AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She gives Natalie a shove, sending her stumbling into me. I catch hold of her, turning in time to see Flavio waving the box over the wall. There’s a beep and then a humming noise. A moment later, the door starts to unlock, one mechanism at a time. “Here we go,” Andrea says, pushing past the two of us. “We’re about to be rich.”
The door swings open and Flavio squeezes inside before it’s even finished moving. Andrea goes after him, leaving me and Natalie unguarded. It’ll be the last mistake they make.
“Ready to get out of here?” I ask, walking over to the wall and pulling the photocopy out of my jacket pocket.
“What’s that?” Natalie asks.
“Copy of the barcode on the Milk Duds.” I run it over the spot where Flavio was waving the box. The door swings shut.
“Hey,” Flavio shouts from inside the room. “It’s fucking empty in here.”
He appears in the gap but one shove from me and he’s back inside just as the gap in the door gets too narrow to do more than shout through. “What the fuck are you doing?” he yells at me. “Open this door! Where’s all the money?”
“Relax,” I call through to him. “You’ve still got a few hours until the fire starts. Plenty of time to enjoy being a couple in all that empty space, right?”
The door slams shut, cutting off a curse from him as I turn away and face Natalie. She looks like she’s about to throw up. “Are you going to let them burn alive in there?”
“I’m going to inform my father what I’ve done and let him decide what should happen to those two. I’m done. Now let’s get out of here.”
“But the vault was empty. Why was the vault empty?”
“Because I came and emptied it when you first gave me the box.”
“You did what? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you’d have told Andrea when she came to get you this morning. I needed to keep it quiet to protect you.”
“So, where is all the stuff that was in there?”
“I’ll tell you just as soon as I’ve had breakfast. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Natalie
* * *
He calls his father, sounding perfectly calm, not like a man who almost got killed an hour ago. I have to admire his cool. He organized the whole thing, knew exactly what he was doing.
“Flavio and Andrea are in the vault,” he says for the second time. “As in locked in the vault.”
He pauses for a moment. “How did it happen? Well, Flavio pulled a gun on me like I expected so I dealt with him. You’ve still got a few hours before the place goes up in flames. If you want to come let him out, you go ahead. As for me, I’m done.”
He hangs up the phone, picking up his fork and digging it into his second round of pancakes. “These are good,” he says. “I could get used to them.”
“About that?”
“Yeah?”
“I was wondering if you’d maybe been thinking about staying here.”
“With you?”
“With me.”
“You’re sure.”
“Nope, but I’m willing to give it a try if you are.”
