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Chapter1
Jeb
Kentucky
There are a lot of good thieves in the business, and a few great ones—which I happen to be. Being great, though, has never been good enough for me.
I want to belegendary.
When other thieves gather around to talk about 'the Great Ones' with both awe and jealousy,I want my name, Jebediah Ezekiel Jones, to be mentioned right alongside Soapy Smith, Leo Nyx, Mad Molly May, and Hova Carmichael.
I want to never be forgotten.
It ain’t easy being legendary though.
There are a lot of skills required to be a thief. First, you need to cover the basics: If you can’t read a mark, lift a wallet, pick a lock, crack a safe, or pull a con, you’re better off enrolling in school to become a lawyer and settling for stealing money the legit way. High-speed driving, shooting firearms, and being able to blow things up on the fly also need to be on your résumé if you’re going to be good at what you do.
Now, if you want to be a great thief, you better also be sharp-eyed, cunning, and have mastered the most critical skill of all—the ability to spot an opportunity and make it your own.
Just like I’m doing right now.
I’m supposed to be on a simple milk run for Cash Mcree. An ex-hook up who, along with his merry band of white hat followers—and me—helped take down the Reivers, his father’s evil motorcycle club. Currently, we’re after Patriots Now, an organization secretly in bed with the Reivers, and set on starting a revolution.
Today’s job is just supposed to be stirring up a little trouble at a series of businesses that Patriots Now uses to launder their dirty money. The idea is to disrupt their cash flow and do what I do best—shock and awe those fuckers until they start making mistakes.
Me and my partner for today’s shenanigans, Eli Baush, started the day by impersonating dealer trade drivers and making off with fifteen high-end cars from a tote-the-note car dealership in Lexington. The second stop of the day was at a check cashing store in Frankfurt, where I paid the lady making minimum wage working behind the counter, Tina, five grand to play along as I manhandled her, tied her up, and cleared the place out of just shy of thirty grand. Then I burned all the checks they’d cashed that day while Eli wiped their computers.
Now, we’re in Louisville at a coal miner’s credit union with the simplest job of the day—planting surveillance equipment in the manager’s office—but something is off. I’ve spent a good portion of my career casing banks, and I’ve never seen anything like this setup.
The door to the safe is open. Not just the exterior door that leads to the safe deposit boxes, but the interior one is as open as a screen door on a summer’s day. There’s no sleepy-eyed retiree, or even a bored, off-duty cop looking for an extra paycheck guarding the place, and only three employees are on duty. All three are blond-haired, blue-eyed men in suits, which is Patriots Now’s typical frontline recruit.It’s like they clone those fuckers.The one working the manager’s line seems to be having problems processing a simple deposit while the other two keep checking their watches.
Out of habit, before I parked my ‘borrowed’Cadillacout front, I checked the perimeter of the building. Eli rolled his eyes and sighed heavily at the delay, but like I told him, knowing the escape route of any place I walk into, even if I’m not robbing it, is a habit I’ll never be able to break. While I was scoping the area out, I noticed there were three cop cars parked an equal distance apart, with a police officer in each vehicle, just sitting there.
Itlookslike Patriots Now is playing a shell game.And because I am a great thief, I recognize exactly what this situation is shaping up to be.
It’s an opportunity.
Grabbing theColt 45 from my sheepskin jacket, I point it up at the ceiling and shoot. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is a robbery.”
Chapter2
Jeb
Kentucky
Two customers hit the ground at the sound of bullets firing; an older man, probably a retired coal miner, who’d been arguing with one of the fake tellers about not receiving his promised pension, and a young hipster girl who’d walked in clutching a résumé.I’ll have to get Eli to make a surprise deposit in their bank accounts as an apology for putting them through this. The rest of the ‘customers’ in the bank look like they’re confused—like actors in a play that started fifteen minutes too early.
Eli spins his head around at me, his brown eyes huge in disbelief at my last-minute change of plans.
I wink at him.
And because there are all kinds of big payoffs—I get the one I wanted. The main one I put this plan in motion for.
He blushes.
It’s been three weeks since Cash was shot at The Freedom Festival. Since then, Eli has shut down and turned back into the uptight computer nerd I first met when Cash and his annoying boyfriend, Johnny, set us up as partners. Except for this time around, I don’t get the scorn-filled looks and ice-pick sharp insults he used to aim at me.
Believe me, I’ve tried all kinds of shit to get a reaction out of him. I spilled tequila on his computer. I told him I thought graphic novels were shit. Hell, I even had some girl I picked up give me head right outside his watch repair shop/computer cave, where I knew his security cameras would show him everything.
