Carmichael couldn’t tell his brothers about this. He absolutely couldn’t. Besides wanting to know what he was doing when Wilber and Klamath were sabotaging the car, they would flat out not believe him. Carmichael hadn’t wanted to be in on the job in the first place. It was a big bank in a sizable town, and they were robbing it the day after paychecks went out, when there would be plenty of cash in the drawer. If Carmichael mentioned this to his brothers, they’d believe Wilber over Carmichael, and he’d be dead.
If he didn’t mention it, he’d be there for the robbery, and Klamath and Wilber would shoot him.
If he survived the robbery, he’d be in prison, which might possibly be the safest option. But prison in Texas was no picnic.
Chuck couldn’t help it. He looked Carmichael in the eyes and said, “Don’t worry. I’ve got a plan.”
Well, his plan had worked—and it hadn’t. At the end of it, he’d driven off with the money from the job while Carmichael, Scooter, and Angus went to prison, and Klamath and Wilber went to big holes in the ground.
Chuck’s plan had involved contacting someone he knew in the sheriff’s department and making sure Carmichael and his brothers knew to lie down on the ground the minute they heard the bullhorn.
A sniper got Klamath and Wilber after Chuck had helped them load their car. And while Chuck didn’t exactly mourn them, he’d abandoned Carmichael to prison, which hadn’t set right with him. It didn’t matter that he’d taken the money and invested it. When Carmichael got out in two years, he’d have enough money to set his wife and kids up right and still get the hell out of Dodge and live a good life. But so, sadly, would his brothers. And it had meant leaving a friend behind.
He’d run the plan by Carmichael that morning, before Carmichael’s brothers swung by to pick him up. The kid hadn’t hesitated. He’d told Chuck prison was better than death, so Chuck had done the deed with Carmichael’s blessing. But God, it had hurt. Chuck had admitted—to himself, if not to Carmichael—that it would have hurt a lot worse if Carmichael hadn’t gotten out of there alive.
A tough decision, and an opportunity to get out of the life he’d accidentally fallen into.
Chuck lived simply, for the most part. He liked high-rise apartments but didn’t mind if they were small and simply furnished. He liked fast cars, but Carmichael had taught him enough about cars to know fast wasn’t always expensive. And he liked his clothes comfortable and not flashy. With a little bit of education on the stock market and some good investments, he managed to quadruple the money he got from the bank job and set the brothers up with bank accounts full of untraceably laundered cash.
Carmichael had written him a carefully worded letter, saying that his wife and kids lived in a house now, instead of an apartment, and that she had promised to be faithful to him while he was in jail.
Well, Carmichael had always wanted to do right by her, Chuck figured regretfully. He wished the guy well—he’d done his part and more than.
Of course, Angus and Scooter hadn’t written him a damned thing after he’d sent them their account numbers and information. He wasn’t sure if they were too dumb to realize how lucky they’d been to get out of that bullshit alive, or if he was going to have to live his life looking over his shoulder once they got out of prison. But that would be a while. They were in for five-to-ten because, unlike their brother, it had not been their first offense.
Eighteen Months Later
GOD, CHICAGO was ice fucking cold in the winter. But it was still better than Texas.
He’d told himself that he’d left Texas because he didn’t want the po-po to connect him to the bank job gone wrong. His sheriff buddy had wanted Wilber and Klamath and hadn’t cared so much about the bank-insured money Chuck had gotten away with, but still—he wasn’t the only deputy near Erstwhile who’d be on the lookout. So, no Texas for Chuck. Sure. That was it. He was afraid he might get busted.
It was a lie he told himself to avoid thinking about the brown of Car-Car’s eyes as he’d turned and given Chuck a last forlorn wave before marching off to the bank—and to prison.
But Chuck had sworn off bank jobs—no more of that noise. He’d made his nut with investments, and could probably live comfortably off his portfolio as long as he didn’t go too hog wild, but he hated being bored. So he enrolled in school again, figuring maybe he’d finish up his degree, or maybe learn something else. He had a job, he figured, but learning things like art history and regular history and economics, well, that could be a fine hobby.
And it turned out there were enough dumb criminals in Chicago for him to never be bored.
Which was how he’d met Josh Salinger.
He’d been intent on mischief—not the criminal kind, nothing that would hurt anybody, but he needed to inflict a little bit of karmic revenge on a douchebag. He figured that along with transportation and munitions, karmic revenge had become sort of his calling, and it was sure calling his name now.
He entered the parking garage casually, even though he’d planned for this. Went to the fourth floor, where he knew the asshole kept his Porsche, ignoring the cute kid in the elevator with him. Chuck wasn’t trading blowjobs or anything else these days, and the kid in the elevator—brown eyes, dark brown hair, neat as a pixie and twice as tight—was depressingly young. Besides, Chuck had some payback in mind this time, and a kid holding what looked like a grocery bag in his hands was not on his list.
The elevator door opened, and Chuck strode over to the Porsche in its customary spot, little radio fob in his hand. The fob was something he’d developed in the military—an electronic master key allowing him to pilot any of the vehicles in the auto bay. When he’d started driving for bank robbers, he’d teamed up with an electronics whiz and a dedicated car thief to come up with a handheld version of his own.
The fob worked, but he knew that car-alarm companies were constantly trying to find new cryptocodes to keep car thieves out. He kept in contact with Teeter the electronics whiz and Skinny the car thief, though—they’d been so excited about the concept he’d come up with, they’d kept him eyeball-deep in prototypes ever since.
This one didn’t let him down. In fact it hadn’t let him down the last six times he’d tried it on this car.
The car beeped as he disabled the alarm, and he gave a sigh of relief, sliding into the Porsche and stretching luxuriously before looking around.
Oops! There was a new security camera on the visor, and another one located behind the pressure plate on the steering wheel, and—oh, hey—he felt carefully and located the dye pack under the seat, ready to blast him when he moved the seat back.
Pity.
The douche-nugget who owned the champagne-colored ode to ridiculous spending was about five six, and Chuck was six three. Ah well, no luxury ride today.
He was so involved with figuring out how to maneuver with his knees up to his chin, that the opening of the passenger door almost caused his heart to jump out of his chest.
“Dye pack under the driver’s seat?” The pretty boy with the dark hair and eyes stuck his head inside. “Here, get out of the seat and I can disable it for you. You weren’t planning on stealing it, right? Just relocating it in the parking garage, like you’ve done for the last two weeks?”