Coin Heist (18 page)

Twenty-Five

DAKOTA

I stepped onstage
and grabbed the mic. “Check one two. Check one two.”

It was that beautiful, scary moment right before a party started. Everything was perfect and on schedule. Our balloons floated around the room, evenly dispersed for maximum effect. The beverage bars were set up, bottles of sparkling water resting in their ice baths. The monogrammed napkins I'd personally paid for, embroidered with the letters HF, were folded on every table. Roses dyed in our school colors, violet and yellow, were tucked into crystal vases (again, on my personal tab—thank god my parents didn't pay much attention to my credit card bill). There was even a limo parked outside, sponsored by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (really, again, my parents), for any students who needed last-minute transport. In the past there had been accidents, and my parents were afraid that if there were any tonight, I could end up getting sued as a planner of the prom.

I stared out at the open room, imagining it full of everyone we knew, all my friends and their dates, dressed up and sitting down at their tables to eat the buffet meal the committee had selected—we'd had to settle for chicken fingers because of the limited budget, but the caterers had agreed to make it look nicer with garnishes and stuff. And the dance floor. They'd be all over the dance floor, dancing to music
I'd
be making.

It was strange standing up there. I mean, I always knew I'd be setting up prom, that was a given. But I never thought I'd actually
be
the entertainment, saving the prom from disaster. Or maybe ruining it entirely, single-handedly. I tried to push that thought away. The point was that for once, I wouldn't be giving orders or organizing; I'd be up there singing. That would be the real me—whether I failed or succeeded.

My parents would be horrified. As it was, they thought theater was a waste of my time. What would they think about me singing in a band? Bands were for losers, guys with unachievable dreams and no sense of reality. Guys like Jason Hodges.

My friends would be shocked, too, to see me hanging out up here with the hipster dudes.
They don't even shower
, I could hear Junibel saying. Not to mention that we hadn't even practiced. I heard my mom's voice in my head.
It's not worth doing anything if you're not prepared to do it well.

Well, that was too bad, because I was doing this. For once I was going to do what I wanted. I sang the chorus of “Good Riddance” and tried to drown out all the other negative judgy voices. My voice peeled out in a ribbon of sound curling around the room, bigger than me, bigger than anyone.

“That actually sounds pretty good,” Chaddie said. At first he'd been all freaked out about the possibility of my singing with the band.
Her?
he'd asked, like I wasn't right in front of him.
Her?
But now he seemed to be relaxing some, as much as a guy who looked like he was digesting a ball of steel wool could relax.

Jason shot me a sneaky smile. It felt good. To be honest, I'd only offered at first because I was concerned about protecting our plan. After all of our work, I couldn't let it go down the tubes. But when I saw Jason's face, and that for once he didn't have some jokey comment to make, I realized it was also the right thing to do.

Also? I'd realized that day when I did recon at the Mint that, every once in a while, doing something I wasn't supposed to do felt really, really good.

I was working my way through the second song on the list, “Wonderwall,” when I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. Could be Simone wondering how much to tip the valet parking guy for his night of service. I put the mic down and picked up my phone.

When I looked at the screen, though, I saw the call was from Benny. I knew, even before I pressed
answer
, that there was a reason my whole body was tensed up.

“Dakota,” he said, his voice hoarse. “We have a serious problem.”

Immediately everything else in the room went fuzzy, and my focus became like one of those laser pointers, tiny, bright, and purposeful. I stepped aside between two columns so I could get away from the others. “Tell me what happened.”

“Alice must have made some kind of data error. There are more coins than we expected.”

“How many?” I asked in my best organizer voice. There was no problem that couldn't be solved. I'd headed enough committees to know that.

“A lot,” he said.

“Like a hundred? Two hundred? Be specific.”

“Try a few thousand,” he said. “They're flying out off the press. I'm watching them right now. There's no way we can move all of these by ourselves. And even if we could—”

I broke in. “What do you need?” I eyed up Jason from across the stage and saw that he'd tuned in to what was going on. He was watching me carefully as I answered Benny as calmly as I could. “Just tell me what you need.”

“I don't know. Just come here. Come here and bring something big to carry them in. We need a new backup plan.”

After all of my scenarios, this wasn't one we'd planned for. Fire, breaking an ankle, a snowstorm, yes. Computer error? No. Because Alice was in charge of that part, and we just never questioned her. “Okay, we're on it.”

“All right. I can meet you. Fire door.” His voice was shaky. “How long?”

“As soon as we can.”

When I hung up, Jason was off the stage and by my side. “What happened?”

“There's a problem with the order,” I whispered, stunned but still trying to maintain some discretion. “They have more than they can handle themselves.”

“So what was their plan?”

“I don't know. He asked us to come and bring something to get the coins out. We have to come up with something. What should we do? What should we do?” I'd told Benny we'd come, but now I was having second thoughts. Now I was seriously entertaining the possibility of skipping town.

“Okay then. We've got to get over there,” he said. He sounded more confident, more serious than I'd ever heard him. I'd seen it a little bit that night in the woods, but now he was like a different person.

“But what if they're in trouble?”

“If they're in trouble,
we're
in trouble. Look, we have to try, don't we? We're a team, right?” he asked, throwing my words back in my face. One minute I was giving him a pep talk, and now he was returning the favor. The world had clearly spun off its axis.

What could I do but agree? “Yeah. But what about the prom? The band?” We'd just averted our first crisis of the night, and now we had to contend with a much bigger one. Prom was one thing, but I couldn't go to jail, and I didn't want anyone else to, either.

“Well, we're just going to have to find a way to do both,” he said.

Prom was starting in half an hour. The Mint was at least ten minutes away. It was impossible. I glanced over at Rankin and the other faculty chaperones, who were talking in the corner. My eyes locked with Rankin's. “I'm supposed to be the committee point person,” I said to Jason. “The chaperones will wonder why I'm not here!” I rubbed my face in a way that my mom had explicitly told me caused breakouts.

Jason's eyes darted around while he thought of our next move. “Okay. I got it. We'll pretend that the rental PA crapped out. We'll get on the phone like we're calling the company, and we'll tell the band we're going down to South Street to pick up a replacement. That limo's still out there, right?”

I nodded, impressed with his quick thinking. Who was this guy in the Jason suit?

“Get the keys and pull it around.”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“You're the project manager,” he said firmly. “Figure it out. Meet me outside in five. And text Benny . . . Tell him we're on our way.”

I did as he said. It was a relief not to have to figure it all out on my own for once. But first I called Dylan to tell him we had a band emergency and had to leave the Franklin Institute, and that I'd be late. I also told him I was singing with the band. Ordinarily he might have questioned that, but he was so drunk all I heard was a four-syllable “yeahhhh” with a background soundtrack of yelling lacrosse players, girly squeals, and something loud crashing.

“Oh man.” He cracked up. “Justin threw Arno's wallet out of the sunroof!”

I just hung up, shaking my head. I wasn't missing anything. I put the phone down and went into the kitchen and had the catering crew lay out a dinner plate for the driver. Then I put my coat on and went outside and told him it was waiting for him.

“That's nice of you,” he said. He was a bored-looking middle-aged guy who clearly spent a lot of his life waiting in a limo on nights like these. In fact, he'd spent so many nights doing exactly this that he was used to leaving the keys in the ignition, right where I needed them. Maybe we were doing him a favor by stealing his car, I rationalized.

I was getting very good at that.

“We try,” I said.

My heart raced as I waited for him to go back through the revolving door at the service entrance on the side of the building.

“Dakota!”

I turned to see Rankin emerging from around the corner. He was all dressed up in a tan linen suit.

Nooo!
Why did I always have to run into him at the worst possible times?

“What are you doing out here?”

“Band emergency,” I said, repeating my prepared excuse. “We have to get a new rental PA.”

He nodded—was that suspicion I saw? I thought back to the day I saw him after meeting with Garcia. He'd seemed weird then, too. No, that was probably just his usual way of dealing with students. No way he could know anything. “See you in there,” he said. He walked a few more steps, then stopped and turned around. “Don't take too long.”

“I won't!” I said, flashing my best DAKOTA CUNNINGHAM smile.

When he was gone, I ran around to the driver side, got behind the wheel, turned on the engine, and drove around to the back where Jason was waiting, two giant red rolling amp cases on either side of him.

Twenty-Six

BENNY

Dread oozed and
filled every inch of my body, like the cement they poured over dead guys in mob movies. It was now 5:35 p.m. We had ten minutes to figure this shit out. Impossible, right?

Even so, I couldn't help but feel a bit relieved when I opened the door on the fire stairs landing and saw Dakota and Jason standing outside on Race Street with these two big red boxes and doomsday looks on their faces. I mean, I almost laughed, I was so glad.

At least we were in this together. As much as Dakota bugged me, I knew she would do her best to make sure we got out of here.

I hustled them in and quickly rushed them up the stairs to the production floor.

“What kind of crazy-ass outfit is that?” I yelled to Jason over the machines. He looked like he had gotten into a brawl with a bunch of lumberjacks. Meanwhile, Dakota looked like . . . Well, she looked like some sort of princess. In a good way for once, I mean. God, she was beautiful. I looked away quickly before she caught me staring at her.
Pathetic, dude, just pathetic.

“It's a stage outfit. For the band.”

Huh? Well, never mind that. “You left the door open, right?”

“Yeah,” Jason said.

Good. We needed all of our options at this point. It was emergency time.

Alice didn't say anything when they got there. She was still comatose, practically. I felt bad for her, but there wasn't much time to worry about feelings. We had to save ourselves.

Luckily, the others were still on this planet, thank Jesus. Jason took one look at the machines and said, “Let's get to work.”

It was nothing like we'd pictured it. Operation GroundEagleFly had had its moments, but this one really took the cake: me and Jason scrambling around on our hands and knees under the coin traps trying to catch the flying quarters in Jason's cases.

Ching ching ching.

We had nine minutes, by my count, before the next security round. An eternity, or the blink of an eye. We could do this, we could finish the job and get this stuff out of here, if we just kept going, if we kept pace with the machines. But they were machines, and we were . . . humans.

My fingers burned through the gloves I was wearing, and sweat poured down my back. Pins and needles started to stab at my feet. Couldn't think about that. The coins had to go.

“How many more?” Dakota kept asking as she watched the doors.

“I don't know!” I yelled. “No one knows!” They all looked at me, alarmed. Maybe they weren't expecting the quiet guy to start hollering. Well, this guy was done being quiet.

Meanwhile, the robots that were supposed to pack the finished coins in nylon bags were zooming back and forth across the floor—their sensors confused by our plan.

It would have been ridiculous if it weren't all so damn stressful. I had no idea how long this machine would keep running. We'd been on the floor for about thirty minutes, but it felt like hours.

About thirty seconds later there was a horrible buzzing, some red lights flashed, and we all froze.

WTF was that? An alarm of some kind?

Then we saw the belt start winding down. Within minutes, the last few coins were flipped out of the press and into the trap, and then everything went dead. I mean everything. All the movement in the room. The silence was so sudden, it was almost painful.

It was done. Finally it was done.
Oh thank God.

A weird sense of peace settled over me.

Maybe this would be okay, I thought. If we hurried, we could get out of here. It wouldn't be so hard. We could still pull this off. Eight and a half minutes.

“Let's go, guys!” I said, noticing that they were all still.

Dakota, especially. She was zoning out at something in front of her.

We had to hustle if we were gonna get out okay. “Come on! What's the problem?”

Then I saw what she was staring at. The light on in the other room. We could see it through the door.

The guard!

Could it be? But he was early. This wasn't right. We were so close. We just needed a few more minutes . . .

Jason was already closing up his case, getting ready to roll it away. Dakota had snapped back into action too, scrambling to help me pick up some coins on the floor. But Alice was just standing there next to me, frozen on the spot, her fists full of quarters that were spilling out at her feet.

“Move!” I yelled, getting in her face. It wasn't like it would help; there was nowhere to hide, and not enough time. But I was just so pissed right then. Why couldn't she
try
? “Just do something! Snap the hell out of it!”

But there was no snapping out of it, no waking up, for any of us. This wasn't a dream, and it wasn't a game. This was for real. They were coming for us. I watched, helpless, as the door opened. Someone was about to walk in.

The door opened, and we all just froze dead in our tracks. It was worse than a guard.

It was Mr. Rankin.