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Wielding the drop cart before him, Mike wanted to sprint to the bathroom but forced himself to hold to a hurried walk. When
he finally arrived, he used the end of the cart to bang open
the door. He practically rode the thing across the tile, smashing into the far wall by the handicap stall. The place was
empty, no one bothering with a bathroom break given the three-ring security circus raging on the floor.

Mike slid under the stall door, unlocked it, and drew the cart in beside the mobility scooter, still parked where he’d left
it. Lifting with his legs and groaning under the weight, he transferred the wall safe from the drop cart onto the scooter’s
footrest platform. Donning his sunglasses and hat, he mounted the scooter, throwing the eagle lap robe over his legs and the
safe. The safe was wider than he’d hoped, so his feet stuck out a little on either side, but he prayed that no one would notice.

He motored out of the bathroom and through the heart of the casino, heading for the nearest entrance. The jagged ends of the
two-by-fours shoved splinters into his legs.

In his peripheral vision, he saw five guards drag Shep from the keno lounge, Shep letting himself go limp to make the job
harder for them. ‘I didn’t do nuthin’!’ he bellowed, playing up the impaired blur of his words. ‘Lee’ me alone. You’re hurting
me.’

A number of patrons watched with dismay and sympathy.

Mike kept his head forward and his hand on the throttle, but given the peewee motor and the weight of the safe, the scooter
seemed to creep at a snail’s pace. He realized with alarm that the cadre of guards surrounding Shep was moving directly at
him, putting them on a collision course. His hand ached against the throttle, but he couldn’t make the scooter go faster.
For a brief stretch of walkway, their paths converged, Mike veering off onto the carpet to avoid getting knocked over. Shep’s
head reared up into sight for an instant, time enough for his and Mike’s eyes to meet before the guards swept him off again.

Mike clanked back onto the walkway and pointed the scooter’s nose at the glass doors twenty yards away. The safe shifted slightly,
and he clamped his legs around it, the lap robe starting to slip. Up ahead he saw Dodge and William storming through
the entrance, McAvoy between them. They started toward Mike, and for a moment he was terrified that he’d been made. Lowering
his head so the brim of his cap blocked his face, he teased a lump of gum from his cheek and worked it anxiously between his
teeth. The overtaxed engine gave off a whine. His leg was cramping under the weight of the slipping safe. He prayed his legs
weren’t sticking out too far, that the stupid eagle fleece would hold in place, that he hadn’t in fact been spotted.

He didn’t dare risk a peek, but he felt the weight of the wind as they swept past. His breath burst from him with a shudder,
the scooter wheezing forward with comedic slowness. At last the automatic doors peeled open and he was out, the night air
chilling the sweat on his face.

Near the knocked-over table, numerous guards had corralled Shep, Bob, and Molly, along with the majority of the casino chips.
Despite management’s best efforts, onlookers remained, standing a cautious distance back, pointing, and plucking the occasional
quarter from underfoot.

Ducati helmet tucked casually under an arm, McAvoy approached the mass, offering Shep a collegial nod. ‘Where’s your friend?’

‘Dunno,’ Shep said. ‘I thought you tribesmen hung together.’

McAvoy’s left eye flickered a little. He turned calmly to one of the guards. ‘Why haven’t you moved him like I asked?’

The head security guard said, ‘We just rounded ’em up.’

Bob waved to a concerned gaggle of older women. ‘I’m feeling much better now, thank goodness.’ He held up an orange bottle.
‘Got my nitrate pill.’

McAvoy pointed at Shep, ‘Take him.’

Dodge stepped into view, and Shep nodded at him. ‘How’s your neck?’

Dodge’s head swiveled slightly, those eyes fastening on Shep but offering neither recognition nor acknowledgment.

‘We can talk about that in a minute,’ William said. ‘In private.’

The guards grabbed Shep by the arms and tugged him forward.

The crowd stirred, and then several uniformed officers shoved through to the front.

McAvoy squared to them. ‘I didn’t authorize you to enter my property.’

A lieutenant flipped open his wallet, let his badge dangle. ‘You’re staring at three felons, Mr McAvoy,’ he said. ‘And they’re
wanted in custody.’

A stare-down seemed imminent, but McAvoy didn’t let it get to that. Showing the lieutenant his palms, he stepped aside and
smiled cordially. ‘Officers.’

The cops took control of Shep, Bob, and Molly and started hustling them out through the crowd.

William stepped around McAvoy and put a hand on Shep’s chest as he passed, halting the procession. ‘Don’t worry,’ he whispered,
‘Graham’ll have you back to us in no time.’

‘Yeah,’ Shep said, ‘good luck with that.’

Dodge followed them a few paces toward the exit, then stood, blocking the walkway, staring after them with dull, lifeless
eyes.

By the time Mike reached Bob and Molly’s van at the far edge of the parking lot, the safe and the scooter were barely holding
on. He thumbed a button on the key chain, and the van’s rolling door slid open automatically. A second button unfolded the
wheelchair lift from the side of the vehicle. The dying scooter lurched up beside the lowered lift, Mike’s trembling leg gave
way, and the safe plopped out and landed with a clang on the metal. With another touch of the button, the wheelchair lift
rose, conveying the safe, still bolted to the severed two-by-fours, into the belly of the van.

Leaving the scooter keeled over on the asphalt, Mike hopped into the driver’s seat and pulled out, passing a second wave of
arriving squad cars.

Turning onto the main road, he rolled down his window and spit his chewing gum to the wind.

The surveillance room smelled of coffee and body odor. McAvoy had the director play back the recording a third time. The footage
showed Shep leaning against the wall near the vault, relaxed as could be, tilting his face up as if into a warm sun.

‘That’s it?’ McAvoy asked. ‘He just
stood
there?’

‘Yeah,’ the director said. ‘He didn’t make a move for the vault, nothing. I think it might have all gone down too fast for
him.’

‘And he had no gear.’

‘No gear.’

McAvoy stared at the image. Shep pointing his face at the ceiling. No – at the hidden cameras.

As if he
wanted
the facial-recognition software to pick him up.

‘Wait a minute,’ McAvoy said. ‘Give me that clip on screen twenty-seven again.’

The director complied. Five guards dragged Shep from the keno lounge and across the casino floor. ‘Pause,’ McAvoy said. ‘No,
back. Now.
Now
. There. Stop.’

A frozen image of Shep’s head bucking up above the guards, his gaze focused.

‘What are you looking at?’ McAvoy mumbled. He stepped forward, traced a line in the direction Shep was facing until his finger
hit the side of the monitor. ‘Show me camera twenty-eight, same time stamp.’

The director complied. The screen showed an old vet, wearing a beat-up hat and sunglasses, riding a medical scooter. His legs
poked out the sides as if they were broken. The hand on the throttle was gloved.

McAvoy paled.

‘Boss,’ the director said, ‘what’s wr—’

McAvoy bolted for the door, motorcycle helmet swinging at his side.

His pace was brisk across the casino floor. He barreled into the admin hall, keying immediately to his door at the end, slightly
ajar. He stepped into his office, drawing up short at the edge of the rug.

The Ducati helmet slipped from his hand and cracked on the floorboards.

When the ragged warehouse door screeched back on its tracks, Mike raised an arm against the light, though the pale dusk glow
was far from bright. He’d been inside the dingy warehouse for seventeen hours, trying not to obsess over the limitless ways
the plan could go to shit.

Given the low sun at his back, Shep was a perfect shadow, one arm extended, his hand hooked on the handle of the rolling door.

‘’Bout time,’ Mike said.

Passing the day alone had been torturous. The smell of damp concrete had lodged as a taste in the back of his throat. Empty
cans of SpaghettiOs rolled at his feet. The deserted warehouse was cavernous, which made the emptiness resonant, living, gothic.
Bats in the rafters. Cobwebs. A rusty faucet dripping into a wide, paint-stained basin.

In the middle of the cracked floor was the pallet of heavy crates that Bob and Molly had delivered the previous day. Though
Mike sat leaning against the boxes, he hadn’t so much as popped a lid; he knew better than to handle Shep’s gear. Pulling
himself to his feet, he set a foot on McAvoy’s wall safe, a game hunter posing over vanquished prey.

Shep stepped inside. ‘Cops grilled me all day.’

‘What’d you say?’

‘“What?” mostly,’ Shep answered with a faint smirk. ‘I did nothing wrong. I was in a casino, minding my own business when
I got manhandled. The bigger concern was my association
with Mike Wingate. But of course that’s all
years
in the past.’ He rattled the door closed behind him. ‘I’d never hang around with the likes of you now.’

‘So that’s it? They just let you go?’

‘As promised, Two-Hawks lined up a pricey Injun lawyer for me.’ Shep produced a taupe business card and flicked it, showing
off the fine stock. ‘Plus, it seems that the Shasta Springs Band of Miwok Casino bought a few new squad cars for the Susanville
PD last year. For once in our lives, we were on the right side of a favor. With no Graham riding in to pull rank, they released
me.’

‘And Bob and Molly?’

‘In the clear. Probably back in Reno by now.’ Shep circled the pallet, appraising the boxes. ‘Not that we haven’t become “persons
of interest,” as they like to say. You are one wanted man.’

He started opening crates, unpacking equipment, most of which had been wrapped in moving blankets. Strings of flood-lights
hooked onto T-bar stands, which in turn plugged into a generator he had Mike wheel over from the rear of the pallet. With
the click of a switch, the center of the warehouse was as bright as day. Shep positioned the floodlights around the wall safe,
so it was lit up like some sort of industrial sculpture. Stepping this way and that like a finicky film director, he adjusted
the floodlights to reduce glare. Watching Shep work brought Mike back to studying SAT vocab words while Shep whaled away on
that wall safe from Valley Liquors, the Couch Mother bellowing down the hall. Not your traditional Hallmark moment, but still,
the memory was a comfort.

Shep walked a few paces toward the safe and sat cross-legged, confronting it. ‘We can’t use explosives, since we’re dealing
with paper in there, not coins or gold bars.’ His eyes were closed. ‘The overpressure and detonation would torch the photographs.’

Mike said, ‘Right.’

Shep lay flat on his belly and propped his chin on his fists, staring at the safe like a kid watching TV.

‘Don’t you know how to break into this brand of safe?’ Mike asked.

‘It’s custom,’ Shep said.

‘What’s that mean for us?’

Shep crawled forward and put his face flat against the metal door. ‘It means we have to listen to it.’ He fingered the combination
dial. Fondled the thick handle. Knocked the walls, cocking his head at the dull ring.

Mike watched and stayed out of the way, trying not to worry about Shep’s fussing and his troubled expression.

After twenty or so minutes of this, Shep said, ‘The fact that it’s a custom safe means it could be booby-trapped to destroy
its contents if it’s messed with. So there’s that.’

‘Okay . . .’

‘It has at least three locking lugs. But I’m not sure where. And carving around the frame to guess would be risky business.
Could set off that booby trap. Or fuck up the photo negatives.’

‘So what are we gonna do?’

‘We’re gonna try to bypass the lugs altogether.’

‘How?’

But Shep was already on his feet, digging around behind the circle of lights. From a footlocker he removed a futuristic-looking
tool with the handle and motor of a chain saw and a white-silver circular blade emerging from a mouthlike guard.

‘Looks like something out of a snuff film,’ Mike said.

Shep held the tool out, his forearms cording. He’d donned eye protection and looked mildly deranged, which contributed to
the effect. ‘Rescue saw, used by fire departments. The blade here’s tipped with industrial diamonds. Steel doesn’t like it
much.’

‘I thought you said it’s too risky to cut into the safe.’

‘I said it was too risky to carve around the frame searching for the lugs. But if we can get the handle to turn, the camming-lever
action will retract the lugs for us.’

Mike tried to hide his impatience. ‘So how do we get the handle to turn?’

‘The combination has three numbers, right? Each number corresponds to a disk inside the tumbler assembly. Each disk has a
groove. And those grooves have to align to release the locking block and allow the door handle to turn. What I’m gonna do’
– he revved the motor, the jagged blade morphing into a smooth blur and then back again – ‘is cut away the locking block and
skip all that other bullshit.’

‘How do you know where to cut?’

‘Experience. Feel. Instinct. It’s like hitting a curveball. Sometimes it all aligns and you catch up to it.’

‘And if you don’t?’

‘Then I mangle the tumbler assembly and we don’t get in.’

After a few more adjustments to the floodlights, Shep braced himself and leaned in, blade biting into steel with a scream
that made Mike’s teeth throb in his gums. In the space between the combination dial and the door handle, Shep made three small
equidistant cuts, no more than an inch deep. Mike was up, pacing, his hands laced at the back of his neck.

Finally Shep set down the rescue saw and wiped the sweat from his brow. He gripped the handle firmly and twisted. It rotated
fully, giving off a dull thud.

Shep exhaled. Risked a glance at Mike. Then carefully turned the handle back into place.

‘It’s open,’ Mike said.

‘No. It’s
unlocked
. We don’t want to open it yet.’

‘Right. The booby trap.’ Mike blew out a breath and cracked his knuckles, his fingertips tingling with apprehension. ‘I guess
if it was easy, everyone would do it.’

Shep headed back to the pallet and, after protracted clanking, returned with a power drill fitted with a thick, carbide-tipped
bit. Centering the bit on the roof of the safe, he set his full weight behind the handle and drilled down. This went on for
ten minutes,
then twenty. Every so often he’d stop and blow steel dust from the hole, the powder turning white when he hit a layer of
concrete. Finally, he stopped to rest.

His lips tensed, that crooked tooth poking into view. Sweat and bits of shrapnel sparkled in his buzz cut. ‘There is nothing
better than this.’

Mike raised his eyebrows.

‘Taking a hard nut to crack and cracking it,’ Shep continued. ‘Making it spill its secrets, nothing left but the light of
day. Doesn’t matter how much money you come from, how much security you pay for, what kind of custom safe you build. Any lowlife
can grind past all that to the promised land. All it takes is focus and determination. Stamina, the great fucking equalizer.
And when those doors swing open for me? Man. The release – the
triumph
.’ He shook his head and whistled a single note. Mike had never seen him so alive. ‘Half the time I don’t even care what the
take is. It’s about the challenge, not the shit inside.’

‘But tonight,’ Mike said, ‘it’s about both.’

‘Tonight’s nothing. The nut isn’t the safe. It’s Brian McAvoy and Deer Creek Enterprises. Money, connections, power – they’re
the guys sitting behind all those doors that’ve been closed to us all our lives. But if we apply the right pressure at the
right time, make the right incisions’ – a nod to the cuts in the steel face – ‘pull the right levers, we’re gonna crack those
mother-fuckers wide open.’

He resumed drilling, leaning on the handle, going through a second drill bit and then a third. At last, the resistance gave
way, the drill chuck free-falling three inches to slap against the top of the safe. Shep blew the hole clear, then uncoiled
a fiber-optic camera and fed the black wire through into the safe.

‘You see the negatives?’ Mike asked, the words coming in a rush. He had done his best to forget that every risk they’d taken
was based on a hunch: that McAvoy had parked the photo negatives in the safe. Now they were inches away from knowing.

Shep studied the green footage on the tiny attached screen. His mouth drooped a bit, and then he leaned over the drill hole,
sniffed a few times, and cursed under his breath.

Mike had the sensation of losing his stomach for a moment, a roller-coaster dip. ‘They’re not in there,’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ Shep said. ‘They are.’ But his expression stayed dire.

Mike looked on the tiny monitor. All he saw were a few brittle papers and – thank God – the thin stack of film negatives.
Then he noticed it – a stripped wire rimming the safe’s interior. If the walls were tampered with or the door opened, the
end of the wire would be pulled into contact with a bare wire loop. ‘If those exposed parts touch—’

‘They’ll ignite,’ Shep said.

‘So how did McAvoy get in?’

‘If you open the safe the right way, then the weight of the locking mechanism pins down the slack wire, moving it out of reach.’

‘But you destroyed the locking mechanism,’ Mike said.

Shep sat back on his heels, his hands resting on his stained jeans.

Mike wouldn’t let himself fully acknowledge Shep’s expression of defeat. ‘So we’ll just be ready to throw water in the minute
the door opens,’ Mike said.

Shep grabbed the back of Mike’s collar and moved his face down toward the drill hole. ‘Smell.’

An acrid scent singed Mike’s nostrils.

‘That’s cellulose nitrate film,’ Shep said. ‘They made movies with it in the thirties and forties. But amateurs used to cut
it down and use it for still photography.’ He pushed the fiber-optic camera in farther, moving the lens right above the strip
of negatives. ‘See the horizontal dashes between every fourth sprocket hole?’

‘How do you know this? What are you, the Professor from
Gilligan’s Island
?’

Shep didn’t smile, which heightened Mike’s alarm. He just
poked his tongue into his lip and said, ‘If you find it in a safe, odds are I’ve come across it. That shit is highly flammable
– basically the same as flash paper. If it catches a spark, it’s up in a puff.’

Mike exhaled and let his forehead bang against the safe. Those photo negatives were a foot away, sitting behind an unlocked
safe door that he couldn’t swing open. To have gotten this far, only to be undone by two lengths of stripped wire.

He swore sharply, a shout that echoed around the warehouse, rustling the bats in the rafters. Then he leaned back, spit into
the darkness beyond the lights, and gave a bitter laugh. ‘I’m never going to see my daughter again, and it’s because some
botanists from Stanford used cheap film eighty years ago.’

‘There’s no way I could’ve known.’ Shep’s voice was too loud, and his hearing had nothing to do with it.

‘I know that,’ Mike said. ‘I’m not blaming—’

‘I mean, of all things, cellulose nitrate—’

‘—you. I’m just grateful—’

‘—that shit’s so flammable it burns
underwater
.’

Mike bolted upright, Shep’s head snapping up. Mike jogged off into the darkness, shouting, ‘Get some light over here!’

He found the faucet near the wall by feel and cranked the handle, water drumming the wide basin below. Shep directed one of
the T-bars of floodlights over, nearly blinding him.

Mike said, ‘We gotta drown the circuit. No oxygen, no spark.’

Shep came over, and they watched the rust-colored water slowly turn clear. ‘And if the water ruins the negatives?’

Mike found a crusted rag and used it to plug the drain. ‘We’re out of options.’

As the water rose, he spread several moving blankets out on the floor beside the basin and angled a set of floodlights directly
down onto them. ‘We have to peel them apart right away.’

When Mike cut the water, the silence was pronounced, every plink from the faucet reverberating off the high rafters.

They crossed to the safe and lifted it from either side, careful
to keep the door clamped shut. With some effort they carried it over and rested it on the lip of the basin. Shep’s eyes were
shiny and excited. ‘Ready?’

They slid the safe over, and it hit the water with a slap, a wave rolling back and splashing their thighs. A spike of two-by-four
gouged the underside of Mike’s forearm, but he held tight, settling the safe gently on the bottom.

He stepped back and shook his arms, spattering the concrete with drops of blood and water. Shep stayed put, elbows resting
on the edge of the basin, a dugout-railing lean. After testing that the blankets had warmed beneath the floodlights, Mike
went to Shep’s side, mirrored his position, and peered down. Bubbles streamed from the drill hole in the top of the safe.
They made the faintest sound when they hit the surface, like guppies feeding.

Mike tried not to think of the water seeping into those photo negatives. He tried not to think about what would happen if
they got ruined, if the wires sparked when the door opened despite the water, if they weren’t the negatives Two-Hawks was
looking for. His knee vibrated up and down, a nervous tic.

They waited, watching the safe slowly fill.