Read Chapter 18: The Night Before the Job

The fire in the farmhouse hearth had burned low, casting long shadows across the room. The crew sat in a rough semicircle around the scarred oak table where Walter had spread his blueprints—not of Federal Trust's grand public floors, but of its underbelly.

"I've walked those corridors three times now," Walter said, tapping the schematic. "Sixty-seven steps from the main lobby to the executive wing. The security rotations overlap by exactly ninety seconds at 9:40 PM, when the audit celebration will be in full swing. That's our window."

Jack leaned forward, knuckles white on the table's edge. "And the vault?"

"There is no vault in our plan," Roy said flatly.

The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on. Jack stared at Roy, then at Walter, then back at Roy. His jaw worked like he was chewing glass.

"You're joking."

"I never joke about money," Roy said. "We're there for one thing: the DeVries file. The document that ties the Federal Reserve to the mills going under. We take that, we take the public exposure, and we leave the physical currency untouched."

Jack's chair scraped backward as he stood. "You son of a bitch. All this planning, all this risk—Sal's got a goddamn deadline, Doc's gambling his forged identity on some audit seals, and you're telling me we're walking out empty-handed? For paperwork?"

"The paperwork is worth more than every dollar in that building," Walter said quietly.

Jack rounded on him. "Spoken like a man who's never had to run from a trigger-happy guard with nothing to show for it."

Sal shifted on his stool, arms crossed. "I ain't sayin' I agree with Jack, but a man's got a right to know what he's bleeding for."

Doc, who had been silent in the corner with his medical bag at his feet, finally spoke. "The boy's right, Roy. You promised us a job. Walter promised us a reckoning. But Jack's got a point—paper doesn't feed a family. Paper doesn't pay a debt."

Roy's eyes swept the room, landing on each man in turn. Then he reached into his coat and pulled out a folded newspaper clipping, yellowed and creased. He tossed it onto the table.

Walter picked it up. A photograph of a breadline, men in tattered coats, hollow faces staring at the camera. The caption read: *"CHICAGO UNEMPLOYMENT REACHES 28%."*

"You think I don't know what money means?" Roy's voice was quiet but carried the weight of a shout. "I've seen men die for a nickel. I've held my sister's hand while she cried because there wasn't enough flour to make a proper cake for her own birthday. I know what a dollar does."

He stood, pacing behind Walter's chair. "But I also know what happens when we rob a Federal Reserve bank in the middle of a city crawling with federal agents. You think they're gonna let that slide? You think they won't burn the country down to find us?"

"They'll burn it down anyway when we expose the routing order," Walter said.

Roy pointed at him. "Exactly. The document points the finger at DeVries and his cronies. It turns the government's attention where it belongs—up, at the men who caused this mess. But if we take the money, we become common thieves. The story becomes about us. The DeVries document becomes evidence in our trial, buried in a federal case file, never seeing the light of day."

Jack's fists were trembling at his sides. Walter watched the man's face cycle through fury, confusion, and something that looked almost like hurt.

"You lied to us," Jack said finally. "You brought us here on a promise of a score, and now you're telling me the score is principle?"

Roy's jaw tightened. "The score is survival. Yours, mine, everyone's. You want to rob a bank and run for the rest of your life, go ahead. Find another crew. But if you stay, you stay for this."

The fire cracked. A log settled, sending sparks up the chimney. Walter watched Jack's chest rise and fall, watched the muscles in his neck cord and release.

Then, slowly, Jack sat back down.

"Fine," he muttered. "But if that safe's got cash in it and we leave it behind, I reserve the right to say I told you so."

Roy almost smiled. "You can say it all the way to the newspapers."

The tension didn't break so much as it thinned to something survivable. Doc reached into his bag and pulled out a bottle of amber liquid, setting it on the table without ceremony.

"Celebration's tomorrow," he said. "Tonight, we plan."

Walter spread the blueprints wider, pulling the bottle aside. "The celebration starts at eight. Cocktails in the main lobby, then a reception in the executive dining hall. The audit review board will be feted until at least midnight."

"You'll be among them?" Sal asked.

Walter nodded. "I'll enter as Edward Westlake's guest. The invitation I forged will get me past the main doors. From there, I'm Walter Crane, tax consultant—a name I made up, but no one will check. I'll keep Edward occupied, keep him away from the eastern corridor."

"What about the security panel?" Doc asked.

"Eastern utility closet, third door past the men's washroom. The panel's been there since 1926, and the bank never upgraded it. Sal, you'll be in position at 9:32. Disconnect the three fuses marked with red tape, then rewire the circuit to bypass the magnetic locks on the executive wing."

Sal nodded, eyes sharp despite the shadow beneath them. "And the alarm?"

"There's no direct alarm on the panel," Walter said. "But the executive wing has a secondary security system—a bell circuit that runs to the front desk. If the bell rings, the guard makes a courtesy call to the manager's office before doing anything else. That gives us six minutes."

"Six minutes is nothing," Jack said.

"Six minutes is everything," Roy countered. "Doc and I will be inside when Walter opens the corridor. We'll move straight to the private safe, crack it with the combination Walter provided, and take the file. Six minutes is enough to get out the service entrance and into the getaway car."

Jack leaned back, arms crossed. "And me? What am I doing?"

Roy met his eyes. "You're our insurance. You'll be in the service stairwell with a crowbar and a clear line to the front lobby. If the bell rings early, you make enough noise to pull the guards toward you, not us."

Jack's lip curled. "So I'm the decoy."

"You're the last line," Walter said. "The reason we all make it out."

The words hung in the air. Jack looked at Walter for a long moment, and something shifted in his expression—the hostility softening into something almost like grudging respect.

"Fine," he said. "I'll be the last line."

Doc poured four fingers of whiskey into each of the chipped glasses he'd found in the cupboard. He raised his own.

"To the last line," he said.

"To the last line," they echoed.

Walter drank. The whiskey burned going down, settling warm in his chest. He looked around the table at these men—Jack with his cracked knuckles and desperate anger, Sal with his gambling debts and bruised pride, Doc with his forged credentials and hidden past, Roy with his sister's photograph and his unreadable eyes.

They were thieves, liars, and broken men. Every one of them had been chewed up by a system that promised them the world and delivered poverty, hunger, and shame.

And yet here they stood, ready to burn it all down.

Walter felt something he hadn't felt in years—a kinship so fierce it threatened to crack his ribs. These weren't just accomplices. They were his brothers in ruin.

Roy caught his eye across the table. For a moment, the mask slipped, and Walter saw something raw underneath—fatigue, maybe, or fear. Or perhaps the same desperate hope that had been gnawing at Walter's own chest since the day his bank collapsed.

"Same time tomorrow," Roy said. "We move."

The crew dispersed into the night, each to their own room. Walter stayed by the fire, nursing the last of his whiskey. He pulled the folded routing order from his breast pocket—the Halcyon Mills document he'd never fully shown Roy—and stared at the ink bleeding across the page.

He owed Roy honesty now. He'd promised it.

But some truths, once spoken, could never be taken back.

He tucked the paper away and watched the fire burn down to embers, wondering which of them would live to see the morning after.