Read Chapter 22: The Splinter

The back room of the Cicero warehouse smelled of iodine and old blood. Doc lay on the cot with his shirt peeled open, the wound in his side a raw red mouth that Walter had packed with strips of bedsheet. The old man's breathing was shallow but steady. For now.

Jack stood over him like a crow on a fence post. "He can't ride. He can't walk. He can't hold a gun." He said it flat, without cruelty, which somehow made it worse. "We leave him with a doctor and a wad of cash. That's the play."

Walter looked up from the bandage. "He dies alone in some boarding house, Jack. Is that what you want on your ledger?"

"I want to see dawn." Jack's jaw tightened. "One man down don't have to be two, three, four. We got one car and a trunk full of stolen paper. Every cop in Chicago is combing for us."

Sal sat in the corner counting his fingers like they owed him money. He hadn't spoken since they dragged Doc through the loading dock. His knuckles were white.

Then Roy spoke. He had been standing by the door, arms crossed, watching all of them like a man reading a balance sheet. "We don't need to run at all."

The room went quiet.

Roy stepped forward. "We got the document. We got the proof. But we got no judge, no jury, no newspaper that'll print a word against a man like DeVries without a wire from Washington saying it's safe. You know it. I know it." He looked at Walter. "The accountant knows it most of all."

Walter finished tying the bandage and stood. His knees cracked. He was tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. "What are you proposing, Roy?"

"DeVries is a businessman. He owns banks, senators, maybe a judge or two. But a businessman knows what a liability costs." Roy smiled, and it didn't reach his eyes. "We send him a letter. We name our price. Five million, and the document burns."

"Five million," Sal breathed.

"Five million dollars," Roy said. "Split five ways. Six, if Doc makes it."

"You're asking us to blackmail a man who already murdered a bank examiner and shot one of his own guards to cover tracks." Walter's voice was quiet. "Do you think he'll pay? Or do you think he'll send men to carve our names into his floorboards?"

"He'll pay because it's cheaper than the alternative." Roy shrugged. "Men like DeVries aren't brave. They're rich. There's a difference. Fear drives them the same as us."

"Or he'll pay us in lead."

"Then we're dead either way. At least this way we die with money in our pockets."

Walter shook his head slowly. "You want to become him. That's what you're asking. You want us to hold a gun to a man's head and pull the trigger on everything he built—unless he fills our hands first."

"Everything he built," Roy repeated. "The same everything that tore your bank apart. The same everything that killed your depositors. I'm not asking us to be saints, Walter. I'm asking us to be smart."

Jack scratched his stubble. "He's got a point. We rob banks for a living. We ain't the Better Business Bureau."

Doc made a sound from the cot—a wet cough. Walter moved to him, pressed a hand to his forehead. Hot. Too hot. "Doc needs a surgeon within the day, or nothing we decide here will matter for him."

"Then we vote," Roy said. "Now."

Walter felt the weight of the room swing. Jack was with Roy—he could see it in the way the big man's arms had uncrossed, in the tilt of his chin. Sal was a coin flip. Sal was always a coin flip.

"Vote on what?" Walter asked. "Exactly what are we choosing between?"

"Revenge or money," Roy said. "The document goes to the newspapers and the government, and we pray someone with a badge cares. Or the document goes back to DeVries with a price tag, and we live like kings in a country that doesn't know our names."

"Newspapers won't print it." Jack again, grinding the point. "We're bank robbers. They'll call it a shakedown and throw us in a hole."

"We're criminals," Roy agreed. "No one will believe us. Not the cops, not the papers, not the public. The only power we have is the power of what DeVries wants buried. That's leverage. That's money."

Walter looked at Doc. The old man was watching him through half-lidded eyes, and there was something in his gaze that Walter hadn't seen before. Not fear. Acceptance. Like Doc had already taken the vote for himself and it didn't matter what the rest of them chose.

"Doc stays with a doctor either way," Walter said. "That's not part of the vote. That happens."

"Agreed," Roy said. "I'm not a monster."

"You'd leave him behind to die alone, but not a monster."

Roy's eyes went flat. "Watch your mouth, accountant."

"Or what? You'll kill me?" Walter smiled, and he could feel how thin it was. "Seems like a waste of a good accountant."

Sal stood up. His hands were shaking. "I vote with Roy."

The room turned.

"He's got five hundred dollars on his head," Sal said, speaking fast, like the words were hot coals in his mouth. "I got a week, if that. Big Jim doesn't care about reasons or plans or hopes. He wants his money. Roy's offering a way to get it. A real way. Not a maybe." He looked at Walter, and there was shame in his eyes, but not enough. "I'm sorry."

"Four men, three votes." Roy counted on his fingers. "Jack's with me. Sal's with me. That's two. Walter's with himself. That's one." He looked at the cot. "Doc doesn't get a vote if he can't hold a pencil."

Doc's lips moved. They all leaned in.

"I can hold a pencil," Doc rasped. "I just can't hold a gun."

Walter moved to him. "Doc, you don't have to—"

"I do." Doc's eyes found Roy's. "I was a deserter. I ran from the Army because I saw what men do when they get a taste of power. They don't stop. They just get hungrier." He swallowed, and his throat clicked. "Roy, you're a good thief. But you'd be a worse rich man than DeVries ever was. And that's saying something."

Roy's face went stony.

"Walter shows the world what that paper says," Doc whispered. "That's my vote."

Two for blackmail. Two for exposure.

Doc closed his eyes. "Well, there's a man in St. Louis who might break the tie."

Walter blinked. "Arthur Phelps."

"He was a good examiner. Honest. DeVries's men tried to kill him, but they botched it. He's been hiding ever since, waiting for someone to prove his story wasn't a madman's fever." Doc's voice was barely a thread now. "But he won't come out for a bank robber. He'll come out for a name he trusts."

Walter felt something cold settle in his chest. "Who does Phelps trust?"

Doc opened his eyes, and there was something almost apologetic in them. "Edward Westlake. The man whose invitation you forged. He and Phelps were at the Treasury together. Westlake vouched for Phelps when no one else would."

The room went silent.

"Westlake is the reason we got in that door," Walter said slowly. "And you're telling me he's the only man who can make Arthur Phelps talk."

Doc nodded, just a fraction.

Walter looked at the document in his hands. The names inside reached Washington. Maybe they reached the White House itself. And now, the only key to unlocking the one living witness was a man Walter had impersonated well enough to walk past his own security team.

Edward Westlake would either be their savior or the man who turned them in.

There was only one way to find out.