Free The Amateurs by Marcus Sakey Page A

palms down, fingers spread. “More than I can come up with, even borrowing. Unless.”
    “Unless you rob your boss.” She said it as flatly as possible.
    “I’ve been thinking ever since Ian suggested it. Because he’s right, you know? Johnny is a bad guy. He’s exactly what’s wrong with the world. He breaks the rules—the ones that are really supposed to matter—and gets away with it. And people like you and me, we end up drinking in his bar. Calling him Mr. Loverin.”
    “Think about what you’re saying. You’re talking about robbing a drug dealer.”
    “Ex-drug dealer. He’s not a tough guy now. A middleman, maybe, but so what?”
    “What if you get caught?”
    “We won’t.”
    “It’s still stealing.”
    “So what?”
    “You’re not making any sense, Alex.”
    “Come on,” he said, and leaned across the counter. “I know you were thinking about it. I could tell. You were excited.”
    She shrugged. “It was a game. Thinking about it was fun.”
    “It was more than that. Remember what you said? How you’d been looking for adventure? Well, here’s your chance.” He wore his cowboy smile. That smile was probably the reason she’d first decided to sleep with him. She’d cloaked it in rationality: They were friends, consenting adults, and there was nothing wrong with finding a little pleasure in each other. But truth was, it had been the smile. That and his wrists, which were at once thick and graceful, like a gymnast’s.
    The coffeemaker hissed. She took a couple of mugs from the cabinet, poured carefully, surprised to realize that she was a little turned on. Not in a wanting-to-do-it kind of way. Something subtler. She’d read a novel once where a lonely woman took off her panties and drove a convertible too fast through the desert, wearing a sundress and no underwear and chasing the sensation of being alive. It was that kind of feeling.
    “Think about it. We do this one thing, a real-life adventure. We all get not rich, but ahead. A chance to do the things we said we wanted to. You could go on that trip, spend a month in the islands. Maybe we’ll go together.”
    “Maybe I’ll go alone.”
    He smiled again, said, “Everybody wins. I get what I need to keep my daughter. Ian gets his money, Mitch gets his revenge, and you, you get—”
    “I look like a windup toy?”
    “Huh?”
    She blew steam off her coffee, then sipped at it. “You want to rob your boss, rob your boss. Why come here at four in the morning and try to manipulate me?”
    “I’m not trying to manipulate—”
    “Don’t.” She set the mug down, brushed her hair back behind her ears. “Don’t.”
    “All right.” He ran his tongue around the inside of his lip, making the skin bulge. “I need you.”
    “We’re not doing this.” She straightened.
    “No,” he said. “Not like that. I mean I need you to pull it off. If I try it alone, Johnny’s going to figure it was someone who works for him. But if all four of us do it . . .”
    “Why four?”
    “One keeping watch, two to do the robbery, and me on duty, looking perfectly aboveboard. But you’re the key. I know Ian is up for it. I think he’s got some sort of money trouble. That shiner, things he’s said. But Mitch.”
    “You think he’ll do it if I do.”
    “I know he will.”
    “Even if you’re right, and I don’t know that you are, and even if I’d be willing to exploit that, which I’m not, why should I?”
    “Because it’s an adventure. Because you don’t want to turn into your mother. Because you’re too hungry for life to pass up something this easy. Because you could help me keep my little girl. Because Johnny Love is a drug-dealing asshole. But that’s all secondary. You want to know the two best reasons?”
    “Sure.”
    “I figured out the perfect way. A way that no one, no one , will ever guess it was us.”
    “What’s the other reason?”
    “Because you want to.” He smiled at her, and she felt something in her stomach