Free Gatecrasher by Robert Young Page B

reasons. Nobody just gave you cash for nothing. If you got offered ten times what the job seemed worth to do it, it was almost certainly worth ten times more than they were offering you. If they told you it was no big deal, then it probably was.
    Despite the fact that he knew that there was more to it than Drennan was letting on (and he seemed often unable to resist alluding to how much more to it there really was) he needed the money badly. He decided that the risk was small enough in this instance. Do the job, grab the cash and get shot of Drennan.
    So the previous Friday Gresham had sent the four of them in; Keith Slater, Julius Warren, Stuart Keane and Tony Cooper. They had gone in late at night, dodged the alarms the way Drennan had told them, pulled off the data from the computer system as Drennan had specified and then trotted back out the door. Drennan seemed to know so much about it that Gresham had been tempted to suggest that he might be better doing it himself but that, of course, would not have been so lucrative.
    It had been fine until the last minute. Buoyed and euphoric at the smooth ease of the job Gresham’s four men had been making quietly for the exit in the subdued night-lights of the office they had ghosted into only fifteen minutes before when Cooper – who had been the one at the terminal, tapping the keyboard, downloading the data – had peeled off the black balaclava obscuring his face at the very moment that he passed a security camera. He was looking full into the lens before he even realised it.
    Slater, glancing back over his shoulder, had seen it and had called Gresham almost immediately. They had first considered ripping out the camera but knew that was as futile as killing the bee that had already stung you. They had discussed somehow getting into the security system to delete Cooper’s image from the record but they didn’t know if it was tape-based or digital, or even what other kind of system it could be or how to do it. Every second they stood there debating how little they knew about this and what to do and whether Drennan had said anything about such an eventuality was a second closer to getting caught in the bright glare of police headlights and Gresham had made the snap decision to get out of there.
    Perhaps Drennan could come up with something, perhaps they could go back the next night and this time steal the incriminating evidence and perhaps this time keep their masks on too.
    But Drennan had not been able to come up with anything like that. In fact Drennan had sounded both horrified and angry, cursing their incompetence and threatening not to pay the cash, the smooth façade of control and assurance dropped completely for a moment.
    Still he wouldn’t say what the data was and why it was being stolen but he had gone to some length to convince Gresham that the implications of this were grave indeed, that Drennan’s employer would not view such a mistake kindly. Though he would not be drawn on exactly how unkindly he would view such a mistake, Gresham had been threatened often enough to see it when it was looking him in the eyes.
    Finally Drennan had let Gresham talk himself back into favour so that Drennan’s employer would not involve himself in the matter any further than necessary and that, provided the USB was delivered as arranged, the cash would also be forthcoming. There was a condition though that Gresham could not duck out of.
    Cooper’s mistake left them all exposed and they could not afford exposure of any kind. Something would need to be done about that. Something swift and final.
    And so it had. But here his boys had messed up again. Keane had been sloppy about it, because he had been too concerned with letting them see that he was willing to get his hands dirty and not nearly concerned enough about doing the job right. Because he didn’t understand the danger that Cooper had placed them in and because he didn’t understand how much Gresham needed that money.