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HEIST

  Sixteen-year-old Jack Brodie time travels back to the world-famous Gardner Heist. When he returns his life has changed for the worst. He keeps returning to the crime to fix his mistakes until he has to make the ultimate choice: his family and his own happiness, or the girl he loves.

  But someone has been watching him and wants him dead.

  ** A Royal Heist, book 2, is live! **

  CONTENTS

  March 18, 1990

  DAY ONE

  March 18, 1990

  DAY TWO

  March 18, 1990

  DAY THREE

  March 18, 1990

  DAY FOUR

  March 18, 1990

  DAY FIVE

  March 18, 1990

  DAY SIX

  Author's Note

  A Royal Heist Sneak Peek

  Also by Laura

  A butterfly flaps its wings?

  MARCH 18, 1990

  A MOMENT IN TIME

  Footsteps echo behind me. Prickles shoot up and down my spine.

  I whip around and see nothing but shadows. Everything in me screams to run, to leave right now, back to my world, but I can't. I'm frozen. Terrified. Curious.

  A dark shadow rushes me, his body, a hulking mass. I try and move but he rams into me; my body is thrown against the car. The air shoots from my chest. I stumble forward, and his rough hands find me. Again, a violent shove. I fall to the ground; the pavement jars my body. My teeth rattle, and my ribs feel crushed.

  He moves, but all I see are darting shadows and hollow, haunted eyes gleaming from underneath the hat pulled low. Familiar and disarming.

  His arm lifts high in the air. Fast. Purposeful.

  I see the glint. The shine. The blade of a knife.

  Shit.

  He brings the knife down. I roll but I'm too late. Pain sears my side. Immediately, my skin feels wet. The blood soaks my clothes, the metallic smell rising between us. I want to fight. To follow my instinct. To survive. But I can't.

  The ache grips my heart and shatters it to pieces. "Dad?"

  Laughter, mocking and deep, chills me.

  MARCH 17, 2013

  DAY ONE

  Midnight

  I don't feel safe. I haven't in weeks.

  It's like someone is always hovering close by, watching, eyes focused on me.

  Even with my best friend next to me at St. Auggies, crouched between the graves and beneath the oak trees, I feel it. The back of my neck prickles. My heart thumps extra loud.

  "You ready for tomorrow?" Stick asks, distracting me. His bright red hair looks almost brown this time of night. His face appears paler than usual.

  "Hell no."

  "Neither am I." He pauses, then asks, "What time is the hearing?"

  "Ten." But he already knows this. Stick's like family. My dad's up for parole tomorrow, and we've spent the last month in denial, hoping for the best, pretending that the worst won't happen.

  The flesh on my arms rises; goosebumps spread. I hold my breath, trying to appear casual, listening. The headstones reflect a ghostly gray and the smell of last fall's dead leaves wafts in the air.

  I strain my eyes, peering into the layers of darkness. At the black shadows and the silver patches of moonlight that shift with the clouds. They play tricks on me.

  "What's wrong?" Stick pounds his fist into his hand. "If it's Big D and his gang, I'm ready."

  My hand snakes out and silences Stick's fist pounding. "Shh," I whisper.

  I feel it stronger than ever. A presence.

  Stick straightens and sucks in a breath.

  Branches scrape against one another. A bat swoops by. I tense. Ready to run.

  "Sit still," Stick orders. "Let them make the first move."

  A shadow emerges from the darkness but settles in one place. I blink and stare. Is it a shadow? Or a person?

  A twig cracks behind us. The ground vibrates beneath my hand. In two seconds, I scramble to my feet and attack. My weight pushes the guy down and we land together. His body is soft.

  An arm wraps around my neck. My attacker rolls me over. I'm trapped underneath. My survival instinct kicks in and I fight back, fists flying.

  I make contact. He groans and rolls off me. I'm on my feet, searching for a branch.

  Stick laughs in big obnoxious snorts. Why's he laughing?

  "Nice one," my attacker says. "Glad we're friends."

  Turbo pushes off his knees and stands. He's half in shadow, half in light but I can't miss his large lumpy body and shaggy black hair. He lives with his mom, near Stick, in the building next to mine.

  "Asshole," I mutter.

  Stick punches my arm. "Come on. Admit it. We gotcha."

  "Yep, you did."

  Turbo drops a bag on the ground. Muffins, scones and donuts spill out. "Hope you don't mind. I raided your mom's day-old bin."

  "It's not me you have to worry about. It's my mom." With the tip of my sneaker, I kick a chocolate donut away. I don't want anything to eat. I haven't been hungry all week.

  Stick and Turbo move on easily from their prank, and joke about school and the new wig the reading specialist is wearing this week.

  I stare into the darkness. If Turbo was the one watching as he crept up from behind, what lurked in the darkness in front of us? It balanced on the edge of a shadow just out of sight.

  I lie back on the ground, ignoring the fear, ignoring the presence, and try not to think about anything. I stare up at the moon sliced into pieces by the scrawny branches of the oak. My breath rises like a spirit escaping from its underground prison. I crunch a dead leaf between my fingers.

  Flashing blue lights kill the conversation as a cop car passes. A large spotlight scans the spaces between the trees and the graves.

  "Let's get out of here."

  We run from the cemetery.

  And I feel it.

  Staring at me as I run.

  The whole way home.

  1:45 a.m.

  I push the covers away, listening, aware of my chest falling and rising faster than usual.

  I swing my legs onto the floor, the worn wood soft against the bottom of my feet. I stand and suck in a breath at the loud creak my weight makes.

  I hear it again.

  A faint scratching.

  It's the sound of a chair sliding against the floor below us in Mom's coffee shop. As if someone accidentally bumped into it.

  In the hallway, I grab the first thing I find-Dad's baseball bat-and creep down the stairs.

  I know these steps inside and out. The second one to the top creaks something terrible, the fourth one down has a deep penetrating scar-I won't disclose how it got there-and the second one from the bottom is near rotten.

  Halfway down, I stop and close my eyes. My fingernails, what's left of them, dig into the grimy wood of the bat.

  My foot crunches on a discarded chocolate bar wrapper. It must've fallen out of my pocket yesterday.

  At the bottom step, I hesitate. Moonlight reflects off a metal napkin holder and a half-finished puzzle left out for customers. It's a small shop, and the faded smell of cinnamon clings to everything. Even our upstairs apartment.

  I breathe in the scent, drawing courage from all that is familiar. Times like this I wish for Dad. He'd know what to do.

  The floor creaks from the other side of the room.

  My heart crawls into my throat, choking me. My knees weaken and my sweaty hands slip on the handle of the bat.

  Step up and be a man. Those were Dad's words, spoken into a telephone on the other side of the glass partition.

  I think back to that day, the visit Mom knows nothing about. The smeared glass, the stubble on Dad's chin and the fierce look in his eye that said he'd be outta there next week. But the next week turned into months and
then years.

  As my eyes adjust, the vague outline of a man appears in front of a painting on the wall. He reaches out and traces his finger down the gilded frame.

  My pulse pounds so loud against the inside of my head, I can't think. I stumble forward and raise the bat above my head. "Who's there?" My voice shakes.

  With his back to me, the intruder hesitates, his finger at the bottom of the frame. He doesn't turn or flinch or seem to care who's behind him. His black suit is tailored to fit his body and much too fancy for this time of night.

  Sweat beads on my forehead and it feels like hours before the man clears his throat to speak. My arms shake. I debate whether to whack the guy in the legs with the bat and then take him out with one good punch.

  "You been behaving yourself, kid?"

  I freeze. The bat drops with a thud.

  The words, the tone of voice, remind me of lazy spring afternoons when Stick and I would find my dad and uncle under the hood of their latest piece-of-shit car. I can taste the cold iced-tea and homemade cookies. I can feel the warm air against my face and smell the gasoline and grease. That was when I was thirteen and thought my dad was perfect. At sixteen, I know better.

  Dad turns and steps forward, his thumbs hooked into the pockets of his tuxedo. All suave and elegant, he looks like a star from the old black and white movies Aunt Fiona watches. His parole is tomorrow. Did they let him out early? Or did he break out?

  I grab the back of a chair as memories rush. Once again, the flashing blue and red lights splatter the room with color. The sharp rap at the door echoes. It was three times. Three loud knocks.

  "I need to explain." Dad glances toward the front door as if he wants to run. But even though he says the words, the explanation doesn't come.

  I stumble back. This man isn't acting like my dad. The dad who could growl like a bear one minute, and the next, playfully punch me in the shoulder over a