Millions

Jet's POV

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As soon as he replied Pax took a glance at the clock on the wall, hung the phone up, jumped off the counter and walked over to Gee, giving him an elbow in the side to draw his attention from the book in his hands before speaking not so quietly, "it's time, are you going or not?"

Gee looked up at him, straightened then put the book beside him, "Fine, I'll do it." He got to his feet, put his strapped gun on and took the ski mask and duffle bag Pax handed to him before walking towards me. What the fuck is he planning on doing, this isn't going to be the part where he makes me let him into the vault is it?

"No, don't take her. Take her blonde panicky friend instead and when you get back tell me how she reacted to the tunnels. Two grand says she's claustrophobic." Pax was right making that bet, Vera was terrified of enclosed spaces and would hyperventilate to the point of passing out. I'd only seen her do it once when we were younger and she trapped herself in the kitchen pantry during a game of hide and seek, she almost broke the door trying to get out.

"If she's panicking the whole time then I'm not going to get any shit done am I?" Instead of listening to Pax, Gee reached down and grabbed me by the arm, pulling me to my feet. "And she's not the one who's got the keys to the bank is she?"

To be perfectly honest I was actually glad Gee had ignored the command of his partner and decided to take me take me with him because I got a foreboding feeling in my gut that if I stayed here something very bad would happen to me. I didn't get the same feeling for Vera, as far as I knew Pax wanted nothing to do with her so she'd probably be safe as long as she took her pills when she started to panic.

Maybe there's a small chance I'll be able to convince Gee to end this all peacefully, he doesn't seem like he'd be closed off to reasoning like his friend.

"Fine, fine. If you want to go sneak around with your hostage girlfriend then I won't stop you but if she tries to escape then it's gonna be you who has to shoot her." Gee wouldn't actually shoot me, right? He doesn't seem like the kind of person capable of killing someone else but I don't know everything he's done.

"I'll take an hour and a half, tops. Be ready to go by the time I'm back." Without so much as another word he grabbed my hand and pulled be away from the group, towards the back of the bank. Not wanting to cause any trouble I hurried along with him and as soon as we'd reached the hallway leading to the vault he let go, not seeming to have any interest whatsoever in whether or not I walked beside him and hung back. If felt like I could have gone into a different room and he wouldn't have noticed or cared.

There was nothing but silence between us as we approached the vault, Gee unzipped the duffle bag as I retrieved the keys from the waistband of my jeans and started looking through them, praying that the vault key was on the loop because I had no idea how on earth I was going to casually explain that I didn't have the key to the vault because I don't even work here to begin with and they've been entirely wrong about me working here. I'm no rocket scientist or genius but I'm smart enough to know that it would likely add up to me getting a bullet in the head from Pax for telling fibs. Given my druthers I think I'd much rather stay alive thank you very much.

"You sure you know how to unlock this thing?" Gee asked as he stared at the vault that was a helluva lot more imposing that I remembered from the one time I'd seen it.

"Yeah," I said, nodding and trying my best to feign confidence which was pretty hard considering I couldn't remember which keys were supposed to go where and there were about five different locks on the giant, reinforced steel door. "I've done this plenty of times, it's- it's easy." If I could turn into that guy from Jumper, now would be the time.

Biting my lip I stepped toward the vault door and took a copper key off the loop, inserting it into what I hoped was the right lock and twisting. I heard a quiet click and breathed out a sigh of relief before going onto the next lock. Much to my luck the others followed suit and I murmured a thank you to my lucky stars before bracing myself and spinning the vault wheel, unlocking it and pulling the heavy door open.

Next there was a day door, pretty useless in terms of defense from robbers but enough to deter any causal visitors from taking a wander inside. A long silver key had that door open and I gestured for Gee to head inside as I stepped back, wanting nothing to do with the actual grabbing of the money.

Gerard stared for a moment at the inside of the vault, seeming to calculate something that I had no chance of understanding before muttering something to himself them turning to look at me. "So what's the catch? Is there a timer for how long the door's open for, some kind of touch sensitive floor?" He seemed as skeptical as I did about how easy it was to get into the vault and rather than shrug in response I had to actually think about an answer and whether or not Vera ever mentioned the bank being boobytrapped.

"Um no, I don't think so. This place was built sometime in the eighteenth century, I don't think they had that kind of technology yet." I'm more than sure that was far from being the kind of reassurance he wanted as a burglar but I wasn't going to give him no a no or yes at the risk of losing my own head.

I had no idea what he was going to do next and flinched a little when he threw the dufflebag into the vault, "I need a two-hundred stacks of ten-thousand. All in hundreds." I nodded and walked slowly into the vault while at the same time trying to quickly add up the numbers for how much he needed in total. Two million, two million bucks, that is a buttload of money. I know there's a fair few people in the town but I don't think anyone actually wanted their money kept here, everything else was off at some bigger place. At a guess I'd say this place has a million in cash, max.

I started going through the deposit boxes, shelves with gold bars and bound notes, picking them up and putting them in the dufflebag, mechanically, over and over and over until I had just about everything equaling 'two hundred stacks of ten-thousand. All in hundreds.'
Well will you look at that, it ended up being one and half million.
So close, so far.
Also fuck.

"There's not enough is there?" Gee had walked over to the bag and crouched down, looking into it and talking in a somewhat exasperated tone.

"No, you're five hundred short," I told him, rocking on my heels in discomfort. "You should have hit up a bigger place, man." Oops, I hadn't meant for that to slip out, complete accident, please don't kill me.

"Fuck." He stood up and sighed as he crossed his arms over his chest and slowly looked around the room. "That's it, we've got no other choice than to go next door. Pax will lose his shit if he doesn't get a cut." Next there was a groan as he half zipped the dufflebag and pointed to a large cabinet against the wall. "You're gonna help me move that, c'mon." He gave me a push on the shoulder in the right direction and walked past me, already beginning to shoulder the cabinet.

Uncomfortable about the prospect of being charged for assisted robbery I stood beside him and started shoving and with a low, reluctant groan the filing cabinet began to slide away, revealing a manhole because why the fuck not. Of course it would be me to end up as an assistant hostage in a bank robbery, an assistant that has to get down manholes into God knows where.

Gee reached down and stuck his fingers into a small cutout and with a grunt pulled the cover up and off. "Alright, get in," he said as he straightened gesturing for me to go down the hole, fuck no. I hate the dark, not to mention I have no idea where on earth that goes, it could allow me to drop into a pit of damn snakes. I know it's unlikely but I'm still not risking it. I gave him a look that said 'you've got to be kidding me' before he sighed and reached into the bag, pulled out a heavy duty looking light stick and cracked it on his knee, throwing it into the hole. "Off you go."

Not feeling my most enthusiastic I walked over and peered in, the white glow allowed me to see a small ladder and a stone floor; a bit more encouraging compared to what I originally expected but I was still far from ecstatic about it. Although in the friendship it was definitely Vee who took the cake for claustrophobia I still had a touch of it myself and my palms were a lot sweatier than I wanted them to be for lowering myself into what might be a very, very narrow passageway.

"Time to balls up, Ridley," I whispered to myself as I wiped my palms off on my jeans and lowered myself into the hole, putting my foot on the third rung and began to climb down, closing my eyes and hoping this wasn't going to turn out to be a sewer or something gross.

After long enough I had to let go and I dropped to the ground, bending at the knees and landing on the floor that thankfully wasn't far enough down for me to break an ankle but enough to put a sting in my leg. Shortly after me Gee dropped down with nothing on him except for a couple more industrial glow sticks and a look that clearly stated he was less impressed by the drop than I was, then again he was taller.

He cracked another light stick and looked around, the tunnel leading straight ahead and he groaned loudly, acting pretty far from what I imagined a bank robber would act. "Okay, we can't go straight to the jewelry store. This leads to the train line and the jewelry stores supposed to lead to the train line so we're following this." I unhurriedly followed him down the tunnel, feeling more than a little bit like I wanted to shrink in the passage way I nearly had to crouch down in. This isn't something I'd like to be doing in my pass time, that's for bloody sure.

While I'd expected this place to be something more along the lines of what might be seen in National Treasure I was surprised by how well everything seemed to have kept but Gee did say this was connected to the train line so maybe the bank used this for transporting money or something. It'd be a pretty good idea when you think about it.

"So how many tunnels are there down here? I don't know how you feel about tunnels but I'm not a big fan and I know you don't want a hostage that screams her head off so I think I'd be best getting out of here as soon as possible." The dark behind me wasn't doing any favors either, I wasn't a sissy when it came to monsters and the like but down here I couldn't help but get more than a little bit creative with what might be lurking on the fringes of the light sticks glow.

"A lot but we're not going to get lost. It'll be a straight walk from here to the train line." Although he didn't sound gentle I wouldn't call his voice gruff either, maybe he was slightly worried. Just because you're a criminal doesn't mean you can't be claustrophobic, right? Then again I could be wrong and he might simply not want to be trapped down in tunnels with me freaking the hell out.

"Oh, good."

As we continued to walk I couldn't help but think about Vera and wonder if she was okay. She seeped pretty relaxed after taking her anxiety meds but there's always a chance she might reach full blown panic attack and not be able to control herself or be doused down with pills. It's never good when that happens and I know that without me up there to make her chill out and without Gee to clip whatever wire it is of Pax's that sends him into psycho overdrive there's a good chance that one panic attack could get her shot dead.

Pax wouldn't want to do that though, would he? If he kills someone he's gonna make the police that much more determined to catch him, not to mention the sentencing, that on top of everything else he's done.

Why couldn't they have gone for some big bank heist instead? They could have gotten all the money they needed and then some, no worries but they just had to come to the local one. My luck might be okay, but not okay enough to keep me safe from situations like these.

"Jet." I looked up from my feet when I heard Gee's voice in front of me. "You don't remember me do you?" I was instantly taken aback by his question, out of all the things he could have asked this was pretty damn low on my list, on the other hand it made up for it by being high on my creepy scale.

"Um, no?" Is this the part where I have to feign Stockholm syndrome to save my own life? He's not going to murder me and wear my skin now is he, like the second season of that show? "Have we met before?" My voice was getting high from nerves but the silence in the tunnel was too confronting for me to dare clearing my throat and I swallowed thickly as I waited for him to lay his answer on me no matter how possibly it might be.

Gee abruptly stopped and turned around, only standing inches away and gazing down with a look that my heart feel like it was beating backwards. "Hmm, I suppose it's easier for me to recognize you with your weird eye and all. My face blends more into the crowd that yours so I can't really blame you for forgetting me. We went to school together, don't you remember?"

Notes