Read Smash & Grab for Free Online

it. There’s no leaving. Ever.
    Gabriel’s Adam’s apple bobs in his throat as he swallows. There are little beads of sweat lining his forehead and chin. “Why’re you so curious?” He wipes his upper lip when he sees me staring closely at his face, and he squints at me. “I don’t need you checkin’ up on me. Soldado had an errand for me, if you gotta know. Had to do with the next job after this one. This one’s big, homes. Huge. Seriously. Like, game-changing.”
    Benny looks over to where Soldado is leaning on his car, with Rosie wrapped up in his arms. He’s laughing and joking with his boys, but his eyes keep cutting over to where we are.
    He won’t come over. The less he’s seen with us, the less likely someone will connect that we’re all working together. Soldado nods like he can hear what Gabriel’s telling us and then kisses Rosie’s neck until she squeals. A couple of the old ladies leaving the church give him a disapproving look—lips all pursed like they sucked on a lemon just now, but they hurry by without saying anything. Eddie joins our group.
    “We meeting at eight?” I ask, changing the subject because I don’t want to talk about future jobs when we have one tomorrow morning that we need to concentrate on. Truth? I’d love not to have to worry about future jobs, period.
    Gabriel looks down at his phone and nods. “Usual time, usual way. The shipments come in at nine-thirty. The hopper gets out of the truck with the delivery almost on the dot. In and out in maybe five, tops. You figure that they probably start breakin’ up and spreadin’ out the bills right after; we need to hit it the moment the truck pulls out again. Nine-thirty-five.”
    “And if they got the money put away already?” I ask. “We walk without it, right? Right?”
    “Yeah,” Gabriel says with a shrug, his fingers jabbing his phone too hard. He’s playing some kind of game on it. “Son of a—it got me. Look, about the next job. It’s gonna be sick.”
    “How big?” Benny asks, suspicious. “I thought we agreed to do only small stuff, that big jobs are too risky. What about rule number three? Don’t get greedy, remember?”
    “Soldado’s got good reasons for us to rethink that. Fifty million of ’em, to be exact,” Gabriel says, his voice getting low as several churchgoers known for spreading gossip walk by. “Got the go-ahead from his higher-ups already, right? They think it’s solid.”
    I work a finger under the collar of my dress shirt. The sun feels too hot on my back.
    Eddie whistles. “That’s insane, bro.”
    “Only if it isn’t thought through. Soldado’s already worked it out. He’s got some concrete guys who are real good at drillin’ and stuff. They’ll tunnel under the vault and get us into the bank so we can do the interior work once the digging’s done. These guys take care of getting us in, we get the money, no one even knows we were there.”
    “You don’t think all that drilling’s gonna attract some attention?” Eddie asks.
    “LA’s sittin’ on a bunch of sandy ground that’s mad easy to tunnel through, dude. We do the job once the vault’s cracked. Then Soldado arranges the fence and the laundering. That’s eight of us with a hand in. We get twenty-four million. That split is sick! Our families would be living large.”
    Eddie whistles again.
    I wait for Benny to raise another objection so I don’t have to. Gabriel will take it better from him, but Benny doesn’t; he just stares at Gabriel, a slight look of awe on his face, and I know I’m losing him.
    “We agreed. No jobs bigger than a hundred thousand.” I shake my head. “Greed gets you caught. Your dad is proof, man.” It’s not cool of me to mention his dad this way, but I don’t care. Homeboy is out of his mind.
    Gabriel’s dad, my uncle, has been doing a stretch for grand larceny ever since Gabriel was three, which is probably why the Eme wanted Soldado to get Gabriel, and then us, for these