Behind me, metal scrapes against metal. The headlights crest the hill and hold steady, not slowing, not turning. I press two fingers against the glass and watch them. My other hand opens and closes at my side.
“Are they turning in?” Cruz asks.
“Not yet.”
I shift my weight forward onto the balls of my feet. The fluorescent hum above the door fills the silence where an answer should be.
“Fuck—I’m in.”
I catch them in the glass. Cruz tilting the tray. Gage holding the duffel open underneath it. The headlights keep coming, bright and flat and indifferent, and then they don’t. They slide past. The highway swallows them.
I watch until the red of the taillights disappears over the next hill. “Let’s go.”
“One more,” Gage says.
I turn around. “We said ten minutes.” My eyes go to Cruz. His jaw is set, gaze already moving between me and Gage, doing the same math I am.
Gage looks at me, then at Cruz. He zips the duffel. “Fuck. Okay.”
Gage and Cruz don’t waste time. They toss in their tools and zip the duffels closed. Cruz double-checks the office door, letting it ease shut behind him with a finality that makes my pulse spike.
The bill changer face dangles crooked for a second before Gage does something with the hinge, snapping it back into place.
In seven seconds, it almost looks untouched. They stride toward me, duffels slung low and heavy, and for a moment I can’t tell if they’re about to high-five or punch each other in the throat. The tension is that thick—caught between victory and violence.
I realize I’ve been holding my breath for entire minutes at a time. There’s a trick to being the lookout, and it seems like I’ve forgotten it.
I make a mental note to cut Beckett some slack next time I put him on lookout duty. I take one of the duffel bags from Cruz, and he tosses his arm across my shoulders.
“Let’s get the fuck outta here,” he says, hooking my neck in the crook of his arm and pulling me toward him. His mouth brushes the top of my head. “Baby girl.”
It feels deliberate, like he’s making some kind of statement. I don’t know if it’s to me or about me. And now is not the time to figure that out, so I ignore it.
We cross back the same way we came—steady, controlled, not rushing. My pulse hasn’t settled yet, but it’s not erratic. It’s focused. A low, steady awareness that hasn’t let go of me since we stepped inside.
The cold hits sharper on the way out.
Cruz tosses the duffel into the back of the SUV. Gage gets in behind the wheel. The engine turns over on the first try.
I slide into the back seat and pull the door shut.
Nobody moves. The engine idles, and headlights stay off. Gage’s hands are on the wheel, but he doesn’t shift into drive.
Cruz leans back, one arm loose over the door. His other hand comes up and swipes his thumb across his mouth. He looks at it—the blood there darker now, drying at the edge—then drops it into his lap.
I pitch forward between the seats. “So we just robbed a laundromat.” I look between them. “We should probably not be here when someone finds that.”
Gage turns to look at me. Something moves through his expression and then settles. “Thanks for believing in me.”
I hold his gaze for a second. “Of course. It was a good plan. It’d be better if we weren’t at the scene of the crime when someone finds it though.”
He huffs a laugh under his breath, rubs his jaw. “Yeah, let’s bounce.”
The SUV pulls out of the lot without a single head turning, not one curtain twitching in the strip center. We’re out before anyone knows we were ever here. The buzz in my blood sticks around, sticky and hot, even as the neon signs shrink in the rearview.
No one talks for five miles. I try estimating the amount of money, try doing some basic math. It’s not even about the cash, really. It’s about the fact that we pulled this off together—no fuckups, no one bailing, no one screwing anyone else over.
“It was a good job, man. Bishop should’ve green-lit it,” Cruz says.
