As his eyes involuntarily clamp shut, the tractor-trailer’s driver manages to pull over to the side of the road. The three guards stumble out of the cab, coughing uncontrollably, mucous streaming from their noses. One of them starts to vomit. Another flees the cloud spilling out of the cab’s open doors, blindly running into a tree so hard, he’s knocked off his feet. The third presses his hands to his chest as if his heart is going to burst. But the gas is already dissipating.

Parking behind the tractor-trailer, the van’s driver puts on his flashers. He and Karl pull on ski masks and jump out of the van. It’s no work at all to relieve the guards of their guns, zip tie their hands behind their backs, and order them to walk into the woods that border this quiet stretch of road. The guards stumble off under threat of being shot. Karl has no intention of shooting them, not if he doesn’t have to. It’s not like the authorities won’t look hard for missing money, but when murder is also involved, they will never give up the search.

Karl and the driver set out the orange cones to make it look like everything is under control. They open the back of the van, then take the keys from the ignition of the eighteen-wheeler and open the trailer. A few seconds later, they start moving the buckets of gold from the larger vehicle to the smaller one. They also retrieve a few of the lighter—and less valuable—buckets of silver, stopping once there’s no more room in the back of the van.

Fifteen minutes after Karl pressed the button on the fob, they’re gone. Without firing a shot. And with twenty-two million in untraceable precious metals.

Come with Me

COME WITH ME

5:39 P.M.

Despair flattens Miranda as she looks at the bike lock stretched across the metal doors. The police aren’t coming and all the doors are locked. And even though she didn’t hear any shots, Parker is probably dead too. Maybe even his sister.

Muttering, “No, no, no,” Grace walks past Cole, grabs the chain, and yanks it.

The locked door, the door that is the only thing that stands between them and safety, is halfway down the corridor. Miranda looks to the other end. Just like the hall they came from, it doglegs, so she can’t see more than about thirty yards.

“I don’t think we can go that way,” Javier says from behind her. “That goes toward where the hostages are.”

“We’re just going to have to go back to where we branched off and try the other way,” Miranda says.

“Back into the mall?” Amina shakes her head hard. “If we go out that door, they’ll see us.”