With his prints and retina in their computers, Kruger simply walked up to the scanner and gained access to the secure door like any other customer. He slid his hand into the reader and stuck his eye up to lens, and the steel door clicked open.

Kruger stepped into the small secure room and looked to his left, where a wide-eyed security guard manned the station. But the rent-a-cop wasn’t alone. The manager of this GoBox branch also occupied the space beyond the glass. The manager leaned down to a long, skinny microphone on the desk. When he spoke, his words came through a speaker mounted somewhere in the ceiling.

In a pretentious British accent, the manager said, “My name is Quentin Yarborough. I’m the manager of this facility. The police are on their way, and there is no way to make it any farther into the building. I would suggest to you that it’s time to make your escape, posthaste.”

Kruger laughed and said, “You know what the problem is with any security system. The human element. Until we can figure out a way to take ourselves out of the equation, there is no such thing as security.”

As planned, he motioned for Franklin to bring him the two women: the bronzed beauty and the white-haired lady. As was almost always the case in Kruger’s experience, people couldn’t be told anything. They had to be shown. And Quentin Yarborough was about to receive a demonstration of exactly how helpless he was in this situation and learn precisely to what lengths Kruger would go to achieve his mission.

“I’m going to ask you nicely just once,” Kruger said. “Open the door.”

Quentin Yarborough narrowed his eyes and held Kruger’s gaze. He could see the white aristocratic self-importance and arrogance oozing from the man. As always, Yarborough needed a demonstration.

Franklin shoved both women inside the ten-by-ten secure checkpoint, and Kruger positioned them so that they faced the glass. Then he retrieved a .44 Magnum revolver from a holster nestled into the small of his back. As he opened the gun’s cylinder and removed the bullets, he started whistling the tune to Vader Jakob, a nursery rhyme his mother had hummed to him often when he was a boy.

He left one bullet in the chamber and put the others in the pocket of his long, black coat. Then he spun the cylinder and snapped it back shut into the gun.

“I assume you’re familiar with Russian roulette?” he said.

“You wouldn’t dare. You’re bluffing. The police will be here any moment, and there’s nothing to steal beyond our wallets. All of our customers’ assets are locked safely away in our vault, and not even I can give you access.”

Kruger cocked back the hammer of the massive pistol.

“In his autobiography, Malcolm X stated that he once played Russian roulette and pulled the trigger three times in a row to convince his partners that he was not afraid to die.” He raised the gun to the head of the white-haired woman and whispered in her ear, “Are you afraid to die?”