Page 51 of Emerald

I jog up the stairs again, my sack of cash slung over my shoulder.

“Got it,” I say to Kristoff and Max.

Max tips a wink at the blonde teller. She tries to hide her smile behind her hand.

Kristoff steps over the bank manager, who’s still laying in front of the desk, though I don’t think he’s actually hurt. He looks more like he’s sulking.

We leave the bank in only eight minutes, fifty-one seconds.

We get back in the Hummer, and I drive to the rendezvous point to meet up with the other groups.

Dom returns first, with Jasha and Alter Farkas.

Despite all the police prowling the diamond district, they managed to sneak in the back of Farkas’s old shop. The locks on the doors had been changed, but the safe code had not. They made off with a bag of loose stones and another hefty stack of banded hundred-dollar bills.

Farkas doesn’t look pleased about the score.

“The place is going to shit already,” he complains. “They haven’t washed the windows once.”

I give him the stones and the cash, though I know it’s poor recompense for what he’s lost.

“I hope to get your shop back too, before long,” I tell him.

The money from the security boxes I split with the Markovs.

Kristoff hands it over to his father at once.

Hedeon tucks it in his jacket without counting it.

“That’s how the Bratva do business,” he says to me, with a slow nod. “As equals. With honor.”

Efrem comes back with a different sort of plunder entirely—two of Remizov’s men. He’s got them bound and gagged in the back of his GLK.

Dom and I climb in Efrem’s car for the second part of our little adventure.

We drive out to the warehouse where Remizov has been storing my guns.

Like Efrem said, there’s still only two men guarding the guns, and not very well. One of them is texting on his phone when Efrem hits him from behind. The other goes down after only a cursory fight.

Dom and Efrem were right. This is much too easy.

Through the dusty windows, I can see the crates of Kalashnikovs stacked inside the warehouse. I nod for Dom to untie Remizov’s kidnapped men.

Dom hauls them out of the back of the GLK, cutting his ropes.

Efrem trains his rifle on the two goons.

“Get in there and bring out our guns,” he says. “And make it fast. Don’t make me come in there after you.”

The two guards from the warehouse are sitting next to each other on the cement, leaned up against the tires of the GLK. They glance at each other nervously as their colleagues head inside.

I hear the sound of a crate shifting, dragging.

Then an explosion rips through the warehouse.

Dom, Efrem, and I are standing back a good hundred feet, and we’re still blown backward onto the cement. I tear a hole in my suit pants and scrape the shit out of my hands.

Dom stands up slowly, wiping away a streak of blood from under his nose. Efrem stares at the blast, his face glowing orange in the reflected light.

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