Page 1 of The Deeper Game
Chapter One
Thor,Odin, and I were nestled like three peas in a pod in the front seat of our souped-up Lincoln Navigator.
The SUV’s giant size and dark-tinted windows would’ve made it the perfect vehicle if the three of us had wanted to do something fun.
But no, we were not doing anything fun.
We were doing something boring—staking out the Prime Royale Bank of Beverly Hills.
Which meant we had to watch it.
And watch it.
And watch it some more.
I rested my head on Thor’s shoulder, enjoying the feel of his longish blond curls against my cheek. His muscular shoulder flexed as he played WhatWord on his iPad.
It was a dorky game, but then again, Thor had a dork buried deep inside him. He hadn’t always been part of an armed-to-the-teeth, bank robbing squad whose members all took their names from comic book gods.
Odin had binoculars on the bank’s second-level offices.
I was watching the street and monitoring the grand entrance.
Saying the Prime Royale was an elegant bank would be the understatement of the year. With its gleaming white marble entrance and soaring columns, it was the Taj Mahal of banks. The entrance was flanked by two palm trees that were so perfectly shaped they looked fake.
In addition to money, the Prime Royale held some of the most priceless jewels in the world. This wouldn’t be the biggest prize financially, but it would be the most notorious.
A pair of doormen dressed up in black suits and top hats, stood at the ready to pull the doors open for the fabulous patrons, which added to the fairytale feel of the whole thing.
Inside, the vaults had vibration sensors and the ceilings were fully wired. There were motion detectors in hidden areas. Kick alarm buttons, state-of-the-art laser trips, and more. Real Mission Impossible stuff.
Needless to say, my hunky bank robbers were obsessed with hitting the place.
Zeus was the only one who’d wanted to do it at first, but then Odin and Thor had gotten on board, and when they’d found two rips in the security fabric of the bank, suddenly we had a timetable. It was full steam ahead.
This wouldn’t be an old school takeover robbery, my guys’ usual specialty; it would be an out-and-out infiltration—another of my guys’ specialties.
Odin took a break from his binoculars to give me a look that said he was thinking about another kind of infiltration.
Um…yes please!
I gave him a wicked smile.
He clapped a hand onto my thigh.
My belly tightened.
We didn’t usually fool around on stakeout, but then, my guys had never met a rule they didn’t want to break.
“You have a count on the west office?” Thor asked.
“Still three,” Odin said, raising the binoculars back up and getting back to business.
A stakeout in preparation for a robbery involved counting and timing lots of things.
The hugest security fabric rip was that the Prime Royale was getting a central air upgrade. This meant a portion of the ceiling security was off at any one time due to the upgrade work. The HVAC crew doing the work had recently taken on a hot member with nut-brown hair and a body like a tank.
Zeus.
