Chapter Thirty-Eight
“I have an idea,” Mabel said.
She held a piece of meat to Truman’s face where the Bastion guards had taken their boots and batons to him, and Mabel’s eyes were lit with a look Truman recognized.
The one she often had right before she suggested something outlandish.
Like the time they hit every bar on the strip, and Truman dropped down on one knee and proposed to guarantee them a round of free drinks at each one.
“I’ll go back and find that guard who copped a feel again,” she said. “Wear the same red dress.” She would bat her eyelashes. Say that she had given it some thought and had changed her mind. Would he show her parts of the museum after hours? A private place where they could be alone?
“Only I’ll carry a rope and a pair of razors in my handbag,” she said, as she found a tender spot on Truman’s temple and he winced.
“And the two of you will be watching,” she said, examining the bruises forming on Truman’s face. “So you can slip in after me.”
“The two of us?”
Ronald Rutherford leaned forward, playing with a Swiss army knife. Swinging it open and shut. Narrowing his eyes at her. “That’s quite an assumption, Mabel.”
“You’ll knock out the guards, tie them up, and use the razors to cut out a few paintings. Do you know how much even one of those is worth?”
She had knelt down, cupped Truman’s face in her hands. “No more free days at the museums,” she’d said, looking him in the eyes. “Instead of begging for invitations, we’ll have to start turning them down.”
And then she’d twisted the knife enough that he’d rather die than pull it out again. “We’ll have the life we always wanted. And you’ll never have to crawl back to your father,” she said. “Not ever again.”
Truman had felt the cold, wet meat on the raw places of his face.
It was the most insane and the most desperate scheme Mabel had ever had.
But what else did he have to lose? And if it worked—he could pay back the entire loan.
With interest, even. He leaned forward, the pain in his face receding a little.
Perhaps at one time he had believed that integrity and dignity were things that went hand in hand.
But the older and more desperate he got, the more willing he was to trade in one for a chance at the other.
Rutherford chuffed and stood, tucking his knife in his pocket. “She’s kidding, right?”
But Truman knew Mabel. He felt a bitter surge of vengeance rise up like acid. A chance to avenge himself against that little bastard guard and his father, all in one go.
“She’s not,” he said. “You in? What could you do with three hundred thousand dollars, Rutherford?”
Only the problem was, things had gone wrong when they decided to infiltrate the Bastion. They went sideways. And maybe so had he.