Chapter 24 Bellamy
TWENTY-FOUR
BELLAMY
We cross the street without speaking. A layer of emotion that I refuse to call awkwardness settles over all of us, tethering us together.
I’m not sure if it’s because I just messed around with both of them or because we were all in the same bed when I did that.
Or because there wasn’t really a discussion about it.
God, I feel fucking wrung out. I’ve never had so many orgasms so close together like that. I don’t even know how many it was by the end, they just started rolling into one another.
Pleasure zips along my spine as my body still feels the lingering affects of the Calloway men.
But I shove it all down and ignore everything but the job.
It feels reckless and indulgent, something I’m doing just because I want to. And I just fucking hope that it pays off.
The road stretches empty in both directions. The laundromat is the only lit storefront in the strip center—the others dark behind their grates, no way to tell if they’ve been closed for a week or a year. A low mechanical hum bleeds through the glass doors, steady and indifferent.
I shift the duffel higher on my shoulder as we cut across the last stretch of pavement, gravel shifting softly under our shoes. Something metallic rides underneath the detergent smell, sharp enough to catch at the back of my throat.
The doors slide open.
Warm, heavy air folds around me—damp fabric and something underneath it. The fluorescent lights buzz at a frequency that lives just behind the eyes.
Gage’s duffel carries Rafe’s safe kit. Cruz has the tools. Mine is empty.
I let the door close behind us.
Four in the morning. Three people who have no business being here. Twenty thousand dollars sitting in machines that don’t know any better.
I roll my shoulder once and start moving.
Rows of machines line both walls, their metal fronts catching the light.
A center island runs the length of the room, the countertop gouged and dented, a graveyard of forgotten dryer sheets and single socks.
Gage peels off toward the back wall, stopping in front of the washing machine closest to the office door, Cruz falling in half a step behind him.
I keep moving toward the bill changers.
Stop at the nearest one. Pull out nothing. Feed it into the slot anyway, fingers going through the motion while my eyes track the front corner of the room—lot, road, entrance, lot again.
“I don’t see any cameras,” I say, not looking at Gage.
The light above the door buzzes. Something loose rattles faintly against metal somewhere I can’t place.
“We’ll know for sure once Cruz gets in the office.”
Cruz is already crouched at the office door, one tool in the lock, his head tilted slightly like he’s listening to it. Twelve seconds, maybe fifteen. The door swings inward.
I don’t breathe until he’s inside.
He reappears in the doorway. “Old TV. No hardwire. No back door.”
Gage checks his watch. “Sweep it again. Bell—entrance. Seven minutes.”
Cruz disappears back inside. I move to the front corner, half-behind a machine, one hand resting against its edge. The other opens and closes at my side.
Gage drops to his knees, unzips the duffel, and pulls out the safe kit—a plug spinner, a tension wrench, a short-handled pry bar. Things I recognize. Things I’ve seen used before.
“There’s nothing in here, man. Barely any paperwork.” Cruz’s voice carries from inside the office. “There’s a drawerful of whiskey, though.”
I keep my eyes on the door. The parking lot. The street. The motel sign across the road, its vacancy light stuttering on and off in a rhythm that doesn’t quite resolve.
Cruz jogs out of the office and drops down beside Gage. I hear the low scrape of metal on metal, then a sharper sound—something giving way.
“How’s it going?” I call over my shoulder. My pulse is loud in my ears. I keep my feet planted.
“Almost,” Gage says.
There’s a dull pop, then a creak of the panel swinging open on its hinge. A pause.
“Got it,” Cruz says.
I glance back once.
The face of the bill changer hangs open. Inside, the cash cassette sits in a shallow tray—banded stacks, loose bills pressed flat by the weight of more loose bills. More than I expected.
Cruz lets out a low breath through his nose. “Alright, Gage.”
Gage grins as he pulls out the tray and dumps it into the open duffel bag. “I fuckin’ told you, man.”
“Time?”
“Three minutes. Enough time to get the second one open if we hurry,” Gage says.
The road is still empty, but the way the night clings to dawn’s impending embrace feels palpable. The hair on the back of my neck stands up, and my senses snap into place.
Behind me, metal grinds against metal. Then headlights crest the hill.
My hand flattens against the glass. “Shit. I see headlights.”
“Hurry up,” Cruz says.
My fingers start to tremble from the adrenaline and lack of sleep. It feels like my very molecules are vibrating, and the urge to run is at its peak.
“I’ve almost got it,” Gage says, breath punching out between words.
Behind me, metal scrapes against metal. The headlights crest the hill and hold steady, not slowing, not turning. I press two fingers against the glass and watch them. My other hand opens and closes at my side.
“Are they turning in?” Cruz asks.
“Not yet.”
I shift my weight forward onto the balls of my feet. The fluorescent hum above the door fills the silence where an answer should be.
“Fuck—I’m in.”
I catch them in the glass. Cruz tilting the tray. Gage holding the duffel open underneath it. The headlights keep coming, bright and flat and indifferent, and then they don’t. They slide past. The highway swallows them.
I watch until the red of the taillights disappears over the next hill. “Let’s go.”
“One more,” Gage says.
I turn around. “We said ten minutes.” My eyes go to Cruz. His jaw is set, gaze already moving between me and Gage, doing the same math I am.
Gage looks at me, then at Cruz. He zips the duffel. “Fuck. Okay.”
Gage and Cruz don’t waste time. They toss in their tools and zip the duffels closed. Cruz double-checks the office door, letting it ease shut behind him with a finality that makes my pulse spike.
The bill changer face dangles crooked for a second before Gage does something with the hinge, snapping it back into place.
In seven seconds, it almost looks untouched. They stride toward me, duffels slung low and heavy, and for a moment I can’t tell if they’re about to high-five or punch each other in the throat. The tension is that thick—caught between victory and violence.
I realize I’ve been holding my breath for entire minutes at a time. There’s a trick to being the lookout, and it seems like I’ve forgotten it.
I make a mental note to cut Beckett some slack next time I put him on lookout duty. I take one of the duffel bags from Cruz, and he tosses his arm across my shoulders.
“Let’s get the fuck outta here,” he says, hooking my neck in the crook of his arm and pulling me toward him. His mouth brushes the top of my head. “Baby girl.”
It feels deliberate, like he’s making some kind of statement. I don’t know if it’s to me or about me. And now is not the time to figure that out, so I ignore it.
We cross back the same way we came—steady, controlled, not rushing. My pulse hasn’t settled yet, but it’s not erratic. It’s focused. A low, steady awareness that hasn’t let go of me since we stepped inside.
The cold hits sharper on the way out.
Cruz tosses the duffel into the back of the SUV. Gage gets in behind the wheel. The engine turns over on the first try.
I slide into the back seat and pull the door shut.
Nobody moves. The engine idles, and headlights stay off. Gage’s hands are on the wheel, but he doesn’t shift into drive.
Cruz leans back, one arm loose over the door. His other hand comes up and swipes his thumb across his mouth. He looks at it—the blood there darker now, drying at the edge—then drops it into his lap.
I pitch forward between the seats. “So we just robbed a laundromat.” I look between them. “We should probably not be here when someone finds that.”
Gage turns to look at me. Something moves through his expression and then settles. “Thanks for believing in me.”
I hold his gaze for a second. “Of course. It was a good plan. It’d be better if we weren’t at the scene of the crime when someone finds it though.”
He huffs a laugh under his breath, rubs his jaw. “Yeah, let’s bounce.”
The SUV pulls out of the lot without a single head turning, not one curtain twitching in the strip center. We’re out before anyone knows we were ever here. The buzz in my blood sticks around, sticky and hot, even as the neon signs shrink in the rearview.
No one talks for five miles. I try estimating the amount of money, try doing some basic math. It’s not even about the cash, really. It’s about the fact that we pulled this off together—no fuckups, no one bailing, no one screwing anyone else over.
“It was a good job, man. Bishop should’ve green-lit it,” Cruz says.
I lean forward between the seats.
Gage’s chin comes up. A beat passes before he says anything. “Thanks, man.” His eyes cut to the road. “Let’s not tell him though.”
“What about Coco? You still planning to cut her in?”
I stay where I am.
Gage slides Cruz a look—the kind that takes a second to land. “I was thinking we keep this between the three of us.”
Cruz shrugs, thumb moving once across his mouth. “Yeah, whatever, man. I won’t say anything.”
Gage finds my eyes in the rearview. Holds them. “That good with you, Bell?”
I sit back. “Good for me.”
Neither of them says anything after that. Cruz goes back to the window. Gage’s hand shifts on the wheel.
I watch the back of their heads and say nothing.
I sit back and watch the road unspool ahead of us. Something’s off between them—not wrong, exactly, but not right either. I can’t tell if I’m reading it correctly or if I’m just tired and still half-wired from the job.
Or maybe it was all the orgasms.
Fuck. How many orgasms are too many?
And more importantly, how soon can I run experiments on this hypothesized question?