Chapter 15: The Antechamber

Vin came through the open back door a moment later in a T-shirt and bare feet, with nothing in his hands.

He'd run across Milwaukee Avenue like that.

"Are you hurt?"

"They took the vault key."

Vin looked at the bare hook.

Then at Mickey, in his socks, with his hammer.

"Tell me before you handle it alone," he said. "That's the rule."

"I'm telling you. I'm going to Taylor Street."

"Then I'm driving."

He drove Nonna's old Buick, because his driver was asleep in River Forest.

He ran three red lights on Ogden Avenue and didn't apologize for any of them.

Mickey pulled his boots on in the passenger seat, and a sweater over nothing, and clipped his picks to his belt.

Bianchi's was dark.

The kitchen door into the alley was locked, the way it should be.

The steel door behind the kitchen wasn't.

It stood an inch open, with Mickey's key still in it.

From down the stairs came a sound he knew in his teeth.

A drill, a big one, chewing steel.

"Three of them," Vin said, very low. He could smell them. "Maybe four."

"They're drilling the relocker again."

"Can they open it?"

"No. But if they hit the wheel pack this time, nobody can. Ever. The will dies in there."

Vin's eyes went gold in the dark kitchen.

"Stay here."

"No."

"Mickey."

"You don't know the hall. I do."

Mickey went down first, on the side of the steps where the old concrete doesn't creak.

He skipped the fourth step.

At the bottom the hall was lit by a work lamp on the floor.

Three men in dark jackets were crowded at the vault door.

One held the drill against the steel just above the dial, leaning his whole weight on it.

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