As soon as the elevator stops, Seb and I push through the doors, hustling across the dark, empty space. Our footsteps echo on the polished marble. It’s still deathly silent, but I know that our presence isn’t a secret anymore.

When we get to the glass doors, I pick up the closest brass stanchion and I launch it through the window like a javelin. The glass shatters, splintering down like so many jagged icicles. It doesn’t matter how much noise we make anymore. The point is to get outside as quickly as possible.

Seb and I step through the glass, hurrying out onto the steps leading down to the street.

I look down to the curb, where Camille should be waiting for us.

There’s nobody there. No car, no, truck, nothing but an empty street.

“Where is she?” Seb says, a note of panic in his voice.

“She’ll be here,” I tell him.

The seconds tick by. The road remains empty.

“Should we just run?” Seb says.

We’re halfway down the stairs. We could just sprint off down the street.

But I told Camille to meet us right here.

At that moment, someone barks, “DON’T MOVE!”

Slowly, I turn and look over my shoulder.

A security guard is standing behind us, his gun pointed at Seb and me.

Not just any security guard—my good buddy Michael, who let us down into the vault a couple weeks back.

Michael is not supposed to be working tonight. No security guards are supposed to be working tonight.

The question of why Michael is here at 11:00 pm is a mystery. If I had to guess, I assume he was doing something less-than-legal for Raymond on one of the upper floors. That’s not what I care about, however. I’m concerned solely with the gun pointed at my face.

Seb and I are wearing Kevlar vests. I really don’t want to test their functionality, or Michael’s aim.

“Take it easy,” I say, keeping my voice low and calm.

“Don’t fucking talk, and don’t fucking move, or I’ll put a bullet between your eyes,” Michael barks.

“What do you want to do?” Seb murmurs to me, so quietly that even I can barely hear it.

I can see his body coiled like a spring. He wants to try to get the jump on Michael, thinking he’s just some rent-a-cop. That’s a bad idea—I doubt Raymond Page picked a schmuck as the head of his security team. This guy is probably some ex-navy SEAL or worse.

Carefully, keeping my body turned to hide what I’m doing, I slip my hand in my pocket. I intend to close my fingers around the handle of my switchblade. If Seb can distract this dude, I might have a chance . . .

My hand grasps at nothing. I don’t have my knife anymore—I gave it to Camille.

Well, shit.

At that moment, I hear sirens—distant, but getting closer by the second.

Michael chuckles.

“You’re fucked now,” he says.

Then I see something so odd that it looks like an optical illusion. The shadow behind one of the bank’s marble pillars peels away from the wall, looming up behind Michael. In one swift motion, it grabs the guard’s wrist, wrenching his gun upward, and wraps one massive forearm around Michael’s throat.

The security guard squeezes his trigger three times in a row, but the bullets shoot harmlessly up into the air. Meanwhile, my big brother Dante puts Michael in the most painful-looking headlock I’ve ever witnessed. Dante chokes him out in about eight seconds, until Michael slumps over unconscious.

Dante drops him on the top of the steps.

“Hey!” Sebastian greets him, cheerfully.

“What are you doing here?” I demand.

Dante shrugs his heavy shoulders.

“I thought you might need help.”

“We had it covered,” I tell him.

“Clearly,” he snorts, stepping over the security guard’s slumbering frame.

The sirens are getting closer. Now’s the time to leave.

Dante must have a car somewhere around.

But I don’t want to leave without Camille . . .

“Let’s go,” Dante grunts.

“One more second . . .” I say.

A white police van screeches up in front of the bank.

Seb and Dante are about to take cover behind the pillars.

“Wait!” I say.

Camille pokes her head out the driver’s side window.

“Come on!” she shouts.

We book it down the stairs.

Dante and Seb climb into the van. I grab the last of Mason’s inventions out of my bag. I fling one of the grenades up the north end of the street, and one south. Then I jump in the passenger seat, shouting to Camille, “Go west on Monroe!”

Cop cars are zooming up La Salle from both directions. I can see them closing in on us from two sides.

Then the grenades explode.

Not in the normal way—there’s no charge inside. Instead, the grenades release two smoke bombs of massive proportions. They create dual pillars of dense black smoke, twelve feet in diameter and a hundred feet tall. This blocks the view in either direction with apocalyptic panache.

Camille floors the gas pedal, shooting the gap between the pillars of smoke. She zooms down Monroe Street, taking us out of the financial district, out toward the river.

She’s driving fast and aggressive, handling the van like it’s a sports car. I can’t help grinning, watching her. The only thing I don’t like is the gash on her chin, and the ugly marks around her neck. Not to mention the fact that her shirt looks like it was cut off her body.

“Are you okay?” I ask her.

Camille gives me a quick smile, before turning her eyes back to the road.

“Never better,” she says.

I feel myself grinning too, a bubble of elation building inside of me.

We’re doing it. We’re fucking doing it.

I can hear sirens everywhere. Probably twenty cop cars, headed toward the bank from all directions. It’ll take a miracle to get through them all without being spotted.

Camille is headed toward the bridge, to cross over the river.

Instead, I say, “Turn right here. Then turn right again.”

“But that’ll take us back—”

“Trust me,” I say.

Camille wrenches the wheel to the right, then takes the next right again.

Now we’re headed back toward La Salle on Washington Street. Sure enough, two cop cars are racing down the road after us, sirens blaring. Camille’s hands are stiff on the wheel and her face is pale.

“What do I do?” she says.

“Just keep going,” I tell her.

The cop cars shoot past us on either side, zooming down Washington.

Camille lets out a startled laugh.

“They think we’re with them,” I tell her. “It’s way more suspicious to drive in the opposite direction.”

We keep driving back toward the bank, letting another squad car pass us by. Once we’re sure the bulk of the cops have passed, we take a left to head north instead.

The sound of sirens fades away. Seb and Dante start laughing. Camille joins in, her voice higher than usual, and a little skittish.

“We did it,” she says, like she still can’t believe it.

“Did you get what you were looking for?” Dante asks me.

“Of course I did,” I tell him.

Now Dante and Seb are looking curiously at Camille.