The Second Mouse - Archer Mayor [29]
She found she was clenching her hands together and willed them apart, placing them flat on the tops of her thighs.
Mel swung out onto the road and picked up speed, leaving the firehouse behind. Nancy was just thinking about relaxing when he slowed again a few hundred yards later, pulled into a dirt road, made a tight U-turn, and parked just shy of the intersection. He switched off the lights, helping the black truck blend into the dark stand of trees beside them.
“Field glasses,” he ordered, his eyes fixed in the direction they’d just traveled.
Ellis extracted the binoculars from the glove box as Nancy shut her eyes, feeling her heart rate double. Whatever it was, it was happening tonight.
“Gotta do a little recon,” Mel murmured, fitting the glasses to his eyes and adjusting the focus. Ellis could still make out the firehouse lights through the intervening stretch of undergrowth, glimmering like a distant campfire. Traffic was almost nil by this point, and only rarely did a pair of headlights come sweeping down the road to flash briefly through their windows. Every time that happened, though, Mel lowered the binoculars.
Twenty minutes later he returned them to Ellis, put the truck into gear, hit his own lights, and resumed driving down the paved road. “We’re good” was all he said.
The village the fire department served lay less than a mile farther on. It was getting late by now; it wasn’t too large a place to begin with, and the few stores lining the square had all closed long ago. As they drove quietly into the downtown’s embrace, Ellis thought of the fake equivalents he’d seen in cheaply made movies, where there were no people, few lights, and an artificial cleanliness that had made him think that every wall was an inch thick. Even the brick bank building seemed made of Styrofoam, under the glow of the one sodium streetlamp standing guard over the sidewalk.
Mel backed into an alley between two dark stores and killed the engine. Opposite them, through the grimy windshield, the front of the bank was clearly in view.
Breaking the unwritten rules, Nancy blurted, “The bank? What’re you thinking?”
Mel scowled as he twisted toward her, making Ellis tense up. He’d seen Mel hit her before. He knew he wouldn’t be able to allow that again without acting in her defense, just as he knew he wouldn’t stand a chance. He was big enough but lacked the instinct to win that Mel had acquired through long practice.
“More than you are, you stupid cow. You think I’m going to drive through the front door? God almighty, girl. You couldn’t make money lying on your back. You are that dumb.”
He opened the door angrily and stuck one leg out. “Just do what you know how to do, okay? Put your hands on the wheel and get ready to go. Leave the thinking to somebody who knows how.” He glared at Ellis. “Move it.”
Ellis slid out the far door, exchanging one last hapless glance with Nancy, and joined Mel in front of the silent truck. The latter’s face was still brooding, but he was evidently back on track. He pointed across the street. “Night deposit box, right of the door. See it?”
Ellis nodded, the plan finally coming clear in his head.
“We got cover from the bush to the left, and that wood garbage can box with the lid on it to the right. The target should be here in five minutes, tops. You take the box and be the diversion.”
That was it. Mel jogged across the darkened street, barely a shadow even by the dull streetlamp. Ellis didn’t think twice before following suit. This was the flip side of Mel’s managerial style—in exchange for his survival-of-the-fittest dismissiveness, he inadvertently injected in those who did stay with him a certain quick-witted autonomy. Through an intuition born