Low (Low #1) Read online

  I sling the backpack holding our ski masks and the gun over my shoulder. Poesy ties her hair into a tight bun before brushing her teeth. She gags and laughs around her toothbrush as if we’re not about to commit a felony.

  Quietly leaving our place, we lock the door and head down the street, past cardboard homes on the sidewalk and empty businesses that haven’t opened for the day yet. About a mile from the apartment, the sun rises, exchanging dark blue skies for deep oranges and pinks. We turn down an alleyway where Poesy spots a parked four-door Honda.

  “How’s that one?” she asks.

  “Perfect,” I say, taking her hand.

  Boosting cars is something every hood kid is taught growing up. I started joyriding when I was a boy, eleven or twelve years old. Getting this vehicle unlocked and started is painfully simple. As I drive away, I tell myself the owner will have their vehicle returned in one piece to alleviate the guilt I feel when I see a car seat in the back.

  With time to burn, Poesy and I hide out in the parking garage we met up at the other day and go over our plans again.

  “Keep the engine running,” I say. “If I’m not out in five minutes, leave.”

  Poe nods her head, but doesn’t argue.

  When the nine o’clock hour comes, both she and I watch the clock on the dashboard turn to one minute after.

  “You’ll need to keep your mask on, Poesy. Make sure none of your hair is showing,” I say. “Keep your head down the entire time.”

  “Okay,” she answers in a small voice.

  “If you see cops—”

  “I know what to do, Lowen. I know you want me to leave you.” She sighs. “But I don’t know if I can.”

  Despite our circumstances, I smirk. “Hopefully you won’t have to.”

  At nine thirty, Poe and I switch seats, and she gets behind the wheel while I load the pistol. With hands that shake uncontrollably, I place the ski mask over my head but don’t pull it down my face. I help Poesy with hers, tucking in every stray strand of hair so they remain unseen.

  She grabs my wrist, and our eyes meet. I see fear combined with love and loyalty in her stare.

  I kiss her knuckles and promise with the chance of lying, “We’re going to be okay.”

  Unlike when we drove into the garage, the streets are alive and filled with a variety of automobiles, and dirty sidewalks carry several pedestrians. The forty-second drive to the bank feels like forty years. Thick blood courses through my veins, and I feel it flow through arteries and vessels, nourishing muscle and bone. My head echoes with the thump, thump, thump of my hard heartbeat. Every breath is shallower than the one before it.

  “Pull down your mask,” I say, but my voice sounds foreign and feels a million miles away.

  As Poe drives into California Credit Union’s parking lot, I grip the cold steel in my hand.

  The edges of my vision blur; I’m blinded by adrenaline.

  My skin crawls like I’m covered in spiders; I’m delirious with edginess.

  “Your ski mask,” Poesy shrieks. “Cover your fucking face, Lowen.”

  My girl reaches over and pulls it down for me. The car stops to a screeching halt, and reality crashes into me in a brutal rush, stripping me of air and voice.

  “If we’re in this, you need to go,” Poesy says in a calm but stern tone, hidden behind her black mask.

  There’s peace in her eyes.

  There’s strength in the girl who stayed with me when I was locked up. The one who’s remained by my side, believing and starving all at the same time.

  With the gun in my hand and determination in my heart, I leave Poesy in the car and push open the glass double doors into the bank.

  As I step foot onto the burgundy carpet, I yell, “Everyone down on the fucking floor!”

  Roughly a dozen customers stand in line to deposit or withdraw funds and turn to examine me. Their faces are blank with confused curiosity before reality clicks in and complexions drain whitish. One by one, they slowly fall to their knees before lowering to their stomachs.

  “Oh my God.” An older lady drops her checkbook and takes a step back into the navy blue velvet ropes keeping her in line before joining the others on the floor.

  Heavily breathing against thick, knitted cotton, my face warms beneath my ski mask, and I begin to sweat. Recklessness surges hot blood through my heart, causing it to beat triple time. Shifting my eyes from one side of the bank lobby to the other, aiming my gun from left to right, I count five teller booths and four desks like Poesy said.

  “Hands in the air,” I demand, focusing my attention and weapon on the four bank employees behind the service counter, recognizing wire-rimmed glasses and red hair from my girl’s description as the key holder.

  Eight shaky hands go up, and I search the room for the guard, never turning my back to the hostages. Finding the uniformed rent-a-cop to my right, I order him over and onto the floor with the rest of them.

  “Think about what you’re doing, son,” he replies with one hand on his strap and the other held out toward me, disobeying my command.

  A minute into my heist, time isn’t on my side, and there’s not a second to spare on this man being a hero. As the guard and I square off, I feel his stance give the others confidence. Heads slowly start to rise and hands inch lower. Allowing his bravery to become contagious isn’t something I can chance, so I stalk toward him and press lethal metal to the center of his forehead.

  “I said to get the fuck down,” I repeat harshly, spitting on his face and stripping him of his weapon.

  Without further argument, and peeled of bravado, he holds his hands up in surrender before sinking to the tiled floor, thinking twice about giving his life for this.

  “No one needs to get hurt today,” I call out. Pulling my backpack off, I unzip the large opening and toss it in front of the first teller, a younger-looking girl with brunette hair and mousy features.

  “I-I …” she stutters.

  “Fill it with everything in your drawer. No dye packs.” I jump onto the counter and point the gun at her from above, aiming it at her heaving chest.

  Her brown eyes fill with tears as she stares down the barrel of my pistol. Rapt by fear like she’s facing the Grim Reaper himself, she doesn’t budge, and three minutes in, the clock works against me.

  Kicking a pencil holder off the counter, I send dozens of yellow-orange pencils and black ink pens flying across the room. The teller flinches, and her tear-filled eyes spill over, running down her freckled cheeks.

  “What’s your name?” I ask, moving the aim of my gun from her chest to her head.

  “Sam … Samantha,” she answers in a delicate voice.

  “I’m sure you have a lot to live for, Samantha. Place the money in the bag, and I won’t put a bullet between your eyes,” I offer in a cooler voice, moving a lock of her curled hair away from her face with the gun.

  Even crooks sympathize.

  She opens her cash drawer, and the leathery spice-like scent of dirty money makes the hair on the back of my neck stand straight. I watch in awe as she drops rubber-banded stacks of fives, tens, and twenties into my bag, knowing each dollar will make life easier for Poe and me.

  When Samantha’s drawer is empty, I move on to the next teller, who doesn’t waste time watching his life flash before his eyes and delivers the funds. The third cashier has hundreds and fifties in his drawer, and the last employee, the key holder with her brassy hair in a tight bun, has more money than the three previous drawers combined.

  “Zip it up,” I command when she’s given me every cent she has. Slinging the cash-thick backpack over my shoulder, I jump down and back away from the service counter slowly.

  I keep my gun in front of me and stare into the eyes of my victims as I retreat toward the doors. Women and children bury their faces in their arms, whispering tearful pacts with God in exchange for survival, but fright flips to anger in a couple of men. Flaring nostrils and snarling lips—if given the chance, this crew of tw
o would seize my gun and hold me down until the boys in blue arrived. Labeled as supermen, they’d profess, “Any red-meat-eating man would’ve done the same. We did it for the kids.”

  I’d fire a round through their teeth before they got to their feet.

  “Don’t take it personal,” I say to one of them, closing the distance between deliverance and me. Hitching the bag higher on my shoulder, I add, “This shit’s insured.”

  Over five minutes have passed since I entered and when my back carefully presses against the glass doors. With one last look around the bank and all of the people in it, I turn and run. Brilliant yellow-white sunlight instantly blinds me, and despite my effort, my feet feel like they’re trapped inside concrete blocks. Fleeing sightless and slow, the piercing branch security alarm chases me into the parking lot where I collide with another body and send them to their back. With oxygen kicked from my lungs, I drop my gun and nearly lose my grip on the loot.

  Tires shriek to a stop behind me as I drop to my knees, airless and only semi-seeing, frantic.

  “Get in the car!” Posey screams.

  Blinking against adrenaline-fueled tears and the bright morning, I reach under a car for my weapon that’s out of reach.

  “I dropped the gun,” I say with the taste of my heartbeat in my mouth, metallic and sharp, as my fingertips brush across the warm metal.

  “Leave it,” my getaway driver insists, her voice more shrilling than the alarm that threatens outcome.

  Ditching the .44 could get us caught, and Posey won’t go down for this. I’ll turn myself in before she’s behind bars. With my wool-covered face pressed against the oil-slick and gas-scented asphalt, I extend my arm until muscle stretches tight over bone, and joints separate enough for my fingers to wrap around the handle of my gun. The faint sounds of sirens cry from a few blocks away as I scramble to my feet.

  The woman I ran into kicks her legs out and skids away from me, catching her long, blue skirt between the soles of her shoes and tarred pavement until she collides with the bald tires of a brown sedan parked one spot over. Her dilated eyes widen, and she holds her oil-stained and pebble-embedded hands out cautiously toward me.

  “Stay away,” she says in a brittle voice. Her eyes dart from my face to the pistol in my grip. “Please, don’t hurt me.”

  I point the gun at her, and she shrinks back, turning her head away and squeezing her eyes shut. The lady in the wrong place at the wrong time wails, lifting her skinny arms to block her face and her knees to protect her chest.

  “Get the fuck out of here,” I say, using my thumb to unlock the safety.

  It’s the only permission she needs to inch away, crawling on her hands and knees before finding the strength to run. The hem of her jean skirt is road-dirty and twisted around her short legs.

  “We need to go—now!” Poesy shouts. Short blonde hair sticks out from under her mask.

  Turning on my heels, I open the car door and jump into the back, crawling over the car seat secured in the middle.

  “Drive!” I yell, sinking into the sun-bleached blue velour seat.

  “Oh, my, gosh, Lowen. Oh my fucking gosh.” Poe shifts the car into gear.

  The Honda’s small tires spin beneath us, burning rubber and kicking up smoke and dust. In one harsh jolt, the car shoots forward, and my girl shifts into second gear. Without regard for oncoming traffic, she pulls out onto the street and zigzags between other cars, driving us farther away from the bank I just robbed.

  “Where am I going, Lowen?” she asks with both hands clutched on to the steering wheel.

  I look out through windows that have tiny fingerprints and smear marks on them, and I kick over empty sippy cups and baby toys on the floor. This car needs to be returned to the family in one piece, but with Poesy passing other vehicles on the left and running through red lights, it doesn’t appear promising. We’re going to get lit up.

  If we don’t crash first.

  “We need off this main road,” I say, holding on to the back of the seat in front of me. The sounds of sirens have quieted to a whisper, but we can’t remove our masks or ditch the car with so many people around.

  Poesy makes a fast right turn, throwing me to the other side of the sedan, before taking a sharp left, tossing me back where I was.

  “Slow down,” I say, tucking the gun into the back of my pants before it accidently goes off. As Poesy eases her foot off the accelerator, I slip the backpack with the money onto my shoulders and look around, trying to figure out exactly where we are. “We need to get out of Inglewood for the night,” I say, taking in the industrial buildings around us.

  Away from the heavy traffic, we’re the only other car on the two-way road with the exception of the occasional delivery truck that passes by. We’re closer to the bank than I’d like before we switch vehicles, but we won’t make it out of town in this one.

  “Should I get on the freeway?” Poe asks, glancing over her shoulder to me.

  “Turn into the next alleyway,” I say. “We need to get another car.”

  Swiftly nodding her head, she squeezes her small glove-covered fingers around the steering wheel and takes a deep breath. She pulls the car into a narrow one-way street between a two-story furniture warehouse and an auto mechanic shop, parking it along the curb behind an old Chevy.

  Poesy kills the engine and pulls the emergency brake before asking, “Now what?”

  THE FURNITURE BUILDING blocks the sun from the street where we’ve parked, and I feel temporarily and mistakenly safe in its shadow. There’s no doubt the police have a description of this car by now, and soon there will be a helicopter in the sky and units on every street looking for it … searching for us.

  “Get out, Poe,” I say, crushing baby bottles under my shoes as I climb over the car seat one last time and open the door.

  Once my feet are on the pavement, I pull the mask off my heated head and shove it into my back pocket. Cool morning air bites my sweaty face, and my damp hair sticks to my clammy forehead. Poesy gets out and doubles over, dropping her head below her shoulders and breathing in heavily through her nose and out her mouth.

  The alleyway is lined with parked vehicles, most likely waiting for service from the mechanic. The stolen Honda blends in perfectly with them and probably won’t draw anyone’s attention for a day or two, but we can’t take any of these. Someone will notice a missing car before they spot one too many.

  “I can’t believe we did that.” Poesy squeezes her eyes shut. She yanks her ski mask from her head and stands straight. The smeared mascara around her eyes is the most ridiculous thing to me.

  Rubbing the pads of my thumbs under her lower lashes, I can’t help but smile at the sincerity in her wide-open pupils and crinkled nose. She grabs me by the front of my shirt with both hands and pulls me closer.

  “You could have died, Low. Holy shit,” she says, clawing at my chest frantically.

  Fire-fueled bravery fades away as the legitimacy of what we’ve done sets in, and this girl is innocent. Just because she made weekly visits to a crook in prison for a couple of years doesn’t make her one. Unlucky to have fallen in love with a criminal, Poesy’s nothing more than a side effect of my bad choices.

  There’s no time to feel guilty about it now, so I brush her sweat-damp strands of hair away from her face and let her grab, scratch, and tug on me until her arms wrap around my neck and my lips whisper into her ear, “Let’s go.”

  Hand-in-hand, we run to the end of the road and cross the empty street to a lot that looks like an employee or overflow lot for the business on this block. Before we boost another car, I search for watchful eyes or cameras but don’t find a single thing.

  “Which one?” Poe asks, staring down row after row of cars in every make and model available.

  “Something without an alarm,” I say. Hopefully whoever owns the vehicle we pinch doesn’t get out of work until this evening. That’ll give us six or seven hours to make ourselves scarce before it’s reported missing.
“No bright colors. Nothing flashy.”

  We walk past a yellow Volkswagen and a red Jeep, scoping out generic, neutral-colored cars only. No Cadillacs, Audis, or Mercedes—not that there are many in this lot in this part of town.

  “That one,” Poesy says, pointing to a sand-colored Camry with aged tint and cloudy headlights.

  Browsing through the window to make sure it doesn’t have an alarm, I don’t see any red flashing lights but bump against the car to make sure it doesn’t trigger anything out of sight. Without a jimmy bar, my only other choice is to break the window with the handle of my gun.

  “Get in,” I say urgently, clearing away shattered glass before I reach inside and unlock the door.

  Poe climbs over the driver’s side and falls into the passenger’s seat. She drops low, pulling the seatbelt across her chest tightly like she knows this might turn into a chase with the LAPD if we don’t make it out of Los Angeles in time. After hotwiring the car, the engine fires up, and I reverse out of the parking spot and sail away from the lot like everything is normal, despite how hard my grip is on the steering wheel.

  “Take off that sweater and fix your hair,” I tell her, shifting my eyes back and forth from the road in front of me to the rearview mirror.

  At the last stop sign before we turn back onto the main road, I yank off my black sweater to reveal a white T-shirt beneath and toss it in the back with Poesy’s. I rake my fingers through my sweat-damp hair and pray to a forgiving God as I flip on the left blinker and drive the car into unsafe territory.

  Let us make it through this…

  Tucked into the seat with her feet under her bottom, Poesy disguises misbehavior with easiness and rolls down the window and turns up the music like we’re cruising. A warm morning breeze rustles her hair across her face, and daylight skips along her eyelashes.

  “The freeway’s a block away. Keep it together, Lowen.” Poe scratches the back of my neck with bitten-down nails on trembling fingers.

  Careful not to drive over the speed limit, I use my turn signal and check my mirrors before changing in and out of lanes. Rush-hour traffic is claustrophobic, and with every second that ticks by, freedom feels ridiculous. I want nothing more than to run through red lights and break transportation laws. Practiced delinquency leaves me abandoned with the one person I’d give my life for sitting beside me. And I’m the one who led her into this.