Raising the Stakes
A story about a gang of thieves being pushed to greater criminal extremes by overzealous authorities and dealing with the aftermath of a painful loss. Hear it performed and discussed over on Stories Across Borders.
The team all trudged into the safehouse, the apartment’s heavy door slamming shut behind them with enough force to make them all flinch. It was understandable that they were all feeling a little jumpy.
Martin walked across to the dusty window at the other side of the room, leaning against the wall as he peered out beyond the curtains. He wanted to rage and mourn as much as the rest of them, but they had elected him as their leader, that meant their safety was his priority.
Their safety. As though he hadn’t already failed in that regard.
They had gone into the job with a team of seven. Six of them had made it out. Sammy was dead.
Martin shut his eyes for a moment. He could still hear the shouting. The shouting of cops, the shouting of his team and his own voice trying to bellow instructions over the top of it all. He could still hear the gunfire too. He could hear Charlotte scream. He could hear when one of those shouting voices was silenced.
It could easily have been he or Charlotte who had copped the bullet. They had been hunkered down behind the same desk as Sammy, on either side of him. Martin still had his blood on him.
Martin was pissed. The cops had come at them with lethal force from the beginning. They hadn’t killed or threatened anyone. They didn’t take hostages. They hadn’t even seen security if security were there.
They were criminals. Martin wouldn’t deny that. He knew that the longer he stayed in the game, the closer he was drawing towards a bad ending. But a bad ending for their type of criminal was supposed to be prison, not a bullet to the head. Had someone misinformed the police about what they were dealing with? Or had they known who it was and gone after them with deadly force anyway? Martin wasn’t sure it mattered. Sammy was still dead either way.
He wanted to rage, be violent, destroy something but he didn’t. He had to stay strong. They had made him the leader. He had failed Sammy, but he still had a duty to the team.
“FUCK!’
Ross had no such duty. The exclamation was accompanied by the sound of the big man’s gloved first slamming into the wall and plaster crumbling away. Sometimes, Martin thought Ross could pick a fight with a bear and still win. He couldn’t beat a brick wall though, he walked away shaking the pain out of his hand. He couldn’t win a fight with a bullet either. Martin wondered for a moment if Ross would be the next one he saw die before his eyes. He was certainly the most likely to charge into danger. Nothing like Sammy who was careful and cautious in life.
Martin steeled himself as best he could and turned his attention to the rest of the team. He wanted to see where they were at. What he saw wasn’t encouraging.
Ross was in the process of waving off Belle, the tiniest of them trying to take care of a giant. She was still shaking, looking for something - anything - to do to distract herself from the pain. Martin could understand the feeling.
He couldn’t see Charlotte. She had hidden herself away in the bedroom in tears. She was like Ross in a lot of ways, always very up front with her emotions. Usually, the feelings she expressed were joy or annoyance, sometimes rage. Today it was grief. Martin suspected it would be grief next time he saw her too.
The other two were more stoic. Sergei was in the process of tending to Tiff’s own wound. It wasn’t serious, she had been grazed by a different bullet. Sergei was focused on his job, one holding Tiff’s muscular arm steady while the other one cleaned it out. He would soon be applying gauze or stitching it up if it was necessary. Tiff was looking at him with a grim expression, not allowing herself to show that she too was hurting.
Martin wondered how he looked to them. If Belle stopped pacing and locked eyes with him or if Ross looked up from the fridge he was now grabbing an armful of beers from, would they feel the same worry?
He suspected they would. The team had been together for over a year and they had gotten to know each other very well. Martin knew that Charlotte was in it for the thrill, she hated monotony and couldn’t live without the adrenaline. He knew that Ross and Sergei felt like the world owed them, they had been let down after their military service ended. Tiff didn’t know how to be anything but a criminal, she had grown up in the game. Bell was like him, they had been seduced by the money.
Sammy had been in it for the money too, but he’d been a robin-hood type. He gave most of what he earned away to people he decided needed it more. They used to give him shit for that. But none of them would ever have thought about kicking him off the team, even with his moral compunctions sometimes getting in the way. Not just because Sammy was good either. They liked him and his stupid virtuous personality.
It was unspoken, but they all liked each other. Only two ways a group of that nature could stay together as long as theirs without combusting and those were to retain complete personal distance or to get along extremely well. The first option was definitely safer but, if Martin was honest with himself, he much preferred this. His band of thieves and crooks were the closest friends he’d ever had. He was certain it was the same for all of them. That was why losing Sammy didn’t sting, it stabbed at them, ripping them apart from the inside.
Something had to be done.
“Listen, guys…”
Everyone in the room turned to look at him, all of them still giving him his dues as the team leader - dues Martin wasn’t sure he still deserved.
“Belle, can you grab Char. I don’t want to have this discussion twice.”
“What discussion?” Ross asked, frowning with concern. He had picked up on something off in Martin’s tone. He was surprisingly perceptive like that.
“Wait.” Martin said it with more authority than he felt like he actually had.
A couple of minutes of tense silence went by, then Belle emerged from the bedroom with an arm around Charlotte. Charlotte had done her best to wipe away the tears but, if she had been trying to fool anyone, she would have failed horrendously. She wasn’t really trying to hide anything though, she wore her heart on her sleeve. It was just about trying to switch to her game face, as she would have said.
“Right.” Martin rolled his shoulders like he was preparing to leap from a diving board, then he took the plunge. “We lost Sammy. No use trying to pretend it didn’t happen. He wouldn’t have identification on him, so we probably have some time. But once they ID him, they might be able to follow that trail back to us. They’ll be coming for us.”
Martin watched as everyone gave grim nods of affirmation. They had been ready for this. They wouldn’t be ready for what was next.
“I say that we come for them before they get the chance.”
Martin watched the expressions shift - all but Tiff’s. Ross and Charlotte were both adopting vicious smirks, Sergei was giving a nod of understanding and Belle looked confused. Tiff, as she always did, didn’t slip out of her resting bitch face.
“We make them pay,’ Ross growled.
“Wait. No!” Belle was looking horrified now. “Are you fucking crazy? We’ll all be dead then.”
“Hear me out,” Martin said, raising his hands in a placating gesture. “They came after us with lethal force today. Right from the beginning. They could have been given bad information by security or something, but I didn’t see any security in that building. We weren’t expecting any security either. I don’t think there was any. We know that they’ve been escalating when they go after us. Protocols, rules and laws be damned. I think they want us dead or they’ve been paid off to try and off us.”
“That would make an unfortunate amount of sense,” Sergei said. “They certainly opened fire immediately. They did not even see if we were armed first.”
“Does it make sense?!” Belle asked. “Would the good guys really try to murder us right off the bat? We’ve never killed any -”
Tiffany scoffed at the same as Ross and Sergei both started to voice corrections.
“Some of us have never killed anyone,” she amended, “And none of us have ever killed someone who wasn’t already trying to kill us.”
“I don’t think they care,” Martin said.
“Shit.” With everyone looking at her, Belle was quick to fold. She couldn’t deny that it made sense. The cops had come in shooting and Sammy was dead. “What then?”
“Revenge.” If it hadn’t been Tiff’s deadpan, matter-of-fact voice that said it, Martin might not have believed it was her. Tiff wasn't the sort to let emotions cloud her judgment.
“Revenge,” Martin agreed. “Sammy was the best of us. The only one of us who was doing this for the right reasons. He was selfless, brave and made damn sure we only targeted people who deserve it. More importantly? Sammy was our friend. He might have largely failed in his attempts to make us better people, but he stuck with us regardless. He made us laugh and smile like we were kids stealing from the teacher’s desk, not lunatics breaking into high security buildings. He looked out for us and he cared about us. They took our friend from us and I’m not fucking having it.”
“Well said,” Charlotte remarked, sniffing and blinking away another round of tears. “So what do we do?”
“Something Sammy would be unhappy about,” Ross joked, earning half-laughs from most of the group.
Martin nodded. “Charlotte, Belle and I are on research. We’re going to find out exactly which precinct did this to us and see what we can find out about the building. Tiff, Ross and Sergei you guys reach out to your contacts. We want guns, ammo and explosives. No baby shit. We’re going to show these bastards why murdering our moral compass was a very fucking bad idea.”
