After an annoying few minutes of failing to find his verification paperwork, the assistant manager finally managed to pull it up on her system and directed him to a hand scanner. He held his palm up to it and the vault door clicked open, and then they walked together into the safe deposit chamber, where she watched him like a hawk as he used his key to free the long box. They then moved to a smaller room with a metal table and three chairs, and after she explained to him that he’d have to buzz her to get back out of the security area, Matt thanked her for her time and she left.
He lifted Hannah onto one of the chairs and opened the lid of the box. Inside was a nylon tote bag containing six passports in different names – two for each of them – and four thick stacks of American hundred-dollar bills bound with rubber bands. He extracted the documents and dollars and then removed another thick wad of euros, a compact semiautomatic pistol with a spare magazine, and Jet’s tiny worn leather satchel on a lanyard, containing her travel stash of diamonds, the rest stored in her Uruguay bank box for permanent safekeeping.
Most of the currency went into his backpack along with the passports. He slid the pistol and magazine into his jacket pocket and looped the lanyard with the diamond satchel around his neck. Finished, the box empty, he considered leaving one of the passports and some money for Jet, just in case she somehow made it to the bank later, but opted instead for a cryptic note telling her to contact one of his blind email accounts, which he’d be checking hourly from his phone. If she was able to get into the box, she’d be able to email him and could explain what she needed and where and when she’d be able to meet up. If not, he hadn’t wasted a passport and twenty grand that would sit unused in the box until the end of time.
Matt and Hannah returned to the vault door, and he pressed a button on the keypad mounted to the heavy steel door frame. The assistant manager took her time, and Matt occupied his adjusting the new cargo in his backpack and straightening Hannah’s hair, messy from the helmet. He’d already decided to ditch the scooter at their next stop – it was impractical with a three-and-a-half-year-old clinging to his back.
Back on the bike, they negotiated the back streets until arriving at the art museum, where he parked the scooter among scores of others, hung the helmet from the handlebars, and led Hannah to the café that would serve as their rendezvous point for the day. The contingency plan was that should either Jet or Matt leave the crisis signal at the house, the other would wait with Hannah at the café until dusk. If the other failed to appear, plan B kicked into effect.
Matt desperately hoped there would be no need for the second phase, but he wasn’t kidding himself.
They took a table just inside the café, out of sight but from where Matt could scan the street through the glare of the picture window. Matt ordered a sandwich for each of them, along with a double-strength cup of coffee for himself, and settled in for the duration.
Hours stretched by, and by the time the sun was melting into the hills, it was obvious that Jet wouldn’t be putting in an appearance. Hannah had become increasingly restless as the day wore on, tiring of coloring and drawing in the notebook among her school things, and asking seemingly every ten minutes where Mama was.
Matt explained to her that they would be meeting her mother somewhere else if she couldn’t make it to the café, and Hannah had given him a skeptical look informed by her months on the run. She might have been knee high, but she’d already seen more of the world than most, and understood innately that when she was pulled out of class only to learn that her mother had disappeared, it signaled nothing good, no matter how Matt spun the news. Misgivings aside, she put on a brave face, but couldn’t disguise her agitation, no matter how many funny stories Matt invented about passersby for her entertainment. By the time twilight was darkening the sky, she was as antsy as Matt had ever seen her, and he could barely keep her from running out of the café as he gathered their things.
He flagged down a taxi, gave the driver an address on the edge of the city, and settled back into the seat with Hannah as the cab shot forward in defiance of oncoming traffic and common sense, swinging into the flow of rapidly moving cars as though possessed of a death wish. The trip across town took fifteen minutes, and when the cab screeched to a stop in front of a long row of industrial buildings, Matt was more than ready to be done with the man’s kamikaze approach to motoring.
They watched the taxi roar away in a cloud of dust and waited until it was out of sight to walk toward the industrial park. After confirming that there was no obvious surveillance, Matt entered the office of a rental storage facility and pushed through the doors to where his unit was located. The combination lock opened with a loud snap, and Hannah watched curiously as he rolled up the metal door, revealing a muted green truck with a polished aluminum camper shell and Romanian plates.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Our new home, at least for a little while. We’re going on a vacation. Camping.”
“What’s camping?”