Category : Books-Fiction

Sub Category : Suspense/Mystery

11:35pm Las Vegas
The armed thieves are deep in the heart of Las Vegas, California. A lone fat security guard is seen pacing back and forth in front of an electric safe. To be more specific, he’s guarding the last hope of the safe holding 10M dollars, in the grandest casino of the city, at least. Of course, the lowly guard knows nothing of the casino’s troubles. But the gambler’s paradise remains ever so close to bankruptcy, due to some unlucky losses. 
          Too bad tonight is the casinos final act. Two grifters, by the names of Antoinette and Jezebel, are hiding in the shadows, ready to loot the daylights out of the casino. Unfortunately, the old floorboards are creaky, and sneaking across them emits a loud creak that draws his attention.
          He whips to face the thieves’ location, brandishing a flashlight as his only weapon. “Who’s there? Don’t think I didn’t hear that! Because I did!” 
    A team member, Jezebel, flings a tranquilizer dart, embedding itself in the side of the guard’s flabby neck. Without hesitation, he drops to the floor with a thump. 
          “My, my. Did your mother not teach you to entertain your guests until they finally leave, with every single dollar stashed in that pretty safe over there, I might add?” Antoinette smirks.

She walks over the guard’s partially paralized body. He tries to roll himself towards the exit. Only making one roll over, he realizes he can’t make it and gives up.     
As Jezebel and Antoinette walk toward the money vault Jezebel looks back every so often to make sure he stays still, “It’ll hurt if you struggle too much. I'd stay still if I were you,” Jezebel says to the guard as he lies on the ground, motionless. 
The thieves walk to the safe. Jezebel begins unscrewing the control panel where the keypad is connected. It clunks to the floor, leaving the battery fully exposed. She takes out the batteries, pocketing them, and the safe opens. The thieves walk into the open safe. Having the duffel bags in hand, Antoinette and Jezebel quickly stuff the stacks of 10M dollars into the bags. 
    The thieves leave the scene, walking over the guard, “I’m afraid we can’t stay and chat,” Antoinette says, jumping out the window that they used to get in. As Antoinette is getting the van, she notices that Jezebel is not behind her. A minute later she sees Jez walk out with her duffel bag in hand. 
“I stole his gun and taser okay?” Jez says as she climbs into the van. 
“Step on it, moron!” Antoinette hisses to Mikey. He puts the pedal to the metal and drives the group to Good Springs, Nevada, an hour away from Vegas. 
                1:25am Good springs
    The team gets a hotel room for the night. Since they are now rich, they decide to get a two bedroom suite. They all sit in the hotel room, chatting about what each of them will do with their share of the money. 
“I’m heading into the bathroom to change,” Antoinette says getting up from the couch. As she goes into the bathroom Mikey and Jezebel huddle in a corner to discuss their plan. 
“But she’s the leader of our team, how would we continue if we kill her?” Antoinette hears Jezebel whisper to Mikey. 
The realization hit her. They’re going to murder me? Antoinette thinks to herself. She thinks back to a year before all this happened. She was with a different crew, a team of four. It was a situation almost like the one she is in now. Her team wanted her dead for money, simple as that.
“Well, aren’t you tired of just bearing to her will, Jez?” Mikey whispers. 
Antoinette feels the anger bottled up inside her as she walks out of the bathroom, pretending like she heard nothing. They must be fooled for my plan to work. The two conspirators quickly jump apart, acting nonchalant. Antoinette raises an eyebrow, playing dumb. The team heads to their rooms for the night.
Mikey is laying in the futon that Antonette made him sleep on. I can’t believe it. Why did I even join ranks with this stupid thieving team in the first place? Well, that doesn’t exactly matter anymore. Eventually Antoinette will be terminated, then Jez and I will finally live in peace, away from all of this nonsense. In the next 15 hours the search warrant for our arrest will be gone. I wonder how the cops will react to us bringing her corpse to them, less than a day later. 
One thing’s for sure, I have to be smart. Ann is cunning enough to catch wind of my plan and shut it down. I can do it. If I ever want to live a normal life with a white picket fence, it’s what I have to do. 
He drifts off into an uneasy sleep. After all, planning a murder was no joke, at least not to Mikey. 
Across the room, Antoinette also lay awake in her bed. Those idiots, thinking they can get away with murder. Well, I’ve got a little treat for them; double homicide. First, though, I think I’ll have a bit of fun. Before she goes to sleep she decides to go down stairs into the hotel’s kitchen. The kitchen is unattended so she easily steals a steak knife and then heads back up to the room. 
Unlike the former, she falls into a deep sleep. Murder wasn’t quite new to the master thief.
                8:45 am Good Springs
    Antoinette wakes up before Mikey and Jezebel, planning to go eat while planning how to go about Mikey and Jezebel’s death. She gets dressed in the bathroom then walks out into the living room area of their hotel room. 
As Mikey lays on the futon bed Antoinette whispers to herself, “you have no idea what’s coming do you?”
Antoinette grabs one of the hotel room keys from the table by the futon and walks out into the hallway. These nitwits don’t have a clue about the fight they just picked. Antoinette thinks to herself as she walks down the hall to the elevator. She gets into the elevator and goes to the main floor. Meanwhile in the hotel room Mikey wakes up startled, he was barely awake when Antoinette was in the living room. He partially heard what Antoinette whispered before she left.
    Mikey runs into Jezebel’s bedroom, terrified he tries to get her up. “Jez wake up, Ann knows what we’re planning!” he says practically yelling. 
Mikey thinks back to when he first met Antoinette, it was only a few days after she killed her old crew members. Now knowing what would happen to them for even thinking about killing Ann he’s terrified for his life. 
“Mikey calm down, let me sleep,” Jezebel says barely awake with hardly one eye open. 
    Meanwhile Antoinette is enjoying her breakfast of black coffee and oatmeal in the complimentary breakfast room. She starts getting annoyed by all the little children running around. So she went to finish her breakfast in her room with her traitorous crew. 
    As the day goes by Antoinette decides that she’d treat her crew to their final dinner. So as they drive through the town of Good Springs they find a restaurant called the Pioneer Saloon. The crew pulls up to the restaurant in the van and goes to eat. 
Later in the night the crew gets back to their hotel room, the time is 11:43pm, the room quiet and everyone is tense as they walk in. Jezebel and Ann go into their seperate rooms as Mikey pulls out the futon which he plans to sleep on. 
    Antoinette decides to give her crew time to fall asleep to what they think will be a peaceful rest. As she waits she gets her weapon ready, she knows the guard’s taser and gun is out in the kitchen, but she decides not to go grab them. Instead she grabs the steak knife that she stole the night before. She looks out into the living room to see that Mikey is clearly asleep on the futon. She walks out silently into the living room, knife in hand. 
10 minutes later Jezebel walks in the living room awaken from the noise of Mikey’s struggle she sees Mikey lying on the floor in a puddle of his own. “Ann wha-” Jezebel tries to say, she is stopped mid sentence. 
Antoinette walk out of the hotel all the duffel bags in hand, the money is all hers, all 10M dollars is hers. She exits out of the main lobby door of the hotel with a smirk on her face. In the parking lot sits the van that Mickey once drove. Antoinette gets into the driver’s seat and puts the duffel bags in the back. Keys in hand she puts the keys into the ignition and starts the vehicle Time for the million hour car ride to Las Angelos. She thinks to herself as she puts her foot on the petal and leaves the scene.