The door latch made a neat snick noise as Zack left the network and security room. He cringed at the noise for a moment and then relaxed. He wasn’t doing anything wrong. Zack straightened and started the stopwatch on his phone. Five minutes.
Zack hustled all the way down the hallway towards the foreign currency room like he was in a rugby game. He whipped into the break room to grab the SecurBag stored inside of his backpack and bowled Jamie over as she was leaving.
“Jamie! I’m so sorry! What are you doing here?” Zack asked, rushing to help her up.
Jamie smoothed her skirt and fixed her hair. She pointed at her purse. “I forgot my purse, so I came back to grab it.”
“Okay. Well, have a good day! Sorry again to bump into you like that.”
Jamie smiled and fished in her purse. She pulled out a piece of paper - her paystub. “Since you are here, do you know about vacation pay and overtime? Do we get paid out for that when the branch closes?”
Zack’s eyes flicked to the clock ticking on the wall of the break room. His fingers fiddled with his phone in his pocket. He had already left the security room about half a minute prior. Zack nodded and guided Jamie out of the break room and down the hall to the employee exit. “Absolutely you will be paid out for vacation and overtime. True North still values you as an employee.”
Jamie stopped and glanced at her pay stub. “What about sick days? I think I have about—”
Zack shoved the door open and held it for Jamie. “I can’t be sure, but I’ll put in a good word. See you later!”
Jamie looked at her pay stub and back at Zack. “Are you trying to get me out of here? Why are you being so strange?”
Zack grimaced. Shit. He had to get moving. Now. He had to come up with something, quick. “I actually really need to go to the bathroom. Sorry.”
Jamie’s forehead wrinkled as she made a disgusted face. “Ew. TMI, Zack.”
Zack was already walking back to the break room. “You asked! Bye!”
Zack yanked his backpack up onto a break table and unzipped it. He wrenched the SecurBag out of his backpack and raced over to the foreign currency room. His heart rioted in his chest.
With shaking hands, Zack waved his keycard at the reader. The keycard beeped, urgent and angry, and Zack barrelled his way inside. He threw the SecurBag onto the floor, dust motes exploding into the previously still air, and fell to his knees. He hauled out his phone and put it beside him on the floor, the numbers rapidly flying upwards. He had turned off the security cameras almost two minutes ago.
Zack huffed and flipped through keys on his keyring until he found the right one, then jammed it into the locked compartment. The old SecurBag stared back at him, crumpled inside of the compartment.
Zack snatched it out and unzipped it. He dumped all of the contents onto the floor. Colourful bills wrapped tightly inside of plastic bags littered the floor around him and Zack stretched and reached to stuff all of them inside of the new SecurBag.
They all fit comfortably and Zack started to zip up the bag. He peeked into the compartment as he was closing the SecurBag and did a double take.
There were more clear plastic bags full of money that were stuffed behind the SecurBag. Zack looked at his phone. 2:10…2:11…2:12.
“Son of a bitch.” Zack chuckled. There was even more money. He tugged the plastic bags out and pushed them into the already full SecurBag. He fit all of them into the SecurBag, but it wouldn’t zip up any longer. Zack shoved the empty bag back and then closed and locked the compartment.
He stood up and groaned as he lifted up the bulky bag. Zack scanned the room, trying to calm his wild thoughts. He had to go, but everything was in its place, wasn’t it? He hoped so.
Zack grunted and hefted the heavy bag. How much had he nabbed? He nudged the door open and rushed to the break room.
“Zack? Is that you? Someone here?”
Zack froze. Cory? He was supposed to be in Arizona or somewhere, hitting a golf ball into oblivion.
Rather than answering, Zack placed the heavy bag onto the break table as gingerly as he could. He only had a minute and a half or so to get the security cameras back on. As soon as Zack looked at the backpack he brought, he realized that there was no way that the SecurBag was going to fit inside. How could he have misjudged so completely?
Footsteps clicked down the hallway. Zack panicked.
Below the counter where the industrial drip coffee maker lived, a duffel bag sat. It looked deflated and empty. Zack hurried over and stuffed the SecurBag inside of the duffel. The duffel had the embroidered name “SYDNEY TREBUCHI” and “CENTENNIAL TRACK AND FIELD” on it. Zack remembered that Sydney had started going to the gym during her lunch breaks.
Zack gulped. He had already used her credentials to shut off the cameras. His stomach roiled and he felt sick. He was using Sydney to rob True North. He felt like he was going to vomit.
But there was no time.
Zack turned just as Cory’s head popped into the break room. “Ah, Zack. It is you. I thought I heard something.”
Zack’s body felt like it was on fire. He shook and hyperventilated as he looked down at his phone. There were only about fifty seconds left until the security measures came into effect. All of the bells and whistles, literally, would be sounding the alarm. He prayed that Cory wouldn’t see the open duffel bag behind him. It took all of Zack’s willpower not to look at it.
Zack wiped at his sweaty forehead and tried to block Cory’s view of the bulging duffel. “Hey Cory. What…aren’t you supposed to be at, the uh…convention?”
Cory leaned against the doorframe. His hair looked disheveled and his tie was half undone. “Yeah. True North cancelled my trip this afternoon. I guess since my branch is closing it isn’t worth it to invest in my career.”
“Oh. That’s crappy news,” Zack mumbled. He stepped back and felt his foot run into the open bag.
“So. How did it go today?”
“Pretty good. Hey, do you think you could double check what I did for closing? I just wanted to be sure I did alright.”
The numbers on Zack’s phone ticked closer and closer to five minutes.
Cory sighed and looked down at his phone as he turned back to the entrance of the break room. “Yeah. I could do that. Hey, are you doing okay with the news of the closure? Do you want to grab a beer or something?”
Zack saw that Cory had almost left the break room, so he spun and zipped up the duffel. He slid it back into the corner with his foot. He guessed that he had about half a minute. “Umm, no. I just—” Zack moved to squeeze past Cory, “Oh! I forgot to close something out. I’ll be right back.”
Zack looked at his phone as he ran to the security and network room. 4:48…4:49.
Zack reached the door with a few seconds to spare. He couldn’t remember when he started the timer, so he needed to get in there immediately.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sydney in the foyer leaving her office. She turned at the sound. “Za—?”
Zack bulled into the network room and slammed his hands on the computer’s keyboard, waking it from sleep. He logged into the computer, as Sydney, and toggled all of the cameras back to ‘on’.
Wheezing, he slumped against the desk for a moment, and then logged off and shut down the computer. With that, Zack left the scene of the crime.
Cory was standing in the hallway tapping on his phone when Zack came back. “So all went well here?”
Zack let out a huge sigh of relief. “What? Um. Yeah. It was…yeah. Good. Are you back to being Manager tomorrow?”
Cory nodded. Zack noticed that he didn’t look like the cheery bro that he was used to. “I guess so. What do you think about that beer?”
Zack felt bad, but he had to get the bag out of the bank. He shook his head as he made his way into the break room. “Sorry, I’ve got dinner plans I’ve got to get to.”
Cory ran a hand through his hair and let out a frustrated breath. “Yeah. I understand,” he mumbled. “That’s fine. Fucking fine.”
The duffel bag in the corner was gone. Zack’s heart rate rocketed and the wave of anxiety almost put Zack on the ground. “Did…was Sydney here?”
Cory was distracted by his phone again. “Oh. Yeah, she didn’t want to grab a beer either. She just left. Guess it’ll just be me.”
Zack swallowed a lump that was sticking in his throat. He jogged past Cory and opened the employee door.
Outside, Sydney’s car, and Zack’s money, was pulling out of the parking lot.
Oh shit.