Chapter 14
Now what?
Previously, Zack chased the money back to Sydney’s house and tells her what happened.
Zack and Sydney sat on the carpeted floor of Sydney’s living room and stared at the sorted piles of foreign money. The sky out of Sydney’s picture window had slowly transformed from dusky purple to dark and the lamp in the living room clicked on by itself. Zack gave Sydney a sideways glance.
“It’s on a timer.” She shifted and faced Zack. Sydney’s voice was gravelly after the lengthy silence. “So. Now what?”
Zack contemplated what Sydney had said. He was a ‘one step at a time’ kind of thinker, and he hadn’t had any time to consider what his next move should be. Obviously, they would need to convert the money into Canadian dollars, or else it was basically useless unless they traveled to the countries that the currency was legal tender in.
“You do have a plan don’t you?”
Zack shrugged. “Yeah, of course. We need to keep going to work and acting like everything is normal. That should be the first step.”
Sydney stared at him. A moment passed. “Yeah? Keep going to work and pretend everything is fine. That’s step one. Are you fucking with me?”
Zack frowned and scratched his chin. The money was starting to make Sydney’s living room smell of that musty antique currency room in the bank. He took a deep breath and clasped his hands together. “Okay. We can take the money in small amounts and get it changed at the airport, or those currency exchange places in town, you know the ones? Maybe we could split the money, like eighty-twenty or something. Then, we move on with our lives and forget this even happened.”
Sydney crossed her arms. Her eyes bore into Zack, and he began to feel his face flushing. Zack twiddled his thumbs. He gulped. “I mean, we could do it differently, Syd. Are you thinking like, seventy-thirty? I did the actual work. I wasn’t sure if it would work, and it did. Thirty percent of twenty thousand is about…six grand? Something like that.”
Sydney shook her head. “I don’t believe this. You can’t have planned so poorly. Yeah, step one, keep our heads down and go into work like nothing happened. The bank closes in a couple of weeks. That’s a great idea. Otherwise, nothing you are talking about is even remotely realistic.”
Zack didn’t like the snarky tone that she was using. He felt like he was being chastised. “What do you mean? I pulled it off and didn’t get caught. I didn’t even have to tell you about it.”
Sydney pointed at the money with both hands. “This? This money is nothing until we can get it exchanged into Canadian Dollars, Zack! You think we can just pull up to some currency exchange places and swap out—” she picked up a small stack and looked at it, “Laotian Kip just anywhere? These places exchange normal currencies, Zack. British Pounds, Japanese Yen, Mexican Pesos. Regular shit. Also, they have protocols and security. We live in Canada. There are hardcore securities for things like this. If we bring in a bunch of big bills from some obscure place, they will have questions. They might even conduct an STR, which you might not even know stands for suspicious transaction report. Did you even do any research?
“And, you want to keep seventy percent of this money? Do I need to remind you that the only clues you left behind have my fucking name on them? You implicated me in the crime, Zack. If they get smart and discover that this money is missing, which will probably happen when the bank closes, who was the one, on record, turning off the cameras? Me!”
Zack hadn’t thought of all of those things. He was just desperate for money, and it was low hanging fruit that nobody would notice. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. “Okay. Chill out. I’m sorry. I’ll take the money and stash it somewhere and then I can exchange it somewhere. I’ll figure it out.”
Sydney scoffed. “Fuuuuuck that. I’m sorry, but your plan is hodgepodge. You’ll get arrested in a minute, Zack. And that is not good for me.”
Zack felt his hands start to get clammy. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Fine. You seem like you know a lot about this stuff, so what do you think we should do?”
Sydney covered her face in her hands and shook her head. “God, I can’t believe that we are even in this mess. It is crazy that I’m even considering this, but what do we do? We could just throw away the money - that’s not that bad of an idea.”
“What! Are you crazy! I need that money, Sydney. Things for me are not good.”
Sydney bit her lip and looked at Zack. “I don’t think I ever want to see you again when this is over.”
Zack just sat on the floor and shut up. It seemed like that was the best choice.
Sydney sighed. “Okay. First thing we need to do is keep on living our lives as normally as possible. We still need to be friends, at least on the surface at work so that we don’t raise any alarms. I will see if I can scrub my information from the server and eliminate myself as a suspect. We need to hide the money somewhere until we figure out a plan to deal with it. I will put on my thinking cap and figure out our next steps so that we don’t go to jail.”
Zack nodded and stared down into his lap. His voice came out low and small. Deferential. “Okay. How should we hide the money?”
Sydney smiled. “I have a few ideas.”
Zack looked up, his eyes pleading. “You aren’t going to tell me?”
Sydney raised an eyebrow. “You’ve gotten us into enough shit, haven’t you?”
Zack bit his lip. He nodded. She didn’t have to say anything else. He pushed himself up off the floor. “So. I’ll see you at work.”
“Yep.” She didn’t look up at him, but she started to pack the money back into the clear plastic bags.
Zack grabbed all of his stuff. He left Sydney with the piles of money on the floor and drifted to the foyer. He took his time putting on his shoes, just hopeful that Sydney would come to her senses and change her mind about him. That she would recognize that he did something heroic, not idiotic.
That he wasn’t a loser.
After loitering long enough, Zack shuffled out of Sydney’s house and walked home.