One Lonely Franklin

The bags hit the bed and bounced, and for a second neither of them said anything. They just looked.

Two big duffels, stuffed so full the zippers strained. Alba Zevon had counted it in her head on the drive back, the way you count anything you have wanted for a long time, and she still couldn't quite believe it. They had walked into a bank in black leather and black ski masks and walked out with all of that. No sirens behind them. No mistakes. A clean job.

Across the bed, Rachel Adams tugged her mask up off her face and laughed, a little breathless, still riding the high of it. "We did it," she said. "We actually did it."

"We did," Alba said, and smiled back at her.

She meant the smile. That was the funny part. She liked Rachel. Rachel was steady in a crisis and fun to be around and she trusted people, which was a lovely quality in a friend and a terrible one in a partner. Somewhere on the drive, somewhere between the second and third time she counted the money in her head, Alba had stopped thinking about half.

*[Photo: the two robbers in black leather and ski masks, the bags of cash on the bed between them]*

Rachel flopped down beside the bags and started talking plans. That was Rachel, always a step ahead on the logistics. They should lay low tonight. Order a pizza, because she was starving and nobody was going looking for bank robbers at a pizza place. Then tomorrow, the airport, or maybe the long way, by car, somewhere with a border and a beach on the other side of it.

Alba let her talk. She nodded in the right places. She said pepperoni when Rachel asked. And while Rachel scrolled for the number on her phone, Alba reached into her bag and came out with a coil of white rope.

She didn't hide it, exactly. She just didn't announce it either. Rachel was mid-sentence about whether they had enough cash on hand for a tip when the first loop went around her arms.

"Hey," Rachel said, half laughing. "What are you doing?"

"Hold still," Alba said.

And Rachel, God bless her, held still. For a second. Long enough for Alba to pull the rope snug and take a second wrap.

*[Photo: Alba looping white rope around Rachel's arms, Rachel looking back over her shoulder]*

That was the moment Alba would remember later, if she let herself remember any of it. The half second where Rachel's face was still trying to make it a joke. Then the rope went around again, across her chest this time, binding her arms to her torso, and the joke fell apart.

"Alba. Alba, seriously, stop."

Alba didn't stop. She worked fast, the way she had worked at the bank, no wasted motion. Arms and torso first, wrap after wrap of white rope against black leather, cinched down until Rachel's elbows weren't going anywhere. Rachel twisted on the bed, which only made the rope bite in and the job go quicker.

"You can't be serious," Rachel said. "After everything? We planned this together."

"We did," Alba agreed. "You were great."

She moved down to Rachel's ankles. Rachel kicked, more out of reflex than strategy, and Alba caught one ankle, then the other, and bound them together with the same quick, practiced wraps. When she sat back to look, Rachel was trussed up and wiggling on the sheets beside the money she had just helped steal, and the look on her face had moved all the way from confusion to something a lot angrier.

*[Photo: Rachel bound arms, torso and ankles, writhing on the bed next to the bags of cash]*

Rachel had a lot to say. She said most of it loudly. Alba heard about loyalty, and partnership, and about what kind of person does this, and about how they were supposed to be in this together. She heard several things that were less polite. She let it wash over her the way you let rain hit a windshield.

It was the oldest story there was, really. Two crooks, one pile of money, and only one of them thinking clearly about it. Alba had seen the movies. She had just decided, somewhere on that drive, that she would rather be the one walking out of the last scene.

She rolled Rachel onto her stomach.

Rachel squirmed and protested and tried to roll back, and Alba kept a firm hand on her shoulder until she gave up on that. Then Alba took the last length of rope, bent Rachel's legs up behind her, and tied her ankles back to her bound arms. A hogtie, tight and neat, Rachel arched on the sheets with her feet drawn up behind her and nowhere at all to go.

*[Photo: Rachel hogtied on her stomach on the hotel bed, Alba kneeling beside her]*

"Alba, I swear to God..."

"I know," Alba said. "I'm sorry. I really am."

She wasn't sure she was lying. It didn't change anything.

Rachel kept talking. She talked faster when she saw what Alba took out of the bag next, a ballgag. She clamped her mouth shut, which bought her about two seconds. Alba waited her out, and when Rachel opened her mouth to say one more thing, the ball went in. Alba buckled the strap behind her head and pulled it snug, and the hotel room got very quiet.

Not silent. Rachel still had plenty to say. It just came out as wet, furious noise around the ball, words that started out as words and turned into something else halfway through. She pulled at the ropes, rocking on her stomach, panting hard through her nose.

*[Photo: close on Rachel's face, ballgagged, glaring up from the hogtie]*

Alba turned to the money.

She took her time with it, which maybe wasn't kind. She zipped the bags. She checked the floor and the nightstand and the corners of the bed for any loose bills, and gathered up every one of them. Rachel watched the whole thing, twisting her head to follow, making noises that needed no translation at all.

Then Alba paused, reached into one of the bags, and peeled off a single hundred-dollar bill.

She looked at it for a moment. Then she laid it on the sheets in front of Rachel's face, smoothed it flat, and patted it once.

"For the pizza," she said.

Rachel's reply, through the ballgag, was not about pizza.

*[Photo: a single hundred-dollar bill on the sheets, Rachel hogtied and gagged behind it]*

Alba shouldered the bags. They were heavy, and that felt good. At the door she glanced back one last time. Rachel was straining in the white rope, arching and rocking and getting exactly nowhere, ballgagged and breathing hard, one lonely Franklin lying just out of reach in front of her.

She would get loose eventually. Rachel was smart, and stubborn, and she would work at those knots until something gave. By then, Alba planned to be somewhere with a border and a beach on the other side of it.

The door clicked shut behind her.

On the bed, Rachel pulled, and panted, and pulled again, and the hundred-dollar bill sat right where Alba left it, not going anywhere either.