Page 16 of The Wrong Idea (The Kinky Bank Robbers #2)

Chapter Twelve

The four of us lurked by the back door of the Army surplus store under the pale dawn sky, waiting patiently for Odin to finish picking the lock.

I turned to sit, leaning my head against the wall and staring up at the morning moon, thoughts returning to my sisters as they had so often in the past hours and days.

I hoped they were okay. I hoped that they’d get over the death of me.

Easier said than done.

I reminded myself how resilient they were—I’d seen it when my parents had died. We four sisters had learned how to reach down inside ourselves and find that place where we knew things would be okay. They had it inside themselves to do that again.

I’d had no choice but to allow my death to be staged like it had been, but it was still awful.

Zeus came over to sit next to me. “They’ll be waking up now, yeah?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “A lot of morning chores on a farm.”

“So I hear,” he said softly.

“I’m thinking that they probably delegated my chores temporarily between them, but now they’ll have to make a permanent shift.” Now that I was dead. “Hopefully they’ll use the money we funneled to them to hire somebody.”

“You didn’t have a choice,” he reminded me.

“I know.”

“You saved their lives. It was the only way.”

I nodded.

He turned to me then. “If you ever want to talk about it…”

I gave him a weak grin. It was usually Thor who did the sensitive guy stuff. “Thanks.”

Odin growled at the lock.

I sighed dramatically and poked Zeus’s chest, wanting desperately to change the subject. “All this because some people just can’t shop like normal folks! Nooooo, our outfits must be stolen.”

Zeus snorted. “We like our clothes hot, what can I say?”

“And hot they’ll be.”

“You know it.”

I knew perfectly well why we were doing it this way—so that our purchases couldn’t be traced. I checked my phone and sipped my coffee, not that I needed it; adrenaline was surging through my veins like a drug. A robbery before the robbery.

“I can’t believe we’re going to just do this today,” I said. “A two-robbery day.”

Thor sat down on the other side of me and squeezed my shoulder. His devilish smile told me he knew exactly how I was feeling—wired. Alive. A little bit wild.

We were going to rob a bank in just a couple hours! I felt scared and thrilled, all at once. It was like staring at a sheer rock face just knowing you’ll climb it. Thor squeezed again. He felt the same way. We were all thrill junkies in our own ways. These were my people.

The door swung open, and Odin strolled right in, heading toward the alarm box. He yanked off the housing and pulled and twisted the wires, connecting a little box with a keypad.

We walked in after him. The place was hushed and dark, and it smelled like musty cedar.

Silent rows of racks held clothes from every kind of military unit.

Vintage suits and dresses were arranged on the other side.

The walls were adorned with displays, some involving helmets and fatigues, others showing colorful robes and fabrics.

“We’ll be back here in thirty minutes, at exactly eight,” Zeus said. “No fucking around. Put together some good outfits. Something that allows freedom of movement and plenty of storage. They probably have Halloween masks in the back. Make sure we can see out of them, though.”

With that, Zeus and Odin walked out.

The door slammed with a loud thunk , leaving Thor and me alone.

Thor smiled devilishly and came to me, stroking his hands up and down over my bare arms, moving his body in close.

Shivers went over me as his chest hit mine. I could feel the steel of his cock through the linen of his slacks. It was hot, us in this forbidden place.

I lifted my hand and stroked his cheek, smoothing over the glint of honey-colored whiskers. I trailed my fingertips over his corded neck.

Crap! I couldn’t let myself get turned on. We had a job to do! But the adrenaline was an aphrodisiac to me, and Thor knew it.

“What if the store opens early?” I asked.

“They won’t open early. But if they do open, we’d be caught. Maybe we’d have an audience we didn’t expect.”

I snorted. “Not the best kind of audience.”

He kissed my neck, sending shivers skittering over my skin. “Nobody’s opening early.”

“How do you know?”

“Because this is the kind of information criminals like to have.”

I heard a certain something in his voice that I had heard once before—a slight bitterness in how he said criminals. He had a thorny relationship with what they’d become—that’s the idea that I was getting.

I started thinking here about what the Gigis had said—it was all about Thor. Like Thor was a problem to solve, or like he was a person who needed extra care in some way.

“You’re more than criminals,” I said.

“Actually, we’re less,” he said, kissing the base of my throat.

My belly heated with desire.

“It’s not what any of us ever dreamed, not even what we trained for,” Thor whispered. “We’re like goddamn ghosts. We add nothing.”

I stepped back. “Stop it, Thor. You guys are awesome.”

“We’re ghosts of vengeance.” He pushed my sleeves partway off my shoulders.

“Thor, I don’t want to mess up this job.”

“Do you know what it was like, in the restaurant basement tonight? Watching you with them?”

It was technically last night, but I didn’t point that out. “We only have half an hour to pick out the costumes. And they said no fucking around.”

Thor’s voice turned gravelly. “I know what they said.”

“They’re counting on us.”

“Don’t worry so much.” He pressed close enough that I could feel the heat of his breath on my nose. The electric pulse of excitement between us intensified. “Zeus and Odin are a lot more fun when they’re mad. I know you know that.”

True enough.

“And it doesn’t matter what we do. They’re the team.

Robbing banks with Zeus and Odin is like if a grade school football team had two professional football players on it.

The other players can be terrible, and their team will still win.

You and I could do anything, and we’d still be part of the most high-achieving gang on the planet. ”

He pushed me gently toward a square pillar covered with mirrors and kissed me. He felt so warm and good against me.

“They’re the ultimate pros.”

I smiled into the kiss. “And you’re the doctor.”

“Was,” he whispered into my ear.

Was? This startled me. Didn’t he feel like a doctor anymore? Like he wasn’t worthwhile, wasn’t a healer?

“You still are. You saved both Zeus’s and my lives. What is that, a big zilch? Because it’s not a zilch to me. You care. You help people. That doesn’t change.”

“Shhhh.”

The mirror felt cool and smooth on my back, and Thor’s kisses were tender and warm.

He said, “I prescribe fucking off a little of this adrenaline. It will help us concentrate.”

I pushed him away. “Our job is to get costumes, dude!”

He gave me a dark look; I think he saw that I was serious. Then he smiled, like putting on costumes was a good new sexy idea. “Let’s get some costumes on, then.”

“Yeah.”

I turned to a rack and pulled off a flak jacket.

Thor wasn’t giving himself enough credit.

He was a good doctor and a good man who’d cared enough to speak up when it was hard, when he saw people being hurt and killed, even though it got him into trouble with dangerous people—the dangerous people that Odin and Zeus had once worked for.

He was a good robber, too; I’d seen him in action, after all, back when the gang robbed the bank I worked at.

He came up behind me and circled his arms around my waist. “All those pockets in that vest are good. We’ll go in really military.”

I pointed up at a display on the wall. “Gas masks would be scary.”

“They cut off your vision too much.”

“I think military is too obvious, anyway. Also, I think it could jinx things because of Odin and Zeus’s history. The military wasn’t good to them.”

“They weren’t specifically military,” Thor said, smoothing his hands up toward my breasts.

“Whatever. Intelligence ops. Still.” I pulled away and walked down a dark aisle. Military boots lined the wall in the footwear section. There were also oddball shoes. I found a rack of wooden clogs. From the Netherlands? I held them up. Thor shook his head. “Impractical for running.”

We picked out tall lace-up black boots and tried them on. Comfortable. Thor picked out sizes for Zeus and Odin and put them in the cart. I also found red ski masks. Very classic. They all went in the cart.

“We usually go for more theatrical,” Thor said. “Like Halloween masks. It distracts people.”

“But if we’re covered in black from head to toe and wearing red ski masks, we would be theatrical.”

“We don’t want to look like a mime troupe.”

Ignoring him, I grabbed a black long-sleeved shirt and a ragged black military vest with lots of pockets and held them up. “How about these together?”

Thor pulled off his dinner jacket, slowly, and threw it aside. He unbuttoned his shirt slowly, giving me a sexy glower, doing a kind of striptease.

My mouth went dry. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

Don’t be so sexy , I thought. Don’t let me see how hot you are when nekkid.

He threw the shirt and unbuttoned his fly, watching me.

I couldn’t look away, and he knew it. I felt like a crazily coiled-up spring, what with the bank robbery in an hour, and here he was, deliciously dangerous, cock straining against the fabric of his black boxer briefs, irresistibly hot and fuckable.

He gave me one of his wicked smiles. “Come here.”

“We have a job. One job!” I threw him the rough, black, pocket-laden vest and long-sleeved shirt. “Try that on!”

He put them both on over his black boxers. My resistance was eroding.

“We need pants,” he said. “You have one minute to pick out pants.”

My pulse raced. If I picked out pants in the next minute, we would have time to fuck, which would be fun. Zeus and Odin didn’t need to know. But they’d said not to!

Stay strong! I told myself.

I walked deeper into the store, vibrating with excitement, passing silk Japanese robes, trench coats, camouflage fatigues, and more, feeling proud of myself for resisting Thor so well.

I was hoping to find green wool pants. That would be a fun Alpine look—wool pants tucked into the boots.

And then I came to the kilts.