About The Starlight Contingency:
Scarlett and Duke awaken to find that they are now prisoners about the Titan International Spaceship. The Earth has been destroyed by the Bergleute des Todes, aka The Miners of Death. Scarlett and Duke are given the chance to become soldiers to fight the aliens who destroyed their world.
The only thing left for them is the hardest thing of all: Survival.
Excerpt:
There were a lot of ways to crack a safe, but we had found the fastest method was using a handheld welding torch. The modern safe of a place like this one wasn’t spectacular. It sat in the corner of the room. Like most retail stores, there wouldn’t be a sizeable amount of cash inside because most customers paid by card or check and the employees made weekly drops to the bank, but some bills were better than none. But that wasn’t all we were here for anyway.
Scarlett burned through the metal door of the safe and flicked the welding torch off, her gloved fingers tugging at the mostly melted lid to reveal the drawer inside. I unfolded a bag and dumped the drawers from the cash registers inside, calculating that we had maybe two-thousand dollars in cash. Not bad.
The next priority was the loose diamonds, which were kept in a separate container with labels for where they went in the displays. This was the real reason we’d come. The private owner had a handful that amounted to about fifty-to-sixty grand altogether. I’d had a friend in our apartment building who said he could find a fence for the diamonds. All they needed to do was make sure there weren’t serial numbers etched inside them and we’d be home free.
We walked out of the back room to the front display and split up. She went to the far side of the shop near the window, staying low, and I worked on the alarms set up on each display case. Once they were open, I stuffed the important pieces in individual sacks: necklaces first, bracelets second, and rings last. Anything else wouldn’t be worth the trouble because we only had another two minutes to get the hell out of dodge. Scarlett always called me a Five-Minute Man. I found that both disturbing and irritating, but it was still better than my usual nickname.
I lifted my eyes toward her to let her know I had finished my half, but then I saw it: sleek and shiny like a Great White cruising through the surf, aching for prey. My mouth felt as if it had been filled with sand, but I pushed the words out anyway.
“Lettie, drop!” I hissed as the cop car glided past the window. She hit the floor with a loud thunk, and I did as well, panting for air as panic gripped my chest. I froze, listening for the sound of the tires scraping against the road but heard nothing. Slowly, I tilted my head upward to see the cop car had stopped in front of the building. I caught a glimpse of two patrol officers climbing out and one of them touching his walkie talkie. As soon as both of them shut the doors to their car, I hollered at my sister.
“Go!”
Scarlett leapt to her feet and raced toward me. The officers spotted us and broke into a run. I slung the loot across my shoulder and led the way out of the shop, kicking the door open once I’d slid the lock back. Our feet punished the ground, but it wasn’t enough. I could hear the unintelligible jabber of their radio as they called in the robbery and ran even faster, turning down alleys left and right until we reached our escape route. Three streets and then straight into the woods. Five minutes and we’d be out of here.
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About Kyoko M.
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