October 1986

The .38 grinds into his skull. He smells three-in-one oil and stale cordite. It is a sweet, metallic odor.

The hammer cocks.

Driver’s heart is pounding. He doesn’t flinch. His white utility van continues straight and steady across the causeway.

Click.

Boss snorts. Sadistic and cold, he blows make-believe smoke from his empty Smith & Wesson. He hopes Driver has pissed himself.

But the guy is ice.

“Might be a keeper.” Boss nods at his two men in the cargo hold.

“Told you.”

No one says anything more till the van arrives at Pell College. There are stone walls and thick arborvitae hedges ringing the oceanside campus. The storied women’s college is a safe harbor on the rocky shore of New England.

Until now.

“We get in. We get out. We drill these girls before they know what happened.”

Boss is the oldest of the four men, the biggest by fifty pounds. Heavy bags under his eyes make him look sleepy, like he crawled out of bed four hours after last call and a Percocet to make it through the night.

Despite appearances, he is fast with his hands. His two regulars know this. They know this all too well.

Driver has delivered up to now. The vehicle he boosted, Newport Tree Service, is perfect cover for a lazy, Friday afternoon in the early fall. But he’s new to the crew and not to be trusted.

“Stay in the van. And keep the engine running. I don’t want to come outside and find you with your dick in your hands.” Boss’s voice is rough as sandpaper.

“Got it.”

“You packing?”

Driver swallows his annoyance and answers for the third time that day. “No.”

Boss turns to his men in back. “Show me your guns.”

They open the cylinders of their revolvers. Empty.

“Good.”

Driver suddenly pulls over. He hates the plan. “No bullets—are you shitting me?”

“Shut up and drive. I’m not going down on a shooting rap.”

The van eases along a winding road, past Hazard Court, past Osgood Hall. Driver eyes the massive stone dormitories in his rearview mirror and continues to the far corner of campus. It is almost closing time when he pulls into the parking lot outside Channing House.

In their gray jumpsuits, the other three men look like gardeners from Newport Tree Service. They wriggle into thick work gloves and don black wraparound sunglasses as they pile out of the van. They hoist a telescoping ladder from the roof and lug it to the front of the building.

Against a red brick wall aged by time and nor’easters, Boss climbs to the spot where a telephone line enters Channing. He opens the jaws of an industrial-strength bolt cutter.

Snap. The cable flops to the ground.

No sirens. No confused cries from inside the building. The intruders are on plan.

The three men yank black, military-style hoods over their heads and reposition their wraparounds so ID is impossible. Behind the wheel, Driver watches them disappear through massive oak doors leading into the building.

His job is to wait. And stay sharp. He gasses the van just to hear it rumble.

Two minutes. Three. He knows exactly what is happening. One man is on the second floor, covering the flank. Boss and the other guy are sweeping the ground floor, raining hell and poking the girls with their gun barrels.

No bullets.

The plan infuriates Driver. Sooner or later, shit happens. Shit that requires a 158 gram solution. Stewing behind the wheel, he senses motion.

Somebody coming.

An old man turns the corner. Wispy hair. Out of shape. He is wearing gray slacks and a blue blazer with “security” embroidered under the Pell College crest. He stubs out a cigarette with his heel and notices the telephone line drooping from a pole on the street. When he spies the ladder, he grimaces.

Driver shuts off the engine and hops out of the van. Holding an unlit cigarette, he ambles toward the old man. “Hey there.”

“Did you see what happened?”

“The phone guy said he’d be right back.”

“Phone guy?” The security guard recoils as though ducking a punch. “Who are you?”

“Newport Tree Service. You got a light?”

“Oh…yeah.” Momentarily distracted, the guard fishes through his coat pocket.

A scream breaks from Channing. The security guard whips a Walther PPK from his jacket and storms toward the house.

“I’ll get the cops.” Driver bolts in the opposite direction.

“Hurry.”

Inside the van, he reaches under his seat. “Screw that.”