Escape to Black Rock Bay

“Hurry Ellie! We don’t have any time to waste,” I hiss at my sister as she trails behind me. I know she is nervous but we only have minutes to pull this off or we are as good as dead. I can see the clearing up ahead where my stepdad Donnie has a guarded vault where he keeps his drug money. It had been a long ten years since Donnie came into our lives and we were about to be rid of him for good. I had been planning this heist for half of a year making sure all of the details were nailed down and we wouldn’t be caught. The guards were due to go on their 15 minute break in the next 90 seconds and we were giving ourselves 12 minutes to fill the five duffel bags we brought and the other three minutes to lug them back to the car. The guards were not supposed to take their breaks together but once per week these particular guards, a guy and a girl, always took their breaks together. They were always back right on time though, so I knew there was no room for error. Their promiscuity would be the end of them and the beginning for Ellie and I. Once we got the money to the car, we would drive to Colorado and get our new identities. From there, we would rent another car under our new identities and take a long road trip on the way to our new home. I had gone over the plan countless times and it seemed as foolproof as it was going to get. I spent weeks following Donnie until he finally disclosed the location of the bunker to one of his cronies. Once I found the location, Ellie and I spent two months staking out the place and making sure I knew every single guard and their habits. I cut a hole in the fence last week to see if it would be detected and not a single person has noticed it so the circumstances couldn’t get much better than this. “Okay the guards should be going on their break right about NOW,” I whisper anxiously to my sister and then we make a break for it. We crawled through the hole in the fence with our flashlights and bags and creeped over to the vault. Sure enough it was open, as I had planned. Every Thursday night at 12am on the dot, right after the guards’ break, Donnie and/or his number two Clive came to count the money. Since the guards spend their entire 15 minute break doing the dirty, they open the vault right before their break so it’s ready for the count as soon as Donnie and Clive show up. We practically run into the vault and immediately start putting money into bags. “My hands are shaking Isla,” my sister whispered. Even though we did not have time for this, I took her hands in mine and told her what I kept telling myself over the last six months, “We are almost free Elle. This is the last step and we are free. You can do this. We can do this.” She nodded her head and we got to work. I checked my watch, eight minutes to go. I put my nose to the grind and started putting money in the bags as fast as I could. I could see my pep talk helped Ellie as well. We worked silently and furiously packing our duffel bags as full and fast as we possible could. I looked at my watch, two minutes to go, five til the guards are back from their break. “How’s it coming Elle?” I ask. “I have half of a bag to pack and I’m done,” she whispered. I had already filled my three so I went over to help her finish filling her last bag. We zip up the last bag and I look at my watch- we have thirty seconds. I was sweating profusely and my heart was pounding but we were almost there. I motion to Ellie to follow me with her bags and we huff it back to the hole in the fence. We each get ourselves through the gate first and then drag the bags out after us. Just as we got the last bag through the opening, I hear a car pull up to the gate. I look at my watch and see its 11:59, Donnie is a minute early. I hear guards running back from their midnight romp to meet the car. “Time to run like hell sis. We are almost there,” I say to Ellie as we start running as fast as we can back to our car. I told Elle to get in the car and I hear yelling just as I put the last bag in the trunk. I sprinted to the drivers’ side and peeled out of there as fast as I could. Neither of us spoke for the next five minutes and I think it was out of pure relief of finally being through the hardest part. “Isla, you’re going to kill me,” Ellie said slowly with a look of horror on her face. I just looked over at her with a puzzled look on my face as I was trying to watch the road. “Dad’s bracelet, it’s gone,” she said as she started shaking. “I was fiddling with it when I was nervous and it must’ve fallen off somewhere in between the vault and the hole in the fence.” My brain was going a mile a minute. Oh f**k, oh f**k, oh f**k. He would surely know it was us once he found the bracelet. We already knew there was a chance that he would know it was us once we disappeared but that wasn’t a definite. We just had to race to get our new identities and pray he would never find us. “Say something Isla,” pleaded Ellie. “It’s going to be okay Elle. I know it sucks to have lost Dad’s bracelet, but Donnie would’ve probably found out it was us eventually, but it’s just going to be sooner than we expected.” I knew that last part was a little bit a of a lie but I had been taking care of Ellie and protecting her ever since Dad died and I wasn’t about to stop now. I took a deep breath and continued my mantra, “As long as we stick to the plan and our new identities, he will never know how to find us or even know where to look.” I always knew it wouldn’t be completely impossible for Donnie to find us, with his seemingly infinite resources and greed, but as long as we don’t make any missteps and stick to our new identities, it would be near impossible for him to ever find us. I just had to say it enough times to actually believe it.