"Not to rain on your parade, baby, but it might be a little more complicated than opening the bathroom door."
"Joe, please, I want to do this. For us. I know I can."
He considered this a moment and then said, "All right. We'll give it a shot."
"I won't let you down. I promise," she said.
"I'm sure you won't." He pulled her down to him, throwing the blankets over both of them.
As a last meal before the operation they stopped at the McDonald's on the corner. Samantha would have liked to eat inside for a relatively normal dinner, but Joseph refused. He wanted to leave as little trace of their presence as possible. "If the police ask around, someone might remember us," he said.
"So what? By then we'll be long gone, right?"
"We're not going in and that's final," Joseph said. Samantha fingered her left eye again as she nodded, knowing better than to question Joseph on a subject he considered final.
"I'm sorry," she said. Instead of eating indoors, they took the bag of food to a driveway by an abandoned barn off the main road. Samantha tried to eat her hamburger, but found her stomach growing too restless to keep anything down. She contented herself with sipping her Diet Coke while Joseph wolfed down his Big Mac and French fries, his appetite not affected at all by their planned heist. She offered his food to him, which he accepted without thanks.
"You don't need to worry," he said. "We've got everything figured out. Every angle covered. It's all going to work out."
She nodded, but this did nothing to quell the riot in her stomach. Even her success in picking the lock couldn't dispel all her worries about this operation. So many things could go wrong. What if she couldn't pick the lock? What if the explosives didn't blow open the vault? What if there was no money? What if the police showed up? she wondered.
After dark, Joseph backed up and started towards Pinecrest. The gas station and McDonald's were still open, but devoid of any traffic. The rest of the town-including Pinecrest State Bank-had closed for the night. No one walked the streets. No police cars kept watch.
"This is it," Joseph said. He kissed her a final time before pulling a black ski mask over his face. She bound up her hair and then covered her face with a black nylon to match the black overcoat she wore. They opened the car doors at the same time, she keeping a lookout as he retrieved the supplies from the trunk.
Once he had everything they needed, including the nitroglycerine, she approached the door to get them inside. First she found the wire for the alarm on the front door and used a pair of wire cutters to clip it neatly in half. Then she took the same hanger from the motel to begin work on the door.