The Tomorrow Heist Read Online Free

drop The Monarch nonsense. In retrospect, Jonathan knew he was lucky Lew hadn’t knocked him on his ass. He had to apologize, but when Lew got like this, you just had to leave him alone for a while. The only person who could cut through his moods was Emily, his on-­again, off-­again girlfriend.
    But as far as Jonathan knew, they’d been off for a long while. Ironically, for the same reason Jonathan was staying away from Natalie. Not that Lew would admit it, of course. Jonathan actually wished they could work things out, but he knew Lew could be a lot to take on a constant basis.
    She was probably better off without him.

 
    Chapter Two
    North London
    3:00 P.M. Local Time
    E MILY ’ S HEAD ROCKED back from the masked man’s slap, blood and spittle flinging across her living room. White flashes exploded in her head, and her ears rang as she distantly felt hands push her back down into the chair. She coughed and spit more blood as the white faded, and her two captors came back into focus, one beating her while another stood back a little holding a gun even though they’d duct-­taped her hands to the arms of the chair.
    â€œWhere are they?” an electronic voice with a South African accent demanded. It came from the iPad sitting on her coffee table beside her. A man with deep black skin and an eye patch peered out from the screen: Canton George. She’d met him before, only then, he had been the one being beaten for information. That scenario had ended with George’s being locked in his own vault and his ill-­gotten mansion explosively spread across half an acre.
    He’d been hunting Jonathan and Lew ever since.
    She wanted to scream and cry—­to give in to the fear and pain—­but that was exactly what George wanted. And to be honest, after searching for her for so long, she was a little insulted that he was phoning it in though she was pretty sure she knew why he wasn’t there in person. George had found Natalie in her British Columbia boarding school about a year ago, and he’d tried to take on Jonathan and Lew in person. It had not worked out well, as his eye patch and the scar peeking out from under it attested.
    â€œThey’re right outside your compound, Georgie. I’d start running if I were you,” she said. She knew she was going to pay for the lie, but the look of fear on George’s face, even though it only lasted a second, made it worth it. His remaining eye widened, and he disappeared from the screen, apparently gone to make sure she was lying. When he returned, with a very different look on his face, Emily was laughing harder than she had in a long time. Her face still felt like it was on fire, and the teeth on one side of her mouth felt loose when she touched them with her tongue, but this little victory made her momentarily forget the danger under her sofa.
    â€œAgain!” he shouted, his anger throwing spittle onto the screen.
    Emily’s laughter was abruptly cut off by a powerful right cross from one of the masked men. This time she did lose a tooth, and she was pretty sure her nose cracked. She spit out the tooth and tried to put on a brave face and laugh some more, but it came out as mewling.
    She was forcing herself not to look under her sofa. Her cell phone was under there, dimly glowing its existence, but to Emily it felt like a spotlight. She’d been on the phone with Natalie when the masked goons had burst in through her door. The door had hit her from behind, and the phone had gone flying, luckily ending up under the sofa. It was encrypted, but she hadn’t had time to lock the screen. All they had to do was look at her call log, and they’d track Natalie down in a matter of minutes. She just prayed the connection had been severed. If Natalie was still on the line listening to this nightmare—­she shook that idea away. It was too horrible, and she needed to concentrate on coming out of this alive