A FEW HOURS EARLIER... 

While Delaney kept an eye out, Zinio finished setting the timer on the bomb stuck to the front door.  

With the last of the wires in place, there was just the matter of deciding on the timeframe. He checked a cable trailing under the door, then studied his watch's display. 

Delaney's attention shifted to the unshaven guy in the upstairs window across the street. He was rubbing his pot belly under a greasy teal tank top two sizes too small as if to confirm his due date. His eyes landing on her and Zinio, his mouth went wide and the Havana hanging off his bottom lip fell, igniting the cloth canopy over the bookshop one floor below as if it had been doused in gasoline. The fire quickly burned through to the racks of books beneath. The store was well on its way to setting the entire block ablaze. 

With a push of a button, the digital red L.E.D. readout on the explosive was set to ten seconds. The loud beeps made it easier to coordinate the rest of their movements, but weren't exactly the incognito solution to middle-of-the-business day bank robberies. "We should probably have thought of some diversion."  

"Not a problem," she said, eying the conflagration in progress across the street. She stepped to the side, moving in sync with him. 

"What makes you think we can't make this relationship work?" 

They both slipped on their airport-grade ear protection. 

The door blew-all the way into the street. 

As they removed the headsets, Delaney eyed the holocaust they had just caused. "If I had to hazard a guess-I'd say you lack subtlety." 

They stormed the building. 

In fluid, rehearsed motions, they made their way through the chaos and confusion. She grabbed the elderly guard by the entrance who was going into cardiac arrest from all the excitement, sat him down, found the pillbox he was reaching for, and slipped a couple nitrate tabs under his tongue. She pulled his gun, emptied the bullets, and tossed the pistol into the street, under the car parked just out front. 

Zinio employed the same wire cutters he used on the bomb to sever the central line connecting the panic buttons. 

Delaney exploited her echo location to maneuver through the smoke to find the source of the beached whale sounds. The woman doing the gasping was closer in size to a beached walrus, as it turned out. She had her back pressed against the room divider separating her from the new account representatives. Delaney found the inhaler in her purse that had dropped at her feet, and got a couple of squirts into her lungs to settle her down. 

When the other security guard came to his senses enough to unclip his gun, Zinio reached it faster, pulling the weapon, dismantling it on the fly, and sending the pieces flying to the far corners of the floor. It would take a CSI team a week to find every piece under all the debris. When the tall forty-some black security attendant started shadow boxing, still unclear as to the whereabouts of his opponent in the soot and smoke, Zinio grabbed his hands and secured him to a marble pillar near the entrance using the guard's own handcuffs lifted off his belt.  

The dust finally settling, the roof started to give. Zinio glanced up at the beam coming loose overhead, then at the single customer waiting in front of each teller. "If you could all just please step away from the counter, please," he said, gesturing with the gun. "That's it. One more small step. Perfect." The overhead beam crashed right behind the customers on top of where they had been standing just seconds ago. 

"Christ, we blew the door, not the building," Delaney said, surveying the wreckage. 

"It's an old building." Zinio took her by the arm, and steered her to the other bank of tellers to the other side of him, some of whom also had a customer they were serving. "You have all these unrealistic notions about relationships."  

Delaney ignored him. 

Zinio held the gun to the teller's face, a dowdy woman in her forties. "Your money or your panty hose." 

Dowdy froze in shock. Her eyes kept bouncing between the muzzle of the gun and Zinio's handsome face, trying to determine which one she was going to be more taken by.  

"Okay, your money and your panty hose." 

"Never mind him. He thinks he's funny. Keys, please?" Delaney's hand wavered under the weight of the .44 magnum pointed at the teller's head. Convinced she was in fact mixing a martini, Dowdy shakily handed over her keys.  

"What happened to that little Walther PPK I got you?" 

"I find nothing says hand over your keys like a .44. Most times I don't even have to say anything." 

"I just don't think it's very feminine." 

"You see the two guns?" 

Zinio did a quick check of the customers with concealed weapons. They both belonged to the row of tellers he had his back to. Marvelous. 

"You notice no one can be bothered to pull them? Try that with a Walther PPK!"  

"We did just save their lives. Maybe they're still feeling more appreciative than put out. And it's not like it's their money." He did another read of the gun-toters and decided those pistols were for surviving the city streets, not for playing undercover cop. They had too little cool under fire and too much perspiration under their hairlines. They weren't about to pull the weapons anytime soon, so long as they knew there was a chance of getting out of here alive. 

Delaney grabbed the keys and sauntered off. 

"Those are her car keys." 

She studied the keys in her hand. "Shit, you're right."  

Delaney marched back to the teller. "Lady, are you menopausal?" 

Dowdy nodded stiffly. 

"Oh, well, in that case, I'm sorry. Could I please have the right keys?" 

Dowdy fumbled the keys not once, but twice. She had to pick them up from the floor both times, and made exasperated sounds with herself the whole time, before handing over the right keys.  

"No one does flustered like you, lady; you deserve an Emmy," Delaney, said, grabbing the key ring.  

She put her fingers to her lips and whistled to get everyone's attention. "Just so we're clear, the entrance is rigged with more explosives, so anyone leaving ahead of us won't make it and will likely just bring the house down on the rest of our heads. We've cut the wires on all outgoing lines. Really, there isn't much to do besides stand around and wait to collect whatever money we can't carry off. If you actually get caught, you can just say we told you to take it." 

Zinio and Delaney made their way to the back of the bank.  

Half way there, he held her back. She gave him a look that could peel paint. The safe door blew-from the inside. Delaney yelped and jumped back, falling into his arm like a ball in a catcher's mitt, as he stood there not batting an eye. The weight of the giant stainless steel door landing sent another shockwave through the building that had more plaster falling from the ceiling and the entire place rocking.  

"You didn't think those things were actually going to open the door did you?" 

Delaney did a double take of the keys in her hand. I guess not. 

A man in his thirties walked out of the dust and fog with a dazed expression, his finger still on the igniter. He looked like Robby the Robot and walked to match in a deep-sea diving suit. 

"The suit worked!" 

"Robby" held his thumb up to Zinio, swayed ominously for a bit, before passing out cold and falling to the ground.  

"At least he had the sense to fall forward. If he tried to break that fall with that hand going backwards, he'd have ended up with a thumb up his ass." 

"Who is that guy?" Delaney asked. 

"Bank President's son. I had to bang him to get him to cooperate." 

"You didn't have the decency to ask me to watch?"  

"I didn't think I could stand any more constructive criticism." 

She passed her eyes over the two with guns in the room. "Is that why the others still haven't made a move? He paid them off?" 

"No, that's why we blew the door on a bank already opened for business. They're in shock." 

She huffed. "We're lucky no one decided to walk out when we exploded the entrance."  

"That's what the Dick Tracy watch is for," he said pointing to the video display. "And the fiber optic probe I snuck under the door to show me what was going on inside."  

They marched into the vault. 

Zinio pulled what looked like a billfold from under his jacket, and tossed it. It popped out like one of those self-erecting tents, only into a tote bag on wheels. 

He already had some safe deposit boxes open, using both the keys from the teller and his matching key ring, and was emptying money and jewels into the bag. 

"I was wondering why your key ring just kept getting fatter over the last couple weeks. And you found out who had safe deposit boxes here, how?"  

"Hire-a-hacker.com." 

She made an impressed face, which she kept from him, before it dawned on her. "So you're a cat burglar too? Well, hopefully you're a better cat burglar than you are a bank robber." 

Zinio briefly raised his eyes heavenward and grunted, but kept his attention on what he was doing.  

Delaney gestured to the security camera in the corner of the safe and shook her head, disappointed. "You see, this is what I mean? No finesse. Woefully inadequate planning. Did he even bother to cover up the security cameras? No. Is he wearing gloves?" 

"I'm not thick skinned." Scraping his knuckles as he fought with the keys, he licked the minor bleed. "I wish you'd remember that when you're running your mouth like an outboard engine hurtling over some ramp at Sea World." He continued matching the keys on his ring with the ones from the bank teller.  

"Why do I bother? You take all the romance out of robbing banks." 

Zinio sighed. "I told you, you plan for everything to go wrong so when something does go wrong, you could care less." 

"I don't care how brilliant it sounds; it just lacks a certain sex appeal." 

She gave him a dirty look, and absently lifted her stuffed bag. "At least you didn't relieve every one of their guns. There's hope one of them could still get up enough nerve. A nice shootout on the way out the door-now that would be romantic!" 

"Always thinking of ya." 

She doubled over in pain, pressing against her stomach, as Zinio blanched white. She had gone a shade of blue that wasn't even on a paint chart. And she made a sound that customarily only mothers delivering babies make. "Six months to live, huh?" she yelped. "That doctor can tell time about as well as you." 

"Maybe so, but he can count money well enough. I'm not sure there are enough banks in the entire world." 

His eyes watering, he caressed her tenderly, gave her a peck on the forehead, and then hugged her as if determined to squeeze all the pain out of her. She resented his dropping the tough guy act for her benefit, and pushed him off.  

He clamped down on his jaw, and threw her the heavy bag with money, just daring her to make a comment.  

To really get her goat, he walked off effortlessly with his bag on rollers.  

When she got tired wrestling with her bag, she surrendered to Zinio's unvarnished pragmatism, and did the same; she pulled up the handle and dragged the case along the floor. 

"Where are you going?" When the wheel caught on the lip of the door and she had to wrestle to get it free, she let go a primal scream. The instant the bag was clear she tore out of the safe after him. "Don't walk off on me! We're in the middle of a marital spat."  

In the center of the bank lobby floor, Zinio stopped dead in his tracks. He rolled his eyes and took a deep breath as he turned to face her. "I'm sorry. How could I forget?" 

They were now both standing dead center of the bank's lobby, Delaney with her fists on her waist, weight shifted to one leg, Zinio holding on to the handle of his bag so tight, he was sure he'd break it.  

"Look," she said, "we need to come to some kind of agreement, right now." 

Zinio craned his neck at the sound of nearing police sirens, then impatiently scanned his watch, noting the preset countdown was nearing zero minutes and zero seconds. "I'm in no mood to cave." 

"I want the weekends off to see other guys, because this is so not working for me." 

"Fine." 

"Fine!" she squealed. "I thought you weren't in the mood to cave." 

"Two days of blissful silence away from the Mouth. I'm sorry, I'm just not seeing the downside." 

Zinio shouted to Dowdy. "Hey, lady-a coffee, please? I'm so used to this shit, I'm likely to fall asleep mid-argument." 

Dowdy rushed to grab him a coffee. 

Delaney ticked off another finger, as she continued to wave the gun around with the other hand. Customers dutifully standing in front of their tellers, as they'd been told, dodging anticipated gunfire, squirmed as if doing the boogie-woogie to music only they were hearing. "We're talking separate checking accounts from this minute on." 

"From the woman who refuses to spend less than a million every time she steps into Wal-Mart. Deal." 

Dowdy dashed to his side with a coffee. He took a hit. "Lady, you aren't much with keys, but you do coffee like nobody's business." One look back at his wife had him rolling his eyes again. He returned his attention to Dowdy. "You don't have to stand around for this." 

He tipped her from his wallet with a twenty dollar bill.  

"Thank you!" Dowdy said, taking the money, and running off. 

Zinio noticed the police sirens were getting a lot louder. Everyone, including Zinio, seemed to breathe a sigh of relief as the tires of the cop cars squealed to a stop in front of the building. 

"Are you done?" 

Delaney made a face. "No, I've just drawn a blank." 

He shook his head in disbelief as he switched guns, shoving the one with bullets into the shoulder holster, pulling the air pistol out of the suit jacket pocket. As he was double checking the cartridges, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a woman. She was waiting to speak to one of the account agents, her back to the room divider, reading Men Are From Mars; Women Are From Venus. She was frozen with the book as it was when she was actually reading. Now, her eyes were glued to the robbers. Zinio snorted at the book's title. 

"Yeah, that's right..." Delaney blurted.  

Two cops came charging through the door.  

Zinio took them out with the tranq darts. 

"I want to properly plan the next job!" Delaney said, ignoring the intrusion. "I want to draw up diagrams, case the joint first, crawl through sewers, all the stuff you see in the movies. I need a little romance in my life." 

"Fine." 

"What's not a concession about that!" 

"You crawling around on all fours in spandex with your ass in my face in some underground tunnel... Gee, I'll get by."  

Zinio reached into his inside jacket pocket, took out a sling shot. "Of course, knowing you, you'll find some way to talk out your ass."  

He slung a glob of plastic explosives with an impact trigger, calibrated fast and loose based on the estimated goal, at the far wall. The small fridge exploded. In his mind's eye, he caught the energy drink that had been resting on top of the refrigerator blasted his way. 

When he let go of the fantasy, he saw the energy drink had rolled on the ground.  

Sighing, he thought, That's what I get for not living in a cartoon. 

Dowdy picked up the can and ran it over to him.  

"Sorry, lady, the coffee just wasn't cutting it." He popped the top, took a swig, as she retreated to safety behind the teller's counter. 

Zinio asked, "Anything else?" 

Still holding her fingers out, Delaney said, "I'm thinking." 

"You think better when we're driving." 

She wheeled her bag toward the front door. "Manipulative bastard." 

"If I wanted to be manipulative, I'd have strung the argument along just so I could catch a cop's bullet to the back of the head. Two minutes under the spotlight with you, and the cockroaches pray for death." 

He held out the empty can for Dowdy, who ran up and grabbed it. "Don't forget to recycle," he said. 

She nodded zealously.  

Zinio got the parade underway with his own bag in tow.  

Delaney addressed the graying security guard, standing with his hands up, on her way out the door. "Don't mind him, he thinks he's funny." 

Zinio and Delaney walked into an army of cops with their guns drawn, shielding themselves behind their car doors. She noted that behind them the bookstore owner was successfully outing the fire to his store with an extinguisher; so much for the much-needed diversion.  

"Do you believe this shit?" Zinio said, eying the cops. "Who can get around traffic in the city?" 

Delaney gulped. "All right, smart guy. I can't wait to see what you pull out of your ass to get us out of this."