Heretics book 3 - The Apocryphile Press

THE KINGDOM :: 261
“You! What were you doing in there?” A man in a dark blue
polo shirt with the Jizz Factory logo was staring right at him,
and glaring. “Yeah, you? What were you doing in there?”
Richard hesitated just a moment, his brain nearly shortcircuiting
with panic. He held up the cutters, wrapped in the
towel. “You’re short on towels. I was looking for one.”
“Goddamit. Will someone go and stock the fucking towels?”
The man turned away from him, and Richard continued,
swallowing hard and willing his heartbeat to slow.
Turning the corner into the row of lockers where Dane’s
effects were housed, Richard approached the locker and
turned his back to the men dressing or undressing several
lockers down. He held one corner of the towel and let the
rest of it fall, making sure that its length still obscured the
cutters, but now only one layer thick, so that the tool was
still operable through the fabric. To anyone else on the row,
he hoped it would look like he was holding a towel while fiddling
with his lock, when in reality, he was cutting it off.
It would have been an impossible deceit, but fortunately
no one was paying him any attention, and no one seemed to
notice when the lock broke off with a satisfying but tooaudible-for-comfort
“snap!”
Richard laid the cutters on the bench in front of him, making
sure to cover them with the towel. Then, stealing one
more glance behind him, he raised the lever on Dane’s locker
and swung wide the door.
Inside was the sort of suit Richard had seen him in just
days before. His heart raced as he felt at the pants pockets.
Nothing.
He reached past the trousers to the suit jacket, and felt at
the inside pocket. A comb. Lowering his hands, he felt at the
large outside jacket pockets—and there was a likely bulge.
He fished inside the pocket and pulled forth an enormous
gold ring with a gleaming red stone.