The Ravine by Robert Pascuzzi

bedroom, mumbled something to Missy about hearing the alarm go off, and then turned over and went back to sleep.
    Tony saw the three of them reflected in the blackness of the mirror, and thought how young and frightened they all looked—Dannyin particular, with those big eyes poking out of his head. He silently pointed to the closet door. “That’s the one,” he whispered. When they opened the door, it was just as they had imagined.
    This was the real deal. The safe stood about two feet high, was gun-metal gray, and was bolted to the floor. There was no way anyone was ever going to carry that baby out of there. Bags was reputed to have nimble fingers, so it was his job to turn the combination lock to the correct numbers. He squatted down, and Tony realized for the first time that he was wearing a backpack.
    Danny shined his light on the piece of paper Jack had given them the day after Christmas. Bags’s hand was shaking so badly that Danny had to reach down and hold his wrist. But within a few turns they heard the cylinders click into place. Bags turned the handle and pulled out one of the drawers; it was filled with piles of neatly stacked cash.
    “All right!” Bags exclaimed. “We hit the mother lode!”
    In their excitement, they forgot their promise to keep the noise down, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was getting the cash into the bags and getting the hell out of there. Tony unzipped his bag and started feeding the cash into it.
    Missy and Kevin both bolted upright when they heard voices down the hall.
    “Somebody’s in the house,” she whispered. “We better call the cops.”
    “The only phone up here is in Mom and Dad’s room. I’m going to go check this out.”
    Missy groped around, found a kids-size baseball bat, and whispered, “Here, you’d better take this; maybe it will scare them away. Be careful!”
    Kevin crept down the hall in the dark, reached around the wall, and turned on the bedroom lights. He saw three men gathered around the open safe, and they turned around at once, clearly startled and shocked.
    “What the hell are you doing here?” he shouted, lifting the bat above his head.
    “We were just leaving,” Tony said. “Don’t do anything stupid and no one will get hurt.” He tried to sound menacing but knew this was a bad situation about to get much worse. He put his hands up as if to imply that he was giving up, but now he was glad Danny had prepared and figured he would know what to do.
    Danny was kneeling next to his bag; he slid his hand in and gripped the tire iron. Then a woman in a nightgown appeared at the door, and the guy with the bat said, “Missy, go downstairs and call the cops, right now.”
    When Kevin moved a step closer, Danny whipped out the tire iron and clubbed him around the knee, and the guy brought the bat down on Danny’s head. Tony jumped in and tried to grab the bat, but the man was swinging it furiously. Somehow Danny managed to stand up and wildly swing the tire iron. He caught the guy on the side of the neck, which knocked him down and out cold, but then Danny started beating him on the back, shouting, “Bastard, don’t you ever hit me!”
    Tony jumped in and said, “Stop! We’ve got to get out of here.” Bags grabbed the gym bag with the cash and ran down the steps and out the door.
    When Tony got to the bottom of the steps, he saw the woman dialing on the phone in the kitchen. He ran in the room, pulled the phone from her hand, and ripped it out of the wall, inadvertently sending her flying across the floor. Holding the phone like a club, he leaned over her and threatened to kill her if she called the cops; then he turned and ran out the door. Missy sat crumpled on the floor, trembling and calling out for Kevin to come downstairs. Eventually, when she found him, her shrieks echoed throughout the neighborhood.

C HAPTER 5
    Crossroads
    Our lives are the sum total of the choices we have made
.
    —Wayne Dyer
    D ANNY AND T ONY rushed off to