Jesse stood in a grassy meadow in a small woodland off Highway 169, staring, remembering his past. He heard a car pull up not far from where he stood when his memories got vivid. 


“Dude, that was the sickest shit ever!” Jesse said, panting, completely out of breath. 
“I know! Building that thing was damn hard, but the payoff top-notch!” he said.
“Shut up, both of you idiots. Who gives a shit about how sick it was when we got paid so much?” she said, holding up a duffel bag overflowing with cash, alongside her pistol.
“How sick it is, times how much money we got, equals how sick it actually is, Lilah, so please, don’t talk unless you're making sense,” Jesse said, while removing his ski mask and gloves, preparing to burn them.
“Don’t talk to my girl like that, you ass!” Danny said, throwing his motorcycle helmet at Jesse.
“Fuck dude, lay off just a little, please. We just struck big, and I’m feeling like a big baller,” Jesse said, tossing the motorcycle helmet he caught to the fresh dirt below him. 
“Feelin’ like a baller doesn’t excuse you from being a cock, Jesse,” Danny said, standing up, tossing the duffel bag into a safe in the hole before them.
Lilah stood up to close the safe behind the three of them, and then started messing with the lock itself.
A loud crunch in the brush behind them startled all three of them.
The crunch turned to crunching all around, and the lighting of police cars and the sounding of sirens. 
Danny was the first to shoot, pulling a submachine gun from his waistband, firing blindly.
“Shit, babe, hit the switch!”
Lilah pulled her phone out and dialed a number. With the final button push, an explosion from the empty hole with the safe cried out and suddenly filled in. 
With that, Lilah dropped the phone and pulled her pistol from her jacket and opened fire.
“Jesse! Open fire! Jesse!”


“Jesse,” said a familiar female voice, tinged with age.
Snapped out of his thoughts of yore, Jesse turned to face her. “Lilah.”
She wore a forgettable outfit of an unmarked black hoodie and jeans, just like she wore back then, but her face hadn’t aged a day.
A calm wind blew through the trees, soothing but foreboding considering the circumstances. 
Staring yet unspeaking, hate glistened in Lilah’s dark eyes. 
Breaking the hurt silence, Jesse spoke, “Long time, no see.”
“Why are you here, Jesse? You’ve got no right coming back here.” Malice was sharp in her voice like a dagger.
“Neither do you, quite frankly,” Jesse shot back, trying to make his body untense. 
“Fucking tell me why you’re here, or I’ll end you like I should’ve back then,” she replied, her hands sliding into her pockets.
Ignoring her question, Jesse said, “ You do look beautiful, you know? You’ve not aged a day in years, truly.”
She drew a small revolver from her pocket and aimed it at Jesse. “Last chance,” she said and clicked back the pin, nearly echoing in the wind. The pain in her voice was as plain as the malice; her eyes had a glisten of tears. 
“Still so quick to violence, huh? It’s shocking you even lived this long if this is how you respond to things,” Jesse said, a sneer in his voice, almost mocking her, trying to eat at her heart.
Voice quivering, she replied, “I only respond to violence when the fuck who betrayed my fiancée and me shows up out of the blue and needs to be taught a lesson about the consequences of his actions, you dick.” 
“Well now, you’ve had a lot of lovers, I imagine, Lilah. Perhaps you’d like to be a little more specific about who?” Jesse began walking towards Lilah, unfazed by the gun aimed directly at his chest.
A tear fell from her face, and her voice trembled. “You know who, you motherfucker. Danny. You killed him, right here. You betrayed us, you cost us all that money, you cost me everything.” Another tear fell as she continued. “And now you're gonna pay.”
Jesse smirked at her as her shaking hands kept the gun trained on him. 
“I didn’t kill him.. Betrayed him, yes, but I wasn’t the one who pulled the gun on him, now was I?” Jesse’s smirk went from coy to sinister as he slowly moved towards her. 
“That was you who did him in, wasn’t it, Lilah? Weren’t you the one who fired the lone shot that sent his brains flying everywhere?” 
He finished his approach and stood less than a foot from the barrel, shaking like mad. Salty tears now covered Lilah’s entire face; her gaze filled with atomic rage. 
Nearly silent, Lilah whispered, “I’ll shoot you dead, Jesse.”
Almost patronizingly, he said, “No, you won’t, Lilah, because you don’t have the damn balls.”
Keeping the gun trained on him, she started weeping openly. “Fuck you,” she said, defeated.
“Now enough with the pleasantries, Lilah. I know why you’re here, and, even though you were so polite in asking me, you know why I’m here too. So, even with such a hostile introduction, I’m open to cutting you a deal,” Jesse said, circling her slowly now, he continued. “We both know the cops didn’t recover the money, nor was it destroyed, but to retrieve it, we need the code for all three of us. You know this as well as I do, which is why you haven’t come and gotten it yet for yourself, you selfish ass.”
“Don’t fucking call me selfish,” Lilah said weakly, her gun aimed at the ground, her eyes on her feet.
“You are, but I digress, Lilah. I didn’t come to ‘huort yo wittle feewings’, I came to get paid for a job 3 years in the making, and if the only way I can do that is with your help, it’ll have to do,” Jesse said, his serious tone and cool demeanor keeping a vice grip over her.
“I figured out Danny’s part of the code, but I still need yours. If you help me find and then open the box, I’ll give you a cut.”
“How big of a cut?” Lilah asked, the wind blowing her tears off her face.
“33 percent of the 6 million.”
“That was my original cut,” she said, the shake in her voice slowing.
“Yea, I remember,” he said. “I don’t forget shit like that.”
“I want 40,” she said, her head clearing.
“Not fucking happening. You did 33 percent of the work, you get 33 percent of the money,” Jesse said, ending his circling, now standing directly in front of Lilah, arms crossed.
“No, I got 33 percent because we were breaking it even between the three of us, but now there isn’t three of us anymore, is there?” she replied, picking up her head, looking Jesse dead in those dead, soulless eyes of his. She couldn’t imagine him feeling remorse for anything, let alone love or even sympathy.
He stared at her for a second, his corneas tracing her silhouette before saying, “35 percent. Last offer, Lilah.”
“Deal,” Liliah said, the enthusiasm in her voice almost outweighing the pain now. Finally, she was getting what she had earned. About 200,000 dollars more, if her adrenaline wasn’t making her dumb.
The next 45 minutes were silent, the howl of the wind growing ever more intense, alongside the chirps of birds and the occasional car driving down the long, empty, grey highway not far from the meadow. Despite being close to roads, this meadow has stayed untouched, the beautiful, almost neon, green grass and large Evergreen trees as fresh and pure as Alaskan water. In the middle of a meadow, a hole had formed by both Jesse and Lilah’s hands, digging for the money below. 
The midday sun turned to evening, and dark, overwhelming clouds lurched above. Grey took the place of oranges, pinks, and blues.  
“We’ve been digging for 2 hours, Jesse, where is the money?” 
Lilah’s hoodie now tied around her waist, replaced by a grey tanktop, now covered in dirt and grass stains. 
“Probably somewhere here…”  
Jesse’s hoodie also no longer on his person, its arm hung down the top of the 6 foot deep hole. He wore a green button-up shirt, with the top two buttons undone. 
“Jesse, you either find this money in 5 minutes or I’ll shoot you dead and find it myself,” Lilah said, dropping her shovel.
“Your so goddamn impatient,” Jesse said, scooping out another scoop of dirt.
 “I’m not impatient, I’m just sick of waiting for this. It’s been 2 hours, after you said it was right here.”
“Just a little while longer, and then we’ll-”
A clanking sound arose from the dirt, the sound of metal on metal.
Jesse had a Cheshire grin on his face, one that would stay in Lilah’s head for years after. “Jackpot.”