I had spent years driving home from late-night nursing shifts at the hospital.

I swung the wheel hard to the left, sending the car sliding across a patch of wet leaves.

We skidded into a narrow, cobblestone alleyway behind a row of brick townhouses.

I switched off my headlights.

The sedan rolled forward in the dark, the engine low and rumbling.

I watched the mouth of the alley in my side mirror.

A second later, the dark SUV roared past the intersection, its tires throwing up a spray of dirty water.

They had missed the turn.

They would realize it in less than a minute, but a minute was all I needed.

I put the car in drive and crept out the opposite end of the alley.

The Boston Merchants Bank stood on the corner of Devonshire Street, its grey granite pillars looking like tomb stones in the rain.

It was a historic building, the kind that still kept a private, 24-hour vault in the basement for its oldest clients.

My mother had kept a safe deposit box there for twenty years.