Drugs and robbery

(via)

I love taking words/setting I'm given for 5 Word Wednesday and going a different direction with it. My friend Kelli suggested a Robin Hood theme, and instead of going with bandits in the woods, I went more with a "people in need, taking from people who have it" type of twist. What do you think?

Words:

persnickety

divination

brigand

squalor

goldfish

Zak leaned out the window and pointed. The hospital across the street rose floors above the apartment building they were in. “The fire escape there,” he said. “That’s your plan C.”

Macy nodded.  Dana peered around them, scanning the street.

Zak pointed at another building. “Dana, you stake out at that abandoned laundry mat. It should be mostly empty.”

Dana’s face scrunched up, as if she couldn’t imagine spending more than a minute in such squalor. Macy bit back a grin. Dana used to think the wrong side of the tracks was a mall without a Pottery Barn.

Zak turned and faced Macy again, his gaze sweeping over her face, reading her emotions as if they were painted in words on her forehead. “What?"

She glanced at the hospital. “I can’t help feeling that this makes me a bad person.”

“Not a bad person, a brigand, Mace.”

“A criminal, Zak.”

“Definitions nowadays are loosely defined. Don’t be so persnickety.”

Macy scoffed. “Right, because breaking into a government hospital is just how I thought I’d spend a May evening my senior year of high school.”

Zak pierced her with his gaze, his green eyes snapping. “People are dying from hunger and lack of antibiotics, Mace.” 

She bit her tongue, holding back the retort she wanted to fling in his face. Why did he always have to call her out in front of other people? Macy waited until Dana walked to the other side of the room.

Zak spoke before she could. “We’re going in, and get what we need.”

His voice was even, as if he’d received some divination about the success of what they were doing. Which was robbing. A government hospital. Macy had been in middle school when the planes rained down bombs on the US and the economy tanked. Rebuilding had happened, but slowly, and the gap between the poor and the rich grew so wide that ‘middle class’ was considered an archaic term. Zak was right. People were dying. Selling out their daughters and wives to afford penicillin. Macy’s own brother had died from strep throat.

Zak stood and handed her the pistol, glancing at her hand which rested on the swell of her stomach. Zak’s eyes softened. “We’re doing it for him, Mace.”

She swallowed past the lump in her throat. Tomorrow was not something she took for granted anymore. It’s why they’d gotten married, and been thrilled when life first blossomed inside of her. She smiled. “It could be a her.”

Zak grinned. “Our little goldfish is a boy.” He bent and pressed a kiss to her lips. Then handed her the pistol. “Ready?”