But Raye told us in the briefing (and Cap had butted in to grunt his concurrence) that, if you looked like you were supposed to be where you were, even if you were totally dressed like someone who was up to no good and strapped with a Taser, people didn’t tend to question it.
However, we didn’t act like we were on a casual stroll.
We didn’t hurry.
But we didn’t fuck around.
As for me—and I figured since they were in on this, it was the same for the other women—I did this feeling the rush.
I didn’t feel anxious, just hyper-alert because of that rush.
I wasn’t sure this was the smartest reaction to have.
What I was sure of was that I trusted these women with me. I trusted them with my heart. I trusted them with my life.
Oh yeah.
Mm-hmm.
That was how great my friend posse was.
If you could trust them to commit a felony with them (for a good cause, of course), they were the genuine article.
Duane’s house was tiny and ill-kept. He’d let the sun burn his grass to dirt, and he hadn’t done anything about it. It needed a paint job. And it just looked sad.
The good thing was, all the houses around it were the same, so it wasn’t like he was letting down the neighborhood—if you could count that as good.
Considering I’d latched on to my usual cheerfulness and optimism, I was going with that.
As planned, Shanti broke off to hit her lookout spot, and Raye and I walked right to the backyard.
We snapped on our gloves, and she went to one window. I went to another. We both went to work on them.
It wasn’t the easiest thing, jimmying the screen out with my penknife (Tex gave mine to me when I became an official Angel, it was adorbs, it had cherry blossoms on it!).
But I got the screen out and went after the window.
Locked.
Raye experienced the same thing.
We went past the back door and did the same with the next two windows.
Also locked.
Shit.
We shared a glance and went to the back door.
I opened the rickety screen.
She muttered, “I saw Cap do this once, so here goes nothing.”
She lifted her black Puma, and putting substantial power behind it (I was impressed), she thumped the door with her foot right by the handle.
It popped open.
We were both so surprised that worked, we stood there in stupefied silence, wasting long, precious moments staring at the open door, before she said, “Text.”
