I shrug as Liam and Gage laugh in my ear. “Sometimes, butterscotch doesn’t cut it.”
“Fucking classic. Toke away,” Liam quips. “We’re at T-minus twenty-eight.”
With that encouragement ringing, I flick my lighter on and peer at Ty for an official confirmation.
“Don’t inhale too deeply. I need you lucid for this.” He grins on a disbelieving exhale and points me in the right direction. “Blow it right there, baby girl.”
I pull a small drag and release a pall of smoke into the threshold that the beams are guarding. It immediately illuminates two, which form an X at about shoulder height, but that cloud misses the third.
“Okay. Another one,” Ty rasps, gesturing to the lower half. “Down here.”
After my second hit, the plume cascades to the floor, lighting up a beam at about knee level.
“Good,” he commends. “We can army crawl. You ready?”
“Yeah.” I squeeze the tip of the joint to snuff it out and stick both it and the lighter inside my jacket pocket while I ponder options.
He tosses his bag through the opening in the middle before taking mine and throwing it over as well. “I’ll go first.”
He drops to his belly as I switch on my headlamp and wait for him to give me the go-ahead. Once he slithers underneath the lowestbeam, I step easily through the middle opening, which garners an irritated groan from him.
“That’s not what I told you to do.”
“I know,” I say, heaving my bag onto my shoulder. “But I’m smaller than you and better on my feet.”
No response. Just a disgruntled scowl.
Smoke still wafts through the air. And the scent of the pot melds with leftover body odor and stale coffee for an unfortunate stench, but I try not to dwell on it.
Meandering through the office space, we ensure that the server cabinets are only on the far wall. There’s another set of security beams back here, shielding the hard drives we need, so we rinse and repeat.
Drag and blow. Slither and step.
Popping the hard drives out is a simple process of releasing the two side pins holding them in place and pulling them out. There are ten, which Ty remarks is an absurd amount of data for this office. The unknown is clearly wearing on him. We have no idea who we’re stealing from or what the point of this is. But what looked to be an inconsequential pillage appears to be a high-stakes heist.
“Thirteen minutes and counting,” Liam reports as we carry out our entrance acrobatics in reverse.
“Looking good, Little Moon. Let’s jet,” Ty croons as we slink back to the main landing and click off our headlamps.
He hauls me toward him, nibbling on my lower lip and licking at the seam, his cognac hypnotizers capering all over my fabric-covered face with unspoken adoration. He obviously thrives in the rush of this life he’s made for himself. And I feel on top of the world to be by his side. Freaking invincible.
“We’ve got company,” Gage barks, shattering our celebratory union. “Cleaning crew is early.”
“Motherfucker,” Ty snarls, snatching our backpacks from the floor. We slip them on, and he grabs my hand, towing me down the stairs.
By the time we emerge before the main door, Liam’s voice greets us, “Going in for directions. Hold until we’re in position.”
We wait, hearing the squeal of truck tires that most certainly belong to Liam and Gage. As soon as we hear Liam asking the cleaning crew how to get somewhere, Ty cracks open the door and ushers me back outside. Both of us bolt around the entrance and through the alleyway, guns drawn, breath held, footsteps light until we materialize before the bike.
“We’re out,” Ty reports, sliding my helmet on before his own.
In a flash, we’re zooming through the back streets—my arms tucked tight around his ribs, chest melded to his back as he holds me close—heading back to the house to destroy the loot, as directed. But Ty surprises me when he veers off course, taking a sharp turn and parking in a field beyond a batch of wild palm trees that seems to be battling Mother Nature for survival. Everything out here is clinging to life.
He leaves the bike running, but hops off, dragging me off in a rush as well. It makes me wonder if I zoned out, missed something on the comm. His whole body is vibrating with intensity as he drops his backpack and shoves mine to the ground with it. After ripping off his helmet, he unbuckles mine. I yank it off, breathless and on edge.
“What the hell is happening?” I gasp.
He ignores me for five agonizing seconds, tapping something out on his phone while my stomach cramps with worry.
