We read the instructions about a half hour ago, but I didn’t want Rena to see my distress, so I plastered on a placid grin and played it off as no big deal. She’s watching some trash reality show with Gage now and trying to relax while Liam and I study the blueprints at the kitchen table and devise a plan.
“Leave it,” he insists, which is a strong statement from him because he researches fucking everything. But we’re concerned this house was bugged while we were on our job last night—a fail-safe way for KORT to be sure we’re complying—so even if he wanted to dive into the reasoning for what we’re doing, he couldn’t say it. Not here at the table.
The thing is, we don’t trudge into shit blindly. This goes against every instinct we have. Our training is so ingrained that the thought of taking out this goddamn warehouse without any intel on the who, why, and what is rendering me fucking nauseous.
KORT may be telling us not to investigate, but our cogs are always turning. They’re using us to carry out some mission that they deem too precarious for ordinary KORT work. Combining it with a trial is a two-birds strategy. We assume the risk if we want to be in the clear, and they complete a mission they were tentative to initiate.
Until I saw the high-level security system yesterday, I had questioned how treacherous the tasks would be if all we were doing were simple heists. That was still an elementary job, especially if we’d been afforded the opportunity to do our own thorough prep work. But now, it seems that each one will get progressively more perilous.
Not to mention that my girl could be implicated in these crimes. While Liam, Gage, and I have anonymity because our identities don’t actually exist, she does not. They’re roping her into this life, one crime at a time. And we’re forced to help them do it.
“We can loop the security footage,” I muse, gauging the time it’s going to take us to set the explosives. “Can you get a fifteen-minute snippet from each of their cameras to afford us the time to wire?”
“Yeah.” He relaxes in his chair, pecking away on his laptop whileI stand jittery as fuck beside him. “Shouldn’t be too hard. They’ve got several top-notch firewalls, but I’ll work around them.”
“Great.” I tap my pen on the blueprints, noting the best points of entry as well as the I-beams best designated for the explosives. We’re going demolition-style, so it will cave in on itself since there’s another warehouse beside it that we don’t want to affect. “I think if we concentrate on the two center rows, six beams each, that should be enough.”
“Agreed,” Liam returns, pausing to study the beams I circled. “That’ll do it. They’re every twenty feet, so if there’s one you can’t reach without being made, skip it and move on to another.”
Panic strikes, shooting acid up into my throat like a foreboding geyser. “She’ll be forty feet away from me if something happens.”
Forty feet is the distance between the rows. It’s more efficient to separate that way, but not being able to shield her is nerve-racking.
He sighs because he’s about to reassure me, and he knows it’s partially bullshit. He’d feel just as sick if it were Celeste braving it in there, and he’s probably plenty ill at the idea of Rena pulling this off. “We’ve got the body cams—one in front, one in back. Gage and I will be with you both the entire time. Eyes everywhere. And she’s a good shot.”
“Right,” I concede because there’s nothing more to add in that regard. “All the primary doors are protected by alarms, but it doesn’t appear that the skylights are on that grid. That’s our way in.”
“Skylights,” Rena says, peeking over my shoulder. “Ooh, I like that idea. Anytime I get to climb is a good time.”
There’s no way she’s as blasé about this as she’s acting, but it’s how she copes. Leaping. So, I won’t call her on it.
Instead, I fill her in, as though I’m not beside myself and chewing my cheek raw at the vision of her scaling this warehouse and rappelling into God knows what. “We’ll be strapping these demolition-shaped charges to the center I-beams.” I grab one out of the go bag we’re packing to show her the linear ninety-degree charges. “They get secured with the ratchet straps. It should be quick, butyou’ll need to cart six in your pack, along with the CS gas grenades, and have your gun accessible. Once we make it back on the roof, we’ll drop the gas down the ventilation shafts, hop on the bike, detonate, and get the fuck out of there.”
She inspects the charges, plays with the rachet strap—feeding the strap through the ratchet, like a pully, and opening and closing the mechanism until it tightens, which will affix the charge in place—and checks out the CS gas, which is executed in the same way as a grenade with the pull of a pin. The tear gas takes immediate effect—eyes and nose burning, gagging, snot pouring. The only remedy is fresh air, so it should evacuate everyone in about a minute, leaving us with six to spare, assuming someone pushes the emergency button.
“And we’ll be sure everyone is out first?” she asks as Gage ambles over to join us.
“Of course.” I palm her head in reassurance. “We never take innocent lives.”
“Okay,” she breathes.
I’m sure there are many who would question why we deem ourselves as the authority on who is and is not innocent, refuting our right to make the call. But my wife isn’t one of them. She really was designed to stand with us. To be mine.
Now that we have some of the details out of the way, I double back to where we began. “There are two skylights. Both serve as solid entry points. No alarm attached to them. A pickable lock. Pop open like a trunk. They also hover above storage areas. So, yes, we’ll be climbing up and down. I have rope and—”
“No need.” She waves me off as she surveys the blueprint. “Not for me anyway. The siding is brick. I can climb that. And going down is even easier since the supports are I-beams—built-in grips.”
I have no doubt that she’s capable, but there are other concerns, so I peck her temple and expound. “It’s not necessarily that easy. Near this skylight entrance is the office mezzanine. Anyone in there will have a direct view, so—”
“I should take that one,” she spits out in utter confidence.
“I was suggesting the opposite,” I balk, “or that we both enter through the other.”
“It’s too inefficient for us to both go through here.” She taps the skylight farther away on the blueprint, guiding her finger over it through the rest of her rebuttal. “One of us would have to cross the open area of the floor to reach the other row, which poses a much greater threat of being spotted. I can maneuver in a hanging position effortlessly, so, if necessary, I’ll swing to another beam or pull myself on top of it so I’m out of sight.”
Gage barks a dubious chuckle. “The fuck?”
“Right. I’ve gone over this with Ty.” She hip-checks the Big Guy, which has his lips twitching as her attention flits between his and Liam’s. “Ever seen a circus or acrobats or Cirque du Soleil?”
