His eyes welled up with unshed tears. “Jesus, Lily, you’re the best second chance anyone ever got. I can’t believe you love me too.”
“Lucas,” I said, “I’ve loved you from the moment I saw you.”
He smiled, thinking I was kidding. He pulled me to him and again I rested my head on his chest, knowing I wasn’t kidding in the least.
Chapter21
Lucas
I’d just gottenAndy to bed, after reading himWhere the Wild Things Arefor the forty billionth time, when there was a knock at the door. Used to be, a knock at the door at nine on a Saturday night was a signal that the night was just getting started. But these days, a knock as I was putting Andy down, and ready to hit the hay early myself, was very unusual.
As I made my way down the hall from Andy’s room to the door, I wondered if Lily was surprising me. When I left her dorm room this morning, we had decided I’d just stay in with Andy tonight and she’d work on that paper she was struggling with.
I smiled, happy that she had decided to ditch that idea and come pay me a visit. Though I worried about how she got to this side of town on her own.
But it wasn’t Lily at the door. It was Stick.
“See, I knocked this time. I hope it didn’t wake the kid.”
“It didn’t. He just went out. Why didn’t you just call or text?” I moved away from the door, letting Stick in.
He went right to the fridge and grabbed himself a beer. He offered one to me, but I shook my head no. Twisting the cap off, then taking a long swig, he moved into the living room and sat in the chair. I followed and sat down on the couch.
“Because I needed to talk, and I didn’t want to do it on the phone.” He leveled his gaze at me and I knew what was coming.
“No. I said I was done with it, and I meant it.”
He held up a hand. “Hear me out.”
“I don’t need to hear about it. No.”
“It’s tonight. Right now. One car. I’ve been waiting months for the right time for this car and this is it. You can get Mrs. Jankowski to come over here for two hours. That’s all it will take. Two hours of your time. Ten thousand dollars.”
“Ten thousand? Are you serious?”
He nodded, took another swig of his beer. Now I wished I’d said yes to one.
Stick dealt in stolen cars. A broker of sorts. He had “clients” that contacted him with specific cars that were desired by their “buyers,” and Stick delivered. And I meanspecificcars. Right down to the color of the interior.
Stick knew about every luxury sedan and expensive sports car that was purchased in a hundred-mile radius, which included several very wealthy enclaves.
This wasn’t just smash-and-grab jobs done in the streets of Schoolport.
No. Stick, at the young age of twenty-one, had put together an informational network that would rival that of the CIA.
He had the valets, of course. But what thief worth his salt didn’t?
The valets at the swanky places in town, and neighboring towns, would call Stick when a desired car was dropped with them. Stick would swing by, or at one time I would, and get all the information available from spending ten minutes inside the car.
Think about how much you could learn about somebody from spending ten minutes in their car.
Name and address are easy, from the insurance forms in the glove box. GPS could call up the places they’d programmed in. Places they might return to in their car. You could easily tell whether they had kids, if they ate takeout a lot. All sorts of information.
Stick collected all this information and stored it away. He also had this magic gizmo that he’d had some brainiac tech guy make for him. It looked like a regular garage door opener remote, but if you pressed it at the same time you pressed a real garage door remote, it somehow copied the signal code, creating a duplicate remote. It worked the same with gate opener remotes for the posh gated communities.
And, of course, with the valet system you had access to the keys. If he had time while the car owners were dining, Stick would drive a couple of towns away (not going back to the same town without a month or two in between) and have a duplicate car key made. If there wasn’t enough time, he just made an impression on the spot and had the key made later.
Stick had seven or eight valets throughout the area in his pocket.
