I tucked my Glock into my waistband and looked up at the top of the building, confirming I was in a shadowy divot and could not be seen.
The two men pushed the carts out of the way and took the equipment off the first one, which was the easiest to unload. They placed the two circular saws on the pavement. Once empty, they rolled that cart back into the garage and began loading ammunition onto it.
Something flashed in my peripheral vision.
Cassie.
She’d left her spot in the shadows of the next corridor. As I watched, she made her way out into daylight, first to the Camaro, then toward the F-150 truck.
What the hell?
She looked around, hesitating, but could not see into the storage garage like I could. She got close to the back of the truck, and I swallowed. She was about to blow the whole operation.
Cassie came even with the F-150 and pulled open the cab door that led to the middle seat.
My eyes scanned back to the storage garage. The men were done loading, and Cassie did not have an eyeline on them.
“Get out of there,” I said, but it was under my breath, and she could not hear me.
She took something from her pocket and leaned into the cab section of the truck. Her head dropped out of view, and it looked as if she was going to climb inside.
The two men began moving the flatbed cart toward the U-Haul, but they had loaded it too high and stopped, adjusting a few boxes. Then began pushing from the rear.
Cassie popped out of the truck and closed the cab door, pressing it shut softly, her hands on the edge of the door. But the dome light did not go off.
She backed away in a crouch, making it far enough to get behind the Camaro and lay down, hidden out of view as the men pushed the cart toward the U-Haul and opened the back of it, loading in the contents, which took seven minutes and fifteen seconds.
I moved along the building, my weapon in hand. Glocks do not have safeties, so I stepped carefully to the edge of the shadow, ready to move. But the men just turned and pushed the cart back toward the storage unit.
As I let out a long breath, the big guy pulled alongside his truck and stopped, staring at the dome light.
“Huh,” he said, loud enough for me to hear.
He glanced around, his eyes moving up and down the row of storage units. Finally he bumped the cab door with his hip, and the light went off.
I texted Cassie when the coast was clear, and she hustled back between the buildings, into the concealing shadow.
Wells and the cousin rolled the cart out a second time, then a third. After the fourth trip, they had used up all the space in the U-Haul, and they placed the remaining two cartons back inside the storage unit.
Wells moved toward his Camaro to leave, but the cousin said something to him. He nodded and turned back, heading over towhere they had left the two saws on the pavement. The men lifted the first one, placing it on the empty cart. Then the cousin’s phone rang, and he answered it. He walked a few feet away, holding up his index finger to Wells as if to ask him to wait.
A text came in from Cassie.
What’s going on?
I looked down and wrote back.
Nothing yet. You planted something?
Cassie texted back.
A GPS tracking device. The one I keep on my keys.
In the two years Cassie and I were partners, she would routinely misplace her cell phone and keys. But this was brilliant. We’d be able to track the Ford F-150. Which meant we had the U-Haul number and license plate. We had a GPS tag in Wells’s jacket. And now we had the truck. All we had to do was disappear into the shadows and contact Poulton and ATF.
The attorney general had signed off on the deal with Wells, but we knew that a better deal was coming for him, with a bigger payoff, once he agreed to testify against J. P. Sandoval in court. So it was better that Wellsdidn’tgo with the cousin to D.C. We needed him safe in federal custody, in Baja or elsewhere.
The cousin got off the phone and helped Travis put the second saw on the cart. The two men began pushing it back toward the shed. But the cousin stopped after he passed the threshold of the garageand motioned for Travis to do something. I squinted and watched Travis hand him an extension cord. As he did, the cousin yanked on a rope by the front of the unit, and the metal door slid down, closing the front of the garage halfway and blocking my view.
