6
If any of Kaci’s students had told her that they were considering sneaking into a rival fraternity house to steal a mascot, she would’ve threatened to call their mommas and have the police waiting for them.
But the beautiful thing about being a full-fledged grown-up was that she didn’t have to make the same threats against herself that she did to her students. Which was why, Saturday night, she and Tara were decked out in black, creeping along the edge of a cornfield and heading toward a shed at the very edge of town limits.
“This is great research,” Tara whispered. “I need inspiration for writing a man cave.”
“But remember—no pictures, no fingerprints, and no vaguebooking on social media. Even a little,” Kaci whispered back.
“They’re going to know it was you.”
“Don’t mean I have to make it easy for them to prove.” A felony breaking-and-entering charge on her record would probably cause some issues with her dean, among other hoity-toities at James Robert. Not to mention the ammunition it would give the sexist pigs on the tenure committee. But she still remembered her daddy laughing over stories of stealing rival squadrons’ mascots and the pranks that had been pulled in retribution.
This here was good old-fashioned fun.
“Remember, if we get caught, run.”
“And if we get caught again, embellish our stories enough that they don’t sound rehearsed.” Tara giggled. “I knew all those episodes ofNCISwould come in handy oneday.”
“Girl, no more military shows. We’re over military men, remember?”
“Ssh. Was that a dog?”
Kaci stopped. She strained to listen, but all she heard were crickets and other night insects.
“I guess not,” Tara whispered. “C’mon. Let’s go.”
They crept up to the corner of the shed, squatting closer and closer to the ground as they went, Kaci clutching a pink stuffed pig from one of those kids’ shows she’d heard the department secretary moaning about. They passed evidence of a bonfire, along with a decomposing pile of pumpkin guts.
This looked like the place. According to Tara’s friend, one of the guys in the squadron owned the land out here, and he’d converted the back-lot toolshed to a bar that all the guys could hang out at. A house wasvisible in the distance, barely outlined in the light from the waning moon. The house’s windows were all dark, as were the windows in the shed.
“You know how to pick a lock?” Tara whispered.
“I’m a physicist, not a criminal,” she whispered back. “But if lots of these guys use this place, there has to be a key hidden somewhere.”
“Like in a flowerpot?” Tara deadpanned.
“More like under a fake dead skunk, from what I’ve seen of these boys.”
They crept about the edges of the building, checking beneath windows and on top of the doorframe. On the second pass around, Kaci almost tripped over a rock. “Huh.”
She knelt on the ground and felt beneath it. “Bingo.”
Tara crept back to join her. “What if they have an alarm system?”
“Sugar, they got at least a dozen dumb flyer jocks who know where this key is. You think they’re gonna ask ’em to remember an alarm code to get in here?”
“Pilots have really good memories for stuff that’s important,” Tara whispered back. “I dated this guy in college who used to recite emergency procedures in his sleep.”
Kaci slid the key into the lock. “Guess we’ll find out the hard way.” She had to jiggle it, but eventually, the lock turned. She twisted the knob, and it released with aclickthat echoed through the night.
“Ssh!” Tara hissed.
No lights flipped on, no security systems beeped, no lasers lit the night—not that lasers worked the way Hollywood said, and Kaci would know—and no masked ninjas leapt out to stop them. “Your flashlight ready?” she asked.
“Ten-four, good buddy.”
They slipped into the dark shed. Tara hit the switch on her flashlight, and both of them gasped.
