Vito eases it off without letting it clang against the chain.
We slide through the gate and pull it shut behind us, leaving it sitting the way it was—closed, quiet, looking untouched.
The back door is twenty feet ahead, metal and scuffed, a small keypad mounted beside it.
Vito leans in, eyes on the numbers.
“Alarm?” he whispers.
“Maybe,” I say. “Assume yes.”
He nods, all business now, and we move in tight to the wall, staying out of the camera’s cone as much as we can.
I pull my phone out just long enough to check the live view from the camera angle I can access—one of ours, across the street, pointed at the front.
No movement. No vehicles.
I put the phone away and crouch by the keypad.
Vito’s impatience is a physical thing beside me, but he holds it in.
It takes me two minutes to get the panel open and pull the cover.
The keypad isn’t hard. I bridge the right points, watch the little LED flicker, then go green.
The click is tiny.
Vito opens the door just enough to slip through. I slide in after him.
The air inside is cooler and stale, trapped.
Dust hangs in the weak light from a single strip fixture near the ceiling. It buzzes faintly, a thin electric whine under everything.
We pause just inside the door and listen.
Nothing. No voices. No footsteps. No radios.
Vito eases the door shut until it’s almost closed, then presses it the last inch with his palm so it doesn’t latch too loudly.
I angle my head, eyes adjusting to the sunless room, and scan the space in front of us—stacked pallets, shrink-wrapped boxes, a wide aisle that disappears into shadow.
“Where the fuck are these crates going to be?” I whisper.
Vito lifts a shoulder, eyes sweeping the warehouse like he’s already mapping it.
“Toward the center,” he whispers back. “They’ll keep the good stuff away from doors. Makes it harder to grab.”
“Or closer to a bay they trust,” I say, and I point with two fingers. “Look for fresh pallet jacks. New shrink wrap. Anything that looks like it came in last night.”
Vito nods once.
We move, slow and quiet, staying close to the stacks so the open aisle isn’t swallowing us up.
My boots barely make a sound on the concrete. I time my steps with the buzz of the overhead light, old habit, but it works.
Vito drifts a half-step ahead, then checks himself and falls back into my line.
We move deeper, and the aisle opens into a wider section where the ceiling jumps higher, and the shadows get thicker. More inventory. More places to hide something. More places for someone to hide.
