East pops the second trunk.
Three hundred rubber ducks stare up at us. Yellow and smug. Packed tight in four cardboard boxes.
Nash looks at them for a long time. "You said one a day. Building the tension. Gradual escalation."
"I know what I said."
"This is all of them. In your trunk. At six in the morning."
East shrugs. "I couldn't wait."
"You lasted twelve hours."
"Eleven. I started packing at midnight." He lifts a box. "New plan. We plant a few in her bag, her locker, her water bottle, her car. The rest go behind the bar. Every shelf. Between every bottle. Lined up along the rail. Tucked into the ice well. Stacked in the glass racks. When she walks in for her shift, three hundred rubber ducks are staring at her from every surface she touches."
Kyle scribbles on his clipboard. "I'm logging this as a tactical pivot."
East drops the box into Kyle's arms. "Log it however you want. Grab a box."
We split up. Nash and I take Ruby's phone first. The bar is dark, chairs still up on tables. Her phone sits behind the register, screen cracked, no passcode. She trusts the universe too much.
I keep watch while Nash handles the swap. Every song on her bar playlist is replaced with "What's New Pussycat" by Tom Jones. All forty-seven tracks. He scrolls through when he's done, verifying.
"This is going to be loud," he says.
"That's the point."
"She's going to know it was us."
"She's going to know it was someone. We deny everything."
Nash sets the phone back exactly where it was, screen down, same angle. Tradecraft.
Maggie's kitchen takes four minutes. James lets us in the back door while she's out running errands, the face of a man sabotaging his own dinner. He's got the labels in a ziplock, each one printed to match her handwriting.
"She color-codes the lids," he says, pulling jars down one by one. "Green for herbs. Red for heat. Blue for baking."
"So we match the colors to the wrong labels," I say.
"Already done." He peels cumin off its jar, presses paprika in its place. Oregano becomes cinnamon. Garlic powder becomes nutmeg. Every swap matched to the right color lid, so nothing looks wrong until she opens it.
His hands are steady. His jaw is tight.
"You good?" I ask.
"She's going to make pot roast tonight," he says, voice low. "With the wrong garlic."
"That's the mission."
"I know. I just want it on record that I love that woman's pot roast."
We seal the kitchen and leave.
Frankie's car is in her usual spot behind the shop. The magnet is massive. "Frankie's Mobile Petting Zoo. Ask Me About My Cats." Underneath, a QR code that links to a ten-hour loop of cat purring. We slap it on the passenger side, the one she never checks when she's parallel parking.
Nash steps back, cocks his head. "How long before she notices?"
"Could be days. She only checks that side when she's squeezing into a tight spot."
