“We’re not kicking the front,” I said. “We Ghost it. Back alley, mudroom, fence dip. We need the roll-up blind, and we need the watchers pointed the wrong way. That means noise where the table sits and quiet where the doors do the real work.” I drew it in ditch dust: bay here, alley there, the fence, the dip, the cracked step that pops. “We time the shift when they swap the outer lane. They get lazy right before pride takes over.”
“And how do we make the table room loud?”
“Call it in,” I said. “Anonymous tip about a truck with numbers that belong to a different company parked where it shouldn’t be. They’ll argue with pride and paperwork for five minutes. That’s our window.”
“Who calls?”
“Someone with a voice that doesn’t sound like either of us.” I touched my throat, then hers. “The old man’s wife can’t stand the sheriff’s boy. She’ll be delighted.”
“Okay.” She pointed at my diagram. “We enter mudroom. I take the ankle straps and locks. You take…?”
“The pallet jack,” I said. “I don’t let them load a second cage while we’re breathing. If I can break the strap on the roll-up, I do. If I can’t, I make sure the truck can’t point its nose where it wants.”
“Sunshine first,” she said.
“Sunshine first,” I said. Saying her name in daylight hurt less than in the cave. Maybe that was a lie. It was a necessary one.
We reviewed contingencies until the contingencies got bored. If the watcher held the hallway, we smoke him without smoke: lights out, bulb on the chain, strobe with motion, shoot plaster to snow. If they pushed the alley, we cut right and ride the fenceline, she knew the dip by heart now. If they pulled a drone low, we hid in stair shadow and let the drone write lies about us moving the other direction.
A small sound came from the cut above, gravel skittering where it shouldn’t. Both of us froze, listening with the parts of ourselves that remember being prey. Then another faint slide, this one nearer the guardrail. Not deer. Not wind. Weight and caution. A man trying to make the earth pretend he wasn’t there.
I eased the Sportster into a deeper smudge of ditch and threw the tarp over her face. Ariel slid back under the rail, flattened against the concrete like she’d been doing this for years. I crawled up on my elbows until I could see the lip of the cut. Boots came into view one pair at a time, then paused, heels hanging just over the drop as if the men didn’t trust the ground. Cheap tactical tread. The kind you buy because the ad has a flag in the corner.
Three sets. Then a fourth, lighter, the toe turned inward on the return, my basement math again. The circle that’s trying to square us. The watcher’s right hand or the man he trained.
They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. Their silence had orders in it. They checked the posts, scanned the ditch without dropping into it, then walked on. When they disappeared, the ditch stayed loud for a second, the way your chest does after you stop running. Then it settled.
Ariel’s fingers found mine under the rail and squeezed once. Here. Still here.
We stayed put a full minute. Two. She counted under her breath, and I caught the beat. The math works or it doesn’t. When the air had the right weight again, we slid back to our stash and breathed like we were allowed to.
“Net’s tightening,” she whispered. No drama in it. Just weather.
“Yeah.” I uncovered the bike, checked the lines again, habit is church, and sat back on my heels. “We’re not the only smart people anymore.”
“I didn’t like being the only smart people,” she said. “It made me think about luck too much.”
“I like winning better than luck,” I said. “Luck’s bad at planning.”
She wiped the grease off her cheek with the back of her wrist and left a black comet tail behind. “Then plan me the next thirty minutes.”
“We take the ditch west,” I said. “We cross at the culvert with the bad grate. We cut through the blackberry hell and hit tree line two hundred yards shy of the outer road. We put eyes on from uphill, not across. We don’t make silhouettes.”
“And the bike?”
“Stays hungry,” I said, patting the tank. “She eats only when we ask her to.”
She swung a leg over without waiting to be told and settled in behind me, hands already learning the language of the engine through my ribs. The day up top changed its light by a fraction, nothing a clock would note, everything a man who intends to live should.
“On your word,” she said.
“On three,” I answered, and felt the old machine grin under us like it knew a good bad idea when it heard one. “One.”
Boot prints ringed the cut like a noose. The watcher was writing his map. We were writing ours.
“Two.”
The engine breathed in, patient and low.
“Three.”
