I secret into the room and ease the door shut behind me.
Winn wears a pair of wrinkled khakis, no socks, and a thin long-sleeved gray knit shirt. His black curly hair is still wet and his angular face lights up at seeing me. I hold my finger to my lips.
I step into his space, our bare toes nearly touching.
He stares at me, questions and hope swirling in his blue eyes.
I silently lift up on my tippy-toes and lean in toward him. His strong hands gently catch me on my waist. He smells like fresh soap and spearmint, a hint of that inviting cologne. No other sounds exist except for the two of us.
His soft lips tenderly meet mine, letting me guide the kiss. It’s a soft kiss, a kiss of reacquaintance. The stubble on his upper lips deliciously tickles mine. The gray knit shirt is indeed thin as my hands grip the firm muscles on his back.
It only lasts for seconds. Long, glorious seconds. But before my hands start to wander and the kiss becomes something more I pull away.
With a trembling breath, I say, “Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas,” Winn whispers back.
Our toes are still nearly touching. I can still smell his cologne. The taste of the kiss lingers, spreading warmth throughout me. It’s like chocolate, as soon as you have one, you want more.
I bite my lower lip, and glance back at the door. How long do I have before Puo finishes showering? Do I even care? My pulse roars through my chest. Winn’s not even wearing a belt.
What a weird day. The thought bubbles up out of nowhere. From panic, to purpose in baking, to gratitude, to anxiousness, to fellowship, and now to lust. It’s like I’ve experienced almost the complete range of human emotions in less than twelve hours. It’s the thought I need.
I take a step back, my hands clasped behind my back. “See you out there?”
“Yeah,” Winn says quietly, staring at me.
I walk to the door and force myself to open it. The sounds of Puo still showering fill the hallway.
“That’s some pretty impressive self-control,” Winn says.
“I’m ... I’m growing,” I say then get the hell out of there before I crumble.
CHAPTER TWENTY
PACKS OF DARK-gray clouds find their way back in to New Dublin the next morning. They’re the types of clouds that go about arm in arm, threatening to rain misery on those below them if looked at crossways.
I take it as a good omen—after-holiday traffic is already going to be a mess, rain will make it worse.
I close the front passenger-side door of the cop’s hovercar with a whoosh that sets a receipt of some kind whirling on the floor near my black standard-issue cop’s boots. Having public transportation up and running at full capacity wasn’t the only thing we needed to pull off this little stunt.
“You ready for this?” Winn asks in the driver seat, dressed in full cop regalia.
The jack knives nudge at the inside of my stomach, ready to flick open if only I’ll let them.
Two and a half hours left. It has to be a bluff.
I nod in response and reach up to make sure my digi-scrambler, a single oblong blue pearl necklace Winn gave me, is running. Winn takes note of the move, but doesn’t say anything. Instead he turns on his own—a generic digi-scrambler we scrounged up over here. Puo, astutely, kept his mouth shut about not giving Winn back his caduceus necklace.
I take a deep breath, preparing.
Of all our operations, this one seems, going into it, the most fraught with risk. In the other operations we’ve pulled we got to choose the where and the when, but not this time.
All operations require a cop mitigation plan. The most effective plans put a fix in place with the mark so that they don’t, or can’t, go to the cops. The next most effective plan is a delayed response, where the mark doesn’t realize for days or weeks that part of their hoard is missing. The last option is the riskiest and what we pulled at the British Museum, invite the cops along for a ride that you’re in control of. And that’s pretty much it. Either don’t let the cops know, delay them knowing, or confuse them long enough to get away.
And with the cops watching Ham, we have no choice except the last option. Except this time we have way less prep time than we did for the British Museum heist.
Confuse is the key word with our plan today, hence our use of the local cop hovercar and their regalia. Puo, through his digital backdoor connection, beautifully put in a requisition for the materials in support of the surveillance of Ham. The hovercar and uniforms were to be left unattended on the street. Cheeky, no?
The first pelts of rain smack against the windshield as Winn takes off. The rain steadily picks up as we fly over the asphalt and stone streets below.
I open the glove box and find a cache of clear plastic shower caps for our police hats. I slip one on. Our winter coats are already waterproof.
We come in from the west, the direction of the closest police station. The rain forms a deluge, bombarding the street below with fat, plump drops. It’s only getting started.
The street is busy with hovercars coming and going and people scurrying against the thickening rain. Yellow lights are on in the residences. Businesses are open. It’s deafening in the hovercar, like a thousand forceful velvet hammers are pounding on metal and glass.
An ummarked dark-gray sedan hovercar is parked in front of Ham’s building where there’s no legal parking.
It’s the cops—I can feel it.
“Could be someone wanting to get out of the rain,” Winn says over the fat drops pounding on the car.
I shake my head, no. “Too much of a coincidence. Pull up right behind them.”
As we pull up, Ham walks out of the building. His bald head is down and uncovered, rain dripping off his brow. His hands are behind his back. He’s being led by two male plain-clothes officers.
Damn it, damn it, damn it. We were already going to make the grab in front of the cops, but I didn’t expect them to be standing right there.
“You got your pepper spray?” I ask. Winn nods once. “Grab an EMP,” I tell him. We were planning on using our hovercar at the end, but the plans just changed.
Winn grabs one of the hand-sized EMP devices Puo rigged up to replace the ones we lost back in Atlanta somewhere on the Pryor bridges.
“You take the tall one,” I say, “I take the short one. Wait for the struggle. Understood?”
“Understood.” We both shove our pepper sprays into our coat pockets and step out into the rain. We leave the hovercar running.
Now or never.
The cold rain drenches me, runs off my protective layers to find the cracks and crevices within seconds. The wet seeps into my bones before I reach the sidewalk.
Ham’s two escorts immediately take notice of us. The tall one with a turban and a beard leads Ham straight for their vehicle while the short one with a round face and small eyes makes a beeline for us. Rain runs down the crown of his head and his eyes flick across the street. Spotters. We have only seconds.
“Who are ya? And what are you doon’ here?” the short one asks, his voice smothered by the rain. His hand is lingering near his waist.
Ham’s small beady eyes widen when he recognizes me as the tall one opens the back hovercar door.
Winn flanks left.
Cold rain pounds the top of my officer cap, dripping down onto the back of my neck.
“What are you doon’—” the short one says, his gaze once again flicking across the street.
“We’re on orders from the Superintendent,” I say in my best Irish accent. Before he can respond I point with my left hand. “He’s strugglin’!”
Ham, with instincts honed for self-preservation, immediately does as told, twisting and bucking against the tall one.
The short one jerks in the direction of my finger.
“Lemme help!” Winn dashes in.
“Wait!” I scream.
It’s all I need. When the short one turns back toward me, I hit him full in the face
with the pepper spray. He falls to his knees, his arm over his face and contorting away.
The tall one freezes at my exclamation and Winn hits him from the side with the pepper spray. Winn runs up to continue to blast him. Good idea.
I continue to spray the short one. “Ham!” I say, “in the back of our cop car now!”
With one hand, Winn continues to pepper spray the tall one, and with the other hand he tosses a homemade EMP device through the plain-clothes officer’s hovercar back door into the front seat. It better be enough.
Ham stumbles toward our car. He keeps his face upward in the rain. When he passes I see the red irritation around the eyes—pepper spray collateral. The pungent assault pervades the air, despite the rain working diligently to stamp it down.
Winn and I break off the attack and run to our car. Winn opens the back door for Ham. As I turn the corner I see movement, people converging on us. The rest of the people on the street are either standing still gawking or hurrying away.
“Spotters!” I yell.
The people running toward us start yelling at us.
CRACK! CRACK!
Son of a bitch! I yank open the car door.
“Hold your fire!” a British woman screams.
Winn shoves Ham into the back seat and slams the door.
There’s a muffled pop like a firecracker—the homemade EMP—as I close the door behind me. Winn jumps into the front seat and has the hovercar climbing up into the traffic before he closes the door.
There are four other officers running toward the scene from different directions. The two officers we pepper-sprayed are alternately using the rain to rinse their face, and looking up at us.
A splash of pink hair is waiting back by the forest-green awning of the coffee shop. Our mock arrest of Ham was supposed to be the final blowoff for Ty’s little amateur group. Oh, well. This works as well. Good riddance, lying fuckbags.
Two of the converging officers jump into the waiting dark-gray hovercar. Nothing happens. No lights come on. No take-off. The EMP did its job.
Satisfied that pursuit won’t be coming from that direction for a few seconds, I turn to face the back seat. “Hiya, Ham!”
“I knew you’d be the death of me,” he says, blinking heavily, rain still running down his face and his hands cuffed behind his back.
“Aww, shucks,” I say, “you know just what a girl wants to hear.”
Ham looks like he’s lost weight. He’s still stocky and soft in the middle, but now his stomach looks more like a sagging, once-inflated balloon than a stuffed pouch. He contorts himself on the back seat, managing to loop his hands under his feet, his face turning beet red in the process. With his hands now in front of him he sits up and shakes his silvery handcuffs at me, his wrists jammed together by a powerful magnet. “Little help.”
I dig around in the center console and find the handcuff key fob and toss it back to him through the small opening in the metal mesh screen that separates the front and back seat.
“This won’t work,” he says, his eyes narrowing. “Don’t you know this?” He looks at me incredulously. “How do you not know this?”
I clench my fists while rooting around in the bag at my feet for a squeegee and heroically keep my mouth shut.
Ham continues when I don’t rise to the bait, “I can’t believe you don’t know this. Master criminals my ass. Look, honey—”
“What the fuck did you just call me?” I spin around in the seat. That sagging bastard is lucky there’s a metal mesh divider separating us.
“—I said, look, sweetheart—”
Arr! There’s got be a way through this metal crap!
His dark, beady eyes laugh at me. “—each handcuff only has one corresponding key fob in the field. So unless you have the matching fob we’re shit out of luck. But bless your little heart for trying.”
“See this!” I grab and shove the squeegee up against the metal mesh.
His smirk vanishes.
“Can you reprogram the key fob with this?” I ask.
“Yeah—” he says.
“Well. Too. Fucking. Bad!” I throw it back down at my feet. “Enjoy your handcuffs, you rude piece of—”
“Isa,” Winn cuts in.
“What?” I ask. “He can hide his hands in a sweater or something.”
“Hide my hands?” Ham asks.
“Yeah, jackass,” I say, “You think we’re in the clear?”
“Isa—” Winn tries again.
“It’ll be fine—”
“It’s not that!” Winn points at the radar display on the embedded tablet in the center console. “We got company.”
That, at least, shuts Ham up.
The radar screen shows the mess of traffic as several multicolored dots overlaid on the city map. The colored dots are commercial or official vehicles, each with a unique identifier from a mandated automatic identification system. But the overwhelming gray dots are radar returns off of private vehicles. And the white ones with blue radiating rings that are all converging on us? Cops.
“Mister Ed, you read me?” I say to Puo. With Ham in earshot temporary code names had to be worked out. Puo is Mister Ed, Winn is Wilbur and I’m Carol—seemed appropriate.
Puo whinnies in the affirmative.
“That’s going to get real old, real quick,” I say.
“No it won’t,” Puo says in his best Mister Ed impression. “You should be flattered I’m even talking to you.” In the show, Mister Ed only ever talks to Wilbur.
“Pipe in some music. They saw everything and now they’re closing in on us,” I say, and then add, “And now I know why you agreed to be Mister Ed so quickly.”
“I’m ready when you are,” Puo says. He pipes in some low classical music. “And I thought I was Mister Ed because without me there is no show.”
Winn cuts in with, “I thought it was because you won’t stop whining.”
“Willlburrr ...” Puo whinnies as the orchestra in my ear warms up.
I snort, helping me forget about that wet heap of shit in the backseat.
A siren blares on behind us; revolving blue lights illuminate our interior cabin.
“Where did he come from?” Winn asks, whipping around to stare at the rapidly approaching police hovercar.
Damn. I check the radar screen: nothing. The screen just shows a gray dot with no identification amid a sea of gray dots. Tricky dicky. There’s an outside chance it’s nothing, a cop on his way to something else, or wanting to chat.
An Irish voice suddenly blares over a speakerphone, “This is the Garda Síochána. Ground your vehicle immediately! This is the Garda Síochána!”
So much for that thought.
Winn shouts, “Hold on!” He jerks the car down and to the left in a steep dive.
Ham tumbles in the backseat, slamming up against the metal divider with an umph. I splay my legs and arm out to pin myself to my seat.
“Head into the rain clouds!” I shout.
“Right!” Winn pulls the car upward. The g-forces push me into my seat and my wet clothes.
Ham strains to jeer, “You can’t hide in the clouds! The radar—!”
“Shut. Up,” I say.
We burst through the bottom of the thick rain cloud and the radar overlay immediately takes over the windshield, showing the locations of all the nearby hovercars. Traffic is concentrated in the skylanes, but there’s a healthy smattering of hovercars in the clouds.
“Mister Ed—” I say.
The gray dot chasing us flips to a white dot and starts radiating blue.
“He’s calling his friends!” I shout. “Stay in the cloud!”
Winn starts driving erratically. It’s the mad dash over Atlanta all over again, except this time there are hovercars, all with minds of their own, in here with us.
“I see the cop hovercars,” Puo says, dropping the Mister Ed voice.
“Do you see the cop behind us?”
“Yes,” Puo says.
“Then
why didn’t you say anything!”
“I didn’t see him until he flipped his identification on. Don’t worry—” he says, anticipating my next comment. “—the push will go to all vehicles that are uplinked, no matter if their identification is running or not.”
“We’ll get ready to push,” I say.
“I’m ready when—”
“Whoa!” Winn slams the car downward suddenly.
I throw out my arms on the car dash to keep from falling into it and I have to work to keep my stomach from jumping up my throat. Ham smacks against the metal cage again with a grunt (which is a nice consolation prize).
A police hovercar, sirens flashing and blaring, materializes right above where we were.
“Where was the radar on that one!” I yell.
“I don’t know!” Winn shouts back.
The clouds to our left are flashing blue.
“Son of a bitch!” I yell. The radar screen is a swarming mass of blue-ringed white dots—the gray civilian dots fleeing in their wake. How did so many mobilize so quickly?
“Push! Push!” I yell at Puo.
“Now?” he stupidly asks.
“Yes, now! We don’t have a choice!” I say. “Push!”
A second later our hovercar internals flicker and the windshield overlay dangerously winks out. The radar display on the embedded tablet continues to operate after the flicker to show all the blue-ringed white dots, except they now have all the same identifier, including ours.
“Make your way to the edge of the swarm,” I order Winn quietly. It’s eerie in the cop hovercar without the radar overlay on the windshield. Gray surrounds us. We know there are other hovercars out there. We just can’t see them. And if they’re cops, they can’t see us. Hopefully, any private vehicles have wisely fled the white and blue circus.
Winn drives the hovercar to the requested location. All three of us are holding our breaths. The whole time, the cloud flashes blue in various directions like otherworldly heat lightning.
“Anyone following us?” Winn points at the radar tablet display, while he focuses on driving.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “It’s kinda hard to tell.” Which is the whole point of giving every cop hovercar the same identification—it would be confusing on a normal day, but in after-holiday traffic in the rain? Forget about it. Human and computer brains just broke (computers use the unique identifier to keep hovercars separate).
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