At 1:45am Evan sat up straight, rubbed the sleep from his eyes and nudged Alik and me. It was time.
We drove to the same sporting goods store we visited six hours before. All the lights were out and the parking lot was empty, except one rusted-out compact car backed into a spot on the far left of the store. My guess was that it didn’t start when the owner tried to leave today and it was left here with plans to attempt revival come daylight. Maybe those were just my hopes, because if that car belonged to a night guard, we were screwed.
The boys and I sat and watched the store for fifteen minutes just in case there was someone in there. No lights turned on. No one drove up. No police cruiser. Just we three, and Maze, staring at a store chockfull of what we needed to save mom.
“I vote we move,” I whispered to the boys.
“Looks good to me, too,” Alik nodded.
“Okay, it’s unanimous,” Evan said. “We approach through the loading docks. Alik, pull around back and back up to the door. We’re going to need the back door open so we can load up,” he gave these instructions with an icy calm to his voice.
Once we were positioned, Alik popped the truck’s back door and jumped out. I followed motioning for Maze to stay and be quiet.
Evan stepped confidently up the three steps to the back door of the shop. There was a security panel, all right. He flipped the cover open and looked at the buttons. With a quick motion, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a Swiss Army knife and popped open its simple screwdriver. Within one minute, he had the faceplate off the panel and we were all looking at colorful wires sticking out of the wall. A quick adjustment of the knife showed him put the screwdriver away and flip open the miniature wire cutters. With a confident hand he chose two of the wires, and cut them. Then took two others, spliced them and made them connect. One final spark of a connection and the door made a buzzing noise then popped open.
He smiled triumphantly to himself and stepped inside first. After he closed the door behind us he explained that not only had he disarmed the alarm and motion sensors, but he had created a loop by which the parking lot video surveillance would continuously show an empty parking lot.
“Wow, it’s a good thing you’re on our side, Evan. That was scary, cool!” Alik didn’t pass out compliments too often so I was proud to see him show his appreciation now. Evan nodded once then pulled out the shopping list from the front pocket of his jeans.
“Okay, you know what you have to do, guys. Get to it!” Evan spoke with authority.
We each ran to get a shopping cart and to our preassigned section of the store. I was to head to the clothing department to retrieve coveralls, canvas sack, boots, socks, ball caps and a helmet.
Alik was to head to the camping/hunting section to get backpacks, ropes, first aid kits, night vision glasses and binoculars.
Now Evan, he went running to the locked safe where this store kept their ammunition, explosives, detonators, wires, and everything else he needed to make a lot of Williams’ building go boom.
We made quick work of our collections and met up at the back door to load up the truck. Evan carefully placed his volatile items in the front seat then went back around to help load the rest of the equipment.
Alik disappeared for less than a minute while Evan and I finished up.
We were in and out, in thirty minutes.
“We did it! Excellent! Did you guys get everything on your lists?” Evan was pumped!
“Yeah, I got everything.” I said, my heart still racing.
“Everything. We’re set.” Alik smiled.
“Hey, Alik. Why’d you go back after we were loading up? Did you forget something?” I asked my brother. That was very unlike him to disappear when there was work to be done. Even if it were just for a minute.
“Naw, I didn’t forget anything, but I had to go do something,” Alik said with a sheepish grin.
“What’d you do?” I asked.
“Well, remember back at the ranch how mom kept that box of spinach in the freezer?” Alik asked.
“You put money on the counter, didn’t you?” Evan blurted.
Mom always kept a thick stash of cash in the house. The best hiding place was in the freezer in what looked like a regular box of frozen spinach. Clever, huh? Mom’s pretty brilliant.
“She always said it was for emergencies only. Well, when Andrews was coming to get us to go find our missing mom, it felt like an emergency to me.”
We three looked at each other, smiled and nodded.
“I just left a thousand on the cash register. I’m hoping that’ll cover what we took. We still have plenty left. I was just sure mom wouldn’t want us to turn into thieves even if it was to rescue her.” Alik said all this with a shrug and a smile.
Evan and I beamed at our brother. Yeah, he did the right thing. Gotta love my good-hearted brother!
Chapter 42 Margo’s Memories