Gibson moved without hesitation. Sidestep, hands moving together from opposite sides, one around Swonger’s wrist, the other coming across the pistol itself, snapping it out of his stunned hand. In one smooth motion, it was pointed at Swonger’s eye. Gibson had learned that disarm in the Marines, but was a little surprised at how flawlessly he’d executed it. Now, if the .45 had still had a firing pin, he doubted his hands would have been anywhere near as steady. But Swonger didn’t know that, and Gibson was happy to leave him in awe.
Swonger’s hands went up. “Hey, man, I’m sorry. It’s just . . . you know . . . I can’t go back inside.”
“I feel like we’re on kind of a steep learning curve here, you and me.”
“I just lost my head.”
Gibson held the gun on Swonger a moment longer, letting Swonger contemplate what options he might be considering. He dropped the gun to his side. “Get in the car. We’re leaving.”
“Cool. It’s cool.”
“And listen to me good. Not one word at the salvage yard about this, or I walk. I’m done with this whole mess, and good luck figuring out how to work a Stingray.”
“Jesus, all right, I get it.”
At the gate, Gibson slowed to a halt. Michaels looked at the van with confusion. “Forget something?”
“You’re never going to believe this.”
“What?” Michaels asked, ready not to believe it.
“I brought the wrong van.”
Now Michaels looked very confused.
“We have three of these. One of them needs servicing, but they gave me the wrong one. I just wasted half the night driving over here in the wrong van.”
Michaels gave him a long look and burst out laughing. “I’m sorry, man. That’s a raw deal.”
Gibson pretended to see the humor in it too.
“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
Michaels shook his head. “Not me. Tomorrow’s my day off.”
Gibson knew that, of course, but wanted to close the narrative loop in Michaels’s mind. Didn’t want him wondering later why that guy had never brought the right van back.
“Ah, well, then. Take it easy.”
“You too,” Michaels replied as his eyes started to drift to the top of the van.
“Hey. Want a suggestion about your yoga situation?”
Michaels looked back at him.
“They have videos on YouTube. You can just do them in the privacy of your living room.”
Michaels nodded thoughtfully. “You know, I might just do that.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Despite the mission going like clockwork, it had still been the longest thirty minutes of Lea’s life. She’d sat with her back against the junction box in the dark and listened for the sound of sirens—the inevitable unraveling of Gibson Vaughn’s plan. So when the van and Mustang finally pulled up, she felt a giddy relief that shot through her like whiskey in December.
She greeted Gibson and Swonger excitedly but got only grunts in return. They started the security system and relocked the junction box, neither one talking, which she wrote off as coming down off an adrenaline high. Some men needed to go off alone to process things, so she left them to their moody silence, although she didn’t know what they had to be so gloomy about—Gibson’s plan had worked. It was unbelievable. While she hadn’t been any great fan of Deja Noble’s full-frontal assault, Gibson’s proposal had sounded like wishful thinking. But she’d be damned if he hadn’t sweet-talked his way onto police property and driven away with a half million in high-tech equipment. Ironically, she had never stolen anything in her life. Now, here she was, an accomplice in a heist. Was that the right word for it? Heist. She liked the sound of it—a daring heist. She grinned to herself. It was a rush unlike anything she’d ever experienced.
Of the two vehicles, the Mustang was by far the nicer ride, but she didn’t entirely trust Swonger behind the wheel of the muscle car. As if to prove her point, Swonger peeled out as she got in the passenger seat of the van. Thankfully, Gibson made no effort to keep up. A bored cop might wonder why a van and Mustang were caravanning across Virginia in the wee hours of the night. The two vehicles would stay in visual contact but give each other a safe cushion.
“You think he’ll cry?” she asked.
“What?”
“When we destroy that car.”
Nothing. Not even a smile.
“Were there any problems?”
He shook his head, a million miles away.
“So no snags?” Still unconvinced.
“What?” he asked, a faint trace of annoyance in his voice. “No, we got it.” He hitched a thumb toward the back of the van as if she’d lost the power of sight.
She looked in back, but it didn’t look like much. Hard to believe it might be the answer to their problems, but she would give Gibson the chance to prove it. He’d earned it. If she were honest, what she’d read about her new partner online hadn’t exactly bolstered her confidence, but tonight had earned him some leeway in her book. He’d talked a big game, but he’d also delivered, so she would go another round with him.
When they reached Dette’s Auto Wrecks, Swonger was waiting for them, Mustang idling outside the salvage yard’s gate.
“Wasn’t going in there alone. Spooky as hell,” Swonger said.
Lea couldn’t say she blamed him. Beyond the gate, the junkyard was pitch-black. They drove in cautiously, headlights casting medieval shadows off canyons of rusted cars. A vast wasteland of amputated vehicles stretched out of sight on both sides—trunks and hoods all open, scavenged for doors, hubcaps, windshields; carcasses picked over by crows. As they approached the main office, a pair of Belgian Malinois appeared from the shadows and trotted alongside. Powerful-looking dogs with black muzzles that accentuated curved ivory teeth. Gibson pulled up behind the Mustang and killed the engine but left his headlights on. The dogs, positioned between the office and the vehicles, watched them speculatively. Not hostile but not nearly welcoming enough for Lea to open her door. A whistle split the night, and the dogs retreated under the covered porch of the office.
“You can come out now,” a woman’s voice called. And when they didn’t move fast enough for the voice’s liking: “Well, come on, now. I got things to do.”
Floodlights lit up the junkyard, and Lea’s hand went up to shade her eyes. Up on the porch sat an older African American woman, matriarchal and stern, with stately gray-white dreadlocks that swirled above her head like a nest of snakes. She set down an e-reader, took off her glasses, and rubbed her eyes. Nearby, a shotgun and a sledgehammer leaned side by side against the doorframe. The dogs flanked her, one by each knee, and as the three visitors approached the porch, the animals tensed and showed their teeth. The woman touched each dog’s head gently, and they crouched, obedient but alert.
“They don’t mean nothing by it,” she said. “Not used to company this late is all.”
Lea didn’t entirely believe that and lingered at the bottom of the stairs, feeling like a rib eye hanging off the edge of a kitchen counter.
The woman looked them over. “The name is Claudette Noble. This is my place. You must be Swonger,” she said as if she’d just found something stuck to the bottom of her shoe.
“That’s right.”
He stepped forward, but Claudette’s attention had moved to Lea, ignoring Gibson altogether. “Come up here, girl. Dogs won’t bother you ’less I tell them. This here the Mustang?”
“Yes,” Swonger said.
“Hush, boy, no one’s talking at you,” Claudette snapped.