“It’s gone,” said Loo.
Hawley watched the moth, then threw out his fist and smashed it against the windshield. He wiped the wings off on his jeans. Then he signaled and spun the truck around. He shifted gears and leaned on the gas.
“It’s not gone,” he said.
It was after midnight and they were the only car on the road. All of the traffic lights had switched from red to a constant, blinking yellow. Hawley turned down a side street. They passed a self-locking storage unit, a garage with several tow trucks parked in front, a tire shop and a back lot full of vehicles, surrounded by a chain-link fence and topped with swirls of barbed wire. Hawley drove onto the shoulder, into the dark shadows and away from the streetlight that flooded the road. He turned off the truck. The engine ticked and then quieted.
“Where are we?” Loo asked.
“The impound lot.”
Hawley got out of the truck and started rummaging through the back. He took a long thin metal rod, a screwdriver and a set of wire cutters from his tool chest. Then he unlocked the side compartment and grabbed his long-range rifle, a suppressor and a scope. He closed and locked the compartment and then he walked into the woods. Loo sat for a minute in the passenger seat, watching the place where he had disappeared.
“Shit,” she said. “Shit. Shit. Shit.” She spread her fingers across the dashboard and gripped it tightly, as if she had the power to rip the whole thing off. Then she got out of the truck.
Her father was only a few yards in, thirty feet from the outer edge of the fence. He had his rifle on his shoulder. He’d added the suppressor. He lowered the gun and handed it to Loo.
“Is it there?”
She set her eye against the scope. Through the crosshairs she could see maybe thirty cars behind the fence. Most were in some state of disrepair, windshields smashed in or back ends crumpled. An old Chevy was missing its hood entirely, the engine exposed. But at the far edge of the lot was a shiny black BMW, a truck with new rims, a small sports car with a custom cover pulled tight across its small body, and behind that—her mother’s Firebird.
“In the corner.”
Hawley took the rifle back and peered through the scope. “What do you know,” he said. And then he just stayed there, watching the car, his mouth twitching.
“Okay,” said Loo. “You’ve seen it.”
Slowly, her father began to sweep the barrel of the gun toward the left, like he was tracking something.
“What are you looking for?” Loo said.
“Cameras.”
“Cameras?”
“There,” said Hawley, and he shot out the first one. A small black security box by the front gate. It was hanging in place and then it was shattered to pieces, nothing but wires and a bit of loose plastic. Hawley shifted, lined up the rifle close to his shoulder and pulled the trigger again. The gun shook in his arms and another camera, set on the roof of the garage, went down. Then another, mounted near the back door. Each shot left behind a muffled huff of displaced air from the suppressor that Loo could feel in her chest, like an underwater explosion.
“What you doing?”
“It’s a Guard Rail system,” said Hawley. “They come in sets of four.” The rifle shuddered again and Loo saw a spark as the final camera, mounted on the fence, went down right over the tiny sports car. The black box bounced off the hood and crashed onto the asphalt.
Hawley lowered the rifle. He flicked the safety, then loosened the canvas strap and slung the gun over his shoulder. He picked up the shell casings from the ground and slipped them into his pocket, then grabbed the wire cutters and moved quickly toward the fence. Loo followed, pushing past bushes and stumbling through vines. By the time she reached the fence he had already started clipping through.
“Let’s go,” she said. “Let’s go before somebody comes.”
“Do you think I’d cut this fence if anyone was here?” said Hawley. Then he was rolling back the chain link as if it were the entrance to a teepee. When he was on the other side, he held the wire for her, and Loo got to her hands and knees and crawled through.
They crossed the parking lot, exposed under the floodlights. Loo kept her eyes on the darkened windows of the auto-body shop, waiting for a lamp to flick on, an alarm to go off, but everything remained quiet.
Hawley walked straight over to the Firebird, then circled the frame, examining the dings and scratches, slipping his finger into a dent by the left wheel well. When he got around to the driver’s side, he stood for a moment, his hand on the roof. Then he put down the rifle, and took out the long metal rod he’d brought from the car, and the wedge he’d lifted from the police station out of his pocket. He jammed the wedge into the edge of the door, slid the rod into the space he’d made, and in less than a minute he had the car open. With the screwdriver he loosened the access cover under the steering wheel. He put the car in neutral, took out his pliers and started stripping a set of wires. He bound two red ones together. And then he used a black wire to hit where the copper was exposed. There was a spark, and then another, and then the engine came to life and started rumbling.
“Wouldn’t it be easier to find the keys?”
“There’s an alarm on the building. Besides,” Hawley said, looking back over his shoulder, “this is half the fun.”
Loo turned toward the garage. A home security sticker was on the corner of one of the windows. Inside there was a tiny red light, blinking steadily. By the time she turned back to Hawley he was examining the gate that enclosed the property. He pumped his rifle and aimed at the center of the lock. The zip of the suppressor pierced the night air, followed by the thump of the lock coming loose. He pulled what was left off the fence. Then he bent down and picked up the bullet casing from the dirt.