19. Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Nineteen
He took the Monday shift, which was boring. Ten people for the entire shift and he made less than fifty bucks. The reason, however, that he’d taken Monday was simple. The others were busy preparing for their parts of the heist of the painting.
Liam felt left out, though he knew his part had been half finished already, and the other half was about to come. Still, he wanted to know, to see the gears clicking together.
In crews before, he knew the gist of things, but to see the men in action, that was the clincher. To see how well this misfit family worked together, outside of the pub and their tricks with the bottles and customers, that’s what would help him understand.
To finally decide that he was in fully instead of feeling trapped.
He took a shot of Irish whiskey, the kind that burned all the way to his gut. It was stupid, the random thoughts that took him as the last customer drank her martini. She was a lonely thing, off in thought, uninterested in talking, like the world was weighing on her, much like it weighed on Liam.
He didn’t feel trapped. Not in the least. The only thing trapping him were his own thoughts and misgivings. The family he’d never wanted, and yet, in such a short time, the men in the bar had become his brothers.
And…maybe that was the hell of it. The kinship he felt for them, the brotherhood so easily in his grasp, they all reminded him of the actual brothers he’d once had. And how short their lives had been cut.
“Thank you,” the woman said, and slid a twenty-dollar bill to the edge of the bar toward him. “I hope whatever is bothering you, it gets fixed.”
“Thanks. Likewise.”
Abs came down to help him lock up the pub, and he answered the questions Liam hadn’t had the time to voice. “We’ve got everything set. Tomorrow, Tally’s coming in to work for us, and we’re off to the races. Mims and me, we know exactly how to get past the alarm system.”
“That’s a good thing. Cutting it close.”
“Yeah, as usual. We never prepare everything too soon. We’ve done that before and the alarm changed, or they got a dog, something. That’s where Goldie comes in.”
“The attention to detail thing.”
“No one better to stake out the places. He grew up with a cop uncle. The uncle was notorious for having the patience to stake out the people they were watching. He took every detail and taught his nephew everything about it. Mostly, because as Goldie put it, the guy had little else going on for him. No family but his parents, sister, and his sister’s kid, you know. And Goldie’s mom, well, she didn’t hang around long.”
“I think he said he was raised by his grandparents, right?”
“Yeah. Mom got into drugs. It was hard for him. She’s clean now, but she moved to a small town in North Carolina. She said it’s better for her sobriety to be away from everyone and all her triggers. I kind of hate her.”
“She thinks Goldie is a trigger?”
“And her mom, and the parents’ house, being that Goldie’s grandpa died a couple of years ago, and her brother, the cop.”
“Wow. Well, I guess I see her point about family being a trigger, but it’s sad for Goldie.”
Abs set his hand on his hip. “I guess you’re right. Family is triggering. Maybe I shouldn’t hate her so much, but I still do. Fair or not.”
“Hate who you hate. That can’t always be helped, Abs.” He thought of something and asked, “Where is Goldie?”
“At the house we’re hitting. He’ll be there until a couple of hours before we hit the place.”
Shocked, Liam just stared at him.
“Yeah, he’s that thorough. No last-minute surprises, if we can help it.”
“That’s…thorough, yeah. Okay, well, what about the rest of it? Anything I should know?”
“I came to get you, Cosmo. We’re still in the meeting.”
Happily surprised, he smiled with relief. “Great. Let’s go.”
In the basement, behind the bookcase, Liam saw them all bent over paperwork in manilla folders as they sat around the table. “Cosmo,” Murphy said, “your folder is there at the empty seat. Start studying. You may just be the driver for this one, but if we need help, you, Mims, and Goldie have to know the layout.”
“Sure, yeah.”
The folder had pictures of the house, every bit, including the interior along with the gated community where the house lay. “How did we get these of the inside of the house?”
“Goldie went inside to check the furnace; has a contact he pays well that does that work for that particular community and others like it. Goldie had a camera on him, snapped what he could, and the rest we got from the realtor site. Mims found it online from when it was on the market a little over five years ago.”
“Smart,” Liam said as he turned over the pictures. “Big place.”
“Seven bedrooms, twelve bathrooms,” Abs groaned. “I’m so jealous.”
“How many do you need?” Haze asked him.
“Oh, hush. We all have our dreams and mine is to have more bathrooms than I could possibly need.”
“That’s a hell of a dream,” Hippy quipped. “Murphy, what the hell is this?”
Liam saw the picture he held, and Murphy laughed. “It’s a sculpture, and if we had the means to get it, it’s worth about ten times what the painting is.”
Liam flipped through to get to that picture and saw a finger on a pedestal, just one finger, pointing up, like a giant got his finger cut off and set it on a display. It was…weird.
“That? That’s ten times the painting?”
Murphy laughed and told Liam, “Yeah. But we aren’t greedy, and besides, we’d need a crane.”
“During his research,” Abs told them, “Goldie found out they’d had to cut a hole in the back entrance to get it inside, and then they had to redo the entire thing. It cost him a fortune just to get it into his house.”
Haze scoffed, “That’s why I hate these kinds of collectors. They’re not purchasing the art for the sake of that art, but because of the price tag. It’s some bragging thing instead of appreciating the beauty, the work, the inspiration.”
“Our true artist,” Abs said, kissing Haze’s cheek.
Haze laughed and pushed Abs away. “Quit.”
“Never. I’m proud of you.”
Watching the love they had for one another was beautiful. Abs may be the smallest, but Liam knew he was the fiercest in his love for the others.
Murphy slapped the table to get their attention. “Enough of all that shit. Let’s go over it. Cosmo, after you drop us at the drop spot, you park the car three blocks from there near our van, where Mims will be with the transmitters and equipment. Yours is an ugly car, so any rent-a-cop security or real cops would know right off it doesn’t belong. Get it tagged like a cop already cited it for breaking down and step away from it, though not far. Close enough to jump in when we’re ready for you.”
“Good plan,” he said.
“Now, Goldie’s been working on the spot in the back fence to get through. It’s two feet thick and has cameras every ten feet. Abs will shimmy his tiny ass up that pole and disable that camera while the rest of us finish what Goldie started.”
“Big blocks of concrete,” Goldie said. “Easy enough to chisel around it, and with you three pushing, it’ll break through easily, and there is a thick hedge on the other side of it. No one will see that hole from the inside until the maintenance workers go fix the camera, and maybe not even then.”
“This has to go to plan,” Murphy said plainly. “If no one reports a break-in, then the things they find, well, they’ll be on high alert thinking someone tried and failed. The security after this will probably be ramped up pretty harshly. This is our one chance at this.”
Liam flipped through more of the pictures. “What house is this?” he asked, pointing to a picture of a different house.
Goldie answered, “The only house between the one we’re hitting and where they’re getting through the fence. The guy’s paranoid, big time, has motion lights and a pack of Dobermans. He keeps them close to him, though, so if we go wide around his place to the alley between his house and ours, we should be fine.”
“And if we’re not?”
“Bear mace,” Mims groaned miserably. “We’ve never had to use it, but we all have it.”
Hippy chided, “Mims, it does no permanent damage. We’ve been through this.”
“I don’t like the thought of you guys hurting animals, even for a second.”
Liam chimed in quickly. “Mims, I get it. I just saved Daiq from being hurt, but I’ve also gotten bit by a dog before and it’s no fun.”
“You did?”
“Yeah, I was a kid. This foster dad had these German Shepards he was all proud of, and one bit me. He spanked me for it, thinking I did something to the dog.”
“What a creep,” Haze said.
“Fine, okay, but only if you need to,” Mims finally relented.
Hippy’s eyes met Liam’s, and he finally saw a bit of camaraderie from him.
“Now, can we move along?” Murphy asked, exasperated.
“Fine, Paps, go,” Mims told him.
“Thank you so kindly,” he said sarcastically. “Now, with Mims busting the password, we don’t need Abs until we get past the two doors in. There is an outer door and inner door. Called a breezeway or some fucking thing, and that is just the backdoor. We get through those, we get past the maid’s room, which is to the right in that little hall there,” he said, pointing to one of the pictures. “There is a camera outside her room. Mims will deactivate it before we get through there.”
“This van you have. Why don’t you use it for a getaway?”
Murphy looked over at Liam and said, “If that van was caught, we’d lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment. With your stolen cars, we lose nothing.”
“Except me.”
“Not if you’re as good as we think you are.”
Liam patted himself on the back for his reputation. “I am.”
“Then, we’re set. I’ll be in the van with Mims and Goldie. You’ll find a nice spot close to the getaway car and wait for our signal. When the painting has been replaced, you’ll take the tag off the car, start it and go get them. It sounds simple, but…”
“Nothing is ever that simple. What are the backup plans?”
“They head into another home, one that is currently unoccupied. There’s one three doors down from the house we’re hitting. We go in by way of Goldie’s contacts to check another furnace and voila , we pick up our boys and bring them home.”
Liam was impressed they had thought of that. “And…and the feds?”
Murphy exhaled loudly as he looked around the room. “That is the other thing I wanted to tell you all. Agent Campbell and I met again. Today. The reasons they want the BBC are simple. They’re on a task force for human trafficking.”
Goldie seemed to be the only one that knew what Murphy was saying, though Taran had mentioned it, and they all knew some.
Goldie added, “We knew they were going after them and others that compete with us, sure, but Campbell is one of the top dogs of this Taskforce. Murphy figured it out. The reason they didn’t tell us the extent of it is because they don’t trust us anymore than we trust them.”
Murphy continued, “This is…big. It’s not only law enforcement officers, but others further up the food chain. Denver is a hub, like Houston, Detroit, and a few others, for these rings. Denver is the perfect midway point between Canada and Mexico.”
Abs was almost in tears. “They don’t think we…do that, right?”
“No, Abs,” Goldie soothed. “They know we don’t. They wanted to appeal to us, being we’re not only like a family, but Murphy has little kids, and it worked. We’re fine doing what we do. The American government is known for letting other crimes slide to get to those they want the most. This will not be easy, and it could be bad for us. The piddly money we make is nothing compared to the money these rings bring in.”
“If you all ever want to know why I’d ever consider working with cops, you go up and look in the faces of those two little babies upstairs.”
Liam looked around the room at the paling faces, drawn tightly at the thought of anything bad happening to Katie and Little Mick, and he saw their fear.
Liam’s mind, however, thought of his own childhood. How no one protected him, and that it was by chance that he wasn’t lying in that house, his insides swelling and foam escaping cold lips. His little brother’s stomach had been distended, like he’d eaten an entire Christmas ham all on his own.
Thinking of Katie and Little Mick…he was envious and happy for them at once. They had not only parents, but an aunt, grandfather, and a bunch of honorary uncles that would kill or die for them.
And Liam knew he was becoming one of those uncles.
He said, “Keep your enemies closer. Taran…he’s an enemy, but I believe him. I think we should believe the both. Frankly, if they end up busting us anyway, if they take these assholes down too, I’m weirdly okay with it.”
Abs’ hand lay over his across the table. “Me too.”
“I don’t like jail,” Mims said, “But, yeah, I’m in too.”
Murphy looked over his crew with such love, he was teary-eyed. “I think we’re all gonna be okay, guys. I have a feeling we’re gonna be okay.”
“Shit, I have a date,” Mims squeaked. “Are we done?”
“How old is this one, Mims?” Hippy asked.
“Only fifty, thank you!”
“Married?”
Mims got up and blew Hippy a kiss. “For now.”
Groaning was heard all around while Mims left the room, and Liam waited until the door was closed to ask, “Really? Always?”
Haze shrugged. “We all have our ways of dealing with the shit from our pasts. His is looking for a daddy to love him.”
“And I’m not good enough,” Murphy said. “He even calls me Paps,” he said while he blanched.
“Easy, Murph,” Goldie told him. “You could deny him one day, too. He needs a backup this time.”
“Damn that kid. Alright. Everyone be ready for tomorrow night. Rest, do what all you need to do.”
When Taran called an hour later, Liam told him to come to the pub. Taran was afraid to do it, but he did anyway, and Liam let him in the backdoor, leading him up the two flights of stairs to his floor.
In his overly red room, Taran’s eyes went right to the cat, who was curled on the bed sleeping peacefully. “He already looks better.”
“He’s very spoiled already.”
Taran reached for his hand and Liam let him take it. “Did they tell you?”
“That you’re on a human trafficking task force? Yeah. You had no interest in busting a bunch of thieves. Thing is, I already knew that.”
“I believe you all did. I didn’t want to lie to you, Liam. I swear it.”
Liam pulled him close and moved so he stood right in front of Taran. “I know. I get that you all want this to stop. Not that your little Taskforce can stop something that’s been happening for centuries, but saving even one kid from it? One woman, one man, it’s worth it.”
“And here I thought you never wanted to care about anyone.”
Liam’s eyes never left his. “Kids…kids should be spoiled, like Daiq over there, like the two kids in this building. Kids and animals are the only living beings still worth protecting in this world.”
Taran’s hands moved to Liam’s face, cupping both cheeks as he whispered, “Like you were supposed to be protected. Like…like they were supposed to be protected.”
“Yes.”
“You’re making me…question everything I’ve ever believed, Liam, except one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“That one day I’d meet a guy worth falling for.”
Liam’s smile came, but it wasn’t from happiness. It was as ironic as irony could get. “Don’t fall for me, Taran. I’ll end up hurting you somehow.”
“I think I’ll take my chances.”