38. Clara
Chapter 38
Clara
T he van, as it turns out, is a stuffy, boring place. It’s extra stuffy when you’re sharing it with four oversized men, anxiously watching a handful of monitors, waiting to see what trouble is coming for us. And extra boring, as we had to leave our cell phones back at the hotel so we can’t be tracked.
We parked down the street from the Lincoln Park mansion all day yesterday, hoping to catch sight of the unknown team, but we didn’t get lucky.
We got here before eight this morning, so we’re still hours from the start of our own run at the house, but we’re all here, waiting, hoping for something to happen.
The team Trips and Jansen found in St. Louis messaged via one of RJ’s super secure internet routes a few minutes ago, letting us know that they’d told Jasmine they were dropping out. That leaves one other team in this battle royale .
“I have a couple of questions,” I say, curled up on a built-in bench on the other side of the van, an extra-large caramel latte for liquid comfort in my hand.
Jansen spins, his black joggers and zip-up jacket the right combo between “out for a run” and “breaking in and robbing you blind.” He slides onto the bench next to me, pulling me into his arms, his nose burrowed into my hair. “Ask away, beautiful.”
I melt into his hold, the thrum of his impatient energy matching my anxiety, creating a hyped-up feedback loop that inexplicably relaxes me. “First one, why don’t you guys have like, guns or something?”
This catches Trips’ attention, and he strides in front of Jansen and me, leaning against the only empty wall in the van. “If there are guns, you’ve already lost. Nothing looks more suspicious than an armed person where they don’t belong.”
“But wouldn’t it be safer?”
Jansen nips my ear, and I melt against him. “Someone is in your house. They appear to be drunk and think it’s their house. You try to get them out your front door without calling the police, because really, they’re just a confused drunk, but then you find a gun strapped to their hip. Do you believe they’re a drunk fool now? Or do you call the cops and let them sort it out?”
I nod. “That makes sense.”
Trips sips his own coffee. “And if you’re a criminal? You don’t call the cops. You shoot first and never ask questions. Problem solved.”
I shiver, and Jansen pulls me close. “Don’t worry. This is just another job. ”
“With the mob. They’ll have guns, won’t they?”
Another warm body squeezes next to us on the bench, Walker taking my hand. “If everything goes according to plan, Jansen won’t even be seen, by the mob or their cameras.”
I grimace, sipping my coffee, watching Trips as he takes the step and a half across the van to hover over RJ’s shoulder again.
Jansen licks my ear, his anxious energy obviously needing an outlet, even if this is not the time or place. “You said you had a couple of questions? Might as well kill some time here.“ He presses his lips against my ear and whispers, “I know of a better way to kill it, though.”
Leaning back, looking between these two men, I pull up my remaining questions, doing my best to ignore Jansen’s suggestion. The fact that I’m now flushed and stripping off my sweatshirt? Entirely unrelated. “Okay, this is a general one. Why are you guys, I don’t know, so clean? Like, none of you do drugs or smoke. I haven’t even seen one of you drunk.”
RJ laughs, spinning on his chair, leaving the obsessive camera-watching to Trips. “Honestly? The more white collar you look, the shorter your sentence. On the off chance one of us gets caught, if we can look like fine upstanding young men, hopefully none of us would get anything more than a slap on the wrist.”
“Also, I don’t metabolize drugs normally. I get, I don’t know, really weird when I’m high,” Jansen says, his fingers slipping under my sweatshirt and undershirt, stroking along the base of my spine .
Walker bursts out laughing. “Oh my God, do you remember that one time freshman year, when you were trying to make popcorn?”
Jansen’s hand slips out from under my shirt, covering his face with his hands. “No. Do not tell that story. Please.”
The other guys join in the laughter, their shared history coming out in snips and bits, some comment about belting out old hymns making them all laugh hard enough that RJ and Walker are crying. I’m not getting enough details to figure out what happened, but I’m still grinning at the parts that I can follow along with.
Jansen peeks at me through his fingers. “Don’t make me get high. Please?”
I laugh. “I wasn’t planning on it.”
Walker pulls me into his arms, and I worry this is jealousy. But once I’m in his lap, he turns me so my legs drape across Jansen’s thighs. Jansen slips his hands between my socks and my sweatpants, his calloused fingers stroking there. Whew.
“Okay, last one. Why did we choose Dick & Willy’s Sewer & Septic as the name painted on the side of the van? Because—ew.”
Everyone looks at Trips, who glares as the guys snicker. He jams his hand through his red-brown hair, eyes stormy. “They’re a legitimate company in Chicago. They also have the absolute worst customer service in the state. If anyone wants to check us out, they’re not going to get through to an actual human. And, honestly, ‘ew’ is a good cover. No one is going to look twice.”
I’m starting to understand more about the choices they make. It’s always walking the line between stupidly dangerous and perfectly safe, only they never stray from that messy middle between the two. They plan, they think as many steps ahead as they can, but no matter what, this is dangerous. We’re sending Jansen into a retired mob fixer’s house to steal a password while another team tries to do the exact same thing. That’s just not safe, no matter how prepared we all are.
Zoning out between the two of them, I sink into the sensation of Walker’s arms tight around my waist and Jansen massaging my tingly calves, my muscles quivering from lack of use. Apparently, I can’t get in the right mind space to run while on my first criminal infiltration. Go figure.
RJ clears his throat, all of us turning to him. “Jasmine just left. Okay, Jansen, time for a mic check,” he says, standing up and opening a slim case. Inside, five tiny capsule-sized bits of plastic lie in protective foam, a toothpick-like stick at the bottom.
“What are those?” I ask.
“These are what they call invisible hearing aids, retrofitted to be two-way radio earpieces. They drop into the ear canal far enough you can’t see them unless you know what you’re looking for. Like Trips was talking about with guns? It’s the same thing with obvious earpieces. We’re in full stealth mode here.”
Jansen slips out from under my legs, peering into the box. “These are a lot nicer than the other ones we had.”
“Those were deader than dead after my swim in the Mississippi this summer. I figured we might as well upgrade. Plus, the combo of your extra runs these last few weeks and my own side project? We could afford the good stuff. ”
Jansen grins, the green in his eyes growing more vivid as it gets closer and closer to eleven. Kneeling, Jansen waits while Walker shines a flashlight into his ear and RJ places the device with the toothpick-like stick. Trips watches the monitors. I watch them as I struggle back into my sweatshirt.
That finished, they do sound checks, Jansen’s voice playing out of speakers by RJ’s setup, RJ talking into a microphone on the desk, Jansen nodding.
The mood shifts, Jansen bouncing on his toes, unable to sit still, minutes from leaving the safety of the van, and my heart has crawled into my throat, the last of my now cold latte sour in my mouth.
I glance at my phone—10:48 a.m. Jansen leaves in six minutes. His grin should be contagious, but I can’t smile around the lump in my throat.
Trips glares at the monitors. “I still don’t see anything. I don’t fucking like this. We need to be out of here before the other team shows up.”
10:51 a.m.
10:54 a.m. Jansen throws open the back doors of the van, fresh, icy air flooding the stagnant van. He leaps out, jogging at a healthy clip toward the mansion, Walker yanking the doors closed behind him, blotting him from my view.
It’s on.
I crowd with Walker and Trips behind RJ, watching for Jansen to show up on our screens. Walker’s hand slips into mine.
Jansen’s tenor hums out of the speakers. “Approaching the end of the safe zone. ”
“Cycling video now. And…go,” RJ says. One of his screens suddenly splits, a view of a boring gate on one side, Jansen trotting into view on the other. He scales the gate like he’s a kid at a playground, throwing himself over with an ease I can hardly imagine.
“Guard northbound in ten, nine, eight,” RJ chants, Jansen sprinting around the circumference of the property, scrambling up a tree moments before a guard steps into view on the monitor. The guard marches by, unaware of Jansen perched above him.
After the guard is far enough away, Jansen jumps down, racing the rest of the way to the back of the mansion, ducking from well-groomed shrub to well-groomed shrub, before taking a running leap at the side of the house, snatching a drainpipe and shutter to hike himself up, making it onto the roof before I remember to breathe.
“Room’s empty. Entering now.” Jansen disappears, and I squeeze Walker’s hand, waiting for him to show back up on the interior cameras. Finally, he’s in the hallway, RJ letting him know when to take cover, when to move, guiding him across the house and down the stairs, all the way to the back office.
Every room that isn’t a bedroom or bathroom has security cameras, so once Jansen’s in the office, we can see him open the briefcase. He carefully lifts and lowers folders until he finds a small piece of paper, tucking it into a zippered pocket he stitched to the inside of his pants.
With the documents back in place and the briefcase closed and left right where it belongs, RJ gives Jansen directions back out. My breath huffs out, relief making my limbs wobbly.
Trips sees it first .
“Shit, Jansen, incoming.”
RJ toggles between different cameras, his own curses muted as a brawler in black, his face covered in a turkey mask, runs up to the office window, chucking a rock through the glass, as the scream of the alarm system startles the silence in the van.
Well shit.