One Wild Night (5 page)

“Well, it isn’t hard to read the writing on
that
wall,” he says. “With four kids to feed, no diploma, no
time or money for your own education, and no support from your
family, there’s no way you’re getting out. Unless you dump the dead
weight and let the state take the children, but you don’t seem like
the type.” He pauses, cranking his window down a few inches,
letting cool air and the smell of the honeysuckle starting to bloom
beside the road rush into the car. “Unless something changes,
you’re headed down a long, hard road, with your chances of creeping
above the poverty line ranging from slim to none.”

I swallow, ignoring the lump in my throat,
hating his prophecy, hating even more that it’s already coming
true. I haven’t even had time to get my GED, let alone start
college. I’ll never make my dreams of getting a degree a reality,
not when I have to work fifty hours a week just to keep food on the
table.

“It’s not your fault,” he says, again in
that kind way that sort of makes me want to punch him. “Like I
said, the system is rigged. America isn’t the land of opportunity,
not anymore. It’s a place where the rich get richer, and the poor
get to watch reality television on increasingly affordable
electronics.”

“You think you’re pretty clever, don’t
you?”

“I’m not clever, I’m realistic,” he says. “I
give my share to charity, but even if I gave my trust fund away, it
wouldn’t change a flawed system. Facts are facts, and the only way
that certain people can break out is to stop playing by the rules
and start playing to win.”

He lifts a hand, pointing to the next turn
onto Orchard Street. “Pull over up here and go around the block. We
can park at the end of the street and sneak in through the
back.”

I take the turn onto Orchard, but instead of
going around the block, I pull to the side of the road and shove
the car into park.

“Sneak into where?” I ask, gut churning
because I have a feeling I already know the answer. “What the hell
are we doing, Gabe?”

“We’re tipping the scales of justice in your
favor with a little breaking and entering.” His smile is so
pleasant you’d think we were discussing the score of the latest
RiverDogs game. “Sounds good, right?”

I shake my head. “No it doesn’t. Not even a
little bit.” But even I can hear the uncertainty at the core of my
words, gooey like a rotten nougat center.

How else am I going to get my hands on the
kind of money I need before it’s too late? Maybe Gabe is right,
maybe there is only one way out for someone like me.

And maybe Mr. Purdue deserves whatever he
gets…

“I can’t,” I say, heart racing. The voice in
my head is seductive, but this isn’t me. I’ve never stolen anything
in my entire life. But then, I’ve never known the person I was
planning to steal from was a monster, either…

“You can,” Gabe says, a smile in his voice.
“I know you have it in you. I saw it on the dance floor.”

“No.” I press my lips together. “I’m not
that kind of person.”

“Sometimes we don’t know what kind of person
we are until we’re put into an impossible situation,” Gabe says.
“Situations that force us to think about what matters, and what’s
the best thing we can do with our lives in the time we’re given. To
me, taking care of your family seems a lot more important than
obeying a law that says you can’t steal from a fucking evil
bastard.”

I pull in a breath and let it out in a rush.
I can’t believe how much sense he’s making.

The good girl in me still wants to turn my
back on temptation and walk away from all this on principle, but my
gut is screaming that principles have never gotten me anywhere. I
can’t afford principles, and why am I fighting to resist something
that doesn’t feel wrong in the first place?

“Come on, Cooney.” Gabe brushes my hair
behind my ear and I prickle all over, like my entire body is a
sleeping limb struggling to come fully awake. “Let me help you get
what you need.”

What I need
.

The way he says it, it’s about so much more
than money. It’s about the way he makes my skin hot and my lips
tingle, it’s about the way he makes my heart race and banishes the
exhaustion that’s been my constant companion since I quit school to
be a full-time surrogate parent. It’s about the flicker of hope he
lights inside me. That flame isn’t much bigger than a candle right
now, but I can sense how easy it would be for it to grow, to rise
higher and higher until it sets my world on fire.

I’m standing at the threshold of a moment
that will change my life, and not necessarily for the better. I
know that, I know it with everything in me, all the way down to the
marrow of my bones.

But still I nod. And take his hand. And let
him lead me out into the night.

CHAPTER FOUR

Gabe

“
There is nothing either good or bad, but
thinking makes it so.”
–Shakespeare

Television sets flicker behind living room
curtains and loud laughter echoes down the street from a party
further up the block as we make our way down Hawthorne Street, but
no one sees the two silhouettes moving swiftly through the shadows
beneath the broken streetlights.

Caitlin walks silently along beside me, a
full two inches shorter now that she’s slipped into a pair of
tennis shoes we found in the Bug’s trunk. She’s so petite that the
top of her head barely reaches the middle of my arm. I don’t
usually go for short girls—too hard to make six foot one and five
foot one match up in certain situations—but I’ve decided to make an
exception in her case.

All kinds of exceptions. Breaking all the
rules of engagement tonight…but what else are rules good for?

I smile, grateful Caitlin can’t see my face
in the darkness. I know she’s scared—any sane person would be;
we’re about to commit a felony—and I don’t want her to realize how
little this bothers me. I’m not a sociopath, at least not in the
true sense, but she doesn’t know me well enough to understand that
it took a lot of time and thought for me to come to peace with
breaking the law. She might be spooked by the smile and rethink her
decision, and I don’t want her to bail. I’ve never had an
accomplice before, but I can already tell that crime is more fun
when shared with someone special.

And Caitlin is special. She’s fierce and
shy, hard and kind, wild and domesticated, all at the same time. I
was too stupid to appreciate someone like her back when we were in
high school, but now I’m intrigued by her contradictions, and even
more curious to see how she’ll perform under pressure.

“How are we getting over?” Caitlin whispers
as we stop beside the chain link fence surrounding the back of the
pawnshop.

On the other side, the innards of rusted out
machinery, old refrigerators, and a variety of battered bikes and
once brightly-colored kids toys litter the hard-packed earth,
belying the quality of the goods inside the store. But I know this
isn’t your average second hand junk store. Mr. Purdue has a
thriving business to lose if he goes to jail. There is good money
to be had within those crumbling brick walls and Caitlin and I are
going to take our share of it.

“We’ll climb over,” I say, stripping off my
shirt. “I’ll go first and leave this on top of the barbed wire so
you won’t cut yourself.”

Caitlin takes a shaky breath. “Are you sure
you’re going to be able to pick the lock? What if they have a
security system?”

“Does this look like the kind of place that
has a security system?” I begin to climb, knowing it’s best not to
give Caitlin too much time to think.

“I don’t know,” she whispers. “But what if
it does?”

“Then we’ll climb faster on the way out.” I
lay my shirt on the barbed wire at the top of the fence and swing a
leg over to the other side. I doubt the Giffney P.D. will bother to
check the fence for bloodstains, but best to be safe. There will
come a day when I won’t care if I’m caught, but that day hasn’t
arrived yet.

By the time I step down onto the ground,
Caitlin is maneuvering over the barbed wire at the top of the
fence. She has a harder time—her legs aren’t as long and she ends
up grabbing on to part of the tee-shirt-covered wire for
balance—but she makes it over without cutting herself and starts
swiftly down the other side. I stand watching her, head tilted
back, wishing the moonlight was stronger so I could get a better
look at the no-doubt delicious view of her jean clad ass.

As soon as she’s within reach, I wrap my
hands around her waist and lift her the rest of the way down.

“I’ve got it,” she says, brushing my hands
away with a sharp exhale before stepping out of my arms.

“Don’t be nervous,” I say. “But don’t touch
anything. You’re not wearing gloves and you’ll leave prints.”

“What about you?” she asks, following me
across the junk-littered enclosure.

“I’ll find something inside to wipe the
knobs down on our way out.” I pull my wallet from my back pocket
and fetch my pick set from inside. “But even if I miss something,
it’s better my prints are found than yours. I have a lawyer in the
family.”

“All I have is crazy in mine,” she mutters,
crossing her arms and huddling close to my side, casting anxious
glances around the yard as I go to work. “I always thought the gene
skipped me, but now…” She shivers, despite the balmy early April
night. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

“Everyone has crazy in their family,” I say,
slipping my tension wrench into the bottom of the keyhole. “And
you’re not being crazy, you’re being brave.”

She shakes her head. “I’m still not sure
this is right, no matter what a waste this guy is.”

“Would you say you have a well-developed
sense of right and wrong?” I tease my pick into the lock above the
tension wrench, raking it back and forth, getting a feel for the
pins. There are five, maybe six. It isn’t a complicated lock. We
should be inside in five minutes, maybe less.

“I think so,” she says. “I mean, considering
the way I was raised, I think my conscience is probably in better
working condition than most people with parents like mine.”

“Dad and Mom not the best role models?” I
find the stubborn pin—the one I need to set first before I can move
on to the others—and lean in, listening for the faint click that
will let me know it has slid into place.

“My dad’s a drunk, but he tries…or he used
to, anyway. And my mom wasn’t a bad person, just a flake and
anxious all the time,” Caitlin whispers quickly, making me think
she’s a little anxious herself. “She was okay when she was
drinking, but once she got clean she couldn’t handle all the noise
and the chaos at the house. She ran off with her AA sponsor the day
after she got her one month sobriety chip.”

I grunt in amusement. “I always knew AA was
bad news.”

“Driving mothers away from their obnoxious
children since nineteen thirty-five,” she says with a soft
laugh.

“I like that you laugh about it.”

“It’s either laugh or cry,” she says,
bumping my admiration for her up a notch, making me even more
certain that I want to help her.

The thought of Caitlin getting kicked out of
her house after all she’s done to hold her family together sets my
teeth on edge. The second her friend explained why Caitlin wasn’t
in the mood for partying, I resolved to make her problems go
away.

I have fifty grand in my checking account
and could get my hands on more if I wanted to—my grandmother
removed the age restrictions on my inheritance a few months ago, so
the sky is pretty much the limit. I could have given Caitlin the
cash as an anonymous gift, but I’d already planned to hit Mr.
Purdue’s place sometime this week and couldn’t resist the urge to
kill two birds with one stone.

Besides, a shared secret brings people
together, and eliminating Caitlin’s money troubles will free her up
to get into other kinds of trouble.

Trouble with me.

I hear the final pin click and my mouth
fills with a sweet, electric taste. It’s the taste of victory and
forbidden things, two of the best tastes in the world.

I turn the tension wrench to the right and
the door swings open.

“We’re in?” Caitlin grabs my arm, her
fingernails digging into my skin.

“We’re in,” I say, marveling that even that
simple touch is enough to make me thicker.

This girl does something to me, something I
can’t wait to explore further…as soon as we get what we’ve come
for.

“Let me check for an alarm.” I move inside,
scanning the walls on either side of the long, dark hallway. I
don’t see any control panels or flashing lights, and no cameras
visible near the ceiling—not that anyone watching security footage
would be able to make out our faces in the near-darkness,
anyway.

I motion for Caitlin to follow, and we move
down the hall, through a pair of swinging wooden doors, and into
the main portion of the pawnshop without making a sound. Her steps
are even softer than mine and I’ve had enough practice that I move
like a ghost, barely touching the floor beneath me.

“Are you going to try the register?” she
whispers as we stop behind the display cases.

I shake my head. “I doubt there will be any
money in it. I’m going straight for the safe, see if I can get
lucky.”

“I’ll find the keys to the display case and
clean out the jewelry,” she says, grabbing several tissues from a
box on the back counter, taking my warning not to touch anything
with bare hands to heart. “That’s the most valuable small stuff. I
can put it in my pockets, and I won’t have to try to carry anything
while I’m climbing back over the fence.”

“Brilliant,” I say, with a wink. “You’re a
natural.”

“Say that after we get out of here without
getting caught.” She takes a deep breath in and out. “Because right
now I feel like I’m about to throw up.”