Jack jerked awake with a start. He had intended to sit in the lawn chair where he could see the rec area and make sure that if Tina left, she didn’t steal anything, but apparently he had fallen asleep. He jumped to his feet and hurried to the lounge, where he found Tina sleeping soundly. With a silent sigh of relief, he checked the time. The microwave clock showed 8:23, almost four and a half hours after they had turned in for the night.
“Tina, get up,” he said, nudging the couch with a toe.
Tina woke with a start before sitting up and stretching. “Good morning.”
“I’m surprised you’re still here. I thought you would slip away in the middle of the night.”
“I’m a lot of things, but if I tell you I’m going to do something, I try to do it.”
“I see. Okay. Are you ready to replace the window?”
“I guess. I don’t know how. You do realize that?”
“We’ll do it together. Get up. I’ll buy your breakfast after we get the glass ordered.”
After another pass through the shower, Tina redressed in her dry, if slightly crunchy, clothes before they drove into Albuquerque proper and ordered the glass. They stopped at a fast food place for breakfast before going to a home improvement store for glass installation supplies. Her heart sank ever lower as Jack added items to their trolley, knowing that every item he added was just that much more she had to work off.
She was pleasantly surprised that the total wasn’t nearly as much as she expected … until they returned to the glass place. There she nearly had a heart attack at the cost of the window. She kept her mouth shut, refusing to complain about the cost, but that one piece of double-pane insulated glass had cost her almost a half-week’s pay at her car washing job.
It was a tight fit getting the glass into the Audi, but they managed. She held the glass to prevent it from moving around and breaking on the drive back to the warehouse. They spent the rest of the morning getting the broken glass out of the window. After a quick burger at the same fast food place they had tussled at the night before, they returned to the task at hand.
It was obvious to Jack that Tina didn’t have a clue what to do, but it was equally obvious that she was trying and not shirking on helping.
The sun was just touching the horizon as Jack put away his tools and Tina cleaned the newly installed glass. She was tired, having not gotten enough sleep last night, but well satisfied with the work she had done that day.
“Jack, can I buy your dinner tonight?” Tina asked as he returned to the lounge.
“I thought you didn’t have any money.”
“I don’t. But … can I put it on my tab and work it off? I want to thank you, in some small way, for giving me a second chance.”
He gave her a lopsided grin. “If that is what you want to do. Where do you want to go?”
“Anyplace you like, but not too expensive, please.”
Jack thought for a moment. “If you like Mexican, I know just the place. But you are going to have to shower and change. Come to think of it, I need to shower and change.”
Tina smiled at Jack. She had lost most of her fear of him after working with him during the day. He was funny and charming, not to mention terribly handsome. She still walked on eggshells around him, not wanting to give him reason to doubt her, but she was no longer afraid he was going to slap her around or turn her over to the cops without provocation—provocation she wouldn’t give him. Right now, she needed him. He was providing her with a place to live, more or less free of charge, while she waited for the heat to die down. In a few days, the watch for her would be forgotten and she would be able to move more freely.
***
An hour later, they walked into a Mexican joint. The food smelled great! Tina saw the smile and recognition in the eyes of the lovely hostess, but when she saw Tina she cooled noticeably. Another of Jack’s conquests, perhaps, Tina thought.
“So, tell me, Tina. How did you end up like this?” Jack asked after they placed their orders.
“The life of crime, you mean?”
“Yeah. You’re obviously smart enough that you could do something else. So why are you mixed up in all of this.”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got all night,” Jack said with a grin.
Tina smiled crookedly at his choice of words. “When I was about twelve, my dad died. He worked construction and a wall fell on him. Mom couldn’t adjust, and she couldn’t make ends meet on just her salary. We lost the house. Then she started bringing these guys home and got mixed up turning tricks, trying to earn a little extra money. Child welfare stepped in and placed me in a foster home.” She shrugged. “They didn’t abuse me or anything, but they didn’t love me either. I started hanging with the wrong crowd in school. Started out with shoplifting and petty theft. Then breaking and entering. Finally GTA.”
“And pickpocketing,” Jack reminded her.
Tina smiled. “Yeah. And pickpocketing. But that’s more of a hobby.”
“What were you doing with the cars?” Jack asked.
“I worked for a breaker. He would tell me what he wanted, I would find it and bring it to him. I got five hundred for each car.”
“Not bad.”
“Especially for an eighteen-year-old. I was taking down two or three cars a week sometimes.”
“What were you stealing?”
“Hondas and other low end stuff. Accords, mostly.”
“So why were you doing B&E?”
“Because I didn’t have an order for a car every week. And because I was cocky and didn’t think I could get caught.”
“But you were?”
“Yeah. Pulled a year on an eighteen-month sentence at PNM.”
“That’s why you were in Santa Fe?”
“Yeah. I’m originally from Las Cruces.”
“But you were trying to turn your life around?”
“I was trying. It was hard. Fresh out of the clink, I had a hard time finding a job. But the Honda dealer finally took a chance on me, and I was making it work. I was renting this shit hole of a trailer for one-fifty a week, and I managed to scrape together enough to buy a two-thousand-dollar car.” Tina snorted and smiled a little sadly. “Hondas have been good to me.”
“And you were headed to Texas to …?”
“To try to start again.”
“How were you going to do that? Do you have family there or something?”
“No. No family but my mom, and she is still in Las Cruces. I don’t know. I just need to get out of New Mexico. Maybe I will herd cattle or something. I just want a new start, that’s all. To put my past behind me and try to start fresh.”
Jack was about to say more when their food arrived, so he dropped it. They ate and nursed a couple of beers. The more he talked to Tina, the more he liked her. She was hellion and a spitfire, but she did have a moral compass, even if it was skewed a little off center. But who was he to criticize?
***
When they arrived back at the clubhouse, Jack asked Tina to show him how she picked his pocket. The only reason he knew his wallet had gone missing the night before was that when he took his pants off to play hide the sausage again with Ms. Jeep, he noticed the pocket was empty as he threw the pants over the back of a chair.
Tina demonstrated by lifting his wallet again and again. If he watched her, he could feel her nimble fingers pluck the wallet from his pocket, but otherwise he would never know. Once, she handed him his wallet and his watch. He was stunned that she had managed to get his watch and hadn’t even noticed it missing. He watched her do it again as her fingers worked quickly and smoothly, unfastening the catch while she held his wrist like an old friend.
He then challenged her by sticking various items in different pockets. She couldn’t get everything he tried, but she did take a high percentage of them, and he couldn’t tell which item she took until she handed it back to him.
As she showed off for him, a hint of an idea began to form in his mind. The rest of the Desert Sons would be by tomorrow, just like every other Saturday, and suddenly they had some new business to discuss.
***
That night, as she settled on the couch, Tina thought about her change in fortune as she began the slow slide into sleep. Lying on the couch, well-fed and relaxed, she decided that she would stick around and work off her debt to Jack as promised. He had been very good to her, and she was surprised that she cared what he thought of her. That was something that hadn’t happened very often since her life started its slide downhill. She was still trying to remember the last time she cared what anyone thought of her as slumber took her.
Jack lay in his bed thinking. Tina had demonstrated a remarkable ability to lift things from his person. Keys, cell phone, watch, wallet … hell, she could probably take his underwear and the fillings from his teeth if she really wanted them. They had a big score planned in a week, something to put them on easy street, and they had sweated every detail. But there had always been one sticking point: how to get into the building. They had planned to do it the hard way, but having Tina break into the clubhouse might be fate’s way of saying there was a better, smarter way.
The more he thought about it, the more he realized that she was the missing piece, the one thing they didn’t even know they needed until it was tossed through the window and into their laps. The question was, would she do it? And could they trust her? He believed her when she said she was trying to put her life together. She might not be willing to step back into that world again if she could get out, and he won’t coerce her.
He spent the next two hours tossing and turning, working out the details of how Tina could help. By the time sleep finally took him, he was smiling. If the rest of the Sons went along with it, this was going to be the slickest heist New Mexico had seen in years!