Tito scratched the light scruff that peppered his jaw. He held my gaze for an instant, and then lowered his eyes to my desk. His boyish features made it easy to assume he was immature or inexperienced.

He was neither.

Although he was in his early thirties, he could easily pass for a high school senior. A true genius and self-taught electrician, he was a wealth of information about everything. His areas of expertise, however, were computer hacking, anything to do with numbers, and the manipulation of high end alarms.

I arched an eyebrow. “Well?”

He continued to rub his jaw. “Eighty-six percent.”

I laughed. “Eighty-six, huh?”

He looked up and nodded. “Eighty-six.”

Standing off to the side, Cash crossed his arms and then gave Tito a look. “You’re a fucking weirdo. Why not ninety?”

Tito glared back at him. “Because ninety would be a lie.” He looked at me. “It’s eighty-six,” he said dryly.

In the few days it took me to recover from having my brains fucked out by my new daytime neighbor, Tito had been researching Pat’s Gold and Diamond Exchange in detail. In his survey of the premises, he learned the alarm system included motion activated cameras and an emergency power supply that automatically energized as soon as electrical power was lost. It was outdated, which made the once state-of-the-art system and easy one to disable. If he was eighty-six percent sure he could manipulate it, I was willing to plan the job.

I rubbed my hands together. “Eighty-six is good with me.”

Cash waved in Tito’s direction and then turned away. “Eighty-six is the same as a hundred. He just makes this shit up. This deal’s for sure. I’m telling you. We’re gonna be fucking rich.”

Tito pushed himself away from my desk and gave Cash a shitty look. “Nothing’s certain, so that gets me to ninety-eight. This place is in a strip mall off of Main Street, and Rainbow has a police force. So, the possibility exists that the town cop gets bored and drives past while I’m trying to kill the alarm and cut the power. Now, we’re at ninety-two. There’s six of us involved. The odds of--”

Cash turned around. “Why do you do you always do this in two percent increments? If you’re so fucking smart, why not one percent? Or a half? Or tenths. Yeah, why not tenths, Mister Brainiac?”

“No one can guess within one percent. A tenth is ludicrous. If I claimed to be able to, it’d be a lie. You’re the only one in the club who’s prone to tell lies.”

“Fuck you, Tito.”

Tito looked Cash up and down. “Truth stings, doesn’t it?”

Cash’s eyes thinned to slits. “What are you talking about?”

“Back in May. When you almost shot that girl in the bank and called it an accident. It was the most blatant lie I’ve ever heard.”

Cash huffed out a heavy sigh. “It was a fucking accident.”

Tito formed a gun with his fingers. “You had it pointed at her face the entire time she was gathering up the money. Miraculously, when it accidentally went off, you missed her. You can tell Baker whatever you want. I’m not interested in listening to your bullshit, Cash. It wasn’t an accident.”

Cash alternated glances between Tito and me. “When are we going to find something else to talk about?”

“It was a fifty-thousand-dollar mistake,” Tito said. “I made an extra ten grand because of your accident. I’ll be talking about it for a long time.”

“It was an accident, and it was eight months ago.” Cash looked at me. “What day is it?”

“Seventh, why?”

“No, not the day of the month. What day of the week? Is it Tuesday?”

“Monday,” I said.

He looked at Tito. “I’ll give you until Friday. Mention it after Friday, and you and me are gonna fuckin’ box.”

Despite Cash being as mean as a snake, if there was anyone who could challenge him and make it a worthwhile fight, it would be Tito. His family had taught Jiu-Jitsu for generations, and he was a master at it. I prayed that Tito mention it during the following week’s Wednesday meeting, just to see them in action.

“You and I,” Tito said, correcting Cash’s grammar.

“That’s right.” Oblivious of Tito’s correction, Cash raised his clenched fists. “The two of us.”

Unamused, Tito tilted his head toward me. “Looks like the town has three cops. One kid with an attitude, and two overweight fuckers in their mid-fifties. Kid appears to work nights. We’ll disable the generator, then cut the power and all communication at the same time. A cell phone jammer will make sure we don’t get a remote alarm.”

“How are we getting in?”

“The roof-mounted air conditioner weighs 560 pounds. It’ll take all of us to move it to the side. Then, we’ll go in through the ductwork.”

“Sounds like a hundred percent to me,” Cash said.

Tito glared. “Maybe you should disable the alarm, then.”

“Maybe I should. I’ve watched you do it enough. No big deal, really. A cell phone jammer, some wire cutters, and a little blind luck.”

Tito glanced at Cash and shook his head. “The place is lit up like a Christmas tree at night, so we’ll need a dozen battery-powered puck lights to make sure someone doesn’t notice the power’s off. If they do, they’ll call it in, and that cop will be there in a minute. My guess is he’s former military. Looks the part.”

The index and middle fingers of Tito’s right hand were crossed. He did it when he didn’t want to forget something he felt was important.

I nodded toward his hand. “What else?”

He uncrossed his fingers. “This Pat guy. He’s got good credit, but he owes eight hundred grand on a nine hundred-thousand-dollar house. He leases a Benz AMG C63, and his wife drives a leased Lexus LX. On paper, he lives off his credit. There’s no doubt he has money, but he doesn’t deposit it in the bank or buy anything short of lunch. When he goes, it’s not with his wife, either. It’s with some hot twenty-year-old.”

“Maybe his daughter?”

“I don’t know who it is, but it’s not his daughter.”

I grinned. “So, he’s getting some young pussy on the side, and he keeps his assets hidden? Might be planning on leave the wife, huh?”

“The math doesn’t add up, that’s for sure,” he said. “I’m guessing his assets are liquid. My bet is that he keeps everything in that shop. If he does that much volume in gold, we’ll need to drive on this one. It will be impossible to haul much weight out of there on our bikes.”

I looked at Cash. “This might be a damned fine job.”

He flipped his hair out of his eyes and grinned. “Told ya.”

“I would hate to leave anything behind,” Tito said. “Just to be safe, our vehicle will need to have a big cargo area.”

I chuckled. “We’re not leaving anything behind.”

Cash stepped to Tito’s side. “We could use that minivan Goose got in the divorce. It’s slower than the second coming of Christ. We’d blend in with all the soccer moms, though.”

I looked up. “That white Toyota?”

Cash nodded. “Fucker’s nice. Seats eight, and has those automatic doors. Slower’n fuck, though.”

“No thanks,” I said.

“It’s the Cadillac of minivans.”

“According to who?”

“Goose.”

Cash was an asset to the club, no doubt. Sometimes, however, I questioned his common sense.

“I’ll talk to Ghost,” I said. “He can get something big enough to haul everything. Something big and fast.”

I looked at Tito. “What else?”

“That’s it, really. As far as jobs go, this one should be simple. Only problem I see is that night cop. He walks like he’s from Texas.”

I blinked a few times, at a complete loss of what that might have meant. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“He wears boots, and his attitude arrives five minutes before he does.”

“Hell, Reno’s from Texas,” Cash said.

Reno was the club’s explosives expert. A former special forces soldier, he was an adventure-seeking maniac with a colorful personality and a huge attitude.

I laughed. “That explains a lot.”

“I’m serious,” Tito said. “This cop’s a potential problem.”

“Maybe we’ll have to create a diversion,” I said.

“Like Perris?” Cash asked.

Tito shook his head. “Jesus. We don’t need another Perris. Start a fire. Tip over an avocado truck. Stage a drag race on the other side of town. Anything but another Perris.”

In 2014, we were robbing a drug dealer’s mansion in one of Perris, California’s affluent neighborhoods. The community of three dozen homes was sheltered by a fifteen-foot-high concrete fence with one way in and out. A security contractor guarded the entrance twenty-four hours a day, making penetration of the neighborhood difficult, if not impossible.

In broad daylight, five of us scaled the wall immediately behind the home and entered the residence unnoticed. Posing as a city inspector looking for a natural gas leak, Ghost drove past the gate by simply flashing a fake ID card. In ten minutes, we rid the home of eight kilos of cocaine, two hundred thousand dollars, and a cache of illicit firearms. Fearing the van would be searched by the guard as we tried to leave, we decided a diversion was necessary.

Voluntarily, Goose scaled the fence, got undressed, and sauntered toward the guard shack. Naked as the day he was born – with his cock clenched in his fist – he strolled past the guard as if he were a long-time resident. A naked cock-stroking biker on a mid-day stroll through a neighborhood filled with multi-million-dollar homes proved to be more than the guard was willing to excuse. A foot chase ensued.

While Goose streaked through the neighborhood with the guard only a few steps behind, Reno, the club’s self-proclaimed explosives expert, rigged the guard shack with an entire satchel charge of plastic explosives.

It was enough C-4 to flatten the Empire State Building.

The explosion that followed blew the structure to dust, and sent an orange ball of flames a hundred feet into the air. The subsequent concussion from the blast broke windows in more than half the homes in the neighborhood, and, according to the evening news, caused permanent damage to many of the resident’s eardrums. A two-hundred-foot radius surrounding where the guard shack once sat was marked by a blackened landscape and charred palm trees.

In the hour and a half drive home, none of us could hear a thing. Goose was covered in cuts and scratches from running through yards, hurdling shrubs, and climbing the concrete fence naked.

The job was a rewarding one, but went down in our history book as memorable because each of us lost our hearing for roughly a week. That, and the fact that Goose spent the entire ninety-minute drive to the clubhouse doctoring his wounds in our presence.

Naked.

I let out a long breath. “That was one hell of an explosion.”

“The image will forever be burned into my memory,” Tito said.

“Of the fireball?” Cash asked.

“No,” Tito replied. “Of Goose trying to get that gauze taped to his bleeding nut sack.”

I let out a laugh. “We’ll need to plan this one a little better.”

“Maybe get the Ghost to take the Ducati to the other end of town and ride some wheelies through a few yards,” Cash suggested. “That’ll get the cop’s attention.”

I glanced at my watch and then walked to the window. “Ghost is our driver. He’s not doing stunts as a diversion.”

“I was just saying--”

I raised my index finger.

Cash stopped speaking mid-sentence. I peered down at the lamppost. Andy hadn’t made it to work. I closed my eyes. As Sky Ferreira’s Easy began to play, it dawned on me that since Andy and I had sex, my headaches had been kept at bay.

Cash may have been right when he mentioned masturbation as therapy, but I wasn’t about to let him know it.

When the song ended, I opened my eyes. Andy’s bike was chained to the post. I grinned, and then turned around.

“From the time we cut the power until we’re loaded, how much time?” I asked.

“Ten minutes,” Tito said.

“Not fifteen, or twelve?”

He shook his head. “It’ll take one minute to get in. Four to penetrate the vault. Two to load everything. Three to get it humped up the ladder. Ten.”

I raked my fingers through my hair. “Eight?”

“Ten,” he said flatly. “Maybe nine. Depends on contents and weight. Not eight. Definitely not eleven.”

I gave a slow nod. “The jewelry shop is on Main Street, but it’s not in the path for access or egress to or from the highway. I’ll have Reno blow up something on the other end of town as soon as we cut power. Any cops coming or going to the site of the explosion won’t drive past us. A nine-minute response time will get us out of there just in time.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Tito said.

Cash clapped his hands together. “I can’t wait to see what this fucker has in his vault.”

I, on the other hand, couldn’t wait to feel my cock sliding in and out of Andy’s tight little pussy one more time. I tilted my head from side-to-side and popped my neck. “Alright. I’ve got some shit to do. We’ll discuss this further on Wednesday.”

For once, I was more concerned with getting fucked than I was with planning a job. Normally, I would find the change in my demeanor alarming.

Considering how Andy’s pussy felt when it was clenching my stiff dick, I viewed it differently.

It was migraine therapy, and nothing more.