“Are you ready?” Jack asked Tina as they admired a blood red 1962 Ferrari GTO three days after she had lifted the guard’s keys.
Tina was flabbergasted as she stared at the car. According to the literature for the car, this one car was worth thirty-five million dollars, more than the price the Sons are getting for the lot.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “But why are you selling them so cheap? Did you see the price on this thing?”
“Yeah. But it’s going to be stolen, remember? The buyer will never be able to sell or show these cars to anyone. That drives the price down.”
“Fuck…” she breathed as her head reeled at the prices.
Jack sent a text message with a single word to Seth and Marshall: “Now.”
It would take Seth and Michelle a few minutes to walk up from their car and buy their tickets, time Jack and Tina used to track down and shadow the guard.
Jack had spoken with Marshall and Seth each night, checking and rechecking their plan, trying to cover all contingencies. Now, just thirty minutes before the show closed for the evening, the plan was in motion.
“You whore!” A woman’s voice rang clear through the exhibit hall. It was go time.
The guard, who had been watching a group of Cub Scouts, turned toward the woman’s voice.
“Fuck off!” another woman’s voice, full of venom, replied. The guard moved toward the ruckus as all heads turned toward the front of the building.
Jack and Tina, along with a couple of others, moved toward the noise. Standing by the first car on display, a 1936 Duesenberg SSJ Speedster, two women were squared off as their significant others tried to calm them down.
“I know you are fucking him!” Michelle snarled, giving Nic a push.
Nic shook Marshall off her arm and shoved Michelle backwards. “Fuck you, you bitch! I’m doing no such thing!”
Tina had to smile because they were really selling it. She followed close behind the guard as he waded between the women. Michelle took a sloppy swing at Nic. She missed completely but made the guard dodge back out of the way, giving Tina a chance to lift the key ring. While the guard got between the woman again, Marshall and Seth pulled their wives away from each other. While the guard was distracted, Tina quickly removed the alarm key and pocketed it, then hid the remaining keys in her hand while she waited for her chance to return them to his belt.
Seth and Marshall saw Jack’s nod that they had the key, so they hauled at their wives, breaking up the fight. The guard ordered them from the building. Michelle lunged at Nic again, having the time of her life and playing her role to the hilt. Nothing like a good bitch fight to get her blood pumping, and she was going to fuck Seth blind the moment they got home.
Nic had a hard time keeping a straight face as she and Michelle spit and snarled at each other. She knew that Michelle and Seth had a reputation for starting fights and causing trouble, and she found it humorous that she and Marshall were now doing the same thing, even if it was just play acting. But, she had to admit, playing the badass, husband stealing bitch was a lot of fun!
As Jack engaged the guard in idle chitchat about the impromptu show, Tina returned his keys to his belt. She caught Jack’s eyes and turned her hands palm out so he could see she no longer had the keys.
***
“You don’t have to do this,” Jack told Tina. “You’ve done your part and you can still walk away.” It was nearly three in the morning and they were sitting in one of the three trucks they were going to use to haul the cars away.
They had exited the show not far behind the other four Sons and driven straight back to the clubhouse. At about midnight, three trucks, two pulling large enclosed trailers, arrived. Jack and the Son driving the third truck quickly and efficiently hooked the truck to the trailer stored in the back corner of warehouse. Tina gathered from their conversion that the three trucks belonged to Desert Sons club members while the other trailers were rented for this job. The third trailer, the one stored in the clubhouse, she assumed belonged to either Jack or the Sons.
They had hung around the clubhouse for a couple of hours until Jack announced it was time go. He had suggested she stay behind, but she was instant that she go. She wanted to see this through to the end.
“I’m going. I’ll keep watch. That will give you four guys, two on each car. You should be done in less than a half hour.”
“Okay,” he said before giving her a quick kiss on the lips. “Have it your way.” He didn’t like that fact that she was still putting herself at risk, but she was right. If she kept watch, they could move two cars at a time instead of one.
Jack unlocked the front door of the exhibit hall with the duplicate key, then quickly strode over to the chirping alarm panel. Without hurrying, to prevent mistakes, he opened the panel with the key, then typed in the passcode and pushed the Disarm button, silencing the pending alarm. He turned and smiled at her. She had exceeded expectations.
While the Sons unlocked and raised the large roll up door at the back of the building, Jack crouched behind a corner. As expected, the guard came hurrying over to investigate the clatter of the rising door. As he passed, Jack rose from behind the wall and put his weapon to the back of the man’s head.
The man wasn’t stupid, and he froze before raising his hands to just above his head. Without saying a word, Jack pulled a black cloth bag from his pocket and slipped it over the man’s head, then removed the guard’s weapon and tucked it into his pocket. Putting a hand on the guard’s shoulder, and still without saying a word, he led the man to the women’s restroom, ignoring the guard’s soft pleading for his life. In the restroom, Jack forced the man to sit on the toilet. He zip tied his hands to the safety rail in the handicapped stall.
As he returned from the restroom, two of the Sons were already pushing the first car out of the door, the silk cloth that covered the car in a wad on the floor. Tina stood at the edge of the door, waving her arm in a come on motion as she watched up and down the road. “Did you find the keys?” Jack asked as the third Son stepped up and handed him a small box full of keys.
“Good man! Tina!” Jack called, waving a glove covered hand to call her too him.
“What?”
“Sort through these keys and find the six we need … and put the covers on the cars inside them. We might as well give the customer the covers too.”
Tina took the box. After finding the first key that fit, she quickly located the other five keys of similar style and placed each key in the ignition of the car it belonged to.
Forty-five minutes later, Jack was locking the roll up door while the other three Sons and Tina secured the cars in the trailers. It wouldn’t do to steal the cars, then beat them all to hell on the trip back to the clubhouse.
Door locked, Jack returned the remaining car keys to the file cabinet where they had been found and left the guard’s weapon in the same place. He was about to reset the alarm when he had another thought. He returned to the guard and removed his keys, once again ignoring the guard’s plaintive pleas. He put the alarm key back on the ring, then pushed the Arm button ... but nothing happened. He typed in the code and tried the button again. This time, the clock began to count backwards from three minutes. He locked the alarm panel, then trotted fast to the women’s restroom. He snapped the keys on the man’s belt, then jogged out of the building, locking the front door behind him with his duplicate key.
He had just turned from the front door when he heard the heavy bellow of two diesel trucks straining under a heavy load. As he watched, two of the Sons’ trucks turned in front of the building, billowing black smoke as they accelerated away, hard. He had warned the drivers about driving in a manner that attracted unwanted attention, but it was hard to stay calm with nearly a hundred million dollars’ worth of stolen cars on your truck.
As Jack slid into the passenger seat of the third truck, he high-fived the driver, then accepted a quick kiss from Tina. “Nice and easy,” he reminded the driver.
***
It was nearly 5 a.m. before the last of the six cars were unloaded and the heist team had dispersed.
“The guard is going to have some explaining to do,” Tina said as she snuggled up to Jack.
The rest of the Sons would be by tomorrow—well, later that day, actually—for their normal Saturday cookout. As much as she would like to make mad passionate love to Jack, she was just too damned tired. She hadn’t slept much the night before; she had been too keyed up about the theft, despite the fact that Jack had fucked her to nirvana.
“I can’t believe you took the time to put the alarm key back,” she added.
Jack yawned mightily. He thought about seducing Tina, but decided that he needed to get some sleep first. Maybe they would have a go before the Sons arrived in the morning.
“Not to mention a hell of a set of hemorrhoids from sitting on the toilet for six or seven hours.”
Tina giggled. “He can get on the floor. Why did you return the alarm key to his belt?”
This time it was Jack that chuckled. “I just thought I would give them something to think about. We got in with no alarm, nothing broken, and nothing taken.”
“Except the cars,” she reminded him.
“Except the cars,” he amended.
“But he had to know you were taking his keys.”
“Probably. But that doesn’t explain how we got in the first time.”
Tina snorted out a laugh that trailed off into a huge yawn. “True. Jesus, I’m tired.”
“Yeah, me too. But in the morning…”
“What?” she asked as she squirmed her ass into his crotch.
“I won’t be tired anymore.”
She smiled. “Me either.”
***
“Thirty-five million dollars? Are you sure?” Nic asked in surprise as she and Michelle admired the GTO.
“That’s what the little plaque thing said,” Tina replied.
“So why are we only getting twenty million for all six?” Michelle asked as her face crinkled in confusion.
“I asked Jack that same question. He said it was because these cars are so famous and rare that the buyer will never be able to show them to anyone or sell them. So that drives the price down.”
“I guess that make sense, but it still seems like we are getting ripped off.”
“A car is worth only what you can get someone to pay you for it,” Tina said as she wondered what Michelle’s beef was. Wasn’t a cool million, tax free, good enough for anyone?
“I’m just amazed that anyone would pay that kind of money for a car. Any car. Even one as pretty as that one,” Nic added.
“More money than sense?” Tina suggested as she returned the cover to the car. All the Sons had wanted to see what a hundred million dollars’ worth of cars looked like, and the GTO was the last to be recovered with its protective silk cloth.
Nic and Michelle both giggled. “That would explain it,” Nic said. “So, now that you have fulfilled your bargain, what about you?” she asked Tina.
“I don’t know. Jack said he would help me start a new life and leave my past behind me.”
Nic smiled gently at her. “Jack’s a really nice guy.”
“Yes, he is,” she said as she looked away.
“And is he rocking your world at night?” Michelle teased as Tina flushed in embarrassment. “Don’t bother denying it. He told Seth the night you lifted the guard’s keys you two were sleeping together. Something about you starting trouble.”
“Are you two sleeping together?” Nic asked, a mischievous grin on her face. “Almost a week now! That’s a regular long term relationship for him.”
“So what’s he like between the sheets? Is he a complete studmuffin?” Michelle asked with a sly grin. “You’re the first woman I’ve met that I could ask that question. He never lets us, the Sons I mean, meet any of his other girlfriends.”
Tina felt herself burn in embarrassment. “Yeah. He can pretty much rock my world.”
“And you his?” Nic asked, her grin growing wider.
“I try, but I think he has it all over me.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Nic said as she waved her beer bottle in the direction of Jack, Seth, and Marshall. Tina looked in that direction and caught Jack’s eyes with her own. He smiled at her.
She was still smiling at him as … Greg, she finally remembered, hurried up and spoke to the three in hushed tones. She felt her blood run cold when all three stiffened suddenly at some news. The conversation suddenly became very intense with Greg frowning and shaking his head no. While she watched, Jack looked at her, his face haunted.
“Sons,” Jack called as he gathered everyone’s attention. “We’ve got a problem,” he continued as everyone wandered up. The excited babble of joyous people fell silent almost immediately.
“Our Chinese buyer backed out of the deal.”
Tina felt the chill of impending doom.
“What? He can’t do that!” Michelle cried beside her.
“He can, and he did,” Seth said. “But I’ll be fucked before we give him his deposit back.”
A murmur of agreement rumbled through the crowd. “What happened?” a man, whose name Tina couldn’t remember, asked.
“We don’t know, exactly,” Greg said. “It looks like he is either about to be arrested or has been arrested. When I spoke to his office, telling them his merchandise was ready to ship, they told me he wasn’t available and that his assets had been frozen.”
“What are we going to do, Jack,” Nicole asked quietly. They were in a tight spot, but if anyone could figure a way out, it would be Jack.
“I don’t know, Nic. I really don’t.”