“You all eat like animals,” I explain.
I immediately regret it when he stops mid-chew, furtively swiping at his mouth. Suddenly, he seems to adopt some manners, grabbing a napkin from the console. “Sorry, I’ve been hungry all day. There’s nothing to eat at my house.”
Now it’s my turn to frown. “Your dad doesn’t buy groceries?”
“We have grocery delivery,” he confirms. “But it’s all shit that needs to be prepared. For the record, that’s not one of my superpowers.”
I’m torn between ribbing him for being a cliché and asking what he eats every night when I see the patrol in the distance. “Oh! There’s security!”
Reyn grabs his phone from the dash clip, noting the time. “We’ll see how long it takes him to make another pass.”
Thirty minutes is the answer. Reyn wants it to be darker, though, so we sit through two more passes. When he starts pulling things from his pocket and fiddling with his phone, I know that the security guard’s next pass will be it.
“Make sure your phone’s on vibrate,” he says, watching as I do it. “And if you have an ID on you, put it in the glove box.” He watches as I do this, too, putting his wallet in next to mine. Next, he hands me a pair of leather gloves.
Stupidly, I guess, “Because of fingerprints?” Like they’re going to have CSI out here dusting for prints on account of a great helmet caper.
Reyn gives me a look that suggests he’s thinking the same thing. Generously, he merely explains, “For the fence.”
When the guard comes into view for the final time, I try to breathe in and out calmly. This is nothing. No big deal. What had Emory called it? Just a light B&E.
Softly, Reyn says, “Hey,” and leans forward until our eyes meet. “Don’t worry. Thirty minutes to get from here to inside the building? Piece of cake.”
“Easy for you to say. I should have practiced climbing a fence or something.” I run my palms across my thighs, looking across the lot at the fence. “Don’t you need time to pick the lock? What if I’m really slow?”
“You won’t be,” he assures. “We’ve got this.”
By then, the guard has disappeared, and there’s really no way I’m wasting my precious climbing time whining about it. I’d wanted to do this. It’s time to woman up.
I pull the handle to the door and Reyn follows suit.
While he goes around to the back of the Jeep, I skulk around the side and have a miniature meltdown, heart pounding. When Reyn returns, he’s holding a big sheet of cardboard and the license plate from the car.
“In case we need to make a speedy getaway,” he explains, throwing the license plate in the back seat.
The sheet of cardboard, I discover, is for the top of the fence. I watch as he slings it into the air, draping it over the pokey bits up top.
“You’ll climb up first,” he whispers, watching me put on the gloves. “When you get to the top, just straddle it and wait for me.” I nod, but he still asks, “You good?”
Instead of answering, I grab onto the fence and test it, wedging the toe of my shoe into a knee-high diamond. My good leg lifts me up easily, and I can feel him at my back—‘spotting’ me, Emory would call it. My other foot slots into a space that’s only a couple diamonds above the first one, and I think I can see the pattern I need to take—the unevenness of it.
When I pull my good foot from the diamond, nothing but my hands and bad foot holding me up, Reyn’s whisper catches my attention.
“Hey, I’m not trying to cop a feel, okay?” Before I can ask what that means, one of his hands is on my ass, holding me up, steadying my quivering leg.
My face blooms into a fierce heat.
I get my foot into another knee-high slot and do it all over again, and this is fine. A little precarious, but fine. I’m doing it. And in about four hours, I’m going to totally die over the fact that Reyn is touching my ass—oh my god—but for right now, I just clamber up the links.
When I reach the top, I shakily swing my good leg over the edge and do as he instructed. I wait.
I watch as he watches me, an understanding passing between us.
All systems go.
He scales the fence so fast that I can only watch in disbelief. All this fanfare to get me over the edge and he does it in like three steps and a single drop. Showoff. Once he’s on the other side, landing easily on his feet, he moves beneath me, gesturing me forward.
The trip down is a bit harder.