Cooper grinned and shone his light at Ben. “I think you’re gonna get your way, Obi-Wan.”
Ben frowned at him—and that was the full extent of his question.
“We empty this safe,” Cooper explained, “and then they don’t have what they owe. If even half what’s in here is real, the street value’s got to be deep into six figures, and they won’t make that back quick. I’ll lay my bet on whoever they crossed handling your nine sworn enemies in a hurry.” He turned to Zach. “And we don’t have to burn them out. Just clean them out and go.”
“That’s good, because we’re low on time,” Kai said. “We’re at six minutes now. We got two minutes left, so let’s start cleaning.”
“Hold on,” Zach said and hurried off to the side of the warehouse. He came back with a box of trash bags.
Grinning, Cooper took the box from him. “Good eyes, good brain, Z.” He started pulling bags from the roll and handing them out.
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~oOo~
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The job had been toshut this crew down, and Harridan had been prepared for them to make a fiery mess. He didn’t seem to know about the safe or its contents, and the Bulls had a long talk in the van about whether and how much to hand over to the sheriff. Some lobbied hard for them to keep at least a few decent bits, to the extent Geno could reliably discern between diamonds and zircons without a loupe.
But Cooper saw a wrinkle and was prepared to overrule everybody if he needed to: what if Harridanhadknown about the diamonds? He seemed to be up to his elbows in all of Clark Country’s dirty dealings, and in his capacity as sheriff, he had to know a lot of jewelry had been stolen and hadn’t popped up into public view again, in pawn shops or anywhere else.
What if this job was some sort of test—or worse, a trap? They had to hand everything over to the sheriff.
Once he laid out his thinking, he hadn’t had to overrule anyone. They’d seen it, too. Thus, a van full of glum Bulls met the sheriff in his favorite cemetery, and Cooper handed him three trash bags of jewelry.
By Harridan’s completely unsurprised reaction, Cooper saw with crystal clarity that the job had, in fact, been a test.
The crew was a real crew doing small-time jobs; Kai’s research had verified that. But Cooper wondered if they were in on the ruse somehow, or just another pawn in the sheriff’s game. Did they really owe anyone all those diamonds? Had Harridan pulled the Bulls into the middle of a real beef, or had he invented one? And if that crew were pawns like the Bulls, did Harridan mean to play them off one another?
Would thesherifftell that crew who’d cleaned them out? Would the Bulls, after all, end up with nine sworn enemies? How deep did the fuckery go?
Cooper didn’t know. The only thing he could be sure of was that Hoss Harridan was a Grade-A cocksucker.
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~oOo~
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It was almost ninein the morning before Cooper finally pulled onto his driveway. All-nighters weren’t rare in his life, but he was fucking exhausted this morning. They’d spent hours in the chapel, debriefing that job and working out Plans A through about H for ways what they’d done tonight could come back and kick them in the teeth.
Or maybe the whole thing was just over. They’d done the job and hadn’t made a mess, so maybe the sheriff was now an ally and the crew they’d robbed blind would never know who’d fucked them over.
Maybe. Cooper wasn’t naturally a pessimist, but with the gavel in his hand he felt like he had to be. At any rate, they’d come up with an array of answers to any challenge from those guys—he really wished they had a name so he could stop thinking of them as the ‘Vegas crew’—and they’d worked out ways to bolster their defenses to the clubhouse they hadn’t even officially opened yet.
And he was bone tired.
Siena’s heap wasn’t in her carport. It was early for her to be at work, so he figured she was taking Geneva to school—and was surprised to discover he was disappointed she wasn’t home. Without realizing it, he’d been ... what? Hoping to see her this morning? Wanting that more than he wanted sleep?
Well, that was a hell of a change in a day or two.
Also, it freaked him out a little. Standing in his carport with his helmet in his hand, Cooper realized that yeah, he’d been more or less aiming at Siena all morning, wanting to get back not just home but to her, to reclaim some of that good feeling he’d had the day before, sitting at her table eating Cubans she’d made and talking about random shit.
Not since he was a little kid had he felt the need to be in company with anyone in particular. Sure, he enjoyed people—he preferred to be in a group over his own company, and there were lots of people he enjoyed spending time with, but he was equally content to hang with just about any of them. He liked that about himself, how he could comfortably talk to anyone, that he formed casual friendships with ease and enjoyed strangers and friends alike.
It was probably a character flaw that he didn’t care to let anyone get too close, that he didn’t really trust anyone outside the context of the club, but if it was, he was fine with it.
But now, after thirty-five years of being fine not caring particularly about anyone, he was suddenly seeking out Siena? Siena, who had openly hated him until about two days ago? The best he could say now was they had achieved friendliness. Not friendship, certainly not trust, but maybe some respect.