Miguel pulled his car around the parking lot until he found a spot; Mitch in his rental car and Russ and Jake in the delivery van did the same.

  Miguel gave each of the middle-schoolers five bucks and told them to hop a bus back to the neighborhood, but to be careful that they wouldn’t be seen sneaking off the base. After the little vatos had left [dang, they’d made good actors today, too! Must include them in the next job somehow- if there was a next job and they stayed out of prison], Miguel strode confidently across the lot over to Mitch, who was already talking to Russ and Jake.

  “Next move, Boss?” Miguel asked when he got there.

  “Just figuring that. Can’t stay here too long, we’ll draw attention. Look, Monty said most places have a worker entrance around the back, but at a high-profile place like this, what we’re looking for might be through the front door and to the side.”

  “How do we know that?”

  “We don’t; we haven’t had a chance to case the joint yet,” said Miguel. “But did you hear what I heard when I said we had an appointment? Everything for the public’s been cancelled for today. You know what that means?”

  “There’s trouble inside,” Russ said. “And where that happens, we’ve got opportunity. I don’t know how many guards we’ve got in this place, but I’ll bet that we rattled that poor kid at the front bad enough he’s not gonna be doing much for the rest of the weekend besides fretting about who coulda possibly sued him.”

  “Sounds great to me,” Miguel said. “I’ll get Monty out’ve the back of the delivery truck- you guys don’t know how to jigger the lock to make it open. Jake, did you get the ID badge?”

  “Yep, when I bumped into the guy. And we just hook it to his breast pocket and- ‘Voila!’ spin it around backwards and no one will see the pictures don’t match, and it’ll open any door that junior back there is cleared for.”

  Russ looked around. “Gentlemen,” he whispered, “it would appear we are in business!”

  Of course, that was when the blue rocks began to fail.

  #

  “Should we give aid to the poor. . .how do you say it? Fatuus?” Gladiatrix was looking at the monitor while Henry kept ducking his head, dodging the occasional bullet that the older lady kept zinging by him.

  “That’s fool, Neela,” said Peter, giggling again. “Your English is getting better, though. Guys, whaddya think?”

  “I say let the fool stew in his juices,” said the empty chair to Peter’s right. “I mean, if she was gonna kill him, she woulda done it already. Right? Plus Jason is there, and he’s gonna wake up at some point.”

  “Good point,” Peter said, his hand a blur as he unwrapped and consumed a half-dozen candy bars. “Okay, Jack says we leave him to the old lday. Ricky, whaddya you think?”

  “Meh,” said a high-pitched voice from the rafter above them. A tiny head, half the size of a cue ball popped into sight above them, still in its red cowl. “I’m with Bill on this one. Henry’s been a douchebag for a while now. I think this’ll be a good lesson for ‘im. ‘Sides,” he continued, as his body suddenly grew to normal size and he dropped down to the floor, “this is the best laugh I’ve had in months on this gig!”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  “Alright, then it’s settled. We let Henry dig his own way out’ve this hole he’s gotten himself in. Jeeves? How’s the check coming?”

  “The wire transfer from the Zurich account is forthcoming, sir,” said the console in a crisp British accent. “I’m told the funds will be safely transferred in the next two minutes, at which point the laser printer will begin-”

  “Okay, yeah, I get it, now-” Peter paused for a few seconds to finish the gallon of milk he’d started after he’d finished the candy. “How’s Jason looking?”

  “He’s still out of it, by the looks of him,” the empty chair said again. “I don’t think any of us know exactly what was in that little gas cocktail Henry hit him with, but he’s still off in La-La land.”

  “Fine. He’ll come around eventually. He always does. Now, once that check’s printed, I’ll zip down and deliver it, but Henry’s gotta be the one to make peace and escort her out. Then, we escort Henry out, unless he really pisses us off and we get security to do it. Sound good? Everybody’s cool with this?”

  Heads nodded. The empty chair rustled for a moment while Jack stood up and made his head visible. “I’m fine with it,” Jack said, his dark skin an odd contrast with the stark-white wall behind him, “but with Henry being unstable right now, I’m wondering if it wouldn’t be a good idea to gas him, too, or something else. The lady down there- who is she again?”

  “Comp’s ID’d her finally," Johnny said, walking over to the computer, jumping into the air and shirking again, landing with a light touch onto the keyboard. “Damn thing’s kinda slow, but it happens with a database this big. Her name’s Jane Cobb, aka ‘Calamity Jane,’ an old, reformed bank robber. Now she does fitness videos for old geezers.”

  “She looks far too youthful to have been thieving from banks fifty years ago,” Neela said. “Are we certain of this?”

  “No,”Johnny said. “This is 1985, not the 30th century. The tech that mapped out her face is pretty new, and we may have a few bugs in it yet. Jason was right, though, she is a celebrity; hence, Pete, you better get that check to her and get her off base before anything more happens and she bankrupts the whole darned team.”

  “Fine, I’ll call security. If anything goes wrong between that storeroom and the front door, it’ll be more on them than us. I-hey, where’s the guard at the front gate?”

  They all looked at the monitor. The small guard shack at the front gate was empty.

  “Maybe he had to hit the head?” Jack said, going invisible again. “You want me to check on him?”

  “Naw,” said Pete. “See this monitor? Kid’s I.D. just got used to enter the base. You’re right; he’s probably just going to the bathroom. We’ll give him a couple more minutes; let Henry stew in his juices, and we can - hey, what’s that group of guys in the hallway by the gift shop?”

  #

  “Where to now, Russ? I’m sure we don’t have a lot of time before this all goes to shit.”

  Mitch looked at me plaintively. So did Miguel and Jake. Monty looked haughtily at the rest of us and snatched the stolen ID out of Jake’s hand. “If I may, I can now act the part for which I was brought here? I- ah!”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. Monty’s hand had suddenly seized up for some reason.

  “My- I’ve got bursitis and carpal tunnel, but they’d stopped after I took the blue-things Jane had given me. Dear God, I forgot how much it hurt!”

  I swallowed, and looked in a nearby novelty mirror at the gift shop. There were several wrinkles that weren’t there this morning that were there now- the deeper furrows in my forehead were more pronounced, and my elbow hurt where I’d pumped it a little too hard last night while dropping my smoke bombs.

  “Okay, so we didn’t take our meds this morning. We’ve still got time. Listen guys, Jane needs us, and we need to get her out of here. Monty, get some mileage out of that work shirt you’re wearing from your security gig, and start walking like we were being escorted and you belong here. Mitch, keep your winterbeam under your coat but be ready to pull it out in case things get bad- it’s the only gun we’ve got, but if we yell that it’s the weapon that stopped The One for an hour, we might be able to get out’ve this popsicle stand before things get really bad. Jake, get ready to start talking if Monty fucks up . . .”

  “Excuse me?” said Monty.

  “We ain’t got time for that, Monty. It could happen, and then Jake’s the fallback. Miguel, be ready while your muscles hold out just in case it looks like we can get out of trouble by bopping someone in the nose and stuffing them in a broom closet somewhere. Got it?”

  “Ready to go amigo. But we better move fast if you wanna take advantage of my fighting; my arms are getting skinnier.”

  “Fine, let’s go. Monty, you’re the security guy. Where’re we going? Where do they have Jane?”