4 AM.
Zen's text came in while I was still half asleep. I read it twice before I sat up.
Big job. Eight thousand. Old man in Long Beach had a Hellcat Charger sitting in his driveway, hadn't moved in days. Probably on vacation. Zen needed it at a chop shop by 9 AM. He had a tool that could pop any car in under five seconds. He'd get it to me in the morning.
I put the phone face down on the mattress.
A Hellcat. That was a different category of thing entirely.
I went back to sleep.
* * *
Woke up at seven. Made food, grabbed an energy drink. Checked on Gia and Rue, checked on Mom. Everyone was good.
I drove to Zen's.
The tool looked like a satellite dish mounted to a backpack frame. He walked me through it. Point it at the door handle, press the button, it cycles frequencies until it finds the match. Modern Dodges took about three seconds. He said go at night but be at the shop by nine.
I said ok and drove home.
Parked the Z, ordered an Uber to Long Beach. Found a motel twenty minutes from the address. Cash only, no ID. The place had seen everything and remembered nothing.
Checked in. Set an alarm for 8 PM.
* * *
At nine I ordered another Uber to the McDonald's three minutes from the house.
The driver was maybe fifty, talkative. He looked at the backpack in my lap.
"What's in there if you don't mind me asking?"
"Science fair project. Meeting my lab partner for the last part."
"That's cool. I always wished I was better at science."
I nodded and let him talk the rest of the way.
He dropped me at McDonald's. I went in, ordered a large coffee, sat by the window for ten minutes and watched the street.
Quiet. Residential. Nothing moving.
I put my headphones in. Nipsey. Rap Niggas. Pulled my hood up and walked out.
* * *
Three minutes from the McDonald's, GPS in my ear, mask folded in my pocket. I walked at a normal pace. Nobody on the street. Porch lights on here and there, a dog somewhere a few blocks over.
Then I saw it.
Yellow and black Hellcat Charger. Sitting in the driveway, wide body, dual exhaust. It did not belong in front of that house and it knew it.
I walked past without stopping.
Camera mounted between his house and the neighbor's, pointed straight at the car. Motion detection. The second I touched the door handle it was going to push an alert to his phone. He'd see me on the feed or he'd see the car gone. Either way the clock started the moment I moved.
I turned the corner, got everything ready. Mask on, hood tight, backpack unzipped, tool in my right hand.
Then I ran.
* * *
Driver's side door. I jammed the tool against the handle and hit the button.
One. Two. Three.
The locks popped.
The camera flash fired the same instant. Motion light above the garage came on full white.
I yanked the door, threw myself in, backpack onto the passenger seat. The push-button start read the cloned signal and the engine turned over.
The sound hit me before I was fully seated.
6.2 liter supercharged Hemi at idle. Not loud, not aggressive, just enormous. A low dense rumble that came up through the seat and into your sternum and stayed there. I put it in reverse and backed out clean. Kept it under forty all the way to the end of the block.
Two minutes out, steady, I heard sirens. Distant. Multiple units, converging from different directions.
He'd checked his phone fast.
I found the on-ramp and got on the freeway.
* * *
405 at night. Three lanes, light traffic. I merged into the center and held seventy. Normal speed. Nothing to see.
The sirens were still behind me, working the surface streets. Not on the freeway yet.
I gave it thirty seconds.
Then I moved left and put my foot down.
The supercharger whined and the car went. Not gradually, not building. It just went. Seventy to ninety to a hundred and ten and the engine wasn't working hard, wasn't straining. It was barely getting started. The speedometer kept climbing and the Hellcat kept pulling and there was no drama in it at all, just raw displacement doing exactly what it was built to do.
Hundred and twenty. Lane markers strobing white under the headlights.
A silver sedan doing sixty-five appeared ahead. I went around it on the right, the gap opened and closed in under a second. The wind buffet rocked me when I cleared it.
Hundred and thirty.
The freeway curved left and the Hellcat tracked through it, wide body planted, rear tires holding, all that weight working in my favor for once. I eased off just enough through the apex and came out still climbing.
No pursuit. The sirens had disappeared completely. Either they never made the freeway or they lost me in the first minute.
I held it at a hundred and twenty for another mile, then let off and coasted back to eighty. Moved into the center lane.
Breathed.
My hands were steady on the wheel. The engine dropped back to that low idle rumble and sat there, unbothered.
I thought about the Z for a second. What Zen could do with a platform and an engine this size. Then I let the thought go. Not my car. Job to finish.
I set the GPS for the shop and drove the rest of the way clean.
* * *
Pulled in at 8:47 AM.
Two guys came out before I had the door open. One of them walked a slow circle around the Hellcat and ran his hand along the hood without saying anything.
I left the fob on the seat, grabbed the backpack, and called Zen.
"It's there."
"Good. You good?"
"Yeah."
Ubered back to the motel, grabbed my stuff, took another one home.
Walked in the front door at ten. The house was quiet. I put the backpack in my closet, sat on the edge of my bed, and took my shoes off.
Lay back.
The supercharger was still going in my head.
I closed my eyes and Laughed like a child pure joy.
END OF CHAPTER THIRTEEN