“Isn’t that, I don’t know, completely suicidal?”
He laughed and shook his head. “You’d think, but nobody would dare rob him. Nobody but me, at least. The place will be empty that late. It’ll be easy.”
“Liam, don’t. We can figure something else out.”
He stood up and stretched, and I briefly admired his lean, muscular form. He grinned down at me.
“Trust me. I can do this.”
I shook my head, at a loss for words.
“I’m going to make a call and then get some sleep. You should too.”
I nodded. “Are you sure?”
“Not at all. But I’m going to do it anyway.”
He strode out of the room and I watched him go. Silence flooded the room again, and I felt suffocated by all the paper scattered around me.
I didn’t want him to go. I wanted to run away, leave Philadelphia forever, forget about everything and disappear, but I knew he couldn’t do that. Plus, I couldn’t leave Petey with Chelsea. I had to trust him.
I got up and walked into the bedroom and collapsed onto the thin mattress. I wasn’t going to give up. I wasn’t going to let everything destroy me. I wasn’t going to let Liam go through hell alone, no matter what the cost. I wasn’t going to be some weak, whiney girl who broke down at the first sign of a problem. I had to get my shit together and support him the best that I could. When I woke up, I decided that I’d go through everything one more time, just in case we missed something.
As sleep began to overtake me, I pictured Liam sneaking around an empty pub, pulling paintings and jewels off of the walls like a cartoon robber.
Chapter Nineteen: Liam
“You sure about this?”
I looked back at Leary, at his all-black outfit and his black ski mask, and nodded. The neighborhood was silent, except for the soft buzz of a weak yellow streetlight. It was around three in the morning, and I knew that the place would be empty, or at least our chances were pretty good that it would be. I reached forward and felt the hard plastic body of the car we were crouched behind and thought about the past few days in silence as Leary steadied himself.
Ellie was counting on me. Fuck, everyone I knew was counting on me, and they didn’t even know it. Richie and his mom were safe, probably having a great time with all the cash I gave them, but their lives would be done with if I didn’t figure my shit out.
I wasn’t ready to roll over and let Colm murder me. I breathed deep and could practically taste the stillness and the fear wafting through the air. Across the street, Colm’s pub was dead, black, and closed up, and Leary was watching it like a hawk, ready for any sudden movement or any flicker of light that would give the presence of a guard away. But there was nothing: Colm was confident in his position, and he didn’t think he needed to post any goons to watch over his spot.
His overconfidence would work in our favor.
I didn’t know what I was waiting for. We had been watching the place for over an hour, had seen the staff close the place up, had watched them wander home, had seen the building sit empty and quiet. We were as sure as we were ever going to be that nobody was sitting in there with a loaded pistol, ready to murder anyone who tried to get in. My hands were shaking and I was sweating through my own black clothing, the ski mask bunched up on my head, letting my face get some air. I wanted to turn back, but there was nothing to go back to.
I looked at Leary. He looked nervous too, jittery, but he always looked that way.
“You ready?”
“I guess.”
“Last chance.”
He grinned at me. “And lose the opportunity to have the future boss of the Irish Mob owe me one huge fucking favor? No thanks.”
I shook my head, laughing quietly. “Let’s go, idiot.”
He shifted his weight and crossed the street quickly, sticking to the shadows where he could. I followed him, willing my feet not to make too much noise on the blacktop. We hit the side of the building and slipped down an alleyway, looking for the side door. The place smelled like puddled water and trash as Leary flattened himself up against a wall, nodding at the green, rusting door.
I was up. I pulled out a small leather case and slipped out a steel pick plus a steel tension rod and pushed them into the lock. I bit my lip, breathing deeply to calm my heart and my shaking hands. Leary kept watch silently as I worked at the lock, driving the pick inside and pushing at the pins. Lock picking was a lot easier than most civilians realized; any lock on almost any door, at least those that used the common key-and-tumbler format, could be broken into within minutes. No door is truly safe. The only thing that really kept the bad guys out was the social contract, the belief that breaking into another person’s house was wrong.