The Devil Inside

8: Ocean's Eleven

"We're on a time crunch," Cooper pressed for the fourth time in half as many minutes. He tapped his foot against the linoleum floors of Calla's kitchen, his eyes darting over his shoulder, toward the front door.

"I know," Calla snapped, shoving the station's blueprints into her ratty backpack. She'd poured over the blueprints for two days now, walking through the layout and trying to match it with her brief, incomplete memories of the old concrete building.

Getting her hands on the blueprints had been surprisingly easy; she'd simply emailed the local library and requested a copy of the originals. The documents were supposedly for her presentation on 1900s architecture. As if she'd ever write a paper on the architecture of this town. Please.

Calla made for the kitchen sink and crouched low, digging around in the cabinet until she'd found what she was looking for: two sets of latex gloves and a can of WD-40. She tossed everything into her backpack, contemplative.

Blueprints. Gloves. Lubricant...

"Do I look like a dweeb?" Cooper asked, also for the fourth time.

Calla looked at him. At the black sweats, the matching hoodie, and the black beanie shoved over his head. "You look like a grave robber."

He frowned. "I'm trying to be inconspicuous."

"Well. At least you're trying," she muttered. His expression darkened, so she added, "Don't overthink this." She hauled the backpack over her shoulder and stood. "Let's go."

Calla's mother had already left the house, off to help set up for the festivities at the town square. Rosalind volunteered her time for the event every year, as a way to "give back" to the community—whatever that meant. Community service clearly hadn't been hardwired into Calla's own off-kilter brain.

But Calla wasn't complaining. She'd been able to use the free time to go over the plan they'd concocted, step-by-meticulous-step, without the fear of her mother bursting in on her and wondering about the blueprints spread out on her daughter's bed.

"Walk me through it again." Cooper ran a nervous hand through his hair as she led the way to his car, left idling out in the driveway. Cold air kissed her face.

She'd walked through it a thousand times already. But still she slid into the passenger seat and recited, "We go in through the front door. You distract the security guard with your bullshit story. I'll ask to use the bathroom..."

From there, it would be simple enough to locate the sheriff's office. The station was a small, outdated concrete block with a single interrogation room, a cell, a main floor, and—leading off that main floor—two mid-sized conference rooms, one of which served as the old man's office.

Calla drummed her fingers against the center console. "And then I'll break into the office and look for the case file. You have to keep an eye on the clock. I can't risk being in there for more than ten, eleven minutes tops."

Cooper nodded, his knuckles white against the wheel as he settled in. "Right. Distract the guard. Bathroom break. Eleven minutes..."

He repeated those instructions to himself as he backed out of her driveway. Calla leaned back against the headrest and took a steadying breath. Distract the guard. Bathroom break. Eleven minutes. Distract the guard. Bathroom break...

Calla's phone rang. Cooper shot her a curious look as she answered the call. "Hey."

"You on the way?" Vincent asked, breathless with laughter. She heard the sound of music somewhere in the background.

She glanced at the dashboard. Thirty minutes. They just needed thirty minutes to make this work. "Almost. I had to take a shower."

"Pity I couldn't join," he said, his voice dropping to something low and sultry.