“Aren’t we the brave crooks?” I asked out loud. I was sitting crossed-legged on the steel catwalk of a billboard a hundred feet above the street, watching four burglars cut a hole into the adjacent building’s rooftop. “Especially with all the extra police everywhere.”
Right on cue, a squad car crawled down Spring Street below. There were definitely more police on patrol that evening.
Probably because of Jeff Ferrell.
The twenty-one-year-old University Of Washington student had been reported missing that afternoon. The case had come right on the heels of two other local disappearances: Anita Hart, a mother of three, and Sebastian Romero, owner of Champion Health Clubs.
Three people in two weeks— has to be a serial killer.
I could see no other explanation. However, according to my dad, Drake Jones, host of In the Spotlight for Channel Five News, missing person reports were filed with the Seattle Police Department almost every day. Only about one percent turned out to involve actual crimes, he said.
These particular cases had made headlines mainly due to Romero. I’d recognized him immediately when his face had flashed across the television screen eight days earlier. I’d had many opportunities to ogle the twelve-foot-high picture of him that graced a billboard off I-5 advertising his health clubs. His chiseled jaw and ripped biceps had been seared into my brain.
The guy is all muscle. He had to have been taken by gunpoint, or drugged.
I shook off the grim thoughts and redirected my attention toward the crime-in-progress. The thieves’ attire, similar to mine—black clothing and a ski mask—had been a dead giveaway that these four were up to no good when I’d happened upon them about thirty minutes earlier. The high-tech power tools they’d produced from two large duffel bags snuffed out any lingering doubts.
Chunks of cement blasted into the air as they drilled. The group wasn’t exactly being quiet, but wasn’t loud enough to draw attention from that high up, either. Good thing I’d decided to leap rooftops that night, or there wouldn’t have been any eyewitnesses.
While three of the thieves cut the hole in the roof, the fourth anchored four ropes to air conditioning units and put on a rappelling harness and backpack. The calm and proficient way the men worked suggested that breaking and entering was old hat for them. I could guarantee, however, their playbook didn’t include a fifteen-year-old mutant foiling their heist.
The harnessed thief lowered himself through the hole as the others shrugged on their own equipment. One man slid on a backpack, too, and rappelled into the dark office, followed by the next man. I expected the remaining thief to go down, as well, but he didn’t.
Plan B? I surmised, searching for reasons why he’d geared up but had stayed behind. Rappelling over the side of the building, if—I glanced at an access door to the roof—things go badly and they can’t escape the way they had come up.
Time for things to go badly, I thought, and pulled on a pair of soft, black angora gloves, embellished with a purple heart, dead center.
I gathered the handles of the colorful polka-dot gift bag nestled in my lap, and stood up. Then I gently tucked the bag against my side, drew several steps back on the catwalk, and took a running leap.
I soared over the alley separating the two buildings, dropping a full story, and landed, solidly and silently, in a crouch. My eyes darted to the pretty gift bag. I frowned. All this jumping was wrinkling the tissue.
