Deadline≫hemmings a.u

3.4

The sky was fading, the purple and pink hues of the sunset becoming an aegean blue that would soon grow dark into another night sky. The streetlights had flickered to life about thirty minutes ago, their bulbs casting white rings of light on the sidewalk below. Houses rose on either side of us, grand and magnificient. Some had wrought iron gates blocking the driveway that led to the house and garage large enough to fit five or six cars. They all look the same reguardless, with their well-lit front yards and the expensive cars that are parked in the drive, shining as if their pretentious mechanical lives depended on it.

There was one house, not at the end of the street, but in the middle of two other houses that looked just like it, give or take a plant and shrub or a paint shade or two. The only difference with this one was it was dark, no source of illumination inside or outside of the house, save for the light that bounced off the walls from the neighboring homes. And the driveway, that was empty as well.

Not a single thing had stirred from the said house for the whole hour and twenty-four minutes that we had been here. In fact, I knew there had been little to no activity here for the past three days. And we had information that confirmed that there would be none for the next week and a half. Except for us.

"We're all set up," Michael announced, breaking the silence in our car. I tore my gaze away from the house just a little ways down the street from us and looked at him, the dim glow of his laptop casting soft shadows across his features. Michael looked tired, we all did. But the determination and excitement of the task at hand was evident in every aspect of him, the line between his brows, his posture and steady hold on the computer, and his alert eyes that flicked from me to Luke, and then back to his screen.

"All that's left to do is wait for them. For now, at least." Luke murmured, his gaze elsewhere as if he had said that only for him to hear. His blue eyes, which were mostly dulled by the darkening sky, were searching down the street in the opposite way of the house in search of a pair of headlights that would signal the arrival of the other three. Like Michael, Luke was focused. I could see it in the sharp set of his jaw, his drawn brows, and his steady gaze. This was the same Luke I'd been on raids with months ago, calm and collected, yet calculating. But now he had grown, in more ways than one, and he treated the task at hand with such caution, I began to question if I even knew the full extent of the job, or if he was just on an extra edge.

But how complex could it be? Michael had hacked into the security system and disabled the cameras like he did back in North Carolina, programming them to replay the same footage from the past few hours. He and Sid would be here in the car, disabling motion sensors and keycodes as we went. Luke and Ro would be the guards, trailing us and manning the entrances just to make sure nothing went wrong. That, of course left the rest of the task up to me and Aileen, the most unlikely pairing I could have asked for. But our job was simple enough. Follow Michael's and Sid's directions into the house and to the main office where we would plug in Michael's thumb and open the only file on there that would scan the computer for everything we needed, including the account information needed to get in and transfer money.

Easy.

I went back to gazing out the window, this time with a little less confidence, the twisting feeling in my stomach becoming more noticeable by the second. Truth be told, I was a lot less sure about everything than Luke or Michael seemed to be. For some reason, I couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't right. When I mentioned it to Michael earlier, he had just given me what was supposed to be a reassuring hug and told me I was just jittery from nerves. And Luke? I hadn't mentioned a thing to Luke.

When I woke this morning, he wasn't beside me. Michael said Luke told him he would be down in the hotel's gym, attempting to work with his injured shoulder. Yet, when he came back around noon, clad in his usual black skinny jeans and face unflushed, we figured out pretty quickly that he had lied. Luke went cold on me, back to his short, clipped, one word answers.