Mercy (The Night Man Chronicles Book 3), Brett Battles [best books to read in your 20s TXT] 📗

hidden in a faux ceiling beam lights up the screen.

I imagine the system is meant for showing montages of a happy couple’s life together or something similar. Tonight’s show will be a little less romantic but equally satisfying.

I move behind the chairs again and click my mic three times, letting Jar know the projector is on.

A moment passes before an image appears on the screen. It’s a static shot of a dark space, with details hard to make out beyond a few shadowy forms. Then Jar switches the input from visible light to night vision, and the room comes into focus.

Marco gasps when he realizes what he’s looking at.

Blaine remains clueless. “I don’t get…it. It’s…a room. So what?”

“Look,” Marco hisses.

Blaine is quiet for a second, then says, “Oh…crap.”

Oh, crap, indeed.

What they are looking at is the storage room they rented at a facility in the city of Orange, where they keep all their ill-gotten goods, and where, I suspect, they’ve done most of their planning.

Superimposed in the top right corner of the image is the time, indicating this is a live shot. Whether Marco and Blaine notice this or not, I don’t know. But they’ll figure it out soon enough.

I click my mic once. A query, which Jar has no problem interpreting.

“Two minutes out.”

I click again, this time to let her know I understand.

“Why are you…showing us…this?” Marco asks. “We-we don’t know…what this…is.”

I almost blow it and laugh. I mean, it’s funny because a moment ago Marco all but said, That’s our place. He may be the smarter of the two but he’s no Stephen Hawking.

Seconds go by without any change to the image.

Marco again says he doesn’t know what he’s looking at, but his tone is half-hearted at best. After another thirty seconds, he says, “Okay…yes…it’s ours, okay. We’re…we’re sorry.”

“Yeah, man,” Blaine jumps in. “We’re…sorry.”

“All of that…you can…have it,” Marco offers. “Just let us…go.”

“Pulling up now,” Jar informs me.

Marco’s and Blaine’s pleas continue, their voices growing more and more desperate.

I’m not going to lie. I’m really enjoying this.

“Switching back to visual light mode,” Jar warns me.

The picture on the screen reverts to the dim image we first saw.

“What’s happening?” Blaine asks. “Why is it…dark?”

Over the Camelot banquet room’s speakers come the muted sounds of footsteps. Blaine hasn’t heard them because he’s been blathering, but I’m betting Marco has.

The steps go silent, and for a moment all is quiet. Then, at the same time we hear the screech of the metal roll-up door being opened, light floods into the storage space.

Marco lets out a shocked curse under his breath as several police officers, weapons drawn, move into the room.

“What are…they doing there?” Blaine asks. “How did they…find out?”

“I swear to God…if you say…another word…” Marco says.

“What? What…did I…say?”

On the screen, the cops continue until they reach the back.

“Clear,” one of them shouts.

“Clear,” another says.

The men lower their weapons and begin looking around. It doesn’t take long before one of them approaches the table in the back corner.

We have a special camera focused down on it and Jar switches to that one now.

On the table is the notebook Marco used to work out the details of his and Blaine’s activities. He’s been pretty diligent about ripping pages out and getting rid of them once a job is done, but success has bred laziness, and the notes for the last few jobs are still in the book. He is cryptic in his writing, so it will take a bit of work to figure out what the notebook contains, but I have every confidence the police will succeed.

There’s something else on the table, too. Something Jar and I added just before we came here. It’s a printout of a map, a small section of Santa Ana that features El Palacio Banquet Center. Written in pencil right next to the center’s name is today’s date.

“Got something here,” the cop at the table says.

Another officer comes over, probably the man in charge, and the first guy points at the map without touching. The newly arrived cop looks at it for a moment, then touches his mic.

“This is Sergeant Yates. We have a possible location on the burglar suspects.”

Our map might have been a little on the nose, but it has done the trick. The sergeant’s reporting of it is my cue.

I tap the remote again, turning off the projector and sending the screen back into the ceiling. I then walk toward the door without looking back at Marco and Blaine.

“Hey! Hey! Where…are you going?” Marco calls. “You’ve got to…get us out…of here! Whatever you want! I swear…I’ll give you…anything!”

I don’t react. I simply put the remote back where I found it, head to the exit, and grab my bag.

“You son of a…bitch! We…. You’d…better watch your back…because we will…find you!”

When I enter the hall, I’m tempted to close the door behind me, as a symbol of how little his words mean to me. But I want to keep things easy for the cops so I leave it open. The moment the police see it, I’m sure they’ll check the room.

I also leave open the door I use to exit the building. Then I walk two blocks to where Jar waits in the van we rented for the job.

“Any news?” I ask as I climb into the driver’s seat.

“Four units inbound,” she says. “ETA three minutes.”

I start the engine. “I guess we should get going.”

We’re eastbound on W. Santa Clara Avenue, almost to the I-5 freeway, when a pair of Santa Ana police department cruisers race past us in the other direction, emergency lights flashing, sirens off.

Some days are really good.

Chapter Two

And some days aren’t.

Technically it’s not really a new day. We finished at El Palacio Banquet Experience around sixteen hours ago, at 1:30 a.m. It’s now 5:13 p.m., and Jar and I are in the living room of my Redondo Beach townhouse, watching the local news.

All day I’ve been feeling pretty satisfied. Taking down a pair of lowlifes like Marco and Blaine has a