The comms crackled in her ear. Hannah pressed her earpiece in, disbelief and betrayal fighting for real estate on her face.

  “You WHAT? You started publishing your fanfiction about us concurrently on ROYAL ROAD?! Even the MASSAGE TABLE chapter?”

  Beyond the infiltration point, a squirrel screamed, then went silent as an owl snatched it up and broke its neck in one fell swoop. From her front cargo pocket, she pulled out a device the size and shape of a cop’s flashlight. She pressed the red button at the butt of it. Flick! A thin, superheated wire no thicker than a fishing line stilettoed out from the other end.

  Shvvvt! Hannah sheared off the bolts on the garden gate. They clinked on the pavers below like a laborer’s wrenches when he was done taking it in the ear from bossman.

  Shnk. The monofilament hissed as it cooled, retracting back into its housing. Back in her pocket. She glanced back to the pink Tesla, California license plate “5 ACES”, parked in the driveway. Rajiv’s signature sled for slipping his self-created omnishambleses, served sizzling hot HOT H-O-T like a steak at Ruth’s Chris to the stupid suckers sitting in Silicon Valley’s silliest, most sumptuous boardrooms, all of whom slapped each other on their asses senselessly after sealing the signatures with shakes and serpent smiles.

  No alarms.

  Good. Back to the mission.

  “I can’t believe you, bestie!” Hannah hissed into the keyed mic.

  “Had to. Their site just gets more eyes on it than ours, y’know.”

  Mac hugged her from behind before she pushed the gate open. “Cheryl, most people on the Internet already know what we’ve been up to. What’s one more platform? At least Eureka and Tar didn’t throw us to the degens on Wattpad or AO3.”

  Hannah blushed. Mac had a point. She always hated when he had a point. “You’re right. And it isn’t even relevant. Job at hand, Davey. We can cuddle on the couch later.”

  “Mmh. It’s a promise, then,” Mac replied.

  Pushing open the wooden gate, they padded in and froze: five sheds. Five full-sized, corrugated metal and asphalt-shingled pieces of shit, each one topped off like a father with a bad habit at gas stations would do for his car and stuffed to criticality with Rajiv’s hoard of crap, no doubt spoils of his dubious, unrelenting shuffle for neo-greenbacks. He was, after all, the greatest conman in the Silicon Valley, and therefore the world.

  “Five sheds. You gotta be shitting me. Four, I could understand. But five?! Get a storage unit, dude,” Mac quipped in a low whisper.

  Hannah’s earpiece crackled again.

  “Wot dew yew awl see, Mr. and Mrs. McGuire-Sinclair?” Eureka teased.

  “Sheds,” they replied in perfect harmony—neither noticing nor caring about Eureka’s jab.

  Wasting no time, Hannah opened the shed closest to the gate and gestured for Mac to clear the one behind it. “Gun up, Mac. We’ve got no clue what we’re gonna see.”

  Hannah flipped on the Streamlight TLR-7X under her Glock 19, the dot on her Trijicon RMR HD a pale red night orchid blooming under the moonlight. The battery still had life in it, unlike the last last last president, who was taken care of in a “freak accident” where he slipped on a pile of unpaid debts from every other country and every foreign bank on Earth, even the broke ones, while chasing a rat around the White House. Most citizens thought it was accidental, but Hannah knew the score from a friend of a cousin of someone’s mom despite all thirty federal intelligence agencies assembling a crack team of spinmeisters in a desperate media blitz to paint Whistler’s Mother on the body bag. Duke, baby.

  Glock and a cleaver, Sinclair. All a girl really needs.

  She glanced back at Mac.

  Well… maybe somebody to call home as well.

  Which reminds me…

  “Love you, Mac. Professionally.”

  “Darlin’… Love you too. As a convenience thing. I was wondering what felt off this morning. Thanks for reminding me to say it.”

  “Yew dummies have a mic open,” Eureka piped in. “Give Mum the channel fer fahk’s sake!”

  Tar’s frosty voice cut the chit-chat. “Attention all units, please keep it professional.”

  “Loud and clear, Ms. Tar, heheh!” Gordon radioed in, loitering a block away in Suzie Red for a speedy exfiltration.

  Creak! Hannah opened the first shed and shone her light in. “Acknowledged—”

  “Jinx!” Mac and Hannah replied in unison.

  Tar groaned, giving her blessing over comms. “Oh my Gawd, hayaku kekkon shichainasai yo! Chotto mate… Hmm.”

  “Mum’s roight!” Eureka barked. “Get fahkin’ marrehd alreadeh yew ADORABLE MENACES!”

  Gordon keyed in again to punctuate the bit with a staticky dad-chuckle.

  Shit. I gotta change the subject before this gets out of hand.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Shining her light around the cramped shed, she found nothing that looked like it held a stupid scrap of an ancient paper map.

  “Just a cheap mahjong table and some cleaning supplies in this one,” Hannah radioed in.

  “Black widows, a lawn mower, a leaf blower… nothing in this one as well,” Mac added calmly.

  The third and fourth sheds turned up nothing as well. Hannah regrouped with Mac. Together, they closed in on the last shed in the back corner of Rajiv’s yard, perched on a raised round concrete platform where a beautiful gazebo had once stood, hard-clearing every nook an enemy could peek from. “Babyboy. I’ll cover y—”

  Then, a flood of magenta light blinded them.

  A familiar, hollow, overly dignified Elizibethan voice rang out from behind them, as if an Amazon Echo binge-read all of Shakespeare and took over the whole HOA while it was at it in a long-winded evil soliloquy. “THIS IS RAJIV CHAUDHARY’S VILLA. DO THE NEEDFUL AND KINDLY STAND DOWN, SIRS. OR WE WILL FIRE.”

  Hannah dashed forward, grabbing Mac and carrying their combined momentum into the shed door, punching a Mac-and-Hannah-sized hole clean through to the other side, with Mac landing on top of her behind a lemon tree for cover.

  DAKKADAKKADAKKADAKKADAKKADAKKA!

  The night exploded all around them as Hannah tracked pink tracers coming from every window facing the backyard.

  “OOF!”

  This feels oddly familiar. Oh. The Quantum Promenade. I was in that silver party dress and landed on top of him like a giggling schoolgirl with a big crush…

  Now’s not the time for embarrassment in hindsight, girl! Got you the boy in the end. That’s not what matters! What matters is that… Hannah took half a beat, assessing Mac for wounds.

  Damn, he really does have some nice matters… WAIT. TAR. Contingency two.

  “TAR! NUMBER TWO! NOW!”

  “Number two? Heheheh—” Mac muffled into her chest as screaming motors from above cut him off.

  “DRONES!” Hannah screamed, burying Mac deeper into her favorite Kevlar-lined cashmere sweater. The navigation lights of three repurposed crop sprayers presumably armed with AR-15s buzzed over the Indian pines butting up against the fence. Their two-stroke moped engines sputtered and died. They fell gracelessly, a trio of shot tom turkeys, their heavy dead weight autorotating into the rose bushes and catching them on fire.

  DAKKADAKKADAKKAclickclickclick! Fire from the house subsided as the guns jammed up one by one.

  “Bought you some time. Yoink the map piece and git! It should be in a map drawer in the shed you just blew through. Just grab the whole thing!” Tar crackled. “Gordon, pick them up. Eureka, man the firewall so they don’t trace me!”

  “Burn rubber! ETA 30 seconds!”

  “On it, Mum!”

  Mac scrambled off her, getting up. He turned away, scratching the back of his head and readjusting his cap.

  “I… Uhh… I’m just gonna wait for you at the gate. Go get ‘em, Darlin’!” Sprinting to the exit as fast as he could given his extenuating circumstances, he reached the gate faster than expected.

  “Don’t think I’ve ever seen him move that fast… What a dork,” Hannah muttered, dusting herself off as she got up. She checked over her shoulder before ending her aside. “I love him.”

  You aren’t slick, Babyboy. Talk about fight, flight, or FUCK… One less thing I need to worry about, though. Guess doing all three really does work.

  Hannah dolphined through the busted back wall of the shed, taking care not to snag the intricate weaves of her reinforced cashmere on the jagged metal rim of the hole she and Mac had just punched through. One of the front doors lay on the ground in fragments while the other one hung bent from its bottom hinge, the top one having borne the full weight of Mac and Hannah crashing through. Breathing in the dust and the smoke from the burning roses, she brought her collar up to her face and started feeling around the old computer components that still haven’t been taken to an e-waste center, a top-end streaming setup from five years ago, boxes of files from 2025, and some idiot’s failed prototypes of 3D-printed skateboard trucks.

  Oh, Saint Anthony. If you’re listening in a place like this, please.

  Not a moment later, her hands felt something square and metal.

  Bingo.

  But it didn’t budge. Using all her strength, she ripped up the whole safe from its anchors like an FBI agent executing a search warrant whose muscles had been growing for too long in a vat of human growth hormone, bear hugging it and blasting away the remaining door out front in a textbook truck tackle: low and with the shoulders squared.

  SKRRRRRRRRR! A familiar red Chevy SS spun around to a stop in front of the driveway, nailing the parking job.

  Gordon.

  “Mac! Pop the trunk so we can load up and get the fuck outta here!” Hannah hollered after him, who was already running to Suzie Red parked curbside. Pop! Latch. Running after him, she barreled through the garden gate, shattering the nailed-together planks of redwood into splinters.

  Fuck Rajiv, I just wanna go home and watch Netflix with Mac while we cuddle on the couch under a blanket.

  Making their way down the driveway, the lights from the house next door all turned on at once. A shrill Karen’s voice added her most valuable opinion to the brisk night air. “SHUT THE FUCK UP! IT IS WAY PAST QUIET HOURS! We’re calling the police!”

  This little hoe…

  Hannah snarled back. “You think the police are gonna send someone out to this neighborhood? Just because it’s a gated community? This ain’t the Hamptons, let alone Mt. Hamilton, you ungodly lying-on-LinkedIn, spreadsheet-minmaxing, FIRE-striver, HOA-board-sitting, Meyers-Briggs-weaponizing, working-so-hard-at-an-email-job, burnout-worshipping, fake-IKEA-plant-owning-to-pretend-you-have-a-personality Nextdoor neighborhood surveillance state snitch ladder-climbing big fake smiles daughter of a mid-level failson, ever-adulterous wife to your seventh practice husband, and mother of Aiden, Braden, Jaden, Kayden, and Okayden compromise of a so-called soul! Do you know where you are? You’re in a fake-ass neighborhood with a Spanish name, renting a shoddy matchstick three-bed, two-bath house roofed by some desperate Argentinian refugees, some shantytown shack that won’t even last the next twenty-five years, let alone The Next Big One, and a shiny new fatass Jeep Gladiator on a N$4,999 note at 50.1% APR parked out front that won’t even last seven. No wonder your ex-husbands all despise you. Get the fuck over yourself and stop huffing your own farts, you corn-fed, self-glorifying, entitled SOW! Connais ta place, espèce de misérable. Et détends-toi et tonds ta foutue pelouse, c'est une horreur.”

  The house next door flicked their lights off. Whump! Thunk! With Mac’s help, Hannah loaded the map drawer into Suzie Red’s trunk and closed it. Kachunk! They hopped in.

  Covered in dirt, Hannah waved a resigned green flag for Gordon, pointing out the windshield. “Let’s go home, Gordon.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Sensing that she didn’t want to talk about it, Gordon signaled, looked over his shoulder, and rocketed away from the scene, not looking back at Rajiv’s burning, ransacked garden. Cool guys never looked back.

  Mac pried anyways. “Hannah?”

  “WHAT?” she snapped, regretting it immediately.

  For a moment he pulled back, then smiled warmly. “Just checking on you. Your eyes went all scary and black when you were talking to that lady. Would you like me to run you a bath when we get home?”

  She returned it, pinning his hand into the seat cushion with hers. “You would? That’s awfully kind of you. Yeah. I’d like that.”

  “Planet Earth and cuddles afterward?” Hannah requested, stealing his lips for just a moment.

  “Of course we can. It’s Tuesday night. We can turn in our Wednesday afternoon mid-week report to Tar from home. She’d understand,” Mac replied.

  Maybe tonight wasn’t so bad. Objective secured. Nobody and nothing of value was lost. Tar bought me enough time to barbecue that biatch low and slow. Mac and I somehow dodged every bullet. We get to sleep in tomorrow. And this guy always spoils me rotten…

  Yeah, never mind. My life rules right now. It was just adrenaline, Sinclair. You’ve been on a billion runs before…

  Bath time with my beloved Davey. Just think about that on the ride home.

  Imagining the rest of their night, she looked out the window and sighed in dreamy contentment, the flickering, fading LED and neon lights of San Jose serving as their north star back to Salt Ponds.

  “Man, you guys take me back to the first few years after I met her… Hope things continue working out between you two,” Gordon rumbled as he put his foot on the brakes and felt how much grip Suzie Red was giving him for the turn onto the on-ramp to 101 South. Then, downshifting with a precise blip of the throttle, he pushed the wheel with one flowing movement, making the corner with ease, setting a course southeast with only the waning moon in hot pursuit.