CHAPTER FIFTEEN

 

We made a quick stop at my place for a couple of supplies. I wasn't entirely sure what I'd need for an evening of breaking and entering, but I figured at least changing out of my heels was a good idea. I opted for a pair of black skinny jeans, a black formfitting T-shirt, and a pair of black knee-high boots that Shane said made me look like Batgirl. I decided to take it as a compliment.

I glanced at Shane's outfit. He was in dark jeans and a black T-shirt with some skateboard company's logo on it. Once he pulled a black beanie from his back pocket to cover his red hair, he looked the part of a B&E artist to a tee. Huh. I guessed there was little difference between regular teen style and criminal attire.

It was well after dark by the time we turned onto the bumpy road leading to the sanitation plant. The industrial area was nearly vacant this late at night, and I thanked God for small favors. The security lights of the plant became visible around the final curve in the road. I drove closer then pulled the car off the side of the road and rolled to a stop.

"Why are we stopping out here?" Shane asked.

"They probably have security cameras installed somewhere. Parking away from the plant will keep the cameras from getting my license plate if we were to happen to get caught," I explained.

"Good thinking, babe!"

"You know, I really appreciate you doing this for me, but I think you need to chill with the 'babe' thing, Shane."

He ignored me, his eyes focused on the looming recycling plant. "If they have cameras, won't they see our faces while we're roaming around in there?"

"Got it covered." I reached behind my seat then pulled out two Halloween masks I'd grabbed from my place.

I held Shane's mask out to him. He looked at me like I'd handed him an insult.

"You have got to be kidding me? There's no way I'm wearing that thing," he protested and held his hands up like I was trying to hand him a snake.

"Why? It's just a mask," I argued. "Take it." I pushed it toward him.

"It's a freaking Hello Kitty mask. You expect me to break into a company wearing a Hello Kitty mask? You must be off your rocker. The only thing worse than being caught while committing a crime is being a guy caught committing a crime wearing a kitten mask." He shook his head.

"Good grief." I rolled my eyes and slipped my own mask on.

He blinked at me.

"What?" I asked behind the plastic face of Wonder Woman.

"I guess there are worse things than Hello Kitty," he mumbled.

"Let's just get this over with."

We started toward the building at a quick clip, both of us self-consciously scanning the area for any night watchmen. None were in sight. The parking lot was void of cars, and the plant sat eerily quiet. We reached the empty lot and stopped. I looked around the exterior of the building.

"I don't see any security cameras," I said, scanning the roof of the building. Maybe Sunshine wasn't too worried about people stealing their trash.

"Neither do I," Shane agreed. "But how do we get in? Are you going to pick the lock or something?"

"Normally I would," I answered honestly. "But if this place has an alarm system, I don't want to set it off."

"Okay, so how are we going to get in?" Shane asked.

I glanced at the building. There was the front office I'd entered before and the large warehouses behind it, housing the main building. The doors leading into the main building were the metal rolling kind, like on a garage. Entering through one of those would be noisy, not to mention they were big enough that I wasn't sure Shane and I could lift them on our own.

Then it hit me.

"Follow me," I said.

I hurried across the parking lot to the farthest side of the building, Shane on my heels, then circled around to the back. A large red door with a handle at the top sat squarely in the middle of the building's back wall. Beneath it was the biggest dumpster I'd ever seen.

"Is that what I think it is?" Shane asked.

"It's the garbage chute."

"And you expect us to…oh, hell no." He held up his hands. "Do you smell that thing? The stench coming off of that dumpster is rank enough to gag a bag of maggots."

At the mention of maggots, my skin began to crawl, and I couldn't even attempt to stop the shiver that went through my body. Gross. Gross. Gross. "Look, it's not my favorite option either," I told him. Especially not in my leather boots. "But it's the best one we have."

He shook his head. "Look, you know I'd do anything for you, babe—"

"Please stop calling me that."

"—but this? This is beyond. It's trash."

"It's recycling. It's clean trash," I tried to argue.

Shane shot me a look that said even a seventeen-and-three-quarters kid could tell I was full of it.

I put on my best adult expression even though Shane couldn't possibly see it from behind my mask. "Oh, come on. Don't be a baby."

"Don't be a baby?" He lifted his mask and raised an eyebrow at me. "Don't think I didn't see that full-body shiver-slash-bug-dance you just did there."

"Put your mask back on," I hissed, looking around for cameras again. Just because I didn't see any didn't mean they weren't there.

He did, but not before shooting me another dirty look.

"Look, if there was another way in, I'd take it. But this is what we have. So be a man, and give me a boost." I waved him closer to me.

"I must be crazy. No, you must be crazy," he grumbled to himself. But he complied, kneeling down and lacing his fingers.

I put my foot into his hand, careful not to stab his palms with my pointy heel, then grabbed the top of the dumpster and felt Shane heft me up. A moment later, Shane hopped into the dumpster and landed on his feet on top of the bags. He worked his way to the door then hopped up, grabbed the handle, and easily pulled it down. It opened with a loud screech.

We both froze, listening to see if anyone was coming to investigate the sound. After a few seconds of silence, I felt my muscles relax again. Pulling my phone from my pocket, I hit my flashlight app and shined the light up the chute.

I didn't know what exactly was coating the chute's walls, but it was beyond disgusting.

Shane must have seen my dry heave, as he said, "This was your idea, babe."

"Don't remind me," I grumped. Luckily, as gross as it looked, the angle wasn't too steep, and it was plenty big enough to accommodate a person. I lifted my knee and hoisted myself up onto the chute. It was slick and sticky at the same time. I could practically feel the nasty stench latching on to my skin. I'd have to shower for a week straight to rid myself of the smell.

I heard Shane climb into the chute behind me. The door was spring loaded, so as soon as he crawled off of it, it slammed shut with a bang. I willed myself to take shallow breaths and quickly crawled forward. A few feet later, we hit the opening, and I looked out with my light, noting that there were several small security lights mounted at the floor against the walls of the warehouse. They didn't provide a huge amount of light, but it was enough to maneuver around the building, so I shut off my phone. I swung my legs out of the opening and dropped the short distance to the floor. Shane followed a second later, and we both looked around.

"There's no one here," he noted. "Funny, I thought there'd be some sort of security guard or something."

I shook my head. "Well, this is a recycling plant. Why would someone break in?"

"Besides us?" he asked.

I ignored his snarky comment and crept through the building, sticking as close to the wall as possible. We passed several conveyor belts and large machines that I knew were used for sorting recyclable products. The smell of bleach and strong chemicals permeated the air, and I had the fleeting thought that we might need more protection from the air than our plastic masks provided. Those chemicals couldn't be good for someone to breathe.

Along the far wall were rows and rows of gallon jugs and five-gallon buckets. Below that was a row of blue barrels. We crept closer, and I pulled out my light and shined it on the containers. All were labeled Caution: Hazardous Material.

"I didn't know so many chemicals were used in recycling," Shane whispered, leaning down beside me to look at the barrels.

I thought back to what I'd seen in their books. I had no idea how those amounts of chemicals processed equated to the barrels I was seeing here. "They're using less now than they were before. Supposedly," I added, taking a couple of quick photos. I wasn't sure what they could prove, but at the very least Cam could run them with my story if it turned out Sunshine was responsible for Bobby's death.

"What was that?" Shane asked and stood up straight, looking around.

"Did you hear something?" I asked, adrenaline shooting through me as I stood too.

He remained quiet for a little longer then shook his head. "I thought I did. Footsteps maybe, but I don't hear it now."

"Come on," I tugged on his sleeve. "Let's get this over with and get out of here."

We moved quickly toward the rear of the building. The clack of my boot heels on the cement floor echoed like gunshots, but there was no way on earth I was taking them off and walking around the place barefoot.

"Does that say offices?" Shane asked and motioned toward one of the red doors we were approaching.

I brought my light up and shined it on the silver lettering on the door. "Yeah, it does."

Shane tried to twist the knob. "It's locked. Now what?"

I knelt down and looked at the knob. It was a cheap one and easily picked.

"Do you have your wallet on you?"

Shane nodded and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and handed it to me.

I opened it, pulled out his license, and wiggled it between the door and frame. A moment later the door popped open.

"You're awesome." Shane grinned as I handed his license back to him.

"I'm glad someone thinks so."

We hurried inside the small corridor and closed the door behind us.

A half dozen doors led off the main corridor, all with silver nameplates attached. Thanks to my research that afternoon, I was familiar with them all. We silently moved along the corridor until we came to the third one on the left: Alvin Daily.

I tried the door, which, thankfully, opened easily.

The chief operating officer's office was small but tidy and filled with plush enough furnishing that I figured Sunshine Sanitation was doing alright. A large cherry desk sat near a window overlooking the warehouse floor, a tall leather chair behind it. Bookshelves and glass display cases lined the walls, and the Persian rug was soft and muffled our steps as we entered.

Shane circled the desk and took a seat in the chair, immediately turning to the computer and lifting his mask over his head. The whir of it starting up was soft, but in the silence it sounded like a car engine running. I peered out of the mini blinds and scanned the building's main floor. All was quiet. Eerily quiet. I couldn't shake the feeling that we were being watched. I looked out the window for a few more minutes then let the blinds slide shut and turned back to Shane.

"Can you get in?"

"No sweat," he answered, never looking up.

I went around the desk and watched him over his shoulder. His fingers whizzed across the keyboard, and letters and numbers danced across the screen as windows opened and closed.

"They've focused all their security on external attacks. Their internal firewall is complete crap. A kindergartner could get into their system," he said with a shake of his head.

I didn't mention that I had, in fact, completed kindergarten, and I only understood half of what he was saying. "So you can access their emails?"

"In a minute," he said, still typing furiously. I anxiously chewed my lip as I watched him switch to a new screen that looked a lot like my Gmail inbox at home. Only fancier and with a lot of sunny logos pasted all over.

"Is that it?" I asked. "Can you find any emails to or from Bobby Baxter?"

Shane nodded. "I can look. But it's going to take me a while. I need to access the main server and do a search." He paused, looking up at me. "Which could be a bit tricky if whoever sent them then deleted them."

My heart sunk. Of course they would delete incriminating emails. Why had I thought they'd just be sitting neatly in someone's inbox? I suddenly felt as blonde as I looked. "Does that mean we can't read them?" I asked, thinking this whole thing might have been for nothing.

"Not necessarily," Shane said, still typing. "Delete isn't the same as erase. It basically just tells the system to archive it from sight. But most systems have some sort of backup that stores old data for a certain amount of time, even after it's deleted. So it might be a little harder to find, but that doesn't mean it's gone."

I held my breath, hoping he was right. And that he really was as good as he said he was.

I stayed quiet while Shane worked his magic, vacillating between checking the windows and checking the time. We'd been in the building fifteen minutes already. Every passing second felt like we were that much closer to getting caught.

"Could you quit checking the window?" Shane asked. "You're making me nervous."

"Sorry," I mumbled, wiping my sweaty palm on my jeans. I took a couple of steps away, aimlessly pacing the office. Company pictures and awards lined the walls. I stepped closer to them and held my flashlight up to get a better look. Smiling faces stared back at me. I recognized a few from my afternoon of company browsing. The CEO and CFO at some fundraiser. Various members of the board at a ribbon cutting. Mr. Daily and a younger, blonde woman I took as his wife, on the company yacht. Daily on the warehouse floor with his arm around a couple of guys in Sunshine Sanitation uniforms.

I paused and lifted my mask.

"No way," I said out loud. I grabbed the picture from the wall and held my flashlight closer as I stared at the faces of the two guys in uniform. One of them I recognized all too well. Ritchie Mullins.

"What?" Shane piped up from behind the desk.

"Nothing," I mumbled, quickly putting the picture back as my mind reeled. Ritchie hadn't mentioned anything about a second job. And it wasn't on his social media profile. Was it something he'd wanted to keep quiet? Had Ritchie been the inside guy Bobby had been speaking to? An informant giving Bobby dirt on the company for the show? But if so, why had Bobby punched him? And how had that led to his death?

"Uh-oh." Shane sat back.

My heart leapt into my throat. "Uh-oh?"

He turned to me and grinned. "I think I found something."

I let out an audible sigh of relief. "God, don't do that to me." I put a hand to my chest. "You almost gave me a heart attack."

"Sorry," he said sheepishly. Though I noticed his eyes had gone to my chest.

I hiked up my shirt, covering my cleavage. "What did you find?"

He turned (reluctantly) back to the screen. "Well, I'm in the system, and I've got at least three emails that have the name 'Baxter' attached to them."

I hurried over to look at the screen. "What do they say?" I asked eagerly.

Shane shrugged. "I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know?" I whined.

"I mean, I can see they exist. It's gonna take a few more minutes for me to recover the data and see what the actual contents are."

I groaned, looking down at my phone again. "Hurry, would you?"

"Hey, art can't be rushed—" Shane started.

But he stopped midsentence.

We both froze at the sound of a door opening softly nearby.

My eyes met Shane's, the panic I felt mirrored there.

"We need to go," I said. "Now." I shoved Shane's mask back on, doing the same to my own.

Shane nodded and shut the windows he'd been working in. We both tiptoed to the door. I cracked it open and peered out at the corridor.

"Anything?" Shane whispered.

I shook my head. "No."

I took my boots off and shuddered at the thought of what I might be stepping in on the bare floor. But if someone other than us was in the building, they'd definitely hear the clack of my heels as we ran back to the garbage chute. I tamped down the urge to gag at the feel of the grimy floor beneath my feet as we slowly pushed through the door to the warehouse and felt our way along the dimly lit walls.

We reached the chute opening without incident. Once there, Shane hefted me up into the stinky corridor, and a moment later I was sliding down the chute much faster than I'd climbed up it. I landed in the dumpster with a thud. Something cold and moist squished beneath me again, but I ignored it. I struggled to get to my feet, but it was useless, as a second later Shane flew out of the chute and landed right on top of me, knocking the breath out of my lungs.

"Sorry, Allie," he apologized in a rush.

All I could do was grunt in response as he tugged me into a standing position.

Shane jumped over the rim of the dumpster, landing on his feet on the pavement.

Just as I heard someone opening the chute door from inside the warehouse.

Crap. We'd been made.

I quickly jumped down, landing hard on my bare feet. Then we took off running as fast as we could across the parking lot and down the road toward where I'd parked the car. My feet protested with every step on the hard gravel, but I didn't dare waste time putting my boots back on. My Bug came into view, and while the sight of my car was a huge relief, I wasn't about to celebrate a victory until we were far away from Sunshine Sanitation and whoever was chasing us.

Shane slid across the hood of the car Dukes of Hazzard meets Hello Kitty style and jumped inside the passenger door. I followed suit and started the ignition, whipped a U in the road, and floored the accelerator. We shot down the road, leaving a trail of dust behind us as we sped away from Sunshine Sanitation and toward safety.

We pulled off our masks and tossed them over our seats into the back, but neither one of us spoke until we reached the freeway. My eyes ping-ponged between the road and the rearview mirror, half expecting to see a vehicle chasing us at top speed. But all I saw was the normal L.A. traffic.

"Are we being followed?" Shane asked. If I didn't know better, I'd say there was a note of excitement in his voice.

I shook my head.

Shane was quiet for a moment. Then he started laughing. "Oh, dude, that was close. What a rush!"

I wished I could say the same. I had a feeling it would take me a week to calm my frayed nerves back to normal.

"I'm sorry I put you in all that danger for nothing," I told him, sincerely meaning it. While I'd always known the plan had had a hint of harebrained in it, being actually chased through the warehouse had brought the reality of how illegal we'd been acting crashing home.

"I'm not." He grinned, really looking like he was enjoying this. "And it wasn't totally for nothing. I mean, we know you were right," Shane pointed out. "Someone at Sunshine was emailing with Bobby."

"Yeah, but we don't know what they said."

Shane shrugged. "True."

"And we don't know who that someone was."

Shane's grin widened. "I do."

I did a double take. "Excuse me?"

He shrugged again, looking way too pleased with himself. "I said I couldn't read the emails. I didn't say I couldn't see who they were addressed to."

I punched him in the arm. "Spill it," I commanded. "Was it Ritchie Mullins?"

Shane frowned. "No. Who's Ritchie Mullins?"

I shook my head. "No one. Never mind," I mumbled, only mildly disappointed. "So who was Bobby emailing?"

"Some guy named Sal Bukowski."

I perked up. The name didn't ring any bells, but the initials sure did—SB. I tried to think back over the names I'd seen in the company's roster, but I couldn't remember a Sal. Though, I'd gone through a lot of names and profiles that day. It was possible I'd skimmed over him.

"So, what's our next step?" Shane asked, pulling me out of my thoughts.

"My next step is a hot shower and a gallon of scented body wash to get rid of this smell," I told him.

Shane's eyes glazed over, and I feared he was picturing me showering.

"And your next step," I said, hopefully harshly enough to knock the image out of his head, "is to go home and forget I ever dragged you along on this trip."

"Fat chance of that, babe. This was the most fun I've had all year."

"We've really got to talk about this 'babe' thing. It's not cool."

Shane just grinned at me.

"Seriously. I've got a boyfriend." Maybe. "And he's sure not happy about the flowers and teddy bears and stuff."

"A little friendly competition never hurt anyone," Shane replied, still grinning.

I shook my head. "No. It's not a competition. No competition, Shane."

"Whatever you say, babe."

I gritted my teeth, reminding myself he was just a child. It wouldn't be right to hit a child.

We rode the rest of the way in semi-silence—me contemplating just who Sal Bukowski might be and what his connection to Bobby was, and Shane loudly chewing on a fresh stick of cinnamon gum. When we pulled up to Shane's house, he got out and tossed his backpack over his shoulder.

"Thanks for the awesome date, babe!" Shane said.

"That was so not a date. It was…" Trespassing? Breaking and entering? Illegal hacking? "…work," I finished lamely.

"Right." He winked at me.

I rolled my eyes. "Get some sleep. And call me if you need anything," I added. Even though he was perfectly old enough to be home alone, I felt a little responsible for him after the sketchy escapade we'd just pulled off.

"You know I will," he said with a grin before he stepped away from the car.

I was afraid of that. I turned the car around in the middle of the street and drove home.

As soon as I opened the door and stepped inside my apartment, Mr. Fluffykins took one sniff of me and sprinted to the bedroom.

"It's good to see you too," I called out.

I couldn't blame him. I smelled like an outhouse in the summertime.

I dropped my poor boots beside the door, my purse on the sofa, and then trudged the short distance to the bathroom. Mr. Fluffykins was hiding beneath the blankets on the bed. I looked down at my clothing now that I could see myself in decent lighting, and cringed. My clothes were ruined. I pulled them off and reluctantly tossed them into the trash. I tied the bag shut to keep the stench from permeating the clean air in my apartment.

An hour and three shampoos under nearly scalding hot water later, I stepped out of the shower feeling a little better and a lot less stinky. I grasped an end of my hair and brought it to my nose. I couldn't tell if the stink was burnt into my nose or if my hair still held a subtle aroma of garbage plant. I hoped it was the former. I so did not want to explain to Felix in the morning why I reeked of Sunshine Sanitation.