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Siena couldn’t sleep.
She’d tried for a while around eleven, but by one she’d given it up as a bad job. She had to be at work at ten tomorrow, so she technically had a few hours left to try to sleep, but she had her doubts for her success.
Now, she sat at the table with her laptop, combing through homeschooling sites. There was a point at which there was just too much information to process, and she’d arrived at it some time ago. Too many ideas, too many conflicting opinions, too many people insisting that only one way of teaching this or designing that was the right way, and nobody agreeing on which was the one right way.
She had, however, found an education plan she thought she could use as a template—or, really, could steal outright. Was it plagiarism if she sent in someone else’s education plan? After all, in a real school, all the kids were following the same plan, right?
The roar of an engine split the quiet night, and Siena’s head popped up. She focused and listened, but it wasn’t a motorcycle, and it didn’t turn onto this street. When she and Cooper had parted ways in the late afternoon, he’d said he had work to do, and she’d assumed that meant work on the race shop his ‘club’ was opening. But it was nearly three in the morning, and he wasn’t home yet.
He’d spent the previous night away as well. Probably, he was partying and getting laid. A guy like him—tall, dark, handsome, ripped, riding a big black Harley—could probably fuck a different girl every night for his entire life.
It wasn’t her business, and she wasn’t quite sure why she was so interested. It wasn’t like she had plans to fuck him. She wanted a friend. Only a friend. Yet all night, and the evening before it, she’d been listening for his Harley and stressing more and more the longer he was out.
Maybe he had a girlfriend. He’d tried to kiss her, but that hardly precluded a girlfriend in the picture. Besides, he hadn’t started to go for that because he was into her sexless self. A guy like him would want boobs and curves and, you know, maybe the ability to make cute babies with toothpaste grins and mood-ring eyes. She’d puked her whole life story all over him, and he’d felt sorry for her. He’d had a pity fuck on his mind, nothing more. That would hardly even count as cheating, if he had a girlfriend.
He probably had a girlfriend. If he didn’t it was because he didn’t want one.
Why the fuck was she thinking about this?
Fed up with herself and not accomplishing anything productive online, Siena slammed her laptop closed and stomped to her bedroom. There she unearthed the last, nearly petrified gummy from a package of weed gummies she’d splurge on a few months back, sucked on it until it was soft enough again to chew, and settled back into bed, determined to think no more about her neighbor’s sexual interests or escapades, or her sister’s troubles, or her own, and just get some fuckingsleep.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Sitting behind thewheel of the Bulls’ van, Geno peered through the binoculars. “Seven, eight, nine. That’s all of ‘em.”
From the passenger seat, Cooper squinted through the van’s windshield and watched the men who’d come out of the warehouse amble casually to their vehicles. “We’re sure there’s nobody else in there? Hangarounds, chicks, whatever?”
“Last guy out hit the lights,” Geno answered. “If anybody’s in there, they like it dark.”
“How do you know he hit the lights?” There was no window near the door. Cooper couldn’t see much from the shadow they’d parked in, across the lot and a four-lane street from the warehouse, but he could tell there were no windows on this wall of the warehouse they were casing, and thus no visible light to go off.
“Last guy out leaned back in and hit a switch. I saw it go dark from there.”
“Okay. Let’s give ‘em five to make sure they’re really gone. Then we move.”
Behind him, Ben grunted.
Cooper turned in his seat and glared back at him. “You got more to say, Ben?”
“No,” he answered gruffly.
