Lighting a Match in the Rain

Chapter Thirty

Very long chapter :)

I slipped my arms through the sleeves of my black puffer coat. Reed handed me my scarf before sliding on his own leather jacket. "That's not going to keep you warm," I told him, judging his choice of layering.

He slipped me a lopsided grin. "That's what the heater in your car is for."

"Mom said you had to stay home with me all day," Callum called out to his brother. He stood in the middle of the hallway, eyeing us as we got ready to leave.

"Yeah, well, I'll be home before Mom comes home," Reed explained.

Our Thanksgiving break got extended an extra day because of the snow, but unfortunately, their mom still had to go to work.

"She won't like that."

I saw the threat in Callum's blue eyes and I knew that Reed saw it too. Reed's jaw clenched and he full-on glared at his brother. "Tell her and I'll make sure you get put up for adoption." He opened the front door. "...Blow up the house while I'm gone and I'll make it happen as soon as tomorrow." With that, he stomped out the front door like the grouch he is.

After slipping Callum an apologetic smile and a quick "Sorry. Text us if you need anything," I followed Reed outside. By the time I closed the door, he was already climbing in the passenger's seat of my car. "You're a jerk," I told him as I buckled my seatbelt and reversed out of his driveway. "Why the heck are you so mean?"

I was graced with one of his famous glares and my phone lit up with a text from Kinsley. "They are checking out of the cabins," Reed read to me.

Reed and I had spent the last few days robbing. That's a sentence I never thought I'd sew truth into. My parents thought I was spending my last few days of break helping Mrs. Lane redecorate her classroom for the next holiday, and Kinsley thought I wanted to spend a few days with Macey after what happened. In reality, I was driving out of town and back with a criminal, helping him steal valuable items.

To be fair, we'd been doing pretty good. He gave me money to give back to my parents to repay them for the paintings that were stolen and the money Ricky had taken from the diner. After that was taken out, we were at about fifteen thousand dollars that we'd gotten. At this rate, we could get that money repaid within a couple of months and get the target off Reed's head.

Honestly, the morning after we found Macey, we'd thought about going back to the cabins with our friends, but Reed saw it as an opportunity to be able to do some "work trips" as I'd started calling them, without having our friends ask questions about what we were doing.

"You should start going in with me," he mentioned as I drove us to our first planned location.

I kept my eyes on the road, not interested in this conversation. "But we have a good system going."

His head shook in my peripheral vision. "It's so much more fun when you're more involved," Reed insisted.

"And more illegal," I reminded him. I said I'd help him, not become his next Ricky.

"It's illegal either way...plus we could get in and out faster if we are both there to look around."

#

When I pulled up to the first street and parked the car a few houses away, I envisioned our new plan going wrong in so many ways. I didn't know the in and outs of how to rob successfully and silently. All I knew was how to drive away quickly as soon as Reed jumped in the car. Millions of questions enveloped my brain. I couldn't believe he'd talked me into this.