toward the large air conditioners on the other side of the building. I don’t see or hear anyone, and the time on the phone tells me we still have twenty minutes. I try not to jitter around, because I assume it’ll be distracting, so I go back to watching him.
He’s quiet, and the curve of his back as he crouches, combined with the easy movements of his fingers, begins to make something inside me go a little bit liquid and hot. It takes me too long to realize why. The memory of him on his bed, using that same hand to skillfully stroke himself, tramples right through my thoughts. I stare at those fingers for far too long, mentally pasting them into the memory, since he was too far away for such distinct details before.
“Time?” he murmurs, never taking his eyes off the task.
I fumble with my phone. “Ten minutes.”
He spits a low curse, slowly removing one of the rods from the keyhole. He ducks his head to wipe his face on the shoulder of his hoodie, but then hangs it for a moment, holding the other tool inside the hole. “Left or right.”
“What?”
He looks at me, jaw tight. “If I turn the tension wrench the wrong way, it’ll reset the pins and I’ll have to start over. I need you to choose, left or right.”
I panic. “Why me?” We only have ten minutes left. There’s no way he does all that again in ten minutes.
“I just need you to do it,” he grits out, and he looks so inexplicably frustrated that I hastily throw something out.
“Left.”
He turns it left.
His posture suddenly deflates, and I think for a second that I’d chosen wrong. But then he levels me with that dimpled smile again and turns the knob. “Lucky charm.”
We get inside the locker room with nine minutes to spare.
The room is dark and smells exactly like a locker room. I can make out Reyn’s outline as he shifts beside me, putting away his tools.
“One down, one to go.”
He precedes me through the row of lockers at first, but then seems to hang back, waiting to walk at my side. When I get there, his hand comes up to the small of my back, leading me the rest of the way. I always hate when Emory or my parents do that, but when Reyn does it, it just makes me feel all viscous inside.
Stupid.
The second door—the one that will lead us into the gym—goes much like the first. Reyn crouches down and gets to work, while I keep track of the time. Chances are, we won’t make the guard’s next pass and will have to hang around a bit.
When he whispers, “Left or right,” I don’t even hesitate this time.
“Left.”
The door opens easily.
“Damn, girl.” It’s too dark to see his smile, but I can hear it in his voice. “Two-for-two on this shit.”
I don’t say that it’s just common sense that they’d have the same sort of lock, but it’s true. There is absolutely no basis for the swell of pleasure I feel at his words and the way he says them—like I’ve done something impressive, special.
“Okay,” I say, “the trophy case is through the lobby.”
We stalk along the bleachers, and I don’t even try to contain my smile. He can’t see it, anyway. When we reach the lobby, there are lights shining right in the trophy case, and it’s like something out of a movie. The Viking helmet shines under the light, our illicit treasure.
But the trophy case is locked.
“Damn.” I jiggle it, but it’s no use. “He said there were only two locks.”
Reyn gives me a look, crouching down once again. “Please. A toddler could open one of these things.” He once again removes the flat-edged thing—tension wrench, he’d called it, although it looks nothing like a wrench—from his roll of tools. But this time, he extracts one of the cruder picks. He holds both tools out to me. “You were watching earlier, right? Put the tension wrench here.” He points to the bottom of the keyhole.
“Wait, me?” I punctuate this by jabbing a finger into my chest. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“Just think, this will be the last time you can say that.” Reyn give the glass a tap. “Come on, we’ve got like thirty minutes to kill. You picking this thing will probably only kill five of them.”
I give him a dubious look, but crouch down beside him, slowly taking the tools. “This thing? Here?”