“So,” Chris says, “what’s Mister Toothy going to tell those two thug-monkeys?”

“That we’ll be out behind the old church playing D&D in the graveyard.”

Chris laughs. “Dungeons & Dragons, wow.” He does a theatrical bow. “Well played, milady. If ever there was a perfume that exuded the scent of weakness, it would be a fragrance that stank of multicolored polyhedral dice and fermented gamer sweat.”

It looks like Shane wants to say something. They wait for him to finally spit it out.

He clears his throat.

“We could actually play D&D sometime,” Shane says. Eyes hopeful. “What? Shut up! It’s fun. Of course, we’d have to figure out which edition.”

“Oh, Lord Jesus, don’t get him started on the edition wars,” Chris says. He forms his hand into a thumbs-down, then pulls on the thumb like a cow’s udder and makes a fart sound. “We’re not playing D&D. I don’t want to lose my spot in the Cozy Nostra, ’kay?”

Atlanta ignores all that waffle. “Time for phase two.” She looks to Chris. “You sure about this?”

“As sure as I am that Shane here will be a forty-year-old virgin.”

Shane tackles him. They wrestle on the ground like idiots. Atlanta just shakes her head.

She and Shane watch at a distance, hunkered down behind a banged-up Jeep Cherokee.

The morning’s cool. Fog slides between needled pines. The hardtop’s up. Windows all closed.

Nobody here in the parking lot. Everybody’s at the game. No cameras. No worries.

Mitchell Erickson drives a nice ride: a Lexus hardtop convertible, red as a matador’s cape. He’s got a baseball game that Saturday morning up at Werner’s Field. Thing is, Erickson parks his car away from all the others. Paranoid, probably, about getting any scratches or dings on that cherry paint.

Chris whistles as he saunters up. He does these jaunty dance steps, whistling “Singin’ in the Rain” as he twirls the tire iron.

He gets to the Lexus. Batter up.

He brings the tire iron against the driver’s-side window. It pops and crumples inward. Even from their distance, Atlanta and Shane hear Chris squeal with what seems to be some combination of fear and delight as the window shatters and the alarm goes off. He looks over at them, giddy.

Chris holds up the origami boulder—a crumpled-up note he worked on all night by cutting out letters from an issue of Cosmo (“Okay, fine, I do read Cosmo, don’t judge me, you monsters.”).

He thrusts his arm into the window. Drops the note boulder onto the front seat.

Then hurries to meet his cohorts.

It’s the second car Atlanta’s messed with this week.

Phase two, complete.