Donnie looked at his phone. Nothing.

He said to Nathan and Wes, “You heard from him? Vulcan?”

Vince had left right after class, saying he’d be back. It seemed suspicious.

Nathan said, “He texted.”

Donnie said, “You, not me. Didn’t have the balls to text me.”

“Yeah. Well. He said he’d be here. Just had something to do first and Mary might be coming by, you know her, the one with tits, and kept going on, all this shit. Which I think means he’s not coming.”

“Fucker’s out if he doesn’t show.” There was a waiting list to get in the D.A.R.E.S. crew. But then Donnie reflected: Of course, for what was going down today, maybe better Vince the Pussy wasn’t here. Because, yeah, this wasn’t the Defend game at all. It was way past that. This was serious and he couldn’t afford somebody to go, yeah, I’m watching your back and then take off.

Wes asked, “Just the three of us?”

“Looks like it, dude.”

Donnie looked at his watch. It was a Casio and it had a nick in the corner, which he’d spent an hour trying to cover up with paint so his dad wouldn’t see it. The time was three thirty. They were only twenty minutes away from Goldshit’s house.

“Plan? First, we get the bikes. Get into the garage. That’s where they are,” he explained to Nathan. “Here.”

“What’s that?”

Donnie was shoving wads of blue latex into their hands.

“Gloves,” Wes said, understanding. “For fingerprints.”

Nathan: “So we get fingerprints on the bikes? We’re taking ’em aren’t we?”

Donnie twisted his head, exasperated, studying Nathan. “Dude, we gotta open the door or the window and get in, right?”

“Oh, yeah.” Nathan pulled them on. “They’re tight.”

“Not now, bitch. Jesus.” Donnie was looking around. “Somebody could see you.”

Fast, Nathan peeled them off. Shoved them in the pouch of his hoodie.

Wes was saying, “We gotta be careful. I saw this show on TV once. A crime show and my mom’s friend Michael was over. And he’s a deputy with the county, we were watching it together. And he was saying the killer was stupid because he threw his gloves away and the cops found them and his fingerprints were inside the gloves. We’ll keep ’em and throw ’em out later, someplace nowhere near here.”

“Or burn them,” Nathan said. He seemed proud he’d thought of this. Then he was frowning. “Anything else this guy would know, we should know? Your mom’s friend? I mean, this is like breaking and entering. We gotta be serious.”

“Totally,” Wes said.

Nathan squinted. “Maybe it’s legal, doing this, you know. Like we’re just retrieving stolen property.”

Wes laughed. “Seriously? Dude, are you real? The bikes got perped during the commission of a crime, so don’t count on that one.”

“What’s ‘perped’?” Nathan asked.

“Bitch,” Donnie said. “Stolen.”

“Oh.”

Donnie persisted. “So? That cop, the friend of your mom’s? What else’d he look for?”

Wes thought for a minute. “Footprints. They can get our footprints with this machine. They can match them.”