She turned back and shone the light on her own face. She was grinning.

“We’re inside the clerk’s office,” she whispered.

“You want me to come?”

“No point.”

She climbed down off the cabinet into the clerk’s office. I pushed myself up on top of the cabinet, craning my neck until I could see. She went straight to the safe, sat for a moment, listening and watching the glass doors to the outer building, then stood, flicked on the light, and started working the combination dial. She hit on the third try, and the heavy door swung open. She spent a moment pulling drawers, dropped a white canvas sack behind her, pushed the door shut, twirled the dial, and came back to the closet. It took as long to lock the closet door as it had to open it. It took only a minute to put the stairway door back on and another minute to lock the door at the top.

“Got it,” she breathed at me. “Jesus, stealing is better than fucking, you know?”

“Thanks,” I said dryly.

“You know what I mean

” Her voice sounded full, awash with adrenaline or some kind of special burglar hormone. We listened for another minute, heard nothing but LuEllen’s breathing. Then she retrieved the rope; we recrossed the ladder and took it back into the store, hooking the hatch behind us.

“This is the worst,” she said when we were at the front of the store. “This is where we really could get caught again.”

“I haven’t seen any cocaine,” I said. The thought had just popped into my head, from nowhere.

“I thought I’d try it this way, doesn’t feel too bad.”

“So

“

“I still want it.”

“That’s the way it is, I guess.” I slipped two fingers under her belt buckle and pulled her up against me. “You’re more interesting without the coke.”

She stood up on her tiptoes and kissed me on the lips, and it went on for a bit.

“This is goofy,” she said, pulling away. “This is how you get caught. You forget for a minute

“

We’d be going back out into the street blind. A car rolled by. We were ready to go when the lights from a second one showed. It passed, and we went. Outside, she used the pry bar to slip the lock in place, dropped the bar in her shoulder sack, and we were on the sidewalk.

I put my arms around her, and she pressed her head against my shoulder. Lovers, again, walking in the moonlight. We stopped once on the street before we turned down toward the car, to kiss and, incidentally, to drop the latex gloves in a brand-new Longstreet storm sewer.

John was waiting for the call.

“You going?” he asked.

“Just got back,” I said. I looked at LuEllen, who was stacking packets of twenty-dollar bills on the kitchen table. “It was smooth as silk.”