It was midafternoon when they stopped for gas outside of Salt Lake. Roy hung his phone from the heat vent and pulled up a mapping app, then continued east toward Park City. It was a cute little town full of snowboard shops and fancy boutiques and restaurants that she might have seen in one of her magazines. It was the first week of October now, and ski season was still at least a month away. “You really don’t want to do this kind of work in the snow,” he said. “You leave tire tracks and footprints, which can be used as evidence. And anyone checking on the house will know someone has been there. The longer we can go without the robbery being discovered, the better. Most security companies erase camera footage after a week. Two is even better.”

She hadn’t even thought about security cameras. “Don’t those big fancy houses have alarm systems, too?”

“They do. But I’m smarter than they are.”

She still couldn’t believe they were actually going to do it, break into a mountain mansion and take rich people’s things. It just seemed like talk, a game of make-believe. Even though she had someone else’s eighty-thousand-dollar ring on her finger, and someone else’s money in her pocket.

Roy stopped talking as they continued through Park City on 189. She watched the muscles flex in his jaw as he bent over the wheel. By the time he turned off the highway at Heber City, he had become the same quiet, cold Roy who had checked her into those motels just a few days before. But it was different now, she thought. She knew what he was preparing himself for.

The road was narrow and followed the slope uphill. A braided river wound beneath them. The mountains were pale green and brushy with trees growing along the creek drainages.

He kept one eye on his phone as they wound farther into the mountains, going more slowly now, window down and heat cranked, peering up driveways and watching his mirrors. Helene hadn’t seen another person for the last half hour. The clock said it was just before six.

When they came to a sturdy metal gate between two stone pillars, he slowed to a crawl. She leaned forward to look past him. The driveway was so long she couldn’t even see the house. “Is this it?”

He picked up speed and kept going. “Yep,” he said. “But we need to check the neighbors first. I’d feel pretty stupid if there were a couple of deputies parked just up the hill.”

Five minutes later, the road died at a wide spot with space for a few cars to park and a sign for a hiking trail. Nobody was there. After taking a funny little walkie-talkie out of the center console, Roy jockeyed the truck and trailer around to head back the way they’d come.