Jack In The Green by Charles De Lint Read Free Book Online Page A

another casualty in the cartels' savage drug wars. That's what she wants to tell him. But she doesn't know how to say it without sounding clingy.  She and Jack have only just met. They've only ever kissed so far.
    The Glimmer Twins drift into the study while they're talking. One of them sprays "Liberated by Los Murrietas—all the sheriff's drug $$" on the wall beside the safe. The fresh paint looks like blood glistening on the white adobe surface. The other twin takes a picture of it with his phone. The flash is a momentary flare of light in the darkness.
    Jack puts his finger under Maria's chin and looks into her eyes.
    "Just what?" he asks, his voice soft.
    Before she can answer he stiffens, head cocked as he listens for something Maria can't hear. But then she hears it, too. Tires on the pavement. On the street outside. Turning into the driveway.
    "Everybody out, now ," Jack says.
    Maria is so scared she can barely join the scramble to get to the back door, but Jack keeps a steadying hand on her upper arm as he steers her toward the back patio.
    "Stay together or split up?" Will asks as they run to the gate in the back fence.
    "Together," Jack says.
    He hands Maria off to Ti Jean and stops at the sheriff's koi pond. It's surrounded by a band of smooth loose pebbles the diameter of silver dollars. He grabs two handfuls and dumps them in his pockets, then hurries to catch up with the others.
    "Don't worry," he tells Maria. "We'll be gone before the first cop car arrives at the front gates."
    One of the Glimmer Twins is thumbing his phone as they make their way through the next yard.
    "Posting your pictures?" Jack asks.
    The twin nods and grins.
    They keep going through the next yard, slipping from one into the next, darting across silent streets until they reach the outer wall of the community. Their rope is still hanging where they left it. One by one they shimmy up and over the wall. Maria listens for sirens, but the night is still quiet. She grabs the rope, but she's trembling so hard that she can't hold on to it.
    Jack gives her a quick hug. "Trust me," he says before he climbs the rope to the top of the wall.
    Ti Jean offers his hands to Maria as a stirrup, like he did with the Glimmer Twin on the way in. She steps into his laced fingers and up she goes like she's popping out of a jack-in-the-box. Jack catches her and swings her easily onto the ledge.
    Ti Jean joins them, then quickly goes down the other side of the wall.
    "Hang on until I let you go," Jack tells Maria as he takes hold of her wrists and eases her into a kneeling position, facing the community. Using the rampart to brace himself, he lowers her down the other side of wall, holding on until Ti Jean's strong hands on her hips lower her the rest of the way.
    "I feel like such a wuss," she says as Jack makes his own nimble way down the rope.
    "Don't," he tells her. "It's your first time. We've been doing this for ages."
    She hugs herself. "I still can't figure out why there aren't any sirens."
    "Maybe he didn't call his own officers," Will says. "Maybe he called his drug-running buddies instead."
    Maria shivers. and Jack puts his arm around her shoulders.
    "Let's get out of here," he says.

    Once they get well away from El Rio Valley and there still aren't any sirens, Maria begins to relax.
    Will takes out a list of people who need help that Luz made before she was arrested. The gang splits up, each taking some of the money, and although it's not even daybreak, they spend the next couple of hours delivering bundles of the stolen cash to those in need.
    Maria is with Jack on the delivery run. Her spirits rise as they visit several homes on Calle Adelanto. At one house, they leave money to cover the expense of a child's asthma medicine. At another, the cash will keep a man from losing his burrito cart. At the third house, the old woman who answers the door ushers them inside with a smile that falters when she is offered money to pay her electricity bill.
    She