I climb over the safety railing and drop six feet down to the dark ground.

I’m away from the light now. I’m underneath the world.

And a good thing because I hear the catwalk above me vibrate then stop. Vibrate then stop.

Someone’s coming my way. Slowly.

I curl up in the darkness next to the building. Looking up through the perforated steel of the catwalk floor, I can see the dark outline of someone approaching. He moves smoothly. He stops at the first window, but he’s not tall enough to see in.

A kid?

But when he jumps and locks his hands on the window frame and pulls himself up to the level of the opening, I get a better look. He’s a very short, compact man. Dark hair, flat-top, straight up. He’s not Asian. He effortlessly holds himself up. I can see his head moving left and right, then back again. He’s got on jeans, cowboy boots and a red-and-tan plaid shirt. There’s about eighteen inches of scabbard fixed to his belt and tied to his leg like a gun-fighter’s holster-a small machete with a handle double the size of a regular one. For swinging two-handed, I figure.

He drops lightly to the catwalk and comes my way, stops right above me, and seems to look off in the direction of the freeways. Then he pulls himself up to the second window. I watch his right shoe find a hold against the wall, then flex, then follow the rest of him as he vanishes through the window.

I give him a full minute, then unfurl and run for the parking area.

I remote the door lock from thirty feet away, then the trunk. Without probable cause cops can’t inspect what isn’t in plain sight, and that’s why you need a car with a trunk.

I swing up the lid, fling in the backpack and slam it shut.

A few seconds later the engine roars and I’m burning rubber away from Miracle Auto Body with my middle finger in the air, which is a childish thing to do, but I haven’t felt so relieved in a long time, oh man, you just can’t know what it feels like to pull off something like this and see ten dead people in a place that would be happy to make you the eleventh, and I’ve never felt more alive than right now, just so thankful and grateful that I’m not lying back there full of bullet holes but right here with a backpack full of diamonds and almost a full tank of gas.