That plus he needed someone to help do the heavy lifting. But one day they were going to put him in the weeds, he thought as he moved down the hall toward the master suite. Then there'd be no more Miami-Dade Correctional Center for him. He'd be riding straight up to Raiford Prison. He looked at his watch again. They'd been in the house for twenty minutes already, first stripping the wires on the big plasma television in the living room and loading it into the van. Then the other electronics: CD players, stereo components, the Xbox computer games. You take the heavy stuff first in this kind of work. Buck had again borrowed a friend's white van, slapped the magnetic FreezeFrame Air Conditioning Service sign on the side, and come probing for the right house.

The two boys had been useful because they got a charge out of sneaking over the walls of these gated communities and then scurrying around from house to house with the laser intercept Buck had put his hands on. They'd hide in the bushes like they were playing a kid game and soak up the garage-door laser signals of home owners coming in after dark from work. It was another benefit of these far-out suburbs. The commute into Miami took these office workers forever and they rarely got home until after sunset this time of year. They'd hit the button to open their garage and the boys would be right there to record it with the intercept.

Then Buck would return with them a week later and scout the possibilities. If things looked cool he'd simply hit the garage door, back the van in, snap on the surgeon's gloves, and in broad daylight they'd clean the place out. When they had what they wanted, they'd just open the door and drive away. In the past he'd left the two boys outside as lookouts, giving them a Nextel so they could beep him if anyone approached or things got hinky outside. This was the first time he'd given Wayne a shot at working the inside and he'd done it mainly so they could load the big stuff that he couldn't hoist alone.