Page 19 of Easy Steal

They didn’t even look our way.

We both let out a sigh of relief, and Livie removed her hand from mine and leant back into her chair.

“It was my father,” she offered, out of nowhere.

I arched an eyebrow, glancing her way.

“I was running from my dad the other day when you saw me.”

I nodded slowly, not sure if she wanted me to ask further questions or leave it at that. Instead of prying, I followed the two bikes at a distance.

Eventually, they pulled up outside of the pub that we knew they would.

The small brick building was lit with dim yellow lights and music echoed from it. The men parked their bikes by a group of others, and headed inside.

“Wow,” Livie said, pulling out her little notebook and beginning to scribble.

There were at least a dozen other bikes here, as well as another handful of cars.

“Only three are pre-2015,” she said, scanning her list with her pen, “the rest of the cars should be vulnerable to our plan.”

“Surprising,” I said, stretching my arms above my head.

“What is?”

I shrugged, “I thought they’d have an appreciation for the classics. Yet they mostly drive soccer-mum cars.”

Livie laughed once, “it’s smart really. What cop looks twice at a ‘soccer-mum’ car?”

I tilted my head to the side and nodded.

She was right.

The girl was clever, I had to admit. It was a type of street smart that I knew only came from experience and time spent in this part of the world. There was no room for naivety, or for gullibility.

Those things could get you killed.

“Should we head back?” I asked.

Livie nodded, “unless, you want me to show you how to use this,” she smirked, pulling out a box from her bag. I frowned at it, taking it from her hands and inspecting it.

“And this is?”

“It’s the signal relay box I was telling you about,” she pulled out a key FOB from a packet filled with about ten of them.

“Sure,” I chuckled, “let’s go.”

We drove around for a while in the richer suburbs, looking for an easy target. With the rise in vehicle theft, people were becoming more careful with where they parked their cars and how well they locked them up. It had been very annoying in my line of work. These amateurs who enjoyed stealing cars for joyrides had been a bigger blow to my business than anything.

“There,” she pointed out eventually, it was a flash SUV parked on a cement driveway in front of a two-storey house. I pulled up down the road a little, and pulled my hoodie on over my head. Livie put on a cap, pulling it over her eyes and pulling her own hoodie over it.

“What do we do?” I asked in a whisper as we approached the car.

“You take this,” she said, handing me the box, “go wave it close to the wall of the house. It will pick up the codes sent by the original key and relay it to this,” she pulled out a smaller box.

I nodded and put my head down as I took the strange box and waved it by the front wall of the house just as Livie instructed. She stood by the car, looking down at the device and waiting. After only a few seconds, the box beeped, and Livie was able to open the car door. She was inside of it, and a few seconds later, the car came to life.

I shook my head and laughed to myself.

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