Page 82 of It's Going to Be a Chrome Christmas
To say Carver was after a motorcycle was to say the Grand Riyadh wasjusta hotel. The Raiju —named after the Japanese mythic creature made of lightning— was a slick, high speed electric feat of vehicular engineering that was being prepared to be launched in the next year’s market. Its dual tire system gave it a unique design, and it was rumored to be faster than even the Ninja H2R.
Cayden had to admit. The thought of driving this motorcycle got his blood pumping nearly as hot as the sight of Trixie bent over a dismantled engine did.
For as valuable as the Raiju was, Cayden had been shocked to learn that Carver didn’t plan on keeping her. He planned on selling her to the highest bidder. Opening bid for the auction would start at half a million, though Cayden had no doubt itwould quickly break seven, maybe eight, digits. The Neiman Marcus LE Fighter sold for eleven million at auction.
Competing companies would kill for the chance to take the Raiju apart and figure out how she runs, but they wouldn’t be the only ones bidding. Collectors would be too, as well as weapons companies who could care less about the motorcycle and were only interested in the battery technology.
Lee wasn’t with Cayden. He’d been able to convince Trixie’s brother that he’d only be a liability. As protected as the Raiju was, Cayden was better working solo. Having Lee along was a distraction he didn’t need and couldn’t risk having.
Therefore, Lee and Captain Holloway, Lee’s superior officer and former Marine friend, were waiting for Cayden’s signal that Carver had the motorcycle and Cayden had eyes on the drugs, and then they were to swarm Cayden’s location with the locator he had in his shoe.
As much as it irked him, the company who owned and designed the Raiju were aware that Cayden was going to steal it tonight and they’d put a duplicate in her place, so Cayden wasn’t actually delivering the real prototype. Instead, the vehicle he would be driving would be one of the original prototype that hadn’t passed inspection, but Cayden was assured it was still safe to drive.
The police department wasn’t prepared to assume the liability required to guarantee the safety of the real vehicle. Therefore, for them to sanction Cayden committing the crime, it had to be a fake bike.
Never knew stings needed to be this complicated, Cayden had found himself thinking over the course of his undercover work. No wonder criminals get away with so much. The cops are fighting us with their hands tied behind their backs.
Cayden saw too many problems with using a fake, but the biggest one was that Carver was too smart to fall for a duplicate.Additionally, the more people who knew a secret, the less likely it was to remain a secret.
Cayden didn’t like it, which was making his blood spike all the more.
As soon as Cayden entered the garage, he got a sinking feeling in his gut. It only increased the closer he got to the Raiju. So many things could go wrong, but… This was also it. After tonight, he was free. Deal done. He could go back to Trixie and start their life together. Lee swore to Cayden that Carver was leaving tonight in cuffs or a body bag.
Taking down Carver got Lee one step closer to Massey. Cayden understood this, but he wasn’t sure how he felt about it. Lee was seeking justice, but maybe he was going about it the wrong way? Cayden had once asked Lee if he knew who had killed Marco. Marco might have witnessed Massey’s crime, but had he actually been the one to kidnap and torture Marco or had he just ordered it done? Lee had just remained silent, making Cayden think that whomever those men were, they were long dead.
Cayden walked up to the Raiju replica, and rolled his eyes. The company had left him the damn keys. What sort of heist was this? This was no test of his skill whatsoever. If his stomach wasn’t churning so badly, he’d go as far as to call it boring.
He hesitated only for a moment before he took out a small notepad, wrote a quick sentence, and then he held it up to the security camera in the corner of the garage. Paul had done something to the cameras so the guards in the security room couldn’t see Cayden, but Paul still could. Cayden had spent his late teens and early twenties relying on his gut, and something just wasn’t right. What he had to say, he didn’t want the whole of the police department to overhear anyway. What was he supposed to tell Lee anyway?Hey, man, my tummy hurts. Want to call this whole thing off?
Cayden scoffed at his own inner sarcasm that sounded far too much like Trixie to help him keep his focus on the job at hand.
Cayden pulled out of the garage, down the back alleyway, and through the gates that Paul opened for him. Like he said, boring. As soon as he pulled onto the main road, he could tell he was being watched. The cops only had a single unmarked keeping an eye on him. They knew where he was; they didn’t know where Carver’s drugs were and therefore felt it was better to spread out their forces through the city so they could converge once they had a location. Besides, the gaze didn’t feel friendly.
Cayden texted Carver that he had the Raiju and waited for the man to respond with the location of the exchange. As soon as he had it, Cayden destroyed the phone. Carver probably had the phone bugged or something. He passed on the location of Carver’s meeting to Lee through the wire. He felt only slightly better knowing that the cavalry was now also on their way.
Cayden’s eyes glanced at his mirrors.Something wasn’t right, he said to himself just as he merged onto the highway. He barely went a mile before the road was lit up with red and blue flashing lights and the path in front of him was being rapidly blocked by barricades.
“Driver, pull over your vehicle!”
Chapter
Fifteen
Trixie couldn’t keep the smile off her face. She’d received a random text from an unknown number that had vanished soon after she read it. But she’d read it and she couldn’t get the words out of her mind.
Unknown: He says to tell you he loves you.
It couldn’t be from anyone other than Paul.
She wanted to reply back to tell him she loved him too, but the message was gone and she hadn’t memorized the number. For all she knew that number had only existed to send her that one text message. First the cookies and now a text. What other gifts was her sweet man planning on sending her?
A shout of “Oh shit!” drew her attention to the employee breakroom. She walked in just as several hollers of “Go, go, go!”, “Damn!”, and “Holy shit, how fast is he going?” came from the crowd of employees standing around the television on the wall.
Trixie couldn’t remember the last time she’d spotted the employees actively watching the television. Occasionally, it was flipped to the weather channel or the news, but for the most part it remained on a random channel while muted with the closedcaptioning on. To find five employees huddled around it now was odd to say the least.
“What’s going on?” she asked, pulling a rag out of her back pocket to wipe her hands. She’d been on her way upstairs to the bathroom. She wasn’t exactly clean.
“Boss!” Gary waved her over. “Check this out. I’ve never evenseena motorcycle like this. Look at it go!”
