Page 66 of Cosmo

Shocked, Liam just stared at him.

“Yeah, he’s that thorough. No last-minute surprises, if we can help it.”

“That’s…thorough, yeah. Okay, well, what about the rest of it? Anything I should know?”

“I came to get you, Cosmo. We’re still in the meeting.”

Happily surprised, he smiled with relief. “Great. Let’s go.”

In the basement, behind the bookcase, Liam saw them all bent over paperwork in manilla folders as they sat around the table. “Cosmo,” Murphy said, “your folder is there at the empty seat. Start studying. You may just be the driver for this one, but if we need help, you, Mims, and Goldie have to know the layout.”

“Sure, yeah.”

The folder had pictures of the house, every bit, including the interior along with the gated community where the house lay. “How did we get these of the inside of the house?”

“Goldie went inside to check the furnace; has a contact he pays well that does that work for that particular community and others like it. Goldie had a camera on him, snapped what he could, and the rest we got from the realtor site. Mims found it online from when it was on the market a little over five years ago.”

“Smart,” Liam said as he turned over the pictures. “Big place.”

“Seven bedrooms, twelve bathrooms,” Abs groaned. “I’m so jealous.”

“How many do you need?” Haze asked him.

“Oh, hush. We all have our dreams and mine is to have more bathrooms than I could possibly need.”

“That’s a hell of a dream,” Hippy quipped. “Murphy, what the hell is this?”

Liam saw the picture he held, and Murphy laughed. “It’s a sculpture, and if we had the means to get it, it’s worth about ten times what the painting is.”

Liam flipped through to get to that picture and saw a finger on a pedestal, just one finger, pointing up, like a giant got his finger cut off and set it on a display. It was…weird.

“That? That’s ten times the painting?”

Murphy laughed and told Liam, “Yeah. But we aren’t greedy, and besides, we’d need a crane.”

“During his research,” Abs told them, “Goldie found out they’d had to cut a hole in the back entrance to get it inside, and then they had to redo the entire thing. It cost him a fortune just to get it into his house.”

Haze scoffed, “That’s why I hate these kinds of collectors. They’re not purchasing the art for the sake of that art, but because of the price tag. It’s some bragging thing instead of appreciating the beauty, the work, the inspiration.”

“Our true artist,” Abs said, kissing Haze’s cheek.

Haze laughed and pushed Abs away. “Quit.”

“Never. I’m proud of you.”

Watching the love they had for one another was beautiful. Abs may be the smallest, but Liam knew he was the fiercest in his love for the others.

Murphy slapped the table to get their attention. “Enough of all that shit. Let’s go over it. Cosmo, after you drop us at the dropspot, you park the car three blocks from there near our van, where Mims will be with the transmitters and equipment. Yours is an ugly car, so any rent-a-cop security or real cops would know right off it doesn’t belong. Get it tagged like a cop already cited it for breaking down and step away from it, though not far. Close enough to jump in when we’re ready for you.”

“Good plan,” he said.

“Now, Goldie’s been working on the spot in the back fence to get through. It’s two feet thick and has cameras every ten feet. Abs will shimmy his tiny ass up that pole and disable that camera while the rest of us finish what Goldie started.”

“Big blocks of concrete,” Goldie said. “Easy enough to chisel around it, and with you three pushing, it’ll break through easily, and there is a thick hedge on the other side of it. No one will see that hole from the inside until the maintenance workers go fix the camera, and maybe not even then.”

“This has to go to plan,” Murphy said plainly. “If no one reports a break-in, then the things they find, well, they’ll be on high alert thinking someone tried and failed. The security after this will probably be ramped up pretty harshly. This is our one chance at this.”

Liam flipped through more of the pictures. “What house is this?” he asked, pointing to a picture of a different house.

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