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“Perfect,” the other man said.
“Go back?”
“Let’s hit up Mickey D’s on the way.”
The van started moving again and almost immediately made a U-turn. Ballard wasn’t ready for it, and the centrifugal force threw her against the back of the van with a thud. She froze and then let her breath out slowly, trying to deflate her body, make it as low as possible behind the pile of bedding and pillows.
The light in the rear compartment changed and she knew that someone was looking through the curtain. Then the darkness returned.
“You gotta tie your shit down, man.”
“I do. I think it’s the spare. It’s underneath and it gets loose.”
Less than a minute later, the van made a ninety-degree turn and Bosch whispered in Ballard’s ear that they were in the drive-through lane of a McDonald’s.
Ballard listened while they ordered seven combo meals. They paid and waited for their order to be handed through the window. Ballard couldn’t see it but she could picture it. Then the men up front spoke.
“This will make that thing in Vegas look like child’s play,” one said. “The precision of it, you know?”
“Oh, yeah,” said the other.
Soon they had their food and were on the move again; they exited the drive-through and turned left onto the PCH. The smell of McDonald’s filled the van, and Bosch’s voice came to Ballard through her earbud.
“Looks like they’re heading back to the caravan with the food,” he said.
But Ballard barely heard him. She was concentrating on what she had heard from the front of the van and what it meant.
Ten minutes later there was another U-turn and the van parked. Ballard knew that they had returned to the original place in the line of campers. The hot food saved her from discovery as the men got out of the van without further investigating the sound they had heard from the back.
“Am I clear?” she whispered.
“They’re going back to the grill fire with the food,” Bosch said. “Get out of there.”
“Not yet. I have to finish putting the hinges back on.”
“Then hurry. Luck is a fluid thing, and you’ve been lucky so far.”
“I get it.”
Ballard rolled the mattress back to access the top of the box and the hinges. She had left the screwdriver and the screws there, and the mattress had held them in place. It took her less than five minutes to re-anchor the last hinge and put everything back.
“How does it look outside the van?” she asked.
“You’re clear,” Bosch said. “Use the driver’s-side door and they won’t have an angle on you.”
“Got it,” she said. “Where are you?”
“Back in the lot across the street.”
“On my way.”
Five minutes later Ballard was safely across the street. Bosch was still behind the wheel of her Defender, so she took the passenger seat.
“Before they made the first U-turn and went to the McDonald’s, they pulled over for a minute or so,” she said. “Where were we?”
“Yeah, I had to drive by them,” Bosch said. “They were in front of a vacant business. It looked like it used to be, like, a chicken-in-a-bucket place.”
The description didn’t match anything in Ballard’s memory. “What was across the street?” she asked.
