The Triplets Mate Zoe by Cara Adams

never washed, and the license plate was encrusted in dirt, making the likelihood of anyone reading it accurately very slender. But the engine was tuned, and the motor worked perfectly in case they needed to hurry away from a job.
    He went back to the apartment, not seeing either of his brothers there, and changed his white T-shirt for a nondescript navy blue one and his shoes for dirty black boots with steel toecaps. He grabbed his favorite thin leather gloves, a balaclava, which he hated wearing unless it was actually snowing, and a black ball cap. Then he raced down the stairs to the offices, collected the keys to the Ford, and finished his journey in the basement.
    He leaned against the concrete wall and switched his cell phone to vibrate, noting that he was three minutes early, a minor miracle considering everything he’d had to do in such a short timeframe.
    Just then Brayden and Favian Willard arrived. Brayden was dressed much like him in boots, jeans, and a plain black T-shirt with a blue ball cap on sideways, but Favian was wearing bright red cargo pants, which were at least two sizes too big, dangled half off his hips, and showed four inches of lurid yellow Calvin Klein boxers. Favian was also wearing the most repulsive white T-shirt Monty had ever seen, featuring an ax dripping with blood, and the biggest sunglasses ever, which covered half his face.
    “Um, Favian?”
    “Yo, bro?”
    “No one will ever forget seeing that outfit.”
    “Exactly, my man. They’ll remember the clothing and have no clue at all about the person inside it. The police aren’t going to search the underwear drawers of every male in the city looking for yellow Calvin Kleins.”
    He grinned. Favian had a point there.
    The elevator door opened, so he beeped the car unlocked and headed across to it, taking the driver’s seat. “Do you want to do a little reconnaissance first, or shall I drive more or less straight there?” he asked Vallen.
    “We don’t have a lot of time. Maybe just check a couple of blocks around the houses.”
    “Let me off before we get to the first one so I won’t look too obvious walking past them several times,” said Favian.
    “Not too obvious? Riiiight,” said Diego, snorting with laughter.
    Monty grinned. Favian’s logic was good, though. He couldn’t imagine anyone paying attention to the face hidden behind the enormous sunglasses when half his ass was hanging out of his pants.
    He drove up the road behind the first house and a block past the correct area then circled the two houses, staying a block outside them. No one appeared to be hanging around watching anyone. It was a good neighborhood, full of families, with bikes lying on lawns and against trees and basketball hoops on the garage walls.
    “Why do kids from good neighborhoods like this want to be in a gang? I can understand poor kids. It’s the only way to make some money and get some street cred. But I don’t understand these kids at all,” said Brayden.
    “For the excitement. Rich kids long for excitement. They like to pretend they’re oh-so-very-bad,” said Vallen.
    Monty was concentrating on driving, but he added, “It’s more than that though. I don’t think they understand how very privileged they really are. They’ve never had it tough, and they want more and more and more, without realizing basically everything they could ever need is pretty much within their reach already, if they just did a little work.”
    “Let me out when you turn this corner,” said Favian.
    Monty did, stopping for the shortest possible time before driving slowly to the block in the middle of the two houses and parking behind two or three other cars. “It’s not much of a disguise,” he sighed. They were all station wagons and minivans, but it’d have to do.
    He and Vallen headed toward the house of the boy considered to be the likely ringleader of the group while Diego and Brayden went in the other direction to the house of the boy who might have