“Ready to rock and roll?” he asked.

I put my coffee mug in the dishwasher, went to the foyer to grab my bag, and realized I didn’t have any clean sweatshirts. My denim jacket was in the laundry basket soaking wet. Munch’s jacket was in the laundry basket. My only remaining jacket was a black wool peacoat.

“What?” Diesel said.

“I haven’t got a sweatshirt to wear.”

His backpack was sitting on the floor in the foyer. He pulled a black sweatshirt out of the pack and tugged the sweatshirt over my head. I had an extra six inches on the sleeves, and the bottom of the sweatshirt almost came to my knees. Diesel pushed the sleeves up to my elbows.

“Perfect,” he said. “Let’s go to the mall.”

A half hour later, we found Cuddles in the food court sucking down a chocolate milk shake. He was in his fifties, average height, glasses, extra-curly brown hair that blossomed out in a white man’s Afro. Bald on top. Baggy tan pants. Red plaid shirt. He was the last person in the mall I’d pick out to be selling contraband rockets and barium. He looked like Woody Allen all swollen up.

Diesel and I sat down at Cuddles’s table, and Cuddles didn’t look happy to see us.

“This table is for paying customers,” Cuddles said.

“We might be paying,” Diesel told him.

“Oh?”

“We need some X-12 King rockets.”

“You and everybody else. Those are very pop u lar rockets. Very versatile. How many?”

“Twenty-three,” Diesel said.

Cuddles worked his straw around, trying to get the last dregs of milk shake into his gut. “How soon?”

“Now.”

“Hah, that’s funny. It’ll take a week, minimum.”

“I haven’t got a week,” Diesel said. “Where do I go to get them now?”

“How about Canada?”

“Do you remember the conversation we had earlier today?”

“The one about breaking every bone in my body and then sucking my fat out with a Shop-Vac and shoving it up my ass?”

“Yeah, that one.”

“Eeuw,” I said.

“Brytlin Technologies might have some Kings. They design some of the payload for the BlueBec sounding rocket, and the King is essentially a miniature BlueBec. It can be used to do more eco nom ical preliminary testing.”

Diesel stood. “You’re going to call me when you hear from Wulf.”

“Yes.”

I didn’t say anything until we got back to the Subaru. I buckled myself in and looked at Diesel.

“Suck his fat out with a Shop-Vac and shove it up his ass?”

“It was one of those inspired thoughts.”

“How are we going to get the rockets from Brytlin?” I asked Diesel. “It’s Monday morning. It’s not like we can waltz in and buy them.”

“We’re not going to buy them.”

I felt my eyebrows go up to my hairline. “Oh no. No, no, no. I’m not going to steal rockets. And the whole place is on camera. Remember when Munch left with the magnetometer, and they got him on tape?”

“Don’t worry. I have a plan.”

“Oh boy. A plan.”

Diesel cruised the mall lot. “The first thing we have to do is steal a car.”

“What?”

“The Subaru can be traced to Flash, so we don’t want to park it in the Brytlin lot.” He pulled in next to an old Econoline van. “This’ll work. It’ll be easy to load the rockets into this.”

“We’re going to jail,” I said. “I’m going to have to use one of those steel toilets without a seat.”

Diesel was out of the Subaru. “I wouldn’t let that happen,” he said. “I’d make sure you got a good toilet.” He opened the driver’s side door, got behind the wheel, and turned the engine over.

“How did you do that?” I asked him.

“They left the key in the ignition. Get in.”

I moped around to the passenger seat. “I’m going to be really mad at you if I get arrested.”

“It could be worse,” Diesel said. “You could be Gail Scanlon.”

I looked at the ignition. No key.

“There’s no key in the ignition,” I said. “How did you start the van?”

Diesel held his finger up.

“You started the car with your finger?”

“Yep. And that’s nothing. You should see what this finger can do on a G-spot.”

“Good grief.”

Diesel backed out of the parking space and took the exit to Route 1. “Put the hood up on the sweatshirt and pull the drawstring tight so no one can see your face.”

“What about you?”

“I don’t photograph.”

“How is that possible?”

“I don’t know. It’s just one of those weird things.”

“Like your finger?”

“Sweetie, my finger isn’t weird. It’s magic.”

BRYTLIN OCCUPIES A seven-acre campus just off Route 1 and is centrally located in a sprawling corridor of technology companies. Diesel wound his way through the parking lots, looking at the redbrick buildings, scoping it all out.

“Ordnance wouldn’t be kept in the main office building,” he said. “They have two buildings on the perimeter of their campus that look to me like maintenance facilities. I’m guessing our rockets are kept in one of them.”

Both buildings had a regular door in the front and garage doors in the rear. Diesel backed the van up to one of the garage doors.

“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

“Are you insane? You can’t just walk in and steal rockets during business hours!”

“No one’s over here.”

“Yeah, but there could be someone inside.”

“Then I’ll deal with it.”

He opened a garage door, slipped into the building, and minutes later, he reappeared with an armful of rockets. I jumped out of the van and opened the back door for him. He slid the rockets into the van and ran back for more. He loaded a total of twelve rockets into the van and closed the garage door.

“That’s all they had,” he said. “Get in the van. I’m going to check out the other building.” Diesel drove to the other building, parked, ran inside, and instantly returned. “Just lawn mowers and snowblowers in there.”

We returned to Route 1, and Diesel called Flash.

“I’m looking for eleven X-12 King rockets. See if any of the research labs on the tech corridor bordering Princeton have anything. If you can’t find any there, try north Jersey.”

Diesel drove the van back to the mall, and immediately we saw the flashing lights. A single cop car was parked in the lane behind Diesel’s Subaru. We were two lanes over, and we could see a scruffy young guy talking to a cop, gesturing to the empty parking space where his van used to be parked.

Diesel slid from behind the wheel. “Drive the van to the other side of the mall by the food court. I’ll get the Subaru and meet you there.”

I climbed behind the wheel and drove to the food court entrance. I found a parking spot with an empty space next to it and parked the van but left it at idle. If I turned it off, I wouldn’t be able to get it back on without Diesel. I tied the hood tighter around my face and gripped the wheel. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that at any moment I might throw up. I was sitting in a hot van with twelve stolen rockets.

A few minutes later, Diesel eased the Subaru into the spot next to the van. We transferred the rockets from the van to the Subaru, cut the engine on the van, locked its doors, and drove away in the Subaru. The perfect crime.

“Are you okay?” Diesel asked me.

“Sure. I’m peachy. And you?”

“I’m good.”

He stopped the SUV at the edge of the lot, untied the hood, and pushed it back off my face.

“You look like you’re going to faint,” he said. “Your face is white and your eyes are glassy.”

“I’ve never stolen rockets before. I’m pretty sure it’s against the law. And what if they explode?”

“They aren’t going to explode. They’re just shells. No fuel. No payload. No explosive device.”

We sat for a few more minutes, waiting to hear back from Flash. When the call came in, it was negative. He hadn’t been able to locate any companies that might have X-12 Kings.

“Call Wulf back and tell him you have his rockets,” Diesel said.