"Tell me there's a camera out there!" Dick growled.
"Try number eight!" a voice yelled. Again the wave moved as one when the three were sighted. This camera was positioned further away and the picture blurry, and more intermittent. Grasso now carried Molly with one arm, on his hip.
"Strong bastard," a voice said. "She must weigh seventy pounds or more."
Grasso no longer hid the knife he carried in his right hand as they moved nearly out of range to a dark, windowless van.
"We can't see the fucking license plate!" someone growled.
Grasso dropped Molly on the pavement, causing a shudder to ripple across the room and a quick reaction from my wife. She jumped toward the child, apparently crying out and evoking a threatening wave of the knife by Grasso. He opened the back door of the van and motioned Betsy inside as Molly lay inert on the ground. Betsy hesitated, but complied when Grasso feigned a slice with his weapon.
"Try to focus on the damn plate!" The detective said. With knife still in hand, as if he heard Carl Dick, Grasso reached in the vehicle and withdrew a license plate and slapped in on top of the existing one. "The bastard is changing it! God, he slaps it on in an instant! It must be magnetic!"
"It's an out of state plate!" I said.
"You can see it?"
"No; it's only on the rear. California requires plates on the front and back."
Grasso lifted Molly by her waist band with one hand and literally tossed her into the van before slamming it shut. He carefully folded his knife and slipped it in his right pocket while withdrawing a padlock and key from his left. He secured the back of the van, looked around, and actually smiled back at the camera.
"I'll kill that bastard when I get him!" Dick snarled. As Grasso moved around to the driver's door, something fell from the rear, left side of the back. It was duplicated on the right side.
"She kicked out the tail lights from inside," a woman's voice said. "Smart lady!"
I hoped to god my wife was smarter than John Luke Grasso. I rushed to a rest room and threw up a meal I didn't remember eating.
California Coast Highway. Surely the gods of chance have favored my brilliance! To be able to pluck two such treasures and eliminate another is worthy of praise from high! While I followed them shopping I never imagined I'd be allotted the opportunity accomplish a daring strike so successfully and leave without a trace! Now my two treasures are secure behind me as I'm off to my wooded sanctuary.