Chapter 1: A Terrible Surprise

Camille Cooper was doodling on the edges of her math binder. She had finished her work and now her teacher was lecturing her and her classmates on the problem sets.

Cami looked up across the room to her twin brother; Sam Fox. He took had the same last name as his and Cami's mother and he also looked like her. Cami looked more like her father. The only thing that she had inherited from her mother was bluish-black hair. Cami looked up at the clock. She and her brother only had ten minutes until freedom.

"Cooper!" Her teacher: Mr. Drenn, barked.

Cami snapped to attention. "Yes?"

He glared at Cami. "Maybe you can give us the answer to this problem?"

Cami looked at the problem and sighed. It was going to be a long ten minutes.

"That must've been terrible." Sam commented when he and Cami were packing up to go home.

"I think that guy hates me." Cami groaned as she slung her bag over her shoulder. "Let's go."

"I can't." Sam said as Cami moved to leave. "I have soccer practice."

"Oh, yeah. Well, see you at home." Cami walked out of the school building. She walked down the street as she checked the messages on her cell phone. There were none, but just as she was putting it in her pocket, it began to ring.

"Hey, Mom." Cami said into the mouthpiece after seeing it was her mother on the caller I.D.

"Hey, Cami." Her mother: Inspector Carmelita Fox, responded. "I'm not going to be home until very late tonight, so you and Sam are on your own for dinner."

"What about Dad?" Cami inquired as she turned down the driveway.

"He's asleep at home because he's on the night shift. Be sure to wake him if he's not up by five o'clock." Her mother said. "Is Sam at practice?"

"Yeah, when he will be back?" Cami asked at she opened the door to the house.

"Around four-thirty. What are you going to do?" Carmelita asked, but Cami barely heard her.

Cami dropped the phone and her backpack. The house was in chaos. Dishes were lying broken all over the floor, the contents of cabinets were strewn all over the place, books had been ripped off the shelves, couch cushions were ripped open, and the paintings that had been on the walls were on the ground with boot prints all over them.

"Cami?" Cami heard her phone at her feet. "Cami? Are you okay? Cami? Answer me!"

Cami slowly reached for her phone. "Mom? Where did you say Dad was?" She asked when she had put it to her ear.

"He's upstairs asleep. Why?" Carmelita asked suspiciously. "Cami? Tell me what's going on!"

"Dad!" Cami ran past the mess and up the stairs. She saw that the upstairs rooms were the same as they were when she had left that morning. Cami yanked open the door to her parents room.

"Dad!" She cried again. The room was empty.

"CAMI! ANSWER ME!" Carmelita was yelling in the phone.

"Mom, Dad's gone." Cami said in the phone.

"Cami, he's probably gone out. Don't worry about him." Carmelita said calmly. She seemed relieved.

"Mom!" Cami was hyperventilating. "This is reason to worry! The house looks as if it has been ransacked and Dad's gone!"

"What?" Carmelita asked breathlessly. "Cami, stay right where you are and don't touch anything, I'll be there in ten minutes." Carmelita hung up and Cami clicked her phone shut.

Cami slid the phone in her pocket and took a deep breath. She rubbed her hands together and opened her father's closet door. Her parents, or (more precisely) her father, kept a safe in the back of the closet in a secret compartment. Cami had found out about it accidently when she and Sam played hide and seek when they were little. She asked her father about it later and he just told her to keep it a secret. Cami pushed the wooden panel aside and saw that the safe was open. An envelope was lying in it and it was addressed to Camille Cooper and Sam Fox. Cami picked it up and hid it in her pocket.

Cami replaced the wooden panel and ran downstairs to see her mother pull up in the police cruiser with three others behind her. Carmelita hugged Cami as the police officers went into the house.

"Inspector?" Carmelita's boss: Commissioner Loup, had come up to the two of them.

"Yes, sir?" Carmelita asked.

"You are not allowed on this case. You're too close to Sly Cooper." Loup seemed to be implying something, Cami thought.

"Sir, I need to tell you that my judgment will not come into question on this case. I need to be on this case, sir." Carmelita seemed to be careful to not say too much.

"No, Fox. You're not participating in this case, and if needed, I can order a twenty-four hour watch as protection. Besides, who would look after her and her brother?" He pointed at Cami.

Carmelita looked at her feet. "I can drop them off at a friend of mine's. Sir, I need to be on this case!" Loup was walking away. Carmelita followed him.

Cami was watching them argue. She knew that 'protection' meant cops who would be watching their every move and reporting it back to Loup. She had heard that he did that, but Cami had thought it was a lie.

"Miss Cooper?" One of the cops had come out of the house. "I need to ask you a few questions."

"Yeah, sure." Cami sighed.