Just a little bit more…
She let the rope slide through her hands as she eased herself down. In the room below, the Thief Taker General was having an audience with his favorite paramour. But the safe was on the opposite wall from the bed, and he was not paying attention to the shadows of the room. She kept her cowl pulled over her head to hide the white of her hair. When she got close enough to the ground, she let go.
She dropped soundlessly, sliding her lock picking set out of her pocket. She cast a glance over her shoulder—the Thief Taker was still plenty busy—and turned back to the safe. It was stronger than most, but she wasn't the Black Cat, the infamous Master Thief, for nothing. The door swung open, and her gloved hand snaked inside and pulled out the jewels stashed in there. She put them all into a pouch at her waist and closed the safe again. Back on the rafter, she removed her grappling hook from where she had secured it in the wood, looped the rope around her shoulder, and crept out of the bedroom.
She made her way out onto the roof by way of an open window in an empty room. She was taking several steps back to prepare for the jump she would make to the next roof when a voice sounded behind her.
"You should give those back."
She turned around, letting the cowl fall from her head. "Spider! Fancy seeing you here. You keep showing up and I'm going to start to think you like me."
The man behind her sat crouched on the roof like a gargoyle. His leathers were of deep crimson and blue, the mask he wore fashioned to resemble a spider. One-man police force, that was the Spider. He tended to pop up whenever the Black Cat struck, even when the contracts she took on as Master Thief led her to different towns. Sometimes she wondered if he was following her, but then other times she wouldn't see him for months.
She would never say that she actually missed him, so she just stole something else and remained pleasantly surprised when he turned up. It was cute, how often he tried to stop her, but it made her job just hard enough to make him annoying.
Even behind the mask, she could tell he was rolling his eyes. "Those don't belong to you, Cat."
She frowned. "Well, they didn't belong to him, either."
"Two wrongs don't make a right, Cat, didn't anyone ever teach you that?"
"No," she replied. "And forgive me if I don't stick around for another Sunday school lesson. Nice seeing you."
She turned and jumped, launching herself across the gap and on to the next roof. Behind her, she could hear him pursuing, and she took an abrupt turn, dropping down onto a balcony and then swinging herself over to the raised walkway. She kept to the shadows—the black she wore would protect her—but she knew she hadn't lost him. He knew her too well, knew how she would run.
"Time to switch it up," she murmured, and leapt up to grab onto the eave of a house.
He kept on his course, which took him past where she had actually run, and she heard him swear as he had to backtrack, but she was already moving, leaping over from one roof to the next. She spotted an open window ahead of her and swung through it, only to find herself in the middle of what looked like a game of dice. The soldiers at the table all looked up at her in surprise.
She used their hesitation to her advantage. "Evening, boys," she said, winking, then ran across the room and leapt out the opposite window. By the time they got outside to pursue her, she'd be long gone.
Her hideout was in an old clock tower near the outskirts of town, and she took the long way, making sure she hadn't been followed. It was nearly dawn by the time she reached her living quarters, and she gratefully took off her mask and her leathers to take a hot bath. The jewels she secured in a lockbox inside one of her many chests. The jewels weren't for her; she would find her client and return them the following night. She was tempted to keep them, but she would never earn a living if all she did was sit on the precious items she stole for her clients. Besides, there were plenty of opportunities for her to steal things all for herself, too.
But with the Spider back in town, she had a feeling things were going to get much more interesting.