Chapter One
Disclaimer of Doom: I don't own MR, The Gallagher girls, or Seventeen magazine. I also don't own Thieves Like Us, and Thieves Till We Die, the books I got this idea from.
Ren dangled her feet over the porch's edge; a carefree teenage on a lazy summer afternoon. Of course, other than the radio transmitter in her ear, the .22 under the deck, and the bank blueprints tucked into her copy of Seventeen, she was normal. Stretching her arms, and yawning loudly, she stood and sauntered back inside. Closing the screen door, Ren bolted the locks, all four of them.
"Okay, now explain. What happened?" Holding her hand up to her ear, she pulled the tiny radio from it, and ran down a frame-filled hallway to what looked like a closet door. A fire alarm was built into the wall next to the door handle, and Ren pulled the cover away from the front. Keying in the pass code on the pad that had been unveiled, she waited until a series of metallic clicks echoed from inside the door before pushing it open.
Gone were the framed photos, the fake flowers and knitted coasters. In their places were state-of-the-art computers, stainless steel floors, and 3D graphic projectors. Ren grabbed the nearest speaker set, and, searching frantically for a nearby USB cord, plugged her tiny radio into it.
"There we go. Now, what happened? I only got half your message."
A burst of static, and a fuzzy voice came through the speakers. "Sorry. We're stuck in some kind of antechamber, past the third elevator. Can you bring up the blueprints? Fast. We've only got eight… no, seven minutes to get in and get out before Darra's virus dies out. Hey, I rhymed!"
"This is actually serious, Dylan, so if you could nix the jokes…wait…got it" Ren turned and pulled up a 3D image of a building from a nearby projector. "Good news. Are you still in that room?"
"Until the police show up and haul our sorry a-"
"Hey, hey hey, work with me. If you turn around and go through the door you came in through, there's another door that leads to the vault. Six minutes."
After another minute or two, Dylan's voice came through the speakers.
"We're in. Nick-"
"Fang. You know he hates Nick"
"Whatever. Fang is getting the painting now. Why, exactly, are we going through all this to extract a painting, when there are literally gold bars stacked a foot and a half from me?"
Ren sighed. "You know why, Dyl. We're stealing from a thief. He might have worked his behind off for those gold bars."
"Doubtful."
"We know for a fact he took the painting from that museum in Venezuela two months ago. Look, can we talk about this later? You have three minutes."
"'Kay. We'll be out in two, returned in forty-five."
"Good luck." Ren pulled a chair over from a computer, and plunked down in it, the copy of Seventeen in her hand. She didn't really care about 985 Ways to Look Hot this Summer! It was just to pass the time.
Forty-seven minutes later, the front door opened, and Ren stood, calmly returning to the living room. In it were eleven teenagers, dusty and sweaty, carrying plastic grocery bags.
"How was it? Did you get it?"
A tall blond boy reached into a bag and pulled out a roll of wrapping paper. He tipped it upside down, and out slid a black tube, and from that, a piece of rolled-up canvas.
Ren snapped on a pair of rubber gloves, and unrolled the painting.
"Yep, this is it. Congrats. Meet me in the comp room in twenty for debriefing. Shower, grab a bite, do whatever."
Cue mad dash for one of the three bathrooms in the house. Still standing in the living room were two boys, the one that had unwrapped the painting, and another one dressed in black with long, dark hair.
"What went wrong? I could tell you sounded stressed, Dyl." Ren turned to the blond boy.
"Arty had another attack."
She sighed. "Again?"
Dylan nodded. "We can barely get her to go outside, let alone do her voodoo-hypnotism thing."
"She calls it mesmerism."
"Whatever. The last thing we need is for her to pull a Max on us." Fang winced as Dylan said this, the only emotion seen from him thus far.
Ren sighed, and scratched the back of her neck. Throughout most of her childhood, Ren and Max had been inseparable. Max had started their gang, with her as leader and Ren as her right-hand woman. After a few months of successful thievery, Max stormed off in the middle of a mission, blowing their cover and nearly killing them all. Since then, she hadn't been seen, and Ren had taken over the gang, with Dylan and Fang as her lieutenants.
A month after Max left, Ren did some confidential hacking and found that she was in an asylum, affected by a rare strain of schizophrenia. The rest of the gang had no idea.
"No matter. I'll speak to her after the debriefing."
Twenty minutes later, the group met in the computer room, ready for inspection.
"Okay, go." Ren folded her arms.
"We arrived at the bank at seven twenty five, and parked. JoJo left the van and entered the building, and pretended to stumble, hooking up his conductor to the underside of the camera. Eight minutes later, we distributed the "closed for repairs" signs -boy the tellers are dumb- and cleared out the bank. JoJo activated the conductor, effectively shutting off the cameras. We had Akiko and Mariko enter through the back entrance, where they dispatched the guards, and smuggled Vee into the security room" Dylan seemed to be the leader when reviewing missions.
"So, far so good."
"Yeah. So far."
Dylan continued, explaining the rest of their day. Apparently, Arty had been unable to hypnotize the rest of the guards, and the gang had been forced to hack into the system while holding off the others. Their lock-picking specialist Iggy was able to get access to the main vault, but not before being routed out to a different hallway. It went on and on, stupid blunders and pointless mistakes, until Ren raised her hand, shutting Dylan off.
"I can't stand this. Bottom line, did you all get out alive and with the painting?"
"Obviously," scoffed a short girl in the back with a black pixie-cut.
"Shut it, Helen." Another boy turned around and glared at her.
"You shut your face, you motherf-"
"Stop. Please. Let's just go to bed, sleep it off, and tomorrow we'll seal the transaction, and be done with it." Ren reached back and pulled apart her messy bun, revealing wavy brown hair. "Hold on a second…" She stepped over to a curtained window and peeked out under the screen. "I thought you said you got out unseen."
"We did!"
"Oh, yeah?" Ren stepped aside and ripped the curtains away, revealing three armored trucks, two SWAT teams, a helicopter, and good twenty-five police cars.
"Close the blinds!" Fang jumped at the window, but refrained himself when Ren assured him that the windows were one-way only.
"Okay everyone, you know the drill. You four, start deleting. You, you, and you, start up the chopper; get our emergency bags. Us three will start the distractions. And you two, start booting up the basement power surges. Let's get this done."
"Wait a second, where's Arty?"
"There! Outside!"
Ren whirled back around, and sure enough, a girl with long silvery hair was walking towards the policemen, arms outstretched, palms up. She turned her head back towards the window and mouthed to them I can still do it. Watch me.
"No, no, no, no, no! This is not happening. If she couldn't do it then, she can't do it now!" Abandoning all sense of decorum, Ren ran through the hallway, Fang and Dylan on her heels.
Bursting through the door, Ren started sprinting towards Arty, totally unaware of the policemen, armed with tasers, surrounding her.
Grabbing Arty's shoulders, she shook her roughly, saying "Run, damn you, run!" and pushed her away, back towards the house. Terrified, the girl ran back towards the house, tripping and stumbling into Dylan's arms, who promptly dropped her at his feet. The gang stared in stunned silence as the policemen tasered Ren one, two, three times.
As Ren held on to consciousness by her fingertips, Fang and Dylan ran to her, not caring that the policemen were prepping their tasers for another round.
"Get out of here, Max. Take the gang, get back to the safe house. Sorry about this, Max. Sorry, sorry, sorry."
"It's us, Ren. Dylan, Fang. Wake up!" It was pointless, though. She slumped in Fang's arms. He set her on the ground, and whispered "We'll get you back, Ren. Promise," then turned and ran to their backyard, a very black and very illegal helicopter waiting for their last two passengers to board.
The last thing they saw as their helicopter ascended into the clouds was a swarm of men loading a small body into an armored car, black dots taking the utmost care for their precious cargo.
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