I have returned! Just as you thought I was gone, I came back to prove you wrong and make you pay (sort of). Here's a special extended-edition to reward you for your patience. Remember, this is part XIV, not XI.

Fox rested her head on her hands, staring at the crime tree. There were many faces on the board, but one in particular had Carmelita's attention.

Cooper, her detective's instincts kept telling her. The mysterious raccoon who led the attacks looked in every way like the elusive thief. He moved like he'd been doing it for years, with grace and expertise. He knew every aspect of how to rob a bank: speed, coordination and aggression. There was something different, though. Cooper had come out into the street and fired upon officers. Since when does a Cooper ditch the cane and go for guns?

It's a new game, she told herself. The good, old-fashioned crooks of old were evolving. That's how it always worked. The stupid ones died off, old trades were abandoned, all in favor of smarter, more contemporary ideas.

But why? Motive seemed to be nonexistent. Cooper had always claimed to only steal from criminals. Why would he steal from honest people all of a sudden? What did he need all that money for? Why would he work with the IRA? He wasn't Irish, was he? Cooper. Cooper. It sounded like it could be Irish.

"Staring at that won't make things go any easier," a voice said from behind. Fedorov walked in from the darkened hallway and stood before the bulletin board.

"Matt, what're you doing here so late? Haven't all the others gone home for the night?" Fox asked. Fedorov didn't answer the question, instead asking,

"So, you think this is Cooper?" Matkovich gestured to "One," even tapping his finger on the photo.

"He's been off the radar until the Crew appeared in France. It's a good bet he left to go knock over some banks."

"What about his old friends?" Matkovich asked casually. Fox lifted her head off the table. "I mean, he's had to have friends before he joined up with these criminals."

Fleck, Fox thought to herself. The squirrel was on to something. She had always ignored the detective, most of his ideas being television-soaked ideas of grand conspiracies and worldwide terrorist organizations. Perhaps he was on to something. She had never tried to look for any of Cooper's support. Fox stood, leaned against the table and put her hand to her head.

"Son of a bitch," she said, beginning to smile to herself. "Fedorov, get the other detectives in here. I don't care if they're sound asleep. I'm going to make some phone calls to Paris and get copies of the Cooper file faxed over here."

"Anton," Elser said to the pair of eyes through the slit in the door. The eyes scanned the two men over. They were both wearing blue jeans, black boots, zipped-up, dense cotton-polyester black jackets and red hooded sweaters.

"One moment," the doorman said, sliding a wooden panel over the opening. Abernathy and Elser were left outside in the freezing rain. They did not move. Instead, they stood perfectly still, staring at the small slit in the door.

"Anton!" Boris shouted over the music downstairs. He knocked on the door. "Anton!" The door flew inwards, revealing a very angry and very naked Anton. The Siberian Husky was being missed in bed by two of his mistresses.

"What?" Anton shouted, the spit landing around Boris's face.

"There are two guys at the door, sir. They asked for you by name." Boris discreetly wiped off his nose with his sleeve.

"Did they give you theirs?"

"No, boss, they didn't."

"Then tell them," Anton said very quietly, before picking his voice up and hollering so loud as to leave more spit trails across Boris's face, "tell them to fuck off! I am very, very busy and am not to be disturbed!" Anton slammed the door in the bull's face.

The wooden panel was moved to the side, and Boris was lightly startled to see the two men standing exactly as he left them, staring directly back at him.

"Go away," Boris said, and after a moment's hesitation, closed the view hole.

Abernathy sighed deeply and hung his head in frustration.

"He thinks we're dead," Abernathy said. "Rightly so, too. We were supposed to meet a week ago."

"So...?" Elser asked, not moving.

"We might be screwed here. Without Anton, we can't coordinate Sapphire."

"That's unacceptable," Elser said. Abernathy lost his cool composure and began hollering at Elser.

"Well, what the fuck you want me to do? You said we could rely on this guy, so he became the lynchpin of the entire operation! Hey, I'm out of here, mate! I got my money, I don't work for Jerry! I should just walk right now!"

Elser turned his back to Abernathy and began to case down the side of the building.

"Hey! Where are you going?" Ethan asked, taking a step to follow.

"Inside," Elser said. "I've killed a lot of people to get where I am right now, and I'm not going to give up this easy."

"What're you going to do? Huh? The door is fucking locked and the windows have iron bars!" Elser moved to the end of the stone building. A chain-link fence ran from the front corner, across a large paved lot, to the underpass of a bridge. Behind the fence was a staircase leading to a basement door. John looked up to the top of the fence. Razor wire was curled up along the edge. Elser put two fingers through a link of the fence and tested its strength with a good pull.

"John?" Ethan asked. Elser ignored Abernathy and strutted across the street to the rented Mercedes with a sleeping Vickers inside. He opened the trunk with his key and pulled out the tire jack. He stuck the jack in the middle between two vertical struts holding the fence up. He stuck the head in a link of the chains and began pumping the handle with his foot. The fence resisted, then bent, and began to creak and snap in a few places. Soon, there was a hole large enough for a man to slip through.

"That's what I'm going to do," Elser said.

Abernathy yanked the jack out from behind them, and did his best to re-shape the fence back to a natural appearance. Down the steps, Elser was working on the lock with a simple lock-picking kit. He felt the third pin lift with his needle. He gave the whole works a twist. With a satisfying click, the door opened.

"Bloody perfect," Elser whispered to himself, cautiously entering the basement.

Boris wasn't the smartest thing on two legs, and it came to Abernathy and Elser's advantage. Letting his instincts get the better of him, he was watching the dancers onstage rather than the stairwell leading upstairs from the basement to the private rooms. He missed two shady figures wearing blue jeans and black jackets making their way up.

Elser was the one to notice the sounds of a mattress squeaking. He held out an arm to stop Abernathy, and used the same hand to signal to the door to the left.

"Stone," John said, making a grabbing motion with his right hand. Abernathy reached into his pocket and pulled out a white envelope. There was something about the size of a pencil eraser rolling about inside. Elser pushed the package into the clearing under the door with his foot and pounded on the door with his fist. There was a very angry answer in Russian from the other side. Elser kept pounding his fist on the door.

"Boris, you worthless piece of shit!" Anton pulled himself away from the smaller of the two women and approached the entrance. There was a paper envelope that had been pushed under the door. Anton picked it up. He dumped the contents into the palm of his hand. His yellow eyes went wide. Anton rushed to his clothes, rummaged through his jacket pocket, and found a similar stone. He held the two together. The cuts matched up.

"Shit!" Anton cursed aloud, in perfect English.

The door opened inwards. A white and silver Siberian Husky stood before Ethan and John. Unlike how he had been with Boris, this Anton was much calmer and fully dressed.

"I thought you blokes bit the big one," he said, pushing past the two into the hallway, closing the door behind him.

"Told you," Abernathy sneered.

Anton sat in the center of the horseshoe-shaped booth seat and put a cigarette to his lips. He lit it and inhaled deeply, letting out a cloud of blue smoke when he was done.

"Now," he tapped the ashes off his cigarette into the gap between booth and wall, "I'm assuming Sapphire is still active?"

"That's right," Elser said. "We're not giving up yet. We've hit a few briar patches, but we're still alive."

"Good." Anton scratched behind his ear. "Do you have the money I need?" There was an uncomfortable silence from the two men. "Well?"

"No. We fucked the Belgium raid."

"Well, the good General doesn't work for free, you know!" Anton leaned forward onto his elbows and pointed at each man as he spoke. "Tell me you have the cash from the other two." Abernathy nodded. Anton sighed deeply and leaned back. "How much?"

"About twenty-five."

"Aleksyevna said no 'less than thirty'."

"Yeah, we know," Elser said, rather irritated. He stroked his chin with his paw and shrugged. "You don't suppose you know where we can get five mil' rightful quick?" Anton was about to shake his head when he got an idea. He turned his head away in thought and pointed to Elser with his cigarette.

"I just might."

"That's them," Sly said through the radio tucked into his collar. He zoomed in farther with his binoculars. The bars over the windows made it hard, but not impossible to see inside.

"Are you sure it's them?" Bentley asked, the vibrations of the earpiece causing Sly to pull the device out of his ear to rub where the speaker had tickled him.

"Yeah. Elser and Abernathy. Looks like they're talking to a Husky. About five-eight, yellow eyes, big black streak down the center of his forehead."

"That's Anton," Marvin commented at a reasonable volume. "He's Russian, but grew up in Ireland with the rest of us."

"Do all you Irish know each other?" Sly asked, shifting his prone position several inches to the left, out of a cold puddle forming from the rain.

"It's a small island."

"Okay, I found their ride," Sly reported, eyeing the dark blue Mercedes-Benz. He pushed the center wheel on his glasses as far to the right as he could, increasing the zoom to its maximum. "Blue Mercedes, plates: P-9-0-4-T-H, then there's a small plate to the side with seventy-two on it."

"Alright. I have it." Bentley placed the pen down on the yellow tablet. "Get back before you're spotted!"

"Not before I have a little fun," Sly said mischievously. He yanked the earpiece away before Bentley's frustrated shouting deafened him. He flipped his hood up over his hat and found his way down the side of the building on a fire escape.

Cooper pressed his back against the wall and slid his back down as he bent his knees under him. He rested on the heels of his feet and looked around his location. The most suitable object for what he had in mind was just a few feet away. Sly pulled the stack of pallets close and climbed up, putting himself six feet closer to the second-story windows. His cane found a ledge, and he climbed up on the handle like a rope. He gripped the window and did a chin-up, looking in. The small bedroom was empty, except for a stained mattress in one corner. Cooper pushed the window up, granting him access. He crept through the hallway, the water draining from his dark gray hooded sweatshirt, down his tail, onto the floor. Two female voices giggled softy behind one door. Never one not to investigate, Sly pushed the door slightly and peeked one eye around.

Oh, my! Sly pulled his head away, his face turning slightly red. He shook his head to rid his mind of the image, blinked hard, and proceeded to the stairs.

"Well, they'll be bringing it around, and all you have to do is--" Anton looked up from the conversation. A raccoon wearing wet clothes and a grin entered from the upstairs rooms. "What the?" Elser and Abernathy were alarmed, and they, too, looked behind themselves to the man in wet clothes. The resemblance to Elser was uncanny.

"Who's that?" Abernathy asked.

Sly attempted to blend in by ditching his cane in the stairwell and strolling over to the bar. He thought he was in the clear as he ordered by pointing to a clear bottle behind the bartender. A heavy hoof grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around. A heavily tattooed bull leaned into Sly, forcing Cooper to bend backwards over the bar. Cooper's stress levels had jumped, causing his heart to begin pounding in his throat.

"Who are you?" the bull demanded in Russian. Sly blinked numbly into Boris's steel-colored eyes and remained silent. His mind, however, was slightly more vocal.

Way to go, Coops. Shut up! You've really got us into a mess, haven't you? I know, I know! You just HAD to leave the cane in the stairwell, didn't you? Hey, are you going to help me out or just sit there like a lump of gray stuff?

"Who ARE YOU?" Boris demanded again, his hand reaching around his back for his switchblade.

Damn! Okay, well, we got to think of a way to get out of here! No, really? Hey, sarcasm's my job! Now, what do you think he would like done to him the least? Well, he's a bull—Bingo! I know one thing about bulls, and it's that they don't like being kicked in the crotch!

"Thank you, brain!" Sly said. Boris jerked his head back on his neck in confusion. That was an odd name. Sly snapped his leg upwards at his knee, driving his ankle into the inseam of Boris's jeans.

"Bloody hell," Elser said, watching the bull fall over with his hands attempting to cover the effected region.

Vickers awoke with a start. He checked his watch. He'd been out for fifteen minutes, though it felt like five. John and Ethan were still inside. He hoped things were going well. He still had to receive payment from those two. It would be against his interests if there were to be any—

"Gunshots?" Vickers heard the pinging of gunfire through the windshield. He sat up and looked across the street to the strip joint. "Fucking hell," he groaned. He found the loaded FN-FAL Elser had insisted on bringing on the car floor and stood in front of the car's hood, unsure of what to do. The staccato bursts of pistol-fire continued for several more seconds, until a door was opened on the side of the building.

Cooper slammed the door shut behind him and held it there with his weight.

There's a fence to your right. I wouldn't go right. Shut up! You're a voice in my head! No, you're a voice in mine! We're going right!

Sly took his cane in his left hand and heaved it over the high chain-link fence. He was about to climb it when he noticed the barbed wire at the top. He watched his staff clatter to the ground on the other side.

You threw the cane over the fence, didn't you? Damn. Sly looked over the fence. Perhaps, just, perhaps, there was a way over—or under. Cooper noticed the crumple in the bottom of the fence that could be exploited. He laughed to himself at his genius and used one hand to lift the chain-links as he slid underneath towards safety. He brought his foot out and scrambled on all fours towards his cane. He got his paw around it and pulled. Sly's hand slipped from the grip and he fell onto his tail. Vickers kept his foot on the head of the cane as he stepped towards Cooper with the other. The end of his weapon was aimed at Sly's left eye.

"Going somewhere, are 'ye?" Vickers asked. Sly sat, looking down the weapon's barrel.

Twice in one day. A new record. Oh, crap. Yes, crap. Well, I'd recommend using your cane, but, hah, look where it is! Oh, crap. Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap! Shit! Yeah, well, he's going to shoot you in the face. Looks like your run is over. He's not going to put a bullet in my head. What's that? It sounded like denial. He's going to put a bullet in OUR head. Well—ah—good point. Try the crotch. Worked last time.

Cooper quickly rolled onto his back and kicked at Vickers with his left leg. He missed and hit the handle of his assault rifle instead. The weapon discharged, the bullet lodging itself in the asphalt mere inches from Cooper's waist. Sly's other leg came up and knocked the weapon to Vickers's right. In the opening made, Cooper pushed himself forward and drove his fist into Vickers's gut, pushing him back and off the cane. The yellow-colored staff was lifted off the ground, and in a fast arc, whacked out Vickers's legs from underneath him.

Elser emerged through the side door, pistol at the ready. He looked left and then right.

"Hell," he cursed. He saw the raccoon from inside the club leap over a brick wall across the street and steal away into the night, leaving Vickers in the street, rubbing his head. "Who the hell was that?"