THIEF! Chapter 13

Waiting for an Answer

"All right. Now, we only need to find out when and where the next meeting is. Any more brilliant ideas, Jenna?" Liana, Dragon, Angel, Bobby, and Jenna were all sprawled out in various places throughout Bobby's basement. Liana was laying upside-down on a basket chair, Angel was at a table with his laptop, Dragon was sitting on top of the washing machine, Jenna lay face-down on the floor, and Bobby was stretched out on the couch. Their pokemon were also out, resting and playing with each other. In a pile in the corner lay their communications gear, and Liana's and Dragon's gloves and masks. "Jenna?"

"Mmm?" came the muffled reply. Then she levered herself, much to the surprise of Quilava, who had been sitting on Jenna's back and now slid off onto the floor. "Why do you depend on me so much to think up plans for you?"

"Because you like to do it. You usually force your plans on me. And this whole 'collective effort' thing was your idea, too."

"Right. Sorry. I'm just a bit tired now." Jenna yawned as if to prove it. "You know, we've all been losing a little sleep, for this. Except for Dragon; she gets to take naps during the day." Dragon shrugged, smiling. "After this is done, you should probably take a break from stealing for a while. Besides, the police will definitely notice you more now, and they may become serious about catching you."

"We beat the police pretty well tonight, though, didn't we?" Dragon asked with an impish grin.

Jenna returned the smile. "Yeah, we did. But that's only because we could anticipate their actions. In the future, we won't always be able to, and they also will be able to anticipate our movements."

"But this is for later," Bobby pointed out. "Do you have a plot in the works for this?"

Jenna snorted. "Don't I always? How skilled are you at hacking, Angel?"

"Pretty good," the boy responded. "I can hack into your average computer quite well. Hiding your traces is a bit harder, but I can usually do that too."

"So, you could hack into a PDA?"

Angel nodded. "But only if I had physical access to it, or it was connected to another computer. I cannot hop to isolated areas by magic."

"Oh, darn." Jenna snapped her fingers in mock horror. "Then it will probably be a bit time-consuming for you. Sorry."

The next night, Angel came with Liana and Dragon. They hit all the houses on the list the police had given them. In each place, Liana and Dragon went inside and found the man's PDA. They then attached a device to it, which communicated with Angel and his laptop via infrared beam. So Angel hacked into them, and copied all their data. Then Liana and Dragon would disconnect the device, and leave the house. In each case, the operation went smoothly, but there was no hint of another meeting. Not yet.

Nor did they find anything the next day. Nor all the following week. Each of the group went to school tired, even Bobby and Jenna, because they stayed up waiting for the others to come back. Though they had always done this after a heist, and people had always assumed that their group had had a late night party or study session, people began to notice more as they were this way every day. Dream, who had always watched Liana closely, began to wonder as well. A gymnast, was it possible, that she was…He couldn't finish the thought.

Derek meanwhile became increasingly concerned as he saw his sister go out each night, but hearing no news of her exploits the next day. Could she have started stealing for real, and this was why he could not tell? But when he confronted her, all she would say was "Soon. It will all be over soon, I promise."

Then, they struck pay dirt. Every single person on the list had a meeting planned 4 nights away, once again at Allyssa's house. They compiled all the descriptions each man gave, and came up with: "Meeting with the others to meet Mr. Felix Raltan, and discuss Josen's stubborn fate." Liana, Dragon, and Angel were exultant as they went to Bobby's house to tell him and Jenna the news.

"Surely this is helpful for us. All this talk about Josen's fate and stubbornness leads me to believe that they were unsuccessful in threatening the man. But this means that they are now plotting exclusively to kill him. If I had to guess, this Felix Raltan is either going to be the hit man, or the contact for one. Angel, we probably won't get much, but search the web for hints of this guy." The boy nodded, and began typing away at his computer.

Liana smiled. "That's great Jenna. With this, we'll have an easier time convincing the police to let me be in on the capture."

"You? Just you? I don't think so." The others expressed similar sentiments. "We five must come, together, because we all make up a part of your image. But we should also be concerned about Allyssa."

"Why?" Bobby asked. "It's not as if she's a conspirator, too."

"She's doesn't know her uncle's true colors, and is fiercely loyal to him. And she's a trainer. She may pose a problem, by defending him unnecessarily. We may have to confront her about this. No, I think we will. And we should do that before we tell the police about what we've found. Tomorrow."

Tomorrow it was, after school, at Allyssa's house. Putting their microphones in their shirts once again, Dragon (who had come to school and sat in a tree outside all day) and Liana followed Allyssa home. The girl entered the front door of her house, but the other two entered secretly, using Espeon's Confusion to raise themselves up to Allyssa's window on the second floor. They were in her room before she was.

"You're Liana. What do you want? And how did you get in here? Who is that girl?" Allyssa looked very frightened to find two people waiting for her in her room.

"I want to talk. We came through the window. And this is Dragon. She's a friend of mine." Dragon waved cheerily. Then she became serious, and that seemed to scare Allyssa even more. "But moving on. Do you have a CD player with you, Allyssa? No? Well, that's ok, because I brought one just in case. I want you to listen to this."

Allyssa frowned slightly. They had come for this? "Ok, I guess." Liana took out the CD of the conversation she had recorded. Allyssa put the headphones to her ears, and began listening. When her face had once shown mild interest, it soon became full of anguish.

Liana looked at her sadly. "I'm sure that you can recognize at least one of the voices. Now, there's going to be a move on them soon. Can we trust you to cooperate with us?"

"I, I don't believe you!" Allyssa cried out suddenly. "You faked it! You faked it all!" Then she held up a pokeball. "Show this girl just how wrong she is!" And she threw it.