I don't own any of this; it is the property of Sony Pictures and the brain child of Angela Robinson.

Chapter 5:

"Okay, Ronnie, let's make something clear right off the bat. If whatever you have planned will get anyone hurt, you might as well shoot me now, 'cause I won't do it," I told him.

"My dear, I'm not a monster," Ronnie replied. It was a transparent lie, but I let it pass. "This is a simple extraction. Something you'll find is right up your alley," he continued.

"What's the grab?"

"The Star of Antarctica is the third largest cut blue diamond in existence," Ronnie began. "And two weeks from now, for four days; it will be held in the vault in US customs before it goes on display. And you are going to acquire it before it is displayed. In and out, nobody gets hurt. In fact, this needs to be done in such a way that nobody even knows that it's gone."

"Nobody knows that it's gone? Come on, Ronnie, you really think they're not going to notice that their vault is lighter by about 40 karats of blue diamond?" I asked, incredulously.

"What's the forgery?" Amy asked. "Lab diamond, colored glass, what?"

Ronnie nodded, appreciatively, "blue moissanite." He turned to me, "she's a smart one," he tilted his head in Amy's direction, "what's she doing with you?"

"You think that a fake is going to fool them?" I asked.

"It won't fool any skilled jeweler; which is why we need to steal it before it is displayed; but after it arrives on American soil. It will be assessed upon arrival; then locked in the vault until the display," Ronnie replied, "so we will need to steal it from the Customs house."

I nodded, "so the fake is displayed for, what, two weeks?"

Ronnie smiled, "now you move to the head of the class. If all goes well, nobody will even know it was stolen until it arrives at the next destination on its tour."

"So it looks like you got this all figured out, so why do you need us?" I countered.

"You'd be hard pressed to find a nuclear missile silo with as high security as the US customs vault," Ronnie replied. "Security guards, cameras, laser grids, keycards and keypads. Not to mention a vault door with a nine-digit passcode."

"A billion possible combinations," I shook my head. "How many times are you allowed to screw it up?"

"Four," Ronnie replied, "before the system goes into complete lockdown, and the company which installed it has to come and reset it, and set a new password."

"I take it getting our hands on the internals is impossible?" I asked.

Ronnie nodded, "without burning a hole in the outer door of the vault, yes."

"So you want us to get into a highly-monitored building; dodge guards that walk by every, what, forty-five minutes?"

Ronnie shook his head, "approximately twenty."

"Twenty minutes?" I asked, my eyes widening slightly, "okay, twenty it is; get into a room which requires a key card and a passcode to enter, past a grid of laser beams, open an unopenable vault, steal one of the most recognizable diamonds in the world, and get away without anybody noticing?"

"Is that a problem?" He asked.

"It's a challenge," I nodded.

"You have two weeks to prepare. Full planning and execution are up to you. The DEB will remain here under my protection," Ronnie told me.

"The DEB has a name," Amy announced indignantly.

"It can't be done," I told him. "Nobody's ever succeeded in breaking into a customs vault."

"Which is why I need you," Ronnie replied. "Diamond theft is your specialty."

"It's not about the diamond," I told him, "you're talking about a US customs vault," I emphasized, "the security is designed to be impenetrable. The guards are notoriously hard to buy off, and even if they weren't, the electronic security is damn near impossible to penetrate on its own."

"You will simply have to get past 'it's impossible' and find your way to 'how we do this,' because it will happen," Ronnie's tone of voice left no room for negotiation. "What do you need?"

"I need blueprints of the building, and tech readouts of the vault," I told him, "plus anything you have on the security systems, card readers, key pads, and closed-circuit cameras."

"Done," he replied.

"And I need Scud," I continued.

"We'll get him."

"Amy and I will do the snatch, Scud will work cover from outside."

Ronnie shook his head, "no way. I'm going in with you."

"Fine," I shrugged noncommittally. I figured he'd turn that one down, but it was worth a try. "Just stay out of the way. I won't be held responsible for you screwing up the job."

"Wait a minute," Amy spoke again, "what would you have done if we hadn't come to LA? Stealing this diamond would've been a little on the hard side if we'd been in Spain when it was here."

"I knew you would be here," he said simply.

My eyes narrowed to slits as I glared at him, "you insufferable bastard." I whispered.

Amy looked over at me, "what?"

Ronnie tilted his head slightly. "Your arrival in Los Angeles was not a coincidence," he said simply.

"What?" Amy asked, clearly not understanding.

"He was playing us from day one. The gallery, the teaching position at UCLA," continued glaring at him, "none of it was real, was it?"

Ronnie nodded slowly.

"Then I also want to be reimbursed for two tickets from Barcelona to LA," I told him, not even bothering to hide the hatred in my voice, "I kept the receipts."

"Oh, I assure you, you will be adequately cared for," Ronnie replied, "after the job is done."

I glared at him again: I'll bet. I thought.

-x-

"11:20 pm. Guard A leaves post to make one round of level six," I announced. "Guard B remains at post."

"This guy's a human stopwatch," Amy announced from the passenger seat of the black Buick Ronnie had given us, "every twenty minutes on the nose. Not twenty-one, not nineteen. He leaves at twenty minutes after every hour, spends ten doing the rounds, comes back to the post at half-past, then leaves again at ten to the hour and comes back on the hour. Then he starts over again."

"And every time, to level six. That's our vault," I replied. "Guess there's nothing worth breaking into on any of the other floors."

"It's probably mostly personal offices. Anything really valuable, I guess they put in the vault," Amy reasoned.

"Makes sense," I put the binoculars to my eyes again, "at any rate, I think that this security guard is the one break we're going to get here. He's practically OCD on his rounds."

Amy looked at me for a moment, her eyes narrowing as they scanned over my profile.

"What?" I asked, looking back at her.

"You're enjoying this," she accused me.

"I am not," I insisted.

Amy raised an eyebrow, "Lucy, I'm the perfect liar here. You may be a super criminal, but when it comes to lying, you're a rank amateur."

I tried to find a way to talk my way out of this one, but the bottom line is that she was right. "Amy, you knew that I loved this life when we got together."

"I know," Amy replied, "it's just weird, you know."

"Amy, you're a spy who was trying to catch a criminal, I'm the criminal you were trying to catch. I think weird kinda comes with the territory," I told her.

"It's not that. It's just weird… I mean, seeing you doing something you loved," she paused, looking intensely into my eyes, "before you loved me."

I gotta admit, I almost started laughing at that one, but something told me that was the wrong response, "wait a second," I said, "you think I'm cheating on you… with a diamond heist?"

Amy shared my smile, "okay, yeah, it sounds a little crazy when you put it that way."

"No, actually, it sounds a lot crazy," I replied, "and I've known people to say some pretty crazy things."

"I mean, it's just that you gave up something you loved to be with me, I guess seeing you doing it now makes me wonder if you ever regret it," Amy explained.

"Regret?" I looked over her and smiled, "not even a little. But I do miss it on occasion."

"But if you love this so much…"

"Hey, it was between something I love, and something I love more," I told her, "I'd do it again in a heartbeat." I grinned mischeviously, "besides, what makes you think I don't love overcharging tourists to rent sailboats? I mean, hell, the amount I charge them is practically robbery."

Amy laughed.

"Being a thief was something that made my life a little more fun; but it was never something that made my life worth living." I looked over at her, "that's your job."

-x-

When we got back to the factory, I practically threw myself into Scud's arms. I hadn't seen him in a little while, and I guessed that his reunion with Ronnie hadn't been the friendliest.

"Lucy, what's going on here?" Scud asked.

I tried not to look too relieved at seeing him again. I failed pretty miserably. "I need your help on this one," I told him.

"You got it," he told me without hesitation.

"How's Janet?" Amy asked.

"She's good. She's really good," Scud replied. "She misses you."

"She still have trouble finding her gun in the morning?" Amy asked.

"Well, you know how absent-minded she can be," Scud offered a one-sided grin.

"But, God, she loves that Glock .357," Amy mirrored his smile. "She'd be lost if she ever lost it. I'll never forget the time that she accidentally sent it to the basement with the laundry."

"She hasn't done that in a while," Scud replied. Then he turned to me, "so what are we doing?"

I gave him a wry grin, "the impossible."

-x-

"Okay, we're dealing with three levels of security," I started. I looked at the three people standing around the table. "First, we need to get into the restricted area around the vault. That requires a keycard and access code. The security guard has both."

"I can clone a card," Scud told me, "but without the guard's access code, we won't be able to get in anywhere."

"One bridge at a time," I told him. "Next step is opening the cage around the vault. This is actually just a mechanical lock. Supposed to be unpickable. I'm going to pick it." I told them, "here's where things start to get tricky."

"This is where it gets tricky?" Amy's eyes widened.

I nodded. "The cage is an eight by eight foot room with a series of horizontal laser beams. The beams are nine inches apart starting nine inches above the ground and going all the way to the ceiling. They start at the cage door and stop about two feet before the vault door. The only reason why they don't go all the way too the door is that it needs about two feet of clearance for the lock console."

"But wouldn't opening the vault door screw it up?" Scud asked

"If you opened it all the way, yeah. But there's just enough space that you can open it, leaving about eight inches to squeeze in, and still have a couple of inches before the door breaks one of the beams." I replied.

"Lucy, we're talking inches here. Nine inches, and you break a beam just trying to get to the vault door. Eight inches, and you break a beam trying to open it," Scud listed off the numbers. "Can you squeeze into a space that small?"

"No," I shook my head, "but Amy can."

"What's next?" Amy asked.

"Next, we have to get into the vault itself," I told her. "This is the hard part. The vault door is a Tippmann-Phibs combination time-lock; possibly the most complicated vault door ever devised. Any one of three things will set it off: putting in the wrong combination, trying to hotwire it, or trying to open it at the wrong time. We set this thing off, and we're hooped. The vault locks down, and there's no way we're getting in."

"Is now a good time to point out that we're going to be trying to break into the thing without a combination, in the middle of the night?" Scud asked.

"Now would be an extremely bad time to mention that," I replied.

Ronnie looked up at me, "so what's the plan?"

I clenched my jaw, "I have absolutely no idea."