If you think I actually own any of this, you're wrong. It's the brain child of Angela Robinson and the property of Sony Pictures.

Chapter 12:

Scud burst into the room early the next morning, clearly agitated. He glanced down at the two of us, snuggled comfortably on the floor, and drew to a halt. "Oh, sorry," he said quickly before spinning around to face the door again.

"'S'okay, Scud," I slurred sleepily, reluctantly opening my eyes before I untangled myself from Amy's arms which were still protectively wrapped around me. I sat up, rubbing my forehead, and twisted my neck from side to side, trying to work the kinks out of it. "What's up?"

"We've got…"

"Scud, we're both decent, you can turn around," I muttered impatiently. Something about not being able to look him in the eye when he talks to me bothers me. I guess I like to have some way of reading him when he's talking.

Scud obediently turned around to face me. "We've got a problem," he said slowly.

I snapped awake as I sat bolt upright. "How bad?"

-x-

"Norwalk Virus," Ronnie said angrily as I stepped into one of the wine cellars he'd converted into his office. "Very contagious, burns itself out in about 48 hours. Not deadly, but very unpleasant. And he's got it."

I turned to Scud, "who?"

"The guard," Scud whispered sideways to me.

"Obsessive-compulsive guy?" I whispered back. Scud nodded.

"He's going to be throwing up steadily for the next 48 hours or so," Ronnie told me, "so he's going to be replaced tonight."

"When does the diamond leave?"

"Tomorrow morning," Ronnie replied.

"And he won't be back by then?"

Ronnie shook his head.

I frowned as I chewed on my lower lip. I quickly looked over at Scud, who shook his head to my unasked question. Finally, I shook my head, defeated, "we have to abort."

"Not a chance," Ronnie said firmly.

"No, you don't understand, we have a new variable here. If he leaves his post a little early, goes up and sees us, we're hooped. We don't know what his schedule's going to be," I rasped, "I can't dodge a guard if I don't know when he's coming."

"I understand perfectly. We are going in, and we are stealing that diamond," Ronnie said, his voice dangerously calm.

"I don't do amateur nights," I said firmly. "We go in there tonight, we're going in blind. I do not do that. We abort. We can get the diamond another time."

"I am not waiting another month to get this diamond," Ronnie replied, equally firmly.

"Well, I've got news for you, if the guard comes up early, we're gonna be in jail a lot longer than a month," I snapped.

"If he comes up early, then we will deal with that issue when it comes up," Ronnie replied.

"What, shoot him?" I snapped, "sure as hell didn't take you long to abandon that whole nobody can know we broke in plan, didn't it?"

"The plan is to get the diamond," Ronnie replied, "not having anyone find out is a bonus. If they do, we'll just have to leave the country sooner."

I clenched my jaw, "fine, but if anybody dies, it's on your head, you hear me? I'm not going down for Murder one. Robbery, fine; embezzlement, sure; but murder, that's your style, not mine." I spun around to leave the room.

"I must say, I'm impressed," Ronnie told me.

I stopped at the doorway. "At what?" I asked without turning around.

"At the short time it took you to abandon your new-found morality," Ronnie replied. "Two weeks. I believe that's a record, even for you."

I turned to face Ronnie. "You know me, Ronnie. I'm always looking out for number one." I took a step forward, glaring into his eyes, "that doesn't include you."

-x-

"So what's the situation?" Amy asked as I stepped back into our little improvised cell.

"We don't have our favorite guard anymore," I said.

Amy's eyes widened, "He's kinda the lynch-pin in this whole thing, can we do it without him?"

I shrugged, "I don't know."

"That's it? 'I don't know?'" Amy chewed on her lower lip uncomfortably. "Those aren't good words to hear from you."

I nodded, "all I know is that Ronnie's pretty adamant that we go in, even if it means we get caught."

"What does that mean?"

It probably means that he doesn't have the slightest intention of letting us walk out of that building alive. I didn't say that aloud, but I'm pretty sure Amy read it from my expression.

She looked at me, her lips pursing before she closed her eyes and gave a small nod. "Okay," she said quietly.

"Get dressed," I told her, "and as fond as I am of your hair, you might want to consider shaving your head."

"What's that?"

"Don't want to leave any hair on site," I replied. "This is the age of DNA analysis, and both of us are on file."

"Good point," Amy nodded.

"It'll grow back," I added quickly, "and a wig will work for the time being."

"The things you get me into…" Amy rolled her eyes dramatically.

"Jumpsuits," I threw her a nondescript blue jumpsuit. I sighed melodramatically as she held it up to herself. It would fit perfectly, and it would provide her with a lot of ease of movement, but it wasn't exactly flattering to her figure. I tossed her a wide Ace bandage, "might as well put it on before we get inside the building this time."

She frowned at me, "you need it more than I do."

"Yeah, but you expect me to bandage myself up if you're not? C'mon, this is the twenty-first century," I told her.

Amy frowned, "you do realize that the whole feminine empowerment thing only works if you're talking to someone with a Y-chromosome, right?"

"Hey, I'm the victimized girl-child constantly searching for her father's affection, right?" I replied, wryly.

Amy winced, "you weren't supposed to read that."

"You got an A," I said, impressed, "apparently someone out there agreed with you."

"Wait a second, how did you read that? The only copy's at the DEBS headquarters," Amy tilted her head at me.

"Well, I am a thief."

"You broke into the DEBS headquarters to steal my thesis?" Amy's eyebrows arched, "their base is loaded with have God-knows how many valuable do-dads and you steal my thesis?"

"Well, I wasn't about to steal anything that didn't belong to one of us," I shrugged. "Besides which, leaving the DEBS with that much information about me seemed like a pretty bad idea." I smiled wickedly, "then when I realized just how far off the mark you were, I decided to leave it behind."

Amy grinned, "touché."

-x-

Nobody ever mentions how weird a draft you get on the top of your head when you trim your hair down to less than a quarter of an inch. The room suddenly felt a lot colder for some reason. It sent shivers up my spine.

But that wasn't exactly what was on my mind at the moment.

"You do remember what happened to the last of your lackeys that you had pat me down, right?" I muttered angrily as Ronnie held his trusty Glock trained on me. I had my hands behind my head as one of his lackeys' hands wandered (a little too eagerly, if you ask me) all over my body, looking for the distinctive shape of a gun strapped somewhere on my body.

"Forgive me if it seems as if I don't trust you," Ronnie said, leveling the gun at me, "but I don't trust you."

They even checked my trusty lock pick kit. Dad had given it to me when I turned eighteen. Some thieves used these complicated lock guns. You stick it into the lock, squeeze the trigger a few times, and it literally rattles the tumblers of the lock into alignment. They worked fine with the really simple locks, but the more complex ones tended to muck them up. I guess you could say that I worked old-school.

"She's clean," the lackey announced, jumping backwards as he said so. Smart guy. Guess he heard about the broken nose I gave the last one. He walked over to Amy, who had her fingers laced behind her head.

"She's clean, too," he announced a few minutes later.

"Okay, let's get this over with."

-x-

I carefully glanced at the road that ran in front of the customs house. There were a few cars parked in the street; a red corvette, a black VW bug, and what looked like a dark blue SUV. None of them had any occupants.

I pretended not to notice anyone's nervousness as I ran my fingertips over the hair which barely would have qualified as stubble, and I shivered at the unfamiliar feel of my own fingertips. "Okay, that's gonna take a little getting used to."

Amy nodded her agreement, unconsciously mimicking my action. "Good thing my hair grows fast," she muttered, as she pulled a baseball cap down over her head.

"How many times do you expect me to say I'm sor—," I started.

"At least one more time," Amy smiled, handing me another baseball cap.

-x-

"I'm already missing the old guard," I muttered while we perched on the I-beam, six floors up.

"She's got no pattern," Amy added. We'd watched the guard make four trips up and down. The first two trips had been twenty minutes apart; the last two were nine. If I'd had time to really stake the joint out, I might've been able to work out some kind of minimum time available before we were in danger of getting caught. Now, I had nothing.

"If she comes up while we're in the middle of breaking the vault…" Amy started.

"…We're screwed," I finished for her, "I know." I closed my eyes, running through everything we had to do to crack that vault in my mind. I guess we were just gonna have to hope that our new friend wouldn't come up early. "Scud," I spoke into the throat mike, "tell me that we've got some kind of break here."

"Well…" Scud said slowly, "rigging the door should be pretty easy; she spends almost a full minute in the room before she even turns towards the door." He paused, "I guess she's trying to impress the boss."

I took a long breath, "well, that's something, I guess." I pulled the bill of my baseball cap low over my eyes. I heard the machinery up above us lurch into action and I looked down as the elevator car began its ascent. "Shit, that was only ten minutes," I said.

"Nine and a half," Scud corrected.

"Okay, get ready to play over the video," I told him. I looked over at Ronnie. He held a small liquid-plasma screen in his hand. If he wasn't going to be able to join me on this jaunt, at least he was going to be watching me on the video.

I made my way over to the elevator door, exactly as I had two weeks before.

"Be careful this time," Amy hissed.

I turned to her with a thin smile, "hey, this is me we're talking about." The elevator drew to a shaky halt as it reached the sixth floor.

"Okay, begin playback," I told Scud. A fraction of a second later, I heard the elevator slide open. "Let me know when it's safe to open," I said.

"Okay, open the door… now." Scud ordered.

I tripped the emergency release and slid as silently as I could into the hallway. At the same time, so that Ronnie wouldn't notice, I reached down and unplugged the microphone on my radio. I would still be able to hear anything that was said, but for a moment Ronnie wouldn't be able to hear me.

I ran to the end of the hallway.

The guard was leaning against the glass door of the vault room, facing me. "I was wondering when you were gonna show up," Janet whispered.

"Shhh, we only have a minute," I hissed. "Do you have it?"

"Yeah," Janet handed me a key for a safe box. "That's not the box with the diamond, though, what do you need that box key for?"

"Long story, who's downstairs?"

"Dominique," Janet replied. Right, that was Frenchie's name. Dominique.

"You getting all this recorded?"

"Not this," Janet told me. "How about Ronnie?"

"He's seeing our test run right now," I smiled. One of the few things Ronnie didn't know: this was actually my third break-in here. Janet and I had staged me rigging the door practically the day after Ronnie had recruited me; and we'd managed to get it on tape while Amy and I were ostensibly checking out the guard rotations. That's what Ronnie was watching right now. I held up the key she'd handed me before I nodded my gratitude at her. "Thanks, I've got to run." She'd be able to rig the door for me.

"Five seconds," Scud's voice sounded over my earphone.

I turned around and sprinted at the elevator. I slid in, safely strapping myself to a protrusion on the elevator shaft before I allowed the door to close.

"The door rigged?" Amy asked.

I swung down, plugging my microphone back in as I did so, "so far, so good," I told her.