Chapter Eighty
Breach of Trust
In through the back entrance to the ZPD, Clawhauser crept, pushing his overzealous body flat against the wall outside the door, while the security camera turned away. With the years he once spent in the security department of the police force, the cheetah knew by heart their placements and timings. The camera looked away, and Clawhauser hurried his key from his pocket and clumsily pushed it into the keyhole.
The door clicked and the off-duty officer slipped, more like 'wobbled', inside. It'd been a great many years since he'd last been out on an espionage mission, or a physically active mission of any kind really, and it sent his heart pounding in his chest with breaths of different tints and species.
He glanced around himself in the darkness. His ears pricked straight to listen for footsteps and tired whistling. His nose twitched, as he smelled a wolf nearby who probably was having a smoke in the changing room. The place was well-ventilated and there were no cameras, so officers who didn't want to be spotted often hunched in there, while they breathed on their burning pieces of tobacco.
The cheetah walked with feline stealth — his steps silent even with the size of his chest and stomach. He passed down the hall and crept to the door to the changing room. Holding his breath, he peeped for an instant around the corner of the open door. He leaped back with a muted hiss at the figure of the charcoal wolf within. With a recovery, Claw glanced a second time — at the person sat with his legs resting on a bench and his back to the door — and darted past the entrance way.
Clawhauser sighed a breath of relief, while creeping further down the hall. He paused at the next doorway, glanced in and found it empty. He moved to the next, then the next and—
Inside the empty room he leapt, frantically pulling the door shut as quietly and quickly as was possible, while he heard the changing room door pull shut up the corridor. He heard the quiet footsteps of the wolf pass, saw his shadow move across the frosted glass of the door, heard him move away into the reception area and then the door was pushed back open a crack.
From down the hall, he heard the wolf grunt softly as he fell back into a chair. He was supposed to be watching the perimeter and checking every room regularly. Luckily lazy security guards were commonplace, and the majority of the night staff were stood guard in the basement, watching over the overcrowded mass of detainees locked inside the cells.
Drawing a long breath, the cheetah heaved himself from the wall and crept to a door marked 'Storage–long-term'. He snatched the key from his pocket, slipped it in and stepped quietly into the darkness. The thick, wooden door was nudged shut behind him, and the lights were flicked to expose the box-filled room.
...
Bogo watched the clock expressionlessly, the only visible sign of his tension being the fixed stare of his eyes. "Fox with the lightest touch," he mumbled to himself, darkly... "Wilde…" He rose from his chair and paced out into the living room, glancing in on the apparently sleeping fox, before, heading into the bathroom. Running the cold tap for a few moments, the buffalo rubbed the cold water against his face, trying to clear the dull ache of his head from the stress, the lack of sleep and the shock.
His eye opening the slightest amount, the red-furred figure of the fox watched the Chief carefully — watched the shadow of his body as it played out against the visible piece of floor from his position on the bed. A thin, wry smile appeared on his muzzle — an expression which came more out of 'professional habit' than due to any sense of satisfaction or pleasure. Though, something about him was enjoying this in a way — back to living on the edge of being caught, back to relying on the razor-sharpness of his mind.
Life in the ZPD had its challenges and was often as rewarding and compelling as his time in The Firm had been... but he'd never been able to ignore the fact that it was far way off the satisfaction he'd once gotten overseeing, managing and, where needing, undertaking operations of danger and great personal reward.
Something of the 'old Nick' had awoken in him. His Judy had been taken, his life had been endangered and now his freedom was threatened by possible accusations on his crimes past. Wilde remembered the 'old Nick', even though he hadn't drawn breath since Scarlett's death. He remembered his inner strength, his deadly sharp mind and cunning, his ambition, his will to survive despite all that was against him — and all he put against himself for the 'challenge', was power to run circles around people and influence minds, to uncover weaknesses and exploit cracks.
The wry expression grew into a grin the fox expertly concealed, his eye falling closed as the buffalo's head appeared around the door for a second time. The sensation wasn't an easy one to describe. It wasn't schizophrenic or split-personality disorder... it was like a part of his brain had been quietly dormant for several years now, and that it was now starting to kick back into life. On old machine, a factory left abandoned; the need for its product returned and life brought back to the whirring of thoughts and turning of cogs.
...
Clawhauser edged his way back down the corridor — three large boxes of paperwork in his paws. He motioned to stop and pull the door closed again behind him, but he had then heard the footsteps of a person approaching, and he had hurried to reach the door out before someone else came.
He slipped quietly out the door and hurried out of sight from the camera and back to his car. He'd left the boot open, and hurried to put the boxes inside, before, shifting and seeking out the direction of the camera's view — counting the seconds before it would move away; remembering the blind spots in its vision.
Inside, the charcoal wolf paused as he guarded down the doorway. A thought slowly entering his mind, he turned back to the door he had just passed, the door marked 'Storage–long-term', and his muzzle twisted with confusion as thoughts passed through his head.
He sniffed his black nose pointing towards the door. The air within had been disturbed recently, he realized. In fact, now he came to notice it, there was a definite trace of something. There were many scents in the ZPD of many people, and it was impossible to tell one from the other... but still, the trace of a recent-corner was definitely there.
He moved inside the storage room, his head disappearing inside just as the back entrance to the building pushed open. Clawhauser froze up for a brief instant, as he saw the wolf looking inside the storage room with a call that bounced around the empty room and naked corridors, "Hello?"
Dread shocked him, as the wolf called out a second time and stepped further inside the room. Pushing the door fully open, the cheetah slipped inside and backed quickly into the changing room, while the wolf re-emerged from Storage — his attention immediately captured by the shafts of light shining in through the open door to the outside.
With a startled cry, he rushed down the corridor and threw the door fully open, passing by the cheetah who would've been grinning at himself if he wasn't so on edge. Clawhauser hurried from the sanctuary of the changing room, as the wolf disappeared outside to look for the intruder all about himself in the cold.
...
Clawhauser balanced the last of the boxes atop of the one below it, picking both up with a soft grunt and carrying them out to the door. He pressed his ear against it for a moment and then hissed, backing away from the door a step as it opened inwards, with the head of the wolf peering in.
The cheetah kept quite still and silent, poised in the darkness behind the closed door. A few moments later, the wolf muttered something under his breath, and the door slowly closed once again.
Placing the boxes down on the floor, the cheetah pulled out his phone and sent a text to the Chief, 'OK, in position!'
...
With a self-satisfied expression already upon his muzzle, Wilde slipped silently down from the height of the Chief's guest bed. Almost swaggering, he made soundlessly to the edge of the bedroom and stood with his ear raised attentively towards the direction of the Chief's study.
Bogo's phone buzzed. The Chief cleared his throat, preparing himself for the telephone call to come — taking up his phone and dialing a number.
Stood in silent preparation in the doorway of the guest bedroom, Nick Wilde's ear twitched. He breathed the cold air, while a shiver ran through him as he counted down the seconds, his paws clasped neatly behind his back.
The phone rang, and in the ZPD HQ the charcoal wolf paced from the door of the storage room towards the reception area, summoned by the ringing of the phone. The storage room door opened, and a wide-framed cheetah stepped out, boxes in paw.
Dropping his calm, professional stance, the red fox spent a moment to ruffle his fur, his expression becoming tight and fearful, his limbs wrapping around himself as though for comfort and his breaths becoming deep and sharp, as though from hyperventilation. He opened his mouth, rasped his voice, and called out in the most wretched, helpless tone he could imitate, "Goh— oh god! Judy? Where's Judy?!"
He stumbled from the bedroom, collapsing down on the floor and dragging himself across the it, while the chief of police hurried up and dashed over to look, the fox's mumbled words of panic continuing, "Juh— J-Judy? Judyyy! Gh— God help me, Judy!"
"Wilde? Wilde!" the Chief shouted, kneeling down on the floor and trying to take the desperate fox's arm.
"No! No, get off," he cried, his voice rasped as through tears, though no tears were upon his face. "Get off. Get, Judy!" He pulled himself from the buffalo's grip and tried to drag himself away across the floor in a state of helplessness and pity.
"Wilde! Nick, it's okay," the Chief said, trying to calm his worried and urgent voice. "It's okay, she's safe, remember? She's in the hospital, you can see her tomorrow."
"No... no, please, Chief, let me see Judy," Nick wept. In the office behind them, a phone sat abandoned. The voice on the other end tried once more to get an answer, and then it just gave up.
"You can't go anywhere like this, Nick. Come on, let's get you off your feet."
...
"Strange," muttered the charcoal wolf, putting the reception phone back on the receiver. "Must be a wrong number." Thinking no more of it, he went back to the storage room, rounding the corner on an overweight cheetah — with two large boxes of paperwork on the floor — who stood facing the door, pulling it silently shut and locking it behind him.
The wolf gawped for moments unknown… "Claw?"
"Uh!" The cheetah turned sharply to the wolf, his paws grasping to his mouth as he stared at him. "Hiiii, how're you?"
"Wh— you're off duty, what're you doing here? Why've you got those box—"
"What am I doing here? What are you doing here?!"
"Me? I... I'm on duty, I'm guarding the place."
"You're on duty in the reception area?"
"Yes."
"You're watching over the security cameras too?"
"Yeaah, why?"
"If you're talking to me," Clawhauser said, feigning a shocked face of artistic capabilities, "then who's watching the security cameras!?"
The wolf stared at the cheetah in bafflement for an instant, but then his expression cleared with panic. "Oh god!" He shifted instantly and dashed away. The cheetah watched him go, his face unable to find change, but then he took to the heavy boxes, lifted them and hurried out the door by which he had entered.
He slipped out into the cold night, dropped the boxes down in the boot of his car by the rest, squeezed himself in and made his escape; before, the night watchmammle would realize the almost facile deception that had been pulled off underneath his sensitive nose.
Author's notes:
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