The officers decided it would be a while before the raccoon regained consciousness, so they went to the break room. While they did that, Carmelita made her way through the hallway to the surveillance room, to try and get to the tape before any of the other officers could.

Sly finally awoke. The first thing on his mind were the events that happened before his second conking out. Neither Bentley nor Murray could know about the recent ordeal. He could have sworn the stink was still clinging to his clothes, but he tried putting it out of his mind. He got off the table and sat back on the chair, where he put his head down with his arm around his face, knowing that he was still being watched, but trying to make it less obvious that he was trying to contact Bentley.

"Hey, Bentley, come in," he said in a hushed tone, as to not be heard over the surveillance system. He still had the communicatior in his ear, and he hoped that Bentley would answer.

"Sly?!" Sure enough, the turtle's nasally voice replied, "I thought we'd lost you a while back."

"I'm already at the police station," Sly continued to whisper, "they have me in the interrogation room, but nobody's in here with me right now."

"We're on it," Bentley replied, "we'll try to create a diversion to allow you to escape."

When he and Murray arrived at the station in the van, Bentley already had the plan thought out.

"If I can use my sleep darts and aim them at the power buttons and switches of all the appliances, I should be able to distract the cops. Shooting the darts at them won't do any good, as the others will know something is up," Bentley explained, out loud to himself and to Murray. Bentley got out of the van and started wheeling himself closer to the police station, using his turbo boost to get up on some platforms. He found an open window, that he could get a great view of the coffee maker in the break aimed carefully at the coffee maker's power button and took a shot. The coffee maker turned on again and brewed more coffee and started to overflow.

"Huh?" one cop said as he ran to the source of the noise. "The coffee maker's gone haywire!"

The spill leaked on to the wire, causing a brief electrical spark. A second officer quickly unplugged the machine.

"Alright, Sly," Bentley said into the earpiece communicator, "I've already distracted some of them, so that's your cue to exit."

With that, Sly simply walked over to the door and turned his back turned to it, grabbed the knob and opened the door. "That wasn't much of a daring escape," he said to himself, "maybe this time, I can improve my performance. But first, I gotta get out of these cuffs."

"While you're working on that," Bentley said, "I'll create more diversions so you can find something to pick the lock." In those halls, Sly was trying to make his way through, quickly, but stealthily, ducked down as he usually did when sneaking around. At this point, he thought about how he didn't have his cane on him. He figured they must have taken it when he was unconscious. But he knew that he still needed to get out of his cuffs. He figured he could kill two birds with one stone if he could get the keys and be able to get his cuffs off and get his cane back from the locker it was likely to be stashed in.

Bentley wheeled himself to another window, where he could see the room where the copy machine was. He saw another window had been opened, as to ventilate the general area. He shot a dart at the power button, and many sheets of paper started to fly from it as it made its usual whirring sounds.

"Wah!" shouted an officer, "the copier's going haywire, too!"

Once Carmelita was in the surveillance room, she looked at the north wall, which was covered in television screens which monitored every room in the police station. They were managed by computers below. She approached one and hesitated, before selecting the very video she wanted to erase.

"Inspector Fox," said a cop entering the room as he approached her, "something screwy is going on here. All the appliances are going crazy!"

At that second, Carmelita clicked "delete" on the menu.

"Does Inspector Barkley know about this?" Carmelita said in an attempt to smooth over her actions.

"Some of us are attempting to notify him now."

Out of curiosity, Carmelita followed the officer to the hall.

Sly caught a glimpse of Carmelita and the officer about to turn the corner into the hall, so he slipped into one of the doorways to avoid being seen. As soon as he saw Carmelita run by him, he saw that the keys were on the back of her belt loop. Carmelita slowed down as she approached the room where the situation had been reported by her fellow officer. Sly snuck up behind her, hunched down and carefully walking backwards as to reach the keys with his hands. With a single finger swipe upward, he got the keys, but at that moment, the momentum with his back-stepping caused him to swing backwards and bump into her.

"Huh?"

She and Sly both turned around quickly to face each other, with him doing so to make sure she didn't see he had the keys.

"Inspector Fox," Sly said, attempting to be smooth, "fancy bumping into you here". When he started the last part of his sentence, he was rooting through the keys to see which one would unlock his cuffs. As he finished speaking, he found one that fit and unlocked them.

"Cooper...!"

With that, Sly dropped the cuffs and ran.

"I'll help you take him down," the officer next to Carmelita said.

"No need," the fox raised her hand, signifying for him to stand down, "I can handle this myself."

Carmelita ran after him with her shock pistol, but only after he was more than halfway down the hall.

Sly spotted the evidence locker room and peeked into the lockers, until he spotted something gold in one of them, quickly seeing the long wooden piece attached to the bottom. Swiftly playing the "key roulette" to find the locker key, only to find none of them fit, he once again tried communicating with Bentley.

"Do you have any info on the combinations to these evidence lockers?"

"Of course," the turtle replied, "if my calculations are correct, the combination should be 3-2-"

But he was interrupted by the sound of a familiar shock blast that was flying towards Sly. At that moment, the raccoon ducked, and the blast hit the locker, causing it to break open.

"You know, sometimes you make this too easy," Sly teased as he grabbed his cane, stepped into the broken open locker, swung his cane up to remove the vent grate, hooked the crook into the opening and climbed up the stick to crawl inside.

Carmelita knew she wouldn't be able to catch him in time, and that shooting the vent would only damage part of the building's structure. She ran to the entrance, where she spotted the familiar Cooper van.

"One of these days, I swear I'll finally get you, Sly Cooper!" Carmelita shouted, "Even if it's the last thing I do!"

"It's great to have a woman so dedicated to me," Sly said, "you don't see that kind of loyalty these days."

Bentley huffed in response, remembering his last encounter with Penelope.

"Speaking of women and questionable loyalty," the turtle spoke, "I discovered that the Mayan wind gem we stole from Boss Hombre had been stolen from us! And the culprit left their calling card." Bentley held up a familiar pink calling card shaped like a certain mouse's head.

"That's the gem Carmelita tried getting me to spill the beans about," Sly said knowing he had unintentionally made a pun only he understood.

"What happened back there, Sly?" Murray asked, "Hope she didn't work you over too hard."

Sly was still very reluctant to tell his friends what Carmelita had done to him back in the interrogation room. "No, she didn't," was all he could be willing to say, "in fact, it was a rather... breezy encounter."

"So you got out of it easily like you usually do," Murray concluded.

"Yep," Sly said, not wanting to discuss any more about it. The van turned another corner in the empty streets that darkened as the twilight hour had turned to dusk.

Back at the safehouse, Bentley still mulled over the Mayan Wind gem that had been re-stolen from them. "How was she able to take them without us noticing?"

"It's a mystery to me too, Bentley," Sly said, "She did still pull one over us in our last escapade. Looking back at our adventure with the vault, I did not see her betrayal coming from a mile away."

"She's still sending me postcards from her travels through time," said Bentley, "though I haven't received her next one just yet. And the pages of the Thievious Raccoonus haven't been disappearing since your return. So we'll be able to get a little rest until our next heist."

Sly already had a taxing day as it was with what Carmelita had done to him, and still couldn't wrap his head around it. Once more, he tried putting it out of his mind.

"That's good," he said, "because I could use some right now. I think I'll hit the hay." With that he marched out of the room, yawning audibly. Bentley and Murray looked at each other as he did. Whatever Carmelita did to him in that interrogation room must have really taken it out of him.

Sly just laid in bed restlessly, tossing and turning. He then stopped when he rolled onto his back and started to think about the interrogation Carmelita subjected him to. He cringed with distaste from the thoughts; it was as if he could again smell the horrible stench she produced. It really contrasted with her beauty. Not that he didn't think she never did that sort of thing — It was basic biology, after all — but when she did earlier today... it was unbelievably intense. Even though it did happen, he still couldn't completely believe it had. It was... not what he expected from her... yet... it was a remarkably bold move of her to purposely do such a thing. He knew she had made bold and unexpected moves before... but this also seemed to be added to his mental collection of them. He felt strange that he was even thinking of it that way now. In an... almost... endearing way. A familiar feeling came over him, and he was confused as to why he felt it in this context, and he peeked under his blanket.

Oh, no... this is going to make our relationship even more awkward than it already is.

He had confirmed that this was how he perceived it now, he swore that he'd never let anyone know. He still considered the night that Murray won a burrito-eating contest a bad memory, but when Carmelita produced similar results, while it initially disgusted him, was now... different somehow. His gang could definitely never know this, or else he'd never be able to show his face at the next job. Neither could any of the other criminals, even though only a few might laugh at him, the rest wouldn't perceive him as a threat to them anymore. And Carmelita... she might get creeped out and never want to speak to him again, never giving him slightest chance to patch things up, if another opportunity ever presented itself.
But why was he feeling this way now? He remembered when they pulled a heist in Athens and saw all the foot statues the boss kept around the land, and Bentley stated that fetishes like this often formed in childhood. Sly then started to remember, back at the orphanage, a time where Bentley was being hassled by bullies as he usually did back then, who were trying to play "keep away" with his glasses. Sly had finally snagged them from one of the bullies, and a girl that was helping them with tormenting his friend leapt out at him, pinned him down and farted on him. He must have repressed this memory for years, and it finally came back to him. And with that, he decided it was a secret he'd take to his grave.
Now I definitely can't get it off my mind. I think if I have more, I'll get over it. Just one more to get my fix, then I'm off the stuff for good. But I doubt I can get any more tonight. Maybe... tomorrow.
He was in disbelief that he even thought that. But since this was going to be the first and last time he'd try this, he didn't think it was that big of a deal.