Chapter Five

Phase One

Recon, her favorite part of the entire operation. Sure all the adrenaline was in the heist itself, but Lily found it utterly thrilling to be invisible to other people. The moment she stepped onto the floor at Marc Hollings bank, she was no longer Lily Ocean. She was Ella van de Kamp. She was no longer Danny Ocean's criminal prodigy. Instead, she a twin daughter to a car dealership owner in Michigan. Instead of having ink-black hair, she was a platinum blonde. Yes, recon was her favorite part of the operation. It was like Halloween, but without the candy and for more than one day. She got to be someone completely different, and she loved that feeling.

So when she walked back into the penthouse - in her black mini skirt suit, strappy sandals, low v-neck top, and with the blondest platinum blonde wig she had ever had the pleasure of coming across - Danny was more than a little surprised that he was looking at his daughter. Rusty was sitting on the couch next to him, both with their feet up on the coffee table watching a rerun episode of "Oprah". She pushed past their outstretched legs, sitting in between them after snapping off the television. Danny protested, but Rusty sat as still as he could. "I almost couldn't recognize you," he praised, watching her produce folded up papers from underneath her blazer. "What's this?"

Lily ripped the wig from her head, flipping her hair back to normal before laying the papers on the table and unfolding them. "Phase one."

"Blueprints?" Rusty tried to hide it, but he was a bit awestruck. "Blueprints are my job," he told Danny.

Danny shrugged, "We needed to get the ball rolling, and Lil said she could do it."

Rusty crossed his arms, seeing just what he predicted unfolding before him. Lily tilted closer to him, whispering, "Looks like the score is: Lily two, Rusty zip."

He disregarded her comment. "So what are we looking at?" was all he could think of saying.

"Right now, just a basic idea. I have to enlarge them to get all the detail we need to, but it's what we'd be working with," she explained as she separated the original paper into three different papers. "These are the three different areas we need access to pull this off. I looked into it, and we can't blast our way through, the walls and floor are too thick. First, we need to get past the armed security guards and the randomized security lasers on the first floor..."

"And how do you propose we do that?" Rusty scoffed. He had to admit, this was hurting him a little. This was his job. He was the detail man. Rusty knew that Danny was trying to breed Lily to be his successor, but he didn't have to step on Rusty's territory. That was just bad form.

Lily smiled, not even making the effort to glance at him. "I propose that we have someone create a distraction while someone else goes through the laser field to make it to this code box here, to disarm the system. Of course, we'd need a code for that."

"And I ask again, how are we going to do that?"

"Leave it to me."

Danny raised his eyebrows at her, "You've done it before?"

She didn't respond. Pointing to the second blueprint next to it, she continued. "Then, on the second floor there are pressure sensors. Luckily there are office dividers evenly spaced between here and Holligs office, here. Unluckily, the dividers are only about six inches thick. After that, we need the code for Hollings office, which he keeps on his person at all times."

"Right. So far I can think of jobs for Turk, Virgil, Yen, and Linus. What after we get into the office?"

"Well... here's where it gets tricky. Getting inside the office is the easy part. Once in the office, there's his own private vault behind a bookcase here, and all the money is going to be transacted directly into the vault's computer on the inside. But to get inside, it requires a finger print and voice recognition."

"No explosives there?" Danny asked, rubbing his chin.

"Nope. I mean... I guess we could try, but I wouldn't recommend it. I'm not sure of what exact security is in the vault. I was acutally going to ask you about this here." Pausing, she pulled the third blueprint front and center, her eyes growing wide and her heart staring to beat rapidly. "Oh, shit..."

Rusty finally took some interest, joining the others in leaning over the coffee table. "What?"

Lily rushed through the other two blueprints, turning them over and checking their backsides. In a panic, she threw off the blazer she was wearing and started to examine her person. "Shit, shit, triple shit..." She whispered, twisting around in a tizzy.

Danny stood, grabbing her shoulder so she would stop freaking out long enough to give them an answer on what was going on. "Lily, what is it?"

Her face began flushing bright red. "This isn't the print of Hollings vault."

Rusty looked at the paper sideways, turning his head in awkward angles as he examined it. "Are you sure? Looks pretty sophisticated to me..."

"Yes, I'm sure," she snapped, covering her face with her hands. "This is the print to the private vault on the first floor, the one for all his higher income clients. Goddammit, I must've grabbed the wrong one when I... shit!"

No matter how impressed Danny was with his daughter a moment ago, nothing could hide the disappointment washing over his face and sinking into the corners of his mouth. He rubbed his bottom lip with his thumb, trying as hard as he could to mask it, but he couldn't. She saw right through his facade. "Get me that blueprint," he instructed, turning to go back to his own room.

Rusty would have assumed that he would have been excited in this moment, seeing someone who was doing his job fail at what he had perfected. He thought he would have been, if it had been anyone but her. He looked to Lily, who had fallen into a chair, still covering her face in what seemed to be shame. Even though he couldn't see her face, Rusty knew her well enough to know that her eyes had faded to a hazy grey. He shook his head and slowly followed Danny in the elevator and down out of the room.

"Danny?" Out in the hallway, it was only the two of them. Even though they were the only presense in the corridor, he could feel Lily's regret and disappointment in herself leaking out from the creases in the door. He pitied her for two reasons just then. One, because she obviosly tried her hardest and messed up. Two, because she couldn't keep her emotions to herself, even if she tried. "Danny..."

"What, Rusty?" His disappointment was coming out as aggrivation. Now that he was away from Lily, he was fully expressing it.

"Danny, tell me one thing." He knew this wasn't the best time to talk about it, but he was going to anyway. "Remeber when we did the Benedict Job, and I told you that if it was all about Tess, then I was going to walk? Well, I'm giving you an ultimatum."

"Jesus," he sighed, continuing his journey to his room.

"Tell me this isn't about Lily and me..."

Danny stopped again, and glared at his partner. "It isn't about you and Lily," he flat out stated, although they both knew he was lying. He could see the door to his room at the end of the hall, and he started walking with a faster pace.

Rusty raced after him, almost jogging to keep up. "Really? Because Lily and I talked the other day, and she happened to contradict that. It's just a little too much of a coincidence that when I tell you about the trouble I'm having with Isabel, Lily pops back up in my life again. Funny, don't you think?"

"Hysterical," he spat as he produced his card key from his pocket and slammed the door in Rusty's face.

yeah... I'm not really sure how well I'm developing the characters. I think I'm molding them to my personal preferance, but I'm not entirely sure...

review please.

Ruby