Chapter Six

Fixing Phase One

Lily pushed the button for the elevator to go to her apartment. Waiting, she wrapped her jacket a little tighter around herself, feeling like everyone could see her and what she was wearing. Underneath the long coat, she was wearing a pair of tight, black shorts, and a black under armor top. Along with the pair of matching gloves in her pocket and her dark boots, it was her usual scam outfit. What made her so uncomfortable was the tightness of the outfit, but she couldn't afford to have loose clothing dangling in her face, or in the path of a security laser. She usually wore the same thing to each casing she did, but felt like everyone could see that she was up to no good. Even with the coat covering her.

She watched the arrow that told her that the elevator was on the first floor. Second. Third. All the way up to her floor. It stopped on the floor below her, and she could only imagine that it was her father getting on to come up, checking to see if she had the blueprint yet. It wasn't Danny. It was Rusty.

He was staring at his shoes as the elevator door opened, dressed in all black himself. Although, it didn't make him look quite as conspicuous as she felt. It just made him look mysterious, even with the ski mask hanging out of his back pocket. "What are you doing here?" she barked at him, thinking that he was going to rag on her for her mistake.

He didn't.

Instead, he held the door open for her and pushed the button to the lobby when she was inside, leaning against the wall. "I owe you. Remember."

"I can do it myself."

"But you don't want to," he responded, watching her build her guard up. "Friends, right?" He held out a hand to her, as a peace offering. He really didn't want to fight with her anymore, it was fruitless. They had dated years ago, and if they couldn't act like adults around each other, they were never going to get this job done.

"I believe we settled on colleagues," she answered, avoiding his gaze but accepting his hand.

"So you have a plan? Or are we just going to wing it?" he smiled, satisfied.

"Give me some credit," she reprimanded, taking a piece of notebook paper out of her back pocket. She handed it to him, then leaned back against the wall and listened to the hum of the elevator's mechanical movements. He studied the sketched drawing she had, while watching her out of the corner of his eye. She had one arm crossed across her chest, the other resting on her hand and reaching around to the back of her neck. He couldn't see where her other hand was, but he knew that she was twirling the longest point of her ponytail, concentrating on what she about to do. He was so consumed on studying her, he hadn't noticed the bag hanging at her side.

"What's in there?"

"Oh. Ella van de Kamp. There's a certain night guard that has a crush on her. I figured I'd just throw on the wig and ask him to let me in first. If he says he can't, then plan B comes into play." Her hands found their way to her hips as a smug expression settled across her counterence. "Although, I don't think plan B is going to have to be used."

He nodded, then followed her out of the building and into a black van parked on the side of the road. Virgil was hanging out of the driver's window, waving them over while Turk yelled at him to get back in the van. "What's all this?"

"You didn't think I was driving, did you?"

Hearing her say it, he remembered just what a horrible driver she really was. She had a lead foot, and not in a good way. Plus, she seemd to rely just a little too much on the anti-lock break system, thinking she could stop on a dime. Now that he thought about it, he was glad that she wasn't driving.

Virgil and Turk argued the entire ride to the bank, but Lily had learned to block them out a long time ago. When they became too loud to ignore, she closed the partition she had installed in the van in case of such a situation. Rusty laughed when she explained that her other encounters with the two had alway resulted in a headache, and they quickly changed the subject onto other members of the crew. One by one they discussed Saul, Reuben, Frank, Livingston, and Basher. "What about these other guys? Yen and Linus?"

Rusty nodded, smiling wildly. It was a trip going back in time with her; remenicing about the jobs they had pulled in the "old days". "The Amazing Yen, you'll like the guy. There isn't much to him, really."

"I figured as much," she responded, reaching underneath the seat she was occupying, and pulling out a bag of chips. Rusty eyed the bag greedily, watching as she slipped a chip from the bag and popped it into her mouth. She was waiting for him to continue, to tell her more about Linus. He didn't respond, only stared at the bag in her hand. "Oh, for pete's sake," she sighed, bending the bag in his direction. Instead of taking one or two, like she had expected, he took the whole bag and began to snack away. She should have guessed. "So what about the kid?"

"Linus? He's Bobby Caldwell's kid."

"No shit? Wow, small world." Lily remembered her last encounter with Bobby Caldwell, and he had never mentioned a son. In fact, he had never mentioned a son period. "He any good?"

"He's getting there. You should have seen him when we took him to a meeting with Matsui."

"Lost in translation? Good times... did he break down?"

"No, but he did try to say something."

"Get out!? And what'd you tell him?"

"We went with the niece being a whore. It got lots of laughs the first time."

She chuckled to herself. Silence fell on both of them, memories evnveloping them in a their paradoxal relationship. This is how it was when they first started getting to know eachother. Lots of awkward smiles, but no awkward silence. Instead, the quiet time was used to contemplate greater things. At one point, they used it to consider weachother. More and more they thought about the other, planning jobs that had specific roles for the other. "Remember my first meeting with Matsui? You and Dad thought it would have been funny to..."

Rusty threw his head back, trying to stifle a laugh. "Yeah, I remember you started to cry. Sorry about that, by the way."

"Rusty Ryan, I don't think I've ever heard you apologize before. Ever."

"Jesus, that was a long time ago."

"It wasn't that long..."

"That was at the lake. Remember?" It seemd like once they started down memory lane, there was no going back. Unfortunately.

The smile wiped from her face, just as it did from his. The lake. They went to the lake to get away from the heat of their previous job. They went to the lake to meet with people like Matsui to discuss possible jobs. But mostly, they just went to the lake to get away from everyone else but eachother. Lily mentally time traveld back to the day she was standing in Rusty's hotel room in Boston, the scrap bok pages shaking in her hands. One of the pictures, the one that used to be her favorite, was taken at the lake. She remembered it like it was yesterday. She had given the camera to Tess - the first time her and Danny were married - and told her to watch. Stealthily, she snuck up on Rusty and tried to jumped on his back so Tess could capture his reaction on film. Instead, he heard her coming up behind him when she accidentaily kicked a pebble. At the last second, he twisted around and grabbed her. Their noses were pressed up against eachother, and she had put her hands on his chest as an instincual reaction to being pulled. His arms had wrapped around her sides. Tess snapped the shot, just like that.

Rusty looked to her, trying to sound cheerful. "So colleagues, then?"

Just like that, Lily realized she could never be colleagues with Rusty. No matter how hard she tried, she could never be his friend, either. Her feelings for him were never going to go away while she was around him, and he had moved on. Isabel, she reminded herself, the woman he loves is Isabel. She knew that because he had never tried to call her after she left. Not once. In fact, the first time she had spoken to him since was on the plane.

But she couldn't tell him that. That would have just been a moronic move on her part. Instead, she nodded and faked a smile. "Yeah, colleagues."

Neither of them expected the sudden stop Virgil had come to outside of the bank, so both of them were uncomfortably jerked into the seats in front of them. Lily hit her head, unable to react in time. Rusty managed to hit his head off his wrist. "HERE!" Turk yelled through the partition.

"Thanks," Lily replied, adding a few choice obsenitites to follow her unpleasnt shift forward.

Rusty slid open the van door, and Lily popped on the blonde wig. In seconds, Lily Ocean had transformed into Ella van de Kamp. This was the other part of disguises that she loved so much. You not only got a new name, but a new identity. Lily Ocean remembered days passed, days where she was happy and thought she was going to be happy for the rest of her life. Ella van de Kamp, on the other hand, had no recollection of anyone remotely named Rusty.

Moments later, Phase One was completed when Ella walked out of the bank with the blueprints to the right vault under her arm. Rusty walked up to her just as she was pulling the wig off and turning back into Lily. She handed him the prints, the smug smile returning. "Here, you're the detail man."

"You just walked in and asked for the blueprints to a top security vault and then left?"

"No. I told him I forgot my cellphone at my desk and asked him if he would please, pretty please with a sugar on top, go get it for me while I waited patiently if I promised to give him my cellphone number afterwards."

"And what number did you give him?" he asked, his eyebrows bunching together in the middle of his forehead.

"You didn't change your number, right?"

"Regrettably not," he mumbled, rubbing his chin. He couldn't help but let the smile slide across his face. "You know, this still counts as one."

She jumped into the van, then motioned for him to go sit next to her so they could leave. "You didn't do anything!" she argued.

"I made an effort. Effort counts."

She thought a moment, bracing herself as Virgil strapped himself in and sped out of he parking lot for the fin of it. "Okay, I guess I can take one point off. New score: Lily one, Rusty...still nothing."