"How long do you think it will take before they're out of that basement?" Megan asked as she and her brother raced up the stairs to the top floors; she spared a long look at the chute she and Kevin had climbed up, and they both grabbed their things to race up to the roof. Personally, she would have preferred going through the chute once more, but sadly Kevin had his own ideas. She just didn't know what they were.
If this was all down to her, Megan would have gone down the chute with her brother, and he would have ignored her protests and her pleas not to go on. She was tired. She wanted to get out of here, and go to the police and find some way of getting home, to Chicago.
She had enough.
But Kevin, being Kevin, wanted to see this through.
"I don't know," Kevin answered as he gave the question some serious thought. "It will take them a while to get that pipe off, and if they actually bother to find the staircase."
Oh, well in that case, then, they wouldn't find it. Megan couldn't understand what kind of intelligent mind would stuff a staircase down with so much junk; the builders busily renovating this house had dumped so much crap everywhere, clearly planning to return to their work in the future, but the staircase was so littered, it had been hard to get down there. She and Kevin had managed to move everything down there, piling it all around behind some boxes, and other bits of rubbish to hide it.
Not that they needed to, since there was already a massive buildup of garbage.
"Kevin, please, lets get out of here. I've had enough. If we leave now, while they're stuck in the basement, we can get out of here, and we can return the money, to the cops, while we leave those two in the lurch," Megan made a last-ditch effort to appeal to Kevin's common sense, and break through the irritating barrier that made him lash out at the world. She knew she and her family had done a number on his mind, but this was going too far.
When Harry touched her, Megan flew into a rage. But she was different from Kevin, she knew when to leave it, and besides, while she had been satisfied to see them both being knocked down by that pipe, and heard their whimpers of pain below, she had decided enough was enough.
She didn't know what else Kevin had up his sleeve, but she'd had enough.
Kevin bit his lip, and considered it all. He had wanted to see the final set of traps - the tool chest, the Kerosene-soaked rope - go through, but at the same time, he wanted to get out of here. Megan was right. If they took the money, then whatever their hopes would dry up.
"But what if they do it again, Meg?" Kevin asked plaintively.
Relieved inwardly he was listening to her, Megan went on, knowing he was getting tired of being chased as well. "So what if they do? Kevin, we're just….just kids. We're not cops. This isn't our responsibility. If we take the money to the cops, we would have won." And finally, Megan grabbed her stuff.
"Where are you going?"
"Where do you think? I'm going," Megan said. "Kevin, they're stuck in the basement. If we leave through the chute, now, take the money, now, we can be miles away before they realise we're gone."
Kevin bit his lip again. The more his sister talked, the more sense she made. Last year, while Megan and the others had been stuck in Paris, he had lured Marv and Harry to the Murphy house. What would he gain this time? In truth, he didn't like the thought of using himself as bait, even if he had planned to get out of the Brownstone quickly, and lead them towards the park…. He would have done that if he was here on his own, but he had Megan with him. She had clearly had more than enough; she had helped him with the traps, even helped him hurt Marv and Harry just a bit, but she was older than he was, and clearly thought this was the better way.
She had a point about the money. If they took the bag that the bandits had left outside carelessly where anyone could just pick it up, maybe even take it back to Duncan's Toy Chest, and then get out of there quickly before anyone thought of asking awkward questions, Marv and Harry couldn't do anything about it. From what Marv had told them earlier today (earlier, God, it seemed like a century ago), the bandits had planned the heist so they could buy a couple of fake passports, which would allow them to go anywhere.
But if they took the money, their plans would be ruined for good, and that led to Kevin realising something worse.
"What if they try this again?"
Megan sighed. "And if they do?" She countered. "Kevin, we're not the Lone Ranger, or Batman and Robin. It's not our problem. The police are responsible. And besides," she remembered something from earlier, "you've got those photos of those guys, right?"
"Yeah," Kevin suddenly saw where she was going with that line of thought. "Give them to the cops. I was gonna do it anyway."
"Good," Megan nodded in relief before she went on trying to reassure Kevin this was a good idea. "Look, Kevin, even if they do try to steal anything again, the police will know about them. It will be okay. We've made them both pay more than enough tonight. We can make things harder for them, but we've got more than enough problems as it is."
Kevin bit his lip in thought. Truthfully, her idea made more sense than his own plan which he was beginning to see as reckless and dangerous, especially since Megan was with him.
"Okay," he said with a smile, realising Megan was smarter than he was.
Megan grinned. "Okay, now have you got your things?"
"My luggage's on the roof."
Megan groaned. "Why is it upstairs? Never mind," she held up a hand. "I don't wanna know. Just run up and get it. Now," she finished with a glare towards Kevin. He raced away, anything to get away from the glare.
-8-
Down in the basement, Harry and Marv had finally recovered from the pipe falling on them, and ignoring their bruises and their other injuries, they had gone about looking for a way out…or rather Harry had before Marv dragged him around to the hole he had climbed out before, and he had worked to rebuild the contraption he had used to get out before, but this time things were different.
This time there were two of them; it had collapsed under Marvs's weight as he'd tried to climb out of the basement, and it had been so unsteady anyway, that it collapsed just as he'd gotten a handhold.
While Harry was reluctant about it, wanting to find a decent ladder or a staircase - it was a basement, there was going to be one - Marv had persuaded him otherwise, saying the basement was littered with booby traps, and even if he had triggered them off himself when he'd come crashing down through the hole in the hall, there could be others. At least this way, they could guarantee a way out.
The contraption was different this time around. It was built more sturdily, and thanks to Harry's reluctant planning, they made it more solid, but that didn't mean the older burglar didn't have doubts about it.
Come on, Harry," Marv said.
Harry looked at the whole mass of objects dubiously, wincing as Marv rocked it. "Marv, are you sure this is safe?"
"Yeah," Marv said, and the taller bandit began climbing, ignoring the unsteady rocking. "I've worked all the kinks out. Solid as a rock."
Harry bit his lip, looking around the basement and wishing he and Marv had thought to explore the place a little bit more, traps or no traps. He was tired. The night had worn him out. What was supposed to be a brilliant heist had ended up as a disaster.
"I wish we'd dealt with those fuckin' kids earlier, Marv," Harry said as he watched from the basement floor as Marv climbed up his masterpiece. There was no chance in hell he was going to climb until Marv was out. This collection of things haphazardly lumped together was just not safe.
Marv paused. He was at the top and he was almost out when he stopped. "I know what you mean," he thought about his aching body; they had been burnt, bricks thrown at their heads, electrocuted, had a pipe smashed into their faces, nearly had every single bone in their bodies shattered by a long drop onto the cold, hard concrete floor of a basement, had staples shot at them, and had paint and bags of plaster fall on his face. "But we couldn't have searched the entire park, Harry. There's only two of us."
"I know. I knew if I just shot them when I saw 'em, we'd be caught in a heartbeat."
Marv bit his tongue before he asked the question which had been on his mind for a while now. "Harry, why did you steal that gun?" He asked quietly while he resumed his climb.
Down below, Harry stood as still as a statue when he heard the question. "Insurance, Marv," Harry said, but suddenly it came pouring out of him while he prepared himself for the climb up. "Ya know I've been a thief my whole life, yeah?"
"Yeah?"
"I started shoplifting when I was a youngster, and I soon learnt how to pickpocket. But then I was caught by the cops," Harry closed his eyes as he remembered that horrible time, the fear of being imprisoned and not being able to get out. "I hated it, Marv. I can count the number of times I was caught; I learnt quickly I hated it, but I also learnt the best way to avoid it is if you think ahead, always, and not leave anything behind. That's why I was always down ya fuckin' neck when you turned those taps on. You might not have thought it was a big deal, but to me it was. I saw fingerprints all over the taps, cops joining the dots to pin us to the robberies. When we were caught, I wasn't surprised at how it went down, but we were taken down by that little bastard up there."
Harry stopped for a second while Marv waited silently, listening to each word.
"When we got out, I swore I would never let anyone take us again." There, he'd said it, but he wasn't sure if Marv caught the sinister implications of the double meaning.
He didn't.
"Y'you would have shot the cops if they tried to catch us?"
'Oh, I'd have done more than that, Marv,' Harry thought darkly to himself without saying it since he wasn't sure how Marv would react. Out aloud, he said, "If I had to. I couldn't bear going back to prison, Marv. I just couldn't."
He had been considering chucking the gun away at some point before they left for pastures news. There wouldn't have been any way he could have thought of smuggling it out of the country anyway, and airports were too well searched despite the slip-ups and the cracks in security, but it was out of Harry's skillset to find one.
"Have you ever killed anyone?"
Harry paused. "No," he said honestly after a moment. "No, I haven't."
"Then, how do ya know you can kill those kids?"
"I don't. Now, shut up, and lemme get outta here."
As he climbed out of the basement after Marv, stopping every once in a while as the stupid things he was climbing up were rocking beneath his weight, Harry started questioning himself if he could actually kill the McCallister kids; he had plenty of motive, but did he truly have what it took to pull the trigger, end the lives of two kids?
He didn't know.
Heck, he didn't even know if he was even capable of ending his own life, never mind Marvs!
-8-
Up above on the second floor, Megan was pacing, wringing her hands desperately as she wondered what was taking Kevin so long. Surely he had just left the stuff up there and could get it down quickly before she heard a loud crashing. 'Fucking shit, Kev, hurry up!' She thought desperately.
-8-
Harry managed to jump up onto the floor of the first floor, just as the contraption he'd put his life on collapsed. As the loud crashing finished echoing through the empty house that had been stripped to bits, Harry turned to Marv. "Like a rock, huh, Marv?"
The bandits were free.