Sell you a Bridge chapter 27

Drake Manor, July 4th 9:00 PM EDT

I  was annoyed. It was the fourth of July, and instead of being curled up  next to my girlfriend like I was supposed to be I was sitting in a copse  of trees outside a huge manner house. I glared at my boss, who was  floating next to me sipping tea, as we sat in the sweltering July night.  My costume did not breath. I was wearing a full three piece black suit  complete with half cape and a shiny black tragedy mask, and that shit  was boiling me alive. "You said I would have today off." Jim was sitting  in mid air, sipping tea from a white saucer and tea cup through his  invisible mouth.

He finished his  sip and exhaled happily "And so you did. The day of July fourth was of  course yours to do with as you pleased, but no thief worth his lock  picks passes up a distraction like multicolored exploding lights over  the city. The day was yours, the night is mine. Don't you agree  children?" He turned to regard the other two members of my team. Reggie  was wearing the same black suit as I was, though he wore a comedy mask  instead of a tragedy mask like I had on. Like mine his mask was a sort  of refractive black, one of a set of three enchanted masks Jim had made  for us as a present to commemorate our apprenticeship.

Jim  said they were carved from haematite, which I later found out was fancy  British talk for hematite. Aside from my tragedy and Reggie's comedy,  Artemis stood right behind the group of us in a matching black mask that  showed a furious face that Jim called rage. Her costume was a close  fitting black body suit with reinforced chest piece and utility belt, we  had been indignant we had to wear formal suits while Artemis got  something more practical, but Jim just waved us off. When we pressed him  about the issue he finally admitted that robbing people in a ballgown  was deeply impractical and that if asked him any more about how he knew  that we would spend the next month stealing bedpans from retirement  homes.

The  masks had enchantments that helped us focus and sharpened our creative  thought, one of the major magical properties of hematite. They kept us  on the top of our game. As I sulked about the unfairness of the world  and the intense heat Artemis answered our mentor's question "He's not  wrong Random. We couldn't ask for a better night to pull our first job  with no training wheels. Speaking of, you sure we're ready for this boss  man?" Tonight was our trial run as independent thieves. Jim was going  to be on hand in case anything went wrong but we had planned this whole  thing out ourselves, and if we managed to pull it off we would  officially be allowed to pull our own jobs either in a group or solo.

Jim's  hat dipped in a nod of acknowledgement "But of course, dear girl. Don't  be so worried. I'll be here every step of the way in case you need me.  You've all exceeded my expectations time and again and I'm sure you'll  pull a marvelous caper. Besides, Drake Manor is no Shadowcrest. The  Drake's have middling security at best. They're new money so we won't be  poking the Owl's nest so to speak, and the couple themselves have gone  to a fourth of July barbecue. Relax and pace yourselves. Remember what I  told you all about a job."

I  recited along with the other two as we quoted back Jim's favorite  phrase "If a single job is too big, just break it into ten smaller  jobs." I took a deep breath, letting it out slowly before I spoke up  again "You're right boss, sorry. Annabel was a bit  pissed I had to  cancel dinner at my place. We were supposed to watch the fireworks with  my mom. She says hello by the way." I very specifically did not mention  that she had asked for his number. Jim had made quite an impression on  my mom when he came by to visit and the thought of the hundred plus year  old dead thief dating my mom made me somewhat nauseous. Honestly the  thought of mom dating anyone did but it was worse because he was my  boss.

Jim  gave a pleased laugh "Well, that's lovely to hear, please tell Marie  that I said hello as well. In any case, personal business is for the  study not for the field, let's commence this caper, shall we? First up  then will be our ingress. As you've all planned this thoroughly I'm  assuming you have our entrance mapped out. Would you mind terribly  filling me in on the plan that I might follow along properly? As a mere  bystander I'm sure I have no clue of how you would approach this  project. Please, dazzle me with your criminal genius."

Jim  was playing bystander for this job so we would have to not only plan  our own entrance but bring him along. Luckily he was a master thief so  he would be able to follow our plan easily, he wasn't sandbagging us,  just making us explain ourselves so we could catch any mistakes. I  nodded to Artemis, giving her this part because the entry was mainly her  deal. I could slip in as a shadow but since this was a test of our  fundamentals we weren't allowed to use any powers. That said, we had  cased this place for a week straight and noted down every little detail.

Artemis  was the least nervous of us. When there was no crazy magic involved her  training made her easily the most experienced of us. Her voice was rock  steady as she laid out the first part of the plan "The Drake's have an  Acertech G370 security system with a fixed point laser detection grid on  the doors and windows. In order to bypass the grid I brought mirrored  arrows I had commissioned with special suction cup heads so as not to  leave marks. They have specialized lenses in a custom housing halfway  down the shaft. I'll put three of them in the door frame to create a gap  that we can walk right through."

Reggie  smoothly took over "I'll be picking the lock on the door, I picked up  lock picking the fastest and will be able to get us in the most quickly.  Once we've entered it's a straight shot down the stairs into the wine  cellar. We searched for ages to find the right target. After Random  hacked into the servers for all the local auction houses we were able to  track down a bill of sale for a bottle of Cheval-Blanc from nineteen  forty seven that sold for over three hundred thousand dollars. The door  has a pneumatic pressure sealing system that we specially prepared for."  He held up a bag of tools we'd brought along.

I  picked up the next part "The system in the room pressurizes and seals  the door. Any attempt to breach it will depressurize the room and  trigger the sensors and any attempt to fool the pressure sensors will  trigger the motion detectors." I grinned behind my mask "That is unless  of course you hack the motion censors through the bluetooth connection  the owners keep active to monitor the feed. In case you missed it, I  hacked the motion censors." I absolutely loved my new computer skills.  Though there were still some things I hadn't been able to get into, a  weirdly large number of big companies use alien encryption.

However  the majority of street level code was basically tissue paper to me, so  getting into a blue tooth connection was baby town frolics. I continued  with the rest of the plan, excited to show off how well we thought  things through "The wine is worth more per ounce than literal solid gold  so we get a big payday without having to lug around a ton of weight.  Once we retrieve the wine we make our escape patch the hole in the wine  cellar door with a bit of glue just so it passes inspection at first  glance and head straight to Clyde to fence the bottle. If all goes well  it'll be long gone by the time they even notice it's missing and think  to look for it."

Which  was good, because I was running low on money. I'd stopped using points  to get cash because between the drain from power use and the utility of  getting more abilities, the points were just completely priceless. Sadly  that meant I'd been living like a rich kid for a month and spoiling my  incredibly wealthy girlfriend with presents and I had zero income. Of  course I still had a few million in savings, but mom had forced me to  put the majority of it away in a college fund when she saw that ten  million dollar deposit last time, most of the rest of my money I'd blown  on our new lair. I'd had to set up a secondary account for my thieving  funds so I would have access to my own cash.

A  hundred grand in tax free pocket money was just what I needed. Jim gave  another nod and stood. His legs just reaching down to the ground from  where he was sitting in mid air like he was getting out of an invisible  chair. "Well done. It certainly sounds like a wonderful plan, I'm sure  it'll be a smashing success. Let's be about our business then, shall we.  Crime and tide wait for no man and all that." He brushed invisible  crumbs that may or may not have actually been there off his pristine  white suit and flicked a wrist, causing the cup to vanish and his cane  to appear.

We nodded as a group  and set out. Crossing the yard was easy enough, I'd long since looped  the security cameras on the property, thank you wifi connectivity.  Artemis drew her bow as we approached the door and fired the arrows into  the exact right spots on the door. We'd built a simulation door with  laser pointers and she'd practiced extensively back at the refurbished  clock tower I'd kitted out to be our base. I'd had to pay extra to hire  some extra discrete workers Jim had recommended, apparently there was an  entire criminal subculture of lair repair guys.

Once  the lasers were taken care of Reggie started on picking the locks. I  hit a button on my watch to time him because he liked to track his  progress. The lock was fairly advanced, it took him a full forty five  seconds to get it open. We followed the map I'd gotten (ironically from  hacking their security company) down the hall and to the stairs down to  the wine cellar. As the most coordinated of us Artemis did the honors of  drilling into the door. She slid in the small tube attached to a small  canister and sprayed liquid nitrogen into the door mechanism.

One  quick twist of the handle and the internals shattered. We plugged up  the hole from the drill, slipped inside, found the proper bottle of  wine, which we then inserted into the specialized cushioned box we'd  bought, and then we slipped out. Everything went absolutely perfect, we  completely nailed the plan and covered every possible eventuality, and I  was feeling pretty damn smug about how well we had pulled this off as  we headed up the stairs. Right until things went wrong. We came up from  the wine cellar quietly, Jim drifting soundlessly like I was while  Artemis and Reggie both did their best to keep the noise down.

We  made it to the door with the wine and we were just opening the thing up  when we heard a small voice behind us. We all turned, slowly and with  horrifying expectation, to find a small black haired boy in red pajamas  glaring at us. His eyes were bright blue, just like the pictures of the  Drake's we'd been taking as we mapped out their daily routines. He was  SUPPOSED to be asleep this late at night, but apparently he got up to  get some milk or something. He repeated himself "I said who are you  guys, and why are you in my house?" That was the first time I met nine  year old Tim Drake.