2 days before the job

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I place the shovel on my shoulder as I happily skip towards the sewer at 3am today. Last day, hopefully, of digging! Yay!

That stupid camera is disconnected from the server, the service cart is in position, Kai is well rested, Yuri has surprisingly not been a pain in the ass and I have not had to go on Walmart runs!

"Last day in the stinky sewer! Wahoo!" Alby jumps next to me.

"It's still too fucking early and I still hate my life for that," Kai whines on my other side. At this point, I'm just immune to her whining. We need her today, otherwise I would have forced her to sleep in.

"Listen up, gang!" Mon's voice rises, "We have six feet more of digging to do till we reach the wall, I'm gonna need two scouts outside on either side of the building to make sure we are completely alone, because we're gonna make a lot of noise while cutting the wall. And we'll need one person outside the sewer entrance receive the scout's signal and translate it to us."

"Yeah I'm going to go on sitting duty because I can't handle this smell for a minute longer," Pandora volunteers, then turns to Yuri, "You're coming with me."

Yuri skips with her out of the sewer merrily.

Blaise raises her hand, "I'll stay near the sewer entrance."

Rey and Dhara grab shovels and squeeze themselves inside the tunnel while the rest of us stay outside.

After I get a call from them, I take one of the containers to collect the excess dirt to give them more space to dig.

We go on and on like this for about an hour until I hear a loud thud and I grow excited.

We've done it! We reached the wall of the room! Yay!

There is some excited chattering around me and Rey and Dhara step out of the tunnel holding two metal plates full of dirt.

I look at Mon, "What's next?"

Mon holds up one of her more powerful drills and hands it to me, and I turn to Minji "Ping Yuri and Pandora, ask them if they sense any presence."

After we hear Blaise shout from the end of the tunnel that we were clear, Mon and I head into the tunnel, me first, Mon second. We dodge the occasional drainage pipe, which we tried not to damage, slowly crouch our way to the end.

When we reach the end, we see a concrete wall in front of us.

I place the drill on the edge of the tunnel excitedly and look back at Mon who is struggling to even crouch in the tunnel with her long legs, sucks to be her.

"Carve out a clean circle, and we might be able to fully cover up our tracks," Mon says, "Jam it in, and then switch it on and the blades will hopefully make it through the wall to the other side."

I take the drill, stare at it, then call for Rey.

Hey, my biceps are non existent okay?

When I crawl back into the tunnel after Rey is done with the weirdly not-so-loud power drill of Mon's, I gape at the clean hole in the wall, through which we can now see the basement room of the Fortuna Auctions Incorporated. And our dear service cart stands next to the hole, waiting to be hollowed out and used for Kai's escape.

I large grin spreads onto my face, we did it. We have a way out. Finally.

We do some tests with Kai and a decoy model for the painting, to test out if it gets damaged in any way, or if Kai and the painting both fit fine, and we got some very promising results.

We all climb carefully out of the sewer and onto the road, off to the side, Pandora and Yuri are playing Go Fish with a pack of cards.

I'm not even surprised.

I tug on Yuri's sleeve, "Come on, we have some sewers to explore."

***

So, Yuri, me, Rey and Ariadne are driving in the Cadillac while jamming out to Baby Shark. No we're listening to Ariana but that song did peak your interest, didn't it?

We asked Cassandra and she ran for the hills, can't say I blame her.

Bastille starts playing on the radio and I lose my head and start belting the lyrics out along with Yuri.

"WE KEEP ON RUNNING, RUNNING THROUGH THE RED LIGHT, LIKE WE'RE TRYING TO BURN THE NIGHT AWAY-"

Yuri shouts louder, "AWAY-AY-AY OH AWAY-AY-AY-"

Rey suddenly decided to interrupt our jam session, "So, Leesh, we'll be leaving Chicago in like, four days."

I turn back from my seat to face her, "Yeah? So?"

"Aren't you gonna have some unfurnished business?" She raises her eyebrows at me.

I tilt my head in confusion, "The only business I had here is the painting. And we're gonna get it. I don't understand."

Ariadne proceeds to scoff, "Can't you get to the point?" she asks Rey then faces me, "She is asking about the handsome security man."

I roll my eyes, "You guys need to get a life. There is nothing going on there. We get the painting, and then we go to Ireland. Capisce?"

"Ireland?" All three of them ask together. It was creepy.

"Yeah, America has become too alert of our presence, but Ireland is blissfully ignorant, plus there is some great loot waiting for us in Dublin. Or London, I'm not quite sure which one to pick."

"Heck yeah, Americans are starting to get on my nerves," Rey scoffs, "I was casually picking berries in the park and this Karen comes up to me and starts yelling her ass off about how I would starve the birds if I took so many. The only birds I saw there were eagles, and I don't think they are vegetarians."

An involuntary laugh escapes my throat. Of course that happened with Rey.

She's always having crazy entitled-white-lady encounters all the time. Once this old woman didn't let us park in this spot outside Walmart because she was reserving it for her husband who drives in with a fucking BMX bike two minutes later, then there was that incident at the park...which will take me an eternity to explain.

I check the GPS, "Turn right at the next intersection, okay?"

"God, Irish accents are hot," Ariadne decides to comment. I have a very strong suspicion she is crushing on our favourite security guard.

****

It has been a long day, everyone is chilling out in the living room, cracking open cold ones while telling stories about our twelve days in Chicago.

"And then we drove into the Marina Tower parking after juking the police, and Kai was still asleep in the back," Yuri says excitedly. Ah yes, how can I forget that eventful night with the terrible sweet tea.

"And it was awesome but Kai and Alicia did not even remotely think it was awesome and it was very insulting."

Cassandra raises her hand, "I don't think it was awesome either."

Dhara finishes her can of root beer and fidgets with the can, "I dunno sounds pretty awesome to me."

"Thank you!" Yuri throws her arms around Dhara excitedly, her dark blue eyes shining brightly. Why does this girl always

"Pandora stabbed her heel into a dude's bicep," Rey said, trying to one-up Yuri.

Pandora scoffs, "Yeah, bad decisions. Now my only pair of Loubotin's have dirty misogynistic man blood on them."

Ariadne laughs and pats her on the back, "I'll clean them up, they'll have the original 'I-like-stomping-on-peasants' shine in no time."

"The best one was when Kai was trying to parkour a shop but slipped and fell into a sack of potatoes," Monique says. Ah must have been the time when I sent them to get us more shovels from the hardware store.

Kai frowns, "My butt still hurts because of that."

"No, the best one is when Allie convinced a dude to get Pickle Rick tattooed on his butt as a symbol for his love for her," Minnie says, giggling loudly.

Dhara, Allie, Minji and Mon had gone to a bar without telling me once, when I was out running errands with Yuri, I'm still mad.

"The highest achievement of a con artist is to convince people to get tramp stamps," Cassandra says, nodding proudly at Alby. Okay....

Elara start suddenly, "Oh! The lady was peeking into our house once, so I made a painting of the Rake and placed it by the window, and the next time she peeked in, oh, I should have recorded it."

Blaise nods, "I helped with the mood lighting for the painting."

"And it was fabulous," Elara says, patting Blaise's arm affectionately, "How could I forget? Blaise hacked into their wifi data, and oh Lord the lady's laptop has stuff dirtier than a middle aged man's sock drawer."

Blaise snorts, "Ah yes, receipts from a site called Sugarmomma-dot-com."

Cassandra spits out her tea. Which I brewed for her.

Rey turns to Blaise, "You are the one talking? You bought a fat thirty year-old man's OnlyFans account."

Monique spits out her drink this time, "What?!"

Ariadne looks at Blaise weirdly, "If you want to see someone's...junk, just go to the underground subway stations, you'll find a creep who'll do it for free."

Blaise then wisely decides to change the topic, "Anyway, Alicia found someone to fornicate with."

Everyone turns to me.

Thank you, Blaise.

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Hello hello! This is the last chapter before the D-day! Hope all of you liked it! I'll see you in the next chapter with the day of the heist, which may or may not have multiple chapters written on it...