There was very little time before the sun was going to be up, so we made plans to text and talk to each other and then the rest of the group left.  Frankie said he'd drop them all off since his car was best suited for transporting vampires in the day.

They left me to my wreck of an apartment and for the first time in days, I was alone with my thoughts. As exhausted and sleep-deprived as I was, being alone was the last thing I wanted to be.

As the sun warmed up the air outside, I shut myself into my bedroom, the one place no daylight was ever going to enter. I tried texting Claude, conscious of the weight of the phone.

Me: Claude, what the fuck is going on? You're supposed to be showing Ronnie around, not getting her involved in your heists. And now she's working for Madame Vera??? WTF dude?

Claude responded almost immediately.

Claude: go to the bathroom and turn on the shower. They're listening.

I trudged to the bathroom and did as instructed. The phone rang a second later and I answered. I put it on speaker.

"Close the door and take me off speaker," Claude said immediately. I complied and put the phone to my ear instead; the door swung shut with an audible click. The hiss of the shower was instantly louder and I stuck one finger in my ear so I could hear better.

"From this point on, pretend that you're in a spy movie, okay?" Claude said. "Someone is always listening."

"You want me to go find a payphone? It's the middle of the day though so that's gonna be tough—" I thought there might still be a working phone booth a couple of blocks down on Bloor, but don't quote me on that.

"No need for that. Ronnie swapped out your phone, right?"

I looked at the phone in my hand with a little more suspicion, almost as if it was about to bite my ear off and chew on it loudly, just to spite me.

"Yeah, she did. Where are you, man?"

"Trying to break into a vault and failing spectacularly!"

"You sound way too happy about this," I noted drily. Claude sounded like he was having way too much fun. "Are you humming the theme to Mission Impossible? You're hanging from a rope right now aren't you?"

"Basic rules of spies and burglars: if you ever get a chance to hang from a rope while robbing a vault, you have to hum the theme to Mission Impossible. It's in our charter."

"So what's the deal with the phone?"

"Encryption hardware is built into it. Should bypass any surveillance attempts by the feds since it's the same hardware they use. Benefit of working for Madame Vera is that she's got access to some of the coolest shit. Some of it isn't even available to most governments yet."

"Yeah, about that... why exactly are you working for Madame Vera? Not to sound freaked out, but I am, so..."

"Set a thief to catch a thief. She already knows what I do. We had a few talks while I was recovering. She was especially fascinated about how I couldn't be glammered, and she was trying every trick she knew. When this job popped up, she gave me the tap."

"Just like that."

"Hey, it's a really big job. She needed to know that everything had been thought of security wise and I'm good at breaking into things. You vampires get so damn cocky in your superiority that you don't anticipate every problem, so it makes most of you suck at security, especially the Feds. My job was to plug all of the holes in their security protocols and make sure we weren't going to be raided. Everything was going great until you showed up at HTDK."

"Yeah, Beatrice is a bit of a wildcard."

"You know, she's got to be the one person I still haven't met. It's like we're actively avoiding each other without knowing we're avoiding each other."

"Claude?" Just asking this one was making me edgy, but it had to be asked. "Did you know about Louise? That it was her?"

"I knew about her gang and the jobs they had been pulling, but I didn't know it was our Louise. As far as I knew, she was dead."

"I told her the same thing. She apologized. Ish."

An alarm went off on Claude's end of the line and I winced.

"How's that breaking in working out for you? Sounds like a fail to me."

"Nope. This time it just means I did my job. Just as long as nobody tries to shoot me, we should be good..." The alarm shut off. "Now how are you holding up?"

"I could lie and say I'm just fine, but considering all of the torture, not so good. I'm a little worried about Stanley though."

"Which one is he again? Muscles or African guy?"

"Muscles. I'm actually kind of surprised he's taking it so hard. I would have thought it would be Benjamin, you know"

"You'd better get someone to talk to him. Things are moving fast right now he's going to be a liability when this situation gets more complicated. The press is having a field day with conspiracy theories and now they're calling it a terrorist attack. Your Feds are working with the RCMP and they want answers fast."

Dammit. I had been wondering how much Harry could keep hidden from the public, and I had just gotten the answer. For some reason, the normal cops being involved made me even more nervous.

"This is why they're pushing the terrorist narrative?"

"Dude, if they already have you guys gift-wrapped for the regular authorities, it takes a lot of the pressure off and it makes Harry look like he's got everything under control. I figure if we can at least let him know everything is secure here and these old crusty bastards are safe, then he'd stop being such a dickhole about it."

"Yeah, about that..."

"Oh fuck me..."

"You guys don't even have all of the Old Masters in that vault you just set up."

Claude paused.

"I'm going to choose my next words very carefully, just so there is no misunderstanding, okay?"

"Go for it."

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"It's Beatrice, dude. She fucking stole the one Harry had control of. She took it months ago. I have no idea what Harry handed over to you to put in your vault but it's all a lie. Either Harry doesn't know about it or—"

"Or he's playing everybody," Claude finished for me.

Can we say it all together now? Count of three!

One...

Two...

"Fuuuuuuuuuuuck!"

####### AUTHOR'S NOTE #########

CONTINUES...