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From his post, Patrick can count 137 butterflies frozen in flight, carefully pinned into place next to a colorful menagerie of birds. He looks away from their beady glass eyes and shifts in his seat, taps his fingers on his knee. Starts recounting the number of segments on the crustaceans displayed alongside the butterflies.
Patrick had hoped that the Hall of Biodiversity would be a more exciting post than the museum food court — after that dreary pit of concrete, a room chock full of flashy display cases would be a welcome change, right? He sits back and surveys the room.
At the beginning of his first shift, he was able to see the true glory of the room. The Spectrum of Life exhibit is the main draw, boasting 3.5 billion years of evolution spread along a backlit hundred-foot wall. A Siberian tiger stands next to it in a display case, posed as if it’s prowling around the room, and right behind it is a panda perched on its hind legs, reaching up for a stalk of bamboo. The opposite wall is a rainforest exhibit, as lush and green as the African ecosystem it’s modeled after.
However, once the museum is fully shut down for the night, the main lighting is switched off, and all of the electric display screens black out. The displays are illuminated only by weak spotlights whose sole goal is making them barely perceptible in the darkness, just enough for the guards to effectively scan the entirety of the room from their posts. It’s all Patrick can do to squint to make out the small words engraved on the exhibits.
Patrick had looked no further than the decent pay, late hours, and minimum social interaction required before he applied for the job — a museum night guard was most possibly the best option he could have hoped for, but even so he has to admit it’s also one of the most boring. He’d already memorized the Spectrum of Life wall, subtly reading the various descriptions and exhibit plaques as he patrolled the room, so now he has to resort to counting crustacean segments. Oh how the mighty have fallen.
The last thing you need right now is excitement, Patrick reminds himself. But it’s been so boring.
He sighs and digs his latest lock out of his pocket. Normally they’re his saving grace a couple more hours into his shift, helping him while the hours away when time really starts to drag (not to mention preventing his skills from getting rusty), but tonight is especially tedious.
It’s a Master Lock M176, a silver and black metal padlock with a long shackle. Patrick turns it over in his hands, bringing it close to his face to examine the sides from all angles in the low visibility of the museum lighting. He remembers scrolling through the website before stopping on the M176, drawn to its unassuming appearance contrasted against the surrounding heavy-duty chunks of metal for sale. In his experience, the less intimidating a lock looks, the harder it is to open. Maximum resistance to picking , the site boasted. That’s what they all say, Patrick thinks dryly.
He starts to reach into his pocket for his lockpicking tools when a voice catches his attention.
“Hey, Jack.” Patrick looks up to see Kevin, his partner, craning his head around the corner of the Siberian tiger’s display case.
“You know you’re not supposed to leave your post,” Patrick says but sits up, as the kid is already making his way over to him.
“Bored,” Kevin shrugs. Patrick can’t fault him that. “What are you doing?”
Patrick shows him the lock. “Gonna crack it open.”
“Really?” Kevin eyes it skeptically.
Patrick takes out his lockpicking tools and selects a thin, tapered tension wrench before turning the lock over in his hands again. The combination is made up of four numerical dials, but once he takes off the dial cover a backup keyhole is revealed on the side of the lock.
“Watch and learn, kid.” He bypasses the keyhole entirely, instead slipping the wrench into the space right next to one of the dials and feeling around the mechanics of the combination. Just the right amount of pressure…
The lock pops open. Patrick spreads his hands in a voila motion and does a little mock bow in his seat. Kevin raises his eyebrows, impressed. He’s staring at Patrick instead of the lock with an inscrutable look on his face, giving nothing away, but Patrick is used to it by now.
This is his second week as Kevin’s night shift partner, and while they aren’t best buds they work together well, alternating posts and break times without conflict. Kevin mostly keeps to himself, bringing his own books to read at his post, but sometimes he finishes them and wanders over to talk to Patrick in order to stave off the boredom. Over the past couple weeks, he’s gotten pretty used to Kevin’s quirks. Patrick doesn’t know why this college-age kid is working late-night shifts at the Museum of Natural History, but he of all people isn’t in any position to stick his nose into anyone else’s business. Best to keep to himself.
There’s a buzzing sound, and Kevin takes his phone out of his pocket.
“Sorry, I gotta take this,” he says, waving the phone in explanation as he backs away. Patrick can barely make out the contact id on the bright screen announcing that it’s a Jonathan who’s waiting on the other end of the line.
He waves Kevin off. “It’s okay kid, go ahead. Get back to your post soon, though, before the bosses chew you out.”
Kevin nods and turns to walk out of the room, probably for some privacy. Patrick inwardly pouts, as his nosy ass is most definitely interested in who Jonathan is and why he would be calling Kevin at three o’clock in the morning. He sits back in his chair to recount the crustaceans, returning the tension wrench to his pouch before slipping the whole thing back into his pocket.
Kevin’s footsteps echo on the tile flooring and fade away the further he gets from the room until there’s nothing but silence. The crustaceans eerily glow in the spotlights, shells glinting in the dim lighting. Patrick sighs. He should start bringing more than one lock to work if he doesn’t want to die from boredom — the M176 was such a letdown. Maximum resistance to picking his ass. It’s a pity that the actual good ones are so expensive. Maybe he’ll take a leaf out of Kevin’s book (literally) and work his way through some novels. Audiobooks would probably work better, less of a load to carry.
Suddenly, Patrick hears a sound, or rather, the tailend of an echo of a sound. He would have probably missed it in any other situation, but even though the noise is barely audible it’s amplified in the dead silence of the museum. The faintest squeak of rubber, coming from the Milstein Family Hall of Ocean Life, adjacent to the Hall of Biodiversity.
Even though the noise was soft, it was unmistakable. A footstep.
It couldn’t have been Kevin, as he left the room through the second exit, which was in the totally opposite direction of the Hall. Patrick cocks his head to the side to focus on listening for any followup sounds, but he hears nothing else.
The Hall of Ocean Life is closed for renovations. There isn’t any security slated for that room tonight.
Patrick reaches his walkie talkie. “Hey, I’m going to check out the Hall of Ocean Life. I’ll be back soon.” He waits to hear the affirmative from the control room that usually crackles through the speakers right away, but tonight the walkie talkie stays silent. He goes anyway.
The Hall of Ocean Life is connected to the Hall of Biodiversity by a flight of stairs leading to the ground floor, and Patrick stands at the top of them to survey the scene below. The massive blue whale suspended from the ceiling takes up the majority of his vision at first, but when he examines the perimeter of the room, Patrick can make out a lone figure in the dark, standing in front of a display case.
He inches down the stairs, taking each step carefully in order to not give himself away. At the same time, he pulls out his flashlight, keeping it off for the moment — so as to not give away his presence too soon — but holding it at the ready both for its use as a light and a club. Soon, Patrick makes it to the floor and slowly creeps his way over to the figure. Upon getting closer, he can see that it’s a man bending over to read the exhibit, so absorbed that he doesn’t notice Patrick standing right behind him.
Patrick clears his throat, and the man jumps about twenty feet in the air before whirling around in shock.
Patrick clicks his flashlight on and shines it directly at the man’s face, who sputters and raises a hand to block his eyes from the bright light. He’s wearing the same exact night watchman uniform as Patrick, a blue short-sleeved button up tucked into black pants held up by a shiny-new black belt. The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles logo is embroidered above the breast pocket of the shirt, and pinned proudly next to that is an official museum id badge.
“What are you doing here?” Patrick puts the hand not holding the flashlight on his hip and watches as the man visibly struggles to think of something to say.
“I— can you shine that somewhere else?” he snaps at last, and Patrick sighs impatiently before lowering the flashlight to shine on his chest instead. “It’s my first day on the job,” the man continues, drawing himself up in a way that’s a bit too superior for the situation he’s in at the moment. “I got a little lost.”
“Well, Antonio, ” Patrick makes a show of squinting at his badge. “You don’t work here.”
He watches in amusement as Antonio’s face flickers from slight smugness into irritation before smoothing out.
“How do you know that?”
“Your name wasn’t on the roster for tonight’s shift.”
“Come on, you don’t remember that.”
“Try me.” Patrick crosses his arms. “Now tell me what you’re doing or I call for backup.” He reaches for his walkie talkie without taking his eyes off Antonio, who only shakes his head.
“That won’t work.”
Patrick sees Antonio’s eyes flicker to something behind him. He starts to turn around, but a sharp pain blooms across his head. The last thing he sees as he falls to the ground is Antonio’s face staring down at him, and then another face swims across his vision. Then, only darkness.
_______________________
When Patrick was twelve years old, he broke his wrist in two different places while trying to rescue Mrs. Johnson’s cat from a tree. Getting up the tall oak growing between their houses had been simple, Patrick doing so with the practiced agility of a child whose mother complained that he always came home with more dirt on his clothes than on the ground outside.
It didn’t take long before he was at eye-level with the cat in question, who decided that it did not want to leave yet, thank you very much, and conveyed its offense by whipping itself into a furry, hissing frenzy and swiping at Patrick’s outstretched hand. Patrick, who had been leaning forward while clutching the branch below him, instinctively flinched back to put as much distance between himself and its claws as possible; said distance ended up being the entire length of the tree, and Patrick had almost crushed poor Mrs. Johnson as he landed in the dirt with a snap. All of the air was knocked out of his lungs, and even as he struggled to take in a proper breath he could feel hot pain throbbing its way through his wrist.
“You ought to be more careful,” Patrick’s grandfather later said while propped up in the seat next to Patrick’s hospital bed. He rapped his knuckles on the plaster cast encasing Patrick’s forearm.
Patrick wiggled the tips of his fingers sticking out of the cast. “I was careful. It’s the cat’s fault, not mine.”
“Well the cat isn’t stuck in here now, son, is it?”
Patrick shrugged and looked down at the book in his lap. His mother dropped it off alongside three others in the morning, pressing a quick kiss to his head before rushing off to work.
“It’s a series,” she had said, “The lady at the bookstore told me that it’s popular with children your age.”
“What about my Sudoku?” Patrick asked her.
“I couldn’t find it in that mess you call a room. Be good!” she called over her shoulder as she headed out the door.
Patrick looked curiously at the book she deposited in his lap , but upon flipping through the pages, it revealed itself to be about magic and wizards. Bleh. He clumsily picked up the thick book with his left hand and tried to lean over to balance it on top of the hospital nightstand with the others, but his grandfather intercepted him.
“What did my daughter give you now,” he said, taking the book. “ Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, eh?
“Yeah,” Patrick wrinkled his nose, and his grandfather chuckled. He pulled something out of his coat pocket and set it on Patrick’s lap.
Patrick stared at the worn leather pouch before turning it upside down. The clink of metal rang through the hospital room, differently-shaped pieces hitting each other until they were lying in a pile on the sheets. He looked up to his grandfather questioningly.
“A lockpicking set,” is what he got in explanation, and his grandfather pulled a small lock out of his pocket. “I reckoned you’d be running up the walls in here until you end up breaking your other arm if you don’t keep busy.”
Patrick ran his hand over the different tools and looked up at his grandfather in excitement. “How do I use them?”
His grandfather scooted his chair closer to Patrick’s bedside, and they both leaned in to look over the lock and tools.
“Now this one is called a tension wrench…”
___________________
The first thing that Patrick becomes aware of is his shoulder hitting something solid before his body rolls the other way. The back of his head is dully throbbing, his arms and legs are uncomfortably restrained with what feels like handcuffs, and there’s a wad of fabric shoved in his mouth, but despite everything, he smiles to himself.
Finally. Some excitement.
The ground pitches below him, and his shoulder bumps into the solid wall again. There’s a breeze blowing on his face. In a car, his mind helpfully supplies.
“This was supposed to be an easy in-and-out job, Taze. What the fuck are we going to do with him?” The voice that filters through Patrick’s addled senses sounds aggravated.
Someone else grunts, and when he talks, Patrick recognizes him as Antonio, also known as the worst actor that Patrick has ever seen in his life. Taze, huh? “I have no fucking clue, Z. Lanky didn’t say a word about another guard stationed in that wing.”
Two more voices enter the conversation, sounding more anxious than frustrated. “Can we — are we sure we can still trust Lanky?”
“Yeah, he wouldn’t sell us out, would he?”
“No.” The answer from Antonio comes swiftly, voice unwavering in his confidence. “He wouldn’t. I have 100% faith in him, just as I do in you. In everyone in this car. I don’t know what went wrong tonight, but we’re gonna figure this out together.”
Patrick listens to this conversation closely, making sure to keep track of who is talking. There are at least four, maybe five people in this car right now, not including Patrick, and they don’t seem to be planning anything especially nefarious regarding his whole situation. That’s good, at least. The fabric in his mouth isn’t enough to gag him fully, and after working his jaw a bit, he’s able to spit it out. It hits the floor with a wet splat.
“Hey, where are we going?”
There’s a rustling sound, and Patrick hears Antonio’s voice.
“Oh you’re awake.” He sounds less than thrilled. Which is entirely his fault because he’s the one who decided to kidnap Patrick in the first place, but whatever.
“You know what they say about secondary locations,” Patrick chirps.
Antonio sounds long-suffering when he says, “We’re not going to kill you. Just… shut up.”
There are footsteps coming towards him, and someone picks the gag up from the ground and shoves it back in Patrick’s mouth. Which, gross. All Patrick can say is mphfmhfp, and he makes a face but keeps quiet. That is, until the cool air wafting through the car windows carries with it a scent that Patrick knows all too well. He spits out the gag again.
“Hey, can we stop by In N Out? Please?”
“You gotta be kidding me.” Antonio groans, but Z laughs a little.
“Come on,” Patrick wheedles, “You kidnapped me before I got to take my snack break.”
“Okay first of all, I didn’t kidnap you, I just… removed you from the situation. You’re in no situation to ask for anything, anyways.”
“No sense of self preservation here, I’m afraid,” Patrick says cheerfully. “I bet you’re hungry too. Plus, I said please.” He pouts in what he hopes is Antonio’s direction. “Pretty please?”
Someone else pipes up a little hesitantly. “I, uh, could eat right now too.”
Antonio sighs loudly.
There’s a little bit of a fumble when they have to uncuff Patrick’s hands from behind his back and recuff them together in front of him, but soon he has in his clutches the ambrosia of the gods, a feast fit for kings, a mouthwateringly delectable four-by-four ( with toasted buns, he made sure to call from the back of the car while they ordered so Antonio couldn’t ignore him). Apparently asking his kidnappers for a strawberry milkshake was pushing it, though.
In one fell swoop, Patrick shoves his final bite into his mouth. “So what’s up with the museum?” he mumbles through the burger.
“Are you a child? Swallow first.” Antonio snaps.
“That’s what he said,” Patrick says, mouth still full. Z snorts.
Patrick grins. “You’re so easy to mess with, man.” There is only a pointed silence from the front of the car.
He crumples up his burger wrapper and stuffs it in his front pants pocket. The smooth leather of his lockpicking set, warm from being in his pocket, brushes against his fingers.
___________________
The sound of a garage door grinding its way open rouses Patrick from where he was dozing off, his full stomach having lulled him into a pleasant sleep. The car tilts as it drives up an incline, presumably a driveway, before slowing to a stop, and Patrick yawns and extends his sore arms over his head, savoring the satisfying stretch of his cramped muscles.
“Finally. How far away is this place, anyways?”
“Please,” Antonio says, “Can you be quiet for—what. Did you do to the cuffs.”
Patrick pauses midway through his stretch. Oops. “They were digging into my wrists,” he explains.
“Suter, I thought you said these were tamperproof.”
“They are.” The poor kid sounds bewildered.
“That’s what they all say,” Patrick sighs.
Someone hauls Patrick to his feet as easily as if he was a rag doll. They frisk him efficiently, the handcuffs hanging loosely off of one wrist as he raises his arms to his sides, and his lockpicking set is quickly discovered and taken away. His museum id badge is also pulled off of where it’s clipped onto his breast pocket.
“Taze, look” Z says, and Patrick hears a clink of metal as his pouch is presumably tossed to Antonio.
“Lankinen,” Antonio sighs. “I’m going to have to have a word with him when he gets back.”
Patrick’s hands are recuffed together, and then he’s shuffling forward, ankles also restrained by the cuffs. There’s the sound of a keypad lock (nine beeps), the lock clicking open, and then he’s told to step over a threshold into what is probably a house. The secondary location. The hands guiding him continue to lead him at first straight and then to a right before he’s being pushed forward with more force. He hears a door shut behind him and a lock being turned, and then he’s presumably left alone to rot.
The carpet he feels beneath his shoes rules out him being stuck in a jail cell or anything, and he’s slowly creeping forward to try to scope out the room he was put in when something suddenly barrels into his calf.
“What the fuck,” Patrick yelps, and as he scrambles to get away from his attacker he trips over his ankle cuffs and falls to the ground. The thing rams into his side, and Patrick scrubs his face into the carpet until he’s able to dislodge his blindfold.
The first thing he sees is an impressive pile of wrinkled fabric right in front of him, and wow what is this, someone’s dirty clothes? Haven’t they heard of something called a laundry bin—
There’s a shrill bark right in his ear and Patrick winces, quickly turning to see the little terror currently wreaking havoc on him. It’s a small yorkie, its whole body wiggling side to side with the force of its wagging tail. There’s a pink bow on top of its head.
The dog attacks his face, slobbering all over his cheeks and nudging him with its cold, wet nose. Patrick sputters and tries to turn his face away from the attack, but he ends up accidentally offering his other cheek to be plundered by the dog also.
If this was Antonio’s evil plan, it was one even more heinous than Patrick had thought was possibly conceivable.
“I give up,” he calls out as he scoots away from the dog. “I’ll talk, I’ll do whatever you want. Just get me away from this thing.”
There’s only silence from the other side of the door. They were making him sweat it out. Fine, if they were playing this game he’ll play it too. He turns towards the dog, who is currently redoubling its attack on his shoelaces.
“Good dog,” Patrick croons, holding out his cuffed hands to reach towards it. “Good dog, come here.” The dog yaps some more and zooms around in excited circles before stopping in front of Patrick. “Good dog, don’t move…” Patrick is able to unclip the bow from its head before its attention span runs out and it jumps on him with the intent of suffocating him with its drool again.
“No! Bad dog, bad dog.” Patrick dislodges it from his chest and wiggles away, pushing his cuffed hands in front of him and crawling on the carpet like an inchworm. He reaches the door and jiggles the doorknob, but as expected it’s locked and holds fast under his assault. Banging on the door results in no reaction, either.
“Hey!” He calls. “Get me out of here.”
He turns the bow over in his hands and bends the thin metal clip outward until it’s perpendicular to the ribbon, then he rotates it until he’s able to grip it properly between his fingertips before bending over and making quick work of the cuffs around his ankles. Then he turns it over and starts working on the cuffs around his hands.
The dog starts yapping away again in reaction to Patrick’s voice and his banging on the door, and Patrick squishes his face to the carpet to call through the crack at the bottom of the door.
“I’ll tell you who I work for if you let me out.”
He continues to bang on the door until he hears footsteps, then he wiggles away as the door swings open, narrowly missing his nose. He looks up and sees what looks like a kid who couldn’t be any older than eighteen, also wearing a museum night guard uniform.
“Oh, hey. Can I leave? This dog is annoying as hell.”
Suddenly Antonio appears behind the kid. His face is stuck in the same pissed-off expression that he had when Patrick surprised him at the museum, but it quickly morphs into something softer when the dog barks some more and zooms towards him.
Patrick stares as Antonio scoops it up and cuddles it like a baby. “Oh, you’re such a good girl,” he coos at the fluffball. “I’m sorry I left you alone with this annoying, annoying man.” He shoots a death glare down at Patrick, who is still sitting on the ground, but the effect is somewhat ruined by the fact that the dog is making quick work of licking all over his face, something that he makes no attempts to shield himself from. He turns towards the kid. “You put him in my room?”
It figures that Antonio’s the one who’s a slob.
The kid shrugs. “It’s your fault he’s here.”
Antonio only sniffs, and Patrick politely coughs into his fist to remind them that he exists.
“Can you let me go?”
“No,” Antonio says brusquely, “Come on.” He turns and leaves, the yorkie following him adoringly.
“Hardass,” Patrick says under his breath. The kid laughs a little before turning around to make sure Antonio didn’t hear that.
“Here, let me,” he says, and holds his hand out to help Patrick up.
“Thanks, man,” Patrick stands up and follows him out of Antonio’s room into what looks like the hallway of a normal suburban house, floral pastel wallpaper included.
“I’m Philipp,” the kid says.
“Jack,” Patrick grins in reply. “So, what’s his deal?” He cocks his head towards Antonio’s retreating back.
Philipp shrugs. “We all have, uh, our own issues, y’know.” Patrick nods in reply. Boy did he ever. Philipp continues. “Me and Ian are pretty new so we’re still settling in. Taze is… pretty uptight. He calls the shots, though, so I guess he has his reasons.”
Patrick follows Philipp down the hall until they make a left turn into what would look like an ordinary dining room, if not for the massive table taking up most of the space. He stares at the array of people that are sitting around it, and they stare back at him, most with curiosity but Antonio with irritation.
Antonio is at the head of the table, the dumb dog panting in his lap. To his left is an intimidating looking guy, a gnarly scar on his chin hinting at his main job. His hair is pulled back into a bun. Philipp walks forward and slips into the chair next to him, bumping shoulders companionably with another young-looking kid. Probably the Ian he was talking about.
To Antonio’s right is two empty chairs, and then another young guy, typing away at a computer in front of him.
Antonio points him to the chair next to the kid with the computer, and Patrick sits down obediently. Antonio’s eyes cut to him before he looks around to survey the rest of the table. “Debrief. Kurashev, Mitchell. What was executed correctly tonight?”
Philipp starts. “Well, our entry was clean. All of Lanky’s intel was correct,” he hesitates, looking at Patrick nervously, “Um, in our area, at least. Guard shifts were accurate, we were able to avoid all of them en route.”
“What else?”
“The hand-off with Lanky was smooth, and extraction was also clean,” Ian tacks on.
Antonio nods. “You did well tonight, rookies. Good job. Suter?”
The kid sitting next to Patrick with the computer speaks up. “The security cameras were easy to access, and I was able to add the loop without raising any alarms. The signal jammers also worked on radios throughout the building as planned.”
“Good.” Antonio smiles thinly before continuing. “Now, what was executed poorly?”
Everyone looks at Patrick.
The man with the scar speaks up, and Patrick recognizes his voice as Z’s, from the car. “Yeah boss, you got busted and I had to bail you out.”
Patrick rubs the back of his head, which still carries an echo of pain. “Good hit, man. Ouch.” Z grins and dips his head in acknowledgement. “It’s not even my fault though, you were just standing there looking at the exhibit. Didn’t seem like you were doing any super secret spy stuff.”
Antonio stiffens, and Z laughs. “Wait, Taze, really? I—didn’t I say you could visit the museum in the day? You know, when it’s legal? Don’t tell me it was—”
“It was the Fishes Across North America exhibit,” Patrick chimes in. Antonio turns angry eyes on him, but Patrick only raises his hands up in surrender. “It’s the truth, man.”
“I admit I got sidetracked from the mission.” Antonio says tightly. “As you can see,” he directs this towards Philipp and Ian, “Staying on goal is of the utmost importance. I apologize to everyone for jeopardizing the mission. Although I have a feeling that Lankinen wanted this to happen.”
“So, he did double-cross us?” Ian’s voice shakes a little, and Philipp’s eyes widen.
“No,” Antonio sighs, “He’s trying to force my hand.”
He places Patrick’s lockpicking set and museum id badge on the table, and something inside Patrick loosens as he sees the worn brown leather. The badge is slid over the table to Suter, who starts clacking away. Shit. “So, Jack. You said you would tell us who you worked for. Start talking.”
“I don’t actually work for anyone,” Patrick says sheepishly. “I just said that so you’d let me out of that room. I’m just a normal guy who just likes picking locks as a hobby. Which just happened to work out rather well, in this case.” He shrugs, as if he’s sorry he couldn’t give them a more exciting story.
“Wrong,” Suter pushes his glasses up his nose and passes Patrick’s id badge across the table back to Antonio. “Patrick Kane. Eighth on the FBI’s most wanted list of white collar crimes for grand larceny, embezzlement, and money laundering. Multiple class one felonies. There’s an APB out for him right now, with his last known location being Spokane, Washington, three years ago.”
He turns the computer around to show an article he pulled up, the title proclaiming in bold font “MASSIVE DYNAMIC EMPLOYEE ACCUSED OF EMBEZZLING MORE THAN $5 MILLION FROM COMPANY”. Patrick wrinkles his nose at the blurry corporate headshot of him accompanying the title. He remembers sneezing and not being able to retake the picture, and it ended up being stuck as his id card for the five years he worked at Massive Dynamic before things went… incredibly sour.
“Busted,” he says, and slumps down in his chair a bit. Fuck, he was really enjoying the whole deal he had going for him in California, too, but now it looks like he’s going to have to pack up shop again and start over somewhere else. Making new identities is always such a pain in the ass.
Philipp and Ian are staring at him in awe with big eyes, and Z looks pretty impressed too. Antonio looks, well, even more constipated.
“Good job, Suter,” he says, but sounds like he regrets asking. Suter nods and closes his laptop with a definitive clack.
“Where did Kevin even find you,” Ian says admiringly, and Patrick brightens.
“Oh, Kevin? The dude’s awesome, best shift partner I’ve ever had. How do you know him?”
Antonio mouths dude before shaking his head. “Kevin Lankinen. He’s our driver, but for the past two weeks he’s been gathering intel about the museum. Although he seems to have neglected to tell us one very important detail.” He pets his dog aggressively while staring lasers at Patrick, but all Patrick can think of is that he looks like a stereotypical cartoony villain. The only thing he needs to complete the look is a spinny chair to turn around dramatically in.
“Kev, my man!” Patrick sits back in his chair and folds his hands over his chest. “I knew he was awesome.”
“So were you planning on stealing something from the museum, too?” Philipp leans forward in his chair eagerly. “A big heist?” Patrick can’t help but smile at his earnestness.
“Kurashev,” Antonio hisses. Philipp sits back, embarrassed, but Patrick waves him off.
“Chill, Antonio, let the kid ask questions.”
Z snorts, and Ian claps a hand over his mouth. Antonio looks about ten seconds away from spontaneously combusting. “My name is Jonathan,” he grinds out.
“Ohhh, so you’re Jonathan. My bad.” Patrick leans back in his chair and watches smugly as Jonny visibly pulls himself together. “So Kevin wanted me in on this?”
“He did mention a while ago that we need a new burglar,” Z says carefully, and Patrick eyes Jonny as he stiffens in his chair.
“No. Absolutely not.”
“I’m just saying,” Z insists, “We wouldn’t have needed Kevin, our driver, to go undercover for two weeks just to get his hands on a key if we had a proper safecracker.”
“We don’t even know if he’s a ‘proper safecracker’!” Jonny jabs a finger in Patrick’s direction. “He got caught for embezzlement, not burglary. And that’s the other thing. He got caught. What sort of thief worth their salt gets caught.”
Patrick was happy to sit back and let them argue—truthfully, this gig sounds pretty awesome, or at least loads better than wasting away from boredom as a night watchman—but when it comes to his skills, well, he still has some semblance of self-respect to defend.
He leans forward in his chair and rests his elbows on the table. “Seven, five, nine, eight, one, three, six, two, four.”
“What,” Jonny snaps.
“The code for your lock. It’s a Schlage, right? I’d recognize those touch tones anywhere.”
Patrick surveys the table’s inhabitants, satisfied at the fact that he’s caught everyone’s attention.
“Although it’s easy enough to break. I’d just need a pry bar and a standard hook. Or a safety pin, I’m not picky. The museum’s locks wouldn’t be much harder, they’re just basic electronics. It would have taken me what, two to three minutes tops. Name a lock, I’ve cracked it.”
He’s lost track of the number of times he’s been tempted to steal something from the museum, just to see if he would be able to. Well, of course he’d be able to. More to see if he could get away with it. The route he’s planned a million times is well worn in his memory by now. Easy access to the areas off-limits to the public also meant easy access to the archives. Slipping through the doorway into the hallway that led to them after his shift ends and taking his pick of the artifacts stored there would be as easy as pie.
He looks at Jonny, who’s scowling under the weight of the whole table’s gazes. Ian and Philipp are looking at Jonny pleadingly, and Z has an expectant look on his face.
Checkmate.
Jonny deflates. “Fine, we’ll take a vote. All in favor of him joining, say aye.”
A resounding aye echoes throughout the small dining room, everyone except for Jonny joining in.
Patrick grins. “Pleasure doing business with you.”