Work Text:
Debbie was just reaching for the diamond when all the lights came on. She froze. Make a run for it now, or stay and try to bluff it out? If she ran, there was a good chance she’d trip the alarms, but “I was looking for the bathroom” probably wasn’t going to cut it as an excuse for being elbow-deep in a museum vitrine at two in the morning.
“Alright,” said a voice, “so we– oh shit, what’s she doing here?”
“Uh,” said Debbie, withdrawing her arm slowly from the case. “I was looking for the bathroom?”
“Right,” said a second voice. “Better question: who are you and why are you robbing this place?”
“Technically that’s two questions,” said the first voice.
“Sabina–”
Two women rounded the corner into Debbie’s field of view.
“I’m just saying,” said the blonde one – Sabina? – “you can’t criticize me for not paying attention in that refresher on interrogation techniques and then go confusing people by trying to ask them two different questions at once.”
“Can we focus on the job?”
“Well, it’s not like it’s a difficult job,” said Sabina. “Seeing as apparently any random civilian can just walk in here.”
“Hey,” said Debbie.
“Not just a random civilian,” said the other, dark-haired woman, looking Debbie up and down with more interest than she liked. “Civilians can’t pick locks, and they don’t know enough to avoid leaving fingerprints. And” – she glanced up at the corner of the room, to the dark space where the red eye of a CCTV camera should have been blinking – “they definitely can’t take down an entire camera network all on their own. So let’s take the questions one at a time. Who are you?”
“Pretty sure I don’t legally have to answer that,” said Debbie. “Also, pretty sure security guards don’t usually wear…” She tilted her head for a better view of Sabina’s boots. “Is that last season’s Armani?”
Sabina’s face lit up. “Yeah! You know, the fashion bloggers were really rude about this collection, but they don’t appreciate how difficult it is to find work boots that also look good at parties. It’s like, everyone’s all ‘workwear to clubwear’ until you want something that can stand up to investigating a disused mine, and then suddenly–”
The other woman made a stifled sound. “Sabina.”
Sabina threw her hands in the air. “I’m just saying, there’s an untapped market there.”
“How did you deal with the security cameras?” asked the other woman.
Debbie shrugged, palming the diamond carefully behind her back. “I know a guy.”
The woman raised an eyebrow. “A guy.”
“Sure.” Technically, she wasn’t even lying. ‘Guy’ was a gender-neutral term these days; there was no reason it couldn’t include Nine Ball’s kid sister. Besides, whoever these people were, they’d almost certainly be happier not knowing that Debbie’s master hacker wasn’t even out of training bras yet.
“Fine,” said the woman after a moment, apparently realizing that this line of inquiry wasn’t going to get her anywhere. “Next question: can your ‘guy’, whoever he is, get us into the Egyptology storerooms?”
“What?” said Debbie.
“What?” echoed Sabina, apparently equally wrong-footed.
The dark-haired woman made an impatient gesture and said something in – was that Mandarin? Sabina responded in kind, kicking off what sounded like an argument. Yep, that was Mandarin. Shame Debbie hadn’t thought to bring Yen along on this one.
The disagreement went on for a couple of minutes, which was fine by Debbie. She occupied herself by scuffing away her footprints from the dust around the case. You’d think the British Museum, of all places, would be able to afford a decent cleaning service.
“I still think we should just let her get away with it,” said Sabina eventually, dropping back into English. “Eat the rich, right?”
“Sabina, you have a trust fund.”
It was Debbie’s turn to make a stifled noise. The dark-haired woman glanced irritably at her.
“Look,” she said, “here’s the situation. We need to get into the Egyptology storerooms, but our– tech support can’t find a way through the security system without leaving traces.”
“Told you we should have just waited until Elena recovered,” said Sabina.
“If–”
“She got tagged with a genetically modified smallpox variant,” Sabina added to Debbie, in the tone of someone providing a helpful footnote. “She’s fine, obviously! Just won’t be in a state for field missions for another couple of weeks.”
“So if your guy could get us in,” said the dark-haired woman, with exaggerated patience, “we’d be very grateful. Grateful enough that we could probably see our way clear to overlooking” – she waved a hand at the incriminatingly empty display case – “all this.”
“Cute,” said Debbie. “You know, I’m going to have to remember that ‘we’re on a secret mission’ schtick if I ever get caught again.” Not that she was planning on that, obviously, but even the best-laid plans could run afoul of… whatever the hell was going on with these two. This was what she got for not looping Lou in on her schemes from the start.
The dark-haired woman pinched the bridge of her nose. “I thought that might be the answer.”
“What if we–” said Sabina, and the two of them dropped into Mandarin again. Debbie eyed the distance to the nearest exit. Sure, there was still the risk of tripping the alarms, but if she could just pin the theft on these two instead–
“– and besides, you know how Bosley feels about civilian casualties,” said the dark-haired woman, turning back to Debbie.
Oh, shit, she thought, but before she could take off running for real, the woman said, “Okay, you’re not going to believe anything we say anyway, so we may as well tell you the truth. Someone at this museum has been smuggling weapons to some fairly nasty terrorist organizations under the guise of repatriating ancient artifacts. We think we know who, but to nail them we need hard evidence, and that means getting into the Egyptology wing. This is important – regime-change-level important. If you’re willing to help us out, we’re willing to wipe your federal criminal record up to and including this break-in, Deborah Ocean.”
“Sorry, babe,” added Sabina, not unsympathetically. “Replacement Elena sucks, but she’s still plenty good enough to pull an ID off Jane’s iris cam.”
“If it’s regime-change-level important,” said Debbie, deliberately not reacting to the use of her name, “why didn’t your organization send you decent tech support?”
A faint crackle at Sabina’s earpiece suggested that Replacement Elena had some objections to this characterization.
“They sent the best person they had available,” said the woman apparently named Jane. She was giving Debbie that disconcertingly knowing look again. “Which makes me wonder what kind of insider information you had to get through those systems so easily.”
Huh. Maybe Debbie should have been paying Nine Ball’s sister in something other than vintage Pokémon cards after all. Still, the experience was good for her.
“So what I’m hearing,” Debbie said slowly, feeling out the situation as she spoke, “is that you can’t get where you need to go without me, and you also can’t call the cops on me, because you’re running a mission too secret for them to know about.”
“You–” said Jane.
“Unless,” she continued, “you’re just spinning me a story, in which case everyone here is a criminal and no-one can tell the cops anyway or we’ll all go down together.”
“That’s not–” said Sabina.
“In fact,” said Debbie, and oh, this felt good. She’d almost forgotten how good it could feel, that moment when you finally stood still and all the pieces just fell into place around you. “The way I see it, I have nothing to lose and all of the leverage here. You can’t get the evidence you need unless I help you, and I won’t help you unless you make it worth my while. So.” She tossed the diamond into the air as punctuation. “What’s it going to be?”
Jane audibly ground her teeth. Sabina, uncharacteristically silent, gave Debbie a thoughtful look.
“What is it,” said Jane, after a long moment in which she looked like she was revisiting the ‘civilian casualties’ idea, “that you want?”
“A new identity,” replied Debbie promptly. “Passport, social security number, credit history, the works.”
“We can’t–” said Jane.
“I’m not going to use it for crime,” Debbie continued, talking over her. “I won’t need to, if you wipe my record like you promised.” That dull slab bearing Danny’s name; the way Debbie’s heart still skipped a beat when she caught sight of a familiar-looking stranger in a crowd. Reuben said he was dead, and Reuben wouldn’t lie to her, but sometimes Debbie remembered the handful of passports she’d found while clearing out Danny’s apartment, and thought– well.
“It just pays to have insurance, that’s all,” she said aloud.
“Jane,” murmured Sabina. She had one finger to her earpiece. “Security. If we’re still going for the storerooms, we need to do it in the next ten minutes.” She bit her lip. “Also, there’s a slight issue on the western perimeter.”
“Oh, for–” said Jane. “Don’t tell me Larsen’s–”
“‘Fraid so. But hey, look at it this way: who’d have thought you’d get to use that shiny new grappling hook so soon?”
Jane’s jaw worked viciously. One, thought Debbie irrepressibly, two…
“Fine,” Jane snapped. “If you can get us into the storerooms before security arrives, it’s a deal. A clean record, and a new identity.”
“Piece of cake,” said Debbie. Hopefully, anyway. Nine Ball was going to give her enough shit already for keeping her sister up so far past her bedtime.
“You are going to have to put the diamond back, though,” Sabina pointed out. “If anything’s missing tomorrow morning, our suspect will know something’s up.”
“It’s not like you’d even be able to sell it,” added Jane, gaze flicking between the display case and some kind of schematic on her phone. “That’s pretty much the most famous bit of rock in the world right now; you might find someone unscrupulous enough to buy it, but you certainly won’t find anyone stupid enough.”
“Oh,” said Debbie, “I wasn’t planning on selling it.”
Sabina paused halfway through stepping into a rappelling harness. “Why bother, then?”
“Hm?” said Debbie. She gave the diamond a parting toss, just fast and flamboyant enough that they’d miss the moment when she switched it out for the plain glass in her pocket. “Oh.”
She couldn’t wait to see Lou’s face when she told her about this little adventure. She couldn’t wait to see Lou’s face when she asked her–
“I thought it’d make a nice ring.”