\/Dwyn Souza\/
Dwyn walked calmly out of the building despite the buzzing of adrenaline through her body. She could feel the weight of the tablet settled snugly against her back under her shirt. She had what was almost like a harness specifically for this, and while the other two had been distracted, she'd made sure the dimensions were right and tucked it in. It was almost like the computer sleeve in a backpack, making sure the tablet was supported while out of sight. She wasn't sure if an ancient relic should really be touching bare skin-- she knew that damaged some things like paintings-- but they hadn't specified that they didn't want it touched, so she hadn't bothered brainstorming another way to get it out.
She'd also taken the time while the other two were distracted with the hallway conversation to look around the room they'd snuck into and steal a few other things. They were all small, and likely not worth nearly as much, but combined with the things she'd taken from a couple other rooms on their way out, she was feeling pretty good. She didn't really know why she'd stolen them, but her excitement spiked knowing she'd been able to without getting caught, even by her own teammates-- if she could even call them that.
She could've easily done this on her own, and it had been a far easier steal than most of the things she had done in the past, which made it all the more intriguing that the people who had hired them had hired all of them. Willingly. Luna had opened locks Dwyn had already gotten keycards to, and Conrad had pushed open the vault door. Dwyn could've gotten the code to the safe too, if she'd wanted it. She could've done all of this on her own-- well, mostly on her own. Derek would be tried as an accomplice if something ever went to court, but Derek was the middle man for dozens upon dozens of people, so that didn't really count.
Still... Dwyn looked at the barely concealed excitement and thrill on Conrad and Luna's faces, and knew that she could've done it on her own, but it would've been way less entertaining. Like the moment when, after walking out separately, they'd all finally rounded the corner and met in a back alley-- the look on their faces as Dwyn pulled out five different items from the museum, none of which were the tablet? Dwyn could never have gotten that level of entertainment on her own. Conrad just seemed to blink a few times, like his mind was trying to process what he was watching as Dwyn pulled out a shard of a clay pot, a thin shred of old paper in a ziplock bag, a piece of metal that must've once belonged to some form of armor, an old small statue of some ancient god, and some type of old pencil, all from different pockets, and began to place them into her purse one by one.
"What-- How--" Luna stammered, "when did you-- " She couldn't seem to hold onto one question in her head long enough to nail it into words. Conrad just kept blinking. It was like Dwyn could hear the gears trying to turn in both of their heads.
"We were with you the whole time, when did you..." Conrad drifted off, his mouth hanging open as he frowned in confusion.
"For people being paid millions of dollars to pay attention, you're surprisingly bad at it!" Dwyn exclaimed happily. "Don't worry, you'll learn with more experience."
"But why did you--" Luna fumbled for her words, seeming to lose them again.
Dwyn rolled her eyes good-naturedly. "Sometimes I forget you two are new at this. Wait, no I don't." She paused, then explained, as if it were obvious, "stealing extra things makes it harder for them to tell what you actually came there to steal. It can throw them off their tracks for a while and make it harder to hunt you down."
"Oh," Luna said meekly, like she was embarrassed she hadn't thought of that already. "That makes sense."
"It does, doesn't it?" Dwyn agreed. She really was good at making up complete lies and selling them as the truth. Maybe she should run for office. "Would you vote for me if I ran for mayor?" she pondered aloud, and Conrad, who seemed like he was still so confused on how she had managed to steal so many things without them seeing it, said in a daze, "Probably".
Dwyn nodded. "Good to know." She left the dialogue at that, which seemed to throw the other two off even more as she sorted through everything she had. "Alright, we're going to meet up at midnight at a twenty-four hour diner. I'll send you two the address. You're going to take the purse," Dwyn said, handing it over to Luna before reaching in and grabbing a few things, "and you're going to take these." She handed two of the stolen items to Conrad. "If one of us goes down, the other two will ditch the phones and we'll never see each other for the rest of our lives. Deal?"
Conrad and Luna both seemed uncomfortable with that idea, but Dwyn didn't give them time to answer. "Good! Then it's settled. Just one more thing." She reached into the purse and pulled out her two flip phones and slipped them into her own pockets, then nodded. "I'll keep the item until we meet up at the diner. When we've contacted Philly-boy, we'll swap who has what items. Everybody's sleeping in hotels tonight, got it? No going back near where you live for the next twenty-four hours until we're sure we weren't caught on any security cameras."
"What?!" Conrad yelped. "But my hockey gear rack is at home. I have to hang everything up or it gets stinky."
"Oh, don't whine, you've got two million in your bank account, I'm sure you can come up with something," she said cheerfully. "Oh, and no sleeping over at a friend's house either. You'd be surprised how easily they can track you down that way. Oh wait." Dwyn looked at Luna. "How old are you, middle schooler? Can you drink?"
"Umm..." Luna shifted uncomfortably on her feet. "I am physically able to drink."
"So no," Dwyn interpretted, sighing. "Fine. It's not ideal, but we'll get a hotel room together then. You have to be twenty one and up to rent a hotel room in Chicago on your own. That means Radical here is gonna be getting more goodies to hide away in his room so they're split evenly between us."
Conrad scratched at the back of his neck awkwardly but said, "alright."
"Great," Dwyn said, "then I'll text you two the address and we'll meet up. Everybody take different routes to get there, alright?"
The two nodded, and Dwyn nodded back. "Glad that's settled. See you at midnight!" She started to walk to the exit of the alley, then paused and said, "oh, and wait a bit between each person before leaving the alley. It's going to look really suspicious if we all walk out of here at once." And then she left.
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