Sly Cooper and the Gang In: A Long Lost Love

CHAPTER 2

Art Credit: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/rRleP6

Sly flinched as a knock sounded on his window. The sun hadn't yet risen over the neon city, but the dancing holograms kept it bright as daytime with their garish colors. Lying still, he glanced sideways at his clock. The time–4:00 AM–hovered in the air above his nightstand. Snapping to focus, the thief grabbed his cane from the wall mount over his bed and sprang to the opposite side of the room, using the tip of the golden crook to peek through the floor-to-ceiling curtains.

Sylas.

The old gray wolf stooped on his balcony, leaning against the stairs of the fire escape as he tapped on the glass of Sly's sliding door with a knuckle. Rain poured off the overhang, but thankfully the balcony was dry as bone. "Care for some air?" his neighbor called through the grimy pane. He cracked a wizened smile. "Polluted as ever."

"Sounds like just the vacation I need," Sly jested, signaling he'd be there soon. He pressed the express button on his coffee maker and had two steaming cups of black in seconds. Opening the door with an elbow, he worked up a half-smile and passed Sylas a mug. Steam rose off it like the hands of tiny ghosts before swirling away in the light wind that wrapped around the skyscraper. He remembered the first time he'd tasted the stuff, back when his father let him try a sip from his mug. Sly had been perched on his predecessor's knee, the leather of the old armchair creaking as Connor Cooper read to him from the Thievius Raccoonus, smoke drifting from his cigar. That had been at least a thousand years ago, long before the scientists developed the cybernetic enhancements and cellular regeneration that put immortality nearly within reach. Long before the technology that could have saved his family's life.

Sly stared up at the sky, at the stars so drowned in fluorescent light he couldn't see them even when he visited the roof on the 77th floor, and wondered if life had always been as heavy as it was now, or if he just hadn't been meant to live this long. He wasn't sure it mattered, really. He was here, she was not, and all that was left was to find her. Time mattered no more than space did, these days.

"Any luck this evening?" Slyas blew on his coffee before taking a careful sip of the scalding-hot liquid. He hissed as it burned on the way down.

Sly took a whole swallow. Scalding hot was just the way he liked it. "We have her last known whereabouts." And it had taken them far longer than he'd liked to get that small, measly crumb of information. The police wouldn't work with them; they thought he had something to do with her disappearance, which was preposterous. But her second-in-command, a conniving rat named Uromys, hadn't waited to usurp her position, and these days Sly was back on the wrong side of the law, as if they'd never met. Never married. Never existed. He blew out a long breath, sending all his anger with it. "FarFlight Tower."

"I don't have to tell you to check the tunnels and airspace logs."

"No, you don't." That had turned up nothing. It was like she'd fallen right through the earth the second she set foot through the door. Sly wrapped his fingers around his steaming mug, grateful for the warmth.

"You have a man inside?"

Bentley had suggested they pay a janitor for access to the security footage, but Sly hadn't trusted their mark not to talk. "We're working on it." If I could just see where she'd gone, what room she'd visited, who she'd talked to . . . something.

"And this 'we' you're working with. Are they looking as haggard as you these days?"

Sly cut him a sidelong glance. "Says the man who hasn't washed his suit in three days. Did your mother stop doing your laundry?"

Sylas snorted, but Sly knew he was right. This search was running him and his Gang ragged. Bentley's chair was unrecognizable–even his shell was full of new technological contraptions–and Murray had been comfort-eating more than usual. "We have a lead," he told his neighbor firmly. "That's all we need." Though he didn't know how long they could keep going like this if they didn't get more intel soon.

"Sometimes great men must make impossible choices," Sylas said, clinking his ceramic mug against the crook of Sly's cane where it rested over his shoulder. "I don't want to come down here one day and find you've all three dropped like flies."

"Is that why you insist on waking me up in the middle of the night? To make sure I'm well rested?"

Sylas flashed a kind grin and shrugged. "My methods are tried and true."

"You've certainly had time to perfect them," Sly winked, hoping to throw the old dog off his scent. Pushing the wolf's ominous words to the side, he added, "The only impossible choice I plan on making is which donut shop to swing by next. The one by the bank on 1st street, or the one by the bank on 5th."

"If you say so," Sylas said, finishing his coffee and giving Sly a fatherly pat on the shoulder. "But you've got your streets wrong there, son."

FarFlight Tower was on 22nd Street, and they both knew the bakery next door was more than worth the risk.