Finders Keepers

♙ || тнree (II)

♙ || ❝goт a proвleм, vιllegaѕ?❞

♙ neхт υpdaтe - [ jυly ѕevenтн - тwenтy ғoυrтeen ] [ still editing ]

♕ⓑⓛⓐⓘⓡ P.O.V 

Heavy footsteps sounded against the tiled surface of the living room floor. Still reclined and stretched upon the loveseat, Brooklyn shifted her position as she looked toward Pierre’s distraught figure when he strolled into the room. Carmen was still on her phone when she looked up at me and then toward Pierre, before her gaze returned to my face.

A silent thought passing between us: What the hell was going on?

How did we know there was something up with Pierre? Well, our dear Pierre was a man bordering along his late-30s, in decent shape, with a grey streak cutting sharply through his raven black hair. There was never a day that this man did not show up in a crisp suit, polished dress shoes, and three times the amount of hair gel needed to get some single soccer mom to “tumble” into his bed that same night.

Pierre, however, currently sported a 5 o’clock shadow, an unbuttoned dress shirt -- no tie, and no hair gel. If these weren’t the signs of the end times, then I didn’t know what was.

Pierre was our supervisor and confidante. He’d picked each and every one of us up, because he knew our back stories and the common goal we all shared. Money.

Carmen from Lake George. Brooklyn from some remote town in Minnesota, and I from the ever-humbling surroundings of Palo Alto, California. In summary, we had nothing and I mean absolutely nothing in common when Pierre had picked and stationed us.

He had a knack for reading people. Or at least that’s the only reason I can come up with for his knowing that Carmen, Brooklyn, and I would be as compatible as we are now. Because I will admit that we weren’t always this way.

There were power struggles in the beginning.

None of us liked to be told what to do. None of us liked to be told what we couldn’t do. But most of all, none of us wanted to be forced to trust or rely on each other to complete a heist. We gave trust out sparingly, as we’d all came from broken families, formed from broken relationships, and kept our broken moral standards. And by broken, I mean, none.

That of course changed when the first heist we’d conducted got all three of us thrown into a precinct, with a misdemeanor on our records for breaking and entering. Two picked locks, and an opened window, all with easily identifiable fingerprints attached to the scene made for an interesting and "elegantly" composed alibi.

In short, we used to be sloppy. Very sloppy.

With time we improved, though. We used to need twenty minutes to break into a house, get the money we came for, and get out. Now, however, we could do it under ten. That’s why every target we chose, was chosen systematically. How much dirt we had on them was a primary criterion. For what little was left of our consciences, of course.

It was a lot easier to take from someone who’d committed fraud in four different degrees than a person who’d given three-hundred grand towards the building of schools for children in Tanzania. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t easy, but it definitely wasn’t impossible.

Then we took into consideration how easy it would be to evade their security system, and of course, how much we were talking about.

We’d all signed the terms of agreement when we joined the “route.” One of the terms all three of us had added into the standard contract given to every “employee”, was the ability to choose. We didn’t want missions, we wanted heists -- ones that we could choose and sleep at night knowing whoever we’d stolen from deserved it.