When done, Misu rose and playfully slapped his cheek to knock away this mode of thought.
‘I’ll go find Jacques for you. He’s been ready for the last hour. Look, I understand your ego and all but selling the Den – would it really be the worst thing in the world? Think about it.’
* * *
Franco puffed his cheeks out but before he could begin complaining Misu had already sauntered off. He didn’t want to think about it, it wasn’t thought-worthy. Selling the Den? Preposterous notion.
Franco pulled on his vest and coat, taking a look at himself in the mirror. Something looked back at him, something quite foreign. Dulled eyes. A permanent frown. No matter, there was no time for any of this. He was already late for his next appointment.
Preposterous, he agreed with himself.
The Vault
Wyld was still reeling from Franco’s scolding. She may have been just a youngster in his eyes, perhaps with no business to be tagging along with them, but whatever his dismissals, she knew this trip was not for naught. It was a grand score. All it required was a little muscle to pull it off. Why could Franco not see that? All the while their relationship – one fraught with stealing and the need to pay for her share of travel, food, and protection – remained strained. Franco never said, nor hinted that he trusted Wyld – something that puzzled her.
Wyld was no bank robber, no part-time crook or whatever accusation anyone might insult her with. She was, in her own words, just trying to make her way and doing what was required to ensure that. She had never mugged a person, never taken a life from greed, anger, or spite. Compared to the majority of folks she had encountered, Wyld’s conscience was relatively clean.
Sure she carried a gun, a pair of snub-nosed revolvers that held sentimentality and offered protection in equal parts – but out this way, most had to. Whenever aimed, they were always just a threat, never seen through as the girl lacked the stomach for such a grisly affair. Bloodshed was for other folks for other reasons.
No, where Wyld excelled was in stealth. There was no place she could not slip into. Day or night, no matter the location, she could sneak inside and retrieve what she deemed fit. It was a skill tempered by the life of a vagrant. She, like many children out in the outpost towns, had been abandoned and forced to scratch through the dirt for survival. Just beyond the Sand Sea, in a town named Esquelle, and with a younger brother in tow, her criminality began with stealing bread from markets to keep away the threat of starvation. Before long, she was stealing to order, living with a ramshackle community of other youngsters, all sharing their merchandise.
That was, until she met her saviour.
Wyld never deemed herself religious. Tales of the Holy Sorceress were for other ears, for people who could afford the luxury of bedtime stories. Redemption never walked through the drift-soiled alleyways with the pimps and beggars. Clemency never sat itself at a back-end tavern and ignored the drinking and whoring. She had learnt long ago that prayers were hollow words.
The day she met him was the day everything changed. Strong in presence, kind in action, he protected Wyld from a host of undesirables, endangering himself in an act of compassion, a lesson devoid from her upbringing. It was the day her life found reason, and when he left her, a void grew, needing to be filled.
Squatting upon corrugated iron sheeting, Wyld scanned the small compound opposite with a retractable telescope, mentally mapping the layout and guard placement. She was perfectly safe. The nearby shanty structures created a structural puzzle to navigate. Schizophrenic passages gave way to ramshackle homes, or to dead ends in some cases, a maze of poverty that would be perfect to aid retreat should things go wrong.
The compound itself was lightly protected. Three men on the outside in uniform took turns to walk the circumference every hour, paying attention to the surrounding chain-link fence, patchily laced with barbed wire. In the middle, some hundred yards from the fence, a two-storey brick building, of unremarkable design, was housing at least another six men, plain-clothed, some passing windows, the others congregating in some sort of room upstairs.
The alarm was rudimentary, a bell connected to the outside, with some cabling passing through the outer wall to somewhere unseen. There were no dogs, thankfully, as dogs were a staple danger of this work and unlike people they could not be reasoned with.
Wyld’s eyes faltered momentarily. She lowered her telescope and gazed into the distance. A whisper, sweet and strong like cherry liquor, haunted her thoughts. It was some advice given when she was far more headstrong, when her saviour tried to show her the benefits of patience and observation.
You’re too headstrong, kid. Take a breath. Don’t rush. You’ve got all the time in the world.
The words lingered as Wyld blinked back a tear. He wasn’t behind her. She knew that. It wasn’t worth turning to check, but she did so anyway, only to view what she expected – nothing. All the time in the world. If only that was true. She would have given anything for more time with him: the man who sheltered her in her younger years, who taught her the meaning of everything.
No, time was cruelly robbed when he vanished – the man who had served as her protector from the bitterness of life, her guardian in a manner of speaking. It’s why she moved from the south, shadowing his footsteps and funding her travel any way possible. To hunt him. To find him. To get an answer as to why he left her to fend for herself.
But this was no time for sentimentality.
She raised the brass eyepiece once more. A breath steadied her rogue emotions.
All the time in the world, she repeated to herself.
When the guards separated for their individual checks, eight hours of observation had paid off. She slinked, catlike, from rooftop to rooftop, sliding down guttering and sprinting to the fence. When there, she climbed, effortlessly to its apex, pressing the barbed wire aside with thick leather gloves and vaulting over, landing perfectly.
Another run, now to the building. She quickly slid downward, forcing herself beneath a closed window, the passing visage of a guard keeping her down. Now pressed against the outer wall, Wyld held her breath, waiting for the boots to faintly echo past until it was safe, before she slid the glass aside and ventured inside.
She pulled a small facemask up from her beige poncho, covering her nose and mouth as she glided from corridor to corridor. The entire structure was decorated in aged tiling, from floor to ceiling. Gaslights were placed spottily, giving plenty of shadow to hide in. What little of that new devil electricity made it out here must have been used for the alarm alone. A roar of laughter emanated from above her – a collection of men playing cards off shift. Six at a guess from the unique voices.
Moving into the middle of the building, Wyld stopped immediately, staring at the impressive sight presented at the end of the central passage.
Protruding from the surface, in grand size, was an immense vault door.
Circular in appearance, with a large turn handle at its heart, the tarnished steel spoke volumes of its age, though even at its creation it would have been mightily impressive. Twenty years at a bet, she figured.
A mental calculation revealed she had another twenty minutes until the next guard passed, so time was not as forgiving as she hoped. Racing to the door, Wyld fingered her way over to the lock, gauging the scale of work based on size and type. The combination dial was awfully imposing, tarnished black with embossed gothic numbering, though on the bright side, there was no need to obtain a key.
Wyld got to work, pressing an ear against the cold metal, spinning the drive cam and gently feeling the wheels inside contact the drive pin. Each small click was scrutinized until each unique snap indicated the combination was being matched.
There was nothing as perfect