Good morning. I had the strangest dream where my neighbor claimed a star had fallen from the sky and into his back yard. While there was a crater it was clearly an airplane toilet and he kept calling it the starlight commode and charged people to see it. I asked him why it wasn’t a space ship commode and he looked at me like I was insane. Not sure what that says about me or what I think of my neighbor, but there you have it. And now, we have our morning prompt. So timers set if you are playing along at him.
Not sure what it is that he stole but I suspect things are about to go sideways fast.
Wednesday, June 25th: Time was running out.
Time was running out. They were scheduled to move the rest of the collection in the morning. Tonight, with most of the museum staff exhausted from packing up the treasures and the guards lax now that half of the collection was already moved, was their night.
Stephen looked at the collection of people he joined. He didn’t trust them, not one bit. There was nothing trustworthy about them. They were here to get as much as they could so they could sell it on for a profit. Stephen wasn’t sure what sort of profit they intended to make, but he supposed there was a market for everything.
He didn’t have a problem with it. The art was not the sort he was overly fussed about. It was a rich man’s vanity more than anything else. The paintings were done by one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the country. The items were praised as high art mostly by people whose universities, museums and galleries depended on grants from the foundations the man funded.
The collection was praised and although Stephen was willing to admit art was subjective, they weren’t his sort of thing. If the others could make a profit on the items then they were welcome to it. His part of the job involved bypassing the security systems. Then they were on their own. He needed something in the building. Something hidden before the collection came to reside here and something he feared might be discovered once the collection was removed.
He would get them in, go his own way, get what he came for and leave. Whatever else they did was on them.
Bypassing the security was not difficult. He worked with the system enough over time that he knew all it’s inner workings. He even found the back up and the extra back up added for extra security. They were soon inside. As planned the team slipped in and Stephen left them to their work. He made his way down to the basement. His prize was a small item, easily hidden and to his relief, it was still where he put it. He slipped it from concealment, made certain it was what he expected and secured it in an interior pocket, hidden from sight.
Once secure, he left the basement, regaining the ground floor. He saluted Carl who nodded. Having let them know he was leaving, Stephen slipped out of the door and out into the night. He moved quickly through the shadows wanting to distance himself from the robbery a quickly as possible. He chose his route well, avoiding all of the security cameras on surrounding buildings in case some bright spark checked them post robbery. The others had gone in after him and through a different door. Even if someone counted the burglars on a piece of forgotten footage he would not be in their number.
‘And they can’t sell me out if they do get caught,’ Stephen thought. He hadn’t trusted them and not only did he work only through a third party but they had only a fake name which, if they traced, would take them to another false identity.
He believed in covering his tracks.
Even if this did go well, he didn’t want them calling him again with a different job. This was it for him. He was leaving this city. If he did feel the need to get back into the game again it would be in a different city, a different country. He would not return here.
Ten til Midnight 