Alpha's Thief

Chapter 4

~ Carter ~

Carter walked into the lobby he could feel the tension thickly filling the room. It took him only a moment to spot the disintegrated phone scattered across the polished tile floors. As one of the younger wolves swept it into a dustpan everyone else pretended not to notice the mess. He sighed shaking his head, obviously Julian had gotten a call that did not please him. Carter had a sneaky suspicion that it was the Dwarf King calling to gloat about the success in having the jewel stolen. Carter inwardly growled. The Dwarf King hadn’t won yet, the human still had the jewel. If he could just find one or both it would make his life that much easier.

Carter thought about setting up another jewel to see if the thief would take the bait. He scrapped the idea after what he learned about the past heists in theory the thief seemed to be connected to. This thief only went after what they were paid to go after. Their dedication to this ideation showed in how they handled breaking into a bank. Instead of taking all the money they could fit in their bag they stole a jewel, which by far seemed more unless than a bag full of money. He puzzled about this. Perhaps they liked the rush they got from completing an otherwise impossible task? Possibly they liked the research they had to do leading up to the heist. Maybe they just liked knowing they could. He would ask them when he found them, and he would find them, there was no doubt in his mind about that. He needed to find them before they were able to give the jewel up to the middleman or the highest bidder. He guessed he had about a twenty-four-hour window on when the jewel would be handed over. They would want to dump the evidence as quickly as possible.

He knew he had no time to lose.

“Carter, where are you going?” Andre called as Carter made haste toward the front doors.

“There is a man claiming to be the thief.” He said shrugging on the jacket. “I’m going to go pay him a little visit.”

“Do you think he’s really the thief?”

“Of course not.” He snorted. From what he gathered about the thief’s personality in his research of their pervious heists they would never make a public spectacle of themselves. It wasn’t their style. “Who knows, I might learn something. There’s a grain of truth in every lie.”

“Oh, by the way, did they bolt the vent shut?” Carter paused for response with his hand on the door.

“First thing this morning.” Andre nodded.

“Good, the last thing we need is a copycat.” Carter nodded his approval before exiting. His thoughts wondered as he drove to the police station. He plotted out everything the thief had to have learned in order to pull off this heist. He replayed over and over in his mind the event of what they learned happened the night before. The thief had exploited the weakness in their armor. He was cautiously impressed by their expertise. Maybe in exchange for a painless death, they would agree to giving information, so this never happened again.

He pulled up to the station just as he was planning what he wanted to ask the thief. He put those thoughts on hold as he parked the car and climbed out.

“Hey, Carter!” Simon greeted brightly standing from his place behind the desk. “What can I do for you?”

“I need to speak with…” he looked at the note he’d made in his book. “Minor Sona.” For a moment there was only the buzzing of the florescent lighting of the dully lit station.

“About the bank robbery?”

“Why else?”

“Well, I hope you’re prepared for Snow.”

“What do you mean?” The officer opened his mouth to answer then closed it again.

“It’s best to just show you.” he motioned for Carter to follow him into the back. Carter followed along noting the packed cells they passed. When they reached a cell in the very back corner a man with chocolate brown hair sat calmly inside. He looked at Carter and Simon as they approached.

“I did it.” He told them without hesitation.

“You did what Mr. Sona?” Carter asked curiously.

“I broke into the Emerald Bank. It was all me. I stole from all the banks, take this as my confession.” He boasted puffing out his chest.

“Please explain to me in detail what happened at the bank.” Carter instructed humoring the man. Simon leaned again the wall making himself comfortable. Carter inwardly sighed at this. If this produced even a shred of useful information than it was worth it. Carter settled himself in bracing for whatever was to come.

When Carter looked up at the clock again, he noticed two hours had been eaten away from his life. After hours of combing through evidence and listening to the man who claimed to have pulled off an impossible deed. Carter was certain of two things.

The first, even without the aid of his nose, this man could not be the person who’d broken into the bank. The man’s foul smell that almost had Carter gaging. It was nothing like the sweet mango scent that lingered at the bank. Then there was his brazen personality. Their thief was methodical they planned lying in wait. This man was choppy in his thought process. He did things first only to think about it after the fact, type.

The second, the man was not paid to turn himself in. Carter had asked him about each of the robberies having studied everything he could find on them. If the man had robbed them, it had been by a stroke of pure luck. He didn’t remember the dates and he only knew what the news had reported. He also claimed he could not recall small details like how he’d managed to shut off the security systems. In his words they were ‘trade secrets’. After his statement regarding them being trade secrets he went on to explain something about a sci-fi forcefield that made him invisible. The power he gained also short-circuited the alarm systems at the banks making it easy him to sneak in.

“I have to be careful with my power though I wouldn’t want to tip anyone off beforehand.” He proclaimed in a stage whisper.

“So why did you take the money from Emerald Bank Mr. Sona?”

“Why else? Money is money after all. We all need it to live and that greedy owner of the bank doesn’t need all of it.” The man’s Robbin hood view of the whole even wore on Carter’s last remaining nerve.

“I have to get going.” Carter started to retreat. Se that he was losing his captive audience the thief shouted after him.

“Though I believe a associate of mine might be breaking in for a jewel.” Carter froze before turning back to the man. He kept his face neutral.

“When will they be doing that?”

“Like they would tell me.” The man snorted. “All I know is after my success after getting the money out of the bank people will probably take Yang up on his offer.”

“What offer?”

“He wanted some jewel out of the bank offering top dollar for anyone who could do it. No one wanted the job. But now that I show them that it was possible to get in there will probably be some takers.” He waved his hand. “Though it would have to be someone on my level like The King of Diamonds, The Bank Reaper, Madame Magician, or The Moonlight Jeweler.”

The thought of even one more thief becoming so bold caused Carter a massive headache. The man was right in his assumption that this would cause more attempts. Even if they were to get the jewel back, now that the unachievable had been achieved there would be more. Whether for the money or the jewel again, even the magic community would be conspiring against them. Treaties only went so far. They prevented all out wars, but did nothing for petty scrimmages. There was always a fight for the upper hand or for more territory. They were the battles the went unnamed and un-noted, but those were always the ones that built names along with grudges.

He doubted that the man was in the circle like he claimed. The others possibly weren’t a complete lie. Cater would have to check with his sources about this new information. The fact that they had reported to the new that the thing stolen from the bank was cash work in their favor. If anyone claimed otherwise, they would be targeting themselves as I reasonable source to investigate. Maybe this trip hadn’t been such a lost cause after all. Someone had taken the job to steak the jewel. If the few who would take an unreasonable job were the ones he listed that was narrowing down the search. Even if the list was wrong about who would have taken the job Carter now knew who had ordered the job. There was no mistake that this Yang person had offered the job.

More pieces of the puzzle were coming together. If he was to find this Yang then he could find who took the job. The best case scenario he also had a witness that could point to the Dwarf king. Before he got too ahead of himself he needed to stop the thief from selling the jewel to Yang. He hoped it wouldn’t get passed tracking down the thief. If he could find the thief, he could find Yang at his leisure later on. The thief being caught quickly would also discourage many copycats.

After excusing himself Carter thought as he walked to his car. The man’s ramblings circled his thoughts. An inner circle of thieves that he claimed to be a part of.

The King of Diamonds

The Bank Reaper

Madame Magician

The Moonlight Jeweler

Carter sent a text to Pear, is informant amongst the black-market society. No sooner had he sent her the names did text with various links were sent to his phone. He drove toward the warehouse district as the news articles Pear had sent to home played over the car speakers. Each person on the list had their own accolades excluding one.

Madam Magician

Of all the names on the list Carter found her the most suspicious, because there were no articles about her. There were no sightings. There were no suspects. There were no crimes linked to this Madam Magician other than one. There was only one article about the thief and that was the one that coined her name. It was dated several years earlier. It named an infamous ruby as the key item stolen in the heist. The only evidence from the case was the silhouette of a woman leaving the scene one second before the video cut. The shadow seemed to disappear without a trace ultimately giving the news reporter the idea of the name ‘Madam Magician’. Because she was the least broadcasted, she was the most notable. She’d gotten on the list somehow. Perhaps word of mouth was the best way to get information on the group of thieves. Pear was more than capable of getting the information herself, but getting to the bottom of this situation was priority.

He continued his way to the warehouse district down to beggars row a little knows side street that held merchants of the less savior kind.

As he was on his way to his meeting spot with Pearl a smell wafted past his nose making him freeze. It was the thief! His head whipped side to side trying to find the source of the smell but much to his disappointment the thief wasn’t wearing a sign that pointed them out. The scent trail was becoming old quickly. He moved into action following the scent