Book Eight, Chapter 9: Demo Time

We tried to do one of those scenes where everyone in the heist gets together, and we learn what everyone is good at. The kind where the audience meets the hacker, the hitter, the face man, stuff like that, but Carousel didn’t go for it.

As best I could tell, Nicole’s Written by the Victors trope gave everyone a little bit more prominence than they deserved, so the heist that we were working on was probably originally more of a low-rent break-in, but because all of our characters were inflated, it seemed like an ensemble piece. Simply put: everyone had already been introduced.

It was no problem. We could adapt on the fly.

The next time Carousel let us be On-Screen, the party phase was over halfway done, and it was time to get this story moving forward. We were loaded inside of Molly’s van, which she had stolen from a furniture store.

Bobby was leaning in the passenger side window, talking to me.

“You sure you don’t need one more set of hands on the inside?” he asked.

We were all a bit afraid of being Written Off, and Bobby’s character lifted right out.

“What is it about this one? Most of the time, you only show your face to get paid,” I said with a grin.

“Come on, man, it’s a safe, a vault, a mobster’s vault,” he said. “How am I supposed to stay away?”

I nodded.

“I see how it is, Geraldo,” I said. “You want to see inside the vault? Okay, hop in. But remember, I’m in charge. If I tell you to cut and run, you run. I can’t have all those poor animals rotting in their cages on my conscience.”

Bobby laughed and opened the back door to make his way inside.

“Wait,” Molly said. “Are we the animals in that metaphor?”

Both Bobby and I laughed.

“I’m a veterinarian by trade,” Bobby said. “He seems to think that all I do all day is take care of snakes and cockatoos.”

Molly shrugged. She put the van in gear and pulled us out onto the road.

We were still On-Screen, so I pulled out my wallet and grabbed something that I’d found in there in the many hours that we tried to create additional scenes for our heist. It was a newspaper article with the title ROBBER SHOT, KILLED IN ATTEMPTED JEWEL HEIST.

My character’s journals revealed that I once had a partner in crime named Marcus. During a heist, a nearby building caught fire, prompting me to call everything off due to the increased police presence. However, Marcus stayed behind, determined to finish the score, and was eventually caught by a passing beat cop because of the fire.

My character was very upset about it. We all had little story elements like that, and since Carousel wasn’t teasing me about my dead parents, I decided to go along with it.

Dina was in the back seat. She looked up at me, saw that I was looking at the article again, and gave me a reassuring nod.

“This one’s going to go smooth,” she said. “Nothing to worry about.”

Famous last words.

It didn’t take Molly that long to get us back to the house for the final time. As we pulled up the street, we were Off-Screen, going over some last-minute notes for how we were going to introduce the final member of our crew. We had those pre-home invasion jitters you hear about.

On-Screen.

“So, how are we getting past the security system?” Dina asked. “I feel it’s weird that I have to keep asking. I know Molly isn’t going to do it.”

I didn’t answer. I only smiled.

“I could do it,” Molly said.

We ignored her.

“So how are you hacking it?” Dina continued. “Because I’m not ready. You didn’t give me any prep time.”

All I did was smile.

“Wait, you don’t know how you’re cutting the alarms?” Camden asked, trying to be the concerned client. “If you were having trouble, I could have put together some ideas. I’ve installed systems like this before, you know, for certain clients that expect a little extra. Tell me we aren’t doing this all on the fly.”

“We aren’t doing this all on the fly,” I said. “My guy’s waiting for us there.”

Molly pulled the rest of the way toward the gate. A figure stood in front of it, waiting for us in a dark coat.

“Who’d you get? Is it Robson?” Dina asked. “Tell me it wasn’t Speckle or whatever his dumb name was.”

“I told you,” Molly said. “I can do it. I’m great with security systems. I know everything there is to know.”

“Sure you do, Molly,” Dina said.

As Molly turned toward the driveway, her headlights shone bright on the figure standing in front of them.

“Who is that?” Dina asked.

“Just watch,” I said.

In front of us, Nicole—the dark figure—took her hood off and then walked over to the keypad that could open the gate. She was holding a small flashlight.

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“Oh, get out,” Dina said. “It’s the realtor.”

Nicole typed in the code, and the gates swung open. She then waved the flashlight, letting us know to move forward.

Molly moved the van up toward the courtyard but didn’t quite park next to the house yet. There was still the security system to turn off, and we were pretending that we were in a blind spot or something like that.

Dina opened up her door but didn’t get out.

“So what, you’re in deep cover as a real estate agent?” she asked as Nicole walked up the drive toward us.

“Listing agent, in fact,” Nicole said. “Wait here. I’ll have the security system shut down momentarily.”

Nicole walked past us, around to the front door, where she fumbled with the lockbox that real estate agents kept a shared key inside for a moment. Once she got the key, she unlocked the front door. Then she went inside, typed in the security code, and came back out, waving us in.

“She gets a whole cut just for that?” Dina asked.

“Were you hoping we’d rappel down from the roof and dodge the laser grid?” I asked.