Nightfall, James and I had dressed in black, and I felt like a real burglar as we crept down to Mrs. Greaves’ office. Although I didn’t have a lock-picking kit, Nightfall made do with some bobby pins and deftly picked the lock.

The office was a mess, and it took quite a while stumbling around in the dark before we found the little black computer which backed up the CCTV footage. It was mounted up on the wall in the storeroom, a little light blinking on it to indicate it was functioning.

“What do we do now?” I asked. “Steal it? Smash it?”

“Give me a minute,” James said, arranging a ladder so he could climb up next to the computer. He plugged in a small machine that looked like he’d cobbled it together out of two old phones and a radio. “This is a pretty old system; it looks like it’ll store all the footage locally. I’m wiping the memory and frying it. It should only take a bit longer.”

The machine whirred, then fizzled and spluttered and let off a few sparks.

“Fricken hell, you’re going to burn the whole building down!” I hissed. We didn’t need to add arson to our agenda.

“It’s fine,” James said. “Now we just need to get out of here and lock the door behind us.”

We crept back out, clicking the lock on the door before it snapped shut and we were back in the lobby no worse for wear.

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“Well, that was kind of anti-climactic,” I said, stunned at how smoothly it had gone.

“Shh, someone’s coming,” Nightfall said, pulling us back into the shadows under the stairwell.

I swallowed, cursing my premature celebration and cowered next to the guys as we watched another figure in black creep down the stairs. The person looked around but didn’t seem to see us before stooping by Mrs. Greaves door and jamming something into the lock.

Their efforts failed, and they pulled a blow torch out of their bag, melting the lock away.

“What the fuck?” James whispered, but I elbowed him to shut him up.

The stranger opened the door, and we watched him rummage around for a good twenty minutes before leaving with what looked like a small safe and returning up the stairs.

We waited another ten minutes before climbing the stairs ourselves and returned to our apartment in silence.

“So?” Brick asked as we sat down at the table, stunned. “How’d it go?”

“We succeeded, but someone else was there,” Nightfall explained. He was the only one of the three of us to be emotionally unaffected by the turn of events.

“Did they cause problems?”

“They arrived after we left, made a much bigger mess, and stole an item.”

“Great,” Brick beamed. “If the police start investigating, they’ll probably get blamed for the murder, too.”

“Are we okay with framing people now?” James asked limply.

“Well, they were hardly innocent,” Nightfall shrugged.

“Neither were we,” I pointed out. “But I agree. Whichever of our neighbours that was, if they get blamed for the body, I’m hardly going to put my hand up and disprove them just to throw Jackal under the bus.”

“So, we’re actually going to get away with this,” James said, still sounding numb.

I shrugged. “Yay for bad neighbourhoods with high crime rates, I guess.”