As soon as the alarms sounded, we all snapped to attention. Everyone looked around with similar confused expressions.

"The hell is going on?" I had to nearly scream over the yelling from upstairs and the alarm that pierced through the air like a knife.

Blake shrugged in response and Ash ran into the security room. We followed behind her and saw what threw this building into a tizzy on the screens with the security footage.

Another thief? Jesus...

"What the fuck is he doing here?" Mei mumbled. Despite Blake and I being confused, the others seemed to know who that person was. Whoever it was, they were stupid. The only form of disguise that they had on was a mask that only covered the top part of his face. He wasn't even wearing a hat or a scarf or something to cover up his face better. If he came for the statue, he's doing a shitty job of it because all he did was trip the alarms and then he started to run away with all four guards on his tail. The guards were stupider than I thought because none of them stayed to protect the statue. You would expect them to have ample security due to the ring being stolen, but I guess because it's opening night and there are lots of witnesses along with the cameras, they thought they thought they could skimp.

"Uh, Flynn?" Max said to get my attention.

"Who is that idiot?" I just had to ask. How did they know such a stupid guy?

"Well... weren't you wondering who your secret admirer was?"

No way. "That's Rhett?" I felt like I was about to burst into laughter again.

"Why the hell is he here? He should be with Nick," Aaron yelled, which seemed uncharacteristic of him, even though we just met. And that's when it hit everyone.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"I told you we shouldn't have kept him in our group!" Ash yelled at Mei. "Where is that psychotic bastard?"

Ash's eyes skimmed the screen, looking for an out of place figure. Max pointed to someone heading towards the statue, who was not in a panic like the others.

"You know what? Screw planning. We need to get the statue before him," I called out. Then I murmured, "Easiest setup ever. Didn't even have to find out the floorplan."

"I have an idea," Max very quickly briefed us on her plan and because we had nothing else and Nick was practically on top of the statue, we had to go for it. By now there weren't many people still trying to leave and the guards were still chasing around Rhett. We started to hear police sirens coming from outside.

I slammed the emergency stop button on the desk and the alarms stopped. This created even more confusion, especially to Nick. Mei and Ash already left to do their part and to confuse him even more, Blake used the P.A. system.

"Nick Martins, please stand down. You are under arrest," Even though Nick didn't know what Blake sounded like (that's why we chose him) he still felt a need to change up his voice. It was obvious that he looked confused because the police hadn't arrived yet, but that allowed him to hesitate enough so that Mei and Ash could sprint through and grab him... or so we thought. As soon as he saw them running for him, he bolted across the room and towards the statue. 

When the guards apprehended Rhett, one of them took note of Nick and abandoned them to sprint towards him.

As this whole episode was happening, I decided to sit back and relax because even if Nick got the statue, he was cornered and unless he had a rope and harness to get out of there through the skylight, he was going to get caught.

That was until I saw him pull something out from under his jacket.

A gun?

He stood right next to the statue and held the gun right up to it and cocked it. Everybody froze and held their breath.

"If anyone stops me, I will destroy this piece of history right now," Nick yelled. Even though the security cameras had piss-poor audio quality, because everywhere else in the building was silent and the door was open, we could only hear him and the muffled sound of sirens from outside.

We are so fucked.