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After pulling off my third NaNoWriMo win today, I am going to do my next project on here. I have to get these people out of my head somehow. :)

Late Sunday Night – Nick Brady locked the D-ring into his harness and looked down. It was a twenty five foot drop to the floor of the Fernandez family’s display gallery. The floor and the case protecting the Mayan collar necklace were alarmed, sure Tony usually killed the alarms, but Nick had not managed to avoid ever being caught by assuming his crew, good as they were personally and professionally, had done everything they were supposed to.

Tugging on the harness and the descender to make sure they were good and tight, Nick started lowering himself spider-like from the ceiling and kept an eye on the floor. He’d done recon on the place by visiting the family two weeks ago about their daughter’s grades, which were truthfully horrible. The floor had a laser optic grid about six inches up the walls, and pressure plates under the marble tile. Nick had no desire to be caught, so he wasn’t going to touch the floor.

Dangling in air level with the glass display case, Nick pulled his glass cutter from his belt and clamped onto the display case, quickly and quietly sawing a six inch diameter hole in the case and removing the circle of glass, laying it insolently on top of the case. Gloved hands, Nick had to be religious about avoiding leaving fingerprints, reached in the hole and lifted the necklace from the marble bust that displayed it. He took a closer look and shook his head. “Ancient Mayan necklace on a replica Imperial Rome era bust. Some people should not have nice things.”

Carefully placing the necklace in the velvet pack pouch clipped on his waist, Nick tugged on his rappelling line to unlatch his descender and started climbing back up the swaying rope. Joey would be waiting nervously behind the wheel of the most non-descript car Donny could boost that night. Nobody on the Knock-On crew would feel the job had gone right until they saw the goods, and Nick, safely clear of the crime scene. Reaching the ceiling, Nick reeled in his rappelling line and tied it off at the descender, than crawled along his zipline back to the wall and a skylight he’ d picked the big clumsy lock on it to open. Nobody would realize the necklace was missing until well into Monday morning, he was sure of that.

Monday Morning – Detective Steven Holcome had examined and re-examined the scene, forensics had gone over it with multiple fine tooth combs. Herman Fernandez was a personal friend of the mayor and the police chief, so Robbery/Homicide was feeling the heat of not catching the Knock-On crew before they had hit an upstanding pillar of the community like Herman Fernandez. Holcome kicked the tile and cursed. They had barely begun, and he already knew what they’d find, zilch. These people were too good, too careful, to be caught by evidence at a crime scene.

A stream of high school sophomores taking it for the first time, and juniors re-taking, and seniors re-re-taking, poured into Nick Brady’s Post-Civil War American History class. Selena Fernandez was in her normal position, cell phone glued to her ear as the school bell rang. The teacher stood up in front of his class. “Welcome back to class this wonderful Monday. I’m Mr. Brady, in case anybody forgot in the past month, and I’ll be guiding you on a fun-filled journey through the past of our present, and our future. Selena, hang up the phone and pay attention, your grades really can’t survive another lecture hour discussing the latest OMG gossip.”

The other students laughed as Selena ended the call and silenced her phone. In the front row, Donny Alvarez was waiting with a open textbook, a number two pencil, and a notebook. If his grades slipped, Mr. Brady would boot him from boosting for the Knock-On crew, and Donny needed his cut of the jobs for providing getaway wheels. Once the class had settled and was paying attention, Mr. Brady started lecturing. “All right, last week we discussed how many modern problems can be traced directly back to the Industrial Revolution. Name some of those problems, Sheila.”

In her own seat, Sheila Holcome was paying no attention to Mr. Brady. She was taking surveillance for her beloved dad. ‘5′8″ maybe 5′9″, about 13o-135 pounds, unlikely to be over 140.’

“Sheila, would you please pretend to be learning something?” Mr. Brady adjusted his coke bottle glasses and crossed his arms.

Sheila Holcome looked up. “Pollution and concentration of wealth. How tall are you, Mr. Brady?”

“I really don’t see how my height is pertinent to the Industrial Revolution, Sheila. Now let’s get into the positive ripple effects on society.”