Thieves Among Us

"So you're in banking now?" Noah couldn't help but smirk. Clara had always complained about math, and in high school, he was always a good three math levels ahead of her.

"Shut up," she smiled. "You'd be surprised at how little math I have to do. And what job do you have that makes you hold up banks? At least I have a clean night job."

"Oh?"

"I won't tell you; they make me wear a ridiculous hat. But if you happen to find yourself in front of the theater at 7.30 tonight, and if you happen to go in, apparently there's some amazing girl in an ugly hat."

"We – I – aren't staying long, really."

"Oh; okay." Clara caught the "we" that fell out of his mouth and couldn't think of anything else to say. Noah cursed himself for talking at all; he didn't seem to have a filter in front of Clara, and if she let it slip that she had seen him…

He would be royally fucked.

Noah decided then he would refuse to talk for the rest of their walk and Clara, still mortified by the implications of his accidental "we" and the reminder of his gun, stayed silent. Though the walk was as quiet as a tomb, it was nice. They walked close, Noah's jacket scratching against Clara's cardigan with every step and their shoes clacked in symmetry. Clara hummed under her breath to calm herself and Noah couldn't help but smile under his sunglasses at her broken hums of The Who.

Clara's break was over much too soon. They walked to the bank and suddenly, it was as if Noah was sixteen and back home again, as if that wretched first day of school had really gone exactly as planned and they were coming back from a date, on her stoop, and suddenly Noah felt the necessity to kiss her.

But she smiled and said goodbye and walked through the door, feeling as though the only exciting part of her life had just finished. And Noah watched her go and reminded himself that he didn't want to kiss Clara because she had ruined his life. He stood there, though, in front of the door, staring at it without really seeing it, reminded of that day they stepped off the train together after he had ran after her and found her. He was reminded of everything he said, and everything she said, and the imprint her hand made on his cheek. He was reminded of the last words she had said to him – I never wanted you to find me – and that he had moved on to the circus, only to lose her again. She never even made it to the circus, and he had nowhere to go.

The mailman jostled into Noah, barely muttering an apology as he ambled back to his truck. Noah shook his head and walked away. He was careful, making sure no one was around, as he slunk into an alleyway, where a van stood lifelessly on a corner. It was like many a getaway van – white, windowless, and stolen. Noah grabbed the handles of the trunk and pulled, revealing an empty nest of a trunk inside.

He noisily clambered in and sighed. "You lot can come out now."

The van stayed as lifeless as ever, and Noah sighed again, louder. Grumbling lowly to himself, he reached over and shut the trunk.

As the van grew dark, it burst with life.

"You scared the shit out of me, man!" Noah's eyes adjusted easily to the dim van once he took his sunglasses off. Facing him were three and a half bodies: Harvey, Fauna, Will, and the sleeping five-year-old, Heath.

Harvey continued complaining. "I mean, would it have killed you to use the secret knock for once in your damn life?"

Noah shrugged. "I didn't get the money."

Harvey groaned loudly, which made Will's hawk-eyes squint. Fauna quickly noticed and placed an arm on Harvey's shoulder. "Stay quiet, Heath's been having trouble sleeping lately."

Harvey looked annoyed, but as he rolled over the top of the front seat to sit next to Noah, he was noticeably quieter. "Just make sure you get it once you come back, okay? We need it bad."

Noah nodded and slipped his sunglasses on. He quickly opened the trunk and slipped out of the van. He had hoped that they would be able to leave Chenekovah and everything from his old life behind, hoped he could leave everything he didn't want to remember behind, but his luck escaped him.

It seemed like his luck wasn't around much, lately. And the only thing a bank robber had to his name was his luck, his gun, and empty pockets.

Even though he knew how desperately they needed money, knew the empty stomachs and cramped nights in the van, knew the guilt of sneaking into gardens, Noah walked away from the bank. He mindlessly wandered around for a bit, his hands jammed into his pocket, careful not to let his arms touch the gun.

He hated carrying the gun. It was nothing but a prop to him, as dangerous and useful as a rubber duck. Harvey liked to shout about how it set the mood and character of a bank robbery, and how it was necessary for safety precautions. What the gun could protect, Noah had no idea, but he had learned it was far easier to nod along to Harvey's one-sided debates than try to make him see logic.

Noah found himself on the steps of the theater before long. He had been subconsciously checking out every building he had passed for the past hour, squinting at modest archways, trying to find a building that looked anything like a theater should. Once he found it, however, he began to pace around it.

He didn't want to go in. He didn't want to see Clara, didn't want to be reminded of anything at all. He knew he should have gone back to the van once it was six o'clock and the bank had surely closed. But he didn't.

He walked up the stairs to the theater, feeling the gun against his ribs and against his arm, still hidden in his jacket. He tried to forget it as he opened the doors and walked straight into Clara who, as promised, was wearing a ridiculous hat.

She was selling tickets and smiled at him. "Fancy that, you're still here."

He fought an automatic smile back. "Yeah, well, it is what it is."

"How enigmatic of you."

He bought a ticket to get away from her and walked away from her and towards the gilded double doors leading to the seats. It was built like a closed arena, with stacked rows full of wooden pews surrounding a sunken stage. The stage was mostly empty, only a wheeled operating table and industrial lamp filling it. Noah wondered what the hell he had just spent three dollars on.

The small theater was packed, and it wasn't until a man came out, rolling an unconscious woman on a gurney that Noah realized he was in the middle of an operating theater.

He felt sick.

The doctor walked around the stage, dressed in black scrubs that shined whenever the spotlight caught them, loudly describing the patient: female, twenty-four, heart transplant. He described her as lifeless as she looked, knocked out on the gurney, her long dark hair messily covering her face. Two nurses, dressed in matching gold lamé scrubs, silently gathered equipment with exaggerated blades and grisly scalpels onto the operating table.

The prettier of the two nurses silently interrupted the doctor's speech by tapping his shoulder. They walked to the second nurse, who was holding a macabre knife with a wicked blade curving to a deadly tip.

The entire theater became deathly silent as the doctor accepted the knife, examining the sparkling blade. Right as he drew the knife and started dramatically inching it towards the young woman's chest, all the doors near the stage simultaneously slammed open. Noah assumed it was part of the show – perhaps her parents or a boyfriend of some sort – but when the nurse broke her silent vigil with a blood-chilling scream, an army of uniformed men poured out of the doors. Chaos broke through the still air as the audience realized what was going on and panic settled in. Nurses and scalpels were tossed aside as the men began to climb off the stage and towards the audience, and the patient was forgotten as the doctor ran off in a fury. The patient, still on the gurney, began to wake, but fainted clean away when she saw the terror surrounding her. Noah knew who the men were below and he knew exactly who they were after.

Noah also knew that he only had about three minutes until they found him.

The rest of the audience was already panicking, causing a stampede of fear and confusion, trying to reach the front doors. Noah started running, dodging couples on first dates and shrieking housewives, pushing his way through the hysterical faces and perverse minds. He entered the main hall where the confused staff began to mill around, and sprinted towards the exit.

To his surprise, before he could slam through the double doors out, he had reached out and grabbed and suddenly, his hand was holding another as he ran out.

Clara wasn't sure what was happening. Most of the others that sold tickets would sneak into the show and watch, but Clara never did. The operations always made her sick – the ostentatious productions were disgusting and perfectly healthy "patients" died more often than naught. She usually stayed in the main room, waiting for the show to end so she could go home and sleep.

She knew something had gone wrong when the scream broke. She had been sitting down, thumbing through an ancient program and jumped up at the noise. Then, the flurry of Noah and the rest of the audience bursting through, and then someone grabbing her hand and pulling her out the door.

Noah didn't stop running and he didn't let go of her hand. Clara ran next to him, stumbling every few steps as she tore the stupid hat off her head and throwing it off, trying to forget that a man with a gun had essentially just kidnapped her. It was Noah, she reasoned, Noah Fitzpatrick, the boy she had known since kindergarten, not some crazed killer.

"What's going on here?" she asked as they ran, but he said nothing, only tightening his grip on her hand. Clara wasn't sure of anything but the fact that she didn't want the excitement any longer. She was scared.

Suddenly, Noah pulled her through an alley and they skidded to a stop, almost falling down in the process. Noah looked shocked and confused at the empty alley.

"What's going on? What's happening?" Clara felt the cold pit of dread in her stomach.

"How could they have gone?" Noah muttered, mostly to himself. "They were here, they were supposed to be – "

Clara's fear was starting to subside, starting to be replaced by anger. She was angry that Noah seemed to think it was perfectly fine to drag her half way across town without reason, then ignoring her and mumbling to empty space. She was cold, afraid, and almost positive that Noah's stunt had just cost Clara her job.

So she grabbed him, pinning him to the brick wall. "Tell me what the hell is going on, or so help me God I will start screaming 'Fire' so loud, they'll hear me in – "

"Look, did you tell anybody?" Noah asked, infuriating Clara even more. She opened her mouth to tell him to answer her, but he cut her off. "No, did you tell anyone? They have people out there, people out looking for me, people who probably won't think twice about shooting a bullet through my head. So did you – "

"No! I didn't tell anyone; when they asked I just said you were an old friend."

"Then they're looking for you, too."

Clara's face drained of all color. "What?" Her voice was barely above a whisper and her wide eyes looked up at him in terror.

"Technically, you're an accomplice, but – " A loud noise clattered in the street – a backfiring car – and Noah looked around uneasily. "Look, I'll explain everything later, we have to find the others and get the hell out of here."

Clara grabbed his hand and they started creeping out the alley when a screech of a car echoed across the alley. Clara and Noah threw themselves back toward the wall as a great white van barreled towards them and sped past, stopping with a loud screech in front of them. The back doors tore open and Noah jumped in, almost throwing Clara through, and the car took off before the doors had even shut.

Clara and Noah were breathing heavily from adrenaline, and she turned towards him. "Why the hell didn't you get your gun out? They could have killed us!"

The three people in the front of the car started laughing, and Clara turned at them and glared. Noah slumped against the car and took the gun out of his jacket and tossed it across the van. "It's a fake."