Queen of Thieves

➵ Chapter 2

Turning on the news and seeing a report on myself would never feel normal. It was so odd. Even stranger was being forced into a conversation about it in my criminology class. When I walked into class, the professor was projecting a video of a news clip up on a screen for the class to see. Taking my seat, I watched along with everybody else. The class had fallen silent, every student excited for the discussion that was sure to come. The boy beside me, Logan, shot me a look.

"Not a word," I warned him before he could speak.

My nightlife may have been a secret, but there were those who knew the truth. Those people, aside from one, were not my friends. They, like myself, were just others who'd been discovered by a man named Robert Keen. None of us spoke to each other in public. There were some in the group who I didn't interact with at all. Thieves aren't exactly a chivalrous lot, we weren't stupid enough to trust each other.

"The Circle is angry," he whispered under his breath.

The Circle was the ring of thieves we were a part of. It emphasized secrecy and avoiding attention. Lately, I had been thrust into the spotlight much to their dismay. The most recent developments the police had made in my case must have been driving the others berserk.

Every member had been handpicked by Professor Keen, not to bring us together, but for his own use. Nobody knew what the big purpose behind the whole thing was. I figured it was greed. He didn't interfere with the Circle's matters unless he needed something, which wasn't all that often. Usually, we were all on our own. There would be an occasional meet-up where Logan and I would set down any rules that were needed, and we would go over any heists that were planned. After a couple months of Logan and I arguing and the Circle splitting up to take sides, Professor Keen had stepped in and declared us as 'co-leaders', to be frank, I think the only point of the title was to get the both of us to shut up. Considering that one of the Circle's leaders had been getting so much public attention while the guild struggled to remain in the shadows, they had plenty of reasons to be angry.

Professor Keen watched me carefully until the video ended. He stood behind his podium, tapping his pen. "Can anyone tell me why this particular thief is being classified as a vigilante now?"

This was more bizarre than seeing myself as a headline. A vigilante? That made me sound like Batman. I wasn't exactly racing around in a car, beating up bad guys. I was the one breaking in and stealing secrets. I was the bad guy. Being called a vigilante applied some degree of intended heroism - a quality I severely lacked. I suppose I preferred people to see me for what I was - a thief.

Motive was a murky area for me. People thought that for thieves, one way or another, it always came down to money. A while back, that was the reason for me. It was hard to eat when you were a street kid. It was less hard when you were a thief. I got better at it as time went on, it was almost like an art. But when I was taken in by the Coopers, something changed. I didn't steal because I wanted money - I had more than enough of my own. But I did it anyway - the only thing that had changed was that I didn't know why I was doing it.

Maybe because I wanted to change something. Maybe because I wanted to hurt the sort of people who had hurt me. Maybe because I wanted to help the people who had been hurt like me. Or maybe I was just a bored rich girl that liked adrenaline and pissing people off.

Regardless of motive, I knew what I was. A thief. Nothing more, nothing less.

A girl's hand shot up. "Because of the people she targets. They're all either corrupt people in government or criminals. Then, she delivers what she thinks is an adequate punishment. Like, last night, the media and the police received loads of files from Senator Walsh's hard drive. Allegedly, there were records of payments made to a contract killer."