The Patroller and the Thief

Yes, my rumored "BIG" Fillmore! story is here! Finally finished! (Hopefully I caught all the typos and grammar stuff; it's a tad hard being my own beta reader.) I'm splitting it up into chapters since it's so long (21 pages after editing from 23 pages) so I'll probably post one chapter per week, how's that sound? I'd say it would depend on reviews, but I won't be so mean.

So please, read on, enjoy and remember: I don't own Fillmore!

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Chapter 1 – Patroller Unmasked

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"You got it, Dee?"

"I thought you'd never ask," I said, sending him a flirtatious wink. I removed the bobby pin from the back of my black belt and knelt down, eye-level with the doorknob, and started to work at the lock as I struggled to regain my old notorious criminal "mojo". I guess you could call it that. You wouldn't have been able to tell by my skillfully steady hands, but my nerves wouldn't leave me alone.

You see, this wasn't my thing; breaking and entering with criminal intentions. Well, it used to be; I was a juvenile delinquent at one point, but not anymore.

My name – my real name – is Ingrid Third. I'm an X High School Safety Patrol officer. This is what I do in my undercover op spare time: I assume fake identities (the current being Deana Brewster; computer genius and lock-pick extraordinaire), I infiltrate the bad guys' gang and save the day, or whatever else it is I'm supposed to be saving, whether it's the school's chalk supply, a drama club's performance, or even the reputation of a scholar.

But, usually, I'm not alone.

The lock clicked.

Wade Canton looked at his watch, but while the black ski mask he was wearing didn't allow me to see his face, the sound in his voice and the glint in his evergreen eyes revealed to me that he was smiling.

"Thirteen seconds," he said, trying to suppress the sound of approval in his tone, "not too bad, Brewster."

"Not my best, either," I told him.

"You ready?" he asked.

I stood up, putting the deformed bobby pin back in its place on my belt. "Whenever you are."

He took a small flashlight from his tool belt. "Let's do this."

Don't worry. Canton was not my partner. He was my target; a chronic thief determined to prove himself higher and worse than any other delinquent X had seen, and he had been doing just that. He'd been the elusive ringleader of almost a dozen attempted heists at X within that past year. Nine of them had been either hoaxes or were thwarted by us, the Safety Patrol, and only two of them had succeeded. One: a rather excessive and quite devastating attack on the high school drama club's reenactment of A Christmas Carol in early November, which resulted in some injured actors, a slightly concussed safety patrol officer, and a completely destroyed set. A short two weeks later, there was a successful break in into Principal Folsom's office at X Middle, which resulted in some stolen personal belongings (which were rather valuable) and her entire office being trashed. That's when the Junior Commissioner, Horatio Vallejo, and X High's principal, John Appleton, put us to work helping out the X Middle Safety Patrol once the threat to turn their HQ into a tanning salon was made.

Well, they put me to work, with everyone else working behind the scenes to ensure a successful infiltration of Canton's personal life and leaving my unhappy partner to look out for me undetected in the shadows, which was one of his specialties.

His name is Cornelius Fillmore – he's my partner.

And he should be here any minute.

I opened the door to the school's private warehouse quietly and slowly, the hinges squeaking quietly and forebodingly in the silence. There had been "rumors" – spread initially, of course, by the Safety Patrol to make sure that Canton took the bait – that there was a vault hidden in this warehouse, said to contain every penny the school treasury had.

And, of course, wanting to prove to the world that he was a real thief, Wade Canton just couldn't resist.

He had to have it.

He entered first, pulling out a flashlight from his belt and shining it around the room as I shut the door quietly behind us. Without turning to look at me, he said, "Where we going, babe?"

I removed the black sack from my shoulder and searched for the blueprints some of my coworkers, Joseph Anza and Karen Tehama, planted in the school archives which I "broke in to" (Fillmore just set up a drop one night, all covertly and everything). Little did Canton know they were totally fake.

Oh. You're probably wondering why he called me "babe".

You did notice how I said that I had to "successfully infiltrate Canton's personal life", right? So, I did just that.

We were sort of dating.

I pulled out the blueprints and set them down on a nearby crate labeled "colored pencils", rolling out the scroll as Canton shined the flashlight at the treasure map.

I pointed to the right edge of the paper where the dimensions of the warehouse were labeled. "According to the blue prints, this entire wall-" I pointed to the wall we were facing. "-should be straight. The building should be like a rectangle."

Canton looked around, surveying the warehouse from the inside. "The building looks rectangle to me, Dee."

I shook my head. "It is rectangle in here, Wade. But didn't you see the building from the outside?" For a moment, Canton looked stumped, but then realization shone in his eyes.

"There was an extra wall."

I grinned. "Exactly. You catch on pretty fast."

"If we didn't have masks on," he said as I rolled up the blueprints and shoved them in my backpack, "I'd probably kiss you."

I stood up, slinging my backpack over my shoulder. You probably won't be thinking that soon, I thought.

"Save it for later babe, we've got a job to do," I said, adding a phony affectionate giggle for emphasis.

"So where are we headed?" he asked.

I pointed in the direction the wall was supposed to be. "This way."

Not wasting any time, Canton and I jogged over to the other end of the building to actually find, not a fake wall, but that there was no fake wall.

Did I mention the blueprint was a fake?

"Dee?"

"Yeah?"

"Where's the wall?"

Feigning shock, I stammered, "I-I don't know Wade, it should be here!" Canton scanned the area with his flashlight, turning in circles on the spot.

"We need to get out of here," he said, barely hiding the panic in his voice. I nodded in agreement but when we turned to run, a voice rang out from the darkness.

"Going somewhere Canton?"

Canton and I froze on the spot as Fillmore stepped out of the shadows where the fake wall was supposed to be. His orange Safety Patroller's belt contrasted brightly from the darkness of his skin and the room around him as he stepped into the faint light streaming in from the windows and our flashlights.

Canton grabbed my gloved hand and we took off in the other direction. That's when the lights snapped on, the sound of the switches resounding through the warehouse and more Safety Patrol officers then stood in our way. We were boxed in between wooden pallets to my left, patrollers in front and behind us, and crates to my right.

Again, we turned and ran in the other direction, but there Fillmore, Anza and Tehama stood, blocking our exit.

"It's over, Canton," Fillmore said as he crossed his arms and sent me a nod, which I probably wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been staring straight at him.

Now to my left, Canton looked between me, the patrollers and the exit, as if trying to find a way out. Not finding one, he reluctantly lifted his hands in surrender. I did the same, wanting to maintain my cover as long as possible before Fillmore gave me the signal.

Fillmore grinned at me. "You okay, Ingrid?"

I heaved a sigh of relief, my heartbeat slowing as both my mind and body realized that the job was done. Canton looked down at me as I grabbed the back of my ski mask, leaned down and pulled it off, my shoulder length black hair falling from the hat.

"Yeah," I said, running my hands through my hair, "I'm fine."

The hurt and shock in Canton's green eyes was something I never expected to see.

"Dee-"

"My name-" I reached towards the top of his head and pulled off his mask. "-is Ingrid Third. Sorry to disappoint."

I couldn't get over the look on his face; his messed up blonde hair, fair skin, and the mask of pure hurt – a mask I could never pull off. I set the masks down on the top of the pallets next to me, took another deep breath and struggled to keep a straight face, feigning exhausting to try and subtly appease the guilt rising in my chest.

I didn't even have time to react.

Canton had me in his arms, but not in the affectionate, I-think-I-love-you kind of way he had been holding me for the past week or so. It was more like the hostile, you-move-you-die kind of way, one where he had one arm around my stomach and the other holding a knife to my throat.

Well, that got out of hand really fast.

Fillmore's cool demeanor quickly vanished. Adrenaline flooded my body and blood raced through my veins, as if it was searching for a way out. I had to push down the fear before it got the better of me; jobs have gone bad before, and I've gotten into a plenty of jams, especially when the truth revealed itself and bonds of trust had been broken… but they had never gone to an extreme like this. Weapons had never been involved.

"Ingrid!"

"I want a deal!" Canton shouted.

Okay. Focus, Third. How on earth am I supposed to get out of this? I thought.

Fillmore and Canton swapped back and forth some kind of witty banter that my ears never really processed as escape plans formulated in my head, none of them with an ending that didn't involve me getting hurt in one way or another.

So, before I could even second guess what I was doing and chicken out, I reacted.

My right hand shot up, coming under the arm that had the weapon to my throat and I pushed the weapon away.

"Ingrid!"

My sudden movement startled Canton; he moved to slit my throat, but caught the palm of my right hand instead, the blade falling from his hand as I pushed his arm away. The blade stung and burned as it pierced my skin, blood seeping from the fresh cut in my palm, but I didn't have time to focus on the pain. I launched my elbow behind me to get him in the gut, but, with a menacing shout, he grabbed me and, using all of his weight, he slammed me into the pallets, his shoulder pinning my chest down and knocking the breath out of me in one go.

I felt his fist connect with my jaw and then my ribcage multiple times before Fillmore ran up from the side, grabbed Canton and threw him the short space across the walkway. I wasn't paying much attention, but as I sank to my hands and knees, gasping for air and hanging my head, I couldn't help but hear a couple of punches being thrown as the rest of the Safety Patrollers collapsed on the patroller and the thief.

"Fillmore, stop!" Anza shouted.

Canton was cursing and shouting at me, struggling to break away from the officers. "I trusted you!" he shouted. Feeling the blood pool beneath my right hand, I balled my hand into a fist, hoping to slow the bleeding, but not quite wanting the pain to leave; it helped block out Canton's shouts and the pain in my heart.

"That was kind of the point," I heard Tehama tell him.

I saw someone kneel down in front of me and then felt a hand on my shoulder.

"You all right?"

I looked into Fillmore's warm brown eyes which were the complete contrasts of Canton's cold and unforgiving emerald irises. I grimaced as the warm blood seeped between my fingers, my ribcage pounding in protest as I struggled to get the air back into my lungs.

"You're really going to ask me that, Fillmore?" I gasped, my jaw throbbing as I spoke.

He chuckled. "Sorry, it's a standard question."

Canton continued to curse and scream as the other patrollers dragged him away.

"Here," Fillmore said, holding out his arm, "give me your arm."

Without hesitating, I put my right arm across his shoulders, welcoming my partner's help for the first time in two weeks, and used my uninjured hand to help push myself up off the ground.

My entire chest hurt.

And it wasn't just from Canton's fists.

Steadying me by a firm hand on both my arm and waist, Fillmore pulled me off of the ground, lingering for barely a moment before stepping back slightly to look me in the eyes.

"You never answered my question," he told me as I removed my hands from his broad shoulders.

"Third!"

The both of us looked behind us to find Vallejo being followed by Principal Appleton, a confident stride in both of their steps. Fillmore stepped to my right, facing the two men.

"Well Ingrid, I believe a 'congratulations' are in order," Appleton, clad in a suit and tie, his blue eyes shining bright with pride. I held my bleeding fist in my hand, rather sheepishly, and sent him a nod.

"Thanks," I said, and then looking at Fillmore added, "but I couldn't have done it alone." I smiled at him, and he smiled back down at me. He had gotten taller since our first days at X Middle, reaching a good five foot ten; the years of Safety Patrol really treated him well, physically speaking, to say the least. Crackers, Third. Snap out of it.

"Of course you couldn't have, Ms. Third," Appleton said, looking over at Vallejo, "your entire Safety Patrol has done a marvelous job bringing this creep to justice. It would be wrong not to thank all of you. You really stuck your necks out there tonight." Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Fillmore staring down at me, but I avoided looking back at him for the time being.

"Some more than others," I heard him whisper to me. I faltered for a moment, his soft voice cutting through me like Canton's knife had, his words echoing through my head as I looked at him warily from the corner of my eye.

He had no idea.

"Just doing our job, Principal Appleton," Vallejo told Appleton.

"Yeah," Fillmore said with a familiar tone in his voice that made you dread of what was going to follow it. He used that tone a lot when he didn't think the job was done. "Although, the job has its hazards," he continued, still looking down worriedly at me, "and I don't think I can say I've seen it get more dangerous than it has tonight."

I looked into his eyes, trying to reassure him by saying, "I'm fine, Fillmore."

"Well, you should be on your way to the infirmary Ms. Third and get yourself patched up," Appleton told me, and then looked at Fillmore, "and you as well."

I wasn't sure why at first – I thought he meant I needed and escort or something – but as Fillmore started to speak, Principal Appleton explained himself.

"You forget this entire building was rigged with cameras for the heist, Fillmore," he said, looking up at the ceiling and pointing to the general location of many well hidden cameras, "and that the Commissioner here and I were watching. After the beating you gave Canton, I can imagine your hand must need a professional check up."

Fillmore and I both looked down at his hand, and, as if he was just noticing it, he tried to clench his hand, only to wince in pain. "Dawg," he groaned.

I did my best to smile at him, despite the throb in my jaw, and said, "Well, the job does have its hazards. Doesn't it, Fillmore?"

Fillmore grinned and said to Vallejo, "We'll be back at HQ soon."

"Take your time, guys," Vallejo replied, "We can take it from here. Nice job tonight, Third."

I put on as big of a smile as I could manage with a throbbing mandible, and said, "Thanks, Vallejo." Fillmore turned around and guided me towards the door, a hand at my back, and I couldn't help but feel this awful, disgusting feeling rising in my chest, like something was making its way up from my stomach; some kind of ugly monster.

The job was done. I should have been relieved. It was one of the biggest busts in X history. I should have been proud.

I couldn't have been more ashamed.