The hostess leaves us with Calla and Agatha.

Calla's eyes are roving over the bar, scanning for potential problems. Agatha is smiling happily at us, holding two heavy shopping bags with both hands, her purse on her shoulder.

She leans down to speak quietly into my ear. “I just wanted to see the reaction before I head out. Worth it. You guys looked thunderstruck.”

“Well, you can’t blame us, holy shit!” I hold up a fist to Agatha, staring at Calla’s gorgeous dress. “Nice work, Agatha.”

She laughs, bumps her fist against mine, then nods her head at the exit. “Cool if I get going?”

“Yeah, absolutely! Thank you for all your help. Oh, wait, we said we were gonna give you a tip - hang on.” I turn and tug on Ralph’s sleeve. “You got your wallet on you?”

Ralph digs it out of his jacket pocket and hands it over without asking what it’s for, and without breaking his eyes away from Calla.

I’m relieved to see that my guess was right. This is Brent’s wallet. Ralph must have left his own wallet in the hotel room. I had a feeling he would be that level of thorough.

There are a few hundred dollar bills in the cash fold. I hesitate, then take the whole bunch and fold it up, hand it all over to Agatha.

“How much was that?” She tucks her long hair behind her ear, looking down at the folded bills. “Kinda looked like, um - a lot?”

“Count it later,” I tell her quietly. “It’s on Brent. Gas money for your move. And good luck with that, by the way! Hope everything goes smoothly.”

Agatha smiles warmly, then leans down to give me a hug before she goes.

She and Calla also exchange a smile as she heads off, but when Calla turns back to us, her friendly expression quickly grows serious.

“Back in a dress." She lets out an aggrieved sigh, smoothing down the radiant golden fabric. “How's a girl supposed to run or climb in an outfit like this? I do think I could still kick someone, though. So, there's that."

Ralph looks up at Calla in speechless silence, biting the inside of his cheek.

“Let’s get down to business, right?” she asks. “Can you move over, Jamie, so I can sit with Ralph? I’m supposed to be his girlfriend.”

I begin to awkwardly half-hop onto the next cube, then stop when Calla slips a hand beneath the table and gives it a swift tug. It noiselessly slides forward on the carpet, sending Ralph’s condensating drink sliding forward, too.

It would appear that the dress hasn’t actually done much to impede Calla’s speed or dexterity. She moves so fast that she looks like a swirling blur of shimmering gold.

She’s around the table in a flash, giving me just enough time to scramble onto the next cube before she drops down to sit beside Ralph. Then she gives the table another sharp pull, bringing it back into place.

Ralph’s drink, which had been about to tip off of the far edge of the table, reverses course and slides right back to Calla. She catches it out of the air before it can tumble into her lap and spill onto the extraordinarily expensive dress she’s wearing.

She takes a sip, then turns to look at Ralph.

“What is it?” she asks, nodding at the drink.

He was staring at Calla with wide eyes, but now he swallows roughly and breaks his gaze away, looking anywhere but at her. His fingers go to fidget with the leather wristbands, which aren’t there, so he drops his hands onto the table instead.

“It's Maker's Mark, on the rocks.” He’s speaking very slowly, like he’s afraid to get all twisted up in his words. “I wasn't actually drinking it, though."

“Well, I needed it.” Calla runs a hand over her soft, buzzed hair, and I realize that her fingers are trembling. “This is probably the most stressed out I’ve ever been in my life.”

Ralph hesitates, steals a quick, sidelong glance at her.

“Really?” he asks haltingly. “Because if I’d just pulled off that trick with my glass, it would be the best moment of my life. I'd be bragging about it forever. Probably never shut up about it ever again.”

Calla pauses, bites back a tiny smile, then rolls her eyes at Ralph.

“Seriously, I’d be fucking insufferable." He shudders, then folds his arms over his chest. “I don’t even like to think of it. All the work I’ve done on myself so far, gone, just like that. How are you not bragging about it, actually? You want me to do it for you?”

“Shut up,” Calla laughs. "I feel like you already are, and it's embarr-"

She breaks off, caught by surprise at the sound of her own laughter. She tries to make an irritated face, but not with tons of success. She actually looks like she feels better than she did a minute ago.

“Stay focused, boys.” She settles back against the booth, adjusting the glimmering folds of her dress. “We’re in deep, okay?”

“Tell that to the one who just fell out of character in front of the hostess." Aiden looks over at Ralph, suppressing a smirk. "What were you saying again, man? Right before that happened?"

I turn and fix Ralph with a sweet smile. "Yeah, wasn't it something about how Aiden and I need to stay focused?”

“I froze up for two goddamn seconds!” Ralph shoots back, his cheeks coloring up. “I still said the right thing, didn’t I?”

“No one is allowed to say anything else about my performance upstairs," I announce, then catch Ralph's eye. "Not after that, anyways.”

Ralph gives me a venomous glare, taps a finger to his temple. “That’s your problem, Keane, you don’t have any performance upstairs! Did you even get the cuffs taken off before you left the hotel room? I realized like, two seconds after you left-”

“Cuffs?” Calla jumps in, her eyes widening with alarm.

“Oh - not police handcuffs, and they’re off now,” I quickly answer, holding up my hands to show her. “See? Nothing on my wrists.”

Calla narrows her eyes at me. “There actually is something on your wrist. What is that?”

“Oh, god. It’s just a little chocolate. Hang on, I’m gonna wipe it off on this cube.”

“You fucking stopped to eat some chocolate, Jamie?”

“No, Ralph made me throw it on the ground.”

“I had a reason!” Ralph protests, as Calla twists to stare at him. “The hotel room had to look - okay, listen-”

“What have you two been doing?” Calla sputters, bewildered. “Aiden and I weren’t even gone for that long!”

“Hey, we’ve been doing alright!" I answer, my cheeks starting to burn. “There have been one or two, um, hiccups, but-”

“Yeah, and what have you two been doing?” Ralph looks at Aiden, one eyebrow arched. “Besides setting off fire alarms, that is.”

Aiden draws back, indignant. “That was part of the plan!”

Ralph and I both open our mouths to answer, and Calla suddenly flattens both of her palms on the table.

She does it wordlessly, and her hands make no sound. But for some reason the gesture draws instant silence from all the rest of us.

Calla slowly travels her gaze over Aiden, then me, then Ralph.

“Like I said,” she murmurs, very quietly, “Stay focused, boys.”

Aiden, Ralph, and I all exchange a sheepish glance. We all take a second to catch our breaths, to pull ourselves back onto the rails.

“Alright, good,” Calla says briskly. “Ralph, Jamie, you first. What’ve you got for us?”

I decide to stick to information of immediate importance. I can tell Aiden the details of my near-miss with an unanticipated lap dance later.

“We’re pretty set up as Brent and Carter,” I answer. “The people in the lobby shops think that’s who we are. Also one of the managers, and now the bar staff.”

“And I’ve got the room trashed,” Ralph adds. “It looks like Brent and Carter had themselves some drunken revelry in there.”

He unlocks his phone as he talks, glances up to make sure that no eyes are on us. Then he turns the phone around to show us something.

It's a photo of a middle-aged man with blonde hair about the same shade as Brent’s. He’s smiling in a supposedly friendly way, but there’s something smug and off-putting about it.

“Memorize this face,” Ralph says, keeping his voice quiet. “This is the State AG. This is who we need to be looking out for, because he’s the only one who will for sure bust us, and apparently no one in this fucking hotel has any idea when he might turn up. Only that he will.”

“Hopefully we’ll be long gone by the time he does," Calla murmurs.

“Let’s really hope so." Ralph clicks his phone to dark, sets it back on the table. "Because if we’re not, this thing is gonna turn into a fucking circus.”

There’s a short, nervous silence. I anxiously twist the ring around my finger, and Calla taps her fingertips on the glass of Maker's Mark. Aiden and Ralph show nothing on the surface, but I know they’re both right there with us.

“What about you guys?” I ask, trying to push us forward. "Calla?"

“Aiden and I got some intel on the safe room. I was hoping there’d only be one security guard, so we could distract him, then replace him with Aiden while I broke into the safe." Calla breathes out a disappointed sigh. "But there are two, so that was a bust.”

Aiden picks up where she left off.

“We tried pulling the fire alarm to see if the security guards would evacuate. But the hotel’s got a good system. They knew which alarm had been pulled, they sent a security guy right to it. He saw it was a false alarm and just turned it off.”

“So, looks like breaking into the safe by force isn’t an option. For a few reasons, actually, which I'll get to, but...” Calla stops, closes her eyes for a second. “We’re - we’re gonna have to…”

Ralph's jaw suddenly tenses. He’s understood where Calla is going with this already.

I’m a few seconds behind him, but I get there.

Ralph impersonating Brent, asking the hotel staff to open the safe for him - that was the backup plan. And right now, Calla is telling us that the original plan is pretty much out the window. The reason we were laying down the groundwork, pretending to be Brent and Carter, was so that we’d be ready if Calla couldn’t get access to the safe by sneaking in. And she can’t. It’s impossible.

Suddenly almost everything falls on Ralph.

Somehow he takes it calmly. I know that he must be terrified, deep down, but there’s no burst of panic in his eyes. He sits there and absorbs the news in silence, breathing slowly and evenly, his hands steady on the table.

“Fine,” he says quietly, after a moment. “What do we know about the safe?”

"It's not digital, for one thing." Calla shakes her head like she can't believe it. "So I wouldn't have been able to get it open, even if we'd gotten past the security guards."

"How do you know that? If you didn't get into the room?"

I had directed the question at Calla, but Aiden answers.

“I talked to some of the security guys," he tells me. "Said a guest had asked me about how the house safe works, so I needed to know.”

“And?”

“It’s not as high-tech as I would’ve thought,” Calla says. “It’s not one big safe, it’s a wall of small ones. When a guest signs up for one, they get a key. Like, literally, a key.”

“To get past the security guards and into the safe room, you have to be escorted by two managers,” Aiden continues. “One of the managers has a hotel master key, and the safe will only open when both keys are turned simultaneously.”

I blink at Aiden, sitting back. “Then - Brent must have a key somewhere that we need to find.”

“Yeah, and as for the managers,” Ralph says slowly, thinking as he speaks, “We’ve got Kate convinced. I could ask her to open the safe, but the second manager is a random draw. Which means - we need all of them convinced.”

“Okay, so…” Calla falls silent for a moment, strategizing. “Ralph and I need to go around and make sure we have a brush with each manager, so they all think that he’s Brent and I’m his girlfriend before he asks to open the safe.”

“Aiden and I can go back to the room, try to find the key?” I offer, and Calla gives me a nod of agreement.

“One thing, though,” Aiden says. “If there are two guests registered to one safe, they both have to be there if they want to actually take something from it. So - you can look at the file in the safe, Ralph, but they won’t let you take it out of the room. Because you won’t have the AG with you, and he’s also registered to the box.”

Ralph absorbs that in silence.

“You said you want to swap out the file in the safe with one you’ve got on you, Calla?” he asks, after a moment.

“Yes, and this policy means that we have to make the switch without anyone noticing that we did it." She nods at Aiden. "Aiden has the one we need to swap in, but he’ll give it to you when it’s time, Ralph.”

Aiden pats his zipped-up security jacket. Ralph looks at him, his grey-green eyes growing troubled.

“There’s gonna be two managers, right there," he murmurs. “I’m gonna have to be, like - real slick about it.”

Calla draws back and narrows her eyes at him, like she can’t tell whether or not he’s joking.

“Ralph,” she says, “I’m gonna make the switch, not you. I’m only having Aiden give you the file instead of me because I can’t hide it in this dress. It’s gotta go in your jacket.”

Ralph’s eyes flit to her, startled. “What?”

“I’m going with you.” Calla stares at him, then tilts her head to the side in disbelief. “Ralph, did you - did you honestly think I was going to let you do this alone?”

Ralph looks at her with mounting confusion in his eyes. “I mean - yeah?”

“You thought I was gonna let you walk into a room full of security all by yourself, and let you risk getting caught swapping out the - don't you know that I would never fucking forgive myself if-?" Calla breaks off sharply, then takes a long, staggering breath, and shakes her head. "Just - no fucking way. I’m going with you.”

Now Ralph is the one who looks like he can’t tell if Calla is joking.

“What - are you sure?” he asks, completely taken aback. “No, come on - I’m the one playing Brent. I have to go in there, anyways. I can make the swap myself, that way you don’t have to risk-”

“Ralph!” Calla makes a desperate sound, then takes his face in her hands, stares right into his eyes. “Listen to me! We get caught together, or not at all!”

Ralph stares back at Calla, wide-eyed, motionless.

Calla lets him go and sits back, a little out of breath. Her cheeks are pink, and not solely from the sunburn. She looks hastily around at the bar, making sure that we haven't attracted any unwanted attention.

Ralph surfaces from his stupor, bites his lip, and sits more upright. He leans forward, catches Calla’s eyes with his.

“Together, or not at all,” he repeats quietly.

Calla looks back at Ralph with very serious eyes. She nods slowly, then takes a deep, steadying breath.

“So, do we have a plan?” she asks, looking around at all of us. “Any objections, revisions?”

"No objections." I reach over and tug on Aiden's sleeve. "Let’s go find the key.”

"Oh, god." Aiden presses his palms to his eyes. “Why do I get the feeling that there’ll be some on-the-fly revisions?”

“Be careful. Don’t do anything st-” Ralph breaks off, interrupted by the sound of squeaking leather as Aiden and I bounce along the cubes to get out. He closes his eyes, lets out a deep sigh. “Anything stupid.”

“Good luck, guys,” Calla tells us earnestly. “We’ve got this, okay? We have a plan, now we just need to stick to it."

"Yeah," I say brightly, then turn to look at Aiden. "We can do that, right?”