Okay, great. So Bentley’s here.

Now we can hear whatever news Inspector Fox came here to tell us. I do hope she gets it over with. She brought her shock pistol, and the sight of her in our house with it twists my insides into knots. 

“Oh, Bentley, good, you’re here,” I say. “We’ve been eagerly awaiting your return. Especially me.”

“Hello,” says Inspector Fox passively.

“Carmelita,” says Bentley with slight alarm. Can’t blame ‘im. “What’s happening?” Then his eyebrows show themselves above his glasses. “Did you find something about Sly?!”

She bites her lower lip. "No, not exactly."

My shoulders sink. When Inspector Fox showed up, ten minutes after I got back from the wrestling ring and was in the middle of making an afterwork burrito, I became actually a little excited. That is, once it became clear she wasn’t here to arrest me. She knocked rather than stomping the door down and didn’t show me her Interpol badge, so there’s that. I really was getting restless of whatever she wanted to talk about that was so important Bentley had to first be present too.

Ever since Sly disappeared, I decided to enter wrestling because I wanted to keep fit. The Murray is always fit, but there have been some fierce foes I’ve had to admittedly endure some bruises over, and there’s nothing in the world more self-esteem killing than losing bicep, especially in anticipation of doing something that would involve Sly’s return. The last three big missions we’ve had together over the last three years have not been kind to me or the others. In our efforts to steal and destroy the Clockwerk parts, we ended up losing my baby van and Bentley got crushed, making me not have confidence in myself to protect my orphanage brothers, my family. And I had to spend months tapping into my inner self with my master. Sure, the next mission involved getting the car back, but we ended up flat-out retiring after that, only for another mission to get us stranded through time, and by the time we returned to present-day France, Sly ended up missing during the effort to correct our timeline doohickey.

I need to have faith Sly will return. Master taught me to think back to the mountains I’ve already climbed rather than those in front and have yet to punch, and remind myself things have worked out in the past, so who says they won’t now? 

“It involves the prison,” says Inspector Fox plainly. “Heathrow.”

“Really?!” says Murray. “Well, does that...does that mean you have information about Penelope? Or those scary freaky postcards?!”

Carmelita slaps her head, but I see a sad expression on her, so I don’t think she’s angry at my words. “No. It’s about Sly’s father’s old friend, McSweeney. He’s due for parole.”