Stealing From a Thief

Katrina Freeman awoke with a start in a dank, dimly lit room, her head aching badly and her face wet. Although she didn’t know where she was, she hardly needed to question how she’d gotten there. She remembered vividly the white van that had skidded to a stop next to her as she was walking back to her dorm from class, and the two men who had leapt from the back, masked and wearing heavy jackets, to drag her inside. She could still taste blood; she’d bitten the man who tried to put a hand over her mouth. She knew her headache was the result of one of them hitting her over the head with something heavy.

Katrina pushed herself into a sitting position from where she had lain crumpled on the damp moss-covered brick floor, rolling her aching shoulders and neck. As her eyes adjusted to the lighting, Katrina began to take full account of her situation. The room itself was constructed of brick; water dripped intermittently from cracks in the ceiling, forming dirty puddles on the floor. A rusty steel door stood in in the center of the wall across from her, a set of brick steps leading to it. A small opening in the door, about eye-height, provided the only light in the room. As she squinted into the darkness, Katrina noticed that there was another figure slumped in the corner opposite her. Standing shakily, Katrina shuffled to the other person, who she found to be an older, dark-skinned woman with splotches of vitiligo across her hands, arms, and face. Crouching, Katrina shook the woman awake as gently as she could. With a groan, the woman opened her eyes and raised her head.

“Where am I,” the woman mumbled, a slight French accent detectable in her voice, “and who’re you?”

“I’m Katrina,” the young woman replied, putting her back to the wall and slumping to sit next to her new acquaintance. “As for where we are, I’m not exactly sure. But I think we’ve been kidnapped by Gabrielle Garnier. Or someone who works for her. I don’t know of anyone else who would want to grab me off of the street like that.”

“I don’t even know who that is,” replied the woman, squinting and rubbing her forehead.

“Most people don’t,” Katrina said. “That’s the way she prefers it. She’s one of the FBI’s most wanted, has been for over a decade, but they don’t even know for sure what she looks like, and it’s doubtful the name they know her by is her real one. She is, by far, the best thief alive. Hell, she may be the best thief ever. If more people cared about that kind of thing, she’d be a legend.” There was an air of reverence in her voice. “Among those who do know about her, she’s a bit like Robin Hood. At least halfway. She only steals from banks, large corporations, hedge fund managers and the like. She has some connections to the dark web; people can contact her with suggested targets, so if someone’s done something really heinous, she can go after them specifically. It’s said there’s not a vault in the world she can’t get into. She skips the whole ‘giving to the poor’ step, but she’s got the right idea.”

“Wow,” the other woman replied simply. Then, after a moment of thought she continued, “You really seem to look up to this person. So, what did you do that got her so mad she decided to kidnap you?”

Katrina laughed sheepishly and turned away, glad this woman couldn’t see her embarrassed blush in the dark. “I kind of, maybe, a little bit, stole twenty thousand dollars?”

“Twenty thousand?” her companion exclaimed, then whistled softly. “That’s... certainly not a small amount.”

“I didn’t even think she’d miss it!” Katrina replied. “I mean, if even half the crimes she's credited with were really her, she should be rolling in money. I didn’t think she’d miss a measly twenty thousand. At the time, I also thought ‘well what’s she going to do, call the police?’ but I guess I didn’t think that through as well as I should have.”

“How did you even manage to steal that much? If this Gabrielle Garnier is such a good thief, you'd think it would be rather hard to steal from her, no?”

“It was surprisingly simple, actually,” Katrina replied. “She may be great at getting into bank vaults, but her cybersecurity was seriously lacking. I, uh, know more than a little bit about computers. I’m a computer science major, actually! I won’t bore you with the details, but once I found out she could be contacted on the dark web it wasn’t nearly as hard as it should’ve been. Not quite ‘her password was password’ levels of easy, but pretty damn close.”

“Does that mean you know her real name? You must’ve gotten into a bank account or something, no?”

Katrina shook her head. “I got into a sort of online account, yes. But I doubt the name she used was here real name, and there’s no way that was all of her money; the twenty thousand I took was almost everything in the account.”

“What did you do with that money once you got it?” the older woman asked.

“Well, I had a lot of ideas,” Katrina started, reaching into her pocket and withdrawing a small black notebook. “I thought about buying a boat.”

Her new friend chuckled. “A boat? You, a college student, wanted to buy a boat?”

“I’ve always wanted a boat,” Katrina replied, somewhat incredulously. “You can get a good-quality used sailboat for about twenty thousand.”

“What else?” The older woman asked.

Katrina had considered lots of options, which she and her cellmate discussed at length over the next half hour. She’d briefly thought about donating to a charity, but quickly dismissed the notion. She wasn’t going to just give away money she’d worked so hard for. She’d thought about spending some to take skydiving lessons, some to take her friends to Disney World, or some to take a vacation to Europe or the Caribbean; she’d never traveled out of the country, but she’d always wanted to. She’d thought about starting a business (though she hadn’t gotten much further than the words “start a business” with “food truck?” scrawled in a nearby margin). She thought about buying a new car, or at least one that was new to her. She considered investing the money, but she didn’t know enough about doing so to make any sort of informed decision, and she would hate to have wasted the money.

Finally, the older woman interrupted Katrina, saying “Alright, but what did you actually do with the money? Surely you didn’t spend all this time just deliberating over what to do with it.”

Katrina flipped to the last page of her notebook, but held it so the other woman couldn’t see what it said. “You’re going to laugh at me,” she said sheepishly.

“Oh, come now, it can’t be that bad!” her companion replied. “What was it?”

Wordlessly, Katrina shifted the notebook so the older woman could read what she had written. On the page were four simple words, all caps, underlined in red: PAY OFF STUDENT LOAN DEBT. There was a moment of silence. Katrina could sense her companion’s confusion.

“All of it?” she asked. “You spent twenty thousand just on student loan debt?”

Katrina nodded. “I’m still about six thousand in the hole, actually,” she said, “but it helped a lot. I figured that before I started spending money on things I wanted I should get myself out of debt as much as I possibly could.”

“Wow,” the older woman said, clearly stunned.

For a moment the room was silent except for the drip of water from the ceiling and the quite echo of the two captives’ breathing, then Katrina shook her head. “I’m so sorry. We’ve been talking about me this entire time. I promise I’m usually more polite than that. Why’re you here?”

For the first time Katrina had seen, her companion smiled. It wasn’t a happy smile, but one full of secrets. Instead of answering Katrina’s question, the older woman only said “You’re quite good with computers, but you’re not very observant in real life, are you? Your wrists are cuffed. Did you notice that mine were not?” She reached into her pants pocket and retrieved a tiny brass key. “In fact, I could get you out of those cuffs right now, if you like.” Without waiting for an answer, she reached out and released Katrina’s hands from their binds. Katrina rubbed her sore wrists absently, trying to make sense of this.

As revelation dawned on her, Katrina felt the blood drain from her face. Her arms felt heavy, her breathing was becoming quick and shallow. Her cellmate continued, “You say you're not rude, but you didn't even bother to ask my name. I would've told you the truth. You could ask now, but I think you’re starting to figure it out. My name, of course, is Gabrielle Garnier.”

“Did you,” Katrina paused searching, “I mean, are you telling me you kidnapped me, posed as another person you kidnapped, sat in here with me for over an hour, just to find out how I spent your damn money?”

“Yes,” Gabrielle answered simply, then said “and to determine what sort of person you are.” Leaving Katrina where she sat on the cold brick floor, Gabrielle walked to the steps that led to the exit. She stopped at the bottom and turned back, then said “You were wrong, by the way. I’m not missing the point of the ‘Robin Hood’ thing. I’ll admit I hold on to enough to live well, and to have the best tools for my work. But the rest I donate to charities. It’s mostly environmental protection and poverty relief, but I also donate to medical research. Recently I’ve been giving a lot to people on the internet who just can’t afford medical bills. You were also wrong about me having several different online accounts, or nearly wrong. I’ve got my own funds held separately, but all the money I had planned to donate was in that account. You stole money intended for rain forests and cancer patients.”

Katrina wasn’t sure what to say. She mumbled, stuttered, and finally got out the words “I can get it back for you!”

Gabrielle smiled. “I know you can,” she replied. “I know you will. Because from now on, you and I work together. Partners in crime. You said it yourself, there’s not a vault in the world that can keep me out. Or at least there wasn’t for a long time. But the people with means are getting savvy, or hiring people to be savvy for them, so I’m going to do the same. You do the electronics, I do the physical work, we both profit and we get to help a good cause.”

“Not that I would,” Katrina began cautiously, “but if I said no, what would happen?”

Gabrielle smiled as she ascended the steps. “I’ve learned a lot of tricks over the years. I’ve refrained from using them, but for someone who would steal from me, and then refuse to make up for their wrongdoing? It would be easy to, say, plant your hair and fingerprints at the scene of a crime. Make it seem like you were good, but not quite good enough. Which, I suppose, is correct. But we'll teach you to cover your tracks, and you'll be among the best. So, tell me Katrina Freeman. What do you say?”

Katrina pushed herself to her feet, then gave a wordless, shaky nod. Gabrielle beamed. “Excellent!” she said as she unlocked the door. “Come upstairs when you’re ready, we’ll discuss the details.” Gabrielle left the door open as she walked briskly out, leaving Katrina to ponder how quickly her life was about to change.