Amateur Night
What Divides UsTwo weeks passed as JR worried over his conversation with the police. The public concern over the robber's identity was fading, though he had not been caught. The police were certainly still searching for him but without a solid lead, the case stopped appearing so often on the news. Aron said that was a good thing, because maybe the robber had gotten what they wanted and that was that, but JR didn't think so.
There was just something in the pit of his stomach that told him this was far from over. He began to jog once again, trying his best to build up his strength and stamina, remembering vividly the way the robber escaped. One powerful leap was all it took to reach the top of a two story building, and then he had leapt from rooftop to rooftop with the ease a child playing hopscotch. If JR had any hope of beating that, then he needed to get stronger.
Aron watched his training with a skeptical eye, still insistent that the robber had moved on, but almost three weeks to the day after the first robbery, JR was proven right.
The program that the two had been watching - a show about two brothers who hunted paranormal beings - was suddenly interrupted. A female reporter came on the television set, her blonde hair being mussed by the wind and her face schooled into a calm expression. "I'm here live at South Central Bank of St Louis, where yet another robbery has shaken the neighborhood."
Aron and JR looked at one another, the former's eyes wide with shock, before focusing back on the story she told. A single robber had entered the bank through the front window around eight-thirty that evening, subduing the two security guards before busting into the safe. Aron mumbled something, questioning how he had gotten into a bank vault, but JR's mind had already moved past that. His own strength had been building that he felt almost confident that he could beat his way into a vault, but he didn't want Aron to focus on that tidbit at the moment.
What stuck in his mind was the late hour. Why did the robber go to one bank on one side of the city in the early morning hours, and then across the city in the night time? It wasn't a pattern, and to someone who highly enjoyed finding the patterns in things, it didn't make a lot of sense to JR. Was it possible that there was more than one robber?
"Oh damn," Aron breathed, and JR's attention was pulled back to the television. The woman was just finishing up her story, though, and so he turned to his cousin for clarification.
"What? I didn't hear that last bit," he added, a bit sheepishly.
Aron didn't seem to notice. "One of the guards shot him, apparently. Says that he is sure the bullet entered his chest, but the dude only staggered back and then continued forward. You guys can do that?" he finished, eyes wide with surprise that JR felt echoed in himself.
"Uh... I think a bullet would hurt a hell of a lot," he admitted, thinking back to the incident with the pickle jar and how fast he had healed. "But I don't think it would stop me, not unless it was lodged in my heart or something."
Aron was nodding already, his thin lips pursing in thought. When JR stood to leave, Aron caught his arm and looked up at him, his eyes worried. "Don't do anything stupid, JR. You can still be caught by the cops."
"I won't," JR promised, and he meant it. If he were going to try and stop this fool, he would go about it in as smart a way as he could. Starting with gloves and a ski mask.
Four days later the robber struck again, and though JR grabbed a mask and gloves and bolted out the door as fast as he could, he arrived long after the robber had escaped and the police had begun the their investigation. He stood, leaning against the outer wall of a nearby building, gasping for breath as he watched the uniformed people go about their work. His mind was in a jumble but as he watched an officer tip his head to the left and speak into his radio, JR knew what he needed to do. Now if only he could convince Aron, because there was no way that JR had the technical knowledge to hack anything.
It took almost a week to convince Aron, with JR pulling out all the stops in his effort, even mentioning Spiderman and the infamous, "With great power comes great responsibility" quote. Which served to irritate his cousin, being that he was a DC superhero fan and not a Marvel one, but it worked. In the end, Aron took as small tablet, barely larger than JR's own cellphone, and rigged it up to connect to the police radio. "If this gets us in trouble, I swear I'm gonna say I had nothing to do with it," he grumbled as he connected a pair of earphones, but JR knew he was just being grumpy.
He professed his thanks and continued on his daily life: go jogging, lift some weights at the local gym, return home and clean the house, all while wearing listening to his new scanner. It was boring entertainment for the most part, so much so that almost two weeks after he had begun listening in, he almost missed the significance. He ws laying on his bed, nearing sleep in the hot air of mid-spring with his blankets pushed off and his limbs sprawled on the bed. An alarm was being reported at a high-end elect
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