Chapter Text
"Spit it out," Yennefer says, looking at him over her glass of wine. Geralt freezes, fork halfway to his mouth. She rolls her eyes. "You have a favor to ask me. You wouldn't have come, otherwise."
Geralt considers arguing, but as usual she's seen right through him.
"I've heard from Jaskier," he says carefully. He's turned over in his mind again and again how to broach this topic of conversation, and isn't likely to get a better opening. "He's offered to lend the RBI his… expertise. As a consultant."
"And did you tell him where to stick it?"
"No," Geralt admits. "I asked what it would cost us."
Yennefer raises a brow, and Geralt shifts, uncomfortably aware of their surroundings. When she'd asked him to fill in for Triss at this charity gala, his assent had been begrudging, hoping for this opportunity. Now that it's come, he's not certain he can convince her.
"The Morningstar case proved we have blindspots," he points out. "Big ones. If he's willing to share his tricks of the trade, we could learn from them. He's proven trustworthy enough."
Yennefer sighs and takes another sip from her wine glass. It's not that he needs her permission, exactly, just that Henselt doesn't entirely like dealing with Witchers and has employed her as a sort of mediator. She advocates for what they need and smooths the way when the administration causes a fuss.
"He took a bullet for us, Yen," he points out. "We wouldn't have stopped Azar Javed without him. All he's asking is for his record to disappear."
"Is that all?"
"And a fee. For each case he consults on."
"That's not a small ask."
"Smaller than it could be. He just wants the RBI files deleted. So as long as he keeps his nose clean he won't need to worry about being arrested in the Northern Kingdoms." He entirely doubts Jaskier's ability to do so, but at least it won't be his problem.
"I'm surprised at you," Yennefer says mildly. "That you'd even consider this…"
Geralt isn't sure how to counter that, because she's right. It isn't like him to consider bringing in an outsider, especially one who has so thoroughly made a fool of him and his brothers. He can't admit how he's been getting to know Jaskier over the past several months, can't confess that they'd fallen into bed together.
"It's important," he says, instead. "He's not joining the team. He'd just be an asset, when we need him."
"I don't like it." Yennefer puts down her glass, with a small shake of the head. "He's a thief. We've been working on your reputation for ages and now you want to get into bed with a criminal?"
Geralt thanks every god that's listening that they had agreed long ago that Yennefer would stay out of his head. Otherwise he'd be screwed.
"The RBI uses consultants and informants all the time."
"Yes, but they aren't him."
"Can we afford to hold a grudge?" Geralt asks plainly. "How long did you spend sparring with the Mornings' lawyers?"
"This isn't a grudge." She leans forward on her elbows. "I don't like him. I don't trust him. Do you know why?"
"Just because he's a criminal doesn't—"
"We don't know a thing about him, about his background, where he comes from or why he does what he does. What we do know is that he's stolen enough art to privately fund an expedition to the fucking moon if he wanted to, and he's still doing it ."
"You don't trust him because he's wealthy?" Geralt looks around the crowd speculatively. This particular fundraising event had been targeted towards those who had more money than they knew what to do with.
Yennefer lowers her voice. "Wealthy people are rarely good people," she says. "They're the same rich pricks that they always were, who don't see other people as people, but as things to be used and tossed aside."
They both have no small amount of experience with that.
"I don't know what he wants to use you for," Yennefer goes on. "I don't know why he would choose to do this and I don't want to see you get fucked over."
"I—" Geralt clears his throat. He doesn't want that either. "We'll be careful. Will you do it?"
~*~
It's the gentle, pulsing vibration of his wristwatch that wakes him. It's a miracle he slept at all, given the tight space of the vent, but apparently weariness wins out over comfort every time. He shuts off the alarm, barely taking note of the time. 2:00 a.m.
Before anything else, he cycles through the lenses of his goggles. Low light, thermals, current sensors— all of them read clear. Nothing has changed from the time he crawled in here, seven hours ago. Now, it's time to work.
His body is stiff, but not unreasonably or unexpectedly so. He's in far from peak condition, but good enough to get this done. Carefully, listening intently as he goes, he begins to stretch. The muscles in his legs wake first, then his arms, shoulders and neck. There's not much room, and his body creaks and cracks as he loosens up as best he can. It takes more effort than he'd like to admit to stop himself groaning at the sensation.
When he's ready, he cycles through his lenses again. No change. Good. The security force at this company is far too reliant on video cameras and motion detectors. He hasn't seen a single guard since getting inside.
He shifts, throwing one gloved hand out in front of himself and using the friction to haul his body forward. It'll be hell on his shoulders by the time he makes it to his goal, but he's used to that.
Nearly an hour later, he tucks the prototype into the pocket over the small of his back. The hardest part is done, and it hasn't been terribly hard, if he's honest. Whoever had installed the security system hadn't the faintest what they were doing, probably too intent on stopping inside jobs than any real professional.
Poorly placed motion sensors, standard issue security cameras, and an alarm system he was able to bypass with a bit of code run through a smartphone; he's done jobs like this a hundred times and will probably do a hundred more.
Isn't that a depressing thought.
He disconnects the phone and rolls up the stripped wires he'd used, jamming them back into the alarm system's control panel. There are about three minutes left of pre-recorded material before the cameras are live again. Museum putty will hold the panel in place. He presses it down until it's set, then studies his handiwork. Good enough. Nothing out of the ordinary.
He high-steps over the beams of the motion sensors back across the floor to the rope suspended from the ceiling vent he'd come out of. It's childsplay to clamber back up the rope and he's just sliding back into the vent when the worst happens.
The putty gives, suddenly, and the panel springs open with a clatter. The plastic casing misses the motion sensors by a hair, but all of the mangled wire is now falling free. He jerks at the noise, nearly losing his grip.
The watch on the inside of his wrist informs him there's less than a minute left of pre-recorded tape on the cameras. Going back to fix the panel again would leave him clearly visible.
"Fuck," he hisses beneath his breath. He hauls himself fully into the vent, sending up a prayer to all the gods, though they've never answered him before. With luck, he'll have enough time to get away before security notices anything is amiss. He shudders to think what this failure will cost him. Coiling the rope as swiftly as possible, he yanks the cover of the vent back into place behind him.
What's done is done. There's no going back.
His shoulders are aching fifteen minutes later, when he reaches his exit, but there's been no sound of alarms. His goggles show nothing out of the ordinary in the deserted parking lot. He needs to go, now, can afford no more dithering.
The vent cover gives with one solid smack, the bolts he'd sheared off earlier in the week falling free. It swings down silently on the single remaining bolt, and as soon as the path is free, he slides out, dropping into the bushes.
He freezes like a startled rabbit upon landing, but no one shouts or shoots at him.
It's quick work to pin the vent cover back into place, jamming a pencil in one of the empty bolt holes before ducking down again. He's just caught his breath when the lights all throughout the complex snap on.
There are voices raised in alarm and the sound of footsteps.
Moving swiftly— failure is one thing, but capture is entirely another— he runs along the edge of the building before making a break for the back fence. He sprints for it, swerving toward the twisted coathanger he'd left hanging from one of the spikes. The hanger bites into the sole of his foot as he launches himself upward, but it helps him to clear the fence. He lands with a roll on the other side.
Luck, for once, seems to be with him, as he dashes toward the alley where the car is hidden unpursued.
That luck ends abruptly as he rounds the corner and spots a uniformed security guard kneeling to clear the mud from the carefully dirtied license plate.
"Huh?" the guard asks dumbly at the sound of his approach. He struggles to his feet, drawing his pistol.
Without giving himself a chance to hesitate— fuck, he's going to pay for this, it's not going to be pretty— he draws as well, snatching up the gun hidden in his thigh pouch.
He aims carefully and shoots the man in his dominant arm without breaking his stride. He puts on another burst of speed, then punches the man square in the face, aiming to knock him out.
It works, and he should run now, should grab the keys from beneath the visor and get out of here, but now the guard is bleeding out and unconscious. He could die.
Swearing to himself, he frees the man's belt from his pants and swiftly tightens it around the injury. Someone will find him soon enough, or he'll wake and radio for help.
Oh, he's definitely going to pay for this. But he knows better than to try and escape again. Throwing himself into the car, he grabs the keys and peels off to make the rendezvous.
~*~
"-- the guard pulled through, but wasn't able to give a good description of his assailant," Lambert finishes, flipping the folder shut with a dramatic flourish. "And that was three weeks ago."
"What kind of thief gives first aid to his victims?" Eskel muses, frowning thoughtfully.
"A stupid one," Lambert replies viciously. He's been building up to this presentation for weeks now. Geralt taps his pen against his desk and hums.
"What does this have to do with us?" Given their expertise, their team at the Bureau has free reign to choose which cases fall under their jurisdiction and which they leave to the regular agents. Corporate theft wouldn't be Geralt's top pick, nor, he thought, would it be Lambert's.
"One of the locals had the genius idea to run the bullet through BTC and, lo and behold, the gun has a history." Lambert points the remote at the projector, which clicks on to display a Ballistic Tracing Center report on the wall between their desks. "It shows up here, at Savi-Ten in southern Kaedwen, where a prototype chaos siphon was taken. Then again, outside of Cintra at Byways Security, where someone walked out with plans for elemental runestone explosives. And all the way up in Kovir where someone took a potshot at a guard before disappearing with three vials of purified zanguebarian venom."
Geralt frowns at the reports as they come up. That's certainly worth their attention. "Hell of a pattern. Nobody thought to flag us?"
"Not til now," Lambert explains with a scowl. "So I started digging for similar thefts. Came up with fourteen separate cases, all over the Northern Kingdoms, none of them ever closed. There are half a dozen more I'm not sure of, stretching back a couple of years. There aren't always casualties, but there've been five wounded and two dead since this asshole got started."
"We shoulda been on this from the start," Eskel says, leaning over to grab the paper file that Lambert had been reading from. Lambert lets him have it.
"We should have. Especially because—" he breaks off with a sort of nasty grin. "Hold on, I wanna see if you guys see what I'm seeing. Take a look at the files I flagged in the shared drive."
"The shared drive," Geralt drawls, opening his laptop and clicking the mouse to make it wake up. "And how do I—" He gets a crumpled ball of paper to the head for his snark. "Alright, alright."
Lambert has kindly labeled the folder as THIS ONE IDIOTS. There are two dozen files inside. He picks one at random. The first page is the responding officer's report.
Arrived at 8:23 A.M. No sign of forced entry or exit. All alarms quiet. Card readers logged no attempts to access the secure storage room and nothing visible on the security tapes. Prototype gone.
He clicks through to another one, which reads similarly.
Security vault door was untouched and retinal scanner logged no activity.
Another.
Motion detectors remained online and security cameras showed no intruders .
"Huh," Eskel says, pushing his laptop away for a moment and rubbing at his scars. "It's…"
"Yeah?" Lambert sits up, looking at him intently. "Bring it home, big guy."
"I mean, if you take it all together… it kind of looks like Jaskier's profile, doesn't it?"
"Thank you!" Lambert shouts, smacking the table in victory. "I knew it wasn't just me. All those files we went through before the Morningstar thing, they looked just like this."
Geralt opens a few more reports, stomach sinking. Lambert isn't entirely wrong. "Except that Jaskier steals art. He's never been involved in industrial crime or hurt anyone."
"As far as we know," Lambert points out, undeterred.
"As far as we know," Geralt concedes. It doesn't sit right with him and he hopes that's not just because he's gone soft. The similarities are far too prominent to ignore.
He sorts the files by date and takes a closer look, relieved when one stands out. He knows exactly where Jaskier was during that theft. Not that he's going to share. It takes only a moment to find another.
"This one, in Poviss— Berowin Facilities— that's just a week after he caught a bullet for us out in Vizima. Technically he was out of our hands at that point, but humans don't heal that fast."
"He walked out of the hospital less than forty-eight hours after he got shot," Lambert argues. "We don't know what he's capable of."
Luckily, Eskel pipes up a second later. "Nah, no good. This one, a year and a half ago in Kerack. That's just two days before that job in Toussaint, with the little ballerina statues. We know he did that one. The way he plans, I can't see him doing both."
Lambert swears, grumbling to himself as he pulls up the file to confirm. Geralt can't help focusing on the fact that he's not wrong. This does look a lot like Jaskier's work.
"If it's not him," he says thoughtfully. "He probably knows who it is."
"No," Lambert gets to his feet. " No ."
"This is his style," Geralt goes on. "Maybe they even trained together. He could help us."
"No," Lambert repeats, even more fiercely. "Are you forgetting how he completely screwed us over? He made us look like idiots! What makes you think he's going to side with us over a fellow criminal? And what's stopping him from going to warn off this asshole and fucking us all over again?"
Eskel starts to speak, but Lambert isn't done.
"This isn't even all of it! Look— knock offs of almost everything this guy has stolen— all those prototypes and plans and models, started turning up again. Down south. You know what that means?"
"Nilfgaard." Eskel drags a hand over his face. "Fuck."
"So if we're doing this, we gotta interface with NKI, and that means Dijkstra." Lambert is pacing now, short little jaunts along the length of his desk. "And he'll tell you sure as I will not to fuck with thieves."
Geralt very carefully keeps his expression neutral at that turn of phrase.
"Dijkstra knows the necessity of making unsavory alliances," he points out. "That's what he calls it when he has to work with us."
"We do usually have more leverage when we consult criminals." Eskel speaks up, fingers tapping idly at the desk. "Mitigating circumstances of our last encounter and all, not sure we have anything we could convict him with if he doesn't play nice."
"If he thinks he can fuck around with us, I'm not above deporting him to Nilfgaard and telling the emperor where to pick him up," Geralt says. It won't come to that, it better fucking not come to that, but Yennefer's doubts have unsettled him. What if this is all just a game to Jaskier. A bit of fun, nicking expensive art, flirting with anyone who breathes in his general direction. Playing with fire. He could be trouble, but Geralt won't let it come to that.
"He'll side with us because we'll pay him to. That's how he works, that's why he led us to Vizima. He owed us. And we'll own him."
"Eh. We'll rent him," Eskel corrects. Geralt nods. They both turn to Lambert, who throws his hands in the air in frustration.
"Fine," he says, at length. "But you're babysitting the thief and I'm not going to talk to Djikstra."
"We wouldn't inflict you on him anyway," Eskel says easily. "You found this, though. You call the shots."
"Ugh," Lambert says. "I'd rather be shot."
Eskel and Geralt both level him unimpressed stares.
"Fine. Geralt corrals the thief and deals with Dijkstra. Eskel, follow up with the locals who caught each of these, see if they remember anything else. I'll get all this shit organized, sort the blueprints and photos and what have you. Happy?"
"Thrilled," Eskel drawls, cracking his neck to one side and the other before drawing his laptop close. Lambert huffs a curse in his direction and stomps from the room, no doubt heading for the archives.
"Five crowns says he decks Jaskier before we get this done," he observes, as the door to the keep swings shut. "You think he's up to this?"
"Who, Lamb or Jaskier?" Geralt asks, keeping quiet on the odds. He doesn't exactly think Eskel's wrong on that front. Hopefully Jaskier will dodge. "They'll be fine, both of 'em. You know what Lambert's like with a goal in mind."
"Hm. Best hope our thief can keep up."
Geralt grunts in reply and tries to ignore the way his heart beat doubled in his throat at the phrase our thief.