The staff room's entrance had been cramped even before the staged accident, and the rest of the room provided little extra space. Filing cabinets, empty desks, and crooked chairs occupied most of the floorspace between them, and trailing cobwebs tumbled across Elise's hair from the shade of a ceiling lamp. Hundreds of glittering dust particles pirouetted in the beam of her phone's light.

    "Jeez. Is this a staff room or an abandoned barn?" Cadence asked as she ducked under an arch of peeling paint. "There's not even a crappy coffee machine. What's the point?"

    "So the staff can move between classrooms without students bugging them, I think," Elise answered, passing her light over the selection of doorways along the walls. She lit up the rightmost door and flicked her head towards it. "This is the one we want. Robin said it should be unlocked."

    Cadence snorted, and a twister of dust sprayed around her face. "Like the staff room door was meant to be? Yeah, right," she said, strutting to the classroom door and leaning on its old wood. As she shot Elise a smug look, the door creaked and spilled her into the classroom. Her hand shot into the nearest wall, barely catching her balance before she tumbled into the old heather-grey carpet. Catching her breath, Cadence turned around, her expression more sheepish than smirking. "Alright, I admit it. Even a bitchy roommate is right twice a day."

    As she hid her grin behind her hand, Elise stepped into the room and eased the door shut. "Hopefully, we can get that second time right now," she said, opening her bag as she approached the front desk. From the depths of her bag's main pocket, she uncovered a small flash drive and set it beside the computer's illuminated tower. "If Robin's professor is as lax with security as he says she is, then she really does leave her computer on overnight to avoid typing in her details again."

    Flopping into the desk's chair, Cadence rubbed her hands together and clicked the monitor into life. A moment of stillness passed, then the beaming light of the professor's desktop poured over Cadence's grinning face. "Jackpot! Thank you, lazy Leanne," she said with drumming fingertips. "So, which button do I push, Batgirl? This funky sunshine one?"

    "Hold your horses, Caped Crusader," Elise said, waving her friend's finger away from the brightness dimmer switch. "We need to look for a blue and orange icon, a circle in a square, I think Robin said..."

    "Your wish is my command." With a wink, Cadence hovered the computer's cursor over the icon Elise described and opened the application. The dark, minimalist interface of the video doorbell software filled the screen, and a lengthy list of recent recordings trailed down the right-hand side of the display. "Wow. I literally busted into this place, and even I feel violated seeing this."

    "No wonder Robin's professor wouldn't let us see this stuff," Elise muttered as she swiped her thumb over her phone's screen. Pulling closer to her friend's side to see the desktop, she gestured towards a calendar icon in the right-hand corner. "Luckily, Natalie's locker got broken into on her hamster's birthday, so she still remembers the date."

    Cadence tilted her head at the side of Elise's face, her puzzled eyebrow raised. "Shut up. Her hamster's birthday? There's no way that's a thing."

    "If it led us to the footage we needed, I'd believe it was her axolotl's wedding anniversary."

    Scoffing her disbelief into the monitor's flickering rays, Cadence entered the date Elise gave her. A trail of tiny thumbnails popped up to reflect that day's recordings, and Cadence's shoulders sank lower with every roll of the mouse wheel needed to scroll through the videos. "This Nat doesn't happen to know the specific time her stuff got busted into, does she?"

    As she searched the notes from Natalie on her phone, Elise shook her head and shrugged. "She was in classes pretty much all day, apparently," she said, starting to count how many batches of clips needed their attention before giving up. "Don't worry, I'll take over if your eyes need a break."

    The first clip flashed onscreen, and Cadence released a breezy sigh. "Please. I've spent entire days staring at screens in the dark for my coursework," she answered as her fingertips drummed against the desk in time with the easy beat of Elise's heart. "And it sure seems like you're cosy as you are anyway."

    Elise widened her eyes. Without her notice, her hand had drifted over the back of the desk chair and come to rest between Cadence's shoulder blades. Her nails picked at the slight distressed markings along her friend's jacket, the occasional wisp of stolen body heat thrilling the tips of Elise's nerves. She left her touch there, comfortable in Cadence's proximity.

    Frame after frame scrolled through the viewer, yet the light breeze of Cadence's breaths blowing over her cheek dominated Elise's attention. More than once, her gaze flocked to the smooth lines of her friend's face, the gentle arcs of her eyelashes, the blushing curves of her lips. The sparkling silver chain of Cadence's necklace caught Elise's eye, and its winking glimmer tracked down the girl's neck to cross below the soft dip of her sculpted collarbone. As if reading her thoughts, it ushered Elise's gaze down further, venturing below the border of her friend's low-cut top. Elise's boiling blood pounded through her ears as she struggled with, then surrendered to the urge to look down.

    "See anything interesting, killer?" Cadence asked, shaking her head at another dud batch of recordings. "Because I'm getting nothing."

    Shaking herself out of her trance, Elise backed away from the screen to hide the glow that blazed onto her cheeks. "No, not yet," she said as she twirled a lock of her hair around her finger. The slight tug on her skin did nothing to distract from the shame that stabbed through her chest. "But we've still got a lot to work through, right?"

    Cadence planted her elbows on the desk and rubbed her eyes. "We sure do. We've got hours and hours of people doing everything but busting into this locker," she groaned, sweeping her shocking purple hair out of her face. "If only we knew when they did it, this would be so much easier."

    "Well, apparently nobody saw who broke into Natalie's locker back then," Elise began. She tracked her finger down the side of the display, scanning the timecodes of the saved videos for inspiration. "Maybe they waited until they knew nobody would be around to catch them."

    "Like lunchtime, you mean?" Cadence asked as she scrolled through the catalogue of clips. "The graphics guys keep the hour after midday free for lunch and club stuff. What are the odds this bunch of techy geeks does the same thing?"

    Several saved video files occupied the space between midday and 1pm, and Cadence zipped the cursor along the length of the playback bar to speed through each one. After a series of clips featuring cohorts leaving classes, stray wandering students, and no apparent movement at all, Elise spotted a dark outline break into the frame. "Here. This might be them," she said, tracing a ring around the hooded figure as they glanced over their shoulder. "They're sure acting shiftily enough."

    Leaning back in her seat, Cadence snickered to herself. "And whoever they are, they're sure not Flo. But really, black biker leathers? A plain rucksack?" she asked with a roll of her eyes. "Why not just wear a neon sign that says 'I'm gonna steal your stuff'?"

    "I can't get a look at their face," Elise said under her breath, tensing every time the figure gave the slightest indication they would turn to face the doorbell. They never did, and they focused their attention on the locker as soon as they reached it. "Shit. It's like they knew the camera was there already."

    "They probably cased the place a couple of days before. Scumbags can be real thorough when they want to be," Cadence answered as she drifted her spinning seat from side to side. A long, looping hose unravelled past the person's waist, and she stilled her swaying movements and straightened her posture. "Wait a sec. Why the hell did they bring a tyre pump?"

    With another peek up and down the corridor, the jacketed figure slipped a slim sheet through the crack in the locker's door. They fiddled with the pump's pistol grip, and within moments the door creaked on its hinges and fell open, the sheet now inflated into a sizeable sack. "Well, I didn't need to know it was that easy for them," Elise said, wincing to the rattle of the locker's flailing door.

    Before the door stopped swinging, the person pulled a single thick volume out of the locker's interior, slipped it into their bag, and hurried away with their face still away from the camera. "That's it?" Cadence snapped as she looped back through the footage. "That's nothing, damn it! Thanks for nothing, Roomie."

    "Maybe we can find them on an earlier clip," Elise suggested, the hope waning from her voice before she finished speaking. Neither she nor her friend had the patience to wade through days' worth of video feeds, and the ticking of a distant wall clock hammered in how much time they had already lost on this mission. Stroking her chin, Elise watched the images play out on the screen again. "Look, they avoided the camera, went straight to Natalie's locker, and picked out just the notebook they needed. All that, plus the tyre pump and the shifty outfit? They clearly knew what they were doing. I hate to say it, Cade, but maybe this is out of our league."

    "Or maybe it's right in the middle of our league," Cadence said, laying a hand on her friend's arm and smiling. "The tyre pump, the leathers, the obvious experience with stealing stuff? Ellie, you're a damn genius!"

    Freezing in her friend's hold, Elise cracked an awkward smile. "Am I?"

    "Hell yeah, sister! It makes perfect sense now." With starry showers lighting up her eyes, Cadence spun in her seat and seized Elise by her waist. "Matt! Whenever he lost a job, he'd make a little extra money breaking into places and taking stuff. Flo knew him through Mel, and she probably offered him a big wad of cash to pull this off for her."

    "Do you really think Florence would do that?" Pangs of doubt throbbed in Elise's gut. The theory seemed at odds with the grouchy, self-assured woman she understood Florence to be, yet there was not a twitch of uncertainty in her friend's smile. Bathed in the warmth of Cadence's tight hold, Elise found her own worries ebbing out of mind. "It would explain a lot, I suppose."

    "Yeah, like everything," Cadence said, triumph rushing through her words. "I knew that asshole was stealing from Mel, and this just proves it more. No wonder he tried to pin his thieving shit on me!"

    As the soft music of Cadence's breathing settled between the girls, a gentle glow lit in the corner of Elise's eye. Suddenly, beams of focused light breached the room, scurrying to ignite the cracks in the shuttered blinds. Running footsteps snapped against the corridor's floor tiles until they halted right outside the nearby staff room door. "Christ, what's happened here?" a man's breathless voice said.

    Elise buckled with a gasp and flinched from the connecting doorway. "Shit, they're right there."

    "Easy, killer," Cadence said as she ran a reassuring hand down the side of Elise's hip. "He doesn't know we're here yet."

    "Someone there?" the man called, and the click of the releasing deadbolt followed after. Glass and wood scraped over the floor, marking the stranger's every approaching footstep towards the classroom door. "This area isn't for kids to play around in, dang it."

    Throwing her phone's light to the floor, Elise snatched up the flash drive and slotted it into the computer's tower. "Quick, save that video so we can show Robin and Natalie," she said as she crept towards the door, releasing a long-held breath when the footsteps trailed towards the other connecting passageways. "It won't take him long to check the rest of the rooms."

    Cadence clicked the mouse, then set her eyes on her friend in the corner of the room. Her fingertips tapped against her neck as she mulled over a silent thought. "We just need to keep him out of here until we can beat it," she said to herself. With a slow move of her arm, she gestured to the filing cabinet stood behind Elise. "Think you can move that?"

    "Blocking the door? Are you insane?" Elise cried in a hoarse whisper. "That'll just tip him off that someone was in here!"

    "Unless you have a way to magic us out of this room, he's going to hear us when we leave anyway," Cadence replied as her bulging eyes betrayed the download's slow progress. "Block the door, and try not to breathe too loudly while you're listening for him."

    Swallowing the hot guilt that bubbled up her throat, Elise eased the filing cabinet over the floor, halting whenever its hidden rails complained. She planted the unit in front of the door and listened out, and the returning click of the man's heels stole the air from her lungs. "Cade, he's coming this way," she hissed as she peered through the slender crack in the doorway. "How are we getting out of here?"

    Her gaze glued to the screen, Cadence rose to her feet. "Do you remember how we got here?"

    "What?" Elise asked, shuddering at the torchlight that flashed through the doorway. "I mean, I think I do, but why?"

    "Hey, who's in there?" the man's voice shouted through the door. A swift shove battered against the door, striking the repositioned filing cabinet and sending Elise stumbling into the room. "Open the door, right now!"

    "Sorry, dude," Cadence quipped under her breath as she freed the flash drive from its port. "But we've gotta run. Come on, killer!"

    Leaping for the classroom's main entrance, Cadence locked her fingers around Elise's hand and threw the door open. She indicated for her friend to enter the corridor first, then followed close behind with her gaze on the staff room door. The man staggered over the debris inside the doorway, and Cadence met the guard's eye with a pointed middle finger and a wicked cackle.

    Elise tugged on her friend's hand and started running, hopping down the stairs with a bravery she had never possessed before. As they stepped onto the final set of steps, the building's alarms kicked into top gear to announce their presence to the rest of the campus' occupants. She aimed for the science building's main doors, yet the growing glare of a pair of torchlights through the frosted windows steered her into the connecting corridor to the humanities faculty.

    Though her heart quickened up to its redline, one look at Cadence's fiendish joy quelled Elise's anxiety. Racing down corridors and skating around corners, the familiar warmth of her friend's hand drained the wailing alarms of their intimidating power. As they clattered through the doors to the campus quad, no fear remained to dampen the dizzying delight of transgression that electrified her nerves.

    "Oi! Stop there!" a woman shouted from across the quad. Her torch fired its beams right into Elise's eyes, filling her vision with expanding stars. "Where do you think you're going?"

    "Anywhere but here!" Cadence shot back, and she guided Elise's stunned form to the side of her SUV and opened the door. "See you never, asshole!"

    Clearing the dazzle from her eyes, Elise fell into the car and tossed her bag onto the backseats. The vehicle hacked into motion before she could do her seatbelt, and the speed with which they blazed out of the carpark tossed her into her doorframe. "That was wild," she said with a gasping sigh as she clicked her seatbelt together. "Do you have the flash drive?"

    With a broad grin, Cadence patted at her jacket's inner pocket. "The state secrets are safe and sound, don't you worry," she said as the university faded into the chilled night. "Nice work getting us out of there, killer. You should sneak into places more often."

    "Like hell I should. I almost passed out when those alarms went off." As she felt for her burning heart through her chest, Elise saw the lights of Bosmouth's apartment buildings floating beyond the glow of the passing lampposts. "Where do we go now? Should we head straight back to Robin and Natalie?"

    "Trust me, I've dealt with the uni's security goons a few times, and they'll have already fired my licence plate straight to the police's desk," Cadence answered as she slouched against the vehicle wall beside her. "We'd better crash at the cabin for the rest of the night. Don't want any patrol cars spotting this scrapheap from the main road, right?"

    The hairs along Elise's neck pricked up at the thought of her father finding out about their escapade. "Cade, I –"

    "We're okay, Ellie." Looking through the vehicle's cabin, Cadence set a hand on Elise's thigh and rubbed the creeping cold out of her skin. "I won't let anything happen to you, alright? I've got you, just like you've always got me."

    Elise found no words to answer. Sinking into her seat without a sound, she brushed her fingers over Cadence's knuckles. Bit by bit, she melted into the rivers of warmth that flowed through her friend's touch, and the long road ahead disappeared behind her tired, heavy eyelids.