Chapter Text
Preparation was never Dakota's strong suit. Ever since she was a little girl, no matter if it was her prepping a cake for baking or packing a suitcase to once again change towns and names to escape the vices of her dad, she had never liked it nor been good at it.
It wasn't like it was ever hard, but preparation was always that thing where a person would have to admit to themselves that they were setting themselves up to either fail or to achieve, and it never sat right inside of her mind. She hated the idea of never being able to know what lied ahead of her in life because she liked to be sure of herself and her actions in a sense, but life was a cruel mistress and didn't allow a person to know that information.
From the very first day that Dakota ever prepped for anything, she was very noncompliant to the idea. Maybe it was the way her mother had stormed into her small, shoddy bedroom, cigarette in hand, sporting her signature tall up-do hair and begged for her to begin packing her things because Dakota's father was on the way to find them, but either way, she wasn't fond. Preparing for ten new lives was hard on a small child, hard enough to want to repress the memories for her entire life, so now when the little images of her tiny black suit case all busted up on the end of her bed with her things packed away tightly inside, she ultimately remembered just how hard it was.
Those were difficult times, and it surely pushed back her growth into an independent woman of her own accord, but it almost worked out. As an adult, she was just now beginning to learn that preparations were the only way to actually get through life, and although Dakota was reluctant to admit it, she was thankful for all of those years of running away from her father, Tobias Dayley, and the many times she spent preparing for those instances. Because if she hadn't of learned how to be ready for anything at an early age, then she definitely wouldn't have been able to pull off a robbery on her own. And that's exactly what she was preparing to do at this time.
It had been long coming. From the moment that she learned how to shoot a gun, Dakota was on the path to becoming a great criminal. She had no way to know it at that time, but the signs were all there. She was more like her father in every way than her mother besides their uncanny looks, and it was surely fate. She didn't know if she was completely grateful for that fact, but she was thankful.
Somewhat.
Maybe.
Dakota shook her head, trying to forget all of her suffocating thoughts that were rattling around inside of her brain, and she looked down to her phone to relocate the objective at hand. On her smartphone was a picture of a woman, her living arrangements, the members of her family, practically all of the necessities she needed to know about one Marine Smith.
It wasn't Marine per say that Dakota was actually interested in, but it was her schedule and her line of work. Without Marine, Dakota was nothing more to this job than a speck of trouble that could be swept away under the rug like an insect. And with Mrs. Smith there, her plans of heisting were simple and smooth as long as Dakota got what she needed.
Dak sighed tiredly, rubbing her eyes to try to rid them of the sleep that was threatening her entire body. She had been up since six in the morning until the current time of eleven at night, carefully trailing Marine as if she were a federal agent staking out a criminal. But that was very much not the case as Dakota wasn't exactly a saint. None the less, she felt that this would make an appropriate scene in an action flick.
Her bright blue eyes looked up the the apartment that her target was residing in- third floor, fifth window to the right- and she wondered if Marine was sleeping at this time. After all, Dakota had been sitting in her position for an hour to see if the woman would leave her apartment, but the light went off not too long before she began to reminisce. It probably signaled that now was her chance to steal away and get what she needed, then quickly get out to not cause a lot of attention. Granted, no one would really notice anyways due to the fact that the apartments were just ordinary, no security system, and no camera surveillance jutting out at any corner of the building, but it was just a precaution.
Dakota stowed her phone into her pocket, stepping out of the car, and she pulled the hood of her jacket up and over her head. Looking both ways into the dim lighting of the streets from the overhead street lamps, she crossed to the adjacent sidewalk quickly, stopping at the curb to make sure that she knew where she was headed, then continued on.
The city was not bustling on this side of town for some reason, and it felt strange to her. She was used to the feeling of pushing through heavy crowds to escape the cops, or making awkward eye contact with civilians that would be wandering around aimlessly at the late hours of the night while on a setup for her recent string of burglaries, and it was kind of unsettling to know that she wasn't under any kind of pressure. Of course it was a relief, but Dakota was the kind who worked very well under the spotlight. It was a stupid little quirk of hers to think that, but it was true to every aspect. She was a star under pressure.
Getting into the elevator, she pushed the plastic covered button with a badly painted 3 underneath the cover, and once the elevator stopped, she was off to apartment number 305.
Dakota found the door quickly, and she checked her surroundings to double check that no one was about or there were no cameras, although she was already sure that her earlier scope out of the place proved that nothing was going to be a problem for her. With a swift lock picking mechanic she had learned when she was twelve years old, the door was no match to her superior abilities, and she was inside of Marine's unsurprisingly tidy apartment.
Nothing stirred around the room except for the occassional hum of the electric devices that were still working in the kitchen, and besides a few glows of red and blue, the room was pitch black. Her theory about Marine being asleep was rock solid at this point, and Dak pushed her way into the layout of the apartment, seeking the bedroom that her target was peacefully resting inside of. She'd be out of here in no time at this rate and could reside in slumber herself soon.
Sure enough, to her right was a bedroom, and the door was wide open, revealing a figure tucked away tightly underneath cotton sheets and sleeping harder than a baby. Dakota invited herself in, making sure to not step on any objects on the floor that could somehow jeopardize herself and her mission as it could be a possibility. Marine's body hugged the bottom of her sheets tightly, and Dakota was immediately tired just looking at the other woman comfortable in her own bed. Not wanting to drag this out any longer, Dakota pulled out her bit that was lazily resting in the back of her waistband, and she cocked it, putting the end of the barrel into Marine's temple.
"Oh, Mrs. Smith!" Dakota smiled in a sing song voice, ripping off the woman's sheets. Marine shot up in an instant, and her dark brown eyes searched Dakota's body until both women made eye contact. She tried to scream, but Dakota shook her head and pressed the gun even further into her opposer's skull, silencing the woman for the moment being.
Dakota looked malevolent in the darkness of the bedroom, the light from the moon outside of the small window dousing her face in white rays. Her lips were pulled into a small smirk, and her wild, dark brown hair tried to escape the hoodie like tiny serpents slithering out of a cavern. She was fatally beautiful and weirdly friendly to Marine then.
"I'm sorry it had to go down like this," Dakota sighed. "But, the good news is, this can be a good thing for us both. If you cooperate with me, then I'll spare your life. But if you don't and try to say anything at all about this encounter, then don't think I can't find you a second time just like I did this time. Understand?"
Marine was absolutely terrified to the core. She wanted to run away and scream and cry and call the cops, but she knew that she would never get out of this situation that way. This woman seemed pretty sincere in her words, and she didn't want anything to do with her, but she strangely trusted her.
Although it went against everything she believed in, Marine nodded.
"Okay! Good! Now, give me the access card that management gave you when you were hired at your office yesterday, and you and I will be even, okay?"
-
It was finally time, Dakota thought proudly, pulling on the last piece of her outfit to complete the look that Marine had specifically told her to wear for this occasion.
"You need to make sure that you only wear either pastels, or classic black," Marine stated as she tried not to shake underneath Dakota's gun that was pressed to her bare shoulder blade. She had opened up her closet and showed off the collection of colors that she had inside for her newly found job, and Dakota admired the colors even though she hated wearing pastels because she thought it made her look like a single middle aged woman, and she was clearly not that, besides the single part.
Dakota basically got a whole rundown of the way a business woman should dress on the job, and she felt like she was being critiqued by one of those women on those fashion shows that she had to watch when she got home late at night and that was all that was on the TV. She almost abhorred Marine for being so critical about it all, but then again, she was holding a gun to the woman and threatening her life if she didn't do a good job at giving Dakota the information that she needed.
And Marine did just that. She obliged to Dakota's wishes and applied everything she knew that she had gathered from hours of preparation to receive her job, and Dakota swore just from three minutes with the Smith woman that she could try out for the job herself.
But now, here she was, dressed in an all black women's suit that had been recommended to her at Ponsonby's by the sales person, the access card strapped onto her breastpocket with a clasp, and her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. She was itching underneath the expensive fabric and couldn't wait for it to be taken off once she was inside of the building and her plan was to be set off.
All she had to do was get inside of the building first, and that was the easiest part with the access key. Since Marine was hired by an online applicant, no one knew her face just yet and wouldn't suspect a thing if Dakota were to storm in there herself. Next, she had to locate the very delicate files that she was after. Now, these weren't just any files, they were manifests that recorded every single transaction that was made in and out of most of the banks around town. Those files were very beloved in the criminal community, and Dakota had an inside source that she had been trustfully working with lately that told her each consecutive file would sell for about $2,500 each. Now, there were a lot of documents that were in possession because as it was, there were 13 banks that were established just in the Los Santos/Tongva Hills area alone, and the building she was hitting could have had more manifests that included the banks of Blaine County and the ones that also dotted the Senora Freeway.
According to her inside source, if she could get the job done, then she could sell these manifests to the highest bidder, which was so far the Triads that she had also done business with beforehand and made very decent money. With their hands on those documents, they had control over every incoming and outgoing transaction and were going to be able to rip off whoever they wanted. Everyone won and Dakota got over $32,000 for pieces of paper .
She believed that it was worth the trouble of stealing into a young woman's house and practically ripping off her identity for one night of mischevious trouble.
Dakota looked into the mirror once more to disapprove of the style she was currently sporting, then proceeded to grab the briefcase that she had chalked full of her original clothes and the items she would use to disable cameras around the level that she was going to lift the papers from. It was simple and cheap stuff, like black, opaque tarps to cover over the lenses, but that was the best she could so as a one woman team. She had no experiencing in hacking, so the tarps were her only choice.
The young Dayley woman made her way out of her humble abode, making a beeline towards her car, and she quickly threw the briefcase in while getting into the driver's side. Her hands started the ignition swiftly and she was pulling out from the curb and onto the street briskly. As she drove the small drive, she recited everything that she had planned up until this point for this job to herself.
"Okay, Dak," she cooed, turning down the radio to hear her own voice. "All you have to do is be professional. Walk past the doors- three sets of rotating doors with two guards standing out front, equipped with a pistol in their holsters and a rifle by their sides- then get past the security check where they ID your card," she stated softly, patting the access card that hovered over her heart with the hand that wasn't on the steering wheel.
"Next, find Cedric Walters who will debrief you and check you into your schedule. He should be on the sixth floor, which is right above the floor where the files are kept. After the debriefing, ask where the restroom is, which is also on every odd floor of the building, so you'll be forced to go down to the fifth floor. Due to the time of the day, no one should be working in those offices as they're used for day jobs, and the only personnel authorized to access the floor are the two night shift guards that patrol the fifth floor every forty minutes."
She turned onto the street to her left, coming up on the Davis Department of City Records, and she turned into the parking lot, parking in the spot marked 24B. She remembered the number and remained in the car to finish replaying her plan in her mind.
"There, you have about a 30 minute window after all of that to get changed going down the stairs that do not have any surveillance, get inside the floor, cover the three cameras angled on the elevator, the offices, and the overall view of the floor, then search for the files. Get them, change back into these dreadful clothes, and get out Scott free," Dakota finished, smiling to herself as she thought of how easy the objective actually was. When she was first researching about the building and the floors' layouts, she thought originally it was going to be a pretty hard plan to concoct, but it turned out smoother than she could have hoped for.
With a sigh of relief, Dakota grasped the handle of the briefcase and exited the car, putting the keys into her pockets after locking it. Her journey towards the building began, and she put on her best poker face to get into the character that Marine had told her to be. Calm, collected, and most of all, very blunt and respectful. According to Ms. Smith, in the line of business, you had to be all four to be successful. The tired overdramatic view of business people being rude and too stern was just that, overdramatic.
She reached the stairs and ascended up the concrete, keeping her balance in the high heels steady, and once she recognized the two men standing at the doors, her face grew into a rock with a small smile plastered in her eyes. The building was down to a skeleton crew at this time of the night, besides the security detail which was always granted at these types of places, so she didn't have to mumur greetings to anyone, not even the guards when her slim form passed into the rotating doors to the inside.
Her blue eyes blinked around the interior of the large building, noting that everything looked just as she had seen when researching the place. Nothing looked out of the ordinary, and she was thankful for that. The security scan was nothing more than a man standing by one of those spinny metal things, Dakota never knew the name for them other than it reminded her of theme parks, and there was a slot to identify cards built into the bulk of metal. She strutted her way to it, smiling upon meeting eyes with the guard, and nodded once.
"Evening, miss," he replied respectfully. "I'm gonna need to scan that card there," he eyed the card on Dakota's suit jacket, and she once again smiled.
"Of course," she said, ripping it off and handing it to the officer.
He willingly took it, running in through his scanner, and returned it to her, to which she replaced it in its original place on her pocket.
"Everything checks out, have a wonderful evening, Ms. Smith."
"Thank you!" Dakota replied cheerfully, passing through the spinning metal thing as she was now referring to it, and she was on her way to the elevator, up, and on the sixth floor. Once there, the young woman searched around for Cedric Walters, trying to picture the image that she had seen of him on her computer screen. He was supposed to be six foot, with blonde hair and a douchebag goatee with the pencil thin sideburns that connected with his beard, and she knew that he wasn't going to be hard to miss.
Sure enough, Dakota could clearly make out a man that fit her description, and she strolled over to him. He immediately turned around, noticing the name on her card and started to fill her in on the job she was expected to do, what she was going to do, how she should handle certain events, etc. She felt like her ear was going to fall off from all of the talking, and she tried to stay awake listening to his monotonous voice yakking away into her eardrums.
Just as she began to focus on the wall above his head to make it look like she was still listening intently, it seemed that he was wrapping up, and now was her time to shine.
"Uh, Mr. Walters? Is there a way you could appoint me to a restroom around here?" Dakota asked as politely as possible. Cedric gave her a once over then sighed, clearly annoyed with the fact that she had only been here ten minutes and was asking for the restroom.
"Sure, sure. There are ones above and below this floor, you can either take the elevator or the stairs, whatever floats your boat."
He then walked off back towards his office, and Dakota took it as her chance to set her plan in motion. She gunned it towards the stairs, unlocking her briefcase in the process, and once she was fully inside with the door shut, she started to undress and pull out the clothes she had intended to wear at this point.
Dakota was now dressed in her appropriate attire of all black, a black beanie on top of her head as she let her hair down to also conceal her face, and gloves around her hands. She packed everything up into the briefcase and took out the tarps, ready for action. The woman carefully slipped into the fifth floor, and her eyes searched for the cameras. They were practically staring her in the face when she entered, so Dakota kept her head down and stayed close to the wall while going for the first camera. Luckily, she realized that they are all stacked together on top of one another, so she stuck to the wall and reached up over her, throwing one of the tarps over all three cameras. Satisfied with her work, she now started to search for the files.
Dakota set down the briefcase at the entrance of the office that she was at, going over to the filing cabinets and looking for anything that could set off in her brain that that's where the files would be. She assumed they were going to be in some well kept place that would be hard to get to, but as she fumbled through the filing cabinet, she was surprised to find three manilla folders with a the word "manifest" stamped on every one of them. She guffawed at how fucking easy that this was going. It was almost like a fairy tale!
She checked inside the folders, and sure enough, there were the shipping manifests with the names of every bank in Los Santos, Tongva Hills, Paletto Bay, and even in Sandy Shores. She had to hide the sheer excitement that was trying to spread onto her face as she read every single piece of paper. Her heart was racing as she scrolled through the names of the banks, and she was unbelievably ecstatic while doing so. For a tiny job, this was hitting the jackpot!
Just as she began to exit the terminal she was in, the alarm went off around the building, and the emergency lights of red began to strobe while the general overhead lights shut off, leaving her in the darkness. Dakota stopped dead in her tracks, now entirely spooked.
Did she set off the alarm?
What was going on?
Was she... Was she caught?
Before she could start to panick, the door that she had came in from busted open, and four men ran in, armed to the teeth in guns. She quickly froze, staring at each and every member of the quartet standing before her that were looking frantically around the room.
It was hard to tell underneath the lighting, but she tried to observe them. One of them was kind of short, his hair curly and his face stern as he looked around the building. He was dressed very similarly to the way Dakota was, down to the black beanie resting on his head. He moved in to the room first, signaling for the others to follow as it seemed to him that all was well for the time being. The next one to walk in was a taller man, his beard large, and he kind of reminded Dakota of Santa Claus. He looked too harmless to be in here, armed with a carbine rifle and strapped up in a bullet proof vest, and she thought that his look totally contradicted his profession.
Following him were two more guys, one shorter than the other with jet black hair, thick glasses, and a beard that looked like he was trying to grow out. He was grasping the end of a pistol, setting his sights around the floor level to be content that the one in the front hadn't missed anything. Lastly was a tall man, clad in a leather black jacket with blue sleeves and white stripes, and the odd thing about him was the mask he was wearing on his head.
It was menacing and impenetrable to onlookers, as the place where the skin around his eyes should have been, there was instead black face paint to make sure that only his eyes were visible behind the mask. He looked pretty concentrated, but his broad shoulders were not tensed as usually suspected when someone is really focused. Dakota noticed that he stood tall to the other three, even Santa Claus by a little bit, and he pushed past them into the room.
"Okay, everyone," the first one with the curly hair spoke, and Dakota could tell the distinctness of his voice as it was not like one she had ever heard. "The alarm has obviously been tripped, so we only have about ten minutes to find these fucking documents and get the hell back to the others. Let's get to it, people!"
The others agreed and started to dig around the offices, causing Dakota to fall to her knees and scramble underneath a desk, clutching the files to her chest tightly. They came here to find the files too?! On the exact same night as her at the exact same time?! How the hell did she miss this?! There was no way that she could have missed other people staking this place out for the past few weeks just as she had! It was impossible!
Unless the Triads set her up, or they thought she wouldn't be able to go through with the plan and they hired others? She racked her brain to try and find any sign for any answer at all as the commotion behind her came closer and closer.
"Goddammit, this'll be impossible! This floor is fucking huge and this is just the first set of offices around here!" She heard the same voice yell and a crash of something came tumbling down.
"M, chill out! Let's just split up and take different sets and look that way, okay?" A deep voice replied to the first one, and Dakota guessed that Santa made that voice come to life.
There were footsteps thudding around her as the men made plans to try to split up to different parts of the floor. Three pairs of legs ran past her and she pulled herself even further under the desk she was at, trying to conceal herself from them. Maybe if she just made a run for it, she could make it! But only once she knew that all four of them were past the door was the only way she could try to even pull that off, and she knew that as of now, someone was still with her.
Dakota tried her hardest to stay calm while the sirens still rang, the red glow of the emergency lights parading around the dark room and landing onto her occasionally. She sat and listened to the pair of boots that were still in the same vicinity with her and realized that they were indeed moving closer to her than she had originally thought.
The man was right by Dakota now, moving into the office that she was in and coming upon the same exact filing cabinet she had sorted through. Thankfully, she had closed it when she was finished with it, and nothing looked suspicious. She could see the shoes of the man in front of her now, dangerously close, and she tried to pull her knees up to her chest also, but ended up banging against the desk above her accidentally. Her heart dropped into her stomach, and she hoped to God that he couldn't hear anything over the sound of the alarm.
But she was wrong. He did hear it as he searched through the cabinet, and he knew that it didn't come from his buddies as they were too far away to make a sound that close to him.
"What the hell?" He muttered under his breath, checking the space behind him to look for the perp that had made the noise. When he saw nothing there, he paused and his blue eyes flicked to the floor, seeing a briefcase flashing in the red lights that looked out of place.
Dakota thought that the voice sounded like Santa's, but it sounded distinctly different, and she knew for a fact that Santa was in the other room as he wasn't wearing the type of boots that this person in front of her was. Before she knew it, the skull mask came face to face with her, startling her, and she immediately reached for the gun that she had equipped on her belt, aiming it directly in between his eyes. The man was just as startled as her, she could see it in his twinkling blue orbs, so she tried to use it to her advantage.
"Back the fuck up before this trigger gets pulled," she snarled, trying her best to be intimidating. The mask shook yes, and the man backed up slowly and carefully, letting Dakota out. She quickly got up, scrambling to her feet and clutching the manifests in one hand, the gun pointed at the mysterious stranger in the other. She knelt cautiously, snatching the briefcase and throwing the papers in there before locking it tight, training herself to her feet and in the guy yet again.
She was still nervous at this point. This wasn't a part of her plan and she didn't know what she was supposed to do for a smooth escape, but all she could do was keep her gun aimed at her opposer and try to back out of the office with ease.
The tall man was observing this woman. She was clad in all black, and her hair was wildly strewn around everywhere, almost as black as her clothes. He noticed that her eyes were sparkling and glowing underneath the harsh lighting, and they looked bluish as far as he could make out. Her body fit tightly into the clothes, and she was almost perfect with all the right curves. He could say she was thick, but her slim torso said otherwise. Even as she pointed the gun at his face, the man was intrigued just staring at the beautiful woman. She couldn't have been much younger than him, but she was exuberantly youthful.
Dakota cocked her head to the side as they watched one another, also intruiged just by looking into his eyes. Yet again, those were all she could see in her position.
"R2, have you found anything? We haven't found shit!" One of those voices called out, and Dakota turned her attention towards the three figures running back towards the two of them. She stayed steady with her gun, but locked onto the other three this time.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" The curly haired one yelled, his eyes wide while facing the barrel of Dakota's gun. "What the fuck?! R2, what is this?!"
"This is me pointing a gun at you jackasses, can't you tell?" Dakota growled, backing up another step to the exit.
"Who is this?!" The one with the glasses called out.
"My new friend," the masked man replied sarcastically with his deep voice.
Dakota trained the gun back onto him for a moment to yell, "Shut up!" Then fixated her sights on the others. If what they had said earlier was true about only having ten minutes until the heat arrived, then they only had a few seconds before the whole LSPD was busting into the doors five stories below them and none of them had time for any of this. She had to get out, and quick.
The one with the long beard that she kept calling Santa stepped up to her with his hands out, while the two behind him gripped the guns they were holding earlier.
"Now everyone calm down! Miss, what are you doing here? Are you, are you an employee?"
Dakota laughed and shook her head. "Do you really believe that right now, Santa Claus? You must be as innocent as you look if you do."
"Did she just call you Santa Claus?"
"I... I think she did."
"Look here," the curly haired one stepped in beside his partner, glaring down the woman that was unknown to him and pointed a finger at her. "If you don't tell us what the fuck you're doing here in about two seconds, then you're gonna be in as much shit as us when the feds burst through those doors right behind you! So why don't you just cut to the fucking chase?!"
Dakota's hand tightened on the trigger, and she glanced over to the man with the mask for a second, before returning her eyes to "M."
"Yeah, that sounds fun and all, but there's no way you're getting anything from me. Bummer, I really wanted to stay and have a chat with you all, really, but that's just not the kind of person I am."
M tried to retaliate, but finally the masked man moved in front of him and grabbed his shoulders, trying to push him back.
"Knock it off! Look, let's just call back to base."
"No, fuck that, R2!" M stated, pushing away from him, staring up at the man before his eyes unleashed onto the woman yet again. "Why is she here?! We need to know that and she's gonna tell us-"
"M, stop!" The one they called R2 boomed. "Just stop man! She had the files in her briefcase! I saw them, okay?! We need to call to the others and see what we're supposed to do about this and not screw anything up."
"What?!"
"Why does she have them?! You didn't take them from her?!"
"She had me at point blank!"
"How are we supposed to do this now?! G1 is gonna be pissed if we don't take them from her!"
All of a sudden, the four of them started to argue as they huddled together, deciding whether or not to call it in to see if the plan was compromised, and they all had their backs (mistakingly) turned towards Dakota while they hashed out what to do next. There was no way that she would escape clean if she stayed any longer, so with a heave of the briefcase over her shoulder, Dakota turned on her heels and sprinted quickly out of the room to the stairs, locking the door before she was spotted by the distracted quartet.
She moved down the stairs with haste, reaching the bottom floor, and once she did, she ran the opposite way of the entrance towards the emergency exit, seeing as everyone was evacuated outside and no one was (thankfully) inside yet, not even the cops.
Once outside, Dakota ran towards her car and took off into the night, the manifests stowed away safely in her handy briefcase.