Finally after months of planning tonight was the night that the “retired” James Thackery was going to do his last heist, a heist with a very personal reason behind it as tonight he’s going to retrieve a painting that once belonged to his family. The painting is Bartholomäus van der Helst's Portrait of a Man, a painting lost when the Nazi’s stole it from a museum in Brussels during World War 2. The Thackery family never knew it was actually theirs until James started to look into his family’s history during his college years where he was learning to become an art-historian and expert.<br/><br/>Being the Bastard child of a famous family of lawyers his father clearly wasn’t interested to hear anything about the painting while he did seem to be rather glad that his youngest child was finally doing something positive with his life. Yet his old man wasn’t aware that James was also learning how to steal objects of art thanks to his old mentor, a man would die sometime after James finished his education. By that time he was already quite an expert on how to steal objects of arts with him starting to steal his own paintings rather than helping his mentor steal what he wanted to have or sell.<br/><br/>Thanks to him placing a King of Spades card, he quickly earned the nickname the<i>King of Spades</i>, a tribute to his old mentor who was known as the King of Aces. For years James was a renowned heister with him stealing a lot of art pieces; mostly painting which he sold on the black market, earning him millions of dollars. Yet sadly all good things have to come to an end and after he turned down a heist, James felt it was time to retire especially as the man who used his plan and who even had a King of Spades card in his backpack was shot. The heister got away but a DNA sample was swiftly acquired by the police after they found blood at the crime-scene. Knowing that the DNA sample wouldn’t be his, James retired with him focusing on buying and selling of art, rather than just stealing it.<br/><br/>Yet the King of Spades persona never really left him as several writers focusing on the subject named James as a potential associate, mainly the heister’s handler though proof of it was never found and accusations towards him were never made. One of the writers even pointed out that his mentor was the King of Aces and therefor making James the King of Spades; yet proof of this accusation was never uncovered.  For 5 years now James is enjoying his retirement yet the Portrait of a Man continued to lead his life as he’s been trying to reclaim it ever since his retirement.<br/><br/>He discovered that the painting was owned by an Yvonne Redvers; who has placed the painting in a London museum for everyone to watch and appreciate while he’s visited it quite a lot over the years. In the past he tried to buy the painting back offering quite a lot more than the estimated $16,000 to $32,500 with him even his final bid being well over $ 150,000 more than 5 times its maximum value. Miss Redvers still shred his final bid saying that she would never sell the painting. By now an already bitter version of James launched several lawsuits in several countries against Miss Redvers with him having found the original deed of the Painting, with the copies of the deed being lost during the Second World War. Yet the judges in the different countries ruled that Miss Redvers acquired the painting on a legal basis and therefore it was out of their hands, which led to James starting to plan one last heist.<br/><br/>Tonight it finally is the night he’s dreaming off and James used his King of Spades contacts to hire two known associates and a hacker with whom he worked with in the past. The hacker has already been working for James for months now with him already having hacked the museum’s security system and tonight he was going to use that control to ensure the police don’t have a clue of what has happened. Besides if the heist goes well it could take weeks or perhaps even months for someone to discover that the painting has been replaced and therefor missing.<br/><br/>Seated in the back of the van James looks at the associate across him while they go through the plan one last time. At midnight the hacker will disable the security system with him placing a loop video over the camera’s recordings making them useless while all the heisters have to do is to avoid the guard walking around the museum. By now they are familiar with each guard and his own personal route through the museum and they’ve picked the guard that spends the most time away from the room where the painting is hanging.<br/><br/>However while the men are discussing the plan a first problem already occurs with a different guard being spotted on the camera’s. Thankfully this guard also has quite big gaps of time when it comes to him visiting the room of the painting so James decides to still do the heist this night for several reasons. One of the main reasons is that Miss Redvers will be out of the country for a few days starting tomorrow which gives James time to start planting evidence to incriminate her when the forgery is discovered, a bold move but the man is sure it will pay off eventually.<br/><br/>As soon as the clock strikes midnight the hacker disables the security system while James watches the guard walk around using his personal camera feed. With the guard walking far away from the side entrance the men make their way inside with them hiding in one of the cleaning lofts near the room where the painting is located until the guard passes it. They follow him from a distance and once he’s exited the room where the painting is held the men make their way inside.<br/><br/>James first task is to prepare the forgery to be hanged on the wall while the associate removes the real painting from its frame and placing it inside of a special travel sleeve that allows them to take it home undamaged. As soon as the forgery is ready James turns his focus towards the camera feed once again, with him watching the guard making his patrol. Yet when the guard takes an unexpected left turn instead of a right turn the man knows he needs to act. “Keep going”, he tells the associate who nods softly while he’s framing the forgery.<br/><br/>James himself pulls one of the fire extinguishers from the wall while waiting near the door the guard will probably enter. As to be expected the guard enters the room earlier than planned yet before he can act upon seeing the associate being busy with the painting, James already attacks him using the fire extinguisher, knocking the guard out. After putting the fire extinguisher back on the wall, the heister starts to tie up the guard using duct tape even placing several strips of tape over his mouth to prevent him from calling out for help.<br/><br/>The bondage itself isn’t that thorough and the guard will eventually escape yet James hopes that several hours would’ve passed until that happens. After placing the guard in a second cleaning loft, he returns to the hall with him helping the associate to hang the now forged painting back on the wall and with that done the two men remove any potential clues before making their escape using the stolen van.<br/><br/>As soon as the men are scot-free and having said their goodbyes, the driver returns the van to the location where he’d stolen it hours before the heist. It will probably be discovered by its owners who hopefully haven’t missed the van itself. During their trip to safety James orders the hacker to wipe the server clean of all the data on it, removing any trace of the virus the hacker used with the hacker even using a second virus to clean all the data of the hacked server that he used to hack into the museum, yet he keeps the backdoor open to allow him to monitor the camerafeed.<br/><br/>The police will probably discover that the painting has been swapped so James does everything he can do to frustrate their investigation so early on. Hopefully it will lead to the case running into a dead lead or a dead end so often that the police will give up before they discover who stole the painting.<br/><div style="text-align: center"><br/>
***​</div><br/>It’s not until 3 AM in the morning when the man arrives home. The first thing he does it remove the burn phone’s sim card before wrecking both the sim card and the phone itself preventing anyone from finding it, with him already having turned it off as soon as he left the museum. With that done he makes his way to the bedroom yet he can’t go to bed just yet as he’ll need to establish his alibi before morning, as surely miss Redvers will tell the police that she’ll think that he has done it. Thankfully James had sent a look-alike under his name to the big matching match this evening with him recording the match as well; he can watch it before heading to bed. From what he’d read about it already the boxing match ended at around midnight itself so the alibi is pretty solid already especially as the match was in Manchester. Yet he can’t mess this up and know nothing at all about the match itself as surely police will start to suspect him in that case.<br/><br/>After watching the recording he made of the boxing match James finally went to bed setting his alarm clock at around 11AM. The next day he spent on making sure the real painting is safe with him placing it inside his bedroom’s panic room; one that only he can access and one that’s not present on any blueprint. After he’s done with that the man spends his day rather casual with him following the news quite closely. Despite that he expects that the police or in this case Interpol would be visiting him no-one shows up yet it’s thanks to his hacker that he receives some kind of intel sometime later.<br/><br/>It seems that a Audrey LaBelle; daughter of the rather renown Clarence Richardson, who is looking into the painting and who could’ve stolen it. It was Miss LaBelle who checked and concluded that the painting was a forgery and it wouldn’t surprise James that she would be the first person to try and meet him to talk about it. A soft grin arrives on James’s face as he stands in his main hallway with him looking at the replica of the stolen painting, a replica he’d made when he lost the lawsuits. He hopes that this will shift the attention away from him but he isn’t going to take a risk as it was Sir Richardson who almost exposed James’s mentor in the past and it wouldn’t surprise him if Audrey would be able to do the same.<br/><br/>Just a few hours after James has heard about Miss LaBelle, he receives even more Intel on her as she’s been spotted in a café not too far from his mansion. A soft grin arrives on the man’s face as he puts on one of his fancier suits while taking his brand new metallic red Audi R8 Spyder V10 RWS out for a spin. Of course for the people living near his mansion it would look like he’s going to drive around the country-side yet they’re unaware that James is actually heading into the small town of Sawston just a few minutes away from his mansion.<br/><br/>Parking the car outside of the café where Miss LaBelle has been spotted James looks up her picture one last time before heading inside of the café. A soft smile is on his face as he makes his way inside seeing that the young lady is seated alone while drinking a beer all while working on her laptop. A soft grin arrives on his face as he orders two more beers at the bar, before walking to her table a beer in each of his hands. Placing one of the on the table near Audrey, he moves the chair right across from where the blonde is seated with him sitting down on it. “Miss LaBelle, word has it you’re looking for me”, James says with a kind smile as he places his beer on the table before sticking his hand out towards her. “James Thackery at your service”, he adds with a soft smirk as this is a bold move indeed but without proof that he’s behind the heist, he’s got nothing to worry about. Looking at the blonde he can tell she’s rather pretty and he wonders how she’ll react to him suddenly appearing in front of her.