As sweat begins to fall down my face, it becomes harder to focus. The stinging in my eyes from this sweat has begun to irritate me. As I continue to pick the lock, my fingers begin to go stiff. Just as I begin to make more progress a loud voice crashes through my focus.

"What is taking so long Justin!?"

It's my partner Andrea. She came along to hassle me apparently.

"I can't help it, who's idea was it to break into the museum in this spot?" I say aggressively. "It has to be over 100 degrees in this room!"

"Justin, we've discussed this." Andrea says with an air of exhaustion and frustration. "We had to enter through boiler room because people are rarely here. Now shut up and get the door open."

In my anxiety to get through to service entrance of the museum, I quickly regain focus and pop the lock. I've never heard a click sound so wonderful.

"That's why you're here babe. Now let's get the spear before security comes around. I spent a lot of time planning this, don't ruin it." Andrea says hurriedly.

"Whatever." I reply dismissively.

As we move forward slowly ensuring to not be spotted by the cameras, Andrea covers all cameras. It's amazing to see her move so fluidly and stealthily. The spear we've come to steal is in a glass case in the corner of the room. Such an odd spot in the exhibit for something of such high value.  At least I assume that this thing is worth a lot of money.

As we approach the spear we notice that the spear is encased in pristine glass, not a fingerprint or smudge anywhere on it. Andrea's heavy sigh immediately grabs my attention.

"You're kidding me..." she says sarcastically.

"What's going on, and keep your voice down." I implore with a whisper.

"What is that keypad on the glass? I didn't plan for that, there should just be the glass case here!"

"So much for that expert planning." I jab.

"Not the time Justin. Can you get through this lock as well? We're running out of time." She asks.

I kneel down and examine the keypad carefully. It appears to just be a rudimentary electronic advice that leads to an alarm. I immediately take the plastic cover off number pad. All the wiring is exposed in neat paths through the device. It's easy to cut power from the device as the red wire is identified as the one that is providing power to the keypad. Hopefully after this the museum realizes you probably shouldn't buy low grade alarm systems for something so important.

"Bingo" I exclaim proudly.

"Hey genius, if you cut power to the key pad how do we open the case." She reminds.

As the embarrassment washes over me, I quickly attempt to think of something smart to say.

"Well, if the alarm wasn't here how did you plan to open it?" Quickly turning the conversation back to her poor planning.

"Well I uh..." she stumbles through her words, "I guess I was going to cut the glass, I was just hoping to not do that now."

"Well uh, just cut the freakin' glass now!" I say with massive frustration.

"Keep your voice down, I'll get this done so we can get the spear and get out of here."

I sit patiently while Andrea scores the glass to remove the spear. My anxiety is growing as the security guard should be here any time now. I want to rush her, but it doesn't seem like that would be conducive to us getting out of here safely. I can't help but smirk when recognizing that I'm sweating profusely again, and it has nothing to do with the rooms temperature this time.

"Got it, now wipe the smirk off your face and let's get out of here." She commands.

"Yes Ma'am!" I reply hastily as we make our way back to the service entrance.

As we head out she removes the covers from the cameras without being seen, but I can't help but think that someone will be here soon wondering why their cameras went black. In that moment I begin the hear footsteps. She gets the last cover before she notices the sound herself. I freeze and begin to feel my heart in my throat as the sounds get louder.

"Just go!" She yells as we both sprint for the service door, no longer worried about the amount of sound we're making.

As we get to the service door flinging it open, hoping to have not been seen, we keep moving to the door of the boiler room. If we're going to be caught it's definitely not going to be because we stood still. It's this moment that we realize we are being chased. Once into boiler room we turn to face our pursuer, and it turns out that there are two pursuers there.

"Stop right there!" one of them exclaims with anger. Seemingly more upset that we made him run than us being here.

"You need to stay there until the police arrive." The other guard states.

Now I'm struck with a dilemma. We're not masked, we're trapped. Do we continue to try to leave, or do we fight our way out? Andrea looks over at me, and winks, almost as though she expected this nerve-wracking confrontation.

"Gentleman, we're leaving whether you like it or not." She says with an almost arrogant tone.

She immediately jumps forward and sweeps one of the guards of his feet with a lightning fast low kick. Before the other guard reacts I punch him right in the nose, and as both guards lie on the ground, Andrea produces rope from the corner of the room.

"Uh, did you know this would happen?" I ask with a genuine curiosity.

"Of course not." She replies, "It just makes sense to always have a contingency plan. Now we've got to tie these guys up and they're going with us."

Great, so now we have to drag these clowns out of here? After binding the security guards, we drag them out of back of the building to our waiting van. Now I understand why she wanted such a large vehicle for such a small haul. A contingency plan I guess.

Now that we have loaded the unconscious security guards in the back of the van we jump in  and head back to our meeting place.

"What are going to do with those guys?" I say exhaustedly to Andrea.

"We have to get them back to our place and tell them exactly what we expect of them or else."

"Or Else what?" I ask with fear, as killing is not something I can stomach. "Killing isn't for me."

"Hey idiot we don't kill people, we take what we need for those who employ us, but WE DON'T KILL!" She exclaims as though she has lost all patience with me. "We'll take their identification so they know that we know where they live, the thought that we might kill should be enough of a deterrent after we let them go."

At this point I feel stupid for even suggesting that killing might even be an option. At the same time, I don't think words have ever made me feel as relieved as those did. We pull into the warehouse where we've been meeting, and explain who we are and our mission and remove the IDs from the guards just as Andrea had planned. We drop them both off at a local store and warn them once more that they should not speak to the police about us as we drive off to our homes.

Two days have passed and I finally reached out to Andrea to see if she had heard from our contacts. We decide to meet at our favorite local park. I've been nervously awaiting this conversation because I have no idea why we even stole the spear.

"Justin!" She says with an infectious smile.

"Andrea, it's good to see you, but we need to talk." I reply. "I did that job with you, and I'm feeling a bit guilty. I'm not sure I've warmed up to the idea of being a bad guy."

"Don't worry Justin, we're good bad guys." She says with that same smile.

"What does that even mean? 'Good bad guys'? How can we be good and bad at the same time?" I ask with the most confused look I could muster on my face.

"Silly Justin, we're not stealing for profit." She says with a smirk. "This spear belongs to a Native American tribe up north. We are returning this spear to its rightful owners. That museum had no right to claim it, and definitely had no right to display it as though it was theirs."

"Wait, so we aren't getting paid for this? I don't know if kidnapping armed guards is worth it." I say with slight anger.

"Your motivation should be doing the right thing. That's why I sought you out." She says displaying her own anger at the mere question. "They will reward us, but it's theirs Justin, and that should be enough. It was unjust that it was even taken from them and not returned."

Swallowing my own embarrassment, I began to question if it was right to approach this subject. Andrea interrupted my thoughts immediately.

"What do you want to do?" she asked. "You can exist here on your own, or we can do great things together, sometimes for profit, sometimes not."

I didn't know what to say. Was this worth it to me simply because it was worth it to her? Am I willing to risk everything for potentially no gain? As I stare blankly into the air I can see Andrea getting more and more impatient.

"Let's go meet our contact, I'd like to know who they are." I reply.

"Great!" She almost screams as her demeanor completely changes. "They'll be here any moment."

"You always intended for me to meet them, didn't you?" I say with a bit of exasperation.

She just smiles and doesn't speak a word to me. Right as I began to question her more on the trap she sprung, she taps me on the shoulder and points to a group approaching us in the park. I stared in awe, as the group approached us, exuding this almost regal vibe that made me immediately feel out of place.

This elderly woman approached us with this amazing grin on her face, the two men that flanked her were clearly there in support of her, and even in not speaking seemed to display a respect and admiration for this woman that was evident without having to say a word.

"I assume you young ones are here to return the spear to us?" the elderly woman asked.

"Yes Ma'am." Andrea responded.

"Such a respectful young woman, our tribe can't thank you enough." The elderly woman replied.

"Who are you, what tribe do you represent?" I ask as I stand and extend my hand.

Immediately one of the men in her party gently pushed me away from her and shook his head at me angrily. I wasn't quite sure how to take this. Did I offend her somehow?

"Calm down!" the elderly woman urges what appears to be her guard. "I'm sorry young man. To protect myself and my tribe, I can't give you the tribe's name or mine. But if you must address me, please call me Rosemary."

Andrea and I returned the spear to Rosemary and her party, and she hugged us before departing. "Someday, if our path's cross again, I'd love to tell you the importance of this spear."

Andrea and I smile as she walked away waving. While I feel I didn't really do anything this sense of accomplishment covered me.

"What's Next?" I ask Andrea.

"More Good. More Bad." she replied with a great smile."