Chloe Frazer

The Chosen Ones of the North -- a dumb name, even for a dumb cult, Chloe has to agree with Coop on that one -- have stopped sending her threatening letters. A normal person would probably be relieved, she thinks, to no longer have their bullshit dangling over them, but Chloe's a more suspicious person than that. The last letter they'd sent nearly two months ago, had alluded to October being a month of change, had listed all the ways in which she had failed to satisfy the group's demands, had directly threatened Nate as a way to punish her for that failure, and had assured her it would be the last time she heard from them until the time of blood and renewal.

Chloe doesn't quite know what that means, but she has to assume it's not good. At least Nate's no longer in their line of fire.

She doesn't give it much thought until October rolls around and even then, she doesn't dwell on it. The first few weeks come and go, nothing happens, and Chloe forgets about it again, doing her best to just keep up with the life she has here. It's not until she hears from her buyer that the compass has been stolen from his personal collection that she really takes interest again. The compass she had nearly died getting him. The compass the Chosen Ones of the North have been so obsessed with.

The same day she gets home to find a note stuck under the door of her flat. It simply reads, Nate's gone. Therese isn't.

Chloe goes without giving herself time to think. She gets her pistol and her knife, then grabs her phone and texts Coop on her way to Therese's flat. He'd asked her not to go off half-cocked, so she's not. She's checking on Therese first, making sure the threat to legitimate before she goes flying off to their hideout.

Therese isn't home, though. And the deadbolt on her apartment door is broken, the wood jamb shattered from the impact of the blow that had forced it open. She enters the apartment and does a careful sweep, but it's empty, and she's heading back to her car, calling Coop at the same time, telling him to meet her downstairs. She makes jokes and she teases him, but when it comes to something like this, there are few people she trusts as completely.

"They took Therese," she tells him once he's in the car with her. She wastes no time pulling away from the curb. "And they stole the compass back. The buyer is pissed." It's clear she doesn't care about the buyer at all. Her concern is all for Therese.

The bloody auction has been postponed twice already due to unforeseen circumstances, which Chloe knows to mean 'Darrow weirdness' and it's only now, finally, after all their work and research and leg work, the auction items have been moved from private and well hidden storage to a more public location.

Public might be overstating it a wee bit, but at least now they know where the damn compass is.

The auction is set for the weekend, Saturday night, and by Tuesday she has both Nate and Coop up to speed on every last detail of their plan. The new storage building is still monitored, but they've done a great deal of recon work and Chloe has no doubt they'll be able to get in and out without much problem. She and Nate have worked more complicated buildings than this and Coop comes with his own set of skills neither of them have.

Of course, that also means she may have to play mediator when Nate inevitably tries to compete with those skills, but she'll worry about that when the time comes.

Three weeks before they're set to break into the storage location, Chloe receives an anonymous letter, telling her she'll never be allowed to use the compass. Since she has no intention of using it, since she's only interested in selling it, she throws the letter away without telling the others about it and forgets about it soon after. No further letters come.

On the Wednesday afternoon before the auction, they're set to meet at her apartment to go through the plan one last time. When it comes down to the moment, she knows there's plenty they're going to have to wing, that's just how these kinds of things work, but she likes knowing there are as few potential issues as possible. And they've planned well, they know their route in, they know where to find the compass, they know their route out. Between the three of them, she's confident they've got this in the bag.

And the payday they're going to get at the end of it will make all the waiting worthwhile.

They wait until after midnight before moving to the location and once they're there, it's Coop Chloe sends to the door first. His skills, after all, come with lock picking tools she's never even seen before. Once inside she knows there's a second door and an alarm they'll have to bypass, but she trusts Nate with that. She's seen him climb higher walls than the one on the other side of this door, after all.