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When Ylaine had described Jace as being a girl with metal legs, Harry had displayed a good deal of skepticism, mostly for his own enjoyment. "What if she's wearing pants?" he had asked stubbornly, to which Ylaine only said through gritted teeth, "She won't be." Harry had rolled his eyes at Ylaine, annoying her to no end (never mind that she was always rolling her eyes at everyone), but he agreed to go and find the redheaded metal legs girl who had taken Ylaine's wig. For a price.

Harry was not well-educated, but he was smart enough to have noticed the fact Ylaine suddenly seemed to be in possession of a fair amount of money. He named a haggling starting price and she accepted it immediately. Shoulda asked for more, dumbo, he realized, and tried to haggle her up, but Ylaine had stayed firm at his first number and he decided to live with the mistake lest Sam guilt him about it later.

Now Harry found himself standing outside the front gate of the Center. He knew better than most the security setup of the Center since he worked for the company that provided the service. With his official credentials, he could have gone straight in and asked for Jace at the main office the proper, officious way, but there was something undeniably nostalgic about hanging around outside the building and waiting for his target. It made him feel just a little bit giddy and long for the good old days when he had been a mob enforcer and not a bodyguard.

The bell rang, signifying the end of school, and Harry took one last drag of his cigarette before flicking it away and smudging it out with his shoe. Time to roll. He scanned the crowds of emerging students for the girl Ylaine had described to him.

Harry swooped into the crowd with practiced ease, coming right up behind Jace and asking in his gravelly smoker's voice, "Jacoba Rebecca Darnell?" Ylaine had fed him the full name, of course, and he liked the dramatic effect of it. He felt it made him sound like the police in a copper movie, though invariably he liked the ones where the most lawless characters in the cast won out. A good criminal could get a lot of mileage out of impersonating a police officer. Harry thought himself to be a good criminal in every sense of the word. A veritable modern Robin Hood.

Harry whipped out his security credentials in the manner of a federal agent, as unruffled by Jace as she was by him. "I'll ask the questions here," he informed her, still playing the movie role. The photo on his identification looked like a mug shot, but all of Harry's photos looked like that. "Do you know a girl named Ylaine Taylor?"

A middle name would have added even more to the drama and Harry lamented that Ylaine had never given him hers, if she had one. He and Emerson could take bets on it.

Harry snickered, a move that would have caused Ylaine's head to explode had she been here, and replied easily, "Yeah, that's the one. Says you might have taken something that belongs to her." He returned his security credentials to his pocket, feeling the fact that Jace hadn't pointed out he was not really a law enforcement agent was a credit to his acting ability. He had missed his calling, really. Aside from a few days as an extra in LA, he had never bothered to pursue a career in the movies, and clearly he could have made a lot of money in it.

"Naaah," drawled Harry, a twinkle in his eye. "I'm a just a punk who got lucky." He had half expected the wig to be in a trash can somewhere on the school property, which would have necessitated him checking his guns in with security and logging his presence and a whole lot of other annoying details. He hated checking his guns. He felt naked without at least two loaded holsters on his body. Having less than two significantly hindered his performance.

Harry held out his hand. "Hand it over and I'll take it back to the robot, Twinkletoes." That, he thought to himself, was clever.

"Nah, I'm pretty sure I'd be obligated to arrest ye if'n she'd gone and died. She just wants her rag back." Harry didn't seem like he was going to play the dangle-and-grab game with Jace, though he probably would have won. "'Sides, even I were going to, say, throw it in a lake, what's it to you?"

He wouldn't play dangle-and-grab, but a simple snatching was an entirely different matter. It was a fact that Harry had, in his misguided youth, been the snatcher of a few purses. He was not proud of it. It was still a skill that came in handy. He yanked the wig bag out of Jace's hand so fast it might have been a vanishing trick. "You haven't put gum in here somewhere?" he asked, glancing in the bag for some sign of tomfoolery. It just looked like a big pile of hair. Damn, Ylaine had bought a lot of the stuff. Harry frowned at the wig distastefully. He was holding a bag full of Ylaine's hair. Forget the basement and the petting, that fact alone was overly creepy.

Harry laughed, happy for a distraction from the creepy bag. He shoved it under his arm and resolved not to look at the thing again. If Jace had put some gum or itching powder in there, he would let Ylaine worry about it. He had done exactly what she paid him for. "Y'know, I just might do exactly that. Thanks, Twinkletoes." He started to walk away, pulling a cigarette pack and lighter from his jacket pocket.