"Have fun with that, Dr. Jones," she laughed as she slammed a large pile of papers on his desk.
Doctor Henry "Indiana" Walton Jones Junior grabbed the pile and flipped quickly through the pages, "How many pages is this?" He'd seen large papers, but not this large. It looked like the size of the bad romance novels that his wife, Marion, read when he was at work. She thought she hid them well, but under their bed wasn't the greatest place to hide things from a man who got paid to find things.
"Around eighty-nine pages," she sniggered. "Anyway, how's being circled, Daddy-o?"
"What the hell does that mean?" he asked, setting the paper back down.
"How's the married life, sir?" she said, dropping the grin and looking at him like he was an idiot.
"Fine," the professor mumbled. She giggled, flouncing out of towards the door in her simple swing skirt and jacket with white gloves and dashing pair of stilettos, the epitome of femininity. On her way out, she almost bumped into a young Greaser by the name of Henry "Mutt" Jones III, who glared at the prudish girl that pushed by.
"Whoops, sorry!" she apologized, dashing away.
"Who's the doll?" Mutt asked his father, glancing over his shoulder at the slowly fading figure, then back.
Indiana gathered his papers and placed them randomly into a leather briefcase that Marion had forced Mutt to get him for Father's Day. Not only that, but Mutt had been forced back to school.
"That's Honey. She's one of my most promising students, but she's probably the most infuriating one too," Indy replied, glaring at the door the girl had left out of.
"More than me?" Mutt joked, hands behind his head, as the two men walked out of the classroom.
"More than you, Junior," Indy told him.
"It's Mutt."
"Yeah, whatever."
"Look, bud, you're cruisin' for a bruisin'. If you don't cut out now, I'm gonna give you a knuckle sandwich that'll make your grandmother turn in her grave!" A woman's voice cut across the parking lot.
"Aww, c'mon, doll, be nice to me," pleaded a giant football jock to young Honey, as she sat in her cherry-red ragtop, ready to leave Marshall College for the day.
"You've got three seconds to move, nosebleed," she growled. Indy and son looked over at the altercation.
"What the hell's going one over there?" Indy wondered aloud.
"Dunno, maybe we should check it out?"
"One…" Honey opened her car door.
"Just one date, babe," pleaded the jock.
"Two…" She got out of the car, straightening her skirts.
"You're not really gonna hit me."
"Three," she roared as her fist smashed into his face. "Get bent, you prick."
The jock fell to the ground, holding his face, but was still in front of Honey's car. She kicked him in the stomach, with the pointed heel of her stiletto, moving him away. Indy started jogging over to the scene to stop it from going any further.
"Honey, stop it!" he ordered. He stopped in front of her car, as she got back in.
"'The hell?" she yelled. "Do I have to hit you too? I gotta get home, why are all squares around here determined to stop me?"
"Are you crazy?" demanded Indy. "I've never seen you like this."
"My mom needs me home 'cause my granny's coming over," she explained, turning the car on and revving the engine. "Now can I go?"
Indy grinned inwardly; here was a chance to get back at the student he loathed most. Would he take it? "Sorry, Honey, but I have to take you to the dean," he told her.
"Ah, damn," she exclaimed, turning the car off and slamming the door closed.
"Junior, wait here, and I'll be right back," he told his son, as the chrome-plated young woman stomped angrily after him.
After sitting in the dean's office getting a lecture on how violence on campus would not be tolerated and that this would be her first, last, and only warning, Honey was told that she could leave. She sighed, leaving the office and cursing her bad temper. She was usually a nice girl who everyone could get along with, but she was under a lot of stress recently. She had pulled together a paper for Dr. Jones last night and her literature professor, Dr. Evan, had decided to spring a surprise test that was to count for twenty percent of her grade. Her parents were on the brink of a divorce that would not only ruin her life, but her parents' social status in a world that demanded a perfect looking marriage. Her last remaining grandparent, who she was close to like a best friend, had severe Alzheimer's disease now and couldn't remember her name, let only live by herself. She felt like someone was holding her head underwater and she had to fight everyone for air.
Walking out to the parking lot, it was dark and she could see smoke coming from the opposite direction. She looked and only saw some of her greaser friends. Honey was a real life Greaser girl, but her parents dressed her like a Socialite so that they could pretend to be proud parents of a lovely lady.
"Hey, baby!" called one of them, waving his hand lazily.
"What's buzzin', cuzzin'?" she replied back, hopping into her car.
"Not much, just hangin'," another replied.
"Cool, but I gotta split," she told him, ripping out of the parking lot and speeding down the road to the dry cleaners down the street. She had to pick up a few Sunday's best dresses for her mom and get home to see her grandmother. Her father would give her hell about beating Eddie Main, the football jock. He was a major scientist and supremely strict. Anything that came out of his mouth was law. He was doing research in something for the government, but not even his own family knew what it was about.
Heading home, she passed two large army trucks filled with soldiers. She looked at them strangely, but then remembered that she was driving and focused on the road. Why in the world is the army in Connecticut? She wondered.
She pulled into the driveway and gathered her things in her arms; schoolbag, clothes, and food that she had bought that morning at the grocery store. Walking over to the front door she called into the house for help, her chin holding down her load.
"Mom, its Loretta!" she called into the house, using her real name. No one outside of her family ever called her by her real name, but her parents insisted that her birth name was the only thing they would ever recognize her by. There was no answer. She slightly shifted everything and knocked on the door with her elbow. The unlocked door opened. Her parents always locked the door.
Walking into the house, she kicked the door close, dropped her load, and turned to lock the door. She walked cautiously into the living room.
"Mom?" she called into the house. She gasped as she saw that all the chairs and tables had been overturned. "Dad?! Granny?!" She was getting a lot more anxious to find them. She knew for sure that someone had broken in, but was it worse?
She rushed to the kitchen. The cupboards had been raided and everything was thrown about. The worst part was that her mother's legs were sticking out from behind the kitchen table. In a puddle of blood.
Her eyes widened and she slowly walked toward the body of her mother, expecting her to be headless or something, hoping that she would get up and smile lovingly and tell her everything was all right, and knowing that nothing would ever be all right again. It was like an out of body experience, she felt numb, but when she looked down, her hands were shaking.
Looking down at the body under the table, there were two distinct bullet holes in the back of her bleached blonde head, stained pink with blood. She felt a need to scream and cry, but she couldn't. She had never been one for crying and hadn't in around a decade.
"Grandma!!" she shrieked into the hallway, running toward the sitting room. "DAD!!"
The scene in the sitting room was just the same. The room was ripped apart. Her grandmother was sitting in her favorite, overstuffed, blood-soaked chair with a bullet hole in the back of her head. She ran out of the room and up the stairs she knew led to her father's in-home laboratory. Slamming open the door, she found that the lab was in the worst state than any room she had seen yet. She was relieved slightly that there was no body in this room, but there was a note on the counter. It was the only thing not soaked in chemicals and things she knew she shouldn't touch or breathe in, but didn't care at the moment.
If wish to see father again, find government research. We return in two weeks. If not find, we kill you and father. Do not tell anyone or we kill you and father and whoever you tell.
The choppy English in the letter showed her that the people who did this must have been foreigners, but what could they want with the research. What the hell was she going to do? She didn't even know what her father did or where to start. The lab had been destroyed. Whoever did this definitely didn't find what they were looking for and neither would she. She couldn't ask anyone or she and her father were dead. She was dead if she did and dead if she didn't. She ran to her room, she was going to need help and she was going to get it. Changing into a pair of skinny duragees, a black T-shirt, and her black leather harness boots, she glanced around her trashed room. Something was out of place, a little black box. She remembered it well, her parents always told her the story of how her father had bought her mother a huge rock for their engagement and she had saved it and the box.
Wanting to keep that, if nothing else, she picked it up and opened it. She took out the giant diamond and with it came a small piece of paper. Placing the rock on her finger and the box in her pants pocket, she picked up the paper. Go to Jones was scrawled in her father's handwriting. Suddenly, she had her first lead.