Mable: Thank you for all the responses to the poll! I'm going to leave it up for the time being, but I think I got a pretty clear idea from the results so far. ^_^ Anyway, Enjoy!
The Broken Circus
Chapter 2: Replayed
The sunny day had faded into a warm evening. A dark shadow had crept over the town of Hurricane while the painted sky glowed overhead, its colors fading deeper into indigo in every passing moment. It was picturesque, but to the two boys walking down the sidewalk it was just the end to another day.
They were trying to hurry back to one of their homes before dark, lest their parents get on them about being out so late, and jogged along the sidewalk towards the road to turn off. They were making good time, would surely make it home before the sky turned totally dark, when they were interrupted by a peculiar sound. One of the boys came to a stop.
"Did you hear that?"
The second stopped and shrugged. "It's just a dog barking."
"I know, but where is it?"
It was then that the second boy realized what he was talking about. While they could both hear a dog barking nearby, they couldn't see it on the other side of the street. There weren't any houses close enough for it to be from one of them either. The closest thing would be the playground nearby, but it was devoid of both children and animals. The only vehicle nearby was a parked, empty van down the other way.
The dog barked again. This time both boys noticed that its voice sounded a little higher in pitch than a normal dog, meaning that it was either a small breed or a puppy. There was something else they noticed too.
"It sounds weird. Like… Echo-y?"
The first boy started to walk across the street when he heard the barking again. Now that he was closer, he could tell exactly where the sound was coming from, the only place it could come from.
"I think it's down there," he said, pointing a finger at the nearby storm drain. He walked over to it and crouched down to get a look inside.
The angle of the setting sun meant that no light reached inside and there was a musky smell wafting out. It smelled like wet dirt and asphalt instead of sewer. The barking would stop for a minute before returning with a few desperate yelps. Definitely had to be a little dog from the sound of it, and it sounded like it was deeper inside.
"Can you see anything?" the boy's friend asked as he leaned down beside him. The boy shook his head. "What do we do? Do we call the police?"
"I don't know. Maybe you call the firemen like when cats get stuck in trees," the boy said. Though he was having some ideas of his own. He knelt down closer to see if he would be able to fit into the storm drain. "Think I could fit in there?"
"What? No! You can't go down there! You'll get salmonella or something!" The boy doubted his friend even knew what salmonella was because he didn't. "Let's go tell your dad. He can call somebody and they'll get the dog out."
"But what if the dog runs off? The sewers go to the whole town. There's probably hundreds of tunnels down there, nobody'll ever find him." The boy leaned in close and whistled into the storm drain for the dog. "Here boy!"
As soon as he whistled, the dog began to bark even faster, now without any pauses in between. It sounded desperate and scared, and wasn't coming any closer. Unfortunately, getting this close meant that he could clearly see that he wasn't going to be able to squeeze through. He stood up and started to look around for a manhole cover, but couldn't find one.
The closest thing was a grate on the sidewalk further down from the storm drain, ironically in the direction of the dog barking. He jogged over to it and looked down through, and that was when he caught a break. While he couldn't see the dog, he could see that the grate was barely covering the hole. Like someone had opened it and then just laid it on top. He slid it out of the way and looked down into the semi-darkness.
It wasn't what he expected when he imagined sewers. It was really just a square shaped shaft that went down only maybe six feet and at the bottom there were two openings to tunnels. One only looked as big around as a basketball and the other looked just big enough that he could probably crawl through it, or for a smaller dog to easily walk through. Instead of sewage, the stuff at the bottom of the shaft was trash and a little muddy water, smelling more like road runoff than anything else.
The most important thing was that there was a ladder of little, metal rungs mounted to the wall. He would have to stretched to reach it, but it didn't look any more difficult than trying to climb on a jungle gym. The moment he tried to reach in for the rungs with his feet, fingers digging into the metal edges of the grate, his friend started to lose his nerve.
"This is stupid! Someone's going to see us and you're going to get in so much trouble. And I'm going to get in trouble too because I'm here and didn't stop you!"
"But then we say that we saved a dog and we get in the newspaper. Maybe Dad'll even let me keep it," the boy said. Finally his foot found where the rungs were and he started to lower himself down. "Just watch for cars, okay?"
"Yeah, okay…" his friend muttered. He watched as the boy slowly began to lower into the hole. "Bobby?"
The boy climbing down, Bobby, looked up at his friend who had a look of upmost seriousness.
"…Watch out for crocs."
Bobby gave a firm nod and climbed down the rest of the way, landing on the mucky bottom with a squish. He crouched down and tried to look into the bigger tunnel with no success. The dog was definitely in it though because he could hear its barking coming from inside. He whistled for it again and tried to coax it out, but the dog wouldn't budge. It just began to bark louder and faster in what sounded like fear.
After a moment of deliberation, Bobby decided to throw any caution to the wind and crawl inside. Hands and clothes could be washed when he got home, and the stuff really didn't smell like it was anything more than mud- at least that's what he said to keep himself from getting grossed out. He slowly made his way into the pitch darkness.
The tunnel tight and even more stagnant. It smelled like a pond that had been sitting under a hot sun stagnating. The kind of pond his mother would've encouraged him greatly not to swim in, even on a sweltering day. The shaft was far from warm though, quite the opposite. The walls that bumped against him were so cold that he couldn't tell if they were wet or not.
He could hear the barking getting closer but couldn't see anything, and it wasn't until he was closing in on it that he noticed how quickly the dog was barking. It didn't even leave enough room to breathe as it yelped so quickly and sharply that it sounded more like an annoying alarm clock than a dog. It didn't sound like a dog.
Bobby stopped in place. It didn't sound like a dog.
The noises echoed through the tunnel so loudly that he felt suffocated by them, as though the tight walls and steadily rising muck floor wasn't enough. By now his head and back were scraping on the roof of it as he sat there and stared ahead into the nothingness. There was an overwhelming urge to turn around, but he couldn't even do that. All he could do was crawl backwards and hope he didn't actually get stuck.
Except he couldn't even do that, because if it was a dog then he would be abandoning it. It was only a few feet ahead of him and he finally decided to press forward. Squeezing himself into the narrowing space he reached out blindly in the dark. His fingers sunk into something spongey and he wrenched his hand back out of reflex.
Blinking in confusion, at nothing as he couldn't see, he reached out and poked the thing. It was clearly what was barking, but it wasn't a dog, and grabbing it around the leg revealed what it really was: a toy.
"What?" Bobby complained. He couldn't help but be disappointed as he felt over the barking object and confirmed that he had climbed all the way down here for a lousy toy. What a total waste of time.
He began to crawl back through the tunnel when he decided to bring the toy with him. Not because he wanted it, but to feel a little less like he crawled down here for nothing. He felt around in the darkness until he found it and dragged it towards him.
It stopped barking the second he moved it. If Bobby had felt suffocated before then it was only doubled now. It was so quiet that even the slightest movement sounded loud in his ears; the shifting of clothing, the squelch of his shoe sliding on the mucky floor, even the faintest sound of his hair brushing on the roof of the tunnel.
Suddenly he felt very alone. He felt miles away from the surface in this dark, wet, silent pit. Bobby wasn't a boy who scared easily, but his heart started to race as he tried to move back a little faster. Only to stop once he heard something scrape nearby. He couldn't tell if it was coming from him, behind him… or somewhere in the tunnel in front of him. He held his breath and listened close.
There was a faint brushing sound. It could've been his hair, but he swore it came from further down the hole. If he listened closely past the pounding in his ears, he swore he could hear shifting in the darkness. His mind filled in the gaps as he got a mental image of something large with sharp teeth and thick claws slowly crawling along the dirt, having followed the sound of the toy. Waiting only a few feet in…
And then all at once, there came noise. It was a strange noise that he couldn't make heads or tails of in his frightened state. A squeal, a muffled voice yelling out, a loud bang from somewhere above-
There was no doubt in Bobby's mind. There was something in this tunnel and it was coming for him and he had to get out NOW.
The boy began to scramble back through the tunnel, hands and feet carelessly digging into the muck without concern of what it was, back repeatedly hitting the roof as he struggled to get back faster. He held the dog plush tightly, not out of any attempt to save it but because he couldn't release his grip enough to let it go. The walls were so tight and everything smelled like rank water, and if he listened carefully, he could swear his own movements were being mimicked by something far into the tunnel.
Then he suddenly was out and stood up so fast that he slipped on the dirt and fell against the concrete wall. Bobby dropped the dog plush and leapt onto the rungs to hastily climb up. His foot slipped halfway up and he almost fell right back in, right into the grasp of whatever he knew was following him.
"Nathan!" he yelled. He continued to climb up and scrambled back up onto the sidewalk. Only once he got to his feet did he dare look back.
There was nothing there.
Bobby cautiously leaned over the open grate and looked into the dark shaft. There was nothing there, save the dog toy left abandoned amongst the litter clogging the bottom. Either he outran whatever it was or it hadn't been there at all, and Bobby had no interest in climbing back down to double check.
He then noticed how quiet it was and looked around to see that he was alone. He blinked in confusion. "Nathan?" he called. There was no answer. He looked down the road both ways, back towards the park, and in the direction of the gas station, but couldn't see him. "Nathan!"
Nathan was gone.
As was the van that had been parked down the street.
Charlie didn't typically get calls during class. The only people who would call her knew her schedule well enough to know not to call, so she typically left her cellphone on. It was the first class of the day and Charlie had been trying to pay attention as best as she could considering the situation going on outside of college. It was going passably well.
Until her cellphone started to ring in the middle of a lecture. Charlie sat upright in surprise before plunging into her bag, a flush of embarrassment spreading across her face. It wasn't the first time it happened to someone in a class and nobody was laughing, but everyone was staring, including her professor. She muttered out an apology and ducked as far as she could behind the table.
Hoping whoever it was would hang up quickly before she got a lecture of another kind, she quietly answered. "Hello?"
All it took was that one word and the floodgates opened. Charlie yanked back from the receiver as out poured a garbled mess of static and discordant twangs. It was loud and uncontrolled, and it was clearly Sammy.
Then in the midst of all of it, Charlie heard his voice finally reach through:
"COME HOME- COME HOME- COME HOME!"
Her heart rose into her throat as she wasted no time in grabbing her things and hurrying towards the door, only briefly managing to get out, "Family emergency!" to her professor before bolting from the room. Her mind was racing with the horrors that could be going on back at the house as she hustled down the halls. All the while, Sammy was still blaring through the phone.
"I'm on my way. What's going on?" Charlie asked. His voice continued to skip and was drowned out by the noise. It was becoming harder for her to stay calm but she managed to keep her voice steady even as she hustled to the front door. "Sammy, I need you to try and tell me what's going on. Is someone trying to get into the house?"
"I- Five- Baby- I knew, I knew, I knew- Can't help, can't save, useless!"
"Okay, on second thought, why don't you just try to calm down before you break something," Charlie suggested, hearing the strain on his music box. He sounded like he was in a frenzy, but it didn't sound like he was being attacked. "If there's someone trying to get in, then hide under the stairs or in the closet- Not the master bedroom closet." She fumbled her words as she made it outside and jogged across the parking lot.
Charlie flung herself into the driver's seat and began to drive, keeping the cellphone in her lap and listening to the noise of her twin's meltdown. As long as she could hear him, she knew he was safe. After what felt like the longest drive home, she parked and picked the cellphone back up.
"I'm outside. I'm going to hang up now and come straight in," she assured him. He gave a distorted answer and she ended the call, got out of the car, and hurried into the house.
Unbelievably, in the time it took her to get there, Sammy hadn't calmed down even the slightest bit. He was currently making circles in the center of the living room with his hands on his face, his mask pulled into a distraught frown, and still making the garbled noises she had heard earlier. When she came in, he finally lowered his hands and rushed to her, seizing her by the shoulders. She was bombarded with panicked words.
"It's okay, it's okay. I'm here, we'll figure this out," Charlie assured him. She reached up and gently squeezed his wrists. "What happened?"
"The-The- it- it- Baby! Children! Five children! Five children- TAKEN!" Sammy blurted out. "STOLEN! FIVE CHILDREN KIDNAPPED!"
"Kidnapped?! What are you talking about?!" Charlie asked with fear growing in her voice. He answered her not through his own voice, but through a collection of vocal clips recorded and recited through him.
"Five local children have gone missing- Local authorities are still searching for the children- Believed to be taken from back yard- Sightings of a van near the scene- In the same six-hour period."
Charlie's eyes widened as she realized that the audio was taken directly from the news. Five children had gone missing in one day, probably yesterday, the day that Circus Baby's had opened. Suddenly Sammy's panic made much more sense as she too was gripped by that awful dread. It was too familiar, too coincidental to be anything less than related. This had to be Baby's ultimate plan.
"This can't be happening," Charlie choked out. Sammy nodded frantically in agreement. "They just- No. This can't… Be happening. They wouldn't just let this happen," she continued in disbelief. The was suddenly struck by a look of fierce determination and released his arm to get out her phone. "I'm calling Clay. Now."
Thankfully, Sammy reigned himself in enough to quiet down, but only because he proceeded to slump onto his sister with his head resting on hers. She held him with one arm and worked around him with the other.
The first call was to Clay's cellphone which she got a busy signal from. That seemed to confirm that he wasn't home, so her second call was to the Hurricane police department, which she had thankfully memorized in case she ever needed to use it- considering the last few months, she expected to use it eventually. She was fiercely determined to track down Clay and get answers.
"Hurricane Police Department. How may I help you?"
But phones had a way of stealing that fire from her voice.
"This is, uh- This is Charlotte Emily. Is Chief Burke there? He's- I'm friends with his son. We know each other and I'm trying to figure out where he is since he's not answering his phone…"
"I'm afraid he's busy at the moment. Is it an emergency?"
"…No, it's not, but it's important that I get in touch with him as soon as possible."
"I can take a message. I'll tell him you called and to call you back as soon as he has a minute."
"Alright, thanks…" But Charlie wasn't contented with this. She made sure the call was ended before saying firmly, "I'm just going to have to go over there and see him myself."
"T-Take- Take Mike with you," Sammy said. It was the first thing he said that wasn't loud and distorted, because of course it was. He was still trembling like a leaf though.
"I don't have enough time to come up with a convincing lie to get him over there, but I can call and ask him to come over here and stay with you if it'll make you feel better," Charlie offered. Sammy didn't answer; she couldn't imagine what he was going through. She wanted to make it better, but knew there was nothing she could say to fix this.
She thought about that the whole drive to the police station. There was nothing she could say and little she could do. The kneejerk reaction was to go to Clay for answers and hope somehow this was all a mistake.
After a few minutes trying to talk her way in past the front desk, one of the officers recognized her and took mercy on her, leading her to Clay's office. She didn't recognize the man's face or name, but had a hunch that he might've been involved with the sting on the Butcher animatronics. The way he was so willing to let her in suggested he had to know her intimately and that was the only connection she could make.
Charlie stepped into the office and found Clay exactly as she expected him: talking into his cellphone, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose, leaning over a desk overtake with multiple, open files. He noticed her coming in and nodded to the officer, who shut the door and left, and then quickly finished up the call. Charlie only caught the end of it.
"Bring the tape in and we'll see what we can make of it," he finished. He then ended the call and turned his attention fully to her. His tense features were marred with exhaustion. "I can only assume this isn't a social call. I'm sure you heard about what happened yesterday?" he asked.
"I heard that five children went missing at Circus Baby's," Charlie answered. She couldn't help but let her frustration through. "I told you this was going to happen. Why wasn't anyone keeping an eye on that place?!"
"Well, that's not exactly what happened… But I'm not blissfully ignorant enough to believe Circus Baby's wasn't involved," Clay admitted. He almost looked ashamed. "Sometime yesterday- we believe it might've been in the late afternoon, early evening- five children disappeared from across the city. None of them were taken from Circus Baby's. From all accounts, none of the five children were even at Baby's yesterday."
"Five children disappear the day Circus Baby's opens. You know that they're connected."
"I do, which is exactly why I have been trying to get a search warrant for Circus Baby's Pizza, which has turned out to be much more difficult than had hoped," Clay said under his breath. His voice expressed his clear disappointment. Charlie's face softened with concern.
"Is this about… Does this have anything to do with Betty?" she asked cautiously. She hated bringing her up, her leaving still being a soft spot, but had to ask. Clay shook his head.
"No, she doesn't have anything to do with this. We need a judge to sign off on the search warrant and, so far, we can't provide enough evidence of a connection to get one. The paperwork we have on the original Circus Baby's is nearly non-existent and, even if we could prove the connection to Freddy's, we can't prove that the children were at this pizzeria. The judge already turned us down."
"But that's insane! You're the police chief, you can't sign one yourself?" Charlie asked. She was nearly flabbergasted and only more horrified by the shake of his head. "But you have evidence directly connecting Baby's to Freddy's where other children were kidnapped just like this! How can they just ignore that?!"
"People in this town have short memories."
"Stop being cryptic and just tell me, is there anything we can do?" Charlie snapped. "There's got to be something."
There was a long moment of silence that answered her better than Clay ever could. It and the defeated look in his eyes said much more than words could. He was feeling just as helpless as she was. Even with his position and the police force at his disposal, he was stuck behind the same tape that let this same thing happen years ago.
"I'm sorry, Charlie, but this is the hand we've been dealt. We do have a few more leads to follow up on though. There's been talk about an unmarked van spotted in the area of two of the missing children. If we can find surveillance footage showing it and find someone who can place it at Circus Baby's at any time, then we might be able to secure a warrant. That's the best we have to go on."
Charlie exhaled through her nose to try and calm down and crossed her arms tight across her chest. Suddenly she knew exactly how Sammy felt when he had been doing circles in the living room. She certainly felt like making a scene, but she knew it wouldn't solve anything. It would just get her labelled a kook and thrown to the curb- she could say goodbye to any credibility ever again.
"Have you seen Lizzie recently?" Clay asked. It didn't take her more than a second to realize who he meant.
"It's Izzy… And yes, Jessica and I ran into her the day before yesterday at Daisy's. She asked if we would go to Circus Baby's with her, but we didn't," Charlie admitted.
Clay looked increasingly interested. "Did she say anything other than that? Anything that might've been related to what happened?"
"So, now you believe me?" Charlie asked cynically. Clay gave her an unenthused look, one he might've given Mike if she had brought him. She let it slide and shook her head. "No. She was acting weird but that's not anything new." As Clay took a moment to process this, Charlie had a new fear creep up. "Could she have taken the kids out of retaliation for not going to the pizzeria? For not doing what she wanted?"
"Steer clear of her. Don't go out of your way to approach her and if she approaches you, try to stay in an area where there are plenty of witnesses. I don't know what's going on here, but I don't trust any of it," Clay said. He met her gaze with a look both firm and concerned. "I'm also going to ask you to not to get involved. I'm going to do everything in my power to find these children, but I don't want you to become a target in the process. Not after what happened with the Butchers. We already risked your life once, I'm not letting it happen again."
"But then what am I supposed to do? Just stand aside and watch this happen again?" Charlie asked with disbelief.
"What happened at Freddy's will not be happening again. We will be bringing these children home, and no delayed search warrant will be stopping us," Clay said with the upmost determination. He sounded like he truly meant it, but Charlie wasn't sure if she could believe it. It was just too easy for the law to trip itself up in a situation like this. "We'll find them. I just need you to worry about yourself and stay away from Izzy."
"Easier said than done. She just shows up without warning, how am I supposed to avoid that?" Charlie asked, avoiding eye contact. She reluctantly added, "I'll try. At least, I'll make sure I'm not alone with her."
"Good. I'll keep you up to date on what we find out. You'll be the first one to know when we find these kids," Clay said. He got up from the desk and guided her out with a hand on her shoulder. The gesture somehow reminded her of her father, or maybe it was the mix of reluctant agreement and frustration she felt that did.
It wasn't until Charlie was walking to her car that she realized she hadn't gotten details on the children or where they were taken from. That was fine, she decided. She didn't need Clay to get them.
"It took long enough, but I got the goods," Carlton proclaimed before collapsing onto the couch between Marla and Jessica. He looked like he had only just woken up, which considering him was a real possibility.
All it took was a few calls to get Charlie's friends to meet together on their lunch breaks to discuss the nightmare that was unfolding. With Clay being a dead end, they were forced to turn to Carlton's usual way of snagging information to fill in the blanks. Thankfully, he had managed to succeed in getting what he needed after some brief sleuthing, and they had all met up at Marla's house to go over it.
"So, after scouring Dad's office and files, and checking his desk, and looking through all his loose papers, I found… Nothing. BUT after a quick online I found out that they've got this missing person bulletin thing online where they give the kids' names and where they were last seen. I wrote it all down." Carlton pulled a folded-up piece of paper out of his pants pocket and began to read off it.
"There's five missing kids, three girls and two boys named Cody, Sophia, Nathan, Nicky, and Tiffany. I didn't write down the last names but they're there. Cody's the one who was snatched out of his backyard. Sophia was riding her bike home from her friend's house and never made it. Nathan went missing by that gas station where the Butchers killed that woman with the glue. It didn't say anything about the last two kids."
"It's just so horrible," Marla said. Even with the limited details she seemed thoroughly disturbed. "Nobody saw anything?"
"Kind of? A couple of people said they saw an unmarked van driving around- not suspicious at all- and the friend of one of the kids said he saw it too before he disappeared. No tag number, no nothing."
"And none of these happened at Circus Baby's? What about those last two kids?" Jessica asked. Carlton just shrugged and she frowned. "I'm starting to see why Clay's having trouble showing that connection."
"But shouldn't there be, I don't know, a report or something on Freddy's that they can point back to? Or how about this: Will owned the old Circus Baby's, right? All Clay would have to do is show that Will also owned part of Freddy's and then use those to show the pattern, then they'd have to see something's up!" Marla suggested. Jessica seemed unsure and Carlton shook his head. "…No?"
"Will's name would have to be on this Circus Baby's Pizza… And if Will's name's on this place, I think we're pretty much screwed either way," he said.
As much as Charlie hated it, she knew that Carlton was right. She knew that Clay was right too. They all saw the connection and knew Baby's was involved, but there simply wasn't enough evidence to take any real action. It was the same thing as the Izzy situation; Baby had somehow managed to cover all of her bases yet again.
Just thinking about Baby made Charlie return to the thought she had earlier about why she took the children. Would she have taken the children if they would've gone to the pizzeria with her? Would she had tried to frame them, or cause that accident she suspected? There was a plan in motion, but Charlie just didn't have enough pieces to put it together.
"Charlie?" John asked. She snapped out of her thoughts and looked to him. "Kind of lost you for a second there. What's on your mind?"
"Just… Thinking about those kids. About how they might've not gotten kidnapped if we had been with Baby yesterday…" Suddenly Charlie got a resolute look as a new idea crept up. If this was all out of retaliation on Baby's part, then maybe it was worth giving her exactly what she wanted. "…You know what? We should go get lunch. How about pizza?"
"What?" Jessica flatly asked. Her eyes widened at that dead-set look as she realized what she meant. "Whoa, what happened to us not going over there?"
"Baby likes to play games, so why don't we play along and see where it takes us?" Charlie suggested. Everyone just stared at her. John furrowed his brow, not liking the sound of it. She explained, "She wanted us to go to the pizzeria and we didn't, so now she's made a scenario where we don't have a choice. She knows we know who she is and what happened with Freddy's. She knows we'll come looking. Why else would she wait until now to take the children when she didn't even take them from the restaurant?"
"That's… A point," Jessica almost reluctantly agreed. "But then we're just walking into it like she wants?"
"If we continue to ignore her, she might resort to more desperate measures. If we play along it might give her incentive to keep the kids alive to use them as bait."
"If they're still alive," Lamar said before thinking. This got a looks of shock and scolding from his friends. "Sorry, I just had to throw that out there. We don't know what she's capable of… But Jess is right, you've got a point. We've all seen how fixated she is on you."
"Maybe she wants to kill you and replace you. She already looks like you and hangs out with us, why not go all the way?" Carlton offered. This also received a few unamused looks, but he didn't back down. "This is my way of telling you that I don't think giving Baby what she wants is a good thing."
"What else are we supposed to do? Wait around for nothing?" Charlie asked.
"I'm kind of leaning in that direction, yes."
It was clear that he wasn't the only one with doubts. Even Charlie herself had that little voice in the back of her head saying this was a bad idea. She didn't want to put herself in the crosshairs of an animatronic as malicious and devious as Baby was, but she couldn't stand by and let her get away with this. Whatever this was, Charlie was going to have to get involved.
But this time was going to be different. This time Charlie was going to be more than prepared for whatever was coming, she would have to be.
"I think we should at least go check it out. You guys don't have to come with me, but I could use the backup," she said. Even with their doubts, they barely considered it.
"Of course we're going with you! I wouldn't have offered yesterday just to ditch you today," Jessica reassured. "We'll just… Have to be really careful and make sure she gets nowhere near you if she does show up. Right, guys?"
"I mean, yeah! Of course! And we'll be in broad daylight, so what's the worst Baby could do?" Marla said with obvious hesitation. Managing a smile and having to force fake confidence through her teeth. Lamar nodded in agreement with her while Carlton looked silently skeptical.
John took a deep breath. "I'll go if you're sure that's what you think we should do, but I have a bad feeling about this. Baiting Baby might be risky," he said. Though as he looked at Charlie, he knew he wasn't going to be talking her out of this. So, he just nodded and gave a final:
"Let's go."
Mable: Sorry this chapter seems to end a little abruptly. I had to move a little around, but it means that I have a head start on the next chapter. I hope you enjoyed!