- Chapter Six -

At This Rate The Kids Will Soon Be Skeletons

Wood whispering with a whistle and a woosh, the door closed softly at her back. Fingers lingering on the portal partly because she wanted to be stopped, the girl rested her head against the surface and took a protracted moment to reflect that she had no plan.

Despite being full of misgivings about her escape, Daniella felt like she had been given no other choice. It was either flee in shame or stay and listen to her mother admit that she had agreed to marry her off for the sake of keeping a tentative hold over a beast that would chew her up whole and spit out the bones without remorse at the first opportunity. Mama had made it clear what her real priority was at every chance, so why would this be any different?

Only partially feeling bad about capitalizing on Logan's little mishap, the teen winced at every step as she hobbled down the hallway. It was only a matter of time before they realized that she was gone, and her footprints were a dead give away. Still, the hardening hand holding her heart - each passing moment a second thought that tightened the grip - dictated that she had to try. If she succumbed meekly to the destiny written by man, she may as well have been the little china doll her mother wanted her to be.

Blood a curse, the heiress paused to wipe her heel with the stained sleeve. Balancing against the wall with the other hand, a few more shards came loose on the carpet, yet what remained was there to stay without really picking at the pieces. Making up her mind in that moment that she really didn't care all that much for the surfer anymore, her thoughts shifted over to the stranger.

Whatever his reasons may have been, he'd shown her a good deal of kindness (you know, when they weren't fighting each other to get food in her system). Vanishing like the ghost she so often felt like, the heiress knew that this was a horrid way to repay him. But wasn't it justified? Give it time, and Sam - Mr. Drake - would also prove to be just like everyone else in the world, keeping her close only so that he could use her. She aught to have been used to that by now, however it was difficult to differentiate an act of decency and an act self-interest when they were used in conjunction.

Daniella was so sick and tired of everyone just treating her like a name.

Garbed in scarcely more than a lengthy blood-stained shirt, hair tangled and matted on the side with grime, she must have looked a real sight as she gimped along the corridor. Counting a family that gave her a wide berth as they carried their sleepy children to bed, there were few enough strolling the halls, but that was only one floor. Wistfully wishing that she knew what it was like, the teen worked on a cover to hide the truth that she was just another teenage runaway. A runway with first-world problems. The heiress sounded like an ungrateful bitch when she thought about it in those terms, but her mother had put her through too much these last twenty-four hours to morn that fact. Perhaps later, but for now she just had to get away.

Corner coming on faster than she realized, as the teen turned the corner she bumped into an elder gentleman wearing a ghastly Hawaiian-print shirt. Arms laden with a tray from the local coffee shop, one of the four cups rocked in the cradle at the disturbance. The man had a much firmer grip than what a person of his age should, but she was more grateful that she didn't end up getting scalded by the contents of the steaming consumer mug. So what if it was the most important meal of the day? Breakfast was almost certainly out to get her.

"I'm so sorry!" Apologizing before remembering that every second counted, the young woman took a step back into the middle of the empty intersection.

Aware from the way that she was holding her legs that the girl was prepared to bolt, that the top she was wearing was covered in dried blood and some kind of soil, he cocked his head to the side. Mustache twitching as he searched for other clues about if she was a danger to his person or not, the man decided from the indecisive look in her eyes that she was not. "You look a little young to be one of Sam's." Adding two and two, it wasn't much of a challenge to guess where she was coming from.

Oh!

"One of...? No!" Shaking her head from side-to-side and dusting the floor in some of the dirt that had transfered to her person, Daniella wondered what the odds were of her running into someone that was heading right for where she had just left. Probably the same kind of movie-level coincidences that made grown men want to tear their hair out. "I was just stretching my legs..." The brilliant lie she had concocted no longer seemed very genius, especially if he knew Mr. Drake. "My mom's with him right now." Ok, the truth was something she could handle.

Smart in any age, the older man questioned her story, though it sounded that he was half buying it. "That still doesn't explain why you're in one of his shirts. Sam is a lot of things, but a gentleman is not one of them."

Feathers ruffled ever so slightly about what she deemed to be an overly harsh judgment, Mr. Drake didn't seem so bad to her. Although to be fair, it was impossible to know anyone in such a short time span, never mind that they hadn't exactly had much time to talk. All the same, she didn't think that was a very fair description.

Honesty finally winning the day, the teen frowned at the old man, "I was kinda klutzy and spilled food all over my top. Mr. Drake was nice enough to let me wear this so I didn't have to just run around in my underthings." Recounting what had happened through a filter, the teen was touched once more by a stranger doing the right thing. "Like I said, I was just getting some air. If you'll excuse me." Conversation getting too dangerous for her liking, the girl ran off before the old man could say anything else.

Unless he was much mistaken, that girl was barefoot when she darted away.

Could she really was just getting air like she said, and maybe there was an honest reason why Sam had lent her a shirt to wear, but there was something fishy about her... Girls her age (and older) were fond of wearing belts and calling them skirts, so there could have been more going on underneath the thermal top than there seemed. Somehow though, something about the young woman was resonating more than what she was (or wasn't) wearing. All sorts did business with the elder Drake, yet not very many of them had the kind of bearing and manners that the girl did. Perhaps she was looking for someone or was in some kind of trouble, he'd find out soon enough.

Knocking on the door with a lack of ease due to holding the tray of mocha-frappé-whatevers, the elder gentleman glanced back over his shoulder as he waited. It was true that Sam had his own clientèle, yet there was something about that girl that continued to trouble him, a nagging feeling that he had seen her face before. But who did she remind him of?

No answer. Finding that to be suspicious under the circumstances, he did away with common courtesies and opened the door with the spare key he had made some while back. Heedlessly opening the door was never wise - especially when dealing with a kid that was nine-tenths a walking hormone - yet the old man was too rattled by the odd conditions to care about that. They could blush like maidens on their wedding day after he knew that everything was fine.

"Victor?" In the middle of shaking out a box of bullets to get a rough estimate on how many were left, Sam looked curiously over at his partner from the towel closet. Making too much of a ruckus in the search for ammunition, it was the smell of coffee that had alerted the thief to the arrival of his partner.

Woman perched on the edge of the couch, apparently in the middle of a speech, the girl's story checked out. The surfer-looking bum that came out of the bathroom was a little on the peculiar side, especially when the nearest ocean was miles away, but not odd enough to bat an eye over. What did merit a double-take was the fact that the blonde bore such a strong resemblance to Sam.

"Thought I'd stop by for a visit. Maybe plan on what to get Cassie for her birthday this year so she doesn't get the same thing twice." The caffeine was to help them think into the night if they couldn't come up with anything, which the older the girl got the more likely that roadblock was to show up. So far they had done decent jobs at knowing what to give her, but it was always on their mind that shopping for a teenage girl was different than it was looking for a gift for Nathan. Even Elena wasn't so hard to pick out presents for, but she was an adult so it was also different.

That year had been a small disaster, however this time around the grown-ups had all agreed to coordinate so they didn't have anything to make up for. Sure the girl had taken it all in stride and had been gracious about it, but to unwrap the same exact gift from your father and your uncle was pretty cringe-inducing for even the best. Elena certainly wasn't happy about it and was in fact spear-heading the campaign to make her daughter's birthday pull off without a hitch. Frankly the guys all shared the hunch that she was taking it so personally due to her own past experience, but none of them were dumb enough to say it out loud.

Friendly as ever, Victor grinned over at the woman before realizing that the pattern on her dark suit was actually the remains of some poor dead bastard. Unfazed by a little grave robbing and/or fight for survival, he mused on the possibility of getting cut in to whatever was going on. "Hello there. Victor Sullivan. And you are?"

"Don't waste your breath on this one, Victor." Waving her off, the ex-con resumed his tally of the shells.

Daggers in her eyes meant solely for Sam, the woman stood and smoothed out her skirt before extending her hand. No longer as prone to falling for charm as she once had been, the bespectacled woman introduced herself warmly enough. "Bai Wen. Yes, I remember your name. You worked with Rafe on the New Zealand job, right?" Perhaps it was Australia, it was tough to keep it straight after thirty-some years. Regardless, he had been good to the business. "From what I remember, you helped make him that much richer."

At the mention of the multi-billionaire, everything he had just been questioning in his mind made sense - the girl, the chances of getting better acquainted with her mother, and why they had come to Sam. Air deflating faster than it took a nail to pop a balloon, Sully peered over at his partner. Surely he realized how dodgy it was to get involved with anyone connected with that lunatic? "Ah. So you knew Rafe?"

Logan chimed in - blissfully unaware that the question was a mere formality - shocking the other two with his sudden appearance. "That's the dead rich dude's baby momma."

"Technically I'd say that we were a bit more than that-"

Speaking of the spawn from the unholy union, he found her absence unnerving. "Shouldn't someone be keeping an eye on that 'baby' right now? After the day she's had I doubt that she's magically fine enough to be left alone all of a sudden. Girl couldn't even manage to feed herself, she was so messed up." Drake wasn't worried that she would intentionally do something stupid, just that something dumb would happen to her on its own accord. Judging from what he knew of the heiress, she had that kind of luck, and he was still interested in taking the job.

Mistake rather major, Logan apologized first to Mother Bae and then to Sam. "About that..." rubbing the image of a coral-colored starfish knitting its leg together on the back of his neck, the surfer sheepishly jerked his head towards the front entrance, "I kinda lost her. She bailed out when she heard that the bae with the glasses wanted to marry her off..."

Eyes blazing with murderous intention, the woman rounded on Sam as if he were at fault. In her mind, the thief had trusted his little cabana boy enough to keep him in the know of his business affairs, and he hadn't objected when the blonde volunteered to entreat Daniella. Enough of a slight on its own, the one from Panama had worked his magic on the impressionable girl and just let her wander off the minute he got distracted. Far from inspiring confidence, Bai was tempted to just call of the entire thing and find someone better to help her.

Alas, the hour was too late to be picky, and she knew it. Nails clacking loudly against the frames of her glasses as she pressed them up her nose, the woman hissed as she made up her mind on her next course of action, "Next time, don't let her get away!"

"Next time I'll put a bell on her." Closing the closet door with a sharp snap, the graying brunette retorted while pointing out one of the biggest holes in the woman's understandable anger. "She got passed you too you know."

Pure scowl, she blew past the old man like a torpedo and was out the front door in the blink of an eye. Prone to being moody and melodramatic like her father, it was only fitting that Daniella would want to get as far away as she possibly could, and under the circumstances who could blame her? Dashing down the corridor like a mad woman, Bai had no clue which way to even start to look. Instead of going left outside the door, she turned right and hoped that if she was wrong, at least the passageways would loop around. Most hotels seemed to do that, so this one should be no different.

Left standing in the middle of the room in confusion, Victor looked to his partner for answers. "What just happened?"

Current task abandoned the minute that he learned that the girl had pulled a fast one and idiotically stumbled out into the open where anyone could screw him out of his money, Samuel didn't have the luxury of expositing the details. Instead the brunette left Logan to catch his partner up to speed as he prepared to hunt down the heiress. "Landon will fill you in. I need to track a girl down. Something tells me if her mother finds her first, she'll only make my job that much more of a pain in the ass."

"It's Logan." The blonde sighed to himself and shook his head, "Not even a hard name, man."

Casting a sideways glance at the blonde even as she shrugged him off, Sullivan set the steaming mugs down on the kitchen counter and took one to the couch. Passing Sam as the elder Drake brother moved to leave the room, he informed his partner of what he thought to be relevant information. "You might want to try heading for the elevators. Pretty sure that that's where your missing shirt was headed when I got here. I have to say, for the daughter of a psychopath, the girl had nice manners."

Sam thanked Victor with a nod.

Lost and hopelessly turned around, somehow Daniella had found herself in a rather nice indoor pool. In hindsight not knowing her way around the hotel was probably for the best, because the lobby would be among the first places they would go to find her. Unintentional though it was, she had to hand it to herself for hiding in plain sight and laying low. Assuming that they ever noticed she was gone (unfortunately this was one of the rare instances she knew that her invisibility would fail her) no one would think to find her here. Since it was empty, she could sit wherever she wanted and deal with the shards in her feet without getting odd/dirty stares.

Forming a neat little pile of the fragments on the armrest, the teen selected a lounge chair near to the edge of the shimmering Caribbean blue water. Drawn to water for a number of reasons, a swim could be a nice little distraction. And if she were wet, just maybe she could fool them into thinking that she was someone else if they were lucky enough to stumble across her hiding place. She wished that she could be someone else, someone who had at least one person in her life that she could say honestly loved her for who she was, not who she was related to.

At this rate it was hard to make herself believe that her father had loved her, but if she didn't have that, what did she have? Once they realized that she wasn't the life of the party and wouldn't just give them whatever they wanted on a dime, no one in school liked her, not really. Poisoned against anyone her age just coming up to her out of the blue without a reason, her homebody ways had failed to make her any friends outside of the classroom. More at ease with older crowds, she got on well enough with her fellow volunteers, yet that never really sparked beyond work hours. Jay was the only person that she could call, however his motives were less than pure. Even her own mother only seemed to tolerate her because she had to...

Forget the swim, maybe she should just jump in and never get out.

"It's fine bro, no one comes in here at night!" Drunk as a skunk and speaking far too loud for an indoor location, a boy roughly Daniella's age pushed the door open with a little too much force and stumbled into the room ahead of two other friends. Judging from how rowdy they sounded and how much they laughed at nothing, she didn't need to be able to smell the collective from across the room to know that they were all smashed. "Well, almost no one."

Another of the boys, easily the youngest from the crack in his voice that had yet to break even, chortled at something and pointed at Daniella. "Looks like we got ourselves a shy one here."

Wondering how they knew that, it dawned on her after a moment that she was wearing a long shirt by herself at the pool. Obviously that was a clear indicator of how insecure she was. If this shirt didn't belong to someone else, she would have burned it for all the woe it was causing. Although if it kept it up, she still might.

The first boy spoke again, hitting the third on the arm with a resounding smack on skin., "See, modesty does still live here! Or maybe she's some old granny in disguise." Coming closer to where the teen sat when there was a whole room they could have enjoyed, it was clear that she was going to be the main attraction. "You a good little girl, or a nasty little gmilf? Can't tell by looking anymore, so you just have ta ask these things."

Shifting uncomfortably in her seat, the heiress didn't much care for the way that they were looking at her. She was so unnerved by the boys that she visibly jumped when one of them let out a noise that was a cross between a burp and a hiccup. "I am modest. Too modest for anyone's good, so you shouldn't waste your time." It was probably the wrong thing to say, but she had no clue what she could have done in that situation that wouldn't get their dander up.

"Rude little cow, aren't you?" Forming a noticeable ring as they moved in on her, the third boy opened his mouth for the first time and called her a name disparaging of her race. As if calling her a cow hadn't been insulting enough!

Acting before any of them were close enough to touch her - though the second was by far the closest - Daniella stumbled slightly as she rose from the seat. Rising with a calm dignity that she had never felt in all her life, she gandered almost longingly at the way out. Apparently the leader of the crew, the first boy only saw that she had stumbled so he looked around for a bottle. "You holding out on us? C'mon, we're all friends here. Give us a drink of what you stole from mommy and daddy."

"I don't have anything." Voice still horse, she knew that she wouldn't have sounded intimidating either way. Retreating from the trio before they had her completely cornered, the teen stepped wrong and practically fell into the arms of the third boy. Betrayed by her own ankles, shoving away from him her heart stopped in her chest when she realized that the second boy was at her back. "Just leave me be, please!"

Breath warm as the first lick of flame from an ember and rank on her ear, the second wrapped his arms around her and came just short of second base. "Now now, don't lie to us. We'll find it," sliding across her waistline like eels, the placement of his palms was a mistake he meant to rectify. "wherever you're hiding it." Nostrils flaring as he breathed in the hair that was plastered to the back of her neck by nervous sweat, she flinched when something clammy and wet brushed the side of her throat.

Pulse thundering in her ears, the girl lost whatever seams had been left before he could make good on his threat. Drawing from years of self-defense classes and sheer panic, the heiress trod on his instep, pulled her elbow back into his gut when he released her to cry out in pain, and kneed the third boy before he could retaliate for his friend. She had no clue where she had hit him, only that the direct attack had caused enough damage to drop him to his knees.

"I told you to just let me be!"

Daniella realized that she had made a mistake thinking that her display would be enough to freak the boys out enough to back off when the leader mumbled something about "the little whore knowing kung-fu". Instead of reconsider what they were getting into, he swung his arm wildly and knocked her directly in the side of the face. Not only missing that they were getting dangerously close to the pool, somehow she had also missed the bottle they'd been holding when they first came in. There was no mistaking the brown paper bag shattering when it collided with the side of her head, the wetness to trickle down the side of her face, the little stars that began to pop before her eyes with a dazzling golden glow.

Soon.

Dazed by the blow and pretty much done for, the first boy truly committed to his brothers and went the full mile for them as they watched from the ground. Pushing the heiress without having any notion of who she was or what harming her would mean, she felt herself falling backwards, but her arms had no command from the brain, so there was no fight as gravity took over. It was almost like tripping, but it was also so different...

Soon.

Water and blackness swirling before she even realized that she was wet, the girl dropped into the pool, her worries thousands of little stones on her chest.