Disclaimer is the same as in Chapter One. This chapter contains direct
quotes from Fellowship of the Ring and Return of the King.
Author's note at the end of this chapter.
"Hostile Takeover"—Chapter Three: Flight to Ford and Vine
"We know your plans, the funds that have been made available," the white- haired gentleman said with satisfaction into the phone. His lips cracked a smile that seemed unnatural for his cold face. He glanced around him to assure himself that his unusual scene had not drawn any unwanted attention. Not that he would care if he had surrounded himself with an audience of onlookers. Circumstances could not have been more in his favor if he had planned it. Sally had literally thrown herself at his feet and he held his enemy captive on the phone line. Time to level out the odds of this millennias' old contest. "A transfer of that magnitude must be made in person and I have the bank under surveillance now. You must choose. Destroy the Ring or save your Shire Publishing. You can't do both. Surren—"
He had become overconfident. The slender phone flew out of his hand, dislodged by something hard thrown with fear and fury. Sally's unbroken shoe. He had underestimated the secretary, he thought fleetingly as she sprang at him. The force of her awkward, unpredictable impact knocked him to the floor. She had caught him so off guard he was not able to signal the men in black around her until she had reached her feet and made her escape.
Sally's hand reached down to retrieve her cell phone from the floor as her unshod feet carried her away almost of their own accord. Earsplitting shrieks filled her head as the men took pursuit. She ran, her feet finding surer footing than before. She brought the phone up to her ear. "Start the car," she sputtered into the receiver.
"Sally?!" Mr. Baggins' voice choked in disbelief.
Her feet ached as they ran hard without protection. She moved faster than her lungs could give her breath and she gasped for air. She would not listen to the sounds behind her. She would not look. She would only run. "Start the car!" she repeated with terror. Hell itself followed her.
She threw herself out the exit and ran along the concrete sidewalk. The sight of Mr. Baggins' car renewed her energy. Its door flew open to receive her and she jumped into its safe haven. She pulled frantically at the door handle to pull it shut. "Go! Go! Go! Just drive away!" she screamed to the unseen driver. The tires screeched and the car lurched away in wordless response.
Sally sat trembling in the wake of her adrenalin rush. She felt sick and in the temporary safety of the moment her emotions threatened to crash. Tears spilled down her cheeks as she slowed her heavy breaths. She barely noticed Mr. Baggins' presence.
"Sally…?" he called to her hesitantly. From her tremulous state he had no hint of what had happened. He feared the tale she would tell and cursed himself for exposing her to it.
She looked down at her feet. Blood had seeped into her stockings and she could feel its stickiness between her toes. Only now could she feel the throbbing pain. "My shoes are gone," she mumbled from her daze.
He reached out and clutched her shoulder. Her attention snapped towards him, startled by the sudden contact. Her lip quivered and her tears came harder. "What just happened? Who was that man?" she demanded in a strangled cry.
Mr. Baggins' face looked sorrowful. "He goes by the name of Solomon, head of Whitehand Press, but his true name is Saruman. He wants to force a merger." He knew his explanation would sound weak before he even said it. There was so much more to it. Even if he had a week he could not tell the complete tale.
But Sally understood the most important key. "You mean a hostile takeover? Getting the Shire is just a tactic." The men in black almost didn't matter. They were mindless automatons bent to the will of that white- haired man. He wanted the Ring and he would do fiendish things to get it. Sally closed her mind to the horrors he would commit if he possessed it.
"It is," Mr. Baggins replied grimly. "He'll do what he can to force my hand." Including taking his company. Including harming her. His hand had not left her shoulder. He tightened his grip at the thought of how close he'd come to losing her. "However did you get away?" he asked.
Sally shook her head stiffly. "I'm not even sure. I just got so scared. It all happened so fast," she replied. She strained to pull any detail of her escape from her memory but it hurt to focus. All she could think was that her shoes were gone. She absentmindedly closed her cell phone still clutched tightly in her hand. She looked back to her concerned employer. A strange object leaning against his leg caught her eye. It resembled the hilt of a small sword. "What were you going to do?" she asked, not able to look away from it.
He followed her gaze to the sword and then moved it under the seat out of sight. He almost seemed embarrassed. "I was coming to get you," he admitted quietly.
Sally realized that she had already considered his coming to her rescue. She smiled weakly. "I am very grateful, Sir, but I have a feeling that would have been very stupid."
He did not reflect her smile but only said sadly, "I didn't know what else to do, Sally."
Sally leaned her head back in her seat and looked out the window. She recognized immediately which direction the car had taken. Without a specific destination the driver assumed they would want to return to the office. That place did not seem safe to her anymore. "What do we do now?" she asked.
Mr. Baggins held his head in his hands defeatedly. "I don't know anymore," he confessed with quiet despair. "L. Rond provided funds to save the Shire but with Saruman's forces watching the bank in New York…He'll stop anyone attempting to make the transfer." He dragged his face up from his hands slowly not able to pull himself up fully. "He's right. I can't do both."
Sally looked upon him with sympathy but a great sadness grew within her as she considered the details of his plan. "You had planned to send me to New York while you destroyed the Ring alone," she accused him softly. The realization hurt more than seemed natural to admit.
He looked at her. He recognized the woundedness of her large brown eyes. He had had this argument before. His chances of winning this time were no better than last. Still, he had to try. "Sally--" he began.
"That's hard, Sir," she broke in, "You would go without me." The words came out of her without a coherent thought preceding them. Her voice sounded strange, almost as if it was not her own. The emotions contained within her were strong and deep, ancient, like a trapped memory.
"That was just a taste of my road ahead," he said warningly as he pointed indistinctly behind them. "It would be the death of you to come with me, Sally, and I could not have borne that."
Sally's bottom lip drew outward and her eyes glistened with new tears. She didn't understand the intensity of the feelings or where they came from. They consumed her like the water of a rushing river coming over her head. "Not as certain as being left behind," she said.
He sighed heavily. He knew he could say nothing to convince her. He had nothing left to say. "You're the only one I trust," he admitted sadly. "I couldn't send anyone else to New York."
L. Rond's words came to her then, pulling her to the surface, clearing her mind. 'Stay close to him. He needs someone he can trust.' In her fear, she had behaved childishly. She wiped her tears away with her fingertips self-consciously. "I'm going with you," she said as if her words settled the matter. In her mind, the foundations of a plan began to form. "We were meant to go together. You may only trust me, Sir, but there are those that I trust. Perhaps you can extend your confidence to include them with me."
Piper Tune leaned against the bicycle rack outside the comic shop on the corner of Ford and Vine and stared lazily at her cuticles. Her roommate, Sally, had asked her to wait for her there and Piper exerted great effort not to let her anxiety show. The truth was that beneath her blue-tipped, jet-black bangs, she worried considerably about her friend. Sally did not sound right, not herself at all. Her words were stifled, saying almost nothing at all.
Just 'wait at the shop'. So Piper waited.
Her appearance showed a woman who lived her life in a constant search for her true self. She tried on careers much like she tried on different hair colors. She almost couldn't remember what she really looked like underneath the dye.
At least she found something to do that made her happy. She had created a comic book called "Coming out of the Woodwork", a traditional story of good versus evil that made her the number one independent comic creator in the country. Some of the tales came from things she imagined as a child. Some from her dreams.
She once believed in such things as elves and trolls and wizards. Then one day she woke up and realized that those things didn't really exist. Reality came and obliterated her dreams. She'd been rebelling from it ever since. Some called her immature but she preferred to think of herself as the eternal child. She always wore a different face, just to keep the world at arm's length, hiding the fact that she'd grown up long ago.
She hated losing her innocence.
As a writer, she could bring her childhood world to life. In her stories, the hero always made it through safely. But reality threatened the purity of her dreams again. Something big was coming. She could feel it. Trouble wouldn't be a big enough word to describe it.
Piper frowned as a large, dark blue car pulled up to the curb. Too big for a car. Too small for a limo. Right now it blocked the only space in front of the shop. She stepped forward to tell the driver to move but stopped as she watched Sally get out.
Piper whistled appreciatively. "Whoa, girl. When you show up, you show up in style," she said smiling. She looked her friend over to assure herself that she was well. Her gaze stopped at Sally's feet, bloody and bare. She swallowed and hoped that her jump in concern did not show. "What the hell happened to your shoes?"
Sally glanced down at her feet as if she had forgotten. To explain would only complicate her situation further. "This isn't a social call, Piper," she said grimly.
Piper folded her arms across her chest and studied her friend's face. "I gathered that from the cryptic phone call," she said.
Part of Sally's strange demeanor faltered only to be replaced by her trademark guilty face. She ran her hand through her brown curls and grimaced. "Yeah, about that," she said uneasily, "I need to borrow your car."
Piper snorted with laughter, partly from the absurdity of the request and partly from relief. Sally in her sheepishness seemed more like herself. Maybe all her worrying was for nothing. Maybe there was no danger. Maybe Sally got caught up in something embarrassing and would tell her about it at dinner. Then she could laugh without it being a false bravado. "What, you're going to show your famous boss how the other half lives?"
Sally's eyes grew suddenly wide and she turned nervously to the still open car door. "Piper!" she cried aghast. When she looked back at her friend, she realized her mistake immediately.
Piper grinned widely in triumph. "He's in there, isn't he?" she asked slyly.
Sally's hesitation was all she needed for an answer. With a look of mischief on her face she ducked under her friend's arms and dodged her efforts to block her.
"Piper, no! Don't!!" Sally cried as she tried to stop her from entering the car.
Piper jumped into the car's dark interior with hopes of having a laugh at Sally's expense. What she found, she could not have guessed or even understood.
As her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she looked fully upon the face of Mr. Baggins. Her breath caught itself in her throat and the smile melted from her face.
As a child she had seen him in her dreams. At that moment, she realized that a part of her had searched for him her whole life. "It's you," she whispered.
He didn't even look surprised when she threw her arms around him in an embrace. He almost seemed relieved.
"You tried to give us the slip once before and failed," she said close to his ear. She had never met him before though she knew him long ago.
In the days before her innocence left her.
TBC
Author's note: It might be a couple of weeks before I update. (Yeah, big surprise there…) I am writing this and "Visions of Blood and Fire" simultaneously. I write a chapter of that and then I write a chapter of this and then I post them both the same day. Your reviews mean A LOT to me and drive me to write better and more exciting stuff for you, so review "early and often". Anyone who would like for me to notify them of updates, PLEASE, let me know.
The following chapters will introduce a couple of characters that I hope you will like. I will also expound on the thoughts of Mr. Baggins' driver. Trust me, I wasn't going to have him there just for window dressing.
Chapter Four: "Two is Company", Sally and Mr. Baggins leave for O'Hare airport but before they do there is a matter of a certain sword which needs to be taken care of. Sally finds that darkness lurks closer to her than she thinks.
Author's note at the end of this chapter.
"Hostile Takeover"—Chapter Three: Flight to Ford and Vine
"We know your plans, the funds that have been made available," the white- haired gentleman said with satisfaction into the phone. His lips cracked a smile that seemed unnatural for his cold face. He glanced around him to assure himself that his unusual scene had not drawn any unwanted attention. Not that he would care if he had surrounded himself with an audience of onlookers. Circumstances could not have been more in his favor if he had planned it. Sally had literally thrown herself at his feet and he held his enemy captive on the phone line. Time to level out the odds of this millennias' old contest. "A transfer of that magnitude must be made in person and I have the bank under surveillance now. You must choose. Destroy the Ring or save your Shire Publishing. You can't do both. Surren—"
He had become overconfident. The slender phone flew out of his hand, dislodged by something hard thrown with fear and fury. Sally's unbroken shoe. He had underestimated the secretary, he thought fleetingly as she sprang at him. The force of her awkward, unpredictable impact knocked him to the floor. She had caught him so off guard he was not able to signal the men in black around her until she had reached her feet and made her escape.
Sally's hand reached down to retrieve her cell phone from the floor as her unshod feet carried her away almost of their own accord. Earsplitting shrieks filled her head as the men took pursuit. She ran, her feet finding surer footing than before. She brought the phone up to her ear. "Start the car," she sputtered into the receiver.
"Sally?!" Mr. Baggins' voice choked in disbelief.
Her feet ached as they ran hard without protection. She moved faster than her lungs could give her breath and she gasped for air. She would not listen to the sounds behind her. She would not look. She would only run. "Start the car!" she repeated with terror. Hell itself followed her.
She threw herself out the exit and ran along the concrete sidewalk. The sight of Mr. Baggins' car renewed her energy. Its door flew open to receive her and she jumped into its safe haven. She pulled frantically at the door handle to pull it shut. "Go! Go! Go! Just drive away!" she screamed to the unseen driver. The tires screeched and the car lurched away in wordless response.
Sally sat trembling in the wake of her adrenalin rush. She felt sick and in the temporary safety of the moment her emotions threatened to crash. Tears spilled down her cheeks as she slowed her heavy breaths. She barely noticed Mr. Baggins' presence.
"Sally…?" he called to her hesitantly. From her tremulous state he had no hint of what had happened. He feared the tale she would tell and cursed himself for exposing her to it.
She looked down at her feet. Blood had seeped into her stockings and she could feel its stickiness between her toes. Only now could she feel the throbbing pain. "My shoes are gone," she mumbled from her daze.
He reached out and clutched her shoulder. Her attention snapped towards him, startled by the sudden contact. Her lip quivered and her tears came harder. "What just happened? Who was that man?" she demanded in a strangled cry.
Mr. Baggins' face looked sorrowful. "He goes by the name of Solomon, head of Whitehand Press, but his true name is Saruman. He wants to force a merger." He knew his explanation would sound weak before he even said it. There was so much more to it. Even if he had a week he could not tell the complete tale.
But Sally understood the most important key. "You mean a hostile takeover? Getting the Shire is just a tactic." The men in black almost didn't matter. They were mindless automatons bent to the will of that white- haired man. He wanted the Ring and he would do fiendish things to get it. Sally closed her mind to the horrors he would commit if he possessed it.
"It is," Mr. Baggins replied grimly. "He'll do what he can to force my hand." Including taking his company. Including harming her. His hand had not left her shoulder. He tightened his grip at the thought of how close he'd come to losing her. "However did you get away?" he asked.
Sally shook her head stiffly. "I'm not even sure. I just got so scared. It all happened so fast," she replied. She strained to pull any detail of her escape from her memory but it hurt to focus. All she could think was that her shoes were gone. She absentmindedly closed her cell phone still clutched tightly in her hand. She looked back to her concerned employer. A strange object leaning against his leg caught her eye. It resembled the hilt of a small sword. "What were you going to do?" she asked, not able to look away from it.
He followed her gaze to the sword and then moved it under the seat out of sight. He almost seemed embarrassed. "I was coming to get you," he admitted quietly.
Sally realized that she had already considered his coming to her rescue. She smiled weakly. "I am very grateful, Sir, but I have a feeling that would have been very stupid."
He did not reflect her smile but only said sadly, "I didn't know what else to do, Sally."
Sally leaned her head back in her seat and looked out the window. She recognized immediately which direction the car had taken. Without a specific destination the driver assumed they would want to return to the office. That place did not seem safe to her anymore. "What do we do now?" she asked.
Mr. Baggins held his head in his hands defeatedly. "I don't know anymore," he confessed with quiet despair. "L. Rond provided funds to save the Shire but with Saruman's forces watching the bank in New York…He'll stop anyone attempting to make the transfer." He dragged his face up from his hands slowly not able to pull himself up fully. "He's right. I can't do both."
Sally looked upon him with sympathy but a great sadness grew within her as she considered the details of his plan. "You had planned to send me to New York while you destroyed the Ring alone," she accused him softly. The realization hurt more than seemed natural to admit.
He looked at her. He recognized the woundedness of her large brown eyes. He had had this argument before. His chances of winning this time were no better than last. Still, he had to try. "Sally--" he began.
"That's hard, Sir," she broke in, "You would go without me." The words came out of her without a coherent thought preceding them. Her voice sounded strange, almost as if it was not her own. The emotions contained within her were strong and deep, ancient, like a trapped memory.
"That was just a taste of my road ahead," he said warningly as he pointed indistinctly behind them. "It would be the death of you to come with me, Sally, and I could not have borne that."
Sally's bottom lip drew outward and her eyes glistened with new tears. She didn't understand the intensity of the feelings or where they came from. They consumed her like the water of a rushing river coming over her head. "Not as certain as being left behind," she said.
He sighed heavily. He knew he could say nothing to convince her. He had nothing left to say. "You're the only one I trust," he admitted sadly. "I couldn't send anyone else to New York."
L. Rond's words came to her then, pulling her to the surface, clearing her mind. 'Stay close to him. He needs someone he can trust.' In her fear, she had behaved childishly. She wiped her tears away with her fingertips self-consciously. "I'm going with you," she said as if her words settled the matter. In her mind, the foundations of a plan began to form. "We were meant to go together. You may only trust me, Sir, but there are those that I trust. Perhaps you can extend your confidence to include them with me."
Piper Tune leaned against the bicycle rack outside the comic shop on the corner of Ford and Vine and stared lazily at her cuticles. Her roommate, Sally, had asked her to wait for her there and Piper exerted great effort not to let her anxiety show. The truth was that beneath her blue-tipped, jet-black bangs, she worried considerably about her friend. Sally did not sound right, not herself at all. Her words were stifled, saying almost nothing at all.
Just 'wait at the shop'. So Piper waited.
Her appearance showed a woman who lived her life in a constant search for her true self. She tried on careers much like she tried on different hair colors. She almost couldn't remember what she really looked like underneath the dye.
At least she found something to do that made her happy. She had created a comic book called "Coming out of the Woodwork", a traditional story of good versus evil that made her the number one independent comic creator in the country. Some of the tales came from things she imagined as a child. Some from her dreams.
She once believed in such things as elves and trolls and wizards. Then one day she woke up and realized that those things didn't really exist. Reality came and obliterated her dreams. She'd been rebelling from it ever since. Some called her immature but she preferred to think of herself as the eternal child. She always wore a different face, just to keep the world at arm's length, hiding the fact that she'd grown up long ago.
She hated losing her innocence.
As a writer, she could bring her childhood world to life. In her stories, the hero always made it through safely. But reality threatened the purity of her dreams again. Something big was coming. She could feel it. Trouble wouldn't be a big enough word to describe it.
Piper frowned as a large, dark blue car pulled up to the curb. Too big for a car. Too small for a limo. Right now it blocked the only space in front of the shop. She stepped forward to tell the driver to move but stopped as she watched Sally get out.
Piper whistled appreciatively. "Whoa, girl. When you show up, you show up in style," she said smiling. She looked her friend over to assure herself that she was well. Her gaze stopped at Sally's feet, bloody and bare. She swallowed and hoped that her jump in concern did not show. "What the hell happened to your shoes?"
Sally glanced down at her feet as if she had forgotten. To explain would only complicate her situation further. "This isn't a social call, Piper," she said grimly.
Piper folded her arms across her chest and studied her friend's face. "I gathered that from the cryptic phone call," she said.
Part of Sally's strange demeanor faltered only to be replaced by her trademark guilty face. She ran her hand through her brown curls and grimaced. "Yeah, about that," she said uneasily, "I need to borrow your car."
Piper snorted with laughter, partly from the absurdity of the request and partly from relief. Sally in her sheepishness seemed more like herself. Maybe all her worrying was for nothing. Maybe there was no danger. Maybe Sally got caught up in something embarrassing and would tell her about it at dinner. Then she could laugh without it being a false bravado. "What, you're going to show your famous boss how the other half lives?"
Sally's eyes grew suddenly wide and she turned nervously to the still open car door. "Piper!" she cried aghast. When she looked back at her friend, she realized her mistake immediately.
Piper grinned widely in triumph. "He's in there, isn't he?" she asked slyly.
Sally's hesitation was all she needed for an answer. With a look of mischief on her face she ducked under her friend's arms and dodged her efforts to block her.
"Piper, no! Don't!!" Sally cried as she tried to stop her from entering the car.
Piper jumped into the car's dark interior with hopes of having a laugh at Sally's expense. What she found, she could not have guessed or even understood.
As her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she looked fully upon the face of Mr. Baggins. Her breath caught itself in her throat and the smile melted from her face.
As a child she had seen him in her dreams. At that moment, she realized that a part of her had searched for him her whole life. "It's you," she whispered.
He didn't even look surprised when she threw her arms around him in an embrace. He almost seemed relieved.
"You tried to give us the slip once before and failed," she said close to his ear. She had never met him before though she knew him long ago.
In the days before her innocence left her.
TBC
Author's note: It might be a couple of weeks before I update. (Yeah, big surprise there…) I am writing this and "Visions of Blood and Fire" simultaneously. I write a chapter of that and then I write a chapter of this and then I post them both the same day. Your reviews mean A LOT to me and drive me to write better and more exciting stuff for you, so review "early and often". Anyone who would like for me to notify them of updates, PLEASE, let me know.
The following chapters will introduce a couple of characters that I hope you will like. I will also expound on the thoughts of Mr. Baggins' driver. Trust me, I wasn't going to have him there just for window dressing.
Chapter Four: "Two is Company", Sally and Mr. Baggins leave for O'Hare airport but before they do there is a matter of a certain sword which needs to be taken care of. Sally finds that darkness lurks closer to her than she thinks.