(A/N: I'm sorry this is very late, I just got caught up in a bunch of other things that kept demanding my attention away from this. I really don't have any way to excuse this, I just want to apologize. There's not much else to say, except I hope you like reading it.)
I-V-O~*0*~O-V-I
Cora left the apartment with her bookbag and the contents inside of it. She was headed to the bookstore that she was recommended to when she was at the library the other day. She figured that if there was any place where she could learn more about the unusual treatise she found, it would be there.
She walked on the opposite side of the street she was walking down that day, due to the double homicide that she was now a 'suspect' in. In case there were police officers who wanted to question her if they saw her near the crime scene, she wore a jacket with the hood over her head and sweatpants to hide her identity.
She likely resembled a vagrant with what she was wearing, but that didn't bother her too much. She wore Army fatigues every day while stationed in the Middle East, even whenever she was on leave. Even before the military, she never did understand why people, particularly women, fussed about the way they dressed.
Her 'disguise' was put to the test when she walked down the sidewalk parallel to the one the murders took place on. There was a single police car guarding the black and yellow tape that protected the crime scene. She gave herself a smile when she was able to walk by without the blaring sound of the black and white vehicle.
She found the place she was looking for and, as luck would have it, it was open. She went inside, the ringing of a small bell above the door echoed in the store, and walked up the counter. It looked like no one was there, but she could hear some rustling behind a thick, barely ajar door.
"Hello?" she called out to whoever might be there.
A man around her age came out of the backroom with a box, "Hi, how can I help you?"
She shifted her bookbag and set it on the counter, taking out the book she got from the library, "I was referred to your store the other day and I was wondering if you could tell me about this."
"Well, I can tell you that it looks like something a conspiracy theorist would read," he laughed. "Um, no offense."
She shrugged, "None taken."
He looked at it again and the name of the author, "I don't think I've ever heard of this guy before. We might have something similar to this book, but I don't know, I don't remember. What's it about anyway?"
"Pretty much every conspiracy theory the US government has been accused of," she answered. "I only read a little bit of it myself. The thing that really got my interest was something about a case in Guatemala during the Cold War."
"Hm, I think there might be something here that could give you some more information on Guatemala. If that's what you're looking for," he said.
She wasn't particularly interested in learning more about the entirety of the Central American country, only where the mysterious incident the book mentioned took place, if it really happened. However, studying more about Guatemala and its history might help her narrow down a potential location, not that she had a specific plan if she was able to find more than the name Anna Gonsalves.
"Might as well take a look while I'm here," she replied. "At least it'll make me feel less like a burn bag."
"A what?" he asked, confused.
"I was in the military," she answered, "it's a term I heard when I first started out."
"Oh. Thanks for your service," he said.
"It was a team effort," she smiled.
He tapped the counter with his hand, "I'll be back in just a second."
He went into the backroom again, returning a minute later with a couple of books. The books were rather large, which meant they were likely textbooks.
"I have these," he displayed them in front of her, "and there might be some other stuff on the shelves."
She nodded, "Okay, thanks."
Since she would have to read the books to know if any of them were useful, she would have to buy them, she was not in a library. Before deciding to purchase them, she wanted to look around and see if there was another book that could help her.
She left the books he brought out on the counter and looked at the bookshelves. She took slow steps as she scoured the rows of fictional and nonfictional titles.
John returned home from the precinct to check on Cora, to see if she was any better than the previous day. He hoped she would not ask him any questions or demand more answers, he knew she likely wanted to know where the investigation was going.
His commanding officer removed him from the case, a decision which he did not protest, he could not bear the thought of arresting and interrogating his own niece. Since it had become high-profile, it was transferred from the Homicide Unit to the Major Case Squad at One Police Plaza.
He also suspected the real reason why Major Case was given jurisdiction was due to many of his colleagues knowing her since before his brother disappeared, including the squad superior. One Police Plaza being involved in the case meant that not only were the detectives of the Major Case Squad were investigating, but Internal Affairs as well.
The investigators in Internal Affairs were the police of the police, if they found out he was the one who called Dmitri and asked him to be her lawyer for the interrogation, he would be cleaning out his desk. He could only hope that his Russian friend was using a prepaid cell phone instead of his own.
He could only imagine how his brother would react if he found out his daughter was a person of interest in three murders. He figured he would likely cause a scene, yelling in every language he knew and quite possibly throwing a punch or two at his colleagues.
'Alan always did have a temper,' he thought with a smile, shaking his head.
He made it up to the apartment and put his key into the door, discovering that it was unlocked. He quickly opened it, only to see an empty, quiet flat.
He went to her room, seeing the scrubs she got from Melinda in a heap on the floor, her wallet and phone were gone. He took out his own phone and called her, but it immediately went to voicemail, it was either turned off or the battery was dead.
"Dammit!" he hissed to himself. "I told her not to leave!"
He ran out of the apartment to look for her before she was found by someone else. If the agents that interrogated her or the being that he suspected killed the people she was accused of murdering got to her before he did, he would never see her again.
"Was denkt sie?" he muttered, dragging his hand down his face in frustration.
She was beginning to think that all she would have were the books waiting for her at the checkout. She looked through almost every shelf and found nothing that could help her.
Just as she was about to give up and leave, she found a book that gave information about Central and South American history and cultures. It wasn't exactly what she was hoping to find, but she was willing to take it if it gave her any type of information.
She took it to the counter and set it with the others, "So how much is it for all of these?"
He scanned all of them into the computer in front of him, "That'll be thirty dollars."
Since she didn't want to use her credit card, she asked, "Do you accept cash?"
"Yeah, that's fine," he said.
She opened her wallet and took out three ten dollar bills, "Here you go."
"Thank you. So… are you doing anything later?" he asked her flirtatiously.
She scowled and grabbed her newly-purchased books, "Get a life."
She couldn't believe he had the audacity to attempt asking her out. She learned her lesson with men like him a long time ago. If he knew what her background was, he would be a cowering mess on the floor, curled in a fetal position.
She opened her bookbag and put her new items of study inside of it. She wasn't going to spend another second inside of the store, there was another place she wanted to go to. She wanted to go back to the library to see if there were any more books she could read and write additional notes, before reading the ones she had.
Once she started walking down the sidewalk to her next destination, she kept her head down. It was risky for her to be in the open for a long period, especially with the fake cops that she was interrogated by potentially looking for her. She wasn't afraid of them, she was raised by a police officer and spent years in a warzone, but she wanted to be under the radar as much as she could.
It wasn't only them she was concerned about, but her uncle as well. He often never came home with the amount of hours he used to investigate his cases. However, she had a feeling that he would visit their apartment frequently to see if she was alright. If he did, then he would immediately take notice of her absence.
She was only a couple of blocks away from the library when she suddenly heard sirens blaring. Still keeping her head down, she tried to look as unsuspicious as she could, hoping the cars would drive past her without a passing glance; unfortunately, they would not.
Cars and vans came from both ends of the street in an attempt to block her path. The vehicles did not belong to the NYPD, there was nothing - other than a flashing blue and red light mounted on one of them - to suggest that they were used by any known law enforcement agency.
Emerging from the car with the police lights on top of it were Edwards and Jones. She gripped the strap of her bookbag tightly, her heart beating faster with anger.
"Scheisse," she growled.
"Hello again, Ms. Schaefer," Edwards greeted, sneering.
She placed her hand over her pocket, secretly turning on her phone, which she turned off so that it wouldn't ring at the library. She also didn't want to be bombarded with phone calls from her uncle, family friends, including Errol, Dmitri and Melinda, or the police officers John worked with at the precinct.
Her hand went into her pocket to open her phone, pressing a couple of buttons. The phone number of the person she was calling was on speed dial.
"Put your hands where we can see them," Jones ordered. Silently, she raised her hands in the air; she didn't need them anymore, she managed to make her call.
"We're going to need you to come with us," Edwards said, presenting a pair of handcuffs with one finger.
Her glaze went from them to the vehicles they brought with them. Through the windows, she could see the drivers were wearing tactical armor and armed with automatic rifles, which she was very familiar with being an ex-soldier.
She was not sure why they would need heavy artillery if their plan was to arrest her. They couldn't have thought she was a significant threat, could they? She left all of her weapons behind in the Middle East.
"Please don't make this difficult," Jones said.
"Ublyudki," she hissed under her breath.
"That foreign language crap won't work on us." Edwards reached for her wrist to put the handcuffs on her.
Out of nowhere, the same word she had just said was suddenly repeated in her own voice, "Ublyudki." However, she was not the one who said it.
A burst of light and energy hit one of the vehicles all of sudden, causing it to explode, killing the driver. Cora, Edwards, and Jones dropped to the ground and covered their heads to protect themselves from the blaze.
A distorted humanoid shape appeared in the middle of the road, a clicking sound eerily ringing with the strong plumes in the background. Immediately, the other drivers ran out and aimed their lethal weapons at it, firing several rounds. All of the bullets missed and the shooters were suspended in the air, impaled by an invisible force, bleeding from gaping wounds.
A pair of glowing yellow eyes turned their attention to them. Large pellucid hands grabbed Jones and Edwards, holding them up as they were analyzed. When it was done with them, they were thrown to the ground with enough force to crack their skulls open. They lay unconscious on the gravelly-textured street, blood spilling out of their injuries.
Finally, the eyes turned their gaze to her, while she was still on the ground with one cuff clamped around her wrist. She was afraid after all of the carnage she witnessed, but she was not afraid of dying because she thought she knew who this killer was. If the ultimate motive was to kill her, she would have died the other day.
She didn't know what he planned to do with her, but rather than lay down, she stood up. If his motivation was to finish what he started, she preferred not to be sick, old canine minutes from being put to sleep.
His gaze moved from her to the ground, noticing something unusual. What he saw was her wallet, it fell out of her pocket when she dropped down to avoid the blaze of the explosion.
She kept a picture of herself and her father taken shortly before he disappeared inside of her wallet to have him close to her at all times, it slipped out of the pocket it was held in. The nearly invisible being picked it up, seemingly analyzing it.
After several moments, the photograph was floating in front of her. Although cautious and unsure of what he was thinking, she took it nevertheless.
While she was putting the picture back into her wallet, she heard an unexpected voice, her uncle's, "Proud father." Except, he wasn't there and it sounded like a recording was speaking to her.
It took her a little while before she eventually realized that the recording of his voice was likely coming from the being in front of her. Why he had a couple of words from a conversation they had recently was a bit of a mystery to her, but not something she pondered, because she thought she already knew how it was obtained.
"Why are you here? Why are you following me?" she questioned strongly. "Is this revenge for something? Is that why you're stalking me?"
Suddenly, he became visible before her and she heard a reconstruction of her own words, "Following… you here…"
"Why? What do you want? What do you have against me?" she queried.
"Want… revenge. Proud father… ublyudki… against…" Afterwards, he raised his arm and became translucent once again.
He leapt onto the roof of one of the cars and jumped to the top of a nearby building. She watched him for a minute before losing sight of him, it was almost as though he had disappeared.
Her mouth dropped open as she processed everything that she heard from him. He wasn't targeting her, he wanted her father, he wanted his head on a stake.
She didn't know how he could have known of him or why he sought revenge on him. She knew that he must have seen the similarities between them in her photography, so he knew they were related, but she had a difficult time trying to figure out what his motives were. For as smart as she was, this was a mystery she could not solve, not at the moment.
As she looked in the direction of where the being left in, she didn't notice when a car came up to her and stopped. Her focus turned to it when she heard a door open and shut.
I-V-O~*0*~O-V-I
(A/N: And… finally done! This took way too long to start and eventually finish (don't let its length fool you). I'm glad it's done though and I'm sure all of you are too.
Translations:
1. Was denkt sie? - What is she thinking? (German)
2. Scheisse. - Shit. (German
3. Ublyudki. - Bastards. (Russian)
4. Burn bag - a bag used to hold papers to be burned; a useless person
Initially, I did want Thite to be in this chapter more, but as I got to work on the second half of this, I decided that it would be better if he had his own separate one. Anyway, that'll be in the next chapter and that's all I'm gonna tell you.
Well, I think that's enough for now because I am tired (very busy pretty soon and very busy right now). I'll try not to keep you waiting for too long next time.)