A/N thanks for the reviews, seriously, I'm flattered. Also, check out SpashleyU dot com, it's all the Spashley clips without any of the other stuff in the way...
May 16, 2008 6:08pm Los Angeles – Stan's Swifty Mart.
They'd been sitting there on the dirty, cracked tile floor of Stan's for over an hour, none of them sure how to go about following the directions they had been given. Few words had been spoken in that time besides the occasional, checking up with each other and murmured words of reassurance that they wouldn't be there that long. Sooner, rather than later, the authorities would rescue them and it would all be over. These are the words that the seven told themselves to comfort themselves; to make it through this nightmare that none of them in a million years would have ever predicted they would be in.
All their cellphones, purses, and wallets had been taken from them. Ashley was about to crack from the silence and lack of activity. She wasn't one to just sit around, often accused of having ADHD, she didn't deny it, in fact she often agreed. On some level she found it funny that her mother had sent her to dozens of shrinks over the years but never once allowed any of them to put her on any type of medication. As if going to a shrink was the fashionable thing to do for LA's elite but being on medication wasn't. Never mind the fact that her own mother had a mini pharmacy in her bathroom.
"Are you ok?" a quiet voice asked, interrupting Ashley's inner musings.
"Peachy." Ashley sarcastically replied, rolling her eyes. She turned to look into the still scared blue eyes of the blonde next to her, puffy and bloodshot from the tears that had finally subsided a while ago. "Well, except for the fact that I'm being held captive in a dirty minimart by gun toting, freaks with a Bunim and Murray complex. Otherwise, yeah, peachy."
"Oh, ah…okay." Spencer shrugged, not sure what to say to the brunette's outburst. Placing a hand gently on the hazel eyed girl's bouncing knee, Spencer gave her a small smile. "I couldn't tell from all the fidgeting."
Ashley stopped the movement as soon as she felt the pressure of Spencer's hand on the denim but it started again as soon as the student withdrew her touch.
"My granddaughter fidgets all the time. Her mother, my daughter, is forever telling her, 'Keisha, quit that fidgeting.' But I say leave the child alone, she isn't hurting anyone. It's just her way of letting some of that endless energy she has out." Rhonda smiled, a faraway look in her eyes while talking about her family.
"How many grandchildren do you have?" Spencer asked the older woman, trying to ignore the cameras catching their every move and word while blocking out the other two men who had their guns constantly trained on them.
"My daughter just had another baby a few months ago, so now I have four. Three beautiful little granddaughter's and the oldest one is a boy, my Marcus. He's such a bright boy. He's only 8 but he won his school's spelling bee, beating out even the older kids." The pride clearly shown in her dark eyes and bright smile while talking about her grandson.
"Aw, he sounds like my older brother Clay. He's in his last year as Princeton, studying to get his doctorate."
"Your parents must be so proud!" Rhonda exclaimed. "One child at Princeton and another at UCLA."
"Yeah and one who works at Stan's Swift Mart." Ashley cut in loudly, smirking at Glen, who was talking quietly to Madison. "What happened there?"
"Shut up, you don't even know me or anything about me." Glen angrily replied, Ashley's loud comment catching his attention.
"At least he has a job," Madison added, "Ms. Next Big Thing. More like next big nothing, LA is full of those."
Next to Ashley, Aiden muffled a laugh, "You obvious have no clue who…umph" Aiden shot a hurt look at Ashley, rubbing the ribs she had just roughly elbowed.
"I'm going to be one day." She finished, "But that's ok, sometimes it's hard to recognize greatness when you've settled for…" Ashley ran her eyes around the rundown convenience store, finally landing on the blonde guy, "mediocrity."
"Hey, that is my brother you're talking about." Spencer chided, scowling at the girl next to her.
"Come on now, bickering with each other isn't going to make this any better." Rhonda interrupted before even more words could be exchanged between the younger hostages. "You all are just upset and lashing out because you're scared. It's ok to be scared but we don't need to be turning on each other from the get go. Alright?" She fixed each of them with a hard stare, the kind that only mother could give, perfected over the years with the addition of grandchildren.
"Yes" "Yeah" was mumbled from the Carlin kids and Aiden. Madison just glared at the brunette who had started it all.
"Whatever. It doesn't matter." Ashley moodily replied standing up. Her sudden movement caused the others to jump slightly, apprehension fell over the group as they waited to see what the gunmen would do. Ashley looked slowly looked around, realization hitting her as to what she had just done.
When none of the white masked freaks made a move to make her sit back down or shoot her with their big guns, she cautiously turned around to open the cooler door she had been sitting against for the last two hours. Taking a diet peach Snapple out for herself, she reached over and grabbed a red bull for Aiden. Everyone else watched her transfixed, as if she was performing delicate open heart surgery instead of only grabbing a couple drinks out of the cooler.
She glanced down, seeing all eyes on her, "What? I'm thirsty, anyone else want anything while I'm up?"
When she got no reply, she shrugged and twisted the cap on her drink. The loud pop of the cap caused a few people to jump again, which only made her shake her head laughing to cover the fact that the noise had caused her to jump as well. She handed the Red Bull to a grateful Aiden.
"Um, excuse me; you are going to pay for that." Madison raised one eyebrow at the girl who had just helped herself to one of her products.
Ashley turned and faced the store manager, "are you for real? We're being held hostage in a fucking convenience store for God knows how long and you're worried about me paying for a drink?"
"It's my job as the manager of this store to make sure all inventory is accounted for. I can't just let people help themselves to whatever they want." Madison replied, "Besides it's not as if you can't afford it with your fancy designer clothes and the brand new Porsche I saw you drive up in with your boyfriend there."
"Ugh, you know what, whatever. Seeing as they took my purse, put it on my tab." Rolling her eyes the brunette took another long drink of her Snapple.
Aiden glanced nervously over at Madison before opening his drink and taking a long swig. His throat had been so dry it was almost painful. He closed his eyes in relief as the carbonated liquid made its way down his parched throat, making it easier to swallow.
"Fine, I will!" Madison got up with a huff and marched over a couple aisles, too pissed to even notice one of the cameraman and a gun man follow her every move.
She grabbed a spiral notebook and a package of 5 Bic pens from the shelf. Then made her way back towards the coolers and sat back down. Aggressively opening the package of pens, she grabbed one and opened the notebook. On the top she wrote 'Tab Tally' then made a column with Ashley's name and wrote 'Snapple, diet peach - 1.29, Red bull - 2.19' under the name.
"Don't forget to include yourself for that notebook and pens." Ashley sarcastically called to Madison, finding the entire thing absurd.
"I don't have to, I'm using them for administrative purposes." Was the equally sarcastic reply.
"Whatever." Ashley looked down at Spencer who been looking between Ashley and the gunmen, trying to see their reaction to the two hostages standing and moving around. They didn't seem to discourage it, at least they didn't make any moves with the guns to stop Ashley or Madison from moving around. It was hard to tell though considering their faces where covered. "Thirsty, Blondie? It's on me."
Despite herself, Spencer smiled at the feisty girl standing over her. "Well in that case, can I get a Snapple Iced Tea?"
Ashley opened the cooler door again, "Sweetened or unsweetened?"
"Sweetened, please?" Spencer took the offered drink with a grateful smile. "Thanks."
"What about you, grandma? What do you want?"
"I'll just take a water, thank you." Ashley nudged Aiden with her foot. The dark hair guy looked over at the gunmen before scooting over, not wanting to chance getting them all shot. Ashley opened up the door that Aiden had been sitting against and pulled out a bottle of water. She handed it over to the dark woman who smiled warmly at her.
"You get that, Ms. Manager? That was another Snapple and a bottle of water." Ashley sneered at Madison, who was indeed writing everything down.
Madison merely huffed and ignored the taunting brunette.
"Hey, she's only doing her job." Glen tried to reason, not wanting to be stuck for who knew how long with two fighting girls.
Ashley laughed, "We're being held at gunpoint by what looks like retarded albino rejects from the Blue Man Group and she's concerned about a few drinks? Newsflash Mr. Assistant Manager, in training, we're all in this together. So if we want to have a few drinks because we're thirsty… So. Fucking. What." Ashley ran an agitated hand through her wavy chestnut locks. "If we want to eat one of your year old hot dogs because we get hungry…So. Fucking. What. Does any of that really matter considering the situation we're in?"
The two men with the guns didn't flinch at Ashley's outburst, they continued to watch the entire group, guns pointed steady at the hostages in front of them. Meanwhile, the two with the cameras continued filming, one zoomed in on Ashley, the other catching the groups reactions.
Rhonda stood up and put a comforting hand on Ashley to stop her tirade, "Hush, now, child, we don't need to be getting upset with each other. Let Madison keep her tally if it makes her feel comfortable. We all just need to calm down. I know this is a hard situation we've found ourselves in but we have to stay levelheaded if we don't want anyone to get hurt." She spoke in smoothing tones to Ashley, calming the girl down.
Spencer looked up in alarm at the mention of anyone getting hurt. She shifting, trying to ease the ach that was starting in her butt and lower back from sitting on the hard floor for hours. She wanted to stand but was afraid that too many of them standing up and moving around would make their captors nervous or worse, causing them to shoot. She glimpsed over and found Aiden staring back. He looked up at his friend and gave a little shrug, as if to say he didn't know what to do with her either.
"Don't worry, Spence, we'll get out of this okay, I promise." Glen quietly said as he scooted over to where Rhonda had been sitting before getting up to calm Ashley down. He wrapped an arm around his sister and pulled her close. "I'll figure something out."
Spencer allowed her brother to hold her, as much as she hated being there, at least having Glen with her made her feel a little better.
May 16, 2008 6:14pm Los Angeles – Outside Stan's Swifty Mart.
Paula Carlin stared at the screen, her heart pulling at the sight of her very scared little girl not looking up as the camera moved to show Glen standing up to rush to his sister, only to be pushed back against the glass doors of the coolers by the barrel of a gun. Her heart stopped at the sight of Glen being held in place with it pressed directly over his heart. The camera then swung back to show Spencer, her eyes as wide as saucers, filled with tears. Terror was written all over her face and Paula would have crumbled into a crying mess right there on the pavement, under the tent they now stood in with the other hostages families watching the broadcast, if her husband, Arthur, hadn't been holding her up.
"Oh, God." He moaned, watching as his baby girl stuttered out her name, age and the fact she was a UCLA student into the camera. He looked behind him at Stan's Swifty Mart. It killed his as a father that his children were just on the other side of the concrete and glass but he couldn't get to them.
Next to them, a well dressed African American woman cried as the image of a woman who looked to be an older version of her came onto the screen. "Momma…We have to do something, Momma is in there!" She yelled into her phone.
Another man came up to her, his skin a light mocha color, his eyes held a steely determination. He hugged her to his chest, much like Arthur was now holding his wife after Glen had come onto the screen giving his stats as well.
Arthur was proud, his son looked calm and completely in control of his emotions. Just knowing that Glen was there with Spencer made him feel much better, he knew Glen would never let anything happen to his little sister. He also knew that Glen would never do anything to put either of them in danger. As much as he wished this had never happened, that neither of his children where inside that store, they fact that they weren't alone was a small comfort in a very difficult situation.
"…doing everything they can. All we can do is wait to see what these people want." The man whispered into the woman's ear.
"I don't care, Seth, they should be doing more. Our mother is in there with gun-toting maniacs, anything could happen." She yelled as she pushed him away.
"Look, Cecily, I know you're upset, we all are, but the only thing we can do is wait. As soon as we get a better understanding of what they want, then we'll know what to do." Seth tried to reason with the upset woman but she just shook her head and turned away, walking while dialing another number on her phone.
Dozens of people were crowded under the tent that had been set up for the families of the hostages to watch the feed on CNBC of what was happening within the store a few hundred feet away from them on the other side of the parking lot. The street had been closed off so the tent sat on the road, back behind the police line that surrounded the building. The store sat by itself, an empty lot on one side of it and a burnt out building on the other that was separated by another parking lot. Commissioner Bradley was grateful that there weren't any residential homes to evacuate; it was one of the only things to be grateful for in this mess.
"Commissioner…" An Asian man in his early 30's ran up catching the Commissioners attention.
"What it is, Detective Lee?" Bradley asked impatiently, he was running late with meeting the liaison for the FBI that had been assigned to the case.
"Sir, we ran all the plates and vins for the cars in the parking lot and behind the store like you asked." Detective Lee took out his notebook and started reading what he had found. "The two delivery trucks were stolen out of Nevada two days ago from a truck rental agency and the plates were all stolen off trucks at the U-Haul in San Jose. The two cars parked in the back, the red Stratus is registered to Glen Carlin and the Camry to Madison Duarte."
Lee continued on as he almost had to jog to keep up with the brisk walking Commissioner, "In the front lot the Porsche was reported stolen but that has been corrected, Ashley Davies and Aiden Dennison were identified as the persons who had taken it out for a test drive this afternoon. The blue Volkswagen is registered to Arthur Carlin and has been identified as the vehicle Spencer Carlin uses. The Honda Accord is registered to Darius Trokovic and the Altima is registered to Rhonda Peterson."
The Commissioner stopped and turned to look at Detective Lee, a displeased look on his face, "Wait, that accounts for all the hostages they claim to have."
"Yes, sir, I know…"
"Then who the hell does the Expedition belong too?"
"We ran that one and it comes back registered to a Harold Michaels, 42, a CPA who works downtown at one of the studios. We sent a patrol car to his home. His wife said he hadn't been home yet and she hadn't been able to get a hold of him since she last talked to him around 3:30pm. He told her he was on his way home and she asked him to stop and pick up some Milk and a Reese's for her. They live in that Meadow Brooke Subdivision about three miles down the road from here."
"Are you trying to tell me there is another person in that store that we haven't been made aware of?" The vein on Bradley's forehead started pulsing as he took in this new information and why they hadn't heard anything about Harold Michaels yet.
"It looks that way, sir." Detective Lee swallowed, cursing his luck at drawing the short straw and being the one who had to deliver the news to the already frustrated Commissioner.
"Then where the hell is Harold Michaels?"