Operation Glitterberries
Chapter 08: Home Invasion III
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Disclaimer: Daria and associated characters are owned by MTV and Viacom. This is fan fiction written for entertainment only. No money or other negotiable currency or goods have been exchanged.
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As soon as she opened the door Melody knew she had screwed up, the cop was three feet farther than she had intended and while on the big scheme of things it was not what could be called a big distance, in close quarters combat it meant the difference between stabbing an unsuspecting dupe in the back and going hand to hand with a man that more than doubled her weight and half as tall.
Plus it seemed that the officer was quite the gunslinger, it took him less than a heartbeat to turn around, recognize the threat she posed and shot at her from the hip, much to her chagrin a truly remarkable display of training and instincts when reacting to an unknown situation from zero.
Later when she had a few moments to think about the combat, and for the first time since this debacle started, Melody was sincerely glad to be in the body of a petite teen instead of an average sized one. It was the training of the cop was the one thing that ended betraying him. Few agencies have targets the size of children available in the shooting range and those who do more often than not use them to represent innocent bystanders and hostages, not enemies.
The result of that particular quirk of training was the way he instinctually aimed a tad too high; if he had been fighting against a fully grown man there was little doubt that the shot would have gone at the center of his body mass, hitting a lung or maybe even his heart; if he had been fighting a regular sized teenage girl then his bullet would have gone through a shoulder incapacitating her.
As it was the shot had passed a hairsbreadth from her neck, so close than her clothes were stained with cordite and only the adrenalin going through her veins prevented her from stopping in shock. Using the impetus she had gathered in her charge she didn't allow him the chance to adjust his aim for a second shot before she was upon him, thrusting with the knife in her right hand exactly where his heart was.
This time it was a desire to go to the harder target, the heart, instead of the easier to reach belly what almost cost her the fight. A barely interposed left arm in a desperate block made her miss the correct point of entry in which she would be able to slip the blade with no resistance, and her lack of muscle memory didn't allow her to properly redirect her strike; instead her knife was deviated slightly to the side, sliding on a rib in an outward angle that made her lose her grip just as she had predicted it would happen with the pummel that was too large for her small hands.
Even then fortune decided to favor her, because even if this particular officer was tough enough to keep fighting even after the large slice she had carved on his chest, and he was indeed that tough, the reflexive step backwards he took plus the impact that the girl imparted during their clash was enough for him to fall from the stairs almost taking Melody with him if she hadn't been able to get a hold of the handrail at the last second.
It was the fact that he felt on an angle the only reason that his neck wasn't broken by the fall, the weight of his body steering him to the left and making him crash against the handrail with enough force to split it in half, and breaking his arm in the process, before bouncing in the opposite direction to fall in the lower floor more or less on his nose breaking it and getting a nasty concussion but avoiding any major spinal injuries.
For a moment she stared into the sprawled form of the policeman on the floor, hearing him moaning in pain despite the sound of the shot still ringing on her ears, hurting but still alive. Then her gaze found his semiautomatic less than a foot from his body and she was running down the stairs at her best adrenalin fueled speed before just lunging towards it just in time to hold the gun that less than five seconds ago almost killed her and aim the very confused form of the blonde in front of her.
** I ** II ** III ** IV **
After officer Winston left to turn off whatever was doing the racket upstairs Marianne searched for the remote for a few seconds before just using the off button of the TV. Doing so she noticed something curious.
'Weird,' she thought, 'why does the alarm is set for 7:30 PM?'
Dismissing it as a silly mistake from the Morgendorffers she went once more to the office to make another call to Helen. "Miss Morgendorffer, we already prepared the overnight bags for the family, and I got your papers ready, however we couldn't found your agenda anywhere."
"This is getting better and better, isn't it?"
"I could get most of the recent numbers from the firm's ledger."
"You're right, is time for it to be used for something more than billing unauthorized phone calls, but I need to contact the rest of Jake's family's as well as mine, and I make a point of never calling them in office hours," and in a lower, more bitter voice, "or at all if I can help it."
"If you give me their names I'll get them in the directory."
"First one would be my mother in law Ruth Morgendorffer, her son is ill, no matter how much I…" Marianne was distracted from the conversation by a short, sharp, noise coming upstairs, followed by a much closer crash and crack that gave her a bad feeling.
"Just a second Helen, something wrong."
Without waiting from a response form her boss she rushed the stairs, and what she found horrified her. Officer Winston was sprawled on the floor with one arm in an unnatural angle and a growing stain in his uniform. She was about to go and help him, or call an ambulance, or something when she saw a dark figure run down the stairs and without bothering to slow down kneeling and taking something from the ground.
What the person took was immediately evident as she pointed the gun to her.
"Hands up." The voice was soft, yet it would be hard to describe the amount of sheer menace that those few words could carry. Even as she did as told, she realized that those words were uttered by a woman. No, a girl.
"Lay down on the floor... slowly." As soon as she hit the floor she was there, touching her with surprisingly small hands, and said hands were trembling, she could also heard her panting as if she was out of breath she noted with a mixture of hope and dread. It could mean that she was tired, scared and unwilling to harm her, or she could be scared and tired enough to do something stupid.
Once she was done palming her for weapons or something, she went and did the same with the policeman, while from her position from the floor she could still not see her face, she could see her checking his pockets with swift movements, getting amongst other things the notebook where he recorded her name and address and two ammunition magazines and a pair of handcuffs from pouches on his belt.
Only his moans and the occasional movement of his head allow her to see that his short time friend was still alive and moving, but he definitely wasn't okay. Gathering a lifetime of courage she voiced her thoughts, "He needs a hospital, please…"
"Come here." Her captor decided not to acknowledge her plea. She was about to stand when she stopped her.
"Don't stand up, crawl here," and she had no choice but to do as told.
"Who are you?"
"Marianne Richmond." Then she arrived alongside the fallen cop. Without preamble her kidnapper shackled her hand to the policeman's using his own handcuffs.
"Tell me Miss Richmond, what were you doing inside the house."
"I came for a few things for my boss. Please, Officer Winston needs help."
"Right now the officer got a broken arm and a gash on his side that, while nasty, didn't cut through any important organs and therefore he's probably going to live, something that I don't care one way or another. However I can tell by his eyes that he also got a concussion when I threw him from the stairs; how severe I don't know, but what I know is that it won't allow him to answer my questions in a coherent manner, and therefore he is useless to me. I recommend you not to become useless as well." With that comment, done with the same level of mercy a shark would show to a goldfish, any hopes that she could plea to the morality of the girl were dashed.
"Now I need to go for a few things, you can help by putting him against the wall opposite from the stairs before I get back; you may also use that time to provide basic first aid. If you try something else I will kill him and then I'll shot you somewhere painful and eventually lethal."
As soon as the girl turned her back and climbed the stairs Marianne then stood up as fast as she could and half dragged Wilson to the wall, thankful for the fact that he had just enough strength to half stagger his way, which meant that while he was moving worst that a drunk sailor she didn't need to content with his whole weight, something she was pretty sure she wouldn't be able to do anyway.
Then as she cut pieces from her skirt to dress his wounds she waited anxiously for her captor's return.
** I ** II ** III ** IV **
Melody saw how the policeman was carried away from the stairs while she went to the upper floor to pick up her things, by letting the woman help her partner she removed them from a position where, if desperate enough, she could assault her on her way down and maybe win despite her obvious fear and lack of physical abilities.
'Look who's talking,' a small part of her in the back of her head whispered in a monotone voice.
She despised her newfound weakness now more than ever; she was sure that while searching for weapons her prisoner must have realized that her hands were trembling almost uncontrollably, for that matter the fact that she was almost completely out of breath for about ten seconds worth of fighting was hard to miss. The final insult was that she was uncertain that if she had tried to escape at one point or another she would have been able to subdue someone who probably was a harmless civilian tied to a (half) dead weight without resorting to shoot her.
Then she arrived to the scene of her first real hand to hand fight during this particular operation, or at least the first one she currently remembered. As she picked her bloodied knife she decided to focus on the most positive aspects of the encounter such as the fact that while her body had not been completely up to the task, her tactical mind was as sharp as ever. Even with the added complication of the carpeted floor throwing her calculations on the relative position of the cop by some critical feet, she had been able to set a hastily thrown ambush successfully. Not many people were able to bring a knife to a gunfight and leave walking.
She was about to clean the blood out of the knife with her clothes when she decided that maybe it was better to let it like that to get an additional edge when interrogating the woman, Marianne. It was ironic, but the more scared she was the safer it would be for both of them. If her answers were truthful and she didn't try anything stupid like trying to escape, she would not be forced to kill her.
Right now she had a little time, there had been a single shot inside the house, and the entire upper floor was carpeted and had its windows closed, outside the house people would hear a muffled sound, barely stronger than a shot on the TV, and with the wrong sound. In the middle of an upper middle class neighborhood the chances that someone would recognize the sound for what it was minimal. What worried her were their superiors, if either Officer Winston or Miss Richmond were on a schedule and if they didn't check on time then someone might end missing them.
Entering once more to the bathroom she could clearly see the path that the bullet took after missing her, going through the open door and the shower's curtain, to embed itself on the wall. Just two inches down, or half a second more to aim… She was damn lucky.
Fighting off another shudder that had nothing to do with adrenalin she went to the basin and poured water from it, throwing some to her face and even drinking a little, she didn't fear cholera here as much as in Cambodian jungles she had visited, after that she gathered her backpack and the computer's case she had borrowed from the Morgendorffer's daughter and turned back where she had left the pair.
On the way down she extracted a bottle of water she had purchased earlier in the morning, her backpack was already a little too heavy with her bounty and drunk from it as she mentally cataloged the most relevant questions she had to ask to Marianne. No, not Marianne, the prisoner; she could not allow herself to feel pity for others right now, pity let to sloppiness and sloppiness was death when operating without backup to catch the screw-ups.
The woman hadn't been idle while she was gone, she had indeed carried the cop to the wall and she had used her own clothes to try to stop the blood pouring from his side and to let his head in a more comfortable position. Her inexperience with first aid was evident to even the amateurs, both in the way she wasn't applying enough pressure on wounds than thankfully weren't particularly life threatening, and in the fact that she was clearly more concerned about the irrelevant knife wound instead of worrying more about his arm, which she could actually aggravate with her actions.
"Be careful. The cut is shallow, there the ribs did their job, but if you keep moving his broken arm like that he might end losing it." To her credit, even if she was crying and clearly scared, she immediately stopped what she was doing and realized that while not really putting undue stress on the arm, she hadn't let it on a stable position earlier. Good, giving her hope, even if it was probably just an illusion, that there would be an 'after' would weaken her resolve to keep information for herself.
She used the moment of frantic activity to check the contents of the big suitcase that they had been carrying outside, finding there only clothes and other mostly useless paraphernalia. After more than enough time has passed for Richmond to reposition the moaning cop back into a more comfortable position she decided to start the interrogation in earnest.
"Well Miss Richmond, could you tell me who do you work for? The truth please, you don't want me to catch you lying." The woman had caught sight of the knife, as well as the blood staining it and she was fixating on her hands, probably too distracted to lie.
"In the Law Firm of 'Vitale, Davis, Horowitz, Riordan, Schrecter, Schrecter, and Schrecter', I'm a secretary working on their corporative law department. I'm also the mother of two, Mike and Oscar, please."
"Oh, and why does a secretary needs to get inside a house, especially with a cop?, because I didn't find a search warrant with him, and even if he had one, a law firm would send someone with a little more rank to represent them." Her story had many holes, but depending of how did she covered them she would get an inking of her true intensions.
She was looking down towards the cop, evading looking at her, when she answered the question. "My boss suffered an accident a few days ago, and she ask me to come here to get some papers and personal items. Officer Winston was called to escort me and open the house."
The answer infuriated Melody, she knew exactly what kind of accident the owners of this house had suffered, and how improbable was that any of them would ever recover. "And tell me, which papers would be worth so much effort to get."
Needing to see her eyes when she answered the question to make sure that she wasn't trying to get one pass her she raised the secretary's head with the flat of the knife, however her reaction was quite unexpected.
"Oh my god, Daria!?"
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Until now most of the errant that Marianne was doing in her house had been a complete disaster. As if she hadn't had enough problems before.
Jake had probably borrowed the emergency cash they had on the safe, probably thinking that such an emergency might never come, a sin she had committed herself, even if she wouldn't admit it unless under oath and with supporting physical evidence. And due to the restrictions that the police had imposed, she couldn't even get the credit cards.
Then her agenda was missing, she was damn sure that she let it on her bed, or was it on the kitchen when preparing sandwiches for the trip? Whatever. The problem was that neither Marianne nor the cop were able to find it, and while Marianne's idea of using her ledger to get the numbers of the most recently called clients and friends was quite good, the fact was that the people she really needed to call were the ones that she was barely in speaking terms, and therefore they would need to hunt down on the directory of three different states. And she couldn't even start coordinating the search because she had been left hanging.
Helen was barely holding her anger in check, if she hated something was to be left waiting in the line, even more when she knew just how expensive the call would be; and for her secretary to be the one doing it… She couldn't even make out through the phone what was she talking with the cop, in fact she couldn't even make his voice at all. For all she knew, they could be checking the family album and laughing at the pictures.
Well, it was going to take all of her willpower to keep herself from scolding her until Marianne was a shivering mess, only the fact that she was doing her a non work related favor outside of office hours stopped her from screaming her name until she picked up again.
What else could go wrong?
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"Oh my god, Daria!?"
Not even the knife touching her chin was able to restrain her from saying the name out loud. Now that she could see for the first time the face of her captor she was able to immediately recognize the characteristic glasses and the eyes behind them. She could barely believe it, the girl who was holding her hostage was no other than the very same reason she had come to Helen's house in the first place.
But her hair, her clothes and her entire poise were completely different; hell she hadn't recognized her voice at all without that sarcastic monotone she always used, it now was filled with cold aggression; more emotional, but at the same time far more impersonal than ever before.
"Oh my god Daria, it's me Marianne. What happened to you?"
"Then you do know me. Umm, I wonder…"
'She's thinking about it. Maybe she'll let me go. Helen told me she's a good girl…' One time Daria had shamed her mother enough that she had been able to get out of work on time, a practical impossibility, and while she had been sure that her main motivation was to shame her mother, she did chose to do so in a way that indirectly helped her.
"There's an old saying, 'farming looks mighty easy when…'" The odd phrase came out of the blue, and for a few seconds her mind was blank. Then she spoke again.
"I guess that you know Daria but you don't know me..." Her eyes, that for a moment had relaxed, hardened again; Helen told her about the hallucinogen berries and the fact that she had escaped medical assistance after attacking the paramedics.
She wasn't dealing with the sarcastic girl she had only briefly met on those occasion either she went to her boss's house to deliver some papers when both of her children were under house arrest and she had been demolishing her competitive boss in Scrabble. She wasn't the girl who usually said out loud those complains Marianne often though about Helen but wasn't able to voice. Right now she was dealing with a desperate, delusional girl with a gun and that was unable to recognize her.
"Where were we? Oh yes, tell more about the papers you were ordered to gather."
"Daria, you need help, you ate some hallucinogen berries. Please let me take you to the hospital!"
The girl limited to show angle the knife so the light reflected on the blade, making the bloodstains on it stand up; the sight of the blood stopped her pleas out cold. "Limit your answers to my questions. I'll ask you only once and only once more. For what are the papers you were ordered to get?"
"They're replacement I.D.s, their medical insurance policy, and one of your photos for the paper."
"How did your boss was able to get a cop to help you? Usually the police department does not like to lend a sworn officer to do a milk run."
"I… I don't know for sure, Helen said that Erik called in a favor. Daria, Helen is really worried that you're missing, extremely worried, I never heard her like that Daria."
"Helen, you mean Miss Morgendorffer?" Marianne could do nothing more than nod.
"And tell me, did you saw her at one point or another when she asked you for the papers?"
"I… She was calling me from the hospital at Oakwood's."
Her voice was calm, eerie calm, when she answered her. "I see… You know, I find hard to believe that Helen Morgendorffer would call you. The last time I saw her she was completely out of her mind, tortured and raped until every word out of her mouth was nothing but gibberish. That kind of damage cannot be healed in a year of therapy, much less in a day. Her husband and daughter were no better, and I consider it a miracle that the youngest, Quinn, wasn't raped as well by those sadistic animals. "
Her voice was calm and modulated, unnaturally so. But the hatred on her eyes was beyond anything she had ever seen in her life, not even of those occasions when she had come face to face with defendants that had lost everything in a trial against one of the firm's lawyers.
She was now sure that the girl was going to kill her.
** I ** II ** III ** IV **
Melody saw the terrified form of Marianne and this time she couldn't stop herself from thinking of her as a human being; it was obvious that she sincerely believed that the person who did that call was her boss, she could see it on her eyes, and that her reasons to be here were completely legitimate on her mind.
When, at the beginning of their chat she saw Marianne recognizing her, for a moment she had a slight glimmer of hope that she was part of the administrative staff of the farm, someone that had managed to escape and was looking for clues of what was going on. That hope had been enough for her to compromise operational security and quote Eisenhower's old creed of farmers: 'Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you're a thousand miles from the corn field.' She just needed to misquote the second part in any way, while stressing certain words for the code to be recognized.
But the answer never came, and all Farm personnel were trained to properly respond to the challenge, no matter their specialty. To not do so meant that she was either an enemy, which her reactions made highly improbable, or an innocent bystander.
She was a disposable prop to bring their policeman here to check for the Intel she had compiled on their organization. The next logical step would be for Marianne, mother of Mike and Oscar, to have a simple unrelated car accident, a tragedy occurring just after she and the 'innocent' cop had parted ways. Who knew, depending on the method used the kids could be accompanying their mother.
If she hadn't been here…
The cold blooded calculation to do so was something that made her blood boil. She would find the sick monster that created such a complex plot and she would destroy it, painfully.
At the same time the plot itself gave her some useful insights of the scale of the operation. They hadn't just come with a search warrant and take dismantled the house, so the local police wasn't completely under their control, probably just a few selected guys just like Oakwood's rescue services operation. Also the fact that they needed to do such a risky trick to bring Marianne here meant that their hold on the law firm was nearly inexistent, on any other case they would just have had Erik order her to go for the papers, no misdirection necessary.
And finally they were operating on a heavily compartmented operation; the left hand literally didn't know what the right hand was doing. It took them almost 36 hours for the clean crew to come to the house, and they had to use a ridiculously complex plan to do so. A compromise between security and operational capabilities always crippled the ability to respond to the unexpected. And she definitely was unexpected.
She left the sobbing woman and went straight to the office, she might not be able, or willing, to extract more useless information from her but to know which papers she had to get might give her an additional clue of who was involved on this.
She immediately saw the folder on the desk that wasn't there on her last visit, but her attention was on the unhooked phone. She had also being a little to careless on her approach making enough noise so that the person in the other side of the line knew someone was there.
"Marianne, are you done? I hope that you were able to find my agenda, or have an otherwise good excuse for letting me on hold. You know exactly just how much I hate that!"
"Hang up that phone this instant! Those calls cost a fortune! … I'm sorry, but I need the phone and my daughter isn't allowed... what? Why, yes, I was about to call a client. Really? I believe he was born in August... ooooh!"
She ignored the bizarre flashback and concentrated on the voice, she had hear it before, in the helicopter, the reason why she couldn't remember it was because it was sprouting a lot of nonsense! Then the person on the other side of the line was no other than Helen Morgendorffer's doppelganger.
She didn't have time to interrogate her, if she hadn't realized something was wrong before, she surely would do so by now, and then she would send backup spoiling for a fight that she was in no condition to give. But she could send a message.
"This is Melody Powers, I'm afraid that the henchman you send to take care of Miss Richmond was up to the task. I know what you did to the Morgendorffer family, and be sure that I will find you and your associates, and I'm going to make you pay."
"Daria!? Wa…" She didn't wait to listen to the answer before hanging.
She knew that the puppet master at the other side of the line would be calling a kill squad as soon as possible. She also knew that they had a less that perfect control of the local authorities. So the most logical way of throwing her opponent out of her game was to call the police.
"911, What's your emergency?"
"He killed Officer Winston, with a knife." She was whispering to the phone with a scared voice, trying to sound younger than she was.
"Wait, who killed whom?"
"The short guy on the ponytail, the one in a black hoodie, he killed him with the knife and is searching for me."
"Okay sweetie, just stat hidden and I…" She interrupted the woman, crying a little louder than before. "Smells weird, it's that a fire? … Please, don't hurt me, plea…" She ended the conversation by hitting the mouthpiece against the desk and then ended the call, leaving the handset unhooked to prevent any more incoming calls. The police would be able to track the call, so she needed to leave now.
On her way out she took the folder that Marianne had compiled and a cursory glance told her that those were indeed I.D. papers.
"Marianne, stand up and help Officer Winston towards the door please."
The confusion with the command was evident. "What?"
"Take Officer Winston to the door and get out. Now!" The last harsh word, the first one she had used was the one that got her on her feet and moving.
While both adults were walking towards the front door she went and picked her stuff, then she went to the kitchen, and hastily opened the gas on the stove, then while pouring half a bottle of cooking oil on the table, chairs and other flammables with one hand, with the other she fished a flare from one of her pockets. Then she just put both articles together in the microwave oven and set the timer to defrost.
Once it was done she ran towards the door that Marianne was in the process of opening. Having both hands occupied it was a harder maneuver than expected. She felt a little sorry of having cuffed her with the Winston guy, under the circumstances she would have preferred to get Marianne out and let Winston to burn, but now it was a little too late to find the key to the handcuffs, so she opened the door for her and helped both get out of the house.
Then she helped her to rest in the side of the police patrol and once she was sitting there she gave her the folder. "Marianne this are the papers you need, when you wake up tell the police to check the number that the double of Helen Morgendorffer gave you, they're not going to find anything but it will be a good enough clue for their investigation."
"Wake up?" Melody's answer was to use one of her tranq darts on the woman. Then without waiting to see the effects she ran flat out towards the street's corner burdened as she was by her backpack and computer.
'Sorry about that, but the dart only has half a load; you'll be right as rain in the morning. I hope.'
She could hear the sirens coming in the distance and a sound that probably was her improvised incendiary going off, and that meant that the neighbors a couple of blocks around would be getting out of their homes to see what the racket was about; but she had almost reached the second corner of the block so she suddenly slowed down, almost completely out of breath.
She then took off her sweater, revealing the orange t-shirt bellow, and forced herself to walk at an upbeat and not particularly suspicious pace while untying her hair despite the instincts that were screaming for her to keep running until she was out of the perimeter that the police ought to do once they arrived and saw the pandemonium she had left behind. But she lacked the stamina to cross even a quarter of the necessary distance.
She had a couple of advantages in any case, the first one was that the emotive description she gave to the 911 meant that they would be searching for a man dressed in dark clothes an a ponytail, and any witness that had managed to see her outside the house would corroborate the description. That had been the main reason she had been forced to knock out Marianne, so that her version of the facts wouldn't get out until the morning, the cop itself didn't matter, the concussion she gave him would last for a while, and his short term memory would be suspect anyway. She had also run off towards the east, but once she had been sure that any witness was out of sight she had gone west, and with a little additional luck the cops would search on that direction.
She wasn't expecting any good luck on that front, especially if any of the witnesses saw the backpack and computer case she was carrying and the police searched for those as well, but she wasn't about to make it easy for the authorities, and surrender without a fight; she had a lot more work to do.
It was then that a car sounded off its claxon before parking alongside her, starting her hard enough that she had her gun halfway out from her pocket.
** I ** II ** III ** IV **
Trent was driving his old and trusty Plymouth Satellite back home. The last minute gig at the Zon ended up being a bust, when Jesse had invited him he hadn't counted on sanitation threatening to close the place again; something about rats the size of cocker spaniels coming out of the girl's bathroom by hundreds. The owner took the bribe money out of their payment and the replacement for the fire alarms.
He yawned, 'Well, I can always go to practice in the house, maybe I can break my record of sixteen hours of practice.'
Then on his way back he saw a familiar figure. It was Jane's friend Daria, walking towards their house, and she looked bone tired.
Well, Janie had said that she expended the entire weekend camping with her family; that brought memories, bad ones, of the six months he lived on a tent outside his house, and of course the one day of hell cooped up with his extended family this weekend.
'She could use a lift'
** I ** II ** III ** IV **
"Hey Daria, want a lift?"
The only reason why the disheveled and cute young man was alive was the fact that getting the gun from the pocket of her backpack was harder and slower than she expected. But then again if a policeman saw her gun they might bring more cops that she had bullets.
"I'll let you off here. I have a problem dealing with authority."
This was someone she knew, she was sure of that, her gut feeling on this was surprisingly strong. Plus she could hear sirens approaching, and no matter how good or bad this guy was, he probably was easier to subdue than the entire Lawndale Police Department.
"Yes please."
Once more she stepped into the car of someone who was a complete stranger, however in this occasion she couldn't treat the driver as a potential enemy, no matter the fact that doing so was the only reasonable choice.
"Janie tried to call you earlier this morning, something about misery loving company. Did you just arrive from your camping trip?"
"Yes, just arrived…" While she was trying to answer him without giving any information she recalled the message in the answering machine. Janie, Jane, had called to tell her about the trip with the… the Lane family, and if his sister was Jane that would make him…
"Trent, how was your family reunion?"
"We had to wake early, it was horrible." He looked worse than some Gulag victims she had rescued before, and she felt no need for ask for clarification on the matter. The felt in a short silence before Trent broke it.
"Sorry about the lack of ambience, the radio is busted again."
"No problem, the ambience is all right." The worst thing was that she actually believed that, and she felt uncomfortable feeling so comfortable with someone who might even be an enemy, so she started humming the first song that came to her mind.
"You're an angel in black
You sure have a knack
For putting my heart on a shelf in the back
I'm waiting my turn
Oh, when will I learn?
My poor heart, you're giving it freezer burn. Yeah..."
Despite that she would admit without any problems that it was a terrible choice it seemed that her chauffeur knew the song, and appreciate it.
"Hey, that's 'Icebox Woman' glad you remember it.
She felt herself blushing at his words, and that made no sense, she hadn't blushed at another's praise in years, not even when she was a schoolgirl she had blushed at something as simple as that. Hell, she usually didn't blush even when doing stuff that the Playboy's bunnies would be shy of trying.
Soon after that they arrived into an old house, with Trent opening the unlocked door and screaming out loud, "Jane, we're here!"
She was looking her surroundings, getting the lay of the ground when she saw the dark haired girl come down. Her heart skipped a beat when the image registered on her brain.
'It's imposible, it just can't be…'
"Hey Daria."
She couldn't hide the shock on her face or to stop the name that came out of her mouth so softly that not even Trent, who was at her side, could hear.
"Jacaranda"
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This is the last chapter I had already written so from now on I'll be slower updating this particular story.
Sorry about that.
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