I don't own Frozen.
"And that's how it's done boys!" Anna said, clinking her mojito with two beer bottles in the piano bar on the ground floor of the Caneel Bay resort. Rich cherry wood booths lined the walls, open shutters and breezeway offering solace to the overheated patrons as Benny the bar tender arranged orange slices and cherries on the rims of fruity cocktails. It was a bit of celebration, mission complete and all that. Hans had turned up his nose at frequenting an establishment as pedestrian as a resort lobby bar, but Jane should be down once she finished her techno witchcraft.
The blonde had snuck up to the third floor of the building to hack into Ursula's accounts on the authorized computer, outfitted in black again because she insisted Sven and Kristoff have the night off.
"I'll be perfectly content going in through the window," Jane had said.
"But they'll be guards outside of the office. You only got by them yesterday because the boys helped. And Kristoff said they were professionals. Like, 'dishonorable discharge and looking for something to hit' professionals. They'll be doubly on guard after what the boys did to them," Anna had argued.
"No need to worry. I'll be in and out before anyone notices. Your seventy-five million is safe."
Anna almost told her it wasn't the money she was worried about. Old Anna would have suspected the woman didn't want witnesses while she transferred the entirety of the company's assets to her personal account, forgoing a five-way split for a singular treachery. The situation wasn't sitting completely well with 'A'. But this new Anna somehow recognized Jane's intent as sincere, and was walking that fine line between doubt and trust. It felt very much like balancing on a power line forty feet above the ground. If something electrifying didn't kill her, the fall would get its chance. Or she could make it across, safe, sound, and better for the experience.
Who knew?
Anna was jostled from her thoughts by the buzz of Sven's phone. The hairy man took out the device and tapped on the screen all thumbs, smiling as he shoved the piece into Kristoff's face.
"Hey, hey, hey!" Kristoff said. "Look at all those zeroes!"
Anna studied the screen, a confirmation email one of Sven's Swiss accounts had received of a seventy-five million dollar deposit. As Anna admired the admittedly sinful progression of zeroes, several things happened at once:
The stampede of boots in the front lobby; men shouting, "They called for backup!"; the screen of Sven's phone hiccupping, words and backlight blurring as the device powered down; the fixtures in the bar dimmed; the light bulbs on the far side of the wall burst in a ripple of shattering glass, staining the room with subdued ocean twilight and serrated shards.
"Shit," Anna said, standing from her stool. "Something's happened."
"What the- Let's bolt!" Kristoff said, rising.
"We can't leave her!"
"You saw the email! The transaction already went through."
"But there's something wrong."
"And I'd rather not stay to find out what it is. I've got a speed boat and a tank of gasoline that can put us on the next island by nightfall, if we leave now."
"She's the one who got us the money in the first place!"
"A, you hardly know that woman, she's probably fine."
At that declaration, the lights flickered back on, and then the corner stereo began blasting Jimmy Buffet's "Cheeseburger in Paradise."
"Nothing to worry about folks," the bartender said. "I'll just get on the phone with maintenance, see if we can—"
Two more men in black dashed through the lobby.
"— or maybe I should call management. Security's gone SWAT mode."
"I'm going to help her."
"What are you going to do, A?" Kristoff asked.
"I'm not going to sit around and let her get caught. If only because she knows too much about us and will turn state's evidence if she gets arrested."
It was a weak defense and she knew it. But hell if she was going to let Jane take the fall for all of them. Something inside her torso was straining, tight, like a rubberband pulled to its tension limit. Or a muscle, resisting a stretch after going unused for some time. It was new and scary and it hurt.
The heart was a muscle.
Funny.
"Let's go," Kristoff grunted.
The trio found the maintenance stairs, Anna taking unhurried, calculated steps down the labyrinth of Caneel Bay's third floor. Sulfur scents lingered in the walls, seeped from the tropical patterned rugs, burrowed into the fern leaves placed in the corners of the hallways. Anna imagined standing on a metal floor furnace in sneakers, heat scorching rubber, the stench migrating to her nostrils.
That's what this smelled like.
Turning another corner, that's when she noticed the thick swamp of bodies. All men upwards of six feet, all burly, all unconscious, dead, or otherwise incapacitated on the floor. The door to Ursula's office was open. Anna picked her way over the casualties, tripping over someone's head.
"The hall of bodies before you should have been a sign not to come in," she heard Jane's voice through the open doorway. "Unless you want to join your coworkers in their varying states of semi-consciousness."
Anna had never heard Jane sound like that before. She had heard removed, apathetic, teasing, confused, threatened, insecure, and even socially ignorant, but never… never this.
It was controlled, harsh, commanding and low. Not a voice one would defy lightly. It was the Ice Queen.
The click-clack of fingers on a keyboard sounded, even this far away.
She must be typing a mile a minute.
"Jane?" Anna called out.
"A? A, is that you?"
"Kristoff and Sven are here, too," she said uncertainly. She was now painfully aware that she knew next to nothing about the woman behind the computer, crush or no crush. Like how she could disable half a dozen men double her size. Or how her voice, the same one that laughed over something as innocuous as a snow cone could drop to nothing short of a death threat.
It was a whole new level of disconcerting. Anna knew that Jane was a criminal, hell, she was a criminal, but she had never considered the possibility that Jane might be... bad. She had never feared the blonde, all ropes and computers and shiny multifacets. And maybe this was Jane's version of performance, metaphorically raising her hackles and baring her teeth in threatening vocal tones as a warning to stay back. She had at least warned her. A bad person wouldn't give people the chance to run, right?
"A, you might want to get in here. Actually, it concerns all of you, but someone should probably stand guard," Jane said.
"More back up will come if they don't hear anything from the first crew," Kristoff said.
"How long do we have?" Anna asked.
"Depends. Maybe ten minutes, maybe three."
"Then let's go talk to her."
She and Kristoff worked their way over the rest of the bodies and saw Jane, as expected, typing furiously at Ursula's computer.
"Damn, damn, no, not the— oh, FUCK!" the blonde screamed, slamming a gloved hand against the monitor.
"What's wrong?" Anna asked. Back in her black t-shirt and harness, Jane was unconcerned with the two large security men lying at her feet. She was panicky but rigid, lightening in her eyes and tear tracks down her cheeks. Yet there was no waver in her voice. A salty drop leaked out from the forget-me-nots and fell, silently, on Ursula's desk.
Jane's face remained blank.
"Hans fucked us."
"What?" Anna asked, coming over to the screen.
"He knew my signature coding, the piggy-back tracker I use to open accounts…" Jane said, black boxes full of green symbols littering the desktop. "And I can't bypass it. I'd need two days, on this computer, and we don't have that kind of time. I stalled the transfers because he had them rerouted to deposit into his account when I activated the sequence, but it didn't take."
"How do you know it was him?"
Jane pressed a button and a picture of Hans popped up, flipping off the camera as dollar signs paraded around the border. The caption read, 'sucks to suck, fuckers'. The background was of a private jet that Anna recognized from a German air company. Date and time stamp read that afternoon at three p.m.
"Are you fuckin' kidding me?" Kristoff stormed over to the computer. He stepped on one man's nose and nearly fell over. In his frustration, he kicked a body, and Anna heard a sickening crunch.
Anna flinched.
Jane did not.
"Did we get anything?!" he bellowed.
"I was able to divert a portion, but I couldn't get it all."
"How much?"
"Five a piece."
"Please tell me that's million," Kristoff said.
"Yes."
Anna breathed a sigh of relief. She had had bigger payouts, bigger jobs certainly, but five million was nothing to sneer at. It's not like the government was taking taxes out of it.
"You mean to say he screwed us out of seventy million dollars?!" Kristoff said.
"Who gives a fuck about your goddamn money," Jane replied, stone faced.
"I think we all just need to calm down for a minute," Anna said, lunging between the two. Kristoff had taken a step toward Jane, bowing up, brow lowering like a knight's visored helm.
"What are you going to do, hit me?" Jane said again. She was back in her lower register, raspy and distant. Almost a taunt. As if her intention were for Kristoff to hit her.
"It won't bring your money back," the blonde girl continued.
"Pardon me if I get a little testy when I've just been fucked in the ass by some pretty boy con," Kristoff grumbled. "I hit things. It makes me feel better."
"I'd like to see you try," Jane said, standing from behind the desk.
"The fuck do you think you are?!"
"No one!" Jane yelled, eyes darting back to the computer. Like she saw something they couldn't. "I'm not anyone, I never have been. And now, I'm less than I was before. I am a negative ratio, imaginary, a negative square root of a singular, compromised—"
"The hell is she talking about?" Kristoff said.
"Because, how sad it is that he took your money, Kristoff. You can invest in a few handkerchiefs to dry your tears with the five million you do have. Not to mention all the future jobs you can take to acquire more money. Not like he took your unhackable signature coding."
"Jane, you're upset," Anna tried to interject. "We all are, but it's not safe for us to stay here."
"You," Jane seethed, eyeing Anna skeptically. Her arms crossed over her chest mechanically, metal links over her harnessed waist tinkling like sad wind chimes. "What was I thinking?"
Jane turned around and opened the window.
There was a loud grunt and the sounds of a scuffle from the end of the hall.
"Company!" Kristoff shouted, and dashed after Sven.
"Jane—"
"What?!"
"What are you doing?" Anna asked.
"I'm leaving. What does it look like?"
"But, I thought we could—"
"What? You thought we could what, A? Be friends? We're criminals! We're not good people. I'm not— look at what I do!" she shouted, waving a hand at the floor. It was her first acknowledgement of the bodies on the ground, the admission not that of a child, squealing for attention. It was a lament, a dirge directed toward the prostrate men. They hadn't moved since Anna had set foot in the room. There were burns on their palms, and Anna could finally pinpoint the stomach-churning scent: sizzled flesh.
She wasn't even sure they were breathing.
"Look at what I could do…" Jane said, more tears leaking.
"Jane, I'm sure you do whatever's necessary—"
"It's not something I can control," Jane exhaled, wringing her hands together like stubborn laundry. Anna thought she might be hyperventilating. "He took my precision— my restraint! They caught me off guard when the system froze… the guns… and I couldn't hold it back…"
"If they had a gun, that's all you could do," Anna said. Jane's actions: violent, uncontrolled, deadly… Anna was still unsure of what Jane had done to immobilize the security, but she knew hysterics when she saw them. She needed to calm Jane down. "They pushed you. It was justified."
"Justified? God A, do you see what you're standing in? I kill people, I hurt people. He knows what I can… the picture… My only safeguard was my anonymity, and my code, using the computer to clear my head, keep it down!"
"Don't panic, Jane! Keep— keep what down?"
"A!"
"Hrrrggghhh!"
"They're calling for you," Jane said, hitching a leg over the windowsill. The sun was down now, night born as the day and all its possibilities waned.
"So he stole your computer program thingie, screw him," Anna said, edging closer to Jane. The blonde took her other foot and pulled herself through the windowsill, her lower body now gone as she propped herself with her hands in the window. "We can get him back!" Anna tried, desperate. "With your hacking skills and my connections, we can find him—"
"Stop it, A. It's not just the code, he took my control. He sent me a message, in the stalling program."
"What did it say?"
"None of your concern. But he knows about me. About who I am. No one knows that, I've made sure of it. I don't... I don't even know."
"I thought… maybe, I did?" Anna said quietly. "Or that I, could. We were… we were going to be friends, Jane."
"I knew this was a bad idea from the start, because just like he took my code…" she pleaded with her eyes, the blonde intimately cataloging every feature of Anna's face. It was that attentive study, that discomfiting gaze raking her form like she was something recognizable, like Jane was desperately trying to remember her. The blankness had faded from the blonde's face and emotion returned. An emotion Anna recognized all too well: fear.
"… you'll take something from me, too. And when you do, I won't be able to restrain myself. I would hurt you."
"Jane, I would never, you would never."
"You can't know that! I don't even know you. And you can never know me."
"We were going to stop all this," Anna pleaded. "We were going to get out. Comrades, remember?"
Please Jane, just give me something here.
"A pipe dream at best," Jane said.
"I don't understand."
"Neither do I. I never have."
And with that, Jane let go of the windowsill.
"JANE!"
Anna rushed to the window and watched as a figure jogged across the road and turned toward the harbor.
The ocean was glittering reflected starlight.
Or maybe, Anna was crying.
"Kristoff!"
"We need to leave, now," Kristoff hauled Anna up by her elbow, dragging her through to the stairwell while Sven barreled over a bewildered maintenance man.
"Just how many of those guys did they have here?" Anna asked.
"I'm guessing a dozen on-site security, but we're missing a few. Probably patrolling the perimeter if they're a private service for hire. Checking to see who's gonna run. Some of them are ex-Marines," Kristoff explained.
"How do you even know that?"
"Their fighting stance, and their tats. Among other things. C'mon, we need to get to the docks."
The island police were pulling into the parking lot of the resort as Sven, Kristoff and Anna sprinted across the highway toward the beach. It was a half-mile to the docks at the harbor, assuming that's where Kristoff had parked his speedboat. With any luck, she'd be able to catch Jane before the blonde made her own escape.
And figure out just what the hell was going on.
Anna heard the screaming before she saw the action.
And sometimes that's worse. Hearing the agony before seeing it with your own eyes. Because hearing, in its sensory aspect, allows the imagination to run unbridled, chock-full of unlikely scenarios, sometimes worse than the actuality.
When Anna saw three men cornering Jane, she knew the guards patrolling the resort perimeter had given chase to the thief descending from their boss's window. A fourth was beating Jane with a black baton.
Anna then preferred the auditory uncertainty to the visual reality.
"Stop it!" she cried, racing toward the crowd. "Stop hitting her! She's down, she's submitted, you can stop now!"
Anna didn't know if Kristoff and Sven were following her. But Jane was staggering to her feet and the security men looked like they were gearing up for round two. Anna launched herself at the nearest man, glancing a blow on the side of his head. It earned her a backhand to the face.
She gripped her cheek in hand, kaleidoscopic images shooting across her vision as the pain flared.
"Don't hurt her—"
Anna heard again, before she saw. Jane's low voice, brittle and fragile as moth's wings. More scuffling sounds, and grunts. A fist flashed forward and Anna ducked, prepping for a blow that never landed.
Despite the disorientation from the previous smack, she watched as Jane took the brunt of the blow on the left side of her skull. The smack was concussion-worthy, Jane's figure limply crumbling over the dockside and into the open water.
Anna dove into the harbor, bobbing body and double-vision destabilizing her equilibrium. She opened her eyes against the stinging salt, the shallow, licorice-dark water swallowing an incapacitated Jane. Anna groped blindly, searching for purchase in the inky blackness. Her head smarted, her eyes burned, and her heart wept bloody tears because it was all too confusing and unfortunate and hopeless.
Her hand felt sand. She had reached the sea-bed, still no Jane.
The tides took pity on her, Anna feeling fabric and a twisted braid seconds after reaching the bottom. She hooked her left elbow under Jane's armpit and pushed, with all of her remaining strength, off the floor of the harbor. Her ears popped on her ascent and she watched, horrified, as Kristoff and Sven engaged in a two-to-one outnumbered fistfight. Anna couldn't drag the both of them up the ladder on the pier so she course-corrected, heading for the open water that would take her to the beach. Every second counted with the unconscious girl at her side, the lack of oxygen no doubt vegetating the most brilliant mind Anna had ever come into contact with. Her own lungs burned from the effort and her brain was banging against her skull like a kick-drum.
Anna's feet hit sand and she dragged Jane onto the beach, pumping hands on a water-logged chest. A flirtatious tide tickled her ankles, urging her to leave the hopeless, to walk away from the difficult, dying girl before her. Just come and play.
"Stayin' alive, stayin' alive, ha-ha-ha-ha."
It was so grotesquely appropriate. She'd once heard on the radio that the famous disco song was the correct tempo for chest compressions during CPR.
Please please please please please—
She tilted the blonde's face skyward to the bashful stars, forcing her chin down and pinching the nostrils on her lightly freckled nose. Anna inhaled so deeply she thought her toes could feel it, and then placed her mouth over Jane's. She blew long and strong, watching for the tell-tell expansion of the woman's chest. It moved, but only slightly. Anna whimpered over their squashed faces, sound reverberating over stilled skin and cartilage and bone and being. Another breath on briny lips, and she returned to Jane's chest.
Anna continued compressions. With her luck, she'd break a rib, or puncture a lung. The desperate pumping was in no way as violent as the beating the blonde had suffered, but any scrambling of distended organs could injure Jane further. Anna would willingly give up her five million and her own hall of French paintings to avoid such an occurrence.
Back to the mouth and Anna breathed into Jane, startled when she felt a twitch along the gums, a clack of teeth and surge of tongue. This was the part where Jane was supposed to roll over on her side and cough up every ounce of seawater holding her sky-blue eyes hostage. The part where they hugged and apologized, and pinky-swore to take Hans down through fine-tuned manipulation. Where they motored to a neighboring island to lick their wounds and drink a little, deciding that this friendship might well be worth all this hell they're currently experiencing.
But none of that happened.
The last thing Anna remembered was the contraction of Jane's minty lips, an electric surge rocketing through her synapses, and the serenity of oblivion as her heart stopped.
*returns from weekend* *opens inbox* WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO?! *proceeds to hyperventilate because I know what comes at the end of chapter fifteen*
A/N: Sooooooo... Not typically fond of cliffhangers? Wanting the babies to go ahead and kiss? That translates to (for me) more cliffhangers, and sort-of kisses that fry the kisser. At least I updated a day earlier than I said I would? I have hope in the fact that you can't kill me because the story will die with me. I'll hold on to that idea as you chase me with torches and pitchforks.
Love you all for your passionate responses, follows and favs. The people who read Stolen Ice seem to really love it, and for that, I am grateful :D Stay tuned.