"I mean... generally, yeah," Lincoln replied calmly. "What was in there?"
"All my money!" Leni shouted in panic as she dropped her duffle bag on the ground with her guitar case.
"How much money?" Lincoln asked curiously.
"Four bags worth!" she said, motioning to her floral print bag. Lincoln knelt down and unzipped the bag, nearly losing his breath as he gazed at the contents.
That was the most money he'd ever seen at one time! "Leni... you... this is how much they..."
Leni nodded somberly. With no way to track it down, it seemed her monetary gains were lost to the sea.
"Where am I gonna keep this now?" she asked, picking her case back up and slinging her duffle bag over her shoulder. With a sigh, she set off back towards where the cab had dropped them off.
"So, was this where you would go before you left to... you know..." Lincoln asked.
"Yeah, I'd like, tell the cab guy I needed some stuff from down here, and they never asked any questions."
Just as they arrived at the entrance to the docks, both Lincoln and Leni's cell phone vibrated with a new text message.
'Emergency, come home NOW!"
They checked the message and looked at each other. Lori rarely used the mass 911 text to call all Louds back to base. Leni quickly got a cab and she and Lincoln headed back to the house. When they arrived, they found two black suburbans parked in the driveway. Leni swallowed nervously as she and her little brother climbed out of the back of the cab.
"I'll go in and see what's going on if you want to hide your stuff."
Leni nodded and headed into the garage, storing her case but keeping her duffle bag on her. Some things were safer to hide in the house than others. Leni stopped at the porch. She hadn't told Ken about her retirement plans, surely this wasn't the agency coming to silence her, or hold her family hostage?
Leni put her hand on the knob and turned. Inside, her father was in tears, with her mother desperately trying to comfort him. Two large men stood over them, their blue windbreakers had FBI in yellow letters on the back.
"You have to believe me! I would never try to cheat the government!"
"Look Sir, the evidence says otherwise. We'll be in touch, don't leave town." One threatened before turning to leave. They walked past Leni without a word as she stepped into the livingroom.
"What's going on?" Lincoln asked, finding his words after the intimidating agents had left.
"Nothing, honey, it's nothing." Rita insisted, though his father's expression told a different story. "There was just a little misunderstanding at Daddy's work, something that we're going to work out very soon."
Lincoln glanced up the stairs, spying Lisa lording over the living room with her arms folded. He knew if there was one sister in the house that knew what was really going on, it was her. She motioned towards her room with a nod and set off, Lincoln following her as he ascended the stairs.
He met her in hers and Lily's room and shut the door.
"I suppose you're wondering what's got our father in hysterics."
Lincoln nodded.
"Well, I can assure you it's something much more serious than arachnids," Lisa sighed, taking off her glasses and rubbing the lenses with the bottom of her shirt. "The company our father works for has been fabricating evidence to frame him for all the tax evasion the board members have committed over the last fifteen years. In short, they did the crime, and set up our father to take the fall."
Lincoln was dumbfounded. "They, they did? But why him? Why Dad?" he asked, running a hand through his white hair in disbelief.
"Who knows why he was their patsy, but the fact of the matter is, there is overwhelming evidence against him, and all he has to defend himself is his word." Lisa set her glasses on her desk and desperately tried to keep the tears from flowing. "I-it appears as though not only may he end up in jail, but the fines incurred from this could very well cost us the house..." she sniffed. Lincoln couldn't believe what he was hearing. In a few days his whole world had been turned on its head. First his sister was a traveling assassin, and now his father was being framed for tax fraud, and his entire family had a chance of ending up on the street.
"But... you've got a plan right? You always do!" he pled with his sister.
"Yes well..." Lisa said, before wiping her eyes and her puffy red cheeks before putting her glasses back on. "We would all have to get jobs, and work anytime we weren't at school, just to keep the roof over our heads."
"That's it? You're just gonna accept this?" Lincoln asked, shocked. "Can't you do some kind of lawyering or hack into their computers to prove Dad's innocent?"
"It doesn't work that way, Lincoln!" Lisa barked, the anger at her inability to fix the family's problems in her usual manner weighing heavily on her shoulders. "Even if I could, the FBI has confiscated everything! Their security is too tight... even for me."
He could tell it was hard for her to admit that. Lincoln pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. How could this be happening to his family? It was all too much. He left her room without another word and found himself at the top landing of the stairs. His Mom and Dad seemed to have taken their problems into their bedroom, possibly to shield them from it.
Lincoln headed down the stairs, still trying to process Lisa's revelation. Once at the bottom, he came across Leni, curled up on the couch, her knees to her chest. Her eyes were red a puffy, just like Lisa's. It seemed the waterworks were contagious. Lincoln sat next to his sister. She wiped her eyes, the pillow she clutched to her chest was already damp with her tears.
"Do you think Daddy's going to jail?" she asked him. Lincoln looked at her. For the first time since her confession, he saw the old Leni. The innocent girl scared for her future, the girl she'd always been, despite what Lincoln had imagined her to be in his nightmares.
"I... I don't know," he replied honestly.
Leni sobbed. "I'm scared, Linky..."
She got rid of the pillow and put her little brother in its place. Here he was, an 11 year old boy trying to console a stone cold killer. They held each other there, on the couch. Lincoln was acutely aware that his other sisters must be feeling the same apprehension, but at that moment, it was only the two of them, desperately seeking comfort and security from the other.
"Me too, Leni."
The next few days in the Loud house were markedly different from their normal summer vacation. Every child knew what was going on, to the degree they could understand it. Even Lily was not her normal, curious and energetic self. As though she sensed everyone's sadness, it then began to affect her, too.
Their Mother and Father were gone most of the day, visiting with their Dad's lawyer, and most every time with him coming home in tears.
Lincoln found joy in nothing he used to do anymore. In fact, the whole house just seemed to lay about all day. Even with Lori in charge, her normally strict rules didn't seem to bother anyone.
One day, Rita and Lynn Sr returned home with pizza, and in massively better spirits that the previous days. Mainly because their father wasn't weeping as he walked through the door. The smell of pizza woke every nose in the house as the herd of children thundered out of their rooms and down the stairs and into the kitchen.
Lincoln followed his sisters down into the kitchen and stared in wonder at not one, not two, but THREE extra large pizzas! This was unprecedented. Each child could have more than one slice!
Once all the Louds had gathered in the kitchen, their mother made an announcement. "Kids, we've got some wonderful news," Rita began, as Lynn Sr put his arm around his wife's shoulder.
"Your father is not going to jail!" Every child cheered, rushing their parents into a group hug that lasted more than a few seconds.
"You mean it?" Lola asked, tears shining in her eyes.
"That's right, the lawyer worked out a deal to keep him with us! Now let's have some pizza!" Lincoln could hardly believe his ears. His Dad wasn't going to get locked up after all! He rushed towards the celebratory pizza along with the rest of his family and dug in. After the hectic assault on the defenseless pie, Lincoln took his seat at the kids table. The kitchen was strangely quiet as most of his family had their mouths full of pizza, when Lincoln noticed Lisa was absent from the kids table. After finishing a record two slices of pizza, he threw away the paper towel he had used as a plate and ventured into the house to find Lisa.
Since their parents had ordered three extra-larges, there wasn't the normal 'you snooze you lose' competition for slices. He poked his head into the living room to find Lisa sitting by herself on the couch, staring blankly at the ground in front of her. Lincoln had encountered her in this state before, usually when she was trying to figure out a formula or experiment of some kind in her head.
"Lucy? The pizza's getting cold, and it looks like Lola's off the wagon again, you better hurry if you want to eat," Lincoln said, approaching the couch.
Lisa snapped out of her trance and looked at him. Though she tried to hide it, there was a clear concern in her young eyes.
"You okay? I don't know if you heard, but Dad's not going to jail. Aren't you happy?"
Lisa sighed. "She used the word 'deal'. Usually when a 'deal' is struck, both sides are getting something." She adjusted her glasses and folded her arms. "What our side got was to keep our father out of jail. The question is, what did their side get?"
That idea landed on him like a bag of dried cement. Now that he thought about it, she HAD used the word 'deal'. He guessed the state just 'dropping' the charges out of the goodness of their hearts was a pipe dream at best, but if he wasn't going to jail, then what else could they have wanted?
Leni only ate a single slice of pizza (minus the crust of course, too many carbs), which was a rare sight indeed, considering the diet she was currently trying out. She was elated, along with the rest of her family to hear their father was safely from the state prison. After a few more hugs from her mother and father, she retreated to her room to get a cleansing facial scrub when a distinct vibrating rattled around the room. Leni put a hand to the pocket in which she kept her cell phone. The sound came again, except it wasn't her cell phone that produced it.
She glanced towards the drawer in her nightstand. She knew exactly where it had to have come from now. She walked over and opened the drawer to find a notification of two new text messages.
Hesitantly, she opened them. The same jumbled code as the previous texts. She set to work decoding them, and read the message to herself once it was decrypted.
URGENT-BARBIE
TARGET VALUE- VERY HIGH
NATURE-SINGLE TARGET
RESPONSE DATE-ASAP
CONTRACT VALUE-$300000
MORE TO FOLLOW. STANDBY FOR TASKING
Leni nearly swallowed her gum. She had honestly never even seen any target value higher than medium. On top of that, the contract value was more zeroes than she'd ever seen outside of math class! Almost instantly, thoughts of all the fantastic clothes and sewing equipment she could buy with that money sprang into her mind. Shortly thereafter, however, those happy thoughts were pushed out of her mind by the fairly emotional conversation she had with her little brother once he found out her little hobby.
Leni moaned to herself. 'Why wasn't I better at lying?' she thought, but almost instantly shook the thoughts from her head. 'No, you heard what Lincoln said, and he's right. Murder is like, wrong and stuff. And you're a good person,' She thought to herself. Leni took another look at the text message in her hand before Lori pushed the door open. Startled, Leni's phone fell from her grasp and tumbled to a stop at Lori's feet. Leni prayed that Lori would just keep her nose in her phone like always, but of course, this time she glanced over the top of the screen.
Her heart sank as Lori bent down to pick up. Her older sister squinted at the odd jumble of letters and numbers on the screen. Leni thought she felt her heart stop as she waited for Lori to say something.
"Leni, I think your phone has a virus."
'Like, duh! She can't read the message without the decody thing!' Leni remembered, sighing in relief before taking her phone back.
"I think you're right! I should totes take it to the store in the mall tomorrow!" she said, pocketing the phone and quickly leaving her room.
As Leni headed back downstairs, her mind drifted back towards her internal struggle. Three hundred thousand was SO much money! And she'd get it for something she already knew she was good at! She wouldn't have to work out of a shipping container anymore! But just as soon as those grand plans came, the dreary cloud of her promise to Lincoln came to rain on her parade. As she descended the stairs, she found Lincoln and Lisa still in the living room, seated next to each other on the couch.
"Hey Linky, Hi Lisa!" Leni sang happily, as she passed. For two kids who just ate pizza, they sure didn't seem too happy.
Before Leni had come downstairs, Lisa was posing her hypothesis to her older brother.
"So you see, if he's avoiding jail time due to a plea deal, he's still on the hook for something, and if I had to guess, I'd bet it's the fine."
Lincoln rubbed his eyes. It seemed like his parents weren't being one hundred percent truthful about the good news. It seemed it was only partial. He recalled what Lisa had told him when they first heard of his father's possible sentence. "We'll all have to get jobs, Dad will never find a job as an accountant again, and have to work with Lori at the Game and Grub, where I'll probably end up working! I won't be able to spend a single quarter on an arcade game because I had to put it all to save the house! We'd have to scavenge the stale garlic knots and old pizza from the dumpster after closing time just to eat!"
"Lincoln!" Lisa shouted, snapping him out of his tirade just as Leni began coming down the stairs.
"Hey Linky, Hi Lisa!" Leni sang on her way down.
Lincoln glanced towards Lisa, knowing that spark in her eyes. It looked like she did have a plan, but Lincoln had the distinct inkling that he wasn't going to like it.