Tomorrow, fictionman will begin the next one. Tune in (or is it "click in"?) to find out what we do next...
RaynDragon
Quick Shtick Writing will be taking a hiatus while fictionman is prepping for and away on his much-needed vacation. He will return on the evening of Sunday, June 27th, so you may expect the first posts of our next story on Monday, June 28th.
At the moment, the next story is likely to follow the same rules as this one did, but this time fictionman will write the opening paragraph and I will (eventually) write the closing one whenever we decide it's time to wrap it up. I suspect, however, we will try to take it in a different direction, with new characters. Although we think that there could be more stories for our detectives, as well as some possibilities with Anna, we may let them rest a while first.
While we're on downtime, we're asking our readers to suggest a name for the story we've just finished writing. Please drop a comment or send me an e-mail with your suggestion(s), and when fictionman returns we'll make a decision sometime within that following week.
Lastly, we'd love to know what you thought of our story. Did our sections flow together or seem disjointed with two writers working on it? Did our characters seem real or need more "fleshing out"? Was there something we missed going into that you had hoped we would? Was there a portion that bored you to tears? Was it better or worse than Cats? We want your critiques and opinions!
Thanks for reading! Don't forget to come back for the next story!
RaynDragon
A brief stopover in Toronto, and she'd be in Amsterdam in about fifteen hours. Here in Chicago they would still be sifting through the rubble. Perhaps eventually they would discover the woman's body they found was not her. They had some DNA evidence to compare, if they wanted to. Perhaps they would. By then she would be beyond their finding, and she had doubts as to whether they would contact foreign agencies for help.
Her escape had been narrower than it should have been. One bullet had passed through her arm, and she had pulled another from her leg. That brought the tally of self-removed bullets to an even dozen.
Even with the medications she had stolen, she was still in a fair amount of pain. Even in the first-class airline seat she could not find a way to sit that was not putting weight on the fresh wound in the back of her thigh.
The captain said something, but it was the routine takeoff announcement, so she ignored it. The plane started rolling. The last skeleton in her closet was dead. There was no one still alive that could directly connect her to her older life. After most of a decade, she might just be free. For the first time she could remember, she felt better not carrying a gun.
Susan then spent the better part of an hour, explaining the situation to the ranking fireman and one of the local police officers. She had no doubts that her own police report was going to be a hefty one. The electric company was called to kill the electricity to the building, while lights were rigged to look for survivors in the rubble. Susan doubted they would find any, and gave them the probable body count. In the process, she remembered the body inside the building and officers were sent in to collect both the body and fingerprints.
Eventually, they moved the cement off of Thomas and Susan noticed that it looked awful. He'd been right that there were no bones sticking out, but he'd still lost quite a bit of blood onto the pavement as far as she was concerned. He'd already had an I.V. and some monitoring equipment put onto him when the ambulance had arrived, but now the paramedics went into action. Thomas' leg was splinted, and he was strapped down to a board with a neck brace on, despite his protests that he could feel his toes, so his spine must be okay.
It seemed as though the local officers had everything well in hand, so she left her card with them and asked them to fax her a copy of their preliminary report, before hopping into the ambulance with Thomas. They must have given him something for the pain, as he was starting to drift in and out of sleep. She noticed with some amusement that it was hampering his half-hearted attempts to hit on one of the paramedics, a blonde woman named Stacey, who didn't seem to be buying into it anyway.
The nearest phone was dead. She moved towards the nearest exit, but the other phones were out, too.
"Tom," she radioed, "the phones are out."
"Let me see if my cell is intact. Okay, dial tone. I'll call it in...."
Years of 'I don?t want a cell phone' echoed back to Susan as she reached the stairwell door. They were fire doors, out was not a problem. Okay, now I want a cell phone, dammit.
At ground level, the place was a wreck. It took her a while just to find Thomas. The big chunk of flying cement was about six feet long--a chuck of partial wall at the edge of the structure from a level up, probably.
"They're on the way," Thomas said when she found him. She could already hear sirens in the distance. She had little doubt that others had heard the explosion and called the police.
Thomas held up the tape recorder, which was broken. "The tape should still be salvageable."
"Anna left film for me, presumably shots she took from upstairs to identify everyone with.
"As opposed to the shots she took later?"
"Yeah," Susan said, sitting on the ground so he didn't have to crane his neck to see her. "Are you okay, you don't look like you're in too much pain, but you're a guy, so you'd be trying to hide it anyway...."
"I can move my toes. I think fractured at worst, actually. I don't know, maybe broken. It hurts, but I don't think there's bone sticking out or anything."
"Hurm. That might cut down the sympathy ploy value," Susan joked as she heard the sirens arriving. She stood to guide them, pulling out her badge in advance.
She found herself beating on the glass with her fist, trying desperately to see through the dust that had been thrown up into the air above the rubble, when her headset began beeping at her. She fumbled with the dial, switching to the first channel they'd been on.
"Tom?" she asked hopefully.
"Oh, thank God!" she heard Thomas' voice answer. He sounded like something was wrong though.
"Tom, are you okay?"
"Well - " She heard him grunt. "I was halfway up to try and arrest that bunch when you told me to bail." He told her. "So I headed back down to the car, and had my hand on the door, when I heard the first charge go. She had them set up to go one at a time I guess, and it started at the far end away from me. I hauled ass over the cement wall and started running, but I didn't get far before the whole building came down."
"But are you okay?" He wasn't answering the question, and it bothered her.
"Are you still up in that office building?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"If you could call for an ambulance, it would be nice. Assuming there isn't already one on it's way. I got pinned down by a big chunk of flying cement. It's mostly on my leg though. I expect I got lucky. Call for a fire truck too, will you? There was all sorts of electrical running through that ought to be checked out. Oh, and the car is toast."
"Hang in there, Thomas. I'm on it. I'll be down in a few."
"Hey, Suz?"
"Yeah?"
"Do you think Cindy might take me back if I use the sympathy ploy from being injured?"
Susan laughed, despite herself. "Be there in a minute, partner." She shook her head and picked up the nearest phone.
Suddenly it occurred to Susan to wonder how it was that they could hear her at all. Perhaps Anna had had to use a normal radio for her bug. Maybe she was out of better gadgets, or needed something specifically compatible with the one Thomas was recording with. It did seem a little improvised.
But then, she had said the transmitter had a shorter range than the radios. What else has she lied about, though?
Susan had distracted everyone down below, and she saw the FBI man and the European both pull out guns. Then things were fragments and chaos.
Gunshots. She heard Anna cry out, and saw Anna start running away, her gun left behind. More gunshots.
And then there was an explosion. The elevator structure went first, and Susan winced and turned her head from the flash. Then more explosions, and rumbling.
She turned back to see the entire parking structure collapsing. A matter of seconds expanded, and in she watched in shock, lost in the moment. It was like watching professionals demolish an old building, except that one side was left partially intact.
"THOMAS," she screamed.
Then she cursed again, this time at herself, as she remembered the binoculars she'd been using before. She yanked them off her belt, where she'd clipped them, and holstered her gun for a moment while she focused in on the group below.
"First off, you - leave." Anna waved her gun at the middle easterner of the group. "Oh, and don't bother to make that transfer. These gentlemen do not speak for the U.S. government. I'm afraid you'll have to handle your rebel situation either on your own or through normal diplomatic channels."
"Svetlana, what the fuck do you think you are doing?" Susan was now able to identify the CIA agent, as he edged slightly closer to Anna. She could see another man, on the outskirts, trying to slowly work his way off to the side of her.
"I thought you had this woman under control!" The foreign leader hissed before waving to two men he'd had standing nearby. One started up the Lincoln Towncar while the other held a rear door open for him. He strode over and got into the back of the car quickly. The second of his men hopped into the front passenger seat before the car sped down the ramp, it's tires squealing.
"Under control, gentlemen? Perhaps you ought to revise your definition of that phrase. If you think that little 'incident' in Munich is enough to keep me under your thumb, then you don't know half of what I've had to do in my lifetime. Munich is hardly worth mentioning." She suddenly turned and put two shots into the chest of the man who'd been edging around as he went for his gun. Susan found it odd, hearing him fall to the ground through her headset. She suddenly realized that Anna had no intention of letting the rest of these men leave.
"Thom, get out of there!" Susan called out frantically, after switching the microphone on. She saw the men on the ground looking around to find the source of her voice, and banged her fist on the window in frustration.
Thomas' voice came through the radio, "What about you?"
"I'm fine, trust me just go!" She saw Anna waving her gun at the others, grouping them in front of her where she could see them easier.
"Anna, what is it you want?" The European said smoothly. "Money? Power? These things can be yours. I'd much rather have you on my team, than as an enemy."
"Oh, c'mon! Even I don't buy that crap." Susan couldn't help but say aloud, rolling her eyes.
"Who the hell are you then? And where the hell are you?" The European demanded angrily.
"Detective Suan Rice, Chicago PD. You are all under arrest you know."
"You're out of your juristiction, Detective." The FBI man said calmly.
This level was much the same as the one above it. She saw the distant exit sign across the work area just as it had been upstairs. She made her way across quickly, able to pay attention to the radio again. She had mentally tuned it out while using all her concentration on the lock.
"I suggest you two get to a safe distance," Anna's voice whispered to them over the radio. Susan halted with a sense of dread.
"Hello, gentlemen," Anna's voice came, louder this time. Now before you get excited, let me point something out. See this? This is a detonator. You want to know what happens if I take my thumb off this button? You know my penchant for explosives, don't you Louis?"
"What is this about, what is with the gun? What are you doing here? You were never to contact us in person...."
"Yes, that was what you had in mind. I have something else in mind," Anna told the men. "Your little game is over."
Anna, what the hell are you doing? Susan ran to the nearest office to look out a window. She could make out figures on the parking roof, mostly grouped together but one off to the side. She cursed, desperately wishing for binoculars.
"This is the account number you'll need to transfer the money into. As soon as I have confirmation of the deposit from the bank, I will give our friends at the CIA the heads up." The European said.
Susan glared at the door angrily, before heading down the stairs. Once she was out of sight of the door itself, she reached into her jacket and pulled out her lockpick set, estimating which pick would be best. Once she had gotten down to the next level, she set to work on getting that door open. She wasn't as skilled as Foley, but it wasn't the first time she'd needed to get past a locked door.
"I've already laid out several possible strategies for this operation." The CIA man added. "Based on tonight's conversation, I believe I already have one that will do nicely. The less of the details you know, the better. It gives you 'plausible deniability'."
"Since this isn't happening on U.S. soil, my only job here is to leak the appropriate information to the press, pinning the blame where we want it to go." The FBI man said.
"One week after the operation has been executed, once we have confirmation that it went as planned, we will transfer funds. After that, the few records of this transaction are destroyed with the exception of a private database I keep to reference. That database is under enough encryption that by the time anyone other than myself were to get it open, they'd destroy most of the information in it. For all intensive purposes, it will be as if this meeting never occured."
Susan nearly cheered when she finally got the lock open. She shoved the picks back into her pocket and slipped inside quickly, hoping Anna wouldn't anticipate this. Just because these guys are international assholes doesn't give you the right to go postal on your co-workers, bitch.
