Off and on over the last decade or so, I’ve been working on a sci-fi novel. I wanted to create a cohesive fictional world with believable characters, and so I wrote a few short stories to help me flesh out my characters and universe. The following is one of those stories.

Mandy swore as she snapped her phone shut, slapping it back into its magnetic holder on her belt and scowling intently over the holographic yellow police line at the house.  It was picturesque, beautiful gardens surrounding it, a little creek running along one side and disappearing into a forest, rustic shingle rooftop and rough-panel siding.  It could have been straight out of one of those old Kinkade paintings her mother had hanging all over her walls, except that none of the windows were lit.  The kind of place that Mandy herself would have loved to live in.

You’d think, she thought to herself, that people this sick would’ve chosen a more imposing hideout.

The phone at her side buzzed, and she snatched it back up to her ear, flipping it open and adopting an icy tone.  “This had better be you telling me you’ve got that van.”

The voice on the other side was harried, male, and exhausted.  “Yes, I’ve got the van, just like I said I would.”

“What you said is that you’d have it an hour ago.”

“Look, darling, nothing in life is certain—”

Mandy cut him off, her frustration straining through her tight tone.  “Neither is the survival of the two little girls inside this house, Timmy.”

There was a pause.  “I know.  I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“Make it five,” Mandy said, and replaced the phone again.  She then picked up the receiver of the police communications equipment, took a deep breath, and dialed onto the house’s network.

A voice answered instantly, deep, calm, and deadly intense.  “Hello.  Your time’s almost up.”

Mandy’s voice was professional, with just a hint of placating desperation thrown in for good measure.  “Please understand these things take time; we’re doing the best we can—”

The voice cut her off, its tone still icy smooth.  “I’ve heard that one before, fed.  Now that I think about it, I remember hearing it three years ago—just a few minutes before I was taken down and loaded into an armored police van.  I am going to repeat my terms to you one more time, just so you don’t have to go to the trouble of searching through your recording for them.  If that van is not here in twenty minutes, I start cutting off fingers.  Twenty-five minutes, toes.  Thirty minutes, ears.  Do I need to go on?”

“We understand that you’re serious.  The van will be here.  But it’s rush hour, c’mon, we just need a little more time.  Our driver has it on the way, he’s on the highway coming as fast as he can.  Give us thirty minutes.”

The voice did not reply for a moment.  “Thirty minutes.  The clock’s ticking, fed.”

The connection cut off.  Mandy set the phone down and leaned against the table, which was set up across the street from the house in question.  Police cruisers and a few SpecOps hover cars cluttered the small two lane road.  A few cops milled about, mostly for show of presence and to keep the camera crews occupied.  Mandy glanced at her timepiece, then clicked the comm attached her to collar.

“Big Mike, how’s the team placement coming?”

Big Mike’s old southern drawl came back through the comm, harsh and raspy with the encrypting.  “All but one team member is in place, Mandy-girl, just waiting on our last long rifleman, and then we’ll be green.  What is the situation there?”

“Not much change.”

“Hang in there.  I’ll let you know when—there, he’s in position, covering the back end of the house.  No visible motion.  Keep me updated.”

“Yes, sir.”  Though Mike Jefferson was her superior officer, they had worked together long enough that their relationship was no longer merely one of profession, but more of a partnership.  Twelve years her senior, Big Mike was commander of her special operations unit that handled situations like this when the local authorities decided it was too hot for them.

This particular situation had quickly become much hotter than expected, a botched robbery turned botched kidnapping turned hostage situation.  It did not help matters at all that the two girls that were being held inside were the twin daughters of the visiting politician, Andre Viat, quite possibly the most influential man in the world.  Some called him a savior, others the antichrist; right about now, Mandy didn’t care much what he was, she just wished he and his daughters had stayed home, instead of bringing their high-profile selves to her country and—inadvertently—gifting it with this huge dose of bad publicity.  Their position in the world was already bad enough; this would be enough to get them thrown into the same batch as Afghanistan and North Korea.

But that was a mess for others to sort out.  All that mattered right now were the lives of those two girls.  If the rest of the world went to hell while she worked that out, she would have to fix it at some later point.

Leaning against the table, Mandy closed her eyes and began to think, began to ponder, to gather all that she knew and all that she had learned of these robbers turned kidnappers into some cohesive form.  To see through their eyes.

There were two of them.  The first was a John Doe, perhaps his first venture onto this side of the law.  The second was Ralph ‘Slits’ Gray; his file back at their office was four inches thick.  He was nicknamed Slits for the scars on his wrists—leftovers of a failed suicide attempt during his first stay in prison, and supposedly the reason for his drive against all things lawful—first the authorities had ruined his life, and then they had ruined his death, and so he had dedicated whatever it was he had now to working against them.

But though Slits was a habitual lawbreaker, he had never been recorded doing anything even approaching as serious as this.  A robbery here and there, an occasional carjacking…but kidnapping?  Desperate people did desperate things…but this didn’t fit his profile at all.

Another thing out of place was how calm he seemed.  If it had been her who had just tried to rob one of the most powerful men in the world’s vacation home, failed, had had to grab two eleven year old girls and hold them under force while a crowd of cops and gawkers gathered and the world heard about what you had done, she’d have totally lost it, started screaming and shooting and making irrational demands.  Perhaps if she had been a professional, experienced kidnapper or terrorist, she would’ve handled it better, but she certainly wouldn’t have sounded like she’d expected it all along.  Which, now that she thought about it, was exactly what Slits sounded like.  Of course, that was not conclusive proof of anything, but still…

Mandy followed that tack.  Say that this was planned…planned to look like a robbery gone bad, when the hostage situation was the real goal all the time?  If that was the case, then Slits definitely was not in charge…finesse and deception?  Not the Slits I know and love. Either he was acting on remote orders—but independence had always been one of his trademarks, so that didn’t fit—or he was being forced into cooperation.

But why?

A motive for kidnapping the children of an important diplomat was not hard to imagine.  Viat had made plenty of enemies.  But why make it look like a robbery?  And why, according to her theory, were they forcing a small chips crook like Slits to be their front?

While Slits was not stupid, he wasn’t brilliant, either.  Pulling off a high-profile, high-risk robbery like this required brilliance.  Plain and simple.  No way any normal person could get away with it.  Too much security.  Perhaps a mastermind or a terrorist organization would have had the guts and brains to pull it off, but Slits was neither.

If they hadn’t been able to determine for certain that it was him, she would’ve submitted an opinion that they were dealing with someone else.  But it was Slits.  The voiceprint matched to ninety-eight percent, they had clear security footage of him and the John Doe entering the building, they had DNA samples from the car they had used, parked a few blocks away.  It was him.

But it wasn’t like him.

Mandy’s gut told her that Slits was being used as a puppet.  She couldn’t explain why, but she had learned to trust her instincts over the years.  Most of the time, they were right.  It had been a gut instinct that had bloodlessly resolved the Empire State Building affair, the job that had effectively launched her career.  It had been a gut instinct that had saved the lives of two dozen hostages a year ago in a Nevada bank.

Heck, it was a gut instinct that stopped me from eating one of those day-old McMuffins they were passing around earlier…Though now, as her stomach growled, she almost wished she’d taken one.

But who is using him?  And why?

Even as Mandy asked the question, she knew it wasn’t important.  Or, rather, wasn’t important at the moment.  That would be for someone else to figure out.  Right now, all that was important was getting those two girls out unharmed.  And now she had her foothold.  The rest was clockwork.

Mandy activated her comm.  “Mike?”

“Here.  What’s the situation?”

“Got ‘em right where I want ‘em.”

“That’s my girl.  Anything I can do?”

Mandy peered at the house, watching for shadows in the windows.  “Can you get me the positions of the subjects?  I want to try and talk to Slits without the Johnny listening in.”

“One sec, sugar.”  Big Mike broke the connection, and Mandy leaned against her equipment table, running through her plan of attack, looking for weaknesses, playing her own devil’s advocate.  But the theory fit the facts she had, which meant it was time to test it.  If it broke down, she would bail and take a different tack.

Big Mike’s voice crackled in her ear.  “Can’t see much, Mandy-girl, but judging from the sound patterns I’m picking up from the window mics, the Johnny’s with the kids, and Slit’s two rooms away, maybe where the TV is.  That help?”

“All I needed to know, sir.  Thanks.”

Mandy could hear Mike’s grin over the connection.  “Take the buggers down.  We’ll stand by in case all hell breaks loose.”

Mandy deactivated the comm, and once again picked up the receiver.

This time the answer was a few seconds in coming.  “Hello.”

His tone had not changed; calm, in control.  For a second, Mandy’s confidence in her theory wavered, but before she could change her mind, she jumped in.  “Why are you doing this, Slits?”

There was a long pause; the question had clearly taken the man by surprise.  “I enjoy complicating your lives.  Where’s my van?”

For a second, Mandy toyed with the idea of grasping for extra minutes by claiming that there had been an accident on the highway, and that it had slowed traffic down even further, but she didn’t want to risk it against the chance that they would check that on the internet.  Being caught in a lie wouldn’t help her situation.  “I know this wasn’t your idea, Slits.  You’re a lot smarter than this.”

“What, you don’t think I can handle a few dirty feds?  It’s not as if I haven’t run into you three-piece jokers before.”  There was indignation in the tone, but also a wavering.  She had him.  Another round to the gut instinct.

“No comment.  But you must have known that us three-piece jokers weren’t going to be the only ones here.  You know how many guns in a S.W.A.T. team, Slits?  There’s three of those out here, a spec ops unit, a HD terrorism squad, Viat’s personal body guard, and about a hundred cops.  Don’t try to tell me that you thought that you could hit this hornet’s nest without waking the whole hive—I won’t believe you.  I’ve read through your record.  While I wouldn’t call you the smartest man I’ve ever studied, you don’t strike me as suicidal.  Who’s your partner, Slits?”

A bark of laughter that sounded decidedly forced.  “If you think I’m going to start giving you names—”

Mandy cut him off, her mind working three sentences ahead of the conversation.  “I don’t want a name, Slits.  I mean organization.  Whoever he is, he’s a lot bigger than you are, and he’s using you as his scapegoat.  You really think he’s going to let you get arrested?  If he’s who I think he is, once you’ve played your part, you’ll never breathe the air out here again.  You know I’m telling you the truth.”  In truth, Mandy didn’t have the foggiest who Slits’ partner was, but the deception could go far to convince Slits’ of her credibility.

A long pause.  “I…Where’s the van?  You’re down to fifteen minutes, fed.”

Mandy ignored the question.  “I’ll make you a deal, Slits.”

That comment got an immediate response, as Mandy had counted on—she couldn’t have him hanging up on her now.  “I don’t make deals with cops!”

“Hear me out.  Here’s your options.  You could ignore me, stay in there, cut off a little girl’s fingers and get life in prison even if your partner doesn’t kill you—which he will—or, you can help me out, get charged with nothing more than unwillful aiding and abetting a kidnapping and attempted robbery, and be back out jacking cars again in a year tops.  Unless you know something about life after death that I don’t, it seems to me that it will be hard to rob that next bank from the inside of a body bag.”

There was silence on the other end of the line.  Mandy pounced one more time.  “You don’t really want to cut their toes off, do you, Slits?  You don’t strike me as sick.  You have a daughter of your own, don’t you?  What will she think of you with that news splattered all over every headline on the web?  And even on the billion to one chance that you escaped this with your life, you’d be the most hunted man in the world.  You’d have to go into permanent hiding, Slits.  If you so much as thought about even bending a law, it’d be over.  Help yourself here by helping me out, huh?  If they got you to do this by force or threat, we’ll protect you if you want, or leave you be if you’d rather handle it yourself.”

Again, silence.  This time Mandy waited.  At last, Slits’ voice came back over the line.  “I’ll never forgive myself for this.”

Mandy almost pumped her fist in the air.  “You’d never have had the chance to try with a bullet in your skull.”

Another pause.  “Do what you do in five minutes.  I’ll keep him off the girls.”

The line clicked.

Mandy nearly crushed her comm as she slapped it on.  “Mike, you got a storming solution worked up?”

Big Mike’s grin could be heard through the static.  “Mandy-girl, we had that worked up ten minutes after we got here.”  The grin disappeared.  “What gone wrong?”

“You’re going in, hard and loud, five minutes.  Slits will provide a distraction.  His partner’s the one really running the show.”

She heard his voice faintly, and realized that he was speaking to someone else.  And then his voice came back.  “How do you know he’s telling the truth?”

Mandy shrugged.  “My gut, Mike.”

“I’m sure I’m safe in assuming you wouldn’t be trusting those two lives in there to a mere hunch?”

That gave Mandy pause.  How did she know?

I… “I’m as sure as I’ve ever been about any of this, Mike.”

She again heard him giving orders, then, “Good enough for me.  Five minutes.”

—

Ten minutes later, Mandy watched as Slits was led, handcuffed and masked, out of the house and into an armored van.  His partner was brought out in a body bag on a stretcher.  The two young girls were brought out on stretchers and loaded into an ambulance, which whisked them and their parents away, followed by an armada of press vehicles and camera vans.

Big Mike made his way through the crowd of cops over to Mandy, a characteristic half-smile on his face—half happy for a job well done, half saddened by the loss of life and the state of the world that required him to do that job.  “You were right, Mandy-girl.  Slits was in there lying over both of them, in-between them and his partner.  Had to take that bugger out, had his finger on the trigger.  That was some negotiating, getting old Slits to help out the feds.”

Mandy gave him a tired grin.  “I have some pretty serious questions about this whole thing…”

Mike cut her off with a wave of his hand.  “So do I, but right now we need to clear out of here so the cleanup crew can get to work, and get some rest before this blasted phone of mine rings and calls us off somewhere else.  We’ll talk on the plane.”

Nodding resignedly, Mandy turned and walked toward their rides, quickly realizing how exhausted she was.  Her job, while not usually physically exerting, was emotionally draining.  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt rested.

As she stepped into the shiny black SUV, she caught sight of her driver leaning out the window, looking very pale.

“What’s with you, Berty?”

Berty glanced back at her, grimacing.  “I think I’ve been food-poisoned.  Must have been that fragging McMuffin, it’s the only thing I’ve eaten all day.”

Mandy almost laughed, but couldn’t quite find the energy.