Monica's Story :D

Monica sent me this over email:

The F-Team Mission X

The piercing ring of the phone made her jump as she drove down the highway so late at night. “Answer” she spoke slowly so her hands free device would understand. As she heard the ringing stop she spoke “Hello?” The response wasn’t a shock.

“Get over here,” Laura’s voice stung after the quite drive she had been enjoying.

            “Okay, I’ll be right there.” Nichole quickly checked her mirrors and her blind spot, although she already knew she was the only car around for miles, then swung across the four lanes highway, getting off at the next exit. Though quite annoying, she had to admit Laura’s timing was dead on. The timing of the phone call had allowed her to get off the highway less than a block from the apartment.

            The blackness of night had stolen the color from the bright flower arrangements that led into the complex. Your average person might have found it creepy but Nichole preferred it this way, as she knew her teammates did as well. The walls were stone and gray brick that cast subtle but incredibly eerie shadows across themselves without sunlight present to fill the dark lines between stones.

            Running her hands along the walls, Nichole jogged up the steps as stealthily as she would were she on a mission. You never know who’s watching. She slid the key from her back pocket and unlocked the door.

            “What is it?” The words had escaped her mouth before the door had opened far enough for her to see whose faces lay inside. Monica let out a small squeak while Laura and Jennifer simply stared expectantly over the computer monitor. “Fine, I know what it is. Details, please?”

            “We’re waiting for Suzy, I don’t want to have to go over everything a hundred and twenty times.” Laura said quietly without raising her eyes from the monitor or interrupting the steady sound of the keyboard clacking beneath her fingers. Or it might have been Jennifer typing; she couldn’t see either of their hands.

            She took a few steps further inside while looking over her shoulder to make sure the door was locked. As she felt her eyes adjusting to the bright room, her ears were working overtime listening for anything suspicious. Paranoia always got the best of her. Despite her training and the intense silence around her, nothing struck her as suspicious. A television in an adjacent apartment, the keyboard clacking, the obnoxiously loud tick of Jennifer’s watch that always drove her nuts, and the ghost-like purring of Monica’s eerie black cat. Suddenly, footsteps. She saw the rest of the team’s eyes’ jump up as well. After a second they collectively relaxed, it was Suzy. They all recognized the sound of her footsteps, it was distinctive, unique even, and when you spent as much time listening as they did, a sound as distinctive as this was always a relief.

            The doorknob turned, the lock clicked, and Nichole felt her back arch and nerves go on end despite the certainty that it was Suzy opening the door. Damn, stupid paranoia. Pluto, the cat, hissed and bolted off under a chair. Suzy entered and immediately went to the computer taking Monica’s seat as she launched herself onto the floor to lure her cat back into her lap.

            “Okay, now, can we get details?” Nichole shot at Laura. Laura answered with a dirty look, it was playful but there was still a bit of honest spite in it. Nichole knew that she would get annoyed as well if the team were constantly pestering her for details, so she didn’t feel offended.

            Laura cleared her throat importantly before starting, hoping to get Monica out from under the chair. “Just start, she already read it over your shoulder,” Jennifer stated.

            “Mostly, I was hoping she’d shut up before I started but, whatever,” she cleared her throat once more, “So, as you all know, there are a couple of targets we’ve been planning on hitting up for a while.”

            “Like that jewelry store with the owner who buys blood diamonds and supports all those barbaric rebel groups in various African countries?” Nichole questioned, unsure of exactly which targets Laura was referring to.

            “Like that bank with the scummy board of directors who report charity donations they aren’t making just so they can get a tax break?” Suzy inquired, as Monica finally brought her cat out from under the chair and stopped cooing at it.

            “Like that-“

            “Yes, all of those places, the whole list, well not the whole list, but, my point is there seems to be another team out there who is going down a really similar list to ours and it’s gonna start screwing with our plans. If they are taking these places out before we can, then we have no work. They seem to be a lot quicker at planning these things our, so they are probably a lot sloppier about it.”

            “We know they are a lot sloppier,” Monica interjected. “The cops are getting suspicious, which is also really bad for us.”

            Jennifer jumped in at this point. “I was thinking that we could do a stake out and confront whoever this is. They’ve already taken out three of our top targets, if we stake out the next one on the list; they’re bound to show up eventually.”

            “Their last hit was two weeks ago and there was exactly sixteen days between the earlier robberies so I say we start the stakeout as soon as possible to look for suspicious characters and possible set up and any other scheming that might be happening around the building.”

            “Do we know which target is next?” Suzy asked while her eyes flicked down the document opened on the monitor.

            “We’ve been thinking about that. We think it’s the storage facility on 6^th that the owner uses for cockfighting after hours. Poor little chickies.” Monica made a sickeningly cute face at her cat with her final statement.

            The next several hours spent working out a schedule for their stakeout and perfecting their stakeout method, including how to warn others of any information that was collected in the process and what the plan was when their opposition began their hit on the facility. Finally, just as the sun began to rise, the plans were done and Jennifer took off quickly to prepare before her shift on stakeout.

            As Jennifer left the room, Laura tried to stifle a yawn and failed. Her failure meant that the yawn was passed around the room several times before they collectively stopped yawning. “I guess that means we should all get to sleep,” Laura stated as she stood up and headed towards the door. The rest followed her out of the room groggily and headed towards their respective beds.

            While the rest of the team hunkered down for some sleep before they had to deal with their day jobs or work for the team, Jennifer found an average looking car and filled it with some empty boxes before she head over to the storage lockers. Her job was to scope the place for anything that was different from their latest blueprints and see what, if anything, had already been done by their competition for the impending break in.

            She entered slowly, casually, a smallish box under one arm, the only one that actually had contents. When she reached the front desk she placed the box on the counter and cleared her throat lightly as she reached for her wallet.

            “Can I help you?” a balding man behind the counter asked with more than a little bit of disdain. His bad comb-over and cracked glasses were distracting but Jennifer did her best to ignore them and focus on being personable.

            “Yes, do you rent on a monthly basis?” she asked in her best impersonation of friendly and honest. The man still looked suspicious but that was most likely related to the fact that he was a criminal.

            “Yes, two hundred a month plus a fifty dollar security deposit for your medium sized locker. Five foot by ten foot, ground floor, pay upfront.”