Young Writers Society

Author's Note: I am not going to be posting every chapter of this on YWS, just occasional snippets that I need particular help with. Everything else is going to my trusted editors because I have decided to do so. Deal with it. If you're interested, send me a PM, but there's no guarantee that I'll ask you to edit my story. I'm not trying to be arrogant, I'm just testing a theory. ^_^

Fragile Little Things

Chapter 1: Warning

Eden Princeton hated when coworkers stole her lunches.

She bent double, leaning into the open fridge in the lounge of the police precinct. Yesterday she had left a plastic container in the fridge with her name written in blue ink on its lid, and today she stared at a plastic-container-sized hole amongst the cups of yoghurt and soda cans. She chewed on her lip, deciding to pay the theft forward as she nicked one of the cans and a Styrofoam box marked "Property of Will Leonard. I am a detective and I will find you if you steal my food."

Oddly, she didn't feel threatened by his warning.

She opened it to find the pungent leftovers from a Mexican restaurant just down the road from the precinct. Spooning it onto a plate, she set the multicoloured mixture in the microwave and turned it on just as her assistant, Patricia Thompson, stumbled in with an armful of folders and paperwork. Her normally pale face was flushed, her hair flying every which way.

"Have you seen the news, Eden?" she burst.

"What news? I've been at the doctor's all morning, haven't heard a thing."

Patricia walked to the miniscule, decades-old television that sat on a cart in one corner of the room. She turned it on and a news report materialized on screen. A television anchor in a suit and tie was talking next to the mug shot of a man with shoulder-length strawberry blonde hair, vivid green eyes, and a massive bruise across his left cheek. The screen's caption read "Mass murderer escapes prison."

Eden recognized the face instantly, her blood turning to ice.

"Police are advising that citizens take great care and extra caution as the hunt for this dangeous criminal continues. Police warn not to approach him as P-"

Eden seized the remote from the nearby countertop, shut off the television, and turned away. She set the remote down on a table and looked up.

"So?"

"So what?"

"Has he killed anybody yet?"

Patricia opened one of the folders in her hands and scanned the report it contained within.

"No. He escaped this morning and vanished without a trace. Every available officer, dog, and helicopter's been on the case -- nothing's turned up."

Eden sighed.

"He's not stupid enough to get caught by dogs and helicopters. Only people will find him, and only if he wants to be found. Why nobody called me, I'll never understand."

Eden took the folder from her assistant and walked out of the lounge. Patricia followed, scurrying to keep up with the chief of police.

"What do you think he's planning?" she asked.

"Knowing him, nothing good. He's not the type to sit quietly on his hands, whether in prison or not. Something will turn up, and hopefully before anybody gets killed."

Eden opened the door to her office, freezing in her tracks as she saw the room's contents. Patricia, having no time to react, walked right into her.

The man with the strawberry blonde sat in the chair behind the desk, tilted back with his feet on the oak structure. He was looking up at the ceiling, one hand on his knees and the other hanging down at his side. He held a cigarette in the limp hand, its trail of poison gas curling around his fingers.

He looked up as the two women walked in. He smiled. The bruise had long faded from his face and his hair had grown a few inches, but there was no mistaking him.

"Hello, Eden," he said.

His voice was calm, but tainted with a seductive poison. Patricia's eyes widened while Eden's narrowed.

"Jesse," she said with as little emotion as possible.

He swept his feet off the desk and sat upright, bringing his cigarette to his lips.

"What's wrong?" he asked in a mocking tone. "Not happy to see me?"

Eden pulled Patricia into the room and closed the door.

"I should call security right now and get you back where you belong," she hissed.

"You might want to call them to ask why I was able to walk right past them without even being glanced at. I mean, really, at least make it fun for me. I had a complicated Plan B outlined and everything, and I was really looking forward to doing it."

He opened his hand and extinguished his cigarette by pressing it into his palm. As the cancer stick made a tiny, circular burn on his skin, Jesse didn't even flinch, locking eyes with Patricia, who turned her eyes to Eden.

"But never mind me," he said, still holding the cigarette to his burned palm. "I've come to warn you - the both of you. The whole town."

"You escaped from prison to tell us something you could have mentioned from the penitentiary?" Eden said in disbelief.

"If I had asked you to come, or even if I had written a letter, you would not have replied. This was the only way to make you listen to me."

"The only way," Eden repeated, raising one eyebrow and folding her arms.

"Well, the alternative would be to kidnap you, but that's far too messy."

Jesse tucked the cigarette into the breast pocket of his shirt.

"You took this office with the promise to put a stop to the violence and drugs and whatever else in the city. Good for you. Made everybody feel good for a while. And you did pretty well on that promise -- enacted some new laws, started some new programmes, re-did the budget, even managed to put me away. You've done your job swimmingly. Crime rates have slowed. People in this town feel safe again.

"But I'm not here just to laud your efforts, Eden," he said, standing up. "I'm here to tell you that the falling crime rates are a ruse. You've always known that the biggest threat in this town -- after me, of course -- has been the mob. And you thought you'd quelled that threat. You haven't."

"What are you talking about?" Patricia interjected. "Eden's put away more mobsters than you could even begin to comprehend."

"I'm not arguing that," Jesse said, stepping around the desk to stand directly in front of the two women. "But when you want to kill a big bad monster, you don't just trim its toenails. You chop off its head.

"You've taken a good chunk out of their ranks, but your job won't be done until you take off the mob's head. They're planning an uprising -- I heard things in prison. The mob is biding its time, twiddling its thumbs and keeping quiet while it builds up an army. And you need to take down their leader if you really want to save this town."

There was silence. Eden tried to keep her face impassive, but her eyes glimmered with excess moisture, betraying her fear.

"Who is their leader?" she asked, her voice cracking slightly.

Jesse leaned back.

"I have no idea," he said.

Patricia and Eden exchanged glances again.

"What do you suggest?" Patricia whispered. Jesse looked into her eyes, and she quailed under the intensity of his gaze.

"Nothing legal, that's for sure," he said.

"So why are you here?" Eden snapped. "You've given your warning; I'm calling security to take you back to prison."

Eden reached around him for the phone on her desk. In a move so fast that it was near impossible to see, Jesse seized her hand and gave one of the fingers a sharp twist. She shrieked as he shoved her backward.

"You people are so presumptuous," he said, his face locked in an expression of boredom. Eden stared at her injured finger.

"You bastard," she hissed.

"Relax, it's not broken. It'll just hurt for a while. My point is that maybe you should wait until I've had my whole say, little sister."

"Sister?" Patricia gasped. Jesse raised an eyebrow at Eden.

"You haven't told her? I'm insulted. I thought you'd be proud of throwing your murderous brother behind bars."

He glanced at Patricia.

"And you bought it. How many Princetons are there in this town? Easy -- four. Us two and our parents. Pretty narrow field, if you ask me."

Eden looked at the ground, Patricia staring at her in disbelief.

"The most notorious criminal this town has ever seen... is your older brother?"

"The plot thickens," Jesse said with a smirk.

"He's seriously your brother?" Patricia said, staring at Eden, who looked away.

"Now that is fascinating news," Jesse said idly, picking up a knick-knack from Eden's desk and toying with it. "How did a high-profile civil servant manage to hide her high-profile criminal brother? Certainly someone stuck their hands in your past. How could even your own assistant not know?"

"Never mind it," Eden said, her face turning red. "We've got more important things to deal with."

"More important, but far less interesting," said Jesse. "Care to explain voluntarily or involuntarily?"

"Or not at all," Eden snapped. "Tell me what you want. You wouldn't go through all this trouble just to warn me. What's your ulterior motive?"

Jesse sighed and set his toy down, bracing himself against the desk.

"I'll tell you the truth if you tell me the truth."

Their eyes met. Patricia looked from one to the other, unsure whose stare was more intense.

"You first, because I don't trust you," growled Eden.

"I told you I have no idea who the leader of the mob is," he said instantly, the words pouring forth like opened floodgates. "But I do know some of their top members are gathering for a faux charity ball in two weeks. They hold them all the time, to keep the leaders' image of well-to-do businessmen. It's not likely the actual mob boss will attend, but several close underlings will. I plan to infiltrate the occasion and try to coax out what information I can. It may call for torture, which i will do if I must. But I cannot do it alone. I need someone help me get into the ball."

"We can't do that," Patricia gasped. "We'd lose our jobs, or worse, get ourselves killed.

"I'm not a total idiot. You'd be in disguise, and you don't have to help me torture anyone; that I can do on my own."

"No," Patricia said, taking a step back and shaking her head.

"You don't trust that I'd keep you safe?" said Jesse, sounding genuinely surprised. "I know how these people work, my dear. I know how to stay undercover.

"I'm not asking for any long-term commitments. I'm asking for help. This is not something I can do alone."

Eden looked him straight in the eyes, surprise plastering itself to her face. Jesse stared back calmly, his face betraying nothing.

"Patricia?" she asked, not taking her eyes off her brother. "What do you think?"

"I trust him about as far as I can throw him," said Patricia. Eden nodded.

"Fine. Go get security."

Patricia nodded and left the room. The two siblings stared at one another for a moment.

"Patricia might not understand, but I know what it means when you admit you can't do something on your own," Eden said, measuring each word. "But this is the first I've heard of anything, and after what happened the last time I trusted you, I can't bring myself to be so lenient with you again."

"You've always stuck by what you believe in, Eden," Jesse said, "and I admire that. But this is a grave mistake. I'll give you a week to think it over. After that, it'll be too late and it's likely that this town and everyone in it will be damned to the furthest depths of hell."

He walked around the desk, opened the window, and vaulted to the tree outside. He looked over his shoulder at his sister.

"This was Plan B, by the way," he said before shimmying down the tree trunk and disappearing from view.