Menagerie: Jack of Clubs

Chapter I -- The Difficult Business of Business

"I'll go to bed in a minute, I just need to look at something real quick." Mongoose had no idea what made her decide to check her office that night. She didn't think of herself as particularly superstitious, only meticulous and thorough, but something guided her into the spare room before she called it a night and went to bed. At first glance, nothing seemed out of place and she almost let out a sigh of relief that she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

As she closed the door however, she started to notice inconsistencies. Slight differences from the way she normally kept things that maybe the average person might brush off as forgetfulness. To Mongoose, however, they jumped out, one by one, as if a light shined on them to point them out. The picture of her family from the last reunion was askew inside its frame, and she didn't touch that picture enough to have caused that herself. One of the drawers on the cabinet next to her desk was slightly open in a way that immediately pissed her off. The odds and ends she kept on her desk to fiddle around with were out of place, even though they were still on the desk. The intruder had been careful, but not careful enough to hide their tracks from her.

She froze and scanned her eyes over the room through the part of the door that was still open. Briefly, the thought to grab her pistol ran across her mind, but she swiftly dismissed it. It would be handy, and it wasn't like the neighbors would ask any unpleasant questions. An intruder was an intruder, and she could kill them and avoid any further unpleasantness about what the intruder stole. She already knew that the stolen objects came from her files on the Menagerie. Those were kept in very specific places, places that most people wouldn't think to look for valuables or information, but were definitely looked through now. The death of an intruder and a quick call to 911 would give her time to erase that potential issue before the authorities showed up.

But, unfortunately, that would require her to leave the doorway unattended.

Instead, Mongoose stepped into her office and swung the door shut behind her softly. She couldn't risk making any loud noises, not this late at night. In a move that would normally make the young woman laugh at how stupid it looked, she snatched a ballpoint pen off of her desk and flipped the cap off. It was stupid. She wasn't a particularly strong woman, and the thought of stabbing an intruder with a pen was laughable, but it was better than nothing. It'd at least cause enough of a ruckus to let her husband know she needed help, and that was good enough.

Mongoose crept quietly across the room, an extra effort made to not cause the floorboards to creak, with her pen at the ready. She checked underneath her desk first, empty, but one of the papers on the surface was slightly wrinkled as if someone had dropped it and awkwardly caught it. The space between two filing cabinets also turned up empty, and she felt her stomach sink in dread. She thought to close the drawer, so that it wouldn't distract her. There was one place left to look, and she sure as hell hoped that it turned up a clueless robber that had no idea what they held.

Before she thought about it further she lunged across the room and ignored the sharp pain in her lower back that resulted from the move. In a single movement, she slammed the closet door open and kicked whoever might lurk inside.

Instead, her foot connected with thin air and the winter coats that they had put up for the season.

Any shred of calm analysis had left her by that point, and the hacker wheeled around on one foot to hurry back to her hiding places. They were gone. They were gone and she'd been none the wiser until the intruder had already left. Mongoose flipped numbly through her hidden documents. Ledgers of what they'd stolen and what they'd sold for were still intact, names of contacts were left untouched. The only thing that she couldn't account for was...

The alert from a new text startled her out of her daze, and she took her phone out to look at the message. It took a second for her to comprehend, all of the energy that she'd felt moments prior now trembled out of her hands and caused the screen to shake in front of her.

[23:03 -- UNKNOWN NUMBER] Too little too late, Mongoose! Or should I call you by your real name? You have a LOT of work to do if you don't want the federales finding out your little secret! -- xoxo