Clandestine

seventy five

-diane-

I don't know how Julia is able to keep up the chatter with Kristy. We were able to convince Kristy to give us a ride to my house. It's still only 6 o'clock. But we plan to get there early to search. If Julia's mother is there already, maybe we can resolve this conflict before it begins.

That is.

If we actually had a plan.

This is insane. We can't go into this house without any type of plan. But we have no choice. We couldn't come up with anything. There is no way out. We are trapped. Marcia Quintana will win.

Kristy laughs at something Julia says as she pulls into the driveway. There's a landscaping crew in the front yard. The grass has been cut and most of the flowers are back in order. They should be leaving soon. I wonder if there is someone working there for Marcia Quintana. Will they report to her that we are there already? Will Marcia Quintana come to meet us?

Kristy says, "What time should I come back to get you?"

Julia lies flawlessly, "We are having some other friends meet here. One of them will be able to give us a ride."

Kristy grins at me, "Have fun. Make good choice. Don't drink."

Julia laughs, "We aren't doing any of that. We are just going to watch some movies."

Kristy nods and we climb out of the car. "Have fun." She says one more time and I wish that it was possible.

We walk up the front door and open it to noise. The kitchen staff has arrived. They must be preparing whatever meal that they've decided on.

They all smile at me and I watch their faces widen when they realize that I have a friend with me. Julia has dyed her hair blond in hopes that not as many people will notice her. While Julia is famous for her bright hair and most people would recognize her with pink or purple or blue, she rarely does natural colors. People won't be looking for a Julia Quintana with blond hair. They might think she looks familiar, hopefully no one will recognize her.

It helps that she has next to no makeup on. It's not the look that Julia normally presents and that's the idea.

The kitchen and the cleaning staff fill the house and there's a few preparational people here, but there's no Marcia Quintana. I recognize most of the people here. Marcia Quintana managed to hire almost all of the same people that my father does. She was smart enough to know that if she didn't hire the people, there would be a huge outburst about disloyalty among the companies.

Did she know that or was she just too lazy to find different people?

Julia says, "Now what do we do?"

"We need some weapons."

Julia twists up her mouth, "We probably can't get knives out of the kitchen. There are too many people in there. Does your father have a gun safe or anything?"

I shake my head, "He wasn't really into that kind of thing."

"Really?"

"Yeah, difficult to believe about a criminal, right?"

Julia's cheeks flush, "You know that's not what I think about your father, right? Maybe I did for a while. But I've met you and I understand now. Just like you know that I'm not like my mother. It's like you said. Crime isn't heritable."

We move through the house, doing checks on all the rooms. We need to be sure that marcia Quintana isn't hiding here already. Julia surveys all the cars in the parking lot and determines that none of the cars there are her mother's. Unless, of course, her mother had someone drop her off.

We can't underestimate her mother.

But we can't overestimate her either.

We can't assume that she will even show up.

We can't assume that she will even try to kill me tonight. Maybe this is all to throw us off.

We can't really do anything.  

Author's Note

First of all, thank you to everyone who has read this! I truly appreciate it. Really. I love all of you and I WILL get to all of those comments. 

Anyway, I have a confession to make. I messed up some of the numbers on the chapters, so there will actually be 84 chapters to this book. So, bonus chapters, I guess! 

Thanks again!

Love you all, 

Anne Brees