ELEMENTALS

BARELY ESCAPED

• • •

The bubble popped for the hundredth time.

She chewed the bubblegum furiously again before blowing it for the hundredth and first time. Her jaw should be numb by now but something about chewing takes off a little edge from the nerves she feel as she waited for Lena in the car.

Dinah checked the time on her phone. It was fifteen minutes past eleven in the evening and visiting hours were over hours ago already. She may still feel her jaw but her butt seems to have been swallowed by the car seat already. She can't feel her butt anymore.

And she wondered who the hell Lena was visiting in this correctional facility in all of this time.

Her thoughts have been jumping off from earlier events to the kids in the orphanage then to her present situation and then to something else entirely. Dinah's train of thought shifts every few moments while waiting inside a dark old car with Beyonce serenading her with Halo on the stereo.

Then something clicked in her mind when the huge bubble popped in her face for the hundredth and first time again.

The old newspaper clip headline.

Jauregui estate burns a week after patriarch, Mike Jauregui, is incarcerated

She remembered as she ripped the sticky bubblegum off her face, shoved it back in her mouth and chewed it again furiously. She mulled over that thought as she tried to blow a bubble for the hundredth and second time.

Incarcerated. Dinah was waiting for Lena in the car outside a correctional facility.

Could it be...

Before she was able to draw a conclusion any further, the driver's side door harshly opened then slammed close.

"A brand new shipment of cocaine arrived this morning and is about to be distributed soon. Kruger sure moved really fast,"

Dinah studied Lena's dark mood as she slowed her chewing, "Did you get your info from the inside?" she said nodding towards the imposing gray building.

"Some yes. But I wasn't here for Kruger. While it cripples their business and disrupt their bigger scheme, we are not burning anything tonight,"

"Care to elaborate further? My brain is sticky with bubblegum,"

"No,"

"Lena..."

"Not yet. How is Lauren?"

Dinah spat her bubblegum out of the window as Lena drove off, "Well last time Mani texted she said they were at Fitz Lounge. Apparently, this Lauren gal is also a singer and Mila is sort of infatuated,"

"What?!"

She almost hit her head on the windshield when she lurched forward as Lena stepped on the break so suddenly.

"What the hell?! Did you accidentally ran over on some squirrel and had the urge to cremate its dead body or you're leg just got twitchy?"