Eleven Snipers Sniping (A Short Story) (12 Days of Christmas series Book 11)

by H. P. Mallory

  I turned around to face her and leaned back into my chair again, suddenly feeling it necessary to take a quick break. Apparently feeling my eyes on her, Dulcie glanced up at me and held my gaze for a few seconds before she smiled. I almost found it difficult to smile in response as I was completely overcome with the sudden realization that if anything ever happened to her, it would mean the end of me.

  An hour later, Sam was standing beside us in my office as we reviewed the two surveillance reel footages. In watching them for the fourth time, it was beyond obvious that the “woman” was anything but. I wasn’t really sure how that fact escaped me the first time around when it became so glaringly apparent now. But that was the beauty of working with a seasoned regulator like Dulcie: when one of us missed something, the other caught it.

  “So, what do you think?” Dulcie asked Sam once we finished viewing the second reel.

  Sam shrugged and sighed. Physically, Sam was much taller than Dulcie, but she was also way less curvy. She had a slender waist with narrow shoulders and incredibly long legs. With her chestnut-brown hair and big brown eyes, she was a very pretty woman although I wasn’t attracted to her. I thought of her more as my sister.

  “Well, whoever our suspect is, he’s not exactly a convincing woman,” Sam said as she studied the footage of the she-male stepping into the phone booth. “I agree,” Dulcie said, nodding. “So do you think you can crack his costume so we can see who our Jane Doe is?”

  Sam shrugged again. “Hard to say, but I can give it a try.” It was the same thing she always said whenever her abilities were called into question. Even though Sam was probably the most gifted witch I’d ever come across, you’d never have known it, based on her own doubts about her abilities.

  “I’m sure you’ll do fine,” I said with a wide smile. Both Dulcie and I tried to boost her self-esteem whenever we got the opportunity. “But let’s focus on cracking the license plate first.”

  Sam didn’t say anything more, but nodded before turning to her backpack, which she always toted around with her. Inside it, she kept an array of tiny vials, all containing various potions, mixes, or antidotes to the most common issues she encountered. She pulled out what looked like a green plastic notebook, but when she opened it, it was filled with about forty one-inch vials, each held in place behind an elastic strap attached to the plastic binder. She scanned the top line of vials, using her index finger to guide her through the powders, liquids, and gasses. As she did so, she muttered something to herself before asking herself a question. She paused for a few seconds, then continued her search, finally allowing her finger to hover over one vial.

  “Found what you’re looking for?” I asked, hoping the answer was a resounding yes.

  Sam nodded. “Grumbelding should stop the motion of the numbers and letters on the license plate,” she said as she pulled the vial of pink liquid free from its enclosure. Then she continued searching through the other vials until she hesitated over one. “Bouchon might work,” she said in an unconvincing tone, tapping her finger on the cork cap of the vial before finally pulling it free. The white powder inside splashed up against the sides of the glass.

  “What’s Bouchon do?” Dulcie asked.

  Sam smiled as if she couldn’t wait to enlighten us as to what in the hell she was planning. “Well, it’s an uncovering potion, meaning that I think I could probably use it to break through this guy’s disguise.”

  “Okay, that sounds perfect!” Dulcie said, her smile falling once Sam started to shake her head.

  “The only issue that concerns me is that I’ve only used Bouchon in person,” she said, sighing. “So I’m not sure if it will work, since we’re trying to break this spell over video footage, rather than in real time.”

  Dulcie nodded while I shook my head, thinking we weren’t off to such a great start. Sam pulled the vial free, then fished inside her backpack again, taking out a pestle and mortar as well as a black iron cauldron, which was maybe the diameter of a dinner plate. She then retrieved a small wooden spoon and uncorked each of the bottles. From each vial she poured a spoonful, which she then dumped unceremoniously into the mortar. After recapping each vial, she picked up the pestle and ground the large crystals of the powders together with the gooey pink liquid until she had something that resembled a wad of strawberry-flavored gum. She dropped the pink pile into her cauldron, and returning to her backpack, fished out a bottle of cherry-flavored Gatorade.

  “Gatorade is magical?” I asked with a laugh.

  Sam returned the laugh as she shook her head. “Think of the Gatorade as a chaser.”

  “You’re going to drink that stuff?” Dulcie asked, frowning all the while.

  Sam shrugged. “Well, I’m gonna stir it up a little first, so it goes down more easily.”

  “Really?” Dulcie continued, her lips turning down in obvious distaste.

  Sam propped her hands on her hips and raised her left eyebrow in Dulcie’s direction. “How else am I going to be able to break the magical code?” Not waiting for an answer, she busied herself by pouring about a third of the Gatorade into her cauldron. Then she began to stir the concoction as she said, “Sometimes you’ve gotta take magic into yourself in order for it to work.”

  “Are you sure that’s safe, Sam?” Dulcie continued, eyeing her friend warily. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you actually swallow any of your potions or anti-potions before.”

  Sam dismissed Dulcie’s concern with a wave of her hand. “Virtually no side effects,” she answered. “At a cellular level, the molecules in the potion simply coat my own cells and then morph them slightly, which allows me to see and feel things I otherwise wouldn’t be able to. It only lasts for about an hour or so—not a big deal.”

  “Okay,” Dulcie said, still sounding unconvinced.

  Sam didn’t say anything more, but picked up the bottle of Gatorade and rummaged through her backpack until she found a funnel, which she placed in the mouth of the Gatorade bottle. She lifted her cauldron and poured its contents into the bottle of Gatorade. Placing the cauldron back on the table, she recapped the bottle of Gatorade, then shook it violently for about three seconds. Twisting off the cap again, she smiled at us, said “Cheers,” and downed at least half the bottle. Then she placed the bottle on the table and closed her eyes for a few seconds.

  “Is everything okay?” Dulcie asked, but Sam didn’t respond.

  Instead, she opened her eyes and revealed that their ordinary brown now appeared to have a haze of darkish green, almost as though she’d put on green contact lenses. “We won’t have long,” she said as she faced the monitor. “Like I said, we’ll have maybe an hour before this spell wears off.”

  I nodded as I fast-forwarded through the footage until the white Toyota appeared. “The most important thing to crack at this point is the license plate,” I said. “If you figure that out, we can try to uncover the real identity of our femme fatale.”

  Sam just nodded and focused on the footage. “Can you play it at the slowest speed available?” she started. “And be ready to rewind it a few times, at least.”

  “Yep,” I answered, slowing the footage down as Sam leaned into the screen even closer, staring at the image of the car unblinkingly. She then closed her eyes, and her lips moved as she chanted words I couldn’t understand. She opened her eyes again. This time, the greenish cast on the brown of her irises seemed lighter, with more of a glow. She chanted words that came out whisper-soft and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she frowned at my computer monitor. “The car moved up, so I can’t see the license plate. Can you rewind the footage back a couple of seconds?” she asked.

  “Sure can,” I answered, obeying her.

  “Is that as far as it’ll zoom?” Sam asked. “I’d like to get as close as possible to the license plate.”

  I tried to zoom in more, but wasn’t successful. “That’s as far as she’ll go, witch hazel,” I said with a smile.

  But Sam wasn’t paying attention to me; in
stead, her eyes were clasped shut tightly, and moments later, when she opened them, they were fully occupied by an eerie, green glowing light. “Seven, H, J, F,” she started as Dulcie whipped out a notebook and wrote the letters and numbers down. Sam narrowed her eyes at the screen again. “Um, eight I think, or is that an S?” she closed her eyes as she did when she relied on her unseeing eye and then opened them again. “It’s an eight.” Dulcie wrote it down as Sam chanted something again, her voice barely a whisper. “C, seven,” she finished, and then took a deep breath. “I’m pretty sure that’s what the real license plate number is.”

  “Nicely done,” I said as I pulled up the icon on my desktop, which would allow me to enter the license plate information so that we could find out to whom the car was registered.

  “So I guess Bouchon does work remotely,” Sam said with a laugh. “Good to know.”

  “Think you have enough left in you to try and break the disguise of the woman?” Dulcie asked as she handed me the pad of paper where she wrote down the license plate numbers and letters. I entered them into the appropriate field.

  “I can try,” Sam said as she took a deep breath. “Can you rewind the footage to the part where the woman-man first shows up?”

  I nodded as I hit “enter” on my license plate query, and then downscaled the window so I could pull up the footage for Sam. It would take a little while to scroll through the database of license plates anyway, so this was just the multitasking we needed.

  “There, that’s good,” Sam said after I rewound the footage to the point when the she-male first stepped into the phone booth.

  “You want it to play slowly again?” I asked, and Sam simply nodded. Slowing the reel, I leaned back into my chair and watched Sam stare at the footage while she closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they were glowing that same foggy green.

  “What do you see?” I asked.

  “I can clearly see a man, although he’s wearing the disguise of this woman,” she responded, and then closed her eyes again, dropping her head slightly as she clenched her eyes shut more tightly. “I’m not sure who he is, though—I haven’t seen him before.”

  I reached out, grasping Sam’s hand as I closed my own eyes and relied on my Loki skills. As a creature of the Netherworld, while I’m not necessarily magic, I do have my own abilities, and one of them is clueing into people’s brain waves just by touching them and concentrating like a son of a bitch. “I need you to open up to me, Sam,” I said, tightening my grip on her hand. “Allow your thoughts to flow into mine.”

  Sam didn’t say anything, and even though my eyes were closed, I could tell she was nodding, which meant she’d allowed me access into her mind. Once I had access to it, I could see whatever she was seeing. I focused even more singularly on opening the doorway between her mind and mine and was rewarded by the image of the film reel. In Sam’s head, though, the images were much cloudier and opaque. It was almost like watching a movie through a milky shower curtain. “Concentrate on his face, Sam,” I said in my head.

  In my mind’s eye, I could see her nodding as she focused on her train of thought, feeding it into mine. Almost immediately, I could see the shape of the woman now morphing, unveiling itself into that of a man. It was as if her disguise began to peel off like layers of an onion, until all that was left was a slightly blurry image of a tall, broad, and dark-haired man with a thick black beard and beady, small eyes straddling a huge nose.

  “Ibahn,” I said out loud before releasing Sam’s hand because I didn’t want to exhaust either of us. If I kept the portal open between our minds for too long, we would both grow incredibly fatigued, so much so that we’d need to sleep it off for at least half a day. As soon as I released Sam, she took a deep breath and looked around the room in what appeared to be befuddled confusion.

  “I can’t see clearly,” she said, her tone concerned.

  “It’ll take a second for your eyes to dilate properly,” I responded, patting her on the back. “You might want to sit down.”

  Dulcie pulled out the chair beside her as Sam took a seat and looked, for all intents and purposes, winded. Dulcie faced me, curiosity displayed across her face. “Ibahn?” she repeated. “As in the same creep we’ve busted numerous times for, oh, everything under the sun?”

  “Yep,” I said as I nodded. “Also as in the brother of Stone Angel.”

  “Really?” Dulcie asked, her eyes lighting up with surprise. “So what does that mean?”

  I shrugged. “It means there are more people involved in this than I originally thought.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  I exhaled long and hard. “Because Ibahn is a complete moron. He would never be able to orchestrate something like this—he has to be getting orders from a higher-up somewhere.”

  “Hmm,” Dulcie said as I faced my monitor again and downscaled the video surveillance window as I pulled up the license plate search. I glanced at the name and address of the registered owner of the Toyota Corolla and tapped my index finger against the screen. All the pieces of the puzzle were starting to fall into place, and they painted a very interesting and somewhat surprising picture.

  “Interesting,” I said, leaning back into my chair, bouncing up and down again as I wheeled around to face Dulcie and Sam.

  “Interesting what?” Dulcie asked.

  “I got a read on the registered owner of the vehicle,” I answered.

  “And?” Dulcie prodded. Sam just continued to sit in her chair, still looking exhausted, as if she were coming out of a drunken stupor. It would take her another few minutes before she felt normal again.

  “And the white Toyota belongs to Dolores Hanson,” I answered.

  “Okay,” Dulcie said, eyeing me curiously. “And I have a feeling you know who this Dolores Hanson is, because I don’t have a clue…”

  I nodded and grinned as I continued to bob up and down in my chair. “Yep, I sure do.”

  “Great,” Dulcie continued, frowning at me. “And were you going to enlighten us as to who she is? Or are you just going to sit there and look smug for the rest of the night?”

  I chuckled. “Last I heard of Dolores Hanson, she was Stone Angel’s mistress, and somehow she’s obviously still tied up with his shit, even though Stone isn’t exactly compos mentis.”

  “So what, you think she’s now his brother’s mistress?” Dulcie asked.

  I shrugged. “Could be. Who knows for sure?” Then I glanced at Sam, who still looked dazed and confused. “We should get her back home. Looks like the screen sharing really did a number on her.”

  “The screen sharing?” Dulcie asked with a laugh, but despite her apparent levity, I was still more than sure that both of us were trying to solve the mystery of why everyone in this situation so far had ties to Stone Angel. And since Stone was obviously not in control of his mental faculties, who was the one calling all the shots?

  The next day, Dulcie woke up at her usual hour of 7:00 A.M. while I still lounged in our bed, wishing she understood and indulged in the luxury of “sleeping in.” She sat upright and stretched before stifling a yawn and allowing my hands to enclose her small waist. “Mmm, why in the hell are you up so early?” I whispered into her neck before raining little kisses down her spine.

  “I can’t sleep any longer,” she said, extricating herself from my grasp and bouncing to her feet. She weeded out a pair of bike shorts and a sports bra from her chest of drawers.

  “Got something on your mind?” I asked as I leaned onto my elbow and looked her up and down. She pulled her Victoria’s Secret nightshirt up over her head, causing her breasts to jostle and making me swallow hard. Standing there, wearing nothing but her lace thong panties, she was a sight to behold and then some.

  “I can’t stop thinking about this case and what part Stone Angel plays in it,” she admitted as she snatched away my view of her breasts by pulling her sports bra over her head and clasping it in the back.

  “I don’t think he plays a part,”
I answered, watching her bend over and step into her bike shorts. She wiggled them up her shapely legs and even shapelier thighs. Holy Hades, but the woman had no idea what she did to me.

  “So you think it’s a coincidence that his brother and his mistress are both somehow involved in this case?” she asked, frowning at me and making it very clear that she didn’t think it was a coincidence at all.

  “Dulcie, Stone Angel is in a coma. He has been for years. And last I checked, coma victims can’t do anything, let alone devise something as major as this.”

  She nodded unconvincingly, but then shook her head as she fished out a pair of white socks from the top drawer. Then she returned to the bed, dropping down to her knees and reaching for her running shoes, which she always kept underneath our bed, on her side. Finding them, she sat on the edge of the bed and put on her socks and then her shoes. When she was dressed, she sighed and turned back to face me.

  “I know, but there’s something missing. There’s some vital piece to this that we aren’t getting. I can feel it,” she said, shaking her head as if to emphasize she didn’t know just what that “something” was and it was causing her stress.

  “Well, hopefully you’ll uncover the answer on your run,” I said with a big smile.

  She smiled back, but it was laced with doubt. “You never know, I guess.”

  “Do I get a kiss before you go?” I asked, opening my arms wide. She shook her head, but then smiled as she leaned into me and wrapped her arms around my neck. I brought my lips to hers and relished their warmth as I kissed her. A few minutes later, she pulled away and beamed at me.

  “Have I told you today that I love you, Knightley Vander?” she asked while offering me a stunningly beautiful view of her white teeth. The smile was as genuine as she was.