Philadelphia, the incident with Detective Ken Carmichael.

There were two police responses to any involvement by Cornucopia Ltd. Response a: DL De Luca was on their side this time, and therefore not to be trusted outside of the exact incident. Or Response B: Shady secret organizations with access to lots of money weren’t to be trusted full stop.

He hadn’t said as much, but clearly Detective Carmichael subscribed to Response B.

He was voluntarily driving her back to the airport, a still wall of disapproval with a crooked tie and the gray pallor of an investigator who didn’t understand what had just happened. It was the look of a man who didn’t like not understanding.

White.Rabbit: Scheduled check-in window closes in forty-five minutes.

DeLuca: Acknowledged. Official business will be concluded in fifteen or less.

“So do the people who buy into this fund know you just offered to give five million of their dollars to a couple of thugs?”

She blinked at him. Aside from a barked ‘offer’ to drive her to the airport—she was relatively sure it was because he wanted her out of his territory, but that wasn’t unusual—he hadn’t spoken. He hadn’t spoken to her above the bare minimum since she went over his head to ensure she made the ransom drop herself.

He didn’t need to know what had happened on the drop. His kidnappers and the person who’d hired them were in custody, and had admitted their transgressions. No money had changed hands. The victim was home safe with her family.

He glanced at her, waiting for an answer.

“I have no knowledge of what information is or is not passed to the fund members of Cornucopia Ltd.”

“So you’re just the paid stooge,” he tried to goad.

“I work on behalf of the best interest of the fund and its members.”

She didn’t say it thinking the company line was going to stop his questions. Detective Carmichael may have been hard and disapproving, but he hadn’t been bad at his job that she’d seen. He understood how his command chain worked, and she had every reason to believe whatever questions he was still asking when she left, they would quell them.

Detective Carmichael knew everything he needed to know. The fact he didn’t feel it was enough was no more her concern than understanding her actual job description was his.

“Do you have children?”

“In what way is that relevant.”

“I’m wondering if they grow people like you in a lab. You know, people who can look at a terrified little girl and not flinch. Do you care?”

“I am paid to complete a job and I complete it.”

He stopped, harder than strictly necessary, at the unloading zone. “Remind me not to call you if I’m in trouble.”

She let herself out of the vehicle and took her case when he pulled it out of the trunk. “Thank you for the ride. Goodbye, Detective Carmichael.”

“Yeah, Goodbye Ms. De Luca.”

She turned, and walked through the automatic door.

“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” Carmichael muttered, probably assuming she wouldn’t hear him.

She made no acknowledgement, and meticulously deleted his contact information from her phone as she walked through the airport.

DeLuca: Business accomplished. Commence standard information scrub.

White.Rabbit: PHL paperwork tagged appropriately, as well as Detective Carmichael’s personal and work email. Your personal messages have loaded. Do you require anything else?

DeLuca: No, this device will go dark at altitude. Thank you for your work Ms. White.

When the seat belt light turned off DL DeLuca stepped into the bathroom. No one seemed to notice when Dottie stepped out.

Come back tomorrow for E: Endings!

Exceprt taken from Mr. Riddle’s Guide to the Dark Net—Everything You Don’t Need to Know About Secret Societies.

Cornucopia Ltd.
This is the public arm of the secret society known to those on the inside as The Eirene. Very little is known about this possibly ancient sisterhood. Reputable sources say that while The Eirene stretch back into the mists of time, Cornucopia Ltd was opened sometime in the early 2000's. They run private investment services, as well as a thriving charitable giving service. They also own commercial properties—rumored to be usable only by members of the fund (and The Eirene)—in several exotic locations.

Cornucopia Ltd. has a rumored presence on the Dark Net, but if anyone has inside information on their working there, they do not share. Rumors abound that if one pokes too far into the business of Cornucopia Ltd you will receive a visit from their Fixer.

Parent Organization:
There isn’t enough on The Eirene to warrant their own listing in these pages. The only information available concerns their links to Cornucopia Ltd, and that tends to disappear as soon as it appears. Reputable sources differ, some saying the organization was founded in the second century by Celtic women fleeing Roman oppression. A differing account claims the wives and sisters of Knight’s Templar started The Eirene to protect their families when that secret society was pursued by the church.

The most believable account, in this investigators opinion, states that two society women in the late eighteenth century, angered by their brothers and husbands entrance into special clubs like White’s, chose to start their own. A gentlewoman’s club, with all the same rights and rewards as membership into their gentleman’s counterpart.

Known Involvement:
An unidentified agent, operating on behalf of Cornucopia Ltd., appears in incident reports surrounding the 2008 kidnapping of the daughter of Senator Evan Blake, (D) Michigan. Blake’s daughter was taken from a friend’s party during spring break. The official reports are tantalizingly obscure. Presumption is that the agent for Cornucopia was contacted to provide the ransom, but the girl was returned to her family and the ransom supposedly unpaid.

Again, an unidentified agent operating on their behalf appears in December 2012 Interpol Communique regarding an international money laundering scheme operating in Zurich. No official arrests were made.

Cornucopia Ltd. appears in unofficial reports surrounding the 2016 kidnapping and death of two young women believed to be connected to the head of the Venezuelan Oil Conglomerate.

The most complete account of their involvement offered appears in the MI-5 report of the 2009 death of underworld fight promoter Bill Bellamy the Black, and the capture of his associates promoting illegal fighting to the cream of European society. However, as many times as the account mentions Cornucopia Ltd there is no clear evidence as to what their involvement with this scheme or its closure actually entailed.

Presumably all agents acting on behalf of Cornucopia Ltd. are actually the same woman. Described as capable, businesslike, and inhumanly cold, her name and description beyond those traits does not exist in any record that this investigator could find.


Enjoy! And come back tomorrow for D: Dead Drop.

She could have let the call go to voicemail. It was Dottie’s phone, and Dottie got three missed calls in a twelve-hour period before it became a problem. Dottie got to presumably have a life that didn’t let her answer the phone every moment of every day.

The caller ID said Scotty’s Pest Control. Last month it’d been programmed as Ophelia’s Swim School.

“It’s two in the morning,” she answered, flopping back on her bed.

The line crackled, and there was a soft beep in the background. “If I hang up and call back can I have Dottie?” a dangerously smooth female voice asked.

She rubbed her face. “That depends. Is Agent X calling back, or Kay?” she snarked back.

“There’s Dottie.” The voice warmed and picked up a mixed Midwestern accent. “You must be at home if it’s two in the morning.”

Dottie blinked at the lazy whorl of the fan against the bedroom ceiling. “I’m always at home when I answer this number.”

“No, I mean at home at home.” Kay snorted. “Not that you’re usually out painting the town red.”

“If it was anybody else I’d put some sort of effort into pretending I have a secret life as a lounge singer.”

Kay laughed, loud and long. “I bet. If anybody could keep secrets it’d be you.”

“Says the woman calling me from a secure line somewhere off in the world on a dark assignment.” She sighed. “I thought we were both supposed to pretend the day job didn’t exist.”

There was a beat of silence. “Remember when you used to write ‘waves hi to the feebee’ on all your emails?”

“We were small or smallish, and silly.” And not actually hiding anything. “And I’m not supposed to ask about the day job but you sound tired.”

“I’m winding down,” Kay replied.

“I meant tired tired. Battle weary, maybe.”

“I’m going to buy you another thesaurus.”

“I’m pretty sure six is anyone’s limit.”

Kay snickered. “No, two of them were for Seb. He even asked. How is the chick by the way?”

“Old enough he probably won’t want to be referred to as a chick. Growing prehistoric beasts in my kitchen thanks to you. He’s eight, and Seb.”

“I’ll try to land my leave when he’s off school. I got the calendar. Mom and Dad said they’d come visit then, too.”
“Did you actually get to talk to them?” Dottie rubbed her face. “Your mother keeps leaving me messages like I should be preparing for a firing squad.”

“Thea Darling, call me,” Kay said, in her most imperious British accent.

“Dorothea.”

“Oh. How many calls did you miss?”

“One. I was in…working. I was working.”

The line sat silent and still for a long minute. “She only has Dottie’s number, and she worries about you. I worry about you.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re always fine.” Kay sighed. “You’re as bad as I am.” There was a beep in the background. “I have to go. Tell Seb I love him, and be careful with yourself.”

“I will. We love you, too.”

​The line went dead and she watched the fan against the ceiling and fell asleep thinking about how few people there were left who called her Thea, let alone Dottie.

If you've been paying attention here you've noticed that I've been struggling to get my blogging back on track since last year when everything went off the rails. And today, when I was sitting down for Camp Nano and contemplating what I was going to write and how much pressure I wanted to put myself under, I stumbled across this thing called the blogging A to Z Challenge.

Fortuitous, right?

Since it's Camp Nano this month as well I'm going to do my daily blogging in flash fiction. That means every day but Sunday in the month of April I'll be posting roughly five-hundred words of flash fiction. These stories should all connect, though given it's me they may not appear to in the beginning. 

A: Association
Three years ago, an undisclosed spring day.

She left Dottie on the tarmac in Chicago.

The Russian is in play, Dottie’s last text message insisted.

She stared at the message notification for several minutes before she powered Dottie’s phone off. If there were an emergency in Dottie’s life in the next few days they would inform her in other ways. She stored the dinged, rose gold smart phone in her carry-on and pulled out the sleek black high tech, high security device De Luca carried.

White.Rabbit: Kakapo inquiring if reservations need to be made.

DeLuca: Negative. Will contact with needs at arrival. Please forward relevant law enforcement information to this device.

The fasten seatbelts light turned off and she stood and walked purposefully to the small bathroom. Gently curled hair was twisted up into a severe bun held in place by a pair of sharpened turned wood hair sticks that would pass as knitting needles. Dottie’s light green sweater was replaced by a soft gray shell and wrinkle-resistant double breasted jacket. Dottie’s ballet flats fit into the false bottom of the carry-on and she slid her feet into severe ankle boots. Contacts replaced Dottie’s purple framed glasses.

By the time she reached her seat again she had a file notification.

“Can I get you anything, Miss?” the attendant asked.

“A bottle of water please.”

The bottle appeared. “Would you like headphones?”

“No, thank you.”

She beamed the documentation to her privacy screened tablet and started paging through personnel files of Philadelphia’s greatest. She’d read the kidnapping report before leaving Chicago. The organization would have a car waiting for her in Philadelphia. She would contact the family once she landed.  

With luck Dottie would be home by the day after tomorrow.

She looked back at the law enforcement files, and stopped on the lead detective. Former DEA experience, and a reputation for a certain lax attitude to authority and rules. She’d been warned he didn’t like their involvement in his kidnapping case.

The organization had dealt with his kind before.

She watched out the small plane window as they touched down in Philadelphia. Rain sheeted down on a steel gray city and she mentally added weather delays to her travel time to the bank. She should still make the drop with time to spare. She took her carry-on bag and walked with swift assurance toward the airport exit. The car would be waiting for her at the second door, as always.

She could navigate the Philadelphia airport structure just as well as she could any other, and in a minimum of time she was rolling her bags over the grating out the second arrivals door. The normal assortment of car services stood at the doorway, all wearing their uniforms with old fashioned hats and jackets. All but one.

Detective Ken Carmichael lounged against a black Dodge Charger that was so non-descript as to be instantly recognizable. A whiteboard with Ms. DL De Luca written on it sat forgotten next to his hip. He was staring at his phone, clearly assuming she wouldn’t have reached the door yet.

“I believe you are waiting for me,” she stated, stopping in front of him. A police escort would ensure she reached the bank in time to make the drop. It would also give her time to ensure he didn’t cause problems.   



Feel free to leave a comment, and come back on Monday for B:Battle Weary

Edit: Now that the month is over I'm putting buttons that'll take you to the next part of the story. Awesome, right?

Today's Well Written Wednesday is for Chuck Wendig's writing challenge, posted here. It was dastardly, unbelievably hard not to have this turn into a book on me. It still wants to.

The purpose of the assignment was to take someone's first sentence, from the previous weeks challenge, and write a 2000 word story off of it. 

"As Willow wiped the blood from her face, she regretted her decision not to wear a hat." Submitted by MsShonnerz.

Notes about the challenge: A, I changed the first characters name, because of reasons (mostly because I have a book on the back burners wherein one of the main characters is named Willow). And B, I'm a little over the 2k line, but I wrapped it up as quickly as a could.

As Loni wiped the blood from her face, she regretted her decision not to wear a hat.

It was a logical decision. Today she was a package delivery driver, and the muddy brown uniform only carried one hat choice. She'd toyed with the hat, that morning in the mirror. Certainly for longer than she should have. The hat made her too noticeable. Made her eyes, and her employment designation—tattooed in reverse along the lower edge of her bottom lip--stand out too much in her face.

"Honeysuckle, are you in one piece?"

She looked down at the blood splatter over her pristine uniform and sighed. "I'm fine, Henry. This is all his."

"That's wonderful," Henry, her unhelpful handler/time-keeper/assistant, supplied through the radio hidden in her ear. "You have five minutes and twelve seconds for clean-up."

Loni—short for Lonicera, the Latin name for the Honeysuckle--grumbled, because she could, and pulled the cleaning-bombs from her thigh pocket. Each one was roughly the size of those bath bombs people were so crazy about. She thought they should be equally as brightly colored and wrapped, because then if someone perchance found one in her pocket then she just seemed like a strange enthusiast of premier bathing paraphernalia. Instead, they were yellow and orange hazard stripped with advanced warnings written on them in hieratic—the writing used by ancient Egyptian priests and religious scholars.

Everything was done in hieratic. Henry and many of the other command crew insisted this was because there were only about twenty people in the world who could read hieratic. Generally speaking people didn't even tend to recognize it as writing. She doubted the man she'd just eviscerated had known what that thing on her lip was, while he was staring at it.

She contended they used hieratic because Wilber had been a priest when they built the pyramids, no matter what he said about how that was a thousand or so years before him.

Loni placed the cleaners on different sides of the room, making sure they were the obligatory twenty-six degrees off angle from each other, and ensuring everything would bounce around the way it should. She double checked the settings. She wasn't fond of these jobs. She much preferred the subtle ones. The quiet shifts from one idea or from one set of people to another. Slitting a man's throat and then erasing all trace of his still corpse was distasteful.

Yes, she still thought that nearly ten years into this business.

She pulled on her gloves and stepped out of the door, closing it softly behind her. Loni counted to twenty, until the cleaning cycle was done, and then poked her head back in the door. Just to double check.

"Clean?" Henry asked.

She nodded, gaze sweeping through the room. Everything stood exactly where it belonged, clean and normal looking. The only sign something was wrong was a flutter of papers on the floor near the desk. Reverend Ezekiel Browning had knocked them to the floor when he stood up to let her in his office. Loni hadn't touched them, and she wouldn't touch them. In an hour, when the secretary got back, she'd find everything exactly in its place.

Except Reverend Browning. He'd never be in his place again.

Well, given the file, Loni actually rather thought his place was hell, and he'd likely be there a very long time. She hoped. Judgment wasn't her shtick, just clean-up. Other, higher members of the Orisk Council decided when the humans were doing a bad job of managing their own religion--religions, technically. They were a multi-national group--and needed a helping hand.

"One minute," Henry warned, as she crawled into the large brown vehicle and slid the door shut.

"I'm gone." Loni threw the truck in gear and started off down the street. Her delivery schedule wasn't even behind.


Wilber stood in the command center and stabbed his finger into the visual representation of Ezekiel Browning's eye. "Terminated" flashed in front of his face, in lime green hieratic. Wilbur stabbed him in the nostril, and then the eye again.

"The girl doesn't like the dirty ones, but she does good work," a crisp female voice said, stepping up behind him.

Wilber smiled slowly. "I notice you do not call her 'the girl' when she is here."

Morgan scoffed. "I like my internal organs exactly where they are." She tapped away at the electronic clipboard in her hand. Most of the tech people used a stylus, or something plastic. Morgan tapped the screen with one long, blood red fingernail.

"What's next?" she asked, looking up at the display. Her eyes were as inhuman as the rest of her, bright green—nearly the color of the text on the wall display—and overly large. Her muzzle was large and hooked, even for an Apuan, and she was taller than most of them. Wilber liked the Apuans—after the Egyptian name for Anubis—as a whole. While there was admittedly something unsettling about the jackal-like head and lower body, he actually tended to find the perfect human torso much more unsettling.

Discomfort aside, he'd always found the Apuan's one of the most useful races amongst the Orisk Council. Nothing quite convinced a standard human of your right to dogmatic interference as being presented with an ancient Egyptian god. The Egyptians had traversed those cultural boundaries so much more than any of the other religions.

Or perhaps they'd just gained a reputation for being so capricious and unsteady no one wanted to risk their displeasure.

"Nothing until next week." Wilber looked at his list, printed in bright blue—just because he liked the color. "Call her in."

"What about the others?"

He turned slowly. "What others?"

"The other teams?" Morgan frowned at him, looking up from her board.

"There aren't any other teams out," Wilber answered, enunciating slowly. There weren't. There were no more jobs until next week. There was no call for teams to be out.

"Hornbeam just left a moment ago. The paperwork came through for Vienna." Morgan cocked her head at him. "And Beech left this morning. Chicago."

Wilber swallowed, his throat suddenly and irredeemably dry. "Call them back."

"What—"

"CALL THEM BACK!"

Morgan jumped, and reached instinctively for the phone nearest her, as the wail of the alarm blared into the room and the screen behind him flashed ominously. She froze, staring at the display, and Wilbur turned back slowly, already knowing what it would say.

Agent Compromised. No Life signs.

"Call Loni," Wilber whispered.

Morgan clutched at her throat, large green eyes wide and horrified. "She's already coming in."

"I don't want her to come in," he said with terrible calm. "Beech needs back-up."


"Beech," Enzo whispered in his ear. "Something's wrong."

Beech stopped, and stepped through the throng of people into the alleyway, double checking to make sure it was clear before he answered. "What's wrong?"

"My video feed just cut."

He rubbed his forehead, trying to get rid of the headache he'd been nursing for the last day. Wilbur was right. He was getting too old for this job. He'd brushed it off, because there were three of them to cover the entire western hemisphere, and while he wasn't particularly fond of Hornbeam he liked Honeysuckle—Loni--well enough he didn't want to saddle her with an utterly crap job.

"I'm sure it'll come back in a minute." There was so much signal noise in a place like Chicago they occasionally had a little trouble keeping the lines straight.

"No." Enzo gupled. "I don't mean it went fuzzy, I mean it cut. I've got nothing." He faded for a second, and Beech could picture him swiveling around in his chair. "I'm actually surprised I've still got you."

Beech stepped back out into the throng of people, his instincts tingling. Stationary was a bad thing to be, in an emergency. And his instincts maybe didn't want him headed for St Catherine's Cathedral on 12th, but alone in a dark alley wasn't a better option. "Enzo, listen to me carefully."

"I'm going to reboot the system—"

"No, don’t bother." Beech caught the black robed figure in the reflection of the bookstore window, for a half a second before it dropped further back. "Turn off your equipment and get out."

"What about you?"

"I'll manage. Go find Henry. You're in the same complex. I doubt he's useless in an emergency."

"But—"

"Now, Enzo," Beech ordered, and reached up to pull the ear-piece out. He crushed it under his foot as he took the stairs into the cathedral.

Sometimes, when all options were bad, you took the one the enemy was least likely to expect.

Beech genuflected appropriately. They were trained in the proper way to enter any religious temple in the world, trained to accord each religion the highest respect. If it occasionally intruded on him that he was according that respect shortly before he cleansed the alter, as they'd said as recruits, that was quickly pushed away in favor of all the good the Orisk Council supposedly did.

The door wouldn't open. No one would come in behind him. The Assassins in Black were better organized than that. As evidenced by the fact they'd clearly managed to send him false orders. This church didn't actually have a Father Donnivan for him to cleanse, according to the board by the entrance.

He moved to the front of the chapel, and sat easily on the end of a pew. Folded his hands in his lap and watched the sun feebly push through the old stained glass. "The others are already dead?" he asked softly.

The figure behind him stilled. "Yes."

Beech nodded, stalling, trying to decide how many of them they'd sent.

"Are you going to pray?" the assassin hissed.

"No." Beech looked up at the window. "I'm not Catholic. You know I won't go quietly."

There was a soft laugh. "We saved you for last for a reason."

He nearly turned, at the lie. No one would save him for last. In any list. Their last target had always been and would always be Wilber.

"Of the killers, in any case."

Beech nodded, and shifted his hold on the knife hidden in his sleeve. "I hope you have back-up, it'll be quite messy and hard to hide."

"We don't hide," the assassin whispered, before he lunged at Beech.

The first blow missed Beech's head by a millimeter, and shattered the top rail of the pew. Beech rolled to the side, kicking the assassin in the stomach. His foot connected with hard, well plated armor under the cassock.

"You didn't wear your collar when you came to kill me."

The hood was pulled low, somehow held in place, and the other man held up his sharp tipped staff, balancing it perfectly. "I am a monk, not a priest. What are you?" He attacked again, thrusting dangerously close to Beech's side.

"Just a man."

"You have no god!" He whirled the staff.

Beech caught the wooden handle against his jaw, and rocked back with the blow. Steadied himself against the pews and wiped the blood from his face. "If you want to be technical I have them all. Or serve them all."

"There is only one God!"

Beech feinted right, and grabbed the staff. Pulled the assassin in close and plunged his knife through the joints on the assassin's armor. He pushed the steadily bleeding man back off of him, and turned to narrowly avoid the other assassin's staff—there was always another one, waiting in case the first couldn't finish his job.

The first man's sharp staff-end sunk into his shoulder, and he struck out with his knife, slashing at the cassock, trying to find the assassin's neck. The one behind him yanked the blade out of his shoulder and if they stayed true to form it was going to sever his spine next, before they cut his head off.

He felt the displacement of air behind him, and braced for the blow.

A shocked scream rent the air, and he turned as the first assassin dropped next to him, blood leaking from his mouth and nose, a large bone-handled knife sticking out of his neck. The other raised his staff, screaming, as Loni pulled out a pearl handled pistol and shot him between the eyes.

"We're not supposed to use guns," Beech reminded, watching the dead assassin drop to the floor.

She rolled her eyes at him, retrieving her knife, and ripping a large chunk off the nearest assassin's robe. "You are unbelievable. And you're welcome." She crammed the material into the back of his jacket, against his injury. "Let's go. I already got the other two."

He winced, letting her pull him to his feet. "Of course you did."

Loni pulled him toward the back exit. "Hornbeam?"

She shook her head, lips tight. The back door opened with a loud clang, and a yellow taxi idled in the alley, waiting.

"I have extra bombs, for clean-up, if you—"

"My only order was to get you out alive," Loni interrupted, voice softening as she shoved him in the back of the cab. "No clean-up this time." 

I like doing these challenges, they always come out with something fun. 

In any case, come back Friday. We're going to talk about either secret societies or bath bombs. I haven't decided which yet.