"I can't believe you...Raven," Mina said, as soon as her former mentor closed the phone. "And no...I'm not calling you Archibald. That's not the name I know you as anyway."
"Fine by me," Raven said, averting her gaze. "Archibald is just my name when I work the underworld. Raven Lockwood is my attorney name."
Mina's eyes bulged incredulously. "Which one even is your real name, dang it?!"
Raven shrugged his shoulders. "At this point, kid. I haven't the foggiest."
Mina wanted to lash out at the man so sketchy that not even he trusted himself with his own name. But her lips turned to a frown and all she felt was a mixed sense of pity and despair. Being an attorney for her brought a cornucopia of emotions and thrills, but little did she know it would result in her being a murder victim of a cult of insane billionaires.
"Come..." Raven said, pointing the gun at her again. "Let's get inside. A few friends of yours have already set up a television to watch Miss Charlotte's greatest scheme come to fruition. By the time this is over, Business Park will be in new hands."
He walked to the door of the abandoned institute and held it open for her, but Mina continued to gaze out at the sea. She imagined her deceased boyfriend, Chad Hangten, surfing on the waves when they much less turbulent. On one shiny, beachy day, she had attempted to fix her tan lines on her yogurt white skin and though she ended up looking like a blanched strawberry, her and Chad still got to enjoy the Ninja Kitty pops from the local ice cream vendor. The only pain she felt was when he hugged her red blotchy, peely skin...but it was the good kind of pain
Sadly, that was so long ago.
Now she was going to witness her first legal loss followed by her own loss of life. The dark sky over the sea and the rain that would fall would perfectly reflect her own fall. She sighed and stepped into the institute without looking back.
The lobby had numerous tiles missing and the front desk was piled up with boxes of papers, no doubt research from the institute. There was no secretary, but a familiar man in a pair of wacky spectacles stood before her.
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His oversized carnation immediately gave his identity away. "Richard Lord?! From the Star Skye case?!" Mina exclaimed. "Are you truly part of the Aura too?"
He squeezed the pump connected to the flower, blasting water into her face. "Am I? In the Aura, my hippie dippie rank is Cancer the Crab! Very ironic, since a comedian is not supposed to be a crab, right Archie boy?"
Raven was surprisingly serious. "I've been assigned a very important task, Dick, by Miss Taurus. And I'd rather clear my mind before I do it."
"Oh ho ho!" the clownish comedian laughed. "Do you mean kill this little anklebiter?! I'd love to do that myself personally. Thanks to her twiddling, I almost didn't get away with killing my brother!"
"But I thought Nick Beard killed Dirk Lord?!" Mina shouted.
"Oh he did," Richard laughed. "But who put him up to it? Truth be told, the Aura really could have used the money from my brother's estate and it bought me a much higher ranking too!"
Mina spat again, this time in Richard's face. "You Aura types sicken me! What you wouldn't do for power in your little organization?!"
"Oh ho ho!" Richard giggled wiping the wet loogie off his cheek. "This girl's a little SPITfire!"
He took his hand and he slammed Mina with the back of it, leaving a red mark on her pasty white cheek.
She wanted to cry again, but she had saved all her tears for her mentor's betrayal. Instead, she just gave him a dark glare.
"Enough rough housing the kid," Raven said curtly. "You know, you're coming off worse than Monty Banks, Dick Lord."
Richard chuckled. "Speaking of which, it is finally time for him to be disposed."
Mina gulped. So the Aura themselves wanted to dispose of Monty. This whole scandal was coming completely unraveled for her, but she was waiting for the final piece.
Richard lead them into an abandoned classroom where most of the desks had been stacked up against the wall. An enormous screen hung from the wall with a projector towards the back. Mina was not surprised to see the most common of crooks sitting at one of the remaining desks. Bunting Dupree was eating escargot out of a striped, red-and-white paper bag like it was popcorn.
"Bonjour!" he said cackling with grin as he saw Mina and her blotchy red cheek. "I see zat life has finally caught up wit zee leetle fily! Now we can see your great downfall at long last!"
Mina was about to tell Bunting to return that accent to the remedial French class he stole it from when suddenly, there was a buzz in her pocket.
She had totally forgotten. She still had her phone. As she sat down on the floor in the back of the room, she started to think of a way she could reach it and who she could reach with it. It was her last chance.