A Conflict of Duty and Heart

A light bit of reading

Constance dropped the manilla envelope on her kitchen island with a huff. She'd been careful to hide her true emotions regarding this mission while in the presence of Queen Sekhmet but now that she was in the privacy of her own home she let her frustration be known. She honestly felt a little insulted, this was just an incredibly long surveillance mission with extra steps. Literally anyone else could have easily taken care of this. Normally she was tasked with things that had her play a more direct role, like tracking down and apprehending dangerous criminals.

The worst part of this whole situation was the time it would take. Six months, at least six months! She'd told Djoser that she'd try to visit five months sooner than that. Speaking of which, she should probably let him know that wouldn't be happening sooner than later. Constance pulled out her phone and flipped through her contacts before landing on Djoser's number. Her finger hovered over the call button for a moment before ultimately deciding she should wait until she'd calmed down a bit before she disappointing her brother.

Constance flopped onto her couch and buried her face in her hands, groaning loudly. It wasn't that she disliked the work she did for her queen, quite the opposite in fact she had a real passion for it. She took quite a bit of pride in the fact that she was actively helping to keep her people safe by ensuring dangerous cats went to prison where they belonged. There was also the wonderful perk that the job payed incredibly well. Her frustration stemmed from other aspects of the job.

For starters she wasn't allowed to tell anyone exactly what she did for a living. This was presumably so that those close to her didn't get targeted by anyone who had a vendetta against her or the things she stood for. That was understandable and all but it sure made it hard to explain to her family exactly why her mystery job was so important and took up so much of her time. Another thing that proved to problematic was that she was technically on call all the time, no matter what she was currently doing. She was expected to drop everything and respond immediately regardless of whether she was off of work or not.

All of this had started to take a toll on her relationship with her family and friends and let's not get started on how abysmal her love life had been recently. Actual romantic relationships didn't last very long, most of the time things tended to end because Constance's general unavailability. It looked like that wouldn't be changing any time soon now that she had to babysit some guy twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, for six months at least.

She let out a frustrated growl as she rose into a sitting position. Constance removed her hands from her face and rested them on her knees. She slowly rose to her feet, retrieved the envelope from the island, and flopped right back onto the couch. She fiddled with the metal fastener that held the envelope shut, not intending to actually open it. She toyed with it a bit before tossing it onto the coffee table in front of her and pulling out her phone once more. She could either open the envelope and start working on this job, or she could call Djoser. She didn't want to do either of those things right now but ultimately decided that doing a bit of reading would be easier than talking to her brother.

Constance opened up the envelope and removed it's contents, placing them on the coffee table in. In front of her were a couple sheets of paper, most likely containing the additional information Queen Sekhmet had mentioned, and a handful of photographs. Constance flipped through the papers first, the first of which restated the information Sekhmet had relayed to her earlier that day. The second page was much more interesting.

This page contained all the information they had already gathered on the target. Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot of information to work with. There was a physical description, estimated age, and his last known location but little more than that. Constance sighed with slight irritation at the lack of info and began to actually read.