What was Lost and Found in the Fire

Ch. 11 Tea and Scones

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Third Person Point of View

Location: Grammy Lori's Cafe In Nevada

Date 3 years and 1 month after The Kidnappings

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Lorraine Lockheart, with her platinum blonde bob and black pantsuit sat next to a window with her Mother, Loretta Lavele. 

Loretta, or better known as Granny Lori among her friends, wore a cashmere sweater and grey striped pants. Her silvery gray hair was piled into a bun on the top of her head.  

Both were tense, and those around them could feel the tension rolling off them in waves. Lorriane's hands shook as she took a sip of her earl gray tea and she was annoyed at herself for being so weak.

Leninora would laugh at me, she mused. Lorraine had been the one to raise her daughter, and she'd raised her to be strong. She had raised her to laugh in the face of fear, and to fight as hard as any man or woman, to fight with fist or wit or gun, to survive. Leninora had exceeded her expectations beyond her wildest dreams. In both good and bad ways.

Loretta picked at her scone as she kept an eye on the street outside the window of the café and the other eye on the group of t.v.'s she'd had set up for this occasion, waiting.

Loretta had called every person she could think of, that she trusted, to set up the things Leninora had asked for. Lorraine had a beautiful memory, and she had memorized every line of the letter Leninora had sent her, then driven like a maniac to Loretta's cottage to relay everything Leninora had told her and asked of her Mother and Grandmother.

They'd had months to set up what they needed to do, and it had taken some very creative planning to make some of it work, but they'd got it done. A good amount of the calls they'd made and things they'd set up hadn't made much sense, but Leninora had been clear;

Do not make last minute changes, and do not deviate from the instructions. That sentence had been repeated often in the letter. Leninora had all but underlined and bolded them.

New identities were made, paperwork forged and collected, the victim's families were all rounded up and well guarded in safe houses. The Lockheart Estate had been cleaned out and renovated, an additional 6 houses had even been built on the massive land and furnished, and a whole army of security teams had been hired.

Now, all that was left was to wait. Today was the last step, and Leninora said it was the most important, and that it would need to be the most time-managed piece of all. She had outlined in detail today's plan, to the very minute.

So, as Leninora had demanded, Lorraine and Loretta were sitting in a café that Loretta had bought with some of Leninora's not-so-hard earned money and they were pretending to eat scones and drink tea with well paid armed guards as company.

Unbeknownst to them, North, Silas, Axel, Raven, and Brandon didn't need the insane amount of money they were being paid. The men would have done it for free if it wouldn't have be seen as suspicious.

Each man was sitting at a different table, eyes on the doors, the window's, the women who had hired them, and on each other. No one knew what they were waiting for, only that whatever it was had Lorraine and Loretta on edge. That in turn made the Academy boys on edge.