Smother ━━ Killian Jones [Discontinued]

thirty; a taste of the lash

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CHAPTER THIRTY; A TASTE OF THE LASH

     Sage slid her hand down to the waist of her denim jeans, carefully grasping the handle of her gun and cocking it to her side. Emma and David did the same, leading the way past the glass french doors as the other pair, Mary Margaret and her grandson, stayed a couple of feet back. When David's foot met the door and kicked both of them wide open, all three police officers went straight in. Once noticing the coast was clear and that a certain malevolent mayor was nowhere to be seen, Emma announced: "It's okay! She's not here!"

     The frightened eleven year old was guided into the room by his grandmother, who protectively stood behind him with her hands placed gently on his shoulders. "When you find her, you're not gonna hurt her, right?"

     "No, we just want the beans she stole from us." Emma responded, glancing around.

     "This is ridiculous." Sage muttered under her breath, uncocking her gun and placing it back into her holster. "How the hell did she even find out about them?"

     No one answered her, but Mary Margaret was proposing another mystery along side her's, "I don't get it. Why would Regina leave her office unlocked?"

     David paused, "Especially when she's keeping the beans here."

     Together, they walked over to a oval-shaped, glass case that was stationed openly in the corner of the room. Instead were the short and leafy plant that produced the beans. However when Sage came closer, she didn't notice the abnormally large beans anywhere near their stems. "They're gone now ― she's probably got them on her."

      "Something not right." Emma concluded, her fingers tracing the keypad of the alarm system on the wall. "Regina would never leave evidence like this behind."

     "Maybe she already used them to portal out of Storybrooke?"

     She scoffed, "Without Henry? I don't think so."

     Henry looked up at the four adults surrounding him, his original fear morphing into an overt concern for his adoptive mother. "What if something bad happened to her?"

     Sage softly petted the back of his brown hair, attempting to soothe the boy when it was already hard enough to conceal her anger towards his mother. Of course when they were all getting somewhere, when the possibility of returning home was nearly in their grasp, Regina had to swoop in and snatch all of that away. Honestly, Sage didn't know if she wanted to go home; truth be told, she never saw the Enchanted Forest as her home or anything close to it. It hold familiarity, but never a sense of warmth. The beans could have taken her back to Wonderland, but whenever that thought popped into her head, she winced and shook it away. Going back to her birthplace meant leaving all of them behind, not to mention going back to a land of danger and unwanted memories.

     Emma pressed a few buttons of the electronic pad, before reading off the sudden sentences that appeared on the lit-up screen. "Security system says the last time someone was in the office was around 6:00 this morning. They used an override code to get in."

     David's brows furrowed, " Why would Regina need an override code on her own alarm?"

     "She wouldn't."

     "You think someone else broke in and took the beans?" Mary Margaret questioned, her eyes widening.

     Sage shuffled on her feet and crossed her arms, becoming more bewildered as time went on, "It would make sense. I mean, obviously she took the beans, but maybe someone came busted in, because they knew she had the beans? Perhaps someone wanted to use them for themselves? I don't know. But it's got to be someone strong enough to take down Regina."