The Nineteen Year Mystery [insaney, possibly Z later]

The car left the moment she was dropped at the quarry, without even giving her a chance to scribble down plate numbers. Miss Brown Suit said she would return in an hour. She gave no clue as to where they actually were, and she had take so many side streets and exit ramps and strange passages that Tracey could scarcely try to recall the route here even if she wanted to. All that she was left with was a sign that read "The Quarry" in rather sharp-edged letters. It didn't look very official. Already she had a bad feeling.

"...Hullo...?"

There was a clanging further ahead, but at her voice, or perhaps when the sound of the car faded, they stopped. Their absence was even more conspicuous than the persistent noise before. Tracey wandered in, looking around for the man in charge.

The car sped along the roads, zipping through the traffic. Like red lightning, twisting and turning as it darted across the sky. The blurring vehicle was very well handled in the hands of Alexi Tyran. Thracia noticed his movements and all--he was really good. Looked as if he was used to the roads and this car for years.

Thracia tapped her foot lightly to the tune going on in her head. It wasn't any particular tune, just one that she made up from some random notes. She didn't want to get lost in it; they had somewhere to go. The agent kept glancing out of the windows to see if they were nearing the spot.

Before she knew it, the tires were screeching to a halt.

"What?! Why are we stopping?!" She demanded to know, only to be looking at a smirk and then a finger pointing outside the window.

"We're here." Alexi said, undoing his seatbelt and opening the door.

"What...?" She recollected the address in her head, looking at the building. Alexi had spotted it before her. Thracia narrowed her eyes, grumbling as she swiftly got out of the car and pushed passed him, going into the building. Her grouchy expression changed swiftly to a pleasant one as she approached a woman who seemed to be working at the place.

"Excuse me," she said, "I'm looking for.. girl with... wavy red hair and bright green eyes? She.. left her phone with me and came here, I believe."

The woman popped her gum and rolled her eyes. These people were interrupting her soaps. "Hah...?" she muttered in a sharp, nasally tone, "you want who?"

Patiently, Thracia repeated the description.

"Haven't seen her," she popped her gum again, resting her chin on a hand, "no redheads. You got 'er name maybe?"

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It was a ghost town. Everywhere, pickaxes and shovels and drills were left unattended, as if there had been a sudden rush at a lunch bell and everyone had dropped things right where they were. Tracey trudged through the dusty quarry, her boots leaving footsteps in the red earth.

"Hullo, I'm looking for Rocky...? Rocky..." she sighed, "Rocky Rua...? He was supposed to meet me?"

From a guardhouse, a shotgun cocked and aimed.

"A name huh." Thracia narrowed her eyes a little, a small bit of silence descending on the room with the occasional 'pop' of the gum. The agent sighed softly as she looked at the girl. "de Carlo, I think. You know? Red hair, green eyes, hat, freckles..."

Pop.

"Are you sure, you don't know...?" Alexi's words gently stepped in, smiling as he approached the woman, meeting her eyes with a charming gaze. "It's very important." He smoothly stepped over to her, never letting his expression or grace falter. Even the tone of his voice kept up. And his eyes never left the woman's.

"...Hiii..." suddenly, the desk clerk sat up, and started primping like some sort of alarm had gone off. She pushed blonde curls into place and straightened her hairband and even spit out her gum discreetly into its wrapper. Then she stood up straight and batted eyelashes at Alexi, and pulled a three-ring binder from a desk drawer.

"What did you say that name was again, Sir?" she grinned her best pretty grin.

"Oh god..." Thracia muttered, disgusted, but she took a back seat to Alexi for now, as he took charge of the situation and tried to make the girl was mostly focused on him and his words and hopefully nothing else. Alexi got closer to her, leaning in a slight bit so she could smell his cologne.

"Her name's de Carlo," He said, voice as smooth as he could make it, "Redhead, green eyes, freckles, tan-coloured hat and clothes... Sound familiar...?" He grinned slightly, looking into her eyes, "Did you pretty up yourself, just for me?" Alexi chuckled before continuing, "And by the way, my name's Alexi. I never caught yours..."

"S... Susie," the clerk girl breathed, hanging on his every word, "but... but I'm sorry... there really hasn't been any Tracey de Carlo in today..." she flipped again through a few pages of names and addresses and phone numbers in her gray binder, fake manicured nails swishing over the papers, "only ladies we got were an old grandma and some businesswoman in a brown suit..."

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Tracey began to sweat.

"Hello...?"

The muzzle of a gun thrust into her back and made her squeak. Her whole body went rigid and perfectly straight. Her hands didn't dare move for the pistol at her side.

"Walk," a gruff voice demanded, and the detective could hear heavy work boots behind her scraping on gravel as they started to move, step after slow slep. They were heading for an above ground guardhouse, she soon saw. It was the only building in sight for miles. The sun was blisteringly hot and she could see a big, tall shadow beside her own, and that of a barrel of a gun, sprawled out like chalk outlines of bodies.

S-stay cool, Tracey... you're an officer of the l-law... you're... you're n-not afraid of a thug with a gun...

"I-I'll have you know I'm an inspect--"

"Walk," the man grunted again, butting the muzzle into her small spine. The girl froze up again, gulped, and resumed walking toward danger. The shotgun in the guardhouse tracked her all the way.

"Oh... I see..." Alexi finished with a look of slight sadness on his face, but it soon faded into a smile, "That's alright, Lover," he addressed her, giving her a flirtatious wink. He turned to Thracia, as if awaiting her order for the next move. Thracia only responded with a flat "what". He shrugged. Thracia rolled her eyes. "Alright, okay, she wasn't here. Apparently. Susie over there said she saw someone wearing brown... but a business woman, so it can't be her, can it?" She looked down at Tracey's phone. "I didn't want to do this, but maybe we should try calling some of the numbers?" She began looking through the phone right there.

"If she isn't paranoid enough to erase them all." Alexi pointed out, but since Thracia shushed him, he turned back to flirt with the Susie woman again.

The phone was mostly empty of contacts, a somewhat sad and short list. But amongst the few listed, mostly professional contacts, numbers of police officers and partners and superiors in both Rochester and Rubato, a name stood out. "Alex" was the only informal name in the list--one of the only ones not entered in with a last name, or grouped under work numbers in the detective's meticulous organizational style, other than a number of a man called Monroe. With Alex being first in the list alphabetically, it was the first Thracia saw. The natural, first resort to call. Someone who might personally know and care about Tracey de Carlo.

It was only up to Thracia to decide whether she would risk it or not. Whether it was worth it to her.

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"Inspector Tracey de Carlo, heh...?"

Brock "Rocky Rua" Mantegna tapped a little ash off his cigar, took his dusty boot-clad feet off the table, and sat forward to have a closer look at the screen where a sepia-and-white display from an old security camera showed him the scene at the guardhouse. The squeaky redhead there was as rigid as a board as Frank and Carl kept her pinpointed with their guns. All an act. Security for the quarry's main operation, which had little to do with excavation on most days. Someday he'd find that gold mine of ground water, and the Rubatoians would be falling all over themselves to pay him for the smallest sip. But on other days, reality was knocking and it was asking him to pay up in commodities far less respectable than water.

And when there was a knock, Rocky Rua came answering. Cadenza Madrigal had made the call. It was his turn to reply.

"Alex, ey?" Thracia raised her eyebrows a little at the single, seemingly unofficial contact on the list. "That might be her boyfriend." She said to herself, pondering whether to call the number or not. She bit her lip and decided to dial it. Whoever this was; boyfriend, friend, whoever, might have some clue about where Tracey went.

She did think it funny that she was chasing a woman to give her phone back to her.

"Hello...?" answered the eight-year old girl on her child's phone, a simple thing with big buttons and a light-up display. Monroe and Tracey had decided it would be a good idea for her to have some way of contact when she went to school. Alex had chosen the green and silver model and covered it in racing sticker decals. "Tracey...?" Alex never called the redhead "mom".

"Hello? Hi!" Thracia was caught off guard. This was a girl, right? "...Is your name Alex? I'm Thracia. Tracey lost her phone, and we're trying to return it to her..."

"Oh, yeah! Tracey takes care of me with my dad! Um... I... I think she went on a trip, but... I'll get Dad, he'll know where she is!"

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"Stand down," Tracey heard a gruff, authoritative voice issuing from one of the gunman's pocket radios. Could it possibly be Mantegna? Immediately the guards relaxed their stances and she breathed out in relief.

Then she tensed again as a concealed trapdoor opened in the flooring.

"Alright...!" Thracia waited for this girl's dad to come to the phone. "Tracey takes care of me with my dad!" the words resurfaced in her mind, is this Alex Tracey's sister or something? And Monroe's their dad, right? That makes sense... But her accent is different. Really different from Tracey's... adopted maybe? Living with her dad and an... adopted sister, okay. Or is Tracey adopted? Her eyes wandered over to Alexi.

He was back under Susie's skin again, leaning on the counter, making her blush with little words. Why was he sticking around? Really, nothing better to do than entice a girl he'd probably not go back to?

"DAD!" the voice echoed from upstairs. A sudden exploding sound, followed by a minor tremor rushed through the house as Monroe walked upstairs from his hidden laboratory and wiped soot off of his face. "Dad!" the voice called again as he opened the secret door-bookshelf he'd installed. It even had a two-way system so he didn't have to grab a different book on both sides. Still, the sliding open of the secret door and the spilling of the man into the living room made his now bleak appearance somewhat more obvious.

"I need to remember to be more careful with mixing volatile chemicals when Alex is home. After all, this may only twinge a bit for me... but I wouldn't want to accidently hurt her," he said to himself as he removed a bar and pulled out a note-screen in which he inscribed his note-to-self. "Anyway," the Quincy muttered at a low tone as he lifted his head and smiled, "yes Alex? What's wrong?"

Alex shrugged. "Some woman named Thracia looking for Tracey," she said nonchalantly.

It was at that moment, the headache began. The feeling... or strong need to... band his head against the door started at that moment as he reached for the phone. "Thank you, Alex. I'll handle this," he told her, smiling.

Alex laughed. "Dad, you got blown up again, didn't you?"

Monroe laughed. "Yes, and this time, like many of the others, it was partly your responsibility," he said with a smile. The two laughed briefly. "Anyway, I'm fine, Alex. I was prepared for it anyway. You get a sixth sense about that stuff when it happens enough time. Anyway... I should probably answer this lady," he said, smiling at her. "I'll start work on dinner afterwards, so get back to your video-games or TV or whatever you were doing."

Monroe turned from Alex and his face went grim. Someone calling about Tracey made the need to bang his head against a wall once bad enough, but he felt this was probably worse than he could possibly imagine. "This is Monroe Vossler, answering from Tracey de Carlo's residence, how may I help you?" he asked in the happiest voice he could manage.

"This is Monroe Vossler, answering from Tracey de Carlo's residence, how may I help you?"

This accent... sounds nothing like Tracey or Alex... "Oh, hello! My name's Thracia Dayna... and I found Tracey's phone..." Alright, scrap my previous ideas. Monroe and Tracey are... a couple and Alex is their daughter. "And I did cause her a little trouble, so I'd like to make it up by giving it back to her personally." But they sound nothing like each other... maybe Alex is adopted? "Huh--I mean, sorry to bother you." Thracia chuckled nervously.

"You're lying. Something's wrong and you had a damn good reason to call, so spill it," he said as he narrowed his eyes at the floor. "You caused some trouble for her, and that's something you should explain before you hang up that phone," Monroe said sternly. "After all, before I gave Tracey that phone, I placed a tracking device on it, so consider your next words quite carefully, miss Thracia," Monroe said chipperly as he held Alex's phone quietly for a second.

Head-desk count was at two already, and this chick wasn't helping with it.

"Wha? Lying...?!"

Who is this guy?! Spill it? Tracking device?! Thracia looked puzzled for a few moments. She wasn't planning to hang up, either. She pulled the phone from her ear, not hanging up, but giving it a once over with her eyes. "Tracey takes care of me with my dad! I'll get my dad..." Quickly, she put the phone back. "Why would you plant a tracking device on the phone of the one who helps take care of your kid...?" Complete, overprotective, paranoia. And choose my words carefully? How fast does he think he can get here?

"Nevermind!" She quickly spoke up, in a more official and demanding tone that she was used to, "MI6 Agent, Thracia Tanya Dayna, personally returning a lost phone to the Tracey de Carlo, who dropped it during a scuffle aboard a ship. That's all, Mr. Vossler."

"Bah... a Fed... great," he muttered away from the phone. "Former Operative Monroe Vossler of the NSA, transfered from the FBI before being discharged. Now then, I guess I can tell you why: Tracey is looking for... unsavory folks, and in the event something goes wrong, I was hoping I'd have something to use to keep an eye on her, to be prepared to move in the event she was captured." The Quincy sighed.

"Anyway, my strong sense is she may have been caught by one of the mobs, but she may not be in danger. An inside source to the aforementioned gangs has warned them of her arrival, and these shady people like to keep their bases and crap hidden from the public view. However... this does make things somewhat complicated..."

Monroe sighed as he looked at Alex. "However, I need to give my daughter her phone back, so I'm going to ask a quick favor from you, Miss Thracia: Find Tracey and help her out for me. I can't leave... I can't leave my daughter alone, and Tracey is clever enough to avoid anything too bad from happening, I think, so she'll be safe for the most part, if nothing more than due to dumb luck. ANyway, good luck. Bye." Monroe ended the call and returned to Alex her phone. "Sorry about that, Alex. Tracey seems to have gone missing. What a day," he muttered.

Three head-doors today. It wasn't going to end well. At least things couldn't get any worse, right?

The room was filled with a hazy aroma of dust and dirt and cigar smoke. Parejo cigars, Tracey noted, if for no other reason than to keep her mind busy doing something other than panicking. She liked to pick out details when she was idle. A safari style hat covering a yellow hard-hat emerged from the trapdoor, followed by a pair of shoulders in a khaki jacket, over a dusty beige shirt, and then dusty khaki slacks and brown boots stepped out of the hole in the floor and the boards were slid back to conceal that the entryway had ever been there.

Gray Cernilian eyes fixed on her, staring out of a weaselly, grayish olive-complexioned face. Freckles dotted the sharp, pointed nose, but they were different from hers, freckles burned on like tattoos from years of burning in the sun. The khaki hat covered a head of messy dark hair the color of mud, tied back in a ponytail, and the teeth that showed between the thin, tobacco-stained lips were yellowed from decades of smoking. Rocky Rua ran a hand over his stubbled chin, straightened his thin, yellowing tie, and cleared his throat once, roughly. Both of the armed guards in the room came to attention briefly and then relaxed again, like they were used to such situations.

"Looks like the detective chick, boss. Squeaky as a little mouse. She's a Limey, alright."

"She's got a lotta f***in' nerve for wearin' that badge in here, that's for sure," Rocky replied, wedging his cigar back between his stained teeth. He walked a slow circle around Tracey, his boots clapping on the floorboards, all ease and authority. This was his turf. The redhead would have to tread carefully.

J-just reeking of those cigars... he looks shady and he knows it.

Tracey straightened up and tried not to gulp. Her hands were shaking, but she wouldn't dare let them see it. She bit her bottom lip to keep it from quivering. She couldn't help her pert little nose from wrinkling up in disgust at the cigar smoke, though, and a small cough escaped her as the man got closer.

"What, gumshoe, don't like cigars...?" Rocky asked, leaning in. He smacked his teeth once, gave a puff, and eased back away. "I could put this out right on your nose, ya know that? And none of ya damn cops could do a thing about it."

Tracey forced words out through her coughing, "M-Madrigal sent me here..."

A silence came over the room, disturbed by only the light wind blowing against the rickety building. De Carlo had just played her trump card. She called out the purpose for this meeting. Now that the guards knew one of the particular players involved, they stood more rigidly, more formally. Madrigal knew this girl was here--and supported whatever her mission was enough to provide her the real address. A wrong step against that could prove fatal.

"...I know the Rubatoian b*tch did," Rocky finally said, his frown creasing his face with a real expression for the first time. "And that's why I'm gonna help you."

OoC: I'm okay with this post. It could be better, but I'm exhausted.

"Oh, wait!" Click. He hung up on her, without hearing her out. She was thinking while they were talking, he must be paranoid. To put a tracking device on her. Thracia wondered if he was smart too; a phone is easily lost. Easier to lose than say, your clothes. It would be more productive if he slipped a tracking device on her person... But was he even telling the truth? He could be... crazy.

Even if he did slip one on Tracey's person, how would that help her? Vossler would've... or should've been tracking it. She didn't want to take Tracey's phone apart just to find the bug. Why was this annoying her more than it should have--Right. Because Vossler told Thracia to find Tracey when HE was the one who planted the tracking device. And then hung up.

"Alexi, ask your girlfriend about the last car that left here. Maybe that'll be a good clue." Thracia redialed Alex's number and waited for her to pick up. "Hello! I'm sorry, it's Ms. Thracia again, your dad hung up before I could continue talking to him..."

Alexi heard her, and looked at Susie expectantly; no doubt she'd heard too.

"Uh... he did?" a video game could be heard in the background, race car tires squealing on asphalt. "Should I get him again?" Alex asked. She didn't seem so surprised by her dad's strange behavior. She knew him pretty well.

By the time Alexi looked back, Susie was already flipping fervently through her three-ring binder for the current date. "Last car, last car... ah! Here! The last car was a Ford, loaned out to... hmm, yes... a Miss Klein, taken out by an assistant, at like... um... 3:20 pm! That's only an hour ago!" The clerk tried to decipher the signature of the "assistant", but it was like trying to read a word in a heap of soggy alphabet noodles--letters were in there, but they were so clumped and tangled that it didn't necessarily spell out anything that made sense. She looked up a little crestfallen at Alexi, hoping she'd helped with what little information she had to give.