Participants:
| Scene Title | How Far |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Lance and Keira meet up to have a talk. |
| Date | October 21, 2018 |
It’s just another day at the 41st Precinct — a bit more empty than normal, thanks to a small surge in food sales, but there’s still a good amount of men hanging out in the common area as Lance makes his way in.
For once, Keira is not in her office — instead, she’s down in the basement garage, leaning up against her precious Cadillac Escalade and smoking a cigarette, looking rather relaxed. For once, things seem to be going smoothly, and that’s a good thing.
She probably won’t continue to feel that way soon, but that’s to be determined. As Lance arrives, the woman nods to the two ever-present guards that often flank her, and the two men clear out of the garage to guard the entrances.
“Hey.” Lance’s hands come up to push the hood of his grey hoodie back, a faint smile curving to his lips as he approaches Keira and her car, “Glad I caught you at home, got something important to talk to you about.”
Messenger bag slung over his shoulder as usual, the guards soon hear nothing as the silence field sweeps out to cordon off the pair and their discussion. And/or gunshots, you know, depending on just how angry she is.
A long drag is taken from Keira’s cigarette, the woman leaning her head back to rest against the heavily tinted driver’s side window of the enormous SUV. “Hey.” She nods to Lance, placing the cigarette between her lips and pushing off of the car to move a bit closer to the teenager.
She appears to be in a good mood; this is probably the best time in general to bring it up to her. Maybe she won’t shoot him with that ever-present gun at her hip. Maybe she’ll just pistol whip him or something. That would be a better outcome than the former option.
“What’s up?” She raises a brow, taking another drag of her cigarette.
“The Arrowwoods.”
Lance stops just out of arm’s reach there, eyebrows lifting as he regards her seriously, “How much do you want to get those human trafficking shit-bags? How far are you willing to go to dig them out of their holes and get them dead or behind bars where they belong?”
Hands spread slightly, “Seriously, here, it’s an important question.”
That brow raises just a little bit more as Keira takes another long draw from her cigarette. “Mmm.” A ponderous look crosses her remaining eye as she taps the ash off of the cigarette, peering at the cherry.
“Pretty fuckin’ bad. I know I ain’t the most savory individual,” she murmurs, tapping the toe of a boot against the concrete floor. “But there’s just somethin’ wrong with stealing a person’s freedom. Sits bad with me.”
Her blue eye turns back up to Lance, eyelid hooding slightly. “Why do you ask?”
“Because if you want to get them— if you really want to get them,” says Lance, regarding her with that serious expression of his that she’s rarely seen except when all this business came up, “You’re going to have to do something I’m pretty sure you aren’t going to want to do at all.”
“So I need to know how far you’re willing to go there.”
For a moment, Keira just stares at Lance, a nonplussed expression finally settles over her face, her lips pursing slightly. The cigarette is lifted to her lips, the cherry flaring as another long drag is taken before she lets the smoke blow out in a slow-moving cloud from the corner of her mouth.
“Pretty. Fucking. Far.” She eyes the teenager, the normal friendliness she keeps on her face for he and his family starting to drain from her features.“Spit it the fuck out, Lance. What are you getting at?”
“You said yourself that they’re way too fucking powerful to just go after head to head, at least with what you’ve got, even with what Black’s got,” Lance points out, motioning a bit with one hand to the side, “Joe’s all gung-ho to go after them ourselves, and I feel him, but… that’s not gonna end well, and I think we both know that.”
He pauses a moment, “You really want these guys to go down, we need to get the feds on their ass. Which means, as one of the only actual witnesses to Sandoval being over there with the Arrowoods, you’d need to talk to the feds and give a statement.”
She figured that he was going there. The woman takes another long drag from her cigarette, her gaze slowly drifting away from Lance. Then, she’s turning her back on the teen, tossing the butt to the ground and snubbing it out beneath the toe of her boots.
Kid has a point. The feds could be the leverage that is needed to get rid of these sick fuckers. “I take it you have a line to them,” she murmurs, pulling out another cigarette and her zippo. For a moment, she just fidgets with the lighter, flipping the lid open and closed; then, she dips her head down, lighting the cigarette.
She should quit, but the notion of talking to the government is not really her favorite thought.
“A bunch of the Ferrymen went into government work after the war,” says Lance with a slight nod, “So I know which ones I can trust, who I can go to about this. I went to them with the information I had, but— they aren’t going to take unsourced information to turn on one of their own.”
He pauses, “If you talk to them, we might be able to really get the gears turning here, Keira. They wouldn’t really give a shit about your smuggling operation here, not with way bigger fish on the hook.”
After a moment, Keira turns, fixing a one-eyed glare upon Lance. She…pretty clearly does not like this idea too much. But…well, when he puts it that way. She sneers. “If you’re the liason, then I have fucking terms.”
She turns, glaring at the teenager. “They give me assurances that they don’t touch my operations out here. They can leave that shit to the NYPD when they come back.” She scowls, fairly displeased by what she’s talking about doing right now. “In writing.” So if they go back on that word, whatever lawyer she hires will have plenty of material to play with.
“I’ll fucking meet with them and I will give them the shit they want.” She narrows her eye, before producing a business card holder. This is opened, the contents gone through, and then she hands Lance a card that simply has an email address on it. That’s all they get.
“If these motherfuckers come down on me?” She stares Lance down with a grave expression on her face. “Tanith will break every fucking bone in your body.”
“I know, I know…” Lance reaches out to take the card, shaking his head, “Look, you don’t like them— but they’ve taken two members’ve my family already, or tried to. You’d do whatever you had to if you were in my place.”
The card’s held up, and he quirks a faint smile, “Thanks. You actually get internet out here?”
“You’re damned right I would.” Keira frowns. “Two of my faces came from them when I rescued some girl from getting killed by those fucks.” She purses her lips. “Nobody deserves to be turned into an object to be sold or used by other people.”
She snorts derisively at the question. “No. But I live with Caspian, and that’s my work email.” She gestures to the card. “I have people who check that shit for me and pass it on pretty quick.” One benefit of being the boss.
She seems irate.
“Okay.” Lance tips his head in a nod, “I know you’re pissed, but… this is the only way to fix this, Key.”
His hands spread a little as he drops back a step, “World’s changing again. We need to change with it if we want to make it better. Things don’t gotta be like they were before anymore, for any of us.”
If there’s anything Keira is accustomed to, it’s change. She changes her faces out on the daily. The woman frowns, looking long and hard at Lance. “You’re lucky I like you, and you’re lucky I want the traffickers gone.” She purses her lips.
Then, she turns, taking a long drag from the cigarette with a frown on her face. “Unfortunately, I’m a career criminal. There’s no reinventing myself, unless I decide I literally want to be someone else.” And her identity is one thing she likes hanging onto. “But I have my moral convictions, and slavery is pretty fuckin’ high on the list of things I don’t like.”
“Then let’s kick some slavers out of our town,” Lance replies, flashing a quick smile before turning to head out of the garage, the silence field fading, “I’ll be in touch. Thanks, Key.”