Dry Run

Ashley decided to let it go. She didn’t want to argue with Heather and Brandon anymore and if it was going to keep Brandon happy to let him have this ‘win’ over her, then so be it. It might even be nice to have Heather there for support. She’d almost completely broken down the first time Hannah told her. This time she not only had to listen to the whole horrid mess all over again, but hold her nerve while Brandon listened in and recorded it. And since they’d hear everything that was said through the spy app, there was no reason to try and keep Heather out of it. Unless Hannah really would clam up around the dark-haired daughter of Robert Ravers.

“Fine,” Ashley said with a shrug. “I don’t mind if you come, Heather, but hopefully it doesn’t stop Hannah talking.”

“Oh, I think I’ll be able to rile her up and get her talking,” Heather replied confidently. “She’s always been annoyed because I kept cockblocking her with my father.”

“Great!” Brandon exclaimed, reclining in the back seat. “What’s the next part of the plan then?”

“The next part is that I call Hannah and arrange another meeting,” Ashley told him, irritably, as she slid her phone from her pocket. “So, keep quiet back there.”

Brandon’s nose flared, but he did remain silent, his lips tightening. Maybe he shouldn’t have pressed the Heather issue, but it did feel good to annoy his ex-girlfriend. Still, no matter how awesome the feeling of petty ****, he wasn’t going to jeopardise their end goal just to piss her off. So, loathe as he was to follow his ex-girlfriend’s instructions, he did what he was told, and just listened and watched.

Taking the quiet from the back seat as Brandon’s answer, Ashley found her sister’s number in her contacts and pressed to dial. Only while it was ringing did she remember that it hadn’t worked last time. She had to call the office and get hold of Hannah that way. But, just as she was preparing to hang up and dial the other number instead, her sister picked up.

“Hey, Ash,” Hannah’s voice sounded distant and cool. “I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.”

“We weren’t done talking,” Ashley insisted, though trying not to sound too eager.

“I thought we were,” Hannah replied reservedly. “It didn’t seem like there was anything left to say.”

“I’m not done trying to talk some sense into you,” Ashley continued, thinking that it didn’t matter if Heather came or not, if they couldn’t even get a meeting. “I know you haven’t gone to the dark side yet. Not completely.”

“The fact that you think this is dark or wrong, just shows how completely incompatible we are,” Hannah argued sadly, her voice almost hopeless. “I don’t think I was wrong. I did this out of loyalty to you, my sister. And I’d do it again. I saw the anguish and heart-break on your face that day in the bathroom. They deserve everything that befalls them.”

“Ok, you did it for me,” Ashley accepted, unconvinced. “But then you owe me at least to talk to me, to let me say my piece. You can’t say you did this for me but refuse to even discuss it.”

For a moment Hannah was silent, and Ashley could tell that she was contemplating the suggestion. The petite blonde in the passenger seat grimaced and clenched her free hand in a tight, optimistic fist while she waited. On the other end she could hear Hannah breathing, measured and contemplative.

Then her voice came through again, soft and haunted, saying, “Okay. Give me an hour and then meet me after work. At my apartment at Ravers’ Palace Hotel.”

“Perfect,” Ashley agreed, and after getting the exact address and room number, Ashley said, “See you soon.”

“Yeah. Bye.” Hannah hung up immediately after.

Ashley felt like shit, lying to her own sister, especially with how genuinely devastated she sounded. It almost made Ashley want to just apologise and forgive her and just embrace her into one long, warm hug. But, she comforted herself by reminding herself that she was doing the right thing. She would always love Hannah, nothing could break the bond of sisters, but Ashley also just couldn’t remain idle while Hannah allowed an innocent girl to be punished for her sins. But knowing that, and being resolved to do it didn’t make the actual act of doing it any easier.

The rest of the drive to Azure Rocks was smooth, though the atmosphere in the car remained tense. Neither Ashley nor Brandon were quite capable to making small talk yet, preferring instead to sit in silence, knowing that neither one felt comfortable being in the situation with the other. Heather, while theoretically capable of talking to either Ashley or Brandon, felt like a third wheel in her own car, unable to talk to either one without pissing off the other. But, silent or not, at least they were willing to work together to get Lisa the justice she deserved.

She tried listening to the radio. Unfortunately, all of the stations kept reporting the news, focusing particularly on the hero detective caught trying to fix a case against his **** addicted daughter. Heather quickly turned it off again. The silence was better than having to listen to uninformed journalists relate the downfall of Carlos Rivera and his wayward seed as if it were an undeniable fact. The purveyors of the truth were all fostering the same lie, based entirely on, and nothing else, the word of the police.

They arrived at the Palace Hotel in little under an hour since the phone call. Heather parked outside, lifting and looking at Brandon’s phone as she cut the engine and the device ceased to charge. Reaching back between the seats, Heather passed Brandon’s phone back to him and said, “Seventy-Five percent. That should be enough, right?”

“The spy app really drains the battery,” Brandon admitted but added, “But I think this should do. Hopefully.”

“And you know how to record?” Ashley inquired, taking off her seat belt.

“It’s this red button here,” Brandon indicted, turning the screen towards Ashley and pointing to a large round red icon at the bottom, the screen above mimicking Ashley’s phone screen. “I’ve never tried it though because I didn’t need any mementos of your date with Zack.”

Ashley pouted, disgruntled, but Heather intervened before she could respond. “Well, then, should we do a little test?”

“Such as?” Ashley raised an eyebrow.

“You and I will go into the hotel lobby and have a little chat, while Brandon sits out here and records the conversation,” Heather suggested, looking between the pair, secretly eager to separate the two. The strained, uncomfortable mood while they waited for Hannah was more than she could bear. She would actually rather talk to Hannah than spend another minute with both of them together in the same car. “Then I can come out and he can show me that it worked.”

“Yeah, a quick dry run wouldn’t hurt,” Brandon agreed, pulling his headphones from his pocket.

“See you in five,” Heather bid him farewell, as she, and Ashley, slid out of the car.

The two girls walked from the car park to the hotel in silence, although, unlike the car, this was a relaxed and unrestrained quiet, the kind of ambience only achieved by two people who are comfortable in the presence of the other. There was a cool evening breeze on the wind, the temperature rapidly dropping as the sun began to dip behind the horizon of buildings and, further afield, hills. The cold felt apt for the covert mission they were about to embark upon, like American spies in a Soviet land.

“Well, I suppose we should talk about something,” Heather spoke first, pushing through the revolving door, Ashley on her heels. “How are you handling this whole thing?”

“You mean with Hannah, or what we’re about to do to her?” Ashley questioned with a depressed sigh, realising they were really one in the same. “I don’t know. I just stay focused on Lisa and doing whatever it takes to prove her innocence because it feels like the right thing to do. But I don’t think I’ve really accepted what Hannah did, or what freeing Lisa will really mean. Every time I think about it I just think ‘no, it can’t be Hannah’ all over again. Once it really sinks in…once I’m finally able to believe it…I don’t know. When I try to imagine what drove her to this, the only conclusion I come to is that this is all my fault.”

“It’s not your fault,” Heather insisted, leading the blonde over to a section of leather couches to one side of the reception. “Even if Hannah deluded herself into thinking that she did what she did for you, that still doesn’t excuse the fact that what she did was criminal, traumatising and dangerously short-sighted. You can’t take her agency away by taking the weight of her sins upon yourself. She made her own choices. No one made them for her.”

“Except my choices led to her choices,” Ashley argued, flopping down onto the cushion. “And now I’m making the choice to punish her for those choices.”

“Which is the right thing to do,” Heather said, her voice encouraging and firm. “It takes courage to do what you’re doing Ash. I don’t know if I would be so brave if it were me and my father in your and Hannah’s position.” Ashley simply stared at the carpeted floor, quietly conflicted. “Well, she could be here any minute now. I should get back to Brandon.”

Ashley responded with a terse nod, just enough to show that she was in fact listening, as Heather left the lobby and made her way back out to the parking lot. Just talking about her father had him back on her mind, and she wondered what he was up to right now. She hadn’t spoken to him since earlier that day, when she accused him of targeting Lisa to get to Carlos, and wound up with her father’s tip spurting off cum into her pussy. Her body flushed at the very memory and she bit her lip in want. But right now, she had to focus.

Robert Ravers was working, no doubt, trying to repair the damage done by the loss of the Silver Lake project, or trying to work out which of the board members might have moved against him, completely unaware that it was the unintentional consequences of his own intern’s actions. If he was banging some slut from his little black book, she wondered if he was thinking of her just like she thought of him. Was he trying to cleanse his palette, to purge her touch from his mind, only for her soft, tight body beneath his hands to plague him instead? Would he cum to the memory of her velvety wet folds constricting his cockhead instead of whatever floosy he might be fucking? She smiled a little smile to herself, hoping it to be so.

Reaching her car, she opened the back door. Brandon jumped at her sudden arrival, at least from his perspective, and quickly pulled one bud from his ear, his breathing increasing rapidly before levelling out as he realised it was only Heather.

“Geez, you nearly gave me a heart attack,” Brandon panted, clutching his chest. “Good news is that it works like a charm. Listen.”

He pulled the headphones from the jack, and pushed a button on the screen. Ashley’s voice rose out of the speaker, repeating her words, “…I don’t think I’ve really accepted what Hannah did, or what freeing Lisa will really mean”. Brandon silenced the recording with another button, and plugged the headphones back in as he looked back to Heather with a satisfied smile.

“Excellent,” Heather replied with a fist pump. “And you’re sure it’ll pick it up even when we’re all the way up there?”

“Absolutely,” Brandon assured her. “If I can pick up Ashley’s date in town from the cabin, I can-” He stopped talking, cocking his head towards the earbud still in his other ear. Holding up a hand to Heather, he said, “Wait, I hear voices.” His eyes went wide, and he stared at Heather. “Hannah! Hannah’s talking to Ashley.”

Ashley remained on the leather couch, bent over with her elbows on her knees and looking at the carpet between her feet. She couldn’t believe that she was there in that hotel, trying to trick her sister into confessing, or preparing to. She wondered what her parents would think; would they think she was doing the right thing, that she was being courageous, just as Heather said or would they think, as Ashley did, that she was a disgrace for turning against her own family? Her own flesh and blood. And the horrid realisation dawned upon her that, if she succeeded in drawing the confession from her sister, she would have to be the one to tell her parents what had happened.

“Ashley?” The calling of her name made her look up, in such a daze that she didn’t recognise her own sister’s voice. Hannah stood, looking stressed and tired as Ashley looked around the lobby, searching for Heather. Her sister, seeing Ashley’s longing look around the room, followed her little sister’s gaze, then asked. “Is everything alright?”