The Umbrella Conspiracy - By S. D. Perry Page 0,1

they hit the bottom, and as she paused in mid-stride, staring in disbelief at the steaming ceramic mug, the thick stack of files she carried under her other arm slid smoothly to the floor. Paper clips and sticky notes scattered across the tan carpeting.

Ah, shit.

She checked her watch as she turned back toward the kitchen, cup in hand. Wesker had called the meeting for 1900 sharp, which meant she had about nine minutes to make the ten-minute drive, find parking and get her butt into a chair. The first full disclosure meeting since the S.T.A.R.S. had gotten the case - hell, the first real meeting since she'd made the Raccoon transfer-and she was going to be late.

Figures. Probably the first time in years I actually give a rat's ass about being on time and I fall apart at the door...

Muttering darkly she hurried to the sink, feeling tense and angry with herself for not getting ready earlier. It was the case, the goddamn case. She'd picked up her copies of the ME files right after breakfast and spent all day digging through the reports, searching for something that the cops had somehow missed and feeling more and more frustrated as the day slipped past and she'd failed to come up with anything new.

She dumped the mug and scooped up the warm, wet keys, wiping them against her jeans as she hurried back to the front door. She crouched down to gather the files-and stopped, staring down at the glossy color photo that had ended up on top.

Oh, girls...

She picked it up slowly, knowing that she didn't have time and yet unable to look away from the tiny, blood-spattered faces. She felt the knots of tension that had been building all day intensify, and for a moment it was all she could do to breathe as she stared at the crime scene photo. Becky and Priscilla McGee, ages nine and seven. She'd flipped past it earlier, telling herself that there was nothing there she needed to see... ... But it isn 't true, is it? You can keep pretending, or you can admit it-everything's different now, it's been different since the day they died.

When she'd first moved to Raccoon, she'd been under a lot of stress, feeling uncertain about the transfer, not even sure if she wanted to stay with the S.T.A.R.S. She was good at the job, but had only taken it because of Dick; after the indictment, he'd started to pressure her to get into another line of work. It had taken awhile, but her father was persistent, telling her again and again that one Valentine in jail was one too many, even admitting that he was wrong to raise her the way he had. With her training and background, there weren't a whole lot of options - but the S.T.A.R.S., at least, appreciated her skills and didn't care how she came by them. The pay was decent, there was the element of risk she'd grown to enjoy... In retrospect, the career change had been surprisingly easy; it made Dick happy, and gave her the opportunity to see how the other half lived.

Still, the move had been harder on her than she'd realized. For the first time since Dick had gone inside, she'd felt truly alone, and working for the law had started to seem like a joke - the daughter of Dick Valentine, working for truth, justice, and the American way. Her promotion to the Alphas, a nice little house in the suburbs - it was crazy, and she'd been giving serious thought to just blowing out of town, giving the whole thing up, and going back to what she'd been before... ... until the two little girls who lived across the street had shown up on her doorstep and asked her with wide, tear-stained eyes if she was really a policeman. Their parents were at work, and they couldn't find their dog... ... Becky in her green school dress, little Pris in her overalls-both of them sniffling and shy...

The pup had been wandering through a garden only a few blocks away, no sweat and she'd made two new friends, as easy as that. The sisters had promptly adopted Jill, showing up after school to bring her scraggly bunches of flowers, playing in her yard on weekends, singing her endless songs they'd learned from movies and cartoons. It wasn't like the girls had miraculously changed her outlook or taken away her loneliness, but somehow her thoughts of leaving