( carrie coon, cis woman, she/hers, forty-four ) look who goes there! is that JANA LJES? i’ve seen them often around SADDLE GROVE, which may be because they are UNEMPLOYED. they’ve been in town for TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS and i’ve known them to be GENUINE but also ENVIOUS. for some reason, AIMLESS by RICHY MITCH & THE COAL MINERS reminds me of them, as well as FRESH-GROWN HERBS, MUG RINGS ON TABLE LINENS & A SEWING TIN FILLED WITH BISCUITS
STATISTICS & CONNECTIONS
( TRIGGER WARNING(S): Mentions of Abduction & Illness )
Born on October 28th, 1982, in Budva, a coastal village in Montenegro. Both of her parents Mirjana and Duro were employed by a lavish resort that curved around the Adriatic Sea, as a spa attendant and chef, respectively
The eldest of three, and the only to be born in their home country before they moved to the borough of Queens in New York, New York, where the young couple found work at a factory producing pianos. Astoria had a sizable Montenegrin community and many others from the Balkan region that shared in their reliable cultures, so they were never far from help when they left the only home they had ever known
Ten years of toiling away and saving up again, Mirjana resolved it was time to move once more; this time to a place she had always dreamt of since her uncle had sent her postcards in her younger years ─ Colorado. They landed in Bear Creek, Colorado, thirty miles west of Denver, and remained modestly on a homestead on the outskirts of town, replete with diverse livestock
To combat the points that fell between her studies and doing chores on the land, Jana read, and she read and read. Everywhere, in fact, but most fondly in the forest by the creek, with a blanket and a snack and most notably her siblings entertaining themselves and not interrupting her. She would go on tales that were wrought with qualities of adventure and love, anything to escape how dull her ordinary schedule seemed to be
In her stories, Jana could vanish into the titular role and embark on a mission with a lover who accepted her, opposing real life where she was the eldest daughter whose affairs fell solely onto her.
These dreams of hers were not invited by her parents, who struggled long days to give her a good life, and tasked her with choosing something more essential to strive for. Equipped with aptitude in numbers stemming from her days studying her parents' accounts (since such records were reasoned an “American way” of doing things), Jana graduated with a bachelor’s in economics from the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. For three of those years, she lived at home, and then the last year she rented an apartment with her younger sibling that was closer to campus
Went on to study in a master’s program at the University of Denver, and was on the cusp of accepting a job that would send her across the country to a bigger city, and then onto Europe for a few years when her mother informed her that her father was ill and they might need to sell the farm
Jana returned to the placid suburb close to her twenty-fifth year to try and help her mother and youngest sibling, who was to be graduating that year. The labour was harder than she recalled, after they had to fire half of their workers to cover the costs of her father’s illness, so her mother agreed that she should get a job down at the local bank for another incoming salary. In less than a year and a half, she had risen to the position of manager of that branch, ousting a very displeased former boss who had one too many HR complaints swept under the rug for the district to ignore
Five years went by, and after a very taxing battle, her father recovered and was in good enough spirits to attempt to restore the livestock and their fields. And then ten years, and after that, her parents chose to sell the acres of land they owned, and they all moved to a small ranch-style house, and then fifteen years and Jana had not realised when and how she had become complacent in this arrangement she had dealt herself into
Still living at home and with no serious relationship to rely on, Jana took what savings she had accrued and bought a place to call her own in the neighbourhood of Saddle Grove
The incident had spread through the town like wildfire; the only time the Ljes family name had been on anyone’s mind since they mostly stayed in their corner of the world, and it was exactly a scenario from one of the novels known to always chaperon Jana. Of course, local public figures would have a varying version to tell since it was one of their biggest mistakes in a case, and followed them into the next elections
It was a standard Wednesday with that distinct lull midweek, as the last dog days of the month had made them submit to the heat and not much else, until the local sheriff’s agency was notified that the silent alarm had been triggered by a teller at the bank.
When a response team arrived on the scene, a little over an hour of tense standoff occurred before the thieves managed to escape, and all that was left behind was three tied-up employees in the vault, four thousand, three hundred and fifty-four dollars taken and one employee, a bank manager, one Ljes, Jana. Their motive for abducting her was unknown, since they complied with all their requests to let all the hostages go safely ─ another in a long line of signs the lawmen had that showed them how the criminals bested them yet
They must have been planned with some ease and time; with intimate details of the bank's (as it turns out, not-so-complicated) security systems, but the biggest of course, why? Other banks in town had far more than this mom-and-pop shoppe, which lent small loans to agricultural practices
Five months into their investigation, a novelty thought had occurred to them. Had the manager been in on this all along? A couple of them had gone to school with Jana or her siblings, and they were confronted both professionally and personally, but no one had answers about whether Jana even had any ties to these robbers and by all accounts she was an exemplary employee and manager, if not a bit awkward with her staff at times
After seven and a half months, their biggest break in the case had resurfaced hundreds of miles away on a beach in Maryland, when she was found by a diner owner who recognised her from the news when she went to visit her friend in Colorado
Jana was immediately flown back to Colorado and questioned by all the appropriate authorities before she was taken back to her parents' house and reunited with them, though the detectives noted something off that they could not quite place their finger on; maybe they weren’t so naive after all
Once in the privacy of her parents' house, the familiar walls feeling like they had aged years instead of just mere months, Jana relayed the truth to her mother, the truth she owed her when she called her four months ago from a payphone in Sarajevo
Exactly one month before the robbery, she had met a woman at a hotel bar a few towns over after finally accepting her workmate’s offer to set her up on a blind date. Said date did not go well, but it was there that she met a woman who introduced herself as Catrine, an out-of-state “businesswoman” who was there for the conference that was being held in the hotel’s conference room
They had talked, and drunk, and Catrine shared stories about her travels that thrilled Jana and a joint that led them going up to Catrine’s room and having a one-night stand. From there on, the criminal had bewitched the humble manager, though she suspected throughout the sparse visits that she was lying about some aspects of her life. Jana had no reason to think the mysterious stranger would harm her
She couldn’t stop shaking, but her limbs felt stiff as she knelt on the floor when she saw the group had weapons. It wasn’t until they were alone in the room with the safe when she realised one of the thieves really was; all it took was one word. Their plan had gone awry to get out of there, and as they fumbled for more time, Jana countered that she knew a way out and that her colleague had hit the button before
She became their only chance to escape efficiently and with some money; her only condition was that her life be spared and that she be given a chance to come with. In that moment, it was as if she had blacked out or been drugged, or both, only coming to when she was in a private plane to Europe
They had spent seven months in a romantic bubble and playing house in Europe, staying in a friend of a friend’s place, mostly from Catrine’s illicit network. From what Jana gathered over time, Catrine was a career criminal who didn’t actually need the money and was casing the bank for something else ─ an heirloom that was kept in a safety deposit box by an elderly woman Jana had only heard horror stories about, scaring all the kids on Halloween into staying away from her house
Fantasies had dissolved, as the couple gleamed they had greater problems to face than just living away from the law’s eyes. Catrine talked Jana into going back to her family, who were probably worried sick about her; after all, she was just as selfish as her unethical lifestyle for putting them through this. That idea cemented in Jana’s mind and carried her back to the US
Almost two and a half years have passed since then; Jana’s father has neglected to speak on the matter, and Jana’s mother resents her for the truth. Her siblings are well, they are left with more questions than Jana has answers to. All she wanted was to have a break from her daily life, and the lengths she went to obtain it cost her her sense of stability. However, they are all trying to work through it, and she has spent the last year in Montenegro with her parents and her siblings before returning to her house and bunny. She is currently unemployed since she resigned at the bank not long after returning from Europe, and has been living off a hefty sum deposited by a mysterious holder in her account
