Vegas Part 1: Fabrication
"Annie, remember the first time I sent you to Paris?" Joan asked off-handedly.
"Yes," Annie answered cautiously as she eyed the folders in Joan's hands.
"Or the time I sent you both out in the field together?" that memory not quite as sweet for Annie as it ended with Auggie proposing to Parker.
"What's up Joan?" Auggie asked curiously.
"Oh I am just going to say it….I am sending you both on a mission…to Las Vegas," she thrust the folders towards them.
"What?" Annie laughed as she took the folder and quickly realized it was Auggie's
She traded the braille docs for her own and scanned the mission quickly.
"I need some intelligence gathered, the mission requires some Russian language skills and some high tech gadgetry, we have a good cover in place for a couple. I am not leveraging your feelings for one another, but you certainly played married fine before you were whatever you are now," Joan waved dismissively in the general direction of her agents who stood even closer to one another these days.
Auggie was running his fingers over the report and frowning.
"These are some seriously bad dudes, what are they doing in Vegas?"
"What does anyone do in Vegas, partying, drinking gambling, wasting the spoils of war, literally," Joan sighed.
"This is fairly dangerous," Annie noted.
"Not if your covers hold. We simply need you to get close enough to each of them to slip them the compound. Alcohol flows pretty readily in Vegas, it will work. Get down to Fabrication, we want you as a well-documented Manhattan power couple, hope you are feeling highly photogenic today," Joan dismissed them.
"Chechen rebels living it up in Vegas, sounds like the plot of a Bruce Willis movie," Annie snorted as they made their way down to Fabrication.
"Hello Mr. & Mrs., let's get some wedding shots shall we?" Marcus from Fab had a veil in his hand when he greeted Annie and Auggie in the photo lab.
While Annie and Auggie were not hiding their relationship they also were not flaunting it. Those that knew them knew about it and the rest of the agency didn't have reason to be in the loop. Spies were private for a reason. So Marcus was probably thrown for a loop when Annie grabbed Auggie's wardrobe for the shoot and wheeled it into her dressing room. There was a lot to get done and they would move faster together.
It took hours to get all the photos done, wedding, vacations, company profile shots, everything that would be needed to create websites, Facebook pages and return decent results on a Google search.
The last batch was "beach" photos with a Hawaiian green screen.
"I need a different bathing suit," Annie noted her voice dropping low.
"What's wrong?" Auggie reached for her shoulder and found bare skin; he followed it to a string tied around her neck.
"My um, my scars are visible," she tried to shake off the dread.
"OK," Auggie just squeezed her shoulder and went to get a runner to find another suit.
"Sorry, just would be hard to explain how a socialite from New York had 2 gunshot wounds center mass," Annie took the beach wrap that went with the bikini and covered herself as they waited.
"Every part of you is perfect, you know that right?" he leaned to kiss her as the intern knocked on the door.
Annie thanked the young woman who smiled at her sadly. She changed quickly and Auggie returned to his investigation of her outfit.
"This feels sufficiently skimpy for vacationing with me," he nodded his approval and she laughed.
Their travel docs were ready when they made it back upstairs.
"Marvin? My name is Marvin?" Auggie snorted after Barber gave him the paperwork.
"I'm Annette, did we fall into 1950 somehow?"
"Annette works, I can still call you Annie, I won't make any mistakes when we…ooof" Auggie grinned as Annie whacked him in the stomach.
"Marvin and Annette Williams live on the Upper East Side. Marvin you own and operate Williams Global Imports and you are about to go Public, congratulations," Barber chuckled.
"The real money in the family belongs to Annette though, only daughter of Randolph Jennings a wealthy mining magnet from Andorra…"
"There are like 12 people in Andorra won't that cover get blown pretty fast," Annie argued.
"Trust Fabrication, you are covered. You just have to go to Vegas and pretend to be rich and in love, man this job sucks some times," Barber sighed.
"I suppose if I get the girl and the money I can live with the name Marvin for a few days," Auggie shrugged and slid the docs in his bag.
The End
