Disclaimer: I don't own James Bond. I don't own Alec Trevelyan either (alas), nor any other recognizable characters mentioned in this fic. James, Alec, etc. are all property of Ian Fleming and MGM. I'm just playing with them for a while. Not making any money, don't have any money, please don't sue!

Alec took a deep breath, and straightened his tie. "We need to present a united front," he said for the fifth time.

"Unified front, check." James smiled at Alec, trying to defuse the situation. "You've been reading advice books again."

"Because feeling our way blindly was working so well." He squared his shoulders, and walked through the door into the outer office. The secretary nodded at them, and they walked in, Alec in front, James at his back.

The principal, Mr. Bray, was there; so was Mrs. Packett, the maths teacher. And sitting between them, looking very small and trying to hide behind her blonde hair, was Lynna.

"Hi, Daddy," she said, in a quiet voice. "Hi, Uncle James."

"Young lady -- " Alec's voice was stern. "Mr. Bray summoned me here. Perhaps you could tell me why that was?"

Lynna dropped her eyes. "I was just looking for my MP3 player."

"In my office," Mrs. Packett said. "She broke in."

"No, I didn't!" Lynna's head came up. "The door was open!"

"I never leave that door unlocked."

Alec looked at the principal. "Are you truly suggesting that she -- a thirteen-year-old girl -- somehow broke into her teacher's office? Picked the lock?"

Of course she could have; Alec had taught her that when she was eight. But James kept that detail to himself. Better to get Lynna out of here, discipline her themselves. Admitting she possessed that particular skill would raise questions none of them wanted to answer.

Now that the question had been asked, Mrs. Packett looked a little shaken. "Well, I suppose -- she must have taken the key?"

The uncertainty in her voice was all they needed. James leaned forward. "And is there a key missing?"

"Well -- no."

Alec raised his eyebrows. "Well, I suppose she must have made a copy somehow. Carved a mold out of soap, perhaps?" He curved his mouth into a smile. "Isn't that how they do it in the movies?"

"This is hardly a matter for humor," Mrs. Packett snapped.

"Oh, hardly." Alec looked at Mr. Bray. "If, as Mrs. Packett says, my daughter is a budding criminal, I need to know about it. However, if she merely walked through a door that had been carelessly left open -- "

"I see your point." Bray's thin lips curved into a smile. "And somehow, I doubt your daughter is capable of -- or inclined to -- such criminal behavior."

James was glad that neither of them were looking at Lynna at that particular moment; the smirk that flitted across her face would have given her away. Mrs. Packett made a sound like a boiling tea-kettle.

Bray looked down at Lynna. "However, you did break school rules by going into Mrs. Packett's office. There is a penalty."

"What sort of penalty?" Alec asked.

"Detention. She'll have to come in on Saturday, to help clean the campus. And of course, letting her have the device back is out of the question."

Lynna looked up, eyes wide and pleading. "But, Daddy -- "

"No buts." Alec straightened, and looked at Bray. "Are we done here?"

"Yes."

He took Lynna's hand, and led her out of the room. James followed, stopping for a moment to smile at Mrs. Packett, and then fell into step behind them.

They said nothing until they were safely in the car; James driving, Alec in the passenger seat, and Lynna squeezed into middle of the small back seat. Then Alec turned around to look at his daughter.

"Bloody hell, Lynna, I thought I taught you better than that!"

She hunched her shoulders. "I'm sorry."

"We have to be careful," James added. "Not attract too much attention to ourselves." The members of the expat community in Sao Paulo would be perfectly willing to maintain the polite fiction that James and Alec were indeed brothers; theft, though, they wouldn't excuse.

Lynna nodded; James knew she understood the importance of staying under the radar; she wouldn't have survived Florida if she didn't. So why would she --

Not too surprisingly, Alec wanted to know the same thing. "What were you thinking?" he demanded.

"I just wanted my MP3 player! Mrs. Packett took it, and I wasn't even listening to it, really I wasn't, I was just showing it to Sophie!"

"I would have talked to her," James said. "I'm sure she would have given it back to you."

Lynna studied her shoes. "Maybe."

"Of course she would have," Alec said. "Your Uncle James's powers of persuasion are legendary, when it comes to the fairer sex."

Lynna looked at him. "I don't think anyone can persuade her. Besides, I didn't want to get you involved."

"So you broke in." Alec looked at her.

"Yes. I mean -- I just wanted the MP3 player, I thought I could get it and get out. But she hid it. And while I was looking for it, she came in. I tried to get out, but the window was painted shut."

"And what have you learned from this ... misadventure?" Alec asked.

"Um -- to secure my escape route before I start looking for the mission objective?"

Alec smiled. "Good girl."

"Good g -- what?" James stopped in mid-sentence, and glared at Alec. "What happened to the united front?"

"Watch the road."

There was really no point in trying to win an argument with both of them; he kept his silence during the ride home; the better to let Lynna stew. As soon as they got there, though, he sent her to her room.

"You can't make me."

"Do what your uncle says," Alec said. "I suspect he wants to have a little chat."

"Fine," she said -- though she did stop at the landing of the stairs. "I was going anyway," she announced. Then she flounced upstairs.

The two men stood facing each other for a long moment, but James spoke first. "You know you can't just allow her to -- "

"Practice her survival skills?" Alec asked.

"Theft, Alec. Breaking in at the school."

"You make it sound so serious." Alec smiled, suddenly. "Youthful highjinks -- were we any different?"

"We weren't in hiding. Our youthful highjinks, as you so quaintly put it, didn't put anyone in danger."

"Our very existence puts us in danger. Puts her in danger -- you know that. Who we are is a greater threat than anything she might do." Alec spun away. "We're not protecting her, we're handicapping her."

"I think you're overstating the case."

"You have the luxury." Alec's voice suddenly went cold. "You're not her father."

"You can't believe I want to see any harm come to her."

"I know. But she's not your daughter."

Alec turned away, and James put his hand on his shoulder, feeling the tension coiled there. If he slipped his arms around Alec, pulled him close -- would he sink into the embrace, or would he lash out?

He didn't dare try, opting, instead, for the practical. "If you're worried about her survival skills, perhaps we should take her camping. Teach her a bit of wilderness survival? She'd feel obligated to complain, I know, but -- "

"Wilderness survival is all well and good, James, but it's urban survival that I'm thinking of. How to get food, clothing, money, if everything goes to hell. How to get to safety if we're both killed. Who to trust, who not to -- and who to avoid at all costs."

"I still think you're overstating the dangers of the British embassy."

"A simple blood test, and suddenly she's got more questions than she can possibly answer. You don't truly believe that MI-6 doesn't have a copy of my DNA on file, do you?"

"Locked in an archive, perhaps. But not easily accessible. "

"Unless I'm still listed as 'Killed in Action -- Body Not Retrieved,' Alec said. "Which it might bloody well be, seeing as the last thing they'd want was the whole truth coming out. One blood test, fed into the wrong server, and she's linked to me. A few phone calls later, they'd figure out her connection to Janus. They'd take her, James, they'd use her to get to me, bait a trap none of us would walk out of alive."

"She's a child, Alec -- "

"Protective custody, they'd call it. A ward of the state. And what's the life of one girl to them?" Alec's face twisted in a sudden memory of pain. "They sent children to face Stalin's execution squads in the name of protecting an alliance, left children orphaned -- "

"That was over fifty years ago."

"So I should trust them now? Trust that they'd give Lynna a pat on the head and send her back to me without so much as a skinned knee?" His eyes narrowed. "How many children have we left orphans in the name of the greater good?" His voice grew mocking. "For England, James?"

And was Lynna's safety really your priority, when you had her mother bring her to Miami He opened his mouth to say it, though he knew it was the one thing Alec would never forgive him for -- when Lynna burst in between them. "Don't fight!" she begged, looking from one to the other. "Please don't fight!"

"We weren't fighting," James said. He saw Alec take three deep breaths, to calm down -- not dispersing his anger, but locking it away. It was enough, for now. "We were having a discussion."

Alec finally managed a thin smile. "If we we'd really been fighting, there would have been a lot more explosions."

Lynna tried to arch an eyebrow at that -- James had seen her practicing in the mirror, but she still didn't quite have the hang of it. He was grateful for the years of deception that let him not laugh at the strange expression that resulted.

And there was no time like the present to pull the discussion back to safer territory. "We were considering what an appropriate penalty for your behavior might be. I was wondering if you had anything to contribute to the discussion?"

"I could do dishes for a week."

"Which might carry more weight if we ate at home more often."

She smiled, and upped the ante. "A month?"

"You could do dishes until you turn eighteen and still not learn the lesson," James said. "What you did was risky, irresponsible, and totally out of proportion to the situation." And why was he suddenly sounding like M? He could imagine her using the very same words to dress him down after some mission or other. Lynna was giving him her full attention, now. "But, Uncle James ... my MP3 player ... "

"You could have done chores for a few months, earned the money for another one."

For a moment, her face squeezed up, and he thought she was going to stomp her feet. He braced himself for the coming tantrum. But then her eyes narrowed, her expression grew crafty.

Uh-oh.

She half-turned back to Alec. "I'm sorry, Daddy," she said, her voice properly contrite. "I know I shouldn't have done it, I know it was stupid, but ... " She looked down for just a moment, twisted her foot on the tile floor. " ... but you guys get really loud sometimes."

It took a moment for the words to sink in, for him to understand what she meant, to realize, with dawning comprehension, exactly how clever she was.

If he didn't act quickly, he realized, he'd have a long, cold, lonely few months ahead of him -- only sneaking in quickies when Lynna was out or when they could find a sitter. Or almost worse, being carefully silent, Alec wincing at every creak of the bedsprings ...

He dug out his wallet, pulled out a bill in a large denomination. "Is this enough?"

Lynna snatched it, but shook her head. "Not unless I want some cheap 128-k knockoff." She took the second bill he offered as well, but frowned. "Plus the headphones they come with are always pretty cheap. You can still hear everything that goes on around you."

He pulled out a third bill, promising himself that this would be it. Negotiating with blackmailers was never a good idea; if she pushed it any further ...

... she must have read it in her eyes, because she accepted the third bill, folded all three into a small square and wrapped her fingers tightly around it. Then she stood on tiptoe long enough to blow a kiss in his general direction. "Thanks, Uncle James," she said. "You're the best."

Then she turned, and dashed upstairs before he could change his mind. He watched her go.

"I suppose this means you'll be adding blackmail to the list of charges against my daughter," Alec said.

"What would be the point?" James asked. "You'll notice, we never did get around to grounding her."

Alec rocked back on his heels, a grin spreading over his face. "Don't worry. I've got something better in mind."

"Oh?" Judging by the amused gleam in Alec's eyes, Lynna was going to wish she'd only been grounded. "Do tell."

"I think I'll tell you both over dinner."

"I'm afraid you're going to be paying." He ruefully spread the edges of the wallet, to show the few meager bills inside. "I'm tapped out."

"Well, parenting is supposed to be expensive."

"Yes, but I never realized I'd be paying blackmail." He headed toward the stairs. "Let's go get changed. I'm curious to hear what you have in mind for our young delinquent."