Author's note:
All characters from Highlander belong to their respective owners, and not to me. Kleo, Shane, Flynn, and Neil however, do belong to me. This is really the sequel to A Bad Joke, but you can read it stand-alone if you want. Slash mentioned of you squint, but there's, like, no slash in the fic; I know, it's a Christmas Miracle!
Next will come the crossover fic!
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Thick as Thieves
It was two o'clock in the morning when Joe's phone rang at his bedside. He was practically shaking with excitement; he wasn't upset or even a little annoyed at receiving a phone call at such an early hour. He'd been waiting, praying, begging for this call to come. He was a little surprised though, he admitted freely. He knew Kleo was a brilliant researcher – he'd seen her Watchers resume and had worked with her on several occasions – but it had been less than three days since he had put in the call to her.
"It's Joe Dawson. Kleo, tell me that's you?" he said through the phone.
"Were you expecting someone else?" a young, energetic, female voice asked him in reply. Joe let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding in at the sound of her voice.
"What do you have for me?" he asked her, anxious for the information she had called to give him.
"What we need is a Thokcha, specifically one of the ones at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology. I'll mail you the blue prints for the museum and some photos of the target and the security on my way into work today."
"Alright, and you're sure it will work?"
"Joe, have I ever once provided you with false information?" Kleo asked him.
"Point taken." Joe answered after giving the question some very serious thought. "We'll meet you there in two days." He told her.
"Okay, I'll be waiting for you there. Where do you want to link up?" she asked him.
"C'mon Kleo!" Joe said, letting himself laugh at the question. "We both know you've scouted out a place." Kleo laughed with him.
"Yeah, you're right. I've got a reservation at the Hilton on Sansom Street, and there's a cute little café on Spruce Street. It's right next to Irvine Auditorium and across from the university hospital."
"See you there at 11 o'clock sharp in two days Kleo. Drive safe." Joe said as he readied himself to go back to bed.
"You too Joe. Tell your friend everything will be okay. We'll handle this." Kleo said as she struggled to stifle a yawn. Joe laughed.
"Go to sleep kid; don't you have school tomorrow?" he joked.
"Haha, very funny." And for a moment, Joe found it believable that she was related to one of his friends. "Good night boss." She said, and hung up.
Joe nestled into his bed once more, and for the first time since Methos had told him about Alexa's relapse, he felt like everything was alright with the world. Except for the fact that he was lying to his friends, and he was enlisting the help of an underage girl in something very, very illegal. He decided to ignore that, and eventually, he drifted off into peaceful slumber.
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Amanda stepped off the train and onto the solid and unmoving concrete platform of 30th Street Station with ease and grace. She had just put on a fresh face of makeup, and she had dressed to accommodate the early summer weather. He heels clicked against the pavement in a brisk and fierce rhythm as she entered the large main area of the station.
She scanned the crowd of new arrivals rejoicing with their family and friends, and the soon to be departures bidding tearful goodbyes. After a moment, she spotted the full head of white hair charmingly peppered, and made for the elderly man standing near the post card kiosk, propped up on his cane.
"We ready to go and make off with the merchandise o what?" she asked him after they shared a brief hug.
"Methos is getting Cory from the airport in about thirty minutes. We'll give him some time to drop his bags off at the hotel, and then we'll meet up with Brenda and head for the café." Joe explained.
Amanda nodded, and followed him out of the large station to the inconspicuous car he had rented for the occasion. He checked his mirrors, not bothering to ask if the immortal woman was buckled, and took off east-bound from 30th Street Station.
"We'll have to time to meeting just right though." He said as he drove.
"What's the margin of error?" Amanda asked, leaning forward a little in her seat and turning her head to face Joe.
"Absolute zero – none." He replied.
Amanda's eyebrows flew up, surprised by the urgency and sincerity in the Watchers voice. She hadn't been aware that the job would be so intense even before it started. She wondered just who the second half of the group was, if they couldn't be left together for even a moment or two. Her interest piqued, she settled back into her seat as her curiosity raged.
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Richie checked his watch for what must have been the hundredth time in the last thirty minutes. He knew he was making himself a target for the local punks, having personal experience from the other side of the situation, but he was horribly nervous. It wasn't like he would have taken up thieving again for anyone in the first place, but there was so much pressure if this job didn't go down the right way. Methos was his friend, not an extremely close one, but a friend nonetheless and then there was Alexa. How could he let those big doe-brown eyes fade out? Let that smile slacken? He couldn't let them down.
Finally, it was close enough to the meeting time that he could leave the hotel room and go down to the café. There were roughly twenty paved blocks between the hotel and the café Joe had told him to be at, but he walked the distance at a steady and purposeful pace. He scanned the sea of faces all around him, picking out ones here and there; the exec with a fake rolex talking on his phone and the Hispanic punk behind him who obviously thought it was real, the woman pushing her baby in a stroller too busy talking to her friend to realize that her baby had managed to wriggle his left arm out of the harness, and the shopkeeper who was probably just too exhausted to see the gang preppy fratboys sneaking apples under their jackets.
But then Richie saw the flash of a familiar face walking on the other side of the street, and he felt the buzz. The man was tall, had broad shoulders, blue eyes, and blonde hair tied into a short ponytail at the back of his head. Richie did a double take, and then, still not sure, tried to take a third glance at the young man. But he couldn't locate the head of sleek, tied-back, blonde hair in the crowd on the opposite side of the street.
He shook his head, dismissing the thoughts running rampant through his head. It couldn't be who he thought it was. There was no way Shane was in Philadelphia, and even less of a chance that the man he had just seen was Shane. After all, Richie told himself as he turned onto the crosswalk accompanied by roughly a dozen other people, Shane was eight years older than him, and that kid looked twenty-two, tops.
Richie kept going down the street; he had only covered three blocks so far. As he rounded the corner of South 36th street from Sansom Street, he caught sight of another flash of blonde hair, but this crop of golden locks was curly and cut to chin length on all sides. Richie sped up, his heart pounding. The way the young man walked – it was just like Flynn's gait – moving from the hip and not bending the right leg half so much as the left one. Then he felt the buzz again.
He averted his gaze to a glass-front store, and caught the reflection of blue eyes, so much like his own and Shane's. Richie tore his eyes form the glass and the reflection it bore, but he had lost the man.
"This is silly!" he thought to himself. "Flynn is almost thirty years old and that kid could barely pass for twenty!"
The freak encounters had done enough to agitate his nerves though. His patience was wearing wafer thin, and his pace quickened threefold before he realized it. He was locked in recollection of his childhood. He made it ten whole blocks before he was knocked out of his reverie by a head full of hair the exact same color as his own, and the same color eyes too. And this time, he was noticed too. The buzz filled his brain, but not so much that he couldn't focus on the person in front of him; he could never ignore that face.
"Richie?" the man asked. His hair was straight and it barely managed to brush his shoulders.
"Neil?" Richie asked. "Is that you?" he asked.
"Yeah," the other man replied, somewhat dumbfounded. "How can you look like so young?" he asked. Richie made a rude noise.
"I'm only twenty two." He answered. "And look who's talking! You're supposed to be three years older than me, but if anything you look the same age as me." Neil nodded.
"I was heading to a café across from the University Hospital; do you want to grab something to eat with me? We've got a lot of catching up to do."
They had always the closest with each other, closer than either Flynn or Shane had ever been to any of the four of them. Remembering all the fun they'd had as children, growing up together, Richie smiled.
"I was just heading there myself, to meet up with some friends." Neil didn't let his curiosity show, but he did answer with at least a half-truth.
"So am I. Her name is Brenda Wyatt." He said as they walked together.
"I'm meeting up with Amanda and Methos." Richie told him. He didn't see a need to fill his long-lost brother in on all the details of his visit to the city of brotherly love. However, he was beginning to wonder if the glimpses of Shane and Flynn were genuine, if Neil was here.
Richie hoped desperately that it was coincidence he and his obviously immortal brother were in the same city, heading for the same café. Though he was overjoyed to see Neil again, and a large part of him hoped that the same force that had brought them together would also attract Shane and Flynn. There was nothing all four Ryan brothers couldn't steal.