A/N: Hope you enjoyed the first chapter. Here's the second :)
Disclaimer: I own nothing and noone except the man in black, who is my own creation.
Enjoy!
The man in black crept up the stairs to her apartment. He had followed them home at 2100 hours, then waited patiently outside until midnight, until he was sure they would be asleep.
The man reached the door and pressed his ear to the keyhole, just in case they were up late, working on a story, or perhaps having a late nightcap. However, he heard nothing but the sound of deep, heavy breathing, so he proceeded to remove his lock-picking tools from his briefcase and began to try and pick the lock, wiggling the tool back and forth, and inserting another to press against the mechanisms inside.
However, after a few minutes of jiggling and pushing and internal cursing, he realised that the dratted thing was broken – to get in, all one had to do was rattle the door handle (vigorously), but doing so ran the risk of waking up the people inside. The man in black did a quick mental risk assessment. His superior had told him no unnecessary casualties, but he had also said to get rid of any evidence at all costs, and if any of them woke up and tried to resist, then that was just collateral damage. With a shrug, the man began to rattle the door-handle and within a matter of seconds, the door had come unstuck and swung open without a creak. 'Well, at least the hinges are well-oiled,' he thought, as he paused to listen for any signs that someone had woken up. He could be thankful for that, at least. Hearing no more noise apart from the steady breath of two people sleeping, he made his way silently along the corridor and into the lounge.
It was a mess. He stopped on the threshold and stared around the room. Every available surface, and much of the floor, seemed to be covered in paper – handwritten notes, newspaper articles, typewritten sheets – the phone was off the hook and there were two half-drunk glasses of cheap French wine on the coffee table (the empty bottle was on the floor and had rolled underneath it). The people themselves were lying asleep on the sofa, the man's hair distinctly ruffled, flattened and unkempt, not at all its usual well gelled self, his tie loosened and slightly askew, shirt untucked and arms wrapped tenderly around the woman, as if they were lovers, or perhaps father and daughter, as the woman's head was resting on his chest. She was grasping on to his hand for dear life, as if, somewhere in her subconscious state, she never wanted to let him go. Her hair was slightly mussed and out of place, but not as obviously as the man's, and her dress had ridden up at the back slightly as she had rolled over in her sleep to lie on his torso.
The man in black stepped carefully into the room, bending down carefully to see what was written on the nearest paper. It was as he had feared. He slowly, systematically, stealthily made his way around the room, picking up every piece of paper and depositing them in the briefcase, which he had laid out open next to the unoccupied armchair. The papers would be burned later.
After he had finished this job, he reached into the side pocket of his suit and brought out a little bottle of pills. He tipped two onto his hand and placed one in each glass of wine. They would ensure that neither of the couple on the sofa remembered anything from the last 12 hours. No unnecessary casualties, although the male journalist would have to be dealt with sometime soon, in his opinion. Far too dangerous, far too tenacious. Knew far too much.
He watched, without blinking, as the two pills fizzled away into nothing but mere particles, invisible in the blood red of the wine.
Then he stood and thought for a moment. No, that would never do. Who drank last night's wine in the morning? Quickly, quietly, he made his way to the kitchen and opened the fridge, where, lo and behold, he found a large bottle of mineral water. He unscrewed the cap and dropped another two pills into the bottle, pondered for a moment, then tipped out another. You could never be too careful. There, that should do it, he thought as he watched to make sure the pills would dissolve to nothing, leaving no traces; he was nothing if not meticulous.
Nearly done. He had one last job to do. He made his way over to the corner of the room, where the phone was lying face down on the floor. He bent down to the phone wire, but then hesitated. The pills would take care of the vanishment of the papers, as with any luck they wouldn't remember anything about them, but if he bugged the phone they would surely notice the click at the end of the line, and know that someone had been in the apartment. It was a dilemma – on one hand, his boss wanted to keep an eye on them – on the other, he wanted it done as silently and anonymously as possible. He chewed his lip and then shrugged. It was his superior's lookout, he wanted the phones to be bugged, and the pair weren't stupid - they knew they were being followed and watched, especially after a programme like last night's. He bent down and attached the bug to the wire. The man on the sofa lifted his head up off the arm of the chair, then bringing it back down again with a large exhalation of air, carried on sleeping, and the man sighed with relief. Then everything went black.