Disclaimer: I don't own any of the rights to anything Iron Man, that right goes to Marvel Studios/Comics. I don't own any of the rights to anything dealing with the Witchblade, that right goes to Top Cow Productions. The only thing I claim as mine is any original characters I created and the plot of this particular story. No copyright infringement is meant. This is for fun and not for money.

A/N: At the end of the chapter I've provided a list of the what the acronyms I used for government agencies and the systems they use to locate missing people and catch criminals with, just for clarification. This chapter deals with the aftermath of Tony meeting Violet. He is desperate to find out who she is and so he goes about accomplishing that goal, Tony Stark style. Remember to read and review!!

- Ladyhawke Legend


Chapter 3

A Little Research

"Thanks for taking my call, Dr. Leroy. I really appreciate it," Tony Stark said into his vid phone as he sat back in his chair. He was in his executive office at Stark Industries where he had a grand view of almost the entire complex out his full, wall-length window.

A young, blonde man with gray eyes, framed by thin, wiry glasses stared back at him. Dr. Jeff Leroy was a DNA expert doing special research and development for the Strategic Homeland, Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistic Division, or S.H.I.E.L.D., for short. Tony had decided that someone within that defense agency would be his best bet for speed, accuracy, and privacy in finding out who his mystery woman from the other night was. He didn't want to alert anyone to his search, especially anyone in law enforcement.

When Dr. Leroy spoke, it was with a slightly East Coast accent. "My assistant was vague on what you wanted, Mr. Stark, but your request to speak with me intrigued me too much to turn you down."

Tony often had that effect on people. He tried not to smile about it as he spoke. "I called because I need a favor, but it has to be handled very delicately and very discretely." At Dr. Leroy's nod he went on. "I have a DNA sample I need to have analyzed and identified. I don't want my search for the person the sample belongs to tip anyone else off about them. They may have a past with breaking the law, and I don't want any interference from anyone until I can talk to them and maybe help them. Does that make any sense?"

"Of course it does, Mr. Stark. So, I take it that Director Fury doesn't know you're doing this?" Leroy asked bluntly.

Tony didn't bat an eyelash at the question. "No, he doesn't, and I want it to stay that way. Do you have a problem with that?"

"Oh, no," Dr. Leroy was quick to reassure him. "I actually don't appreciate the far reaching oversight Fury has with us scientists sometimes. It would bring me great pleasure to do something under his nose for a change."

Tony had picked the right man for the job; an unhappy employee. He liked Leroy's attitude; it was one he shared. "I'll tell you what; I'll throw in a complete set of playoff tickets for all the Lakers games if you can pull this off." Tony thought sweetening the deal a little couldn't hurt and may win the man over even more.

"That would be fantastic!" the young, blonde doctor said as his whole face lit up at the prospect. Tony had done his homework on the man and knew he was a basketball junky, especially when it came to the hometown L.A. Lakers.

"Great, we have an arrangement then. I will send the DNA sample over to you via a special, personal courier. I need the results as quickly as you can get them. I don't want to have to wait days or weeks," Tony clarified for Dr. Leroy.

"Shouldn't be a problem," was the reply Tony got from the good doctor. "I'll get on it as soon as I receive it and see if I can have some data for you either by tonight or first thing tomorrow morning."

Tony beamed at Leroy. "Excellent. Thanks, Dr. Leroy, you've been most helpful," Tony complimented the young man.

"You got it, Mr. Stark," Leroy said cheerfully in return. "It's a pleasure doing business with you, sir."

"Likewise," Tony told him honestly and said his goodbyes. It wouldn't be long now and he would be able to find the captivating woman that had stolen more than a few trinkets from Hugh Hefner. Somehow she had stolen a bit of Tony's peace of mind as well.


Tony was busily working in his workshop, deep inside his Malibu mansion, when the call from Leroy came. He had gotten so into repairing and modifying his Mark III, Iron Man suit, that his backstabbing mentor, Obadiah Stane, had crushed, that he almost missed it. Tony had given Dr. Leroy his personal cell number, to bypass his ever efficient personal assistant, Miss Pepper Potts; she didn't need to know about his latest scheme.

"I thought I was going to have to leave you a voice mail, Mr. Stark," Dr. Leroy said in way of greeting.

"Sorry, I got into something in the shop and lost track of time," Tony told him with a sheepish smile he knew the doctor couldn't see.

Dr. Leroy understood the tendency to get lost in one's work. "I just thought you'd want to know what I found out about your DNA sample."

"Were you able to get an I.D.?" Tony asked trying not to sound too excited.

"I was, and I must say, the woman is colorful to say the least," Dr. Leroy's tone was slightly teasing. "I got a hit for her in CODIS."

"You mean she's a felon?" Tony demanded when Leroy paused of too long. "Your search didn't stir anything up did it?"

"No to both questions, Mr. Stark. I was very thorough in covering my tracks, thank you very much. You girl seems to have had her DNA entered into CODIS because it was found at a crime scene, not because she was arrested and convicted of a crime. I'll send you a copy of the file I've complied for you, but I can give you the basic information on her now, if you'd like," Leroy began.

Oh boy, did Tony want to know about her now. "Got for it," he told the doctor.

"Her name is Violet Devonshire. She was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. She disappeared from her home in Manhattan, New York a few days after her two brothers were found dead in her uptown apartment. She was a suspect in their deaths, but nothing substantial was ever found to bring her up on charges. When she was investigated, it was discovered that she and her brothers were professional thieves, so her fingerprints, which were originally only taken only as an elimination sample at the crime scene, went into the AFIS and the Triple-I databases. She has one sister still living in Fairfax, Virginia. Her parents are decreased; car accident it appears. She's been missing for over a year, with no contact with her sister at all, so that also puts her in the NCIC's database as well, for missing persons," Leroy finished.

"Wait a minute, wasn't there a big news story about this, a year ago or so?" Tony asked as a realization was beginning to hit him; that's where he'd seen her face before.

"You are correct, Mr. Stark," Leroy replied. "Included in the files I've complied are several news clipping from the time of her brothers' murders. They were pretty brutal and suggested some sort of ritualistic killing. They made all the papers for days to come afterward."

"And this Violet," Tony liked the name, "just vanished a few days later? No one's heard from her again? Not even the police or the FBI?"

Leroy paused a moment as he consulted his data. "It looks like she popped up on the grid only once or twice in the last year. Background checks were run on her after the police in Chicago received help from her in catching a violent serial killer, but she appears to have gone under ground again after that."

"Anything else?" Tony asked, becoming more and more interested with each fact he learned about Violet Devonshire. So, she wasn't just a thief; she had a hero streak in her too, just like him. He wondered what had really happened to her brothers and why she was on the run.

"That's all that I think that's relevant, Mr. Stark," Leroy said. "You can go through the files at your leisure and find out anything else you want to know."

"I'm very impressed, Dr. Leroy; so impressed in fact, that I'm going to make sure your Lakers' tickets are for a Skybox with all the amenities they come with," Tony decided to offer.

"Thank you, sir, that is most generous of you," Dr. Leroy's gratitude could be heard in his voice.

Tony shrugged to himself; it was the least he could do. "And you're sure that nobody has any inkling of what you've been doing or who you've been researching?" Tony was still a little worried. He had a nagging feeling that someone was after Violet Devonshire and that's why she was running, not because she killed her brothers. He didn't want his search into her past to tip anyone else off about where she might be hiding.

"I'm positive, Mr. Stark," Leroy reassured him. "I was extremely careful."

"Great," Tony responded. "I'll anxiously await your packet of information." And with that, Tony hung up. It shouldn't take the good doctor to long to electronically transfer all the data he had assembled to Tony's private server. That was the same place he stored and kept all his Iron Man suit designs as well; they were for his eyes only.

Tony freed up a whole console to pull up various parts of the data package Leroy was sending him. He could pull up multiple parts of the file at the same time on different screens, or split some of the screens vertically to allow him to view more information at one time. Once the data came, Tony immersed himself in it, careful to watch for Miss Potts, incase she decided to drop in and bug him.

"Jarvis," he said to his trusty A.I. system, "alert me immediately if you detect Miss Potts coming in here, will you? And make sure that she doesn't see any of this data I'm saving under Blue Eyes."

"Certainly, sir," Jarvis replied from everywhere and nowhere around Tony, in a crisp and very proper British accent. Tony had modeled him after an English butler. Jarvis was a very sophisticated artificial intelligence program that Tony had designed to run his house - everything from security to bath temperature could be controlled through Jarvis.

Tony really didn't want Pepper to know about Violet. Tony and Pepper Potts' relationship was complicated. They were employer and employee, but they were also good friends, almost like family, yet the was an undercurrent of romantic interest there too, but both of them felt it unwise to let it evolve. Pepper might not be too happy about Violet, but Tony couldn't help himself, the woman had bewitched him, and might be someone he could care about.

It would be nice to expand his inner circle. All he had was Rhodey and Pepper; it might be a good thing to have someone else too. Yensin had taught him the importance of loving people. He had died to help Tony live and he had had a family he had loved and watched die, but he had died happy; he died content because he had given his life for someone else. Tony wanted that same contentment.

The first thing Tony did was pull up any photographs of Violet. The striking brunette must have dyed her hair to change her appearance some, because most of the pictures Leroy had given him had her with dishwater blonde hair. She looked fantastic either way. It was her intensely blue eyes that grabbed his attention. They looked haunted in many of the pictures, troubled and sad too. It was from the news articles that he had seen her before; that was why she seemed somewhat familiar last night.

"She seems like a lovely, young woman," Jarvis commented randomly. Tony had programmed him to be interactive, to actually initiate conversations if Tony was quiet for too long.

"You have no idea, Jarvis," Tony replied passionately.

Next he found a piece of information, not mentioned verbally by Dr. Leroy, but included in the files he sent. It seemed the FBI had discovered that the last job as a thief that Violet had pulled before her brothers' deaths was linked back to a Kenneth Irons. That was a name that startled Tony and one that he recognized. He was the CEO of Vorschlag Industries, one of Stark Industries top competitors, especially in tech development. Vorschlag, however, liked to deal more with bio technology, whereas Tony had always had been more of a hardware man. Both companies had contracts with the DOD to develop new and better weapons.

How the FBI had actually found a connection between Irons and Violet he didn't know, but Tony was willing to bet that Violet had something of Irons' and that was who she was running from. Irons was a very unethical and unscrupulous bastard. He and Obadiah Stane would have been great pals if they hadn't been competing against each other.

As Tony dug deeper in the files, he almost dropped his coffee mug that he had been about to take a sip from; S.H.I.E.L.D. had a file on her. It was interesting that Leroy hadn't commented on that. Maybe the doctor didn't want to talk about that little fact over the phone. Why on earth would the defense agency be investigating a professional thief? They were usually interested in the unusual or the extraordinary, not regular people.

"Why would S.H.I.E.L.D. be examining her life and be trying to track her down?" Tony now asked of Jarvis, bouncing ideas off his A.I. program.

"That is a good question, sir," Jarvis answered. "While Violet Devonshire appears to be an exceptional woman, I don't see anything about her that would attract S.H.I.E.L.D.'s attention."

"At least not yet," was Tony's response.

"True, sir," Jarvis said respectfully.

This new information made his finding Violet again even more important. She might be a good addition to the team of people Nick Fury was trying to put together to fight the good fight. But it might be better if she got the invite from Tony, on a more subtle level, than from the hardnosed director of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Another opportunity was presenting itself to Tony; checking out his company's main competitor, Kenneth Irons and Vorschlag Industries. The multibillionaire industrialist had been trying to get Tony to see him for years now, and Tony had always declined. He thought that he recalled that Obadiah had met with the ambitious business man a few times; that now was kind of a worrisome thought to Tony. What had the two talked about – what kind of deals had they made behind Tony's back? They were both dirty and underhanded in how they did business, especially when it came to developing and selling weapons.

Maybe now would be a good time to have Pepper call Irons' assistant and set up an appointment. Tony wanted to size the man up, see what he was made of, what he was like in person. All the information he had about Irons came from people on Stark Industries board of directors and a few tech developers who had jumped ship to Stark Industries from Vorschlag Industries; none of what they said was good. Tony needed to assess the situation himself, and maybe, just maybe, he could get Irons to slip up and say something about Violet.

Tony would have to be very careful and cunning in the way he went about that, however. He didn't want to be the one that helped Irons find Violet. That wouldn't earn him any brownie points with her. Could Irons' interest in Violet be the same as S.H.I.E.L.D.'s interest in her? What made her so exceptional? How was she different from all the other thieves out there? She was such an enigma; she fascinated Tony.

He could still feel the warmth of her body against his, and her sweet scent still lingered in his memory. He groaned when he went back over in his mind the kiss they had shared and the fact that it was way too brief. This was crazy. He'd always had a weakness for beautiful and sassy woman, but this was completely ridiculous. He had been in her presence for what, like five minutes, and he couldn't stop thinking about her. It was totally crazy, but oh so incredible.

The only way for him to have any peace of mind was to see her again and talk to her, find out who she really was, and then help her in anyway he could. But that meant that he had to find her, and that was going to be a real challenge. Not that Tony didn't like a challenge, but this one was that had an absolute imperative to be conquered.

"Excuse me for interrupting your reflections, sir, but you asked me to notify you when I got a hit against any of the shipping manifests that Mr. Stane had authorized without your consent. The ones that could not be canceled, or where nearly impossible to trace," Jarvis' smooth and cultured voice broke into Tony's musings.

"That's just fine, Jarvis," Tony replied, wholly surprised. He had set that parameter up quite a while ago and nothing had ever come through. Obadiah worked very hard to conceal his under the table dealings, but some evidence could be traced and outted. Part of his mission as Iron Man was to find all the of the Stark Industries weapons that were sold to the bad guys and then destroy them. This search program was one of Tony's ways to try and accomplish that mission. "What've you got?" he then asked.

Jarvis brought up some data on another screen other than the ones Tony was currently using. "It appears as though there is a rather large shipment of weapons going to a subsidiary of Vorschlag Industries in Bosnia. I had to go through shell company after shell company, but I finally was able to establish a definitive link back to Vorschlag," Jarvis told his creator.

"What!?" Tony exclaimed in disbelief. "You're sure that the weapons are Stark Industries' weapons and not Vorschlag's own?"

"In over twenty-five markers of identification, the weapons in this shipment match those of Stark Industries particular materials, design, and configuration," Jarvis was precise in his answer. "There is a ninety-two percent probability that these weapons are in fact weapons manufactured by and originated from Stark Industries, sir. For additional identification I've even tried matching serial numbers. Many of the serial numbers seem to have been tampered with, but each one has a seventy-four point six seven percent chance of matching the original Stark Industries serial numbers."

"When and where is this shipment going out?" Tony demanded. He had no doubt now that Obadiah had sold out to Irons. This was really bad and it shook Tony to his core. How many other villains had Stane sold out to?

Jarvis was silent a minute, and then he said as he again brought up data for Tony to view, "They are leaving from the Port of L.A., shipping out at 0100 hours tomorrow morning. There are thirty-one containers. The weapons range from S-category missiles to M-category mortars to AP mines to a variety of automatic, semi-automatic machines guns and handguns. I believe there are even a number of rocket-propelled grenades." Pictures of all the aforementioned weapons scrolled across the screen.

Red, hot anger, flashed through Tony. His weapons were not going to end up in the hands of terrorists, or in the hands of those people who were still determined to carry out ethnic cleansings of other nationalities. Tony Stark was not "The Merchant of Death", and he was going to keep trying to prove that fact to the entire world, until it killed him. He had lived through his horrific experience in Afghanistan for a reason, and he was not going to waste his second chance to make things right.

"Sir?" Jarvis interrupted his thought once again, and the A.I. program actually sounded tentative.

"Yes, Jarvis, is there something else?" Tony tried to ask patiently.

"I don't think your going to like this next piece of information, sir," was Jarvis' reply.

"Just spit out, Jarvis," Tony said starting to grow frustrated.

After another lengthy pause, Jarvis finally said, "It appears that Vorschlag Industries is also selling Stark Industries Jericho Missile too, sir.

Tony about fell out of his chair. How the hell did Irons get his hands on that weapon? How long had he had access to them? "How soon will the Mark III be ready for deployment again?"

"If you continue working on it the way you have for the last two days, it will be fully functional again by 0100 hours tomorrow morning," Jarvis said exactly what Tony wanted to hear.

"Good, because that is when I need to go clean up the mess that Obadiah left behind him," Tony's tone of voice left little room for argument. "Then have Miss Potts make me an appointment to meet with the head of Vorschlag Industries. I want all this evidence that Vorschlag is illegally selling my weapons on the black market to take with me."

"Yes, sir," was Jarvis' answer to Tony's orders.

The search for Violet Devonshire would have to wait one more day. Tony had to stop this shipment with its deadly cargo before it left L.A. Then he could turn his attention back to her. Picking up a number of tools, he set to work on getting the Mark III suit ready for its next mission.

TBC

CODIS – Combined DNA Index System

AFIS – Automated Fingerprint Identification System

Triple I – Interstate Identification Index

NCIC – National Crime Information Center

DOD – Department of Defense

I hope that little list is helpful. You know what to do now, leave me your impressions, even if it's just a brief sentence or two. :)