A/N: This is a little shorter than usual but it's heavy with plot so there's that...
As always, thanks to cophine.
"It's not as bad as it sounds, I promise!" I defend myself even before the accusation comes.
"Sit down!" Siobhan's voice is firm and her eyes are piercing as I follow her command and sit on the worn, ugly, brown couch that her finger is pointing at.
My body is rigid, the broken springs of the uncomfortable seat push against my back as I recline. She towers over me for a second, but moves away, shaking her head in disappointment and I feel the sting of guilt.
"I don't know what they've told you," I restart, willing my voice not to tremble and reveal my nervousness, "but I've got this under control."
I hear a chair being dragged, scraping the old wooden floor, but don't look back. Siobhan remains silent as she carries the chair in one hand until she stops in front of me. She sits, crossing her legs, a mug of tea resting on her thigh between her hands.
"No, it's not a bad as it looks," she says, "it's worse."
I swallow my anxiety and shake my head. "Oh c'mon… how bad can it be?" I try to sound nonchalant. "Her fiancé encouraged us to be friends. We're just... we just go out and talk."
She narrows her eyes in my direction, but other than that her expression reveals nothing. "What have you been talking about?"
"You know… stuff." I shrug and raise my brows, knowing they she's expecting a better answer. "Honestly, Delphine has been helping me understand the Webster family a little better…"
"How so?" She looks surprised.
"Well... for one, I don't think she trusts them much," I say after taking a moment to gather my thoughts. "She has warned me about them."
"Warned you?" Mrs. S sounds in complete disbelief.
I snort, somehow finding a hint of humor in all this. "Yeah, she said they're not good people, which like… totally incredible, since she's about to marry one of them."
"What do you think she meant by that?"
"I really don't know yet." I shake my head. "But see..? This is what I mean. This can be useful, I can get useful information from her."
"And what have you told her?" She asks, leaning forward, staring at me intensely.
"Me?! Nothing!" I raise my voice, not liking the implication of her words. "I've told her nothing! Every time she asked me something about work I've stayed with my cover. I'm not an idiot!"
"But she has asked you about your work?" She presses on.
"Well… yeah, but not like…" I pause to mull it over. "I think it's normal that she would ask after not seeing me for so long," I reason. "Look, at worst, she's a gold-digger trying to get settled with a rich fuck. She's harmless."
Siobhan shakes her head again, slightly incredulous by my assessment. "What do you know about her, Cosima? Really? What do you know about her life for the last ten years? Has she told you what she did before meeting the Websters? Or how she met them?"
"We haven't covered that yet, but I can find out," I reply fast. "I know she studied art…" I stop when I notice that S continues to shake he head.
"She did study art conservation and restoration…" She informs me, getting up from the chair. "For one semester."
She gets a folder that was sitting on the table and places it in my hands. "When we began our mission there was a sense of urgency and we had to prioritize what information we dug out first. Mrs. Cormier was not a priority, but maybe she should've been.
"As it turns out, your high school sweetheart's stepfather used to do business with Henry Webster. Nothing too big, as far as we were able to gather. Patrick Collins, who married Sophie Beraud, Delphine's mother, had various businesses in New York and hired Webster's firm to handle the finances."
"Well, that explains how she knows them," I mumble, opening the folder and being surprised by a photo of a teen Delphine - the one I once knew - on her left was her mother and on the right the man I recognize as her stepfather.
"Yes, it does," Mrs. S agrees with me, but in a tone that tells me that there's more to it. "What it doesn't explain is how come we can't find anything else on her after she dropped out of college."
"What do you mean?" I'm positively confused. "She never graduated?"
"No, she did not," she says with certainty.
"Then, I assume, she never worked in a gallery in New York."
"Or anywhere else." Siobhan shakes her head and sits on the chair again. "Mrs. Cormier has been nowhere, worked nowhere. No driver's license, no social security number, not even listed in travel records. It's like she ceased to exist at nineteen."
"This makes no sense…" I shake my head, going over page after page of database searches that came up with nothing under her name.
"So… I wouldn't exactly call her harmless, would you?"
I look at Mrs. S, blinking several times as if trying to wake up from a dream, not really fully registering what she's saying. "How did this escape the Websters?" Is what I come up with.
"They may have felt no need to investigate since they knew her from back in the day when her stepfather did business with them," Siobhan says, casually sipping her drink. "Picture this: someone from your past, who you had have no reasons to doubt, comes back into your life, tells you a story that is completely feasible about where she's been, what she's been doing and claims to want to get reacquainted and so on and so on… sounds familiar?"
"Vaguely…" I mumble, closing the file on my lap and giving it back to her. "But it's not like she saw me coming. She had to be genuinely caught off guard when I showed up to work at the estate."
"Doesn't matter." Siobhan looks unimpressed. "It worked for Daniel, it would work for you. She only had to stick with the original plan, because you know nothing about her that could really damage her."
"Until now," I think aloud.
"Until now," she repeats with a nod.
"What do you make of this?" I ask, gesturing to the folder, now on Mrs. S' lap.
"I don't know… there are several possibilities." She says thoughtfully. "For instance, if someone did the same search on you before we created some fake backstory to prep for this mission, the results would be the same. After I picked you up, Cosima Niehaus figuratively died. The only information anyone could find is about one of your several aliases, nothing on you."
"She wouldn't have anything to do with us being sent there, would she?" I ask.
"I doubt it," Siobhan says. "If that was the case I would've been warned about her."
"Then?" I raise both my hands along with my voice, feeling mildly exasperated.
"Then… it seems we're not the only ones working the Websters," Mrs. S states firmly. "Someone else has infiltrated them and Delphine's the inside man, so to speak."
"With what purpose?" I ask and she shrugs. "And what about our purpose?"
She gives me an ugly look, trying to discourage me from inquiring further.
"We need to know, Siobhan!" I insist, getting up from my seat, but with no intention of moving away from her "Now more than ever. Especially if there are other players."
She remains quiet, but her gaze wavers briefly.
"Does this have anything to do with Sarah's failed mission in Warsaw?" I ask bluntly and this definitely spikes her interest, so I carry on. "Because Daniel has asked me to look into a Polish investor who's approached him to do business."
"Who?" She asks instantly, getting up as well and dropping Delphine's file back on the table, going to the fridge and getting some ice that she drops in two glasses.
"Can't say the name." I search my back pocket and take out the small piece of paper where I wrote Mariusz Baczkowski. "Here."
She finishes generously filling two glasses with her favorite bourbon and takes the paper on one hand, while she brings the glass to her lips.
"And he has approached them?" She asks, setting the glass back down to rip the paper in even smaller pieces and dropping them in the sink, where they go down the drain with the running water.
"That's what he said." I watch her actions with a raised brow. "Do you know him?"
"What does Daniel want you to find out?" She ignores my question.
"Pretty much anything." I answer her either way because I've never seen Siobhan this tense, so I figured it's better not to challenge her at this point. "Apparently that dude's rumored to have ties to the Russian Mafia - as was Sarah's target - and Daniel wants to know how much of it it's true.
"He seems very invested in it, gave me carte blanche to look for information, even if that means going to Poland," I continue. "No expenses spared."
"I don't know if that's a good idea, Cosima," she says in a very low voice.
I watch her closely as she moves slowly to sit back on the couch, her eyes locked on the glass that she spins on her hands, frowning. It's as if all energy has left her all of the sudden.
"This felt wrong from the start," she says thoughtfully. "But we needed to save face after what happened in Warsaw and this is a very important client, I simply couldn't say no."
I take the glass she left on the counter for me and sit next to her. "The same guy ordered the two missions?"
Mrs. S nods. "I never had any reason to doubt his intentions, he's been a client for years."
"Who is he?" I ask and I know that under normal circumstances she wouldn't answer, nor would I even dared to ask, but this feels anything but normal.
"I only know him as Mr. Y - as in the letter, not the word," she adds drolly, looking at me with a sad smile.
"And why would Mr. Y do something like this?" I inquire with a weird brand of humor. "Seems like a bit much just because Sarah's mission was unsuccessful. Besides, and don't tell her I told you this, but it was not even her fault. Someone beat her to it."
"I don't quite know," she admits, her eyes on me, flashing with renewed determination. "But I'm going to find out! We have all these puzzle pieces and none of them fit."
"That's because we're missing key information," I tell her, being influenced by her determination I get up. "And that's why I'm going to Poland!" My feet carry me back and forth on the old wooden floor. "If we're going to find out what this is all about, we need to go back to where it started, that's where we'll find some answers. And if Daniel's paying for it, even better, I get to kill two birds with one stone."
"I still don't think that's a good idea," she counters. "And I really don't want you to go there alone."
"Daniel has clearly stipulated that I'm not to discuss this with anyone, so I can't exactly bring Sarah or Felix." I stop and wave my hands.
"You haven't told them about this?"
"No, I wanted to talk with you first," I say honestly.
"It's probably for the best," she nods. "I would also encourage you not to disclose any of this information to them just yet, not until we get a better footing on what we're dealing with."
"Yeah… We don't even know what Daniel knows. He may very well be oblivious to all this and they - whoever they are - are just using him and the rest of the family as a front." I agree and add some of my own thoughts. "And where does Delphine fit in all this?" I pause my pacing and look at Siobhan. "How much have you told Sarah and Felix about what you've found out about her?"
"I haven't." She shakes her head. "I thought it would be better to tell you first. And it's not like they need an extra incentive not to trust the woman, especially Felix; he's already very… agitated over your relationship with Delphine."
"You don't say…" I roll my eyes. "He's being a total bitch, thinking that Delphine and I are shagging," I air quote.
"Maybe is not such a bad idea," Siobhan muses.
"What?!" My heads whips in her direction.
"I don't mean literally," she shrugs, talking casually. "But it might be a good idea to… cultivate some sort of relationship with Delphine. As long as you keep in mind what we've discussed here."
"Yeah… I don't think that's gonna be a problem." The irritated tone in my voice aimed at myself and my blindness and not at the older woman.
Siobhan seems pleased with my reaction. "She doesn't know that you know, we can use that to our advantage."
"You mean, we can use her," I correct her.
"Do you have a problem with that?"
I smirk. "Not even a little bit."