A/N: Thanks so much for all your wonderful thoughts! So glad you guys are enjoying this "reboot!" I'm looking forward to reposting and updating the story in so many different ways. Hopefully, it'll give us all some much-needed distraction right now;)
Most characters belong to S. Meyer. The rest belong to me. All mistakes are mine.
Chapter 1 – Strangers in the Night
Eighteen Months Earlier:
She wears a short brown wig in a nondescript style. Her dress is unremarkably bland: black and skimming just past her knees. It blends into the evening background. She's got low, black pumps on her feet, wears no makeup and no jewelry. She keeps her head down, making it difficult to tell anything about her features. For most of the evening, she remains at the fringe of things, slowly sipping a glass of wine, conversing with no one, barely glancing at anyone in particular. In short, she's trying to blend in, to avoid eye contact, and to go unnoticed.
But for some reason, I notice her, and once she and I do make eye contact, she no longer blends in.
Her eyes…they're a peculiar color, not gray, as I first assume, but they're not brown either. They're some hue in between that stands out even from this distance. What's more, they're disconcertingly sharp and deep, like they may be able to see through steel. And they're round like eyes on one of those manga comic book characters, right down to the silver sparkle in the middle of her pupils. Long, dark eyelashes curl toward her brows, and pink lips purse in obvious disapproval at the fact that I'm still staring. It's all framed by a honey-toned complexion that speaks more of nature than Hawaiian tropics.
Still, it's those eyes that hold me captive for a few moments. They're expressive; there's the lingering disapproval, yes, but there's also excitement, curiosity, amusement…and something akin to anxiety.
Instinctively, I know this last emotion is why she's in her plain-Jane get-up, why she's trying to go unnoticed. As an expert at going incognito, I muse to myself that had she consulted me on her disguise, I would've advised hiding those eyes more than anything.
Either way, in the next moment, those eyes go blank. She stares at me for half a second longer before turning away – not too quickly, not too slowly. I snort to myself while I watch her walk away at a reasonable pace, doing nothing that would make one suspect she's attempting to hide again. She's got a great ass, but even that she refuses to shake the way most women gifted with her rear end would.
Still, it's those eyes…
I turn away from Mystery Girl and catalog the semi-encounter in a section of my brain reserved for information that may or may not be of future use. Right now, I need to remain focused. If I were really who I'm pretending to be, I'd probably approach her just so I could get a closer look at those eyes…figure out that color.
But I'm not, so those orbs can't be my concern now.
"Alright, here comes Kate," Emmett warns into my hidden earpiece.
He's missed the quasi-exchange with Mystery Girl, and I can't blame him. As I said, she's blending in, and he's not actually here. He didn't see those eyes.
"Hey, Em," I breathe quietly, scratching my nose to hide my moving lips, "what's that color between gray and brown?"
"What?"
"The color between gray and brown," I repeat, covering my mouth with my wine glass. "There's a name for it."
"Why the fu-"
"She's coming up behind you at twelve o'clock, Ed," Alice says. "And the shade between gray and brown is taupe."
"Taupe," I murmur to myself.
"Why the fuck are we talking colors?" Em wonders. "And of course, Al, you'd know the answer to that."
"What a sexist, misogynistic-"
Someone squeezes my shoulder. Ignoring the argument I've unintentionally initiated between my fellow agents, I take a sip of wine before pasting a grin across my face and turning around.
"There you are, Dr. Masen," Dr. Kate Nixon says in that refined voice of hers.
She smiles brilliantly. Perfect white teeth glimmer through blood-red lips. Her long blond hair falls straight as an arrow behind her back, and a tight red dress is practically painted on her. See, this is the kind of dress you wear when you're trying to call attention to yourself. Combined with that sapphire necklace around her neck, which has to be worth a couple of hundred thou, Kate succeeds in spades.
"Has anyone told you that you fill a tux out nicely?" she asks with a seductive smile.
"And you look perfect too," I say, making sure I return the compliment, butter her up and all that.
She appears pleased. When she weaves her arm through mine, I squeeze it against my side, offering her an indulgent grin.
"Had I known you were looking for me, I would've made sure to make myself more accessible. You know I'm always at your disposal, Kate."
"Oh brother," Alice mutters into my earpiece. I picture her and Emmett rolling their eyes inside the nondescript, cable repair van parked across the street from the hotel.
Emmett chuckles.
Kate raises a suggestive brow. "Are you now? I'll have to keep that in mind."
She bats her eyelashes, her commonplace blue eyes sparkling – because they've caught the light from the chandeliers above us.
The grin remains plastered to my face.
"What can I do for you, Kate?"
"You can do absolutely anything for me or to me, Tony," Emmett quips over the earpiece, mimicking her voice.
"The speech is ready, Tony," Kate says at the same moment. "You're on in fifteen minutes. Do you want to take a quick look?"
"At what exactly?" Emmett asks.
"Apparently, at anything he'd like," Alice adds.
My partners snicker at their own covert stand-up routine. Meanwhile, I resist the urge to smirk.
"Sure, though I'm positive whatever changes you've made will be brilliant," I say.
Kate chuckles and pouts her lips in a way I assume is supposed to be seductive.
"Flattery will get you everywhere, Tony."
"Including inside my panties."
"Good one, Em," Alice chuckles. "Sexist, but good."
Externally, I smile, but my teeth are clenched, and I make a mental note to smack them both upside their heads when I see them.
Kate leads me to where Dr. Garrett Smith waits at a quiet table in a corner of the open-air ballroom. He holds the revised speech I'll be presenting at tonight's medical symposium. The symposium is held yearly on Oahu, the Big Island of Hawaii. Where else should rich and powerful physicians meet?
Garrett's face is solemn. I can only imagine what horrors I'm being given to spew in front of the six hundred fellow doctors and pharmaceutical reps at tonight's event. In the few months since I've been on this assignment, I've started to see that Garrett is probably one of the only good guys on James' medical team. How the hell he ended up as Kate's boyfriend is beyond me. She's hot, and she's smart, yeah, but she is one cold bitch.
With everyone…except me.
Garrett looks up as his girlfriend and I approach arm in arm. He hands me the speech and offers me an apologetic smile. As usual, he seems to have lost the battle with Kate. Still, I grin easily as I take the speech from him because it's Kate I need to please here.
Eyes scanning the speech, I glue the grin to my face, a grin that totally belies what I really think about the shit that she and James, our chief of staff, have me saying tonight.
'…are extremely grateful to all of you…without your visions and innovations our field would not be what it is today…have improved the quality of life for millions….time the government lifts restrictions on testing…gives terminal patients the right to choose their course of treatment without personal issues…'
All are comments a person is free to make, but we're doctors, and these are substantial pharmaceutical corporations. It's not for us to make these observations…these endorsements in public.
Never mind the fact that Doctor James Penn and his team are testing non-FDA approved drugs on terminally ill patients without alerting them to what exactly they're being given, nor that, as the drugs are untested and still in the experimental stages, they're doing more harm than good. Never mind that the players involved are using these patients to tweak their drugs, to observe what goes wrong. Never mind that these patients are being used as very human, very disposable, and very misinformed guinea pigs.
This goes way beyond experimental treatments.
Does the government have proof?
Beyond a couple of dead bodies whose families refuse to allow autopsies, drained bank accounts belonging to these families, the fact that James and some of the members of his team live well beyond their means, and a sneaky suspicion? No.
That's why I'm here.
I've been on the case for about six months at this point, slowly ingratiating myself into James' medical team. He's the head cardiac surgeon at Manhattan Medical in New York City. Every year, he and his team attend this symposium, held to bring the field's brightest medical minds together to discuss the latest developments. The symposium is not-so-secretly funded by various pharmaceutical corporations looking to market their latest drugs to these brilliant minds.
A conflict of interest? Sure. Is anyone going to stop it? No.
I was put on this case because I was a first-year cardiac resident before I decided to join the Bureau. Well, because of that and a couple of other facts - something about my being the best recruit the FBI's seen in years.
'Your instincts are unsurpassed, Special Agent Cullen. Your analytical skills have blown everyone away here at Quantico, and your defensive and offensive tactics are top of the line.'
Those are the words Assistant Director Whitlock used when he showed up with his right-hand agent, my sister Rosalie, at Quantico to recruit me.
It's always been this way, for both Rosalie and I. We're fraternal twins, though she looks like our mother – tall, slim, and blond – while I take after our father – tall, lean, and darker. But Rosalie and I share more as twins: a Type A instinct to overachieve, and a competitive streak.
"What's more," Agent Whitlock continued, "your medical background is exactly what we need from the agent who'll be put in charge of our new assignment."
I'd kept my face blank as I listened to him, my eyes roaming between him and Rosalie.
"We need a man undercover to infiltrate Dr. James Penn's medical group, to become part of the team, to win over James and the team's trust in any way necessary," he emphasized, "and to gather enough information and evidence to present a case against him in federal court."
"That could take years."
"We know. You'll build friendships with these people," Agent Whitlock said coolly. "They'll invite you out for drinks after work, show you pictures of their nieces and nephews, ask for advice in their love lives. One day, they'll tell you what you need to know, and you'll forget all about the ball games you attended with them, about baby Cindy's first tooth, about the time you all passed out drunk together. You'll gather the evidence, we'll present it in court, and that will be that." Agent Whitlock studied me long and hard. "Do you think you can handle this, Agent Cullen?"
"My team would be?"
"Two recruits of your choice. Your sister will be your liaison with the Bureau. You'll both come to me when you've gathered information of value. Other than that," he'd shrugged, "you're on your own to run this assignment as you see fit."
We'd gone over a few more details. Then Agent Whitlock and my sister had turned to leave, but just before walking out of the room, Agent Whitlock turned back to me.
"Remember, Agent Cullen, you need to do whatever it takes to earn these people's trust. You'll be immersed in their life, but when the time comes, you need to remember that this is just a case with a file number and that you serve the federal government. Don't ever lose sight of the assignment or the priority. Are we clear?"
Quantico is where I met Emmett McCarty and Alice Brandon; my team.
Emmett, at six feet three and one-hundred ninety pounds, has three inches and about twenty pounds on me. He kicked my ass on our first day of defensive tactics training. The next day, when we squared off again, I'd remembered his M.O. - brute strength, coupled with head-on tactics. I ducked and bounced on my feet. When his huge fists swung my way, I feinted to the left and then to the right. Then I grabbed him in a headlock, kicked his knees out from under him, and finished him off.
We became fast buddies after that.
Alice is an IT genius. Give her a laptop and a few minutes, and she'll break into the best-encrypted system in the world. She's got a great afro that bounces all over the place, and she wears the funkiest glasses she can find. Still, she's the kind of girl that makes geeky look good. She's as much sister to me as Emmett is a brother. In some ways, even more so.
Don't get me wrong. I love Rosalie, but she seems to believe the fact that she was born ten minutes earlier, gifted her with half a brain more. I'll admit that until I decided to join the Bureau, she may have been the best thing to happen to it in a while, but…
Either way, Rose takes her work seriously. For the past few months, she's performed her duties as the liaison between my team and the Bureau efficiently. She gives us what we need to get the job done. Because as we all know, the job is all that matters. It's all a file number, an assignment. I'm no longer Special Agent Edward Anthony Cullen, age 32, first-year cardiac surgeon, son of Elizabeth and Doctor Anthony Cullen, brother of Rosalie Cullen.
I'm Doctor Anthony Michael Masen, age 30. I joined the Cardiac Team at Manhattan Medical six months ago, straight out of Cornell, where I also did my residency. My parents are dead. I have no siblings. I am originally from South Jersey.
I laugh at James' jokes, I flirt with Kate when Garrett isn't around, and I play pool and throw back a few beers with all of them a couple of nights a week.
The job.
The assignment.
The case.
A file number.
It's all that matters.
Every day, I remind myself of these facts. Growing friendships aren't confused with the real job. My mind remains focused. Nothing and no one will push me off track because underneath it all, I'm still Special Agent Edward Cullen.
OOOOOOOOOO
While I read aloud the speech, with Kate's revisions and additions, I try my best not to vomit over the podium.
Kate and Garrett watch me with opposing expressions. Kate glows. Garrett's lips are drawn in a tight line. He's not part of the inner circle; I've learned that much over the past few months. Again, I find myself wondering how he and Kate are dating when they're so dissimilar. Alice, Emmett, and I have spent some time pondering this. Needless to say, neither provided any enlightening ideas beyond juvenile jokes involving shoe sizes.
As I speak, I turn my eyes away from Garrett and Kate because remembering that conversation has my eyes straying toward Garrett's feet.
And the only reason any of that is of any import is because this is when my gaze once again finds and settles on Mystery Girl.
She's standing in a corner across the room from Kate and Garrett, those taupe eyes intent and focused. While my mouth moves around the words James and Kate have me speaking, I follow Mystery Girl's intense gaze. She's scrutinizing Kate so steadfastly that for one split second, I confuse her intense stare for admiration. But when I minutely narrow my own eyes and focus, I see Mystery Girl isn't so much admiring Kate as she's admiring Kate's sapphire necklace. A wry sort of grin lifts one corner of her mouth.
The crowd suddenly breaks into applause, and I vaguely note that I've gotten to a part of the speech the majority of the pharmaceutical reps here agree with, which is the deregulation of experimental drugs.
When Mystery Girl's sharp eyes abruptly snap to mine, her gaze is backlit by flames of fury. My brow furrows imperceptibly, but I'm unquestionably intrigued by her reaction. Yet, before I can even attempt to decipher its meaning, she scowls at me fiercely then weaves through the crowd, making her way out of the symposium grounds. As she disappears behind the swaying palm trees, she leaves behind an almost visceral impression.
Eventually, I finish the speech, all while mentally bewildered by that final scowl and by the fury in those eyes.
Much like her eyes, she's...intriguing.
OOOOO
James was supposed to fly in last night and be the one to give this bullshit speech, but some last-minute change in his itinerary forced him to remain in New York. I suspect he's meeting with a new client, and I'm pissed off that I'm a fucking fifteen-hour flight away. Had I had an inkling he was going to meet with a new client, I would've at least left Emmett or Alice behind. Yet he appeared fucking gung-ho about this symposium to the very end.
Six months into the assignment, James is still an enigma. At times, he can be the most pleasant, easy-going guy you've ever met. He genuinely seems to care for his patients. He's taken me under his wing, so to speak. We hang out after work a couple of times a week, go to bars, just as Agent Whitlock directed a few months earlier. We've played golf together on weekends.
But there's a wall around him that I haven't been able to penetrate. Sometimes, I'll spy him and Kate, or he and Alec, who's another member of our group, whispering with one another. When he looks up, his eyes are guarded and cold. Sometimes, conversation ceases as I approach. They keep secrets. They hold meetings that don't include me - yet. I'm slowly working my way into the inner circle, but it could still be a while. I'm prepared to wait.
At least Kate is here this weekend.
Kate and I have an interesting relationship. She and Garrett have been dating for a couple of years. They're a good-looking couple, and Garrett obviously worships the ground she walks on.
Kate, on the other hand…
She flirts with me constantly. Over the past couple of months, it's become overt. Agent Whitlock's directive circles around and around in my head.
'Do whatever you have to do…'
OOOOOOOOOO
After the symposium ends, Garrett, Alec, Kate, and I are set to celebrate at a bar a couple of miles away. However, I bow out, claiming an upset stomach. I rarely cancel events with them since we're part of the same medical group, and we're such good friends.
I'm ingratiating myself here, remember?
Tonight though, I've got a different mission.
Another fact I've picked up on over the past few months: Kate is James' second in command in their little operation. I've already planted a chip in the pocketbook she's carrying. From the unmarked van parked a couple of blocks down, Alice listens to every word Kate speaks while keeping an eye on the hotel entrance.
Emmett is dressed like a bellhop and hanging out in the lobby.
I'm in my hotel room on the sixth floor, directly one floor below Kate's room. While I wait for their okay, I change out of my tux and into black sweats, a black tee-shirt, a black cap, and gloves.
"Alright, man, all's clear down here. Kate and the rest are gone."
"Yep, they just drove away," Alice confirms from the van.
"Green light, Ed," Emmett says.
"Got it." I open the door to my room and take the empty staircase one flight up.
"The hallway is clear," Alice assures me while I wait behind the stairwell door. I make my way down the hallway. When I stop in front of Kate's room, I surreptitiously check my surroundings. Confident that no one is around, I pull out the all-access key card I stole a few minutes earlier from the head housekeeper. The light on the handle morphs from red to green, and I slip in, discreetly shutting the door behind me while alerting both Emmett and Alice of my success.
"I'm inside."
"Get to it, then," Alice urges.
All the room lights are off, and I leave them that way; the meager lights in from the open balcony provide enough to guide me. I only have three bugs to plant; I won't need much light or time. Methodically, I attach one to the light on the overhead fan in the living room. Moving to the bedroom, I hide another one on the back leg of the three-legged side-table in the corner.
"Hey, Alice," I say softly, "are you planning on listening to everything that goes on in this bedroom?"
Alice offers me a dramatic sigh. "Don't worry, Edward. If I hear heavy breathing, and then a moan that sounds suspiciously like you, I'll cover my ears quick-fast."
"I wasn't referring to myself," I smirk.
Emmett joins in. "Sure, you weren't. And by the way, what was all that talk about taupe?"
"Nothing. It wasn't important – not part of the case, anyway," I mutter in reply, those taupe eyes once again in my head as I make my way to the bathroom.
"It's just a strange thing to ask," he persists. "Like, why throw it out there in conversation while we're in the middle of an op? Taupe," he snorts. "Alice, back me up here."
"He's right, Ed," Alice agrees. "I mean, as much as I hate to agree with Emmett-"
"Thanks a lot," Em snorts.
"-and as much as taupe is an interesting color, it's a rather random subject to just throw out there, when the focus is supposed to be kissing up to Kate."
"Or kissing Kate," Emmett chuckles, "as the case may call for."
"Good one, Em," Alice snickers.
"Can we change the subject?" I hiss while crouching in front of the toilet and feeling around for the indentation under the pipe.
"But why taupe of all colors - brown and gray? I might be able to understand something like Slate."
"Slate - that's blue and gray," Alice says.
"Or Nectarine."
"Ooh, that's a good one, Em. Nectarine."
"That's like yellow and orange, right?"
I position the minuscule bug then straighten from my crouch, shaking my head at my team's inanity.
"Can you two just…stop…"
Beyond Kate's closed bathroom door, something moves, and my entire body goes rigid.
"She's back," I hiss under my breath.
"What? No! No, she's not!" Alice says. "I've got my eyes peeled for their car!"
"She's right, Ed," Emmett agrees. "They haven't walked back into the hotel."
Completely still, I listen carefully and hear more movement beyond the door. Shutting my eyes, I exhale.
"This is what happens when you allow yourself to get distracted by stupidity. She's definitely in here."
"Edward, unless she climbed in through the balcony, she is not in there," Alice growls.
"Well, someone's fucking in here," I retort, listening to the shuffling on the other side of the door.
"Fuck!" Emmett says, breathing heavily into my earpiece. "Maybe it's housekeeping?"
Pressing my ear to the door, the distinct sound of drawers opening and closing seep through the wooden barrier.
"It's not housekeeping," I breathe.
"How the hell are you going to get out of there?" Alice asks.
My mind races around the dilemma. I can't afford hesitations. If she finds me hiding in here, my cover might be blown, and the entire case right along with it. I yank off the cap and the gloves and stash them in my pockets. Then, raking a hand through my hair, I draw in a breath and practice my grin…and recite its accompanying, improv line in my head.
'Hey, Kate. I've been waiting for you, baby…'
"Edward, what are you going to do?" Alice asks.
"Guess it's time to take one for the team," I mutter before pulling the bathroom door open.
In the relative darkness of a room illuminated by meager streetlights, there's a sharp hitch of breath before a lithe body draped in a black bodysuit spins around…and all I see are taupe eyes.
It's Mystery Girl.
A/N: Thoughts?
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"See" you soon, and stay safe. 3