{Author's note: I meant to have this up sooner, but with one of my best friends being in town for just a week, I didn't have time to really sit down and write anything. Then, I wasn't happy with what I wrote so I had to rewrite. Anyway, thanks to everyone who has reviewed so far. I really appreciate you all taking time out of your lives to do so.}
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Chapter Seven: Good Morning, Mr. McCoy
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The sound of his alarm clock letting out its blaring siren roused Danny from his deep sleep. Not fully awake, the tall, brown-haired man uncurled an arm from around his pillow and slowly reached over to the nightstand next to the bed. However, a foreign hand and arm reached over his body and tapped the snooze button before he could do anything. Instantly waking up, Danny turned over to see a very familiar woman with shoulder length, brown and blonde hair laying next to him in bed. From the looks of it, she was just waking up herself and was wearing nothing under the covers.
"Leah!" Danny exclaimed, sitting up against the headboard.
"Surprised to see me?" she purred, resting her head against his bare chest.
"Well, yeah." Danny replied, as it was the obvious answer.
"Hmm." Leah pouted, slightly offended. "And here I was thinking that last night was pretty memorable."
"Last night?" a puzzled Danny asked, rubbing his forehead. He couldn't remember sleeping with the woman in his bed, but McCoy admitted to himself that he might have done so in a drunken state.
Heading off into a nearby bathroom, the ex-Marine splashed some cold water on his face as he thought back to the previous night. He had come home from the Montecito, ate dinner, got himself caught up on his e-mail, and then went straight to bed. Nothing about alcohol or Leah coming over entered his memory. With a perplexed expression present on his face, he headed back into the bedroom.
"Got you, didn't I?" Leah giggled as she stood by Danny's dresser. Her brown eyes suddenly focused on a picture that was on Danny's dresser. It was of Danny and Mary at one of Mike's infamous barbecues. She picked it up in her hands. "This is the woman from the other day. You've got a lot of pictures of her." She looked up again at Danny, who was throwing some pants on over his boxers. "Who is she?"
"That's Mary, my best friend since I was a kid." Danny replied, sitting down on the edge of his bed.
"And you're just best friends?" Leah inquired with a knowing smile. "Seems like she wants to be more from how she acted the other day." She set the picture down and turned fully around. "How about you? Are you fine with being just best friends?"
"How in the hell did you even get in here?" Danny asked, ignoring her question. With a grin, Leah walked back over to him and pushed the ex-Marine into a laying position. She leaned over him and pinned his shoulders to the bed.
"Try leaving your key in a less obvious place than under the doormat." Leah smiled, pulling Danny's spare key out of her shorts pocket. She quickly put the key on the nightstand before returning her hand to his shoulder. "As for what I'm doing here, you didn't forget that you owe someone an answer, did you?"
"No, I didn't." Danny grinned as he gently flipped the woman over so that they had changed positions. "I've got an answer for him."
"Good." Leah replied, standing as Danny let her up. She walked towards the door. "Well, I'll see you later then."
"Hold on a second." Danny called after the retreating woman. "Don't you want to know what it is?"
"That's between you and him." Leah commented, stopping in the doorway. "I'll get in touch with you later and tell you where and when you're supposed to meet him."
"No stun gun this time?" Danny asked with a smile.
"Nope." Leah promised, returning his smile. "Bye Danny."
As his bedroom door shut behind the petite woman, Danny fell back again on his bed and stared up at his ceiling. It was turning out to be one of those days!
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"What's the latest on the Montecito Mole?" Mary asked as she somehow appeared at the freshly arrived Danny's side just as he was about to enter the door that led to the innards of the Montecito. He immediately paused in his tracks.
"The what?" the puzzled Danny asked, looking at his best friend.
"The traitor." Mary clarified with a chuckle. "Everyone is referring to them as the Montecito Mole." As Danny became even more confused, Mary just smiled. "Ed made the mistake of telling Delinda about it, and you know how she is with secrets."
"She can keep them if she wants to." Danny remarked, thinking about how Delinda had never told him what her last name was or who her father was when they had gotten together. "Montecito Mole, huh? Kinda catchy name." However, the catchiness was kind of ruined when Danny McCoy was placed in front of it. He shrugged at his best friend. "I just got here, so I didn't really know anything more than I did yesterday…which was next to nothing."
"Just thought I'd ask." Mary replied as her eyes surveyed the tall, brown-haired man in front of her. "It's kind of scary thinking that someone we know could be stabbing us in the back."
Saying nothing, Danny simply hugged his best friend back as she leaned in for one. He wondered what she would do when she found out that he was the "traitor". Surely, she would understand when the full story came out, wouldn't she?
"I'm just glad that I know that we can trust you, Danny." she continued, smiling at the warmth of his embrace. "The traitor would never be you. Not in a million years."
As his cell phone rang out, Danny immediately whipped it out of his pocket. He was overjoyed to have some distraction from Mary's comments, as they made him wish that he could tell her right here that it was him and why he was doing it. However, any thoughts were dashed out of his mind as he noticed a strange number on the caller ID, instead of Ed's like he was expecting.
"Danny McCoy." the ex-Marine answered.
"Hmm." came the voice of Leah from the other line. "You sound sexy when you're all serious like that." She giggled slightly. "Did I catch you at a bad time?"
"No, I'm just at work." Danny replied with a shrug as Mary let go of him. "What's up?"
"Just reminding you that I'll meet you for our date in front of the Montecito at five pm." Leah stated as if Danny already knew this information. However, he knew that she was just covering in case someone was listening in to their conversation. "You can make it, right?"
"Yeah." Danny nodded, "Yeah, I'll be there."
"Good." a happy Leah said, "See you then." '
"Yeah." Danny agreed as he hung up his phone.
"Who was that?" an inquisitive Mary asked, looking up at her friend.
"That was Leah." Danny replied, stuffing his phone back into his pocket. "The girl from yesterday."
"Oh." Mary nodded, remembering. "You two going out tonight?"
"If Ed will give me the time off." Danny replied, nodding back. Seeing the slightly upset look in Mary's eyes, Danny immediately shifted his gaze to the floor. "Speaking of that, I'd better be getting upstairs. I'll let you know if I find out anything new."
"Okay." Mary agreed, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. "Have fun tonight with Leah."
"I will." Danny promised as she walked away.
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"Anything new?" an optimistic Danny asked as he climbed up the last stair into Ed's office. Looking up from paperwork, the grim, older man looked to be stifling the more intense than usual desire to pitch something at the younger man's head. Seeing this, Danny froze in his tracks. "Not good?"
"Big John and his crew ran background checks on every single employee we've had in the database for the past few years." Ed replied before shaking his head. "Dead end."
"Damn." Danny replied as Ed got up and began pacing the room. "Now, what do we do?"
"Make it look like we've got everything under control." a calm Ed replied, staring down at the surveillance room below. "Panicked employees lead to panicked guests, and that's the last thing we need right now." Defeated, the older man leaned an arm against the massive window. "Other than that, not much else we can do, except wait."
"Um, I'm going to need some time off tonight." Danny brought up, deciding to switch subjects. He tapped the tips of his two index fingers together nervously as Ed turned to look at him.
"For?" the older man inquired with a stern look on his face.
"Leah wants to go out." Danny shrugged, sitting on Ed's desk.
"Get your ass of my desk." Ed ordered, nodding at the sitting Danny who stood up immediately. The older man turned back and looked out the window again. "Fine."
"Fine?" a surprised Danny asked, "You're really okay with that?"
"Not exactly." Ed admitted, putting a hand to his gray hair. "But I don't want you to make the same mistakes I've made, kid." A deep, depressed sigh escaped the other man. "Don't neglect the people that you love. Even if that love is only destined to last a few days tops." He waved Danny off. "Go make the best of the time you do plan on spending here."
"Yeah." Danny agreed, heading for the office door.
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Exiting the Montecito hours later, Danny could see Leah, dressed in a short black dress, waiting for him by his car. Ever the flirtatious one, Mike was busy talking to her, and making the brown haired woman giggle about something. Another woman, who also had brown hair and a feisty demeanor about her, was with them. Realizing that it was Sam Marquez, the Montecito's hostess who just happened to be an ex-girlfriend of his, Danny groaned before walking over.
"Here he is now." Leah smiled as Danny arrived.
"Whatever she said about me is a lie." a teasing Danny remarked, pointing at Sam.
"Oh, that's nice." Sam replied, rolling her eyes. "Just make assumptions about me! How do you know that I was talking about your good points?"
"Because I know you like the back of my hand." Danny fired back with a smile. It wasn't a day until he had gotten into one of these arguments with Sam. Although they appeared to have a volatile relationship, they were pretty close, as they both seemed to have left the door open for each other.
"That's right, Danny." Sam sarcastically nodded, "You keep thinking that." The brown-haired woman suddenly looked at her watch. "I'd better be going. The Maloof brothers are going to be here any minute." She smiled at the woman standing next to her. "It was nice to meet you, Leah."
"Nice to meet you too." Leah replied as Sam walked away.
"Even if she is just destined to be another name on Danny McCoy's list of conquests." Sam commented under her breath as she passed by Danny, who frowned at her.
"Well," Leah smiled, leaning up against Danny. "Are you ready to go?"
"Yeah." Danny nodded before looking at Mike. "I'll see you later, man."
"You two, have fun." Mike called after the retreating Danny and Leah.
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Slamming down the phone, Ed sighed in relief and leaned back in his chair. The old bastard had finally shown his face! A contact of Ed's had spotted the Professor at a restaurant just outside of town, where it would be easier to remain anonymous. According to the contact, the curly-haired, older man also appeared to be waiting for a dinner guest, which, as Ed heavily suspected, could be the "Montecito Mole". Wondering why things never usually went this well, Ed picked up his office phone again and started dialing Danny's cell phone number.
He set the phone back down halfway through. Running a hand through his gray hair, Ed stared momentarily off into space. He realized that he had been working Danny rather hard lately, and the younger man was definitely in need of a break. Deline also realized that his young protégé would be almost as recognizable as he himself was, so there was no way he could send him on a covert mission like this. However, Ed would need someone that he could trust and it was a few minutes before the perfect candidate popped into his head.
"Hey." he greeted after dialing another familiar cell phone number. "I need you to do something for me."
To be continued....
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Chapter Seven: Good Morning, Mr. McCoy
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The sound of his alarm clock letting out its blaring siren roused Danny from his deep sleep. Not fully awake, the tall, brown-haired man uncurled an arm from around his pillow and slowly reached over to the nightstand next to the bed. However, a foreign hand and arm reached over his body and tapped the snooze button before he could do anything. Instantly waking up, Danny turned over to see a very familiar woman with shoulder length, brown and blonde hair laying next to him in bed. From the looks of it, she was just waking up herself and was wearing nothing under the covers.
"Leah!" Danny exclaimed, sitting up against the headboard.
"Surprised to see me?" she purred, resting her head against his bare chest.
"Well, yeah." Danny replied, as it was the obvious answer.
"Hmm." Leah pouted, slightly offended. "And here I was thinking that last night was pretty memorable."
"Last night?" a puzzled Danny asked, rubbing his forehead. He couldn't remember sleeping with the woman in his bed, but McCoy admitted to himself that he might have done so in a drunken state.
Heading off into a nearby bathroom, the ex-Marine splashed some cold water on his face as he thought back to the previous night. He had come home from the Montecito, ate dinner, got himself caught up on his e-mail, and then went straight to bed. Nothing about alcohol or Leah coming over entered his memory. With a perplexed expression present on his face, he headed back into the bedroom.
"Got you, didn't I?" Leah giggled as she stood by Danny's dresser. Her brown eyes suddenly focused on a picture that was on Danny's dresser. It was of Danny and Mary at one of Mike's infamous barbecues. She picked it up in her hands. "This is the woman from the other day. You've got a lot of pictures of her." She looked up again at Danny, who was throwing some pants on over his boxers. "Who is she?"
"That's Mary, my best friend since I was a kid." Danny replied, sitting down on the edge of his bed.
"And you're just best friends?" Leah inquired with a knowing smile. "Seems like she wants to be more from how she acted the other day." She set the picture down and turned fully around. "How about you? Are you fine with being just best friends?"
"How in the hell did you even get in here?" Danny asked, ignoring her question. With a grin, Leah walked back over to him and pushed the ex-Marine into a laying position. She leaned over him and pinned his shoulders to the bed.
"Try leaving your key in a less obvious place than under the doormat." Leah smiled, pulling Danny's spare key out of her shorts pocket. She quickly put the key on the nightstand before returning her hand to his shoulder. "As for what I'm doing here, you didn't forget that you owe someone an answer, did you?"
"No, I didn't." Danny grinned as he gently flipped the woman over so that they had changed positions. "I've got an answer for him."
"Good." Leah replied, standing as Danny let her up. She walked towards the door. "Well, I'll see you later then."
"Hold on a second." Danny called after the retreating woman. "Don't you want to know what it is?"
"That's between you and him." Leah commented, stopping in the doorway. "I'll get in touch with you later and tell you where and when you're supposed to meet him."
"No stun gun this time?" Danny asked with a smile.
"Nope." Leah promised, returning his smile. "Bye Danny."
As his bedroom door shut behind the petite woman, Danny fell back again on his bed and stared up at his ceiling. It was turning out to be one of those days!
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"What's the latest on the Montecito Mole?" Mary asked as she somehow appeared at the freshly arrived Danny's side just as he was about to enter the door that led to the innards of the Montecito. He immediately paused in his tracks.
"The what?" the puzzled Danny asked, looking at his best friend.
"The traitor." Mary clarified with a chuckle. "Everyone is referring to them as the Montecito Mole." As Danny became even more confused, Mary just smiled. "Ed made the mistake of telling Delinda about it, and you know how she is with secrets."
"She can keep them if she wants to." Danny remarked, thinking about how Delinda had never told him what her last name was or who her father was when they had gotten together. "Montecito Mole, huh? Kinda catchy name." However, the catchiness was kind of ruined when Danny McCoy was placed in front of it. He shrugged at his best friend. "I just got here, so I didn't really know anything more than I did yesterday…which was next to nothing."
"Just thought I'd ask." Mary replied as her eyes surveyed the tall, brown-haired man in front of her. "It's kind of scary thinking that someone we know could be stabbing us in the back."
Saying nothing, Danny simply hugged his best friend back as she leaned in for one. He wondered what she would do when she found out that he was the "traitor". Surely, she would understand when the full story came out, wouldn't she?
"I'm just glad that I know that we can trust you, Danny." she continued, smiling at the warmth of his embrace. "The traitor would never be you. Not in a million years."
As his cell phone rang out, Danny immediately whipped it out of his pocket. He was overjoyed to have some distraction from Mary's comments, as they made him wish that he could tell her right here that it was him and why he was doing it. However, any thoughts were dashed out of his mind as he noticed a strange number on the caller ID, instead of Ed's like he was expecting.
"Danny McCoy." the ex-Marine answered.
"Hmm." came the voice of Leah from the other line. "You sound sexy when you're all serious like that." She giggled slightly. "Did I catch you at a bad time?"
"No, I'm just at work." Danny replied with a shrug as Mary let go of him. "What's up?"
"Just reminding you that I'll meet you for our date in front of the Montecito at five pm." Leah stated as if Danny already knew this information. However, he knew that she was just covering in case someone was listening in to their conversation. "You can make it, right?"
"Yeah." Danny nodded, "Yeah, I'll be there."
"Good." a happy Leah said, "See you then." '
"Yeah." Danny agreed as he hung up his phone.
"Who was that?" an inquisitive Mary asked, looking up at her friend.
"That was Leah." Danny replied, stuffing his phone back into his pocket. "The girl from yesterday."
"Oh." Mary nodded, remembering. "You two going out tonight?"
"If Ed will give me the time off." Danny replied, nodding back. Seeing the slightly upset look in Mary's eyes, Danny immediately shifted his gaze to the floor. "Speaking of that, I'd better be getting upstairs. I'll let you know if I find out anything new."
"Okay." Mary agreed, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. "Have fun tonight with Leah."
"I will." Danny promised as she walked away.
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"Anything new?" an optimistic Danny asked as he climbed up the last stair into Ed's office. Looking up from paperwork, the grim, older man looked to be stifling the more intense than usual desire to pitch something at the younger man's head. Seeing this, Danny froze in his tracks. "Not good?"
"Big John and his crew ran background checks on every single employee we've had in the database for the past few years." Ed replied before shaking his head. "Dead end."
"Damn." Danny replied as Ed got up and began pacing the room. "Now, what do we do?"
"Make it look like we've got everything under control." a calm Ed replied, staring down at the surveillance room below. "Panicked employees lead to panicked guests, and that's the last thing we need right now." Defeated, the older man leaned an arm against the massive window. "Other than that, not much else we can do, except wait."
"Um, I'm going to need some time off tonight." Danny brought up, deciding to switch subjects. He tapped the tips of his two index fingers together nervously as Ed turned to look at him.
"For?" the older man inquired with a stern look on his face.
"Leah wants to go out." Danny shrugged, sitting on Ed's desk.
"Get your ass of my desk." Ed ordered, nodding at the sitting Danny who stood up immediately. The older man turned back and looked out the window again. "Fine."
"Fine?" a surprised Danny asked, "You're really okay with that?"
"Not exactly." Ed admitted, putting a hand to his gray hair. "But I don't want you to make the same mistakes I've made, kid." A deep, depressed sigh escaped the other man. "Don't neglect the people that you love. Even if that love is only destined to last a few days tops." He waved Danny off. "Go make the best of the time you do plan on spending here."
"Yeah." Danny agreed, heading for the office door.
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Exiting the Montecito hours later, Danny could see Leah, dressed in a short black dress, waiting for him by his car. Ever the flirtatious one, Mike was busy talking to her, and making the brown haired woman giggle about something. Another woman, who also had brown hair and a feisty demeanor about her, was with them. Realizing that it was Sam Marquez, the Montecito's hostess who just happened to be an ex-girlfriend of his, Danny groaned before walking over.
"Here he is now." Leah smiled as Danny arrived.
"Whatever she said about me is a lie." a teasing Danny remarked, pointing at Sam.
"Oh, that's nice." Sam replied, rolling her eyes. "Just make assumptions about me! How do you know that I was talking about your good points?"
"Because I know you like the back of my hand." Danny fired back with a smile. It wasn't a day until he had gotten into one of these arguments with Sam. Although they appeared to have a volatile relationship, they were pretty close, as they both seemed to have left the door open for each other.
"That's right, Danny." Sam sarcastically nodded, "You keep thinking that." The brown-haired woman suddenly looked at her watch. "I'd better be going. The Maloof brothers are going to be here any minute." She smiled at the woman standing next to her. "It was nice to meet you, Leah."
"Nice to meet you too." Leah replied as Sam walked away.
"Even if she is just destined to be another name on Danny McCoy's list of conquests." Sam commented under her breath as she passed by Danny, who frowned at her.
"Well," Leah smiled, leaning up against Danny. "Are you ready to go?"
"Yeah." Danny nodded before looking at Mike. "I'll see you later, man."
"You two, have fun." Mike called after the retreating Danny and Leah.
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Slamming down the phone, Ed sighed in relief and leaned back in his chair. The old bastard had finally shown his face! A contact of Ed's had spotted the Professor at a restaurant just outside of town, where it would be easier to remain anonymous. According to the contact, the curly-haired, older man also appeared to be waiting for a dinner guest, which, as Ed heavily suspected, could be the "Montecito Mole". Wondering why things never usually went this well, Ed picked up his office phone again and started dialing Danny's cell phone number.
He set the phone back down halfway through. Running a hand through his gray hair, Ed stared momentarily off into space. He realized that he had been working Danny rather hard lately, and the younger man was definitely in need of a break. Deline also realized that his young protégé would be almost as recognizable as he himself was, so there was no way he could send him on a covert mission like this. However, Ed would need someone that he could trust and it was a few minutes before the perfect candidate popped into his head.
"Hey." he greeted after dialing another familiar cell phone number. "I need you to do something for me."
To be continued....