AN: Yes, the Duchess in the previous chapter is NOT Bex. That will be explained in around six or so chapters. Joe Solomon is 30 as of this chapter, but will be 31 once the story rolls into the next year's springtime. According to my outline, he was 35 when Matt died and 39 when he thereafter joined Gallagher. As always, reviews bring speedier updates!
CHAPTER TWO
Staring at the folded piece of paper he had found in his pocket moments ago, Joe sighed. There really was no such thing as a vacation day. It was the result of a cleverly orchestrated brush pass that he had barely noticed. Despite the fact that he was one of seven people in the Henley's gallery of Renaissance art, the culprit had practically disappeared into thin air before he could identify them. He flipped the crumpled strip over and stared at the narrow text of a reciept. It was the same restaurant he had met the Morgans at, merely twenty-seven hours ago. Certain letters were bolded and he frowned; Matt wouldn't put himself through an overcomplicated manuever for a simple meeting. A heavy weight settled in the pit of his stomach; someone was following him through London, and it was likely the same tail that forced him to abruptly leave his companions the day before.
Not that he minded. At the time, it had been the perfect excuse to get out of a conversation he did not want to have.
He skimmed over the easy code, the letters and numbers rearranging themselves into an address in his head. He frowned; anyone willing to give him such an effortless lead to follow was confident. The "blueberry" in the mixed berry smoothie was underlined with a light pencil mark, as were the last four letters of "purslane" in the purslane salad. From what he remembered, Rachel was the one that had ordered both... maybe a cashier's replica of their receipt? He pulled out his phone and flicked through a map of London.
Bloomsbury Lane was a match.
As he exited the museum and sped down the streets, he used every counterintelligence maneuver in the books—and those that he created on his own. He flipped directions and backed down alleyways, grabbed a darker coat and pulled on a baseball cap. By the time he reached his hotel room, he was sure that there was no one following him.
He slid into the emergency staircase and endured a six story hike to his room. He preferred to sacrifice the comfort of an elevator for an easier escape route. Besides, the confinement of elevators reminded him too much of the boxy rooms that Blackthorne would brutally lock its students into, all for the sake of creating assassins that performed in all conditions. Though he found it pointless as a teenager, he was surprised at the amount of times he was stuck in a jail cell with the task of executing someone that the public thought dead.
After slipping his access card in, he swept a gaze across his spotless hotel room and slid into the bathroom. He carefully lifted the ceramic cover over the toilet's water tank and pulled out a waterproof satchel.
The Glock felt comforting at his hip.
Four taxi cabs, a bicycle, and a double-decker bus later, he was on Bloomsbury Lane. His lip curled in distaste; there were barely any pedestrians on the streets, and the open environment made him uneasy. All someone had to do was climb up to the rooftops with a rifle to pick him out of the crowds. The streets were lined with small shops and the typical tourist traps, with doorways tucked away next to the glass displays, most likely opening into the apartments on the second and third floors. He gave a cursory glance at the second message on the back of the receipt: "The Ace holds two faces in the Joker's game."
Blackjack. Building number eleven, apartment number one. He picked out the correct address—a quaint little electronics store with movies—before realization dawned on him.
A poster featured Cold War era Soviet spy films. His lips quirked into a smirk and he twisted the knob of the door next to the main entrance. There was one apartment on the level above Cinema Emporium.
"That took you longer than I thought it would." A woman stood in the threshold, her hand on her hip as she examined him with sharp, grey eyes. The way she held herself—poised, lithe, and prepared—reminded him of a cat. "Was my message too difficult?"
He straightened his shoulders, insulted. "I was busy admiring Raphael. You interrupted my break," he said. "Besides, Hutton's cryptography was meant for children."
She waved a hand dismissively and opened the door all the way, allowing him inside. "Or maybe you were trying to figure what went wrong during the Henley heist last year."
Joe thought back to the international art scare that had seized the world when rumors of the infiltration of the safest museum in the world hit the news. He was immensely interested in why a man as clever as Bobby Bishop—someone that even Abigail Cameron had difficulty in tracking down—had attempted to carry out such a broad scale attack in a building with security equivalent to Fort Knox. Motive was key and mistakes were a rarity, which was why he found it so hard to believe that the man wanted to be caught on camera.
"That may have been a factor," he admitted, and scanned the expanse of the small studio. There was no furniture except for a mattress pushed against the wall, and a desk and chair on the other side of the room. Cobwebs were bundled in the corners of the ceiling and dust covered every surface. One glance at the floor told him that the previous owner had raised more than a few animals, as deep scratches marred the hardwood.
She caught him staring at the state of the living space and grimaced. "Charming, isn't it? They don't pay me nearly as much as they should." She grabbed a small backpack amid a bundle of blankets on the mattress and pulled out a laptop and several manila folders.
He strolled across the room to glance out the window, moving a heavy velvet curtain aside, matted with mothballs. A glint of light bounced off a reflective surface outside and flashed him in his eyes; he immediately closed the curtains. "You have a—"
"A sniper. I know," she said, a pen in her mouth as she shuffled through papers. "I want him to know I'm here."
He furrowed his eyebrows, and maintained a cool composure though he was extremely uncomfortable. "Why did you call me here? The last time I saw you, it was for twenty minutes and three weeks ago."
She circled the table, leaned against its edge and held a print out towards him. It was a photograph from when he departed Buckingham in his own private vehicle. Behind him was a man circled in a red marker—he wore a black coat and was dressed formally, emerging from the same event, caught taking a picture on his cellphone of presumably the SUV's license plate.
"Pray tell, why is that I have been commissioned to capture the same person that has been following you for the past three weeks?" she questioned.
He walked forward, taking a stack of prints from her hand. Him, with Rachel and Matt, dining near the same man only three tables away. Then it was the clerk at the hotel, a guard at the Henley.
"How the hell did I miss this?" he muttered under his breath. He gritted his teeth, angered by his sloppiness. He had been so busy looking for threats hiding in crevices that he had missed a glaringly obvious one in the open.
She shrugged. "Let me tell you one thing, Bond. I don't clean up other people's messes. If this is something that concerns you, then..." she trailed, "I suggest you take this one on your own."
Joe looked up at her, narrowing his eyes. "Who put you on this mission?"
She seemed to debate giving him an answer, and paused momentarily. "Max Edwards." When he visibly clenched his jaw, she raised an eyebrow. "Not a fan, I assume."
"That's one way to put it," he snorted. Agent Edwards was hell bent on digging into his past, and his history with the Circle was something that the CIA didn't need to know about, especially after all the trouble he had gone to bury it. "I want in on this." At the flash in her eyes, he corrected himself. "Not as help—this is your mission. I just need to know who this is."
What he didn't tell her, of course, were his plans to silence the man in case he was another one of the Circle's loyal followers, duped into Ioseph's legacy of destruction.
"No interference," she emphasized. "We do this my way."
He nodded in assent. While he enjoyed his work, he wasn't particularly eager to take on a case that wasn't his. He held out his hand for her to shake, and said, "Joe Solomon. But you probably knew that."
She grinned. "Katherine Pierce. But you probably knew that, too."
"Edwards."
"Solomon."
Their greeting was ridiculously unsociable, and as Rachel Morgan slid into the elevator behind them, she voiced her disdain.
"Now, children. Forgiveness is key to life." She leaned forward and pressed her thumb against the small biometric scanner, and opened her eyes a little wider for the laser that read her irises.
Maxwell Edwards kept his line of sight fixed in front of him, his posture as stiff as his over-starched suit. "If Joe has done something regrettable that I need to forgive him for, then he should first explain to me what it is."
"How dense do you think his head is, for him not to understand that he should be the one apologizing to me for his assholic behavior?" Joe scoffed, his eyes in Rachel as he refused to recognize the third occupant in the small enclosure.
Rachel sighed dramatically and watched the floor number on a digital screen increase as they descended into the sublevels.
"That's very mature. Talking about me third person."
"You know what's even more mature? Asking an assassin to tail me!"
The woman tore her gaze away from the digital numbers. "You what?" She fixed a glower in his direction. "What warranted that action, Edwards?"
"You were aligned with a possible perpetrator in Her Majesty's palace. He was tailing you before I set her after the two of you to take care of our little problem."
"So you commissioned an assassin," Rachel replied flatly, ignoring Joe's satisfied smile as he substantiated his hatred for the man. "Whoever put you in authority must have a screw loose in their head."
The elevator doors slid open at Sublevel Sixteen, and the intercom announced their presence in a robotic tone. "Agent Rachel Morgan, CIA, clearance level twenty-seven. Mr. Maxwell Edwards, Interpol, special clearance level thirty-two. Agent Joseph Solomon..."
"Interpol, the policeman of international affairs did," Maxwell shot back. "Along with your agency—hence, my presence here, and higher clearance level."
Joe had the inexplicable urge to punch the smug grin off his face.
"Now, if you'll excuse me, I must tend to much more pressing matters than an elementary-level argument." His gaze locked with Joe's and his eyes glittered with mirth. "Remember, Solomon. If you've done something regrettable..."
Tight-lipped, Joe roughly brushed pass the man and silently walked down the opposite hallway. He could hear Rachel's heels clicking against the tiles as she rapidly sped forth to catch up to him. She grabbed his arm, forcing him to slow down.
"He doesn't know a thing," she insisted. "Relax, Joe. It's behind you."
He raised an eyebrow and cast a sideways glance, her brown locks slightly mussed from running after him in three-inch heels and a sculpted pencil skirt. "It won't be behind me if you keep talking that loud."
Rachel rolled her eyes upwards. "Stop being dramatic, Solomon. Now, about this assassin..."
"I don't want to talk about it."
"What about Career Day at Gallagher?"
"I don't want to talk about that either."
"Joe—"
"So, where's Cammie?" he interrupted, an obvious attempt to divert their conversation. His green eyes were fixed on the grey linoleum tiles of the endless expanse of hallway.
Accustomed to the moods of the men around her, Rachel went along with it. "She's in the computer lab with the other kids. They're having a Minecraft hacking marathon until four."
"Aren't you supposed to be picking her up soon?" he said, phrasing his words carefully so that it didn't seem as if he was trying to escape her.
Rachel slowed to a halt in front of the glass walls of one of the many computer laboratories in the sublevels. "I am picking her up," she said, tapping on the glass and waving at her daughter. "You're supposed to be two levels below me with Stanford to debrief about last month's Kyoto mission, remember?"
Joe's blood froze as he watched the carbon copy of Matthew Morgan wave back with a toothy grin. She collected her things and emerged from a small group of children her size. He immediately turned around when he saw the girl sprinting to the door, and was already walking away when he heard Rachel call after him.
"Joe! Really?"
"You shouldn't have done that, Rachel," he muttered under his breath, definitely not loud enough for her to hear.
As he was walking away, he heard the girl's childish, high-pitched voice raise in a question. "Mommy, who was that?"
He was already in the elevator when she answered.