14. Little Black Dress

. . .

"I've seen bigger," muttered Natasha, tossing her waved and gleaming hair over her shoulder as the borrowed limo approached the sprawling Hollywood mansion. She opened her spangly, expensive-looking clutch and looked one more time at the credentials inside. She had her cover story in place. This was just killing time.

"Well, yeah," said May, from the driver's seat. She watched the security guys standing in the street wave the line of arrivals around. "You've seen, what, like four different houses Stark owns? This guy's a small fry compared to that. What'd he direct, anyway? I fell asleep the second we hit the motel, I honestly didn't bother reading that part of Skye's brief. I got the gist she got bored just writing it."

"Some crappily researched epic, either biblical or from that time period. I just read enough to airhead my way through a chat on the topic. Like your agent said, it's Oscar bait." Natasha looked down at herself, ensuring that her teardrop necklace was on straight and the almost invisible comm kit she was wearing was firmly double-taped along the curve of her chest. She wiggled, making sure that it would never become visible short of a total strip show. "Someday, somebody in development is gonna invent a chest rig that doesn't poke."

"Hear that." May idled the limo as one of the huge security guys approached. He gave her a nod, then stepped to the window by Natasha and knocked on it once. May rolled it down and then called back on her passenger's behalf. "Yes?"

"ID and invitation, ma'am?"

Natasha gave him a beaming smile and plucked both out of her clutch, the two documents pinched between a perfect-looking manicure. The guard took them, looking longer at her than at the documents. Frankly, they could have been blank for all the guy cared – at this end of the line, he was more a bouncer looking for who else to let in for background art than a security pro. She tilted her head at him as he handed her ID back, knowing exactly how striking her red hair looked when it draped along the pricey black silk dress she wore. "All right, thank you. You have a lovely night, Miss." The guard tipped his cap to her and waved the limo through.

"Gonna be a long evening for you, Nat." May pulled up through the gate, watching the throng as it spilled along the rolling front lawn of the mansion.

"Seen so much worse. Is that one actor here, you think? The one that was creeping on the actresses during the last Oscars? God, I thought he was going to lick one of them."

May knew who she was talking about; it'd been the breakout drama of social media afterward. Skye kept cracking jokes about it. "Probably."

"Ugh. I hate the handsy ones that don't even try to play the game. I always have to remember I can't break their ribs in public."

"I can tell." May grinned. "You never break character, but it's like your eyebrows sharpen up. Just this little bit of tension. The guys never notice."

"Well, yeah. I keep 'em looking elsewhere." They shared a laugh, two long-timers readying for a variation on a familiar scene.

. . .

Natasha clutched the arm of the party attendant showing her around and squealed just loudly enough to be twee and quietly enough to not draw too much attention. "Oh my God, is that Eddie Redmayne?"

It was, but that wasn't important. As her attendant swiveled his head to look, she peered behind his back to keep track of Dario Agger. He was holding forth in a corner of the pool area, surrounded by a handful of models and performers she didn't recognize. All of them had that familiar network-party plastic smile. And all of them had the body language of someone who instinctively smelled a threat behind the boxy face and the too-processed mane of hair just a shade too long to be pure business. Yeah, he was a showy guy. She beamed up at her guide as he looked down at her, seeing only the young twenty-something no-name actress. A little bit of contouring, the right choice of colors along the eyes, and just the right attitude. No one would ever guess she'd been all over C-SPAN not all that long ago, talking about SHIELD's implosion before a government panel. "I didn't see him, Miss, but probably."

"Oh, wow." She giggled and tossed her hair. "I never believed I'd be at the same party as him. Do you know how to introduce yourself to someone like that? I mean-"

"Sweetie, I'm sure people'll come up to you just fine." The attendant patted the hand still clutching his arm, not actually condescendingly. The guy was clearly practiced at moving a scene around. Probably worked the business for a long time; long enough to have almost some of the same instincts as a trained spy. A nose for trouble. She smiled up into his broad face, sort of liking him. "Just be your charming fresh self. People around here love that earnestness. Let me get you situated over here." He waved her towards a line of plush chairs set along the mansion's side deck. "If you need anything, you just ask one of Mr. Scomerone's staff."

Natasha squeezed his arm in gratitude as she took the seat like an awkward princess. 'Natalie Scarletto' was pure bait – a pretty new girl in the L.A. scene, with an obviously fake stage name selected to play up her hair color. "I still can't believe I got invited. I mean, friend of a friend of a... yeah. But it's just wild."

"You get used to it. The glitz fades and you learn the gig. Can still knock you around from time to time, though. That sparkle." The guide tipped her a wink before wandering off to wrangle his next charge. "First time I saw Brad Pitt? Boy-o-howdy."

. . .

"And we don't run proper backup for her? At all?" Loki watched the monitors despite not getting much in the way of visual from inside the shindig, setting the paperback he'd been reading down on his leg. "Is it me? Gods know, I'm sure she'd rather die than have me help contain a situation. Should one arise."

Skye kept crunching her potato chips, scanning the automated transcripts and getting a surprising amount of overheard gossip. "Not all about you, dude. We're strictly monitor and assess on this gig. She says she's got a full plan, plus contingencies. She never bothers to register an outside extraction, never needed one. And what Romanoff says about an op usually goes. Doubly so today, since May signed off on it. Oh my god, those two are together?" She mouthed the word 'wow' at the stream. "Once upon a time I could have sold that information to a paparazzo for enough money to keep my van running for a month."

The demigod shook his head and picked his book back up with a lot more aggression than the act required. "I'm continually proven wrong. This is the most boring social scenario devised by humans yet. A bunch of bards and mummers yammering at each other about how terrific it all is."

Almost absently, she noticed an urgent email message getting uploaded to the secure network. "Yeah, but this actress is bangi-"

"I don't care."

. . .

She was on her fifth drink - although an extraordinarily cagey observer would realize the actual count was less than one – when the vaguely familiar looking television actor with a motormouth and a fairly obvious cocaine habit walked her past Agger's little enclave. The actor was unsuccessfully chatting her up by way of pressing a sixth drink on her, which she took and then set aside on the side table before staggering slightly. She giggled. "Oops. I'm so sorry."

To Agger's point of view, all it looked like was a pretty new face with a lot of tipsy and a little leg to show. She steadied herself and met his eyes as she came up. He was openly checking her out, without any shame. She giggled again, patting at the corner of her mouth and careful to not smear her makeup. "I should probably switch to water."

"I'll get you some," said the actor at her side, taking the opportunity to dart off and ingratiate himself with a different offering. She took the opportunity to settle carefully, unsteadily in an open chair close to Agger. She ran a hand through her hair, noticing through the corner of her eye that Agger was still watching her. Just at the edge of her view, she could tell a couple of his buddies closed off the corner to new arrivals before her new actor friend could come back. So, Agger wasn't that subtle about what he really came to the local parties for.

"Fresh to town?" he asked.

She sniffed a little giggle. God, he was easy. "Is it that obvious?"

"You're beautiful," he said, not bothering to be anything but forthright about it. "Give you a year and the right agent, you'll be a star."

She flushed just the right bashful shade. "I think it takes more than beauty."

"It gets the door open."

"Yeah, but... oh my God, I worked so hard on the theatre circuit back home." She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, it was a tiny thing, but... Are you an agent? Rep?" Natasha leaned back in the plush chair in the languid, easy way of someone good and moderately drunk.

"Sorry, honey. I'm just a businessman that gets to crash all the best parties." He saluted her with the wide glass of whiskey in his hand.

"Aww. But you get to come to them?" She blinked, a little bleary. "You must know a lot of people."

"Networking, all it is." He grinned, showing a lot of teeth. "All right, and a little money." He sipped his whiskey, studying her like a shark that just found an orphaned baby seal. "A lot of money."

. . .

Drunk Natalie Scarletto didn't know any better. It wasn't about trying to buy her way in, she told him in a wavering voice, clutching the arm of his suit as he led her deeper inside the director's mansion and up to the second floor. Just, you know... it's so lonely out here.

The lost farmgirl, looking for one moment of friendly comfort. The classics never die.

While he pawed at the shoulder of her dress, she slipped his smartphone out of his suit pocket, palming it quickly behind her back and into a carefully layered slit pouch she'd personally stitched in. She staggered back. "Just... just one moment," she said, wavering in place with both her hands up to waggle at him. He put out a hand on her hip to help her stay upright (and cop a 'subtle' feel of her butt), causing her to outright laugh. "I'll be right back."

When she was locked in the attached bathroom, the routine dropped like a porcelain mask. She didn't have a lot of time – one hand turned on the water faucet while the other lifted the toilet lid with an audible clunk. Standard gig of a lady that didn't want any of her business overheard. Then she pulled the phone back out.

He used a keypad to lock the device, but he hadn't cleaned the plastic cover on the screen in a little while. She held the phone at a tilted angle, looking at the way the fingerprints smeared and calculating the odds based on his biographical data. Finding the best probability, she unlocked the phone with four swift taps and went straight to the list of contacts.

There it was – fourteen calls in the last three days, plus a long list of well-timed contacts with earlier phone numbers over the last couple months. She memorized the current number, then hesitated. Did she place a bet and go for it, or take the number out of the mansion and chase it down?

Good odds the number could be burned. Changed any hour. And time was a factor. She hit redial to see who picked up.

"Agger?" The voice was low and quiet, in the deep range for a woman. Natasha stared at the phone, not certain yet. Internally, she pleaded with the woman to talk more. Almost on cue, the voice started again, rich and almost perfectly American English. Natasha's trained ears picked up the slightly sharp 'r', the blended 'th' sound of southeastern Europe. Regional traces that could include once-Hungarian territories. "You had best not be drunk dialing me again. Our deal doesn't cover my patience with your antics."

She hung up on the familiar voice, her suspicion confirmed. Natasha hid the phone away, staring into the mirror and trying to find her mask again. One hand reached out to flush the toilet. Yes. The woman who'd come out of Latveria to threaten the US government just a couple years earlier. Lucia von Bardas. Only one senator had tapped his own office, and Natasha was among those who'd heard the recording of von Bardas' quiet, careful fury over the map drone. She'd sounded like a real patriot, serving in the name of her country.

Well, why not. It used to be her family's land to run. Who knew for sure what happened since. Natasha looked in the mirror again and winced before her expression smoothed back over into that of the sweet young thing in a big wide world. Loki's unpleasant theory had a legitimate hook to it.

Loki's. The reflexive disgust made her careful mask waver before she swallowed it down again.

She exhaled a long, drawn out sigh, and went back to finish the game.

. . .

Getting the phone back into his pocket was easy, a few quick gestures while Agger kept trying to paw at the wobbly drunk girl and her artful attempts to keep her dress on. A good thing, because it rang less than a minute later. Natasha's instincts called it instantly as she pushed herself back towards the edge of the bed – von Bardas wanting to see if she'd gotten butt-dialed by her partner in corruption or what. Agger pulled away from Natasha at the audible agitation in the woman's voice, the spy taking it as her cue to start looking for the exit.

Whether she had to signal one for herself or not.

"No, I didn't call you. I don't- maybe there was a glitch." Agger immediately turned and started eyeballing her. She smiled up at him. "You hear anything?"

Yeah, running water. Natasha kept beaming drunkenly just before she stood up and started walking towards the door. Not dropping character yet, just playing around with a half-stagger, half dance. "Daaaario..." she sing-songed at him. "Come on. Get off the phone, that's all anyone does in this city, play on their phooone."

No good, he was studying her. She blinked at him, rubbing a hand up the side of her face. There were going to be three of his people just outside the door. She'd watched them follow their boss up, gauging them through the fall of her hair. Easy drops. Still. She preferred to get out of the mansion without causing a big scene. But a little one? No problem.

That was going to mean she needed a clean way off of the second floor. Three windows in the hall beyond, two with a clear shot of the door she was going to come through. Easy enough. All well within plans she'd previously arranged.

She gave Agger one more innocently drunken giggle as he lowered the phone to stare at her, then flung the door open with a firm and steady hand. Without pausing, she swept the leg out from under one of the guards, the one closest to her. Her right arm snapped out and curled around the neck of the shortest of the three while the first one crumpled to the ground with a startled yelp. With the momentum from the swipe giving her an extra push, she tugged the second guard down, beginning her spin. The third barely started to move. Behind her, she could hear Agger start to yell.

Now would be good.

A hole suddenly appeared in the window between her and the third guard. The cracking edges on the window drew his attention, pausing him, keeping him in perfect position while she spun – no easy stunt in a silky black dress – and used all her body weight and leg strength to yank him down with the force in her legs. She heard the smack of the back of his skull against the floor.

The first guard tried to move again. She grabbed him along the forehead and bounced his skull once. The second tried to crawl away, dazed, before giving up and falling over. And with that, all three were out in under four seconds. She stared inside the bedroom from where she temporarily knelt, her body still in a go-posture.

Inside the room, Agger coughed and dropped to his knees. No way he was joining the fight. The trick arrow was one of Barton's very special ones; it was intended to completely disintegrate after a target contact, leaving no evidence for anyone to trace. Agger was going to conk out hard for half an hour at best, the largest dose the tiny vial attached to the arrow could carry.

Thank you, Clint. She beamed a genuine smile out the window, followed by a wink. A glint of light flickered back before a darker shadow against the black slipped out of a tall tree's nest – You're welcome, Natasha.

Then she glided downstairs through the unsuspecting crowd to get to her ride out.

. . .

May's tension in the limo was an almost physical thing. "We're going straight back to base. Right now."