A/N: Chappie two! Jess and Lynn are going shopping...what could possibly happen?

Disclaimer: If I owned Alex Rider or Sears, I would be a heck of a lot richer.

Chapter Two: No!

"No!"

Jessica slowly backed away, hands held protectively in front of her, shaking her head and repeating, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no!" She hit a wall, and only then did she stop.

"Why not?"

"It's pink."

"So?"

"I don't wear pink."

"But Jess-"

"No!"

Jess and her aunt were currently in the juniors department of the local Sears. Lynn was trying to convince Jess to buy a bright pink T-shirt – which Jess adamantly refused to do.

"Jessica, the only colors you wear besides black are bright colors. This shirt is practically searing my retinas – which you seem to enjoy – so I don't see why you won't-"

"It's pink," Jess interrupted through gritted teeth. "I hate pink."

"But Jess, honey, you used to wear pink all the time!"

"Yes, when I was younger and didn't have a choice," she retorted, still eying the shirt warily. "Now I do have a choice, and I'm choosing no."

"Jess, look, if you'd just-"

"No!" Jess kept her eyes glued to the shirt as if it was threatening to bite her.

Lynn sighed, defeated. "Fine. I can't make you, can I?" She put the offending shirt back on the rack.

Jess relaxed somewhat. "Aunt Lynn, I'm sorry, but I just don't like pink. Green? Blue? Red? Great. Purple? Eh...if it's the right shade. But not pink."

"I understand," Lynn said. She started pawing through the rack for another shirt. "I wasn't a fan of pink when I was your age, although-" she shot an irked glance at her niece- "I never reacted quite so violently."

Jess grinned easily, unimpressed by Lynn's glare. "Aunt Lynn, you've never done anything violent in your life."

"And a good thing for you, too," Lynn grumbled from the depths of the clothes rack, "or you'd most likely be dead by now, what with all the grief you caused me."

Jessica's smile faded. "Grief, indeed," she said quietly.

"What was that?" Lynn asked, emerging from the rack only to move on to a shelf behind her.

Jessica hesitated. "Nothing."

"Mmm," came Lynn's distracted agreement. "What do you think about this?" she asked, turning around and holding up a neon green tank top. "It's sort of garish, but I think it-"

Whatever she thought about the shirt was lost in a sudden crack that rang through the store, followed by several screams.

"What the-" Jessica nearly swore, but remembered her aunt's presence just in time.

"Run to the doors, Jessica." Lynn's voice was deceptively calm. "Go!"

She obeyed. She heard her aunt's footsteps close behind her as she dashed toward the exit. Cracks – which sounded a lot like gunshots – and screams rang out with terrifying frequency, urging her to greater speeds.

Finally, she reached the door. The automatic opener was much too slow for her liking – some of the shots sounded closer. When the door was open enough, she dashed through, getting out of the direct path of the door before skidding to a stop and turning around.

She looked inside only to see her aunt lying facedown in a rapidly growing pool of blood.

oOo

Ten minutes later, she watched, a silent sentinel, as her aunt and several others were loaded into ambulances. Thankfully, a store employee had had the presence of mind to call 999, and the police and several ambulances had come within minutes. Jess felt that it was too late, though – her aunt looked pale enough to be dead already. She stood watching long after the ambulance carrying Lynn had driven away.

Eventually, she became aware of someone standing next to her. She turned, startled, to find a man looking in the same direction she had been staring. At the sound of her shoes scraping the pavement, he faced her.

"Hello," he said simply.

"Hi," Jess slowly replied, all of Lynn's lectures about strangers running through her head.

He seemed to sense it. "You don't need to be afraid of me," he said reassuringly. When she raised a doubtful eyebrow, he smiled and gestured around the parking lot. "Look around; there's open space, lots of people – though not enough that anyone is really obscured – and I think that employee is keeping her eye on you." He pointed to the one he meant.

Despite herself, Jessica followed his finger. A twenty-something Sears employee was indeed looking at her. When Jess made eye contact with the woman, she pointed to Jess, then brought
her thumb and forefinger together, forming a circle, while fanning her other three fingers: "You okay?"

Jess hesitated, then nodded. She gave a thumbs-up, then held her index finger up: "I'm fine. Wait a moment?" The woman gave a thumbs-up back. Only then did Jessica decide to talk to the man. She turned to face him again.

"Who are you?" she asked bluntly, folding her arms.

"My name is Crawley," he replied. "I work for the Royal and General bank – perhaps you've heard of it?"

Jess shook her head. "If you're here to pitch your services, I don't want 'em."

Crawley smiled. "I'm not here to 'pitch' you anything. I wish to talk to you about your aunt."

Jess felt the blood leave her face. "What about her?"

"I'm just concerned that you won't be able to pay for her hospitalization. See, when something like this happens, hospitals get in touch with insurance companies, and insurance companies get in touch with their dependents. However, if the paying dependent is the one in the hospital - and there is concern over their ability to cover the cost the insurance company does not - the insurance company gets in touch with the paying dependent's bank to confirm their concerns. If the dependent cannot pay, it's the bank's job to essentially cajole the defendant's family into coughing up the extra cash – so to speak."

"What?"

Crawley frowned thoughtfully and said, "Okay, forget all the details. To put it simply, your aunt's hospitalization is a special case, and insurance companies don't like special cases. In this case, to use the word once more, your aunt's insurance company contacted her bank - the bank I work for - and essentially asked us to find a way to make her family cover the cost of her hospitalization."

As Jess processed Crawley's words, she felt like fainting. "But...I'm the only family she has..." she whispered.

Crawley nodded, saying, "Precisely why I need to speak with you."

Jess bit her lip. This guy seemed legitimate, but these days it was hard to tell. She tossed her head to get a stray clump of hair out of her eyes, and asked Crawley point-blank: "How do I know you're telling the truth?"

Crawley looked uncertain. "You can't," he replied, equally frank, "but I hope you will trust me."

Jessica hesitated again. "Okay," she said at length. "But I'm not going anywhere in any sort of vehicle with you."

Crawley smiled. "I wouldn't expect anything less from a well-raised girl."

Jessica wondered just what she had gotten herself into.

oOo

The unlikely pair walked across London in a tense silence. Jessica kept herself alerted for any sign of duplicity from Crawley, while he seemed almost irritated with her for doing so. Finally, they came to a building on Liverpool Street, where Crawley turned to go inside.

Jessica hesitated. It was only common sense to not get in a vehicle with someone you didn't know, but her aunt's various lectures had never dealt with buildings. Crawley waited for her at the door, looking impatient. Eventually, she gave a mental shrug and followed him, deciding that there had to be people within scream range inside.

Crawley led her across a dim lobby to a row of elevators. He hit the call button for one, and the door opened almost immediately. He gestured her inside, and she paused only a moment before complying. He hit the button for the fifteenth floor, and they ascended smoothly.

On the seventeenth floor, two people had watched the whole thing. The man now let out a low whistle. "I don't know whether to be impressed or disappointed," he remarked.

"Why do you say that?" the woman asked him.

"She followed him inside, barely hesitated. She came here with him in the first place. She's either very clever or very naïve."

"She could be neither," the woman whispered, so quietly the man could pretend to not have heard.

Nevertheless, he responded. "She could be."

The elevator doors opened. "Here we are," Crawley announced. He stepped out of the elevator, and Jessica followed, her eyes darting around the hallway. Crawley was already two doors down the hall.

"Where are we going?" Jess asked, still standing in front of the elevator.

"Just to my office," Crawley explained. "There are some sensitive documents there I couldn't bring with me."

"Why not?"

"She definitely doesn't waste words," mused the man on the seventeenth floor.

"For the same reason you are hesitant to trust me." Crawley answered Jessica's question with enough frankness in his tone to make her inclined to believe him. She paused a moment longer before nodding and following him.

Before she reached him, a door opened halfway down the hall. A man walked out, carrying a folder tucked under his arm. He closed the door carefully before turning. When he caught sight of Jessica, his eyes grew wide. He quickly stepped across the hall into another room and shut the door behind him.

Jessica frowned at his behavior. "Who was that?" she asked Crawley.

"Another employee." Was it her imagination, or did his voice seem strained?

A small frown appeared on Jessica's face, though she tried to hide it. "So what's in there?"

"Just a bunch of filing cabinets." Yes, his voice was definitely strained. "Here we are." Now there was relief instead of stress.

He opened the next door and ushered her into an office, presumably his. She glanced around as she walked in. Bland, impersonal, and boring. This office could have been anyone's.

"Please, have a seat." Crawley gestured her toward a chair in front of the desk, and she sat. "Would you like anything to drink?" he asked.

"I'm fine, thanks." In fact, she was a bit thirsty, but she was slightly put off by Crawley's over-accommodating attitude. He sat across the desk from her and started rummaging through the drawers. After a couple minutes, he straightened with a pleased exclamation.

"Sorry," he told her. "I thought I put this in a different drawer." She nodded her acceptance of his apology. "Now," he continued, businesslike, "we-" A ringing phone cut him off.

He answered it with a raised finger and apologetic look. He seemed to mostly listen, saying "Yes, sir" before hanging up. He faced her once more. "I'm very sorry, Miss bank president wants to see me, and I'm afraid he's just not the kind of man you say 'no' to." He rose from his seat. "I should only be five minutes. Do you mind waiting?"

"No." In truth, Jessica wanted to see if she could get into the "filing office" down the hall. Five minutes should be enough time.

Crawley nodded to her. "Thank you, Miss Fox." He walked briskly out the door, shutting it behind him.

Jessica waited for his footsteps to recede, then sat for a few seconds more, just to be safe. Then she got up and went to the door.

She eased it open with the utmost care. It opened toward the inside, so she would have an unobstructed view of the hallway. However, anyone outside would be able to see the rectangle of light before she saw the person.

The hallway was empty.

Moving as fast as she dared, Jessica slipped out the door. Turning to the left, she darted down the hall. Upon reaching her destination, she tried the door handle. Locked. She frowned, disconcerted. That's weird. But she wasted no more thought on it. With a glance at her watch, she reached up and removed two of the hair grips she had used to pin up her bangs that morning. She straightened the pins out, then inserted one end – the flat end – of each into the doorknob. Carefully, she picked the lock.
When it clicked three minutes later, she blessed her nosiness and her uncle with his locked gun cabinet. She twisted the knob, and it turned all the way. She allowed the door to drift open while she stuck the now-useless pins in her pocket. She glanced at her watch. One minute. There was more time than that, of course, but she needed to be back in Crawley's office before he returned. Pushing the door open the rest of the way, she slipped into the room, holding the doorknob so it didn't click when she shut the door.

When she turned from the door, her eyes met, not filing cabinets, but another office. She frowned. Why had Crawley lied to her? There wasn't a single filing cabinet in sight. There was, however, a computer on the desk.

She moved briskly over to it, pushing the button to power it up before she even reached the keyboard. She knew her time was limited, and she wanted to do as much snooping as possible before leaving.

The computer's welcome screen faced her. She clicked on the only name, and it asked for a password. She smirked. No mere password was going to keep her out of that computer. Squashing the small, protesting voice in the back of her mind, she hit a few keys in rapid succession. Fifteen seconds later, the desktop appeared.

Jessica's eyebrows climbed higher on her forehead with every file and folder name she read. Poison Mutations: Cyanide, Thallium, Atropine..African Uranium Movement...Russian Mafia report...nothing sounded like documents that would be on a bank executive's desk. She was about to click on one when the door opened.

She jumped. Busted. Surprisingly, though, neither of the men who had come through the door – one of whom was Crawley – asked her what she was doing. Instead, the strange man said, "Come with us, please."

"Who are you?" Jessica whispered. "You're no bank, so don't bother with that story. Who are you?"

Crawley sighed and said, "I'm sorry, Miss Fox. Your question is valid, but I'm afraid we're not allowed to give you answers. Now please-" the strange man raised a gun- "come with us."

Jess slowly raised her hands to shoulder height. "Or what? You'll shoot me?" she said defiantly. Despite the bravado in her voice, she kept her eyes firmly on the gun barrel.

"Only if you're uncooperative," was Crawley's decidedly un-reassuring answer.

Jess hesitated a moment more, rapidly weighing her options. Realizing she had none – at least, none that were particularly appealing – she chose the least unpleasant one and nodded sharply. "Fine," she said as she stepped out from behind the desk.

A/N: Duhn duhn duuuhn...What's going to happen to Jess? What sort of grief did she cause her aunt? Read on to find out!

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