A/N: Apologies for the delay! I had two big medical exams to take, and my beta has been very busy as well. Hopefully the length of this chapter will make up for it. Once again, we're diving into Dean Winchester dreamland.
"Page. Page. Earth to Agent Page."
CIA Special Agent Jimmy Page forced himself to glance up and away from the debriefing notes in his hands and the paperclip that he had been tracing with his thumb, again and again, for the last five minutes. His throat dry, he looked along the conference table, his gaze skittering over the tanned skin and wavy cafe-au-lait colored hair of the woman three seats away from him, until it reached the white board at the head of the table, where his boss's boss, Assistant Director Henriksen, was glaring at him impatiently.
"Apologies, sir," Jimmy said quickly. "I was reviewing some of the details for tonight."
Henriksen raised a single dark eyebrow. "Well, now that you've joined us, we can review them together."
The tan woman three seats down made a choking noise that almost sounded like a cough, but Agent Page knew better. That was a laugh. Slightly humiliated by having been called out by the Assistant Director, he stared down at the notes in front of him as if his eyes could burn through the paper. The woman coughed again.
"You need a lozenge, Agent Lyons?" barked Henriksen.
"No, sir," said the woman in a honeyed voice of utmost professionalism. "Won't happen again, sir." She turned her head, and for a moment Agent Page caught a glimpse of familiar brown eyes, glinting with amusement.
"It had better not, Now, if you'll all turn to page two . . ."
Special Agent Page listened with only half of his brain. The other half was still too discombobulated. What was Hope Lyons doing here? He had not seen her in - God, it had to be what? Five years at least.
He scanned the details of tonight's operation, trying to pretend that her presence had not thrown him. They had been friends, once upon a time. Met during orientation at the Farm. They'd been in the same cohort during training. Ate lunch together every now and again. Neither of them'd had anyone show up at graduation. Most of the other cadets had somebody - a parent, a spouse, a sibling. Not Jimmy. And not Hope. They'd gone out to dinner with a few of the other 'orphans' as their combat instructor had jokingly called them.
But they hadn't lasted at dinner long. Hope'd come up with some excuse before dessert arrived, and the next thing he knew, he was following her into some motel room and they were going at it like rabbits.
It'd been like that for a long time. For the first two years out of the Farm, he and Lyons had been assigned as partners. The suits upstairs seemed to think that they worked well together. They did - Jimmy had to remind himself - and not just at the sex thing.
Two tours in Afghanistan and a third in Iraq with the army had zapped him of most of his people skills. At least the ones that didn't involve lying. But that was the thing about Hope. She didn't give a damn about his people skills. Hers were more than enough to make up for them. Hope had grown up on the streets of South Boston for most of her childhood, clawed her way out through the foster care system. She had survived some pretty rough places, and most of her scars tended to be on the invisible side. Jimmy wasn't supposed to know any of this, but then again, they'd been partners.
He knew more things about Hope than anyone in the Agency ought to know about each other, and it went both ways. They were the only ones who were, as Jimmy's immediate boss Agent Harvelle put it, 'willing to put up with your manipulative crap.' Sometimes, Jimmy wasn't exactly good at that whole 'golden rule' thing. He struggled to trust his fellow agents. Everyone except for Ellen - Special Supervisory Agent Harvelle, that is - and Agent Lyons.
For two years, Agent Lyons had been his slender shadow. They criss-crossed the globe together - several times - traveling everywhere from Zurich to Kiev to Singapore to carry out the missions that the agency assigned them. It had been a perfect arrangement, or as perfect as such things ever became.
But then there had been Kiev and their giant mistake. Jimmy still wasn't sure if it had been her idea or his. Either way, the suits in Washington had finally gotten evidence of the sex thing. Agent Harvelle had harbored suspicions since their first week out of training, Jimmy knew, but she'd as much as told them that she didn't care. As long as he and Hope kept doing their thing, slipping past customs and weaving their way through half a dozen identities in as many weeks, Harvelle hadn't given a damn if they were frakking.
Washington cared. They had been separated, reassigned, and Jimmy hadn't heard so much as a squeak from Lyons. Not a call, not a text, not a damn email. And it had been five years.
Now there she was, sitting three chairs down from him, her dark brown hair a few shades lighter, a little more curled, her Irish skin surprisingly tan. (It had to be fake, thought Jimmy. No way Lyons could ever tan that dark. Even in Mozambique, she'd never been browner than him.)
"So, in summary," continued Henriksen, his low buzz of a voice reclaiming Jimmy's attention, "since the Metropolitan Gala is already going to be crawling with security, I want Roberts and Stevens to handle liaising with the FBI and the LEOs on this one. Page?"
"Yes, sir?"
"You and Lyons have the most experience. You're going to be our two on the inside."
"Excuse me?"
"I need you two to attend the Gala. You'll find all the things you need are already in your room at the Carlyle. Reservation's under Remington. Our intelligence is clear that the Falcon is in grave danger tonight. You must protect it, whatever it takes. The auction must go on."
Agent Lyons swiveled her head towards the Assistant Director. "Whatever it takes?" she echoed.
Hair stood up on the back of Jimmy's neck. He recognized that psuedo-innocent tone. It never meant anything good. For anyone.
Damn it, Hope, he thought fleetingly.
"Whatever it takes," repeated Henriksen. "I assume you can handle that?"
The woman chuckled, low in her throat. "I think me an' Page here've got that taken care of." She turned in her chair long enough to look at him, her gleaming smile predatory. "Don't we, Jim?"
Jimmy nodded at the Assistant Director. "We can handle it," he assured him with more confidence than he felt. He wasn't the type to get shook up, but working with Lyons had always been a little touch and go. Sometimes touch, then go.
"Good," said the Director. "God willing, we'll meet back here tomorrow morning to debrief. You have your assignments. Go to them. Team dismissed."
Agent Lyons filed out of the conference room with the rest of the team. Not once did she glance back at Jimmy to see if he was coming. She would meet him later at their assigned hotel. That was the way they had always operated. Jimmy didn't see any reason why a five years' hiatus would be enough to change that.
Jimmy fumbled over his paperwork and then slid it into the inside pocket of his long gray pea coat. It was a little . . . preppy . . . for him, but Ellen had recommended that he buy it once he'd been officially stationed in New York City six months ago. "You need to blend in, boy," she'd told him. "Or at the very least stand out in the right ways."
As long as the coat didn't itch, Jimmy didn't much mind. After all, he'd never really dressed in any way he preferred. When he was a kid, his father dictated his wardrobe - in the sense that whatever his dad bought was what he wore. After high school, it had been ROTC and the university wrestling team dress code. Then it had been the Army. And then the Agency. And, at one point in time, Lyons.
Save for Henriksen, he was the last to leave the room. As Jimmy approached the door, the Assistant Director cleared his throat. "Agent Page, one thing before you go."
Folding his coat over his arm, Jimmy turned. "Yes, sir?"
"Close the door, son."
Nothing good ever came of a superior officer calling you 'son.' Jimmy fought the urge to gnaw on the inside of his lip. That had been a tell of his, once upon a time. Not anymore. He pushed the door to with his hip and stepped over towards the Assistant Director, automatically shifting to attention. 'How can I help you, sir?"
"I've got a special mission for you, Jim. Ellen says you're one of the best that she's seen in her thirty years working for the Agency. I've reviewed your files, and she's right. Nothing but commendations in the last five years. You're quite the Special Agent."
"Thank you, sir." Still, Jimmy waited for the shoe to drop.
"You used to work with Agent Lyons, did you not?"
"Long time ago, sir. She was a good agent."
"'Was.' Funny you should choose that word."
"Sir?"
Henriksen lowered his voice to just above a whisper. The volume of secrets. Agent Page felt a pit growing in his stomach. In his line of work, secrets always boded ill for somebody. "We have reason to believe that Agent Lyons is conspiring with the North Koreans," he said slowly, enunciating every word so that there was no room for misunderstanding. "We've had suspicions for quite a while, but no hard evidence. Well -" he laughed in a way that wasn't a laugh - "the evidence came in last week."
Jimmy straightened his shoulders even further. "Why are you telling me this, sir?"
"She's been very careful, but from what we've been able to uncover, Agent Lyons was turned shortly after your partnership ended. Which makes you her last partner. Which makes it your job to clean up this mess."
"I'm . . ." the man hesitated. "I'm not sure I understand, sir."
"Clean up your mess. That's an order, Agent Page."
This time, it was impossible for Jimmy to deny understanding. Instead, he simply bobbed his head once and watched as Henricksen left the room. For a long moment, Jimmy stared at the charcoal pea coat folded his arm, lost in uncertainty. Then he nodded again, this time to an empty conference room, slipped his arms through the sleeves of his coat, and headed for the Carlyle.
"Room for Remington," Jimmy said to the man at the front desk, tucking his chin to the side so that his features would be obscured from the security camera nailed to the wall above the hotel clerk.
The balding man smiled at him obsequiously. "Your missus was here earlier," he said, his grin showing far too many teeth. "She took the only key, but it's room 4-F. Just to your left after you get off the elevators."
"Thank you," replied Jimmy. He followed the clerk's directions to the elevator and stepped inside. The special agent kept his eyes pinned to the closing doors as the elevator began its shuddering climb upwards.
A minute later, he knocked once on the locked door to room 4-F. The door swung open before the ringing echo of his knock had died away. A tan hand shot out into the hallway, snatched at the collar of his pea coat, and dragged him into the room.
"What, no hug?" teased the brunette woman from the debriefing as she released him. She pushed the door closed and locked it. Hope Lyons.
His mouth was oddly dry. Jimmy could barely take his eyes off of her long enough to survey his surroundings - an expensively shabby standard hotel room with a single king-sized bed in the middle of the place. Damn the agency. If he didn't know better, he would have sworn they were trying to . . . Well, perhaps that was part of the game after all.
"Long time, no see," he said lamely. "Where you been, Hope?"
She shrugged effortlessly, a knowing glint in her dark eyes. "Same place I've always been, Page. Wherever the agency sends me. You know how that goes." Hope crossed the room to lift a faded red duffel bag up onto the bed. Her back turned to him, the agent unzipped the duffel and began rummaging inside.
"Whatcha got there?" Jimmy asked in a casual tone, his right hand slipping inside his coat to settle on the grip of his Glock.
"Research." Hope dropped a stack of papers a good six inches thick onto the floral comforter. "And snacks." She produced a brown paper bag stained liberally with grease at the corners and tossed it across the room to him. "You still like pickles on your burgers, right?"
Releasing his service weapon, Jimmy caught the bag automatically, and then his eyes locked on the logo printed on the grease-soaked paper. His mouth tightened, and once again he was tempted to bite his lip. "Jimmy Dean's? Like the breakfast sausage? That's new."
Hope flopped onto the couch near the hotel room door, the bundle of papers tucked into the curve of her elbow. "Place just opened around the corner. I was feeling charitable, so I got you one."
It was more than that, and they both knew it. The greasy paper bag was a warning shot. In her characteristic round-about way, this was Hope reminding him of all the things she knew about him. She knew his actual name - the one he had been born with, not the one the Agency issued assignments to. At least, she knew part of it.
Long before Jimmy Page existed, there had been an Army sniper named Dean, who served three tours and went home to Fort Riley to put a bullet through his own brains. He'd been all set to do it, and then he got a call from D.C. There were some suits in Washington who wanted to interview him, wanted to offer him a job.
Dean the sniper had had nothing left at that point. His mother died when he was a child, his father had passed away from a stroke while he was at KU, and his little brother had suffocated to death trying to save his girlfriend from an apartment complex fire while Dean was serving his final tour. He had nothing left but the rounds in his service weapon. And it didn't much matter if he died in Kansas or D.C. So he had taken the interview. By the time he took the posting with the agency, he had emerged from a chrysalis as Jimmy Page, leaving dead-beat Dean with his family of ghosts far behind.
Jimmy unwrapped the hamburger with a little extra force, then he plopped his weight onto the couch next to Hope, struggling not to think of all the ways she truly could make his life a living hell, double agent or not. "I do still like pickles," he said cautiously. "Thanks."
"What are partners for?" Hope began spreading her many pages out across the hotel room coffee table.
"Mmph," murmured Jimmy in careful agreement, his mouth filled with hamburger. He swallowed. "Shall we get down to business?"
"And here I thought you'd never ask," cooed the woman, grinning wolfishly up at him in a way that reminded Jimmy sharply of why he had been so willing to get into trouble with her in the first place, all those years ago.
Damn it. Even without Henricksen's orders, he was screwed. With them, he was headed straight to hell.
Jimmy wasn't entirely sure how it happened. They'd spent hours pouring over Hope's intel and strategizing their final plans for the evening. Henriksen had given them basic instructions, but, as always, the exact details were left to the partners. On some level, Jimmy was surprised how easily he fell back into his former rapport with Hope as they bickered over tactics. After all, it had been five stinking years.
Apparently, however, five years meant nothing, not when they wrapped up their plans with a full two hours before they needed to be at the Met. Jimmy couldn't say how it had happened, but one moment he was carefully feeding the last of their notes into a portable paper shredder perched over the hotel room trash can. In the next moment, he was stripping himself out of the neatly tailored suit (another part of the wardrobe Ellen had insisted he buy) and falling into bed with Hope.
A voice in the back of his head whispered that he couldn't - he shouldn't - not with Henriksen's special mission hanging over his head. But Jimmy had never been great at denying himself, and with Hope there, lean and tan and scarred and dangerous, his resistance crumpled into ashes.
If the Assistant Director was right, if Lyons was truly a double agent, chances were she might kill him at any second. Jimmy laughed at the thought, although it was enough to turn him on even more, driving him to ram his heels down in the mattress and twist his hips to flip their interlocking bodies until Hope was trapped beneath him. So what if this was dangerous? There was always danger.
Besides, he knew Hope. If she was going to betray him, she wouldn't do it now. She would wait until she had used him to get the Falcon. When there was a mission on the line, Hope was far too practical to kill an asset. So he closed his eyes and drove all thoughts of Henriksen out of his mind.
After, when his former partner finally released him and rolled away, wrapping herself in the sheets, he stared up at the ceiling and said, "Forgot how many things we were good at."
Hope chuckled as she ran red-taloned fingers through her tangled hair. "Poor Page," she replied with an utter lack of sincerity. "Nobody giving you any lovin' these days?"
Turning onto his side to face her, Jimmy took in the fine layer of sweat glistening on her forehead and the handful of fading bruises scattered just below her left clavicle. Four of them, small and oval. He remembered the fifth, matching mark on her back. Not that long ago, someone had put their hand on her shoulder and squeezed.
He reached out with a single finger to trace the path of the bruises - one, two, three, four - and then retracted his hand. Jimmy glanced at his watch. "We got ninety minutes. Shower?" As he looked up from the watch face, he met her eyes, the brown irises almost black in the half-light of the hotel room.
Hope nodded but did not say a word until they were both standing beneath the spray of the palatial shower, passing an unnecessarily fancy shampoo bottle across the granite tile. Her good mood from earlier had disappeared, leaving in its place the woman who had schemed and fought and assassinated her way more than halfway across the world, Jimmy always at her side.
"You think they're listening?" she asked abruptly, massaging the expensive shampoo into her scalp while her ex-partner rinsed off beneath the shower head, raking his nails through his short hair.
"You don't trust the suits?" He kept his voice low, barely audible under the noise of the spray. Ever since the Farm, they had saved all the truly important conversations for the shower. If you talked quietly enough, not even the ears in the walls could hear you when the water splashed down.
The woman did not dignify his comment with a reply. Instead, she snorted and nudged him away from the water with a shoulder.
Jimmy held onto his next question until he had lifted the single bar of soap from its neat alcove carved into the granite walls. He ran the thin white square along his arms, leaving a faint line of suds from his shoulder along the bend of his elbows and then down to his fingertips. Then he continued soaping down his chest, his stomach - still slightly sunken in despite the hamburger earlier - and his legs. Finally, he asked casually, "You got anything for me?"
Tossing her head, Hope sent droplets of water flying across the shower. "Something's up with this gig, Jim," she said, her voice more serious than he had yet heard it. "I don't know what it is, but something's not right."
He shook off the sensation of guilt creeping up his spine. Instead, Jimmy raised his eyebrows. "Let me guess. Your spidey senses are tingling?"
"Shut up." Hope traded places with him once again, this time with a quick jab to his ribs. "My spidey senses saved your ass in Kiev. And in Vancouver. And that time in Leeds."
"Don't forget San Diego," he reminded her as he rinsed off.
"How could I?" grumbled Hope. She squirted a dollop of conditioner into her hand. "I'm just saying, keep your eyes peeled, okay?"
Relieved that thus far she had not realized that he was the thing that was off, Jimmy smiled down at her, "Yes, ma'am."
He stepped out of the shower while Hope finished rinsing off and reached for the bar of soap and a disposable razor. By the time she emerged five minutes later, wrapped in one of the Carlyle's complimentary bathrobes, Jim was halfway dressed in the clothes that had been left for them in the hotel closet. Hope noted the crisp pleats of his tuxedo trousers with a soft whistle and darted into the closet to retrieve her own garment bag.
Jimmy gave her another fifteen minutes before he joined her in the bathroom. He stared at his reflection in the mirror as he buttoned up his white dress shirt and carefully looped his black silk bow tie around his neck. He pretended not to notice the other reflection in the mirror, but every few seconds his eyes swerved to the side. If they were working this gig together, he might as well appreciate the view.
And what a view it was - the agency had splurged on these covers, and in that slinky green satin gown with the plunging halter neck, the open back that revealed nearly the entire extent of her spine, and the slit halfway up her left thigh, Hope was a vision in green. Her mostly-dry hair was piled into a messy chignon at the back of her head, and she frowned at her reverse image in the glass as she swept crimson across her lips and spread black over her full eyelashes.
Satisfied with her face, the woman dropped the tube of mascara back into the small makeup bag on the counter. She fished inside the bag for a moment and then withdrew a small cardboard package. Humming under her breath, she tugged out four strips of double sided tape and began securing her dress to her skin so that none of her bruises were visible.
"Help," she said commandingly, passing a fifth strip to Jimmy. "Get the one on my shoulder."
He draped the satin over some idiot's thumbprint and kept it in place with the tape, then returned to the bedroom for his tuxedo jacket and his Glock. Sliding his arms into the sleeves, he came back to find Hope standing with one black stiletto propped up against the toilet lid as she strapped her Beretta to the inside of her left thigh. Jimmy leaned up against the doorframe and watched his former partner's movements with the comfort of familiarity. Not for the first time, he wondered if he would truly be capable of carrying this mission through.
Hope glanced over her shoulder to see him standing there. She laughed. "Enjoying the view?"
"Always." It had been five years, he reminded himself. For all the familiarity of the woman's movements, five years had made strangers of them. Chances were, she was actually working for the North Koreans. Chances were, one of them would wrap this night up dead. Oddly enough, the thought was not one that disturbed him. It was all part of the game.
Jimmy cleared his throat. "You ready?"
"Yeah." The woman took one final glance at herself in the mirror, then she looped her arm through his as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "Let's go save us a Falcon."
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 8:30 p.m.
On some level, Jimmy was impressed with how easy this mission was going. The agency-provided attire was the right degree of expensive to allow them to blend in with the non-celebrity end of the guest crowd. They were neither too flashy nor too shabby to stick out, which permitted Hope to flash their invitations and squirm her way past the security guards at the front door without anyone asking Jim to remove his tuxedo jacket or check to see if they were armed. Considering that he had one automatic revolver just above his right hip and another strapped to his left ankle, this was just as well. Hope was packing not only the Beretta on her leg but also a stiletto knife attached to her lower spine with extra-strength double-sided tape. Plus whatever else she had neglected to tell him about.
Once inside the museum, they wandered casually around the outskirts of the central exhibition hall, casually not-glancing at the piece de resistance in the center of the room: the Maltese Falcon. The Falcon, the very same one that had catapulted Bogey to fame and noir to the forefront of American Cinema, had vanished for decades. It was thought to have been pilfered by some stage hand or consumed in the fires that burned down the studio a few months after Falcon had wrapped production. But then just last month, the ebony bird had turned up in the collection of a Russian oligarch, and now it was being sold to benefit his personal pet charity.
Or so the story went. Hope and Jimmy, not to mention the entirety of the CIA, had their doubts.
Hope gave the Falcon a long, slow look, and then with a light brush of her hand trailing along the length of Jimmy's forearm, she drifted away through the crowd of guests. Jimmy was unsurprised, as she had always been the more charismatic of the two of them. She had been the one to hobnob and lie and finesse her way into whatever locked room or bedroom the agency wanted access to. Jimmy broke through security systems and sometimes bones. Hope broke through people.
He watched her as she walked away, the edges of her shoulder blades pressing out against her tanned skin. The green satin of her dress swayed gently from side to side with the easy movement of her hips. Jimmy wondered briefly if he should offer her an out, if he should give her a chance to explain herself or even to run away before he put a bullet in the back of her head and dropped her body into Oyster Bay where no one would find her. Not that anyone would think to look. Hope, like Sherman marching through Georgia, tended to leave a trail of scorched earth behind her.
Jimmy knew, perhaps, more about her past than any other person, and even then, all he had was a fragment of points along a fuzzy timeline. Foster care. Juvy. A chunk of her late teenagerhood spent under the guidance of Southern California's most dangerous white and blue collar crime boss, known to the FBI, the DEA, the ATF, and the US Marshall Fugitive Task Force only by the moniker, "the Mayor."
The Mayor had been the one to send Hope to college in England, to study and to assist in his international business interests on the side. She stayed abroad after graduation, eluding Interpol as she slipped her way through European borders - until she was caught and flipped by the CIA.
Even at the farm, Hope had been a revelation. She was a decent shot, but despite her small build, it was in hand-to-hand combat where the Mayor's little girl truly shone. She fought desperate, dirty, and smart. She spoke four languages and used her body as easily and dangerously as she did her preferred stiletto knives. Rumor around the agency was that she had almost failed her psych eval, that she was precipitously close to being a psychopath.
Jimmy hadn't minded. He wasn't looking for his fellow agents to be good people, just for them to get their jobs done and to cover his six. And besides, for a while there Hope had been his psychopath.
Now, of course, as those too-familiar hips in green satin slowly sashayed across the room, Jimmy wondered if he hadn't been wrong. Maybe - if he had said something or did something earlier - maybe if he'd pulled in the reins on her instead of just frakking her - maybe they wouldn't be here now.
Pull it together, Page, he reminded himself with a slight toss of his head, snatching a canapé off a passing tray. You got a job to do. Falcon first. Then the other thing.
As he meandered through the crowd, Jimmy noticed one face that kept repeating, almost as if she were following him. A tall, curvy woman in her mid-thirties, with waves of black hair and dark almond-shaped eyes, wearing a slinky black minidress with a sweetheart neckline and sky high heels.
She was always there, hovering just at the corner of his peripheral vision. Jimmy had rounded the giant entrance hall twice already, and still she was there. Hope had long since vanished from his line-of-sight. Not that he was too concerned. Lyons could take care of herself.
He turned suddenly to the left to slip between a frazzled-looking man with the air of an investment banker and his equally frazzled wife in an attempt to shake his new tail. Jimmy covered half the length of the reception hall before the beautiful woman caught up to him. This time, he was ready.
Agent Page spun to confront her, his white teeth bared in a smile that was as full of Midwestern Kansas charm as he could make it. Jimmy had learned a few things from Dean, after all.
"And who might I have the pleasure of meeting?" he drawled, softening his voice with a bit of Southern twang.
To her credit, the woman did not bother to feign innocence. She extended her hand. "Lucy Liu, Assistant Curator of American Film."
Jimmy took her fingers in his. Bending over her hand, he brushed his lips against her knuckles. As he straightened, he introduced himself. "Pleasure to meet you, Lucy. My name's Jim." It was a common enough name. He jerked his chin towards the Falcon inside its glass casing. "What can you tell me about the guest of honor over here?"
Lucy blushed and began reciting the recent history of the Maltese Falcon. The vast majority of her tale was familiar to him, but he listened anyway, in case she knew something he didn't. After ten minutes of light conversation and even lighter flirting, the curator seemed to sense his fading interest, for she spotted a conveniently located friend in the crowd and vanished.
Once she had left, Jimmy resumed his patrol of the reception hall. To his intense frustration, nothing seemed out of place. No one was behaving suspiciously - at any rate no more suspiciously than inebriated celebrities and those with more wealth and champagne than sense tended to. A time or two, he caught a glimpse of someone who looked almost like Hope out of the corner of his eye, but every time it turned out to be some other brunette in a green dress.
Growing suspicious, he fished his work phone out of the pocket of his tuxedo jacket and fired off a quick text message.
Where r u?
The response came back almost instantly.
Had to take care of something downstairs. On my way back.
She'd had to take care of something? Jimmy kept his expression smooth as his thumbs tapped heavily against the phone screen.
What happened?
Tell you when I see you.
Face blank as glass, the agent slid his cell back into its pocket. His stomach clenched uncomfortably. When she returned, he would have to interrogate her about her little trip into the bowels of the museum before he carried out Henriksen's instructions. That was exactly the sort of behavioral anomaly that the Assistant Director would have been worried about. Jimmy glanced to the right and to the left around the great entrance hall. Still no Hope in sight.
Suddenly, the air above the guests sizzled, and the entire hall was plunged into darkness. A cacophony of shrill screaming erupted all around him. Jimmy instinctively drew his service weapon, but as yet he did not move, momentarily disoriented by the pitch black all around him.
There came a great crash from the center of the room. As nervous anxiety turned to panic, the Gala guests began stampeding in all directions as they searched for the exits and the hope of street lights outside.
Agent Page adjusted his stance so that his feet were a shoulder-width apart and braced himself against the frightened wave of civilians pushing their way past him. As soon as the worst of the press passed, he took one careful step after another in the direction of the crash.
When the lights came back on as abruptly as they had gone out, it was instantly clear that the black-out had been no accident. The elegant glass case in the center of the room had been smashed utterly to pieces, and the priceless Falcon had vanished. Again.
Jimmy was not in the least bit surprised. He tugged his phone loose of his jacket a second time and quickly texted Henriksen to alert him to the situation. Then he called Hope. Twice. She did not pick up.
While he was swearing silently to himself, the busty Asian beauty from earlier approached him from the left and tapped him on the elbow, looking pointedly at the Glock still dangling loosely from his grip. "You got a permit for that?"
At his startled glance, the woman laughed. "Agent Lucy Liu," she introduced herself a second time, her silky voice now tinged with a hint of a British accent. She pulled upwards on her silver necklace to reveal a black ID card that had been resting below the neckline of her gown. "MI6."
Jimmy stowed his phone and showed her his own identification. "Agent Page. CIA."
Agent Liu smiled up at him. "I suppose you were also protecting the Falcon? It looks as though both of our higher ups were keen for the charity auction to proceed without a hitch. Alas." She turned to survey the glass shards littering the floor around them. "I'd call this quite the hitch, wouldn't you?"
The man grunted wordlessly, watching the continued chaos as half the Gala guests struggled to exit the reception hall. The other half were simply standing slack-jawed against the walls.
"Well," said the MI6 agent. She gestured to a trail of glass shards leading away from the Falcon's broken cage. "Shall we go bird hunting together, then?"
Jimmy thought one last time of the silent phone in his pocket and the woman who should have been on the other end. But finding the Falcon took precedence over locating Hope. So he gave Agent Liu another of his charming smiles and nodded at the broken glass. "After you."
Without much speaking, they followed the glass shards across the reception hall, past the entry to the first-floor galleries, and into a little-known staircase. From there, the trail led downwards, until they found themselves moving from the basement into the subbasement and then into the steam tunnels deep beneath the museum.
As they moved silently past great pipes at hip height and shoulder height, Jimmy wondered if it was worth checking his phone again. He had not felt it buzz, not once. Wherever Hope was, she had gone past his ability to help her.
Twenty minutes into the search, the CIA agent cleared his throat. "So, if your guys and our guys were both so focused on protecting our little lost bird, how come we weren't working together from the start?" It was something that had been bothering him ever since the well-endowed beauty had flashed her shiny ID card.
Agent Liu glanced over her shoulder at him and shrugged, her dark eyes gleaming in the half-light of the steam tunnels. "I don't know," she admitted. "But maybe it had something to do with the whispers."
Jimmy raised an eyebrow. "Whispers?"
"Rumor has it - had it - that a CIA agent was present when the Falcon was discovered in Ivan Ilych's estate. Rumor also had it that that same agent was - oh, how do you Americans say it? - Playing the field?"
The man swallowed. If his gut was anything to go by, Henriksen hadn't been the only one telling tales. "Rumor give this agent a name?" he asked nonchalantly.
"No." Liu shook her head. "Only specifics we ever got was that it was a woman. Brunette, according to most of the rumors. Although hair color doesn't mean much in our line of work."
"Can't disagree with that."
Traveling once again in silence, the agents moved quickly along the tunnel to where it forked into a 'T'. Jimmy jerked his head to the right, and they turned together. They had made it perhaps fifteen feet down their new route when a figure stepped out of the blackness between the tunnels, and they found themselves staring down the barrel of a Beretta.
Despite the gloom, Jimmy recognized his partner. His pulse accelerated, and the last dregs of his optimism crumbled into ashes. For clutched in the crook of Hope's elbow, was the ebony statue of the Falcon itself.
"Where'd you get the bird, Hope?" He tried to sound calm, but all that came out was suspicion. Henriksen had been right. Damn the Assistant Director to hell, but he had been right.
Hope's brown eyes darted from Jimmy to the woman at his side. "Who's she?" she demanded as her revolver swung to point at Agent Liu.
"She's MI6," Jimmy said shortly. "Hope, the bird -"
Now she looked back to her partner. "I got it from the guys who stole it. C'mon." She tilted her head further down the steam tunnel. "Let's go, Jim."
"Sure thing. In just a second, Hope. First, uh, why don't you let me carry the Falcon. In case something comes up. You're better at hand-to-hand."
The Beretta reversed position until it was aimed solidly at his chest. "No," said Hope. For the first time, Jimmy noticed a still-bleeding cut high up on her cheekbone. "We move together, but the bird stays with me."
Jimmy sighed, and the muzzle of his weapon slowly raised itself from the floor to point directly at his partner. To his left, Agent Liu did the same. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist."
For a long minute, the partners hesitated, neither of them moving as they stared each other down. Brown eyes locked on green, and Jimmy hardly dared to breathe. This - now - this was his moment to act.
He darted in, and Hope twisted to the side, curving her body to keep the Falcon further out of his reach even as she continued to aim the Beretta squarely at his heart. Jimmy ignored the threat of the hand gun. He pressed forward, bringing his left wrist up to smack against the stock of the Beretta and knocking it loose from her hand.
At the same instant, Agent Liu rushed them from the other side. Jimmy landed a couple of quick jabs to Hope's solar plexus. The rapid-fire blows were enough to distract her for a half-second, but that half-second was all that it took for the MI6 agent to slide her hands along the smooth surface of the Falcon and jerk it free from the other woman's grasp.
"What the f-" But before Hope could finish her sentence, an arm thick as a tree limb and sturdy as an iron bar locked around her waist and brought her toppling to the ground.
With the Falcon safe, Jimmy lost no more time in tackling his former partner. She was thrashing beneath him on the concrete, struggling to reach for the dagger strapped to the small of her back. Agent Page grabbed her by the shoulders and slammed her head down against the concrete. He paid no attention to the entreaties and imprecations spilling from her lips.
"Jim, listen. Stop. Please. You have to - listen."
But now his hands had settled at the base of her throat, and her words faded away into whimpers. Jimmy squeezed carefully, and the woman's brown eyes grew wild with panic. She clawed at his wrists in vain.
Ultimately, thirty seconds was all that it took for the CIA agent to subside into unconsciousness. Her former partner rose to his feet. Grabbing her by the upper arms, he dragged Hope away from the pipes and over to the other side of the tunnel, where the high temperatures of the steam running through the pipes could not burn her. Jimmy propped the woman up against the cinderblocks and fumbled in his pockets until he found the plastic zip-tie he was looking for. He bound her hands at the wrists and then hunted for a second zip-tie to restrain her ankles as well.
I'm sorry, boss, he thought momentarily, sparing Hope one final glance before he turned back to Agent Liu, who was retrieving the Beretta from the cold concrete. Couldn't put her down. Not enough evidence.
Aloud, he said, "Now what?"
Agent Liu narrowed her pretty eyes at him. "Do you think it's safe to leave her there? What if she escapes?"
Jimmy chuckled low in his throat. "She won't be coming round for a while. I'll come back for her once we get the Falcon back up to the reception hall and hand it over to the museum staff."
Every word of it was a lie. Hope would be awake in ten minutes - maybe less. And as for her staying put, Jimmy hadn't forgotten the stiletto taped to her spine. As soon as she opened her eyes, Hope would be twisting and contorting herself to reach that knife. Once she got her fingers on it, she'd be free in seconds. Jimmy only hoped that she would recognize the chance that he had given her and run.
If she didn't, if she showed that dark head of hers again . . . Well, Jimmy had the stones to fail Henriksen once by letting his old partner survive. It was more than his life was worth to fail a second time.
"All right, then," said Agent Liu, apparently taking his words at face value. "Shall we return to the Gala?"
"Yeah." His Glock pointed once more towards the ground, Jimmy followed the MI6 agent back into the dark from which they had come. They retraced their steps back to the 'T,' took a left, and continued towards the main underbelly of the museum.
As the minutes crawled by in the darkness, Jimmy wrestled with the uncomfortable feeling that by trying to betray neither Henriksen nor Lyons, he had effectively betrayed both. He had seen no alternative. When push came to shove, he couldn't finish the job. Even when faced with the blatant evidence of the missing Falcon in Hope's arms and no good explanations of how it had come to be there, Jimmy lacked the stomach to do his duty. He could do almost anything in the service of his country, but he could not do this. He could not kill her.
Why couldn't he kill her? The thought tugged at the fraying edges of his mind. He had killed so many people for the Stars and Stripes. Some of them had probably even been innocent. But he could not kill Hope Lyons, not when she was the one last fragile thread tying him back to the man he had once been, back before his life was completely steeped in death. Hope was the one thing linking him still with Dean, the man he had murdered in the days between receiving his new commission and joining the Farm.
Besides, he had loved her once. He hadn't intended to. After he had put his life as Dean and the memories that accompanied it to the sword, Jimmy had fully intended never to love anything ever again. And then he met Hope. Wild and clever and dangerous and fearless and beautiful, beautiful Hope.
By the time they had completed their first two months in the field, Jimmy had reluctantly acknowledged that he was in over his head with the brunette agent. He had not wanted to love her, but now that he did, Jimmy had no idea how on earth he was supposed to not love her.
It had been infatuation. He realized that now. An infatuated passion that soon faded into appreciation and respect. Maybe not love at all. Still, unless she shot first, he was incapable of pulling the trigger on her.
Five minutes passed in his uncomfortable reverie, and then a cold sensation slid over the CIA agent, causing the hairs to rise on the nape of his neck. They were being watched. Jimmy looked back over his shoulder, just in time to watch two tall, broad-shouldered figures emerging from the darkness.
"Watch out!" he called ahead to Agent Liu, moving between her and the newcomers. "Run!" he commanded. "I've got this."
"Do you?" asked the amused feminine British voice behind him.
The heavy stock of Hope's Beretta slammed into the back of his skull, and all Jimmy could see was blackness.
He woke to find a familiar brunette slapping him repeatedly across the face. Cheeks stinging, Jimmy blinked hazily, and the room around him swam into view, illuminated to blurry perfection by the faint light from a cell phone. Someone had cuffed him up to a ladder in a dark brick alley. A muddy alley, he reflected, glancing down to the red bricks beneath his feet. He looked upwards to see a brick sky.
Jimmy blinked again, and his senses became a little more clear. He could hear something now - something other than the irritated huffs of Hope as she ran dirt-stained hands over his already-ruined tuxedo, checking him for injuries. He could hear the rush of water. The man took a deep breath in through his nose and choked. It smelled horrible. Like that time that he and Hope blew up a trailer park septic tank back in Arkansas.
Screw alley. He was in a sewer. And the water was rising now, rushing in to the channel where they stood from a handful of steel sluice gates maybe fifty yards down. Soon, Jimmy imagined that he would be able to hear the wet thwapping sounds of the gummy sharks which were known to eat city workers who ventured down this far to check on the sewer lines. Or maybe it was giant alligators. Jimmy was never quite sure which rumor to believe.
"Shut up about those damn sharks," Hope growled through a mouthful of bobby pins. Huh. He must have thought that last bit out loud.
"What -"
Hope cut him off, uninterested in whatever it was that Jimmy had to say for himself. "So your little girlfriend wasn't interested in sharing her toys, huh," she said grimly, twisting to the side to get a better look at his handcuffs. "Surprise, surprise."
"She wasn't my girlfriend," Jimmy snapped back at her. "She was -"
"She wasn't MI6. I've seen her around a time or two. She works for the Koreans."
Jimmy stared at her in mild horror. "I thought you worked for the Koreans."
Hope jerked back on her heels, and the bobby pin in her hand fell to the sewer floor. "Who told you that?" she asked darkly.
He looked down to where the bobby pin had disappeared. No point in trying to keep secrets now. "Henriksen," he admitted quietly to the ground.
"Figures." The woman snorted. She pulled another pin out of her hair. "Let me guess. He told you that I've been playing a double-agent ever since our little escapade back in Kiev and that it was your job to clean up the mess by putting a bullet in my pretty head. That right?"
"How -"
"Because he told me the same thing about you, dumbass."
"Why - "
Shaking her head, Hope leaned over and got to work picking Jimmy's cuffs. "Turns out it's kinda simple," she answered shortly, the word almost muffled into the smudged fabric of his jacket.
"Oh?"
"I've been keeping my ear to the ground these last few years. While you've been running around proving your loyalty to the bosses upstairs, they've been clutching their pearls and panicking about what we did in the Ukraine. That it's gonna get out. That the agency's role will be revealed. It's been burning a hole in the back of their brains. So I guess they've decided to put a literal hole in the backs of ours."
Kiev. Of course it had been Kiev. It had been the last mission of their time together, and Jimmy could hardly remember the details now. He had drowned them in whiskey, walled them up like Amontillado, until nothing but blurry outlines remained. He and Hope had gone in to kill people, and they had killed the exact people that headquarters ordered them to, but neither of them had liked it.
Why hadn't they liked it? Jimmy racked his brains as Hope fidgeted with the bobby pin. Oh. They had been ordered to kill children. One of the last few lines that he and Hope had joked about never having to cross. And then the suits upstairs forced them to cross it.
His memories were clearer on the aftermath of the mission. Afterwards, when everything was done and he and Hope were on the retrieval plane back to their home base in London, they had said frak it. Literally.
Despite all the cameras on board, despite the presence of their new handler - some annoying dude called Walker who was subbing in for a few months while Ellen was on maternity leave - despite knowing the consequences of being caught, he and Hope had decided to join the mile-high club in the plane bathroom. Loudly. Noisily. Until they weren't even touching, just looking at each other and slamming their backs into opposite walls of the bathroom to make as much of a ruckus as possible, practically daring Walker to open the door and catch them violating the fraternizing regulations.
At that point, they would have done almost anything to get out of Europe, to get away from active duty for a hot minute or two. They might be vicious sons of bitches, but they weren't child killers. But then the agency had taken even that away from them.
"Oh." Jimmy finally said out loud.
"Yeah. From what I've been able to figure out, the suits aren't convinced that either of us are gonna keep our months shut about those kids. There."
With a gentle click, the handcuffs finally snapped open. Jimmy pulled his wrists free and rubbed at them halfheartedly. Already, the rushing water had climbed up past his knees. "So . . ." he felt embarrassingly slow. "So then you weren't trying to steal the Falcon, were you?"
Hope fished her stiletto dagger out of nowhere and began quickly slicing away at the skirts of her emerald dress until the fabric barely came to mid-thigh. "Of course I wasn't trying to steal it, you idiot." She rolled her eyes. "Who do you think this whole auction was set up by in the first place?"
Jimmy frowned at her. "You said you weren't working for the North Koreans."
"I'm not." The woman dropped the beautiful satin into the filthy water, but she kept the stiletto in her hand. "In case we meet any of those gummy sharks you were so worried about," she added, seeing the man's gaze fixated on the steely blade.
"If not Korea, then who?"
"Let's just say that finding the right home for the Falcon - for the right price, of course - was one of my last projects from university. You might almost call it my thesis," she grinned.
Jimmy groaned. A reference to her education could only mean one man. "The Mayor, Hope? You're working for him again? I mean, that is a lot more your style than North Korea, but still - "
"Not doing anything illegal," Hope pointed out. "Just paying back some old favors." She took a step towards another ladder a few feet further down the sewer tunnel.
When her former partner did not immediately follow, the woman turned and gave him a sharp look. "Water's rising, Jim. What's it gonna be: me or the gummy sharks?"
"You." Jimmy reached for her outstretched hand, clasping his fingers tight about her wrist and allowing her to drag him up the ladder after her. "Let's get the hell out of here."
January 23rd, 2016, Lebanon, Kansas, 5:45 a.m.
"Dean."
His brother's voice jolted him back from whatever insane funhouse land his subconscious had sent him to this time. Dean opened gritty eyes. He could faintly make out the outline of his brother's concerned face in the dim light streaming in from the hallway.
"What is it, Sam?" he groaned, longing to roll back over and tug the blankets over his head. For Sam to dispense with Cold War tactics and come into his room, though, this had to be serious.
Sure enough, the next words out of his little brother's mouth were, "We got a case."
"Kay." Groggy, Dean pushed himself up into a sitting position and swung his legs over the side of the bed. "Give me fifteen."
"Yeah." Sam was already retreating back towards the neutral zone of the hallway. "Sure."
And the Cold War was back. Grumbling to himself, Dean glared at his laptop, which was still perched on the far side of his mattress, the screen dark. He thought again of the bizarreness of his dream and shook his head to clear it. Secret agents and gummy sharks? That was the absolute last time he let a ghost talk him into mixing Swedish fish with James Bond.