Danny Ocean was not a morning person. He liked his heists at night, sometimes well into the morning. And after spending his evening swindling card players, planning multi-million dollar thefts or (lately) storming in Righteous Anger over his wife, ex-wife, and her new boyfriend, Danny thought himself entitled to to a nice lie-in in the mornings.
His first impression of Mr. Potter, then, was rather groggy and clouded by his sleepy fury at whichever dolt couldn't be quiet long enough to let him nap off the mild hangover he had achieved from the mini bar while practicing his Righteous Anger. Mr. Potter seemed a little short for the images Basher had talked into his head and his head was very fuzzy looking to Danny's still bed-bleary eyes.
No, he thought, blinking, not fuzzy, just wild.
Even though Mr. Potter was shorter than he had expected, there was an air of confidence about the man that made it hard to place his age. In fact, if the two Brits had not been standing side by side, Danny did not know if he would have noticed the height difference, a thought which he found a bit distracting as it was a necessity in his chosen career to pick up on details that others might afford to pass by.
A gut feeling told Danny that this man could lose himself in a crowd.
Until the newcomer looked up. His eyes were green. Very much so. Distinct and wonderfully green.
But even those, he mused, with some brown contacts could turn a shade off from hazel.
Hazel didn't catch your eye in a mob.
This new guy was the kind of stunning that could cloak itself, bend and distort to be what it needed to be.
Danny'd bet his week's winnings that this guy knew how to change the way he moved, walked. And though he still looked a bit fuzzy to his own sleepy eyes, Danny knew without a doubt that this guy was a professional, down to the soles of his feet.
The newest recruit sauntered over to him, hand out.
"Mr. Ocean, I presume?"
Resisting the urge to rub at his eyes like a child, Danny replied, "Yes. And you are the Harry Potter that Basher has been talking up?"
"Yes, I am the Harry Potter." A glimmer of amusement passed through his eyes, "I hope I can live up to whatever tripe he's been pumping your head with. Easily impressed, that one."
"Oy! Don't talk about me like I'm some sort of crazed fangirl. Right here, you know." Basher piped up, crossing his arms.
"Quite, love," Harry crooned, "I'll stoke your ego later. Now, be a doll and let me talk to the nice gentleman."
Danny watched with a sort of humor born of mild confusion, wondering how the next few days would pan out.
"Well, I understand you've come a long way to get here, Mr. Potter-"
"Harry, if you would."
"Harry, we're very grateful you could pull this on such short notice. As you've probably been informed, we need a widespread power outage for approximately 30 seconds without it going out for more than a couple minutes, do you already have a method chosen? We have purchased all the rest of the materials already, but we can see what can be shipped last minute if you are in need of anything."
"Mr. Ocean, please. I keep the materials necessary for this kind of thing on me all the time, I would not require any additional tools or supplies. Though, to be fair, I have never formally agreed to take on this job."
Rusty stared at Ocean, incredulous. Making sure to sound out his words, "You mean to say that he flew across the ocean, overnight, to tell us that he'll think about it?"
"That's pretty much the gist of it. Then he told me he'd be calling Basher after he hit up some tables and walked out the door." Danny sighed, swishing the coffee in his cup in slow circles. "If he doesn't take it, we're kind of screwed."
"Can't Livingston hack the power company? Or Basher put a timed charge on a generator?"
"Livingston's spread too thin, between keeping the spider hack under the radar and dealing with the brothers for the van, he can't be close enough to the station to be effective. If Basher blows things up, it shows the cops that something's going on. By himself, Benedict will most likely choose to keep the theft under wraps and deal with it himself, but outside property goes boom, we have an investigation. Messiness. Loose ends. Besides, we need the power back on after the outage in order to finish the job."
"I hate relying on outside people," Rusty moaned.
"I think he'll take it. I hope he does. He's good."
Rusty raised a brow, "You saw this shaking his hand while rubbing sleep out of your eyes?"
"He had that air. You know what I mean, I haven't seen him work, but I bet he'll be a master. He should be at the Bellagio right about now. I'd be watching right now if it wouldn't seem as if I were snooping."
"So you want me to snoop, that's it?"
"Well, I'm not going to tell you what to do."
"But you want me to snoop."
Danny took a sip of coffee, savoring the caffeine as it wound it way through his veins.
"Okay, I'll snoop."
Danny took another sip of coffee, smirking into the cup as Rusty worked his way to the suite door.
Rusty walked into the Bellagio, strolling with his chips while trying to act like he knew where he was going. Past the craps tables, slot machines. Examining a poker table, Rusty realized he had no idea what the new guy, Harry Potter, looked like and he was damned if he would walk anymore than he had to for this British bastard.
He sat at nearby table with a brunette young man and a couple older gentlemen who had 'retirement party' written all over their faces. Probably cops. Cops always forked over cash like they handed out tickets, ridiculously generously.
The dealer slid a hand over.
Rusty played a hand before deciding that this Potter business needed to get done before he could have play time.
As Rusty dug for his phone to call Danny to get a description, he raked his eyes once more over the crowd, willing the guy to leap out at him with the force of his mind.
What do British people look like? He thought to himself, Bad teeth, right? Uptight. Tea. Pale. They don't get a whole lot of sun, right?
Unfortunately, there were no tea-drinking, crooked-toothed, uptight, super-white men at any of the tables.
"Ahh, shit." He swore as the cell phone's annoyingly unfazed voice stated that in no uncertain terms was his subpar phone service getting through the walls of Terry Benedict's ridiculous fortress of sin. One of these days, he promised, I'll putting one of these millions to a solid cell phone plan before it gets blown on all the illegal parts.
"You alright?" The black haired man looked over at Rusty, politely concerned with the flickers of an inside joke twitching the corners of his mouth upwards.
"Fine, just shitty cell service anytime I walk between two walls. Should be used to it by now." A chuckle. "Uh, Dwight Cartwright at your service."
"Nice to meet you... Dwight. Garret Harris. I understand that it's proper manners to say 'it's a pleasure to meet you' before we trade useless information, but I hope you'll forgive my rudeness as you just lost me a thousand dollars in that last hand.."
Rusty raised his eyebrows, "Oh no, the pleasure is all mine."
The new man, this Garret, laughed. It was a real laugh that came from deep in his chest and gave Rusty a nice little shiver up his spinal cord. "Well, I suppose if we're to swap our equally boring life stories then I can lend you my phone."
Curiosity itched at the back of Rusty's brain, leading vague familiarity by the hand. So he asked the number one stupidest question for a con man, "You seem familiar, have we met?"
Garret raised his borderline freakishly green eyes to Rusty's, again with that twitch of a smile at the corners of his mouth. "Who knows, maybe we've met once or twice some drunken night."
"Mmm." Rusty pushed the brain itch back and dialed Danny's phone instead of asking another 'useless' question.
"Yeah?" Danny answered.
"What does this guy look like again?"
"Black hair, green eyes. Confident walk. Guy looks like he knows what he's doing, so my bet's on finding him either at high roller table or a low end table with one good pull. Stay inconspicuous. If this guy thinks we're watching him, don't know how he'll react."
Rusty hung up.
"Looking for someone?" Garrett inquired as he took back his cell.
"Yeah, business associate. Negotiating a merger today, but I just can't find the guy." Oh, God. The lying never seemed to grow old. It was like playing make believe, except the other person was truly convinced that the unicorn was coming.
"Well, I'm out." Garrett gathered his sizeable winnings and strolled to the door. As he began to round the corner of the slot machines, he called over his shoulder, "Hope you find this Potter guy, Rusty."
Before Rusty could quite remember that he hadn't given "Garrett" the names of either himself or the man he was looking for, Harry Potter was quite gone.
Rusty decided that, in the future, he'd leave the snooping, spying and recon business to Danny.