Disclaimer: I own neither Glee nor any part thereof. No money is being made off of this story and is intended only for entertainment purposes; therefore it falls within the parameters of "Fair Use"

A/N: Thank you to everyone for bearing with me through the holidays. It's a crazy time for me. Anyway, I hope everyone is still enjoying.

Chapter 3

Investigating

6:04 am EST, May 21st

Santana's eyes shot open. A quick examination showed that it was still dark outside and Brittany was still curled up under her left arm where she remembered last seeing her. She guessed that she'd been asleep for less than an hour, but it wasn't the duration of sleep that had her concerned but rather the fact that she'd done it at all. She hadn't fallen asleep without meaning to in almost eight years. That was part of her training. She was slipping. It hadn't even been twelve hours and already Brittany had put her off her game. To be fair she'd never spent five hours having the most intense sex of her life before either. She'd had and caused more orgasms than she could adequately recall, so maybe it wasn't Brittany putting her off her game. Maybe she'd just felt safe enough to relax and let her exhaustion from the marathon love making session wash over her.

She looked at the beautiful blonde sleeping peacefully next to her. Last night (and earlier this morning) it had seemed such an easy decision to give up on The Brotherhood to be with her when she was standing in front of her naked. Okay, fair enough, Brittany was still naked and maybe her being curled up against and partly draped over her was an even more beautiful sight than the wonder that was her naked form alone. Santana just couldn't help but think that things get said in throes of passion that weren't necessarily true and there had been a lot of passion in the last few hours.

She knew without doubt that she meant everything she had said, and she really, really hoped that Brittany meant what she said too but could she be certain of it? She was 99% sure since Brittany hadn't just said them in the throes of passion but explained to her that she was falling for her before sex ever entered the picture. She just couldn't help but wonder about that nagging 1% though.

On top of that she was still wondering how Il Maestro had gotten the orders so messed up. The very idea that this sweet, slightly ditzy party girl was connected to the Templars was ridiculous. It wasn't like Il Maestro to make mistakes. "Don't move until you are certain of the stroke" was the man's personal motto after all.

Santana was now suddenly cursing her ability to function on so little sleep. If she wasn't so well trained, she'd be asleep next to a beautiful, naked woman right now and not questioning everything she had ever known in her life, but she was and she had two seemingly irreconcilable facts that she had to piece together. Il Maestro didn't make mistakes especially not about targets and Brittany Pierce was definitely not a Templar. It was time for her to look around. She tried to extricate herself from Brittany as gently as she could. Weeks of study showed that she was a light sleeper, and disturbing her when she looked so peaceful was the absolute last thing wanted, even if it likely would have lead to even more mind blowing sex.

Just as she'd pulled herself out from underneath her, Brittany still mostly asleep murmured gently, "No leave." Santana was pretty certain that had she any intention of leaving the sheer cuteness of that would have broken her resolve.

"I'm not leaving. Just need to go to the bathroom," Santana said softly before pressing her lips into the girl's hair.

"Hurry back," she murmured again, "Miss you."

Yeah, that girl was a part of no one's evil plot.

Just so that she wasn't actually lying to her, Santana did make use of the facilities and then proceeded to look for anything that could even begin to connect Brittany to Abstergo and the Templars. The medicine cabinet revealed nothing of interest: aspirin, Midol, birth control pills. Her search under the sink was a likewise fruitless effort, finding only cleaning products. She moved to the kitchen cabinets and found nothing of interest, and barely anything in the way of food.

Her laptop had a password on it and Santana was no hacker but knowing so much about the girl it didn't take long to figure out that the password was "Beyonce." However that didn't accomplish much either since there wasn't much to go on therein, just a lot of pictures of people that Santana recognized from the dance studio or an older couple that she guessed were Brittany's parents. There were some bank records but there was nothing damning in them either. Brittany looked to have a sizable nest egg that Santana wasn't entirely sure where she would have acquired it, but nothing outrageous.

Santana was just about ready to give up her search. She was about to chalk it up to one of the great unknowable mysteries of the universe, something that she would never understand. Just for the sake of being thorough she decided to search the closet. Opening the door revealed the closet to be much larger than she'd thought. It was a walk in. The open closet door had always obscured Santana's view of it when she was surveying Brittany. She never thought much of it. Taking in the view, Santana noticed that apparently the exception to Brittany's Spartan lifestyle was her wardrobe. Both sides of the closet were stuffed full of clothes. Large opaque plastic tubs lined the shelves overhead and shoes cluttered the floor.

She shoved hanging clothes to one side or the other to feel along the walls to search for a false wall. Finding nothing, she searched through shoes that were big enough to conceal anything and again came up empty.

The first two tubs nearest the door had coats and sweaters, scarves and mittens, her winter wear stored. The next tub she inspected had yearbooks and cheerleading trophies and various paraphernalia from some place called Lima in Ohio. The next one Santana initially thought had been empty but actually had stuffed animals in it, mostly cats and ducks. Tub number five had winter footwear.

Just when she'd began to think that this had all be a huge waste of time she grabbed the sixth and final tub off of the shelf. It was so tremendously heavy that she'd nearly dropped it. Inside she found lots and lots of medical records, all Brittany's. There were blood tests for every conceivable illness, stress tests, MRIs, cat scans, EEGs, ECGs, it was almost endless. There were multiples of all of them, one of everything about every month for over two years. Santana was far from a medical expert but as near as she could tell all of the tests looked normal so she was confused by the enormity of them.

In the very bottom of the tub she found two things of note: one was a diary with a pen still tucked inside and the other was a manila folder bearing the company logo of Abstergo Industries containing a confidentiality agreement and some other paperwork all signed by Brittany. None of it made much sense to Santana but she expected that since she wasn't an intelligence agent. One thing did jump out at her was the name Project: Morningstar. She'd found material related to this project in the homes of her last three targets...the last three people she'd killed. Now she was forced to wonder how many of her targets had been innocent.

10:22 am EST, May 21st

"You're gonna kill me?" Brittany said in disbelief more than fear.

"No, honey, I was sent here to kill you. You've been asleep for hours if I had any intention of killing you, then you'd have never woken up," Santana said.

Brittany with pleading in her eyes said, "San, this isn't funny. You shouldn't make jokes like this." She drew up on herself, knees tucked under her chin as she pushed herself back up towards the headboard." You...you can't be... This can't be true. You're not a bad person, I know you," Brittany was on the verge of full blown panic.

"I'm not a bad person, mi preciosa, but I'm also not joking," Santana said careful to keep her voice level so as to excite the emotionally fragile girl. "I am a professional killer and someone very powerful did send me here to kill you."

"Y-y-you kill people?"

"Bad people, very bad people, and only very bad people."

"I'M NOT A BAD PERSON!" Brittany bellowed before breaking out into tears.

Santana wanted to just wrap the girl up in her arms and hold her forever and reassure her that she knew that, but crowding her was probably a bad idea at the moment. Instead she just said, "I know you're not, sweetie. I know you're not."

"W-whoever sent you after me m-made a mistake," Brittany said.

"No," Santana said shaking her head, "he doesn't make mistakes, not like this anyway."

"So what are you saying?"

"I'm saying that he knew that you weren't a bad person and he sent me after you anyway," Santana replied, "I'm saying he's a bad person, that he's corrupted the organization I've dedicated my life to serving. That's why I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure you stay alive."

"Can't...can't you just leave and do that?"

Santana looked down and slowly shook her head before looking back up. "No, because he'll figure out that you aren't dead, have me killed, and then just send someone else to do the job," she said, "Someone who doesn't know the truth about you or just doesn't care enough to find out."

Brittany stared at her clearly unsure what to think about all of this. "So last night..."

"Was real," Santana said firmly, "I left a lot of things out, obviously, but nothing I said to you yesterday was a lie. Well, okay, I wasn't babysitting my niece and nephew the other day. I've actually never even met my sister's kids, but beyond that nothing was a lie."

"So your name is really Santana?"

She nodded. "Santana Christina Maria Lopez and you are now one of six living people who know that name."

"So you...and me?"

"I love you, Brittany. It wasn't a line to get in your pants. That connection that you said you felt to me? It was real and I feel it too. That's why am I about to go up against The Brotherhood to find out why they wanted me to kill an innocent woman."

"I don't know if I can trust you enough to love you back, Santana," Brittany said bluntly, "Everything I thought I knew about you is questionable at best and a huge lie at worst."

"Nothing was a lie, Britt," Santana said, "Some of it should have been. If you were just another assignment, I shouldn't have told you my real name and I shouldn't have gone on a date with you, and I definitely shouldn't have spent the night making love to you. If you need time to be able to trust me with your heart again, I understand, but it may become necessary in the very near future for you to trust me with your life without a second thought. Do you think you can do that? If nothing else can you trust that I don't want to see you hurt?"

"Yes," Brittany said softly.

"Okay," Santana said, "to get the Brotherhood off your back I need to know why they're so interested in you in the first place. Can you please tell me what you know about Abstergo and Project Morningstar?"

"Um, yeah," she said, "Can you put some clothes on first? Your body is really distracting."

Santana smiled. "I'm glad you think so," she said flirtily, "I just wanted you to know for certain that I didn't have anything concealed on me."

"I get it, San. I do," she said as she got back up from the bed and retrieved a robe from the bathroom and threw it to Santana. Brittany then went into the closet and came back a minute later wearing an oversized t-shirt. "I don't know what I can tell you about what you want to know. Three years ago I was studying dance at Juilliard and I was a million miles behind on my bills. I had scholarships for tuition but rent, food, heat, my part time job at a diner wasn't even close to enough to cover all of that. I started stripping a couple nights a week at an upscale place and did alright but then I heard about a clinical psychology study being done. I didn't have to take pills or do anything that might kill me and it paid $3,000 a session. I just had to spend twelve hours laying around while they watched me to pay my rent for almost four months. The lady that brought us in to the observation room said that they were who you said Abstergo Industries and that we were a part of a classified study called Morningstar that was supposed to help people with mental disabilities which made me think of this sweet girl Becky that I went to school with who had Down's Syndrome. That's it. That's all I know. I don't know what they were observing or why or even how."

"And you just went once?" Santana asked, "I mean, you've got records of medical exams every month for years…"

"No," Brittany said quickly cutting her off, "I went that first time and figured that was it, quick, really easy money to keep me afloat for a few months. Then about two months later they called me to ask if I would come back in. I asked if they were paying me again and they said sure so I did, and then about two weeks after that they said I was a 'good candidate' for their study and asked if I wanted to start coming in every day, they worked around my school schedule, they even bumped me up to $5,000 a day. Every day for nine months, I went in, they observed me, and by the time it was over I bought this apartment and my dance studio, paid off my credit cards, paid my parents back some money they'd loaned me, and still had more than enough to finish school. They insisted that I get a full battery of tests done by my doctor to make sure there weren't any side effects."

"And were there?"

"I don't know… I don't… I don't know if it's a side effect or…" Brittany stopped talking and took a calming breath before continuing, "Or if it was the effect the treatment was supposed to have. They never said what the study was supposed to do, and I mean they never even did anything to me. I laid on an observation table for hours at a time and then I left. How did that fix me?"

"Fix you how, honey? What did they fix?" asked Santana.

"Since the treatment, I've looked into it," Brittany began, "and I'm totally not a doctor or anything, but I think I had an undiagnosed developmental disorder. I was always really good at dancing and things that involved motor skills but I was terrible at mental things, what's the word cognitive skills? I mean I could barely use a computer. My grades in high school were terrible. Honestly, the only reason I graduated was because I was a cheerleader and my coach wouldn't let my teachers fail me. But these learning disabilities… they're supposed to be lifelong things. I shouldn't be cured."

"And they never gave you anything?" Santana asked. "No pills? What about drinks?"

"When they brought us drinks it was always sealed bottles of water," she replied, "I've been over it a million times, but then never did anything. I came in and lay down on an observation table with a clear plastic dome over my head for hours on end and then I left."

"Yeah, you're right," Santana confirmed. "That doesn't make any sense. There's no way that The Brotherhood wants you dead because you were cured of a mental disorder, and there's no way that Abstergo is dedicating that much money to something as altruistic as researching developmental disorders."

"Are you sure?"

"About what?"

"Are you sure that Abstergo are the bad guys?" Brittany asked. "I mean, you've been told forever that they are, but it looks like the people who told you that aren't really all that good either, so maybe they were lying about that too."

Santana shook her head with determination. "The Brotherhood may have been tainted… or who knows, maybe it was never as on the level as I was raised to believe, but I've seen with these two eyes the things that Abstergo does to people. They are not the good guys, honey. That's for sure."

Brittany said, "I have no idea what to be sure about anymore."

"That's…" Santana's reply was cut off by the sound of a key sliding into one of the lock on Brittany's front door. Her eyes shot to the door and then to Brittany. She whispered, "Does anyone else have a key to your place?" Brittany with wide eyes silently shook her head. Santana pointed past Brittany and said, "My purse." Brittany tossed the bag at Santana who was already up out of the chair by the window and heading for the door. She caught the bag as she heard Brittany's deadbolt come unlocked; the snap lock was already undone. The invader had only the doorknob left to undo. Santana quickly brandished the dagger that she'd brought with her last night. The dagger that was intended to be Brittany's end and the woman that was meant to kill her would now help to defend Brittany and her home; the irony wasn't lost on Santana.

When the doorknob clicked, the door pushed open and a familiar voice said, "Miss Pierce?" It was Sam, the flirty maintenance man, and before he knew what was going on, Santana grabbed him by the arm and slammed him roughly into a wall and then arm dragged him to the floor. He impacted the hardwood roughly with a grunt. He was clearly not expecting a confrontation. Santana moved to mount him putting all of her weight on his upper chest and pinning his arms out his sides with her knees.

She pressed his cheek to the floor facing away from Brittany and stuck the tip of her dagger against his Adam's apple and said, "You have exactly ten seconds to explain what the fuck you are doing barging into this apartment, you fish faced son of a bitch! After that, you're just a stain on the fucking floor for my detail man to deal with, so talk!"

"Firebrand," he said.

Santana's eyes went wide, "How the FUCK do you know that name?"

"Barracuda," he said.

"You're Barracuda?" she said.

"Yes," he said.

"Protocol 22."

"Tadpole." Santana tossed the dagger aside and climbed off him. "Why are you still here?" he asked.

"What's going on?" asked Brittany still sitting stunned at the goings on of the last couple of minutes.

"Wait, she's still alive?" he asked as he stood up fully taking in his surroundings. "And you're wearing her robe? Aww, Jesus! You fucked her instead of doing your damn job? How fucking unprofessional can you get, Firebrand?"

"Okay, first of all," Santana said also standing up, "stop calling me that. I hate fucking codenames, so you're still Sam and you can all me Alexa. Secondly, if you ever question my professionalism again, you'll go back to the floor again and stay there. And finally, she's not dead because she's innocent. She's not an agent, she doesn't even work for Abstergo, she was just a human test subject for a while."

"Your boss messed up?"

"You're connected to the Brotherhood, you ever known him to mess something up this big?"

"He's dirty?" Sam asked.

"You tell me," Santana said, "You've undoubtedly been keeping tabs on Brittany like I have. She strike you as the global threat type to you?"

"Can someone please tell me what is going on?" Brittany asked.

"Sorry," Santana said, "Sam, here, is my detail man on this job and was on a couple of previous operations, too. He comes in after I've eliminated a target and makes sure it can't be traced back to me… or to anyone. He cleans up all trace evidence."

"So you kill people," Brittany said looking at Santana then looked over to Sam, "and you help her get away with it?"

"Bad people," Sam and Santana said in unison.

"So that night I invited you up for a drink," Brittany said to Sam, "is that why you said no?"

"Believe me, that is the only reason," he said. "I wanted to say yes, but unlike some people, I am a professional."

Brittany said, "Sam, you can't blame, Alexa, she's in love with me."

"Really?" Sam said looking at Santana, "You went there to get laid?"

"No, it's true," Santana countered, "I know it's a total cliché. Killer falls for the target but it fucking happened."

"So are you guys running?"

"Not until we need to," Santana said, "and unless you're planning on reporting us to The Brotherhood, I can shine them on for another week or so which should be long enough to figure out what Il Maestro wants her dead for which sound be sufficient dirt to get him to leave her alone."

Sam shook his head looking at the floor. "You don't have a week."

"Damnit, you reported in to your handler?"

"I'm sorry," Sam said, "If I'd known about her and you guys… I-I'll tell them that I was wrong. That it wasn't you, that the job hasn't been carried out yet."

"No," Santana said, "that'll just provoke too many questions. You'll end up in front of an intelligence team, and honestly, I don't trust you not to crack for them. Hell, I don't trust myself not to crack for them. Brittany, honey, that time I was telling you about where you'd have to trust me without question? It's here a lot sooner than I thought it would be. Please go pack, essentials only. Comfortable clothes and shoes, anything you absolutely can't live without. If you have any cash stuck around here anywhere get that too."

True to her word, Brittany listened and went to do as asked only saying, "Okay."

When she was gone, Santana turned to Sam and said, "I need to know why you're helping us. I need to know that I can trust you not to sell us out to the Brotherhood."

"Because you're right," Sam said, "she's not a part of any plot to take over the world. You're not the only one to be charmed by her. And let's just say that my air of professionalism wasn't always so, and you aren't the only one to cross a line that The Brotherhood disapproved of."

"You fell for a target too?"

"Not a target," Sam said, "An assassin. I've got some cash if you need it."

"I could use a favor more. Do you know a reliable forger who's not connected to the Brotherhood at all?"

"Yeah," he said, "there's a guy down in Middletown, New Jersey, goes by Puck. He should be able to help you out."

"Puck, as in A Midsummer Night's Dream?"

"Knowing him it's more likely a hockey reference. When you talk to him, he knows me as Evan." Santana nodded in understanding. "What should I report back about this?" he asked pointing to the room around him.

Santana looked around and sighed. "Don't lie," she said, "but be extremely stingy with the truth. Say that you saw me in the building and assumed the mission was a go. You entered the target's apartment the next morning and found no dead body, which is the truth. Tell them you went forward with the detail job in the room just to be sure. Actually do the detail work… just to be sure. And say that you await notification of further need of your services. That should keep you in the clear and in The Brotherhood's good graces."

"Thanks, Alexa."

"I'm pretty sure I'm the one that should be thanking you, Sam. You're pretty much a prince," Santana said.

"Then do me a favor," he said, "you familiar with an assassin named Ladybird?" Santana just shook her head. "Okay, so this is a long shot, but if you ever encounter her tell her that Barracuda said I'm lucky to have been where I have been. Say it just like that, okay?"

"Okay, will do," Santana said. Brittany emerged from her closet with one very large, very heavy duffel bag slung across her shoulder and one smaller bag in hand. "You ready?" Santana asked gathering her clothes from last night.

"As I'll ever be."