A/N: Whoops, this is a day late. Yesterday was All-State Orchestra Auditions and the Homecoming Dance, so I was literally gone all day. I'm so tired now lol.
I've finished a college application! Yay for productivity!
-IMPORTANT QUESTION-
Thoughts on a sequel?
Thank you for reading :)
Snake took one glance at Eagle and called an ambulance.
Now he and Eagle were en route to the hospital and Alex, Danielle, Clara, and Tom were under strict orders to, no matter what, stay on the courtyard and wait for Wolf and Ben to arrive.
Alex intended to do the exact opposite.
"Quinn told us to stay here," Danielle said, her feet planted against the stones. "I'm not leaving."
"Fine," Alex replied, and he meant it. "Clara can wait with you."
"Are you mad?" Clara asked rather shrilly despite Tom's attempts to shush her. "You can't just leave - what if August comes back?"
"He won't," Alex said. He had seen the look on August's face when he saw Snake. August wouldn't be returning anytime soon.
Tom tried to pull Alex aside, whispering, "Alex, what are you doing?"
"The longer we wait, the worse chance we have of finding whoever stuck Eagle," Alex replied in kind, voice lowered to a barely perceptible pitch.
"You don't even know if they're still around," Tom said.
"They are."
"How do know?"
"The poison wasn't lethal," Alex said impatiently. "They want to see if it worked."
"What if they already did?"
"They didn't!"
Danielle and Clara glanced over, their attention drawn by his snapping.
Tom held his hands up in self defense. "Sorry, Alex, but the rest of us have no bloody clue what's going on. You can't just run off!"
Alex ran his hands through his hair. "Tom, I can't sit here and do nothing while Eagle is poisoned and the others aren't here. I'm the only one-"
"That's the thing with you, isn't it? You're the only one. You're the savior," Tom growled, jabbing his finger into Alex's chest.
Alex winced. Tom had poked him in the bullet scar, an unfortunate reminder that he could never outrun the things he did.
Tom was angrier than Alex had ever seen him.
"I think you like it," Tom continued. "You enjoy being the only one who can do all this stuff - you think it justifies the hell that MI6 puts you through every time they want something. You'd rather pretend to be Jesus bloody Christ if that means you don't have to admit that they've been using you this entire time."
"I know that!" Alex replied. He thought he should be angry, livid, even, but all he felt was. . . nothing. A big, black pit of nothing. "I know I was being used."
"Then stop!"
"Stop what?"
"Stop doing this, Alex! No one's forcing you! There's not a gun to your head this time or someone's Visa on the line." Tom smirked bitterly. "Stop trying to atone for someone else's-"
"Shut up, Tom."
"So I'm right."
"It doesn't matter." Alex shook him off and turned away, jamming his hands into his pockets. He didn't want to wait like an unruly child, he could do something, he could be helpful. . . he was nineteen, an adult! There wasn't any reason to listen to Snake -
Danielle had a reason, though.
Alex froze.
Just because he didn't have a reason to stay, that didn't mean the others didn't.
She was seventeen, and he - he was barely nineteen. They were both out of their depth at the Academy, teenagers surrounded by graduate students and prodigies, hanging on the edge of great careers if only they could make it four years of study. That was what Alex wanted his life to be. He'd rather worry about auditions than missions, performances rather than evaluations. He had worked so hard to make it this far after Jack died and he came back from America - he couldn't lose sight of that. This thing with MI6 was just temporary.
Suddenly, Alex Rider was afraid. He felt like he would shatter, one wrong move and everything would fall apart - one wrong move, and everything had fallen apart.
"Come on, Al," Tom said softly. "You're just going to get sucked in again."
Alex couldn't begin to describe the ethical dilemma that tore at his mind. Did he stay with Danielle, or did he try to find Eagle's assailant while there was still a chance?
His heart twisted. This time, he wasn't strapped to a chair. He had a choice.
There was no guarantee that the poisoner had waited around. Alex had a suspicion, though, another gut feeling that he would find some trace if he looked hard enough.
Anything could leave a trace, and he could find it.
"Alex!" Danielle yelled. Her voice wasn't harsh - it was never harsh. Despite everything she survived, she had yet to yell or curse or lash out at anyone on the magnitude that she had been treated with. It was no small miracle that she wasn't a psychopath.
He looked up, searching for her face.
She waved him over impatiently. Her eyes flicked from him to the other people standing in the courtyard. There weren't very many other students; most had cleared off to class, and those who remained were clustered in tight knots, occasionally glancing over at Danielle.
Alex hurried over to her. "What's up?"
Her eyes pierced his own. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine."
"I don't want to stay here," she said softly. "Everyone's staring."
"I know," Alex replied. The gazes of spectators made his skin itch. "What should we tell them at classes?"
"That my extremely jealous boyfriend-" she paused, her face twisting into a grimace at the word.
"No," Alex said. "You don't have to pretend he's your boyfriend. Just tell everyone that I pissed him off and he thought you were my sister."
"They do think you're some kind of cop.
He grinned so she wouldn't think he was upset. "Exactly."
"I see Luke," Clara said, coming over to them. "He looks lost."
"Let's go," Tom said. He hovered next to Danielle. "We should go to the hospital."
Alex agreed.
He took one last sweeping glance around the courtyard, but there was nothing suspicious to be seen. Whoever poisoned Eagle had vanished, a ghost hiding among the living.
After the incident with Ian, Danielle found herself much more reluctant to leave the house. The only reason she traveled into London was to practice, but even that was dimmed by the constant anxiety that someone was watching her. August hadn't resurfaced, not since the altercation with Quinn, but she expected him to turn up at any moment.
Her life did however, manage to fall into an unsteady routine.
Wake up, make coffee, visit Ian (who was relegated to the couch until he stopped throwing up the poison - diluted strain of the pufferfish venom, from what the paramedic said - and all other foods), take a shower, drive to the Academy, come home, repeat.
Danielle heard rumors about moving the Prime minister's reception up by, of all the insane jokes, seven months. She didn't have time to learn a suitable repertoire, and Alex refused to give her any more information.
Sometimes, she wanted to strangle that boy.
Three weeks after the afternoon in the Academy's courtyard, Danielle and Clara were left behind when Luke, Quinn, Tom, Alex, and Gwen were off to various haunts around London either to work or for work, a distinction Danielle was learning to be very important.
"What do you want to do?" Clara asked, kicking her feet up on the coffee table.
"Tired," Danielle muttered, adjusting her position on the couch. She lay flat out on her side, head propped on the armrest and didn't feel like doing anything.
"You've watched three seasons of that show where everyone gets their heart ripped out."
"So?"
"Dani, you need to do something else."
With a heavy sigh, Danielle swung her legs to the ground until her upper body almost slid off the couch. She pushed herself up, dizzy, and yawned. "You're horrible, Clara."
Her closest friend flashed a wicked grin. "I know."
Ben shook his head with an amused smile as the kettle whistled a demand for his attention.
"Are you making tea?" Danielle asked as she popped the seal on one of the milk bottles delivered that morning - a regular thing for that neighborhood, apparently, but she had no idea people still did that - and took a sip.
"Yep."
"May I have some?"
"Stop stalling," Clara said sternly, grabbing Danielle by the wrist. "Come on. The grass won't bite you."
"It might," she muttered, as she took another gulp of milk and, ignoring Ben's laughter, followed Clara reluctantly onto the back deck.
The air was crisp, heavy with the beginning of spring and warm enough that Danielle felt uncomfortable in the heavy sweatshirt she had stolen - that is, borrowed- from Ian while he was recovering.
She stayed on the deck as Clara ventured down to the grass. "Let's go down to the dock," Clara called up.
"I'll be right back," she said as Clara looked ready to launch into another tirade. "I promise."
Clara watched her skeptically but started towards the docks. As soon as her back was turn, Danielle scurried inside and shut the door firmly behind her.
"Everything okay?" Ben asked, having moved into the living room to one of the armchairs. His crutches were nowhere to be seen; Danielle suspected that Gwen wouldn't be pleased if she knew he was limping around on a barely-functioning leg.
"Just changing," she replied and jogged up the stairs.
She quickly tugged on a lighter shirt, still with long sleeves, and ran Clara's brush through her tangled hair. She didn't particularly feel like doing anything, but the wrath of Clara was, she thought, quite similar to the wrath of God. Besides, Clara was being nice. Absurdly nice for someone who had been coerced into Danielle's problem with August.
As she left her room, Danielle noticed that the office door was slightly open and remembered that she had a midterm on the biology class she was taking online. Her laptop was still at her flat - she hadn't been allowed to return for it, despite excessive pleading - so she borrowed Alex's when he wasn't using it.
She wondered if he'd taken it with him.
Nudging the door open, Danielle peeked into the small room. The laptop sat on the desk, plugged into the wall, surrounded by manila folders. A small humming noise came from one of the black USB drives plugged into the computer, and its light blinked red.
Danielle unplugged the charger and held the laptop under her arm as she slipped out of the office and closed the door tightly after her.
I need it for school, she told herself, trying to quell the uneasy feeling in her stomach.
"When will the others be back?" she asked Ben as she passed through the living room.
"A few hours," he replied.
She made up her mind to have all her schoolwork done before they returned so she could return the laptop.
"Hey!" she ran down the deck stairs as fast as she dared in bare feet.
"I'm going to work on school," she said after a pause, holding up Alex's laptop.
"Okay," Clara said. She kicked a spray of water into the air.
Danielle shielded the computer and sat down next to her, balancing it on her lap. "Midterms tomorrow."
"Good luck. Dual enrollment sounds like hell."
"It's worth it to be here."
"Really?"
"No one's tried to punch me, so yes."
Clara didn't bat an eye at that, a fact for which Danielle was grateful. She could tell Clara things like that and not expect a hellfire and brimstone as a result.
Because Clara had known.
For three years, Clara had known. She hadn't told Danielle at first - not until the second year they knew each other, when Danielle arrived at piano lessons with her wrist clumsily wrapped with an ace bandage.
Danielle pried open the laptop.
A file fell out that was squashed between the screen and the keyboard.
Danielle, without really thinking about what she was doing, picked up the file, and opened it.
The Daedalus Project
Agents Assigned: Benjamin Daniels, Alex Rider
Special Operations Division: Luke Giovanni, Ian McGreggor, Quinn Cariston
"What are you looking at?" Clara asked sharply.
Danielle realized her mistake and tried to hide the folder by shoving it under the laptop. Calmly, Clara reached over and tugged the cardstock away. "You shouldn't be looking at this."
"What? You'd do the same."
"Maybe I would have, but this is different."
"Please, spare me."
"I know what'll happen if Luke finds out. He'll get mad, probably yell. You'll break."
Danielle glowered at her and silently logged onto Alex's account. "I'm not fragile, Clara."
"Yeah, well, you're not immortal either."
Alex stepped back into the safe house with absolutely no answers whatsoever.
It had been like this for three weeks.
He and Snake did dozens of searches, Ben pulled old files, and even Wolf agreed to contact old SAS buddies for any possible information on an American named Troy.
All they found were dead ends, just like today's.
Alex was pretty sure that Johann Icarus, the plastic surgeon from the first mission file he opened, was involved. If Icarus had access to influential politicians, he could be bribed into the underworld if he wasn't already there. Criminality was, according to some, more rampant in the higher classes than the lower ones. Alex agreed, but politics seemed to be the wealthy man's crime.
Alex's current theory was that Icarus had been bribed to surgically create clones of high-ranking officials by the same organization that was planning to assassinate the Prime Minister (Ben pulled old MI6 correspondences; apparently the plot was known of before Troy decided to inform them, his information was the catalyst for the operation), and that organization was also coming after him and K Unit.
He couldn't help but think that the attacks were almost. . . personal.
Then there was the IRA angle: according to Tom, the microwave-bomb-delivery man had an Irish accent. AS did the woman who punched Alex in the eye, and the gaelic tattoo on the dead body's arm.
Was someone trying to frame the IRA?
To what end?
More importantly, why were they coming after Alex?
The organization behind it all had to be well connected if they knew about Danielle and August - perhaps they had contacts in the government, or the drug lines.
The entire affair was so complicated that Alex tried not to think about it all at once; it made his head hurt.
He returned, made a mug of green tea - Jack's favorite, he remembered with a pang - and went up to the room he shared with Tom.
Their room was a mess. Tom was too busy to clean and Alex was too tired.
At least, that's what he told himself. Tired. Never lazy.
Tom wasn't legally obligated to stay; he was a witness as far as the bomb went, but as an adult he wasn't compulsed by law to remain under protection because the act he saw was of lesser severity. As it was, he spent most of his time at the University or practicing football.
Alex stepped over a pair of discarded shoes and resisted the urge to throw himself onto the mattress for a long overdue nap. The nightmares were proving to be an eff ective deterrent from sleep, something that was starting to take his toll by making him twitchy. Earlier, Alex had almost yanked Eagle's arm out of its socket for trying to tap him on the shoulder. He couldn't help it. His hands fidgeted even now in constant motion brought on by too much caffeine and too little sleep.
He couldn't sleep.
His dreams were no comfort, and there was work to be done.
Speaking of work, he had to find Danielle and tell her that yes, they were moving the concert up by seven months. Two-and-a-half months away. Seven weeks. They could pull that off, barely.
He hurriedly changed into a t-shirt and ducked into the bathroom, to splash some water on his face. He felt exhausted, just as much from pretending that he was fine as from actual lack of sleep.
What to do next? Either stake out the monitors for the video feeds, or research the elusive Agent Troy, CIA.
Alex decided on the videos. Much more interesting than reading.
Spying wasn't all skulking around or fleeing exploding buildings; in cases like this, Alex didn't have another identity, just a pile of research more like a lawyer's than a spy's. To find the assassin, he had to consider everything, dozens of details that made his head threaten to explode.
Not being able to understand was driving him mad.
Alex went to the kitchen in search of food and coffee, preferably caffeinated. Jack had been a coffee lover, and the habit rubbed off onto him as he preferred coffee over tea.
Danielle sat at the table with her head in her hands, staring at a pile of papers with highlighted words and a familiar laptop propped up in the midst of index cards, neon highlighters, and sticky notes. Her hair was pulled back and she gripped a mug of tea between her hands like a lifeline. She had earbuds jammed into her ears.
Alex didn't want to disturb her - she looked like she would kill anyone who tried to speak to her, wound tighter than a spring - so he quietly fished leftover pizza out of the fridge and started some coffee in the pot, wondering why Danielle had his laptop.
School, right - online courses. She had mentioned exams coming up.
Alex took his lunch and wandered downstairs to the media room, the half of the basement with computers, video screens, audio recorders, speakers, and all the tools for enhancing audio/visual information to the best of MI6's abilities.
Alex flipped on one of the computers and pulled up the application for the video feed from all the hidden cameras put in place. Eight partitions appeared on the screen, each of a different room or angle. Clicking through them one by one, Alex quickly realized that there was no interesting activity in the hotel or the Palace Theater, so he turned on the audio feeds too and played back the last hours recording.
The first thing to come on was the drone of a vacuum cleaner running across carpeting. It whined like static, and Alex winced and skipped to the next spike in the relatively flat sonograph.
"I do love you," A woman's voice said. Alex thought it sounded familiar - the woman with Troy in his hotel room? He paused the recording and pulled out his phone, dialing a number only known to a few. It was answered by a nameless girl.
"Hello?"
"New recording," Alex said. "I need to look for a match."
"Name?"
"Alex Rider."
"Identification Number?"
He recited it, hearing her tap the digits out on her keyboard.
"You can play it."
He did.
After a few seconds, her breathing crackled through the line. "One match on file: 672B, female. Recorded two years and eleven months ago."
"Thanks," Alex said. "Can you send that over?"
"Yes."
He hung up and turned his attention back to the recording. Soon the email would arrive with an encrypted file, another recording of the matched voice pattern. Now he had three instances of that woman's voice.
Now he just had to meet her.
Alex hadn't told Ben, but he had a feeling that the woman was the key to the entire fragmented puzzle. There was something about the way she spoke- authoritative, like she didn't expect anyone to turn her down.
Hmm.
He'd have to think on that some more.
Turning his attention back to the recording, he restarted it.
"I do love you," the woman said. "Occasionally."
"Oh really?" A man this time. Alex couldn't tell who was speaking.
"When I have to."
"Look, I'm sorry about the client-"
"We didn't need her anyways. We'll still get what we want - the money, the silver platter you requested, head and all."
"I never wanted the money. That was all you."
"Isn't everything?" her voice changed, a seductive purr. "Come here. Forget about work."
Alex slammed the spacebar to pause and skipped the next twenty minutes on the recording.
So, love-hate relationship, he thought, mentally jotting that down. Interesting.
He clicked on the database search engine and did a broad search for anything related to Troy and the CIA. Few articles came up - some, he realized, from one of his missions nearly five years ago.
It was a harrowing mission, Alex remembered, to a small island named after the bane of art museums everywhere: Skeleton Key.
Curious, Alex clicked on that file.
Agents Troy and Carver, deceased. Assisted by an MI6 Operative.
Alex sucked in a quick breath - Troy- one of the agents assigned to him- yes, he remembered it now! They had both died in a cave made to collapse inward with deadly steel stalagmites that pierced any living thing venturing inside.
Just thinking about it brought back all the nauseous anxiety of realizing how the CIA agents had died.
This couldn't be the same Troy - the first was a woman, so obviously not.
He couldn't remember what she looked like. Blonde, maybe? Or brunette? Her face escaped his mind every time he tried to recall it, eluding his grasp.
Alex buried his head in his hands, trying to think. Was this man, this Troy, her brother?
Were the name similarities a coincidence or a blood tie?
Suddenly, the stairs creaked under heavy footsteps and Alex closed out of his search and the audio recordings, checking the camera feed one last time before closing that too just as Wolf came in the door with a massive Styrofoam cup of cola in one hand.
"What are you doing?"
"Checking the feeds," Alex said, spinning around in his chair and launching to his feet. "Nothing."
Wolf grunted.
Alex needed space so he took the stairs two at a time and headed for the deck - any place to be alone, really, and stormed through the kitchen, almost forgetting about Danielle.
She still sat at the table, arm folded, head on top of them.
He pulled up short, his brain seizing on the distraction from the memories percolating inside his head. "Danielle?"
She jerked upright, eyes rimmed with red. "Yeah?"
"You good?"
She nodded, pulling another sheaf of papers towards her. "Just studying - calculus is kicking my butt."
Ben ducked in from the kitchen. "Luke's good at math if you need any help."
Alex glanced at him. "Not volunteering yourself?"
"Nope. I was always more of a history person."
Alex didn't have anything to say to that, having been the same, so he shrugged. "Yeah, you should ask Wolf. What's tripping you up?"
"Everything," Danielle replied very melodramatically, wiping her eyes. "Limits. Tangent graphs. Integrals."
"I'll go find him," Ben said and started off towards the stairs despite Danielle's protests. Alex stepped out onto the deck and started down the stairs.
Outside, the air was fresh and crisp. Jack would've loved this neighborhood.
The thought sent another pang through Alex's chest.
He missed her every single day - she was his best friend, like an older sister.
It was the way she died more than anything else that haunted him.
Alex sighed.
He sat down heavily at the foot of the pier, far enough from the water to feel more secure than if he was out away from the land. Leaning back, he stretched his arms above his head, fingers curling into the fresh grass, reveling in kind of solitude that didn't bother him.
His eyelids drooped, leaden.
Just a few minutes, he told himself as he closed his eyes.
Then, all of a sudden, he had an idea.
"The intercept of tangent is always at the origin of your parent graph," Luke said, stabbing a point on the graph paper with the tip of his pencil.
Danielle nodded, mentally cursing Ben to hell and back for sticking her in the same room with Luke and calculus. It was either this or fail her exams.
"You didn't understand a word I just said, did you?"
"I did!" she defended herself, but trailed off when he gave her a flat stare, one eyebrow raised. "Okay. Never mind."
"You're not focusing."
"I'm Trying."
He rolled his eyes with more disdain than necessary, loosing an aggrieved sigh.
Danielle pressed her palms down on the table, leaning forward, trying to make sense of the numbers that blurred across the page. Math was always easy for her - why was this so hard?
Nothing she'd read all day stuck in her head, not biology, literature, not even the file she'd glanced at.
"Danielle." Luke slid the sheet of paper towards her. "Show me the amplitude."
She picked up her pencil and held it to the paper. It was heavy in her hand.
Dimly, she registered Luke's voice saying something but his words were muddled.
She pushed her chair back and stood slowly, leaning on the table for balance. Her legs shook but she stepped back as a sudden wave of nausea nearly brought her to her knees and, mumbling something about needing the toilet, fled.
She threw herself up the stairs, barely making it into the bathroom before she vomited, pitching forward onto the floor. The coolness of the floor seeped into her suddenly flushed skin and she closed her eyes, tired, unable to summon the strength to try and push herself up. A pervasive ache made her bones throb. Her eyes filled with tears that she blinked away, turning her face away from the floor.
what's happening to me? she silently cried, wanting to yell out to someone - Luke, even Tom - for help, but she knew they were busy. SHe couldn't go running to Alex every time something bad happened either, and Clara was out.
So she lay there, throat stinging with bile, until her body told her to move.
Alex burst in through the sliding doors. His entrance made Luke look up sharply from the pieces of paper scattered across the table, and Danielle was nowhere to be seen.
"Wolf," Alex said, now feeling alert and very much awake. "Where's Snake?"
"Downstairs." The older soldier gave him a long look. "What's the hurry?"
"I figured it out," Alex said as he hurried through the kitchen. He heard Wolf's chair scrape across the floor as he got up to follow.
Alex took the stairs two at a time. His feet struck the ground with a thud as he swung around the corner, greeted with Snake's familiar coppery hair as he did pushups on the hard floor.
"Snake."
Snake pushed himself up once more, using his momentum to pull up to his feet without bending his knees. An impressive maneuver that Alex knew he couldn't replicate - he hadn't touched physical exertion more than necessary after he quit MI6 - so he didn't comment on it.
"What's up, Cub?"
"Can you arrange a meeting with Troy?"
Snake frowned, looking doubtful. "I can try. When?"
"Now."
"Is there a specific purpose for this?"
"Yes," Alex ran his hands through his hair, pushing it out of his eyes. "I think I understand what's going on. It has nothing to do with the IRA. They're just a scapegoat."
"Because they're an easy enemy to blame."
"Yeah. The man who delivered the microwave: Irish accent. The body we found: IRA tattoo." Alex started to pace back and forth between the door and the desk. "It's an obvious conclusion."
Snake tilted his chair back, balancing precipitously on the two rear legs. "Or is it? What about the lady who decked you?"
"I think that's unrelated," Alex said. "I want to find out who's in that house."
"I'll ring Troy," Snake replied right as Wolf came down from the stairs.
"Why are you calling the American?"
"Cub can fill you in." Snake dug around in his pockets for a second and withdrew a small USB chip, which be plugged into the charging jack in his phone before unlocking the screen and hitting an icon.
Alex turned and explained his theory to Wolf as concisely as possible while Snake's muffled conversation buzzed in his ears.
"Not an entirely horrible theory," Wolf admitted. "That's why they keep you around, I guess."
Alex bristled at that, but forced himself not to snap back. Stay calm. You're better than this. "Probably," he said and pivoted smoothly on his heel, facing the stairs. "I'll be right back."
He hurried up the stairs, across the living room, up the smaller flight of stairs, and into Ben's room.
Ben was on the ground stretching, his injured leg clearly paining him even as he stretched it with the same movements as he did his good one.
"Are you supposed to be doing that?" Alex asked.
Sheepishly, the older agent glanced up . "Don't tell Gwen."
"Sure."
"What's up?"
Alex leaned against the doorframe with his arms crossed over his chest. The wooden trim pressed against his forehead. "Have you read my file?"
"Yes." Ben pushed himself off the carpet, balancing on one leg, and sat on the edge of his bed, waiting for Alex to continue.
"The thing I had to do in the Keys, eh - one of the Americans who worked with me was an Agent Troy. A woman. She died."
Somehow, Ben didn't look too surprised. "Do you think there's a connection between her and this Troy?"
"I . . . don't know." Alex paused, turning his face away from the door, trying to think. "Maybe."
"Do you know if she was married?"
"No."
"Huh." Ben stood, aided by one of the crutches sitting on the floor, and gestured to the door. "Let's find his file. I'm sure the Bank has something on him."
"Actually, we're about to meet him."
"Really?"
Alex nodded. "Snake set up a meeting."
"I'm coming."
"Do you think you should -?" Alex promptly shut up at the look on Ben's face, which came startlingly close to Wolf's glares. "Okay. Sure."
"It's just a cut," Ben muttered as he walked down the stairs.
Alex decided to stay silent on that particular subject as he followed Ben downstairs, pausing at the top to wait out the argument he knew would follow.
Sure enough, the yelling started.
Ben was hell-bent on going to the meeting and Wolf was just as committed that no, under no circumstances, would Ben do anything while on crutches.
After a few minutes Wolf stormed up from the basement and shoved open the front door, heading towards the car. Snake came soon after, and Ben appeared with his face set in a carefully controlled mask.
"Useless," he muttered. "Bloody useless."
Alex tried to think of something to say but came up with nothing, so he settled for clapping Ben on the shoulder. "It's not your fault."
"Right. You'd better go, Al. Don't want them leaving you behind."
Hearing the bitterness in his voice, Alex realized that Ben really was similar to him. He lifted his shoulders in a helpless shrug then fumbled for the doorknob and hurried to the car.
The cafe was crowded. Alex, Snake, and Wolf sat at one of the gilded iron tables outside on the patio, an area with a pleasant view of the street and intricately architected buildings that loomed overhead. Bright splashes of color broke the monotony of the asphalt - the lady with the crimson hat, traffic cones, reflective vests on cyclists.
It was the perfect strategic meeting place: good sightlines, heavy pedestrian traffic.
Alex couldn't stop thinking about Ben, about the look on his face. Ben wanted to be useful, he wanted to be needed - and, Alex realized, so did he himself.
That's why he was a musician first and a spy second. MI6 used him - they didn't need him, he was just convenient. In the world of classical musicians, he had a purpose.
Snake and Wolf shifted slightly, looking at the newcomer.
He was an American - tanned skin, sandy hair half-bleached from sun exposure, intense eyes shadowed with dark circles, a faint smile. Pulling the sunglasses off his head, he plopped them on the table with a clatter and fixed his gaze on Alex.
Alex stared back unblinkingly.
Tension filled the space between them as Wolf leaned forward, one of his arms pressed flat against the table. A challenge, unspoken.
"So," Agent Troy said at last. "You're the one who killed my wife."