3. I Didn't Choose The Spy Life, The Spy Life Chose Me
Print was dead.
Emma knew this. Hell, she'd written enough papers on the subject while she'd been at college. She could wax lyrical about The Age of Media Convergence and The Rise of Citizen Journalism, and why it meant she would never find a job in journalism, ever.
The fact of the matter was, she had. And straight out of college to boot. She landed an internship in her senior year, which landed her an actual paying cadetship on graduation. She'd started working for a newspaper that still landed on street corners six days a week, wrapped in plastic. Every article she'd ever had published she'd been able to cut out with scissors, and stick inside a scrapbook, all the while getting ink stains on her hands.
She figured she was the exception to the rule. Call it luck, call it talent, call it divine providence, call it whatever; she thought she'd skipped the hard part.
She... may have been wrong about that.
She couldn't have picked a worse time to be an out-of-work journalist, if she had... well... picked it.
Newsrooms across the country were laying off editorial staff. Magazines were folding left and right. She tried calling a few fairweather friends working at other publications, but they weren't answering her calls. She idly wondered if her Twitter meltdown may have played a role in that. It hadn't been the most professional move. The rest of the time was spent clicking through job listings, her hopes sinking deeper and deeper into her chest with every unpaid internship she came across. Did no one pay anyone for their work anymore? A CharlieCard and a free lunch were all well and good, but who was paying the rent for of all these people? How did they live?
It had been a month since she'd been fired, and her severance had nearly dried up. Her insurance too.
August still wasn't home yet, and he hadn't kicked in his share of the rent last month either.
Ramen may have been back on the menu. Her Netflix subscription was on borrowed time. Her next student loan repayment was due. Things were getting more than a little dire.
So much so that Emma had to bite the bullet and widen her search parameters. By rather a lot.
Standards were for people with savings accounts. Emma didn't have one of those.
She was in the middle of adding a position as an ice cream scooper into the Maybe folder, when she noticed her phone buzzing across her kitchen table. She swooped on it, taking a moment to compose herself before she answered.
"Emma Swan," she answered with her most put together, please-hire-me voice.
"Swan," came the accented reply.
"Oh," said Emma, deflating immediately. "It's you."
"Ouch, lass. If I had heart, you might have broken it." She could practically imagine him clutching dramatically at his chest.
"Good thing you don't then. What do you want, Jones?" She asked with maybe a little less geniality than she could have.
"Am I interrupting something?"
"Just job-hunting."
"Ah. And how is that going?" he asked, the sound of his office chair groaning as he leaned back echoing through the receiver.
"You know the Hindenburg disaster?"
"Yes...?" he answered warily.
"It's going a lot like that."
A pause. A small cough. "So you're not busy, then?" He asked, a little too casually.
Now it was Emma's turn to be wary. "Why?"
"Want to make an easy 100 bucks?"
"Ah, yeah."
"Yes?" He repeated uncertainly, as though expecting a trap.
"Killian. I am literally five seconds away from filling out an application to be a department store Christmas Elf! Lay it on me."
"You have a video camera, correct?"
"Okay, now I'm suspect." She really didn't think that he-
"Not like that, lass," he hurried to clarify. "I need video evidence to close a fraud case of mine, and my camera is on the fritz. You still have that one that August brought back from Thailand, aye?"
"Aye," Emma repeated, with only a hint of mocking.
"Excellent. I'll pick you up outside in twenty minutes. Wear something nondescript." And then he hung up, before she could actually agree to do what he asked.
Emma slid her chair back, looking from her phone back to the advertisement that still lay open on her laptop screen, for the ice cream scooper job.
Well, she reasoned, there were worse ways to make $100.
"What the hell is that?" Emma asked, as she slid into the passenger seat of Killian's Charger, camera bag slung over her shoulder.
That was a truly tiny dog in a tiny red sweater lounging on the backseat, with what appeared to be the corner of a manila folder clutched between its tiny, tiny jaws. A miniature pinscher, if Emma had to guess, though she was no expert. She'd once lived with a family for a couple of weeks that had one just like it, though. It had chewed through her only pair of school shoes. She hadn't been a fan.
"That would be Smee." Killian waved a hand between them in introduction. "Smee, Emma. Emma, Smee."
"Smee?" Emma asked, reaching across to secure her seatbelt, giving the creature a wary glance.
"Aye." Killian grinned as he pulled them away from the curb, his words filling with something eerily like pride. "He's my first mate."
"And in this scenario you're... Captain Hook?" Emma asked uncertainly.
"Naturally, Swan." He gave as dramatic a bow as he could while strapped to his seat and still kind of keeping his eyes on the road.
Emma glanced back at the dog set on a destructive mission in the backseat. Smee. He was kind of cute, she guessed, if you liked that kind of thing. The sweater was a little weird though. She didn't pick Killian as the kind of guy to dress his dog up in fall fashions.
"And you've been keeping your fashion-forward pooch on the down low for... how long?"
"Err..." She watched in growing horror as the wattage of Killian's smile visibly dimmed at her question. "It was... It was Milah's idea. To get a dog. Good practice for um..." He was visibly uncomfortable now, and Emma wondered how exactly she always managed to parachute herself into these conversational minefields.
Milah being, of course, the dreaded ex. The woman he had co-habitated with for nearly two years. The woman with whom he had apparently been raising a puppy, in preparation for hypothetical children.
Which, whoa.
The same woman who had ditched him three months ago to go crawling back to her ex-husband, who was now conveniently a dotcom millionaire.
Which, ouch.
"He's cute!" Emma blurted suddenly, a bit too loudly. No matter her personal vendetta towards all things dog-like, it was the best she could do to breach the awkward silence. "Why haven't you brought him round before?" She asked, reaching out a tentative hand to scratch behind Smee's ears. He whined in approval, but didn't pause in his destruction for a moment.
"Well he-" Killian paused as he scanned the street signs for his next turn. "He tends to get a little... He needs a lot of attention, or he'll pretty much tear up the place." Emma could believe it. "So he's been staying with my downstairs neighbor while I've been at work. Only her brat children are set on foisting her off to a nursing home, so he's kind of... become my shadow of late."
"Riiight. And the... file he's gnawing on?"
"Ah." With one hand still on the wheel, Killian fumbled blindly behind him, finally managing to wrestle the file out of dog's jaws. "That," he said, dropping the file into Emma's lap, "Would be our case file. If you'd like to familiarize yourself?"
Emma opened the file with tentative fingers, trying her best to avoid the dog saliva and chewed up edges.
"Anton Riese." Emma recited, as she scanned the first page. "38. He works in the... Flower Market?" She waited for Killian's nod. "So it's a dispute over worker's compensation?"
"Aye. He says he strained his neck so badly he's unable to work. His employer thinks he's maybe exaggerating his injury. There were a few red flags."
"Red flags?"
"You get over a certain number, they call in someone like me. It usually works out cheaper for them, in the long run." Killian shrugged, turning the car onto a leafy suburban street. "Our Mr Riese ticked 5 boxes in the "suspicious" column."
"Which boxes?"
Killian held off answering as he parked in a shady spot in front of a row of tidy Craftsman-style bungalows and killed the engine. "Firstly," he began, unclipping his seatbelt and turning in his seat to face her. "He's made a claim before, with a previous employer for a similar injury."
"Maybe he just re-aggravated it?"
"Perhaps. But that's just the first. Secondly," Killian held up two fingers now. "No one else witnessed the incident that triggered the injury, even though he usually works as part of a close-knit team. Thirdly," he held up three fingers, "He's missed some medical appointments. Hardly the behavior of a man eager to return to working life as soon as possible. Fourthly," he held up four fingers now, "He's under a certain amount of financial stress. More accurately, he's in the middle of a divorce. And the house," Killian indicated to the third house down on the left. "Belongs to his wife, who earns rather a lot more than he does. She signed a prenup. He's gonna lose it all."
"And fifthly?" Emma prodded, giving the house the ol' once-over. It was virtually indistinguishable from the others on the street, except for the rather impressive oak tree in the front yard.
"Fifthly, he's been uncommunicative and generally hard to get a hold of by both the insurance company and his employers."
"I see..." Emma considered this for a moment. "So we've got the camera in the vain hope that he will suddenly decide to, what? Host a group yoga session in his front yard?"
Killian snorted. "Aye, something like that. We shadow him for a few hours. Try to catch him performing tasks that err on the strenuous side."
"That's your plan? To lie in wait until he does what we want him to do?" Emma really thought there might be a bit more strategy involved with the whole thing. It just seemed like Killian was prepared to leave things up to chance. Emma liked to think she was a little more... dogged in her approach. Dogged... And with that, an idea began to take shape.
"You've a better suggestion, love?" Killian crossed his arms over his chest, cocking his head to one side as he watched the mischievous smile spread across Emma's face with some amount of trepidation.
"I think I do. Can I borrow your dog?"
"I don't like it," Killian reiterated for the zillionth time, as Emma stepped out of the car with Smee's tiny body clutched in her arms. She clipped the lead to his collar and let him down onto the pavement, before leading him around to Killian's open driver's side window.
"Try something new, Jones. It's called trust. I won't kill your dog, I promise." Killian only huffed in response.
"You got that camera rolling?" Emma leaned in slightly, to see how he was getting on with it.
"Aye," came his weary reply, as he held up the device.
"Good. And he's still in the front yard?"
"Aye. Tending the bloody hydrangeas."
"And how long did you say he's been estranged from his wife for, again?"
"Five months. Why is that relevant?" Emma didn't respond, reaching up with her free hand to pull her hair tie free, and shaking her blonde curls loose.
"Swan?" He sounded suspicious. Emma rolled her eyes at him, stripping off her leather jacket to reveal a somewhat sheer blank tank top underneath.
"Just improving our odds," she winked at him. "Catch," she warned, before she tossed her bundled up jacket at him.
"Swan..." It was almost a sigh.
"Watch and learn, Jones."
And with one last flip of her hair, Emma and Smee crossed the road, making their way towards number 23, where Anton Riese was out front, tending the bloody hydrangeas.
...
Emma had already devised a few attention-grabbing scenarios, but she was pleased to find that Smee was up for a little improvisation, letting loose a tirade of surprisingly loud barks, as a squirrel darted across the sidewalk in front of them. As such, the pair just so happened to draw the attention of the man in the neck brace who was kneeling by a shrubbery with a pair of secateurs. And Emma felt the heated gaze as the man's attention shifted from the yappy little dog in the sweater to the woman who was holding the lead.
Emma put an extra swing into her step, throwing in a thoroughly unnecessary, but rather enticing hair flip. She definitely had his attention all-right. He was standing up now, craning his neck rather a lot for a man with a neck strain.
He had taken the bait. And now it was time to engage the target.
Emma bit her lip, pausing in front of the house before his, scanning the numbers on the mailboxes in an obvious kind of way.
"You lost, darling?" came the voice of her Knight In Shining Armor.
"That depends..." Emma replied, turning her attention properly towards the man for the first time. Anton Riese was a rather large man, clearing well over six foot, with a prominent belly. He was dressed in his best gardening casual, with what appeared to be faded pajama pants and an orange t-shirt contrasting rather violently against his blue neck brace. His hair was long, tied up at the back in a frizzy man-bun, and he brushed a strand from his eyes as he took the last few steps around his shrubbery to face Emma directly. His smile was genuine. Friendly. "I'm looking for number 57. But there doesn't seem to... be one?" There may have been a small pout on her end. So sue her.
"Well," he said, a hand coming up to scratch behind one ear, "The numbers on this street only go up to 50... You sure you have the right street?"
"I thought so..." Emma frowned, eyes scanning the houses nearby. Smee got another whiff of squirrel and started going mad, pulling at the lead. Emma might have to reconsider her opinion on dogs. This one was worth its weight in gold. "This is Magnolia Street, right?"
Pleased to be of some assistance, Anton took another step forward, his face breaking into a wide grin. "Actually, this is Magnolia Avenue. There's a Magnolia Street down on-"
But whatever oh-so-helpful directions he was going to impart would have to wait. Smee's desire for squirrel reached fever pitch, and the lead "broke free" from Emma's grasp, Smee taking off full tilt after his fluffy prey. "Shit!" Emma shouted. "Shit! My sister's stupid dog! She's going to kill me! OSCAR! Come back!" Naturally enough, Smee ignored this command, seeing as he hadn't gotten the memo on his newest nickname, and he didn't slow down.
Enter, the good Samaritan. Anton took off running after the pup, betraying a speed that Emma would not have guessed at, considering his size. More impressive, he caught up with him too, after half a block, practically tackling the dog into submission. It was a risky maneuver, which hinted at least a little history as a linebacker. And every second captured on glorious HD.
His grin was ear to ear as he returned with an irate "Oscar" trapped in his arms, who was wriggling like a worm on a hook, demanding to be let down. He handed Emma the leash with bashful nod of his head, and they shared a look of amusement when the dog was finally back on ground level, and began pulling at the lead immediately again, his taste for squirrel not even close to sated.
...
"So, Boss," Emma began, as she returned back to the car, after circling around the block, letting an exciteable Smee leap back into his position in the backseat, before closing her door shut. "What do you think?"
Killian was turned towards her, his arm leaning against the wheel, the camera in his lap, as he took in Emma's flush of victory, and her self-satisfied smirk. His own face was neutral, giving nothing away, and for a moment, Emma worried that the footage wouldn't be enough. Maybe the take-down had been obscured by a tree or parked car? Did she remember to charge the battery last time she used it? When was the last time she used it, anyway? Last Christmas? And then Killian broke into a series of involuntary chuckles, and Emma felt a wave of relief.
"That was bloody brilliant, Swan," he admitted at last, shaking his head in disbelief, between chuckles. "You convinced a man with an allegedly serious neck injury to make a flying tackle, simply by wearing a see-through shirt. It was..." He grasped for the right words, letting his eyes wander down to the aforementioned shirt, and it's less-than-opaque qualities. "A pleasure, Swan, watching you work," he finished, an almost wolfish grin spreading on his lips.
Emma rolled her eyes, grabbing her jacket back to cover herself up again.
"So... did I earn my hundred bucks?" she asked, as she tugged her arms into the sleeves, and shrugged her leather armor back into place.
"Lass, for that effort, I'm throwing in champagne."