Chapter X

"This cheating, Nina," Broyals said quietly. She frowned at him delicately from behind her veil, her distaste nearly invisible behind the black.

Nina Sharpe mused the smooth stem of the white lily in her fingertips, bringing the pail flower up to her face, searching for a trace of a scent, "It's not cheating. This is business, not a little league game."

"And the boy? Why did you kill him?"

Nina looked up sharply at the passive Broyals, "I have no idea what you're talking about, Philip. But Georges… he died a great many years ago." She looked up at the quiet funeral possession, moving in and out of time with the gentle moan of the church organ.

"Raze was very valuable, Nina. Whatever you got from his death, it won't be worth it. I'm also assuming it has something to do with the address you've given Dunham; what are you doing, Nina?" Broyals did not raise his voice, even as he quietly warned, "You're being impatient."

"The way Raze designed the system configuration was a trap."

"Impossible. Dr. Bishop wouldn't have been able to withdraw the information from the system."

Nina smirked, "You underestimate the dead, Philip. The trap Raze set was not to spring until much later, when Walter- or anyone else, for that matter- tried to access incomplete information. The system would then self-destruct."

Broyals' brows furrowed, "How did you know that they didn't get all of your system?"

"There's something for everyone, Philip, just watch. I've changed nothing, with Raze's death; just make certain that your agent Farnsworth keeps faith in the boys, and Olivia her distrust." Nina strode at last to the open casket, stooping over the small, pail form of Raze, his hands folded across his chest in a gesture of peace.

She carefully touched his hair with her gloved fingertips, and laid the lily across his sable lapel. She stood and turned, deciding not to shed fake tears for him.

xXx

"Olivia," Charlie exclaimed, stopping with his coffee in hand, "It's your off day."

"I'm off the clock," Olivia grumbled in reply, shuffling a stack of papers aside as she jotted down a note.

Charlie sighed, "Liv- I mean, seriously, what are you doing here?"

She looked up at him, and blinked, "You're right. I should be down at that Opera house, shouldn't I? There was a homicide, someone killed that kid- It's got to be connected…" she returned to sifting files, mumbling inaudibly while she wrote.

Charlie sighed, shaking his head, "You can't be in here, kid. You need to be out, having an ice cream or something, for chrissake. Do something chicks do, take a breather."

Olivia looked up at him again with a small smile, "Ice cream? That's you're idea what chicks do?"

Charlie shrugged one shoulder, sipping his coffee, "I didn't think you went to strip clubs."

Olivia laughed, and got back on with her work. Charlie frowned. For as long as he'd known Olivia, it was impossible to get her off of something, when she got her mind set on it. This was both a good thing, and a bad one. Charlie also knew that there was only one thing he could do about it; "So, did Broyals give you the go-ahead for that 'anonymous' address?" give in.

Olivia shook her head, "No, not yet. He's not sure if we can trust it, that we're not being distracted by something useless. I have to agree- it's way too easy, for the Bishop's address to just fall into our laps…"

"It's not their address," Astrid said, entering with a teeming box of layout plans, "It's a datum storage."

"Datum storage?" Charlie questioned as she passed him, dropping the box onto the table and dusting her hands.

"Yes. It's something like a bank, or a back-up plan, for when a major company crashes. The other companies we've been dealing with haven't had them, only Massive Dynamic… and that's privileged information." Astrid stopped, glancing over at Olivia, "…isn't it your off day?"

Olivia ignored her question, "So they're giving us a way to catch them red-handed. Jesus, this is too easy."

Astrid frowned, "That's what I thought, to. Sharpe knows that they didn't get all of the information, just like we know… so she knows where they're going to go to get the rest of it."

"So if she knows that much, would she know about-" Olivia paused, glancing up at Charlie.

"Oh, come on," Charlie snapped, "whatever you're keeping from me can't be any worse than thinking about you two going to strip clubs."

Astrid looked completely befuddled, and Olivia decided to explain, "When Astrid was inspecting what was left of Massive Dynamic's system, she found that Walter didn't manage to get all of the information. So Astrid did, so we would have leverage against the Bishops."

Charlie raised his eyebrows, "Oh. Well, I totally knew that all along."

"Anyways," Astrid continued, shaking off what appeared to be thoughts about strip clubs, "I don't know if Sharpe has caught on to our sort of illegal info keep-away. But we have to go on assuming she doesn't, because we can't allow something to slip that we can't afford. The less Nina Sharpe knows, the better."

"Yet I still somehow feel that she knows more than we do," Charlie commented absently.

"Always," Olivia replied bitterly, rubbing her temples as she sat back in her desk chair, "So, this is what we've got. The Bishops checked into a Hilton Garden Inn and stole top-secret information from the government that a private cooperation just happened to have. They left shortly after, so that's dead. A cellist is shot, the Bishops are sited at the very same opera house none by other than the head of the chief operating officer of the company they just lifted from, and they somehow manage to disappear from the scene. Then, Sharpe gives Astrid a note for me, with the address for Massive Dynamic's privileged-access datum storage."

"How much do you take to the club? Just so I know what to draw out of the ATM, next time?"

"We're being led," Astrid said quietly.

"We're being fed sugar cubes," Olivia said, "and I don't like it one bit."

"Gene never liked sugar cubes," Astrid said under her breath as Charlie's cell phone gave a chime, and he pulled it from his inside pocket, flipping it open against his chin, "but Walter always fed her orange popsicles…"

"Agent Francis," Charlie answered as Olivia pelted Astrid with paperclips.

"Francis. It's Broyals. I'm only assuming that Olivia is in?"

Charlie smirked, "Yes, sir."

Broyals sighed, "Fine. Tell her we've got the go-ahead on that address. Get your crap and get over to the Baltimore field office."

xXx