Samuel Tanner never, ever failed. It simply was not in his nature to accept anything than absolute success. At seventeen, he had more patience, more instinct than a man three times his age. It was what made him, undoubtedly, the best tracker in Creed. Who else, he thought with a smirk, could've tracked down the ever-so-elusive agent known only as the Ghost?
Oh, it hadn't been easy. He wasn't saying that at all. It had taken months of information gathering, of following false leads and spending countless hours searching cities all over the world. But he'd done it. And that was all that mattered. For now, at least.
With some frustration, he bent over the pieces of paper spread out on the desk in the hotel room he'd checked into with a false ID. A small stack of papers, a few pictures, and pages of notes was all that made up the file on the Ghost.
A disappearing gypsy was what she was, one who'd been spotted maybe three times several years back, all sporadic, blurry sightings. And then, for the longest time, no one had seen her at all. But some people had seen, after the fact, just what she was capable of. And it was those capabilities, those skills, which made her a prime recruit for Creed. And they would have her. Of that, Sam had no doubt. He would get her, one way or another, no matter what.
For years, since he'd first been recruited into Creed and been trained as a tracker, he'd had his sights set on the elusive Ghost. She'd gone by many names, none of which, he was sure, was her real one. She had been bopping all around the globe, stealing classified information one minutes, quarters from a public fountain the next. There was no rhyme or reason to her jobs, no system or pattern that had ever been detected.
She-for they had finally determined that the Ghost was definitely a she-simply vanished off the face of the earth for months at a time, popping back up without notice. And then, the most frustrating of all, she would drift unnoticed through society, and then simply fade away once her purpose had been fulfilled.
She was young, younger than him, and that pissed him off as well. He pulled out one picture of her, a zoomed in close up of her face that was grainy at best. But it was impossible to miss the youth in her face. A face, he admitted, that reminded him of bonfires and secret forests. And that, he reminded himself as he read through the frustratingly brief report of a sighting in France, had nothing to do with the fact that she was still out there somewhere. A girl, no older than sixteen, of average height and build, who he'd finally tracked down after years and years of searching.
And he hadn't caught her, not there amidst the festivities of Mardi Gras, because, with only a blink, she had vanished in thin air. And he'd been left with nothing but a memory of smoky gray eyes and colored beads around a slender throat.
The laptop at his elbow beeped suddenly, signaling an incoming email, and he shifted over to it, pushing a few keys to bring up the newest information. There was a document attached to it, and with a curious hum in his throat he opened it. And, studying it, he began to smile, and then to laugh.
Punching a few buttons on the computer, the document printed out, and he was still laughing as he held in his hands a picture of the Ghost herself, standing amidst a group of girls, almost invisible among them, dressed in the fancy uniform of Gallagher Academy.
So, he mused, thoroughly pleased with the world in general, he was dealing with a little Gallagher Girl. Now that, he thought, was going to make things plenty interesting indeed.