Part III
Location: unknown
A dark brunette woman sat at a bar, dark waves of fallen curls pulled back loosely behind her head, smoky eyes accentuating the fake blue hue of her eyes, pale peach gloss skimming her lips to a perfect plumpness, a dusting of different shades of pink and nude emphasizing aspects of her facial features that gave her an entirely different face. Her fitted red top left little to the imagination with a plunge down the front of her chest that highlighted the two swells held up by a good push up bra, and her short skirt was barely long enough to be considered clothing at all. She looked and played the part of a streetwalker, and very few new better. This time tomorrow she would have a different name and a different occupation. Tonight, however, she had a target in mind, so she crossed her legs to show off those killer stilettos and invite-only outfit and waited for her prey to arrive.
Within half an hour, the man walked in, navy blue suit of a luxurious quality, crisp white top and plaid tie that all but screamed the net worth of his fat pocket. This was a town so small, it wasn't even on the map. People here turned to dealing, smuggling, robbery and prostitution just to survive, and yet this man that dominated the gaze of all in this shabby bar becoming a jackpot bag of gold nearly overnight. The same night that Henry Wilcox was in town.
The sultry woman glanced down for a moment upon watching a blonde already attempt to claim her ground with the rich man. She knew the blonde, she had two kids and her husband died attempting to smuggle goods across the border, and her youngest child was ill three hundred days out of the year, so she decided to undo another button of her blouse. She was already thankful for the lacy black bra she'd picked off a lingerie shop across town the other day. When she'd touched the garment, it brought back memories and fantasies of another man with sensitive fingertips and a taste for texture skimming her body with his sweet touch, and in turn it pulled at her heart and made her breathe deeply like the thought alone was suffocating her. She missed him, immensely. She missed the sound of his voice, that messy half-curled mop of brown hair early in the morning, those sightless warm eyes that made her melt into his arms, and his strong and heated fingers when he touched her, even just innocently. She would die a thousand times to have him again, to be with him again, kiss him again, feel him again, taste him again...but putting her longing heart aside, this lacy black article that reminded her so dearly of the hole in her heart was fitting the bill perfectly tonight as well.
With one last deep breath and a meticulously manufactured smile, the brunette stood and took five long strides across the room to the man, every step highlighting her curves and smooth, pale skin. This was a mission, and it was no time to let a real streetwalker take her opportunity. She'd make it up to the unfortunate blonde at a later date.
Right now, this night, she had a mission to fulfill, and each step she took to find the missing pieces of this intricate puzzle of Henry Wilcox was a step closer to bringing back those fantasies and memories that haunted her at night.
"Mr. Dellis, I've heard so much about you," she let the words laced in a manufactured accent slip off her tongue like a warm liquor that made the man in the suit want to purr in response. His dark eyes met hers with a sickening smile. She kept up her invitation smile as he silently scanned her body, sliding from her overdone makeup to the deep crevice between her breasts and that lacy, black bra, all the way down to her endless expanse of naked legs in sharp-as-nail stiletto heels. His hungry gaze could easily make the brunette's skin crawl and knock the faux dark dye straight out of her naturally blonde curls.
But she kept up the charade, and with one silver-polished fingernail, toyed playfully and seductively with the trim of his collar.
"I heard from a friend that you are always looking for romantic company," she purred seductively into his ear, reading every reaction, expression, and body motion the man made so she could properly adjust her bait tactic. She did not need much adjusting at all, however; it was painfully obvious to the well-trained professional that this man was already well entangled in her net.
The rich man's sickening smile spread wider, showing a rotten tooth that gave away his pre-Wilcox lifestyle. "You're friends speak well, but my accompaniment is...highly demanding."
The brunette broke out her deal-making grin and leaned in close enough to the man that the exposed skin of her chest pressed against his crisp, white shirt as she whispered into his ear. "Its a good thing I am how you say...eager to please?"
30,000 feet in the air
There was a buzzing deep inside Auggie Anderson's ears that hadn't quit since he began piecing together this complex puzzle he never even knew was in front of him.
Annie Walker is alive.
His Annie was not in a pile of ashes that were thrown into the Atlantic, she was alive. She was alive, presumably well, and it left a buzzing in his ears that no matter how hard he attempted to dislodge, he couldn't shake. He was...fuzzy. He was off, and he did not understand why. Was he angry? Was he happy? Was he indifferent? He was definitely not indifferent, but he couldn't piece together all the emotions and all of the thoughts racing through his head and exploding like a never-ending fireworks show.
Half of him wanted her the way the stereotypical male always wanted a woman's company. He longed for her touch, and her skin, her smell, her taste, and the electricity she ignited inside of him. He longed to hold her in his arms, kiss her with his lips, and let himself drown in the glory that was her mind, body, and soul. He needed her mind, the way she knew him better than he knew himself, they way they could have entire conversations without a spoken word, the way a touch or a sound could change everything for better or worse. He missed her.
The other half of him however, wanted to scream, shout, yell and bellow at her until he could make her feel exactly how much pain she'd put him through in the past six months. He wasn't entirely sure how at this point, but he needed her to know what the past six months thinking she was dead had done to him and destroyed in mind, home, and workplace. He was not simply upset that she feigned death even to him, he was absolutely furious.
The seesaw of emotions had been playing their balancing act every minute of the past fourteen hours since he'd heard the news, promptly got Barber to order him the next flight out of the country, and promptly boarded a flight to a destination he wasn't quite sure he remembered with a plan he hadn't quite devised yet.
Annie Walker is alive.
"August Anderson?" a voice broke his turbulent thoughts. Auggie shifted his attention to the voice originating just from his left. "You have an emergency call. If you would follow me I can take you to the telephone."
The man seated in 12C frowned. Lost in his thoughts and subconscious process, he was not paying attention to the surroundings. His senses felt dull after so much time left unused; it took him a moment to take in everything around him.
He was still in the air, he hadn't heard anyone announce a descent, and the humming in his ears that resonated low behind the insistent buzzing only confirmed these observations. Someone was snoring next to him, and judging by the giggling he faintly made out there was a family seated behind him...at least two kids, one probably below the age of ten and another older but not yet at the teenage status.
"Are you Mr. Anderson?" The polite stewardess asked when Auggie didn't reply. Auggie didn't even reply verbally with more than a mumbled sound. "There's an emergency call for you. If you'd like to come with me, I can take you to the phone."
Auggie raised an eyebrow at the announcement, but nonetheless stood and allowed the young stewardess to guide him towards the back of the plane. When he arrived to the area, another person whom he presumed was also a stewardess was waiting with a phone in hand that was immediately pushed into his the moment he was close enough.
"Where are you?" A familiar voice sounded on the phone the moment he raised it to his ear.
"Hollman," he recited back almost robotically. He had specifically told Barber to keep both his whereabouts and sudden developments in a six-month-old event to himself.
"Where are you?" He repeated again, this time more urgently. Auggie ignored the question, and before the tech op had an opportunity to repeat the interrogation a third time, he heard a different voice arguing in the background, followed by a fumbling of buttons and eruption of Eric Barber's distinctive voice.
"Just tell me you're still on the plane." He wasn't asking, but he didn't have to either.
"I'm still on the plane," Auggie recited truthfully. An audible sigh of relief emanated from the other line, but it did little for reassurance and more towards raising the blind man's curiosity and brow.
"If you have news to report to me Eric, do it quickly." Auggie Anderson's irritation was as obvious as his determination.
There was a pause of silence, and in his head Auggie could almost imagine the two other tech ops back at Langley exchanging glances lost to him,
"Barber!" He barked before he finally got an answer.
"Two of Henry Wilcox's informants have just been listed as missing, a third's body just washed up the Indian coast, and last night one of his partners stationed in the southern European region named Alexandre Dellis is not responding to any form of contact. Langley has just shipped out two operatives in a rescue mission to find Dellis and if they find you, man, I don't think even Joan will be able to cover for you. You need to report your location before Wilcox waltzes in here and demands to know what affiliation you have with these new disappearances."
"Are you shitting me?" He felt the aggravated heat of anger bubble inside of himself. "How long as this been going on? Who else is missing?"
"Umm…" Barber grew silent for a moment and Auggie wanted to close his eyes and hit his head back roughly until all the chaos around him cleared. Was he completely oblivious to the world around him these past six months? "Why, the hell have I never heard about this before?"
"Man, we tried, but you haven't been very responsive since Annie died…"
Auggie was silent, processing the information. Someone he loved dearly had told him a while back that he was an optimist, determined to find the good in people until they proved otherwise. After that same woman presumably died, gunned down by a superior of his, he found it difficult to ever trust anyone or see any good in any person or situation. With this new outlook on life, he also found it difficult to ever take any coincidences for granted.
As such, what was the possibility of his discovering one of the CIA's best operatives and Henry Wilcox's worst enemy was alive and loose in the same general area of all these disappearances being simply a coincidence?
"Auggie?"
He knew what this meant. His mind was in a haze and his body felt numb but he could decipher this news easily enough. He knew who was working here, and it was another corner piece to this puzzle he was attempting to assemble. Annie Walker was not simply alive, she was working down Henry Wilcox from the inside out.
"Auggie!" Barber's voiced yelled once more, but the man was in no mood to answer questions.
"Where was Dellis last seen?"
Eric Barber was silent for a second, but Auggie's fine-tuned ears tuned out the insistent buzzing long enough to make out raced typing in the background before his colleague's voice returned. He was seen three days ago in a tiny city off the Bulgaria-Macedonia border. I can send you more specifics but there is no way of saying if that was his last location or just official spotting, man. You need to come back here, today."
"Anderson, report!" This time the voice belonged to neither of the tech ops, but the blind spy had already abandoned the phone and was halfway down the plane's cabin to find a stewardess flirty enough to let a poor, blind man with a sexy smile coax her into getting him to a particularly secluded town to the southeast of their final flight destination. A year ago who could charm his way into just about any destination or woman's bed, he was about to oil up those rusty skills and bring back the last woman he wanted to ever share a bed with.
"I'm sorry sir, we are preparing to descend and you need to get back to your seat." A young, American, and female voice interrupted him before he could reach the end. A wide, carefully planned smile spread his lips in a way he knew oh-too-well worked wonders with the opposite sex.
"Oh, my bad, I must have taken a wrong turn and missed my seat, could you help me find it?" He listened carefully, never letting the smile in his flirty lips fall as he felt the young woman taking his offered arm as she began walking him to his appropriate row.
In this game of prey and spy, Auggie Anderson was not to be underestimated.
"Actually, you are exactly who I was looking for. You know, I was supposed to meet a friend at the airport, but I just discovered he missed his flight. I could really use some accompaniment when we land." He listened closely and felt a sense of accomplishment when the young voice practically giggled in his hands.
"You wouldn't happen to be traveling south, would you?" he practically whispered out the words.
Author's Note:
So I need to start off this really quick author's note by giving a thousand thanks to paixnouvelle who pretty much is always ready to give me ideas for my next chapter/part whenever I hit a snag. I've also just started a new job working with kids - which means by the end of my first week I had a black eye, bruised nose, and a horrible, horrible, headcold. (But hey, it gave me a lot of time to work on this fic, right?)
Let me know what you think about Parts II and III, and what you would like to see in the next few parts before I finish this fic. I know I originally said it would be 3 parts, but then I not only got an immensely positive response, but this monster kind of grew a life of its own as well, so we will just have to see what happens. ;)
Also, my geography is horrible and I had to actually do some research here to find random locations to send Annie. By the way, did everyone understand who the stranger from Part II was? ;)
Leave me some love and reviews!
- Liz