"Oh my gosh, it's her! McMissile's intern!"

"She's not an intern. And she can hear you, idiot."

"Look, she's looking over here!"

Holley barely gave the two forklifts a glance, hurrying past them. The only bright side of leaving this late— er, early?— was that she could be noticed as little as possible. It was also why she had ditched the purple paint for this excursion, adopting a deep charcoal gray instead.

She drove onto the apron, where only one medium-sized jet was being serviced at this hour. Silver glistened under the moonlight; Siddeley seemed to be dozing as he was fueled up.

Holley rapped the back hatch door. Sid stirred with a groan. "Mmm? I'm up, I'm awake… Just resting my eyes."

"Please let me in, Siddeley."

The ramp dropped open faster than she'd ever seen, almost flattening her. She rolled inside quietly, taking a seat. With the press of a button, her seat slid over to the computer monitors in the corner. She logged into her email and opened the most recent message from her new boss, the one that had arrived just after supper and sent fear (and annoyance) rushing through her system as soon as she laid eyes on it:

Hello Miss Shiftwell,

Apologies for interrupting your trip. You are urgently needed back at home base. A flight has already been arranged for your swift return. You are highly encouraged to take it.

-Handler 83

Fortunately, the handler had been merciful enough to assign Siddeley to pick her up. Any other jet might have asked the same questions every other agent seemed to have. Sid was privy to the recent past, and his only question right now was—

"Why are they calling you back to base?" The cabin shook as Sid yawned over the intercom. "What's so important that this flight couldn't wait until morning? Don't they still have mountains of paperwork to process until you're certified?"

"It's not really that urgent, but I suppose they want me in town ASAP. I've been chosen as a witness for a special investigative task force." As she said it, the air chilled. Sid had turned on the air conditioning. Which was odd, since it was already dark and cool outside. "Why? Have you heard anything about it?"

"What are they investigating?"

"The World Grand Prix fiasco, of course."

Because apparently, there was nothing else interesting about her. Everyone in the agency wanted to talk about what she had done and who she knew, rather than what she could become and who she really was. If she wasn't identified in relation to Finn, she was known as "the girl who helped Sir Mater stop Axlerod." Not that anything was wrong with that; Mater had saved the day, and she was proud to have worked with him. He really, really liked her— and a long, long period of soul-searching revealed that she liked him a lot, too. She had yet to visit him and follow up on their date, because things had been absolutely chaotic since Axlerod's arrest. She had barely made it out here to Montreal— and she'd only come because Finn strongly recommended it.

Sid was quiet for a long time. It wasn't until he had finished refueling and was rolling toward the runway that he spoke again. "I think they paid me a visit a week ago. An SUV from administration flew to Narita. But the whole time, he was asking me about… about the rendezvous at Tokyo International."

Holley paused, thinking. If someone had recently questioned Sid about the World Grand Prix, it probably wasn't a coincidence that she had been summoned back to England to discuss the exact same thing. "What did you tell him?"

And it all came pouring out, as if he hadn't been able to confide in anyone about it. Holley listened closely, trying to picture the conversation/interrogation in her mind. The administrative car already had quite a bit of information at his disposal, and his approach for obtaining more information was aggressive.

She'd have to be very, very careful. Her job— and possibly Sid's, and most certainly Finn's— depended on it.

Whenever Dave had a solitary moment in the Committee basement, he would visit the C.H.R.O.M.E. gossip forum.

Of course, no agent worth their parts would admit to using it, but judging by the size of the server, they all did. For most, it was a coping method for all the secrecy of the job. Feuds would be in full force between anonymous agents; if they were particularly unlucky, they'd find they were best friends in real life.

Though its chaos was entertaining, Dave considered the forum part of his research. These days, Finn McMissile was a trending topic:

UrgentTransmission: Did y'all hear FM is on suspension? Literally, he strained his suspension and was hospitalized.

CulturedSwine382: Yes. I heard he "wall-jumped" too much

UrgentTransmission: He also fell off the stage right after Axlerod was exposed.

GoldenGun: No way shut up

NemosHome: Your mom should shut up

IG99: Please refrain from mom jokes. Aren't we all adults?

NemosHome: Your mom is a joke

NemosHome was banned from the forum

UrgentTransmission: I've got a friend who works in the infirmary. FM was under strict mechanic's orders for weeks. But he [REDACTED] enough that the doctors let him go to a private safehouse somewhere.

GoldenGun: Literally anything could be in that blank lol

NemosHome2: Your mom is a blank

GoldenGun: What are you eight years old

IG99: How about Shiftwell? Is she okay?

UrgentTransmission: Yes, she only got a dent. He's vouching for her to be a full-fledged agent— his new partner. Assuming he can return to the field.

CulturedSwine382: Good on her. She did well under the circumstances

GoldenGun: Yes but FM should be fired he almost wrecked the case

NemosHome2: Your mom is a case

GoldenGun: Your mom should disown you

NemosHome2: Thats what she said

NemosHome2 and GoldenGun were banned from the forum

Dave rolled his eyes, closing the web page. Judging by the way those people carried themselves, perhaps McMissile, even with his mistakes, was the top agent after all.

The basement door hissed, and Vivian rolled in with her clipboard. "Your next witness just arrived. She's waiting in the interrogation room. Heads-up, she doesn't seem to be in a good mood."

With a chuckle, Dave deactivated his heads-up display and drove into the hallway. "I bet she's not. She just took a redeye in from Montreal— apparently, she was on vacation."

Just as promised, Holley Shiftwell was waiting in the interrogation room. Pride flooded Dave's engine, and he could barely keep a grin off his grill. In contrast, Shiftwell didn't bother to restrain an icy glare. Dave nodded at Vivian, who disappeared into the observation room next door.

Shortly after Dave returned from Tokyo, he had emailed Shiftwell to request a meeting in the interrogation center. She replied— exactly one week later, the nerve— with her availability for video calls. And that would not do. Most of Dave's past virtual interrogations involved a "critical technical difficulty" and the agent in question "forgetting" or suddenly being "too busy" to call back.

(Now that he thought about it, that was also how most of his romantic relationships dwindled out, too. He chose not to dwell on it.)

"Thank you for coming on such short notice, Miss— Agent Shiftwell." Dave parked across the table, studying her expression. If this meeting was to be productive, he had to decrease her hostility. "I understand you've been quite busy since the World Grand Prix. It must feel like a lifetime ago."

"In many ways, it does. Don't worry, I remember it like yesterday. It's a bit hard to forget— it's all anyone ever talks about."

That could have been said in a more cheerful, teasing tone, but Shiftwell clearly thought Dave was a safe target for her annoyance. It made him that much more grateful that he hadn't gotten into a fender-bender on the M1 that morning.

"I'm certain it was quite memorable. I mean, it's not every day you get picked up by a field agent, brought right onto such an important mission. What was it like, working with McMissile? He's among the best."

"Yes, he is." Her expression became slightly more neutral. "We studied a few of his missions in the academy. Meeting him in real life has been… well, mind-boggling. He… thinks differently than anyone I've met."

"You find his thought process intriguing?"

"Yes. Always about the mission, the objective, the law and order. Though he's not exactly…." She trailed off, glancing toward the wall-length mirror. Any trained agent could tell by the mirror that they were being watched; it was part of the intimidation.

"He's not what?" Dave pressed. It seemed Shiftwell wanted to be careful with her words. Which meant she was protecting McMissile somehow. Which meant something was being hidden, and he had to draw it out. "By-the-book? One to follow orders?"

"...Traditional," she settled on. "He prefers to improvise. Like how he brought me onto the mission so quickly, even though I wasn't quite qualified. He's great at adapting. I don't know how he does it, but it works. Next time I see him, I'll try to get more anecdotes out of him."

"Anecdotes? You mean advice?"

"Of course. I mean, he's survived this long."

So not even McMissile was safe from her sass. Dave bit back a chuckle. "Is he someone you aspire to be like?"

Shiftwell paused. "Am I in trouble, David?"

"It's Dave." He checked his file on her. "And no. No, you're not in any trouble. Not for the WGP case. Since McMissile was the superior on that— and you weren't a field agent, as you mentioned— he is responsible for the consequences."

"So you want me to, what, incriminate him?"

"Not if there's nothing to be incriminated for. I just want your account of the events of the case. I've already spoken to your jet. Coincidentally, I met a friend of yours in Tokyo, and he spoke very highly of you. Francesco Bernoulli identified you as a flying car that nearly ran him off the road. I figured it only made sense, after three mentions, to meet you myself."

Now she was back to being irritated. "Then we should get started. What do you want me to start with?"

"How exactly did you meet Sir Mater? How was he confused for an agent?"

"He was in the loo at the same time as the real American agent. At least, that's what we pieced together. Finn was supposed to meet him, but he recognized some of the thugs from the oil platform, and didn't want to be caught." For a split second, she bit her lip. "So he sent me in his stead. Mater came out as I was heading in—"

"Into the men's loo?"

"That's what I told Finn, but he said it didn't matter. The agent would only activate the beacon if no witnesses were around. If things went wrong I could always play it off, act like a brainless beauty and all that. Anyway, Mater came out of the loo, and I— honestly, I couldn't believe it at first. He was just so casual. Upbeat. Fun. But he had the beacon on him— the American planted it on him, before he was captured— and Finn said we were looking for an American. And Mater… well, he's the most 'American' you can imagine."

Dave was so, so tempted to ask, "So he wears one of those tacky Hawaiian shirts and spends 6 hours a day in a McDouglas' drive-through, shooting beer cans with a rifle and tossing tea into the sea?" But he had heard Shiftwell and the tow truck had become very close over the short time they'd known each other. She'd raise her guard again if he insulted her friend.

Instead, he asked, "Did you express your doubts about Mater to McMissile?"

"Oh, a few times. We thought he was just very dedicated to his cover— that of an oblivious tow truck." She glanced up at the ceiling for a moment, as if a thought struck her. "Though it seems we were the oblivious ones— he saved the world."

"The world" seemed like a bit of an exaggeration. Even if Allinol failed as the Lemons had planned, there were plenty of nerds who would enter the market with their own, legitimate fuels. "The world" hadn't idolized Allinol as their only hope; Dave, for his own part, hadn't been impressed by a billionaire electric vehicle using high-performance celebrities to prove the fuel's reliability to common gas guzzlers. On the other tire, had Allinol been a success, billions of cars would still run on gasoline until the luxury wore off and the price came down; "the world" wouldn't have changed overnight anyway.

But who was he to rain on her parade?

"Your new handler informed me you were in Montreal just yesterday. May I ask what type of business you had there?"

To prepare for this role, Dave had been extensively trained on microexpressions. So he noticed the way Shiftwell, well, shifted on her tires oh-so-slightly. How her eyes widened a little at the mention of her handler, and how her face tightened as she answered. "Just a change of scenery. A lot of people have been trying to contact me, so I wanted some time away from it all. That's why I didn't see your email right away."

"I can understand that… but why that city in particular?"

"It's nice this time of year. And I've never been to Canada before. Anyway, I'm not done with my testimony. That is what you wanted to hear, correct?"

If she would rather talk about the WGP and risk incriminating McMissile, he wouldn't get anything more about Montreal. Though his curiosity remained, he dropped the subject and gestured for her to continue.

And she continued. Frustration bubbled up inside Dave, for a reason he couldn't quite place. He knew he should have felt glad Shiftwell had followed protocol as best as she could. Everything correlated with what previous witnesses had already said, what city-wide CCTV footage had already shown. But it felt so anticlimactic; there was no "gotcha" moment, no matter how many times he prodded at a vague statement.

After what felt like hours, Shiftwell fell quiet and stared at him expectantly. "And that's just about everything. Is it sufficient for your investigation?"

"Yes, I think we're done here for today," Dave said, keeping his tire firmly planted on the ground instead of pounding the nearest wall. "Again, thank you for coming. If additional information is needed, one of the Committee members will reach out."

Shiftwell nodded and began to reverse, turning toward the door. Then, in the doorway, she braked hard. "Actually, Dave, I've got a few questions for you. If you don't mind."

It couldn't hurt, Dave decided. "Go on."

"Are you divorced?"

Dave's headlights flickered on their own accord. If Shiftwell hadn't already known she was being watched, then Vivian's unrestrained laughter through the wall certainly would have given it away. "What gives you that idea?"

"Not that being divorced is shameful. Of course, many people are okay after it. It can be good, healthy even. But it's less likely to feel good if you're on the receiving end."

"So what does that have to do with me?"

"I know this is your job, but I don't know if delivering justice truly motivates you. You're not satisfied with your own life, so you get a shred of joy from tearing into others."

"I find joy," Dave said slowly, determined to make a good comeback, "in uncovering the truth, Agent Shiftwell. Nothing more. That's why we're all here, isn't it? Perhaps the next time you see McMissile, you can ask him about that."

There it was again. The shift, the eyes, the tightened jaw. Her tell. She knew something else. But she recovered in an instant, and was gone before she could even finish saying, "Good-bye, David."

Dave leaned back on his tires, processing what had just happened. Did he like tearing people down? Like some sociopath? Some… villain? Well, he did get a rush from critiquing other people. He liked accumulating a collection of deep, dark secrets.

But that couldn't be the only reason he liked his job. Because he didn't like his job. He was only learning all these secrets, making all these judgments, because it was the objective of the Committee. And the sooner the objective was achieved, the sooner he could get back to his summer holiday.

"Are you divorced?" Vivian asked. While he was lost in thought, she must have entered. He felt stupid for not noticing, since he had been zoned out in the general direction of the door.

Dave exhaled hard through his grill. "I was never married."

There was an awkward silence for a long time after that.

(Alright, so this is technically the first author's note I'm putting so let's see how it looks. AO3 has more, if y'all check out this story over there.)

The moral of the story is to leave Holley Shiftwell alone.

By the way, no disrespect to divorcees. Holley's just falling in love, and at the moment, being divorced is the most miserable state of being she can think of. (Aside from being, you know, dead. Or whatever the heck is going on with Finn.)

If y'all catch any typos, please PM me about it. Other than that, share your thoughts on Holley vs. Dave. Oh, and the gossip forum, which was a blast to write. Whoever can identify all the movie references in the comments wins a shout-out in the next chapter. (That's the best I can do until the limited edition T-shirts come in, lol.)

Speaking of the next chapter, it's gonna be fun. Featuring the most dissed, forgotten, throwaway gag characters in all of Cars 2. And the best part is that I probably won't have to spend hours on Google to write it :)