New Faces and New Places

Jem was probably ten when Russian drug dealers tried to kill her. At her best guess, anyway—she'd never been clear on her actual birthday. The people who saved her and killed the drug dealers gave her an "official" birthday, later, to go along with her new identity. But the day they'd actually saved her, that, as far as Jem was concerned, was her real birthday. The day the emotionless woman knocked on the door, pretending to be Jem's new social worker, the same day they spent mostly holed up in a ventilation shaft together. The day she met Shaw.

It was Shaw who broke into the warehouse, Shaw who gunned down Jem's captors and cut her free, Shaw who dropped her off at the upscale prep school that had been mysteriously provided for her.

Jem gave her a hug and then walked away, never looking back.

Only she did. Of course she did. Jem was going to be a spy, what self-respecting spy wouldn't keep tabs on her mysterious rescuers? Of course, any self-respecting spy also wouldn't turn around in such an obvious way. They would instead use a handy rearview mirror, like the ones on the cars around the school, to look behind them. The image was distorted, but Jem still saw Shaw approach a small, bespectacled man in a suit and hat—with a dog.

Sometimes I just think I'm in it for the dog.

Finch, I've got the girl.

Jem smiled at the reflection. "Finch." She repeated to herself, as Shaw walked off with the man.

Her new fifth-grade prep school offered no courses whatsoever in poison, firearm safety, or krav maga. The closest she could come was karate and chemistry, which for the moment satisfied her. She already knew more about the criminal underworld than any sociology class could teach her, but psychology and civic studies helped her to interpret a lot of the things she'd seen first-hand in her childhood. The school's computers, too, were an untapped fountain of knowledge which she was eager to exploit. Unfortunately she didn't seem to have any aptitude for them, but she learned enough to make friends who did.

"Why do you need to figure out who's in charge of your trust fund, anyway?" Landon asked, as they huddled in the booth at a McDonald's. "Isn't that sort of stuff public?"

"Nope." Jem shook her head. "It was hidden. I think it was my real dad—like I think my Mom might have been cheating with someone? And he didn't want her husband to know, so he kept the origin of the trust fund hidden."

Landon glanced at her with wide eyes. "That's messed up, man."

"Yeaaah." Jem nodded sorrowfully. It was a plotline from last week's soap opera. Jem had no idea who her father even was. Her mother was in a prison still in Russia, but she'd never been married. She'd found, though, that her fellow classmates tended to assume that her Russian family must necessarily have all sorts of sordid secrets, a misconception she had no difficulty exploiting.

"Okay, let's find who your real dad is." Landon fingers clattered over the keys. "Easiest route is through the school's finances. I'm in and out of their systems all the time, so I've got all sorts of backdoors built in by this point. Let's see… better to look at a bill from a few month's back, less likely for anyone to notice anything… huh."

"'Huh'?"

"It's not a person, it's a company." Landon reported. "Called 'Sparrow Solutions, Ltd.' Let's see what Google has to say…"

Several shell corporations later…

"Harold Wren." Landon reported, pushing back his computer. "There. Finally. Geez, Jem, you didn't tell me this was going to be some sort of CIA cover-up."

"I didn't think it would be." Jem lied, scanning the information. There was an awful lot of it, but a rather noticeable lack of any sort of photo. But Wren—Sparrow—Finch… yes, there was a definite pattern there. Unfortunately, if the name was fake, it probably meant all the rest of this information—landed English gentry and so forth—probably was too.

Still, it was more than she'd had before. And some of these corporations, shell or not, might bear some looking into.

"Thanks, Landon." She said, giving the boy a quick peck on the cheek. Before the blushing teen could respond, she hopped out of the booth and jogged out of the restaurant.

Jem hadn't "discovered" boys yet, but she'd discovered how to use them quite some time ago.

Unfortunately, there wasn't Jem could do with the information, and her next encounter with "Harold Wren" was an obituary.

"It was a plane crash in the pacific." The suited man in the principal's office informed her. "They're still working at recovering the bodies, but so far the results have not been promising. Insurance limited have been named as the executors of Mr. Wren's estate."

"I'm sorry, Jem." The principal placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.

Jem shrugged. "I didn't know him very well." She saw no reason to lie about this. "It was mostly this other lady… Shaw? Does it say anything about her?"

The man shook his head. "No word about any nanny or any retainers with him on the plane."

"Oh." Jem struggled with the mental image of Shaw as a 'nanny.' Something was wrong here. "So… who's my new guardian?"

"A friend of Mr. Wren's." The man reported, consulting his sheet. "We haven't managed to locate him yet, he's currently overseas somewhere. His estate has vouched to support you until he can be reached."

"But what's his name?"

"Dr. Will Ingram."

A/N: This is a story that's been sitting on my hard drive for forever, and I'm finally deciding to just go for it and try to actually finish it. I have the first two chapters written out-basically it's the story of what happened to Jem, the Russian orphan who got left behind. We'll see where things go from here.