Some More Mischief

Jack had promised Michael she would do more stunts with him, join him on some sort of mission in which they could get in trouble. And she had been waiting for the opportunity, looking for missions that needed more than one person on it, and so far... nothing. That was one of downsides to a more domestic lifestyle, she supposed. Trouble became a more infrequent visitor. She had once complained there was too much action in her life. Now she missed.

What a fickle beast mankind be.

So when an owl had appeared, bidding she meet him as soon as possible, she responded back, telling him she could be outside of the nightclub, Satan's, that very night. She put the kids down, explained to Max that she had some potentially dangerous work to be done and she should be back by breakfast, no worries. He had been, of course, baffled and worried, but it was the usual amount of it all. So she wasn't too worried for him.

Jack was dressed like a soldier, well like a hipster soldier, but some sort of militant individual nonetheless. She had always wanted to feel like she could storm an army, and she figured one had to dress for the job they wanted. From Michael's tone, their mission was going to be a serious one. And it was about tie. She had all of these skill sets that were just not being used.

So she loitered outside of the nightclub that she owned the deed to, looking for her friend who would be looking like trouble.

Michael was stressed. Very stressed. His life had quietly been going to hell since the end of November.  Maddie, right before she was due to have their child--his first child--had suddenly just taken all her things, all the baby things and gone.  No word, no nothing. Just disappeared out of his life.  And as good as the Ministry was at tracking magical folk, no one seemed to have a trace of her.  


They'd been forced to marry by the stupid marriage law.  They'd each gone along with it in order to keep the other from Azkaban.  And, they'd gone along with the additional procreation clause for the same flipping reason.  Now, they were both gone, and Michael was trying to go forward as if the whole business had never happened in the first place.  How he felt about it on the inside was different. 


He finally had taken off his wedding ring and had put it away. He had put his house back to the way it had been before she'd been there, and he'd separated out his considerable wealth from the bank account that he had added her to.  He'd not closed the joint account, but had left a small sum in there, enough to see her and their child for perhaps a year.  More than enough to get home on.  He wasn't going to give her more than that without some word from her.  


And, what he hadn't let anyone in to, not even Robert, was how hurt and angry he was that by now surely he had a son or a daughter that he had never seen.  He was more wounded than he wanted anyone to know that he hadn't had the opportunity to be there when his only child had entered the world, to know whether it was a boy or a girl, to see it, to hold it....Maddie had robbed it all from him, and he didn't understand why. There'd been no fights, no cross words, and so far as he knew, they'd gotten on well under the circumstances.


And then, as if troubles with his wife were not enough, his old flame just got deeper and deeper into trouble, dragging him with her.  The owls from Alete had been coming again, heavily now since the start of the new year. 


First, it was a bungled art theft in Paris that he'd had to rescue her from. Then, he'd spent quite a lot of time convincing Lee to let her go from an attempt to swipe priceless jewels from the Smithsonian.  After that, he'd broken her out of a Mexican prison. 

She was going to make him rip out his hair. He was the only other person who knew she was still trying to be in the business. The arthritis in her hands had stopped her from making a somewhat lucrative business selling her oil paintings and her watercolors. She rarely could paint anymore at all, but what was most frustrating to Michael was that she was in total denial that she didn't have the delicate, feathery touch anymore nor the agility to continue in her "real work," as she called it.  They'd argued for hours every time Michael had had to run to another corner of the globe to keep her from spending her last years in a cell.


Tonight was the most infuriating and insulting thing she'd tried yet.  And he needed to get to her before Robert did. Robert was out of patience for Alete and had been for at least a year now, and Michael remembered why.  She had attempted to swipe some medieval paintings from the Uffizi gallery in Florence.  She'd been caught redhanded, and when Michael tried to break her out of jail, she'd stupidly bungled her own escape, and they had both been caught.  Michael had been in way over his head, and Robert had had to negotiate for hours for their releases.  Robert had not wanted to hear of Alete ever again. He'd put himself on the line for Michael's sake.  He could not do it a second time--not for Alete.


Tonight took the cake, though.  She'd had a new target tonight, and he'd gotten another owl.  This one he couldn't walk away from. This one was beyond anything she'd ever done, and because of it, Michael was in deep trouble.  Robert was more than likely to toss him into Azkaban by daylight.  


He'd sent a desperate owl to Jack, slipped into his mission clothes--a black longsleeved polo, black slacks, and had grabbed the black backpack he used for his work, and had gone to Knockturn.  He was relieved to see her already there and waiting.  He triple checked to be sure he hadn't been followed and wasn't being watched.  Then he approached her.


"We need to talk," he said softly, his eyes scanning everywhere just in case. "Someplace safe.  I'm in trouble--real trouble, and I need your help."

It didn't take him long - they both happened to be fairly prompt people, which just continued to add to their compatibility as partners in crime. He looked worried, more so than usual, and she knew that this was personal. Not Lupin-personal, because he would have been all serious and hellfire-y. This was something vastly different from their missions before. And it should have worried her more than it excited her... But Jack was so ready to be doing something again. Something that mattered.

"Lucky you," she said. She turned and stepped into the nightclub, motioning for Michael to follow. The bouncer immediately dropped his tough behavior the moment he saw her, gesturing for her to enter. She jerked a thumb over her shoulder and nodded, and the bouncer nodded back, letting Michael in as well. She moved quickly through the dance floor, and people seemed to instinctively move out of her way. Perks of being deedholder.

They took to the stairs and Jack turned her head to speak to Michael. "I have the deed to this place now. It comes with perks - the owner has their own room for an office, etcetera." She flicked her eyes upwards. They reached the second floor and Jack turned down the hallway. She passed the first door, which was boarded up as a reminder to everyone that only Vito Dee Symons could enter that room. The next room, however, was hers. She pulled out a magical key and opened the door, slipping inside.

She let Michael into the room, which had once looked like a sterile motel room. The bed and bathroom was still there, but now there was a new cabinet full of potions and bottles of liquor - this was where she sent her acquaintances and friends who needed a safe place.

Jack crossed for the cabinet and withdrew a bottle of whiskey, holding it up as an offer.

Michael followed her, eager to get out of sight. One thing was for sure. Robert wouldn't look for him here. In fact, it wouldn't even make Robert's mental list.  Once they were upstairs, and she offered whiskey, he nodded, hoping that the fact that she owned the place meant that there was more than one bottle of that if he needed it.

He fished out a piece of Ministry stationery. Robert's stationery, in fact. The writing wasn't Robert's though. He laid it in front of Jack.

"This is starting endwise, I know, but its the latest chapter in a part of my life you don't know anything about yet.  You'll need to read this."

The parchment read:

Mon Cher,
I've run into a small snag. I don't have time to explain. The good news is that I scored--big. It's going to set us up with more money than either of us ever dreamed. I've done it! As soon as I deliver the package, we'll be set for life. 

They heard me, though. So, to give you a fair bit of warning, you need to talk to your friend immediately. I needed to buy myself a little time, so I had to choose someone that he would always excuse no matter what. So, I put one of your cigarette butts and just a wee smidge of its tobacco to throw them off my trail. All you need to do is tell him you did it, and he'll let bygones be bygones.  And before you can say Bob's your uncle, we'll be living the highlife.

I just knew you'd be proud of me! 

Love, 
A

PS--Do tell him his safe and its enchantments are utter genius!

The parchment's words were already indelible in Michael's mind, and they made his blood run cold. His old flame had literally set him up like he'd never ever thought possible, and, if he couldn't resolve it, he'd either be in Azkaban or worse. This wasn't something Robert could just brush under his carpet.

He intended to let Jack read the parchment first and then try to explain the whole tangled web.  He was starting to regret that he hadn't heeded Robert's warning to sever all ties with Alete once and for all.

Michael nodded and Jack grinned, turning to the small bar next to the cabinet. She pulled out four small glasses, dropped a few small ice cubes in each, and poured generous triple shots. She crossed the floor and handed him a glass, trading him for the piece of parchment in his hand. She tossed back her own glass, the whiskey smoothly travelling down her throat and landing heavily into her stomach.

Good stuff.

She took the parchment, reading through it. It felt strange to be reading what seemed to be a very personal, intimate letter. She had never really heard or seen that part of her friend. It was almost weird to think how professional their relationship really was. They were friends, yes, but they didn't talk about anything beyond their work, the mission, and fun little tactics they had figured out for their line of work.

Michael knew she had children to watch out for, knew she had a roommate. But he didn't know their story. And, as this parchment revealed, she knew very little of her friend as well.

Well, that was about to change.

Jack whistled, shaking her head. She handed the letter back to Michael, before taking up her other glass. She shook her head. "You certainly seem to have a type, Michael."

Michael was glad for the whiskey and he tossed it down quickly, enjoying the burn and savoring the rich flavor. He hadn't lost his thoughts enough that he missed the appreciation of a truly fine whiskey.  This one was silky smooth, dark, woody, and he caught the afternotes of fruit.  In another time, this was one he'd sip in front of his fire, while reading a good book.


"Oh, that's nice," he said, approving. "You've got good taste."  He sighed heavily, the weight of his situation in front of him. "I've never not been able to go to Robert before. Never--until now.  


"Her name is Alete, and she's about as French as you are. She likes to appear French because most of her aliases are French.  She says she needs to practice to stay in character. Bullshit. She's a frustrated halfblood who has always wanted to be a pureblood French aristocrat. 


"I met her after Hogwarts, when I started to make the big scores. She and I had an odd relationship for decades--ongoing, but long distance and sporadic--until Maddie. She used to have a good touch, particularly for old tumbler safes, and she was the most agile woman I'd ever seen working from a rope. But, she's not what she used to be.  She's got arthritis in her hands. Frankly, she just simply doesn't have the touch anymore. Oh, lord, how we've fought for the last three or four years about it.


"And, I've rescued her repeatedly.  This makes the fourth time just since the start of this year.  The only time I've been in jail in the last 25 years or better was because of her.  Not to say that I'm blameless entirely, but had she not been, again, doing stupid things that I told her a million times not to do, I wouldn't have felt sorry for her again and wouldn't have been there in the first place.  She still thinks she's as gifted as she used to be, and I felt like I needed to protect her from herself, poor as that was on my part. Normally would I blame her? No. I'd blame myself, but right now, frankly, I'm pissed. So, this part of the tale will spin with a bit more bias, and for that, I apologize.

"Early last year, she tried to rob some medieval artwork in Florence and got caught. And, as usual, she sent for me. I didn't have any luck in negotiating bail, so I decided to break her out. Not like I haven't done it before. But, she decided she could disarm an alarm that, honestly, wasn't going to be a problem--until she tripped it. We were both caught and jailed.  Robert had to use his friendship and political clout, from one minister to another, to get me out. The Italian minister let Alete out, so long as she never returns to Italy. It put Robert in a delicate position with the Italian magical authorities. He warned me very clearly that it was the last time he could afford to help Alete, and if that meant not helping me, then I needed to know I was on my own.  He never wants to hear about Alete again, and I can't blame him.  I should have listened when he told me to end all contact with her.


"The safe she's talking about can only be a secret safe that is Robert's at the Ministry.  I designed it for him and made it as impregnable as I knew how. He and I are the only ones that have access to it.  Or we were, until tonight.  It holds the most sensitive documents the government has.  Eyes only documents, top level classified information.


"She's obviously got a buyer or she'd have no reason to try it. I'm a bit surprised she figured out all the levels of enchantment and the back up systems to get in it. But--if she sells those papers, the damage to England is insurmountable.


"Can I go to Robert about this? Hell, no. My cigarettes are handmade by a wizard with a little shop in Venice.  Not likely that anyone else in London smokes them. And she just happened to pick remnants from the ashtray at my desk to leave behind to frame someone up with.  Even if I could go to Robert, even if he did believe me, he wouldn't have any choice but to have me arrested for one of the highest crimes on the books. 

"If I don't find her and get those papers back, I'm a dead man," he said quietly.

Michael complimented her choice of whiskey and tipped her head. "Loads of practice," she said with a cheeky wink. Ha, ha, ha, alcoholism was the best, let’s all make jokes. Unfortunately, humor was one of the best ways she could deal with the issue. Giving it too much stock, taking it too seriously, that’s what helped it turn into a real problem. Keeping the jokes light kept the drinking light.

She shook these musings off and finished off her drink, shaking her head. "Actually, the previous owner of Satan's had a very sophisticated taste for drink. It was positively pretentious as times, but yielded good results. All of the drinks are from the bar downstairs." She ticked her head, refilling their glasses with ice, which was quickly followed by more whiskey. For the sake of the mission, it had probably be their last round, but Jack knew that if anyone could do this mission with a buzz, it was the pair of them.

He quickly explained and Jack marveled at just how little she did know of Michael. It seemed so out of character for him to do something that Robert was so firmly against, which would make him have to ask his friend to inconvenience himself for his sake. It was more like Michael to quietly suffer so that his friends and family might be more comfortable for it.

This woman had a hold on him. Even if he would deny just how much.

She handed him a glass, arching an eyebrow. "We'd better get started then. What do we need? I have a whole network at my disposal." She smirked. "I've become popular, as of late."

(ooc--okay, so, yeah, i'm writing monsterously long posts. sorry 'bout that! i guess i'm just really having a good time. )

Jack's drinking hadn't gone unnoticed, and Michael had noticed that it had been increasing.  But he loved Jack, so he was only keeping an eye on it from a distance. When it came to how much alcohol she was drinking, he understood.  He knew his could get out of hand if he didn't constantly work to keep it in check. He'd never become dependent on it, but he knew it took ridiculous amounts to make him blotto. His tolerance was probably too high, part of the consequence of living hard, of the brute survival needs in his lifelong business of walking the line between crime and law enforcement.  Doing sinful things for saintly reasons could mess with his head when he let it.

He swirled the alcohol in his glass and watched the light sparkle through the amber.  As a lover of art, he loved the play of light and color, and he liked how light liked to dilute his darkness, tickling decency out of what others found shameful. He didn't know if his 50+ years of friendship with Robert would survive this, particularly if they didn't stop Alete. To stop her this time, he would need to pull out every stop.  And with Maddie gone, he didn't relish now what he had to do with the only lover left that still could accept not just the saint in him but the devil too. He would have to stop her once and for all--whatever that took.

That was his job, for awhile yet anyway.  This, what Alete had done, was no less criminal and in some ways a great deal more, than what Audriana Swan had done. Michael knew he would have to kill Swan if he couldn't stop her. He couldn't treat Alete any differently if he couldn't stop her either.  He groaned, frustrated.

"What the hell have I done?" he was restless and starting to pace, wanting to swiftly shut down the emotion that wanted to take hold of him. This wasn't the time. He didn't want to take Jack in this. He'd always wanted to protect her, to keep the ugly things of this world away from her, and here he was dragging her into the darkest part of his worst personal nightmare.  She didn't deserve that, and yet, here she was. Still here.

"Well, offhand,..." he said, with a bit of dark humor, desperate to shut away some of his own emotional pain before he found himself spilling it all to her, all the agony of losing his wife, his child, his--what was she anyway--old flame, was that what she was? Betrayed every way but loose, except by Jack. And now, to right himself, he tossed his friendship with Robert into the pot right along with everything else.

"Offhand, I'd say some lockpicks, some dementor kibbles, a lobotomy so I don't need to think anymore..."  He glanced at the glass of whiskey in his hand, lobotomy in a glass.  Close enough. He let his voice trail off, knowing that if Robert had to contain him in Azkaban, he'd know to go to extraordinary lengths to keep him there.

"No, seriously, in any other time she'd be already back at my...our...her ...the house," he stumbled over what to call the beach cottage in southern France that was just as much home to him as the cottage in Hogsmeade. Forty years it had been a home to him, a safehaven and a place to run to when he was hunted.  Forty years she'd been his companion, his collegue, his confidante, his lover, and had wanted to be his wife. The only thing that had kept that from happening was his allergy to altars. It surely hadn't ever been because of a lack of feeling for her on his part.  She had been the only woman he'd ever seriously considered marrying for love.  To sever that bond so completely had seemed so impossible and heinous when Robert had suggested it last year.  To his own dismay, the fire had never quite quit burning even after he'd married Maddie.  Now, it was over. It had to be. He had no choice. He slugged the drink quickly, snatched up the bottle, poured himself a third and set the bottle back down in front of Jack.  He'd been loving Alete before Jack had even been born.

"She won't be doing that tonight," he said hoarsely, mainly from nearly choking on the whiskey. "She's got a buyer. And a damned rich one. Alete has expensive tastes and so do I.  If she's got one she thinks will keep us for the rest of our lives, she's about to make the biggest score of her career. And, since I've covered her screw ups these last years, Alete still has a reputation of being one of the best." He added softly, partly to hear his own reasons in his own ears. "In our work? To lose her hands? To lose her touch? Its the worst that can happen to us. And she'd already lost me to Maddie. I wanted to leave her something, Jack."  Focus, Tremaine, he told himself. Work now, think later.

"One question keeps nagging at me," he said, back on task, "Who? Who has that much money? Who is that desperate to want that sort of government information that they'd seek her out, be willing and able to pay that sort of money? Who the hell would that be, and what would they want it for?  That sort of money has all sorts of power written all over it. If that alone doesn't give us pause us, we shouldn't be going on this.

"There's a far greater chance that when she turns the documents to the buyer, he'll kill her and keep the money. And, she knows it. But, she's done her homework, I promise. She knows whether this guy has the ability to pay her cost. Something has made her think she can pull it off.

"And, then there's the small business of what happens to England when that information is turned back against us.

"Before we run out of time, we have to figure out who the buyer is and get there in time to either stop her, or stop them both, and get the papers. We have to get the papers. The only thing I can bring to the table at the moment is trying to think like she does. Beyond that, I got nothin'."

((No worries - I hope you don't mind if my word count slips. My free time keeps fluctuating))

Jack was a patient woman, and she was intrigued by Michael's words. She was not, however, good at communicating emotions, especially with someone she had never done so with, so it was hard for to just stand still and respond to Michael's narration; it was a very intimate thing to do, just stare and react with whichever emotion seemed to be bubbling to the surface. Jack had not ever been, nor had ever wanted to be, a guidance counselor, so she put herself to work behind the bar, listening as she poured a bottle of wolfsbane into serving size bottles, pain medicine into vials, some strong whiskey into canteens for those who needed some warmth.

But she was struck. This was a side of Michael that, until now, had been his alone to bear. And she could not be confused nor upset by this, for she had done the same. Where Michael had to rescue his love from prison, from traps she had sprung herself, Jack had, once upon a time, had to save her love from hospitals, tops of bridges, from bottles, pills, and razors. She remembered the dread she had felt upon entering a quiet home, upon knocking on his door. She wondered if Michael had nearly the same one every time he saw Alete's handwriting.

And it was a twisted love. It was twisted love that said 'let me blame you so we might be together.' It was twisted love that said 'let me perish so you might move on.' It wasn't healthy, nor happy, and yet it was nearly impossible to let it go. Jack had only been able to when she realized that by continuing on, she was loving him in a twisted way as well. Perhaps Michael had finally come to that conclusion too. Love wasn't bailing someone out one final time. It was putting an end to the danger they had made for themselves... and it often included a goodbye.

Jack tried to think of a potential buyer. A few flitted into her brain, but their means or their motive did not seem strong enough. There simply wasn't enough evidence from this note to point a finger on anyone, so Jack simply could not follow that train of thought quite yet. Jack scratched her head impatiently.

"There's no way to know the buyer, which means there's no way to know where she's planning on going." Jack tossed the thought around in her head. "Would she meet with you, before she hands off the documents. We could plant something on her... Track her."

((IDK if you have a buyer in mind... But I do. xD If you're okay with that, we could run into the person.))

(np.  i'm good with whatever you suggest. the only other thought i had was gideon, but i was sorta winging it.  lol. i'm good with it not being the obvious, which would be gideon.)


Michael knew that following the money would lead him to the buyer. But, with time being of the essence, Jack was going the shorter way around the barn. She made sense. 


Alete. There was still time to find Alete before she contacted the buyer. It was an unconscionable hour. A man of power would probably not choose to meet at an ungodly hour, if for no other reason than it was hard to make a large money transfer when Gringotts wasn't open. Even if he planned to kill her, Alete wouldn't give him that big a window to do it. She'd want it in daylight. She'd want to give herself a way to try to get away.

His mind felt like it was clearing.  "She's playing the odds," he said.  "She's hoping she can stall him til sunrise, and hoping she can improvise her way out by using broad daylight." He shook his head. "Its too thin. She's not 20 anymore, and her arthritis isn't going to let her do any gymnastics to get away this time."


He took another sip of the whiskey, not guzzling this time, his mind racing too fast to drink whiskey like he'd like to.

"She's scared. She's got hours to kill, with the goods in her hands. Goods she has to know are priceless and she's got to stay alive, alone, in the dark, counting the minutes til dawn." 


Jack's plan gave them a chance and gave Alete a chance to stay alive. In order to do that, though, Michael had to set her up, to turn the tables on her before Alete's set up of him cost him his freedom for the rest of his life. 


In another day and time, he'd have perhaps taken the fall for her and, if he were lucky, spring himself in a day or two.  Much as he wanted to do that, he didn't have that option this time. He had looked for it. Alete was inadvertently forcing it to be her or Robert and England. And he'd sworn with his life to defend England.


He was at risk of overthinking it. He had to act before he changed his mind. Turning it over and over like a Chinese puzzle box wouldn't yield him different results.

He opened his backpack and drew out a parchment and a pen. He hastily scribbled a note.


"You forgot your tickets. They'll be at the station. Watch the muggles don't see you."  He scribbled her name on the front.


"Its old code between us," he told Jack, handing her the parchment in hopes the club had an owl. "She'll read it that her normal escape routes and safehouses won't be safe. I've told her I've got another way out of England for her and another safehouse. I've told her that if she goes to Kings Cross station, they'll be passed to her there."  

There was one thing Alete had always wanted from him that she would not trade now or ever.  One thing he'd never been able to muster up to give her.  If he and Jack enchanted it, it would track her. A ring. Any sort of a ring. Alete would surely read into it, and she would delightedly wear it to the meet with the buyer and beyond. He was disgusted with himself for his own plan. Why did he suddenly feel like Judas? He took another sip of whiskey.


"What's the chance any of those ladies downstairs have a vintage ring they'd sell me on the fly?" he asked her.  "Anything but costume. Size doesn't matter. Quality does."