Acquaintances vis-a-vis, Part 2

This is a direct sequel to this story. I always felt that this part of the story was cut too short, so I finally wrote a few more pages to it.

***

"So this is how you live, then?" The woman looked around the open living room, peeked through the curtains into the wide balcony and the fine view of down-town London that spread from there.

"It's nice", she concluded as she dropped herself onto the comfortable black leather couch. "They must be paying you well."

"What'd you expect? I can pay for your services, you didn't think I'd bankrupt myself for them?" His irritated tone was met by another lopsided grin. She was definitely not one the cheapest of mercenaries, and prone to overcharge the unknowing customer. But you got a job well done quickly.



"Speaking of services..."

"I wired the payment to you already. I appreciate that you gave the man a lift back, by the way, although I don't quite get how you could price the info on my whereabouts as high as that."

"Oh, some things just can't be measured in money", she replied nonchalantly but Nigel saw right through it. If anything could be said against her, it was that she could measure everything in cash.

Nigel didn't employ anyone he didn't do a full background research on. Although she didn't look anything like it, Emma Ernsthart was a self-made millionaire whose fees went directly to her Swiss bank account. Nigel had long suspected that she had not left the Royal Marines because she hated orders – both giving and receiving them – as she usually claimed, but because they just didn't pay her enough. Nigel had always made sure he paid her promptly the full asking price, as he also knew what might happen if he didn't.

Nigel had needed a message sent to a London White Knight that had tried to resign after a mission. The man had cut all contact to the Knights and disappeared. Well, unfortunately for him, he had been the next-in-command of the London unit and according to Audrye they hadn't been doing so well after he left. Also the man was an heir to a powerful White Knight family and their next-in-line was a teenage girl with a flounce of a diva. Not happy about becoming the heir in stead of him, she had actually joined with the Assassins, who were mortal enemies to the White Knights. So Nigel had used all his capabilities on tracking the Young Master Weston-Pryce down, finally locating him from a small town in Russia, of all places. Lucky for Nigel, he had noticed that Emma was on a mission of her own nearby. She had been employed by a Russian oil mogul whose fruit of loins plus entourage had been trapped by an avalanche on the mountains of Ural. Nigel had been even more lucky that this mogul had tried to be cheap with her, which never worked out with Emma. So she had located the boys with the helicopter her employer had provided her, rescued them and dropped them off at the nearest place where they could buy a ticket home and took off with her new helicopter, which compensated nicely for the cut in her paycheck.

"So, what do you want?" Nigel asked her bluntly.

"Something to drink would be nice", she answered carefreely. Baffled, he slouched to the fridge and scanned it's contents.

"Ehm, we got.. Coke? Or Light Coke? Oh, I think I see a strawberry cider in the back, must be Audrye's..."

"I'll just have whatever you'll have", she shouted from the couch. He returned with two cans and passed one of them to her.

"No, really, what is it that you want from me?"

She tilted her head to the side, with a mischievous look on her face.

"I wanted to meet my maker."

Nigel snorted.

"Then you're in the wrong place, I'm afraid. It was Quentin who built your arm."

"But it was you who made it work. Without you, I would just have a very heavy and weird-looking prosthetic."

He couldn't deny that. Programming her replacement arm had been that first big favour she had owed him.

"Well, now you've met me. Are you going to stay long?"

"I've got no other current plans. And I haven't met my sister and nephew in a long time, so I think I could crash with them for a while."

Finally Nigel noticed what it was about this woman that made her different from anyone else he usually had to interact with. He knew that his way of communicating was blunt bordering on insulting, even if he usually didn't mean it like that. But Emma seemed to see right through his words, not offended and her smile never wavering.

Before he could comment anything on this though, his laptop flashed it's screen as a sign of a search result. He frowned at the message.

"Whatcha doin'?" Emma asked, leaning over his shoulder for a better look and startling him. He had completely blacked out on having a visitor. Well, this was not anything top secret, or even anything that would hint at the White Knights.

"I was tracking a vehicle that is a possible lead to the brat they're trying to relocate."

"Brat? You mean 'little sister that went with the knives'?"

She was sharp, Nigel had to give her that. It was the message he had asked Emma to relay to Weston-Pryce.

"Yeah. Well, I seem to have tracked it to Cainsborough airport, but I'm afraid the lead will go cold here... They don't keep much on the record in there", he replied, still frowning. Part of him wondered if the reason some places still kept on using outdated paper files and not an electronic system was because of people like himself, who could hack into any system to retrieve those files.

"One of the reasons I like it so much."

"What?" He turned to the woman, who was calmly sipping her coke. She gave him a quizzical look.

"Did you expect me to leave my stolen helicopter to Heathrow?" That actually made a lot of sense. In her line of work, Emma had to be familiar with the underground places and people. On a whim, he turned the laptop screen straight towards her. On the screen was a midnight blue Porche.

"You didn't happen to see this car at the airport, did you?" he ventured. She squinted at the screen.

"I think I did, actually. Yes! The owner of that thing was a real pain in the ass and impatient as hell."

"Do you know where they went?"

"Yes, he was quite loud about demanding that his precious baby be loaded asap but with silk gloves on the private plain to Dublin."

"Hold that thought, I need to make a call."

His fingers flashed on the keyboard. Soon the call was picked. It seemed that the three musketeers – the Nob, the Scot and the Mexican – were at a deadlock, but hearing a confirmation that the car had been flown to Ireland seemed to get them moving. But what Nigel heard was the enthusiasm with which Emma greeted the Knights over the speaker, or the one Knight in particular, the one she had just spent several hours with, flying from Russia to London. Which brought another problem to his mind. The nob had returned to save his little sister from the Assassins, but he there were no guarantees he wouldn't skip again after retrieving her. Having closed the phone he turned to Emma with a serious face.

"You said you didn't have plans for now? Could I employ you for a while longer, then?"

Emma's constant grin melted immediately. Talk of business always got her serious.

"What do you need me to do?"

"I need you to tail Weston-Pryce once he gets back from Ireland. I don't want to go through all that trouble to find him again."

"Daniel? What's so special about keeping him in your radar?" she tried hard to keep her voice adequately disinterested.

"What would you charge for it?" he asked, dismissing her question. She grinned, giving him a price. Knowing he was being overcharged for something this simple, he agreed anyways.

"Wow, you really like this guy, don't you!" she exclaimed after shaking his hand for the agreement. His face darkened.

"I don't like him. He's valuable here, that's all. Besides, this'll cost me less that getting you drag his arse all the way from Russia again."

"Allright, I'll take your word for it. But now I got to get going", she said, drinking the last drops of her coke, "If I'm going to stay in town, I think I'll need to downgrade to a motorcycle again. It's such a hassle trying to find a parking space for a helicopter..."