CHERUB: The Syndicate

10: Settled

The house they'd leased for the mission was huge; George's new bedroom was bigger than his room back on campus, and it had a giant bathtub in the en-suite with about fifty different settings.

"Nice house," George grinned as he walked into the kitchen fresh from a shower, getting a thrill from sliding across the polished kitchen tiles in socks.

"Wait until you see the pool," Alice replied, flipping some bacon out of the frying pan and onto a plate. "You can eat as much as you want, I bought loads."

George grabbed a plate of bacon and eggs and took it over to the sofa, which was in front of a giant wall TV. It took a couple of moments to work out what was on each channel, but he found some cartoons and shovelled bacon into his mouth while Alice made a second batch for Katie.

"Get that Brian," Alice said when the doorbell rang. "I can't leave this."

Annoyed, George put his plate down and headed for the door, vaguely wondering why Katie had to take so long in the shower. He opened the door to two older teenagers who did their best to look polite.

"Hi mate, are your parents in?" one asked, giving George a friendly smile.

"Aunt Alice, there are some people to see you," George shouted. He heard her complain a lot about not having time, but she appeared a few moments later, giving the two teenagers a suspicious look.

"Can I help you two?"

This time the other teenager spoke. "Ah, yeah. We've got a good deal for you. There are a lot of robbers around here who'll take advantage of you, especially just after you moved in. So we're here to tell you we'll make sure nobody targets you."

"And what's the catch?" Alice asked, not sounding very pleased.

"You just pay us fifty dollars now and we give you protection for as long as you live here, guaranteed," the teenager said. "We only take cash."

Alice's eyes narrowed. "You two can think again. You obviously don't know who I am, but if you did, you'd be apologising pretty quick."

"Your loss, sheila," the boy said, turning and jogging back down the path. "We'll be back again when you've had all your stuff stolen."

"Can't wait," Alice shouted, slamming the door.

George laughed. "Wow, I didn't realise you had a nasty side," he said, heading back towards his breakfast.

Alice wasn't in the mood for jokes. "You can get ASIS on the phone before you go back to your breakfast and tell them what happened. I'm gonna phone up some of my clients and see if they can't give whoever those kids were a good beating."

George groaned and slid his phone out of his shorts just as Katie strolled down the stairs, her hair still wet from the shower.

"Your breakfast is probably burnt by now, Chelsea," Alice apologised. "You might be able to save some of it."

"It's okay, I'll eat Brian's," she replied, ignoring George's complaints. "He can make more later."

The cloud burnt off and by lunchtime it was hot and sunny by George's standards, so he spent his time cleaning out the pool and, despite vowing never to swim again after the gruelling fitness training he'd endured, found himself lazily completing a few lengths as the ASIS operatives arrived. Alice swapped with him as he got out since she wasn't allowed to listen in.

"Hi George, take a seat," one of the ASIS operatives said to him as he walked through to the living room, towelling his hair after changing. "I'm Dawn and my partner here is Linda."