Cold Fusion - A Sci-fi, Fantasy, and Fusion Short Story Anthology

Leverage part 2

Author's note: I'm introducing a couple of characters here from @xxButterflykissesxx's story that, unfortunately, didn't make it out of development. Fingers crossed she'll get the chance to post it so you can see just how amazing of a writer she is.

Having a spy recruit her into their world of secrets, lies, and danger was quite exciting for Annabeth. At least, it was at first. Carefully sifting through each torrent of pillow talk for anything useful was significantly different than her usual routine. Enough so that the young woman from Dublin actually started to think of herself as something more than a mere whore. She was now an operative, working with the Agency to catch a dangerous mole. And the weekly bag of money somehow smuggled into her trunk didn't hurt, either.

But, as those first few exciting days turned into weeks, then months without anything significant, the excitement began to wane. Each day became more and more of a chore as she tried to stay focused on the task that Carlton gave her.

Then, just as Annabeth thought she was about to sink back into the daily grind of a woman of the night, the weight of disappointment and frustration heavy on her shoulders, it happened. She overheard something significant.

" ... don't be an idiot!" a hard voice hissed from the other side of a door. Getting ready for the nooner rush with a couple of the girls, Annabeth paused in applying color to her lids to look over at the door.

"If we can't contact Geppetto, then there's no way this deal is going through," the voice, a hard male one tinted with the locution of western England, likely Liverpool, went on to say.

"They weren't at the original meeting point," a second voice pointed out, equally hard and colored by a Cockney accent. "Some animatronic circus has moved in there instead."

"Send a note and request a new meet," the first voice directed. "Use the colonel's drop point."

The voice continued after that, but as the two walked down a hallway and away from the door, it faded below the concentrating young woman's ability to hear. As the voices finally disappeared, Annabeth sat back, thinking hard.

It sounded like some kind of business transaction. That, in itself, wasn't unusual; many well-to-do merchants and businessmen seemed to like using a brothel to conclude important business.

This transaction, however, felt different. Like there was an extra level of urgency to it, along with a healthy amount of menace and anger. The question was: was it enough menace to warrant contacting Carlton?

'Only one way to find out,' she thought, swiftly rising from her chair in front of the big mirror the girls were using. 'I need to hear more of that conversation!'

Slipping out the door after making an excuse about needing to use the loo to the other girls, the determined young woman carefully and quickly stole down the corridor, eyes sweeping this way and that in a hunt for two hard-looking men lost in conversation as they walked. Thusly occupied, she managed to negotiate the corridor's far corner and one other before she turned a third and nearly ran directly into them.

Gritting her teeth against the possibility of their anger at discovering her following them, she pulled up just short of smacking into the taller man's back and twisted back around the corner. Annabeth had just managed to put her back up against the wall and half lean back around the corner when the men began speaking again.

"I dunno, Brown. Blowing up that bloody plane factory was one thing. But this?" said the man with the Cockney accent.

"Quit whining, Cruikshank," the other man bit out in his Liverpudlian lilt. "We're getting paid well by von Brandenburg, Frederick's war marshall. All we have to do is deliver the plans to Geppetto and he'll get them out of the country."