Chapter 78: Scouting for Teammates
"So tonight there's also a homecoming dance at Sarah's old high school to deal with?" Simon said, after Ratner's interrogation wrapped up.
"You heard correctly," Casey said.
"Why does everything land on the same night?"
"You have somewhere to be?" Casey said.
"I'm scouting a recruit. I need to observe them tonight." Simon didn't particularly try to hide it.
Casey looked at him with something that wasn't quite envy but was adjacent to it. "Your own team. Your own recruitment. Your own mission selection." He shook his head slightly. "That's a good setup."
"You could've had it," Simon said.
"Go," Casey said. "We'll handle tonight."
"You sure? With Chuck—"
"Walker and I are the actual spies here," Casey said. "We managed before you showed up. We'll manage tonight."
Simon accepted this without further argument. Casey was right — when Chuck wasn't actively creating variables, the two of them were more than capable.
"I'll be on the phone if something goes wrong," Simon said.
"It won't," Casey said, which was either confidence or denial and Simon decided not to examine which.
He finished his shift, went home, and slept until midnight.
When he left the house he was wearing a fake beard applied carefully enough to hold up under decent light, and he'd aged himself with makeup — a few lines, slightly dulled coloring, the specific look of a man ten years older than he was. The disguise wasn't elaborate but it didn't need to be. It needed to survive a brief encounter in a poorly lit building.
He drove to a parking structure in Burbank, left the Mustang, and found a dusty station wagon that had been sitting in the same corner spot for at least two weeks based on the accumulation on the hood. He had it running in ninety seconds.
The neighborhood below the Hollywood Hills had the particular character of a place that existed in the gap between what the city advertised and what it actually was — old apartment buildings, broken streetlights, the ambient presence of people conducting business that didn't benefit from visibility. Men with bottles. Women in doorways. The specific stillness of people who had learned to make themselves difficult to notice.
Simon parked at the base of the target building, got out unhurried, and put his hands on his hips in a way that let the badge on his belt catch the nearest light source. Fake badge, real effect — the people watching from the shadows reassessed him and went back to their own concerns.
He walked in.
He bypassed the elevator and took the stairs to the roof, confirmed the surrounding area was clear, and went over the railing.
The drainpipe on the south face of the building was old but structurally sound. He tested his weight on it before committing, then climbed four floors to the fifth-floor window ledge.
The window to the public corridor was unlatched — a detail he'd confirmed two days earlier on a daytime visit with a maintenance story and a clipboard. He eased it open, pulled himself through, and moved quietly to apartment 506.
He checked the doorframe for alarm contacts and the lock housing for secondary mechanisms — neither were present, which told him something about the tenant's confidence in their own defensive capability rather than their security hardware.
He used the automatic pick Casey had left in the field kit without asking questions about it, heard the lock disengage in about four seconds, and went in.
The apartment was clean and organized in the specific way of someone who had been trained to live that way rather than someone who had gradually developed the preference. Every surface clear, every item in a logical position. Military habits surviving into civilian life.
The photographs on the shelf confirmed the right address. He'd been tracking this target for four days — enough to know the schedule, the routines, the approximate return window.
He had about an hour.
He settled in, did what he'd come to do, and waited.
The footsteps in the corridor arrived at the expected time. A key in the lock, the door opening, the automatic reach for the light switch.
The woman who came in moved through her own space with the ease of someone for whom spatial awareness was a default state. She didn't see Simon immediately — he was on the sofa, still, outside the primary visual field of someone coming through a door.
She was three steps from the bathroom when she stopped.
Simon had the Beretta up before she completed the turn toward him.
"Easy," he said. "Hand away from the back."
Her hand, which had been moving toward a weapon at her lower back, stopped.
She looked at him. Her expression was calm in the way of someone running a very fast calculation rather than someone who wasn't afraid.
"Who are you?" she said.
Simon opened the file folder on his knee and read from it.
"Gisele Harabo. Israeli national. Former IDF recon unit, weapons specialist. Discharged and relocated to the United States three years ago." He closed the folder. "Currently employed, loosely speaking, by the Campos organization." He looked at her. "That about right?"
DING.
[ Fast and Furious 4/5/6 protagonist Gisele Harabo detected. Check-in available. ]
Check in.
[ Available skills — select one: ][ 1. Weapons Proficiency (Advanced) ][ 2. Hand-to-Hand Combat (Intermediate) ][ 3. Driving (Advanced) ][ 4. Lockpicking (Intermediate) ][ 5. Computer Skills (Intermediate) ][ 6. Composure (Passive) ][ 7. Iron Will — Basic (Passive) ]
Cancel. Decide later.
"Who are you?" Gisele said again. Her voice hadn't changed register.
"Before I answer that," Simon said, "I want you to answer something first." He kept the weapon level. "Are you planning to keep doing this? Working for people like Campos, waiting for the day a rival crew or a federal task force ends it?"
She didn't answer.
"Because if you want a different path, I can offer you one," Simon said.
"You're asking me to trust someone whose name I don't know," she said.
"I can tell you who I work for," Simon said. "But once you know, you have two options — you're in, or this conversation ends permanently." He paused. "So the question is whether you want to know now or after you've decided."
Gisele looked at the weapon in his hand. Then at him. "You have the gun. I don't seem to have options."
Simon smiled. "You think the gun is the only reason I could handle you?"
"I think if you put it down we'd find out," she said.
He knew she was testing him. He also knew that not rising to it would cost more than rising to it.
He stood up from the sofa and set the Beretta on the coffee table.
"Your draw or my hands," he said. "Whichever you think is faster."
She drew.
She was fast — genuinely fast, the kind of speed that came from a body that had practiced the motion until it stopped being a decision. The safety was off before the weapon was fully raised, which meant she'd swept it during the draw, which was good technique.
Simon was already moving when the gun cleared the holster.
He covered the distance in two steps. His left hand closed on the slide before she had a firing angle, his right thumb wedged against the hammer, and he felt the trigger pull complete against a locked mechanism.
She pulled again. Nothing.
She looked at his hands — the left gripping the slide, preventing it from cycling, the right blocking the hammer from falling.
One motion: he twisted the slide assembly off the frame and stepped back, holding it.
Gisele stood with a disassembled weapon and looked at him with the first expression he'd seen from her that wasn't fully controlled.
"Okay," she said.
"Okay," Simon agreed.
He set the slide on the coffee table beside the Beretta.
"Now," he said, "do you want to hear the offer?"
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