As the car stopped and Hannah reached for her gun, she found herself hesitating. Maybe Castiel was right and this was a bad idea. These women had pulled off dozens of bank robberies, with, as it appeared, only the two of them. And now there was only Hannah coming to corner them, with no foreseeable back-up behind her.
She got out of the car and straightened her back. She’d been the top of her class, she reminded herself. And these were thieves, even if they were very, very, good at it…
She would be better.
Hannah creaked open the door to warehouse, which now she was thinking on it, didn’t really feel like the style of hideout pad she’d been expecting, her heart started pounding, and her fingers twitched around her gun handle. She was fine, she was fine…
She flung open the door, announcing herself as FBI, praying it didn’t sound like her voice was shaking.
“We hear you, honey,” said a British accent behind her. “Now drop that weapon.”
Hannah briefly let her eyes close as she exhaled slowly. She was so stupid, and Cas had been right…
“This is a trap,” she breathed.
“Actually it’s really more of a surprise party,” said the grinning redhead stepping out of the shadows in front of her. Charlie Bradbury, though Hannah had no doubt that wasn’t her real name. She’d got caught hacking into the pentagon when she wasn’t even old enough to legally drink, but had yet to be taken in for it.
Slowly, Hannah put her gun down on the floor. “My partner knows where I am,” she said.
“Yes, I’m sure he does,” Bela Talbot, the famous cat burglar extraordinaire, told her reassuringly as she walked around to stand beside her, gun still aimed at Hannah’s chest. She was, Hannah could admit to herself, as intimidatingly beautiful as her wanted posters has always portrayed her. “But we’ve got him kept busy for tonight. Oh don’t worry,” Bela continued as Hannah gasped, “I’m sure he’d enjoying himself. But we’d really like to talk about you tonight, Agent Devas. Seat?”
Bela gestured towards an armchair which seemed out of place in the building, where Hannah reluctantly sat. “Me?”
“Sure!” said Charlie. “You’ve been tracking s for almost a year, and no one else has ever gotten closer – have they Bells?”
“No, they haven’t,” Bela’s cold eyes glittered. “We know how good we are, but you’ve just about been keeping up with us. That makes you both dangerous, and…”
“Really hot,” Charlie cut in at her partner’s elbow. “Like seriously… you’ve just been so earnest about this whole thing too – it’s all pretty adorable. And flattering. Like you’ve really been trying to catch us…”
Hannah stared, and tried to ignore the blush she knew was creeping over her face. “That’s my job…”
Charlie pouted and sat down on the seat she’d rolled up from behind her. “Aw, don’t be like that,” she said, placing a slender hand down very deliberately on the armrest, close to Hannah’s leg. Achingly close really…
“Please don’t consider this a kidnapping or anything,” Bela said with a smile, leaning down on the edge of Charlie’s chair. Lovers, that was what the reports had suggested, the reports which, in Castiel’s words, Hannah had ‘obsessed over’. Seeing them together now Hannah could see for herself that they certainly did seem comfortable around each other...
Bela was smiling at her, a little pityingly, as Hannah registered that she was staring gormlessly again, and found herself wishing that maybe one day Bela would smile at her in a different way.
‘…We’d prefer for you to think of this as… as a meeting,” Bela told her, apparently deciding to ignore her partner’s earlier summary of the situation as a ‘surprise party’. “We’d like to get to know you a bit better. Find out -”
“If I’d work for you?”
Charlie looked up at Bela, looking as pleased as if she was showing off a dog that had just learnt a new trick. Told you she was quick, Bells.”
“Yes, she is,” Bela practically purred, as Hannah continued talking.
“Five agents in nine years have been found to have been on your pay roll and you want me to be one more.”
“Well, we don’t want you to be one of the one of the ones who get caught… But we’re thinking you’d be too smart for that anyway. And we don’t just want you to be an inside woman. We’re actually rather interested in treating you more as a partner…”
“See,” Charlie interrupted, “You’ve been watching us but we’ve been watching you too. And we really do think you’d be a great fit with us. We’d let you take your cat if we were ever leaving and everything.”
“I’m not a dirty cop,” Hannah said slowly. “If you know anything about me you should know that.”
“Oh, that’s true of most of them before we dirty them up, sure,” Bela said, flashing a predatory smile. Hannah could only think of it as predatory because she wasn’t sure if she was meant to take her words in a threatening manner, or more of a… sensual one.
“How would you like to be dirtied up, Hannah?”
Hannah’s heat beat quicker in her chest and she told herself it was only reacting in fear. “Uh, it’s an… attractive offer but… I don’t break the law, I uphold it.”
Charlie squealed. “Aw, Bells, listen to all these principles, she’s basically Batman.”
Bela sniffed at her. “She’s not even slightly like Batman, don’t be ridiculous. For one thing, she’s got a much better style going on,” she added with a smile. “Now, c’mon, Hannah, haven’t you ever thought about playing cops and robbers from the other way around?”
“I said no,” Hannah said firmly, and rolled the smoke bomb out from her pocket, and at the sound of the spluttering it induced, ran for it.
They’d be gone before she could get a team back there, she knew that much, but she had been good enough to make it out unharmed. And to have recorded everything they’d suggested about the department leaks. For now, she’d take that as a win.
*
“That was so cool,” Charlie said as soon as the smoke had dissipated, as she flopped back in her seat. “I told you she was good.”
“Yes, you mentioned,” Bela said tersely, wiping the dust from her suit. “She liked the idea, Charlie, I could see it.”
“Oh yeah,” Charlie sighed. “Two more minutes with her, and… well, it was nice to try. Y’know I think I kind of missed real danger like that?”
Bela rolled her eyes. “Oh, I know you do. Which is why I don’t like you coming with me on jobs these days. You take too many ridiculous risks.”
“Think we should go after her?”
Bela shook her head. “She knows she shouldn’t have taken the bait and come after us alone like that. She won’t want to risk a reprimand with that stunningly clean record of hers, not when we’ve just told her she shouldn’t be trusting anyone she works with.”
Charlie’s phone started vibrating in her pocket, an instant before starting an electric version of the Babylon 5 credits, making Bela groan.
“Hey,” Charlie sang at her phone, before coughing agan.
“You guys still like, alive over there?”
“Ha, ha, very funny, Dean. Meet us back at the hotel, we’re done here.”
“That was quick. C’mon, I was having fun here…” Charlie could almost hear the pout her friend was giving her.
“But since we’re leaving now -”
“Wait, wait, wait, so since you struck out on your insane plan, I have to abandon my new plans with the pretty man you told me to lead about a bit tonight? No fair, guys.”
“Do you want your pretty man to arrest you?” Bela asked coolly, grasping the phone from her lover with manicured fingers.
Charlie smiled as she heard Dean grumble something indistinct. “His partner’s heading back to him now, Dean.”
“You guys suck.”
“Not so much.”
*