When I Return || Perrentes

Chapter 23: Save Me, San Francisco!

They were still sitting on the sofa locked together at seven o'clock that evening when the knock on the door came.

Mike had turned on the TV and, on the limited channels there were available on the satellite, they'd managed to find cartoons and were currently watching Adventure Time, motionless and warm, and Tony, although living in a strange dream world, at least knew he was safe in this room, in these arms, with his dog still lying stretched out across their laps.

The knock at the door startled them both and Sammy sat up suddenly, ears pricked, looking from side to side as Mike untangled himself. "I'll get it," he said, and Tony stayed on the sofa, tickling Sammy's head. His muzzle appeared to have been well and truly smushed by sleep and was pressed into amusingly awkward angles, and Tony chuckled softly, put his hand under Sammy's jaw and tilted it up. The dog's tongue was poking out slightly and Tony laughed, poked it so Sammy recoiled slightly and sniffed, and then tried to sort out his fur, messy and dishevelled from sleep.

"You look a right state, Sammy," he mumbled, amused, and Sammy blinked and then thumped his tail a few times, clearly supremely offended. "Silly pup."

Mike opened the door and a moment later, the others came flooding in. "News from Danielle," Vic said, leading them. "Settle in folks. We have much to discuss."

"There's been a plot twist!" Jaime exclaimed as Mike closed the door behind Frank, grinning as he clapped his hands together, clasping them like a child would as he spun once and flopped onto the bed. "Don't you just love plot twists?"

"No," Vic said shortly, flopping down beside him, and the others found respective perches on the windowsill and on the desk. Mike frowned as he came back to sit down beside Tony, slinging an arm round his shoulders.

"So it's not a good plot twist?"

"There are elements of good and bad to it," Patty tried brightly. "But considering our luck so far it's more than reasonable to assume the bad elements far outweigh the good."

"Lovely. Alright, so...start at the beginning."

"A very good place to start," Jaime said vacantly, looking into the distance and singing slightly, and Kellin raised an eyebrow.

"I think we broke Jaime."

"Okay!" Vic silenced them, and then gathered himself. "Danielle has been monitoring the remaining elites and has managed to pinpoint the locations of the San Francisco five. She's prepped and ready to cut off the money pipe and get rid of the mercenaries."

"That sounds good?" Tony said, and it came out as a question, and Frank nodded.

"It was good. And then halfway through the call, those lovely Columbia girls called in too."

"Chrissy and Lynn?" Mike frowned. "Why?"

"They were double checking the database to see which entries they would need to fudge next," Kellin explained. "And they noticed something odd."

"I don't like odd."

"The system is already blipping on the accounts of the San Francisco five," Patty butted in. "They aren't inputting their data."

Tony frowned, sitting up straighter, as he and Mike looked between each other, confused. "Why?" He said. "That doesn't make any sense."

"Keep in mind they don't know they're being tracked via the spy bugs on the hard drives," Jaime started again, having stopped singing The Sound of Music. "They just aren't inputting things. And Danielle, lovely Danielle, who was still on the other line, did some very quick and very deep digging. It isn't that they're just being lazy. They aren't doing the work. They've stopped tracking the missing leads. They aren't looking for Veil anymore."