THE MAGICIAN.
chapter four
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Catalina rhythmically taps out a beat with her fingers on the table as she waits in the interrogation room. The young magician hums as she watches yet another cop pass the door of the room she's in. The blonde hair girl throws her head back with a groan. When is somebody going to talk to me? The young magician thinks as she crosses her arms with a pout forming on her lips.
Meanwhile, down the hall from Catalina's room, a hatless Merritt jokingly apologize to Dylan as he walks in a blonde woman by his side. "Please convey my deepest apologies to your colleague out there. I'm really sorry about the whole Tranny Tuesday thing. I was out of line."
"Tranny Tuesday?" Dylan asks the man, his eyebrows slightly furrowed conveying his confusion.
"Well," Merritt states. "It's a bit of an arrangement he and his wife have, or might not have. If you believe everything Agent Fuller is saying to be correct but isn't there a proud tradition in the FBI of men wearing dresses?" Merrit asks. "No shame, Agent Fuller," Merritt yells to the Agent on the other side of the glass. "No shame," he says sassily snapping his fingers in the process before laughing and adding on, "I'm just having fun."
Catalina sighs again for the 100th time. "This blows," she says flatly to no one in particular. Sick of looking at the same blind walls and noticing how no one has passed her door, an idea lights up the blonde's head. Catalina sits up with a mischievous look in her eyes. She slowly gets up making sure her chair doesn't screech against the floor. She walks to the door and swiftly opens it, discreetly looking both ways to make sure the coast in clear.
Conveniently, Dylan Rhodes office was not to far down from where Catalina was being held. The blue eye girl quickly makes her way to the agent that seem to be on the Five Horseman's case. She quickly scrolls and sifts through his files before landing on one with the name Shrike. The magician raises her eyebrow with interest before opening the file.
"Was this your card?" Danny asks as he flips through a deck of cards.
"No," Alma tells him.
"See, I knew you weren't a queen of hearts lady, and I respect that," Danny smoothly tells the French woman in front of him. "The trick usually works better when I'm not strapped in here,
but I understand protocol."
"Okay, okay," Dylan interrupts.
"So, if you had nothing to do with it, then how did the playing card get into the vault?" Alma asks the other Atlas in front of her and Dylan.
"That would be magic," a silky voice says as they enter the interrogation room.
"How did you?" Dylan asks as he notices the second Atlas sibling.
"Get out of the handcuffs?" She finishes his question before scoffing and gravitating towards her older brother. "I could get out of those flimsy cuffs blind folded, in fact I already have search me up on YouTube," she tells him a cocky smile on her lips.
Danny rolls his eyes at his sister's arrogance. No idea where she gets that from.
"Just answer the question, smartasses," Daniel tells them, clearly fed up with their antics.
"All right. Sorry, sorry, sorry," Danny apologizes while Catalina shrugs, looking at Dylan with a new interest and curiosity in her eyes.
"You can keep that," Daniel says giving Alma the soda. "Don't share it with him."
"It says here you are a mentalist," Dylan tells Merritt as he shifts through a folder laying on the table. Merritt's only reply being a disinterested hum.
"What exactly is mentalism?" Dylan asks.
"Tricks mostly," Merritt begins to explain what it is he does. "Um, some science. Targeted guessing might be a most apt description. Along with some intuition and the occasional...voices in my head," Merritt says chuckling lightly at his own joke
"Says here you were fairly famous at one point," Dylan says still shifting through Merritt's file. "You can even hypnotize people over the phone. Some big tours around the U.S. for a few years, two TV specials," Dylan lists off Merritt's accomplishes.
"Glory days," Merritt says through a reminiscent smile.
"Then your brother-slash-manager disappeared with all your hard-earned money."
Merritt clears his throat. "Did your research, did you?"
"IRS audit. Back taxes. You've had a long hard slog back into the limelight, haven't you, Mr. McKinney?"
"Yes, indeed, it has," Merritt says looking Dylan directly in the eye. "And I do appreciate that trip down Memory Lane."
"As far as I understand it,
when the man from Paris put on the magical helmet," Danny tells the two agents.
"Listen to me," Dylan interrupts. An identical amused smile slips onto the two siblings faces at Dylan's small outburst.
"If you didn't rob that bank, then you knew about it. Which makes you an accomplice. So if you wanna walk out of here today, I'd suggest you start..."
Catalina leans forward in her chair and puts her finger up. "Okay no, now its time for you to listen to us," she tells him with a slight edge in her voice. The magician puts her hands flatly on the table in front of her. Unless you actually think there's a D.A. in the state of Nevada who'd willingly try to make sense of this to a jury, then we have a show to perform."
"And you, Agent Rhodes," Danny adds on. "Have a drawing board to get back to."
"Is this your first date?" Merritt asks smoothly changing the subject.
Dylan and Alma share a confused glance. "What?" the blonde asks him, her french accent prominent.
"No, I mean, obviously you guys don't know each other well, if at all, but like there is a palpable tension in this room," the mentalist explains. "And before you get involved, you should consider the fact that she has a lot of big secrets and I know the first one is that this is your first time off the desk, isn't it?" Merritt asks putting a plan of dividing them into action. "You should have said something to him," he reprimands her. "This is a weird way for you to find out," he adds on awkwardly.
"You are literally begging to be arrested," Dylan tells the two smug siblings. "You know that?"
"If it means you would actually do it, then, yeah," Daniel replies.
"But you won't," Catalina tells him smartly, while leaning back in her chair. Her eyebrow raised in a challenging way.
"Because if you did, it means that you and the FBI and your friends at Interpol actually believe, at an institutional level, in magic. The press would have a field day and we'd be even more famous than we already are," Daniel explains.
"Meanwhile," Catalina says a hint of laugh in her voice. "You guys would look like idiots even more than you already are."
"Well, no, not you," Daniel says pointing to Alma. "But him," he finishes pointing to Dylan.
"Right? You have, what we in the business like to call," Daniel tugs at his sleeves. "'Nothing up your sleeve.'"
"And you both know it," Catalina tells them with narrowed eyes.
"Don't draw him in and then dump him because abandonment is a big 'area' for him," Merritt tells Alma. "Mommy?" Merritt asks looking at Dylan. "No, daddy," he corrects himself. "Ah! You have big daddy issues."
"Okay, that's enough!" Dylan says monotonously.
"I'll tell you what, your average therapist is gonna charge you
$200-$300 for this sesh. Me? I'll take a tenner."
Dylan looks at Merritt and begins to close his file. "Okay, later, if you're feeling magnanimous... I'll still take a tenner," Merritt tells him.
"You wanna know who sat
in that chair before you?" Dylan asks Daniel. "Mob bosses, murderers, and thieves."
"Oh," Daniel says shifting in his seat while Catalina looks at Dylan boredly.
"And you know who put them there? The guy who's sitting in this chair."
"Oh, really?" Catalina asks, she puts her elbow on the table and lays her chin in her palm. "And you did that all by yourself? Wow, tell me more," she says the sarcasm in her voice sharp like knives.
Dylan looks at Catalina and then Daniel. "So I warn you, both. I can maintain my resolve much longer than you guys can maintain that phony arrogance, and the instant that you even show the slightest crack in that smug facade, I'll be there. I will be all over you like..."
"Like white on rice?" Daniel finishes. "Sorry, that's unfair," he apologises.
"Let me warn you," Daniel begins. "I want you to follow because no matter what you think you might know- we will always be one step, three steps, seven steps ahead of you and just when you think you're catching up, that's when we'll be right behind you."
"And at absolutely no time will you be anywhere other then exactly where we want you to be," Catalina finishes.
"So come close, get all over me
because the closer you think you are."
"The less you'll actually see," Catalina finishes with a smile.
"I'm gonna nail you," Dylan growls but Daniel jumps up and throws the handcuffs on Dylan. Catalina sits on her chair calmly, her arms still crossed as she watches the scene unfold.
Catalina licks her lips and points to the diet soda. "Alma, is there something wrong with your soda?"
Alma picks up her soda and shakes it, a rattling sound comes from it. She opens it and pours the soda onto the table, the key falling from the can with a clink.
Catalina grabs Dylan's phone before the soda can touch it. She lightly wipes it off with the back of her jeans.
"First rule of magic, always be the smartest guy in the room," Daniel tells the two agents.
"Here you go," Catalina says politely, a smile on her face as she hands Dylan back his phone.