Morgan and Adrienne log

[x-adrienne.livejournal.com]

A late-night meeting at the gym, fueled by mutual insomnia, leads to a hypothetical discussion about hired killers that isn't at all hypothetical.

Adrienne couldn't sleep. She'd been having trouble sleeping since the day Srinager had been blown to shit, the same day she'd met with Inspector Welles and had been informed that Guerero was being questioned about the murder of Steven duClos. Whenever she finally did manage to nod off she'd awaken after only an hour or two in the throes of some nightmare. So rather than risk waking Terry, she was hiding out in the gym, beating on the punching bag with one hand encased in her usual leather glove while the other was held against her torso in a sling.

"I admire the spirit, cupcake, but that's probably not the smartest thing in the world give your collarbone, you know." Morgan sauntered up to the woman she'd somehow begun referring to in her mind as friend. That was sort of a strange thing when she thought about it. Morgan hadn't had friends who were just friends since she was a kid. She had men who were family, brothers, blood she'd die to protect, but she didn't just have...friends.

"Something needs to die," Adrienne grunted, face dark with emotion, "and it was either the punching bag or a cake in the kitchen. Arm pain seems like less of a sacrifice than all those calories." She huffed out a tired breath and turned to face Morgan. "You couldn't sleep either?"

"My internal clock's fucked from India. Probably will be for a week or so anyway. I woke up an hour ago." Morgan leaned against the wall, near enough to watch Adrienne without being anywhere near in the way unless the woman purposely decided she needed to deck Morgan. "Aye, so why's something got to die? My vote really goes to the cake, you're less likely to injure yourself with a fork."

"Fork you," the psychometrist muttered, smirking. "I'm not eating an entire cake. My inner model forbids it." She really was starting to feel the pain in her shoulder, however, so she walked away from the bag, pulling a bottle of Tylenol 3 from the bag she'd brought along. "I have codeine if you want some help sleeping," she offered, popping two in her mouth and washing them down with a bottle of water. "Maybe if you help me with the cake I won't get as fat and the sugar will put us both in a coma." She'd been meaning to talk to Morgan anyway, though she wasn't quite ready to answer Morgan's question about what was angering her.

Morgan rolled her eyes as the childish retort, yet she smiled as she did. "Your inner model is retired, love. She really needs to give up the dream here. Also? Cake is worth it. At least good cake is anyway. And thanks, but I am sleeping enough, I'm just sleeping early. Medicated coma won't fix that, just fuck it up more." Now talk of cake was making her hungry. Not necessarily for cake, just in general. Maybe for french toast. Mmm, yeah, maybe that. "I could do with sugar coma, though." She noticed the obvious avoidance of the question of why something needed to die so Morgan let it lie for now.

Adrienne dug into her gym bag and withdrew a black forest cake in grocery-store packaging, balancing it precariously on the palm of her good hand like a waitress. "I wasn't sure if I could hit the punching bag so I brought the cake with me," she explained. "Only brought one fork, though." Unceremoniously she sat on the floor of the gym, tucking her legs underneath her, and took the lid off the cake. "So how old were you when you started working as a mercenary?" she asked conversationally.

"You brought a cake with you to the gym? You know the kitchen's not that far away, right?" Really, just how desperate did you have to be to bring the damn thing with you? Her nerves couldn't hold out for maybe another four minutes to walk from the gym to the kitchen? The question from Adrienne derailed her thoughts abruptly. Morgan visibly tensed. "Are you sure you want to try to have this conversation with me," she asked, voice suddenly gone cold and having lost all inflection.

"I didn't get it from the kitchen. I bought it. Sit down and have some." Adrienne noticed the tensing and tried for a reassuring smile. "I honestly don't think I want to have this conversation with you," she admitted, keeping her tone light, "but I have a hypothetical question to ask, and before I asked it I was trying to make polite small talk and dance around the subject."

"Small talk is like a man who thinks foreplay consists of telling you that you're a dirty bitch," she replied evenly. Morgan didn't move from where she leaned against the wall and no longer had any plans to do so. "How about you cut the bad foreplay and just shove it the fuck in so we can get it over with? What's your hypothetical question?" Which she assumed wasn't likely very hypothetical.

Adrienne shivered at the cold remarks and drew her knees up to her chest, hugging her good arm around them. She felt much less vulnerable in that position. "If a mercenary got hauled in for questioning on a job, would they give up their employer's name? Assuming said employer meant to pay them off for their silence in the event of being questioned but couldn't access their accounts at the time when the mercenary was taken in?"

Morgan gave her a flat look. "A mercenary gets paid to do a job and get the fuck out. If they botch it enough that they get connected to it and taken in that's on their head, not their employer's. They aren't likely to get any work if they make an employer, in the rare instance where a mercenary is not working a war but another sort of job. Someone who can't be trusted is no use to anyone. An employer shouldn't even have to pay them off for their silence, that's part of the fucking job."

Adrienne relaxed visibly. "That's reassuring." She stabbed at the cake with her fork and ate a chunk. It was comforting to have that grain of reassurance from Morgan that the man she'd hired to kill Steven might stay loyal to her. But just in case... "Hypothetically speaking," she began quietly, swallowing her cake, "if a hired gun," mercenary seemed like the wrong title after Morgan's point about them usually working wars, "seemed ready to roll over on their employer, what would your price be for impersonating said person to ensure that said employer stayed out of jail, and would you take a post-dated cheque?"

"That depends on the details of the job. What they were paid to do, when, how long I'd have to pretend to be him, how much time I have to study." There were too many variables and so long as Adrienne was deciding to speak in supposed hypotheticals that was all she'd ever get.

The psychometrist expelled a nervous breath and ate some more cake, weighing her desire to keep her problem to herself against her worry over the uncertainty of the situation. Should she confide in Morgan and ask for her help? They were friendly enough to each other, sure. Adrienne recognized that Morgan had integrity. She'd already said that someone who couldn't be trusted was no use to anyone. But Adrienne's need for self-preservation dictated that she be cautious about telling the blue woman the details of the 'job' she was proposing. And she'd never told anyone before. She only had a small degree of familiarity with Morgan and couldn't anticipate how she would react.

It seemed best to skirt some of the details for now, but there were a few things she could tell Morgan without worrying how it might come back to haunt herself. "Hypotheticals aside," she admitted, "I've no idea how long you'd have to pretend to be him, or how much time you'd have to study." The inspectors didn't exactly tell her when they were bringing Guerero in for interrogation sessions. "You'd just have to talk to some cops, that's all. You'd probably have to get rid of him while you were talking, but I expect you'd only have to pretend to be him for a very short time if you were good enough at it." She wasn't trying to be petulant, just honest, and hoped her tone reflected as much. "It was seven years ago, but I don't know if I want to tell you what I paid him to do right now." She gave Morgan her best 'do I have to?' look.

While she knew they were alone Morgan glanced around to be sure before she said anything. Her voice was low and hushed as she spoke. "It's not a matter of just being him while he's talking to cops. It's a matter of being him, at all times, until they are not only done with him but definitely not thinking of approaching him again. They'd never prove any claim he may or may not have of being kidnapped and held hostage if they decided a month from now to talk with him again to clarify some minute detail if they want to put you away for whatever it is badly enough, but if he thought you were responsible and the cops came at him again the likelihood of him giving you up if they promised him immunity are greatly increased. If he's going down anyway at that point he may as well drag you down with him out of spite, career when he gets out be damned...assuming he'd not be doing a life sentence for this job you had him do." There were only so many things you acquired a hired gun for. Morgan wondered who Adrienne had killed.

"Shit. I am so fucked." She put her fork down and focused fully on Morgan. It was becoming painfully apparent that she hadn't thought this through fully, operating on a 'quick fix' mentality rather than worrying about long-term consequences. "I should just ask Emma to mind-wipe the cops, or fucking Guerero." Her head was beginning to get fuzzy from the pills she'd taken
and focusing was becoming a problem. "Would you have to kidnap him? Couldn't you just pretend to be his girlfriend for a while until you studied him enough and then drug him the night before his interrogation and go to the cops the next morning wearing his face, or something? Sell the story that he never killed anyone so convincingly that they decide they're done with him then?" Adrienne already knew what Morgan would say, since she hadn't actually proposed anything new to solve the problem of the cops re-interviewing him a month down the line, but she knew for certain that she didn't want to compound her problems by having Guerero kidnapped and held hostage. "Or just kill him right off the bat? Play him for a while, then fake his death or something?" Now she was really grasping at straws, and probably without cause. She didn't even know for sure that Guerero would tell the police who had hired him...

"You're a shitty fucking mastermind, cupcake." Morgan sounded like she was lecturing a kid. There was a vaguely amused tone in her words and some of the tension that had set into her body at the mention of her being a mercenary earlier was seeping out. "Ever consider just sending someone to fucking feel him out and see if he was even intending to sell you out? I mean, if you send someone after him it puts the message in the guy's head that he might turn up dead by someone pre-paid if he gives you up. No one wants to get dead. They like that even worse than jail."

Adrienne wrinkled her nose at the comment that she was a shitty mastermind. "I'm a little out of my depth here, in case you haven't noticed. And my head's really tired and fuzzy. I just want all this shit to be over," she sighed, digging into the cake once more. "You pay someone a shitload of money to off your husband, that should be the end of it. Not supposed to be seven years later one of your business rivals decides to stir the shit back up." She shook her head as if that would clear the fog from it. "You're right about 'no one wants to get dead'. Jail'd still be better than dead." Morgan's statement was a good reminder for the brunette. No matter how much trouble she was in she couldn't regret what she'd done.

Her face blanched with sudden realization and her eyes shot to Morgan guiltily. "I haven't been talking out loud, have I?"

Morgan arched an eyebrow. "Uh, yeah, mastermind, you have been. Maybe you shouldn't be around people until those whatevers you took wear off, yeah?" She didn't say anything about the recently revealed information. It was hard to wonder why the fuck someone would hire someone to kill their husband, but there were lots of reasons potentially. In Morgan's mind a lot of them involved underage girls and inappropriate/illegal situations, but that was likely just her personal experience talking there. Really, she didn't need to know why. At least not in the context of this particular situation. "Just send someone after whatshisname and make scary, scary threats that make it clear he can and will be killed should he not comply as one ought to, yada yada yada," she waved a hand dismissively.

"Well, you're the one who came here after I was already here, so it's not my fault I'm around people," Adrienne reasoned. She was feeling rather exhausted and dizzy, and laid down on her side on the gym floor with her head pillowed over her good arm. Morgan stopped spinning in her vision, though now she was sideways. Adrienne wondered why the other woman wasn't questioning her about what she'd said, but was glad for it, and didn't bring it back up herself. "You're a someone, and you're good at scary, scary threats," she pointed out. "How much for you to do it, and will you take a post-dated cheque?"

God, this conversation just got stranger and stranger, didn't it? "I'm not really hired muscle. It's not exactly my area of expertise." Killing people was her area of expertise. Not getting caught was her area of expertise. Pretending to be someone else was her area of expertise. Being an enforcer? Not really. Morgan shrugged. It was Adrienne, though, so she considered it. "Depends on how much I have to threaten him. Couple hundred to two grand on just how messy and involved I've got to get with him to make the point known. Rate goes up because it's on home turf. I don't generally do business of any sort in the States. Especially with Boy Scout about I've got more reason not to."

Closing her eyes out of weariness, Adrienne gave a sort of a nod, not really taking in much of what Morgan had said beyond her last comment. "Boy Scout makes doing morally questionable things just that much harder," she mumbled. "I get that. An' if you don't wanna do it that's fine. I might send Temp there to throw him into a lake instead. I'm sure she'd do it. Good practice if she wants to go into the fashion business," she smirked, not at all serious about involving Inez.

"I'll consider it," she told Adrienne seriously. She would consider it. She may come out on the resounding "no" side of the issue, but she'd give the woman the respect of consideration at the very least. She'd not promise to anything right now, though, beyond that.

"Okay. Are you gonna have some of that cake?" Adrienne asked sleepily.

"Nah, cupcake, it's all yours." Morgan watched the way Adrienne's eyes were drooping. After a second she walked over to the woman laying on the floor and held out a hand. "C'mon, love, let's get you back to your room so you don't pass out in the gym for hours."

The psychometrist considered protesting childishly, but she was worried about what Morgan might do to her if she put up a fight, so she sat up, put the lid back on the cake, shoved it back into her gym bag, and took the proffered hand so Morgan could haul her to her feet. "He deserved it, y'know," she murmured dizzily. "'Was gonna kill me. I saw it. Fucking powers. I didn't wanna die, Morgan. I'm not sorry."

Morgan pulled Adrienne up and threw the woman's arm over her shoulder. Her own arm went around Adrienne's waist to support her. "Aye, can't fault a person for wanting to live. Most people don't want to die." If that was really the case Morgan couldn't fault her. Though, Adrienne didn't seem aggressive to have her husband killed without enough push to get her to that edge anyway. "And we're going to get you behind lockable doors so you can't go off saying any of this to anyone else, aye?"

"Aye," Adrienne agreed, corner of her mouth tugging upwards in a smile. "Need bed. Don't lock me in, though," she said quickly, and with a flash of seriousness that toed the line towards panic. "I'll be good. Can you get the cake?"

"Can you not fall over if I do?" She gave Adrienne a look but after a moment bent down to grab the bag with one hand. "Word of honor, cupcake, I won't lock you in." With that she started to guide Adrienne out of the gym so she could get her back in her own room.