Dead Letter Office: Recon

[x-pressive.livejournal.com]

Mark and Illyana snark scout the resort at Sun City to find out who's responsible for the auction.


"I can't decide if I love or hate undercover," mused Mark as he and Illyana strolled down the paths of the magnificent golf course of the Sun City Resort. He picked at some schmutz on his yellow and blue checker-patterned sweater vest. "This is disturbingly comfortable."

"You look like an idiot, and I look like a prostitute," Illyana said severely, pulling at the hem of what she'd been assured was all the rage for personal assistants to the rich and famous - a tiny tennis skirt and Lacoste polo, both in black. "I like your hat, though," she added to soften the blow.

"Really? I was thinking of getting the yellow one with the blue pompom instead of the blue with yellow but . . ." Mark glanced and Illyana and shook his head. He could tell how much she cared. "So who pings on your suspiciousdar?"

Illyana nodded at a young girl in a pink dress learning to swing a club. "Probably a shapeshifter," she said, narrowing her eyes at the girl's minder.

"I'll put that in the 'maybe' pile." Esther seemingly appeared in his hand out of nowhere and he gently tapped the screen to turn on the camera. "You don't take this stuff very seriously, do you?"

"What are you talking about?" Illyana said, lowering the voice only after the second syllable. To cover her indignance, she pulled the large black Burberry sunglasses out of her hair and slid them onto her nose. "You asked who looked suspicious. Little kids on expensive golf courses are suspicious. Or do you think our guy's going to show up wearing a black suit, dark sunglasses, and a suitcase labelled 'important documents'?"

"You're flippant, and coming from me that's sayin' somethin'. If you're right about her, though, I'll eat my hat. So to speak." Weirder things have happened, Mark considered, so to be safe he snapped a quick picture of the kid and parent.

"I'm sorry, I am not injecting the situation with the proper gravitas? I think I must have skipped that section in the handbook." Behind her sunglasses, the blonde rolled her eyes. "And check out that guy in the plaid shirt. Who comes someplace like this without knowing how to golf? Except people like us." The man she indicated had missed the ball on his tee at least six times.

"Some dumbass. I doubt that anyone's gonna want to come here and attract such attention. We're more likely to get a hit with good players. They're the ones with lots of money but never work and spend all their free time on the links."

Illyana nodded, accepting the logic in this. "What about those guys," she said, tilting her chin at a group of very sharply dressed men with an entourage of at least eight others in various stages of servitude. "They've been hitting the balls, at least."

Mark randomly tapped Esther's screen to look like he was typing something when he was in fact taking a picture of the golfers. Very sneaky, this one. "Look more like buyers than sellers, but they may be able to lead us to him."

A blonde eyebrow lifted in irritation. "Well, if you're so good at this game, you find him."

"Midol. Take some." Mark continued down the course, still typing quickly on his phone. "I'm sendin' these to Doug so he can identify 'em and we can find their schedules and from that find this fucker."