Cathouse: Protection Duty

[x-copycat.livejournal.com]

Once she's parted ways with all her company Vanessa starts making calls to find a place to keep Libertine's daughter safe. She starts with the most convenient, but least likely, option.

Bishop was going to be the last person on her list. She was going to need him working on legit cases while she possibly stole the rest of their personnel to look into the brothel situation. If he was working then he couldn’t be on kid duty. She needed to find the most secure place for Anna Leigh possible. Of the two Wade was the more convenient one because there was no transatlantic flight involved.

She wasn’t even back at her apartment yet when she called Wade. When he answered Vanessa skipped the greeting and got to the point. “How would you feel if I temporarily gave you a kid for an indeterminate period of time?”

Wade pulled the phone away from his ear for a moment. The voice was Vanessa’s. The caller ID said it was Vanessa. “Uh... is this a trick question?”

“No, actually. It hopefully wouldn’t be more than two weeks.” Hopefully. Wade might kill her if it was. Immunotherapy and a tiny person. She considered the odds of him saying yes to be very, very slim.

Wade’s initial response was to look at his watch. It was a nifty watch. It told him important things - like that today was Sunday. That tomorrow was Monday. That he’d be having another dose of immunotherapy tomorrow. But then... well. “Why’d I be getting a kid temporarily?”

That answer surprised her a little. The refusal could still be coming, but the delay gave her a bit of hope. Vanessa might feel bad about dragging Thom across an ocean to babysit, even if he would only complain a little. “I’m looking into a case and I need her kept safe. This bastard I’m seeing about going after, he threatened her life as leverage over her mum. I can get mum’s business back but not if he can pull the trigger on his threat. So I’m calling the people who can keep her safe to see who can do it for me. I started with you.”

“Bring her over,” Wade said, the answer immediate because what the fucking fuck? Who threatened to kill a child? Even for leverage, that was pretty fucking low. “I’ve got immunotherapy in the morning, but I should be basically functional in the evening and there’s plenty of people here to help if I can’t hold the nausea at bay. How long will she be here? And where’s her mom?”

“I can do the evening, that shouldn’t be a problem. She’s nine so I don’t think she will need that much looking after.” Vanessa made a mental note to tell the kid to look after him while he was at his most ill for the first half of the week or so. “I really don’t know how long she’ll be there. If it gets to be too much tell me and I can make other arrangements. I need her protected for as long as it takes me to figure out who the asshole is and find the best way to remove him that won’t blow back on her mum. Mom’s in the city and she’ll be staying here. It’s too obvious if she disappears and then stuff goes down. If he has anyone who might look for retribution she would end up with a target on her back before I could stop them from getting her.”

“Gotcha,” Wade said. “Bring the kid. I can keep her entertained, maybe introduce her to the half-pint. Kyle’s around. He’s good with Molly, he’d probably be good with another kid. You concentrate on getting the bastard who threatened her and I’ll hold the fort down here.” He wanted in on the action - he coudln’t help it. He was good at killing. It was what he did. But he’d given his word to the Professor that he wouldn’t do that sort of thing while he was actually at the mansion... and he had to get that damn treatment in the morning, so he’d be useless as a wet noodle for most of the day. Protection detail, though, he could work.

Vanessa sighed, shaking her head. She unlocked the door to her building before saying anything, weighing options. If she called Thom tonight he could be here by tomorrow night easily. “I’m not asking Kyle, though. If I was willing to trust her to him I’d be on the phone with him, not you. If you don’t think you can keep eyes on her at all times then I’ll go to the next option. I appreciate you being willing to help, but I knew it was a bit of a longshot with your treatment anyhow. I promised a guarantee of safety. The mansion may be the safest place around but people have gotten in before. This isn’t a kid who needs a place to stay, it’s a little girl who will be killed if they can get to her. I’m not risking that on Kyle.” Because in the end she had no confidence if Annie was with Kyle he would really do what needed to be done. Vanessa respected that the X-Men didn’t kill as a rule, but anyone trying to kill a nine-year-old did not get to live so far as she was concerned. Charles would understand Wade defending her the best way he knew how if it came down to it. Giving her to Kyle even some of the time meant Vanessa had to plan what to do with the bodies and how to get the guy from authorities because she would go after them if Kyle let them live.

“I’m not talking about handing her off,” Wade said. “I mean he could hang out with me here, in my suite, with the kid so he could distract people if they came through the window while I got Bea out of her hiding spot to shoot them.” There was no real inflection to the words, no sense of distress - it was almost like he was talking about the weather. “I don’t think it’d be a good idea to, y’know, flaunt Bea where the kid could see, but I’m not planning on leaving her by herself even if I just have to go to the bathroom.”

“You’re sure? One hundred percent confident you can handle looking out for her with all the stuff you’ve got going on?” Vanessa was the sort who would bend over backward for a friend. She was the sort who would run herself into the ground if a friend asked her to. Hell, Jean-Paul had done as much for her before as well. If Wade was one of those people, if he ranked her high enough for that sort of response...she didn’t want to jeopardize his health for this.

“Yeah, I’m sure. No hesitation here, buttercup. Nobody’s getting near that kid while she’s here.” Wade didn’t care about the nausea he knew he’d be feeling tomorrow morning. It’d gone away by around five last Monday. “Just bring her ‘round about six and we’ll be good. I’ll be in my suite. We’ll figure things out from there so far as keeping her entertained is concerned.”

Her footsteps echoing on the stairs stopped and she quietly said, “Thank you, Wade. This means a lot to me. I’ll talk to her mum about entertainment when I call her back.”

“Cool,” Wade said, nodding. “Think school work, too. Don’t want her to fall behind if she’s stuck here for any period of time. Coloring books will only last so long and I’m not sure how many people you may or may not want to know she’s here.”

“The fewer the better. I’ll see to her mum getting me her schoolwork for the next few weeks. All else fails I’m sure you can wrangle someone into playing teacher if you don’t have the concentration for it.” Though the idea of Wade sitting around teaching fractions or long division or whatever it was that they taught nine year olds in school was sort of amusing. And oddly endearing.

“We’ll work it out,” Wade said, standing up and heading for the door to his suite. He was basically going to have to do an overhaul of the whole damn thing before he went in for his treatment tomorrow. The place was secure on a basic level, but he needed to make it better than basic. At least he had the mansion’s security system on his side. Still, he was more a hand-on kind of guy. “I’m gonna want you to run a basic sniper scenario for me. If this guy’s as dedicated as you say he is, he might call in the long-distance weaponry. I’d like to make sure the kid’s safe from all angles in my suite.”

“I can do that tonight whenever you want.” She had several sniper rifles in addition to the gun Wade had bought for her from Fitzpatrick. “I’ll see what spots are workable from outside the mansion security and perimeter, if there are any.” The trees blocked a lot but if there was a tall enough building beyond them it could be an issue.

“Excellent,” Wade said, already sliding into protection detail mode. “I’ll see you this evening, then, so we can run through the set-up here.”

“See you then,” she said and rang off. One big, important detail done at least.