Author's Note: Co-Written by Darthneko and White_Aster

Arthur got the first message in Berlin: a return number to call and a simple message about a possible "business opportunity", sent to one of his more well-known contact numbers. Arthur didn't think much of it. It wasn't a number he knew, which meant it wasn't something being passed along personally by one of his contacts. Which meant that whoever it was could damn well wait. He was elbows-deep in research, and anyone who knew what they were doing knew that he'd get back to them (or not) when he had the time.

Then he turned up a piece of their mark's history that turned everything from mind-numbingly mundane to actually halfway interesting in the way dealing with functional sociopaths always was, and Arthur forgot about the mystery message, leaving it to sit in his inbox as he hurried to firm up this new angle.

The second message came three days later via a different, less public contact number, plus an email to one of Arthur's more well-hidden email addresses. Both were marked "urgent" and made Arthur frown in annoyance, at the breach of unspoken rules and also at the revelation that he obviously needed to switch out those contact points, if random wannabe employers could find them. But, because he'd learned to view the out-of-the-ordinary as a possible prelude to trouble, Arthur bumped the issue upwards on his Next Actions list. Over lunch that day, as they all waited for their architect to finish their maze, Arthur did a bit of fact-finding. An idle investigation into the number revealed it was an unlisted cell phone that had been activated in Nevada about a year ago. The area code covered most of the state, except for Las Vegas. Arthur was debating whether he cared enough to track down and hack into the number's call records when Manuel came up out of dreaming with a sigh and said, "Ok, hombres, good to go," and Arthur went back to work.

Then, things got weird.

The third message wasn't so much a message as a BARRAGE aimed at the previously-used contacts and a round dozen others: forwarded cell numbers, specialized answering services, alternate email addresses, including one that only his mother used (and his mother's security was rock solid, because Arthur had made it that way). Text and voice messages left at five different numbers and voicemails, including the number of the actual phone in Arthur's pocket, which he'd picked up fresh for this job two weeks previous and which had only been used to call out to members of his current team or to the local round of delivery places. Arthur sat in his hotel room, looking at that message for a long moment: Urgent. Please return call asap.

It was the same fucking Nevada number.

Arthur's nightly take-out settled heavy in his stomach. He shoved the box aside and reached for his computer. Twenty minutes later he had the Nevada number's call records splayed before him. Most calls had been made to a half-dozen or so local unlisted cell numbers, with occasional long-distance calls to unlisted numbers in Washington, DC. Arthur checked what towers the Nevada number usually contacted first, then cross-referenced it with Google Maps. Las Vegas.

Eastern Las Vegas. Including Nellis Air Force base.

"Fuck," Arthur said, adrenaline shooting through him. Then, once more, with feeling, "Fuck."

In twenty minutes he had his room packed and wiped clean, the door snicking shut behind him. Two minutes later, he was knocking on Manuel's door, giving his more-than-slightly-annoyed architect the rundown on why he had to bail. Yes, he was sure he was compromised. No, he didn't think it had anything to do with the current job. Yeah, they could probably continue on. Yes, he was aware that he was gutting the team. Yes, he was leaving the intel he'd gathered with Manuel. Yes, he could suggest replacements and here were Cao and Thorgiersson's contacts. Fuck yes, he was taking the backup PASIV with him, that was his...

By the time false dawn lightened the horizon, Arthur had paid way too much for a sinfully fast rental that raced along the Autobahn with criminal ease. He stopped in Dresden for coffee, breakfast, and a pre-paid cell phone, all paid for with cash, just like the car. He'd had to give them ID for the rental, but he'd used the cleanest one he'd had on him. Once he got to the safehouse, he'd have a better one.

Arthur sat in the corner of the Starbucks, near the door, waiting for his latte to percolate through his blood enough to make him feel like getting back in the car was a good idea. He stared at his newly-activated phone and debated, fingers drumming slowly on the tabletop.

It wasn't smart, Arthur told himself. Nothing was secret anymore. Nothing was beyond the grasp of someone with the right skillset, the right codes, the right tools, who knew cellphones and computers and airlines and the right servers to ping. He should know. The new phone was (reasonably) clean, but whoever was stalking him obviously knew his (or her) way around the digital world. Contacting any of his usual contacts would be a bad idea, if only because they might be under surveillance as well. Of course, that was the question, now wasn't it?

Arthur picked up the phone and sent a text message.

His phone rang three minutes later.

"Changed your number, hmm?"

Arthur squashed the very, very tiny bit of relief he felt at hearing Eames' voice, unconcerned and tinny and rumbling almost into incoherence with distance and a cheap cell phone speaker. Not that he'd been concerned, of course. Even though several of his most dangerous jobs had also included Eames, and any heat (if that was what this was, though Arthur had been careful to give the American military a wide berth for quite a long time) would likely fall on both of them. No, no, he hadn't been concerned.

"Yes. I had to leave in a bit of a hurry." I had to bail out on the job you probably know I was working on.

"Really? How very unfortunate. Anything I can do? You know I am always at your service, darling."

Eames' tone wasn't even irritating: he'd been playing condescendingly chivalrous with Arthur so long that he'd worn the sarcasm right off.

Arthur looked down into the dregs of his coffee. He was tired in that eyes-wide-open way that came from caffeine lifting him bodily out of a night of no sleep. He ignored Eames' question, for now. "How's the weather there?"

Arthur could hear movement: clink of glass, what might have been a handful of silverware. Was Eames doing dishes? Yes, there went the tap... "Lovely, actually. Just perfect. I do hope that yours hasn't been too warm. I know how you hate to sweat in those exquisite suits of yours."

Arthur swirled the last, cold sip of his coffee in its cup. Here was where their usual codes broke down a bit, as he wasn't sure it was heat, per se. It certainly could be, but if the military wanted him, they were much more likely to just send someone to pick him up, not play digital cat and mouse. The same thing could be said for anyone hunting him for revenge for an old job. Which left him with...what? Overeager would-be employer, most likely. Who'd hired a hell of a hacker. Who knew the right contacts but not the proper protocol. Who was persistent but not physically insistent.

It was just weird. Arthur did not like weird. Weird made him nervous. He did not like being nervous.

There were more sounds of crockery, then a clatter and a muttered "Bugger" and Arthur found himself sitting with his eyes closed, trying to imagine Eames at the sink of his London flat, phone cradled between head and shoulder. Arthur shook himself. "I keep thinking it'll get warmer, but now I'm not so sure. Have to keep my eye on the weather report."

"I...see. Uncertainty's never good for the soul."

"Mmm."

More water running, and the sound of metal on metal now. Eames had moved on to the pans, evidently. "Well," he said, after a thoughtful moment when Arthur could have sworn he'd heard the gears turning in the forger's formidable brain, "all else fails, you know the weather here's always predictable. Pissing rain mostly, but very predictably so."

Arthur had given up on trying to analyze this...whatever it was between him and Eames. They weren't colleagues, weren't friends, weren't partners, certainly weren't lovers, and yet they did things like this. Normal, respectable criminals did not offer to compromise themselves to cover each others' backs. And yet, here they were, and it wasn't even the first time.

Arthur opened his eyes. "I'll keep that in mind, Mr. Eames."

"You do that."

Arthur tossed back the gritty last swallow of caffeine. "I've got to go."

The water stopped. "Arthur."

"...what?"

"Do keep in touch, eh?"

"No promises." Arthur said, thumbing the End button. He stood, turning his head to ease the crick in his neck. Time to hit the road again. He could be in his Prague safehouse by lunch, get some sleep, and make a fresh start on figuring out what the hell was going on.

As he crossed the Czech border, his phone rang. Arthur checked the number and nearly swerved off the road.

Nevada.

Arthur rolled down the window and threw the phone out into the weeds growing on the side of the road.

Patrol, as Sideswipe had so accurately put it, was a choice of sand, more sand, Pit slagging sand, or sand with occasional organic scrub. The only real options were whether the duty roster put you on the northern route or the southern one, with the "Pit slagging sand" on the northern circuit and the sand with occasional scrubby growth on the southern side. Neither were really good for much of anything except long drives on relatively empty roads with sensors flung wide open looking for any 'Con activity within the perimeter.

Up Interstate 15, over on U.S. 50, back down via U.S. 95 - it was actually one of the shorter patrol routes, for all that it covered over one thousand of the local units of distance and took nearly an entire planetary rotation if they stuck to the prescribed speeds. It was also, without argument, a thoroughly boring stretch of road with nothing much to look at for long portions and nothing to listen to beyond sensor sweeps that were coming up null, static filled intermittent local radio channels, and whatever was on the line-of-sight comm.

Which was, currently, Sideswipe. Complaining.

Jazz had long since tuned out 97.8% of what Sideswipe was saying, setting a background line of code to filter the sound for pauses where he might reasonably be expected to reply with some sort of neutral response. Another few lines of subroutine were tallying the most used words in the nonstop stream so that he had a brief summary of what Sideswipe was saying and an amusing graph of the frontliner's favorite profanity and preferred glyph underscoring. The rest of his attention was split between the sensor sweeps he was supposed to be looking at and the local music stations he always looked at anyways, the whole merging into a pleasant if somewhat numbing blur of road passing beneath his wheels, heat and wind over his plating, and a consistent burble of audio and data in his processor.

::...Don't even know why we bother, there's nothing out here but fragging sand, what in the Pit are the 'Cons going to do, roll around in it to polish their fragging armor? Can't believe...::

/ EXECUTE SENSOR SWEEP B4-N2
/ PING B4-N2 ARRAY 154.96
/ STATUS, EXECUTING; SPEED, 2192.4
/ RECEIVED, 123 PACKETS
/ ANALYSIS: NULL RETURN
/ EXECUTE SENSOR SWEEP B4-N3...

The radio crackled momentarily, switching between local broadcast limits, and then came back midway through a song Jazz liked. He cranked the volume, drowning out Sideswipe and the sensor returns alike as he hummed along with the beat that vibrated through his panels and into his struts. He let it rev through his engine, little bursts of playful speed in rhythm to the music, until the song ended and duty reasserted itself.

/ ANALYSIS: NULL RETURN
/ EXECUTE SENSOR SWEEP B5-L4...

::...Swear, I'd rather be on monitor duty than picking up half the Pit slagging desert in my fragging wheel wells...::

Same old routine. Jazz was about to go back to scanning the radio when a ping from base came through, coded on his own channel with his own ident, a result from one of the spider programs Jazz had left running. Gleeful, Jazz unpacked it.

"Slag it all to the Pit and back!"

Ahead of him, Sideswipe swerved so hard he almost spun out across the empty road. Jazz realized he had unintentionally broadcast the shout not only audibly but across the comm, and the frontliner was coiled up on his shocks, near vibrating with the need to identify the threat that had caused his superior's sudden outburst. ::What?:: he demanded, the audio crackle of the com overlaid with glyph bursts for 'who' and 'where', underscored with 'weapon systems/targeting' and a sharp interrogative.

Fuming, mostly at himself, Jazz sent back a hard negative, underscored with command. ::Sorry,:: he added, deliberately circulating a slower intake of air. ::My bad. It's nothing, just a response from something I've got running.::

Sideswipe dropped into the lane beside Jazz, engine growling an unhappy note. ::Bad news?::

::More like no news,:: Jazz grumbled, underscoring it with a glyph of frustration. He could have left it there - technically it was none of Sideswipe's business - but news, information from others of their own kind, was something they all hungered for. ::My crawlers are crawling home empty.::

::Oh.:: And just like that, the frontliner lost interest, revving ahead again in a burst. ::Terrestrial stuff?::

::Yeah,:: Jazz replied. ::Slag that's gonna keep me on the monitors, that's what.::

::Better you than me,:: Sideswipe caroled back, underscored with the glyph for self-interested pleasure as he darted further ahead.

::Thought you were just saying you'd rather take monitors than sand patrol!:: Jazz shot after him, but the Corvette was long gone, speed limit and Jazz both left behind in the roar of an opened engine. Cycling another intake, Jazz set one sensor to track the other bot, checked the data log of the sensor sweeps - still null - and settled back into a ground eating cruising speed as he picked apart the data his spider code had returned with.

Null response on all fronts, email and phone alike. For being a professional businessman, one would think his target didn't want to be hired.

The last ping had been at coordinates that indicated another geographic change and contained a log of an external contact to the United Kingdom. Jazz filed the log and looked the coordinates up, overlaying topographical maps; Earth political boundaries were fluid and frequently made little sense, but in this case there was an elevation shift that indicated an actual reason behind it. It didn't, however, tell him what the target was gaining by crossing from Deutschland to the Česká Republika. Giving vent to a growl in the rumble of his engine, Jazz turned the radio down and started reworking the spider code for a different approach.

Arthur reached his Prague safehouse on high alert. Ever since the Czech border, he'd been rolling all the evidence through his brain. The email addresses, the phones...he could see how they all could have been compromised. Not at the same time, not in the same ways, but...he could see it. If someone was persistent enough and had enough access to electronic records. If they knew enough about him and his contacts. If they had enough people or programming skills to have feelers out on enough networks. It was...possible. Not probable, but possible.

Fine. Whoever this was, they were a pro. Obviously the usual evasion tricks were not going to work. Time to get serious, then. Fine.

He kept an eye on his rearview mirror through Prague's afternoon traffic, looping and backtracking multiple times but not seeing anything to indicate that he needed to. He abandoned the car in a parking garage two miles from the safehouse, wiping it for prints before walking away with only his bag and the PASIV. He switched his wallet for that of an older gentleman who was nice enough to stop and give him the time and unneeded directions to the closest metro station. He left the wallet on the street and used the man's koruna to buy a public transit ticket at a newsstand. He headed into the subway, taking the B line to Můstek and walking the rest of the way to his flat by a distinctly circuitous route. He usually would have enjoyed the walk (his flat was in a lovely section of the Old Town that dated back to the 14th century), but right then he was only glad for the narrow, cobbled streets and tall, mismatched buildings because they made for good cover. Only when he was certain that no one was following him did he stride to his building and slip inside.

No one was waiting for him, either in the foyer or in his flat. Quick recon verified that everything, down to the spider-thin thread across the doorways, was just as he'd left it. No one had disturbed anything, down to the significant amount of dust gathering on the mantel.

Arthur stood in the middle of the living room and took a deep breath. So far, so good.

He spent the next hour checking for bugs: clothes, bag, every item in the bag, the PASIV itself. He checked seams, emptied bottles, felt for suspicious lumps, and even opened up his iPod to check its innards (he wasn't worried about the file system: he'd long since wiped it and installed an alternate OS which wouldn't know how to contract a virus or connect to the internet if it tried.) He ran a bug sniffer over everything, including himself. Everything came back clean.

Arthur celebrated that small victory with a pot of coffee and a shower, then changed, repacked, and looked at the choices that were sitting in his closet safe. He had the usual range of clean IDs, credit and debit cards, and cash. He picked up the cleanest of the documents: passport and credit card for an identity that had never been used and that he hadn't even set up himself. He held the passport and card in his hands for a long minute, eyes closed, but couldn't think of any way on earth that it could be linked to him. He grabbed a thousand euros and change and shut the safe.

He stood in the middle of his bedroom and resisted the urge to lay down, just for a moment. He knew himself, and he would be fine so long as he kept moving. The safehouse, after the prepaid cell phone incident, didn't feel particularly safe. He'd feel better after another jump and a few days with no strange contacts wherever he ended up.

Wherever he ended up, indeed.

Arthur slid the fresh ID and into the inside pocket of his coat and paused, fingers tapping in over-caffeinated staccato on the strap of his bag. He had a lot of choices. He'd invested a lot of his share from the Fischer job in real estate in various parts of the world. He had safe houses of varying security and luxury everywhere from Rome to Beijing to Bogota to Vancouver. A few of them should be untraceable. Should be.

He wouldn't feel safe in any of them until he figured out how he was being tracked. They were just buildings. They couldn't watch his back.

Arthur left the flat nearly three hours to the minute from when he'd entered it, locking the door behind him and ghosting back out onto the street. Prague's streetside taxi service being what it was, he headed for Můstek station again, his mental checklist reorganizing itself. Subway to bus to airport to plane to Heathrow to taxi to flat to... He left it at that. Anything more would likely be derailed by the future anyway.

Eames would no doubt be thrilled for him to show up on his doorstep. Arthur could practically hear the smug already, but this once, just this once he was willing to put up with it.

It was nearly a week after Keller's late night visit when Prime finally cornered Jazz while the smaller mech was pulling a shift on the monitors; that being nearly the only time he could have done so, Jazz consoled himself, as duty came first. Otherwise, it would have taken the harbingers of Unicron himself to run a mech of Jazz's talent to ground when he didn't want to be found, and right then, he decidedly didn't.

Jazz was perched in front of the monitor banks, slightly less than half of his processor conscientiously processing the incoming data. The rest was devoted to his current problem of choice, strands of code for a new program slotting and reslotting into place as he tinkered with it. The sound of heavy steps behind him nearly shot him out of his seat before he caught himself; jumping like some half clocked sparkling would have as much as given away that he hadn't been paying attention to much outside of his own processor.

If Optimus was aware that they had been playing an impromptu game of keep away - in which Jazz had been determinedly keeping away, communication relegated to brief comms and all necessary reports shunted to Prime's inbox - then he made no mention of it. The feel of frustrated fatigue was a nearly palpable thing surrounding him, prickling along Jazz's plating and making him suppress a wince; Ratchet was going to have Optimus' rims stripped for parts if he kept piling duty shifts back to back for himself. Despite knowing with near certainty what was on the other mech's mind - the outgoing and incoming call log had shown a heavy preference for the Secretary of Defense's direct numbers and staff, of late - Jazz made himself sit up and injected a falsely upbeat note into his vocalization. "Hey, Boss. What's up?"

The larger mech started to rest the edge of one hip plate against the welded beams that served as desk and framework for the monitors, and then caught himself in time - while the army engineers had done a more than creditable job in hastily erecting structures that accommodated vastly larger-than-human being, some things were simply not designed to support a mech's weight, much less one the size of Optimus Prime. Venting an intake cycle, Prime settled solidly into a resting stance instead, optics spiraling briefly as he took in the monitors. "Jazz, do you have a moment?"

Not really - there were monitors to watch and code to rework and compile, and probably some rivets in the wall that could use counting, particularly if it meant not having to give Optimus the answer to the obvious question, which Jazz really didn't want to do - but that wasn't something a mech could just up and say to a superior officer, especially not when he answered to the Prime himself. "Sure. What do you need?"

Optimus shook his head slightly, a gesture the humans commonly mistook in their own physical language but which Jazz recognized from too many long shifts as a twisting motion to loosen overly tight wires in the larger mech's neck. Prime's voice, in Cybertronian, held a wealth of whistled undertone that English words simply couldn't convey. "Have you made any progress with the simultron research?"

And there it was, right there, the sparking stripped wire that Jazz really didn't want to admit to, looming in the air between them like a cityformer that no one wanted to acknowledge. It was just as ridiculous to deny it as it was hard to squash his own pride and admit it, but in the end there was only ever once choice. Jazz cycled a ventilation of his own, exhaling the prickling heat of embarrassment. "Yeah, Boss, about that…" He hesitated, picking the least damning words, which was far more difficult in the hard, rigid concepts of their native language than it would have been in the fuzzy homonyms of English. "There's been a small setback."

Prime's optics flickered briefly, back struts straightening. "You haven't made contact yet?"

It was hard, sometimes, to remember that he was second in command, a proven officer, with countless vorns of experience and classified operations to his name, rather than a squirming sparkling caught out in a prank gone wrong by an elder. Prime was the only officer who had ever had that effect on Jazz, and Jazz had decided early on that he really didn't care for it and would prefer to do everything in his power to avoid having that disapproval directed at him. Knowing that it was circumstances outside of his control didn't really help. "I've been trying, but…"

The other mech held up a hand, cutting him off, and the glyph that came through on a quick surge of Optimus' field was, surprisingly, one of relief and not of disappointment. Jazz reran the burst of it to be sure, but no - it was, distinctly, relief over frustration, and neither of them aimed specifically at Jazz himself. He cocked his head, curiosity getting the better of him. "…Prime?"

"There have been… difficulties in the negotiations," Optimus explained, the deep cadence of his voice slipping into the layered tones of Iacon's nobility, the language of politicians and Senators, and the closest dialect Cybertron had once had to the slipperiness of any of the human languages. Grimacing, Prime shook his head again. "The funding allocation has come up again. I'm certain we'll reach an agreement but I can't, at this exact moment, authorize a third party contract in good faith."

"Aah." The relief in his own field didn't have to be faked like his earlier patter had been - the reprieve from the anticipation of Prime's disappointment lifted him up all on its own and Jazz twitched with renewed energy, shifting back and forth in his seat. "Uncle Sam's got the purse strings, then?" he said, slipping back into English. It wasn't any real security breach, as everyone on base from either species knew it for the truth.

"Essentially," Prime agreed heavily. English smoothed some of the irritates tones out of his voice, but not all of it. "We should reach an understanding by next week, but in the meantime, you may consider the project on standby."

Something between Jazz's spark and processor did an uncomfortable sort of lurch. He firmly suppressed it and flicked a smart salute, following it with the glyphs for acknowledgement and teasing all at once. "I'll take care of it."

Prime flickered gratitude at him, the emotion briefly lighting his optics. "Thank you, Jazz. I'll inform you as soon as things change."

Jazz waited until the other mech had turned away, until his steps were faded to a dim vibration, before letting himself slump. Thank Primus, he thought, for English and its loopholes. Lying to Prime was very nearly top of the undesirably list, right under having to watch Prime be slagged, or being slagged himself. On the other hand, 'taking care of it' was a rather ambiguous statement of intent, and really, Jazz doing and Prime not knowing about it was almost standard procedure in the Special Ops handbook.

A week. Pit spawned politicians. His target could go to ground so far off the grid that Jazz would never find him in a week. In Siberia. In Tahiti. In Antartica. Anywhere.

Point of fact - in the time their conversation had taken, Jazz's spider crawlers reported back that the target was on the move again, destination logged through Praha Ruzyne international airport. Jazz bit back a few choice curses and focused on the data stream, optics dimming to take in the information as he flicked through searches, pulling up airline, flight number, and itinerary.

Now, that was interesting. Lufthansa, from Ruzyne to Heathrow. Less than a day previously, his crawlers had logged a phone conversation from his target to a contact in London. Jazz did not, strictly, believe in coincidence, and especially not when it was that obvious.

Jazz sat back, fingertips tapping a rhythm against the edge of the desk. It took half a second to pull up the file, scour it, trace the signal bounce, and then run a search for an 'Eames' in the proper vicinity. It came back empty, which didn't surprise him at all. A second trace, triangulated through the satellite signals, gave him a location, but another search informed him that the location was registered to a Mr. Richard Harding, a mild mannered and perfectly law abiding shop worker in London. Nothing at all to trace said individual to Jazz's target.

Except a phone call. Jazz whistled softly to himself, a Cybertronian fugue overlaid with Ella Fitzgerald, backed by the humm of data from the monitors as he shuttered his optics and dug into the search. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing alarming - a little too much of nothing. It was, Jazz concluded several minutes later, an excellently constructed identity, but he had fabricated too many of them in his own time and knew the traces of what to look for where the seams began to fall apart. Which left him with nothing but the name of 'Eames' - "Mr. Eames", his target had said, but the name itself could be either familial or given. It was little enough to go on, but Jazz had worked with less. With his target safely ensconced on a plane - it was marginally possible the man could bail out mid flight but Jazz calculated that chance to passingly slim and not to be worried about - he had plenty of time to pick at the new puzzle.

An hour later the puzzle had less taken shape and more created the suggestion of the space around the shape. 'Eames', Jazz had decided, was a professional name, but it happened to be in a profession near and dear to his subject's spark and equally useful to Jazz himself.

He had also unpacked and reshuffled through every file he had assembled on his primary subject and found an interesting tidbit. The humans had a phrase for it, a rather apt one - it really was a small world after all. Chirping a chuckle into the quiet of the monitor room, Jazz stretched to ease an ache in his struts and tapped into the base lines, waiting for the tiny buzz of the human comm to click over and pick up.

"Epps," the man all but barked into the phone line, which told Jazz he hadn't checked the caller id before answering.

"Hey," he drawled back, his preferred accent slipping heavier onto the words, "Bobby, my man, you got time to spare to help a brother out?"

The sergeant snorted. Beyond him, bleeding over into the auditory line, Jazz could hear the blurred sound of other voices. "Jazz, I keep telling you - you are as white as a silver Solstice can get. What'cha need?"

"Little side project," Jazz replied. He didn't have the facial flexibility to simulate the finer points of human expression, but amusement buzzed softly through his circuits, lighting up his optics. "Need a human liaison touch. Come on over to the watchtower, I'll give you the sit rep…"

Eames was of the professional opinion that running point was the hardest job in any extraction. The point man made sure that things went smoothly before, during and after the somnacin hit their veins. The point was the first brought in and the last to leave. They gathered intel, planned everything from location to timing to procurement, dealt with any nasty surprises that cropped up along the way (forcibly, if necessary), and all the while kept everything as quiet as possible to the outside world. All of the best point men (and one point woman who constantly bitched that they needed a more gender-neutral term) shared one trait: they were paranoid as hell. After all, the world WAS often out to get them, whether its agents be the police, old enemies, rival teams, competing interests, or one's team's own stupidity. A healthy sense of paranoia constantly made them look for the con, the trap, the suspicious, the just plain off that might be all the warning you got before everything went to hell.

A good point man's paranoia had saved Eames' life on more than one occasion. On more than half of those occasions, that good point man had been Arthur.

Which was why, when Arthur showed up unannounced on the doorstep of his flat at midnight with what looked like 48 hours worth of baggage under his eyes and said, "I am being fucking stalked," Eames just said "All right, then," and opened the door so Arthur could slip inside.

Arthur set down the PASIV case, his eyes sweeping over the room reflexively, then again, as if he expected an ambush to leap from under Eames' sofa. "No, no, you don't understand, Eames. This...this is well beyond anything I've ever seen before. This is fucking impossible. This. It."

Eames locked the door slowly, amazed and faintly worried by the sight of Arthur gesturing, at a loss for words. He'd been vaguely concerned after Arthur's cryptic call earlier, but Arthur hadn't used any of the "snafu: send obscene amounts of money and also rocket launchers" codes. He hadn't, in fact, asked for anything other than a status report, which was why Eames had been only vaguely concerned rather than calling in every favor he could lay his hands on.

Eames knew that Arthur liked to operate under the delusion that they weren't partners. He had practically BOUGHT that one river in Egypt. Eames didn't mind. He went about his business as always, and if that business meant keeping an eye on the best point man in the business' back, well, needs must. It wasn't as if Arthur didn't do the same for him (though with a lot more bitching involved.)

Arthur pulled a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket and thrust it at Eames. "This. I got from a Starbucks kiosk in Heathrow airport on my way here. Automated kiosk. Using a credit card that had never been used before."

Eames took the paper, noting the fine tremor that was translated through it from Arthur's shaking hand (the poor man obviously needed either more or less caffeine.) It was a receipt. Eames scanned it and, seeing nothing obvious, opened his mouth to make some crack about Arthur needing to lay off the Venti lattes when his eyes caught on a line of text at the bottom of the receipt, underneath all the usual "Thank you for your business" and store number whatnot: "URGENT. Please call 775-657-3007."

Eames blinked. "This..."

"That," Arthur said, plucking the receipt out of Eames' hand, "is the same goddamned Nevada number that's been fucking stalking me for the past week. I get text messages from it. I get phone calls from it-on phones that I bought pre-paid with cash not an hour before, mind you. I get emails telling me to call it, at addresses that no one should know about. I get it fucking showing up on my goddamn coffee receipts!" He shook the receipt as if he'd like to strangle it. Or shoot it. Yes, that clenched jaw and all the swearing definitely translated to "Arthur would like to shoot something".

Eames was still thinking about that receipt, though, "Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that-"

"Impossible?," Arthur bit out, his hands curling into fists. "Yes. Yes, it is. Even if someone, I don't know, read the fucking universe's mind and knew that that card was mine, how would they hack the coffee machine and fuck with the receipt in five seconds?"

Eames (quite bravely, he thought, knowing what Arthur was capable of) stepped forward and laid his hands on Arthur's shoulders. Arthur was vibrating. This, Eames decided, was beyond worrying and had tipped right over into alarming. Stalkers aside, Arthur looked as if he was about to keel over. God knew what he'd do if a car backfired in the street. "Breathe, darling. Have you spotted them?"

"No!" Arthur threw his hands up in frustration, but he didn't pull away. "I haven't seen anyone! No feet on the ground, no nothing, just this constant badgering!"

"So no contact."

"No!"

"No tails or threats or shots fired."

Eames was gratified to feel some of the tension bleeding out of the shoulders under his hands as Arthur eased himself back from his point man's tunnel vision. "...No."

"Good," Eames said, cheerfully, squeezing Arthur's shoulders and then pulling back. "Then likely nothing will explode if you get some sleep."

Arthur stared at him for a moment, then barked a laugh. "With this much caffeine in me? Maybe next week." He raised a hand to rub at his temple. "I have the world's worst headache."

"I don't doubt it. Come on." Eames headed into the living room. "I have a wonderfully nap-capable couch. I'd offer you the bed, but honestly the couch is more comfortable."

Eames gestured at said couch dramatically, turning just in time to see Arthur look up, expression tired and unnaturally old now that his adrenaline was starting to fade. His eyes flickered over Eames, taking in his faded tee and old sweats, the rest of the living room which was very obviously lived in. "I shouldn't have come here. I have no idea what's going on, but I shouldn't have gotten you involved. Sorry."

Eames repressed a roll of his eyes and settled for raising an eyebrow. "I would have been disappointed if you'd gone anywhere else, and that's the truth."

Arthur sighed, hauling the strap of his bag over his head and letting it fall to the floor with a thump. "We need to stop doing this."

Eames brushed a few crumbs off the cushions and pulled a pillow over to the end of the couch. "What, watching each other's backs?"

"Yes." Arthur pulled off his jacket, laying it over the arm of the couch and sitting down next to it. He made a pleasantly surprised face. Eames had tried out every couch in the London metropolitan area looking for something firm-yet-squishy that wouldn't leave his feet draped over the side. The result of this diligent research was that his couch was a finely-tuned perfect storm of upholstered comfort. Just what the doctor ordered for exhausted point men.

"And why is that?" Eames called, as he headed into the kitchen.

"We just...should."

River. In Egypt. Eames rummaged in the cabinet for the bottle of paracetamol and brought it and a glass of water back out with him. Arthur was lying down by then, his shoes lined up at the foot of the couch. "Whatever you say, Arthur."

Arthur glared at him, but said glare was ruined by his shameless reach for the paracetamol. He swallowed three of them, washing them down with the whole glass of water. "Don't patronize me, asshole."

"I wouldn't dream of it." Eames took the glass, reaching up to turn off the lamp. The smaller cone of light from his desk near the hall kept the room to comfortable shadows. "Go to sleep, Mr. Arthur. I'll be right over there, gun not a foot away from me. We'll deal with your mysterious stalker in the morning."

A snort was his only response, but Arthur closed his eyes, which was victory enough.

Eames headed over to his computer, pulling the pistol from its holster strapped under the desk and checking it, reflexively. He wasn't all that worried that anyone would come bursting through the door, but one couldn't be too careful. Not to mention the sound of a loaded clip sliding home would put Arthur at ease. Eames sat the gun down on the blotter and picked up the last of his Guinness. He didn't, he decided, have enough intel to do anything about Arthur's predicament. He'd just have to wait until morning, when Arthur could give him all the details. Then they could decide whether there was running or arse-kicking to be done.

Meanwhile, Eames had a job to iron out.

Eames pulled up his mail window and found another message waiting for him. At least this Epps chap didn't keep him waiting...