Arriving back at her apartment building, J.J walked from her car to the concierge, buzzed herself in and made her way up to the 4th floor via the stairs. It was high-time that the local council sorted out the elevator as it had been shut down for 3 months without any sign of a repairman. Opening the front door she picked up the mail from the letterbox and slammed the door shut. Going to her room, J.J sat down at her computer desk and switched the laptop on. Once it had loaded, she re-opened her most recent file and continued writing in her e-diary.

‘We had been watching the house for the better part of 5 days when we got the chance between other jobs, and on day six it was decided we would go for it. The house belonged to a high school professor living just out of town. On the outside it looked like just a normal farm-house but inside he had renovated it to the extent that it was packed with the latest technology and gadgets. Anyone that has enough money to do that must be worth a pretty penny, so why shouldn’t we have paid him a visit and collected the money he owed?? When we got in the house, we found 15 boxes of unpacked wide screen lcd TV’s, 20 brand new top of the range laptops and pc’s, cell phones which hadn’t even been released on the market yet and a lot of ultra modern technology that could be sold for at least 4-5 figures each. Something didn’t add up though because the value of this collection was more than enough to pay back the 10 grand he owed. Why then would he go out of his way to try and hide from us?

Just as we had finished making an inventory, the front door swung open and there stood Professor Robertson. He looked more shocked that his alarm hadn’t gone off than upset that we’d managed to gain access to his house. We were all frozen stiff for a few moments before he edged his way into the hall and closed the door behind him, fumbling at the locks. Great, he was going to try and be a hero by fighting us; that was the last thing we needed. As expected there was a fight and in the midst of it, Katy was slashed on her left forearm by an antique Spanish blade that Robertson had taken from the wall by the front door (we had noticed it when we entered the house but didn’t think it was real… damn). There was a struggle to disarm him and punches were thrown, it must have been 4 or 5 minutes before we knocked him out cold with a candle holder to the temple.

We took him outside and tied him to a tree, prodding and poking at him with Katy’s baseball bat. He was quite aggressive when he came round, as you would expect. We let him vent his anger but the last straw was when he spat directly into my mouth as I was yawning. Katy smashed the bat over his exposed ankle with full power and you could hear the bone shatter. After I swirled water around my mouth to get rid of the after-taste, I pounded on his kidneys and rib cage as though I were boxing for a world championship. After a few minutes the blood started to spew from his mouth and we decided it was time to go. We went back into the farmhouse, loaded our van with the goods and drove off'.

J.J heard a knock on her door and nearly jumped out of her skin as Katy announced she had arrived home. Before she could come in, J.J closed the diary and quickly hid it in the drawer under her bed. She then went to the lounge and slumped onto one of the reclining chairs in the main sitting area as Katy checked the answering machine. There were a couple of messages but only from marketing companies trying to sell her some kind of miracle grass growing shit (no help considering they didn’t have a garden) and wondering if she would be interested in phoning them back to take part in a questionnaire regarding some charity or other. A beep followed both messages to declare that they were deleted. Grabbing a beer from the fridge and sitting down in the other recliner, Katy breathed a large sigh and opened the bottle, taking a long drink and setting it down on the table.

“Have you felt nervous or suspicious at all today?” asked Katy looking directly into J.J’s eyes, “Say a car following you, disappearing for a while down a different road and then picking you up again later? Did you notice anyone paying particular attention to you when you’ve been standing in a queue or walking around town?”

“I didn’t spot anything unusual at all but then I haven’t been looking for anything until I got your voicemail. It’s pretty weird that the same guy contacted us both separately in the space of a few hours though; I mean how did he know where you would be? There’s no way in hell he found you by coincidence, it’s not impossible but very unlikely” said J.J. The girls sat for a few moments staring at each other to see if one or the other was perhaps hiding something, given the situation they were in and what had happened today, you could forgive them for being just that little bit edgy.

“Well one thing’s for sure J.J, from now on; we’re going to have to start watching everything and everyone all the time. Someone’s obviously been clever enough to trace our steps so we need to properly cover our tracks at all times” Katy stated.

“So you actually met this guy and he offered you the exact same job as he emailed me with? Did he have a lisp and a southern accent? What did he look like? Can we trust him?” said J.J. The way she asked what he looked like sounded more like she was interested in dating him than questioning him, she was a sucker for Scotsmen.

“J.J, I know you’ve not had any action since we got here, but trust me, he’s in his mid thirties with a beard that needs drastically trimmed and the way he speaks is sneaky and sarcastic…” remarked Katy. Her eyes were determined and her expression suspicious. “In terms of can we trust him, I’m not entirely sure but the kind of money he’s offering we can’t turn down so I think we should take this job. Pretty basic job really, we spy on the girl he’s looking for, tell him where she goes and what she does, simple and easy”.

They were in need of money and this job was apparently going to pay well but they were beyond this kind of shit but they couldn’t keep working at the bar much longer.

“So we either take this job and make some good money, or don’t take the job and get paid shit money for the rest of our days,” said J.J. “Make the call and tell him he’s got a deal but we want to negotiate the price first.”

“Spence, if the contract is still on offer we want to take you up on it but we need some more information. The fee we will receive for doing this work had better be made clear before any agreement is reached tonight”.

“Well, I didn’t expect you to call this quickly Miss Barclay but I am pleased you have decided to accept the offer. Let’s talk business shall we? Firstly the deal has changed in terms of there is a second target and it’s non-negotiable. There’s a kid by the name of James Valentine that I want you to track down. This request isn’t coming from my superiors, it’s purely a personal matter and I’ll guarantee you £100,000 for successful work in bringing him to a place of my choosing at a time and date to be specified by me once you’ve managed to secure him. Are we still going to proceed with the deal or do I need to find someone else?”

“You better not change the contract any more than this Spence or you can forget it. We’re not bounty hunters and we’re certainly not babysitters but the way you’re making this deal sound, that’s exactly what we would be doing. Only because you’ve given us an assurance, and even then I doubt you’ll follow on with it, that we would get permanent contracts with this Polyamourous Company or whatever, are we going to go ahead with this crap”.

“Temper, Temper Miss Barclay. You have my word, and you can take that as though it were written in the bible, that the deal will not change and your contracts are definitely assured upon completion of this contract. I’ll send you the details on your primary target, Dianne Gabriel in the next few hours. Details on Valentine will be made available by the end of this week and again I cannot stress the importance of bringing him in. I’ll let you and Miss Fleisch have a chat about our deal and I hope the next time that we speak, it’ll be on friendlier terms” said Spence as he disconnected the call.

“What the hell was that about” asked Jacqui. “Did he say the deal has been altered? We’re still getting paid aren’t we? I’ve just put down a deposit on a new pickup truck and I’ll be damned if he’s just screwed me out of 2 and a half grand”.

“We’ve got a new target in addition to the girl but he said the second target is a personal problem. There’s a hundred grand on this kid’s head and Spence seems a little too fixated on getting this kid, for whatever reason. Either way, this could turn out to be a very successful deal for us. So you can stop worrying your pretty little head about your truck and start thinking about how we’re going to run 2 operations at the same time, not to forget that we’re currently holding down a job thanks to Kevin at the bar”. Katy went to the fridge and poured herself a glass of apple juice, downed it and stood at the counter separating their kitchen from the lounge. The last time the deal got changed, they ended up having to flee the country and creating a new lives for themselves and Katy would be damned if it was going to happen again.