crocket + racketeering

James raises his eyebrows, watching her from over the rims of his glasses. A curious thing to say- she’s not wrong, though. “Well, if you’re doing things and not getting caught, you must be very good at what you do. Have you ever considered transferring to espionage?” He smiles at her, clearly joking, but then it occurs to him that he doesn’t really know her well enough for her to know that. He clears his throat. “Don’t actually do that, of course. We, uh, already have a lot of spies. Anyway.”

Shaking his head slightly, he finishes flipping through her file and then gently closes it, instead opting to pull out a pad of paper and a pen. Already, he scrawls a couple quick notes. Doesn’t seem threatened by authority. Generally self-confident.

At her question, James sits back and crosses one of his legs over the other, holding the pad in his lap. He smiles thinly at her.

“It’s just a general meeting. Getting to know you, basically. I’ll ask a few questions, but I’m, uh, more interesting in just open, honest discussion. It’s really… not as bad as everyone makes it seem.” He scoffs lightly. “The way people talk about it you’d think I was trying to pry their deepest secrets out of them.”

She remains straight-faced at the doctor’s joke, crossing her arms across her chest. It’s not that she doesn’t find the idea amusing; but Juniper has a fleeting thought of the stuffy suits the spies wear, and that’s enough to put the idea from her head.

Nodding once in acknowledgement of his explanation, she tilts her head. “D’you really blame them? You probably know as well as I do that this place loves to take your secrets and use them against you.” June pauses, considering. “And let’s be honest, not all the mercs here are as straight-laced and upstanding as me,”

James stares at her for a moment, and then his face contorts in abject horror. How could he have missed that piece of information? Embarrassed, he looks away, desperately flipping through her file. Yep, it’s right there: employed for six years. Whoops.

“I- oh, god, I’m sorry. I’m just, uh. I’m used to files being a little bit thicker,” he comments, the thought of Bruce Hutchins’ file passing through his mind. June’s file is small. It has a little bit of past, her information from when she joined, transfer papers… and that’s really it. At least most people had derogatory marks.

“You, uh. Have a pretty good record. I’m… surprised. I mean, not that I should be, it’s just… it’s easy to get in trouble here.”

She watches this whole panic go down, mildly amused by the fact that the doctor seems to be even more squirrely in person than she’d expected.

“It’s easy to get caught here.” She corrects him with a snort. Slouching further into her chair she shakes her head. “Most of the people around here lack the subtly to keep from getting caught. Eve’s good, but she can’t be everywhere at once.”

It’s spoken very matter-of-fact and with a shrug. Even with her various assistants, things tend to fall through the cracks. June’s gotten very good at figuring out where those cracks are over the years.

test

test

test

test