FIC: Keeping Up With the Joneses Ch. 5
Title: Keeping Up with the Joneses
Author: dancingelf88
Rating: Mature
Pairing: Luke/Noah
Disclaimer: If only….
Summary: Luke and Noah Jones live a mundane happy life until a secret shatters their world
Chapter V: Mission Incomplete
“You’re sure this is going to work?” Maddie asked Luke.
Luke adjusted the lens until the image was clear, “Mads come on.”
“I’m just asking.” She said and sat on the bed.
Luke tore his attention away from the sniper rifle resting on the stand and went to sit next to her, “When we had to take care of that arms dealer from 100 ft. away…who take care of that?”
“You did.”
“Exactly. Don’t worry…I got this.” He assured her.
“Ok…so if it’s not the job that’s bothering you…then what the hell is wrong?”
Luke looked at her, “I’m fine Maddie.”
“I’ve known for a long time: you’re not fine.”
Luke closed his eyes and rubbed his temple, “I think Noah’s cheating on me.”
Maddie looked at him before she burst out laughing.
“I’m not joking.”
“Luke…Noah’s a boy scout. There’s no way.”
“The other night he ran out of our neighbors’ dinner party early…shut up.” Luke warned at Maddie’s snort, “then he comes home a few hours later with glitter on his face and fed me some cockamamie story about a stripper and confidentiality.”
“Ok…well he does work for a security firm Luke, a private one. He can’t just give out privileged information.”
“He was lying Maddie.”
“So what if he was? He’s just the cover, it’s not like you actually care right?” Maddie asked and waited for Luke to answer. Thankfully her phone rang, “Hello? Seriously? Ok.”
“What happened?” Luke asked her.
“Those new computer systems we got? Apparently no one else knows how to program them. I have to jet.” She kissed him on the cheek, “Good luck here.”
Luke smirked, “Won’t need it.”
As she headed toward the door she stopped and turned to him, “If you want I can have my buddy Earl check it out.”
“I’ll think about it.” Luke waved goodbye.
Luke knew Dr. Oliver was not going to be back in his room for a bit: they had hacked into his e-mail and learned what room he was staying in and that he had a very important meeting. So they had booked Luke a room across from his. Luke took the time to finish adjusting the lens and then went to lay down on the bed to think.
~~~
Noah unzipped the plastic, black bag and unearthed the maintenance uniform, “Better costume than the last one.”
“What? The last one happened to be awesome.” Casey defended.
Noah raised his eyebrow, “Yeah? Then next time you be the ass end of the donkey.”
“Whatever…here’s the room key. You know what to do?” Casey asked. The two men were in a motel room two blocks down from the Hilton hotel.
“Get in, wait for Oliver, find out where the rest of the stash is, and take care of him.” Noah listed as he pulled on the uniform, “Try not to keep him out too long.”
“Why…you have to be home for dinner?” Casey smirked.
“Shut up.” Noah mumbled as he waited for Casey to change. The plan was simple: Casey had set up a meeting with Oliver, posing as a potential buyer, to lure him out of his room. While he was out, Noah was going to go in and wait for Oliver. Once the doctor returned, Noah would force him into revealing where the rest of his stash was and then take out Oliver. The operation should not have taken more than a couple of hours.
Casey straightened his tie and turned to Noah, “How do I look?”
“Spiffy.” Noah answered.
Casey rolled his eyes, “Ok…gotta go. Good luck.”
“Thanks.” He smiled.
Getting into the hotel was simple enough: Casey had done an incredible job forging an ID card and the uniform was identical. Noah’s first stop was to the basement to grab a maintenance cart before heading to the 8th floor room 802 to wait.
The first thing he did, after putting the Do Not Disturb sign on the door handle, was search the room. There was the possibility that Oliver would be one of the paranoid ones who carried everything with them…he was not.
Noah sat down and prepared himself. He had been in this business for years, but killing someone never got easier…it was never his go-to option; however, sometimes it was a necessity. His phone beeped three times about two hours later: Oliver was on his way up.
Noah sat down on the sofa, took out his gun, and laid it on his lap. He waited for the door to open and watched as Reid Oliver slowly came into view.
“What the-“
“Hands up…don’t make a sound.” Noah said evenly as he pointed his pistol at the man.
Oliver put up his hands but smirked, “So you’re the one they sent after me huh?”
Noah got up from his seat and stood face to face with Oliver, “I’d wipe that smirk off my face if I were you. Where’s the rest of the stash?”
“Why should I tell you?” Oliver asked calmly.
“Because, doctor, it would be in your best interest.”
“What does it matter…either way you’re going to kill me right?”
“That’s true. But trust me: you don’t want me to make you tell me.”
The shot came quickly. Noah felt the bullet graze his right shoulder and hit the lamp on the desk which promptly exploded. He reacted just as the next bullet hit the wall above his head. He hit the ground on instinct, but the first bullet had knocked his gun out of his hand. He saw Oliver also hit the ground and attempt to crawl towards the door. Noah scrambled after him, despite the burning in his shoulder. He had reached him and was attempting to subdue when another shot sliced through the window and narrowly missed him. Noah was temporarily distracted, giving Oliver a chance to kick him in the injured shoulder and make a dashing escape.
“Fuck!” Noah screamed. He turned on his back quick enough to see a figure in an upstairs window retreating.
Noah decided not to take any chances. He stayed crouched on his stomach and crawled slowly towards his gun. As soon as he retrieved it, he crawled back towards the bathroom and locked the door behind him. He turned on the light and swiftly removed his right arm from the uniform sleeve. He examined the wound in his shoulder: thankfully, it was a light graze. A few bandages and he would be fine, but he had failed. Noah didn’t have time to dwell on the mission. He had to leave the room before someone from security came to check on their guest. Even though the sniper’s bullets hadn’t made any sound, his struggle with Oliver most likely had.
Noah cleaned off his wounded shoulder quickly and effectively with soap and covered it with a wad of toilet paper. It would have to do for the time being.
~~
Luke drove fast and with purpose down the city’s main street. He made it to headquarters in half the time and sprinted towards his office.
“Luke…wow that fast I’m impress--”
“Something went wrong.” He interrupted Maddie mid-sentence.
“What happened?”
“I didn’t get the shot.” Luke told her plainly.
“Why not…were you too far away?”
“No…someone else was there. He got in the way.”
“What like a bodyguard or something…he was protecting him?”
Luke walked toward his office as Maddie followed, “No. He was actually…I couldn’t see all that clearly but I think he was holding him at gunpoint. When I was aiming, I saw Oliver with his hands up: in surrender.”
“You didn’t see the guy’s face?”
“No. He was turned around the whole time. I got a small opening and I took it, but he moved in the way again and I shot him instead. I just…I couldn’t hit the shot.” Luke explained.
“Damn it.”
“Here…” Luke took out a small flash drive, “This is from the sniper rifle I used. It…”
“The built in camera.” Maddie finished before he could. She took it from him and went straight to her office with Luke following behind.
She immediately inserted the device and started rifling through until she got to the desired images.
“Ok…this is the best shot we have. Let’s see if we can’t improve the image.” Maddie worked diligently until she had zoomed in as far as it would let her and then worked to clarify the image. When she was finally done, it was damn near perfect, “Still no facial sho…Luke?”
She looked over at her partner who had frozen. He looked like he had seen a ghost, “Luke what’s wrong?”
“That…that’s my husband.”
~~
“What the hell happened?” Casey said as soon as Noah literally stumbled through the door. He was sweating, breathing heavily, and the right shoulder of his shirt was soaked with blood.
“Someone else was there.” Noah puffed out.
Casey took him and guided him to the bed. He immediately took off the top half of Noah’s uniform and examined the wound, “In the room? Oliver had a guard?”
Noah squinted his eyes and hissed as Casey touched his shoulder, “No…not in the room.”
“On the roof then…it was a sniper?”
“Definitely a sniper not on the roof. In a room…across from his.” Noah explained quickly and then attempted to stand before Casey pushed him back down, “what are you doing?”
“I’m calling Ali to come look at that shoulder.”
“We have to find which room that was and who the person was.”
“I know Noah. But you can’t do it.”
“It’s a flesh would and it’s barely a graze.”
“Sit down. Shut up. I got it.” Casey said. He spoke on the phone for a few minutes and then hung up, “she’ll be here in twenty minutes.”
Alison made it there in 13. As she cleaned Noah’s wound he explained the details of the botched hit to Casey.
“How’s he doing?” Casey asked Alison.
“Luckily it was just a flesh wound and a bad graze. He’ll be just fine. But he should rest.”
“No way.”
“Noah,” Casey looked at him, “I’ll make her sedate you. I’ll take care of it. Rest.”
Noah tried protesting but decided to give in. He woke up two hours later with a slight start.
“Whoa there ace.”
“What did we find out?”
“You might want to sit down for this.”
“I’m already laying down Casey.”
“Ok I sent in two of our guys to look at the room. You were right…the shot did come from a room across the courtyard.”
“And…?”
“And…we got Hunter to hack into the hotel’s system and we got a name: Evan Hoffman.”
“That’s an alias.”
“We know. So we also hacked into the security cameras to see who checked in or out of the room.”
“And…?” Noah was getting impatient. Casey sighed heavily and handed over his laptop. Noah looked at the screen and paled, “That…that’s Luke.”
“Yeah.” Was all Casey said.
“No way…that can’t be right.” He explained to Casey.
“It is.” Casey said with assurance.
“Luke is in Connecticut on a book signing with one of his authors.”
“Yeah? And you’re in Philly for a conference.” Casey reminded him.
“Fuck!” Noah cursed
“Look it’s ok.”
“Really? Because my husband, you know the nice farm boy from Illinois, just tried to kill me Case!”
“Ok, so that part’s bad.”
“Yeah.”
“But hey he didn’t see your face right?”
“No…my back was to the window the whole time.”
“Good. Look Hunter is the best hacker we have. If there’s anything to find…you know he can.”
“And in the meantime I play the unsuspecting husband while trying to get the jump on him.”
“Exactly.” Casey smiled. Just then Noah’s phone rang…he let it go twice before picking up.
“Hey baby. I’m great…how’s Connecticut? Really? Yeah Philly’s great. Looking forward to seeing you too. Same here.”
~~
“How is this possible? Noah works for a small security firm.” Luke said perplexed.
“And you work for a small publishing company. It’s called a cover.” Maddie said.
“For what?”
“Million dollar question.”
“And we need the million dollar answer right now.” Luke raked both his hands through his hair.
“Luke calm down we will. But this just happened three hours ago.”
“Yeah? And the boss is going to want to know why I didn’t know that my husband was some kind of, I don’t know mercenary, that just fucked with our mission.” Luke yelled.
“Hey guess what?! This isn’t helping.” Maddie said forcefully.
Luke took a deep breath, “You’re right. But I know what will.”
“A big bottle of scotch?”
Luke looked at her and let out an amused sigh, “No. I need to find out just who the hell my husband is.”
Luke picked up his cell phone and called Noah. After his brief conversation, he hung up, and shared a look with Maddie.
Chapter Six
Author: dancingelf88
Rating: Mature
Pairing: Luke/Noah
Disclaimer: If only….
Summary: Luke and Noah Jones live a mundane happy life until a secret shatters their world
Chapter V: Mission Incomplete
“You’re sure this is going to work?” Maddie asked Luke.
Luke adjusted the lens until the image was clear, “Mads come on.”
“I’m just asking.” She said and sat on the bed.
Luke tore his attention away from the sniper rifle resting on the stand and went to sit next to her, “When we had to take care of that arms dealer from 100 ft. away…who take care of that?”
“You did.”
“Exactly. Don’t worry…I got this.” He assured her.
“Ok…so if it’s not the job that’s bothering you…then what the hell is wrong?”
Luke looked at her, “I’m fine Maddie.”
“I’ve known for a long time: you’re not fine.”
Luke closed his eyes and rubbed his temple, “I think Noah’s cheating on me.”
Maddie looked at him before she burst out laughing.
“I’m not joking.”
“Luke…Noah’s a boy scout. There’s no way.”
“The other night he ran out of our neighbors’ dinner party early…shut up.” Luke warned at Maddie’s snort, “then he comes home a few hours later with glitter on his face and fed me some cockamamie story about a stripper and confidentiality.”
“Ok…well he does work for a security firm Luke, a private one. He can’t just give out privileged information.”
“He was lying Maddie.”
“So what if he was? He’s just the cover, it’s not like you actually care right?” Maddie asked and waited for Luke to answer. Thankfully her phone rang, “Hello? Seriously? Ok.”
“What happened?” Luke asked her.
“Those new computer systems we got? Apparently no one else knows how to program them. I have to jet.” She kissed him on the cheek, “Good luck here.”
Luke smirked, “Won’t need it.”
As she headed toward the door she stopped and turned to him, “If you want I can have my buddy Earl check it out.”
“I’ll think about it.” Luke waved goodbye.
Luke knew Dr. Oliver was not going to be back in his room for a bit: they had hacked into his e-mail and learned what room he was staying in and that he had a very important meeting. So they had booked Luke a room across from his. Luke took the time to finish adjusting the lens and then went to lay down on the bed to think.
~~~
Noah unzipped the plastic, black bag and unearthed the maintenance uniform, “Better costume than the last one.”
“What? The last one happened to be awesome.” Casey defended.
Noah raised his eyebrow, “Yeah? Then next time you be the ass end of the donkey.”
“Whatever…here’s the room key. You know what to do?” Casey asked. The two men were in a motel room two blocks down from the Hilton hotel.
“Get in, wait for Oliver, find out where the rest of the stash is, and take care of him.” Noah listed as he pulled on the uniform, “Try not to keep him out too long.”
“Why…you have to be home for dinner?” Casey smirked.
“Shut up.” Noah mumbled as he waited for Casey to change. The plan was simple: Casey had set up a meeting with Oliver, posing as a potential buyer, to lure him out of his room. While he was out, Noah was going to go in and wait for Oliver. Once the doctor returned, Noah would force him into revealing where the rest of his stash was and then take out Oliver. The operation should not have taken more than a couple of hours.
Casey straightened his tie and turned to Noah, “How do I look?”
“Spiffy.” Noah answered.
Casey rolled his eyes, “Ok…gotta go. Good luck.”
“Thanks.” He smiled.
Getting into the hotel was simple enough: Casey had done an incredible job forging an ID card and the uniform was identical. Noah’s first stop was to the basement to grab a maintenance cart before heading to the 8th floor room 802 to wait.
The first thing he did, after putting the Do Not Disturb sign on the door handle, was search the room. There was the possibility that Oliver would be one of the paranoid ones who carried everything with them…he was not.
Noah sat down and prepared himself. He had been in this business for years, but killing someone never got easier…it was never his go-to option; however, sometimes it was a necessity. His phone beeped three times about two hours later: Oliver was on his way up.
Noah sat down on the sofa, took out his gun, and laid it on his lap. He waited for the door to open and watched as Reid Oliver slowly came into view.
“What the-“
“Hands up…don’t make a sound.” Noah said evenly as he pointed his pistol at the man.
Oliver put up his hands but smirked, “So you’re the one they sent after me huh?”
Noah got up from his seat and stood face to face with Oliver, “I’d wipe that smirk off my face if I were you. Where’s the rest of the stash?”
“Why should I tell you?” Oliver asked calmly.
“Because, doctor, it would be in your best interest.”
“What does it matter…either way you’re going to kill me right?”
“That’s true. But trust me: you don’t want me to make you tell me.”
The shot came quickly. Noah felt the bullet graze his right shoulder and hit the lamp on the desk which promptly exploded. He reacted just as the next bullet hit the wall above his head. He hit the ground on instinct, but the first bullet had knocked his gun out of his hand. He saw Oliver also hit the ground and attempt to crawl towards the door. Noah scrambled after him, despite the burning in his shoulder. He had reached him and was attempting to subdue when another shot sliced through the window and narrowly missed him. Noah was temporarily distracted, giving Oliver a chance to kick him in the injured shoulder and make a dashing escape.
“Fuck!” Noah screamed. He turned on his back quick enough to see a figure in an upstairs window retreating.
Noah decided not to take any chances. He stayed crouched on his stomach and crawled slowly towards his gun. As soon as he retrieved it, he crawled back towards the bathroom and locked the door behind him. He turned on the light and swiftly removed his right arm from the uniform sleeve. He examined the wound in his shoulder: thankfully, it was a light graze. A few bandages and he would be fine, but he had failed. Noah didn’t have time to dwell on the mission. He had to leave the room before someone from security came to check on their guest. Even though the sniper’s bullets hadn’t made any sound, his struggle with Oliver most likely had.
Noah cleaned off his wounded shoulder quickly and effectively with soap and covered it with a wad of toilet paper. It would have to do for the time being.
~~
Luke drove fast and with purpose down the city’s main street. He made it to headquarters in half the time and sprinted towards his office.
“Luke…wow that fast I’m impress--”
“Something went wrong.” He interrupted Maddie mid-sentence.
“What happened?”
“I didn’t get the shot.” Luke told her plainly.
“Why not…were you too far away?”
“No…someone else was there. He got in the way.”
“What like a bodyguard or something…he was protecting him?”
Luke walked toward his office as Maddie followed, “No. He was actually…I couldn’t see all that clearly but I think he was holding him at gunpoint. When I was aiming, I saw Oliver with his hands up: in surrender.”
“You didn’t see the guy’s face?”
“No. He was turned around the whole time. I got a small opening and I took it, but he moved in the way again and I shot him instead. I just…I couldn’t hit the shot.” Luke explained.
“Damn it.”
“Here…” Luke took out a small flash drive, “This is from the sniper rifle I used. It…”
“The built in camera.” Maddie finished before he could. She took it from him and went straight to her office with Luke following behind.
She immediately inserted the device and started rifling through until she got to the desired images.
“Ok…this is the best shot we have. Let’s see if we can’t improve the image.” Maddie worked diligently until she had zoomed in as far as it would let her and then worked to clarify the image. When she was finally done, it was damn near perfect, “Still no facial sho…Luke?”
She looked over at her partner who had frozen. He looked like he had seen a ghost, “Luke what’s wrong?”
“That…that’s my husband.”
~~
“What the hell happened?” Casey said as soon as Noah literally stumbled through the door. He was sweating, breathing heavily, and the right shoulder of his shirt was soaked with blood.
“Someone else was there.” Noah puffed out.
Casey took him and guided him to the bed. He immediately took off the top half of Noah’s uniform and examined the wound, “In the room? Oliver had a guard?”
Noah squinted his eyes and hissed as Casey touched his shoulder, “No…not in the room.”
“On the roof then…it was a sniper?”
“Definitely a sniper not on the roof. In a room…across from his.” Noah explained quickly and then attempted to stand before Casey pushed him back down, “what are you doing?”
“I’m calling Ali to come look at that shoulder.”
“We have to find which room that was and who the person was.”
“I know Noah. But you can’t do it.”
“It’s a flesh would and it’s barely a graze.”
“Sit down. Shut up. I got it.” Casey said. He spoke on the phone for a few minutes and then hung up, “she’ll be here in twenty minutes.”
Alison made it there in 13. As she cleaned Noah’s wound he explained the details of the botched hit to Casey.
“How’s he doing?” Casey asked Alison.
“Luckily it was just a flesh wound and a bad graze. He’ll be just fine. But he should rest.”
“No way.”
“Noah,” Casey looked at him, “I’ll make her sedate you. I’ll take care of it. Rest.”
Noah tried protesting but decided to give in. He woke up two hours later with a slight start.
“Whoa there ace.”
“What did we find out?”
“You might want to sit down for this.”
“I’m already laying down Casey.”
“Ok I sent in two of our guys to look at the room. You were right…the shot did come from a room across the courtyard.”
“And…?”
“And…we got Hunter to hack into the hotel’s system and we got a name: Evan Hoffman.”
“That’s an alias.”
“We know. So we also hacked into the security cameras to see who checked in or out of the room.”
“And…?” Noah was getting impatient. Casey sighed heavily and handed over his laptop. Noah looked at the screen and paled, “That…that’s Luke.”
“Yeah.” Was all Casey said.
“No way…that can’t be right.” He explained to Casey.
“It is.” Casey said with assurance.
“Luke is in Connecticut on a book signing with one of his authors.”
“Yeah? And you’re in Philly for a conference.” Casey reminded him.
“Fuck!” Noah cursed
“Look it’s ok.”
“Really? Because my husband, you know the nice farm boy from Illinois, just tried to kill me Case!”
“Ok, so that part’s bad.”
“Yeah.”
“But hey he didn’t see your face right?”
“No…my back was to the window the whole time.”
“Good. Look Hunter is the best hacker we have. If there’s anything to find…you know he can.”
“And in the meantime I play the unsuspecting husband while trying to get the jump on him.”
“Exactly.” Casey smiled. Just then Noah’s phone rang…he let it go twice before picking up.
“Hey baby. I’m great…how’s Connecticut? Really? Yeah Philly’s great. Looking forward to seeing you too. Same here.”
~~
“How is this possible? Noah works for a small security firm.” Luke said perplexed.
“And you work for a small publishing company. It’s called a cover.” Maddie said.
“For what?”
“Million dollar question.”
“And we need the million dollar answer right now.” Luke raked both his hands through his hair.
“Luke calm down we will. But this just happened three hours ago.”
“Yeah? And the boss is going to want to know why I didn’t know that my husband was some kind of, I don’t know mercenary, that just fucked with our mission.” Luke yelled.
“Hey guess what?! This isn’t helping.” Maddie said forcefully.
Luke took a deep breath, “You’re right. But I know what will.”
“A big bottle of scotch?”
Luke looked at her and let out an amused sigh, “No. I need to find out just who the hell my husband is.”
Luke picked up his cell phone and called Noah. After his brief conversation, he hung up, and shared a look with Maddie.
Chapter Six