Cleaning House - ch 1

Ch 1 - Mail Call

They had apparently closed the air vents to her office while she was out and the room was one step below stifling when she opened the door; frowning heavily and already hot from walking over from the parking garage across the street in the Nevada sun Shiloh used a foot to nudge the door open further and maneuvered her way into the room, banging her heel into the door to shut it behind her.

She had a metal lockbox in her arms, two foot by one foot by one foot - not very large but the metal made it heavy - and she let it drop to her desk with a rattling thump before she moved to the far corner to open up the vent to let the cooler air blow in.

Only moments later, before she'd even had a chance to sit down, the office door opened and Yuri's head poked inside.

"I just got in, what do you want now?"

His expression was as serious as ever and Shiloh still had no idea how to really read the man but she had the feeling she'd come across as a bit more grumpy than she'd intended as evidenced by the tiniest hint of his brow furrowing.

"Yes, am aware. Mr. Alexei wishes dinner tonight with you."

"Oh, uh...thanks. Sorry, didn't mean to sound - yeah, let him know I'll be up once I look through the mail."

He nodded and left and Shiloh sighed heavily and dropped into her desk chair, rubbing her face with her hands. It had been a long drive; normally she didn't mind eating dinner with Alexei (that man had an amazing number of stories to tell) but as hot and tired as she was she found the idea more annoying than anything at the moment...she'd been hoping to do her sorting then just head to bed.

After a few moments (during which Shiloh slid her chair over to sit nearer the AC vent until she'd cooled down) she dug a key out of her pocket and opened the metal box, reaching in to pull out a small pile of envelopes and a single small package wrapped in brown paper with Mundy's carefully printed handwriting visible on its top.

That made her smile a bit and wonder what he was sending home to his folks as she sat the box aside to start her "international" pile; the box ended up being the only thing needing to be sent out of the country with the other bits of mail all going to various parts of the United States - Scout was sending a letter home to his mother, Spy was also sending a letter to Scout's mother (Shiloh had decided weeks ago not to ask about that the first time she'd seen it), there were several thick envelopes from Medic addressed to various scientific research and supply facilities, and Dell-

Shiloh paused, halfway to dropping the envelope with Dell's neat script on it onto the pile, and held it closer when her tired brain noticed that it actually didn't have an address on it; it wasn't the first letter of Dell's that she'd handled so she recognized the handwriting but whereas those other letters had been addressed to his parents down in Bee Cave, Texas, this one was...

...addressed to her, specifically. Her name was on the envelope and was the only writing on the envelope entirely. Huh.

She turned it over in her hands and then slid a finger under the flap to carefully tear the envelope open and pull the single sheet of paper out.

Shiloh,

Just a quick note to let you know that I've got my hand as fully functional as I can hope to get it - Medic and I can't figure a way to let me feel texture with it without digging around in my arm and my brain so I'll just have to make do with what I've got and be glad the dang thing works well enough as a replacement.

I've got Victor up and running, still working on building the outer plating for his body but he's mobile and also was surprised you thanked him for what he did. He might be programmed to be as human as possible but I guess it never ocurred to him that he'd be thanked for doing what he was designed to do. Gunther's been speaking to him and we've found that while Victor may have been created out of whatever Zane took out of Gunther's head he's mostly his own robot - there's some lingering shared memories but none of it are exact copies so that's calmed Gunther down somewhat about Victor's continued existence.

As the team doesn't need three dang medics (yeah, Gunther's still stationed with us) I've been thinking on other ways to use Victor that'll mesh with his programed need to prevent harm...got a few ideas, maybe I'll get a chance to show you on one of your mail runs.

Take care,

Dell.

She read it through a couple of times, smiling and shaking her head; it was good to hear things were going well and it at least served to brighten her mood a bit. After one last read through Shiloh folded the letter back up and slipped it back into the envelope before tucking it into a pocket; tomorrow morning she'd get up early and take another long drive to this month's designated post office and send off all the collected mail and pick up any that may have come in...

'All right...dinner, then bed,' she found herself thinking as she got up to head upstairs; she still wanted to just head straight to bed, but it was hard to say no to spending time with Alexei...that was sort of why she was even back at the club, after all.

Thinking that brought on a feeling of...almost a restlessness, followed by guilt - she was home with family, safe and with no need to be constantly worried about survival, what in the world was there to feel guilty for?

Maybe she was a bit more tired than she thought.

-------------------------------------------------------

Alexei wasn't sitting in his usual armchair, over by the window, when she finally pushed the door open to his sitting room; that was a bit surprising as he almost seemed to live in that chair between the hours of six and eleven - he was growing old, something he'd readily admit, and napping in his chair was one of very few "hobbies" he indulged in.

The room smelled faintly of pipe tobacco - Alexei did not smoke but he enjoyed the scent - and the decorations had been changed over to dark brown woods, thick rugs, and paintings of thick, dreary forests covered partially in snow that took up the wall space in between shelves full of books. She could still "see" how the Madam had once had the room arranged and if Shiloh thought too hard on it she could almost expect the foul-tempered old hag to come hobbling out of the bedroom; that mental image was one thing she had yet to really scrub from her mind, even with the change in decor.

She paused just inside the doorway and listened; there was a sound of rustling paper coming from the bedroom, maybe she'd just arrived while he was on his way back from the bathroom or something - the door leading to the bedroom was slightly ajar so that was likely.

"I'm here," she called toward the door, the Russian words awkwardly rolling off her tongue. Alexei had been trying to teach her but she had only learned words and phrases here and there, finding it next to impossible to really learn the language when the only time he had to teach were those evenings when they had a few hours to chat and catch up...five days out of the month she wasn't even at the club, and she still had a security job here besides.

Several minutes later he emerged, a couple of newspapers that were just starting to go yellow pinned between his elbow and his side. He was stripped to the A-shirt he wore beneath his dress shirts and had left his hair down, leaving him with a frizzy gray mess framing his head; the man looked grumpier than normal and Shiloh felt that little spark of a good mood brought on by Dell's letter fade immediately at Alexei's disgruntled look.

"...what now?"

"See for self," the man rumbled, holding out the newspapers to her as he passed by on his way to the armchair.

She took them and unfolded the top one to see a headline in giant black print "VIGILANTE TAKES OUT SUSPECTED CRIME LORD AND FAMILY" and blew out a heavy sigh. "Let me guess - you somehow knew them."

"In sense that they owed us favors, yes. Not allies, but known of. Read, and see the other."

Shiloh scanned the first article - it detailed an armed hit against the Bertucin family, suspected Mafia members high up on the food chain in the New York area. According to what she picked out as she scanned she gathered that the family had been killed to a man; even the hired help - maids, drivers, gardeners - had been killed. It was a neat and tidy job, minimal collateral damage, and it seemed whoever had done the killing had seized whatever assets from the property that they could; a quick kill and cash grab, having taken place almost a month prior.

She stuck the paper under an arm and looked at the second one, finding a similar story about a separate family in the Washington, D.C. area, again killed to a man with a robbery following it.

"Please tell me this isn't a hint of what's coming for us," Shiloh sighed into the silence.

Alexei did not move from where he sat in his armchair, his massive head braced in an equally large hand. "Time will tell." There was another long pause before only his eyes moved, his gaze flicking over to her. "There is reason I kept you in dark while you were here."

Shiloh sighed again and moved over to take up her usual seat on the ottoman in front of Alexei's chair, letting the papers drop to the floor at her feet. "I always suspected, you know - there isn't anyone in Vegas that's totally clean."

"Yes, but you do not know extent of it. There are many things I tried guiding the Madam from...she did not always listen. Preferred show of power and fear. We fled because of crime, and she learned nothing."

Shiloh nodded carefully; Alexei had sometimes hinted here and there about why he and the Madam had fled Russia though he'd never said exactly why and he'd go silent if asked about it - she didn't want him to go silent now, not with...

She glanced down at the papers...if earlier she was feeling restless and guilty, now she was feeling a bit exposed.

"You've done a lot to try and undo what she's done," she said finally. "If anything that's made you more friends now than the Madam ever managed to bully before."

Alexei shrugged, his expression unreadable. "Time will tell." After another long pause he finally turned his head to look at her. "You are continuing with Yuri?"

"Yes father dearest," Shiloh replied, allowing some sarcasm to leak into her tone even as she smiled at him. "Yuri is still throwing me around the room like a rag doll, and when he's not showing me how to gut a man he's got me practicing with small arms. I'm black and blue more often than not with him around."

That managed to bring out a smile on his face. "Good. Bruises builds character."

"If I haven't built character by this point in life I don't think anything will."

The chuckle at that was deep in the chest and had her grinning at him. Finally he leveraged himself out of the chair and moved back toward the bedroom. "...be vigilant."

"That's sort of my job...actually, literally my job."

He disappeared through the doorway then came back a few minutes later with his hair pulled back up into a ponytail at the base of his skull and his dress shirt back on, his huge fingers managing to expertly button up the shirt and neatly tuck it into his pants.

"Dinner is lamb."

Shiloh made a face. "I think I'll have a salad."

"Eat meat, is better for you."

"I've subsisted on meat for most of my life, let me have my greens...especially if the main course is lamb," she added in a grumble.

He snorted and gestured and she moved to follow him out of the room, glancing back at the discarded newspapers on the floor near the ottoman.

'No rest for the wicked,' she thought, wrinkling her nose. If it wasn't one thing it was another...