Action Man James Monroe

Chapter 2:

It was a regular day, well at least as regular as it could get with personal assistant James Monroe. Everything had run smoothly; the meetings, coffee runs, dry cleaning. His boss, billionaire Alan Wyatt, had even trusted him to park his beloved Porsche. The plan was falling perfectly into place. In fact, it was falling so perfectly that James had even been invited as guest of honor, alongside Alan and his date for that night, at the annual Masquerade Art Auction that night. Yep. Life was good-- well, more than good really. By the end of the week, an untraceable virus he'd created would ravish the system, emptying the company's banking accounts into a secret one he'd wired in Switzerland under the alias of Stewart Sanchez. Now all that the con-man had to worry about was what position he wanted his penthouse to face. Did he want of view of downtown with the silhouettes of the NYC skyline plastered across a watercolor sky, or was he more of a Central Park kind of guy? Either way, he could now afford to have two if he found he fancied both. Not such a bad life for a guy of only 25.

While whistling a short and peppy tune, Monroe made his way into his studio apartment which consisted of a small kitchen, a few ancient bookcases filled to the brim, an unmade bed, a single bathroom with a porcelain tub, and a balcony that overlooked Greenwich village. (Though he'd much rather live more extravagantly, the secret to not getting caught mid-con was to lie low.) The masterpiece of the entire loft however was his collage wall, an attempt to re-create the face of a beautiful woman that haunted his dreams so vividly that mid-dream he easily could describe every painstakingly, little detail of her. Her facial expressions, the way her hair fell about her shoulders and framed her pale face, the airiness of her laughter. She was so familiar to him, and yet whenever he woke the memory of her faded into nothing just like everything else of his life before the cons. Nothing except for her eyes. Beautiful silver orbs outlined in dark grey rings and flashing with lightning as if they contained a storm of their own. That was what these cons were really about after all. Finding her; the girl with lightning in her eyes. So far, there had been nothing except that she was here in New York. For whatever reason he knew that she was here, despite the fact that every little bit of information he gathered worked against his beliefs.

For a moment he stood in front of the crudely pieced together face, entranced by the variety of eyes that had been pinned up along the wall. Although they were stunning in every form, none of them held the storm he was searching for. Feeling himself grow frustrated, James forced himself away from the collage. James had the rest of his life to track down this mystery women, but only a few hours to ready himself for the evening to come. Tonight, he'd sell the assistant act and set his 'loyalty' in stone with Alan Wyatt, and tonight the con began.