Special Agent | ✓

Thirty (I)

(a/n: this is an early, two-part update. make sure to read in order!)

THIRTY (I)

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Chief Tibble had prepared a lowball glass of whiskey, setting it by her side on the long, flat desk in her office. She'd been given permission to exit the HQ's conference room and read through the file in her own office. It was, probably, the biggest exception Director Kimmel had ever made for the rules — and Adina knew it was only because Kimmel was all too aware of her own connection to Analyst Quinn O'Reilly.

Tibble sighed, feeling light tremors go through her fingers as she surveyed the file. It was a flat piece of cardboard, though its contents would sway the decision on Quinn's life. Tibble knew she needed to read it, but chose to grab for the crystal glass and take a sip of her whiskey at first. Involuntarily, her mind flashed back to the night Quinn had first ended up in this mess, where they'd shared the same bottle.

You have to read that file.

Because Chief Tibble was not someone to shy from what needed to be done — it was one of the key ingredients in her success at The Agency thus far — she swiftly opened the top of the file. They'd been given an hour to sift through the contents of the file, to assess what 'needed to be assessed', as one of the other Chiefs had put it.

To prepare herself, Adina had made copies of Quinn's other, official personnel files. It was a thick stash of papers she'd read on many occasions, most of them during Quinn's employment process. Employing Quinn O'Reilly was one of few decisions Adina had never come to second guess.

And putting a kill order on her will be the biggest mistake The Agency will ever make, should it come to that.

Adina sipped at the whiskey again, fingers toying with the edge of the file, before opening it. What came first was a few pages of personal info — much of the same stuff covered in The Agency's file. It listed Quinn's DOB, known residence, preferred pronouns — much of what The Agency vetted in their employment process, too, such as criminal history and any minor infractions on her record. Quinn had a few of them stacked, such as petty thievery and one count of battery assault she'd managed to tack up while in Paris.

Adina knew the latter was the result of a drunken brawl, told to her by a soft-spoken Quinn at her first employment interview. She didn't like to speak of her time in Paris — generally, Adina knew Quinn wished to avoid speaking about the majority of her life pre-Agency. Adina understood it, even respected it, and it had cemented their bond when they'd first started working together.

Tibble knew Quinn, both professionally and from a personal standpoint. It was the reason she felt herself reeling back, shock spreading through her system as she flipped to the next pages of the file's contents. It was a number of mission files, listed with Quinn as their primary. Most of them had been completed by Special Agent Kent, while Quinn had been the intelligence analyst, hence her being the primary listed. However, that wasn't what caught Tibble's eye — it was the following list of transactions, all made from Quinn's Knightsbridge HQ computer.

When The Agency completed a mission, they'd usually need to send a clean-up crew, or launch a number of smaller missions to ensure that their primary mission had the correct effect. It was never easy to battle crime internationally, and when you did so under the radar of the public it was even harder. Most of these minor missions were handled by other field agents and their primaries rather than the Agency's best and brightest, while some could be handled from the HQ itself.

Most of it came to to money, attempting to settle debts or restore economic growth in areas where the activity The Agency had wiped out had disturbed such things. Some of it came down to moving precious valuables — stolen art, jewelry, clothing — millions of pounds of valuables The Agency was in charge of shipping away to their rightful owners, or a museum. These activities were background noise to the more renowned Special Agents, but to the majority of intelligence analysts they were the everyday work. Routes needed analyzing, transport needed prepping and planning, values needed to be estimated.