Access Denied: The Bullseye

8. Thriller Odds

When there's a new modification to a working business model, there's an abstractness to it. It's already out there and can't be taken back, so people have to accept it for what it is-a modification. An attempt to upgrade.

To maintain reputation and good publicity no one really mentions the drawbacks and downsides to this new modification, but everyone knows there is a problem with it. It's new. Even if this change makes them better as a whole, there's no guarantee for it. It is a gamble. Worth-or risking-millions.

That abstractness had somehow seeped into the head base of Blind Spot Agency in Old City, Philadelphia.

Everyone knew here that Genevieve Wilfred was a new addition. An attempt to upgrade an above average Blind Spot team of agents by adding someone with inside knowledge. It also made a hell of a success story. Rogue kleptomaniac thief, turned good guy with BSA help and acceptance.

No one really mentioned it, but Genevieve knew that she set off the balance in this place. Thieves weren't the sisters of Mentally Advanced Individuals, who were apparently also revolutionary inventors. Thieves weren't given top level protection unless it was for house arrest or suicide watch before a high profile trial. Thieves weren't the thought in the back doctor's mind just because they were once family. Genevieve was on the wrong side. She was the bad guy.

And everyone here knew it.

But for top secret agents of extraordinary skill sets, these people weren't very good liars. Their hostility and alertness around her was sensed and known. For a few days, it bothered her. It was like a knife inside her skin poking her whenever she forgot that she wasn't free from judgement among Blind Spot agents just because she had helped them with a case. Even if it was involving Vincent Redstone and his alleged brother Emerson Rothstein.

After a while, though, Genevieve learned to ignore that knife as it constantly poked her and instead think of it as a meaningless tickle. That's when she began to have fun with strong-silent type agents hovering around the halls of Blind Spot HQ. In England, anyone in the Queen's royal guard isn't supposed to express any emotion when on duty. They can't even smile. You could yell at them and make fun of them and take pictures with them. But they weren't supposed to react.

Genevieve wondered if the royal guard recruited people from Blind Spot.

She had fun with it for a while. Laughing when an agent walked past her, recalling something she stole when one of the agents came to meet her female roommate in the hospital room. No one could do or say anything because they were on duty. They couldn't tell her off or roll their eyes in front of her. A thief was sitting in front of them and they couldn't do anything. They were helpless.

Blind Spot agents had the highest clearance available to any intelligence agency (private or public) and there was nothing they could do about a now twenty-four year old petty thief. That made it even funnier.

"How are you?" Genevieve asked her when she finally let go. Guiding her inside what Genevieve thought was obviously a research lab, Nicole led her to her cluttered desk and dragged a chair from the opposite table.

Among the cluttered items on her desk, there were several wires, one of those scissors that were used to bend wires and metal that she had seen even Jackson use a single notebook that was left open having millions of notes in small, squiggly, non-understandable handwriting. By the looks of her open drawer, nothing was organized and ordered in there either.

"Fine, fine," Nicole said as she waved her hand off, her other hand reaching across the table trying to clear some things off it. Nicole smiled a bright smile that showed all her teeth. "I'm fine. But what about you? I'm not the one that got shot in the stomach."