Hunt

[intheheart]

Title: Hunt
Rating: PG-13
Summary: There may be a problem.
Warnings: implications of murder, plus brief explicit discussion of murder
Notes: I don't know if this AU is going to be A Thing, but I wouldn't be surprised.


Gina was waiting for her, sitting serene in the café sunlight, a teacup poised delicately between the saucer and her lip. Her hat tilted at a perfect angle across her brow, her cool cream dress fluttering around her crossed legs. She appeared absorbed in her book, the picture of a socialite out for an afternoon snack.

Miranda, in her flowered purple dress, was her polar opposite. Where Gina had bright golden hair, hers was dark brown, nearly black. Their skin was the same honey-gold color, but Miranda's was genetic, where Gina tanned. Gina dressed light and neutral, Miranda in dark and saturated colors.

Honestly, and she'd never say this out loud, Gina looked like someone's mistress, or trophy wife.

She... well, she hoped she looked like the powerful woman that she was, but likely anyone looking at her would assume she was a teacher.

Anyone looking at them would assume they had nothing in common.

Their hypothetical observer would be very wrong.

Miranda strolled into the café and sat down across from Gina, draping her arm across the back of the chair and crossing her legs, the better to appear casual. Gina looked up, her hand tightening minutely on the spine of her book, before she recognized Miranda, relaxed, and smiled.

"You're late," she observed mildly. She set her teacup down with a soft clink of china.

"I ran into some difficulties." Miranda observed the perfect polished nails on her left hand, then let it drop into her lap. "They've been taken care of. How are you?"

Gina gave her a swift up-and-down look, checking for injuries perhaps, or blood stains. There were none to see—Miranda had made very certain of that—and her friend's eyelashes dropped a bit, a sign of satisfaction. "Quite well. Don't worry, I'm used to waiting."

"Ah, yes." Gina's girlfriend, well beloved and often spoken of, red-headed, reckless, and chronically late. No one in the business had ever met this girlfriend, of course, and Miranda doubted if any of them even knew her name, but that was just basic safety procedure. "Well. I'm glad you weren't too bored."

"I've been entertaining myself." She closed the book, but kept a finger between the pages, a woman patiently waiting for her unexpected visitor to leave. Miranda couldn't help a smile. "So, what did you want to talk about?"

And now they came to it. Miranda chose her words carefully. "There's been an incident."

"The same incident that delayed you?" Gina asked, her eyes sharpening.

"No," Miranda said, "or not really. It may be connected, it may not."

Gina hummed, opened her book again and stuck a napkin in to serve as a bookmark, then shut it and put it away in her purse. "Connected to what?"

"That's the difficulty," or one of them, but perhaps the only one she could talk about in anything resembling public. "We're not sure. Do you remember Kenneth Rawlings?"

Gina frowned, her brow furrowing in perfect little lines. "Not off the top of my head. A contractor?"

"Something of that sort." Miranda tapped one finger restlessly on the glass tabletop. "We just aren't sure that he was working for us."

"Ah." Gina sat up and back, her frown deepening. "So you think..."

Charlotte strangled in her bedroom. Jack bleeding on his kitchen floor. Her mother poisoned, her father stabbed. "Oh, yes," Miranda said. "I think."

Gina's hand tightened on her purse, and her eyes went hard. "Has anything happened?"

"Not yet," Miranda said. She reached into her own purse, extracted her compact, and opened it, examining her lipstick. "Better not to wait for it."

"No, of course not." Gina relaxed, a little, just enough to set her chin in her hand. The hard look left her eyes, replaced by thoughtfulness. "Kenneth Rawlings."

Her lipstick was smudged at the corners, and she was tired of the color anyway. Miranda dabbed at her mouth with a tissue, reddish-brown smearing like dried blood, and watched Gina's face.

"Let's go find him, then," Gina said, at last, decisive. "If he's innocent, I'm sure he'll tell us then. If he's not..."

"If he's not," Miranda echoed, and smiled. Her face reflected in the compact showed no humor at all. "Yes."

Gina mirrored her expression. "You're underdressed," she said. "For a hunt."

"I am, aren't I?" The dress, the shoes, no, it would not do at all. "I've got some things back at the hotel. You?"

Gina shrugged one shoulder, which could mean anything but probably indicated confirmation.

"Then let's go hunting," Miranda said, and snapped the contact shut.