Opaque is the New Black [Invite]

[Jamison Cavanaugh]

The feel of the bass pressed against his head, the melody lost in the thumping of the drums. Her steps were careful and deliberate as she wound her way toward him. A small, dark smile added a sensual curve to her lips, and as she lost more of her clothes, the lean in his seat deepened. He studied her carefully, offering a twisted smirk to match her smile.

When the distance between them had closed enough, he reached forward and tucked a bill into the strap of her right stiletto, one of the few items to have remained on her person. With a smile - this one much more shy than the first - she bent down to move the bill to the strap of her underwear, momentarily giving him a view of her face and hands before she regained her full height. Having noticed the size of the bill, she then stepped down off the stage and settled herself into his lap.

He let her dance for a while, then asked simply, "How's the education business?"

She stopped, frozen in place for several seconds as his question sank in. Then, just as suddenly, she raised a hand to slap him. He stopped it with a hand around her wrist.

"You have no idea how to walk in those five-inch heels, but you only have faint callouses on your feet. You've been doing this for a very short while. Where you do have pronounced callouses is on the fingers of your left hand, which also happens to have short-cut nails while your right hand is normal. Many string players keep their left hand nails short for better accuracy pressing down the strings. You're a musician, playing a stringed instrument, which is where the callouses are from. Your demeanor says you're used to being around men, so I'd gamble you play the double bass.

"Your demeanor also says you're not used to men gawking at you in a half-naked state, which supports my theory that you're a newbie, and the fact that you can't walk on stage means you're not a gigging musician. That pretty much leaves teaching. You're a middle or high school orchestra teacher, moonlighting as a stripper because your day job doesn't cover your bills. Does that explain it?"

She had not stopped staring at him since he caught her hand. Now she blinked, as though confused by conflicting responses. Finally she settled for leaning back and looking at him. After glancing side to side, she leaned in and whispered to him, her lips stopping only millimeters from his ear.

"Meet me out in the alley in half an hour. I'm Janice."

His dark gaze took on a sparkle as he smirked. "Jamison."

[Jamison Cavanaugh]

Though he was usually not one to follow instructions given to him by a compete stranger, Jamison was in the alley exactly a half hour later. There was a chill in the air, and he pulled his coat a little closer. He had dressed warm today, thankfully. Paying attention to the weather was not one of his usual practices. He was from Georgia, after all; the weather there changed every few minutes. It seemed leaving the South had not been enough to kick all those old habits out of him.

He was not kept waiting long, as Janice appeared only a minute later. She gave him a smile, and had taken the first step toward him when a hand fell on her shoulder. Turning around, she took a step back as she came into contact with the barrel of a gun. Her scream was cut off by her assailant slapping her across her face.

"Drop it."

The voice came from behind Jamison. He started to look, but the figure was already stepping forward, a pistol in his hand. There were three people, not counting Jamison, in the alley now; two armed, and one - Janice - on the ground, sobbing softly.

The newest figure stopped a yard short of Janice. Cloaked in a long black jacket, his face was obscured by shadows. He kept his gun trained on the first shooter. "Drop the gun."

The first man declined. Slowly and carefully, Jamison reached behind his own coat. Neither of the other men was looking at him, with the first trying to decide who to shoot and the second man watching the first as well as Janice very carefully. Finally, the first man put his gun on the ground and raised his hands. The second man lowered his pistol and advanced, revealing a pair of handcuffs. Jamison frowned. Undercover cop?

Something moved in the darkness beyond them. Busy with the task of handcuffing the first guy, the second did not see the new player joining them; this one also had a gun, and began to aim it at the long-coated man.

Janice saw the new entrant but, helpless, could only squeal for attention; the man in the coat looked up, but couldn't reach his gun fast enough. Without anything beyond a last glance at Janice, Jamison pulled out his gun fully and fired. One shot crackled through the alley, and the new assailant fell, while the first man slipped away and darted back into the strip club.

The man in the coat turned to Jamison and gave him a look so muddled with conflicting messages that Jamison misread it as annoyance. He shrugged. "Can't win 'em all," he said, just before jogging back into the club to pursue the first shooter. The sound of footfalls behind him told Jamison that the cloaked man was following him, with Janice at his side. The clumsiness of her heels was unmistakable.

Janice was deposited safely in the company of some of her coworkers, Jamison faintly heard a voice tell the women to "watch her." The man moved swiftly after that, and caught up with Jamison quickly. They pounded up the stairs to what was supposed to be the VIP area, but actually featured a long hallway of rooms, with all doors closed. Jamison raised his gun and backed along the hallway, on the left; the other man took the right. They moved silently, pushing doors open and peering in as they passed, listening for sounds to give away their quarry's position.

He saw the other man stop at a door and nod at him, then toss his head at the door. Jamison moved into position naturally, used to years and years of doing the same. The man pushed open the door and went in first.

The room was pitch black, save for slivers of moon- and streetlight slipping in through the blinded windows. Jamison took one side, and his silent partner took the other. The closet was on Jamison's side; he exchanged a look with the cloaked man and then went toward it. Reaching for the knob, Jamison fought back his nerves and swung the closet door open wide. The shooter tumbled out, his hands raised over his head.

"Looks like our friend here realized he had no gun." With a smile, the cloaked man moved forward to cuff the shooter again. Jamison waited, his eyes scanning the room around them and falling on the silhouette in the main doorway.

"I hate to be the bearer of bad news," Jamison said very, very slowly, "but this isn't the end of our problems."

#nosignature#

[-Process Management-]

At Cavanaugh's words, Reese snapped his head around, leaving the cuffed Jackson to tumble slightly before coming to a stop over the arm of a chair. Somehow he was not surprised to see Janice in the doorway, pointing the gun Reese had confiscated from Jackson at him and the younger man alternately. Her hands were shaking, and Reese noted that she had failed to release the safety, which he had snapped on after picking it up in the alley. He shot a glance to his left; Cavanaugh had a very slight smile on his lips. He had probably noticed the same.

Janice took a few timid steps into the room. "Who are you?" she asked. "Why have you been following me?"

Cavanaugh raised his hands. "Don't look at me. You told me to meet you in that alley."

Both he and Janice turned to look at Reese. Reese sighed. "I knew you were in trouble, so I kept an eye on you."

Janice scowled. "That still doesn't tell me who you are."

"I told you. My name's Jamison. This here is my frie- partn-"

"John." Reese picked up on Cavanaugh's hint. "We're investigators. We've been asked to watch Mr. Jackson, and along the way we learned that he had plans to have you harmed."

Clearly still nervous, Janice turned her gaze and the gun on Jackson. "Why?"

Jackson spat at her. The projectile landed far short of the woman.

Reese took a smooth step forward. "Jackson realized that you come from money, Miss Simons. I suspect he had some ransom plan in mind."

"Exactly," Cavanaugh offered, despite this probably being news to him as well. "Now put down the gun and hand it over."

"The authorities are on their way, Mr. Reese." Finch's voice came over the earpiece. "I suggest you make an exit."

The gun was sliding across the floor to Cavanaugh. The man picked it up, pausing when the sound of sirens reached his ears. "Atta girl," he told Janice. "John-"

The spot where Reese had been was vacant. Cavanaugh rolled his eyes.

#nosignature#

[Jamison Cavanaugh]

A week had passed since the incident at the club, but that night's events had not left Jamison's mind. Something had been strange about the whole thing. It was not as though he often ran into strippers with deadly problems - or money - or mysterious men who stalked them. All the same, his past work had required him to do odd things, so perhaps he should not have been that affected by it.

Or perhaps it was the fact that the scene at the club had been by far the most exciting thing to happen to him since… a long time. He had been out of work for a couple of weeks, and even then, all he'd had were the usual is-my-husband-cheating-on-me sort of gigs. For now, that was fine, but once he was done executing Terri Rivers' last arrangements, he would need something to occupy his time.

Today he had begun by going for a run, then finishing up the workout at a nearby gym. As per his usual routine - he hated routines, but what could he really do? - he then headed to a café and ordered a coffee to drink as he perused the day's paper. He had set the entertainment section aside in favor of Sports and Business.

"Good morning, Mr. Cavanaugh."

The voice was soft; by a stranger, it might even have been considered timid. Jamison, however, remembered witnessing the power behind that person and his voice. Lowering the newspaper, he was not surprised to see the man from the club across from him in the booth.

"John." Jamison folded the paper and placed it atop the already-discarded entertainment section. "How can I help you?"

The other man chuckled. He had an easy manner, yet managed to be enigmatic. "That's no way to treat your partner."

"Hey, I was just covering your back. We aren't partners. So, unless you're here for some reason aside from making light conversation…."

John leaned back in his seat. "Aren't you the least bit curious about what happened the other night? If I have you pegged right - and I do - then you haven't stopped thinking about it."

"Explain it, then." Jamison scowled. "And while you're at it, explain how you know my last name. Or where to find me."

"You of all people, detective, should know better than to fall into a daily routine." John raised his eyebrows. "I think I have your attention now."

Jamison sighed. He was right. At the very least, this man knew too much. He needed to find out what else John knew, and how… and, damn it, he was interested in what had led to the earlier night's events. He had lost this round, and good.

He shrugged in what he hoped was a nonchalant manner."Go for it."

[-Process Management-]

Reese nodded slowly. There was no point in pushing Cavanaugh further. The man was exactly where he needed to be, albeit unwillingly at the moment. If Reese handled this correctly, that would change. "We had been tailing Janice Simons for a couple of days. The reason for that is complicated. I'll come back to it. We cased her apartment, the school where she worked, and the club where she… earned her overtime. We needed to know who was going to harm her, or who she was going to harm, and why, so that we could prevent something... undesirable from happening.

"When you crossed paths with her at the club, you became a suspect. I took a photo of you, and my associate ran it through face recognition software. Interestingly, we came up with a few different hits for your one face. We learned that you are Jamison Cavanaugh, a former football star, now a private investigator based in California. You're also Chase Parker Constantine, a photographer; and Dmitri Vladecovich, the scion of a small, powerful, and nonexistent Russian crime family. There are others. Most recently, you were James Carliotta, a social psychologist living in southern California with his wife, Sherry, who died in mysterious circumstances four months ago."

Usually, spouting off this nature of information gave Reese a bit of a rush of pride; knowing so many details about a person's life was a dangerous thing. This time, though, he felt no such pride. Jamison had completely blanched; his normally tanned face had turned perfectly white. The man had helped him out of the situation with Janice, after all, and if this meeting went as Reese and Finch expected it to, they would need Jamison to be on good terms with them.

Regaining his composure, Jamison said, "I doubt you got all that from face recognition software."

Reese's tone softened a bit. "The sheer number of aliases you had flagged you as trouble. I overheard Miss Simons invite you to meet later, and I made sure I was there. Of course, it turned out to be the club owner and not you. You know the story from there."

"What I don't know is why you were following Janice."

A while passed before Reese responded. This was the difficult part. "My associate and I have… a way of knowing when people will be involved in violent crimes before they happen. We use the information to stop the crimes. The reason this concerns you is that we are looking for… assistance.

"Recently we've been getting more… information than we can handle. We need a team of specialists in the field who can help us catch the perpetrators. We'd like you to lead that team."

[Jamison Cavanaugh]

The clatter of dishes and the hatter of conversation reached Jamison's ears as his own table fell silent. The man in front of him was waiting for a response, Jamison knew, but the nature of his proposal was barely rendering in Jamison's mind. This sounded like a job offer… and a fairly shady one, in terms of their methods - face recognition? They, whoever "they" were, must have been quite effective, though, to have dug up that much of Jamison's past. John had mentioned things he'd considered long buried.

There was Terri, for one. No one had known of their marriage. It had been only a cover they had used on some cases, nothing more. Still, her death technically made him - in one of his iterations, at least - a widower. The only positive in John's knowing that was that it made a better explanation for why he had been granted most of her assets than "we were work partners" did.

He took a swig of coffee. Leading a team… God, how long had it been since he'd done that? And what exactly would he be doing? Following people, getting information on their habits, their friends, their enemies, every aspect of their lives that mattered or didn't? Solving crimes before they happened, like some unsung superhero? Putting his life on the line for people who didn't realize he existed?

Sounded like another day on the job to him.

"If I were to accept - if" - he emphasized the word pointedly - "who would I be answering to? What kind of stuff would I be involved in?"

The look on John's face remained completely passive. "You'll report directly to me and my partner. You'll be the only one. Everyone else on the team will report to you. As for what you'll be doing, you'll be investigating. You may have to jump in front of a few bullets. After Janice, we took a close look into your past, Mr. Cavanaugh. You seem fairly willing to jump into the line of fire."

Jamison shrugged. "A fair enough point."

He took another sip of coffee.

"I'm going to need to know a little more about what I'm getting into. Where you're getting your information from, for starters. What other methods you use, and who your partner is. I'm not going into this blind."

"But you are going into this."

Jamison cringed at his obvious choice of words, and John smiled. "There's nothing to cringe over, Mr. Cavanaugh. You'll enjoy your new work."

"Do you? Enjoy your work?"

The other man paused for a moment, then said, "Yes."

His tone gave away the depth behind that word.

"If you'll come with me, Mr. Cavanaugh, you'll meet my partner, who wants to meet you as well. He's heard plenty about you. You'll learn most of our methods, and you'll learn in part where we get our targets from. But there are some things you won't know, for your safety and ours."

Jamison nodded slowly.

Dusting off his coat for no particular reason, John got to his feet and gestured to Jamison. "Bring your coffee."