"Sure thing, sir. Here you go." He stood up and re-positioned the folding chair in front of the fourth floor window they had been using to watch the street below.

Major Peter Taylor sat down and leaned forward to look out towards the east end of Cecil Court, and then the west end. He was relieved to see the Court was quite crowded, which was normal for a Saturday. The crowds would provide good cover for his man, Henry, and the women he was escorting to the safe-house directly across the street.

”So what do you know about the new minder, sir?” John asked as he checked his watch. 

“Joanne? Oh, well, she’s Christina’s granddaughter, and I heard she knows her way around Leather Bound. Other than that, she’s got a couple of advanced degrees, so she must be above average in the smarts department. She just finished the run-through up north, so she has at least some training. Ah... there’s Henry now.”

John leaned in to see their man walking along the sidewalk with four women in tow. They were halfway down the Court and only three doors away from Leather Bound.

“Of fuck!” Peter gasped as his gaze went to the end of the street that Henry and the women had just come from. A troop carrier had pulled up, blocking the entrance to the Court, and what must’ve been thirty Moral-Regeneration Unit troopers jumping out of the back end.

”It’s worse,” John said.

Peter turned to look in the other direction to see the other end of Cecil Court blocked by another truck and more MRU troopers.

”I gotta go...” Peter said as he pushed the chair back and ran for the door.

From the vantage point of the window, John watched the perfectly executed drop as Henry positioned the women next to him along the store fronts and nudged them through the slightly open door of Leather Bound Books. They disappeared into the shop and he continued walking along as though he’d been alone the entire time.

Moments later, Peter appeared on the sidewalk below and wove his way through the traffic and crowd to the other side. Without looking around he slipped into the shop and closed the door behind him. His movements were so fluid he would've been undetectable from either end of the street.

Inside the store, Peter was glad to see that Christina had already moved the women into the back of the store. Knowing the MRU could be at the door in minutes he hustled Christina and her granddaughter out to the front. The four women in the room looked deservedly worried as he turned back to them.

"Don't worry," he said as he went to one of the bookcases. "We've done this before." He took a firm grip of the old wood and pulled. One small section of the case swung away from the wall to reveal a staircase leading downward. Peter made a sweeping motion with his arm, inviting the women to pass through. He followed them in and pulled the secret door close behind him just as he heard male voices coming from the front of the store.

They had recently replaced the original stairs to ensure the wood didn't creak as they were used, and with the sounds of MRU thugs now only a few feet away, he was glad of it. The ancient basement had been modernized the previous year, too, as it became apparent the Network would be sheltering women here on a regular basis.

"You're safe here," he said as he made his way to a desk in the corner of the warmly furnished room. "Please make yourselves at home, but no talking for awhile." He sat down behind the desk and powered up the laptop.

Hidden throughout the store were several well disguised cameras that fed live views to the laptop. Peter put an earbud into his ear and clicked on the icon for the front desk in time to see the new recruit come around the side of the counter to block the entrance of the hallway. He smiled as he saw a classic training centre stalling technique flawlessly performed. Just like the men she was stalling, Peter's eyes naturally wandered to her breasts. 

The MRU officer finally regained control of himself and the situation, and organized the searchers. It hadn't been much of a delay, but six or seven seconds can sometimes be the difference between life or death.

The chance of discovery was so slim that his view remained on Joanne and the two MRU grunts. When the one man began groping the Hallewell woman Peter watched her closely to see how she handled it. What he saw was very impressive.

Changing minders of the safe house had been making him pretty nervous, but he felt a lot better about it now. The MRU thug had gotten a good feel, yet she had remained calm. He clicked on the icon for Camera 4 and the view on the monitor switched to one from next to the front door looking towards the sales counter. There he could see the Hallewell woman...Joanne...a little better.

Earlier, he had given John a rather vague response to his question about the newest member of their team. 'Need to know' was so ingrained in him that his vagueness came naturally. He had, of course, read through Joanne Hallewell's dossier quite carefully - several times, and had spoken with Catherine about her, too. In discussions with the team at the Edinburgh training centre, he had been told that she had performed exceptionally well. His ex-wife, Abby, had apparently taken a special interest in the woman, and had given instructions to the trainers to work her especially hard. Just because Joanne's grandmother minded the Cecil Court asset didn't mean that Joanne was automatically entitled to take it over. She had to earn it, and Abby seemed intent on making sure she got it.

The longer the MRU goon groped Joanne the more at ease Peter became. He needed someone at the safe house who was calm under pressure, just as Catherine had been these past couple of years. For her first real action as a KSN agent, Joanne was handling the pressure very well. From the dossier he knew she was thirty-two years old. He looked carefully at her face on the monitor and could see a look of maturity under the curls of her auburn hair. Her hair, which was more brown than it was red, framed her face beautifully with kinky little strands of curls falling down over her shoulders. The leather outfit she wore seemed a perfect fit for her surroundings, as if she was blending in with the richness of the store's inventory. The narrow leather collar around her neck was mostly hidden by the high stiff collar of the brown leather jacket she wore over a form-fitting tan blouse. The blouse was tucked into the top of a pair of equally form-fitting brown leather pants. The fit of the pants complimented her shapely ass and long slender legs.

A noise off camera made the groper straighten up, and then Peter saw several men enter the view. The men who had searched the rear of the store could be seen coming out of the hallway, and then the entire squad moved past the view of the camera as they left the shoppe. He watched as Christina stepped over to the door and most likely locked it before leading her granddaughter away from the camera and down the hallway. Assuming they would soon be coming down the stairs, he switched off the computer and rose to meet them.