It's time to tease you again. Cause we're sadistic that way, and you just keep coming back, don't you?
“I don’t care if it
looks like the service road to Mordor. Free food is free food.” Rachel bravely
went straight for the red door and stepped through.
When she didn’t come
out screaming right away, the rest of the group joined her.
So
this is how Luke felt in the cantina. Edgar thought it so
loudly he may as well have said it aloud. He studied a long row of booths
occupied by scattered men and women, each looking rougher than the next. At the
far end of the dining area was one oversized booth where Rachel was standing
and trying to talk to someone they couldn’t see.
Rachel waved them over
and took a seat next to a middle aged man wearing a respectable suit and
carefully looking over a menu which simply said Menu on its cover. “I figured he had to be Lassard,” Rachel said, a
little too loudly. “No one else was wearing a tie. Or sleeves for that matter.”
She felt the disapproving stares from the rest of the team now seated. “I also
asked to see identification. Ladies and jerks, please meet Assistant Director
Lassard.”
“AD Lassard, I’d like
to welcome you on our behalf. My name is…” Edgar was suddenly cut off.
A gruff, booming voice
that strangely didn’t rise above a low conversational tone stated, “I know who
you are. I know who all of you are. I read your files. Take a menu and pick
anything you want as long as it’s under ten dollars. After you order you will
be briefed.”
“Briefed? I thought
this was a meet and greet,” Alex said.
“What this is,” Lassard
said, the last word in air quotes, “is an evaluation. You are my assets now and
I need to see how you work.”
He was interrupted by
the waitress, whose name tag read Waitress,
to take everyone’s order. Lassard ordered a steak with baked potato and
broccoli. After the waitress left, he continued before anyone else had a chance
to start talking.
“I’m going to save all
us some time.” He took a sip of his coffee, cleared his throat and adjusted his
tone. “Whatever you think you’ve learned you’d better be ready to forget
immediately. I am trying to give you the benefit of the doubt because you’ve
already saved some lives and the Bureau is grateful for that. In the long run,
however, that doesn’t mean a whole lot. You are agents. If you can’t be counted
on to perform continually at a high level of efficiency then you are useless to
me.”
Wait. Who's Lassard?
