Thursday, 9:45 PM | LaGuardia Airport Marriott

[veronicamarshmallow]

It had not been what Veronica would ever have considered a good day.

Not only had she missed her connecting flight to Ithaca, the airline had "misdirected" her single piece of luggage to Virginia. When she'd been waiting on a shuttle to her hotel, she'd been splashed from head to toe with slush by a passing cab. And now that she was dining the a dimly lit hotel bar, the last thing she wanted to deal with was a friendly travelling salesman named Barney - recently divorced, wouldn't you know? - chatting her up from his place at the bar.

About two-thirds of the way through her meal (hurried because of the unwelcome company), another gentleman entered and sat at the bar. As soon as it was apparent Barney was going to invite himself to her table, Veronica took her only opportunity to escape without outright telling the man to piss off. She gathered up her purse with a hurried "excuse me" hurled at Barney.

Veronica crossed the bar to where the man had just ordered. "Where have you been, bonehead? I was starting to worry!" She threw her arms around the stranger and embraced him warmly (hoping against hope he wasn't a worse kind of creep). Veronica whispered roughly into his ear, "Pretend to be my brother, okay? Please."

Comments

[oversight]

Blake found that the training had been paying off, as he expected to be a bit more winded than he actually was. If nothing else, it was a bolstering surprise, though it did little to help with the nagging feeling that they just hadn't escaped far enough, and now there was another person involved. Veronica had somehow managed to involve herself on some level, sure, but that didn't mean she needed to be directly in the line of sight with these people.

Feeling he had little other recourse, he stepped toward the center of the room, somehow still at the ready even behind closed, locked doors and tried to explain. "Been investigatin' 'em for two weeks. Andrea da Panicale — that's the girl in the red dress, also known as Erica Fortham — and Gianlorenzo da Panicale, or Jerry Jonas. Been posin' as brother and sister, but they're a coupla con artists that got upgraded by the mob. They've been managin' a group of drug runners pushin' heroin through the kitchen of this hotel," he told her, and no matter how hard he tried, he felt like his roots in the police force were seeping though.

After taking a moment to just breath and be, he took it upon himself to sit on the edge of the bed, a hand running through his hair. "Things are gonna start goin' really bad for 'em real soon and I need 'em to find my way back to the source, so blowin' it now's not gonna do me a whole lotta good. Must know I'm on to 'em by now. Gotta switch gears." Even before it left his mouth, Blake was reformulating his plan, trying to decide the best way to get through these two and to the top without exposing himself in the process. He's supposed to be working transparently, after all, and thus far he'd been anything but.

[veronicamarshmallow]

Switch gears, huh? Another aspect of detective work Veronica was well versed in (thanks to many, many plans gone awry).

"Well, they know what we look like now, so anything hands-on is pretty much out," she noted. Mentally, she ran a few scenarios of possible tactics for tailing the da Panicales. Tailing them was only going to be an option if Veronica and Blake could get the suspects in their sights again.

Unless...

"We could go undercover." She eyed Blake's jacket. Between that and her scarf, she could effectively disappear. It didn't leave a lot to work with for him, though. Of course, she did have a little make-up in her carry-on. If nothing else, she could give him a convincing shiner to disguise him slightly.

((ooc: Please ignore the previous tag's slip-up re: Veronica luggage. It's still missing, and I am a moron.))

[oversight]

"Undercover?" John repeated her, not because he didn't understand, but more because he was considering the possibility. Truthfully, he'd already been undercover in some aspects, but going even deeper undercover might be a good idea since some people had already managed to see their faces. Not to mention, that sort of thing was a part of his job description these days, therefore he gathered he ought to get used to it.

He nodded a little late. Having picked up on her visual cues, he stripped off his jacket and handed it to her and then went about dragging his fingers through his hair, softening out the generally chiseled look by pulling everything down toward his forehead. The next step had him getting rid of his sweater so he could roll up his sleeves. It wasn't the most convincing change, but if he kept his head down and didn't do anything to attract attention to them, it might actually work.

Without preamble, he tossed his sweater to Veronica, guessing she'd find some creative use for it that would be better than trashing it all together. "Hate to say it, but somethin' 'bout this says you picked the wrong brother," he added a little later, voice rueful. It was a shame she was involved now, but she didn't seem to mind all that much considering her call to action.


[[OOC: No worries, my love! <333 ]]