Gotham City, New Jersey - Saturday Afternoon
Charlie shot a disapproving look at the pack of cigarettes on the table. "You really should quit, you know."
Renee lit the cigarette anyway. "Lemme guess, you used to smoke."
"There's hydrogen cyanide in cigarette smoke, Renee," he continued as if she hadn't spoken. "That's the stuff the Nazis used to murder the Jews, except they called it Zyklon-B."
He shook his head, "And that's just one of the chemicals in them. There's benzene which is a solvent; it's known to cause cancer and leukemia. There's lead. You know, the stuff that drives you insane..." It was pretty obvious that Charlie had a list, and he was just barely getting started.
"Charlie..." She sighed in annoyance. He wouldn't stop harping on her about the smoking.
A real pain in the ass.
"No," he interjected. "Listen, I'm not done here. I've looked into this, okay?" Then again, there wasn't much he hadn't looked into at some point.
"There's cadmium, that's a poisonous metal. They use it in batteries which is why they tell you to 'dispose of them properly'. There's formaldehyde and there's acetone. There's..."
Renee snuffed out the cigarette suddenly, looking behind him. "Here she comes." There was a small pause as she smoothed out her hair. "Try not to embarrass me, okay?"
Charlie turned to glance over his shoulder and grinned suddenly. He'd only ever seen Kate Cain in pictures before, and it was pretty clear that they didn't do her justice. "Hubba-hubba."
"Shut. Up," She hissed under her breath. Renee managed a smile for her once she came closer to them. "Thanks for coming, Kate."
"Renee," Kate said, her voice distant. She glanced over at Charlie. "Who's your friend?"
Charlie put on his most charming smile (which was surprisingly actually charming). "I'm her partner, Charlie. Pleased to meet you, Ms. Kane."
"Who's yours?" Renee shot back, not about to let herself miss the blond woman in Kate's car.
"Her name's Mallory," Kate said as if it were none of Renee's business. "She's a doctor."
She didn't care. At all.
Renee looked away from the figure in the car and back towards Kate. "What do you have for me?"
"You were correct, the family does own the property at 520 Kane Street. But like most of our holdings, it's controlled by one of our several management companies." She reached into her twenty thousand dollar handbag to pull out a folded slip of paper.
"Thanks," Charlie grinned as he took the slip from her hand to examine it.
Ignoring Charlie's oh so charming bit of thieving, Renee leaned against the picnic table in front of them. "Was it being rented?"
Kate shook her head, "It's empty at the moment, but up until two weeks ago it was leased to a company called Ridge-Ferrick Holdings here in Gotham."
"Two weeks," Renee said, crossing her arms over her chest and looking at Charlie.
Charlie nodded. "Yeah. The timing's right."
She nodded back, glancing back at Kate once before heading away. "Thanks for the information, Kate."
"No," Kate interrupted. "Wait a minute. What's this about? What's going on here?"
"I told you," Renee said, barely looking back. Best for her if she didn't know more. "Something we're looking into."
Kate's hand snapped out to catch Renee by the arm. "You're not a PI, Renee! You don't have a license, I checked." Her grip tightened, "And whoever your partner here is, I doubt that he is either."
Looking down at the hand on her arm, Renee tried not to snap to much. "Kate..."
"No!" Kate's voice was hard. "If this is something that concerns my family, then I have a right to know!" Her eyes flashed heatedly, "You don't come back into my life after ten years of nothing asking for favors without an explanation, Renee!"
"You owe me that much," she let each word bite.
"I don't owe you, Kate," Renee hissed, yanking her arm away. "I don't owe you anything!"
Kate's face drained of color. "How..." she paused to swallow. "How can you say that...?"
Despite her angry words earlier, her tone held nothing but shocked betrayal.
Turning and walking away with Charlie, Renee didn't look back.
Couldn't.
"Goodbye, Kate."
Charlie didn't look aback as they walked away from Kate. In fact he was uncharacteristically silent almost all the way to the parking garage where they'd left his van. Eventually he shook his head and chuckled. "That was smooth, Renee. No wonder the women are falling all over themselves for you. Oh, hey, I've got an idea! Why don't we double date sometime?"
"What was I supposed to do, huh?" Renee lit up again. She needed something to calm her nerves. "It's bad enough what Intergang will do to use they find we're messing with their play. Maybe they'll let us off with being murdered. That's fine, that's my risk to take. But I sure as hell am not putting Kate in their crosshairs."
Or Cooper. Or Faith.
"Ah, right..." Charlie said in sudden understanding. "Sorry, I should have realized."
"What?" Renee asked snappishly. "Should have realized what?"
"You've still got a thing for her," he announced with a combination of amusement and concern.
"The thing I had for her ended ten years ago. She ended it," Renee said, looking away, lips pursed. "I'm just tired of people I care about dying on me, okay? Better she stays away."
Charlie just shook his head and pressed the button on his keychain that made the van chirp-chirp. "You're packing a lot of guilt for someone so young, you know."
"At least I come by it honestly!"
"Give me a break." Charlie's voice dripped with exasperation and maybe a hint of dismissal.
"What did you say?" She moved forward, leaning in the doorway of the van. "What did you say?!"
Charlie didn't even turn to look at her, engrossed in searching through the boxes and boxes of files in the van. "You heard me. The thing with your partner? You've got to let it go. It'll eat you alive."
He finally turned to shoot her a quick look. "Trust me."
"You don't know a thing about--"
"Detective Second Grade Crispus Allen," Charlie began reciting as he carelessly tossed Renee a file from one of his boxes. 'Montoya, Renee' was carefully written on the front.
"Murdered last summer. Corrigan, James. Arrested for the killing but released due to lack of evidence. The case is still open."
Charlie paused and turned to stare Renee in the eye. "James Corrigan murdered your partner and then walked. Allen was your partner, and more than that he was your friend, and his death had to be answered. You owed him at least that much. So you hunted down Corrigan and you wanted to kill him."
"But you didn't." Charlie's voice softened. "That's why you hate yourself, Renee Montoya. Because you did the right thing, and you still can't forgive yourself for it."
She clutched the file, sitting on the edge of the van floor. Breathing suddenly hurt again. Like she pushed herself too hard when running.
Like her chest was going to explode.
She wasn't going to cry.
[[OOC: NFI and NFB due to distance, pre-played with the fabulous iseewhatyoumean]]