Darling,

Their client this time is a woman by the name of Margaret Truitt. She is convinced that her daughter’s husband, Landon Reeves, murdered her daughter, Emily, three weeks ago, though the case was filed away as a suicide. She wants to find that damning evidence that her daughter was, in fact, murdered, and it’s Dom and his team’s job to find out.

This job is particularly tricky, Arthur realizes, as they begin to research and discuss tactics. It’s not like this guy is just going to admit to doing something like this. They need to trick him somehow but at the moment, with the strategies they are capable of using, it just seems impossible. Arthur doesn’t know how they’re going to pull this off.

He’s in the warehouse (a different one than before, always a different one, never the same one twice because then they’d be too easy to find) poring over a record of the numbers Reeves has called in the past month, when Dom comes over and drops a red folder on his desk. Arthur looks up, highlighter hovering over the paper in front of him, and raises an eyebrow inquiringly.

“We need someone else,” Dom says. “We can’t do this on our own.”

Arthur bites back the urge to toss out a snippy well of course we can’t and instead flips open the dossier Dom has tossed him. It profiles a man who looks like he can’t be very much older than Arthur, not very much younger than Dom. The man has hair in a color that’s close to blonde but a little browner styled in a sort of cropped style and blue, blue eyes. He’s smirking somewhat haughtily in the picture Arthur sees before him, his ridiculous lips pulling up into something of an obscene smile, and his name is Eames. He’s twenty-four.

“He’s a Forger,” Arthur reads. Though he’s heard of forgers, knows there are some really magnificently talented ones out there, he’s never actually encountered one before. They’ve never needed someone who possesses the ability to shift into different people before.

“Yes,” Dom says, “And we need him.”

Arthur nods once. “Do you have his number?” he asks, flipping through the pages in the folder. There are very few and, Arthur notices, there is hardly any information about him at all.

Dom smiles slightly. “If I had his number I wouldn’t have asked you to find him,” he says, and Arthur has a brief moment of understanding. Of course. This man is hiding; he’s a thief. He doesn’t have a listed number, probably doesn’t even have one single identity.

“Does he have a first name?” Arthur asks. “Or is it just ‘Eames’?”

Dom’s face takes on a rather amused look. “Just Eames,” he says, and walks away.

Arthur sighs and looks over the contents of the folder one more time before he flips open his laptop and begins trying to track this guy down. With any luck, he’ll find him by nightfall.

-

Arthur does end up finding him with a little work. It’s not as easy as he’d originally thought, but it’s not too difficult either. It just takes some digging around, sifting through about a dozen false identities until he finds one that matches. And then it’s all a matter of using some of the nifty hacking tricks he’s picked up and he’s able to get his hands on a phone number. He arrives the next day at the warehouse able to proudly hand over the information to Dom, who receives it with a smile and a thank you.

Arthur goes back to his desk to continue researching Reeves, and Dom goes to call this “Eames” character. Mal is humming softly to herself as she drafts dream space floor plans. Arthur vaguely hears Dom talking, but for the most part, he tunes it out and focuses on the call record he’d been working on before Dom asked him to find this Forger.

The sound of a phone snapping shut draws Arthur’s attention back over to Dom a few minutes later. Arthur raises his eyebrows again in that questioning way of his and Dom smiles.

“Looks like we found ourselves a Forger,” Dom beams.

Mal smiles excitedly, grey eyes shining brightly, and asks when he’ll be here. Dom says that Eames will be here tomorrow morning. Arthur listens to this exchange as he skims over the documents in front of him, making a mental note to start bringing the PASIV to the warehouse tomorrow, which they haven’t needed just yet but will need soon because if he knows Dom, he knows that Dom will want to give this guy a test before officially accepting him as their Forger on this job.

-

Arthur arrives at the warehouse five minutes beforehand the next day, at eight-fifty-five, just in case. He doesn’t like being late and he wants to have a little time to set up. He takes a couple minutes to make sure the PASIV is running smoothly and then sets the timer for five minutes, like always. It’s just a test run. They don’t need to be under for much longer than that.

Mal and Dom arrive together at nine o’clock sharp, perfectly on time, ready to work. Mal smiles a greeting at Arthur and Dom slips off his jacket, draping it over the back of a chair. They each settle themselves into a lawn chair, ready to begin.

Eames, their Forger, this mysterious stranger Arthur has spent more time than should be necessary trying to track down, arrives at sometime around nine-thirty. The second he walks into the warehouse, Arthur has to stamp down on the urge to snap “you’re late.” He doesn’t want to be rude, though, especially if they’re going to be working with this man for the upcoming weeks, so he just nods in greeting and shakes his hand politely as they’re introduced.

“Going under already, are we?” Eames asks, and Arthur hears a very noticeable British accent. He wonders if the accent is real, or if it’s just a forgery. It could very well be either.

“Yes,” Dom answers, gesturing casually to one of the two vacant lawn chairs near the PASIV. “Have a seat.”

Eames does and shrugs off his suit jacket (he’s remarkably well dressed for a criminal, donning a crisp dark grey suit, but then again so is Arthur; the knot in Eames’ tie could be a bit neater, though). He rolls up his sleeve and Arthur hands him an IV tube before sitting down in the remaining lawn chair.

“Five minutes on the clock,” Arthur says as he inserts the needle into his own arm and reaches over with his other hand to push the Somnacin release trigger. He looks over at Dom for his final words before sending them all into the dream.

“Right,” Dom nods. He looks to Eames, “Let’s see what you can do.”

Arthur takes that as his cue and he feels the familiar rush of Somnacin into his bloodstream, pulling him under to a world that almost feels more like home than reality.