Tony moved his suitcase to his left hand and unbuttoned his jacket. “Okay, Hoke Colburn, just call me Miss Daisy.” Tony hummed a note, nodded, and motioned with his hand. Tony’s eyes flicked over the man, taking in the strangely stiff driving jacket and pants, the gloves with haptic tips, the small tell with how his coat hung that spoke of a holster underneath, though the normal bulge was missing. “How did this someone know I was here, now?” “Someone who wants to join the queue and offer you a job, sir. The thought fizzled out as Tony took another step forward and the man met his eyes and inclined his head. Maybe he was coming into London and it was a big freaking coincidence. As Senior always said, he was the real Anthony DiNozzo. Tony was tempted to just ignore the sign and pretend he wasn’t “A. Hell, he’d rather take a job at the CIA than the last two offers that were in his email inbox before he boarded the plane. He’d rather take a job at McDonald’s or collecting garbage than some of the suspicious offers he was getting. Tony just wanted to relax and unwind from the recent insanity of protective custody and aliens and robot houses and their robot cats and getting shot at and AIs tracking every move and old friends with dozens of job offers and emails from skeevy private security companies that he would never work for even if they were the only ones hiring in the world. DiNozzo.” What the hell? No one knew he was coming! He was five freaking days early! There was a man in a driving suit and cap, round, dark-framed glasses perched on his nose.
He got five steps when he stopped dead, blinking in disbelief. Tony made his way off the jet and through customs in the international VIP terminal before claiming his bags and heading towards the taxi stand. It would be just his luck, the old man getting wind of his situation and the head-hunting frenzy going on, and trying to horn in to get his “just piece of the pie, Junior.” Now, hopefully, the thought didn’t jinx him, here was hoping he didn’t somehow stumble on Senior during his travels. Tony had had enough assholes at work, leading to his current job hunt, he didn’t need to spend time with the ones in his family if he wasn’t forced to. And that was just a hard no, the hardest of hard limits. But he was several months too late and the only one left from his mother’s side of the family was Crispian.
If his Uncle Clive had still been alive, Tony would have made sure to swing by for a visit. So he was going to get a nice hotel room and spend time doing the tourist thing in London and maybe he would even rent a car and drive to other sights in other cities.
And Washington to London was over seven hours, more on a commercial flight.īut it had given him time to relax, knowing he wasn’t going to be getting calls about interviews or emails or texts or going out for breakfast or a run only to be ambushed by someone conveniently “in the neighborhood” and offering him a job.Īnd one huge plus of his early departure thanks to Eli David’s entrance into the US - no one knew he was coming, he wasn’t expected to be in London for another five days for his first interview by a European agency. Even in first-class or business class, his legs always ended up cramping if the flight was longer than two hours or so. He really loved private jets, just for the legroom if nothing else. Tony got up from the airplane seat and stretched.