<div class="floatleft">(http://imageshack.us/a/img265/8833/justinhartleyasryanmerc.jpg)</div><br/><div style="text-align: left;"><strong>Name:</strong> Ryan Mercer<br/><strong>Title:</strong> Undercover Cop/The New Guy<br/><strong>Location:</strong> Downtown Seattle<br/><strong>Tags:</strong> None<br/><hr/><br/>“I am well aware of what my job is.” Ryan said to the person on the other end of the line. “…Well they haven’t had any cars to steal since I’ve been undercover.” The longer the conversation went on the more frustrated Ryan became until finally he had enough “Look this undercover assignment could last a while, right now I don’t have anything but I will and when I do I will tell you so how about until then you let me do my job…thank you!”<br/><br/>He tossed the phone onto his couch with a sigh as he leaned back and tilted his head from side to side, hearing it crack. Being an undercover cop isn’t the most glamorous role a cop can do, oh sure there are worse, but being someone else day in day out for countless days, weeks, months or even years in some cases can take its toll. <br/><br/>The key to being a good undercover agent he found was putting a little bit of the real you in with all the lies, helps make it believable, but that’s the easy part, the hard part is separating yourself enough to keep your loyalties and your emotions in check, get close enough to your targets to earn their trust while keeping enough distance so that you don’t hesitate when it’s time to bring them down.<br/><br/>This assignment at least was right up his alley, street racing and car theft. Ryan couldn’t help but smile since he’d always had a love of cars as a kid, something he never grew out of and would come in handy for this assignment.<br/><br/>He glanced down at the stack of folders on his couch, each one of them full of whatever information the FBI had on his new crew. Some of it didn’t really surprise him much, at least not until he’d gotten to the file on Allison, specifically the bit about her parents murder and her fathers suspected ties to the Triads. Ryan wondered if the girl was aware of that piece of information, if she did that could cause problems for him down the line.<br/><br/>He’d been with the crew for a little over a month now, so was still pretty much the new guy but had made a bit of leeway with the group. Glancing over at the clock he realised it was nearly time for the race. Unfortunately he’d blown one of the gaskets in his SLR during the last race, it wasn’t bad enough that he couldn’t drive it but racing it was out of the question. He’d ordered a new part but it hadn’t arrived yet, which had benched him from tonight’s race.<br/><br/>Which in a way was a blessing in disguise since not every member of the crew would be racing, given him an opportunity to not only get to know some of them better and solidify his place in the group, but also afforded him an opportunity to see if he could spot some of the Triads, the more info he could gather on them to help his case at these events the better prepared the FBI will be when it came time to take them down. He’d have to be subtle about it though, these events were the ideal meeting points to hand off information…like say a list of cars to be stolen for example. <br/><br/>Standing up he grabbed the folders and stashed them away out of sight before grabbing his gun, the keys to his car and heading out the door, making his way down to the garage, smiling at his sleek black McLaren sitting there, he really loved that car, even more now considering it also came in handy when he had undercover assignments like this. <br/><br/>The engine roared to life when he turned the key, the noise echoing around the empty underground garage. He pulled out into the streets and headed for the outskirts of the city where tonight’s race was going down.  As he drove through the city he had to admit Seattle was a nice place but it wasn't New York...that was the other problem with going undercover, being away from home and family for long periods of time, it all adds up and takes it toll, not to mention a person's love life...Ryan couldn't even remember the last relationship he'd had, at least not a real one anyway. But he'd spent most of his career working undercover assignments so it wasn't the first time he'd had these thoughts and overall had accepted the facts and moved on, still they occasionally manage to pop their way into his mind every now and then. For a brief moment he could almost count the years he had lived his life of lies as undercover Ryan compared to living the truth, so far true Ryan was still winning by a year or so but the gap between the two got smaller and smaller with each assignment.<br/><br/>As he stopped at a red light he shook his head, banishing all those thoughts to the back of his mind and turned on the radio, using the rest of the drive to relax, listen to some tunes and get his head in the game before he met up with the rest of the crew at the race.   <br/></div>