Nell's Journal

New fanfics up

2014-06-03T23:26:57Z

I wrote a series of short pieces, episode tags, for Eureka. They're up at my AO3 page and at my new, just because of Eureka! ff.net page as well.

I had fun - tried different voices, wrote a little porn. I also used these little bits and bobs to construct head canon to make what happened on screen flow naturally from my own understanding of the characters, and what happened between episodes and off screen. Which was definitely fun to do. I have a few more 'issues' like that to resolve, actually! So - there will probably be a few more of these before I'm ready to let go...!

But - this project of mine in Eureka has made reading all the angst in the OUAT fandom even weirder. Deeply compelling. Like I can't look away from the carnage compelling....

I realize not everyone's project is to make sense of canon - in fact *my* project is not always to 'make sense of canon'! I've got the AU fics to prove it too - but as that is my project *right now* - it's especially disorienting.

It is NOT disorienting that there is a major, major slash fandom for Regina/Emma, because, hey, fandom! And antagonists to lovers is always popular. Not my fave, but super popular. (It's the dominant pairing in Eureka, actually, on AO3 - slashing the primary antagonists. I don't ship them? But LOTS of the remaining active fen do.) I'm still kinda amazed, though, that so many fans of Emma/Regina are so insistent that it is the real 'endgame' of the show, AND that the actors and producers and writers are all queer baiting assholes, AND that the onscreen het pairings are essentially false, without chemistry, rushed, and full of rape culture, AND that the actresses and writers are deliberately crafting a great love story *without even knowing it,* AND that Jennifer Morrison is a horrible person because she doesn't understand her own character, AND anyone who doesn't see the Emma/Regina love is just a big poopyhead.

(That rape culture bit is.. well. Okay. Yeah. We swim in it, of course it's in our mainstream entertainment. But basically the line of thought seems to bottom out somewhere around: dude expressing desire = rape culture. Or even, dude expressing strong opinions = rape culture. Misandry for ten, anyone? - I don't think that's what they intend, btw, in each individual long tumblr post on the subject, but it certainly is the result of reading LOTS of them all at once. Kinda like the cumulative effect of Mad Jim Kirk, or Bimbo Nikita.)

The highlight - or maybe lowlight? - is the charge that OUAT is a very damaging, deeply misogynist show. This is a show that has three female leads, multiple female recurring characters whose stories drive the plot, and some really fantastic female villains. The women are young and old, married and single, mothers and child free, readers and warriors, lovers and loners, look fragile but are unexpectedly tough, or look tough but cover up a tender core.... Because there are so many, NONE of them have to bear the burden of representing all 'women' and instead get to exist in deep variety.

The boys are, with the exception of Rumplestiltskin, almost entirely eye candy/rewards. They've even gleefully fridged several dudes along the way. I haven't kept a tally, but I think they've actually fridged more way dudes than ladies (is Milah the only one?), because it's the ladies' stories that are central.

Could more of the female characters be POC? Of course. Would it be nice to see some non-het, non-cis folk, of any variety? Of course.

Just - still - coming to terms with the intensity. I sort of wish there was still a fandomwank to take the piss out of all of it!

nell65 @ 2014-05-12T08:14:00

2014-05-12T12:14:11Z

Wow. Tumblr is going to be the death of me. Thank the FSM that I got all my grades submitted before the OUAT season ender! LOL!

(Not that I don't have some of the most irritating students ever complaining about their grades... sigh. You *missed the final exam* dude. And didn't contact me about it until TWO DAYS LATER. No. I am not sympathetic to your cause. Idiot.)

The angst. The hair rending. The tearing of garments. The overdone aca-fan analysis. The weird comparisons. (Xena/Gabrielle = Regina/Emma? I have no memory of Xena trying to kill Gabrielle...? Or saying mean things to her episode after episode? Perhaps I need to re-watch?)

And of course the cheers and the happy dances and the triumphant hand signs being thrown from the happy het canon shippers.

Anyway. Awwe-some!

I've even learned how we go after a dude breaking up a non-canon f/f. He's a rapist. Or an embodiment of rape culture. (A distinction without much difference?) Which, hmmm. I think I would have preferred evil bitch. Or stupid bitch. Or even castrating bitch. Though that last is my least favorite of those three.

I like Nestra's rule. (Rule? Preference? Guideline) Just ignore the inconvenient canon het interest. That's certainly the most common solution in Eureka (still the home of my current OTP!) Jack/Nathan shippers. Allison? Allison who? Who is this Allison of whom you speak? No. no. *headshake* I'm quite sure I've never heard of anyone named Allison....You must be mistaken. Or, oh yes, lovely, but ultimately - there was nothing there. Mutual decision to just be friends. Often after Allison helps the boys get it on.

I might even read that fic. The one where Hook realizes that Emma will never respond to him the way she does to Regina, and manfully steps back after midwifing their true love. I mean. OOC up the wazoo, but, I'd read it anyway!

various fannish thoughts

2014-05-08T16:18:10Z

1. H50 - so, so very glad Catherine was not 'fridged. Whew. Otherwise, so, so bored now with H50. Sad face. I miss the boo ya.

2. Finally broke down and got a tumblr so that I can follow OUAT fandom there. Hmmm. Still not sure how I feel about that. Fun stuff. Lots of cute/fun images and gifs. But, it's been a while since I followed anything with a current fandom... and I'd forgotten the intensity. I mean. I hadn't forgotten, forgotten. Of course. But I had.

3. Still totally filled with the Jo/Zane OTP. Stories are still tumbling from my brain and I. Can't. Stop.

4. I fell back into Revolution over the winter, but now I've decided that I think they all suck and I don't care how soon they kill each other off. I think the series should end with a post-apocalyptic red wedding, Texas style. Circular firing squad style. Everyone enters. No one leaves.

5. I am a pathetic canon shipper. If the actor is selling me on their role - and the ones I get all fannish about are - they, well, they sell me. I buy it. If they're not selling me, well, I'm not watching cause I didn't care or got bored.

6. A good villain really helps. Zelena is a pretty good villain. Even if her super power is envy. Which is, kinda sad. But she just has so many feels about it all. So I feel for her. For comparison, I enjoyed the first season and a half of Arrow - but Slade is a terrible bad guy - even though he's basically Zelena in dude form at this point. I just don't care about his stupid man pain or his ridiculous Dr. Evil 'revenge' and I know the good guys will win. So I'll check back in eventually and hope the show is onto some new story arc.

7. The teen and I are watching Buffy together. We've just started season two. BUFFY FOREVER!

ETA: I have not yet commented on a single OUAT tumblr entry. Congratulate me for my strength!

Another Eureka-H50 crossover

2014-03-24T02:42:20Z

Yes. Another one!

As always - I am incredibly grateful to sk and to Ms. Artisan. In this particular case - I also owe a big shout out to Meredith - who not only offered some brainstorming, but even went and found the links to help me sort out the science - or the Eureka 'science' for the kids science fair project.

Posted at my AO3 page - http://archiveofourown.org/users/Nell65

ARrgghh OUAT

2013-11-19T03:55:25Z

Of the few OUAT fans on my flist - anyone else as *tired* of Neverland as I am?

How many 'running around the island like idiots' scenes do we need? Most of this backstory stuff could have been done in Maine...

Fie on all of them, I say.

fannish obsessions

2013-10-07T02:02:10Z

As some of you know, my latest fandom obsession is Eureka - a syfy production about a secret government scientific think tank and all the wacky scientists that live and work there, and the every man sheriff who saves them from themselves time and time again. In this show, there is a couple. Zane Donovan and Jo Lupo. Jo is my new Nikita. Everything about her hits one of my fan girl buttons. Hard. Zane thinks Jo is awesome. In both time lines. So, she and Zane are my latest OTP 4 eva.

I read a new fic last weekend, new fic production is slowing but hasn't stopped for the fandom, and it really got to me. Got to me so hard, I actually wrote a short fic set in that story universe - which is an AU twist on the canon time travel/reboot. My OTP was left a bit, well, hanging. In my view. I *needed* to fix it. (see OTP 4 eva) I wrote a fic to do it. I contacted the author, recieved her perssion to post, and viola. With Jaybee's beta, it is up on AO3 now. The original author left an encouraging comment (yay!) which has made me feel quite good about the whole excercise.

Here is the link to the fic:

Love Writ on Her Arms

Posted a new H5O story today

2013-08-27T23:31:27Z

"In the Breathless Night"

Can be found at my AO3 page: http://archiveofourown.org/works/944159

It's a tiny snippet of Adam and Kono on the run, because I love their doomed romance so. And there are not a lot of us! The Adam/Kono tag over there had all of 12 stories listed, and (having clicked on all 12), in many of those they are together only off screen, don't even have an in-fic conversation. !! So, small increase in the number has a big impact percentage wise. ;-)

I wanted to write them a longer story, but alas, it never raised it's head.

And - as always - a huge shout out and thanks to Ms_Artisan, who provided a lovely beta even in her week of laptop disaster. Yay Ms Artisan!

Sadness that takes you by surprise, even when you aren't surprised

2013-06-29T00:34:53Z

Does anyone else weep on seeing the M*A*S*H episode in which Col. Henry Blake listens by phone as his youngest son is born stateside? It isn't a sad episode at all, it's a very funny, slapsticky one - the way the first several seasons episodes often were.

But, if you watched enough of the series, you have probably also seen the later episode when Henry's chopper was shot down over the Pacific as he was headed out on the first leg of his journey home. There were no survivors.

So - now, when I see the episode when Henry is so happy and excited about the baby, I weep. Because I know that he will never meet that child. Every time, by the way. I weep again.

As we come up on the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg (and the almost more important, strategically speaking, fall of Vicksburg in the west to U.S. Grant), the military history parts of the internet are alive with posts and blogs.

I teach military history and nineteenth century U.S. History is my field. I know the history of the Civil War quite well for some one who is not, as they say, a 'buff.' So I knew the rough outlines of the history of the Iron Brigade.

I wept today as I read this, a short story about them on the eve of Gettysburg that I did not know.

"On this day, 28 June, the men of the Iron Brigade were marching towards Gettysburg. Then the lead regiment of the brigade passed a young woman waving an American flag in her front yard. She was described as being, "about 20," and we can infer a little about her looks by what happened next.

The commander of the lead regiment, a man named Rufus Dawes, is riding with his staff at the head of the column. He inclines his men and they all tipped their hats and bowed to her as they passed her prosperous farmhouse. Then the first company of the infantry and the second company, trooped by and just stared in amazement as the young beauty waved her American flag, an audience of one for these men marching towards the enemy.

But by the time the third company approached, a lieutenant took things into his own hands. Lieutenants sometimes do that, and sometimes they do it right.
Calling behind himself he brought his company to a more rigid form of marching, the sort usually used on parades not real road-marches. Then he ordered, "Company C, Right Shoulder, Shift, Arms!"

Essentially this was the same mass salute that a military unit would give to a general or the President of the United States when marching past on a formal review up Pennsylvania Avenue. And then, following the inspired lead of Company C of the Sixth Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment, every, single, damned, company, in the whole rest of the First Brigade of the First Division of the First Corps of the Army of the Potomac, did exactly the same thing, for the same reason.

....

"Less than 96 hours of life remained for a sad percentage of those men. Out of the 1,885 men marching down the road that day -- saluting a pretty girl by the side of the road as though she were a dignitary -- some 1,153 of them would be killed, wounded, or captured before 100 hours were out. And believe me, you do not get called the "Iron Brigade," by both sides, because "captured" makes up a big part of your numbers. That one unknown girl to whom they collectively, in their hundreds, flirted while marching towards hell was probably the last pretty face many of them would ever see. So maybe we can forgive them their little breach of military custom and courtesy. They would pay, in truth, on the barrel-head when the time came."

Acting Like School Boys as the Armies Close In, by Lt. Col. Robert Bateman.

The essay is florid, and leans a little hard on the men, men, manly men, theme, and I suspect the soldiers would have found any young woman waving the flag pretty, because it was her actions not her face that charmed them - and yet. I wept. I'm still weepy - hours later.

That this should be the week the Supreme Court gutted the enforcment provisions of the Voting Rights Act, which was written and passed to give the 15th Amendment to the Constition force, only makes me weep the harder.

Looking for a beta read?? Pretty Please?

2013-06-16T18:56:44Z

Yes - I finished another story, the third and (last?) in the Eureka/H50 fusion 'verse I accidently started. This one takes them all to Eureka, seemed like the period the larger story arc required.

Anyway - you don't actually need to be familiar with either canon to help me with this one, so much as an eye for plot. This fic, probably because of the Eureka setting - emerged from my deranged immagination with an A plot and a B plot, the B plot eventually offering the solution to the 'science' problem of the A plot in classic Eureka fashion. So, as a result, I have a more complicated story than usual and I need/would be so eternally grateful if someone could take a look and let me know what I missed/forgot/overlooked in terms of the plot threads. *bats eyelashes appealingly*

Given the two canons, Eureka and H50 the plotting hardly needs to be air tight (!!!) - only persuasive enough to pass on a first reading!

Because of the plotting - it is a bit longer than the last two, clocking in at ~30,000 words rather than ~20,000. I'm working on tightening up everything I've already written, I may be able to wring 1,000-2,000 'extra' words out of the story.... as long as I don't add any!

I'm feeling all fannishly giddy

2013-05-23T13:42:25Z

And suddenly understanding - just a tiny bit - what the TRs must have felt during all of LFN. In the, what it feels like to root for not the main couple sense. Not that I'm opposed to the main H50 couple (fannishly speaking - I'm honestly not sure who the show runners think the 'main couple' is? Doris and Mick? They appear to be the only two to actually acknowledge that they are in a relationship, and one that is, relatively speaking, honest and straightforward) -- I just really like Adam and Kono (and such lovely tears. They both got to cry. Grace Park is so pretty when she cries. I just want to hug her. Awesome..!)

Because seriously? I totally wish next season of H50 would feature several episodes of Adam and Kono on the run with Doris McGarrett. SERIOUSLY! I'm so jealous! Can you be jealous of fictional characters? And, yes, I know, sad, death, destruction, fratricide in defense of your one true love (sheds small tear for Michael Noshimuri's beautiful shoulders and even more beautiful artwork that we will never see again) all had to come first.... but honestly. On the run with Doris McGarrett? How wild and crazy fun will that be?

(Is Steve ragingly jealous? Yes? No? Of course? Will Adam and Kono come home full of wild adventures with Doris stories? Do I, maybe, perhaps, possibly, need to write such a story? Does the sun rise in the east? Will there be more angst? All of the above? Tune in next fall to find out? Will we ever get to the bottom of the Wo Fat mystery? LOLOL)

~~~~~~

Hmm. It occurs to me I may finally need some icons beyond LFN..... :-)

ETA: Oh man. Already, the bunnies are forming. I think there should be pirates. And adorable urchins. And possibly smuggling.

Help?

2013-05-10T15:19:05Z

Does anyone on my (sadly very short!) flist know anyone who is into the syfy show Eureka? Even just casaully?

I'm working on another story (yes - Eureka ate my brain), and I'm a bit stuck on working on the 'science' of the B plot and I'd love someone familiar with the show (like, at all. Do you remember tha odd episode you caught while surfing for something else?) to bat some ideas around with.

Anyone? Bueller?

New Fic: Bright Morning Comes

2013-05-01T17:31:00Z

Okay - it turns out that I wasn't ready to walk away from my Eureka/H50 universe. I think, maybe, I didn't like that Danny was unhappy? Whatever the cause - this story burst into my head and would not leave me alone until I wrote it and shared it. It was a fun ride, and I hope others will enjoy it too.

I have also posted it to my AO3 account, here:http://archiveofourown.org/users/Nell65

Title: Bright Morning Comes
Fandom: Eureka, Hawaii 5-0
Characters: Zane Donovan, Jo Lupo, Steve McGarrett, Danny Williams, Catherine Rollins, Chin Ho Kelly, Kono Kalalula, William Shaw, General Mansfield, Dorris McGarrett
Relationships: M/F, M/M, Multi
Category: Gen, Action/Adventure, Scifi
Words: ~20,000

Prologue:

The video opened with a wide pan of a lengthy but orderly airport security line, before zooming in on a very slender, impeccably dressed white woman. Her fashionable purse dangled from its short strap over her forearm as she held her tickets and passport ready for the first inspection station. With her free hand she reached up to brush her hair back from her face, showing off her thin, aquiline nose, high cheekbones and elegantly understated makeup. She took a step forward, and another, swayed, started to raise her free hand, and then, like a marionette whose strings had been cut, collapsed onto the ground in an untidy sprawl. The lines swirled and broke as people rushed to her side, struggling in vain to revive her. The video ended with another close up shot framing her face, her dead eyes staring emptily up into the camera.

Jo had recognized her instantly. It was Beverly Barlow, spy, terrorist, felon, fugitive, very occasional ally and now, it seemed, corpse. Though Jo would have preferred to be able to stick pins in her, a lot of pins, just to make sure.

General Mansfield turned to Jo and Zane, who were seated across from him in the small conference room, just off the Director’s offices at Rockwell Industries. His many ribbons were a bright splash of color against his dress greens, and his expression was studiously bland. “That was taken two days ago at Hong Kong International Airport. Any thoughts?”

Jo kept her face impassive and her shoulders still, and hoped against all experience that her husband would muster the same control. Just one quick glance at Zane, however, and she knew he was about to say something obnoxious instead. Three, two, one, and…

“You’ve got a great video editor?” he offered, all disingenuous helpfulness. “That had to have been cut together from about ten different cameras. Could use a sound track, though.”

‘Bingo’ she thought, and wished she bet herself something comforting. Like a stiff shot of Ouzo or an extra thirty minutes at the gun range. Or, maybe, both.

Mansfield narrowed his eyes, and opened up another window on his laptop. “This was taken last spring, in Hawaii. Just before that unfortunate incident with Dr. Parrish.”

By which he meant that time the Consortium kidnapped Parrish from the Unconventional Weapons Convention in Honolulu. They attempted to grab Zane and Jo as well, intending to jack them all into another VR prison. With the help of the Hawaii Five-O Taskforce they avoided capture, rescued Parrish and destroyed the computers. Along the way, and quite incidentally, they also rescued Beverly.

Unfortunately for her, not before her former allies had shot her full of nanotech explosives, the same explosives that apparently had killed her two days ago in Hong Kong. And, now unfortunately for Jo and Zane, they had let her go without revealing her existence or whereabouts to Mansfield. Beverly had known too many of their secrets, secrets that could get them all killed. She had also helped rescue Zane from the Consortium the year before, and they owed her something for that. At the time, it had seemed the right thing to do.

And by the pricking of her thumbs, Jo knew exactly what footage the General was about to bring up on screen. This time she bet herself the Ouzo. She was sure she was going to need it.

The video began and, yes, ‘Bingo’ again, it was the brief footage of Beverly Barlow standing in front of the elevator banks in their hotel in Hawaii. The same images that had led them to Parrish, and that Zane had done his best to scrub away.

Damn Beverly Barlow and her stupid need to be in the middle of things, Jo thought resentfully. She could have stayed in hidden retirement, but no! Beverly had loved orchestrating grand events, and her death was proving just as good as anything else she’d ever pulled off in life.

“This video was quite hard to find,” Mansfield said, shooting another gimlet-eyed glance Zane’s way, “but,” and he smiled a small, triumphant smile, “eventually it turned up.”

He waited again, but this time Zane kept quiet.

“It seems to me,” Mansfield went on once it was clear they had nothing to add, “that your debrief on the whole incident was woefully incomplete.”

He reached over and closed the laptop. To Jo, the click of the lid snapping closed sounded exactly like the lock on the jail cell in the Sheriff’s office.

Mansfield continued, “It also seems to me that there might be questions you would rather I didn’t ask. Loose threads you’d rather I didn’t start pulling. Barlow. Senator Wen. Dr. Monroe. Henry Deacon. Grant. To name a few.”

He watched them carefully in the silence that followed, his glance flickering between them as he waited for their response.

Jo felt curiously numb. They’d been waiting so long for this ax to fall that she didn’t even feel fear anymore. Just a strange, distant, floating sensation as she watched the two men enter into their best gunfighter stare-down impressions. She glanced at her watch and decided to time them. Zane could and would keep up this sort of adolescent posturing all day, while the General was a busy man.

“In exchange for NOT pulling on those threads,” the General didn’t quite snarl, “I have a small project that could benefit from your particular skill set.”

Four minutes, twenty-six seconds, Jo noted. Not their longest stare-down, but not the shortest either.

His minor victory secured, Zane asked, “Whose skill set? Mine? Or Jo’s?”

“Both.” Mansfield sat back, another triumphant little smile hovering around his mouth. He knew as well as they did that Zane even asking the question meant that he had won this round. “A little breaking and entering, and a little coding. You can handle that, Donovan, and Lupo here can cover your back.”

Five days later they were standing against a wall in a busy market district in a small city a few hours outside Seoul, in South Korea. Wilson, their curiously inept CIA handler, pointed with relief to an anonymous looking apartment over narrow storefront, “There! That’s the safe house.”

Jo shared a sidelong glance with Zane. He shook his head infinitesimally; he didn’t want to follow Wilson either. This entire adventure had been a long series of disasters, and relying on the intel and contacts provided at their all-too-brief briefing had been part of the problem from the start.

Sweet Christ did she have a bone to pick with Mansfield if they survived to see him again –‘a little breaking and entering, a little coding,’ her fine ass. He’d wedged their small team, uninvited and unwelcome, into a CIA op that sent them into the heart of North Korea’s nuclear weapons center. Their formal mission was to steal copies of all the ICBM operating systems. Gob smacking as this order had been, it got even better. Mansfield also wanted Zane to slip Trojan code into the facility’s hardware, code that would allow the US to seize control of the guidance systems if the North Koreans were ever capable of launching any weapons towards the US. Without alerting anyone else on the team or the CIA to what they were doing.

Not that he had provided much in the way of a team in the first place. The moment she and Zane laid eyes on the small collection of people on the military flight to Seoul, they realized that Mansfield’s briefing had been, at best, incomplete and, at worst, deliberately misleading.

“What the hell is this?” Zane had hissed in her ear, “The Bad News Bears take on North Korea?”

He was exaggerating, but not by much. Each member had a different background—CIA, Army Intelligence, Naval Intelligence, NSA—and had never met before. As the only civilians in the group, the CIA analyst was assigned to them as their handler. Wilson had only the briefest of field experience before he landed a desk job and his only apparent qualification for this gig was his Korean-American heritage and his fluency in the right languages. By the time they had all introduced themselves, Zane had quit whispering under his breath and was openly calling the group ‘the Expendables.’

“If you can get away clean, good. If not, make it big,” had been Mansfield’s parting shot.

They didn’t get away clean. A network of CIA agents got them in, but things went south, they improvised like mad, and then Zane triggered the small charges they had laid during their entry. In the ensuing chaos they and the rest of their team managed to slip out of the complex. Fortunately, and not at all accidently Jo was sure, they were all dark haired enough that in coveralls, jackets and caps they passed sufficiently in the crowd to make it through. Then the NSA agent died trying to get them to their CIA extraction point. Their attempt to get back to the CIA safe house they had started from that morning led them to two more dead CIA agents and the not terribly shocking but seriously infuriating discovery that their back trail was completely blown. The whole thing began to reek of a set up.

The Military Intelligence Officers Mansfield had flown in with them had the same reaction. Ditching the CIA and pooling their own prior resources, they helped Zane and Jo and their handler get to the border before peeling away, each to mysterious business of their own.

They had crossed back into South Korea late in the afternoon. Wilson insisted on immediately calling in for support and new instructions. By this point she and Zane both were convinced that the CIA had set them up to take the fall, and the last thing they wanted to do now was follow their directives. They tried to explain to Wilson why they thought he was nuts to trust his home office, but they failed entirely to convince him.

Given Wilson’s excitement and relief at seeing their destination, Jo didn’t know what else to do. So she cut their losses. “Fine,” she said. “You go first. We’ll wait here until you’re sure it’s clear.”

As soon as Wilson slipped away, blending immediately into the early evening crowd along the market street, Zane touched her elbow. “We should go.”

Jo nodded.

His fingers closed around her arm, tugging her along with him as he stepped into the foot traffic headed the opposite direction from Wilson. “Jo. We did our best.”

She shook herself out of her regret and stepped up her pace. “I know. Come on.”

They had just cleared the block when the sound of a muffled explosion reached their ears. They hopped on the next city bus that passed, riding away from the wailing of sirens rushing in behind them. As they slid into two open seats, she muttered, “That wasn’t very subtle.”

He scooted nearer to her, dropping his arm around her shoulders, pressing his long thigh close to hers. “I think someone is trying to attract attention.” His voice was a low rumble against her ear.

“What?!”

“From,” he patted the full backpack resting on his knees, “you know.”

She vented her outrage about this whole damn clusterfuck with a hissed wail, “Oh my God! How many layers of double crossing are going on here?”

“As many as possible, I think.”

She straightened her shoulders. “We need to get to an army base.”

“Which one? And how do we know they won’t shoot us on sight either?”

That stopped her. She could still hear sirens behind them. “Well, what do you propose?”

“We have to get ourselves to Mansfield.”

Jo searched his face, hoping to find any trace of doubt, anything she could use to challenge her own conviction that he was right. There was nothing. “That means the airport in Seoul.”

He nodded. “We’ll need papers and money,” he murmured, his eyes already back to scanning the other passengers.

Jo scowled down at her own pack. They didn’t have either. They didn’t even have phones. Mansfield had requested that they leave everything behind but the two backpacks full of gear he let them select from a small but satisfyingly diverse armory at the airbase in DC. The equipment had been life saving, literally, but right now a giant wad of cash would have been more useful still.

Zane leaned even closer, his breath warm on her skin, his thumb a slight warning pressure along her jaw. “Don’t look up, but I think we’ve been made. Wrong season for tourists.” He brushed his lips across her cheekbone and down to her mouth, slanting his head to kiss her. “Next stop, we get off and lead him into an alley.”

His lips closed on hers and she leaned in, automatically reaching up to thread her fingers through the soft hair along the nape of his neck. She deepened their kiss and held onto the moment, on to him, until they felt the bus start to slow.

She saw their tail step off the bus as she and Zane turned the corner, headed for the darkest alleyway they could find.

Jo knocked him cold with the butt of her handgun and Zane quickly riffled through his pockets. He pulled apart the phone, smashed his watch, pocketed the money, and handed Jo the ID. She shrugged. “I can’t read this.”

He took it back. “I used to be able to read a little, but,” he frowned in the dim light leaking around the street entrance, “I’m way out of practice. I think it’s just a drivers’ license and a state ID. Probably not even his real name.” He stood up. “What do we do with him?”

Jo took a deep breath. “Look away.”

“What?” He stared at her in confusion for a beat, then comprehension set in and he nodded and moved to the alley mouth.

Jo joined him a moment later, tucking her knife and her gloves back inside her coat. “How much money?”

“Enough for train tickets, or,” he cocked his head at her, “gas money.”

“For what?”

“A car. We’d get further, and with less need for ID.”

Jo started to object that it would be too dangerous, but Zane stopped her. “Jo, I love that when you look at me, you see a mostly honest man. But, right now, I need you to channel the Enforcer. Remember that I was a thief. And a damn good one.”

“Computer crime!”

“You really think there’s some bright, clear line between stealing money on the Internet and stealing material things in meat space?” He shook his head. “Come’on Jojo. Enforcer. She knew what I could do.”

“But, those were all just pranks when you were a kid…” She trailed off, daunted by his crooked smirk and shaking head. She tried again, “You were never charged with anything like that.”

He shrugged again. “Like I said. I was good.”

Something odd in his voice caught on her ear, and she pulled her gaze back from the street to look up at him more carefully. His eyes were hooded, his lips were pulled thin and flat and the muscle was twitching in his cheek. She realized with shock that he was nearly vibrating with worry, and not about his ability to steal cars. He was afraid that revealing more of his criminal history would make her doubt him, doubt them, again, even now. She didn’t know if she wanted to rip out her own hair or break his fingers. Or maybe the other way around. Good God, had they done a number on each other, each too caught up in their own fears and hurts to see the wounds they had made.

Her eyes filmed with sudden tears, and her heart swelled hot and huge in her chest, nearly choking her. Less than fifteen feet away lay the body of the man she had just killed and Zane didn’t even flinch. She was a soldier and that was who she was and he had never once questioned or challenged that. In fact it was part of what had drawn him to her in the first place. But he was panicky that she would run from him again because he knew how to steal the cars and money they needed to get home.

She pressed close to his chest, running her hands up to capture his head and pull him down to whisper in his ear, “I love you, Zane Donovan.”

Then she kissed him. She poured everything she had into it, willing him to remember that he really did know how completely she loved him, desired him, trusted in him.

In seconds he had reversed their positions and backed her up against the nearest wall. Time blurred and she was lost, again, always, in his arms, his mouth hot on her skin and his hands leaving aching trails along her body. When she realized she was already grinding against his thigh, a keening moan in the back of her throat, she pushed hard against his chest. “Car. Seoul. Papers.”

He laughed, low and relieved, and ducked his head to scrape his teeth along her jaw once more. Then he stepped back and held out his hand. “Yes ma’am.”

~~~~~~~~~~~

The sound of his phone woke Steve from a deep sleep. Picking it up, he squinted at the time. Four AM. Terrific. There was no way he’d be going back to sleep today. “McGarrett,” he said, his voice thick with tiredness. It had been a long week already.

“Steve? Hey! It’s Zane.”

For a bleary instant Steve couldn’t place the voice or the name, and then it clicked. He struggled to sit up. “Donovan? Zane?”

“Yeah! Listen. I know we’re calling out of the blue, but Jo and I could really use your help.”

“Okay.” Steve was trying to shake the sleep cobwebs from his brain. Zane calling before dawn and asking for help could not be a good thing. “Where are you?”

“On a plane. We’re flying in from Seoul and will be landing a little after 11am your time. Could you meet our flight, and give us an escort to Fort Shafter?”

“Yeah, sure, but…” the oddness of Zane’s phrase finally clicked, “Escort? To Shafter? What’s going on?”

“We’re kind of in trouble.”

“Trouble?” He wasn’t alert enough yet do more than repeat things, apparently.

“Beverly Barlow dropped dead ten days ago, trying to get through airport security in Hong Kong.” Zane sighed. “This revealed to certain parties that we might not have been entirely forthcoming about, well, about a lot of things. As a consequence, I received an invitation I couldn’t refuse. To provide IT support to a group doing business out of Seoul.”

Zane paused, probably to make sure Steve was following along. He was, unfortunately, and feeling the ground slip out from under his feet as a result. He had known last spring that Zane and his wife, Jo, were hiding Beverly Barlow from a General Mansfield. Mansfield was with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for whom he did a number of irregular and mysterious things. Things like ordering covert executions on American soil to hide the existence of advanced technologies and the attempted theft or use of the same. For instance.

Steve had assumed that, after last spring, Barlow would have the good sense to stay hidden. But according to Zane, something had sent her on the run and now she was dead. Unlucky for her, and for Jo and Zane. Her very public death had revealed their cover up to Mansfield. Mansfield’s punishment for their deception had been to send Zane out to commit computer crime on behalf of some DOD project, and likely in North Korea, by the sound of it. Fantastic. At least Mansfield had the good sense to send Jo along with him. “Okay,” Steve said. “I’m with you so far.”

“So,” and now Steve could hear the exhaustion and the anger in Zane’s voice, “I was just ‘support’, only the ‘computer guy’. Everything that could go wrong, did. It was a stupid plan, and we told them so, but, you know. ‘Professionals’.”

His scorn was withering and his contempt for this waste of his extraordinary talents was clearly boundless. The man had an ego the size of a planet when it came to his work, and one he almost deserved.

“What do you need now?” Steve asked.

“We got separated from the rest of the team. We have a package we have to get out of our hands, and into Mansfield’s. We made it onto this flight, but probably not alone.”

And there was a tale for another day, Steve noted to himself. “Why haven’t you called him?” he asked.

“Seriously? You don’t think we’ve tried? We can’t get through. We don’t have any other names or contact info.”

“You can’t find any?”

“Commercial aircraft. Over the Pacific. No, I can’t ‘find’ him or anyone else right now.”

Right. Zane might be a world-class hacker but even he couldn’t work with little to no bandwidth.

“Where is your handler?”

“Not coming back. Along with half the team.”

“Wow. You are in trouble.”

“Yes. Thank you. Can you help us get off this damn plane? Preferably in one piece?”

“Yes. Let me talk to Jo.”

There was quiet, and then Jo’s familiar voice, low and honeyed with a hint of whiskey, came on the line. “I’m fine.” He could almost hear her smile. “I’m relieved you’re smart enough to check, though.”

“How valuable is the package?”

“Extremely.”

“How off the books do you think this is?”

“Since his staff claims that Mansfield is on vacation and unreachable? Even by me? Way, way off.”

“Great.” By which he meant, ‘oh shit.’ Jo was chief of security and DOD liaison for a private firm that did a significant volume of R&D work for the DOD, both on and off the books. She was also former military herself. Which meant a lot of personal attention from Mansfield, who knew Jo personally as well as professionally. As did, presumably, his staff. If they were blocking Jo, something was really wrong.

“Yeah.” Jo’s voice was quiet, and worried.

“Okay. Give me your flight details. I’ll see you when you land.”

After Steve ended the call he dropped his hands between his legs, his elbows resting on his raised knees, phone dangling from his fingers, and took a deep slow breath. He had something less than seven hours to figure out what the hell was going on, find Mansfield, and make sure Jo and Zane got off their flight and into secure hands. Which meant it was time to get out of bed. Now. He kicked his legs free from the sheets and headed for the shower.

Four hours later Steve was pacing his office, wearing a path in the floor. He had tried and failed to make contact with anyone in DC or on the island who would even admit to knowing Mansfield. Oh, plenty of people had met him, his public record was easy for even Steve to find on the Internet, but no one knew him.

Steve had finally deciphered this astounding ignorance an hour earlier. They all knew him. But none would admit it without a direct order. Which, wherever the hell he was, Mansfield was not issuing. And without their team or their handler, Zane and Jo had been left out in the cold.

He’d rousted Chin a while back, and set him to find out who Mansfield’s staff officers were, but this avenue hadn’t panned out either. The General’s entire operation was buttoned down tight, which meant no way in for someone without the right clearance or contacts. Catherine was also doing her best, but Mansfield was Army, not Navy, and that was a pretty huge barrier.

Kono came in with a big fancy coffee for him, not his favorite, but the calories and sugar were welcome. “Here,” she said. “Chin told me what’s going on.”

“Which must have taken him about thirty seconds, since we don’t have a freaking clue about whatever the hell is going on.”

“Is it time to start making a plan to get them off the plane?”

“Yeah. I think it is.”

“Can we just arrest them? Have the plane held closed at the gate, escort them off, regular drill?”

“Arrest who?” Danny walked in, smooth hair gleaming, pressed shirt tucked neatly into his trousers, looking all bright and chipper and like a man who had had his full night of sleep.

Steve smiled optimistically. His big plan for this was to act like it was good news. “Zane Donovan and Jo Lupo.”

Danny frowned in confusion. “As happy as that would make me, for what, exactly? And where? Aren’t they home in Oregon?”

“They’re flying in from Seoul in a few hours.”

Danny leaned forward, his eyes wide with surprise. “From Seoul? In South Korea?”

“Yep.”

Danny frowned again.

Steve waited.

Danny sighed and waved his hands and dropped into the chair in front of Steve’s desk. “Okay. I give up. There are so many questions to ask I can’t even begin. Just brief me and get it over with.”

Once he’d finished, and given how much they still didn’t know it didn’t take all that long, Steve sat back, leaning on the edge of his desk. “So. That’s it.”

“I see.” Danny looked up at Kono. “So, your idea for getting them, and their ‘package’ off the plane is to arrest them. For something.”

“Sure. Why not?” said Kono. “Then we can take them through security, out of the airport and off to Shafter. We can be there in less than ten minutes. It’s like, what? Four miles from the airport?”

“Why Shafter and not Hickam? And why would anyone at Shafter want them?” Danny looked at Steve, not Kono.

“That’s where they want to go. I assume because Shafter is the Army Pacific Command HQ, and Mansfield’s Army. So’s Jo. I’m also assuming that once we actually show up, someone will at least take charge of their package until the General can be found.” Steve replied.

“And if they don’t?”

“They will.” Steve leaned forward. “Come on, Danny. Missions in progress that might blow up are denied. But missions that actually cross the finish line, goods in hand, well, they count.”

“Is this the actual finish line?”

Steve sat back again.

“Ah.” Danny leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. Waving his finger in Steve’s general direction he said, “You have no idea. All we know is that Donovan and Lupo are involved in another clusterfuck and are hoping we will clean it up. Again.”

“That’s not fair, Danny. They did the heavy lifting last time, we were backup and you know it.”

Danny remained stubbornly unyielding. “If they hadn’t lied to the General about Barlow, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“She helped them as much as, or more, than she hurt them. They felt they owed her.”

“For what?” Danny’s voice rose with his exasperation.

“Zane’s life, along with the lives of nineteen other people.”

Danny scowled, chewing the inside of his cheek as he considered this. Finally, he said, “I suppose you did all this sharing during the week they spent at your house?”

He made it sound more like an accusation than an observation.

“Yes. And you could have been there too, only you refused to come over.”

“I wasn’t invited.”

“Bullshit, Danny. You were invited every damn day. Just like always. Just like Chin, and Cath and Kono here,” Steve gestured to where Kono had been standing, only to realize that she had slunk away. Coward. He wished he had the courage to join her.

“Kono where?” Danny looked around. “What happened to her?”

Chin appeared in the doorway. “I might finally have a line on someone who can help. A Lt. Colonel William Shaw, Special Forces, stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado. He isn’t part of Mansfield’s staff, but his name shows up in some of the same reports as Mansfield’s, and it rang a bell for me. He was mentioned in Jo’s army record. She served under him in Afghanistan, back when he was a captain.”

“Have you gotten in touch with him?”

“Yes. He took my call. Sounded very relieved that we’d heard from Jo. Claimed he had no idea what was going down,” Chin’s expression made clear what he thought of that assertion, “but would call back as soon as he could.”

On cue, Chin’s phone rang. It was Shaw. Chin explained who they were, then turned the phone on speaker so they could all hear. Shaw had a slow, pleasant baritone, the kind that made you think of the reassuring Allstate Guy. “I’m not directly involved,” he said, “but knowing my connection to Jo, people reached out to me, in case I heard from them. I haven’t been able to learn much, but I gather that everything blew up badly. Several people are dead, they thought they had lost Jo and Donovan as well.”

It was left unsaid, but Steve had the distinct impression that while Shaw seemed grimly pleased that this wasn’t the case, other people involved might not be.

Shaw went on, “Can you arrest them at the gate? Get them to Shafter?”

Steve frowned. “We were thinking of something along those lines. But, for what? And, why us and not you?”

“Theft. I’m sure he took at least a handful of things with him that should never have left the research facility.”

That came too promptly even for this crisis. Steve was sure he heard some history there. “Okay. But, why can’t you send MPs?”

“This whole,” Shaw paused, obviously choosing his next words with care, “project is a Hail Mary put together at the last minute by parties who should have known better.” He sighed. “It seems their markers got called in by someone else. It doesn’t officially exist, and can’t. Get them to Shafter. I can take it from there.”

Steve and his team were at the airport thirty minutes early, airport security and HPD standing by. As they stood about the gate area on the ground level, waiting to go out and board the plane using the rear stairs, he assured himself that this would be just like any other fugitive apprehension. Nothing to worry about. Completely standard operating procedure. Not at all dicey, like, say, collecting two amateur spies fleeing from a mission gone up in flames, carrying God knew what sort of intelligence with them. Any minute now he would start to believe it, he was sure.

The plane actually landed a few minutes early, and after what seemed an interminable wait, but was really probably only about a minute and half, Steve’s phone rang. “McGarrett.”

“It’s Zane. Where are you?”

“At the gate. We’ll be coming in to arrest you as soon as the plane is parked. Try to look a little surprised and disappointed.”

“Right. I think there are at least two people on the plane with us who’d like to take us out of play and retrieve our packs.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I spent two years running from the FBI. I’m pretty sure when I’m being followed.”

Steve chuckled quietly. “Fair enough. See you in a few.”

“Our fugitives from justice?”

Steve refused to rise to Danny’s bait. “Yes. Our fugitives who call first, just to let us know they’re anxiously waiting for us. You know. How fugitives do.”

Okay. So, maybe he rose just a little bit. He could see Danny smirking out of the corner of his eye. Steve cleared his throat, then with a glance that took in Chin and Kono as well, he said, “Chin, you and Kono cuff them, Danny, you and I will be carrying their packs, and trying to spot at least one, maybe two tails.”

“Why can’t I cuff them? What happened to ‘book’em Danno’?”

“Because you’re being an ass.”

“Me? I’m being an ass?”

“I get it, Danny, I do. But you’re blaming them for something they had no control over. Because it’s easier to do that than to deal with the reality of a system that violates things you believe in.”

“Like, truth, justice, and the American way? Oh, and, not arbitrarily executing people?”

“Danny,” Kono broke in, “they need our help.”

“And like good little operatives, we aim to please, do we?”

“No. Like friends. That’s what friends do.”

“Friends. They’re everybody’s friends. Everybody likes them. Zane and Jo. Jo and Zane.” Danny altered his voice into a breathless falsetto and fluttered his hands around his face, “ ‘When are they coming back for a visit, Steve? They’re so much fun! I like them so much!’” Dropping his voice back to his normal register and his hands to his hips he glared at Kono. “Even your aunties like them.”

Kono crossed her arms and glared back. “You have got to stop this, brah.”

“Everybody likes you too, Danny,” Chin added.

“What? Wait!” Danny held up his hands. “I am NOT jealous! You don’t need to reassure me about my place.”

“Fine.” Chin turned his back on Danny and stared at the gate agent, waiting for their cue.

After a pointed frown, Kono did the same thing.

Danny looked at Steve and assumed the classic, hands-open pose of a bewildered man, a brilliantly executed ‘what did I do?’ expression on his face.

Steve crossed his own arms and sighed. Back in the spring, Zane and Jo had been vacationing on the island and he had met them while rock climbing. They had hit it off immediately, sparking a new friendship. Later, Five-0 had helped Zane and Jo rescue a kidnapped colleague, which was good, but the operation had concluded with the covert execution of five men, which was bad. Steve had accepted General Mansfield’s order for what it was, the neatest solution to an intractable problem. Danny, however, had been righteously pissed over what he saw as Steve’s consistent rejection of the ideals of police work in favor of the brutal calculus of warfare. It only added fuel to an old argument, and one they would probably never be able to fully resolve. But, at some point, Danny had transferred his anger from Steve directly to Zane and Jo, or really, just Zane.

Steve hadn’t been aware of it at the time, mostly because Danny had avoided him as much as he could until Zane and Jo returned to Oregon. Steve had hoped the week they spent at his house would give Danny the opportunity to get to know Zane and his wife, see what Steve liked about them, deal with what happened, and let it go. But it didn’t pan out that way because Danny refused to participate.

Danny’s absence aside, their visit had been a blast. They liked everything, from the beach to the mountains, and were willing to try anything once, from spam to surfing. They had been a huge hit at the Kalakaua/Kelly event Chin had dragged them all off to, one of those gatherings that began as ‘stop by for coffee’ and ended with fifty people and a roaring barbeque and an active, open bar. They even worked in more rock climbing.

Once they were gone, Steve and Danny almost immediately settled back into their familiar routines, easy give and take restored. So Steve had happily assumed that during his self-imposed time out, Danny had gotten over his anger on his own. Then he’d tried to share a very funny, and very obscene, joke Zane emailed him, and Danny had practically turned purple with rage. After a jaw-dropping harangue, Danny finally slammed out of the office bellowing about his role as the father of a beloved daughter whom he could not bear to release into a world in which such vile things existed.

A few experiments later, and Steve realized that Danny hadn’t gotten over anything at all. He had only pushed all of his anger onto Donovan. Pointing out that this was particularly bizarre, because it was Lupo who had issued the order to her security force under direct orders from her own DOD superior, had no impact. So, Steve dropped it. He told himself things like ‘out of sight, out of mind,’ and ‘time heals all wounds,’ and similar reassuring clichés. He didn’t share either of the other emails he’d received from Zane since then.

If he was being really honest with himself, Danny blaming Zane rather than Steve smoothed the way for Steve to make his move on Danny without sorting their professional differences. And for Danny to respond positively, even after Steve cautiously explained that his relationship with Catherine was part of the package, and that he wanted to explore the possibilities of a less conventional romance. If anything, that had actually seemed to reassure Danny, took some of the weight off what they were doing, meant that no one had to take on more relationship than they were ready for.

Catherine had been even more willing than Danny. In fact, Steve thought he had even detected relief on her part. Now she could set aside the weird tug of war she and Danny had found themselves in and instead work with him to balance all their lives. The only thing she asked was that she be the only woman in Steve’s life. Wrapped around her in his bed, skin-to-skin, heartbeat-to-heartbeat, that had been a frighteningly easy promise to make, clear eyes and open heart. Without Danny’s place safe in his life he might have been too panicked to make it. With him, some of the hard knots pulled free and loose. Steve slipped into love with them both as effortlessly as he swam in the sea.

But with Zane and Jo’s arrival imminent, Danny was positively sparking from suppressed energy, a mass of combustible emotions and unsettled arguments just looking for a flame.

The plane slowly taxied up to the gate, and after the usual round of checks and safety procedures, Steve and his team crossed the short distance of noisy, hot tarmac and climbed the rear stairs. The passengers had stayed in their seats at the instructions of the pilot and flight crew, so the aisles were clear. Zane and Jo were in a middle row, toward the back, which made picking them up easy. Coming up from behind startled them enough that they looked genuinely surprised, and then they both adopted attitudes of grim resignation.

In their jeans and battered leather jackets and scuffed boots, with tired eyes and appearing vaguely un-showered, and in Zane’s case, quite unshaven, they looked exactly like the sort of couple who could be carrying stolen property.

With Danny carrying their packs, grumbling under his breath about demeaning tasks and what are you hauling in here, anyway, rocks?, they made their way off the plane and into the back corridors of Honolulu International Airport.

“Did you see them?” Zane asked under his breath.

“I think so. 34B and 23H?”

“You’re good.”

“They were already on the phone, reporting to someone.”

“Yeah. Not so good.”

Once they had passed behind locked security doors, both Zane and Jo straightened up and let out huge sighs of relief. “Oh man,” Zane grinned at Steve as Chin opened his handcuffs. “I have rarely been so glad to be cuffed in my life.”

Steve grinned back at him as he unlocked Jo’s cuffs, “Do I want to know about the other times you’ve been glad?”

Rubbing her wrists briskly, Jo turned to look at him. She grinned, her brows arching in firm warning over her laughing eyes, “No. No, you don’t.” Then she reached up and hugged him tightly. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure.” Steve said, hugging her back, faintly surprised once again that the top of her head barely cleared his shoulder. She always seemed to take up so much more space than that. Letting go of him, Jo turned to hug Kono and Steve reached out to clasp Zane’s hand, pulling him into a one-armed embrace. “Good to see you, man. Even like this.”

By the time hugs were exchanged all around, they were all a little giddy with relief. Even Danny had managed to eke out a small smile and a one-armed hug for Jo, though all Zane got was a handshake and a grimace that, on a very charitable viewing, might once have had a relationship with a smile.

After they had all made it inside the small suite of security offices halfway down a white utility hallway, Jo turned to the airport security staffer who had accompanied them and demanded, “rest room?”

“Down that small hall and to the left, first set of doors.”

“Thank you!” she cried, and sped off the way she was directed.

Steve turned to Zane and gestured at their packs, inquiring, “Do I even want to know what you have?”

“Yeah,” Danny seconded. “One of those is really fucking heavy.” He toed the offending backpack, then pulled back, eyeing it suspiciously. “That won’t explode, will it?”

“Yeah, Danny. Seoul Airport security totally let me board a commercial airliner with a backpack full of explosives. Kick it and see.”

“Very funny, jackass.”

“Bite me.”

They glared at each other for a moment, but Steve could see that Zane’s heart wasn’t really in it. Zane turned back to Steve. “And, no, you don’t want to know.” He twisted his lips ruefully. “Some things are better not shared.”

“So, what went wrong on this little mission of yours, anyway?” Danny asked.

Zane pulled off his jacket and rolled it up, shoving it into the larger and heavier of the two packs. He was wearing a hideous and slightly too small ‘Gangnam District’ tourist tee shirt underneath. Steve figured it was even odds whether or not that had been the largest he could find in a hurry, or he liked the way it showed off his prodigiously well-toned abs.

Hefting the pack up as he rose, he slipped it back on, rolling his shoulders until it settled comfortably. “Honestly? I don’t really know.” He glanced sharply at Danny, “And it wasn’t my mission. There were a lot of things wrong with their exceptionally stupid plan, any of a half dozen flaws that were predictable spots for disaster.” He turned back to Steve and Chin, “We were already inside the facility and almost done with our part, when all hell broke loose behind us. After that, it’s mostly been running. Without a plan. For four days.” His expression darkened. “Loosing people on the way.”

He looked up as Jo re-entered. “Better, babe?”

She had taken the time to wash her face and pull her long, dark hair into a ponytail, smooth and neat against her head. She had stripped off her jacket and she also had on a souvenir tee-shirt, emblazoned with an anonymous looking mountain range. Hers didn’t cling nearly as tightly as Zane’s, but did nothing to hide her figure either. In fact, with the loose hem of her shirt spilling over her belt and her jeans tucked into her combat boots, she looked a lot like Kono’s shorter and curvier cousin.

She sighed with relief. “Oh my God, yes. I may get out of this without a yeast infection after all.”

Zane grimaced, an aggrieved frown appearing between his eyebrows. With a petulant whine in his voice, he demanded of the room, “Is there no aspect of my life that Mansfield’s fucking mission will not screw with?”

Jo shot him an evil eye. “So glad my discomfort is all about you!”

Which cowed him not at all. “In this case, yeah! It is as much about me as you.”

“Speaking of things better not shared!” Danny groaned. “Shut up about the personal parts people!”

Zane and Jo swiveled their heads to hit Danny with identical glares.

“It’s not over until you’re in Shaw’s hands,” Steve jumped in before things could drift any further into the treacherous shoals of TMI. “Come on. This way.”

“You’ve heard from Shaw?” Jo asked, her irritated expression lighting with pleased relief.

Steve filled her in as they made their way through the underground maze to the parking area. After listening without interruption, she frowned and said, “I’d feel a lot better if anyone had been in contact with Mansfield.”

“You don’t trust Shaw?”

“Oh, no. I do. He’s a good officer and deeply familiar with our work in Oregon. If Mansfield is MIA, Shaw is definitely my choice.”

“Yeah,” Zane piped up, “Jackboots is a pretty good guy, all things considered.”

“You really have to stop calling him that,” Jo snapped. “Especially if he’s the one who gets us out of this.”

“Fine. He gets us out of this, I’ll stop calling him Jackboots.”

“I’m not making a deal, Zane.”

“I’m not either. I said I liked the guy, didn’t I?”

“Hey!” Steve barked, “This isn’t over yet. Stay alert.”

Jo immediately looked chagrined, and nodded her understanding. Zane looked offended, then after he glanced at Jo, thoughtful. Then he nodded too. Steve decided that dealing with really smart people had its upsides.

Steve directed Zane and Jo into the backseat of Chin’s SUV and he took the wheel, Kono riding shotgun. Chin and Danny followed at a discrete distance in the Camaro. They pulled out of the parking lot and began to wend their way through the sea of rental car lots toward the frontage road.

Danny’s voice crackled in Steve’s ear at the same moment he saw it in the rear view mirror. “You have a tail.”

“Yep. See it.”

“Where?” Kono asked.

“Silver Impala.”

“Got it.”

“How did they find us so fast?” Zane asked.

“Airport’s not that big. Once we went through the security doors, there were only so many possible exits to watch,” Steve answered. Which also, unfortunately, meant they had enough watchers to go around. Whoever they were.

“Damn!” Danny’s voice echoed in his ear. “A second one. Black Malibu.”

Adrenaline starting to slip through his veins, Steve said, “See it.” He looked over at Kono. “Black Malibu.” He glanced at Jo through the rearview mirror. “Two bogeys now, and we’ve just turned onto the frontage road. I think you need to tell me what’s in the bag.”

“Shit.” Zane swore briefly. “Okay. We were supposed to make copies, but we were given crap equipment to work with and then we ran out of time. So I yanked the drives and the boards for the ICBM guidance systems instead. That’s what’s in the bag.”

“Where the hell were you?” Steve demanded, suddenly knowing the answer and feeling the peculiar thrilling terror that comes from blowing up something really, really big.

“Yongbyon.”

Center of North Korea’s nuclear efforts. Holy shit. And Wow. So, so many questions. “How the hell did you get that through security in Seoul?”

“It looks like what it is; old, disassembled computer parts. I said we had volunteered at an electronics-recycling center and these parts were still good, so I was going to use them when I got home to build laptops for underprivileged children. Most people know fuck-all about what the inside of a computer looks like, so it was good.”

“Steve!” Kono interrupted, “White panel van, ahead on the left.”

“Holy crap. They’re going to try to box us in. Arm up, ladies.”

Steve took the next right turn at speed, and a second later, flipped on the sirens.

“What the hell, Steven!” Danny shouted in his ear, the radio earpiece not really doing much to keep it less deafening. “Way to tell them where you are!”

“My island, Danny. Mine. We aren’t running from them. We’re going to arrest them.” Steve said. “Kono. Call it in, request backup.”

Seeing the white van flash by at the next intersection, running fast in the street parallel to them, Steve grinned in anticipation. “Danny? We’ve got the panel van. See if you can herd either or both of the others towards us.”

He sped up, charged the next intersection and cut left. The van just beat them across the parallel crossroad, but he swung in directly behind. No one was going to chase him, not in Hawaii. Pursuit was Five-0’s job.

Jo’s happy cry from the backseat, “You remembered my gun!” made him smile.

“Beretta M9,” he said, risking a check in the review mirror. Her smile was the brilliant one that lit up her whole face, and he grinned wider. “Of course I remember.”

“You remember her birthday, too?” Zane asked.

Steve started laughing, even as he spun left to follow the van. Just because Zane knew he was a jealous bastard didn’t ever stop him from acting like one. “Make you miss your cop days, Jo? Nothing like a good car chase, am I right?”

Jo’s answering laugh managed to contain a hint of regret, “Not a lot of hot pursuit in a tiny research community.”

“Hey!” Zane protested, “What about that time with the kids from Tesla High?”

“What?” Jo sounded confused, then accusing. “You had something to do with that, didn’t you?”

Steve stamped on the brakes to follow the van into an alley, slinging everyone to the right.

“Bigger issues, Jo!” Zane said.

The driver of the van did his best, but he obviously didn’t know the area well, and within fifteen minutes had gotten himself so turned around that he trapped himself between pursuit and open water. Recognizing the dead end, the van spun to a stop at the far edge of an empty lot and four men, including the driver, boiled out, the rat-a-tat-tat of automatic fire filling the air.

Jo yelled, “Zane, head down. Now!”

Cursing his failure to have everyone in tac vests, Steve, Kono and Jo spilled out of the car, already firing back. Steve and Jo used their doors as cover, Kono shooting over the hood, and Steve bellowed, “5-O! Drop your weapons!”

He didn’t expect them to do that, of course, but there were a few pedestrians in the area so it was better to be clear about who was who.

The man on Steve’s right fell, clutching his leg, and Steve knew Kono had taken him down. He got the man in the middle square in his vest, knocking him flat, damn them for being better prepared than he was. The man to his left went down with a hit to the shoulder. Had to be Jo. The last man standing ducked behind the van, obviously deciding to make a run for it.

Steve took off after him, shouting, “Stay with Jo!”

Just then the black Malibu came barreling around the corner, headed straight for Steve and the man he was chasing. The man on foot veered away to make a run for it, but Danny and Chin were right behind the Malibu, and there was no time. The Malibu caught their accomplice head on, the solid thump of impact echoing in Steve’s belly. The hit lofted the man over the hood, up the windshield and off the roof to crumple on the ground behind. Danny swerved to miss him as Steve dove to the side to get out of the way of the Malibu. The driver slammed on his brakes, apparently aiming for a fishtail turn, but with a double popping of tires being shot out, the black car squealed and skidded across the open lot, coming to rest with the sound of crumpling metal against the front bumper of Chin’s SUV.

Steve was on his feet and running even as Chin and Danny burst out of the Camaro. They converged on the Malibu at the same time as Kono and Jo, the sirens of HPD blaring behind them.

Fortunately, the driver and his partner decided not to attempt to shoot their way out of arrest or into suicide, and in relatively short order five men were in custody. The sixth had not survived his encounter with the Malibu. The men turned out to be American, guns for hire, not enemy agents. Steve had no trouble believing that they had no idea why they were supposed to grab Zane and Jo; or that they were simply supposed to wait for instructions after that.

Unfortunately, the silver Impala had made a clean get away, which meant there were still people out there with orders to stop them. And given their now obvious destination of Shafter, well, there weren’t that many possible routes. Watching all three approaches would be easy if their opponents had enough manpower.

Steve finished checking in with the HPD officer in charge, then headed for Kono, Jo and Zane, whom Jo had finally allowed to get out of the car.

As he neared them, he heard Kono ask, “So. Car chases with teenagers, huh?”

Jo narrowed her eyes up at Zane. “Long story. From another time.”

“Yes, dear. I know.” Zane smirked down at her, even as he reached up to smooth his thumb across her eyebrow. “Such adorable frown lines.” Then he bent to press a kiss against her forehead.

Kono sighed even as she twinkled at them, her dimple dancing in her cheek. “You’ve been married more than a year. Honeymoon should be over by now.”

Zane and Jo turned to look at her, identical expressions of mild confusion on their faces. Then Zane laughed. Wrapping his arm around Jo, he said, “This? We’ve always been like this. Even when we were sneaking around.”

“Sneaking around?” Kono frowned. “Were you cheating on somebody?”

“No.” Zane shook his head, not offended, just correcting. “But the head of security didn’t want anyone to know she was banging the resident screw up.”

“You are such a jackass.” Jo slapped at Zane’s arm, but, not very hard. He didn’t even pretend to wince. And she left her hand resting against his chest afterward, her other arm still wrapped snugly around his waist. She turned her head to look at Kono. “He wasn’t a screw up. But he was a felon on parole, and, well, major, major weirdness if everyone knew. At least, until we knew. If it would be more.”

“Friends and lovers came later. And we got married a long time after that,” Zane added. He grinned teasingly at Jo. “And I was a screw up.”

Kono didn’t say anything, but Steve saw the wheels turning. He had a feeling that Jo was going to be cornered as soon as Kono could arrange it. Possibly ambushed even. Kono had never had anyone to talk with about Adam Noshimuri, not anyone who might understand. Gods knew he and Chin and Danny weren’t any good on that front, their position having always been that there was no way the sex was good enough or unique enough to balance out the danger. And if the danger was the point, there was always sky-diving. Even Cath, who was pretty tight with Kono these days, wasn’t very sympathetic. He’d have to find a moment to give Jo a heads up.

Chin and Danny joined them then. Chin said, “We need a new plan.”

“Yes.” Jo stepped away from Zane. “I should call Shaw, let him know why we aren’t there yet.”

“A full on, sirens-blaring escort to Shafter isn’t in the works?” Danny asked, his expression hopeful but his tone already resigned.

“No.” Zane answered him, saving Steve the difficulty. “How could it be? Without Mansfield around, how would you even explain what you wanted it for? How would you explain us?” he gestured at Jo and himself, “Much less what we’ve been up to?”

“Remember what Shaw said?” Steve added, “That the whole project is unofficial? When HPD asks who authorizes this, who will be waiting for it, will anyone at Shafter even take their call?”

Danny frowned, his lips twisting in frustration as he struggled to come up with an answer.

“Besides,” Zane went on, not waiting for Danny’s inevitable objection, “Bringing the HPD in makes them part of something that they shouldn’t want anything to do with, makes them accountable for shit better left far away from them.”

“Okay,” Danny nodded at that, finally conceding the point. “How about this? We put you back in cuffs, take you to holding at HQ and wait for Shaw to send someone to pick you and your stuff up.”

Zane shook his head. “That just gives everyone more time to intercept us, and puts more couriers at risk. Assuming Shaw would even agree.”

“So what then? No one comes to claim their shit?” Danny demanded. “And why do we care?”

“Oh. Someone will come,” Zane said. “It’s just a question of who. And how.”

That sounded plenty ominous to Steve, knowing what Zane was carrying around in his pack, but Danny barreled on, oblivious. “Well, how about we leave you here, find your own way?”

“Fine!” Zane threw up his hands as his voice rose in exasperation. “You explain to the JCS and the DOD why you didn’t cooperate with their fucked up mission.”

Steve interrupted before the argument could spiral further out of hand, “What we really need is some sort of diversion. Right?”

He looked around and saw shrugs of agreement.

“Okay,” he suggested, “How about a car accident right in front of the main gate at Shafter?”

Chin nodded thoughtfully. “That could work. Make enough distraction, give the folks at Shafter a reason to mobilize at the front, gather a crowd, and Zane and Jo could slip in behind it all.”

Kono nodded slowly. “Yeah. I can see how that would play out… but, logistics, who drives what? Chin’s car is out, for now. Too obvious.”

“What about asking Catherine and my mom to drive the cars? Cath is off duty today,” Steve offered.

“Sounds plausible.” Zane nodded. “And it would be good to see Doris again, dude. She’s pretty smokin’. Got that whole, best-friend’s hot mom thing going on.” He provided a cheerful leer.

Steve scowled at him. “She can tie you in knots.” He tossed in a glare for good measure.

“Right up my alley. I love that.”

Steve tried blinking his eyes, but it didn’t change anything. Asshole was actually rubbing his hands with an anticipatory gleam in his eye. “What is wrong with you?” he demanded.

Zane dropped his hands and shrugged. Narrowing his eyes he said, “Karma’s a bitch.”

Jo elbowed her way in between them, somehow they had ended up nearly toe-to-toe. Putting her hands on their chests, she shoved them away from each other, hard enough they both stumbled slightly to catch their balance. Glaring at them both, she said, “Do you two need a ruler? We can get this whole size thing sorted right now.”

Steve frowned at her. “What? No!”

Zane just smirked. “What would be the fun in knowing?”

Danny turned to Jo, an expression of disbelief on his face. “Was your whole week like this?”

She folded her arms, “On and off. Fortunately, for my sanity, and,” she dropped her voice to a growl that was nearly a purr as she caught both Steve and Zane in her warning glare, “their lives,” she turned and smiled sweetly at Danny, “more off than on.”

Danny laughed sharply, then looked at Steve. “No wonder you like him so much. You’re both perpetually fifteen.”

Chin cleared his throat. “So. About a diversionary car crash.”

“It sounds good, but,” Kono shook her head, “no way Cath is risking her car!”

Steve frowned in annoyance. “Obviously. We’ll provide the cars.”

“What cars?” Danny demanded. “We don’t have any extra cars!”

Steve looked at Zane. “Just how good are you?”

“Stole your truck, didn’t I? Besides,” he sighed and a brief wave of darkness crossed his features, “I’ve been practicing lately.”

“Steal cars? You’re going to steal cars to stage a car accident?” Danny’s voice was rising with his incredulity.

“At this point the game is hot potato, and the longer we have the goods, the more likely it is we lose them. And that someone else gets hurt.” Zane responded. “We have got to get them off our hands and into Shaw’s as soon as we can.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, “it will take too long to get cars legitimately for this. And the cars can be returned, in as good or better condition. Right?” He looked at Zane.

“I’m sure someone’s budget has room. Mine, if no one else can be made to cough it up.”

Steve turned to Danny. “Come on. You know he’s good for it.”

He should, Steve thought. They all should. Zane had used up their entire supply of C4 and most of their grenades last time, and had all of it replaced and more before he left Hawaii. Steve didn’t know exactly how he’d done it, but he hadn’t wanted to know either.

“That is so not the point!” Danny exclaimed, punctuating his words with emphatic waves of his arms. “Why is it that when these two show up,” he pointed at Zane and Jo, “we start breaking laws?”

“We break the rules all the time, Danny,” Kono said. “I know you don’t like it, but honestly, it isn’t unique for us.”

“And I don’t like to play the whole ‘national security’ card thing, because that’s mostly bullshit, but this time, it is. Really.” Zane added.

Danny shoved his hands in his pockets and scowled balefully at all of them.

“Danny?” Jo stepped over to him, tilting her chin to look him in the face, her own large, dark eyes steady and more than a little mesmerizing. Steve guessed that Danny would fold pretty quickly in the face of those eyes. “We could really use your help.” She added a small, kind smile. “But, I also understand if you’d rather sit this one out.”

Danny eventually tore his gaze away from hers to look at his toes, then the horizon, then finally around at all their faces, ending up with his eyes on Steve’s. “You’re really going to do this thing?”

“Yes.”

He sighed dramatically. “Fine. I’m in.”

Score another one for Jo. “All in?” Steve asked. Just to be sure.

“Yes!” He shot Steve an exasperated glare. “All in!”

New Fic: Bright Morning Comes

2013-05-01T17:28:30Z

Part II

He sighed dramatically. “Fine. I’m in.”

Score another one for Jo. “All in?” Steve asked. Just to be sure.

“Yes!” He shot Steve an exasperated glare. “All in!”

“Okay. Kono? You call Cath, I’ll take Doris. Zane, you and Chin decide how you want to set up the crash. Jo? You get in touch with Shaw and fill him in?”

Doris was more than willing to pitch in, too willing and too pleased, actually. Too late, Steve realized that she would see this as an invitation to step further back into his life. And, more worrisome, he suspected he was probably happy about that, which is probably why he had thought of her in the first place when he realized they were going to need more drivers. Damn.

Catherine was also game, which was not a surprise, and Shaw, who had begun to worry, promised to have people waiting for their cue.

Chin and Zane came up with a scheme for a three car pile up, Cath in one car, Doris in one car, and Danny and Kono in the third. Meanwhile, Steve would drive Zane and Jo to the gate and drop them off to make their run for it as soon as the drivers were out of their cars and yelling at each other. Finally, in a change Steve whole-heartedly approved of, Chin would take the computer drives and boards and ride straight into Shafter on his bike. “What made you think of that, anyway? Using Zane and Jo as more decoys?”

“It was Jo’s idea,” Chin said.

“Chin is the most disciplined,” Jo explained. “And least likely to stop if anyone else gets hurt.”

Steve shook his head as he grinned ruefully at them both. “Yeah. You probably nailed that one.”

“And I wanted Kono on the ground, center stage, where she’ll have the best view of any possible shooters,” Chin added.

“So. Four cars?” Zane asked.

Chin nodded in slow agreement. “Yeah.”

“Okay then. Let’s get going. All from around here, or should we spread it out?”

“Fast is better,” Steve said, “But let’s at least get away from the HPD.”

Steve made their excuses to the duty cop left at the scene, and they peeled out in Chin’s SUV after kicking off the rest of the front bumper and leaving it behind.

Zane was fast. He had electronics that made grabbing late model cars almost effortless. But he was just as efficient with old school auto-theft. In a four block radius less than two miles away from their starting point, they took two newer cars, one mid 2000s SUV, and one banged up old mini van. The easier to hop out of, Zane explained when Steve raised his eyebrows at that one.

They rendezvoused at an empty warehouse Kamekona pointed them to, after the brief round of ritual bartering. Steve sent Danny off to hold the warehouse with the first car, mostly to keep him from needling Zane any further about his heroic life of crime. Unfortunately this only gave Danny time to compose a number of irritating observations about Grand Theft Auto, PhD’s from FPU – Federal Pen University, get it?– and the various and manifold pleasures of thug life. He let them fly as soon as Steve and Zane arrived with the last car.

Zane, busy prepping the packages for Chin, ignored him. Despite Steve’s glares and failed attempts at telepathic communication to just shut the hell up, this only made Danny up the ante.

“It must help keep the role playing authentic, the wife knowing she should arrest you for real, huh, Donovan?” Danny all but elbowed Zane in the side as he chuckled nastily.

That got an arctic glare, but Zane somehow, heroically even, managed to keep his mouth closed.

So Danny turned to Jo. “Hey! Am I right? I’m right, aren’t I?” He leered at her. “Knowing your bad boy is still a really bad boy must keep the story fresh, hm?”

Jo, her jaw tight with irritation, eyed him levelly and just let Danny’s rudeness hang in the air until even Danny started to twitch uncomfortably. “Are you finished?” she asked.

Danny shrugged and had the good sense to look slightly ashamed of himself. He also refused to look at Zane or at Steve. Which was just as well, Steve thought. Zane was probably fighting the temptation to either slug him or bait him into truly unforgivable territory. Probably the later, knowing Zane. Steve couldn’t think of anything to do to diffuse the situation, either, in part because he was so exasperated that Danny was creating it in the first place.

Under most circumstances Steve loved Danny’s mouth, for what he said and for all the clever things he could do with it. But every now and then, like, say, now, or sometimes when dealing with Rachel, it took him in way, way too deep to easily walk back. Which was why his legal bills required a monthly payment plan. And why some people didn’t like him very much.

“Good.” Jo turned her back on him.

The sound of Chin’s bike was a welcome disruption, and soon they were engrossed in diagramming out the proposed accident at the T-stop intersection in front of Shafter.

Less than ten minutes later Kono arrived in her own car, having left the Camaro at HQ and collected Doris and Catherine on the way back.

“Jo! Zane!” Doris cried, holding open her arms and giving each of them a strong hug. “It is so very good to see you again!”

“Et tu, Doris?” Danny said.

Doris raised her brow as she gave Danny a long considering look. Finally she said, “Jealousy does not become you, Daniel.”

“I am not jealous!”

“No.” Zane turned on him, all of his normal good humor entirely evaporated by a wave of surprisingly cold anger. “You’re pissed because we violated your incredibly erratic personal rules. I’ve read your files. Even before you hooked up with Steve you played dirty when you had too. Since then, you’ve followed commando man into every civil liberties violation that enters his head.”

“I have not!” Danny looked outraged. And faintly guilty as well, Steve thought, watching him roll his shoulders into a nearly imperceptible defensive crouch.

“You have too!” Zane curled his lip in a way that managed to be both mocking and contemptuous, and entirely antagonizing. Steve suddenly found the time to be amazed that Zane had made it out of federal prison alive. “You even stood there and watched while a SEAL team played a giant ass counting coup game with Mexican drug lords. Because apparently, according to your personal code, Mexicans aren’t worthy of civil liberties, so cold-blooded murder of them is all A-OK by you.”

“How the hell do you even know that?” Now Danny was just straight-up angry.

“How do you think I know that?” Zane all but rolled his eyes, his ‘moron’ unsaid but audible all the same. “I looked it up. Your record isn’t even secret. It barely rises to confidential.” Somehow Zane managed to make this sound like being banished to the children’s table, a direct hit at one of Danny’s most painful insecurities. “So when you do get extraordinary, one-time only clearances they stand out like a fucking beacon. You’ve been a dick to me, and to Jo,” Steve thought it was pretty clear everyone that this was the heart of the problem, “almost since we met, so I wanted to know what the hell crawled up your ass and died.”

“Did you figure it out, brainiac?” Danny’s eyes were narrow with fury and his tone was barely removed from grade-school taunting.

“Yeah. I did.” Zane folded his arms and dismissed him with shrug. “Turns out you’re just an asshole.”

Danny rendered speechless didn’t happen all that often, but now he just gaped at Zane. Finally, in a much calmer voice, he said, “That whole thing actually really pissed me off.”

“Which ‘whole thing’?” Zane asked, implying vast multitudes of options.

“That SEAL thing. My objections wouldn’t have made any difference though.”

Zane nodded slowly. After a moment he let stretch nearly to the breaking point, he said, “Sucks, doesn’t it. Becoming a DOD lackey.” His voice was oddly sympathetic, and Steve was relieved to see Danny’s shoulders begin to relax as the tension began to leak out of the room.

Danny flicked his eyes to Steve, and then looked away from all of them. “Yeah,” was all he said.

“Okay then.” Kono broke the scene with a bright, if forced, smile. “I have tac vests for everyone. After our last encounter with these guys, seemed like a good idea.”

Steve wanted to hug her, but knew better. “Good call.” He looked around. “Gear up everybody. No point in standing around here. Jo? Give Shaw the head’s up.”

They were about half way back to Shafter when Chin radioed in. “The Impala is patrolling the intersection southeast of Shafter.”

“Has he made you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Okay.” Steve thought for a few seconds, and then decided to come around from the other direction. “Everybody, circle around and be ready to come in again on my mark. I’m going to bring Zane and Jo in from the north.”

He looked over at Jo. “I’m guessing that they will be watching from this direction too, and now I’ll have to stop on the wrong side of the road, but….”

“That draws more attention away from Chin and makes us more visible running for the gate,” Jo concluded approvingly.

“Oh. Yay.” Zane said from the backseat.

They spotted the black Camry just as they exited the freeway and turned back south toward Shafter. At about the same moment the driver must have decided it was them and pulled into traffic two cars behind them. “We’ve got a black Camry on our tail,” Steve announced, his adrenaline singing now.

“Guys,” Catherine’s voice rang in Steve’s ear, “another car just pulled out behind me from under the trees here at Funston Road. He isn’t looking at me, but I think he’s gunning for you.”

“Okay – pile up as many cars as you can.”

Cath and Doris hit their marks exactly, two left turns at once in the intersection immediately in front of the Shafter gate. Danny and Kono plowed right into Doris’s rear bumper, having been following—deliberately—too closely as she swung across a lane and into the turn.

The silver Impala promptly rear ended Danny and Kono’s older model SUV. With a screeching of tires, two more cars behind the Impala barely managed to avoid collisions.

Steve pulled to a stop on the far side of the road from Shafter. Danny, Cath and Doris were all emerging from their cars, already yelling about whose fault it was. Then he saw the driver of the Impala pulling a weapon as he strode for the center of the intersection, his partner only a few steps behind him. Kono popped up over the roof of the SUV, her gun already in her hands, and began firing at the driver of the Impala. He promptly darted back for cover, returning fire as he ran.

“Go!” Steve cried to Jo and Zane. Flinging himself toward the Camry, all of them dodging around another car trying to make the right merge onto the freeway entrance, he pulled his own gun and began firing at the Camry closing in fast. He hit the Camry’s windshield twice and the car spun out, slamming across the northbound lane and into the stone fence surrounding Shafter about twenty-five yards before reaching the main gate.

The air was full of the sound of gunfire. Zane and Jo were almost across the street, Zane pulling Jo behind him. Steve caught sight of Chin on his bike, simply gliding past all of the turmoil and turning right and into the entrance of the Fort, disappearing around the bend with a wave from the guard as he passed through. Steve smiled in triumph, and then he heard his mother’s scream. “Steve! Hit the ground!”

At almost the same moment he heard the whooshing bark of a rocket launcher.

The street directly in front of Zane vanished in a geyser of asphalt and dirt, the force of the blast throwing him up and back, tossing him into Jo, spinning them both head over heels like rag-dolls, debris raining down across the entire intersection. They fell, cart-wheeling into the ground, and lay sprawled and still.

Steve had begun his dive as soon as he heard his mother’s shout. The force of the explosion knocked him sideways, but he was more or less prepared for it and already beginning a roll as he hit the pavement. He was pulling himself to his knees, trying to get a sense of what was happening when he saw two men running from the direction of the Camry and headed straight for Zane and Jo, and heard a second round of the rocket launcher.

He dropped to the ground again and covered his head, waiting for the impact before launching himself to his feet. He felt more than he heard a secondary explosion, and then the billowing heat and pressure of a gas tank going up in flames hit him like a wave, making him stagger.

Through the shimmering air he saw Jo standing over Zane and firing point blank into the faces of the two men who had made it within paces of them, blood and bits of bone flying as what was left of their heads snapped backwards and their bodies tumbled to the ground.

He turned his head to see what was happening with the mid-intersection collision and couldn’t make out any details, too many running people, too many flames, too much confusion. Men and women in army camo were rushing into the scene, traffic was beginning to back up into long lines in three directions behind the snarl at the gate, too many drivers were exiting their cars, trying to get a better look at the chaos.

Five more strides and he was at Jo’s side as she knelt over Zane, brushing dirt and blood from his face and growling, over and over, “Don’t stop breathing, damn you. Just. Don’t. Stop. Breathing.”

The next few minutes were chaotic, but not nearly as chaotic as they would have been without Shaw’s intervention. The squad that rushed out from Shafter was aware of what they were seeing. Before HPD even arrived, they had flagmen out sorting and redirecting traffic, the two bloodied men from the Impala in custody, and medics were gently sliding Zane onto a body board before transferring him into a waiting ambulance. Despite the flames, Danny, Kono, Cath and Doris were fine, bruises and cuts and a bit singed, but nothing more. Unfortunately, the men firing the rocket launcher had fled the scene.

Steve called the Governor’s office, needing to get out ahead of explaining why his mother, his girlfriend and two members of 5-O had just had an accident in front of Shafter in stolen cars.

Denning was understandably inclined to be cranky, but the careful use of Mansfield’s name, an invocation of national security, the cooperation of Lt. Col. Shaw and the people at Shafter, and he was willing at least to delay a dressing down until he’d had time to process the entire story.

Assisting HPD with the accident site was essential. Dumping them with Five-O’s extremely messy business would have only resulted in hostility and questions. Cheerful support earned him and his team enough good will that their misdirection about what they had been up to, foiling a terror plot, was accepted readily. It helped that they had two live suspects and two dead ones, as well as the rocket launcher, which had been left behind. They were able to pass the location itself off as the target of the terror plot. The two living suspects, having been threatened with military detention by hard-eyed officers in Army green, were happy to be taken away by HPD and ready to plead to any number of weapons violations as long as they stayed in the criminal justice system.

He also had to spend some time chatting up the officer Shaw had detailed to manage things on the ground at Shafter. The man obviously knew almost nothing about what was going on and was both thrilled and disappointed to be so close to, and yet so far from, something big. The packages Chin had delivered had been snatched up and whisked away by waiting intelligence officers.

As a result, it was almost three hours later before he was able to send his team home to rest and to take himself off to the hospital to check up on Zane and Jo. Catherine had called to let them know that Zane was alive and stabilized, but so far there had been little information about the extent of his injuries.

He arrived at Tripler, the massive Army medical complex on the island, to find Jo, rigid with tension, sitting between his mother and Cath in a small waiting room near ICU. Catherine stood as soon as she saw him and walked into his arms. He held her tightly for a moment or three longer than usual. The stricken look on Jo’s face provided all the reminder he needed to hold on to those he loved while he could.

“Hey,” Cath pulled back, reaching up to brush gentle fingers over his own bandaged cheek and forehead. Contusions he hadn’t realized he had taken until long after the excitement died down and a persistent medic finally pushed him down on the curb. “How are you doing?”

“I’m fine. Sore. But fine.” He caught her fingers and kissed them. “Any news?”

She nodded. “They think a large piece of pavement hit him full in the chest. Even with the vest, it crushed his sternum and broke several ribs. One of his lungs was punctured and there’s been a lot of internal bleeding. Plus the concussion from slamming into the ground, the broken wrist and the gash in his thigh. He was just too close to the point of impact.”

What she didn’t have to say was that without the vest, he probably would already be dead. “Is Jo hurt?”

“Minor concussion, sprained wrist. Bullet graze to the shoulder and three slugs in her vest. Major bruises where they hit. But he was between her and the blast, so he shielded her almost completely from any initial debris.”

Steve nodded and crossed the room to kneel in front of Jo. He started to put his hands on her knees, but she flinched back, so he pulled his hands away. “Hey. I came as soon as I could.”

She nodded, and worked up a very strained smile. “Thanks,” she said. Her voice was so faint and dry he could hardly hear it, but she coughed and tried again, stronger this time. “Thank you. I’m glad you’re here.”

They waited quietly for what seemed another very long time. At last a man in blue scrubs and a white coat appeared. “Mrs. Donovan?” he said, obviously not quite sure to whom he should be speaking.

Jo rose to her feet, her back straight and her shoulders square. “Yes?”

The doctor looked around, obviously wondering about privacy.

“It’s fine,” Jo said. “Go on.”

“We have him stabilized for now, but there’s been a lot of internal damage. Especially to his heart and lungs. They were seriously bruised at impact, and bone splinters ripped them up pretty badly on top of that. We’ve repaired everything we can for now, but he’s still bleeding and it’s not a good long term solution.”

Jo swayed, but she did not fall. “Meaning?”

“We think they will eventually fail. He needs new ones.”

“New organs? A new heart and lungs? That’s what he needs?”

“Yes. We’ve put him on the top of the transplant lists. He’s young, healthy and in excellent shape. If we can get organs in time, he should do very well.”

“You need a heart and lungs. For Zane.” Jo repeated, speaking slowly and clearly, as though it were terribly important that the doctor understand exactly what she was saying.

“Yes. He needs a new heart, and, ideally, new lungs.” The doctor nodded firmly. But then, with a quick glance at Steve and then Doris, he went on, “we can keep him going, here in the hospital, but, Mrs. Donovan, the wait times can be quite long. Especially for both a heart and lungs. You need to understand that.”

“No.” Jo shook her head. “There’s no need to wait.” She was fumbling for her phone. Once she had it in her hands, she raised a faintly trembling finger and pointed at the doctor. “Don’t move,” she ordered.

The doctor looked to Steve and then Doris in confusion, but they both shook their heads. They were as much in the dark as he was.

Whomever Jo was calling was taking their time picking up the phone, but eventually Jo breathed, “Allison? Allison, the doctor is here. He says Zane needs a new heart and lungs.”

She nodded sharply once, then twice, said, “OK,” then she held the phone out to the doctor. “Talk to her. Tell her everything.”

“Jo?” Steve asked, “What’s going on?”

“Allison and Henry will print him a heart. His heart. His lungs.”

“Um,” Steve exchanged wild glances with Cath and Doris. “Okay.”

He looked at the doctor whose eyes had gone as wide as he was sure his were as he listened to the person on the other end of the line. The doctor burst out, “Is this some sort of sick joke?”

Whatever this Allison said next had the doctor frowning, then leaning back as though to get away from someone poking their finger in his chest. Eventually, he cleared his throat, and said, “I see. Thank you Dr. Blake. I’ll alert the transplant team and put you in touch with the nurse’s station supervising Mr. Donovan’s care. I look forward to meeting you.”

He handed the phone back to Jo, who accepted it and stepped away to speak privately.

Steve looked at the doctor. “Well?”

“I don’t quite know what to say. Either I’ve just been colossally punked, and at the expense of a patient and his terrified wife, or, I’m about to participate in a medical advance that I thought was still only the stuff of science fiction.”

“And what is that, doctor?” Doris asked, using one of her more terrifying ‘don’t fuck with me’ smiles. About a seven on a one to ten scale, Steve thought. Aimed at anyone other than himself, watching his mother in action was always a bit freakishly satisfying.

The doctor didn’t even hesitate. “You’ve heard of 3-D printing, I assume?” At their nods, he continued, “This Dr. Blake assures me that they have organic 3-D printers. They are going to build, in their labs, new organs for Mr. Donovan. Replacements. Created specifically for him. Based on genetic information they already hold on all their employees. And fly them in. Within the next twenty-four hours.” He paused, frowning. “Allison Blake. That name is ringing a bell.”

Jo, who had finished with her phone call, interrupted his thought process. “When can I see him?”

“I’ll take you to look at him now, but only through the glass. In a few hours we will set him up in a private room.”

“When will he wake up?”

“Well.” The doctor scrubbed his hand through his thinning hair. “I was going to see if we could wake him in the morning, but with Dr. Blake’s news – I’m beginning to think it will be better to keep him sedated until after the next surgery.”

“No!” Jo swallowed hard. “I mean. I want to be able to speak with him before the next surgery. He would want it too.”

“He’s on a ventilator, Mrs. Donovan. It’s extremely uncomfortable and impossible to talk through.”

“Give him a tablet. He can type.” She raised her eyes to the doctor’s. “Please?”

Steve watched the doctor gradually crumble under the onslaught of Jo’s eyes. She had amazing eyes, Jo did. Large and expressive, and often so dark you could hardly see her pupils unless you were in bright light. Tonight you could drown in her eyes, terror and hope and love pulling you in and under until you were lost for good in their bottomless depths.

“Okay.” The doctor’s voice was weak at first, but gained strength as he spoke. “But not until morning. He needs the rest. And I’m sure you do as well.”

“I will stay here.”

The doctor looked to Steve and Doris. “It might be best if you all took shifts….?”

Doris nodded. “I agree.” She turned to Jo. “I’ll take you to Steve’s. You can shower and get some sleep.”

“No.” Jo shook her head and repeated, “I’m staying here.”

“Josephina Lupo you will do no such thing. You will come with me and get cleaned up and rested before tomorrow.”

Jo looked shocked. “How do you know my name?”

Doris smiled warmly at Jo. “Your husband likes to talk about you.”

Jo smiled back, a watery smile, but a genuine one, and she chuckled softly. “I imagine the difficulty is getting him to shut up.”

Doris wrapped her arm around Jo’s shoulders and began moving her to the exit. “Not at all. Listening to a man who loves his wife is a great pleasure. Though, I admit, I won’t be asking him a second time!”

Steve and Cath had finished a not quite as awful as anticipated cafeteria supper and were debating who would stay and who would go home for some rest themselves, when the door to the small waiting room off the ICU opened again. Looking up, they saw a very tall, dark-skinned Army officer entering, some sort of aide beside him. “McGarrett?” The man said.

Steve immediately recognized the voice, and the rank on his collar. He rose, offering his hand. “Shaw?”

“Yes. Good to meet you.” He turned to Cath, and offered her his hand, “And you as well, Ms. Rollins.”

Having now established that despite his uniform, they were not officially on duty, Shaw gestured towards the chairs, inviting them to sit with him.

“I wanted to offer my congratulations on your very quick work today. You earned yourself a lot of gratitude.”

“From?” Steve cocked his head encouragingly.

“When it might help, you’ll know.”

“Ah.”

“I also want to offer you my personal thanks. Jo Lupo is a very good friend of mine. I’m very relieved that she is back again, and mostly in one piece.”

Steve quirked his eyebrow, “And, Zane?”

Shaw laughed a quiet, rumbling laugh. “Donovan. Makes her happy. So, I’m happy he’s going to make it.”

“Hmm.”

“Well,” Shaw leaned forward, a bit conspiratorially, “I’m happy for him too. He is, slowly, proving that he is worth more than the trouble he brings. A great deal more. But you don’t need to tell him I said so.” He sat back and crossed his legs. “In fact, if you’d like to head home and get some rest, I would be happy to take a turn waiting.”

Steve searched Shaw’s face, trying to figure out what was making the small hairs on his arms stand up. “I think,” he said slowly, “I think I’ll just wait here. We’re running shifts and someone else from our team will be here in a while.”

“No need. Really. I know you had a very busy day.”

“And, if you are planning to whisk him away in the dead of night, at least I’ll be able to tell Jo I did everything I could to stop it.”

Shaw chuckled again. “The thought had crossed our minds, McGarrett. But, he’s really in no condition to be moved. And this is a military hospital, so the necessary security protocols can be established. Beginning with this.” He gestured for his aide, who handed over two clipboards. “I’m afraid that you’ll both have to sign, again, to guarantee your silence about all that you heard here today. Specifically about the extent of Donovan’s injuries, and about how he will be treated.”

“The whole ‘printing him new organs’ thing?” Cath asked.

“Yes.” He smiled approvingly at Cath, and then grew serious again. “The DOD is not sitting on this technology due to national security concerns, I assure you, but because, so far, it has resisted all attempts to scale up production. It is also incredibly costly and the materials hard to manufacture. To allow any hint that it exists to escape, even as a remote possibility and only in the rarest of cases, would be cruel. Raising hopes that cannot, at present, be met.”

“But, you’re willing to use it for Zane?” Steve said.

“Yes. He wrote the some of the first organ design programs for the lattice.” At their confused looks, he added, “the printer.”

Steve exchanged glances with Cath, then they held out their hands for the clipboards. They’d both already signed away so much of their lives, what was a little bit more, really, in the grand scheme of things?

As Steve handed his back to the aide, he said, “My mother was also here, when we heard about it.”

“Yes. Someone is visiting with her as we speak.”

“You are very thorough.”

“Yes.”

“So? What happens now?”

“We wait.”

So they waited. Shaw took off soon after they signed, but left his aide, who sat quietly working away at a laptop. Around midnight Kono arrived, armed with coffee and magazines. Steve introduced her to Shaw’s aide, having already texted her his warning to not leave Zane unwatched, and he and Cath headed home to bed.

In the morning he went first to Five-O, sure that there would be a mountain of paper work waiting for him after yesterday’s adventures. Instead he ran into Danny, sitting in his own office, staring off into space with a bemused expression on his face. “What’s up?” Steve asked, leaning in the doorway.

“People in dark suits and armed with thick non-disclosure agreements showed up, announced anything we had from yesterday was classified, downloaded and erased files, and left. Just like the last time we tangled with Lupo and Donovan.”

“So… does that mean no paperwork?” Steve tried not to sound too gleeful.

“Apparently.”

Steve’s conscience kicked a little. “Even about the stolen vehicles?”

“I asked about those, actually. They said that the owners would discover that their insurance companies were remarkably understanding and generous.”

“I can’t believe the owner of the mini-van was carrying that kind of insurance!”

“Fortunately for them, it wasn’t damaged.”

After a few minutes of silence as they contemplated this turn of events, Danny stood up. “I owe you an apology, by the way.”

“Yes. I’m sure you do. For what exactly?”

“For doubting that they would step up, ‘once the goods crossed the finish line’. They certainly have.” He looked up at Steve. “I will allow you one, and only one, ‘I told you so.’ Don’t abuse it.”

Steve laughed then. “Well, I’ll be sure to be careful with it.” He looped his arm around Danny’s shoulders. “Come on. Let’s go see if Zane’s awake yet.”

He had been, but was already in being prepped for his next surgery by the time they arrived.

“He was really groggy, but, I’m glad they let him wake up enough to understand what was happening,” Jo said. “He’s really twitchy about having things happen while he’s asleep. They all are. The ones who….” she fluttered her hands and shrugged.

Steve nodded. He saw the quick gestures to her forehead and temples, and he remembered the banks of machines the Consortium had set up, waiting to jack Zane back into their VR world. He also remembered how thoroughly Zane had smashed those machines, and later, blown up the smashed bits and buried them. Just for good measure. He hadn’t thought about it before now, but he could imagine just how upset Zane might be to learn that he’d had major surgery without knowing about it ahead of time.

“McGarrett. Just the man I was looking for.”

Steve turned to see Lt. Col. Shaw approaching.

“How’s he doing, Jo?” Shaw asked as he joined them. “I heard you had a chance to speak with him?”

“He’s strong. He’ll be okay.” She smiled, her eyes glistening with tears she quickly blinked away. “He said to tell you thanks. For arranging everything for us at Shafter.”

Shaw shook his head. “I just wish…”

Jo interrupted him. “You’d what? Anticipated rocket launchers? Really?”

Shaw ducked his head in an apologetic shrug. “Well, that was beyond the parameters I’d anticipated. Or anyone had, I suspect. It seems the local hires decided to use some initiative.”

Shaw grew serious again. “The helicopter should be here shortly, and Donovan will be fine. He’s in the best hands possible.” He turned to Steve. “That’s why I’m here. Would you like to come with me, to meet the chopper?”

“Um, sure?” Steve smiled and turned to Danny, his gaze pointed. “Will you be okay here?”

“Yeah.” Danny smiled a bit ruefully. “We’ll be fine. Really. Go.”

Shaw was silent as they made their way to the helicopter landing area. As soon as the chopper landed, several med tech looking types jumped out, turning to take the small organ transfer cases. Hospital employees quickly ushered them inside. Shaw made no move to follow, and Steve turned his gaze back to the chopper. Two more people were emerging; a slender woman and a tall, square-jawed, grey-haired man wearing a polo shirt tucked neatly into his pressed and belted khakis. Steve immediately recognized this look as senior military officer ‘civilian’ wear. He had a passing moment of relief that he had gotten out of the service before his inclination for comfort over anything that needed ironing was ground out of him.

Shaw gestured them inside, and Steve found himself shaking the hand of the elusive General Mansfield. “How do you do, sir? It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

“And the same to you, Commander McGarrett.”

Mansfield’s grip was firm and well practiced. He turned to the woman with him. “Please, let me introduce Dr. Allison Blake, who will be supervising the surgery.”

Dr. Blake was a lovely, trim woman on the threshold of middle age, with long brown hair and expressive eyes and a warm, reassuring smile.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Commander.” Dr. Blake had a perfect physicians’ voice, warm and full, her fingers in his hand were cool and dry. “Jo’s told us a bit about you.”

“Dr. Blake,” the General said, “let’s get you to surgery, shall we?”

With that they all turned to make their way back into the hospital. Dr. Blake was collected promptly by a hospital staffer, and Shaw steered Steve and the General into a small office, conveniently – as if, Steve thought – empty and available.

“McGarrett. I wanted to apologize for being out of touch yesterday. It was necessary, given the parameters of the mission at hand. But the initiative you and your team showed was superb. Lupo and Donovan chose well when they decided to come to you.”

“Thank you, General. I assume this means everything ended the way it was supposed to?”

“I believe it did.” Mansfield smiled briefly. “Stolen cars and all.”

“You heard about that, I see.”

“Donovan’s a born felon.” Mansfield quirked an eyebrow, “I assume your tendencies are the result of training and expediency.”

Steve smiled a half smile and chuckled a half chuckle, refusing to commit himself to any actual answer.

“I am in your debt. Which I will remember.” Mansfield held out his hand again, and Steve took it, aware that this time they were sealing a bargain. Too bad he didn’t actually know what the terms of the deal were.

When they made it to the waiting area, to Steve’s surprise, Mansfield held out his arms and Jo walked into his embrace. It was short and formal, but Steve felt it was also quite sincere. “I came as soon as I could,” Mansfield told her.

“I understand, sir,” Jo’s lips quirked up in a faint smile, “And you brought Allison.”

“I’m sorry everything went so badly at the end.”

“It was a hastily planned mission, sir.” Jo shrugged and locked her hands behind her back, quietly assuming the pose of a soldier debriefing to her commander.

“Window of opportunity was closing.”

“Yes sir.” Jo nodded.

“But,” and Mansfield’s gaze was abruptly quite sharp, “you and Donovan completed your mission.”

“Yes sir. We did.” Her voice rang with quiet assurance.

Mansfield’s expression acquired the faintest hint of malevolent satisfaction. But all he said was, “Thank you.”

Jo cocked her head. “But the risks were far greater than you acknowledged.”

Mansfield shook his head regretfully. “I know. And for that, I’m very sorry.”

Jo unclasped her hands from behind her back, letting her arms fall to her sides. “In fact, the plans presented to us on site suggest it would have been neater if we hadn’t made it home at all.”

“No!” Mansfield looked horrified. And faintly guilty as well. “No. Jo. I knew you both would get home. That’s why I sent you.”

“Did everyone else involved know that? Sir?”

The General didn’t answer right away and he wouldn’t meet Jo’s gaze. Finally he said, “I don’t know what everyone else believed.” He raised his eyes to her face again. “But I believed in you. And in Donovan.”

“You didn’t answer your phone yesterday.”

“I know. I sincerely regret that I couldn’t.”

“I see.” She paused, and then raised her brows. “You could make it up to him.”

“I could?”

Her gaze hardened. “Find him the money to build the chaotic inflation device. I know he and Henry have been requesting funding for more than a year.”

“That’s pure research Jo. You know I don’t handle that.”

“Yes. It is. But you can find the money. Sir.” Jo’s stare was both measuring and a challenge. “It’s Nathan Stark’s design. With Zane and Henry building it, it will revolutionize astrophysical theory, maybe even some of the laws of physics. It is the beginning of testing his doctoral thesis. He’s earned it.”

The General opened his mouth and closed it again, once, then twice. Finally he said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

Jo folded her arms across her chest. She kept her gaze steady on his, “You can make this happen. If you want to. Sir.”

Steve had no way of knowing what they saw in each other’s eyes, but in the end, Mansfield bowed his head. “Yes. I can,” he said at last. “And I will, Jo. I will find him the funds.”

Steve let go the breath he had not been entirely conscious of holding. Jo had lined Mansfield up in her sights, maneuvered him into position, and taken him down with little more than a lifted brow and force of righteousness. Guilt and honor and a hair’s breadth escape from widowhood were all on her side this time, and Mansfield knew it. It was an impressive performance. He was glad he wasn’t in the General’s shoes. And admired that Jo had asked for something he could actually give.

Then, turning to take Shaw and Steve in as well, the General gave them all a curt nod. “If you will excuse me, I have other business to attend to.”

As the General left the room, Steve’s phone rang. It was HPD, with a new case. He turned to make his apologies to Jo, but Shaw waved him off. “It’s fine McGarrett. I’ll be debriefing Jo today. She won’t be alone.”

“Today?” Jo looked horrified.

“The doctors have told us the surgery will take ten to eleven hours, Jo. Debriefing now is efficient, and will help you pass the time.”

Five-O’s new case proved to be the usual. It had a little of this, a little of that, then a dead body, leads that didn’t pan out, informants who had little to offer that was useful and lots of commentary that wasn’t as funny as they thought it was.

Things were stalled out in the late afternoon while they waited for lab tests and information requests to be filled, so Steve decided it would be a good time to check in on Jo. He was looking around for Danny when Kono and Chin returned from pursing another lead that failed to pan out. “Do you know where Danny is?”

Kono shot him a baffled look. “Yeah. He went back over to the hospital a while ago, said he was going to take Jo some decent coffee and take out.”

Steve was surprised that Danny had taken off without telling him, but pleased all the same that it showed effort to mend fences on Danny’s part. Striding through the hospital corridors looking for them, he came around a corner and caught sight of his mother’s familiar back. He was just about to hail her, when he realized that she was walking along deep in conversation with General Mansfield. As it did so often when dealing with Doris, the first thought that passed through his brain was, ‘what the hell, mom?’

Before he could edge himself into listening distance, they stopped at another corridor crossing and he had no real choice but to walk right on up to them. He raised what he hoped was a meaningful eyebrow. “Mom?”

“Steve!” She smiled at him, as always apparently genuinely delighted to see him no matter how badly timed, from either of their points of view, his arrival might be.

“Commander.” Mansfield smiled. “I was just telling your mother how pleased I was with your recent intervention.”

And just like that Steve felt reduced to grade school during parent-teacher conferences, suffused by that vaguely embarrassed yet thrilled sense that the adults were happy with his work. He automatically thrust his hands into his pockets to shrug off the praise. “Just doing my job, sir.”

“Above and beyond.” Mansfield smiled. “If you’ll excuse me?” He turned to Doris. “It was good to see you again.” He offered her his hand. “Take care of yourself.” He nodded at Steve. “And your son.”

While Steve was still floundering around in search of his dignity, Mansfield walked off.

“Mom?”

“Yes, honey?”

“You know Mansfield?”

“Know? No.” She shook her head in denial. “We met, once or twice, a long time ago. That’s all.”

“And so he tracked you down to praise me?”

“No!” Doris laughed and turned to keep walking. “Don’t be silly.” She linked her arm through his. “Not that you don’t deserve it of course.”

Steve thought about shrugging off her arm, but then she would go all brittle and withdrawn and that would end any attempt to get new information out of her today. “So. What did he want?”

“You signed all those documents?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. You’ve put together that I did a lot of my work in Asia, yeah?”

Steve nodded. “Yeah.” And kept his ‘duh’ and his infinite number of Wo Fat questions to himself.

“Some of the assets I helped set up then were used in this whatever it was that Zane and Jo were involved with now. Mansfield was just letting me know that the old work finally paid off. It was very sweet of him, I thought.”

She could have been talking about gardening, and not setting up clandestine networks in North Korea. “You know your nice lady routine is really aggravating, don’t you?”

“Of course I do, honey! Why do you think it works so well?”

Steve ignored this. “Mansfield isn’t a nice man.”

“No.” Doris frowned thoughtfully. “He wasn’t when we were younger either. I’m sure, in time, I’ll get the check for this.”

Steve instinctively tightened his arm, pulling his mother closer, relieved now that he hadn’t shrugged her off earlier. It was entirely up to him to cut her out of his life if he decided, in the end, that was best. No one else had the right to take her away again before he’d made up his mind, and especially not someone like Mansfield. “I’m in on this one too, mom, and not because of you this time. You don’t have to do it by yourself.”

Doris leaned in. “Thanks. I will remember that. I promise.”

They found Danny and Jo sitting by a bank of windows, chatting away in what looked to be a friendly conversation.

“How was your debrief?” Steve asked.

“Long. Thorough.” Jo shrugged, then smiled quickly at Danny. “Danny arrived with coffee at just the right time.”

After getting the latest updates on how the surgery was proceeding, Steve announced that he and Danny really had to get back to work on their current case, and they wandered off, leaving Doris to keep Jo company.

Walking back toward the parking lots, Steve cleared his throat. “You seemed pretty comfortable, back there, talking with Jo.”

“Yes.” He shot Steve a cocky grin. “I started with extreme groveling, and worked my way up to an apology for my asshole remarks from there. Techniques honed to perfection over years with Rachel.”

“But,” Steve wrinkled his brow, “you were sincere, right? Because you really were being a jerk.”

“Once again, my friend, you underestimate me.” He clapped his hand on Steve’s shoulder. “A very early lesson, and one reinforced many, many times subsequently, is that apologies never work if they aren’t sincere. You can’t apologize for being a jerk if you don’t actually know what it was that you did was jerky. This time,” he dropped his hand. “I knew exactly what I’d done, because it was obvious the minute it fell out of my mouth.”

“The long, awkward pause gave it away?”

“While everyone looked at me like something they’d like to scrape off their shoe? More or less. Yes. That was it.”

“So, none of the ‘if it made you uncomfortable, I’m sorry’ weaseling?”

“Nope. Straight up, I was rude. I’m sorry. I was wrong.” He paused, then said, in a musing sort of tone, “It’s an excellent life lesson. Learning to apologize that way. One that many people could benefit from.”

Steve immediately started wracking his brain, trying to figure out what he should have apologized for but failed to because he still didn’t know it was wrong in the first place. Before he had come up with anything, Charlie Fong called with his preliminary report and they were back to work again.

Two frustrating days of failed leads later, Steve looked across the small café table at Jo, “So. Mansfield. What was he on about, with all his ‘born felon’ attitude about Zane?”

Zane had come through the surgery in excellent shape. Before she returned to Oregon, Dr. Blake assured them all that he would be up on his feet and ready to fly home himself within about four days, which had initially had the local transplant team openly guffawing. But, now, barely thirty-six hours after his surgery, it seemed Dr. Blake had been correct. Zane was awake, restless and bored. In other words, well enough that when Steve arrived at Tripler, Zane was locked in with Shaw doing a full debriefing of their mission.

Even more telling, Jo had slept and was now smiling again, even laughing as she recounted Zane’s colossal attack of whining when he realized he was going to be trapped by Shaw.

So he took Jo out for coffee.

Jo shook her head as she chuckled. “That’s a long story.”

“I’m listening.” He smiled encouragingly.

“You’ve seen his felony record, right?”

“Yes. And the pardons.”

“Well, hackers don’t start with major theft from government accounts. That’s something you work up to. In Zane’s case, he was hacking NASA before he was in middle school. And he acted out – a lot – after he was sent to college while he was still a kid. Petty theft, minor vandalism, joy riding, mostly pranks taken too far, but exhausting for everyone involved to clean up after. Mansfield is thinking of that.”

“But,” Steve paused delicately, “he hasn’t committed computer crime since his pardon, has he?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On why you want to know.”

“Our current case involves one of those hacking shops. I want to know who has hired them and for what.”

“Without warrants, I suppose?”

“Well. Yes. But, the operation itself is illegal, so….” Steve opened his hands in a ‘what can you do’ sort of gesture.

“He has a soft spot for hackers.”

“I don’t think the hackers are the problem, or, at least, not this problem. It’s the people they’re working for.”

“He’s ready to climb the walls with boredom. He even shaved off his beard just to have something to do. He’ll be happy for a distraction.” She reached over and touched his arm. “But don’t lie to him about what you want or why. You don’t want him to figure that out on his own.”

“Would he?”

“He’s been hacking since he was a little boy, starting with the computers in elementary school. If ass-covering orders and special emergencies are counted, he’s mostly clean these days. If not, well,” she shrugged, “bottom line, he’s never stopped hacking. With any new system, he’s like a cat trying to open a milk bottle. He can’t resist. And he’s single minded about it too, until he’s cracked it.” She caught his eyes, her gaze a warning. “So, yes, once he’s in whatever system you set for him, he will know everything about it before he is done.”

“I can deal with that.” He checked his watch. “How much longer will he be with Shaw?”

She checked her own watch. “They should be almost finished.”

Steve grinned. “Let’s go.”

On the way back to the hospital, a new thought occurred to him. “What would he do, if he discovered I misled him?”

Jo laughed. Rather evilly, Steve thought. “Exercise his own judgment,” she said.

After a blank thirty seconds, Steve shuddered. It wasn’t that Zane had bad judgment, exactly, more like, wildly idiosyncratic and unpredictable judgment. “That’s a terrifying idea,” he said.

“Good.”

Zane was more than willing to do what Steve wanted, the only price was better food than the hospital’s. The nurses were inclined to be disapproving on the grounds that he was too excited, but Zane had already charmed most of them into submission and Steve went to work on the rest. Within three hours, Zane had provided him with all the names and information Five-O needed to break the case wide open. He insisted that he would have done it faster if his left wrist hadn’t been immobilized in a cast, which was probably true. He begged pathetically to keep the laptop, but, mindful of Jo’s disapproving glare, Steve refused. And he didn’t want to feel even a little bit responsible for whatever Zane might do once he was inside the Army’s networks.

By mid-morning the following day Five-O made their first of a half-dozen arrests in a complicated con turned blackmail scheme gone lethal.

Opening beer in his kitchen that night, Steve looked up as Danny breezed in from another visit to Tripler, takeout containers in his hands. Steve had been tracking his visits, and knew that Danny had been going by almost twice a day, just bringing by coffee or food, never staying all that long. “So,” he asked. “How’s it going with Jo?”

Danny was opening the food containers. “Good.” He began serving food onto a plate. “Very good. I think we are on the way to becoming friends.”

“Really?” Steve was skeptical, but willing to be pleased.

Danny made a face, obviously offended that Steve should doubt him. “Yes. Really.” He smiled then. “I like her. She’s good people. Focused. Disciplined. Believes in law enforcement.”

Steve offered him a beer and what he hoped was a winning smile. “What else have you been talking about?”

Danny scooped up his plate, a fork, and his drink and headed for the lanai. “Nothing. Everything. Managing the wild-men in our lives. You know. The usual.”

Steve trailed after him, his own supper in his hands. “Managing?”

Danny plopped down on one of the chairs. Raising his eyebrow, he waved his fork emphatically. “Managing.”

“I’m not sure I like the idea of being managed.”

“Who does? And, yet, here I am. Making friends with two people I was determined to dislike.”

Steve ate in silence for a while. Eventually he risked an, “And?”

“They are actually quite likable.”

“See?” It was impossible not to crow triumphantly. Or as triumphantly as one can crow with a mouthful of food.

Danny pointed his fork at him again. “Is that your ‘I told you so’?”

He swallowed hastily. “No! It is not!”

“Hmmm. Very close to the line, there babe.”

“But not over!”

Steve stopped by to visit Zane later that night, during evening visiting hours, knowing that Jo had gone out to dinner with Catherine and Kono.

He found Zane sitting up in bed and riffling impatiently through a stack of magazines. “How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Battered. And restless. They won’t let me out of bed yet. Or do anything fun in it either.”

“How are the ribs?”

“Surprisingly good. Allison brought me some new ones, along with the heart and the lungs, so it’s really only a few clean breaks that have to knit up.”

“And the new organs?”

“Fine. Not even sore. The doctors here keep testing for rejection, no matter how many times we explain that my body won’t be rejecting my own parts.” He rolled his eyes at the doctors’ skepticism. “My wrist and my leg actually hurt more, right now,” he added.

Steve nodded at the magazine in his lap. “Never took you for a Good Housekeeping kind of guy.”

“I’m reading the warning labels on the pillows I’m so bored. Thank God we go home tomorrow.” His expression turned eager. “Got anything else I can do for you in the meantime?”

“No. Sorry!” He really was. He was actually trying to figure out how to decide, in the future, when a case reached a threshold that calling Zane for help would be worth it. “I’m surprised you’re not back to work.”

“Can’t. The networks here are entirely unsecure, and everything I do is classified or proprietary.”

“So, why not watch TV? I know there are games on ESPN right now.”

“Jo doesn’t trust me with the remotes. She gave them all to the nurses. And took my tablet and my ereader.”

Steve could understand the tablet and the ereader, they were both wifi enabled. But, “The remotes?”

“You can reprogram remotes to mess with computers. It’s fiddly work, and harder one handed,” he held up his cast, “but basic enough.” He smirked. “She thinks I’d just get into trouble.”

“Would you?”

“Yes.”

Steve laughed. “At least you’re an honest felon.”

“As the day is long, Commander.”

“Watching Jo handle Mansfield was eye-opening.”

“She’s good, isn’t she?” Zane beamed with pride. “Really, amazingly good. I got a message from Henry today – we got the funding we needed.”

Unexpectedly curious, Steve asked, “If your positions had been reversed, what would you have wanted?”

“For Jo? From Mansfield?”

“Yeah.

“I’ve read my O. Henry, dude. I’m not going to sell my watch to buy combs for her hair.”

“So?”

“A reserve commission. Commensurate to whatever rank she should have by now, if they’d sent her to officer school like they should have done instead of marooning her in Oregon. Major, probably. Shaw shouldn’t be able to address her as sergeant anymore.” He narrowed his eyes at Steve. “Neither should you.”

Steve conceded the point with a wave of his hand. Zane had obviously given serious thought to it, and he was right. Jo would have made a fine officer. The Army had lost a valuable opportunity by handing her over to the DOD. Someday soon, he was certain, Mansfield would find himself on the wrong side of a deal with Donovan, and he’d be coughing up a long overdue promotion as a result. And officer rank now would undoubtedly make portions of her job easier. But the Army’s loss was not what he wanted to talk about. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure. What?”

“Was getting the goods back to Mansfield the primary mission? Or the distraction?”

Zane’s lips lifted in a crooked grin, his bright blue eyes twinkling. After a long pause, he said, “You realize I can’t possibly answer that question, right?”

Steve swallowed his own smirk. “Right.”

They left five days after his surgery. Zane was limping from the gash in his leg. He had a cast on his wrist. He was still interesting colors from all the bruising. But Steve and Danny watched him walk onto the small Rockwell Industries jet more or less under his own steam, only leaning a little bit on Jo.

***** end *****

Footprints in the Dust

2013-03-20T20:11:19Z

One of the upsides of closed canon universes is the limitless possibilities for what our beloved characters might do next, good and ill. Happy and sad. Beautiful and tragic.

Many, many years ago, in the first heady explosion of HEA post-series LFN fanfic, some of us with a snarkier bent complained that there was an overabundence of Michael and Nikita have twins and ponies and sparkly rainbows sorts of fic, in worlds that weren't obviously supposed to be even a little AU.

Now, it's true that I'm not in a position to cast too many stones, having produced my own HEA fic, but still. Some of those first HEA, kitchen-curtian stories were a teensy bit, well, twee. Especialy given the source material. So I foolishly declared to my fellow snarkers that I could write a 'true to the source' future fic where Michael and Nikita had children and struggled to deal with parenthood in the same universe that produced Section One, and made them who they were.

Eventually - I finished the promised story. It has had lots of inputs, and still has kitchen-curtain bits, but that was probably inevitable given the challenge I originally set myself.

After nurturing it and setting it aside and picking it up again after years of languishing and then letting it mature and reading it again, I am at last letting it go into a world that has almost no readers left for this sort of story! But - in general, witness the Eureka/Hawaii 5-O story I just completed, the idea of clearing my brain of old stories has been successful. And this one is more than ready to fly on its own.

If anyone should be interested after all these years, here it is.

As always, special thanks to my excellent and wonderful beta readers sk and Jaybee. I would never have finished without you. And whatever errors and infelicities remain, they are my own.

Title: Footprints in the Dust
Fandom: LFN
Characters: Michael Samuelle, Nikita Wirth, Kate Quinn, Mick Schotpel, Adam Samuelle, OCs
Relationships: Het, Multi
Words: ~54,000

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6

Footprints in the Dust 1/6

2013-03-20T20:00:18Z

For Jaybee:

L'aéroport d'Orly, Paris, France, Nineteen Years After the Events in “A Time for Every Purpose.”

“Daddy! Daddy! Hurry up! I see Baron’s box!” A child’s lilting voice rose briefly above the general clamor of mid-day arrivals and departures.

In a moment a little girl, no more than six or seven, appeared. She wove determinedly through the thinning crowd, her soft copper curls bouncing as she moved, dragging an older man by the hand. She was heading for the airy, sunlit end of the terminal where the airline workers deposited traveling kennels.

Once they were free of the crush near the center of the main concourse, the man halted. His worn khaki bush hat, pulled low over his forehead, obscured but did not hide his strong roman nose or his long, square chin as he scanned the area around them. “Gabrielle. Wait for your sisters.”

“But Daddy! Baron’s right over there!” Gabrielle wailed. She tugged impatiently on her father’s hand, trying to brace her pink plastic sandals on the slick polished floor. She waved desperately with one skinny, tan arm toward a large, travel-worn blue dog carrier. “Daddy!”

The carrier suddenly emitted a few loud and impressively deep barks.

The man was wearing rumpled, off-white trousers and a pale, soft cotton camp shirt, a costume adopted almost universally by European men working in the tropics of Africa or Asia. He bent his neck just enough to catch his daughter’s eye and repeated, in a very firm tone, “Wait.”

Gabrielle glared, then pouted, and then, with a slump of her shoulders she dropped her eyes and stopped pulling on his arm. Her own brightly printed sundress, red splashed with large, white flowers, also suggested that they were recently arrived from somewhere much warmer than Paris in February.

The man turned to look back in the direction they had come, searching the crowds behind them for the rest of their party.

After a minute or two a cluster of adults and children broke free and surrounded Gabrielle and her father. A considerable array of canvas bags and well-used hiking packs thudded to their feet as they drew to a stop. The group gradually resolved itself and a large family took shape; father, mother, five brightly dressed daughters, and a dark young man in his middle twenties. Gabrielle, more than a head shorter than the next largest girl, was obviously the youngest child.

A rapid exchange of many voices, speaking both French and English, followed. Then, permission apparently in hand, the three younger girls took off at a near run for Baron’s box, Gabrielle in the lead. Their excited cries quickly blended with a series of yips, whines and low, loud barks.

The mother, dressed like the father in well-worn khakis and a soft white cotton shirt rolled at the cuffs, was tall and slim and carried herself with the easy grace of an athlete. She wore brown leather thongs on her tanned feet and a straw hat partially covered pale blond hair tied up in a low, careless knot just at the nape of her neck.

The two oldest girls, teenagers both, were still standing with the adults. Obviously their mother’s daughters, they easily matched her in height and build; broad shoulders swaying over narrow hips, long tanned expanses of slender, well-toned arms and legs revealed by their short skirts and sleeveless shirts. Their long, straight, light-brown hair was streaked nearly white in places by lengthy exposure in the sun.

The younger man was also about the same height as the older couple, but unlike the woman or her fair, laughing daughters, he was dark, wiry and intense looking. He wore his hair very short, and his thick, level brows matched his deep brown eyes. He was clean-shaven, but signs of a heavy beard shadowed his cheeks and jaw. Then he turned his head, and it was instantly obvious from his profile that he was the older man’s son. Like his father, he wore a light camp shirt with rolled sleeves and light colored trousers. He had no hat.

The woman squatted down to rummage through the various knapsacks. She twisted her head up to laugh at something the dark young man said to his father, showing a flash of white teeth. She grinned fondly at them both, the corners of her generous mouth curling up in a broad smile, before turning back to her task, which turned out to be finding extra clothes for her younger daughters.

The three younger girls rejoined the party, Baron padding alongside. Baron was a giant, longhaired German Shepherd with a huge, dark head; almost large enough that Gabrielle could have ridden him like a pony. The volume of the group shot up as the three younger girls attempted to divert the attention of their parents away from their older siblings and toward themselves and their pet.

The woman rose to her feet, shrugged on a deep brown, many-pocketed jacket, and began distributing fleeces and leggings to her youngest children. She paused to help Gabrielle into hers, dropping a quick kiss onto her shiny curls before she straightened up. The man in white pulled on his own worn canvas coat and began ordering the distribution of the heap of packs and sacks. At his direction the dark young man, now wearing a heavy sweater and a scarf, went to get a luggage cart from a nearby stand and then collected Baron’s travelling box, stacking a few of the family’s smaller bags on top. Everyone else had just gathered up their remaining belongings and were preparing to move out, when a loud hail from further up the terminal startled them.

“Nikita! Hiya, Nikita!”

A bald, barrel-chested man with sharp, dark eyes and a wide grin erupted out from the crowds. His deep maroon jacket was cut in a style better suited to a much younger man. Three beefy, pasty-skinned men in dark trousers and thigh-length leather coats, something faintly military in their rigid bearing and close-cropped hair, trotted at his heels.

“Nikita!” The man in the eye-catching maroon coat cried again, flinging his arms wide in welcome as he hustled toward the family, now gone wary and still. “Nikita, my Love! Doll face! I can’t believe we didn’t get here to meet you at the gate!”

*****

For a timeless moment, Nikita could only stand frozen, blinking madly to clear away the fantastic image of a long dead Mick Schtopel bearing down on them, three rent-a-goons trailing in his wake.

It was Michael who reacted first, putting himself between Mick and Nikita, his voice low and firm as he said, “empty your hands.”

After the briefest of stunned hesitations, they all moved rapidly. Nikita stepped up to stand at Michael’s shoulder. Nine-year-old Sophie pulled Gabrielle behind them, into the center of the loose ring formed by her older sisters and Adam. Fifteen-year-old Isabella was on their left, eleven-year-old Margaret to their right. Katherine, at thirteen nearly as tall as Isabella, fell in behind the little girls. Adam tugged Baron’s lead from Margaret’s hands and took up a point position between the strangers and his father, his fingers wrapped securely around the already growling Baron’s collar. As they moved, everyone adjusted their shoulder straps or dropped their bags to the ground, kicking them aside to clear their paths.

Her adrenaline surging at the reality of a fast approaching Mick Schtopel, for unless ghosts were walking the streets of Paris in broad daylight it was definitely Mick Schtopel, Nikita firmly re-gathered her scattered wits and begin evaluating escape options. She knew if they could find an exit route, they had a good chance of making it. After a lifetime of travel through some of the world’s more dangerous places, their children had responded exactly the way she and Michael had taught them.

The quick rush of confidence steadied her just as Mick drew up in front of them. He kept a wary distance between himself and Baron. Baron was coiled on his haunches at Adam’s side, snarling and growling and clearly tensed for a chance to leap for the intruder’s throat.

“Well, well, well! Quite the family you have here, Nikita!” He glanced archly at Michael. “Your work, I presume?”

Michael didn’t dignify that with a response, so Mick sidled a bit until he was standing more or less directly in front of Nikita.

“Nikita, love! I know it’s been a long time, and we’ll have to have a coffee and catch up sometime soon – though I can see where you’ve put your time and energy, and to such fabulous effect too! Lovely girls. Lovely.”

Mick paused briefly, casting such obviously calculating glances at Isabella and Katherine that Nikita had to stifle the urge to break his neck on the spot, but then Mick rushed on, “Ah, no time now! We must get you back to your perch, Operations.” Mick heavily underlined the word with significant nod in Nikita’s direction. “We require your immediate presence.”

Ignoring the way her heart rate spiked still further with that old title hanging in the air, Nikita just shook her head and said evenly, “I’ve already told the others they sent no. It won’t change just because you’re here,” she paused and raised her brow, “Marty.”

Mick frowned at her, but otherwise ignored her taunt. “Ah, but, my dear, the terms of your leave of absence were quite explicit.”

Nikita crossed her arms. “A lot changes in sixteen years. Obviously.” She nodded her head in the general direction of her daughters. “I’m not going back.”

“It’s yours. You have no choice.”

“No, it’s not, and yes, I do.”

“Well, you know, love, yes it is. It doesn’t properly belong to anyone else, you see, for you were the last to own it. It falls back to you now.”

“Come off it, Marty.” It was petty, but she did like the way the name seemed to make him flinch. “It’s been up and running for months. You don’t need me now. You never did.”

“Nikita. Please.” Mick abruptly changed tactics, adopting his best hangdog expression of charming desperation. The same expression he had once used to wheedle her into spending an entire evening with him, waiting for his – no doubt fictional – mother. “It’s very important that you come with us now.”

This time Michael said no.

Mick dropped his sad, pleading face and returned his hard, bright gaze to Michael. “Ah, old man, I know! Difficult to give up the little woman again, just because duty calls, ain’t it? But you’ll be wanting to keep this lovely covey of birds safe now, won’t you? Let me see if I’ve got all their names right, shall I? Isabella? Katherine? Margaret? Sophie?”

Mick nodded at each of her daughters in turn. With each name, the heat from Nikita’s helpless fury that he should be here at all, much less threatening her children, spread further across her shoulders, then down her arms to the palms of her hands. Seemingly unperturbed by this, Mick ducked his head and waved cheerfully, “and is that little Gabrielle I spy? Hello my dear!”

Mick turned suddenly to stare at Adam. “And this young man must be Sala Vacheck’s grandson! Adam, yes? Don’t look much like your father do you? Must take after your mother’s people, hmm?”

Michael said, “Their names are widely known. Nikita can be of no use to you.”

Mick wagged his finger at Michael. “Once again, Michael, you and I are going to have to agree to disagree. For we need Nikita and none other.” Mick paused, as if debating with himself about what to say, then with a weary sigh and a tired shake of his head, he added, “and we may well need you too, before all is said and done, my old friend.”

Mick was quiet for a beat or two, staring at the ground and contemplating something none of them could see. But when he looked up, his bright smile was once again firmly in place. “Come on, come on! We need to go someplace calm and quiet to talk this through. Shall we leave? Please,” Mick raised his hands imploringly, and for one brief second, Nikita almost believed he was as genuine as he sounded, “let us have no unpleasant scenes?”

Nikita looked around once more, but seeing no avenue to safety, she opened her mouth to bargain with Mick, her compliance in exchange for her family’s escape, when another loud hail startled the little group.

“Michael! Michael! Thank heavens we’ve found you! The traffic was unbearable!”

Out from the crowd behind Mick and his glowering assistants burst a gray-bearded Frenchman, short, stout and broad shouldered. His battered hat and well-worn hiking boots gave him the indefinable air of a man who had spent much of his lifetime out of doors. He rushed over to Michael’s side, crying as he came, “Michael, my friend! I am so sorry we are late! Had a bit more trouble with security than we expected. When was the last time that happened, eh?”

Michael took the man’s outstretched hand and said, “You’ve made it in time.”

Nikita nodded gratefully at J.B., recognizing him as a potential diversion, when five more men and women slipped quietly out of the crowd and took up positions around her family. These newcomers were all slimmer, younger, taller versions of J.B. Their work pants and worn boots also testified to long hours out of doors. Their lean, hard faces suggested something of the same military past as Mick’s beefy goons. But there was no appearance of uniformity in their street clothing, the hue of their skin, or their hairstyles, which ranged from bald through in-need-of-a-cut to dreads. Like J.B., all of these younger people were familiar to Nikita and she let herself relax, just a tiny bit, in relief.

Michael and Mick exchanged a long cool stare, and then Mick dropped his head and opened his hands, conceding the moment with a light little laugh. “Well, Michael, it seems your formidable reputation as the director of security for Médecins Sans Frontières is as well deserved as was your previous one. You are one step ahead, as always. Perhaps we could arrange a meeting to discuss our needs later this evening, or tomorrow?”

Michael was silent for so long, Nikita wondered if he was going to deny Mick again and attempt to hustle them all out of the country. She knew it would never work, that there was no place to go and no place to hide, and she knew Michael knew the same. She was about to tell him so when he said, “Tomorrow morning. Nine o’clock. My office.”

*****

They watched in silence as Mick and his goons exited the terminal. Then Nikita said, “Michael?”

He turned to look at her, his expression, even shadowed by his hat, grim. “Not here.”

Nikita swallowed her impatience and nodded. What they needed to discuss was really not something for the open terminal at Orly airport. Directing her gaze to J.B., she smiled warmly, “J.B. Thank you.” She turned her head to include all six newcomers in her smile. “Thank you all.”

J.B. waved his hand as though he were batting at a troublesome fly. “It was nothing, and we were almost too late – something for which I’m sure you will have harsh words later, eh, my friend?”

J.B. shot a quick grin at Michael, who rewarded this weak sally with a faint upward twitch of his lips. “Yes.”

“Come,” J.B. went on, barely daunted by Michael’s response. “We must get you out of here. I’ve got two vans, one for you, one for your baggage. Should’ve brought a third for Baron, here, yes? I’d forgotten just how huge that beast is!” He turned to give Baron a cheerful smile. “Like a tame bear or a small horse, you are!”

J.B. laughed heartily at his own wit, and his warm deep rumble was like fresh breeze, blowing away the frozen tensions of the last few minutes. Everyone seemed to shake out their limbs, Gabrielle giggled, and even the usually serious Margaret smiled at J.B.’s teasing reference to her beloved pet.

“To baggage, then?” J.B. asked.

Michael nodded and the whole group, wary now and keeping their protective rings well in place as they moved through the halls, made their way down to where their baggage was travelling in an endless loop on a large, nearly empty carousel. The encounter with Mick had delayed them enough that most of the other passengers on their plane had claimed their bags and were making their way slowly through customs. The space around the carousel itself was now fairly open and their numerous items of luggage easy to spot.

Nikita stood a little way back, holding onto Sophie and Gabrielle’s shoulders. Margaret, who had regained Baron’s lead, stood with Nikita and the little girls, while Adam joined his father at the luggage carousel.

As Michael and Adam began heaving the large duffels onto the ground, Isabella and Katherine claimed some more empty luggage carts and pushed them over to begin loading them up. In a pause while they waited for more bags to reach them, Isabella, her voice clouded with worry, said, “Dad? What’s going on?”

Michael turned to look at his two oldest daughters, one nearly as tall as he was and the other who would be soon, and he smiled reassuringly. “Old business. Nothing you need to worry about.”

Isabella crossed her arms and fixed her father with a rather hard stare. “Dad.”

Michael sighed, and then said, “This is not the place to explain. Be patient.”

He reached out and gently touched Isabella’s arm as they stood together in front of him, his expression serious as he looked back and forth between them. “We’re good at this. Your mother and I will take care of it.”

In Nikita’s opinion, Isabella and Katherine did not look fully convinced that this was so, but they both nodded and turned to seize more bags as they trundled by.

By the time sixteen large bags were pilled up on five carts, J.B.’s eyebrows had nearly disappeared under the rim of his hat. He glanced dramatically around the group and then said, in a tone of mock chastisement, “had it not been for the bully boys by the entrance, my friend, I would have suspected you of wanting nothing but porters today.”

Michael shrugged and adopted an expression of long-suffering, saying, as though it explained everything, “ les femmes.”

His three eldest daughters immediately cried, “Dad!” and Baron let out a low “woof!” at the noise.

Everyone laughed at that, even Michael managed a short-lived grin. Then their group headed for customs and their vans.

They were waved quickly through customs, national pride giving the French director of security for Médecins Sans Frontières something dangerously close to a free pass through French security. Normally this irritated Nikita and Michael both, as unbearably sloppy and unprofessional; today she had no quarrel with their speed.

It was only a short hike to the vans, for J.B. had managed to park unconscionably near the terminal, no doubt waving his MSF badge at everyone in sight. But again, as that had placed the vans under the steady surveillance of the Orly airport security as well as the two drivers, today Nikita was grateful for the privileges. Quickly flinging open the doors, three of J.B.’s squad filled one with their luggage while two others pulled out a small, battered pair of duffels and began discretely distributing handguns.

Sophie and Gabrielle regarded this development with unblinking calm, having traveled under armed escort most of their lives and hardly remembering the last time they lived in Paris. But Nikita saw that her three oldest daughters all immediately recognized the unusual nature of doing this here, in the heart of France. As she grimly accepted a gun herself, she saw their faces grow pinched with worry as they darted looks of increasing alarm back and forth among themselves.

J.B. asked, “Where to?”

The whole party turned to look at Michael, waiting for his direction. Michael looked at Nikita, and she said, “Left Bank?”

Michael nodded and gave the drivers their instructions.

Nikita had been looking forward to getting resettled into their big, airy apartment, but she knew that it was now hopelessly compromised. They would probably have to give it up altogether because they would never be able get rid of all the spyware.

So, instead of heading home after a very long trip, they were off to find a small, randomly chosen hotel. They needed a secure location to figure out what had set Center on her back and to plot her escape, plot all of their escapes.

Seeing this exchange, Margaret cried in a voice full of shocked dismay, “we’re not going home?”

Nikita turned her head to look at her middle daughter. “No honey, we can’t. Not today.”

“But…but…I don’t understand!” she wailed, her pale gray eyes wide and suddenly glassy with angry, panicked tears.

Nikita exchanged a quick glance with Michael, who was already on the phone with someone, no doubt an informant of one sort or another, and she read his mute appeal to calm their middle daughter herself. Nikita looked at Sophie and Gabrielle. “Go get in the van, girls. Iz,” Nikita looked up, half in command, half appeal to her oldest daughter, “will help get you settled.”

Seeing Isabella nod, Nikita released Sophie and Gabrielle and gave them a gentle push toward their sister. With the youngest girls moving obediently to Isabella’s outstretched hands, Nikita stood and turned to face Margaret.

*****

Dropping her arm across Margaret’s shoulders, Nikita pulled her around the end of the vans, where they could have a bit more privacy. Margaret had grown over the previous six months, and the top of her pale blond head reached just below Nikita’s shoulder. Despite the color of her hair and the sprinkling of freckles across her nose, Margaret of all their children most clearly took after Michael. Her hair, despite being blond, was thick and wavy like his, and she had his high broad forehead and long square chin under a beak of a nose, all still a little too large for her. She was a fit, active child, but Margaret also had Michael’s solid, muscular body-type, and it was already clear that her figure was going to be fuller than her older sisters’. So she would stand in front of mirrors along side Isabella or Katherine and announce that she was fat, fat, fat, and nothing could kill her notion that she was, as she had once phrased it to Nikita in a fit of agonized crying, a ‘bulldog in the middle of grey hounds.’

Out of compensation, or personality, or most likely some self-reinforcing combination of the two, Margaret had gravitated to a jocky, tom-boy presentation and even now was wearing faded jeans, beat-up sneakers and an old, washed-out, Real Madrid sweatshirt. She was an incredibly aggressive, talented football player and during their just-finished year in Cambodia had played on a boys’ team an age rank up from her own.

Of all her children, Margaret was the most easily thrown off balance by the unexpected, the one who most longed for what she called a “normal” life and most resented her family’s peripatetic journeys through the world’s worst trouble spots. When Margaret was eight, they had spent nearly a year in Paris and she had ever since looked back on this as a period of civilized sanity in an otherwise crazy universe. Her conversation for the last eighteen months had been so heavily peppered with the declaration, “this would never happen in Paris!” that even Michael’s near inexhaustible well of patience began to run dry and he actually interrupted her more than once before she could finish the sentence.

Ever since Mick’s departure a tendril of worry for Margaret’s reaction to their changed plans had been weaving through Nikita’s consciousness. Looking down now at Margaret’s furious scowl, that tendril burst into full, hideous flower. Nikita visualized Mick painfully dead on the side of a dark road, long ago and in a different place. It soothed her a little, even though it did nothing to relieve Margaret’s crushing disappointment or help them out of their current predicament.

When they reached an area of relative quiet, Nikita drew Margaret around in front of her, so she could look her in the eye. “I know how much you were looking forward to getting settled in our apartment. I was too! But right now it just isn’t a good place for us to be.”

Glowering, Margaret crossed her arms over her chest. “Why not?”

“Because we need to find a place where Dad and I can put our heads together, privately, and figure out what’s going on.”

“About that man.”

“Yes.”

Margaret frowned accusingly at Nikita. “Why does the Section want you back so badly?”

Nikita blinked in surprise that Margaret had put it all together so quickly. She said, “It’s not important now, because I’m not going back to work for them.”

“Why? Would it be so bad?”

Forcing down another rush of angry panic, Nikita replied as calmly as she could, “Yes, Margaret. It would. It would be very, very bad.”

Nikita nearly closed her eyes against the slight tremble of fright in Margaret’s voice when she asked, “Can he make you?”

She made her voice as firm and sure as years of training could make it. “We won’t let him.”

Margaret flicked her eyes to Nikita’s waistband, where Nikita had tucked away the weapon she had been handed. “Is that why you have a gun now?”

“Yes.”

Margaret dropped her gaze to her toes. When she looked up at Nikita, it was with eyes old beyond her years. “You can’t just say no and then we can all go home, can you?”

“I’ve already said no several times. He obviously doesn’t want to take ‘no’ for an answer. There is too much to explain and this isn’t the place. Margaret, I need you to be strong, because things are going to be pretty crazy for a while, for all of us. We need you to do exactly what we tell you, just as if we were in the bush, or in a war zone.”

“But, . . .but, Mom!” Margaret’s momentary flash of adulthood vanished. She waved a jerky hand around, taking in a wide circle around them, and said with a child’s incredulous anger, “this is Paris!”

“I know, honey.” Nikita couldn’t help but chuckle a little at Margaret’s open resentment and shock, for a part of her felt exactly the same way. “I know. We are all just going to have to roll with it for a while.” She gripped Margaret’s shoulders reassuringly. “I know you can do that. Okay?”

Margaret thrust out her lower lip, but nodded, and with her voice breaking on swallowed tears said, “Yeah. I guess I can. I just… I wanted to go home, you know?”

Nikita pulled Margaret close and hugged her tight, resting her cheek against the top of Margaret’s head and whispering, “Yeah. I know. Me too.”

At first Margaret was rigid in Nikita’s arms, but after a few seconds she let go her tension and slumped against Nikita with a muffled half-sob, wrapping her own arms tight around Nikita’s waist in a return hug as fierce as it was desperate.

Margaret was just stepping back when Adam came round from the other side of the van. Catching Nikita’s eye, he offered her a quick reassuring smile before he turned his gaze to his sister. “Hey Maggie May. Would you come ride in the second van with Baron and me? He’s picked up on the tension and his growling is scaring Dad’s staff.” Adam sighed dramatically, “Again.”

Margaret smiled gratefully at Adam. “Sure. No problem!”

“We can check the football stats once we get going; yesterday’s results are all available now.”

“Awesome!” Margaret high-fived her brother, then vanished around the van in the direction Adam had come.

From the time he had offered to walk for hours, carrying a colicky baby in an infant sling and singing along with a staff member’s Rod Stewart tracks, Adam had shown a special talent for soothing Margaret. He’d been a gangly fourteen year-old then, and preferred comforting an infant to the comparatively far more exhausting task of chasing after then four year old Isabella and two year old Kate. Nikita knew that long, hot, humid summer in Thailand would have been far harder without his good-natured help. He was twenty-five now, but he still seemed to have a sixth sense for when Margaret needed a little extra attention. She said, “You’re an awesome big brother.”

Adam assumed one of his better smug expressions. “Yeah. I am.”

Nikita buffeted his shoulder. “Shall we discuss, again, the wisdom of telling ghost stories to Sophie right before bedtime?”

“She asked!”

“Next time, I’m sending her to sleep with you in the middle of the night.”

“Okay. Next time!” Adam grinned again, then turned to follow Margaret.

“Adam?”

He looked back at her.

“Thank you.”

He waved his hand at her and disappeared around the side of the van.

*****

Crawling into the seat Katherine had reserved for her a few moments later, Nikita looked around at the little girls as she pulled off her hat. Facing forward again, she said, “Michael? We need to stop for a meal as soon as we can.”

Michael, sitting in the middle of the first bench, his own hat now on the seat beside him, turned and looked back over his shoulder. His quick glance slid over their children’s strained faces before focusing on her. “Do you still have anything with you?”

“Only a few crumbled granola bars.”

Michael was silent for a moment, and then called out, “what would you like to eat?”

As one Sophie and Gabrielle began crying, “McDonalds’s! McDonald’s!”

Katherine scowled and said, “that’s not very French,” even as Isabella called from the back, “doesn’t matter to me, Dad. Whatever you think best.”

The chorus of “McDonalds’s!” reached a crescendo and Isabella reached over to ruffle Gabrielle and Sophie’s hair, hushing them softly as she did so. “McDonalds’s is fine, mom. Really.”

After consulting the location finder on his phone, Michael said to the driver, “There is a McDonalds’s with an auto-window a few blocks out of our way.”

Sophie and Gabrielle cheered this declaration and Katherine sighed theatrically, though Nikita knew that with the unquenchable hunger of a thirteen-year old she would eat everything she asked for and more, if anyone else ordered more than they could eat.

Michael sank back into his seat after giving the driver the exact address. Nikita leaned forward and clasped his shoulder, his flesh firm and comforting under her hand. She whispered quietly into his ear, “Thank you.”

She knew how much he detested the fast food chains, not only as an insult to local cuisine around the globe but also because as he’d inched deeper into his middle-fifties, he couldn’t tolerate it very well and it often made his stomach cramp up. It would also send the little girls into a salt and sugar high followed by a major crash, but the immediate calorie and carbohydrate injection would be worth it.

Michael reached up and put his hand over hers, pulling her fingers around so he could press a kiss against her knuckles. Turning his head slightly so he could look at her, he said, “It should entertain Mick.”

Nikita snorted despite herself. Wrapping her other arm around him, she squeezed his fingers and leaned her cheek against his; relishing as she always did the feel of his skin on hers, even with two day old stubble and the faintly sour smell of more than twenty-four hours of travel time behind them. In a voice only he could hear, she said, “You are a terrifying man and an excellent father.”

“Yes.”

Nikita hugged him tighter and kissed his jaw before whispering, “I love you.”

Leaning back in her own seat, she scrabbled for pen and paper in her bag and then started taking food orders.

*****

Almost exactly nineteen years earlier, Nikita had said good-bye to Michael and Adam in a train station in Paris and watched them walk out of her life. At the time, she had been certain that if she ever saw either of them again, it would be decades into the future. She told herself it would have to be enough to have said ‘I love you,’ and heard Michael say the words in return, and known them to be true.

She had re-entered a Section in complete disarray, reeling from the loss of too much senior personnel in too short a time, and turning in on itself in a frenzied panic. So, just as Paul and Madeline had done after the disastrous theft of Section’s directory file in her first year as a probationary operative, and again after the destruction of their entire facility two years later, she focused on getting everyone moving as quickly as possible. She had Jason and Quinn comb the system for as many high-success missions as they could find, priorities be damned. They sent out their few fully functional teams and teams that were badly fractured by loss of both members and confidence, filling in new people as they finished their training, and recombining and closing and redefining substations as they went. Every team got twelve to twenty-four hours rest before she handed the team leaders new assignments, enough to recover physically, not enough to start thinking ahead.

Flash missions continued to crop up, of course, and Nikita regularly fielded hysterical demands from the latest Agency mouthpiece that she respond to some crisis situation or another. At first she had tried to actually achieve whatever outcome the Agency asked for. Sometimes things broke their way and the Section achieved closure, other times the hastily profiled, over-ambitious missions blew up in their faces.

Then one night, dragged from her bed by yet another exhausted Agency operative, she realized that they had no idea what outcome they wanted. They simply wanted a response, any response, to the situation. Armed with that insight, she had her profilers design flash missions that Section could accomplish, regardless of whether or not they addressed exactly whatever the Agency said they wanted. If anyone at the Agency noticed, no complaints ever made their way to her.

Gradually confidence and calm returned and within six months she was once again in a position to start thinking about priorities and long-term goals.

Only, she didn’t have any. Section was a hammer that pounded every nail it saw, but built nothing.

When she approached her senior contact at the Agency, wondering quite belatedly why Center had not yet offered any long-term policy guidance, she finally learned what had been keeping the Agency and Center in a state of chaos and producing its musical-chair leadership.

They were running out of money.

The primary backer of the Sections since their founding had been NATO, and at the heart of that, the United States. But the U.S., stung by the most dramatic instance of foreign terrorism on their soil in their history, and without the strong countervailing weight of confident and sure Agency leaders, was pulling in all its resources and circling the wagons. The then President and his advisors were determined to make their own decisions about their own security unhampered by what they perceived as the general spinelessness of their long-time allies; or hidden agencies over whom they had no direct control.

The Agency and the Sections were surviving only by raking up long lists of dead terrorists. Ironically, Nikita’s strategy to improve Section One morale by sending her operatives out to kill whomever they could kill successfully, as opposed to whomever might be most strategic or significant, had been all that was keeping the Agency’s funding intact.

Then the United States went to war in Iraq. The day Saddam Hussein was pulled out of a pit in the ground, unshaven and bewildered, Nikita retreated to her quarters and laughed until she cried and cried until she was sick, vomiting up all the anguish she had endured over Paul Wolfe’s efforts to hold back the darkness and save civilization by propping up another nasty, small-time dictator.

Civilization did not fall with Saddam Hussein.

But the Sections did.

The U.S. government was desperate for cash to pay for their activities in the Middle East. The black money that had fed the Sections for decades was an obvious source of funds. Confident that their efforts had successfully shifted the mantle of fighting terrorism to their own shoulders, and in many distressing ways quite oblivious to the extent and reach of the Sections, the U.S. pulled the plug and the lights went out.

It hadn’t been quite that dramatic, of course. Nikita had been given almost a year to shut the Section down, successfully arguing, along with the heads at the Agency, Center and the other Sections, that simply vanishing would create too great a gap in global security, one that the U.S. was simply not yet ready to fill on its own.

At first she had been terrified that the Agency would demand that she exterminate everyone who had ever been a part of the organization, killing them off one by one as their jobs were eliminated. But they didn’t. She was told that it was entirely up to her how she closed the Section. At that point, those at the Agency hadn’t even wanted to know that they knew about the Sections and their work, much less that they knew what had happened to them.

Anxious for someone with more experience than she or Quinn or Jason had to bounce her ideas off of, she searched out Michael and asked him to review her plans.

It had taken almost an entire precious month to find him, and when she eventually did she was shocked to the core and yet, in some way utterly unsurprised. He was in the hell that was Liberia in those years, in Monrovia, providing security for the intrepid volunteers working for the Medicines Sans Frontiers hospital there. To her outraged dismay, he even had Adam with him. When she demanded to know what possessed him to endanger Adam like that, he told her he owed a debt to the director of the hospital, and was now in a position to pay it back. He also informed her that Adam was better off with him regardless of where, than alone with strangers, even in a safe place.

Michael had refused to come to her and abandon the responsibilities he had taken on, so she took a security team and went to him.

Over the course of two long days they refined and solidified her plans for closing down Section One and re-integrating as many operatives as they could into the outside world.

She had wanted desperately to spend the one night with him, in his bed and in his arms, but been afraid to ask after their first, very public, meeting. She had flung her arms around him, so glad to see him alive and well and healthy in front of her she wanted to laugh with joy despite the place and the circumstances. He had returned her embrace, but with enough hesitation and surprise that she had not been certain if he was being polite or if he really wanted to hold her. She did go a little glassy eyed, from embarrassed relief, and from overwhelming lust, when he held out his hand to take her to his quarters at the end of that first, long day.

In the deep black night of a city without power, wrapped tightly in each other’s arms despite the heat, they also made whispered plans and promises about her future, about their future.

While she had to make various adjustments to her profiles as a result of circumstance and better information, the framework she had prepared with Michael’s help stood the test of time, dictating almost all of her actions over the next ten months.

The Agency was also shutting down, so, much to her satisfaction, she heard very little from them over that time period. She was only weeks from walking away forever when they asked her to come in again. It was at that meeting that she learned that the Agency, once again, had new leadership and as a result, once again, had changed course. It wasn’t shutting down so much as it was going dark; they were planning to keep the Agency alive by hibernating with a skeleton staff, ready and waiting to be revived when the world changed again.

Her superiors had informed her that she was to consider herself on leave, not released, from her position as Operations, and the last thing they wanted from her was a plan to restart the Sections if that time ever came. Disappointed, but too exhausted by the demands of trying to meet the same threats with ever fewer resources to be surprised, Nikita had complied – drawing up plans that relied on Section hardware and installations and ideal operating conditions, but required entirely new personnel. She submitted her plans believing that they would be ignored when the time came, and determined that she would have no part of some re-booted Section One.

With the Sections closed and most of their old opponents fully occupied by playing cat and mouse with U.S. intelligence and military operations, Nikita hugged Walter, Jason and Quinn goodbye, then booked a ticket under her own name and flew directly to Michael’s side.

*****

By the time Nikita joined him, Michael was no longer in Monrovia. The intervening months had seen some improvement in Liberia’s stability, and with a solid team in place there, Michael had moved on. He was overseeing security for MSF hospitals in Afghanistan and Iraq. Both countries were in a state of near total breakdown then, and various factions struggling to gain a hold in the post-Hussein Middle East increasingly came to view aid workers as acceptable targets. Because MSF and other humanitarian agencies and personnel were being explicitly targeted in Iraq and Afghanistan both, MSF leadership had contacted Michael directly and asked him to do for their facilities there what he had done on an independent basis for the director of the hospital in Monrovia.

Nikita found the irony of the two of them – of all people – taking part in attempting to reconstruct Iraq painfully funny, and at the same time deeply significant. In the few quiet times during the frantic months of closing the Section, she had considered her own future and she had decided that Michael’s work with MSF was an omen. She would put aside killing in favor of healing, slowly earning her way to redemption with every life she helped patch back together. There was really no more satisfying place to begin that task than Iraq. That every day, and every small success, felt like a quiet ‘up-yours’ to Paul and Adrian both, was just that little extra zing that made every task a little bit sweeter still.

Despite the very real dangers and too many heartbreaking losses, Nikita loved the first years they spent with the MSF. She threw herself into the work at the MSF hospitals, doing everything from cleaning floors to bookkeeping. She eventually focused her attention on nursing, training by mail and by internet and under the supervision of the professionals on the staff. Quite serendipitously she also became involved with some United Nations sponsored initiatives addressing women and children. With time, she found ways to combine her interests by focusing on public health policy and preventative care.

During those years people she met often asked her why she didn’t go to school and pursue a degree in her field, but this option had never appealed to her. She couldn’t imagine why she should want to leave Michael and Adam to go to school, and said so. Having, by an utterly unexpected twist of fate, the opportunity to live openly and freely with the partner she loved was a gift too precious to ever abandon, no matter how noble the goal.

She and Michael married within days of her arrival, in an untended garden in full bloom under a bright afternoon sun. Cliché though it was, it was the happiest day of her life.

And the nights, the long hot nights when they discovered and rediscovered the joy they found in each other, kept them both on a sex-fueled high that lasted for months, up through the birth of their first child and beyond.

Nikita also learned, to her delighted surprise, that she relished being pregnant. In the bad years at Section, she had both loved and deeply resented her body. Madeline’s welcome to Section made it clear to Nikita that she was initially valued for her body alone, recruited for it alone, as if it was a thing separate from herself, and she had blamed it for trapping her in the Section. And Section used her body. If she never, ever again heard the phrase “he has a weakness for tall blondes,” it would be too soon. It would never compensate for all the humiliating and degrading things she had been asked to submit to in the pursuit of the Section’s agendas, or the contempt she had learned to feel for the appetites of men.

At the same time, she had loved her body. She was tall and strong and supple and even in the intensely macho environment of the Section, with speed and skill and talent on her side she was more than a match for any operative there. Over the years she had honed her body with constant and intense exercise, finding peace in the physical exhaustion itself and security in knowing she was a formidable athlete at the peak of her form.

In Iraq she discovered that her body was far more remarkable that she had ever imagined. Watching herself grow and change in the mirror, free from any morning sickness and feeling the first faint stirring and, later, the determined thumping of new life inside her was the most fascinating, most powerful thing she had ever experienced with her body. It also left her feeling unbelievably aroused, literally bursting with life; feelings Michael supported and encouraged with abandon.

She once teased him about keeping his pregnant-lady kink a secret from her, and he smiled his slow, sweet smile and told her he hadn’t known he had one until now, until her, and she thought she might well die from loving him so much. Only to learn the spring following her arrival in Iraq, when she stared into the tiny face of her newborn daughter, that she had never known what it was to fall headlong, permanently, unquestioningly, and forever in love.

The only dark cloud over those first years was Adam. When she joined them in Iraq, Adam was a wary, quiet nine-year old, clinging to his father as the only rock in his unstable world. It proved quite difficult for him, and for Michael, dealing with his own issues of guilt and regret and fear, to let a new person into their relationship. Nikita finally decided, difficult as it was for her to do, that the only way she could make headway with Adam, and through him Michael, was by backing off and proving as stable and reliable as his father was. The first time Adam hugged her of his own accord, more than a year and a half after she and Michael married, was moment of triumph forever engraved on her heart.

Once begun, their family grew steadily in the years that followed. This was a source of great happiness and sometimes burning frustration for Nikita. They moved regularly as Michael acquired ever-greater responsibilities within MSF for protecting and securing their humanitarian and relief efforts world wide, making it difficult for her to give her own work the attention it deserved and at the same time, meet their own needs, or those of their children. She and Michael had decided early on that ten days – a compromise number resulting from many heated discussions – was the longest either of them would travel away from the family, and that one of them would always be with the children. If he needed more time to inspect various MSF missions or to establish a new one, they all went with him. If she needed more than ten days to attend training or conferences, once again, the whole family came. This kind of mobility made pursuing her own work so difficult that she came close to simply giving it up more than once, only to have Michael convince her not to, and to redouble his own efforts to help her maintain her own career.

For many years, they also had to deal with the challenge of long-time MSF workers who resented the need for armed security, and as a result, resented Michael and Nikita. They viewed armed guards as a nearly mortal affront to the very humanitarian impulses and principles that created their organization in the first place. At the same time they had thought Michael and Nikita recklessly oblivious to real danger as they carted their young family around to many of the world’s most damaged locations. Michael had responded to both sets of criticisms with a raised brow, a cool stare, and a roll of his shoulders.

It had been up to Nikita to explain to their critics that they felt more secure if they were all together, regardless of the circumstances, and that a gun was no more and no less a tool than a scalpel, and increasingly just as vital to the work MSF was doing. She left it to them to work out for themselves that a chief of security who traveled with child seats in his Land Rover was maybe not so far removed from their core mission as they feared. Eventually, MSF staff and volunteers had made their peace with Michael and his teams, and found it in their hearts to embrace his children. One unexpected consequence of this was that in many ways their children were being raised in the midst of an extremely large extended family of interventionist-minded adults, something that had resulted in turning them into worldly wise, sophisticated, and generous busybodies. They never met a problem for which they couldn’t think of a solution, and Michael and Nikita had long since grown used to having the family pulled into one adventure or another through the earnest efforts of one of their children to live up to the ideals of the adults around them.

It had been, for her and for Michael, a remarkable life. It wasn’t conventional; they had never owned a mini-van, or a house with a picket fence, or a dog as harmless as a cocker spaniel, but they had been together. They had children of their own. They had found a way put their skills and their knowledge to work saving every life they could.

It was a life that Nikita was determined to protect with every resource she could command.

*****

Footprints in the Dust 2/6

2013-03-20T19:59:18Z

*****

Less than two hours after Mick Schtopel walked out of the past and into Orly Airport, Nikita stood in the lobby of a small, left bank hotel. She was overseeing the delivery of more computer equipment. They had chosen the hotel at random, based on the combination of layout, size, location and the willingness of the owner to throw out his two sets of guests and (for a generous fee) turn the entire facility over to them.

They were setting up a communications center in the main sitting room; J.B. and a team of Michael’s operatives from MSF were already working the phones and the computers. Their goal was to put together anything and everything they could find that might help them figure out what Mick and the Agency wanted so very urgently from her and, apparently, her alone at this particular time and place.

Almost nine months earlier a man claiming to be a representative of the Agency had contacted her, asking her to resume her job as Operations and restart Section One. She had laughed in his face, told him no, and walked away. For several weeks she had heard nothing more, but then a different man approached her in different place with the same request. She turned him down and told Michael that the Agency was back in the Section business.

After that they had both spent time raking their sources trying to figure out why, even if someone was finally putting the Sections back online, they should want her, now. She was more than fifteen years out from that world and, moreover, had cultivated innumerable ties and obligations and a public persona that made disappearing into the daily operations of the Section completely untenable. They had hit blank wall after blank wall even as they eventually found hints, here and there, that the Sections were already operational and running live missions. Which meant they were up and functioning without her. At that point they had sat back, watching and waiting to see what else might happen. And then, nothing. Not for nearly six months. Until today.

Some piece of information they did not have, some key to the puzzle that would help them make sense of the sudden panic to claim her was still missing. So they were once again searching everywhere, calling everyone they could think of who might be able to help, no matter how tangentially related to what and who they had been in their Section lives, and in all the years since.

The young woman posted in the lobby opened the front door to yet another arrival, and Nikita smiled in relief. “Took you long enough.”

“I was busy.”

Nikita grinned wider and shrugged. “You could have said no.”

Quinn folded her arms and raised her brow. “You don’t have anyone else to call.”

“You don’t even like children.”

“No. I don’t. Thank God you got fixed and quit spawning after five.”

“I liked being pregnant.”

“Give it up, already. You’re never going to convince me that playing host to a parasite you have to squeeze out your twat after nine months of hell is fun.”

“Well…”

“And if you tell me about Michael’s pregnancy kink one more time I swear to God I’m walking right out that door and never looking back.”

“You have no poetry in your soul.”

“You’re a romantic, breeding sap.”

Nikita stepped into Quinn’s arms and hugged her hard. She whispered, “Thank you.”

Quinn returned her embrace, fierce and short, like always, and then stepped back. “Where are the kids?”

“Upstairs.” Nikita crossed to the staircase and yelled up to the next floor, “Girls? Quinn’s here.”

Running footsteps and excited shrieks converged overhead and in seconds Quinn was fully occupied trying to fend off five different girls all trying to hug her at once.

Nikita smiled at the commotion, made worse when Baron started barking. Once the noise eased, Nikita said, “Come on. Let’s go show Quinn where we’ve gotten you all set up.”

The girls and Quinn were already on the stairs when sound of Michael’s voice from the door to the lounge stopped her. “Nikita. We’re ready.”

“Michael, I’ll just be a minute.”

“No. Now.”

From halfway up the stairs, Quinn drawled, “Hi Michael. Nice to see you too.”

Michael looked up at her. “Hi. Thanks for coming so quickly.”

Quinn put her hand on her hip and pointed at Michael, pinning him with sharp glare. “You owe me. Big time.”

Michael smiled in acknowledgement as he nodded. “Yes.” Michael looked at Nikita. “Nikita.”

Nikita exchanged a long look with him, and then sighed. “Okay.” Looking up at Quinn she forced a smile. “You guys be good. We have the run of the place, but I’m sure the little girls are going to crash soon.”

Quinn nodded back. “We’ll be fine. Don’t worry about us.”

Nikita held Quinn’s gaze until Quinn raised her brows, rolled her eyes in exasperation, shook her head and turned to follow the girls.

*****

Climbing the stairs Quinn reminded herself, for approximately the one-hundredth time in the last ten hours, that she was a determinedly, blissfully child-free woman of a certain age, with significant accomplishments and considerable professional success. She possessed highly sought after skills and knowledge, and was exceedingly well paid for her time as a result. So, given all that, she asked herself, again, how the hell had she ended up so thoroughly entangled with traveling road show that was the Wirth-Samuelle household? How had she become their go-to babysitter in time of crisis? She didn’t even like kids!

She knew the answers perfectly well, of course. It all began the day she dreamed up the wild notion that she could play Nikita, brand new Operations of Section One, the same way she had played Paul Wolfe. She would seduce her, and then worm her way from Nikita’s bed and into her confidence. She would offer her acidic, chatty self as a bracing antidote to Michael Samuelle’s glowering, emo charms, and her skills as assets to be bargained with and for.

Her handlers had thought she was crazy, that Nikita was completely heterosexual and, more to the point, totally committed to Michael. Quinn disagreed. She had suspected for some time that Nikita had an unexplored interest in women as well as men, and she reminded her handlers that Nikita had fooled Michael as thoroughly as she had fooled Paul and Madeline. She blithely assured them that she would be offering Nikita exactly the type of sexual adventure Nikita craved, while providing her with a simulacrum of the female friendship she so pathetically desired. Her rapid success seemed to confirm everything Quinn had thought she knew and understood about the untried and undeserving young woman who had inherited a position earned the hard way by more talented predecessors.

It took her six and a half weeks to realize just how thoroughly she’d been swallowed by her own hubris. Nikita had used the affair to gain access to nearly all of Quinn’s files. From them, she had learned the names and extent of Quinn’s ties into Center personnel. Something Quinn discovered the day all her contacts disappeared in an internal purge, orchestrated by Nikita’s sister and uneasy ally, Michelle Jones.

Quinn had expected to be eliminated immediately herself. Instead, Nikita had offered her the position as second in command that she had been angling to secure. When Quinn asked her why, Nikita shrugged and said, “You’re obviously well qualified for the job.”

Then she’d asked Quinn out for dinner.

Curious, Quinn had accepted, half believing that it was merely the traditional last meal served to the condemned. It was, in a way. As they sat over their wine and desert, Nikita cocked her head, looked Quinn over very carefully, and observed, “You were angling to fill a number of positions in my life.”

After carefully swallowing a non-existent sip of coffee, she had said, “Yes.”

“Other than my second, are you actually interested in any of those other roles?”

Quinn had said yes, of course she was.

Nikita laughed. “You really don’t have to say that. You have the job as second either way.”

Of course Quinn had insisted that no, really, she was interested in exploring the more personal relationship they had begun. What choice had she had? To back off at that point would have been to be cut completely out of Nikita’s inner circle. With her contacts at Center eliminated, she would be truly out in the cold.

Nikita shook her head, almost as if in regret. “Quinn,” she’d said, “you’ve read my files. Being my lover is a dangerous, and probably disastrous, career move. Look at what happened to Michael.”

All idiotic bravado, Quinn had said, “I’m not Michael.”

Their affair resumed more or less as if nothing had happened. By the time their first year in charge was over, Quinn realized that she was no longer pretending to like or respect Nikita. By the time they learned that the Sections were being closed, she hoped they were really friends, as much as they could be, in the context of the Section.

Nikita really was an extremely talented cold-op and team leader, and she really was a nudgey do-gooder with a massive problem with authority, just as her files said. But her files hadn’t revealed her warmth, or her empathy, or her charisma, all of which made her a commander of considerable talent and charm. Nor had the files captured her full capacities for ruthlessness and duplicity; or her deep and biting cynicism for the Section, its mission, and its overseers, and, most especially, for herself as their handmaiden. They had also been quite silent on just how very good Nikita was at sex.

All of which meant Quinn had needed to spend some hard time looking into her own heart and mind when, after learning they might escape the Sections instead of dying in them, Nikita returned from her flying visit to Michael almost literally shedding light as she strode through Section One’s cold corridors, unable to banish her tiny smile of boundless, private joy. The realities of the Section ended that phase soon enough, but it brought on a welter of confusing emotions that it had taken Quinn some time to sort out. Eventually she had decided that she clearly wasn’t jealous of Michael Samuelle, exiled former contender for the top job, she was merely envious of her friend’s excitement about the future. And that, unlike jealousy, was something that Quinn had been able to acknowledge and deal with.

As it turned out, she had not sailed so far up the river of denial that there was no hope of return.

A few months before they walked out for good, Nikita had rolled over on to her side, propped her head on her hand, and said, “Would you be interested in bringing this relationship into our new lives?”

Quinn had felt her heart leap with what, after almost three years of constant exposure to Nikita, she was prepared to call personal happiness.

And that was why, now, when the Section had returned, zombie-like, from the dead to hunt Nikita down, Michael and Nikita had turned to her to watch over their daughters.

*****

Quinn followed the sound of the girls’ voices into a large, front-facing guest room. When she walked in the voices stopped and, to her very mild surprise, the girls were ranged around the room in a semi-circle, clearly waiting to interrogate her. Gabrielle and Sophie were sitting on the big bed, Margaret at the small table in front of the window. Isabella and Katherine, twin sentinels, were standing facing the door, their arms crossed and grim expressions in their light blue eyes, cool and appraising under their father’s level, dark brows. They looked so much alike, and were such close friends, it was often hard to remember that they were quite different from one another in temperament and taste. Isabella had been a serious, thoughtful, book-reading child and was a serious, responsible teen. Kate was louder, and more social, making friends easily and preferring movies and music to reading.

Isabella spoke. “It’s bad, isn’t it.” She made it a statement, not a question.

Quinn nodded. “Yes.”

“Do you know what it’s all about?”

“The past. The Section.”

“Is mom in trouble?” That was Margaret.

“She’s in danger, not in trouble.”

Sophie piped up, an anxious frown marring her pretty little heart-shaped face. She had green eyes and dark brown curls, and an unquenchable love for dresses, jewelry and nail polish. She asked, “Then why is dad mad at her?”

“He isn’t. He’s just really focused right now on saving her from whatever it is, reaching out to try to take her from him. He’s really obsessive that way. Fanatical even.”

Quinn stopped herself before she went even further, words like ‘insane, freakish, terrifying’ trapped safely behind her teeth.

“What are they doing downstairs?”

“He’s about to put your mom through her most intensive debrief in nearly twenty years. It’s going to take a long time.”

Katherine interrupted, her expression hard and a little angry. “She didn’t do anything wrong!”

“No.” Quinn really hoped this was true. “It’s just that whatever started this, it’s from a long time ago. Details are important, but much harder to recall with accuracy.”

“Mom wouldn’t hold out on him!”

Quinn sighed. “If your dad handed your mom a knife and asked her to open her own veins, she’d do it. Just because he asked. She’d bleed out believing he had a good reason for her sacrifice. But...”

Quinn trailed off, not sure if she could ever put it into words, words that someone who had never been there would ever be able to understand, much less a bunch of kids born long afterward.

“But...?” Isabella prompted.

“But – we all learned, in a hard school, to keep secrets. To tell lies. It’s, like breathing. Easier even, and sometimes just as unconscious.” Quinn smiled then and walked into the room, tossing her bag on the bed and plopping down between Sophie and Gabrielle. “Your mom will do her best, which is always very, very good. And while we wait, you’re going to fill me in on the last nine months.” Quinn looked around at the worried faces of the five clever offspring of Michael Samuelle and Nikita Wirth, and she grinned. “Now. Enough with the worry. Tell your auntie Quinn. What mischief have you all gotten up too lately?”

*****

Four hours later one of Michael’s people summoned her downstairs. Quinn found Nikita in the small dinning room, leaning back in one chair and her feet propped in another, long legs stretched out in front of her and a wet cloth over her eyes.

“Why do you let him do that to you?” she asked.

Nikita answered without moving. “Michael didn’t do anything to me. Paul and Madeline fucked me over with their fucking mind-rape bullshit twenty years ago. I’m just still paying.”

Quinn pulled out a chair at the same table and sat down. “Wow. Now I know your head hurts. You don’t usually have such a potty mouth.”

“I’m seeing double.”

“He should have stopped the debrief hours ago then.”

“And picked it up, when?”

Quinn frowned and didn’t answer, knowing as well as Nikita did that there was no more ‘when’ to wait for. After a minute or two she asked, “Did you turn up anything?”

“Narrowed it down.” Nikita pulled the cloth off her eyes and sat up a bit so she could look at Quinn without craning her neck. Her face was pale and drawn, and her eyes red-rimmed and watering with pain. “It has to be something from the years at Section One after I was level two and before you and Jason got there. But we still can’t pinpoint what. And it feels like we’ve excluded everything.”

Quinn could hear all of Nikita’s exhausted frustration in her low, raspy voice. “Why just those few years?”

“Before that I was too junior to know much of anything not also known by lots more people than me, and no one has contacted you or Jason.”

“I know. I called him after Michael called me. We’ve heard nothing, even though we’ve both caught the traces of the rebooted operation. I know he told Michael the same thing. Which also definitely means Section One, and not Center or Oversight.” Quinn hesitated a moment, then asked, “Did either of you call Michelle?”

“I did. She says she’s heard nothing.”

“Which she’d say, true or not.”

“Yes.”

“How did Michael know something was going to happen today?”

“Apparently the new Section leaks as badly as the old one. Rumor got to one of the Uzbek mafia-types MSF has to deal with, and yesterday he actually gloated to Michael over the phone that some big bad was coming to steal his woman.”

“I see.”

After another short silence, Nikita asked, “How are the girls?”

“Worried. But, for now, asleep. And you were right; Sophie and Gabrielle were out before eight. Took the big girls a bit longer and a really stupid movie for them to fade.”

“It’s a long trip. And the roads in Cambodia still suck.”

Michael walked in then, carrying a glass of water, which he set down at Nikita’s elbow, and a pill package. Seeing him opening it, Nikita said, “I already said no, Michael.”

He answered, his voice soothing, “It’s over the counter migraine medicine, nothing more.”

Nikita closed her eyes and said, “Quinn?”

Quinn held out her hand and raised her brows, waiting. After a minor staring contest, Michael sighed quietly and handed her the pills. After examining them, Quinn said, “He’s lying. It’s your prescription stuff.” Responding to the plea she’s seen in his eyes, she went on, overriding Nikita’s objection, “but he’s right. You need to take them.”

“I hate them. They make me loopy.”

“Which is worse than the seeing double, blinding-pain thing, how, exactly?”

Nikita scowled and then held out her hand for the pills, tossing them back with the water and a heavy, resigned sigh.

Michael put his hand on Nikita’s shoulder. To Quinn he said, “Thank you.” He gently brushed Nikita’s hair back from her forehead. “I’m running a bath for you. Come on.”

Nikita put her hand on his for a moment, then, leaning heavily on both Michael and the table for support, pulled herself to her feet and headed for the lobby stairs.

Michael looked at Quinn. “Would you look over the notes?”

“Of course.”

“Adam has them.”

Quinn barely controlled her gasp of surprise. She was pretty certain her eyebrows flew up to her hairline anyway. “Adam?”

“Schtopel ID’d him as Sala Vacheck’s grandson in the middle of Orly airport today. At this point further ignorance is deadlier than more knowledge.”

*****

When Nikita was half way up the stairs she spotted Isabella and Katherine waiting for her. They were sitting on the top steps and leaning against the wall, just out of sight of the main lobby. She slowed to a stop and looked at them carefully, straining hard against the pain in her head to focus her vision. Her reward for this effort was to see clearly the stress and worry in their expressions. “Hey,” she said. “What’s up?”

“That’s what we want to know,” Isabella replied.

Nikita countered, “Quinn told me you were asleep.”

Katherine smirked. “Quinn isn’t always as hard to fool as she thinks she is.”

Isabella rolled her eyes. “You were so snoring during the movie.”

Katherine stared down the bridge of her nose, Samuelle hauteur rolling off her in waves. “Fake snoring. Obviously fooled you too.”

Nikita decided her head still hurt too much for thinking up clever, and true, misdirection. She sat down heavily on the step across from Izzy and Kate. “Alright. What do you already know?” she asked.

Isabella said, “Only that something from the past, from Section One, has started up again and somehow you’re involved, and you and dad and the rest are trying to figure out what, so you can get away from it.”

Nikita nodded. “More or less, yes.”

“Did you figure it out?” Katherine asked.

“No.” Nikita sighed. “We’ve narrowed it down, but mostly all we’ve been able to do is exclude every possibility we’ve thought of so far.”

Isabella asked, “So, what can we do?”

Nikita looked up at her clever, beautiful daughters and fought back overwrought tears. Tall and slim, they looked more like her than like Michael, with upturned noses and big, bright blue eyes. The only sign of their paternity, in their faces anyway, was their dark, level brows, and something about their high cheekbones, especially in Isabella’s slightly longer, slightly narrower and flatter bone structure. What they both had, and that had definitely come from their father, was an incredible natural assurance. In her own troubled youth, Nikita had made do with bravado and defiance, but her oldest daughters, at least, walked through the world as though it had been made just for them. So far anyway, the world seemed to agree.

She looked down at her hands, unable to meet their eyes any longer. She answered Isabella’s question, “We keep gathering intel, and in the meantime take steps to keep us all safe.”

Looking back up again, she remembered that defiance could sometimes hold long enough for a better plan to come along. “We also fight them at every turn, using every tool we have.”

“How does trapping us upstairs with Quinn do that? We could help you!” Isabella said, as Katherine exclaimed, “Whatever it takes mom. We have your back.”

Nikita felt her heart swell with a familiar wave of love and pride and general amazement how much she adored her children. She smiled what she suspected had to be a watery smile, Quinn would have called it inanely sappy she was sure, and gripped Kate’s knee. “Thanks, honey. I know you do. As for why you were upstairs,” she looked at Isabella, “partial knowledge can actually be more dangerous than none. Today we didn’t have the time to give you all the background you would need to make sense of the details we were working with tonight. I know – trust me, I know! – It is incredibly frustrating to be kept in the dark for your own good. I promise that we will make the time as soon as we can to tell you as much as you want to know.”

Izzy said, “Like, for example, who is Sala Vacheck?”

Nikita exhaled sharply. “See – that’s what I mean about partial knowledge. We are almost one hundred percent certain that, at this moment, Sala Vacheck has nothing to do with what’s happening. For one thing, he’s been dead for more than twenty years.”

“Then why did that man bring him up?”

“Mick. The man’s name is Mick Schtopel. He was reminding us that even though he couldn’t drag me back to Section One today, he can still hurt us if we don’t make some effort to negotiate with him. He could also, he thinks, stir family turmoil by bringing up your dad’s past.”

“What about my past?” Michael came up the stairs, stopping just below where they were sitting.

“Who is Sala Vacheck?” Kate asked this time, her gaze darting back and forth between her parents.

Nikita looked up at Michael, waiting for him to take the lead. He said, “You know the story of how I came to meet and marry Adam’s mom, Elena?”

“Yeah.” Katherine frowned. “You married her as part of a mission to get to her father.”

“Yes.” Michael hesitated, then, after a quick glance at Nikita, went on, “Sala Vacheck was her father.”

“Why does anyone care now?” Isabella asked.

Michael said, “His nephews have rebuilt much of his old organization. They could be persuaded to see Adam as a threat to their power.”

Isabella rolled her eyes. “Because terrorism is hereditary, now?”

“No more than any other family business, but no less.” Nikita shook her head, then hissed because it made the world wobble a bit. “Anyway, it was a warning, not a statement of anything that has actually happened. Yes,” she held up her hands, “we’ve checked. And re-checked.”

“Your head hurts,” Katherine said.

“Yes.”

“Mom?”

“It’s just stress.” Nikita took the hand Michael offered her and pulled herself to her feet. “Really. Stress headache, nothing more. Tomorrow is likely to be a very crazy day, so you should really try to get to sleep. Come on.” She gestured toward the upstairs hall with her hand and smiled at them. “Do you want to be tucked in?”

They both rolled their eyes as they filed past her and down the hall, but neither of them objected when she slipped into the room they were sharing with a sleeping Margaret a few minutes later, after checking on Sophie and Gabrielle. She pulled the covers up over their shoulders and kissed their foreheads. “Sleep well. I love you,” she whispered, and they whispered back, “We will, we love you too.”

*****

Nikita closed the bathroom door and sagged against it, watching impassively as Michael zipped his fly and reached to flush the toilet. Over the noise of the rushing water, Nikita said, "Did I pass your test? Was I truly shocked by the reappearance of Mick Schtopel?"

Michael finished washing his hands and toweled them dry, then looked up and fixed her with a level gaze. “Yes.”

Nikita tried to muster a blistering glare, but her vision was still fuzzy on the edges and Michael didn’t even blink. She suspected the result was closer to a tired pout. “Why did you bring us back here? We were still in Bangkok and had almost four hours to change plans after you got your tip.”

"If they are determined to speak with you they will – in Paris we have resources as well."

“We have resources lots of places, some of them much further from the Agency than here.”

“Only they have the information we need.”

“You still should have told me.”

“Why?”

“So we could have decided together what to do? So I could have come alone?”

“Obviously, you do know why I didn’t tell you.”

“Michael…” She trailed off, sighing, realizing that there was nothing else to be said.

After a moment, he offered, “Your bath is ready.”

Nikita looked over at the ancient claw footed bath, long and deep, then she looked back at Michael. “It looks like the one in your old apartment.”

“Yes. I thought so.”

After a pause she said, “There’s room for two.”

“Yes.”

“Will you stay?”

“If that’s what you want.”

Nikita stepped close to him, slipping her fingers inside the waistband of his trousers and pressing her cheek against his as she spoke softly into his ear. “Yes. That’s what I want.”

Folding his arms around her, Michael murmured, “We should plan for tomorrow’s meeting. And then you need to sleep.”

She closed her eyes and let Michael take more of her weight as she relaxed into him. “Yes. And you should sleep too.”

Michael brought up his hands to tangle in her hair as he pressed his lips to her forehead, then her cheeks, then to her mouth.

She had to swallow to speak; even then her voice was a dry husky shadow as she asked, "What approach do you think they’ll use?"

"More of what Mick tried today, pressing on your old ‘leave of absence’ and demanding your compliance."

"And no information until I offer it.”

“No.”

“So, I lie, they lie, and at some point they will have to get bored and tell me what they want from me.”

Finished with unbuttoning her shirt, Michael slipped it down off her arms, trailing his fingers along the skin on the inside of her elbows and staring at her lips. “Yes.”

After shaking her hands free from her shirtsleeves, Nikita ran them gently over his shoulders and down across his chest, slipping her hands under his sweater and smiling when she felt his hiss in the contraction of his abdominal muscles. “Then, that’s our plan. Wing it once we have more intel.”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” She nodded and reached for his belt buckle.

*****

Nikita stretched her back as she wiggled down against Michael’s chest, seeking a more comfortable position. The tub was shorter but wider than one Michael had once had, and it was nice and deep. The hot water and Michael’s strong fingers had washed away the grime of travel and the drugs were working and her brain no longer felt like it was trying to explode out her eye sockets. Breathing deeply she closed her eyes and said, “I had started to believe this day would never come.”

Michael was skimming his fingers gently across her shoulder. “I know.”

“You never did.”

“No.”

“How worried are you?”

Michael breathed deeply for a heartbeat or two, and then he said, “Let’s not talk about it now.”

Nikita thought about that for a moment, then twisted her neck so she could look up into Michael’s face. “What should we do instead?”

His answer was a kiss, followed by his hands running along her sides under the water, slick and sure as he reached for her inner thighs. He pulled her legs up and open, shifting his legs underneath hers at the same time, using his knees to trap her legs against the hard, smooth surface of the tub walls. Nikita made a sound caught somewhere between a smothered laugh and erotic moan as she felt his fingers tangle in her pubic hair. He tugged gently, stroking and playing long enough that she lifted her hips to push her cunt more firmly into his hands. She said, “Stop teasing.”

She felt as much heard his quiet laughter, but then he palmed her pubis and pushed his fingers inside her and she quit paying attention to anything else.

As the last tremors of her orgasm faded Nikita began rocking harder against Michael’s cock, rigid and thick against her lower back. His sharp groan made her smile. Sitting up, she turned and twisted, slipping around and over him, until she was facing him, straddling his lap.

With her eyes locked on his, she opened herself with one hand and guided him in with the other, flicking her thumb across the tip of his cock, slick with pre-cum, before flexing her hips and sinking down and onto him. With her hands on his shoulders for balance, she arched her lower back, angling to take as much of him in as she could, humming in satisfaction at the way he stretched and filled her. Still holding his eyes, squeezing her pelvic muscles tight around him, she said, “Sixteen years is a really long time for people in our line of work.”

He started rocking his hips, bracing her with his hands. “Yes.”

“It’s not enough.”

“No.”

“So don’t give up on us.”

“I never do.”

*****

Quinn watched Michael follow Nikita up the stairs, then she went into the salon and found Adam still working with a handful of Michael’s employees. They were grouped around several large computer screens, staring at a collection of maps.

“Hey,” she said.

Adam turned at her voice, and his tired face lit up with a bright smile as he straightened up. “Hey! I heard you’d shown up for babysitting duty.”

Quinn smiled back as she exchanged air kisses and a brief hug with Michael’s oldest child. “Which is a ridiculous waste of my talents.”

“Yes. But no one else could’ve kept my sisters upstairs all night. So, you would’ve spent all your time swearing at them anyway.”

Quinn laughed. “Too true.” Sobering up, she said, “What are you looking at?”

“Maps of the known locations of former ops overlaid with known current Section activity.”

Quinn looked at the map for a moment, then looked at Adam in surprise. “How many former ops do they keep up with?”

“Probably about half of the cold ops who survived the shut down. They know a lot less about the tech and support staff.”

“Why so many?”

“You’d be surprised, or,” Adam shrugged, “maybe not, at how many former cold ops ended up doing humanitarian relief work, at least for a time.”

Quinn thought about that for a moment then she shrugged and said, “From Nikita’s section? Maybe not.”

Adam smiled at her. “Exactly.”

“Michael said you have the notes?”

“And the summaries.” Adam turned to one of the laptops open on a smaller side table. “Everything is here. It isn’t organized as well as I’d like, but it’s the best we can do with the software we have.”

As she headed for the chair in front of the computer he pointed her to, Quinn said, “so, how’s it feel to be a full member of the team?”

“Scary as hell.”

Quinn looked sharply at him. Adam was a handsome young man, not quite as tall as his father, with olive skin and dark eyes that he must have inherited from his mother’s side of the family. His finer, smaller-boned frame and bicyclist’s lean, whipcord muscles might have made him seem less than fully consequential, but he had inherited Michael’s Roman nose and square jaw, and his imperious gaze. And perhaps his maternal grandfather’s charisma as well; at least based on what she could remember from old reports she had read long ago. Quinn could see that the experienced, trusted MSF operatives of Michael’s personal team were already responding to what had to be a genetic ability to issue instructions and have other people follow them with barely a token show of resistance.

She cocked her head and raised her brows. “And?”

Adam grinned and shrugged self-consciously. “And very exciting.”

Quinn nodded in satisfaction, then changed the subject. “So, bottom line. What do you think we’re looking at?”

Adam took a deep breath. “I think we’re looking at, and for, something that was very small and very localized at the time. Something so small that everyone thought it was completely dealt with then. But some element survived and some new, recent catalyst sent it into overdrive.”

“Makes sense.”

“Problem is, I’m worried, and I know they are too, that they can’t figure out what it is, because they don’t remember it, because whatever it was, it was so minor and unconnected at the time.”

“Nikita could barely see when she went upstairs. Are her headaches getting worse again?”

Adam shook his head. “No. Or,” he shrugged, “as far as I know anyway. She hasn’t had anything like this since her hospitalization four years ago.”

“As far as you know.”

“Or Izzy or Kate. They’d tell me.”

Remembering a series of adventures in Madagascar and then Paris that took place about two years ago, Quinn winked. “Well, the three of you together make a damn fine intelligence gathering unit, so, I think we’d know if they were trying to hide anything.”

She could tell from the quick flush on Adam’s cheeks that he remembered too. He almost smiled, but quickly sobered. “She’d tell you, right?”

Quinn shook her head. “Not necessarily.”

“Oh.” Adam frowned.

Quinn shook her head at him, and resumed her course for the computer. “Never mind that now. We’ll pursue that later, after we get out of whatever it is ahead of us tomorrow.”

After a seventy-five-minute review of all the data, Quinn had little to add to Adam’s assessment and suggested that they all needed to get some sleep. New intel would arrive in the morning and they should to be ready to respond to it. Adam and the remaining man and woman from MSF agreed. There was a general scraping and standing and stretching and groaning as they all headed upstairs after checking in with the night security team.

She looked in on the girls, relieved to find they were all five of them still sleeping soundly. Tapping on Nikita’s door a minute later brought no response so she pushed the door open as silently as possible, only to discover the lights were still on, the bed was still made and no one was there. Letting out an exasperated huff, she knocked on the bathroom door, quietly calling Nikita’s name. No one answered so she opened that door too, and found them.

They had fallen asleep in the bath. Or rather more likely from what she could see, Nikita had fallen asleep on top of him, her head on his shoulder and her body trapping his under hers, and Michael hadn’t wanted to wake her and ended up unintentionally dozing off himself.

Shutting the door behind her, Quinn strode over to the tub. Squatting down to shake them awake, she hesitated for a just moment, caught by the way sleep eased away the stress and the most dramatic signs of ageing in their faces. Michael’s hair and beard stubble were more grey than brown now, but asleep he otherwise could have passed for his much younger self, his tanned skin still firm and only the deep laugh lines around his eyes and mouth giving hints of his full life. With her face scrubbed clean, Nikita’s faint freckles stood out against her paler skin, and the faded purple shadows under her eyes were more obvious, and neither detracted from her soft cheek or the faintest of smiles on her full lips.

Shrugging off her brief descent into sentimentality, Quinn poked both of them sharply. “Psst! Wake up!”

Rewarded by both of them shifting irritably away from her prodding, she observed, “Post-coital drowning is an absurd death, even for you.” Smirking, she added, “Of course, given your hard-earned reputations for high-risk fucking, there is the black comedy factor.”

Michael opened his eyes, and then broke into a slow grin. “Best death profile yet,” he whispered.

Quinn sniffed, “Somewhat undignified.”

“Death is undignified.” Nikita’s low murmur made Michael laugh. He said, “So is sex.”

Nikita sat up slowly, and something about the way she moved left Quinn convinced she was still riding Michael’s cock. Michael’s laugh died and his eyes momentarily lost focus, so either he had still been hard or he was again now. Nikita reached out and wrapped her damp fingers in Quinn’s shirt as she said, “I prefer sex.” Then she pulled Quinn in and kissed her.

*****

When she entered the dining room just before six o’clock the next morning, Quinn found that Michael was awake, showered, shaved and had beaten her to the tables. With no one around to witness it and accuse her of going soft on Michael Samuelle, she felt free to return his warm hug, and even kiss him back. Once. Briefly. Even genuine affection for the man could only go so far.

Sitting down across from him a minute later, with a cup of coffee and a croissant and some fruit from the spread that someone had already set up on the buffet, she asked, “Have you seen my report?”

He nodded at the laptop computer in front of him. “Yes.”

“And?”

“I agree.”

Quinn said, “Internal politics.”

“Yes.”

“She’s just a pawn in someone else’s game. Again.”

“Yes.”

Quinn scowled. “Screw them.”

“I’d rather just kill them all.”

“Do you have the resources to cover up something that big?”

Michael scowled in turn. “No.”

“Too bad.”

“Yes.”

“Any new reports come in over night that might help?”

“Not really, mostly more confirmation for all the things we had already excluded.”

“Can I see it?”

“Of course.” He pushed the computer towards her and then rose to refill his coffee and get himself a plate of food.

After looking over the data, which as Michael had said, added nothing new, Quinn said, “That was an interesting map Adam put together last night.”

“Yes.”

“Not very helpful right now, but impressive all the same.”

Michael just grunted, absorbed in something he was scrolling past on his phone.

“I could fill it out further, and if you added intel from some others, like Jason, or Jasmine, or Mintz, it would be a valuable, and dangerous, file.”

Michael looked up sharply. After holding her eyes for a moment he said, “Sink the whole file, and destroy the drives.”

“You sure?”

Before Michael could answer, one of the men watching the front door stuck his head into the dining room. “Michael? There’s someone at the door who insists he has to speak with you, right now.”

*****

Nikita woke up feeling the mattress move as someone crawled onto the bed. Opening her eyes she said, “good morning baby,” and reached out to stroke Margaret’s hair.

“Hi Mom.”

Nikita squinted at the bedside clock, which read 6:17am. She said, “You’re awake earlier than usual.”

“I’ve been awake for an hour already. Can’t get back to sleep.”

Nikita lifted up the blankets. “Well crawl under the covers and get warm, maybe you can fall back asleep here.”

Margaret did as she suggested, snuggling down and saying, “where’s Dad?”

“Getting ready for our meeting today. He let me sleep in a little.”

Margaret rolled over and pinned her with an accusing glance. “Does your head hurt?”

Nikita ruffled Margaret’s hair and then stroked her face, savoring the feel of her satiny, still child-like skin under her fingers. She raised her brow and asked, “You know what the best thing about technological surveillance is?”

“No. What?”

“It doesn’t plague you with concerned questions.”

Margaret’s expression relaxed and she rolled her eyes. “Mom.”

Nikita leaned closer and kissed her forehead. “Try to go back to sleep. Before you know it we should be able to go home.”

Margaret obediently closed her eyes. “Okay.”

“I love you sweetie.”

As she settled further into the mattress, Margaret sighed out, “I love you too, mom.”

After swinging out of the bed, Nikita straightened the covers and pulled them smooth over Margaret, tucking her in and kissing her temple, whispering, “go back to sleep.”

She found some clothes, then slipped out of the room. Examining herself in the bathroom mirror a moment later, she decided she did look better this morning. Her eyes were clear, and she could focus, and her skin wasn’t as colorless or as puffy. She still looked tired, but that couldn’t be helped, only disguised later with cosmetics. She washed her face, brushed her hair and teeth, and then headed downstairs to see what the overnight intel had brought in.

She was half way down when Michael came out of the dining room, following one of his men to the front door, and trailed by Quinn. She had just reached the bottom of the stairs when Michael’s man opened the door to reveal Mick Schtopel dancing impatiently on the front stoop. As soon as he caught sight of Michael, he flung out his hands and cried, “Ah Michael! Good to see you again so soon! Sorry to be here so early, really I am, but it’s really, very, extremely urgent that I speak to you. Right now.”

Michael looked back at Quinn, and seeing Nikita caught her eyes too. After a quick, silent conference, Michael turned and nodded. “Okay.”

Mick stepped inside as Michael tilted his head to indicate the way, then he led the whole parade back to the dinning room.

Michael and Quinn resumed the chairs they’d obviously already been sitting in, leaving Mick standing uncomfortably in front of them. Nikita turned to the buffet to get herself coffee and a plate of food before she sat down in the open chair between Michael and Quinn. Kissing both of them in turn, lingering a moment longer on Quinn, she said, “good morning.”

Michael smiled briefly at her, laughter in his eyes, then turned to look at Mick, who was elaborately pretending to fight being shocked. Michael raised his brow said, “okay. We’re waiting. What’s so urgent?”

“Ah, well,” Mick rubbed his hands together, looked around the room nervously, rubbed his nose, then looked back to Michael and said, “well, yes. You see, I’d rather thought I’d just be speaking to you, you know,” Mick dropped his shoulder and mimed a bad boxer move, “mano a mano, you know?”

“No.”

“Okay then.” Mick took a deep breath, then plunged on. “I know this is a bit indelicate, but I have to know, to know what to tell you.” Mick stopped.

They all waited for a long beat. Then Michael said, “Mick?”

“I really, really hate that I have to ask you this question. You have no idea how much I hate it. I want to make that very clear, right up front.” He paused and looked at each of them in turn. Seeing their irritated nods, he looked straight at Michael and said, “Were you, ah,” Mick paused and grimaced one more time, “pleasuring the lovely Nikita around 4:30 this morning?”

When no one answered him, trapped as they were by the reality that was Mick, he plunged on, “you know, rogering the missus, giving her the old what for, banging-“

Nikita was hit by one of the more unwelcome waves of déjà vu of her life. She cut him off. “Mick. We get it.”

Mick shot her a helpless glare. “Seriously, I really, really hate that I have to ask, but I do.”

Quinn folded her arms across her chest. “You are a disgusting little man, you know this, right?”

Nikita exchanged a long incredulous look with Michael, who finally shrugged, looked at Mick and said, “Yes.”

Now truly exasperated, Quinn turned on Michael, “and you are apparently pathologically incapable of going soft. I am given to understand that this is a serious medical condition, and you should seek treatment as soon as possible.”

“Hush.” Nikita put her hand on Quinn’s arm. Looking across the table she said, “Mick. Your excuse better be really good.”

Mick sighed, and then glanced longingly at the empty chair at the table. Nikita said, “yes, fine, sit. And then start talking.”

“Coffee?” Mick asked as he pulled out the chair and sat down.

Feeling Quinn tense up preparatory to launching herself at Mick, no doubt to box his ears, Nikita gripped her arm and held her down. “Later,” she said.

“Okay.” Mick held up his hands in acquiescence. “Do you remember Section Four?”

Nikita frowned. “Section Four? Psy-ops?”

“Yes. You met one of their projects, years ago.”

Nikita blinked as she set down her fork with suddenly nerveless fingers. “Jerome? This is all about Jerome?”

“Yes. It is all about Jerome. All of it. In every way.”

Michael said, “Details, Mick.”

“It’s a long story. Could I please have some coffee, and maybe one or two of those lovely sticky buns? And perhaps some pink grapefruit?”

“Fine.” Nikita pushed her chair back and rose to her feet. “Talk.”

“When they rolled up the sections, they also shut down Section Four. Most of their projects were terminated, but a few were old enough and stable enough, like Jerome, to be humanely released into the world. To be tracked and studied of course. Jerome and his keeper, who was, in a particularly unfortunate coincidence, named Josephine, were for many years the great success story. Most of the others ended up permanently institutionalized.”

Michael raised his brows. “Were?”

“Yes. Josephine died of breast cancer almost five years ago.” Mick held up a spoon to avert any questions. “Yes, all that was possible was done, no expense was spared. But she contracted it before she was thirty. It was very aggressive and in the end, all was for naught.”

Quinn said, “So, Jerome was left alone.”

“Yes. Alone in every way. Josephine wasn’t just his keeper, she was his mentor and his mother, his sister, his friend, and from more or less the time they entered the world when he was thirteen or fourteen years old, his lover.”

Nikita exchanged wary glances with Quinn and Michael. Sex, love and grief weren’t a good combination, even for the most stable of minds. She set a cup of coffee and a plate of food in front of Mick before resuming her own seat.

Mick went on, “Until she got sick, they were doing well. She helped him stabilize and manage his gifts enough to operate outside of a completely controlled environment. In time, he was able to enter university and actually go to classes, finishing up a degree in just a few years. She eventually found a career of a sort of her own, caring for medical research animals, and I want you all to know that I’m really fighting the urge to wander off track here, and he was beginning to work on a graduate degree, genetics I understand, when she got sick. He dropped everything to care for her, and after her death his watchers were fully prepared to institutionalize him, but to everyone’s initial surprise he pulled himself together amazingly well.”

Nikita frowned. “Initial surprise?”

“Yes. Now we know why. He found a new focus object.” Mick turned his sharp gaze to Nikita. “Do you remember the Oslo Conference on women’s health you attended four years ago? You were on one of the plenary panels, about some of the new cancer vaccines?”

Nikita frowned. “Yes. I do.”

“There were photos.”

“Of course.” She shrugged. “There always are.”

“Jerome saw one with you in it. He’s been fixated on you ever since.”

“What? Why me?”

“As far as we can tell, you are literally the only other woman in his entire life with whom he has ever had any significant physical contact. And you were Section. Like him. Like his Josephine. He wants to go home, and he has decided that you, and the Sections, are his home. So he set out to systematically rebuild them.”

“Jerome did this?”

“Yes. Planting a suggestion here, an idea there, in the right minds, at the right time, and…”

Michael finished for him. “And men in power saw possibilities.”

“For what it’s worth, more than a few women as well.”

Nikita exclaimed, “Why didn’t he just pick up a phone and call me? I’m easy to find!”

“He isn’t sane, Nikita, and he wants to go home. All he remembered was that your code name was Josephine, which he decided was an omen. And when he began looking for you through the minds of his watchers, because to Jerome, that is the obvious place to begin and not, say, the internet, he learned that you were the last Operations. So it seemed to him that if he rebuilt the Sections, you, Josephine, would be recalled and would be there to take him in.”

“When did he realize that I’m a completely unsuitable candidate for the job? And, more importantly, that I don’t want it?”

“When he finally discovered your family.”

“What? That’s not a secret!”

“He didn’t think to look. Remember. Not sane. Never was. Also. Raised in a glass box.”

“So when did he realize that I’m married to Michael, and that we have children of our own?”

“When he figured out that he’d started more than he could control, and that the men with the money weren’t going to recall you. He demanded to know why – and they told him. About ten months ago.”

“I see.” Nikita titled her head as she considered Mick. She said, slowly, “The men who came to ask me to go back to the perch were sent by Jerome, and not by the Agency, weren’t they.”

“Yes.”

“Why couldn’t he control it better?” asked Quinn.

“He is, of course, much stronger now as an adult than he was as a child, but as far as we can tell, he can still really only affect one thing, or one person, at a time. And, more or less, whatever it is has to be within unassisted visual range. The closer to him, the more he can affect, and the further away the less control he has. And the more people or objects he tries to manipulate or read, and with more precision, the more erratic the results. So once the Sections really started taking shape – your plans, by the way, have been most helpful, love – there were too many people in too many places, with their own goals, agendas and plans.”

Quinn cut in, “So, his mommy and lover fantasies took a major hit when he realized she’s already married and has a litter of children with another guy.”

“Yes.” Mick grimaced in Quinn’s direction, then looked at Nikita again, “And the fact that you’re married to Michael….”

“Let me guess,” Michael said. “I’m the only other person alive who has ever had meaningful physical contact with Jerome.”

“Yes. Freudian daddy issues galore.”

“So, what’s going on now?”

“He got wind of your return to Paris and insisted that he needed to speak with you, with you both, and with your ‘other’ children. The people at Center and Oversight agreed that it might be best for all concerned to allow a meeting to go forward under controlled conditions.”

Nikita’s blood turned to ice. “Meaning, inside Section One.”

“Yes.”

She went on, “Our whole family.”

“Yes.”

Michael inclined his head and said, “Thank you Mick.”

Mick grinned broadly. “You’re welcome.”

Quinn said, “What?”

Nikita answered, “Mick tipped the lowlife.”

Mick faked some modesty. “Well, not him directly, one of his suppliers.”

Nikita smiled at him and held out her hand, which Mick took and gripped firmly. She said, “The message got through.”

“Hate to break up this unexpectedly horrifying love fest,” Quinn interrupted, “but what happened at 4:30 this morning that had you on our doorstep barely two hours later?”

Mick’s smile vanished and he pulled his hand back. “Jerome slipped his leash. We all knew where you were, you aren’t hiding, but now we’ve lost Jerome. We couldn’t think of what would have set him off in the middle of the night, our teams here reported nothing unusual happening. Which is when, having once been Nikita’s neighbor, you see,” Mick paused to share a conspiratorial wink with Quinn that made her sneer at him, “I recalled that 4:30 in the morning is not an unusual hour for, ah, nocturnal activities, if you get my drift, between the couple at the heart of Jerome’s obsessions. Which sent me here at the double quick to confirm, and then, with clearances in hand, to tell you everything.”

Quinn’s tone was very, very dry. “So. Jerome flew the coop when he sensed Mommy and Daddy fucking.”

Mick made series of uncomfortable and yet leering faces that made Nikita want to hit him upside the head, then he said, “Yes.”

Nikita looked at Michael, something tugging at the edge of her consciousness, and saw the same uncertainty in his eyes. Then she was on her feet even as Michael said, “the children.”

Michael was still faster than she was and he was half way up the stairs before she had reached the foot. He was inside the little girls’ room, sitting on Gabrielle’s bed and waking her up while pressing a wide-awake Sophie close to his side when Nikita flew past to the big front room Izzy, Kate and Margaret were sharing. Kate was still asleep, and Izzy was getting dressed when Nikita flung open the door. She said, “Get your sister dressed and into the dining room. Quickly.”

Then she headed for the room she and Michael had shared, willing Margaret to still be there, safely asleep in their bed. Behind her, she heard Michael and Sophie knocking on Adam’s door and Adam’s sleepy voice answering. Pushing the door open, she saw only an empty bed. Telling herself all would be well, she turned for the hall bathroom, only to see a confused member of Michael’s staff walking out and into Quinn’s glare. “Margaret?” Nikita said.

Quinn said, “not in my room.”

“Margaret?” Nikita called down the hallway.

There was no answer and the passage fell silent, the adults shooting tight, anxious glares in every direction. “Margaret?” she called louder. “Has anyone seen Margaret?”

“Mommy?” Sophie’s voice was quiet and frightened. “Margaret took Baron outside a few minutes ago. He needed to go.”

Michael said, “Everyone else, dining room,” as he pushed Sophie toward Adam and scooped up Gabrielle and gave her to Quinn. To another MSF staffer, who had just come up the stairs, he said, “Did you see Margaret take the dog out?”

“Yes sir. Eric and Karol went with her.”

“Do you know where they were going?”

“To the river walk, sir, it’s just a block over.”

Adam put his hands on Sophie’s shoulders, gently squeezing before letting go. He said to Izzy, “take her,” then he vanished into his room.

Michael plunged down the stairs, calling for his team, with the staffers at his heels, while Nikita turned to Quinn, who nodded and hustled the rest of their daughters after them, Gabrielle still in her arms and clinging to her neck. Nikita went to her room and quickly changed into street clothes. She was pulling on a coat as she rushed down the stairs, reaching the lobby as a fully dressed Adam and Michael met at the front door, a team of three with them. “Michael?”

Michael nodded and handed her the extra gun he was holding. The rest of the group was already armed. “Eric and Karol aren’t answering their phones. Quinn, Mick and five others are with the girls. Mick is calling his personnel for updates and reinforcements. J.B. is rounding up another team.”

Just then Quinn walked out of the salon and handed each of them an earpiece. “Here. They’re not military quality, but they will cover a two kilometer range.”

Michael called, “Mick? Anything?”

Mick appeared in the entry to the dining room, phone in hand. “Yes. They headed west on the river walk five minutes ago.”

Michael nodded at the group by the door. “Let’s go.”

They ran.

They all spotted the fallen bodies about a hundred meters in front of them as soon as they turned onto the river walk, but Adam got to them first, his father hard on his heels. They knelt and checked for life signs. Adam looked up as Nikita drew nearer. “Eric and Karol. Both dead. No sign of Margaret or Baron.”

Reaching Michael’s side, Nikita saw that Eric and Karol had died the same way she remembered Section operatives dying; blood leaking from their noses, mouths and ears, even, in Eric’s case, from the corners of his eyes.

Nikita stood up straight and turned slowly in a circle, taking in the environment around her as fully as possible. At last she came to a stop, looking up the street that led away from the river directly in front of them. She took a deep breath and, pitching her voice low and full, to carry as far and as clearly as possible, she called, “Jerome? Jerome? Can you hear me? It’s me, Nikita. If you want to talk to me, please call me. Or come to the hotel. Michael’s here too. We would both like to see you again.” She paused, but the only sounds she heard were the river and the noises of the city coming to life on a bright, sunny Saturday morning. “Jerome? Please don’t hurt Margaret. She doesn’t know who you are.”

*****

Footprints in the Dust 3/6

2013-03-20T19:56:23Z

*****

Quinn looked up at Mick, who was hovering restlessly around the edges of the dinning room. “They’ve found the guards.”

Mick raised his brows. “Alive?”

“No.” Quinn shook her head. “No sign of Margaret or Baron.”

“Damn.”

“Michael says to brief the girls. They’re going to spend some time at the site and then follow the most obvious exit route to the edge of our communications range.”

Mick gaped in shock. “Brief the girls?” He gestured at Michael and Nikita’s remaining daughters with his head. “These girls?”

“Yes.” Quinn held his eyes until he raised his hands in surrender.

Mick turned to face Isabella, Katherine, Sophie and Gabrielle, who had gathered into a tight knot in the middle of the room when Quinn gave the update.

“Okay.” He rubbed his hands together, coughed uncomfortably and began. “Your Uncle Mick has some bad news for you.”

“Uncle?” Gabrielle frowned. “You aren’t our uncle.”

“Honorary uncle, then.”

Kate snorted derisively and her expression suggested that she regarded Mick like something nasty stuck on her shoe. Her tone dripped with adolescent challenge as she explained in tiny words, “You don’t decide that. Mom and dad choose who our extra uncles are – and I bet neither one of them would do you with a ten-foot pole. Tell us about Margaret.”

For a time-stopping moment, Quinn saw in Kate the brash insolence that had carried Nikita through the streets at an age not so very much older than Kate was now. If the situation hadn’t been so dire, she might have actually damaged herself laughing at Mick’s expression of horrified recognition. As it was, her slightly hysterical giggles erupted in a choked kind of sniggering.

“Excuse me,” Mick said to the girls, then he spun on Quinn, grabbed her by the upper arm and hauled her from her chair and into the hall. “What the hell?”

Quinn got herself under control. “I’m the only ‘honorary aunt’ in their lives right now. Or uncle, for that matter.”

Mick could only manage a strangled sound.

“They do have real aunts you know, and an uncle by marriage and cousins and everything.”

Mick made the same sound.

Quinn took a little pity on him. “Nikita’s pretty hostile to secrets. And I pre-date all of them anyway.”

Mick shook his whole body, like he was trying to shake off ants. “I’m just still coming to terms with all this.” He shot her a skeptical look. “Michael just never seemed your type.”

“God you’re dimwitted. Michael isn’t ‘my type.’ He’s the price of admission.”

“Oh.” Mick blinked a few times. “Oh. I see.”

“Do you?”

“Ah. No.” Mick shook his head sharply. “Michael was always a possessive, jealous son-of-a-bitch where Nikita was concerned.”

“Yes. Quite. Still true.” Quinn sighed. “But, Nikita explained to him what she wanted, and he accepted that.”

“Why?”

“He doesn’t like to say ‘no’ to her.”

“He used to say ‘no’ to her all the damned time!”

“Those were not the good years Mick.”

“Ah. He learned then.”

“Example number five million and one why he’s a smarter man than you will ever be.” Quinn pointed to the dining room. “Briefing Mick. Now.”

Mick didn’t move. Instead, he thrust his hands into his pockets and tilted his head in confusion. “Why do you put up with the arrangement?”

“Why, after almost twenty years, did you risk having your brain melted out your nose to tip them off about the Section?”

Mick opened his mouth to reply, and then closed it again. He considered her quietly for a moment, then he said, “Heroes and sidekicks, yeah?”

Despite herself, Quinn smiled back at him, suddenly understanding why neither Michael nor Nikita had killed him yet, despite endless provocation. “Yeah.”

Walking back into the other room, they discovered that Sophie and Gabrielle were now sitting at the center table, with Katherine and Isabella standing over their shoulders, eyes watchful and expressions grim.

Isabella, always the spokesperson for the group, said, “Okay, ‘Uncle’ Mick,” raising her brows and not quite sneering as she flung the title back in his face, “Someone took Margaret. Who and why?”

Mick shot another agonized look at Quinn, and then turned to face his interrogator. “Okay. Yes. You figured that out correctly. Margaret has been taken by a man your mother, your parents, knew years ago when they had different jobs.”

Katherine let out an exasperated sniff. “If you mean the Section, say so.” Her glare could have frozen blood, “ ‘Uncle’ Mick.”

“Look, obviously, I’m not ‘that kind’ of uncle.”

Isabella said, “No. You aren’t any kind of uncle. Not to us.”

“And how do they know about the Section, anyway?” Mick rolled frantic eyes at Quinn.

Quinn made an incredulous face at him and said, “Nikita. Hostile to secrets. Past, present and future. Remember?”

Mick held her stare for a long beat, then turned to face the girls again. “Some twenty years ago, your parents crossed paths with a ten year old boy named Jerome. He was a Section project in telepathy and telekinesis, bred and trained, essentially, to be a human blood hound, tracing thoughts, not scents.”

“What’s telekinesis?” Sophie asked.

Katherine touched her shoulder and said, “I’ll explain later.”

Mick went on, “Your parents were the only two people to ever treat him, even for just a short time, like a normal child rather than a freak of nature. It helped him see other possibilities for himself. After the Sections closed he was able to live a fairly normal life, with the aid and support of his,” Mick hesitated a second, “girlfriend.” He shook his head, and continued, “Sadly, she died of cancer five years ago. After he lost her, Jerome remembered your parents. He has been working to recreate the Sections ever since, so they could all go home, him, Nikita and Michael.”

Isabella frowned. “So, why would he take Margaret?”

“We don’t know, unfortunately.”

Katherine examined Mick thoughtfully, and then said, “He’s jealous of us, isn’t he.”

Mick’s shoulders sagged. “We think so. Yes.”

“Will he hurt Margaret?” Isabella asked.

Mick met her gaze head on. “We don’t know.”

“So what now?” she asked.

Quinn answered. “While we wait for the team to get back, let’s get everything re-packed. My hunch is that we will be moving on shortly. And Sophie and Gabrielle need to get out of their pajamas and into some clothes.”

They had just finished sorting out the bags when sounds from the lobby alerted them to the return of Michael, Nikita, Adam and their team, which was much larger now as they seemed to have picked up Section operatives along the way, and a second MSF squad.

When they reached the ground floor, Michael was already issuing orders to Mick, requesting in his polite ‘not a request but actually a demand’ way that Mick turn over to them copies of every file they had on Jerome. Mick assured him that the files were already being sent. Then he looked at his remaining daughters, and at some unspoken signal they launched themselves into his arms. Quinn and Nikita had wondered for years how he managed to not fall over under the onslaught, but all the practice continued to pay off. Katherine broke off from the mass hug first and turned to wrap her arms around Nikita, burying her face in her mother’s shoulder. In another moment Michael emerged from the scrum with Gabrielle in his arms, and he headed for the dining room.

Once they had all reassembled, Nikita said, “Mick. How badly compromised is our apartment?”

Mick scrunched up his face. “Badly. I wouldn’t have needed to ask you any embarrassing questions earlier if you’d gone straight home.”

Nikita closed her eyes for a moment, in rage and despair both Quinn was sure. Then she looked at Mick. “Even the bathrooms?”

Mick shrugged. “I’m not in charge of that, but probably.”

Quinn burst out, “Fucking perverts.”

Mick shrugged again. “Yeah.”

Michael said, “Quinn? How much can be disabled?”

“With the right tools? Most of it, probably.”

“Can we at least get privacy back in the bathrooms?” Nikita asked.

“I think so. With professional help.”

Mick started, “I can call-“

Four people interrupted him all at once, as Michael, Nikita, Quinn and Adam all said, “No!”

Michael said, “We will call our own contacts.”

Nikita sighed, “Okay. Girls – it’s up to you. We can stay here at this hotel, or we can go home, knowing that in our apartment we will be under surveillance, all the time, even possibly in your bedrooms.”

Quinn was not surprised when the vote came in at unanimous for going home.

*****

A crew dispatched from French Military Intelligence arrived at their apartment not long after they did. Nikita stood with her shoulder brushing Michael’s, watching together as the technicians overloaded the circuits throughout the old building, frying everything tied directly into the building’s main current. Tiny bursts of light and smoke and small popping noises erupted throughout the rooms she could see. While electricians worked to restore the fried circuitry, other technicians came through with detectors and sensors, collecting almost two dozen small, stand alone bugs before they finished. After that, another crew installed dampeners in the bathrooms and bedrooms.

While the technicians worked on disabling as much of the surveillance as they could, not that Nikita believed they’d ever get it all, she and the girls unpacked and put away everything they had brought home. Michael, Adam and J.B., along with their team, re-established their networks and equipment in Michael’s office. Quinn sat in the living room combing through the data on Jerome sent by Mick.

Knowing that all was being done that could be done, Nikita concentrated on being fully present with her children. Once they unpacked, she sat down on the floor with Sophie and Gabrielle to help them re-organize their toys according to their current schemes and stories.

Eventually they lost themselves in their games, and Nikita went in search of Kate and Izzy. She found them on the balcony, sitting with Michael on the glider, one of them on each side of him, his arms around their shoulders. They weren’t talking; they were just rocking gently as they watched the Paris skyline together, gleaming and smoking in the bright mid-winter sun.

Rather than disturb them, she collected Adam from the office and they headed out to get enough groceries to hold everyone together for the next day or so. After they unloaded everything in the kitchen, Adam caught her arm. “Mom. We’ll get her back.”

Nikita smiled against the wetness in her eyes. “I know.”

“You got me back. We can get her back.”

“Oh Adam.” Her voice caught on a sob. “When did you get so grown up?”

“I’m not all that grown up yet.”

Adam’s voice was soothing and his arms were strong and solid as he pulled her close, but she felt the wetness on his unshaven cheeks and she remembered the terrified six year old he had been, just yesterday and so very long ago.

“Thank you.” She kissed his forehead, then leaned back as she brushed away his tears with her hands. “You’re right. We’ll get her home again.”

The hours slipped away as they waited for Jerome to reach out to them. Quinn’s work with Section’s files resulted in teams being dispatched to all of Jerome’s known places of residence, to his university, the hospital where Josephine had been treated, and where she had died, and the cemetery that held her ashes. Everything was clean except for his current apartment, which showed every sign of having been abandoned in haste, but with no clues for where he might have gone.

Quinn shook her head dispiritedly. “Psych profiles aren’t my strength, especially when working with someone as far outside of the curve as Jerome, but everything suggests that he is going to contact you. It’s you he wants, not Margaret. I also don’t think he will hurt her, because he wants you to come take care of him. I think he is rational enough to recognize a counterproductive strategy when he sees one.”

“So why did he take her?”

“Opportunity, I think. For information. For a point of contact. To touch you, but at a safe distance. To make sure you won’t refuse to see him.”

By the time evening began to fall, they had all drifted into the large, comfortable living room. Sophie and Gabrielle were curled up on the big sofa next to Michael as he read aloud to them. Nikita sat on one of the smaller couches with her arm around Isabella, who rested her head on Nikita’s shoulder. Katherine sat on the ground next to them, leaning up against Nikita’s knee as Nikita combed her hair with her fingers, all of them listening to Michael’s voice. Adam sat at a nearby table, working quietly on a laptop. Quinn was at the table in the dining room.

The quiet was broken when J.B. rushed in. “He’s transmitting now.”

They quickly gathered in Michael’s office, all of them staring at the large screen set up in the middle of the room. Nikita opened the connection and said, “Jerome?”

The screen was still dark, but a man’s voice replied, “Nikita? You know it’s me?”

“Yes. People from the Section have been telling us a lot about you today.”

“I’m sure they have.”

“How is Margaret?”

“She’s fine.”

“Will you let her come home?”

“Her home, here in Paris?”

“Yes. Our apartment here in Paris, with her family.”

“And if I wanted to be part of your family?”

“Then you should be here too.”

“How could you forget me, Nikita? I thought you cared about me.”

“I never forgot you, Jerome. I did care about you. I’d like to know you today, learn who you’ve grown up to be.”

“Michael?”

“Yes. I’m here Jerome.”

“Is Adam with you tonight?”

“Yes.”

“You got him back, when he was a child.”

“Yes. I did.”

“You left me in Section.”

“The last time we saw you, Jerome, you were with Josephine. You were happy to be going with her.”

“She left me.”

Nikita said, “I’m sure she didn’t want too, Jerome.”

“No. But what she wanted didn’t matter. What I wanted didn’t matter.”

“Jerome. Can I speak to Margaret, please? I’m sure she is frightened.”

“Yes. She is.”

Margaret’s strained face appeared on the monitor.

“Hi Mom.”

“How are you doing, sweetheart?”

“I’m rolling with things.”

“You are such a brave girl. I love you and I am so proud of you.”

Margaret flashed a quick, tremulous smile, then said. “Dad?”

“Yes, Margaret?”

“Jerome says for you, all of you, the whole family, to meet us at the Palais Bercy in two hours. The Section is to make sure it is secured and cordoned off. You all have to come. Jerome wants to see everyone in the family, all together.”

“We will be there. Can I bring anything for you, or for Baron?”

Margaret smiled nervously. “Can you bring Baron some food? Jerome didn’t realize how much a big dog eats.”

“Okay. And for you?”

“My coat and some dry shoes. I’m cold, dad.”

The monitor went dark.

*****

They arrived at the big stadium twenty minutes ahead of time. The Section had managed to close off all the surrounding streets, mostly, as far as Nikita could tell, by calling in French military police.

Using Margaret’s hint, they had determined that Jerome had never really left the vicinity of river. They must have spent the day in the vast tunnel system under the city, making their way from the Left Bank to the stadium they were in now.

In the stadium parking lot a man dressed in black stepped out of a dark van and introduced himself as Cassius, level five operative. He explained the profile. A perimeter team would go first, ten operatives lining the field. Next, their family would enter the stadium; each of their remaining children flanked by two armed guards, along with Quinn and Mick, each with one guard, and herself and Michael, also with a personal guard each.

“No.” Michael said. “Guards on our children, but not on us.”

“Numbers overwhelm him.”

Nikita said, “So, send the extra team in with the first group. Same number overall.”

Cassius shrugged. “Okay.”

“Are they here already?” she asked.

“We think so. Our scans show multiple heat signatures, but Jerome has demonstrated an ability to confuse electronic sensors in the past, and we aren’t sure which ones are real and which ones are ghosts.”

Fifteen minutes later they filed into the field according to the profile.

Two hours exactly after Jerome’s transmission, Nikita called, “Jerome?”

A shadow detached itself from a darkened entrance on the far side of the field. As they moved into the light, Nikita could see it was Margaret, with Baron padding next to her on his leash, and on her other side, a man who must be Jerome.

They stopped about six meters away from Michael and Nikita, well inside the circle cast by the stadium lights. Margaret was pale but seemed calm. Her face and hands were clean, but her jeans and sweatshirt were damp and muddy, especially at the knees and elbows. She nodded once at Nikita, then shifted her gaze back to Jerome, obviously unwilling to move further without his permission.

Nikita looked at Jerome as well, trying to find a point of resemblance to the child she barely remembered, and failing. He had grown up to be a slim man, just over medium height with non-descript brown hair in need of a cut, a prominent nose and soft brown eyes. She would have passed him on the street without a second glance. “Hi Jerome.”

“Hi Nikita.”

“Will you let Margaret come to us?”

“Not yet.”

“Okay. What shall we do instead?”

“First, we need to get rid of all the extra people. They aren’t part of this. They don’t belong here.”

“They’re here just to make sure that we all get home safely.”

“I don’t want them here.”

“Jerome….” Nikita trailed off as she watched all the operatives in the stadium begin to go glassy eyed and start to waver, and then blood began to trickle out their noses. “Jerome!” she cried, starting forward. Michael’s hand on her shoulder stopped her. “Jerome! No! Please don’t hurt them!”

Jerome just stared into the middle distance, not really watching anything or anyone as the men and women from the Section, from MSF and from the French army began to topple over and begin thrashing on the ground. When they saw what was happening, both Sophie and Gabrielle started to scream in high, thin voices. Sophie was too frightened to do anything but stand frozen between her thrashing guards and wail, but Gabrielle broke and started to run for Nikita. Adam stopped her, scooping her up in his arms and holding her tightly as she buried her face in his neck and whimpered in fear.

Once all the operatives were still, Jerome refocused on Nikita and Michael. “That’s better,” he said. He said, “Tell me why you don’t want to come back to the Section. Tell me why you don’t want to come home. I don’t understand.”

“I hated it there, Jerome. Surely you knew that about me, even back then.”

“Yes. But it will be different now. I promise.” His expression turned eager and excited. “I’ll make sure everyone does exactly what you tell them, with none of the bad stuff you hated so. I can do that for you. I can make it happen. We could be an amazing team.”

“I was able to leave the Section a long time ago, Jerome, at the same time you did. Just like you and Josephine, I built a life outside, one that I love very much, and don’t want to give up.”

Jerome looked petulant. “With your family.”

“Yes. With my family.”

“With Michael. And his son. And your daughters.”

“Yes. With Michael. And Adam. And our daughters.”

He raised his chin, and said, with some satisfaction, “You fear me.”

“Yes.” Nikita nodded. “And for you. The world isn’t kind to people like you Jerome. Let us help you.”

“Make me part of your family?”

“Make you a friend, to start with.”

“Not good enough.”

“Jerome. I don’t want to promise you something that might not work out.”

“Why wouldn’t it work out?”

“Well, you might not like being part of a big family.”

“Then, let’s make it smaller.” Jerome looked straight at Michael. “One son is enough, don’t you think?”

Jerome turned his gaze to Adam, saying, “Don’t move, Michael. Adam, you’d better put Gabrielle down, so you don’t drop her when you fall.”

Adam’s eyes started to loose focus and less than a full second later a thin trickle of blood started to seep out of his nose. He let Gabrielle, already screaming again, slip gently to the ground to stand at his feet.

Nikita yelled, “Jerome! Stop it!” at the same instant that Margaret turned, stomped on his foot and then elbowed him hard in the stomach, breaking his concentration. As Jerome sagged, Margaret started to run for Michael and Nikita. Confused by the screaming and by Margaret’s sudden movement, Baron broke away from her and launched himself at Jerome, a howling growl bursting from him as he flew through the air. Jerome spun toward the seventy kilos of flying dog and, a look of terror on his face, flung out his hand, sending Baron hurtling in the opposite direction. Baron landed with an audibly bone-crunching thump, and lay still.

Margaret, seeing her dog fall, changed course, veering towards Baron’s body.

Looking horrified, Jerome cried, “Margaret, no! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to hurt him. Come back here!”

Michael caught Adam as he buckled to the ground. He yelled, “Jerome. Let them go.”

Margaret reached Baron’s side, falling to her knees as she shook him roughly, calling his name.

In an instant she was back on her feet, racing toward Jerome, screaming as she ran. “You killed him! You killed my dog! You killed all these people! You promised me no one would get hurt if I did what you said! You promised me! And now you’re killing my brother! You fucking liar!”

Nikita started to run too, calling, “Margaret, No! Leave him be. Stop! Now!”

Jerome turned to face Margaret, his face full of dismayed shock even as he raised his arms to ward her off, launching her into the air as effortlessly as he had Baron.

Nikita pivoted and raced toward her daughter’s airborne body, her arms stretching to catch her before she hit the ground, knowing already she would be too late, when she heard shots ring out; two, four, six. She saw the bullets enter Jerome’s chest, blood flying in the bright stadium lights, his torso jerking from the impact.

Margaret’s body crumpled to the ground just two strides in front of her, and she turned and looked behind her to see who had fired even as she slid to her knees beside Margaret, reaching to feel for her heartbeat.

Isabella and Katherine were two meters behind Michael, Adam, and Gabrielle. They stood close together, feet planted shoulders’ width apart in the stance she and Michael had taught them, each holding a two-handed, straight-armed grip on the guns they must have taken from the bodies of their fallen guards. As Nikita stared in shock, they each fired one last round into Jerome’s corpse. Then they slowly relaxed their stances, dropping their hands and looking at each other and nodding, some message passing between them that only they could see.

Nikita sought Michael’s eyes even as he turned his face toward her. She held his gaze as she shook her head. Margaret was dead.

*****

For Quinn the crucial events that night in the stadium would always be a series of unrelated sounds and still images, images that she could never quite get to run together in her head even though all of it had been caught by the Section’s cameras, and from several angles. She was also not sure how many of the images were from her own eyes, or from the videos. It seemed like she remembered more than she really could have seen from her position behind Nikita, Michael and their children, where she had been rooted to the ground until it was all over. It had all happened in less than five minutes, counting from the time they walked into the stadium.

Sophie and Gabrielle screaming. Adam catching Gabrielle mid-stride. Adam slumping to the ground in his father’s arms, eyes closed and blood trickling over his lips and down his chin. Margaret elbowing a shocked Jerome in the gut. Margaret running for Nikita. Baron howling in mid air. Margaret yelling at Jerome. Nikita falling to her knees beside Margaret, her face already ravaged with grief to come. Isabella and Katherine with guns in their hands and death in their eyes.

After that Quinn could remember movement, though it was all hazy, like a bad dream sequence in a cheap movie. She had gone to Katherine and Isabella, taking the guns from their unresisting fingers, their expressions slack with shock; deeper, darker emotions swimming at the backs of their light eyes. Mick had gone to Michael and helped him lift Adam to his feet, weakened and wobbling, but otherwise without permanent damage from Jerome’s assault. Michael hurried to Nikita’s side, where she was curled over Margaret, whispering to her and stroking her hair back from her face. He fell to his knees beside Nikita and carefully pulled her away from their fallen child. Then he examined Margaret for himself. Only after he carefully gathered her up and cradled her in his arms, tears already falling down his cheeks as he cried without making a sound, did Quinn realize that Margaret had not survived her fall.

It was about then that Quinn had realized that Sophie was still frozen in place and screaming, a high-pitched wail of terrified hysteria. Nikita must have realized it just a heartbeat or two sooner, for she was already pushing herself to her feet and making her way to Sophie’s side.

Then Cassius strode onto the field, more operatives called from somewhere at his heels, and took charge of cleaning everything up.

They pushed everyone into ambulances, calming the sudden flare of resistance by assuring them, truthfully, that these were real ambulances, headed for a real world hospital. J.B. and a group of operatives and doctors from MSF met them at the emergency room. The MSF people quickly claimed their own, firmly brushing aside any and all efforts of the regular hospital staff to interfere. No one other than Margaret and Adam had taken any physical hurt at all, but they were all numb and frozen with shock and grief, even Quinn. Only Mick escaped and he was surprisingly soothing and efficient as he and J.B. worked with the doctors and nurses of MSF to warm them up while pressing liquids and calories on anyone passing by.

There was another awful moment when Michael wouldn’t, or couldn’t, relinquish Margaret’s body to the doctors. He stood, straight-backed and pale under his tan, holding Margaret cradled against his chest, her head loose on his shoulder, flaxen hair gleaming against the dark brown of his sweater, and he could not let go. Not until Nikita arrived at his side and put her head close to his, saying things no one but he could hear as she stroked his shoulders and his arms. At last she put her hands on his, and with their gazes locked, together they laid their daughter down.

There was a terrifying, fleeting second when Quinn thought Michael might step back, turn on his heel and leave them all there, but then Nikita murmured something else to him. He nodded and went to Katherine and Isabella, folding them both into his arms and pressing their heads against his shoulders. That was when they both finally collapsed, shaking as they sobbed against his neck.

Somehow the MSF teams got everyone back to Nikita and Michael’s apartment and put them all to bed, using every trick they had at their disposal to get them to sleep. In Michael’s case, she was pretty sure it was intravenous drugs. She herself went the traditional route, sitting silently in the kitchen with J.B. and Mick, downing shot after shot of vodka. They matched her, glass for glass.

*****

Jason arrived from New Orleans and Jasmine from Los Angeles within fifteen hours of Margaret’s death. They took charge of planning her funeral and all the related events, rudely brushing aside the efforts of Nikita’s many woman friends from her MSF and public health circles. Nikita knew she would eventually have to soothe her friends’ hurt feelings, but she also knew any funeral they planned by committee would be un-endurable for Michael.

Nikita gave Jason, Jasmine and Quinn instructions to organize an event that closely echoed Walter’s funeral four years earlier, using the same chapel, the same reception hall, the same simple, vaguely neo-pagan service. She also asked them to respect Margaret’s passionate desire for everything to be normal, regular, and conventional.

Nikita’s sister-in-law Genevieve, her husband and their three grown children drove in from Marseilles the next day. They took rooms in a hotel close to the apartment, and her brother-in-law commandeered her kitchen. He made sure that there was an ocean of food and drink constantly available to the swarms of people that were flowing through; family, friends, security teams, medical staff, counselors. Nikita lost track of the names, and after a while she quit worrying about it. She trusted Quinn and J.B. to make sure that no one got in who didn’t belong.

Nikita had always been a little mystified by Adam’s generally private and yet omnivorous sex life, and so she didn’t know whether it was horrifying or hilarious or both that within thirty-six hours at least a half dozen current and former partners were in Paris, swirling around him in a vortex of near-smothering, intensely prickly and jealous concern.

Most of Nikita’s time and energy was taken by Michael, fighting to keep him anchored in the present and to hold him together long enough to get through the very public events of the week. She ruthlessly turned their daughters into her agents and collaborators. She pushed them on him, urging them all to hug him and kiss him as often as possible, knowing he wouldn’t thrust them away and it would keep him from burrowing in on himself so far he couldn’t get out again. She even violated the longest standing, most ironclad parenting rule she and Michael had ever had, and invited the girls to sleep the full night their bed if they wished. It was both reassuring and extremely worrisome that Michael didn’t object. They slept in a twisted pile, badly for the most part, but together.

During the second night she realized Sophie was creeping away to sleep in Margaret’s bed. So, the third night, she left Michael to Katherine and Gabrielle and she dozed while curled around Sophie, who whimpered in her sleep almost all night long.

Nikita also stayed at his side during all the meetings and debriefings they faced. Everyone who had been even tangentially involved in the final days of Jerome’s life wanted to hear directly from them about their impressions and experiences. They were particularly interested in Jerome’s newly demonstrated ability to take out some two-dozen operatives without, apparently, needing any recovery time before attacking again. At least a few people suggested that they should have stopped Isabella and Katherine from killing him, even that it betrayed a lack of true parental sensibility that their pretty, pretty daughters had known what to do with a gun. They also would have liked to speak with the girls, but Michael and Nikita absolutely forbade it, the wild fierceness in Michael’s eyes convincing even the most determined to respect their wishes.

Others – officers, politicians, officials – wanted to personally express condolences and sympathy, and offer, sincerely or not, to help in any way in the weeks to come. And, of course, there was the Agency, and the Section. Now that they all knew that they all knew, the current Agency directors offered her and Michael both positions in the re-booted Section One. Michael laughed wildly in their faces, and then pulled his own gun on them. Mick hustled the Agency directors out one door while she talked Michael down and out the other.

Theirs was not the only loss, and not the only funeral of the week. Section operatives were disposed of anonymously, of course, and most of the MSF operatives and French soldiers killed by Jerome were not from Paris, and their bodies were sent home to their families. But there were still a half dozen funerals or memorial services held for those with family in the city. Nikita felt that she and Michael would create too great a commotion if they tried to attend, but she was reluctant to ignore them altogether. It was, after all, her fault they had died. So she turned to Adam, Isabella and Katherine. Katherine declined in a dramatic fit of weeping and wailing about being asked to do something so ghoulish. Isabella watched it all in silence, then said Katherine could stay home with the children if she preferred. Isabella and Adam attended each one, growing still graver and quieter as the week passed.

Margaret’s funeral was Thursday. Jason, good Louisiana boy that he was, suggested an open casket. Nikita vetoed the idea immediately, knowing there was no way Michael would make it through something like that. Jason also suggested preparing a video of Margaret to show at the reception afterward, but Nikita knew that would destroy her, so she said no again.

A few times Quinn or Jasmine pressed her to talk to them about how she was feeling, but the only answer she had for them was ‘numb’ and so they let her be.

The small, non-denominational church was packed nearly to the rafters for the brief service. Their family included Michael’s sister Genevieve, her husband and their children who sat with them, along with Quinn and several of Adam’s friends. Nikita’s sister Michele put in a brief appearance, but she did not sit with the family and left without speaking to anyone almost the second the ceremony was over. MSF workers and other long time family friends formed the bulk of the crowd. There were also a startlingly large number of old Section people in attendance. Many of them found a moment to speak to Nikita and it surprised her how glad she was to see most of them. It was the result, she gathered, of one phone call to another, stretching around the globe and back again in a web that was thicker and denser than most of them had realized.

They buried Margaret in a little cemetery not far from their apartment. It was one they had walked in often the last time they had lived in Paris, inventing elaborate histories for all the grave-stone statuary as they strolled down the paths.

Afterwards they returned to the reception already in full swing. Despite, or perhaps because of, Jason’s efforts it reminded Nikita of a macabre Hollywood facsimile of a Mafia Don’s wake. She and Michael sat at a table near the head of the room and accepted tribute after tribute to Michael or herself from people who wouldn’t have known Margaret on the street. After Michael downed his fifth scotch in less than an hour and a manic glint appeared in his eye, she packed him and the little girls up and took them home.

*****

An hour or so after Nikita had taken Michael away, Quinn surveyed the crowd and realized that the majority of the eighty or so people remaining were former Section operatives or current MSF ones. Buoyed by the river of free booze Jason had provided, the brotherhood of blood and death was obviously rousing itself for an evening of debauchery and memory. At the center of a loose circle of MSF operatives she spotted Adam, Isabella and Katherine. Many of the men and women there had watched the three of them grow up, all over the world, and had always treated them with rough kindness, but mostly ignored them when they were little kids. Adam had long since been welcomed into their ranks, and now, after their own first kills, they were reaching out to Isabella and Katherine, too. The girls were flushed from emotion, and praise, and, Quinn realized watching someone refill the glass in Kate’s hand, alcohol.

Isabella was already five feet ten inches tall, and Kate would catch her soon, and both were still drenched with the dewy glow of youth and nearly luminous in their maturing bodies, but they were kids and it was definitely time to get them out of there. Death was tied much too closely to sex, and not only were the girls still very young this was not the time or the way for them. Especially not while surrounded by thirty or so well armed, and rapidly inebriating, self-appointed older chaperones, some of whom weren’t really all that much older than the girls and who were casting newly appraising looks their way. Or their actual brother, who was himself an excellent marksman and a useful man to have on your side in a bar fight, if stories she had heard were to be believed.

She was just about to dive into the crowd to go after them herself, when she realized that Adam was pulling them free. He turned them over to their aunt and uncle, who swept them out of the room. She caught Adam’s eye and raised her glass to toast him. She saw him laugh in acknowledgement, and then she let the current take her.

Mick soon commanded a center of attention, launched to importance by his status as ‘person who has known Michael and Nikita the longest’ and his ability to tell side-splittingly funny versions of stories from their earliest days together in the Section. Quinn knew she was as red-faced with laughter as any of them, wiping away tears as she gasped for breath as Mick acted out a one-man performance of “Super Michael Man of Steel saving Robo-Nikita from the evil clutches of Paul and Madeline and the Gellman process” even though she knew damn well that none of it had been funny while it was happening, and all of it had been terribly painful for the principals.

Not to be outdone by the old Section hands, J.B. jumped in to tell the story of the first, and last, time someone hijacked a shipment of MSF supplies in northern Afghanistan after Michael arrived. Michael tracked down the gang leader and wannabe warlord and opened negotiations by hitting him in the face and then jamming his gun into the man’s crotch. He told him, in Persian, he’d blow off his dick unless he turned over the cargo. When the man laughed, Michael shot him in the balls, then holding his gun to the man’s head, asked who the new leader of the group was. Another man stood up and said he thought they could find some working arrangement, and Michael executed the now superfluous former gang leader on the spot. He retrieved the MSF cargo, but at the expense of outraged horror within the MSF world.

In his own way, J.B. was as good a story teller as Mick, building up the danger and the risk in those early days, the suspense of not knowing who was who, the furious hostility within MSF to Michael’s methods. Under cover of the approving shouts and applause for Michael’s big dick, both real and metaphorical, Quinn rolled her eyes, grimaced, leaned over to Jasmine, and sneered, “He forgot to add that Michael and the new gang leader scripted that entire little show of manly dick waving and shooting beforehand. The deal was assassination in exchange for the goods.”

From there, “Michael and Nikita” stories poured out from all sides, but after a while, after it was clear that all the best stories had been told, people remembered that they were all together, now, because Michael and Nikita hadn’t won. Not this time. That’s when the drinking got really serious and the small knots of old and current friends broke off to tell other stories, more personal and less intelligible to outsiders.

Quinn settled in at a table with Jason and Jasmine and Mintz, just as Jasmine was saying, “I feel bad that I laughed so hard at Mick’s story. I mean, it must have been horrible at the time, but worse is that she’s never fully recovered.”

Quinn shrugged. “No. She recovered. But there have been consequences.”

“What does that mean?”

Quinn opened her mouth to reply, but caught herself before she launched into a story that wasn’t hers to tell. Nikita’s health was her own concern, and it was up to her to share information about it, or not, as she chose. After a moment, and prompted by Jasmine’s worried gaze, she said, “The Gellman Process was an untested combination of micro surgeries, engineered viruses, cortical stimulation and drug therapy. How could there possibly not be life-long consequences?” Quinn winked at Jasmine. “And don’t feel bad. I laughed so hard I nearly pissed myself. I didn’t know either of them then, but I can so totally imagine it happening like that!” She dropped her voice, and in a bad imitation of Michael, or Mick, or Arnold Schwarzenegger, she was too drunk to know which, said, “I’m baaaack.” Then collapsed laughing, along with everyone else at the table.

Their conversation soon drifted away from the past and on to their more current lives, which was fine by Quinn. For one thing, there really wasn’t an easy answer. No one knew if Nikita’s recurrent bouts with vicious migraines were related to the Gellman Process or not, though Nikita absolutely believed that they were. As for the virus that was part of the Gellman Process – and that Nikita and Walter thought they had beaten years earlier – that turned out to be more like meningitis or malaria than smallpox or the measles, going into remission rather than being eliminated. It had flared up again not long after Walter’s death. Michael and Nikita had taken some pains to keep Nikita’s hospitalization for it quiet, and Quinn didn’t need to be the one to drunkenly spill the beans.

Later on, Adam wandered by, trailed by his posse of frustrated lovers, which made everyone at Quinn’s table giggle inanely.

Days afterward, Quinn wondered what sort of blood bath might have erupted had any of the myriad terrorist and/or criminal organizations of Paris had realized what sort of gathering it was, given that nearly everyone there was undoubtedly carrying weapons, legal and illegal both. Eventually she learned that, fearing the same thing, at least three different security agencies had posted discreet perimeter guards.

Jerome had no funeral, but Nikita and Michael took his ashes to be scattered with Josephine’s. No one understood that, not even Quinn. But, after brief arguments they all gave up and acknowledged that Nikita and Michael would do exactly what they thought best and nothing else, just as they always had.

*****

On Saturday, more or less fully recovered from Thursday’s drunken wake, Quinn helped Nikita and Adam load up two big SUVs, preparatory to heading for their cabin in Belgium.

“Are you sure leaving is the best thing to do right now?” she asked.

“Yes.” Nikita answered, huffing her hair off her forehead as she shoved another duffle into the back. “If we stay here, no one will leave us alone. At the cabin, we’ll have time and space to deal with this in our own way.”

“You really shouldn’t be alone out there – that cabin is kilometers and kilometers away from everything. What if something happens?”

Nikita slammed the back window closed and turned to stare at Quinn. “Like what?”

It was on the tip of Quinn’s tongue to say, ‘like, for example, Michael decides it’s a brilliant idea to eat his gun,’ but one look at the tension around Nikita’s eyes and she said instead, “I don’t know, somebody breaks a leg? Gets sick? Gets lost on the woods?”

“Um hm.” Nikita held her stare for a beat, and Quinn was certain she had somehow heard her thought and not her words, then Nikita turned and headed back inside and Quinn trailed after her.

“A grief counselor is scheduled to come once a week, and so is a family therapist.” Nikita gave the elevator call button a vicious punch. “I don’t want either, but agreeing was the only way to get out of town.” Stepping into the elevator, she went on, “and Michael’s sister and her two girls are coming to stay for a while in a few weeks, and in the meantime Adam and a friend will be there with me.” She grimaced and rolled her eyes at Quinn. “It isn’t, exactly, the ‘alone with Michael and the kids’ that I’d prefer, but it’s the best I’m going to be able to get away with.”

“Adam and ‘a’ friend? How did he choose just one?”

“I have no idea. They must have drawn lots or something.”

“Jason was going on and on about how poly must be catching.”

Nikita snorted. “Adam isn’t poly. He’s twenty-five years old. He takes whatever he’s offered that catches his fancy, and charms the pants off the ones who don’t offer first. And deals with the fallout later.”

“Is he going to be okay?”

“With the fact that his eleven year old sister saved his life, and then died defending him?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know.” The doors slid open and Nikita walked into the apartment without looking back.

Mick showed up just as they were all leaving. In fact Adam was already pulling away from the curb with his friend Marco, Isabella and Gabrielle in one of the two SUVs, when Mick hopped out of a taxi.

“So,” he said to Quinn, “You’re not going too?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I have a life, Mick. I have a job, friends, a house, and, believe it or not, dogs of my own I need to get back too.”

Mick just looked confused.

Quinn shook her head and cast her eyes heavenward, hoping for the strength not to slap him. “Heroes and sidekicks, remember? They’re the heroes, and I’m very happy to be a minor character. Now more than ever.”

Nikita came out the front door of their building, followed by Katherine and Sophie, who was leading her father by the hand. Michael was clean but obviously hadn’t shaved since before Margaret’s funeral, and he walked like he was stoned to the gills, though Quinn was pretty sure he wasn’t. Much, anyway.

Michael managed to smile and say hello to them, though his attention kept wandering and he stood in the street next to them like he had already forgotten why he was there. They half shoved, half poured him into the back seat. One he was inside, Sophie crawled in next to him, put her hands on his face, looked into his eyes and said, “Where are we going, Daddy?”

He frowned at her. “To the cabin in Belgium. Don’t you remember?”

Sophie sighed and leaned her forehead against his. “Yes. I do.”

Michael took her head in his hands, and kissed her brow. “Good. Get into your seat and fasten your seatbelt.” He turned and looked out the still open door, more alert than she’d seen him in days. “Thank you Quinn. For everything. I owe you.”

“No. You don’t. Not this time.”

Michael nodded at her, then held out his hand. “Thanks Mick.”

Mick took Michael’s hand between his and clasped it firmly. “No, old man, please don’t. It wasn’t enough. And maybe it was the wrong call.”

Michael shook his head. “No. It wasn’t. Alive, inside the Section, is the same as dead.”

To that there was nothing to say, so Quinn stepped back and gently closed the door.

“Quinn?”

She turned. “Yes, Nikita?”

Nikita’s eyes got glassy for a moment, and then she shook her head sharply. “Can I come, when I need a break?”

Quinn pulled her into a hard tight hug, “Of course.” She stepped back. “Drive safe, and call me when you get there, yeah?”

She and Mick waved them off from the curb, and then she turned to stare at him. “What are you doing here, little man?”

Mick was still staring down the street, watching Nikita drive away. “I’m an informant. I collect information, and I inform.”

Quinn scowled.

Mick went on, “Quite the pillar of strength, our Nikita.”

“Yes.”

“When she stumbles, as she inevitably will, will he wake up enough to catch her?”

“That was always the plan.”

“The plan?” Mick looked at her. “There was a plan?”

Quinn stared incredulously at him for a long moment, and then she rolled her eyes, turned on her heel and left him without saying another word.

*****

Footprints in the Dust 4/6

2013-03-20T19:53:41Z

*****

Nikita felt some of her tension bleed away as she turned into the long drive at the cabin. She knew, in her head, that simply changing locations wouldn’t change what had happened. But her spirits lifted anyway.

From a distance, especially in the flat, gray light of a late winter afternoon, the cabin looked the same as it had on her first strange trip here with Michael, part quixotic lovers’ getaway, mostly a scheme to flush out yet another high-level traitor in the Section’s ranks. Even so, she had known immediately she wanted to return. She counted it among the great good fortunes of her life that she had.

As she drove closer, she could see more clearly the many alterations, large and small, they had made to the old stone house over all the years since that first, eventful visit.

Nearly a third of the original structure, the former attached barn, had been virtually abandoned when Michael first brought her here, right down to the unglazed windows in the cellar cow byre and owls in the rafters of the old hay loft. Today not only did the old cow byre have new, larger, glassed-in windows, so did the rest of the old cellar. They had converted the ground floor into bedrooms almost ten years ago. There were more new windows cut into the walls and roof of the old barn space as well, marking her and Michael’s bedroom in the expanded loft area above, and an extra all-purpose room on the main floor.

Pulling the SUV around to park on the far side of the house, she saw light was streaming out of the French windows that filled the space where the garage doors had once been. The windows opened out onto a snow-covered terrace from the big, farmhouse-style kitchen they had installed, mostly by themselves, the summer Isabella was a year old. To her left rose the separate, multi-bay garage they had added to the property just about five years ago. It had an apartment above, which Adam had largely claimed for himself, and had continued to use even when the rest of the family was away.

It had not been intentional on Nikita’s part, but because the cabin had been in a state of ongoing evolution since before Margaret’s birth, up through their very last visit, there was no space here that was marked as “Margaret’s” alone. Her absence haunted all of them, haunted Nikita, all of the time, but here at the cabin Nikita hoped it would be easier not to have to deal with reality of Margaret’s room, full of Margaret’s things, they way they did in the apartment in Paris.

Adam’s group had arrived already and as she looked around, she saw Isabella and Marco come around the corner of the house, carrying the big ladder for taking the shutters off the upper windows. Judging by the smoke pouring out of the chimneys, Adam was working on the furnace and the fires. Gabrielle was running around outside, making trails in the unbroken snow.

Nikita turned off the engine and just sat for a moment, enjoying the sudden silence inside the car and letting go of the adrenaline of a long drive. Kate and Sophie had hopped out almost before the engine had stopped running, slamming their doors behind them. In the quiet she looked over at Michael, who had claimed the front passenger seat after their first rest stop. “We’re here,” she said, knowing it was obvious but not knowing what else to say.

He nodded, still staring out the window. “Yes.”

“Margaret would be pissed we left Paris so fast.” That wasn’t what she’d intended to say to him, or even to herself, but, there it was.

He turned to look at her then. “Yes.” He nodded once. “She would.”

Nikita frowned then, something in his tone catching on her ear. “Did you want to stay in Paris?”

“You wanted to leave.”

“If you didn’t want to come, you should have said something.”

Not that she cared, really. Getting him in particular out of Paris, full of traffic and bridges and people and tall buildings, had been one of her primary goals. It was just easier to manage if he felt more cooperative than not.

“No!” His response was quick, almost angry. “No,” he said again, more gently. “It’s fine. It’s good to be here.” After another minute he opened his door. “I’ll go check on the water.”

She was carrying in the last of the bags from the car when a furious bellow of “mom!!,” dragged out a hair-raising number of syllables, rose up from the ground floor.

Hurrying down the steps she discovered Kate and Sophie locked in struggle in the doorway to the middle bedroom. Sophie was trying to get in and Kate was hanging onto the doorframe, blocking the way with her body. Nikita voice was sharp with disapproval as she called out, “Hey! What’s going on here?”

“This is my room this trip!” Sophie gasped, breathless from her continuing efforts to worm past her sister.

Kate, her voice rough and deep from effort and anger, insisted loudly, “No! It isn’t! Margaret and I were supposed to share so that Izzy could have a turn with a single. Just because Margaret’s dead doesn’t mean I don’t get the room.”

Sophie’s voice built towards a furious shriek. “It’s MY turn next for a single.” Suddenly, Sophie drew back enough to glare at Kate, then her expression hardened and, too fast for Nikita to stop it even though she saw it coming, Sophie reached up and pinched the tender flesh on the inside of Kate’s arm, really hard.

Kate recoiled instantly, pulling her injured arm close with an outraged shriek, then with reflexes Nikita admired in other circumstances, snatched the back of Sophie’s shirt as she tried to dart past and into the room and flung her backwards. Sophie landed butt-first on the carpeted floor of the narrow hallway, sliding until she caromed into the exposed stonework of the old foundation with a solid looking thump. There was a stunned silence, and then she sat up and burst into tears.

Nikita shook her head in disapproval at Kate, still blocking the doorway and looking both abashed and defiant. Then she bent to pull Sophie into her arms, tugging Sophie to her feet and hugging her, still sobbing, against her side.

Isabella’s voice interrupted before Nikita could say anything. “I’ll room with Gabrielle,” she said. “Then Kate and Sophie can each have their own.”

Nikita turned to see Isabella sitting on the bottom step, peering down the hall, Gabrielle huddled behind her. “No,” she said, “You don’t have to do that.”

“I don’t mind,” Gabrielle said, wrapping her arms around Isabella from behind. Isabella flashed Gabrielle an approving smile and patted her arm.

“I know you don’t.” Nikita forced a smile of her own, “but it really is Isabella’s turn to room by herself.” She raked Kate and Sophie with a disapproving glare. “All seven of us shared three bedrooms for the last year, eight of us for the last month, and without this fuss.”

Kate dropped her eyes and shifted her feet, but she also crossed her arms over her chest and hardened her jaw. Sophie just whimpered into Nikita’s side. Nikita repressed a frustrated groan. “I hate to reward either of you after this, but Kate gets the room. Sophie, you’ll share with Gabrielle.”

Three voices burst out nearly at once, “Mom!!”

Nikita pinned Katherine with a hard glance, and watched in satisfaction as her daughter shifted from smug to guilty and uncertain in the blink of an eye. “Kate?”

“Yes?”

“Until Sophie is strong enough to take you on, I expect you to pull your punches.”

“I did! I know!” Kate now looked ready to cry. “I did.”

“Yes. Barely. I saw.” Nikita put her hand on the top of Sophie’s dark head. “As for you. You should have come to me.”

Sophie’s voice was muffled. “It’s MY turn.”

In a stage whisper, Kate muttered resentfully, “Actually, it was Margaret’s turn next.”

“I know the schedule,” Nikita shot another quelling glare Kate’s way before tipping up Sophie’s chin so she could see her tear-stained face. “But, this was NOT the way to handle it.”

She leaned down and brushed a kiss against Sophie’s forehead, drying her cheeks with her thumbs. “We’ll talk about it again after Aunt Genevieve’s visit.”

Nikita went up the stairs feeling about a thousand pounds heavier than she had when she went down.

She and Isabella were in the midst of getting a hasty supper together when Michael came in. He called out to tell her that the water was on, but instead of coming into the kitchen, she heard him go up the stairs to their room. When she went up later to tell him the food was ready, he was sitting in a chair by the window, staring out at the dark landscape.

“Michael?”

He answered without looking at her. “Yes?”

“Hungry?”

He shook his head. “No.”

She frowned, but turned to leave, when his voice stopped her. “Please don’t send Adam or one of the girls up to ask me again. I’ll come down when I’m ready.”

She looked back to discover that he was staring at her, waiting for her agreement, his expression tight and closed, and pain in the lines around his mouth. She nodded, and let him sit undisturbed.

Lying sleepless beside him, much later that night, she knew when he got up and slipped down to the kitchen, but she didn’t say anything to him then. She didn’t know when he went back to bed, because Gabrielle came to get her not long after Michael left, to tell her that Sophie was crying in her sleep. Nikita finished what remained of her night curled up around Sophie, soothing her just by being there, reminding herself that she could only manage one day at a time.

*****

As she tucked Gabrielle into bed two nights later, Gabrielle looked up and with a contented, sleepy sigh, said, “I’m glad things can go back to normal now.”

Nikita nearly choked on a sudden, ferocious, terrifying desire to seize Gabrielle’s shoulders and bellow into her face, ‘how could you be so stupid? Nothing will ever be normal again!’ Barely breathing, reigning in her unexpected fury with every ounce of control she could find, she gently kissed her youngest daughter good night, then fled for the only true privacy she had.

Her rage at the unfairness of fate had no safe outlet beyond tears, so she let them fall as she stood under the hot stream of the shower. Her shoulders burned from the strain of not holding tightly to someone who was no longer there. The skin of her arms and breasts stung from want of Margaret. She waited with sick anticipation for the awful moment when her tears dried up, leaving the suffocating weight of her grief and her yearning trapped in her chest.

The moment never came. Instead, this time, her misery and heartache spilled outward and swallowed her whole. Wracking cries tore out of her throat and echoed in her ears, loud and ugly over the rushing of the water. Her sobbing shook her so hard her legs failed her and she slid to the floor, banging her elbows and her knees and her head on the way, the fresh sharp pains a welcome icy contrast to the raging storm of her anguish at the loss of her child.

She had no idea how long she sat, huddled and crying on the floor of the shower, missing Margaret so hard she thought that surely her own heart would stop just to avoid the pain, and then Michael was there. He turned off the water and stepped in and sat down next to her, pulling her into his arms to hold her while she wept convulsively into his shirt.

As her crying at last began to ease, Michael shifted her weight so he could get them up. “Come on. Let’s get dry.”

In a few minutes he had her tucked into their bed. He disappeared briefly, returning with a bottle of scotch and two glasses. He also put two pills in her hand, which she immediately recognized as her most powerful migraine prescription. He handed her a glass with a couple of fingers of scotch and said, “Take the pills.”

She raised her brows at him, holding up the liquor and the meds. “Is this a good idea?”

“No.” He offered her a tiny, crooked smile and touched her glass with his. “But, after crying like that, you’re going to have a terrible headache. You should make sure you sleep first.”

Michael’s prediction turned out to be accurate. When she finally woke up, muzzy and heavy, the bright sunlight streaming in behind the light curtains made her recoil into the blankets and bury her head. More cautiously opening her eyes from under the protective shadow of a pillow, she realized she was alone and that it had to be long after Gabrielle and Sophie were usually awake. Isabella and Katherine slept the deep morning sleep of teenagers, though, and probably wouldn’t be up and around for at least another hour. Swallowing around the painful lump in her throat, she remembered that Margaret would still be sleeping too, if only she were still here.

Staggering down to the kitchen, wearing sunglasses against the bright glare of the winter day and suppressing groans as her aching abdominal muscles protested the movement, she discovered the cold remnants of breakfast scattered on the table. Following the sound of giggling into the next room, she found Michael sprawled on the couch, Gabrielle and Sophie crawling on top of him, laughing as they tried to provoke him by tickling him while he pretended to fight them off.

“Hey,” she croaked.

Michael took one look at her, then lifted the girls aside and stood up, ignoring their protests and the way their faces fell. “Did you take your meds?” he asked.

She had to think that one through, against the throbbing in her head. “No,” she said, not really surprised.

He narrowed his eyes in disapproval, then strode past her out of the room. Seeing her daughters’ stricken expressions, Nikita forced a smile. “Dad make crepes this morning?”

Gabrielle beamed gratefully. “Yes. Chocolate ones!”

“Want to watch a movie?” she asked.

When Michael came back with her pills and a mug of tea, she was nestled on the couch, one girl on each side of her, watching the opening credits of one of their favorite Disney films. Michael handed her the meds, waited until she had taken them, said, “I’ll be upstairs if you need me,” and left the room. A minute later she heard his footsteps cross the creaky old boards of the floor above, ending by the chair looking out the window. With an internal scowl, she knew that was probably the last of him they would see today.

*****

Her meds held off the migraine, barely, but fighting it was exhausting. By the end of the evening she was almost shaking she was so tired. Too tired to sleep, it turned out. Rather than disturb Michael with her restless twisting and unwilling to take more pills, she crept down to the study, poured herself a generous brandy and opened her laptop photo files. Starting with Margaret’s infant pictures she began to build new albums, selecting all the images that reminded her of the things about Margaret that she intended to never forget, from her first smile to her last soccer game.

She was so absorbed in her task she nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard Michael’s quiet ‘hi.’

“Hi.”

“Here.” He handed her a small bowl of ice cream. “You didn’t eat much at supper.”

Automatically accepting the bowl, she said, “I was still sort of nauseous.”

Looking at the ice cream in her hands, she realized she was hungry now. She started to eat as he sat down next to her, savoring the creamy frostiness as it slipped down her throat, still feeling as raw and tender as it had the night before after her long bout of sobbing. The leather seat cushions creaked as he settled in and transferred her computer from her lap to his own.

When her bowl was empty, she set it down and scooted closer to look at the screen. When he didn’t recoil, she leaned into him and dropped her cheek to his shoulder. They didn’t talk, just looked at pictures and snippets of video of Margaret as Michael clicked through them, pausing now and then to study one or another more carefully. When he got to the end, he closed the computer and set it down on the low table in front of the couch, then turned his face toward hers. She could see his grief and his exhaustion in the new lines around his eyes and his mouth, but he didn’t move away, so she closed the short distance between them to kiss his lips. His mouth was soft and yielding and he raised his hands to cradle her head, responding willingly to her advances. She trailed her fingers down his chest to kneed his thigh, then drew her hand up the inside of his leg to brush against his cock, which was as soft and yielding as his lips as she ran her nails over the warm flannel of his pajamas.

Before she had fully processed this unresponsiveness, he pulled her hand away and pushed it gently over her head as he twisted over her, his lips sliding down her jaw, her neck, between her breasts and then, sinking down on his knees on the floor before her, pushing the table aside, skimming up her shirt and dusting her belly with light kisses.

She said his name, making it a question, as he hooked his fingers in her pajamas and began to pull them down. He kept kissing her belly, so she raised her hips to let him work her clothes off, spreading her knees to give him room, humming in pleasure as he settled his mouth over her clit, his tongue flicking and stroking while he slipped two strong fingers inside her.

Afterwards she was too relaxed and too sleepy to protest as he helped her straighten her clothes, lifted her legs onto the sofa, and covered her up with a soft afghan. She must have fallen asleep immediately, because she never even noticed him leaving. When she woke up in the bright sunlight her computer was back on the desk, the coffee table was in its right place, and her glass and bowl were cleared away.

*****

She actually welcomed the arrival of the first grief counselor later that morning, thinking that they obviously could all use a little help processing Margaret’s death.

Then Michael refused to leave their bedroom to speak to her. When she tried to insist that he needed it too, he said, thank you, no, he didn’t need a counselor.

“That’s a load of crap, Michael. You need help every bit as much as the rest of us do. And furthermore,” she went on, her voice rising despite herself, “it would be good for our kids to see you take it seriously!”

He got up and walked her out of the room, shutting and locking the door behind her. Nikita stared at the closed door for a long moment, re-gathering her shattered nerves, then went to round up the rest of the family.

It did not go well.

Kate took an instant dislike to the therapist and answered every question as obnoxiously as possible, beginning with her name. Then she picked a screaming fight with Sophie about who knew Margaret best.

Isabella, resembling Michael more than ever, sat stone-faced and silent for about fifteen minutes of her sisters’ argument, when she stood up and walked out of the room without a backward glance.

Gabrielle burst into tears and crawled into Nikita’s lap, burying her face in Nikita’s shoulder.

As soon as it was polite to do so, Adam fled to town with Marco in tow.

When she told Michael about it, after picking the lock to get back into their bedroom in the early evening, he shrugged and said, “What did you expect?”

She figured it was either a great triumph of will, or a sign of emotional exhaustion, or both, that she did not yell or smash things in response.

The noise of Adam’s SUV coming up the drive woke Nikita from a fitful doze in the early hours of the following morning. Sitting up, she realized Michael had never come to bed. He was still in the chair by the far window, staring bleakly out into the night. After she watched Marco pull a staggeringly drunk Adam out of the passenger seat of the car and through the door to the apartment stairs, she said, “You should try to get some sleep.”

He looked up at her, “I know.”

But he hadn’t joined her before she fell asleep again.

Marco came into the main cabin for lunch, but they didn’t see Adam until nearly two o’clock the following afternoon.

*****

“Thanks for doing the dishes.”

Adam looked up from the sink with a wary smile. “You’re welcome. Thanks for cooking.”

Nikita forced a chuckle as she headed for the refrigerator. Pulling out the open bottle of white wine and refilling her glass, she said, keeping her voice as casual as she possibly could, “you talk with your dad today?”

“Ah.” Adam turned around and leaned back against the counter, drying his hands on a towel. “I wondered why I was being thanked for following the chore chart you posted on the fridge.”

Nikita shrugged and lifted the corner of her mouth in a half smile of acknowledgement.

“And the answer is no.”

Nikita raised her eyes to his. “Would you, tonight?”

Adam looked startled. “What? Like, now?”

“Yeah?”

“About what?”

“Anything? How you’re doing? How’s he doing? The weather?”

He shook his head. “I know you’re worried about him. We all are. But…” Adam trailed off.

“But?” She prompted, after a longish pause.

Adam turned back to the sink and picked up another plate to scrape. “But, he’ll be fine. He doesn’t need or want any of us hovering over him.”

“Not hovering. Just, say hi?”

“Fine. After I finish here I’ll go say hi.”

*****

“Again,” Nikita said, bringing her hands, protected by heavy pads, back into position.

Panting, Isabella nodded, then swung into the sequence again, kicking and punching as Nikita backed slowly around the mat.

“Good. Good.” She raised her hands. “Again. Harder this time.”

Isabella’s eyes widened slightly, but then she took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and did the sequence again. Harder.

Nikita grinned. “Good!” She dropped her hands. “Take a break.” She turned to look at Kate. “Your turn.”

Nikita hadn’t intended to start training with Isabella and Katherine, but she was enjoying it now that they had begun. The afternoon after their first, disastrous meeting with the grief counselor, she had retreated, alone, to the garage and the heavy bag there, taking her frustration out on it instead of her family. She had looked up to see Isabella watching her. And then Iz had said, “Can you show me how to do that?”

She and Michael hadn’t intended for one of the bays in their new garage to morph into a small gym either, complete with mats, free weights and a bag. It had happened slowly, item by item, until one rainy day Michael and Adam, sparing with sticks, chased each other (they would never say who was pursued and who was pursuing) across the open floor and smashed in the drivers’ side window of Nikita’s much-treasured Mercedes roadster; memento, memory and warning from another life. At that point, they had accepted the obvious and put up a partition wall.

The day after Nikita started teaching Isabella some of the basics of kickboxing, Kate showed up and asked to learn too. They’d been at it for almost a week now. The girls were quick students, which wasn’t surprising. They had been training in and around the marital arts, in a low-key and somewhat haphazard way, all their lives. Michael and Nikita had never made an issue of it, instead letting their children watch and participate in their workouts when and how they wanted, and sending them off to children’s classes whenever there was a place they found they liked. Margaret, naturally, had been their most ferocious student. Soccer was her first love, but while they were in Cambodia she had followed some of her soccer teammates into a kickboxing school. It turned out she had the personality and the physicality for the sport, even taking ribbons in a handful of competitions before they left.

Isabella and Kate, in contrast, had drifted away almost entirely from any formal training at all after a sequence of tae kwon do classes several years earlier they hadn’t enjoyed. Instead they occasionally watched Nikita and Michael train, or some of Michael’s MSF staff, sometimes willing to come out and spar for a while, but usually fading away before it came to that. Michael and Nikita hadn’t been thrilled, but decided it was something that shouldn’t be forced. Both girls were careful, observant and smart, and it had been a straightforward proposition to train them to hone those talents, mostly without them even being aware of it as training.

Nikita raised her hands. “Again.”

As Kate began to push her backwards, Nikita saw Michael come into the workout area. As they moved into the middle of the sequence, Michael called out, “harder.”

Kate flicked her gaze toward her father in surprise, then looked at Nikita with a question in her eyes. Nikita nodded and they continued, Michael adding his commentary from the side. Soon he was out on the mat, repositioning Kate’s arms, adjusting her stance, and generally driving her close to tears of angry frustration. Finally she muttered, “Why do I have to learn to do this anyway? Doesn’t a gun make all this wasted effort?”

Michael stilled, and the hairs on Nikita’s arms prickled at the way the tension in the air shot up about a thousand percent. After looming over Kate for a moment, he walked over to the rear wall of the garage and opened the gun cabinet, pulling out a nine millimeter. He rummaged for a clip, slammed it into the gun, and said, “here,” as he tossed it to Kate, who caught it automatically, gaping in surprise at her father. He said, “It’s empty. Try to shoot before I get to you.”

“Dad?”

“You can’t hurt me.”

Kate held the gun down at her side, her eyes wide.

“If you can’t raise that gun, it doesn’t matter that you have it.” His tone was perfectly reasonable, but an underlying menace reminded Nikita all too well of her early days of training as a recruit. She fleetingly considered and as quickly rejected the notion of intervening. This lesson was essential and Kate had provided a nearly perfect opening, even if Michael was going to overplay it.

Kate squared her shoulders and started to raise the gun, her arm trembling slightly, but before she’d hardly gotten it into position, Michael had crossed the floor and kicked her square in the abdomen, seizing her gun arm as she collapsed inward, breaking her grip on the gun and tossing it aside, sending it clattering across the concrete floor. He used their momentum to spin her around and slam her up against the wall, his forearm in her throat. He met her eyes in a long stare. “How useful was your gun?”

Kate, wide-eyed in shock, could only manage to shake her head a tiny fraction as she struggled weakly to push her father’s arm away from her neck. That was when Nikita realized he wasn’t just holding Kate still, he actually had her feet off the ground and was really pushing against her windpipe, which sent her flying across the floor to knock him away from their daughter with a sharp elbow jab into his side. “Michael! What the hell are you doing?”

Michael glared at her as Kate sagged to the floor, gasping for breath and holding her stomach.

Her blood pounding and her hands shaking, Nikita yelled, “You were crushing her windpipe! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Michael blinked, and Nikita watched awareness, shock, shame and anger chase their way across his face as he took in Kate curled up on the ground at their feet. He stepped back, spun on his heel and strode out of the garage.

Nikita dropped to the ground beside Kate and helped her to sit up. “Izzy, hand us some water, please?”

As Kate swallowed, leaning against Nikita and wincing as her throat muscles worked against the fresh bruises, Nikita hugged her close and wondered if they were all going to survive this.

“Mom?” Isabella asked.

“Yeah?”

“What was that?”

“I don’t know.” Nikita sighed and pressed her lips to Kate’s temple. Resting her cheek on Kate’s hair, she said, “But it’s time to find out.”

She found him upstairs, standing still and staring out his new favorite window, his hands locked behind him, parade-rest style.

She shut the door with a not-quite slam. “What the hell?”

Michael, who had obviously been expecting her, handed her the tablet he was holding. As she took in the data in the top files, all the sympathetic understanding she’d been working up to offer him vanished in a wave of angry shock. “You’ve been sitting up here, tracking Section activities.”

“Yes.”

She looked up from the data, but he wouldn’t turn to meet her face-to-face, guilty son-of-a-bitch that he was. “Despite our agreement that you wouldn’t.”

“We can’t protect ourselves if we don’t know what they’re up to.”

She made no attempt to keep her incredulous disgust out of her voice. “And is that your excuse for hitting Katherine?”

He turned his head to look at her then. “We assumed they could do the job. They can’t. Their success rate for cold-ops is barely fifty-two percent.”

She felt like he’d just kicked her in the solar plexus too. Scrolling fast through his data, seeing nothing that she could question, she muttered, “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“No.”

She looked back up at him, shaking her head as she put it all together. “That’s why they offered you command of Section two weeks ago. Fucking assholes! Why should you have to clean up their mess?”

And he had nearly shot them in the face for their trouble. Now she wished she hadn’t stopped him. She handed him back his PDA, all her anger with him thoroughly redirected towards the incompetent bastards running the Agency. How dare they even approach him with their own problems, and only days after Margaret’s death? Which was also entirely their fault! “Can’t they see all the ways that wouldn’t work? You’re as compromised as I am. More, even!”

She did not like at all the way her voice had wavered at the end there. He was probably one of the few people on the planet who could fix their stupid, shitty, self-created problems, and the thought made her shiver in a cold wind that was entirely inside her head.

“Why was the gun cabinet nearly empty?”

The abrupt change in subject gave her needed time to regroup. “Adam is obsessed with teaching Marco how to use each gun. They’ve been going out to the far pasture, using that old range you and Adam built when he was a kid.”

His face went blank with surprise. “Oh.”

She shrugged, still surprised herself by this development. “Yeah. I know.”

He tilted his head in acknowledgment, and then turned his gaze back out the window.

Talking about the guns had given her time to remind herself that she was also one of the select few who might be able to deal with the mess the Sections were in, but that hell would freeze over before she did. “Their problems are their own, Michael, and not ours.”

He didn’t answer, didn’t even turn his head, and she welcomed back the warm rush of anger at his obstinacy. She turned to leave, stopping at the door to say, “You should apologize to Katherine.”

“For showing her the limits of a handgun?”

“You nearly crushed your thirteen-year old daughter’s windpipe.” She paused, then added, “Luckily, you have a lot of experience apologizing for the inexcusable.”

She wasn’t certain, in the growing dark of their room, but she was pretty sure he flinched.

*****

After an almost sleepless night spent worrying about how to keep her family from ripping itself apart from strain, Nikita called a morning meeting and announced that starting the next Monday, the girls were going back to school.

There was a startled silence, then Isabella said, “What about Aunt Genevieve’s visit?”

“She and your cousins won’t even be here for two more weeks. That’s too long to wait to get back on some sort of routine.”

Depending on where they were living and what options were available, like Adam before them, the girls sometimes attended actual schools, sometimes did their work at home through one of the many internet options, and most often a little of both.

Today, Isabella and Katherine exchanged another quick look, then Isabella spoke again. “We’d like to try the school in town. You know, the one with the big sports fields we pass on the way to the supermarket.”

Adam interrupted, “The work won’t be in English, we’re in the French speaking part of Belgium.”

Kate snapped, “Yeah. Duh. We know!” Then she turned to look at Nikita and Michael with a bright, earnest smile. “We went to a French language school in Cambodia, so it should be easy to transfer our work.”

Gabrielle broke in, “I want to go to that school too, mom.”

Nikita was pleased. Despite how much the driving into town twice a day, nearly forty minutes each way, was going to suck, this was her preferred solution. It was a huge relief the girls had already chosen it for themselves. But one person hadn’t spoken up yet. “Sophie?”

Sophie had been staring at the tabletop, but now she looked up with a pleading expression. “Can I home school? Please?”

Nikita looked at Michael, but they couldn’t reach a quick, silent agreement, so Nikita said, “We’ll talk about it and get back to you. Everyone get dressed and be at the car in thirty minutes. We’re going to get registered and shop for school supplies today.”

The next afternoon Nikita was coming down from the loft just as Sophie erupted from the basement stairs, Kate hard on her heels and bellowing at the top of her lungs, “You stole my bracelet! You fucking little thief!!!”

Catching sight of Michael, who must have come from the kitchen, Sophie quickly ducked behind him, shrieking, “Daddy! Daddy! Save me! She’s going to kill me!”

Kate skidded to a stop, her chest heaving from exertion and emotion. She spat, “I’m not going to kill you, you stupid little twit. I’m going to beat the crap out of you.” Then she suddenly lunged forward, flailing her arms and growling, “Rwarrr!!!”

Sophie shrieked again and clung tighter to Michael’s waist.

Nikita looked at Michael, and together they reached an effortless, instantaneous and mutual decision that Sophie could home school while her sisters went to town without her.

*****

Driving the already familiar route home from the girl’s school the following Friday afternoon, Nikita listened to Katherine and Gabrielle’s happy chatter and smiled in satisfaction. Gabrielle had already located at least three new best friends and was thrilled with everything, but especially lunch and recess, when there was time to talk and play with other kids her own age. Kate, also a quick adapter, was full of new information about the latest bands and movies to catch the attention of Belgian seventh graders. Both girls also approved of their new physical education teacher, whom all the grades shared, and as they told each other stories they had heard about her from new classmates, Nikita glanced over at Isabella. “You’re being quiet. How was your day?”

“Fine.”

“You realize I am going to keep on asking until you tell me more than that, right?”

Nikita caught her eye when Iz turned to look at her in exasperation, and winked.

Iz managed a weak grin. “Yeah. Okay.”

While Isabella began to talk, slowly at first and then with mounting enthusiasm as she began to describe upcoming projects in her new classes, Nikita congratulated herself, again, on a job well done. All three of them seemed to be off to an excellent beginning. Dressed anonymously in the same uniforms as everyone else, and without the notoriety of looking as out of place as they had in Cambodia, or anyone’s awareness of Margaret or her murder, they were just three girls, recently moved to the area and new to school. They clearly found it a huge relief.

The driving hadn’t been nearly as awful as she feared, either, especially because Adam and Marco had taken over more than half of it. Fortunately, Nikita and the girls all liked Marco. Adam had met him bicycling in Spain a few years earlier, and in the dark it would be hard to keep them straight, their build and size was so similar. In the light it wasn’t a problem at all. Marco had a round, cheerful, open face and a bright toothy smile, and he laughed easily and often. He was halfway through a graduate program in chemical engineering, and was a restful person to be around.

With Adam and Marco’s help with all the driving, Nikita had not only been able to get Sophie going on her own program, she’d even begun returning her own vast backlog of phone calls and messages. She didn’t want to actually talk to very many people yet, so she stuck to email, but, it was a beginning.

*****

Nikita smiled and tipped her re-filled glass to Marco. “Thanks.”

Marco topped off his own wine, flashing his infectious smile. “You’re welcome. Besides, it was fun to take a big group of teens to the movies. I’m the youngest kid in my family, so I’ve never been the big brother before.”

“When you all got home, Isabella and Katherine looked happy. And they said they liked the movie.”

“I think they had a good time. Or, at least.” Marco shrugged charmingly and grinned conspiratorially, “there was a lot giggling.” After taking a sip of his drink, he asked, “How did Gabrielle’s friend’s visit go?”

“Good. She seems like a nice kid.”

Adam walked into the kitchen then and came to lean against the counter next to Marco. As he often was, he was just close enough to leave the clear impression that they were lovers, without ever stooping to, or allowing, anything that might possibly be construed as a public display of affection.

“How did Sophie do?” Adam asked.

Trust Adam to go right to the difficult heart of the matter, Nikita thought. She said, “Okay. She was too shy to go outside with Gabrielle and her friend by herself, so I went out with them.” Nikita smiled, recalling the afternoon’s somewhat muddy snow battle. “It was fun, playing in what’s left of the winter!”

“Did dad come downstairs at all, while Gabrielle’s guest was here?”

Something in Adam’s tone made her straighten up, even as she answered as casually as she could. “No.”

Adam nodded sharply. “Of course not.”

Nikita frowned, but said nothing.

“Do you know what he’s doing, up there, all day, every day?” He jerked his chin up, indicating their bedroom on the floor above.

“He’s working.”

Adam raised a skeptical brow. “On what?”

“MSF projects, budgets, planning, a little crisis negotiation. The usual.” Nikita waved her hand airily, dismissing the question. It was true, more or less. He had started taking J.B.’s phone calls again. He had spent part of the week engaged in the kind of complex negotiations of give and take with local leaders that were the core of what he really did to secure MSF missions. He’d also spent a good deal of his time, as far as she could tell, staring off into space. This was, she discovered, preferable to the one afternoon he had announced he was going to take a walk and then terrified her by being gone, on foot, for eight hours, without his phone. Arriving home long after dark had fallen, mouthing casual and obviously unfelt apologies for frightening her.

Adam folded his arms and narrowed his eyes. “And all of it is so important he can’t take a turn on the driving, or helping with Sophie’s home school?”

“He did help out with Sophie.”

“One afternoon out of five! By watching a bunch of football games with her! Sophie doesn’t even like football. Hell, she cringes and ducks if a soccer ball comes anywhere near her! It was Margaret who loved football!”

Marco tossed back his wine, then cleared his throat. “I think I’ll be going out to the apartment now. Good night.” He set his glass down next to the sink, and headed for the front door.

In the silence that followed, Nikita watched Adam stare at his toes. He looked lost and angry, and a little bit like the lonely nine-year old he’d been when she and Michael had finally begun their lives together. Her heart hurt for him, but she didn’t have any words at all to give him. What she really wanted to do was offer a hug, but she could see from the set of his shoulders it would be as unwelcome right now as it had been then. After a long few moments, he looked up and shrugged. “The Mediterranean flair for public emotions escaped Marco entirely. He hates scenes. I should go out and let him know there wasn’t one. See you in the morning.”

As he walked past her, he reached out and brushed the tips of his fingers against her shoulder. “Good night, mom.”

He was gone before she could respond.

*****

Kate’s voice caught Nikita’s attention when she walked into the garage with an armload of recycling.

“Just once, that’s all I want.”

“Once is all you’ll get.” Adam’s voice carried a hint of laughter as well as threat. “You haven’t taken any training seriously enough to do better.”

“How long would it take?”

“To touch him? I could show you one or two moves right now that should work. Once. To get through Dad’s defenses regularly? Years.”

“Arrrgghhh!” Kate wailed. Her voice got serious sounding again. “Can you?”

“Can I what?”

“Take dad?”

There was a pause, and then Adam said, “yes, but not always. He’s still really quick.”

“Still?”

Nikita shot around the partition wall to see Michael standing at the back of the workout area, staring down Adam and Kate.

Michael pushed himself off the wall, stripping off his jacket and hat, and ambled out onto the training floor. There was something loose and dangerous in his movements that made the hairs on the back of Nikita’s neck stand up. He said, “try.”

Adam frowned. “Excuse me?”

“Try to drop me.”

Adam stepped back and folded his arms. “No.”

Michael’s tone was perfectly reasonable, but his eyes were cold. “You told Kate you could. Prove it.”

“Prove what, dad?” There was something new, something a little taunting and hard, in Adam’s voice. “That I’m thirty years younger than you?”

“If you can.” Michael raised his hands and faced Adam, who after a long beat, raised his own and started moving into the center of the mat.

Nikita launched herself between them. Her heart pounding furiously, she held out her hands, trying to ward them back and way from her, away from each other. “No. No. This is not going to happen.”

Adam was circling now too, forcing Nikita to pivot to keep her eyes on both of them. He said, light and mocking, and underneath, angry, oh, so angry, “Oh come on, mom. Let him try.”

“I’m not the one with something to prove,” Michael said.

“Kate!” Nikita called. “Go get Marco, and tell him to bring the car keys. Right now.”

Kate vanished, and Nikita heard her running up the stairs to the apartment above. Adam and Michael spun lazily around her, and Michael said, “Nikita. You should get out of the way.”

She turned and squared up in front of him, raising her own hands. “Make me.”

“Nikita!” Adam’s voice was sharp and he was openly angry now. “This isn’t about you. Get out of the way.”

Nikita kept her eyes on Michael’s, moving her feet to keep facing him and her body between him and Adam. “No. Neither one of you is in any state to do this.”

Marco came hustling into the garage, Kate hard at his heels. “What’s happening?” he asked.

“Marco.” Nikita didn’t turn her eyes away from Michael’s as she answered. “Please take Adam out of here. Into town, back to Paris if you have too, but take him away. Right now.”

Nikita risked a glance at Marco and saw his jaw drop in surprise, then some sense of what was happening must have come to him for he moved toward Adam, and Nikita returned her concentration to Michael. She heard Marco speaking urgently under his breath, and Adam answering angrily and loudly, but she kept her focus completely on Michael. He was still poised and loose, ready to strike, but he had come to a stop and was obviously watching Adam and Marco.

There was scuffling and more hissed angry words behind her, and then she heard Marco call out, “We’re going. I’ll phone later.”

The outer door slammed shut after them, and as Michael turned his gaze back to her, Nikita said, “Kate, go into the house and all of you stay there until I come inside.”

She left without a sound, and Nikita was alone with Michael, who started stalking her again. She gaped in disbelief, nearly dropping her hands in surprise. “You really want to spar, right now, with me?”

“Yes.”

“Fine.”

So they did. Nikita was glad that she’d been working out for a few weeks already, because Michael was still a formidable opponent. He wasn’t in the field nearly as often as he had once been, and for the most part MSF security teams didn’t engage with anyone, ever. They worked behind the scenes to keep connections open, staying abreast of their situations and serving as visible reminders to all and sundry to not mess with the missions and people under their care. But their presence was only as effective as anyone believed in their resolve and their skills. So they trained openly and constantly, Michael right along with them.

He was barely in control, but the dark thing swirling between him and Adam didn’t enter into this between them. The match ended when she dropped him, mostly because he got winded more quickly than she did, thanks to spending most of a month more or less checked out from the world around him.

Sitting on his chest, holding him to the mat with her weight, she asked, “Want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“How are you going to handle it?”

“I’ll deal with it.”

“I hope so.”

She stood up and offered him a hand, pulling him to his feet. They walked back to the house without speaking. Once inside he immediately retreated upstairs and left her to face their children on her own. It made her wish she’d hit him a lot harder when she had him on the mat.

Many hours later, Nikita slipped back into bed after another of her middle-of-the-night wanders through the house. She was too wound up to sleep but she was afraid of the heavy slumber and slow waking that meds produced, she didn’t know what crisis she might be called to next. So she had tiptoed through the cabin, looking in on her sleeping children, counting heads, checking that they were still breathing, and carefully not looking for the one she knew wasn’t there.

Then, for the first time, the cold night air and the silent house reminded her of the Section in the quiet hours of the night watch, when she’d paced out her anxieties and walked through her insomnia. Furious with herself for even thinking the comparison she had fled up the stairs to their room. Settling in on her back and telling herself that this time she would stay still until she went to sleep, Michael rolled over and looked at her. “You’re not sleeping well.”

She met his eyes, dark in the dim starlight that was all that lit their room. “No. I’m not.”

“Can I help?”

She examined him as carefully as she could in the dark, uncertain what to make of his offer. “How?”

“Help you relax?” His voice was thick with sour mockery, but his hand on her hip was firm and warm and made her skin ache for more.

A toxic sludge of old bile and new grief rushed at the back of her throat even as she arched into his kiss, tasting tears and blood, his or hers, real or remembered, it didn’t matter and she didn’t care.

There was no teasing, and no foreplay. Michael pushed her onto her back, helped her wiggle out of her long underwear, shoved down the front of his pajamas and thrust inside her. It was so sudden she was hardly wet at all and the dry friction of his first few strokes made her eyes water from the peculiar pleasure pain. Within seconds, though, she was slick and open and he was driving into her hard and fast, muscles bunching under her hands and his breathing ragged in her ear. When he sagged against her after he came, she was still pulsing and aching from arousal, twisting against him in frustration. He slid out and off to her side, catching her wrists and pinning her arms above her head with one hand while he brought her off with the other, his fingers working her clit until she cried out in relief and release. She fell asleep tucked up against his chest, his arm wrapped around her, holding her close, keeping her warm.

When she opened her eyes in the grey dawn light, she saw him pulling on running pants and a long-sleeved workout shirt. She sat up so abruptly her head swam a bit, which she ignored. “Can I come with you?”

Only a plain refusal could have stopped her, and maybe not even then. He didn’t say anything at all, so she scrambled for her clothes.

*****

Adam and Marco hadn’t gone to straight Paris, but they did leave a few days later, vacating the garage apartment for Michael’s sister Genevieve and her two daughters, Caroline and Marjorie.

Hugging Adam goodbye before they left, Nikita asked, “are you going to deal with it, whatever it is, between you and your dad?”

His attempt at a reassuring smile was more like a grimace when he leaned in to kiss her forehead. “Yes, mom.”

“And take care of yourself too?”

“Yes, mom.” Adam’s smile widened into his more familiar teasing grin as he sighed theatrically, casting his eyes upward in an appeal to a heavenly figure Nikita was reasonably certain he didn’t much believe in. Obviously sensing this wasn’t actually very reassuring, Adam grew more serious and continued. “It’s called PTSD. I’ve been listening to people tell me how to deal with it since I was six years old. I could lead workshops on how to deal with PTSD. I know what I have to do. I’m doing what I need to do.”

“Okay.” She hugged him one more time and stepped back. “Call if-“

He interrupted her, “you too.”

*****

Footprints in the Dust 5/6

2013-03-20T19:52:05Z

Genevieve handed Nikita a steaming mug before sitting down beside her at the big kitchen table. “Tell me. Tell me everything.”

Nikita inhaled the heavy, rich scent of the hot chocolate in her hands, enhanced by the faint bitter notes of Kahlua. “There’s not that much to tell.”

Genevieve raised her beautifully shaped eyebrows in an expression of dramatic unbelief.

Nikita tried laughter. “Really! It’s less than a week since we last talked on the phone. The only news since then is that you and your girls arrived safely!”

Genevieve shook her head in disapproval. “Nikita. It’s not about new things happening, it’s about the act of talking.”

Nikita sighed, and blew across her mug to cool the liquid enough to sip. “Just how much reading on ‘comforting the bereaved’ did you do, anyway?”

Genevieve laughed gaily. “I looked through everything at the book shop, and the internet.” She sobered then, and lifted her shoulder in an elegant shrug. “Also my own experiences. Michael and I were alone after our parents died, and he was a teenaged boy and, already,” she waved her hand, “himself about grief.”

Nikita snorted, “You mean, closing down and shutting everyone else out?”

Silently, deep in the privacy of her own head, she added ‘while wallowing in guilt and maudlin self-pity, spiked with a suicidal disregard for the well being of self and loved ones?’

“Yes.” Genevieve smiled briefly. “And then, when he ‘died’ in prison, I was in the care of another very young man. Well-meaning, wonderful, so kind, so loving, but,” she shook her head in fond memory, “so young. Which meant I did not fully grieve for any of them until after Rene died. Then, it all hit at once, very, very hard.”

Nikita sipped her coco, letting the burn on her tongue take the pain and guilt of Rene’s death. When they had reached out to Genevieve and her family some fifteen years ago, she had wanted to tell her about Rene, tell her who Rene was and how Rene had died, and confess that she had been the one to kill him. In fact, now that she was thinking on it, with an ever-green appreciation for all of Section’s monstrous ironies, she had killed Rene to save Michael from himself when he had been stuck in an earlier bender of guilt-and-grief fueled, reckless self-endangerment.

Michael had asked her not to take that step, for the sake of Genevieve’s memories of the man who had been her only living family for almost ten years. She had regretted not telling Genevieve ever since. The secret was so heavy, and the weight only grew with time. That she had subsequently stood her ground on not keeping secrets from their children did not lessen the burden of this one.

Genevieve went on, “I nearly lost myself, my marriage, everything then. Poor Henri! He did not know what had become of his cheerful, always strong, wife. Someone had taken her in the night and put a strange, morbid, weeping, frail creature in her place.” Genevieve shook her finger at Nikita. “So, I tell you now. Talk. And keep talking. Over and over again. To yourself, if to no one else.”

Nikita knew Genevieve was right. How could she not know? On the outside chance that five weeks of family therapists and grief counselors hadn’t made it clear, her entire life was one long adaptation to loss. Before the Section, in the Section, and all the years after, coping with grief was the constant. On her own, on the streets, denial was the only way to go. She had paid a high price, though, in unacknowledged vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities later exploited ruthlessly by Madeline. And by Michael.

The Section itself, under Paul Wolfe’s command anyway, had operated on the theory that grief, like any other human reaction, could be plotted, manipulated, and, most importantly, scheduled and contained.

MSF was not like that at all. If anything, it was a fun-house mirror image of what the Section had been. Grieving and the need to grieve were, if not celebrated exactly, held to be a central facet of the lives of the volunteers and career workers alike. Everyone was an amateur grief counselor; everyone had a personal story or stories to tell.

By choosing to have a large family, and to keep that family in the field with them, she and Michael had to some degree insulated themselves from that aspect of life with the MSF. They were neither blind nor stupid, however, and they both had absorbed the major tenets of how to cope with grief from their friends and colleagues and co-workers. Friends and co-workers who even now were reaching out to embrace them, pull them into supportive communities whether or not they wanted it. A huge percentage of the messages she’d received since she had fled to the cabin were from friends and colleagues, calling to offer an ear or a shoulder, sharing stories about Margaret, practically begging to come cook, or clean, or run errands. She was sure that Michael’s messages were filled with the same. Genevieve herself had called every three days, like clockwork, just to check in.

Nikita had only held all offers at bay because Adam and Marco were there, and then Genevieve and her daughters had arrived within days of Adam and Marco’s departure for Paris.

Nikita looked up, startled, at the sound of Genevieve clearing her throat. She realized, ruefully, that she had sunk into a fit of abstraction. “Right. Okay. Sophie. Let’s talk about Sophie.”

Genevieve smiled in encouragement and Nikita spilled out her concerns and worries. Sophie’s adjustment to the new world they were all living in was proving particularly hard going. She wasn’t clingy, exactly, unless she was running from Kate, of course, but she’d gone from a cheerful if somewhat dreamy little girl who played with her toys and her dolls and her sisters for hours on end, to a pale and watchful loner who stayed just out of arms reach. When she wasn’t picking fights.

It didn’t take Sophie especially long to whip through each day’s assignments on the fourth grade online curriculum they selected for her, though this was producing some head butting with her father over sloppy and careless work. This in turn meant she spent too much of each afternoon ghosting through the house, perfecting her ‘play with me for I am a lost soul’ expression. But, when Nikita offered play cards with her, or read aloud, or do their nails, or even, in desperation, to pay her for her help with extra chores, Sophie would promptly vanish. “Of course,” Nikita finished, “if I don’t see her around, it turns out she’s hiding out in either Kate or Isabella’s room, playing electronic games on a hand held.”

Genevieve smiled sympathetically. “All to be expected. Anyway, I think you’re doing fine with her. With all your girls. It’s really you, and Michael, I’m worried about.”

“Us? Why?”

Nikita was genuinely startled, not so much at the sentiment, but that Genevieve was being so uncharacteristically blunt about it, and flatly refusing to rise to the red herring of Sophie’s situation.

“Since he came back, since I met you, you two have been always together. For more than fifteen years, always so close together, always looking to each other, always touching each other. Now? I know we have only been here little more than three days, but I haven’t seen you and him in the same room at all, except for meals, and while he still watches you, you don’t look at him at all.”

“He sits right next to me at supper! If I looked at him the whole time I couldn’t eat!”

Genevieve tapped her fingernail sharply on the table. “That’s not what I mean and you know it.”

Nikita sipped her cooling drink, giving herself time to compose an answer. Because she did know what her sister-in-law meant. Though she was taken aback that it was, apparently, so obvious to a sympathetic observer. She wanted to be better than that.

The truth was that she was so strenuously guarding her tongue, so valiantly holding in all the ugly, hurtful, angry versions of ‘why the fuck did you bring us all back to Paris?’ that filled her head and heart, she had no room left to say anything to him at all.

She knew that he was lacerating himself with his own guilt, knew he was drowning in his own grief, but she had no line to throw him. She never had. Not in the past, when everything she had managed to say had ended up sounding like, “I told you so,” or, “What did you expect?” And not now, not when it was taking everything she had not to push him under herself.

As for him, well, silence had always been Michael’s refuge of choice. He would not rage at her, he would not cry for her, he would not even meet her eyes, too afraid to see his own bitter judgment on his failures reflected back from her to him.

Instead, they’d kept sparring. They slipped out to the garage at dawn, in unspoken agreement that no one needed to be watching. She held nothing back and he took it all without a sound; every bruise, every scrape, every cut, every strain. And repaid her by fucking her hard and fast in the darkest part of the night, all teeth and muscles and finger-shaped bruises on her hips and thighs. Or he slipped in behind her when she was in the shower, pressing her tight against the wall and holding her up through orgasms that buckled her knees. At meals they sat side by side, their knees just touching, their feet pressed together, under the table, out of sight. And other than the business of the day, they didn’t talk at all.

For now, this all they had to offer each other. For now, this would have to do. Nikita swallowed and looked up to meet Genevieve’s kind, worried gaze. “You’re right. We’re in a hard place. But, I promise, we are dealing with it, best we can.”

*****

“Genevieve? Ready?” Michael walked into the kitchen, carrying his coat.

Genevieve looked up from the table, where she had just spread out her latest needlework project, showing Nikita the colors and the pattern she had selected for a new set of dinning room chair cushions. “Ah, Michael! I’d forgotten about our walk! I’ve just laid everything out!” She glanced toward Nikita, then back at her brother, her expression bright and bland. “Could Nikita join you instead?”

Nikita looked up at Michael and saw him blink, then he looked at her and shrugged, smiling in fond resignation as he gestured at his sister with a slight tilt of his head.

She looked at her sister-in-law and said, “you will never, ever win a prize for subtle.”

Genevieve opened her eyes wide in a very good approximation of shocked denial, and Nikita laughed as she pushed back her chair and stood up. “I’m going. We’re going. We’ll talk.”

They had walked for almost a mile along the muddy, early spring trail before Nikita finally broke the silence. “Have you made a decision about the reception in Paris next week, the UN Human Rights Commission one?”

“We should go.”

“Yes.” She glanced over and in the bright mid-day light she could see how drawn and tired he still was. “Annalisa made hotel reservations for us.”

He looked at her then, holding her eyes for a brief second before looking back to the trail winding away in front of them. “That was thoughtful of her.”

“Yes. But we could stay at the apartment, if you’d rather.”

He kept his eyes on the path. “No.”

That was good. She didn’t want to stay there either. “We have to at least stop by. The girls have lists of things they want, and all our evening gear is there.”

“Okay.”

“If we’re going, I’d like to schedule some meetings for myself. The report on the Cambodian project is overdue.”

He answered sharply, “We’re going.”

“Fine.”

After a few more minutes of walking in silence, he asked, “Do you want your meetings before or after?”

“Before.”

“Fine.”

When they were almost in sight of the house, she said, “I want to take my car.”

He shrugged. “Then you should drive.”

She had expected that. All his years riding in the back of the van, working, had taught him the value of chauffeurs. Which was all very well, right up to the moment she realized she should go ahead and buy herself the damn cap, at which point she usually quit driving him anywhere, on principle. He would drive as long as she stayed vigilant, but the minute she slacked off, her driving time went up and his went down. The only exception was his motorcycles, which he would take by preference almost anywhere, in almost any weather. But there was no way she was going to take a motorcycle trip in the cool, rainy spring weather, or get out of doing most of the driving on this trip either, so she might as well drive her own damn car. “Fine. But then I get to choose the music.”

Her voice sounded far more petulant and aggrieved than she’d intended, and she held back her wince only by assuming a hard stare.

He stopped and looked at her again, managing to appear baffled by her vehemence, then the corners of his lips began to rise in a faint, teasing smile and his eyes glinted a particularly bright, warm green in a stray shaft of watery spring sunlight. With a slight nod of acquiescence, he murmured gently, “Of course.”

Just like that her irritation fled, her chest felt lighter, and she smiled back at him, a small, twisted, apologetic smile, but a real one. When she slipped her hand into his, his grip was warm and firm. Their shoulders brushed now and again as they finished their walk, in a silence more comfortable than when they began.

*****

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?”

Nikita leaned down to the open window. “No Michael. I’m fine. Come pick me up when your meeting is over.”

She stood up and waved, then turned for the front door of their building. She heard Michael pull away from the curb, but she didn’t stop to take a deep breath or square her shoulders or in any way indicate that she had the slightest hesitation about walking into the apartment. She knew full well he was watching her.

She got all the way into the elevator before she let herself sag against the wall, raising her hands to watch her trembling fingers, willing her muscles to still and relax.

Once she got inside, it didn’t seem that bad. They’d had a cleaning service in after they left for Belgium, so the apartment had the vaguely foreign air of anonymous tidiness. She retrieved everything the girls wanted, raided her and Michael’s closets for the clothes they needed for the reception that night, and had it all packed up and by the door in record time. But she was too efficient. She finished well before Michael would be back to get her.

She told herself to call a taxi, to call him to let him know he didn’t need to come for her, and get out, but she was already walking to Margaret’s room.

*****

“Nikita! Nikita?” Michael’s voice echoed loudly through the apartment, and it took Nikita a moment or two to figure out it was really him and not part of her uneasy, groggy dream, running through the murk, trying and failing to find and save her scattered children from faceless, nameless threats.

He found her before she could answer, appearing in the doorway to Margaret’s room, concern, relief and irritation chasing each other across his face. “Nikita?”

She struggled to sit up. “Hi.” Her voice was raspy and dry and she started coughing.

Her head was killing her, the result of crying herself into an exhausted sleep.

Michael crouched in front of her, lifting her chin so he could examine her eyes. After a long minute, he stood up. “Where’s your bag? You need your pills.”

“If I wanted a personal drug pusher, I’d hire one.” Her voice was too loud, too harsh.

He snapped back, “If I wanted to be one, I’d hire out.”

Nikita dropped her eyes first, and caught sight of Margaret’s Real Madrid sweatshirt crumpled on the bed next to her. She had pulled it out because she hoped it would still smell faintly of their last day of travel. She had pressed her face into the soft, faded fabric and inhaled the traces of her lost child, and she had started to cry. Now she pulled it into her lap and folded it neatly, brushing away the fresh tear drops as they fell. Once she stood up, she placed it gently back into the bottom drawer of Margaret’s dresser, running her hand along the neat stacks of jeans and tee-shirts. Margaret never kept her drawers neatly. Her clothes were tidy because Margaret had never come home after their last trip.

Michael cleared his throat, so she closed the drawer and left the room, shutting the door softly behind her, wiping surreptitiously at her cheeks before she followed him out and down to her car.

The reception for the new high commissioner was a brilliant and glittery affair, and if they didn’t look their absolute best, they looked damned good. An exacting teacher had trained them in a harsh school. She and Michael both accomplished what they needed to: seeing those who needed to be seen, speaking with those who needed to hear, listening to those who needed to talk, and being seen by those who needed to see.

The cold night air, after the hot, crowded party, made her shiver as they stood waiting for the bellman to summon the next cab. Michael wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close, and after the briefest of hesitations, she relaxed into his embrace, reminding herself to take the warmth and comfort he could offer, even if it wasn’t exactly what she wanted or needed from him. Not that she knew exactly what that was, either.

He fell asleep almost immediately after they had sex, wrapped around her, practically pinning her to the bed with his arm heavy around her waist and his leg wound through hers. Her meds kicked in and she fell asleep before she’d finished working out, in her head, exactly how she would tell him how much she hated it when he did that.

They had breakfast with Adam before they left town, and learned he was planning to head back to Africa soon. Adam didn’t work for MSF, he worked with a group that assisted in distributing, installing and adapting technologies for third world nations, mostly in Africa, but also in central and east Asia.

When Nikita asked him if he was ready to go back into the field, he assured her that if he stayed in Paris any longer he was going to go batty from having nothing to do. Which wasn’t really an answer, but was the best she was going to get, obviously. He and Michael spoke only of the latest political news, though they hugged each other tightly before she and Michael left. Another instance where it was obviously insufficient, and yet the most she was going to get as far as seeing father and son work out whatever their issues were.

*****

Nikita scowled at her reflection in the bathroom mirror as she tossed back the sleeping pills. Every time she thought she was done with them, that she was sleeping well enough to get by on her own, something new would happen to disrupt her hard won balance.

Today it was getting called into the director’s office at the girls’ school to discuss, of all people, Isabella. Isabella had always been a classic oldest daughter, quiet, compliant, willing, and conflict avoidant with anyone but her siblings. Today, quiet, compliant, conflict avoidant Isabella had kicked, all too literally, the bloody snot out of another girl in her class. No one at the school had really tried to defend the other girl, who had been taunting a group of new students, refugees from the latest crisis in the Congo, and Isabella had been defending them. Apparently it had started with words and then escalated, but everyone was quite sure that Isabella’s final assault was out of all proportion to the event in question.

To keep Isabella from being suspended, or worse, thrown out of the school once the other parent showed up full of angry bluster, Nikita had given the director a very short version of Margaret’s abduction and death, limiting all her daughters’ roles to those of horrified observers.

When Isabella discovered that, as she put it, ‘their cover had been blown,’ and that Nikita had ‘betrayed them’ she actually started yelling at Nikita in the hallway at the school, something she had never once done in her entire life in public and extremely rarely in private. Then she rode home in stony silence: a silence unbroken, at least towards Nikita, in all the hours since.

Michael’s only contribution had been to offer to help Isabella plan a better, untraceable assault, the next time she wanted to take someone out for behaving badly. This made her stamp out of the room, hissing loudly about her violently twisted family.

Kate, Sophie and Gabrielle then spent the evening offering Nikita unsolicited hugs and kisses, which she could only assume was their reaction to what must have been the stricken expression on her own face at Isabella’s behavior.

When she walked back into their bedroom after swallowing the pills, Michael was working at the small table he had set up by the window and turned into a desk. She pretended not to know he was still tracking Section activities as he attended to MSF business, he pretended not to be doing it. Another reason she was back on sleeping meds. He looked up and said, “She will get over it.”

“Which ‘it’?”

“Killing Jerome.”

“She won’t talk about that, not with me, not with the counselors, not with anyone. Neither of them will.”

“Give it time.”

“Time.” She sighed and collapsed onto their bed. “I’d hoped there had been enough time that I could dismiss of all the therapists.”

“I think you should. They’ve done all they can.”

She closed her lips on ‘how the hell would you know? You never met with one!’ and said instead, “Yeah. I will. Right after Isabella meets with them, one last time.”

The following week, nine weeks after they arrived in Belgium, Nikita dismissed all the counselors, much to almost everyone’s relief. Only Sophie seemed to want to continue the sessions, so as a way to get her out of the house, Nikita started taking her to a clinic in town once a week.

Isabella apologized to the other student, to her classmates, the teachers, the director, her volleyball coaches, anyone who had even been tangentially related to the scene that day, and the breach in decorum seemed to heal over quickly. She even tried to apologize to Michael and Nikita, but they assured her that she didn’t owe them anything for doing what she thought was right. The director apparently kept the information about Margaret closely held, to the girls’ relief, for no one ever spoke to them of it.

By the time the trees were fully leafed out and her favorite April flowers had come and gone, Nikita decided they could all do without her for a time, booked a ticket on the ferry, and headed for London.

*****

Quinn closed her phone and said, “I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to change our plans for this weekend.”

Zoe paused with her fork half way to her mouth, her eyes wide in surprise. “What? Why?”

“Nikita’s coming.”

“With a two-day warning?”

Quinn shrugged. She’d actually had more warning than that, Nikita just hadn’t confirmed until now that she would really be able to get away. However Quinn had seen no reason to say anything to Zoe until Nikita’s plans were finalized. “Yes.”

“And our plans just go ffft?”

Quinn raised her brows. “Our plans were to go running with the dogs and maybe go see a movie. Hardly earth shaking.”

Zoe frowned. “That’s not the point.”

Quinn sat back and folded her hands over her crossed knee. “So what is the point?”

“That you just drop everything for her.”

“She’s one of my oldest, dearest friends, and she just recently experienced major trauma. She needs a weekend escape. Don’t make this a big deal.”

“She’s more than a ‘friend’. It is a big deal. To me.”

Quinn shook her head. “Zoe. Don’t do this.”

“You fuck him, sometimes, too, don’t you.”

“I won’t bother to lie, so don’t ask me if you don’t want to know.”

“I want to know. I need to know.”

“Very rarely, and not in a long time.” Quinn was well aware that for this answer to be true, ‘fuck’ had to be very narrowly and quite literally defined, but she was not going to explain or defend her own choices, not even to her current girlfriend. She also, she smugly reminded herself, did not go around sharing the details of her sex life, not without the consent of everyone involved, and never while in a crowded bistro at lunchtime.

She was guiltily aware that more often than not Nikita and Michael both disapproved of just how much information she chose to withhold from her other lovers, and that awareness threatened to take the sheen out of her self-righteous glow, so she firmly squashed it.

“Why?”

Zoe’s tone was a bit too anguished for Quinn’s taste, so she decided to try a new approach. She winked as she grinned salaciously. “Heat of the moment.”

“That’s it?”

“Well. Yes! He’s a very sexy man.” Quinn laughed. “What more does there need to be?”

“So, why not more often then?” Zoe eyed her suspiciously. “You like sexy men.”

Quinn remembered Mick’s confusion and smiled. “He’s not my type. Even when I do choose men for myself, Michael’s way too top dog for me.”

Zoe stabbed viciously at her salad. “So it’s her. Always her. Nikita.”

“You make it sound like some sort of fatal attraction. We take vacations together a couple of times a year, usually in some place distant and warm. We lie in the sun, drink caipirinas, tell each other bad jokes, and fuck. That’s it.”

Well, again, not exactly. That made it sound like it was always just the two of them. Which was often true, but not always. Sometimes Michael, or the kids, or all of them, were on the same vacation. Frequently the ‘distant and warm’ place was their current house, which happened to be in such a spot. And once again, Zoe was not enough a part of her life to be briefed on those details, on that past and that present. Not yet, anyway.

“And you won’t stop.”

Quinn narrowed her eyes. “Why should I?”

“Because I asked?”

“This is not a place you should go.”

“Yes. It is.”

“I was very clear with you about Nikita, from the beginning.”

“That was then, this is now.”

“Now is when Nikita needs a safe place to get away, and I’m offering her one. Deal with it.”

*****

Two days later, Quinn opened the door to Nikita and had to swallow the first words that popped into her head, which were, “Oh my god, you look terrible.” Instead she said, “Hey you,” and offered her a glass of wine.

Nikita looked exhausted. She was thinner, and very pale, so pale that her eyes looked almost bruised above the dark, bluish-purple shadows underneath. She had let her hair go without color for so long that her darker blond roots stood out dramatically against the brighter color she usually preferred. More shocking to Quinn than her roots, though, was how much grey she could see in them, threading through the darker strands.

Quinn had almost no maternal instincts, so her immediate desire to push chicken soup, white bread and a good long sleep were surprising to say the least, especially as she had neither chicken soup nor white bread on hand.

Nikita was also distracted, though she was trying hard to keep to their normal script of raunchy banter and acid political commentary. Finally, halfway through supper, Quinn took a deep breath and asked, “How is everybody?”

Nikita smiled gratefully at her. “Kind of a mess, actually. I mean, on the surface things seem better. Michael’s up and around and back at work. Adam is back in Africa. Izzy, Kate and Gabrielle are in school in town and seem pretty happy there, but…”

“But.” Quinn counted quickly in her head. “Sophie?”

“Sophie will barely leave the cabin. She refused to go to school in town. She’s started sleeping on the day bed right outside our room. She hides out when the other girls bring new friends home. She still cries in her sleep. She’s watching football with Michael.”

“Sophie’s watching football?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow.”

“Right.”

“What else?”

“Iz has mostly stopped talking. I mean, she hides it well enough that no one will bother her about it, but she’s really withdrawn. Even from Kate. Who is retaliating by running with a tight group of girls from school and flirting like mad with all the boys she sees, isolating Iz even more. Michael is still easily distracted. He called me one day last week from the road because he couldn’t remember where he was supposed to be going. He was supposed to pick the girls up from school, but had got headed for Munich somehow. Gabrielle wants to spend all her time at her new friends’ houses, rather than come home, and there is something ugly between Michael and Adam.”

Quinn refilled Nikita’s wine glass. “What’s between Adam and Michael?”

“I think they both think that if Michael had let Adam fall, he might have been able to save Margaret.”

“There is no way to know that.”

“Which everyone knows, even them. Which doesn’t stop either one of them from wondering about the choice Michael made.”

“That’s crazy.” Quinn wished she sounded more emphatic. It was crazy. It was also all too believable. She refilled her own wine glass. “And you? How are you?”

Nikita wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Mostly fine.”

Quinn cleared her throat meaningfully.

“Okay.” Nikita raised her eyes to Quinn’s. “I do most of my serious crying in the shower, so no one will see me and get upset. I’ve lost my appetite and I have trouble sleeping. If I don’t take anything, I wake up a lot, adrenalin pumping, trying to run, trying to reach my arms out, just that little bit further. Then I can’t relax enough to go back to sleep.”

It took Quinn much less than a second to decide which part of that to respond too. She knew how much Nikita hated that that particular bit of video had circulated throughout the Section for years afterward. So she asked anyway, smiling lewdly as she did. “Michael can’t help with that?”

“Ha Ha.”

“Really.”

“It’s... Complicated.”

“Spit it out.”

“Yes, we’re fucking again. Almost as much as before. But, it’s all, very,” Nikita twisted her lips, then grimaced, “efficient. No wasted motion. No extra time.”

Quinn looked at the way Nikita was staring at her empty wine glass, idly spinning the stem between her fingers, and said, “what else.”

“He’s not talking to me.”

Fifteen years ago, this complaint would have made Quinn laugh meanly. Of course the great stone-faced one wasn’t talking to her. But she’d learned many things in the years since then, including some things about Michael Samuelle. Michael wasn’t the type to strike up idle conversations with strangers, or with people in whom he had no interest, but he was perfectly capable of being a charming conversationalist when it suited him. In the company of the few people about whom he really cared, he was positively chatty. For him to be not talking to Nikita now was a big change, and not a happy one. Maybe it was not a surprising one, but it was not a good one either.

Quinn sighed, and said, “So, what are you going to do about it?”

Nikita reached for the wine bottle. Refilling her glass she smiled lazily at Quinn and said, “This weekend? Not a damn thing.”

Nikita never did answer the question, and so when Quinn dropped her off at the train station on Tuesday morning she had no idea what, if anything, her plan was. If she even had a plan. On the bright side, Nikita had slept soundly while she was with Quinn, so that was four nights and most of Monday of catching up. On Saturday, Quinn booked them into her favorite day spa, and then they went shopping. They also ate as much rich food as Quinn could find an opportunity to push. More rested, with her hair it’s normal color again and wearing a more fashion forward outfit, Nikita looked a lot more like her old self when she left than when she came. On the other hand, she was drinking too much, easily putting away a couple of bottles of wine by herself each day she was there. A search of her bags had revealed recent migraine prescriptions, sleeping pills and anti-depressants. The pill count suggested she wasn’t taking all of them every day, but still, closer to every day than not.

Quinn wasn’t anyone’s savior, and she wasn’t going to start now, not even for Nikita. Especially not for Nikita. Saving Nikita was Michael’s job, and she had no desire to challenge him for it. Or, at least, not until circumstances were far more dire than this. But, she was more worried than she wanted to be. Frowning, she told herself to push it aside. Time would determine what, if anything, she should or could do.

Flipping open her phone, she hit speed dial. When her call was picked up she said, “Hey Zoe! Can I make you dinner tonight?”

*****

Nikita caught sight of Michael standing outside the station as her train was pulling in, and her heart began to beat just a little faster. He looked really good. He’d finally visited a barber and the beard he’d grown since February was neatly trimmed, and his hair, though greyer than before and much longer than he’d worn it for years, was also freshly cut. He looked fit and alert, and she thought leaving him in charge by himself had been a very good idea and something she should definitely return to from here on out.

When she met him, accompanied by Sophie and Gabrielle, outside the barricade, he was smiling broadly in warm welcome. “Hi,” he said, pulling her into a firm embrace, “you look really good.”

She hugged him back, hard. “You too.”

He really looked at her then, meeting her eyes for a long beat and then dropping his gaze to her lips, tilting his head just enough to kiss her. His lips were warm and soft and their kiss got very interesting, very quickly, but Sophie and Gabrielle were dancing around them, singsonging, “Mom! Mom! Mommy! We have a surprise for you!”

Michael turned to look at them, leaving his arms wrapped securely around Nikita. He shook his head at them as he laughed. “You weren’t supposed to say anything until we got closer to home!”

The girls didn’t answer, just chortled delightedly and swooped in to hug Nikita, then taking her hands, dragged her toward the car.

All the way back to the cabin the girls giggled and whispered in the back seat, obviously eager for Nikita to ask them questions, but she held her tongue, enjoying their excitement. It was the first time she’d seen Sophie’s eyes sparkle like that since Margaret’s death. Instead she told Michael about her visit with Quinn, and her two days of meetings in Paris on the way back. He told her about what they had done on their days without her, and passed along the latest MSF news and gossip.

When they got to the cabin, they piled out of the car and the girls rushed to the door and then stopped, looking back impatiently as Nikita and Michael caught up with them. At the door, Gabrielle said, “cover her eyes!”

Michael moved in behind her and wrapped one arm around her waist, pulling her close against his chest to guide her, and covered her eyes with his other hand. She felt the heat from his body seeping into hers from knee to neck, the solid planes of his chest and thighs pressing close against her and her pulse accelerated and her palms heated at the contact. She could definitely hear the girls’ barely stifled laughter as they opened the door and clattered inside, and then she heard other noises that were incredibly familiar but that she couldn’t quite place.

He guided her through the door and turned right, toward the kitchen, then stopped almost immediately and pointed her toward the wall under the stairs, and removed his hand. She had barely registered the wire kennel in front of her, or the two wiggly brown bodies inside it, before the girls were yodeling, “Puppies! We got two new puppies!”

It was, indeed, puppies. Two squirming, adorable puppies, complete with wavy hair falling over their shiny eyes, lolling tongues and frantic puppy energy.

Nikita looked at Michael, laughing in surprise, even as she dropped to her knees to get a closer look. “Puppies?”

“We passed a house with a sign that said, ‘free puppies,’ and Sophie wanted to go see them. These were the last two, and we left with them.”

She reached out to open the kennel. “Why were they free?”

“The mother is a registered Belgian sheep dog. They didn’t know who the father was. They think, possibly, the spaniel mix from the next farm over.”

Sophie cried, “watch out, they’re escape artists!” just as the first puppy attempted to make a break for freedom. Nikita caught its collar and Gabrielle got hold of the other one. Holding the one she caught up in the air so she could look into its adorable little face, Nikita asked, “What are their names?”

“Duke and Duchess.” Sophie said.

Nikita smiled at Sophie’s triumphant expression. “Good names,” she said. “Margaret would approve.”

Margaret surely would have. Their dog during Margaret’s youngest years had been a Rottweiler-Black Lab mix named Prince. His name was quite random; his previous owner had given it to him. Nonetheless, when it came time to name their next not-so-tiny puppy three years ago, Margaret had vehemently insisted that they choose in the same vein, so Baron it was. Duke and Duchess carried on the pattern, and that was something Margaret treasured.

The noise had obviously attracted their attention, and Isabella came in from the kitchen and Katherine came up the stairs from below, both of them smiling at the puppies too. Nikita looked up at Isabella. “What do you think?”

Izzy grinned at her. “I think they’re adorable.”

She looked around at all of them. “You all think we’re ready for this? Two puppies?”

A chorus of ‘yeses’ followed and so Nikita shrugged, and laughed again. “Okay. Well. Then. Duke and Duchess.” She said to the puppy in her hands, “Welcome to the family.”

******

Michael looked up from the papers spread across his lap. “Are Gabrielle and Sophie settled?”

“Yes.” She pushed the door closed, then added, “for now.”

He was sitting against the headboard of their bed, his hair still damp from a shower and wearing only loose drawstring pants and a pair of reading glasses, his legs stretched out, bare feet crossed at the ankles. In the low light of the lamp she could still make out the yellowing shadows of two-week old sparing bruises on his torso. She drifted to the foot of their bed. “Do you have a lot of work to do?”

He met her eyes, shaking his head and smiling. “No.” He began to gather up the scattered files. “Just waiting for you.”

Nikita grinned back and toed off her shoes, pushing them under the edge of the bed. “Miss me?”

He leaned over to set his stack of work on the floor, giving her a good view of the muscles rippling in his back, along with another faded bruise. He removed his glasses as he sat back up, setting them on the bedside table. “Always.”

She quickly stripped off her trousers and shirt, tossing them more or less towards the chair behind her. Down to her underwear, a new set from a shopping side trip on the way through Paris, she sank onto her knees on the mattress and crawled up Michael’s legs to straddle his thighs.

He wrapped his hands around her hips, hooking his fingertips inside the edge of her panties. He drew the backs of his fingers over her hipbones and across her belly under the edge of black lace, making her belly contract from the tickling sensation even as she scooted closer to him. He dragged his fingers up her torso to cup her breasts, his thumbs brushing firmly across her nipples, which promptly stiffened at the contact. Tilting his chin up to meet her gaze, he said, “You had a good trip.”

“Yes.” She settled into his lap and framed his face with her hands, his beard tickling her palms. Then she ducked her head, her lips hovering over his as she dropped her voice to mummer, “and I’m glad to be home.”

*****

“Okay, I’ll send Annalisa the amended file tomorrow. Let me know what you think.” Nikita ended her call as she walked into the kitchen, and then stopped in surprise. Kate was sitting at the table, hunched over a scattered pile of half a dozen or so gun parts, a field stripped Styer AUG assault rifle if Nikita had had to guess. “What’s all this?”

Kate looked up. “House rule. I put the gun back together, dad teaches me how to shoot it.”

“Oh, right.” Nikita smiled. “Walter’s rule, actually.”

“Yes. I know.” Kate sighed deeply and rolled her eyes. “I’ve heard it all before, mom. Remember? I’m the third one.”

Nikita ignored the attitude and asked, “How’s it going?”

“I’m stuck.” Kate looked up with her most winsome smile and batted her eyelashes beguilingly. “Can you give me a hint?”

“No.” Nikita grinned back at her. “That would be cheating. Besides, you’re really good with puzzles.”

Kate exchanged her smile for a sarcastic lip curl. “So, where’s my box top picture?”

Nikita laughed and shook her head.

Isabella walked in and laid a fully assembled M16 on the table, then headed to the sink to wash her hands.

Kate frowned. “Show off.”

Isabella smirked. “You have twenty minutes before we head out.”

Nikita was close enough to hear Kate mutter, very quietly, under her breath, “bitch.”

She put her hand on the table and leaned close, so only Kate could hear. “I heard that. That wasn’t very nice.”

Kate muttered, “Sorry.” Only, it was quite clear she wasn’t.

Nikita went on, still speaking for Kate’s ears alone. “It isn’t Izzy’s fault you haven’t started yet.”

Kate scowled and reached for the first two pieces.

Nikita pulled out a chair and sat down. She looked up at Isabella, who was drying her hands and watching them curiously. “Would you give us some space, please?”

Iz shrugged. “Sure,” she said, and left the room, but not without pausing to pick up her gun and smirk meaningfully at Kate on the way by. Nikita suppressed a groan.

Once Iz was gone, Nikita said, “What’s going on?”

Kate reached for another part. “What?”

“With you and Iz. Why are you sniping at each other?”

“Nothing’s going on.” Kate locked the barrel in place.

Nikita reached out and put her hand on the rifle, holding it still until Kate raised her eyes. “You can’t go shooting with your sister if you’re angry with her.”

“Mom!”

Nikita kept her hand on the gun, and waited.

After a short staring contest, which Nikita won, Kate ground out, “Fine. Yes. I’m pissed at her. She kicks the crap out of another kid at school, and instead of getting into major trouble…. Nothing. And now she’s like, Isabella, the weird violent girl!”

“Hmm.”

“If they knew you were teaching her how to fight, and dad was teaching her how to shoot assault rifles and sniper guns, everybody would run away from her!”

“I’m teaching you to fight, and dad is teaching you to shoot…?” Nikita didn’t add, ‘and you both killed a man,’ hoping Kate might bring it up on her own.

Kate opened her mouth to reply, then paused, obviously struggling to think through her emotions. Just when Nikita thought Kate was about to speak, there was a sharp rapping on the glass of the French doors behind them, and they looked up to see Michael, gun bag slung over his shoulder. They read his lips more than heard his muffled, “Let’s go.”

Nikita looked back at Kate. “What are you really pissed about?”

For a fleeting instant, Nikita thought Kate might actually tell her, but then adolescent self-protection shields dropped down over her eyes and her face closed off. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

While Nikita struggled to find something to say that might reopen the tiny crack, Kate said, “Mom. Please let go of my gun. I’ll be fine, but if I don’t get outside in the next few minutes dad will make me do pushups or run laps or something equally hideous for being late.”

Nikita let go of the gun and stood up, contemplating her daughter’s bent head. Michael wouldn’t, of course, do anything like that if Kate were late to the range. He would use the power of his most condescending, most dismissive stare and a cutting remark about dedication and motivation to make his humiliated student wish he would assign something as stupid as pushups or laps. “Okay. For now.”

Kate looked up, faint alarm in her eyes.

Nikita shrugged a shoulder and smiled as reassuringly as she could. “Whatever it is, it won’t stop bugging you until you deal with it.”

Kate’s stare got a little harder, then she dropped her gaze, pushed the last piece into place, tightened the bolts and stood up, reassembled rifle in her hands. “I’ll be fine.”

Recognizing a wall of denial when she saw one, Nikita merely nodded in acknowledgement and stepped aside so Kate could leave the room.

*****

“I can’t believe it! You actually did a background check on Robert?”

Nikita shrugged. “Yes. We did. He’s someone you’ve been spending time with.”

Isabella looked like she didn’t know whether to explode or stomp out. “How did you even find out?”

“How do you think?” Michael asked.

Isabella narrowed her eyes and snarled, in a tone full of promised retribution, “Kate.”

“No,” Nikita answered, “my own eyes, thanks.” Though, it was true, Kate had been dropping anvil-sized hints, hints Nikita had chosen to ignore in favor of her own observation.

“Is this because his family is from the Congo?”

“No.” Michael answered. “It’s because he’s interested in you.”

After another long stare of disbelief, Isabella’s expression hardened. “Are you going to do this to anyone who has any interest in me?”

“Yes.”

“Because I’m your daughter?”

“Yes, but the emphasis should be on ‘ours’ and not ‘daughter.’” Nikita said.

“Yeah, sure, like you did this to Adam?”

“Until he was twenty,” Nikita said, flicking her glance toward Michael, who kept his face blank.

Iz narrowed her eyes, then she abruptly pulled out her phone and hit a pre-programmed number. She just stared at them, daring them to ask her whom she was calling.

Nikita exchanged another quick glance with Michael, then sat back in resignation.

After a long minute or two while the phone rang, Isabella’s expression changed as whomever she called answered. “Hi, Adam, it’s Iz.”

“Yes, everything’s fine. I mean, no, it’s not, but no mayhem or death or anything.” She shot Michael and Nikita another condemning glare with that comment. “I have a question. Did mom and dad really do a background check on anybody you went out with until you were twenty?”

“Yeah.” Iz listened for a moment, frowning, then looked up. “Adam says to look dad in the eyes,” which she did, dramatically, “and ask to see the file on Marco.”

Michael looked at Nikita, then with a shrug and a wry twist of his lips, reached for his tablet and called up a file, then handed it to Iz.

After examining it in silence for a minute or two, Iz said, half to Adam on the phone, half to Nikita and Michael, “No. They didn’t stop when you were twenty.”

Iz rolled her eyes and sagged. “Jesus.” Then her expression grew serious again, “How do you know that?” She listed intently for a while, then said, “yeah. Okay. I get it. I’ll call you later.” She ended her call, folded her arms across her chest and looked at her parents again. “Adam says hi.”

Nikita bowed her head in acknowledgment.

Iz said, her glance flicking toward the tablet she had returned to Michael, “Do you have that much on Robert and his family?”

“Yes.”

“And does he ‘check out’?”

“Yes.”

Iz looked at them for a long beat, then nodded slightly. “So. That’s how it will be.”

Michael said, “Yes. That is how it is.”

*****

Michael dragged his hands down her back, making her hum in pleasure. They had sparred today, while the girls were at school and Sophie was playing with the puppies, and Nikita was happy to have him work the knots out of her muscles. Nudging her over on to her back, he pushed her legs apart with his knees, settling between them and running his hands up the long muscles of her thighs, digging deep into her quadriceps with his thumbs and palms, making her back arch in response to the conflicting signals flashing toward her spine – relax into the massage/tense up in anticipation – as his hands slid ever closer to her cunt. In the candlelight his eyes were darkly shadowed but she could clearly see his cock, so erect it was almost brushing against his belly as he prowled over her. She started to reach for him, but he batted her hands away.

“No. I will tie your hands down if you can’t control them.”

Nikita dropped her arms above her head and made a noise that was supposed to be part objection, part frustration, and part laughter, that turned into strangled moan when Michael pulled her labia open with his thumbs. He scooted backwards as he bent down to drag his tongue up along her skin until he circled her clit, making her gasp and dig her heels into the mattress, pressing herself against him. He kept licking her until she was rocking her hips against his hands, the first tremors of her future orgasm sparking deep in her groin. After another minute she was thrusting and twisting, trying to push faster against his tongue, wanting more pressure, and she had agreed not to use her hands, on him or herself.

He lifted his head and began dusting kisses across her belly and up between her breasts, and then sat up on his heels, lifted her hips and pulled her close, thrusting hard into her, making her gasp, “Oh, fuck!”

He leaned over her and laughed breathily into her ear. “Yes.”

“My hands. I want to use my hands.”

He kissed her, wet and long, then said, “no.” To make sure she wouldn’t, he caught her hands with his own and pushed them deep into the pillows above her head, using his weight to hold her still and angling his own thrusts to grind hard against her. She squeezed her thighs tight against his hips, rocking hard into him even as she tightened her pelvic muscles, clinging to his cock as pulled out, trying to hold him in, releasing when he surged back, smiling into his kiss at his faint sounds of pleasure, gasping quietly herself as her orgasm circled closer.

Then he pulled out completely, sliding back and down her body just enough that he could pull her left nipple into his mouth, tugging gently with his teeth and making her squirm and moan. That’s when she knew it was going to be one of those nights, the ones that left her limp and completely wrung out from erotic exhaustion.

When it was over, and she lay boneless and hovering on the edge of sleep in his arms, he said, “I have to go to Kyrgyzstan. The missions there are having some troubles.”

It took her a long breath to process his words, but once she had, she pulled away and half sat up. Leaning on her elbows, she reached for the candle, which she raised high so she could get a better look at him in the dim light. He held his expression still and bland and sincere under her scrutiny, but she had long ago learned to spot the difference between apprehensive and smug. Looking him straight in the eye, she said, “you fucker.”

He smiled sweetly, and smugly, at her, then pinched out the candle, caught her head in his hands, pulled her down and kissed her.

He left two days later, planning to be gone for ten days.

*****

Footprints in the Dust, 6/6

2013-03-20T19:49:14Z

*****

As Nikita pulled the SUV into the garage that night, Kate let out a huge groan. “Oh god. I just realized! With Dad gone, supper won’t be waiting for us. I’m starving!” she wailed.

Nikita looked over to the passenger seat, where Kate was sagging dramatically against the cushions. Tuesday was always a late day for all of them. Kate and Isabella had two-hour sports practices after school and Gabrielle and Sophie had violin and then karate lessons. Snacks in the car helped stave off total breakdown, but Nikita had learned during Adam’s adolescence that energy bars and sandwiches did little to actually sate a teenager’s hunger.

She caught Sophie’s eye and grinned. “Ready to show off?”

Sophie laughed delightedly and leapt out of the SUV, heading for the big freezer that stood next to the gun locker. She flung it open and turned to beam triumphantly at her sisters, raising her arms like a spokes model and crying “Ta da!”

The freezer was full of food containers, and as they gathered around, they could see each one had a printed label that included heating instructions and the date they were supposed to eat it and what they were supposed to eat it with.

Nikita slung her arm across Kate’s shoulders. “Never underestimate your father’s ability to micro-manage all his responsibilities, even from a distance.”

“Hey!” cried Sophie. “It was my project!”

Nikita let go of Kate and turned to stroke Sophie’s hair, chuckling as she said, “Absolutely. You did all the planning this time.”

It was true. Michael had turned the previous week of Sophie’s homeschooling in to meal preparation for the entire period he intended to be away. He had even convinced Sophie to keep the project a secret until after he had broken the news to Nikita. Sophie had entered enthusiastically into the scheme, finding the whole process, planning, shopping, cooking and secret keeping, absorbing and engaging.

Kate was looking speculatively at the freezer contents. “What happens if we eat things on the wrong date?”

Sophie was aghast. “We can’t! Everything is planned out, even the leftovers!”

“Oh. My. God. You can’t be serious?”

Isabella made an exasperated sound and rolled her eyes. “Of course she’s serious. That’s how dad cooks every week. How have you not noticed?”

“What?” Kate looked shocked and Nikita frowned.

It had never dawned on her that Kate would be that oblivious to their home economy. Michael did do most of their cooking these days, and he did plan for leftovers that could be quickly recombined for new meals. He preferred it to the daily grind of driving back and forth to town. As with everything he did, he gave the task his full attention. And, after all their years in the humanitarian relief field, he always, always operated as if all resources were scarce and needed to be stretched to their limit. A lesson she had thought they were self-consciously teaching to all their kids. Somehow, they’d clearly missed one.

Kate was still looking at her smirking sisters in bewilderment. “Oh come on!” she exclaimed, flinging out her arms in exasperation. “Let’s live a little! Be wild! Eat our meals out of order!”

“No!” Sophie cried, as she turned to Nikita, her green eyes glowing and her pointed little chin thrust out in determination. “Mom! I planned it all out! Ten days, breakfast, lunch and supper!”

At the same time, Gabrielle asked, “If dad’s not home, do I still have to eat all the vegetables on my plate?”

Nikita smiled at Sophie’s fierce expression. “Yes. It’s your project and,” she turned her head and narrowed her eyes at Kate, “we will follow your rules. In fact,” and she smiled a slightly more wicked smile as a new idea formed, “I think it would be a good idea for Kate to be your assistant. That way she won’t have to help with the clean up, which we all know she hates, and you can explain everything to her as you work.” Then she looked down at Gabrielle’s solemn, thoughtful stare, saw a fight she didn’t wish to have, at least not tonight, and, waffled. “We’ll see.”

They trailed Sophie, bustling ahead with tonight’s designated meal, into the house, Kate whingeing in protest the whole way while Isabella and Gabrielle laughed at her.

*****

On Friday evening Sophie was so engrossed in a movie that she and Gabrielle were watching that Nikita sighed and said she’d take the puppies out, when Isabella offered to come with her. Nikita barely contained her squeal of glee. Isabella had skillfully avoided almost every opportunity to be alone with her for weeks now, and she didn’t want to scare her away.

She intended to let Isabella lead the conversation, but after walking in silence for five long minutes, she gave up. “So. What’s going on with you these days?”

“I was in the director’s office today.”

Nikita nearly stumbled on the ruts in the driveway. “What? Why?”

“Somebody tore up one of the projects posted in the atrium, they’re trying to figure out who did it.”

Nikita was aghast. “Do they think you did?!”

“No! No. She doesn’t. They were just ‘investigating’ and wanted to know if I could add anything. She said ‘sneaking around’ didn’t seem to be my style.” Iz twisted her lips into ironic smirk. “Obviously, she hasn’t met dad.”

Nikita snorted her laughter.

“Did you know I could have been arrested, for assault?”

She sobered immediately. “Yes.”

“Telling them about Margaret kept me from being thrown out of school, didn’t it.”

“Yes.”

They walked on in silence, pausing only to untangle the puppies’ leashes. They had almost reached the road and were about to turn around and head back up the drive when Isabella offered, “I’m not really seeing so much of Robert these days.

“I’d noticed.” Nikita had, and she’d wondered a bit, but had chalked it up to the fleeting nature of high school romance and let it go.

“Yeah. We had, not a fight, exactly, but –“

After waiting a beat or two, Nikita murmured encouragingly, “Go on.”

Isabella grimaced, but picked up the story. “We were talking about refugee politics in government class, and he told me I didn’t know what I was talking about, that there was no way a privileged French girl like me could know anything about it, about what it was like to see people die, about living close to violence…” She trailed off again, shaking her head in frustration.

Nikita made another encouraging noise.

Iz burst out, “Robert’s a freaking banker’s son, from Kinshasa. They used to take vacations to fucking Switzerland to ski.”

She scowled then, and suddenly looked close to tears, waving her hand defensively against phantom interlocutors. “I know! I know that his dad is in jail, and probably won’t come out alive. I know it was terrifying to have soldiers storm their house. I can hardly even imagine would it be like to know your mom was letting herself get gang-raped in the next room, to save your life and your sisters’.” She scowled again. “Not that Robert even knows I know that.” She shot Nikita a sour, tired look. “Thanks, mom and dad.”

After a long pause, she suddenly offered Nikita a wry smile. “Of course, I can’t imagine it in part, because my mom can, like, kill people with ballpoint pens.”

“That’s a movie sweetie. I’ve never done that in my life. I prefer a gun. Or a knife. It’s your dad who likes breaking necks.”

Iz groaned. “Thank you, queen of TMI.” She looked over at Nikita. “I could only wish you were joking. Which you’re not. Are you?” Her voice rose hopefully at the end.

“I’m not joking. I have my reasons for not hiding who we are, or what we’ve done.”

Iz looked at the frolicking puppies and sighed. “Yeah.”

“You didn’t lie to Robert.”

“No. But I never told him the full truth, either. I told him dad’s a security consultant and you work with the UN on public health stuff. He doesn’t know I’ve actually lived in refugee camps – not as a refugee, but still – or that I’ve seen people die in tent hospitals, or sometimes outside them. He doesn’t know that I’ve travelled through war zones, or handed out supplies after natural disasters.” She paused and rolled her eyes. “Of course, he’d probably insist I was some kind of danger tourist.”

“We all get that.”

“And he’d never believe me that the hardest thing of all happened in Paris. He doesn’t know about Margaret. Or her murder. Or that I killed a man.”

Nikita waited a beat in hopeful silence. This was the first time she’d ever heard Isabella actually say those words out loud, and maybe once started more would come.

After it was clear nothing more would, she dragged herself back to Izzy’s boy troubles. A boy clearly not worth her troubles. “Can you tell him now?”

“Now it would just sound like a contest, who’s seen or done more crap. I’d win. That won’t make him like me more.”

Nikita winced in sympathy. “Probably not.”

As they made their way up the long drive toward the house, Isabella slipped her arm through Nikita’s and they walked on together, their shoulders pressed together and their strides evenly matched. After a while, Isabella said, “I wanted to be normal, for once. Like Kate’s trying to be. Like Margaret wanted us all to be.”

“I’m sorry. That’s not something we can really give you.”

“I know. Now. And, it’s okay. Really. I’m glad to know so much about the world. The bad and the good.”

Nikita glanced sidelong at her daughter and her heart skipped a beat to see Isabella looking back, meeting her eyes with a tentative smile.

*****

Michael’s voice was hard to hear over the phone, he was obviously talking as he walked, and the noise of the surrounding crowd – market? hospital queue? central plaza? – leaked through the connection as well. But, all the same, she was certain she had heard him tell her he wouldn’t be home as scheduled.

“Why? What’s happened?”

“That’s what I have to discover.”

Her heart started beating very fast. “Is something wrong with the mission?”

“No. That’s all straightened out.”

“Then-“

He cut her off. “Do you remember the data I showed you on success rates?”

“Yes.” She did, and now she knew he wasn’t talking about MSF missions any longer.

Suddenly the ambient noise died and his voice rang clearly. “Open up a secure channel.”

She raced for their bedroom and her computer. By the time she had finished tunneling in to their most secure messaging location, there was already a new message waiting for her.

By the time she closed the links, twenty minutes later, her hands were trembling.

*****

Nikita sat back and refilled her glass, shaking off the last few drops from the now empty wine bottle. In the week since Michael’s call, they had run out of Sophie’s prepared meals. They subsisted on frozen pizza and Chinese take-out until tonight, when Kate’s unending complaining about the chemicals in processed food landed her in charge of spending her weekend preparing meals for the coming week. The downside of this was that Nikita would have to supervise, or they would still be eating boxed food and still listening to Kate complain well into next week. She was also going to have to ask Kate and Izzy to take turns skipping school to stay home with Sophie, who was getting justifiably cranky after three weeks of spending half her day in the back seat of the SUV, riding back and forth to town on errands not her own.

For the last week, Nikita had spent her few precious hours while the girls were in school and at night after they were asleep, or, at least, in their rooms, re-running Michael’s searches and re-doing his numbers, calling in a few favors of her own to double check what she was seeing. She had only the minor pleasure of watching the new Section’s completion rate inch up a few, tiny, percentage points, after she found sign of a successful string of missions in the western Mediterranean.

She could also see that the trend lines were improving, slowly. She judged that some of the worst problems early on were more the result of ambitious over-reach than any fundamental operational incompetence. The problem was that Sections were improving too slowly and without focus, and in the meantime, had made too much noise in a world over-full of clandestine organizations.

Which had resulted in the inevitable approach to her or Michael, seeking information. A former cold op from her days as Operations had returned home to the Urals and spent his intervening years as consigliore to his uncle. His uncle was a local big-wig, loud, blustering, corrupt as hell, squatting all over all commerce in his locale, legal, illegal and in-between. The new Section had, for an as yet unclear purpose, targeted the uncle, and, missed. The former cold op had recognized the assault for what it was, and learning that Michael was in the region with MSF business, had sought him out to ask him what the hell was going on. Which is what Michael was trying to piece together, because MSF supply routes ran right through the uncle.

It all brought her back to the same place.

“Damn you to hell, Jerome,” she muttered, as she set her empty glass aside and pulled her computer closer.

She quickly closed all her work files, leaving open only her albums of Margaret. After taking a deep breath, she started scrolling slowly through them. Tonight she lingered longest on Margaret’s baby pictures, in particular a snapshot of her own mother, taken not long before she died. Roberta was sitting in a rattan chair on shaded veranda and cradling newborn Margaret, still folded up like a tiny lima bean, sleeping against her breast. A little Isabella and a smaller-still Katherine leaned over her shoulders. They were all looking up, laughing at whoever had taken the picture.

After a while she sat up and shook herself out. She printed the photo and carried it upstairs to prop it on her bedside table. She fell asleep crying softly about all the things that should have been and could no longer be.

*****

Nikita rocked faster, her muscles coiling in anticipation as she pressed herself harder against Michael, bracing her arms against the wall above their bed for better leverage. Michael was below her, his cock so deep inside her that he jolted her cervix with every roll, sending tiny sparks of not-quite-pain across her abdomen and lower back, increasing the ache building in her cunt until she was gasping with every thrust. He tightened his hands against her hips, his fingers digging into her muscles, urging her to ride up and slow down, lengthening her stroke until her breathing eased. Swaying back on her heels to accommodate the new position put her out of reach of the wall, leaving her hands fluttering for purchase and balance. In response Michael sat up further, wrapping one arm around her waist, holding onto her thigh with his other hand, keeping her steady. As her hands settled on his shoulders he leaned in and sucked her left nipple into his mouth, biting down just hard enough to send new sparks cascading down to her belly, colliding with the tremors already fanning outward from below.

Earlier that evening, Nikita and the girls had been sitting at the kitchen table, finishing their supper and idly planning for the summer vacation ahead when they caught the sound of a car approaching. Rushing to the windows they watched as a battered, fifteen year-old Land Rover bumped over their dirt driveway. They had spilled out onto the graveled terrace as the vehicle pulled to a stop and a tired-looking Michael climbed out, holding open his arms and once again, not toppling over when hit by the human wave of their daughters. Over their shoulders, Michael met her eyes and smiled, just for her, and she grinned back, all her worries and concerns temporarily set aside in the wash of happiness at seeing him home.

She’d formed a very specific plan for dragging him up to bed as soon as she could, but he foiled it by beating her there and lying in wait. He had pulled her through the door with one hand while he shut it with the other, then he pushed her up against it and kissed her. Her hands were already busy with his clothes, anxious to see for herself that he was as unharmed as he seemed.

Her body was bright with tension; sweat filming her skin, slick between her breasts and pooling in the small of her back. She felt Michael’s orgasm coming in the way he bucked harder against her, his movements growing sharper and jerkier and she strained to squeeze her muscles tighter around him, rolling her hips to pull him deeper inside. Her own climax was not far off either and she picked up speed again as she sought greater friction. He let her nipple pop free with last twist of his tongue, then pulled her flush against him and lifted her just enough that they could roll over, ending with him on top. Their familiar rhythm quickly re-established, it wasn’t long until she exhaled on a sharp cry as her orgasm seized her, and Michael quickly followed her over. He held her so tightly that her whole body shook with his as they both shuddered in release, his forehead pressed into the crook of her neck.

Eventually their heartbeats slowed down and Michael raised his head to kiss her again.

After pulling on the nightgown she wore against the nearly inevitable arrival of not-nearly-so-small-as-they-had-been nighttime visitors now that Michael was home, Nikita crawled back into their bed. She nestled herself against him, draping her leg across his as he wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her closer. She drew her hand over his naked chest and down to his hips and back again, slipping her fingers under the loose waist of his pajamas to trace the join of his thigh, molding the familiar contours of chest and abs, assuring herself all over again that he was whole and safe and home once more, she tried to wrestle up the courage to start the conversation.

After a long silence, Michael said, “It won’t stop, now that it’s begun.”

“No. It won’t.” She paused to raise her head on her hand so she could see Michael’s face. He went very still, but she was pressed so close to him she felt the tension humming through him all the same. “You were right. We do it your way.”

He nodded his head incrementally and his hand tightened on her hip even as the rest of him relaxed. “Thank you.”

“You knew I’d agree. In the end.”

“I hoped.”

She grimaced at him, gently tapping his chest. “Gloating would be more attractive than sympathy.”

“No. I know this isn’t what you wanted.”

She shrugged. “It’s the best of the options we have now.” She dropped her head back to his shoulder, and began rubbing her fingertips in slow circles along the hollow of smooth, soft skin just below his hipbone. As images of a future she could no longer escape played through her mind, her fingers, drifting along almost of their own accord, traced a new path down to his groin. An exploratory stroke along his thickening cock made her wonder if they’d gotten dressed too soon after all. When he slid his hand down to her ass, pressing his thumb into a pressure point that made her groan and arch her back, pressing her cunt closer against his thigh, she knew they had.

Swallowing a premature moan, she extended her reach to cup the still loose skin at the base of his cock and roll it gently between her fingers, pleased to feel it tighten at her touch. “Why did they target Stefan’s uncle?”

“He was in the way of someone else they wanted to do business with.”

“Botched assassination is a sad calling card.”

He grunted in agreement, shifting his hips impatiently under her stilled fingers.

“Do think we could do better?”

“That’s not the point.”

She wrapped her fingers around his erection, feeling his hips lift as she began to squeeze. “It should be. Part of the point, anyway.”

Michael regarded her quietly for a long moment, then he smiled and shifted completely out from under her, rolling to face her, so close his lips nearly brushed her cheek as he whispered breathily into her ear.

Nikita’s eyelids dropped closed as his lips met hers, another shudder of anticipation rocking through her as she pressed herself closer against him.

*****

After an early supper on first Sunday night in August, once the sound of Adam’s car faded away down the drive, Isabella said, “Does anyone else think it’s really, really eerie just how much Alice looks like Marco, only with longer hair and boobs?”

Adam got home from Africa about the same time Michael got home from the Urals, and had been coming up to the cabin most weekends since. At first he brought a rotating group of friends, all cyclists like himself, and they spent most of each Saturday on daylong rides through the Belgian countryside. Saturday nights he and his guests filled the patio with music and laughter and dancing and Nikita only cried a little bit thinking how much Margaret would have loved it, even more than her sisters did.

But by the middle of July Adam had started coming accompanied only by a woman who worked for the same organization he did. Her name was Alice and Nikita, along with everyone in the family, was pretty sure that she was a girlfriend, as well as a friend. Adam didn’t see fit to share any more information with them than usual and they had all long since learned the uselessness of just asking. Even Gabrielle had given up, and she had all the brazen determination of any youngest child in a large, sprawling family. Though there was a lot of giggling about it on his sisters’ parts, whenever he left the room, and wild speculation when they returned to Paris each Sunday evening.

At Iz’s question, everyone started in surprise, and then started to snicker, and then to laugh, and then to laugh so hard they fell back in their chairs, holding their bellies and wiping their eyes. Because it was true. Alice really looked like Marco, or Marco really looked like Alice, and there was no way for them all not to think this was the funniest thing that had happened to them in months.

*****

Two nights later Nikita strolled into the kitchen after the girls had all gone to their rooms, planning to close up for the night. She found Michael waiting for her, a startlingly large collection of empty wine bottles lined up on the counter next to him, along with the boxes of her various medications, prescription and off the shelf.

He was leaning up against the counter next to this unpleasant collection of things, his hands in his pockets, his expression serious, and, more immediately horrifying to Nikita, kind.

He gestured at the counter beside him with his head. He said, “That’s from the last six days.”

“Really?” She did her best to sound interested and surprised.

“Yes.”

She shrugged. “Adam and Alice were here for the weekend.”

“Alice doesn’t drink, and so Adam wasn’t drinking much either. Neither was I.” He gestured to a group of five bottles slightly separated from the rest. “That’s from yesterday and today. I didn’t have any of it.”

He paused, but Nikita didn’t say anything, because what was there to say, really? So he picked up her medicine packets, and held them out, as though for her inspection. “These all recommend against drinking while using them, and against mixing them with other medications.”

She shrugged again, striving for nonchalance. “I know that.”

“But you have been. Drinking, and mixing them.”

Not wanting to keep just standing there in the kitchen, as though she were still an operative being reprimanded in his office buried deep under Paris, she turned and headed for the main room, tossing off over her shoulder, “It helps me sleep.”

He followed her, of course. “If you’re still having that much trouble, you should be talking with me about it, and with a doctor.”

She flopped down onto the sofa, deliberately modeling her disaffected sprawl after Isabella’s, knowing it would irritate him. “What’s there to say? I miss her, Michael. I miss Margaret so much. It hurts my heart, all the time.”

He frowned, crossed his arms over his chest and glared at her. “So do I.”

His unvoiced, ‘and I’m not taking drugs or drinking too much’ hung oppressively in the air.

Refusing to rise to this bait, she shrugged and kept her tone light and dismissive. “Without the meds, in the middle of the night, I wake up. I close my eyes to sleep again, and I watch Margaret fall. Then, when I do sleep, I dream about not catching her. About not catching any of them.”

She paused, and shot a quick glance his way. He was glowering down at her, unforgiving and hanging on the thin edge of angry. So she went on. “On the really bad nights, I dream she’s here. Alive. With us. And then, I wake up. I lose her all over again.” Her voice broke as she spoke, though she hadn’t planned it. Because, it was all true. She had dreamed that dream again last night. In her dream, Margaret had been practicing with a soccer ball in the lawn below the cabin. It had been glorious. Waking up had been agonizing. She looked up to meet Michael’s gaze head on. “I don’t want to dream.”

After a long searching stare, he said, “and the migraine pills?”

“My head hurts all the time. Not full-on migraines, but always. Sometimes better, sometimes worse, but never gone.” She sighed, and went on, anticipating his next question. “The wine blunts the edge, and doesn’t make me feel as loopy as the migraine pills do, so I only take those at night.”

He sat down next her, resting his forearms on his thighs as he leaned towards her. “Did something happen during your trip to the Hague you didn’t tell me about?”

Which meant he’d figured out when she started taking sleeping meds again, after doing without them most of the late spring and early summer. She blew out a long, noisy sigh as she stared at the high widows, black with the night and reflecting odd, watery images of the room below. “No. Everything went exactly like I told you.”

“I see.”

The knowing sympathy in his tone suddenly infuriated her and she folded in on herself and snapped, “I’ll be fine. I’m just having trouble sleeping. Exercise isn’t enough, and the meds help.”

She needed something. She really did. Training with Iz and Kate, working out on her own or with Michael, running, gardening, even occasionally cycling with Adam and Alice, none of it was helping. But it wasn’t fair to abuse Michael’s enthusiasm by using him to fuck herself back to sleep several times a night, either. So, drugs it was. She had also lost her appetite again, but she clung to a pitiful hope that Michael would not dredge that up now.

He stood up and frowned down at her. “It’s all potentially addictive, which you know as well as I do.”

“Yeah.” She glared up at him. “What’s your point?”

“That if you don’t get control of this now, you could end up like your mother.”

Rarely in her life had a metaphorical knife felt so goddamn real. It actually took her a minute to get enough air into her lungs to spit, “I can’t believe you just fucking went there.”

He snapped right back. “Given her history and your own, I can’t believe you let it go as far as it has.”

Her entirely justified outrage blunted by searing guilt, and a sudden spiking pain in her head, she ground out, “I haven’t! And, it’s not!”

“Then stop now. Stop drinking, stop taking the sleeping pills, stop drinking coffee all day to fight off the drugs from the day before. And start eating better.”

So much for hoping he hadn’t noticed she wasn’t eating well.

He sat down next her again, taking her hand in his own and looking earnestly into her face. “You can do this.”

She couldn’t bear to sit next to him, listening to that patient, loving, encouraging tone. She jerked her hand free from his and jumped up, fight or flight instincts sending adrenaline racing through her veins. She ended up at the window, staring out into the dark, mostly seeing her shadowed reflection and his brighter one, behind her, in the glass. Glaring at his image, trying hard to ignore the throbbing in her temples, she said, “Look, I know you think that just because you’ve pried me off drugs in the past, you can do it again, but this is not the same situation.”

“No.”

“I’m not dependent on this stuff, I don’t need to be handcuffed to a chair, and I don’t need to go through any kind of detox.”

“I know that.” He paused then added, “but our children don’t.”

She whirled to face him. “What?!”

“Kate and Izzy have both spoken to me about your drinking, Adam has talked to me, and Kate even contacted Quinn, asking her to come stage an intervention.”

“Good God! Michael!”

“I’ve held them all off so far, but,” he sat back and crossed his legs, folding his hands in his lap, “I won’t much longer.”

“Shit.”

“Quinn called me. I told her you’re going to be fine, we’ll be fine.”

She looked into his eyes, and willed him to believe her, willed herself to be telling the truth. “I am, Michael. I really am.”

The concern she could read in his face shaded into something more urgent and more demanding. “I know. But you have to start now.”

“Great. That’s just,” she shook her head in frustration, “Great.” She turned away and crossed her arms, repeating, “I don’t need an intervention. I just need for my daughter not to be dead. Or for me not to be still living, going on without her, the hole in our lives just sealing itself, like she was never here.”

Nikita closed her eyes, and saw Margaret falling again, her pale blond hair glowing against the hot lights of the stadium. “You can’t do a damn thing about that, can you.”

“No.” He was suddenly in front of her, gripping her upper arms to emphasize his words. “But neither can you. Not sleeping won’t bring her back. Neither will wine. Or pills.”

Resisting the urge to lean into him and weep, she opened her eyes and snarled, “I hate this.”

“It was always the plan, Nikita.”

“Right. Our plan. That I’d have so many children the Section could never take us inside again. That if we lost one or two along the way, it wouldn’t hurt.” She ignored the tears that were beginning to roll down her cheeks again, her voice rough as she said, “It was a really sick plan, Michael.”

His grip on her arms tightened painfully. “We didn’t plan it wouldn’t hurt, we planned to survive it.”

She glared at him and wrenched herself free, stepping back as she spat, “What kind of sick people are we, that we could see the need to make that kind of plan? That we could carry out that kind of plan?”

His expression was steady as he answered. “The kind of people who survived the Section.”

She looked away, twisting her lips in disgust. “The kind of people who survive the death of their child.”

His voice didn’t even waver. “Yes.”

After a long silence, she said, “You know what I hate most, about this plan?”

“No.”

She sagged in defeat, brushing her hand against her wet cheeks in a vain effort to dry them. “That it’s going to work.”

*****

Quinn gestured with her chin and raised her hand to wave, “There they are.”

Zoe followed her gaze across the crowded bar and watched as Michael and Nikita made their way to the table Quinn and Zoe had already claimed. “Wow.” Zoe said, after a few seconds. “They really work the aging rock-star grove, don’t they?”

Quinn looked at Zoe in surprise, then back at Nikita and Michael. Then she had to laugh, because it was an accurate, if unkind, description. They were still wearing their sunglasses as they wove hand-in-hand through the crowd, Michael in front, effortlessly cutting a path through the tangled maze of people and chairs and tables. He had on a battered brown leather motorcycle jacket and well-broken in work trousers over heavy-soled boots, his un-tucked, faded work shirt unbuttoned far enough to expose the tan column of his throat. His hair had gone nearly white at his temples, and was long enough to curl against his collar and a full, white beard covered his cheeks and jaw. Nikita’s jacket was black, with dark red stripes on the sleeves, and she continued to rock black leather trousers better than most women who tried them. She was wearing combat boots, her bright hair was caught in a sloppy braid and her deep red lipstick matched the red in her jacket. Heads turned to watch them as they passed.

Rising to greet them as they drew up at their table, Quinn was relieved to see how much better they both looked up close. Nikita’s face wasn’t as tight and drawn as it had been in the spring, and Michael’s eyes, once he took off his glasses, were as clear and sharp as ever, his warm handshake as firm as it had always been. They were both tanned from their summer in the countryside and windblown from their trip; they’d come on Michael’s bike because the weather was fine. She resolutely ignored the twist of regret snaking low through her belly that she’d brought Zoe along, reminding herself that the point was to introduce them all to each other.

After quick hugs and introductions, they settled back down and gave their orders to a hovering waitress. Michael asked Quinn about her work, which led pretty quickly to international news and politics. Quinn and Nikita would have gone on for hours, but Michael soon recognized that Zoe wasn’t participating and deftly changed the subject to her. Zoe gamely answered all their questions, then switched the subject back to them and their family. It didn’t take much prodding to get Nikita to pull out her phone and start showing off pictures from a recent house party with Michael’s sister and her husband and children.

Looking over Zoe’s shoulder as photos scrolled past, Quinn exclaimed, “Who’s the new girl with Adam?”

“Alice. She works with him, in Africa.” Michael answered.

Leaning forward to squint more closely at the small screen, Quinn said in surprise, “She looks a lot like Marco.”

Michael started sniggering so hard he couldn’t speak. Rolling her eyes at him, Nikita explained. “Yeah. She really does. In person it’s even more obvious. Izzy finally said it out loud, and the next time they were up to the cabin, Gabrielle cornered Alice and said,” Nikita changed her voice to mimic Gabrielle’s accusatory challenge, “did you know you look just like Marco?’ And Alice, totally deadpan, says, ‘Maybe I am Marco. Maybe, like Orlando, I went to sleep a boy and woke up a girl.”

Quinn cackled in delight. “I like her already.”

“Yeah, well, Gabrielle wanted to know who Orlando was, so we watched that old Tilda Swinton film. Now she’s trying to go to sleep a girl and wake up a boy.”

“How’s that working out?”

“About like you’d think.” Nikita snorted, and took another sip of the beer she’d been nursing all evening. “But we’re calling her Oliver anyway, because that’s what she wants.”

“Oliver?”

Nikita shook her head, laughing, “No. I have no idea where that came from either. I am about to ask Adam to have them both up at the same time, though, to clarify that Orlando is fiction.”

“Do you think it means anything?”

“About what? Her future?” Nikita shrugged. “No, I don’t. I think it means that, right now, she wants to be someone else for a while.”

The band they’d come to hear started their first set about then, and Quinn dragged Michael onto the tiny, already crowded dance floor. She leaned in to his ear to ask, “How’s Nikita?”

He smiled reassuringly. “Doing well.”

Quinn looked back at the table, where Nikita had stripped down to a deep violet tank top that revealed lots of lightly tanned, freckled skin and very buff arms. She was smiling deeply at Zoe and flirting up a storm. Zoe, no mean flirt herself, was preening under all the attention.

Quinn turned back to Michael, whose gaze, like hers had been, was on Nikita. “And you?” she asked.

He met her eyes, his face open and calm. “I’m fine.”

She actually believed him, so she went on to her next question. “Where else are you going, on this little late summer bike trip?”

“Brussels, Munich, Geneva, Rome, Barcelona.”

They must have started in Paris, and were in London now. She narrowed her eyes. “What are you up too?”

He smiled disarmingly, “MSF fundraising.”

Not have been born anything even close to yesterday, Quinn didn’t believe him for a second. Or rather, she was perfectly prepared to believe that there was real fundraising going on, but that was the cover, not the purpose of this trip. As for the real purpose, well, given those destinations, and the data she’d been tracking all summer, she had some good guesses. “Don’t blindside me, Michael.”

“I won’t.”

Zoe took his place and they danced until the end of the first set. When they got back to their table, Michael and Nikita weren’t there, though their gloves and jackets still were, so Quinn knew they hadn’t yet left for the night. Dropping into her chair and looking at their empty ones, and then back at Quinn, Zoe said, “They’re a little, a little…” she waved her hands helplessly, “a lot, if you know what I mean!”

Quinn nodded in half-laughing agreement. “Yeah. I know what you mean.”

“Do they ever stop touching each other?”

“At a bar? Away from their kids?” Quinn paused and Zoe made an impatient face, urging her to finish her thought. Quinn shook her head emphatically. “No.”

Even as the flippant response rolled off her tongue, Quinn frowned, suddenly quite sure that something was off somewhere. Thinking back over the evening, she realized that a lot of the touching was one way. In fact, if she’d seen Michael behaving like that with another woman, she would have assumed he was seducing her according to some profile. With Nikita, it meant he wanted her to do something, something she was resisting. And where logical argument failed, Michael was perfectly willing to use any other method at his disposal to get his way.

Zoe was scanning the dance floor. “Where are they?”

After looking for and not finding Nikita’s blond head, Quinn shrugged. Nikita would give in, in the end. She always did where he was concerned. “Getting it on somewhere, probably the alley.”

“What?!”

“You were just complaining about all the foreplay.” Quinn smirked. “They think it’s hot. And funny.” Trying to ease Zoe’s horrified expression, she added, “It’s an old joke.”

Zoe frowned disapprovingly. “You’d never know they lost a daughter a few months ago.”

Quinn knew her voice was too sharp when she snapped, “Yes. You would. If you knew them before.” Softening her expression with effort, she tried to find the words to capture all the ways Margaret’s death had marked them, and floundered. The changes were many, but most were small and together added up more to mood and energy than anything visible or tangible. She finally settled on the true and yet utterly empty cliché, “It’s aged them years in just a few months.”

That wasn’t it, not really. Michael’s hair was going white and the lines bracketing Nikita’s mouth were more clearly etched than before, to be sure. But it was instead an intense focus, a vibration, darker, angrier and more dangerous than she’d felt in them for years, since Section, that Quinn felt in them now. She knew it was that energy Zoe had picked up on in her crack about rock stars, and not their clothes or their sunglasses at night. It made her shoulders tingle, in that someone-just-walked-on-your-grave sort of way. She wondered again what the future would hold now that Section One was back in the game.

*****

Quinn recognized Nikita’s number and picked up her phone. “Hey. What’s up?”

“How would you feel about a winter holiday in India?”

“India?” That stumped her, coming right out of the blue like that.

“Yeah. We’re headed to Kabul for at least the school year.”

“Wait. What?” Quinn frowned. “I thought you were planning to stay in Paris this winter? Hadn’t the girls picked out schools and everything?”

“That was the plan, but we got back to Paris a week ago, and…” her voice dropped, “it turns out no one wants to stay here.” Nikita switched to videophone and her face filled the small screen. Behind her, Quinn could see the familiar bookcases of their living room in Paris. Nikita shrugged dispiritedly. “It hurts to be here without Margaret. She wanted to be here so much.”

Quinn switched to video as well. She made her voice as sympathetic as she knew how. “I understand.”

“We started to clean out her room, so Sophie and Gabrielle wouldn’t have to share anymore, but then we realized no one wants too, no one is ready for that. We settled for getting rid of everything no one could remember her wearing or using, which turned out to be like, one small sack of things, and leaving the rest right where it is.” Nikita shrugged again and tried for a small smile. She gave up after a second or two and continued, blinking to clear her glassy eyes. “So between the Margaret Museum and the surveillance I know is everywhere...” she trailed off.

“You’re leaving,” Quinn finished the thought for her. “How do the girls feel about Kabul?”

“Pretty good. We gave them several options, and this is the one they liked best. They say they’re ready for mountains again. And there is a good French language school there.”

“Even Kate?”

Nikita shrugged. “Kate wanted everyone else to want to stay in Belgium, but once she accepted that wasn’t happening, she got on board.”

“Hmm.” Based on the alternately furious and petulant emails and texts she’d received when the decision about leaving Belgium for Paris came down, Quinn was pretty sure that was an exceptionally rosy picture of Kate’s actual feelings. But teenager wrangling was not her bailiwick. Thank God. “And you? How are you?”

Nikita smiled, more genuinely this time. “I’m better. Walked past kids playing soccer yesterday and didn’t realize until later that I didn’t cry. When I did cry, but, small steps, yeah?”

Quinn murmured an agreeing sort of sound, and shifted the subject. “How’s your work?”

“Mostly grant writing this year, which I can do from anywhere with more or less regular power. And unlike where we were in Cambodia, it’s relatively easy to get in and out of Kabul.” There was a pause, and Nikita narrowed her eyes. “What aren’t you telling me? Work okay?”

Quinn laughed and shook her head. “You are feeling better.”

Nikita raised her brows expectantly. “And?”

“Work is fine.”

“Any movement in the force?”

“None I haven’t already forwarded to Michael.”

Nikita fixed her with a hard stare, giving Quinn her best mom-face. Which looked a lot like her best Operations-face, actually. “Go on,” Nikita said.

“I stopped seeing Zoe.”

Nikita dropped her stern expression to exclaim, “What? Why? I’m so sorry!”

“It’s okay. It happens.” Quinn waved off any offer of concern. “Zoe was another one who went from thinking an open relationship was all modern and exciting and sophisticated to feeling all oppressed and jealous at even the idea of it.”

Nikita shook her head as she smiled in fond exasperation. “You really are an underhanded bitch sometimes.”

“What?” Quinn pretended not to know what she was talking about.

“You have a nasty habit of introducing lovers you want to dump to Michael and me, so we can frighten them away for you.”

Quinn sniffed. “All I’m doing is heightening the contradictions, helping them see the future they prefer is not the one I choose.”

“Fancy talk, girlfriend. You’re still making us the bad guys.”

“Like Michael doesn’t love that.”

“He does not.” Nikita’s frown broke and she smirked. “Much.”

“Anyway, you two are scary.”

“What? We are not!”

“Did you or did you not fuck Michael in the alley at the bar while you supposed to be dancing?”

Nikita’s expression wavered between smug and irritated. “In the men’s room, and the only way Zoe would have known is if you made a point of telling her.”

“See! You are way out there-“

“We are not. Sex in public places is like, what, kink for beginners? Half-kink? Pre-kink? Anyway,” Nikita waved her hand through the air, dismissing the topic, “we’re talking about you and your habit of dumping pretty young things who want to fall in love with you.”

Quinn snapped, “You bet. I don’t do love, just good times.”

Seeing Nikita take a deep breath to challenge this, Quinn announced, “Just this week I heard from that lawyer I met last year, and then the very next day Tim-the-marathoner rang me.”

“Which lawyer? The bodybuilder?”

“Eww. No! Turned out to be a pinhead. No. Mina. You met her, remember? The one who does human rights work.”

“Oh yeah! She’s hot.” Nikita got a speculative look in her eye. “If things go well, you could invite her to come to India with us. Or Tim-the-marathoner. It would be nice to meet someone you aren’t trying to get rid of.”

“God, I swear, sometimes I think you’re my mother, not my girlfriend, trying to marry me off before my sell-by date passes.”

Nikita opened her mouth, no doubt to defend herself, then obviously thought better of it. Instead she said, “You’re doing thorough backgrounds, right? What with-“

Quinn cut her off again. “Yes. Mom.”

After a shocked second, Nikita’s affronted expression abruptly faded and she burst into laughter. “That would work better if you didn’t manage to sound exactly like Iz.”

Their conversation drifted after that, roaming through work, to politics and finally gossip about friends and mutual acquaintances. When Quinn hung up the phone, she hadn’t quite promised about the winter holiday, but a tune from her favorite Bollywood musical was lodged in her head.

*****

Three days before they were to leave for Kabul, the door buzzed just after supper and to Nikita’s dismay, the hearty tones of Mick Schtopel boomed over the intercom.

She opened the door to him and stood blocking his way. “What do you want, Mick?”

“Have a message, and some information, for both of you.”

She glared for a moment longer, then gestured him inside and led the way to Michael’s office, where he was waiting for them. She sat on a corner of the desk and left Mick standing in front of them. Michael said, “What do you want, Mick?

He beamed his widest smile. “I’m here to extend an invitation you simply can’t refuse.”

Neither of them bothered to respond to this.

“Right. Moving on. I’ve been empowered to invite you to serve on the Center’s board of directors.”

Nikita looked at Michael. His expression was as bland as always, but she saw the question in his eyes. She shrugged, indicating that he should speak for them.

“Why?” Michael asked.

“There is a consensus that your current work and identities, in combination with your past histories, will provide a useful, and, perhaps, corrective perspective on the work of the Sections.”

Michael leaned back in his chair and smiled a faint, derisive smile. “Why should we believe the other members of this board would listen to or respond to anything we have to say? I think it would be a waste of our time, and theirs.”

“Ah.” Mick tapped his lips, barely hiding his knowing smirk. “Ah. Well. The people who have proposed your memberships, people, it turns out, with whom you may already be familiar, are fully aware of your considerable powers of, ah, persuasion. Both of you.”

Nikita exchanged another glance with Michael, and considered shooting Mick in the head should she ever see him again. “And if our recommendations were to close the Sections because they are redundant security agencies with no meaningful role in the world?” she asked.

“You’ll be invited to craft a new role for the new Sections. To have the opportunity to make the new Sections better and more useful than the old ones.”

Nikita huffed a small, disbelieving snort, but otherwise held her peace.

Michael shifted in his chair. “And if we say no?”

“You were both supposed to serve life-sentences in prison. Nikita served less than a month of her original sentence, and Michael, you served no more than six months of yours. While it is unlikely that anyone can revoke the official, if sealed, pardons you both managed to secure on the basis of your ‘time served’ as it were, in the Section...” Mick trailed off, opening his hands wide and ducking his head with a ‘what can you do about it’ expression.

“Remarkably unsubtle.” Nikita smiled without meaning it. “Rather like the new Section itself.”

Mick shrugged.

After letting a long silence build, during which Mick tried to stay still but ended up fidgeting, Michael asked. “Our children?”

“Are as hands-off as we can possibly make them.” Mick dropped into a chair with a sigh of relief. “I remember, you see, because I was there,” he shot Nikita a conspiratorial nod as he waggled his finger at her, “that you,” and he spun to waggle his finger at Michael, “working nearly single handedly,” he paused to wink broadly at Nikita, “brought Section One to it’s knees to find Adam.” He stopped waggling his finger at Michael and put on his serious face. “You have much more power and many more assets now. And you wouldn’t be working alone.”

Nikita held Mick’s gaze. “No. Not alone.”

Mick bowed his head in acknowledgement, a tiny smirk hovering at the corner of his mouth.

Michael said, “What sort of commitment will this be? Given our current identities and occupations,” he pinned Mick with his haughtiest stare, “we have many worthwhile demands on our time.”

Mick waved his hand airily. “Oh, understood, understood. It’s all very modern, very corporate, three or four times a year for a long weekend in an exotic, posh locale. Nothing more.” Mick laughed then. “And very handsomely recompensed, I might add.”

Nikita blinked her eyes against her still-ready tears as she spat, “What’s the going rate for a daughter, Mick?”

After a blank pause, Mick spoke gently, his voice and his expression both full of apparently sincere regret. “I’m truly sorry Nikita. Everyone is. This is a pale substitute, but it is the best anyone can do.”

When Michael walked back in after showing Mick out, Nikita was blowing her nose and drying off her cheeks with a damp handkerchief.

Michael came to a stop in front of her, just out of reach.

Nikita raised her chin. “The world can’t be changed by a handful of people sitting in a fancy resort.”

“No. But a handful of people can act to remove obstacles to people changing their own worlds. If they have the right tools.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Are you offering to bring me heads on a platter?”

He shrugged, and his expression relaxed into a faint smile. “If you point me to the right heads.”

His tone was light, but when he raised his eyes to hers she saw his grief and his pain and, with a queer little flutter of anticipation and adrenaline licking at her skin, his hunger and his excitement at the new opportunities in front of them. He was one of the very best operatives Section One had ever produced and now he was older, stronger, wilier, and tempered by a life lived fully engaged with the world.

He made her breath catch and her palms burn.

*****

Two vans pulled up to the departures level of the international terminal at Orly airport and a crowd of people spilled out of them, milling around as well-used bag after well-used bag was pulled out and handed over to the porters.

In the midst of the unloading, a yelping dog broke free from the group and started to make a run for it. Amidst a child’s screams of “Duke! Duke! Come!” and before the animal had made it more than meter or two, a tall, slim girl, wearing tight dark jeans and a short, fashionable jacket, took two long strides and slammed her heavy boot down on the line. Catching up the leash in her hand, she spun back to the group, her long, light brown ponytail swishing through the air, crying, “Oliver! I told you he was going to make a break for it! Why didn’t you give him to me, like I told you to?!”

“I thought I had him!” declared the little boy who must be Oliver, as he reached for the leash. His close-cropped, wavy auburn hair framed light hazel eyes and the scattered freckles on his nose. “Kate! Give him back,” he cried as the older girl held the frisking dog’s leash up in the air, out of reach of the smaller child.

A tall, broad shouldered, older man, whose short, nearly white hair and beard stood out in sharp contrast to his black sunglasses, expensive black suit and dark grey tee-shirt, reached up and took the leash from the taller girl. “Oliver, can you hold him?” he asked, as he turned to face the younger child.

“Yes!” Oliver cried.

“Dad!” Kate exclaimed, her dark brows snapping down into a frown over bright blue eyes, “You saw what happened! She can’t hold him in this crowd.”

Oliver took the leash his father gave him in both hands, gripping it firmly. “Yes, I can too!”

Kate threw up her hands. “Fine. But you have to catch him if he gets away again.”

Her father smiled and dropped his arm around Kate’s shoulders, pulling her close enough to speak quietly into her ear. Kate, her eyes nearly on a level with his, turned to look at him in surprise, saying in shocked tones, “Dad!” and then she burst into laughter. Her bright blue eyes still sparkling with good humor, she said, “yeah, okay, whatever!” and stepped aside to get out of the way of another large suitcase being passed in their direction.

The last of the bags in the hands of the curbside porters, the vans pulled away and the group turned for the terminal. As they flowed through the doors and in to the ticketing area it was difficult to sort out the relationships of the shifting array of adults, teenagers, children and dogs. Leading the way toward the counter, the older man in black paused to remove his sunglasses and to wait of the rest of his party. A handsome, middle-aged woman caught up with him and linked her arm through his. Her bright blond hair, caught up in a smooth chignon, glowed in the morning sun. She was also dressed in black, a fitted, hip length black leather jacket belted over slim black trousers and black boots. She pushed her own sunglasses to the top of her head and something faintly electric passed between them when their gazes locked. When she turned to look for her children, the source of her daughters’ large, light eyes was clear.

More than one head turned toward them as they passed through the terminal; in her high-heeled boots and piled hair she was taller than he was, and he must have been nearly six feet tall himself. In their tailored, black clothes and their almost-a-swagger stride, they had the kind of glamour that drew the eye.

Trailing after the couple in black was a mixed group made up of two young men in their middle twenties and four younger children of various ages. Kate and Oliver, another tall, pretty girl about Kate’s age, and a third girl, a head taller than Oliver but clearly still a child and not yet an adolescent. The six young people caught up with the older couple in black as they closed in on the ticketing counter. While they waited in the shorter line for those with first class tickets or frequent flyer status, Oliver continued to hold firmly to the leash of a half grown, mid-sized dog of indefinable bloodlines, frisking and lunging with excitement and interest at all the new sights and smells of the airport. The leash of a matching dog, one equally excited by the terminal, was held by the next oldest girl. Her long, wavy, dark hair was held back from her heart-shaped face with lavender bows that matched her lavender sweater and her lavender nail polish. The last daughter was as tall and slim as her mother, and something in her face, her firmer jaw line and more prominent cheekbones perhaps, suggested that she was older than Kate. Like Kate, her long, light brown hair was caught in a sleek ponytail that showed off her fine bones and her own bright blue eyes, large and well shaped under dark, level brows.

The two young men standing and chatting with the oldest daughter were lean like her, but dark where she was fair. The younger of the two had an open, cheerful face in marked contrast to the imperious gaze of the older one. Who, when he turned his head to catch something the oldest girl said, revealed a profile that was a ringer for that of the older man and at the same time caught a faint echo of his sister’s face as well.

The family clustered around the counter, getting their boarding passes, checking in their luggage, and after a last round of squealing hugs, the two dogs, safely locked away in their traveling kennels. Once they were done there, they wandered towards the security line. The youngest child walked hand in hand with the mother, the father and his oldest son followed slowly, talking with their heads close together. At the line, they all exchanged hugs, the older son spending slightly longer with each of his parents than with his siblings, and it became clear that neither of the younger men were leaving on this trip.

Then the couple and their four children passed through the security line for frequent travelers, handing over their tickets and well-worn passports to the security agents stationed there. Once through, they re-collected their coats and bags, turned and waved goodbye to the young men, and then vanished from sight, blending into the crowded concourse beyond.

~~~~~Fin~~~~~~~

Stars in the Sky, con't

2013-03-08T18:07:45Z

Sorry - I didn't realize it was going to be too big, and now I have the story posted upside down. I hate that.

Part I

Steve was trying and failing to figure out what to say when he was rescued by a phone call from Cath. He answered before the second ring. “Yes?”

Cath’s voice was somewhere between amused and worried as she said, “I just got the strangest call from Jo Lupo.”

“Oh crap,” Steve said, then switched his phone to speaker and put it down on the desk. “You’re on. We’re all listening.”

“Jo said Zane has tapped into a bunch of Navy satellites and is going to redirect them shortly, for a two minute window. She said he was sending me an email with a link to some code and to please click the link as soon as the two-minute window closed. The code will erase any sign of what he did. I received the email, on a closed network mind you, a minute ago. The countdown clock it contains gives me eleven minutes to decide what to do. She said to call you if I had any questions.”

Steve was silent as he considered his options, which were basically to try to extricate himself now, or plunge ahead. He generally preferred the plunge straight in approach, but with this case already ringing a lot of bells in high places, he wasn’t sure exactly how the fallout would implicate Five-O.

“Steve?” Cath sounded more worried and less amused now.

“For what it’s worth,” Danny spoke up, “he probably didn’t hack your network. I’m sure his DOD clearances give him legitimate access.”

Steve took a deep breath. He was already in this up to his neck, and they might as well see it through. “Do it. Please.”

“I expect a full report later.”

“You’ll get it.” Steve couldn’t help grinning, already feeling the first hints of a future adrenaline rush. “I think you’ll find it very interesting.”

“I’m sure I will.”

Cath ended the call and Steve stood up. “My guess is we will hear from them soon, and that they are cooking up some sort of night assault. We should get changed and geared up.”

The call came about forty minutes later. It was Zane, on Steve’s cell phone. “Hey. We found them. I’m texting you some coordinates. Meet us there in an hour, and if you could turn your headlights off when you leave the paved road, that would be good.” There was a pause, and then he added, “Thanks. We owe you. Which is worth a lot.”

“That was them?” Danny asked.

“Yes.” Steve pushed his phone back in his pocket. “Guy has an unbelievable ego.”

Danny raised his brow and shot Steve a speaking glance. “Mmhm,” was all he said.

Steve made a face at him, but otherwise let it go.

“Do we have a location?” asked Chin.

“Yes.” Steve answered. “He’s got to be using their DNA tracking equipment, to have found them so quickly.”

“He said he built the original prototype,” Danny said. “He must have had it with him, in that bag of goodies he was carrying around.”

They piled themselves and the gear into Chin and Kono’s vehicles, the bit about ‘turn off the paved road’ convincing Danny to leave the Camaro behind, and headed out to face whatever fresh hell Donovan had devised for them. Steve scrubbed his face with dismay when he realized he was actually thinking in Danny-Williams-eze, and firmly ordered himself to get a grip.

Zane’s coordinates led them to a small gravel road that eventually turned into little more than a dirt two-track as they climbed higher and higher into the foothills on the north side of the island. The track petered out at a small and quite unused looking bungalow, which was set close to the edge of the falloff and commanded a fairly impressive view of the land spread out below them. To Steve’s surprise there was a second SUV parked beside his truck. The moon was waning, but the night was clear and their eyes had adjusted to the starlight.

Jo appeared in the drive, presumably alerted by the sound of their vehicles. She had changed her clothes as well, and, like them, was dressed in a dark tee shirt tucked into dark cargo pants. Her handgun and her taser were holstered on her belt, and her knife was once again strapped to her thigh. She waved them off to park on the far side of the house. With a terse “this way,” she led them to the edge of the old lawn area. Zane was bent over a folding camp-table, frowning down at a confusing tangle of equipment tied into three laptop computers.

The second car was explained by the presence of two more armed men. Both were wearing dark, semi-military looking fatigues and reinforced body armor with RI logos. Jo introduced them as Patel and Davis, the other half of the security team that had come with them from Oregon. The men offered firm handshakes and nods, their eyes watchful and considering. Their bearing, like Jo’s, fairly screamed “not-really-former military.”

Steve didn’t know whether to be relieved or horrified to learn that Zane and Jo had such competent looking backup. While he was still trying to work that out, he heard Kono exclaim, “Cath? What are you doing here?”

Spinning around, Steve was gob-smacked to see Catherine Rollins strolling up to their now not-really-small-at-all group.

“Hey guys!” Cath smiled cheerfully and gave them a jaunty wave. “Jo called as my duty shift was ending, and invited me to the party. Picked me up just outside the gates.”

“They go lingerie shopping AND they like big guns. How incredibly freaking cool is that?” Zane was grinning like a loon as he stared at his wife.

Steve caught Cath’s eyes and smiled at her, probably looking a bit like a loon himself. “Really freaking cool.”

“Zane.” Jo’s growl managed to convey both pleasure and warning.

“Right, boss lady.” Zane turned and gestured out over the nighttime panorama below them. “See those lights?”

He pointed to the only lights close by. It was hard to make it out entirely through the tree cover, but it looked like a construction site, partially excavated for a large house perhaps. The site was ringed with security fence and a few mounted lights, glowing arctic blue against the darkness. Inside the fence was the hole in the ground, some scattered earth moving equipment, a construction trailer and two shipping containers.

“That’s where Beverly and her crew are holding Parish.”

“How are they not seeing us up here?” Danny asked. “Surely they have better security than just the fence?”

“They do, but they love their high-tech. You can fool with shit like that. Like, you know how you can make your own recording of nothing happening, and loop it into security cameras to fool people?” Zane asked. “Well, you can achieve the same effect with satellite monitoring. It’s tricky. You have to be able to guess which satellite systems they’re using. But, it’s possible. I’ve created a blind loop in a half-mile radius right over us, one that will last until dawn.”

“No shit?” Danny exclaimed. After a thoughtful pause, he added, “Wow. That’s not good.”

Zane shrugged. “If you can build it, someone can break it. Eventually, anyway. And satellites are old tech.” He went on, “they also had some ground monitoring, but that was easy to mess with. Anyway, we’re not trying to hide that we’re here, only how many of us there are.”

“What?!” Danny again.

“Well,” Zane looked mildly exasperated, “It’s a trap, right? They want me, and my designs. But we have to spring the trap to get Parish out, so….” he shrugged again.

Steve touched Danny’s elbow, hoping to head off another outburst. He said, “And you’re absolutely positive that your guy is in there?”

“Yes.” Zane said. “I’ve spent a lot of the last year trying to figure out how to disable or fool my own system, but it’s a beautifully simple design. And Isaac made it better.” He spread his hands and his voice rang with absolute confidence, a man telling you the sun rises in the east. “I know he’s there.”

“How did you come to develop this horribly invasive thing anyway?” Danny demanded.

Zane shoved his hands in his pockets and raised his eyes to Jo’s. Steve wasn’t completely sure, in the starlight, but going by the muscle twitch in his jaw, it seemed to him as though Zane was waiting for her to pass some sort of judgment.

Jo folded her own arms across her chest and raised her chin. When she spoke, her voice was especially graveled, and to Steve’s surprise, ever so faintly full of what sounded more or less like mockery. “Oh go ahead. Tell them. They’re all out here, helping us. They deserve to know.”

With his gaze fixed firmly out in the middle distance, Zane nodded. Speaking slowly, enunciating with great care, clearly intending to say it only once, he said, “I developed it on the fly, to play a practical joke on someone.”

After an astounded pause, Danny burst out, “What! The! Hell?!”

He moved into Zane’ space, hands on hips, jaw thrust out as he spoke. “This demon device of yours is the result of a fucking prank?” He waved his arm theatrically, taking in the whole of the panorama below them. “Not such a funny joke, now, is it?”

Zane squared his shoulders and raised his own jaw, glaring down at Danny with his usual overweening confidence firmly back in place. “A moment of inspired genius, actually. Thanks. And it’s already been used to find lost children, buried mountain climbers, and shipwrecked sailors. Just so you know. It’s not always bad to be able to pinpoint exactly someone’s location. So, seriously dude, fuck off.”

Zane looked at Steve. “If I haven’t figured out how to break it yet, no one else has either.”

“And then they wouldn’t need your ego or your disruptions,” Jo snapped.

“Damn straight, babe.”

“Hey! Everybody calm down.” Steve glared around the group, ending with his gaze on Zane, “I assume you have a plan?”

Zane took a step back. “Me? For getting Parish out? No way, man. I’m smart enough to actually know what my limits are. That’s your job. Your job and Jo’s.”

“You want me to take charge of this, now?” Steve was incredulous.

“Would you actually follow any plan that wasn’t yours?” Zane shot back.

Steve scowled and Chin said, “He’s got you there, Steve.”

Steve swept them all with his meanest dirty look, just for good measure including Zane, Jo and a smirking Cath in his glare. “Fine.” He snapped. “Sergeant Lupo? I assume you have some preliminary ideas?”

“Yes Sir.” Jo stepped up to the table and typed in some commands on one of the screens. “Parish is here,” a green hotspot appeared on a layout of the building site below them. “Barlow is here,” and another orange dot bloomed. “And here are the rest of the consortium people.” A series of red dots popped up. “Seven in all.”

“Consortium?”

Zane answered, his eye roll audible in his voice. “They’re all cold war relics. Intellectually if not chronologically. Just be glad they don’t call themselves C.H.A.O.S.”

Jo cleared her throat and Zane took another half a step further back from the computer table. She continued, “With nine of us to seven of them, my preference is to send Davis, Patel, Zane and your team straight in through the front gate, while you and I slip in from the west to secure Parrish.”

“You like a head on assault, Sergeant?”

“Always, Sir.” She grinned wolfishly. “And Beverly knows that, and she knows that I know that she knows that, and I know that she knows, and so on. But in this case, they think we are out numbered, and they won’t shoot to kill because I think they want to jack Zane into another neural matrix. That’s what all that power is for.” She pointed on the screen to the six large generators hooked up to the larger of the two container units, the same one Parrish was in. “So it really seems the best option.”

“Neural matrix?”

“Long story short,” Zane’s tone was flat with what Steve recognized, after a confused second or two, as barely leashed anger, “they have developed a way to tap into the cortex and observe what the dreamer is doing in a controlled dreamscape. It’s a kind of living death, an unbelievable violation of mind and body.”

Steve leaned down next to Jo, looking over the layout on the screen. Low voiced, he asked, “Are you sure you want Zane in on the assault?”

“I don’t want him here at all,” she hissed, “but he’s safest where I or Davis and Patel can keep eyes on him.”

“Will he slow us down?”

“I’m standing right here, you know. And we can all hear you.” Zane said irritably, his flash of anger dissipated; or swallowed.

Jo went on as though Zane hadn’t spoken. “No. He won’t slow us down. He can keep up.”

“Can he use a gun?”

“I live in a house with a gun range in the basement. Yes. I can use a gun. A whole bunch of them, in fact. All different kinds.”

“A gun range in the basement?” Steve was impressed. “That’s kind of awesome.”

Jo beamed at him, and Steve’s heart did that weird pitter-pat that all men who liked women felt when a beautiful woman smiled at him straight from her heart. If he had a tail, it probably would have been wagging. “Yeah.” Jo said, her voice soft. “It is totally awesome.”

Steve filed that away for future questions, and re-focused on the task at hand. After considering the layout on the screen from several angles, trying not to be openly jealous of how easily he could use the program to zoom in and out and rotate it three dimensionally, and asking Jo a few more questions about their resources, he quickly sketched out an assault plan, fleshing out Jo’s basic scheme but tossing in a few twists of his own. “There. That should do it.”

Jo nodded, and then turned to give out assignments to their squad. “So,” she concluded, “any questions?”

“Yeah. I have one.” Kono said. “If that’s the plan, why did we bring all those explosives?”

“That’s for afterward.” Zane stepped forward again. “For a variety of reasons, it’s best if we sanitize the site ourselves. There is too much there that is dangerous, one way or another. It’s better not to bring anyone else in, if we can avoid it.”

“Which you plan to do by blowing it up.” Danny had his arms crossed and was wearing his ‘I cannot believe I am hearing this insanity’ face.

“Yes. But not all with one big, noticeable bang. Duh.”

“How then?”

“We’re going to MacGyver an explosive net, then set it off with a cascading timer. It will be like lifting off the top layer of the dirt, and shaking it out. Like a blanket. ”

“Just like that.” Danny raised a skeptical brow.

“Just like that.” Zane said. “Right after we do what they’re obviously planning to do, which is push the containers and the trailer into the hole, and cover it up with the nice dirt pile they’ve left in place.”

Danny rocked back on his heels, and gestured vaguely out over the site. “And we are going to help you with this, this destruction of evidence compiled with an environmental atrocity, because why?”

“Only if you want too.” Zane managed to sound sullen, as though he were offended that Danny failed to be enthusiastic about his plans for exploding fun.

“Can I drive the bulldozer?” Cath asked.

“Sure!” Zane smiled beatifically at her.

“I want to see how you set up the explosive net,” Kono said.

“Me too,” added Steve.

“Oh, of course you would, you violent children you.” Danny’s glare took in all of them. “I swear, you are all hopeless. Completely incurable.”

“And you like us that way,” Kono grinned at him, making Danny huff and look pointedly off in another direction.

“But, first,” Steve raised his voice, just to be sure he was heard by everyone, even those were not listening as attentively as they should be. “We have to complete our assault and rescue Parrish. Get your gear and get ready to move out on my order. Five minutes, everybody.”

Steve watched Zane pull on a tac vest without any fumbling and check his weapon with every sign that he really did know what he was doing. He wondered what kind of experiences had led him to acquire that particular competency, or, after watching Jo double-check his vest while he smiled patiently down at her, if it was merely the result of Jo’s insistent training. Once she’d finished checking on Zane’s vest she looked up at him, and he bent his head to kiss her.

After watching them for another beat, Steve turned back to his own gear with a sense of relief. Whatever else was going on, Jo was kissing her husband like a woman who had every expectation of seeing him alive again and mostly unharmed, and not at all like a woman who was expecting catastrophe.

“Being voyeurs, now, are we?”

Steve turned to see a thoughtful looking Danny. He sighed. It was probably time to put that right, too.

“It doesn’t matter how or why they developed their DNA tracking system, Danny. The bottom line is that, right now, as the developers, Zane and this guy Parrish are at risk. If we weren’t helping them, Zane and Jo could have been snatched as well and it might have taken a full day or more to even figure out anyone was missing. The next thing after that would be a team of Rangers, or SEALs, or both, rampaging around the island trying to find them. And having a much harder time, without Zane’s help.”

Danny scowled, then with a huge, gusty sigh let his shoulders drop and the tension in his upper body began to dissipate. He said softly, “Yeah. I know.

Everyone followed their orders and in less time than Steve had allotted, the small complex was secured. Jo had been right. The Consortium had expected four people to sneak in, at least one of whom they wanted to trap, not kill, and set their defense accordingly. They were not prepared for seven people to burst through the front gate in a hail of gunfire.

He and Jo quickly disabled and secured the two rear perimeter guards, both distracted by the noise from the front, and the lone nurse/attendant/guard inside the container. They found Parrish unconscious, restrained on an extremely high-tech looking bed. He was older than in his photo; a soft, bearded fellow, just over medium height, putting on a bit of a belly as he closed in on middle age. Steve reached him first and felt for a pulse, happily finding a strong one. He was looking around for a way to wake Parish up when he heard Jo gasp a whispered, “oh no.”

He whirled to find her staring, eyes wide in horror, at the bank of computers and monitors behind Parrish, and, more ominously, at the two empty beds beside him. Wires and cords leading from the computers were neatly looped and resting on a small, wheeled surgical table, ready for something Steve didn’t want to think too closely about.

Jo reached out and touched one of the empty beds, her face furrowed in a tight, unhappy frown.

“What is it, Jo?” Steve asked.

“I think the second bed is for me.” Her voice had gone very, very quiet.

Something odd about her stillness made him gentle his voice even more than before when he asked, “why?”

She replied without looking at him, still gazing unseeing at the bed before her. “I don’t pretend to understand it all, or how they do it, but, it’s like being inside a super intense VR game, so intense that if you don’t know it’s a program, it feels real. It uses predictive algorithms based on extremely detailed personnel files to let the sleeper make up their own world as they play, responding to cues from the programmers. And there is no exit from inside the game.”

Steve felt his own expression morphing into one of horror as the sense of her words sank in.

She went on. “When they had Zane before, they knew they couldn’t create an NPC me that would fool him for long, if we were still together in the game.”

Steve longed to interrupt with questions, like, ‘Before? You never said anything about Before?!’ but had the very distinct feeling that if he recalled her to herself and her surroundings, she would shut right down.

Jo was still speaking. “So they pushed for the most likely, and most hurtful, breakup they could construct from their data and his fears, so he would stay away from me. Her. Whatever.” She shook her head, frustrated by the pronouns. “Anyway, in the game, virtual me turned to a man he considered, considers still, a friend. And he didn’t have many of those.”

“But,” and Steve wondered at the wisdom of what he was saying even as it fell from his lips, “If I’m understanding, it had to be someone he could believe you would choose. Over him.”

“Oh yes. It was.”

He winced in sympathy. For both of them. “Ouch.”

“Yes.” She smiled grimly. “He eventually figured it out anyway of course, and helped blow it up, from the inside and the outside.”

“I can believe that.”

“This time,” she shivered and touched the empty bed once more before stepping back and away, “this time I think they planned to jack me in with him, hoping to keep him inside indefinitely. Probably inventing device after brilliant device just to rescue me from endless danger. Even once he figured it out, which he would do eventually, if he knew it was really me, he would never save himself and leave me behind.”

That struck way too close to home, and Steve impulsively burst out, “Jo! Whatever you do, don’t leave him because you think it will keep him safe, that he, or anyone, will be better off if you and he aren’t together. It won’t work. I promise you. Better to face whatever it is together. As a family.”

She looked up at him, her dark eyes measuring, and he realized he had revealed far, far too much. A sudden smile warmed her face and she reached over and squeezed his arm. “I know. Been there, done that, it didn’t work. I’m all in now, whatever comes.”

What came next was a loud hail from Danny, giving the all clear. They had killed two guards on the way in, and had two men secured. The men seemed to have been in charge, or, at least, they weren’t wearing fatigues or scrubs, but rather trousers and collared shirts. They were grimly silent as they knelt in the dirt outside the trailer, their hands restrained behind their backs while Chin and Davis trained their guns on them.

Steve sent Cath and Patel to assist Jo in waking or at least moving Parish. He turned to Danny. “Zane and Kono?”

“The second container. Looking for the Beverly person.”

A single gunshot rang out and he and Danny ran for the source of the noise. It turned out to have been Kono, shooting off the padlock. Zane was pulling open the doors when Steve and Danny skidded to a halt. They were just in time to see Jo appear around a corner, the wildness about her eyes fading as soon as she saw that Zane was unhurt.

The container turned out to be mostly a cell, lit by harsh fluorescent bulbs. It was outfitted with only a cot, a chair, a dry toilet and a handful of flat screens mounted on the wall, four of them dark and two with images of a quiet, nighttime camp. Steve knew for absolute certain that there were four living people on the ground outside the trailer, and two bodies. And even so the silent, empty images on the screens made him want to run to double and triple check on Chin and the rest.

The cell held one barefooted occupant. The slim woman they had seen on the hotel security camera. She was on her feet, backed into the far corner.

As soon as she saw them she started forward, her face wreathed in what Steve read as genuine happiness and relief. “Oh Zane! Jo! Thank God you’re here.”

“Stop right there, Beverly.” Zane had raised his weapon and had it trained steadily on the woman.

“On your knees, Beverly,” Jo ordered, slipping around behind Zane, her own gun also raised and pointed at Beverly.

“You don’t understand!” Beverly began, but Jo just waved her gun once more. “Down, Beverly. Now!”

“We do understand,” Zane said. “We understand very well. I can see the collar. I saw it in the security footage. That was smart. If I hadn’t, I’d’ve already shot you.”

Steve looked back and forth in confusion while Beverly sank to her knees. He said, “I don’t understand!”

“Hands on your head,” Jo ordered, and Beverly complied without saying anything else. “Zane?” Jo’s tone held as much question as order.

“Got it.” Zane held out his gun to Danny, who accepted silently, though his expression spoke volumes. Zane skirted around Beverly, keeping a wide berth until he was directly behind her. He pulled out a pair of plastic restraints from his utility belt and efficiently secured her hands behind her back. Then, to Steve’s utter surprise, Zane began to gently gather up Beverly’s shoulder-length hair, securing it in a high ponytail with an elastic he brought out of another pocket.

“What the hell is going on here?” Danny barked, surprised consternation visible in every line of his body. “Why are we in a beauty shop now?”

It was Beverly who answered, her eyes steady on Jo, who stood in front of her with her gun still raised. “I’m not helping Decker out of my own free will. He collared me. Literally.”

Steve looked again, and realized that what he had assumed was simply a metallic, collar-style necklace must be something else all together.

Zane had dropped to one knee and bent to examine it carefully, but without touching it or her. “What’s it do?” he asked.

“Do you remember the vaccine?”

“Yes.” Zane didn’t quite snarl, but it was close.

“Same idea, only fatal. The collar triggers the explosions if I get outside whatever Decker sets as the perimeter.”

“More explosions?” Danny cried. “What the hell is wrong with you people?”

“Tiny ones,” Zane answered. “Inside her. All the major arteries?”

“Yes.”

“Damn.” Zane said, but without much heat. “It’s all soldered together. I’m sure a cut breaks the circuit and triggers the failsafe.”

“Probably. I was unconscious when they put it on.”

“Okay.” He stood up and brushed off his knees. “I’ll have to look at their systems.”

“Be careful. I’m sure they are full of deadmen’s switches.”

“Or, in this case, dead woman.” Zane sounded quite unconcerned. He took his gun back from Danny and walked out of the cell.

Jo looked at Steve and ordered, “Do NOT turn your back on her!” and rushed out after Zane.

“What the hell?” Danny said again.

“Zane hasn’t seen the other container yet. He didn’t know about the two empty beds.” Steve kept his eyes on Beverly as he spoke.

“I figured as much. If he had, he probably would have put a bullet between my eyes. Collar or no collar.”

“Was Jo right? Was the plan to jack her in too?”

Beverly nodded, faint regret gleaming in her eyes. “Yes. It was the only possible chance for keeping him inside, and alive.”

“And working for you.”

“Yes.” She lifted her shoulder and chuckled without humor, “Well, for them. I’m sure I wouldn’t be around long after I got them safely established inside the neural net.” She smiled then. “It’s my design, you know. And Zane came up with some amazing, ground-breaking tech, before. He would do it again. All without putting anyone else at risk, or having it fall to the DOD. That’s the beauty of the matrix. And there is the strong possibility that once he knew they were inside the game, with Jo as his motivation and Parrish as his partner, he would manipulate entirely new materials as well as new designs.”

Steve felt his gorge rise as he realized that, even now, on her knees, in restraints and wearing a death collar, the woman was actually proud of her work.

“Well, this is incredibly creepy,” Danny said. He turned to Steve. “Did you know about all this? And just not tell us, because it is too obviously insane to be real, except that it is, because here we are? Having this unreal conversation?”

“No. I did not know.” Steve held Danny’s eyes until Danny nodded, accepting that he was telling the truth.

Danny looked at Beverly and asked, “What happens now?”

“It depends entirely on Jo,” Beverly replied.

Steve wasn’t sure if he was more relieved or more regretful to have missed the confrontation Jo and Zane had inside the medical container.

“It was pretty scary, actually,” Cath said. He and his team were all sitting under a tree at the edge of the compound, taking a short rations break as the sky began to turn purple with the promise of dawn. Cath was holding forth to a rapt audience. They had all heard the noise coming from the medical unit. “She’s a yeller, but he isn’t. He went very, very quiet instead. Eerie quiet. All coiled fury and no indication of what he was going to do next.”

“Where was Parrish?”

“We’d managed to get him on his feet, but he kept fading in and out on us. So Patel took one look at Zane’s face, then leaned down and slung Parrish over his shoulders and just took off. I should have seen that as my exit cue, but, it all happened so fast!”

Cath paused to laugh, a little shakily Steve thought, before continuing. “Zane had walked in, looked around and just froze. Went cold all over. Jo came in yelling his name, looking utterly terrified. When she saw him, she got all still too.”

She looked around, “That’s when Patel beat tracks and I missed my mark.”

Returning to her story, she went on, “So, Jo starts murmuring to him, like talking to a baby, or a frightened kid. All, ‘It’s okay, babe. Didn’t happen. Nothing happened. We’re safe. We’re outside. I’m safe. I’m right here’.”

Steve reached over and stroked a finger down Cath’s wrist. “Beverly’s group had Zane and some others jacked into their system a few years ago. It was,” he stuttered, remembering Jo’s face, Beverly’s smug triumph, “it was really bad. According to Jo.”

“Must have been,” Cath shivered. “So, she figured out pretty quick that he wasn’t responding at all. And then all of sudden, she gets this look on her face, and it’s like, whoa, terrifying, face of vengeance, and she picks up a metal stool and hands it to him and says, ‘smash it babe. Grind it to dust’.”

Cath sat back with huge expulsion of air. “So. He did.”

“It sounded like he was going to take the whole container apart.” Kono still sounded a little awed.

“No kidding,” Steve agreed. “I looked in after it was all over and they’d taken Beverly off to the trailer. Every piece of equipment was in little bits, wires pulled out of their housings, furniture overturned. I can’t believe one guy could wreak so much damage in such a short time.”

“Oh, it wasn’t just him. She did her fair share,” Cath said. “There is clearly some intense history there.”

She looked at Steve and raised an inquiring eyebrow.

Before Steve could decide how to respond, Danny commented, “I know Beverly was half convinced he was going to come kill her next.”

“Yeah.” Cath nodded vigorously. “I know he thought really hard about it, after he’d finished smashing the last of the computers to bits. He looked to Jo, but she made him make up his own mind. Said she didn’t care either way, what he did, she was his forever and she hated Beverly, but she wasn’t going to give him permission or blessing either.”

“So that’s why he’s in the trailer now, trying to figure out how to get that damn collar off her?” Chin asked.

“Yep.”

They finished their food in contemplative silence, and if Cath scooted closer, to press her thigh against his, that was only fair because he’d leaned back and angled his body so she could lean against his shoulder.

The rest time ended when Danny stood up. “We should go get the cars and the other gear. Probably take about an hour.” Danny said. “Who’s with me?”

Steve rose to his feet. “I want to get my truck back.”

Chin said, “I’ll come too, and I’ll go see if either Davis or Patel wants to retrieve their vehicle.”

Steve glanced down at Cath. “If we’re going to help with the clean up, you might as well get started with your Bob the Builder fantasy.”

Cath beamed at him as he hauled her to her feet. She landed in his arms, so he kissed her, because, well, he was helpless when she smiled like that.

Kono said, “Dibs on the digger.”

Chin came back from the trailer, Davis following him.

“How’s Zane doing with the collar?” Steve asked.

“He’s about to take it off. Either Beverly walks out of the trailer in five minutes, or,” Chin shrugged, “she doesn’t.”

It was three minutes, and Beverly walked out. Jo escorted her to the perimeter fence, handcuffed her to the chain-link netting, and returned to the trailer.

During the hike back up the hill to the vehicles, Steve, Danny and Chin all attempted to learn more about RI and it’s employees, but Davis proved closemouthed in the extreme. Only his charming smile as he ducked their questions convinced Danny to stop harassing him further. Steve did gather that Davis, as a team leader under Jo, was terribly embarrassed and angry, both for his fallen men and at them, for failing to protect Parish. He also appeared to genuinely respect Jo, and regarded Donovan with a sort of paternal exasperation, proud, mystified and annoyed in equal measure.

By the time they returned, Cath and Kono had figured out how to work the bulldozer and digger in tandem and successfully pushed the medical container into the pit in the ground, along with all its generators. Parish was sitting up and drinking water, looking dazed and grateful. Patel, Zane and Jo were walking the construction site, collecting all the random bits of trash and tools and tossing them into the pit.

Zane fell on the bags of equipment and quickly organized a production line, attaching what was nearly all of Five-O’s supply of C4, along with a good portion of their grenades, to long lines of Christmas lights already rigged with charging caps to trigger the explosions. When they asked where on earth Zane had come up with everything, he laughed and replied, “Dollar stores.”

Once he figured out what was going on, Parrish stumbled over and took charge. He proved to be an acerbic and exacting taskmaster, even in his current state. But he also worked more quickly and carefully than anyone besides Zane, and asked no questions about what had been done to free him or what they were planning to do next.

Seeing that all was going well and they would be finished soon, Steve relinquished his spot on the line and strolled over to Jo. She was frowning at their collection of five prisoners; her arms folded tightly over her chest. They were slumping in the early morning sun, wilted and defeated under the watchful eyes of Davis and Patel. “What are you planning to do with them?” he asked.

“I think,” she sighed hugely and looked up at him, “I think I have to call Mansfield. Tell him what’s gone down, and let him make the call.”

“That’s probably best. Kick it up the ladder when you can, soldier.”

She huffed, but she also smiled. Then she moved away and pulled out her phone, squaring her shoulders for what was undoubtedly going to be a very difficult conversation. Called over by Zane to help with the timers, Steve put Jo’s command problem out of his mind.
Then he heard her raised voice, protesting whatever the General had ordered. He and Zane rose to their feet almost as one, and moved to intercept her frantic pacing.

As they drew closer, she finally stilled. “Fine. Yes, Sir. I understand, Sir.”

She was obviously furiously unhappy about it, though, Steve thought, judging by her clenched jaw and hot eyes.

“Sir. I would like you to convey your orders to Commander McGarrett directly, sir.”

Jo held out her phone to Steve. He wanted nothing more than to refuse, but the pleading glare she shot him had him holding out his hand. He lifted the phone to his ear, braced for the General’s anger, but magnificently unprepared for the order he received.

Handing the phone back to Jo, he knew he must look as stunned as he felt, because she smiled bleakly at him. “Not the decisive order I was expecting,” she said.

“Me either.” Steve shook his head, still processing.

“What does he want?” Zane asked, worried frown lines appearing between his eyes.

Jo answered, still sounding stunned. “The five of them buried with the rest of the rubble.”

Zane absorbed this in silence, wrapping his arms around his chest and rocking back on his heels as he searched Jo’s face, looking for what Steve could not tell. Then at last Zane said, “That guy Decker,” he jerked his chin towards the older man in civvies with short, grey hair and wary eyes, “he was in charge, when they had us all jacked in before. If you’d been any later, he would have killed us all, Jojo. Starting with me. And he was going to do it again.”

Steve turned to look at Zane in surprise. “That’s…not what I thought to hear you say.”

Zane turned his head and looked Steve squarely in the eye. “Part of what I do for the DOD is design weapons. Some of them are already in use. Including our DNA targeting system. It’s already been mounted on modified drones, already been successfully tested in the field. My hands stopped being clean a long time ago.”

“Fine.” Jo took a deep breath, turned and drew her handgun, preparing to shoot the men on the ground.

Zane yelled her name and at the same time Steve lunged, just barely managing to catch Jo’s wrist, forcing her arm upward before she fired. “Not so fast, sergeant.”

She struggled against his hold, grinding out from between gritted teeth, “I haven’t been in the service for a long time, Commander. I don’t have to take any orders from you.”

“You dragged me into this thing, so, yes, you do.”

She fought him for a few seconds more, but Steve knew she wasn’t really trying, or she would have kicked him, and probably managed to break his hold. When he felt her relax he released his grip on her arm and stepped back. She spun and swung her gun hand around, only to have Zane seize her upper arms from behind and lift her off her feet, turning bodily to keep her gun pointed away from the men. “Dammit Zane!” She yelled. “It’s my job! It’s my responsibility!”

“No!” Steve yelled back. “It’s mine. You asked the General to task me with it, and he did, so back off.”

“I did not!” She’d stopped struggling, but, wiser about Jo than Steve was, Zane hadn’t let go of her. “I just wanted to make sure you wouldn’t arrest me for murder afterwards!”

“Whoa! Hold up! What the fuck is going on here?” Danny inserted himself between Steve and Zane and Jo. “Murder? What murder?”

Steve sighed and scrubbed his jaw. Maybe he should have let Jo do it already, easier to argue about it afterwards. And less torture for the men on the ground, listening in shock or resignation to a fight about who was going to kill them. He took another deep breath, then answered Danny. “Mansfield ordered us to clean the site, including the five men from the consortium.”

It took Danny a beat or two to process this, but when he did, his eyes nearly popped from surprised anger. “What? Steven! We don’t do that shit!”

Jo shook off Zane’s hands, and he let her go. She marched up to Danny. “We don’t either, Detective Williams! But those are the General’s orders. I have and I will defy him for a lot of things, but Decker’s life isn’t one of them. He’s slipped out of my hands twice already, with dire consequences each time. People died, people he killed. Good people.” Her voice softened, tinged with both determination and regret. “I agree with Mansfield. The possibility of loosing him for a third time is not an acceptable option.”

Davis coughed quietly. He’d slipped up to their little group while they were talking. “Ma’am, we’re ready for your order.”

Jo slid her gaze to Steve, and he nodded once, acknowledging that the order was hers. She looked up at Davis. “Do it.”

Danny swung his head from side to side, obviously furious and bewildered that no one from Five-O was sharing his outrage or moving to stop Davis and Patel. As the first body tumbled to the ground, he spun on his heels and stalked off, fury radiating from him with every step he took. He was also ominously silent.

Steve waited until all five men were down and Patel and Davis had checked to make sure their work was complete before he turned to follow Danny. Chin and Kono fell into step beside him, spreading out slightly as they drew near, as though to make sure Danny couldn’t slip through their net, Cath only a few steps behind.

Danny had come to a halt in the shade of the trees where they had eaten before, and was staring out over the horizon.

Chin stepped forward, holding out his hands. “Those men killed half of their team. They had the right.”

“I can’t believe this!” Danny turned on Chin in a fury. “You’re just going to back them up, like it’s no big deal?”

“I’m not seeing that we have a lot of choices here,” Kono said. “I’m sure General Mansfield has all the authority he needs to issue that order.”

“He does.” Steve said. “And we’ll be meeting a DOD lawyer before the end of the week, armed with documents swearing us to perpetual secrecy about all of this.”

“I don’t remember, any more, when I fell through the looking glass,” Danny mused, back to staring at the horizon, still refusing to look at his team, at his friends, at Steve. “One day, I was a regular cop, doing my best to uphold the law and follow the rules that civilized living depends upon. And now I’m here. Party to a covert execution, ordered by a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.” He huffed a bit of faint, disbelieving laughter.

After another minute or so he looked over at Steve. “I think I blame you.”

Danny’s accusation stung, even if Steve understood the cause. But, dammit, he didn’t have anything to do with it this time. He folded his arms across his chest and with some effort he kept his voice sympathetic. “You always blame me. Even when it’s not my fault.”

Danny grimaced in pained resignation and shook his head. “See? That’s the thing. It usually is your fault, one way or another.”

After a pause during which no one could think of anything to say, Danny looked at Steve, slapped his hands together and exclaimed, “Well! If we’re going to help your new BFFs clean up the scene of their crimes, we better get moving.”

From the dripping sarcasm to the icy glare Danny was shooting at him, Steve knew they were a long way from done dealing with this.

“Come’on kids,” Danny called as he turned and marched back toward the construction site, waving the rest of them along with him, all false cheerfulness as he sang out, “Back to work.”

Steve exchanged long, resigned looks with Chin, Kono and Cath. It was all too clear that there was nothing they could do right now to help Danny adjust to the situation. So, they got back to work.

With ten adults, even ones operating on no sleep for twenty-four hours, it went surprisingly quickly. While Cath and Kono used the bulldozer and the digger to push the second container into the pit, the rest of them dragged the bodies into the trailer. Once they had the trailer in the ground, Zane and Steve climbed in and laid explosive charges, rigged to detonate by remote switch. After that they got it all covered with the dirt.

Zane tossed one of a handful of detonators to Steve. “Go ahead, take the first one.”

Steve did, and with a muffled ‘whump’ the explosion sent up a satisfying ten-foot fountain of dirt and dust before it settled back down. He tried to stay serious for Danny’s sake, but it was too hard and he knew was grinning madly. He did love a good explosion.

Zane turned to Danny and held out another of the detonators. “Your turn,” he said.

Danny crossed his arms over his chest. “No thank you.” He shot a significant look Steve’s way. “I don’t need to blow things up.”

“Come on.” Zane smiled, still offering the detonator, tempting Danny with it. “It’s really fun.”

Danny ostentatiously looked away.

Zane was undeterred. “It’s also therapeutic.” He leaned forward, adopting a conspiratorial vibe. “I usually imagine Mansfield.” His voice got harder, and more satisfied. “Today, I am blowing up Decker.”

Danny sniffed, but his gaze had strayed back to the detonator in Zane’s hand.

“You know you want to,” Zane was grinning again as he sing-songed.

“Oh fine.” Danny snatched the detonator out of Zane’s hand. “What do I do?”

“Just flip the switch whenever you’re ready. We’re all out of range.”

Danny narrowed his eyes, no doubt considering whomever it was he was mentally blowing up, and then very deliberately flipped the switch. Steve tried to guess who it was that had Danny smiling with satisfaction like that, but realized the list of potential victims was actually pretty long.

After the geyser of dirt settled back down, Danny cocked his head. “You know. That felt surprisingly good.”

Zane laughed. “Every time, man. Every time. It’s like sex that way.”

Then he winked at his wife and punched the button on the last detonator.

As Cath and Kono climbed into the earthmoving equipment to push more dirt into the sinkholes the explosions had created, Steve ambled over to where Zane was studying one of his monitors. “You know,” he said in a low voice, “I could have sworn you had rigged all three to go from one detonator.”

“Really?” Zane looked up with a half smile, shrugging aside the question. “I have plenty of switches. It seemed a shame waste them.”

“Thanks, man.”

He was already looking at his monitors again. “My pleasure.”

Steve called the Governor’s office mid-morning, to let them know that the Five-O team was finishing up their investigation of the convention center flash bomb and would not be coming into HQ today. To his surprise, the governor himself called back a few minutes later to tell Steve that he had heard from a General Mansfield, who had reported glowingly on Five-O’s performance, and that he was very pleased in turn.

The explosive net worked exactly as Zane had said it would. Where the trailers and containers had been, a rolling crackle of small bangs, followed by a cloud of dirt lifting a few feet in the air, and then settling back, smoothed out the ground as it went.

Afterwards, Zane brought back out his electronics and scanned the field for any un-discharged explosives. Fortunately there were only a few duds, easily disposed off.

Zane straightened up from the last one, his face and body, like the rest of them, seamed with sweat and dirt, and underneath his skin was pale with fatigue. He said, “I still need to pull up their perimeter sensors, and we’ll have to get Mansfield to send someone to take care of their cars and the earth moving equipment, but I think we’ve done enough for today. Thanks, everyone, for all your help. I really appreciate it.”

Jo moved to stand beside him, wrapping her arm around his waist, his arm falling automatically across her shoulders and pulling her close. “We appreciate it. Thank you.”

They slowly collected the last of their gear and settled into the vehicles for the ride out. Kono took Cath home to shower before her duty shift. Danny rode with Chin, still too angry with all of them, and especially Steve, to linger. Davis and Patel took Parish and Beverly, about whose eventual fate Steve had declined to inquire. He had noticed that Mansfield didn’t seem to know she was there, and figured it was best to leave things that way. That left Steve with Zane and Jo.

“Do you know where you want to go?” he asked.

They looked at each other, then shook their heads. “No.”

“Why don’t you stay with me?” He smiled, improving the offer he’d been thinking about for an hour or so. “I live on the beach.”

It took him several minutes to convince them he was serious, but once he did, they accepted his invitation with grateful enthusiasm.

They stopped for some food on the way back, so by the time they arrived at HQ Danny and Chin were gone, Jo and Zane’s bags dumped in a heap in the middle of the room. Steve sighed, and Jo and Zane were too polite, or too tired, to ask any questions.

“How do you two do it?” Steve nodded toward Jo’s silhouette, sharply outlined in the setting sun. She stood in the surf, letting it break around her calves, her face raised to catch the last of the day’s warmth. She was smiling, her long hair blowing in the evening breeze. The same breeze pressed her thin linen beach shirt flush against her body, revealing the black bikini she was wearing underneath. He was reminded for about the thousandth time what a beautiful woman she was. “You make it look effortless, but, I gather, it isn’t?”

“No. Not effortless. At all.” Zane was sprawled out next to Steve on the lanai. They had been swimming earlier, but retreated to the lounge chairs a while back. “But,” and his smile transformed his expression into one blinding happiness, “So, so worth it.”

“You almost make a man jealous for that.”

Zane raised his brow. “Cath? Or Danny?”

“What?” Steve froze, beer half-way to his mouth.

“One of the easier ways to get into a system without setting off any alarms is to guess passwords. Lovers, family and pets are incredibly common keys.” He shrugged and offered a sympathetic half-smile. “I’m good at watching people, putting things together. And your password is his daughter’s birthday.”

Steve was too uncomfortable to say anything.

“Have you considered trying to work something out with both of them?”

Steve concentrated on placing his beer bottle gently on the ground, next to his chair.

“It’s not really any of my business, but I know that I’m a lot for Jo to handle, all by herself. She’s got no back up and no respite. It’s all me, twenty-four-seven, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Sometimes, I feel like a vampire, and not the handsome, sparkly kind. The demon, blood-sucking kind. I wonder if one morning I’ll wake up, and she’ll be an empty husk, turning to dust beside me, because I’ve drained everything she had to give.”

“That’s…” Steve swallowed, flailing for something intelligent to say. He settled on, “Very vivid.”

Zane chuckled, and pointed to himself, “Geek.” He turned his face back to the shore, watching Jo. After a while he said, “She tried to run, you know. More than once. I think she knew how it would be, and was afraid. And I was afraid to hold on too tight, in case I panicked her even more. I do everything I can now to make sure she never regrets taking the chance on me.”

“So, how come you don’t have a third person?” It was a feeble riposte, but the best he had.

Zane laughed, giving Steve’s weak attempt the contempt it deserved. “It turns out I’m kind of a ragey, possessive jackass, at least where Jo is concerned. And, it’s hard to see in her now, but twelve years of Catholic School leaves its mark. Sharing is pretty much off the table for us. But, you three don’t seem that type. In fact, they both might be more than a little bit relieved to have someone around to help lighten the load.”

Steve was quiet for a long time, turning the idea over in his head, wondering if he’d suddenly lost his mind and hadn’t noticed. “How would I manage it?”

He wasn’t even one hundred percent sure he’d asked the question out loud, but Zane answered.

“You? You wouldn’t. You’d turn the whole thing over to them and let them work it out. Then you do exactly what they tell you and thank your lucky stars every day for your good fortune.”

Jo came wandering back, windblown and smiling. Zane held open his arms in invitation and she climbed into his lap. After some adjusting, she ended up straddling him to rest her head on his shoulder, turning her face to watch the sun slanting across the waves.

Zane wrapped his arms around her, hugging her tightly for a moment, his biceps bunching and releasing under the smooth skin of his upper arms. He pressed his lips to her hair before resting his cheek against her head. His voice was soft, but Steve heard him clearly all the same. “Steve? Don’t wait so long to decide you loose the window.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*Author note: It’s not fully clear either timeline where Donovan finished his PhD, and at least some Eureka fen take it for granted that he doesn’t have one in timeline 2 because of several "Mr. Donovans" in S5, but lots of characters do call him Dr. Donovan during S4, which honestly makes the most sense to me. Why bother with him if there is no proof at all he can produce anything, or of his research credentials? Also, I can't believe he would be eligible for his final promotion without one. Academics/Scientists are as touchy about rank as Military types are. So I made the UCLA part up.
**Author note: Eureka canon provides conflicting information on Lupo’s military record. In the S3 Jo/Julia body swap story she claims she graduated at the top of her class at West Point, but in S4 Zane refers to her as a 'grunt' and in S5, Major Shaw greets her as ‘sergeant.’ You could make both work by waving at the timeline shift, but honestly I think the West Point business makes no sense at all. I literally cannot imagine anyone who ‘graduated at the top of their class at West Point’ having any – much less all – of Jo’s intellectual insecurities or status anxieties in the face of a bunch of out of control civilian scientists. Or her career path. Deputy Sherriff who can’t get a promotion? Really? So I decided to ignore it as a bone headed writing mistake that wasn’t caught in time.

New Fic - in a New Fandom! Two even! A crossover!

2013-03-08T17:55:50Z

Yes. I went and fell for a new fandom, of another dead show, natch. Eureka. Fortunately only about six months dead, so I hope there are still readers out there. And, for the first time since LFN, I had new fic burst into my brain and demand, DEMAND I tell you, to be written. And then it turned out to be a crossover. With Hawaii 5-0. Knock me over with a feather, people. It was wonderful!

I hope any readers who find their way here enjoy it as much as I did. :-)

Title: "Stars in the Sky"
Author: Nell65
Fandoms: Eureka (syfy TV series), Hawaii 5-0
Rating: PG13
Pairinga: Jo/Zane, Cath/Steve, Danny/Steve if you squint, implied future OT3 Cath/Steve/Danny
Length: ~19,500 words
Spoilers: All of Eurkea, S1-5, Hawaii 5-0 through 3.17 assumed, but nothing specific.
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Syfy and CBS. No infringement intended.
A/N: The wonderful, wonderful MsArtisan stepped up to beta read this for me, and I could not have done it without her. Even the title is one of her suggestions. At this point, whatever errors of fact, or canon, or characterization, or grammar and style exist are my own and none of hers.

"Stars in the Sky"

Steve rounded a bend in the trail and swore under his breath. A pair of hikers were squatting down and looking at a map, blocking the path ahead of him. This was one of his favorite weekend hikes, difficult enough and far enough off the main tourist routes that he could usually count on being undisturbed, but not so difficult that it was foolish to tackle the ascent alone. Well, okay, it was foolish and foolhardy to do any climbing alone but given that he preferred it that way, thank you very much, this was a good destination. And today, there were people on it, people who did not belong.

“Dammit, I hate paper maps.” The man’s tone was aggrieved and ever so slightly tinged with a whine.

“Don’t be such a baby.” The woman, a petite brunette, batted her companion’s hands away from the map spread out between them. Her voice was surprisingly low and pleasantly rough. “We’re right here.” She pointed at something on the map, then gestured up the path. “The ascent is less than a quarter mile further up the trail.”

The man stood up, still complaining. “The guy at the hotel said it was a short walk.”

“Live in the moment, Donovan.” The woman stood up as well, folding up the map and tucking it away in a pocket of her trousers as she rose. Her glossy dark hair was bound up in a long braid that swung down to the middle of her back.

The man was about Steve’s height, with dark hair and blue eyes, and his climbing gear emphasized his broad shoulders, well-developed arms and flat abs. Knowing from experience, Steve estimated it at about four hours with weights a week to maintain that build.

The man, Donovan, looked down at the woman standing in front of him and his voice dropped, all complaint gone and instead full of honeyed invitation and promise. “The moment was supposed to include plenty of downtime between climbing and the reception tonight.” He paused slightly before drawling, “Lupo.” He made it a caress as much as a name.

The woman arched an elegant brow and cocked her chin as she looked up at her, what? Boyfriend? “You can work fast when you have to.”

Then she smiled up at him, a brilliant, happy, satisfied smile.

Even though Steve could only see her face in profile, he had no doubt that a man would crawl through broken glass to earn that smile. Obviously her partner thought so too, because in an effortless and well-practiced move, he leaned down as he wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her in for a hungry, open-mouthed kiss. She more than met him, rising up on her toes to wrap one arm around his shoulders, digging her fingers into his dark hair with her other hand. As the man’s free hand slid down Lupo’s back toward her well-muscled and, Steve did pause to take note, very fine ass, Steve cleared his throat and scuffled some loose gravel on the narrow path.

If there had been any way to pass them without calling attention to himself, he would have done so. Unfortunately it was a single-track path that hadn’t been cut in a while. The verdant undergrowth was rapidly encroaching on what little open space there was.

The man raised his head, but didn’t let go of his girlfriend. She spun in his arms until she was facing Steve as well. Steve smiled an open and friendly smile as he waved. “Hey.”

“Hey.” The man answered, stepping back. Keeping his feet well clear from their packs on the ground and his hands loose at his sides, Steve couldn’t help but notice.

The woman smiled at Steve, far less brilliantly than she had smiled at her man. For the first time, Steve was able to really take her in. Her snug tank showed off a lovely, hour-glass figure, and more smooth, tan skin across her broad shoulders than such a small woman should really have. On his second visual sweep, he noticed how much strength there was in her legs and her forearms, and how capable her hands looked. He also noticed that she had a seven-inch KA-BAR in a comfortably worn-looking thigh strap. Almost identical to the one he was currently wearing, in fact. Her large, dark eyes were steady as she evaluated Steve, checking him out for a potential threat he was suddenly quite certain. Having reached her decision, she moved more directly into the path, putting herself between Steve and Donovan. “Hi,” she said.

Steve kept his non-threatening smile firmly in place. “You’re right,” he said. “About a quarter mile to the ascent. But,” and Steve nodded, friendly-like to the man, “not really a walk. More of a mid-grade hike.”

The woman’s “thanks” was almost overridden by her boyfriend’s, “told you so.”

Steve looked at the gear lying on the ground at their feet. It was a mix of old and new, and, if he’d had to guess, personal rather than rented. He added, “the ascent is also mid-grade, and harder at the top.”

“You’ve done it before?” the woman asked.

“Yes.”

“So it’s safe for one climber?” Her expression was doubtful, and given that Steve had just delivered an oblique warning, he could hardly blame her.

He could also hear Danny’s commentary on the known dangers of climbing alone, which he was sure to get an earful of later. “No. Not really.” He grinned and shrugged. “But my climbing buddies are out of town.”

By which he meant, ‘still in the service and far away from here.’ But he didn’t add that.

He held out his hand, “Steve McGarrett.” And just to see how they would react, “Hawaii Five-0.”

The man frowned. “Hawaii Five-0?”

“Governor’s Taskforce. Major Crimes.”

“So. You’re a cop.”

“Yes.”

“Cool.” He stepped closer to the woman, dropping his left hand on her shoulder as he took Steve’s hand. His handshake was firm, but brief. “Zane Donovan.”

Steve looked at the woman and she held out her hand as well. “Jo Lupo. Nice to meet you, Steve.”

“We’re in town for a conference.” Zane added, “We came early, snagging a vacation out of work trip.”

“Where are you all from?”

“Oregon.”

“Lots of good climbing there, I hear.”

The woman laughed. “Yes. Which is why our equipment is our own.”

Steve grinned at her. He couldn’t help it. They fascinated him. Their odd combination of ease and watchfulness was making all his Five-0 senses tingle. Well, that and that she was clearly guarding Donovan, not the other way around, and they both took that for granted. Which was definitely not something you saw every day. “You saw me check it out.”

She folded her arms across her chest and smiled back. Still blocking the path between Steve and Donovan. “Yes.”

“If you know the ascent, you want to climb with us today?”

“Zane!” Jo turned to look at her companion in surprise.

He raised his hands. “Hey – if he’s done it before, the climb will go more quickly.” His grin turned into what Steve could only describe as a happy leer as he looked down at Jo. “More downtime later.”

The climb did go smoothly, and Steve had a much better time than he would have anticipated climbing with two tourists from Oregon. Zane and Jo turned out to be experienced climbers who knew what they were doing, and had obviously climbed together often. It only took a deliberately inviting glance at their rings for them to clarify that they were indeed married to each other, but for less than a year. This explained a lot of their banter and heated glances, and the kissing. The rest, given the complete absence of any self-consciousness about being inside each other’s space, was probably just them.

Zane, unlikely as it seemed at first glance, turned out to be a physicist and R&D guy. He was in town for a conference on unconventional weapons. Jo was a former infantry grunt, Army Special Forces if Steve had to guess, though she didn’t say and he didn’t ask. Comparing Afghanistan notes was enough for him. And for her to peg him as well, he was certain. Her current position was less clear. “I work for the DOD,” was all she offered. Steve didn’t press. He was sure there was more they weren’t saying. Zane probably worked for the DOD as well, at least as a consultant, and they were doing dangerous enough work to be wary and cautious with strangers.

During their first break, Zane whipped one of the new phone/tablet hybrids out of his backpack and started quizzing Steve about recent cases he pulled from news headlines. By the time Steve had answered a half dozen or so of Zane’s questions, most couched in a gee-whiz, way to go dude, that is so awesome form, he realized he had been efficiently interrogated, and had probably revealed more than he intended. Based on the shared smile between Jo and Zane, and the faint release of tension he hadn’t fully realized was there in their shoulders, he had also passed.

After that, Zane had stashed his electronics and started asking Steve about his favorite weapons, and what, if anything, would make them more useful to him in the field. His wife could play that game too, and it filled in their few rest breaks on the way to the peak, and the hike back down the trail to their cars.

This was how Steve discovered that Zane shared his enthusiasm for blowing things up, and they were deep into a debate on the merits of various timed chargers when they reached the parking area. It was still only mid-afternoon, so Steve impulsively invited them to join him at Kamekona’s shrimp truck for a late lunch. After a quick glance at each other, they accepted. In short order they all were seated at the familiar picnic table, tearing into a well-earned meal.

Steve wasn’t at all surprised when first Danny, then Cath showed up. He’d answered their texts asking about his climb on the drive out to the beach. He was only a little surprised when Chin and then Kono ambled by, each apparently alerted by a call from Danny. By the time the introductions were all over, Zane looked at his watch and announced that they really had to go.

Jo looked at her own watch, and an expression of dismay crossed her vivid features. “Oh damn! We’re going to have to hurry or we will be late!”

Zane pulled his wife to her feet as he grinned down at her. “Oh babe. We are so totally going to be late.”

A flush spread across her high cheekbones, but she only grinned back as she turned him around and pointed him toward their rental car. “Oh get on with you,” was all she said.

Another round of handshakes later, they strolled away arm in arm.

Once their car pulled out into the road, Steve turned back to the table. “What did you find?”

“Blank walls, boss,” Kono replied. “Nothing but basics, social security numbers, birth certificates, driver’s licenses. He works for a company called Rockwell Industries, seems to be some sort of high tech outfit based in Oregon. Only about a year old. I can’t find any records for him before that, which is very odd for a thirty-two year old man. Her military files are sealed, as are her current records with the DOD, which only acknowledges her as a civilian employee.”

“Spider senses tingling?” Danny asked, grinning up at Steve from under his eyebrows, his blue eyes bright and knowing.

“Oh hell yeah.” Steve grinned back, then looked around table. “Anybody learn anything about the conference they’re headed to? And why I’ve never heard of it?”

Danny answered. “It’s a small, semi-annual industry event for weapons design specialists, most of them from the private sector, and for the Army and Navy types who buy their stuff. It’s not open to the public, only insiders. Apparently they get together to geek out about things that go boom and to share tips on getting grants and contracts.”

“And it’s legit?”

“Totally legit,” Cath said. “I ran down a friend who has attended in the past. He said it’s about what you’d expect. Tweedy, squishy brainiacs loving being around soldiers, career staff types trying hard to pretend they’re just as tough as folks with line commissions, and that they aren’t at all insecure about how they stack up, intelligence-wise.”

Steve shuddered in not-at-all-mock horror. “Sounds thrilling.”

“That Donovan guy isn’t big on tweed, I’m guessing,” Chin observed.

“No.” Steve pursed his lips, replaying the day’s climb. “No. And not in the least squishy.”

Kono grinned. “Nope. Rock hard is my guess. Did you see his arms?” She whistled quietly under her breath, then pantomimed fanning herself.

Cath leaned into Steve and bumped gently against his shoulder. “That Jo’s a lucky girl.”

“I’ll say.” Danny poked his finger in the air, taking in both Kono and Cath in an expansive wave. “Did you notice how much he failed to notice the two of you?”

Steve dropped his arm across Cath’s shoulders. “Yeah. I did.”

“Well. He did notice. He just didn’t linger.” Chin’s warm smile took in both Kono and Cath. “He is human.”

“And very, very male,” Kono added with a final smirk. Then she turned to pin Steve with a hard glare. “Why are you so curious about him, about them, anyway?”

“Yeah.” Cath elbowed him gently in the side. “And when was the last time you hooked up with random, tourist climbers?”

“She’s his bodyguard. And he’s cool with that. Never seen a guy who looked like that be so totally unfazed when his female partner takes the muscle position.”

“Partner? You don’t think she’s his wife?” Danny asked.

“Oh. I’m sure they’re married. And very enthusiastically so.” Steve shrugged. “I agreed to climb with them because I was curious about them, but I stayed with them because they’re good climbers.” And despite Zane’s general chattiness, they were able to sit quietly at the top and take in the view, according it the respect it deserved. He added, “It was fun to be out with them.”

“I think I like them,” Cath said.

“Me too,” said Kono.

“Me too.” Steve was only a little taken aback to discover that this was true. “I’d go out with them again, if they have the time before they leave.”

“I’m going shopping with her tomorrow afternoon.”

They all turned to look at Cath in surprise.

Cath shrugged. “She said he was going to be busy all day with meetings, and she really wanted to go to a nice mall. Said they live pretty far out in Oregon, and she has to do most of her shopping online.”

“I guess she figures he’ll be okay, surrounded by military types. Even if they are all staff.” Steve turned to look directly at Cath. “Do you think you could….?”

“See what else I can learn, hanging out with her?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll do what I can. Though she did specifically mention lingerie. We might be distracted.”

Steve had opened his mouth, already preparing to encourage her curiosity when Cath’s exact words sank in. He paused, his mouth still hanging slightly open, enjoying the imaginary view. Judging by side-eye exchanges with Danny and Chin, so were they.

Kono cleared her throat loudly, and Steve snapped his jaw closed and his eyes front. She said, “Right. If that’s all for today, I have plans for tonight.” She stood up. “See you Monday.”

By Monday afternoon Steve had nearly forgotten about Donovan and Lupo and his spider senses. Five-O was being tasked with more and more drug interdiction. So their morning was swallowed by a briefing with several different agencies, all trying, and mostly failing, to convince everyone else that they were really, truly, for real this time, sharing all their intel.

They had all just wandered back into Five-O HQ after a tasteless but free lunch on the DEA’s dime, when Steve caught the call from HPD. A bomb had gone off at the convention center this morning, and they needed Five-O on the case.

As soon as they walked in to the lobby, Steve spotted one of those conference tripods, bearing a placard that directed the attendees of the Unconventional Weapons Convention to the registration area above and to their right. “Damn,” he muttered under his breath, nudging Danny with his shoulder to draw his attention to the sign. “That’s the conference Donovan was attending.”

Danny’s eyes widened slightly. Then he nodded decisively. “Room full of weapons designers and military types. Good target.”

“Or site for an accident,” Steve added.

“That too.” Danny looked around, his hands stuffed in his pockets as he considered the busy lobby. “Doesn’t this place seem awfully full of people for a place that just got bombed?”

“Yes. It does, Danny.” Steve finally saw a uniformed officer, and headed her way. Following her directions down a corridor they found the roped off crime scene Steve had been expecting.

The site of the explosion was one of the smaller conference rooms along a back hallway. Max was already there, poking around the rubble of twisted chairs and burned carpet. Two bodies were covered with ground sheets, and paramedics were attending to a half dozen more burned and scraped victims.

Max stood up as they reached his side. He explained in his precise and awkward way that the blast had come from a briefcase or a pack of some kind, left in the back row of chairs. The force of it had gone forward, toward the front of the room. The room had been set up in classic conference style, a front table with a half-dozen chairs set behind it to face the room, a drop down screen, a computer and projector cart, and a podium for the speaker, all now in disarray. Partially from the blast, partially from the attendees scramble to get away from the explosion. Uniforms were already taking statements in the next room.

“It doesn’t seem like a lot of damage for a bomb,” said Chin.

“Correct.” Max bobbed his head in approval. “It was really more of a very large stun grenade, but with a surprising level of accuracy and control in the direction of the detonation.”

“So how did these two die?” Steve nodded at the bodies on the ground, midway up the room, one on each side of what was left of the aisle between the chairs.

Max stepped over and lifted a sheet, pointing as he spoke. “Gunshot to the back of their heads. One shot, small caliber, muzzle applied directly to their skin.”

“So, two assailants?” said Danny.

“At least two,” Max replied firmly.

Danny frowned at that, then continued, “Who were they?”

Steve, who had crouched to examine the nearest body, looked up. Lifting the man’s blazer to reveal a shoulder holster containing a loaded handgun, then pointing to the small earpiece, he said, “I’m going to guess, security personnel.”

“Yes.” Max flagged down an assistant. “Their IDs claim they work for something called Rockwell Industries.”

“Security for whom?” Kono wondered.

“That’s what we need to find out,” Steve said. The name rang a faint bell, but he couldn’t quite place it. He turned to Max. “Do you know what was going on in here?” he asked.

“A presentation on some new targeting mechanisms.” Max answered as his assistant appeared and offered Steve and Danny a program, along with the bagged wallets and IDs of the two dead men. “Part of the annual weapons design conference.”

The tech-speak on the program was close to impenetrable, but Steve’s eye immediately fell on the name Zane Donovan, one of two scheduled presenters from Rockwell Industries. “Aw shit,” Steve said, offering the program over to Chin. “Where are the witnesses?”

They turned out to be corralled in the next room over. When Steve and his team entered, his quick once over suggested that the group of fifty or so was overwhelming male. They looked to be about two thirds civilians, one third staff officers, more or less evenly distributed between branches, with a slight over-abundance of army uniforms. He didn’t see Donovan anywhere. Approaching the closest of the civilian scientist types, Steve introduced himself before asking, “Do you know if Zane Donovan was in the room before the flash bomb went off?”

“Donovan?” The man shook his head. “I don’t know. Hadn’t met him yet.” He sounded disappointed.

A thin, bearded man sitting next to him looked up. “I have. He wasn’t there yet.”

“You sure?”

The man smiled and shrugged. “Yes. He’s pretty memorable.” He waved a self-depreciating hand. “A bit of a rock star, for this crowd anyway.”

That struck Steve as completely believable. “Okay. Thanks.”

Steve was starting to turn away when the man added, “His co-presenter was here though.”

“You mean his wife? Jo Lupo?”

“Oh no. She wasn’t here either. I’m quite sure of that. I meant his design partner from RI. Isaac Parish.”

“Is he here now?”

The man looked around, finally standing up to get a better view as he frowned. “You know, that’s odd, but I don’t see him.”

Kono said, “I’ll go see if he was one of the ones the medics were helping,” and vanished out the door.

Steve nodded, and was turning to give Chin and Danny instructions when a disturbance by the door caught his attention. “Damn.”

Chin and Danny looked over, then back at Steve. His frustration at seeing military investigators pushing into the room was mirrored in their faces. “Chin?” Steve made it more a question than an order.

Chin sighed, then flashed a resigned smile. “Sure boss. Interference coming up.”

Steve called after him, “Tell Kono to start collecting the witness statements. Danny and I will try to find Donovan and Lupo.”

As they sidled out of the room’s side door, Danny asked, “Why are you so concerned about them?”

“The explosive was set to blind the presenters at the front of the room, the ones facing the flash. The assailants were behind it, and rushed the front, taking out two private security on their way forward.”

“Right. And Donovan was supposed to be at the front. But,” Danny scowled, “if the guy’s such a,” he paused to make air quotes, “rock star, shouldn’t they have noticed he wasn’t there?”

“I’m sure they did, Danny.”

“Ah.”

As they drove the short distance to the Hilton, Danny returned to the subject of their morning meetings, and how irritating he found the DEA’s local taskforce chief. She and Danny had had run-ins before, none showing either of them at their best. Steve amused himself by baiting Danny into ever more elaborate flights of baroque language while they rode the elevator up to Donovan and Lupo’s floor. Winding Danny up just to hear the ensuing cascade was one of the more satisfying pleasures of his day. The only thing that broke the flow was Kono’s call to confirm that Parrish was nowhere to be found.

Steve rapped loudly on the door, then called, “Donovan? Ms. Lupo? It’s McGarrett. With Five-O.”

He had prepared himself so thoroughly for silence and an empty room that he had the key card halfway into the door when they heard Donovan’s voice.

“McGarrett? Steve?” and the door opened. Donovan filled the entrance, leaning on the doorframe with one arm while he kept the other on the door handle, blocking their view of the room with his body. His brows were drawn down in confusion and concern shadowed his eyes. “What’s up?”

He was shirtless and barefoot, wearing only a snugly fitting pair of jeans that rode low on his hips. His hair and carefully maintained scruff were still wet from a shower. Standing so close to him it was impossible not to take in just how very well defined his muscles were, or to appreciate how much work he put into sculpting himself, and how very well it paid off. Steve dragged his eyes back up to Donovan’s face, only to discover that Donovan was looking back over his shoulder, calling, “Jo?”

They heard what had to be the bathroom door click shut, and Lupo’s muffled voice rang out, “I’m good. You can let him in.”

Donovan stepped back, his voice raised as he said, “Them. Let them in. Danny’s with him.”

Their room was a generous one, with space for a round table and two comfortable chairs by the window, as well as the standard king-size bed, desk and dresser with wide screen combo. The bed itself was rumpled, the pillows tossed in a single heap and the duvet haphazardly dragged over the rest, indicating it had been occupied again after the morning maid service. The table had the remains of a takeout lunch scattered across it, and it seemed glaringly obvious that Donovan had skipped out on the convention to spend some quality time with Lupo.

Steve heard the bathroom door latch click, and a quick glance showed that Lupo had opened it a few inches, no doubt so she could hear their conversation as she finished dressing.

Donovan meanwhile had backed further into the room, so he could reach into a neatly packed bag resting on one of the two luggage racks without turning his back on them. The guy clearly had picked up that something was amiss, and had good instincts about self-preservation. He pulled out a clean tee shirt and a pair of socks. Dropping into one of the chairs at the table, he said again, “What’s going on, Steve? You’re looking very official.”

“There was an event at the conference session you were supposed to be attending,” Danny answered.

Donovan tugged on a sock. “What kind of event?”

Steve said, “At 11:25 am today a flash bomb went off in one of the conference sessions. It was aimed toward the front table and stunned everyone in attendance, allowing at least two assailants to kill two security personnel as they rushed the front. You were supposed to be one of the speakers, but we realized you weren’t there and came looking for you.”

The bathroom door banged open and Lupo burst out. With her long, dark hair loose over her shoulders and dressed in a knit hiking skirt, a short-sleeved peasant blouse/tunic-y sort of top, and a pair of hiking sandals she looked impossibly young. “Killed? Do you have names?”

Danny read them from his phone while Steve watched Lupo and Donovan react to the news. Her face paled, then her expression hardened, eyes narrowing and her lips pulling thin into a determined grimace. He froze in the act of tying his shoelaces, his frown matching hers. Then they looked for each other. Once their glances locked Steve knew he was watching information flow back and forth, choices examined and decisions made, all within a few heartbeats. Too bad he couldn’t read their code.

Lupo turned to the desk and extracted two plastic identification badges and two leather ID folders from the open briefcase. Handing them over to Steve, she said, “I’m the Chief of Security for Rockwell Industries. Those two men are,” she hesitated for a fraction of a second, then continued, “were part of my team. They were there to keep watch over our scientists. Zane,” she nodded in the direction of her husband, her eyes never leaving Steve’s, “and Dr. Parrish. Where is Dr. Parrish now, Commander McGarrett?”

Steve was looking at the badges, which certainly seemed real enough, though hardly difficult to fake. It was the DOD identifications, and the shockingly high security clearance levels they displayed, that really interested him, however. The penalties for forging this sort of thing were very high. He handed them over to Danny as he answered her question. “We don’t know.”

“But, he was on the platform?”

“Yes.”

“Shit, shit, shit.” That was from Donovan, now on his feet and tugging down a blue tee shirt. “I don’t suppose you have any idea if Parrish’s computer or prototypes are still in the room?”

Steve shook his head. “No.”

“Commander?” Lupo recalled his attention. “We need to see the room. We need to secure RI’s property.”

“It’s all part of a crime scene, Ms. Lupo.”

“It’s all classified far beyond your levels, Commander. And we don’t need to remove them, if they are still there and under guard. But we need to know if they are missing, along with Dr. Parrish.”

Donovan finished putting on his watch, then started efficiently stripping their room. He checked the drawers, scooping out the few items of clothing he found and placing them in his wife’s bag. As he headed for the bathroom, Danny and Steve retreated to the space between the bed and the bathroom wall, pushed more by his focused energy than moving by conscious decision. While Donovan was doing this, Lupo flung open the closet door and opened the safe. She pulled out a handgun, which she immediately tucked into her waistband at the small of her back, a half dozen loaded clips, and a bulky but impressive looking taser which she tossed onto the bed. Before closing the safe she pulled out an envelope and handed it to Steve, taking their identifications back in exchange. “My concealed carry permits.”

By the time Steve and Danny had satisfied themselves that the permits were genuine, Donovan and Lupo had their duffels packed and zipped and on the bed. She was transferring items between a handbag, the briefcase and her climbing pack and he was packing an odd-looking assortment of electronics into another backpack. His hands were deft and sure, coiling charging cords and putting each item in its designated space.

Lupo was in front of Steve again, her pack slung over her shoulder, her hair pulled back in a severe ponytail that added years and authority to her countenance. “Commander?”

At Steve’s nod, she continued, “We need to change locations. This one is compromised. And we need to see the scene. I’d like to leave our rental car behind as well.”

Trying to guess at what kind of lives they led that they were so quick to respond to a sudden emergency, and what it was about this one in particular that had them so spooked, Steve must have waited a beat too long to respond because Lupo’s eyebrows shot up in impatience. Her voice dropped a notch and acquired a more distinctive growl. “Commander!”

He didn’t snap to attention, but it took a conscious decision not too. He glanced at Danny, who shrugged and said, “Well, at least this way we know where they are.” Danny looked at Donovan and Lupo. “There’s room in my trunk for your gear, and you can squeeze in the backseat on our way to the convention center. It’s a short trip.”

Of course it ended up being Danny and Lupo in the backseat, Danny muttering in complaint the whole of the brief ride. Donovan spent the trip tapping away at a computer tablet, while Lupo snapped orders at someone over her phone.

As they scrambled out of the car it finally dawned on Steve that he hadn’t actually asked them the question. “Where were you when the bomb went off?”

Donovan stopped in his tracks and turned to give him an incredulous stare. “Seriously? It wasn’t completely obvious?”

Steve ducked his head in mild apology. “I had to ask.”

Danny interrupted, “Yeah, so, okay, it was totally obvious. But why? Weren’t you supposed to be here, showing off your stuff to potential buyers?”

Donovan started moving again. “It is actually a conference, not a trade show. Parrish didn’t really want me there, stealing his thunder for the big reveal. I did promise to be there for the afternoon session and the question period, though.”

“Was it his work? Or yours?”

“Both. The initial idea and prototype were mine, but after I assigned the project to him, he really took it to the next level.”

“You assigned it?”

“Yeah. Don’t faint or anything, but I’m actually his boss.”

Danny rolled his eyes. “I’ll manage. Your Dr. Parrish isn’t the only guy in the world to work for a muscle bound freak who thinks a v-neck tee shirt is professional office attire.”

“Hey!” Steve exclaimed, more or less simultaneously with Donovan’s, “You don’t get your shirts tailored like that to show off a saggy gut, dude.”

Steve sniggered at Danny’s ‘I am offended face,’ which barely concealed a flush of pleasure, and wished he’d thought of the comeback himself. Danny’s shirts were a thing of beauty and a thing of legend in the HPD. But Donovan was the first person Steve had known to comment directly on it to Danny’s face, and within an hour of seeing him modeling one.

Lupo darted ahead of them, spinning at the top of the wide marble staircase to seize the high ground as they came to a sudden stop in front of her. Dark eyes flashing as she glared at them, she flung out her hands and exclaimed, “Boys! Bigger issues here!”

Steve exchanged mildly chagrined glances with Danny and Donovan, and the three of them trailed along in Lupo’s wake as she strode toward the roped off corridor.

Lupo’s ponytail swished and snapped as she moved, making it impossible for Steve not to drop his gaze to admire the way her hips rolled and swung with her quick strides, or to follow that up with speculation about what it would feel like to pull that ass close, how nicely it would fill his hands…and any further drifting was cut short by Donovan’s voice, close to his ear and tinged with knowing laughter. “Nice view, isn’t it?” he said.

Embarrassed to be caught out, Steve looked to Danny for support.

Danny gave him a ‘who me?’ look. Hooking a thumb in Steve’s direction, he said to Donovan, “Don’t mind the horndog here. He is housebroken, difficult as it might be to believe.”

Zane laughed, and Steve glared at Danny. “Thanks.”

Apparently taking pity on him, Donovan said, “You should see her go in her power suits and high heels. That’s even more impressive.”

“I’ll bet,” Danny drawled, his eyes firmly on Lupo’s ass this time.

“I liked her cop uniform too, of course. She totally nailed that deputy sheriff shuffle. That was so hot.”

“She was a deputy sheriff?” Danny looked up at Donovan.

“When we first met, before she took the job with RI.”

“Why don’t you call it Rockwell?” Danny asked.

“Because it’s a really stupid name, that’s why,” Donovan snapped. “It makes it sound like we work for a company in Bedrock and ride dinosaurs to work.”

Danny sniggered and Steve interrupted before they got sidetracked further. “How long have you known her?”

“All my life, and not long enough.” At Steve’s frown, Donovan elaborated, “For about five years, give or take.” He grinned then. “She used to arrest me for the stupidest little shit, tossed my ass in jail once or twice a month for almost two years. Even tazed me a few times.”

“Really?” Danny’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s one hell of a courtship.”

Donovan shrugged and his voice softened into the tones of a man still amazed by his good fortune. “Things changed. I got lucky.”

They reached the conference room and Steve waved them all in, intensely curious about what Donovan and Lupo would do next. The bodies had been bagged and moved to stretchers. Lupo headed directly for them, Donovan following after. As she opened the first one, Donovan pressed in behind her, his hand resting on her shoulder. For a brief instant, she seemed to relax back into him. It wasn’t a hug, but it seemed to serve the same function. The moment ended quickly. She leaned forward to examine the body and he pulled away and began to scan the scene, starting not at the back of the room but at the front. He was clearly looking for Parrish’s equipment.

Steve turned to greet Chin and Kono, while keeping his eye on Lupo and Donovan, and they filled him in on their activities over the last hour. Max and his team were gone, their work complete, all but the lone tech waiting for Steve’s permission to remove the bodies. The witnesses had all finished giving their preliminary statements and been released. Their statements confirmed the loose outline they had already developed. A large flash bomb had gone off, the lights went out, confusion reigned, people rushed about tripping over chairs and each other, the lights came back on, two men were down and about a dozen more sustained minor injuries in the chaos. And the only person who seemed to be missing was Dr. Isaac Parish, the forty-year old scientist and researcher who had just stood to begin his presentation when the flash bomb went off.

Chin had managed to wave the military investigators off, for the moment, but Steve knew that if Parrish had the same type of DOD clearances as Jo and Zane, they wouldn’t be able to hold them off indefinitely.

“So,” Danny’s voice interrupted Steve’s morbid thoughts on the unavoidable intrusion by the feds. “When did you start trusting them?” Danny nodded toward the couple now bent over the burns on the carpet, looking at the readout on some device he was holding.

“Their IDs helped. But mostly,” Steve shrugged, “they aren’t worried about us at all, and they are really, really worried about their colleague.”

Parrish’s computer and other equipment were gone, which surprised no one. After quick consultation with the officers left guarding the scene, Steve ordered everyone back to Five-O HQ. Everyone included Jo and Zane, who obviously couldn’t be left alone, given the apparent kidnapping of their colleague.

“Wow! Awesome set up!” Zane headed straight for the central computer table, an irrepressible kid-in-a-candy-store gleam lighting up his face. He looked up. “Someone give me a password. I can break in, but it will go faster if I don’t have too.”

Steve and his team exchanged startled glances, then Steve shrugged and decided to see what would happen. He had to change his password soon anyway to keep with the monthly security cycle.

Zane’s fingers flew over the keypad, and before Chin had time to draw a breath to explain anything, files started popping open across the table top. Zane straightened up, shooting two sets of video feeds to the wall screens, and pointed. “Okay, here’s the convention center security feeds from yesterday and today, and there’s the ones from our hotel, yesterday and today. Parrish was two floors down from us.” He looked, not at Steve or his team, but at Jo. “Has anyone gone to his room yet?”

She replied without shifting her gaze from the security feeds. “Patel and Davis cleaned it out, along with Aronsky and Foster’s. It was only clothes and personal items in all of them.”

“Hey. Hold up!” exclaimed Danny, poking his finger at them to emphasize his words. “DOD clearances or not, you two can’t just start hacking security feeds or cleaning out potential evidence. This is a police investigation! There are procedures! There are rules!”

Zane cut him a sympathetic glance. “This investigation will never see the light of day. Normal rules don’t apply. I’ll do what I can to make sure they don’t steal all your equipment under some Homeland Security bullshit, or try to vanish you.”

Steve had the very uncomfortable sense that Zane wasn’t kidding, and for the first time began to wonder exactly what they had gotten sucked into.

“Zane!” Jo interrupted, “back up the hotel feed. Lobby elevators.”

They all watched as Zane centered that screen and started rolling it in reverse.

“There!” Jo looked at Zane, who froze the frame. She pointed to a slim woman with brown, shoulder length hair. Jo’s expression was at once alarmed and outraged. “Is that who I think it is?”

Zane enlarged the screen shot, and his mobile mouth settled into a grim frown and his voice hardened. “Yes. Beverly Barlow. Fuck.”

“When was that?” Jo asked.

“This morning.” Zane met her eyes, and they did more of the silent communication thing.

“Who is Beverly Barlow?” demanded Danny.

“Here.” Zane typed some more, then paused, licking his lips as he considered whatever it was he was looking at. Having reached some sort of decision, he continued, “Okay. I’m pulling up her DOD files prior to 2008. You see anything after that and they will lock you up and throw away the key. Basically, she’s affiliated with a self-selected watchdog group created after World War II. They believe they will do better than the rest of us with managing technological innovation, particularly with an eye toward stopping anything they view as too dangerous for the plebes to manage on their own.”

“They are very ends justify the means types,” Jo added, her lip curling with disdain. “She’s been directly or indirectly involved in several murders, multiple kidnappings and assault and theft on a grand scale. It turns out, if they do it, it’s for our own good and not a crime at all.”

“What the hell were you and Parrish planning to present today?” Danny asked.

Zane sighed. “A way of using wifi networks to identify people based on their DNA.”

There was a pregnant pause as Steve, Chin, Kono and Danny all stared at Zane with varying degrees of fascination and horror.

“I know.” Zane scowled uncomfortably and dropped his gaze to the tabletop. “Very Brave New World. I’m working on way to block it, but I was being too clever by half when I built the damn thing.”

Jo gently stroked the back of his hand, slipping her fingers into his. “It also saves lives. And Allison says the medical applications are potentially amazing.”

He smiled sadly at her, lifting their linked hands and pressing a kiss across her knuckles. “Thanks Jojo. But you and I both know it will be decades before it gets used that way. If ever.”

She touched his face with her other hand and offered him a crooked smile. “You never know what the day will bring, Donovan.” Then she pulled him down and kissed him.

“Ahem.” Steve cleared his throat. Zane and Jo’s rapid shifts in emotional settings were almost as mercurial as Danny’s, and just about as productive. “About your friend Parrish?”

“Right.” Zane and Jo disengaged as he spoke. “Okay. Now that we know whom we’re dealing with, we have some idea of how they’ll approach the problem. We should be able to find them, before the end of the day probably.”

“But right now, we need to call our employers. Let them know what is happening,” Jo said. Looking to Zane, she continued, “Would you call Carter?”

He said he would and she looked at Steve, belatedly, if politely, seeking his permission. “Commander?”

Steve waved his hand, indicating either permission or his acknowledgement that he had very little control over the situation; even he wasn’t sure which.

They stepped away, into different corners of the big room, pulling out phones as they went. Steve turned back to his team and sent them off to pursue their own sources for information, determined not to be completely steamrolled by anyone on his own turf. He scanned the files on Barlow, unwilling impressed by her record of subterfuge and mayhem, while Danny flipped through the convention center footage.

He was aware of the low, one-sided conversations in each corner, but couldn’t catch more than a few phrases.

Kono cleared her throat. “Boss?”

Steve looked up.

She was standing in the door to her office, avid curiosity in her eyes. “There’s a General Mansfield on the phone for you.”

“Who?”

“Mansfield? His secretary said he’s with the Joint Chiefs?”

“Okay.” He jerked his head toward their guests, issuing a silent instruction, and headed for his office wondering how a flash bomb at a weapons design conference attended mostly by civilians had already reached the attention of Washington. “I’ll be right back.”

Nearly ten minutes later he walked back into the main room, shaking his head in disbelief. “That was one of the weirdest conversations I’ve ever had with military brass. This guy was all over my ass for not locking Zane down the minute I saw him today. Claimed he was a danger to himself and others at all times, and one of the most valuable assets the DOD has. He also didn’t give a shit about this poor Parrish guy.”

Danny and Kono looked up from the computer table, where they had been bent over more security footage.

“Wait.” Steve looked around. “Where are Zane and Jo?”

“She went to the ladies room,” Kono replied, and Danny added, “He got another phone call and stepped outside to take it.”

Steve glanced at the floor where Donovan had been standing, his temper rising. “With his pack?”

“What?” Danny followed the direction of Steve’s accusatory glare. “Oh shit.”

Steve fisted his hands on his hips and his voice started getting louder despite his better intentions. The conversation with the General had rubbed him rawer than he realized. “What the hell Kono?”

Kono grimaced in embarrassment. “Sorry. Escorting her to the bathroom seemed like overkill.”

“Danny? How hard is it to watch two people?”

Chin walked out of his office, obviously drawn by Steve’s volume. “What’s happening?”

Steve snarled, “Donovan and Lupo are gone.”

“What?” Chin turned a startled glance toward his furiously blushing cousin. “Kono?”

Before anyone could say anything else, a new window popped up on a wall screen. It was Zane, calling in on streaming video. “Hey. Sorry guys. Heard Mansfield’s name and knew we had to split.” His wide grin was downright cocky. “He wanted to ship me home in a padded container, didn’t he? Claimed I’m a danger to global security?”

Mansfield had actually claimed exactly that, though in a vaguely complimentary way. Mansfield said that Zane was merely capable of destroying the world, not that he wanted to, and that he was therefore too precious to be allowed to fall into enemy hands. Steve had protested that he didn’t think anyone could make Zane do anything Zane didn’t want to do. Mansfield had coughed, and then with surprising gentleness had suggested that if anyone ever held Jo’s life in their hands, Donovan would do just about anything and everything under the sun, including blow it up if necessary, to keep her safe. Steve scowled, remembering the General’s warning, and the heavy tones of jaded experience in it. He glared at Zane. “I don’t think the General requires padding.”

Zane chuckled ruefully. “Yeah. Probably not. Hold off on telling him you lost me for a while, unless you like red-faced generals yelling at you. Though, the way the vein in his neck pops is pretty impressive, if you’re into that sort of thing.” He turned his head, obviously listening to the low burr of Jo’s voice. Looking back at the screen he continued. “We should have a lock on Parrish’s location by later tonight. We’ll call you then with coordinates. In the meantime, I’m sending you a list of equipment I think we might need. Looks like you guys have a pretty expansive armaments budget. Oh, and Jo likes your guns and wants to borrow some.”

Steve was listening with a barely contained sense of growing indignation, when the tablet camera view shifted as they took a turn and he got a good look at the background of the image. He was hit by a wave of astounded disbelief. “Are you in my truck?”

Zane didn’t even have the grace to look embarrassed. Instead he smiled a gleaming smile and winked. Winked straight at him! While riding in Steve’s own damn truck! Steve thought he might be feeling a vein in his own neck.

Zane said, “Yeah. We borrowed it. Don’t worry. Jo’s driving, so you should get it back in good shape. And before you try, the tracker is disabled.”

Steve struggled to keep his voice even. “You’re a car thief now?”

“Dude! Now? No! I started boosting cars when I was fifteen, but I haven’t done it in years.”

Steve ground out, “So. You’re a career criminal.”

“First computer felony when I was ten, so, yeah. But I use my mad skillz for good now.” He smirked somewhat sourly. “Mostly.”

“First?” Steve heard his voice rise perilously close to a howl.

“I’m sending you a pretty safe version of our files. You deserve to know who you’re dealing with. Later.”

The screen winked out.

“Oh my God.” Kono pointed to an email that had flowered open on the table. “Get a load of his list. What the hell does he think he’s going to blow up?”

As Steve read through the list, he had strangest feeling that he was having an out of body experience. His vision seemed to be telescoping and he wasn’t entirely sure that he could feel his own hands. As from a great distance, he heard Danny say, “Chin?”

Chin looked up, frowning in an odd combination of irritation and admiration. “Nothing. He bounced that signal off so many towers it looked like he was calling from the entire island, all at once.”

Steve exploded back into his own skin. “Who the hell is this asshole? He breaks into our system, violates every protocol we have, and then sends us a fucking shopping list for enough armament to take out a city block! And he stole my truck! My truck!” He raked his hand through his hair. “What did I ever do to deserve this?!”

Kono, Chin and Danny stared at him, almost identical expressions of dumbfounded shock on their faces. Then they looked at each other and, very nearly as one, started to snigger. As they continued to share wild glances across the table, their attempts to control themselves gradually failed. One by one, they slid down the slope from sniggering to giggling to snorting to gasping and finally into gales of laughter tinged faintly with hysteria.

Now Steve was sure he was popping a vein somewhere. “What the hell is so funny?” he demanded.

Danny was leaning on the table he was laughing so hard, but he got himself enough under control to answer. “Oh babe. We’ve only now realized. He’s just a more annoying you! The geeky, criminal version of you! So watching you freak out about it is...” he waved his hand weakly, dissolving into more laughter.

Steve’s incredulous bellow of “What!?” only provoked more howls of laughter.

Steve marched into his own office and slammed the door, determined to refuse them the pleasure of his discomfort. Once he’d flung himself into his chair, he decided to pursue his own military contacts. He desperately wanted to get a better feel for who in the hell these people were, and why they were being such a monumental pain in his ass.

He started with Cath, naturally, finally seeking a rundown on what, if anything, she’d learned out shopping with Lupo.

“Nothing much. Any secrets aside, I think she’s just a pretty private person. Thinks the world of her husband, likes her job, and mostly wanted to pick my brain about things to do for fun on the island. Said it was their first real vacation together in a long time.”

“So what is her job?”

“She didn’t say, exactly, but she did say it was a lot like trying to herd cats, struggling to keep weapons developers playing inside the lines.”

Finding this entirely un-illuminating, he attempted to debrief Cath on the entire outing, start to finish, hoping to tease out any small clues, only to have her hang up on him in exasperation. “I’m at work, Steve!”

His next three calls produced nothing but promises to look into it later. He finally tracked down a friend of a friend of a friend in Army Intelligence. He must have been bored enough with whatever he was supposed to be doing that he obligingly called up Donovan’s name, only to squawk, “Holy Hells, Batman! Who the frak is this guy? I just ran into a flagged firewall! I’m totally going to get a visit from people in dark suits asking me what the hell I was doing poking around in there. I’m so totally going to give them your name.”

Steve pinched the bridge of his nose as he said, “Fine,” and disconnected.

Next he pulled up the security feeds from the Convention Center, not the ones Zane had hacked, but the ones actually sent over to them in response to Five-O’s formal request. It didn’t take long to find the two murder victims, and once he ID’d them, he was able to spot at least three men tailing them. One of them was dressed in jeans and tee shirt, like a grad student, and was wearing a typical-student size backpack, packed full of something Steve suspected was an unusually large and carefully constructed flash bomb.

He didn’t find Parish, but he only had an undoubtedly dated head shot to go on. He assumed that Parish, too, would have had a tail, which meant at least four men on site at the Convention Center.

He began to suspect that whatever Zane and Parish had cooked up was well past the preliminary design phase, and that their value as the two men most likely to be able to counteract their own work was immense. It also dawned on him that Mansfield had been remarkably unspecific as to who, or what, the ‘enemy’ was.

He found Danny, Chin and Kono sprawled out in Danny’s office, sharing pizza and reading computer files on laptops and tablets. As he walked in, he heard Chin exclaim, “Oh man. How do you accidently launch yourself into space in a decommissioned rocket? And walk away from it afterward?”

Danny shook his head as he continued to read whatever was on his screen. “Cat’s got way more than nine lives.”

“Hey,” Steve said.

The three of them looked up. “Feeling any better?” Danny inquired.

“A little.” Steve gestured at the screens in their laps. “Those the files Zane said he would send?”

“Yep.” Kono looked up and grinned. “Fascinating reading.”

Steve claimed the pizza box with half a pizza still in it and dropped into the empty chair. “Tell me.”

“He’s a brilliant guy,” Kono said. “Seriously. True genius. He was enrolled at MIT at thirteen, and was admitted to their graduate program in physics by fifteen.”

Danny held up a finger. “And expelled for the first time at sixteen.”

“Spent a year each at Yale and Cornell, where he won the most prestigious prize in Physics that they give.”

Danny held up two more fingers. “Expulsions two and three.”

“Finally completed his doctorate in particle physics at UCLA, finishing before he was twenty-one.” Kono concluded.*

Chin took up the story. “Then he more or less vanishes, and a only a trail of computer felonies exists, most never tied to him, though he is the only suspect. At least some people think he was behind the 2004 computer crash on the New York Stock Exchange.” His tone, which had remained studiously dry throughout his narration, acquired a faint hint of admiration.

“During which several million dollars seem to have gone missing.” Danny added, his tone almost exultant as he piled up the bad news.

“The FBI finally caught him after he stole $3.1 million from the U.S. Border Patrol. He was convicted on six felony counts for computer crimes, and he spent almost eight months in federal prison.” Chin added, all cheerful helpfulness.

Danny, gleeful bearer of bad tidings, sang out, “Money never recovered, by the way.”

Chin continued as though Danny hadn’t interrupted. “Then the DOD claimed him. Sent him under parole to a secret research facility in Oregon. Wiped out his records before and since. The only thing Donovan left for us in his files after that are a long string of patents with his name on them, consumer goods to military hardware, a bunch of them with Isaac Parish by the way, and a handful of truly spectacular events.”

Steve swallowed a mouthful of pizza. “Like launching himself into space?”

“Right. Which led to him qualifying as an astronaut under NASA guidelines, which in turn led to a high level intervention that resulted in him receiving full federal pardons for all his crimes. He is officially a free man with no criminal record.”

Kono piped up. “He also once detonated a seventy-year old nuclear bomb, to counteract a ground water radiation threat. That actually worked, by the way. And he helped explode an out of control nuclear fusion reactor, preventing the formation of a black hole. And helped build a device that can wipe out power grids on a national scale. And pioneered radically new data transfer technology, massive jumps in speed and quantity. And devised the hardware and software that takes advantage of that technology to track individual humans based on their DNA.”

After letting that deluge of information settle, Steve could only say, “Now I know why General Mansfield was so insistent.” After another moment of silent contemplation, he asked, “And Lupo? What’s her story?”

Kono answered. “She comes from a military family. Her dad and three older brothers are all retired or currently active duty. Her mom died when she was a little girl. She enlisted in the Army right out of high school, graduated at the top of her training class, then got sent off to a whole bunch of specialized training schools. She ended up in the Special Forces just before 9/11. From what I can tell, she was in Afghanistan within weeks of the towers going down. And that’s when her record gets weird.”**

“Let me see.” Steve held out his hand. Reading through the sections Kono highlighted, he saw exactly what she meant. After flipping back and forth through the whole record a few times, he looked up. “I think she got dropped in with a combat team, one that she wasn’t supposed to be a part of, as a woman, back in 01-02. Whatever they were doing must have been well beyond the official mission, total black ops stuff, and they must have been good at it because it looks like they were in-country for almost a year. When they got back, she at least, seems to have been redacted, handed over to the DOD and vanished into that research facility in Oregon. The same one Donovan later ended up in.” He glanced at Kono. “Can you look up the other members of that team, see where they ended up?”

“So,” Danny frowned, “she wasn’t ever a deputy sheriff?”

“No. I think she was. That’s the job she got placed in by the DOD. Later moving into a security position with some outfit called Global Dynamics, which got bought out by Rockwell Industries about a year ago. But,” he shook his head at the new mysteries, “she has incredibly high DOD clearances. She still works for them.”

“Good call, boss.” Kono said. “There were eight other soldiers who came home with her,” she looked up with a twinkle in her eyes, “Zane attached a list, and so I checked them all out. All of them have records as blank as hers. Basics. Nothing more.”

Steve steepled his hands and gazed up at the ceiling. “So,” he said, to no one in particular, “we have these two remarkably unique individuals, running around the island in pursuit of their kidnapped colleague, armed and dangerous and with a penchant for really big explosions. And in my truck.”

“That’s about it,” Chin agreed, a maddening serenity bathing his features.

Steve rocked forward and slammed his hands flat on the desk with a loud smack. He raised his voice to a shout, feeling that vein in his neck again as he yelled, “How can you be so calm about it?”

The silence that fell made it clear that he had yelled much too loudly.

After another awkward beat of time, Danny raised his hand and looked imploringly at Kono and Chin. “Oh. Oh. Let me take this one. Do. Please.”

They both shook their heads and raised their hands, making vague shooing motions, denying any interest in interference. “Take it, Danny. Floor’s all yours,” Chin said.

Danny leaned forward, hands resting on his desk as he looked up at Steve from under his eyebrows. “So. Steven. You want to know how it is we are so calm, the three of us,” he leaned back and gestured expansively, “sitting here quietly contemplating our evening meal, while an armed maniac with a penchant for blowing things up and an utter disregard for all organized rules and regulations concerning the same, is running around the island in a vehicle not his own? Undoubtedly headed straight into the most dangerous situation he can locate within the next twenty-four hours, give or take? Aided and abetted by a highly skilled commando ninja type, who has exhibited an unhealthy fascination with big guns? This is what you want to know?”

“Well…,” too late Steve saw the wolf pit, and his attempt to stop Danny was in vain.

Danny was on his feet, hands flying as he wandered the room. “Well. Steven. We are calm because we are inured.”

“Inured, Danny?”

“Inured, Steve. Inured. Habituated. Accustomed. Broken in. Yes. Broken. By you. This,” he waved his hands around the room again, “this sitting around, waiting for disaster at the hands of crazed man with a death wish, this? This is our life, Steven.”

“I don’t think Zane has a death wish, Danny.”

Danny ignored him. “Yes. We live this moment, what,” he turned to look at Kono and Chin, “Weekly? Twice a week?”

“Five or six times a month, brah. On average.” Chin said, wicked enjoyment glimmering in his eyes. He looked at Kono. “Cuz? That sound about right to you?”

“Yep.” Kono’s nod was enthusiastically cheerful, her grin nearly splitting her face. “That sounds about right to me.”

Danny turned to face Steve, folding his hands together for the double pointing gesture he was so fond of. “This is why we are calm. This situation is utterly unremarkable to us.” He flung himself dramatically back into his chair, crossed his ankle over his knee and struck a pose of complete relaxation.

“I see.” Steve looked around and saw not even the smallest hint of forgiveness in his teams’ evil smirks. “Did any of you do anything about Donovan’s shopping list?”

“Yes.” Chin pointed with his head out into the nearly dark main room. “It’s all packed and ready to go.”

“So, you’re assuming we are going to help them.”

“Yes.” More maddening calm.

“Why do you assume that?”

“You didn’t report your truck stolen.”

Part II

My mini nanowrimo efforts

2012-11-30T14:49:41Z

Still more of the medieval LFN AU. Yes - still in my head, still needing to be written out and done so I can move on. ;-)

But another 5000 or so words this month, and some of the hardest - getting going on a new section. This is actually only about half of the words, the rest are disjointed pieces, assembeld in the right order but linked only by stage directions!

Under a cut. Jean’s Palace, Paris, December 1363

“So.” Lady Margaret de Bourbon turned to Nikita with a bright, infectious smile. “What do you think of Biette de Casinel, Nikita?”

Nikita choked on the biscuit she was eating. Coughing and waving away concerned expressions on the part of the sisters Margaret and Jeanne de Bourbon, she struggled to come up with the best way to respond to such a direct question. The three of them were sitting in a curtained alcove of Jeanne’s somewhat down at the heels dressing room, drinking tea and, until this second, engaging in a rather forced and artificial conversation about the dismal winter rain filling the gutters outside.

Jeanne was the Dauphin’s wife. She and her younger sister Margaret were also noble cousins to the king and his children, as well as to Rouen’s family. They were connected to both the Valois and the Samuelle lines through their mother, in a confusing cross-generational leap that required paper and pen to trace out the convoluted lineage. They were handsome enough women who bore a mild resemblance to the king, mostly due to fair coloring and broad shoulders, high foreheads and narrow, sloping noses.

What familial similarity the sisters’ shared, however, was undermined by their very different life courses. Grief and worry had already taken their toll on twenty-six year old Jeanne. Her face was thin and lined with strain, the hollow above her sharply visible collarbones far too deep for health. Her heavy rings spun loosely on her long, elegant fingers, her nails were rough and her cuticles bloody. The thirteen years of her marriage had been marked by lethal political turmoil, bloody civil uprisings and intermittent warfare with the English, as well as more personal tragedies. Jeanne had born the Dauphin three children in quick succession in the late 1350s. Their daughters had died three years ago, and her surviving four-year old son was, according to gossip at least, quite frail. She had birthed no more children since the youngest girl died in infancy. According to gossip, because out of grief she denied the Dauphin access to her bed.

In contrast, still unmarried at twenty, Margaret retained the plump prettiness, rosy skin and unlined lips of maidenhood. But her eyes too, were anxious and full of worry. The French court was an unhappy place. The royal family was out of money and rocked by passionate arguments between the King and his sons over the uncertain future of a kingdom he had staked on an outrageous ransom and dangerous alliances.

Rouen had introduced Nikita to Margaret their first day at Jean’s court, and done everything he could to foster a friendly relationship between them in the week since they had arrived. Nikita’s initial skepticism about the likely success of this plan faded once she saw more fully how isolated Margaret was. Jeanne had more or less withdrawn entirely from public view after her children’s deaths. As a result, at this latest moment of crisis in the royal house, Jeanne was a forgotten person. Any friendly face was probably welcome to Margaret right now.

To be sure, access to Rouen and his close ties to the Dauphin and his brothers was surely worth the two royal sisters stooping to cultivate Rouen’s mistress. So, while it was no longer a real surprise to Nikita that Jeanne had invited her here today, or that Jeanne’s true goal was to quiz Nikita about Biette de Casinel, the abruptness and directness of Margaret's question had nonetheless left Nikita gasping for breath.

Biette de Casinel, soldier’s daughter and the current mistress of the Dauphin, was an extremely lovely woman. Further cementing her importance to the future king of France, she had just given him a plump and healthy son. She also, on the several recent occasions that Nikita had been in her company, appeared to be breathtakingly stupid. So stupid, in fact, that Nikita was strongly tempted to think it an act, except she wasn’t sure it was possible to pretend so thoroughly.

After taking another sip of mulled wine and then a deep breath, Nikita turned to Margaret, who had asked the question. “She is a beautiful woman, obviously. And she seems to have a pleasingly placid and tranquil demeanor, my lady.”

Jeanne shook her head in mock dismay. “Oh Nikita. You sound so like cousin Michel! So tactful and discrete.”

Nikita felt her smile freeze and for a fleeting instant wished she could share what Michael had actually said about the Dauphin’s mistress.

Margaret leaned forward, an earnest expression on her face. “Please Nikita. We could really do with your opinion on Biette, one concubine of another.”

Now thoroughly discomfited, Nikita focused on setting her mug down on the small table between them as carefully as possible.

“Margaret,” Jeanne laid a hand on her sister’s arm, “you have embarrassed my guest.”

Margaret shrugged and smiled semi-apologetically at Nikita. “Sorry. That was rude of me. But, Jeanne, be serious a moment. We are here to talk about sex and men, so we might as well speak frankly as elliptically.”

Jeanne narrowed her eyes at her younger sister, who stared back unrepentantly, and then she nodded and turned back to Nikita.

Nikita sighed and shook her head. “Alright. You’ve seen her, I trust?”

Both the sisters nodded.

“Well, then, you know she is an extraordinarily sensual person. She is soft and billowy and always dressed in silks and velvets, making her appear extremely touchable. She is usually nibbling at some sweet, showing off her even white teeth against her full lips. She is also extremely calm. Almost eerily so. I suspect that in comparison to dealing with affairs of state and family, the Dauphin finds her presence soothing and undemanding. Rather like falling into a deep stack of featherbeds.”

Margaret nodded, as though this confirmed what she had already told her sister. Jeanne leaned forward, her gaze bright and intense. “Is she trustworthy? Do you think she carries his interests close to her heart?”

Nikita paused, searching for the right words. Finally she said, “I honestly can’t tell. She appears to be entirely focused on herself and her own comfort most of the time. I don’t think she has any particular feelings for the Dauphin other than a vague fondness and some hazy desire to please him,” Nikita lifted her shoulder, “but I understand they have been friends since childhood so perhaps that bond is strong.”

“Yes.” Jeanne nodded. “Her father has served the king’s household all his life.” After a beat she went on. “Could others use her to hurt him?”

Nikita nodded. This was where it had been going all along. “Yes. I believe they could.”

Actually, Michael was sure that someone already was. The royal family was beset on all sides. Nobles wanted more autonomy, allies wanted more considerations, citizens wanted more freedoms, peasants wanted lower taxes and greater safety, opponents wanted more power, and always, always, the English and their unpayable ransom loomed over everything else. Charles, the Dauphin, was a threat to all of these interests and more, mostly by virtue of clearly having a stronger and more disciplined character than his father, and therefore more capable of being a better and more effective king when his time came. Anything that kept Charles away from his duties, anything that disrupted his household, like a billowy and fecund mistress, was likely a boon to any or all of his opponents.

Jeanne and Margaret exchanged a long look. Then Jeanne said, “Do you think you could convince Rouen to help us ease her out of Charles’s life?”

Since that was the whole reason Rouen wanted her to be sitting here in this room, Nikita nodded again. “Yes, your highness, I believe I could. I believe he wishes for the estrangement between you and your husband to come to an end.”

Jeanne sat back and smiled in relief. “Michel has always been a good friend.”

~*~*~*~*~

“I spy your handiwork all over this one, cuz.”

Samuelle looked up from his conversation with one of his uncle’s advisors, happy for a break in the frustrating business of trying to wring more cash out of the thoroughly depleted treasury. “What are you talking about, Philippe?”

Nineteen year-old Philippe Valois, youngest son of Jean of France, leaned closer and nodded across the room. “That. Jeanne.”

Samuelle leaned back to glance around Philippe and saw a cluster of women had just entered the large chamber. The party was led by Jeanne de Bourbon, wife to Charles, and her younger sister Margaret. The babble of conversation gradually faded and the subsequent rustling as people around the room came to their feet and bowed was very loud.

Charles, who had been seated with another small group to Samuelle’s left, also rose, but he stepped forward with his hands outstretched and a concerned look on his narrow, angular face. “Jeanne? Is everything all right? Anything amiss?”

Jeanne took her husband’s hands in her own, smiling as she shook her head. “No, nothing amiss. Quite the opposite! I’m feeling so much better today I thought it was time to come greet our friends and guests.”

Charles smiled in what Samuelle read as genuinely pleased surprise. “Well then,” the Dauphin replied to his wife, holding out his arm in invitation, “Come, let us make the rounds.”

Charles and Jeanne turned away from Samuelle and began to circle the room, clearly intending to speak individually with each person present. Samuelle slid his eyes to his right, looking to see what the reaction of Biette de Casinel would be to the arrival of her lover’s wife.

Biette’s lovely, placid expression did not alter, but Samuelle was certain she paled ever so slightly.

He resisted the urge to smile, instead retaking his seat, signaling to others around the room that they were free to resume their business until the Dauphin and his wife should approach them. He glanced over at Philippe, who had dropped into an emptied chair. This left his father’s chief financial counselor on his feet, scowling down at the young prince. Samuelle frowned reprovingly at Philippe, who elaborately ignored him.

“Why do you think I had anything to do with this?” Samuelle asked.

Philippe raised an eyebrow in an almost successful attempt at wry, sophisticated amusement, and said, “your woman.”

Samuelle raised his own brow in return. “My what?”

Philippe dropped his pose. “Nikita. Your lovely, clever Nikita.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know she’s been taking tea with Jeanne these last few days.”

“Really? Has she?” Samuelle shrugged slightly. “I had not realized.”

Philippe frowned in turn. “I don’t believe that. But whatever you say. Margaret told me.”

“But, what would that have to do with Jeanne’s coming here, today?”

“Apparently Jeanne has been seeking advice on how to win her man back, and thought a concubine was likely to offer the best counsel on the subject.”

“Well, being in the same room at the same time is a good beginning. Though why she should need Nikita’s advice for that I do not know.”

“Not that, Michel! I image she was seeking advice for other,” here Philippe paused to smile crookedly, a lascivious gleam in his eye, “more intimate maneuvers.”

Samuelle could imagine no more unlikely scenario than the reserved Dauphine seeking, or Nikita sharing, bedroom tips at this stage of their acquaintance. If they became close friends, well, that would be different. There had been an afternoon in the fall, when they were still in Labrit with Michelle and Hugh, when he and Barbant had interrupted a sisterly chat. Michelle had looked up at Samuelle, flushed a rosy pink and then burst into giggles, which turned into hearty laughter as soon as she caught her sister’s eye. Nikita had started laughing too. He and Hugh had promptly retreated, agreeing without words to never acknowledge the situation again. Now, Samuelle stared coolly at Philippe for a long beat, waiting until the younger man dropped his gaze and shifted uncomfortably, before saying. “You are a filthy-minded boy.”

“Michel!”

“If Jeanne has found a reason to resume her public duties at this time,” here he flicked his glance towards Biette before catching Philippe’s gaze again, “that is all to the good, whatever the cause.”

At this, Philippe nodded grimly. “I totally agree, cousin.” He scowled and went on, “were you here yesterday when she actually interrupted a counsel between Charles and our father to ask him about pocket money? She wanted to buy some frippery or other. I feared for a moment that father would stroke out on the spot.”

“Yes. I was.” And he had immediately told Nikita to step up their schedule. She had obviously succeeded.

By this point Charles and Jeanne’s progress about the large room had finally brought them near Biette de Casinel and her party. She was sitting with her brother and his wife. A nursemaid stood behind them, holding the elegantly swaddled infant, who, fortunately, seemed to be as placid in temperament as his mother. Samuelle felt the anticipation in the room rise as the assembled nobles and courtiers strained to watch the coming confrontation, all without appearing to do so.

Jeanne immediately stepped up to the nurse, holding out her arms and exclaiming, “Oh, do let me see the baby.”

Too flustered to do anything else, the nurse handed the child over to the Dauphine, dropped into a deep curtsey, and stayed there.

Jeanne held the child close in one arm, pulling the heavy silk blanket away from the infant’s tiny, pink face with her other hand. “Oh, what a beautiful child!”

The infant worked an arm free and waved his tiny fist in the air. Jeanne caught his hand and briefly pressed her lips to his plump little knuckles. If her smile was faintly tremulous, her eyes remained dry. She looked over to Biette. “Aren’t you worried about his health? I should think exposing such a small one to all these people and all these damp airs would be so dangerous! Please, I can’t be comfortable worrying about him, and I’m sure you are anxious as well. Do feel free to stay away from court until he is old enough to be left alone without his mother, safe in his nursery.”

Then Jeanne pressed the child into Biette’s chest, forcing an extremely startled Biette to accept her son or drop him. Jeanne stepped back and folded her hands, a small, tender smile on her face as she kept her eyes on the child. “Don’t let us detain you, Biette.”

Biette, her fine, pale blue eyes opened even wider than usual, nodded. “Yes, your highness.”

Then she bowed, turned and left the room, her terrified nursemaid at her heels.

~*~*~*~*~

OMG Kono!!!

2012-05-08T02:16:36Z

I wanted someone hotter than Charlie.... but ----- ieeeeeieieieiei!

nell65 @ 2012-04-02T17:30:00

2012-04-02T21:30:08Z

So, hat tip to Ms. Artisan - the Sevens meme:

1. Go to page 7 of your most recent WiP
2. Count seven lines down
3. Copy and paste the next seven lines of text

Because I'm actually working on something, this sounded like fun!

(Yes, it is one of the old LFN WIPs, part of the long runing project to brush all of them out of my brain pan by actually finishing them so I can move on.)

Believe it or not, it was Medieval AU that stepped up and demanded that Nikita's story in this universe be finished and offered ideas about how to accomplish that. This isn't actually page 7, that's all really old stuff, but rather, page 7 of the new work. So here are lines 8-14, from the seventh page of new work.

~~~~~~~

“Hmm.” Bertrand bowed his head in concession. “Perhaps.”

“She’ll also have less time to get into trouble. You know what they say about idle hands.” Samuelle clapped Bertrand on the shoulder. “In any case, should she betray me, I’ll hand her over to Madeline.”

Bertrand whistled, “Cold, Michel. Very cold.”

Samuelle dropped his hand and shrugged.

“Speaking of your terrifying sister, what is her opinion of this venture of yours?”

~~~~~~~