If . . . At The End

Cody winced as he heard the words through his own headset.

“He is so dead,” he murmured to Monica sitting nearby. She shook her head and turned her attention back to the monitors, listening as was he.

“Let me get help to those men.” Frank’s voice sounded firm. “Make a show of good faith Quiller. Don’t condemn those men to die and we’ll talk about how we can resolve this. We’ll talk about what you want.”

Frank appeared in the doorway of the ops van and made a cutting motion at him and he scrambled to hit the button on his keyboard.

“Well?” Frank sounded tired as he asked for their opinion.

“Well I could run a VSA on the call if…” He rattled off a load of technical stuff about Voice Stress Analysis before he realised that Donovan wasn’t talking to him.

“He’s trying to provoke you. He’s starting to get worried.” Monica answered. She paused as though she looked as if she were thinking. Then she nodded. “Yeah, he’s starting to doubt his convictions.”

Frank nodded and turned to Nick, their CIA liaison. “Get me two teams, visible. I want them looking as if we’re go on the raid.”

“You got it.” Nick said, and left the ops van.

“Donovan, call from the house,” Cody pointed at the flashing light on the console. Frank left it a full thirty seconds before he answered the call.

**

“Jesus, he’s really going to do it,” Jake came away from the window and watched as Alana picked up the child after fixing her clothes. He ran his fingers through his hair. What the hell was he supposed to do?

“Something’s going to happen isn’t it?” she looked up and asked him somewhat fearfully.

“I think so,” he said calmly, not wanting her to start getting any more afraid than she already was. “It will be okay.”

He hoped, as he stroked her back, and leaned down to gently touch the baby’s cheek that he hadn’t just told a lie. The child turned her head toward the touch.

“She’s hungry,” Alana explained. “She didn’t get to finish her milk before.”

He saw her shiver as he moved away and pulled the gun the other man had given him out of the waistband of his pants, to check the clip.

“It’s okay,” he said softly, replacing the gun and covering it with his shirt. “It’s okay.”

**

He paced slowly behind the ops van, his arms folded across his chest his eyes hooded as he moved… sighing.

Jake was in the house… armed. A loose cannon… an unknown.   Another sigh escaped his tired body. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Jake… he was young – a little headstrong still, but better than he had been. Just that Jake would be trying to second guess what he was going to do, to fit in with the plans. Ordinarily that wouldn’t be a problem. With the profile Monica had grudgingly given him he could pretty much work out what Jake would do, but he was second guessing himself… and that made it hard. It made it dangerous.

Quiller had a domestic staff of twenty five and Intel. said fifteen heavily armed guard. He’d pulled four of those back into the house, to replace the men that had defected, leaving eleven on the perimeter. Heat traces showed the majority of personnel in the dining room, probably where he was holding most of the hostages and apart from Quiller and the other guards, only three others in an upstairs room.

He swallowed hard… three others and one of them a child… a baby… his baby.

He leaned against the side of the tech-ops van, relishing the pain as he raised his right arm over his head. He couldn’t allow himself to think about that right now. He couldn’t allow that to have power over him, but merciful Christ how could he not. It was his child; his flesh and blood; his…

“Frank, we have movement at the house,” Cody’s voice sounded in his ear. “Looks like hostages.”

“I’m on my way,” he said into the mic. He hurried as best he could back to the door of the van to peer at the monitors, and then back outside to watch with his own eyes as the hostages were herded into the centre of the driveway, surrounded by Quiller’s men.

**

“So what do you think, Jake?” Quiller roughly pulled him up to the window. “How many will Frank lose before he gives me what I want?”

“You know the way these things work,” Jake said. “You have to give him time.”

“Exactly.” The answer chilled his blood.

“You can’t just start killing hostages without giving him…”

“Oh but he’s had time.” Quiller interrupted.

“You haven’t even told him what you want.”

**

“Pull the men back and drive the car slowly by the gate on my signal,” Frank ordered, and then nodded at Cody.

“Listen to me very carefully,” he said as soon as the phone was picked up. “You harm even one hair on the least of those people and I will tell the car that’s about to drive past your gateway to keep driving.

“You don’t mean that, Frank, you…”

“You don’t want to risk testing me, Quiller.” he said resolutely. “You let the hostages go unharmed and you and your wife get a plane fuelled to get you anywhere you need to go outside of US jurisdiction. You and I both know that’s the only way past this.”

“How do I know you’re on the level, Donovan?”

“When have I ever been otherwise?” he replied. He signalled to Cody, who keyed his mic.

“Ops to transport, go, repeat, go,” Cody instructed.

“Look out of the window, Quiller,” Frank instructed. “There’s your transport out of this. All you have to do… is release the hostages and let them get to safety. Then stand down your men.”

“And if I don’t?” Quiller pressed.

“There is only one other way this can end, Anthony.” Frank leaned over Cody and cut the line himself.

**

It felt like an eternity she’d been checking off hostages and helping to process the men that had been surrendered from inside the complex. Only four now remained with Quiller and his wife to guard Jake, the nanny and Frank’s daughter.

Alex had a bad feeling, she turned to go and see if she could find Monica. Her bad feeling suddenly had a face when she spotted Saran, struggling with a uniformed officer at the police line.

“Saran no!” she caught her around the waist as she darted past the police officer. “You can’t be here. You can’t go in there!”

“No!” she fought and scratched, not even careful of her newly healed shoulder. “Let me go, that’s my baby in there!”

Alex pulled her back to arm’s length and shook her, hard.

“You have to trust him,” she said. “You have to let him do this the way he knows how.”

“But he doesn’t…” Saran started, tears swelling in her eyes.

”He knows,” Alex told her. “He knows, Monica told him. She had to.”

She watched as Saran crumpled, tears becoming sobs as she finally stopped struggling. Alex pulled her into a tight, warm embrace.

“She’ll be all right,” she whispered. “I promise you… Frank won’t let anyone hurt her.”

**

He was tense, more tense that he could ever remember as he watched them starting out of the house. His fingers just brushed against the video screen beside Cody’s left arm.

Quiller held a woman around the throat, moving her forward with his feet between hers, keeping her off balance. He held a gun to the side of her head and against her chest she held… he turned his eyes away from the screen and sighed.

“Frank…?” Monica touched him lightly on the shoulder.

“Don’t,” he growled and then instructed, “Cody, tell the car to move up.”

“Already moving,” Cody said softly.

Frank felt something nudge against his hand and turned his head to find Cody holding up the headset he had discarded some few minutes before. He took it and started fixing it into place, once again watching the monitor, assessing the situation.

Jake walked beside Quiller and the woman, similarly restrained and on the end of a hand gun. Quiller’s wife walked nervously behind and around them four men, armed with automatic weapons walked, their guns trained to cover them.

He didn’t like the way it looked or felt.

Walking out of the ops van, fully connected now with the taskforce, he looked on the scene with his own eyes as the small group of people came down the driveway to the gate and the waiting car.

He closed his eyes against and took a huge breath, before he opened him mouth to speak.

**

Tension…

It was all he could feel. It filled the air, a sickly stench that was making everyone nervous and would only take one wrong move… one lapse in concentration to bring it all tumbling down.

If that happened he had to be ready. Jake flexed his arms slightly, making sure he could reach the gun tucked into the back of his pants and earned himself a sore spot on the underside of his chin where the man holding him captive pressed the gun into his flesh.

“Don’t even think about it,” the voice hissed in his ear.

**

“Blue team, Donovan, you read?”

“Go ahead, sir,” the voice answered in his ear.

“What is it looking like up there?”

He listened while the members of the team called in that they had target acquired. He tightened his jaw and held his breath. He knew better than to hope.

“Negative, sir… I have no target.” Only one team member could not deliver. “Repeat, I have no target. Quiller’s obscured by the hostage.”

“Damn it,” he hissed. “Anybody?”

The other teams all called in negative. He ran his hand over his face, about to tell them to hold – but stay on target when one of blue team called in with an uncomfortable suggestion.

“Sir?” The voice in his ear was hesitant. “If I take down the hostage, I have a clear shot.”

His tired mind went through every permutation of the way that could end. Could he condone that? Could he order a hostage deliberately harmed by those meant to protect them for the greater good – for a desired outcome?

Could he take that risk with his child?

Don’t get personal… care ABOUT the hostages not FOR them… be ready to do what you have to do to achieve the best possible outcome. The words of every training seminar he ever attended all swam through his head. But the truth was this was personal. It was over eight years personal and now Quiller had a member of his team and…

“Sir?” The voice interrupted his dark musings. “Are we go?”

A member of his team, a civilian hostage… he had to wonder about Quiller’s wife and how involved she was in all this or if she was as much a hostage as Jake and the nanny… He sighed…

“Agent Donovan? Are we go?”

And more than that… He sighed again, closed his eyes and in his mind clearly saw the bundle pressed against the chest of the hostage in question. Enough! He told himself, and gave himself a mental shake.

The tiredness shattered like a fractured windshield and suddenly the whole scenario cleared in front of him.   A single shot would be all it took to change the organised, controlled retrieval into chaos. The minute the hostage went down the gunmen protecting Quiller would scatter like rats. They were agency. They would know they were being covered. Would know that they were all but dead if the shooting started and as confident as he was in the ability of his sharp-shooters, his gut told him that for all they had their targets, if the shooting began, they would miss.

“Negative Blue team,” he snapped. “But stay on target and if you get a clear shot…”

“I don’t think so, Donovan.” A voice behind him, and more to the point the soft click of the hammer of a handgun being drawn back made him stop talking. He heard the rattle of many guns, found his own weapon somehow in his hand as he turned, raising it to point at his would-be assailant, and around him heard the cries for the man to surrender the weapon.

“Back off or he dies!” The voice said firmly.

”Put it down Teague,” Monica instructed softly. She was standing to his side, her gun out, pointed past his shoulder at the man in front of him.

“Do as he says, Monica,” Frank said softly. Then to the other law enforcement officers he said, “All of you…stand down your weapons.”

As they all hesitantly complied as he fixed his eyes firmly on Teague or, as he had known him, McGuirk.

“You too, Frank,” McGuirk spoke first as he and Donovan faced off against each other, starting down the barrels of their respective enemy’s gun.

“And have you kill me?” Frank said. “I don’t think so.”

“You’re a hard man to kill, Donovan,” McGuirk said.

“Which is why you’re the one to do so?” Frank asked. He didn’t need this complication… this added tension and risk. “Again… I don’t believe so. If you were going to, you’d have done it a long time ago. Completely aside from which the moment you fire the shot to take my life, this whole situation explodes. I don’t think you want that.”

“Don’t presume you know what I want,” McGuirk spat.

“All right,” Frank said softly, he wavered slightly, swaying backwards a little and felt Monica move behind him. “But I assume that you don’t want to die? Because if you take the shot then these officers are going to take. you. down.”

“Then we have a standoff,” McGuirk sneered.

“No we don’t,” a soft female voice said from behind McGuirk.

“Clare, no!” Frank managed to snap off the word before the whole of the area erupted into noise and chaos.

**

A shot… a single shot was all it took and the men beside him opened fire, thankfully not on him, but at the law enforcement officers that were already returning fire. Jake didn’t waste time marvelling at that, he quickly jabbed back with his elbow, and was rewarded when it connected with the man’s middle and his arms were released.

He grabbed the gun from the back of his waistband and without hesitation dropped the man with a well placed bullet before turning the gun on Quiller and letting off a second shot.

Alana screamed as the blood splattered onto her, but Jake didn’t give her time to think about it, he grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her away from her Quiller, racing for the only cover he could see… the large stone pillar that supported the gate.

It wasn’t going to be a good position for long, if Quiller’s men realised they’d gone and were not so pinned down by the fire from the agency taskforce then they were basically screwed. The pillar provided cover from the outside of the estate but not the inside. If Quiller’s men started shooting, they would be dead.

And his gut told him that time would not be long in coming… so he started looking for a way out.

**

“Hell!” Frank had just lost it. He knew that… that single shot he’d worried would shatter the fragile situation had done just that.   Quiller’s men were firing on the law enforcement teams on the ground, who were firing back.

“Cease fire!” he yelled into the mouthpiece, hoping to regain a measure of control, and heading out toward the cars at the front line. “All units cease fire!”

To a man they ignored his command. He had no choice. He had to send the in the chopper to get men behind Quiller.

“Red team, go!”

“Roger that. About time,” the pilot answered and he heard the sound of the nearby helicopter, circling in a holding pattern, begin to get louder as it broke away to come in closer.

He risked raising his head over the squad car behind which he was sheltering to take a look at the situation, and what he saw made his blood run cold.

**

A bullet impacted against the pillar over his head and a shower of white plaster and marble rained down on him. He flattened himself as much as he could around the nanny. He had to get them to the law enforcement side. He had no other choice.

He took another look.   It wasn’t such a long way… in fact if he could just get them to a point behind the limousine – no doubt bullet proof, that Donovan had arrange to take them all to the airport…

“Alana, listen,” he said urgently. “We gotta make a run for it…”

“But the guns…” she wailed in protest.

“We’re as much a target here as we are out there,” Jake argued. “We stay low, and run quickly, we should be okay. It’s only twenty yards… maybe a little more.”

She looked up into the sincerity he hoped was on his face, masking his doubts and swallowing hard, she nodded. He would wait for a lull in the firing. That way they stood more of a chance.

It was a slim chance… but it was better than no chance at all.

**

She saw the movement from the gateway of the house and instantly started struggling with Alex again.

The dark haired man was leading the woman out in the middle of the gun battle putting her child in danger.

“No!” she gave Alex one final push, breaking free and without thinking of her own safety – thinking only as a mother that saw her child in danger and had to be there, be there to save her – she too leaped out and ran straight toward them.

**

“Saran, no!” he yelled, even though he knew there was no way she would hear him with all the gunfire around them. Bad enough that Jake was endangered, though he understood his agent’s thinking and would have made the same choice himself, but Saran…

Everything he ever was, or would ever hope to be knotted in the single instant and switched his action onto automatic. Ignoring the fact that he had discharged himself, against strenuous medical advice the day before… not even knowing if he had the strength to run as far as he would need to, he slid across the hood of the car and the minute his feet touched the ground on the other side, set off, sprinting on a course to intercept Saran.

“Frank, no. Get out of there!” Monica’s urgent voice sounded in his earpiece.

“Don’t just yell at him,” Cody’s voice followed, equally urgent. “Give him covering fire.”

He tried to shut out the voices and concentrate on running. It was getting harder and harder to put one foot in front of the other. The breaths he took stabbed at his chest and burned on the way out.   He still had a lot of distance to cover.

Forty yards… He saw her smiling face, and remembered the feel of her arms around him, her laughter as he swung her around.

Thirty… Remembered the touch of her hands on his face, her lips under his.

Twenty…

**

She screamed beside him, and a hot fount of blood sprayed across his chest and his face. Alana stumbled and then fell backwards.

Jake hesitated, half turned, and looked down at the woman and the blood that stained the white of the blanket which wrapped the baby.   So much blood, he couldn’t see who was hit or where.   His mind screamed in denial

He felt the movement of the air as a spray of bullets whipped past his head and did the only thing he could think to do, throwing himself over the fallen woman and child.

**

The impact of her slender body against his sent all the air rushing out of his tortured lungs, it was pure reflex that had his arms close around her, and instinct that had him turn them both as he registered the gunman out of the corner of his eye.

The spray of bullets from the automatic weapon hit him across the back and shoulders and sent them both sprawling to the ground, her body under his. It was all wiped away by the pain that blossomed anew though the whole of his body. He fought for consciousness, but it was a losing battle.

The last thing he registered… she was screaming his name.

I had simply never been so nervous in my life. Since the middle of the afternoon I was glancing at the clock every five minutes… counting down the time.

I was home… the charges I faced had been dropped – only sensible I supposed, since you can’t be charged with the murder of a federal officer if that officer were still alive and of the hundred or so other charges they could have brought against me, nothing ever came. I didn’t know why, but I suspected he had something to do with it. Even the assault charge against the doctor in Washington that had been going to take Alethea from me had been wiped away.

I was almost sick with nerves by the time the doorbell sounded. I don’t know why he rang the doorbell – as far as I knew he still had the key I’d given him.

“Hi,” I said with a faint smile, opening the door, and not really looking at him.   I daren’t. If I looked at him, I would be even more lost than I already was, and I wasn’t sure where I stood any more.

It was all very confusing… and confused I stood to the side to allow him into the house. I hated the awkwardness… knew there was more to come through the evening, but tried not to think about it.

He reached out to take my hand, and I flinched. I’m sure he noticed, but he didn’t say anything, just picked up my hand and gently ran his thumb across my fingers. They had been grazed by one of the bullets that bounced off the vest he was wearing. I was glad of that vest. It had saved his life even as he saved mine.

And it was that realisation that shattered the awkwardness between us. He had saved my life… had risked his own life to save mine. My other hand came up to his chest, to rest against it, gently in case he was still sore.

“Frank,” I whispered, “I’m sorry. I should have told you.”

“Yes you should,” he said equally softly, but with an underlying tone of warmth. “But I understand why you didn’t.”

“And I’m sorry I…”

“Ssshhh, Enough.” He pulled gently on the hand he held until I moved forward, closer to the hand that was still lying on his chest. “They’ve stolen enough time from us, Saran, and I miss you.”

His arms folded around me before I could answer, holding me tightly against his chest, and I couldn’t help the tears that came into my eyes, or the wracking sobs that shook my body as I held him too.

When I came to myself again we were sitting on the stairs, held in each other’s arms. Both of us had been crying, but they were cleansing tears – tears of healing. I reached up a hand to wipe the droplets of salty water from his cheeks and he turned his face into my palm, nuzzling like a huge cat, his lips brushing the lightest of kisses against my hand where it touched his face. The sensations I felt were so acute they were almost painful… longing… desire… need…

I gasped softly, my hand falling away from his face, to rest on his shoulder.   He eased me closer, almost into his lap and his own fingers settled onto my face, raising my lips to his and he began a soft kiss that I could not have escaped even if I had wanted to.

The body remembers…

My lips softened and parted under his brushing embrace, I moulded against him as I always had, my arms snaking around his shoulders, as his hands came down to encircle my waist. His tongue eased gently between my lips and teased at my own, then moved in strong sweeping strokes inside my mouth. He tasted so good and I was almost dying from the sweetness of the other sensations at sharing his warmth… his strength…

A shrill cry broke the moment, and understandably, he stiffened under my hand, but none the less followed me as I stood and climbed the stairs to the nursery. He seemed surprised that the nursery looked so together. It was, after all, only a short time since my return from DC.

“The others helped me,” I explained as I picked up Alethea from her cot. “Monica, Jake and Alex. Cody…”

“The baby monitor?” he asked, almost smiling, looking at the small microphone inlaid into the side of the cot. I nodded and turned so that he could see his daughter where she was cradled against my shoulder. She was trying to lift up her head.

“She’s beautiful,” he said with a soft catch in his voice. He reached out almost hesitantly to touch her face, and then to stroke her shoulder. “Truly beautiful.”

“She’s your daughter, Frank. How could she be anything else?” I asked softly.

He closed his eyes and sighed, his full, lower lip trembling slightly.

“Saran, I’m sorry, I should have…”

“Ssshhh,” I said, echoing his earlier words to me. His eyes opened and found mine. “I gave you no choice… no chance.”

“Still…” he argued gently.

“No… Enough.” I told him. “I won’t have you blaming yourself for anything… please,” I added softly.

For a long time he stood looking at us… at his daughter, gently touching from time to time.

“You want to hold her?” I asked him softly. He took a deep breath, but shook his head. He looked afraid.

“Not yet,” he breathed.

We didn’t make it downstairs again. As soon as we came out of the nursery Frank turned and whispering my name took me into his arms again finishing the kiss that our daughter had interrupted.

This time our shared need expressed itself as passion. His hand wound into my hair and pulled back my head so that he could press our bodies close together and share the long, deep and almost frantic kiss at the same time.

Don’t misunderstand, it was not all one sided. I was as needful as he was. The buttons of his shirt succumbed to my trembling hand as I sought to find skin on which to rest my aching palms. It was as though it hurt to be apart and we all but fell into the bedroom, kissing and touching more and more with every step.

When his shirt finally fell away I gasped at the sight of the scar I had caused on the right hand side of his chest.

“It will fade,” he promised, lifting his head away from my neck.

Even so I felt like the worst person in the world to have hurt him in the way that I did. I leaned forward to plant a line of soft kisses over the bullet wounds and the scar from the surgery. His hand cupped the back of my head and he gasped with each pass of my lips and my tongue.

The gasps became a long, low moan as I moved to take his nipple into my mouth, until he pulled my head away and rolling suddenly, pressed a passionate kiss against my mouth, pinning me beneath him, his thigh between my legs. My turn to moan as his kisses began to descend over my neck and breasts, over my stomach as he moved lower, to unfasten my pants and slip them off.

He knew me; knew everything about me and used that knowledge to leave me reeling in almost unbridled pleasure even though the touches had been nowhere near the space I really needed to feel him, gasping and reaching for him even as he returned to my side.

He took my hand and kissed each finger then placed my hand onto his chest again, covered with his own.

“I need you,” he said, his voice a soft growl in the dim light from the bedside lamp.

“I need you too,” I whispered, then added. “I love you.”

“Oh Saran,” the words burst out of him almost like a sob and he pulled me into a strong crushing embrace. “Dear God, I love you too!”

It felt like coming to life as he slowly eased up, let me away from him, so that his fingers could brush over my breasts, still firm in spite of feeding Alethea and lower to reach for the ache that he had caused in the centre of my being.

I moaned, lifting my hips to catch his touch, and moved my own hands to cup him through the shorts that were all he was wearing… he pressed himself, hot and hard against the caress of my hand until I moved to push the shorts away, and take him into my hand, and stoke him gently, tenderly… knowing just where and how – the body remembers…

We fit together so perfectly as he moved to cover me. Both of us held our breath in the moment our bodies joined, as he glided in to fill me, and we both gasped, calling out for the other as our hips met – holding still for a moment, and yet trembling together.

Then he gathered me closer and began to move. Emotion so great welled up inside me that it spilled over almost at once, tearfully I gasped and moved with him, wrapping my legs around him… wanting him closer, needing him closer… my arms around him were like a shield to both of us against the horrors we had suffered, that our lovemaking was only now beginning to wash away.

So high, we climbed – so bright the light that covered us. I was reaching for that bright place, holding him with me, gripping him inside – almost shattering beneath him when he left the warmth of my body. I moaned in disappointment, my orgasm slipping from me, only to return in full and sudden force when his mouth descended onto the ache and his tongue flickered inside me.

“Frank!” I cried out for him and gripped the bedclothes, rocked and broken into tiny pieces by the intensity of my climax. He drank deep of my sweetness before returning to fill the empty space, thrusting home hard and deep, to reach the spot he knew left me helpless and weak as a second wave of pleasure broke over me fast on the heels of the first.

“Breathe,” he whispered and kissed me deeply until all I could see and feel and taste was him… his breath filling my lungs, his heart beat against my chest as though it were pumping my blood around and not his.

“Don’t stop,” I begged him quietly. “Don’t leave me…”

“I won’t,” he said. “I promise.”

He clasped my hands, our fingers entwining and rose over me again, like the sun rising to bring the day. Our movements together became almost primal. We were so lost in each other, and so high that the world was almost nothing but a blur beneath the two of us.

“Saran,” he breathed, and I knew he was close, I could feel the tightness in all of his muscles and against my body where his almost swollen pouches pressed against the point of our joining. I raised my lips to his and my body to meet his downward momentum and that was all it took for both of us.

Oblivion surrounded us – soothing all past hurts and losses – breaking us open and healing us, each with a piece of the other. He flowed into me, hot and thick. I felt every pulse against the trembling of my own climax.

Again we stilled unable and unwilling to move apart from each other, until nature forced our hand and he melted out of me. Drawing me against his chest as he laid back, he kissed my forehead, breathing heartfelt words of love and promises of better times to come.

I still felt a shiver of doubt… and it hurt me more than I can say.

Cold…

I woke cold in the middle of the night, and where Frank should have been was nothing but cold and empty sheets.

At first I panicked until I saw the warm glow that filtered around the edge of the opened door from the nursery opposite

I slipped on a robe and on quiet feet walked to find him. When I reached the door, tears came to my eyes as soon as I saw the two of them.

Frank was sitting in the chair, reclined, feet up on the foot rest. He had fallen asleep and was gently cradling Alethea against his chest, skin to skin. Their faces were turned toward each other, in fact it looked as though he had fallen asleep in the midst of kissing her infant forehead, and her tiny arms were pressed against his muscled chest.

It was a truly beautiful sight; father and daughter, together, both sleeping, both at peace. I knew then that we would be all right.

UC CRIB: Two months later – Tuesday 9.40am

“Can I take it that, given we’re not playing beer or coffee everything is right with the world?” Jake nudged Alex almost playfully as she sat in her place at the briefing table. “That OPR cleared you of misconduct?”

“OPR ran away with their tails between their legs,” she grinned at them. “Apparently Donovan filed a report that said, and I quote – “Agent Cross was acting under my direct orders, helping to establish convincing, deep cover for a fellow agent as part of an ongoing investigation.” I guess they didn’t want to argue with Frank.”

Cody sighed, and put his feet up on the table, leaning back dangerously in his chair.

“If everything is right with the world, how come we get another new boss?” he moaned, “And I’m telling you Monica, if he’s anything like that last drip they sent, I will quit.”

“You won’t quit,” she slapped his legs off the table and he had to make a grab for it to stop himself from falling over backwards. “So anyone know anything about this guy?”

Cody watched as everyone looked at each other with blank faces.

“Hey at least we know now that they do take out an add,” he said cheerfully. “At least according to Teague… an internal one, but an add none the…”

“Yeah right,” Jake interrupted, “Like you trust a word that snake said?”

**

Clearly they hadn’t heard him open or close the door behind him. They were arguing, as before, he smiled wryly, about whether or not the post had been advertised.

There was no need to advertise the post. He forced the smile from his face as he walked further into the room, surveying each member of the team. They looked older – wiser… but closer as a team.

Monica appeared a little softer somehow and he wondered if Cody had anything to do with that, because he too looked more relaxed… no less sharp, just less on edge.

Alex looked rested. The haunted look was gone from her eyes – as though she had laid many ghosts to rest, and he was glad of that. He had worried about her coming apart on a case. He could forget about that now…

And Jake – he let out a light sigh – looked as hard, as bloody minded and independent as ever… as challenging to authority… but he knew differently. He’d looked into the man’s brown eyes and seen the change in the youngster… now he could truly be the peer that he needed him to be.

He came to a standstill at the edge of the platform and said, “Good morning.”

**

They jumped at the sound of his voice and instantly stopped their conversation to turn and look at him. Monica fought to suppress a smile as Cody pulled his feet, which he had returned to the table, quickly down to the ground and sat up straight.

She took her seat as Frank moved forward and began placing the familiar Manila file folders onto the table in front of them.   She stopped fighting not to smile when he handed her file to her, and the glint of the wide white-gold band on the ring finger of his left hand caught her eye.

“Antonia DeMarco,” he began then asked, “Do you have a problem, Agent Davis?”

But when she looked up, she found he too was smiling.

Fin