A/N: Let me start out by saying that I was thrilled with where our favorite pair left off in terms of their relationship – which is probably why I haven't had all that much to say about it until this point. I do think we're going to see things get pretty dark at work for Sam, though, and I doubt Andy's about to let him go down that road alone. On that note, a lot of what's to come is somewhat unfamiliar territory for me, and while my aim as always is to keep things accurate and plausible, I wouldn't expect any true-crime expertise here. I do, of course, encourage constructive criticism – and I hope you enjoy.
Sam jostles himself awake for what must be the twentieth time this hour. Deep breath, he orders himself. Get up and stretch or something. He's frankly starting to become a little exasperated with himself; despite his strict instructions to the contrary, his eyes have the audacity to try to close, over and over again. Ten-plus years of undercover, and to look at him, one would think all those all-nighters had been a figment of his imagination.
Of course, said all-nighters tended to have a lot more action going on than this particular night, which involves futile and repeated searches for connections between the police commissioner and the denizens of Toronto's seedy underbelly. Santana might be… well, probably is a lot of things, but stupid is hardly one of them. Sam has been at this for a good while now, and he's failed to find one thing that – at least on paper – is less than immaculate.
He stands up, takes a couple of pathetic laps around the kitchen table before returning to his chair; contemplates making another pot of coffee, or taking a sick day, or just saying 'screw it' and going to bed already. This is the third consecutive night he's been awake to greet 3am; he's so sleep-deprived at this point that he expects full-on hallucinations to start any minute now.
(But not sleep-deprived enough, apparently, because suddenly he's imagining just what he might hallucinate, and somehow that leads to visions of Santana and Ted McDonald chasing one another through the kitchen and around the living room on horseback and…)
He closes the laptop. "Enough is enough," he says aloud, voice coarse and uneven.
"Enough of what?"
Startled, he rises abruptly and spins around on his heel. Even though he sees exactly who he expected in the doorway – Andy, with tousled hair and heavy-lidded eyes – he's starting to get a little paranoid.
(Could be the nature of his investigation; could be the lack of sleep. Who's to say?)
"What are you doing awake?" he asks. "It's not even four in the morning."
"Kept waking up. Half the bed was cold." She shrugs. "Enough of what?"
He sighs. "Nothing. I just keep coming up empty on Santana."
Andy pads over to the table, pulls out a chair for herself adjacent to his.
"Maybe it's like I said yesterday," she suggests gently. (And the day before that, and the day before that, and all the way back to two weeks ago when I nearly got blown to bits, Sam hears.) "Maybe McDonald really was just a conspiracy theorist, and Santana isn't actually doing anything that wrong."
"He slammed the guy's face into a table, Andy," Sam says blearily, sitting back down. "There's no way that's an isolated incident. And let's not forget how quick he was to pull rank with the whole thing with you and Duncan, and that lawyer. The guy's on a power trip."
"Power trip, sure," Andy confirms. "But corruption? Involvement with the mob? That's a little different."
Sam yawns. "Well, even if he's as dirty as they come, nothing on the Internet or the remote server seems to want to hint at it."
She turns the laptop on the table so it's facing her and pulls it open. "Where have you looked online?"
"Search engines," he replies, letting his head rest atop an outstretched arm on the table. "Newspaper archives. I mean, I'm not expecting a fully notarized confession to pop up in Google Images, but…" He trails off as he sees Andy lean in closer, eyes narrowing. He scoots his chair around so the laptop screen is visible to him. "What is it?"
"Do you remember this?" she asks, pointing at the headline on a news article. "'Two officers and three civilians dead after faulty flash grenade fire.' This was up in 12, a year and a half ago. I was telling Chloe about it a few days ago, it's the only reason I'm even thinking about it."
"I'm sure I heard about it at the time, but refresh my memory."
"The detectives received bad intel about a drug trafficker's location, and ETF raided the wrong house," Andy says, skimming the page in front of her. "When they set off the flash grenade, it malfunctioned and caught fire, and everybody near it – the first two ETF officers to enter, the elderly couple who lived in the home, and their adult son who was visiting from Vancouver – ended up being killed."
"And ETF had to retrain on flash grenades," Sam recalls. "But what does that have to do with Santana? What did you search for?"
"'TPS problems' plus 'equipment.' And believe me, no trouble finding results there." She sighs, her fingers tapping steadily on the keyboard. "But there was definitely a blog post someone wrote about it that… here we go."
She points to something on the screen. "'What happened to ETF officers Brown and Rivas, and to the Nelson family, is undeniably tragic. But how did it happen? There's no question that the ETF team was acting on misinformation; certainly they would have had no interest in harming three innocent people, much less themselves. But it's worth considering that just five weeks before this incident, TPS and weapons manufacturer DuraCorps announced a new partnership, to ensure that TPS has the best equipment available to help fight crime and protect citizens' safety.' There are about fifty sources here, too."
"The only thing I know about DuraCorps is that they were a big military supplier," Sam says, words coming like molasses through his exhaustion. "And then their name suddenly stopped being mentioned in the news."
"I'll try to put the dates together, see if I can figure out when they started providing for local law enforcement and why," Andy asserts. "And you are going to bed. You look like shit."
"Just what I want to hear from the woman I love, thanks," he retorts, though he stands up. "You know, half the bed will be cold when I get there."
"You won't notice," Andy says without turning around. "You're so tired, you won't notice if a horse climbs into bed at the same time you do."
His earlier vision returns to the forefront of his mind, and he groans. "I'd notice a horse. Believe me." He pauses at the door, looks back. "Thanks, McNally."
She does turn to him then; cocks her head to the side with a newly energized smile. "What can I say? We make a good team, you and me."
It turns out she's right; bizarre apparitions notwithstanding, it wouldn't matter if an all-out rodeo was taking place inches from the bed. Sam almost immediately falls into a mercifully dreamless sleep, and when he wakes nearly ten hours later, it takes several moments of marveling at the novelty of actually being rested to realize that he's just slept away half his work day. Sitting bolt upright in panic, he searches the bedside table for his cell, instead finding a folded scrap of paper.
Called in sick for us both. Pretty sure everyone thinks we're having a lot more fun than we are.
-A.
He breathes slow, lets waves of relief slowly dissolve the unexpected adrenaline rush. Eventually, he climbs out of bed and follows the scent of coffee to the kitchen. Andy must have come in at some point while he was asleep; she's dressed, an uncapped ballpoint pen holding her hair in a tenuous bun as she furiously scribbles something on the notepad beside Sam's laptop.
"Did you sleep?" he asks, swinging open the cabinet above the sink to retrieve a mug.
"Yeah," she responds distractedly. "On the couch for a few hours. Are you serious?"
"What?" Sam takes a sip of coffee as he approaches the table and takes a seat beside her.
She looks up at him. "So remember how DuraCorps was making stuff for the military? Turns out they lost their contract after multiple failed safety tests. That was in August, 2012 – three weeks before Santana and their CEO announced the partnership."
Sam raises an eyebrow. "And five people died from a faulty grenade a little over a month later."
She nods grimly. "What are the odds that DuraCorps magically improved their standards and manufactured all new equipment in three weeks?"
"Not especially likely," he remarks. "But would Santana have known about the reason the military contract ended?"
Andy clicks on a second window and turns the screen toward Sam. "I looked up Joseph Linken, the DuraCorps CEO. The society pages did a feature on his wedding about five years ago. And can I just say, it was his fourth wedding, and that woman in the purple dress in the background there is his youngest daughter, who's actually a year older than his newest wife – "
"McNally."
"Just wanted you to know we're not talking about Mr. Integrity here," she replies, scrolling until she finds what she's looking for. "There."
It's an image of a grinning Linken and Santana, tuxedoed arms around one another's shoulders. The caption describes them as childhood friends.
"Makes sense," he says in disbelief. "Linken whines about the consequences of cutting corners to his old buddy, and Santana finds a use for all the crappy stuff the military doesn't want."
"Yep." She meets his gaze. "And I'm guessing he didn't do it out of the kindness of his heart."
Sam considers this for a moment. "You think he got a kickback."
"Would you put it past these guys?"
"Nope," he assures her. "We just need to figure out how to prove it without Santana finding out that we're digging around his records – and assuming Ted McDonald's information was valid, we're still at square one when it comes to any mob ties."
Andy shrugs. "It's like you said yesterday. There's no way this is an isolated incident. We'll find it." She rises. "I'm going to make some sandwiches."
Sam continues to look at the image on the screen before him; wonders what other secrets exist beyond plain sight. All he knows for sure is that he and Andy have stumbled upon the tip of a well-hidden iceberg, and for better or worse, they're about to descend below the surface.