So, it's time for a little variety. Most of what I've written for A/A is lighthearted and fluffy. This story is going in a different, more angsty direction. I've been working on this one for a long while now. I hope that my efforts have paid off. More importantly, I hope you enjoy!
Note: This is set about a year and a half after the Season One finale. Annie and Auggie are in a relationship. If you want to know how they got together, choose almost any other story on this site, many of which are awesome. :)
Disclaimer: I do not own Covert Affairs or its wonderful cast of characters. I just borrow them for my own entertainment.
Robbed
Part One: The Assignment Is . . .
His knuckles tap lightly against the bathroom door. "You okay in there?"
Pushing down the handle, Annie watches the mixture of water and vomit swirl around the toilet bowl before it is sucked down with a wet gurgle. Her hand shakes as she runs her fingers through her hair and swipes the moisture from underneath her eyes with the back of her nails.
Getting up from the floor is a slow process, but once she's upright, her nerves are calmer and her stomach isn't queasy anymore. Annie reaches over to unlatch the bathroom door, wiping the corners of her mouth with the back of her other hand. Luckily, she'd gotten home from the airport late last night and dinner had consisted of a bagel with cream cheese outside the taxi bay; there wasn't much to empty out of her stomach this morning.
When she opens the door, Auggie's leaning against the frame, his orange Nintendo 64 sleep-shirt clashing with his plaid lounge pants. He gives her that look—a combination of curiosity and worry—that makes her need to reassure him there's nothing wrong to ease the creases in his forehead.
"I just feel a little sick," she tells him.
His pout fades fractionally at her honesty. "Any better now?"
"Much. I think it was that ten-hour flight that did me in."
He ghosts his fingertips along the wall as he enters the bathroom. Annie grabs a cup off of the sink and fills it with water. She moves to the side so Auggie can reach his precisely arranged toiletries. Auggie lathers shaving cream on his face while she rinses her mouth out. She swishes and spits any remaining bits of partially digested bagel into the basin.
"I swear every time I take a flight longer than five hours, I catch some kinda bug."
"Recycled air will do that to you."
"Especially when you're in coach at the height of flu season," she adds.
He cleans off the razor between swipes, hitting the blades against the side of the sink. Annie reaches around him for her toothbrush and squeezes a glob of toothpaste onto the bristles.
"I thought you got a flu shot?" Auggie asks between the strokes of his razor.
"I did," Annie mumbles around her toothbrush. She finishes brushing her teeth, then adds, "Those shots can be unreliable. I might have to get another one."
"Can you do that?"
"I don't know," she says. "I just wish antibiotics got rid of all my problems. Not just the nose stuff."
"I think we have Pepto somewhere."
"Nah, I'll be fine. I feel better now," she assures him again. "But I can't keep getting sick like this every time Joan sends me overseas."
"She's been sending you out a lot lately," Auggie comments.
He nicks himself just above his Adam's apple and swears in frustration, hitting the blades against the sink harder than necessary.
"Here, let me," Annie offers.
Auggie relinquishes the razor and she slips in between him and the sink, leaning her backside against the counter. She drags the razor over his stubble, leaving a trail of smooth skin behind with each scrape. As she repeats the motion over and over, Annie recalls her recent missions from memory.
Madrid. Scottsdale, Arizona. Bali. A few minor operations around the D.C. area. Genoa, Italy. It's been a long, action-packed month. Even if most of those trips only included routine surveillance stints or exchanges of intel, the sheer number of miles she's covered and airports she's visited is impressive and tiring to think about.
"I guess I have been gone a lot this past month," she says as she finishes shaving the second half of his face and neck. She begins removing the shaving cream residue on his skin with a warm, wet washcloth. "Explains why I've been so tired lately."
"Joan's making you work hard for your salary," he teases.
Auggie rests his hands at her hips, his thumbs sliding under the fabric of her underwear and rubbing her skin.
"I miss you when you're gone," he adds in a lower octave, flashing a mischievous smile. His words are sincere even though he's clearly trying to get into her pants; he's already halfway there.
She pats his cheek dry with the other end of the washcloth, then lightly kisses the same spot.
"I miss you when I'm gone too."
Auggie's response is to kiss her fully on the mouth.
"How much did you miss me?" he asks, barely pulling away from her lips. He grinds his body against hers suggestively.
She moans at the feeling and bites her lower lip, trying to restrain herself and maintain some level of control.
"I'll get you sick," she warns, trying to scare him off.
"I'm not scared of a few Annie Walker cooties."
She smiles against his mouth as he kisses her again in a series of short pecks.
"Aug, we have work. We'll be late."
One hand moves to the apex of her thighs, the other to the nape of her neck, his thumb brushing over her cheek.
"Not that late," he argues, then says in a more playful tone, "Can't you feel how much I missed you?"
Oh, she feels it all right. Her senses overflow with the man who's trying to drive her to distraction. All she can see, hear, smell, feel and taste is Auggie.
His warm breath tickles the hairs along her neck; he's going in for the kill. Even blind, he always manages to find the exact spot below her ear that makes it impossible to resist him. He hits her trigger point dead on, every time.
His mouth hovers above the sensitive spot, teasing her. The anticipation is enough to send tingles across her skin; the foreign hand between her legs might have something to do with the little prickles of pleasure too.
"I need an answer, Ms. Walker."
The vibrations from his voice on her flesh make her give in. Annie pulls his head against her neck, her left hand threading through his hair. His free hand begins moving her underwear over her backside and down her legs. She feels his triumphant smile as he kisses and nips at the skin just behind her jawbone.
"You're apologizing to Joan this time," she tells him in the most authoritative tone she can manage.
"Fair enough."
"You're late."
The announcement is stated loud enough to attract more than a few curious eyes in their direction, turning Auggie and Annie's arrival into a walk of professional shame.
"I thought you said you were keeping an eye out for her?" Auggie whispers out of the side of his mouth as they walk down the hall.
"She came out of nowhere," Annie whispers back.
Joan waits at the end of the hallway, hair pulled back in a slick ponytail, dress devoid of any hint of a wrinkle, and lips as straight and thin as a knife's edge.
Annie brings them to a stop a safe distance away and tries to look contrite. The after-sex aura Auggie exudes makes it difficult to pull off.
"Care to explain why you're almost an hour late without any sort of notification?"
Annie will kill him if he doesn't keep his promise to come up with an excuse for their boss this morning. For a large majority of times they've been late over the past year, it's been up to her to concoct plausible excuses. But Auggie lives up to his word.
"I could detail it for you," he says, "but that might constitute sexual harassment. Of whom, I'm not sure."
Annie might just kill him. In her mind, she's shaking him back in forth with her hands wrapped around his neck. In reality, she has to settle with her elbow discretely burrowing its way into his ribs as they stand side by side before Joan. Auggie doesn't flinch or make any attempt to apologize to her or their superior, but continues to beam his five-hundred-watt smile.
Joan's face falters slightly. But, as always, she quickly composes herself and says in a more confidential tone, "Next time, either think of a legitimate excuse for why you're late, or don't let it happen again."
"I'll write up a list," he says.
Just as Annie is seriously considering slapping him on the back of his head for his crass comments, a shadow of a smile pulls at the corners of Joan's lips. Annie breathes a little.
"Jai is waiting for us in Tech Ops," Joan informs them, getting back to the business at hand. "I have a new assignment I'd like to discuss with you, Annie, now that you're here."
"Another assignment? So soon?" Annie asks.
"I know you've just returned, but this is a matter of great importance."
Even if she's been exhausted lately because of the volume of her workload, something inside of Annie always gets excited when she hears that Joan has another assignment for her. Annie may have been working for Joan for almost two years now, but she is still an eager junior agent.
"Of course, if you need a few days off, I'm sure there are other agents. . ."
"Nope," Annie interrupts. "I'm up for it."
"These are images taken from Senator Kridler's office," Jai says, bringing up a series of four grainy images onto the center computer screen in Auggie's office—the hub of all technical operations within the DPD. "This was the only footage captured before the cameras went offline."
"So we know whoever the robber's accomplice is has terrible timing," Auggie comments, "Or he's just really bad at his job."
Annie takes a long look at the four pictures. One figure, dressed in an all black business suit, stars in each frame. Though Annie can tell that the figure is a woman from the long brunette hair hanging around the person's shoulders, there aren't many other details that stick out. The first image shows the woman entering the office with her hand held in front of her face, the last picture is a shot of her back as she leaves the office, and the two photos in between feature the woman rifling through Senator Kridler's desk, her long hair shielding her face from view.
"There's nothing to go on here," she says, "The camera never got a shot of the robber's face."
"So there's no chance of getting a hit off facial recognition software," Auggie translates, then begins typing on his keyboard without saying what he's searching for.
"What did they take?" Jai asks.
Joan stands behind Auggie's chair, arms crossed, her eyes concentrated on the images on the screen. "They stole a flash-drive with a list of names."
"Whose names?" Auggie questions, still skimming his fingers along the strip of lighted Braille at the base of his keyboard.
Joan sighs—it's the same sigh she always gives when she has to share information that she and the higher ups would rather keep on a need-to-know basis.
"Classified names," she states. "All you need to know is that, if this list gets into the wrong hands, dozens of deep-cover operatives will be compromised. It's crucial we recover the information before that happens."
"Here," Auggie says. "Look at these."
He replaces the pictures from the senator's office with even lower quality pictures from a cluster of shops outside of the Congressional Building. In every picture is an image of the two thieves—the woman from the senator's office and a man, similarly dressed in black. The timestamps on each image are within a minute of each other. In every shot, they're on foot and headed east.
"This is looking like an inside job," Jai says. "That woman knew what she was looking for in Senator Kridler's office. She was in and out in two minutes."
"Maybe they're locals?" Annie hypothesizes after analyzing the new batch of photos. The robbers blend in well with the D.C. crowd and know exactly where they're going. Something in Annie's gut tells her that Jai's theory is correct; whoever stole Senator Kridler's flash-drive had access and inside information.
"Can you enlarge the third picture?" Annie asks.
Auggie makes the image larger.
Jai leans in to examine the photo more closely. "Zoom in on the upper right quadrant."
Auggie types in a few more commands and enlarges the picture further. The female robber's face is partially visible in the shot.
"Run an ID using that image," Joan orders. "Crosscheck it with a list of employees who have access to Senator Kridler's office. See what you can find."
"On it," Auggie says. "I'll see what Stu can dig up about Kridler's staff." He stands and leaves the room, using his laser guide to make his way to Stu's desk. His face is determined and serious now.
Joan turns to her remaining agents. "I need you two ready to leave at a moment's notice. You should take this time to gather anything you may need."
Annie returns from her short break with a small duffel bag hanging off of her shoulder.
She sees Auggie come out of Tech Ops, a piece of paper in hand, rushing toward Joan's upstairs office. Instead of going to her desk, she follows him.
Joan motions Annie in with her hand. Jai is already in the room, reading over the paper Auggie printed out.
"We got a hit?" she asks.
Auggie nods and comes to stand closer to her. He edges behind her, resting his hand on her shoulder.
"The woman in the photo is one Kate Harris. She's on Senator Kridler's Intelligence Committee," Jai reports, reading from the paper in his hand.
"And her associate?" Annie asks.
"Still unknown."
"We've been tracking Harris' cell phone GPS," Auggie says. "But if she gets smart—which I'm not predicting will happen—she might ditch the phone and we'll lose the signal."
"Where is their current location?" Jai asks, still scanning the paper.
Annie prays for it to be somewhere that doesn't require a change in time zone. She's still getting over her jetlag from her return trip from Genoa. She doesn't think her stomach can handle another long trip.
"Yorktown, Virginia," Auggie answers.
"You'll be leaving immediately," Joan tells them.
This chapter is more of a setup/prologue. If you come back for part two, which I surely hope you do, we'll get more into the action. Can I entice you by telling you the title of the next part is: ". . .A Disaster"? *wiggles eyebrows persuasively*
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There are so many people to thank for helping this project get off the ground and stay that way: Phoenix, Georgie, Patricia, Kira. I can't begin to say how much I appreciate your help, encouragement and suggestions!