GRACE SEQUENCE
Once Was Lost - Toils and Snares - How Sweet the Sound - Safe Thus Far - Lead Me Home
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SAFE THUS FAR
--
They had them surrounded, guns trained on his chest, almost as soon as Sydney registered their presence. She sat up abruptly, pulling the sheet to cover her naked breasts. Cool air washed across her exposed back.
"Julian Sark," the man closest to Sark's side of the bed barked, "you are under arrest, on order of the United States government, and have the right to remain silent . . . ."
Familiar words, as Sark slowly raised his hands in the air, moved out of the bed, nude and leanly muscled, and kneeled on the carpet of Sydney's bedroom floor. Sydney could only stare as the man handcuffed his wrists behind him, pressed the barrel of a gun to the base of his skull as he yanked him to his feet.
"Agent Bristow, excellent work," another man said, the squandron leader, indistinguishable in the moonlight except that he was standing taller than the others, reholstering his gun as he approached her. He kept a respectable distance.
Sark was being pushed out.
"We'll be out of your home shortly."
"Thank you," she said, through the daze.
The agent nodded, and retreated from her bedroom, leaving it empty, silent, and still.
-
"What did you do?"
Her presence in her father's office couldn't have been unexpected. But he looked up in placid inquiry, brows slightly arched, at her fury.
"Sydney," he said, "you suspected it yourself. Sark insinuated himself into your life for a reason."
"Not everyone is Mom," she hissed.
"It's better we have him in custody," he called after her as she slammed out the door. "We'll find out what he's really after."
-
"You could call me Julian, you know," he told her, head resting against her bare stomach as she toyed with his hair.
She frowned slightly, reached for his hand. He gave it to her, squeezed hers in reassurance. "Sark," she said, and he chuckled, and the moment reminded her painfully of Vaughn-- except instead of a drawer he'd somehow managed to capture the whole damn dresser, "what do you do when I'm gone?"
He turned to lay on his stomach, look up at her with luminous blue eyes. "I read, mostly," he said. "Why?"
She shook her head, looked away, and he pressed a kiss onto her belly.
"Darling Sydney," he murmured, "aren't you used to me yet?"
He kissed her stomach again, lower, and her body began to stir. She sighed against her will, arched into his attentions, and he moved his mouth achingly slowly over her as she lay back and looked at the ceiling.
Misdirection, she had thought, even as she cried out, writhed against him, urged him on. Begged for him.
He was too good, he knew her too well, and in his hands her body betrayed her, and she came.
-
She'd mentioned it to her father in passing-- What if?-- airing her worry the way any woman would. Sark was as determined, as stubborn, as devious, as talented in his personal life as he had been in his professional one; he had said he would make her love him and he had. His expressing his intent hadn't mattered, hadn't hindered her one bit. A few weeks of patient attention, quiet acts of affection, and she had been his.
She hadn't said anything when his toothbrush appeared next to hers, or when he began to leave his book stacked beneath her own, unobtrusively, on the bedside table. He had been nonchalant, and she had remained silent: their relationship was characterized by silence, and the moments in which it was breached.
They were living together, she'd realized finally, belatedly, almost six weeks after he'd first shown up in her living room. And by then she was in love with him, and too far gone to care.
Her father had been concerned.
"This isn't good for you, Sydney."
There were a lot of things about her life that weren't particularly good for her, she reflected, but he wasn't balking at any of those.
"He isn't good for you."
"No," she had agreed, but already in her mind she was opening her front door, letting him take her suit jacket, accepting his mouth soft on hers, and her father, and his words, were already behind her.
"I don't trust him," Jack had pressed, as if he might convince her of the danger by the inflection of his voice alone.
"So . . . what? Are you going to put a tail on him? Bug my phone?" She shook her head.
But he had. Might have had them in place already even as their conversation had taken place.
He must have finally found something he could use.
-
She managed to stay away for almost three days. On the third day she dressed in a sober pantsuit and pale camisole and walked through the long hall to the solitary confinement cell as the metal gates raised and lowered around her. There were no windows, no time. She could have been on her way to visit her mother, plain canvas again, upon which anything could still be written.
When she finally reached his cell he glanced up from his position on the sleeping platform: back against the wall, feet pulled up, wariness calling tension into every sleek line of his body, though his expression remained disdainfully, almost comically, neutral. She recognized this cool-eyed Sark, from long interrogations, tense moments in the field, time in this very same cell. He looked like her lover, though he was not. She wondered what she looked like to him.
She folded her arms as she faced him through the glass.
"Sydney, what a pleasant surprise," he mocked. "Come to pay your respects? I hear I'm a dead man. Or at least I will be, if your father has his way. Do give Jack my regards when you see him next."
"I'll make a point of it," she said coolly. "But unfortunately I'm not here to exchange pleasantries. I'm here to give you one last chance to tell us what your endgame is."
He laughed: incredulous, condescending. "You simply cannot be serious."
She clenched her jaw, drummed her fingers against her bicep.
"Sydney, I've hardly been out of your sight since I arrived in Los Angeles. Even I do not believe myself capable of masterminding some kind of international crime syndicate or carrying out a diabolical terrorist scheme while living in your home, and sleeping in your bed . . . ." His gaze raked offensively over her face, her neck and breasts—and stalled at her still tapping fingers.
"You seem impatient, Agent Bristow," he murmurred, cocking his head to one side, sights still fixed on the delicate movements of her fingers.
"I'm waiting for an answer. A simple no," she assured him tersely, "would be fine."
"Yes," he sighed, "I do believe it would. I hate to disappoint you, but as I do not have any professional purpose in being in Los Angeles, I will not be able to provide the kind of answer the CIA is no doubt expecting."
"Like I said, Sark-- a simple no would be fine."
His lips curved in a malicious sneer. "No."
She dropped her arms and turned on her heel, passing back through the gates, returning to report to the agents on the other side.
I will get you out of here, she'd tapped out for him against her jacket's sleeve.
The only question was how.
-
In the most recent director's office, Sydney sat stiffly, straight and narrow, as its other occupant delivered the offer.
"Agent Bristow, your work is always flawless, but you've outdone yourself with this last assignment. Sark is . . . ." He shook his head. "The higher-ups are pleased. We're all pleased. You're an asset to us, Ms. Bristow. We'd like you to return to the agency in a full-time capacity."
"Let me think about it," she said.
Precisely seventy-two hours later, she accepted the position.
-
It did of course occur to her that her father might have been correct, that their time together, hers and Sark's, had been in service of some greater plan on Sark's part. She was fairly sure, in fact, that it must have been.
It was difficult, but she managed to avoid her father. She had herself assigned to a separate task force, passed him brusquely in the halways. He never said anything. Never tried to explain to her why he'd had Sark taken into custody. He'd been protecting her of course. But from what? Had Sark's endgame been so terrible that he felt it would be worse to tell her than to let her believe her father had wrongly accused the man she loved?
The apartment was hollow without him, and her presence echoed in the empty space. She packed his things in meticulously-labeled boxes, which she stored in the linen closet. She saw other men, met Weiss's girlfriend. Remembered what her life had been before he came for her and decided she didn't like it.
She pretended to, though.
-
She went to visit twice a month, endured the ribbing from the guards: "Bristow's here to see her boyfriend." They played cards, she and he. Poker, gin rummy, endless rounds of war. Then crazy eights, go fish, uno. They played silently, the only sound in the cell the shuffle of cards or the rare shift of Sark's seat; outside the cell the sound of Sydney's cards was accompanied by the low murmur of the on-duty guard's radio.
If he was keeping track of who won, she never noticed.
-
It was almost six months before her opportunity came. Her father was out of town; a prisoner transfer was being made. It was a simple thing to switch the prisoner ID numbers in the system, have Sark taken instead. Almost embarassing the ease with which she drugged Weiss's drink, putting him under and giving her time to hijack the van, take out the guards and free her lover from his shackles.
"Do you have someplace you can go?" she asked him, releasing the last cuff from his wrist. She peeled the ski mask from her face, felt her braid fall down her back.
"Of course," he said, voice neutral.
"Sark," she said. Pleaded, "It wasn't an assignment."
His smile was bitter. "Thank you for freeing me, Sydney."
"Will you—" she began. Her voice faltered: weak, ridiculous. "Be careful."
It earned a genuine spark of humor, however dry. "Aren't I always?"
-
He'd had to move quickly, or he would have kissed her.
She reassured herself of it as she lay herself out carefully on the couch beside Weiss's still unconscious body and took a swallow of the drugged liquor. She saw Sark's face, the cool eyes, the hardened mouth, as her living room went black.
He would have. Wouldn't he?
-
She let the news hit first. Then she went to see him. She couldn't stand not knowing any longer.
She asked, "Dad--" Swallowed; continued, "What did Sark do?"
She could see the hesitation in his eyes, in the brief tic of his jaw. His promise not to keep things from her warring with his need not to hurt her.
"Your phones were tapped, and your laptop was . . . compromised," he said finally. "Sark was siphoning classified data off our servers."
She closed her eyes.
"We . . . weren't able to find out where the information was sent."
She'd never felt so foolish.
"I'm sorry, Sydney," her father said. "I never wanted you to have to go through something like this."
It was the closest he'd ever come to acknowledging that she loved him.
"Thank you," she told him, throat tight.
"You asked."
She nodded. "I did."
She turned to go.
"He hasn't been caught yet," her father volunteered as she pushed open his office door.
"He wouldn't be," she answered over her shoulder, and let the door swing shut behind her.