NO EYE IN CYCLONE
AN: I will eventually go back to my other WIP, I promise. But I'm still having a hard time with inspiration for a funny, light-hearted story. I will get back to it, when that fickle muse decides to grace me with it's presence again. In the mean time, I've had this story brewing in my brain for a few weeks now. Tell me what you think and if you want to see where it goes.
Those little reviews help motivate me. As always, thank you for your feedback.
oxoxoxoxoxo
It had been three weeks since the colossal implosion of Walter's company. Well, in reality, his entire life. But he'd done his best to bury the more difficult aspects of his personal life in the back of his mind and concentrate on salvaging what was left of his business. It was only logical to focus his efforts on something that wasn't yet a hopeless cause.
That morning, he'd been expecting a prospective client, not his ex-girlfriend.
So when Walter looked up from the mountains of paperwork littering his desk and realized Paige had just entered the garage, the emotions rushed through him at light speed. Confusion. Elation. Frustration. Anger. Nostalgia. Longing. Heart-wrenching pain. It happened so fast, he was unable to hold on to any one particular feeling for long. And true to his usual pattern, he was inept at reading others to see if any or all of them were mirrored in her face or demeanor.
Paige stalked up to Walter's desk and slapped a piece of paper down. Anger then. It didn't take an empathetic genius to see it after all.
"Was this your idea? Did you put him up to this?" She demanded.
He couldn't help himself. He was merely regurgitating the lesson she'd attempted to teach him when they first began their working relationship. He gave her a patronizing half smile and replied, "Good morning to you too, Paige."
"Cut the crap!" She snapped. And people accused him of being rude?
"I need to know w-where… what you've done with…" Her voice broke and tears momentarily filled her eyes. Sniffing and blinking impatiently, she recovered quickly and pinned him with a glare. "Where is my son?!"
"Has something happened to Ralph?" He blurted, unable to keep up the superior charade as alarm gripped him and dominated all the other warring emotions.
Paige folded her arms tightly across her torso, her face taking on a pinched look, but this time he could plainly see she was terrified under the rage. "You need to tell me. Now. What the hell did you do with him?"
Walter stood and came around his desk, holding up both hands in a show of mock surrender, hoping to calm Paige enough to get more information. "He's not here. Has he gone missing or something?"
"Don't pretend you're innocent. I don't buy it! This whole scheme screams 'Walter O'Brien'! Tell me how to find him or... or I'll call the authorities!" Her voice was starting to sound semi-hysterical in pitch.
"I haven't laid eyes on him since the day you walked out and took my entire team with you…," Walter retorted defensively.
Presumably alerted by the raised voices, Cabe picked that moment to intervene. He walked out of the kitchen area where he'd been making breakfast the last time Walter saw him. Setting his coffee mug down on the conference table, the older man said in his special, authoritative way that both diffused some of the tension and encouraged cooperation, "Hey. Take it down a notch, you two. What's going on with Ralph?"
The distraught mother turned to the Homeland agent and ran a shaky hand through her already tousled hair. She snatched the note from Walter's desk and held it out to Cabe. "When I went to wake Ralph up this morning, I found that on his pillow. And he was," She swallowed, "…gone. Just gone. I didn't know what to think. It's in his handwriting and it's addressed to me, so I figured he was probably plotting something with Walter," she explained, her voice sounding ragged with worry.
Cabe pulled his reading glasses out of the breast pocket of his jacket and perched them on his nose. "Let me see what it says."
The older man unfolded the paper, his eyes quickly scanning the content. "But this is gibberish. What's it supposed to mean? Is it some kind of code? Do you think someone took him?"
All the blood drained from Paige's face and her knees threatened to buckle.
Walter grasped her elbow, steadying her as she swayed on the spot. "We'll find him, Paige. I promise," His reassurance of her was automatic. He so effortlessly slipped back into the pattern of the past four years, instinctively wanting to make sure Paige was okay. He led her over to the couch and helped her sit down. "Cabe? Could you bring her a glass of water?"
"No. I don't need water!" She shook her head vehemently, "I need you to help me find my son!"
"Okay. Let me look at the note. Maybe I can make sense of it."
Walter took the paper from Cabe, closely examining the 'gibberish', and couldn't completely hide a smile.
"What? What does it say, Walter?" Paige prompted urgently.
"It will take me a few minutes to decipher it. But luckily I know exactly how to do it."
Staring at the strange symbols, Walter strode back over to his desk, already lost in the puzzle. He opened a folder on his desktop and began writing his own scribbles in the margins.
The Homeland agent stepped over to stand beside the Scorpion leader's work station. "Son, you may not want to write on that in case we need it for evidence," Cabe cautioned quietly, hoping Paige wouldn't overhear.
"Ralph wasn't kidnapped," Walter muttered back distractedly as he kept up his scrawling, "Unless it's possible to kidnap yourself."
"What's that supposed to mean?" the upset mother asked sharply.
Walter briefly glanced in her direction. "It means he ran away. And he left us a list of clues telling us how to find him."
"But why would he do that?"
The genius chuckled a little, both amused and annoyed at Ralph's cleverness. "Because he's the smartest one of us and he's forcing the whole team to work together again to figure this out."