Author's note: Not many were fortunate enough to have seen the short-lived TV show starring Parker Stevenson and Ashley Crow in 1988 called Probe. And if you don't know it, you can still see it, mercilessly butchered but still fairly watchable, on Youtube. If you like my writing style, read this one, even if you don't know Probe. I think it's by far my most polished work.
A couple of shout-outs: Reviewer "Ronda", you get credit for instigating this one. A single well-timed review can serve as a great motivator. I thank you. And to Parker Stevenson, whom I had the great pleasure to meet personally in 2015 in Chicago, you breathed life into Austin James through acting, and inspired me to breathe life into him through writing. You'll always be more Austin James than Frank Hardy in my imagination.
Disclaimers: This is a work of fanfiction. I make no profit off of it. Included in this fiction are references, scenes, and some direct quotes from episodes of Probe, which were not written by me. Beyond this, the ideas and non-canon characters are products of my own imagination and any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Severance
by WasWoksa
Chapter 1
Mickey Castle dodged the flow of departing business people, quick stepping left, now right, banking sharply and turning to the side, as she navigated the main outer vestibule of Serendip. It was late afternoon, quitting time for the bulk of those corporate members who punched a time card, and Mickey was forging against the tide.
She had left Austin some twenty minutes ago, rather guiltily to be honest. Not that she was cutting out early—actually, historically speaking, there was no such thing as early. A workday for Austin could be an hour or two or a day or three, just depending on wherever his fancy took the two of them.
But she had left in a rather rushed way, with an appointment to keep. The disconcerting part of this particular errand was how it was so shrouded in secrecy. She took the call from Serendip's executive director, Graham McKinley, a short time after lunch. He had first inquired after Austin, as would be expected. Austin wasn't available, which was par whether he was physically present or not. One of Mickey's prime duties as his personal assistant was to run interference with the Serendip executive body for him. This time, he truly was not present. He had taken his battered, wood-paneled station wagon out not long after Mickey had arrived for the day, left her to eat the midday meal alone, and wasn't due back for probably another hour.
All that was unusual thus far was his going out alone. Typically, Mickey was invited along, to drive, if nothing else. Today, he had needed "to think." And apparently, whatever thinking he had in mind didn't need company.
The intrusive notion broke Mickey's stride as she progressed through the late afternoon foot traffic in the building, earning her a check to the backside from somebody's swinging tote bag passing swiftly on her left. She frowned, bit her lip, and continued forward, more slowly.
Austin was always thinking. He was thinking and fidgeting, and was unable to sit still five minutes together. He had made it known that certain factors more readily facilitated effective thinking for him—diagrams, for instance, and models, and complex classical music compositions. But for the past several days, Austin's ponderings had taken on a more solitary and silent character than Mickey was used to seeing from him. He hadn't even paged her once over the weekend, a rare phenomenon as long as she'd known him. She knew he was preoccupied. Austin wasn't accustomed to losing, and last Thursday, he had had to declare defeat on a pursuit he'd held dear.
Mickey didn't think he had even really known the man. It was a death, a homicide, brought to their attention by Austin's quirky police medical examiner friend, Miles Smanovitch. The dead man, one Edgar Johnson, was a Serendip groundskeeper who had been found by his grown son in the backyard shed at his rural home, shot once in the head. It had been a neat job, no theft, no ransacking, no shell casings left behind. It was a contract killing, as far as the police could tell, and wholly unrelated to Austin except for the memory of a single conversation that he'd had with the man three weeks prior. They had discussed a problem Edgar had recently discovered concerning his side interest, cultivating hybrid squash, and had parted ways with Austin leaving him his card, in case his new acquaintance had any further developments to report. Austin had taken a keen interest in the apparent Serendip connection, but referred the man to federal regulatory authorities rather than get involved in any direct way.
At the time, Mickey hadn't thought much of it. It was a random encounter, something that quickly faded into the nebulous past, unremarkable. And then the man had turned up dead, assassinated, still carrying Austin's card in his hip pocket, and the case landed right in Austin's fervid hands. Viewing his presumed negligence as unpardonable, he atoned himself by now pursuing the matter with disproportionate zeal. It was pure Austin James: obsessive, relentless, and nothing but trouble.
Mickey hesitated for just a moment at the bank of elevators before choosing to traipse up the stairs instead. She was less eager to reach her destination with every step.
During their earlier phone conversation, upon learning that Austin was not in earshot, Graham had readily made known to Mickey that his real purpose in calling was to speak to her. He requested to meet with her at his office this very day at the close of regular business hours. He asked her to come alone; to please not invite Austin to the interview. Not that it was any nasty, dark secret, he had assured Mickey in his formal, Australian-tinged vernacular. But it was a matter of some import that Graham thought best not to trouble Austin over, seeing as the matter was more relevant to his secretary anyway. Mickey's heart sank. It didn't sound good.
So come five 'o' clock, Mickey had abruptly announced her intention to depart, and to her chagrin, her determined science sleuth of a boss didn't even press for much explaining. He had just stopped tinkering with the assortment of flasks and solutions and papers spread out in front of him on his expansive laboratory table, peered up, his unruly hair dangling awkwardly over his forehead, and quirked a small smile.
"Going straight home?" he'd asked.
Mickey glanced down before answering him. "Not straight home. No." She looked back up from under her thatch of curly ash blond bangs. "I have a stop to make first, on the way. Shouldn't take long, I hope." She frowned, thinking. "Not too long." Then she'd plastered on a smile. "See you tomorrow?"
For the first time since Thursday, his distractedness receded and his blue eyes softened at her. He smiled faintly. "G'night, Mick."
At the door to the third floor executive anteroom, she stopped altogether. The room was expansive, intended to awe. The granite support beams and polished marble walls rose to unnecessary heights in a vaulted ceiling laced with indirect lighting fixtures. Both the wall and the double doors into the suite were glass, and through it Mickey could see between the assorted potted palms the remaining personnel pool had thinned considerably. Less than a handful of secretaries sat hunched over their desks or hitched to their telephones in that room, putting in their overtime. One of them was posted at the door of Graham McKinley, executive director. That particular woman would be the mistress of the secretary minions, the executive assistant. Mickey pressed her lips together, hiked her purse up higher on her shoulder, and pulled open the door.
The faint squeak of rotating hinges coupled with the flash of light reflecting off the door's glass panes caused Graham's chief secretary to look up from whatever was keeping her late and acknowledge Mickey with a stern nod.
"Hello, Jean," she said with utmost politeness and a smile. "Graham asked to see me?"
The woman, whom Mickey had known now for a full year and had spoken to directly on a number of occasions, answered with all the warmth of bag of frozen peas. In a tone lodged between indifferent and impatient, she answered, "Have a seat, Miss Castle. Mr. McKinley is with clients." She immediately picked her phone up off the cradle and turned away.
Mickey backed away from her and swept an appraising look over the room. Of the three other women present, none was interested enough in her being there to look up, let alone make eye contact and speak. This must be a grim business, handling the affairs of the office of the company's executive director—nothing like handling the activities of its president. She finally lowered herself into one of the leather lounge chairs near the outside windows, folded her arms over her purse on her lap, and took up waiting. It was a tedious business, encompassing all of forty-eight minutes, making her doubt the wisdom of hurrying to get there. The three minions had already left for the day by the time Graham's office door came ajar and three smart dressed businessmen filed out. Then Graham was standing in the doorway as well, his eyes meeting hers, and he beckoned her to come.
No sooner did she cross the threshold into his office, and Graham was ushering her further inside with an overwrought smile and many apologies for making her wait. He briskly pushed the door closed behind her and returned to the chair set behind the broad mahogany desk littered with myriad papers, file folders, and stacks of ledgers on alternating white and pale green lines. "I do thank you for coming so promptly, Miss Castle. This last appointment wasn't expected. Please come in and take a seat." Then he sat, and Mickey pulled back one of the two chairs arranged directly in front of the desk and carefully perched on the edge of it.
"And how are you all holding up at the bat cave?" Graham began casually, with a light chuckle that sounded more like a painfully unnatural cough.
Mickey caught herself frowning at him and corrected that with an equally unconvinced smile. "Um, holding up? Just fine, I guess. It's been kind of quiet. Well, since the party, anyway." Of course Graham would begin with small talk. He was a rather formulaic diplomat. But the tension the man was emitting today was oppressive, and it wasn't lifting any with Mickey's reference to last Thursday's directors' banquet at the McKinley home, the most likely precursor to this meeting. With growing trepidation, she waited for him to get to what was really on his mind.
"I see you've been with us for over a year now, Miss Castle," he was saying, his hands steepled in front of him on top of a file folder, her employee folder, perhaps? That hardly seemed fair. Austin was the one who raised the ruckus Thursday night. "Fourteen months, if I'm not mistaken." The secretary nodded absently, eying the folder and still waiting for the meat of the matter to surface. "You know, that's a special record for Austin. No one else has been able to tolerate him for more than a week or two, at best."
"And vice versa," she heard herself answer in a low voice. It was almost a knee-jerk reaction to criticism of the man. She had become rather skilled in deflecting it.
Graham had the decency to look sheepish. He'd heard her well enough. "Well," he said. Then he shook off the awkwardness and continued with more vigor. "The point is you have certainly shown both me and the board outstanding service, both for Austin James and for the good of the company. I want you to know that Serendip, its board, its officers, and myself, do thank you for all that you do."
At some point during his statement, trepidation had turned to impatience and Mickey now released a long breath as she severed her grip on her purse strap and deposited it between her feet with a soft thump. "Am I in some sort of trouble? Is this where you hand me a pink slip or something?"
"You? No! Of course not." Graham pulled backwards a notch, a scowl on his face. "And I've said everything in my power to assure you to the contrary."
In her lap, Mickey cupped her hands over her kneecaps. "I'm sorry, but it sounds to me like you're giving me some sort of send-off, and I still don't even know why you called me over here, or why you wanted me and not Austin. I can't imagine anything that we could discuss that wouldn't directly relate to him, or that I'd give an answer to without consulting him first. I just wish you'd tell me what I'm doing here."
He was bobbing his head at her, finally cutting in as she stopped to draw a breath. "Yes, yes. Well, that's just the point. We're standing in the gap, figuratively speaking…" He hesitated, pushed back from the desk a little on swiveling casters. "The truth of the matter is, I—that is, Serendip, as a whole—"
"Whatever it is, he ought to be here. I'm just a secretary. He's the president of the company!"
"Was," Graham corrected, sharply. "He was the president. And I don't see what his being here now would accomplish." He paused to throw a glance up toward the angular, Roman-numeraled wall clock hanging to his right. His expression darkened, and he muttered, "As of fifty minutes ago, Serendip has no president."
Mickey sucked in a breath, tried to speak, and failed. Her mouth hung open, but nothing came out, nothing coherent. Suddenly, her vision was tunneling, until she let out the breath she didn't realize she was holding. And in that swollen moment of horrified stupor, Graham McKinley, apparently oblivious to her distress, continued talking.
"I don't relish telling the board about it in the morning, not to mention the shareholders. But never mind all that. As I was saying, the status of Austin James in relation to Serendip will not in any way jeopardize your employment with us, your pension, or your other accrued benefits. I would like to say we could maintain your pay grade as well, and certainly you will be first in line for consideration for the next executive assistant vacancy, but unfortunately, at present—"
Shock turned instantly to white hot fury, and Mickey leapt to her feet, her uncastered chair legs squealing noisily against the polished marble floor. "How could you!?" she hissed. She even stomped her foot once, for good measure. "Just because he doesn't fit into your neat little box of proper presidential behavior, because he digs into problems wherever he finds them, whether they're on the agenda or not—" The tone of her voice was rising substantially in both volume and tempo, even as she snatched her purse up off the floor and clutched it in front of her. "After everything he's done for you—he might have saved your life once, do you remember that? And you still thought he was crazy, just some mad scientist living like some comic book character out of his own little fantasy land…a bat cave. Well, you were wrong. Austin James is brilliant and he's sane, and you've been luckier than you'll ever know just to be able to claim his name to this dump, let alone—"
If Graham had been attempting to quell the flood of her vehemence, she hadn't noticed until his hand was splayed across his face, his elbow propped on the desk, and he nudged his voice one more notch above hers to shout, "Nobody fired him!"
"Huh?" She slowly backed into the chair and sat again.
"He wasn't let go, Miss Castle. He quit, all on his own. He came in today expressly for the purpose of resigning Serendip. All his ties here are severed, effective end of the day. His words, not mine." His head cocked slightly and he looked puzzled. "He didn't tell you?"
Rendered speechless once again, she merely shook her head.
Not quite two hours after Mickey arrived for her appointment, she left Serendip in the blaze of ruddy twilight. She settled back into her small blue sedan and retraced her steps under the glow of newly illumined streetlights back in the direction of her wayward boss and his warehouse abode. It was the logical next step. She needed to hear it from Austin himself; Effective end of the day. She had little doubt Graham McKinley's admission was in earnest, but the reality of the situation, that Austin was, in fact, no longer her boss, simply wasn't penetrating her brain.
She might have predicted this was coming, had she paid better attention. The signs were there: Austin's stony reaction Thursday night to being told by Graham and others on the executive board to drop his nosing into Serendip's genetics division under pain of restraining order, his suddenly remote behavior the next day, the strangely tidy appearance of the warehouse Monday morning. And yet, as she numbly attended to the mechanics of driving and to a route she could practically trace blindfolded, a small and fanciful part of her still wanted to find Austin as baffled as she, denying the whole thing as a crazy joke of the cosmos.
But the larger, more pragmatic part, the part that wasn't still paralyzed in shock and denial, understood that Austin had just changed his course, and had spun hers out of orbit, careening off into the great unknown. Just as he had assured her the day they met, he was sponsoring the greatest adventure of her life. Except this time, he would not be a part of it.
A chapter of her life was ending, and much too soon. Just when she had gotten comfortable with the situation, just when she had become, well, attached, it was gone. She was on her own again. Sort of. Well, anyway, she was relegated to living out of the back bedroom of her mother's house indefinitely. She was without a job, canned, unemployed. Okay, not exactly. Graham had put an offer out there, should she agree to accept it. She could enter the secretarial pool at a lower rate of pay, or she could take a severance package and leave. It didn't have to be the end of her employment, certainly not of her income. She might not be Austin's secretary, but she remained an employee of Serendip. Sure, it was a demotion, but at least she might have a normal, structured work life with clear start and stop times, weekends off, and defined tasks, like filing and making phone calls. No more breaking and entering, or getting tied up or beat up or run down, threatened, cajoled, challenged...No more crazy, mind-bending, heart-pounding escapades.
No more Austin.
She blinked back an unwelcome seepage welling up around her eyeballs and scowled at herself. If he was walking away from all his Serendip ties, even his own unsuspecting secretary—no, friend. Close friend—well, he could at least be prevailed upon to tell her himself. What were his last words to her today?
"G'night, Mick."
He hadn't even had the decency to warn her, to explain, to say goodbye.
The seepage spilled over the confines of her eyelids. "Darn it," she muttered, fishing in her jacket pocket for a tissue as she navigated the turn into the warehouse lot one-handed. She pulled into her usual place alongside the building and sat, dabbing her eyes for a moment, composing herself. It would never do, to present herself to him emotionally unhinged. Besides, he deserved a chance to explain himself. Better he do it after the fact than not at all. She got out of the car in the still nighttime air, trudged up to the warehouse door and punched in the five-digit door code she knew as well as her own birthdate.
Nothing. The number panel flashed red a few times, but there was no familiar click and the door remained unresponsive. She stared at it. Surely he didn't... He wouldn't. She pressed in the code again, very slowly.
Still nothing. The flashing red lights mocked her momentarily.
"Austin!" she yelled at the disobliging door. Then she banged on it twice, in tandem with his first and last name. "Austin!" bang, "James!" bang. The door was metal and banging rather hurt, so she stopped short of a third pass. Riding a wave of growing indignation, she shouted his name into the night one more time before another thought occurred to her. She turned around suddenly, facing the empty lot, searching it with her eyes. There was the usual assortment of wood pallets leaning against the warehouse wall next to the main service dock. The permanent dumpster was just visible around the corner at the rear of the building. But the lot itself was empty. Aside from her own car, no other vehicle populated the property, definitely no battered, wood-paneled station wagon. He wasn't even home. He was gone and he locked her out.
Sorrow and outrage united to launch one last assault against the detestable metal door, and with no regard whatsoever for the personal consequences, she dealt it an impassioned kick. That hurt considerably worse than pounding with her fist, and she had an entirely different reason to cry as she limped back to her car.
Three hours later, she finally steered into the driveway of the modest ranch home she shared with her mother. She had left the emergency room at College Central Hospital with her non-displaced fractured right foot in a boot, necessitating the use of her left foot for the gas and brake. In her hand, she clutched the slingback of her right shoe, a prescription bottle of pain pills and discharge instructions advising her to rest, ice, and elevate the foot, and follow up with the orthopedist in six weeks.
She limped up the driveway to the front door, ready for nothing more ambitious than swallowing a couple of those pills, exchanging her work clothes for an oversized nightshirt, and collapsing into bed.
Beverly Castle was there to catch the door as Mickey opened it, and Mickey grimaced at the look of weary concern etched into her fair features. "Michelle, you know I don't like to be that way, but where were you?"
"Sorry, Mom."
"I hate it when you do that. How hard is it to drop a quick phone call? That's all. You don't even have to tell me where you are or when you'll be back. Just tell me you're alive and—What in the world happened to your foot?!"
Suddenly, a firm grip had Mickey under her arm and she was being manually steered out of the foyer and into the living room. Beverly had caught up Mickey's purse off her shoulder and plunked it down beside the couch. She waited expectantly, eyes on the couch to prompt movement that direction. But right there, Mickey resisted sitting. "I'm okay."
"Sit."
"Mom, really, I'm—"
The older woman drew herself more upright and the creases around her mouth deepened. "Sit down," she ordered firmly, "prop up that leg, and tell me what happened."
"I'm okay, Mom. Really." Mickey nestled herself down on one end of the couch. It wasn't worth the energy required to argue. "It was just a dumb accident—"
"You were in an accident?" Beverly tossed a worried look over her shoulder toward the front picture window. "Well, is the car okay?"
"Mom," Mickey groaned, twisting to her right so she could hoist her immobilizer boot onto the couch. "Not that kind of accident. I ki—uh, kind of caught my foot on a door. It was a dumb mistake; I did it to myself. And it's been a really lousy day. I don't even want to talk about it." She sighed and leaned back against the brocade fabric of the couch, closing her eyes. "I just want to go to bed. Can we please wait until tomorrow and I'll tell you all about it then?"
"Don't you have to work tomorrow?"
Mickey's eyes stayed shut. "I don't think so," she said softly.
"Well, I suppose you wouldn't," Beverly continued, unfazed. She ran a hand through her mop of short, curly hair. "I don't know where you ended up, but your boss, Austin James, came over. He waited for you."
Mickey's heart felt like it suddenly stopped cold. Her eyes snapped open, and she searched for her voice while her mother blithely continued her report.
"He stayed for supper, but not dessert. Eventually, he had to stop waiting. I guess he's left on some kind of business trip tonight. Isn't that strange? I usually assume when you're late it's because you're with him. Now I don't know what to think."
While she was still talking, Mickey turned and used both hands to lower her injured leg back down to the floor. Then she levered herself back up on her feet and stood there, listing a little. "He was here, here at this house?"
Beverly nodded, frowning worriedly. "He said he paged you, but you didn't call. Didn't you get the page?"
She didn't. She couldn't. Her pager had been left on the desk of Graham McKinley at Serendip when she found out Austin had unceremoniously ditched her. Her head was beginning to throb almost as badly as her broken foot. She massaged her temples with the hand cradling her face.
"Oh, honey, I'm so sorry. I'm sure he'll call you when he gets back and you'll get this whole thing straightened out." Mickey felt a reassuring grip around her shoulder that failed to make her feel any better. "Are you sure you're okay? You really should go lie down. Can I get you something?"
She could imagine no better idea than lying down. Maybe after a couple of those painkillers and a solid night's sleep, she might wake up better suited to deal with the fallout of today. "Just give me a hand, here, Mom. I want to go to bed."