Erin Strauss walked confidantly back up the steps to the doors of the Senate building, the sweet smell of spring tulips combined with the warm sun on her face hardened her resolve. Her career, her future in the Bureau was on the line. She knew what she had to do. She didn't care who's toes she had to step on. Alex Blake, would have to be another casualty on her way to the top.
She caught sight of Alex as soon as she entered the building her dark hair shone brightly against the sulight streaming through the window. She sat alone on the bench outside the meeting room. Apparently, Alex was waiting to give her testimony. Erin could see the bags under the other woman's eyes and the faint wrinkles in her white button-down blouse. She could've almost taken pity on her. She rose hastily, her brown eyes, bloodshot.
"What do you plan on telling them?" She asked worriedly.
"Whatever I have to." Erin replied, cooly. As she entered the meeting room preparing to face the seven committee members. She took her seat in the center of the podium facing the Chairman. A single white tulip hung out of the pocket on his suit coat. That innocent tulip seemed so out of place in a room full of politcians that Erin couldn't keep her eyes off of it. The questions came at her like gunfire. Each answer was another nail in Agent Blake's coffin.
"Is it your understanding that Supervisory Speciel Agent Alex Blake knowingly defied orders and arrested Doctor Hatfill in the Amarathrax case, giving him cause to sue the Federal Goverment?"
Erin took a breath to steady her voice, her eyes trained on the pure white flower. The words that would change the course of history fell off her lips.
"Yes, it was Agent Blake who wrongfully arrested Doctor Hatfill."
The tulip was innocent, Alex Blake might have been, and, Erin, didn't need to be.
Nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion - Oscar Wilde
Finished.
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