Over a year ago, it became rather evident to the FBI that top secret and sensitive designs had been stolen from a variety of companies with government contracts. Alarmingly, many of them had projects tied to national defense, some at the cutting edge of technology.

The thefts occurred over a substantial period of time, and there was some debate as to how long this had been happening. What was clear, however, that a core group of individuals were at the center of the thefts and would only need a matter of months to infiltrate the companies and their security. They were swift and precise, so much so that the companies had no idea they were getting ripped off until very familiar designs and prototypes ended up on the black market.

The illegal sales of these designs were swift and quiet; long enough for the companies to be caught off guard, but quick enough to make any progress or updates on the designs negligible.

They also knew to take enough time off between the thefts and lay low for awhile so they couldn't be tracked.

About six months later, Michael and his team caught this when government analysts couldn't sit on the intel any longer. With that intel came one of the best criminologists the Bureau had seen in a long time. Natalie Markins had pieced everything together and was able to track the thefts at least five years, with evidence that could date back even further.

Natalie was brilliant, but she was book-smart and desk-smart and sometimes lacked certain skills that would allow her to fit in to the social-norm. But the FBI couldn't exist solely on field agents; the meat of their work relied on criminologists and analysts who spent the majority of their government career as desk jockeys.

She patiently waited for Paul Taylor's team to show up as she sat inside a drab and featureless room, save for a projector, screen, a few tables and chairs as well as her laptop. Natalie was quite familiar with Paul and his team members; she had worked with them in some capacity before. These particular Special Agents were more appreciative of her work and research, much more than others in the Bureau.

Sadly, Natalie had been on the receiving end of the "us vs. them" culture within the Bureau between the field agents and internal agents like her. Everyone knew the importance of her work along with her fellow colleagues, but the Field Agents always seemed to get more internal recognition. Her only solace from this was when the media reported about cases, there was no distinction made between the criminologists who did the work in the caverns of the Hoover Building, or the Special Agents in the field who caught shit or made the arrests, it was the FBI that saved the day. She didn't like that any more than Field Agents did, but at least they weren't getting preferential treatment from the public like they were internally.

Natalie wouldn't have made for good media fodder, anyway. She never was one to stay on top of trends and was rather plain looking. It was her choice, she never had a lot of time to really doll herself up and try to impress people – there was a lot of work to be done. She wore her brown hair in a modest ponytail and tended to dress in darker colors, staying close to black or charcoal suits. Her black and somewhat-thick rimmed glasses were only slightly in style, and were chosen as an alternative to contact lenses because Natalie just simply didn't want to deal them.

She didn't dwell much on what other people would call her shortcomings. Natalie was damn good at what she did and she knew it. If there was one thing on which she didn't second guess herself, it was her research and her skills as a criminologist. Some chose to call her arrogant and chose to distance themselves from her, but she chose to consider herself confident and competent. In just a few minutes, she was about to brief the team who would make a historic bust – all thanks to her intel.


Outside in the hallway, Michael and his two partners, Lonnie Sullivan and Jordan Muntzy, with their team leader, Paul Taylor walked together toward the briefing room. They cracked jokes and laughed, that was their style. When the time came to be serious, they would be, but otherwise they were laidback, and prided themselves on eschewing the model of the stuffy FBI Agent with no sense of humor.

Taylor may have been the team leader, but the team didn't belong to him, they all belonged to each other. They had been working together for almost two years, investigating varying cases of industrial espionage, government-sensitive thefts and various threats. This case was perfect for them.

As they reached the briefing room, Michael began to open the door, but he stopped and turned around. Muntzy was the first to react, "What?" he asked, barely able to stifle some laughter.

"Which one of you decided to make some smart-ass comment about me going through the door first," Michael asked. He looked back and forth between Taylor, Muntzy and Lonnie, all of whom were smiling and trying hard not to laugh.

It was an inside joke between the four of them, hell even Natalie was in on it sometimes. Somehow, no matter who was standing or walking next to whom, or how far behind he was, Michael always ended up being the first through a door, or the first to stand in a line. Sometimes it was intentional; the team would yield to Michael and let him go ahead – in those situations, Michael wouldn't realize what happened until he was through the door. Other situations, like this one, they were so preoccupied with something, they wouldn't notice that Michael almost magically appeared ahead of them.

The only times it wasn't funny was when Michael was first during a rough situation. But his

combat and law-enforcement skills always saved his hide. When it was all over and no one was hurt, they would laugh about it and jokingly thank Michael.

This time, neither of the team were able to say their snide comment, for the door opened and on the other side was Natalie, "Good morning, Michael," she said, "figured you'd be the first one through."

Natalie's comment sent everyone over the edge and into near hysterics, causing other agents in the hallway to quizzically look at them as they passed by.

Everyone followed Michael and Natalie into the briefing room. Natalie took her place at the podium, while Michael sat down next to Muntzy. Taylor and Lonnie sat across from them. On the screen was what appeared to be a photo taken from surveillance footage of a man. The man appeared to be middle-aged, with dark brown hair that was somewhere between not short enough, but not too long, and a hardened face that might not be capable of smiling.

"This is Fred Wilson," Natalie said, "he's the Chief of Security for The NDS Group. NDS is one of our contractors specializing in systems engineering, operations and maintenance. Their main contract is developing a new computer system that will network and link all government databases and mainframes. It's done using a new computer processor that's more powerful than anything we've ever seen."

Taylor slightly raised his hand just to be polite and asked, "How did you track them to NDS?"

"After their most recent theft last year, we identified prime targets they may be interested in, based upon previous thefts. This processor is designed for government use only, never in the public sector. If it gets out there on the black market, it could cripple the worldwide economy by collapsing the computer market."

Michael whistled, "All because AMD and Intel would be undercut."

Natalie nodded, "Exactly. Now Wilson may be Chief of Security but he isn't protecting much these days, if anything. He doesn't work alone; we believe he has a team, but we haven't been able to identify any patterns except for one other man," Natalie brought a new picture on the screen. Facing them was a man who may have been slightly older than Wilson, but had a slimmer face, and shorter-gray hair that was well-kept, perhaps in military regulation, "His name is Grey. Here's the deal, these two guys are the pattern, but it's definitely Wilson calling the shots. We think that Wilson gets into security, takes it over, brings in Grey, dismisses everyone, and then hires local guys with not-so-clean-records to fill the rest of the spots and not ask questions."

Michael looked at the picture of Grey and immediately noticed something familiar, but he couldn't place it. He wasn't sure if Grey was just someone who had one of those faces, or if he knew him somehow. It was Grey's military-style haircut that stood out the most to Michael, he had seen that type of haircut a million times on a bunch of different men before, but something was different. It bothered him that he couldn't put his finger on it. "Something doesn't seem right here," he said.

"Hey man," Muntzy said, "this whole thing seems messed up."

"No, it's not that," Michael pointed to the picture, "I think I know this guy."

Taylor turned toward Michael, "How so?"

"Couldn't tell ya, boss. But something's familiar."

"We couldn't find anything on him, aside from tracking him with Wilson through past thefts. Otherwise he has a clean record." Natalie changed to another picture again, this time of a shorter man with glasses, slightly balding, smiling this time and standing with a strawberry-blonde woman who was considerably younger.

"Mmm-mmm-mmm," Muntzy exclaimed, "Please tell me you know her name."

Natalie rolled her eyes, "The man is Charles Acton, and he's the CEO of NDS. He has a reputation of having secretaries-of-the-month if you know what I mean. Acton is a notorious gambler, and loves to take his work on the road. Each time, every year, he heads out to Vegas and drops a million or two at the tables. Considering how unsecure of a move that is, I'm pretty damn sure this is where Wilson is going to make the steal."

"Now Nat, before we go further, lemme ask you this – have we tipped off Acton that he's about to get ripped off?" Taylor asked. He probably asked the question that was on everyone's minds in the room, at least everyone but Natalie.

Natalie shook her head, "No," she said, "we cant risk Wilson somehow finding out. If he's somehow taken over security in a few months, that means he's gotten to Acton. We can't risk tipping our hand – he's too dumb to heed our advice if we told him to keep quiet about it. We need to play this close to the chest.

"That's two poker references in one thought, Agent Markins. Did you forget to invite us to those wild parties you throw every night?" Muntzy asked.

"She could have, but she would have had your money, clothes and car in the first hand," Taylor shot back. He knew Natalie wouldn't have a witty comeback, either because her straightforward mind couldn't stray far enough to be a smart ass, or because she was anxious to get the rest of the briefing over.

The team let her finish the rest of her briefing without incident. Before she left the room, she wished them the best of luck. Deep down inside, she was a bit jealous she wouldn't be going with them. Not that field work was of any interest to her, but this case had been her baby for over six months, and in another six months, a team of agents would be in Las Vegas to break it. Oh well, she thought, at least it wasn't a bunch of thankless assholes doing the job.

"What's our plan?" Lonnie asked after Natalie left.

"Whoa, she speaks," Muntzy said.

"You've been pretty quiet, Lonnie," Taylor said, "something on your mind?"

Lonnie shook her head and sighed a little. Her question was merely hypothetical and that's what bothered her, she already knew the answer to the question, at least regarding her. Since the team focused a lot on industrial espionage and sometimes went undercover, Lonnie often found her role marginalized to that of a secretary or administrative assistant.

It's common knowledge that secretaries and assistants frequently 'hear things,' so much so that they are desired interview sources for lots of journalists. Whenever there is an anonymous sourced cited in a report, chances are it came from a secretary. But still, Lonnie wanted to avoid getting typecast.

"I already know where I fit into this," she said.

Taylor paused for awhile – there was no other way to soften the blow, "Well, kinda…"

Lonnie cut him off, "Jesus," she said. She stood up, crossed her arms and paced the room, "Come on Paul, give me a break," she pointed to her breasts and flipped her hand through her hair, "I'm more than just these and this. Get me in the middle of something… I'm just tired of being a ditzy secretary."

"No one said you have to be ditzy," Paul said, "someone is able to get close to these CEO's and rip them off right from under their noses. If you can get close enough you can figure it out, because I tell you what, it sure as hell isn't Wilson himself. It's either one of his shady local cronies, or someone else we haven't figured yet. We got six months until Acton hits the Strip."

Paul had the gift of being able to motivate the unmotivated. Lonnie was defeated, but knew she was able to get the job done. Paul knew too. His pep-talk was just as unnecessary as Lonnie's question. "So, Lonnie, you're going in almost right away to get close to Wilson and his staff, or even Acton himself. You'll know what to do. Acton plays at the same hotel every year, the Montecito. Muntzy, you're gonna be on maintenance staff."

"Yo, why's the Mexican on maintenance, man?" Muntzy asked. Michael was the first to laugh, with Lonnie and Paul following soon after. "Where are you going to be? The valet?"

"My black-ass will be watching all of you and keeping you alive," Taylor said. "Michael is going to be the last to go in. A few days before Acton heads to Vegas, we're going to arrange for a handful of Wilson's security staff to get arrested. They'll scramble to find help at the last minute and that's where you come in, Mike. We'll give you a phony background that's watertight and irresistible."

"I always liked feeling irresistible," Michael quipped.

"Don't get used to it," Lonnie shot back. In any other situation the team would have thought Lonnie was being sarcastic – but not this time. Her tone was clipped and bitter. Whatever was behind that statement, she meant it.

And the team didn't get a chance to find out, because before they could finish processing it, Lonnie was gone.


A few hours later Muntzy walked through a clearing and found himself facing a statue of Theodore Roosevelt. He had a hunch Lonnie would be somewhere on this tiny island – it was her favorite place to go and reflect, especially when things bothered her. That, and he already checked her apartment and favorite restaurant.

"You probably should have come here first," a familiar voice said from off to his side.

Lonnie was not only skilled at finishing Muntzy's sentences, but also his thoughts – sometimes before he could manage to complete one. She sat on a bench, practically bent in half with her legs pulled close to her chest. Muntzy had always remarked on how painful and uncomfortable it had to be, but she maintained it was her favorite and most comforting position.

While Muntzy's first instinct was to come here, he also figured that Lonnie might have needed some time to herself. He walked over and sat down.

She allowed herself to teeter to her left and rested her head on Muntzy's shoulder, but still maintained her folded position. She closed her eyes and listened to the birds and the wind rustling through the trees. A plane flew low overhead on its final approach to Reagan-National Airport. For the moment, Lonnie let herself get lost in the surroundings.

To say she never wanted this would be false; Lonnie always had some small voice nagging her in the back of her head that she would end up in law enforcement, which was incredibly ironic given she spent the majority of her time in junior high and in high school raising all kinds of hell in her small town.

Lonnie Sullivan was smart – whether it was naturally talented, or good and memorizing useless facts in class, she never had a problem with academics. Her major problem was shared among most of the children in her town – boredom.

She grew up in a master planned community about 25 miles outside of the suburbs of a major city. The community was developed in anticipation of burgeoning growth, but also marketed to families wanting to escape the perils of dangerous city life. Everything was meticulously planned, except how to entertain the town's youth.

Lonnie filled plenty of her days and nights with partying, drinking, vandalism, and casual sex – having never been caught. Mainly because the town's police were worried about giving the kids any kind of rap sheets. Of course this only encouraged the behavior. When high school graduation came around, most, if not all of her friends found themselves stuck there. With grades barely acceptable for high school graduation, let alone college, not that any of them had the motivation to move on in the first place.

She quickly found herself ostracized from her friends when she was the sole recipient of a full-ride scholarship to the state's fourth-tier university. And while Lonnie was excited to get out of the faux-idyllic and mediocre suburban life she grew up in, she found herself in what she thought to be an equally mediocre college, often the butt of jokes from students at other schools in the state. Lonnie did her best to make the most of her experience there… after all it was free. She embraced the typical college lifestyle, almost an extension of her life from home, just without the vandalism. And just like before, Lonnie's grades almost never suffered.

Still, she couldn't shake the feeling that she was meant for something more, and often lost sleep over her fears that she was destined to lead nothing but an average life.

One day, she wandered through a career fair on campus, still hungover, and still in her clothes from the previous nights date dash. She had neared the end of her junior year, and while she didn't dare approach any of the recruiters, she hoped she would find something that would pique her interest, and maybe use her generic, mediocre, integrated communication major.

Then she saw three words – Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity – printed on some kind of sign, but obscured by the handful of students walking between the many tables. She laughed to herself because they formed the initials of the FBI, but as she drew closer, she realized it was the FBI.

And that's when that small nagging voice came back – in the form of one of many cops who tried to stop Lonnie and her friends back home – who once told her that he wouldn't be surprised if she ended up somewhere in the field of law. She reflected on that, noting how he left it quite ambiguous… was he trying to inspire her to become a cop? A lawyer? Either way, Lonnie felt motivation that she had never felt before and resolved to spend her senior year working towards joining the FBI. Goodbye, mediocre life.

But now… those feelings came rushing back to her, and she didn't like it. She escaped. She moved on. She worked hard to join the Bureau and succeeded. But now she felt marginalized. Again. "Did you ever feel like you were meant for something more?" she asked, absently.

Muntzy had been waiting for Lonnie to say something. It was very rare that she would get so introspective, but it's happened at times. He gave up not too long ago trying to be a fixer, that type of hero to rush and solve her problems immediately. Sometimes a girl just needs someone to listen, she would say.

But in all those fleeting moments of thought, she never sounded as full of self-doubt as she did now. "Every day," he said, "that's why I'm here."

Lonnie shook her head, "No, that's not what I meant."

"I didn't think that was a multiple choice question," Muntzy said.

Lonnie eased in more against Muntzy and turned her body so her legs drooped off the side of the bench. She sighed, "Is it what you expected?" She glanced down at her ID and badge and the leather pouch containing them and turned them over and over in her hands.

"The first thing they told us at Quantico was to go in with no expectations," he said, looking at her badge as well, "besides, we've both been doing this a few years now – it's kinda hard to predict what to expect next."

Muntzy and Lonnie both met at the FBI Academy in Quantico, VA. By that point she had found enough purpose in her life to clean up her act and get serious about everything. Meeting Muntzy solidified that even further. She had quickly run out of significant firsts over the last ten years, but Muntzy became her first love.

Of course, cadets were strongly discouraged from dating each other because any kind of relationship that turned adversarial could spell trouble. Naturally, it happened to a lot of their friends, but somehow they escaped that.

Maybe that's because they both played it cool and kept it on the down-low. To both of them, it was nobody's business but their own – but they also knew that eventual graduation and assignment could end the relationship all the same.

Another plane sailed overhead, drowning out the birds and her thoughts, "Did Michael come with you?"

"No," Muntzy said, "just me… just us."

"Good," Lonnie replied. Muntzy couldn't see but she quietly chided herself for thinking that. While their brother-sister dynamic made life easier, the deeper connection she had with Muntzy was what she needed right now.

More silence between the two of them. Muntzy gently kissed Lonnie on the top of her head and looked around them. He rubbed her shoulder as he closed his eyes as well, listening to the birds and the wind through the trees. For a second he thought she fell asleep, and for good reason too as she seemed to need a bit of rest, but after another plane passed overhead, she was the first to speak up.

"Why are you here?" she absentmindedly asked, "What are you getting out of all of this."

"I'm here to serve my country," Muntzy replied, although he wasn't sure what Lonnie was really asking or getting at. He figured this might be the best way to find out what was really bothering her.

Lonnie scoffed. Why, she had no idea because she heard his answer so many times before. Her head was so clouded with emotion; she didn't realize she had been crying for most of the conversation. She could feel Muntzy take in a huge breath and he tensed up. She offended him somehow with her scoff, but she didn't truly didn't mean anything by it. She wiped a few tears away and wanted to say something before she dug a deeper hole, but Muntzy was already on the defensive…

With a more emphatic voice, he said, "I watched my brother enlist and deploy to Afghanistan after 9/11, then get shipped over to Iraq for no God-damned reason and never come home. I wanted to serve, but I wanted to make a difference over here. Not in some far off land."

"Jordan…"

Muntzy cut her off, "Lonnie, I really want to help you through this, I want to fix whatever is bothering you – you know I love you. You know I'm here, Lonnie. I'm here. But we got a hell of a case…"

Before Muntzy could barely finish the last word, Lonnie shot up straight and yelled, "The case! Of all fucking things to bring up now, you bring up the case?"

"Lonnie we got work to do…"

"And we're the ones who get shot at when something goes wrong. Have you given any thought to that? Christ, you and Michael both said there are things about this case that bother you!"

Muntzy was trying to keep his patience, but it was starting to wear thin. "There are plenty of things that bother me, but it's not my place to worry about them! Besides, what the hell do you care? Michael and I are the ones in the middle of the shit, you're just going to be a…"

He stopped, realizing what he had just said.

That last part hurt. Lonnie stood up slowly but with her fists clenched. "I can't do this anymore, Jordan. I just…" Tears began to flow from her eyes again, "When this case is over, I'm done."

Muntzy stared at her for a moment, with a bemused expression on his face. He stood up and took a step towards her, but she took two steps back. "Lonnie? What are you talking about? Done with the Bureau? Or done with us?"

"Yes," was her simple reply.

He tried to take another step, but she repeated her previous move, "And then what, Lonnie? What comes after that? What will you do?"

Lonnie sobbed again, "I heard I'm really good at being a secretary."