Savior.

A/N: A Big Thank You to everybody who has reviewed, or put this story on alert or on their favorites list. I am sorry for the delay in updating this story, and I will do my best not to keep you waiting so long for the next one. To make up for my tardiness here is an extra long chapter. I also want to send out a huge thanks to Jedi Skysinger for her input and BETA of this mammoth chapter.

Warning: There is a very minor mention of child abuse (Mikey's home life). Also some parts refer to the Bosnian war, and war crimes. As I've stated before this is a dark story.

Part Seven,

Sam left Michael's room and headed straight for the CIA station chief's office. He was going to have to find a way of suggesting that if she wanted to get Mike Westen to 'fess up to what had happened in that Chechen farmhouse, she needed to tighten up her security measures.

He reached her outer office, his fingers closing around the handle when he heard her voice coming from inside.

"Steven! Put a call through to the hospital. When Westen is ready to leave post op, have him put in a single room as far away from Sizemore as possible and then arrange for a guard to be posted on their rooms."

Taking a deep breath he opened the door, stopping just inside the room. She looked across at him, her eyes flickering over his clean shaven features and freshly laundered fatigues.

With a welcoming smile on her lips, she beckoned him to follow her. "Commander Axe."

Once inside her office, he closed the door and turned her to face him. Staring at her with solemn eyes, he gently cupped her shoulders. It was time to break the bad news.

"I heard what you said out there, but you're too late, Sandy. I went past Mikey's room and saw Sizemore being wheeled along the corridor."

He watched her carefully as she stiffened before shrugging his hands off her shoulders and turning her back on him. "This is exactly what I said would happen. If you're right about what occurred at the asset's home, then they've gone rogue. I'm going have to close them down before they end up killing more civilians and bring the whole agency into disrepute." She began to pace around the room, deep in thought.

Sam watched Rayna as she completed a circuit of her office. He knew if she was allowed to, she would keep going until she either came up with an answer or dropped from exhaustion. Taking the matter into his own hands, he caught hold of her around the waist and guided her to a chair.

"Sam, do I have to …." Anger flared in her eyes at his presumption.

He held up a hand to quell the words about to come from her mouth, while he pulled up another chair and sat down facing her.

"I know you're frustrated, but wearing a hole in the carpet isn't going to fix the problem, Sandy. You know if you're going to break Larry's hold over Westen, you can't go in angry. Larry's like choke weed and he's got his tendrils wrapped tight around the Kid. I noticed it in Serbia and it's gotten a helluva lot worse now."

She shook her head in denial, but a vivid image flashed before her eyes of an angry young man standing at attention in front of her desk while she demanded an explanation for his recent behavior.

"Serbia was a year ago. Since then they've travelled into areas where they had no clearance, failed to keep their superiors informed of their actions and they have both committed unsanctioned kills. I think this last act proves they are completely out of control."

Sam stared back her- both of them had committed unsanctioned kills. He had heard all the rumors circulating; spies really were a bunch of bitchy little girls talking about each other behind the others back.

"I heard the buzz that you've been using 'Michael Westen' as a code word for a special ops team in Russia. Is that because what happened in Kiev? It's all they talk about around the water coolers at Langley, Mikey's lil tour of the old Soviet Union."

She raised an eyebrow, not terribly surprised about how far the story had spread.

"Westen took down a whole spetsnaz team on his own." She smiled at the only bright spot of that mission. "We knew he'd done it by himself because when the tac team arrived, Sizemore had taken such a beating that he couldn't walk without help."

Sam grinned wolfishly at the thought of a beaten and bloody Larry Sizemore. "How?"

"Whatever they were planning went wrong and Larry was taken prisoner. The Russians must have used him as a punch bag, presumably trying to get Westen to surrender."

"Oh, man, what I'd a given to see that," Sam chuckled. "I don't suppose you've still got the mission photographs handy?"

"Those pics are classified, Sam."

"Yeah, but they're in his file, right? I promise not to tell- Just a peek," he leaned back in his chair and winked.

"Sam, you're not helping me here," She smiled back at him though, grateful for the break in the tension.

"Really? Doesn't just the thought of Larry beaten to a pulp give you a nice warm feeling?"

"It does," she agreed, but then got back to business. "Larry Sizemore is as good as untouchable and he knows it. He has connections throughout the agency. The only way I can get rid of him is if Westen blows the whistle on what happened outside Grozny and you've just told me that's not going to happen."

She was back on her feet again. "I've given that kid chance after chance, even when he didn't deserve it. Well, he can take the fall this time because this can't keep going on. They are out of control and, if he won't admit what happened, then I'm going to make damn sure he's burned and I'm going to make sure Larry doesn't get the chance to pull some strings this time."

"Hey, easy, Sandy baby, he's just a kid and Larry's got him all turned around. You didn't see him out in Serbia. Some of what he saw out there hit him hard and you didn't hear him yelling his head off about what went on in that farmhouse either. I tell ya what Larry did make him sick."

Sam was on his feet too, blocking her march around the room. "If you ask me you should get him out from under Larry's influence while he still has a soul- Cuz I tell ya, Mike Westen on the loose without a soul will be very scary thing."

The "Sandy baby" comment had very nearly earned Sam a punch to the jaw. She had had enough of that sort of patronizing talk from Larry Sizemore. She didn't like over familiarity, not even from somebody as close to her as Sam. But what he had said had given her hope for the young agent. If he had truly been sickened by what Larry had done...

"You know, it was right after they got back from Serbia that I started getting complaints about Westen, I should have come down hard on him then and split the pair up. He pulled a knife on Stanwyck." She saw the question in Sam's eyes. "That was my previous trainee. Westen had him pinned up against a wall."

She suddenly paled as another thought struck her; it was shortly after the altercation that Stanwyck had contracted food poisoning. She had put Westen on report and told him to clean up his act if he didn't want to be shipped back state side. A week later, Stanwyck had started to complain about feeling ill.

"Larry loves using a blade, but he's pretty fond of his poisons, too."

The warning had come from Larry's previous handler before she had gotten the privilege of trying to control him. Had Larry killed Stanwyck in reprisal for her pulling his Kid into her office?

She sat down heavily, staring up at Sam with a determined expression. "Tell me about Serbia, not the official report. But what actually happened there."

Sam took a deep breath and sat down facing her. "You read the reports?" he asked.

She stared back at him, Had she read the reports? She didn't speak the words, she didn't have to.

"Okay, jeez." Sam read her expression correctly. He felt a bit like a school boy telling tales.

He thought about how much he should tell her. She wasn't going to want to know about how he made contact with the two spies, though that first meeting certainly showed him how much Mike had changed since the last time he had seen him.

He had found the two spies waiting for him inside an abandoned cottage, Larry's eyes glinting at him through the darkness, Michael's hunched figure crouched by the empty fireplace looking like he was ready to pounce. It had only been when Larry had turned up the wick on an old oil lamp that he had noticed the blood and dirt ingrained into the clothes of two men; no, not just their clothes but into their skin and hair too. There had been an air about the pair of them of barely contained violence.

Larry had insisted that they waited until the moon had risen high in the sky and all traces of daylight had vanished before leading the way towards General Drava's camp. Sam remembered how surprised and sickened he had been as they had climbed over the crest of a hill and he got his first sight and smell of what the other two men had been dealing with for the last few months.

His senses had reeled at the stench coming from a pile of dead bodies near the entrance to the camp which appeared to have been left there to rot. Further into the camp they had passed by a drunken crowd cheering and jeering as the body of a man, hopefully dead, was dragged behind a motorbike and then there were the sobs and cries of the women... Sam closed his eyes not wanting to drag those memories back to the surface. He had been there for less than twenty four hours; Michael and Larry had lived in that camp for months before his arrival.

He remembered how bile had risen in his throat and at one point the terrified scream of a woman had sent his hand straying to his weapon. Michael had leaned in close to him, stopping him from drawing the handgun.

"Don't react, you can't help them. Not without blowing our cover," the younger man had hissed out the warning before letting go of his arm and moving ahead to keep pace with his mentor. He had walked behind them wondering how the two men had coped with what they were seeing every day and not gone insane.

"Sam?"

"Yeah - sorry. You know what went on there, right? You must have some idea of the things Mike must have witnessed. He was there for how long? Three or four months in hell, with Larry as his personal tour guide."

She nodded. "Yes, I have a good idea of what they faced and I saw first-hand how it had effected Westen. I tried to get him to accept a transfer to another region or, if he wanted to stay, to find him another agent to work with, but he refused to consider either offer."

She paused, remembering something that had concerned her at the time, something that hadn't rung true during their mission debriefing. At the time, her concerns had been swept under the rug by her section chief. Sizemore was an experienced agent and the two men were a successful team. "Stop looking for trouble" had been the final stark warning.

"Do you know what happened to Mitar Savic?" she stared as Sam paled. It confirmed her fears; Kiev wasn't the first time the two agents hadn't follow their orders.

"Sam, what happened? Their orders had been to locate and bring the arms dealer in for questioning, but they said he died during the extraction of General Drava."

"Oh yeah, he died alright," Sam snorted.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Pausing in the shadows, Larry pointed to a large tent. "Inside is the man we think is Drava. You ID him and then stay out of way while me and the Kid handle it."

"How are you going to do that?" he hissed. There had to be close to five hundred heavily armed men in the camp.

"Leave it to us," Westen replied a little too eagerly for his liking.

"C'mon," Larry urged him to move, leaving Michael behind. "In ten minutes, the Kid is going to set off a diversion and we're going to leave with the general."

"What about your mission? I thought you weren't to do anything..."

Larry laughed. "Two birds with one stone, Boy Scout. Let's just say our little arms thief is going to help us out with Drava."

Ten minutes later, there was a scream and a man came running seemingly out of nowhere with explosives strapped to his chest. Before anybody could help him, he disappeared in a massive fireball.

While the militia still was reeling from the surprise attack, more explosions went off adding to the chaos and confusion that was spreading rapidly throughout the camp.

"See?" Larry slapped him on the back as he led the way inside the tent.

"Sam, answer the damn question!"

"Sorry." Sam wiped a hand over his eyes. "I believe they used Savic as a decoy to get Drava out of the camp."

Rayna dropped her head down. It was the news she was dreading.

"That tour I sent Westen on after Kiev- I was hoping that getting him away from Larry and talking about what happened on his own would make him see the mistakes they'd made, but I can see now it was too little, too late." She shook her head, in either disgust or defeat. "You know, he spent the first two weeks acting like a grounded teenager and then, just when I thought the Kid was coming around, I find out Sizemore had managed to organize regular radio communications between them."

Sam rubbed his eyes, a sudden feeling of tiredness coming over him. "Look, it's pretty obvious whatever is going on with Mike isn't going to go away while he's under Larry's thumb. Talk to him in the morning;. hell, put the fear of God in him if you think that will help. But if he still won't give up Larry, before you throw him out into the cold, let me take a run at him. Like I said before, I know him. Maybe I can get him to see sense."

She studied Sam's worn out expression, taking note of the slump to his shoulders.

"C'mon." Thinking about Larry Sizemore and Michael Westen had given her the start of a massive migraine. She got to her feet and offered him her hand to help him up. "You're right. We're just going round in circles here. Westen can wait 'til morning."

She eyed him up and down, noticing the way he was standing, taking more weight onto the right hand side of his body. "Your knee is acting up again." It wasn't a question.

"Coupla aspirin'll take care out the swelling," Sam answered.

"A massage will take care of the 'swelling' quicker," she smiled.

"A massage, huh? Hm, you sure want to make the swelling go away, Sandy? I mean - "

"Shut up, Sam."

()

Michael woke up when an orderly drew the curtains back from over the small window in his room. As he lay there, he noticed one of little touches that showed Station Chief Kopec had taken charge. Standing in the corner of his room, dressed in a plain black suit, was one of her team of junior agents, one of the Den Mother's guard dogs.

"Hey, I hope I haven't kept you up all night," Michael smiled at the man.

He waited, but got no response to his greeting; definitely a guard dog, Larry was right. The station chief was pissed. He bit his lip. A guard in his room meant she must have found out about Larry's late night visit. But how?

A sudden sinking feeling settled in his gut. Sam Axe, the older man was interfering again.

Michael closed his eyes. Every time the SEAL and Larry came together it left him with a raging headache.

They were in an old abandoned cottage close to the Serbian militia's camp where the suspected war criminal General Milan Drava was lording it over a nearly five hundred strong army. The room was dark and smelt of rotten wood and mold, the atmosphere frosty and full of suppressed violence. Michael was uneasy, his friend, colleague and mentor was angry. More specifically, Larry was angry and disappointed with him.

"There was no need to call Kopec. What is it with you and her anyway? Do you still need your mommy to hold your hand?" A crafty glint had come into the older man's eyes and he chuckled. "Or maybe it's not your hand you want her to hold. Are you getting a thing for the Ice Queen, Kid?"

"Just following procedure, Lare," he answered from where he was crouching next to the ash and cinder filled fireplace.

"You're not a rookie any more. You've moved up into the big leagues. You don't need the Den Mother's approval every time you wanna wipe your ass," he paused when they both heard the crunch of a boot on the stony path outside.

"Now you've got us stuck with a damn nurse maid."

"Nurse maid," "Trained ape," "Knuckle dragger," Larry spent his time waiting for darkness to come doing his best to get a rise out of the SEAL and prove his own superiority.

"Vampire," "Ghoul," "Sadistic sonuvabitch," The insults hadn't just gone one way.

It had taken Michael less than ten minutes to realize he wasn't the only one who had a history with Sam Axe.

That had to be it. Sam was interfering- just like he had done before.

Drava was tied up, gagged and had a hood over his head. The UN chopper was due to arrive in another five minutes. Larry was off acquiring their transport for the next part of their mission.

"Mike, are you okay?"

He hadn't answered. He had known what was going through the other man's head.

"Talk to your handler, Mikey. Larry isn't known as a team player. You might do better with somebody else."

He remembered how he had glared at his friend. "I don't want a new partner. I'm learning a lot from Larry."

"Yeah, he's taught you all about mass murder and how to help him cover it up," Sam's dry response came out of nowhere.

Yes, it had to be Sam, trying to do the right thing.

"He's nothing more than a boy scout, Kid. Just remember who's got your back."

He needed a distraction. The two men weren't even in the room and yet somehow they were battling away inside his head. Shutting off the part of his brain Larry and Sam were using as their personal combat zone, Michael turned his attention to the only distraction in the room.

"Do you get paid by the hour?" he threw out the comment, just to see if he could get any sort of rise out of the man. Nothing. Kopec's guard dog remained motionless.

"Just remember what I told you. Stick with me, Kid, and I guarantee we'll get a commendation for neutralizing Broshev."

It was all very well and good for Larry to make these promises, but it wasn't him that Station Chief Kopec was about to rake over the coals. Allowing his eyes to close, Michael did his best to convince the guard that he was unconcerned by his presence.

By mid-day and still no sign of Kopec, Michael's nerves were beginning to fray. She was deliberately keeping him waiting, trying to wear him down. Well, he'd learned a long time ago that it was a waste of time to fear the inevitable. To be precise it had been twenty years ago his dear old dad had taught him that fearing the inevitable was a waste of time.

He hadn't meant to leave a burn mark on the dining room table. He had been trying to do a good thing. His ma had taken a licking the day before cuz she forgot to iron his dad's shirt. Well, that morning he had taken care of it. He had gotten up extra early and pulled a clean white shirt off the pile and set out to iron out the creases. He thought he was doing a real good job of it until the smell of something burning alerted him to the smoldering iron-shaped hole developing in the wooden table.

The screech from the fire alarm had then alerted the rest of the family to his mistake. So he had done what any six year old would have done. He ran away.

He had spent the whole day knowing and dreading what was going to happen when he eventually built up the nerve to return home. But when the sun went down, he knew he had no choice.

It was that night he learned that the fear of the belt had been far worse than the actual sting from the length of leather. He knew from prior experience that the pain would pass; that the marks on his back, behind and legs would heal.

He had just promised himself that one day he would be as big as his dad and one day he would give the old man a taste of what the rest of the family had to put up with.

When the door finally swung open and Station Chief Rayna Kopec stepped inside, he felt a wave of relief flow over him; the waiting was finally over.

He watched warily as she walked towards him, her back ramrod straight, her hair pulled back tightly. He guessed if she turned around he would see a thick braid of dirty blond hair lying between her shoulder blades. She stared down at him standing in an 'at ease' pose with her arms crossed over her chest, her cobalt eyes cool and flat.

Behind her, her latest trainee stood holding a clip board; the pup's eyes were firmly fixed on the paperwork in his hands.

"Agent Westen. I understand you've already had one visitor since surgery," she spoke in a clipped tone. "So I'm not going to bother to ask you about what happened in Josef Broshev's home. Instead I want you to explain to me why you fled in the face of the enemy leaving a wounded colleague behind."

"What?" Michael tried to sit up but the pain lancing through his head made him fall back gasping. He hadn't expected this.

"Did you or did you not leave Agent Sizemore after he was shot?" Rayna asked coldly.

"It wasn't..." He wanted to tell her that stopping hadn't been an option, but she was pressing on with her questions.

"I don't want excuses. Answer the question."

"Yes, but..."

She cut him off with a sharp movement of her hand.

"I'm not interested in your story, Westen. Do you admit to leaving Agent Sizemore to fend for himself after witnessing him take fire?"

"I was going to come back for him... I was unarmed... I - " He screwed up his eyes as the pain in his head intensified. She was making a case for burning him; he sure of it.

"You lost your weapon, abandoned your partner and then allowed yourself to be captured. Have I missed anything so far?"

"I - " Anger was beginning to build at the injustice of it all and he fought to keep control. The bitch wasn't even interested in his explanation.

"This is not looking good for you, Westen. Perhaps, we need to start with a full review of all your recent failures and deficiencies."

You have to kill the Ice Queen with kindness, Kid. Once you lose your temper, she's won. You do not want to get your ass handed to you by some overachieving bitch, do ya?

Michael took a couple of deep breaths, trying to curb his temper. She couldn't get to Larry. The older man had shown her up time and time again, so she was taking it out on him.

He watched as she picked up a chair from the corner of the room and sat down, crossing one leg over the other as she took the clipboard from her newest pup.

"Steven, you can leave us now."

Michael lifted his gaze to watch her pup leave the room and noticed for the first time that the guard dog had also left the room.

With her trainees out of the room, Rayna turned over the first page of the stack of paper attached to the clipboard.

"Let's review your performance record, shall we? Starting with Serbia and the reason why Mitar Savic, the arms dealer you were sent to investigate, couldn't be brought in for interrogation."

Michael paled. Who the hell told her about that?

The answer came to him almost immediately. Only one man apart from Larry and himself knew what had happened to that Serbian sonuvabitch: Sam Axe. He had to have been the one who told her about Larry coming to his room earlier and he must have also spilled his guts about all the little details they had left out of their report on the extraction of General Drava.

"Dammit Sam, just leave me alone."

"As soon as you pull your head outta your ass, Mikey."

"Agent Westen, I'm waiting for an answer."

"I - in the chaos of getting General Drava out of the camp, we lost Savic. But w- we had already interrogated him. We gave you the location of his warehouse. You ordered us to go to Belgrade and blow the weapons depot. The mission was a success. Everybody said so."

"A success? Is that what you called that mission? If you had brought Savic in, our interrogators might have got more information out of him."

"Yes, it was a success and believe me when we were finished with Savic, he had nothing left to tell," Michael defended his actions.

She hadn't been in Bosnia or Serbia. She hadn't witnessed the things they had seen. Men being dragged behind cars until they died, bodies ripped apart - he stopped the thoughts, forcing himself to listen to Kopec had to say.

"At least that time you remembered to follow proper procedure, though your behavior afterwards left a lot to be desired. I still have all the reports: insubordination, rudeness to support staff and- ah yes- threatening another agent with a knife."

"I was reprimanded and cleaned up my act. You - "

"I accepted that you had been put under a lot of stress and I remember encouraging you to take some leave or to accept a transfer, which you refused."

"We were an effective team. Why would I give that up?"

Rayna hid a smile of triumph. We were an effective team. Not "We are." So he didn't think they were that effective any more. She pushed her advantage.

"Let's talk about Kiev."

"Rogue agents, selling a warhead to the highest bidder... I did the world a favor." He had proven himself to everybody that night.

"Rogue agents? Interesting choice of words, Westen; are you talking about the spetsnaz team or you and Sizemore?"

He didn't reply. In fact, he couldn't think of a single thing to say in response to her accusation.

"Failure to report that you had left your area of operation, failure to report you had found the location of the warhead," She ticked off each of their breaches of procedure. "Engaging in an elicit arms sale without clearance from your superiors and without back up. In fact, if it hadn't been for the quick actions of a tac team, you would have been in the hands of the FSK. Have I missed anything, Agent Westen?"

"No, Ma'am." He was shaking with the effort to remain calm.

"Oh, wait. There was also some collateral damage on that mission, wasn't there?"

Michael swallowed thickly, but made no other comment as he forced the gruesome images of the late Vasily Andropov, the arms dealer who'd been trying to buy the warhead, and his equally dead companions out of his head.

"I'm glad we're agreed that your behaviour has been questionable at best and downright reprehensible for the most part. Now, let's move on to what really happened in Grozny. Let's hear your version of events from when you arrived at the home of Josef Broshev."

She stared at his pale drawn features. She could see that she had rattled him, but as soon as he opened his mouth she knew she had lost.

"When we entered the farmhouse Broshev and his men took us by surprise."

She held up a hand, stopping his well rehearsed speech. "Three civilians were beyond your skills, Agent Westen? Haven't we just finished discussing a mission where you alone took apart a highly trained six man spetsnaz team?"

He swallowed again, his mouth suddenly felt very dry.

She smiled graciously, noticing his discomfort, but she was far from done with Larry's Kid. "Please, continue."

Michael's hand strayed to his head, gently probing the thick pad covering the large wound to the back of his skull. He knew what he had to do. He was an experienced operative. His cover was being questioned. An inexperienced agent would fold in the face of Station Chief Kopec's hard eyed gaze. But not him; he was no rookie Boy Scout fresh off the Farm. He knew when your cover was about to be blown, you played role even harder.

He straightened his shoulders and calmed his jumbled emotions before fixing his superior with a bright toothy smile straight out of the Larry Sizemore charm school manual.

"They caught us by surprise. We didn't want to start a bloodbath, so we waited for an opportunity to escape. When we got away, Broshev must have realized that he was going to be outed as a Russian sympathizer."

The soft sound of a silenced handgun being fired on the other side of a thick wooden door, the smell of death, and the image of bodies piled high in the corner of a rustic kitchen.

"So, he rounded up his family and staff and then he blew up his own home using a high explosive?" She raised an eyebrow at the improbability of her statement.

"He must have thought he had no choice. I mean, the Chechens would have killed him if they had found out."

"Hmmm, it's always amazed me what some people will do when they think they have no choice."

She slipped her pen into the holder attached to the clipboard. "The civilian casualty rate just keeps going up when you two are around, doesn't it?"

"Ma'am?"

"Just an observation, Agent Westen." She got to her feet. "Now, I am going back to my office to go over my notes before writing up my final report. I suggest you think things over very carefully before the official debrief."

"I don't have to think about it," he responded with false bravado.

She regarded him with a cold hard stare. "As soon as the medical team here gives you an all clear, I intend to call you in for a full performance review and psych evaluation. This time Agent Sizemore will not be present to hold your hand."

"I haven't done anything-" His self assured act began to crumble, as realization set in.

Don't worry about it. The Ice Queen is playing you. Stick with me Kid I can keep you safe, I tell ya we'll walk away with commendations at the very least.

"That will be for the review board to decide."

She walked out of the door, leaving without another word.

Michael stared up at the ceiling, watching the lazy turn of the fanlight above his head. A sudden feeling of bile rising in his throat had him reaching for a bowl beside his bed.

"If Larry gets away with what he's done this time, what's he going to ask you to cover up next?" Sam Axe's warning rang clearly in his head, but Michael pushed it away.

Sinking back on his bed, he closed his eyes. "I did nothing, I wasn't there." He repeated the mantra as he fell into an exhausted sleep. "I did nothing, I wasn't there. I did nothing, I wasn't there. I did nothing, – ."

()

Outside Michael's room, Rayna spoke to the guard she had placed on the door. "Nobody goes in that room except medical personnel and when they go in, you go in too, regardless of what they say."

She had yet to find out the identity of the nurse who was assisting Sizemore, but when she did she was going to make sure that nurse was on the next plane state-side, where she could try her luck at finding another job.

Walking away with the clipboard clasped tightly in her hand and a stony expression on her face, she ran through the interview with Westen in her head. She had been sure he was going to crack at the end. She had forced him to remember every misdeed she knew about since his teaming up with Sizemore. She had hoped it would be enough, but obviously not.

Turning a corner, she ran into Sam Axe who had been visiting his injured team mates. "So how did it go?"

"I've rattled him. But what good it'll do, I don't know," she answered crisply. "If this doesn't work, Sam, I am going to throw him out on his rebel ass."

.