"And furthermore, your reckless actions yesterday could have brought the Justice Department down on us like a ton of bricks!"
Mr. Belmont from Internal Affairs was not happy with Agents Beaman and Stetson and he was letting them know about it.
Lee and Efraim sat across from him at the table of the conference room, sinking lower into their chairs, looking more uncomfortable as the minutes passed and not just because of their injuries. They had both wangled discharges from the hospital that morning; Lee had his bad leg propped up on a chair after having limped in on crutches and Efraim had his arm in a sling which he kept shifting trying to find a comfortable spot, but none of these outward signs of injury seemed to have any effect on Belmont.
"And you put a civilian- a female civilian! – right in the line of fire!"
Efraim felt he had to interrupt at that point. "Well Sir, we didn't exactly put her anywhere– she kind of ran off and put herself there!"
"And would she have gone there in the first place if you hadn't encouraged her to help you investigate?"
"Well, no Sir, but she wasn't really supposed to investigate, Sir, she was only supposed to see what floor the elevator went to…"
"You haven't spent a lot of time with Amanda, have you?" Lee couldn't help himself. He caught the thunderous look on the IA Chief's face and wiped the smile off his face immediately and stared down at his lap.
"And you should talk, Stetson! You beat the suspect into such a pulp that his lawyers are going to have all their Christmases at once trying to get him lighter sentence because of Agency brutality."
"Well, I wasn't in my right mind, Sir, and I wasn't because of something he did, so…"
"I am well aware of that, Scarecrow, and that is the only thing that is keeping me from firing you right now."
Lee snuck a look at Efraim to see if he was going to bust him – if anyone knew he'd never been more in his right mind than at that moment, it was Beaman. Efraim was staring at a point somewhere over Belmont's head, looking like he was trying very hard to keep his face expressionless.
"And the only thing that is keeping you on the payroll right now, Agent Beaman, is the fact that you had least had the sense to call for backup before you so stupidly headed off to be a one-man rescue team."
"Two-man," muttered Lee with absolutely no sense of self-preservation.
Belmont turned back to him but before he could say anything, he gave off a sort of strangled noise of horror, staring at something behind the two of them.
"I'm sorry to interrupt, Sir, but I really think that if you should be yelling at anybody, it should probably be me," said Amanda apologetically from the doorway.
Lee and Efraim had both twisted around to see what had evoked that look on Belmont's face and felt their own jaws drop when they saw her. The left side of Amanda's face where she'd hit the wall was a mass of bruises and her eye was swollen almost shut.
"Ah, Mrs. King," said Belmont in strained tones. "We were just discussing you. You seem to have caused quite a ruckus yesterday." He couldn't seem to take his eyes off the injuries she'd sustained and Amanda's hand crept up as if to hide them for view.
"Yes, Sir, and I'm certainly very sorry about that. I just acted without thinking and I'm afraid I dragged Mr. Beaman and Mr. Stetson into it with me. Neither of them would have been involved at all if I hadn't been so foolish."
"But we wouldn't ever have known what Glaser was up to without Mrs. King's help," added Efraim, trying to keep her from taking all the blame. Amanda looked at him and for a split second, he could have sworn she was glaring at him.
"Ah, yes, well, that's true," stammered Belmont now entirely off balance.
"I mean, really they only got involved to save me. And I really wasn't thinking about endangering anyone – I was just concerned about Mr. Melrose and I just didn't think Dr. Glaser could be that dangerous since the Agency was still using him for their testing." Belmont went pale at this timely reminder that the Agency was also at fault for having exposed them all to Glaser's psychosis.
"I see. Well I think that given the unusual circumstances perhaps we could settle for two week suspensions for both of you," stammered the IA Chief. "Especially since you're both going to be next to useless around here for at least that long." His gaze found its way back to Amanda's face and he winced noticeably. "And Mrs. King, if you could just manage to stay out of trouble from now on, that would be most helpful."
"I'm sure I can, Sir." She had moved forward into the room and somehow Belmont missed her squeezing Lee's shoulder to keep him from making any kind of smart comment. "I hope Ms. Desmond will be getting a commendation for all her work – she was really instrumental in getting the Agency involved and rescuing all of us in time."
That's a bit of an exaggeration, thought Efraim, but nice touch.
"I want you two out of here in the next hour, but you will keep yourselves available for any questions that come up closing this case, is that understood?" Efraim and Lee both nodded. "Fine. Now Mrs. King, I am putting you on administrative leave for one week and I will now escort you out personally and make sure you don't end up dragged into a case between here and the front door."
"Yes, Sir," Amanda smiled gently at him. As he passed her on his way out the door, she leaned down and breathed into Lee's ear, "Meet us at Ned's."
Half an hour later, Lee and Efraim walked – or limped, in Lee's case – into Ned's to find Francine, Billy and Amanda sitting in a booth at the back. Amanda was facing away from them as Francine appeared to be tending to her face wounds. Billy waved them over, grinning at their dual looks of embarrassment at finding him there.
"Dr. Pfaff said it was safe for me to be around the two of you but you'll forgive me if I stick to public places for the first little while."
"Can't say I blame you," muttered Lee. "I'm really sorry, Billy-"
Billy held his hand up. "Don't worry about it. The lab says that serum of Glaser was the most lethal thing they've seen in years. No one can believe you fought it at all, let alone snapped out of it enough to help Beaman."
Lee slid gently into the booth after Efraim, wincing as he did so. "Well, Amanda had done a pretty good job of starting to rattle me free before Beaman came to get me."
The object of his sentence suddenly let out a loud "Ow!" across the booth. "Francine! Can you either do this gently or not at all?"
"Well, just hold still for two seconds and it wouldn't hurt so much!"
"Amanda, why didn't you tell me you were this badly hurt yesterday?" asked Lee, worriedly. "You seemed fine right after it all happened."
Amanda held up a hand and waved it at him. "I'm fine, don't worry about it, I just – ow!"
"Francine, what the hell are you doing to her?" Lee's voice was rising.
"I'm just getting the last of the…there!" With a flourish, Francine pulled her hand back and dropped something unrecognizable on the table. "K-9 squad strikes again."
Amanda lifted her hand to her face and rubbed it vigorously. "Oh my gosh, that feels so much better." She turned to face the rest of the table and Lee and Efraim's jaws dropped in unison. The puffy eye was gone and where there had been disfiguring bruising, there was now just very red skin. Amanda's eyes sparkled as she beamed at them.
"What the hell?" spluttered Lee.
"Nice make-up job, hey Scarecrow?" said Francine with pride. "I hear Belmont couldn't get out of there fast enough once he thought the civilian was the most injured person on a case."
"The whole thing was a fake?" Efraim leaned forward to study Amanda's face.
"Not entirely," admitted Amanda. "My cheek is actually pretty bruised from hitting the wall but nowhere near as bad as Francine managed to make it look."
"Yeah, it's kind of handy having gotten to know the Fabrication lab so well," chuckled Francine.
"And you knew about this?" Lee turned to look at Billy in amazement as his friend guffawed.
"Oh yes, although it was the two of them that came up with it," answered Billy between chuckles. "Belmont was ready to throw you both to the wolves this morning as damaged goods but the two of them cooked this up to – what did you call it?"
"Camouflage and Distract," answered Francine. "Camouflage all the ways you three broke the rules and distract him with worrying about lawsuits for letting Glaser loose on all of you. I hear it worked like a charm."
"It did," said Lee, reaching across to take Amanda's hand. "But could you let us in on it next time? You just about gave me a heart attack."
"Next time?" yelped Billy. "There will be no next time, Scarecrow!"
Amanda turned to look at him, wide-eyed. "You mean I can't help anymore? I thought I'd been doing a good job!"
Billy looked flustered. "Well, you have Amanda, but you're not an agent and I really can't allow you –"
"You know, if Billy's going to be a problem with letting Amanda help out, I'm sure one of the two of you could have a relapse," quipped Francine. Three heads swivelled to stare at her, all with the same expression of disbelief. "Too soon?"
"Yes!" answered all three men.
"K-9 squad?" asked Efraim suddenly. "What's the K-9 squad?"
Francine and Amanda exchanged grins. "It's a sort of specialized internal unit. You know, like those Swiss mountain rescue dogs," answered Amanda finally.
"The ones that save people from their own stupidity?" Efraim was beginning to see the light.
"Exactly like that. You'd be surprised how often it's had to be mobilized."
Billy and Lee were looking back and forth between the other three, similar looks of confusion on their faces.
"How many members are in this unit?" Efraim was laughing openly now.
"Just two so far. It keeps the meetings short," said Francine, smiling. Amanda was wearing her most innocent expression - the one he'd learned to recognize in the last few days as the most dangerous. Both women lost it completely at his response.
"Uh-huh. But I bet the bitch sessions are great though."
