Disclaimer: Burn Notice and its characters belong to Matt Nix and USA Network.


Michael was fixing me dinner. Chicken Cordon Bleu was a dish that he had never made for me before. He had let me smash the chicken into the flat, thin pieces he needed to work with. It had been fun, imagining the faces of the creeps from the day before as I beat the chicken with the mallet. Though Michael had mentioned how he was planning on hiding the mallet from me so I wouldn't think to use it as a weapon against anyone. It wouldn't do much more than break bones, maybe puncture the skin if I used the edge with the dozens of little spikes.

I had my weapons magazine out on the counter in front of me, but I wasn't really paying attention to it. Michael didn't even acknowledge that I was watching him cook out from underneath my eyelashes, if he had even noticed. He had always been a better cook than I, something that I hadn't even been bothered by until I started to take cooking classes during the second year of the whole burn notice disaster. At least now I could cook more than a handful of things without burning the food or risking poisoning the people I was cooking for.

There was a knock at the door. Michael turned to me.

"Fi, could you get that? My hands are covered in chicken, and I have to get this in the oven."

I rolled my eyes as I slid down from the stool and cracked open the steel door, gun in hand. With a disgusted sigh, I flung the door all the way open and set the gun down loudly on the workbench by the door. Leaving the 'guest' to come in himself, I strode grumpily back to the counter and returned to my magazine. Max shut the door behind him and joined me at the counter, though he didn't sit down and stayed out of range.

"My superiors aren't too happy about this, Michael." He announced.

"Happy about what? About you slipping up and almost getting a civilian killed, or about that civilian and her friends demanded to be in on the tearing apart of the organization?" Michael washed his hands, not bothering to turn around.

"The later. Mostly. Thing is, this gang had killed others. Before, and during the time that my undercover has been working with them. So, if they had succeeded in killing your girlfriend…" Max shrugged.

I contemplated throwing my magazine at his head, but settled for pretending not to listen and flipped the page. An HK-45 would be fun to shove into Mr. CIA's face. Or to shoot off some toes with. Who needed toes?

"If they had succeeded in killing Fi, trust me, the CIA wouldn't be happy with the results of what happened to the organization. This way, you can get your undercover out. Was he one of the ones from the alley yesterday?"

Max looked at me for a moment. "Yes. I believe he's the one who gave her that black eye. We'll get him out just before we take down the organization."

I fingered my bruised orbital bone gingerly. The one who had given me that bruise had only given me that bruise. It was almost as if he was hanging back. And the hit had been much lighter than all of the other ones…

"Can I shoot him? Just in the shoulder, or maybe the hand?" I studied the HK-45 compact on the facing page.

What was the point of an 8-round clip? You'd be out in seconds in a decent fire fight.

"He's CIA, Miss. Glennane."

"And he punched me. No one punches me and gets away with it. Not even my brothers."

"Do you shoot your brothers when they punch you?" Max asked in an annoyingly superior tone.

"Well, they haven't been able to lay a finger on me in over twenty years, since before I could hit a target with a gun. Besides, Mum wouldn't like it if I shot one of my brothers." I flipped the page nosily.

"Okay…" Max paused. "I can get you their names. Of the other three. You can have fun with tormenting them or whatever you want, Michael. We're ready for the operation to go down tomorrow. Here are their names, and places of residence. All that I ask is that you don't kill them until after tomorrow."

"If you plan on taking down their organization, won't they run off and hide?" I cut in, staring at a Berretta 95. "Which really won't solve any problems, will it?"

"They won't run away if you have them in… I don't know, a storage locker? There's a key and address of one that you can use in the file. Michael, are you sure you know what you are doing?" Max continued.

"Max, I'm sure." Michael said, leaning against the stove that he had just put the chicken into. "After everything happens tomorrow, can they… I don't know; take a swim in the Atlantic?"

"Just as long as it doesn't trace back to me, I don't care what you do with them." Max set the file on the counter and walked towards the door. "You'll owe the CIA another favour, Michael."

"Another?" I asked as the door swung shut. "What was that creep thinking?"

"Probably that I owe the CIA a favour because they let me help out in taking down the people who burned me." Michael sat beside me and pulled over the file.

I shut my magazine and leaned against his arm to look at the file with him. Michael wrapped his arm around my shoulders, pulling me in closer as he studied the first sheet in the file.

"So his name really is Keith Stone." I muttered, tapping the photo. "He didn't just think of some stupid beer name to try and keep from getting caught. You and Sam were wrong."

"Sorry, Fi." Michael kissed me lightly and turned back to the file.

I took a slow breath and tried to concentrate on the text of the paper his photo was attached too. My heart was thudding loudly, and all I really wanted to do was to pull Michael into another kiss. But he was going to be distracted by the file even if I managed to get him over to the bed, and if I gave him the slightest inkling that one of my cracked ribs was hurting, or that my side was throbbing like it was, he'd call a stop to it instantly. And dinner might burn.