"And what was that 'personal feelings' comment all about, anyway? I do not have personal feelings for Will Towne!"
She'd obviously been waiting for the relative privacy of the elevator to start up the fight in Billy's office again, a fight he was more than willing to participate in, frustrated by her stubbornness.
"I never said that you did! But you gave him a good review and now you think it will make you look bad when he turns out to be working for the Russians! You're just trying to overcompensate because you think I'm questioning your instincts!"
"Excuse me?" Her voice was icy but her eyes were flashing dangerously. In the confined space, he could feel the anger coming off her in waves. "Overcompensating for what exactly?"
He knew he shouldn't, but he was still so ticked from that scene in Billy's office that he spat it out anyway. "You're determined to say he's a good guy because you're still not sure whether you can even tell a good guy from a bad guy!"
The moment it was out of his mouth, it was like the temperature in the elevator dropped twenty degrees and he suddenly felt like the coyote in the cartoon who has just discovered he's run right off a cliff and is suspended in mid-air, waiting for the sudden drop.
"I see." Her eyes, which had been snapping with rage just seconds before, had gone stone-cold. She turned to stare straight ahead at the door.
"Amanda," he sighed. "I get it – I really do. You think your value is all tied up in your ability to read people, and on paper, this guy Towne checks all the boxes, but all the evidence is pointing to him being a double agent and your famous gut instinct just isn't enough here. I'm sorry, but you are way off base on this."
She still wouldn't look at him. "We've seen evidence be wrong before – more times than I've been wrong about a gut feeling," she replied, voice tight with anger. "And this isn't anything to do with my instincts anyway! I've spent time with Will Towne and his wife, I did all the background checks and I used all the techniques they tell us about to read a person's body language. I am not just working on some ooky-spooky feeling, Lee Stetson, and I know he is nothing but a nice guy who's good at math, likes Chinese food and loves his wife!" Her voice had been rising as steadily as the elevator – he was certain Mrs. Marston could hear them coming.
"Amanda! The evidence-"
As the elevator door stopped, she brushed past him to open the door onto the lobby then turned to face him, jabbing a finger into his chest. "I don't care what the evidence says! You are not always right, no matter how much you think otherwise! And don't stand there accusing me of something you do all the time! Now let's go find that proof you're so certain isn't there!" She stalked off across the lobby, pausing only to give Mrs. Marston her pass before heading to the door. The receptionist had looked at him, eyebrows raised accusingly, as he handed over his own pass and he'd settled for a weak smile and a muttered apology for the disruption before following Amanda out to the car.
The drive to Culpepper was completed in unnerving silence, Amanda staring out the passenger window, lips pressed together, tapping her hand on the purse in her lap, him sneaking sidelong glances, thinking up and discarding a thousand different ways to try and break down the barrier of hurt feelings she'd thrown up. After all these months of hoping she'd confide him, now it seemed like every conversation since then was an emotional minefield where she looked for hidden meaning in any comment he made.
And he wasn't always right, but right at that moment, when he read those words "William Alan Towne, died August 19, 1950", for the briefest of seconds, he wished he was wrong this time. He wished he could have pretended not to have seen it, but this wasn't one of their usual jokey disagreements over something silly, this was a national security crisis, and when he let out that groan of disbelief, she was on him in a second.
"What's the matter?
"I just found something I don't think we were looking for." He pointed to the entry, outlining the death of a two-year old Will Towne and watched her sag in defeat as he explained the con.
"I'm sorry, Amanda, but Will Towne is not who he says he is." If he could have done anything to wipe that look of defeat off her face, he would have done it in a heartbeat.
The drive back was almost as silent, although not as frigid. Once they reached the highway back to Washington, he reached over to squeeze her hand and she squeezed back, but never looked at him. She was still staring out the window but it was like a fire had gone out, leaving just a shell. When they pulled back into the Agency parking lot, neither of them moved for a moment and then she took a deep breath and went to open the car door.
"Amanda, wait."
She stopped and waited, but she was still staring out at the wall in front of the car instead of at him, and she'd stiffened up, as if she was getting ready for whatever "I told you so" was coming.
"I'm sorry about earlier. I shouldn't have said it that way."
She slumped a little in the seat and sighed. "No, you were right. All the evidence said you were right and I just didn't want to believe it."
"Well, that may be true but that's not what I meant." She finally looked at him, or at least stole a glance sideways briefly. He turned so that he was facing her more and put his hand out to touch her arm. "I meant, I shouldn't have said what I did in the elevator. That wasn't fair and you were right to be angry about it." She bit her lip and he knew a lot hinged on whatever he said next. "It's just that, well, I was worried about you. I know Claudia's been helping you through everything, but you won't really talk to me about it anymore…"
"Well, it's not really something I want to talk about," she interrupted. "I don't want being raped to be some kind of defining thing about who I am!"
"No, no, I get that," he said patiently. "It's just that you're swinging around a bit emotionally and…" Her eyes flashed and he stopped. "Oh God, this is all coming out wrong." He tried again. "I'm worried that you're going at this emotionally instead of professionally because you think you need to prove something to me, or to yourself maybe. And yes, I know I've done the same thing so you don't even need to start pointing that out to me, okay?" He smiled a bit at the way she'd opened her mouth to do just that and then closed it again when he'd beaten her to it. "But you really don't need to prove anything – your gut feelings are as good as mine any day of the week, usually better actually, and there isn't an agent alive who hasn't gone out on a limb because of a feeling about something and sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. It doesn't mean you're a bad judge of character because Towne fooled you – for all we know, the Russians planted him years ago and he's had time to perfect the character. Hell, we don't even know if his wife is in on it – she might be an innocent victim in all this too!"
Amanda looked at him fully now, horrified. "Do you think so? She loves him so much – could she have no idea what he really is?"
He shrugged, relieved that at least now she was talking to him properly again. "It's possible – there are always stories kicking around of sleeper agents embedded when they were kids, acting like perfectly normal American families, just waiting to be activated. Then again, her name's Sonia right? Maybe there's Russian connections that would show up on her background check but not his."
"You think it could really be something like that?" she asked, doubt tinging her tone.
"It could be – we've seen crazier schemes, haven't we?"
"Yeah, I guess we have." She still sounded sad, like she'd lost a friend.
"On the upside, if our friends in Moscow really do have one of our guys, now we have someone to trade for them," he offered.
"That doesn't seem like much of an upside to me right now," she sighed.
"No, I suppose it doesn't" he agreed. "But Amanda? I am sorry that I said what I said earlier, or at least the way I said it. So can you forgive me and declare a truce before we have to go back and tell Billy what we found?" He held out a hand for her to shake and she took it without hesitation, squeezing it and holding on.
"You're forgiven. And I'm sorry too – I said some pretty mean things in front of Billy and I didn't mean them either – I was just upset that you weren't listening to me." She gave a little laugh. "If I hadn't been so mad, it would have been kind of nice."
"Kind of nice? How does that even make sense?"
Amanda stared down at where she was still clasping his hand. "Well, it was like we were back to normal a bit. Ever since I told you… you know, about what happened… you've been tiptoeing around me like you thought I was going to break or something. Which is silly because even though you only just found out, for me, it was over a year ago and I've been fine all that time, or mostly fine at least, so you treating me with kid gloves made me feel like I'd made a mistake telling you." She gave him a quick glance as he started to protest. "I remember how it was when we first met and how you'd never talk about how you really felt about things, but then you let me in and let yourself lean on me a bit... but it was kind of one-sided because I hadn't done the same. And then I thought we were finally at a point where it would be better if we didn't have any secrets and instead it's just been awful. You don't talk to me like I'm me anymore – you use that polite voice you use with witnesses when you're trying to be soothing."
Lee winced – he knew the voice she meant but hadn't realized he'd been doing exactly that.
"I even took over your office on purpose with all my paperwork because I thought if I was around all the time, you'd get sick of trying to be careful and start treating me like normal but it just bothered you more and then you said Billy was just humoring me instead of seeing that I was doing my best to be normal again."
Her breath hitched a bit and he flushed guiltily, realizing just how hurt she'd been by that off-hand comment.
"So when you started yelling at me, it was like you forgot for a second that you thought I was fragile and maybe we were going to get back to how we were." She looked at him briefly. "And then you ruined it by making it sound like I was just trying to be right because I was afraid," she finished with a sigh.
"I really didn't mean that," he admitted. "I was just so worried that you were going to damage your career for all the wrong reasons and it came out of my mouth before I could stop it. And you're right – I have been treating you differently because I was angry about what happened to you and I didn't have anyone to take it out on and now I've ended up taking it on you. It was dumb."
"Well, if you want to know how you rate for fighting dirty, I'd have to say very high," she said wryly.
Lee chuckled. "That's fair." He laughed and added, "God, it's so different fighting with you. Andy and I used to have way worse fights but there was a lot more shoving. We almost had a fist fight in the break room one time but we still managed to get over it and go home together at the end of the day."
The laughter gurgled out of her at the mental image. "Gosh, can you imagine the office gossip if we went home together at the end of the day?"
There was a beat where they both pictured that, both suddenly flushing and unable to meet the other's eye.
"Right, well, we should go find Billy," said Lee, clearing his throat and turning to get out of the car.
"Yes, right, Billy," stammered Amanda, moving equally fast to climb out of a Corvette that suddenly seemed a lot smaller than normal.
