Part Eleven

"Whoa!" Donna hopped off the couch and began to pace on the opposite side of the room, her heart pounding in her ears. "I think we may need to slow down."

Josh shook his head and shifted on the couch. She could feel his eyes on her as she walked back and forth across the hardwood floor. "I don't want to slow down," he said.

"What about your wife?" she asked. Regardless of what he might possibly feel for her, he was still married, she reminded herself.

"What about her?"

The indifference in his tone startled her and she stopped pacing, her hands firmly on her hips as she leveled the accusation, "You married her, Josh. There had to be something there."

He shrugged. "Yeah, a political advantage. There's no love there. I'm a means to an end for her -- I always was."

Donna snorted and resumed pacing, muttering, "It took you long enough to figure that out."

Calmly, Josh replied, "I figured it out about ten minutes after you died."

She refused to be shaken. "Why the sudden onslaught of confessed emotions?" she asked, her eyes glued to her feet. "I mean, this is quick."

"I've been thinking of nothing else for two years, Donna." His voice was calm and steady and it scared her. "I want you to know . . ."

"Stop!" This was going too far, too fast, and Donna wanted to put a stop to it. "You may have had two whole years to iron out your feelings, but technically I've only had a few days. You can't come here and dump all this on me."

Josh stood and held his hands out to her, "Then what do you want me to do?"

Donna paused and stared at him for a moment, her thoughts tumbling over one another as she considered all the possible answers to that loaded question. Finally, she settled on, "You need to leave."

"Why?"

She had expected a refusal or at least some petulance. Instead he was calmly asking her a question, which did nothing more than infuriate her, because he had every right to an answer, and she didn't have a good one to give him. "Because," she yelled, "right now I could either kiss you or kill you, and you really don't understand how true that statement is."

He paused, considering her words and started to smirk when they sank in. "Kiss me?"

"Or kill you," she hotly pointed out.

"I'd rather focus on the kissing part," Josh replied, waggling his eyebrows and widening his smile.

"Of course you would!" Donna rolled her eyes and threw her hands in the air. Trying to talk to Josh was like talking to a sixteen-year-old with abnormally overactive hormones. She had to try to rein him in. "Would you like to know what I figured out today? Why I want you to leave and never come back?"

He sighed and flopped back onto the couch. "Enlighten me."

It was all or nothing, Donna supposed, and she'd likely get only one chance to catch his attention before he flew off track again. "I was brainwashed, Josh. I was brainwashed and have been programmed to kill you on command." She stood still and watched as a host of expressions lit his face.

Finally settling on a half smile, he deadpanned, "That's so not funny it's hysterical."

Donna groaned and looked to the ceiling, not at all surprised that he didn't believe her. At least she had his attention. "Do I look like I'm kidding?" she asked, leveling him with a glare. "Why don't you call Leo and ask him. I'm sure he'd be happy to tell you how *not* kidding I am."

He shook his head, still smiling at what he must have thought was a joke. "You couldn't hurt a fly, Donna Moss, and you expect me to believe that someone has screwed with your brain enough to get you to kill?"

"Not just kill, Josh. Kill *you*." Her voice carried the magnitude of a nuclear explosion as she tried to convey the importance and seriousness of the situation.

His smile faded as he stared at her. "That's absurd," he finally said, but without conviction.

"I wish it was," she sighed, crossing the room to sit beside him.

"You're serious."

"Yeah."

"You're really, really serious."

"Yes, Joshua, I am."

"Oh, my God."

"My sentiments, exactly." She turned her head and looked at him. He was struck dumb, staring at the floor, his hands clasped before him as his mind finally wrapped around the possibility. There was nothing she wanted to do more right then than wrap her arms around him and tell him it was, in fact, all a really sick joke. Instead, she held still and allowed him the time he needed to come to terms with it all. She almost laughed when she realized that she'd accepted it faster than he seemed to be able to do.

"Why?" he finally asked, voicing the question she'd been asking herself since early that morning.

"That seems to be the question of the hour. How many enemies do you have, Josh?" she softly asked. "How many people out there hate you enough to want you dead?"

"Well, yeah, sure," he replied with a cocky air. "But enough to stage something this elaborate? I'm sure it's cheaper and less trouble to just shoot me in the street than to try to brainwash you."

She blanched at the thought of Josh being shot in the street and quickly said, "Don't talk like that."

"Like what?" he asked with a chuckle. "You're the one who's gonna to pop a cap in my ass!"

He was making light of the situation again, and it was beginning to piss her off. "Do you have to be so crude?" she hissed, scooting across the couch cushion and settling again a little further from him.

"Crude times call for crude measures." The retort, meant to be funny, fell flat, and he sighed before seriously asking, "What's the F.B.I. doing about this?"

Donna cringed. She'd been dreading this particular question, mostly because they weren't doing much of anything at the time, and when they did do something, the plan was to use her as bait. "We're working on that," she cryptically replied.

"You mean you don't have a plan? You could snap right now and beat me to death with the telephone?" He grinned, but she could see the uneasiness in his eyes. She knew it was hard for him to think that she would be able to hurt him -- just as she couldn't believe it herself.

"Poetic justice," she muttered, thinking about all the times that she'd considered bludgeoning him with his office phone.

"No kidding," he remarked, no doubt thinking the same thing.

Donna opened her mouth to reply, then stopped as the thought formed. It made perfect sense. "No, really," she said, reaching out and grabbing his arm. "It *is* poetic justice. Whoever planned this obviously wanted me to be the one to do it. I mean, everyone that knows me knows I would never do anything to purposely hurt you and how I stayed with you and took care of you when you were recovering. It's poetic justice. Who knows you well enough and would go through *that* kind of trouble?" She took a breath and smiled, looking for some sort of reaction from Josh.

He stared at her for a moment then nodded. "Amy," he said, as if it were the most natural and logical conclusion for their dilemma.

"What?" She closed her eyes and shook her head. "Did you say Amy?" She'd finally pushed him around the bend.

Josh was deep in thought now, the wheels of his mind cranking away, justifying to himself how his wife had masterminded the past twenty-eight months.

"She wouldn't . . ." Donna started to argue but was cut off when Josh's head whipped around.

"Have you met my wife?" he asked with a note of bitterness in his voice. "There's also that little thing called the 17th Amendment to the Constitution. Add to that her long-standing friendship with the governor of Connecticut, which I always found a little odd, and she could conceivably be given my Senate seat until my term is up." He nodded as the mental pieces all fell into place and added, "To some people, power is like crack, you know. Once you've had a taste, you'll do anything to get more."

Donna had seen this look before and she knew he had made up his mind. "Now you're talking crazy talk," she lightly teased, although she knew there wasn't any way she would be able to talk him down from his delusion.

"You don't think it's possible?" he asked, nodding as if to beseech her to explore the possibility.

She paused and let her tortured mind follow the same twisted path that Josh's had. She had to admit that his idea had merit, as way out and insane as it was, but she held a special bias where Amy Gardner-Lyman was concerned. "I didn't say that," she conceded. "I just said . . ." she paused as a thought popped into her mind. Scrunching her nose, she tilted her head to the side and asked, "Why wouldn't she just run on her own? Wouldn't that be easier?"

"Revenge is Amy's middle name. I snubbed her the night you died -- and she's always had a thing against you. She never does anything unless there's a personal gain for her."

Donna's eyes opened at that. "She had something against me?"

Josh wasn't paying attention and talked right over her, "It makes a sick kind of sense, doesn't it?"

"I mean, I never liked her, but . . ." She shook off the thought and refocused on the important parts of their conversation. Donna studied Josh for a moment and decided to humor him -- for the time being. If he wanted to believe that Amy -- his wife -- wanted him dead, then who was she to stop him? "I suppose it makes a little sense in an alternate reality, but how can we prove it?"

Josh smiled and winked at her, causing her blood to run cold. "How fast can your F.B.I. friend get here? I have an idea."

"And why does that scare the hell out of me?" she commented as she reached for the phone.

Tbc . . .