Author's note: As with the last episode, I am still changing up some things to keep Amanda more involved in the ongoing case and because I am evil and have some drama planned as well surrounding my ending to this case. On another note, I borrowed about three lines of dialogue after McGill's shooting from an un-filmed scene of "Photo Finish" in which the explosion Amanda had set off was originally intended to kill Jake Williamson, but the scene was re-written and Williamson was still alive at the end of "Photo Finish." It was a great bit of dialogue between Lee and Amanda though to reflect her thoughts and Lee's reaction the first time she has to use lethal force to save him, although she was not crying in the scripted scene as she is in mine. Since she's pregnant and would be more emotional. I thought crying fit the scene. The dialogue is borrowed but the rest of the actions intermingled with it are not.

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Amanda followed General Garrett's truck down the back roads of rural Virginia until he pulled off into a long driveway. She drove by noticing a house sitting about a quarter of a mile from the main road. She drove a little further and pulled her Agency sedan on to the shoulder behind the cover of some trees getting out of the vehicle a using the same trees as cover to creep up onto the property, very glad she'd already had her practice run in her infiltration class. She crept from tree to tree getting as close to the house as she could to see what was going on without getting caught.

She peeked around the tree she was hiding behind and saw Garrett half-sitting on an outdoor table cleaning a shotgun. She quickly ducked back behind the tree when she heard another car coming up the driveway. She glanced over surreptitiously Lee to see a gray four-door sedan pull up next to the house followed by Lee's "Vetter which he parked much further back. She glanced back to the house and saw a woman exiting the sedan carrying a suitcase. This must be Major McGill, she thought. She knew from when she'd called Billy from the country club that Lee now suspected her. She watched as Lee silently exited his car and crept up to crouch behind McGill's sedan keeping himself low to the ground the whole time.

"Well, that was a quick trip," Garrett said still cleaning his gun. "I was hoping to have a couple of quail for dinner before you got here."

"I can't stay anyway," McGill replied. "I've already taken the first salvo from The Agency. No direct hits."

"This was a good idea, I think, Sally. You were right. Wait for my moment. That's the ticket." Amanda couldn't help but wonder what they were talking about. Had all three of them been involved in the Hale bombing or was McGill just covering the General's tracks? Or was the General an innocent party and she'd been in it with Carpenter all along and she was just trying to set him up to take the fall? She glanced over to where Lee was hidden to find he'd noticed her. He smiled at her slightly with an arched eyebrow and she could tell he had the same questions and McGill's all-business, noncommittal tone betrayed nothing.

"Why don't you check what I've brought, General?" McGill said coolly. "See what I missed. Anything else you might need."

"What's the hurry?" he said still relaxed and working on his shotgun.

"I explained, I've gotta watch our flanks," McGill replied. She walked into the house without waiting for a response. Garrett put his shotgun down with a sigh and followed McGill inside, Lee and Amanda soon following behind them. Amanda slipped up to one side of the window along the side of the house while Lee moved from his hiding place behind McGill's car and crept up on the other side both with guns drawn.

"Amanda, what are you doing here?" Lee whispered to her once he was close enough to talk to her for the first time since stealing up from the opposite side of the yard that he'd come from.

"Following Garrett, just like you asked me to," she explained also in a whisper so as not to reveal their presence too soon. "What are you doing here?"

"Following McGill," he said with a nod of his head toward the inside of the house. He put a finger to his lips as he heard talking coming from inside. They both put their ears closer to the window to hear what was going on.

"I don't know what you think you're up to, Major, but I'm not amused," Garrett was saying. Lee and Amanda both looked at each other questioningly.

"I'm not here to amuse you, General," McGill said icily. Amanda gave Lee a look that said this doesn't sound good.

"Explain please, Major. That's my pistol," Garrett said. At hearing the word "pistol" both agents moved closer and cautiously peered inside to see McGill holding a gun on Garrett.

"Yes, it is," she replied. "And the one you used earlier today to kill Captain Carpenter." Amanda looked at Lee in alarm. He nodded to her and held up one finger to indicate they should wait a minute to see where this went.

The newlyweds saw Garrett grimace when it struck home what she was up to. "Thirty-five years in the military and I've never been outflanked. Never thought I would be. Certainly not like this, by one of my own soldiers."

"Life's full of surprises, General," McGill said as she gesture to the suitcase. "Open it." It struck Amanda how utterly unfeeling McGill sounded, how callous.

Lee and Amanda watched as Garrett opened the suitcase and pulled out an ruby bracelet very similar in style to the earring that had started this whole mess. "And these?" he questioned.

"You can guess," McGill said smugly. "The Hale jewels or some of them, anyway. Don't miss the note."

The agent team continued to watch biding their time as Garrett picked up a folded note and read aloud, "I have shamed my country and violated its trust in me as an officer, Garrett. You always could spin a phrase better than me, but my handwriting's not really this neat. Still, who'll know? My fingerprints are on her now as well," he said as he fingered the paper. "Tactically perfect." Lee gave Amanda a smug look that said he knew he'd been onto something about McGill being able to mimic Garrett's handwriting.

"Your uniform's in there with one of the decorations missing. They'll find it with Carpenter's body. Oh, and if you look, there's a bottle of tranquilizers. It's the easy way. I'm prepared to wait." That explains the ribbons they found at the warehouse crime scene, Amanda thought.

"Easy for who? The blood of good people are on these stones. You're not gonna profit by it without the living memory of putting a bullet in me." Lee and Amanda both gripped their weapons in preparation to fire if necessary at hearing those words. Garret was practically daring McGill to shoot him, probably in the hopes that she'd chicken out and back down.

"That's really not a problem for me, General," she said as she raised the pistol higher. You see, the note works either way. This close range, the tattooing from the powder will serve as a self-inflicted."

She was halted by Lee using his pistol to smash the widow glass behind her yelling "Hold it!" When she turned the gun on him with the intent to, he fired first just as Garrett grabbed her pistol hand. Lee's bullet hit her in the left shoulder. That combined with Garrett's move caused her shot to be off-center hitting Garrett in the side.

She fired wildly several more times before dropping the pistol and running out the door. Lee and Amanda rushed in through the window, Amanda reaching Garrett first. "She's hit," Garrett said gasping in pain. "She dropped her gun but she may have another."

"Amanda, call the paramedics and The Agency. I'm going after her," Lee said as he took off.

Amanda set her gun down on a nearby end table and ran to the kitchen returning quickly with a kitchen towel to use as a makeshift bandage and began putting pressure on Garrett's wound with one hand while picking up the receiver of the phone tucking it against her shoulder and dialing with the other hand. When Garrett groaned, she said, "I know it hurts, but we've got to try to get the bleeding down to a minimum." She made her phone calls and was still working on Garrett when she heard the sounds of more gunfire outside. "Listen, can you do this?" When he nodded, she released her hold, reached for his free hand pressing it against the blood-soaked towel and said, "Hold pressure right here. I've gotta go back up my partner." She picked up her revolver and followed the direction of the gunfire.

As she passed by the outdoor table that Garrett had been at earlier, the first thing she noticed was that the shotgun was now missing. She also noticed that Garrett's truck had been moved. She followed the tire tracks and found the truck abandoned where it had been drive into a pile of firewood. As she stepped across fallen bits of wood she noticed part of the windshield had been shattered by a shotgun blast. As Amanda crept around the ranch-style fence behind the truck, she heard the sounds of a struggle coming from a storage shed behind the house.

She stepped into the doorway to see Lee on the ground and McGill swinging at his head with an ax. She didn't think just reacted on instinct firing her weapon and watching McGill drop. "Are you ok?" Lee nodded as he crawled over to McGill to check for a pulse while Amanda looked at him expectantly. He shook his head with a frown. Amanda dropped her revolver simultaneously dropping to her knees, tears stinging her eyes. Lee crawled over to her and took her in his arms as she sobbed. She clung to him as she stammered, "I...I ...didn't want...I never...never...you know...killed anyone before..."

"I know," he said holding her tight in his embrace rubbing her back, stroking her hair, trying to soothe her in any way that he could. "You did it for me," he said softly as he pressed a soft kiss to her hair still holding her shaking body to his. "You had to. It'll pass."

She pulled back from his embrace just enough to look at him, but still leaning on him for support and said, "Not completely...Not ever."

Lee pulled her into his arms again and said, "Oh, sweetheart, I'm so sorry you had to do this. I never wanted this for you." They both fell silent as Amanda's tears slowly subsided and were still holding each other tightly a few minutes later when they heard the wail of sirens coming up the driveway. "We should go," he said reluctantly as they staggered to their feet together still holding onto each other as they exited the storage shed to direct the paramedics, Amanda hurriedly wiping her eyes on her sleeves to at least present the appearance of composure and professionalism.

An hour later, Garrett had been taken to the hospital and McGill's body to the morgue while agents swarmed around the property gathering up the evidence of McGill's treason and taking statements. Lee approached Amanda after having his eyes treated due to the insecticide McGill had sprayed in his face, where she was explaining to another agent why she had to shoot McGill. "She tried to lop my partner's head off with an ax," Amanda was saying a little calmer than she was before.

He chuckled a little at her turn of phrase. The other agent looked at him and said, "Is that true?"

"Yes, it is and it will all be in our final reports, which we should get back to the office to work on," Lee said as he reached for his wife's hand. "Listen, where did you park the agency car that you drove here?"

"Down the road about an eighth of a mile on the other side of the fence," she said gesturing the direction she'd parked it.

He turned back to the other agent and said, "Can you make sure it gets back to the motor pool? I want her to ride with me back to The Agency so we can get started."

The other agent nodded and said, "Sure. There are plenty of extra bodies around here right now." He smiled at them slightly wondering if that was really what was going on. Like everyone else in The Agency, he'd heard various stories since Friday about this pair of partners.

Amanda handed the other agent the car keys and said, "Thanks."

"Here, you may need this again," Lee said as he handed her the revolver she'd dropped earlier. She sighed and reluctantly took it from him, sliding it back into her holster. Lee wrapped his arm around her waist as he led her toward the "Vette. "Look, I know you don't like it, but you never know when you may need it."

"I know," she said sadly. "I definitely needed it today, I realize that. It just still doesn't make me feel any better that I was responsible for taking someone's life."

"You know, you don't really know that you were entirely responsible. She'd already lost a lot of blood from the wound I gave her. She probably would have died anyway the way she was fighting. The more she fought, the more blood she lost. I think your shot just sped up the process," he said as he opened the car door for her.

"You don't know that," Amanda countered as she got into the car Lee closing her door behind her before he walked around to the other side.

"No, I don't, but I've been around enough things like this to have a pretty damn good idea," he said as he slid into the driver's seat and slammed the door behind him.

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" she said looking at him incredulously as he started the car and began to back it out of the driveway.

"Yes, actually it is," he said. "While you may have fired the gun, her own actions, her betrayal of her country, her murder of Captain Carpenter, her attempted murders of Elisa, General Garrett, me, and the fact that she refused to surrender when she was caught all put her in the path of the bullet you fired. Do you understand me?" He said firmly looking at her with serious look in his eyes before he pulled the 'vette onto the main road.

"I understand what you're trying to say, Lee, and I'm not saying you're wrong. She put herself in that position and she definitely had it coming, but no matter how you try to justify it, it doesn't change the fact that I killed someone and that's something that I'm going to have to live with and deal with in my own way."

"I know, I just want to help you through this as much as I can," he said. It was funny that he and Jamie had just had this conversation yesterday about how he'd shared with his younger stepson his worries about how it would affect her when the day came that she would be forced to kill someone in the line of duty. He'd always known the day would come. He just hadn't expected it to be so soon.

"I know that, Sweetheart," she said as she reached across the console and laid her hand on his arm. "I appreciate it and I love you for it. I just need a little time."

"Ok," he said. They drove the rest of the way back to The Agency in silence.

When Lee pulled into the lot, Amanda was surprised to see her car still there. "Hmm," she said as she looked the Wagoneer curiously.

"What?"

"Just wondering why my car's still here. I thought Mother would have taken it home hours ago. That was part of the reason that I took one of the agency's cars to begin with so she'd have a way to get home after her appointment with Dr. Quidd," she explained as she and Lee climbed out of the car and made their way toward the building.

"You know, it might not be a bad idea for you to make an appointment with Quidd yourself to help you deal with what happened today. He helped you a lot after all the crap Birol put you through."

"Lee, I don't need to see Dr. Quidd. This is nothing like what happened with Birol."

"Ok, maybe not Quidd, maybe Pfaff or Dr. Joyce. There you go, she'd be good. You know Claudia, she's very good at staying objective when it comes to field agents and the crap we go through."

"Sometimes too objective," Amanda said. "If you recall, she wanted to take Billy's badge over that lost weekend incident."

"What, are you afraid she'd do that to you over one shooting? One justified shooting, I might add. It'll never happen," Lee said.

"Lee, I'm not worried about any kind of disciplinary action. You're right, it was a justified shooting. I know that I did what I had to do to protect my partner and I'm fine. Like I said. I just need time, time to think about things. I need to process this for myself."

Lee stopped walking and placed a hand on her arm to stop her as well. "Hey, I'm just trying to help. I don't want to see this thing consume you."

"I won't let it," she said she said as she patted the hand on her arm affectionately. "I love that you care this much but just let me work this out in my own head first, please? If I feel like I need a professional, I'll be on the phone right away to book an appointment, ok?"

"Ok," he said skeptically as he placed a light kiss to her forehead. "What do you say we go see what your mother's up to and why she's still hanging out here, huh?" He reached for her hand which she eagerly took entwining her fingers with his.

"Good plan," she said. She had to admit she was burning with curiosity about what her mother would still be doing at The Agency when it was after lunchtime and her appointment had been for 8AM. They walked into the building and were greeted by Mrs. Marston who handed them their IDs. "I don't suppose you've seen my mother," Amanda said to her.

"Actually, I have. She went to lunch with Miss Desmond about an hour ago and hasn't been back yet."

"Why do I not like the sound of that," Amanda said with a grimace.

"Well, we're not going to find anything out until they get back so we might as well get to work on those reports. Come on," he said as he placed his hand on the small of Amanda's back and they walked up the stairs together to their office.

Upon entering the room, Amanda immediately took a seat at Lee's desk in front of the computer knowing that she'd end up there anyway since her typing skills were much better than her husband's. Lee stepped behind his desk turning his attention to the coffee maker to brew a fresh pot knowing that they'd need it, especially since he'd only gotten about twenty minutes of sleep the night before having been at the Pentagon from midnight to six. Plus, he knew that they'd be here for a while doing the paperwork.

"I've already got a preliminary report started," he said as he turned the coffee maker on. "Pull up temporary file number G-977."

"You got it." She pulled up the file in question perusing what he had already written. "Hmm, I'm impressed. You've actually been pretty thorough so far," she said as her fingers began flying across the keyboard to add recent events to it.

"Hey, I used to have to do my own reports long before you came along," He said.

"Who are you kidding?" she said. "You know you used to sweet-talk some cute little dish from the steno pool into to doing them for you before I came along."

"Ok, maybe, but none of them were as cute as you," he said as he snaked his arm across her shoulders and planted a kiss to the top of her head. "Wow, You're really tense," he said as he scooted the chair in a little to get behind her as he began to massage her neck and shoulders to loosen her tight muscles distracting her from her typing as she let out a soft moan.

"Feels good," she said sighing in pleasure as she began to feel the tension ease at his ministrations.

"Well, I did promise once this was over, I'd get back to distracting you," he said as he lowered his lips to her neck just as Francine and Dotty entered the room laughing uproariously.

"See, what did I tell you?"Francine said to Dotty. "It never fails. Every time I walk into this room, they're up to something not work-related."

"I had a neck cramp," Amanda said with a grin as she returned to her typing while Lee turned to check on the coffee pot.

"So, have you been telling on us, Francine?" Lee said with a grin as he set a fresh cup of coffee in front of Amanda then turned to pour one for himself.

"Thanks," Amanda said pausing in her work just long enough to take a sip before resuming her furious typing.

"Oh, well, I ran into Amanda's mom downstairs and we got to talking about the two of you."

"It was quite enlightening," Dotty said with a mischievous grin at her daughter and son-in-law. "She invited me to lunch and we had a very pleasant time getting to know each other better. She told me this one story about a cake..."

"Cake?" Lee said innocently as he took a sip of his coffee. "Do you know anything about that, Amanda?" He smiled at his wife.

"Mm-mm. Haven't got a clue," Amanda replied never taking her eyes off the computer screen.

"Oh, come on," Francine said. "Are you two seriously going to deny that I walked in here to find half the room and the two of you covered in cake like you'd been having some kind of juvenile food fight."

"Ohhhh, that cake," Lee said with a grin.

"That cake," Amanda said grinning back at Lee before returning to her work.

"Francine, we already told you what happened. Amanda brought that cake in as a belated-birthday present for me and she tripped when she was bringing it in."

Francine glared at the two of them and said, "That might explain how it ended up on the floor and maybe even on Amanda's desk, but that doesn't explain how you two both ended up wearing it."

"I told you, Francine, that happened when we tried to clean up the mess," Amanda said innocently.

"You don't actually expect either of us to believe that, do you, Darling," Dotty said with a knowing smirk.

"Well, that's the official story that we reported to housekeeping when they asked and that's the story we're sticking to," Lee said. "What are you doing up here anyway? Your desk is downstairs in the bullpen, remember?"

"Oh, well a bunch of us are going to Randy's Friday night and we wanted to know if you guys would join us."

"I don't think so, Francine. We've got the kids to think about," Lee said.

"Don't you worry about that, Lee," Dotty said a she shared a conspiratorial look with Francine. "I'll take care of the boys for the night."

'I don't know, Mother," Amanda said skeptically. "We're really just starting to get a good routine going with the boys since Lee moved in and I'd hate to disrupt it."

"No, Amanda, I absolutely insist. The two of you have been working so hard, you deserve a night out with your friends. I mean, just because you're married now, that doesn't mean you can't have a night out once in a while."

"What do you think?"Amanda asked Lee.

"Sure, why not? Sounds like fun," Lee said. "Your mother's right. We haven't had a night out since we've been married." He smiled at her and she knew by the look he was giving her that he was thinking about their conversation right after Billy's late night phone call about their new habit of staying home at night. "What time?"

"Around six," Francine said.

"All right, we'll be there," Amanda said.

"Well, I really should get going back to the house before the boys get out of school in a couple of hours," Dotty said.

"I'll walk you out, Mother," Amanda said as she and Dotty left the room together.

After they'd left the room, Lee sat at his desk to pick up where Amanda had left off on the report until he noticed Francine staring at him with a hardened look very different from the jovial expression she'd had on her face just a few minutes ago when she'd walked in. "What, Francine? We agreed to join you on your night out with the gang. Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I want to know why you lied to me," she said folding her arms across her chest as she waited for an answer.