A/N: Someone had suggested awhile back a B&W fic based on the show White Collar. Loosely based,I should add. This is my stab at it. Since I'm already trying to finish up two other fics, I'm not sure when I'll get back to this one, but I will get back to it. I tried to make it a straight caper, but I couldn't get any traction on it. So I went the brooding route instead. My usual lighthearted take on B&W.

A/N II: This is where I'll say the usual disclaimers about Warehouse 13. (Pause) Consider them said. I'll also say here, because half the time I forget to at the beginning of chapters - this fic will have strong language and sexual situations between characters. Moreover, this fic is not meant to be an accurate portrayal of the FBI, Department of Justice or any other agency, let alone the world of art forgeries, counterfeits, etc. It's all in fun. Even when there's angst and recriminations and regrets, it's all in fun. Really.

She was sweating. Not glowing, not perspiring. Sweating. Copiously. Sweating hard enough that she knew there were damp patches under her arms, half-moons that would show as a darker blue on her shirt if she took off her suit jacket. She could feel drops of sweat trickling between her breasts and down her belly. That would show too - not as half-moons but as splotches, as though raindrops had spattered her shirt. Except that there was no rain. Sunshine beat on her through the car's windshield. Part of the problem maybe, but not all of it. Flop sweat. She was no actor, this was no play, but it was a performance that they were going to put on all the same. And she knew their audience, their audience of one, and that one had never, ever missed a thing.

"There aren't going to be any surprises, right? I know all that I need to know before we go in there?"

Sam brought her hand - one of the few parts of her body that wasn't sweating - to his mouth and kissed the back of it. "It's going to be fine, Myka. She's the one who reached out."

"No touching, no looks. She'll be searching for anything she can turn to her advantage," Myka reminded him. It hadn't been some sloppy kiss to her knuckles, just a peck really, but she felt as if she needed to wipe her hand. She wanted to carry nothing into that room that spoke to who she was, now, outside the agency credentials and her suit. They were the only things Helena needed to see. Her hand wasn't wet, but she tried discreetly, she hoped, to rub it against her slacks.

Sam didn't seem to notice, or if he did, he didn't care. He was scanning the GPS, looking for the turn they needed to make off the highway. "She's not Hannibal Lecter, you know," he said mildly. "They're not going to wheel her in with her arms strapped to her sides and a mask on her face."

"If she's no threat, why is she in a maximum security prison?" Myka wished she had worn her hair up; the back of her neck was damp, which would make the frizz worse. There was a time when Helena had - "She's a fraud and a forger, and she's a threat to people's pocketbooks, but she's not violent."

Sam's smile was smug, preening. "Let's call it an incentive."

"You said she was the one who had reached out."

Another smile but he didn't answer her. Myka looked out the window at trees just beginning to bud, feeling a surge of anxiety and a reflux of the coffee she had had earlier in the morning.

"Can I refuse the assignment?"

Pete regarded her across the table. After he had been promoted, he rarely conducted conversations with agents at his desk, preferring to sit at the conference table, which was smaller. Less imposing, he had said, a reminder that it could have been any one of them put in charge of the team. Maybe that was true, but it never would have been her. It wasn't just in her personnel file, it followed her on every assignment, colored every discussion about a commendation, she was sure. She had been commended many times, she had done what she could to ensure that. But she would never sit behind the desk in this office, she had also seen to that.

"It's career suicide, Mykes."

"No, the career suicide happened eight years ago when I worked with her."

He stretched, cracking his neck. "They want you for this assignment. You know her better than anyone else, and they're confident that what happened then won't happen now. It's nonnegotiable."

"Fine, I'll quit."

He laughed. "No, you won't. She fucked you over, Myka, but you're still you, the best."

"And she's still a scorpion."

"Maybe she's changed. She's got a kid now. That changes you in ways you never dreamed of." He twisted his head and looked fondly at the photographs on the shelves behind his desk.

A four-year-old daughter, Myka had read in the file. Which, though it made Helena's incarceration all the more inexplicable - she had been caught in a sting to ensnare the major actors in a securities fraud, not her specialty at all - had lent her reaching out, the offer she had made some credibility. Some. When Pete told her that Helena had a child, she hadn't been able to stop herself from flinching, just a little. She hoped he hadn't seen it, she had tried, very, very hard, to school her reactions over the past several years, eight to be exact. There were limitations; her blushing, her occasional stammering, she had never been able to completely eliminate those. But she was better at disguising what she felt than she had been eight years ago when Helena had only to look at her to know what she was thinking. In the end, there was no better teacher than shame.

But today her reactions were playing truant, and her stomach unapologetically flipped as the prison came into view. Its 1960s-era modular sprawl was surrounded by well-tended grounds, and it might have been taken for an aging office park except for the multiple wire barriers glinting in the spring sunshine. Sam parked the car in the visitors lot and, after displaying their credentials several times and endlessly repeating the purpose of their visit, they were finally ushered - to the metal detectors. Myka reluctantly surrendered her jacket and tried to keep her arms close to her sides, fearing the half-moons had grown into jack-o-lantern grins, until she could pick it up at the end of the conveyor belt. As she shrugged it on, she could smell the 'sporty' scent of her anti-perspirant. In the two hours since they had left the city, she must have sweated away 20 hours of its 24-hour protection.

A guard took them to a windowless room and unlocked the door, instructing Sam to use the intercom to let the guardpost know when they were done. Behind the broad bulk of Sam's back, Myka tugged at her suit jacket and tried to take a deep breath. Showtime. Her drama teacher in high school had actually advised them to imagine their audience in their underwear, or, as he had coyly put it, their "unmentionables," to combat their stage fright. Back then, her imagination had rebelled at complying with advice so hokey; this morning it was stalling because she had seen Helena Wells in and out of her underwear too many times.

The giddy laugh that bubbled at the realization just as quickly died at Sam's booming "Ms. Wells" and his uncharacteristically aggressive advance into the room, as if he were ready to pin Helena against the wall should she try to make a dash for the door. He dropped his briefcase with a thump next to a chair and then pulled the chair out, noisily, clumsily. "I'm Assistant U.S. Attorney Sam Martino and, of course, you already know Agent Bering." He pulled out the neighboring chair just as loudly, and it struck Myka as she approached the table that he had been signaling from the moment he had shouted Helena's name that he was claiming possession of this room, this meeting, and, she recognized with a flare of anger, of her as well. And she had lagged behind, too self-conscious about her sweating and her nervousness to understand how submissive she would look following him in, taking the chair he offered, letting him (re)introduce her to a woman who had once known her much too well.

"Myka."

Myka had never known the simple two syllables of her name could hold such a variety of emotions, surprise, pleasure, remorse, curiosity. As she sat down, she tried to take Helena in with a single, sweeping glance. One that was professional, cursory, neutral. She had seen pictures of Helena over the past eight years, but she hadn't seen her face-to-face since just before the disaster in Houston. Helena looked older, of course; she would turn 40 in September. Prison wasn't doing her any favors; the blue workshirt was too big for her - Helena had had to roll up the sleeves - and her hair, which was as black as Myka remembered it, when she would bury her face among its strands and think that the blackness of the universe was here, on Helena's pillow, and she would never see to the end of it, was no longer as lustrous and in need of a trim. But the eyes were the same, given a narrow, almost tilted cast by high, prominent cheekbones, they looked both skeptical and secretive, and the wariness in them now was untouched by how softly Helena had said her name.

"Helena." Myka nodded toward the papers that Sam had taken from his briefcase, which he had lifted from the floor and placed in front of him on the table. "That's the substance of our agreement, the assistance you'll provide us in our investigations, our assistance, should your work for us be as beneficial as we hope, in reducing your sentence." Even to herself, she sounded cool, unruffled. She was a little surprised that Sam hadn't interrupted her, but he seemed almost uninterested in Helena's response. She expected Helena to start reading the agreement or ask if her attorney had been provided a copy, but instead Helena had turned to the signature page and looked at her and Sam expectantly.

"If you'll give me a pen, I'll sign it." Then, with the smile that always seemed to start at the center of her mouth and spread to the corners, as if she were letting you in on one of her many secrets, she said, "My attorney would be appalled if he knew I was meeting you without him, but I have no ulterior motive." The smile faded and the wariness in her eyes was replaced by anxiety. "Nothing means more to me than being with my daughter. I've seen her here, but it's not the same. This arrangement, it means more to me than you can know, and I won't screw it up." At the end, her gaze shifted slightly to focus solely on Myka.

Myka looked away, and she touched Sam's arm in spite of the injunctions she had issued in the car about their not touching, but it seemed less dangerous than looking into Helena's eyes. Myka inclined her head toward the briefcase; a pen was hanging from a leather loop. Sam closed the lid and clasped his hands on top of the briefcase, the almost drowsy expression he had worn when Helena glanced through the agreement gone. "We haven't talked about a condition that's not in the agreement."

Myka struggled not to show the dismay that coursed through her. Damnit. She had asked Sam, and he had as good as lied to her. Helena had no reservations about showing her displeasure. "I thought that's what agreements were for, to identify the conditions that the parties would meet," she said sharply.

"That's your agreement with the FBI, not with us," he said. He opened the briefcase and took out a manila envelope. "I'm the kind of guy who has to visualize things. Words on paper, they just never seem to bring things home to me. Odd for an attorney, isn't it?" Helena stared at him, her hands gripping the table's edge. "I was a linebacker in college. Pretty good one, but too slow for the pros. They always tell you to follow the ball, and you really do have to do that, especially if you're a half-step or more slower than the guys opposite you. Concentrate on what's important." His eyes flickered briefly over the now-ignored agreement. "You've been out of the game for what, four, four and a half years? Which, by the way, makes that securities con you tried to pull, just really fucking stupid. But I digress, you've been out of the game. I have to trust that the FBI knows what they're talking about, that you can still contribute important information to them. But to my bosses and those higher up, it's like you're getting a free ride, Ms. Wells. You get out on some dreamed-up work-release program that we'd give no one else, you dangle a few fake baubles in front of the agents, and all the while you get to play with your daughter all day, take to her the park, the matinee, whatever."

"It's hardly a 'free ride,' Mr. Martino," Helena said evenly. "When I'm not working for the FBI, my understanding is that I'll be under virtual house arrest. And as for my being out of the 'game,' as you call it, there are very few people who can do what I do; the skills and the expertise don't go out of date. In fact, I know of three forgeries that are at the heart of three different insurance scams that the FBI still hasn't been able to help solve."

Myka couldn't help but start reviewing her team's open case files in her mind, until Helena, with a sardonic smile, said, "Those I'll give you, darling, just as a goodwill gesture."

Sam pulled out an 8 x 10 photograph and spun it around on the table for Helena to view. It was of a man and a woman with a little girl between them walking down a sidewalk. The girl had dark hair and was squeezing something against her chest with one hand, a plush animal, an elephant, and, with her other, holding onto the man's hand. He was looking down at her, and though their coloring wasn't similar, there was a resemblance in their features, the same sharp chins and arched brows. The woman, slightly behind them, was walking with a pregnant woman's forward thrust of her pelvis; the photo had caught her with her mouth open and head turned toward the man, talking to him.

"That's your daughter's father, Ben Winslow, am I right? And his wife? Happy little family, aren't they?" Sam's finger touched on each in turn. "Mr. Winslow is petitioning for custody of . . . Chrissy, is it? I understand that he didn't know he was her father until recently. So I can understand why you're anxious to get out of here. The Winslow money, the Winslow influence - it's going to be hard to combat that. I mean, a felon going up against a senator's son. . . ." Sam issued a soundless whistle and shook his head.

"Her name is Christina." Helena had said it as if it was the only thing about the people in the photo, the seemingly happy, seemingly indissoluble unit they presented that she could claim as her hers. Her expression was bleak as she stared at the photo. When she raised her eyes to Sam, Myka could see the flash of rage and confusion before a coldness settled in them. "What do you want from me," she asked flatly.

"We're coming to that." Sam was taking another photograph from the envelope, but this one he was sliding out face down.

It was late in the morning or early in the afternoon, Myka didn't know the time, didn't care. They were sliding away from each other toward their respective sides of the bed, Helena laughing as she began crushing pillows under her arm. "I believe we're giving new meaning to the expression 'fucking like bunnies,' Agent Bering." She rolled onto her side, propping herself upon the pillows, hand cradling her head as her eyes traced the long lines of Myka's body. "I could almost believe we'd reproduce like them, if effort made the difference."

"Do you want them, kids?" Myka wasn't sure why she was asking except that, at this moment, a couple of mini-Helenas struck her as completely adorable. She would probably want to return them at the end of the day, like you would puppies you played with at a pet store, but right now she could imagine herself fixing them breakfast and telling them they needed to brush their teeth.

"Mmmm. . . hadn't really thought about it. I'm afraid I'd be one of those parents who'd tend to forget they were there and then, out of guilt, overindulge them." Helena had said it lightly, but her mouth was thinning into an unhappy line. She paused, glancing down at the sheets, and when she lifted her eyes, the seriousness was gone and a smile was bowing a delectably full bottom lip. "You'd have to keep them out of my paints and keep track of their bedtime," she said teasingly. "If you think you're up for the job, why don't you come over here and see if we can create a biological miracle?"

Myka was tired and sore and not a little hungry, but she could no more resist that smile than she could anything else about Helena Wells. "We'll name her after you," she said as she sucked in Helena's bottom lip between her own.

". . . some would say he went out in Gentleman Jim style," Sam was saying musingly, and as Myka tried to retrieve her thoughts from the bed she had shared with Helena eight years ago and more, she was arrested by the black and white photograph he had lain on top of the photo of Helena's daughter. It was a photo of the hotel bedroom in which James "Gentleman Jim" Wells had been found. Helena's father was sprawled in the middle of the bed, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. One of the women he had been with had likely pulled the sheet across his waist; the heart attack he had suffered wouldn't have allowed him the time or the freedom of movement necessary to cover himself. Empty champagne bottles were on the nightstand, and a woman - the one who hadn't fled after he had collapsed - was still half in the frame, a robe drooping off the shoulder that was visible and a cloud of hair, light-colored, grazing the exposed curve of her breast. Jim Wells, a.k.a. Charles J. Wells, Chuck Wells, Charles W. James, J. C. Wells, a premier dealer in stolen art and almost any other kind of valuable - jewelry, rare books, antiques. "Others would say when you're 74 anything can take you down. But he had a strong heart, better than men 20 years his junior, and there is that strange reference in the autopsy report to 'traces of a foreign substance.' Never could find out what that was."

Helena gazed at the picture of her father with little emotion. "I suppose there's more you want to show me," she said tonelessly.

"Indeed there is," Sam said, his geniality not merely jarring but menacing, as if he could be as expansive and joking as he wished since he knew Helena would be powerless to reject what he was going to propose. He dug into the envelope and took out another photograph. "Six years ago your father dies, and not three years later, your brother dies as well. That must have been tough. Charlie dies in prison, yet they could never identify the inmate who killed him." This photograph showed a man sitting on his bed, slumped against the wall, head hanging down, touching his chest, his workshirt, similar to Helena's, covered with a dark stain that had seeped into his pants. "The really odd thing was that no one could explain how someone was able to get into a locked cell to stab him."

Helena's face registered no more emotion than when she had seen the photograph of her father, but her hand hovered over the image, as if she might touch her brother's head. "Bear with me," Sam said, "I've got one more." The last photograph he took out of the envelope was in color, a publicity shot of a well-dressed, middle-aged man standing on a red carpet in front of the entrance of one of the city's better-known art museums, waving at the small crowd that had gathered and displaying on his other arm a stunningly beautiful and much younger woman. Sam slapped it on top of the other ones. "I know you know who he is."

"Nate Burdette," Helena said indifferently.

"Your father's protegé and, so I hear, one of your old boyfriends," Sam said, disappointed. "Why are you making me tell you things about him, Ms. Wells, that you already know?"

"Because you seem to have all the answers," Helena said, her voice still lifeless, but her eyes, raking over Myka's face for the first time since Sam had started showing her the photographs, filled with contempt. As though Myka could have stopped this, should have stopped this.

But she hadn't known about the "extra" condition, still wasn't sure what Same expected Helena to do, although she could make a good guess. She had thought they were going to meet with Helena to discuss the work she would do for the FBI, ensure that the assistance she was to provide would be solely in the service of the agency, that there would be no repeat of what happened eight years ago when Helena had used her cover with the FBI to commit an art theft, which, to this day, remained officially unsolved. Had there been anyone else with her combination of talent, skill, and expertise, the agency would have been more than content to let her serve her sentence, but Helena Wells was unique, one of a kind, and when, through her attorney, she had offered to provide what she had played at providing them all those years ago, only this time "with feeling," with sincerity, the agency had cautiously accepted. There were conditions attached to the agency's acceptance, and Myka had expected that their meeting would be spent going over them - as they were outlined in the agreement, or so she had expected. Supposedly Sam had been a last-minute replacement for the FBI attorney who was to have accompanied her. She wasn't surprised by Justice's interest - they had been the ones to put Helena away - and they would have the ultimate authority in determining whether her assistance justified a reduction of her sentence, but she had been surprised that they wanted to be represented at the meeting.

It was a mystery no longer. But they were a team, she and Sam, they were the representatives of the law that Helena, her father, and her brother had flouted for years. There could be no cracks, no chinks in the wall that they presented; they needed to be too tall for Helena to climb, too deep for her to dig under, too wide for her to go around. Helena was a supplicant asking the law for mercy, not an equal bargaining for concessions. Sam's alpha-male behavior, the crude ploy of the photographs, it was meant to unsettle Helena. Myka didn't like any of it, but she was one-half of the wall, and she couldn't break.

"Yes, he was my father's protegé, and, yes, we were briefly involved, both about a million years ago. But there isn't any "Nate and I," there's no relationship of any kind. I'm not sure what association you think I still have with him." Helena pushed the photograph toward Sam. Her flicking it away revealed the one of her brother's dead body slumped against the wall. Helena visibly swallowed, and Myka felt an unwanted tug of pity for her.

"The rumor is that Burdette had a hand in your father's and brother's deaths." When Helena didn't so much as blink, Sam pressed on. "Practically a second son to your old man, best buddies with brother Charlie, and then the squeeze of the little sister. What happened to the closeness?"

"He wanted to expand into activities my father had no interest in. That's all I know."

"I doubt that." Sam began to put the photographs back into the envelope. "It wasn't amicable, the split. Your dad didn't want any part of the drug smuggling and extortion and general thuggery that Burdette was getting into. I guess it was, um, too uncouth for him." He held out the photograph of Christina with the Winslows to Helena. "I know this isn't an ideal picture. I'm sure you'd like it better if you were the one holding her hand, but that's awfully hard to do from in here. And, besides, it's a picture of your kid." Helena glared at him, and Sam, with an air of wounded innocence, poked the photograph into the envelope. "Maybe Burdette was the one who set you up, lured you into that securities sting. Ever think of that?"

Helena gave him a pained smile. "That was solely the result of my own. . . stupidity, as you called it." She shifted, seeking a more comfortable position in her chair. "Nate went his own way years ago, long before my father and Charlie died."

"Some people have long memories," Sam said.

Helena's eyes landed on Myka and then flitted away so quickly that Myka was almost convinced that the look was inadvertent. But she didn't chase Helena's glance, turning her attention to Sam, who had opened the briefcase and tossed the envelope in it. He held up a finger, although Myka doubted he had forgotten anything, and took out the pen, clicking it repeatedly. He placed it on the neglected agreement. "We want Nate Burdette, and you're going to deliver him to us, Ms. Wells. It's as simple as that."

Helena laughed in disbelief. "I haven't spoken to Nate since my father's funeral. We have no business relationships, and our affair, such as it was, ended when I was 20. I have no power to deliver him to you."

"It all depends on how you define power. I bet you can think of something he wants. Or persuade him that there's something he wants. You set up the con, and we come in for the kill."

Helena started to shake her head, the swinging becoming more pronounced as her "No's" grew louder. "No. Absolutely not. One of the conditions in that agreement you're holding in front of me like a carrot is that nothing I'm asked to do will jeopardize the safety of my daughter and mother. Going after Nate would put them in danger. I won't do it."

"Okay, then," Sam said easily, sliding the agreement back towards the briefcase. "We're done, Ms. Wells. Good luck in the custody battle with Ben Winslow." He started rising from his chair only to sit down again. "You know you don't have a chance against him. Right now your daughter is with who, your mother? The ex-wife of a criminal and the mother of one? I'm sure a judge will look favorably on that arrangement." He looked at Helena intently. "He'll win, and while you can convince yourself that a judge will force him to let Christina visit you, he'll find ways to get out of it. And Christina, she may visit, but she's only four years old, and you're going to be here for a long time, Ms. Wells. Right now, it's just the securities fraud. But our office is scouring everything we have on you. I don't care if it's citations for jaywalking - we'll hang them on you, and you'll sit here until Christina's a mother herself."

Helena seemed to shrink into herself, the bleakness that had slipped over her face when she had first seen the photograph of Christina returning and drawing down her eyes, her mouth. Myka didn't say anything, but she put a warning hand on Sam's leg. He didn't look at her. "Little kids, they get distracted. And Ben Winslow's shiny new wife is going to have a shiny new baby. I bet Christina's already excited about it. I bet she sometimes she refers to Mrs. Winslow as her mother. She doesn't mean to, I'm sure, but little kids,they can get confused. You know how they are. Christina's part of a family now. How long before coming to visit you becomes a chore -"

"Sam." Myka said it quietly but firmly. "Stop."

He still didn't look at her. "Part of me doesn't want you to sign that agreement, Ms. Wells. Part of me wants you to tell us to get the hell out of here. You ruin lives, and that beautiful little girl deserves better than you. You sign that agreement, and you have a shot at keeping her, but I'm not sure I want that. Ben Winslow may be a vindictive little piss ant when he feels he's been wronged, which is probably why he's going after you so hard, but he's still a damn sight better role model than you."

"Sam," Myka was louder. "Stop it, now."

Finally he twisted his head to stare at her. "I'm not telling Ms. Wells anything that doesn't run through her mind a dozen times a day. Am I, Ms. Wells?" Helena had dropped her head and was working her hands, one over the other, in her lap. "The only one who can put your family in danger is you. You're supposed to be clever. After all, you fooled the FBI for 18 months. You're telling me you can't con one man?"

"I want to speak to Myka. . . Agent Bering alone." Helena hadn't looked up from her lap, but there was nothing tentative about her tone. She was demanding, not requesting.

At Myka's nod, Sam glanced around the room for the intercom, spotting it before she did on the wall behind them. Having seen the surveillance cameras in the corners, Myka belatedly realized their meeting with Helena was being recorded, probably not watched all that closely given who she and Sam were, but any guard looking at his monitor might have wondered why Helena seemed to have aged decades in the span of a few minutes and why she, the quieter, nearly motionless one of Helena's two visitors, had suddenly started moving in her chair, touching her partner, finally leaning around him and saying, unmistakably, "Stop." Sam was speaking into the intercom, telling the guards that they were almost done. He asked to be buzzed out and when the door lock clicked, he gave Myka a long look, which she steadily returned, before he closed the door behind him.

She fought the impulse to say "I'm sorry," to apologize for how Sam had begun using Christina as a club, battering Helena with her own fears, but she had cracked the wall, her and Sam's wall, the endless, unscalable wall of the law, when she had told him to stop, and that was as much of an apology as Helena was going to get.

"I'd like to believe that you didn't know anything about it, that the Myka Bering I knew wouldn't willingly endanger a four-year-old girl and a 63-year-old grandmother to capture a criminal who's never bothered to hide. Nate's always believed he's invincible, and now I'm your best chance for getting him?" Helena's eyes had lifted to hers, weary and pleading and derisive all at once. "I was telling the truth when I said I hadn't spoken to him in years, but he's a hard man, more ruthless than my father could stomach." She paused, taking a deep breath. "You have to promise me, Myka, that you'll keep them safe. It's the only way I'll sign this fucking piece of paper. Promise me."

Myka couldn't make the promise; she couldn't guarantee their safety. But she couldn't look away from those eyes.

"You've never told me that you love me," she mock complained as Helena curled against her chest. "I've told you at least a hundred times."

"You're saying it enough for both of us," Helena said wryly, but she leaned her head back to give Myka a kiss under her chin. "Besides, haven't I been showing it enough for your satisfaction?"

"Still, it's nice to hear the words," Myka grumbled.

"I don't say those words lightly. In fact, I don't recall ever saying them, except to my mother. And I'm fairly certain that's not how you want to hear them from me." Myka squirmed, muttering "ow" as Helena turned, shoulder rubbing against shoulder, to face her. "When I say them, not if, but when, Myka Ophelia Bering, I want you to have no doubt that I mean them."

Myka felt her breath catch at the seriousness of Helena's expression. "So what do I do in the meantime?"

"Just look into my eyes. They'll tell you everything you need to know."

She couldn't read what Helena's eyes were telling her. And even if she could, it would be a reflection only of what she wanted to see, as it had been all those years ago. But it didn't matter. She wasn't going to let a little girl who loved toy elephants become a target for Nate Burdette. "I promise," she said.

Helena flipped through the agreement and scrawled her name on the last page. "You can tell the guards to let your boyfriend back in."

"Ex-husband," Myka automatically corrected.

Helena didn't look up from the agreement, apparently absorbed in reordering the pages, but she was smiling slightly. "I have to confess that his charms are lost on me."

Myka thought about the things she could say about charm, specifically the ability to be charming, or for that matter, the ability to be intriguing or mysterious or seductive and how they had become the qualities that least attracted her, but she said none of them. She had already given away too much about herself, just as she had feared she would.

Sam showed no triumph when Helena handed him the agreement, merely slipping it into the briefcase. "It'll take a few days to process your release," he said. "As soon as we get all the requisite approvals, we'll let you know." Then he waited at the door as if some inner time limit he had set on being in the same room with Helena had expired. Myka stood, awkwardly, between the table and the door, unwilling to join Sam on the other side of the invisible boundary line he had drawn but not wanting to sit at the table with Helena, who had relaxed against the back of her chair, meeting over, her eyes almost completely closed. Possibly she was letting her mind wander or daydreaming of when she would next see her daughter, but more likely plotting, Myka thought dourly.

She heard the heavy tread of a guard at the door and then it opened. There were two guards, one to escort her and Sam back to the prison's main entrance and another to take Helena back to her cell. Helena obediently rose, not glancing at Myka as she passed her, Following their guard down the corridor, Myka twisted her head over her shoulder. Helena was at the opposite end, her guard keying in a code to open the door. It swept shut behind them, the echo of the closing click sounding louder and more forceful than the click itself.

Myka tried not to listen as Sam congratulated themselves on having gotten exactly what they wanted from Helena Wells. He had taken off his suit jacket, crooking his finger under the collar as he slung it over his shoulder, and he was whistling a pop song as he pressed the remote to unlock the car. Myka wanted to scream at him to stop whistling, but she was afraid if she started yelling at him now that she wouldn't stop until they had returned to the city. She bargained with herself that if she waited until the prison was out of sight, she could then begin the conversation, calmly, about what had happened in the room with Helena. But once the last blinding glint of the fences had disappeared from the rearview mirror, she said, tightly, thinly, not calmly, "Stop the car. I want you to stop the car."

Sam had been sampling the limited offerings of the radio, limited not only by their location but also by the fact that they were in an agency-owned car. "Are you okay?" he asked, concerned.

"No, I'm not okay. Stop the car now, Sam. I need to get out."

He slowed and cut over to the shoulder. As soon as the car stopped, Myka was flinging open her door, shouting, "You blindsided me in there, Sam. Why the hell did you do that to me? I asked you if there was anything I should know before we met with her, and you neglected to tell me that you had changed the whole goddamn deal." She paced the gravel, kicking rocks from her path.

"I'm sorry." Sam was out of the car, hands on hips, head bowed, as if he had run all the way from the prison. "I knew you wouldn't like it, and I didn't want that hanging over us when we met with her. What the deal was going to be, that it was going to be about Burdette, it was decided long before you entered the picture."

"It's one thing to use her kid as leverage, it's another to make her a pawn. That's low, Sam. Helena may not be better than that kind of treatment, but I thought we were."

He sighed, passing his hand over his hair. At the sides, it was still thick and dark blond, but on top, where his fingers were pressing the strands, it was lighter and thinner, less like hair and more like wisps of butter-colored cotton. "Burdette's an all-around mobster, but what he specializes in is smuggling, drugs, counterfeit merchandise. . . people. Recently he's gotten into guns, and that really has us worried. He's dangerous and smart and completely amoral. The ATF placed two undercover agents in his organization One we haven't heard from in over two months, the other we found, in pieces, in the trunk of an abandoned car."

"So you think that because he worked for her father once upon a time and because they were an item before cell phones existed that Helena can bring him to you," Myka jeered.

He started to come around the car, as if he could more persuasively plead his case nearer to her, but at her glare, he sighed again and slumped onto the car's hood. "All we need is to get close enough to him that he slips up, says the wrong thing, agrees to the wrong scheme. All we need is for her to open the door, we'll be the ones barreling through it. There's history between the Burdette and the Wellses. Don't tell me she's not good enough to find some way of using it." He squinted at her. "What did you promise her, Myka?"

"That I would keep her daughter safe. And I will, Sam. If this thing starts going south, I'll yank Helena out of it. I don't care if you don't get Burdette." She stopped her pacing long enough to cross her arms over her chest and give him a glacially cold stare.

"That's why I didn't want you on this, why Pete didn't either. But we were overruled." Still squinting, he craned his neck to look up at the sky. "You've got a code, and you follow it, no matter what. Just like you're not going to let yourself make the same mistakes that you did eight years ago. You're going to go into overdrive trying to prove to everyone that you're on top of it this time. She's not worth all the emotional energy, Myka. One hour in a room with her, and you're already worrying about how you're going to protect her daughter."

"I'd be worrying no matter who had been in the room with us, Sam. We jammed her, we put her between a rock and a hard place and then we got behind the rock and started pushing." She uncrossed her arms only to recross them, hugging her chest tightly. "Just because I'm concerned that we're putting Christina and Jemma at risk doesn't mean that Helena's gotten into my head." She was surprised at how easily the name of Helena's mother had come to her. She had seen her only a few times during the 18 months that she and Helena had worked together, but she could clearly bring Jemma to mind, the light brown hair just beginning to gray, the blue eyes, the unthreatening prettiness that suggested, when young, she could have been a country lass straight from a nineteenth century English novel. The only feature she seemed to share with her daughter was an extraordinarily fair complexion, which, in Helena, framed by all that black hair, could appear bloodless.

"Are you sure, Myka?" Sam asked softly. "You dumped me for her, remember? I knew what you were like pre-Helena. That Myka smiled a lot more often than you, for one thing."

"And that Myka also thought someday she'd be the director of the FBI and, in the meantime, she'd settle down with the cute junior attorney who kept insisting that he wasn't ready for anything serious." She approached the car with slow, exaggerated steps, swinging her legs out with each stride before planting her feet with overdeliberate care, like a driver under the influence asked to walk a straight line. She reached for his hand. "Her illusions were bound to be punctured, with or without Helena's assistance."

"You thought I was cute? Despite the fact that I didn't have a mane of black hair and a phony British accent?" He drew her to him and kissed her gently.

Her mouth remaining against his, Myka murmured, "I think the accent's one of the few real things about her."

"I shouldn't have let you go. She was a vulture, and I was an idiot." He laughed ruefully, kissing her once more. "I'm still an idiot. Except for that brief period of time when I was smart enough to be married to you. Tell me, please, why did I let us get divorced?"

"Because we never saw each other. You said it was like being married to your college roommate, except that you saw him more often and you were pretty sure that you didn't have sex with him, although you couldn't vouch for what happened during homecoming weekend your freshman year." As he leaned in, seeking yet another kiss, she pushed his face away, teasingly, but away. She could excuse it by telling herself that the meeting had left her too raw, too angry to pretend that all was right between them, but her uncertainty ran deeper. The "exes with benefits" they had fallen into over the past few months was skidding perilously close to dating - for the third time. How often did you revisit the past, attempting to substitute better choices for all the bad ones you had made before you realized that you couldn't change anything? She had been thinking more often lately about shaking things up, leaving the FBI, leaving the city. She wasn't ready to do either yet, but once this arrangement with Helena reached its end, good or bad, she would . . . give the idea of "spontaneously" striking out for somewhere new serious consideration. She smiled a skewed smile, all too familiar with how slowly she could approach a "sudden change."

"What are you smiling about?" Sam asked, paternally chucking her under her chin.

She tried to disguise her irritation by shaking her head. "Nothing in particular." She let her gaze wander over the hills that had given their drive a continuously rolling pitch that had been like riding waves. They were tawny with a winter's residue of dead brambles and grass, early shoots peeping greenly in the tangle. Birds were diving into the tops of trees and as quickly reascending, gliding on a breeze that was cool but promised warmth. This area would be lovely once everything was in full bloom, and Myka wondered whether the women found it harder harder to stare at the cement walls of their cells or the grass and trees and wildflowers that grew outside them. The women would have access to parts of the prison's grounds, but the grounds were hemmed in like quilt squares by the fences. Free to feel the sun on their faces but only as free to walk in it as the guards and barriers would allow. When Myka had been a teenager on a family vacation to northern California and had seen San Quentin nestled near the bay, she had thought how strange it must feel to be in the middle of such postcard-worthy scenery and yet be so remote from it at the same time.

That remoteness was no longer so foreign to her. It was an odd quarantine she existed in - she was in Pete's office all the time, for meetings, conference calls, chats late in the day, but she was always aware that she was outside it too. She could look, visit, touch but never have. She had never known that mistakes had an odor and a taste, but they did; hers were salty and thick like phlegm or sour and thin like stomach acid when she saw Pete laughing with one of the assistant directors or when she met the bold eyes of a woman with long, dark hair.

"We need to get going," Sam said, sliding off the hood and shaking his pants down from where they had crawled up his legs. Almost absently, Myka noticed that one sock wasn't the same blue as the other. When they were married, his socks had always matched. Maybe that had been the problem with their marriage if socks that matched were a selling point. But Sam wasn't distracted by socks, which perhaps said something not so positive about her. He was matter-of-fact, businesslike, the kisses forgotten. With a crispness that he hadn't had when he had spoken mournfully - only half in jest - about having let her go, he said, "We haven't set a timetable, but we want Burdette soon. She's going to try to stall and delay as much as she can. Don't let her. Don't hesitate to remind her of what she has to lose if she doesn't cooperate."

Although the birds still sang and the wind still teased her hair, the sunlight dimmed when she heard his car door slam, and she felt that she might be, if not on the moon, then somewhere almost as far as away, and from that distant point, nothing was green and spring-like. Instead, everything was brown and drear, and she was empty, just like the long prison corridor down which Helena had quietly walked with her guard, not once looking back.