A/N: We probably won't be done by Christmas but we should not miss by too much.

HER GIFT

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Sins of the Father

Exhausted but nervous, early for work, Amber stepped off the elevator.

Bobby Plero was standing in her office door, smiling at her or leering at her or both. With Bobby, it was impossible to tell.

Her first thought was to kick him in the groin and slip past him as he writhed on the floor. She did not. The same exhaustion and nervousness that caused her to think the thought also kept her from acting on it.

She had been up most of the night studying the keylogging results from Gregory's computer. The results showed that Gregory was not doing what he was tasked to do. It looked like he had been doing the opposite. He had been erasing, not reconstructing, whatever it was Bryce Larkin had done.

Gregory had also been messing with the Tower's security system, but Amber had chalked that up to Gregory taking advantage of Casey's carte blanche to take a peek through a few of the security cameras in the building. At any rate, Amber had ignored that set of results. The other set, the erasure, was complicated enough. Gregory underestimated Amber but the truth was that Gregory was better at such manipulation than she was. Not a lot better, but better. She wanted to get into her office and do more work before reporting to Casey.

Instead of being able to just dump her things on her desk and start, she got to face Bobby.

Bobby, as always when she was standing, surveyed her slowly toe to head, as if he were climbing her visually. She shuddered involuntarily

"Bobby," Amber said, her voice pitched below freezing, "what brings you here so early?"

Bobby reached into the back pocket of his pants and produced a slightly rounded, slightly wrinkled envelope. "Merry Christmas, Amber!"

She reached out and took it and shuddered again. It was also slightly damp. She tried not to think about it. "Open it!" He gave her the smile/leer again.

Holding it by one corner, she ripped it open and pulled the card out. It was a plain white card. On it, a snowman, vertical, wearing a smile/leer eerily like Bobby's, was hard against a snowwoman, bent horizontal, also wearing a disturbing expression. Amber lifted the front of the card. Inside, it read: Hey, where's my carrot?

Amber dropped the front of the card and looked at the picture again. The snowman had no nose.

Bobby had gotten close to her and was watching her, looking at the card, watching her, looking at the card. "Get it? Get it? His carrot's in her —"

"I get it, Bobby. I've got work."

I should've kicked him in his snowballs.

She shoved the card in her briefcase and went into her office, never looking back at Bobby.

Mercifully, by the time she had put down her things and taken off her jacket, she could hear the mailcart squeaking down the hallway.

Casey stopped inside the door to Endless Pi, the bell over the door had just stopped ringing.

A dark-haired woman was at the counter. A man with a Dick Tracy jaw handed her his credit card and smiled. "Here you go, Hannah."

"Thanks, Derrick. — Hey, mister," Hannah called to Casey, "sit anywhere you like."

Casey nodded and walked to a booth along the side.

He sat down so that he could see the door. The Dick Tracy look-alike stared at Casey for a long second, then left. Ellie was not anywhere to be seen, but she had asked Casey to meet her.

She worked an early shift at the ER and was going to stop by Endless Pi on her way from daycare to the hospital.

Casey looked at his hand, his palm. Ellie's stitching had been so good that you could not see a scar except in bright light. Casey's regular doctor had removed the stitches and praised Ellie's work.

Casey loved that scar and was thankful for the stupidity that caused it.

The bell rang; Casey looked up.

Ellie stood inside, smiling at him. She had on an emerald sweater over blue-gray scrubs and she was so beautiful that she made his chest hurt like a relocated ice cream headache.

That a woman like Ellie Woodcomb was spending time with a man like him made no sense. She was a wholly unmerited favor. He was thankful, profoundly thankful.

She waved at him and then she waved and smiled at Hannah. Casey thought he saw a hitch in the wave and uncertainty in the smile, but he was not sure. "Hey, Ellie! It's been a minute."

"Bring us some coffee, Hannah, please," Ellie asked as she crossed to Casey's booth. Casey noticed that the Dick Tracy guy, Derrick, was standing outside, looking in the large glass window. He turned and left.

Ellie leaned down and kissed Casey, much to his delight, then she slid into the seat opposite him. "Hey, John. Thanks for meeting me so early."

"My pleasure. I can't think of a better way to start my day than that."

"Than what?" Ellie teased, looking like she had no clue what he meant.

"That kiss."

She grinned. "Maybe you'll get another before we part company."

He reached across the table and took her hand. He did not say anything, just gazed into her green eyes.

Hannah arrived at the table with two coffees. "Cream or sugar?"

"Not for me," Ellie said, and John made a me-too gesture. Hannah took out her pad. "Pie? Quiche?"

Ellie's face showed mischief. "A big, hot slice of the feta and mushroom quiche for the gentleman, and I'll take a cherry turnover, warmed."

Hannah nodded. She looked like she was going to say something more, but she tore the sheet from her pad and walked away.

"Power move, ordering for me, and quiche too. And feta."

Ellie smiled. "We can change it if you want."

Casey shook his head. "To tell the truth, I like quiche — and feta. I make a mean frittata. Although I prefer naked frittata." He chuckled, glanced at her, then away, then back.

Ellie's green eyes became a deeper green. "You need to make me one — some morning soon…"

Casey gulped and nodded, deciding to change topics. "You know our waitress?"

"Yes, she's sort of a friend. She's the devil who showed up at trick-or-treat, Sarah Walker's evil rival. — Wow, that was a lot of 'v's. Anyway, I've known her for a while; I like her. She likes Chuck and has been hoping Chuck would take a more active interest in her for a long time."

"The Devil? So, a Pilgrim's Regress?" Casey asked, and Ellie almost spit her coffee on him.

"You're bad, John Casey." She kicked him softly under the table, then left her foot against his leg.

He gave her a look that promised things; Ellie smiled into his look.

They sat quietly for a thick, pulsing moment.

But Ellie's smile slowly vanished and the moment thinned, calmed. She breathed out. "Look, John, I asked you to meet me because I wanted to see you, but also because I wanted to ask a favor." Ellie reached into her purse and pulled out her phone.

Casey could sense Ellie's reticence, embarrassment. He had never seen Ellie Woodcomb embarrassed. "What is it, Ellie?"

"I've got this problem at my apartment…"

"Oh, I'm handy, and I've got a neglected toolbox."

"Not that kind of problem, not the hammer kind."

Casey was lost. "What kind?"

"My apartment complex manager is a very large, very small-brained lout named Ricky. Not long after I moved in, Ricky moved in. He started hitting on me every time I went to the office. I did my damndest to make it clear that there was no chance, zero, zip, but Ricky is one of those men who goes deaf when a woman says no." Ellie paused, gathered herself. "When he figured out that I was struggling to make the rent — and paying daycare and everything, he started making…counter-offers, suggesting trades."

Casey bared his teeth and his hands strangled air. "Son of a…"

"I kept saying no — and Chuck helped me with rent but Ricky kept hitting on me, sneaking around my apartment, spying on me. But it's gotten worse. He's actually come inside my apartment when Clara and I were not there."

Casey growled, low and feral and deadly. "Inside? Do you have proof?"

Ellie called up the video of Ricky coming in the backdoor and she handed it to Casey. He looked at Ricky for a second, then punched the Play icon. He watched wordlessly, but by the time the video finished, he was siren red.

He looked at Ellie. "Give me the word and I will end him, Ellie. That lint stunt alone makes the earth incapable of bearing him." Casey's voice sounded like boulders grinding against each other.

Ellie's smile returned slowly. "I don't want Ricky…ended. Although I appreciate the thought, I really do. But I do want him stopped, and in a way that guarantees he will not start again. I don't want to involve the police or anyone else."

She hesitated and continued. "I thought at first, well, I thought about sending the video to the owners of the apartment complex, Ricky's bosses, but it occurred to me that they hired him…who knows if they'd help me or not. They might side with him and try to force me out."

"But he's not allowed to be in your apartment without your permission. That's standard; it's a lease boilerplate. They'd have to take your side, really."

"I know, I do — but, John, the truth is," Ellie paused and her embarrassment became more clear, "I don't want to have to tell anyone, anyone else, about this — my hope is that you can take care of it without involving anyone else."

In the midst of his anger, Casey was touched by what Ellie asked, by what it represented, the trust she was putting in him, the display of her vulnerability, her need.

"I can do it, Ellie. And no one but Ricky — and God Almighty — will know anything about it."

Morgan had a feather duster in his hand and he was dusting the Nerd Herd desk, humming to himself. The Buy More was still closed and Morgan was going to make sure it was shiny.

He felt shiny. Glorious.

A real relationship was new to him but he was in now. He had gone out with Alex again last night and, when the evening reached its end, she turned to him and asked if his mother was out of town.

"Yes, she is."

"Then take me to your place. I'd say it's about time you found out whether my Breathless Mahoney quotation about wearing black underwear was just a quotation."

Morgan took her to his place, or, rather, she drove them there. His mom had gone to visit his great aunt for the week.

Things happened in Morgan's bedroom that he had often imagined there but never enacted there, truly wonderful things, awe-inspiring.

At one point, he thought he might have beheld the Trinity.

Later, holding each other close in the dark, he heard Alex sigh. "What's wrong, Alex?"

"Derrick sort of found my dad, a man named Alexander Coburn, but he's…he's dead."

Morgan wrapped his arms around Alex, holding her tight. "I'm so sorry."

She kissed his cheek. "It's okay, Morgan. It's hard to mourn someone you never knew. I suppose the hard thing is the loss of chance to know him, the loss of the hope of a chance to know him."

"Alexander. So, you're named after him?"

"Yes, so it seems, but Mom still won't talk about him and I haven't pressed the issue. She gets impossible when I talk about him. I haven't told her that he's dead yet, since I haven't told her about Derrick. Maybe she knows, but I don't know why she wouldn't tell me."

"Did Derrick find out where Alex Coburn is buried? We could at least go, visit the graveside. It might give you some…what do they call it?"

"Closure? Yeah, I suppose so. You know, Derrick didn't say anything about that. I'll call him tomorrow and ask."

"Good. And I'd like to go too if you find out."

"Morgan?"

"Yes?"

"Do that to me again, just like you did before."

He did.

Morgan had stopped dusting and he smiled hugely at the memory.

He jumped when he heard someone knocking on the glass door. Derrick the Jaw was standing there in the bright morning sun.

Morgan walked quickly to the door and punched in a code, allowing the door to slide to the side and Derrick to enter. "Morgan, I was trying to call Alex but I got no answer."

"Oh," I doubt she's awake; she doesn't work today." Morgan did not want to say where she was; he had left her in bed with a kiss, with breakfast on the stove, with a note on the pillow, when he left for work.

Derrick nodded. "Right. Have her call me. I thought her case was finished, but now I'm not so sure."

"I'll tell her. She was wondering last night if you know where Alex Coburn is buried."

Derrick glanced across the parking lot. "I just might. Have her call me."

Morgan watched as Derrick walked quickly back toward Endless Pi. It might have been a trick of the breeze but Morgan thought Derrick was whistling The Marine's Hymn.

Chuck had to fight back a smile when Sarah met him in the living room of her apartment. She was walking in small steps, squinting, rubbing her temples.

Hilda had met Chuck at the door and quickly explained that Ms. Miller had come by the evening before and that the two of them had been up late, drinking. Hilda had leaned to Chuck and whispered. "They were arguing about…something." Hilda leaned back for a second so that Chuck could see the look she gave him, a look he saw but did not understand. "I've never seen Ms. Walker tipsy, much less…drunk."

Sarah's cheeks were pale, her eyes red-rimmed and dull. "Hey, Chuck. I'm not feeling so well this morning."

He stepped closer. She was wobbling and he wanted to be near her if she fell. "Maybe you should take the day off."

She gave him a look harder than the remark seemed to warrant. "I don't take days off, Chuck."

He did not contradict her. She grabbed her bag from the chair where it was sitting, then rubbed her temples again. Hilda came in carrying a tray. A glass of water and a bottle of aspirin rested on it. Without saying anything, she offered it to Sarah.

Sarah took a few aspirins and drank the water. She gave Chuck a tired look. "Let's go, okay?"

"Sure, I'll carry your bag."

She handed it to him and they left the apartment.

The downward motion of the elevator caused Sarah to turn slightly green. Chuck kept watching her out of the corner of his eye.

She shook her head. "Carina got back in town last night."

Chuck played dumb. "Oh, you said you expected her back in town."

"She was here when I got home. We ended up…talking until late. Drinking. I don't drink to excess." She glanced at Chuck as she spoke, then glanced away. "Well, I typically don't drink to excess."

"What were you two talking about?"

He could see Sarah's desire to avoid the question in her posture. "Sorry, it's not my business."

Sarah slumped a little. The elevator reached the Parking Garage. "It's okay. Life stuff, girl stuff…Say, Carina is going to visit her mom for Thanksgiving after all. But I want to come to your sister's. Would that be okay, late notice and all?"

"Sure, sure. I'll call Ellie once we get to WI."

Sarah did not speak all the way to the Conklin Tower. She stared out her window, thinking, Chuck guessed, about life and girl stuff.

Sarah needed to tell Chuck why she hired him, and show him the second contract. Her drunken spat with Carina made that clear.

Sarah hated it when Carina was right, but Carina was right.

What she was doing was deceptive, and she had been trying to justify it to herself from the beginning in a the-end-justifies-the-means way, just as her father had taught her to do. She kept telling herself she could pay Chuck enough not only to make him agree to be her donor but also to forgive her duplicity. Jack Walker would have approved; it was the sort of justification he would buy.

But a part of Sarah had disapproved of it from the beginning, a part of Sarah her father had worked hard to disable, her conscience. It was weak and it spoke in a faint whisper, but it was not dead.

And, God, it was frustrating when Sarah's conscience and Carina were on the same side.

When Carina left, herself the worse for drink and waiting for her cab, she jabbed Sarah with a finger. "I know you really do want a child, Sarah. But don't you see? You're going about it in just the way your father would have chosen. Some weird Walker Insurance policy. No mess, no fuss, no human contact. — Don't you see that this plan isn't really yours, it's his? Isn't it time to plan your own life — or maybe to scrap the planning altogether, and just live it, come what may," Carina waggled her eyebrows a little drunkenly and half-staggered, "or come who may?"

Sarah was not sure about all that, about scrapping the plan or about scrapping planning, but she was sure that she needed to tell Chuck her plan. She needed to do it.

She looked at him in the driver's seat. She wanted to tell him to pull over, park the car, climb into the back seat of the Bentley, more than large enough to accommodate them both, and to climb on top of her.

She did not.

She did not speak at all. She just stared out the window. She would tell him.

Soon.

Just not right now. Not in the car.

Chuck called Ellie from his office. He stopped there while Sarah went on to hers. He would join her in her office in a few minutes.

"Hey, Ellie, sorry to call at work, but Sarah Walker is going to come to Thanksgiving."

"Really? That'll make for a houseful with Morgan and Alex, John and Clara. But the more, the merrier. At any rate, you'll be merrier."

"What's that mean?"

"Chuck, come on. You've been in some fugue state ever since you returned from the state of Georgia. I haven't pressed you, but even Clara wonders what's up with Uncle Chuck."

Chuck shook his head although Ellie could not see it. "I guess I've been a little distracted."

"A little. The other day Kitty chewed a hole in your Chuck Taylors while you sat there and watched, unseeing. I've been a bit worried you were headed for a straightjacket."

"Oh, come on, El, I've not been that bad."

"No, I've seen you worse, after the Jill-Bitch, but then you had righteous anger to hang onto. Sarah Walker's reduced you to a drooling dumpus. Maybe now you'll be of good cheer, huh?"

"A what? A dumpus?"

"Call it a bit of Dickensian verbal panache…"

"Jesus, Ellie. Sometimes."

"Oh, I know. Our parents messed us up. But you love me all the time.

"I do. Talk later."

"Later, little brother."

Casey was in his office but he was not concentrating on WI security. He was concentrating on Ricky, dead-apartment-complex-manager-walking. Casey had scoured the internet and found the sort of things he expected to find on Ricky, given Ellie's description.

Casey took out a piece of paper. This needed to be carefully planned, perfectly orchestrated, like the goddamn D-Day landing.

Ricky would never know what hit him.

Casey's in-house phone rang.

Bryce looked out at the ocean. He had chosen a window table near the lavish breakfast buffet. As he watched the waves lazily lap the California coast, he heard a distinct voice behind him.

"Bryce."

Bryce turned to see Langston Graham standing next to the table.

Graham was dressed, as always, in an expensive suit, impeccably tailored. I need the name of his guy. Graham also looked like he had just come from a visit to the barber — his hair and salt-and-pepper beard seemed as trim as the suit. Beside Graham stood an older woman, also expensively dressed. Bryce had been waiting, eager to meet her. She had intense eyes like a bird of prey, and a still-affecting figure, even if it was now losing to gravity. It was obvious that she had once been a beauty of considerable power.

"Langston."

"This is Betty Funk. You've been working for her, indirectly, as you've worked for me."

Bryce stood and bowed in courtly fashion. "Mrs. Funk."

"Miss Funk," she said, unimpressed by the madrigal bow. "I am not and have never been married, Mr. Larkin."

"Call me Bryce," Bryce said, giving her his knock-out smile.

She stared at him. "I will stick with Mr. Larkin."

"Shall we sit?"

The three sat down and Miss Funk gave Bryce a long look. "So, you dated Sarah Walker at one point, didn't you? May I ask about the change of heart?"

"No change of heart. My heart was never involved. It was always a business deal — for me and for her, even if she didn't admit it to herself. — Personally, my hands are clean."

"Pontius Pilate is not a good look on anyone, Mr. Larkin, not even you. But I have heard she is all business. That makes this easier. It's not personal. That jackal, her father, stole the company from my father, and I am going to take it back or ruin it. One or the other."

Gregory sat down in a corner of the cafeteria and looked around. It was too early for the early crowd, although a few folks were sitting drinking coffee.

Punching keys on his personal laptop quickly, Gregory joined the Walker Insurance wi-fi. Then, still working quickly, he patched into the video feed that went to Sarah Walker's penthouse office. He had figured out how to do that the day before. He could not direct the surveillance, but he could see what she chose to see. Sarah Walker was in the building, he knew, and he was curious about whether she was going to use her surveillance.

A moment later, Gregory's screen brightened. Sarah turned on a camera. It showed Chuck Bartowski seated at his desk, talking on his phone. Gregory had his headphones on, so he turned up the volume. Bartowski was talking to someone about Thanksgiving dinner.

This is what Sarah Walker watches? The Cinderella Man talking on the phone?

Chuck hung up and started gathering things from his desk. Sarah turned on another camera and Gregory could no longer see Chuck. His screen now showed Amber at her desk, working on a thick computer printout, concentration on her face. She grabbed the in-house phone and a moment later, she spoke. "Hello? This is Amber. I have something I think you'll want to see. I will be there in a few minutes."

Gregory shook his head. Why is Sarah Walker spying on Amber Kitchens?

And then worry began to dawn. And who is Amber talking to? About what?

Gregory scrambled to shut his computer, yank out his headphones, and rush upstairs.

He wanted to be there before Amber left.

A/N: More soon.