A/N: We're nearing Thanksgiving.

HER GIFT

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The Spirit and the Letter

As she walked into the ER, putting her phone away in the pocket of her scrubs, Ellie recalled the end of her morning with John at Endless Pi.

They talked and laughed and ate. Ellie gave John another kiss before he left Endless Pi, a lingering kiss, more intimate than was perhaps appropriate in public, but she could not help herself. She liked this man, liked to talk to him, liked to have her arms on his large, heavy shoulders. For a moment, as they kissed, she allowed herself to imagine him on top of her, and the image, and the accompanying headiness, made her feel a little drunk.

She opened her eyes without ending the kiss and noticed that the man who had left the shop just as she arrived was standing outside.

He had just put his phone in his pocket. Casey squeezed Ellie tighter and she closed her eyes, not thinking about the man outside anymore.

She ended the kiss and smiled up at John. "Thanks, I feel better now, our talk, and that kiss. That frittata you mentioned, John, that needs to be soon."

He smiled at her the way she liked, the smile that began reluctantly but was all-in by the end.

"See you soon, Ellie."

"Okay — oh, John, one more thing. Do you have any idea what happened between my brother and your boss in Atlanta?"

Casey frowned. "No, Ellie. Something did, or didn't, or something…"

"That's not helpful, John."

"No, and I know it. What I mean is that something changed between them, but whatever it was, it hasn't manifested itself in…well, in apartness or togetherness."

Ellie looked at him and deliberately crossed her eyes. Casey laughed and shook his head. "I know, cross-eyed. It defies physics or maybe even logic: two people feel less apart but no more together. Pardon the old-time Hollywood patter, but only a dame as screwy as Sarah Walker could manage it."

"My brother can surely pick them."

Casey shook his head, put up his hands defensively, not for himself but his boss. "No, no, she's screwy, but she's a good woman. Down deep." He grinned. "Down way, way deep. If I didn't believe that, no, if I didn't know that, I would never have stayed with her. I certainly wouldn't have stayed with her father. I worked for people like him — and I don't want to do it again."

The change in Casey's tone puzzled Ellie. She had never before heard him sound so scarred.

She did not pry. "So, good, down way, way deep, huh?" Ellie asked, raising an eyebrow.

The haunted look in Casey's eyes dissipated, and he smiled. "Yes, way, way down."

"My brother's a kind of deep-sea diver — he can hold his breath forever. If anyone can get to the bottom of her, he can."

Casey grinned again, crookedly.

"I didn't mean it that way, John."

"And I am not thinking about Sarah Walker's bottom."

"I'll have you know," she poked his chest, "my bottom is the only one that should be on your mind."

"Maybe your brother's not the only deep-sea diver."

Ellie put her palm on Casey's broad chest, flexing her fingers gently, then tiptoed up to his ear. "It's time to raise the Diver Down flag, John."

Ellie giggled as John turned the color of the flag.

"Ellie, Ellie, an ambulance just arrived, cardiac patient. We need you!" another nurse yelled through the ER doors.

Work.

Ellie shook off the memory as she ran to the doors.

Gregory clambered up the stairs; he could not wait for the elevator. He burst out of the stairwell and into the hallway in time only to see Amber step on the elevator at the opposite end.

He started to yell but thought better of it. He watched the elevator indicator as it climbed all the way to the penthouse office. Damn.

Sarah's desk phone rang. She hurried to it, pulling the Observation Room closed behind her. She did not hear it click, but she ignored that fact and crossed to the phone.

"Sarah Walker."

"Yes, Casey, that'd be fine. I'd like to hear what Amber has to say." Sarah omitted the fact that she already divined that Casey was the one on the other end of Amber's office phone a few minutes earlier. "Chuck should be here too, and I'd be curious about his opinion."

Sarah was actually not happy about Amber and Chuck crossing paths in her office. She had worked before the Atlanta trip, and even harder after it, to minimize their contact.

It would interfere with her plan for them to become attached. She did not want Amber to have a say in what Chuck decided. Chuck's decision was unpredictable enough as it was.

Sarah's conscience was complaining softly in the background of her consciousness. It had been panging her since she first came up with her plan and since she first manipulated Amber and Chuck.

She tried to ignore it.

Casey arrived in her office with Chuck following a moment later. Chuck smiled at Casey. "Hey, Casey." Chuck looked at Sarah. "What's up?"

"More information on the Larkin fandango. I don't know if you knew, but I put Amber Kitchens to work with Gregory on that…"

Chuck nodded. "I heard."

"...But I came to suspect that Gregory was working with Larkin, since it seemed to beggar imagination, believing that Larkin could have done all this computery wizardry himself. If that man has any magic, it's confined to his teeth, not his fingers." Sarah looked down and blushed and Casey saw. "Sorry, I don't mean to suggest anyone's told me a lot about Larkin's fingers."

Amber Kitchens came through the door. She was carrying a bag and a thick computer printout. She had glasses on — Chuck had not seen her in those. When Amber saw Chuck, she quickly took the glasses off, blushing. "Hey, everyone, I thought I would just be talking to you and Ms. Walker," Amber said, facing Casey.

"Chuck, you recall, was one a Buy More guy. It turns out he had even more expertise in this area than that might suggest."

Amber shoved her glasses into her bag. She looked puzzled but Casey offered her no more explanation.

Sarah broke in, trying to keep control of the situation. "Casey says you've discovered something, Amber?"

Amber sat down, the thick printout in her lap. "Yes, this is the printout of the keylog of Gregory's WI computer. It shows that he was doing the opposite of what Casey assigned him, us, to do. Instead of trailing Larkin, Gregory erased Larkin's trail.

Casey came around the desk to stand on Sarah's side of it, but at the corner. Chuck sat down in the chair beside Amber. "May I see, Amber?"

"It's a lot of data, Chuck."

He smiled without any vanity. "Where this kind of thing's concerned, I'm sort of a speed reader."

Amber handed him the stacked pages and he began to scan them. Amber stared at him for a moment and Sarah spoke to her, forcing Amber's attention away from Chuck.

"So, you conclude that Gregory's working with Larkin?"

Amber nodded. "It's not a certainty, but I believe it beyond any reasonable doubt. Chuck will see…"

"Do you have any idea what specific WI documents Larkin downloaded?" Casey asked.

"No, I don't. Gregory made it possible for Larkin to do it, but I don't know what he took. I assume it would be documents with sensitive information, either about WI's clients or about WI itself."

Chuck was still paging through the document, and without looking up, he asked a question: "Isn't it about time for a number of WI's primary clients to re-up with us? That's what one of the files said, one of the ones Mrs. Bennet gave me. Four of our most important corporate clients have contracts that end with the calendar year, companies considerably larger than, say, Jaeger Industries."

Sarah nodded at Chuck. "That's true, but the renewals are a matter of course."

Chuck looked up from the pages, looked at Sarah. "I know — but that they are a matter of course does not mean they are necessary, right? The companies could back out?"

Sarah's expression grew worried. "Yes, technically. But, that's not how it's done."

"Still," Chuck said, quietly insistent, "it could be done?"

"Yes, but the companies would have to have a plan, another provider ready to go. They wouldn't chance their employees, their employees' needs."

"So, what if someone — one of your competitors — had the full information on the contracts with these companies, knew exactly what the companies pay us, and used that information to…I don't know the term…underbid us? Undercut us? To make an offer so much better than ours that the companies would be sure we couldn't match it."

Sarah sat down. "But none of our competitors could afford that — they operate much as we do. They might make a better offer than we did, but it couldn't be that much better. They can no more operate at a loss than we can."

Casey spoke up. "What about Graham at Nationwide? He's been after these contracts forever."

"Yes, he has. But he could hardly underbid us and stay afloat. Besides, Graham's an asshole. No one wants to deal with him if they can help it."

Casey nodded. "But Bartowski's right. Those renewals are the big items on the horizon, the only real gap in our armor. It might be what Larkin's aiming at."

Chuck had been rifling backward through the pages, then forward, as Sarah and Casey talked. "Amber's right," Chuck told Sarah, then he smiled at Amber. Sarah gritted her teeth. "Gregory basically swept away Larkin's trail. We can tell that he did it, but not what he did exactly. They keystrokes by themselves tell part of the story but not the whole thing." Chuck looked back down and flipped forward a few more pages, then he glanced up. He was staring at the Observation Room door, standing slightly ajar. Then he returned his attention to the pages. "Gregory's been a busy little programmer."

Sarah cursed herself for not going back to shut the Observation Room door. The open door felt like it was allowing secrets to escape.

"I'm going to have to go after Larkin himself," Casey said. "No more chasing his trail. No more Mr. Nice Guy. If he wants to play spy, I'll teach him the game. Ms. Walker," he turned to Sarah, "do I have your permission to squeeze Larkin?"

Sarah nodded. "Yes, Casey, we have to defend ourselves; we didn't start this cold war but we have to finish it. We need to know what's being planned."

Amber had been listening. "What happens to Gregory?"

Sarah and Casey exchanged glances, then Sarah turned to Amber. "I will fire him. He can't work for me after this."

Amber's face lengthened. "No, I guess not."

Sarah rotated slightly to Chuck, who had still been turning pages. "Do you think Amber is right, beyond a reasonable doubt?"

Chuck kept turning pages. "Chuck?" Sarah asked, more insistently.

He looked up. It took a second for his eyes to clear. "What? Oh, beyond a reasonable doubt? Yes, beyond a reasonable doubt."

"Then he goes. Today."

Casey cleared his throat. "Do you want me to do it?"

"No, I will. But I'd like you to bring him up. — Amber, thanks for all your help. I will remember it."

Amber nodded. She seemed torn, but she managed a smile. "Thanks, I just — I feel bad about Gregory. I mean, he did it to himself, but still…"

Chuck turned his head to Amber. "I understand. I got a guy at Buy More fired — Lester was his name — he was stealing photos — particular photos — off phones that came in for repair. I found out inadvertently but…" He shrugged. "What he was doing was gross and wrong, and he deserved to be fired, but I still felt bad for having done it. I had to remember he was the one who did it."

Amber gave Chuck a weak smile of thanks. "Thanks, Chuck. I know. He just used to like this job, the IT folks. I don't understand."

"Don't underestimate Larkin's charm — on men. There are a lot of men who'd love to be Bryce Larkin, who envy him the clothes, the women…" Casey stopped and glanced at Sarah, but she was more invested in Chuck's interaction with Amber than in Casey's comment about Larkin. "Um, anyway, Don't let it worry you, Amber. Chuck's right. Gregory sowed the wind, not you, Amber. You're just doing your job, the job I asked you to do."

Amber agreed with a sober nod. Sarah hated that she liked her as much as she did, but she did. It was easy to see why Chuck liked her, and easy to see that he did.

"I'll go, if we're done," Amber said, starting to stand, but showing reluctance.

"Yes, we're done," Sarah said, understanding Amber's hesitation. "Why don't you take the rest of today and tomorrow off, since tomorrow is just a half-day. Begin your holiday early — with pay. Casey," Sarah continued, swiveling her chair to face him, "go and bring Gregory up to see me. You can get your things after Gregory leaves the IT office."

"Thanks, Ms. Walker."

Casey glanced at Sarah. "Actually, you can stop in my office, Amber. I'll have someone from Security gather your things and bring them to you." Sarah nodded and Casey led her out.

Chuck watched them leave the office then turned to Sarah. The pages Amber brought were still in his hands. "That's tough for her. She and Gregory — they've had some sort of thing, I gather, in the past."

"So Carina has told me. I can't criticize her. She had her Gregory; I had my Bryce."

Chuck glanced down. "Right. We've all made mistakes." Chuck shook his head, a bitter grin on his face. After a moment, he gave Sarah a look. "This makes your decision to give up on dating seem like a solid idea, huh?"

Sarah sighed. She felt Chuck's look all the way to the soles of her feet. She shrugged. "I don't know, Chuck." She leaned forward. Her hangover headache was back and she still had a confrontation with Gregory ahead of her. She took a moment to massage her throbbing temples, then lifted her eyes. "Can you hang onto those pages for Amber?"

Chuck held them in his hand. "Um, sure. Is it okay if I study them a bit more? Amber was right but I worry Gregory was up to more than she realized."

Sarah's head hurt too much to think about it. "Sure, Chuck. Let me or Casey know if you find anything else."

He stood up. "We'll figure it out and stop Larkin's plan, whatever it is. Plans were made to be foiled."

Sarah could not keep herself from staring at Chuck. He stopped. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yes, thanks. You should go. No need to be here when Gregory arrives."

Chuck tucked the pages under his arm. Sarah noticed him glance at the crack in the door to the Observation Room before he left.

When he did, she got up and crossed the room, shut the door, then went back to her desk.

Plans were made to be foiled.

Morgan's phone vibrated in his vest pocket. He pulled it out and smiled.

Alex.

"Hello, Breathless Mahoney."

Alex giggled. "So," she said in a sleepy, husky voice, warm and melty, "you now know that I sweat better in the dark, huh?"

Morgan caught his breath. "Um," he looked around, then went on in a whisper, "you sure do. That was the best night of my life." Morgan stopped. That was probably a stupid thing to say, said too soon.

But Alex purred in response. "Me too, absolutely, lover. Is it okay if I stay here since it's my day off? I'll order some Chinese — sizzling shrimp, maybe, noodles — for dinner?"

"That sounds so good." I'm Alex's lover. "Say, Alex," Morgan added, "Derrick, the PI, stopped by this morning. He tried to call you."

"I saw that he did, but I wanted to talk to you before anyone else today. — Did he say what he wanted?"

"Not exactly. I asked him about the gravesite, and he acted like he might know something."

"Huh. Well, I'll call him after I shower."

"You're going to be naked in my shower?"

"I'm naked in your bed right now, if you remember."

"Every blissful inch."

"Me too." Alex giggled, throaty. "Hurry back to me when your shift ends."

Chuck sat down at his desk.

He put the thick stack of papers on the desktop. Chuck was curious to study more closely what Gregory had done to obscure Larkin's espionage. But he was also curious about something else. Gregory had been up to more than obscuring Larkin's trail — he had gotten into the closed-circuit system in the Tower. Amber had not mentioned it. Maybe she had not noticed it. Maybe she ignored it as a distraction. But Gregory had invested time in it.

Chuck sat down and flipped to the pages that interested him. He turned on his computer and got into the WI system. He began to mimic Gregory's keystrokes.

Gregory stood before Sarah Walker in her office. Casey had accompanied him up but left after walking Gregory inside.

Sarah Walker sat straight, her face pale, and eyes as welcoming at the Artic Cape. She had a pencil, a sharp one, in her hand.

He reached the front of her massive desk. If he had not been so nervous, he might have admired Sarah Walker (he had rarely seen her up close), the imposing desk (it seemed to contain enough wood for a Man-of-War; it only need sails), or the commanding view of LA (his desk in IT was not near any window). But he was so nervous, and so he did not.

She held the pencil in her hand and pointed it at him. "A few weeks ago I fired Bryce Larkin, and soon afterward I found that he was involved in corporate spying." Gregory felt himself shrink. "I now find that you were his accomplice. — Do you have anything to say about this, any denial, explanation or excuse?"

Gregory did not speak for a moment, and then, in desperation, he choked out an answer. "I know."

Frost seemed to settle in the office. "What do you know, Gregory?" Sarah's voice was like a hard fall on slippery ice.

Gregory played his only card, his hole card. "I know that you have a surveillance system up here and that you routinely spy on your employees."

Sarah Walker's only response was to blink once, and slowly. "What if I do? There's boilerplate in all WI contracts about security."

Gregory's frustration with himself, with Bryce, with Amber, with the whole mess, grew. "Yeah, but I wonder how Chuck Bartowski would feel about the fact that you spend so much time watching him? Or Amber Kitchens?"

The impassivity of Sarah Walker's face broke. And Gregory knew he had hold of something. "Bartowski and Kitchens. Amber told me you called her up here the day Bartowski got hired, and that since then, you've kept her hopping, assigned her to work on Larkin with me, kept piling busy work on her desk…"

Gregory watched as Sarah put the pencil down. He went on. "Someone might think that you've been manipulating people, running some marionette theater from up here."

"What if I were? I'm not breaking any law."

Gregory, encouraged by her response, shrugged. "No legal law, maybe, but you're breaking moral laws, keeping the letter but violating the spirit."

Sarah looked down. "I'm firing you, Gregory. But — I will provide you with a large severance package…"

"If I do what?"

"If you sign a confidentiality agreement, agreeing never to discuss anything connected with your firing, anything either of us has said today."

Gregory stood, thinking. "You know, it's not clear that a CA is enforceable in court."

Sarah now returned Gregory's shrug. "Try me. Try my lawyer, Roan Montgomery. And remember, I have a reputation in LA; I could blacken yours, make it hard for you to ever work again. As things stand, as long as you abide by the CA, we will too."

Gregory could see the steel in Sarah's gaze. Intensity rolled off her in waves. He nodded his head. He laughed regretfully, silently to himself.

I did all this for money because I wanted to win Amber. I now have a pile of money, and I've lost Amber.

And my job.

He left the office. Casey was waiting for him in the hallway.

Sarah sat for a long moment after Gregory left, processing what had happened.

She had bought Gregory's silence, but circumstances, and her own feelings, were closing in on her. She stood and walked to the Observation Room and went inside.

She walked into the middle of the room and stood in place, rotating, taking it all in. Gregory deserved to be fired, but he was right about her — this Room was wrong. She had known it all along.

But the Room was also — she now realized in a rush of bitter self-knowledge — the most telling outward and visible sign of her father's inward and spiritual domination of her life. There, high, high atop the Conklin Tower, she had built a shrine to her father's manipulation, mistrust, and machinations.

She felt nauseated by the Room, by herself, by her father. Her father had taken a small, lonely girl's needs, that girl's love for him, and he had twisted it, and twisted her, into a possession, never accepting her love or Sarah as the gifts they were.

He had twisted and twisted until he could possess her from the grave.

Carina was right. Sarah was living her father's life, not her own.

She sank onto her bottom, on the floor, and lurched forward onto her hands, and, for the first time she could remember, head down, she wept.

Chuck jumped when his screen filled. He saw himself. He looked up. A camera was hidden in his office; he stood and began to look for it. It took some searching to find it; it was cleverly hidden in the wall, built into the office's thermostat.

He sat back down, punched more keys.

Amber Kitchens was putting on her jacket in the IT office. More punches and he saw the employees in the cafeteria. More keystrokes showed Chuck office after office, hallway after hallway, room after room in Conklin Tower. He left the system and searched for plans for the cameras. It took him a while, but he eventually found it. The cameras were all controlled from one place, from the room in Sarah Walker's penthouse office.

Earlier, in her office, when Chuck had realized that Gregory had entered the security camera system, a funny feeling had settled over Chuck. It had felt like a draft from the cracked door to that room in her office, the room Sarah had told him was a private bathroom, but one she had never used, in any way, not even to wash her face or hands, when Chuck was in her office, one she never offered to let him use.

To his great surprise, Chuck noticed that the control room itself had a camera in it. He punched the keys.

He saw the interior of the control room. The far wall was a panoply of screens, screen after screen, all dark. In front of the massed screens, on the floor, Sarah Walker was sobbing uncontrollably.

Chuck's own eyes filled with tears as he watched. And then, realizing he was an intruder into her private grief, he turned off his computer.

"What are you watching, Chuck?"

Chuck whirled in his chair. Carina was standing in his doorway. She looked dull, much as Sarah had that morning. It took Chuck a second to be sure that Carina really was asking. But she could not see his screen from her door; the volume had been low.

Chuck wiped at his eyes. Carina noticed.

"Hey, Chuck, you okay? Holiday blues already?"

"Something like that. What's up Carina?"

She seemed not to be concerned that he did not answer her first question. "Nothing, work, but I wanted to ask you if I could come to Thanksgiving with you and your sister after all. Mom got a better offer from a widower in Key West at the last minute. Those are the breaks with a Mom like mine. Sarah said she was going to attend, right?"

"Yes, right." Chuck could not get the image of Sarah out of his head enough to respond promptly, correctly. "It'll be…um, a humble gathering."

"I do humble, Chuck." Her grin faded and she gave Chuck an unusual, serious look. "It'd be nice to have a traditional Thanksgiving. I like visiting Mom, but large drinks and grocery-deli-prepped fare aren't particularly festive, do not make for much of a holiday, even if the house is fancy."

"Okay. Be sure to bring Sarah, okay?"

"But she said she was coming, right. You just said so."

"She did. But I worry that she'll change…change her mind. I don't like the thought of her alone in that cavernous apartment on Thanksgiving."

"I'll be sure to bring her, Chuck. See you Thursday; I'll bring some food, as well as our boss."

"Good, just come by anytime in the afternoon. We'll be hanging out. We'll have dinner at six."

Alex waited for Derrick to answer. One pink towel was wrapped around her body, another around her hair. She looked like a strawberry milkshake when she saw herself in the bathroom mirror. The call rolled over to Derrick's voice-mail.

"Derrick here. I can't answer the phone right now. Just leave me a brief message at the tone."

"Hey, Derrick, Alex. Morgan told me you talked to him; I see you called. I was asleep. Do you have news on my dad? Call me."

Bryce steered his car along the coastal highway, whipping into and out of curves. The sun was setting and he was just driving, no destination in mind. He felt good.

Breakfast with Frau Funk had gone well. He'd call her Frau — married or not. Bryce had been clever to demand to meet her as part of his arrangement with Graham. She had been reluctant; meeting Bryce served no purpose for her, really. But Bryce had wanted the meeting. If nothing else, he wanted a beachhead on her consciousness.

Bryce had something on her, something he might be able to turn to advantage eventually, down the road. Play the angles. Plan ahead. Funk was going to underwrite, to fund, Nationwide's effort to steal WI's crucial clients.

She had a vast personal fortune and an Ahab-like hunger for revenge. She also had Job-like patience: she had been working toward this, single-mindedly, for years. She had changed her name when younger; virtually no one knew she was the daughter of the man who gave Jack Walker his start in insurance.

Or so Graham had told Bryce one incautious night over drinks.

Graham did not care about Frau Funk's revenge; he was tired of having to check WI in his rearview mirror, in the growth of WI as an increasingly worrisome competitor. If someone else wanted to foot the bill and eliminate WI, he was perfectly happy to help.

After all, what they were doing was legal. Underhanded, but legal.

Bryce accelerated into the next curve, his smile tracing a similar parabola.

A/N: Thanksgiving dinner should be interesting, huh? Lots of people and lots of issues in a small space. It'll take a chapter or three to wade through it. Drop me a line, please.