3.
Samantha Dean opened an eye as her phone buzzed with an incoming message. She groaned as she debated getting out of bed. The fact that she was still wearing yesterday's clothes was a strong incentive to get up. On the other hand, she'd only just gotten back from a week in Brussels. She'd been sent there to work out a problem with one of the largest bottling plants serving the European market. The issue affected the quality of one of the companies top-selling beverages. It turned out that a change to the chemical solvent used to clean the injectors left a residue that did not mix well with citrus. The result was a metallic aftertaste that forced the company to issue an expensive product recall.
After she worked out the root cause of the problem, it took multiple teams of workers three days working around the clock to replace all of the injectors in the entire plant and she'd been there for every minute of it. She had, of course, fired the company that supplied the bad solvent and only the plant managers stellar work history kept him from suffering the same fate.
Her timely work saved the company millions along with preserving the reputation of a top-selling product. There was a reason she was compensated as well as she was. Not that she had much time to spend it, hell she barely found the time to sleep. She realized that she'd been busier than normal over the last six months. She made a mental note to re-examine the data for her last several assignments to see if she could find a pattern.
Her plans to catch up on some much-needed sleep on the flight back had been thwarted by some two-bit hacker's attempt to take down their internal communications network. She needed to send the head of IT a note thanking her for enabling the company jets with an ultra-fast internet connection. Only that and her own skills kept the mildly competent shithead from doing real damage. Sending said shithead's location to Interpol had been the best revenge she could manage on short notice. That and implanting a virus that gave her full access to all of the idiot's files. It did not take her long to figure out that a rival company had hired this incompetent. She made another note to check for a connection between this particular rival and the company that produced the bad solvent. Her intuition was telling her that the company was under attack even if she didn't yet know why or who was behind it.
As for the current situation, she used the hackers own machine to unleashed a nasty little virus of her own creation. It would likely take weeks if not months to undo the damage she caused. The beauty is that it was untraceable.
"Oh, they would suspect who done it, but good luck proving that shit," Sam thought to herself.
This was the kind of thing she wouldn't even tell Andy about. Not that she didn't trust Andy, In fact, she trusted the older woman completely. She just understood the benefits of plausible deniability. She would always want to protect Andy. Despite or maybe because of their complicated past. She smiled to herself as her thoughts drifted away from work and towards the day that Andy and Lilly drunkenly stumbled into her life. They had all gotten along from the moment they met but there had always been a little more between her and Andy. Sam's smile grew wider as she remembered ending that night screaming Andy's name as the girl fucked her brains out, more than once. They'd been inseparable after that and had even talked about the M word, but it wasn't meant to be and luckily they both realized it before it was too late. It was also lucky that they both acknowledged that until they found "the one," there was no good reason for them to stop having the best sex either of them had ever experienced.
Her focus shifted as newer memories of fantastic sex floated to the surface. She wasn't sure how Andy was going to feel about any of this. Of course, Andy's opinion of her new relationship was the least of her problems at the moment. She decided to put those thoughts aside for now. Instead, she picked up her phone to check the message that had interrupted her sleep.
"Interesting," she thought as she reread the message from Lily. She quickly realized from the tone of the email that this was important to Andy which meant it was important to Sam as well. She also picked up on the heavy subtext in Lily's message. Maybe things had just changed for Andy as well.
"Good for her," Sam thought and genuinely meant it. She loved Andy and wanted nothing but the best for her.
She decided a quick shower and coffee where both a necessity before she could get down to the task of figuring out the identity of Andy's mystery woman. Twenty minutes later Sam sat in front of her laptop writing a script for a multi-level internet search using all of the information contained in Lily's message.
She set the script loose before going in search of some food. She bypassed her own kitchen not trusting the viability of anything that was still in her fridge. She instead opted for a trip to her favorite diner. In addition to its late night hours, the little greasy spoon had the best pancakes outside those her adopted mother Angela made.
She felt much better after the sugar rush and the two cups of strong hot coffee helped too. When her phone buzzed she knew it meant her script was done doing its thing. She finished her coffee then dropped a rather generous tip in the table for the pretty young waitress. She liked the woman and they had even flirted a little but it had never gone anywhere and now it never would.
"Damn, you've got it bad," she told herself as she slipped out of the diner. She looked around the mostly empty Manhattan streets but saw nothing to concern her. As soon as she got back home, she sat in front of her laptop and began going through the results. She was use to Andy's leaps in intuition paying off, so she wasn't surprised to find her search had come up with just half a dozen potential candidates. She was easily able to eliminate half because their recent whereabouts could easily be confirmed. Of the remaining half, one name easily stood out.
"We sure know how to pick'em," she thought referring to Andy's connection to the former Fashion Queen and the fact that she'd fallen for an actual. She cut that last thought off still not ready to think about that situation.
Next, she began reviewing the woman's bio that her script had assembled. Her amusement about the complex situations she and Andy found themselves in quickly disappeared as she read about the last few years of Miranda Priestly's life. Her sadness at what had become of the iconic woman was quickly replaced by pure fucking outrage as her mind began seeing a pattern in these events.
"This is some evil fucking shit," she swore to herself as she composed an email to Andy with the results of her research along with a few of her own insights. She sent a separate email to Lilly letting her know that the job was done and asking her to do some digging of her own.
She sent both emails then crawled back into bed where she promptly fell back to sleep.
Andy woke the next day and was immediately surprised at how much sun was coming into her bedroom. As she went to check her watch she realized that she was still holding her mystery woman's hand.
"She's not your anything," Andy reminded herself before she reluctantly freed her hand. She finally checked her watch and was surprised to see it was almost ten in the morning. She could not remember the last time she'd gotten anywhere near eight hours of sleep. She checked on her guest and confirmed that her vital signs were still at an acceptable level. If she was reading it correctly it appeared that they had actually improved overnight. Next, she slipped into her bathroom and completed her usual morning routine. As she entered her bedroom again it occurred to her that she should check her email for something from Sam. Sure enough, there was an email waiting from her friend with the heading JACKPOT.
She felt a little bad knowing that Sam probably had not gotten any real sleep in a couple of days but she felt an urgency that she could not quite explain. Sam was a good friend and judging from the length of the email she had more than come through. Despite her desire to review the whole thing, she decided to have something to eat first. After a few minutes working through the dilemma of needing to go downstairs but not wanting to leave the unconscious woman unattended, she decided to convert her phone into a nanny can. She set it up on her chair then pointed it towards sleeping beauty and the monitor. She connected the video feed to her tablet then checked to make sure she had a good view. Satisfied she would instantly know if there was a problem she finally headed towards the kitchen.
She made herself light breakfast then sat at the large island in her kitchen to eat. She kept one eye on her tablet as she consumed her egg white omelet and toast. When she finished eating she grabbed her coffee then made her way into her office so she could review Sam's findings. She took a moment to caution herself against being disappointed in what she was about to read. Despite urging herself not too, she was already more than just a little invested in this woman.
She also reminded herself that, "She has children, an ex-husband, and is probably as straight as an arrow."
She clicked on the email and began to read. The first thing she saw was the woman name, Miranda Priestly. She tried it a couple of times loud. She decided she liked the sound of it. As she read further her next thought was, "That woman is no Miriam Princhek," referring to the name Miranda had been born with. As she continued reading, she appreciated the level of detail Sam had included as well as how she rated the reliability of each source.
Her first marriage had been to Gregg Brant a financial whiz who Andy had heard of on a few occasions. When the couple divorced Miranda had chosen full custody of their children over a more lucrative financial settlement. Andy could not understand why the man would have turned around years later to take those girls away from a mother who so clearly loved her children. Her next husband, Stephen Tomlinson, was a partner at a well known Manhattan law firm. After reading the details of their marriage she sent a quick note to Lilly to make sure they never did business with that firm again.
She could see when things began to change for the worst. It started with her sudden and unexpected ouster from her position as Editor-in-Chief of Runway magazine. Here she came to the first of Sam's insights in the form of a question. The younger woman laid out the magazine's sales totals before and after Miranda was forced out. Next, Sam charted the stock price over the same period of time. The downward trend in both cases was severe and yet they'd made no move to bring Miranda back nor had they fired the new editor. Sam's simple why at the end of her analysis would need some follow up. One of the things that she liked best about Sam was her dogged pursuit for answers. It was a trait they shared and one of the things she liked best about herself. The bottom line was that neither she nor Sam would let that question go unanswered.
The lost of her job at Runway began a series of suspiciously timed events. The next was her divorce from husband number two. Once again Sam flagged this event noting how unusual it was for an ironclad prenup to be thrown out. Despite clear evidence of Stephen's infidelity, the judge granted him half of their marital assets plus monthly alimony payments.
The next blow to Miranda's well being came just six months later when her first ex-husband sued for full custody of their twin girls. Andy's heart melted as she looked at a picture Sam included of Miranda and her girls clearly taken during happier times. Miranda had spent every dollar she had left to try to hang on to her girls. Andy had tears in her eyes as she pictured how devastated Miranda would have been when the judge ruled against her.
The two court cases going against Miranda in such an unexpected manner felt wrong to Andy. Sam apparently had the same feeling as she read on. Sam's digging revealed some unsettling details. Including the fact that the judges in both cases attended Yale at the same time as the managing partner at Stephen's law firm. Further, all three men were members of a super-secret all-boys club at Yale. Her eyes went wide when she saw that Miranda's first husband and her former boss were also members albeit from a decade before.
Sam indicated she intended to follow up on the Yale connection noting ominously that Miranda's own attorney was also a graduated from the esteemed ivy league university.
The last act of this travesty occurred when Miranda was blacklisted. She tried and failed to get a job at any publication in the city. In desperation, she took a job in advertising, but on the day she started her bosses were informed no uncertain terms that if they did not fire her they would never get another client even remotely connected to Elias Clark. The firm had little choice but to fire Miranda the very next day. She sold her house and all of her valuables just to stay above water. She had insisted on maintaining a two bedroom apartment, in case she regained custody, for a period far longer than was financially wise. Finally, she had to give up on that place and ended up moving into the low rent place that had evicted her just yesterday.
The tears that flowed down Andy's face were from a mixture of sadness and of pure rage. She had to agree with Sam's assessment that the confluence of events reeked of collusion. The men in her life had likely worked together to ruin this woman. She sent instructions to Sam to track down the potential threads of this conspiracy and to retrieve Miranda's possessions from her old landlord at any cost.
Next, she called Doc to update him on his patient's condition. He was pleased with the improvement in her vital signs and he further speculated that she should regain consciousness later today or sometime tomorrow given her steady improvement. She hung up with Doc then called Lilly. She filled Lilly in on Sam's research and asked her to look into what it would take for Miranda to regain the custody of her girls. Lilly told her that there was not much she could do without the case files. She sent another note to Sam telling her to call Lily then get her what she needed.
She did not like asking Sam to do things that were not strictly legal but in extreme cases, she would do what was necessary. She also knew that everyday Miranda was without her kids was pure cruelty. She knew that Gregg Brant had a good reputation, so she wondered how he could be mixed up in whatever this was. As she climbed the stairs her mind reviewed what they knew and what they still needed to find out. Her course was clear, in all honesty, it had been clear since the moment she laid eyes on the other woman. She would help Miranda at all costs. Miranda's enemies were now her enemies and they had no way of knowing that she was coming for them.
She walked up to the bedroom and stood over Miranda. She introduced herself as she said, "Hi Miranda, I'm Andy."
"I'm sorry that all of these things have happened to you but I promise you that I will do whatever it takes to make things right."
She then leaned over and placed a gentle kiss on the other woman's forehead.
She got back into the bed, took Miranda's hand, and cried until she fell asleep once again.
AN: So now we know what happened to Miranda. Now, what are Andy, Sam, and Lilly going to do about it? How's Miranda going to view things when she wakes. And who is the new woman in Sam's life? All questions I intend to answer and I hope you stick around long enough to find out. Also, expect some familiar faces from other fandoms to make an appearance later. There are a couple of hints if you're paying close attention. Let me know what you think.