A/N: I wasn't planning to update this fic for another week, but the chapter was going to be ginormous if I didn't insert a break somewhere. I apologize for the exposition fairy that may be at work in some places, but I thought a few explanations seemed to be in order. Although you know that this is just coming out of my head, right? It's not as though this has any relationship to the way art conservation/restoration, law enforcement agencies, or crime networks work in the real world. If some of it sounds plausible for a millisecond, that's all I can hope for. I'll start upping the B&W. . . warmth. . . a little bit in the next chapter, but we have a long way to go.
"She seems to be working out so far" was Leena's cautious assessment over a shared lunch, one that she had brought because Myka didn't bring lunches - when she remembered to have one - she ordered off the vending machine menu.
"You talk as though she's an au pair, or a puppy." Myka dipped a pita chip into the homemade hummus. Leena did things like that; she cooked, she entertained, she attended cultural events with friends. She wasn't the kind of woman you brought home to meet your parents, although she was, of course. She was the kind of woman your parents, their friends, your high-school Latin teacher, everyone, urged you to meet. Myka had met her a couple of years too late, that was all. After Sam. . . and Helena.
They were outside in a courtyard of sorts, formed by a four-square of virtually identical office towers, including their own, and the people sitting on benches were almost as indistinguishable. Everyone sported a badge, wore the same wrinkle-resistant shirts and casual slacks, and read the latest headlines or texted on their phones. Myka was convinced that she and Leena were the only two sitting close together who were actually talking to each other. It was well past noon, and Leena would have already eaten her lunch, like normal people did, but she always brought extra food on the rare day when she and Myka managed to sync their schedules so as to take a half-hour together. She was familiar with Myka's eating habits, or absence thereof, just as she was familiar with a lot of things about Myka that Myka sometimes wished she wasn't.
"I admit it's early days, but I'm an optimist. She's helped the team close two cases in two weeks." Leena pushed the bag of pita chips and Tupperware container of hummus closer to Myka. "Here, you're feeding those dark thoughts of yours."
"No darker than normal," Myka muttered defensively, taking another pita chip.
"That they're dark at all is the problem." Leena had assumed her gently admonishing therapist look, which was appropriate, the therapist part anyway, since that was part of what she did. She provided counseling to agents for job-related issues. Her other responsibilities were more broad-based; she developed psych profiles of suspects and perpetrators, she evaluated team interactions and recommended changes when necessary, and she developed interrogation techniques. She also was available for ad-hoc assignments whose purposes were deliberately ill-defined, such as her recent assignment to Pete's team. Myka wondered if Leena was "working" with them to observe Helena or to observe her.
"She did this the last time, too," Myka said. "Swept in and closed cases that we hadn't been able to put to bed. Spotted the giveaways in the forgeries that we had missed, found connections between swindles that we had overlooked. And then, just as we might have been getting suspicious that we weren't getting any of the big fish we thought she'd land us, she reeled a few in. They just happened to be competitors of her father, but who's counting? The last twelve months she didn't help out on as many cases." Myka laughed soundlessly. "More of her own work she had to attend to, she said. Various art restoration projects. But I didn't care because I was spending every minute I wasn't working with her. I didn't care where I saw her, in the office or out of it, as long as I saw her. . . ." Myka had breaking off little pieces from a pita chip as she spoke. When she stopped, she looked down at her lap and saw a pile of fragments. She impatiently brushed them from her legs.
"You think she was planning the art heist at the Marston Gallery in Houston then, don't you?" Leena was carefully not looking at her, choosing instead to tilt her head and bathe her face in the attenuated rays of the sun.
"She had been planning it long before then. In fact, that's why she offered her services as a consultant. She needed to know how we operated, how we thought." Myka glanced enviously at how still Leena sat, how her lips curved in a smile as she closed her eyes against the sunlight. It seemed to make little difference to Leena whether she was enjoying a few minutes of a spring afternoon outside the agency's offices or in a lounge chair on her apartment balcony. She enjoyed the moment no matter what brought it about, which was a talent that wholly eluded Myka.
"And you think you were part of her plan," Leena said, not opening her eyes.
"Yes. . . maybe, I'm not sure anymore," Myka admitted. She hated the uncertainty that had entered her voice. It suggested, somehow, that what had happened eight years ago wasn't completely over, if only in her own mind, that she might revisit it to find a different answer, one that would tell her she hadn't been Helena's fool. It was much easier, and safer, to believe that than to believe that she had been Helena's mistake, her one misstep. Hardening her voice, she said, "It doesn't matter now."
"Actually, it does," Leena disagreed. She opened one eye and rolled it in Myka's direction. "Because what you think happened then influences how you behave toward her now and how you interpret her actions."
"She's given us no reason not to view her with anything but suspicion. I also think she's constantly seeking an opportunity to bolt and to take Christina with her. But I know she won't do anything until she believes her plan can work, and, until then, she'll cooperate with us. Professional enough for you?" Myka asked dryly.
Leena moved her head in what might have been a nod. Again, not looking at her, more, Myka sensed, because Leena wanted to spare her than because she was uncomfortable with her own questions, Leena said, "Have you given any consideration to the possibility that her feelings for you were real and that part of what motivates her now may be a desire to make amends? If that's true, then she's not going to be looking for an opportunity to bolt. What she's going to be looking for is some sign that you've forgiven her, Myka. Not the agency, you. If you engage with her with that possibility in mind, you'll reinforce her desire to be cooperative, and, if you can't accept that it might have any meaning for you personally, you can always look at it as a positive for the team."
"That's stretching. She's being cooperative because we're all but holding her daughter hostage." Myka wondered if she was suggesting more about the true arrangement between Helena, the FBI, and Justice than she should, but then Leena always had a way of knowing exactly what was at stake in any given operation. It seemed to be of a piece with her purposefully nebulous role in the agency.
"I've seen how she looks at you." Both of Leena's eyes were open and focused intently on Myka.
"The same way she looks at all of us. With barely concealed contempt." At Leena's moué of displeasure, Myka amended sardonically, "Okay, she looks at me a little differently, with an extra dose of resentment. She thinks that I've had a hand in cooking up that mess she has going on with Christina's father, or at least that I don't have a problem with using a four-year-old in criminal investigations." Now Myka knew that she was saying too much; the party line was that Helena had reached out to the agency, hoping that her assistance would play well with a family judge, it didn't include the additional information that Justice had thrown Nate Burdette into the bargain. She didn't care; more than a month later, it still struck her as one of the slimiest deals she had been involved in as an agent. Her promise to keep Christina safe had come out of that mess, but it had done nothing to change Helena's opinion that she was one of the enemies, albeit a lesser enemy. The past two Sunday afternoons, Helena hadn't failed to give her a death stare over the top of Christina's head at least a half-dozen times. Which was just as well, it was better that Helena kept her in the enemy camp.
Leena was having none of it. "You know better than to try and snow me. If you don't know how she's looking at you, then it's because you're afraid to see it. And that's not good, for you or the team." She put the container of hummus and the bag of pita chips in Myka's lap. "Take these with you, I imagine it's the only dinner you'll get as well."
"I'm having dinner with Sam tonight." But Myka didn't try to give her back the chips and the hummus.
Another moué, almost sulky. "The third time isn't going to be the charm, you know."
"I keep telling you that we're not getting back together . . . it's just. . . comfortable with him," Myka finished helplessly, running her finger around the rim of the Tupperware lid. Leena had been encouraging her to do more than she had been since the divorce, which had been little more than dead-end coffee dates and, when all else failed at blocking out certain memories or exhausting her restlessness, the occasional pick-up. More often women than men, but no matter how casual or impromptu the encounter, none of the women she had slept with had had dark hair. That would be a disturbing note in her psych profile, if she had one (and she was pretty sure she did).
"We'll talk about this another time," Leena threatened. Sighing, she added, "I'm having some friends come over on Saturday. Bring Sam with you."
"Thanks, I'll have to see," Myka said, shrugging. "On Sunday, Helena wants to take Christina to a park. I was going to take some time and scope it out."
"Because she'll have hired a getaway car to lurk at the entrance." Leena's sigh this time was more aggravated than resigned. "Are you really sure she deserves this much suspicion, or are you just trying to rationalize why you're thinking so much about her?" With another therapist-like response, an arch of her eyebrow, Leena gave Myka a long look before leaving her alone on the bench.
Myka sat on the bench for longer than she had to. Following Leena back to the office too quickly was as good as saying she had a point with that last remark, but Myka wasn't choosing to think about Helena frequently. . . constantly. . . it was part of her job. She was beginning to feel a little chilled by the time she decided to go back in; the early May sun might be warm but the breeze was still cool. As had become her habit over the past couple of weeks, Myka squared her shoulders under her suit jacket and took a deep breath before flashing her badge at the card reader. She needed to be battle-ready. After dropping off the hummus and pita chips at her desk, which was in a cubicle that was marginally larger than most of the others in the office, she headed toward the conference room that was serving as their war room for as long as Helena was with them. It was toward the back of the office suite, within a few feet of Pete's office. Through the narrow pane of glass set into the door, she could see Steve, two of the other team members, and Helena's partial profile. She was bending over the contents of a file folder, pointing at an item that she wanted the team members to notice. Her cooperativeness extended to her presence on a daily basis and a cool civility as she shared her knowledge; it in no wise was meant to suggest that she was happy to be there.
Myka slipped into the room. At the sound of the door opening, everyone looked at her, Steve and Lee and Jennifer with relief, Helena with. . . the same banked hostility with which she greeted Myka every time she saw her. Leena was wrong; there was nothing else in Helena's eyes to see, anything softer would be consumed by the rage. "Ah, Agent Bering, now that you're back, perhaps you can explain to your colleagues the significance of this detail." With an almost contemptuous flick of her wrist, Helena pushed the folder down the table toward her.
Myka flipped through the papers, skimming their contents. It was one of a number of theft investigations that had been assigned to Lee and Jennifer because of certain similarities between the insurance claims. All filed with different insurance companies but all reporting the loss of valuable pieces of jewelry that had been discovered only weeks or months later when the owners had wanted to have them cleaned or reset. None of the filers were related to one another, worked together, or sent their kids to the same schools. The only apparent commonality was that the victims lived in exclusive suburbs north and west of the city, but it was hard to shake the feeling that something tied the victims together beyond the fact that they were well-to-do. Lee and Jennifer had asked about cleaning crews, landscapers, caterers, any service that might have had the victims as customers or clients, but they had found nothing helpful. Myka glanced through the police report of the most recent theft, her attention caught by a comment the interviewing officer had noted, "Mr. Ames joked that the thieves had overlooked other pieces of jewelry, and Mrs. Ames said she wished they had taken his Barrington Academy class ring." Without looking at Helena, she said to her, "The fact that the officer's a scrupulous note-taker isn't what you want me to come up with, is it?"
A noisy, derisive exhalation was Helena's response. Looking at Lee and Jennifer across the table, Myka asked, "Did you go back to the victims and ask them if they had attended Barrington?"
The agents shook their heads. Lee, like Myka, had been recruited straight out of law school, while Jennifer, a few years older, had worked at the SEC; both were still relatively new agents. "There's no mention of Barrington anywhere else in the file. We thought it was a one-off kind of thing, like someone mentioning to the police that he grew up in Des Moines."
"This has always smelled like insurance fraud more than it does simple theft," Helena impatiently interjected. "Seven thefts over a 15-month period, and only jewelry stolen. It's too long, too targeted, and too clean. There aren't many crews who could, or would, do that - not for relatively small payoffs. We're not talking about the Hope Diamond here. You can't overlook any possible link."
"You have to admit that it's pretty damn small, Helena." Myka's tone was mild, but the look she leveled at Helena wasn't. She didn't like sarcasm as a teaching method - perhaps because it had been her tutor throughout her childhood - and she wasn't entirely convinced that all the cases pointed to insurance fraud. "Seven people deciding to work together to scam their insurers? To me, this all speaks to a smaller organization. Maybe a few are frauds, but the rest are true thefts. A couple of school buddies decide they want to turn a lark into something more serious. They're at a friend's for a barbecue and one steals up to the master bedroom and takes a diamond ring from the jewelry armoire."
Helena lifted her chin. "If it were just a couple of school buddies on a lark, they would've already been caught. A maid would have seen them, one of them would have bragged to the wrong person. Somebody with some knowledge is behind this." Her chin was back at a normal level, but her eyes . . . there was something other than hostility in them. A four-year-old's challenge maximized. "Are you up to discovering that you may be wrong?"
Myka couldn't repress the smile that answered Helena's dare. She also couldn't deny that it was this Helena who made her heart beat a little faster, even now. The outfits were less slapdash and more firmly fixed in the business professional category, the hair betrayed a glint of silver here and there, and the face, more burdened, but even lovelier, perhaps, because it was evidence that she too had suffered, though not for the same reasons, underscored that this was not the same Helena, yet that look hadn't changed. It could still burn right through her. "This is Lee and Jennifer's case," she deflected, but the two of them were already holding their hands up in surrender.
"Be our guest," Jennifer said, reaching for the stack of file folders and plopping them in front of Myka. "Pete's even suggested that he might loan us to the securities team. They've got something big going on." She stared at Myka meaningfully. "It's more our bailiwick, anyway." What she all but said was that Helena was Myka's bailiwick, not her and Lee's.
"Let's go discuss this with Pete," Myka said to Helena, who wasn't trying, at all, to hide the smug expression on her face. She quietly added as Helena passed her in the doorway, "You'd better be prepared to accept the possibility that I may be right."
"The odds are slim," Helena said. She stopped to look at Myka over her shoulder. "What are you willing to wager that you're right?"
"We don't wager on cases," Myka said, stepping around her and continuing down the hallway to Pete's office.
"I'm not a professional, so don't expect professional behavior from me. If you want me at my best, you're going to have to put some skin in the game, Myka."
Myka laughed, and it sounded more genuine than rueful. "I did that before. I think I've learned my lesson."
Helena flushed. "It was a poor choice of words." She paused. "If I'm right about all of it, you buy me lunch for two weeks."
"And if I'm right?" Myka waited expectantly as Helena frowned, trying to think of something she could offer, and then waved her hand dismissively. "Let's forget it. You have no counteroffer." She had tried to say it lightly, but it fell hard into the space between them, along with the unspoken 'You never did.'
Helena heard what Myka didn't say, her flush growing deeper. "How about any humiliation, within reason, that you like? I have to quack like a duck when I enter the conference room? Or I have to sing The Star-Spangled Banner at your whim?"
She didn't have to save Helena's pride, but then she had gotten her digs in, intentional or not, which she had sworn to herself on Helena's first day that she wouldn't do. Who was being the bigger child? Placing her finger on her chin and pretending to mull over the suggestions, Myka said, "Enticing, but I think I can come up with something better. If I'm right, I get to teach Christina the CU fight song."
"She'll never remember it," Helena said quickly.
"That's not the point. The point is I sing, repeatedly, and you have to listen."
Helena frowned again, but it seemed directed more at the course of her own thoughts, as if she was thinking about something that unsettled her. Her expression clearing after a moment, although the challenge that flared in her eyes seemed to be struggling against another emotion, Helena said, "Lunch is not a sufficient reward against the possibility of hearing you sing. I need something better. If I'm right, you buy me, no, you make me dinner for two weeks."
"I can't cook, you know that."
"That's not the point. The point is that I make you do something you dread. I don't have to eat it."
"Dinner with your guard? I thought that's something you weren't going to do." Despite the fact that the collar of her blouse wasn't buttoned, Myka felt an uncomfortable tightness around her throat.
"I'm not inviting you to dinner. You're cooking for me, that's all," Helena insisted, a note of uncertainty creeping into her voice.
"Only if you're right," Myka said, fleeing to safer ground. "And more than in your own mind," she added warningly.
"That's not going to be a problem."
Pete was with Leena at the conference table, and Myka had the feeling that she, Helena, or the both of them had been the subject under discussion when he motioned for them to come in. She had hardly begun to propose that she and Helena work together on the jewelry thefts when Pete nodded his approval. Leena, who had been idly observing them, flashed Myka another quirked eyebrow, therapist style, collected a couple of unmarked folders and mentioned that she had another meeting to attend. But Pete didn't automatically shoo them out of the office after Leena left, instead he pointed them each to a chair. "Sit down, thought we could have a status update on the Burdette thing."
Helena regarded him with the same slightly incredulous look she had worn since her first day when she learned that Pete had been promoted to team leader. Her sly "Ouch" to Myka had been her only comment, but the disbelief signaled by the crooked smile and the narrowed eyes was impossible not to read. Pete, for his part, who had always called her "Foxy Lady" out of her hearing eight years ago and then only to Myka, called her "Foxy Mama" to her face. When Helena would protest that it was inappropriate, he would say, "Your presence is inappropriate in this workplace, but I have to put up with it."
"There's no update to give," Myka hurriedly cut in before Helena could respond with something even less to Pete's liking.
"Justice is getting anxious." He turned from Myka to Helena. "They won't hesitate to throw you back in your cell and slam the door behind you if you don't give them something soon. So, Foxy Mama, if I were you, I'd get that busy little brain of yours focused on Burdette." He glanced back at Myka. "Has Sam said anything to you about it yet?"
Myka shook her head. Pete smiled at her knowingly. It didn't sit right on his face, mainly because he rarely tried out anything so smarmy on her. "I guess this time around he's trying to keep work out of the bedroom, right?"
Surprised, unpleasantly so, Myka could say only, "I'm sorry?"
Helena, who had been gazing up at the ceiling, as if praying for release, dropped her head to stare, hard, at Myka. "The Neanderthal, again, really?"
Pete brought his fingers to lips in an "Oops" gesture. "My bad for bringing in your private life, Mykes. I just thought Sam might have said something already."
The shit, he had done this deliberately. She couldn't very well punch him in the shoulder, not in front of Helena, but she could scowl, and she did. He knew what it meant. Then Helena's voice, cool and vaguely malevolent, floated across the table. "I have been giving some thought to what I could do to attract Nate's attention. I have a couple of ideas, but I want to talk them over with Myka first and get her read on them before I broach them to you or Mr. Martino. Is that acceptable?"
"You have until the end of this week to give me a plan." He had no sooner said it than Helena was halfway to the door, while Myka lingered at the table. Pete flinched under her glare and protectively crossed his hands over his shoulders. "If you have to hit me, I can take a gut shot or two, but not the shoulders. The kids and I were wrestling last night, and I practically dislocated my right shoulder."
"What the hell was going on with that comment about Sam keeping 'work out of the bedroom?'" Myka relented enough to flop back into her chair.
"I dunno," Pete growled, deciding, once Myka wasn't standing over him, that he could lower his arms. "Just seeing the two of you together, like Batman and Robin." At a renewed glare from Myka, he changed the comparison. "Or, you know, Thor and Loki, when Loki was pretending to be good." That comparison earned him a snort. "Anyway, it was déja vu all over again, and I wanted her to know that you weren't available to her." He asked hesitantly, "You aren't available to her, are you, Mykes? 'Cause I've seen the way she looks at you sometimes, and -"
"Have you and Leena been exchanging notes?" Myka demanded. "There are no 'looks,' there have been no 'looks,' and there won't be any 'looks.' Where's all that 'You're the best' and 'You can handle it, Mykes'? Jesus Christ, Pete, she practically ruined me. Why would I set myself up for a repeat disaster? You either trust me or you don't."
"I do trust you, but there's still something between you and her, and everyone's aware of it, except you, apparently." He lifted his hands and let them fall back into his lap, suggesting a helplessness that Myka wasn't ready to believe was sincere. As if he sensed her doubt, he said, "To be honest, I felt a whole lot more comfortable about this thing before she walked into this office, and I saw that the first person she looked for was you. And you're not much better." He smiled, sadly, as Myka snapped her head up, dismayed. "It's like it was eight years ago, you two have zeroed in on each other, and it's as if the rest of us don't exist."
"Of course, I've zeroed in on her. She's planning to screw us over, sooner or later." Myka was leaning forward in her chair, searching Pete's face for some hint of the goofy smile that always told her he was putting her on. He was putting her on, he had to be, he was just going about it a different way, playing it completely straight. "Don't worry about me. I've got this, okay?"
"Okay." Still no goofy smile, and, if anything, he looked more concerned, but he pushed his chair back from the table indicating that the meeting was over.
Myka slowly walked back to her desk. She sagged against her chair, running her hands, one after the other, through her hair. Great, first it was Leena and then it was Pete questioning her ability to manage her emotions around Helena, which, by extension, meant they were questioning her ability to manage this assignment. An assignment I never wanted in the first place, she silently yelled, but shouting at them in her head didn't do any good. Yes, if she was being honest, she still responded to Helena on some level, but it hardly meant that she was about to run off with her to a tropical island. First of all, there would be no running because they would have a four-year-old, her clothes, her toys, her stuffed animals, and her nonnie to take with them. Myka smiled at the ludicrous image; she was holding Helena's hand and Helena was holding Christina's hand and Christina, in turn, was clutching at Jemma's. Poor Jemma was being yanked off her feet, in the unenviable end position of the Bering-Wells version of Crack the Whip. Second of all, she had burned down her life around her once, she wasn't going to run into the fire a second time. No matter how pretty the flames looked.
Until this afternoon when Helena had challenged her over the jewelry thefts and she had seen that cocky glint in Helena's eyes, she hadn't even noticed her, not with that gut-twitching pull she had felt in the months preceding their becoming lovers and during the months that they had been lovers. All right, all right, she has been struck the week before by how attractive Helena was in a black pant suit with a scarlet blouse, but she would have been just as struck by any woman with the same coloring and a complexion resembling a snowbell in bloom. The issue wasn't how she responded to Helena's exterior, the issue was how she responded to her interior, and she knew already that the only thing that occupied it was Christina; the rest was a wasteland, a desert, the black vacuum of space, the . . . .
With a dull thud, the pile of case folders landed on the corner of her desk. "Bedtime reading," Helena said sarcastically, "Mr. Martino's exertions to keep you awake notwithstanding."
Myka wearily rolled her eyes up at her. For someone whose interior was a barren expanse, Helena seemed genuinely angry. There was nothing cocky or challenging in how she was looking at Myka; her mouth was set so hard that Myka could practically hear the grinding of her teeth. Helena probably saw her . . . thing . . . with Sam as more proof of the agency's underhandedness. Myka had promised to protect her daughter, yet she was sleeping with the man who was willing to put Christina at risk. Not that Sam personally was tossing Christina at Nate Burdette's feet, it was the office he was representing that was doing it. Myka realized only then that she didn't know how Sam truly felt about it, if he found it as repugnant as she did or if he believed that putting Helena and her family in jeopardy was worth the chance to capture Burdette. What the hell were she and Sam doing if she didn't know something like that? Regardless, whatever their . . . arrangement . . . was exactly, whatever its quicksand and sink holes, none of it was any of Helena's business, and she had no right to act as if she were the victim of some horrific deception. Leave it to a con artist to be outraged at the thought that she was being conned -
"What I do outside this office and -." Myka tried to keep her voice even only to find herself abruptly cut off.
"Do you love him?" Helena asked flatly.
Her mouth having opened in surprise, Myka clamped it shut. She needed to calm down. One second, two. The hell with that. She ground out, "What the hell right do you have to -"
Helena leaned in, the dark eyes burning into Myka's. "I need to know that the woman who promised me she would keep Christina safe will - even if it means defying her U.S. Assistant Attorney boyfriend." Her pronouncing of "boyfriend" was so scornful that Myka flinched from its heat.
"I keep my promises." Myka didn't look away from her, steadily holding Helena's gaze.
"Do you love him?" Helena asked again, so close now that Myka was helpless not to look away. She couldn't bear the intensity. She could almost feel the press of Helena's forehead against hers, the ticklish slide of black hair against her skin. Helena's voice was hoarse, the anger gone, making what had been a demand an actual question, and Myka was already responding to a tremor in Helena's voice that she was half-convinced she had imagined, slowly sucking in a breath that she heard Helena drawing in too, as if they were sharing air like they would a milkshake, teenagers in an ice cream parlor, heads together, aware only of each other.
A discreet cough caused her to launch her chair to the opposite end of her work station, and Myka knew that the color was mounting in her face when she lifted her eyes to see who had stopped by. Steve was standing just outside the entry to her cubicle, attention shifting from her to Helena, who had straightened just enough to slouch against the desk, legs extended and ankles casually crossed, claiming possession of the space and everything in it.
"Sorry to interrupt. I wanted to let you know that Pete put me on the case as well." He directed his words to Myka, but he continued to glance at Helena.
"Just like the old days," she said softly, wickedly to Myka, "you, me, and Jughead." She pursed her lips, taking her time taking Steve in. "You're a good boy, aren't you? Eager to please. Not Jughead, no, no, you're Archie."
"I think I prefer Agent Sunshine," he said, placing his hand on the top of the cubicle's wall, announcing his own right to Myka's time.
"As you wish." Helena shrugged, pushing herself away from the desk. She tapped the folders. "Enjoy."
Still caught in that moment when it had seemed to matter to Helena, beyond promises to protect Christina, whether she loved Sam, Myka was irritated that Helena appeared to have recovered so quickly. While she was trying to catch her breath and settle her pulse, Helena nimbly leaped from being distraught to being snarky. She had been played, Myka concluded, pure and simple. Watching Helena flash Steve a sassy grin as she exited made Myka only the more disgruntled, and she said sharply, "Those ideas you wanted to bounce off me? I want them tomorrow, in writing and in detail." It was a ridiculous demand, and Myka knew she sounded pettish, an overmatched high school teacher squaring off against the class smartass.
Helena turned back to her, head quizzically cocked but the sassy grin still in place. "I like to think as I talk," she countered, "and I'm sure I'm due for an 'unscheduled' bed check. Why don't we kill two birds with one stone? Unless you're already planning to check Mr. Martino's bed. . . ." She didn't wait for Myka's answer, disappearing down the corridor.
Steve waited until she was out of view then pulled out the single, uncomfortable visitor's chair and bonelessly slid into it. He rubbed his close-cropped hair before hooking a thumb in the direction Helena had taken. "It looked like I interrupted something pretty intense going on between the two of you. Do you want to talk about it?"
Myka's instinct was to scowlingly dismiss his concern. She wasn't up for a third round of advice; on the other hand, he had to put up with her, she was his partner. Pete and Leena could witness the multi-car pile-up that she and Helena were together from a distance, Steve was a passenger. She strove for lightness. "Just a minor traffic accident." Before she could stop herself and before she could blunt its bitter edge, she said, "Helena, as usual, walks away without a scratch."
"I wouldn't say that. I think she was putting on an act for my benefit."
Again her instinct was to growl her disagreement, but she recognized that he was trying only to console her. He was a good boy, plus he had an uncanny talent for seeing into the heart of a situation. Hesitantly Myka said, "Leena and Pete are worried that I can't be objective about her. Do you think they have a point? I mean, am I fucking things up for the team?"
Steve arched his neck and looked up at the ceiling panels, as if he were going to count them. "Sometimes it's like you're poking each other with sticks, but I don't know that it's more annoying than Jennifer's 'At the SEC, we did this ' and 'At the SEC, we did that' or Lee's showing up fifteen minutes late for everything." He rolled his head to the side to grin at her. "Or my daily updates on finding a surrogate." The grin faded. "She's a strange fish. I've read the file we have on her, but it doesn't make sense to me, she doesn't make sense to me. What does an artist and sometime art conservator, art restorer, whatever they're called, know about counterfeit designer outfits? Or insurance fraud?"
This was a conversation about Helena Myka could handle; it was easy to be objective and factual when all she had to do was treat her like a case study. She began reciting Helena's background like she would any other criminal's. "Jim Wells was her father. He was a lot like her, only more so. When he was young, he was a painter like her, but more talented, or so the critics say. But that all ended when he was caught trying to pass off a Matisse he had forged. He had a gambling habit even then." She wasn't recalling this from any file. During one of those infrequent "couple dinners" she and Helena had had with Jemma, Jemma had opened a second and, eventually, a third bottle of wine and talked about her years with Jim Wells. Myka had been fascinated, Helena not at all, leaving them at the dining room table and taking a magazine with her onto her mother's balcony. "He had an eye, Jemma told me. He appreciated color and design, and if he wasn't trying to steal it, he was trying to reproduce it. If he couldn't do it, he hired someone who could."
"Like his daughter?"
"That's what everyone thinks now. She may not be the artist he was, but technically her work is flawless, and she's a master imitator. It's why she can find work repairing damaged paintings; her additions are virtually indistinguishable from the original. It's also what makes her a master forger. My old boss, Bates, and his bosses had their doubts about her, but she knew her father's network, and she was willing to give it to us." Myka tugged at her hair, a memory she would prefer not to recall beginning to tease her. "She said it was the right thing to do, and Bates and the assistant directors bought it."
"Maybe a part of her meant it." Steve shifted in the chair, fruitlessly trying to find a comfortable position. "After all, she did give up some of her father's associates."
"The ones he wanted her to," Myka said tersely. The deception had been funny at the time, but it had also been a warning sign, and she had been so head over heels, she hadn't taken notice of how slick, how smooth Helena could be, or how many, many tricks she had in her bag. . . .
Helena wanted to take her to dinner at an exclusive restaurant, so exclusive that it was forbidden territory to all but celebrities, sports figures, and politicians. And not every politician could finagle a table, it was rumored that the governor had been turned down at least once. Myka was content to stay where they were and order out for pizza or make grilled cheese sandwiches every night. Food wasn't something she spent a lot of time thinking about, and she wanted to spend even less time thinking about it, preparing it, or eating it now. But Helena was insistent, and she had a plan for getting in, she said, smiling that smile of hers, the one that started at the center, as if her lips were trying to hold back a secret. She waggled her phone at Myka and keyed in the restaurant's number.
Myka wondered what "in" Helena could possibly have. She wasn't especially famous, and it was unlikely that she could trade on her father's notoriety. She wasn't especially wealthy, although she did happen to have a fabulous loft, if you liked large, uncluttered spaces that still spoke to the warehouse that used to house them. And she definitely didn't do politics. Myka crossed her arms behind her head and prepared to enjoy the show - for the few seconds that it would last - from the sofa, one of approximately four pieces of furniture in the loft.
But when Helena spoke, it was Meryl Streep, asking for a table for two, wanting to share a romantic dinner with her long-suffering spouse. As she spoke, Helena also pretended that she was trying to shush a personal assistant, crying out with a little laugh that she was more than capable of making a dinner reservation. Her party on the other end of the call must have agreed because Helena warmly offered her appreciation for being allowed to "sweep in at such short notice." There must have been compliments streaming forth from the restaurant staff because Helena laughed once more, indulgently, and with a touch of false modesty, claiming that dinner would be her reward for the privations she had recently endured on location. She, of course, was her spouse's reward. Another, more seductive laugh, the reservation taken, "Under Helena Wells, please, one of my favorite aliases," and the call concluded. Helena spun around to view the effect of her performance on Myka, who was staring at her, dumbfounded. After tossing her phone on the floor, because the only table, the one off the kitchen, was half a football field away, Helena straddled her, pulling up Myka's shirt and unbuttoning her jeans, mischief and desire and triumph in her voice and in her eyes. "How about spending the afternoon in bed with La Streep? She needs to work up an appetite." Then Helena was nipping her belly, letting her tongue trail down. . . .
"So how was it?" Steve asked.
"Incredible," Myka said softly.
"I meant the dinner," he teased, and she blushed.
"That's what I was referring to," she said defensively, the blush continuing to travel up her face. "We waited as long as we could. Helena figured they would hold onto the table for awhile, chalking up Meryl Streep's no show to celebrities being celebrities. So we swanned in about 40 minutes late, and they didn't want to give us the table, but Helena pointed to her name on the reservation list and said it wasn't her fault that they thought she sounded like Meryl Streep. Of course, she's hamming up her accent, sounding like she came off the set of Downton Abbey." Myka heard the smile n her voice and decided to surrender to it. "It was a great dinner. . . ."
Steve smiled back. "I haven't seen you look like that in a long time, like you're happy." As Myka's face began to cloud over, he said, "It's not a sin, Myka, to remember that it wasn't all bad." The smile grew sly. "You know, when I stopped by, I got the distinct impression you two weren't poking each other with sticks. In fa-a-a-a-ct -"
She showed him the palm of her hand. "Stop right there. Don't say it, don't think it."
"'I'm not the one going there," he said innocently. "You are." He rose from the chair, putting it back in its corner. He loitered in the space between the two panels that formed the entrance to her cubicle, as though he was ready to listen if she wanted to say more. But she didn't want to talk about the past, her and Helena's past, believing that if she kept walking over it, tamping it down, she might actually succeed in burying it. The silence didn't grow uncomfortable exactly, but Myka sensed there was a weight to it, as if Steve were thinking she should speak. Her lips thinned, she didn't like pregnant silences. It had been one of her father's favorite ways of disciplining her when she was young. She would have done something wrong, or he would think that she had, and he wouldn't speak to her, expecting her to confess her error, and the longer she took to confess, the longer he would maintain his silence. Once, when she was a teenager, it had stretched to a week, until one morning when she opened her bedroom door she felt that she would fall to the floor from the weight of it, and she had admitted something, anything, to get out from under it.
But Steve wasn't her father. Her father wasn't even her father any longer, Alzheimer's slowly claiming him. She gusted a weak laugh. "If you ever see me with my tongue down Helena's throat, don't hesitate to shoot me, okay?"
"Deal." He slapped one of the panels. "But don't ask the same thing of Pete, he'd just -"
"Pull up a chair and watch, I know. He's such a horn dog." Myka's laugh was stronger.
After another slap of the panel, Steve pivoted to go down the corridor to his own cubicle, which, unlike Myka's, was in the office's cubicle farm. He spun back. "You know what really gripes me? That accent of hers. She's been here how long, twenty years or so?"
"Her parents split up when she was little, and she and Jemma went back to Britain. It's not fake, but she can lay it on thick. Ask her to trot out her Southern drawl or her upstate voice, if you want to hear something different. If she's still the ham she used to be, she'll be happy to do it."
"Maybe I'll ask her to do her Meryl Streep. It seems to work wonders," he said impishly.
"Her Bacall's devastating. Make sure you're not alone with her if she whips it out."
They were grinning at each other. It was easy to talk about Helena this way, too, as if she were just another co-worker whose quirks and idiosyncrasies you laughed about when she wasn't around to hear you. Steve gave her a little farewell wave and Myka rolled her chair closer to her desk. She should start on the folders and get up to speed on the jewelry thefts. Her nightly workout session might have to be trimmed down a little, she'd need to leave time to meet with Helena later in the evening. Sam. Dinner. Shit.
She didn't question why the decision was so easy to make. It was work, after all, meeting with Helena. And work always came first, it was one of the fundamental things she and Sam had in common. She also didn't question why she chose to text him rather than call him. He was probably in meetings, and the call would go to voicemail anyway.
Something came up. Rain check on dinner?
No endearments, no "Babe" or "Hon" or "Marvelous Martino Man" (which she had called him only once, when she was drunk, and she blamed it rather than the excessive number of tequila shots for the vomiting that came minutes later). No Sorry's, no Miss you's, no Love, Myka's. They didn't do that, they never had.
She had done it before, with someone else. She had learned her lesson.