Disclaimer: I don't own the situations or characters portrayed herein. I'm just playing with them for a while.
To Catch a Mongoose
She was living a lovely, Amanda-free lifestyle for as long as Lee was in Europe (since Billy steadfastly refused to partner the accident-prone woman with anyone else) and she was enjoying it. She didn't feel bad for enjoying it, since Lee was on a case that landed firmly in the category of "milk run". Just some stolen diamonds.
It was a milk run — until it wasn't. Suddenly, with the death of a British agent at the hands of the Mongoose, a prolific hitman apparently turned entrepreneur, the case wasn't about stolen diamonds anymore. The discovery that the Mongoose was using the diamonds to finance his own murder-for-hire startup turned Lee's investigation into a full scramble.
She was pulled off all her other cases and ordered to find someone — anyone — in the vast American intelligence network that could identify Conrad Walter Barnhill on sight.
It had to be down to the universal laws of irony, or, perhaps, Murphy's Law, that the name that appeared in her searches was a familiar one.
Amanda King.
Of course it was Amanda. Despite having no social life to speak of, in Francine's estimation at least, it seemed like Amanda somehow knew, dated, or had once accidentally met everyone. Everyone.
She had a feeling, when she slammed the printout of Amanda King's connection with Barnhill down on Billy's desk, that he was delighted about it.
Of course he was.
Our Man in Tegernsee
The next time she saw Lee, he was rushing out of Billy's office saying something about Gillian having a lodge in the Poconos, and that he was going to be late.
She had a feeling that Gillian wouldn't mind. Lee Stetson, alone, at a lodge, in the Poconos, wasn't really something that precise and punctual people got themselves mixed up in.
It should have been a relief, seeing Lee back to his old Don Juan self, but it wasn't. Amanda was in Europe, finishing up a milk run assignment of her own — her very first solo courier job. Lee hadn't asked about her when he rushed back into the office, and that was a level of callousness in regard to his partner that even Francine disapproved of.
The next time she saw Lee, he was back early from Gillian's lodge in the Poconos. Recalling Lee had been Billy's first call, after the one from Munich came in. She could hear him complaining about it through the phone Billy held out at arm's distance from his ear.
How exactly like Amanda, she thought, a bit uncharitably, to land herself right in the middle of an overseas counterfeiting ring. Francine would have thought she'd done it on purpose to wreck Lee's romantic getaway.
He left the office huffing a little, but not too much. He didn't seem nearly as put out as she would have expected, with the prospect of a ten-hour flight to Germany to bail Amanda out of jail.
He'd probably read Amanda the Riot Act when he got there, though, just to keep up pretenses.