Chapter 6: It's Considered Recruit Work

Disclaimer: I do not own Alias...unfortunately.

A/N: I love this title...it reflects fanfic writing in a way. Why do we intentionally put ourselves through the torture?
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Sydney climbed out of bed the moment the alarm went off. She had no clue when her dad's guard would show up, but if he showed up before she left she wanted to at least appear capable; the last thing she wanted was a CIA escort following her everywhere. He'd probably be the classic James Bond type, she thought in annoyance. Perfect hair, sensual smile, suave, and with a thousand virtually-useless-but-looks-good moves up his sleeve.

To save Danny the trouble, especially since he wasn't a morning person, Sydney got Jaime up and fed. That in itself was a job since Jaime had moved on to solid baby food, which he somehow made an even bigger mess with. By the time Danny emerged from the bedroom, dressed but with his hair still wild, not only was Sydney dressed and ready to leave, but so was Jaime. The kitchen was cleaned up after Jaime's breakfast, too.

When Danny glanced at her in surprise she glanced up at the clock and realized she had a good hour before she needed to leave. May be she had done it intentionally to avoid seeing the CIA guy; actually seeing him would make it all so real and threaten to let loose the emotions she'd so carefully capped the night before.

Sydney was unbelievably relieved to find that, ten minutes before she had to leave, the CIA guard still hadn't arrived. May be Dad couldn't get anyone, she thought hopefully.

She jumped ten feet in the air when their doorbell rang suddenly. She threw a panicked look at Danny before she could stop herself.

"Sydney, if you want to go ahead and leave, I'll let the guy in," Danny offered, realizing she didn't want to see him.

Sydney took a deep breath. "No, I'll let him in," she said, handing him Jaime and stepping out of the kitchen before she lost her nerve.

She walked through their living room, her heart pounding in her ears.

Stop it, she told herself firmly. You're being ridiculous.

She jerked open the door and started to throw a disgusted glance at a James Bond clone, but she stopped with the door wide open, speechless.

The man she saw was about 6'2" with an athletic build, and slightly messy brown hair, a nose that looked like it had been broken more than once, a crooked grin, and bright green eyes. In other words, not James Bond.

"Hi," not-James-Bond said, sticking out his hand and grinning. "Michael Vaughn. You must be Sydney Hecht."

Sydney nodded and shook his hand, and he handed her his badge. She noticed he never looked her quite in the eye.

"I'm required to show this," he laughed, indicating the badge.

"CIA Operations Officer," it read.

"Um," Sydney said, finally recovering her powers of speech. "Mr. Vaughn, what…"

"Call me Michael," he interrupted.

"Okay. Michael, what exactly are you doing here? I knew to expect someone, but I'm not clear on what you're doing. Guarding the house, protecting it from…my mother?" she forced herself to finish.

"Both. I'm watching the house, checking for bugs, that sort of stuff, but I also have strict orders to prevent Derevko from any further contact with you, and…"

"Contact with me? You make it sound like you're keeping me from contacting her. Where do you get those orders?" she asked in annoyance, vaguely aware of how organizations like the CIA worked.

Michael dropped his eyes, somewhat guiltily, she thought fleetingly. "In this case, I received my orders from Jack Bristow," he admitted.

"So he thinks I still want contact with my…with Irina Derevko? Even after he told me what she's done?!?" Sydney asked, furious.

"Mrs. Hecht…" Michael protested.

"Sydney," she corrected automatically. "Only my students call me by my last name."

"Sydney, I think your father is just looking out for you. He seems afraid that you don't believe him and I have no business disclosing that," he added.

Danny chose that instant to come from the kitchen, having heard the raised voices coming from the front door. Danny's first impression of Michael Vaughn was that he was a man hiding something, that he was personally connected to him and Sydney in some way.

"Sydney, honey, do you think you should let this man in the house?" Danny asked gently, grinning.

"Oh," Sydney said softly, as though she'd just realized she was blocking the door. "Michael, this is my husband Daniel and my son, Jaime," Sydney explained as she stepped back, a little sheepishly.

"Oh," Michael said inaudibly, dropping his eyes again but quickly raising them again. "Nice to meet you Daniel."

"Danny, actually," Danny said, extending his hand. "Sydney insists on introducing me that way because she thinks a doctor should sound more dignified," he joked. This isn't just some random guy Jack chose, he thought. There's a reason.

"Great. I'm Michael Vaughn, call me Michael. I hear enough of my last name at work to get tired of it," Michael said, unknowingly mirroring Sydney's thoughts on the matter.

"Good to meet you," Danny said, despite his misgivings about the man. "If you're here, then what Jack told Sydney must be true."

"Yes. It is," Michael said after a pause. His words were clipped and calculated, Danny noticed, which served to deepen his concern about the stranger's motives.

"We hate to have to run without showing you around the house, Mr. …Michael," Sydney corrected herself. "But we really have to get to work. I need to get there as early as I can."

Michael smiled understandingly. "No problem. You won't mind if I look around a bit, though? I need to know the layout," he said quickly, more than happy to get away from the woman.

"No, no, of course. Feel free to look around," Sydney said brightly, taking Jaime and hurrying toward the door. "Will you still be here this afternoon?" she added, wanting to know whether to expect to find him.

"I'm not sure. Agent Bristow assigned several agents to have a shift, but I don't know what sort of schedule has been worked out," Michael admitted as she continued to move toward the door. Danny had begun to follow his wife.

"Are you sure you have time to drop Jaime off?" Danny asked as he pulled the door closed.

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When Sydney arrived at the school, she fully expected Lorrie to come to her classroom before the first bell. But as the day went by and Lorrie continued to stay out of sight, she became the furthest thing from Sydney's mind. In fact, many of the things Sydney should have been concentrating on seemed to be forgotten among the recent events. She was flooded by students complaining about their grades in her fourth period class after she handing back test she'd graded during her break, finally promising to look over all the tests again. She almost allowed her class to be late for lunch again, only this time it was an impatient Samantha Bush tapping her foot in front of Sydney's desk that reminded her. She'd also failed dismally at explaining how to diagram a sentence to her first period class.

It didn't occur to her to wonder where Lorrie had been until she got to the day care to pick up Jaime and Kaitlyn asked about "that cute little girl you had here yesterday."

Sydney wondered about that on her way home. It was a short drive, however, and the dark sedan in her driveway once again pushed Lorrie's absence to the back of her mind.

"Michael," Sydney said pleasantly when she opened the door to find him standing on the other side. "You're still here," she added, feigning surprise. "Did you find your way around all right?"

She knew on an instinctive level that he detected the phony tone of her voice even before he pressed his lips together into a thin line.

"I had no choice," he said, his voice cold. "It turns out no one else is willing to take this job. It's considered recruit work," he added.

"Are you a recruit?" Sydney asked before she could catch herself, unconsciously leading him into the kitchen.

"No," he snapped, unintentionally following her. "I'm…I volunteered. Agent Bristow wanted someone knowledgeable about the status of the Derevko case."

"Are you involved in it?" Sydney asked, suddenly much more interested in Michael Vaughn, though only for the information he might be able to give her about her mother.

It took Sydney several moments to realize he didn't answer her as she strapped Jaime into his high chair and found him some animal crackers. When she did she looked up sharply to see him staring at her, unmasked hate gleaming from his eyes. She gasped, and his face quickly became unreadable.

Sydney stared at him, her eyes narrowing. She already disliked the idea of having some stranger around her home at all hours, and she certainly wouldn't want t o be in his shoes, but he had volunteered for this job. If, for some unexplained reason, he hated her--and how could he when they'd never met? --why had he volunteered for a job he obviously considered beneath him?

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Lorrie had carefully avoided Sydney in school that day. She was the last one into the classroom during the period Sydney was her teacher, and the first one out. At lunch, Lorrie made sure to sit in the middle of a large group of girls from her class. After school, when Lorrie had to pass Sydney's open classroom door, she moved to the other side of the hall and hid among a throng of students hurrying for the bus.

It wasn't that she didn't want to see Sydney; she did, very much. But if she talked to Sydney she'd have to tell her her plan. And she was sure Sydney wouldn't approve of it. Lorrie was planning to take that box of files that he clearly didn't want her to see from her father's office when she got home. As soon as she knew what was in that box, she'd show it all to Sydney. If it were all of the technical records she expected, Sydney would understand it better than she could anyway.

Lorrie surprised herself when she arrived home. She kept looking over her shoulder, straining to hear if her father should arrive early. She couldn't justify her actions; she'd sat alone in that house for several hours after school for as long as they'd lived there, and her father had never gotten home before five. Still, she slipped into the office and closed the door behind her as if afraid someone might see her. She was relieved to see the small carton right there in the corner where it'd been the night before; she must have hid her interest in it well. As quietly as possible, she tugged the box down the hall into her room.

She spread the top few files out on her bed and flipped through them. Three contained facts and figures that made no sense to her. The fourth on, however, she found shocking.

When she first opened the file, she thought she'd come across some of the pictures her father had made a point of throwing out. But she didn't recognize any of the photos of her mother, and she was positive it was her mother. In one shot, her mother was glancing off to the side with a nervous expression on her face. In another, she was wearing an odd, tight leather dress that was unbelievably short. Lorrie stared at that one for a moment before moving on. There were all types of pictures in the box; in some on them her mother wither wore wigs or had colored her hair, but it was undeniably her mother. All the pictures had one thing in common: they had been taken without Angela Miller's knowledge. Slowly, hands shaking, Lorrie turned a picture over, looking for a date. It was there, clearly printed on every photo. And every one of the dates was after Angela Miller should have died in a car accident.

Lorrie gathered up the pictures back into the file and tore down the hall and out her back door. She crossed the backyards in what could have been an Olympic record. Knowing Sydney would be home, she burst in through the back door without knocking.

"Sydney!" she yelled frantically. "Sydney! Come look at this! Sydney! It's my…" Lorrie skidded to a stop and fell silent when she saw Sydney standing in the kitchen with a strange man. It wasn't Danny; Lorrie had seen him before, though she'd never actually met him. She stared wide-eyed at the stranger for a long moment, fear and timidity seeping into her manner. "I'm sorry," she stuttered finally to Sydney. "I didn't know you…I didn't think…" Lorrie dropped her eyes guiltily.

"It's…it's okay, Lorrie. It's fine," Sydney said quickly. "My student, she lives behind us," Sydney explained to Michael, then turned back to Lorrie. "Remember that guard my father mentioned? This is him. Meet Michael Vaughn," she said, sounding disdainful despite her intentions.

"Hi, Lorrie," Michael said quickly, as though to avoid a lull in conversation. "Is there a problem?" he tacked on to make it seem afterthought.

Sydney and Lorrie both frowned at him, Lorrie in confusion but Sydney in irritation, her mouth drawing into a thin line. She then walked over to Jaime's high chair and plucked him from it. Putting her free arm around Lorrie's shoulders, she led the girl out of the kitchen. Lorrie remained confused as to why the man would care why she had come to talk to Sydney.

Sydney led her into Jaime's nursery and closed the door firmly behind her. After settling Jaime in his playpen, she turned to Lorrie.

"What's going on? You avoided me today," Sydney pointed out.

Lorrie quickly related her story, including why she'd avoided Sydney and the file folder full of pictures, waving the folder in the air the entire time. When she started to show Sydney the pictures, she stopped her.

"Let's go to your house to look at all this. You have all those other files in your bedroom?" Sydney asked.

"Yeah, but my dad…" Lorrie protested.

"I don't like talking about this with that CIA guy in there straining to hear every word we say," she said, raising her voice considerably on the last seven words. She was almost positive she heard footsteps moving away from the door.

Sydney led the way out of her house, shooting Michael a death glare as she passed the kitchen, and waited for Lorrie to unlock her back door. Before she'd even left her own house, Sydney had decided she didn't need to look at the folder of pictures; she knew enough about technology to realize the picture couldn't be very reliable. When Lorrie led the way into her room, Sydney dove straight into the other files, trying to decode the abbreviations and short hand used. Lorrie kept trying to shove various pictures at her, but she was too involved in the files that she glanced at them barely long enough to make out a woman with a faintly familiar profile, and that didn't even register until much later.

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Ooh, why would Lorrie's mother be familiar to Sydney? Could it be someone she knew before? Or maybe someone she knows now? Or is it…someone else?

Review, por favor! (I think that's how you spell it…I've been listening to the drum major too much if I'm starting to use broken Spanish phrases any way…)