"What were you and Syd talking about?" Laura asked her husband as soon as he entered the room. She reached over and touched the lamp. A soft glow filled the room. Jack jerked and walked over towards the dresser. He began emptying his pockets.
"Starting to spy on me, Laura?" he joked.
She barely kept herself from wincing. "I went for a glass of water and saw you both outside."
"We didn't want to wake you," he answered as he began taking off his clothes.
She nodded and wondered when he had grown so distant with her. Her relationship with Sydney was uneasy right now, but she believed time would heal the wound. Her daughter would understand one day.
"I noticed that it seemed a little tense," she told him. For the first time ever, it was hard to talk to him. She felt like he was behind glass, and she couldn't reach him.
Why her marriage felt like it was crumbling she didn't understand. For most of her life, she had felt as if she lived inside one gossamer thread. It would not take much to unravel her world, destroy it. It was why she was willing to sacrifice anything to keep it. Her desire to keep what was hers was what Sloane used against her. It was how he kept her under control.
Jack closed the closet doors. "Sydney's upset that I've not been home more lately. I tried to explain to her, but--"
"She doesn't know how important your job is," Laura said.
He sank down onto the bed, his back to her. "Maybe I should tell her the truth now."
She couldn't breathe. "No!"
He looked back at her. "You think she would hate me for lying all these years."
"No," Laura answered. There would only be one parent that Sydney would hate, and it would not be her father. "I don't want her to worry."
"I'm a desk jockey, Laura. Not too dangerous anymore."
She played with the material of her nightgown. The silk caressed her fingertips. "I still worry," she admitted. It was the truth. She couldn't tell him that she knew bad things sometimes happened to support personnel, too.
He was quiet for several heartbeats. "Do you ever wish I had never told you?"
When he told her, she had been thrilled. He had been falling under her spell, was going to share his world with her, and she would share it with her superiors. She had known who and what he was before they even met. Tears pricked at her eyes as she looked into his and told him the truth. "If you hadn't told me, we would have a very different marriage, and I can't regret a moment of it."
She leaned over and kissed him, and she was gratified to feel his lips move beneath hers. He stroked her hair. "I love you so much, Jack."
He pulled away and looked at her, studied her as if he didn't know who she was. Then, he smiled. "I love you, too."
Clearing his throat, he pulled away from her and stood up from the bed. He pulled back the covers and got underneath them. After turning out the light, she slid over and laid herself on his chest.
"Sydney seems to think that you have been needing me," he announced to the darkness.
Laura smiled, pleased to hear that Sydney was worried about her again. "I always do."
"She tells me that you've been acting really stressed out."
Now was her opening. She wanted to talk about their relationship, wanted to heal whatever rifts were between them, but she had other priorities. Sloane made sure of it. "I hate my job."
"You've always seemed to enjoy it." He rubbed her back.
"I did. I have. Jack, when I quit teaching and started working for the Foundation, I thought we were going to make a difference in schools. A real difference. We would help implement new ideas and techniques, but it really hasn't worked out that way. Or maybe I'm just burnt out like a lot of other teachers." She had loved teaching. She really had, but Sloane had forced her to give up the classroom when for SD-6's convenience. Now she was giving up education all together.
"Well, you can look for another job or just quit. We don't need your income," he told her.
"No, but it makes for a nicer retirement," she supplied. She wanted to quit. Leave it all behind. Just be a normal person with her husband.
Kissing her forehead, he mumbled, "Do what you want to do. You know I'll support you."
"You always have," she told him. She thought she felt him tense beneath her for a second, but then she decided that she had imagined it. "I ran into Sydney's boss the other day."
"Dixon?"
Dixon had always found it amusing to play Syd's boss. He hadn't understood why Sloane's name was not supposed to be mentioned in the Bristow house anymore than Sydney had. "Yeah, Dixon. He offered me a job as a portfolio manager."
"You? Working at a bank?" His hand stilled on her back. "Are you sure you would enjoy that?"
"I think it would be fun to work with Sydney," she told him. She placed her palm against his chest and rested her chin on her hand. "You know how much I love playing with investments. I think I would be great at it. And the pay is excellent."
"So, you're going to work at the bank now," he said as if he already had known. "Go for it. You can always quit if you hate it."
"True," she agreed. She pushed herself up and kissed him.
When her hand started to wander down his body, he stopped it. "I'm sorry. I'm just so tired lately."
She blushed. "I'm sorry. It's been so long, and I miss you."
He pulled her down for a passionate kiss. "I've missed my wife, too. A lot more than you realize."
She lay back down on his chest. "I'll be so glad when the clean-up is over. I can't wait to have my husband back."
"I keep telling myself that everything will be over soon," he whispered.
***
Jack sipped on his glass of bourbon. Another long day of interrogations, followed by hinted allegations. He wanted them to outright accuse him. It was easier to fight against those types of accusations. Reacting to snide hints only made someone look guilty.
He really wanted to beat the hell out of Bill Miles now. He was good at his job.
"I'm being taken off Sydney's case," Vaughn said from beside him.
He looked up at the younger man in surprise. He had not even heard him approaching. "What? Why?"
"Devlin pulled me off of it," Vaughn told him after ordering a whiskey sour. "Wants a more senior agent to be her handler. I pointed out how much of an asset she was to keep them from getting her killed, and that's how they handled it."
"Slow down," Jack told him. "Take a deep breath, and then tell me what the hell is going on."
Vaughn smiled his thanks at the bartender, and then did what Jack asked of him. He lowered his voice to where Jack could barely hear it over the din of the bar. "We found out why Navour was trying to get twenty-year old intel."
"Why?"
"You've heard of Doomsday Six?" Vaughn asked him.
Jack nodded and took another sip of his drink. "Yeah. In 1989, the US government was informed of that operation. Six nuclear weapons had been smuggled into the US. We recovered and disarmed them."
"There were seven."
He knew the horror he felt was showing on his face, but he was too tired to hide it. "Damn."
"Well, Sydney only had time to call me and tell me that she was going to go see Ivanov--which didn't make any sense to me," Vaughn admitted with a grimace. He chewed on the cherry from his glass.
"It doesn't make any sense to me, either," Jack admitted, feeling a sense of dread pooling in his stomach.
Vaughn shrugged. "Well, I can know tell you that she went to see Milovich Ivanov in Buckingham, Virginia. His name was on the disk."
"The babysitter of the nuke?" Jack guessed.
"You could say that," Vaughn said with a grimace. "It was buried in his grave." He rubbed the back of his neck. "We were a little slower getting that information off the disks. When my boss realized what was happening, he wanted to send in a team to get the nuke out."
Jack took a long drink from his glass. "That would have exposed her."
"Yeah," Vaughn agreed, looking down at his feet.
"You talked him out of it." It wasn't a question. Jack knew the Intelligence community.
"Yes, I did. Then, Sydney called SD-6 to help her disarm the nuke."
Jack barely kept his drink in his mouth. "She disarmed a nuke?"
Vaughn nodded. "I was upset that she didn't call us, but she trusted Marshall to help her more."
"Marshall?" How little did he know about his daughter's life?
Sympathy crossed Vaughn's face. "SD-6's top tech guy."
Jack nodded. "She disarmed it."
"Eleven seconds," Vaughn said, answering the question Jack didn't have the courage to ask. "She had eleven seconds left."
The world stopped for a moment as Jack thought about those eleven seconds. As he sat in his office, his daughter had been eleven seconds away from being evaporated.
"I'm sorry," Vaughn said, putting his hand on Jack's shoulder and squeezing. Jack pointed his finger at his glass and the bartender nodded. "Jack, it's two o'clock in the afternoon."
"I know what time it is, Michael." Jack's voice was a snarl. He struggled to breathe, and then he asked. "Who did they assign to be her new handler?"
"They haven't told me, yet."
Jack shook his head. "Let me know as soon as you find out. I'll try to talk to Devlin about it later, but--" He took a deep breath. He swallowed some more of the bourbon. "They don't want me involved. I'm too close."
Vaughn nodded as he paid for his drink. "Are you all right, Jack?"
"I'm fine."
"You've never lied to me before. Even when I was a kid and Mom wanted you to," Vaughn said after a few moments.
Jack looked back at him and then sipped on his drink. An old guilt tickled the back of his throat. "I thought you deserved to know the truth."
"You were right," Vaughn said. "Mom even admits that now."
"She admitted it then; she called me the next day to thank me because you had slept through the entire night," Jack said, remembering those long-ago days. It was when he had first met Michael. He had been investigating William Vaughn's death, and he acknowledged that his interest had been personal, but young Michael had managed to make it more personal.
"You're unraveling, Jack, and I don't know what to do."
Jack squeezed his eyes shut. Then, after taking another sip of his drink, he said, "I'll tell you what to do, Michael: handler or not, you make sure that Sydney is safe. That's all I need from you, Michael. Keep Sydney safe."
***
Laura entered Sloane's office with a smile on her lips. She had applied the makeup heavy this morning. The little sleep she had been getting lately was beginning to take its toll on her. "Good morning, Arvin. Did Sydney already call you?"
"Yes, she did." Sloane told her. "What's wrong with her?"
"Stress. Strain. Jack sent her up north. She needed some time away. She will be fine," Laura finished with a certainty she didn't feel. "Finding out about me after what happened with Danny has been hard for her." She almost stumbled over the young man's name. Sydney had confronted her that morning and demanded to know if she had been the one to make the plane reservations. She had told her the truth, wanting her to understand that she had done what she could to save him. Then, she had begun working on a way to get Will off the story. She could still save that young man.
"Are you all right?" Sloane asked her.
"I'm fine," she answered with a wave of her hand. "Why do you ask?"
"I don't know," he said, lying back in his chair. He studied her. "You seem a little . . ."
"What?" she asked as she struggled to maintain her smile.
He shook his head. "Nothing. Nothing."
"Okay. Well, I'll see you--"
"Laura, is everything okay between you and Jack?"
Her fingers tightened on the doorknob. "Everything is fine."
"Really?" he asked in a way that told her that he didn't believe her.
"Really," she answered as she opened the door and left the office.