"Why the long face, Syd?" Dixon asked when she sat down across from him.
Sydney looked up from her desk and smiled. "I'm off from work for the next few days, and I was hoping that I could talk to Mom and schedule another girls' day out."
She desperately needed to talk to her mother about those codes; she needed to tell her about the CIA and about Jack knowing. She knew her father--and the agency--would be furious, but she needed to be honest with Laura. She needed Laura to be honest with her.
"I'm sorry, Syd, but Sloane sent your mom out on assignment."
Sydney's eyebrows snapped together. "Assignment?"
"Yeah," Dixon said, picking up a pencil. "I think someone told me that she was going to Havana."
"Cuba," Sydney whispered as her heart began to pound.
"Yeah, I don't know what's there, but Sloane wanted her to go."
Sydney knew exactly what--or rather who--was there.
***
"It took me a second to realize what you were doing," Sydney said with a grin on her face.
"I was blinking as fast as I could," her father told her.
"I know," she said, the grin still plastered on her face. "I was like 'hard on your light'?" she joked.
"Guard on your right," Jack replied, staying focused on the job.
"Well, I figured it out," she said. The euphoria of victory was leaving her. "I was just never very good at Morse code."
She gasped when she saw the blood on his arm. "Dad, you were shot."
Jack shrugged the injury off. "It's nothing." He returned his focus back to their prisoner. A short time later, Sydney sat in the backseat, aiming a gun at Hassan's head.
"So, now what? Take me to the mountains and kill me?" Hassan said as the countryside began to overtake the city.
"We are going to fake your death so that SD-6 thinks you are dead. After you give us your client list," Sydney answered before Jack could. She saw her father look at her in the rearview mirror, and she dreaded telling him what she now knew.
***
Jack elbowed Hassan in the face, knocking the man unconscious. He started typing him up as he demanded to know why the change the plans. "Why did I just cover a man in fake blood and take his picture, Sydney? Why are you here?"
His daughter reminded him of a lost animal. She stared at him, and tears filled her eyes. "SD-6 has sent someone to take care of Hassan."
"I think I could handle an SD-6 assassin on my own, Sydney. I've been doing this job long before you were even born," he snapped. He couldn't believe that Devlin had let her follow him.
"It's Mom," she said, and his world stopped again.
He sank down on the floor. "Laura's an assassin?"
"I'm sorry," Sydney whispered, sitting down next to him.
Jack struggled to focus on his job. He used to never have to work hard to focus; he always knew he could relax, be himself, when he got home. Just as soon as he got the job done.
He stared at his daughter and thought about SD-6. Nodding, he reminded himself that he just needed to get the job done.
***
Laura was shaking when she entered her house. She had gone straight to her daughter's apartment, but when she hadn't found her there, she had returned to her own home to think. Instead of peace and quiet, she had found Sydney's Land Rover parked outside.
Sydney stared at her, a deer caught in headlights. "Hello, Mom."
"Who do you work for?" Laura demanded. Her voice was softer than she expected, and she realized that fear was choking her. For the first time in her life, she was completely terrified.
She could lose her daughter.
"Who, Sydney?" She grasped her daughter's shoulders and squeezed, resisting the impulse to shake her. How could she be so stupid? Didn't she know they would kill her when they found out? And they would find out; they always did.
"And don't tell me that you're not. I recognized your description from my contacts. You stole Hassan out from his own home and guards. You and another man." She had not even bothered to find out any information about her daughter's associate. "Who do you work for, Sydney?"
Sydney didn't answer her. Instead, she handed her an envelope. Laura ripped it open and pictures fell into her hand. Pictures of a dead Hassan. "What's this?"
"I know Sloane sent you to kill him," Sydney whispered, causing Laura's heart to shatter. Her daughter now knew one of her dirtiest secrets; she was a killer, an assassin. "Sloane would want proof that you had done the job, so I got you proof."
Laura sat the pictures down on the bar and looked over at the clock. Jack wouldn't be home for hours. "He's not dead, is he? You faked these shots. The people you work for didn't want Sloane looking for him anymore."
Sydney shook her head. "No, they didn't, and I wanted you to be safe from Sloane. He doesn't like failure."
Laura's grin was tight. "Don't worry about me, Sydney. I have a long history with Sloane. He would forgive me a few mistakes."
She reached up and caressed Sydney's cheek. She looked at her through tear-filled eyes. "But he won't forgive your betrayal, Sydney. You have to stop."
"I can't."
Suddenly furious, Laura snapped, "Why? Do you honestly believe that they have your best interest at heart? That they will protect you?"
"Yes, she does," answered a voice from behind her, a voice she hadn't expected to hear.
A part of Laura wanted to run, to hide away from him. Not that she could hide from the truth any longer. Still, her body resisted as she forced it to turn and face her husband.
He looked at her with hate in his eyes, and Laura tried to find the strength to swallow. She didn't know how her weak legs were holding her, but she was glad that she wasn't a heap on the floor. She would face this with her shoulders straight and her head high.
And her heart broke into a million tiny slivers.
"Go home, Sydney." He didn't even bother to look in their daughter's direction. His eyes remained trained on her.
"Dad--"
"Go," he said in a tone that didn't allow for argument. He was being a senior officer of the CIA instead of a father.
Sydney took a few steps forward, looked at them both, and then nodded. The door barely made a sound when she closed it behind her.
***
Jack stared at his wife and wondered if she knew he was trembling. He wondered if she knew he was wishing that he could be an ostrich. He had liked living with his head stuck in the damn ground; he had liked not knowing what was really happening around him. He wanted that happiness back. He could never get it back.
"You've been hurt," she whispered, sounding like the caring wife he had always thought she was.
His cheek started throbbing. He had forgotten about it and his shoulder until she spoke. "Hassan didn't much care for me asking questions."
"No," she whispered. "He wouldn't."
"I'm not asking you any questions, Laura. I don't want to know the whys anymore. I'm too tired to care." He took a step forward and she stepped back. Her back bumped into the bar.
He put his hands around her, laying them on the bar. He leaned forward. "But I will give you warning: if you tell that son of a bitch, if you do anything that harms our daughter, I will personally kill you. Do you understand me?"
She only stared at him mutely. Finally, she nodded. He wanted to choke her, to shake, make her talk. Instead, he stood up straight. "Good. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to move my things into the guest room."
He walked away, leaving his marriage behind him. It was now over. He didn't have to live in a lie anymore. He wished he were happy about it.
***
"You just left them?" Vaughn couldn't believe his ears. "How could you just leave them?"
Sydney looked up at him, and he hated the lifelessness in her gaze. He wanted to see the familiar crackle of anger, of frustration, in those eyes. "What else could I do, Vaughn? Mom and Dad have never let me take sides in their arguments. They hardly even let me see them argue."
"They didn't really argue much," Vaughn said. He had never believed Jack's claim. Well, he had believed it because it was Jack, but it always struck him as strange at how much Laura agreed with Jack and Jack with Laura. A fairy-tale marriage.
Only Jack hadn't known about the evil stepfather Sloane.
"No, they didn't. And my father had never looked at mother that way before," Sydney whispered. "He used to always treat her like a princess."
Vaughn shifted on his feet, thinking about his own father. His stomach rolled, not wanting to cause her any more distress, but needing to know the answers. "I, uh, got those codes deciphered. I had N.S.A. look at them."
Sydney's shoulder's stiffened. "Yeah?"
"Yeah," Vaughn told her. He opened his briefcase and handed her the files he had been carrying for over a day. Inside were the translations.
"What are they?" Sydney asked, her voice flat. If he didn't know her better, he would think she wasn't interested.
"Directives. Confirmed KGB orders," he told her as he watched her. She gasped when he said KGB, and he wondered again where she had gotten the code.
She stared up at him, and he was stunned by the terror in her eyes. "What kind of orders? What do they mean?"
"It's a list of aliases, of handles--people," he whispered. People who had never came home, who became a star on a wall in Langley.
"Who?"
He barely heard the question. "Those are official code names given by the CIA to over a dozen of our officers. All of whom died." He was proud of how professional he sounded. He wanted to yell about it, to scream that life wasn't fair. No little boy should grow up without his father.
Some part of himself said that he should be happy that he least he now knew. He knew where and how his father had been killed. And now he had a chance to find out who had murdered William Vaughn. He didn't feel happy.
Sydney stood up and walked away from him. She shook her head. "No," she sighed.
"Sydney, where did you get these codes?"
"I can't tell you." She kept her back turned to him.
Vaughn reached for the folders. "Then I guess you'll have to tell Devlin and Jack."
Sydney spun to look at him. "You can't tell them!"
Vaughn's laughter was not a happy sound. "I sure as hell can't keep it from them."
"You have to," Sydney said, putting her hand over his before he could move the folders.
"No, I don't. I won't," he said, yanking his hand and the folders up off the table. "Don't even ask me to do that, Sydney."
"Vaughn, you have to--"
"No!" He stared at her. "My father was one of those agents, Sydney. Whoever you are trying to protect murdered him.'
Sydney sank down to the floor. She started to cry. "I'm so sorry."
He squatted down in front of her. "Why? Who--" He saw the answer in her eyes. "No."
"Mom and Dad honeymooned in Europe," she whispered. "They found a bookstore in Prague that was magical--that's what Mom said about it. They set up an order with them to ship books on a monthly basis so that Mom could get non-Western literature as it was being published."
Vaughn felt sick. He didn't want to hear this; he didn't need to hear it. He wanted to go to Devlin, wanted to have his father's murder arrested and punished. He couldn't do that to Jack, a man who had acted like his father for the last twenty years.
"Inside the covers are these inscriptions. Some of them are simple like 'With all my love, Jack.' Some of them are long, flowing letters of love." Sydney chuckled. "Some of them are really bad poems that he wrote."
She looked up at him. Tears covered her face. "And after that, hidden in the margins, are orders for my mother to kill."
She stared at him and waited for him to make up his mind. Closing his eyes, he prayed that his father would forgive him and that his mother never found out that he had decided to protect his father's murderer.
Vaughn reached out and hugged Sydney close. He didn't know if he was giving comfort or receiving it.