7

Time in seclusion: 51:07:07

"Un. Believable."

"Yeah, I know," Vaughn muttered without moving his eyes from the brake lights on the car in front of him.

"No," Jen continued to argue even though he was agreeing with her. "We've been scouring the state for those tapes and they've been four floors above us the whole time?"

"Apparently so."

"How the hell is that possible? How did this…A/V guy not know about Barnett's death? There were interoffice memos – hundreds of memos – from the second her body was found. Memos from Security. Memos from Facility Management. Memos from Devlin," she rattled off. "Hell, we even had a fucking memorial yesterday. What did this guy think that was for?"

"Claims he had a doctor's appointment then," Vaughn stated, the epitome of calm. "Never saw any of it take place."

"Yeah, I know. I was at the debriefing. I just can't— Jack and Sydney have been stuck in that safe house for two and a half days, and we could have prevented all that if we'd known those tapes were in the Multimedia Department." Sighing, Jen looked out her passenger-side window and rubbed the tips of her fingers together. "We could have prevented it, Mike."

"We didn't send them to their executions, you know. You can stop acting like we did."

"You don't understand. Jack doesn't… Ever since Irina Derevko surrendered to us, Jack's been on edge. We need to get him out of there."

Swiveling his head slightly to his right, Vaughn gazed at her in trepidation and uncertainty. "Why? I know he can be a loose canon, but he'd never do anything to hurt Syd."

"Of course he wouldn't." The response was automatic – defensive – and when Jen heard those empty words leave her mouth, she crinkled her nose in disgust at herself. "Jack…loves Sydney more than…anything. It's just that…"

"That what?" he gently pressed even though his hands were now clenching the steering wheel with an irrationally tight grip.

"I don't…" Running her right hand down her neck until it rested on her left collarbone, Jen sighed once more. "I respect Jack, maybe more than anyone else within the Agency. But…I don't know. There's more to him than he lets on. We all know his past. We all know about Irina and how she hurt him. He tries to mask it, play it off as nothing, and he's gotten very good at it. I mean, he can be so detached sometimes that you'd swear he'd never seen her before in his life. But then there are other times when you'll catch him off-guard and see…" Her voice trailed off as she lost herself to her thoughts. She snapped back to attention, though, when she heard Vaughn prompt her by clearing his throat. "Irina changed him. She…stole something from him and has made it so that everything's…gray in his life. Various shades of gray, but the differences are almost nonexistent."

Vaughn stared at her, his heart sinking, until he finally noticed that the car in front of him had stopped and he had to slam on the brakes, lurching both of them forward in their seats. "Are you telling me Jack would hurt Sydney?"

"No," she dismissed, almost with exasperation even though 'not on purpose' was the phrase on the tip of her tongue. It was a phrase she would always refuse to say out loud. "I'm simply telling you we need to get them out of that house."

He pondered Jen's comments while Russek's death darted to the forefront of his memory. He'd been appalled by Jack's behavior then, how he hadn't even blinked when sending an innocent man to his execution. But he'd done that to save Sydney. And as far as he knew, Jack always put Sydney's well being in front of his own. But how much of that is real, and how much of it is an illusion? Vaughn asked himself, the palms of his hands growing clammy. Is he really as selfless as he leads people to believe?

Jen watched Vaughn's face harden into an expression of determination and felt panic rise up within her. They'd been colleagues and close friends for years, but she never had any doubts about where her loyalties lay. Despite her fears concerning Jack, she didn't want anyone else questioning him or his motives. "Hey, don't pay any attention to me, Mike. I'm just being my usual paranoid self," she said, forcing a bubbly laugh from her chest as she playfully slapped his right arm. "I'm sure Jack and Sydney are fine. After all, it's not like we put them in that house with Irina, right?"

Vaughn threw her a questioning look and was taken aback by the sudden happiness on her face. But when the smile never faded, he slowly allowed her cheerfulness to set him at ease. "Right," he replied, chuckling as well, almost as if they were sharing an inside joke.

But then the car fell silent as both handlers realized that Irina could be present in the house without physically being there.