December 8, 1998

Nothing new on Myrick. We've heightened our surveillance of the area he was last seen, and Daschle is keeping an extra eye out at the police station for anything new that might help us. He's the strongest lead we've got so far, we need to find him as soon as possible!

December 20, 1998

School got out for winter vacation today. What else happened? Diddly squat!

December 25, 1998

Merry Christmas I suppose I should say. Don't know that there's much to be merry about. I never thought I'd miss spending Christmas at my mom's house as much as I do right now. Courtney and I spent the day together to keep with our cover as a couple, but there was the lingering feeling that we both would rather be in other places. I did feel a little dose of Christmas cheer when I went through my mail from a couple days ago and found an invitation to a New Years Eve party at Anne Barnwell's house. Anne Barnwell is the principal at South Glen South. Think I could get away with putting "when donkeys fly" as an RSVP?

January 2, 1999

I finally have something to write about! Okay, that sounded so much better in my head. I think teaching Kristen and Kirsten (airheads extraordinaire) is having a bad effect on me. Anyway, incase it hasn't been blatantly obvious I've been pretty bored recently. So bored in fact that did something I never expected I would. It was my night off in the surveillance rotation, so I decided that I would go to the party. Figuring that at the very least I could pick up some more tips on teaching. When I called to inform her that I would be coming Anne immediately screamed "Oh, Sam that's wonderful." in my ear so loudly I probably received some permanent hearing damage, and then asked me to bring a bottle of Champagne and some oyster crackers.
Courtney dropped by just as I was returning from the store to pick up a progress report for Devlin that was encoded on a blank floppy disk. Upon seeing my unusual purchases she went into interrogation mode until I finally fessed up about where I was going. I felt kind of embarrassed after she left, but decided that since I had nothing better to do and had already bought the Champagne, which was outrageously expensive for a teacher's salary, that I would go anyway and ignore whatever teasing I got at the next briefing.
Imagine my surprise when I stepped out of the shower only to find Courtney at my front door in a blue holiday dress demanding that I take her along. Looks like I'm not the only who has been bored out of their mind. So we went. Apparently Anne's husband is pretty well off, because they had a big place. All in all I'd say the party wasn't too bad, open bar = always good, and I got about a million dollars worth of blackmail material that I'm sure many of my students would love to know.
Anne turned out to be worse than my mother in her questioning of Sam and Laura about their relationship. She practically forced us onto the dance floor during a slow song. It didn't really matter though, since we were suppose to want to anyway. In the middle of the song I noticed Courtney looked a little sad though, so I decided to ask her about it.
"Oh it's nothing I just........this isn't where I figured I'd be dancing at this time of year." She said.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Well it was last new years that my fiancé proposed, at a party just like this......" She laughed with a far away look in her eye, "Except more graphic designers and less teachers."
"Jeez Courtney, I had no idea." I said surprised.
"Yeah well, I suppose it's part of the job just.........you know sucks," She said and looked away to hide the tears in her eyes. I felt so sorry for her, it was obvious she missed him very much. It brought back all of my feelings of homesickness. We continued to sway together to the music appearing outwardly to be a two people totally in love, but who actually felt depressed and lonely at heart.

January 11, 1999

Success! We finally captured Myrick. This morning during my third period I received page. When I saw the dire emergency code it took all of my will power to act nonchalant. I apologized saying I needed to take the call, then called back outside on my no traceable line. They told me to report for an emergency briefing immediately. After rushing to the front office to get someone to substitute for me, giving the excuse that a close family member had been in a car accident, I tore across town to the doctor's office.
Everything was rushed they got us suited up in swat team gear and gave the intel in the vans on the way there. An anonymous tip came in that gave Myrick's location to be a cabin near Lake Michigan. It was good that it was in a remote area, less witnesses, less security risks.
We arrived and stormed the cabin. It wasn't very big so it didn't take long to figure out that he was gone. Barnes told us to split up into teams and search the woods. After about 20 minutes of searching a message was yelled over my earpiece giving a location east of where my team was. We hauled ass over toward them, arriving just in time to apprehend Myrick. He obviously has not been informed that his location had gotten out, because he was jogging along the road like nothing in the world was wrong. Talk about a nasty way to have your work out interrupted, having two dozen armed CIA agents jump out at you.
On the way back I got to talk to Weiss some, and Barnes even gave us permission to stage a meeting between our cover identities. It has been a long time since I've had a day this good.