Revelations

Chapter Ten

Frank spoke not a word to anyone as he ran for his car, but then again, he didn't have to. His face was set in a stern, unflinching mask. He was determined and heaven help the soul who got in his way. His other agents saw what he was doing and made moves to join him. Monica slid into the front seat next to him and Jake and Cody ran for their own vehicle. Once behind the wheel, Frank left half of his tires on the pavement.

Having no other means to communicate, Monica replaced her earpiece and tried to contact their tech-op still back at the Nest.

"David?? Can you hear me? David! God damn it, answer me!!" she nearly shouted.

"I'm here! I'm here! Jesus! What the hell was that? I damn near lost my hearing in this ear!"

"Just shut up and listen!" she commanded. "I need you to send whatever emergency vehicles are available to Alex and Laura's location. We've lost contact with them."

"Oh Jesus," was the strangled reply. He now understood what had happened to their communications. "I'm on it. Do you need directions on how to get there?"

Monica glanced over at Frank, and something told her that from the way he was driving like a maniac that he knew exactly where he was going. "I think we're OK there. Just get someone to help ASAP."

"Emergency vehicles have been dispatched. The fire department and ambulances should be on the scene within 10 minutes or so."

"Right. Thanks Dave. I'll let you know if we need anything else. And David…..leave all of the lines open."

There was a brief pause before he answered, "Understood." She'd just asked him to leave communications open to Alex and Laura just in case they could still be reached by their receivers.

Now that she'd done what she could, Monica once again turned to look at her boss. His gaze ahead was unwavering. His hands were firmly gripping the steering wheel and his jaw was clenched. She swore she could almost hear him grinding his teeth.

"Frank….."

He turned slightly to glance at her. Something in the tone of her voice had made him look at her, either that or the fact that she'd called him by his first name. He didn't think he could recall a time when she'd done that. He saw the look in her eyes and looked away quickly. She was looking at him with concern, empathy and a hint of sympathy. He didn't need sympathy, from her or from anyone. They'd gotten out in time. He was sure of it, or at least that's what he kept telling himself. If he let himself become overrun by the emotions that were welling up inside of him, he was sure that he'd become unhinged. Laura and Alex needed him right now and for their sakes he refused to be anything but positive and determined.

"They made it out, Monica."

"I…..I'm sure that they did," she answered softly, still watching him. "But what if….."

He turned and looked her directly in the eye, temporarily taking his eyes off the road. "Don't…..don't say it. They're fine. Maybe they got the wind knocked out of them when the bomb went off, but they're fine." He then went back to watching the road ahead.

Oh dear God I hope he's right. She'd seen the look in his eyes when he'd stared straight at her. The man was nearly manic. Most people wouldn't have picked up on it, but there was a different gleam in his eyes that she thought she'd never see. He was on the edge of losing control. She opened her mouth to say something else when she heard Jake's voice in her ear.

"Are these damned things working? Anyone?"

"I hear you Jake," Monica replied. "Are you still following us?"

"Yeah. That is as best as I can."

"Good. If you get separated from us, Dave can give you directions."

"OK, we'll see you there."

"Jake and Cody are behind us," she informed Frank. He simply nodded that he'd heard her.

They drove on for a few more minutes in nearly complete silence. Neither one wanting to talk about the possibilities of what might have happened.

Frank reached into his pocket and put his own earpiece back on and held his hand up against it, hoping to hear something. He was almost afraid to say anything, but he knew he had to try. "Laura? Alex? Can either of you hear me?"

Monica looked out the side window and had to take a calming breath. The sound in his voice had nearly broken her heart. He wasn't just saying their names, he was almost pleading with them to answer. She suddenly had images flash before her eyes. Frank's son looking up at his father with loving eyes or his daughter so snugly held in his arms. She had to blink away tears. Losing a friend and colleague was one thing. Losing a wife and mother to your children was something else entirely. Swallowing the tears that were threatening to fall, she joined in trying to contact her fellow team mates.

"Alex…..Laura……I know you can both hear me and maybe for some reason you can't speak to us. But I wanted you to know that we're on our way. The fire dept. should be there any minute and we'll be right behind them. Don't panic. Help's on its way. We're on our way. Just stay calm."

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Frank take a long trembling breath. She couldn't look at him, so she looked straight ahead and continued talking to the two women as if they could hear every word she said.

As they were getting closer to the plant, they could begin to see plumes of smoke and flashing lights from the emergency vehicles. Winding their way through the myriad of cars and trucks, they finally reached their destination.

After exiting the vehicle, Frank showed his badge to the many workers on the scene. From where they currently stood, it didn't look like too much of the plant itself was damaged, so they maneuvered their way to the other side of the building. Once they rounded the corner of the structure, Frank stopped dead in his tracks. The back half of the building was gone and the entire five story parking garage had collapsed in on itself. He stared at the scene with wide eyes and his heart in his throat. Closing his eyes for a few seconds, he tried to maintain his composure, and after a few deep breaths he came close to succeeding.

He saw a firefighter walking nearby, and grabbed the man's arm to stop him. "Have you found anyone?" he asked hopefully.

"And you are?" the man asked.

"Frank Donovan, FBI"

"Ahhh, so you're Donovan. We were told that you were on your way. And no….we haven't found anyone, but we have a hell of a lot of debris to clear away. It could take us days to get through all of it." Looking around the man added, "If you'll excuse me. I need to get back to work."

Frank mutely watched the man walk away. He started to feel an overwhelming numbness overtake his body. He heard people talking around him, but all he could do was stare at the two story pile of rubble in front of him, but a touch on his arm brought him out of his trance.

He looked down and saw Monica looking intently back at him. She had an extremely concerned look on her face and he was pretty sure that she had said something to him.

"What did you say?" he said finally.

"I said that Cody and Jake are going to comb through the surrounding woods, just in case they made it out and they're still unconscious." He nodded in reply and went back to staring at the remains of the building.

Sighing, she decided to let him be for the time being. Honestly, there was nothing she could do or say that would make things better. And that was the way they stayed for the next 45 minutes to an hour. The two stood by and watched the endless stream of emergency workers come and go. The only thing that broke the monotony was when the other two agents returned saying that they'd found nothing, but they had spotted Alex's car still in the parking lot.

Frank walked away from the other three agents. He'd been holding out hope that they had somehow made it to their car and had successfully gotten away. Hearing that the car was still there and that they were nowhere to be found in the area left only one possibility. They were still inside the structure when the bomb detonated, and looking at the seemingly endless piles of debris and twisted steel, he knew the chances of survival were slim to none.

As he was walking away, he heard someone say his name, so he stopped and turned back to the other three. When he saw that they weren't looking in his direction at all, he began to think that he'd merely imagined it and continued walking.

He couldn't stay still. If he did, he knew he'd be very close to collapsing into a pile on the ground. So on he walked. Not really going far, just getting some distance away from the noise and the endless chatter that could be heard over the police radios. That's when he heard it again. Oh dear God! Holding his hand closer to his ear, he listened intently to the receiver.

"Can anyone hear me?" he barely heard over the din.

"Laura? Alex? I can barely hear you? Where are you?" he asked almost desperately. Monica, Cody and Jake of course heard him loud and clear and thought that their boss had lost his mind.

Jake walked over to where Frank was standing and tried to talk to him. "Donovan. Why don't you go over to one of those police cruisers and sit down for a while. We'll let you know if they find anything."

Frank was shaking his head and walked away from Jake in frustration. With other noise around, he couldn't hear anything. Jake saw this and went after him.

"Donovan, look……"

"Shut the hell up Jake! I can hear them!" he yelled at the younger man.

Jake's eyes flew open, not because he believed what Frank was telling him but because he thought his boss was losing his mind, but just when he opened his mouth to say something, he heard it too.

"Jake, listen to the boss and shut up for once!" Jake looked at Frank in shock. It was Alex and from the way she sounded, she seemed to be all right.

"Oh holy shit! Alex!?!" Jake exclaimed. "Is that you?"

"And who else were you expecting?" she said between coughs.

"Is Laura with you?" Frank asked hopefully.

"I'm here, Frank. I'm OK," he heard his wife say. Frank released a breath he didn't know he was holding. Closing his eyes, he silently thanked whatever deities he could think of for sparing their lives.

"Where are you? Are you still in the garage?" Frank asked anxiously.

"We're trapped under what's left of the garage, yeah," Alex replied. "We were about 15 feet or so away from getting out completely when the bomb went off. We were both thrown into the outside wall before the upper floors collapsed down on top of us."

"Jake, alert the emergency teams that there are survivors trapped under the rubble. Tell them we'll try to get a better fix on where they are," Frank instructed.

"I'm on it," Jake said before running off.

After he sent Jake off on his errand, he looked and saw Monica and Cody both gathered around him with relieved smiles plastered on their faces. Smiling briefly in return, he began speaking to Laura and Alex again.

"Are either one of you hurt?" he inquired.

"I'm OK," Alex answered, "but Laura's leg is broken."

"How bad is it?"

"It's not too great. I think I may have to wear one of those God awful casts for quite awhile." Pausing to cough some more, she continued. "It hurts like hell and my foot is now turned in a direction God never intended it to be in."

"Any bleeding?" he asked concerned about the amount of dust that was sure to be still filtering down on them.

"We both have some minor cuts and scratches, and we'll have some spectacular bruises to show everyone, but again, nothing major. Just the broken leg and a couple of wicked headaches," Alex informed her boss.

"Were either one of you unconscious for any length of time?" Frank asked, suddenly concerned that one or both may have concussions.

"I think we were both out for a bit. I'm not sure how long though. I know what you're thinking and we'll try our best to stay awake until you get us out of here," Laura answered.

"Good. I'm going to have a talk with the emergency people on the scene and see what we can do to get you both out of there quickly. In the mean time, just stay calm and talk to each other to keep one another awake."

"Understood," they both replied. Then Frank went off in search of the people in charge.

Alex looked around as best as she could. There were chunks of concrete everywhere with pieces of twisted steel intermixed. She still couldn't see very far ahead because of all the dust still hanging in the air. Laura was some six feet away and separated from her by some really mean looking metal girders. If she tilted her head a certain way she could just see between two of the rusted pieces.

"How's the leg?" Alex asked.

Sighing raggedly, Laura responded, "Not great, but I've been in worse pain. How are you doing? Is your head still throbbing?"

"It's not too bad. Kind of feels like my brain was used as a basketball, but besides that…." she let the sentence trail off.

Several minutes went by before Laura spoke again. "How long do you think it'll take for them to get us out of here?"

Again looking at her surroundings, she answered, "I have no idea, but I have a feeling it might be awhile. There were five floors above us and we were actually on a floor that was below ground level, so who knows. Could be many hours or even a day or so. Think you can hold out that long?" Alex asked, concerned about Laura's leg.

"I guess I don't really have a choice, huh? But if I know Frank, he'll probably start digging himself, if it ends up taking too long."

Alex chuckled at that. Her boss was indeed a determined man, and she could just imagine him ordering the emergency team around.

"Well….I guess we might as well get as comfortable as possible. I just wish we had something to drink at least. This dust is killing my throat," Alex remarked.

"Yeah," Laura responded half-heartedly. Suddenly something occurred to her. "Hey! Do you see my purse anywhere? It's a big black satchel type bag."

The two women looked around as best they could in their confined spaces. The immediate problem was that with everything covered in concrete dust, nothing looked like it should. Alex was actually able to move around a bit, staying mindful not to push up against anything very hard in case things might still shift. She suddenly spotted something that looked like a strap, but with the dust, she knew it could very well be some type of wiring. Wiggling her way as close as she could get, she was finally able to snatch the item. It certainly felt like a purse strap, so she pulled carefully until the item came loose.

"Eureka!" she cried out, pulling the purse closer to her. She dusted it off with her hand and held it up for Laura to see.

"That's it! Can you squeeze it through the metal beams? Or is it too big?"

"We'll find out," she announced as she began trying to wedge it through the tight space. After a moment or two of maneuvering, the purse finally fell through to the other side and Laura was able to grab it.

"All right….let's see what we have here, assuming that the contents weren't pulverized by falling pieces of concrete. Rummaging around for a few seconds, she looked up with a smile on her face. Pulling her hands out of the purse, she held up an item for Alex to see.

"Tah dah!" she said with a flourish.

Alex squinted trying to make out what it was in her hand. "OK, I give. What is it?"

Shaking her head and smiling, she handed the item to Alex. Once she held on to the item, she looked at it funny. "A juice box?"

"What can I say…..I'm a mom. We do these things. Hell….I probably have crackers or something in here too."

"You have kids?" Alex asked incredulously. She couldn't believe what she'd just heard. Donovan was married, had two children and was fooling around with another woman who had children of her own. This just keeps getting more and more bizarre!

Laura looked at Alex and suddenly remembered that she didn't know the truth. "Yeah….I do. A boy and a girl. In fact…….you've seen them already," she just had to add for good measure.

The look on Alex's face could only be described as total confusion. I've seen them already? What the…… "Holy shit!" she exclaimed as she suddenly realized what the hell was going on. "You….and Donovan? Alicia and Christopher…..those are your kids??"

Laura couldn't help but laugh. The expression on Alex's face was priceless. A look of shock coupled with……relief? "Sorry….we just thought it would be for the best if the rest of the team didn't know that we were married. I can imagine what kind of shock this is."

"You don't know the half of it! We thought……." Alex broke off, not really sure how to bring up their suspicions without sounding too nosy.

"You thought what?" Laura asked intrigued by the tone in Alex's voice.

"Well…….last night…….after Jake and I checked out a lead downtown, we kind of…… spotted the two of you together."

Now it was Laura's turn to be shocked and a little embarrassed. "And what did you see….exactly?" she was almost afraid to ask.

"Let's just say that it convinced us that the two of you weren't just acquaintances. If you know what I mean."

"Oh shit," Laura mumbled under her breath, sure that her cheeks were now flushing bright red. "So after this afternoon…..you thought……" Suddenly she couldn't contain her giggles. And soon the two were in the throes of uncontrollable, all out laughter.

"Oh God…..I needed that," Laura finally managed to say after she'd managed to calm down, wiping away the tears from laughing so hard.

Neither woman said anything for several minutes, both lost in thought. But from out of the blue, Alex finally said something.

"So how did you and Donovan meet?"

Glancing at the other woman, Laura knew they were now treading in somewhat dangerous territory. Normally she wouldn't discuss their past, working for the government, it just wasn't prudent, but this was a different situation entirely. And even though she knew that Frank was totally tight lipped about his past, she wanted to talk about it anyway.

"Now that's a long story," she finally answered.

"I think we have the time," Alex responded, looking around at her surroundings to prove a point.

Laura chuckled. "I guess that's true. So….let's see…where should I begin." Settling herself a little more comfortably against the wall, she began her story.

"I met Frank…gosh….it's been almost 13 years ago. I'd just received my doctorate in psychiatry from Princeton, when I was recruited by the CIA."

"CIA?" Alex asked. "What did you do for them with a degree like that?"

"My job was to help agents who'd been undercover for extended periods of time pick up the pieces of their former selves and start their lives over again."

"I don't get it. What do you mean pick up the pieces?"

"Let me see if I can explain this……the type of undercover work that many CIA operatives do, is entirely different than the work that you do here. Some of these agents can stay under for months and sometimes years at a time. Their job is to secure information. So in order to get the intelligence that they need, they have to become the character that they're trying to portray. The contact they have with the outside is minimal and in some instances, impossible. They become the persona they've adopted. They have to or someone could die.

"My job was to help these agents reconnect with who they were before the assignment began. And depending on how long they were under, the therapy could take weeks, months or even years. And that's how I met Frank."

"Donovan worked undercover?" Alex asked a little shocked.

"Yeah he did. When I met him, he had just spent 16 months being part of a drug cartel in Columbia."

"So he was one of your patients?"

Laura smiled. "In a manner of speaking, I suppose he was."

"Huh……is that when the two of you……"

Laura cut her off before finishing her thought. "No. I think that would be considered a little unethical. No, I just helped him regain himself. It was an amazing journey."

"What do you mean?"

"Usually when an agent is under for that long, it's reasonable to expect the therapy to last for many months. The key to it all, is finding some trigger point. Something in their past that sets off all of the memories and feelings that they'd been hiding for so long. Sometimes it can be a song, or a favorite food, a smell, a memory of a childhood pet….almost anything. So the key to the therapy is finding out what that something is."

"Makes sense."

"When I started working with Frank, I was stunned at how quickly it all came back to him. We'd found that certain memory that unlocked it all within the first week of working together. That's almost unheard of. And after that, things progressed rapidly. It was astounding. Next thing I knew, he had totally worked through everything that had happened and was ready to return to work. I'd never met anyone who could compartmentalize their life so easily."

"Compartmentalize?" Alex asked confused.

"It means that he has this incredible ability to separate his personal and professional lives. Most people can do it to an extent, but he's the first person I've ever met who could do it so successfully. In fact….he's still very good at it."

"I don't get it, why would he need to now?"

"While he's at work, that's his focus. 100%. Before ever walking into his office, I could have told you what it looked like. A desk, a chair, computer, file cabinet, non-descript pictures on the walls……but no photographs, no citations, no mementos…..nothing to remind him of what waits for him at home. And conversely, at home, there are no files, no papers, no reminders of what's back at the office. That's how he balances the two distinctive parts of his life."

"I guess I never thought about it. It makes sense, and I guess it works for him." Alex paused to think about all that Laura had told her.

"Soooo…..if you two didn't hook up then, when did it happen?"

"It was nearly three years later. After I'd gotten my second doctorate…."

"Second?? In what?" Alex asked amazed.

"Psychology. What can I say, I'm an overachiever at heart," Laura said with a smile.

"Like I said after I got my second degree, I started working for the FBI as a profiler. I was assigned to a hostage case in Kansas City. Four inmates broke out of one of the penitentiaries and held a bank full of people at gunpoint. Anyway…..the idiot who was originally assigned to negotiate, quickly let things turn from bad to worse. I called our superiors and had him yanked from the job. In turn, they said they'd send in some new hotshot. I was skeptical, but I figured the new guy couldn't do any worse than the moron who had just left.

"So the next day, I come on shift and everyone's buzzing about the new team leader. In the 6 or so hours that I'd been off duty, he'd practically turned the whole thing around. I was impressed and couldn't wait to meet him. The tech-op pointed him out to me. I looked across the room and stared at the guy for a few seconds and kept thinking, 'Geez, he looks familiar.' Then he looked directly at me and I knew who it was. The funny thing was, I almost didn't recognize him."

"Had he changed that much in just three years?" Alex asked.

Laura chuckled a little. "Well, just cutting his hair made a drastic change."

"He had longer hair?" Alex asked curiously.

"Not just longer. I'm talking long!"

"Get out! You're kidding me, right?!?" Alex asked with a squeal of delight. Laura laughed along with her.

"Hold on a sec….." Laura told Alex as she once again rummaged through her purse. After a few moments, she fished out her wallet. "I think I still have it in here," she mumbled to herself. Flipping to the back of the photo pages, she finally found what she was looking for. Laura handed the open wallet to Alex.

Once in her hands, Alex looked at the picture that was face up. "OH MY GOD! Look at that hair!! Holy crap!" In the picture, Frank was dressed in a leather jacket, t-shirt and was sporting hair that easily reached past his shoulders in wavy curls. The other amazing thing was the almost full beard surrounding a dazzling white smile. "Never in a million years…….Jesus! He looks like one of those Chippendale dancers!" At that both women cracked up laughing once more.

When the laughter again died down, Alex began flipping through the other photos in the wallet. There were several of the kids, from birth to ones that were easily taken just weeks or months ago. There was even one of Laura and Frank together all dressed up. And the very last picture was of a boy she didn't recognize.

"Who's this?" Alex asked, holding the picture up so that Laura could see who she was talking about.

Sighing softly, Laura answered, "That's Michael."

"Who's Michael?" Alex asked, once again glancing at the picture in front of her.

"He's our oldest son."

"I didn't know you had any other children. How old is he?"

"He would have been 9 this year," came the soft spoken reply.

Alex quickly turned her head and looked at Laura. She saw the haunted look in her eyes, and somehow wished that she hadn't asked the question.

"Would have been….?"

"He died of leukemia a year and a half ago."

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