A/N: Wow. I feel loved. You have no idea how good it was to come home from a horrible, boring vacation (we weren't in Key West long enough to do anything, it rained in Cozumel, I injured myself, there was no one my age to talk to, and I was locked in a tiny cabin with my psycho mother) to your wonderful comments. Thank you all, especially neumy who has been unfailingly encouraging of this story :) I hope this newest update meets your standards!
Chapter Seven
Divine Intervention
He slipped out while the rest of the team was preparing and found the nearest public phone. He dialed the numbers from memory and listened to the distant ring on the other end, chewing over his motivations for doing what he was. The problem was that there were no motivations, he couldn't explain it to himself and probably never would be able to. For some mysterious reason, despite the high probability that she was lying to him, he believed Sydney and every word that fell from her lips in a wholehearted, incurable kind of way. That was why he needed to warn her.
One of Weiss's contacts had revealed that Sloane and his associates would be attending a party that evening with the sole purpose of purchasing a Rambaldi artifact from the host, a Mr. Amberath. Sloane and his company, which according to his invitation would include two women who were presumably Sydney and Irina, would meet Mr. Amberath in the main hallway at 8 p.m. before the two men would move upstairs to work out a price, a bargaining that Vaughn was entirely confident would end with a single bullet.
Earlier, when Vaughn had questioned what source had given him such detailed intel, Weiss had given him an odd sidelong glance as if the answer should have been apparent. "The wife."
Vaughn had raised his eyebrows, not so much surprised as disheartened by the revelation; what had happened to all the good marriages? "And why would she do that?"
Weiss had heaved his shoulders dismissively, "How the hell should I know? Maybe he has a mistress, or he murdered a friend of hers, or he left the toilet seat up one too many times, or something equally as criminal. All that matters is that we're close, Mike, so close to Sydney. It's going to be over for good this time."
The wife had cooperatively arranged for a childhood friend of hers as well as a few of his associates to be invited last minute to her home, and the men would spread out to monitor the house once they arrived. Vaughn had been given a post watching over the ballroom, but it was basically a job to placate a damaged man, with no risk or effort involved for him; they didn't expect to see Sydney or any of the others there, they expected them in bedrooms, or the study, or the library, or even to catch them entering the main hall, but not mingling among the other guests where they could be noticed and remembered.
A monotonous, lackluster female voice answered on the second ring, declaring both her name and the name of the hotel before asking how she could assist him. For a moment, his mouth went dry as he realized he was betraying the only person that had stood by him, robbing his truest friend of the target he desired most...and then the moment passed.
So sorry, Eric. Maybe one day he would understand.
"Yes," he began, switching the phone in a business-like manner to rest between his shoulder and ear so that he was free to scan his surroundings, but there were no tails that he could detect. "I was wondering if you had a woman staying there, late twenties, brown hair, brown eyes, about 5'9, probably traveling with an older woman of roughly the same description."
"You must mean Ms. Graham," the lady said, her tone filling with more warmth at the introduction of a topic that was enjoyable to her. "Lovely girl, so handsome and polite, the spitting image of her mother."
He flinched at the implications of the last statement, but managed to keep his intonation pleasant. "Yes, yes. That's her. I was wondering if I could leave a message for her?"
There was a fumbling on the other end while she searched for pen and paper. "Go ahead," she prompted him.
He hadn't planned this far ahead in his distracted haste to contact Sydney, and he had to scramble for something to say on the spur of the moment, some coded message that she would understand. "Tell her--tell her that I'll see her at the party tonight, and I hope that she doesn't mind that I'm bringing some of my friends along as well."
"And who should I say this is from?"
He struggled to dredge up some past alias of his that she would recognize, but failing that he improvised, "Angelo. William Angelo."
He thanked her for her time and wrapped up the conversation, then he replaced the receiver, noticing with concern how his hand shook, the courage that had sustained him thus far slowly draining away. He reached his other hand around to hold it steady and turned blind eyes on the street as he made his way back to the hotel; all he saw before him were their faces, Eric and Sydney, two sides both with a unbreakable hold on him, dragging him in opposite directions.
His only hope was that he would still be whole when all this was finally over.
* * * * * * * * * *
He knew she would come, somewhere in the back on his mind he knew she wouldn't pass up a chance to put herself in danger and multiply his worries in the process.
He muscles had just begun to ache from standing still as he regarded the milling collection of people blending and interweaving around his withdrawn position in one of the many alcoves the room provided, a stance which he trusted would discourage anyone from recalling him in the wake of whatever events took place.
He knew she would come, but that didn't prevent him from jumping when she brushed her fingertips along the sleeve of his rented tuxedo.
He must have cursed or made some sound because their was a instant answering crackle in his ear. "Silver Dollar?" Weiss anxiously called his new codename; they had all been required to change their codenames since Sydney could have easily recognized the previous ones. "Is everything alright over there? Did you see something?"
He tilted his head in next to the black curls of Sydney's wig so that it would appear to anyone passing by that he was talking to her instead of himself. "No." The lie slid effortlessly out; he kept waiting for the inevitable guilt to hit, but it never came. "There's nothing here. Two hours and still nothing. Someone must have tipped them off." Balls of steel. Weiss was right, he must have balls of steel to dare suggest that when he had been the one to give them away. "I'm going to wrap up in here, and I'll meet you in the parking lot in a few minutes. Going radio silent."
As soon as it was safe to acknowledge her presence, he opened his mouth to admonish Sydney for coming. She knew how many morals he'd had to compromise, how many rules he'd broken, all he'd risked to make that phone call to caution her. It hurt, stung him in way nothing ever had before, that she would ignore all the dangers he'd put himself in for her and show up anyway.
But all that died on his tongue, withered away by the fact that he was truly, sincerely relieved to see her alive and well and without a scratch.
She brushed a long tendril of dark hair away from her face and turned the full power of her dazzling brown eyes on him. "I guess 'Thank you' would be inappropriate right now."
He compressed his lips into a forbidding line. "Yeah. Yeah, it would be."
She turned out to face the crowd in the room, her shoulder sidling in next to his as if it was the most natural position for her to be in, standing at his side. "I had to tell Sloane about the ambush, you understand. If the CIA captured him now it would ruin my whole plan, and leave the door open for someone like Sark or my mother to take up the reins of the operation. And then we'd only be back where we started. Plus, it adds credibility to my claim of switching sides.
"But the drawback to telling him is that now we'll be on the move again; we can't stay in a place where they've pinned us down. He doesn't trust me enough to inform me ahead of time where we're going to, either." Her shoulders dipped hopelessly. "I wish I could tell you where it'll be, but I can't."
His gut knotted, and he couldn't bring himself to look at her for fear of revealing his obvious disappointment; there was no gain for him in letting her know just how much of a hold she had over him. "So this may be the last time we see each other for awhile?"
"No." Her denial was so fierce it managed to take him by surprise and startle him into glancing at her. "I'll leave a trail like I did last time, I won't be hard to find." So, she had left those traces on purpose, not out of carelessness; all this time, she had been meticulously setting them up, reeling him and the rest of organization slowly to the point where she wanted them. "So it may be four days, a week at the most before we can meet up again." She caught his hand and squeezed his fingers between her own. "No matter what, you'll never lose me." With that hanging between them, there was no room for any more inadequate words, only a fervent meeting of lips that filled in what they could never say.
It could have been his first kiss, that's how deeply it was ingrained on his memory: the exact shape and taste of her mouth, the heavenly feel of the red silk of her dress and the even more heavenly feel of the skin he discovered, the welcome weight of her arm wrapped around his neck, the way his breath burned in his lungs, and the way the air swirled between them when they finally inched apart.
She released the rest of him from her grip and backed away, leaving him adrift in a universe that suddenly seemed utterly dark and bleak.
"Soon," she whispered in farewell, and turned her back on him like he was any other stranger as she disappeared in the throng.
* * * * * * * * * *
They weren't men used to not completing a job--the CIA wouldn't recruit any other kind--and that didn't make it any easier, staring around at the crestfallen faces of his fellow agents, their heads hanging low over their knees, as the van jolted them back to the hotel, knowing it was all his fault.
Weiss clapped him reassuringly on the back, hiding his own frustration in a valiant show. "S'okay, Mike. We learn from our failures, right? And I don't know about you, but I rarely make the same mistake twice. Except that one girl, whatshername, Tiffany. But we won't mention that." It was only with that attention that he realized he must appear just as bad as the rest of them, but not for the same reason; not even his conscience or doubts about a woman trained to deceive could bother him in the state he was in.
He was simply tired. He had barely slept in weeks, but he knew that for the first time that over the course of that night there would be no nightmares since the source of those dreams was at last safe, and he had the means of keeping her that way. With that promise, drowsiness dropped around him like a heavy blanket, cutting him off from the misery around him.
He trudged up to his room, discarding his shoes along the way, and shed his jacket and pants, leaving him only in his boxers and dress shirt. He stared frowningly down at the stiff, immovable buttons, and burrowed under the covers as he was, starched shirt and all.
Weiss settled fully clothed on his bed, switching the bedside light on as he yanked his laptop out of its case. He had a long night ahead of him, drawing up the reports on the unsuccessful events of the evening for base ops.
And that was the last image Vaughn saw as his eyelids closed over his view: Weiss pausing in the fury of his typing to land his gaze on his friend. And the last sound he heard before he plunged over the edge of oblivion was Weiss's murmured, "Poor son of a bitch."
Chapter Seven
Divine Intervention
He slipped out while the rest of the team was preparing and found the nearest public phone. He dialed the numbers from memory and listened to the distant ring on the other end, chewing over his motivations for doing what he was. The problem was that there were no motivations, he couldn't explain it to himself and probably never would be able to. For some mysterious reason, despite the high probability that she was lying to him, he believed Sydney and every word that fell from her lips in a wholehearted, incurable kind of way. That was why he needed to warn her.
One of Weiss's contacts had revealed that Sloane and his associates would be attending a party that evening with the sole purpose of purchasing a Rambaldi artifact from the host, a Mr. Amberath. Sloane and his company, which according to his invitation would include two women who were presumably Sydney and Irina, would meet Mr. Amberath in the main hallway at 8 p.m. before the two men would move upstairs to work out a price, a bargaining that Vaughn was entirely confident would end with a single bullet.
Earlier, when Vaughn had questioned what source had given him such detailed intel, Weiss had given him an odd sidelong glance as if the answer should have been apparent. "The wife."
Vaughn had raised his eyebrows, not so much surprised as disheartened by the revelation; what had happened to all the good marriages? "And why would she do that?"
Weiss had heaved his shoulders dismissively, "How the hell should I know? Maybe he has a mistress, or he murdered a friend of hers, or he left the toilet seat up one too many times, or something equally as criminal. All that matters is that we're close, Mike, so close to Sydney. It's going to be over for good this time."
The wife had cooperatively arranged for a childhood friend of hers as well as a few of his associates to be invited last minute to her home, and the men would spread out to monitor the house once they arrived. Vaughn had been given a post watching over the ballroom, but it was basically a job to placate a damaged man, with no risk or effort involved for him; they didn't expect to see Sydney or any of the others there, they expected them in bedrooms, or the study, or the library, or even to catch them entering the main hall, but not mingling among the other guests where they could be noticed and remembered.
A monotonous, lackluster female voice answered on the second ring, declaring both her name and the name of the hotel before asking how she could assist him. For a moment, his mouth went dry as he realized he was betraying the only person that had stood by him, robbing his truest friend of the target he desired most...and then the moment passed.
So sorry, Eric. Maybe one day he would understand.
"Yes," he began, switching the phone in a business-like manner to rest between his shoulder and ear so that he was free to scan his surroundings, but there were no tails that he could detect. "I was wondering if you had a woman staying there, late twenties, brown hair, brown eyes, about 5'9, probably traveling with an older woman of roughly the same description."
"You must mean Ms. Graham," the lady said, her tone filling with more warmth at the introduction of a topic that was enjoyable to her. "Lovely girl, so handsome and polite, the spitting image of her mother."
He flinched at the implications of the last statement, but managed to keep his intonation pleasant. "Yes, yes. That's her. I was wondering if I could leave a message for her?"
There was a fumbling on the other end while she searched for pen and paper. "Go ahead," she prompted him.
He hadn't planned this far ahead in his distracted haste to contact Sydney, and he had to scramble for something to say on the spur of the moment, some coded message that she would understand. "Tell her--tell her that I'll see her at the party tonight, and I hope that she doesn't mind that I'm bringing some of my friends along as well."
"And who should I say this is from?"
He struggled to dredge up some past alias of his that she would recognize, but failing that he improvised, "Angelo. William Angelo."
He thanked her for her time and wrapped up the conversation, then he replaced the receiver, noticing with concern how his hand shook, the courage that had sustained him thus far slowly draining away. He reached his other hand around to hold it steady and turned blind eyes on the street as he made his way back to the hotel; all he saw before him were their faces, Eric and Sydney, two sides both with a unbreakable hold on him, dragging him in opposite directions.
His only hope was that he would still be whole when all this was finally over.
* * * * * * * * * *
He knew she would come, somewhere in the back on his mind he knew she wouldn't pass up a chance to put herself in danger and multiply his worries in the process.
He muscles had just begun to ache from standing still as he regarded the milling collection of people blending and interweaving around his withdrawn position in one of the many alcoves the room provided, a stance which he trusted would discourage anyone from recalling him in the wake of whatever events took place.
He knew she would come, but that didn't prevent him from jumping when she brushed her fingertips along the sleeve of his rented tuxedo.
He must have cursed or made some sound because their was a instant answering crackle in his ear. "Silver Dollar?" Weiss anxiously called his new codename; they had all been required to change their codenames since Sydney could have easily recognized the previous ones. "Is everything alright over there? Did you see something?"
He tilted his head in next to the black curls of Sydney's wig so that it would appear to anyone passing by that he was talking to her instead of himself. "No." The lie slid effortlessly out; he kept waiting for the inevitable guilt to hit, but it never came. "There's nothing here. Two hours and still nothing. Someone must have tipped them off." Balls of steel. Weiss was right, he must have balls of steel to dare suggest that when he had been the one to give them away. "I'm going to wrap up in here, and I'll meet you in the parking lot in a few minutes. Going radio silent."
As soon as it was safe to acknowledge her presence, he opened his mouth to admonish Sydney for coming. She knew how many morals he'd had to compromise, how many rules he'd broken, all he'd risked to make that phone call to caution her. It hurt, stung him in way nothing ever had before, that she would ignore all the dangers he'd put himself in for her and show up anyway.
But all that died on his tongue, withered away by the fact that he was truly, sincerely relieved to see her alive and well and without a scratch.
She brushed a long tendril of dark hair away from her face and turned the full power of her dazzling brown eyes on him. "I guess 'Thank you' would be inappropriate right now."
He compressed his lips into a forbidding line. "Yeah. Yeah, it would be."
She turned out to face the crowd in the room, her shoulder sidling in next to his as if it was the most natural position for her to be in, standing at his side. "I had to tell Sloane about the ambush, you understand. If the CIA captured him now it would ruin my whole plan, and leave the door open for someone like Sark or my mother to take up the reins of the operation. And then we'd only be back where we started. Plus, it adds credibility to my claim of switching sides.
"But the drawback to telling him is that now we'll be on the move again; we can't stay in a place where they've pinned us down. He doesn't trust me enough to inform me ahead of time where we're going to, either." Her shoulders dipped hopelessly. "I wish I could tell you where it'll be, but I can't."
His gut knotted, and he couldn't bring himself to look at her for fear of revealing his obvious disappointment; there was no gain for him in letting her know just how much of a hold she had over him. "So this may be the last time we see each other for awhile?"
"No." Her denial was so fierce it managed to take him by surprise and startle him into glancing at her. "I'll leave a trail like I did last time, I won't be hard to find." So, she had left those traces on purpose, not out of carelessness; all this time, she had been meticulously setting them up, reeling him and the rest of organization slowly to the point where she wanted them. "So it may be four days, a week at the most before we can meet up again." She caught his hand and squeezed his fingers between her own. "No matter what, you'll never lose me." With that hanging between them, there was no room for any more inadequate words, only a fervent meeting of lips that filled in what they could never say.
It could have been his first kiss, that's how deeply it was ingrained on his memory: the exact shape and taste of her mouth, the heavenly feel of the red silk of her dress and the even more heavenly feel of the skin he discovered, the welcome weight of her arm wrapped around his neck, the way his breath burned in his lungs, and the way the air swirled between them when they finally inched apart.
She released the rest of him from her grip and backed away, leaving him adrift in a universe that suddenly seemed utterly dark and bleak.
"Soon," she whispered in farewell, and turned her back on him like he was any other stranger as she disappeared in the throng.
* * * * * * * * * *
They weren't men used to not completing a job--the CIA wouldn't recruit any other kind--and that didn't make it any easier, staring around at the crestfallen faces of his fellow agents, their heads hanging low over their knees, as the van jolted them back to the hotel, knowing it was all his fault.
Weiss clapped him reassuringly on the back, hiding his own frustration in a valiant show. "S'okay, Mike. We learn from our failures, right? And I don't know about you, but I rarely make the same mistake twice. Except that one girl, whatshername, Tiffany. But we won't mention that." It was only with that attention that he realized he must appear just as bad as the rest of them, but not for the same reason; not even his conscience or doubts about a woman trained to deceive could bother him in the state he was in.
He was simply tired. He had barely slept in weeks, but he knew that for the first time that over the course of that night there would be no nightmares since the source of those dreams was at last safe, and he had the means of keeping her that way. With that promise, drowsiness dropped around him like a heavy blanket, cutting him off from the misery around him.
He trudged up to his room, discarding his shoes along the way, and shed his jacket and pants, leaving him only in his boxers and dress shirt. He stared frowningly down at the stiff, immovable buttons, and burrowed under the covers as he was, starched shirt and all.
Weiss settled fully clothed on his bed, switching the bedside light on as he yanked his laptop out of its case. He had a long night ahead of him, drawing up the reports on the unsuccessful events of the evening for base ops.
And that was the last image Vaughn saw as his eyelids closed over his view: Weiss pausing in the fury of his typing to land his gaze on his friend. And the last sound he heard before he plunged over the edge of oblivion was Weiss's murmured, "Poor son of a bitch."
