Heather finished her bottle of beer and put it on the table, the buzz feeling rather pleasant. Actually, by counting the number of bottles in front of them, it was quite a bit more than a buzz. Then again, she could be seeing double, but then there would be a lot of twins in the room and there weren't so she was probably just drunk. Not all the way. She still knew where her feet were. And she wasn't naked. That was a good start to the night. Or ending. Whatever. They were having fun, dammit.

"So then the guy says to me," Baker said, finishing the story he was telling about his first assignment with HRT. "He says, 'you can't arrest me for that. I only brought the guns!'"

The table roared with laughter. Training had officially ended twenty-seven hours before. There wasn't a graduation ceremony or anything like that. Being accepted meant that they finally got introduced to the other members of HRT. And then about ten of them took the four new members out to a favorite bar of HRT and they were all getting gleefully blasted. She had wondered how they would accept a woman into the group, but since she could A) complete the same training they did, and the others could verify that Chambers didn't go easier on her, B) drink right from the bottle, and C) burp as loud as any of the guys there, they had accepted her and taken her out with them.

"So when was the first time you got to shoot someone Raleigh?" Linkin asked jokingly. Despite what books and movies dictated, agents rarely killed someone. They pulled their guns often enough, but to pull the trigger was very rare. There were several agents at that table that had never fired a shot while on duty before.

"Oh," she said waving her hand dismissively. "I was fifteen." That got their attention. She giggled. Oh yeah, she was well on her way to being drunk. Drunk was good tonight. So was the beer. Cold beer was always good. Except for bad cold beer. But this was good. The waitress came over with more bottles, and Heather grabbed one, getting to her feet.

"Okay," she said with a laugh. "One time for all of you. And not like that Perkins!" She glared at another agent at the far end of the table. He almost fell out of his chair, laughing at her joke. It wasn't that funny, but the amount of alcohol he had consumed made it seem much funnier. Her chin lifted. "The story," she announced dramatically, "Of how Special Agent Heather J. Raleigh became Special Agent Heather J. Raleigh."

Be careful what you say, she thought to herself. You shouldn't be doing this while drunk. What the hell, they were all brothers or something like that now. "See," she finally said, "since you're all going to find out anyways, I might as well be the one to tell you 'cause then you can't say I didn't." She took another swig. Talking was thirsty work.

"Yes, it's true," she announced. "I am a total spoiled little rich brat. And I went to high school at this exclusive private school filled with fellow spoiled little rich brats. And when we went on school trips, it wasn't to some museum. We went to upscale resorts and went skiing in Colorado. Well, the first year I go, and it's the first time I am away from my very protective family, some guys decide that it would be cool to kidnap a spoiled little rich brat, and for some reason, they picked me."

"And you shot them and got away?" Hartford asked.

She glared at him. "Don't interrupt," she lectured, throwing a peanut shell at him. "It's rude." She smiled again. "They would have gotten me, except I was up late, and went for a walk, and heard them talking and stuff, and ran like hell. But before I could get out of there, my teacher caught me, and they heard her yelling at me for being outside, and they came after us both."

She let out a small laugh with the memory. It had been scary then, but it was pretty cool now. "What they didn't know was that my teacher happened to be disavowed CIA. And what they also didn't know is that my uncle spent every Thanksgiving in Colorado with his stepfather. And my uncle is the definition of a badass. He's military, and we're talking heavy-duty covert ops stuff. We're talking stuff that makes Delta Force look like pansies. I didn't know how good he was, till he showed up in the middle of it, and just whipped up on anything that he decided he didn't like."

"Anyway, we got away from them, but they had a sniper, and I had learned to use a gun a long time before that, and I had one of my uncle's guns, and I saw that guy take aim, and…. bam. Didn't even think about it. Fired three times before I knew what I was doing, and hit the guy dead center." She sat back down, her lips pursed thoughtfully. "Anyways, it was one of those life altering experiences, and instead of being a spoiled little rich brat, I started to be a responsible little rich brat, and got introduced to the idea of going into the FBI soon after than." She took another drink. Smooth.

"No wonder you made it in and managed to survive Chambers," Hartford commented. "Girl's used to playing with the big boys."

Heather laughed. "You have no idea. Speaking of big boys, wasn't Chambers supposed to show up?" She had been interested in actually getting to meet the man behind the hard front that he had put up for the last several weeks.

"He had to deal with some domestic issues," Perkins called.

Walker, one of the more senior agents on the team started laughing. "Domestic issues? Isn't that what he called what happened when he proposed to Karen?" He glanced at the new members, all of them looking curious, but not sure if they should ask or not. He laughed again. He probably wouldn't have said anything under normal circumstances, but the amount of alcohol he had consumed was making him very talkative. "See, Karen was married before to a total loser, worked for a chop shop, sold drugs, all that crap. It was one of those got pregnant too young kind of things, and then she had a few kids, and couldn't get away, and then the guy ends up in jail. So she's working at a bank, and it gets robbed, and they robbers get trapped inside, so they take hostages and in the end, she ends up meeting our good friend, Special Agent Tynell Chambers.

"Six months later, he's all ready to propose. Drove us nuts wandering around, writing out different proposals and things to say and all that crap." A couple of the other agents nodded, grinning with the memory. It was rare for their fearless leader to start acting like a teenager all of a sudden. Funny as hell though. "So, the day comes, and he's down on his knee with the ring, and who should walk in but the now ex-husband who wants to discuss the whole ex status. He just made parole and nobody thought to call her. Guy's screaming and cussing at seeing another man with her, and starts threatening her and him and saying he's taking the kids. Legend has it that Chambers gets up, calmly walks over to him, beats the holy hell out of him, and tells him that the next time, he's calling in a few of his brothers, and the guy isn't going to have to worry about going to jail because they won't find all of the pieces to send. Then he throws him out, walks back to Karen, kneels, and finishes proposing. Hasn't even broken a sweat or gotten a wrinkle in his suit."

They all laughed at that. Heather figured that she would probably say yes to a guy like that. Of course, she would have already beaten the hell out of the ex, but it was the thought that counted.

"So would you fine, upstanding officers of the law really have made sure they couldn't find the pieces?" Brewster asked teasingly.

Walker looked at him. "Hey man, anybody messes with my family, and they're going to pay the price. We're all brothers here." He gave Heather a small smile and hoisted his bottle of beer towards her. "Even the ones in skirts." He paused for a second, and then yelled down the table, "but that doesn't mean you get to wear a skirt Monday, Perkins!" And once more the people around the table dissolved into laughter.

Heather laughed with the rest of them. Brothers, she thought. Yeah. Brothers.

**************

Brotherhood was a nice thought at midnight. When Heather stumbled into her apartment at two-thirty in the morning, she was hoping that brotherhood didn't require too many nights like this. Maybe she did. Her head was spinning and she wasn't sure where her feet were. But she had her purse and heels. At least she had one heel. The other was somewhere. She checked her purse. There it was. She put it in there when she paid the cab driver. Wait. That wasn't the shoe she had been wearing earlier. It was shiny.

She threw her purse and the strange gold sequin shoe onto the small table by her purse. She'd sort it out later when the room would kindly start staying still. She had to pee. Good tip from her favorite doctor aunt. Hangovers are caused by dehydration. Drink lots of water while drinking alcohol. However, it made for some serious time in the can. Heather headed to her bathroom; habit making her hit the play button on the answering machine.

"Hey, it's me," Daniel's voice said.

"Hi Daniel!" Heather yelled back, giggling. It was funny, dammit!

"Just wanted to see how you were doing and when you were going to be getting up here," he said. "Cyra's all in the fa-la-la mood, and you know how she gets. Let me know."

"Will do!" she yelled back.

The next message was offering her a big discount on siding for her home. Heather laughed again, thinking about calling them out and asking how much to put siding around her apartment building. The third message caught her attention. She flushed, coming out of the bathroom to listen to it the second time.

Jon? He sounded worried. What was he calling her for that was not good news? And why did he want her to call him right away? She was tired and drunk and had a strange shoe in her purse. She wanted to sleep for a while. Bed was cold though. A cold bed was like bad beer. Bah. She liked sleeping with someone. She should have invited Brewster over with her. They shared the taxi, why not the sheets too? Oh yeah, she didn't like him like that. Damn. Could she make an exception for the night? He did have a great ass. No. Again, damn. She had liked Jon like that once. He was still hot. He'd warm the sheets. She grabbed the phone, and once it stopped moving around in little circles, dialed his cell phone.

"Hello?" he answered, briskly. That meant he was doing something important. She hoped it wasn't Katie. Yuck. That would be some bad timing. Or not. He better be careful with her. She probably was a disease fest by now to get so famous.

"Hey, you called me, buddy," she replied. She fell onto her couch. It seemed to be the place that was moving around the least.

"Heather!" He better not act surprised. "Hold on a second." She heard him tell someone to do something about a lift. And something about wax. Wax. Candles. Warm scented candles all of the way around a bathtub. Like on her seventeenth birthday. That night was the first time that they…

"Sorry about that." His words interrupted her train of thought. Maybe he would just talk to her until she fell asleep. He had such a great voice. "It's a little crazy around here."

"I know the feeling," she said, and then giggled. "No I don't. I lied. It's not crazy now. It's actually very nice except I'm cold and can't figure out where my warm blankie is." That was very true. Her parents had surprised her by having her apartment in Chicago cleaned out and moved over to the one she had rented here in Virginia. It was sweet of them so that she didn't have to spend time doing that and could enjoy her leave, but she couldn't find jack around there. Her fluffy blankie had to be around there somewhere.

There was a pause. "Are you drunk?" Jon finally asked incredulously. He knew Heather didn't drink a lot, and could count on one hand the number of times he had seen her totally blasted.

"Ohhhh…maybe just a little," she replied playfully.

"Great," he said, sounding both amused and slightly disgusted. "The one time I need you, and you're drunk. Oh well, you'd want a drink anyways after this."

Heather sat up, grinning. "Aww…you need me. I knew you cared. Tell you what; I can be there in a few hours. Less, depending on what you're wearing."

Jon started laughing. They both knew it was long since over between them, and hearing her come on to him was nothing short of hysterical. Heather had always been all over him when she was drinking. There was that party over at the friends the summer after they graduated, and he was lucky they hadn't ended up doing it on the coffee table in the living room. It broke first. That was actually the last time he had seen Heather really shitfaced.

"Heather, go to your computer," he ordered firmly.

She groaned as she got off of the couch. "You better be sending me something worth seeing," she growled as the room began to move about with her as the center. Center of the room. Did that mean the world was spinning around her too? Center of the universe. Full of shiny, shiny stars.

She more or less fell into her chair, and opened her e-mail. Jon's resort had a website that had pages that were restricted so that he could let people see things, but not the public at large. It was great because then Jon's lawyer could see footage that had been filmed at the resort no matter where the lawyer was. Unfortunately, people still liked to sue for not being protected from their own stupidity. And stupidity was epidemic.

There was an e-mail from him that had the web address. She loaded it up, and there was a movie link. She laughed. "Since when do I get home movies from you?"

"Trust me," he replied. "This is going to be far more interesting to you than it is to me."

Even with the high-speed connection, it took a minute to load. He asked her about the other members of HRT, and she said that she liked them well enough. Chambers was still an ass, but she was contemplating borrowing his youngest kid for a few years until she became an obnoxious teenager. Then the footage that had been taken at the di LiCossa estate started playing.

It was only about a thirty-second clip. Heather watched it. She blinked. She watched it again. Jon waited silently, knowing that something had permeated her alcohol-fogged brain. She didn't say anything, but he heard her moving, and then the sound of water running. "Hold on a second," she finally said, and then she let out a sharp screech a second later, but at a distance. "Damn that's cold!"

A minute later she came back to the phone, sounding quite a bit more sober. Jon was snickering. Some people used strong coffee to sober them up. Heather used an ice-cold shower. Knowing her, she didn't bother with removing the clothes first. That took too much time.

"Tell me that's doctored footage," she said. She was still lightheaded, and the room was changing position, but her mind was a little clearer. Her clothes were soaked, and she now looked like a drowned rat, but she could think.

"It was taken by a camera on the property of one of my clients," he replied. "It's straight and uncut footage. A very old and valuable necklace was stolen from them a couple of days ago, and this is all they got of the thieves. They said that one of them was a girl, and that she whipped up on a security guard. I've met him. He's a big guy. I wouldn't want to tangle with him. I thought you might be interested."

Heather leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes. This is not happening, she thought. Who? Please don't let it be the twins. Let it be a new strain. Maybe a mishap with one of her X-6 uncles and a condom, and he just doesn't know about it. Janna? No, she can't jump like that. But then again…

"Was the security system taken out?" she asked timidly.

"Like they've never seen anyone do before," he replied.

She blew out a breath. "Jon?"

"Yes?"

"What time is it there?"

"Almost nine," he replied.

"I'll be there tomorrow afternoon."