Fading to Bare, chapter two.
A/N: Thank you for all the kind words—we appreciate them so much!
*
It started very simply, though, nothing beautiful ever really is.
And that's why it never really ended, that thing with Jack. Only, that thing
with Jack, it was never just a thing, and that's why everything that was wrong
about it could never feel wrong enough to last.
So she stayed that way, in love with him.
Then there was Michael, and she started thinking maybe
she might spend her whole life waiting for a moment that just wouldn't come,
and it felt lonely.
Now that he was missing, she wished she had spent more
time talking about his career, because it had seemed interesting to her when
he'd first told her about it. Somehow, it had strayed, and they got closer than
she'd wanted. That's why she left.
His client, the one he'd been scheduled to meet today,
sat across from her, his hands tapping against each other nervously. Every now
and then, he'd move a hand and tug on his tie, move the knot up closer to his
neck, and she thought if it got any closer to his carotid, he might pass out.
"Mr. White, can you tell me what you were meeting Mr.
Adler about today?"
A shift in the seat, a tug on the end of the tie, and
around a cough, he responded,"I
had an alimony dispute with my ex-wife, he was going to help me negotiate with
her and her lawyer so we could reach an amicable solution."
"Did Mr. Adler seem odd to you the last time you spoke
with him? Anything out of the ordinary?" Sam inquired
as she waved her left hand in broad strokes, tapping her finger against the tip
of the pen.
He shook his head. "No, no. He seemed fine."
She looked down, about to make a note of it, when Robert
White spoke again.
"Actually, there was – there was something...I don't
know, it's nothing –"
Samantha leaned forward, her arms crossed over each
other now.
"Mr. White, nothing is too small or dumb to mention to
us. Any little bit helps."
A sigh, and then,"He
just seemed a bit...nervous...about something. I have no idea what, but he was
a little jumpy. That's all."
Extending her hand, she drew upon her rehearsed smile,
the one she used for instances like this, with people she would know for less
than a day, and for faking the normal countenance she felt she'd been pulling
off quite well the past months.
Of course, it was really all a lie and it was catching up
with her, slowly.
It worked, though, for a time, because she was really
quite good at it.
She was a beautiful liar.
*
Danny read the notes he'd taken from a piece of paper,
translating it in hasty scribble on the white board as Samantha came up behind
him.
"You were late this morning," she teased as she took a
seat next to the small pile of notes he'd set on the conference table, crossing
her legs and leaning back.
He gave her a wry smile, a
what-do-you-want-me-to-do-about-it smile.
"My power went off."
"Late on your bills?" she teased,
her eyebrow going up.
Danny capped the marker, pushing his papers into a
little stack.
"There's been some construction near my building,
somebody hit a generator."
"My phone lines have been tied up the last few days, I
keep hearing other people talk."
Danny sat down, his hands folded atop the wood as he said,"Schizophrenia, or...?"
She slapped his arm playfully. "My phone company told me
they had cleared it up, but now I've been getting all these phone calls and
whoever it is just keeps hanging up, so –"
Jack came over to the two of them, his hand
unconsciously going to the back of Samantha's chair as he leant forward.
"Danny, I want you back at the firm, talk to some of his
other coworkers about cases and his behavior. Sam, I want you with me, we're gonna head to the place where he used to work, see what we
can find out."
*
"You're sure it's his?"
Vivian rested the phone between her ear and shoulder
while shuffling through her file on Michael Adler; according to her notes, he
drove a black Mercedes. A black Mercedes that had, according
to the officer on the other line, just been found by the NYPD.
"Matches the description exactly, ma'am," came
confirmation from the young man. "It's clean, but we just did a quick
sweep. Once we realized it belonged to your guy, we figured you'd want to check
it out yourself."
"Thanks, Porter," Vivian replied sincerely,
remembering the officer from a few previous cases. He was a good kid; young,
but sharp. Respectful. "Agent Fitzgerald and I
will be there as soon as we can."
Officer James Porter repeated the location, and they
disconnected.
Replacing the phone back into it's cradle, Vivian made
her way to the center table, where Martin had spread phone and bank records
across it's entire surface.
"Find anything interesting?" she asked the
younger agent, who looked up with a roll of his eyes.
"Nothing," came the
frustrated reply Vivian was expecting. "Phone records are normal; most
seem to be to clients or co-workers, a few to his sister, Claire, and
Samantha's number is listed here, too, but only a couple times. Last call was
two days ago, to one of his clients, a Robert White. Thirty-seven
seconds long. Bank records look about the same, nothing unusual. His
credit card hasn't been used for two days."
"Good work," Vivian told him. "I just got
a call from NYPD; they found his car. They're waiting on location for us to
check it out."
Martin asked, "It's clean?" as he rose from
his seat at the table, pulled on his jacket and followed Vivian down the hall.
"According to their preliminary
sweep, yes. We'll see what we can
find."
*
On his second trip to Michael Adler's law firm, the
faces he passed now seemed more cordial than friendly, eyes that darted to his
face and then quickly away were wary rather than welcoming, and Danny
understood.
He was here to find a missing man, but he was also here
to uncover, disrupt, expose, and sometimes it seemed people forgot about the
first part.
It didn't matter. He would do what he had to do,
distrustful eyes and cautious faces or not.
Danny found himself in the office of Holly Boylan, a woman who appeared to be a few years younger than
Michael and who had, according to Michael's boss, been working closely with the
missing man.
"Michael, you know..God, I can't believe he's gone. This stuff happens
in the movies, right? Real people don't just up and disappear.."
Sure, they do, Danny thought, but smiled sympathetically
instead of speaking. The woman appeared more perplexed than anything, and he
knew how hard it was for some to relate the distant horror stories they saw on
the news to their own, concrete lives.
"What can you tell me about Michael, Holly?"
Danny finally asked gently.
"Oh, Michael.." She
rolled a pen compulsively between slender fingers, as if grappling with the
material object would somehow aid in her remembrance. A small smile appeared on
her lips, like she'd caught in her mind the wisp of a fading joke shared with
the man she couldn't quite find the words to describe. "He's brilliant,
really; working with him has been such a learning experience for me."
Swallowing hard, Holly looked up from her desk and met Danny's eyes. "Just..a helpful guy, smart, kind
of intense.."
"Intense?" Danny
repeated.
"Oh, yeah, you should have seen him work. He always
gave everything to what he was working on. Never went in fifty percent."
"Would you say that you two are close?" Danny
wanted to know, leaning back in his chair.
A shrug from Holly Boylan, who
replied, "I guess so. We'd worked some cases together over the past few months..Michael always ran point
because I'm so new, but we got to know each other."
"Has Michael seemed different, to you, over the
past weeks, maybe? Anything or anyone bothering him?"
Holly frowned in concentration, and went back to rolling
the smooth pen between her fingers. "I don't know," she answered
finally. "Michael has his moods. Usually, I know when not to bother him,
but I guess it was a week ago, I had a question about something unrelated to
the case we were working on, and he nearly took my head off." She shrugged
again. "He apologized, but he didn't say what was bothering him, if it was
anything specific."
Regarding the young woman curiously, Danny questioned,
"Does he go off like that a lot, Holly?"
"Oh, God, no. No." She shook her head for
emphasis, eyes widening. "I probably shouldn't have even said anything.."
"I'm glad you did," Danny responded.
"You've been very helpful--thank you for your time."
Holly Boylan nodded mutely,
and her hand felt limp in Danny's as he stood and shook it.
"Agent Taylor.." the woman began
as Danny began walking towards the door.
He turned around to see her standing, hands flat on her
desk, eyes a stormy mixture of worry and confusion.
"Good luck," she told him, but the words
sounded awkward, heavy, as if they didn't quite fit into her mouth or maybe
she'd spit them out instead of what she really wanted to say.
Whatever the case, Danny could only nod and smile in
thanks.
*
Michael had gotten an upgrade, Samantha decided as she
and Jack stepped through the doors of his previous law firm, a small, tired
place that looked as if it had started out well, started out hopeful, ready and
willing to serve, but had, for whatever reason, been stripped of it's dreams
and potential and now all that remained was the empty shell of the place it
could have been.
The closest thing Michael Adler had to a partner at this
particular firm was a woman by the name of Amy Langdon, in whose office Jack
and Samantha now sat.
Jack started by asking Amy the last time she had seen or
spoken to Michael, but Samantha preferred to remain quiet, studying the woman
as her features shifted and she searched for an answer.
She was a lot like the firm itself, Samantha decided,
with just a thin outer covering to protect the bare necessities under the
surface, a woman who had probably begun her life and her career eager and
enthusiastic, looking for a way to make her mark on the world, but ultimately,
unable to transcend and rise above the whirlwind that was this city, the
whirlwind that eroded secret desires and aspirations to nothing and left behind
the barren, bitter aftertaste of dreams unfulfilled.
That was Amy Langdon, that was this firm,
that was so many others. That could have been her.
"It's been over a year," Amy was answering in
a soft voice, her weary eyes glancing from Jack to Samantha and back again.
"I hadn't even thought about Michael until I heard he'd gone
missing."
"And you have no idea what might have happened to
him?" Jack persisted, leaning forward in his seat, pinning Amy to hers.
She regarded him mildly, unintimidated,
almost uncaring. "No. I have no idea."
"We were told that you and Michael were close,
Amy," Samantha tried, her words a touch gentler than Jack's. "Partners, of a sort. Anything you can tell us about
him would help."
"We worked together, yeah," the other woman
conceded, and then, with a sigh: "We also dated." A
touch of emotion, a touch of pain in her otherwise unaffected voice.
Amy's eyes were trained directly on Samantha now.
Samantha could feel Jack's on her, as well, searching
for any kind of a reaction to Amy Langdon's words, but she kept her face still,
composed, and her tone even, soothing. "What happened?"
A shrug from Amy. "I don't know," she answered honestly.
"Normally, I wouldn't date someone that I work with, but Michael.." she rolled her eyes, almost, it seemed to Samantha,
in self-disgust. "I couldn't resist Michael. He was smart, attractive, and
just generally a good guy. I don't find too many of those."
"But.." Samantha
pressed, studying the other woman.
"But Michael was also..intense," Amy replied, speaking the word as if
she were tasting it for the first time. "Maybe I just wasn't ready for
what he was looking for. We split up after a few months, and Michael moved
on." A short laugh. "He always was too
ambitious for this place."
"Did you stay friends?" Jack wanted to know.
"Business acquaintances," she replied with a
small nod. "But like I said, I haven't spoken to him in over a year."
"Right," Samantha said, as she and Jack stood.
Both smiled at Amy Langdon, but Samantha's held a world of compassion, empathy,
understanding. "Thank you for cooperating,"
she told the other woman sincerely.
Amy merely gave a warm nod, as the agents walked to the
door and let themselves out.
"Intense, huh," Jack muttered as soon as they
were out of earshot. "Is that what you thought about him?"
"Jack.." Samantha
forced herself to look up into his face, into those penetrating eyes, and to
hold her ground when it would be so easy to fall. "Not that it's any of
your business, but no, not really. We only went out three times."
"It is my business," he replied, and Samantha
waited for him to add that this was a case they were working on, in case she'd
forgotten, but the words never came.
They fell into silence, this odd pair, and she wondered
if she should be irate that he thought her personal life was his business.
Because she wasn't.
She could pretend to be, of course, and she would, but
she also couldn't ignore the warmth that crept into her stomach and slipped
around her heart, shutting out the cold and the pain and filling the emptiness
that had taken hold inside of her.
And for a single moment again, she saw everything in
color.
*
The rose would be the perfect touch, the perfect gift
to welcome her home.
She'd once looked at a flower stand on the side of the
street, her gaze lingering for just a second on the display of roses,
peach-colored roses resting in a quaint wicker basket.
She'd looked away before the vender could badger her
with a bargain, but her eyes had been wistful, almost regretful.
"I like peach," she'd offered by way of
explanation. "The color, it's beautiful."
Those roses had been peach, but the one sitting outside
of the door to her apartment was red. Blood-red.
It still had it's thorns.
TBC..