Eighteen—Repent
Madison stood and wrapped her arms around herself as she tried to fight the chill running through her body. She tilted her head forward, her gaze resting on one person. One man.
Her husband.
In less than twelve hours her plans, her preconceived notions for this op, had all been turned around. The innocent were guilty, while the guilty were unbelievably innocent. And where did she stand in all of this?
What am I going to do?
The closed door cautiously opened, and Weiss, Ashley, and Isabel appeared. "We have to get you out of here before we can release Burke," Weiss informed her.
She jerked her head in surprise. "You've been here all this time?"
Weiss nodded. "I was monitoring the video feeds." He shrugged. "Now, Grace."
She ran her fingers through her hair and nodded. "I guess I'll see you sometime soon," she told her friends. A small smile crept on her face. "Have fun working all night."
Ashley rolled her eyes. "Oh, that was just low," she muttered.
"Would you rather go home with Burke?" Isabel snickered.
Ashley reconsidered. "On second thought, I can't wait to pull an all-nighter," she said enthusiastically. Isabel rolled her eyes, and Weiss checked his watch.
"I'm coming, I'm coming," Madison said quickly. She hugged each of her friends hurriedly and then followed him out the door. At this hour she knew it would only take about fifteen minutes to get home. Burke would probably be home about thirty minutes after that.
And then the fun would really begin.
*****
An hour later Weiss re-entered the conference room and angrily threw his keys onto the table. "What the hell were you thinking?" he yelled at the man who entered the room behind him.
Bentley glowered. "I was doing my job, nothing more," he said smoothly.
"Would someone like to explain why you two are yelling at twelve-thirty in the morning?" Devlin snapped. He gestured at the panel of agents sitting at the table, sorting through intel. "We have better things to do than sit around and listen to you two whine."
"Oh, you'll want to hear this," Weiss assured him, obviously angry. He turned to Bentley. "Who's going to tell them? You or me?" After a few moments of silence, he continued. "So we're driving Burke home, and it's absolute silence, you know? Well, we're just a few minutes away from his place when all of a sudden Burke asks if Pyper-Ferguson had already been under investigation, based on the questions we asked."
"Uh-oh," Isabel muttered worriedly.
"Exactly!" Weiss agreed. "That was my reaction too. But what does Bentley over here say?" All eyes swiveled to the end of the table.
"You didn't tell Burke, did you?" Ashley asked, enraged. She walked over to where Bentley was sitting. "Did you?"
*****
"You're finally home!" Madison exclaimed as Christopher locked the door behind him. She rushed to greet him.
"Hey, Maddie," he said wearily, pulling her into his arms.
"You're so tense," she murmured. "Rough day?" She inwardly berated herself. And the Academy Award for Best Actress during a swallow op goes to . . .
"You have no idea." He finally released her and looked into her eyes. "Madison, we need to talk."
She frowned. "Well, it can't be good news if you stopped calling me Maddie," she pretended to worry. She sat down on the couch and faced him. "What is it?"
*****
"I didn't tell Burke," Bentley retorted to his audience. Several agents were visibly relieved at his statement. "Not exactly."
"Not exactly? What do you mean, not exactly?" Isabel asked coldly.
"I told him that the CIA had credible intel that there was suspicious activity at Pyper-Ferguson, and a team was investigating."
"In the future, Bentley, keep your mouth closed," Devlin warned him. "You should know better than to even reveal that much to Burke. His statement hasn't been authenticated yet."
"That's not all Bigmouth over here said," Weiss interrupted. "He said, and I quote, 'Our team, led by the efficient Agent Thompson, has been making great strides in uncovering the first of what is presumed to be many biological weapons.'"
*****
"I wasn't working late tonight. At least, not at the lab." Christopher stared down at his hands.
"If you weren't at the lab, then where were you?" she asked suspiciously. "And why did some secretary call me to tell me you were going to be home late?"
He was certain he could see the wheels turning in her head. "Oh, it's nothing like that," he quickly assured her. "I swear to you, I have in no way cheated on you. I couldn't if my life depended on it."
Score one for Burke. "What's going on?" she asked, frustrated. "You can trust me!" And the score is now tied, one to one.
"You know how I've told you I've worked at the same place since I graduated, right?" She nodded wordlessly. "And remember how a few weeks ago I said I was sick of this merger and just wanted to quit? Well, there's more to the story than that. A lot more."
She tucked her legs underneath her. "I'm listening."
*****
"'Led by the efficient Agent Thompson?'" Ashley repeated. Isabel's mouth hung open.
"I'm going to kill him," she muttered, and Ashley nodded in agreement.
Weiss nodded grimly. "I'll hold him down for you," he offered. "Although as fast as Devlin hauled his ass out of here, we might not get a chance."
Isabel smiled darkly. "Don't worry. I've been researching number six on our most wanted list lately. Just give me a knife; I could take care of him in no time."
*****
"You turned yourself in to the CIA," Madison said slowly. She buried her face in her hands for a moment. "My poor brain can't grasp all of this at once," she said truthfully as she looked up at him.
"It's a lot to take in," he agreed. "I'm so sorry you've been pulled into this too, Maddie."
She shrugged. "I haven't been 'pulled into' it," she said dismissively. "It's just . . . a lot to process."
"But don't you see? If Pyper-Ferguson realizes I turned them in to the CIA, you could become a target. I don't know why that never crossed my mind before," Christopher worried. "I'm so, so sorry about this. If I had known it was going to turn out this way, if I had known my job could endanger you somehow, I would have never pushed our relationship so quickly."
Madison blinked. "You what?"
Christopher looked away. "I didn't mean for it to sound like that," he said quickly. "It's just—we went from meeting each other to married in a matter of months. And I don't think you're usually that spontaneous, and I know I'm not. But on the one hand, I had all of this work looming over my head and all of these problems and headaches and things consuming me. And on the other hand was this wonderful woman I happened to meet while trying to find a birthday present for my niece." He turned his head and looked at her. "It was a lot easier to focus on the wonderful woman than my job. And this is not to say that I wasn't attracted to you, that I didn't grow to love you incredibly fast. But I think I pursued you a bit more than I might have if I hadn't been trying to push my job away from the forefront of my mind."
"Oh," she gulped.
"Maddie, don't look at me like—"
"So our marriage, our relationship, everything since I met you, has been based on the fact that you hated your job?" she burst out impulsively. Then sank back into the cushions as reality crashed to the surface and she remembered who she really was.
"I knew you would take this the wrong way," he said under his breath. He tentatively pulled her hand into his, absently stroking her ring finger.
"If—if we had met at a different time in our lives, under different circumstances even, I know we would have still found each other," Christopher said softly. "But in another universe, we might have dated for a year or two, maybe had a six or seven month engagement while we planned a big wedding. The end result would be the same. It's just the journey would be different." He broke out of his reverie. "Maddie? Why are you crying?"
*****
Devlin took a sip of his cold coffee and looked around the room. He glanced at his watch. "It's almost four," he pointed out. "Let's break for now and meet again at ten." The agents in the room wearily nodded and began gathering up intel.
"Grace is getting pulled soon, right?" Isabel hesitantly asked as she and Ashley left the room.
Ashley shrugged grimly. "It sounds like they want to keep Burke at Pyper-Ferguson, and it would be too suspicious to pull her now. She could still be in for years."
"It's a far cry from being the biochem major who was the best at everything at the Farm," Isabel said sadly.
"Yeah. I guess all she really needed was a few acting classes."
*****
Madison rubbed her eyes and sat up straight in her kitchen chair. "Why does the CIA want you to go to work tomorrow? It sounds too dangerous to me."
"Later today," Christopher gently corrected her, glancing at the clock next to the sink. "It's already a quarter to five."
Madison groaned. "At this rate, we might as well stay up all night and go to work early," she muttered.
"You could probably stay home if you wanted to," he comforted her.
She shook her head. "I think I would feel safer around a group of people than be here by myself." And besides, what if Fiona wasn't the only plant at my job?
He silently nodded.
"If we're going to stay up, we could go ahead and eat breakfast," Madison said, jumping up from her seat. She peered inside the refrigerator. "Let's see, we have . . . when was the last time we went grocery shopping?" She wrinkled her nose and turned to him. "I could make toast," she said finally, pointing to the unused toaster that sat on the counter. "And that's about it. No juice, no milk," she rummaged through the cabinets, "and oh my God, no coffee."
"We have bread and water," Christopher laughed. "We're pathetic."
A giggle erupted from her lips before she could stop it. "Only the two of us could get into the mess we're in," she agreed, looking into his eyes.
He abruptly stopped laughing. "For what it's worth, Maddie, I am sorry we're both in this mess. I promise you, I won't let anything happen to you."
She let him pull her into his lap. "I know, Chris. I know," she sighed. "It's just—this changes everything, doesn't it? You. Me. Us."
"It doesn't have to." He cupped her cheek with his hand.
"But it will. It will," she said grimly. Then pushed that thought out of her mind. "You know, I'm not very hungry for toast. We should go to bed." She stood up and held out her hand to him.
"Yeah, we should."
*****
Devlin walked into his office and nodded in greeting to his assistant.
"You're here awfully late this morning," Kaye commented. "It's almost nine-thirty."
"I'm expecting Agent Bentley in a few minutes, and then I have a meeting at ten. Please hold my calls." He closed his door behind him and immediately began to work.
Thirty minutes later, he was still waiting.
*****
"Where's Devlin?" Weiss growled. He pulled a yo-yo out of his pocket. "It's pretty bad when the boss is late to his own meeting."
Isabel gulped down more coffee. "He's only a minute late. Relax, Eric." She sifted through a stack of papers. "Do you think she's ever going to be free of this man? Grace and Burke?"
"I—" Weiss was interrupted when Devlin entered the room.
"Bentley didn't show up this morning," he said in a distressed voice. "And he's not answering his phone."
Ashley shrugged. "So he overslept. Happens to the best of us," she interjected.
"I hope that's all. Nevertheless, I've got two agents on their way to his home. Just to be safe." He looked around the room. "All right, so let's pick up where we left off earlier this morning . . ."
*****
"I'm going to take an early lunch," Madison told the new receptionist as she prepared to leave the building.
"It's not even eleven o'clock," she pointed out.
Madison shrugged. "I need to run a few errands before the lunch rush begins," she said noncommittally. "Don't worry. I'll be back in an hour."
The receptionist waved her off as she pushed the glass door open and began walking down the street. There were no errands; she just had to get out of that place, get away from everyone and everything and just be by herself for a few minutes. So much had happened in the last twenty-four hours, and her brain had not processed any of it.
She pulled her cell phone out of her purse to check the time, and then began to aimlessly wander the surrounding streets.
She never noticed that she gripped her phone so tightly she turned it off.
*****
Kaye rushed into the conference room. "Mr. Devlin, one of the agents you sent to locate Bentley is on the phone. It sounds urgent."
He hurried out of the room, only to return minutes later, an unreadable expression on his face. "Isabel, make the call. We're pulling Grace."
The agents at the table looked at each other momentarily, surprised. "Yes, sir," Isabel said quickly, pulling out her phone.
"But why now?" Ashley wanted to know. "After everything you said last night—"
"Bentley's dead," Devlin interrupted brusquely. "It appears he hung himself."
Weiss whistled. "Did anyone else not see that one coming?" he asked the crowd.
"You said it appears he hung himself," Ashley pointed out. "Do the agents think it was staged?"
Devlin nodded. "And from what they found in his bedroom . . . he wasn't just CIA." He turned to Isabel. "Make the call."
She quickly dialed a series of numbers, then cursed under her breath. "Her cell went straight to voice mail."
"We'll have to risk the work number then," Ashley said. "I'll call this one." She picked up her cell phone and dialed. "Hi, I was calling about one of your artists who is playing at the Shrine—what? Oh. I'm sorry." She hung up the phone. "Someone else answered her line."
"I'll contact the surveillance team," Weiss volunteered. He quickly left the room.
"We need to find her soon," Devlin said, as if to himself. "A preliminary investigation of Bentley's home indicates he worked with Mr. Sark. In a project that was orchestrated by Irina Derevko."
*****
Madison's stomach rumbled as she walked through the front door.
"Two days in a row? I'm flattered," Dorothy teased her as she led her to a table. "Still want the usual?"
Madison nodded gratefully and sank into the booth.
It was good to know that some things didn't change in her crazy new existence.
*****
"My turn," Isabel said, retrieving her phone. She quickly dialed. "Hi, I was calling about a children's book you special ordered . . . what? I'm sorry. I must have dialed the wrong number." She clicked off the phone and sighed. "Still not her answering."
"And her cell phone still goes straight to voice mail?" Devlin asked. They both nodded.
"Surveillance team found her," Weiss burst in the room. "And get this. She's—"
"You can tell me on the way," Devlin interrupted. "Let's go."
*****
"Lunch was wonderful as always," Madison reassured Dorothy as she picked up the empty plate.
"Now what about dessert?" Dorothy's eyes twinkled.
"No, I really need to go," she said reluctantly. "I've probably been gone too long as it is."
"Come on, you've never tried my double chocolate cake," Dorothy wheedled.
Madison sighed. "I didn't want to go back to work anyway," she smiled to herself.
"Wonderful! I'll be right back with a piece." When she returned a few minutes later though, her hands were empty. "They're heating up the chocolate sauce to go on top of the cake. But in the meantime, why don't I show you around? You've been a faithful customer for months now, and I've never given you the grand tour."
"Why not?" she shrugged.
"Great!" She pulled Madison up by the arm. "Don't forget your purse—we are in L.A., after all." She ushered Madison through the swinging doors into the kitchen. "And this is the most interesting aspect of the business," she said glibly as she opened what Madison presumed to be an office.
She allowed Dorothy to lead her into the room and close the door behind them before she noticed they were not alone. Seated in two battered chairs were Devlin and Weiss.
"What the—" Madison stopped, confused. She turned to Dorothy. "You know them?"
Dorothy nodded. "Ben's an old friend of mine, Grace."
She stared at her, open-mouthed. "Grace?" she finally squeaked out. She fought the urge to scream, or demand too many explanations, or burst into tears.
"I presume this is important if the two of you are here to meet with me," she said to the two men in a calm voice.
Devlin nodded approvingly at her composure. "We have acquired new intel since last night that you must be made aware of."
"Oh?"
Weiss looked at her regretfully. "Christopher and Madison Burke are going to be killed tonight."
tbc
