Chapter 7: Lying
Sydney looked in the window of the study to see Kate and the buyer pointing guns at one another, apparently frozen. She couldn't see the buyer's face, and Kate's was partially obscured. After taking only a split second to think about it, Sydney launched herself through the open window and hit the buyer hard on the temple, knocking her unconscious to the floor. She turned to Kate. "Are you all right?" Kate's eyes flickered briefly to Sydney, and then returned to the floor. She knelt and turned the buyer face-up. Sydney's stomach dropped when she saw her. "Mom," she gasped. She quickly knelt beside Kate.
"She's breathing," Kate said after a moment. "She probably has a concussion, but I think she'll be all right."
"I didn't know it was her," Sydney said. She reached out and took the disk from her mother's limp hand. "She must have been getting this for me."
Kate nodded. Sydney had explained on the plane what little she knew of her missing two years and how Jack and Irina had tried to determine what had happened to her. Since Jack and Sydney were both being closely watched by the CIA—Sydney supposedly "for her own protection"—Irina had been doing most of the work of the search over the last three months. "I don't think she recognized me," Kate said softly.
"Are you sure? She didn't shoot you; that's probably a good sign," Sydney said. "What now?"
"The Brasilian agents will be here soon," Kate said. "I suppose we'd better hide her."
Sydney nodded. She and Kate had been ordered to disable, not kill; Dixon wanted to get some terrorists to interrogate if at all possible. The Brasilian agents were coming in to remove the prisoners. Two years ago, Sydney would have wanted her mother to be apprehended, but things had changed since then. "I saw a shed out back. We can hide her in there, then tell the others she got away through the house."
Kate nodded, moved over to Cosovich, and checked for a pulse. "He's alive. Okay, how's this. Nobody knows she's my mother, so we'll say I got here first and she got away while I was taking out Cosovich. She was gone when you got here. I give a nice vague description, they might not even figure out it was her." Sydney nodded, and the two women carried Irina outside and hid her, then returned to the study just in time to meet the Brasilian agents.
***
Twelve hours later, they were in Dixon's office, where Kate handed him the disk. "The buyer got away?" he asked. Kate nodded. "Anybody you know?"
Kate shook her head. "I just got a quick glimpse. It was a Caucasian woman, long brown hair. That's all I can tell you."
"Sydney, you didn't see her?"
"No, sir, we took different routes to the study. She was gone when I got there."
Dixon nodded. "Thank you, ladies. I'll have this disk analyzed; Sydney, I'll let you know if there's anything applicable to your situation. Dismissed."
With hidden sighs of relief, they left Dixon's office. Kate went to her newly established desk, while Sydney sought out her father. "Hey, Dad, would you like to have lunch with me today?" she asked.
"Sure, Sydney," he said, giving her an odd look. "Something wrong?"
"Later," she mouthed quickly, and then said, "Can't I want to have lunch with my dad?"
"Of course," Jack said with a smile. "I'll meet you at noon."
***
Meanwhile, Irina Derevko was lying in bed on her private plane, somewhere over the Atlantic. She'd woken up after several hours in the shed and had managed, despite the worst headache of her life, to remember where she was supposed to meet her driver and make it there. The rest of the night was a blur; fortunately, she could trust her staff to take care of her. She'd suffered a pretty bad concussion, but there would be no permanent damage.
The medication she'd been given for her head was finally starting to take effect so that she could think again. Now she was trying to sort through her memories and make some sense of them. She'd just completed the deal and gotten her hands on the disk when Cosovich had gone down; that much was clear. But after that, she wasn't sure: had her memory, influenced by the head injury perhaps, made over the woman who had pointed a gun at her into the image of her long-dead younger daughter? Or was it possible that Tatiana had somehow survived? Both of her daughters had apparently been killed in fires, with bodies identified. If one daughter had survived, why not the other?
***
AN: Irina kind of sneaked up on me at the end of the last chapter. I really did intend to properly introduce Jack and Kate, but Irina insisted on being first, and she's not really a woman you want to say no to.
Next: Bodily fluids alert! Someone cries, someone throws up, someone dies.