Sara answered the knock at her door to find two men in dark business suits standing on her front porch. Sara had been a Spec. Op. wife long enough to recognize the way they carried themselves. Both men had a compact almost wiry build. Looking at them she noticed that the older looked to be just a few years older than Jack while the younger of the two seemed to be still a child to Sara's eyes. The younger man was Hispanic and from the way he held himself and how he shrugged his shoulders to settle his suit coat, Sara thought he wasn't that too far removed from the street. "Mrs. O'Neill, is your husband home?" the older one asked.
"Upstairs," Sara told them wearily not caring why they were here. Some distant part of her brain told her she was already distancing herself. Her mind already preparing to grieve for Jack as well as their son.
The footsteps coming up the staircase warned Jack in time for him to hide the pistol under the pillow on his son's bed.
"Mr. O'Neill, my name is John Clark," the older of the two who appeared in the doorway introduced himself, "and this is my partner Domingo Chavez."
Jack nodded not bothering to greet them verbally.
"We're here to offer you a job, Mr. O'Neill," Clark informed him as he leaned forward to extend a business card to the grieving man.
Jack glanced casually at it as he took it from Clark's hand. Three words jumped out at him from the small white card: Central Intelligence Agency. "You do know about my psych. evaluation don't you?" Jack asked them out of some distant sense of curiosity.
"Yes," Clark told him. He didn't reveal that he also knew about another offer about to be made to O'Neill. "I've been where you are, Mr. O'Neill. Let me help you before it's too late."
Jack stared at the two men for several minutes. He didn't know if he was trying to decide what to make of them or trying to make them leave so he could retrieve the gun from under the pillow and finally do what he'd been contemplating. The two men didn't react to his scrutiny though. They just stood patiently staring back at him as he stared at them. It surprised Jack when he broke first and finally nodded his acceptance of their offer.
He followed them down the stairs and out to their car vaguely aware of the younger man stopping to speak to Sara briefly.
Three hours later when several Air Force officers arrived at the front door, Sara told them Jack was already gone.