A/N: Well, I'm in a happy mood. Vukovic's gone for good about time I finished this chapter extraordinarily early and though I am slightly dampened by the fact JAG is ending this is where you all go awwww . . . it really is the best thing we could have hoped for don't hate me, whoever's on the opposing side because otherwise Vukovic would have taken over and if there are any Vukovic fans out there . . . well, you've lasted through all my other character-bashing chapters so this shouldn't be anything new.

Special thanks to joanoa, Radiorox, Bite Beccy, alix33, starryeyes10, SpaceMan546, Wendy Kaye, froggy0139, Jackia, Tina Frank, Lyssa Grace, snosamie6, cbw, Nesabj, Arian04, RoleModel2, Tomcat GM, jaka, mara-rabb, Abigaile, mjag, MichelleLee, CharmedAli, princess mai, dansingwolf, martini1988, squirtbug158, jaggurl, Tinny, Elysabeth, hothing40, jagdreamer, Steelo, Sube, rjm-az, cutieronnie, sarah, jtbwriter, smithknk, beyblade, browneyeez, Lauren, and a very very special thank you to mjag who sent me an article on JAG's last episode if any of you want to see it, email me (my address is in my profile) and I'll forward it to you.

Salute to you all!

Actions of Attraction

"What do you think is happening?" I asked nervously for what must be the give or take 5 hundredth time in the last fifteen minutes. Beth leaned against the wall and sighed for give or take five what must be the hundredth time in the last fifteen minutes.

"I don't know, Harm," she said, evidently exasperated. "Now stop pacing, you're going to hurt yourself."

And she was right. I was hurting myself. My back was badly bruised and every time I took a step forward, I could feel it stiffen into a knot. My body hurt terribly – the thought of Riley harming Mac hurt more.

There was the sound of the lock being picked and then the door swung just long enough for Mac to be literally thrown in. I moved to catch her, barely able to contain my groan of agony as my back wrenched forward and I caught her nimbly and movie-style-like in my arms. Our bodies froze there for a moment, her in my arms, my face barely an inch from hers, our breath crawling over each other's faces.

"Hey, you," she whispered softly, her voice inching into my ear and making my heart race a thousand beats per second. She coiled her arm around my neck and eased herself up.

"What happened?" Beth demanded instantly, breaking whatever romantic and fragile moment we had into a thousand pieces. I leaned back against the wall, my arm moving magnetically across my ribs. Mac moved so that her body was next to mine and she wrapped one arm around my back and clasped my shoulder reassuringly, careful not to grip too hard on a tender spot.

"The Phantom's Lindsey," Mac breathed, still looking at me rather than Beth.

"We know," I replied. How does she think I got like this?

"And Harris is in with Lindsey," Mac followed.

"We know," was the simultaneous answer from Beth and me.

Mac looked at us crossly. "Well, you probably don't know about the bomb."

My ears perk up. "What bomb?" I asked immediately, a rush of other questions flowing through my brain.

"Strontium, used to make a dirty bomb," Mac answered instantly. "Delivered by mail to each crime scene – delivered to all victims who were later slain by the Phantom after . . ." Mac trailed, wondering how she would word this, "after they were already dead."

"Already dead?" Beth questioned but I nodded my head.

"High level of radioactivity," I responded. "Human contact, it could have been . . . disastrous."

"It was disastrous," Mac corrected. "But the worst is yet to come."

"The bomb," I breathed and then looked at her hard. "How do you know about all this?" I motioned at the door. "Riley didn't tell you all of this . . ." I trail and then remembered Riley's – ahem – overly friendly attitude towards her, ". . . or did he?"

Mac shook her hand and then leaned her head on my shoulder. "Interpol."

I stared at her, eyes laughing. "They let a JAG use Interpol?"

She sighed, "Nah, I had to marry Webb first."

I'm not even going there.

"So what happened with you and Riley?" Beth asked, coming out of her corner and joining us. Damn, she just couldn't take the hint, could she?

"I told Riley about the bomb. He seems to think that Webb's the Phantom or something like that," Mac replied immediately.

"Wait a minute . . .?" I trailed. "You told Riley about the bomb! After everything that's happened to us! He's in with them!"

"They're using him."

"He'll tell them that we know about the bomb!"

"Look," Mac retorted angrily. "Riley's not an idiot. I've put some ideas in his head and he's now going to start wondering. That can only go in our favor. As soon as he starts using his head he's going to realize that we're on the same side."

I remained unconvinced. "Well, what do we do now?"

"What we've been doing for the last four days," Beth retorted, slipping back into her corner. "We wait."

"They're making a bomb," Webb whispered for nearly the hundredth time. We had managed to save the files from being deleted by loading them onto a back up disc stored in the hard drive by logging into a CIA user (another one of Webb's special passwords) but in the process, we had lost nearly half the disk. Thankfully, the first half was Mac's trial and error side.

"We know they're making a bomb," I shot back, snappishly. Within a matter of minutes, a dispatched NCIS team not Riley's, a bomb squad, the FBI, and the CIA all met in the room to look at what we were dealing with. And as Webb continued to say – we were running out of time.

"How much strontium is it?" Webb snapped to the bomb squad who were typing in numbers onto the machine, locating the bomb drop-offs at each point, the package weight, and were doing something which resembled – well – rocket science but then again I've never been much of a mathematician.

"Enough to blow up . . . well," the presumed-mathematician furrowed his eyebrows, "well, actually, not a whole lot of space. The total amount of strontium combined with the maximum size bomb would be quite small. However, because of the high level of radioactivity, the area around the broken bomb would be otherwise uninhabitable."

I could see Webb close his eyes and calmly force his mind to say 'Breathe'. "How big is the blow up area?" he asked in a frighteningly calm voice.

"That's hard to say."

Taking out a blow up map of Washington and Virginia he pinned them on the wall and then handed the man a red marker. "On this map, mark the maximum blow up point," Webb commanded, leaning his back against the desk.

"What good would that do you?"

"It would," Webb said quietly, "give us an idea of the prime target for the location of the bomb based on the area. If it's going to blow up the whole city, we don't quite need to worry about where the bomb comes from as long as the city's evacuated –" Webb shuddered; hopefully it doesn't come to that, "but on the other hand, if it's going to blow up a building. Oh, I don't know – maybe we should think about the White House, or the Pentagon," Webb said, his voice on the sarcastic side.

The man stared hard at Webb and then moved towards the map, taking the red marker in his hand, arching his arm, he placed the tiniest of dots in the middle of the map and around it drew the smallest of circles. "The dot is the bomb blow point, the circle around it is area affected."

Both Webb and I narrow our eyes to be able to see the dot. "But that's . . . not that big," I said, walking directly up to the map.

"It wouldn't take down the Twin Towers," the man agreed but then paused thoughtfully, "at least – it wouldn't take them out as cleanly as the planes did."

Webb narrowed his eyes. The take down of the World Trade Center was nothing to be praised. "So, estimated area, it would be an object . . . wider rather than taller?"

"Precisely."

"So it's not a building . . ." I trailed. I looked at Webb, my eyes frantic. As though magnetized his hand drew towards mine and gripped it firmly – reassuringly. I ran my fingers over his, looking up at him and smiling thinly – more for his comfort than my own. These small actions of attraction were lost on no one – not even us.

At some point in time we fell asleep. I don't know when – no light comes into this damn room. I don't know how Beth and Harm survived here for the last four days. I snuggled up closer on to Harm's chest, careful not to touch his rib cage. I can still tell it hurts – even if he smiles every time he feels the pang of pain.

Harm's soft breathing tickles my ear and so I roll off him, more beside him, and curl up with my face next to his. Beth's still in her corner. Every so often when she's awake, that is I catch her shooting furtive glances at us and I can't figure out why.

I came so close to losing him. I look at his face, his skin color only slightly lighter than the dark black of the cell. His hair still hasn't grown back from the marine hair-cut they gave him when he became 'Commander Evan Hart'. To be honest – I think he looks better with his old hair cut not that I've got any problem with the way he looks now I find myself going for the Navy type more and more now a days well, one Navy type.

I curled up next to him, my head resting in the crook of his neck – reassured by the steady beat of his heart, small actions of attraction expressed in only the most dire of situations. And we stayed that way – until I heard the racket coming from one room over . . .

"They're lying to you, Aaron!" Lindsey shouted at me while I sat rather helplessly on my bed, my eyes jumping from Lindsey to Harris, not really sure who to make eye contact with.

"No one's lying to me," I said coldly. "If anyone is deceiving another, it would be you."

It had taken Lindsey and Harris no time at all to realize there was one "prisoner" missing and not even a second to realize where she might be.

"What did she say to you?" Lindsey pressed, pulling her now deemed ugly face towards mine as if if she looked close enough she might see the truth.

"Nothing!" I cried, and at the same time not sure why I was lying. Maybe because Lindsey and Harris were acting so guilty at the moment – maybe because Sarah Mackenzie made a very compelling argument, but then again, she's a lawyer. That IS her job.

Harris and Lindsey exchange a glance and for a split second, I'm mortally terrified. What are they going to do to me? I suddenly have a vision of joining Rabb and the others in the cell and I start sweating in places I've never sweated before.

Harris shrugged and Lindsey turned to me. "If the Colonel told you something, it's nothing but lies. Do you understand me?" I nodded dumbly. She wiped hair out of her eyes. "Good."

She pivoted on her heels and literally stormed out of the room with Harris hot on her heels. I flopped down on my bed and stared up at the cream colored ceiling of this hellhole. And something Sarah Mackenzie said came back to me:

(flashback to previous chapter)

"Because you went through my drawer!" I hollered angrily.

"Because I thought you were the Phantom," was Sarah's calm rational reply.

"Because Webb told you to go through my drawer!"

"No, actually, he said to do exactly the opposite."

"Because he didn't want you to figure out the truth!"

"Because he didn't want me to be in danger."

"So you admit he cares about you!"

"We're friends."

"He's manipulating you."

"No, they're manipulating you. They're using you to get at Webb! Don't you see, she's the Phantom!"

I sighed, muffling the noise in the middle of my pillow. It had been so easy to believe Lindsey. I felt an internal war erupt within me at the sound of her name. She's been my assistant for – how long was it now? A year – maybe two. My god, is she that invisible? I don't remember when she comes and goes.

Now, Webb's always been known as a shrewd character, by any standards. And he running this op just had to mean trouble. But manipulating the entire CIA/JAG/NCIS was a bit of a fantastic idea. Even for a known eccentric.

And then there was Harris who has been, from beginning to end, Lindsey's monkey man. The one who does everything he's told. He didn't have much of a life – not if he lived in this pigpen.

Slamming down my arm on the bed I sat up. Dammit, I was going to do it. I was going to do something extremely stupid. I was going to get caught. Hell, I could even get killed. Tonight I was going to break out

But there really is something funny about running with a fantastic idea that's just gotten caught in your head. That once you've got it in there, there really is no turning back.

Preview of 'Break Out' aka, the next chapter . . .

Riley's hand wavered slightly as his shadow fell across the keyhole. Slowly, sucking in a deep breath, he turned the key in the slot and entered the cell. He cleared his throat. "Rabb, come with me . . ."

Webb ran through the halls, the clatter of Catherine's heels falling behind him at a quick pace. Stopping at the door, he heaved his shoulder against it at the same time Mac on the other side, opened with ease. "Webb!" she cried in a broken voice. "They've already gone."

Harm trailed his finger over Mac's lips and then bent down, his mouth capturing hers. It took about a millisecond for her to react. They sat for a moment – silently devouring each other – before Harm broke for air. He kissed the top of her forehead and whispered, "I love you," before he ran off into the night . . .

A/N: I know what you're thinking right now, how completely sucky this chapter was. I don't blame you, I'd be upset too. Actually, I AM upset seeing as I did write it but I assure you – this was just one of those necessary things. It's a build up to a really awesome chapter no, I'm not being braggy, I'm just keeping you hooked . . .