Chapter 7

Before they knew it, two months had passed. A few more visits from the girls and Samantha was a pro. They had almost pushed Jack out of the way to get to her at the airport but all he could do was laugh. Hannah was still his girl and it was clear that although she was fond of them both that Samantha had a little soft spot for Katie and Katie for her.

Samantha stirred on the sofa as the door opened at 9pm.

"Hey honey." He said as he kissed his drowsy girlfriend who had an adorable case of bed-head (sofa-head).

He had been gathering up some things from his apartment. They had been living a little like Nomads recently. His bag was here; her bag was at his place. Every so often laundry and a clean up just had to be done; however, he noticed that she was a lot better at it than he was.

"Did you get everything you needed?"

"Yes I did. Did a little laundry, opened a little mail…." He said as he produced an official-looking letter and handed it to her. She opened it. It was his decree-nisi. She smiled and kissed him again.

"We're almost there then?"

"Yep, absolutely and I wanted to say-" His cell-phone went. He sighed and pressed the button as Samantha rolled her eyes and smiled. That always happened when he was about to say something important.

"Malone. Oh hi. Yeah, um I got it, did you? Right, right."

Jack tensed up and moved away from Samantha slightly. She guessed by his body language that it had to be Maria.

She got up and went into the bathroom. As she splashed the cool water over her face she sighed and looked in the mirror. When would they be free of her, she wondered. As she buried her face in the towel she felt his arms around her waist.

"Hey, you disappeared on me!" He said.

"I wanted to give you a little privacy, that's all."

"You didn't have to do that. You're with me now. What concerns me, concerns us. I know it's kinda my fault, I mean, I get uncomfortable when I talk to her."

Samantha smiled sympathetically and pulled him to her in a hug.

"It's ok honey, honestly."

But that night as he lay asleep, she lay staring at the ceiling she realised that it wasn't ok really but what could she do? She didn't want to lose Jack and she knew that this was something that had to be gone through if they wanted to come out the other side ok. She sighed and rolled over to face him. He's worth it, she thought as she snuggled into him.

The next day in the office they finished up on a case that had to be closed because it was going nowhere. She hated that, she thought as she closed the lid on a box of files. She looked at Jack who was doing the same thing and she knew he had that feeling too. She had been trying to get Maria out of her head all day but it wasn't working.

Little did she know she would soon get something to totally put it out of her mind.

The office was quiet for the middle of the afternoon. Just the odd person left, answering the endless ringing telephones. Vivian, Jack, Danny and Martin were on their way back from upstate and the crime scene. Ever the perfectionist, Jack had wanted to go through it one last time, just in case they'd missed anything. Samantha had stayed behind because they were waiting for an important lead to come through from California, but it had turned up blank about 15 minutes after the others had left.

She sat in the conference room and tidied up some paperwork. Suddenly an agent knocked on the door.

"Agent Spade, sorry to bother you but there is a Mr Almeida to see you."

"Sure, let him come in, thank you."

Inside stepped a small man who, in the past few days had lost his only daughter and now they had told him that they couldn't do any more. Samantha felt awful. She wanted things to work out for him so much. His wife had died of cancer, his teenage son had committed suicide as a result and now they had to tell him that there seemed to be no hope of finding his daughter. It seemed as if she had dropped off the very surface of the earth. It wasn't good enough, Samantha thought, as she led him towards a seat.

She listened to him talk about his daughter, he needed an open ear. She concentrated and began to think how she'd feel if Hannah or Katie were to go missing. She'd been doing that a lot lately having become extremely attached to both of them.

She began to notice however that his tone became agitated, with her and the FBI, pretty much with everyone.

He stood up and paced. He was certainly on edge she thought. He took something out of his pocket and gripped it tightly. Samantha stood up, frozen in terror as she realised it was a gun.

"Wait a second Mr Almeida, "she cautioned as she drew her own gun and trained it on him. "You know that we did our best for Carmen. We will still keep trying, we will, I promise. This will not help you. You are in a federal building, threatening a federal agent with a firearm, that carries mandatory jail time and you don't want that. What if Carmen comes back to find you in jail?"

"You don't know what I want!" He said as he waved the gun madly at her, gesturing with every word.

"Ok, ok, just calm down, please. Look, I'm putting my gun away. If someone comes round the corner and sees me with my gun drawn you're gonna have a lot of people in here." She said calmly, putting her gun back into its holster, slowly and deliberately so that he could see.

"Well I'm not putting mine away, now sit down and shut up." She did what she was told, however as she sat she hit the silent alarm button located under the table.

"Whoever comes around the corner now will see you sitting down, not me with a gun on you, right?"

"Right." she said

"Look, I can only imagine what you must be going through but all I can do is tell you that we aren't going to give up on her. I promise you, we wouldn't do that."

"Oh yeah, right. Till someone else goes missing, some governor's son in private school, then my Carmen will just be another face on a milk carton."

"That's not true, I-"

"Don't you tell me it's not true!" He was in a rage and Samantha wondered where the hell everyone was as she pondered the possibility of getting another gunshot wound.

Jack and Vivian were driving through the streets in silence, both touched by the hopelessness of the case. Suddenly Jack broke into a smile but quickly tried to shake it off before Vivian saw. Too late.

"Oh, what was that? Suddenly something's funny? That only took 2 hours and 3 gridlocked freeways. Come on spill."

"Nothing, I just remembered something funny I heard on the radio this morning." He said quickly. He neglected to mention that Samantha had then hit the snooze button after saying a quick obscenity about the DJ.

Vivian, not buying that for a second, folded her arms and shifted in the seat to face Jack who was getting redder and redder behind the wheel.

"I'd buy that except you've been wearing that smile for around 3 months now and don't even try to tell me it's because you got your decree-nisi." She paused and cocked her head to one side.

"You're getting some aren't you?" She sat back, pleased and waited for his response.

"You know what Viv? You are so nosey, I swear, if you ever met Bill Clinton you would be the first one to ask him how Monica got that stain on her dress."

Vivian laughed but probed on.

"Come on; just tell me, I can keep a secret you know! Is it anyone I know?"

Jack sighed, he wanted to tell her badly, he wanted to tell everyone badly. He wanted to appear on a big screen in Times Square and yell at the top of his voice, "I LOVE SAMANTHA!"

He settled for staying silent for a minute. However with Vivian's eyes boring holes into his skull he decided to come clean. If it was gonna come out, it would be better coming out to a grown up like Viv, he thought to himself.

"Ok, this isn't common knowledge. It's been going on for three months as you correctly guessed, Colombo. I am deeply in love with her as she is with me and yes I would like to marry her and have lots of sex and babies. Well, just for the record we're already having lots of sex, lots of great sex-"

"Ok, that's enough detail, Jeeze; do you want me to have nightmares or something?"

He smiled and started to say who but Vivian called him on it before he got the chance.

"And your mystery lover is, drum roll please….Samantha Spade, come on down!"

He almost crashed the car with shock. How did she do that?

"How did you do that?"

"Well, let's look at the evidence,

You spend all day making eyes at each other

You're always assigning her with you

You're frequently both the last ones to leave the office or the first ones to arrive

And finally, the one that really sealed the deal for me;

4) I saw you kissing in the file room"

She sang the last line in the manner of a schoolgirl who had juicy gossip about a popular girl.

"When did you see us kissing?"

"About three weeks ago. Look Jack don't worry. I could say a lot, like be careful or remember what happened last time but I'm sure I couldn't say anything to you that you haven't said yourself. So all I'm gonna say is that I hope it works out for you guys because you love each other, clearly, and you deserve to be happy."

Jack parked the car and turned to look at Vivian. She had been a true friend to him and he was glad they were back on good terms again. Putting his hand on hers he said,

"Coming from you, I hope you know how much that means to me, to both of us."

"I know." She said patting his hand with her other hand. "You're a good man, Charlie Brown!" She smiled and got out of the car. He laughed and followed her. As they walked onto their floor they were beaten back by SWAT.