Ch. 13 UH OH!!!
Mathew woke up in a hospital bed, surrounded by his family and Sydney's friends who had become sort of attached to the crazy old man. Mathew looked around the room and said, "What no flowers? Don't I even get a balloon?"
The group all let out a relieved sigh. If he was back to telling bad jokes, he was alright.
"Glad to see you're back to your old self, Pops," Sydney said.
"I'm not dying Johnny, I can do it myself!"
These and many other comments had been heard around the house ever since Mathew had gotten home from the hospital.
"Dad, you had a heart attack, you need to take it easy," Jack said, trying to remain patient, although he was about at his wits end.
"Take it easy my buttocks, the moment I stop moving you'll leave me for dead and stick me in a pine wood box and be done with me," Mathew replied, also fed up.
Jack couldn't help but smile at his pig-headed father. He loved him, but sometimes he was just so...well pig-headed. They had had a long chat while Mathew had been in the hospital and resolved a lot of issues. Except for the occasional fight, they were on their way to maybe actually liking each other.
"See you guys later," Sydney yelled as she raced down the stairs and out the door before her father could find out that she wasn't going on a group thing, but a date thing with Danny. Her father still wasn't wild about her dating. If he had it his way she wouldn't be dating until she was 18 and by then her social life would have been obliterated.
She was meeting Danny at Dairy Queen and then they were going to The Artic Circle, the local ice skating rink. When Sydney arrived at the Dairy Queen Danny was nowhere in sight. She waited patiently for five minutes, ten minutes, after fifteen minutes she started getting worried. A couple minutes after that the phone rang and one of the cashiers yelled out, "Is there a Siffey Brisfoe here?" Sydney went up to the counter and took the phone from the cashier, who was wondering, "who in their right mind would name their kid Siffey?"
"Sydney?" Danny's voice asked.
"Yeah. What's going on?"
"There's some....uh, family stuff going on and I have to cancel our date. I'm really sorry."
Sydney thought that Danny sounded terribly upset, maybe even been crying, but all she said was that she'd call him later then. She hung up and went home, bummed out.
On Monday she didn't get a chance to see him until lunch. She had sat down next to Will and Francie when he came up beside her and asked to talk to her alone. Once they were in an empty hallway, he started.
"I wanted to explain why I canceled our date."
"It's ok," Sydney tried to say, but Danny held up his hand.
"You should know, besides I need to tell someone, I'm going crazy."
Sydney waited patiently for Danny to start. After awhile he began, "My parents are getting a divorce," he announced.
"I'm so sorry," Sydney said as she gave him a hug.
"It's really complicated and I don't want to drag you into it, but promise me one thing okay?"
"Anything," Sydney said, automatically.
"Promise me you'll never lie to me," Danny said.
Sydney's face turned pale as Danny continued. "I mean if I have a really bad hair day don't tell me, but like the important things you know?" It was about at this point that he noticed the strange look on her face. "Syd?"
Sydney looked around and led him down another hall so they weren't as close to Sloane's office. She knew he'd throw a hissy fit if he knew what she was about to do.
She then proceeded to tell Danny what her "debate matches" really were about.
"Mr. Sloane?"
Arvin the ugly monkey Sloane had been having a pretty good day until now. Emily had made his favorite breakfast this morning and his rival in a bid for an antique clock had mysteriously gone bankrupt. He had been feeling content until security dropped a bomb.
"She what?!" Sloane yelled, as he jumped up out of his chair.
Irina was outside his office, waiting for the secretary to get back, when she heard Sloane shriek. Being the person that she was, she felt no guilt in moving closer to the door and eavesdropping on the little weasel. After a few sentences she knew all that she needed to know. She also knew what she needed to do and she wasn't very happy about it. Besides risking her own life and possibly blowing her cover, she might actually make things worse than they already were, but she wasn't going to sit back while an innocent person suffered at the hands of Arvin Sloane. Her fingers were trembling as she dialed the number. It took her three times to get it straight. Third times a charm, right? She took a deep breath and hoped to heaven that this voice distorter worked.
"Hello?"
Irina had expected to hear Jack or Syd's voice and was surprised when the voice answering was neither of the two.
"Is this the Bristow residence?" she asked, uncertainly, forgetting to turn the distorter on.
"Yep."
Well, that was super informative on helping her figure out who was on the other end of the line.
"I'm Mathew," Mathew said after figuring out not everyone on planet earth recognized his voice or knew who he was in the first place. "I'm Joh..."
"Oh, nice to finally talk to you," Irina said, before she could help herself.
"Finally?" Mathew asked suspiciously.
"Uh." For one of the few times in her life, Irina was caught of guard. Deciding to avoid the sticky situation altogether she quickly changed the subject.
"I really need to talk to your son, Mathew."
"You his girlfriend?" Mathew asked laughing.
"If only he knew how funny that really was," Irina thought to herself.
"Could you give me his cell number?" Irina asked, hoping he wouldn't ask any more questions.
Mathew quickly obliged and gave her the number. He chuckled again, after he hung up the phone. It seemed his Johnny didn't have such a boring life after all.
Jack had just gotten off work when his phone rang. This time though, Irina remembered to turn the distorter on.
"Hello, this is Jack Bristow."
"Sydney's told Danny she works for SD-6."
"Who is this?" Jack said, taken back.
"All that you need to know is that Danny is in danger. Sloane has ordered him to be taken care of and there's not much time left."
"I won't do anything until I..."
"Take care of it or Sloane will take care of it for you," Irina said interrupting him. With that she hung up.
Jack just stood there for a moment. A million questions flooded his brain and for some reason one thing stuck out in particular. Laura always use to say this thing when she wanted him to do something, it went something like, "Take care of it or I'll take care of it for you and you won't like it." Of course this was ridiculous. Laura, or Irina since that was her real name, wouldn't have the information or the resources to alert him to this matter, let alone call him. And that's saying she was alive. He didn't know for sure whether she had survived the accident or not. After returning from his yoga cruise from hell, he had realized that if Laura, Irina, whatever had been planning to be extracted around the time of the accident maybe it hadn't been an accident after all. Which meant she could be anywhere and Sydney could still be in danger. But he put all these thoughts out of his mind and focused on the task at hand. Saving Sydney's boyfriend's butt.
IMPORTANT: Unless I get past a major writer's block this will be the last chapter. You know how everything has been on a smaller level and connected to school and stuff? Well I always thought I'd just expell Danny instead of killing him off, but I'm realizing that just won't work for a lot of different reason. It won't be a radical enough to make Syd doubt SD-6 or try to leave and all. So with your permission I might kind of ignore the conventional thing and just have her bump into Jack somewhere or something. If anybody has any ideas I would love to read them.
Thank you so so so so so so much to everyone who reviewed and please continue because now is when I really need you guys.
