A/N: Hi, guys, my computer's still out of whack and is now in a repare shop (the memory's getting wiped) so I'm writing from a different computer. That's why these chapters have been coming to you so slowly (I'm so sorry). Anyways, hopefully I'll get my computer back and you'll get a chapter every (two, three?) days.
Special thanks to all my reviewers: Bite Beccy, Bail's Other Daughter, Steelo, Starryeyes10, Kitty X, martini1988, QueenOfAces, froggy0319, alix33, mjag, moonlight, nursejay80, AnMaDeRoNi, snugglebug, jaggurl, Anne, ficchic, dansingwolf, Radiorox, cbw, wishwaters, Rocket Rain, sgcgirl and anyone else I've missed for the great reviews!
Note: I have created a new main character for my story (just to give it a little twist). I begin the story with her but you'll soon see everything fall into place. Just bear with me here.
Let There Be Light
Rrriiinnngg.
Special Agent Vera Azhad's eyes snapped open, her vision immediately taking in the darkness. Pearly white moonlight shafted through the crack between the silk curtains that hung over her apartment window and a cool breeze floated in through the open window. Vera shivered and turned to look at her bedside table. Her digital alarm clock said 3:48. She sighed. The Agency had no sense of time.
She picked up the phone. "Azhad," she growled, blowing a disobedient strand of her dark auburn hair out of her eyes. "Now make it fast or I'll fall asleep."
A ridiculing laugh broke out on the other end of the line. "Not the morning person are we, Vera?"
"Bite me, Chuck," she replied bitterly, cursing everyone under the sun for ever being assigned to Charles Kovach's team.
"Watch your tongue, Azhad. No one's indispensable."
Vera exhaled slowly, willing herself to breathe. "Did you just call to chat? Because if you did, I doubt that's with your wife's bliss."
"Clayton Webb wants to talk to you."
"Tell him to get a life."
"It's a government issue."
"No," Vera stretched sarcastically. "I thought he was going to ask me out."
There was a pause on the other end of the line and for one embarrassing moment, Vera thought he would ask her if there was anything going on between her and Webb but instead he said, "Clay wants you to come in."
"It's four am!" Vera exploded, blasting volume down the other end of the receiver. But even as she said that she was pulling on a sweater and struggling into jeans. Kovach she could deal with, Webb was an entirely different matter.
"I'm putting Webb on." Kovach's voice was taunting. There was the sound of the telephone taking a change of hands and then the quick quip, "now put on your panties and get down here ASAP."
"You know what rhymes with Chuck don't you?" Vera snapped down one end of the phone and a cool laugh picked it up on the other end. Webb.
"Don't tell me my call woke you up?"
Vera felt drained. "Webb, it's four in the morning. I'd like to see you call someone at this time and have them not be sleeping."
Webb smiled into his end of the phone. "Please don't tell me you don't sleep with one eye open?"
"Please don't tell me you do."
Webb cleared his throat. "We've got a situation. An emergency, really. Now, you wanted a vacation, right . . .?
I sat there shivering feeling totally lost. Webb had thrown a jacket at me as soon as we got into the car. I pulled it on gratefully, slipping the framed photo of Mac into one of its bigger pockets. Webb drove the car at a mild speed, not fast enough for someone to give you the finger and not slow enough that you get a whole lot of cars honking at you. Just slow/fast enough that you can slip anywhere unnoticed.
And the first thing that I noticed while I sat shivering in the backseat of his car (he wouldn't let me in the front) was that he was taking the road to Langley. I really shouldn't have been surprised. I mean – where else would he take me? But a strange sense of foreboding came over me, like I knew what was going to happen and yet at the same time I was powerless to stop it – or unwilling to stop it.
Webb parked the car and got out, flashing his badge at least a hundred times. I was too tired to count. I followed suit, my senses not yet accurately pinpointing the embarrassment of being in my boxers. It was a chilly morning, with the sun not in view yet.
I thought about what Mac was probably doing right now. Sleeping, my quick-witted brain told me. But how was she sleeping? Was she buried up to her neck in covers or had she thrown them partly off? And was she biting her lower lip like she sometimes did when she thought or dreamed? Was she dreaming of me?
I sighed, and ran my fingers over the framed photograph I'd stolen into my pocket. And perhaps her face with me more than anything gave me the courage to step through those doors and into a whole new life . . .
Quite literally.
Albert Hayes had seen some quite strange things in his time. Undoubtedly. As the manager of a Washington DC apartment building, he had come across his share of transsexuals, Goths, hippies, the load. But tonight of all nights had to take the cake.
Almost a decade ago, Albert Hayes had sold an apartment to one Navy Commander Harmon Rabb, Jr. He was a tall fellow, decent looking with great eyes (or so his wife said) and until now there had been no strange events in that apartment (then again, most that occurred under Albert Hayes's nose was never acknowledged). But tonight, almost by chance, Albert Hayes had certainly witnessed some strange goings on.
Albert had gotten up to take a leak – as he so eloquently put it - when he caught sight of the first car. It was black, sort of sleek and shiny, and though Albert didn't know much about cars, it looked expensive.
And out of that car came a rich looking man with an expensive three piece suit and a look on his face which very plainly said he had no time to kill. Had Albert Hayes watched the news, he might have known that was Agent Clayton Webb of CIA. But Albert didn't, so the only thing he had admired was the Armani tie which this man wore.
The man with the tie got into the elevator as if he knew exactly where he was going and disappeared. Twenty minutes later he came back down accompanied by the Navy Commander who was clad in only his boxers and a t-shirt. That was unusual, but perhaps what caught the real attention of Albert Hayes was the fact that out of the rim at the back of his boxers, a framed photograph could be seen picking out. A picture of a girl – a pretty girl at that.
And then just like that both men were gone. Swallowed by the darkness of the outside street. Albert Hayes had been asleep an hour later when three top secret security men stole into his apartment building and planted a fake body on the rug in the Rabb apartment. He was, however, rudely awoken an hour after that by a team of JAG personnel who were demanding to see the "body".
This had come as a shock to Mr. Hayes who could have sworn he had seen Harmon Rabb exiting in his boxers with the Armani Tie Guy. But he was tired, it was the middle of the night, and he had a full bladder. Mr. Hayes was not willing to cope with issues of his sanity at the moment.
The body had been taken away, the Rabb apartment had been locked up for the night, Albert Hayes was annoyed that he would have to find another tenant. But events were not finished for the night. They were far from being over.
As he stood recounting this story to the authorities, Albert Hayes looked into the dark eyes of a man who was unfamiliar to him, but yet possessed a Police badge. Funny, he thought to himself. He wasn't there when all the other cops came.
"And this photo he had with him?" the man's voice was clearly loud and authoritative, but it couldn't hide the suspense lingering in its tone.
"Of a girl."
"A girl?"
"Well, a woman, really."
"A woman . . ?" the man trailed, looking confused.
Albert Hayes nodded vigorously, excited that he was on to something. "I only got a real quick look, but the woman was pretty. The kind you'd see on TV. And she's been around this place. At least, I think she has. Maybe to his apartment. A lot of women go to his apartment."
Now Albert Hayes was stretching the story a bit, but he didn't quite care. This news seemed to startle the man, and placed a very animalistic gleam in his eyes. A gleam that if Albert Hayes was completely wary, he might want to extinguish.
"And if you saw this woman again, would you be able to identify her?"
The question hung in there for a deep moment and then –
"Yes, I would."
The man, for the first time, smiled. But it was not the kind of handsome, happy smile one might have thought you would see. It was a wolf's smile, like a predator that had just smelt his prey. Killer instinct.
As Albert Hayes walked away with this man, he though about Harmon Rabb and who he really was. And he thought about how much he would like to ride in a police car, with the siren wailing.
But Albert Hayes was to be sorely disappointed, because the man he had walked away with was not a Policeman. Or an FBI, NCIS, NSA, or even a CIA. No, but you would come across his face in any of those agencies. He was on the America's Most Wanted List . . .
Rrrriiiinnnnggg.
Again with that damn phone. I stared at it for a long time. Harm was gone. What was the use in picking it up anymore? Sometimes I used to race to the phone, thinking it was him, and then realize it wasn't – only to become moody and depressed. Now I would be like that all the time. Like the widows in those old black and white films who watched everyone and everything pass them by. To far gone to be revived . . .
Rrriiinnnggg.
I pressed my head to my hands. What was the point of living anymore? I stared around the room. Everything in here made me think of him. We painted the walls of my kitchen together last summer. My bedroom's literally a collage of his pictures. I've got my freaking closet sorted into two sections – the clothes Harm's complimented me on, and the clothes Harm's taken no notice of.
Rrrriiinnnggg.
And I know my feelings about him. I've known them since the moment we met. The moment we said hello. That I'd follow him to the end of the earth if I had to – and don't think I haven't done that. We've been through hell and back. And it's just not freaking fair that he gets taken away from me now!
Rrriiinnnggg.
I screamed aloud and picked up the telephone. "Hello!"
"Hello." The voice on the other end seemed cool – very calm and collected. Not much like anyone else's voice I knew. "Are you Sarah Mackenzie?"
I felt a shiver run down my arms and I rubbed them away forcefully. This was no time to turn scared. "Yes."
"Do you know a Harmon Rabb, Jr.?"
I fought a tear back from breaking. "Y-yes." And then I corrected myself. "I knew a Harmon Rabb, Jr."
There was a long pause on the end of the line, maybe just for effect and then . . . "You may still know him."
And that's when I realized that perhaps not everything I'd thought I lost was gone. And that, somewhere at the end of this dark tunnel, there was light.
A/N: Hi people, I'm so sorry it took me such a long time for me to get this chapter out but I computer's gone haywire, end of the year exams are next week for me and I'm never going to pass the Music Exam, but thank you for all sticking with me. The next chapter will flash six months ahead so that Harm and Mac can reunited (well, okay, they won't REUNITE in that chapter, but you know how it goes).
My new character, Special Agent Vera Azhad, I just quickly introduced her in this chapter. You'll be seeing a lot more of her. She'll be playing opposite to Webb (surprise, surprise) and . . . um, yeah. That's it!
Note to sgcgirl: Well, I wouldn't say I'm Jewish because I don't practice any particular religion but my grandmother is. The main reason behind Harm's quick funeral (this is a note to everyone now) is because I wanted to speed up the chapters so we can get to the good part.
Oh yeah, and for everyone who doesn't know, JAG's coming out on DVD for the Christmas Holidays! I heard it on the radio.