Okay, since my last story (There For Me – about Tony's relationship with Jen) went over like a lead balloon, I thought I'd try a different subject. (BTW, thanks to those few of you who read and reviewed that story. Your reviews were wonderful!)

This story takes place about 10 years after S3. It is a sequel to my story Carnival Town. You don't have to read that story to understand this. I'll make sure I fill you in on the details when necessary.

As always, I don't own any of the major characters. They all belong to Fox. If you take the time to read, please review. It only takes a second and it makes me really, really happy! When I'm happy I write better, so it's in your best interest to review! (How about that for convoluted logic?)

PLAYING JAMES BOND

Chapter 1

"Uncle Jack," said a small voice from behind Jack Bauer, "were you and Daddy really spies?"

Jack was sitting at the desk in his den working on a proposal for a client. He took off his reading glasses and turned to look at the source of the voice. "Who told you that, Carmen?" he asked four year old Carmen Almeida.

Carmen was the youngest of Tony and Michelle's three children. She could light up a room just by walking in it. Spending time with Carmen always made Jack regret not having another daughter. About three years after their second son was born, Jack had suggested to Kate that they try one more time for a daughter.

"Jack," Kate rationalized, "you already have a daughter. I'm perfectly satisfied with our two boys and we're getting too old to have more children. What if the next one is another boy? Are we going to try again in three years? You have granddaughters now. Let's be satisfied with that." Kate was referring to Kim and Chase's daughters, Angela and Tess.

Jack knew that Kate was right. He adored his sons, Mason, who was ten, and Ryan, who would be eight next week. But at the same time, whenever he was with Carmen he found himself just a little bit jealous of Tony and Michelle.

Jack picked Carmen up and set her on his lap. She had huge brown eyes shaded with thick lashes. Her long, thick hair was black and wavy, not curly like Michelle's, but wavy. It was pulled back in French braids which accentuated her striking features. Tony, you better look out, Jack thought, because this little girl is going to break a million hearts and yours is the first one on the list.

Unlike her older brother, Ricardo, nicknamed Rico, and her sister Lucy, who had Tony's darker complexion to go with their dark hair and eyes, Carmen's skin was a fine porcelain color just a shade darker than Michelle's. Carmen was a girl in every way. While her older sister played soccer and climbed trees with the boys and kept her curly hair cut into a short bob, Carmen spent hours playing mother to her dolls and stuffed animals, carefully feeding and dressing and tending to their needs. She was delicate like a flower and always dressed in pastel colors.

"Who told you that your dad and I were spies?" Jack asked.

"Mason and Rico say that you were and I don't believe them. They say you were just like James Boone."

"James Boone?" Jack asked unable to keep from smiling. "Carmen, do you mean James Bond?"

"Yeah, that's it! James Bond," she said brightly her dimples deepening with her smile. She had Michelle's smile. "Mason said if I didn't believe them that I should come and ask you for myself. Besides, I didn't want to play their silly old game anyway."

"What game were they playing?"

"They were spies and they had to go to the volcano to rescue someone." Mount St. Helens, not far away, was threatening to erupt and the children were fascinated by it. The volcano had become the central point of all of their play.

"Who did they have to rescue?" Jack asked her.

"They had to rescue the dancer in the dress," Carmen answered.

"The dancer in the dress?" Jack said he brow furrowed in confusion.

"Yeah, Rico says that they have to rescue her before the bad guy throws her into the volcano."

"Oh," Jack said suddenly understanding, "do you mean the 'damsel in distress'?"

"That's right!" Carmen exclaimed. "They wanted me to be the girl they rescued. I told them that I didn't need to be rescued and that I wanted to play with my dolls, so I came back."

"Wait a minute," Jack said with concern, "you came back from where? Where are the others?"

"Playing in the clearing," Carmen told him. She was referring to an area about a hundred yards through the woods behind Jack and Kate's house.

"Carmen, did you walk back from the clearing by yourself?"

"No, I had Frankie with me," she answered pointing to the Bauer's Border collie who was now sleeping on the rug near Jack's feet.

"Sweetie, you shouldn't walk all that way by yourself. Next time you want to come back from the clearing, one of the older kids has to walk with you," he told her.

"It's not that far," she said with a pout, "and, besides, you can't get lost if you stay on the path. Daddy says that I'm a big girl now that I don't suck my thumb any more."

Jack's face softened. "I know you're a big girl, Carmen, but I still think it's safer if someone walks with you. Okay?"

"I guess," Carmen said with a pout. She held her thumb near her mouth as if she was contemplating sucking it after being admonished, albeit gently, by Jack. She suddenly remembered what she just said about "being a big girl" and pulled the thumb abruptly away from her face. "Can you read me a story?"

"Sure," Jack told her. "What would you like to read?"

Carmen brightened up and jumped off his lap narrowly missing Frankie who yelped in surprise and decided that his current resting place wasn't safe anymore. It was time to move on. The dog stood lazily and ambled off to the floor in front of the fireplace and lay down on the cool tile. "Let's read 'Madeline'. I'll go get it." Carmen ran off to the next room to retrieve the book from her backpack.

Jack smiled and got up slowly from his desk chair. He put his hand on the desk for support. The first step was always the hardest, after that he was usually fine. Jack had been shot in the line of duty a little more than ten years ago, just months before Mason was born. He was hit three times. One of the bullets lodged near his spine. He was so unstable at first that the doctors made a decision to remove the other two bullets and leave that one alone until he stabilized. By the time they removed the bullet from his back a week later, it had done irreparable damage. He was left with some paralysis in his left leg. After months of physical therapy, he learned to walk again, but with a definite limp.

Carmen came running back into the room with not one, but four "Madeline" books. Jack had read the same books to Kim 25 years ago. It always brought back memories. "Let's go out onto the back porch and read," Jack suggested to Carmen.

"Okay," Carmen called behind her as she ran for the back door. She opened the door and held it for Jack. She waited patiently while he put his hand on the doorframe for support and stepped down onto the painted wood porch. "Can we sit on the porch swing?"

"Sounds perfect," Jack told her as he went toward it. He sat down and helped Carmen up. She immediately climbed into his lap. Jack was less than half way through the first book when he looked down to find that Carmen was sound asleep with her head propped against his chest. Trying to keep up with the older kids had obviously tired little Carmen out. Jack shifted her weight slightly so he was more comfortable and he continued to move the swing slowly back and forth rocking the child in the warm summer air.

When Kate first moved to Seattle she bought a small two story Cape Cod style house just outside the city and about 20 minutes from her office. It was big enough for her and the baby she was carrying at the time. At that point Jack wasn't in the picture. They had broken up several months earlier not knowing that Kate was pregnant. She stubbornly refused to tell Jack about the baby and moved to Seattle. When Jack was shot, she returned to LA to be by his side. The decision was made to reconcile and they married and moved to Seattle together. They lived in Kate's house for the first year, but negotiating the stairs was always a problem for Jack. They decided to build a ranch style home a little further out. They bought about two acres of land that backed up to a pine forest which eventually let to foothills and mountains. It was amazingly private but yet conveniently close to Seattle.

The chain on the swing creaked rhythmically. Jack listened to the creaking of the swing and the birds singing and inhaled deeply enjoying the freshness of the air, the smell of the pine from the forest behind the house. It was never like this in LA, he thought. Life was never so peaceful or calm and the air was never this fresh. It made him sad in a way to realize that it had taken him the first forty years of his life to find real happiness. He thought he was happy when he and Teri were first married and Kim was little, but not nearly as happy as he was now.

He had resigned from CTU shortly after being shot. He wasn't sure what he was going to do next, but he knew that he couldn't go back to CTU, not if his relationship with Kate had any chance of succeeding. He and Kate moved to Seattle where she ran the local office of Warner Enterprises. When they first moved, Jack was too busy with physical therapy to worry about what he would do for a living. In his mind, he needed to be able to walk again in order to be the kind of husband and father he wanted to be.

Once he finished that, he spent most of his time taking care of Mason. Jack was enjoying being a house husband when an old acquaintance who now ran security at an airport near Seattle asked him to look over their security procedures and make recommendations for improvements. That simple, one-time request turned into a whole new career for Jack. Security for airports, shopping malls, skyscrapers, convention centers and a host of other facilities was being scrutinized by the public following terrorist attacks in the U.S. and abroad. Once word got out that someone with Jack's expertise was available for revamping security protocols, he was inundated with requests and job offers. He was so overwhelmed that he asked Tony to go into the business with him. Tony was reluctant at first. He had a secure job with a software company that he liked, although he admitted wasn't much of a challenge. Kate guaranteed that even if the business with Jack failed, she would always have a job for him with Warner Enterprises. Tony eventually agreed and he and Jack became not only friends but business partners. In the agreement, Tony owned 60 percent of the company to Jack's 40 percent. It was set up that way at Jack's request. Kate's job was demanding and Jack didn't want to work full time. He limited his time to four days a week, one of which he would work from home, and didn't do any travel that required more than an overnight stay. Tony, on the other hand, needed the full time job and was not opposed to travel.

It was an arrangement begun ten years ago with little more than a handshake. They hired an office assistant and Kate gave them some office space rent free for the first six months. After that modest start, they now occupied an entire floor of an office building and had fifteen employees. Jack tried to get Chase to come on board with them, but he and Kim preferred to stay in LA. He had transferred from CTU to District and was rapidly moving up the bureaucratic ladder. Instead they had been able to hire a couple of other former CTU employees who had grown tired of the stresses of their jobs and the hustle and bustle of life in LA.

It was nearly 5 o'clock and Carmen had just started to wake up when Michelle came to pick up the children. Jack called to her to let her know that they were on the back porch. Michelle rounded the corner and climbed up the back steps. She hadn't changed much over the years. Still thin and pretty, she wore her curly, auburn hair shorter now. It was loose and tucked behind her ears. She had taken off the suit jacket she had been wearing this morning when she dropped the kids off.

"Hi Mommy!" Carmen called as Michelle stepped up onto the porch. She liked the way her mother's high heels clicked on the wooden steps.

"Hi Sweet Pea," Michelle called back. "Are you and Uncle Jack reading a story?"

"We started to, but I fell asleep," Carmen admitted as she slipped off of Jack's lap and ran to her mother. Michelle took her daughter in her arms. She was so different from their other two children. Rico and Lucy already hated being hugged and kissed in public. Carmen was still little and snuggly.

"Where are Rico and Lucy?" Michelle asked.

"They're still playing in the clearing with Ryan and Mason," Carmen told her.

"Why don't you get your toys and books and put them in your backpack. Then we'll walk back to the clearing and get them." Carmen agreed and went into the house to gather her things.

Moments later Loretta, the Bauer's housekeeper, leaned out of the back door. "Oh, hello Mrs. Almeida. I didn't realize that you were here," she said.

"Hi, Loretta," Michelle responded. "I just got here. Were the kids good today?"

"They're always good. When the four older ones are together you don't even know that they're here. They go off and play and you never hear a thing from them until they get hungry," she said with a smile. Loretta was a bit of an eccentric lady in her 60's. She had snow white hair stylishly cropped very short and she had the bluest eyes that Michelle had ever seen. She had been with the Bauers since they moved from LA and was almost like another grandmother to Mason and Ryan. Loretta looked at Jack, "Mr. Bauer, I was getting ready to leave. Can I get you and Mrs. Almeida anything before I go? I just brewed some iced tea if either of you would like some."

They both indicated that they would like iced tea and Loretta disappeared into the kitchen.

"I hope the kids weren't any trouble, Jack," Michelle said.

"They were fine, Michelle. Like Loretta said, I barely knew they were here."

"You're a lifesaver! I can't thank you enough," Michelle told him. She had called Kate just after 7 o'clock that morning. Tony was in San Francisco working with airport officials at SFO on a major security upgrade. Michelle worked part time out of their home providing computer services, web site design and administrative functions to small businesses. She occasionally had to meet with clients and had scheduled an all day meeting with a company whose computer systems she was upgrading. She had arranged for a baby sitter to watch the kids for the day, but the sitter called at ten minutes to seven to tell Michelle that she couldn't make it. Michelle frantically called Kate to see if she knew a baby sitter that could be called on short notice. Jack answered the phone and told Michelle that he would be working from home that day and to bring the kids over. He never minded having all of the kids at his house. Besides that, he had learned long ago that if the boys had friends over, they would go off and play and he would get more work done.

"What did they do all day?" Michelle asked.

"They played ball out back for about an hour or so, then they asked Loretta if she would pack them a lunch and they all went back to the clearing. They haven't been back since. Carmen came back around 2 o'clock. By the way, she walked back from the clearing by herself. I told her that next time one of the older kids needs to walk back with her," Jack told Michelle.

The clearing was a large meadow that was bordered on three sides by woods and on the fourth side by a stream. July and August were always dry months in Seattle but this year they had been drier than most leaving the stream only a couple of inches deep. The kids liked to kick off their shoes and walk along the creek bed. By lunch they ended up soaked despite the small amount of water in the stream and they would sit in the sun on towels and eat lunch while they dried off. After lunch either a soccer ball or baseball would be pulled from a backpack and they would spend much of the afternoon playing ball until hunger again set in and they came back to the house in search of food. Carmen usually followed them to play in the stream but she would tire out by lunchtime and want to play quietly with her dolls.

Michelle nodded. "I agree. I'll remind Rico and Lucy about it."

"Oh, one other thing," Jack started. "Apparently the boys are on a 'spy' kick again. Carmen asked me if it was true that Tony and I were spies."

"Was Lucy playing, too?"

"From what Carmen said she was. I'm sure she was just going along with the boys."

"I'll talk to Rico and Lucy," Michelle said with a sigh. Why did CTU always have to come back to haunt her? She and Jack and Tony rarely talked about their former line of work. It had come up in a discussion a couple of years ago and Mason and Rico picked up on it. They immediately equated their fathers to James Bond and any other cool spy they could think of. Kate thought it was harmless fun for little boys, but for Jack and Tony and Michelle, it was an all too clear reminder of their CTU years. They didn't want their sons glorifying intelligence work to make it seem like an adventure. They didn't follow arch criminals to exotic islands and scuba dive with beautiful women and have an inventor in the basement supplying them with exploding pens or cars that could throw up smoke screens. James Bond had never spent a sleepless night in Kosovo huddled in a frigid stream keeping watch on the house of a local warlord. He hadn't watched as his colleagues who had wives and children die when the operation blew up in their collective faces. James Bond had never been shot in the neck trying to apprehend a suspect nor had he been exposed to a potentially fatal virus. No, Jack and Tony and Michelle didn't want their children playing spy games and the children had been told that.

"I'm surprised the kids aren't back by now," Michelle said as Loretta came out onto the porch with two iced teas and a plate of fresh oatmeal raisin cookies.

"I'm not," Jack said with a smile. "They never come back until they get hungry and Loretta packed enough food for an army."

"They're growing children, Mr. Bauer," Loretta said with her hands on her hips as if to make a point. "I've been taking care of children for over forty years and in all those years, not one child in my care ever starved to death. I'm not about to start now! Plenty of food and plenty of water keep children healthy."

As usual, Michelle was amused by Loretta. "What all did you pack, Loretta?"

"Just a few sandwiches…"

"A few!" Jack exclaimed unable to control his laughter. "There were five kids and fifteen sandwiches!"

"Go on, Mr. Bauer!" Loretta said with an exasperated look on her face. "I did not pack fifteen sandwiches. I just wanted them to have a variety. You know, some ham and cheese, chicken, a couple of peanut butter and jelly, that's all. Then I put in some hard boiled eggs and apples and cherries and some of the cookies that I baked."

"Only about half the batch," Jack added trying to egg Loretta on. "Let's see, and then there was the fresh trail mix that you made and some celery stuffed with peanut butter, not to mention the juice and water to wash it all down. The list is endless, Michelle."

"Well at least I won't have to fix any dinner tonight," Michelle laughed as Loretta went back inside to get ready to leave for the day. "Were you and Kate planning on taking the kids to the Asian Heritage Festival downtown this weekend?"

"I think Kate is going. With Tony out of town this week I've got a lot of work at the office. I was planning on driving into the city with them but I think I'm going to go to the office and work while Kate and the boys go to the festival."

"I talked to Tony today. He may be stuck in San Francisco until Sunday, so I'll talk to Kate. She and I can take the kids." Michelle looked at her watch. "We better go, Carmen. Do you want to walk back to the clearing with me to get Rico and Lucy?"

"You don't have to walk back there. They'll come when I whistle," Jack told her. He made a circle of his thumb and forefinger, put them in his mouth and let out a shrill whistle. "They'll whistle back to let me know they heard me."

Jack and Michelle listened for a minute but didn't hear a return whistle. Jack whistled again. "I guess they don't feel like coming home," he said knowing what it was like to be a little boy who was engrossed in play.

A minute or two later the children still hadn't returned Jack's whistle. "I guess I'm going to have to walk back there."

"Wait a second, Jack," Michelle said. "I have a change of shoes in the car. I'll get them and come with you."

Michelle walked to her car and exchanged her business heels with a pair of flat walking shoes. "Come on, Carmen. Let's take a walk."

By then Jack had reached inside of the house and grabbed his cane. Although he was steady on flat ground, the path to the clearing was uneven enough to cause him to lose his balance. He would make better time with the cane. Michelle met him a step or two from the porch and they made their way across the long back yard and onto the path to the clearing.

Kate arrived home soon after Jack and Michelle had left. Loretta was just about to leave as Kate walked in the front door. They exchanged greetings and pleasantries.

"I saw Michelle's car in the driveway. Are she and Jack out back?" Kate asked.

"No, ma'am," Loretta explained. "The children didn't come when Mr. Bauer whistled so he and Mrs. Almeida went back to the clearing looking for them."

"They didn't come when Jack whistled?" Kate said looking vaguely concerned. "I bet Jack wasn't happy."

"No, ma'am, not happy at all. I'm not sure I'd want to be either of those boys when Mr. Bauer gets a hold of them."

Kate smiled. Jack had a whole lot of bark and not much bite. He tried to be a strict disciplinarian but deep down he was an old softie. Still, their lack of response to Jack's whistle caused Kate a twinge of concern. Neither of the boys liked to incur Jack's wrath even if in the end he carried out little of the promised discipline. So they rarely disobeyed him. Kate quickly pushed the thought from her mind and thought about Jack walking through the woods to the clearing. "I hope Jack took his cane. The last time he tried to walk to the clearing without a cane he lost his balance and fell. It took three stitches to close the cut over his eye."

"I remember, ma'am, and I suspect he did, too, because he came in and got his cane before he left."

"Oh, good," Kate said slightly relieved. "I'm going to take advantage of a couple of minutes of quiet and change my clothes. You run along, Loretta. Have a good weekend and I'll see you on Monday."

Kate made her way back to the master bedroom suite. The room felt a little stuffy so she opened the sliding glass door that led out to the back porch which ran the entire length of the house. While she changed clothes in the adjoining dressing room, she heard Jack's familiar whistle. He had been calling the boys that way since they were four or five years old and she hadn't ever remembered them failing to respond. At first they just came running back but in the last couple of years Mason had learned to whistle back to let his father know that he had heard the summons. She stood still waiting to hear Mason's return whistle but heard nothing. Now wearing a pair of cropped jeans and knit tee shirt Kate stepped into a pair of sandals and walked out the back door and toward the path to the clearing.

Carmen trotted ahead of Jack and Michelle along the path to the clearing. She stepped into the meadow ahead of the adults. "Rico! Lucy!" she called. "It's time to go home." She started running across the meadow just as Michelle stepped out from under the canopy of trees that lined the path. "They must be playing hide and seek," Carmen said taking in the empty clearing. "Come out! Come out wherever you are!" she shouted.

Jack had joined Michelle now and was surveying the field. It was completely empty except for the cooler in which Loretta had packed the lunch feast. It sat near the stream but there was otherwise no sign of the children. All four of them had backpacks that contained beach towels and whatever balls or baseball gloves they decided to carry. Even the backpacks were no where to be found.

Jack opened the cooler and looked inside. It was empty except for the wrappings and plastic bags that Loretta had used when she packed the lunch.

"Carmen," Jack said, "after lunch was there any food left in the cooler?"

"Yeah, lots of it," she answered. "Miss Loretta packed a lot of food."

"Did they say anything about going off to play at a neighbor's house or give you any idea that they might leave the clearing?" Jack asked her.

"I told you Uncle Jack. They were going to the volcano," she said innocently not understanding that Mount Saint Helens was too far away for them to walk.

Jack looked at Michelle who looked something between worried and angry. "Jack, do you think they put the food into their backpacks and wandered off into the woods?"

"I think they might have," Jack said realistically. "On the other hand, if one of the neighbor kids came by, they might have just decided to play at their house and forgot to tell me where they were going."

"I don't think they would have emptied the cooler or left it here if they were going to a neighbor's house. I'm worried, Jack," Michelle said.

Jack looked down at the ground before speaking. "Me, too," he admitted.