Thanks to everyone for continuing to review! Sorry about the typos in the last chapter - they were all my fault - I made some sloppy edits after Diane, my wonderful beta, saw it.
The saga continues...
Too Good to be True
By: Mariel
Chapter 9
Next morning, Samantha and Vivian both looked up as Jack breezed into the bullpen.
Vivian eyed him closely."You're looking bright-eyed this morning," she observed. "Sleep well last night?"
"Like a baby, thank you," Jack said in a light tone. "I feel great."
It was true. In spite of the fact he couldn't remember details of everything he and Janice had talked about, wasn't sure what time she had actually left, and couldn't remember crawling into bed, he felt better than he had in months. Last night the conversation had eased something inside him. On top of that, the wine had put him out cold, without the need of Lisa's sleeping pills. He'd awoken this morning and discovered that not only did he not have a hangover but actually felt better than he had in a long time. Maybe talking about his troubles had helped. Or maybe talking about someone else's troubles had helped... Or maybe it had just been nice not to spend an evening alone. Whatever the case, life looked a little less depressing, and he was grateful for that.
Samantha, after regarding him with a silent stare, wordlessly bent her head back over the papers in front of her.
"Where's Danny?" he asked, looking in the direction of Danny's desk.
"He's got a dentist appointment. He told you that yesterday," Vivian reminded him.
Jack nodded, remembering. Grinning slightly, he said, "He was dreading it, too."
"Let's be sure to remind him of that when he gets back," Vivian said in a dry tone.
"And ask for gory details, maybe," Jack grinned.
Sobering, he then asked, "Anything on Nina?"
Vivian shook her head. "Not much. I hear Martin started working on it last night, but I guess he didn't get far before he went home. He's gone for donuts at the moment. He shouldn't be much longer."
Samantha finally spoke. "What are you expecting to find, anyways?"
Sliding into an empty seat across from her, Jack placed his elbows on the table. "I'm not sure," he admitted, "But something's wrong. There's more to Nina's story than meets the eye, and the more I think about it, the more I think she can shed light onto why Georgina ended up dead behind a dumpster."
Her thoughts leaping ahead, Samantha asked, "If Nina's here illegally, you wouldn't tell on her, would you?" She winced at how school-girlish the question sounded.
He shook his head, not seeming to notice anything amiss with her question. "You aren't hearing me say it, but we're not immigration. I do want to know how she got here, though, and what she did when she first arrived. It sounds as though she came here just to marry a guy, sight unseen, and we know the mail order bride business can be pretty shady. Of course, since we don't know whether or not she was really married - she may have been involved in a prostitution ring. Or perhaps she carried drugs into the country for someone, or was part of the sex slave market we've been hearing so much about lately." He shrugged, not really believing that the woman he had folded laundry with was involved in any of those things. "I don't know - but something tells me there's an interesting story there, and like I said before, I have a feeling Georgina knew that story and it had something to do with her death."
Remembering the man who had visited Georgina's husband so shortly after her disappearance, Samantha asked, "Do you think whatever they were involved in also involved Rossi?".
Jack opened his mouth to respond but was cut off by a comment from Vivian.
"Perhaps you should let the NYPD investigating Georgina's murder know what we've learned," she suggested.
"I will, when I have enough to give them. But this is connected to us, too. I looked up the unsolved rate of Filipino disappearances in the past two years. There are five Filipino women who have dropped out of sight within a year or so of their arrival to the U.S. In every case, they were here under contract to marry someone. In every case, they vanished and were never heard from again. Without even wiring for their photos, my guess is that Nina is one of them. I'm also wondering if the others are dead or alive...and if there are more who have simply fallen through the cracks and gone unnoticed. Something is happening to these women. I want to know what."
Vivian looked at him with astonishment. "That's quite a theory you're developing, Jack. I don't see that there's much evidence to support it, though."
"Not yet, but when Nina hears what happened to Georgina, she's going to tell us more than she did yesterday."
Catching Samantha's look at him, he was quick to add, "And it's not that I think she had anything to do with the murder directly."
Before anyone could take the conversation further, Martin arrived with a box of donuts. "Here," he said as he sat down beside Samantha. "Help yourselves." Opening the box, he passed it around to everyone.
"I found something you might find interesting," he said to Jack through a mouthful of powdered sugar and sweet dough. "Your Nina person doesn't seem to have a past beyond her arrival to New York. She's got a social insurance number, a credit rating, and all the other accrutrements of modern living, but nothing to trace her back beyond this city. I can't even find information on when she arrived here from the Phillipines."
"Which means she's using an alias."
"Not unheard of, when a woman is hiding from an abusive partner," Samantha said in Nina's defence.
"You're right," Jack replied, "But I think it's further proof we need to go back and have another conversation with her. If Georgina helped women set themselves up under new identities, we need to know how and why. Engineering the documents alone shows a lot of organization. If someone discovered what she was doing, they might have a reason to be angry. If that someone thought she could nail them for any wrong-doing, they might also be afraid. Angry and afraid isn't a good combination if you're already on the wrong side of the law." He looked across the table at Samantha. "Samantha, phone Nina. Tell her we need to talk to her, and make arrangements for us to meet somewhere."
Samantha nodded, glad for the 'we' that indicated she was not going to be left out of this second meeting. Rising, she crossed to her desk to make the call. While she did, Jack told Vivian: "I've asked for photos of the missing Filipino women, along with all the information they've got about their disappearances. As soon as it comes in, give me a call."
-XXX-
The cafe Nina had selected to meet them in was small, dark, and almost deserted. Samantha and Jack arrived early, and so chose a window seat in order to observe the falling rain and street activity while they waited. Later, when Nina arrived, they would move to a more private booth near the rear of the shop.
In spite of the tension that usually stood between them now, they slowly relaxed enough to enjoy sitting, sipping their coffee, and talking in a desultory fashion about whatever came to mind. Samantha found herself watching for his smile and enjoyed the opportunity to focus just on him without worrying how it would appear to others. Smiling at something he said, she realised how much she missed times like this and found herself remembering with a pang the easy-going companionship they had once had.
As for Jack, he felt conscious of being careful not to say the wrong thing or to intimate a closeness to her that was no longer there. Watching as emotions flowed like water across her face, he wondered at how they had got to this place. It was a delicate matter, their new relationship - if indeed you could call what was between them now such a thing. Striving for honesty, however, he acknowledged that as wary as he felt and as dangerous to his peace of mind as it might be, he couldn't deny himself the pleasure being with her gave him.
After almost thirty minutes of waiting with no sign of Nina, Samantha began to looked worried. Tapping her fingers on the table, she leaned forward and looked out of the window and down the street. "She should be here by now."
Sensing Samantha's unspoken worry, Jack nodded and tried to be reassuring. With a wave of his hand he indicated the rain pouring down on the street outside. "If she planned to take a taxi here, it'd have taken her a while to get one. Half of New York is out there fighting for a cab right now."
He was right. The heavens had opened about an hour and a half earlier, the steady downpour doing nothing to lessen the heat and much to make life even more horribly humid. It had also made taxis a very valuable, rare, and sought after commodity. Choked by yellow cabs and umbrella-toting jaywalkers, traffic was an even knottier mess than usual and not likely to ease up anytime soon. "Let's give her another thirty minutes," he suggested, oddly content to remain where he was.
She nodded and turned her gaze back to the rain outside. Her attention, however, centred on the man sitting across from her. It always did, when he was near. It bothered her somewhat that she felt so conscious of him, bothered her how aware she was of his hands, of his movements, of the expressions on his face. Sternly, she set about concentrating on things other than how it felt to share space with him again...
Which meant that her thoughts turned to his friend Janice and how late she had been with him the night before...and how close a friendship they shared. She shot Jack a quick, sidelong glance, then focussed on the rain outside. He did seem happier. She sighed, not happy with the way she felt about him moving on.
"A penny for them," Jack said, his eyes amused.
"Not worth that much," she replied absently. Turning her eyes to meet his, she was taken by the warm humour she saw in them. She rarely saw that these days. Another thing to lay at Janice's feet.
When he didn't reply, she tilted her head to one side and said, "You seem more relaxed today. Catching up on old times did you wonders." She knew it sounded as though she was fishing, but didn't care. Maybe he wouldn't notice.
He did.
"It was good to see Janice again." He smiled wryly. "She's brutally honest, but sometimes I need that."
Longing to know what the other woman had been brutally honest about, Samantha asked instead, "You've known her a long time?"
He nodded, his eyes warm. "Yeah. Since forever. She's lived quite a life. I told you yesterday about meeting her in Germany when my father was stationed there, but our lives have crossed paths a number of times. We met up when I was in the service and stationed overseas, and then again while I was in Quantico - she was here on assignment for some newspaper she was working for. She doesn't stay in one spot too long."
Samantha knew that to be true - she'd googled the woman's name the day they'd been introduced and had discovered Janice Spencer had been married four times, had had assignments all over the world, interviewed an incredible assortment of people, covered several major world crises, two wars, and the fall of a dictatorship - often with exclusive interviews. She found none of that as interesting as the woman's relationship with Jack, however.
"Quantico was before you met Maria?" Samantha asked, trying to get a lock on what their relationship had been.
And was.
And might become.
He nodded.
"So she's popped in and out of your life a lot," she prodded discreetly.
"Yeah. It's been good that way." He smiled, his eyes fixed on a distant memory. "Last time she was here, she called me from a police station. She had a long, involved story to explain why she'd been arrested, but the fact of the matter was, she needed me to bail her out. It wasn't the first time I'd rescued her."
She asked the first question that came to mind. It was a personal question, had an edge to it she was ashamed of, and was something she had no right to ask.
She asked it anyway.
"Is that what you'll be doing this time? Rescuing her from something?"
He looked away. In a thoughtful tone that surprised her, he replied slowly, "No. This time, I think she'll be rescuing me." His smile didn't quite reach his eyes when he turned them to meet hers. "I figure it's about time the tables were turned."
Taken aback, Samantha could find no way to respond to what he'd said. Looking away from him, movement outside caught her attention. A small, wet and bedraggled woman was making her way across the street towards the restaurant. "I believe our guest has arrived," she said, both glad and disappointed that their conversation had been cut short. All in all, when she thought about it later, she would feel nothing but dissatisfaction over the whole discussion. She knew she had no right to feel anything at all, knew that all that mattered at the moment was her relationship with Martin and its progress, but-
She stifled a sigh and forced herself into honesty.
It wasn't her relationship with Martin that kept her awake nights - thoughts of this man did.
End
Chapter 9