Thanks go to all those who left great reviews for me...including the people who pointed out to me that type 1 diabetes would keep a person out of the Academy. Let's say that Lainy did not yethave it while attending the Academy, just in the interests of dramatic fiction! Could a person still serve at JAG Headquarters with a condition such as she has? Well, Bud managed to pass his fit-reps, after he lost his leg, so I'm going to say she can and carry on with the story anyway! Feedback, whether positive or negative is always welcome!
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Part 5
After they had secured for the day, Harm and Mac stayed out in DC, returning to their respective homes only to change. They spent the evening talking and walking around the Washington Memorial, then the Iwo Jima Memorial. They were just heading back to where they had parked their cars, by the mall, when they caught sight of a familiar figure standing by the wall.
Andy James was standing alone, engaged in conversation with somebody who obviously had their name recorded there as either missing or killed in action. Although they didn't want to intrude on him at this very personal moment in time, Harm thought they should stick around until he was done, so that they could check that he was okay.
"Men can be insensitive as times," he explained to Mac, "but it doesn't mean that they're incapable of experiencing emotions at times of great stress. I think that this will be weighing more heavily on him than he's letting on."
Mac had to agree, the two officers may have had their disagreements, but they very obviously cared about one another and the unresolved issues between them would only serve to make this a more bitter pill for Andy to swallow.
OOOO
"What am I gonna do, Pops?" Andy asked, quietly, standing by the black marble memorial, staring at the name engraved there, "What do I do if she doesn't come home? She's out there alone and she could be sick. She doesn't have her medicine with her. How do I go on without her? I don't want another partner, another best friend, another…another something-much-more…I've never let on about how I feel more for her than just friendship and now, just after I make a royal ass out of myself and upset her like I did, she's been taken from me. What if I don't get to apologize? Get to make it up to her for the stupid things I've done and said? It can't end like this, can it? Would God be so cruel?"
But Andy knew that this question was irrelevant. His Father had often told him that bad things happened in the world, things that were orchestrated by man, not God and unfortunately, not even prayer was enough to prevent many of those things from taking place. Andy felt like he could pray all he wanted, but at the end of the day, he'd still have to live with whatever life had decided to dish out to him. He only hoped that Elaine would return home safely. It didn't matter about anything else; the court case; their adversarial positions. That would likely always be a reality. If he could have her as a friend and colleague at work and a cherished friend outside work, then it was something he'd never ever be dissatisfied with, ever again. Just as long as she came home okay.
Perhaps he'd feel a bit better if he was able to do something, play some small part in the search for her, but he had been barred from the investigation from the beginning. The General had said that he had no objectivity when it came to Elaine, because she was his partner and a close friend. He was partly right; in his life, she was the close friend, the one who, it soon becomes clear, will always be a permanent fixture in your life, come hell or high water. After all of the shit he'd dished out, she'd never backed down, never let it deter her from clinging onto their friendship. In an instant, it became clear to him just why she had been so relentless, so unwavering in their friendship…Like him, she was willing to take him any way she could get him. Even if they never had anything more, despite how much the thought 'if only' plagued her, she was willing to stick at 'friendship' level, because anything lower would literally destroy her.
And Andy now saw this because it was just the same for him. She was an essential to him, as much as air, food and water. Without her, life didn't look all that much like a life at all. The prospect more closely resembled hell.
Andrew was a bit shocked when he was leaving and ran into the Commander and the Colonel. Unlike himself, they were both out of uniform, but were strangely as well-matched as they were in the office, like a pair of old, antique bookends. Such a thought would normally be amusing, but the thought of how he'd usually share such an observation with Lainey only squeezed his heart even harder.
"You okay, Lieutenant?" Harm asked, compassionately, "I see you like to visit the wall, too. I often find it a good place to get some perspective and mull through some tough decisions."
"It makes me feel as if I have somebody to talk to, Sir," Andrew admitted, "My Mother and I never had a grave to go to, so we'd come here…I'm sure you understand it, Sir."
Harm and Mac were shocked, they had never known that Lieutenant James had been in the same place as Harm, growing up.
"I didn't know," Harm admitted, "and I apologize for that."
"It's not something I've ever really spread about," Andrew explained, "It's not even on my personnel record. I've kept it quiet, because it is something about my early life that I've managed to move past. It's not that I don't love my Father, Sir, but I know that he wouldn't want me to miss out on life, just because he isn't here."
"Does anyone at work know about your Father, Andy?" Mac asked, softly.
"The General," Andrew replied, "but only because he knew my parents, a long time before…But Lainey is the only person I've ever told. Not even my friends growing up knew. It was hard enough on my Mother, being on her own with a child, but to constantly have reminders, I never wanted to bring that upon her as well."
A few seconds passed, in which Harm and Mac didn't know quite what to say in the face of Andy's surprising candor.
"We'll find Lainey," Mac tried to reassure him, "the General's losing patience with the NCIS investigation and he's going to push for some results. We've still got the recruits to interview, whether NCIS like it or not."
"Time is running out for her, Ma'am," Andy told her, frustrated by the helplessness that he was feeling, "if they don't give us some answers…"
"Don't give up on her yet, Andy," Harm cut him off, "We're going to do all that we possibly can to find her."
"Yes, Sir," Andrew replied, raking an anxious hand through his hair.
"Let's head back to JAG," Harm decided, "I'll make some calls, see if we can't summon up some help."
OOOO
An hour later, everyone was gathered around Bud, sitting at a computer terminal.
"We need to bring up the records for two seaman recruits," Mac instructed the younger officer, who was the best computer wizard at JAG, "We need to find out if they have any notes in their records from superior officers."
"Notes for what, Colonel?" Bud asked.
"Anything they got busted for," Mac told him, "Anything that may have attracted their CO's attention, anything that concerned them."
After finding nothing, Andy gave a frustrated sigh and wandered off to his desk. Harm and Mac went back into her office and tried to come up with a new action plan.
"So it might not be anything linked to her case," Mac reasoned, "but what other lead do we have to go with? I…I just feel so helpless…"
"Mac," Harm put a comforting arm around her shoulder, "don't do this to yourself. You're doing all you can…we all are."
"Goodness only knows how Andrew feels, right now," Mac pondered.
"He probably feels worse than any of us," Harm nodded, "Despite the way he acted, sometimes, I can tell he really cares about her. It's hard to sit by and do nothing when your best friend has dropped off the radar and you don't know if they're okay or not."
This brought Mac to a whole new realization.
"This is how you felt, isn't it?" she asked Harm, "When Webb and I were missing in Paraguay?"
"That wasn't your fault," Harm told her, "you were away on a mission approved by the SECNAV, you were doing your job."
"But it still doesn't diminish the fact that you worried about me," Mac insisted, "and that you came to save me. You saved my life, sacrificing your career to do so and I simply threw it back in your face."
"And I don't regret what I did for a minute," Harm maintained, "because if I hadn't, I would have lost you forever."
In that minute, Mac felt as if he'd reached out and physically touched her, though all they had shared was a look. It was something that had always been patently 'Harm-and-Mac.'
They were both prevented from further comment by the ringing of Mac's cellphone. She picked it up and Harm knew that it was something important by the look of urgency that spread across her face.
"We'll be right there," was the only comment she made, before hanging up.
"That was the brig," she told Harm, who was almost humming with the suspense, "We should get down there. It seems that our seaman recruits want to talk to us."
"Did they give you any clue as to what it was about?" Harm asked, a new hope dawning within him.
"They told a brig officer that they have 'something important' to tell us," Mac reported, adding, with hope, "This might be it, Harm…This could be the lead we're needing."
"We're not out of the game, yet," Harm agreed, summoning the additional reserves he would need to see this through.
"What exactly did the seaman recruits say to the brig officer, Ma'am?" Lieutenant James asked, eagerly, as they made their way to the brig.
"Just that they had to speak to their attorney," Mac told him.
She and Harm had decided early on not to tell Andy too much, in case they gave him false hope.
"It could be about Lainey though, couldn't it Ma'am?" Andrew asked, his hope buoyed.
"Maybe," Mac answered, non-commitantly, "But maybe not, Lieutenant. And as opposing counsel, I'm afraid that we won't be able to let you come in with us, when we interview them…"
James went to protest, but Mac assured him, "but that is why we agreed to let you come along to the brig with us. If we find out anything useful in helping us find Lainey, you'll be the next to know."
This seemed to settle him, but Harm could see that he was still displeased about not being there himself.
They left him at the reception area, then proceeded to where the seaman recruits had been seated in an interview room, waiting for them.
"Just what is this about, seaman recruits?" Harm asked, as they entered the room and took a seat, "I'm hoping this is something we will find useful in your defense."
"It's about the officer who was defending us, Sir, before you had been brought in on the case," one of the young men told them.
"Proceed," Mac authorized.
"She seemed to be a very nice lady," the man continued, "and we could tell that she was doing her uttermost to cut us a deal…"
Harm and Mac held their breath, but tried not to appear too obvious, at the same time.
"And we hate to think that she may be in danger, just because she tried to help us," the man continued, "The thing is, we wanted to plead guilty to the charges, even though we weren't completely to blame for the missing items and we were only storing the drugs…We had been threatened by one of the partners in this syndicate that was running."
"Is this partner someone inside the military, or outside?" Mac asked.
"Inside, Ma'am," the other man (who had more knowledge about this partner) now spoke up, "The day we spoke to Lieutenant Hodge, he was also around, demanding that we take the fall for everything. He told us that if he were implicated in this, hard labor in Leavenworth would seem like a luxury cruise compared to what he'd dish out to us. But now someone else is at risk. Lieutenant Hodge was trying to convince us to turn him in and help our own chances and he didn't like it. We think he may have been responsible for her disappearance."
"Who exactly is 'he'?" Harm asked and the two young men hesitated before they gave a name.
Harm and Mac were shocked by the information they got, but knew they had more pressing issues to pursue.
"Thank you both," Mac thanked them as she and Harm left, "I'm sure the courts will look favorably upon your plight, now that they know the truth. We'll have protection arranged for you as soon as possible."
"And we hope that Lieutenant Hodge is unharmed, Ma'am."
Harm and Mac could only echo that thought themselves.
"We need to get an address, Bud," Harm requested, as Mac drove and filled Andy in on what they'd learned.
Harm gave the name and then requested that Bud arrange for back-up and an ambulance to meet them at the address Bud found. He gave Mac the address and she turned the car in the right direction and stepped on the gas.
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