Okay, so as it turns out, this is going to be more parts than I originally expected. So here's chapter 2…I anticipate anywhere from 1 to 3 more.
Do you like it? Please let me know! R & R!
Chloe was left to herself for some time under all the usual threats. Losing her job, prosecuted, charged with treason. If she didn't talk the next time Buchanan came back, he said he was going to have security haul her off to really have her interrogated. There wasn't much they could do though. Not knowing for sure that she was working against the government, they couldn't justify some of the more unpleasant methods of getting her to talk. There weren't any real incentives they could use to persuade her; it's not like she had kids or a husband or anything like that.
Buchanan hadn't brought up her phone again and Chloe took that to mean they couldn't cut through the encryption file she had placed on it and he was somewhat embarrassed about that fact.
Buchanan came back a few minutes later and sat down again. "Well?"
"Well what?" she demanded.
He sighed. "This is your last chance. Talk to me and your punishment will remain at a minimum." Chloe just stared at him, nonplussed. "Very well. I didn't want to have to do this."
"Do what?" Chloe asked, trying to sound nonchalant and failing miserably. Buchanan said nothing but began to reach for the phone receiver. Before he could get it, however, it beeped.
"Mr. Buchanan?" a voice said.
"Yes?" he sounded irritable.
"There's…someone here to see you and Ms. O'Brien."
Buchanan snatched the phone out of the cradle. "Well who is it?" he demanded. Chloe was flummoxed. She saw his face register disbelief and confusion before settling on just being plain stunned. Chloe's heart skipped a beat. Who could it possibly be except…no…he wouldn't come out of hiding for her, he knew she could take care of herself.
"Escort him back," Buchanan said in a choked voice. He turned a calculating eye on Chloe who just looked bewildered. There was a knock on the door. "Enter!" called Buchanan, standing up.
And the last person Chloe would ever have expected to see came in to the room, shutting the door behind him. She scrambled out of her chair as the former president of the United States reached over to shake her hand. Besides Jack himself, Palmer was the last person she had expected to walk through that door.
"It's good to see you again, Chloe," Palmer said warmly, staring intently in to her eyes, a message Chloe took to be 'shut up and don't mention the fact that we've never met before.'
"What can we do for you, Mr. President?" Buchanan asked.
"You can let Ms. O'Brien here out of this interrogation room. I'm sure she'll gladly resign if you wish her to, but I can assure you, she was not doing anything of harmful intent."
"How did you know…?" Buchanan started to ask.
"She was helping me with something," Palmer explained smoothly. "I apologize for intruding on CTU, but I met Chloe here a couple years ago and thought she might be able to help me with something that came up today. She assured me it wouldn't be a problem. I'm sure you understand, however, I can not go in to much detail. It was a highly sensitive matter."
Buchanan looked as if he had swallowed a lemon. "Of course. I suppose Chloe is free to go then." He gave a half-hearted shrug. "If there's anything else CTU can do for you, sir, just name it and…"
"There is, actually," Palmer declared. "I have a woman and her son that will be arriving in approximately one hour. If you could provide them with protection, just for a couple days max, I would be forever in your debt."
"Of course, it's not a problem," Buchanan acquiesced.
Chloe began to sidle towards the door. "I'll go type up my resignation," she offered to Buchanan.
He sized her up for a moment before waving his hand in dismissal at the idea. "Just try not to do it again," he sighed.
"Bill," Palmer interjected, "if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to have a word with Chloe alone. It's a private conversation, I'd prefer that the video and audio surveillance were turned off. Just for a few minutes."
Buchanan shook the former president's hand and exited the room. Chloe watched the camera until the miniscule red light went off, signaling the surveillance had been switched off.
"Is he okay?" she immediately asked.
"Perfectly well," Palmer told her. He seems to have prepared every possible contingency plan in case he had to escape from his new home. He called and said you were in some trouble down here. I just happened to be in town, thought I'd pay Bill Buchanan a little visit."
"I can't thank you enough for doing so, sir," Chloe sighed, "he was getting ready to haul me off and really interrogate me."
Palmer smiled at her. "Good, then you owe me. I can't take my driver- secret service still won't let me drive my own car- so you can take me to the rendez-vous point to meet up with him and the other two so we can bring them back here. I couldn't risk him being seen by someone who didn't already know about him."
Palmer and Chloe were being very careful. Just in case there was someone listening, no names could be mentioned.
"I can do that," Chloe consented.
SCENE
"Hello?"
"Michelle?" At the sound of the voice, Michelle put down the newspaper she had been perusing.
"Bill?"
Tony Almeida looked up in surprise from the papers he had been going over.
"Is Tony there with you Michelle?" Buchanan asked.
"Yeah," Michelle replied. "Want me to put it on speaker?"
"Please."
"Okay, we're both here. What do you need, what's going on?"
Bill was silent for a few moments. "Strange things have been going on at CTU today and there's some common ground, but I just can't seem to put my finger on what that is." Another few moments of silence. "Were either of you aware of a preexisting relationship between Chloe O'Brien and David Palmer?"
Michelle and Tony exchanged alarmed looks.
"Maybe indirectly," Tony said cautiously, "they probably had some form of communication at least once while Jack was helping Palmer a couple years ago. Why do you ask?"
"One of our newer tech people, Spencer, he came to me this morning and said Chloe had been behaving strangely- stranger than usual- and had taken several cell phone calls in a very short period of time. He dug in to her terminal and found she had been transmitting satellite images and building plans to an external source. She refused to say anything and I was just about to have her taken away for serious questioning when David Palmer himself showed up at CTU."
"Palmer went there?"
"Sure did. Insisted Chloe had been helping him with something but he couldn't talk. Then he said a woman and her son would be arriving at CTU within the hour and would need protection. The two just left together to go pick them up. Something isn't adding up."
"And neither said protection from what?" Tony asked.
"No. Palmer just asked to talk to Chloe alone and without video or audio surveillance of the room. They talked a few minutes and then left to go get these two people." Buchanan paused, thinking. "I think Palmer might be helping her cover up for something or someone. But I have no idea who."
Tony and Michelle looked at each other. Both had their suspicions about what was going on. Michelle spoke up. "Look, Bill, why don't we come in and talk to Chloe when she gets back. We know her better, maybe she'll talk to us. It won't take us long to get there."
"I would appreciate that."
"See you in about twenty minutes."
SCENE
"They should be here soon," Jack told Diane and Derek. It killed him to see them so scared, especially since it was him they were afraid of, but it was for their own good that they knew as little as possible.
"Who are they? Why won't you tell us anything, Frank?"
"You never know when the plan will change, when something will go wrong. Until you are with them, I'd prefer you did not know names."
Jack had arranged to meet Palmer and Chloe behind an empty warehouse about ten blocks away from CTU. It would be away from prying eyes and they could make the exchange and then Jack could return to the oil fields and find out who was looking for him and hopefully, by making an obvious 'escape' to somewhere a couple hundred miles away, draw their attention away from Los Angeles and, with any amount of luck, from Diane and Derek.
A van turned the corner of the building and slowly headed towards Jack's vehicle. He had his gun out in the event of an ambush. The van flashed its headlights twice quickly and twice slowly and Jack relaxed. That was the signal.
"They're here," he said. "Let's go."
The three clambered out of the car and he led them hastily to the waiting vehicle. Chloe jumped down from the driver's seat and ran to meet Jack, hugging him fiercely.
"I was so worried," she breathed. "What are you going to do now?"
"Don't worry about me," he assured her. "He's waiting in the back?" Chloe nodded.
"Diane, Derek, this is Chloe O'Brien, a good friend of mine. She'll be taking you back to the CTU building, not far from here," Jack made the appropriate introductions. He then led them to the back of the van and opened the door. He smiled, reached in, and shook Palmer's hand.
"It's great to see you alive and well again, Jack," Palmer told him.
"Sir, this is Diane Huxley and her son Derek. Diane, Derek…President Palmer. Another friend of mine who was generous enough to help us out this morning." Diane was slack jawed as she shook the former president's hand.
"I…wha- Frank? Who are you?" she asked in bewilderment.
Jack turned to her and hugged her. "Someone that isn't supposed to still be alive," he said. "I have to leave now. These people will take good care of you. I'll be back in touch when it's safe for you to return to your home."
Jack turned to leave and Chloe began to get back in the driver's seat when a rumble filled the air for a few seconds and was quickly replaced by sirens.
"That was an explosion," Chloe said in a trembling voice. Smoke could be seen rising above the buildings of downtown LA. The fire wasn't far. "It might have come from CTU. It's in that direction."
Jack stood unsure, torn between going back into hiding and finding who was watching him or checking up on CTU and inconspicuousness be damned. He teetered on the edge for a moment before making a decision.
"Chloe, got any blankets or anything I can use to cover up with in the back of the van?"
SCENE
"Mr. Buchanan, I think you need to have a look at this."
"Did you find anything, Curtis?"
Curtis studied the papers in his hands. "It doesn't make a lot of sense. We traced any calls between Chloe and David Palmer and we found something, but it's not a call directly between their numbers."
Buchanan frowned. "What do you mean?"
"A series of short calls- all well encrypted- were made to Palmer eighteen months ago on which Chloe was logged in externally."
"Who was making the calls?"
"There were two different numbers. We traced them both back to cell phones belonging to Michelle Dessler and Tony Almeida. It isn't completely out of the realm of possibility that either of them would have been calling him that day. It was the same day the Secretary of Defense was kidnapped and the President's plane shot down."
"And the day Jack Bauer was killed," Buchanan put in.
"Exactly. And the timing of the calls is what doesn't make sense. They all occurred after the missile was stopped and Marwan was dead. All but one occurred in the time span between Jack Bauer returning to CTU and the secret service agent coming to take him in to custody."
Buchanan considered that piece of information. "You think they might have known something about Jack's death? Maybe tried to prevent it?"
Curtis shrugged. "Difficult to say. But there's something the four of them have in common relating to that day and that's probably the key to what is happening today."
"Michelle and Tony are on their way here now," Buchanan told him. "I'm such an idiot. I called them to ask if they knew about any contact Chloe had ever had with Palmer in the past, they probably knew exactly what I was talking about. Michelle immediately offered to come up and talk with Chloe, see what they could get out of her. She probably just wants to make sure their stories are all corroborated." He checked his watch. "They should arrive any minute. Let's go meet them and see what they really know."
SCENE
"You need to be careful not to leave any traces of your work," Spencer told the tech guy. He had been called and told to let him through security.
Silence.
"Seriously. If someone realizes what you did, they'll look back and see how you got in and we'll both be in trouble. My position here is important."
"I think I got it," the guy told Spencer in annoyance. "I've been doing this since before you were born, kid."
Spencer ignored the jab. "I've got to get back to work before someone notices I'm gone," he said. "Just try not to be seen." He turned and left the room. The other man watched him go and then pulled out his bag and set to work.
SCENE
Tony and Michelle rolled in to the parking lot. Buchanan and Curtis were standing there at the building entrance, waiting for them. Michelle climbed out first and went to meet Bill. He kissed her on the cheek, turned, and shook hands with Tony.
Buchanan spoke first. "Chloe and Palmer should be back in a few minutes. There was something I wanted to discuss with you first, however. Curtis pulled these records from-…"
Curtis cut him off. He gestured to where a man was climbing out of the back of a sleek black car. "Do you recognize him?" he asked Buchanan. Buchanan shook his head.
"He's probably just a tech person. Maybe someone called in a vehicle problem."
"No, that's the car Palmer came in. He's not even here right now, he went with Chloe. And that's not Palmer's secret service driver." Buchanan seemed unsure. The man began walking faster and Curtis began to follow.
"Hey! Wait up a minute!" he called after him. There was no response. The man began to run and turned a corner.
And the world exploded.
Well there it is…a little suspenseful for ya…I'm going to be at work for the next 3 days straight (haha.) so maybe the next one Sunday night or Monday sometime…we shall see.
Please review…cuz you love me like that.
Cheers!
Lexi
