When I get messed up at the party

I make a scene and get upset

But when I wake up in the morning

You bring me breakfast in bed

And act like there's nothing to forget

React, Pussycat Dolls

Z

The bass was deafening. It was thrumming in my chest like a second heartbeat. I let the current of the beat carry me through the waving, undulating crowd. Hands pulled and tugged at my body like the current in the ocean as I danced my way through the throng of too hot bodies, making my way to the bar.

The bartender perked up on my arrival. He dropped the wad of cash he was counting into his tip charge and wiped his hands off on a dirty, limp bar rag. My heart was hammering in my chest, faster than the beat of the song, and I was wondering if he could see it beating out of my chest. He was staring like he could.

"What'll you have?" He asked after a beat of silence.

I shrugged noncommittally.

"Why don't you tell me?" I counted to three as I looked him up and down before I continued. "I'm tired of my usuals. I think it might be time to try something new."

White male, early thirties, medium skin tone, black hair and beard. Height approximately five feet eleven inches. Weighing in at about two hundred and thirty pounds. No sign of a weapon in his waistband, but I was willing to bet there was one under the counter.

"You're a vodka girl, aren't you?" He leaned his weight on the counter, shooting a quick glance at my face before settling back on my neckline.

"Tequila is another favorite of mine." I tried to sound bored. He nodded slowly. Another man came up to order, but he ignored him.

"I'll fix you something special." I smiled at him without showing my teeth.

"Remember to check your periphery." Stasiak screeched in my ear. I jumped at the voice but managed to play it off as a hair swish.

I was really wishing Brian's medical leave would be over so I didn't have to deal with Stasiak. Or maybe I wasn't. Without Brian around, I had been shoved straight into undercover work.

The skeezy club was filled with skeezy patrons. Not one of them stood out to me. I couldn't shake the feeling that I was being watched closely, and I was trying to figure out if that was because of the FBI guys on surveillance, or if it was because there was someone at the club. I could feel someone's presence behind me and I didn't think they were FBI.

I was broken from my thoughts by the bartender returning with my drink. He had gone to the other side of the bar and made it with his back to me which was a huge red flag. He dropped a beer on the counter for the man that had come up to my left, and then focused all of his attention on me, personally handing me the cocktail.

"So what did you choose?" I asked as I pulled a ten out of my top, playing up the motion to keep him interested.

"A little of everything." He answered with a chuckle that was meant to be flirty but made me cringe. "Are you here by yourself? What's your name?"

Red flag number two. Or forty. I had given up trying to count the number of red flags this place was waving.

"Yeah. I just moved here. I'm trying to meet some people. My name's Sara." I offered him up an actual smile.

He seemed super interested, shifting his weight and smiling at me as he handed me my change. I dropped a few dollars in his grimy tip jar.

"What brought you to LA?" He was over-enthusiastic now and I felt the prickle run back down my exposed spine.

"I'm going to be an actress." I smiled broadly. He looked me up and down and I could feel the thoughts running through his head.

We were hunting an offshoot of the same sex trafficking ring Brian took down in Vegas. Those working for it had a very straight forward MO: identify vulnerable young women in a dive bar, get drunk and/or drugged, drag girls to a secondary location, get started on heavy drugs, make it hard for the women to leave, and eventually manipulate the women into working.

The difference was Brian was undercover as a John. I was not undercover as a John and I was about to freak out. Brian was still at home with cracked ribs and had no idea I was out here with Stasiak. I could only imagine the freak out he would have over me being pushed out into the field so early.

For the first time in my life, I felt really truly unprepared for where I had found myself and I was having trouble staying calm. It didn't help that they had shoved me in some booty shorts and the tiniest, crop top halter thing that didn't cover my upper half at all. I was falling out and extremely self-conscious, especially knowing that every man I worked for was watching the cameras for this right now and would be for the next few weeks if our investigation tonight gave us a lead.

I faked a sip of my drink, smiling at the bartender as I thanked him for the drink and told him I enjoyed it. As we made meaningless small talk, I felt the presence at my back push even closer and I knew we were going to walk away with at least some information.

"They're playing my song. I'll be back to see you later." I finally found a way out of the conversation. I pushed off the bar and moved for the dancing crowd, swaying my hips as I walked. I squeezed myself onto the dance floor between a few groups of people, dancing on anyone that got close to me, disappearing in the mass of bodies.

I felt three taps on my hip and the drink disappeared from my hand, replaced with a mostly empty Malibu and pineapple juice that thankfully was the same color as the concoction the bartender fixed up for me. I made a big show of taking big sips through my straw.

"There was a guy watching me at my 5 o'clock. I couldn't get a look but I know he was listening in."

"I've got a group of guys, but I think I see who you're talking about." Stasiak's voice was cut with static over my earbud. "Harvey do you have him?"

I felt the agent dancing behind me shift as he looked around for the group of men.

"Negative." He whispered.

There was a beat of silence as Stasiak went through the cameras.

"Back off and see if he makes the approach." And just as quickly as he made contact, Harvey left me on the dancefloor by myself, moving back into the crowd.

I immediately had another male dance partner, but Stasiak confirmed it wasn't anyone from our group of guys. We danced for another few songs before I realized my drink was empty. It finally occurred to me I was not acting drunk enough to be worth the mark's time.

With the new realization, I amped up the giggling and drunken dancing. It wasn't long before another man was pulling me away from my dance partner. I wasted no time wrapping my arms around his neck and shoving my tongue down his throat.

"Tone it down! That's him. Harvey move in." I heard Stasiak chirp quickly before the line went back to silent waiting.

"What's your name?" I giggled into our mark's ear.

The wave of disgust I felt when his hands circled around my back was crippling. I instantly went stiff when he pulled me into his body. I was afraid I made a mistake when he took a step back.

"David." He answered. He let his hands settle onto my hips. I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding; I'd backed him off with my body language, but I hadn't scared him off yet.

"I'm Sara," I told him as I made myself stumble in my sky-high heels. He laughed, helping me stand up straight.

I forced myself to look up so I could memorize his face. He was just barely on the attractive side of average. He was Hispanic, five foot nine, with an average, muscular build. He had buzzed black hair and brown eyes. There was enough of a sharp jawline and defined cheekbones to call him attractive but at the same time, he could blend into a crowd.

"Do you want a drink, Sara?" He motioned to the bar.

"What?" I chirped back, feeling my face blush as I started to panic.

"Can I buy you a drink?" He yelled louder, pulling me to the bar by the hand.

I forced a laugh and stumbled again.

"I want to dance! I've already had way too much. I'm already so dizzy." I grabbed at his shoulders, forcing him closer to me.

"I know a place where you can rest." He responded, pulling me the opposite direction of the bar.

My heart jumped into my throat as he dragged me away from the bar, through the dancefloor, and towards a VIP room. Stasiak was barking orders to Harvey in my ear to keep up with him and constantly reassuring me that they had me on camera and could raid the place at any second. I started to tell him that I was okay, but I was about to have an anxiety attack.

If he looked for the wire, I was dead. If he separated me from the FBI in a private room, I was dead.

Instead, he didn't do that. He dragged me to a VIP couch, flirting with me the whole entire way. We still had a view of the dancefloor, which meant Harvey and Stasiak could still see me, but we had a much more quiet area to talk.

I slurred out all of my acting plans to him, sloppily flirting the whole time, trying to drag information about himself out of him. A drink appeared in my hand and I pretended to sip at it and pretended to get drunker by the second. I was also getting more scared by the second, but I kept that under wraps.

He let me tell him about my ideas for a screenplay and my imaginary sister for a long time until he finally grabbed me by the hand and pulled me to my feet, grabbing my license out of bra as he did. He made if a flirty motion, but I just felt nauseous; it had obviously been poking out, but still. He pulled me to the front of the club, towards the taxis. I just knew we were going to the secondary location, but instead, he kissed me deeply and pushed me into the taxi by myself.

"Are we going to party more?" I asked him before he could shut the door with me in the backseat of the taxi. He laughed.

"Shit, next Saturday night there's a party here. I'm looking for some girls to help out around here. I need some VIP waitresses. We can party afterwards as hard as you want to and make you so money while you do it. Am I going to see you there?" He smiled brightly and I had a feeling that if I was dead drunk I would have been very interested.

"I wouldn't miss it for the world, David," I told him with the last bit of flirtiness I had. He passed me a flyer from his back pocket and gave me one more kiss on the corner of my mouth.

"Good. He'll get you home." He motioned to the taxi driver as he shut the door.

I breathed a deep sigh of relief as I slumped against the door. Stasiak was barking orders in my ear to all of the other agents watching the camera's in the van. He soon faded out as the wire lost range as the taxi headed to my fake home address.

I was shaking. This time, it wasn't the excitement of the chase. I was really and truly terrified when that guy had his arms around me in the club.

Z

I watched Penning throw the file on his desk with an impressive amount of strength. Papers flew out and fluttered across the room.

"He's made her out to be a cop. This just got too dangerous to send someone else in!" He bellowed.

"I don't know. She was pretty damn convincing." Stasiak murmured under his breath. Penning whipped around and fixed him in a glare.

"This seems like grooming behavior. See what they can get away with and set them up with a job. I watched the men with him do this with two other girls. He put each one of them in a taxi home. Gives a false sense of security that they left safely." Harvey added.

"He took my license, so maybe that's his way of screening for cops? Or his way of drawing women back to him if they think they lost their ID." I pointed out. The flyer had the club number and the details of the waitressing job on it. If they walked back in for their ID he could repitch his employment opportunity when they were sober.

I had changed out of my hooker suit the second I got back to the FBI office and was now wearing grey dress pants, a baggy button-up shirt, and a pair of flats. There was an FBI SUV that followed the taxi to the address on my fake license, so as soon as the taxi driver helped my nearly 'passed out' self to the door and drove off, a group of agents was picking me up.

We ran through every bit of intel on David and his group of guys we had found on our sting. We went through most of the footage, which made me cringe. We also got the chemical analysis back on my drink, revealing that it was spiked, which made me cringe even more.

"You'd better be right. I've got the top brass breathing down my neck to root out this little nest of rats and if he moves his operation to another club, I'm not sure we'll find him again." Penning stared thoughtfully at the pictures scrolling across the monitor of possible criminals in the club.

We sat in silence as Harvey collected the stray papers that had been flung out of the folder. Penning looked like he was fuming more and more with every page that went back into place. He finally turned to fix me in a steely gaze.

"Beck, my office." He wheeled around on his heel and stalked off towards his open door.

I followed him, much less confidently than I had in the past. He waited for me to get across the threshold before he slammed the door, closing us in.

"How are you?" He asked awkwardly as he looked at me, searching my face for something.

I shrugged.

"I'm tired, but it's four in the morning."

The truth was, I felt gross. I had been practically naked in front of half my coworkers and groped and grabbed by every creeper in that stupid club. I really wanted to go home and shower.

"Beck, undercover work is not for the faint of heart." I opened my mouth to interrupt him, but he waved me off. "You're going to be asked to do things that violate every moral code you have and no part of that is easy. I want to make sure you understand that."
"I do." I cut in indignantly the second he finished his sentence.

"Wearing revealing clothes is just the beginning." He paused as he looked at me. "You were way too good at this. You're going to be picked up as a deep-cover agent when this is over for sure and we need to start getting you ready now."

"Are you talking about me being afraid to put myself in bad situations or about me not turning someone in like O'Conner?"

He knew. He knew how much being half-dressed in that club disgusted me. He also knew Brian was growing on me probably a little too much.

"We always start preparing our deep-cover agents early, so they don't end up like O'Conner, but I don't know why I'm talking to you about this. You'd betray your own mother if the opportunity presented itself."

"Excuse me." I spat. He shrugged.

"You're a loose cannon in uncomfortable situations. You did okay tonight, but what about next Saturday if we put you back in? I think you're too green for this." He flipped open the file with David's picture from the security footage and flipped it around to show me. "We need to know who he is before we put you back out there. I'm afraid you're going to get hurt."

"You didn't think I'd make it through tonight, did you?" I asked him hesitantly. He nodded his affirmation and I felt rage.

"I'm happy you didn't try to shoot him or tackle him in the club, which is what I was thinking. You did good, but I think we're pulling you off of this to put another agent in."

Underneath the rage, I felt relief. I wanted to drag this lowlife in kicking and screaming, but stepping back in that club made me want to vomit.

"Debrief with O'Conner. I'll have a new case for you Monday when he's back to work." He dismissed me with a wave of his hand.

Z

Brian's door swung inward before I could knock and I was hit in the face with the smell of fresh pancakes and bacon.

"Who told you?" I sighed tiredly as I stumbled in his apartment still in my work clothes right as the sun was coming up.

He looked more alert than he normally would have at this point in the morning which told me he hadn't slept. He was wearing his basketball shorts and a t-shirt with a heavy five o'clock shadow on his face, so clearly he had not spent his time awake getting ready. He had to have gotten a heads up from somebody.

"Harvey did. He didn't tell me much, just that he was uncomfortable and they pulled you for a more experienced agent. Apparently that was a good thing." Brian pushed the door closed behind me and motioned towards the breakfast food being kept warm on his stove.

"He's uncomfortable?" I snapped shrilly.

I cried after that conversation with Penning. I felt like I was being punished, but at the same time, I was relieved to never have to step foot back in that place. I was so conflicted because that was my first big undercover assignment and I should have been fighting to get back in there, but I wasn't. I didn't want to go back there in skimpy clothes with these creeps. I couldn't see Brian blending in with them at all, and the thought that he at one point did made my stomach roll.

I knew Brian could read me. He knew I wasn't feeling great after this undercover night, so I told him everything. Every tiny detail on panic and discomfort. His jaw got tighter with every word. His bright and sunny face looked like a thundercloud when I was done.

"That was way too much for you to go into as a new agent. Way too much. What if they had lost sight of you? What if they had spotted the earbud? You would have been killed in a heartbeat." He angrily slapped a pancake on a plate and shoved it towards me.

"Brian, I failed at undercover work." I broke in with the part he didn't seem to be getting. He shook his head.

"No. No, you didn't. You got the information. No one got hurt. That was a successful operation."

"Then why do I feel like this? I also got pulled off the case!" I felt the angry tears welling back up, but I tried to shove them down.

"Good! That's too dangerous for your first undercover op. Did you think undercover work was going to be easy? You're nothing but a conman. You wedge your way into these people's lives and then rip it apart." He sounded bitter.

"Is that what you did to Toretto?" I blurted before I could think.

He recoiled like I had slapped him. I saw a brief flash of betrayal in his eyes. Not knowing what else to do I reached out and grabbed his wrist.

"I didn't mean that. I didn't and you know it." I pleaded with him to believe me, but his posture was still rigid, which I'm sure hurt with his bruised ribs and hurt back. "I just- I"

I was floundering. I put up a front on someone that always knew what they were saying and was comfortable in any situation and didn't care what she did to hurt someone else, but that was all gone in an instant. I felt more vulnerable and open to hurt now than I ever had in front of anyone in LA. This was worse than being told I got my job because I was someone who was owed favor's golden girl.

"I know you let him go, and I'm trying to figure out why. I think I'm starting to understand, but I'm not quite there yet. You've always done the right thing or at least thought about what the right thing is, so I know you had good reasons. I'm not trying to insult you, Brian. I'm trying to understand you." The tears started to slide out like they always did when I was upset. I hated being a crier, but right now I was so upset, I couldn't stop.

He tossed a paper towel at me so I could wipe my eyes and awkwardly patted my shoulder. I managed to reign it in a little and he started to relax a little.

"Do you want to know why I let Dom go?" Brian asked after a long minute of awkwardness.

"If you feel like you want to tell me," I answered slowly.

"I don't know." He stated with finality, staring deeply into the kitchen counter. "I really don't. I guess, in that one moment I respected Dom more than I ever did myself."

"What about him did you respect?" My question seemed to pull him out of his deep thoughts.

"Mia used to call him gravity." He said after a long pause. "You just got pulled into Dom. It was hard to walk away. You've read his file, so I'm sure you know all about him."

The last part was bitter and was a stab to the heart.

"I've read a lot of files to get ready to be FBI, but I'm learning they don't tell the whole story. Look at Eddy. That confession never should have happened like that, but you knew."

"Treat them like people." He repeated the line he used every time we interrogated somebody.

The lightbulb went off and I just realized he got me to admit that I had my hands on Toretto's file. He hadn't given it to me and I hadn't told him I had been checking up on his early career. I suddenly felt like I was sitting next to the master and I didn't know anything at all.

I was pretty sure Penning had made this forced partnership so that I would have this epiphany. Even I could admit that it needed to happen; I hadn't been open to being taught until he pushed me in with Brian.

I was starting to change and maybe it was for the better. I was even starting to not care what my coworkers thought of me anymore. At least I was until I had to put on clubbing clothes in front of them.

I snorted and Brian looked at me with a raised eyebrow.

"I just realized how many of our coworkers have seen me half topless. Think I'll ever work my way past that? You know, gain their respect after that?"

"Work past that? I think you just made a bunch of new friends."

I snatched a pancake off the top of the stack and launched it at his face.

"Now that's fucked up!" He yelped with a laugh.

"Is it, buddy?" I asked as my face turned bright. "I'm off until you got back next week so they have until then to forget."

Brian's face lit up in a bright, surfer boy smile.

"Know what that gives us time for?" He was back to his normal golden retriever self.

"You to calm the hell down?"

"Time to pick you out a car!"