Would you believe we are nearly halfway through this story?

Tori: thanks, those were two very different chapters with moods and all, I am trying really hard to keep the balance here.

Speaking of which, time for Gillian and Cal to get some answers. Are you ready for it?

They had never underestimated Reynolds' contribution when he was with the Group, but obviously they had never really fully understood the extent of his support. Not only had he tracked down the names he had been given, but had managed to get them to agree to a meeting without letting transpire anything about what it would be about.

Cal had been honestly impressed, even more when the FBI agent had jumped on board with their plan. He was to go in first, let them settle in with the official topic of the meeting, then get Foster to join them. Cal was to be the trump card, the last move to be played, coming in at the end and scaring them shitless. Knowing how important it was for them to have taped interviews, Reynolds had even agreed to wear a micro camera in his tie clip, with Loker recording everything remotely from the office.

Once it had all been settled, at least on paper, Cal and Gillian left the office for the first time in nearly two days. Loker was staying behind with Miller, to coordinate the ongoing repairs in the office and hold down the fort, while the trio drove to the Pentagon. The ride was silent, charged with tension and anticipation, interrupted only a couple of times by the noise of Cal's painkillers bottle, and only when the unmistakable shape of the building appeared on the horyzon he feel it was the right time to speak.

"So, what BS did you sell them?" He asked absently, looking for Reynolds' eyes in the rear view mirror.

"I told them the FBI is collecting information on a potential presidential appointee. Looking up their resumes and information I found the name of someone they all worked with who is indeed up for a job with the Bureau, so I told them I needed some reference of sorts."

"And they went for it?" Reynolds nodded in response to Gillian's question. "Well done, Ben."

The agent gave her a quick side glance, trying to see if she was being sarcastic, but saw none of that and went on.

"As far as I know they have no clue what this is really about." He said. "I don't think they are aware of my connection with the Group but I guess if one of them really got Warton on your case they would be pretty nervous the moment they see one of you."

"Oh, I'm counting on it," Cal hissed in between his teeth, but Reynolds noticed how Gillian looked away at that very moment.

He had no actual clue as to what was really going on between them, not anymore, but he did continue to catch those small gestures and exchanges trying to make sense of them. Nobody said anything else as they approached, then eventually Ben parked the car and they made it to the entrance. The moment they crossed it, Cal stood right behind Gillian. To a casual observer it might have looked like he was tailing her, hovering obsessively, but she felt that close presence as nothing but comforting. True, it might have been just a building, but the people they were about to meet were, in a way, a big part of her life. Part of her thought it was ridiculous, she hadn't given any thought to them in years, but the recent events had stirred the waters and brought them back to the surface.

At the entry desk they were given visitors passes and directed to a room where Rodriguez, Parker and Greene were waiting for Reynolds. The person at the desk didn't seem to care much about the fact that Reynolds was the one with the appointment and yet he had shown up with two more people, which was all the best for them. They moved through corridors that once used to be familiar to them, in what felt like another lifetime, eventually arriving at the room that had been reserved for them. They could hear voices on the other side of the door, three voices that Gillian could recognise even with the barrier in between, then they huddled up a few feet away.

"Alright," Reynolds huffed and fumbled with his tie, then looked over at Gillian who had her phone in her hands. "Is Loker getting this?"

Gillian typed a message and waited for a moment, then nodded when she got the positive reply from Loker back at the office. Cal also took out his phone, refreshing his emails and opening the one Loker had just sent with the link to the live feed. He wasn't going to be in the room for the first part, but he needed to see how things went down before joining the party.

With the preparations over, Reynolds nodded and left them there, approaching the door and knocking before entering. Cal and Gillian took a seat on the chairs in the hallway and gathered around the small screen of his phone, watching and listening as Reynolds kicked off the conversation with three people who, by the look of it, had no idea what was about to hit them. They watched and listened in silence as Reynolds played his part, starting off with seemingly innocent and generic questions about the made up potential appointee, the natural and relaxed answers coming from the three helping them to establish a baseline they could use for future reference.

Then, when Reynolds mentioned something about another person needing to ask some questions about the candidate, Gillian stood up and took a step toward the door of the room. Before she could take a second one, Cal's hand let go of the phone and seized her wrist, holding it gently until she looked down at him and returned his encouraging nod before going in. Once she was gone, Cal held the phone with both hands and brought it closer to his face, thankful for the deserted and silent hallway and still wishing he had some earplugs on hand.

The expression of surprise on their faces when she entered the room was something to behold.

Whatever story Reynolds had told them it must have been extremely convincing, because none of them had any idea what her sudden presence meant. Cal saw it on the small screen, blessing the agent for how skilfully he had positioned himself to catch all the three people on the other side of the table. He wished he could have seen Gillian too, keep an eye on her, but all he had to rely on was her voice. Watching, he figured she let the surprise of her arrival sink in before taking a seat on the opposite side of the table, chewing at his bottom lip and waiting for her to speak to be able to gauge the tone of her voice. She was definitely the expert when it came to voices, but he knew all about hers. When she finally spoke, greeting the three as politely as she could given the circumstances, Cal was glad to hear her voice steady but wondered just how long she could keep it going.

The first one to ask what she was doing there was Carola Rodriguez; she had been the operation head with the Ward investigation, and since then had moved up the ranks. Peter Greene was next to her, which wasn't surprising to Cal; back then he had been Rodriguez's trusted right hand man, and according to the information Reynolds had found things hadn't changed much with regards to that. Further out, close to them but not too close, Ross Parker watched Gillian sitting down with a level of utter confusion on his face that spoke volume.

"One down," Cal muttered to himself with a smirk.

Parker's surprise in seeing her was genuine, so was it for the other two, but while the other two quickly switched to worried expressions, confusion held still on his face. Cal knew immediately what it meant, and it was clear Gillian did too because after a few minutes she looked over at Reynolds and the agent informed Parker that he was free to go. For a moment, Cal stopped watching the video and looked up at the door, just in time to see Parker coming out the room. There it was again, the genuine surprise on the man's face as he saw Cal Lightman sitting there, followed by a run of fear and then just more and more confusion. Cal stared at him with an intense gaze, digging until he was sure that not only the man didn't know anything about Warton but also hadn't been involved with the Ward debacle. Then, with a small nod and a shrug, Cal silently dismissed him and went back to watching.

Gillian had gone ahead with Rodriguez and Greene, without missing a bit, unveiling the obvious truth that that meeting wasn't about some employee's reference. Cal couldn't see her but he could see the two people in front of her staring at a very precise spot, and he imagined Gillian was probably showing off the small cut and bruise on her neck.

Everybody has a rock, Cal thought, biting at his bottom lip. He was once again astonished by Gillian's resilience, but he wished she didn't have to test herself to that extent.

Then she went ahead and explained she was there because something about Ward had come up, and Rodriguez and Greene looked like they were about to shit their pants. She was keeping it casual, as for the plan they had discussed, and even if he couldn't see it he knew that she was now pretending to read some notes, filing questions about the operation back then.

Of course they fired back, enquiring as to what that had to do with anything and why bringing that up after so many years. Gillian ignored their protests and carried on, wondering if they could clarify exactly through what channels the official explanation of what had happened had been discussed. There must have been, she explained, two parts to the process: the people who had decided what version of the truth to tell and the people they told it to. It was an easy win for them, or so they thought: Cal could see them relax, comforted by the fact they had been asked something they could talk about without feeling trapped. Cal chuckled, watching them jump in and happily explain how it had gone down, who had known what and when. They knew all of that already, they had been part of the conversation at the beginning, but they needed to get it out of them and lay the trap.

"We made the decision to keep it under wraps, it seemed the most sensible thing to do."

And wait for them to fall into it.

When Rodriguez declared that with a little proud smirk, Cal immediately knew they had her. And Greene too, as he looked down and away in a sign of clear shame due to a deeper knowledge of what she was talking about. He heard Gillian hum, probably nodding to herself, then she asked how it was possible then, in their opinion, that the true version of events could have gotten to Ward's brother. She was as casual as she could have been, asking that as if they were discussing what to have for dinner, and once again her seemingly innocent query swiped them off their feet.

It was also the cue for him to join the party, so he switched off the phone, swallowed a pill and walked inside the room as briskly as he could. In all honesty, once inside he intentionally exaggerated his limp and moved slower than necessary, putting up one hell of a show. As Gillian had guessed, the moment they saw him there was only one very clear and overwhelming emotion on their faces. If they had been surprised to see Foster and a bit worried, when he sat at the table in front of them they were downright terrified.

"Nice to see you, Dr Ligthman."

Rodriguez's attempt to mask her true feelings sounded terrible, and even Reynolds couldn't hold back an audible scoff. Gillian glanced at him, a little surprised, then rolled her eyes at Cal who was chuckling freely at the agent's reaction.

"Likewise," Cal muttered in response, then slouched on the chair and stared her down. "So, let's talk about Ward's long lost brother."

"I don't think I follow."

"See now, that's insulting!" Cal burst, waving his hands at her. "I mean, you could at least try to lie a bit better."

"Dr Lightman, I am not sure what you and Dr Foster are after here but I can assure you we have no idea what you are talking about."

There was a silent moment between Cal and Gillian, who looked at each other with a knowing expression, because Greene's statement was rather revealing. It seemed that, even though he knew something about Ward, he was rather clueless about the whole Warton affair. Interesting, Gillian thought, also pondering how they could use that to their advantage. Not only Greene looked like he wasn't in on the whole story, but when he spoke he also sounded like the idea there was something else to it outraged him.

"You don't, by the look of it," she said then, pointing over at Rodriguez who immediately stiffened in her seat. "But she sure does."

"Agent Reynolds," the woman sighed, visibly annoyed. "What is this? I lead a whole department here at the Pentagon, I don't have time for games-"

"Deflection, distancing body language, contempt," Cal listed, then looked over at Gillian. "Am I missing anything, love?"

"You know Cal, maybe she'd like to talk about something else." She patted his hand gently, then looked over at Rodriguez. "For example, were you monitoring the Ward operation then?"

"Of course I was, I was your supervisor. And your superior," Rodriguez added with a not so subtle hint of pride.

"And as our superior, you felt that monitoring meant spying on us, withholding information and trying to derail the operation?"

There was no sarcasm in Cal's voice, no provocation: just a pure and simple question to which he already knew the answer. The visual confirmation was as clear as superfluous; Rodriguez clenched her jaw and Greene tensed, revealing they both knew what he was talking about.

"Let me get this straight, Lightman," Rodriguez went on the attack, the only possible strategy considering she had no grounds for defence. "You've come here, nearly 10 years later, to blame us for your botched operation with Ward?"

"No, we are here because Ward's evil twin, literally, has been coming after us for the past two days." He leaned forward, making sure they had nowhere else to look but at him. "And we want to know who put him up to it."

"Ward had a twin?" Greene asked, surprised, and interestingly enough he directed the question to the woman to his left rather than to the people in front of him.

"Leopold Warton, yeah. Nice bloke," Cal muttered. "Juvenile records, convicted felon, violent psychopath. Makes his brother look like a choir boy."

"We can get to that later," Gillian stepped in then, surprising even Cal with her change of direction. "After all in order to understand why she would get Warton to come after us we need to find out what she did wrong with Ward first."

Cal looked at Gillian at his side, her chin up, her chest pushed forward, her hands steady on the table and her eyes fixed on Rodriguez. Everything about her, including her solid voice, screamed confidence and determination, yet he knew there was so much more going on inside her. But she was determined to use that as a weapon against them, and he was going to do what he could to help her strike.

"You knew he had Merton, didn't you?" Cal asked, as directly as he could.

There was no more time to play games and beat around the bush, they had a nutcase on their tail and frankly he was tired of people trying to lie to him when it was absolutely useless.

"And you knew about the warehouse," Gillian pressed on, gulping down a big lump in her throat to push away. "You knew that was where Ward was hiding."

"We had the information you provided in the file," Greene tried, horribly, to respond with a half truth. "You were our contacts for the operation, Merton was supposed to provide external support and not get directly involved."

"Sounds like a non answer to me," Reynolds muttered with a scoff.

"'Cause it's not," Cal hissed, his eyes now glued to Rodriguez as he leaned back on the chair and put his hands on his lap. "And because whatever it was that she did he went along but never agreed with it, the spineless bastard."

"Dr Lightman, you might want to remember that you don't work here anymore and nobody has to tolerate this kind of behaviour anymore."

"Is that why you set him up to fail with Ward?" Gillian asked. "Because you didn't tolerate his behaviour?"

"He was in charge, it was his strategy and his plan." Rodriguez sounded pissed, but still way too much on the defensive. "Ward was a tough one, I'll give you that, but we are not the reason why he failed."

"You do know the more you say we, the more he's trying to get away from you?" Cal pointed out then with a smirk, eyeing Greene at her side. "Just staying."

Gillian picked up the hint from Cal, identifying Greene as potentially the best target for the time being.

"Did you know Ward had kidnapped Merton?" She asked him, seeing the positive response in his face without any words needed. "Did you know what he was doing to him, before he got me to go to the warehouse?" Again, it was all there on his face. "Did you know where to find us, before Cal called?"

The silent response exploded on Greene's face, and Cal had to tighten his hands together to fight back the instinct to jump over the table and pummell his face. Then he saw something else, fear once again but more for something else that they might have asked him, and Cal clenched his jaw. There was something, something else floating behind Greene's stunned silence, and the more Cal started to get an idea of what it was the less he wanted to bring it up. Not with Gillian there.

But he had no choice, and perhaps he owed it to her. She was looking for closure, for some kind of way to really and fully get over what had happened to her and it was clear that running away from it wasn't an option anymore. So he sighed and leaned forward, not so much to put pressure on Greene or Rodriguez but so that he could be closer to Gillian, his hand now hiding under the table and ready for her to catch if needed.

"Were you listening?" He asked then. "You bugged the warehouse at some point, you knew it was one of his spots, didn't you?" He saw recognition on his face, and guilt, lots of guilt, which rendered the follow up question a mere formality. "So, were you listening while we investigated him?"

Greene didn't respond, it wasn't necessary because his face and posture said it all. Gillian never broke eye contact with him but her hand did wander under the table and found Cal's, squeezing so hard it hurt both of them. It was a big and resounding yes, which meant a lot more than she cared to admit. She wanted to ask, she wanted them to tell her, straight to her face, that they had been knowing what was going in that warehouse with Merton, and with her, and had sat on it waiting for things to go from bad to worse and for what? Out of spite?

"You wanted him-us to fail." She managed to say then, feeling the strength of Cal's proximity. "So what? You just listened to Ward torture Merton for nearly two days, just so that you could put it on us?"

"Jesus Christ!" Reynolds gasped, as even he could tell the stunned silence Gillian got in response was a clear confirmation.

"I guess you got what you wanted. I went all in with that and lost big. Got myself kicked out for good, carried the stigma, took years to rebuild my reputation and career." Cal said then. "Then why wasn't that enough? Why are you trying to get us killed?"

"Now Lightman, these are some serious accusation-"

"You can go," Cal hissed at Greene, his eyes laser focused on Rodriguez. "You sat back and let her do whatever back then but you have no idea what she has gone and done now."

"What- Carola, what are they talking about?"

It was the first time they addressed each other directly, and it was extremely telling. To his credit, Greene looked uncomfortable every time Ward was brought up therefore he must have had a conscience; on the other hand he had clearly never tried to stop Rodriguez or even thought about distancing himself from her actions.

"I can explain that for ya, mate." Cal quipped, then pointed at Rodriguez. "This one, well clearly it was her idea and you went along because you've got no balls. Maybe it was her own initiative, maybe she was asked to make sure we failed so that I could be cut loose, I don't know. Maybe she just wanted to take the credit for nailing the bastard, either way it sure helped that she happened to be the one in the position to control the outcome no matter what. She got what she wanted back then, clearly with little to no regard for those involved." He squeezed Gillian's hand under the table, giving and receiving support. "I guess for some reason she thought there was more damage she could do still."

"Did you find Warton, and got him out of prison?" Gillian came back into the game, determined to badger Rodriguez with questions in a way that would make Cal proud. "You did, didn't you? You told him about his brother, how he died and who was responsible." Rodriguez was holding her gaze, but everything about her was uncovering the ugly truth. "Did you simply give information over the phone or straight up gave him the file?"

They knew she was never going to answer, as far as they were concerned they didn't need her to say much. They weren't after some real justice that would prosecute her and make her pay for her actions; they just wanted the truth for themselves, and to end that nightmare as soon as possible.

"Why now?" Cal asked, and this time he sounded more tired than anything else. "It's been years, we all went our separate ways… What did we do that you had to unleash a crazy psychopath against us?"

Right when they thought they weren't going to get much out of her in terms of words or explanations, Rodriguez seemed to be tired of keeping up the mute and denial act. She scoffed and grumbled, a smirk coming to her lips, then she shook her head and leaned down on the table.

"You're like a cockroach, Lightman. I thought we got rid of you after Doyle but you still clung on, you and her with your group selling pseudoscience left and right." Hold nothing back! Cal thought sarcastically. "Six months ago you were down in the gutter, swimming in debts and losing your government contracts. Then Doyle comes back, your screw up becomes a success story and you made a lot of people here look bad, while all of sudden you were cleaned up and redeemed." Disgust, clear and unwarranted. "All of a sudden everybody started to think letting you go had been a mistake, meanwhile you are out there writing books and getting more clients than you can manage, patching things up with FBi and-"

"And that's why you wanted them dead?!" Boy, Reynolds hadn't been saying much but he had certainly nailed his few interventions. "Out of spite?"

"He was only supposed to scare them," Rodriguez tried to justify herself, quite unsuccessfully. "I wanted him to bring Ward's case back into the fold, make them sweat and think he was still alive and then expose their screw up back then."

"You let loose a violent psychopath, an erratic individual with serious issues. What did you think was going to happen?"

"Carola, what- Are you out of your mind?"

"Oh grow a pair Peter! You've never had what it takes to make it far in this job."

"Make it far? Having people killed is what it takes?"

"Where is he?" Reynolds asked then, much like Gillian and Cal not at all interested in their drama. "Where is Warton now?"

"You don't know, do you?" Cal pressed on. "Did you really think someone like him was going to follow your instructions and be a good boy?"

"You lost control of him, you never had it to begin with and now you don't know where he is."

"Do you know what he's done?" Reynolds piled up on Gillian's question, sparing her and Cal the pain of bringing it up. "In only a couple of days, how much damage?"

"It wasn't supposed to be that way-"

"Do you know how to find him?" The agent insisted, and Rodriguez shook her head no. "You got him to DC, you were in touch with him directly… When's the last time you spoke with him?"

"Four days ago," she whispered. "I called him a couple of times but he didn't answer-"

"A couple of times? You ship a maniac across the country, you call him twice and then give up?" Cal burst out, feeling that if there had ever been a moment in his life in which he had been ready to put his hands on a woman with violent intentions that was certainly the moment. "He came after us, our office. We-"

"I think we're done here, Cal."

All of a sudden, Gillian's calm and somewhat soothing voice broke up the rising temper and volumes, bringing everything to a silent stop. Cal looked at her, surprised she seemed to be giving up, but then he realised she was right. They had what they wanted, even more since Rodriguez's confession was now recorded, and after that any further arguments on her despicable actions was pretty much futile. So he nodded at her, letting go of her hand before she stood up, doing the same immediately to make sure he was by her side in case of need.

"You'll be hearing from me," Reynolds not so casually dropped when it was clear they were about to leave. "I suggest you get yourself a lawyer."

Cal and Gillian didn't stay to see her reaction, nor cared about whether Greene seemed to have suddenly grown a conscience and was considering what his options were moving forward. They had come for the truth and found it, ugly as incomplete as it was, and quite frankly they didn't give a damn about what would have happened to the people they left squirming in the room.

Any thoughts? What will they do with the new information? Was this the truth they hoped to uncover?

Next chapter will pick up directly from the end of this one