How can Cal still function after Gillian told him goodbye, in her own way?


It took Cal nearly one hour to get his shit together.

The first step had been wiping the tears off of his face, along with a generous amount of snot spread all over the sleeve of his jacket.

Then he had to stop them altogether, push more tears back down and order them to stop.

Then it had been about getting his breath and heartbeat under control, waiting for his hands to stop shaking and his skin to stop sweating. The final step, which he got to by the time the sun was starting to rise, was to make sure he didn't look like he had just lost one of the most important persons in his life before fulfilling her wish.

Before leaving Gillian's office Cal quickly looked at his own reflection in the glass door, his eyes were still a bit red but he could put that down to troubled sleep if he had to. Then he took a deep breath and waited for his legs to feel steady enough to carry him to his own office. Reynolds wasn't there, nor anybody else what mattered. It was still way too early in the morning for any of the employees to come in and Cal was grateful for that; he could barely keep it together on his own, the last thing he needed was to keep everyone's curiosity at bait. He didn't have the energy for it, not anymore, and quite frankly he didn't care.

His life was falling apart enough as it was, and when he got to his office and stood in front of the safe staring at it as if it was the face of an old enemy, the epiphany soon there might be no employees to worry about hit him like a ton of bricks.

Papers about the company. About me

She probably wasn't going to say anything else anyway, but she hadn't need to add much to that.

I need to be ready

How could he ever be ready for something like that?

Will you do this, for me?

He was going to, of course. It was going to rip his insides out and destroy his mind but he was going to. Because Gillian had asked; because sadly that really seemed to be the only thing he could do for her.

On unsteady legs, Cal took the last steps to the safe and kneeled down in front of it, only briefly wondering how he had only focused on what had been missing when he had looked in there the day before. Then again, he hadn't expected her to leave something too - certainly not the kind of something she wanted him to retrieve - and Cal knew things wouldn't have changed much even if she hadn't gone to the extent of getting rid of the video evidence.

Cal punched in the code and opened the safe, grimacing one more at the missing gun and wondering if Gillian had had to use it at all. Then he brushed the thought aside, he was scared enough as it was, and moved away the stuff that was on the bottom shelf until he unveiled a big brown envelope taped to the back. He took a moment to stare at it, thinking that probably what was on the missing video had been Gillian going to her office to get those damn papers and then popping over to drop them into the safe. It would make sense, including the deleted footage: someone with the right skills and tech, time and ill intentions would have had no problem extrapolating the combination from the video.

"Damnit Foster!" Cal cursed to himself, equally infuriated and touched that even in her situation she had been that thoughtful.

Then he reached for the envelope with his hand and pulled it from the back of the safe, feeling its weight as a haunting omen. And immediately realising Gillian's attention for his privacy had nothing to do with the missing footage.


"Where the hell have you been?"

Reynolds stopped on track as he entered the room greeted by an angry Lightman who looked like whatever sleep he had gotten had not done him any good.

"Back to HQ," the agent explained, confused by the sudden aggression. "We checked international travels to and from the countries where the package has been in the corresponding dates, see if the same names would come up more than once. Nothing like that unfortunately, these guys are likely pros so they probably have multiple IDs to use. As for finding out what's was in the parcel, I'm afraid it's nearly impossible-"

"No, it's not."

Cal cut him off and Reynolds frowned, thinking the scientist was messing with him and yet finding it impossible he could be in that kind of mood. Then he looked at him better, immediately recognising the nervous energy the man usually displayed when he was on the move, mentally and physically. However, at a second look there seemed to be more frustration than anything else creeping up to the surface, along with something he was not equipped to understand.

"What are you talking about?"

Cal sighed, he had been sitting behind his desk when Reynolds arrived and he now stood up, hands in his pocket. Slowly, a bit theatrically to Reynolds' taste, he moved over to the still unlocked safe and pushed the door open with his foot, motioning to the agent to take a look. Confused, but also curious, he stepped forward and bent down looking inside the safe. Through it really, because there was a gaping hole in the back side of the safe, going straight into the wall behind it. Now more confused than curious, Reynolds looked up at Cal who bit at his bottom lip and nodded as if to say that yes, that was actually a thing. Then Reynolds looked further in, after all there had to be a reason for that hiding place within a hiding place, and spotted something nested in the cavity.

"What is that?"

Cal shrugged, the seemingly careless gesture in strong contrast with his tensed demeanour.

"Don't know, haven't touched it." The agent gave him a stare, honestly impressed by his restraint. "Figured you should do the honours."

Reynolds nodded and fished in his pockets for a pair of gloves, and once they were on he leaned forward and stretched his arms to retrieve the mysterious object. But then he stopped halfway and looked up at Cal again.

"Did Foster leave it here?"

"Looks like it."

The agent filed away the information and happened to agree with Cal's assessment. Then he went back to the extraction but once again stopped.

"Do you think that's what was in the package?"

"Duh!" Then Cal growled and burst. "Quit stalling mate, get that thing out already!"

Reynolds shrugged then went back to it, wisely keeping any further thoughts and questions to himself. Slowly, his trained eyes looking for wires or anything that might suggest bad surprises, his hands found the object and picked it up, bringing it into the light. It was a small black box looking thing, a hard drive by the look of it. Reynold stood up as he held it and Cal immediately was all over him, the patience he had shown since he had discovered the device officially exhausted. As he flipped it around, the agent spotted a post-it secured to the back with additional sellotape and when they read it all their previous questions were answered.

Ben Reynolds. It was what the note said, written in Gillian's distinctive and surprisingly poor penmanship.

Cal had to suppress a painful moan when he saw it, but also couldn't hold back a thought of sheer admiration for Gillian. Whatever she was involved in, she had known it might have come and she had been ready for it, scarily ready. More than that, she had taken steps ahead when he had been too messed up to notice or give her enough credit. And Gillian deserved all the credit in the world because her presence of mind had gone to the extent of knowing at some point he would have played the Reynolds card.

It was easy to be impressed with Gillian in that moment, not that her brilliance had ever been in question for him. But once past that, Cal way too easily went back to thinking about the reason she had been pulling all of those genius moves, keeping him out of the game.

Reynolds was mumbling something he didn't fully grasp about taking the drive to the FBI lab, his eyes silently called by another object in the room. Once he had seen the hole and item hiding in it Cal had sort of forgotten about it, but now that one mystery had been revealed the meaning of the brown envelope came back to haunt him. Gillian had left the hard drive for them to do something with it, possibly put a stop to the international murder spree, and that was clear enough. But she still had left those damned papers for him,

About the company, about me

and as relieved as he was for the hard drive and what it could mean, Cal was well aware of the fact that the two objects were not mutually exclusive. He knew that no matter how helpful the hard drive would prove to be, there was still a good chance that he still would have needed to get familiar with those papers.


Let me know what you think!

Chapter 10: Unexpected guest