AN: This takes place in 2003, when the CIA is fairly developed (ten years before UWS). As established by the prior chaper, this current one takes place in the spring. And yes, I find it completely realistic that missions turn into multiple year excursions and that contact between Joe and Cara has been limited, while they take on other official missions. Remember, this one with Edwards is off the books. This is a short, but important, filler. We're going to start cheery in this chapter, but...
CHAPTER EIGHT
Cara rolled her eyes at her friend's pleading look. She had been giving her the same pointed stare of intrigue the entire night. Abby had already spent her half hour vomitting her stomach clean on the bathroom floor, and now her full attention was on the assassin.
"I thought you were drunk," Cara said dryly, slightly bitter that she wasn't nearly as tipsy as she wanted to be.
Abby rolled her shoulders in a shrug. "What can I say? I can hold my liquor like a champ."
"You just puked all of your martinis into a toilet bowl."
"Shut up, smartass," she replied cheerily. "Now, I've kept quiet for a total of four hours, which is an all-time record—"
"Impressive, really."
Abby glared, kicked off her heels and plopped onto the couch next to the woman. "You're wearing a coat that is not your size, and frankly, it smells like liquid sex."
"For the love of God. Abigail Cameron, leave me alone!" Cara said, choking in horror at her companion's words.
Pleased, Abby pressed on further. "Whose is it?" she said, drilling her for information.
"No one. I just borrowed it from a friend for a few days since I lost mine at the airport—"
"Whose is it?"
"Really, Abby, you're overthinking this—"
"Tell me, you goddamn witch! We've been friends for over a decade. I think I deserve this particularly sensitive piece of information, don't you think? Friends don't keep secrets from one another—"
"Joe Solomon."
Cara blurted the name, and sighed in defeat. She had fallen victim to the younger Cameron sister's persistent interrogation and famed blackmail. The woman's mouth hung open, closing periodically like a goldfish.
"I thought—but Joe doesn't—eternal bachelor, bullshit." Cara was only able to decipher a few words of her garbled speech. She was looking at the jacket, folded and slung over the arm of the sofa, with an odd look in her eyes.
"What is it?" Cara said defensively.
Abby pursed her lips, the laughter from her eyes erased, and shook her head. "Nothing," she said, and feigned a yawn. "I'm really tired and can barely think straight—"
"Bull," Cara proclaimed. "I borrow a jacket and you lose your mind over whose it is. Now you're quiet. What the hell is it?"
The woman stood up and adjusted the hem of her sparkling miniskirt. "I don't think this is a good idea, Pierce."
"I already told you, I'm not—"
She shook her head. "Not that." Cara knew immediately what she was referencing, and wondered how long her best friend and the entire group surrounding her true target had known. Her cover had been blown in barely any time, and the long, disapproving look that Abby gave her said it all. The woman may not have read the minute details of her case, but she knew enough. "You need to stay away from Joe Solomon at all costs. Matt will go to the ends of the earth to protect that man, and you don't want to be in the middle of it."
Cara remained silent and watched as Abby ambled to her bedroom, calling one last thing over her shoulder.
"You might also want to check whose side you should really be on, Pierce."
They were nearly the same words that Matthew Morgan had hissed to her at the cabin. Cara rubbed her eyes; all the giggling and excitement from their night out were gone. She gave a hard stare at the text message that popped up on the phone, powered off the device and collected her bag of toiletries.
She needed a day off. And most importantly, to return to the days when her personal life and work life were two separate entities—the former practically nonexistent.
Joe was accustomed to the smell of burnt food and the howl of the smoke alarm when he visited the Morgan's home. That particular Sunday morning, it was charred fried eggs and blackened pancakes. Sitting in the dining room, he had a prime view of Rachel tossing a washcloth to the floor angrily and giving her failed attempt at cooking a very frazzled and teary-eyed look.
"I had a bagel on the way to dropping Cammie off, sweetheart," Matt called, sensing his wife's distress, though his eyes remained glued to his crossword puzzle. He pushed his reading glasses up the bridge of his nose. "What's a thirteen letter word for tension-filled wine-tasting?"
"Cork room drama," Joe replied, watching as Rachel stomped angrily towards the freezer.
She pulled out Eggo's waffles, and gripped the yellow cardboard angrily. "There's maple syrup in the fridge," she said, and threw the box as hard as she could at her husband. He caught it against his chest and blinked. "Help yourself."
Joe shook his head, chuckled and rose from his seat to pop two into a toaster. "I don't think Cammie's going to be happy when she finds out two grown-ass men finished her waffles," he remarked. The house was empty, as she'd gone to school, and he stared at the pictures on the fridge in amusement. "You didn't need the face paint to prove you're a clown, Matt."
"That's real funny," he said dryly, and shot a glower at Rachel's snicker. "You'll understand when you have your own kids."
Rachel snorted. "I'll give a hundred bucks to see the day Joe Solomon gets hitched. He doesn't have time for women, remember?"
"I don't," Joe said defensively. "I don't have time for kids either."
"That's ironic, considering how you're practically a father to—" Matt cut off abruptly at Joe's short cough. He returned his gaze to his newspaper while Joe shuffled to the fridge to retrieve the syrup.
Rachel narrowed her eyes. Her gaze flickered between the two men, and she was instantly suspicious. "What? Do you have some illegitimate child I don't know about?" she asked.
Joe took a seat across from her at the six-person dining table. He stuck a fork into his waffle in irritation, catching Matt's apologetic look out of the corner of his eye. It was true—ever since Zach's first visit, Catherine had dropped him off at the Roseville gazebo a total of three times in a month, all for short periods of time. Usually, there was a text asking if he was in Virginia, and then a notification that her eight year-old child was stationed in one of the town's central attractions. Sometimes it was in the middle of the night, and sometimes it was during the day, but Zach always came equipped with a few wrinkled pairs of clothing in a tiny backpack, and a forlorn frown on his face.
The little boy was tranforming from a murderer's son to a child he cared for deeply as if he were his own, and Joe knew that his attachment would become dangerous.
"Nothing," Joe said quickly. "It's just an inside joke."
Rachel ground her teeth, and watched him shovel through his food. "Liars. What the hell are you hiding from me?"
"Honey. Drop it," Matt said under his breath, discreetly gesturing at Joe with a tilt of his head. When it came to keeping secrets, the man had a tendency of being extremely sensitive, and they risked an angry outburst with every push for information.
She sighed, and glanced at his crossword. "East German currency until 1990. Ostmark. You have one of those in your coin collection."
Matt frowned. "I knew that," he muttered sourly, scribbling the answer onto the paper. Rachel smirked triumphantly, and he changed the topic before she could tease him. "How is the Schmidt mission?"
"I have a flight to England, early Saturday morning after I debrief about last week's Tunisia operation. There's a trap set to capture the man that's been tailing me," he explained, setting down his fork. "All I need to do is get to the interrogation room before Cara does."
Rachel exchanged a long glance with her husband. "And in the occasional that he blurts something about your roots in the Circle..." she trailed. "What would you do then?"
He was silent for a length of time, as if he had been in denial all along about the probability of such an occurrence. There wasn't much he could do at that point, and Edwards would probably walk in with a smug smile on his face and a pair of handcuffs. It would take seconds for him to get cornered, and he didn't have much of a contingency plan to secure his survival. No matter how the situation played out, Joe would eventually lose. And it would all have been because of a stupid commitment he made at the age of sixteen and acted upon for the following five years.
Matt took off his glasses, folded them onto the table and rubbed his eyes tiredly—though it was only nine in the morning. "She knows," he said quietly, watching his friend's expression remain stolid. "Edwards debriefed her on the original intents of the mission even before the first day it went into effect, back at Buckingham Palace."
Joe barely blinked, and poured himself a glass of orange juice.
Rachel reached over and placed a hand on his arm. "We're all in this until the end. You need to say something, Joe, so that we can help—"
"No," he said roughly and jerked away, slamming the glass onto the table hard enough that the liquid sloshed over the rim. "I'm dealing with this myself. The last thing we need is for Edwards to add you to the list—" He stopped abruptly, his eyebrows furrowed. "Wait. You seem so sure about this. How would you have it confirmed?"
Matt fiddled with his newspaper, staring down at the black, inky text of The New York Times. The guilt was apparent on his features, and he tried to keep his tone reassuring and level. "I... had a conversation with her when she was at the cabin." His eyes flickered to his wife as she processed that particular piece of unknown information. "I told her that I knew what she was doing, gave a few warnings, and she seemed pretty shaken—"
"Oh my God, Matt, you didn't—"
Joe stood up, his green eyes darkened with anger. "This is exactly what I was afraid of!" he thundered. "You put yourself on the line and painted an even bigger bulls-eye on your back. You already have the Circle behind you, and the last thing you need is the goddamn agency you're working for to sic an assassin on you!"
"Do I look like I give a damn? You don't get to play victim and take on the world yourself. Your hero complex is going to get you killed and you'll just leave the rest of us behind to suffer—"
"You have a fucking eight year-old daughter!" Joe interrupted, his voice a loud bellow. "Did you ever think of how she'll feel when her father doesn't come home from a mission one day?"
Rachel cradled her head in her hands as she listened to the heated exchange between the two friends. "Can you please stop arguing—"
"Yes. I do. Every single minute I'm away from home," Matt hissed, pushing himself to his feet and gripping the edge of the table angrily. "But you know what? Saving a couple hundred lives from the Circle is a little more important than reading her a story before bed. Nothing will stop me from coming back to my family other than death, so don't you dare accuse me of anything while I'm still breathing."
Joe laughed bitterly. "You don't know what you have, do you, Matt?" he spat. "You have a wife, a daughter, a fucking home. The minute you screw yourself over by getting involved with these people—people like me—then it's all over."
"You are the most selfish son of a bitch I have met in my life! You're in this family whether you like it or not, Joe—"
"Selfish? I'm trying to keep you all safe—"
"The hell you aren't! Your hero complex is making you blind—"
"Hero complex? I'm done with your idiocy—"
Rachel finally stood up indignantly, and raised her voice to a yell. "Will you please shut the hell up!" The two men froze at her intervention, chests heaving from endless arguing, and their full attention turned to her. Tears pricked her eyes and she clenched her jaw. "That disgusting, hellish woman is going to kill the two of you without lifting a finger, if you keep fighting like this. You need to stop throwing yourself in the frontline," she said to Matt, and then turned on Joe. "And you need to let us help and accept that we're standing with you until the end. I swear to God, I'm shooting the both of you myself if you keep acting so bullheaded and stubborn."
Joe rubbed his temples, an oncoming migraine throbbing at his head. "I need time to cool off. I'm sorry. You're right," he said to Rachel first, and then looked at Matt. "And you were right, too. I'm—I'm going to go pack. I'll see you when I get back. Give my love to Cammie." His words were rushed, as he struggled to get them out as quickly as possible, and ducked out of the kitchen and out of the house without another word.
Matt's fingers pressed against the table, and he stared at the spilled orange juice. As Rachel watched him, her heart clenched. Suddenly, the circles around his eyes were so much more prominent, his shoulders slouching low in defeat. She lifted a hand and cupped his jaw, turning his attention her way. He was hurting for his friend, she knew, but there wasn't much they could do for someone that didn't want to be helped.
"He's right, sweetheart," she said quietly, and the silence was a drastic change from the chaos only moments ago. "I know it doesn't seem like it, but he's hurting for all the right reasons. The things he said, about a family, a home..." She pressed her lips together in a thin line when his dark eyes met hers. "He's right. Those are all things that can be stolen away from him at any minute, without any security."
His arms went around her and he pulled her close, burying his face in his hair and inhaling the therapeutic scent of her lavender soap. "That much anger gets people killed," he muttered. "No one should have all that bottled inside, and if Max puts too much pressure... God knows what will happen then."
Rachel ran her fingers through the hair at the back of his head, and pressed a kiss to his neck. "Keep trying. There's always a solution, and we will find a way out of this."
His words were filled with doubt, his confidence wavering, and she heard the fear and apprehension in his voice for the first time.
"We can only hope."