AN: Well, life hit pretty hard and I almost forgot about this fic. I had a complete chapter sitting in my files so here it is - a little shorter than most, but jam-packed with plot. I want to give a big thank you to the people that have stuck with this story and a promise that I'll be updating a LOT more. Please, please review!

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Max was out of bed in seconds and Cara whipped on a bathrobe. There was a reason they picked rooms with traditional locks rather than access cards. If anyone wanted to get inside, the extra milliseconds it took to turn the key saved lives.

The maid that opened the door gasped, hand over her heart. Her cheeks turned red when she saw Max, only wearing a pair of pajama bottoms, on the other side of the door. The bottle of cleaner and her dishcloth hung limply from her hand.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" she said, her accent thick. She sounded Eastern European, probably Albanian. She dropped the supplies back into the cart. Her blonde hair was tied into a bun and she nervously tucked loose strands behind her ear, rubbed her sweaty hands against her dress.

Max didn't buy her apology. "There was a sign on the knob," he said flatly.

She muttered a few indecipherable words under her breath and quickly turned on her heel. The wheels of her cart squeaked as she rolled down the hall.

Max looked perturbed as he shut the door.

"You did hang the sign. I remember," Cara said, wrapping her arms around herself.

Max grabbed her clothes and shoved them into her hands. "She was sent to check if we were here. We need to leave. Fast."

Next door, the maid pulled out a burner phone and dialed a number.

"Hello?"

"They are here, sir. Just as you thought they would be."

The recipient of her call sounded confused.

"They?"

"He had a woman with him. They were, um, in a state of undress."

"Ah, I understand. Thank you, Marie. I appreciate you."

She smiled. "Anything for you, Mr. Morgan."

Matt dropped the flip phone on the floor and crushed it under his shoes. He turned to Joe and raised an eyebrow. His friend poured himself a glass of whiskey and sighed.

"It didn't work. He has her wrapped around his fingers."

Matt put his hands in his pockets and shrugged, leaned back against the kitchen counter. "No. Something makes her go back to him. We need to be smarter."

Joe didn't respond. It took a year of tension and restraint to build up to that moment in the Sublevels. He was an expert at honeypot missions, but for some reason, he couldn't bring himself to put his best effort forward.

"It's out of my hands now. If we want her to trust us, we need to do it the right way. She needs to figure out for herself that Max is a lunatic. Deception isn't going to work here, Matt."

His friend chuckled. "That's the first time I've heard those words come out of your mouth, Solomon."

Joe grimaced. "And hopefully, the last."

Abby picked up a manila folder, flipping it open and staring at the photograph paperclipped to the first page. She grimaced. As much as she loved snooping, this had to be crossing a line. She doubted that the CIA spent billions on resources and building secure facilities for them to be using conference rooms and databases for their personal battles.

"Come on, Matt," she complained. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"

He glanced at her over the stack of papers in his hand and raised his eyebrows. "We did this very exact thing for Max Edwards."

"So?"

"While we didn't find much, I didn't hear you complaining then."

She huffed. "Max Edwards isn't exactly a friend of ten years, nor do I have a lick of appreciation for him. I've known this woman forever and don't need to tear her inside out to tell you everything."

Abby looked at Joe for some support. He usually took her side and helped her make a case when the Morgans wouldn't listen. He pretended not to hear her and continued typing on his computer.

She scowled at him and there was the shadow of a smirk on his face.

Rachel popped into the room with her laptop and some paperwork. Her face was flushed and her eyes were bright, a clear sign that she had made a discovery. "You will not believe what I found."

Matt turned his head and raised his eyebrows. "Jeez, Rachel. Way to make us look bad. Seven hours and we could only dig up a dozen or so things that weren't kept under lock and key by the agency."

"That's because you're looking in the wrong places," she told him, taking a seat at the table. It was practically buried under papers and empty coffee mugs. "Someone went in and disabled the search query—she won't pop up in other people's profiles unless you go through and physically read the entry. So I went through and studied the language in her folders. Every handler has a very specific signature: words they use, phrases they like. I found a few useless things, like cases she's closed, but then I found this."

She pulled out a grainy photograph from a folder. It was a man dressed in a casual tee and jeans, a mischievous smirk on his face as he considered the camera.

"That's from security footage," Joe pointed out, squinting at the time stamp. "From two years ago. He wouldn't be in the system unless he had a headshot."

Rachel nodded. "Exactly. Because Jason Groves is not supposed to exist. Hell, he somehow magically appeared in this world at the age of twenty-eight. One of the few things in his file is a transcript of an interrogation done by MI-6 after an armed robbery in a museum. MI-6 had been onto him after tracking him at the scene of several thefts of crown jewels and paintings hours before they occurred. They shared notes with Interpol when they hit a few blockades while crossing borders, which ultimately got him caught."

Abby was frowning at the photograph, a troubled expression on her face. "Okay, but what the hell does this have to do with Cara Pierce?"

"Jason had a few things on him when he was arrested at a cafe near the Louvre. A phone, which he destroyed quickly, and a wallet. The wallet had his current identity, which could have been a fake one, but the police could never figure out what his real name was. There was also a photograph of him and his girlfriend, who the police thought was an associate, but he led them to her memorial site with a grave. There was a body inside and everything checked out when they did DNA tests and cross-checked his story with the facts."

Matt sighed. "Let me guess. The girlfriend was Cara?"

Rachel shook her head. "Nope. Her name was Corine Irvine. I don't know if this is a coincidence, but either the agencies involved were extremely inept, or someone was playing a very dangerous game."

She put a piece of paper in the center of the table, and amid her messy scrawl and several crossed out letters, they made out two words.

"Renoir, Vinci. Famous artists," Matt muttered. "The police, MI-6, and Interpol were being played into a very big game."

Rachel nodded and presented them with a ziplock bag. "And this is the photograph that had been admitted into evidence."

The small print was worn with age. Jason Groves had his arms around a young woman, the backdrop of a garden behind them. The couple was in the middle of laughter and stared into the camera with wide grins. Despite the creasing, there was no mistaking the lithe body and dark hair, the relaxed yet poised manner the woman held herself.

Abby was shell shocked. "Holy shit. That's—"

"Cara-fucking-Pierce." Joe rubbed a hand over his face, exhausted. "You found all of this in six hours?"

"Oh, this isn't even half of it, Solomon." Rachel pulled out a mugshot. Gone was the laughter in his eyes—Jason Groves looked lifeless. "He was put in a high security facility, where someone slipped him a few toxic pills. Guards found him with his mouth filled with foam in the corner of his cell. There was no reason for him to kill himself—there was talk of a negotiation to trade in a few pieces of artwork in exchange for a shorter sentence. They were looking into homicide."

"You said you searched for linguistic clues that linked Cara and her handler. Who is pulling all these strings? Whoever this person is, they're doing a hell of a job to keep this cold case closed and her name out of it," Matt reasoned.

Rachel sighed. "That's one thing we're never going to get access to. This handler has been with her for the entirety of her CIA career, and might have followed her to MI-6 and Interpol when she was commissioned to help with their cases. These people are like ghosts: no one will ever be able to find them and they only submit cases into archives once they are closed. You will never be able to find out what she is currently working on unless she wanted you to."

"But the Groves case isn't closed," Abby pointed out. "It was put into the archives so no one would ask any questions, wasn't it?"

Joe, who had been silent for a few minutes, interjected. "Motive is six things. Love, faith, greed, boredom, fear, and revenge. The handler closed the case so Cara could sneak through the bureaucracy without raising any red flags, and find out what happened when Jason was in prison."

Rachel nodded in agreement. "And who better to ask than the young Interpol agent who made a name for himself by busting one of the most wanted art thieves in the world."

The pieces in the puzzle were slowly coming together and Joe leaned forward. "We knew this about Max. Either he was involved in some sort of foul play, or there's a bigger picture here that made Cara target him."

Rachel shrugged, swiping her husband's coffee to take a drink after talking for so long. "Like you said, Joe. Motive is key."

They dissolved into silence. While Joe was relieved that he wasn't the root of the problem, he was still incredibly confused. After over a decade of being chased by the Circle and some misguided people that hunted the terrorist organization, he was used to knowing the good guys apart from the bad ones. Cara Pierce was somewhere in the middle, resting on a very thin line that divided the two. He didn't know if she was aware of it, but she was being used by Max for a much bigger game, just as she was using him. Spies lied, but the lies she told to hide such a questionable past made him pity her.

The thick air was broken by an expletive from a stunned Abby's mouth. "For fuck's sake," she grunted. "Why can't anything in our lives be straightforward?"

Matt glanced at his sister-in-law and fixed her with a look that screamed 'I told you so'.

"You've known her forever, huh?"