There's a gold high heel in the middle of the sidewalk.
Rachel has just enough time to see that it's sporting a few deep gouges before Tim's front door bangs open and two figures come stumbling out of it. Tim staggers towards her, making remarkably good speed considering he's supporting a woman who's doing next to nothing to help him. Rachel recognizes the FBI agent who'd brought in their latest witness.
"Oh Jesus Christ," she puffs out, biting her tongue against the rest. Tim and Agent Carlan are both messes, her gray and him white, and when he draws even with her she can see the half-dried vomit covering them both.
"I'm sorry, but I just…" he trails off helplessly, unsure, the slur of alcohol and panic pulling at his tongue.
"Get her in the car." The change in momentum this process entails is too much for a semi-conscious Carlan, and she falls forward, heaving. A thin string of liquid spools from her lips to the ground, and Rachel resigns herself to her car smelling like Ocean Wave and puke until morning.
Tim crawls into the back seat first, and they push and pull Carlan up next to him. He positions her on her side, head tilted slightly down. Despite the late-autumn chill Rachel rolls the front windows all the way down.
"I'm sorry about your car," says Tim when they're on the road. "I'll get it cleaned."
"I'll send you the bill."
She sees him nod distractedly in the rearview mirror, his attention more focused on holding a few strands of Agent Carlan's hair in front of her mouth to make sure she's still breathing.
"She good?"
A nod and a grunt.
"What the hell happened?" She also wants to know what he's doing with a Feeb. If this were Raylan it would be funny, but Tim hasn't mentioned bringing a girl home for a while.
"She drank too much."
"I can see that," she says, unimpressed with his attempt at evasion. "What I mean is why'd you let her?" That's a funny question coming from Rachel. Tim doubts she's ever cared about a man 'letting' her do anything, and he says so, giving a brief explanation of the circumstances that led to them being in the back of her vehicle.
"You're both idiots." Instead of the sardonic comeback she expects, he takes it, rolling over and letting it kick him in the soft part of his stomach.
When they reach the hospital, Rachel stays with Tim in the waiting room. He sits silently, fingers laced tightly and kneading against each other, eyes riveted on the double doors leading back to the patient rooms.
Rachel sighs. "At least you didn't try to drive her yourself." Tim called her once for a ride not long after Art had given him a dressing down for showing up intoxicated to the VFW. He'd mumbled something about losing his keys, and Rachel's still not sure if they'd been held hostage by an unusually conscientious bartender or if he'd needed an excuse to call her for the ride.
The wrinkle between Tim's brows deepens, and for a split-second it's Clinton sitting next to her and not Tim, and a bubble of anger expands in her gut. Rachel thanks Jesus, God, and Mary that she heard her phone ring when he called because she knows he wouldn't have waited for an ambulance.
"You need a shower," she says when his fidgeting becomes too much, deciding he needs a break from sitting around in the hospital he just left.
"Someone should be here when she's done."
"Tim, you've got puke all down your front, and I'm pretty sure if I lit a match next to your face, the air would catch fire." Determined to be stubborn, he takes off his flannel over-shirt and tucks it under the chair; the old wife beater he's got on underneath only has a quarter-sized stain in the middle where some of the vomit soaked through.
Rachel eyes him, brows pinched together in disapproval. "You really want her to wake up to you looking like this?" It's just like telling Nick to brush his teeth and him insisting swishing around some mouthwash is the same thing.
He pinches his lips between his teeth, and she watches as his resolve cracks and then crumbles. Men and their egos. Stick a hook in that and you can lead 'em anywhere. "Come on, I'll take you home so you can shower. We can pick her up a spare change of clothes while we're at it."
"I owe you," he says, once they're back in the car, still fidgeting, drumming his knuckles against the window.
"Damn right you do." She leaves it at that, restraining the urge to chastise him further. He looks beaten enough that she can save the lecture for another time, but damned if she ever has to look at him again, a man she depends on, and think of her brother in law. "Man, you and a Feeb." It's a feeble effort to lighten both their moods, but it falls as flat as the expression on Tim's face.
"She just came for a drink."
Rachel snorts, "Uh huh," brow cocked and loaded. Don't lie to me, boy. He pretends to ignore the look, feigning tiredness, and leans his head against the window, eyes closed.
When they arrive back at Tim's house, Rachel picks up the mysterious lone high heel on her way back up the walk. It's frivolous and impractical; the heel is too high, a stiletto, and the whole thing is covered with a sheer lace that'll tear if you look at it wrong. Someone obviously gave it a hard glare, an expensive tragedy, she notices when she sees the brand. "Damn, this is a Christian Louboutin."
"A Christian lobo-what?" Tim asks.
"Louboutin. It's French." Rachel frowns, considering. "What the hell are you doing with a girl who wears two thousand dollar shoes?" The better question is what the hell an FBI agent in Kentucky is doing with two thousand dollar shoes. She takes in Tim's living room, the dishes, the cold pizza with oily, congealed cheese sitting on one of the couch cushions, curious what Tim sees in a woman who wears those kind of heels. Only accessories he's ever dropped big money on were for his guns. It's not that she thinks Carlan's out of Tim's league; it's that Carlan probably thinks she is. Ole Miss had plenty of girls like that, sweet southern belles with sour centers who didn't give guys like Tim the time of day unless they had use for them. And girls like that don't change, only the way they use others.
"I guess one of us is an idiot." From his tone it's unclear which one of them he thinks that is. Then realizing what she said, he continues uncomfortably, "And I ain't…I'm not with her."
Rachel rolls her eyes at his back as it disappears up the stairs then back at the shoe before setting it by the door. Not that the man doesn't deserve some happiness in his life, but she doubts that's what Agent Carlan would bring to it. It's probably a good thing she ended up with alcohol poisoning instead of in Tim's bed. Rachel flops down on the couch and watches TV for the five minutes it takes him to shower, gargle some mouthwash, and throw on clothes.
o.O.o
"I'll bet he even tucked you in after he took you home. Did he tuck you in, Lena?"
"Deputy Brooks gave me a ride home last night." Talk about awkward.
"Are you sure Deputy Gutterson wasn't the one giving you a ride home?"
"Yes, Oona, I'm sure." Lena had been wrong. It wasn't that she was never going to hear the end of it; she's going to be constantly assailed with it. "Now that drug company you were –"
"Chivera." Lena nearly sighs in relief but stays silent, hoping to prevent any more tangents.
"Yes, them. The ones with the morphine recall." Lena takes another bite of breakfast between searching through papers. "Okay, last week –"
"What are you eating so loudly?"
"I'm not eating loudly." She's chewing with her mouth closed for chrissakes.
"If I can hear you chewing then –"
"Deviled eggs," Lena interrupts shortly, trying to steer the conversation back on track. "Can you tell me where the last shipment came from?"
"Oooooh, did the deputy devil your eggs?"
"Ew! Oona! Good grief, woman, will you just –"
"Fine, fine, get your panties out of a twist and out of your ass crack. Jesus. I'm just saying." She's been 'just saying' for the past twenty minutes, and all Lena wants is the damn shipment information. No one needs to know about her train wreck of an evening with Tim. Well, partial train wreck.
"You're a dumbass."
"You changed your shirt."
"Some dumbass puked on it." Tim one-finger nudges a large takeaway paper cup towards her. "I brought you coffee." He brought her coffee.
Tim's sitting with his boots thrown up on the hospital bed, getting road grease on the blanket, but Lena doesn't give a damn – darn – about that right now, because instead of calling her a crazy psycho stalker who showed up uninvited and then proceeded to drink herself half to death (Dr. Evans had given her a weighty, meaningful look over the rim of his glasses. 'At your age?' his eyes admonished.), he's brought her clean clothes and coffee from somewhere that's not the hospital cafeteria.
"I'm sorry I ruined your evening," she says sincerely. Lena takes the lid off and blows across the top. If the IV hadn't already taken care of the nausea and the hangover, the smell of this brew would. Beans roasted by the gods, infused by the tears of virgin unicorns –
A shrug brushes off her apology. "Eh." He sips at his own coffee, adjusting his feet to tip the chair back on two legs, further spreading the black smear on her blanket. "It was nice to have the company."
Oona had been the one to give her the address and so feels entitled to a complete rundown of the whole night. This is why you don't befriend your employees, her grandfather's voice whispers in the back of her head, and because it's the voice of an uptight old codger she ignores it.
"Oona. Shipment," she snaps, hoping her efficiency will engender like behavior in her assistant.
"Yeah, yeah." Oona has known her far too long to take her irritation seriously, even when Lena wants her to. "The recall was for a batch from their New York lab, and as far as I can tell…" Lena can hear her tapping on a keyboard as she pulls up a document, "their last two shipments came from Italy, which may or may not be strange. Most of the time they're coming from England to New York; Chivera has only had a few from Italy in the past year."
"Where from?"
More tapping. "From…Ancona, from another pharmaceutical company called Angeliano."
"Ancona…Ancona…" Lena's eyes sweep across a Google maps page. "That's only about four hours south of Aviano Air Base."
"You think Chivera's using the air force as mules and then shoveling it all off onto Angeliano?"
That's exactly what she would bet. These guys are even smarter than Lena had given them credit for. Why bother smuggling it back to the U.S. to run some second-rate drug ring when you can get a legitimate pharmaceutical company to get it through customs for you? Kelsey had made a few discreet inquiries at the DEA, and no snitches or undercover agents had reported anyone flooding the market with opioids. The stuff had to be going somewhere.
"Probably. Oh my gosh, would you look at that. They have an American office."
"Oh, and would you turn back around and look at its ass. It's in D.C." Oona's tone finds room for serious, "You gonna come home and visit?"
"Maybe," Lena hedges. Sayeed is her first priority.
"Well stop by work sometime. John has two sandwiches rotting in his office and refuses to look for them. I'm about to firebomb the place, so you're our only hope."
o.O.o
Tim brought a hangover and a cloud to work with him, and the day is fixing to continue sliding downward. The coffee falls the wrong way out of his mouth, splashing inelegantly back into his mug. A few wayward drops sprinkle his shoes and cuffs. Fuckin' great.
"Who made this?" Coffee is too generous a term for the thin, vaguely coffee-flavored swill he found in the pot. No one in the bullpen meets his eye, but Nelson is a little too interested in the paperwork on his desk, so Tim decides it's his fault that his hangover is being prolonged by a lack of quality caffeine. "It's eight scoops!" he calls out. The noise and effort of raising his voice don't do good things for his headache, but the satisfaction of yelling outweighs the discomfort. Everyone continues to ignore him, save Nelson, who chances a furtive, guilty glance. Tim glares, and Nelson goes back to filling out his report with an enthusiasm Art only wishes his deputies had for paperwork.
Back at his desk Tim yanks the blinds closed and flips open a file on one, Robbie Gates, a second-rate thug for the Dixie Mafia and the asshole responsible for the twelve stitches on the left side of his neck. Looking at the photo clipped to the first page, Tim thinks some time in the state pen will do Gates some good; at least in prison they take you to the dentist.
His eyes flip to the clock and then the door. Raylan is late of course, but Tim means to go with him when he heads to KSP to interview Gates. Another glance at the clock. Maybe he already headed there without him…Tim takes out his phone, preparing to call Raylan when he hears the doors open.
It's Lena. Sayeed holds the door since her hands are full carrying a cardboard coffee holder and a paper bag. She pauses at Rachel's desk to hand off one of the coffees and the bag. Rachel accepts each, saying something to Lena that Tim can't hear even though he tries. He gets the second coffee and a smile before she heads into the conference room. In rude contrast to his hungover, grainy-eyed state, Lena appears crisp and fresh and smells like a fresh pine forest but without the dirt and bear piss. His eyes follow her through the glass door, wondering how many thousands of dollars she's wearing on her feet today. Fuck. How do you buy a girl dinner when she's wearing those? But she let him throw one. It's still sitting, sad and mangled, by his front door.
He looks away to find Rachel regarding him, one brow raised meaningfully. He gives her a look back and is about to say he was looking at Lena's shoes, not her ass, but then checks himself because wow, how fucking gay would that make him sound?
The paper bag on Rachel's desk is too big for just one pastry, so Tim heads over to investigate. She glares over the top when he gets close.
"I get first pick."
He backs up a step, hands out in peaceful surrender. "Yes ma'am." In hindsight he should probably be the one bringing her coffee.
Rachel pulls out her selection and passes the bag back across her desk. His mulling over of the contents is interrupted by a loud concert of car horns outside. It sounds like rage. Tim looks out the window at a traffic jam in the lot, a couple of SUVs making three point turns and gumming up the works.
"Bet you five dollars that's Raylan," Rachel says, not bothering to look herself.
"Nah, we'd'a heard gunshots if he was down there."
Sure enough, four minutes later Raylan walks through the door.
"You're late," says Rachel, holding out her hand to Tim. He rummages in his pockets and slaps a crumpled bill on top of it.
"A bunch of idiots out there didn't know how to park."
"I'm going with you to KSP today," Tim interjects into Raylan's own little cloud. "When you headin' out?"
"You got a water bottle on you?"
Tim's brows quirk, confused. "No."
"Then let's go."
Rachel looks up from her computer screen. "You're going to go interview the guy that shot you?"
"Yeah." She's gearing up for protest, which he tries to head off with, "It's fine, I'll be with Raylan." It's not the most convincing argument he's ever made.
She fixes the both of them in place with a look that very clearly says bullshit.
"I promise we won't kill him. He'll be alive when we leave." Tim pulls on his jacket and dumps his keys in the right pocket. "He'll have a pulse and everything. Scouts honor."
Rachel huffs, suspicious, but unable to stop them. They're halfway to the door when the fire alarm goes off.
Raylan looks up at the alarm flashing in the corner, annoyed. "Oh hell, who burned the popcorn this time?"
"Raylan! Tim! Get back in here!" Art's hanging out his office door. "Someone just called in a bomb threat."
"Great."
Tim's eyes go automatically to Lena and Sayeed, both out of their chairs and looking bewildered that no one's making much effort to leave the building. Tim sidles up to the window and peaks out. Those SUVs from earlier are still there, settled in a clump at one end of the parking lot. He lets down the blinds and pulls his sidearm.
"Yeah, problem is that if someone actually wants to bomb you, they don't call it in."