Moments
A/N: the final segment posted by Christmas Eve/Christmas (depending on the time zone). Mission Accomplished. Be merry (drink responsibly) and enjoy : )
The Christmas Curse
~11~
On the Eleventh day of The Curse, the Adventure Hour gave to us
Eleven Snitches Snitching…
"Oh Captain! You're my h – "
Angie was just about to switch the station in deference to Peggy, when a male voice not among the usual cast broke in.
"We're sorry to interrupt the Adventure Hour program, but we have a gentleman here who would like to make an important and urgent announcement."
Peggy signaled her to stop.
"Hello, I am Damian Rothschild, and a few months ago, my niece Rebecca Rothschild, a student from Columbia University, a good girl, went missing. Her family and I desperately want her home, so I am offering a $5000 reward for anyone who has information that could lead to that joyous outcome. The investigators who are looking into her disappearance can be reached at…"
And then Rebecca's uncle rattled off the SSR's number.
"Bloody hell."
~:~
When she walked into the bullpen, it appeared to be pure chaos, but Daniel paused, with the phone to his ear, to explain.
"We've got the junior agents working the tip-line. Anything that they think might be of interest or credible we senior agents are following up on."
She nodded her thanks and began looking around for her partner. Daniel caught her at it and added, "We already had nearly a dozen of our usual reliable sources contact us – as in literally showing up on our front doorstep, having recognized our number. Jack has been interviewing them each in there." He indicated the interrogation rooms with a nod of his head.
Just as she was about to head into the observation room, Jack came out of the interrogation room shaking his head in disgust. When he saw her, he reported, "I have done three of these so far, and not one of them has a story that shares even sliver of similarity. One claims it is the Genovese crime family who abducted her as her father has gambling debts; another claims that he saw her at a sanitarium a few weeks back trying to get sober; and another, that he saw her in Atlantic City laughing it up with what 'looked like it be her sugar daddy'."
That was all rather disheartening, and she could tell that Jack was to the point where he would almost prefer a reluctant scumbag to beat good information out of than to talk to another overly helpful, greedy source of useless of information. So putting her hand on his shoulder, she said, "Jack, do what you can to follow up on those, and I'll take the next three."
And so that is what they did, but after eleven interviews filled with contradictory reports and hours of pointless follow up, they were back to square one of nothing.
She, Jack, and Daniel were taking a brief respite to eat a late lunch (that the rookie had kindly gone and gotten) and were staring at each other morosely, when Daniel asserted glumly, "I don't know about you guys but I feel like I am drowning in a sea of misinformation."
"You mean non-information," Jack grunted.
"No, you mean dis-information," Peggy corrected excitedly. Daniel's words had sent her mind down a dark, suspicious path. Bits and pieces of impressions and nagging questions from all her conversations with Rebecca's family and friends were coming together and…
"What do you mean?" Daniel asked curiously, but Jack had perked up and looked as if he was tracking right along with her.
"I mean that it is suspicious that dear uncle Damian is just now after months of her being missing is offering a reward for information, when that might have been more helpful in the first few days or even weeks," she declared.
"It could be that he doesn't know how crucial that first 48 hours is and is just still holding out hope," Daniel countered.
Jack snorted, "No, Carter's right. The timing is just too coincidental with us re-opening her cold case and asking questions again. All this accomplished today was mass confusion, which could be buying him time."
"To cover his tracks, notify his accomplices, makes sense," Daniel nodded grimacing. "I'll cross-check his phone records and have Fisher check into his financials."
While they did that, she and Jack made a few phone calls to some of Rebecca's close friends, asking entirely different kinds of questions than they had before, and getting entirely different results.
Rebecca's college roommate and a few of her other close friends indicated that Rebecca had ever increasingly been reluctant to go home to family get-togethers, especially when Dear Uncle Damian was there. Her roommate even indicated that the one time she had met him, the man had been intoxicated enough to drop his sophisticated façade and insulted her, denigrating hers and Rebecca's attempts to get a higher education. A former boyfriend of Rebecca's noted that he had always been 'creeped out' by how affectionate the uncle was towards her and that he had always encouraged her to set her boundaries with him.
In light of all this, their theory that Rebecca was another kidnapping victim of Leviathan's went to the uncle possibly having some connection with them and giving her over to them to the uncle just being skeazy misogynist pervert, who most likely murdered his own niece.
"Let's go get this bastard, Carter," Jack declared between clenched teeth.
It warmed her heart to see her partner so riled up about this poor most likely dead girl, but she knew his wrath would not burn so bright once his usual cool, calculating, and cynical mind began working again. After all, the only person Jack ever hated for long was his own damn self.
She remained in her chair and with deliberate casualness pointed out, "You know if we go after a member of the Rothschild family with these kinds of accusations, we will be burning a lot of bridges, politically speaking."
She assessed him speculatively. At her words, he froze, and she knew then that he was weighing the consequences. She was fully prepared for him to advocate for caution, as she knew how driven by his ambition he was.
But then, he finished putting on his coat and turned to stare indignantly down at her, declaring, "'Burn them'? Hell, for this bastard, I will happily blow them out of the water."
And so they did.
When they confronted him, Peggy took the lead and goaded him with the very intelligence he so abhorred in women. She goaded him so well that she provoked him into punching her and incriminating himself in front of witnesses, which was sufficient cause to arrest him.
And after a few hours in the box, he spilled where he had buried Rebecca's body.
The two of them finished the day on the roof, quietly drinking a toast or two in honor of their Gone-Girl Grad Student and to 'blown bridges.'
~12~
On the Twelfth day of This Hellish Season, my partner and I were cursed with
Twelve Party-crashings
And the rookie…
"Well, Carter, I got good news, bad news, and more good news," was how Jack greeted her that morning.
She shoved his feet off of her desk and scowled warily at his tired but cheeky grin. "Am I going to like any of this good news?"
He shrugged, "I dunno, depends." Before she could ask what that depended on, he shared, "That tip-line farce wasn't a complete waste of our time apparently. Per Sousa, one of the snitches gave us the skinny that there is going to be a hand-off for that chemical formula that the Patent Office 'lost'."
"Roxxon's?"
"Yep, that would be the one," he confirmed with a drawl.
"Okay, what's the bad news?"
His smile slipped a little as he unhappily divulged, "The hand-off is between a server of the Smoak & Pepper Catering Company and a guest at one of their twelve events scheduled for today."
She sighed wearily. So much for a half-day today. Oh well, with her family clear across the Pond, she didn't have any real plans for Christmas Eve anyways.
"The 'more' good news?" she prompted.
His grin returned as he declared, "With all these parties, you may finally have the opportunity to clear your debt with me from our last shindig crashing."
She was saved from finding a suitable response by the rookie showing up with the addresses for all of Smoak & Peppers' events.
~:~
That very long day they attended one wedding brunch, two office lunches, three ladies' teas, four cocktail parties, and changed their outfits to suitably blend in with all, but to no avail.
At none of those did they spot any guest or caterer with the infamous holiday pin of three red rubies and twelve holly leaf-shaped emeralds.
The last two events were evening galas. The first was actually catered by a different company as the hostess had canceled the contract the last minute, but the second was their last hope of preventing a potential bio-chemical weapon getting into the wrong hands.
Jack eventually got his wish to try and finish a dance with her, but only after they circled the room and stalked the buffet and checked-in on how the rookie was doing with his perimeter checks.
For several minutes neither of them talked as they swirled around the edges of the dance floor, both scanning the crowd for their targets, but Jack, being Jack, was the first to break their companionable silence with a sardonic drawl:
"I know you like to break the mold on traditional gender roles, Carter, but does this preference of yours have to extend to who leads in dancing?"
Peggy nearly missed a step she was so startled by his question. She couldn't be offended by his comment, however, because after a few moments of reflection, she realized that she had at times been taking over the lead. What many of her female friends would have found interesting was that even though they had been sporadically trading leads, they had done so flawlessly.
To keep Jack from noticing or at the very least from commenting on this very fact and all its possible interpretations, she admitted to a less embarrassing truth. "I was attempting to steer us away from the mistletoe, I think."
This startled a low chuckle from him, and he taunted, "What? Are you afraid that you won't be able to contain yourself, even if we share a chaste Christmas kiss?"
"Hardly," she scoffed. "I am bound and determined to not let Ramirez make a penny off of that pool he has going."
Jack's hold tightened on her, causing her to glance up at his face. There was brief flash of anger there that she had not been expecting, prompting her to ask, "You didn't know?"
He shook his head, "No." She relaxed more in relief at his answer than in any relaxing of his hold on her, which was near to nothing.
Jack eyed her sharply, as he added, "I am more than a little bit surprised that you do and that he's not sporting a black eye."
"Just because I am good at violence does not mean that is my favored form of revenge," she primly replied, before shooting him a sly, mischievous smile, "Especially, when it is so much more fun playing havoc with his bank account."
Jack returned her smile with an admiring one of his own, as he started to declare, "You, Marge, are one – "
But he never got to finish that sentence, nor they their dance, because at that moment there was an alarmed cry from a guest who had just had a drink spilled all over them.
This drew their attention as the server was quite noisily making her apologies as she attempted to clean the champagne dripping individual, futilely patting him dry with a cloth napkin. After a few moments, he pushed her away giving her and Jack an ample view of both parties, who shared similar taste in jewelry.
She and Jack shared a look, both realizing that the whole scene had been a ruse for the exchange of documents, and probably to give both the added benefit of an excuse for making hasty exits.
But not on their watch.
She and Jack sprang into action. Jack spun her out so that she would twirl right into the guest's path, while he moved to block the server's.
"Oh pardon me," she giggled tipsily, steadying herself by grabbing onto his jacket lapels. She noticed that the rubies on the infamous pin were shaped as red skulls.
The man tried to brush her off as he had the 'clumsy' server, but Peggy was having none of it. She reached up on tip-toe and giggled breathily, "Mistletoe."
The man instinctively looked up to gape at the offensive parasitic plant dangling above his head, giving her the perfect opportunity to plant one on him.
He went down like a ton of bricks.
She glanced over at Jack to see how he fared. He had the belligerent looking woman hand-cuffed. She was upright and mobile in comparison to hers, but that also meant she was still feisty.
Over the woman's jerking shoulders, Jack eyed the man's prone lipstick-stained form and then shot her a look that clearly said, 'Really? Again?', to which she replied with a look of her own.
He nodded his understanding and muttered, "Yeah, yeah, I know. Why fix what ain't broke?"
Before she could reply, Norris (who had finally joined them and was man-handling their perp to his woozy feet) cut in and pointed out long-sufferingly, "I don't know what is more disturbing – your bickering or your meaningful glances."
She and Jack shared another pained look: 'Moment Crashed'.
~Encore~
He and Peggy were riding the elevator down at the end of another long-ass (but yet successful) day, when she reached over and hit the stop button.
It was all he could do to not let out a whimper. Three ladies' teas, a wedding brunch, and eight club-soda-only-filled parties of various kinds. Need he say more?
Before he could raise any objections, Carter turned to face him and instructed calmly, yet coolly, "Jack, at 0800 on the 26th, as soon as the shops open, you will take the rookie back to Little Hungary, and the two of you will fix those herbalists' window, even if it means that you will miss Cliff's boxing game extravaganza."
She held up her hand to silence the protest that he was about to make, asserting forcefully, "Come Monday morning, Jack, I will have enough on my plate playing catch up on all our reports from the mayhem that we have endured these past few weeks. There will not be an unlucky 13th day."
Normally, he would have objected to her high-handed manner and yet another ruining of his weekend plans, but he considered all of the instances of mayhem that they had experienced – the parties, the snitches, the bail-jumping fugitives, the warehouses, the wailing divas, the week-long stakeout, the bombs, the ghosts of cases past, the relentless dames, the egghead conspiracy, the spiteful hags, and his puppy of a probation officer.
So instead, he wisely and without a hint of condescension replied with a meek, "Yes, dear."
I wish us a Merry Christmas. I wish us a Merry Christmas. I wish us a Merry Christmas.
And a Happy New Year…
(With no rookie)
