Disclaimer: Characters not mine, and never will be.

Rating: T

Chapter 16 – Blackout

Something didn't sit quite right with Riley. After Lillian left the park, the agent had been rather quiet and kept to herself. Why had Lillian been acting so strangely? It just didn't make sense.

She wondered if Gabriel noticed anything. Riley may have been on high alert because she felt guilty lying to her boss, but something was still fishy. She remembered the look in Lillian's eye when her boss had insinuated that she was sure nothing was going on between the agents. It was just off somehow. She couldn't place her finger on it.

It was almost like Lillian was giving her the chance to admit something, like she was waiting for Riley to set her straight.

Thinking of her boss's strange behavior also brought back the memory of the night Lillian arrived. Their boss had wanted to get to bed rather quickly instead of sharing the vital information that she'd specifically driven upstate to give them. Riley sat up straight on the couch she was sitting on, a light bulb going off in her head. "Hey Gabriel?"

"Yeah?" he asked, poking his head in from the kitchen where he was cooking lunch. "I told you the food will be ready soon enough, Riley." He shook his head at her in an endearing way. At least maybe this meal wouldn't get interrupted like it had been last night.

"No, that's not- Listen, did you notice Lillian acting strangely at all?" Riley asked, brow furrowed. She stood up and walked into the kitchen, suddenly sure her hunch was right. In low tones, she asked, "Don't you think something strange was going on?"

"Not really. What in particular are you talking about?" Gabriel matched his tone with hers without understanding why they needed to whisper.

"Can your chip do a bug sweep?" she asked, eyes searching his. There it was, Riley thought, plain and simple. Lillian had to spying on them somehow. She wasn't as trustful as she seemed. Well, she wouldn't be if Riley was right.

Gabriel nodded and his eyes glazed over for half a second. "Nothing's on my radar. Why?"

Riley didn't answer but moved out of the kitchen. Her partner wordlessly followed her as she made her way into the master bedroom, stopping before the bed to look thoughtfully at the walls.

Gabriel wasn't getting it. If he didn't detect any bugs in the room, he wanted to know why she was still searching. He gently grabbed her arm and asked, "Is something wrong?"

Riley put a finger up to her lips when he stopped her, and pointed towards the air vent that was facing towards the doorway, near the bathroom entrance. She cocked her head towards it and in a single look, asked him to give her a boost.

He got down on one knee and straightened his other leg so that she could use it as a step up. When she wobbled at first, he placed his hand on the back of her leg, a little higher than she would've liked. She let out an embarrassing squeak and, upon finding her voice, whispered, "Gabriel! Move your hand."

"Where would be the fun in that?" He tried and failed to suppress a smirk. He did move his hand, though, and waited for her to remove the vent covering. Gabriel wasn't going to rush her, but he got more curious and curious by the second. She finally stepped off with a triumphant look on her face. "What did you find?"

She held in her hand a tiny, pinhole camera between her index finger and thumb. A small red light indicated that it was recording, but Gabriel didn't detect a receiver anywhere nearby. In fact, he the chip wasn't picking up any information about the miniscule device. He was wildly curious as to why and how the chip didn't make him aware of the camera's presence. He took the small, square object that she placed in his hand and reached up to put it back in the vent.

Riley tugged his arm and led him into the bathroom, shutting the door. Because the camera was pointed away from the bathroom, she suspected that the room had at least a shred of privacy more. "She was setting up a camera in the room. That's why she made the excuse that she was so tired. I bet she only finished setting it up when we heard her leave the room in the middle of the night," Riley hissed.

Gabriel remembered being too caught up in the way Riley's mouth was exploring his to care why Lillian had left the room. He did, however, recall hearing her preparing food in the kitchen while they were in the closet, so he knew their boss was still awake late that night. If she was tired, he'd have thought she'd be asleep by then.

Come to think of it now, her behavior did seem pretty unusual. "You know, when you went in for a shower this morning, she asked for a little tour of the cabin."

"But there's only one other room she hadn't been in," Riley remarked. A tour would be pointless, but it would also be a clever way of gaining access to a room without looking suspicious.

"That's what I thought," he agreed, "But I showed her your room anyways." Gabriel was thinking along the same lines as her now and hurried into the smaller room. There was no air vent or any place that a camera could be placed at a good angle higher up, so he searched the desk light and the back of the dresser for something else. Soon, he held up an even smaller, round, black device.

"She bugged my room?" Riley mouthed to Gabriel. She had no doubt now that the entire cabin could be bugged or have hidden cameras all around. Anger bubbled up inside her towards her boss who had been lecturing them about being professional. The least Lillian could do was to let them know they were being watched before they found out themselves.

"Outside?" Gabriel gestured with his thumb. Once out on the gravel of the driveway, Riley stared at the entryway to the cabin, and out of the corner of her eye, saw a little red light that was no doubt hooked up to a device that was watching the front lawn. She wanted to scream in frustration. Before Gabriel could say something to calm her down, she yanked his arm over towards the fire pit in the middle of the lawn.

"Why do you feel the need to tear my arm from my shoulder?" he grumbled, rubbing the spot where her fingernails had accidently caught his skin.

"Sorry, but there's another one above the door," she ground out. "She's watching us, Gabriel. I don't like being watched." The brunette started to pace furiously near the campfire area, trying to compose herself and think about why Lillian would do this without telling them. "What is the point of all of this? Does she really not trust us?"

"I don't know." Lillian sometimes got on his nerves. Really, really got on his nerves. But he never thought his boss would stoop so low as to plant bugs around the house to spy on them. Through the storm of dark thoughts in his mind, one broke through that seemed a little brighter. "Maybe she was trying to watch for the guardsman covertly?" he offered.

"But why would she need to do that in our bedrooms? And why make it chip-proof?" she wondered. Riley's anger was slowing somewhat, but she still didn't understand the situation. Gabriel sat down on a log, watching her slow in her pacing until she joined him.

Defeated and out of ideas, Riley said, "This doesn't add up."

"That's something we can agree on." Gabriel put his chin on his hands. "I can't help but find it creepy that the whole of Cyber Command will be able to watch us at any waking moment." That meant that he was going to have to watch what he said, even more so than normal. He wasn't quite sure what he needed to be hiding from his coworkers, unless they somehow knew about…

But that would be ridiculous. And no one would really care that much about how much time the two agents spent acting… unprofessionally, right?

"Gabriel," Riley started in a low voice, "We just have to go in there and act normal. I don't know what this means, and I don't like it, but I think we should just go along with it for now." She ran a hand through her hair and stood up, not waiting for an answer.

She was so focused in her anger about the situation that she didn't think to even consider any other options. Gabriel didn't seem to know what else to do either, though he felt like protesting against that particular order, quite honestly.

He'd thought that they'd finally gotten to a spot where Riley protested less and less every time he started kissing her. This sure as hell was going to screw things up if he wasn't allowed to so much as make a suggestive comment to her, much less be able to touch her. His blood started boiling for an entirely different reason then, and it took him a minute to regain his composure enough to follow her into the cabin.

Seeing as Gabriel didn't have much ground on which to argue with Riley about their latest "acting normal" scheme, he decided to make himself busy in the kitchen while staying as far away from her as possible.

It was like he turned into an animal around her, always trying to rattle her composure and shake things up because he liked to see what it did to her. It felt like he couldn't control himself, and he wasn't so sure he could act as normally around her as he once did before they came to the safe house.

Gabriel pondered whether or not it would be so horrible if Lillian did find out about them. Well…but what was there to find out about? That they'd kissed a couple of times? It's not like they were in any sort of relationship. All Gabriel knew was that his stomach had started doing funny things whenever she walked past him and that she smelled really nice and that he absolutely adored waking up next to her in the morning.

Nothing special or anything like that.

However, they were going to spend less and less time in each other's close company, and he was still frustrated about that. Once Lillian called them to check in, he wasn't going to hold back on his own interrogation against her.

Both he and Riley needed answers.

The call from Lillian came in at about half-way through their dinner. Gabriel cursed when the phone rang as a bite of his food was halfway up to his mouth. It seemed he was getting more and more irritated as their boss continued interrupting their dinners.

When it sounded, Gabriel picked it up before Riley did. Their hands both shot out for the burner phone between them on the table, Riley's landing atop his. A split-second stare-down made her remove her hand so he could answer it.

"So, you've decided to start spying on us?" he immediately grumbled into the receiver. He put Lillian on speakerphone to appease his partner, who was already looking peeved.

Riley picked at her food, glancing from her plate to her frowning partner on the other side of the table. She should've been thankful that her partner had prepared another meal for her, but she didn't have an appetite. It gave her the creeps knowing that she had no privacy to do or say what she wanted. She tried to focus on the feeling of satisfaction she would get knowing Gabriel wasn't going to let Lillian off the hook.

A heavy sigh could be heard on the other line. "Now is not the time, Gabriel. We have some important information on-"

"I think it's the perfect time to discuss this," he said, trying to keep his voice even. "Were you ever going to say anything?"

"No, Gabriel, now listen," Lillian's voice raised, sounding unimpressed by his attempt to get the truth from her. "Like I said, we have more important things to deal with at the moment. After sending out a BOLO for the guardsman, we got a hit in a few towns over from where you're staying. Officers picked him up in a stolen car and last we knew they were placing him in holding. We have yet to hear back from the station on whether or not they've secured him."

"The guardsman…" Riley started.

"…Was captured?" Gabriel finished.

There was no sound in the room save for the static of the phone and the metallic clanking of Riley's spoon as it dropped down to her plate. She cringed when it hit, suddenly feeling like the noise was much too loud. Gabriel's face was unchanged, but he was avoiding eye contact with her and staring down the phone in his hand.

"So…we really are going home this time," Gabriel stated, breaking the silence. He swallowed and finally met Riley's gaze. "It's all over, then?"

Riley abruptly stood up, taking her dishes with her into the kitchen. She suddenly didn't want to hear the rest of what Lillian had to say.

This day had gone all wrong from the start. Lillian had betrayed their trust, making them watch what they were doing all day. She hadn't even known what to do after their boss left.

Usually, they would have hung out together and done some random activity until Gabriel decided he would find some way to make it inappropriate. This time, she had to force herself to leave the room whenever he came to join her just to make sure nothing would show up on the cameras, and it had made her feel like absolute crap. The frown on Gabriel's face when she did such a thing had been enough to put them both in a down mood.

And, after all of the moping they'd done, the agents had been told it was time to come home again - this time for real.

Before, when Lillian had said they had more time at the cabin, Riley had been thrilled. She never took vacations, and while she was here to do a job, Gabriel made it feel more like it was a vacation. Sure he got on her nerves all the time, made trouble for her, and made her job a million times harder some days, but it was worth it for all the good moments they'd shared together the last week.

Lillian had also told Riley that she wouldn't get fired for consorting with another coworker. She once had the thought that maybe she'd be able to let loose enough for something like that to happen, but not anymore. How would she be able to trust anything their boss would say anymore? For all she knew, she might not get fired for having an inter-office relationship, but transferred to another department instead.

Lillian would be the type to leave something like that out, Riley thought bitterly.

In the other room she'd heard Gabriel finishing up the phone call almost an hour ago, sounding none too pleased about it. In another moment he was at her side, and she tried to calm her still-jittery nerves when he placed a hand briefly upon her shoulder blade. It seemed the touch was only to make her aware of his presence, as he moved away again to lean his back against the counter next to her, not saying a word.

Riley supposed his company did bring her a bit of comfort as she continued washing the dishes over and over again in the sink. When she was finally ready to speak, she asked, "What else did Lillian say?"

A look of relief passed over Gabriel's features when she spoke to him again, but it turned into a self-depreciating smile. "Well you know how I have somewhat of a hard time controlling my anger sometimes?" He waited for her to nod. "Basically, she told us to come straight back home immediately."

Riley didn't want her disappointment to show, but found she couldn't stop the tired sigh from escaping her lips.

She sounded defeated when she spoke. "But it's late. We'd get back in the early hours of the morning of we left now."

"I know. Listen, I'm sorry if I made things even worse."

"You know what?" Riley turned to him and met his eyes fleetingly. "I don't care anymore. And it's not you that I blame, Gabriel," she said pointedly to another hidden camera she'd found above the fridge. She gave up on trying to clean her plate and reached for the towel behind her partner.

Gabriel moved to block Riley out of the camera's line of view and put his hands over hers, stilling her movements. He took a step forward and said in a quiet voice, "I really am sorry."

Never had he given her so sincere an apology, and it caused her pulse to skitter. Riley wondered if he could feel it in her wrist where his warm fingers were wrapped around her skin. For a second, she thought he might kiss her, but he only dropped her hands and walked out of the kitchen.

She hated that she still expecting things like that to happen.

Stalling by pretending the dishes still needed cleaning wouldn't help, so Riley followed him down the hall to pack her belongings. She hadn't actually brought much, and most of her things were still in her tiny travel bag, save for the dress that she managed to bring along.

As she opened the doors to the closet and laid eyes on the black lace dress, she was hit with a small wave of memories from the evening at the lodge so many nights ago. Well, it felt like a longer time than it had actually been since the party, but she could recall with perfect detail the moments she'd shared with the man across the hall. How it had felt pressed up against him, the smell of his aftershave, the way they'd danced together – oh, she so longed for that same carefree feeling she'd experienced.

But all too soon, things had changed.

Neatly, she folded the dress in a way that it would not wrinkle and set it atop her other clothes. She absently wondered if Gabriel might ever see her in the dress again.

Riley shook her head. She needed to stop thinking those sorts of things. It was time to go home.

Her partner was still packing a few of his bath supplies when she passed his room. She went out to place her bag in the trunk of their vehicle and when she returned, Riley noticed a curious thing. The burner phone that was still on the dining room table was lit up.

She opened the first text message from Lillian. She tensed as a feeling of alarm graced over her.

Where the hell are you two? Pick up the damn phone. It's important.

There were more messages, but she opened an unexpected one from Nelson next.

Listen to your voicemail, it's urgent. Please.

Her warning bells were definitely ringing loudly now.

"Hey, I think something's wrong," Riley called into the next room. "Did you put the phone on silent?"

"Yeah, why?" Gabriel poked his head out of the bedroom.

"We have a few voicemails from the boss, not to mention tons of angry texts. You'd better come in here," she requested. Their voicemail was soon dialed and they listened patiently for an explanation as to what was going on.

"Gabriel, Riley, listen carefully. I know I told you to come home, but we've just received an update about the guardsman. We're not sure what happened, but the station where he was being held was ambushed and every suspect being held escaped. The troopers inside were all found dead, bled to death. The bodies were found hours after the break out. Agents, they've had lots of time to plan their next move. Call me immediately after you get this."

Gabriel opened the next voicemail with an anxious expression on his face.

"I hope you're on the road by now. The ballistic report just came back. Whoever these men are they are armed and dangerous. You are to avoid engaging with these men at all costs, am I clear? Riley, I expect you to make sure both of you arrive home safely. Hurry back."

The concern evident in Lillian's voice was far from reassuring. There was one last message left.

"Dammit, I need at least one of you to pick up phone. Remember what we said about keeping me updated? In case either of you wanted to know, the cameras hooked up in the cabin are going haywire, so I can't tell whether you're still there or not. And speaking of updates – Nelson found out the guardsman was being held at the same place as that hiker you mentioned… Charles? No – Chris? It doesn't matter. If they've talked, you've been compromised. Get as far away from your campsite as possible – That's an order."

"When was that message left?" Riley asked. She stood straight up, going into bodyguard mode, but her voice was full of worry.

"Over a half hour ago."

Riley swore under her breath and brushed past him. "Alright, we need to get moving immediately. I'll get the last of my stuff from the bathroom. Are you-?"

"All packed." He held up his bag with one hand and slung it over his shoulder.

She quickly gathered the rest of her things and returned into the living room. Some of the lightness was desperately trying to make its way back into her tone. "All right. If we leave now, we can still make it out alive."

Gabriel met her eyes and shared a nervous smile. Everything would be okay.

That, of course, was when everything went pitch dark in the cabin. A chill swept down Riley's spine and she reached for her gun, dropping everything else that had been in her hands.

"Do you hear that?" Gabriel whispered through the darkness. He stepped forward until his hands met her forearm and grabbed ahold tightly, as if he would somehow lose her.

"No?" She whispered back confusedly. The silence that filled the void after she spoke was deafening.

"Exactly," he said after a full minute.

Oh. It all of a sudden clicked in Riley's brain. It was eerily calm outside.

Stormy weather wasn't the cause of this blackout.

A/N: Even more updates to come. I also wanted to ask – do you guys even know how awesome you are? Can we all just be best buddies?

Thanks to readers and reviewers KTaylorCSI (I agree whole heartedly!), nrdhrd3, KVD, TearsInTheDust, clay cowan, USNeshama, bandgeek033095, Alara A, Midgardian Avenger (jeez I love your username), Guest, sunshineforever13, and kwisteria for your awesomeness. Your feedback gets me up in the morning. XO