Thanks to my wonderful beta Kristen! I've finally finished the xmas fics, so you have something else to look forward to.
Chapter 2: Project Indigo
He let her recover from the shock. "Monday morning. We will work through your memories. It should help you remember what happened. What is the first thing you remember about Monday morning?"
She smirked. "You mean after that?"
He had a matching smirk on his face. "Good start."
Lily closed her eyes and allowed her mind to drift back.
Monday morning
A very faint light filled the bedroom, but Lily did not bother to turn on the light. Sunlight would have to do. She did not wish to wake Alex up.
She sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the paper in her hands. Part of her said she should be wearing gloves for this, but her rational side kicked in to remind her that it had already been checked for fingerprints and she did not care about chain of evidence. This would be dealt with by her and her alone.
The dim morning light made it hard to read, but she reread it anyway. Anger burnt inside of her and she vowed to sort this out. She sighed and glanced at the alarm clock. 0400. Far too early for her to get up and harass people again.
Except possibly LJ. But he couldn't help her with this.
She sighed again and forced herself to get up. After hiding the paper in her wardrobe, she padded across the floor and into her spare room. Jenny was fast asleep, dead to the world. Lily let a small grin cross her face; she had tucked Jenny in herself earlier and threatened to shoot her if she went anywhere near a case file.
The cots at the end of the bed called to her, and she double-checked the twins had not suddenly learnt to walk and disappeared. Nothing had changed; Camilla and Rose continued to sleep, their little chests rising and falling.
Lily remembered watching her son when he was an infant. She had spent long nights staring at him, checking he was breathing. She had barely been able to leave his side for fear he would die, just as her husband had.
She took a deep breath to steady herself, and turned her thoughts away from those dark days. Jasper was fine. He was sleeping in his dorm at his school. She had spent the previous day with him and they had been to the zoo. All of them. Jenny had argued that the twins were not old enough to appreciate the animals, but Alex had countered it would be a nice day out for everyone.
Her cell phone rang in the other bedroom and Lily rushed to answer it. She was the only one awake and wanted it to remain that way. She snatched the phone up without checking the caller ID and answered it.
"This had better be World War fricking Three," she hissed.
"I am going to pretend I didn't hear that, Agent Shepard," came the reply.
Oops. Her boss, Arbourne. Not the best person to annoy this time of a morning.
"How fast can you get into my office?" he continued.
Lily glanced at the alarm clock again. "Depends. If I had a jet pack –"
"Just answer the damn question!" he roared.
She grinned. Winding Arbourne up was her specialty. "Half an hour," she guessed.
"Make it twenty minutes," he told her before hanging up.
Lily walked through the CIA headquarters, unsurprised at the busy activity around her.
People rushed around, yelling orders, knocking things over, kicking the vending machines, and generally getting in the way. The CIA was about the only federal building which did not get quiet at night. There was always a crisis somewhere to worry about.
Lily was glad she did not have to deal with this place day after day. Processing intelligence reports would drive her up the wall. Long missions – sometimes undercover, sometimes not – with danger and complications suited her fine. Sitting in an office all day was Hell.
Even if she covered for Jenny sometimes, but that was only for the change of pace.
She dodged an agent on a coffee run – literally – and ducked into the elevator. Agent Blain was the only other occupant, and she was busy quacking like a duck. Lily knew her idiosyncrasies hid a brilliant mind, so did not interrupt.
By the time the elevator reached the correct floor, Agent Blain had started mewing like a cat and Lily was glad to escape. She ploughed through a group of people discussing how accurate the British television show Torchwood really was, before diving into Arbourne's office.
He was not yet present.
Lily breathed a quick sigh of relief. Using her time wisely, she began to root through his desk. Chocolate, heart medication, chocolate, emergency coffee, half a dozen untraceable cell phones, a camera...
In Lily's opinion, cameras were fun. Not because you could take pictures, but because you could look at what other people had taken pictures of. She switched it on and started trawling through the images.
Nothing really interesting. Vacation snaps mainly. And also –
"Drop that camera right now!" Arbourne ordered, sweeping through the door like an ogre.
"Does the Director know you have pictures of a topless woman on here?" she asked, staying where she was.
He snatched the camera from her hands and returned it to his drawer. "One of these days," he warned. "Someone is going to kill you for aggravating them."
Lily shrugged her shoulders. Everyone wanted to kill her anyway. "There a reason you dragged me out of bed, Louis... I mean Loius."
The glare he shot her way warmed the cockles of her heart. "Probie work."
"You don't have to tell me again. Hanging sprigs of poison ivy on the door handles and telling the Probies that such plants are edible is wrong."
"You put five Probies in the hospital!" he screamed at her.
"And they have learnt a valuable lesson: Never believe everything someone tells you."
Arbourne shook his head in despair. "I am giving you a Probie job."
"My clearance –"
"Is the main reason you're getting it. Sit."
She took a chair opposite him and settled down.
"A piece of highly classified military software has gone missing from a Navy laboratory in Norfolk. For obvious reasons, we cannot read the agents investigating this into exactly what the software can do."
"I have the clearance to know about it," she guessed.
"You already do; it's Project Indigo."
She closed her eyes. Jeez.
"It will revolutionize warfare," he continued.
"I am well aware of what it will do," she snapped. "How did this happen?"
"Your job is not to investigate. All you need to do is stick with them, make sure they don't stumble across anything classified, and check we retrieve the correct object."
"What does it look like?"
"It looks like a camera memory card."
"Great," she scowled. "I'm going to have to get every possible suspect to hand over all their photos."
He rolled his eyes. "Get over it. I'd give this job to a Probie, except you have the necessary clearance and you know these people."
Lily stood up to leave. Her hand was on the door when Arbourne called out to her.
"I suggest you stop hiding things."
Lily snorted. Like that was ever going to happen.
The lab was small, stuffy and full of computers. Three things Lily did not like.
To make up for that, LJ and his team were in attendance. They all looked very tired, as though they had all been asleep when the call came in. Lily was capable of being quite petty when she was short on sleep.
The drive from Langley had been good. No one was on the roads so early in the morning, so she had been able to put her foot to the floor. She had even outran a traffic cop on a motorbike. Arbourne would be given the speeding ticket. She wouldn't actually give it to him, but she had borrowed his car from the parking garage so any tickets would not be in her name.
He had told her it was an urgent national security matter. How could he fault her desire for wanting to get stuck in?
"Found anything interesting?" she asked, making them all jump.
"I was hoping for a different ghost," Ziva complained.
"Spook," Tony corrected. He took another picture with his camera. "No idea what we're looking for."
LJ stepped right into her personal space. "Read us in," he ordered.
"Stolen technology, worth a lot of money… what else do you need to know?" she retorted.
"If I have to go over your head…"
"To whom? Arbourne? He'll tell you to come straight back to me. You don't need to know anything else. If the situation changes, I'll let you know."
LJ looked homicidal. The rest of his team didn't look too happy either.
"Have you found anything?" she asked again.
"Plenty of fingerprints," Tony noted. "But they could belong to anyone who works here."
"I'm trying to access the records to see who was here at the time of the theft," McGee added. "But it's a strange system so it might take me a while."
"It would really help if we knew more about Project Indigo," Ziva hinted.
Lily resisted the urge to shoot someone. Why did everyone think they knew better than her?