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chapter eighteen

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it's become just like a chemical stress
tracing the lines in my face for
something more beautiful than is there
i've barely been gone
-Rilo Kiley, "My Slumbering Heart"

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Washington, DC
3:00 pm

"Senator Fitzgerald," his father's long-time secretary, Margaret, greeted him. "So nice to see you again."

"You too, Margaret," he said, waving absent-mindedly. "Is my father still in?"

She nodded, motioning towards his father's closed office door. "I'll let him know you're here."

"He's not in an important meeting, is he?" Martin asked, turning his gaze to glance at Margaret, who shook her head. "Then I'll just let myself in."

She gave him a small smile, and he nodded his head determinedly. His hand on the door knob, he paused long enough to take a deep breath before turning the knob and letting himself in.

His father was sitting forward in his desk chair, looking extremely stressed as he barked replies into the telephone.

"No! ... No, I said for them to handle it..." Victor looked up, meeting his son's gaze and mouthing 'one minute' to Martin. "Listen, Leonard, you're going to have to pick up the slack on this one... No, I'm running interference on something else right now. Listen, I have to go now anyway... Just take care of it."

"Dad?" he asked, observing his father's tense but professional demeanor.

"Sorry, son. We've had a situation come up in the Charlotte field office, and they seem to be incapable of handling things on their own," his father let out a sigh of disapproval that he knew only too well. "What do I owe this pleasure?"

Victor stood from his desk to shake Martin's hand.

"What the hell is going on, Dad?" he asked, knowing it was better not to beat around the bush when his father was concerned.

"Excuse me, Martin?" His father did not skip a beat.

Martin stiffened his posture defensively, preparing himself for confrontation. "You know what I'm talking about. I'm just lucky that Colin Adair thought enough to warn me about what was going on before the DOJ cornered me outside the Senate Chamber this morning."

"Martin--" his father said warningly.

"Don't give me that. You could have at least warned me that it was about the Missing Persons team!" Martin yelled, remembering the sense of panic that had arisen within him when he learned that morning that it was Samantha's team that was being investigated. "They saved Kelsey and Bridget's lives... Did you just forget, or do you not give a damn?"

"Of course I remember, Martin!" His father matched his tone in intensity. "Why do you think I've been trying to divert the investigation? Do you think I've just been sitting on my ass for the past three weeks? I was informed of this well over a month ago."

"So it was okay to take the team down then, but it's not now? I guess I should be glad you're at least appreciative of what they did for our family." He had always thought his father to be stern but fair. If Victor had been supporting the investigation before, though, he wouldn't know who or what to believe.

Victor sighed, moving to take a seat behind his desk again and motioning for Martin to sit as well. "It's not that easy, Martin. The team, they're good agents. You saw as much when we were there."

"So then why try to take them down?" he asked incredulously.

"It wasn't to take down the entire team, just Malone."

"The SAC?" Of all the members of the team, Jack was the one Sam spoke of least frequently. He had always assumed it was simply because Jack was their boss and, therefore, was somewhat separated from the rest of the team.

"Jack Malone is an extremely talented agent. But he's made some mistakes recently, and they haven't gone unnoticed." Victor said, giving a terse nod of his head.

"What kind of mistakes?"

"He came to DC a month or so ago to interrogate Congressman Whitehurst..." His father explained.

Martin released a small laugh; he had met Congressman Whitehurst on several occasions. "Whitehurst is pond scum, and you know it, Dad."

"We can't all have you impeccable morals, Martin," his father admonished.

"It's not morals," he argued. "Nobody should be above the law. If Whitehurst was a suspect, then he shouldn't get any special treatment."

"Even so, son, but there are more tactful ways to go about doing so," came Victors reply.

"That was only a few weeks ago, though. Why use Anwar Samir to bring him down?"

"DOJ thought Samir would be the easiest way to go about it."

He was shocked at the ease with which his father explained the situation to him.

"So everyone gets what they want, then? DOJ gets a fall guy, and you get to bring Jack Malone down?" Martin accused.

Victor sighed heavily. "I didn't say I was pleased about it -- not anymore. I appreciate everything their team did for our family. But Jack Malone did have it coming to him..." Victor paused for a moment, then continued slowly. "You can say what you want about my commitment to our family, but I have always been faithful."

Martin should not have been shocked. After all, it was something he saw from almost all of his colleagues. But he still felt slightly taken aback at his father's insinuations. He swallowed, resignedly. "Regardless, we still owe the entire team."

"What do you suggest that we do, then?" His father spoke with derisive authority, as though he were daring Martin to come up with a course of action that he hadn't already contemplated.

Martin rolled his eyes. "I would like to think that between the two of us, that we could come up with something."

xx

New York City
3:40 pm

Jason Farrell paced behind the desk of Jack's office, waving one arm emphatically while the other rested casually on his hip. His tone was leading and accusatory, and Samantha was already at her wit's end after recounting the entire investigation for him. "So your statement is you believe Agent Malone's handling of the Samir case was both appropriate and professional?"

"Absolutely," she said curtly.

"And that the two of you have no difference of opinion with regard to tactical strategy?"

She shook her head "Not really. No."

Farrell leaned down to pick up the file lying on the desk. "Well, according to Agent Malone's own report, you approached him with your concerns about 'jumping too quickly to the conclusion that Samir was a terrorist.'"

Sam swallowed. "We may have talked about it."

"Would you mind characterizing your conversation for me, please?" He insisted.

As she recounted her conversation with Jack for Farrell, she recalled her own shock at the way Jack had treated her that day. He had spoken to her harshly, threatening to remove her from the case. It had been the first time she had ever allowed herself to get furiously angry with Jack Malone: although she had kept her demeanor calm and collected to his face, inside she had been boiling.

She was careful to keep her own personal feelings in check, however, as she spoke with Farrell. Jack had made it perfectly clear that they were over, in spite of the fact that he had separated from Maria, and she would not be made to be any man's fool.

Farrell raised his eyebrows suggestively as she finished her story. "Threatening to reassign you because you challenged one of his decisions?"

"In cases like this, emotions tend to run fairly high, Agent Farrell," she said defensively.

"I'm sure they do," he brushed off her reply, sitting down at the desk. He raised one hand as she moved to get up from her own seat. "Oh, oh, one other thing, Agent Spade. Have you and Agent Malone ever had a sexual relationship?"

She felt like she had been punched in the gut, and she had no idea how to respond while keeping both of their careers intact. "I beg your pardon," she said, tersely.

"Unless you're going to go Clinton on me, it's a fairly straightforward question," he practically sneers, and she fought the urge to slap him.

"You have no right to ask me that," she replied.

"Actually, I do. Administrative Operation Procedures of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, section 23--" he stated, looking very self-important. "'A supervising agent--' that would be Agent Malone -- 'is strictly forbidden from having a sexual relationship with an agent and his immediate reporting chain.'" He paused long enough to give her a hard stare. "That would be you."

"I am not going to respond to this." She rose from her seat indignantly, stepping toward the office door.

"We are not done," Farrell said forcefully, stopping her in her tracks. "Look, Samantha..."

"Agent Spade," she corrected.

"Agent Spade..." he approached her. She crossed her arms and tilted her head back defensively as he spoke. "I don't mean to be impolitic when I say I think we can all understand the pressures of this job, especially the difficulties a junior agent may face, say, if she were approached by a superior -- a man in a very unhappy marriage, desperate for the intimacy he wasn't getting at home. In this light, the Agent's actions would be understandable. However, refusing to answer, or lying about such a relationship, would not."

As Farrell spoke, she mentally considered how she was going to respond. Obviously, this was not going to go away by simply wishing it. "Your accusations are unfounded," she replied.

"Maybe," he said, sitting down on Jack's office sofa. "Or maybe not. You should know as well as anyone that security card access codes and cell phone records can be rather telling."

Farrell held out several pieces of paper for her: her cell phone records from the months she and Jack had been together.

"Jack and I are friends; we've worked on the same team for well over two years now," she defended. "If you look carefully at this, you'll see I talk to all of my teammates on a regular basis."

"To be quite honest, the Bureau does not care what you do with the rest of your teammates on your own free time, Agent Spade. I am asking you if you have ever had a sexual relationship with Agent Malone."

"And I--" Sam rose from the sofa and stepped towards the door, "am telling you that it is not true. We're done here, Agent Farrell."

Sam shut the door forcefully behind her, breathing heavily as she went searching for a place where she could find some peace and quiet. She stepped into the conference room, finding it devoid of occupants, and sat on the sofa against the back wall. The Bureau still had a long way to go in regards to the way it treated female employees, she thought. Jack was the one who had cheated on his wife, but she was the one who was made to feel like a whore.

She jumped forward slightly as she felt her cell phone vibrating in her jacket pocket -- she had switched it to silent while she had been in with Farrell. Her breath caught in her throat as the caller ID revealed a 202 number. Martin.

Shit.

She let the phone ring and go to voice mail, unable to come up with the courage to answer his call. She wondered if maybe he knew about the investigation. Or worse, if he had found out about her past with Jack through another source.

Her hands shaking, she opened her phone and dialed the number for her voice mail.

"Hey, it's me." Martin's now familiar voice made her pulse quicken, although she was not sure from what. "I know you tried to call me back earlier. I'm sure things are pretty crazy there with the Samir case and the Spaulding trial, and that's why you didn't leave a message. But if you get this later and you want to talk, just give me a call. And, uh, Sam--" Martin's voice broke slightly at the end of the message. "I miss you."

She swallowed hard as she lowered the phone from her ear and placed it back in her pocket.

She knew Martin was different than any other man she had ever dated, had known that from the beginning -- and it wasn't about his public status or his Senate position. It was about the kind of person he was. Even though the expectations of a long-distance relationship were different, she knew that she had been trying -- really trying.

She fought back tears with the realization that she had already let him down.

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