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chapter twenty-one

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you think your days are ordinary
and no one ever thinks about you
but we're all the same
and she can hardly breathe without you
-Keane, "She Has No Time"

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May 15, 2003
1:10 pm

Samantha sighed and hung up her phone, looking up at the expectant eyes of Sydney Harrison's assistant, Libby Coulter.

"What's up?" Naomi's voice carried from the opposite corner of the room, where she sat looking over a sample of Sydney's case files trying to get a better idea of how she worked.

"That was Jack," she put her phone back in her jacket pocket. "We have a drop location: the Table of Contents bookstore, over on Waverly. Jack wants us to meet him at the Revival Movie Theater across the street, we're going to set up there." Naomi nodded her agreement and both agents turned to Libby. "Libby, they've asked you to be the one to do the drop. Now, we'll go over the details with Agent Malone, but we need to know if this is something you think you can do. This is a routine thing, we do it all of the time. But just in case, if you think you can do this, we'll have several agents to back you up just in case anything happens."

Libby breathed deeply, her voice shaky and nervous, but full of determination. "I want to do this to help Sydney," she said.

"Okay, good," Naomi encouraged. "Let's go."

The three women made their way to the elevator and outside into the stuffy mid-May heat. Sam motioned towards where she had managed to find a parking space on the side of the street, knowing that Naomi usually took the subway, and opened the door for Libby to climb into the back seat. The two agents lingered next to the passenger's seat, Naomi's hand hesitating against the door handle.

"Are you okay?" Sam raised her voice, probing her friend.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Naomi said, shaking her head slightly. "I'm trying not to read too much into it, but something about this is giving me a really bad feeling..."

"It'll be fine, Naomi," Sam reassured her friend, dodging traffic as she walked around to the driver's side of the four door sedan. She sat down and his her eyes behind her sunglasses, trying to ignore the chill that ran down her spine that had nothing to do with the way the stream of cool air from the vent was hitting her skin.

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1:30 pm

"Make a wish and blow out the candles, sweetie!"

Aunt Bonnie held Bridget's hair out of her face as the little girl bent over her cake to blow out the candles. Well, spit on the candles would have been a more accurate statement. Several of Bridget's friends from preschool and their parents were also in attendance, as well as Martin, Victor and Lydia, Scott and Rebecca, the Tolands, Tim's older brother Neal, and Tim's mother. Tim's father had passed away just eighteen months ago from congestive heart failure.

All in all, the party had been a huge success, but as the cake was being passed out, Martin found himself leaning against the counter as a spectator, instead of in the middle of the action.

"Hey, Marty," his sister Rebecca approached him, offering a plate.

Martin took one look at the pile of pink confection sugar icing and declined. "No thanks, Beck."

"Okay," Becca crushed the plastic fork into the cake for emphasis. "Now I know something's up. Who are you and what have you done to my baby brother? I have known you for almost 32 years, and I don't think you refused food even when you were sick and throwing up!"

"I'm fine, Becca," he said, crossing his arms insistently across his chest.

"Well, sure, you look fine Marty. But I know you and I know something's up," Rebecca said defiantly, her eyes daring him to deny her. "This doesn't have to do with the fight you had with Dad that the two of you are just not talking about? Or your surprise visit a couple of weeks ago, does it?"

"What do you mean?" Martin cast his eyes downward and shuffled his feet, glad that everyone else's attention was directed towards the chatter of the small children at the kitchen table.

"Don't play stupid with me," Rebecca warned. "Caro told me you turned up unexpectedly two weeks ago; she said you seemed kind of upset."

"You have no idea," he lowered his voice, frustrated.

In the two weeks since he had come up to see Sam, he had gone over their conversation in his head a hundred times an hour. How could he have been so stupid that he didn't see it? There had been a different quality to the way that Jack had interacted with Sam, as opposed to Naomi and Vivian. And Sam had rarely ever mentioned his name; in fact, sometimes it seemed like she may have gone out of her way to avoid Jack's name coming up in conversation.

Though nothing that she had actually said had given him any indication that she still held feelings for Jack, he could not help but feel uncertain and insecure. Jack was her boss and had known her for far longer than he had; Martin felt almost betrayed. While rational thought told him that they were over, that she had explicitly said she and Jack had ended things well over a year ago, he worried that between the outside factors that already made their relationship intensely complicated, that maybe their young romance would not be able to survive this.

And he knew that he himself had not helped things by getting up and leaving the way that he did, but at the time, he was too shell-shocked to do anything else. When his father had hinted at Jack having an affair with someone else from the Bureau, he had never pictured it being someone from the team -- and never Samantha.

They had exchanged a few messages, although their main contact had been via home voice mail at a time when each had been certain the other would be out, and they had agreed to meet that evening for dinner. When they had first planned this a week ago, Martin had assumed he would have some brilliant revelation as to what he wanted to do, but the days had passed and still nothing.

Martin was torn, because the attraction he felt for Sam ran much deeper than just physical and he knew that, but at the same time, he did not want to get hurt by getting in too deep for someone who still held out hope for someone else.

Becca reached out and squeezed his shoulder, smiling reassuringly. "So be honest with me, Martin. Are you alright? Is everything okay with Sam?"

Martin felt his posture sag. "I don't know, but I think I'm going to find out tonight."

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1:50 pm

Samantha pulled on her light blue jacket and checked her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She and Naomi were both getting ready in the ladies room at the Revival Movie Theater, where the Bureau had set up a small team to prepare for the ransom drop.

It was becoming obvious that something about this case was deeply affecting Naomi, and she briefly considered confronting her friend about it. They could not risk anything going wrong in there if they wanted to find Sydney Harrison alive.

"Hey Sam?" The door to one of the stalls opened and Naomi stepped out, dressed in jeans and a dark green blouse. They would both be going in to cover for Libby, but they did not want to dress in a similar fashion and possible draw attention to themselves. Naomi seemed to have put aside whatever was bothering her, instead looking more concerned as she looked at Sam's reflection in the mirror.

"Yeah?"

"I know this isn't the best time, but I've been meaning to ask you. Is everything alright?" Naomi's eyes caught hers imploringly.

"I'm fine," she answered.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Naomi dismissed her quickly. "Because you know if you need someone to talk to, I'm here..."

Sam stood silently for a moment, thoughtful. "I know, Naomi. Thank you." She smiled at her friend, extremely grateful to have someone that she could trust if she decided she wanted to talk to somebody about what was going on between herself and Martin. Though she knew she wouldn't; it was far too personal and she did not want to explain to Naomi about her past with Jack. If nothing else, it would not be fair to put Naomi in a position where she could be vulnerable if there was another investigation. "We better get out there," she reminded. "Jack is going to need us to get in place."

"Right, of course."

Sam looked herself over in the mirror once more, making sure that her gun was secure and not visible to any onlookers, before pushing the door open and walking back around to the van where Jack was going over the final details with Libby Coulter. She took Naomi's bag from her so that Naomi could go into the bookstore first and moved to the back of the van, pulling the doors open and placing both her bag and Naomi's inside safely.

When she walked around to the side of the white vehicle, she found Jack giving Libby the explicit warning not to react to her and Naomi's presence inside the store.

They had, of course, gone over as much in the car on the way to the movie theater.

Jack gave her the go head, and she made her way across the street and into the small bookstore.

Knowing that Libby would not be far behind her, she quickly found her way to a small table that held a book display and tried to take in her surroundings, searching for a possible suspect.

She saw a woman reading in a chair not too far away from a little boy, whom she assumed was the woman's son, and ruled her out immediately. Two men were leaning against another set of bookshelves, one whom she couldn't get a good look at because he was too far away, and the other a slightly older man with a bit of a beard who made her a little bit nervous. She saw Naomi from a distance, noticing that her friend's eyes were also focused on the two different men leaning on the bookshelf.

She heard the door swing open and the bell ring, and in her peripheral vision, saw Libby walk in with the bag.

"Hey, can I help you with something?" The cashier greeted Libby.

"Uh, where's your travel section?" As Libby spoke, Sam cast her eyes quickly around the store to see if anyone had moved around. No luck.

The cashier pointed along the back wall. "Are you looking for anything in particular?"

"No, thanks," Libby replied.

Sam watched out of the corner of her eye as Libby set the bag down by the travel section and walked towards the front doors. Her eyes then turned to the slightly older man right in front of her. She estimated him in his late 40's or early 50's, and the way he held himself continued to make Sam nervous. He was moving, his body now angled a little closer to the travel section. Sam held her breath.

When Libby was about ten feet away, Sam heard the cashier speak up.

"Uh, miss-- You forgot your bag."

Shit.

"Oh, um, I'm ... just going to feed my meter. It, it's kind of heavy, so I just ... so ..." Libby was stuttering, flustered, obviously losing her focus and concentration. Sam saw a look of panic on her face as Libby seemed to recognize the man who had come out of the shadows from behind the windows during the commotion.

Sam turned herself around just in time to see the man grab the bag and head towards the door. The older man whom she had previously been eyeing suspiciously stepped into his way.

Before Sam could react to what was happening, the two men were shouting at each other.

"Hey, pal, that's not your bag! Hey, hey, hey! It's not ...!"

"Hey! Get the hell off!" The man with the bag yelled, pulling a gun and pointing it at the man who had threatened him.

Sam's heart was pounding in her chest at a million miles a minute, and as she quickly scanned the scene for anything that she could think of, she saw Libby hiding behind the far bookshelf, mouthing something into her sleeve.

And though Libby was quiet, she was just loud enough that Sam could here her frantic, hurried words muttered to Jack on the other end.

"It's Barry Mashburn, it's Barry Mashburn..."

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