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chapter sixty-three
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if it takes my whole life, i won't break i won't bend
it'll all be worth it, worth it in the end
'cause i can only tell you what i know
that i need you in my life
when the stars have all gone out
you'll still be burning so bright
-Sarah McLachlan, "Answer"
xx
April 9, 2004
New York City
7:30 pm
Sam gave her report a final once-over before hitting print and going over to the printer to retrieve it. She sighed as she fingered each page of her case report; she was not supposed to be working tonight. But before she could lament any further on her misfortune, she heard Jack call out from his office.
"You still here?" he asked, striding purposefully across the bullpen.
She smiled and shrugged, trying to play it off. "Just try to keep me away," she joked. She leaned forward and signed her name to the bottom of her case report, clipping it together and handing it to Jack. "Here's my report on the Mark Wilson case; I wanted to finish a few things off before I head home."
Jack took the report from her, his eyes scanning the first page quickly before nodding and dropping his hand to his side. It had been a bad week for the whole team, the previous week ended chasing down leads to find Mark Wilson, and in the process, their faith in the legal system had been severely shaken as they just barely saved Mark's son from being executed for a crime he did not commit. This week started on another inauspicious note as they hunted down a college football coach who suffered his first losing season because he was trying to clean up the athletic program, only to find him dead. Jack had been unusually distracted, and his ex-wife Maria had been in and out of the office several times. Although she had not noticed, Sam suspected that Jack had been in his office brooding for the better portion of the evening.
"You done for the night?" he asked.
She shook her head, unable to read the expression on his face. "No, I want to finish up a few more things here before I head out. Are you on your way out?"
He squared his shoulders back, as if to brace himself. "Yeah, I have to head uptown to Maria's new place to pick up the girls and talk some things over."
She took a few steps back over to her desk and glanced up at the picture frames that now lined the top of her desk. Frames that, one year ago, she would never have considered putting out on display. She turned her body back to face him, leaning back against the side of her desk, and commented, "You get the girls for the weekend? That will be nice."
He nodded, giving her a half-smile. "It should be. Kate has her first softball game, and she's volunteered me to be team dad. I'm in charge of making sure everyone has a juice box and a granola bar after the game."
Sam laughed at this, but before she could answer, her cell phone shrilled in her pocket and she flipped it open to answer it. "Hey," she tucked a loose hair behind her ear as she answered, not needing to ask who it was. "Did you manage to break free?"
On the other end of the line, she heard Martin let out a long, deep sigh. "Just for a few minutes. I left in the middle of a dramatic reading of Shakespeare's Sonnets; I just wanted to give you a call and see how you were doing."
"I'm fine," she said, sitting down in her desk chair as she massaged the back of her neck with her free hand. Her muscles were taught and tense after several long weeks, and she was disappointed that Martin was still stuck in Washington. "I decided to just stay at the office and finish off some of my paperwork. How is everything going?"
Martin was supposed to fly in this afternoon because their anniversary had been two days prior. He had 'big plans' for the evening, although he refused to divulge just what those plans were. Instead, he got holed up in the Senate when Garrett McDowell started a filibuster to delay the vote on a piece of legislation that Martin had introduced nicknamed the Ashton Bill, which would institute a series of new environmental policies to further prevent water pollution. The bill was going to go through with a wide majority, but McDowell started the filibuster in a last-ditch effort to prevent the inevitable. And Martin was stuck in DC until it was all over and done with, which was how Sam found herself working a late night at the office when she should have been out celebrating.
The other end of the phone was quiet for a long, charged moment, and she could see Martin running his hands over his face out of frustration. "I'm tired and I'm hungry and I would rather be in New York with you," he answered finally. "I'm disappointed that tonight got ruined; I've been looking forward to having some time alone with you for weeks."
"Me too," she answered, closing her eyes and leaning back against her desk chair. She made it down to Washington for a long weekend once, but other than that, they hadn't actually seen each other since her mother's wedding. "There will be other weekends though."
"Yeah. It's just ... I miss you, Sam."
"I miss you too," she said, "But you should probably get back. You wouldn't want to miss anything..."
He chuckled. "Yeah, if I'm not careful they'll be reading the rules of bridge when I get back." With one final sigh, he continued, "I love you Sam, I'll call you tomorrow."
"Love you, too," she answered back, hitting 'end' before flipping her phone shut and setting it back in her pocket. She turned around to apologize to Jack for the interruption, but a quick look around revealed a completely empty bullpen. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a small notecard on the far recesses of her desk. She picked up the card and read the note that Jack left behind:
Had to go to Maria and the girls. Goodnight.
Jack
She crumpled the note into a ball and unceremoniously tossed it into the trash can underneath her desk. There was a time in her life where she received these notes on numerous occasions, where she would look forward to these notes even as he would go back to his wife and daughters after sharing her bed. Those notes were her lifeline; this one meant nothing.
She wandered into the break room, done with her paperwork but not wanting to go home alone just yet either. She flipped on the TV and switched the channel to C-SPAN2, where Garrett McDowell had jumped a few hundred years and was reading aloud from Harry Potter instead of Shakespeare; the filibuster was still going in full force.
Sam was immensely disappointed that he was stuck in Washington indefinitely on the night they were supposed to be out celebrating their anniversary. She never made it to six months with any other man, so the one year mark with Martin felt like something worth celebrating. More and more often however, she was beginning to wonder how much longer they were going to be able to be long distance.
She was shaken from her musings when the break room door swung open and Danny walked in.
"Why are you still here?" he raised an eyebrow suspiciously. "Isn't Martin supposed to be in town this weekend?"
She nodded, rolling her eyes and motioning towards the television. "His plane was supposed to land almost three hours ago. Instead, I'm staying late to finish up paperwork because my boyfriend is trapped in the US Senate while a member of his own party reads from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets to delay the vote that was supposed to go down at 11:00 this morning."
"Yikes, I'm sorry Sam." Danny shrugged his shoulders, a guilty, sympathetic look on his face.
Sam let out a long sigh and rolled her head back, rotating her neck several times. She asked, "What are you doing back here? Didn't you leave almost two hours ago?"
Danny cocked his eyebrows suggestively. "I'm meeting someone downtown tonight, and I left my cell phone at my desk. I heard the TV on in here, so I figured I would come investigate."
"Here I am," she replied. "Everyone else is long gone for the weekend."
He gave her a commiserating smile. "You know, at first I really didn't think I was going to like the Senator," he met her eyes, shrugging sheepishly. "I didn't really interact with him last year when his nieces went missing, and when I first found out you two were seeing each other, I thought he was going to be a pompous, self-righteous jackass, just another guy who wasn't good enough for you."
This did not come as a surprise to Sam; everyone had to prove themselves to Danny before he could give them his seal of approval. "What changed your mind?" she asked finally.
Danny gave her one of his patented self-satisfied smirks and explained, "Well, when he was helping us work the Wyland case a couple of months ago, the two of us had a little chat right here in the break room..."
xx
Danny's stomach rumbled loudly as he made his way toward the break room. They'd been working overtime trying to catch a break in the Hugo Wyland case, all while trying to keep up with their normal case load, and he had missed dinner. He hoped there were some Snyder's pretzels left in the vending machine.
As he neared the break room door, he heard loud noises coming from inside. He stalled outside the door, not sure if he should go in or if he should wait for a few minutes. That's when he heard the Senator's voice echoing back loudly. This conversation seemed to be one sided, so Danny assumed that he must be on the phone with someone and obviously upset.
"... and I'm telling you that you need to calm down and give me a little space. I'm in New York now and I'm not sure I'm going to be back until the vote next Monday."
Danny frowned. If the Senator was seeing someone behind Sam's back, he would have Fitzgerald's head on a plate. He wouldn't be the only one, either, he thought as he glanced back to the bullpen where Naomi and Viv were both crouched over, studying something on Naomi's computer screen. His interest irrevocably piqued, he listened harder trying to get a better idea of to whom the Senator was talking.
"Look, Dad," Fitzgerald barked, "I don't care if I lose ten thousand dollars towards my re-election campaign if I can't even do the job I was elected to do in the first place. I asked Sam if I could help, and I intend to see this through because it's the right thing to do." He paused for a beat, apparently listening to the Deputy Director speak on the other end of the line. Danny felt a sense of relief that he hadn't accidentally eavesdropped on a conversation that had the potential to break Sam's heart. After just a few seconds, however, Fitzgerald raised his voice again. "Then why don't you call me back when you think I'm feeling a little more 'reasonable'."
The conversation stopped short, and Danny assumed that Fitzgerald must have hung up the phone. Danny's stomach growled loudly at him, and he braced himself before pushing the door open and entering the break room. The door swung back and forth as it shut behind him, and he greeted the Senator formally as he headed directly for the vending machine.
"You can call me 'Martin' you know," Fitzgerald said. "How much of my phone call did you overhear?"
Danny shrugged, his back still turned as he dropped three quarters into the slots and pressed the corresponding buttons for his pretzels. The machine beeped and dropped his pretzels to the bottom.
"It's okay, you certainly wouldn't be the first person to overhear me in a 'fundamental disagreement' with my father. He makes it a habit to second guess everything I do." Fitzgerald set his shoulders back and shook his head with a roll of his eyes. "But I'm sure Sam has told you that before."
Danny shrugged, opening his bag of pretzels and snagging a handful. He bit into them with a loud crunch, chewing and swallowing before he replied. "To be honest, Sam doesn't really talk much about you two while we're at work. She tries as much as she can to keep it separate from the office." Martin nodded quietly, and Danny took the opportunity to continue. "I have to say, I'm glad to see you here helping out with the case. Sam really took this whole thing to heart, and I'm glad you're helping her do something about it." He crooked his head and met Martin's eyes to make sure he was listening. With a deep breath, Danny puffed his chest out a little and adopted his best macho special agent voice, and he warned, "I hope you realize that Sam is practically my family, more than my own brother, and no one will be happier than I am to see you together as long as you treat her well. But if you break her heart, the entire Missing Persons team will be on you faster than your secret service can handle. Capisce?"
Martin smiled. "I have no doubt that you and Naomi and Vivian could take out the best of my secret service, but I assure you that it will not be necessary. Sam can be the most frustrating woman I've ever met, but that makes her all the more worth it."
"Excellent, mi amigo," Danny proclaimed as he held out his hand to shake. Martin took the proffered hand and, as they shook, Danny said with certainty, "Then we should get along just fine."
xx
"Danny, you didn't!" Sam exclaimed, half amused and half horrified; Martin had never so much as mentioned it to her.
Danny smiled smugly, obviously very pleased with himself. "I did. Samantha, you are like a sister to me and I will always have your back, whether you like it or not." He leaned forward, wrapping his arms around her in a friendly hug. "Now, you should stop wallowing at work and get out of here. It's Friday and the night is young, enjoy yourself. I must be getting on my way..." he paused for dramatic effect, waggling his eyebrows, "I have a date."
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