Disclaimer: Still a girl, not a forty-year old guy in L.A/ Miami so I'm not the creator of these characters.
FBI psychologist Lance Sweets watched the man in the interrogation room. Sweets had seen lots of people in these interrogation rooms, but he had never seen anyone look so comfortable with the situation. Michael Westen didn't look tense any more like he had when they arrived. Now he man just looked tired, borderline bored. Sweets had even seen him yawn a few times as he answered the agents questions.
Sweets was supposed to be analyzing Michael's answers but he was having a hard time finding anything. Booth had told him that Michael was trained at resisting interrogation, but the way Michael was working the interrogators backwards was nothing short of impressive. Michael seemed quite practiced at answering the questions with the bare minimum of details so that the agents couldn't ask any other questions, but still couldn't learn anything. Miss Glennane was doing the same thing only with slightly more bite in her answer's.
Sweets glanced back down at part of the psych evaluation in Michael's file. From what Sweets could tell, the psych evaluation was one of the only parts of the file that hadn't been redacted to the point where it was nothing but black ink. The part that made Sweets uneasy was where it said:
Westen has a pronounced gift for simultaneous interrogation and counter interrogation. In evaluations, Westen almost managed to learn more about the trained interrogation specialist than the specialist learned about him.
Sweets looked back up when the door to the interrogation room opened and Booth walked in to talk to Michael.
Michael became more alert to, "Agent Booth. I guess their breaking out the big guns consider me flattered, although I am surprised about the lack of a polygraph machine." Sweets couldn't help but smile a bit at that. He mentally noted how Michael was managing to imply that all the proceedings were pointless while still cooperating with them.
"Sorry to disappoint about that," Booth said sitting in the chair across from Michael. "But polygraphs are expensive and I don't think it would have made much of a difference to you."
Michael shrugged, allowing that assumption. Polygraphs were a little harder to beat than a human but it was the same basic concept; Beatable.
"So as long as I'm still stuck here, what else do you need to know agent Booth?" Michael asked.
"What can you tell me about the death of Tomas Carr?" Booth asked, watching Michael carefully. Sweets watched Michael's to.
Michael's face closed off, and the light behind his eyes went black and Sweets couldn't help the cold shiver that ran down his back at the expression. He had never seen a living person with eyes that looked that dead.
"Carr tried to kill me and was a traitor He tried to get me to help. I made my refusal known in bullet form, and then he became a corpse instead of a traitor." Michael deadpanned.
There was a brief silence while Booth tried to swallow that nugget of information. "What about the death of Anson Fullerton?" Booth asked.
If it was possible, Michael's face went even blacker. "I answered all of these questions in a report. Go read it." The last words were like ice chips. Sweets noted his obvious aversion to that line of questioning.
"Why can't you answer my question?" Booth prodded. Sweets felt a stab of admiration, if someone was glaring at him the way Michael was glaring at Booth, he would have backed up by now.
Michael's face suddenly forcibly lightened. "There are some things I will talk about and some things I won't. This is one of the things I won't and you can't legally make me because it doesn't have anything to do with the case your currently investigating."
Dr. Brennan who had been silent for a while stopped Booth from asking any more questions by tapping him on the shoulder. She had been studying Michael for a while, and some physical aspects had caught her attention. "May I ask you a question Mr. Westen?"she inquired.
Michael nodded once.
"You have a number of bones that show evidence of recent and previous remodeling such as your Ulna, Radius, and Phalanges. As well as your mandible and you walk as though you feel a large amount of pain radiating from your 3rd and 4th Ribs. What can you say about those injuries?" she asked.
It was true, Michael had been gentle with his Ribs ever since a job a few weeks ago that involved a particularly violent arms dealer and a large explosion from an even larger block of C4. He had been used to breaking bones in his hands and arms since he was a kid, but he didn't particularly like the idea of going into his life history for the federal authorities. He simply answered, "Effects of the job."
Bones bit her lip. She could tell that there was more to that and it was her first instinct to push until she got her answers. Booth guessed her intentions and shook his head slightly. She frowned and resolved to ask more later.
There was another small silence while Booth tried to find a question that would actually get him some answers. The silence was broken by the shrill ring of a cell phone.
"You can get that." Booth informed Michael.
He checked the caller ID and flipped the phone open next to his ear.
Booth stopped him, "Put it on speaker phone," he ordered.
Michael forced a smile before placing the phone on the middle of the table and placed it on speaker. "Helloooo?" he questioned.
"Yeah Mikey," Sam's voice said. "Look, we've got a bit of a problem."
Michael dropped his head into his hands and barely stopped from groaning in response to his rapidly growing headache. "What kind of a problem Sam?"
"Umm.. well. You know how you kind of hated your brothers ex? How exactly did you feel about your nephew?" there was the slight sound of a baby crying in the background.
Michael clenched and relaxed his jaw a few times to get enough control over his voice to keep it even, "Why?"
"Well, Ruth is a, well, a little bit dead, and Charlie is um, well not." Sam explained awkwardly. He hated being the one who had to give Mike news when he already had so much to worry about, but Jesse was checking the perimeter and Madeline was taking care of Charlie. He braced himself for some form of yelling but all he got was a rush of static as Michael sighed.
Michael was rubbing his temples to focus. As a spy he was used to accepting and adapting to situations. It was something he was used to, Hell it was even something he was good at. The ability had kept him alive in his professional career, now he was just adapting the skill set for this situation. "How long will it take you to get here with Charlie?"
"Are we talking legally or illegally?"
"Whichever's faster Sam." Michael told him, which might not have been the best of moves considering that agents from the FBI, and NCIS not to mention a forensic anthropologist and a shrink were listening to every word. However, in this situation Michael really didn't care.
Sam considered briefly, "an hour and a half."
"Make it one." Michael told him before hanging up.
Sam shrugged, "Can do."
Michael took a deep breath before looking back at the agents. "So, I hope you don't mind but my nephew is coming to stay for a while and some people are possibly coming to kill him. Now, you people help me or stay out of the way your choice. I won't hold it against you. Get in my way and you'll regret it."
Booth looked at agent Gibbs who nodded solidly. Gibbs could get away with almost anything at work. All he had to do was make sure it didn't blow over badly on NCIS. Booth had decided already to help Michael if he could, and if he told the bureau he was working a secret joint case with NCIS and explained the situation to Andrew Hacker he wouldn't have any problems.
Booth looked directly at Michael. "Tell your people to meet at The Jeffersonian Institution," he said.
"Why?" Michael asked suspiciously. He wasn't an idiot, and he definitely wasn't having Sam, Jesse, Charlie, and his mother walking into a federal ambush.
"Because your job just got some federal help," Gibbs replied.
A/N: Reviews feed the soul people. I hope you've been liking what I've been doing with the plot.