Chloe woke with far less urgency than she had the day before, as she'd been asleep for far less than 16 hours. Bright sunlight streamed in through the window, warming the room. It would be air conditioner weather soon.
Hopefully, the power company would get the energy grid stabilized before than. No, forget that. Once Lowes opened again, she was going over there and buying a giant generator. It was only sensible to plan ahead.
She'd ask Jack later about other things he'd recommend. Between the two of them, they probably possessed a nearly insane amount of knowledge of disaster preparedness…though honestly, she'd always just assumed she'd be in the office if anything major ever happened. Now she had to think about the little person who would be a part of her life in less than nine months.
Yeah. She was definitely going to have to keep an eye on her paranoia, though she felt she was justified in it. Hello! Nuke in Valencia! Not exactly national security's proudest moment.
As she mulled things over, Jack showed no signs of waking. Again, he was half draped over her, arm slung around her, hand on her abdomen. Their legs were tangled together and when she curled her toes, they brushed his foot, making the limb jerk reflexively then settle back against her.
He wasn't a bad sleeping companion. True, he threw off a lot of body heat, but that wasn't so bad, as her feet tended to morph into blocks of ice during the night. And despite his apparent affection for cuddling, Jack didn't seem to be trying to roll over her. More than once, she had woken up when Morris had rolled on top of her while asleep. It was never pleasant to be squished awake.
She'd never really shared a be like this…platonically. When she'd been married, of course there'd been nights when she'd just slept beside her ex, but that was different.
People had often questioned her relationship with Jack, wondered why she did all the things she did for him, believed in him enough to risk prison when she'd go along with one of his off book missions. She knew some people assumed she was in love with him and maybe she was a little, but that wasn't relevant.
Trust. Loyalty. A belief in each others abilities. A shared dedication to a job that tended to put people in early graves. Some saw their relationship as one sided and Chloe had never deigned to express her reasons for following Jack. Their relationship was theirs. It was weird and a little awkward to outsiders, but it suited them just fine.
Love came in many forms, Chloe mused, staring at Jack's scarred hand where it peeked out from under the pillow in front of her. Theirs was friendship and trust based, forged in the face of danger and death. Each had enough armor built up around them that they hadn't even noticed when they became fused. It just happened and somewhere along the way it had become okay, acceptable to lower those defenses, be laid bare and vulnerable…but only to each other.
Yeah, not exactly an uncomplicated relationship.
Gently, she touched his hand, tracing the raised scarring and down over his fingers, not overly long, but strong with rough knuckles. Fingers twitching, his arm moved, sliding forwards, then up to wrap around her in a sleepy embrace.
With a small smile, Chloe decided she could sleep in for a while longer and pressed a quick kiss to his skin before settling her cheek against his hand and closing her eyes.
"Hello?"
Hearing his daughter's voice, even filtered over a phone line from where she was living in Pasadena, made Jack's breath catch in his throat. The day he'd come out of hiding, she'd been so angry that he'd allowed her to think him dead and though, by the time she left CTU she no longer seemed to hate him, their relationship was strained.
And that was before he disappeared into the depths of a Chinese prison for nearly 2 years.
He had thought himself prepared for this call, but he was suddenly frozen with fear, dreading her rejection.
"Hello?"
From her position beside him, Chloe shot Jack a concerned look as he again opened and closed his mouth silently. Finally, she leaned forward. "Kim, this is…."
"Chloe!" There was a mix of surprise, hope and fear in Kim's voice. "Oh my God, is it Dad? Did you find him? Is he okay?"
Shooting Chloe a relieved look, Jack let out a sigh as she continued, "Your dad's sitting right here beside me."
"Hey Kim." Jack was glad he finally found his voice, hoarse though it was.
There was a moment of silence, then Kim breathed, "Dad…Dad, oh my God! Are you all right? What…How…When…Oh, you had something to do with stopping the terrorist attacks didn't you?"
What else could he say? "Yeah and I'm okay, Kim…Everything's a little complicated, but I'm here and I'm not gonna disappear again…."
"Are you at CTU?" Kim asked. "The highways are pretty nuts, between people leaving the city and emergency crews, but I can try to get down there…."
"I'm staying at Chloe's," Jack said quickly. Though he was eager to see his daughter, he didn't want her out dealing with all the craziness on the roads. "I think maybe you should wait a few days before trying to head down here."
"Do you have a web cam?" Chloe asked, picking up her laptop. It sounded like a brilliant idea to Jack, who wanted to see Kim, but not at the expense of her safety.
"We do," Kim replied with a huff, "but our Internet's been down since the blast. I tried accessing the IPS directly, but got stonewalled. I thought the net was supposed to be able to withstand a nuclear attack?"
"All the processors have probably been diverted to emergency and military channels," Chloe said, hands poised on her keyboard. "I have to call in to CTU in a bit. I'll try to set something up. Sorry."
"Not your fault, Chloe," Jack said with a soft smile. He was thrilled that Kim seemed to have, at least for the moment, abandoned her animosity towards him. It was a relief. Especially in light of the less than pleasant topic of conversation he had to bring up.
Knowing Chloe had set the call up on a secure line, Jack began, "Kim…I have to tell you something about today's…events…."
The rest of Jack's conversation with Kim went better than he had expected. Apparently, Kim had been of the opinion that, in recent years, Graem was a little shady and she'd thought her grandfather was weird for even longer. After Jack's 'death' a few years earlier, Phillip had brought up the subject of his legacy to her, but she had no interest in being his heir and had promptly cut off ties to the family, mostly out of her anger, but also, she claimed, cause Phillip had sounded a little too invested in having her involved with the family business.
After the 'Grandpa and Uncle Graem were evil' chat, the rest of their talk was nice. Shortly after Jack was snatched by the Chinese, Kim had ditched Barry, the creepy shrink boyfriend, and the new guy, Steven, sounded far preferable. He was her age, a teacher and completely lacking the pervy condescension that Barry had oozed.
All in all, Chloe thought the conversation seemed to go well. Her only hope was that their call in to CTU was similarly without incident.
Calling Nadia directly seemed to be the best course of action, as they weren't sure who was officially in command at the CTU. In a more than slightly disgruntled tone, Nadia informed them that Ben Graham, the Section Chief sent down by Division, was still running the show.
Poorly, in her opinion.
Apparently, CTU's location made it a good staging point for rescue and recovery operations, as well as a centralized command post for all the agencies and military branches involved. In fact, Nadia said the only reason Graham wasn't butting in on their conversation was that he was busy getting reamed by a pissed off Marine, with an equally angry LAPD captain, a FBI SAIC and an EPA director waiting for their shot.
She sounded more than a little gleeful at that particular turn of events.
"What are they doing to my servers?" Chloe asked, knowing the Division lackeys were poking around in the CTU's OS and not liking that idea one bit. That system was her technological baby, God damn it!
"Well, they're still trying to understand the system you and…Milo set up, but they're not having much luck. The techies are starting to whine about calling you back in to help, but medical has you down for another two days leave…." barring another emergency, which went unsaid, before Nadia lowered her voice. "Graham wants to debrief Jack as well."
Chloe looked over at Jack, who sighed, "Yeah, I figured as much."
Oddly, Nadia snickered. "Sorry. It's just, I can see into the office Graham took over and Sgt. Reese is practically chasing him around the room while she screams. He's freaked out by radiation and she's spent enough time in the hot zone to max out her RAD meter. It's kinda funny."
Exchanging a look with Jack, Chloe asked, "When was the last time you got a good nights sleep, Nadia?"
"Sleep, what's that?"
"Well, that answers that," Jack murmured, then offered, "Sugar, coffee and stim pills or sugar, coffee and energy drinks. Do not mix stim pills and energy drinks. The manic state followed by a crash is not pretty."
"Noted," Nadia said, then sighed, "Can we expect you two in a couple of days?"
"I'll be in," Chloe agreed, but didn't want to speak for Jack. They really hadn't talked about what he wanted to do in regards to the CTU, so she didn't know if he was ready to return, even if just for a debrief.
After a moment of silence, Jack murmured, "Yeah, yeah…I'll come in."
"Good." Nadia sounded relieved, then lowered her voice even more to ask, "Have you spoken with Bill?"
"Not since you all showed up here yesterday morning," Chloe answered.
"Okay, Karen is out here with him and she says VP Daniels and Tom Lennox are looking into a total overhaul or even disbanding of the CTU…and without Karen and Bill around to go to bat for us, I don't know what's going to happen."
This was not good.
TBC
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