A/N: Sooo… this first scene is inspired my uncle, who does some of the strangest things in his sleep. My cousin visited from France a couple weeks ago, and, well… we just started talking about his sleepwalking stories. I was in the middle of revising Dreamer, then, and I knew I had to use this somewhere. :)

Oh, and if you even like the story a little bit and are glad I'm continuing, I think you should thank my sister. Who is amazing. Alotalot. If she hadn't helped me brainstorm a few weeks ago, I'm pretty sure you would have gotten an author's note, explaining the story was over, instead of a continuation of the story. So. You know. *hint-hint* :)

And before you start to freak out about what's going through Annie's mind. Relax. BREATHE. I have it all under control, and I think you all will be very excited about the turn the story will be taking in these next three chapters! :)

'Kay. That's all for now. :)

Disclaimer: I do not own Covert Affairs.

Chapter 9

Annie woke to the feeling of being cocooned in the arms of a strong, protective man and the mild winter sun's rays hitting her face. She smiled sleepily and snuggled deeper into his arms. He was both strong and tender at the same time, and the lingering scent of yesterday's cologne lingered around them. His arm clenched around her midsection, and he nuzzled his face into her neck. His day-old stubble tickled her neck and cheek. She thrilled at the sensation. It'd been a long time since she'd woken in the arms of a man.

Wait—in the arms of a man? What man?

Annie's eyes fluttered open, and her surroundings slowly began to register. The apartment, in Manassas. But who—

She shifted just enough to look into his eyes, and her heart nearly stopped. Auggie. How had he gotten here, in bed with her? And why was he holding her like he'd dreamed of this more than she had?

If either one of them had been awake at two o'clock that morning, they would have known that Annie had been having another dream about Auggie, this one revolving around an explosive fight about nothing in particular (Annie wasn't sure why she dreamed about the good, the bad, and the ugly when it came to Auggie, but she supposed that fighting with Auggie, while they were engaged, was a million times better than not being able to tell him how she felt while they were best friends), and a few times, she had whimpered, tears in her voice, "Auggie, please…" Auggie, the light sleeper that he was, must have heard, even though he never woke. He climbed from his mattress up into her bed, wrapped her in his arms, and stroked her soft blond hair gently, whispering, "Shhh. Shhh, Annie, it's okay." He kissed her shoulder softly before nuzzling his face into the hollow between her shoulder and her neck. Miraculously, she relaxed against him, humming happily to herself, and she pulled him closer. The rest of the night, her dreams of Auggie were sweet and full of walks in the park, wedding plans, and kisses under mistletoe.

When she had realized what position they were in, she fleetingly considered the idea that she'd begged him to come to bed with her, or tried to seduce him while totally zonked, but she rejected both ideas quickly. She hadn't had any alcohol, and she'd gone to bed fairly early (in her bed)—after Auggie had fallen asleep on his mattress.

Annie reached up and caressed his cheek with her hand. His eyes were closed now, but she'd give just about anything to see those gorgeous chocolate-brown eyes of his this close. He sighed softly and tugged her closer.

Tears blurred Annie's vision. She loved Auggie. It was crazy, but she couldn't help herself. All she wanted to do was kiss him awake and spend the day with the man she loved, but that just wasn't a possibility, not when she was pretty sure Auggie didn't feel the same way.

In the little over two weeks that they'd been here, he'd kept enough distance between them to prove that he would be her best friend forever, but they were nothing more than friends. He was utterly doting and affectionate in public, when they were August and Anaïs Anderson, but when they came back to the apartment, they were just Annie and Auggie. His affection in the field made it all the harder to just be his friend when they were home, but that's all he was—her friend. Her best friend, the one who made her laugh, the one who was wiser than anyone else she knew, the one she could trust with anything—except her heart.

Regretfully, Annie pulled away from him and slipped into her robe. Brushing away a tear, she made her way to the door and shut it behind her. She'd deal with the repercussions later.

Annie curled up onto the couch and turned on the early morning news. She tried to pay attention to the news anchor, but her thoughts kept interrupting. Much as she wanted to have a happily-ever-after with Auggie, it wasn't going to happen. She couldn't keep living with her heart on the edge of her sleeve. One day, he would find out, and then her heart would be crushed for good. Her eyelids fluttered shut against the pain and she let the weariness wash over her. It was time to move on. With the too-cheery sound of the news anchor's voice droning around her, she slowly drifted back to sleep.

"Daddy, Daddy! Look at me!"

Jai heard her before he saw her. The shrill of her excited voice, the pitter-patter of her little feet on the carpet, the swishy sound of whatever she was wearing. She made her grand entrance on tiptoe, a larger-than-life tutu hanging from her shoulders, as she spun around, hands held above her head. "Daddy, I'm a ballerina!"

He closed his laptop and set it aside. He had been watching more of the footage that Annie and Auggie had sent over, of the Perrot home. It hadn't proved especially helpful yet—Perrot was careful, and didn't bring anyone to his home except his daughter—but he still hoped to find something.

With Hannah dancing in front of him, batting her eyes and grinning wide, he couldn't help but set his worries and work aside. His family was here, and, for now, they were safe. The CIA was good at what they did. He would have to trust them to do what they said they would do. After all, Annie and Auggie were some of the best.

Vivian appeared around the corner, holding Annabelle in her arms, and she grinned knowingly to him. Laughing, Jai took a few steps toward his daughter and swooped her up in his arms. "Where'd you get this?" he asked, and she giggled.

"Mommy…"

Jai looked up at Vivian and laughed. Of course she had taken ballet when she was a little girl, and of course she still kept her tutus. It was just something Vivian would do.

Jai carried Hannah across the room and kissed Vivian slowly, sweetly. "Ewww!" Hannah squealed, spoiling the moment, but Jai laughed anyway and said, "I love you."

Vivian had smiled shyly in reply and returned the sentiment.

Hannah squirmed in Jai's arms, and he bounced her on his hip. It was barely after six—they liked to eat supper early—and he needed to let the worry of the past couple weeks go.

He still remembered the gut-wrenching, breath-stealing horror and fear he'd felt when he had seen Perrot's note. The thought of having Vivian, Hannah, and Annabelle taken from him had both paralyzed and infuriated him. If it hadn't been for Vivian's gentle hand on his arm and that quiet worry and fear in her eyes, he probably would have hunted Baptiste Perrot down that very minute. He'd been on edge ever since.

Hannah giggled as he spun her around. When they came to a stop, Jai said, "How 'bout a tea party, Princess Hannah?"

She scowled at him playfully. "I'm not a princess, Daddy," she proclaimed drolly. "I'm a ballerina!"

Jai laughed. "Okay, Miss Ballerina, would you do me the honor of attending my tea party?"

Hannah gleamed and clapped her hands. "Yay, Daddy!" she squealed, throwing her little arms around his neck.

While Jai dug out Hannah's tea set and set it up on the coffee table and Vivian filled the pitcher with water from the sink, Hannah danced around the living room, chattering and giggling. The three of them knelt around the coffee table, and as Vivian served the "tea," Jai couldn't help but let the worry of the past few weeks go. They would get Baptiste Perrot and his cronies, in the end.

For now, his greatest concern was pulling smiles and laughter out of Vivian and Hannah. They were like healing salve for his soul.

Auggie cocked his head curiously and listened as Annie popped another chip into her mouth. It was just after three o'clock. Classes were concluded for the day. Basketball practice was in full force in the gymnasium, but the majority of the rest of the students had left for the day. Annie had no real need to be in her classroom, and after the day they'd had, he was hoping inviting her to the library to grade her French 2 quizzes would improve things between them.

He had hoped spending some time with her would have broken the ice that had built up between them overnight. She had barely acknowledged his presence all day—making her own breakfast and hiding in the living room, grading papers, ignoring him when he tried to get her attention. All her replies had been in clipped, one-word phrases, and she'd let him find his own way, both to their car and then to the library when they got to school. She'd taken lunch in her own room, so he'd missed her in the teacher's lounge at noon, and any attempt he'd made to talk to her at any opportune moment was shut down by excuses only Annie could come up with. Annie had never treated him this way.

Though she'd grudgingly agreed to join him in the library to finish her grading for the day, she'd sat, a whole two seats between them, and munched on her barbecue chips and graded her quizzes in silence.

The silence and frustration was eating him alive. He knew it had to have been awkward when Annie woke up with him in her bed—he still didn't know how that had happened—but had whatever he'd done been truly that bad? What in the world had he done?

After weeks of Annie making him breakfast, holding his hand on the way to the car, teasing him at lunch, and living as though she truly was Anaïs Anderson, he still couldn't believe the overnight change. Though she was still Annie, his sweet, happy, spunky, against-the-groove, you-can't-stop-me Annie, his best friend always, he'd gotten used to the way she'd started acting like she was Anaïs, too—like he completed her, like he was her strength and the only one who believed in her. He had grown to love being that Auggie.

Seeing Annie transform from that to this was like being doused with an ice-cold bucket of water, or an electric shock, and he couldn't help missing his Annie. What had he done?

"Annie?" he tried again, reaching out to where he knew she had been a few minutes, hoping to find her arm. If he could find her arm, maybe she would let him trail his hand down her arm, and find her hand. Then maybe, just maybe, she would let him hold her hand, and he could pretend it was all a part of their cover, and maybe he could convince her to forgive him for whatever grievous error he'd committed in his sleep.

But she dodged his arm—again—and studied a fill-in-the-blank exercise a lot more seriously than there was any need to. "Annie, please…"

She glanced up at his forlorn face, and that was her mistake. He hadn't even done anything, but he looked so contrite, like he cared more about her than anything else, and it killed her inside. How could she move on when those chocolate eyes kept pulling her in?

She immersed herself in the French quizzes again, but she managed to reply to his desperate plea. She had to acknowledge him at some point, after all. "What, Aug?"

Hope filled him at the hesitant reply. He and Annie had never had a rift so wide, and he was beginning to believe it could never be repaired. He scooted across the two chairs in between them, hoping she didn't move farther away. "Annie, what did I do?"

She shook her head, trying to push away feel of waking up in Auggie's arms, feeling his arms tighten around her. What she wouldn't give for that to happen again…

But no. She couldn't think like that. Not anymore. She and Auggie were just friends. That's all they would ever be. "Nothing," she said, patting his arm awkwardly. "It was just weird. Waking up next to you."

He reached up, cupping her cheek. "Annie, I don't ever want it to be weird between us. Okay?"

She nodded, letting him feel the movement through his hand. "Yeah." Why did he have to be so utterly perfect?

Aurélie chose that moment to skip into the library, a grin on her face. She skidded to a stop in front of Annie and Auggie, and Annie cleared her throat. "Hi, Ari."

Self-consciously, Auggie dropped his hand and turned in the direction of Aurélie's voice. "Hey, Ari," he echoed.

She grinned. "My favorite adorable couple!"

Auggie rolled his eyes, and Annie blushed, ducking her head. Much as she didn't want to be that woman anymore, the one who loved Auggie so completely, it was just a part of who Anaïs Anderson was, and she couldn't change that now.

Auggie tugged Annie against his side, and he said, "What can we do for you, Ari?"

Ari grinned down at them. "Will you be our faculty sponsor?"

"Me?" Auggie asked.

Aurélie rolled her eyes. "Both of you. I'm in charge of this physics project that NHS is conducting. It has to be done by the end of this year. If everything goes according to plan, we'll present our results to the president later in April."

"The president?" Auggie asked. "As in, of the United States?"

Aurélie beamed. "Mm-hmm. It was my idea, too. Have you ever heard of Bill? He's this terrorist in Europe. He's… well, he has these signature bombs, and we discovered some of the elements can be traced through a satellite. We're working on developing technology that will be able to locate these bombs before they do damage. I'm in charge of it, but there are all these physics students who are working on the technology, and someone else wrote the proposal, and some of the rest of us are in charge of the reception in late April, and Mrs. Marais said that the whole intelligence community in America is interested in the information that we might be able to develop, and we're getting really close, and—"

"Whoa, whoa, Ari, why do you need us, then?" Auggie asked. "It sounds like you have it all figured out."

Aurélie blushed prettily. "Well… Mrs. Marais was our sponsor. Without a sponsor, the school won't let us complete the project. Mr. Winters—the director of the National Honor Society—supports it completely, but he says he can't be our sponsor. I think he's afraid Bill's gonna come after us or something."

"Well, he is a terrorist, Aurélie…" Auggie hinted. Though Annie didn't say anything, he knew she agreed. Though there hadn't been much activity on Bill in recent months, they both knew exactly who he was and what he was capable of. If he was working with Baptiste Perrot… and if Aurélie was caught in the crosshairs… Auggie didn't even want to think about that.

"I know. But nothing's happened yet, and we've gotten so far! Mrs. Marais thought it was okay, and this information will save thousands of lives. Please? Will you be our sponsors?"

Annie glanced at Auggie, but she already knew the answer. "Yes," they both said at the same time. "We'll be there," Annie finished.

Aurélie squealed and jumped up and down. "Yay! Good. Our next meeting is Thursday afternoon, at three o'clock, in the physics lab." As she skipped out of the library, she called over her shoulder. "Don't be late!"

Laughing, Auggie called out to her, "We won't!" As he called out the words to her, it didn't go unnoticed the way Annie pulled away quickly, like she'd been burned, and she returned to her grading.

Some things would take time, he supposed. He still didn't understand Annie's reasoning for her behavior over the past day, but she wasn't ready to talk. It had been a miracle he had gotten this much out of her.

Baptiste looked both ways down the hallway as he felt the lock click in his hands, and he pushed the door open slowly. It was three in the morning—he wasn't expecting anyone to be awake and at the school—but he was just taking precautions. If Aurélie ever found out what he was doing… She would kill him.

He knew, from the conversations he and Aurélie had had about her project for NHS, that they kept all their information locked up here, in this room. The physics lab.

Flashlight dangling from his teeth, he put away his lock-picking tools and made his way to the locked filing cabinet. Pulling the key Aurélie had hidden in her jewelry box out of his pocket, he unlocked the cabinet and began searching through files. A lot of it was grades, lesson plans, and ideas for physics experiments. When he got to the fourth drawer, however, he saw a tab labeled "Operation Stop Bill."

Baptiste reached for the whole file—several inches thick—when he heard the sound of boots clicking in the hallway. The security guard?

He had known that could be the one hitch in his plan, but the guard was supposed to be down near the language arts rooms, all the way across the building. He peaked through the blinds in the classroom door window, watching as the guard marched past.

Just his luck.

Waiting a few seconds, he closed the filing cabinet door, and climbed out the open window. It was two stories up, but he was used to the height. He landed in a bush, covered in snow, and rolled to his feet. Muttering a curse, he ran for his car, nearly a mile away, hoping the school hadn't invested in more than one night guard.

Bill screamed and threw the 25-page document, rolled up like a scroll, against the wall. Pacing back and forth in his luxurious apartment, he let out a strangled curse.

This was what he got for letting an arms dealer handle his dirty work. Baptiste Perrot wasn't a dirty work sort of man.

How was it possible that a group of students could be so smart? If he hadn't been so angry, he would have been impressed.

At least Perrot had managed to get a copy of the group's proposal. That was the one thing Perrot had managed to get right in the past year.

It looked like he had some work to do. Starting with upping the ante. So far, Perrot seemed motivated enough by threat of violence, but it wasn't anywhere good enough. If he wasn't careful, by this time next year, he'd be facing a lifetime in prison, along with potentially three to seven other negative scenarios that were floating around in his head. Bill needed results.

And he needed them now.

A/N: Review, please!