Promises Chapter Three
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Fiona fought the gathering of tears and rubbed her fingers over her cheek to lift the comforting scent of Sam's after shave to her nose. He'd have a good laugh if he knew how sentimental she'd become over his Old Spice.
She turned over in the bed so her back was to the camera she'd located in the room, which meant someone watched, listened and probably recorded her every action. She was certain the designated visitors room was similarly equipped. Willingly losing free will and privacy as an act of love for Michael was one thing. Allowing others to witness her solitary grief was something she chose to hide from them.
When the lights dimmed at 10, she lay down on the board-hard bed with the board-hard pillow and roughly textured blanket and pulled it up over her shoulder. She didn't expect comforts and there were none, but she was a woman who enjoyed the sensual textures of fabrics and lotions and sweet and spicy scents, none of which existed in this barren environment. Instead, she let her memory give her those small luxuries.
Fiona shivered. The facility was air conditioned to the extreme. She had been thoroughly chilled from the moment she arrived, and wondered if she would ever feel the pleasant humid warmth of the loft again. Or Michael's gentle touch. When she closed her eyes and fell into that near sleep-like state she could almost feel his warmth and soothing caresses, and she trembled. It had become a nightly, aching sensation, something she knew would continue for as long as she was apart from him.
She strongly believed Michael would find his moral grounding again and in doing so, he would provide the way out of the hole she buried herself in. But the risk she'd taken might come with a price too high.
If he believed she had lost complete faith in him, then . . .
She'd known the possibility existed that she could lose him when she removed herself as Anson's leverage. She would do it again, if she had to because it was too agonizing to watch Anson play with Michael.
It had been nearly three weeks since the day she turned herself, and yet, with crystal clarity, she could hear him call her name and could see him, defeat on his face and in his posture, as he stood at the bottom of those stairs. Her last image was of him glancing down to the note she'd written.
I have to force you to tell what you know. If you don't, you won't be the man I love.
That's when it struck her what she'd written.
Had she just told the man she loved that if he didn't do what she wanted she wouldn't love him?
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When Pearce scrolled through the images of Fiona Glenanne's visitors and incarceration, she paused. One image caught her attention more than the others, apart from the interesting visits from Jesse Porter, Michael's mother and Sam Axe.
Fiona was in the bed, the blanket pulled up and over her shoulders while her small frame was silently shaking. It took a woman who had cried too many soundless tears herself to accurately identify the images on the screen before her.
She wondered again if there was some way the powers at Langley would allow Michael to see Fiona but according to her director, they weren't done with him yet.
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"Back off, Westen."
Jesse altered his stance. Mike might be fast, but so was he and there was no way he was going to put up with his attitude one minute longer.
"What's the matter? You pissed because I visited your girlfriend in prison? Or because the reason she's there is because of you?"
He anticipated his friend's predictable move, then stepped to the side, felt air move as Mike's fist whizzed past his jaw, then delivered his own message up and under Mike's chin, and followed up with his other fist as Mike's jaw snapped down.
In three moves, Jesse put Michael flat on his butt on his mother's garage floor for all of the two seconds it took him to pop back up again.
"You really want to do this?" Jesse yelled when it was apparent Michael wasn't ready to call it quits. "Really? Cause I'm more than happy to take you on, Westen. If this is what it takes to adjust your attitude, I'm happy to put you on the floor again. You need to get your head screwed on straight, cause it's not. You're a fool, man. Anybody who knows you, knows the way to get to you is through Fi. She's a shortcut. You don't get to be pissed about that!"
Unaware their argument had drawn onlookers, both Michael and Jesse were surprised when Sam stepped through the door. Madeline was right behind him.
Sam evaluated the situation between soldiers; Madeline saw boys and reverted to her mom role.
"What is going on out here?" she demanded.
Both Michael and Jesse looked over at them and replied at the same time, in the same way, with the same word. "Nothing."
Sam glanced at Jesse and put his hand on Maddie's shoulder to steer her back to the house. "You heard them. Let's go."
"But . . . " Maddie started.
"You're good here, right?" Sam asked.
"Yeah," Michael said, using the front of his wrist to wipe the blood at the corner of his mouth.
Jesse agreed. "Right."
When Michael heard the screen door on the house shut, he turned to Jesse, took a deep breath and extended his hand. "I'm sorry. Thanks for taking that to Fi."
Jesse shook Mike's hand but he wasn't ready to move past their argument, or the reason for it. When he spotted the small fridge against the wall that he'd used when he'd been living in the garage a couple of years earlier, he opened the door to find Sam's stash of beer. He grabbed a bottle and held one up to Mike. "Want one?"
"Yeah."
They took seats at the opposite ends of the couch that had been moved against the wall while Michael rebuilt the Charger after Jesse rescued it from the police impound lot last year.
"When do you go back to Langley?" Jesse asked.
Michael grimaced. "Whenever they call. Every time I think we're done, they call me back and ask the same questions again and again. I think they're trying to decide if they're going to throw me in prison, too."
"So that's it."
"What?"
"Your hair trigger."
Michael got up and walked toward the open door and stood in the light. "Sorry, Jess."
Jesse left the couch to stand on the opposite side of the door. "It's not like everybody's piling on. Pearce, Raines, your ma, your brother."
"Yeah."
"For the record, that's not me and Sam."
"I know."
"Hey, man, you can handle this but you need to work on doing that better. This has been coming at you for a long time, more than half your career, if Anson is to believed, and I'm not sure you can take anything that manipulative son of a bitch said as truth. That's all they're doing, Mike, trying to sort out what's true and what's not. If you hadn't been so good at operating behind a smoke screen that you made, and we all helped you make, it'd be over now. Or you'd be in prison already. Or dead."
"Yeah." Michael shook his head and stared off into the distance.
Jesse let the silence settle between them for a minute before he grinned to himself. "So, there I was, visiting your girlfriend in prison and it was like I was in high school again. I slipped your note to Fi and she seemed confused at first, and then she saw what she had. So I got a big ole kiss from her, Westen." Jesse pointed to his cheek. "Right there. You could have got some of that sweet stuff on your knuckle if you would've connected."
Michael had the grace to be embarrassed. In a quick gesture of surrender, he put both hands up in the air and grinned then took a sip from the bottle. "What is this? You going to be like Fi and need to hear the apology six times before you believe it?"
Jesse laughed. "Yeah, something like that."
Just as quickly, Michael's good humor vanished. "I don't want her to be there."
"I know. We all know. But . . . "
Michael sighed. "She did the right thing."
"You just wish it had been you, not her."
"Yeah."
Jesse finished off his beer and tossed the bottle in Madeline's recycle bin by the door. "You know, I heard this rumor that married people do that kind of thing for each other. Not that I ever saw it in my life or you, either. But I hear that's how it works."
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It was a small thing. A small piece of unlined paper, folded twice, the words written on it obscured and hidden inside.
It wasn't something a guard would confiscate, something that would alert anyone to anything, so it was easily overlooked when Jesse was searched. A small piece of paper in a shirt pocket. Nothing big.
Except it was.
And it was clearly against the rules as outlined by Pearce and the CIA guards who checked visitors through security.
Madeline and Sam showed up as often as they were allowed to visit Fiona, but Jesse had delayed his visit because a project he was working on for his security company didn't allow him to come during the limited visiting hours. It'd been at least two weeks since Madeline's first visit when Jesse arrived.
Fiona was not expecting him, nor expecting how much room he'd take up. He was a large man, broader and heavier than Michael and she'd forgotten that about him. When he came through the door, he grinned, took her in his arms and whispered in her ear. "There's a note from Michael in my shirt pocket. Take it and read it while I hold you so the camera can't see you."
And she did. When she was done, she wiped the tears of gratitude from her eyes and kissed Jesse's cheek and whispered "thank you."
He teased her a bit, and told her she was beginning to look like an Irish lass again since her tan had faded completely. Then he told her what was going on with Maddie and Sam and repeated everything they'd already told her about Michael being called to Langley twice since the day Fiona surrendered to the FBI.
"Are they looking for Anson?"
"Oh, yeah," Jesse laughed. "I forgot to tell you about my debrief with Pearce. That account number you memorized? I did, too. She was really happy when they matched up. His money's frozen, so they've locked him away from his big money. He probably has more somewhere, though."
Fiona thought about that for a minute. "That probably makes him more dangerous."
"Yeah. And something else, Fi. They never found Larry's body at the Embassy."
"Does Michael know?"
"Yeah."
Fiona leaned heavily against Jesse's shoulder. "It's never going to end. This is never going to end."
"It feels like it doesn't it?" Jesse said, giving her a gentle hug.
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Five words.
It only took five words to restore the hope that had eroded since Fiona chose her course of action.
She kept them inside her bra, as close to her heart as she could safely keep them.
And that night, the night after Jesse's visit, she slept easily. On the board-hard bed, with the board-hard pillow and the scratchy gray blanket. She had the peace and comfort she needed.
I love you, Fiona. Forever.