Chapter 24
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It was 0500 when Michael and Fi turned into headquarters; Jessie was right behind them. Nick Carnahan and Ryan Peterbaugh were waiting, and both wore grim, irritated expressions.
"Are we working for you again?" Carnahan asked.
"Or has Raines permanently loaned us all to the DEA?" Peterbaugh wondered, his words heavily coated with sarcasm.
"Conference room," Michael indicated.
Jesse flipped on lights and ventilation, Fi started coffee and Michael opened his laptop to take notes for the debrief he planned to file at the end of the meeting.
"We're going to start here and then continue elsewhere," Michael said. "OK by you, Jess? Or will your job . . ."
"Yeah, my office or the loft. Your preference. You mean this isn't my job?"
That stopped him. Fiona glanced over at Michael.
"No, it isn't, but I don't know what I'd do without you. Your place for this meeting, OK? And thank you."
Carnahan and Peterbaugh exchanged a glance.
"Tell us what happened, gentlemen," Michael said.
And they did. Either the DEA intel was wrong or Anson Fullerton had departed hours before they'd arrived. It wasn't complicated. Interviews with the mercenaries they captured didn't revealed anything new. The DEA agents hauled them away, asked them to wait while they checked the empty office building Anson and his mercs had occupied, then said adios. Nick and Ryan had returned to base and called Michael. What next, they wondered.
"We're going to continue this in private," Michael said, fully aware that Raines had ears in the room, but pretending that wasn't true, he emailed his debrief report, then powered down the laptop.
When his phone rang, he glanced down, frowned then flipped it open. "Yeah, Sam?"
He listened for a moment and swallowed a groan. "Yeah, I'll be right there."
"What?" Jesse asked.
"Mom's at the loft."
Jesse frowned. "You didn't call her when I told you to, did you?"
Peterbaugh chuckled.
"Big bad DEA-CIA op interrupted by Mom," Carnahan drawled.
"I'm sorry, but I got to take care of this."
Jesse threw Michael a lifeline and interpreted the situation. "She was in a safe house, and now she's not. Call us when you get her settled, Mikey."
Michael winced at the Mikey and stifled a groan as Fiona, smiling, stood by the door waiting, keys in her hand.
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"Michael, I am tired of being stuck with Nate and Ruth and Charlie, away from my home and my friends and everything I enjoy. I'm putting an end to this nonsense right now. I want to go home."
Madeline extinguished her cigarette by dropping it in one of Sam's mostly empty beer cans, and pulled another out of the pack.
The only person who looked unhappier than Michael or Madeline was Sam.
Fiona took a look at the entire menu of unpleasant expressions worn by those in the loft, and chose to take matters into her own hands. She started by removing the cigarette and lighter from Madeline's hands and putting them on the counter.
"Madeline, I need to talk to you. Michael, do what you need to do, call Raines, whatever. And, Sam, you should take an aspirin. There used to be some in that cupboard. You look like your head hurts."
She steered Madeline to the deck, closed the door behind them for a modicum of privacy she was certain Michael would appreciate.
"I know you're ready to yell at Michael, and I can appreciate that, but I need to tell you this is not a good time."
"I've heard that before," Madeline grumbled.
Fiona persisted. "It's really not a good time to be putting yourself in danger by leaving the safe house."
Madeline was not demonstrating the least bit of cooperative spirit, and her voice was strident as she tried to walk past her. "Listen, Fiona, I need to have few words with my son . . ."
Fi interrupted her movement by placing a gentle hand on Madeline's very tense arm. "My husband," she said softly.
Madeline stopped. A confused expression appeared on her face as if she couldn't process the word husband.
"Your son is my husband," Fiona repeated.
Madeline's expression flipped from instant pleasure to instant irritation. "And when did that happen? You didn't invi-"
"I'll tell you all about it," Fiona said softly, guiding her mother-in-law to the bench on the deck. "I especially want to tell you about my wedding ring."
Madeline looked down at Fiona's hand and criticized. "He didn't even buy you a diamond."
"I don't want a diamond. This is much more precious."
They sat on the wooden seat next to each other as early morning sun played tag with the clouds behind them. Fiona took Madeline's hands in hers and began to talk.
Forty minutes later, Madeline understood what had happened to both Fiona and Michael since she'd been put in protective custody with Nate and his family, everything from Fiona's self-defense after Anson visited her in prison, to their leased house being blown up, to understanding in general terms, the new, dangerous assignment Michael had been asked by the CIA to fulfill.
She found her mother's heart reconciling the knowledge that her son had kept Fiona's Claddah ring, the wedding ring she wore, for fifteen years, then laughed at his sense of urgency to marry once Fiona was free from prison. And then, there was that last bit of perception-shattering news.
She'd expected it of Nate; she had never expected it of Michael.
Madeline had hugged Fiona and told her how happy she was that Michael finally had come to his senses, and hoped that some day they might think of safer things to do with their lives or think about having a family. That's when Fiona explained there wasn't a single thing they were doing to prevent having a family.
She realized, quite honestly, beyond the first hours after Michael's birth, the past moments with Fiona had been among most happily satisfying in her life as his mother. Her son had become what she had never known: a loving husband.
"You know," Fiona explained quietly, "since you left, they'll need to move Nate and Charlie and Ruth now. You'll need to go with them to stay safe. When this is over, we can all be a family, but we need to keep each other safe now. I know you don't like this, but it'll be a lot easier for Michael, and me, too, Madeline, to know you are safe."
Madeline dabbed at the corner of her eyes, and realized that she hadn't had a cigarette in 45 minutes now. She said so.
"Maybe you can go another 45 minutes," Fiona suggested.
"Hmm. Maybe."
There was a cautious expression on Michael's face when Fiona opened the deck doors and waited for Madeline to enter the loft. She went straight to him and gave him a hug which he freely returned. She looked up into his face and studied him for a long moment. "You're not happy with me right now . . . but you're happy."
"I am, Ma," he said softly. He looked over the top of his mother's head to Fi and smiled, hoping she could see his gratitude. "We've made arrangements for you to be relocated. Nate and Ruth and Charlie are being moved now. They'll give you an emergency number if you need to get in touch, but it'll go through a special unit opertor, and I won't always be able to answer. Understand?"
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"That didn't take long," Jesse said when Michael and Fi arrived at his office. Carnahan and Peterbaugh were looking at maps on a large wall screen of the Southwestern U.S. and Mexico.
"Saved by my wife again," Michael said. "Oh, we didn't do introductions this morning, did we? I'm sorry. Ryan Peterbaugh, Nick Carnahan, my wife. Fiona Glenanne."
Fi shook her head and smiled. "That's Fiona Westen. He's had a hard morning." She shook their hands. "Good to meet you."
"Important member of the team," Jesse filled in. "Sharpshooter, precision driver, IRA-trained bomb builder and you shouldn't mess with her. Anson visited her in prison and she sent him to the hospital. He escaped from the ambulance before it got to the hospital, but they carried him out of the prison. She laid him out cold."
"Why, er, when were you in prison?" Carnahan asked.
Michael glanced sharply at both of them. "I thought Raines debriefed you on Anson's blackmail schemes."
"After that op with Reed went south, he interviewed us about Rebecca Lang. That was months ago. He said he believed she was being blackmailed, but we didn't know anything about that and we didn't discuss anything else."
Jesse, Michael and Fiona exchanged glances.
"This will never work unless you know what we're dealing with," Michael said.
Jesse picked up his phone when it blinked at him. "Yeah, send him in."
Sam joined them and reported Madeline's departure had gone smoothly. "Little sleight of hand and she's disappeared again. So where are we now?"
"We're going back to square one," Michael said.
"Why?" Sam wondered.
And after Michael explained why, Sam sat down, crossed his arms and wondered if Raines was being inefficient because he was being blackmailed or if he was responding the way he was because his wife was more ill than either her or she had indicated.
Michael began the tale with his burn notice and how that had played into what they were dealing with today with Anson Fullerton and his illusive co-conspirator, Management, who may or may not be dead.
It was nearly noon when he finished telling the story. He'd paused to answer questions as they arose.
Peterbaugh, who had run stateside support for several of Michael's ops prior to his burn notice, had been listening carefully. "You think Anson's got someone in the DEA, too."
"Or more than one," Fiona interjected.
"So it'll make the cartel op even riskier," Carnahan added.
Hearing Michael's story from beginning to end had a different effect on each person in the room who'd heard it.
Sam was thankful he'd given up retirement because this had been a hell of a lot more fun than sitting on his butt by a pool every day.
Fiona was thankful they had survived, that there was no doubt they belonged to one another.
Jesse had never heard the entire tale before, but as someone who'd worked in counterintelligence for more than a decade he realized, like Michael did, they might be dealing with the tip of the iceberg.
Peterbaugh and Carnahan were amazed they were all still alive, and said so.
"I'm thinking a lot more positive thoughts now about this job," Nick said. "If you all lived through that, you're golden."
"Careful," Michael said. "We're as careful as we need to be, and we need to be even more so on this next job."
"Wanna know why?" Sam asked.
They turned and looked at him.
"We think we're being set up . . .well, you two CIA guys and Mikey more than me, Fi and Jesse, but you're going to be the fall guys."
"How do you figure that?" Peterbaugh asked.
So Sam told them. By the time he was done, they both wore somber expressions. Both of their careers had been long enough to experience the CIA-DEA rivalry and distrust.
"And here's the thing," Michael added. "If we stray away from mission objective, get caught up in a cartel war, we're dead, either figuratively or literally."
"The objective is to take out Anson as an arms supplier on this side because the DEA wants to break the supply line before it's built," Peterbaugh said. "Is that the only objective?"
"It is," Michael agreed.
"Yeah, and after that?" Carnahan wondered. "You know if we're successful, they'll want us to do more."
"That's true. They might want you to do more, but I'll be retiring if that's the case."
Sam didn't allow room for discussion on that topic. "If you haven't run into the real bad blood flowing between the DEA and the CIA you're about to take a bath in it. This op could be or probably is a set up. Feels like it, anyway. If it's designed to fail, they can redirect their current bad press to the CIA and heap the blame. Given how hot the spotlight is currently on the DEA and ATF, they need that. And Sophia? They don't care if they burn one of their own."
As soon as Sam made that remark Jesse shook his head at Sam's deductive reasoning. "And there you have it. That's the plan. They're planning on burning Sophia. Somebody knows the story why she wants justice for her husband's family, and they've read her motivation and they're playing her."
"Even if she knows it, she won't care," Fiona added.
"Is anything what it seems?" Carnahan asked finally. "We're tactical support. This isn't something we usually deal with."
"It will be if you want to survive with us," Michael said.
"You got to learn to look at the layers of information," Sam added. "Usually the truth sorts itself out pretty fast. Or at least you hope it does."
"You mean, if you have a team like this one doing it," Peterbaugh added.
"Yeah," Michael said. "Jesse, how's Pearce, I mean, really? She didn't look good the other night. Do you think she's up to running an op?"
"She's on medical leave," Jesse said, frowning.
Michael glanced over at Jess and held his gaze. "Not what I asked."
Sam laughed. "Good one, Mikey. Good one."
"I'm not following the damned bouncing ball you people have going," Peterbaugh said with some irritation.
Fiona explained. "They're trying to take Raines out of the loop. If he's been compromised, it eliminates a threat. If he's inattentive because his wife is quite ill, it's dangerous. The DEA people don't know Pearce. We do, and we trust her. She's solid at the CIA, so they trust her, too."
"Jess?" Michael asked, watching as his friend squirmed just enough.
"Yeah, I'll ask her."
"Sooner would be better," Michael urged.
"Fine," Jesse muttered. "I'm going home. Everyone out."
"Can Fi and I come, too?"
"Oh, hell, yes, why not."
Sam raised his eyebrows, Peterbaugh and Carnahan were oblivious to the undercurrent, and Fiona smiled at Michael.
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Pearce was coming down the steps to the second floor in Jesse's townhouse when he opened the door. Michael and Fiona were right behind him.
"What the hell are you doing?" Jesse wanted to know.
She smiled, her hand on the railing. "Exercise. Since I can't drive to the physical therapist, I'm taking online advice. Stairs are a great exercise."
"Until you fall," Jesse mumbled.
"I am getting rid of that damned wheelchair."
"That's good news," Michael said. "You're looking a lot better than you did the other night. I'm wondering, do you think you'd be up for running an op?"
Fiona noticed Dani was wearing the grey lounging set she'd gotten for her. Her feet were bare, her hair was down and loose around her shoulders, and she looked . . . she looked like she did in that photo Fiona had seen on her desk.
She came down the stairs and walked over to sit on the couch. "What kind of op?"
"The one I told you about," Jesse said.
Michael and Fiona took seats on the couch that faced the one Dani was on. Jesse took the opposite end.
"Do you really think Raines has been compromised?" she asked.
"I don't want to believe that. His wife is very ill, and I think he's distracted as anyone would be."
"He is my boss, too, Michael."
"If . . . or when the time comes . . . "
"I'll do it," Pearce said. "Jesse can keep me informed."
"Thanks. Well, I've got a lot of reading to do on the Sinaloa and Zeta cartels . . . so see you later."
Michael and Fiona walked to their townhouse just a short distance away, and as Michael opened the door Fiona turned to him. "She's in love with him."
Michael shut the door behind them. "I don't think it's a one way street."
And it wasn't. But it was a street without a name so far.
"Know what this means now that I can do stairs?" Dani asked Jesse after Michael and Fiona left. "I can move my stuff upstairs and you can have your room back."
Jesse's smile was slow and sweet. "I've got my room back."
"That's not what I meant."
He shook his head with a nearly imperceptibly small negative motion. "You're fine right where you are."
He looked away then, toward the door. "I need to go back to work."
"Then I'll see you later."
He nodded and left, and Dani closed her eyes and realized her pulse rate had increased, and she would have another night of peace sleeping in his arms.
She didn't know if she could give that up. Ever.
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"Are you done?" Fiona asked, yawning.
Michael put down the file he'd been reading on the table by their bed and rubbed his eyes. "For now, I think."
She'd been reading behind him. Everything he'd been consuming about the Sinaloa Cartel and the Los Zetas, she'd been reading, too. It was frightening, the stuff of nightmares.
She was just about to tell him that when he turned and took her into his arms. "I need to say thank you, Fi, for how you helped with my mom this morning. What did you say to her? It was like she left a different person."
"I told her everything important a mother wants to hear about her son, and then I told her something personal."
He held her away to look into her eyes. "Such as?"
"We're not being very careful."
His smile was slow and seductive. "No. We're not."
And they weren't.