Author's Note:

Thanks again to those who have reviewed regularly, especially dcj, kal220576, Tinat68, and dreamer1978. You all rock!

This is the chapter where I take the starting point of the Boyko alternate reality and spin it into a whole back story about what Sam's been up to during the months he's been waiting for Andy to wise up and dump Luke. I figured once I'd ventured in that direction, why not run with things?

The names Mickey and Collins are little shout outs to Would Be Kings, but aren't particularly intended as models for those characters. (unless you want to picture Jamie Collins 15 years on and with his act much cleaned up, which would make Sam's mentor an older, more volatile version of himself, LOL) Enjoy and let me know what you think!

Chapter 11: Double Duty

"OK, right," Sam cleared his throat. "Now I'm the one who's nervous about this. Look, there's a lot I need to still tell you. But before we get to all that, I want to hear what made you so upset, and why you ran off like that? Were you just afraid you would say something too harsh in the heat of the moment?"

"Sort of. No. I don't know. I was, I am, really mad that you kept something that major from me all this time. But it also…I don't know. Something about the whole thing makes me think that you still don't think I know what I'm doing on the street. Hearing you describe what went on back then made me feel like an incompetent rookie all over again. It was humiliating to have it all come out in front of Jerry and Traci, and I just wanted to get out of there."

"Andy, you run circles around half the senior officers, let alone the other rookies in your class. I still wish you were a little bit more cautious when you make the kind of quick gut calculations about risks that the job requires. And that's only partly because I have a very personal interest in your safety. But I have never, ever thought you were incompetent. You impressed the hell out of me right from the start," Sam said adamantly.

He held up his hand to shush her, "And not just because you're hot," he grinned.

"You can't always read my mind, you know," she muttered, irritated.

"You're really gonna claim you weren't about to deflect what I was saying with a comment like that?" he asked, raising a brow.

"OK, fine. I was. But it's still annoying sometimes," she huffed. "So why did you agree to keep this whole thing secret from me then?" she demanded after a pause.

Sam sighed. "I didn't have a choice. My handler, Collins, demanded it as part of the deal we made."

"Part of a deal? What, you mean there was something more than it being a condition for him doing it?" Andy said with a frown.

"See? That's why you're a great cop. You pick up on little details. Yes, there's more. A lot more. This is where I have a long story to tell. I'm not authorized to tell you any of it. In fact, I've been expressly forbidden to read you in on this, but I decided I was going to anyway. I needed to tell you before we took this relationship any further. I planned to take you to dinner. Rubin was going to let me use the table in his private VIP room, and I was going to tell you everything before our 3-day stretch started. I figured the private, but romantic setting would make you stick around and give me a chance to tell the whole tale," he shot a crooked grin her way. "Best laid plans."

"Sam…you're starting to freak me out! What is this all about?" Andy said, starting to panic again.

Sam took a deep breath, and then plunged in, "The Anton Hill case isn't closed. Collins had another cop undercover for over a year before he added me to the streets. Mickey is a badass who can stand that long a stint embedded in the Russian mafia, and she's been working her way up the management of his vice rackets. When she made a big leap up his organization, Collins recruited me to play a junkie to get intel and make sure her cover stayed solid. He also had me start building cases on Hill's dealers in case we needed to flip them instead of busting him with the info she was gathering. Emily was just a fluke connection I lucked into, not part of the original plan," he explained. "But Collins doesn't run C.I.s through the system either. I went in alone to try to get a confession out of him, but I actually did have a small plain clothes squad waiting to come in with a warrant if it didn't work. The reason I didn't answer your calls is because the phone was rigged with a high tech recorder. Anton's goons only took my guns and checked for a wire, but they never suspected that."

"So you mean I screwed that up too?" Andy said, depressed that her one big save seemed to be nothing but an illusion.

"No. I was getting nowhere with Hill. He wasn't saying anything that would be incriminating enough to convict him of squat, and he wasn't going to hand over Emily willingly. I wasn't even really sure he had Emily there, but I was about to have to resort to calling the team in to search for her anyway. If she hadn't been there, that would have sealed her death. And even if she was, having to do that meant we would have had him only on her kidnapping, assault, and whatever else we could get Emily to testify to. She was completely opposed to going into Witness Protection. Prosecutors hate basing things on reluctant witnesses, and we would probably only ended up getting him on petty things. But we would have had to do it to try to save Emily. It was better that you showed so we could get her out with the file trade and then bide our time for Mickey to find something better."

"OK, so what does the Boyko deal have to do with the ongoing case?" Andy said, lost.

"I'll get there. Mickey found out a few days later that it might be a good thing we never got the chance to set up the raid of the drug deal I'd heard about. She got wind that Hill had been toying with making a much, much bigger play, but then got spooked by the close call with me and the Emily thing. Collins decided that even though there might be extra danger of Hill being more paranoid, he wanted to keep her under to monitor developments to see if he would revive the plan after laying low for a while.

He wanted me to help him as a sort of back-up handler for her since I knew Hill's operation better than anyone except the two of them. He wanted it kept completely off the books and for me to appear to be somewhat disgraced and sent back to routine street duties nowhere near the drugs, vice, or organized crime units. We needed to make sure Hill thought it wasn't worth bothering putting a tail on me. Otherwise we'd have no hope of arranging safe ways for me to meet with her.

So we agreed that I'd stay on patrol as your permanent TO. He said he'd take care of Boyko if I agreed to work overtime as his wingman to help keep extra eyes on the operation. But only if I agreed to keep you in the dark. The idea was for it to look like I was on a sort of unofficial probation for a while. Collins is the smartest cop in the city. He's the go-to guy for every major op, and even the Pecks don't mess with him. They keep him happy because he's the best and he's not interested in their top jobs. I knew for sure he could make the Boyko thing happen without a ripple.

I also knew that he was concerned about my feelings for you, but not above using them as another reason for people to believe I was content and not pushing to be doing anything but training you and scowling at Callaghan. He's a genius at developing covers that people can pull off easily. But he was worried that you were a wildcard who could cause me to go off the rails in terms of the career path he wants for me. He knew before I did that I'd probably never agree to go undercover again. But he has his own agenda about grooming me to be a handler running UCs. He knows what you look like and he knows how to read me like a book. He still isn't quite over my screw-up getting outed and keeps making cryptic comments about Achilles getting sloppy over a woman too. I think he's really just wary of anyone that can get a rival hold on my soul," Sam smiled wryly.

"So I made my deal and put up with his occasionally annoying control freak tendencies because of the info Mickey turned up on what Anton was considering getting into. It's something none of us could tolerate getting a foothold in Toronto," Sam said bleakly.

"What could be worse than how he's already built his empire?" Andy said, not sure she wanted to hear the answer.

"He's planning to get in bed with the Zetas, one of the Mexican cartels, to supply him with kidnapped girls for the growing number of scumbag clients who like them young. Guess he's not satisfied with luring runaways into his clutches. They're planning a pipeline to import blow and sex slaves at the same time under the cover of chartered buses bringing visiting student groups for study abroad trips.

Andy, these are the guys who left a mass grave of hundreds of Central American migrants that you probably saw in the news. They rob them and steal their daughters before slaughtering them. We can't let a single bus get through or let those animals make a successful alliance with a Russian mobster like Hill," Sam was so agitated he jumped up and started pacing.

"My God!" Andy was completely shell-shocked by everything she was hearing. How could Sam have been working, even tangentially, on something this massive without her knowing it? She felt like she didn't know him at all any more.

"Mickey's close to finding out which border control agents they've got on their payroll to wave the buses through. And she's close to getting all the intel we need to intercept the first run, and implicate Anton in everything. Maybe even bust a couple of the cartel guys if we're lucky. It looks like things might start heating up within a month."

"Sam, how…How could you pull off juggling all of this without showing any stress?"

"Well, you're the one who said I always seemed impatient and irritated with the world. So I guess the stress must have showed a little," Sam attempted the weak joke. But he could see this news was hitting her with as much force as he knew it would.

He crouched down in front of her and took both her hands in his, "Andy, I know this is a lot to lay on you. But I didn't want there to be any secrets between us any more. I hated keeping it from you as long as I did, but that's part of being involved with under cover work. You have to take it seriously. You know I don't follow rules that aren't important, but I couldn't even consider breaking this rule about how things are done until we were starting get really seriously involved romantically. What I owed you as a partner wasn't enough to override the discipline you have to keep when you're working on something where the stakes are this high. You understand that that it had nothing to do with whether I trusted you, right?" he scanned her face anxiously. "It was all about my being able to be convincing playing a double role around people who know me well without slipping up. Frank is the only one at the 15 who knows about any of this, and even he doesn't know much. You understand?"

"I guess so. I just don't know how to react. Part of me feels I don't know you at all. That if you can keep a secret like this, I'll never really know you. I feel like I'm walking in quicksand and in way over my head," she confessed in a shaky voice.

"And the other part? Please tell me there's a part that still a part of you feels at home with me?"

"Well, that's not totally gone. But what I was going to say is the other part feels like I found out I just slept with Superman or Jack Bauer or Donnie Brasco or something," she gave a weak laugh, before adding, "You know, Luke would never have been able to keep his mouth shut and not brag about it to me if he was on a case this big, whether it would put Mickey at risk or not. You're really something. I don't know whether to run terrified or to tear off your clothes."

"What can I do to make you go for option two?" Sam flashed his best dimpled smile. He was going to fight for her with every weapon he had.

He turned serious and added, "I have to admit I wasn't entirely sure I was right when I said there would be more than one time no matter what we said later. But I will do anything to make this work. Whatever you need to adjust and feel comfortable. Just name it."

"Just hold me and tell me this isn't as crazy dangerous as it sounds," she said, tearing up at the mere thought of losing him now.

"I'm not the one on the front line any more," he tried to reassure her as he pulled her into his arms.

"What if one of Anton's guys spots you during a meet and realizes you're still going after him?" Andy asked anxiously.

"Collins does most of the meets with Mickey. She's the one who's at serious risk. The few times I have to do it, we have a ton of precautions in place to cover our tracks," Sam assured her.

"Like what?" she asked.

Sam sighed, "Promise you won't over react."

"Sam, I can't promise that. Just tell me. You said no more secrets," she reminded him.

"Monica helps. She's been an unpaid, off-the-book informant for Collins long before I ever met her. She had a sister who lost her life to addiction. Monica is on a mission to find out whether it was an accidental OD or whether one of her dealers killed her. She helps run a rehab center her family founded after her sister died. That's where I took Rubin to get him clean. Mickey takes some of Anton's girls there when they get too messed up. Monica and I were known to have a connection, so we decided to pretend my cover getting blown hadn't changed that. The clinic gives us perfect cover for Mickey and I to be in the same place when we need to without raising suspicions. Most times we get by with dead drops to pass messages rather than meeting in person."

Sam had felt Andy stiffen at the first mention of the other woman's name, and it didn't seem to lessen with the rest of his explanation. So he pulled back to look her in the eye, "Andy, I swear there hasn't been the least spark there in a long time. We only drifted into something while I was under cover because she's a workaholic who's too busy to meet anyone, and I didn't have a prayer of getting anyone but a low rent hooker to look twice at the kind of dirt bag junkie I was pretending to be. And even with a long, bleak months-long stretch staring me in the face, I would never go there. We were able to play it that she saw me as a pet project, and I was too clueless to realize I was chasing after someone out of my league. We managed to hook up occasionally without anyone catching on. I got a lot of my sources and leads through her clinic, and that was the extent of it.

Monica is a brilliant, driven woman. She's a big wheel at the hospital, keeps tabs on the rehab clinic, and also is running a separate animal research lab doing clinical trials. But she runs entirely on two emotions, guilt that her sister's chronic insecurity and envy of her led her into addiction and rage at drug dealers and pimps. She doesn't feel the least hesitation over the pain caused to her animal subjects. I'm no PETA type, but I found that a little unsettling. And she never expressed any desire for anything more than a convenient interlude here or there. She caught the attraction between you and I immediately, and cut things off. Which was a huge relief, because I was saved from having to tell her it was over. I think the only thing that attracted her to me was that I was trying to take down Anton and that I shared the experience of seeing a sister in pain. She was over me in less than a week."

"I'm not sure I buy that she got over you that quickly. I guess I can live with the fact that you still need to have contact with her occasionally. But I don't have to like it," Andy sniffed.

"Trust me, you have less to worry about than I do about the fact you run into Luke all the time at the barn. We had less going on in the first place, and I don't see her that much. My attention has been entirely occupied with you from the minute I met you."

"Clearly, not entirely occupied, after what you told me tonight, but I get your meaning. What was that you said earlier about working day and night to convince me? I think this slow kid is ready for another lesson," Andy smiled, deciding she was going to hold onto Sam regardless of how many bombshells he dropped on her. He thought he was going to need a lifetime to figure her out? She was obviously just starting to scratch the surface of this man. But like Traci said, she was already in it. It was time to just strap in and go for the wild ride.

"I thought you'd never ask," Sam drawled, picking her up and striding toward the bedroom with an extra spring in his step as relief washed over him and the burden of secrecy finally melted away. He felt like they had finally navigated the last major barrier separating them.