AN: Updating sooner than I expected, I should be sleeping, but who needs that anyway. We are getting close to getting rid of command, finally, let us hope nothing goes wrong cause no one wnat him around. Hope you guys enjoy ;)
On monday morning Jerry got up early to continue his gardening work, on saturday he stopped after about an hour, he had never done lawn mowing in his life and it was way more tiring than he thought. On sunday he decided to take on the backyard as a project to fight boredom, he would make it look nice, there were plants already there that just had to trimmed and cleaned; he didn't really know much about gardening, but he couldn't really make it worse.
Olivia was very anxious, Huck had told her on sunday night that the final part of their plan was being executed on wednesday, they were so close to being free, she couldn't really believe it would finally be over. Huck told her he would go to Houma to be with her when everything happened, just to make sure nothing went wrong, he would be traveling tuesday afternoon to get to her wednesday morning, he preferred to travel at night to go faster. She was packing some things that morning, she wanted to be ready to leave, but she didn't want to tell Jerry yet, just in case they had to postpone it, she planned to wait until wednesday morning that Huck got there.
Rowan was sitting is his office wondering about Jake and his daughter, everything seemed to be ok, but he had a gut feeling things were a little too good to be true; neither Fitzgerald or Olivia were doing stuff they weren't supposed to, too much calm, and being who he was he found it odd, even more after calling Jake. He thought about sending someone to get Ballard, see if his daughter was with him, and if she wasn't, persuade for information, but a part of him considered he was making too big a deal of the situation and he would just be wasting resources, his daughter was nowhere near Fitzgerald anyway. After a little while, he decided to call one of his agents, Adams, and have him find Jake, he could spare and agent, the guy was reliable, and why not do it and get it out of his mind instead of just sitting there thinking about it. Adams arrived around noon and went directly to his office.
"Sir, you wanted to see me" Adams said
"Yes, I need you to do something, and it's kind of personal so I rather have you doing it" Rowan told him
"Of course, anything"
"I need you to coordinate a search for Jake Ballard and have them find out if he is indeed with a woman having fun in the Bahamas" Rowan instructed him, it was better if he left out the woman was his daughter, that was a piece of information very few agents knew.
"On it Sir, I just have to go finish another assignment first" Adams told him
"I understand, just come back later" Adams walked out of the office, and Rowan just sat there finally satisfied with his decision.
"How is everything with command?" Huck asked Tom while both of them waited for Fitz latest interview to be over.
"Last time I checked, it's all good, I can't show up today just because, it would be weird, but I am due for a POTUS report tomorrow" Toms replied
"Ok then, we wait and hope nothing goes boom" Huck said
"Pretty much, yeah"
Fitz' interview was over after a few minutes and he walked out of the room and went straight to Huck.
"Gentlemen" Both of them nodded and replied with a very formal Mr. President "Is everything ok?" he asked, thinking both of them looked worried.
"Yes, we are just a bit on edge, considering everything" Huck tried to reassure the president, he didn't want him to do anything stupid. "I just need you to wanted to talk to you about the car you said you could get me, you know, so Olivia doesn't freak out if I just borrow one" Fitz laughed at his choice of words.
"Of course, lets go to the conference room, and I'll make the call from there" he stared walking and both men followed him. They reached the conference room and the rest of the team was there, they were actually working on his whole post divorce image building plan, ODC was pretty much done, they just had to make sure all actions were done at the proper time it was all planed out already.
"So, how did it go? Was I good?" He asked Abby after taking a seat
"You sure did, your numbers are actually pretty good" Abby answered with a smile "Looks like america is finally getting over your divorce"
"You think I'll be able to start dating soon?" he asked coyly
"Hold your horses Mr. President, lets not get carried away, besides, your girl is still MIA, or were you planning on dating someone else?" Abby replied.
"Nope, she's the one, so you can't blame me for hoping she comes back soon, and once she does, I don't care what you say, I will not be wasting any more time" he said thinking once he got her back he would make her First Lady the minute she said yes.
"We'll see Mr. President, now lets just get back to work" Abby told him and finished the Olivia conversation so they could all get back to business.
Jerry was keeping himself busy with his gardening, at first he felt bad about leaving Olivia alone, considering they had spent very waking hour together in the past few weeks, but then he realized she was kind of avoiding him. He had a feeling it had to do with something in DC, about the whole plan to bring down her father; he wanted to know but he understood maybe she didn't want him to get his hopes up in case there was a setback, so he pretended he noticed nothing.
There were some wild overgrown bushes he had been waiting to cut because he couldn't find the large gardening scissors, he just had a pair of small ones he had used with flowers, but that morning he had peeked through the front window blinds to see if Huck had left them on the porch or something, since there were probably plants there too, and indeed they where there getting all rusty from the humidity and just being dumped out there. Jerry knew Olivia would never let him go outside and she never went past the door, if he asked she'd probably tell him to do something else. Jerry knew, she had stopped leaving everything locked since like their third week, once she was truly convinced he wouldn't try to run; so he waited until after lunch when she disappeared upstairs to go outside real fast and get the scissors, he thought it was very simple and she would never find out.
He carefully opened the front door, trying to not make a sound and very slowly started walking on the front porch. Jerry had been so concentrated in being quiet that he didn't notice the delivery guy walking up to the house until he talked to him.
"Hey kid, I got your groceries, is your mom home?" the guy asked. Jerry froze momentarily and then got up with the scissors in hand and hurried back into the house, hoping the guy hadn't seen his face, he slammed the door after he got in. Olivia heard the noise from upstairs, she had been putting on her custom to answer the door fro the dinner supplies she had ordered, she panicked for a moment thinking there was no reason for that door to be used, she ran out of her room and nearly crashed into Jerry on the stairs.
"What happened" she asked him, panic written all over both of their faces.
"I just…" he tried to talk, then they heard the doorbell.
"What did you do?" she asked him again
"I wanted to get this scissors, I didn't know anyone was coming, I didn't see, he was out there" he ranted. She saw how scared he was and decided to go get rid of their visitor before anything else.
"I will go get rid of him, just go to your room, I'll be up in a minute" Jerry ran to his room and sat on the bed, cursing in his head for being so careless.
Olivia managed to compose herself to put up her act and went for the door. She opened, a teenager was standing there with a few bags in his hands.
"Hi, I'm sorry about my nephew, he's not good with people" doing her best southern accent and letting out a small chuckle.
"That's ok ma'am" the guy politely answered "here is what you ordered. Olivia took the bags and gave him the money.
"Thanks" she told him before she gave him a hefty tip "Have a good one"
"Thank you ma'am" the guy smiled and walked away. Olivia sighed in relief, everything seemed to be fine. However, Michael, the delivery guy, did see Jerry's face and was trying to place it in his head, he thought he seemed familiar but couldn't remember from where, and just like most people, it bugged him so he kept thinking about it. As he was driving back to the store he was behind a car with an old and discolored Grant bumper sticker, and that's when it hit him, the kid looked a whole lot like the president's dead kid. Michael didn't really know how the first children looked before the kid died, he didn't actually know how the girl or the baby looked like, but he remembered the dead kid's face because he had seen it over and over, on every news show, newspaper, on the internet, portraits of the kid taken over the years, school photos, the press had got their hands on all they could; and to top it off, some ladies at the supermarket had made a small memorial thing for him at the cafeteria with a large photograph. He chuckled to himself thinking he had found Jerry's doppleganger, and when he parked back at the store he got his phone out to tweet it, he just thought it was a funny thing to tweet "Just saw the doppleganger of the POTUS dead kid LOL #ripjerrygrant #presidentgrant"
Tuesday afternoon Tom was waiting outside command's office for his routine briefing of POTUS activities, he was going to report nothing interesting just as he had for the past weeks. There was another guy standing there with a pack of files on his hands, he knew the guy, command trusted him with his most unofficial tasks.
"Adams" Tom said to acknowledge the other guy waiting to see command
"Larsen" he replied
"What do you got there"
"Just a little assignment, had to find this guy, what he's up to" Tom thought fast and realized there was a chance it was about Ballard, so he decided to play along and pretend he knew, see if the guy bought it.
"Oh, the Ballard situation" The guy looked a bit surprised, but then figured it made sense, Tom was also one of commands most trusted guys.
"Yeah, you know about it?" he wanted to be sure
Tom nodded "There was a phone call, he seemed off"
"Well he is" Tom cursed in his head, they were so close, then he saw the guy winced when he turned to see the guy that had just passed them. Tom saw an opportunity
"You ok man?" Tom asked
"Not so much, I was shot a couple of days ago and I couldn't get the bullet out, have to go see the doc" Adams replied
"I can give those files to him, so you know, you can go get that checked" he suggested
"I don't know man" Adams hesitated
"I know those bullets can really hurt, and I have to see him anyway, plus, it's your lucky day cause I know what those are about so it's not a problem that you give the intel to me" Tom insisted, he saw the guy was caving.
"Guess you are right, but you know it's command"
"I'm just saying, cause I have to go in before you, cause I have some rather important stuff to tell him, he said it was urgent that I got back to him" Tom made something up to see if Adams finally agreed.
"I know, you always get big shot info" he winced from the pain again "This does hurts like a bitch so…" he handed the files to Tom "Just put in a good word for me ok"
"Sure, no problem" Tom waved as the guy hurried out of there, he hid the papers on his back right before the door to the office opened, he knew there were cameras, but by the time someone noticed it would be too late. Adams figured his information wasn't so important, command didn't make it seem like a big deal and he had no idea his daughter was the missing woman.
After about an hour he came out form his POTUS briefing and left to go back to the white house, once he was far enough he called Huck.
"What happened" Huck answered the phone
"He sent someone to find Ballard, see if his story held up"
"And?"
"It's handled, I intercepted the files, he won't find out on time" Tom told Huck
"Ok then, I'm about to leave town, Abby is in charge now, but call me if it's an emergency" Huck said as he packed a the last of his luggage into a black sedan.
"Ok" Huck hung up right away and got in the car.
Olivia had dropped the groceries on the living room and ran upstairs right after they guy left their house. She wanted to make sure Jerry was fine, she was mad that he broke the rules, but she was more worried that he could have a panic attack.
"Jerry are you ok?" She found him sitting in his bed hugging his legs
"I am so sorry Liv, I should've been more careful, what if something goes wrong, I'm so sorry" he was on the verge of tears, she sat next to him and placed a hand on his shoulder.
"It's ok, I don't think he saw anything, he just wanted to drop the food and get his money" she said soothingly. "Besides, we are close to the end of all this, everything will be just fine, just don't do it again ok"
"I swear Liv, I won't even go to the backyard" He said, clearly still scared.
"I don't think that is necessary, I may have exaggerated a bit, the backyard is pretty secluded" she tried to console him.
"Yeah, but I'm not taking any chances, you guys did so much to protect me and here I am screwing it all up, like what if your dad finds us" he was really shaken up
"Look I didn't want to tell you this yet, but, it's happening tomorrow" Olivia decided to tell him
"You mean… like we are coming out of hiding" he said with relief
"Yes, it will all be over in a few hours, so there is nothing to be worried about" she smiled at him
"I guess not much can happen in less than a day" He finally calmed down.
"Come on kid, lets go cook some dinner" Olivia told him and tugged his arm to get him off the bed. He followed her to the kitchen and they started preparing their meal to get their minds off the incident.
Later that night, Tom was getting ready to call it a day, he was not on night POTUS detail so he was going to get some rest, it was going to be hard day, wednesday with ODC coming to an end so he wanted to be sharp and rested. He was heading home when his phone started to ring, it was command. He cursed under his breath, and hesitated to answer, then he figured it was better to know what was going on, it could get worse if he ignored the call.
"Yes, sir" he answered
"Tom, I need you to come see me right now" Rowan said slowly and clearly
"Is something wrong sir?" Tom asked, trying to find how screwed he was, if Rowan knew about Adams giving him the files.
"Not yet, but I have something to discuss with you" Tom was 90% sure he was screwed, he contemplated making a run for it and waiting for Rosen to get him arrested, it was just a few hours he would have to wait; but he had to know if their plan was in danger, he had betrayed his boss enough already and if he really wanted redemption he couldn't just run and risk everything he had been working on, and putting his son's life at risk again.
"I'll be there in a few" he finally told command.
Rowan was sitting in his office waiting for Tom, and he was pissed, he was going home already when it hit him it was about time Adams had turned in his report, so he went and asked how it was coming along to put some pressure into his agents to have it by the morning, but he was unpleasantly surprised to find it had been finished hours ago. He called Adams only to get another nasty surprise, the files had been given to Tom so Adams could go get some medical attention. He sensed something was very wrong and that one of his most trusted guys was likely betraying him. He knew that if Tom kept those files from him it was because there was something wrong in them, there was no way around it, Tom had turned against him so he had to be gone; but first, he wanted to know what was going on. A few minutes later there was a knock on his door.
"Come in" he said through gritted teeth, trying to stay calm, he wanted to get the info in a peaceful way, then kill him without a mess.
AN2: So... it's almost time, they are so close, but it seems like they can't keep out of trouble, will Rowan get anything out of Tom, will the tweet be an issue, or are getting worried for nothing and their plan will work just fine? Let me know what you guys think :)
I apologize for any grammar or spelling mistakes you find, they happen a lot more than usual when I'm sleep deprived.
