24
His work and laptop in a knapsack on his back, Leonard strolled out to his car in its regular parking spot near the Cal Tech Physics Building then looked around for Sheldon to take him home. He wasn't out yet, but that wasn't unusual. When Sheldon started talking, he often lost track of the time. Unlocking his driver's side door, he slipped into his silver Dodge Neon and placed his pack behind him on the back seat. As he sat and waited at the wheel, he thought about pulling closer to save Sheldon a few steps, but after his rant about Penny at lunch, he wasn't feeling charitable. He pulled out his cell and pulled up Penny's phone number. Sheldon wasn't going to like it, but he was re-scheduling his date with her for tonight.
"Hello?" She responded.
"Hi, Penny. It's me…"
"Hey, Leonard, could you hold on a second?" Bridget was currently in the mountains of Northern Iraq in the ruins of Bel-Tammon, ancient Roman ruins currently used as a temporary base for Iraqi insurgents to hide weapons. By time the Army got here, these terrorists were going to be in the wind so she decided to keep them here a bit longer. Tapping her ear bud to place Leonard on hold, she was getting strafed by bullets from over thirty Iraqi hostiles. They had tried blowing up her seven times, burying her underground in the temple ruins and shooting her out of the sky with a missile, but she just kept coming at them. Her costume from Samantha was really holding up to the damage, but she didn't like the fact it didn't let her perspire. Grabbing the front of one of their military trucks, she hoisted it by its front bumper and hurled it up to come down on their machine gun nests. Terrorists went screaming and running and calling enforcements.
"Hey, Leonard…" She had rolled under a tank and was sticking to the bottom of it. "What's up?"
"Well," Leonard sat in his car in the parking lot of the California Institute of Technology oblivious to what she was doing. "I was thinking about rescheduling our date for tonight? I think I can get our table back at Risottos."
"Really?" Penny dug her feet into the ground and started lifting the tank up over her head, rattling and shaking it to disconcert and knock the spirit out of the men inside it. Artillery shells, machine gun fire and high caliber armor-piercing rounds bounced off of her and struck the ground around her and hit the huge stonewalls of the ruins. "I'm afraid I can't make tonight."
"What's that noise?" Leonard heard her background noise.
"Oh, I'm kind of working as an extra in a low-budget terrorist flick." One of the Iraqi insurgents tried roasting her with a flamethrower, but she dropped the tank on its side in front of him, and he got roasted himself before he could drop the weapon. Several of the terrorists had lost their will to try killing her and were fleeing into the desert, the more sadistic and determined stayed behind to take Bridget out before she could get them.
"Oh, cool!" Leonard was excited. "Who's starring in it?"
"No one you'd know…" Bridget hit a round piece of wreckage with her foot, flipping it up and catching it, hurling it like the chakram of a long forgotten warrior princess as it bounced several times off several surfaces and walls taking several insurgents out in front of it before it lost its energy and momentum and skidded to a stop. Someone tossed another hand grenade at her, but she caught it and hurled it back. The explosion sent several khaki wearing men flying in separate directions.
"It sounds exciting?" Leonard responded in her earpiece. "How about tomorrow?"
"That's not really good for me either…" Through the screams, gunfire and crates of weapons blowing up in the fire, Bridget's mind processed the sounds of American soldiers coming from a mile away. A number of Air Force fighters were getting close to access the area for weapons, and she ran up the side of the ruins and ascended into the air, her fist furled ahead of her before the United States Military could see her. She was already craving Greek for lunch.
"Saturday?" Leonard asked as Sheldon started heading to the car.
"That's not good for me either…" Bridget was riding the air currents toward Crete. "I might not be home tonight."
"What happened to the shooting? Did they stop?" All Leonard heard now was the crackling and buffeting of the wind around her.
"Yeah, I got a break…" Penny slowed to a stop over an Italian liner near Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean. She slowed to keep the wind from drowning out her voice. "Right now, I think Monday is free for me. How about then?"
"Then it's a date." Leonard grinned as Sheldon got into the car.
"What's a date?" Sheldon asked as Leonard clicked off his phone.
"I just rescheduled my date with Penny." Leonard grinned excitedly. Sheldon groaned.
"Honestly, Leonard…" Sheldon rolled his eyes. "She didn't even finish college." He recalled the false history Bridget had given for herself the day they first met.
"Einstein didn't finish college and look how far he got."
"Yes, but if he had, he'd have finished his Unified Field Theory; now, wouldn't he?" Sheldon pointed out and Leonard groaned in his seat. On the other side of the planet, Bridget was returning to her favorite Greek restaurant and getting welcomed by the owner and his wife who ran it. She even spoke to them in their native language as American soldiers seized the ruins and started taking prisoners. It was going to be an interesting report for the President to read, but it was not the first time President Dale Gilchrist had received a report from either Homeland Security or the CIA about an alleged blonde girl in a superhero costume taking down terrorists or angry anti-government radicals. He had just assumed her activities were confined to the States, but right now, he tried to find a respite of peace from his duties as a world leader.
Since he had taken his oath of office, President Gilchrist tried to open the White House dining room every Saturday afternoon to lunch guests he could choose, although many of them were guests picked and recommended by his personal assistant. He had invited former President Josiah "Jed" Bartlett to join him himself, and a brief encounter with historian Ben Gates at a party at Mount Vernon led the treasure hunter to be another guest. From the local newspapers, Gilchrist heard how FBI Agent Seeley Booth had solved a forty-three year old murder case through his contacts at the Jeffersonian Institute and decided to meet him as well. Congressman Marty Huggins from North Carolina rounded out the small private affair. Vice President Selina Meyer was expected to join them, but the latest news was she had to cancel.
"How you doing, Dale?" Bartlett shook Gilchrist's hand as he entered the White House dining room.
"Just fine, thanks…" Gilchrist gestured for his guests to sit. Gates and Booth exchanged glances, and Huggins shined to meet the President and actually dine in the White House dinging room guarded by Marine cadets and Secret Service men in the corridor. "Mr. Gates…" Gilchrist looked to the historian and recalled how Ben had sneaked Bartlett out of a private party for information on the President's Secret Book. "We're not going to have any mischief here, are we?"
"Not at all, Mr. President." Ben took his seat.
"Marty…" Gilchrist met the Congressman then turned to Booth. "Agent Booth, it is an honor to have you with me."
"It is my honor, Mr. President…"
"Oh, don't be modest…" Gilchrist shined. "Men, this is one of the top men in the FBI. I feel safer just having him with us." Servants brought in the plates to place before the President's guests. "A forty-three year old murder case of a White House Aide in 1969 that was once deemed unsolvable…"
"Well, sir, I couldn't have done it without the assistance of Dr. Temperance Brennan and her staff at the Jeffersonian. " Booth sipped his juice and looked at his eggs. "They deserve a lot of credit."
"Aren't you forgetting someone, agent?" Bartlett turned his head up. "I read a report where someone tried bombing the Jeffersonian to destroy the evidence in another case, but a blonde in a cape stole the bomb and prevented the explosion."
"I wasn't there when that happened." Booth confessed. "I can't be a witness to what really happened there."
"I heard she did the same thing in New York City…" Marty salted and doused his eggs with pepper. "That girl is really something the way she gets around."
"My grandkids love her…" Bartlett lit up with a smile. "They keep asking if I know who she is."
"I know…" Gilchrist sliced his eggs and ham. "Everyone keeps asking me. Who is she? Who is she?"
"Actually…" Ben looked up from buttering his toast. "I heard a rumor, President Gilchrist, that you had her deputized as a special deputy for the FBI."
"Oh yeah…" Booth mused with a glint to his eyes. "Along with Santa Claus and Paul Bunyan…" He jested to show his skeptical belief in a bulletproof girl who could fly and lift tractor-trailer trucks. Both the current President and former President grinned and shared looks across the table.
"Ben…" Gilchrist's face lit up in amusement. "You know better than to listen to rumors, and besides… as much as I'd personally love to meet this girl, how do you think we could keep such a thing secret?"
"I heard…" Bartlett sipped his orange juice. "That's she's been dumping the worst people on the planet into exile on an island in the South Pacific surrounded by man-eating sharks."
"Maybe that's why you guys haven't found Red John or the Grave-Digger?" Ben wondered about the guy at the top of California's Most Wanted and one D.C. serial killer. Booth and Gates stared at each other across the table. "How about the huge illegal marijuana farms that have been mysteriously burned up, the umpteen tons of cocaine dumped in the ocean, hundreds of meth labs and criminal rings busted… In one year, she's located a hundred and seventy-five wanted criminals in the FBI database." Ben was provoking Booth. "She's kind of putting you guys out of business."
Booth quietly ate part of his omelet.
"I haven't seen her…" Booth responded. "Until then, I'm skeptical that she exists…"
"Really…" Ben leaned back and studied Booth from across the table. "What about this secret file I hear the FBI has on this girl…" He tried to get a reading on Booth. "Is the name of her secret identity in there?"
"There is no secret file…" Booth maintained his decorum then changed his attitude. "Where are you getting this stuff? From your friend, Riley Poole?"
"Well, he is a fan…"
"I've seen her." Marty spoke up. Briefly using his napkin to dab his lips, he held up a finger to pause the conversation and sip his grape juice. "Yes, I've seen her…" His Southern accent danced through his words. "Do you all recall those storms that hit the southeast part of my state some time back? The one that mysteriously blocked those flood waters and created that big lake from the old quarry? I saw her do that. I saw her lift that chunk of bedrock that turned that rain-swollen creek five miles into the other direction and save millions of dollars of private property." He plucked a strip of bacon into his mouth. "We now call that Superior Creek."
"Superior Creek?" Bartlett asked.
"Tried calling it Supergirl Creek, but the local town council wouldn't pass it."
"Dale…" Bartlett looked over. "What about this rumor she lives out of a decommissioned missile base? Have you had them all checked?"
"Do you realize…" Gilchrist was chuckling. "How much trouble I'd be in with the American people with I wasted tax dollars to go looking for a person the majority of the country says doesn't exist?"
"Well…" Ben looked up to Booth. "Maybe that's why no one has ever been able to figure out just where she is…" He sipped his juice.
Forty-five miles south of Bermuda in the equally mysterious stretch of sea known as the Bermuda Triangle, Bridget got the attention of another confused flier flying in gas fumes and guided him back to the airport in Miami. If her power allowed her to time travel, she would have done the same thing for the five missing Avengers of December 5, 1945, but she stayed the night in Miami and dumped three drug lords in an upside down trash dumpster outside the Miami Police Department for Horatio Caine to deal with before breakfast. She was in Atlanta next on an Amber Alert, leaving a pedophile hanging from a cell phone tower by his underwear, and in Nashville, saving the life of an intoxicated teenager trying to dodge a speeding train at a crossing. Near Litchfield, Illinois, she re-guided a tractor-trailer on to the highway after its driver started dozing off at the wheel, and in Hiram, Iowa, she stopped a youth from blowing off his hand with a stick of dynamite stolen from a construction site. Not staying to hear the glory or praise from another grateful mother, she was in Pawkett, Nebraska, Saskatchewan, Canada, Lutherville, Idaho, Tucumpari, New Mexico, the Southeast Utah desert and heading toward California for dinner. Piper and Leo invited her to stay for dinner in San Francisco to hear of her adventures and second thoughts of doing this for another year. They tried to console her over her loneliness, but they weren't sure if they had anything truly insightful to tell her. Following getting caught on camera in Sacramento foiling a fleeing drug-pusher trying to escape the police for the CBI and the attempted murder of a dancer in Las Vegas for Detective Jim Brass, Bridget was soon gliding on the winds over Los Angeles and casually cruising the skies over the fifth floor Law Offices of Harrison and Parker. Actress Stacy Barnett sawing her buzz the building first and tried to show her best friend, but Jane scoffed with friendly grin, called her assistant Fred over and motioned him to her office. The puckish and likable young man followed Jane through the law office. Though large and slight in build at the same time, the lovely brunette lady lawyer moved with a grace on dainty footsteps and light gestures left over from her previous life as Deb Dobkins, a young beauty who had lost her life in a fatal car accident and who had been reborn in this life as Jane Bingham, a strong-willed career woman. Fred had followed her from the afterlife to keep an eye on her, even taking a job as an assistant in her law firm to pull it off, but there were often things coming up from his past duties that kept creeping up.
"Fred, could you tell Grayson I'd like to see him?"
"Sure…" Fred promised and looked up to Jane, but in his eye-line was an attractive young blonde slowly rising up alongside the window in a red cape and blue "Supergirl" costume. Arms crossed, her legs closed together in a levitating pirouette… Bridget floated up into view trying to get his attention. "I… I…"
Jane turned her head into the window, but Bridget had vanished out of sight.
"As soon as he gets back from lunch…" Fred promised.
"Thank you…" Jane watched Fred dash out of the office into the outer work area. Hastening around Terri at her desk outside Jane's office, he bolted for the windows and looked out over the Los Angeles skyline. He was used to Bridget shooting past the building one in a while, but she had never stopped and looked into the windows. Just what was that girl thinking? The last time he had seen her was over doughnuts and coffee at Christmas, before that it was during a mess the Halliwell Sisters had with Ares, the former Olympian god of war. Before that, he was present when she tried storming the gates of heaven over the fate of her father and threatened to give up her godly gifts. Admittedly, he had a bit of a slight infatuation with her, but right now, his fondness for her was tempered by her peeking in the window at him. Sent racing from window to window in the law firm muttering her name under breath, he finally reached the firm's exterior balcony landing where the lawyers often stepped to catch a smoke or clear their head.
"Bridget?" He looked around for her and closed the doors behind him. "Bridget?!" He looked down to the ground for her.
"I'm over here." She was standing on the ledge to his right.
"What are you doing poking your head in windows?" Fred turned round to her. "You've never done that before…"
"Actually I have…" Bridget hopped over to him with her cape swaying from her shoulders. "But I was trying to get your attention, and you immortals aren't listed in the phone book."
"And there's a reason for that…" Fred acted out an example by using his hand as a fake phone to his ear. "Hello, Fred, I'd like my own house and bigger boobs…"
"I was thirteen at the time and self-conscious, okay." She knew when he was imitating her. "Look… you said I could come to you any time when I was having a crisis of faith, and, well, you've kind of got this direct line to God…"
"Not right now…" Fred looked to see if Kim was looking for him. "In case you haven't noticed, I've kind of been demoted since someone I'm not naming right now hit the "return" button." He was talking about model Deb Dobkins whose spirit now inhabitant Jane. "Talk to Earl…"
"Well, I'd talk to Earl in Albuquerque…" Bridget referred to the guardian angel of New Mexico police detective Grace Hanadarko and moved her head back and forth emphatically. "But he always seems to know when I'm coming… and disappears… So, I'm talking to you instead."
"I can't do this now…"
"I'm quitting…" She confessed.
"What?" She had his ear.
"I can't do it anymore." She shook her head. "I can't keep disposing of my life when things get too close. Kerry finding me forced me to realize I want to go home, and running into my father in Pittsburgh made it worse. I'm quitting, and yet, I still care about Leonard. I can't just vanish on him to restart a new life again with another name and identity!"
"You did it with Zack and Cody…"
"Yeah, but…"
"And Jason and the Halliwell Sisters…."
"That's different, they…"
"And don't forget…"
"Stop doing that!" She dropped down on the ledge and struggled between heart and mind.
"Bridget," Fred gave in and swung his legs over to sit next to her. "I know you love your job, but giving it up to go home is a selfish thing… You can't give it up now. You're destined for great things… You can't throw it all away just because you're lonely."
"I don't want to give it up…" Bridget was crying. "I just think God made a mistake giving me these powers…"
"It was no mistake." Fred placed his arm around her back as her head rested on his shoulder. "You had these powers coming… He just… woke them up…"
"Great…" Bridget rolled her eyes. "I can't even give them away…"
"Who were you going to try giving them to?"
"Maddie…" Bridget recalled an old friend. "She always wanted the power to change the world."
"That candy girl at the Tipton in Boston?" Fred made a face of amused disbelief then recanted and thought about it. "You might be a little too late…"
"Oh my God…" Bridget looked to him and hopped back over to the ledge. "You're kidding me…." Maddie was also destined to become an angel? "You ruined that poor girl's life…"
"Irene recommended her…" Fred knew the girl's guardian angel. "You never wondered why people thought you looked both like Reese Witherspoon and Ashley Tisdale?" He looked to Bridget. "And we didn't ruin her life. We unleashed her full potential like we did with you…."
"Which one of her friends or relatives are you holding hostage on her?" Bridget became upset. "Who's going to die if she tries giving up her powers?"
"God doesn't work like that!" Fred confessed. "That's just an empty threat Zeus came up to motivate you." He chuckled at her. "Heck, he told Leonardo Da Vinci Greece would disappear into the sea if he didn't do the Sistine Chapel."
"That was Michelangelo…"
"Doesn't matter…" Fred chuckled and looked dreamily up to her. "Bridget… God isn't concerned where you live or who you live with… Your father won't die if you return home. He wants you to be happy." He paused and admired her innocence. "Bridget Hennessey, do your realize how much good you've done? As you told Kerry, the lives you've touched have touched other lives, and those lives have touched others…. Why would He want to stop that?"
Bridget looked at him.
"Are you telling me…" Bridget looked at him. "I could go home anytime I wish…"
"If you can do it without exposing your secret…" Fred responded. "Trust me, Bridget, the world isn't ready for that… and your family… they already know and love you that much more for it."
"The world… my family… There's no way…" She had a huge problem. As far as the world was concerned, she had been taken out by a serial killer almost ten years ago. Bridget Hennessey as a person no longer existed. Although her parents refused to believe it, the police had given up trying to find her. Most crime writers thought she was going to turn up as a pile of bones somewhere on the Upper Michigan Peninsula. "How can I go home without the entire world asking where I've been?"
"Bridget…" Fred mused still a bit in love with her. "If you can find a way, go for it."
The blonde one thought of her mother in Michigan. Considering the time difference, her mother would be getting home from the hospital about now. Back to working as a sports news reporter, her father would be home too. Her grandfather had come to stay with them after his divorce, and CJ had moved in after leaving the army to get back on his feet. Kerry was home as well and building a career as a lawyer. The only one not there was Rory away at college on his basketball scholarship. Bridget wanted to be there with them to tell them she loved them, but how long would it take in that crowded house before her father discovered her in her costume or before her mother inquired about her nearly endless fortune? Maybe she could live nearby under another alias… If she could fake a British accent as Linda Kent, how about a French accent? What if she lived near her family as Billie Daniels? What about Chloe Tisdale, the identity she had in Boston at the Tipton? No, her mind realized there was no way she could keep up the pretense, and what about Leonard, Howard, Bernadette and her friends in Pasadena? She didn't want to vanish from their lives either. There had to be a way she could live in both worlds and keep her real life a secret. She thought it over and mulled every possibility over the next following days. That week, she stopped an avalanche on the Seattle coast that week by fortifying the collapsing ground with a chunk of solid bedrock taken from down the coast, she prevented a two plane collision in London and she practically stopped an entire train by ripping open a box car to rescue a kidnapped adolescent near Grand Rapids. That close to home, she couldn't help but briefly dye her hair black, fake a New York accent and hide her identity under a baseball cap and work suit to slip into her old house under Kerry, her father, Cousin CJ and Grandpa to fix the stopped up pipe in the kitchen as a fake plumber. CJ even tried hitting on her, but then her mother started getting close enough to nearly recognize her and Bridget conjured a bit of poltergeist activity upstairs to distract them that she could escape. It was a close call, but it just fortified her desire to be back home that much more and somehow bring Leonard with her. That's when the idea finally hit her…
"It had to be Bridget, Paul…" Cate was convinced. "I know my daughter!"
"Cate…" Paul sighed and looked lovingly upon his wife. "I met this girl entering the house. I think I would know my daughter."
"Really…" Cate moved through the house cleaning and picking up cups through the living room. "Why did she dash out of the house out the back door without getting paid… five minutes before the real plumber showed up?!"
"Well… well…" Paul tried to think of an answer then looked at CJ by his side sipping a cup of coffee over the coffee pot.
"Don't look at me for answers…" CJ mumbled disinterested in their debate. "I was busy undressing her with my eyes."
Both Paul and Cate looked disgustedly offended to him.
"Phone's ringing…" CJ heard the house phone ringing. Ed looked up from his newspaper in his chair. Kerry was typing up her court notes from a local crash-and-dash case she was defending.
"Okay…." Paul surrendered to Cate. "Maybe she was homesick and had some time…" He noticed CJ, lowered his voice and whispered to Cate. "…Between terrorists, pedophiles and criminals to sneak in and see how we were doing?"
"Because…" Trying to eavesdrop on their secret conversation, Kerry looked up to them. "Like I said, she's still as sneaky, deceptive and manipulative as she has always been… just like I've been saying."
"Kerry, I refuse to believe…"
"Aunt Cate…" CJ stopped what was about to be another talk about the family secret and held up the phone. "There's a Detective Mac Taylor on the phone from New York City… He wants to talk to you or Uncle Paul."
"A detective…" She looked at him. "What did you do?"
Paul and Cate exchanged looks. Ed looked over his newspaper.
"I've never even been to New York…" CJ lightly scoffed and handed her the phone. A memory came to him he thought he had forgotten years before. "They couldn't have found that stuff. Stinky said he buried it really deep…" He was mumbling.
"Hello…" Cate answered the phone.
"Mrs. Hennessey…" A distinct voice of authority spoke. "This is Detective Mac Taylor. I'm with the New York City Forensics lab. I'm calling about your daughter, Bridget Hennessey."
"Bridget…" Cate feared the worst. Upon hearing his daughter's name, Paul stopped to listen in interest, and both CJ and Kerry turned around to listen to the phone call. Her father lowered his paper even more to eavesdrop as well. This was where she feared they announced finding her daughter's body in a deserted Brooklyn house next to Jimmy Hoffa or in an unmarked grave with Dorothy Arnold in Central Park. Please don't let it be true. Let this be a false alarm like the last one.
"Mrs. Hennessey…" Mac looked through the hospital ward centered on the victims of a current case. Twelve girls had been rescued from an underground sex ring through an anonymous phone call to the police. Doctors were checking the young girls all out for venereal disease and injuries. One of them seemed healthier than the rest. Mac stopped and looked up at Bridget. "We found her, she's alive, and we got her here."
From the bed, Bridget looked up to Detective Taylor as a nurse checked her. She was taking a big chance to bring herself back to life…