"She flew you, in her private helicopter, to Houston, just to get some noodle soup?"
"It sounds ridiculous, right? I was there and even I'm finding it hard to believe. She flew the god damn thing herself."
"Sounds like a keeper, Cracker. Plus, chick is smouldering." Frank nodded in agreement, and grabbed the phone to ask, "have you seen her since?"
"No, I've spent the last three days trying to get over it."
"I don't get it, Hales. Why are you being so weird about this? She's not doing this stuff because she kinda-sorta likes you. This is classic wooing." Poot popped his head in frame to agree, "Classic", before a grin spread across Frank's face. "Besides, it's been like, what? Two years since you last got laid."
Poot barked out a laugh, turning the camera towards his face and laughing, "dude, do you even still have sex organs? Or did they pack up and leave for somewhere they'd be appreciated?"
Haley's face went poker-straight, "shut up Poot. My sex organs—could you have picked a more ridiculous phrase—work just fine. They are all about Lucy. I don't know," Haley rolled on to her stomach, the camera held directly in front of her face, "I think the whole 'internationally-known, universally-hated, no-holds-barred, leader-of-the-US's-biggest-crime-syndicate' thing is psyching me out. I mean, I'm no angel, but some of the rumours I've heard kind of scare me. My inner-angel does not feel comfortable with this."
"And here I thought we had gotten rid of that pesky cretin." Frank shook his head slowly and piped in, "all those hours running from cops and breaking padlocks on underground garages, all for nothing."
"Hey, I thought it was gone too. Then it reared it's haloed head right when the making out was getting good."
"You're filthy," Poot quipped. Frank feigned shock.
"Whatever. Two years."
"Well then, go take that girl to church."
"Church?"
"Yeah, you know," Frank put the phone right up to his face, his mouth taking up the full frame, "make her see the face of God."
Haley couldn't help but laugh. "I'm done listening to you two dirty-mouthed idiots. I'm gonna peace out."
"Fine. But go get it, gurl. Bye-yuh!" Two sets of hands waved at her, and she hung up with a smile on her face.
Haley had just finished her hand-to-hand training when Amy walked up behind her.
"Hey, stranger."
"Hi-yuh. What're you doing down here? Don't you TA a class at this time?"
"They have an exam so I get the day off. As a result, I've been craving a milkshake for the last hour, but I had to wait for my partner-in-crime. I couldn't possibly get one without you. What d'ya say?"
"Sounds perfect, just give me fifteen minutes to de-funk and put on clean clothes. I have a surprise for you, actually."
Amy walked out of the gym and leaned against the wall outside the shower room. Haley's promise of a surprise distracted her for less than a minute. It was overtaken by dread. Amy had planned on sitting Haley down and telling her the whole 'Lucy' story. Haley was spending a lot of time tailing her and Amy felt that her friend deserved to know the full story. She decided all this before she came down to the gym but her resolve had begun to crack. The nerves sat right behind her ribcage, making her feel physically ill. She had almost decided to abort the mission, give Haley some excuse and lock herself in her room; everything else got sidetracked, however, by the image she was greeted with when she raised her head.
"Well, say something." An anxious look clouded Haley's face, and her voice was small when she spoke. "You've kept telling me to do it, so I did. Was that not what you wanted? Oh god, I feel so stupid. It was just supposed to be a, like, way of showing you that you're a great Captain."
Amy stood stock-still, her eyes trying to drink in as much of the picture as possible. Haley stood in the doorway clad in a D.E.B.S. uniform. Amy couldn't control her own body; her eyes greedily took in the crisp white shirt, open to show just a suggestion of cleavage, the tie hanging untied around her neck, the short plaid skirt perfectly emphasising her toned legs, and the combat boots that made her look tough and sexy.
"You look, wow, you look great." Amy swallowed hard. "Thank you, but it's easy to be a good leader when your student is so amazing." Amy's eyes lingered over her body, looking powerful and so perfect in the uniform.
"Oh, you! Now, come on. Let's go get milkshakes before I change my mind about this whole thing."
If you asked Haley later, she would say wearing the uniform was to bolster Amy's confidence, and definitely not a way of assuaging her guilt over her double-crossing.
Haley couldn't take it any longer. Amy had come into her room four times this week. It was obvious she had something to say to Haley, but every time, she made up some lame reason and ducked out before spitting it out, and Haley had been on tenterhooks the entire time. She felt nervous and unsettled with it hanging over her. When Amy came to her room for the fifth time, Haley didn't give her a chance to bail.
"Amy, can you just please tell me what's on your mind? It's making things really freakin' tense." Amy stood chewing her lip for a minute, then sighed and flopped down into Haley's desk chair. Haley raised an expectant eyebrow, and Amy groaned.
"This isn't easy. I still feel so guilty and… I don't know, disappointed in myself."
"Amy, if there was a ranking of 'How likely a person is to judge you', I would be below every other girl in this house, right smack-bang on that 'no stones to throw' line. Now, will you just spill?"
Amy looked around apprehensively, trying to find the words. "Okay, so… right before our End Game, our team got a surveillance detail. Lucy Diamond was meeting a known assassin. Only, when we got there, it turned out that it was really just a date. Our cover was blown and it turned into a shoot-out. We ran after Lucy when she ran out of the restaurant. Somehow, I got separated from the team and all of a sudden me and Lucy were staring down each other's gun barrels. We both, we kind of decided we'd both prefer to just walk away."
"Wow, that sounds really scary, Amz." Why was it so easy to lie, to feign ignorance, to Amy?
"The weird thing was, it wasn't. Anyway, after that Lucy started showing up, made me go out with her. I had just broken up with my boyfriend and she was so smart, and funny, and god, she's insanely good-looking, if you didn't realise. One thing led to another, and I... I wanted to be with her so I let the D.E.B.S. believe I had been kidnapped. We holed up, me and Lucy, pretending we were a normal couple. Then things got really messy: I left her, came back to D.E.B.S. racked with guilt and without even Max for support. I had lied to everyone and they were all, understandably, pissed. I promised them I wouldn't have any more to do with Lucy." Haley opened her mouth, ready to speak, but Amy held up her hand to stop her. "There's more. Lucy turned up to End Game, and we left together. I couldn't get rid of the guilty feeling I had over betraying my friends, my sisters, so I came at both of them—the D.E.B.S. and Lucy—with a compromise. Lucy and I would continue our relationship, but I would stay a D.E.B.. That meant that Lucy had to promise to give up the family business, and I mean stop everything. She promised me she would be a law-abiding citizen if it was for me. We went to Spain. Everything was great for a while. But I should have known, people don't ever change, not that majorly. She was slowly slipping back into old habits. She would sneak off to plan heists with Scud over the phone. She broke our deal; I had to let the team know."
"Yeah, of course," Haley nodded, but made a marked effort to avoid eye contact. Shame and guilt had pushed all of her blood to the surface and the heat was stifling.
"I confronted her one night and she admitted it. She said it was in her nature, that she couldn't help it. I told her doing the right thing was in my nature, and I couldn't be with someone whose life was dedicated to wrong-doing. I should have arrested her, but I let her pack her things and go. And now, now she's pulling jobs so frequently we can barely keep up."
"That's not your fault."
"No, but it is my responsibility. I wanted to tell you that, and warn you. I want you to be careful. If you do come in contact with her, you have to keep the fact that she is a criminal foremost in your brain, or she will use her charm to reel you in. She'll break her promises and she'll break your heart." Pain was evident on Amy's face. She shook her head and let out a bluergh sound that made Haley laugh despite herself.
"Anyway, it shouldn't be an issue," she pushed herself up out of the chair and moved towards the door, "you're good at tailing. Just keep your distance, doing what you're doing, and it won't be an issue. Hopefully you never have to meet her face-to-face."
"Yeah, here's hoping." Haley heard the insincerity in her voice and mentally kicked herself.
"Huh, I feel much better now. Thanks, Hales."
"Sure," Haley forced, praying her small smile looked encouraging and not pained. As far as she could tell, Amy didn't notice, she just ducked quietly out the door.
Haley didn't care how over-dramatic it was, she flung her body face-first on to her bed and buried her face in her pillow.
Her head buzzed with all the new information, but she could only verbalised one question:
"What the actual fuck?"