Chapter 19

Collateral damage was one of the many hazards of being a spy. More often than not, innocent people suffered the worst when causes for the greater good went awry. Civilians were sometimes more convenient to burn, to use, for the sake of keeping a mission uncompromised. Joan had seen it happen, time and time and again, and she had learned to accept it with stoicism and distanced empathy, but no remorse. Espionage afforded no man, or woman, the luxury of regret. As a field agent, Joan had hardened herself against falling prey to emotions like compassion. Her contrived heartlessness was justified by the fact that ruining one life often meant saving countless others.

She felt differently now.

All within the last 12 hours a key CIA asset had been lost to a violent demise, her operatives had been attacked, run off the road, and injured in the process, and now Annie's sister was missing with not a shred of evidence left behind to find her.

Calder had called Joan on a secure satellite phone before the Learjet had even landed in Rammstein, delivering the unexpected news of Oliver Lee's latest double-cross with the American Consulate's supposed star pupil; Sarah Tam. Joan had then tried to contact Auggie immediately, when he and the others were ambushed on their way to the naval base, by who they assumed was Tam, or someone working with her. Lee had revealed Tam's initial status as a double agent for the MSS inside the consulate, and her subsequent defection from the MSS (along with Oliver) when Henry Wilcox offered them a price they could not refuse.

Diamonds were a girl's best friend, after all.

Lee had also revealed that he had managed to establish contact with Tam using protocol before he was put in secure custody. Despite the fact that Joan still did not trust him, especially now, Oliver had sworn that his plan to escape only included capturing Annie Walker to use as bait. Tam was supposed to pretend to act on behalf of MSS, so that it would appear as if they were trading one operative for another. Lee knew the location of the diamonds, and he and Tam had planned to pool their resources and disappear once she had gotten her share.

Obviously somewhere along the way things had fallen apart and not gone according to plan.

The bigger issue now was that Sarah Tam's involvement presented a whole new set of problems. Langley was already in a state of unrest following Henry's traitorous actions. The discovery of another person connected to the long line of ludicrous lies only fueled the fire, and the subsequent abduction of a civilian during an off-the-books mission only served to heighten the already rising tension. And it begged the question: how deep did the corruption run? How compromised were all the other facets of their existence?

If Henry had gotten to these few, what had stopped him from tainting others?

To make matters worse, what had originally been a simple, uncomplicated mission to retrieve Annie and bring her home, had suddenly turned into a crisis situation. Despite the DCI's knowledge of the operation, it had still been off the books on the principal that there would be no immediate or long-lasting repercussions. The intrepid, misfit agents were therefore on their own, without official CIA support, in a foreign country with no resources except what they could manage to find by themselves.

It plagued Joan to no end that there was no immediate course of action she could take to change the status quo.

This is why she now sat on her living room couch in the middle of the night, coffee table scattered with file after file, dossier after dossier, trying to figure out how she had missed all the warnings that were now so blatantly obvious. It was raining outside, the winter storm creating a chorus of sound against the glass of the living room's bay windows, a fire glowed softly in the fireplace. It was one of three warm, happy things in the room with her.

Arthur and Mack occupied the recliner just across from her, the muted buzz of a DVR-ed baseball game the ambient sound of the late-night atmosphere. Taking a moment to enjoy the view, Joan sat back on the couch, admiring the two boys from afar, a small piece of tranquility amidst the chaos of the moment. Mack was sound asleep in his Father's arms, unaware of the world around him, but Arthur was watching her intently, blue eyes forever as striking as the day they had met. She was reminded fleetingly of Teo - followed by a tightening in her chest.

"You're doing what you can, Joan." He murmured softly, knowing all too well the internal struggle his stoic wife wrestled with.

"It doesn't feel like enough." She rubbed her tired eyes, but there was no erasing the circles below them. She twirled her necklace around her finger - nervous habit.

"Calder will get them home." Arthur reassured, glancing down at Mack, whose tiny fingers were held tight to his thumb. "What does Jennifer say?"

"She agrees that this kind of behavior isn't typical of the MSS, which correlates with Oliver's story that Tam's gone rogue." Joan admitted, briefly scanning back over the papers in front of her. She picked up a picture of Tam, no longer Mai Shin, and studied it. "But why kill Joost? Why take Danielle?" Joan stood, picture in hand, walking over over to Arthur and Mack, sitting on the arm of the recliner. "If Annie had something she wanted, I would understand, but she couldn't possibly be of any value to her in a longterm sense."

"Maybe you're over-thinking it." Arthur took the picture from her to examine it. "Not all spies are motivated by the same things. While most of us are working toward the bigger picture - the common good - others ambitions are simpler. More selfish."

"What are you saying?" Joan leaned over Arthur, readjusting Mack's baby blanket so that his legs were covered.

"I'm saying Tam is grasping at straws. Greed makes people desperate, Joan. You know that as well as I do. It explains the brash decision-making, the atypical plays…" Arthur readjusted his reading glasses, pushing them back up the bridge of his nose. "What she didn't expect was to lose the key to her treasure chest, and now she has to get that key back. She might not want him, but she needs Oliver - Danielle is just another bargaining chip, and another way to control the chess pieces, namely Annie."

"They way you talk, Arthur, you make it sound so impersonal." Joan frowned. "It's not a game, it's Danielle's life, Annie's life."

"You know I'm just as worried as you are, for all of them." Arthur grabbed her hand with the one that wasn't currently being commandeered by their son, kissing the back of it. "I'm just trying to give you the rundown objectively, so that when you have to make the call, you'll be able to make it count."

"I know." She squeezed his hand back. "Objectivity is usually my forte. But lately, when Annie's concerned…" Joan's throat tightened, and she bit her lip, fighting the unfamiliar swell of emotion that hit her.

"She knows you care, Joan." Arthur's reassurance did little to calm the anxiety that threatened to do her in. "Don't think for a minute that she doesn't."

"It's not that." Joan settled into Arthur's side, balanced on the arm of the chair, letting her fingers brush softly against Mack's little fingers still wrapped tightly around his father's hand. "I see me, Arthur, I see so much of me in her that it scares me. And I don't want her to think she has to do this on her own, like I did. I don't want her to think she has to be alone, that she has to keep running."

"She won't be alone." Arthur murmured, turning to kiss the top of Joan's head as she rested it on his shoulder. "I know there's at least one person - besides Auggie - who won't let that happen."

"And who's that?"

"You."

Auggie hated hospitals.

He hated the sterile smell, the clipped way nurses and doctors marched up and down the halls, the looks he could feel when people would stare. It was the latter thing that especially irked him, something he should have gotten used to by now, even though in his heart he knew he never would. He had enough hours logged in the emergency room to last himself two lifetimes, and being forced to sit in the waiting area of the infirmary at the airbase in Rammstein was a bitter reminder of past visits he would have rather forgotten entirely. As a rule he generally avoided medical personal and medical facilities altogether, if he could help it.

Since meeting Annie Walker, however, Auggie noted that his waiting room visits had exponentially increased, this year especially.

He wasn't entirely convinced that this was a good thing.

He sat in one of the many cookie-cutter, too-stiff waiting area chairs that was trying to give his sciatic nerve a run for its money. Auggie stretched his legs out in front of him, cane loosely clasped in his hand, wincing at the protest of his muscles, and doing his best to ignore he headache that was currently torturing him.

"A mild concussion at worst,'" the doctor had said. "Just a few stitches, It'll be gone before you know it."

Bullshit.

With a sigh Auggie shook off his growing impatience, trying to still his racing thoughts long enough to decompress the insanity of the past few hours and wishing he had taken those painkillers they'd offered him. Thanks to Joan's quick thinking, Eric had managed to pinpoint their location after the wreck by tracking the last known coordinates of Auggie's cellphone. Calder and Vaughn, the Germany station chief, had come searching for them as quickly as possible. According to Eyal, the Israeli had been in the process of trying to remove Auggie and Annie - both unconscious - from the wrecked vehicle when a swarm of unmarked, Terradyne armored vehicles descended upon them.

Auggie vaguely recalled drifting in and out of consciousness during the caravan ride back to the airbase, the bits and pieces of hazy memory consisting mostly of Eyal making awful jokes about his broken nose and always having wanted a nose job. But he specifically remembered asking if Annie was ok, and only being told only that she had not regained consciousness yet.

It wasn't until Auggie had regained full consciousness, while they sewed his gashed temple back together, that Calder gave him the whole story.

Upon reaching the airbase infirmary Annie had woken up briefly. However, according to both Calder and Eyal, her emotional state concerning Danielle - which was just short of hysterical - had forced the ENTs to put her under mild sedation so they could get her through the CT scan without a fight. Her dislocated shoulder and bruised ribs were the least of the attending doctor's concerns. It was the gaping hole at the base of her skull, and the blood in her ears, indicative of a basilar skull fracture, that were the main cause for worry.

And if that were the case, true to form, Annie Walker had managed to defy all logic and reason by being responsive in the first place - responsive and aware enough to tell Calder, over and over again, what she had somehow managed to remember after the accident. The licensee plate number of the vehicle that had hit them. The type of gun the abductor had held to Danielle's head.

It wasn't until now, waiting by himself, that the possibility of what could have happened hit him.

That she might have never woken up at all.

Jaw locked, heart heavy, he tenderly held his head in his hands and shut his eyes. There were only a handful of things he had encountered in the world that had ever scared him.

Losing Annie was the one that terrified him most.

"She's awake." Eyal was suddenly beside him, hand on his shoulder, causing Auggie to jump at the Israeli's unexpected proximity. The hand recoiled, and Auggie heard the sharp intake of air as Eyal realized his mistake.

"Sorry." Eyal apologized as Auggie slowly got to his feet. "They just moved her to a room. She was asking for you."

"What did the scan say?"

"No fracture." The blatant relief in Eyal's voice mirrored the accompanying swell of relief in Auggie's chest. "Ruptured ear drum was the cause of the blood in the right ear. She has a severe concussion, and staples for the laceration." Eyal offered Auggie a sighted lead, which he took, and together the two men moved down the infirmary hall. "Luckily for us, Annie's always had a hard head. However, they do want to monitor her for the next 24 hours at the least, but considering-"

"It could have been worse." Auggie finished for him.

"Much worse." Eyal agreed.

"What about Danielle? Did Calder find the SUV with the licensee plate numbers Annie gave him?"

"Barber was in the process of locating it."

"We don't have a lot of time, Eyal."

"I know."

After walking a while longer in silence, Eyal eased to a stop, turning to face Auggie, though not speaking immediately. Auggie knew there was nothing comforting either one of them could say. Every minute that passed was another minute their chances of finding Danielle decreased.

"I am going to visit with a friend." Eyal finally said after a long pause.

Auggie was unsettled by Eyal's finality, his certainty, and it piqued his curiousity. "What kind of friend could you possibly have to visit with here?" He asked hesitantly.

"I didn't say they were here, did I?" Eyal joked darkly. "But that brings me to my next statement: If I don't come back immediately, don't panic. It might take time."

"Didn't I just say we don't have a lot of time?"

"All the more reason I need to go, now." Eyal grabbed Auggie's arm reassuringly. "The door to her room is directly in front of you."

"The last time you ran off on your own, Annie and I had to save your ass." Auggie interjected. "Keep in mind neither of us are really up for a repeat."

"Noted." The Israeli's distinctive laugh was the first happy sound Auggie had heard since they'd been at the airbase. "Honestly though, you and I both know who truly has penchant for pulling disappearing acts." Eyal's last statement was more of a somber afterthought than anything else. "Keep an eye on her, Auggie." Realizing what he'd said, he quickly backtracked. "Well, you know what I mean."

This time Auggie laughed. "Yeah, I do."

Auggie unfurled his cane, turned to face the door and ran his free hand along the surface of the door until he found the handle. Eyal's footsteps were fading quickly into the distance. Auggie, just as he went to open the door, hesitated.

"Eyal?" He called out. The sound of retreating footsteps halted.

"Yes?"

"Promise me something?"

"Sure."

"Annie's lost enough, I don't want her to lose you too… Promise me that's not a conversation I'll have to have anytime soon."

"I promise."

Before Auggie could say anything else, Eyal's footsteps continued and faded out entirely. He lingered a while longer, hand on the handle, until there was nothing but endless, empty silence to keep him company.

Then with a deep breath, he opened the door.

A/N: Absolute power corrupts absolutely, silly Sarah Tam wants all the diamonds to herself! I wonder though, what Eyal's got up his sleeve? We're coming down to the wire, and all the cards are going to be on the table - hold on readers!

Thanks for all the love & reviews, and big thanks to Ashtordiffe, my mega awesome beta, and Cherithcutestory2, who is one of my biggest fans. Or maybe I'm HER biggest fan, but regardless, she's awesome too. Love y'all!