A/N: This chapter is Mariah's POV. The rest of this occasionally has chapters from her point of view. At the time I wrote this, it was an easy way to fill in gaps, partly because this is the fic that wasn't supposed to happen but for which I followed my usually process of writing down the line from both POVs to see where it was going or why. I was strapped for time when this posted in its original version elsewhere, so I didn't rewrite in Casey's POV as much as I did for Forging a Life. I thought I should explain.
Ghosts that Haunt—22
Over the next several days, things began to snowball. Before it was all over, John was promoted to lieutenant colonel, Devon Woodcomb found out about John and Sarah Walker—and about Chuck—Chuck was no longer the Intersect, and John's orders changed. He wasn't going on a mission for Beckman. Instead, he would be rejoining his old unit and heading for Waziristan the morning of Ellie Bartowski's wedding. The new orders changed many things, and Mariah's life was thrown into chaos.
She and John, with the General's permission, had decided Mariah would stay in place for a while longer. It would look suspicious for John, Mariah, and Walker to all leave at the same time, so Mariah would stay and preserve the illusion for a few weeks. Then she would tell Ellie and Emmett Milbarge, who was now manager at the Buy More, that John's mobilization would be permanent, that he was tired of being called back to duty, that he had just decided to re-up, and that she was moving to base housing where he would be stationed.
Since Chuck was no longer the Intersect, Beckman was, indeed, shuttering their part of the Intersect project. As a result, Mariah spent the day before Ellie's wedding helping John pack. The NSA would pick up most of the equipment during the wedding, but Mariah would keep and monitor a few basic bits of surveillance to make sure no one who might have connected Chuck to the Intersect turned up. She and John both thought it only fair that after nearly two years of service, Chuck's protection should be extended just a little longer. Mariah was given contact codes in the event that someone did come looking for the newly unprotected Chuck. She was just glad that Kavanaugh had been pulled from this detail when John came home and would not be one of those contacts.
Deep down, she suspected John had insisted on leaving her in place because he didn't trust Beckman not to simply eliminate Chuck when he and Walker were gone.
Meanwhile, John and Chuck quit the Buy More, but Mariah would stay on a little longer.
They had attended Ellie and Devon's rehearsal dinner, but Mariah had pleaded tiredness so she could beg off Ellie's bachelorette party and spend John's last night in their apartment in bed with him. For his part, John seemed intent on wearing her out. She wasn't complaining, especially since he couldn't tell her when he might see her again. In the early dawn, he pulled her close and once more reminded her how to find him if she needed him. He made promises he shouldn't, promises she knew he might not be able to keep. A part of her liked that he felt the need to make them, but another part of her knew she'd be crushed if something happened to him.
For some time, they talked quietly as their hands ran restlessly over one another until they drifted off to sleep. Mariah mumbled, just this side of sleep, "Don't get killed."
As usual, John told her, "I'll try not to."
As she remembered the last time he had left her, recalled what happened in Gaza, she roused enough to add in a sleepy mumble, "If you do, I will find you and kill you again."
"Try or die?" her husband asked with a sleepy rumble of his own, and Mariah smiled, more at the remembrance that he was her husband than at his question.
"Die."
When her alarm went off, she was in bed alone. That was typical of John, who hated saying goodbye worse than anyone she knew. It was one of the reasons she had taken to telling him not to get killed. He tolerated that better.
She thought about catching a little more sleep, but she was afraid she wouldn't wake back up in time to make Ellie and Devon's late-morning wedding, so she got up and went downstairs. The equipment she and John had taken down and packed was stacked out of sight, a fact she was grateful for when she heard a frantic pounding on her door. Ellie rushed past her, panicked. She had, apparently, lost her something blue. Mariah, frankly, was surprised Honey Woodcomb didn't have a backup for everything—not to mention backups for the backups.
As Ellie babbled, Mariah, loopy from lack of sleep, imagined the infinite number of possibilities backups for backups might create and briefly pondered storage and transportation for those items. Then, she got a grip and sat Ellie on the couch and soothed her as best she could. When Ellie finally calmed down, Mariah offered to loan her one of her pairs of sapphire earrings, but Ellie declined. She told Mariah she would just have to look harder, and as they talked, it became apparent that Ellie had just needed a few moments away from the madness of everyone and everything to gather herself. Mariah offered to go help her look.
"Have you eaten?" Mariah asked, not in a great hurry to go over to the craziness that was Wedding Day at the Bartowski/Woodcomb's. Unlike the last time she'd been pregnant, she had had very little morning sickness with this pregnancy so far, and she was hungry. Mariah made eggs and toast, figured Ellie wouldn't want much to eat since she was running on nerves. She made coffee for Ellie, though she considered hopping the other woman up on caffeine might not be a kindness—to Ellie or to anyone who actually had to deal with her in full wedding freak-out. When Chuck knocked on the door as they were about to eat, she invited him in and provided him with a plate of eggs and coffee.
They talked about the schedule for the day, and Ellie told her she planned to wait and dress at the church. Ellie asked about John, and Mariah told her he'd been called back to duty suddenly so wouldn't be able to attend the wedding. Ellie complained for several moments about the lack of consideration on her government's part, and then blew her bangs away from her forehead before she slumped and told Mariah, "I'm just being a bitch, I know, and an inconsiderate one given John's had to leave." Mariah was about to placate her, when Ellie's eyes narrowed thoughtfully and her head tipped. Mariah was already marshaling excuses for all contingencies even before Ellie asked her if she would be willing to partner her father for the day.
Her first instinct was to say no. She knew who Stephen Bartowski really was, and she knew he was a very odd man prone to erratic behavior. On the other hand, he'd managed to get the Intersect out of Chuck's head, and even though she knew that made Chuck vulnerable in ways he hadn't previously been, it occurred to her that the older Bartowski might be able to do something similar for her—assuming she could get her father or the Canadian government to release more detailed records on what had been done to her as a child. Regardless, Mariah wouldn't mind an opportunity to pick his brain a little, so she agreed to accompany Ellie's father to the reception.
When Ellie finally headed home, Chuck lingered at the door. He buried his hands in his pants pockets and gave Mariah an earnest look. "I know Casey's gone to Waziristan," he said, "and I know you're staying for the time being. I promised Casey I'd look after you for as long as you're here, so if you need me, well, just call."
Mariah nearly burst into tears. She flung her arms around him, and she could tell Chuck didn't know how to respond to that from the way he stiffened before he put his arms around her and awkwardly patted her back, muttered something about his "man parts." She finally let him go, and he followed his sister home.
The rest of the morning passed quickly, and Mariah made her way to the church, arrived about half an hour before the wedding. She saw Chuck and lifted a hand in his direction. He met her, dragged her to Stephen Bartowski, and quickly re-introduced her to his father, whose mind was clearly elsewhere. Mariah took a seat on the bride's side, and settled in to wait. As the church began to fill, she talked to people she recognized, including Anna Wu and Morgan. When Jeff and Lester went to the front of the church and began to perform, she stared on in horror, wondered if she should try and stop it. After their pyrotechnics set the sprinklers off, Ellie declared the wedding cancelled. Mariah prepared to go home, but a bedraggled Sarah Walker wearing a destroyed bridesmaid dress caught her arm and whispered that she needed to go to the reception hall.
She was soaked by the time she got there, and then she stared open-mouthed at the utter destruction before her. She noted the military team restraining Roark's men, and it only took a second to spot John in the middle of the carnage. She started to pick her way toward him, stepped over bits of the destroyed cake, the ice sculpture, and the broken furniture. He was grinning when she reached him, and he shoved his rifle at the dark haired man next to him before he scooped her against him and kissed her absolutely breathless.
"I didn't expect to see you quite so soon, Colonel," she said when he let her mouth go.
"Didn't expect to be seen so soon," he said and kissed her again. He broke the kiss when there was a polite cough next to them. She was quickly introduced to his second-in-command and the other members of his team. John endured their jokes for a few minutes before he waved them off and walked Mariah to the door.
When he stopped her just outside, Mariah tried not to stare. He was dressed entirely in black, and she would never understand what it was about John and black clothing—and he was completely covered in black—that turned her on, but it did. It really, really did. As a result, she missed what he told her, tuned back in to hear him say, "I'll have to stay with Roark until they collect him." He gave her a funny look, one that slid to heated, and one corner of his mouth lifted in a knowingly little grin. The last time she'd seen him clothed in what she teased was his signature color—that time a black suit and black shirt—she'd told him she really liked his undertaker assassin look even as she'd begun stripping it from him. "We'll keep him at Castle. When he's gone, I'll be home for the night before we head out again tomorrow."
She nodded at him and then rose on her toes, ran her hands up him and silently cursed the body armor that kept her from actually feeling his body before she kissed him again and left him in the chaos in which he seemed to thrive.
Home again, Mariah changed into comfortable clothes. She had almost asked John if she could join him at Castle, but she knew better than to ask. Even if she hadn't begun her severance paperwork shortly after they married, she was persona non grata since they had been told they could marry. She should go check on Ellie, she supposed, but she was tired from her mostly sleepless night. Ellie needed her family with her, and Mariah didn't want to intrude. She lay down to take a nap, figured she'd go commiserate with Ellie later, maybe offer to fix dinner.
She had trouble getting to sleep, though, so she rolled on her side and thought about John, thought about her mother's ever-escalating wedding plans, and wondered if she could make them stop.
In hopes of getting more comfortable, Mariah changed position. The truth was, her mother had never done the big wedding thing, and Mariah was fairly certain that her need to scale things up for Mariah's wedding was rooted in that. Ariel Taylor had never married Mariah's father, and when she and Ben had married, they had done something not unlike what Mariah and John had done the week before—had simply gone to a judge's chambers and exchanged vows. Having seen the destruction of Ellie's wedding that morning, Mariah seriously considered the wisdom of publicly marrying John.
Admittedly, Mariah had always been a private person. Her mother claimed she was shy, and perhaps she was. She attracted trouble, certainly more lethal trouble than her mother did, and that made a big wedding risky. The kind of trouble John was capable of attracting was even more hazardous, she suspected, than what she drew. In addition, the more people they invited, the greater the risk that strangers attending with their guests might have something other than celebration in mind. Mariah shuddered, vividly recalled the devastation at the church that morning after a firefight between John's men and Roark's.
A moment of morbid amusement made her lips twitch into a smile. Maybe John's "friends" should be barred from their wedding. She sobered when she realized it was more likely her unknown enemies who would cause problems—if there were problems.
She stretched into a different position, closed her eyes, and considered how to argue her mother down from the two hundred guests Ariel thought "their" side should invite. Mariah figured fifty total was more than enough, and she thought the thirty or so that would encompass just family on both sides was probably better. In her book, though, three was best, just as it had been when she actually married John.
The very best, she thought, sleep finally sliding in, would be to simply announce they'd already married and just have a reception.
Of course, her mother would kill them.
Mariah's phone woke her, and she scrabbled for where she had left it on the bedside table. Squinting at it, she sat up, but before she could ask John what was wrong now, he asked, "How long does it take to make a wedding cake?"
Nonplussed, she blurted, "Depends on the cake. Why?"
She heard someone in the background ask what kind of bunting they wanted.
"Can you do it?" he asked.
"Yes," she answered cautiously, though she wondered why on earth he needed a wedding cake.
Once more she heard another male voice in the background, this time telling someone they would have to get a permit for the beach.
"How long?" John asked.
A sinking feeling started, and she began running all the possibilities that could explain his questions. "It depends, John, on when you need it, on what kind of cake and how big. It depends on whether it's covered in fondant, gum paste, or buttercream. It depends on whether or not you can get me access to a professional kitchen with industrial mixers and several ovens, not to mention the pans, ingredients, and other equipment needed." She sat up, bent her legs so she sat indian-style in the middle of the bed. "What's going on, John?"
His voice was muffled as John growled at someone that he wasn't Martha Fucking Stewart. She bit her lip, silently swore she wouldn't laugh, especially when she remembered hearing in a documentary the director John Waters talk about Martha Stewart as the ultimate control freak. "I'm trying to make Ellie's wedding happen today," he admitted. There was an embarrassed note in his voice, and Mariah tried to imagine who had thought a special operations team would be the best go-to guys for giving Ellie the wedding of her dreams.
Then again, they had been partially responsible for Ellie's planned wedding falling through.
"Call a bakery, someone who specializes in wedding cakes," she told him. "Sometimes weddings are cancelled at the last minute, so there's a cake available. Sometimes, they keep spare layers frozen in case something goes wrong and can do something on short notice." He grunted, and she imagined him scrawling notes.
"If you can't get an orphaned cake that's already decorated, have them use real flowers," she added. "Less work goes into the cake design that way, so it can be completed more quickly." He grunted what sounded like thanks, and she thought of something else. "If they have to start from scratch, ask them about arranging the layers into different tiers—there're some cake stands that do a sort of staircase thing, straight or spiral. That way if the baker doesn't have enough prebaked layers of one flavor, there can be several different kinds of cake without worrying about the taste."
"Anything else?" he asked, and she could tell he was already on to the next item, whatever it was, on his checklist.
"Other than if you successfully pull this off and I like the results, you are going to be in charge of planning our wedding in July," she told him, actively imagining the mileage she could get out of the inevitable fireworks between John and her mother.
On second thought, Lydia had told her she didn't need a lot of stress, and Mariah had no intention of getting stuck between the two most stubborn, immovable objects in her life.
"Like hell," he ground out, and it wasn't hard to hear the horror in his lowered voice.
She heard another man ask John what color fuchsia was, and she held her breath to keep from laughing when he told the man to "look it the hell up."
"Good luck," she told him and then grinned and added before she thought better of it, "Don't let this particular mission kill you, John."
"With any luck," he bit out, "I'll die before I find out what color fuchsia is," and hung up.
After an hour or so, Mariah gave up on more sleep. She decided to go downstairs and see what she could find to eat. As she reached the bottom of the stairs, someone pounded on the door. When she reached it, she looked to see Chuck on her doorstep. "Ellie and Devon are getting married this evening," he said quickly after she opened the door. "On the beach. Can you make it?" She asked which beach and when before she agreed to be there.
She looked at the clock after she sent Chuck on his way. She had a little over an hour before she needed to leave, so she went upstairs, showered again, and stood in the doorway of her closet and tried to decide what to wear. She should have asked Chuck whether it was formal or casual, but it was too late. She decided to split the difference and flipped through her dresses. She finally pulled out a pretty, lightweight, blue cashmere with long sleeves. Since the wedding was a sunset wedding, and for a moment she stood there and smiled like an idiot while she remembered marrying John the week before, she decided the sleeves would save her needing a wrap or jacket. She threaded a pair of sapphire earrings in her ears and stepped into a pair of shoes.
It was a lovely wedding. John and his men had done a good job, though she wondered how much of this they had been directly responsible for. She could tell Ellie was happy, and Mariah smiled, remembered how Ellie had told her more than once she had always thought she would get married on a beach rather than in a church. Mariah occasionally caught the tell-tale glints of hidden watchers, and she wondered if John was one of them, if Ted Roark had already been collected and taken to the facility where he would be incarcerated for the rest of his life.
As she watched Devon kiss Ellie, she wondered what story the government would tell to explain Roark's sudden disappearance. After all, the man was one of the most famous businessmen in the world.
The reception was set up in the courtyard at the apartment complex, and Mariah chatted a little to Stephen Bartowski, who was distracted, kept watching the archway to the courtyard as if he were expecting someone. Mariah could hardly blame him, though, since she was doing much the same thing. She drank only club soda and ate a few canapés. Whoever had done the cake had done it well, she noted. She circulated a little, danced with Chuck, with Devon, with a couple of Devon's brothers, and then, finally, tired and a little depressed that John still wasn't home, she decided to call it a night. She found Ellie and Devon, congratulated them once more, and disappeared inside her apartment.
Mariah slipped into a silk nightgown and its matching robe. She thought about watching a little television, and though John had soundproofed the living room, she knew the light from the set would be visible. She didn't want visitors, so she decided to read a while in bed, ignored the fact that the light from her bedside lamp would be visible from the courtyard below.
She didn't read for very long before her eyes felt heavy. She struggled to stay awake, wished John would hurry, but in these relatively early days of her pregnancy, she tired easily. Finally, she gave up, set the book aside, and closed her eyes.
John's voice roused her. When she surfaced, she felt a weight over her waist and warmth along her back. She settled back against her husband and ran a hand along the forearm looped over her to link her fingers with his. She wondered how long he had been home and how much longer he had before he had to leave. His fingers tightened on hers, so she murmured his name.
He kissed her bare shoulder; then he kissed along her exposed skin to her neck and up under her ear. She turned her head toward him, and he released her hand, slid his own over her abdomen to her hip and rolled her over, took her mouth with his. Mariah slid her own hands over his chest and shoulders and wound her arms around his neck. When John lifted his head, he propped himself on his elbows and cradled her face in his hands. He kissed her again, softly. "You okay?" he asked.
She nodded. "Tired."
He grunted and took her mouth again.
"What time did they take Roark?" she asked, already starting to drift off once more.
John stiffened, and Mariah pulled herself more fully awake before she looked up at him in the dark. Something was wrong. She could tell from the taut way he held his body over hers. "They didn't," he said, and she could hear anger and something else in his tone. She waited, knew he would tell her if he could. "Miles killed him," he finally said, "killed the rest of the team, too."
Mariah stared up at him, appalled. It must be killing him, she thought. She had recognized his loyalty to his men before, and for someone he trusted—they trusted—to do this, was the ultimate betrayal of all they stood for. She waited to see if he would say more. When he did, when he told her, it came out in fits and starts.
He started with what happened in Castle with Roark, how Miles killed the others but chose not to kill John—his mistake, Mariah thought heartlessly though gratefully—but then he told her how Chuck's father flashed on the man who came for Bryce Larkin, about Larkin's death, about Chuck reinstalling the Intersect, and about Chuck's sudden martial arts exhibition.
"What happens now?" she asked, stunned by John's story.
"Tomorrow I take Chuck to Prague," he said. "Beckman's decided that since he's the new, improved Intersect, it's time to train him to be a real CIA officer." He snorted, and Mariah looked up at him, heard the mix of concern and pride. "Kid's over the moon at the idea of being a 'real' spy."
"Tomorrow?" she asked weakly. Given that John had narrowly escaped being murdered, she wasn't sure she wanted to let him out of her sight. She was, though, smart enough to keep that particular sentiment to herself.
John ran a hand down her body. "Tomorrow," he confirmed, "but Beckman's made yet another change. I'm not going back to my unit after all." She relaxed a little then before she remembered part of that unit was now dead, and she saw when John felt her relief. Hot color flooded her face, but she couldn't make herself be sorry that he wasn't going to Waziristan after all. "I'm not exactly staying here, either," he warned. Then he told her what Miles had said about the Ring.
"So you're going hunting," she said.
He nodded. Then he bent and kissed her. Mariah recognized it as an attempt to distract her. She considered playing along, but she wanted answers. He didn't give her a chance to say anything when he released her lips, just said with a soft urgency, "I want you to go visit your father while I'm away." She started to protest, but he leaned in and cut her objection off with a swift kiss. "I don't want you here alone again."
There was a moment where she chafed at his apparent belief that she should simply do as he said. Then again, he had a point. They could all be targets depending on what this Ring was really after. "How long will you be gone?" she asked softly.
He shrugged. "I won't be training Bartowski, so I suspect I'll drop the package and then head back. I'm not sure where I'm going first when Chuck's safely delivered. Beckman will tell me when I get back from Prague."
Mariah got the impression there was something else, something he wasn't really telling her. She ran a hand lightly over his chest, down over his shoulder and arm, around his back. "And then what?" she whispered.
His own hands weren't idle. He stroked over the silk, ghosted a hand over her breast, trailed it along her side, her hip, up her back, sat up and removed her gown, and when he eased her back onto the mattress, he stroked up to cradle her cheek. She closed her eyes, nearly purred at the sensation. John waited until she gave him a lusty moan, was distracted by what his mouth was doing to her breast before he murmured, "Back here until Chuck finishes training and they assign him elsewhere. We'll begin shutting down Castle, and I'll work out of the Los Angeles office for a while, keep an eye on Ellie and Woodcomb until we're sure they're not targets." He kissed her, long, slow and deep. "You and I get married again in July."
Mariah sucked in a ragged breath when he closed his mouth back over her nipple. "Then what?"
He released her nipple and kissed his way lower. "We move to my house in Maryland." His tongue ran around her belly button, and then he lifted his head and grinned at her. "You have a baby, and we live."
John moved even lower, and Mariah quickly forgot what they were talking about, her mind far too occupied with the sensations he coaxed from her.
Later, though, as she stroked her hand on his chest and rested her head in the hollow of his shoulder, she considered carefully, realized things were unlikely to be as simple as he had put it. "John?"
"Hmm?" he asked.
"I don't want to go to Ottawa."
He stiffened a moment. "You're going." Before she could protest, he continued. "I don't want to have to worry about whether or not you're safe, Riah. Until I know more about what we're dealing with, you need to be where you can be protected—and Beckman and your father both agree."
Once more, she felt like she was five, and it pissed her off. "I'll be careful," she tried, but he cut her off.
"I'm sure you will," he said, "but you're not taking chances. Use the time to start the resignation process, if you haven't already. Your dad can schedule your exit interviews, and you can do whatever else ISI requires you to be present for."
Mariah really hated that she couldn't argue with that, so she didn't.
She spent a week in Ottawa, escorted there by an ISI operative on her father's plane. Her father met her and took her to his house, another decision that pissed her off enough she had an ugly argument with him about it. In the end, she had given in though she insisted the bodyguard he wanted her to have had to go.
The day she went to ISI's headquarters, she went straight to personnel and explained why she was there. She filled in the forms a clerk gave her. Her next stop was to her field supervisor in Covert Operations. She'd never really answered to the man since her father had controlled her assignment in Los Angeles, but, technically, Warren Robards was her boss. He sighed, pulled her file from the stack on his desk and told her that her father had already contacted him and her interview would be the following afternoon.
She returned for that interview, was amused by the questions from the panel, some of which she doubted other operatives were asked when they left ISI. She signed affidavits, turned over her agency-issued weapons, and her ID. Her ID was handed back to her, and she was told to keep it as a memento.
It raised her suspicions. Operatives were not allowed to keep their credentials—at least they weren't allowed to keep ones that didn't mark them as retired or inactive—but she supposed that until her resignation made its way through all the levels of ISI's bureaucracy, she was still an employee. She imagined she'd have to return it when the final approvals were made.
Mariah was not allowed to return to Los Angeles until John came to get her. Even though she was happy to see him, it irritated her to be picked up like a toddler from day care, but she said nothing. She settled into their apartment again and waited. John came and went where Beckman sent him, and Mariah tried not to resent that, especially since she had continued to work at the hell that was the Buy More under Emmett Milbarge's increasingly oppressive, fascist rule. It wasn't long before Chuck was back from Prague, having washed out of the CIA, and then he and John were back at the Buy More, too.
Emmett Milbarge, though, was gone. John finally admitted the man hadn't jumped ship for Large Mart and Alaska but had been murdered.
Mariah couldn't help but wonder if John had been the one to kill him.
It did, though, amuse her that John was the de facto manager while corporate tried to decide what to do.
On one of her days off, she received a call from her father not long after John left for work. He asked her to find John, told her he needed to talk to him about a rogue operative who was rumored to be in Los Angeles. When Mariah pressed, he reluctantly admitted the rogue was looking for her.
She nearly joked that she was surprised she wasn't surrounded by ISI operatives on a protective detail, but she didn't want to give her father any ideas. It was surprisingly hard to find John that morning, but apparently Chuck was flashing like a warning light. She finally caught up with her husband just as he was returning to the Buy More. John heard her out, kissed her, told her to go home, stay there, open the door to no one, and headed back to the store.
Mariah got in her car to head home, and as she put the key in the ignition, her mobile rang. She fished the phone out of her purse and answered it. As she did so, she looked up and saw John in front of the Buy More talking to some woman. The woman stood much closer to John than Mariah thought necessary.
"Mariah?" her father asked, obviously not for the first time, and she realized she had completely zoned out after answering the call.
She kept her eyes glued on the couple standing on the sidewalk outside the store while she said, "Sorry, Dad. I was distracted."
"Did you talk to Casey?" he asked.
That woman, that tall, slim brunette with the expensive clothes and long, long legs leaned into John; Mariah ground her teeth in anger. Her father repeated the question, and she answered in the affirmative.
"Mariah?"
She had a moment of petty triumph when John removed that woman's hand from his chest, but it was relatively short-lived. The woman turned slightly, and Mariah got a good look at her face. She'd never seen the woman, not even a photograph, but she had had a pretty good description provided to her, a good enough description that she was fairly certain who the woman mauling John was. "Dad, does ISI have a file on Ilsa Trinchina?"
After a lengthy pause, her father asked, "Mariah, am I going to have to shoot Casey after all?"
From Mariah's vantage point, if that woman didn't get her hands off John, her father wouldn't get the chance—she'd do it herself. She just had to decide whether she killed him before or after she killed that woman. Maybe she'd just cut that woman's hands off, teach her that she really should have kept them to herself rather than run them over a man who wasn't hers. "No, Dad, but I think I'd like to know a bit more about Ilsa."
"Any particular reason?"
She heard the studied nonchalance in her father's voice. How did she answer that question without convincing him to come and carry through on his threat to John? Because I'm staring at her? Because she keeps putting her hands on my husband? The last was right out since they had agreed to tell no one they had already married. That also ruled out Because my husband is kissing her, and I think he's still in love with her. If she said that, her father really would shoot him, and Mariah, like an idiot, loved John and would prefer he remained among the living.
Her mood turned dark. She stared at John and the woman she was certain was Ilsa Trinchina a moment, and then she looked away. "Sorry, Dad, I'm just a little distracted right now."
"I can tell," he said with the heavy sarcasm she had rarely had directed her way. "That's the second time you've said you were distracted. Care to tell me what's distracting you and why you want Ilsa Trinchina's file?"
She breathed in, once, twice, then closed her eyes and did it once more. "Because she's kissing John."
That shut her father up. She opened her eyes again, watched John say something to the other woman, and he looked angry. Mariah wasn't sure if that made her feel better or not. "Mariah, you knew Casey had been involved with her."
"He was in love with her," she corrected. "Now she's turned up. I think I'd like to know more about her."
Her father sighed. "You mean you'd like to know more about them. We have a file, Mariah, but we don't generally let operatives troll through files for personal reasons. You know that."
The couple she watched appeared to be having an intense conversation of some sort. Normally, an intense conversation with John was an angry conversation—or, if it was an interrogation, a scary conversation—but this was something different, and Mariah didn't like it at all. "I'm no longer an operative," she said in an absent kind of voice as she focused on trying to see if she might be able to lip read at least part of the discussion across the parking lot.
"All the more reason not to let you read the file, Mariah." Her father sounded as distracted as she was. She wondered what or who might be distracting him. "Although," he continued, "that is partly what I called you about."
She frowned. "Reading ISI files?"
He gave a huff of a laugh. "Not being an operative." She heard him murmur something to whomever was in the office with him. She looked over once more to where John nodded at whatever Ilsa was telling him. "Mariah, I got your resignation letter and change of status paperwork this morning. It's worked its way through the process to me."
She felt her shoulders sag and bit her lip. That had been part of the deal she and John had made with General Beckman and her father. In order to marry John, or for John to be able to marry her, from Beckman's viewpoint, Mariah had to resign from ISI. She had delayed doing so, but after John had convinced her to marry him earlier than planned, she had put the paperwork through. ISI—meaning her father—had asked that Mariah not be asked to compromise her agency, but Beckman had informally asked her if she would like to go to work for the NSA despite the part of the agreement that said she couldn't work for another intelligence agency for at least five years. Mariah knew how difficult a security clearance would be, so she had respectfully declined. She had not let on how pissed off she had been that Beckman was willing to ignore the conditions ISI had put on their agreement. Besides, she could tell when she declined that Beckman was not in the least sorry.
Now, looking at her husband as he bent and kissed his former lover's cheek, she finally wondered why she had been the one to make nearly all the sacrifices thus far. Sadly, she thought the correct status for the couple she observed might be lovers rather than former lovers as the two parted, and John stared after Ilsa before going back inside the Buy More. "You know what the deal was, Dad. You were there."
He grunted an agreement, and it reminded her of John, which wasn't a reminder she wanted at the moment. "I've been thinking that maybe we could accept your resignation on paper and let you go to sleeper."
She sighed. "Dad, I'm marrying a spy. I sort of think he might notice if I were to suddenly take up any clandestine behavior."
"Mariah, I know Casey. You'll continue doing what you do—it'll just be for the Americans' benefit."
"Remind me why you called again, Dad," she said through gritted teeth.
He returned to the primary purpose of the call, asked if she'd talked to Casey about the rogue operative ISI hunted. She told him she had and explained that John planned to be in touch with him soon. They talked a bit further about the woman who had been identified as a Fulcrum mole. Mariah knew her, and she fully understood the amount of damage the woman could do and probably already had done to ISI and to Canada. Before he ended the call, her father added, almost as an afterthought, "I told you once before you could trust Casey, Mariah. I still believe that."
She didn't say anything, added only, "I love you, Dad."
The drive home seemed to take longer than it usually did. In part it was because she was caught up in her jumbled thoughts, and when she was distracted, she tended to drive more slowly. In part, it was because she had nothing waiting for her when she got there. Her change of status meant she had very little to do.
Mariah spent a lonely afternoon in front of the television and wished she had Nerd Herd duty that day instead. She rarely did the couch potato thing, but she really didn't want to think, so she tried to lose herself in classic movies. It didn't help, though. She wondered in disgust if they had really made that many romantic movies in Hollywood's Golden Age. Late in the day, her BlackBerry buzzed. She had a message from her father telling her to check her e-mail. If it hadn't been in code, she wouldn't have thought much of it, would have been in no hurry to look at it. Curious, she went upstairs, and when she saw the encrypted message, she opened it. He had sent her Ilsa Trinchina's file.
As she read the dossier, it occurred to her that her father might have been wiser not to send it to her. Among the information on the French spy was a brief report about the other woman's suspected involvement with Beauty One. From the dates, it was clear that if the report were true, then Ilsa had once been involved with Mariah's father. She closed her eyes a moment and sighed. Sometimes, not knowing was better than knowing some of the things she learned. Her husband and her father. Great. Mariah read further, read about Ilsa's supposed death, read about her reappearance as Victor Federov's fiancée, and read about the night she had spent with John before she escorted Federov to the lockdown facility her agency had chosen. John had told Mariah when she first came to Los Angeles he had spent that night with Ilsa. At the time, she hadn't cared. Now, she tried hard to put it in perspective by remembering that it had been before the two of them had met, let alone become involved with one another for real. She could hardly hold against him what had happened before he knew her. Fairness might dictate that, but her emotions still resented the hell out of it.
What she had seen that afternoon, on the other hand, was very different. For one, it had been right in front of her and anyone else who happened to look. For another, John was Mariah's husband, but he seemed to have conveniently forgotten that while he locked lips with the other woman.
She noted a very recent addition to Ilsa's file. An intelligence report added earlier in the day noted that Ilsa—interestingly, her real name was not in ISI's file—had been assigned to a case that touched on one of the NSA's though it failed to note what that case was. Mariah knew she was in no position to object or to insist John not be the agent who worked with her. She suspected the French woman's appearance in Los Angeles meant someone had already tagged John to work with her on the case.
Sometimes, she really hated their line of work.
John called and told her he would be late. Normally, that meant Team Bartowski had a mission, but she saw Chuck come home with Sarah Walker. Neither of them left again. She started to get up and fix dinner, but she wasn't hungry. Instead she curled up in a corner of the sofa and stared at one of the Thin Man movies. Meanwhile, she tried not to think about John with that Frenchwoman, about John kissing that woman, about what John might now be doing with the woman he had loved—might still love. When those thoughts intruded, she fought back tears. Each time she clamped her mouth shut to stop the sobs, she considered how the idea that he might be with Ilsa affected her. Maybe it was her pregnancy. Last time she had cried over the slightest and stupidest things. Perhaps it was simply hormones that made her want to cry every time she thought about how much he had reputedly loved the other woman.
When midnight came, she finally dragged herself up to bed and wondered if he would even come home that night.