Ghosts that Haunt—33
Early one morning, Casey wondered if babies could be made to cry on demand. When he asked Riah, she had given him a tired, puzzled look. "Think about," he urged, watching her nurse their daughter at two-thirty in the morning. "Nothing disrupts sleep patterns more, and you could get anyone to spill their guts after several rounds."
She shook her head, snorted, and ignored him. After a moment, she apparently thought better of it, commented, "Victoria doesn't really cry that much, John."
There was truth in that, Casey acknowledged, though Riah didn't have to sound so smug about it. Victoria made noise to get their attention, but she rarely cried. He'd been relieved to not live the stereotype of walking the floor all night with a bawling baby, but he also worried at first that the fact that Victoria didn't bawl might mean something was wrong. Of course, the reason she wasn't a bawler might be because one or the other of them tended to pick her up if she even sounded like she might. Even when she did, it didn't last long and sounded more like a quiet wail followed by a bad case of the hiccups. If he had to have a mutant child, he supposed he'd take lack of screaming and crying over the other possibilities.
Now if they could only do something about the toxic waste frequently found in her diapers. Weaponizing that, he told his wife, as he changed their daughter, could lead to serious advancements in military science. Riah sighed, rolled over, and ignored him.
His two-week-old daughter, though, wriggled enthusiastically. "What do you think, kiddo?" he asked softly. "Interested in dirty bombing the Taliban?"
Riah groaned, but Victoria squeaked happily.
"What?" he growled at his wife. "She likes the idea."
"No," Riah corrected, "you like the idea. She just likes the sound of your voice."
Scooping Victoria up, he leaned over Riah and nibbled on her neck before he said against her ear in the tone and pitch that usually made her a puddle, "You like it, too."
"That's not fair," she grumbled, rolling over to take Victoria. "Don't do things like that when there won't be any follow through." He grinned and went to dispose of the biohazard before washing his hands.
When he came back to bed, Riah was sound asleep on her back with Victoria lying on her stomach, the baby's head over her mother's heart. He was counting weeks until he could make love to his wife. Lydia had told him she didn't agree with the prevailing notion that four or five weeks were necessary before they resumed sex, and he'd cringed, inwardly squirmed as she explained that some research indicated resuming marital relations after about two to three weeks was beneficial to more quickly returning the uterus to its normal state. Casey had desperately wanted to change the subject from his wife's lady parts, but he listened even though he didn't intend to do anything that might harm Riah. He'd go with the traditional waiting period just to be sure, especially since he wasn't entirely certain Lydia hadn't simply told him that to watch him squirm. Riah's aunt had a peculiarly sadistic streak where he and sex with his wife was concerned.
Now that he thought about it, practically her entire family seemed to be obsessed with their sex life.
"Back to sleep," he told Victoria as he kissed her fuzzy head before he laid her in her cradle. She squeaked, and he hoped she'd drop off quickly.
He gathered his wife to him when he was back in bed and went to sleep himself.
For reasons of her own, his mother stayed until Thanksgiving, and so did Ariel. He suspected his mother had decided to make sure he knew what he was doing before she left him with her granddaughter. Casey noticed she didn't seem to question Riah's abilities as a parent, which meant he told his wife one afternoon that she ought to point out to his mother that Riah didn't know everything simply because she was female. She just snorted and shook her head.
As a result of their mothers' extended stay, one or the other of them seemed to always be underfoot. Casey had to admit it wasn't quite the level of torture he had expected, and spending an extended amount of time with Jane Casey for the first time in decades let him reconnect with her in ways that scattered phone calls and flying visits hadn't.
Ariel flew his family in for the holiday, and hosted the meal at her house. Riah told him she was just happy not to have to manage the meal for once, though he noticed she had to bite back a few comments about how her mother had chosen to do things. Since Emma's university was on the quarter system, she was off until January, and she offered to stay and lend a hand with her niece when the others left. Riah thanked her for the offer and found a way to make it clear she'd like to be alone with her daughter and her husband that didn't offend her sister.
Casey was amused by that since after a week of having him constantly looking over her shoulder, she'd had a word with General Beckman, who had, as she had done after Gaza, begun sending him reports for analysis. He didn't mind lending the NSA a few hours a day when he could do it with Riah and Victoria nearby. It also kept him from getting too restless.
When his mother suggested one afternoon that he take Riah out somewhere, give her a break, his wife had whispered, "Gun range." He was pretty sure his mother had had quieter pursuits in mind. He'd blown the hell out of some targets, so had Riah, and then he'd taken her to dinner at their favorite Italian place. It wasn't the same as shooting bad guys, but it would do in a pinch. Unfortunately, he liked the sight of his wife with a gun a little too much. She had smiled seductively at him. "The smell of spent cartridges and gun oil puts you in the mood?"
"You do," he corrected. The gun and the scents that went with it didn't hurt any.
Still, as he sat at Ariel's table, surrounded by his family and the handful of hers present, he wondered what his life might have been like had he chosen differently years before. He looked at Emma, realized he could well have had a child or two her age, but when his wife laughed at some outrageous declaration from Julie, he decided he had made the right choice twenty years before. Even if he had chosen differently then, it didn't mean he'd be somewhere like this, surrounded by people he loved and who loved him back despite his flaws.
Finally left alone with their daughter, he and Riah found a comfortable routine. Victoria was sleeping for marginally longer periods, and one afternoon Casey thought Lydia might have something when Riah took advantage of Victoria's nap to touch and kiss every single inch of him. He decided to check into Lydia's notion when Riah's mouth finished its task. After all, it seemed unfair to be the only one to benefit from her mood.
Before he got the chance, though, V. H. turned up on their doorstep.
His father-in-law played with his granddaughter, talked to his daughter, and uncharacteristically didn't make comments about Casey molesting Riah. Casey had a feeling this was more than just a chance to visit his daughter and granddaughter, but he didn't push. V. H. would tell them what he was there for in his own time, and if Casey pushed, it would only take longer for the man to do so. When Riah went upstairs to feed Victoria, he kept Casey in the living room. "I'm about to make the two of you very unhappy." Before Casey could ask how, V. H. told him, "Call your boss. Now."
"I assume Adderly has explained," General Beckman said when he'd done so, peered at him through the monitor.
"Not yet," Casey grunted, but he had a very bad feeling, particularly since V. H. had waited until his daughter was out of earshot.
"Mr. Adderly?"
V. H. turned to Casey and said, "Your leave is over. There's been a breach at ISI. Someone stole the Montreal Project files."
"That's your problem, not ours," Casey told him, but he suspected where this was going, and he began running contingencies to protect his wife.
"There was a simultaneous breach at the CIA," Beckman told him tightly. "They took the Intersect files and the ones on Mr. Bartowski's father."
If there was good news, he couldn't find it. If this had been a coordinated effort, then they probably had enough to connect the dots to Chuck Bartowski and then connect them to Riah. "So Bartowski's going on lockdown," he said. "Walker and one of the CIA teams has that." At least he didn't have to suffer through the inevitable babble that would result from that bit of news.
"No, Casey," Beckman said, "we intend to leave Chuck Bartowski where he is. If we move him, then we confirm any suspicions they have. If we leave him where he is, then they'll come after him."
"Bait." Casey sighed. Riah wouldn't gripe if he had to be in Bartowski's pocket, and at least he wouldn't be leaving her home alone.
"My daughter, on the other hand," V. H. said, "is going home with me."
"The hell she is," Casey bit out, moving instantaneously from irritated to furious. If moving Bartowski exposed him, then surely the same was true for Riah. He remembered the last time they had used her as bait, and he wasn't letting that happen to her ever again. He'd made very specific promises regarding that—to the man standing in front of him.
"The hell she's not," V. H. returned firmly but without the anger with which Casey had infused his version. "She and Bartowski are equally at risk, and your loyalties don't need to be divided. I can hide her and Victoria while you focus on your own problem."
"Walker can take the asset, especially since the CIA bungled this. I'll protect my wife and daughter," he growled, emphasizing protect since his family would likely need to be more than simply hidden. There was no way in hell he was letting the two of them out of his sight.
"I've got many excellent operatives and any number of places that are difficult to get to where they can go to ground. Your assignment is Bartowski, and you're staying with it."
"One good reason," he demanded.
"Because Bartowski works," V. H. said. "Mariah never really did. He's the more likely target, the more useful one, and if she's here, they get the Intersect and a potential Intersect."
"Riah does work," he shot back and then wished he could retract that since it simply made her father's case for him.
"Gentlemen."
Casey seethed. It was true that Bartowski was the most likely target, if for no other reason than he could be used against his father. That made Ellie a target as well, and Ellie had growing suspicions about several things. Her brother was gone a lot, he and Walker still appeared joined at the hip despite the fact that she disappeared for long periods and the strain between them was obvious to even a blind man, and he knew Ellie thought Chuck was hiding something. If she suddenly saw a lot of new faces, faces that hung around with her brother and ones that, as Walker's father had once put it, had obvious "cop" faces, it wouldn't take her long to start piecing things together she really didn't need to know. That endangered them all.
"Colonel, it's true you're on leave, and it's true that you can refuse," Beckman said, "but I need you on this assignment. When it's over, we can extend your leave, work something out, but Adderly and I agree it's best to let him take your wife and child and protect them while you and Walker coordinate Mr. Bartowski's and his family's security."
Casey's jaw set, and he narrowed his eyes at V. H. He could refuse, and Beckman could retaliate in very legal ways that would, essentially, end his career or at the very least consign him to backwaters until he decided to opt for retirement. He could agree, and his wife would probably be seriously upset but would let him do his duty. For a moment, he thought about what he'd told her the year before, that for once in her life she should have been selfish. He wanted to exercise that particular option himself.
But that wasn't who he was, and the truth was that he wasn't going to leave Bartowski to the fumbling ineptness of some idiot like Robert Kavanaugh or whoever else Beckman chose to watch the kid. Walker could do it, but she couldn't do it alone. V. H. would make sure Riah and Victoria were safe, and even if he won the argument to keep her here, Casey knew Chuck would have to be his first priority, and that left Riah vulnerable.
"Fine," he said, and then he eyed V. H. "Anything happens to either of them, I will end you."
"You realize that's a prosecutable offence," his father-in-law told him.
"We're not in Canada." Casey took a step closer to the older man. "And that's a promise," he said with soft menace. He gave the man a hard glare. "You get to tell your daughter."
It wasn't cowardice, Casey reminded himself; it was self-preservation—not to mention punishment for V. H. He knew Riah was going to refuse, would argue hard before she gave in because she had no real choice, and her father could just take the brunt of it.
"Tell me what?"
Riah had Victoria with her, and Casey wondered how bad the fireworks were going to be. "Colonel, I'll expect you in Castle as soon as possible." Beckman was gone, and Casey wondered if she was seeking cover, too, despite being thousands of miles away.
Her words, though, had Riah looking at him expectantly. "Where is she sending you?" she asked, and Casey noticed she didn't seem pissed off—yet.
"Not me," he answered.
V. H. rubbed his gloved, left hand. "You and Victoria are coming with me, Mariah."
"No, Dad, we're not." Riah's voice was firm, and she kept any emotion out of it.
"Yes," her father told her, "you are. Mariah, I'm sorry, but Casey's going to have his hands full with the Intersect, and that leaves you vulnerable."
She looked at Casey then. He sighed, read her confusion. What worried him more, though, was the light that flared briefly, the one that said she'd want to help. "Tell her the rest."
"Honey, someone took the Montreal Project files," her father told her. "The Americans had a related breach. ISI will protect you while Casey and the Americans will take Bartowski and his family."
Riah had paled at the mention of the Montreal Project. "ISI can protect me here. For that matter, I can protect myself." She paled further, and then her eyes met Casey's. "You're worried about having both me and Chuck in the same place."
"I can't watch both of you."
He could see it, could see that she really wanted to deny that, but he relaxed when he saw she was going to give in without much of a fight. "Fine," she spat, and then she turned to her father. "I'm going to Witless Bay."
V. H. shook his head. "A lot of people know about that," he began.
She cut him off, and there was an edge of vicious in her voice Casey was very happy to not have directed at him. "The house is secure and isolated. You can put your men on the grounds easily enough, and there are at least three possible avenues of escape if it becomes necessary."
"And those three avenues are also vulnerabilities when it comes to protecting you," V. H. countered.
"I'm not taking my daughter to one of ISI's safe houses," she told him. "I've seen them." Casey's lips twitched. Television and movies typically made safe houses look like comfortable upper-middle class homes, but they rarely were. "And I'm not going to your house, either," she said. "It may be a fortress, but enough people come and go that Victoria and I will never get a moment's peace." She sighed. "I'm well aware my apartment's out, too, and why, so if I have to go hide, I want to do it somewhere familiar and comfortable."
"Mariah—"
"No, Dad," she told him firmly. "It's Witless Bay, or I stay here. The security problems there are fewer than many other possibilities, and if I have to be there through the holidays, then at least Victoria gets to spend Christmas somewhere that's actually hers."
Hell, Casey thought. Christmas. Their first Christmas as a family. Victoria's first Christmas. His wife didn't like Christmas any better than she liked birthdays, he remembered, and he had planned to give her a happy holiday. He had spent most of the Christmases of his adult life on duty, first in the military because he was single and it allowed the married men to be with their families, and then later with the NSA because terrorists and other enemies of state didn't tend to take holidays off.
If they were lucky, this would be over within a week, two maximum, and she and Victoria would be home where they belonged by then. So far, the Ring had been relatively easily foiled, something that made Casey hold them in contempt even as he admired their tenacity. He'd wondered if they were testing them, a few feints to see how they reacted to danger, to threats, before they went for the big prize. He was fairly certain Bartowski was that prize, and that made Riah's vulnerabilities of greater concern. After all, they might just decide to settle for Door Number Two.
Without another word, Riah handed him Victoria and went back upstairs—to pack, he presumed.
V. H. took his granddaughter. "Go talk to her. I'll mind Victoria."
What he found when he reached their bedroom wasn't at all what he expected. Instead of his wife angrily shoving clothes in cases, Riah sat on her side of the bed, hunched in on herself. Casey silently closed the door and then he noticed her shoulders shook.
His wife didn't cry often, much like their daughter, but she was doing so now. It would be easy to dismiss it as hormones, as post-partum depression, but Casey knew it wasn't. He sat slowly down beside her and pulled her close, wrapped his arms around her, and leaned his cheek against the top of her head.
She pulled herself back together quickly, but she sniffed and her voice was thick when she finally spoke: "I don't want to go."
He sighed, kissed her hair. "I don't want you to, but you and Victoria will be safer if you do."
"I don't work," she whispered. "They can't want me. I'm a failed experiment."
"No," he told her softly, "you aren't. You certainly worked when Kellett showed you those pictures. ISI just didn't finish the job." Her face was still wet when she looked up at him. He wiped at her cheeks then kissed her. "They want something, and given what they took from us and from ISI, they apparently want an Intersect. You're valuable because you're different than Bartowski."
As he said it, he realized it was true. Bartowski wasn't functioning because he was emotionally all over the map. Someone had changed his father's designs, and the result was the Intersect malfunctioned now that someone unlike the person or persons for whom it had been engineered had it. Riah, though, had something different, something quieter, something that wasn't as obvious when it was triggered. If the two could be merged, a smoothly functioning Intersect that didn't make the user physically react might be a better instrument.
He wasn't about to say that to her, though, wasn't about to feed whatever she was feeling—and not simply because he didn't want her to cry again. "Beckman gave me an out," he told her. "I could still take it."
She shook her head. "No, John, it's important. Do your job, and I'll go back to Canada and hibernate." She kissed him, then added, "I've got to pack, and you've got to go."
"Riah—"
"No, John. The decision's been made." She stood, gave him a sad smile. "Don't get killed."
He stood, too, put his hands on the slope of her hips. "I think this time I'm the one who ought to be saying that."
"I suspect they're more interested in the files than in me," she told him, slipped her arms around his waist and leaned into him. "I have to be manually triggered. All they need are the details."
It was an opportunity he couldn't ignore, tasteless though it might be, but he couldn't guarantee when he might see her next. He'd see if what Lydia said was true, he decided, so he put a dirty spin on the words when he offered, "I'll manually trigger you."
She gave a watery little laugh. "Going to listen to Lydia after all?"
So it wasn't exactly manual, he thought, but there were triggers involved on both sides. Afterward, he asked if she was okay, and her entire body was engaged in the kiss she answered him with. He decided this had been a miscalculation on his part since he was now even more reluctant to let her go.
But Beckman waited, and so did V. H. "Seriously," she said softly, stroked his cheek. "Don't get killed, John."
As he always did, he told her, "I'll try not to." He kissed her. "You try not to as well."
They both dressed, and they both packed, Riah for Canada, Casey for the job. When they went downstairs, V. H.'s expression said he knew exactly what had taken so long, and he appreciated the fact that for once his father-in-law made no cracks. Riah took Victoria, and Casey kissed them both before nodding at her father and leaving. He tried not to mind that his wife looked like the tears would start again the second he cleared the door.
Bartowski freaked out. Casey should have predicted it, but of late the kid rolled with whatever the spy life threw at him. He suspected Chuck's problem was the family connection. Casey knew he worried about his father and about Ellie and her husband. They wasted precious time calming the asset before they could make and implement plans. By the time the two teams Beckman sent them got there, the kid was calm again, and they briefed all the players with any references to the Intersect specifically excluded.
It was only as Casey followed Bartowski back to the Buy More that the kid asked, "Aren't you supposed to be off for a few more weeks?"
"Duty calls," Casey said. He was too busy trying to figure out how to explain his supposed desire to return to retail hell early to Big Mike in such a way he wouldn't question it, especially after Casey had threatened a lawsuit when the man balked at him asking to take the unpaid leave in the first place—particularly since it would span the heaviest shopping period of the year.
"But—"
He was going to have to give Bartowski more of an answer than the Can it he wanted to grunt. He'd only pick at it until Casey explained, so he decided to save a little time. "Your safety takes precedence over my personal life, Bartowski. It's the rules of the game."
"So personal time doesn't mean—"
"Squat," Casey finished, though Chuck would have taken about seventy more words to say the same thing. "You're my assignment, Chuck, and I'm needed."
"Mariah—"
"Is going to Canada for a while," he said. There was no reason to induce another freak out. "She's taking Victoria to her father's." It wasn't exactly true, but it was close enough.
Bartowski stopped cold. "You two didn't break up over this, did you?"
Trust the kid to go to worst-case scenario, he thought.
"Not everything's about you, Chuck," Casey said, and as he watched the empathy flood Bartowski's face then switch to horror, he realized the kid was going for a world-record in Leap to Conclusions. "Riah's equally in danger," he gritted. "She's safer where the focus can be on her, not you. That's all."
Big Mike did some world-class leaping to conclusions of his own when Casey told him he'd like to come back early, but since they fit with his plan, Casey didn't disabuse him. The store manager simply assumed Casey was bored and Riah wanted him out from underfoot. Casey would return to work the next day, and he made sure he got the same schedule as Bartowski for the foreseeable future.
After Chuck finished his shift under Casey's watchful eye from Castle, they travelled back to Echo Park together. Casey let Walker carry the conversation with Bartowski. He didn't look forward to going home to an empty apartment. He was in the middle of calculating how long it might take his family to reach Newfoundland and then Riah's house when he caught the tail. He said nothing, watched the late model sedan stay in textbook range, but to test his theory, he took a different route than the one he often did. This one was longer, and while it increased the possibility something might go wrong, it gave him a chance to confirm what he suspected. He noticed the car traded off with a small SUV a couple of times.
Since he didn't want to alarm Bartowski, he decided to continue his silence. The kid was used to Casey varying the route. However, he was going to have to tip Walker off, especially since he wasn't certain he shouldn't turn them around and put Chuck in Castle for the foreseeable future. Ellie's detail should already be in place, so she was likely fine. He decided to simply follow through with going home, let them think he hadn't made them.
When they were a couple of blocks away, he told Walker. "Bogeys. I'm pulling up to the courtyard. Get him out and get him inside my place as quickly as possible."
He chose to ignore Bartowski's yelps, let Walker soothe the concern. He checked with Ellie's team, who were, indeed, in place. He pulled the Vic up in front of the archway leading to the courtyard and parked. It was a no-parking zone, but Casey ignored that for the moment. He got out, told Bartowski to stay in the car, and surveyed the area, looked for the sedan or the SUV as Walker got out as well. "Go," he told her when he spotted the sedan pull up much further down the street, and she got the kid out of the car while Casey put his hands on each of the two weapons he wore and continued to watch for anyone who didn't belong.
When they had a babbling Bartowski in Casey's living room, he continued to ignore the kid while he called in the two vehicles and the partial plate he'd managed to get on the SUV. He got one of Ellie's detail to babysit his front door while he moved his car.
By the time he returned, Bartowski and Walker were bickering about whether or not Chuck should stay at Casey's or should go to his own apartment with Walker in lockstep. Casey voted for Castle, but he didn't say so. They'd have to transport him back, and that had risks of its own. Plus, explaining to Ellie why her brother disappeared would be painful. An extended absence would be hard to explain in any way that made sense.
Some of the advantages of keeping Bartowski in Casey's apartment were the same as those in Castle—his apartment was fortified, and as the Delany incident and the evening Woodcomb became aware of who and what Chuck was had proven, the security measures worked. There were no such measures in the Bartowski apartment. There would be a whole new set of lies for Ellie, though, if Chuck, essentially, moved into Casey's apartment—especially since Riah was gone.
How did his life get so complicated and not involve at least a battalion of heavily armed and well-trained soldiers or assassins? Why did it just take one long, skinny nerd with a head full of government secrets? For a moment, he longed for the relative ease of combat.
He cut the ongoing argument off. "He stays at his place. The two of you need to make up convincingly enough for Ellie to buy that Walker's sleeping with you for the foreseeable future—every night." He gave Bartowski a look that cut off the asset's instinctive protest. "It's that or Castle."
Not surprisingly, Chuck chose home over the equivalent of a bunker.
In the meantime, Bartowski and Walker put on quite a show when they went to the Bartowski's. Ellie was thrilled they'd patched it up, and Casey settled in for the kind of surveillance he hadn't done for the better part of a year. Earphones on and video feeds active, he ate the soup he'd reheated and wondered what Riah might have fixed for dinner if she'd been home.
He really should have given more thought to how to manage Ellie, though. The next morning as he met Walker and Bartowski in the courtyard, Ellie came out with them. She started to head toward Casey's apartment with a casual, "I need to talk to Mariah about Christmas dinner."
Casey froze. His eyes met Walker's. "Riah's gone," he blurted. He had no idea how he was going to explain her absence.
"Gone?" Ellie's voice shot up as she came back and stopped in front of him. "Gone where?"
At least he had a truthful answer for that one. "Canada."
A frown creased Ellie's face. "Victoria's only three weeks old, John. Why would she travel so far with a baby that young?"
He could hardly tell her the real reason, and he just about decided to use a dead grandmother excuse, but then he remembered that had been the cover for that trip to Banff. His mind raced to find a rational explanation, and he wished he'd thought to ask Riah, who was much better at things like this.
"She went to register Victoria's Canadian citizenship," Walker offered hesitantly.
As long as Ellie didn't know Riah wouldn't have had to leave Los Angeles to do that, it would do to cover his wife's absence. "Riah wanted her to have dual citizenship as she does," he added. He owed Walker for the save.
"Oh." Ellie frowned harder, and Casey thought she was going to pick at it, try to figure out what was wrong with that. "Will they be back for Christmas?"
"Hopefully," he said. Then he added, "If not, I'll join them."
Ellie seemed satisfied though still troubled by that. Casey called his wife when he arrived at work, told her how they had covered her absence, and she assured him that if Ellie called her she'd reinforce it. They talked a few moments more, and then he went to do his job.
-X-
Mariah fought the blackness minute by minute. She tried to tell herself it wouldn't be the first miserable Christmas she had spent in her life, but after the previous year, she had had hopes, especially now, especially now that she had a family of her own. She had looked forward to creating traditions of her own, to spending it with John, especially since she was well aware that he might not be able to spend many holidays with her and Victoria. Unfortunately, as the days crept slowly closer to Christmas, she felt keenly the distance between her and John; the thousands of miles that separated them eroded her emotions like water, one steady drip with every heartbeat.
He called every night, but it was cold comfort. Sometimes he called her during the day, and those were the calls she treasured most, the ones that were just because—just because he missed her, just because he thought of her, just because he wanted to tell her something.
She sat in her bedroom and watched the gloom outside gather as darkness fell and nursed their daughter. John usually sat with her in the evenings when she fed their daughter, talked softly about whatever came into his head. She thought about the evening he gave her a monologue about how soon might be too soon to begin training Victoria how to use a handgun. Mariah, a little appalled, had grasped their newborn daughter's tiny hand and weighed options for how to tell him she didn't think his plan was a good idea at all. Then she wondered if he was actually serious or just pushing her buttons when he started talking about the pink SIG Sauer .22 Mosquito. About to tell him it was too big and heavy for a child, she had been brought up short by memories of her own childhood and the realities of life with John. Their home was full of weaponry and probably always would be. John had bought several gun safes and locked most of his arsenal up during the last two months of her pregnancy. She wasn't foolish enough to think their daughter wouldn't eventually figure out what was in the tall black boxes and how to get into them, not to mention the numerous hidden recesses that were filled with even more specialized weaponry.
Moving Victoria to her other breast, she sighed. It was the winter solstice, and she watched the light fade from the sky outside. It was the longest night of the year, and all she needed was more darkness in her life. Christmas was only days away. When John called, she hid her sadness as best she could. She knew he couldn't stand it when she cried, so she waited until he hung up before she let the tears fall. Christmas was Friday, and she had no hope they would let him come to them since they still hadn't caught whomever had stolen U. S. and Canadian plans for their versions of the Intersect. Her family were all coming to stay with her, but she was pretty sure it was only because John had to stay in Los Angeles with Chuck Bartowski.
Ellie, who had been told Mariah had gone home to register Victoria's Canadian citizenship, was further told Mariah had decided to remain and visit her father since she was already there. Ellie called every few days, most recently half an hour earlier. Mariah had hated telling her that she would not be home for Christmas after all, mentioned the growing winter storms as the barrier. Ellie had commiserated with her, and Mariah had honestly told her she couldn't bear the idea of being away from John for the holiday.
But she would be, and there was simply nothing she or he could do about it.
She'd spent her time locked up in the house her mother had built. It was a beautiful prison she had to admit as she stared out the wall of glass that looked out over the sea. It was, though, a design better suited to another climate. The panes rattled in the vicious winter wind, and the cathedral ceiling in the living room meant the room was always cold while the other rooms were almost insufferably hot with the amount of heat it took to make the open living space bearable. It was also huge, far bigger than she and Victoria needed. Since she wasn't allowed to let the local woman who took care of it come do her job, Mariah found it was more house than she wanted to keep, especially since her only company were members of the security detail her father had sent. She found herself cooking for and cleaning up after them.
Maybe she should insist her father send her a vetted housekeeper and cook. She was tired all the time, and she knew it wasn't the effort of keeping up with a newborn or looking after the house and the security detail. No, she was depressed, and it had nothing to do with post-partum blues. Playing housewife without her husband kept her busy enough she didn't wallow in it, at least not often. Unfortunately, when the only person she really had to talk to couldn't talk back, it didn't help matters.
If it weren't for why she was there, she would have visited friends, but she stayed put, and the days crept by.
When her sister, her mother, and Ben arrived on Wednesday, she was glad to see them, but it did little to lift her spirits. The next day, she and her mother braved the snow to go into St. John's to get the rest of the food she would need for Christmas dinner. Her security details had a fit, but Mariah overrode them, agreed to their rules, and they let her go. "You really should have called and let us bring it with us from the airport," her mother told her.
Mariah had put it off, held out hope John would be able to come, but when she had talked to him early that morning, it had been clear that he wouldn't be able to come to them. At least she hadn't cried when they ended the phone call, even though she had wanted to. She hoped to remain distracted by family so that she wouldn't feel John's absence so keenly. For the most part it worked—until her father called and told her the growing snowstorms might keep him away. He told her new operatives were on their way to relieve the ones who had been with her since she arrived in Newfoundland. He gave her their names, and she jotted them down. She promised to ask to see ID before trusting them. He apologized again in case he couldn't get there. She swallowed down her disappointment and told him she loved him and to be safe. He returned the sentiment, and after he had hung up, she couldn't help wondering if he had found someone he wanted to share his holiday with more than his daughter and his ex.
On Christmas Eve morning, she announced she planned to attend church that night. Mariah was past caring if someone saw her, and she loved the pageantry of this particular service. The head of the security team argued with her, but she had held her ground, insisted. She could hear faint curses as he left to go see to security along the route and at the church.
When she told her family that afternoon she intended to go to church that night, her mother protested. The weather had grown worse, but Mariah wouldn't be swayed. She had given up midnight service the year before in Los Angeles, though she didn't regret it. This year she wasn't going to get her Christmas miracle, so she was at least going to do something she enjoyed and had missed. She knew Peter still followed local tradition, that the service was still the way it had been when they were both children, and she wanted one normal thing in her life when very little else was even remotely normal.
At one point she thought perhaps she should give in, stay home. Then she decided to hell with it. There had been no attempts on her, no one had apparently even come looking for her and Victoria. She would resume her life as best she could until she could go home.