If you are a Shaw fan, you aren't going to like where this ultimate goes. Sorry. Okay, maybe not THAT sorry. . . .
Ghosts That Haunt—39
Much to Mariah's irritation, Chuck escaped punishment. She sighed heavily as she opened her door to Ellie Woodcomb the next morning. The other woman looked upset, asked if she had seen Devon. Mariah hadn't, and she told the other woman so. Ellie wrung her hands, and Mariah could see her agitation. "Is John here?" Ellie asked hopefully.
Mariah stepped out and closed the door behind her. Frowning, she asked Chuck's sister, "Is there something you need, Ellie?"
She watched the other woman lift a shaking hand to her forehead. "Devon didn't come home after his shift," she said. "He isn't answering his phone, and no one's seen him since last night."
"Have you talked to Chuck?" she asked.
Ellie shook her head, sighed. "Not since this morning." Her shoulders dropped. "He hasn't seen him, either."
"I'm sure he'll be home soon," Mariah told her, though she wasn't at all certain of that. Devon had played spy games, and it was entirely possible someone looking for Chuck had found his brother-in-law instead. "Try Chuck's place again," she suggested.
Worried, she watched Ellie cross the courtyard, and then she went upstairs to wake John.
From the look of her husband, either the painkillers had worn off and the leg was giving him problems or he had a sort of hangover from the drugs. When she filled him in on Ellie's visit, he sighed, rolled, and scrabbled for his cellphone. She left him talking to Sarah Walker.
Less than half an hour later, he was downstairs. Mariah noticed he didn't really limp, and she wondered how he managed that. When she'd been shot in the thigh several years ago, she'd been barely able to stand for several days and had a pronounced limp for weeks. "Walker couldn't find him, so we'll see if we can trace his steps," John told her.
She was about to ask if he was okay, but he gave her a look that told her not to. He kissed her and walked slowly out the door.
-X-
About the only thing Casey and Walker could learn about Ellie's husband was that he had seen one last patient the night before, and then he had vanished. Mainly they'd been hampered by the kind of Bartowski worry the Intersect shared with his sister. When Chuck had finally gone to work, they made considerably more progress. They had run the security footage from Westside, and when the doctor left, he was accompanied by a man Casey recognized.
"Bastard was going to kill me," he growled with all the menace righteous indignation could raise. He quickly told Walker the man with Woodcomb was the Ring operative the Costa Gravans had employed who had intended to kill him—Goya, too.
They set about running the usual traces, though Casey didn't really want to call in any other operatives. Doing so was likely to expose Bartowski, so he and Walker agreed to do the legwork since the kid was safely back at the Buy More.
Later in the day, Casey decided the kid's life—and his, by extension—was beginning to resemble a soap opera. Not that he watched them, of course. He had to admit he enjoyed Bartowski putting Patel down after bitching out the Korean woman—in Korean, no less. As he hunted the Ring agent, tried to follow the man and Woodcomb after they'd left the hospital and vanished, he considered the possibility of an Intersect that did more than simply retrieve data on targets and provide martial arts expertise. After all, the kid had tapped into some pretty sophisticated surgical skills to repair Casey's wound without the slightest hesitation, and the facility with languages was probably more useful than some of the martial skills in many circumstances in which spies typically found themselves.
Woodcomb turned up, thank God. They talked to Beckman who offended the kid by telling him they had to use his brother-in-law. The kid might be on the first rung of the spy ladder, but if he was going to keep heading up rather than falling off, it was time to put him through the paces. Casey and Walker were going to have to be the ones to teach him, something he'd already realized after Bartowski's spectacular fail in Prague.
Bartowski's next freak out came with the news that Grimes was now the assistant manager of the Buy More. Casey was, at first, appalled by Big Mike's choice then decided the result might be entertaining in the same way a train wreck could be entertaining. On the other hand, the kid never once considered his bearded friend might actually succeed at it this time. He'd failed under Milbarge because of scruples Casey hadn't thought Grimes would have, given what he'd seen of him as a green shirt, but Casey admired Grimes's attempts to do right. He still had a lot to learn, a lot to reconcile between his juvenile instincts and that strangely responsible streak of his before he was ready for the big boy pants, but Grimes might make it since Big Mike seemed willing to make sure he learned to do it right rather than just use him as a lightning rod while he did what he wanted.
He gave some thought to whether or not that approach—encouragement and reassurance—would work with Bartowski, who never listened to anything Casey said without getting Walker to back it up. Casey would have to modify what normally passed for encouragement and reassurance, but it wouldn't be that difficult to do.
When they had learned all they could, Casey told Walker he was headed home. Officially, he was on leave for a couple of days, and his leg throbbed like a son of a bitch.
As he let himself in their apartment, Riah had dinner underway, so he scooped up Victoria and sat on the sofa with the intent of keeping her entertained until it was ready. Before it was, though, Beckman called with a few more instructions regarding Operation Awesome, and Casey went to find Bartowski. When he stepped outside, he saw the kid, Ellie and her husband. Whatever they had been talking about had Ellie staring at him like he was some sort of criminal, her face wearing an expression he hadn't seen from her before. She quickly dragged her husband inside their apartment, so Casey asked Bartowski what that was about. The kid said it was nothing, and even though Casey was pretty sure it was something, he told Bartowski to get Walker and come over in an hour or so.
He returned home to dinner and was amused by the fact Riah prepared a dinner of foods rich in iron, but he said nothing about her apparent desire to head off any anemia blood loss might have caused him. He ate the steak, spinach salad with chopped boiled eggs and mandarin oranges, the artichokes, and the rest with no comment.
They sat on the sofa and talked quietly after clearing up the dishes until someone knocked on the door. Casey told Riah to stay where she was and hobbled over to the door to let Walker and Bartowski in. Riah stood up, said hello, and then took their daughter upstairs.
Irritated he couldn't follow them as usual, he listened as the other two discussed what Woodcomb had had to say for himself. Casey knew they were going to have to do something to protect the doctor, but as he thought through options, someone else knocked on the door.
Not for the first time since this particular operation started, Casey considered how many fucking ways an assignment could go wrong. Woodcomb being thought L.A.'s own James Bond was but one of them. He really could understand the mistake, but it greatly complicated his job. For the most part, he had figured Woodcomb would be easier to handle since he was more likely to listen to them, but the man was a flake who really only trusted his brother-in-law. Of course, he'd thought Casey was going to kill him in this very room less than a year ago, but Casey figured he should have realized he was safe at this point.
Then again, the point was that he obviously wasn't.
God help the man, but Bartowski was going to have to be Woodcomb's handler.
As Casey watched the kid get Woodcomb through Sydney Prince's phone call, he realized that Bartowski had a lot more potential than he'd previously thought. Bartowski kept his head, was calm, reassuring, and that kept Woodcomb from a full-scale meltdown. Casey reconsidered his belief the kid would only be of limited use as anything other than an analyst. As he watched and listened, silently encouraged the kid sitting across from him, he came to believe Bartowski could actually have a future as a field agent, might be able to run an asset, and might eventually learn some calm under pressure.
On the other hand, it didn't take long to smell a rat. The only problem was that Casey couldn't quite put his finger on who the rat was, but he was absolutely certain whoever it was was on their side.
He went upstairs, told Riah to keep Ellie occupied while they took the woman's husband to Crystal Towers, and they waited until she persuaded Ellie to go out with her before they left themselves.
Casey would have bet money it would go spectacularly wrong. The first sign he might well be right was Woodcomb losing it. Bartowski went in after him, and Chuck managed to handle himself and his brother-in-law.
And then Casey and Walker were locked down in the van while Beckman told them to stand down.
-X-
Mariah took Victoria with her when she went into the courtyard. John had explained what was going on, and he wanted her to see if she could keep Ellie occupied enough she wouldn't see them take Devon out or worry about her husband. She knocked on the Woodcomb's door, adjusted the diaper bag over her shoulder and hoped Ellie wouldn't think it strange that she wanted to go shopping this late with a tired baby in tow. As she waited, she realized she should have seen if Morgan could watch Victoria while she used a desire to have a night out without John or the baby as her excuse.
The look Ellie gave her as she opened the door made Mariah think pity. Since Ellie had no reason to pity her, she ignored it, figured it must be something else, and told Ellie she needed to make a run to the mall, lied and said that Victoria needed a few things because she was outgrowing everything before she asked if Ellie would like to come with them.
It was true that her daughter had had a bit of a growth spurt, but Christmas had ensured Victoria might not need clothes for the next six months. Ellie didn't know that, though, and she readily agreed to go with Mariah. Luckily, Victoria slept through the shopping trip, though after a while, Mariah wished she'd fuss if for no other reason than that Ellie's questions about John were beginning to make her uncomfortable. Ellie had asked where John was as they left the apartment complex. Mariah's car had been parked behind his Crown Vic, so she told Ellie he wasn't feeling well.
Ellie didn't ask what was wrong with him, and Mariah thought that odd but let it go.
As they walked through the mall, stopped now and then to look at things for Victoria, Mariah bought a few items to shore up the story she'd given her friend. After a while, Ellie asked how often John was sick. Puzzled, Mariah told her this was the first time of which she was aware. Ellie had studied her, concern written on her face. "I've noticed John's often out most of the night," she said.
Mariah frowned, stopped Victoria's stroller. She hoped like hell Ellie wasn't finally piecing things together, but it was entirely possible that Devon's kidnapping by the Ring had made her begin to figure out not all was right with her family, that a lot of strange behavior and events centered around her brother. Mariah sought an answer that might appease her friend. "John took a second job," she lied, and then she realized she should have come up with something else, though what Ellie might buy as an explanation, she couldn't fathom.
"Babies are expensive," Ellie agreed softly. "They also cause a lot of stress and anxiety in a marriage."
Mariah wondered what she was getting at. "They do," she concurred as she stared at a dress in a window.
"John hasn't been going out because he's having problems adjusting to fatherhood, has he?"
As Mariah studied her friend, she realized Ellie was genuinely concerned about John, though she wondered why the other woman believed John was finding being a father difficult.
Ellie chewed her lip a moment, and when Mariah didn't answer, she added, "I noticed you were gone for several weeks just before Christmas."
"I went to my dad's," she said, and as she watched Ellie's expression shift, she realized what that sounded like, especially since she had claimed she'd done that when they had their "problems" before John came to California. Thinking fast, she found a lie that wasn't much of one since it was usually true. "We always spend Christmas together, and because his housekeeper takes the holidays off, I usually do the food and host parties for him."
Skepticism was written clearly all over Ellie's face, and Mariah wondered why the other woman obviously wasn't willing to believe that. Apparently, she needed to work on her lies.
"And what does your dad do, exactly?" she asked.
It was obvious the other woman was fishing, so Mariah moved on, wondered how to distract her while she decided which of her dad's covers to use. She finally chose the one he'd used with his own parents. "He heads up R & D for an electronics firm in Canada."
"So why did you stay here last year?" Ellie asked, and Mariah's heart sank when she puzzled that out. She should have thought of the fact that she'd been firmly in Echo Park the Christmas before.
"Listen, Ellie," she started, not at all sure what she would tell the other woman, but then she remembered the lie she had used to cover John's lengthy absence. "John was back on active duty," she began and then tacked on something that wasn't entirely true, "and Dad had a new girlfriend I didn't like, so I decided to stay here instead."
To her mixed gratitude and distaste, Ellie seized on her father's love life, and Mariah was able to be almost completely honest about the rate with which her father ran through women, about the fact that as he got older, they got younger and how that made Mariah feel. Still, she was relieved when John's text gave her the all-clear to return home.
-X-
Casey eyed Daniel Shaw and wondered who in hell that bastard was. He'd never read his name in a report, never heard him mentioned in a briefing, never even heard a word of gossip about him. Now here he was, some reputed Ring expert, but he looked as wet behind the ears as Bartowski.
What galled him was realizing he would have to answer to the jumped-up little pissant since Beckman was putting the idiot in charge of Casey's assignment.
The worst part had been that nonsense about not liking guns, particularly when the jackass proved he was very good with them when he killed Prince. Still, Casey wished the little prick had given him a chance to plug him when Casey provided Walker cover so she could go try and save Bartowski again.
When he finally got home, Riah was waiting for him. "What did you do to Ellie?" she asked.
He gave her question serious consideration, but he couldn't think of anything that might have recently pissed the female Bartowski off. "Nothing. Why?"
His wife shrugged. "She was asking a lot questions about you, none of which made any real sense." Riah waited for him to reach down the scotch bottle. "She seemed to be hinting at something, and for a little while, I thought she was finally piecing things together."
As he recorked the bottle, he looked at her, lifted a brow. "She come very close?"
Riah shook her head, leaned back against the counter. "She just kept asking about your health."
Carefully considering that, he sipped his scotch. When he could come up with no explanation for that, he offered, "Maybe her brother or husband said something about the leg."
Once more she shrugged, then rolled her lower lip between her teeth, and Casey watched her chew at it while she thought. "No," she finally said. "She'd have asked how you got shot."
Casey was about to distract her by asking if she'd ever heard anything about Shaw, but then he remembered the very "special" agent was staying in Castle and could, potentially, be listening in. In his shoes, Casey would be.
As a result, he asked if Victoria was asleep, and Riah nodded, told him she'd slept through the shopping trip she'd taken Ellie on, and when he finished his drink, rinsed his glass and put it in the dishwasher, they locked up, shut down the lights, and headed upstairs. Casey was tired, but he found a scanner, made a pass through their bedroom, but it remained clean. He didn't trust Shaw, and the place had been empty for several hours that evening.
The next evening, he had cause to remember Riah's comments about Ellie. Bartowski had invited them to a family housewarming. Grimes had moved in with him when Ellie and her husband moved out. It complicated things in ways Bartowski living with his sister and brother-in-law hadn't. Casey soon forgot about that, though, when Ellie snatched the bottle of wine from him and told him he'd had enough. Later, he asked Riah if she knew what that had been about since Chuck had denied knowing. She'd been as puzzled as he.
Casey's suspicions about Daniel Shaw didn't go away, and his anger ratcheted up as Shaw deliberately endangered Bartowski on that Paris mission. Of course, it really hadn't been a Paris mission but a plane mission, and while Shaw told them Casey and Walker had babied the Intersect—infuriating Casey in the process and thrilling Bartowski—he decided to let the little bastard find out why on his own. He'd help Chuck if he could, but he was going to have to let Shaw play his little game and see for himself what Bartowski's limitations were.
It could have ended so badly in so many ways, and that made Casey step back and wonder why Shaw would take such huge risks with the best intelligence asset the government had found. He nearly put the question to Beckman, who was suddenly unwilling to talk to him as freely as she had once done, and Casey began to wonder if they had decided he was the liability, if he wasn't about to be sent back to the Corps or simply retired. He thought, too, of what Riah had once said to him—that men like him weren't usually allowed to leave, were retired, as she'd put it, with prejudice. He hadn't been sure Shaw had the balls to do that until he watched what the other man did to Chuck on that particular job.
He could tell Riah was concerned about him, but she didn't ask. For once, he wished she would, but he didn't exactly volunteer his suspicions, at least not yet. He did, though, feel Walker out about her own feelings toward the man. By then, Casey had figured out Shaw intended to break up the team, and he wondered if Beckman would let him. They were hands-down the most effective eliminators of Fulcrum and were well on their way to mastering the Ring before Shaw turned up.
Walker hadn't been surprised when Casey raised his suspicions, had clearly wondered some of the same things. As a result, Casey had no problem suggesting she treat Shaw as a mark, and since she and Bartowski were "only friends," he made clear what he meant by that—get close, see what she could find out. He left up to her whether that would involve pillow talk or just a kind of friendship.
It didn't take Casey long to strike out. One of his buddies told him he thought Shaw had gone through Annapolis, but when Casey checked, he couldn't find him anywhere. That said lie or alias or both. Another buddy mentioned he'd heard him give a paper at West Point, and Casey tracked that down, snorted derisively at the theoretical content that was unlikely to produce workable results in the real world. Shaw wasn't, apparently, a hands-on spy, just an analyst.
But that was all he could find. That evening, he decided to try Riah. As usual, he sat with her while she fed Victoria. He let her finish that, talked of generalities, before he made his approach.
"His name is Daniel Shaw," Casey told his wife as he reached for their daughter. "Some Ring expert." He watched Riah put her clothes back in order, considered telling her not to and suggest she put Victoria in her crib, but they still had to give her a bath. "Beckman says he's been working on the Ring for five years."
Riah paused, her fingers on the buttons of her blouse and frowned at him. He could read her pretty well by now, so it wasn't hard to tell she had caught what he had: none of them had heard of the Ring before Miles set out to steal the Intersect for them, and Casey found it hard to believe that neither he nor Walker had caught even a whiff of them. Larkin would have told Walker had he known, and it appeared he really should have.
"So who's Daniel Shaw?" Riah asked softly.
Victoria squirmed, so Casey gave the baby his attention for a moment. Hard stares didn't work on small infants, he'd learned, so he made sure she wasn't about to wriggle right out of his arms before he looked at his wife. "That's what Walker and I are trying to find out."
Riah gave him a wry smile, shook her head. "I'm out of the business, John. Permanently."
She stood, walked toward him and took Victoria.
"But that doesn't mean you can't ask questions, gossip with, say, Ellerby."
Before she gave that sigh, the one he knew meant she was well aware that she should run away from this but was really actually considering it, she met his eyes. After the sigh, she shook her head and walked out of their bedroom to the bathroom. He followed, got Victoria's bath ready while she undressed her.
"Not Mona," she said.
He raised a brow.
"When she goes looking, that will raise flags," she told him. "If Shaw has friends in other agencies, there's a chance he'll find out."
Casey grunted, nodded, and tested the water temperature in Victoria's bath. "Ideas?"
Riah shrugged, picked up their now-naked daughter. Casey took Victoria, eased her in the water, and began washing her. Riah moved so she could watch. Sometimes Casey wondered if she actually trusted him to do this.
"I could probably see if my old ICOM codes still work."
Victoria loved the water, and he took a moment to make sure she wasn't going to try the backstroke again before he looked up at her mother. "Assuming I overlook your violation of a binding agreement with the U.S. and Canadian governments which would directly affect me, how likely is that and how long would it take?"
She gave him a tiny smile and shrugged. "Depends a little on whether or not your agency is still watching my online behavior."
There was a sharp edge there. Riah hadn't taken long to figure out that the NSA was capturing her phone calls, e-mails, text messages, and other online activity. Beckman had called him and reamed him out for confirming his wife's suspicions that she was under surveillance. Casey had been pissed off, not least because he hadn't said a word, had figured it was likely but hadn't really known they were actually doing it.
"Assume they are." She had gone over the line a time or two, but because it had ultimately benefited General Beckman, his boss had looked the other way. He doubted Beckman would do so when the object of Riah's quest was Daniel Shaw. He hadn't managed to get a good read on Beckman and how much she did or didn't trust the other man, so until he knew, he wanted Riah to tread lightly. Then again, Beckman might not be the one they had to worry about. It was one of the reasons Casey had been very, very careful about whom he contacted to see what he could learn about Shaw.
Riah held out a towel, and Casey lifted their daughter out of the tub and into the waiting towel, watched as his wife wrapped Victoria in the soft, thick terry and sat on the edge of the bathtub to gently dry her.
"That makes it trickier," she acknowledged, "but I've picked up a few tools of the hacker trade." She studied him. "I might manage to go undetected. ISI will be more curious than the NSA when I knock on a back door or two." She gathered Victoria in the towel and stood. "I could just find a way to contact Dad directly, ask outright."
"Probably not a good idea," Casey said gruffly.
She shot him one of those looks of hers, this one more puzzled than anything else. "Dad would tell me, John."
He knew that, and what's more, he knew V. H. would send the files, and that's what would tip their hands. If V. H. pulled any files on Daniel Shaw or had them pulled, if the Ring had eyes in ISI—and Casey was pretty sure they did—then they would know someone was asking questions. He couldn't shake the belief that Shaw wasn't what he appeared, and if the man wasn't, then Casey's money was on Shaw having a connection to the Ring.
Casey's instincts were rarely wrong, and his gut told him Shaw wasn't what he said. Those snide comments the younger man made were carefully calculated to position him against Casey but with Bartowski, and they chafed. The man made eyes at Walker, which proved he had a pulse and was probably a heterosexual, but even that somehow felt off. Casey wanted to know who this guy was, who this expert no one had heard of was, and he especially wanted to know why Beckman had trusted the man to come into the Intersect project and take over.
It wasn't sour grapes, he told himself as his wife dressed their daughter. It wasn't that Casey wasn't willing to take orders from the competent. It was that there was something simply wrong with this, and he couldn't quite pin down what. There were lots of little clues, hints, but none of them fit coherently together. For example, when Beckman sent people in, they didn't know Bartowski's real name or that he was the Intersect: Shaw did.
"See what you can do," he said, met Riah's deep blue eyes as he took Victoria from her.
Several times he nearly rescinded his request. Casey waited, though, thought Riah might not be able to do it, might find herself caught, but his wife typically weighed her decisions carefully, thought her actions through before she acted on them.
A few days later, he arrived home tired and found his wife getting dressed. He smiled, noticed she wore his favorite dress, the red one that Bartowski had nearly had a cow over with the flame-like pattern. "What's the occasion?"
She smiled at him. "You're taking me to dinner."
Sliding his arms around her from behind, he made a counteroffer. "Suppose we stay in, get naked?"
Leaning back into him, she told him, "Dinner. That Italian place we like. Naked can come later."
When he'd cleaned up, changed and driven her there, he looked across the table at her. "After we order," she said softly.
As soon as the waiter was out of earshot, she told him, "You aren't going to like this."
He waited, decided not to say anything until she had explained. He didn't always like how she did things, but he'd come to trust her decisions.
"I took Mona up on her lunch invitations," she began, and Casey got a sinking feeling. "She played with Victoria while I got access to ISI's computer network."
There was a split-second of panic, but then he realized that if Ellerby was willing to be silent, this was the best solution to his dilemma. Riah wouldn't be caught hacking, and her actions were unlikely to be traced if she was accessing their encrypted systems from the inside.
"Mona made me use my codes," Riah continued, "which still worked but likely left a trail if anyone notices." She eyed him for a few moments. "I could find no mention of Daniel Shaw, and I was quite thorough. I read through what ISI knows about the Ring, but I still couldn't find any mention of him despite references to intel shared by the Americans in which he should have featured. You were there, and so were Sarah Walker and Charles Carmichael, but there were absolutely no references to Shaw or even any confidential source that might be Shaw."
"So there's nothing to share."
Riah shook her head. "I'm sorry, but, no."
Certain she wasn't telling a lie, he decided to enjoy a quiet night with his wife.
Then there was Manoosh. Casey had to admit he was taking his own frustrations out on Bartowski, but he really couldn't help it. Besides, pointing out the parallels between him and the new moron on the block might help Chuck connect with the kid. What he hadn't bargained on was Chuck coming on too strong instead of using that natural charm of his. Casey reconsidered whether or not the kid was really ready. He was just glad Shaw was off doing something else somewhere else and didn't see the mess Bartowski created.
To the kid's credit, he cleaned it up—with some help from Walker.
It wasn't hard to see, though, where this was going, and no matter how hard Bartowski tried to save the other man from his inevitable fate, in the end, the kid had done what he had to. That restored Casey's faith that Bartowski could learn to be a spy.
Ironically, Walker wasn't happy about that. Casey didn't know how to make her see that with Shaw around, Bartowski needed to make use of his normally short learning curve. If he didn't, then Shaw just might get the kid killed. So he'd told Walker it was a good thing the kid was turning into a spy, and while he sympathized with her apparent view that it was that very change that was making the likeable kid they'd both first met disappear into that hardened shell they all had to grow, Casey knew that if the kid didn't evolve, he'd die.
Of course, he might well die anyway.
Casey had the next day off, and he wasn't the least bit sorry. He wasn't sure he could take Bartowski's moping over having burned Manoosh, and he knew he definitely couldn't take Walker's moping over the kid being able to even burn his asset, so he settled in to enjoy some time with his family.
Late in the afternoon, he worked on paperwork when Riah handed him Victoria. He stayed where he was, sprawled on the couch with several intelligence reports, which he set aside to take his daughter.
"Emma's coming this weekend," she said, "and I need to do a little shopping."
He assured her he had babysitting duty covered, listened to her instructions, and then settled Victoria on his chest and went back to what he was doing.
-X-
"I see John put you on the starter scotch." Chuck whipped around when she made her observation. Mariah was a little amused that he had nearly given himself whiplash. She could tell he didn't know what to say, so she said to him, "Scotch is the mother's milk of the spy world."
"Do you drink it?" he asked.
She gave a brief huff of a laugh. "Only when I can't get good bourbon—or rye."
He stared at the bottle of Johnnie Walker Black in his hand. "Starter scotch?"
"Single malt's better but considerably more expensive. You'll have to progress through a few more pay grades before you can afford really good scotch." She reached for the bottle of bourbon she was there to get. Her sister was coming for a visit, and Emma loved a rum cake recipe she had adapted to a bourbon cake.
"So what's the deal with martinis?" Chuck asked.
Mariah shrugged. "Well, that would be Ian Fleming."
He nodded. "James Bond."
Returning his nod, she observed, "Real spies drink scotch." She studied him. "Come on," she said, taking the bottle from him and adding it to the three bottles of wine and bottle of bourbon she carried in her basket. John ought to know better than to make some kinds of suggestions to the younger man. Chuck would likely never admit it, but he had a case of hero worship when it came to her husband.
She paid for the alcohol, including the bottle of blended scotch, and then she took Chuck to a nearby Starbucks. "Want to tell me what's going on?" she asked when they had their drinks and had taken a table that provided some distance from the other customers.
Chuck fidgeted with his coffee. "Did you ever have to burn an asset?"
Somehow, that was the last question Mariah expected. She nearly gave him a vague answer, mainly from habit, but if he was actually taking John's advice to drink scotch, then it bothered him more than he was probably willing to admit. "Yes." She stared at her cup of decaf, turned it between her hands a moment, and then said, "Anyone who's been in this business long and run an asset has had to do it."
"What happened?"
This was the first time Chuck had ever asked her about her job, she realized, but then she had been kept largely isolated from any direct operational work with him. "I was in Montreal. ISI heard rumors that the old Front du libération du Québec was collecting new recruits and looking to build off what happened in the seventies." She caught the puzzled look on his face and briefly outlined the history of Quebec's periodic attempts to separate from the rest of Canada and of the turmoil and terrorism of the movement's last hurrah in the seventies. "I knew someone from my days at McGill whose family was involved before and again in the resurgent movement. He considered himself Canadian first and Québécois second. He agreed to infiltrate and report out. It was dangerous because he was betraying family as well as friends, and it tore at him. He was proud to be Québécois, and he had a hard time with his choice to spy on people he loved."
She traced a curving line back and forth on the tabletop a moment, remembered François, his keen intelligence, his ambition to work for the Foreign Office (preferably posted to France), his sweetness. She should never have asked him to do what she had. She had known he would ultimately break, but she had hoped they would get what was needed before that happened. Unfortunately, someone had recognized her, someone who knew her father and, she suspected, was connected to Galina Vian's old organization who were backing the agitators.
"He met me at Mount Royal one afternoon to do a rather risky brush drop." Chuck looked confused, so she explained the maneuver, the bump and exchange. "I was the one making the drop, and if I'd been thinking, we would have done a dead drop instead, but I was young and stupid, and I decided to do the flashier exchange." She wasn't looking forward to explaining what happened next. "Two of the Front were there, and they moved in."
"What happened?" Chuck asked.
Mariah thought about the bottle of bourbon in the bag at their feet, but she sighed and picked up her decaf. "I shot him. It was a clean shot, killed him instantly, and then I shot the two Front provocateurs. I retrieved the material from François and went to the exit strategy."
Chuck stared at her in horror. "Surely, that wasn't necessary."
"I wish I could say there was another option, Chuck, but there wasn't." Mariah had spent several years rethinking that operation. There really hadn't been. If they had taken the material, if they had taken François somewhere, it would have all been over. As her godfather had assured her on the occasions when they talked about it, she had taken the only viable option in the circumstance. She had come to terms with that, but there were times when she thought about François, times when she acknowledged her culpability in dragging a young man who had no business doing what he was doing into something he would have otherwise walked away from.
And then she had killed him.
He sagged and stared out the window at the passing traffic. John had been saying for a while it was time to quit coddling Chuck, but Mariah wasn't completely convinced that was so. "I only sent him to a bunker for the rest of his life."
She watched him, watched the emotion flicker across his face, and she hoped he didn't lose that sense of guilt. She didn't think she'd like Chuck if he became like the rest of them, able to do any dirty duty with barely a twinge of regret. "At least he gets to live. That's better than the alternative."
Those dark eyes zeroed in on her, and he looked angry and betrayed. "That's what Casey came to do to me," he said. "I'd rather be dead than spend the rest of my life under lock and key, never see my family, my friends, ever again."
Mariah had to concede the point. "I'd give anything to have had an alternative in François' case, Chuck, but I didn't. I did the job. Sometimes that's all we can do." She reached out and took his hand. "Let me ask you this." His eyes locked on hers. "Was what you did for the greater good? If you hadn't burned whoever it was, would there be many people in jeopardy?" He continued to stare at her. "If the answer is yes, then you made the right choice. If the answer is no or maybe, then perhaps you have a right to feel guilty."
"I did it for my own safety," he said faintly. "The greater good was served, but I did it because he was a threat to me, to my family."
She really wished she could ask, but she knew not to. Chuck shouldn't even have told her as much as he had. "Then what you did was the right thing, Chuck." She squeezed his hand and released it. "Now. I'm going to forget we had this conversation. You're going home with your scotch. I suggest you think about just stashing it in your cupboard and spend some time with Morgan or with Ellie and Devon or with all of them." The reminder of why he fought so hard to stay where he was would probably do him the most good, she knew.
He walked with her to her car, carried the bag of alcohol. When they had put it in the cargo net in the back of her Subaru, he drew out the bottle of Johnnie Walker and then closed the tailgate. She smiled at him, and left him there.
John was still in the living room with Victoria when she got home. He lay on the couch with his daughter asleep on his chest while he read a report. He looked over at her when she entered, and she walked with the bag from the liquor store and the one from the grocer's to the kitchen and set them on the counter next to the sink. She walked back to the couch and leaned down to kiss her husband.
He must have seen something in her expression because he took her hand and pulled her to sit on the edge of the couch. "What's up?"
She raised her brows. "Johnnie Walker Black?"
A faint color ran up under his skin. "Bartowski."
Mariah nodded and rubbed a light hand over Victoria's back. "I paid for his bottle," she told him. "I also gave him some advice."
John scowled. "He tell you what happened?"
"No, but he asked if I ever burned an asset."
Her husband looked at her, his head tilted, interested.
"I told him about François Rochambeau."
It was obvious he knew the name. "That was you?"
She nodded.
He lifted his brows. "That ended the last round of Québécois separatism before it could really get started."
"It ended a lovely young man who would never have been involved in the treason around him if I hadn't asked him," she said, sadly. She stroked a light finger down their daughter's cheek. "I don't want her in the family business, John."
His hand cradled Victoria as he sat up. He leaned in and kissed her. "Let's not make any rash decisions, Riah," he cautioned.
Her brows shot up. "Not funny, Colonel."
He kissed her again. "Maybe she's genetically programmed—father, mother, grandfather—so that she'd be really good at it."
Mariah sat back and looked at him. She sighed, tried to measure whether or not he was serious, and then she saw it, saw that he was simply trying to get her out of her funk. She asked anyway. "Do you really want her to grow up and do the things we've done, John?"
Her husband cradled her cheek and stroked a light thumb over her cheekbone. "No, Riah, I don't." When he kissed her this time, it was a kiss of comfort, and she leaned into it, felt the tears slip. She hadn't thought about François in a long time, but she could see him so clearly, could remember so well how sweet he'd been, could remember the thrill he got from doing what he did as well as his crushing guilt for betraying family and friends. "Hey," he whispered when he lifted his hand and stroked at the tears.
She swallowed thickly. "Sadly, Johnnie Walker Black isn't a viable answer for this."
He kissed her once more. "You did what you had to," he told her. "We all do. He, ultimately, made the decision to do what he did." He swiped her cheeks with the fingers of his free hand again. "If it helps, he was getting cold feet. You would have had to do what you did sooner or later."
Mariah sniffed and stared at her husband. How could he possibly know that? He read the question on her face.
"I was there, Riah. François gave you the names. Who was missing from the final round up?"
"Yves Simoneau." He gave her that look, the one that said she needed to go the next step. She tilted her head. "You were Yves Simoneau?"
"CSIS borrowed me," he said. "It was the one and only time I ever did them a favor."
Her lips twitched. Her father intensely disliked the Canadian agency, and it sounded like her husband had that in common with his father-in-law. She leaned in and kissed him. "I'm sometimes frightened by the number of times you and I seem to have been in the same places at the same times working the edges of cases."
John gave her his enigmatic look, then spoiled it with a grin. "Just think about your father's reaction if we had met one of those times."
She snorted. "You assume that we would have hit it off if we hadn't been sharing living quarters."
His mouth teased hers, and when she opened, he plundered. Before she could offer up a retort, he took her mouth again. "I think we might have, Riah."
A shiver raced down her spine at the low, seductive tone of voice. "You notoriously had a type, John," she reminded him softly. "I don't fit the requirements."
"I didn't marry them," he said, and she leaned in and kissed him.
Mariah considered putting Victoria down in the playpen across the room and seeing if she could convince her husband to get naked with her. Before she could suggest it, a soft, not-quite-cry escaped Victoria. She leaned away from her husband, took their daughter from him and started on the buttons of her blouse. John's hands pushed hers aside and did it for her. He leaned back into the corner of the couch and pulled her so that she lay back against him. As Victoria nursed, she told him about her discussion with Chuck and her advice to him. He grunted approval when she finished her recitation. Mariah nearly asked what had happened, but she didn't.
To her surprise, though, he told her, told her about Manoosh, told her where he had gone when he disappeared for a couple of days with no more notice than a brief note dropped in front of the coffeemaker. She listened, and when he finished, explained where Manoosh had ended, she turned and met his eyes. Before she could say anything, though, he told her, "Several years ago I was sent to Mount Royal to kill a traitor. A redhead did it for me."
His brows went up. She'd dyed her hair red before that mission in Montreal. Instead of confirming what he didn't ask, she simply smiled bitterly, thought fleetingly of Carina Miller and those photographs of her husband. "That why you like redheads?"
John's snort and shake of the head was the only answer she got.
The next morning, Mariah had a moment of déjà vu. Ellie was on her doorstep shortly after John left for the Buy More. From the woman's grave expression, Mariah wondered what had happened now, and her dread deepened when Ellie said, "We need to talk."