A bit of explanation before you begin:
Okay, on the one hand, "Chuck vs. the Tic Tac" had me tightly focused. On the other hand, it really had me rolling my eyes. I'm normally good at suspending disbelief, but this always bugged the hell out of me. Even though I liked some of what they did with Casey after this, there were also a lot of things that seriously irritated me. The whole Alex Coburn thing just never sat well with me, and parts of it were inconsistent with things we'd previously been told about Casey. I also confess that it threw a giant monkey wrench in what I'd written. After a lot of angst and thought, I decided not to do massive rewriting—hence the AU on this.
The next few chapters give altering points of view, too, because figuring out how to fill in all the blanks without lots of exposition gave me a headache.
Thus, you've been warned. If you don't like my version of the Chuckverse from this point on, sorry. Write your own (I'd read that, by the way).
Ghosts That Haunt—41
Mariah opened the door to see what seemed like half a department worth of operatives. The anonymous men in suits were clearly agents of some sort. She stared at the one who seemed in charge—or at least stood directly in front of her. He looked embarrassed, and that was really the only warning she had.
"Mrs. Casey?"
She gave a cautious nod.
"Mrs. John Casey?" he clarified.
That didn't sound good, but they were obviously not there to do one of those "we regret to inform you" speeches. She nodded once more.
He held out ID. He was from the NSA, but most of the men ranged behind him were CIA, she saw. She couldn't help wondering what had happened to John because something must have. "Please let us enter," he said, and she got the impression from his tone that he wasn't actually asking her consent. She stepped back, watched them file inside while none looked at her directly. "If you could have a seat, ma'am," the NSA agent said and waived at John's chair. At a loss, she sat. Sooner or later, she knew, someone would explain to her what was going on.
She watched as they gathered in her kitchen around the NSA agent and had a discussion she couldn't quite hear. After a few moments, they began to fan out, and when one of them started upstairs, she stopped him. "My daughter's asleep up there," she said. He ignored her and thundered on up the stairs. Not surprisingly, he woke Victoria. Mariah started for the stairs to get her but was stopped by the first agent.
"You need to stay here, ma'am," he said.
She lifted a brow and asked, "Hear that?" She waited for him to notice Victoria's wails. "It won't stop until I go to her."
He gestured at a third agent who followed Mariah upstairs to the room she shared with John. They hadn't made Victoria a room of her own yet. It was more convenient to have her in their room since she wasn't sleeping the night through. Mariah's mother assured her it shouldn't be long since Victoria was now a little over four months old. Mariah was just glad her daughter only woke once in the night at this point.
She lifted Victoria out of her crib and took her to the rocking chair where she usually fed her. "I'm sorry, ma'am," the agent who had accompanied her said quietly, "but you can't stay up here."
Mariah had had a bad feeling from the moment she opened the door and admitted these men. It grew worse. "May I ask why?" He looked uncomfortable, didn't meet her eyes. When he didn't answer, she told him, "She needs to be fed. I don't use bottles, and I would far rather do this without an audience." She didn't care that he went beet-red. She didn't care that he looked so uncomfortable she thought she could whisper boo and make him at least flinch. He stepped out into the hall and bellowed downstairs for Harris, whoever that was.
Harris, it turned out, was the agent in charge, the one who had knocked on the door. The man who had come upstairs with Mariah had a whispered conversation with him, and then Harris stepped into the room. "You are not to leave this room," he told her curtly. "You are to touch nothing but what you need to feed your child. Understood?"
Now even more worried, Mariah nodded. She was on the edge of asking what this was all about, but he turned and left her. She suspected this would not turn out well. Something was going on, and she knew it somehow involved John.
Before Sarah Walker turned up, Mariah would have bet the presence of the other woman would make her relax. It didn't. Mariah changed Victoria after another argument with the man she was beginning to think of as her guard, brought her daughter downstairs, and walked into chaos. Agent Walker appeared to be supervising the other agents' work. That work appeared to be stripping the apartment. They were packing all John's gear and his files. It looked like they planned to take everything. She had been here before, she reflected, but before she could protest, two other men with badges stepped forward. "Mariah Adderly?" the shorter, older one asked.
She eyed him, not amused, and ignored his question. Her name was no longer Adderly.
When she turned to ask Sarah Walker what was going on, the man grabbed her arm. "Are you Mariah Adderly?" he demanded.
"No," she snapped. "I'm Mariah Casey."
He held an ID in front of her face, one with his photograph and the seal of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and she felt her heart sink. "This is for you," he said, handing her a folded form. It looked a bit like a subpoena, she thought, and when she opened it one-handed, she found a deportation order.
It seemed she had entered the United States on forged documents in the name of Mariah Taylor. She had also, apparently, entered into a now-nullified marriage with someone named Alexander Coburn.
She thrust the documents back at the man who had handed them to her. "There's been a mistake," she said, but she could hear a little voice in the back of her head say, General Beckman provided you with a second set of documents in the name of Mariah Taylor. You lived and worked under that name until you married John. She supposed that could account for that, but she had no idea who Alexander Coburn was. "I'm a U.S. citizen, and my husband is Lieutenant Colonel John Casey."
"You are a Canadian spy," he asserted, ignoring the papers in her outstretched hand, "and the man you married is not Lieutenant Colonel John Casey. You and your daughter are to come with us. We will escort you back to Ottawa."
Mariah stared at him open-mouthed. "Ask Agent Walker," she said. This was all a bad mistake. They had to have made a mistake. Her husband was definitely Lieutenant Colonel John Casey. She would make them call General Beckman or General Patterson, either of whom would vouch for John.
When Sarah Walker wouldn't meet her eyes and suddenly found something else to do, Mariah's heart sank even further. There was definitely something going on, and, belatedly, she realized that whatever it was, it was very bad indeed. Alexander Coburn. She had heard that name before, so she chased after it, shut out whatever the man was trying to say to her now to try and trace where she had heard it.
Victoria began to cry when Mariah jerked her arm away from the INS agent. "Don't touch me," she ground out.
"Ma'am, I would appreciate it if you would come peaceably."
"I need a few things," she told him.
He shook his head. "My orders are to escort you directly to LAX. There's a plane waiting to fly you to Ottawa."
Mariah was definitely pissed off then. "I would like to call my husband."
"Ma'am, he's not your husband," he told her.
Despite the fact he was obviously nearing the end of his patience, she narrowed her eyes, furious, and bit out, "I married him twice—once in a private ceremony and once in a very public ceremony. I assure you, both were legal, and John is my husband."
"Ma'am, he's not John Casey, and that means he's not legally your husband." He let that sink in for only a moment. "We need to leave."
Inside, Mariah reeled. What did he mean John wasn't who he said he was, that they weren't married? He started to pull her toward the door, but she explained in succinct terms that she needed to get a few things from upstairs. She felt like a prisoner as she packed a few things for Victoria, especially when she had to hand each garment, each diaper, each item, to one of the men to examine before it was given back to her to stuff in the diaper bag they had nearly destroyed searching it. She almost asked what they were looking for, but she knew they wouldn't tell her. She did ask if she could pack a few things of her own, gave the watching INS agent a hard glare and dared him to call her ma'am again. She got some grim amusement out of watching him visibly bite it back before telling her she could only take the things she'd gathered for her daughter.
Chuck was downstairs when they escorted her through the living room. She tried to stop and ask if he knew what was going on, but the two INS agents hustled her and Victoria out the door and into a waiting black Suburban. She thought about berating them for not getting Victoria's car seat, but she had a feeling she had already tried the limits of their patience. The INS agent who had spoken to her was true to his word: she was driven straight to LAX. She was forced to surrender her real American passport at the airport. Her BlackBerry had been confiscated at the apartment.
They escorted her to a private jet, and she sighed. She would just have to wait until they landed in Ottawa and demand her father tell her what was going on. She noticed the two INS agents followed her onboard.
Mariah recognized the man waiting inside the plane for them. They all remained silent for a while. Mariah sought—and failed—to find the words to ask what was going on. As she was about to just bluntly ask, he told her, "We'll have this discussion when we're back in Canada, Mariah."
For her godfather to come instead of her father meant this was serious, and for Major Jonathan Clack to ask her not to say anything until they arrived home and the Americans were on their way back meant there were things he didn't want said in front of them. She was desperate to ask, but the look on his face told her to hold her tongue. "Where's Dad?" she asked instead.
Clack gave her a sad look. "Tilting at windmills."
She knew not to ask again.
Hours later, when she and Victoria were inside Clack's limo, he asked if she knew what this was about. "I hoped you could tell me," she admitted.
He rubbed his forehead, something she had frequently seen him do when her father had tried the limits of his patience. "What did they tell you?" he asked, and she told him. He sighed. "Mariah, please take no offense at what I'm about to ask you." She gave him a cautious nod. "Did Casey ever give you any hint that he might not be who he claims?"
She thought back to her birthday nearly two years before, thought back to that night in Chicago. He had promised her the truth, and he had told her John Casey was truly his name. "No," she said. "Never."
Clack reached forward, and the driver handed him a briefcase. He laid it on his lap and opened it. He handed the file he removed to Mariah.
For a long moment, she held it between them, held it like it might bite her. She instinctively knew she didn't want to open that file and read its contents, knew it would probably tell her things about her husband she didn't want to know. "I want to talk to John," she said faintly.
Clack's face wore sympathy uncomfortably. "You can't. He's in a secure facility under arrest." He stroked a cuff back and looked at his watch. "In a few hours, he'll be on his way to a facility in Thailand where he won't be protected by American laws against torture."
Mariah began to shake, her breathing shallowed, and her vision blurred. This had to be a bad, bad dream. This couldn't be real. "There's some mistake," she whispered.
"Sadly," Clack told her, "there isn't." He patted her arm. "Read the file, Mariah."
She still hadn't opened it when the limo drew up in front of her apartment building. The driver came around and opened the door for her, and she sat the file down on the seat to unbuckle her daughter. She hadn't even brought their coats, she thought, dazed, and it was freezing in Ottawa. She bundled her daughter up as well as she could and rushed toward the building door. Inside the entryway, she dug in her purse for her keys, then tried to remember if they had been taken from her or not.
Her fingers finally closed around the ring of keys, and she drew them out. She fitted the key in the inner door that kept everyone but residents out. She belatedly realized she would have to go shopping and prepared a mental list: crib, more clothes for her daughter, diapers. While she had stayed with her father since she married John, that visit had been before Victoria's birth. In fact, she had intended to sell the loft but hadn't yet gotten around to it.
It was just as well, she mused as she unlocked her door.
Scratching a car seat off her mental shopping list when she realized Major Clack carried the one that had been in his limo, Mariah hoped she could hold it together until he left her there.
She looked around. Someone had been in to clean. Her father's doing, she assumed, since she had no arrangements. Clack sat the car seat by the door and then dropped the file he had brought her on the counter. "Read it, Mariah," he said, "and then call me." He kissed her cheek and let himself back out.
Mariah found many things to do, most of which didn't actually need doing, to avoid the manila folder on her countertop. She called in a favor from an old, trusted friend of her father's and did some shopping while Isobel Gerrard stayed with Victoria. She bought clothes and the other things her daughter needed. She ran to the grocery store for essential items, and then she returned home. It was only when the other woman was gone that it dawned on her she had left the file in the open. She wondered if Mrs. Gerrard had read it.
When Victoria was fed, bathed, and asleep, Mariah puttered in the kitchen, not really hungry. She worried about her husband, but she couldn't call him if he'd really been arrested and was on his way to a place where they could torture him. She did call her father, who tersely told her he was "on it" before he hung up on her.
She couldn't sleep—between the recent time change and the time zone changes, she hadn't adjusted to the differences. It was as it neared three in the morning Ottawa time that she finally sat at the kitchen bar and opened the folder.
As was her wont, she set the photographs aside without looking at them. The dossier was an ISI one, though it seemed odd they would have had such a file on a fairly unremarkable second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps, one who had been killed in Honduras two decades before, at that. Mariah had been nine when that happened. He had been assigned to a unit serving as "technical advisors," though given what was going on in the area at the time, she suspected Alexander Coburn and his colleagues had actually been part of the destabilization efforts aimed at Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his government.
Coburn had been buried at Arlington with full honors. Nothing else was noted except that the day after Coburn's death John Casey joined the NSA. Mariah frowned, not at all clear why her husband's name appeared in this Coburn's file. Then, she realized it was a recent notation, probably added when the file was given to Clack.
She flipped over the photographs, but she was woefully unprepared for what she saw. At first glance, Alexander Coburn could have been a much younger John Casey. He had paler blue eyes, though, and the chin was all wrong—unless John had had plastic surgery. The hair was darker as well. The ears were similar, but on closer observation, only similar. Mariah was intimately familiar with John's ears.
Since she learned she was pregnant, she had refrained from drinking, but now she got up, walked around the counter at which she had sat to read the dossier, and crossed to a sideboard where she kept a number of bottles and selected bourbon. She poured a measure and carried it back to the stool and picked up the dossier once more. She read through it again. After all, according to the deportation order, she was married to the late Alexander Coburn, not to John Casey.
There were several things wrong with the dossier, other than those she had noted. She had worked security for Generalissimo Alejandro Goya. She was well versed in el Ángel de la Muerte lore. John had first tried to assassinate the Generalissimo six years before Coburn had been killed—a few years before Alexander Coburn, according to his records, could have entered military service at all. She had admitted that John looked younger than his age, but while he would have been old enough to have been in Costa Gravas for the attempt, it was unlikely this Coburn had miraculously made second lieutenant and been given the job of assassin just out of high school.
Then there was the fact she had met John Casey's family. She seriously doubted Jane and his sisters had pretended to be his family as some sort of twisted validation project.
And John had never lied to her—not that she knew, anyway. He had promised her that night in Chicago that she could ask anything and get an honest answer. She had asked if John Casey was his real name. He had said it was. She believed him.
She sighed and sipped the neat whiskey, reluctantly admitted that he could well have lied to her. She stared at the city lights, wondered why the United States government revoked her dual citizenship. Why did they claim she and John were not legally married, that the man she married was actually this dead man? She rubbed her tired eyes. It made no damned sense at all.
Picking up one of the photographs of Alexander Coburn, she studied that oh-so-young face. He looked like a nice boy, she thought, but he also looked soft, vulnerable. John wasn't soft. She chewed her lip and picked the boy's image apart again.
John was soft. He was soft where Victoria was concerned. That child would wind him around her fingers when she was old enough to communicate with her father. He was a bit soft where she, Mariah, was concerned. She sipped the bourbon once more and looked at the photograph in her hand. This boy was nearly twenty-one years dead. John had said more than once he had more than twenty years in the spy business, but to have been this boy, he had exaggerated. There was no reason she could think of that explained why he had faked his death, which she assumed was the premise from which they worked—assuming he really was this Alexander Coburn as the deportation order and the transmittal memo on the dossier asserted. The NSA would have just tapped him and swallowed him into their agency.
She really wanted to hear John's version of this mess.
That was not going to happen, not any time soon.
Her phone rang, and she walked over to pick up the handset. She had considered getting rid of the landline, but she hadn't managed to get around to it. Now she was glad. She'd have to replace her BlackBerry if the Americans didn't return it to her. She should probably call Mona and see if the other woman could get it back for her.
She wilted when she heard her father's voice ask if she was okay. For the first time, the tears came. "No," she said softly. "What's really going on, Dad?"
"Later," he told her, and Mariah was really getting tired of hearing that. "You got home safely?" Agreeing that she had, she was about to ask where he was, when he said, "You read Victoria's bedtime story I sent you?"
That drew her up short. After a second she realized he meant the dossier on Coburn. "Yes. Nice fairy tale."
"You know what they say about fairy tales, Mariah. They sometimes contain the truth."
Message transmitted, he told her he would call her the next day and wished her good night.
Finding a tissue, Mariah mopped up her face and blew her nose. Then she marched back to the phone and punched in John's cell number. She wouldn't get him, she knew, but when this was all cleared up and he had the phone back, he could call her. She listened to his gruff identification, but when she got the beep for the message she hesitated. "John—" she began, and then she ground to a halt. "God," she said on a deep exhale, "I don't even know what to call you." She sought the words, but couldn't find them. How did she ask her husband if it had all been false? How could she ask about all those promises never to lie to her? The message ended. She hung up.
After a few moments of blankness, she dialed the number again. This time, she said, "I'm in Ottawa. They deported me. They took my American passport. Victoria and I are at my apartment." She reeled off the landline number and explained that they had also taken her phone—which she would like returned.
When she hung up, she thought, hard. She hadn't really had a chance to before. Between shock and coping with her suddenly changed circumstances, she had been moving on autopilot. She decided to simply assume it was true, that John really was this Alexander Coburn. Working from that premise, she thought she could dismiss the idea that the NSA was pissed off that he wasn't John Casey. Given the way the agents had gone through their apartment and through their belongings, given the way she hadn't been allowed to take anything but necessities for Victoria, she figured it was safe to assume they were looking for something. That meant John, Coburn, whoever, had taken something or had been given something. She didn't speculate what that might have been. There were numerous possibilities, after all.
Calling Agent Walker or even Chuck for an explanation was unlikely to get her anywhere. If they knew, they couldn't and probably wouldn't tell her. She felt reasonably certain Walker knew, suspected Chuck did as well. John—she decided she'd just stick with the name she knew for the time being—had told her the day before that he and the others were going on a trace cell mission. Mariah was familiar with those. She suspected something had happened on that mission. She thought back, though, to the evening before that, thought about how John had been more quiet than usual. Come to think of it, he had sent her out with Mona Ellerby. She had taken Victoria with her and spent several hours with the other woman at her apartment. John had been unusually distracted when she returned home.
That begged the question of what had happened that night—because Mariah was now convinced something had—and she thought there was a high probability it had led to whatever had caused John's arrest and her deportation. She wished she could hack into the video footage from their apartment, but she was certain General Beckman had already secured it and that if she tried to access it she would be unable to.
She turned to strategizing ways to deal with the threat to her marriage. She refused to acknowledge that the INS claim that she and John were not legally married could be true. She went to the desk along the wall next to the windows and rummaged for a notebook and pen. She took them back to the counter and began making lists; lists of things she knew about John; lists of things she knew about his assignments; lists of things she knew about his family, about the family she had married into; lists of things she knew about his friends. In the end, though, she realized they were just lists; they offered no proof of anything.
Mariah sighed, but then she remembered Paul Patterson. She hunted through the bag she had brought with her, looked for the plain card he had given her with his telephone number. She realized it was one of those things she had left behind in Los Angeles. She Googled him, hoping to find a number, but the long list of Paul Pattersons she returned and a lack of any other knowledge than he lived somewhere in California made it impossible to identify the one she looked for—assuming he didn't have an unlisted number or something that would keep him off the results list her search returned.
While she scanned through the list of Paul Pattersons, her e-mail pinged. She opened the program only to discover an e-mail from her godfather. It was a reminder to read the file and to call him. Mariah stared at the screen a moment, and then she realized that Clack still had connections she might be able to exploit. She dialed her godfather's private number.
He didn't waste time on greetings, a trait that reminded her of John. "You've read it?" She acknowledged having done so. "I'm sorry, Mariah," he told her. "This seems out of character for Casey, but I suppose it isn't that surprising. He's always put duty before all else."
She drew in a deep breath and released it. "I want to talk to him," she said baldly.
"Diane isn't going to let that happen.
"Then I want to know what he's accused of doing," she said.
"Treason, Mariah." She felt faint. Of all the things she could have imagined, that was the very last thing of which she would have believed John capable. Her godfather sighed. "Consider yourself fortunate not to be charged alongside him. The Americans still have execution on the books for both treason and spying."
She closed her eyes. Tired. She was so very tired. "John would never commit treason, Uncle Jonathan."
"I confess I find it hard to believe as well, Mariah, but all evidence indicates he did. According to Diane, when he was confronted, he pleaded the fifth."
If John pled the fifth, she figured he must have been either guilty or close enough he couldn't be honest with his boss without exposing something or someone that needed to remain hidden. She rubbed her forehead and thought hard. "It just isn't in his character," she told her godfather. "He—he wouldn't do that, not without a very good reason. I simply can't believe he would betray his government, his oaths."
Her godfather sighed. "Mariah, denial in these kinds of circumstances is normal, but all evidence indicates what was in that dossier is true."
"It proves nothing," she insisted, but she kept silent on her reasons for doubt.
"Your faith is a credit to your husband, Mariah, but the truth of the matter is that John Casey, apparently, is not John Casey. He's Alexander Coburn."
"I've met his mother, his sisters," Mariah said, and even she could hear the desperate edge to her voice as she began spilling those reasons. "They were named Casey. A whole family could not have died and been reborn. There are too many things about John that don't fit with Coburn's history. It can't be true."
Something inside her whispered, Say it often enough, and you'll believe it. Perhaps that was the case. Perhaps it was just wishful thinking on her part.
Major Clack quietly echoed her thoughts before he continued. "All evidence indicates that John Casey and Alexander Coburn are actually the same person."
"I want to see him," she said. "I want to talk to him."
"The Americans have likely placed you on a no-fly list, Mariah. I doubt you could cross the border, even. He'll be gone soon—if he isn't already—and then he'll be beyond your reach."
She swallowed thickly, fought down the panic. "They're going to kill him, aren't they?"
One of the things she had always appreciated about Major Clack was the fact he never deliberately lied to her. Admittedly, he had occasionally omitted certain facts, but he had never outright lied to her. "I don't know, Mariah," he confessed at last, "but it is likely that they'll either kill him trying to find out what they want to know or they'll kill him for admitting he did what he's accused of. Men like your husband seldom go to prison for this particular crime."
Her godfather still had connections; he could still call in favors, and Mariah desperately tried to formulate her request.
Major Clack anticipated her, though. "I'm so very sorry, Mariah, but there's nothing I can do. If the charges were anything but what they are, if the truth—assuming what we've been told is not the truth—were more obvious, but your husband and others have muddied the waters. We may never knowwhat the truth really is."
Her eyes were gritty when she hung up the phone and rubbed them with the forefinger and thumb of her right hand. She thought hard about what other resources she might be able to exploit. She could return to her search for Paul Patterson, but she had a feeling she would have to call each and every possibility to find him. She sighed. Beckman would simply refuse to accept her calls. Chuck would be placed in a difficult position if she called him, and her father would call her when they could safely talk—though it would likely be too late to do anything for John by then.
She had alternatives, she told herself. There were identities ISI had created for her that the NSA and CIA were unlikely to know, and there were a few identities she had created herself as a failsafe. She could book a flight under one of those, travel on a Canadian passport issued under one of those names. Her father wouldn't be amused, but it could work. Mariah thought a moment about Victoria, about whether she could risk taking her daughter with her. It might help flag her if she did so, but it might also deflect suspicion. She went to the armoire and exposed the small safe. Opening it, she looked at her collection of passports and documents that supported each identity. She finally chose Anna Markowitz, an associate professor of history at Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland. It would be a simple matter to activate the protocols that would confirm her identity and affiliation with the University. She would probably have to fly to Newfoundland and leave from St. John's for Los Angeles, though.
After more thought, she decided it would be unwise to choose an identity that tied her to a location Mariah was herself easily identified with. She flipped through the ID's one more time. This time she selected one she had used before, Angelique Broussard, a financial analyst for a major Canadian bank. Once again, it would be simple to activate the protocols, and because Angelique lived in Quebec City and was married, travelling with a child was unlikely to raise any eyebrows. Mariah could simply fly to Quebec City and then assume Angelique's identity, booking a flight in that name. She did exactly that.
She didn't sleep that night, had been awake for two days. Victoria was fussier than usual when she woke slightly before dawn. Mariah sympathized. She wanted to sit down and bawl herself, but she didn't. They caught an early morning flight to Quebec City where Mariah miraculously became a French-speaking Québécois.
When they landed in Los Angeles, the passengers were held in the plane on the tarmac. Mariah got a sinking feeling, one that was reinforced when an air marshal asked her to come with him. Her new phone was taken from her, and she and Victoria were sequestered for over two hours until a return flight to Canada could be arranged. No one spoke a word to her while she and her daughter waited, but the air marshal flew back with them. When he had escorted her off the plane in Ottawa, he handed her phone and her false passport back to her and told her gently, "I don't recommend that you try that again, Mrs. Casey. I've been instructed to inform you that if you try to fly into the United States again, your daughter will be turned over to family services, and you will be incarcerated."
By then she was running on fumes. She walked toward the taxi stand but was intercepted by her father, who looked absolutely furious. He steered her toward his car, and when they had left the airport, he closed the window between them and the driver and verbally chewed on Mariah for the entirety of the drive back to her apartment. He carried his granddaughter as they rode the elevator to her loft where he followed her inside. She was so very tired, but she doubted she would sleep. She went through her nightly routine with her daughter, and then she returned to her living room to face her father.
Mariah might have held it together if he hadn't given her a sympathetic look. She might even have been able to withstand more lectures on how her actions only made things worse, but that very disappointed, very sad look was her undoing. She simply burst into tears.
He held her, let her cry, and didn't say a word. There were no words of comfort, and that spoke volumes to Mariah. He had been there. He had looked into it. He had spoken to Beckman. It was all true. She cried even harder as that sank in.
When she finally stopped, he rubbed his good hand up and down her back. "I'm so very sorry, Mariah," he said softly. Then he began to tell her what he had learned. He told her that her husband was really Alexander Coburn and that John had admitted as much. He paused, and then he told her the rest, told her what John had done, how he had used the trace cell exercise to steal an experimental military drug for his former commander who had joined the Ring. Mariah nearly protested that John would never do that, but when she saw her father's expression, she knew, somehow, that worse was coming. He told her why John had done it, told her about Kathleen McHugh and her daughter Alex—her husband's twenty-year-old daughter.
Mariah's chest seized. She thought for a moment she was having a heart attack. Her lungs didn't work. Her husband had lied to her. He had lied about the most fundamental thing—who he was. He had loved another, apparently still loved her. Victoria had a sister old enough to be her mother. Mariah was only a little less than a decade older than John's—Alexander's—daughter.
She shouldn't be that surprised, she supposed. There had, after all, been Ilsa.
A part of her wanted to rage, to throw things. Another part of her wanted to crawl into bed and sleep until it all went away. Still another part wanted to cry again, but Mariah decided she was through with the last option. Victoria meant she couldn't exercise the second, and her daughter was again the reason she wouldn't choose the first. That left her at a loss. Her father seemed to recognize the warring instincts within her. He told her then what else he had learned, told her about John's escape, about Beckman setting Walker and Bartowski to find him, and about the denouement. "He's been fired, Mariah," he said gently. "Diane discharged him."
He didn't call me, she thought. He hadn't contacted her so that she wouldn't worry. He hadn't acknowledged her messages. She felt the blackness close in. Maybe he had decided he wanted her, not Mariah, them, not his wife and their daughter. She buried her face against her father's chest. Oh, God. He was going to divorce her. She was never going to be allowed back in the States. He would never leave his country, and if he had truly loved this Kathleen, Mariah and Victoria had lost him.
"Don't," her father said gently. "He loves you."
"He didn't commit treason for me," she said bitterly. "He lied to me." And that was another kind of treason, she realized.