"Four months?" Billy said incredulously. "Four months and you're just now telling me about it? What the hell is the matter with you two?"
"Look, I know this is s shock, Sir, but there are valid reasons for what we did, for keeping it a secret," Amanda said with a sigh feeling like she was repeating the same conversation that she'd already had with her mother.
"No, the fact that you two got married is not a shock to me. I've known for a long damn time how in love the you are and I've been praying every day since I figured it out that the two of you would get married. I've wanted to see Lee settled down for more years than I care to count and I knew that first time that I met you, Amanda, that if there was anyone who could get him to that point, it would be you. As for your marriage, I'm happy for you. What I'm not happy about is that you felt you had to hide it, especially from me. Haven't I always supported your relationship? Didn't I tell you just a few months ago that whatever your relationship was, it was fine by me?"
"Yes, you have, you did Billy," Lee said deeply surprised by Billy's reaction. He'd thought of all the people in their lives, his long-time friend would have been the most supportive.
"And didn't I try to give you an opportunity to advance your career so that you would be ready to get married and raise a family because I knew you were thinking about it? And didn't I do that even though I knew it would cost me one of my best agents?"
"Yes, that's true too," Lee said. He couldn't argue with him.
"Then why? Why would you keep something like this from me when you know you had no reason to? It makes no sense when you should have known that I would continue to support your decisions, no matter what."
"And we've appreciated that more than you know," Lee said. "But you have to understand why we kept it from you. Not just from you, but from everybody."
"Well, you better start explaining pretty damn fast because I don't understand at all. I thought you were my friend and that you knew that I'm your friend. Why wouldn't you trust me with something like this?"
"It wasn't that we didn't trust you. We thought the fewer people that knew the better," Amanda said with a sigh. "We were trying to protect our family. After what happened to Khai, we just didn't want to take the chance that something like that could happen to Phillip or Jamie."
"Khai and what happened to his kid?" When Lee and Amanda both nodded, Billy became even angrier. "Are you kidding me? You've been with The Agency how long?"
"Fourteen years," he answered sheepishly.
"Four years," Amanda replied at the same time.
"And in that fourteen years, Lee, how many times other than that have you ever heard of an agent's family being threatened?" When Lee was silent, he said, "Come on, Scarecrow, how many?"
"None, ok? None," Lee admitted.
"That's right, Scarecrow, none and do you know why? Because we look after our own around here! That's why! Amanda, you should know that better than anyone. Anytime that you've ever been involved in something that could threaten your children in the four years that you've worked here, haven't we always placed twenty-four hour guards around your house?"
"Yes, Sir," Amanda said guiltily.
"And haven't we protected your mother when she got in over her head a couple of times?"
"Yes, Sir," Amanda said again. She was beginning to feel more and more guilty with every argument Billy was throwing at them. None of them could be disputed. Billy's words were really getting her thinking that Lee was right. Keeping their marriage a secret had been a big mistake from the start.
"Then where's the logic in the decision you made to keep your marriage hidden? I'll tell you! There is none! I think maybe Lee was right when you had your fight the other day and you just like the thrill of sneaking around and nearly getting caught."
"Sir, please," Amanda said starting to get a little embarrassed.
"I don't mean just you, Amanda. I mean both of you! What in God's name possessed you to do something this asinine?"
"Look, what happened to Khai rattled us both, ok?" Lee said. "It happened right at the time that we were trying to plan our future together. We'd been talking about wedding plans and buying a house, how to break the news that we were engaged to Phillip and Jamie and we even started to talk about maybe having kids of our own. Then when all hell broke loose with Khai's little boy, we...I don't know...we just panicked."
"So, you let one, just one, bad situation scare you both into lying to everyone around you when you could have just come to me and asked me for advice?"
"We weren't sure it would be safe to confide in anyone, Sir," Amanda said. Why didn't we think to ask Billy's opinion before making this decision?, she thought.
"Why wouldn't it have occurred to you to confide in me? Who would know better than me how to balance family life with agency life or have you forgotten that Jeannie and I have raised two daughters without one incident? Never, once in the twenty-five years we've been married has our home or family ever been attacked! Not once!"
"But Jeannie's not an agent. We both are," Lee pointed out. Didn't he realize where they were coming from and why they were afraid? "That makes it doubly dangerous for our family."
"No, it doesn't. It just makes your moronic decision defy logic even more! The fact that you're both agents makes your family safer than mine ever was. I could see if you weren't partners how it might doesn't double the danger, but because you are partners it doesn't. You work the same cases which means you have the same enemies," Billy countered. "Aside from which, having two trained agents in the house would mean double the protection for your family. You two just didn't think! You let one moment of blind panic talk you into making a disastrous decision."
"I don't know that I'd go as far as to call it disastrous, Sir," Amanda said.
"What else would you call it, Amanda? You two had a very public fight right out there in that bullpen over this which, by the way, Dr Smyth heard about. I've been busting my ass trying to make excuses for you two over the past three days! Do you know that he's talking about splitting the two of you up? I've been trying to talk him out of it and convince him that this will blow over, that you guys will work it out, but he feels like you can no longer be professional."
"He can't do that," Lee protested.
"He can and he will unless the two of you give him a damn good reason not to. He's known for a long time that you two are a couple and has never made a move in that direction until now! He told me today that unless you can keep your personal life out of the office and start acting like the professionals that you are, he will have no choice but to assign you both new partners! He was just in here an hour ago and made me watch the whole thing all over again play by play. Then he demanded that I try to offer some kind of rational explanation for your behavior and guess what? I wasn't able to give him one! Do I need to give you a reminder?" he said as he picked up a remote control next to him and a video from the bullpen starting playing. There they were in living color screaming at each other. They both hung their heads when face to face with the ridiculousness of the fight they'd had. "You still think you didn't make a disastrous decision?"
"Ok, we get it, Billy," Lee said testily.
Billy stopped the video feed. "No, I don't think you do! A good portion of your colleagues, people that you work with every day witnessed this too. How do you think this makes you look to them?'"
"I don't really care how we look to them," Lee said defiantly.
"Well, you should and you know why? Because of your idiotic outburst the other day, the two of you have become more than just water cooler gossip. You've become the laughingstock of this agency. Why do you think I gave you two days off before this assignment started? I wanted to not only give you time to work it out, but also to give this time to die down. Since I knew you'd be on this undercover assignment for five days, I figured that would give it a whole week for me to do some damage control. The problem is that it took less than an hour for Dr. Smyth to hear about it. Now my ass is in a sling because I didn't see it coming and because I didn't tell him about it right when it happened!"
"I'm sorry, Sir. I just wasn't thinking the other day," Lee said. "The only thing that I could think about was my wife, how much I'd been missing her and how hard this has been, how painful! You couldn't possibly understand what I've been going through! You get to go home to your wife every night! I don't! You see your kids on a daily basis! I don't! You have a real home with a real family. I don't! So, don't stand there and lecture me on how hard this is on you with Dr. Smyth. He'll get over it. He always does. This, however, is not something that anyone could easily get over!"
"Sir, Lee's right. You don't know how difficult this has been to deal with, not being able to be together like a normal couple should," Amanda said.
"I'm sorry, but I don't feel a bit sympathetic toward either of you right now. The two of you brought this on yourselves by not doing this right from the beginning. The hardships, the difficulty, the pain, None of that would have had to happen if you'd have just both thought for a moment about the consequences. Did either one of you ever stop to think what would have happened the next time one of you was up for review? A marriage license would have been easily found since they're a matter of public record. No one would even have to dig very hard to find it. Your secret would have been out and that would make it ten times worse if Dr. Smyth found out about your marriage on his own rather than you telling him personally."
Lee an Amanda looked at each other in trepidation and it dawned on both of them that they'd never even thought of that possibility until very recently. "We didn't think about that, Sir," Amanda said now feeling utterly stupid.
"No, Amanda, you didn't. You didn't think at all! I think I'm more surprised at you than I am at Lee. You're usually the one who considers every option before making a decision. That's what's made you so good in the field so fast." He sighed trying to calm himself down. "Look, I'll do everything I can on my end to keep Dr. Smyth from splitting you up as partners, but I may have to let him in on your secret to do it."
"How do you think that will help?" Lee asked disbelievingly. "Didn't you just say you thought it would make it worse if he didn't hear it from us?"
"But if I tell him that it came from you and that this was your way of explaining the reason behind your fight, he may be more accepting. I could use the information as leverage. I could point out to him like I did to you that the two of you working separate cases would put you and your family in more danger than if you stay partners. Plus, I can also remind him that you two have the highest case closure rate of any team in The Agency and that's saying something since you're assigned to the Q-Bureau."
"I'm surprised you didn't try that first," Amanda said.
"Oh, believe me I did," Billy said. "That was the first argument out of my mouth when he started ripping me a new one. I think that's what convinced him to at least think about it before making a decision. He wanted you re-assigned right away at first. If I throw that argument at him again along with the new information, he may just change his mind entirely. He already sees the logic in keeping you together based on your success as a team."
"Well, that's something, I guess," Lee said.
"Here's the thing though. What happened in the bullpen the other day can never happen again or you won't have a chance. I don't care if you are so mad at each other that you're ready to spit nails, I want you to keep it out of the office. If you have to hold it in all day or take it out on your enemies, or take it outside, I don't care. You need to at least regain some semblance of professionalism while you're in this building. Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes, Sir," Amanda answered.
"Yeah, " Lee replied.
"Good. So, do I have your permission to tell Dr. Smyth the whole story so I can try to fight the battle for you?"
"You'd still be willing to fight for us?" Lee said.
"You're still my friend, Lee, in spite of this," Billy answered. "And no matter how much it bothers me that you kept this from me, I still believe that you're the best team I've got.'
"I don't have a problem with you telling Dr. Smyth as long as Amanda doesn't," Lee said.
"If you really think it will help you plead our case, I'm on board too," Amanda said.
"I really do, Amanda," Billy said. "Now that that's settled, the background information you wanted on Murdoch and Klein is on Francine's desk. Just pick it up on your way out."
"I was also able to dig up some information on the computer on them and Chambers too," Amanda said. "I sent the printout to the big printer down here instead of trying to use the smaller one upstairs since there's so much information. That's why I came down here in the first place, to retrieve my printouts." She looked at him with a guilty look still on her face and said, "For what it's worth, Sir, we really are sorry we kept this from you." She knew that while he was trying to put on a calm front, he was still really angry at them for keeping him in the dark, just like her mother had been.
"You know what? it doesn't matter, Amanda. You can't go back and undo it. You two have an investigation to get back to and I can't talk to you about this anymore. It's just too much right now."
"Sir, please," Amanda said.
"I mean it, Amanda. Both of you just get out of my sight for a while." He gestured to the door. When neither moved, he shouted, "Go! Now!" They both scrambled to the door at the harshness of Billy's words. As they exited the room, they looked at each other both wondering how long he would stay mad and how to regain his trust.