Chapter 17. The Process

Content warning: Contains sexual content which may be inappropriate for readers under the age of 18.

Jane

In the two days since we heard of Loki's death, we had learned some things, but mostly that we knew shit. Because of the militia's bugging of Tony's offices anything that his people created was considered contaminated. We were also proceeding without Sylvie Laufeyson. When Thor accompanied her to the medical examiner's office to identify her husband, she finally had the breakdown that most of us were expecting. Happy arranged for her to go into hiding with her mother, while finding her a counsellor who could help her get through her grief.

At least we had those documents that were "liberated" from the office of the winery. A thorough evaluation of the supplies that had been invoiced on those documents shed some disturbing light on potential uses for them. There were receipts for fertilizer, which made sense for a winery, although research on the internet indicated that wineries tended to use a balanced fertilizer, with equal parts of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Many of the receipts were for high level nitrogen fertilizers, much higher than what was recommended for a winery. There were also a lot of receipts for diesel fuel, which again could be explained as being needed by the machinery identified by satellite as being present on the vineyard. Although many vineyards harvested by hand there was a growing trend to use purpose-built machinery that would remove the grapes and drop them into boxes as they straddled the vines. The machinery used diesel fuel, which was cheaper than automotive gasoline. Other receipts indicated the purchase of large amounts of ammonia. Although there were some indications that the purchase of ammonia was acceptable as a cleaning agent of glass bottles there was no reason for the vineyard to have the large amount indicated on the receipts. It was overkill, in a big way. Other receipts indicated the purchase of hazmat suits, respirators, caustic solution resistant work gloves, and other protective equipment that really weren't part of a winery.

It was Bruce who put it all together, as we all sat there trying to find something to work with. He went online for a time, then drew Thor over to what he was working on. Thor, who had arrived back at the secret site without Sylvie, had almost seemed ready to give up at the time. But when he saw what Bruce was working on, he swore, then placed a call to Regina Frigg. Leaving us for a moment while he spoke to her, we all looked at Bruce for clarity, but he wasn't saying anything just yet. Then Thor came back into the room with his eyes blazing.

"We may have enough for a search warrant," he said. Then he looked at Rig. "Are there any more wineries or vineyards that are owned by any of the shell companies?"

"On it," replied the seasoned FBI agent.

Thor looked at all of us. "Twenty-eight years ago, April 19, 1995, a man parked a rented truck in front of a federal building in Oklahoma City. He started a time delay fuse on a bomb in the back and walked away. Just after 9 am the bomb exploded, almost completely destroying the building, and killing 168 people, injuring hundreds more. The bomb was made from a combination of high nitrogen fertilizer, which was also high in ammonia content, diesel fuel, and several other chemicals that have been kept out of the public sphere to deter any would be copycats from duplicating it."

"Shit," said Tony Stark. "Who did have access to the information on those chemicals?"

"Thaddeus Ross," replied Thor, grimly. "He was one of the lead agents on that case. Several other now retired agents that we have identified as being involved with this militia business were also involved in the case. All of them would be aware of the formula used to construct that bomb."

"Why would they do this?" I asked. "They saw the devastation that bomb brought, right? Surely, they haven't gone that far overboard?"

Thor looked at me with sympathy. "You're right, they shouldn't have," he agreed. "But there is always a danger that in this line of work, just as in police work, that something can tip the balance between being a person who respects the law, and a person who sees it as something to be challenged. Ross had a reputation for crossing that line more than once, especially after his daughter was murdered and her killer got off on a technicality."

"Let me guess, some evidence that wasn't legally obtained and had to be thrown out," said Bucky. "Like these."

He gestured to the files angrily.

"Yes, those rules apply to a murder investigation," admitted Thor. "But this is a domestic terrorism investigation, and we have a lot more leeway in how we get evidence. Those files are legitimate evidence of a plan to build bombs with the intent to use them against the federal government. I bet if we do some further digging of the other retired agents and law enforcement officials, we'll find they all reached a tipping point that pushed them into a more authoritarian frame of mind."

"Thor?" We all looked at Rig. "Ten wineries and vineyards, most of them here in the east, although two are in California. That's just the results of my preliminary search of a couple of shell companies. I haven't even started on the others."

I sat down, feeling a little sick. It must have shown on my face because Bucky sat next to me and took my hand.

"Do any of them own vineyards in Canada?" I asked. "There are lots in British Columbia and Ontario. It can't just be limited to here."

Rig looked up at Thor who nodded his head giving permission for him to search. If there were any, then the RCMP and CSIS would have to be brought in. The thought that this movement may have spread to my home country sickened me and I wanted to know for my own sanity. All of my life I had viewed law enforcement in all of its variants as people who could be trusted. Sure, there were occasions when an individual went bad, but they always seemed to be caught and punished, then marked forever as being tainted. Now we were looking at a large group of active and non-active people connected to the law that had decided to step away from those rules and try to impose their own laws on people. I looked at Bucky, and his NYPD colleagues that were here in this room, along with Thor and his FBI colleagues. How did this affect them? Knowing that people they had counted on were now on the other side of that thin blue line that represented the difference between order and chaos must be devastating for them, especially if those people thought they were still on the right side of that line.

The more I thought about it, the more upset I could feel myself becoming. Suddenly I felt claustrophobic and stood up. Rushing to the door I pushed it open and stood outside trying to breathe. I even bent over as I felt light headed so I leaned my backside against the building. Bucky joined me and rubbed my back gently, not saying anything. When the feeling of panic subsided, I stood up and he put his arms around me, cradling the back of my head in one of his hands.

"I'm sorry, I just couldn't be in there anymore," I murmured.

"Nothing to be sorry about," he replied. "It's frightening to think that the same people who took an oath to uphold the law, to serve and protect citizens, are now planning to overthrow the government in a bloody coup. It's worse for those of us who still believe because we know some of these people and trusted them with our lives."

He held me for as long as I wanted him to, with just the warmth of his body and strength of his arms for comfort.

"How are we going to stop them?" I finally asked.

He smiled at me. "I like how you said we," he answered. "There had been some discussion about sending you to be with your family."

"No," I interrupted. "I need to be here. You saw when that attack on our server happened that we needed everyone involved." I couldn't look away from him. "If I left, I would be worried about you."

"I know," he said with sincerity. "I wouldn't want you to go either because my attention would be split. What you did earlier, identifying John as the hacker, then getting on the computer and finding something that would slow him down enough for our guys to stop him ... that was genius. You're right where you should be, as part of this team. I believe that with all my heart."

He kissed me then, holding my face in his hands. His blue eyes were focused on me, and I found myself loving him even more at that moment.

"Okay, I'm part of this," I reiterated. "Who else knows John as well as I do? Especially now that he's revealed what he really is ... a criminal."

"Exactly," affirmed Bucky. "We need you." A moment of realization crossed his face. "You know, John's offer to work with this team was probably a stunt, a way for him to appear to be a prize to be won. He probably told them he could work his way into our circle, allowing him to undermine our investigation. He still sees you as weak ... that was his first mistake. His second was thinking that we would allow him access to our operations. I wouldn't doubt he already knew they were bugging Tony's offices. His third mistake was being involved with the assault on Sylvie and probably the murder of Loki. I have no doubt that he's gone over to the dark side in a big way, embraced it in fact. He sees this as his time to prove what a big man he is. We have to take advantage of him because he'll be careless, and so sure of his superiority that he'll make more mistakes.

I listened to Bucky saying all of this, wondering how he managed to come up with this theory. He must have seen the question on my face.

"Believe me, I've thought about him a lot, right from the moment you began sharing information about him," he said. "At first it was because I was angry at what he did to you but when I heard he showed up at your office, brazenly breaking the protection order you had against him ... I knew we were dealing with a narcissist. He's all in now. It makes him dangerous, but he'll be going for the big play, like he did when he showed up at FBI headquarters, or when he started hacking our server. We want all of them but I'm going to enjoy getting him the most."

We went back inside where Tony was in the process of tacking up hard copies of the people previously identified on the bulletin board. Peter was printing off the shell companies and what businesses they owned. Ned was cross checking any names listed under any of those companies with the names of people who had been identified. Bucky stopped midway in the common room when he saw all this.

"I thought I would give your process a try," said Tony. "I have to admit I like having it up on a wall where we can see it all without opening different tabs. Do you do that thing with the coloured yarn ... you know, to show the connections?"

"Sometimes," said Bucky, stepping closer. "I think there would be too many with this investigation. Maybe coloured markers or post-it tabs. I can see a big connection right now."

He went over to Alexander Pierce's name, then showed that his name appeared on several shell companies, which connected to several businesses, including the fishing charter business in Alabama, and the vineyard they got the files from. Sam got up from his chair and stood next to Bucky, looking at the list of other names connected to the businesses.

"Buck, isn't that Val Fontaine's maiden name?" He pointed to a cleaning business where a Valentina Allegra was listed as co-owner when it merged with another cleaning business owned by a shell company that was connected to Alexander Pierce.

Joaquin came over and looked at it. "You're right," he said. "Her father was Enzo Allegra." The other two men looked strangely at him. "When I was in the academy, we were given an assignment on crime families. I was assigned her dad's. He was the original owner of that cleaning business, along with a bowling alley, funeral home, a couple of restaurants and a garage. He had one son, Salvatore, and three daughters Valentina, Maria, and Sophia. Maria and Sophia were never interested in the family business. They got married right out of high school and although their husbands aren't made men they aren't exactly clean either. Let's just say they know how to cook the books whenever it's needed. Sal was an idiot and after being in charge for a month it was a disaster. Val took over, convinced her father that she could do a better job than her brother and he signed it all over to her before he died. She was already married to one of Enzo's lieutenants. It was a love match apparently. He was quite happy playing consigliere to her when she took control. Rocco Fontana was his name, but they changed it to Fontaine to distance it from her father when he was brought up on racketeering charges before he died, probably to make them sound more legit. I always assumed she had everything in her married name but maybe she has them in her maiden name just to muddy up any connections. It would be worth it to look closer. We might even find some other businesses."

By the time Joaquin finished his piece nearly all of us were smiling at him. Bucky put his hand on Joaquin's shoulder.

"How old are you?" he asked.

"25, why?"

"Kid, if you aren't a sergeant by the time you're 30, there's something seriously wrong with the NYPD," said Bucky.

"Forget that, I want him in the FBI," smiled Thor. "You remembered all that?"

Joaquin shrugged. "I remember stuff."

"The important thing is we now have a connection to organized crime, which means RICO," said Thor. "Which means more resources for us."

He looked positively bubbly and as the day wore on, those people with computer skills accessed databases to find corporate records, while Bucky, Thor, Malin, and Carol tacked up the printed off sheets. There was a moment when Rig came to me with a handful of papers, saying he wanted me to see them first before they were put on the board. He had found connections between a handful of Canadian vineyards and some of the companies we were investigating.

"Thor will contact the RCMP and CSIS to advise them of our findings," he said gravely. "It was a good idea to suggest we do that search."

I still had a moment as I looked over the pages, caught between anger and despair over this movement gaining a toehold in my home. Despite the years I had lived in the United States, Canada was still home.

Tony placed a call for a couple of mobile white boards that we could use, as well as every colour of post-it tab and highlighter imaginable. By the time we took a break it was well into the evening and Thor called it for the day as Chinese food was delivered by Happy. He came with some news on the bugging of Stark Technology offices. As we all ate, he updated us.

"First of all, I didn't handle the relocation of family members from the main offices," he said. "That was my first concern. They didn't bug my office until the night before we figured it out. Before you ask, yes we identified the people who cleaned the offices. Two of them were contracted by Val Fontaine, even though she didn't own the cleaning company. She has disavowed knowing anything about it but we have them on security video as saying she better be paying them double for taking the risk of bugging the offices. Sergeant Barnes, I believe your colleagues were happy to take her into custody for breaking her bail conditions. We found bugs in the work stations of both Ned and Peter. They knew about the encryption you created for the server here. Walker showing up at FBI headquarters? I think they found out what was going on when you phoned Mrs. Stark. Sorry, Boss, but you kind of told her that you were headed there that day. Didn't take much for them to figure out the probability of Ms. Peterson being there."

"I'm truly sorry," Tony said to me. "It never occurred to me that they would take that step of bugging us. Hap, is the office clean now?"

"Yes, but I would like to do one more sweep before I'm completely satisfied," said the burly man. "Oh, and Boss, Site B is set up except for the servers."

We all looked at Tony, who looked at Thor for permission to speak.

"Site B is a fallback location," said Tony. "The other side has managed to infiltrate FBI headquarters, Quantico, NYPD, and who knows how many other police departments. If ever this site becomes compromised, we have another secure site to relocate the team. Happy will coordinate any evacuation from this site. Until it's imperative that we move, anything else is on a need-to-know basis."

It was probably a prudent move, but it also underscored how precarious our position really was. I had no more appetite after that announcement and sat back, pushing my plate away. Several others finished eating and headed to bed, mentally exhausted after the long day. Bucky finished eating and got up to put his dirty dishes away, taking mine with him. We headed to our room and locked the door, just looking at each other silently.

"Come sit," he said, gesturing to the couch in the sitting area. "I don't think either of us is in the mood for anything physical, especially the way that food is sitting on my stomach right now."

He sat on the couch, while I stood in front of him, holding his hands in mine. Gently he tugged on them so that I was sitting on his lap. As he nuzzled my neck slightly, I could feel his stubble against my skin.

"You ever use a straight razor?" I asked idly, as I stroked his chin. "You know, have the full hot shave treatment?"

"Once in a while," he replied. "It's kind of a guilty pleasure. I've had a little fantasy about you giving me one."

I smiled at him. "Let me guess, I'm in a bikini or lingerie, and your hands keep finding their way onto my body."

"Not quite, but I do like the sound of that," he replied, grinning. "In my fantasy, you're dressed like a Bond girl, in a very classy but definitely sexy evening gown. I'm in a tuxedo but my jacket is off, and the top few buttons of my shirt are undone. For every bit of shaving cream that you get on my shirt, I get to undo your dress just a little bit more. For every bit of blood that you draw I get a seductive kiss from you."

"What if I don't get any shaving cream or blood on you?" I asked.

"It ends the same way as if you do," he grinned again. "It's my fantasy and just like 007 in Skyfall, I want to end up in bed with you."

We kissed, a long, slow kiss, that was definitely trying to start something, even though he had earlier claimed he was too full for that. His hand found its way under my top, undoing my bra, and gently rubbing up and down my back. Pulling away I looked at him with amusement. With a guilty as charged look he shrugged.

"What about you? Do you have any fantasies you want to share?"

I could feel my cheeks becoming hot. His persistent look of support broke through my shyness about expressing myself and for the first time in my life I decided to share a fantasy with a man.

"You're going to think this is stupid," I began.

"Never," he answered. "It might make me horny as hell."

"Have you ever seen the Clint Eastwood movie Heartbreak Ridge?" I asked. "It's one of my guilty pleasure movies. Eastwood is a marine sergeant on his final posting, I guess. He's put in charge of a unit of bad boys that need some tough love." Bucky began getting a soft smile on his face, but he didn't interrupt. "Well, they're supposed to go running every day and he tells them that they have to match what he wears, even though he lives elsewhere on the base so they don't know what he's wearing until he gets to their hut. When they don't match, he makes them take their shirts off to run. He wants them to get used to the concept of improvising, adapting, and overcoming when difficulties arise."

"Okay," grinned Bucky. "What does this have to do with your fantasy?"

I took a breath. "Well, it's set in the early 1980s and the marines wear these short shorts that don't hide much. They're all pretty buff and they get all sweaty. I just imagined you in a pair of those shorts, all sweaty and warm, after a run, coming to wherever I was and having your way with me."

I covered my face with my hands, as I was so embarrassed to be admitting this to him. I fully expected him to laugh but when I peeked from in between my fingers he was watching me intently. Gently, he stroked my hair then my arm.

"That's a pretty good fantasy," he admitted. "I would do that for you. It's a movie I like as well but for different reasons than you." He had my attention. "Eastwood's character is pretty macho in that movie but he was also self-aware enough to know that his attitudes towards women needed to change if he was going to have someone in his life after his mandatory retirement. So, he read women's magazines, and he let his ex-wife take out her anger on him, so that he could understand how much he had hurt her when they were together. Then he was tender with her and validated her feelings. I watched that movie a lot after I split with Connie. Didn't get it right until I met the right woman, you."

His eyes became a little glassy and he just held me, gently kissing the side of my head. I almost burst into tears at all the emotion I was feeling at that moment. It never would have happened that way with John. His fantasies had involved hurting and humiliating me. He didn't even want to know about my fantasies and I'm sure if I had ever felt secure enough to tell him he would have laughed, and made fun of me.

Even though we hadn't been in the mood when we first sat down we were now feeling the need to take these intense emotions we were both experiencing and act on them. I got up and began walking to the bedroom, taking my top and bra off as I walked. Bucky followed me and watched from the doorway as I took the rest of my clothes off and got into bed. When he pulled his shirt off over his head I could feel the heat beginning deep inside me. He didn't rush when he took everything off, but he did keep his eyes on mine as he got into bed and laid partially on me. Slowly, he caressed my hair before trailing his hands to my face and kissing me gently, starting with my cheek then down my neck before returning to looking at my face as if he were searching for something. Tentatively, I touched his cheek with my hand and he turned his face to kiss my palm, before placing his hand on mine. His hand then wandered over my body, barely touching me with his fingertips. I reciprocated with my free hand, trailing it down his back to his waist and lower. Grinding his hips into me I could feel him become hard.

"I thought we weren't really in the mood for this," I whispered.

"I thought so, too," he whispered back. "Would you let me make love to you? Slow and soft, kind of?"

"Yes." I barely had any volume behind the word but he heard me.

Every time Bucky and I were intimate it felt like I was experiencing something new and this time was no different. How had I managed to find this man who could be so soft and gentle with me, yet bring out the deepest depths of passion from my body and my heart? From the moment he entered me we were in our own universe where all that mattered was the merging of our bodies. With each thrust against each other we were giving and receiving pleasure at the same time. The salty taste of heated skin amplified the increase in our arousal. Several times we approached the edge of ecstasy then pulled away like a receding wave on the shore. When we both finally surrendered to the bliss it burst out of us in a crescendo of mutual elation. In between the tender kisses of the afterglow we felt the gentle sensation of our breaths as our heart rates slowed and we lay tangled together under the sheets that barely covered our spent bodies.

Bucky was gently rubbing his thumb across my swollen lips as we gazed at each other. His eyes were still dark and once more he was looking at me as if he was committing my face to his memory. Suddenly, his face changed and he placed his hand on my cheek.

"Would you marry me? I don't want to wait until this is all over." He waved his hand towards the door. "I love you with all of my heart and soul. You mean everything to me, Jane. Everything."

I gasped, not that I was surprised but that he was asking while we were in the middle of an emotionally intense time in our lives. We had only known each other for a short time but I had to admit that I felt as much for him as he felt for me. My grandparents were married two weeks after meeting each other at a dance a month before my grandfather was deployed to the Korean War. They were married for over 50 years, so I knew that it was possible we would last. Both of us had been hurt by our first marriages but the fact that Bucky remained friends with Connie was a big indicator of the type of man he was. It was obvious there was only one answer.

"Yes."

CSIS – Canadian Security and Intelligence Service

RICO – Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, enacted in the United States in 1970, giving law enforcement stronger legal tools for evidence gathering of unlawful activities by organized crime.