The team had done their preliminary work to get the information they were missing, discussed some possibilities, and gotten an evidence board going by the time Jack had them all together again later that day to brief everyone. They were going to attempt to catch the "Prince of Terror," Arif Dessa, by getting close to the suburban couple Dessa's phone had contacted in Virginia, the Vanderwylens.
"Not the couple of people you'd expect to be getting phone calls from Arif Dessa," Bobby observed.
"And just in case you are wondering," Lucy added, "that phone call was too long to have been simply a wrong number."
Jack continued. "Joseph is originally from Holland, also the home country of Dessa. And Joseph worked and lived in the U.S. for several years before he returned home to Holland to work for an international bank. Two years ago, he married Betty Vanderwylen, an American. A year ago they moved back to the U.S. Joseph is now an independent financier in Arlington, Virginia, and Betty is an admissions clerk at Virginia Community College, where part of her job is to help foreign students get into the school."
"Maybe Dessa's kid goes to Virginia C.C.," Myles suggested dryly, "and Papa was just calling Betty to see how the little Prince of Terror, AKA Junior, was doing."
"Do you come in early to think of those?" Bobby asked, earning a wry smile in his direction.
Jack wisely chose to ignore the antics of his teammates and forged ahead with the briefing. "Neither Joseph or Betty has ever had a criminal record, nor have they ever been under any kind of watch before. Joseph currently has a Dutch passport, but has applied for U.S. citizenship."
Across the bullpen, Tara had been on the phone. As she hung up, she called out to get the rest of the team's attention, waving her hand to catch Sue's eye as well. "Okay, guys, that was intel! Joseph Vanderwylen recently popped up on their radar, as well as the CIA's, when they traced a money transfer to a small bank in Yemen, back to him. It was a bit of a round-about trail, but Joseph and Betty appear to be at the end of it."
"Tara, work up a tap on their phones," Jack ordered. "Let's see who else they like to keep in touch with." Turning back to the rest, he continued, "Now, very quietly, let's start looking into whatever else we can find out about them, but remember, they don't know we're looking at them. Let's keep it that way."
"Listen up, everyone." The booming voice of Ted Garrett garnered the attention of the entire team (except Sue, who looked toward the door as soon as she saw all her coworkers do the same). "We just intercepted another call from Arif Dessa's phone. This was to a number in D.C."
"Hope he's got a good long distance carrier," D joked. "This has got to be costing him a fortune."
"Phone number he called belongs to a Stephen Banks," Garrett continued. "This one was scrambled too, but we have an address."
"Nice neighborhood," Sue observed. While Tara was overseeing phone tap planning, and the other guys were staking out the address Garrett had brought them, Sue and Jack were getting a cursory look at the area where the Vanderwylens lived.
"Not bad for the suburbs," Jack acquiesced. "Still a little crowded for a small town boy from Wisconsin."
"You get yourself a wife, a couple kids, and a dog, I could see you living in a place like this someday." She tried not to show any outward sign of her inward cringing when she realized that not only had she basically just told him her own fantasy of where they could be together one day, but she also had actually pointed to Levi when she said "dog."
He didn't seem to notice though. He only gave a small laugh and then pointed to a house near where they were parked. "This one's for sale, maybe I should grab it."
Sue looked over. "Nice." And it was. A little ostentatious for her taste, and she thought probably for Jack's too, but it really was a lovely house.
Levi moved over to the car window and whined a little as he stared out toward the house they'd been pointing at. "Levi seems to like it here," Jack teased.
Sue looked as well, and saw, not at the house they'd looked at, but in the driveway next to it, both their own quarry and Levi's. "There's what Levi's interested in," she said, nodding toward the lovely suburbanite who had exited her home along with a dog on a leash.
"Betty Vanderwylen is a dog person," Jack said somewhat incredulously.
"I know," Sue replied offhandedly. "It says in her bio from the college that she even helps raise money for service dogs."
"Maybe we should make Levi the case agent." Realizing that the time had about expired that they could possibly sit on the side of that street, Jack reached for his seatbelt, and Sue followed suit, as he said, "Quiet neighborhoods like this are not very conducive to surveillance. If you don't live around here, you stick out like a clown at a funeral. It's gonna be tough to get close to them."
Sue looked back at the For Sale sign Jack had pointed out earlier, and narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. "Maybe not."
Convincing Garrett that Sue and Jack going undercover as a married couple who moved in next door to the Vanderwylens was a bit difficult, especially given some slight hiccups in their own communication with one another. But they got there in the end.
Still, when Garrett ended the meeting with, "I now pronounce you husband and wife," they exchanged a somewhat awkward glance. It was exactly what they had just been petitioning Garrett to allow—that is, for them to go undercover as such—but somehow, hearing those words felt a little less like a cover and a little too . . . real.
As they headed back to the bullpen, they cautiously broached the topic. "I mean, it's what we asked for, I just didn't expect him to . . . say it like that," Sue said, briefly averting her eyes shyly before glancing back up to catch Jack's response.
"Yeah," he agreed. "I mean, that's a thing with going undercover, it should feel real, it's just . . . I mean, I don't know if that's how it seemed to you, just . . . ."
"Just it seemed like he was serious," Sue finished.
"Yeah."
They glanced at one another one more time, each appearing to want to say more but neither doing so, before they went to let their team know the plan. Neither said, and neither knew the other was thinking, that when Garrett had "pronounced them husband and wife," both their hearts had jumped a little, longing for that very thing to be true.