Drew's grin widened. Now the expression wasn't quite like anything that ever crossed Shane's face. It was a welcome relief— except for the little matter of Drew's history of consorting with dangerous criminals and then needing to hide himself away.
"Well done, Kimberly. There aren't many people who can do that so easily. I should say, there aren't many people who can do that at all."
It wasn't the praise Drew thought it was, not when Kim hadn't identified him out of any real skill, nor even because she loved Shane so deeply that she would know him anywhere. No, she'd known Drew because of the distinct lack of contempt in his expression.
He had been away and he hadn't realized that in order to impersonate Shane effectively, he needed to look at Kim with distaste instead of love.
"What?" Drew prompted. "Are you so unhappy to see me?"
No one deserved that kind of a reception from his family after more than two years. She plastered a smile on her face; she knew that the sincerity was there, somewhere, inside of her if she could only find it beneath her grief. "Never unhappy to see you looking healthy and safe," she assured Drew as she wrapped her arms around him. Like Shane, but very much not Shane.
"It's difficult to keep a Donovan down. Surely you're aware of that."
"Surely." Her smile felt more genuine now. "But what are you doing here?"
"The ISA has uses for someone like me." From that, she extracted that Drew was no longer in immediate danger from Stefano DiMera. Or else he was spying on the ISA for Stefano DiMera. One never quite knew with Drew.
"What in particular prompted the ISA to bring you here?"
Drew's cheerful face hardened just a bit. "I'm here to test the patience of everyone who trusts and admires my brother. When you think of it, I've been training for this assignment for my whole life."
Sibling rivalry. She'd had more than enough of that recently. "Drew, Shane's been through a lot lately—"
Drew waved her off. "I am not here to hurt my brother. I am here to test the mettle of some of the people who are paid to watch his overly tight arse. So when you think of it, who benefits more than Shane himself? If I'm secretly working for some powerful criminal mastermind, isn't it better than no one who trusts my brother would mistake me for him?"
"Are you working for a powerful criminal mastermind?" asked Kim.
"No," said Drew, with a remarkable lack of offense. Kim found that she was inclined to believe him. "But I wouldn't trust me not to backslide, if I were you."
"But you're here. You're—"
"Spare me the pep talk. Tell me how you recognized me so quickly when you had no expectation of seeing me."
"Trust me. No one else would see what I saw."
"You don't know that."
"I do."
Drew eyed her critically, then plucked her badge and purse from where they hung on the back of the door. "Come. Let's go for a walk."
They wended their way through the maze of concrete and strolled toward the only reasonable place for a walk— a well-manicured path through the patch of woods behind the conference center. It was so humid that the air was almost liquid, and swarms of mosquitoes were visible here and there. Still, there was a pretty stone bridge over a pretty little brook, and it was nice to be away from the bunker.
"I knew you weren't Shane because Shane is never that happy to see me anymore," Kim admitted at last. The state of her relationship with Shane was hardly a secret. "He's in love with my sister."
"Kayla?" Drew choked on his own laughter. To her surprise, Kim felt the need to defend her sister.
"Why shouldn't he love Kayla? She's beautiful, kind, smart, generous, compassionate—"
"She's your sister. That's why he shouldn't love her," said Drew sharply.
"I left." The words stung. "I had another man's baby, I moved to California, and I mailed him divorce papers. They were single, consenting adults. They're free to see whoever they would like. Really, I'm happy that they found each other."
Drew didn't say anything. He didn't have to.
"At least, that's what I tell myself," Kim completed.
"Perhaps you'd better start from the beginning."
She shrugged mentally. There was no real reason not to tell Drew. Drew was a skilled operative in his own right. He could find out as much as he liked from any number of sources who were not Kim. He was hardly Lawrence or Cal; he was in the ISA's tightly secured training center because the ISA wanted him there.
It seemed, too, that the session with the therapist had weakened her resistance. Her disappointment in the psychiatric evaluation hadn't been mere professional distaste, she realized belatedly. After the stress of the past few weeks, she'd been looking forward to talking to someone who had the time and space to care how she felt. And here was Drew, informing her in no uncertain circumstances that he cared.
So she started with Shane's disappearance and worked her way through the ISAs assorted lies, the horrible night when she'd woken up screaming, the pressure to hold a memorial service against her own instincts, the terrible isolation, Eve's renewed hatred, Cal's insistence that her grief was excessive, Shane's miraculous reappearance, his amnesia followed by his suspicion and the shooting, the unexpected pregnancy, the disconnect, the need to flee, the hope of a reunion thwarted by the sight of Shane's lips on her sister's…
Drew listened patiently. "He's brilliant, my brother," said Drew at last. "He's also a fool sometimes. This is most definitely one of those times."
Kim shook her head. "I told you, it wasn't Shane's fault. It was mine. I tried to move on too quickly and then I— I was the the one who left. I have terrible taste in men, and Shane has excellent taste in women."
"Yes," agreed, Drew, dropping a fond arm over Kim's shoulders to help her climb a particularly steep section of the path. "He does."
She brushed off the compliment. "More importantly, Drew, how are you? Where have you been?"
"I am fine, and literally everything about where I've been since you last heard from me is classified."
"You weren't working for the ISA when you left."
"No, but it has still been requested that my life between then and now remain a mystery. Besides, I'd much rather talk about you."
"I think we've talked enough about me."
"Then why don't we discuss my splendid namesake nephew? How is Andrew?"
"Clever. Loving. Incorrigible."
"All to be expected. I do hope he's started to look more like you and less like Shane."
Kim smiled. "He has not."
"And does he like being a big brother?"
"He tolerates it. Hard for him to get away from baby girls since Kayla's daughter Stephanie is only a few months older than my Jeannie."
"Jeannie?" Another wide grin split Drew's face. "You named her after our mother? That's wonderful."
"Even Shane seemed pleased," Kim admitted. "I just couldn't call her anything else. All of my siblings have children and my family names get a lot of use. I always wanted to make sure that the Donovan names lived on too."
"And this Donovan, at least, appreciates it. But it wasn't me that you were thinking of, much as I'd like to flatter myself. You were hoping that Shane would raise Jeannie as his own."
He wasn't wrong, but that didn't mean she had to admit it. "It's a lovely name. Some people say it's a little too old-fashioned or even a little too English."
"A little too what?" asked Drew with mock outrage.
She patted his arm in mock consolation. "I know. People are ignorant. But Jeannie… every day the name seems to suit her more. I'm sure she'd find a way to let me know if it didn't. She's so sure of what she wants. I know that people say all babies are like that, and but Jeannie has such exacting standards. I can't wait for her to start talking so I can hear all about it instead of guessing until I get it right."
"It must be difficult to be away from her. And Andrew."
"It is."
"So, if you don't mind me asking, why are you here?"
She smiled thinly. "Your life is classified, and so is mine."
Drew snickered, unoffended. "Touché. But I'll almost certainly find out when I trick someone into thinking I'm Shane."
"Probably," she admitted. But while she was willing to share her personal secrets with Drew, she didn't want to take the risk of sharing her professional secrets. She'd been far too lax with her judgment lately. She had almost prevented Jennifer from getting justice. She wasn't going to prevent Carly and the others from finding an antidote to the virus.
They had walked the length of the path, and the bunker was once again looming before them. "Are you going back to your room?" Drew asked solicitously.
"To the dining hall. It's early but I haven't eaten all day."
"You wouldn't be the first agent who tried to pull a hunger strike to get out of this place. It doesn't work."
She laughed. "Now you tell me."
"We should probably get you in the side door, then. I'll have to let you eat alone. Ungentlemanly of me, but my test subjects shouldn't know I'm here."
She saluted him. "I quite understand."
But as soon as Drew swiped the door open with his badge, Kim found herself physically lifted off of her feet and over the threshold.
"Just what in the bloody hell do you think you were doing with him?"
It appeared that Shane wasn't in a better mood today than he'd been yesterday.
"Going for a walk," she said when Shane put her down.
"And what do you suppose could have happened on that walk?"
"There's always the risk of a mosquito bite," she mused.
He glared at her.
"I see what you mean about how he looks at you," said Drew to Kim.
"What are you implying?" Shane demanded.
"Did Tarrington tell you why I'm here?" Drew asked. Shane scowled, but nodded. "Kim recognized me immediately. The moment she saw me. Our own mother couldn't have done it. And when I asked her what my mistake was, she told me that you never smile at her."
For a brief second, Shane almost looked ashamed of himself.
"Now," said Drew. "I have to get away from you before I spoil the surprise for all of our other friends. But you should go to dinner with her. You're both being evaluated just as much as anyone else in this building. If Tarrington realizes that you can't even eat a meal together, I don't know how he'll conclude that you can continue to work together in life-and-death situations."
Kim wanted to agree with Drew, but she doubted that that would make Shane any more likely to see sense, and so she remained silent. Shane's hand was still on her arm, possessive and warning.
It was really very odd.
But then Shane nodded stiffly and told Drew that he was quite right. More than that, he told Drew that he was glad to see him alive and well, and Drew said the same to Shane, and to Kim's delight they actually shook hands.
(She couldn't reasonably expect the bear hugs and the kisses on cheeks that came with her own family even when they were annoyed with each other.)
"How did you end up not eating all day?" Shane asked casually as he guided Kim toward the displays of food. It was funny how all industrial lunch lines smelled the same. The quality of food here was far, far better than anything she might have eaten at Salem High School fifteen years before, but the sensation was dizzyingly similar.
For a second she imagined an alternate universe in which Roman and Shane had met earlier in life, and she'd been a normal teenage girl with a crush on her older brother's friend…
It could never have been, of course. She would have made a fool of herself and screwed it up, just as she had managed to ruin her marriage and drive Shane into Kayla's arms.
"Kim?" Shane prompted. "I asked you a question."
She supposed he had. "I don't know why I didn't eat all day," she said, adding meatloaf and mashed potatoes to her tray. (She did not trust the fish. She had grown up in a fish market, and she knew what fish was supposed to look like in all its many forms.) "I guess it just seemed like too much effort."
She wasn't looking at Shane, because he was behind her as they wound through the rows of offerings— she decided to take a few pieces of fruit back to her room and to reconsider the dessert if she and Shane survived the main course— but she could feel his eyes skimming over her. He waited until they had made their way to a booth tucked into a corner to answer her.
"I was concerned that you might have been avoiding me."
"Avoiding you? Couldn't do that if I tried," she said as lightly as she could. "I'm not the one who has the layout of this entire place memorized. Every dark corner, every hiding place, every listening device."
He shrugged, not denying it.
"I suppose it's to be expected in a place like this. Is anyone listening in on us now?"
"Not unless they're doing it the old fashioned way." She glanced around. They were alone.
"What I meant to say is that I'm sorry that— I regret that Drew has a point. I've behaved abysmally toward you since we arrived, and you have done everything I asked you to do."
"Thank you," she said. "Apology accepted." Then she evaluated him more closely. "Is something wrong?"
"Besides the obvious? You and Kayla have taken leave of your senses and—"
She held up a hand to stop him, fork covered with meatloaf and potatoes. "Forget I asked."
He briefly considered telling her about the headaches, but he knew that that would result in offers of medication and suggestions of a visit to a doctor and, worst of all, a report to Kayla as soon as they got out of the training center. "After you left, Peach took another turn for the worse. She slipped back into the coma, and from what she said to me before it happened I don't think she's planning on waking up again."
"Oh, Shane." This time she put down her fork and reached to cover her hand with his. "I'm so sorry."
"So am I."
"No wonder you were in such a terrible mood yesterday."
"That did not give me the right to take it out on you. Especially since I know how much you love Peach, too."
She nodded. "And I can't imagine that it makes things any easier to have Drew appear out of nowhere. Or did you know he was coming?"
"I did not. Tarrington didn't tell me about his little plan until half an hour ago." Shane's lips tightened with something almost like amusement. "Congratulations on passing the test, no matter how you did it. I admit that I'm not sure I want to know how some of the other agents will do."
"But it seems like something you should know."
"Yes, it does." Shane stabbed angrily at his own meal. "Part of why I hate it. The plan, not the meatloaf. The meatloaf is all right, although not nearly as good as yours."
Kim smiled at the compliment. She was never going to be an artist in the kitchen like Caroline, but there were a few things she did particularly well and meatloaf happened to be one of them.
"So I know why I was very nearly late for our flight. I was watching Peach flatline. Why were you late?"
She paled more than he thought the question warranted, and something deep inside of him told him that it wasn't just about the mental image of Peach's monitors wailing that she was all but lost. "Oh, the usual. Arguing with my family."
"Any members of your family in particular?" he pressed.
"You know how they are. They all blend together."
"I don't find that to be the case," said Shane as casually as he could. "I happen to know that your father was working yesterday afternoon, and your mother was minding several of her grandchildren at my request. So you didn't step out of Peach's room and run into them. Kayla may have gone to the hospital, but you and Kayla have been so very close and shared so very many secrets lately that I don't think you had a moment to argue. Roman's work could have taken him to the hospital as well, and I suppose Roman might argue with you about your involvement with Alamain. But you'd have no reason to hide that from me. And that leaves Bo. Now, what has Bo been up to lately other than watching the woman he loves marry his biological father? I think he's taken a break from blowing up oil tankers, but I don't believe I've seen him since he testified at Alamain's trial."
And suddenly it struck Shane that that was odd.
And then he felt like a fool for not having worked it out more quickly.
Kim let her fork fall to her plate and got up, saying something about needing to study.
"Not so fast," Shane told her, catching her by the arm and escorting her down the corridor to his room, where they would have more privacy.
She looked around the room with more interest than it warranted. "You have a desk," she said.
"Because I'm an instructor."
"Wouldn't it make more sense for the students—"
"I did not bring you here to discuss desks, Kimberly. I brought you here because I wanted to ask again whether you are all right. It's hard to give an honest answer in the public areas where the walls have eyes and ears. You've had a very unpleasantly eventful few days. On top of everything else, it can't have been easy coming up with all those lies, pretending you had feelings for Alamain."
"I'm doing what I have to." It was the same answer she'd been giving him for weeks. But now that he thought he understood it, it stirred something inside of him.
"Yes, I know you are. That's why I'm going to make damn sure that by the end of this, it's all going to be worthwhile," he promised.
She seemed to respond. "The important thing, Shane— the only thing that matters— is to get our hands on that antidote."
Now it was time to continue to lure her in. "I certainly see how determined you are. You put yourself on the line more than anyone and here you are still full steam ahead. This is very personal for you, isn't it?"
"How could it not be personal? You know how I feel about Peach. She's Andrew's godmother! When I was pregnant and you weren't able to go to lamaze classes with me, Peach was my birth coach. All the love, all the support, I'm not sure I would have survived, oh, 1985 through 1987 without Peach. I know you said that we may be too late for her, and I did get that impression when we said goodbye, too. But if there's even a whisper of a chance, I'd do anything in the world to help save her."
"Yeah, yeah, I know you would. You just seem more fired up recently than ever before."
"Well, maybe that's because I'm scared to death time is running out."
"For Peach."
She nodded.
When Kim stopped answering aloud, it was always a sign that he was making progress toward dragging something out of her that she didn't want to tell.
"You knew Peach was sick long before you changed your mind about testifying at Alamain's trial."
"And anyone could see that she was getting worse."
"Perhaps," said Shane. "But if anyone could see it, you didn't need Kayla to change your mind."
"Kayla's a medical professional. She's brilliant, you don't need me to tell you that."
"Brilliant as she may be, she did not receive any new information about Miss Peach before she pulled you aside and convinced you not to testify."
"Why don't you ask Kayla this? I mean, she's my sister but I don't necessarily know how her mind works."
"I did ask Kayla. I asked Kayla before we came here, just as I asked you before we came here. It's a funny coincidence. Kayla told me that it wasn't her secret to tell. And then you said the exact same thing to me last night. That it wasn't your secret to tell, either. It reminded me of something that happened a long, long time ago. Do you know what that was?"
"I don't know how Kayla's mind works and I don't know how your mind works, either," Kim continued stubbornly.
"You mentioned how good to us Peach was when you were pregnant with Andrew. It was such a difficult time. I couldn't understand why you were lying to me. Lies on top of lies on top of lies."
"Well, if you called me here to rehash the past, I have studying I could be doing. Very important classes, you know." She took a step toward the door. Shane blocked it with his own body. When their eyes locked, he saw terror in hers. He hated it. But he could help alleviate it— or he hoped he could.
"One day you said to me that it wasn't your secret to tell. You were in such distress, just as you are now. And it wasn't your secret to tell. It was your mother's secret. You knew that your mother had given birth to Victor Kiriakis' child and raised him as Shawn Brady's son."
"Bo," she whispered, and that one syllable confirmed everything for him.
"Bo. You'd do just about anything for Bo, wouldn't you? You and Kayla both. And he knows it. I've heard him admit it, how growing up he had his sisters wrapped around his little finger. There aren't very many people you and Kayla both love that much. Your parents, of course, but neither one of them moves in the kind of circles where they might come across a genetically engineered virus. Now your brother Roman might— but as many misgivings about the ISA as Roman has, it seems highly unlikely that he'd ask you to lie to me. If we're sharing secrets, Roman just gave me a file of information he'd compiled about Victor because he'd promised Isabella he'd gotten rid of it. He simply didn't tell Isabella how he'd gotten rid of it."
Kim didn't say anything to that. She turned her back to him and looked at the cold, grey wall.
"I'm on to you, Kim," he said as softly as he could. "I'm on to you and Kayla. I knew, I knew something was going on and you weren't telling me about it. You can stop lying. I know. I know what's been going on. It's Bo, isn't it? He's sick. He's got this damn virus."
Ever so slowly, Kim nodded her head. "I'm sorry," he said, repeating her words from earlier that evening and turning her to face him. "I am so sorry."
Her green eyes flooded with tears. "Kayla and I wanted to tell you, but Bo made us promise. We had to respect his wishes."
"Yeah, yeah, I understand. It's been terrible for you both, trying to keep this under wraps. The pressure from everyone."
"It's nothing compared to what Bo is going through."
"No, I suppose you're right. Now, what do you say the three of us get together on this?"
"I'd say it's a long time in coming."
"Good." He reached for her, wanting to comfort her, but she skirted away from him as best as she could in the small room.
"Now that you know my secret, can we leave? Can we go home and work on getting answers from Lawrence? You only dragged me here in the first place because you wanted to know what Kayla and I were hiding, right?"
He hated the pleading sound in her voice. He hated that that was how she viewed him in all of this: as a person who had taken her away from her dying brother because he she had kept a secret from him. "I'm afraid not, Kim."
"But I'm sorry. I'm sorry I lied to you. I know Kayla is too. But Bo—"
"I don't want you to be sorry. I want you to be safe. And some of the things you're learning here really are going to help you when you're around Alamain."
"You can teach me those things in Salem. I'll be an excellent student, I promise."
"It's out of my hands, Kim. Since Tarrington decided to take advantage of my presence to run this little test with Drew— which we both agree, however reluctantly, is actually a good idea—I can't leave until the conference is over. I can't, and you shouldn't. I can't imagine that Bo would want you running off after Lawrence half-cocked."
He almost laughed when something in Kim's expression told him that she and Bo had already had that conversation and that he wasn't wrong. "I don't care what Bo wants. I care whether Bo lives through this."
"Well, I care what Bo wants. Because Bo happens to be correct." He reached for Kim again; she allowed him to hug her without resistance, so she couldn't have been too angry at his decision. "We have to take this very carefully. For Bo, for Peach, for everyone else who's involved. Yes, I admit that I pushed Tarrington to bring you here because I was afraid that you and Kayla were both going to get yourselves killed with whatever nasty secret you'd cooked up. But now that I know the truth, I still think we were right to come here. As you keep telling me, you have more influence over Alamain than anyone else on the inside. And you can't wield that influence effectively until you have proper training and backup. The way to get those things is to stay here."
"I don't think I agree with you," she muttered in his ear. "But I'll try it your way anyway. It didn't go very well the last time I went off on my own."
The confession made him squeeze her tighter against his own better judgement. "No, it didn't. But we'll get it right this time. We haven't made any mistakes that we can't correct."
It was funny how he believed the words once he said them out loud.
To be continued.
Note/Disclaimer: Some of the dialogue where Shane confronts Kim about Bo's illness is lifted directly from the show.
