About That Night

"Francine," Amanda Stetson repeated after a few seconds, the Glock never wavering, "Why are you here?"

In the myriad ways Francine Desmond had rehearsed this reunion on the drive up from New York City, she had never factored in a gun. Nor had she imagined losing control of the conversation before it even started. One did not become Director of The Agency's Northeast operations by being caught off guard. Even the incident eighteen months ago had not paralyzed her like this, although it had shaken her to the core.

"Hello Amanda. Nice to see you too. Could you put the gun down now before the wall or this gorgeous furniture gets hurt?"

Oh no. As soon as the words were out, she knew reverting to snarkiness was not the right approach. She hadn't meant to, but she... panicked? Okay, deep breath, girl. Steady. Try again.

"I'm sorry, Amanda. I need your help. Could we at least talk before you put a bullet in my brain?" Damn! There she went with the snark again. "It's about Lee." Even worse! She hadn't meant to mention him. Not yet. Not until...

"Lee?" Amanda said her late husband's name as if she had never heard it before. But at least she lowered the gun. "What about Lee? I told them everything I could think of after he... " She took a deep breath to counter the sudden surge of excruciating memories. "What do you want from me?"

Francine pulled a battered birthday card and envelope out of her jacket pocket. The postmarked was dated two years ago from tomorrow. "Did anyone outside of our old team know this code?" she asked, passing them to Amanda. "I got it yesterday, but it was forwarded from my D.C. address. There's no way to tell when it was actually sent."

She studied the envelope first. The cleverly forged postmark gave the date and approximate destination, if you knew what you were looking for. Light colored stamp indicating daytime. Slight tear at the one o'clock position. So, something was supposed to happen around one o'clock tomorrow afternoon. A birthday card meant an arrival of someone or something. Text inside would give further clues to identify the specific location. The familiar handwriting was almost certainly Lee's. The p's in "Happy Birthday" inside the card had been colored in, and a mouth and eyebrows added to make a goofy smiley face. The code and sender identity verification checked out. Amanda finally slid the safety on and returned the gun to her purse. "Tomorrow?" she asked. "But how? How is that possible?"

"I think we were set up. I've thought so for a while." The dam of words and feelings that Francine had kept bottled up since that fateful night threatened to burst. Deep breath, girl. Keep it together. "From inside."

"You lost me. Who set who up? Inside where? The Agency? And what does it have to do with Lee? How can it have anything to do with him? He's..." Dead. Lee is dead.

The silence dragged on for what felt like a lifetime as she tried to absorb what Francine had said. "I always wondered. Lee...well, he said something didn't feel right about that assignment."

"And you never mentioned that in the debriefing?"

"Francine, when I say things like that, people look at me like I'm crazy. And when I'm right, someone usually tries to kill me."

She has a point there. "This time you were probably smart to not say anything. Lee must have found something...after. Otherwise, he would have made contact. But you suspected, too. I hate to admit it, but your instincts have usually been sound. Right now, that makes you the only person I trust." The conversation was definitely not going as planned.

The silent tangle of unspoken memories and unanswered questions was becoming unbearably loud in the small room. Amanda could see only one way forward. "Come on, let's go to the kitchen. I'll make us some coffee and you can tell me what's been happening. Everything. From the beginning."

Amanda's hands were steady as she filled the brewer reservoir with water from the filtered tap and took two heavy stoneware mugs from the cabinet. Cream and sugar? She couldn't remember if Francine used cream or sugar. Artificial sweetener, maybe? Put the filter in the brew basket. Three kinds of coffee beans in the narrow cabinet above the brewer. Which? Decaf? It was late. The simple decision threatened to overwhelm her tenuous composure. Her hands had begun to shake slightly, then her eyes lit on the blue canister on a higher shelf. Yes, that's it. Blue. That's the right one.

Francine had been uncharacteristically silent until Amanda set the two steaming mugs on the table. "Hot chocolate." It was a statement of pleasant surprise, far from a complaint.

"Well, I figure if you're driving from New York City to break into my house with a birthday card from my dead husband and saying I'm the only one you trust, you must be pretty scared, and if you're scared, whatever you're going to say is going to scare me, too, and I know when you're scared you need chocolate, so I-"

"I'm not sca-"

"Don't you lie to me, Francine Desmond."

"Is it that obvious?" Oh hell, why deny it? "I'm terrified. And a lot of other things I don't like being." But, she admitted to herself, mostly terrified.

For a moment they sat in silence, savoring the rich, comforting beverages. Francine struggled to organize her thoughts.

"Officially, I'm on leave. I had a few personal days I needed to use before next quarter. I made some excuse about wanting to go sightseeing. Niagara Falls, shopping in Toronto, all that."

"So you came alone, with no backup."

"No backup. You read the message in the card. 'Sorry you have to spend your birthday alone. See you soon! Peace and Laundry. Love L & A.' Except it's not an A. Because you're A. For a second, I wondered if somehow you...but then, well, you were pretty easy to track down. I thought about it on the way up. I think it's an O. I think he means Oliver Wells. He was never confirmed dead."

"But Lee was. They found his wedding ring in the- In the rubble. How...?"

"You saw the footage on the news, Amanda. You saw what the building looked like...after. Most of the people who died, they...the forensics team from the Jeffersonian had to identify them by artifacts that survived the explosion, then the collapse and fire afterward. 51 declared dead, 4 missing, but all that means is they didn't turn up in the aftermath, and nothing specific was found to identify them. I don't know how Lee's ring ended up in the ruins."

Francine had been working outside surveillance and communication for that assignment. The shockwave and shrapnel from the blast had taken out another two members of her team. She could never recall the scene without feeling sick, even after watching all the collected photo and video evidence countless times. The nausea tonight was as bad as it had been eighteen months ago.

She forced herself to continue. "Lee and Assistant Director Minter were the only people we had inside at the reception. Minter was assigned to the Energy Secretary, and Lee was keeping an eye on Doctor Wells. As you know, Minter was the only one of those four who made it out. Or so I believed. Until yesterday."

"When you got the card."

"When I got the card."

Amanda was silent for a moment. "So what do you need me to do?"

Francine considered the woman across the table from her carefully for a moment. "You really are something, Amanda. Billy used to say that about you a lot when you first came to work for us part time. I drop a huge bombshe—sorry, wrong word. I break into your house and drop all of this on you, and you simply ask what I need you to do. Just like that."

"Well, if Lee's alive somehow and needs help, of course I'm going to help. And if he's not, if you're being set up, then you're going to need help."

"That's what worries me."