CHAPTER 37
IF SHE DOESN'T - HAVE MY BADGE AND GUN!
Garcia opened her eyes at around half past three o'clock at night, at the sound of a new notification. After so many false alarms, she must have lost all hope by now. But she hadn't.
New credit card activity: Lauren Reynolds
Garcia squealed so loud that she wondered if JJ and Will could hear her, all the way from the guest room.
She checked what had been purchased and sighed with relief when she found out it was a ticket back home.
"My Wonder Woman is coming back!" She whispered to herself, allowing a small genuine smile to appear on her sleepy face before she put her phone down and dozed off one more time.
Bryan had woken up and, after a short argument with a nurse, he was now headed off to the floor where Angela had been taken.
Dan managed to spot him out from a far, and he made a gesture for Jack and Kris to disappear, which they did, immediately.
Bryan walked right past Dan, on his way to the desk, demanding to have information about Amanda.
"I'm her husband!" He stated when asked about his connection to the girl.
Dan was about to say something dumb, but when he saw the doctor was willing to let Bryan in, he decided to stay quiet.
Bryan entered the room and she was still asleep. He sat by her side and saw her hooked on a system, looking tired and weak.
He tried really hard not to freak out one more time, as he knew he had to be there for her. For Angela.
He was only allowed to be there for a few minutes before the doctor asked him to go back to the waiting lounge.
"How is she?" Dan asked, as soon as Bryan walked out.
"I don't think you get to ask this question." Bryan was being extremely hostile towards him lately.
At least Angela had been a bit more reserved with her hatred and her words.
"Look, I know you hate me, but I am still your training officer and if someone here has the right to know how this girl is, it's me." Dan tried to argue, but Bryan wasn't having any of his bullshit.
"Oh yeah?" Without giving it any thought, Bryan grabbed Dan by the collar and walked him backwards, until his spine hit a wall. "You're probably the reason why she's here in the first place!"
"Hey, hey. Calm down." Dan put his hands in the air, showing him surrender. The last thing he wanted was to aggravate Bryan to the point where he would later on have to be sanctioned about something irrational he might do.
Too late.
Bryan swung his fist and gave Dan a nice, firm, side cheek punch before he let go of him.
Dan lost his balance and ended up hitting the ground sideways, with his right butt cheek crashing against the cold floor tiles.
In a moment of rage, Bryan swung one more time, this time an unfair one, as Dan was already on the ground, knocked out.
"Don't!" Dan called out and something about the way he said it made Bryan pull his fist away.
"Just don't!" Dan said, this time a little more softly, as if he was doing this to protect Bryan.
"Is there a problem?" A security guard walked over to where their little scene had unraveled.
"No, Sir." Dan stood up, patting dust off his pants.
The guard looked at Bryan, who seemed a bit less sure that they had no problem.
"We're fine." Bryan said grumpily, already contemplating on taking the guard out too, if he dared ask one more question.
The man walked away, but kept an eye on those two for as long as they stayed at the hospital for.
Angie opened her eyes and looked around. This was not her first trip to a hospital, but this time she didn't know why she was there. She searched for the emergency button and she pushed it.
A doctor and two nurses walked in her room, seconds later.
"What's wrong with me?" She asked weakly, feeling a certain soreness in her muscles.
"It's nothing serious, Kimberly. You'll be okay." The doctor reassured her.
"You're also not pregnant." A nurse added, as they had run blood tests, to confirm or deny the suspicion.
"I know!" Angie said defensively. "I'm also not Kimberly." She loved a good word play.
"Angela?" The doctor asked, after reading that as an alternative name on her chart.
"Bingo." She winked at him.
"It turns out you have been exposed to some type of a poison, more like a sedative really, but a bit more powerful." The doctor started telling her and she sighed.
"Have you been experiencing any sudden nausea?" He asked and she nodded. "Well, this is due to the consumption of this substance. As far as we can tell, you have been exposed to this three, maybe four times already. Now, can you recall eating anything out of the ordinary? Maybe you changed your take-away preferences lately? Or did you go to a club where you suspect someone might have spiked your drink?"
Angie rolled her eyes. She knew exactly who had spiked her damned drink.
"Yeah, I had sushi." She said lamely, just wanting him to shut up and leave her alone.
Bryan stopped giving dirty looks to Dan only at the moment when they both saw the three people rushing into Angie's room.
Bryan walked over to the room and stood by the door, hoping he'd be able to overhear something. Dan, however, walked over to the far end of the hallway, in search of the vending machines, which turned out to be on the floor above theirs.
When the two nurses left Angie's room, he tried to get information out of them, but failed to do so.
He knew that the doctor was still in there and he was curious to know what was going on.
The nurses were useless and clearly not easy to corrupt. So Bryan had no other choice but to go search for Dan and ask for his help, or rather – ask for him to flash his badge and demand answers.
He figured Dan would have wandered off to go buy himself a coffee, so he asked someone where the vending machines were. When he walked up the stairs to the upper floor, he found Dan talking to a tall man in a black suit.
"I told you to push her, not to crack her!" The tall man said, physically pushing Dan around the room, as if he was a naughty child.
"Of course. Let everyone blame me. Why not?" Dan said lamely before he finally moved far away from this man's hands, before he would get himself thrown out of the window.
"I don't want her to suffer. That's not the point. How could you be so careless? I told you it was a bad idea to have two this year. I should have never agreed to your dumb plan. I only needed one, male or female. But just one!" The man swung against Dan one more time, but this time Dan stood up for himself.
"I stand by my decision! I never meant for her to end up this way. But mark my words – she is going to bounce back and she is going to give everyone a run for their money! I can promise you that. And if she doesn't, then you can have my badge and my gun!" Dan stated, sure of himself.
"You can't seriously be gambling your job on a Trainee." The man laughed in his face.
"Not a Trainee!" Dan crossed his hands against his chest. "Two of them! My chosen ones!"
"You are being ridiculous. She's a child, for God's sake, she wears a freaking bow in her hair like it's the 70's! She danced her ass off for all Agents to see, on her first night at the Academy! She giggles in class and disobeys direct orders. She publicly made a fool out of you after your little test results stunt. I think it's time to pull the plug on this little experiment." The man said rudely.
"She also finished the race first. Twice. She also never backed down during class, even if it meant keeping a throw up bucket next to her head while doing push-ups. She also took extra books from the library and spent her evenings not drinking with her pals, but reading on a broken bench, squinting her eyes under the most obnoxiously girly lamp in the world. Not to mention, she also gave me an actual 99% on her overall exam at the end of week two. She also never put anyone down, not even Jack, whom she hates and blames for Amanda's death. She also made a promise to her friend and she has been helping him find his voice in the Academy since the moment she met him. She also has an amazing spirit and intellect, one that no other 23 year old girl possesses. She also doesn't give a crap what you think about her dancing, because that said silly carefree thing she did was also the reason why a whole bunch of your old ass pals got up from their seats and had the best time they've had in years – dancing and drinking with people they haven't even met before. She's also the most stubborn little asshole in the world. She is also the one I chose this year and the one I'm going to keep on pushing until you see what I see in her." Dan went on a full-on rant, one that he couldn't hold back any longer.
"Oh, and also, mark my words, you will be sorry for doubting me. Also, I have to go." Dan added, grabbing his now cold cup of coffee from the machine and walking back over to the elevator.
"What the fu-…" Bryan muttered to himself, hiding by the stairs while Dan went the other direction.
He quickly made his way down the stairs before the elevator door opened and Dan would walk out on Angela's floor.
"Any news?" Dan asked, trying not to show any signs of irritation from his talk with his Superior.
Bryan looked at him intently. He noticed Dan's cheek was now swollen and red, from there his fist had landed. And, given what he had just heard Dan say, Bryan felt a little sorry for having acted out like that.
"No, they wouldn't say a thing. I thought you could try flashing the badge." He suggested quietly.
"This is not a movie. The badge would only work if-…" Dan then smirked, interrupting himself as he got an idea.
He saw the doctor walk out of Angie's room and he briefly spoke to another doctor, holding her chart, along with a few others.
"What do you see, Trainee?" Dan challenged him.
"Uh, a shift change. He's clearly updating him on everything before he would leave, so the new one would be ready to step in and do his rounds. This means that we won't be able to see her for at least another hour, until he finishes his rounds in all rooms and evaluates her state." Bryan groaned unhappily.
"And?" Dan urged him to dig deeper.
"Hmm, and it also means that this new doctor has no idea who we are. So, I guess this is quite like in the movies then. It's time to make our move!" Bryan said contently, but Dan pulled him back, as soon as he had taken his first step towards the door.
"Calm down, Rambo! You can't be all emotional about this." He rolled his eyes and stood in front of Bryan now.
"Follow my lead." Dan suggested as he walked, slowly but surely, towards her room.
"Sir, it's not visitation time…" The new doctor informed him, but Dan just put his hand in the air.
In his hand, his FBI badge and ID.
"We're with the FBI. We need to talk to our witness, Angela Hunter." He said with authority before placing his badge back in the picket of his pants.
"Oh…" The doctor looked at the door and then back at the two men. Dan was wearing plain clothes, while Bryan was in his clean sports attire. He had changed after the race, thankfully. None of them looked like FBI to him, but he didn't want to challenge them. "Sure, she's uh, she's in this room."
They walked in and Angela sighed.
"So, what? You two are best friends now?" She said, shooting a mean glance at both of them.
Bryan made a hand gesture for her to shut up.
"What happened to you?" Bryan asked.
'Someone…" She shot a mean glance, this time only to Dan. "Someone has decided it would be real fun to poison me."
Dan looked away.
"Wait, you did that?" Bryan was now confused.
First, Dan had been distant, but nice, for the first few days of the Academy. Then, he turned into an asshole. Then he was acting shady. Then, as soon as Angie ended up in a hospital, he turned out to be one of the good guys, maybe. And now, he was back to being guilty.
Yes, this was looking more and more like a movie.
"I cannot discuss that with you two." Dan shrugged.
"Why not?" Angie pushed it.
"Just, trust me, I can't tell you anything!" Dan spoke and Bryan heard the same softness in his voice as when he had asked him not to punch him earlier.
What if he wasn't the enemy after all? In every movie there was the villain, but in order to find his true identity, the viewers were being offered a few red herrings along the way.
"Did you mean to hurt me?" She asked softly.
"No." Dan brought his hand to her face and caressed it, no matter how unprofessional that must have looked.
It was the only way to show her that he was being genuine.
"Okay." She exhaled and it looked like she was done with all this drama. She also shrieked away from his touch, as she was not a fan of physical contact.
"Okay? Just like that? He's off the hook?" Bryan raised an eyebrow.
"Yup." She said genuinely. "I don't waste my time by holding a grudge. Plus, if he turns out to be lying, I can always haunt his ass and make him regret it later on. But for now, I need to throw up."
The last bit of her statement caught them off-guard. The doctor had told her that the only way to get rid of the substance was to force herself to be sick. And given that she was already feeling the nausea naturally, she didn't have to force anything.
She walked to the bathroom after unplugging the system from her arm. It made her look sicker than she actually was. She found it to be quite annoying, too.
When she walked back to the room five minutes later, her hair was all messy and her face was wet and white.
Dan looked away. He didn't want to see her like that.
Bryan held her in a hug and helped her sit back up on the bed.
The doctor walked in the room, as he had gotten a notification for the unplugged system. He poked her hand one more time, this time making sure it would be harder for her to get the needle out. He informed her that, if she wanted to go home by the evening, she'd have to stay there for a couple more hours, with that thing hooked to her vein.
Angela rolled her eyes and hated hearing that, but she was eager to go sleep in her own bed that night. Mostly, she was hoping she would be able to catch at least the end of their afternoon lecture, before she would go back to her dorm.
"Richard?" Someone desperately tried to get him to listen.
"Richard? Es-tu sourd?" The man insisted, asking if he was deaf.
"What? What do you want from me?" Richard finally replied, after two whole minutes of failed attempts to get his attention.
"I wanted to discuss-…" The other man said.
Both of them spoke in French.
"Is it urgent?" Richard raised an eyebrow.
"No…"
"Does it have to be resolved today?" He asked again.
"N-no…"
Without saying one more word, the man knew he had to disappear. And he did just that. He had seen Richard mad and there was no way he'd put himself in danger, by being the reason for his fury.
But this was not the end of his troubles.
"Oui?" He answered his phone grumpily.
"Yes, I already took care of the delivery." He continued.
"Like I just said a second ago – I took care of it." He repeated after, presumably, the person on the other side of the line had questioned his words.
A few seconds later, he rolled his eyes at what he was being told.
"Do you think I'm an idiot? Do you know who you're talking to?" He challenged.
"Good. Because I don't have any time to waste. Have a good day." With those words he hung up and sighed.
A second later, someone else was entering his office.
"Sir, we need your signature on-…" A woman said kindly.
He looked up at her. She was quite tall, with short blonde hair. No fringe. She was no Lauren Reynolds.
"Show me." He interrupted her.
It took him seconds to skim through the papers before he signed them.
"Make sure you're careful with that." He pointed at a passage from the legal papers he was just given. "It could backfire, thread carefully."
"Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir." The woman said, excusing herself and disappearing.
"Ugh…" He exhaled, once he thought he was alone in his office.
"Sir, I-…" Someone else just poked their head in the crack of his office door.
"I don't care!" Richard hissed.
He was known to have a short temper, but only when the moment asked for it.
And every moment, since the moment he had written a certain note to a certain dark-haired woman, whom he felt a certain type of way for; he found himself unable to support people, being around him.
All he wanted was some silence. Peace and silence. Maybe then he'd actually be able to relax, to forget what he had been forced to do.
"Sir, it is kind of urgent…" The man dared continue.
"Fine. What is it?"
"It's Claus…"
"Yes, he's in Prague. Marie is joining him tomorrow." Richard said calmly.
"No, Sir…He's in Bratislava." The guy said with a shrug. He seemed completely terrified by Richard.
"What the Hell is he doing in Bratislava?" Richard was amused.
Just a day ago he had personally overlooked Claus' documents. He had a ticket to and from Prague. He had left the previous night and he had to land early this morning, local time.
"Waiting for an autopsy…" The guy said hesitantly.
"Whose?" Richard was not convinced. This sounded weird.
"Uhm, his…" He finally came out and said it.
"What!? Claus is dead!? How the Hell did this happen? Why was he…when…what…ugh…"
"All due respect, Sir, but I think it's time we bring Annabelle back."
"No. No way! She's no longer with us. I can't risk her life, too." Richard shook his head. Over his dead body. This person was never stepping foot back into his web of complicated risky business.
"But, Sir…"
"No! Annabelle is off limits. End of discussion. You can show yourself out." Richard pointed at the door and the man was gone with the blink of an eye.
Richard was at the loss of words.
He picked up the phone and made a few angry calls, desperately trying to find out the truth.
In the end, it was confirmed – the man had been found dead, near the airport in Bratislava.
"I don't understand…" Richard shook his head. "Everything was perfect. I personally approved it all."
This complicated a lot of things for him.
"God, no. Not Claus. Why?" He muttered to himself, holding more documents in one hand and his phone, in the other.
"I take it you've heard…" Yet another man was there, to see Richard.
This one, however, seemed a lot less intimidated by the him. He even allowed himself to walk right into Richard's office and to take a seat, without being invited to do so. Nobody else had the guts to do such thing.
"Yeah. I'm trying to figure out what happened." Richard said, offering the man a comforting smile.
"All we know so far is that, for whatever reason, Claus went to Bratislava, instead of Prague. He used a fake name to buy a ticket." The man said.
"What name?"
"Simon…"
"Simon!? That's not a fake name. that's his real name! What was he thinking? Is he out of his mind!?" Richard flipped out a bit.
"I know. It doesn't make sense."
"I've just e-mailed Marie, informing her that the whole thing is off." Richard said, looking at the screen of his computer.
"Oh? But she already left…"
"What do you mean? Her plane to Prague leaves late this evening."
"Yeah, she said goodbye to everyone this morning."
"Goodbye?" Richard raised an eyebrow.
"Oh…" The man realized how this whole thing was starting to look. "Are we being set up here?"
"God, I hope not. We've already lost one. There's no way I'm letting Marie go through with this, not on her own. Wait, let me try giving her a call again…"
As Richard picked up his phone, the other man put his hand over his, urging him to put it back down.
"She won't pick up. I had to talk to her about the details earlier and I called six times, but she never replied. Her phone is off since this morning." The man said.
All Richard could do was to shake his head in denial.
"And I guess we've already lost Marie, as well…" He muttered to himself, knowing very well how this type of complications usually ended.
This was his second day on the job, after his week with Lauren, and he was going insane. Everyone needed him, everything had to be done urgently and, to top it all, the one thing he had personally overlooked was now proving to be a huge fail.
"Where are you going?" The man asked, watching Richard stand up and grab his jacket.
"I have to find ways to tell a wife and a mother of two children, that her husband is dead. And then I have to pray that I wouldn't have to tell Marie's family something similar, too." Richard stated and he walked out.
He needed some fresh air. He needed to breathe. He needed to make sense of what had just happened.
He needed to calm down.
He needed an alternate universe in which everything was perfect, like it had seemed to be all week long.
He needed Lauren Reynolds.
