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perpetual_motionTitle: You Don't Need Analyzing (It is Not So Surprising)
Author: Perpetual Motion
Fandom: A-Team (TV)
Pairing: Amy/Murdock
Rating: PG
Word Count: 38060 (Roughly 12,000 words a part)
Summary: A year after Jakarta, Amy's got a nice life, and then it goes sideways.
Dis: Lies and bullshit.
Author's Notes: Many, many thanks toaithine, who did a fantastic beta job on this monster. And love to lasergirl for enabling me to write this monster. The title comes from the Irving Berlin song "(I Wonder Why) You're Just in Love," which I can completely imagine Murdock singing at top, Ethel-Merman volume to show his affection.
Part One
“Miss. Allen.” Colonel Decker stood by the elevator, looking like he'd been there all day. “I asked the doorman, and he said he doesn't remember you leaving.”
“I went out the fire escape,” I told him, trying to reach the call button. Decker tried to step around me, but I used my shoulder and shoved him aside—a trick I'd learned from BA, along with how to rebuild a carburetor. “I met Murdock at a seafood place.” Even without looking, I knew Decker was trying to hide the surprise on his face. “You got taken for a ride, Colonel.”
“Excuse me?”
I glanced over my shoulder. He was standing almost directly perpendicular to me, trying to catch my eye. “They weren't on an assignment last night,” I told him. “Murdock hasn't seen the team in awhile.”
“Miss Allen, I understand that your relationship—”
“It was a ploy, Colonel,” I interrupted him. “Murdock was…” I wasn't sure where to go with the thought. “Seeing if you'd follow,” I finished. “He knows you've been watching.”
“I don't believe you.”
The elevator dinged, and the doors opened. I stepped into the car. “Then don't believe me. I'm very tired, Colonel. I'll be in my apartment the rest of the day.”
“I'm posting someone at the fire escape,” he said as the doors closed.
“Fine,” I agreed, and the doors closed. I sagged against the back of the elevator car. Closing my eyes, I felt every second of sleep I'd missed the night before. The elevator swept up five floors, then dinged to let me know it had reached the sixth. I forced myself upright and walked down the hall. I missed the lock with my key twice before I got the key in and got the door open.
“Hello?” I called when I closed the door, half-expecting someone to answer me. Wayne, maybe. Or Hannibal or Face or BA, here to explain Murdock's actions. My voice echoed back at me, and I felt even more exhausted. I threw my keys on the kitchen table and toed off my sneakers by the door. I half-stumbled down the hall and peeled off my clothes in the doorway of the bedroom, falling face first onto the bed and crawling up to the pillows. The blanket was rucked up at the foot of the bed, and I fumbled for it a few times before getting a grip and pulling it up to my chin. When I closed my eyes, I saw Murdock looking happy, Murdock looking excited. Murdock looking sad for dramatic purposes, and Murdock looking sad for real. And I saw Murdock looking at me time and again, everything he was feeling plain in his eyes. And I saw myself, in a weird third-person view, staring back with the same look in my eyes.
Because I'd fallen in love with the crazy man. Because I was obviously unhinged.
I turned over, rearranged my pillow, and took in a deep breath to feel every tired part of my body. Fall asleep, I told myself. Fall asleep.
I did. How quickly, I wasn't sure. When I woke up, the slant of the light in my bedroom told me it was late afternoon, and the phone was ringing. It was Wayne, I thought, checking to make sure I was okay.
“I'm fine,” I answered the phone, not even sitting up in bed. “I just need to get some sleep.”
There was a pause on the other end of the phone, but I could hear someone breathing. “That's great,” the voice said, and it took a moment for my half-awake brain to place the voice. Face. “But I'm not calling to check on you.”
I sat straight up in bed, my tiredness wiped away in a spike of adrenaline. “They—”
“They're not,” he interrupted. “We swept your apartment after you left to meet Murdock.”
I couldn't think of anything to say for a moment. “What? How?”
“Well, you scaring off the guard by your apartment door helped, and the fact that they didn't plant someone at the fire escape helped more.” Face sounded like he was on the verge of laughing. “How you been, Amy?”
His tone—interested but not too interested—snapped me beyond adrenaline-awake and into full-awake. “How have I been? How have I been? Are you out of your damned mind, Face?”
“I think we both know you're talking to the wrong—”
“Shut up,” I snapped. I was rewarded with absolute silence on the other end of the line. “What the hell do you think you're doing? Calling me now?”
“I thought I'd—”
“Face,” I warned, “not right now.”
There was more silence on the line. “Murdock had the best intentions,” Face said after a long pause. “I'm not saying that led to him doing anything reasonable, but we both know—”
“Stop,” I ordered. “If there is anyone on the team willing to forgive Murdock his weirdness, it's me.”
“That's…true.” Face said slowly.
“And if there is anyone in the world who can see through the bull the four of you layer so well, that is also me. So cut it.” Face said nothing for a few seconds, and something pinged in my head. “Wait, did you say you swept my apartment?”
“Yeah.”
“And when did you do this?” I asked.
“After you left—” Face cut off, and I listened to him swear under his breath.
“You were in on this,” I said. “You and BA and Hannibal were all in on this, weren't you?”
“Amy—”
“What the hell, Face?” I had more, but I couldn't put it into words, so angry I was seeing spots in front of my eyes.
“Amy,” Face paused, waiting for me to stop him again.
“What?” I asked into the silence. “Am I supposed to be flattered, Face? You don’t contact me for a damned year, and I'm supposed to be thrilled you're contacting me now?”
There was a series of hushed whispers on the other end of the line. I listened to the phone get passed off. “Kid,” Hannibal said. “We need to talk.”
“You think? My God, Hannibal, you've gotten astute in your old age.”
“Careful, kid,” Hannibal's tone carried plenty of warning. “We wouldn't call you if—”
“You haven't called me,” I interrupted. “Not once. No matter how often I've tried to get into contact with you.” Hannibal didn't reply. “And I swear, Hannibal, if you even think of passing the phone to BA, I will hang up on you.”
“Wouldn't dream of it,” Hannibal replied, unflappable as always. “He's driving.”
Driving? Oh, hell. “How close are you?” I asked, dropping my head into the hand not holding the phone.
“Sixteen blocks,” Hannibal replied. “Anything we should know?”
I thought about Decker, wondering if he and his men had left yet. I stood up from the bed and looked out over the fire escape. I spotted a man in uniform down on the ground. I considered not telling Hannibal, but even in my anger, I couldn't set them up to get caught. My frustration was no reason to send them to federal prison. “Decker and his men are still here,” I told him. “One at the fire escape, probably another in the hallway, and Decker said he'd be in front of the elevator the rest of the day.”
Hannibal hummed in thought. “Better start some coffee, Amy. We'll be there in twenty.”
“Of course you will,” I replied, and I heard Hannibal chuckle as he hung up the phone. I moved away from the window to hang up the phone and reached for my jeans and shirt. The front door opened as I walked down the hallway, and I froze, pressing against the wall. It could be Decker, coming to poke around.
“Hon?” Wayne called as he closed and locked the door behind him. “You here?”
I gritted my teeth as I pushed off the wall. “I'm here,” I said and smiled as he kissed my cheek. “I was just going to make some coffee.”
“Did you get any sleep today?” he asked as he set down his briefcase and peeled off his coat.
“Some.” I emptied the coffee grounds from that morning into the wastebasket and considered how to tell Wayne that the guys were stopping by. “I thought you'd be working later.”
“Given the day I've had and the day you've had, I thought I'd come home on time for once,” Wayne explained from down the hall.
I started fresh coffee and pulled down mugs as I listened to Wayne walk into the bathroom and turn on the faucet. I heard the water turn off and braced myself as Wayne walked back down the hall. When I turned from the counter, he was standing next to the island, brow furrowed, a bundle of soggy clothes in one hand. “Wayne?” I asked.
“These are the clothes I loaned Bob,” he said. His voice was quiet. He looked at me, the furrow between his eyebrows getting deeper. “Why were they on the floor of the bathroom?”
Oh, hell. “Wayne—”
“Did the tub leak?”
“No.”
He looked at the clothes, then back at me, then back at the clothes. I held my breath, not sure how to segue from Murdock and me in the shower to telling him the guys were stopping by in—I glanced at the microwave clock—sixteen minutes. Wayne dropped the clothes on the counter and crossed his arms. He looked at the clothes. “Bob isn't Bob, is he?”
My breath rushed out of me. “No.” I clenched my fingers on the counter. “He—”
“Is he—”
“That was Murdock,” I pushed out. “And the other guys are coming by in about fifteen minutes.” My heart hammered in my chest while Wayne stared at me.
“What?”
“Hannibal and Face and BA,” I explained. “They're going to be here in about fifteen minutes. They need to talk to me about Murdock.”
“And you—” Wayne threw up his arms. “Amy!” he shouted. “You said you didn't know them!”
“I know!” I shouted back. “I know,” I said more quietly. “Wayne, honey, I'm sorry, but…” I couldn't find the words.
“They're criminals,” Wayne said after a few seconds. “They're wanted felons. What kind of attachment do you have to them?”
“They're good people,” I argued. “They're—”
“Here,” Hannibal announced as he, Face, and BA walked down the hall. Wayne jumped and tried to backpedal away from them. Hannibal put a hand on his shoulder before he could get far. “You must be Wayne,” he said, holding out his hand. “Hannibal Smith. Nice to meet you.”
Wayne blinked. He glanced at me. When he looked back at Hannibal, Hannibal smiled wider. “Nice to meet you,” Wayne parroted back, but he didn’t shake Hannibal's hand. “Listen—”
“Wayne, hi, I'm Templeton Peck,” Face said, sliding around Hannibal, shaking Wayne's hand, and leading him away from the conversation in one smooth motion.
I crossed my arms as Hannibal and BA turned to smile at me. “Twenty minutes?”
“Window lock wasn't a challenge,” BA explained.
“And the guard?”
Hannibal shrugged as he removed his gloves. I got a whiff of blasting powder. Of course. “How much—”
“It was minor,” Hannibal assured me. “Just a diversion to get him to look away.”
Before I could retort, BA stepped forward and curled a hand on my shoulder. “Good to see you.”
I wanted to hug him, tease him about buying me a better lock and the actual size of the explosion, try to tease him into confessing that they'd been downstairs casing the place when they'd called. I pushed the urge aside. “Murdock's not with you?” I asked. “I would have thought he'd lead the charge through my window like a knight in dented armor.”
“Crazyman stayed home,” BA explained. “Thinks you're mad at him.” He crossed his arms and glared at me.
I met him with a glare of my own. “That's because I am.”
“No, you're not,” Hannibal told me. “You're mad at us.”
“No, Hannibal, I'm fairly certain I'm mad at Murdock.”
“You ain't,” BA told me.
I huffed out a breath and put my hands on my hips. “No, I'm mad at Murdock. Who showed up, turned everything sideways, and led to Wayne having to answer a bunch of questions he didn't know he was ever going to be asked.”
“You didn't tell him about us?” Face asked as he walked up to the conversation. He tilted his head towards Wayne, and BA walked over to loom over him.
“That's completely unnecessary,” I hissed. “He doesn't need BA treating him like a suspect.”
“He does,” Face disagreed. “He's squirrelly, Amy. He'd probably bolt if we stopped watching him.”
“I can't possibly imagine why,” I replied, sarcasm as thick as I could make it. “It's not like he's spent the whole day down the damned rabbit hole.”
“Let's calm down,” Hannibal said, holding up a hand. “We're here to check in, kid. Make sure you're all right.”
“Make sure I'm all right? Or make sure I'm not going to finally grow sane again and decide to turn you over to Decker?”
“Both,” Face said with a grin meant to ease the tension. “But more the first than the second. We trust you. You know that.”
I snorted. “Trust. Yeah. I've really been seeing that since I got back into town.”
“Easy now,” Hannibal said. He pointed a finger at me. “We had our reasons for keeping you out of the loop.”
“I've heard it.” I snapped. “Safety. Protection. Letting me have my own life. It's a great story. Really.”
“You're the one who left,” Face pointed out. His face was smooth, the anger only in his voice.
I pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead. Across the room, Wayne tried to see around BA. BA stepped over to block his view. “Do any of you not have abandonment issues?” I asked. Face's neutral expression quivered, then held. My stomach knotted, and I turned away from them, started pouring coffee. “Face, that's not—”
“It's a fair hit,” Face interrupted. He took the coffee I handed him and pulled me into a side hug, kissing me on top of my head. “Missed you.”
My anger dissipated into pieces I couldn't reassemble. Face had always been a cheat, and the admission and the hug and the kiss were a too powerful combination. “Yeah, yeah,” I groused and handed Hannibal a cup of coffee of his own. “I tried to get ahold of you.”
“We know,” Hannibal said, taking a sip of his coffee and nodding at the taste. “And we chose to ignore you.”
“I'm a big girl, Colonel. I can make my own decisions.”
“And we're big boys. We make our own decisions sometimes, too,” Hannibal replied.
“You left,” Face said, “and we decided to give you a break, let you have your full life back.”
“I didn't—”
“Is it so bad?” Hannibal interrupted, glancing over his shoulder to Wayne and BA. Wayne was still trying to sidle around BA and not making progress. “Seems like a nice guy.”
“We vetted him,” Face told me. “Not even a parking ticket.”
“You—” Of course they had. I sighed and poured another cup of coffee, nudged Face out of the way so I could get a bottle of fruit juice from the fridge. I walked across the living room and handed the coffee to Wayne and the fruit juice to BA.
“Thanks,” BA said, twisting off the cap. “You done bein' mad?”
“Working on it,” I told him. I looked at Wayne, put my hand on his arm while I handed him his coffee. “Today's been a mess.”
Wayne looked at me askance as he sipped his coffee. “Yeah,” he agreed. “I noticed.”
“Let's all sit down,” I offered. “Let's talk through this.”
“Amy—” Wayne started, but Face and Hannibal were already sitting in the arm chairs, and BA was sitting on one end of the couch. “Amy,” he said more quietly, “I don't care for this. You never told me—”
“I know, but I'm trying to tell you now.”
He tapped his fingers on his coffee mug and glanced around the room, not quite looking at BA, Hannibal, or Face. “Amy—”
“Please.”
He clenched his fingers on his mug and breathed out hard. “Why didn't you ever tell me?”
I looked at the guys. Hannibal smiled at me. Face gave me a nod. BA huffed and uncrossed his arms. “They're my friends,” I said to Wayne, turning to look at him again. “But it's hard to explain to people.”
“We've been together for almost a year!” Wayne shouted. Face and BA both jumped up. I held up a hand, and they both stopped moving. Wayne looked at them, then back at me. He clenched his fingers tighter around his mug and swore under his breath. “Jesus, Amy, what else don't I know? What else don't you trust me with?”
“It's not—”
“It is.” Wayne stepped around me and stormed into the kitchen. I shook my head at Face when he moved to intercept him.
Go after him, I thought, but I couldn't move. I stood in the middle of the living room and listened to Wayne slam his coffee cup into the sink, listened to him open and close cabinets and mutter under his breath.
“So,” Face said as the sounds petered off. “How's things?”
“Face,” I muttered, and I ducked my head to hide my smile at his singsong tone. If Wayne walked back in and I was smiling, everything would get even worse.
Wayne walked back into the living room and stopped short, like he'd forgotten the guys were in the room. He looked at each of them in turn then ran his hands through his hair and stared at me. “What else?” he asked. “What else don't I know?”
“Nothing,” I promised. “This was it.”
“This,” Wayne snorted, waving a hand at the room in general. “How long has this been in your life?”
“For the record,” Hannibal interjected, “we haven't been in her life recently.”
“You said you didn't know them,” Wayne said, ignoring Hannibal. “You said you tried to hire them, and that you spent time with the other one—”
“Murdock,” I filled in automatically.
“Murdock,” Wayne spat out, “because he was nice.”
“He is nice.”
Wayne stared at me. “And me?” he asked. “Am I some sort of cover for you? A respectable guy so you can keep this secret?”
“Hey, now,” BA interrupted, walking over to Wayne and crowding him into the wall. “You don't say those things to a lady, you hear me? Amy's classy. If she likes you, it's because she likes you.”
Wayne looked scared for a moment, then it wiped off his face. “Classy? I had a damned colonel in my office today threatening me with a treason charge. What kind of classy person knows people who could get her arrested for treason?”
“BA!” I shouted as BA reached for Wayne's shirtfront. “Don't.”
“He's talkin' sass.”
“Don't,” I repeated. I strode over to him, pulled at his forearm where it rested in the air. “He has a fair point.”
“He don't. You're—”
“Back away,” I interrupted.
BA frowned at me, growled at Wayne, and did as I asked. Wayne shook his head and stepped away from me, close to the door. I slid around him to block his way.
“Let me out,” he said.
“No.” I pressed myself against the door and clenched one hand over the knob. “Wayne, please. I know it's a lot to take in, and I know there’s a lot I didn't tell you, but you can't storm out of here. They'll know. There are guards around the building. If you storm out, they'll know they're here.”
Wayne's jaw twitched. “Amy,” he said slowly, “think about what you just said. Think about the ultimatum you just gave me.”
“I didn't—”
“You just chose them,” he said. “By telling me I can't leave, you just chose them.”
Oh, God. I slumped against the door and stared down at the floor. “I didn't—”
“I'm leaving.” Wayne announced. He looked over his shoulder at the guys then back at me. “I'll…” He shook his head and grimaced. “I'll do it quietly, okay? I just…I can't be here right now. I can't be here with…” He waved a hand behind him. “If I stay here, it's just going to degenerate into a lot of terrible things.”
“Wayne.” I looked him in the eyes, and he looked at me right back. I unclenched my hand from around the knob and stood up a little straighter. “You're a really nice guy,” I told him. “I appreciate that.”
He huffed a laugh, low and self-derisive, “Yeah, that and a good haircut.”
“Wayne—”
“I'll be at my place,” he said. “I'll call you tomorrow. I won't…” He looked over his shoulder again, met everyone's eyes this time. “I'm not squirrelly,” he said. “I'm not going to run and tell.”
“Thank you,” I murmured, and I reached out to touch his arm. He let me. Face tapped him on the shoulder and handed him his briefcase. Hannibal and BA both gave him a nod. “Thank you,” I said again as I stepped away from the door.
“You've got a headache,” Wayne said as he opened the door. “I'll call you tomorrow, see how you feel.”
“I love you,” I murmured.
“Yeah,” Wayne breathed out, and he walked out of the apartment.
I left the door open a crack and listened to him walk to the elevator. I didn't close the door until I heard him get on. When I turned around, Face, Hannibal, and BA all gave me sympathetic looks. “There's whiskey in the cupboard over the sink,” I said to Face. “Make me a drink.”
Face walked into the kitchen, and I slumped on the couch, hands over my eyes. I felt the couch sag on either side of me, and I felt BA's arm come around me. When I looked up, Face was walking back into the living room, a collection of drink glasses balanced in his hands. Hannibal, Face, and myself all took the whiskey. BA took the water.
“Lies of omission don't count,” Face said as he sat on the coffee table, leaning forward to make sure I could see his eyes. “If Wayne didn't ask, it's not your job to tell him.”
“Who asks, 'Oh, by the way, do you regularly hang out with felons,’ Face?” I sipped my whiskey while Face shrugged in reply. “And that's not the point, anyway.”
“There's a difference between someone not askin' and someone not sayin' on purpose,” BA interjected. “Amy tellin' him nothin' at all tells me she meant to hold it back.”
Face shrugged again. “So what? It's one piece of information he doesn't have. Everything else she ever told him was true. That should count for something.”
BA crossed his arms. “You either trust someone or you don't.”
“Gentlemen,” Hannibal broke in, giving my shoulder a nudge. “Perhaps we should let the lady speak for herself.”
I gave Hannibal a half-grin and sipped my whiskey again. “The lady doesn't have a lot to say.” I gestured between Face and BA. “You're both right. If Wayne doesn't ask questions, it's not my job to inform him on every single thing that's ever happened to me—”
“Spoken like a very good reporter,” Hannibal interrupted.
“But,” I continued, throwing Hannibal an annoyed look, “I kept it from Wayne with purposeful intent, and nothing done with intent can be said to be an accident.”
“Spoken like a lawyer,” Face said with a roll of his eyes.
“Learned a lot about the law running around with you,” I replied, swatting at his leg. Face grinned, but BA and Hannibal said nothing. Silence settled around us, and I stared into my drink. “He's a nice guy,” I said without looking up. “He didn't deserve to get all this dumped on him without warning.”
“So why not tell him?” Hannibal asked. “You trusted him enough to let him walk out of here tonight; why not trust him enough before now?”
“Because,” I said, and finished my drink in a gulp. Because Wayne had started out as a diversion, someone to keep me company until the team decided I could join them again. “I thought you'd come back before now,” I said. “I thought you'd take the hint when I tried to find you when I got back. And when you didn't, Wayne seemed like the opposite.”
“Law-abiding, good looking, and making his way comfortably up the corporate ladder?” Face asked.
“Steady,” BA added. “Not gonna jump and run.”
“And smart,” Hannibal finished off. “Our Amy doesn't go for the dumb ones.”
I snorted. “So, I'm one of you again, am I?” Anger simmered in me, and I put my tumbler next to Face's leg. “Am I supposed to be glad this has happened?” I asked. “You're here now, and you've helped run off Wayne, so now we can go on adventures, right? Now that you know for certain I'm not going to—”
“Hold on a minute,” Hannibal interrupted, warning in his tone. “We didn't show up to screw things up with you and him.”
“Your timing just happens to be excellent,” I stood up and walked around them all, flicking back the curtain at the picture window to look out over the scenery. “How long have you been planning this? How much time did you four put in to come up with this crazy idea?”
“Wasn't us,” BA said, his voice almost a growl. “We're playin' clean up.”
I'd only pushed the curtain over far enough to see out. I couldn't see their reflections in the window. I couldn't give Decker or his men a chance to spot them. I turned around, pulling the curtain tight against the window frame. “For what? Walking in when Wayne was here?”
“For Murdock,” Hannibal told me.
“We weren't in on the plan at the start,” Face added. “Most of what happened today was pure Murdock.”
“Crazyman wanted to see you, so Crazyman came up with a reason.” BA scowled. “And we're the ones gettin' yelled at for it.”
“Murdock called us early this afternoon,” Hannibal said in his debriefing voice. “He gave us the broad strokes, mentioned you'd been bugged, so we thought we'd come over and double-check the place for you.”
“Then, he called a little while later and told us how badly things went at the restaurant,” Face picked up. “And as he's back at the VA—”
“Under heavy guard,” Hannibal interjected.
“We came as proxies.” Face finished. “With absolutely no ulterior motive regarding Wayne or your relationship.”
“Murdock feels bad,” BA added. “He wants to apologize.”
I couldn't figure out what to say for a few seconds. “You don't answer my calls,” I finally said. “You don't answer my requests through Mr. Lee, and now you're here, and I'm…” I shook my head and had to swallow down a laugh at the sheer weirdness of it. “I don't know what to do. The plan hasn't come together.”
“So what?” Hannibal asked, beaming at me. “Maybe this isn't the final stage of the plan. Maybe this is the middle stage of the plan.”
“Hell of a climax for the middle of the plan,” I replied. “You three coming in the window, Wayne storming out, me getting an explanation of what the hell's happened today.”
Hannibal shrugged. “End of the second act, kid. There's a whole act to go.”
I looked at the three of them and let some of the laughter escape. “God, I can't do this right now. There's…I don't have the tolerance built up for this level of weirdness anymore.”
“We should go,” Hannibal said, standing. Face and BA followed his example. They all walked over to me, hugged me, and started to walk down the hall towards the bedroom.
“Is it because you didn't trust me?” I asked as Face pushed the window open and glanced out. “Did you refuse to answer because you didn't trust me?”
They all stared at me for a moment. It was BA who finally answered. “Fool,” he muttered. “Wouldn't be here we thought we couldn't trust you.”
“We took a vote,” Hannbial explained, throwing one leg over my windowsill. “And we agreed, as a team, to give you a real chance at a regular life, to not pull you back in just because you thought you wanted to.”
“Murdock…” I started but didn't know how to finish.
“We made him take your name off the list,” Face said. He grimaced. “It didn't work, obviously.” He followed Hannibal out the window, stepping down the fire escape ladder to the floor below.
“BA, let's go,” Hannibal said, following Face down.
BA stuck both legs out the window and turned to look at me. “Crazyman's crazy,” he said. “Doesn't mean he don't mean the things he says and does.” He pushed himself out of the window and was headed down the fire escape before I could answer.
I closed the window after them and flipped the lock, watched Face jump from the fire escape and tackle the soldier on watch. I watched them until they slipped down an alley and vanished from sight.
*
I spent the night rolling around in bed, dozing on and off but not really sleeping. The clock rolled over to five o'clock, and I called it off, slid out of bed and walked down the hall to the kitchen. I half-expected Wayne to be there, standing at the counter and eating a light breakfast before going out jogging, but the kitchen was dark. I opened the fridge to search for something to eat. On the top shelf, leaning against the milk carton, there was a small stuffed dog. It had a note wrapped around its neck.
Sorry.
HMM
I stared at it, then closed the fridge. When I opened it again, it was still there. I closed the fridge again and forced myself to take a deep breath. I picked up the phone and dialed one of the team lines from memory. After the third ring, the line was picked up.
“This is the answering service for Appleton Productions. May I take a message please?”
“My name is Amy,” I said. “Just a short message.”
“Certainly, Miss. Please go ahead.”
“Did you know about the dog in the fridge?”
There was a pause. “Beg your pardon, Miss?”
“That's it,” I told her. “Just that.”
There was another pause. “The message I'll be relaying is, 'Did you know about the dog in the fridge?' Is this correct?”
“Perfect.”
“And a number where you can be reached?”
“They have it.” I hung up before the woman could ask if I was certain. I started the coffee and cracked a couple of eggs into a skillet. Whether the team got back to me or not, the day was going to be a bad one, and I could hear BA in my head, reminding me that breakfast was what got you going for the whole day.
The phone rang as I was folding the eggs into an omelet, and I fumbled the receiver off the hook. “Hello?”
“A dog in the fridge?” Face asked, sounding only half awake. “Please tell me it wasn't alive.”
“Stuffed,” I said. “A toy,” I clarified when it sounded like Face was choking back shock. “I know he's crazy,” I reminded him. “But come on.”
“Murdock's idea of a gift can get weird,” Face pointed out.
I opened the fridge and looked at the dog again. “Did you leave it here before you left?” I asked. “Was it part of the plan?”
Face didn't say anything for nearly a minute. “I wish,” he finally said. “Because now you're going to go yell at him, aren't you?”
“For breaking into my apartment in the dead of night? Yeah, I'm going to yell at him.”
“Hmm.”
“What?”
“Meet me for breakfast,” Face said. His tone was open and warm.
“What aren't you telling me?” I asked.
“Amy—”
“I know that tone,” I told him. “You're trying to distract me.”
“I am not.”
I rolled my eyes. “Face.”
He sighed. “Meet me for breakfast,” he repeated, and this time his tone was rueful. “I'll buy you waffles.”
“Why not just tell me now?”
“Because I have to commit a minor theft in order to explain things properly.”
I laughed. I couldn't help it. It was everything I remembered in a single sentence. There was a plan, but in order for the plan to work, something at least mildly illegal needed to happen. “Fine,” I agreed. “Where?”
“There's a doughnut shop two blocks from your apartment. It should be busy pretty soon. Go in and buy a cup of coffee. There's a side exit that puts you into an alley that'll get you over to the next block. I'll pick you up there.”
“Doughnut shop,” I repeated. “Two blocks down.” I clicked off the burner and moved the pan to a cool burner. “Haven't seen you in over a year, and you have my neighborhood mapped?”
Face cleared his throat. I could see him in my mind's eye, smoothing the front of his shirt and trying not to fidget. “We might have kept an eye on you.”
I shook my head. “Of course,” I muttered. “You're explaining that, too.”
“Give me an hour,” Face said. “Side door of the shop.”
“I'll remember,” I promised. I put the phone back on the cradle and checked the time. 5:27. I walked to the bedroom and checked down the fire escape. There were two soldiers on-duty on the ground. Not surprising, considering the team had tackled whoever had been on-duty last night. I'd have to go out the front door.
The soldier by the elevator looked me over as I walked up to him a half-hour later. “Ma'am—” he started, but cut off when I held up a hand.
“Am I under investigation?”
He blinked at me. “I beg your pardon?”
“Does Colonel Decker have me under investigation for something, or are you here guarding me against a threat?”
“I can't disclose—”
“Then you can't ask me questions,” I continued. “In fact, I'd report you for trespassing if I wasn't certain the colonel was nearby to come up with an explanation.”
He blinked again. It was possible, working for someone with the power of Decker, that he'd never had someone get in his face about the actions of his superior. “My orders are to watch the door,” he said after a moment. “And inquire as to where you're going.”
“What if I don't tell you?” I asked.
“I don't have orders for that. The colonel…” He trailed off.
“The colonel assumed I would be willing to share, yes?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“I'm not. I'm trying to live my life, and I'm trying to do it around a set of accusations that have led to my boyfriend questioning my honesty.”
“We know—” he bit his lip. I took a moment to look him over. He was young, maybe twenty or twenty-one. He wasn't scared of me in the least, but he wanted to tell me something he shouldn't. He was nice, I decided. He followed orders and did his job, and he was a nice guy who didn't want someone to be ambushed if they weren't really an enemy. “I shouldn't tell you anything,” he said, and he straightened his shoulders.
I considered pressing him for the information. I could get it, I was certain, but it wasn't right. For as long as the guys had been on the run, they still thought of themselves as military men, and I'd gained respect for all that stood for in the time I'd spent with them. The man in front of me was a good soldier because he didn't want to give me information, and he was fighting the natural urge to cut me a break.
“I'm getting breakfast,” I told him, keeping my tone annoyed. “And then I'm going to work. You need my number there to check up on me?”
“No, ma'am.”
They had somebody posted, then. “Have a good day,” I said as I pressed the button for the elevator. He didn’t respond, and it was only as the doors closed behind me that I saw him talk into a wrist mike. They'd be tailing me. I'd have to be extra-careful slipping out of the doughnut shop.
I made a point to meander on my way to the shop, stopping to look into display windows. At the third window, I spotted him in my reflection. A man in his twenties, striped polo shirt and khaki pants. His shoes gave him away, shined too bright for a civilian. They'd given me a plainclothes tail in the hopes that I wouldn't notice. Decker and I didn't get along, but I had to give him credit for his appreciation of my intelligence. The thought made me grin as I stepped into the doughnut shop and got in line for coffee. My tail didn't follow me in. I wondered if he was checking alternate exits or radioing my location to get backup.
“What'll it be?” the teenager at the counter asked.
“Coffee. Black.” I ordered and moved to the side. I pushed my way toward the wall, away from the counter and into a small shadow so I could get a good vantage point on the door. The man in the striped polo walked in a few seconds later, scanning the room for me. I looked at a sketch on the wall, the glass in the frame reflective enough I could track him. I saw him spot me and then move closer.
“Coffee! Black!” the teenager at the counter called. I pressed forward and got my coffee. “Restroom?” I asked.
“In the back, next to the kitchen,” he said, jerking a thumb as he turned away from me.
I couldn't watch my tail as I walked to the bathrooms. There was a line at the women's room, and I stood at the back, looking out towards the front of the shop. My tail was ordering at the counter. He was looking at the menu, but I was certain he could see me in his peripheral vision. I wouldn't shake him just going into the bathroom. I'd have to come up with a better plan.
“What’s the hold up?” I said, half under my breath, but loud enough to get the woman in front of me to glance over. “I've never been here,” I told her, giving her a sheepish smile. “Is it a single stall?”
She nodded. “Oh, yeah. This place used to be nothing until the tourists found it.” She sized me up, looking for, I imagined, any telltale signs of tourism.
“Damnit,” I muttered and gave her a rueful look. “One broken coffee maker…”
She snorted in agreement and fell silent. I didn't push her. A single stall bathroom could give me a chance to sneak out. All I needed was a window.
Ten minutes later, as my tail ate the last of his doughnut and pretended not to be looking my way, I made it into the bathroom. There was a toilet, a sink, and a window. It was up high and covered in wire mesh. I put my coffee on the edge of the sink and dug into my purse. Wallet. Keys. Lipstick. Powder. Swiss Army knife.
Bingo.
It had been a gift from the team, A super-deluxe Swiss Army knife, complete with a tiny pair of wire cutters. I inspected the mesh. It covered the whole window but was only connected at the four corners. I balanced on the lid of the toilet and snapped the wires, throwing the mesh to the floor as I pushed against the window. It stuck; there were three layers of paint on the sill. Someone rapped on the door and jiggled the knob. I shoved my shoulder against the window, and it gave, cracking open an inch. Another hard shove with my hands, and it opened fully, pointing straight out.
The trick to slithering through a window, Murdock had taught me, was not sucking in. Breathing in expanded the chest cavity, making you wider than you actually were. I pushed all the air out of my lungs and shoved myself through feet first. I dangled above the ground, trying to find a foothold on the side of the building. Someone grabbed my legs, and I kicked out.
“Easy,” Face called up to me. “It's just me.”
I went limp, letting him take my weight and lead me to the ground. “Sorry,” I said when we were face-to-face. “I've got a tail.”
“Thought you might.” He grinned as he looked up at the window. “Nice escape.” He grabbed my hand and led me across the street to a gold sports car, opening the door and helping me in. He jogged around to the driver's side and got in, checking the mirrors as he started the engine. “What'd he look like?”
“Mid-twenties, striped polo and khakis. There may have been more than one.”
Face pulled out of the parking space, reached over and pushed down on the top of my head. I slid down the seat until my head couldn't be seen out the window. “I think we're okay, but stay down there for a minute.” He rounded a corner, stopped briefly, then rounded another corner. “All right,” he said. “You can come up.”
I pulled myself up and straightened my shirt. “Where are we going?” I asked. “You promised me waffles.”
“I did,” he agreed, and he took at exit for the highway. “Probably best we're not in the city, though.” He reached over as he merged, popped the button for the glove box. “Brought you something to read.”
I looked into the glove box. There was a file folder, and I pulled it out. Written on the tab in careful print letters was a name:
Murdock, H.M. Captain
It couldn't be. I turned the folder over in my hands, not opening it. “Face—”
“He's in love with you,” Face interrupted. “Has been for years. You should know what you're getting into.”
“Face—”
“Amy.” He glanced away from the rode to give me a brief, serious look. “I know he's a goof, but he's not—”
“I know,” I cut him off. “I—”
“You think you know,” Face interrupted again, “but it's not—”
“Face.” The way I said his name, hard on the 'c,' made him stop short. He glanced at me again, and I looked down at the file. “Was this the theft?” I asked.
“The latest copy I had was a few months old. I thought you'd want the most up-to-date version.”
I shook my head, pressed the file against my lap. “Does he know you look at it?”
Face didn't look at me. We were going in a straight line down the highway. “Not exactly,” he admitted after a pause. “He gave me permission a long time ago to keep informed, but it's been awhile since I mentioned it to him.”
I looked down at the file again. “Why did you…”
Face didn't answer for nearly a mile. I rode it staring out the windshield, the file heavy in my lap. “You're in love with him,” Face finally said. He held up a hand before I could argue. “I read people for a living, Amy, and I'm accurate. You've got a great job, a great apartment, and a great boyfriend, and from the moment Murdock showed up the other night, you made decisions that placed him higher on the chain of importance than any of that.”
“I…” I clenched my hands on top of the folder. “I care about Wayne,” I said. “I love Wayne.”
“Wayne's a good guy,” Face replied. “And you do love him.” He turned onto an access road, slowing the car down with careful pressure to the brakes. “But there's love and there's love.”
I looked at him, watched him watch the road. His window was cracked, a few strands of his hair blowing in the breeze. “If you're going to say it, say it,” I challenged him. “You don't have to scam me into anything.”
Face glanced at me again, then back at the road. “You left, and we accepted that, and when you came back and tried to reach us, we chose to ignore you.”
“I know all this,” I reminded him.
“Let me finish.” He waited a few seconds to make sure he had my attention. “But we couldn't fully ignore you. You'd been part of the team, stuck around a lot longer than we'd expected, and we ended up liking you a lot. Murdock…” Face shook his head and ran a hand through his hair. “Murdock fell in love with you. Hard. When you came back, and we told him he had to take you off the visitors list to protect you, he…” Face shook his head and didn't speak for a minute, pulling the car into a gravel lot in front of a red and white building with the word “Waffles” painted on the front. “He made demands,” Face finally said, looking over at me. He turned off the car and kept looking at me. “We had to keep an eye, he said, and make sure you were all right. So we did.”
“You—” I tried to get out more, but Face shook his head.
“Amy, if I don't say it now, I won't. This is entirely more emotion than I care to share, okay?”
I pressed my lips together and nodded, curling my hands into tighter fists.
“We didn’t follow you everywhere, okay? But we paid attention some. When you moved, we vetted the neighborhood. When you started dating Wayne, we vetted him, too. And we were going to leave it at that, except…” Face shrugged. “Murdock.”
I almost smiled at the fondness in it, but I fought it back. “That was it?” I asked. “You all decided how I should live my life, and that's it?”
Face shrugged. “We're all a bit old-fashioned,” he admitted. “A proper lady should get a proper life, and you're a proper lady.”
I rolled my eyes. “Who can shoot any number of automatic and semi-automatic weapons.”
“Being a well-trained lady doesn’t make you less of a proper lady,” Face argued.
“How flattering,” I deadpanned. “You saw right through my modern woman disguise. I should bake you a victory pie.”
Face had the good sense to look abashed. “We were trying to help,” he said. “We didn't want you…regretting us.”
“Regretting you?”
“For taking you away from the life you wanted,” Face explained. “For making you a fugitive through coercion.”
I considered slapping him across the face. Or maybe punching him in the jaw. BA had taught me how to do it without breaking my fingers. The trick was to put the power in your arm. “When, precisely, did any of you coerce me to do anything, Face?”
“I’m not saying—”
“You are too saying,” I interrupted him, my voice rising. “I blackmailed you if you'll recall. I chose to run around and get shot at if you'll recall. I decided to lie to Lynch and Decker if you'll recall. There was no damned coercion, okay? I made my own decisions, and I had a right to make them again.”
Face curled a hand over one of my fists, gave it a squeeze. “I know,” he agreed. “And Hannibal and BA and Murdock know, but we…we're protectors, Amy. And given the choice between letting you be fully free of possible treason charges and making room for you in the van again, it was a no-brainer. You're safer without us.”
“I don't want to be safe!” I nearly yelled. The silence after it was heavy. I swallowed hard. “That's not what I meant.”
Face squinted at me, sizing me up. “Let's get some food,” he said. “We'll talk after we eat.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, and I got out of the car. It was only as we were sitting down that I realized I was still holding Murdock's file. I pushed it to the far end of the booth, against the wall, and didn’t look at it while I ordered coffee and waffles and bacon. “Where are the others?” I asked after the waitress bought our coffee. “I'm surprised you're alone.”
“BA figured it was best we not put you in a van with lots of guns and ammunitions.”
“And Hannibal?”
“Hannibal's filming next week. He didn't want to show up to set with a black eye.”
I smirked. “So they sent you.”
“I'd have come anyway.”
I stirred my coffee and listened to the noise around us. There was a couple having a quiet argument over my shoulder. To the left there was a family, the tired slump of their shoulders telling me they'd been on the road. There was no one behind Face. He'd picked a booth that let him put his back to the wall.
“Amy?” Face asked, his eyebrows up, asking the rest of the question.
I glanced at the file. “I know Murdock has issues. What do you think I don't know?”
Face breathed out hard, but he didn't break eye contact. “Nothing, probably, given your friendship with him. You've seen his bad days, right?”
I had. Murdock went quiet on his bad days, rolled into a ball on his bed, a pillow under his chin. Sometimes it happened on the days I'd come by to take him to lunch. I had always sat on the edge of the bed, one hand on his back, not saying anything, just breathing in and out with him. “I've been there,” I said. “Did you think I hadn't?”
Face shook his head. “Most of the time, he's some version of himself. The up-beat, twitchy, multi-voiced weirdo that he is.” He looked away from me and closed his eyes just a little longer than a blink. “You would have liked him back in the war. Tone him down a notch or two, and he's exactly the same most of the time.”
“I like him now,” I said. “I liked him the first time I met him.”
Face looked at me again. There weren't tears in his eyes, but they were brighter than they should have been. “He shouldn't have done what he did, coming to your place like that, but…”
I pushed my coffee to the side and reached for Face's hand, pressing my fingers to the back of his hand. “I'm pissed. I'll probably stay pissed, but I know Murdock. Maybe not as well as you and Hannibal and BA, but I know him. And I'm going to call him on all this stupidity—”
“Then you know him well enough,” Face interjected.
I smiled a little. “Thanks.” I squeezed Face's hand. “I'm going to yell at him,” I said.
Face grinned. “Oh, good. BA could use a break.”
“And, if he decides not to be entirely difficult, we may even talk about the proper way to talk to me and the improper way to get in touch with me.”
“And about leaving stuffed dogs in your fridge.”
“That, too.” Face turned his hand over and wrapped his hand around my fingers. “I brought you the file because there's more than you know. You know Murdock, but there's some things that haven't come up.”
I ticked off the points on my fingers. “Recurring nightmares. Insomnia. Window fans becoming helicopter blades. Tourists quietly speaking their native language become Charlie.” I arched my eyebrows at Face. “Anything else?”
“Screaming fits,” Face replied, trying not to look surprised.
“Face, I can sleep through gunfire because of all of you. Screaming fits don't concern me.”
“He kicks in his sleep during nightmares.”
“So do I.”
Face grinned. “All right, then.” He leaned back as the waitress dropped off our plates. “Thank you,” he said, his grin slipping up a notch. The waitress blushed and backed away without turning around.
I watched him cut into his eggs. “What just happened?” I asked.
Face glanced up, swallowing his bite before speaking. “Problem, Amy?”
I knew that tone. That was his, ‘I just won and you didn’t know it was happening,’ tone. “Face,” I said, dragging out his name to make it a warning, “what just happened?”
He took another bite of his eggs, took a sip of his coffee. He wiped the edges of his mouth with the corners of his napkins. “Nothing that we haven't already discussed,” he said. “You. Murdock.” He pulled a face. “Love.”
I sighed and stared at my waffles. “I have to talk to Wayne,” I said. “He deserves as much as I can tell him.”
“And Murdock?”
I bit into a piece of bacon. “I'm yelling at him.”
“And after?”
I shrugged. “I'll probably yell at him some more.” I cut into my waffles. “Pass the syrup.”
If anyone knew how to accept an abrupt change of subject, it was Face. He was the one who had taught me how to use it properly, after all. “Syrup,” he said, handing me the jar and giving me a wink. “Butter?”
“Please.”
We ate in silence for a few minutes. I adjusted the grip on my knife to cut through more of my waffle, and my elbow nudged Murdock's file. The papers shifted, and I could see the text on the top few.
“We won't tell him,” Face said quietly, not looking up from his eggs.
I picked up the file, tapped the edge against the table to right the pages, and handed it back to Face. “Lies of omission,” I said, “and deliberate not telling, remember?”
He pretended to think it over. “Sounds familiar.” He reached for the file and placed it on the seat next to him. “I'll put it back where I found it.”
“Thank you.”
*
Face dropped me off twelve blocks from my apartment. “Last chance,” he said, holding up the file.
“It's not fair,” I replied, and I stepped away from the car and waved him off. I glanced around as I walked down the block, but I didn't spot anyone who looked like a tail. There was no one positioned across the street from my apartment, and the soldier by the elevator was gone. It wasn't right. The jazz thrummed low in my blood in agreement. Decker didn't just give up and leave. I eyed my front door, checking the lock for scratches. Scratches meant someone with lock picks. Of course, someone particularly good with locks—like BA—wouldn't leave scratches.
Fake calm, I thought. It was always better to pretend like you didn't know what was going on. Go in acting like there's no one there. It'll be easier to get the advantage. I turned the key in the lock and opened the door. No one was in the front of the apartment, but I could hear shuffling in the bedroom.
I walked to the kitchen and silently opened the drawer where I'd stashed my gun the day before.
“Amy?” Wayne called from the bedroom.
Of course. The tension leeched out of me. “It's me,” I called back. I tried to put the gun back in the drawer, but I banged it against the edge of the frame instead.
“Are you—” Wayne stopped at the end of the hallway, eyes widening at the sight of the gun. “Jesus, Amy, I was just—”
“Sorry,” I said. “The soldiers are gone, and I thought…” I couldn't finish the thought with Wayne watching me. “Sorry,” I repeated.
“They were gone when I got here,” Wayne said. “If you're talking about the guy who was in the hallway.”
I finally got the gun back in the drawer, closing it with a snap that made Wayne flinch. “They were gone?”
“Yeah.” Wayne's brow furrowed when I reached under the counter. “What are you doing?”
I moved from the kitchen to the dining area, sliding my hands under the table, then under the phone. I walked past Wayne to check under the coffee table and against the seams of the couch.
“What—”
“We need to talk,” I interrupted. “But I'd rather not do it here, considering…” I couldn’t say the truth, in case there was a bug I'd missed.
“Yeah,” Wayne agreed before I could finish the thought, but the way he looked where the guys had been sitting the night before, I knew we were thinking of different things. “I'd rather not talk here, either.”
“The Italian place?” I offered. It was always crowded, always busy. The chances of anyone listening to our conversation were minimal, and the chance of anyone remembering us even less. “I'll buy,” I offered.
“I can buy,” Wayne said, and his mouth twitched into something that was almost a smile.
“Okay,” I agreed. It was an old joke, my offering to buy, Wayne politely insisting to pay. “Give me a minute,” I said, and I walked towards the bedroom to check for bugs in the nightstand. On the bed, laid out in careful piles, were Wayne's clothes. His razor and shampoo and toothbrush were on the nightstand on his side of the bed.
Well.
I checked for the bugs—nothing—and walked back into the living room. Wayne was waiting by the door, his suit jacket draped over one arm. “You…” I started, but I couldn't get out the rest of the sentence. “Let's go,” I said instead, and we walked to the elevator in silence.
The lack of soldiers on our walk to the Italian place made the jazz strum a little harder in my blood. I let Wayne talk to the hostess while I looked around and tried to figure out if I had a tail.
“Excuse me,” I said to the hostess, “do you have a phone I could use?”
“Sure,” she said, handing me the phone on the hostess stand.
“I'll be right there,” I told Wayne, and I caught something in his eyes—disappoint or aggravation—as I dialed the Appleton Productions answering service.
“Appleton—”
“Just a short message,” I interrupted.
“Go ahead,” the woman on the other end said without missing a beat.
“I may have pests,” I said. “That's all.”
“I may have pests,” she repeated back to me, more professional than the woman from early that morning. “Is that all?”
“It is.”
“And your name and number?”
“No number. The name is A. M.”
“A.M.?”
“Yes. Like the time designation.”
“Yes, ma'am. I'll pass along the message.”
“Thank you.” I hung up the phone and turned to find Wayne waiting for me, close enough to have overheard the call.
“Amy—”
“Let's sit down,” I overrode him. “Please.”
He narrowed his eyes at me but followed the hostess to our table. We sat and took our menus. As soon as she was gone, Wayne dropped his menu on the table. “What is this?” he hissed. “You pulled a gun on me.”
“I didn’t know it was you.” He looked away from me, and I knew it wasn't a good enough answer. “Wayne…” I bit my lip and tried to figure out what to say. “I'm sorry I lied to you.”
“I would hope so.”
“And I—” I swallowed back the rest of what I was going to say as the waitress came over to get our order. “I'll just have coffee,” I said.
Wayne looked at me over the edge of my menu. “You're not getting food?”
“I just ate,” I admitted, and I saw his eyes clearly this time. It was aggravation.
“Spaghetti carbonara,” he ordered. “Extra pepper.”
“And to drink?”
“Water is fine,” Wayne snapped. He held out his menu like a sword. The waitress didn't seem to notice his attitude as she gathered mine and left us alone. The room around us was busy with conversation and movement. Wayne tapped his fingers on the table and looked away from me for a moment. “What were you doing in the kitchen?” he asked.
“Looking for bugs.”
“With a gun?”
I breathed in slowly. “No. That was—”
“Did you think I'd hurt you?” Wayne's voice snapped, and he scraped his nails across the tabletop.
“No!” I nearly shouted. “God. Wayne. No,” I said more quietly. “You're not—” I swallowed back the rest of the sentence. “I know you wouldn't hurt me,” I promised. “You're a good man.”
“What were the clothes?” he asked. There was something hard in his eyes. I'd seen it before, when I'd gone with him to business parties and someone had politely insulted his talents. He was angry, but he didn't want to show it. “Why were those clothes soaking wet in the bathroom?”
“There were bugs in the apartment. The only place to have a conversation without being overheard was the shower.”
Wayne thought about that for a moment. “You didn't have any wet clothes on the mat,” he said.
“No, I didn't,” I agreed. “It was—”
“Don't finish that sentence,” Wayne requested. “I don't want to hear the end of it. There can't be anything that comes out of it that explains it in a way I'll accept.”
I opened my mouth to argue, and then I remembered why we were here. Because I'd lied. Deliberately. For a year. “Nothing happened.”
“Of course not,” Wayne said, scathing. “Just like nothing happened with the A-Team.”
“Wayne—”
He looked away from me, jaw tightening. “I don't—”
“You were packing,” I shot back.
“I thought you'd be there,” he snapped. “I was going to talk to you, but when I called, you weren't there, and when I showed up, you weren't there, and when you did show up, you pulled a gun on me.”
“Not on you. On—” I pressed my hand to my mouth. Wayne watched me.
“You lied to me,” he said. “You purposefully lied to me.”
I didn't respond. The waitress brought my coffee and Wayne's water and walked off again. “I did,” I said after I'd sweetened my coffee. “But only about—”
“About a lot,” Wayne interrupted. “It was one big lie, Amy, but there were a lot of smaller lies wrapped around it.”
“There weren't—”
“You didn't know the A-Team. You'd never met the A-Team. The man who showed up last night wasn't part of the A-Team.” Wayne clenched his jaw. “Except that you know the A-Team, you've met the A-Team, and the man who showed up last night—”
“I get it,” I interrupted. “And I'm not denying it—”
“Denied it long enough,” Wayne muttered.
I clenched my hands around my cup and looked him in the eyes. “I lied to you,” I said, “and I admit that. I can't take back what I did, Wayne, and I'm not expecting you to forget about it.”
He tapped his fingers against his glass. “What do you want from me, Amy?”
“We could try it again,” I offered. “I'll tell you everything,”
“It's not the same.”
“I know.”
Wayne looked away from me. There were couples to our left and right. He had a group of businessmen seated behind his shoulder. I had my back to the wall.
“You said I know everything else,” he said finally, looking at me again. “You only lied about them. Is there anything else I should know?”
“Nothing.” It tasted like a lie in the back of my mouth. I took a drink of coffee. “I'm in love with Murdock,” I corrected myself.
Wayne stared at me, anger and betrayal sliding over his face. “What?”
“I'm in love with Murdock,” I said again.
“Since when?”
“A while.”
“What?”
I took another drink of my coffee. “It wasn't the first time I met him or anything. It…it snuck up on me—”
“I don't want to hear this,” Wayne interrupted. “I don’t want to hear this,” he repeated. He shook his head and pushed his glass aside to put his elbows on the table and put his head in his hands. “Jesus, Amy.”
“We—”
“What did you do in the shower?” he snapped, looking at me. “And what were you doing when he got my clothes wet?”
“Not that,” I snapped in return, angry at the implication. “There were bugs in the apartment. It was the only place to talk.”
“Where were your clothes?”
“I had to actually take a shower for whoever was listening. I didn't know he'd—”
“Please don't,” Wayne interrupted, and I pressed my mouth closed. “Amy…were you in love with him when you met me?”
I didn’t answer right away, considering my phrasing. “Not actively. I'd been in Jakarta, and then I came back, and they weren't talking to me, and Murdock had taken me off his visitors list, and I was trying not to be.” Wayne flinched, and my stomach rolled. “You weren't a replacement. You were—”
“A nice guy,” Wayne cut in. He sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “If he hadn't shown up last night, would you have ever told me?”
“Not on purpose,” I admitted.
“Did they know about me?”
“Wayne, I swear I hadn't talked to them since I left for Jakarta. I didn't have a chance to tell them.”
“If you had, would you?”
I opened my mouth to say yes, to tell him I'd have given them every detail. “If they'd been around,” I said instead, “I probably wouldn't have dated you.”
He stared at me, and I watched him decide to walk away and cut his losses. To get away before it could get worse. “This isn't going to work now,” he said. “Maybe it shouldn't have worked in the first place.”
“It worked,” I argued. “It was nice.”
Wayne scoffed. “Nice. It’s…it’s funny. You’ve used that word to describe me and Murdock and the rest of them. What’s the difference?”
Explosions, I thought. Adventure. An expectation for the unexpected. “It’s just…different.” I shrugged, not wanting to give him the list. Lying to him again, I realized, even if it was to try and spare his feelings. “They’re all just…them.”
Wayne shook his head and pushed himself out of the booth. “I'll take care of your coffee.”
“Wayne—”
“They’re different,” he muttered, shaking his head. “How could I possibly live up to such high expectations?”
I looked down into my coffee. “Thank you for not…” I shook my head and stood up next to him. “I'll get your things packed. You can leave your key when you pick them up.”
He watched my face. I had no idea what he was seeing. “I'll go now if you can give me a few minutes.” I nodded in agreement. “Thanks,” he said and it sounded like it hurt him to say it. He looked at me for a few seconds; I watched him fight himself to say something else. “I would have married you,” he said finally, and his shoulder slumped forward. “I thought you were more sensible than this. I thought you wanted a life.”
I am getting one, I thought. “So did I,” I said instead. I could tell he didn’t believe me. “I'm sorry.”
He walked away without responding, and I sunk back in my seat. I put my head in my hands and thought about what I'd just done, giving up a sure, comfortable thing to possibly get investigated for treason and chased around by Colonel Decker and his men.
“Excuse me, miss, I think you dropped this.”
I lifted my head and eyed the old, slumped man in front of me. He had curly gray hair, a thin mustache, and a tweed sweater with worn elbows. There was a mole on his cheek, and his glasses were nearly falling off his nose. He was holding out a paperback book, and I took it from him. “Hi, Hannibal,” I said quietly.
“Hey, kid.” He winked at me. “Book's a diversion. No bugs at your place. BA and I made a show of showing up and leading Decker's guys on a chase when we saw Wayne walk in.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “Face said you didn't want to get punched.”
“A true excuse is the best excuse,” Hannibal said. He grinned at me. “See you around, kid.”
“Thanks for the book,” I said as he turned and shuffled off, hitting the edge of a table like his eyesight was going. I counted to sixty before I stood up and walked out the front door. It was bright outside, and traffic was picking up as the lunch hour got closer. I could see Hannibal down the block, still shuffling, committing to the role. I turned in the opposite direction and walked down the street, glancing at the display windows to check for a tail as I tried to clear my head and give Wayne time to clear his way out of my life.
I wasn't surprised Wayne had gotten up and left. I would have done the same thing. But my head was still muddled. A year ago, I'd come back and unpacked and made a call. It'd been a different answering service then, a different efficient voice.
“Your message?” she'd asked.
“I'm back in town,” I had said, and I had given my phone number, hung up the phone and waited. Two days, I'd figured, maybe a week if they were on a job.
A week and a half later, I hadn't gotten a message or a visit. I'd called a different answering service and left the same message. Another week and another service. I hadn't wanted to see Murdock until I'd checked in with the team, but I was worried, not sleeping quite right, and so I went to the VA.
“You're not on his visitors list,” the nurse had told me, “I'm afraid you can't see him.”
“What?” I had tried to look around her down the hall. Murdock's room was down the hall, fourth door on the left. “Have there been problems?” I had asked, wondering and worrying what I'd missed while in Jakarta. Had something happened? Was he hurt?
“I can't give you any details on Captain Murdock's care,” the nurse had told me. “You're not on his medical list, either.”
“But—”
“He can still receive mail from you,” she had offered. “You're not banned.”
But I am, I had thought. “Dr. Richter?” I had asked. “Is he around?”
Dr. Richter had given me the same response as the nurse. “Part of Murdock's work is learning to set appropriate boundaries. If he's chosen to remove you from his visitors list, Miss Allen, that is his choice.”
I'd gone home, sat on the couch, and wondered what to do. At work the next morning, I'd scoured the Courier's databases for any recent news on the A-Team. There were a few blurbs of small businesses rescued from under mob rule, property destruction surrounding rumors of crooked businesses trying to harm their employees.
I kept leaving messages, kept trying to track them. Nothing piled into more nothing. Every time I called to try and talk to Murdock, I was told he didn't want to talk. I sent letters, but I got no responses.
A month later, as I started to give up, I was introduced to Wayne at a party, a friend of a friend. He had smiled and nodded and shaken my hand, and at the end of the night, he'd asked me out.
I'd said yes because I didn't know what else to do. They weren't calling. They weren't sending notes. They weren't dropping in. I wasn’t supposed to be the type of woman who sat around waiting for things to happen around me.
So I'd said yes.
Author: Perpetual Motion
Fandom: A-Team (TV)
Pairing: Amy/Murdock
Rating: PG
Word Count: 38060 (Roughly 12,000 words a part)
Summary: A year after Jakarta, Amy's got a nice life, and then it goes sideways.
Dis: Lies and bullshit.
Author's Notes: Many, many thanks to
aithine, who did a fantastic beta job on this monster. And love to lasergirl for enabling me to write this monster. The title comes from the Irving Berlin song "(I Wonder Why) You're Just in Love," which I can completely imagine Murdock singing at top, Ethel-Merman volume to show his affection.Part One
“Miss. Allen.” Colonel Decker stood by the elevator, looking like he'd been there all day. “I asked the doorman, and he said he doesn't remember you leaving.”
“I went out the fire escape,” I told him, trying to reach the call button. Decker tried to step around me, but I used my shoulder and shoved him aside—a trick I'd learned from BA, along with how to rebuild a carburetor. “I met Murdock at a seafood place.” Even without looking, I knew Decker was trying to hide the surprise on his face. “You got taken for a ride, Colonel.”
“Excuse me?”
I glanced over my shoulder. He was standing almost directly perpendicular to me, trying to catch my eye. “They weren't on an assignment last night,” I told him. “Murdock hasn't seen the team in awhile.”
“Miss Allen, I understand that your relationship—”
“It was a ploy, Colonel,” I interrupted him. “Murdock was…” I wasn't sure where to go with the thought. “Seeing if you'd follow,” I finished. “He knows you've been watching.”
“I don't believe you.”
The elevator dinged, and the doors opened. I stepped into the car. “Then don't believe me. I'm very tired, Colonel. I'll be in my apartment the rest of the day.”
“I'm posting someone at the fire escape,” he said as the doors closed.
“Fine,” I agreed, and the doors closed. I sagged against the back of the elevator car. Closing my eyes, I felt every second of sleep I'd missed the night before. The elevator swept up five floors, then dinged to let me know it had reached the sixth. I forced myself upright and walked down the hall. I missed the lock with my key twice before I got the key in and got the door open.
“Hello?” I called when I closed the door, half-expecting someone to answer me. Wayne, maybe. Or Hannibal or Face or BA, here to explain Murdock's actions. My voice echoed back at me, and I felt even more exhausted. I threw my keys on the kitchen table and toed off my sneakers by the door. I half-stumbled down the hall and peeled off my clothes in the doorway of the bedroom, falling face first onto the bed and crawling up to the pillows. The blanket was rucked up at the foot of the bed, and I fumbled for it a few times before getting a grip and pulling it up to my chin. When I closed my eyes, I saw Murdock looking happy, Murdock looking excited. Murdock looking sad for dramatic purposes, and Murdock looking sad for real. And I saw Murdock looking at me time and again, everything he was feeling plain in his eyes. And I saw myself, in a weird third-person view, staring back with the same look in my eyes.
Because I'd fallen in love with the crazy man. Because I was obviously unhinged.
I turned over, rearranged my pillow, and took in a deep breath to feel every tired part of my body. Fall asleep, I told myself. Fall asleep.
I did. How quickly, I wasn't sure. When I woke up, the slant of the light in my bedroom told me it was late afternoon, and the phone was ringing. It was Wayne, I thought, checking to make sure I was okay.
“I'm fine,” I answered the phone, not even sitting up in bed. “I just need to get some sleep.”
There was a pause on the other end of the phone, but I could hear someone breathing. “That's great,” the voice said, and it took a moment for my half-awake brain to place the voice. Face. “But I'm not calling to check on you.”
I sat straight up in bed, my tiredness wiped away in a spike of adrenaline. “They—”
“They're not,” he interrupted. “We swept your apartment after you left to meet Murdock.”
I couldn't think of anything to say for a moment. “What? How?”
“Well, you scaring off the guard by your apartment door helped, and the fact that they didn't plant someone at the fire escape helped more.” Face sounded like he was on the verge of laughing. “How you been, Amy?”
His tone—interested but not too interested—snapped me beyond adrenaline-awake and into full-awake. “How have I been? How have I been? Are you out of your damned mind, Face?”
“I think we both know you're talking to the wrong—”
“Shut up,” I snapped. I was rewarded with absolute silence on the other end of the line. “What the hell do you think you're doing? Calling me now?”
“I thought I'd—”
“Face,” I warned, “not right now.”
There was more silence on the line. “Murdock had the best intentions,” Face said after a long pause. “I'm not saying that led to him doing anything reasonable, but we both know—”
“Stop,” I ordered. “If there is anyone on the team willing to forgive Murdock his weirdness, it's me.”
“That's…true.” Face said slowly.
“And if there is anyone in the world who can see through the bull the four of you layer so well, that is also me. So cut it.” Face said nothing for a few seconds, and something pinged in my head. “Wait, did you say you swept my apartment?”
“Yeah.”
“And when did you do this?” I asked.
“After you left—” Face cut off, and I listened to him swear under his breath.
“You were in on this,” I said. “You and BA and Hannibal were all in on this, weren't you?”
“Amy—”
“What the hell, Face?” I had more, but I couldn't put it into words, so angry I was seeing spots in front of my eyes.
“Amy,” Face paused, waiting for me to stop him again.
“What?” I asked into the silence. “Am I supposed to be flattered, Face? You don’t contact me for a damned year, and I'm supposed to be thrilled you're contacting me now?”
There was a series of hushed whispers on the other end of the line. I listened to the phone get passed off. “Kid,” Hannibal said. “We need to talk.”
“You think? My God, Hannibal, you've gotten astute in your old age.”
“Careful, kid,” Hannibal's tone carried plenty of warning. “We wouldn't call you if—”
“You haven't called me,” I interrupted. “Not once. No matter how often I've tried to get into contact with you.” Hannibal didn't reply. “And I swear, Hannibal, if you even think of passing the phone to BA, I will hang up on you.”
“Wouldn't dream of it,” Hannibal replied, unflappable as always. “He's driving.”
Driving? Oh, hell. “How close are you?” I asked, dropping my head into the hand not holding the phone.
“Sixteen blocks,” Hannibal replied. “Anything we should know?”
I thought about Decker, wondering if he and his men had left yet. I stood up from the bed and looked out over the fire escape. I spotted a man in uniform down on the ground. I considered not telling Hannibal, but even in my anger, I couldn't set them up to get caught. My frustration was no reason to send them to federal prison. “Decker and his men are still here,” I told him. “One at the fire escape, probably another in the hallway, and Decker said he'd be in front of the elevator the rest of the day.”
Hannibal hummed in thought. “Better start some coffee, Amy. We'll be there in twenty.”
“Of course you will,” I replied, and I heard Hannibal chuckle as he hung up the phone. I moved away from the window to hang up the phone and reached for my jeans and shirt. The front door opened as I walked down the hallway, and I froze, pressing against the wall. It could be Decker, coming to poke around.
“Hon?” Wayne called as he closed and locked the door behind him. “You here?”
I gritted my teeth as I pushed off the wall. “I'm here,” I said and smiled as he kissed my cheek. “I was just going to make some coffee.”
“Did you get any sleep today?” he asked as he set down his briefcase and peeled off his coat.
“Some.” I emptied the coffee grounds from that morning into the wastebasket and considered how to tell Wayne that the guys were stopping by. “I thought you'd be working later.”
“Given the day I've had and the day you've had, I thought I'd come home on time for once,” Wayne explained from down the hall.
I started fresh coffee and pulled down mugs as I listened to Wayne walk into the bathroom and turn on the faucet. I heard the water turn off and braced myself as Wayne walked back down the hall. When I turned from the counter, he was standing next to the island, brow furrowed, a bundle of soggy clothes in one hand. “Wayne?” I asked.
“These are the clothes I loaned Bob,” he said. His voice was quiet. He looked at me, the furrow between his eyebrows getting deeper. “Why were they on the floor of the bathroom?”
Oh, hell. “Wayne—”
“Did the tub leak?”
“No.”
He looked at the clothes, then back at me, then back at the clothes. I held my breath, not sure how to segue from Murdock and me in the shower to telling him the guys were stopping by in—I glanced at the microwave clock—sixteen minutes. Wayne dropped the clothes on the counter and crossed his arms. He looked at the clothes. “Bob isn't Bob, is he?”
My breath rushed out of me. “No.” I clenched my fingers on the counter. “He—”
“Is he—”
“That was Murdock,” I pushed out. “And the other guys are coming by in about fifteen minutes.” My heart hammered in my chest while Wayne stared at me.
“What?”
“Hannibal and Face and BA,” I explained. “They're going to be here in about fifteen minutes. They need to talk to me about Murdock.”
“And you—” Wayne threw up his arms. “Amy!” he shouted. “You said you didn't know them!”
“I know!” I shouted back. “I know,” I said more quietly. “Wayne, honey, I'm sorry, but…” I couldn't find the words.
“They're criminals,” Wayne said after a few seconds. “They're wanted felons. What kind of attachment do you have to them?”
“They're good people,” I argued. “They're—”
“Here,” Hannibal announced as he, Face, and BA walked down the hall. Wayne jumped and tried to backpedal away from them. Hannibal put a hand on his shoulder before he could get far. “You must be Wayne,” he said, holding out his hand. “Hannibal Smith. Nice to meet you.”
Wayne blinked. He glanced at me. When he looked back at Hannibal, Hannibal smiled wider. “Nice to meet you,” Wayne parroted back, but he didn’t shake Hannibal's hand. “Listen—”
“Wayne, hi, I'm Templeton Peck,” Face said, sliding around Hannibal, shaking Wayne's hand, and leading him away from the conversation in one smooth motion.
I crossed my arms as Hannibal and BA turned to smile at me. “Twenty minutes?”
“Window lock wasn't a challenge,” BA explained.
“And the guard?”
Hannibal shrugged as he removed his gloves. I got a whiff of blasting powder. Of course. “How much—”
“It was minor,” Hannibal assured me. “Just a diversion to get him to look away.”
Before I could retort, BA stepped forward and curled a hand on my shoulder. “Good to see you.”
I wanted to hug him, tease him about buying me a better lock and the actual size of the explosion, try to tease him into confessing that they'd been downstairs casing the place when they'd called. I pushed the urge aside. “Murdock's not with you?” I asked. “I would have thought he'd lead the charge through my window like a knight in dented armor.”
“Crazyman stayed home,” BA explained. “Thinks you're mad at him.” He crossed his arms and glared at me.
I met him with a glare of my own. “That's because I am.”
“No, you're not,” Hannibal told me. “You're mad at us.”
“No, Hannibal, I'm fairly certain I'm mad at Murdock.”
“You ain't,” BA told me.
I huffed out a breath and put my hands on my hips. “No, I'm mad at Murdock. Who showed up, turned everything sideways, and led to Wayne having to answer a bunch of questions he didn't know he was ever going to be asked.”
“You didn't tell him about us?” Face asked as he walked up to the conversation. He tilted his head towards Wayne, and BA walked over to loom over him.
“That's completely unnecessary,” I hissed. “He doesn't need BA treating him like a suspect.”
“He does,” Face disagreed. “He's squirrelly, Amy. He'd probably bolt if we stopped watching him.”
“I can't possibly imagine why,” I replied, sarcasm as thick as I could make it. “It's not like he's spent the whole day down the damned rabbit hole.”
“Let's calm down,” Hannibal said, holding up a hand. “We're here to check in, kid. Make sure you're all right.”
“Make sure I'm all right? Or make sure I'm not going to finally grow sane again and decide to turn you over to Decker?”
“Both,” Face said with a grin meant to ease the tension. “But more the first than the second. We trust you. You know that.”
I snorted. “Trust. Yeah. I've really been seeing that since I got back into town.”
“Easy now,” Hannibal said. He pointed a finger at me. “We had our reasons for keeping you out of the loop.”
“I've heard it.” I snapped. “Safety. Protection. Letting me have my own life. It's a great story. Really.”
“You're the one who left,” Face pointed out. His face was smooth, the anger only in his voice.
I pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead. Across the room, Wayne tried to see around BA. BA stepped over to block his view. “Do any of you not have abandonment issues?” I asked. Face's neutral expression quivered, then held. My stomach knotted, and I turned away from them, started pouring coffee. “Face, that's not—”
“It's a fair hit,” Face interrupted. He took the coffee I handed him and pulled me into a side hug, kissing me on top of my head. “Missed you.”
My anger dissipated into pieces I couldn't reassemble. Face had always been a cheat, and the admission and the hug and the kiss were a too powerful combination. “Yeah, yeah,” I groused and handed Hannibal a cup of coffee of his own. “I tried to get ahold of you.”
“We know,” Hannibal said, taking a sip of his coffee and nodding at the taste. “And we chose to ignore you.”
“I'm a big girl, Colonel. I can make my own decisions.”
“And we're big boys. We make our own decisions sometimes, too,” Hannibal replied.
“You left,” Face said, “and we decided to give you a break, let you have your full life back.”
“I didn't—”
“Is it so bad?” Hannibal interrupted, glancing over his shoulder to Wayne and BA. Wayne was still trying to sidle around BA and not making progress. “Seems like a nice guy.”
“We vetted him,” Face told me. “Not even a parking ticket.”
“You—” Of course they had. I sighed and poured another cup of coffee, nudged Face out of the way so I could get a bottle of fruit juice from the fridge. I walked across the living room and handed the coffee to Wayne and the fruit juice to BA.
“Thanks,” BA said, twisting off the cap. “You done bein' mad?”
“Working on it,” I told him. I looked at Wayne, put my hand on his arm while I handed him his coffee. “Today's been a mess.”
Wayne looked at me askance as he sipped his coffee. “Yeah,” he agreed. “I noticed.”
“Let's all sit down,” I offered. “Let's talk through this.”
“Amy—” Wayne started, but Face and Hannibal were already sitting in the arm chairs, and BA was sitting on one end of the couch. “Amy,” he said more quietly, “I don't care for this. You never told me—”
“I know, but I'm trying to tell you now.”
He tapped his fingers on his coffee mug and glanced around the room, not quite looking at BA, Hannibal, or Face. “Amy—”
“Please.”
He clenched his fingers on his mug and breathed out hard. “Why didn't you ever tell me?”
I looked at the guys. Hannibal smiled at me. Face gave me a nod. BA huffed and uncrossed his arms. “They're my friends,” I said to Wayne, turning to look at him again. “But it's hard to explain to people.”
“We've been together for almost a year!” Wayne shouted. Face and BA both jumped up. I held up a hand, and they both stopped moving. Wayne looked at them, then back at me. He clenched his fingers tighter around his mug and swore under his breath. “Jesus, Amy, what else don't I know? What else don't you trust me with?”
“It's not—”
“It is.” Wayne stepped around me and stormed into the kitchen. I shook my head at Face when he moved to intercept him.
Go after him, I thought, but I couldn't move. I stood in the middle of the living room and listened to Wayne slam his coffee cup into the sink, listened to him open and close cabinets and mutter under his breath.
“So,” Face said as the sounds petered off. “How's things?”
“Face,” I muttered, and I ducked my head to hide my smile at his singsong tone. If Wayne walked back in and I was smiling, everything would get even worse.
Wayne walked back into the living room and stopped short, like he'd forgotten the guys were in the room. He looked at each of them in turn then ran his hands through his hair and stared at me. “What else?” he asked. “What else don't I know?”
“Nothing,” I promised. “This was it.”
“This,” Wayne snorted, waving a hand at the room in general. “How long has this been in your life?”
“For the record,” Hannibal interjected, “we haven't been in her life recently.”
“You said you didn't know them,” Wayne said, ignoring Hannibal. “You said you tried to hire them, and that you spent time with the other one—”
“Murdock,” I filled in automatically.
“Murdock,” Wayne spat out, “because he was nice.”
“He is nice.”
Wayne stared at me. “And me?” he asked. “Am I some sort of cover for you? A respectable guy so you can keep this secret?”
“Hey, now,” BA interrupted, walking over to Wayne and crowding him into the wall. “You don't say those things to a lady, you hear me? Amy's classy. If she likes you, it's because she likes you.”
Wayne looked scared for a moment, then it wiped off his face. “Classy? I had a damned colonel in my office today threatening me with a treason charge. What kind of classy person knows people who could get her arrested for treason?”
“BA!” I shouted as BA reached for Wayne's shirtfront. “Don't.”
“He's talkin' sass.”
“Don't,” I repeated. I strode over to him, pulled at his forearm where it rested in the air. “He has a fair point.”
“He don't. You're—”
“Back away,” I interrupted.
BA frowned at me, growled at Wayne, and did as I asked. Wayne shook his head and stepped away from me, close to the door. I slid around him to block his way.
“Let me out,” he said.
“No.” I pressed myself against the door and clenched one hand over the knob. “Wayne, please. I know it's a lot to take in, and I know there’s a lot I didn't tell you, but you can't storm out of here. They'll know. There are guards around the building. If you storm out, they'll know they're here.”
Wayne's jaw twitched. “Amy,” he said slowly, “think about what you just said. Think about the ultimatum you just gave me.”
“I didn't—”
“You just chose them,” he said. “By telling me I can't leave, you just chose them.”
Oh, God. I slumped against the door and stared down at the floor. “I didn't—”
“I'm leaving.” Wayne announced. He looked over his shoulder at the guys then back at me. “I'll…” He shook his head and grimaced. “I'll do it quietly, okay? I just…I can't be here right now. I can't be here with…” He waved a hand behind him. “If I stay here, it's just going to degenerate into a lot of terrible things.”
“Wayne.” I looked him in the eyes, and he looked at me right back. I unclenched my hand from around the knob and stood up a little straighter. “You're a really nice guy,” I told him. “I appreciate that.”
He huffed a laugh, low and self-derisive, “Yeah, that and a good haircut.”
“Wayne—”
“I'll be at my place,” he said. “I'll call you tomorrow. I won't…” He looked over his shoulder again, met everyone's eyes this time. “I'm not squirrelly,” he said. “I'm not going to run and tell.”
“Thank you,” I murmured, and I reached out to touch his arm. He let me. Face tapped him on the shoulder and handed him his briefcase. Hannibal and BA both gave him a nod. “Thank you,” I said again as I stepped away from the door.
“You've got a headache,” Wayne said as he opened the door. “I'll call you tomorrow, see how you feel.”
“I love you,” I murmured.
“Yeah,” Wayne breathed out, and he walked out of the apartment.
I left the door open a crack and listened to him walk to the elevator. I didn't close the door until I heard him get on. When I turned around, Face, Hannibal, and BA all gave me sympathetic looks. “There's whiskey in the cupboard over the sink,” I said to Face. “Make me a drink.”
Face walked into the kitchen, and I slumped on the couch, hands over my eyes. I felt the couch sag on either side of me, and I felt BA's arm come around me. When I looked up, Face was walking back into the living room, a collection of drink glasses balanced in his hands. Hannibal, Face, and myself all took the whiskey. BA took the water.
“Lies of omission don't count,” Face said as he sat on the coffee table, leaning forward to make sure I could see his eyes. “If Wayne didn't ask, it's not your job to tell him.”
“Who asks, 'Oh, by the way, do you regularly hang out with felons,’ Face?” I sipped my whiskey while Face shrugged in reply. “And that's not the point, anyway.”
“There's a difference between someone not askin' and someone not sayin' on purpose,” BA interjected. “Amy tellin' him nothin' at all tells me she meant to hold it back.”
Face shrugged again. “So what? It's one piece of information he doesn't have. Everything else she ever told him was true. That should count for something.”
BA crossed his arms. “You either trust someone or you don't.”
“Gentlemen,” Hannibal broke in, giving my shoulder a nudge. “Perhaps we should let the lady speak for herself.”
I gave Hannibal a half-grin and sipped my whiskey again. “The lady doesn't have a lot to say.” I gestured between Face and BA. “You're both right. If Wayne doesn't ask questions, it's not my job to inform him on every single thing that's ever happened to me—”
“Spoken like a very good reporter,” Hannibal interrupted.
“But,” I continued, throwing Hannibal an annoyed look, “I kept it from Wayne with purposeful intent, and nothing done with intent can be said to be an accident.”
“Spoken like a lawyer,” Face said with a roll of his eyes.
“Learned a lot about the law running around with you,” I replied, swatting at his leg. Face grinned, but BA and Hannibal said nothing. Silence settled around us, and I stared into my drink. “He's a nice guy,” I said without looking up. “He didn't deserve to get all this dumped on him without warning.”
“So why not tell him?” Hannibal asked. “You trusted him enough to let him walk out of here tonight; why not trust him enough before now?”
“Because,” I said, and finished my drink in a gulp. Because Wayne had started out as a diversion, someone to keep me company until the team decided I could join them again. “I thought you'd come back before now,” I said. “I thought you'd take the hint when I tried to find you when I got back. And when you didn't, Wayne seemed like the opposite.”
“Law-abiding, good looking, and making his way comfortably up the corporate ladder?” Face asked.
“Steady,” BA added. “Not gonna jump and run.”
“And smart,” Hannibal finished off. “Our Amy doesn't go for the dumb ones.”
I snorted. “So, I'm one of you again, am I?” Anger simmered in me, and I put my tumbler next to Face's leg. “Am I supposed to be glad this has happened?” I asked. “You're here now, and you've helped run off Wayne, so now we can go on adventures, right? Now that you know for certain I'm not going to—”
“Hold on a minute,” Hannibal interrupted, warning in his tone. “We didn't show up to screw things up with you and him.”
“Your timing just happens to be excellent,” I stood up and walked around them all, flicking back the curtain at the picture window to look out over the scenery. “How long have you been planning this? How much time did you four put in to come up with this crazy idea?”
“Wasn't us,” BA said, his voice almost a growl. “We're playin' clean up.”
I'd only pushed the curtain over far enough to see out. I couldn't see their reflections in the window. I couldn't give Decker or his men a chance to spot them. I turned around, pulling the curtain tight against the window frame. “For what? Walking in when Wayne was here?”
“For Murdock,” Hannibal told me.
“We weren't in on the plan at the start,” Face added. “Most of what happened today was pure Murdock.”
“Crazyman wanted to see you, so Crazyman came up with a reason.” BA scowled. “And we're the ones gettin' yelled at for it.”
“Murdock called us early this afternoon,” Hannibal said in his debriefing voice. “He gave us the broad strokes, mentioned you'd been bugged, so we thought we'd come over and double-check the place for you.”
“Then, he called a little while later and told us how badly things went at the restaurant,” Face picked up. “And as he's back at the VA—”
“Under heavy guard,” Hannibal interjected.
“We came as proxies.” Face finished. “With absolutely no ulterior motive regarding Wayne or your relationship.”
“Murdock feels bad,” BA added. “He wants to apologize.”
I couldn't figure out what to say for a few seconds. “You don't answer my calls,” I finally said. “You don't answer my requests through Mr. Lee, and now you're here, and I'm…” I shook my head and had to swallow down a laugh at the sheer weirdness of it. “I don't know what to do. The plan hasn't come together.”
“So what?” Hannibal asked, beaming at me. “Maybe this isn't the final stage of the plan. Maybe this is the middle stage of the plan.”
“Hell of a climax for the middle of the plan,” I replied. “You three coming in the window, Wayne storming out, me getting an explanation of what the hell's happened today.”
Hannibal shrugged. “End of the second act, kid. There's a whole act to go.”
I looked at the three of them and let some of the laughter escape. “God, I can't do this right now. There's…I don't have the tolerance built up for this level of weirdness anymore.”
“We should go,” Hannibal said, standing. Face and BA followed his example. They all walked over to me, hugged me, and started to walk down the hall towards the bedroom.
“Is it because you didn't trust me?” I asked as Face pushed the window open and glanced out. “Did you refuse to answer because you didn't trust me?”
They all stared at me for a moment. It was BA who finally answered. “Fool,” he muttered. “Wouldn't be here we thought we couldn't trust you.”
“We took a vote,” Hannbial explained, throwing one leg over my windowsill. “And we agreed, as a team, to give you a real chance at a regular life, to not pull you back in just because you thought you wanted to.”
“Murdock…” I started but didn't know how to finish.
“We made him take your name off the list,” Face said. He grimaced. “It didn't work, obviously.” He followed Hannibal out the window, stepping down the fire escape ladder to the floor below.
“BA, let's go,” Hannibal said, following Face down.
BA stuck both legs out the window and turned to look at me. “Crazyman's crazy,” he said. “Doesn't mean he don't mean the things he says and does.” He pushed himself out of the window and was headed down the fire escape before I could answer.
I closed the window after them and flipped the lock, watched Face jump from the fire escape and tackle the soldier on watch. I watched them until they slipped down an alley and vanished from sight.
*
I spent the night rolling around in bed, dozing on and off but not really sleeping. The clock rolled over to five o'clock, and I called it off, slid out of bed and walked down the hall to the kitchen. I half-expected Wayne to be there, standing at the counter and eating a light breakfast before going out jogging, but the kitchen was dark. I opened the fridge to search for something to eat. On the top shelf, leaning against the milk carton, there was a small stuffed dog. It had a note wrapped around its neck.
Sorry.
HMM
I stared at it, then closed the fridge. When I opened it again, it was still there. I closed the fridge again and forced myself to take a deep breath. I picked up the phone and dialed one of the team lines from memory. After the third ring, the line was picked up.
“This is the answering service for Appleton Productions. May I take a message please?”
“My name is Amy,” I said. “Just a short message.”
“Certainly, Miss. Please go ahead.”
“Did you know about the dog in the fridge?”
There was a pause. “Beg your pardon, Miss?”
“That's it,” I told her. “Just that.”
There was another pause. “The message I'll be relaying is, 'Did you know about the dog in the fridge?' Is this correct?”
“Perfect.”
“And a number where you can be reached?”
“They have it.” I hung up before the woman could ask if I was certain. I started the coffee and cracked a couple of eggs into a skillet. Whether the team got back to me or not, the day was going to be a bad one, and I could hear BA in my head, reminding me that breakfast was what got you going for the whole day.
The phone rang as I was folding the eggs into an omelet, and I fumbled the receiver off the hook. “Hello?”
“A dog in the fridge?” Face asked, sounding only half awake. “Please tell me it wasn't alive.”
“Stuffed,” I said. “A toy,” I clarified when it sounded like Face was choking back shock. “I know he's crazy,” I reminded him. “But come on.”
“Murdock's idea of a gift can get weird,” Face pointed out.
I opened the fridge and looked at the dog again. “Did you leave it here before you left?” I asked. “Was it part of the plan?”
Face didn't say anything for nearly a minute. “I wish,” he finally said. “Because now you're going to go yell at him, aren't you?”
“For breaking into my apartment in the dead of night? Yeah, I'm going to yell at him.”
“Hmm.”
“What?”
“Meet me for breakfast,” Face said. His tone was open and warm.
“What aren't you telling me?” I asked.
“Amy—”
“I know that tone,” I told him. “You're trying to distract me.”
“I am not.”
I rolled my eyes. “Face.”
He sighed. “Meet me for breakfast,” he repeated, and this time his tone was rueful. “I'll buy you waffles.”
“Why not just tell me now?”
“Because I have to commit a minor theft in order to explain things properly.”
I laughed. I couldn't help it. It was everything I remembered in a single sentence. There was a plan, but in order for the plan to work, something at least mildly illegal needed to happen. “Fine,” I agreed. “Where?”
“There's a doughnut shop two blocks from your apartment. It should be busy pretty soon. Go in and buy a cup of coffee. There's a side exit that puts you into an alley that'll get you over to the next block. I'll pick you up there.”
“Doughnut shop,” I repeated. “Two blocks down.” I clicked off the burner and moved the pan to a cool burner. “Haven't seen you in over a year, and you have my neighborhood mapped?”
Face cleared his throat. I could see him in my mind's eye, smoothing the front of his shirt and trying not to fidget. “We might have kept an eye on you.”
I shook my head. “Of course,” I muttered. “You're explaining that, too.”
“Give me an hour,” Face said. “Side door of the shop.”
“I'll remember,” I promised. I put the phone back on the cradle and checked the time. 5:27. I walked to the bedroom and checked down the fire escape. There were two soldiers on-duty on the ground. Not surprising, considering the team had tackled whoever had been on-duty last night. I'd have to go out the front door.
The soldier by the elevator looked me over as I walked up to him a half-hour later. “Ma'am—” he started, but cut off when I held up a hand.
“Am I under investigation?”
He blinked at me. “I beg your pardon?”
“Does Colonel Decker have me under investigation for something, or are you here guarding me against a threat?”
“I can't disclose—”
“Then you can't ask me questions,” I continued. “In fact, I'd report you for trespassing if I wasn't certain the colonel was nearby to come up with an explanation.”
He blinked again. It was possible, working for someone with the power of Decker, that he'd never had someone get in his face about the actions of his superior. “My orders are to watch the door,” he said after a moment. “And inquire as to where you're going.”
“What if I don't tell you?” I asked.
“I don't have orders for that. The colonel…” He trailed off.
“The colonel assumed I would be willing to share, yes?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“I'm not. I'm trying to live my life, and I'm trying to do it around a set of accusations that have led to my boyfriend questioning my honesty.”
“We know—” he bit his lip. I took a moment to look him over. He was young, maybe twenty or twenty-one. He wasn't scared of me in the least, but he wanted to tell me something he shouldn't. He was nice, I decided. He followed orders and did his job, and he was a nice guy who didn't want someone to be ambushed if they weren't really an enemy. “I shouldn't tell you anything,” he said, and he straightened his shoulders.
I considered pressing him for the information. I could get it, I was certain, but it wasn't right. For as long as the guys had been on the run, they still thought of themselves as military men, and I'd gained respect for all that stood for in the time I'd spent with them. The man in front of me was a good soldier because he didn't want to give me information, and he was fighting the natural urge to cut me a break.
“I'm getting breakfast,” I told him, keeping my tone annoyed. “And then I'm going to work. You need my number there to check up on me?”
“No, ma'am.”
They had somebody posted, then. “Have a good day,” I said as I pressed the button for the elevator. He didn’t respond, and it was only as the doors closed behind me that I saw him talk into a wrist mike. They'd be tailing me. I'd have to be extra-careful slipping out of the doughnut shop.
I made a point to meander on my way to the shop, stopping to look into display windows. At the third window, I spotted him in my reflection. A man in his twenties, striped polo shirt and khaki pants. His shoes gave him away, shined too bright for a civilian. They'd given me a plainclothes tail in the hopes that I wouldn't notice. Decker and I didn't get along, but I had to give him credit for his appreciation of my intelligence. The thought made me grin as I stepped into the doughnut shop and got in line for coffee. My tail didn't follow me in. I wondered if he was checking alternate exits or radioing my location to get backup.
“What'll it be?” the teenager at the counter asked.
“Coffee. Black.” I ordered and moved to the side. I pushed my way toward the wall, away from the counter and into a small shadow so I could get a good vantage point on the door. The man in the striped polo walked in a few seconds later, scanning the room for me. I looked at a sketch on the wall, the glass in the frame reflective enough I could track him. I saw him spot me and then move closer.
“Coffee! Black!” the teenager at the counter called. I pressed forward and got my coffee. “Restroom?” I asked.
“In the back, next to the kitchen,” he said, jerking a thumb as he turned away from me.
I couldn't watch my tail as I walked to the bathrooms. There was a line at the women's room, and I stood at the back, looking out towards the front of the shop. My tail was ordering at the counter. He was looking at the menu, but I was certain he could see me in his peripheral vision. I wouldn't shake him just going into the bathroom. I'd have to come up with a better plan.
“What’s the hold up?” I said, half under my breath, but loud enough to get the woman in front of me to glance over. “I've never been here,” I told her, giving her a sheepish smile. “Is it a single stall?”
She nodded. “Oh, yeah. This place used to be nothing until the tourists found it.” She sized me up, looking for, I imagined, any telltale signs of tourism.
“Damnit,” I muttered and gave her a rueful look. “One broken coffee maker…”
She snorted in agreement and fell silent. I didn't push her. A single stall bathroom could give me a chance to sneak out. All I needed was a window.
Ten minutes later, as my tail ate the last of his doughnut and pretended not to be looking my way, I made it into the bathroom. There was a toilet, a sink, and a window. It was up high and covered in wire mesh. I put my coffee on the edge of the sink and dug into my purse. Wallet. Keys. Lipstick. Powder. Swiss Army knife.
Bingo.
It had been a gift from the team, A super-deluxe Swiss Army knife, complete with a tiny pair of wire cutters. I inspected the mesh. It covered the whole window but was only connected at the four corners. I balanced on the lid of the toilet and snapped the wires, throwing the mesh to the floor as I pushed against the window. It stuck; there were three layers of paint on the sill. Someone rapped on the door and jiggled the knob. I shoved my shoulder against the window, and it gave, cracking open an inch. Another hard shove with my hands, and it opened fully, pointing straight out.
The trick to slithering through a window, Murdock had taught me, was not sucking in. Breathing in expanded the chest cavity, making you wider than you actually were. I pushed all the air out of my lungs and shoved myself through feet first. I dangled above the ground, trying to find a foothold on the side of the building. Someone grabbed my legs, and I kicked out.
“Easy,” Face called up to me. “It's just me.”
I went limp, letting him take my weight and lead me to the ground. “Sorry,” I said when we were face-to-face. “I've got a tail.”
“Thought you might.” He grinned as he looked up at the window. “Nice escape.” He grabbed my hand and led me across the street to a gold sports car, opening the door and helping me in. He jogged around to the driver's side and got in, checking the mirrors as he started the engine. “What'd he look like?”
“Mid-twenties, striped polo and khakis. There may have been more than one.”
Face pulled out of the parking space, reached over and pushed down on the top of my head. I slid down the seat until my head couldn't be seen out the window. “I think we're okay, but stay down there for a minute.” He rounded a corner, stopped briefly, then rounded another corner. “All right,” he said. “You can come up.”
I pulled myself up and straightened my shirt. “Where are we going?” I asked. “You promised me waffles.”
“I did,” he agreed, and he took at exit for the highway. “Probably best we're not in the city, though.” He reached over as he merged, popped the button for the glove box. “Brought you something to read.”
I looked into the glove box. There was a file folder, and I pulled it out. Written on the tab in careful print letters was a name:
Murdock, H.M. Captain
It couldn't be. I turned the folder over in my hands, not opening it. “Face—”
“He's in love with you,” Face interrupted. “Has been for years. You should know what you're getting into.”
“Face—”
“Amy.” He glanced away from the rode to give me a brief, serious look. “I know he's a goof, but he's not—”
“I know,” I cut him off. “I—”
“You think you know,” Face interrupted again, “but it's not—”
“Face.” The way I said his name, hard on the 'c,' made him stop short. He glanced at me again, and I looked down at the file. “Was this the theft?” I asked.
“The latest copy I had was a few months old. I thought you'd want the most up-to-date version.”
I shook my head, pressed the file against my lap. “Does he know you look at it?”
Face didn't look at me. We were going in a straight line down the highway. “Not exactly,” he admitted after a pause. “He gave me permission a long time ago to keep informed, but it's been awhile since I mentioned it to him.”
I looked down at the file again. “Why did you…”
Face didn't answer for nearly a mile. I rode it staring out the windshield, the file heavy in my lap. “You're in love with him,” Face finally said. He held up a hand before I could argue. “I read people for a living, Amy, and I'm accurate. You've got a great job, a great apartment, and a great boyfriend, and from the moment Murdock showed up the other night, you made decisions that placed him higher on the chain of importance than any of that.”
“I…” I clenched my hands on top of the folder. “I care about Wayne,” I said. “I love Wayne.”
“Wayne's a good guy,” Face replied. “And you do love him.” He turned onto an access road, slowing the car down with careful pressure to the brakes. “But there's love and there's love.”
I looked at him, watched him watch the road. His window was cracked, a few strands of his hair blowing in the breeze. “If you're going to say it, say it,” I challenged him. “You don't have to scam me into anything.”
Face glanced at me again, then back at the road. “You left, and we accepted that, and when you came back and tried to reach us, we chose to ignore you.”
“I know all this,” I reminded him.
“Let me finish.” He waited a few seconds to make sure he had my attention. “But we couldn't fully ignore you. You'd been part of the team, stuck around a lot longer than we'd expected, and we ended up liking you a lot. Murdock…” Face shook his head and ran a hand through his hair. “Murdock fell in love with you. Hard. When you came back, and we told him he had to take you off the visitors list to protect you, he…” Face shook his head and didn't speak for a minute, pulling the car into a gravel lot in front of a red and white building with the word “Waffles” painted on the front. “He made demands,” Face finally said, looking over at me. He turned off the car and kept looking at me. “We had to keep an eye, he said, and make sure you were all right. So we did.”
“You—” I tried to get out more, but Face shook his head.
“Amy, if I don't say it now, I won't. This is entirely more emotion than I care to share, okay?”
I pressed my lips together and nodded, curling my hands into tighter fists.
“We didn’t follow you everywhere, okay? But we paid attention some. When you moved, we vetted the neighborhood. When you started dating Wayne, we vetted him, too. And we were going to leave it at that, except…” Face shrugged. “Murdock.”
I almost smiled at the fondness in it, but I fought it back. “That was it?” I asked. “You all decided how I should live my life, and that's it?”
Face shrugged. “We're all a bit old-fashioned,” he admitted. “A proper lady should get a proper life, and you're a proper lady.”
I rolled my eyes. “Who can shoot any number of automatic and semi-automatic weapons.”
“Being a well-trained lady doesn’t make you less of a proper lady,” Face argued.
“How flattering,” I deadpanned. “You saw right through my modern woman disguise. I should bake you a victory pie.”
Face had the good sense to look abashed. “We were trying to help,” he said. “We didn't want you…regretting us.”
“Regretting you?”
“For taking you away from the life you wanted,” Face explained. “For making you a fugitive through coercion.”
I considered slapping him across the face. Or maybe punching him in the jaw. BA had taught me how to do it without breaking my fingers. The trick was to put the power in your arm. “When, precisely, did any of you coerce me to do anything, Face?”
“I’m not saying—”
“You are too saying,” I interrupted him, my voice rising. “I blackmailed you if you'll recall. I chose to run around and get shot at if you'll recall. I decided to lie to Lynch and Decker if you'll recall. There was no damned coercion, okay? I made my own decisions, and I had a right to make them again.”
Face curled a hand over one of my fists, gave it a squeeze. “I know,” he agreed. “And Hannibal and BA and Murdock know, but we…we're protectors, Amy. And given the choice between letting you be fully free of possible treason charges and making room for you in the van again, it was a no-brainer. You're safer without us.”
“I don't want to be safe!” I nearly yelled. The silence after it was heavy. I swallowed hard. “That's not what I meant.”
Face squinted at me, sizing me up. “Let's get some food,” he said. “We'll talk after we eat.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, and I got out of the car. It was only as we were sitting down that I realized I was still holding Murdock's file. I pushed it to the far end of the booth, against the wall, and didn’t look at it while I ordered coffee and waffles and bacon. “Where are the others?” I asked after the waitress bought our coffee. “I'm surprised you're alone.”
“BA figured it was best we not put you in a van with lots of guns and ammunitions.”
“And Hannibal?”
“Hannibal's filming next week. He didn't want to show up to set with a black eye.”
I smirked. “So they sent you.”
“I'd have come anyway.”
I stirred my coffee and listened to the noise around us. There was a couple having a quiet argument over my shoulder. To the left there was a family, the tired slump of their shoulders telling me they'd been on the road. There was no one behind Face. He'd picked a booth that let him put his back to the wall.
“Amy?” Face asked, his eyebrows up, asking the rest of the question.
I glanced at the file. “I know Murdock has issues. What do you think I don't know?”
Face breathed out hard, but he didn't break eye contact. “Nothing, probably, given your friendship with him. You've seen his bad days, right?”
I had. Murdock went quiet on his bad days, rolled into a ball on his bed, a pillow under his chin. Sometimes it happened on the days I'd come by to take him to lunch. I had always sat on the edge of the bed, one hand on his back, not saying anything, just breathing in and out with him. “I've been there,” I said. “Did you think I hadn't?”
Face shook his head. “Most of the time, he's some version of himself. The up-beat, twitchy, multi-voiced weirdo that he is.” He looked away from me and closed his eyes just a little longer than a blink. “You would have liked him back in the war. Tone him down a notch or two, and he's exactly the same most of the time.”
“I like him now,” I said. “I liked him the first time I met him.”
Face looked at me again. There weren't tears in his eyes, but they were brighter than they should have been. “He shouldn't have done what he did, coming to your place like that, but…”
I pushed my coffee to the side and reached for Face's hand, pressing my fingers to the back of his hand. “I'm pissed. I'll probably stay pissed, but I know Murdock. Maybe not as well as you and Hannibal and BA, but I know him. And I'm going to call him on all this stupidity—”
“Then you know him well enough,” Face interjected.
I smiled a little. “Thanks.” I squeezed Face's hand. “I'm going to yell at him,” I said.
Face grinned. “Oh, good. BA could use a break.”
“And, if he decides not to be entirely difficult, we may even talk about the proper way to talk to me and the improper way to get in touch with me.”
“And about leaving stuffed dogs in your fridge.”
“That, too.” Face turned his hand over and wrapped his hand around my fingers. “I brought you the file because there's more than you know. You know Murdock, but there's some things that haven't come up.”
I ticked off the points on my fingers. “Recurring nightmares. Insomnia. Window fans becoming helicopter blades. Tourists quietly speaking their native language become Charlie.” I arched my eyebrows at Face. “Anything else?”
“Screaming fits,” Face replied, trying not to look surprised.
“Face, I can sleep through gunfire because of all of you. Screaming fits don't concern me.”
“He kicks in his sleep during nightmares.”
“So do I.”
Face grinned. “All right, then.” He leaned back as the waitress dropped off our plates. “Thank you,” he said, his grin slipping up a notch. The waitress blushed and backed away without turning around.
I watched him cut into his eggs. “What just happened?” I asked.
Face glanced up, swallowing his bite before speaking. “Problem, Amy?”
I knew that tone. That was his, ‘I just won and you didn’t know it was happening,’ tone. “Face,” I said, dragging out his name to make it a warning, “what just happened?”
He took another bite of his eggs, took a sip of his coffee. He wiped the edges of his mouth with the corners of his napkins. “Nothing that we haven't already discussed,” he said. “You. Murdock.” He pulled a face. “Love.”
I sighed and stared at my waffles. “I have to talk to Wayne,” I said. “He deserves as much as I can tell him.”
“And Murdock?”
I bit into a piece of bacon. “I'm yelling at him.”
“And after?”
I shrugged. “I'll probably yell at him some more.” I cut into my waffles. “Pass the syrup.”
If anyone knew how to accept an abrupt change of subject, it was Face. He was the one who had taught me how to use it properly, after all. “Syrup,” he said, handing me the jar and giving me a wink. “Butter?”
“Please.”
We ate in silence for a few minutes. I adjusted the grip on my knife to cut through more of my waffle, and my elbow nudged Murdock's file. The papers shifted, and I could see the text on the top few.
“We won't tell him,” Face said quietly, not looking up from his eggs.
I picked up the file, tapped the edge against the table to right the pages, and handed it back to Face. “Lies of omission,” I said, “and deliberate not telling, remember?”
He pretended to think it over. “Sounds familiar.” He reached for the file and placed it on the seat next to him. “I'll put it back where I found it.”
“Thank you.”
*
Face dropped me off twelve blocks from my apartment. “Last chance,” he said, holding up the file.
“It's not fair,” I replied, and I stepped away from the car and waved him off. I glanced around as I walked down the block, but I didn't spot anyone who looked like a tail. There was no one positioned across the street from my apartment, and the soldier by the elevator was gone. It wasn't right. The jazz thrummed low in my blood in agreement. Decker didn't just give up and leave. I eyed my front door, checking the lock for scratches. Scratches meant someone with lock picks. Of course, someone particularly good with locks—like BA—wouldn't leave scratches.
Fake calm, I thought. It was always better to pretend like you didn't know what was going on. Go in acting like there's no one there. It'll be easier to get the advantage. I turned the key in the lock and opened the door. No one was in the front of the apartment, but I could hear shuffling in the bedroom.
I walked to the kitchen and silently opened the drawer where I'd stashed my gun the day before.
“Amy?” Wayne called from the bedroom.
Of course. The tension leeched out of me. “It's me,” I called back. I tried to put the gun back in the drawer, but I banged it against the edge of the frame instead.
“Are you—” Wayne stopped at the end of the hallway, eyes widening at the sight of the gun. “Jesus, Amy, I was just—”
“Sorry,” I said. “The soldiers are gone, and I thought…” I couldn't finish the thought with Wayne watching me. “Sorry,” I repeated.
“They were gone when I got here,” Wayne said. “If you're talking about the guy who was in the hallway.”
I finally got the gun back in the drawer, closing it with a snap that made Wayne flinch. “They were gone?”
“Yeah.” Wayne's brow furrowed when I reached under the counter. “What are you doing?”
I moved from the kitchen to the dining area, sliding my hands under the table, then under the phone. I walked past Wayne to check under the coffee table and against the seams of the couch.
“What—”
“We need to talk,” I interrupted. “But I'd rather not do it here, considering…” I couldn’t say the truth, in case there was a bug I'd missed.
“Yeah,” Wayne agreed before I could finish the thought, but the way he looked where the guys had been sitting the night before, I knew we were thinking of different things. “I'd rather not talk here, either.”
“The Italian place?” I offered. It was always crowded, always busy. The chances of anyone listening to our conversation were minimal, and the chance of anyone remembering us even less. “I'll buy,” I offered.
“I can buy,” Wayne said, and his mouth twitched into something that was almost a smile.
“Okay,” I agreed. It was an old joke, my offering to buy, Wayne politely insisting to pay. “Give me a minute,” I said, and I walked towards the bedroom to check for bugs in the nightstand. On the bed, laid out in careful piles, were Wayne's clothes. His razor and shampoo and toothbrush were on the nightstand on his side of the bed.
Well.
I checked for the bugs—nothing—and walked back into the living room. Wayne was waiting by the door, his suit jacket draped over one arm. “You…” I started, but I couldn't get out the rest of the sentence. “Let's go,” I said instead, and we walked to the elevator in silence.
The lack of soldiers on our walk to the Italian place made the jazz strum a little harder in my blood. I let Wayne talk to the hostess while I looked around and tried to figure out if I had a tail.
“Excuse me,” I said to the hostess, “do you have a phone I could use?”
“Sure,” she said, handing me the phone on the hostess stand.
“I'll be right there,” I told Wayne, and I caught something in his eyes—disappoint or aggravation—as I dialed the Appleton Productions answering service.
“Appleton—”
“Just a short message,” I interrupted.
“Go ahead,” the woman on the other end said without missing a beat.
“I may have pests,” I said. “That's all.”
“I may have pests,” she repeated back to me, more professional than the woman from early that morning. “Is that all?”
“It is.”
“And your name and number?”
“No number. The name is A. M.”
“A.M.?”
“Yes. Like the time designation.”
“Yes, ma'am. I'll pass along the message.”
“Thank you.” I hung up the phone and turned to find Wayne waiting for me, close enough to have overheard the call.
“Amy—”
“Let's sit down,” I overrode him. “Please.”
He narrowed his eyes at me but followed the hostess to our table. We sat and took our menus. As soon as she was gone, Wayne dropped his menu on the table. “What is this?” he hissed. “You pulled a gun on me.”
“I didn’t know it was you.” He looked away from me, and I knew it wasn't a good enough answer. “Wayne…” I bit my lip and tried to figure out what to say. “I'm sorry I lied to you.”
“I would hope so.”
“And I—” I swallowed back the rest of what I was going to say as the waitress came over to get our order. “I'll just have coffee,” I said.
Wayne looked at me over the edge of my menu. “You're not getting food?”
“I just ate,” I admitted, and I saw his eyes clearly this time. It was aggravation.
“Spaghetti carbonara,” he ordered. “Extra pepper.”
“And to drink?”
“Water is fine,” Wayne snapped. He held out his menu like a sword. The waitress didn't seem to notice his attitude as she gathered mine and left us alone. The room around us was busy with conversation and movement. Wayne tapped his fingers on the table and looked away from me for a moment. “What were you doing in the kitchen?” he asked.
“Looking for bugs.”
“With a gun?”
I breathed in slowly. “No. That was—”
“Did you think I'd hurt you?” Wayne's voice snapped, and he scraped his nails across the tabletop.
“No!” I nearly shouted. “God. Wayne. No,” I said more quietly. “You're not—” I swallowed back the rest of the sentence. “I know you wouldn't hurt me,” I promised. “You're a good man.”
“What were the clothes?” he asked. There was something hard in his eyes. I'd seen it before, when I'd gone with him to business parties and someone had politely insulted his talents. He was angry, but he didn't want to show it. “Why were those clothes soaking wet in the bathroom?”
“There were bugs in the apartment. The only place to have a conversation without being overheard was the shower.”
Wayne thought about that for a moment. “You didn't have any wet clothes on the mat,” he said.
“No, I didn't,” I agreed. “It was—”
“Don't finish that sentence,” Wayne requested. “I don't want to hear the end of it. There can't be anything that comes out of it that explains it in a way I'll accept.”
I opened my mouth to argue, and then I remembered why we were here. Because I'd lied. Deliberately. For a year. “Nothing happened.”
“Of course not,” Wayne said, scathing. “Just like nothing happened with the A-Team.”
“Wayne—”
He looked away from me, jaw tightening. “I don't—”
“You were packing,” I shot back.
“I thought you'd be there,” he snapped. “I was going to talk to you, but when I called, you weren't there, and when I showed up, you weren't there, and when you did show up, you pulled a gun on me.”
“Not on you. On—” I pressed my hand to my mouth. Wayne watched me.
“You lied to me,” he said. “You purposefully lied to me.”
I didn't respond. The waitress brought my coffee and Wayne's water and walked off again. “I did,” I said after I'd sweetened my coffee. “But only about—”
“About a lot,” Wayne interrupted. “It was one big lie, Amy, but there were a lot of smaller lies wrapped around it.”
“There weren't—”
“You didn't know the A-Team. You'd never met the A-Team. The man who showed up last night wasn't part of the A-Team.” Wayne clenched his jaw. “Except that you know the A-Team, you've met the A-Team, and the man who showed up last night—”
“I get it,” I interrupted. “And I'm not denying it—”
“Denied it long enough,” Wayne muttered.
I clenched my hands around my cup and looked him in the eyes. “I lied to you,” I said, “and I admit that. I can't take back what I did, Wayne, and I'm not expecting you to forget about it.”
He tapped his fingers against his glass. “What do you want from me, Amy?”
“We could try it again,” I offered. “I'll tell you everything,”
“It's not the same.”
“I know.”
Wayne looked away from me. There were couples to our left and right. He had a group of businessmen seated behind his shoulder. I had my back to the wall.
“You said I know everything else,” he said finally, looking at me again. “You only lied about them. Is there anything else I should know?”
“Nothing.” It tasted like a lie in the back of my mouth. I took a drink of coffee. “I'm in love with Murdock,” I corrected myself.
Wayne stared at me, anger and betrayal sliding over his face. “What?”
“I'm in love with Murdock,” I said again.
“Since when?”
“A while.”
“What?”
I took another drink of my coffee. “It wasn't the first time I met him or anything. It…it snuck up on me—”
“I don't want to hear this,” Wayne interrupted. “I don’t want to hear this,” he repeated. He shook his head and pushed his glass aside to put his elbows on the table and put his head in his hands. “Jesus, Amy.”
“We—”
“What did you do in the shower?” he snapped, looking at me. “And what were you doing when he got my clothes wet?”
“Not that,” I snapped in return, angry at the implication. “There were bugs in the apartment. It was the only place to talk.”
“Where were your clothes?”
“I had to actually take a shower for whoever was listening. I didn't know he'd—”
“Please don't,” Wayne interrupted, and I pressed my mouth closed. “Amy…were you in love with him when you met me?”
I didn’t answer right away, considering my phrasing. “Not actively. I'd been in Jakarta, and then I came back, and they weren't talking to me, and Murdock had taken me off his visitors list, and I was trying not to be.” Wayne flinched, and my stomach rolled. “You weren't a replacement. You were—”
“A nice guy,” Wayne cut in. He sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “If he hadn't shown up last night, would you have ever told me?”
“Not on purpose,” I admitted.
“Did they know about me?”
“Wayne, I swear I hadn't talked to them since I left for Jakarta. I didn't have a chance to tell them.”
“If you had, would you?”
I opened my mouth to say yes, to tell him I'd have given them every detail. “If they'd been around,” I said instead, “I probably wouldn't have dated you.”
He stared at me, and I watched him decide to walk away and cut his losses. To get away before it could get worse. “This isn't going to work now,” he said. “Maybe it shouldn't have worked in the first place.”
“It worked,” I argued. “It was nice.”
Wayne scoffed. “Nice. It’s…it’s funny. You’ve used that word to describe me and Murdock and the rest of them. What’s the difference?”
Explosions, I thought. Adventure. An expectation for the unexpected. “It’s just…different.” I shrugged, not wanting to give him the list. Lying to him again, I realized, even if it was to try and spare his feelings. “They’re all just…them.”
Wayne shook his head and pushed himself out of the booth. “I'll take care of your coffee.”
“Wayne—”
“They’re different,” he muttered, shaking his head. “How could I possibly live up to such high expectations?”
I looked down into my coffee. “Thank you for not…” I shook my head and stood up next to him. “I'll get your things packed. You can leave your key when you pick them up.”
He watched my face. I had no idea what he was seeing. “I'll go now if you can give me a few minutes.” I nodded in agreement. “Thanks,” he said and it sounded like it hurt him to say it. He looked at me for a few seconds; I watched him fight himself to say something else. “I would have married you,” he said finally, and his shoulder slumped forward. “I thought you were more sensible than this. I thought you wanted a life.”
I am getting one, I thought. “So did I,” I said instead. I could tell he didn’t believe me. “I'm sorry.”
He walked away without responding, and I sunk back in my seat. I put my head in my hands and thought about what I'd just done, giving up a sure, comfortable thing to possibly get investigated for treason and chased around by Colonel Decker and his men.
“Excuse me, miss, I think you dropped this.”
I lifted my head and eyed the old, slumped man in front of me. He had curly gray hair, a thin mustache, and a tweed sweater with worn elbows. There was a mole on his cheek, and his glasses were nearly falling off his nose. He was holding out a paperback book, and I took it from him. “Hi, Hannibal,” I said quietly.
“Hey, kid.” He winked at me. “Book's a diversion. No bugs at your place. BA and I made a show of showing up and leading Decker's guys on a chase when we saw Wayne walk in.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “Face said you didn't want to get punched.”
“A true excuse is the best excuse,” Hannibal said. He grinned at me. “See you around, kid.”
“Thanks for the book,” I said as he turned and shuffled off, hitting the edge of a table like his eyesight was going. I counted to sixty before I stood up and walked out the front door. It was bright outside, and traffic was picking up as the lunch hour got closer. I could see Hannibal down the block, still shuffling, committing to the role. I turned in the opposite direction and walked down the street, glancing at the display windows to check for a tail as I tried to clear my head and give Wayne time to clear his way out of my life.
I wasn't surprised Wayne had gotten up and left. I would have done the same thing. But my head was still muddled. A year ago, I'd come back and unpacked and made a call. It'd been a different answering service then, a different efficient voice.
“Your message?” she'd asked.
“I'm back in town,” I had said, and I had given my phone number, hung up the phone and waited. Two days, I'd figured, maybe a week if they were on a job.
A week and a half later, I hadn't gotten a message or a visit. I'd called a different answering service and left the same message. Another week and another service. I hadn't wanted to see Murdock until I'd checked in with the team, but I was worried, not sleeping quite right, and so I went to the VA.
“You're not on his visitors list,” the nurse had told me, “I'm afraid you can't see him.”
“What?” I had tried to look around her down the hall. Murdock's room was down the hall, fourth door on the left. “Have there been problems?” I had asked, wondering and worrying what I'd missed while in Jakarta. Had something happened? Was he hurt?
“I can't give you any details on Captain Murdock's care,” the nurse had told me. “You're not on his medical list, either.”
“But—”
“He can still receive mail from you,” she had offered. “You're not banned.”
But I am, I had thought. “Dr. Richter?” I had asked. “Is he around?”
Dr. Richter had given me the same response as the nurse. “Part of Murdock's work is learning to set appropriate boundaries. If he's chosen to remove you from his visitors list, Miss Allen, that is his choice.”
I'd gone home, sat on the couch, and wondered what to do. At work the next morning, I'd scoured the Courier's databases for any recent news on the A-Team. There were a few blurbs of small businesses rescued from under mob rule, property destruction surrounding rumors of crooked businesses trying to harm their employees.
I kept leaving messages, kept trying to track them. Nothing piled into more nothing. Every time I called to try and talk to Murdock, I was told he didn't want to talk. I sent letters, but I got no responses.
A month later, as I started to give up, I was introduced to Wayne at a party, a friend of a friend. He had smiled and nodded and shaken my hand, and at the end of the night, he'd asked me out.
I'd said yes because I didn't know what else to do. They weren't calling. They weren't sending notes. They weren't dropping in. I wasn’t supposed to be the type of woman who sat around waiting for things to happen around me.
So I'd said yes.
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on 2011-03-22 02:15 am (UTC)no subject
on 2011-03-22 02:20 am (UTC)And now that that's all pretty, don't forget to tell everyone I wrote it! Because, if you're gonna get me to write these things, you're gonna play press monkey, yes?