#i guess he's a cautionary tale. do not quit the army or ELSE

[katatty]

Year 1 - Summer - Barker (Peasant Chicken Farmer)

He may have left the army, but Lawrence never was one for work, or politics... he loves animals, so the farming life should suit him just fine.

He gets settled into life nicely, selling eggs, making friends with the locals.Harald Bouldre doesn't seem to like him, but whatever! Like he cares what some old miner thinks of his life choices.

Howwever, it's not long before he meets Primrose Mondegreen - and he's instantly smitten! She is beautiful, confident, musically talented... Maybe he made a mistake in quitting the army? He's lost his shot at winning her hand, now.

The feeling appears to be mutual, with Primrose falling for his charms immediately! He might not stand a chance at actually marrying her, but maybe he can still win the lady's heart... or at least bed her.

Egg production is slow and rent is due, so Lawrence heads into the forrest to collect fruit and do some hunting.

After killing a deer, though, he's sick to his stomach. Such a beautiful beast, slain by his hand... Lawrence was never meant for violence.

That sick feeling in his stomach isn't just guilt though - its the poisonous mushrooms he attempted to forrage in the woods! And some flu he picked up from the chickens. Lawrence heads home, hoping he will feel better after a nice long rest and a hot bath. But alas...

...he perishes :( a sad end to a short life!

[qqueenofhades]

the tangled web of fate we weave: iv

part iii/AO3.

The incredibly stupid (and rather terrifying) situation that Master Sergeant Wyatt Logan has presently found himself in goes like this.

Something feels off about the botched operation the instant he gets off the phone with Neville, and since Wyatt is still technically the official personnel assigned to this case, if he doesn’t want to drop it, he doesn’t have to. He stands there in the middle of the pickup curb at LAX, being jostled to every side by passing travelers, until he decides he should, if nothing else, get out of the way. Heads back to his car, stares through the windshield for a long moment, then takes out his phone again. Sorry babe, he texts Jessica. Order some pizza and invite some friends. Don’t think I’m making it home tonight.

With that, he tosses the phone into the passenger seat, trying to ignore the twinge of guilt. Jessica knew when she married a serviceman, especially one in special ops, that it would be a lot of long separations and unexplained absences, and she’s held up admirably thus far, but she has to be wondering when the buck finally stops. So is Wyatt, for that matter. They need this. They love each other a lot, but they’ve become different people during his last three deployments. A relationship can’t survive forever on Skype calls and care packages.

Putting that out of his head for now, Wyatt turns on the engine, pays the exorbitant parking charge, and rolls into downtown L.A. He can’t help wondering if he’s been outsmarted and the mark is going to turn up at the Burberry store now that a potential accomplice has given him the all-clear. But how would a relatively routine drug runner, or even mid-level member of the mob, be privy to the classified details of a Delta Force sting arranged just hours ago? Their counterintelligence is good, but not that good. And while tons of information isn’t exactly par for the course in this job, they usually at least give you a name. Even a fake one.

At that, Wyatt makes a decision. He isn’t hauling all the way back to San Diego tonight, and he’s gonna drop by Bam-Bam’s. Dave Baumgardner, given the nickname for his enthusiasm for certain parts of the job, is on leave, but he lives here. Has a nice bachelor pad in Westwood. His dad is rich, because Bam-Bam definitely does not make enough money to afford it by serving in the army, even in a specialized unit. At least Wyatt can get a second pair of eyes on this, judge if there’s actually a wrench in the spanner, or he’s just being paranoid. Everyone in their line of work knows it happens eventually.

Traffic is a crawl up 405, because aside from all the other reasons for L.A. to have terrible traffic, there’s a Los Angeles Tech Convention and some billionaire bigwig named Connor Mason is the featured attraction. Has all kind of gizmos he’s wheeling out for public display for the first time ever, so this place is Nerd Mecca. In Wyatt’s opinion, it’s bad enough they keep inventing new iPhones every year. Who needs all that?

He sighs, reminds himself not to be quite so curmudgeonly, and makes it to Westwood with only two minor road-rage incidents. Pulls up in front of Bam-Bam’s place, parks, and heads up the walk. Technically the term for what Bam-Bam is on is “paid administrative leave,” because there’s still some question about whether his actions on the Abu Dhabi mission were entirely necessary. This is, also in Wyatt’s opinion, a dog-and-pony show. The U.S. government pays David Baumgardner to kill people, and the legality isn’t something they’re concerned with except when it appears in the press. It does occur to him to wonder if this is a great place to be asking advice, but hell, he’s here now.

A few moments after his knock, Bam-Bam opens the door, holding a sweating Budweiser bottle and looking surprised. “Hey, Logan! What the hell are you doing here?”

“Complicated,” Wyatt says briefly. “You gonna let me into your beer and porn den, or what?”

Bam-Bam smirks, gives him a bro clap on the shoulder, and leads him into the kitchen, where he twists the cap off another cold Bud and hands it over. Wyatt takes a long swig, leaning against the counter, then follows Bam-Bam out to the porch. Here in an airy, comfortable suburban backyard, it feels as if he might definitely be overstating things, but no point chickening out now. As economically as he can, he explains his hunch. The fact that he can’t be sure, but this feels like a setup, and not in the right way. Bam-Bam might be trigger-happy, but he’s a good soldier. Wyatt trusts his instincts.

“Huh,” Baumgardner says, when he finishes. “That is a little weird.”

“Okay, so it isn’t just me?”

“No, that does sound off the ranch. Not even this guy’s name or who he’s supposed to be working for – ‘Ndrangheta, Yakuza, plain old Mafia, Big Pimpin’ dealing weed down in Compton?” Bam-Bam takes another slug of beer. “Who’d you piss off?”

“Nobody,” Wyatt says. “Far as I know. This all came out of nowhere. Yesterday I thought I was finally going to have a real weekend with Jess, today I’m here with… this.”

“Just send her a dick pic.” Bam-Bam finishes off the Budweiser and chucks it expertly across the lawn into the recycling. “Tide her over?”

Wyatt gives him a cold fish stare, as he doesn’t think that any woman, not even his wife, just magically needs his genitals to appear in their life. “Good thing I don’t ask you for romantic advice, you dog.”

“Whatever.” Bam-Bam shrugs. “Anyway, what are you planning to do about this?”

That catches Wyatt short. He doesn’t actually know. Critical thinking is a valued skill for a solo operative, but independent thinking, less so. A soldier follows orders, he doesn’t start yanking at threads and veering off on tangents and trying to rewrite the script, thinks he knows better than the brass and can do whatever he wants. Finally he says, “Should we call someone?” You never know. Pestering the boss could do something.

“Guess you could try? I’d call my dad, actually, but he’s at some retreat up in the Bay Area this weekend.” Bam-Bam’s rich daddy, Rick, is a defense lawyer in Orange County and makes gigabucks shielding even richer assholes from the consequences of their crimes. In other words, if there’s a big bust afoot, he might know something about it, albeit on less official channels. “Leadership development potential, or whatever.”

“Can you call him anyway?”

“Because my Delta Force buddy thinks something smells a little fishy about one of his jobs?” Bam-Bam gives Wyatt a weird look. “This is still classified, remember?”

“You don’t have to tell him it was me. Just put it in general terms.”

“Yeah, I don’t think that’s gonna work. Anything else?”

Wyatt racks his brains, trying to recall the paperwork he skimmed through quickly to get to the operational summary. This is probably a cautionary tale about why you should actually read it. “I think there were initials? Dunno if it corresponded to the guy at all. G.F.? And something about an unauthorized investigation.”

“Shit.” Baumgardner’s eyes widen. “Garcia Flynn?”

“What?” That catches Wyatt off guard. “Who?”

“He works in the NSA. He’s from somewhere in former shithole-Soviet land, he’s been in Eastern Europe for most of that time. I met him a few times, actually. He’s about the one guy who could take me in a shooting contest.” Bam-Bam sounds proud of this, which Wyatt finds worrying – is this the guy they sent him into LAX to take down, solo op, civilians to every side? “Anyway, though, that’s not why I thought of him. My dad was just talking about him earlier. Apparently Flynn’s lost his marbles, and that worries people.”

“Your dad’s work colleagues? Flynn sounds like the exact kind of client they love.”

“You think anyone from Orange County is gonna defend a possible Russian mole?”

“Yeah. Probably have three on the payroll already. Is that what they think he is? A mole? How the hell is that too controversial to tell me?”

“Look, man, I don’t know. This is probably on shaky confidentiality grounds anyway, but you and I are on the same security clearance, so…” Firearms-related or otherwise, David Baumgardner has never been bound too strictly by an exacting observance of the rules. “You wanna stay and play some Halo, or go and do your fucking job?”

“Probably the latter, huh? Not all of us get to sit on our ass and stuff our face right now like you.” Wyatt slugs down the last of his beer and stands up. “Do you have anything else you can think of? Anything at all?”

Bam-Bam considers, frowning. Then he says, “I think my dad knows that tech guy who’s in town for the convention. Connor Mason. If you wanna pull rank and flash a badge at him, pull him off into some back room and scare him, he could be helpful. Not sure, though.”

“Yeah, I’ll get a last-minute ticket to that and haul the keynote speaker off the stage in front of ten thousand hyped-up nerds?” Wyatt looks at the ceiling, then blows out a breath. “Not like I got anything else to try. Thanks, buddy. Hope they let you out of the doghouse soon.”

With a quick hand-shake and bro-hug, he lets himself out, gets back in the car, and drives to the packed convention center, which involves subjecting himself to I-10 at peak evening hours and thus takes approximately eighty-one eons. It takes him several more after that to find a parking space, which is practically in Chavez Ravine, and he heads to the door and asks to speak to the security staff. It takes (more) time, but he finally gets the head honcho, introduces himself quietly as Delta Force, and says there may be a security threat that he needs to speak to Mr. Mason about. Yes, he knows that Mr. Mason is scheduled to give the kickoff speech at 7:00pm, which is nineteen minutes from now. It’s urgent.

The security guys look at each other, but after Wyatt repeats “credible security threat” a few more times, one of them slopes off to get Mason. He arrives fixing his cufflinks and the microphone pinned to his lapel – twelve minutes to go – and clearly angry at the interruption. “They said there was some bloke who wanted to talk to me? Now?”

“That’s me, Mr. Mason.” Wyatt clears his throat, with a significant look at the others ordering them to scuttle off. “This won’t take long.”

“It better not.” Mason is a bald black British guy in a very expensive suit, who has not gotten to the level of success that he has by tolerating fools. “Well?”

Wyatt checks that they’re alone. “Do you know a Garcia Flynn?”

It’s a good thing Mason wasn’t trying to take a drink, otherwise he definitely would have done a spit-take. He takes half a step backwards, as if Wyatt has turned radioactive. “I’m sorry,” he manages, trying and failing to sound nonchalant. “Who did you say you were with, again?”

“I didn’t.” Wyatt takes a step of his own, in case Mason tries to bolt. “You’re the one in the hurry. Tell me what I want to know, we can make it quick. Well?”

“You’re… not…?” Mason’s eyes search Wyatt’s face, as if trying to uncover a mask, a sudden reveal. “Is this some attempt to punish me for not attending the…? I’ve told them, many times, that the work is on schedule, and…”

“What work?” Wyatt asks. “On schedule for who? Not attending the what?”

Mason’s eyes flick from side to side again. He scrutinizes Wyatt carefully, then asks all of a sudden, “Scientia potential est?”

“Is that Latin?” Wyatt is more baffled than ever. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“So you’re not.” Mason seems to have been checking something. Rather belatedly, he hitches his professional, P.T. Barnum smile back into place. “I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about, Mr. …?”

“Smith.” Wyatt is pretty sure Mason is lying out his ass, but he’s not sure how to force him, short of tackling him and dragging him off to a broom closet for the old shock-and-awe routine Bam-Bam recommended – and that is definitely a bad idea. “You really sure you don’t know anything about Garcia Flynn? Really sure?”

“Absolutely.” Mason almost sells it, too. There’s a moment more in which they stare at each other, and then there’s a harried knock on the door.

Mason turns away to open it, and a young African-American man in a MIT sweatshirt sticks his head in, looking frazzled. “Mr. Mason, what the hell? Your cue’s in five minutes!”

“Yes, Rufus, of course. My apologies, I was unavoidably detained by G.I. Joe here.” Mason tweaks his cuffs, stares back at Wyatt, and turns on his heel with a slight, sarcastic flourish, marching out after his – assistant, aide, graduate student, whatever Rufus is. Wyatt has about five seconds to decide if he is in fact going to throw his weight around – he’s not a cop, and if he’s going to hold Mason for questioning, he needs something to, you know, actually question him about. Mason seems like a smarmy dick, but that’s not illegal. But who the crap do he and Rick Baumgardner both know that makes Garcia Flynn a potential problem for them? They’re both rich, successful corporate types. Bam-Bam said that Flynn’s in the NSA. Has he gone black hat, exploiting security loopholes in their servers and threatening to hold their trade secrets for ransom? Sophisticated cybercrime? But then why wouldn’t Mason want him taken down? Or does he, but he doesn’t want to tell Wyatt how he knows him?

Yeah. There’s something really fucking fishy going on here, it’s not just Wyatt’s imagination. As Mason and Rufus vanish down the corridor, he blows out a breath and tries to work out what to do next. He can’t tap Bam-Bam for any actual action, he’s still on leave, and that would land Wyatt’s ass in hot water right next to him. And yet again, the question remains. Action against who? It feels like kickboxing with your own shadow.

Wyatt thanks the security guys, assures them the threat has been dealt with (which is a lie, but he doesn’t know what else to say), then hikes back to his car, pulls out his phone, and scrolls down to the encrypted numbers, the ones you don’t call except on (hopefully) rare occasions. Once it’s been picked up and he’s gone through the various steps of verifying his identity, he is finally transferred to whatever Lovecraftian horror that is the NSA switchboard room, insists he has the proper clearance to three different people (you’d really think the U.S. government would be better at sharing intelligence and coordinating between departments, but nooooope) and finally, finally gets someone to tell him that yes, Garcia Flynn is an agent on active roster. As far as they know, he still is, but he has missed a scheduled check-in and reassignment. That was supposed to take place today. This afternoon, at the Tom Bradley International Terminal in LAX. At the Burberry store. He didn’t show.

At that, Wyatt feels a goose walking over his grave, as the saying goes. What the shit. He was sent to arrest – as far as Flynn’s bosses know – an agent still on his regular assignment, a fellow high-level, elite operative, but why? Someone who has been, apparently, making trouble for Rick Baumgardner and Connor Mason’s chummy corporate buddies? Mason assured Wyatt that the work was on schedule – what work? Did Wyatt just stumble into the middle of an attempt to whistleblow a whistleblower – stop Flynn before he can pull the clothes off whatever emperor he is trying to disrobe? What. The fuck.

It takes Wyatt several more minutes of cajoling, but he finally convinces the NSA lackey that he’ll try to get in contact with Flynn, put him off his guard, and see if there’s anything he can extract about this very, very puzzling situation. The lackey gives him the company phone number that they have on file for Flynn, and Wyatt jots it down on his hand. He thanks the guy, then hangs up.

Wyatt isn’t nearly stupid enough to call a potential hostile on his own government phone, especially since that could lead to him getting tracked. So he starts the car, wearily girds his loins for his – what – fourth go-round with L.A. traffic for the day, and drives off to the kind of totally reputable establishment on Sepulveda Boulevard that sells burner phones that can be bought with cash. By the time he’s done that, it’s getting quite late, and Wyatt is starving, so he makes an In-n-Out run. He scoffs it down, buys a second burger for the road, and sits in the restaurant until he’s pretty sure the traffic will only be mildly exasperating rather than hellmouth terrible. Then he trucks out, gets back in, and drives off to a deserted high school parking lot. According to the dash clock, it is 11:23 pm.

This is probably a horrible idea. The guy could be full-on, off-the-ranch insane. Or – almost more frighteningly – he couldn’t be.

Wyatt checks that the number on his hand hasn’t gotten too smudged, and dials.

Lucy is getting changed into the Walmart pajamas when she hears Flynn having a terse conversation through the door. He’s keeping his voice down, so it’s hard to make it out, but it sounds like it’s important. God, not something else, not now. This has already been the absolute hell of a day, and she just wants it to be over. Please no more.

She combs out her tangled hair and brushes her teeth with the toiletries he also got, which was nice of him. So was the rescue, if that’s what Lucy wants to call it. She had everything under control, or so she would like to think. Told Cahill five minutes, and then… well, then she was somehow changing for an evening party with his serried social set, they were telling her how great she was, and she kept swearing that she was about to make a run for it somehow. And then out of nowhere, dragging her back into the library with its mounted deer head, scaring the life out of her and yet making her never so grateful to see anyone, Flynn. He keeps doing this. Turning up, and saving her. The last several times, from situations he put her in in the first place, but still. And that car with Benjamin Cahill and company, that wasn’t him. That was something else entirely, and Lucy didn’t like it.

She clenches her hands,which briefly seem inclined to tremble, and looks at herself in the mirror. She is a little pale and wan, dark smears of washed-off makeup lingering beneath her eyes, but she still seems like her. She waits until Flynn has finished his conversation, out of her usual polite instinct not to interrupt someone else’s private business, then steps out of the bathroom. “Who was that?”

Flynn jumps, then puts down the phone, which he has been glaring at as if expecting further information, or just because he’s annoyed. “You should probably go to sleep.”

“Maybe.” Lucy folds her arms. “Who was that?”

Flynn considers her, then gets abruptly to his feet, which is a fairly imposing thing for him to do. “You aren’t working for Rittenhouse,” he says, half as a statement and half as a challenge. “Are you? Some play-pretty-and-ignorant act, some very deep cover?”

“I am not working for Rittenhouse!” Lucy bristles. “Didn’t we settle that? Would I have left with you, or just gone to take a shower, instead of – I don’t know, calling someone and tipping them off where we are?”

“I was gone for a good twenty minutes or so,” Flynn points out. “I don’t know that you didn’t call someone.”

“I didn’t. Here, check my phone if you like.” Lucy thrusts it at him. “Besides, if you really thought I might be some kind of deep-cover agent, why did you rescue me?”

Flynn opens his mouth, realizes he doesn’t have an answer, and shakes his head brusquely. He takes her phone and scrolls through it, tosses it down on the bed, and finally says, “That was a Wyatt Logan. Friend of yours?”

“For the last time, no. I have no idea what is going on with any of this!” It’s close to midnight, Lucy’s exhausted, and this day has been, to say the least, a bitch. “Do you have anything else to interrogate me about, or can I go to sleep?”

Flynn briefly looks chastened, mulls another response, and jerks his head at the bed; apparently the Emperor has given permission. Lucy marches over, turns the covers back, and crawls beneath them, determined to put up a brave front but feeling shaky and small. Why, why has her mother kept this from her? Was it for her safety? It must have been for her safety. Realized that Benjamin Cahill was up to his eyeballs in whatever bad news Rittenhouse is, and cut Lucy (and later, Amy) off for their own good. It still hurts, but at least that way, Lucy can make sense of it. When she gets back to Palo Alto, hopefully soon, she’ll call her mom and clear the air, see if there’s anything else Carol needs to tell her. Maybe she can even help Flynn with this hell-bent investigation of his. Must know firsthand how sketchy they are. Maybe put him onto a few leads.

That is Lucy’s rational historian brain at work, the part that wants to cycle the kaleidoscope pieces together and see the big picture, the best outcome. And yet, all she can think of is Henry Wallace, all the times she called him Dad, and he never gave her any reason to think that was anything but the truth. How much did he know? All this time raising another man’s daughter – did he ever resent her? Did he truly just love her that much? Lucy wants beyond anything to see him again, to know. And yet obviously, she can’t. Lucy the historian understands all this, but Lucy the daughter is broken-hearted.

She sniffs, once and then again. Can feel a wetness soaking into the pillow under her cheek, and wipes her nose with the back of her hand. There can’t be many worse places to have this breakdown. Not yet, not yet. But another tear escapes, and a third.

Lucy thinks she hears an uncomfortable cough, and isn’t sure if she wants Flynn to notice this or not. She’s not really sure that he’d have anything particularly comforting to say, since his whole attitude about this seems to be “I told you so.” Why the hell did he come after her, then? Track her all the way out to the literal Rittenhouse in the middle of nowhere, but still won’t entirely relinquish his belief that she might be in with them somehow? Ugh. What the hell. This man is beyond frustrating.

Despite herself, Lucy slips into an uneasy haze, seeing as Flynn has apparently decided that the best strategy to deal with this is to sit very still and pretend he’s a tree. Yet again, if she was thinking that he might offer any comfort or …comfort, she’s mistaken. It’s really a good thing that she didn’t actually kiss him that first night.

Satisfying as this may be, it’s still hollow, and since Lucy doesn’t have Amy’s lap to put her head in, she could at least do with some brief moment of human connection or support. But if Flynn’s not offering, she’s not asking, and pulls the covers up tighter. If Rittenhouse comes barging in here during the wee hours, it is decidedly not her fault.

When Lucy opens her eyes again, the light is grey, the room is quiet, and the clock on the bedside table reads 6:43am. Flynn has dozed off on the other bed, still dressed, the same way he slept on her shitty couch back in her apartment, and nobody has been murdered, so there’s that. Lucy still feels like she’s been hit with a hammer, and could probably sleep another six hours at least, but she’s not sure if they’re going to have to pick up and bugger off somewhere else. It’s Sunday, maybe that will help with the traffic. It’ll still be at least two hours back to the Bay Area, though. If that’s where they’re going.

Lucy groans, closes her eyes again, and steals another forty-odd minutes of precious slumber, before she’s woken by the sound of Flynn moving around. She lies still and pretends to be sleeping, until he says gruffly, “Lucy, I know you’re awake.”

Ever the charmer, her knight in shining armor. Lucy sits up slowly. She has not had a ton of time to go to the gym recently, and yesterday was the most workout she had in months; she can feel it down to her toes. “Other people say good morning.”

Flynn’s mouth twitches, as if he’s almost about to smile, until he catches himself. “You should probably get up.”

“Oh? And what have you been doing all night?”

“Thinking.” Flynn pulls off his shirt, wads it up, and tosses it on his unmade bed. “I’m going to take a shower.”

Lucy was about to shoot back some remark about how she can’t see that going well – if he’s going to prod her, she’s going to prod him – but she’s momentarily distracted by the sight of his torso. Broad shoulders, heavily muscled arms, and several rugged scars – whatever the majority of this man’s career has been spent doing, it is not just annoying nearly-completed PhD students in California hotel rooms. There is a small, puckered, pinkish circle that looks like a bullet wound, and a few others that look like knives. She doesn’t know how old Flynn is – maybe mid-to-late thirties, seven or eight years older than her – but he’s clearly lived a hard life. Unwelcomingly, unnecessarily, her fingers flex, and her breath hitches.

Flynn catches her looking, and his tongue flicks out briefly to touch his lips. “Yes?”

“I thought you were taking a shower,” Lucy says, as coolly as she can. “Or are you still afraid that I’ll call Rittenhouse if you turn your back on me?”

Flynn arches an eyebrow at her. This man does have a remarkably expressive face, even if it mostly is employed for various permutations of smug, sass, smirk, and son of a bitch. “What, were you planning to come in? Only room for one in there, I’m afraid.”

With that, he strides to the bathroom and shuts the door, for all the world as if he just virtuously turned her down from making a move on him – which, obviously, did not actually happen. Lucy rocks back and forth on the bed, fighting an urge to scream, then gets up, gets dressed, and wonders if she can go down to the continental breakfast by herself, or Flynn will come tearing in and terrify some yuppies. Which might be amusing, at least momentarily, but will then result in even more headache and hassle to sort out.

It takes a while, but they finally eat (though Flynn, to judge from his dark looks at the buffet tables, doesn’t think much of Holiday Inn Express’s culinary selections), check out, and head back to the car. Lucy is not enthused to see it. “Are we going home yet?”

“No.” Flynn gestures her to get in, but she doesn’t. “I couldn’t keep you safe there.”

“Who said that was your job? Can’t you call someone? Whoever you work for?” Lucy folds her arms. “Get me a protection detail, so I can go back to my life, even if someone has to babysit me? However this is ordinarily handled?”

Flynn looks frustrated that she isn’t just taking his word and following his orders. Finally he says, “It’s… last night. When Logan called. There’s been some kind of complication. He said he was supposed to arrest me, at LAX. I don’t know what’s been decided on, but first they ordered me to drop the investigation and now Rittenhouse is trying to – ”

“What? Your bosses ordered you to drop it, and you didn’t see fit to share that with me?” As if he was going to share anything. “So what, we’ve been off the grid and against orders for at least the last twenty-four hours? It was one thing to be on the run with you when you were working on some official government business, now you’re off that too, and – what? I’m supposed to just trust you and get in the car?”

“Lucy – ” Flynn looks exasperated, as if he has genuinely never considered how insane he and all his plans sound. She’s gone along with it thus far, because she didn’t really have a choice, but before they head any further away from home, off into whatever planet he lives on, she needs solid answers. “Don’t make this difficult, just – ”

“Oh, me? Me? I’m the one who should not make this difficult?” Lucy catches sight of a nice retiree couple eyeing them from the hotel portico, and waves reassuringly. She might try to run for it right now, but all her books and her computer are still in the car, and it does not seem beneath Flynn to hold them for ransom. “Either we go home, or you explain a hell of a lot more about who this Wyatt Logan person was and what he told you.”

“He – ” Flynn rolls his eyes viciously. “It’s not a conversation for right here. Get in, and I promise – I promise – ” he repeats, seeing her look deeply dubious – “we’ll drive around a bit and I’ll tell you. Yes or no?”

Lucy hesitates, then jerks the car door open and gets in with as much icy dignity as she can muster. Muttering, Flynn does the same, pulls out with only a slight grinding of the gears, and keeps to his end of the bargain in puttering around at 30mph on some residential streets. As he does, he provides her a doubtless still-very-abridged version of what he learned. Wyatt Logan is a soldier of some description, though he didn’t specify his exact branch of service. He was sent by person or person(s) unknown to arrest Flynn at LAX, which is where he was supposed to go instead of staying with Lucy. Given that Flynn’s boss told him to go there, either he didn’t know that the rendezvous had been compromised, or he did. In short, someone highly placed in the U.S. government has ordered Flynn taken off the Rittenhouse investigation, and has gone to the lengths of sending a fellow special-ops guy to apprehend him. In short, Flynn can’t trust anyone back at headquarters, or know who they’re reporting to. That’s why he can’t just call in for backup and let someone else take it from here.

Lucy stares at him. If Flynn isn’t lying about this – and lying isn’t really his way, rather brute-force application of the unvarnished truth with all the subtlety of a speeding freight train – then that, obviously, is worrisome. “Why would he call and warn you?”

Flynn shrugs. “Dumb decency. Some people have it. But he wasn’t told either, he smelled a rat, so he did some digging.”

“How did he find out it was you?”

“I’m not sure. Wouldn’t say.” Flynn flashes a grim smile. “Had to play some of it close to the vest, after all. Said that he asked a few people. I assume someone like him, it wasn’t just the local hot dog vendor. So then. Do you see the problem?”

“You’re not willing to just drop me off back home and…” Lucy has no idea what the ordinary protocol would be, it’s a little outside her area of specialty. She doesn’t want to be kidnapped by Rittenhouse again, obviously, but she also doesn’t want to be joyriding around with a possibly-ex-NSA agent who’s managed to push the envelope too far even for them. “They couldn’t have had some good reason for pulling you off the case?”

Flynn looks at her flatly. “You’ve met who I’m after. Do you think so?”

Lucy hesitates. Yes, Rittenhouse was obviously creepy, there was a Waco-compound vibe to the party, and to have all these powerful, accomplished, wealthy people suddenly swanning out of the woodwork and offering her a dream job clearly came with a major catch. But… political parties and lobbying groups and other business conglomerates might be distasteful or even unethical (shock, horror, politics are dirty) but that still doesn’t make them strictly or flagrantly illegal. “I don’t know. I need more evidence.”

“Need more evidence.” Flynn makes a derisive noise in his throat. “That’s a historian’s answer.”

“I am a historian, in case you forgot. And I need to be back to Stanford by Tuesday, I have a class to teach.”

For a moment, Flynn looks as if he can respect this commitment to professional responsibility, even if he has no intention of honoring it, himself. “Why did you want to be a historian?” he asks instead. It doesn’t sound entirely like pleasant small talk. “Though it’s better than dropping out of college to join a band.”

Lucy flushes. That is the first reference he’s made to the fact that he saved her life seven years ago. But as to his question, she isn’t even sure she remembers consciously choosing. Just that it was implicit in her mind ever since she was a little girl, that she was going to study history and follow in her mother’s footsteps. That time with Jake was the only time she came seriously close to deviating from the plan, and Flynn is the reason she returned to it. Well, indirectly, since if he hadn’t come along, she would have been six feet under for a while now. “I just… always knew that was what I was supposed to do,” she says, after a pause. “My mom was… well, she is very… she just wanted what was best for me. She pushed me a lot, and that time when… when you saved me, that was when I’d decided I was going to tell her that I could live my own life, and not just mimic hers. But when I almost died, it… it seemed like a sign. That it had been a mistake. So I continued.”

“Do you even like it?” Flynn asks. Bewilderingly. “Or is it something else she made you do?”

“Of course I like it.” Lucy stares at him. “Really. If I hated it, I wouldn’t have gotten this far, even for my mother.”

She isn’t altogether certain about that. Just because she’s not sure she could live with her mother’s disappointment, her constant remarks about how Lucy isn’t really doing everything she could be. And she – she does want this, she can’t think of anything else she wants to do with her life, and frankly, if you’d be happy doing anything else apart from getting a PhD in history, you should probably do that. But that’s odd to think about, almost unsettling. If Puff the Tragic Wagon hadn’t gone off the road, and she hadn’t almost died, and Flynn hadn’t saved her, would she have gotten to her mother’s house, told her the plan, and followed through on dropping out of Stanford and running off with Jake? Or would she have wilted at the first sight of her mother’s disapproval, called the whole thing off, and continued as normal anyway? Does she actually have it in her to defy Professor Carol Preston, who red-penned her homework assignments from the age of nine? Who used to open up her laptop and go through her college papers and just delete whatever she thought wasn’t strong enough?

Lucy starts to say something else, then stops. “What about your mom?” she says instead, not sure why she’s inviting more intimacy, but determined to learn something about this man, half guardian angel and half obnoxious, dangerous, stubborn liability. “You said she was American, but you were born in Croatia.”

“She was.” Flynn rolls to a precise halt at a stop sign, then continues. “From Texas. She worked at Lockman Industries in the aeronautics and engineering division. She was in Houston during the moon landing, actually. A very talented woman.”

Lucy glances at him. She’s always up for hearing more about talented women. “What was her name?”

“Maria.” Flynn’s mouth shapes around it as if he hasn’t said it in a while. “Maria Thompkins. She died a few years ago.”

It’s plain that he would rather not keep talking about the subject, and they drive for a few minutes, going nowhere in particular. They make a few loops around the Windsor main drag, until Flynn says, “All right, I’ll take you home. But if anything happens on the way, or when we get there, then – ”

He sounds so grumpy and yet so worried that Lucy can’t help but smile. Impulsively, she reaches out to put a hand on his where it grips the gearshift. “I’ll be fine, Garcia.”

He blinks. His fingers tense under hers, for a moment as if they might turn and take hold. She gets the sense that people don’t often call him by his first name; it’s either Flynn or Agent or something else curt and formal. He’s still looking down at her. The air feels thick. She hasn’t quite let go.

“Lucy.” It sounds half as if he was trying to say something else, and half as if it just spilled out, as if he wanted to taste it. It lilts on his tongue, he looks at her from under his eyelids, and – Lucy doesn’t know what might have been about to happen. And for that matter, doesn’t get a chance to find out.

She’s aware of a flash, a glint, from the car that’s just pulled up next to them at the stoplight. Is aware, in a horrible, too-slow way, of Flynn realizing what it is, and slamming her down. In the next, the entire world has exploded in Lucy’s ears.

Flynn spreads his arms, sacrificing the chance to go for his own gun in order to shield her, and she hears him grunt as he straight-up takes two shots. All she can think about is those scars she saw this morning, how there was at least one bullet wound, and –

At that, Lucy moves. Reaches over, half-climbs into the driver’s seat, and hits the accelerator, trying to steer with one hand and thinking madly that she has to get them to a hospital. She can barely spare a moment to look in the rearview mirror and see if they’re being followed; all her attention is for him. “Garcia?” she says frantically. “Garcia!”

He grimaces, pressing a hand to his side. It wells up red. “Shit.”

“Don’t talk. Don’t talk, all right?” Lucy looks madly from side to side. She can see a sign for an urgent care, but she isn’t sure how well-equipped they are to handle a drive-by shooting. There’s probably a proper hospital in Santa Rosa, but how bad are his wounds? She tries to look, then has to swallow hard and turn away; blood has never been her strong suit. And if they go somewhere that needs ID, if that’s the exact thing they don’t want to do –

“Lucy.” He sounds somewhat squashed; even aside from being shot, their impromptu driving arrangement is making it hard for him to breathe. “There’s… a kit. In the back. Pull over somewhere, I’ll – ”

“You think you’ll fish two bullets out of you by yourself?” Lucy snaps. “We are getting someone to take care of you!”

Flynn opens his mouth, grimaces, and stops. The left shoulder of his shirt is wet red. He looks like he might pass out, and Lucy decides to hell with it. The urgent care it is. She veers them into the parking lot, slams on the brakes, and hauls Flynn out with a considerable effort. Once she has gotten him inside to the very alarmed receptionist, Flynn is just in command of himself to grouch, but someone takes hold of him and he vanishes into the back. Lucy drops into a chair, covered in blood and shaking. What the hell. What the hell.

She doesn’t think she’s going back to Stanford today.