Introduction | Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six
"It's 8:45. You think something happened to him?" Nathan queried, pushing back from the conference table and nervously pulling his sleeve back to check his watch for the seventh time in the last fifteen minutes. "He could of busted them stitches or had an infection set in or...," he trailed off, chewing on his lip as numerous other possibilities flashed in his mind.
"Maybe we should try his cell," Josiah said softly, looking up at the others around the table.
"Just did," Vin Tanner said, as he came back into the room and dropped into a chair opposite the ex-medic. "No answer. Don't mean nothing though, cause iffin' he stayed at the Travis' he may not of had a chance to charge it."
"Hell, as often as he's kicking his boots off at Mary's, you'd think he'd just move in there," Buck snorted, jabbing his elbow into the tracker's side and grinning at the implications of such a move.
"I meant the Judge's house," Vin retorted back, not willing to make the situation any worse by having Chris overhear them talking about his relationship with Mary. Shaking his head disgustedly at the mustached man still grinning at him, Vin looked past Buck to JD. "What you starin' at so hard, JD?"
"Our young protege here has decided to complete all his paperwork so as to not burden our replacements," Ezra drawled sarcastically, lifting his head from the table top for the first time since he had entered the room almost an hour earlier. It had been far too early in his estimation when the alarm had gone off. The insult had gone even deeper when he had stumbled into the kitchen to start coffee and realized the sun had not yet risen.
"Ha, ha. Very funny," JD retorted back, before again turning his eyes back to the laptop that was humming quietly before him.
Leaning over the arm of his chair, Buck craned his neck to see what was on the screen. "Graduated top of class in computers...."
"Hey, do I read your stuff?" JD snapped, slapping the laptop closed. Shifting uncomfortably, the young agent finally muttered, "I just thought it'd be a good idea to take Ezra's advice and update my resume."
"A prodigious undertaking, no doubt," the southerner stated dryly, sitting back with a sigh. "Gentlemen, how much longer are we going to sit here?"
Cocking an eyebrow at the question, Nathan said, "Do you want to be any place other than in this room when Chris comes in?" Shaking his head in disbelief that the southerner would even consider such a plan, Nathan answered his own question. "Not me."
The sound of resigned sighs echoing around the table showed the other's agreement. Moaning in frustration, Ezra dropped his head back onto his arms.
Not surprisingly, Ezra was still in that position one hour and fifteen minutes later when the sound of the elevator stopping on the floor announced the arrival of the person the six men were so ambivalent about seeing. On one hand, Chris's appearance meant that he was in fact suffering few, if any, negative side effects from the incident. The down side however, was that now that he was here, they were in for it.
Being the one facing the open conference room door, Josiah was first to know of Chris's entrance. Nudging the southerner, Josiah announced, "He's here. And he's not alone."
Getting up to see who was with him, the six condemned men watched as their executioner walked out of the elevator. To their surprise, he was dressed in a black double-breasted suit, carrying a briefcase, and escorting two beautiful women, one on each arm. One of them was Mary Travis. They didn't recognize the auburn haired lady.
Team Seven watched as Chris halted the threesome's progress outside the door of the conference room.
"Why don't you ladies wait for me in my office. I'll take care of them and then we can grab an early lunch before we have to be at the gallery," Chris said, smiling at both women and nudging them in the right direction.
"Now, don't take too long and remember, Orrin needs at least part of them tomorrow," Mary said with a smile, before turning to lead the way.
"And I need the others," the unknown woman purred before following.
As Chris watched the retreating forms, Buck caught the others' eyes and mouthed the word "gallery" while cocking an eyebrow. Surely not the gallery.
Waiting until the women were settled in his office, Chris Larabee finally turned slowly to face the men on the other side of the door. When he did, the team members swallowed hard at the grin on his face.
Most of the time, Chris' smile could be described as unholy at it's best and downright demonic at its worse. But today....
Today, there was a sadistic glee reflected in it. It only seemed to get worse with each step he took towards the conference room.
Scrambling backwards to get out of the advancing man's way, the six members of the highly skilled ATF team literally tripped over each other in their haste. When they finally got untangled, each fell into the chair closest to them and nervously waited for Chris to make the first move.
Pausing inside the conference room door, Larabee had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep his laughter in check at the sight of his team before him. The last time he had seen so many bodies tangled in that many uncomfortable positions was the night Buck had drug out the Twister game. When his agents finally found their seats, Chris moved slowly to the end of the table and gently laid his briefcase on it.
The snapping of the locks on the case rang in the room like church bells across a country plain announcing the time for mere mortals to confess and atone for their sins. Locking eyes on the black clad man before them, the six men watched breathlessly as Chris laid a thick case file on the table, followed by a thinner folder. Tearing their eyes away from the mysterious papers, they saw the black clad man reach back into the satchel and slowly withdraw a small clear bag and carefully position it in the middle of the table.
Six set of eyes became locked on the bag as they realized what was in it. A bullet. They had no doubt that it was the bullet that had been extracted from Chris. Focused on the damning evidence before them, the men jumped as Chris re-latched the case and set it on the floor.
Easing down into the chair, Chris gritted his teeth at the pain radiating from his behind. Knowing it would ease in a few seconds, he took the opportunity to pin each man with a cold stare. He wanted them to know he was not in the mood for anything less than a complete and thorough explanation.
Satisfied that he had their undivided attention, Larabee began speaking in a low voice. "At seven a.m. this morning, I got a call from Travis who had been awakened by his boss. It seems the Director received a call from an attorney representing a very irate gallery owner demanding to know why his client had been targeted for, and I quote," Chris snapped, flipping open the thin folder, " 'the particularly heinous and insidious form of harassment, which resulted in over $10,000 damage and a yet to be determined amount of defamation upon the good name of said gallery owner' unquote. I, gentlemen, had the unenviable task of telling the Director that I had no idea why my team had taken it upon themselves to be in the gallery, let alone destroy private property."
Watching as each of the men flinched with each word of his statement, Chris leaned slightly forward. "Would one of you like to tell me why I shouldn't come down on you so hard that you'll be lucky to be checking two-bit joints for liquor license violations when I'm done?"
Swallowing hard, the men shifted uncomfortably and looked at each other. There was no choice now but to do what any self-respecting man who wanted to save his hide would do.
They spilled their guts and told Chris everything.
Silence descended in the room as Chris slowly rose from his chair and moved over the window. Looking outside for a few minutes, he finally turned and leaned one shoulder against the frame and crossed his arms. "Let me get this straight. All of this -- the damaged statue, the torn picture, me getting shot -- all of it happened because you didn't want me to see the photographs." Seeing the men nod their confirmation, Chris looked at the ceiling and shook his head in disbelief.
Pursing his lips and again pinning the men with his eyes, sarcasm dripped from his next words. "Did it ever occur to you geniuses that I might of already known they were on display?"
Stunned expressions gave Larabee his answer. They had not even considered that possibility.
"But when.... How.... I mean who...," JD stuttered, flabbergasted by the turn of events.
"Now, hold on," Buck Wilmington said, pointing at his oldest friend. "I've known you for over ten years and you never said nothing about being a...." The mustached man struggled to find the right word.
"A nude model," Ezra offered blithely, strangely amused by the irony of the situation and trying hard to contain the hysterical laughter that threatened to escape as he realized that he had basically thrown his career away for absolutely no reason what so ever.
"Yeah, one of them," Wilmington said, flinging his hand toward the southerner.
"That ain't something we ever thought you'd do, Chris," Nathan breathed, still shocked by the thought. "Buck, yes, but you?" The tall man broke off shaking his head.
"You gonna tell us when and why you did it or leave us wondering?" Josiah queried softly from the other end of the table.
Moving back to the table, Chris flipped open the large musty smelling folder that he had brought with him. Pulling a photo from it, he tossed it down the table to the ex-anthropologist.
As Josiah picked it up and scanned the photograph, Chris identified the subject on the paper. "Malcolm Bogdonnovich. Ten years ago, he was killed when agents tried to arrest him for selling guns and explosives to numerous paramilitary groups in the country. I was the one who went undercover and got the evidence needed for the warrants."
"Ten years ago? Weren't you a cop then?" Vin Tanner asked, flashing his eyes between Chris and the photograph just handed to him.
Nodding, Chris eased back into this chair. "I was. The Bureau contacted the department looking for a sucker to go in for them. Seems Bogdonnovich was paying someone inside the agency and they needed an unknown. Bosses asked me, and I said 'yes'."
Seeing the creases of confusion on Buck's face as he tried to remember when this could of happened, Chris grinned at him. "Remember when I won that all expense paid Alaskan cruise? You moaned for the week before I left that it should have been you as you were the one who goaded me into buying the ticket? Well, let's just say there weren't many tickets sold for that particular drawing and I didn't see any polar bears."
"This is all quite fascinating, I'm sure, but it still does not explain how you came to 'bare all' shall we say," Ezra said, dying to find out the rest of the sordid tale.
Pulling another photo from the folder, he handed it to the agent. "Bogdonnovich's step daughter, Nancy Sheldon," Chris said.
Peering at the auburn haired woman smiling up at him from the picture, Ezra commented, "The mystery woman," before passing it on.
"Hey, this is the woman with Mary," JD exclaimed excitedly, earning him a 'would you be quiet' stare from the others.
"Nancy was at college when her Mother remarried. When the summer break came she went to her mother's new home to meet her new stepfather. I showed up not long after that. I thought I knew what I was doing, walking into the situation. Didn't take long before I realized that this was the big leagues and I was greener than hell," Chris snorted, staring out the window. Glancing back, he continued, "Bogdonnovich wasn't buying my cover. He was going to get rid of me when Nancy convinced him that she needed me for a photo project that she was supposed to do over the summer. Trying to make a good first impression, there wasn't much 'dear old dad' could do but go along with her wishes." Shrugging, Chris picked up Nancy's photo and looked at it. "It kept me in the house long enough to get the proof I needed."
"So what happened when she found out you were a cop?" Vin asked, making a mental note to thank this woman he had never met.
Grinning at the memory, Chris looked up at the longhaired man. "After the raid, Nancy told me she had tossed my room after we met and found the recording devices and cameras I had stashed in it. Figured that if I wasn't really working for her stepfather, that meant I was a cop or a competitor. Since I didn't seem to be stealing trade secrets, that left a cop. She decided to keep her mouth shut and see what happened. Lucky for me she did."
"And her reward for this was that she got to keep the photographs she had shot of you," Josiah surmised. Seeing Chris' head bow in confirmation, he glanced around the table.
"That still doesn't explain how you knew they were on display," Nathan parried.
"She called me a couple of months ago. Said she was putting together a display to take on tour and wanted to know if I had any objections to her including my shots. I cleared it with the bosses and when I mentioned it to Mary, she offered to hook Nancy up with a friend of hers who runs a gallery here in town," Chris patiently explained, settling back into the chair.
"Let me guess, the gallery where we... and...," Buck said sheepishly, filling in the blanks with vague hand gestures.
"And that's the only reason your butts are mine instead of the Director's," Chris snapped back. "I was able to smooth it over with Nancy and Mary worked on the owner. Both agreed they would allow me to handle it in exchange for a couple of favors." Sitting forward, a savage smile glided back onto the team leader's face. "Favors that you boys are going to handle for me. Aren't you?"
Introduction | Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six