Who: Max What: Narrative: A.J. (after Jack) & a life-changing event Where: Warehouse → Airport When: Recent Warnings/Rating: Some language
Max had no idea how long she sat in the living room of the warehouse, elbows on her knees and head in her hands. There was a sense of time passing, of light through the windows giving way to dark, then to light again, but the only thing that really jarred her was the alarm on her phone, which indicated that Amanda's flight was due in an hour.
She needed to get up, to move, to shower and find clothing and put on a brave face. She was an agent. Her life was all about brave faces and things she didn't actually feel. She'd watched a fellow agent die in front of her, and she'd toasted over his dead body, all to keep her cover. She could do this. She could drive to the airport, and she could pick up her six-year-old daughter, and she could pretend she hadn't been responsible for the death of...
Of what? How did she even describe Jack?
Past tense, Main. Past tense.
Fuck.
She went through the motions. Jeans, a sweater, hair scraped back and cold water to downplay the puffiness of her eyes. Agents didn't cry. Main, report. Loss of life, two. Cause of death, arterial blood flow, given the amount of blood on her clothing. Mission complete. But it didn't make her feel any better, and she wondered how she'd done it for so long all those years ago. Yes, this was different. She hadn't been the one to pull the trigger, and she hadn't watched him fall, but she was still responsible. If she'd caught him in Las Vegas, then they'd been fine. She would have sedated him, and they would have worked it out. He'd trusted her to do that. Luke had trusted her to do that. She'd trusted herself to do that. Jack was inexperienced, a novice, and she had fifteen years of operative work under her belt. He shouldn't have slipped free.
She should have been able to control her.
That pissed her off nearly as much. She was strong. She should have been able to break through, to stay that unnamed woman's hand. To prevent this. But she hadn't been able to. She'd failed. Fuck, how she'd failed.
The truck swerved, and she couldn't see the road for her tears, and she checked the time on her phone as she pulled onto the shoulder for a second. Thirty minutes.
Thirty minutes until she brought her child into this hell. Brandon would say it was irresponsible, letting Amanda get off the plane when Max couldn't control some homicidal woman in her mind. But Brandon would say a lot of what she did was irresponsible; she would just agree with him this time.
The phone rang, some cheery jingle that Amanda had set it to for herself.
"Hey, bumblebee. You still in the air?" And she did a good job of sounding calm. At least that remained from her training. She could fool the best target with that fake calm. No one could see through it.
"Mommy? What's wrong?"
Correction. No one could see through it but a precocious six-year-old. "Nothing, baby. Is your flight landing soon?"
"Mommy, you're a worser liar than daddy is."
"Worse," Max corrected, unthinking, which earned her a dramatic sigh on the other end of the line, and that made her laugh a tear-wet laugh. "Mommy's just kind of upset, Manda. But I'm glad you're coming to visit."
The little girl on the line huffed. "I don't know what you people would do without me."
Max laughed as the nanny took the phone away, and she could hear the older woman lecturing Amanda about being polite, which was a failed exercise, given who her parents were. After reassuring the nanny that yes, she was on her way to the airport, Max hung up, just as the pilot announced that all electronic devices needed to be turned off for the descent.
The rest of the drive to the airport was tears and anger, and by the time Max parked the car, she'd worked herself up. She tilted the rearview mirror down, and she regarded herself. She looked like shit - puffy eyes and no sleep for over a day - but that wasn't why she'd done it. She knew how she looked. More importantly, she didn't care.
"Listen to me," she said to the mirror, but she hadn't gone crazy, and she wasn't talking to herself. "I don't care who you are, and I don't care what your story is. You're not setting a foot through that door ever again. Not while my daughter is here, not after she leaves. You're fucking done. And if you think I'm joking, you don't know me. And if you think your will is stronger than mine, you're wrong. You managed this once, and I hope it was worth it, because you're done. You killed someone I cared about, and you're lucky I can't put a bullet in your brain in return, because I'd smile as I pulled the trigger. But I've killed you regardless. You're as good as dead. Trapped inside me, and I'm never letting you out."
With that, she cut the engine, and she put the rearview back in place. She didn't notice the new silence in her mind, because the woman there had always been silent. She just closed the door, and she put a smile on her face as Amanda ran out of the baggage claim area with the haggard looking nanny behind her.
"Mommy, you look terrible. Have you been eating that junk food daddy hates? He says it's bad for cholisterine."
Max just laughed, tears running down her cheeks as she pulled the crinkle-nosed little girl into a hug, one that Amanda tried valiantly to squirm out of.