~~~~~
Things had happened so fast that what Connor wanted more than anything else was just a few minutes to sit back and breathe and let his brain catch up with it all. He wasn’t getting that time (which was really about par for the course for his life lately). Crises and life changing moments all seemed to want to come in a mad rush that didn’t leave you much room for breathing. He wasn’t (if the speed at which Anna’s fingers were flying across the keyboard in front of her was any indication) getting any time at all in any foreseeable time frame. He wasn’t going to worry about that. He was too hopeful to be feeling much put out with a lack of time and breathing room.
There were far more pressing matters in need of his attention. If Karen had brought them what it seemed she had, then that took precedence over everything. He wasn’t going to dwell on Lia right now. He couldn’t. They had all spent too much time going back and forth over where Lia did or did not stand. They had to focus on stopping Meredyth. That was more important than hurt feelings or mistaken appraisals or even betrayal.
They had a mission. They had spent so long thinking that they were going to be trapped in a never ending attempt to block small moves and slow her down without ever being able to completely stop her. This was a different option altogether. Everything that they had thought about Meredyth’s inevitable possession of Glimpse and all of its use at her disposal was now possible (if Anna was right, and he never argued with Anna when it came to what she could do with a piece of technology) to end. They could cripple her. They could knock her back to having to do it all on her own (which was still not a perfect world by any stretch of the imagination, but it was infinitely easier to combat).
Anna shot him a pleading look over her shoulder, and it finally filtered through his thought processes that the room was far nosier than it should be. It took him a couple of seconds to realize that the sound he was hearing was a heated argument between Karen and Will.
Seriously? They thought this was the appropriate time for a domestic squabble? He didn’t even have time to process what they were saying or to move to get them out of Anna’s way before Karen took care of it for him.
“Anna needs quiet you moron,” she told Will with a sudden flick of fingers against his forehead. “If you want to continue your pointless yelling, then you’ll have to follow me out to do it.” She spun on her heel and was out the door before Will’s eyes had uncrossed from his attempt to watch her fingers as they came in contact with his head. He sputtered for a moment before rushing out after her.
Connor just stood there. Karen had just carried out a sensible solution to a problem that her presence had created for Anna -- for Anna. Connor hadn’t been nearly as blind to the antagonism between the two women as he was sure he had appeared to be to the others. He found himself blinking in the direction in which the other two had disappeared, but he shook it off as quickly as he could. He would think about what had just happened later -- much later.
He would, instead, focus on getting Anna whatever she needed (which probably meant that he was going to spend an extensive amount of time pacing as quietly as possible in the next room ready to run if she hollered for something). Anna in work mode mostly just needed him to get out of her way, and he was comfortable enough with his place in their world to step back and let her go. She wasn’t looking at anything other than the screen in front of her. She might not have even processed what Karen had just said and done.
They would all have a whole lot of things to process later -- it was possible that later was going to have a lot more time and breathing room than they had counted on having.
In the hours that followed, Connor did a lot more thinking than he had planned. There wasn’t much else for him to do. He couldn’t stay in the same room with Anna. His pacing was distracting, and he couldn’t keep himself from pacing. He needed to pace. The motion was soothing, and he needed soothing. The rapid fire procession of the thoughts swirling around in his head was anything but soothing, thus the necessity of the continued pacing. He stuck to a back and forth on the carpet in the hallway; it helped to muffle the sound of his footfalls.
At least, he thought it did. Anna didn’t do any complaining, and Kyle (who had wandered in somewhere around hour three and been hastily briefed on what little Connor knew in a whispered conversation in the kitchen) hadn’t said anything about it either. Kyle was the one who ended up stationed close to Anna to bring her files and notes. He was allowed in the room as he was quiet. He had been nothing but quiet since Connor had offered him what little explanation of what was happening that he could.
That was one of the things that Connor found himself thinking about as he paced. He admired the younger man’s ability to focus on the importance of the task at hand even as he was sure that what he dearly wanted was to track down Karen and grill her for details about what had happened. Connor knew that he did, and he knew that it had to be worse for Kyle. He had been through a lot these past few months. Connor found himself amending his thoughts to years. He had been through a lot these past couple of years. They all had, but it had always seemed different when it came to Kyle and Lia. They had been the ones who shouldn’t have had to have been involved.
Granted, he wasn’t particularly pleased that Anna had had to have been involved either, but he had no illusions about how out of his depth he would have been in a multitude of ways if he hadn’t had her help. In the end, there were ways they would have been backed into corners without Kyle and Lia as well, but he knew with every bit of common sense that he possessed that despite his determination and original plan to take on the task of battling Meredyth on his own, there were a multitude of times that everything would have crashed and burned (in spectacular fashion) if he hadn’t had Anna to aide him.
As time continued to pass (and the McKees’ carpet suffered what was likely permanent damage from his back and forth vigil), Connor found himself whispering his thanks for the inspiration that had led him to decide that Anna’s home office had needed a massive upgrade. It wasn’t the first time that Connor was pleased that he had shelled out the money (and run roughshod over all of Anna’s objections) to turn the McKee living room into a dream come true of the tech junky variety. It had taken him a while (and a lot of pleading about contingency plans and agreeing to an understanding that it was all still technically his and not hers) to get Anna to admit what all she would need to not just meet but have something better than what was available to her at RR.
In the end, it wasn’t like she was running a military grade installation out of her apartment, but she had access to what she would need to do just about anything that Connor had asked her to in the past year. Today, his gratitude that he had had that foresight hit a new level. There was no way that Anna could have been doing what she was doing (even though he wasn’t completely clear on what exactly that was) if she had had to go to the RR offices to do it. He wasn’t sure that she would have had everything that she had needed there either.
So, all in all, it was a good day to have been the pushy former boss who insisted that she let him purchase things that she hadn’t originally wanted him to purchase -- not that he had any intention of rubbing that in any time in the near future. He would save that for some random day in a time yet to come when they had downtime (and she was gearing up to argue with him over something else). He was so looking forward to there being a day that they had downtime.
It had been a while since they had any downtime that wasn’t spent questioning people’s motivations and offering recriminations about who was or was not trusted. The tension had, of course, been unpleasant, but mostly, the whole situation had been heart wrenching. He wasn’t going to think about that now. Lia was a thought for later (when there was downtime again). As time went on, he was surer and surer that they were going to get to that point. If Lia hadn’t given them what Anna had said it looked like at first glance, then it wouldn’t be taking this long, would it?
&
nbsp; Anna would have already figured out that it wasn’t what it appeared to be and let them know, wouldn’t she? He wasn’t about to interrupt and ask her. One, he respected Anna’s ability to do what she did enough to stay out of her way while she was doing it. Two, he had enough of a sense of self-preservation to make sure that he stayed out of her way while she was doing it.
At hour ten, he was worried that he might need to be looking for some wrist braces for his best friend (they had discussed jokingly months ago that he would be covering the cost of corrective surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome for her someday, and he was thinking that the time table for that was being moved up by this marathon session), but Anna hadn’t voiced any complaints. She was focused. He knew Anna in working mode. She never noticed being uncomfortable when she was focused. The only things she noticed when she was focused were things that got in her way. She didn’t let uncomfortable get in her way -- she just ignored it.
She was going to have done all kinds of bad things to her wrists and fingers before this was over -- not to mention what kind of back pain she was going to be in after being scrunched up in front of her equipment the way that she was. He was going to be making himself useful as a masseuse later. Anna could just deal with it. He wasn’t going to be buying any argument on her part that she wasn’t in pain. There was no possible way that she could be sitting like that for that long without causing some serious problems.
That would be later. There would be a lot of things going on later -- that later that he was getting surer by the minute was coming. They had just hit hour eleven, and Anna was smiling. There was no reason for someone who had spent eleven hours hunched over computers typing at break neck (or break fingers as it were) speeds with only one (yes, he had been watching closely enough to keep track, what else did he have to do) quick run to the bathroom to break the monotony to be smiling like that if things were not working.
She was also starting to mutter. Connor knew the woman sitting in that chair well enough to know that she did not mutter in the middle of a project. Muttering to herself and the way she had moved so that she was sitting on her knees as she scooted her head closer to the screen were all signs that she was very close to finishing something -- something challenging that she thought she had completely figured out. Those were her tells, and she was displaying all of them.
“No, no that one,” she was saying to herself as he brought a halt to his pacing and settled in the doorway. Kyle turned and smiled at him. He knew. He knew it was close.
“Wait for it,” she murmured. “Wait for it. And four, three, two, one.” Kyle shrugged his shoulders, and Connor took that to mean that he didn’t know what it was that she was doing either. He just shared Connor’s knowledge that she was close to finishing whatever it was.
“And it goes . . . good . . . good. There, there, second set. First, that one. Yes!”
The shout caught them both off guard. Anna wasn’t generally that vocal even when she was excited about doing something. Connor managed to cover his surprise fairly well -- he was already leaning against the doorway so his small jump didn’t show. Kyle, on the other hand, had jumped enough that he lost his balance in his chair and landed with a thump on the floor.
Anna didn’t seem to notice. She was too busy twirling around with her hands in the air saying some sort of phrases that would probably make perfect sense if Connor knew more about computer programming or hacking or whatever it was that Anna had spent the last half a day doing. He took a minute to admire Anna as she continued to spin. He had never seen her act quite like this before. She was just too cute, and he found himself wondering why it was that he had never mentioned that to her before.
You know, aside from the obvious awkwardness involved with someone who was kind of sort of your boss telling you that you were cute. They were friends though; she was his best friend. That should be different for people who were friends. Did he tell her often enough how much he depended on her? Did he mention how much he appreciated everything she did -- all the times that she went above and beyond? Did she even know that she was his best friend? Had he ever told her that?
He couldn’t remember. He didn’t think that he had. He rather thought that it had always been one of those things that had been understood and didn’t require anyone to say it out loud. He wasn’t thinking that right now. It was more important to him than anything else that he could think of right now that he say those things to Anna. He needed to know that she knew. It was suddenly so very, very important that there weren’t things that he didn’t tell her. He wasn’t sure why.
Maybe it was an after effect of watching how strung out with worry Will had been. Maybe it was elation that he was certain they had just managed a very serious blow against the things that went bump in the night that they were fighting. Maybe it was the sense of awe that was striking him all over again at how dedicated she was to the things that she cared about and how much that meant to him. He didn’t know. He just knew that he really, really needed to tell her. This particular moment, however, looked like it wasn’t going to be the time that he got the chance. She had skipped (of all things) over to him and stopped in front of him to look up and smile into his face.
“It worked,” she told him sounding breathless and pleased and something else that he didn’t have the brain power to define at the moment what with all of the other thoughts swirling around in his head. “It’s gone. All of it,” she paused. “At least it looks that way. I’ll need to double check. Lia can . . .,” she trailed off, and her eyes brightened, “Lia, Connor.” The inflection was enough to ensure that no further words were required.
“I know,” he told her smiling back. There were so many other things that he wanted to say, but it wasn’t the moment. He settled for pulling her into a hug and allowed himself the luxury of letting his lips press softly onto the top of her head. His eyes caught Kyle giving him a thumbs up from across the room and mouthing words that looked like “I so called it.”
That made no sense, and Connor couldn’t think about them. He could only think how Kyle should be indignant with them and shouting out I told you sos, but he wasn’t. He just looked happy. Anna pulled away from him and ran back across the room where she tackled her brother in a bear hug that should have been completely impossible for a woman of her size to pull off, but it was Anna (and he had learned to never underestimate Anna).
There were things that he needed to say; there were things that he needed her to hear, and he wasn’t even sure why it was hitting him all at once when he must have felt this way for ages and just never realized it. That would all have to wait. They had checking to do and cleanup of the aftermath to handle. His words would wait, but they wouldn’t be waiting for long.
At least, that was what he had thought. In the days that followed, none of his plans for “later” really worked out in the way that he had thought that they would. Anna had done her checking. Every bit of access she had (and Lia had made it possible for that to be extensive) said that the pirated copy of Glimpse was no more. That was, of course, no guarantee that Meredyth didn’t have some sort of backup somewhere that had remained out of their reach, but Lia hadn’t thought so. The weeks that followed gave no indication that she had been wrong about that.
They had an advantage again. Meredyth wouldn’t be using Anna’s program against them any longer. He couldn’t not be happy about that -- the Lia that he thought he knew would be insulted by a lack of appreciation. He wasn’t sure if he was comforted by the fact that it turned out that the Lia that he thought he knew was the Lia that actually was or not. There was a part of him that was insisting on reminding him that if she hadn’t been (if she had, in fact, turned on them in the way that they minus Kyle had thought she had), then she would have been safe.
He wanted to be able to ask her what she had been thinking. He wanted to be able to ask her why she hadn’t told them what she wanted to do. It didn’t help th
at he could hear her answers in his head. She had been thinking that she had a way to help. She hadn’t wanted them to try to talk her out of it. He didn’t want to hear the answers that he thought she would give echoing in his head. He wanted to hear them from her mouth.
That wasn’t an option. He hadn’t believed the news report when it first appeared. He had thought (they all had thought) that this was some sort of a continuance on Meredyth’s part of previous tendencies. He had thought that she had shipped her sister off somewhere again and spread a cover story so no one who might be inclined would question her absence. He would have given a lot to have been right about that despite the wonderings about and implications of what Meredyth would have been doing to her in whatever time it took for them to find her again.
This was worse. This was so much worse than wondering while you have the hope of being able to find someone and do something about it. They knew exactly where she was, and there was no way that they could reach her. No one could.
A home invasion was the story that the media had been fed -- some unknown person who had tried to rob what he thought was an empty residence and stumbled upon the young woman who had happened to be home alone. It made Connor sick to his stomach to watch her father spin it into fodder for his campaign -- the poor father who sadly couldn’t make appearances for a week while he devotedly sat by his comatose daughter’s bedside. Then, he bravely put aside his grief to continue his work “for the people” to “do his best to ensure that no other families suffered as his was suffering.”
Meredyth’s teary-eyed pleas “for anyone with any information no matter how seemingly insignificant to come forward” at a series of press conferences as Wyatt stood at her side with a supportive arm around her shoulders were worse. He still didn’t know if he would have believed it if it hadn’t been for Karen. She had been able to confirm that Lia was, in fact, a patient in her hospital (transferred to be closer to Meredyth’s permanent residence) and in the comatose condition that the press had claimed. She said that she had suffered head trauma and declined to say anything else.
One look at Kyle left him grateful that she had refrained from further details because one look at Karen had told him that it was bad. He wasn’t sure whether or not he was grateful that she had continued to decline to offer further details when there was no Kyle around to overhear. Connor was upset (and not a little bit shocked numb), Kyle didn’t seem to comprehend and was wandering around in a sort of dazed state that nothing seemed to penetrate, and Anna was devastated at the combination of what had happened to Lia and her brother’s reaction to it. Karen even seemed to be suffering some sort of a behavior shift as a result.
She hadn’t elaborated to any of them as to what exactly had occurred between the two of them when she had gone off to do they still didn’t know what and come back with Lia’s jump drive in her hands. Something about the interaction with Lia had been enough to leave her saddened by the outcome. Connor caught her looking at Kyle in a speculative sort of a way more than once, and he wondered if maybe there was something she was debating telling him. She had that pondering sort of a look about her.
Will was being a jerk.
Connor knew he had all but come unglued when Karen had gone missing, but it didn’t make him overly tolerant for the way that the other man was acting. He found himself grateful more times than he could count for Karen interrupting him or hustling him out of the McKees’ apartment to which he seemed to keep gravitating even though it couldn’t be clearer that no one wanted to deal with him. He was pestering Anna over whether or not she was sure that Meredyth’s version of Glimpse had been shut down and making a habit of arguing with Karen about something that Connor didn’t catch until the day that he walked in to find Anna at the end of her tether yelling at him “I’ll know when I know, okay?”
“No, it’s not okay. None of it’s okay. I could have lost Karen. Do you even understand what that’s like? To know that she could have been the one in that hospital room? I need to know it’s over.”
They were all staring at him in shock (Karen included), and Will was glaring back at them all as if he was some sort of injured party who hadn’t just said . . . Connor couldn’t even process a phrase to describe what Will had just said. His brain was too tied up in seething.
It was Karen who once again interceded. She pulled a still huffing Will away from Anna and whispered (hissed more really, it didn’t sound particularly pleasant from where Connor was standing) in his ear before giving him a rather hard shove in the direction of the door. He slammed it behind him, and they all stared after him for a couple of moments while it felt like the words he had spoken echoed around the room.
“Please don’t, Connor,” she held up her hand even though Connor was pretty sure he hadn’t been about to speak because he still hadn’t come up with any words. “He’s finished. He can’t do this. He isn’t cut out for this.” She smiled at him, and there was something gentle about it that he never would have associated with Karen before. “I don’t know if you can understand that because you’re the kind of guy that doesn’t really understand why anyone wouldn’t want to do the right thing. Will isn’t that guy. I think you were probably a little desperate for help when this all started, and I think in the grand scheme of things it didn’t hurt him any to get pulled out of his comfort zone for a while, but this is it. You and Anna live in this. It’s who you are. Will was just visiting for a bit. It’s not where he lives. It’s not who he is. It’s time to cut him loose. You’ve gotten all the help you’ll get out of him.” She took a deep breath before continuing.
“I’m not saying that every once in a while (every once in a great while) after things die down a bit that you can’t make a call and get some occasional assistance. I think that, after some time, we can make that work. But, he can’t do this every day. He can’t always know what’s going on and always be watching for what’s going to drop next. He can’t handle that. At least, not right now. You hear what I’m saying?”
Connor couldn’t do anything but nod. What was there to say? Karen turned to Anna.
“He won’t be back to bug you any. I’ll get him to back down. When you know one way or the other, will you give me a call? I’ll handle it from there.”
“I can do that.”
“I need to talk to you, Kyle.”
Of all the things that could have broken through the daze that Kyle was wandering around in, it would have had to of been Will’s callous statement. He looked broken, and Connor really wanted to step in and tell Karen that whatever she had to say would have to wait. He remembered the way that she had been watching the boy, however, and he bit his tongue. Anna must have noticed that something was up as well because she also made no objection.
“We can step out?” She offered sounding unsure of whether she really wanted to go through with that. Karen shook her head.
“No need,” she commented steering Kyle by the elbow down the hallway. “This won’t take long.”
It didn’t. Five minutes later she was heading out the door herself. “Give him some time,” she offered in the direction of where he had found himself on the sofa with Anna’s head resting against his shoulder as they waited for one or both of them to emerge. He didn’t say anything. Anna’s nod answered for them both. He didn’t say anything as they sat for hours that evening just letting everything that had happened soak in for the both of them. He didn’t say anything when he recognized the necklace that Kyle was wearing the next time that he saw him.
What was there to say?
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