Week
Twenty-four
Fi's explosion knocked Mike, Jesse, and a man named Donovan off their feet. Mike stood up a minute later, head ringing, staring at the smoldering wreck of half a dozen trucks.
The
only good thing about it was he was expecting something like that, so it took
him less time to get his wits about him than it took Donovan.
"He's
found us! Finley's found us! We have to run!" He got the stunned man
moving again and glared in the direction he thought Fi would be.
*******************
Hours
later, back at their house, they gathered with Sam and Jesse.
"I
think Donovan's convinced that it's time to talk to the Feds. After that
explosion, witness protection's sounding awfully good to him. Speaking of
which," Michael shifted his glance from Sam to Fi, "I said enough to
scare him, not blow half of the trucks in the lot off the planet."
"I
saw his face, he was scared." Fi smirked, satisfied at a job well done.
"Of
course he was scared, and half dead, too! This plan doesn't work if you kill
the guy we have to get talking."
"There
was no danger of that."
"No
danger?" Mike takes off his shirt, and turns his back to them, showing off
the bruises and scrapes from where he landed against the pavement. He points at Jesse who is holding an ice pack
to the back of his head. "Donovan had a bloody nose, ruptured ear drums,
and a broken ankle."
"Exactly."
Fi still looks smugly satisfied. "There was a car between you and the main force
of the explosion, so you didn't take much of it. Jesse was shielded by it, too.
Donovan was in the clear, so he got a full dose. You needed to sell the idea
that the dreaded Chuck Finley wanted you both dead, and some real blood and
pain does that very well."
"Explosions
do that, period! You don't have to actually roast the guy."
"Guys,
we can argue about this later. Right now, Donovan's ready to talk to my Fed, so
I think it's safe to say the job is done, and we can put one in the win
column," Sam said.
"Fine,"
Fi replied. "So tell us what was so important we ended up doing a job less
than ten hours after getting home from our honeymoon?"
"Okay,
you remember Agent Wood?"
"Yeah,
we did that job for him to get the information on Nate," Mike says.
"Well,
he had an accountant for the Teamster's Union who noticed some suspicious
activity on one of the pension funds. That's Donovan. Anyway, he's getting
ready to do some whistle blowing when he starts getting the be-a-good-boy,
shut-the-hell-up, and we'll-make-it-worth-your-while treatment.
"So,
he's thinking life just got pretty sweet. Nice new car, promotion, all the
goodies are heading in his direction if he keeps his mouth shut.
"So, Wood called me to see if there was a way to go about convincing Donovan that he
had to talk, so we came up with the idea of making him think that the big
bosses thought he had already talked. We killed the bank account, wired the car
to go boom, stuff like that. Which got him so scared he wanted to run. We just
needed one more push to convince him he needed to run right into the arms of Wood."
"So
that's what we were doing?"
"Yeah.
And it looks like it worked, too. He called Wood right after you dropped him
off, and supposedly they're talking now."
"Great."
**********************
Much
later that night, Fi went for a midnight snack. Normally she's not a big
snacker, but lately whenever she's awake she feels like eating, and the small
person who seems to enjoy punching her in the bladder means she's not sleeping
for more than three hours at a time.
She's
not sure if Michael didn't go to sleep in the first place, or woke up at some
point and started messing with the computer. Either way, he's sitting at the
breakfast bar, computer in front of him, looking tense.
"I
think it's time we need to keep you away from gunfire and explosions," he
says as she opens the door to the fridge.
"Michael—"
"I'm
serious. No more firing range, no more demolitions, no more C4 until after the
baby is born." He turns the computer screen to her. "Look." He
plays slow motion footage of the shockwaves of explosions. "I mean, they
don't have a ton of information on the effects of explosions on pregnant women
or their babies, but the MythBusters crew—"
"What's
a MythBuster?"
"A
TV show. I googled effects of explosions on a fetus and didn't get much. But a
lot of clicking around got me to a TV show where they blow stuff up all the
time, shoot things every episode, and one of the hosts got pregnant, and they
stopped putting her anywhere near anything that went boom."
"This
is the male equivalent of nesting, isn't it?"
"I
think that's when I start adding the defensive fortifications to wherever we're living.
This is just... protectiveness. Think about it, we all know what can happen if
you get too close to an explosion, so let's not risk the baby. Donovan was a
good hundred meters away from the center of that explosion and you still blew
his eardrums out. Imagine what could happen to the baby if you got too close to
an explosion."
"Okay,
no explosions, but no guns? Really? I'll be bored."
"Bored
and safe."
"This
is more of your you-hang-back-and-let-me-do-the-dangerous-stuff, isn't
it?"
"Fi,
you're carrying our child."
"I'm
still perfectly capable of shooting a gun and triggering an explosive."
"I'm
not saying you aren't. I'm saying I'm going to go completely insane if
something happens to you, and worrying about it isn't helping either."
"What about you? You think I don't worry
about you off doing dangerous stuff, especially without me?"
That
stops Michael. In truth the answer is no, he doesn't think she worries about
him, not when it's about him having to deal with dangerous people, not for the
kind of jobs they're doing now. Selling his soul, walking the dark path, and
losing what's left of his humanity, sure, he knows she worries about that.
Getting into a fight he can't handle? The idea that she might worry about that
is both surprising and touching.
"How
about we both take the next six months off? We can offer tactical support for
Jesse and Sam, but stay out of any sort of active, get-shot-at, infiltrating
sort of role."
"You
think we can really do that? Sam'll show up with a job, we'll tell him what to
do, something will go wrong, and next thing you know you'll be itching to get
in costume and go save the day."
He
shrugs. "True. But we can try."
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