Adam didn't imagine Lee was having any more of an easy time handling what had happened back at the safe house than he was. They were both quiet in the car although Lee kept looking his way. Adam couldn't help but see the movement out of the corner of his eye. There was no talking though so he was thankful that he was able to use the time to concentrate on the driving.
They were twenty minutes away from the prison just before lunch time and as they weren't allowed in to see Gareth Headley until two, Adam took the initiative and pulled into a diner parking lot. Food and talk were both on his to-do list. They settled in a corner booth and after a silent and short battle of wills Adam sat facing the door. The menu was simple and the selections easy. As soon as the order was filled Adam knew where they should start but he didn't immediately launch into anything. He looked at Lee who was slumped in his chair and tracing patterns on the table top with his finger. He appeared thoughtful and Adam considered that they were thinking about the same thing. Were they both on the job or was Lee introspective after last night? The drinks arrived and Adam sipped hot coffee as he waited for Lee to say something. Anything.
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Lee finally said.
"I don't know," Adam moved in his seat and leaned into the corner. The table was a little close to the seats and fixed with a bar. It made someone of his height and width a little claustrophobic. Still, he wouldn't change anything for the clear view of all the exits. "What were you thinking about?"
"The case," Lee offered with a frown. He pulled a notebook from his pocket and placed it flat on the table.
"Someone compromised the FBI safe house where Morgan Drake was being held. We know for a fact there's been an agency leak back at the Bureau. What if we hypothesize there is a connection. That whoever the leak is, is working for the Bullens?"
Adam pulled his cell out of his pocket and thumbed through his emails. The message received early this morning from Manny was the one he wanted to show Lee. He turned it around to face his partner. "Manny sent over the list of matches from the notes that Maggie Headley had to the case files that were taken from Gregory Bullen's PC. There are two pairs of letters which repeat but Manny can't match them. They appear enough to make them worthy of notice and the last notification of one of the sets of initials was the day before Elisabeth Costain was shot in the alley."
"Which letters?" Lee was sliding the screen to read down the list and then he stopped as he reached halfway. He looked up at Adam but there was no sense of recognition in his expression. He carried on scrolling to the bottom.
"SH and EC. Those are the letters we can't match to reports," Adam summarized. "However, EC seems to tie in with Elisabeth Costain."
"That would make sense."
"SH is the initial that appears last. What if that is the person inside the FBI?"
"That's a reach."
"It's the only lead we have."
"SH? Sean Hanson?" Lee immediately concluded exactly what Adam had thought. "The agent working as liaison between Sanctuary and the Bureau? There must be a hundred men working with the FBI with those initials. Hell, Adam, he's one of the good guys."
"Agreed with the hundreds of matches. But, it may be worth seeing if there are any correlations between the initials and agents and staff involved or connected with the Bullen case."
"Or with you and me," Lee said softly.
"You're thinking there is some connection between you, me, the Bullens and the leak?" Adam considered the suggestion. "Stranger things have happened," he finally concluded.
"All I'm saying is that last case you worked, Lloyd Robertson. Is it possible that he was linked to the Bullens? Lloyd ran money schemes for a lot of very shady people. Who's to say he wasn't the Bullens' money man. We could get your guy, Manny, to see what he can track down. It was the Lloyd Robertson case that was compromised by your actions—your alleged actions." He corrected himself even as he said it. Then he ducked his head in a slight show of embarrassment.
"I was close to shutting Robertson down then he was shot and killed—"
"I remember. We woke up to the news on CNN." Lee went quiet.
Adam could see Lee was remembering their last morning together before the shit hit the fan.
"And then you were framed," Lee added, "and I didn't see it."
Adam wanted to grab Lee's hand and hold it tight; he sounded so resigned. They were both to blame. He didn't though, as he wasn't sure how that would go down in this small diner. The two men could handle anything but the last thing they wanted was to attract attention.
"I shouldn't have placed that responsibility on you to accept what you saw as lies. I'm not sure if it had been you that I wouldn't have doubted the same way."
"You didn't though. You believed in me, knew it wasn't me who was the FBI mole."
"Can we leave it? The whole blame thing?" Adam leaned forward in his seat when sadness passed over Lee's face. "That's not to say not talk about it, ever. I just mean for the next short time while we get our visit over with Gareth Headley."
"I can do that." Lee nodded. "Hell, when this is over we go our own ways anyway."
Adam didn't want that. He wanted to talk, he wanted to fix this, hell he wanted to get over his own insecurities so he could look at Lee and not feel disappointed at the other man's actions. "Why did you ask to work with me, Lee? You knew I didn't want you anywhere near me, and you still thought…"
"Sean asked me to, and I didn't have to think about it. I wanted to see you." Lee shrugged then looked down at the paper. "Can you get your team to run the check on the initials?"
Lee evidently wanted to change the subject and Adam was strangely enough very cool with that. Despite having questions the last thing he wanted really was an in-depth discussion on his love life where anyone could hear.
"You want this done outside of the Bureau."
"No sense in raising red flags."
Adam tabbed to Manny's number and connected almost immediately.
"Yo, big man," Manny answered.
"Manny, can you do a check on any agents with those initials S and H from maybe ten years back to today that may connect with the organized crime team, the Bullens, with me or Agent Lee Myers, or with the last case I worked at the Bureau?"
"Which was?" Manny was typing even as he was talking.
"Robertson, the Bullens' money man, murdered just over two years ago."
"FBI as a whole, too many hits."
"How about narrowing it to the organized crime team past and present?" Lee suggested. "Makes sense for the Bullens to want someone on the inside where it mattered."
"Running. Okay, we have twenty-six hits, ten female, sixteen male. Factor in the Bullens and that drops to ten. Add in your office brings it down to four. That's as far as I can take it down."
"What are the names?" Adam gestured for the notebook and a pen and Lee slid them across the table. Adam scribbled them down and heard the momentary pause before Sean Hanson's name.
"Look, Adam, this name came up on my matches. Should we be giving a heads-up to Jake? The man is Jake's shadow for nigh on half the day."
"Leave it for now. I'm running the names past Lee. I only recognize one and that's Sean and that is only because we met yesterday. Lee may know more."
"I'll be here." Manny signed off with his customary "laters".
Lee took the pad from Adam and turned the paper around. "Sarah Harrison, she's on maternity leave, spent most of last year practicing her new surname after marrying John Harrison in accounts. Selina Hernandez, she's a good field agent. Mostly out of the LA office but I know she was seconded to our office just after you left. Simon Hatfield, he's this new guy, fresh out of Quantico, and then Sean Hanson. I don't know a lot about him personally but he's working hard at getting Sanctuary looked on as something more than a renegade organization."
"Jake would love that. Renegade," Adam smiled. The idea of his thoughtful ticking-boxes boss being anything like a kind of renegade was something he couldn't see.
Their food arrived and suddenly they had something to focus on other than the case. Lee was still talking about the people they had identified with the initials SH. They could be barking up entirely the wrong tree with this SH. Just because the letters featured in Headley's list and appeared to tie up with each case didn't mean it was pointing at an FBI contact.
Listening to Lee talk was therapeutic. Adam worked through his thoughts quietly until the smile he gave when Lee cracked a joke about procedure was actually genuine. He'd forgotten just how much he liked to hear Lee talk. He enjoyed the softer tone of his voice and the clipped preppy accent that sounded every vowel he had. He remembered Lee's voice loud with passion and soft with teasing and he realized why it had hurt so much when he had lost Lee's trust. He missed Lee. He missed his voice and his teasing and his body and his hair. Fuck. Everything.
"Ready?" Lee was saying. It broke through Adam's thoughts and the question startled him. "You spaced out there, big guy."
"Yeah." He glanced at his watch. "Let's hit the road."
"Just gonna use the bathroom," Lee said and slid out of his seat. "Meet you at the car."
Adam paid the check and left the diner. The day was warm and the road busy. He crossed to the car and leaned against it, raising his face to the sun. No point in wasting the heat. His cell vibrated and he answered without checking the screen.
"Something else came up," Manny dived in without preliminaries.
"What?"
"I don't know if this is of any use but you know that Fed you're with? Lee Myers. I'm turning up some connections between him and one of the people on the list and I don't mean work connections."
"What kind of connections?"
"A joint address for part of last year but not on their personnel files. I dug quite a lot deeper than the normal sweep for information. Looks to me like your Fed was sharing a place with our very own Sean Hanson."
Adam said his thanks but could barely hear the words he was saying over the sudden bitterness that flooded him. Sharing a place with one of the names on the list? Why wouldn't Lee immediately tell him that? Fuck, he told Adam about everything else he knew concerning the other people on the list. Right down to that woman practicing her married name on FBI paperwork.
Lee walked out the front door and slipped his shades from his pocket and onto his face. In a gesture similar to Adam's he lifted his face to the sun. But he grimaced. Unlike Adam, Lee was prone to burning and wasn't a great sun worshipper. Suddenly Adam hated that he knew that.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he snapped as soon as Lee reached him.
"Tell you what?" Lee said frowning. Adam wished he could see Lee's blue eyes to check for deceit.
"You and Sean Hanson."
"Oh."
"Is that all you can say? You're fucking one of the suspects in a case and you don't think it's important to share with me?" Abruptly all the warm fuzziness of smiling at each other in the diner flew out of the window. A mask fell over Lee's face as suddenly as the bars on the windows in a safe house lock-down.
"I don't have to tell you everything I did for two years, Adam," Lee said stubbornly. He crossed his arms over his chest.
"You fucked a suspect," Adam bit out angrily.
"Like I was fucking you when you were breaking the law?" Lee snapped back equally as pissed off. Then he immediately deflated and leaned back against the car next to Adam. "Shit, Adam, I didn't mean that. I wasn't sleeping with Sean. He needed a place to stay so I gave him my spare room. That's all. And he wasn't a freaking suspect when that happened. He was just a friend in need."
"Okay." Adam walked around to the driver's side and unlocked the doors. He climbed in, had his belt on, and was starting the engine before Lee even opened his door.
"Adam—" he started.
"Forget it." Adam was pissed and he wasn't entirely convinced about why he was losing his cool. Jealousy? Frustration? Sadness? Any and all of these were spinning around inside him. He didn't own Lee. Their relationship had ended two years ago and Lee was perfectly okay to sleep with whomever he wanted to.
"There hasn't been anyone, okay?" Lee said tiredly. He removed his sunglasses and pressed at his temples with his fingers. He was staring at Adam and his blue eyes were filled with emotion. "Not since you."
"Just you and your right hand?" Adam finally said. Then he quirked a smile which, thankfully, Lee returned. Adam reached for the satnav and typed in the zip code they needed. The disembodied voice instructed them to turn around when possible. It was enough to break the weird feeling of connection in the car. Adam didn't want to spend any more time imagining Lee being fucked in his bed by the tall dark Sean Hanson. Lee said nothing happened. That they were just friends. Adam trusted him.
He pulled out of the car park and into the stream of traffic.
There would be time to work through the shit in his head later.