Mickey woke up alone. He lay in bed a moment, confused. Hadn't Laurie been with him? So where…

Suddenly, he bolted upright as something frightening occurred to him. There was no way he had dreamed up the time they'd had together. His body still ached from what they'd done over and over last night. So unless she'd left, she could have come across something he didn’t need her to. He threw himself out of bed, grabbing a pair of shorts and pulling them on, then leaving his room to go look for her.

Laurie had gotten up before Mickey. It had been deliberate. When she woke up to see him still sleeping, she'd been planning to surprise him with breakfast—but, she had gotten curious.

They had talked during their date, but Mickey had been mostly quiet about himself and his life. Because she didn’t want to ruin the mood, she didn’t pry. All she'd managed to get out of him was that he'd been in a long-term relationship before that ended badly because of his job, and his love of bikes that was as great as hers. Only he'd been to some official cyclist competitions, while Laurie just mostly did it for fun.

So she had gotten curious, and peeked into a room on her way to the kitchen, only to freeze.

Mickey discovered Laurie in the room where he had his surveillance gear set up. She stood still, in front of the window where he'd sat to watch both her and her brother. He wanted to curse, out loud, but his breath was caught in his throat as he waited for her to blow up at him. It wasn’t as fast as he'd expected.

"I wanted to surprise you," she murmured without turning around. "I wanted to make some breakfast and bring it up for you… but then this…" she whipped around, glaring hard at him, even as tears streamed down her reddening eyes. "You've been spying on us?"

He winced and wished she'd have screamed at him instead of this quiet anger. Having a confrontation with Laurie this soon, with her angry and in tears, wasn’t in any of his plans. There was nothing he could say. The evidence was all laid out neatly. Even an idiot could be able to tell what had been going on in this room.

Mickey had been stupid. He hadn't forgotten his job, no, but he'd allowed himself to put it aside. At the very least, he should have locked up anything he didn’t want getting found out. But because of his carelessness, they both found themselves in this situation. He could only imagine what Laurie must be feeling, probably betrayed.

"Laurie…" his voice trailed off, because what exactly could he say in this situation? Nothing could make it better, and he wasn’t supposed to tell her the truth…

"Just tell me what the hell all this is," she cut off whatever he'd wanted to say. "What was last night to you? Why are you doing all this? Or why you're even here."

Dammit. There was no way he could keep her quiet about this. If he didn’t say anything, the look she had on her face made him think she'd either tell someone and create problems for him, or try and find out on her own. Either option was dangerous.

"All right," he admitted, "yeah, I was spying. But I'm here for your brother, not you." Not entirely the truth, but it would probably devastate her that she was under suspicion of being an enemy of the government. "I work for the CIA. I was sent here because your brother hacked into your father's computer, and copied files he shouldn’t even know exist. They were basically secrets of the Pentagon, and it put a big target on his back. Laurie, your brother is currently the most wanted man in the US because of those files. If they get out, he might have just crippled national security trying to get back at his dad."

She'd lost the angry stance. Instead, her face was twisted in horror as she took in his words. There was no way any of it could be true, though. Her idiot brother? The kid that was always lazing around, way too interested in sex and drugs even though he got more of one and relied on porn and his own hand for the other? Kept making a mess of her house and squawking about his privacy…

Laurie had trouble believing any of it. Sure, he was a little good with computers, at least enough to get through her passwords. She knew her dad wasn’t all that okay with technology, so his computer would be the safest thing to crack. But could her father, a man that had instilled fear in her for as long as she could remember, really be stupid enough to leave information that sensitive behind such a flimsy password that her brother could crack it? Or had he just not expected it from someone inside his house, so he didn’t prepare for it, not like with the security he had all over the house.

Mickey could see her struggling with herself, struggling not to believe him. He moved to a desk that held one of the computer monitors, reached inside a drawer and pulled out a phone. He had several of them, for several purposes, but he rarely used a personal one on the job. He dialed her father, assuming if she'd stayed this clueless, she hadn't talked with him yet. He handed her the phone.

Laurie just watched the device as it rang, the dial tone stopping when the call was picked up. Then she slowly reached for the phone, snatching it from his hand, and holding it up to her ear.

"Hello? Who is this?"

She gasped, hearing her father's voice on the other end of the phone, eyes jumping to meet Mickey's. How did he have her father's number? There was no way Mickey knew her dad. Or had he sent him here without telling them because he was worried about the files that had been taken from his computer?

Because Laurie could imagine how this would affect him. National secrets were stolen from him, and by his own son no less, inside his own home. It would be less humiliating if it had been a stranger that broke in and did it. Her father was too proud to not let something like this affect him.

But there was no way he could have sent Mickey, then. He claimed to be from the CIA, and if that was true, then her dad probably couldn’t give him orders, not unless he got orders from people in his organization. Because the military and the CIA might have the same goals when it came to keeping the country safe, but they were essentially different organizations. She remembered her father explaining something like it a long time ago.

"Hello?" her father's voice came again, only more irritated as he grew impatient.

"Dad," she whispered. It was all that could make past the lump growing in her throat. She hadn't expected to talk to her father this soon, and she hadn't expected this would be the conversation they had when it finally happened.

Really, she would have preferred to be kept out of it. Whatever was going on, it involved her father and her brother. So even though the security of the nation was at stake, it boiled down to her family having another spat. Her father should have thought his actions through and tried to find out what Karl had done instead of just throwing him out. Then he wouldn’t have gone to Laurie at all, and none of this would be happening to her.

You also wouldn’t have met Mickey.

But she shook the whimsical thought aside. Mickey had just admitted to being CIA, to being a spy sent after her and her brother. That meant that, in spite of the great time they'd had so far, it couldn’t continue.

"Laurie?" her dad questioned, surprised. "I didn’t expect you. I don’t recognize the number… do you need something?"

Laurie had a moment to take note of how her father sounded. He didn’t sound anything like the intimidating man she'd grown up with. For the first time in as long as she could remember, her father sounded tired. Her father was in his mid-fifties, he would be turning fifty-five that year, and he suddenly sounded every one of his years.

"I've… been living with Karl, actually. He told me that you threw him out, but he wouldn’t tell me why." Her voice sounded lifeless, even to her. Because she suddenly knew, that Mickey couldn’t have been lying. Not if her father sounded like that. "I'm with a guy that claims to be CIA, telling me that Karl took files from your computer…"

There was a short silence on the other end, and when her father sighed, she could hear her heart breaking.

"It's true," he confirmed. "Your brother broke into my computer and through it, into Pentagon files. I didn’t know where he ran off to, but… I should have known."

Tears were flowing down her face again. How could this be possible? Her brother… the most wanted man in the country? Doing something this stupid and dangerous, it had all been for the sake of his drugs, hadn't it? Or just to get back at their father, because he never lacked money. Whatever he wanted, their father always gave him. And this was the result of him getting spoiled to this degree.

"When I offered to secure your machine for you, why did you keep refusing?" she berated her father. "I said I could do it so many times. Granted, I never expected something like this, but I could get into your computer easily, Dad, if you'd let me help even just a little then this…"

Her voice trailed off as she broke down into quiet sobs. Her father sighed over the phone.

"You may be right," he admitted. "I take full responsibility for what happened. The CIA didn’t tell me they had someone looking over the two of you, but I think it's the safest thing right now. There are a lot of people after your brother right now, a lot of them aren’t going to be nice people."

Laurie could only listen, trying to take it all in.

Once her father was off the phone, she handed it back to Mickey. He'd gotten closer, but her anger was completely gone now that she knew the story.

"Laurie, I'm going to ask something of you. I know I don’t have the right to, but it's important."

She sniffled and looked up at him cautiously. Just because she was better informed didn’t mean she suddenly had to trust him. "What."

"Please help me prevent Karl from making the biggest mistake of his life by turning those papers over to his buddy Randy and the Russian mob. It's for the sake of the country, and your brother's head."

"I…" she floundered, looking for what to say. There was no way she could be ready for this. "I'm too overwhelmed. I need some time to think things through. I promise I won't say anything to Karl about the trouble he's in, but I can't do more than that."

They stood there, gazes held. Mickey raised a hand to her face, only to stop half way and let it drop. Laurie took a step back, turning her eyes away when pain showed on his face.

"Is there a chance in hell of salvaging whatever is growing between us?"

Perhaps she should have flat out told him, no, but then that wouldn’t be honest, would it? She'd felt with Mickey things she'd never felt with anyone she'd dated before, and it wasn’t just the amazing night they'd spent together. She looked away and walked around him.

"It's too early and I'm hurt too bad to be able to tell."