Early the next morning, Mickey checked in via his secure uplink with Madeleine.

"That's the end of my report. It's about all I have so far, but when I get more information, I'll call you as soon as I can."

He'd already sent the two separate recordings he'd gotten from the Nash siblings. He would have loved to edit Karl and Randy's, but he didn’t dare. He wasn’t so good that he could make whatever edits he made untraceable, and then he'd be stuck with the responsibility to answer as to why he would do it in the first place.

He would just have to get some more info on the other kid, and someone else could monitor him, so he wouldn’t have to worry about it for a while.

"Of course. Good work, Agent Harding."

He almost rolled his eyes. Well, at least she was pleased.

Madeleine Tate, forty-two years old, was his contact and superior and had been with him on missions for the last few years. Still, in all that time, she'd never called him by his first name. Mostly, she was just a voice on the phone for him; she almost never left Washington DC. He had met her briefly when he was first assigned to her, so he at least knew what she looked like. On the short side and blocky, with a long face, small, bright green eyes, and shoulder-length, graying blonde hair.

Madeleine was a bit of a battle-axe, hard-nosed and a stickler for proper procedure. Mickey tolerated her for her mixture of fairness, attentiveness to her agents, and general intellect. Cool, smart, articulate, and just a touch paranoid, with an obsession for precision and detail. That last bit was why he was so glad she was pleased with his report, it meant he was doing something right. If he'd done something that translated to a huge oversight to her, all he'd have received was cold silence over the line.

She also never let on about her personal life outside of a love for classical music, and he'd given up having her call him Mickey a while back.

"There is one thing, though," she continued, and the smile dropped from his face. "I am unable to provide surveillance for Randy thanks to the lack of personnel. If you really think he should be monitored, I will continue working on it, but the resources simply don’t exist right now."

Mickey wanted to curse. He didn’t like the idea of that kid being left to do whatever he wanted. Mickey was there, so he would know if anyone shady got close to Laurie, but it wasn’t his job to follow her everywhere, just her brother. He couldn’t always be with her.

His lips tightened. "I really believe there should be someone on him." Not just for Laurie's sake, but he couldn’t deny their last conversation was a large part of why he was being so insistent on this. "But if nothing can be done, I'll think up something on my end."

"Good. Now, your next order. Find a way into the Nash’s house and place some spy equipment. you don’t need cameras if it's too troublesome, but at least some microphones so we can listen in. Get on it as soon as possible. I'm sending over a stingray cell phone signal tracker so you can listen in on any cellular calls that your subjects make."

Dammit. It was too soon. They'd only just met yesterday, she was supposed to be in his house in the afternoon. After yesterday, he didn't want to arouse any more suspicion, but he'd have to find a way to get her to invite him to her place so they could have their coffee date there. At least he was relatively sure her brother wasn’t back yet from his visit to his friend's place. With any luck, he'd stay away longer so Mickey could come up with some sort of plan. It would be so much easier to handle if there was just Laurie there.

"I warn you right now, Agent. Just because Laurie Nash is not involved now does not mean that Randy and Karl won't try to rope her in later. Do not write her off as a suspect, no matter how innocent she seems."

He bit his tongue at the refusal that wanted to leave his mouth instantly. He wanted to argue for Laurie's case, provide every bit of evidence he'd been able to gather. Because it was a question of her character, he didn’t need physical proof. He wanted to convince them, or at least Madeleine, that Laurie was truly innocent.

But he didn’t, no matter how much he wanted to. She was still his superior, so he couldn’t just talk back to her. Besides, betraying that he felt anything other than clearheaded about this case might just get him booted from it and someone else to replace him. It was the last thing he wanted.

"Of course, ma'am," he said, perhaps a tad more stiffly than he usually would.

If Madeleine noticed, she didn’t mention anything. A few more words were exchanged before she declared their conversation over.

When they signed off, Mickey realized he had a lot of faith that Laurie wouldn’t be tricked into betraying her country that easily. She was already at odds with her brother. Clearly, she knew he was bad news; the only reason she was still helping him was probably because of their shared blood that neither could run away from. He'd keep an eye on her anyway, because of orders, but he felt sure in his assessment.

He realized, then, that he was really fascinated with this woman, even though he hadn't known her for that long. Knowing every other detail of her life didn’t count. He thought about their date later and almost wanted to hit himself at how he happily kept thinking of it as a date when it was probably just a 'welcome to the neighborhood' meeting, at best.

There was proof that she was at least attracted to him, but that he'd come across the information while listening into what was supposed to have been a private conversation didn’t sit right with him. He would have rather gotten the words from her directly, though from how she'd been blushing around him, he had a feeling she was the nervous type. She wouldn’t just come out and tell him what she felt, not so soon anyway.

Maybe she could grow to be comfortable with him…

Stop thinking about that, he ordered himself.

In a perfect world, there may have been a chance. But the place he was in was a rental, meant to be occupied for only a short period of time. It could be a few days or weeks, but Mickey already knew that if it took more than a month, he'd have to leave anyway. Already he was thinking a little too much about what she thought of him, so maybe he should back off emotionally from it all. It was a bit of a surprise that she could capture his interest so thoroughly in only a few hours if even that.

This fascination wasn’t a good thing, though. It was probably the worst thing that could have happened. Not only was she a suspect in a crime that involved national security and living with the guy he was sure was responsible for it, he was only there for the sole purpose of spying on her. Once the mission was done, he would be moved, and he wouldn’t see her again.

Also, thinking about her that way just made him start brooding on the painful breakup with his wife two years before. They'd been happy and had remained so for most of their marriage. But she couldn’t handle the demands of his career and cheated on him to 'get even.' The betrayal had grated, and he hadn't dated since. Seriously, Mickey was starting to think he just didn’t have great luck when it came to this sort of thing. With this current case, he was thinking about dating.

Considering it again—with someone he had to manipulate as part of his job.