“You could’ve just asked, you know.”
Miranda scoffed. “We wanted you, not Dufault too. I get enough of his whining on game nights.”
“I hear my friend has taken to following you around like a little puppy dog,” Garcia continued, unrelenting.
“He really, really has,” Maria chimed in, pulling out her phone. “There are photos. Do you want to see?” Francesca’s eyes lit up. Syler sputtered. What in the fresh hell?
As she swiped through them—them, plural, as in multiple photos, apparently taken by multiple people, all of Dufault following him around the office—Syler sunk lower into his seat, fortifying gulps of wine all that stood between him and a painful death by humiliation. When Francesca got to the last one, she let out a soft ‘oh,’ passing the phone back to Maria before he could see what the hell was on it. “I see,” she concluded. “So, Perrin, what are you going to do about it?”
“Absolutely fucking nothing,” he snapped. “Look, I realize that the entire agency is laboring under the impression that Dufault is interested in me. It was even kind of funny at first, but this has gotten entirely out of hand.”
“Out of curiosity,” Miranda muttered, “just how deep would you say the Nile River is in miles?”
“Oh for fuck’s sake!” Syler threw back what remained of his wine, entirely done with this conversation. “I am his handler. He is my agent. We work field ops together. On a good day, we’re friends, and that’s how it’s going to stay regardless of whatever passing crush you all think he has on me.”
“Why?” Maria inquired quietly.
“Because we have to work together? Because men like that don’t stay with men like me? Because I get entirely too attached? Oh, wait, I forgot one!” Syler snarled, “Because the mortality rate among field agents scares the shit out of me. Really, take your fucking pick!”
He slumped back in his chair, exhausted and suddenly entirely too sober for this conversation. “If you’d all just leave it,” he sighed, “I’d really appreciate that.”
Maria looked chastised, while Miranda nodded, sipping at her beer pensively. Francesca signaled the bartender, calling for another round, and changed the subject deftly to teaching him to dance. Currently, he decided, she was his favorite.
Twenty
Monday morning came with a three a.m. call from the Director herself, notifying him of an ongoing cyber attack on the NSA and rousing him from bed with all the frenzy a fire alarm provoked. His presence was requested immediately to provide support to their sister agency. He was on the phone with Maria before he had finished dressing, receiving updates even as he stepped into the bullpen fifteen minutes later.
“Do we know who it is yet?” Protocol dictated that any security breach of a US agency sent all others into a Priority One ready status, prepared to rebuff any potential attacks on their own systems and ready to provide aid to one another.
“Trace keeps bouncing,” Maria replied, both hanging up their phones as they came into ear shot of one another. Miranda was en route, as was the Colonel. Jason stood at the desk nearest the command post, already deep in fortifying their firewall codes.
“Has Meade let us into their system?”
“Yes,” she replied, passing the keyboard and headset over to him, moving to a station besides Jason.
“Deputy Director Perrin here, CIA,” he called over the line, joining the inter-agency team of responders, falling straight into shoring up their firewalls. By his best estimate, there must be a crew of a dozen hackers on the other end. They were getting hit from too many sides at once for there to be any other explanation. He barely noticed Miranda keying in a short while later, nor did he spare a thought for the Colonel taking a position to his left soon after.
It was pushing 8 a.m. before the attack ended, not with a victory, but with a total system shut down. The hackers had breached the NSA. Syler all but collapsed into his chair, stunned.
“Fucking shit,” Director Boothman uttered from somewhere to the left of the bullpen. Well, that about summed it up, Syler thought, somewhat hysterically. “Get me a full review. I want to know who and I want to know how and I want to know it yesterday.”
---
The longer Syler poured over the logs, the more questions he had. Unfortunately, the answer to one of them was becoming undeniably clear the longer he looked.
“Fuckity fuck shit goddamn it.” It was a morning for swearing and that was all there was to it.
“Breath, sweetheart.” His eyes darted up, startled. Dufault sat to his right, pressing a fresh mug of coffee into his hands without comment. Nearly an hour had passed since he’d started his review, absolutely oblivious to everything else including Dufault’s arrival. Syler slumped forward, inhaling his drink, and resisted the urge to whine. “Tell me what happened.”
“Somebody breached the NSA.”
“Got that bit. Do we know who?”
“No.”
“Do we know how?”
“Not really.”
“Are you going to figure it out?”
Syler dug his hands into his hair. “I’m afraid that I already have.”
Arthur hummed consolingly. “That’s not usually the tone of voice people use when they’re reporting good news.”
“Because it really isn’t.”
“Out with it, Perrin,” Boothman barked, apparently still present. It made sense, he supposed. The Director was hardly going to leave before she had answers. Still, he really, really didn’t like the answer.
“What was it you said, Dufault? ‘Wait and see?’ Yeah, well, we just saw. That code signature matched Pyrona.”
---
What followed was a dizzying few weeks of strategy meetings and repeated attacks on various agencies, not all of them located in the United States and not all of them governmental. Syler found himself at the center as representative of the CIA, and point man on the entire case. Everything about Pyrona had flown below the radar of every other agency actively involved and he was feeling the combined weight of their frustrations regarding the dead ends.
It didn’t help that Oliveria turned up dead shortly after the hack on the NSA, computer network dismantled and personal laptop long gone, with all traces of encryption around the companies receiving funds suddenly vanished along with any sign of the shadow organization behind them. If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he’d be hard pressed to believe any of it had ever existed.
And then, in early December, it just stopped.
“Well that’s worrying,” Dufault summed up, positioned to his right in the Director’s briefing room. Understatement of the year, honestly. “About the only good news is that they haven’t come after us yet.”
“Does anyone have anything useful to go off here?” Boothman asked.
“I’ve looked through every major known hacker profile with a fine tooth comb, ma’am. We both have,” Syler replied, glancing over at Thompson, who nodded. “None of them come within spitting distance of the skill level to do this, even combined.”
“Well—”
“If you say wait and see, Dufault, I will break your leg all over again,” Jeanette snapped.
“I’m fully open to better suggestions.”
“Dismissed, all of you.”
---
Syler escaped to the private mechanic’s bay partitioned off of the main parking garage, desperate for an outlet that didn’t involve a computer screen and other human beings. He’d run dry of his allotted patience for dealing with them both for at least the rest of the year, possibly the remainder of his lifetime.
“Oh, she’s beautiful.” Syler nearly dropped the wrench into the engine compartment of the BMW he was working on, startled. Dufault saddled up beside him, limp barely detectable, back to being deadly silent now that he’d finished PT. As soon as the doctor had cleared him for ‘retraining,’ he’d eagerly taken to making up for lost time by sneaking up on Syler whenever possible. “And what’s your name, gorgeous?” he continue
d to croon at the car.
Syler blinked. “How did you even find me down here?”
“I’ve developed something of a sixth sense.” He winked, hands going over the body of the BMW reverently. “So, what’s her name?”
“She is a field grade vehicle I’m retrofitting with plate armor and an expanded capacity machine gun in the engine block, not a woman you need to romance into bed.”
“Sonya,” he decided, utterly ignoring Syler. “I’m going to call you Sonya.” He continued stroking along the black exterior, thumbing delicately over the exposed chassis where the plating was still being laid in, expression doting. “Promise me you won’t tell my Lucy. She’ll get huffy if she catches wind of me fondling a modern lady like yourself.”
“I genuinely can’t tell if you’re talking about a car or a person.”
That did the trick of getting his attention. “Lucy,” he announced proudly, “Lucifer on days when she’s being a brat. I’ll introduce you sometime.”
“Well that clears everything up.”
“Mind if I help?” He tugged the wrench out of Syler’s hand without waiting for an answer, nudging him out of the way and diving into the engine compartment. Syler snorted. It figured that Dufault was a sucker for cars, the giant blond menace.
“Fine, you can help me with the plating though. I don’t trust you with rigging the weaponry around the engine block.”
“I’d wager a year’s salary and hazard pay that I know more about cars than you ever will, sweetheart.”
“Doubtful,” he countered, shoving him towards the plating components. “Highly doubtful.”
“Wanna bet on it?”
“Stakes?”
“When I win? Dinner.”
Syler paused, considering. It was already two o’clock, but it wouldn’t take more than a few hours to lay the remaining plates and affix the weaponry. He could afford the delay. “Alright. Finish her off by five without help. Otherwise, I want Pho. I’ll even let you keep your salary.” Arthur grinned. Syler settled in against the workbench, reaching for a tablet, prepared to win in under an hour.
---
“I’ll take an order of those tasty burgers from your dive bar,” he announced shortly before five p.m., wiping his hands off on a rag. Syler was absolutely stunned. He’d even waxed the car. By hand. “And I want Sonya as my own in the field.”
Somewhere in the course of the afternoon, his agent had slipped out of his jacket and removed his dress shirt entirely, presently clad only in one of his too small cotton undershirts normally reserved for the gym. It clung unreasonably to his arms and shoulders, stretching sinuously across his broad back, and did things to Syler’s brain that should be patently illegal.
“Right,” he heard himself say faintly.
Twenty-One
“Mmph, fuck me, those were exactly as good as I remembered them being.” Arthur flopped down on the couch, head in Syler’s lap, and it was like the last frantic month and a half hadn’t happened at all. Syler smiled, hand carding through his hair fondly. “Thank you for dinner, sweetheart.”
“Thank you for finishing my car.”
“My car,” he corrected, “because you’re definitely assigning Sonya to me.”
“Not quite sure that’s how that works, Dufault.” Pleading blue eyes found his. He sighed. “Maybe.”
“Yes!”
“Oh my god, you overgrown child, that isn’t how this works at—”
“Am I interrupting something?” Both men froze, two sets of eyes darting to the doorway. Agent Garcia stood there in all her raven-haired glory, hip leaned against the frame.
Syler jumped up, dislodging Arthur, who muttered roundly. “Francesca! What are you doing here so late?”
The other agent smiled, slipping over and pressing a kiss to his cheek by way of greeting. “Last minute assignment to Panama, cariño. I’m afraid I won’t make our dance Friday night.” She smoothed a hand over his shoulder, adjusting the lapel.
He grinned, shrugging. “S’alright. There’s always next time, and we’ve been a bit busy down here lately anyway.” First ambush aside, Syler was more than a bit chuffed to be counted among the members of the little group of agents and senior staff who went out every Friday; he hadn’t had regular drinking friends since grad school and Sampson and Alvarez sang hilariously bad karaoke duets. “Want to go pick out a few toys from the armory?” He asked, grabbing his key card.
“You call her Francesca?!”
Syler blinked stupidly, astounded by the sheer hurt in his voice. “I—yes? Why wouldn’t I?”
“Well, you’ve certainly never called me Arthur. And what’s this about dancing?”
“We go out on Friday’s when our schedules overlap.” He looked helplessly at Francesca, whose lips were pressed firmly together. “Honestly, what’s gotten into you?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. Have a great night.” He shut the door with a resounding click, gone. Syler swallowed, throat suddenly dry. You could hear a pin drop in his office.
“So,” he finally dared to breath, “armory?”
She nodded slowly, following him out into the hall, accepting her equipment issue without question. Even the specialty earrings he’d painstakingly embedded with tiny explosives were met with silence. After pocketing her passport, she just stared at him. Syler fidgeted self-consciously, waiting for the inevitable.
“So tell me,” she finally said, “are you still pretending that nothing is happening between you or was that line an actual pile of steaming garbage?”
Syler closed his eyes, exhausted by the prospect of another round. “Oh, not this again.”
“His head was in your lap, Perrin.” Syler’s jaw shut with an audible click, protests dying in his throat. She nodded as though he’d acknowledged her point out loud. “Look, I’ve known Arthur Dufault for over ten years. On the best of days, he’s a force of nature, so I’m going to give you the benefit of overwhelming doubt and assume that you’re blindly oblivious and not willfully stringing him along while you decide whether or not he’s worth it.”
“I’m not—”
Francesca silenced him with a quelling look, dark eyes daring him to look away. “You are. He’s spent the last six months almost slavishly devoted to you. He picked you as a handler. He goes home in your car. He sleeps on the couch that he gave you, in a room he arranged specifically for you, just so he can be near you. He seeks comfort from you, calms down for you, trusts you. He wants you, clear as day, and you let him.”
Syler swallowed, the truth of it undeniable. “I didn’t mean…”
“I know you didn’t, but the result is the same,” she murmured, eyes and voice softening as she ran a consoling hand over his shoulder. “Make up your mind, Syler. He deserves that much.” With a quick press of lips to his temple, she was gone.
---
Syler spent the remainder of the evening locked away in his office, slumped on the couch, head in his hands, hopelessly attempting to avoid his own feelings. It had been a much more effective strategy in the days before his little family of brutally honest CIA spies came along, all too ready to tear apart his carefully constructed excuses and denials with the same ruthless efficiency they applied to their work.
A soft knock on the door interrupted his ongoing pity party, door clicking open by override code. Maria sat down beside him, door shutting quietly behind her as she slipped an arm around his shoulders.
“Time to deal with it then, huh?”
He let out a watery sigh. “Suppose I have to now.”
She hummed, rubbing soothing circles down his back. “You know I’m married to another member of the agency, right? Not a field agent, mind you, but I get it in every other sense. It’s terrifying to think that something could go wrong.”
“And how do you deal with it all?”
“Well,” she began, “first, it’s best to admit that you’re not somehow safe from potential devastation by denying yourself a relationship. Case in point,” she
gestured to their position in his office. He huffed into her shoulder. “Second, it’d be a damned crime not to take happiness where you can get it.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.” They sat in silence for a while. Syler knew she was right. He’d been denying the possibility of something happening with Arthur from the very beginning, buried so deep in his own excuses and insecurities that he’d ended up taking advantage of the other man’s affections rather than address them. It was no wonder he’d stormed out. Seeing his easy friendship with Francesca when his own attempts were so constantly rebuffed must have been a slap in the face. Syler knew all too well what it was to be used.
“I’ve been a monumental asshole.”
Maria chuckled fondly. “So do you want him?”
“Yes.”
“Still scared?”
“Petrified.”
“Good,” she pressed a kiss to the crown of his head. “Means you have something worth fighting for.”
Syler smiled tightly, ready to try.
Twenty-Two
That turned out to be easier said than done. For the first time in their acquaintance, Arthur Dufault was actively avoiding him. He considered just calling him in, but his bravery only extended so far and he honestly worried Arthur wouldn’t show up if he did. Though, as the days passed and the holidays approached, he began to reconsider that he might have to. An entire week went by without Dufault so much as stepping foot in the bullpen.
He forced himself to focus his nervous energy on his work, continuing to put out feelers on the Pyrona situation, who had remained considerately quiet in deference to his personal crisis. His agents were outfitted and overseen. His requisitions forms were in order. His meetings went off without a hitch. Everything was going well but for one glaring exception.
By Wednesday, he resorted to setting a security alert for Dufault’s ID badge, prepared to hunt the other man down the moment he stepped foot in the building. It was the 23rd and the agency would be all but closed for the following week, just a skeleton crew left behind to provide support to field agents and maintain security. He wanted to see the other man before then least they go on like this until New Years.
Covert Affairs: Partnership : A Covert Affairs Romance (Book One) Page 11
