All The Pretty Things

by Magdon, Rae D

  The message finally got through, and Tess looked hurt. "Why?" she murmured sleepily, still focused on Robin's lips and obviously disappointed that she was no longer kissing them.

  "You're drunk and upset. I'm not sorry you kissed me, but you need some space." Robin didn't add that she also needed space. She wasn't sure how many more of Tess's kisses she could handle without taking things further than either of them were ready for. "I'm going to get you in bed –"

  "I don’t have any objections to that," Tess shot back, but Robin knew it was the alcohol talking.

  "To rest. You need to sleep this off, and then we'll see where we are, okay?"

  To Robin's immense relief, Tess allowed herself to be led into the bedroom with a minimum of fuss. She did try to give Robin one more peck, which the agent diverted by turning her cheek at the last second even though she desperately wanted Tess to kiss her again.

  "I should be insulted," Tess muttered as she flopped onto the mattress, not even bothering to crawl under the covers.

  "Don't be. Don't be upset, not about anything," Robin urged, pulling back the quilt on top of the bed with some difficulty, since Tess wasn't being very cooperative. Finally, she helped her friend snuggle under it. "I'm going for a little while, but if you want, I'll drive you to work in the morning since your rental car is still there."

  "Okay..."

  Robin allowed herself the small privilege of stroking Tess's hair before she left the bedroom, hoping that she could complete her quiet exit without upsetting the drunk and emotionally unbalanced politician anymore. Obviously, the half-bottle of Jack Daniels had sent Tess on a rollercoaster ride, since she had been depressed, self-deprecating, sleepy, and sexually aggressive all within the span of a few hours.

  Once she was back in the living room and it didn't seem like Tess was going to follow her, Robin picked up Tess's purse, which was sitting on the table by the front door. Feeling slightly guilty about the invasion of Tess's privacy, but also very curious, she pulled out her phone and scrolled through the contact list, looking for Samantha's number. According to Tess's own confession, she didn't have a lot of close friends, and Robin didn't want her to be alone in this condition. However, she didn't want to stay near temptation, either. She wasn't sure she could reject Tess's advances, even drunken advances, a second time. Calling the woman that Tess used to pay for sex felt uncomfortable, and Robin had to admit that she was slightly jealous, but she reminded herself that she had no claim over Tess, and this woman was also her friend. Unfortunately, there was no 'Samantha' or any variation listed in her contacts.

  With a grunt of frustration, Robin went to Tess's call history instead, searching for the night of October 9th. Tess had told her yesterday that Samantha visited her apartment after the car crash. Presumably, a phone call had been made first. Robin smiled when she noticed only two non-work-related calls. The others were all full names, complete with middle initials, business acquaintances, and much earlier in the day. The first had been an incoming call from a number listed as 'Dad'. The second was an outgoing call to 'Aunt Abby' just a few minutes later. Robin had a feeling Aunt Abby didn't really exist, and to test her theory, she called back the number.

  Her suspicions were confirmed when a young, female voice answered the call with. "Hey, doll baby. Have you asked that tall, dark, sexy FBI agent out yet?"

  Robin's eyes widened in surprise. This was obviously Samantha and not Aunt Abby, but she was too startled to be proud of herself for figuring that out. "Um... this isn't Tess," she blurted out, not sure what else to say in this situation.

  "Oh. Is this tall, dark, and sexy then?"

  "Is this Samantha?"

  "Tell me who you are first and why you're calling with Tess's cell number."

  Robin sighed with frustration. Tess had been right – she already didn't like this woman. "This is Special Agent Robin Hart, FBI. Tess is safe at her apartment, but she's totally wasted and passed out in bed. I can't stay, but I don't feel right leaving her alone..."

  "Ooh, you're a gentleman, aren't you?" Samantha half-sang over the phone. "Did she put the moves on you or something?"

  "I'm not going to answer that. She was upset earlier, and she could use a friend."

  "I'll take that as a yes. Besides, you sound sexually frustrated."

  "I do not!" Robin protested, but Samantha ignored her. "I'm frustrated with you!" she snapped. Truthfully, Samantha hadn't said anything that offensive, but the woman's tone was getting on her nerves. She supposed the fact that Samantha had been in a sexual relationship with Tess also bothered her.

  "I'll be over in ten minutes. Stick around until I get there, okay?"

  For the second time that day, Robin was left irritated as someone else hung up on her. "Doesn't anyone say 'goodbye' or 'thank you' anymore?" she grumbled to herself, sitting down on the living room couch to wait for Samantha.

  Chapter 21

  Cincinnati, Ohio: October 11th

  Robin's wait was not pleasant. Her overactive imagination kept picturing all the ways Samantha had probably pleased Tess in the past even though she had never seen the woman before, and the images bothered her far more than they should have. The rest of the time was spent replaying the kisses she and Tess had shared, and that only made the situation worse. She worried that Samantha and Tess would fall into bed again once she left, even though Tess had told her that Samantha had refused to sleep with her the night after the car accident.

  Although she was a trained field operative and had held steady under gunfire before, the sound of the door opening made her flinch and jump off the couch, her hand reflexively going for the sidearm she usually carried at her hip. However, she relaxed when she saw a tall, dark-haired woman enter the room and tuck a set of keys back in her purse. Samantha's face was softer and less chiseled than her own, and her hair was much longer, but their bodies weren't dissimilar, Robin noted with some interest. I guess Tess has a type... she thought, not sure whether she was pleased or upset by this fact.

  "Sorry, but I figured this would be faster," Samantha said, waving her hand carelessly at her side as she kicked the door shut behind her with a heeled foot. The FBI agent tried not to be jealous of the fact that Samantha had a key to Tess's apartment.

  "Thanks for coming," Robin said, even though she still wasn't sure that asking Samantha to come over had been a good idea.

  "Ooh, you are a tall drink of water, aren't you?" she said, looking Robin up and down with obvious interest. "I see why Tess wanted to keep you all to herself."

  Robin frowned. "Look, I don't know what you think you're trying to do, but we need to focus on Tess here. She did something that she will probably regret tomorrow, so I want to give her some space when she wakes up. That being said, she shouldn't be alone while she's passed out drunk, either. Since you're here to keep an eye on her, I can leave."

  "What's your rush?" Samantha asked, sliding out of her shoes and making herself comfortable on the couch that Robin had just abandoned. "Running scared? I thought you were a big bad FBI agent, Hart."

  "I'm not running from anything," Robin growled, liking this woman less and less the more time she spent in her presence. "Tess has other problems in her life right now besides this, and she asked me to help her with them."

  "You mean the campaign?"

  "Sort of," Robin hedged. "You can talk to Tess about everything when she wakes up. Just do me a favor and stay with her until then. And if you don't mind, could you tell her I'll pick her up in the morning to drive her to work?" Robin wanted to leave a more personal message, that Tess shouldn't worry about the kisses and that she wasn't upset about them either, but she decided it was none of Samantha's business.

  "I'll tell her," Samantha said. "And not that I owe you anything, but you should know that Tess and I aren't involved anymore. She needs to grow up and stop making choices that are bad for her."

  Robin's eyebrows lifted in surprise for a moment from their nearly constant furrow of anger. "And you think you're a
bad choice for her?"

  Samantha folded her legs, making her short skirt ride even higher on her thigh. Robin was too irritated to notice. "I think she uses me as an excuse to avoid making good choices," she said cryptically. "Anyway, I'm glad I got to meet the famous Robin Hart. Tess waxes poetic about you when she isn't careful."

  Robin didn't know whether to be uncomfortable or flattered as she headed for the front door. "I'll be back tomorrow morning," she said over her shoulder on the way out. She tried to shove down feelings of guilt for leaving Tess while she was passed out, but she decided to assuage her conscience by stopping back at the politician's office. Louph would probably be done with her computer by now, and hopefully they could start sketching out a plan to catch Tess's blackmailer. Then, maybe she could finally get around to doing the job the FBI was paying her for.

  * * *

  "So, what have you got for me?"

  Louph glanced up from his laptop in time to see Robin stroll into the office, her presence immediately filling the area even though it was relatively large. Since she was his friend, the hacker put aside his discomfort at the unintentional intrusion into his personal space and answered her question. "Some interesting background information about Tess's family." Popping one of his ever-present containers of breath mints open, he put one of them on his tongue and waited for it to melt. "Would you like one?" he asked, offering her the packet.

  "No thanks. Jeez, you eat those things like candy!"

  "They contain less sugar than a piece of candy in addition to acting as a breath freshening agent," Louph said, sounding a little defensive. Since Robin had declined his offer, he took a second strip from the package and allowed that one to melt in his mouth on top of the first one.

  "But you don't even need a 'breath freshening agent' now... Oh, never mind. So, tell me what your bots have dug up about Tess." She gestured at Louph's laptop, which was next to Tess's and was currently running scripts that she couldn't begin to decipher. The things her friend was able to do with computers were, frankly, astounding to her.

  Louph put away his breath mints and checked the screen. "Actually, I'm finding information on Cal Saunders for you at the moment. I've found a lot of useful tidbits, but most of it won't stand up in court. Data mining usually doesn't." He began reading the results on a second program. "To answer your question about Tess, I have some good news. Her sexual orientation hasn't hit the Internet yet. I did a few basic keyword searches... Tess and Daubney within three words of lesbian, homosexual, LGBT, sex, prostitute, you get the idea."

  Robin's heart rate spiked briefly. For some reason, the thought of Tess's secret becoming public knowledge and gossip fodder for the tabloids felt almost like a personal attack. In fact, this entire mess felt personal, and the agent had learned to trust her gut instincts long ago. "We need to look into her close connections. Start with family and friends, and then we'll cast a wider net to include business acquaintances. That's the group I think our blackmailer's in, but I want to be thorough."

  "Already on it. Did you know that Tess's mother died when she was three?"

  "Yeah, I read that in the file Slade's brick agents put together for me. She calls her stepmother ‘Mom’, though."

  "Not surprising. Tess's father remarried a year and two months later. It was a family friend. Tess probably considers her a surrogate, or was told to refer to her that way."

  Robin tried to remember everything Tess had said about her family during their conversations. "I don't think their relationship is particularly close – at least, not anymore."

  Louph shrugged, turning his swivel chair to face Robin. "Do you think it's because Tess is attracted to women? I'm given to understand that some parents might disapprove."

  Robin couldn't help rolling her eyes and blowing out a frustrated sigh, which shifted the hair that was hanging in front of her face. Her own mother had never verbally chastised her for being a lesbian – that would have been a laugh, considering the woman was rarely sober enough to pass judgment on others without looking like a hypocrite – but she had not acknowledged the fact, either. Whenever she was home, Robin was usually forced to eat dinner with a man around her age, and her mother made constant references to her bridge partner's son, Henry. Fortunately, Henry had no interest in seeing a woman who could draw a service weapon on him if he got too handsy. After a few minor 'incidents', they had developed a very clear understanding.

  "Tess isn't out to her parents," Robin told Louph, deliberately choosing not to continue thinking about Henry or her mother anymore. She had enough other problems to deal with in Ohio.

  "That doesn't mean they don't know. Maybe they found out from someone else."

  Robin perched on the desk, folding one leg over the opposite knee. "Maybe, but why would her parents ask for blackmail money? They could just cut her off from the family funds."

  "It might not be about the money. What if they want to scare her or prevent her from running for office?"

  Seeing that Louph remained unconvinced, Robin gave in. This was too carefully planned to be about anything but profit. If it was about packing an emotional punch, the blackmailer would have revealed themselves and left money out of the equation altogether. "Fine, we'll check them out. It can't hurt," she conceded.

  Louph smiled and turned back to his computer. "Just so you know, I don't think it's them either."

  Robin let her head fall into her hand with a light slap. "Then why did you just spend five minutes trying to convince me?"

  "To annoy you."

  "Of course. So, who else is on your list of possible suspects?"

  "I checked her payroll accounts," he said, switching over to Tess's computer and bringing up another window. "I decided to run background checks on all their names. No priors, but that's not surprising, since the campaign runs background checks on their employees before offering them jobs. If any of them committed a crime, either it was expunged, or it was under an alias."

  Robin perched on the edge of the desk, leaning over to get a better view of the two laptops. "What do we do about Tess's cell phone?"

  "Tomorrow, I'll jailbreak it and install a program forwarding her calls to my computer. Then, when the call comes through, we'll run a trace."

  "I doubt that will do any good," Robin said. "Most criminals just grab a prepaid cell phone with cash, and if they need money, they buy a refillable ATM card with cash as well. All you need to receive money over the Internet is a phone number and a bankcard. You can get both of those things without showing any form of ID."

  "Then we'll triangulate the location of the phone and find out who they are that way. We can cross-reference their location with the list of Tess's employees and family. Don't worry, we'll get them."

  Chapter 22

  Cincinnati, Ohio: October 12th

  "Hey there, sleepyhead."

  Tess groaned, rolling over and trying to bury her face in the nearest pillow. She made a muffled noise of displeasure, huddling beneath the covers and pulling her knees close to her chest.

  "I've got some aspirin for you, if you think that's worth getting up for..."

  Reluctantly, Tess propped herself up against the headboard and studied Samantha with squinting, tired eyes. "Is that water, too?" she asked, her voice cracking in her dry throat. "You're a saint. Thank you."

  Samantha smiled as Tess reached out her hands to take the pills and the glass of water. "I try. You went on a real bender yesterday. How much do you remember?"

  The look of fear and self-hatred on Tess's face answered the question. "I can't believe I was so stupid, and this close to Election Day..." Not to mention her blackmailer, who Samantha still didn't know about. And the hangover would make driving out to Springdale today very unpleasant. "Was Robin the one who asked you to come babysit me? What did she tell you?"

  "Nothing, but I put the pieces together from what she didn't say."

  Tess sighed and swallowed the pain relievers, chasing them with a long drink of water. Once her stomach no
longer felt like it was going to rebel, she set the glass on the nightstand. "Do you know what the worst part is?"

  Samantha made herself comfortable on the edge of the bed and crossed her legs. "What?"

  "I can't blame my behavior on the alcohol. I wanted to kiss her when I was sober, too."

  "Is that all you did?" Samantha rolled her eyes dismissively. "Well, Robin didn't seem to mind. In fact, she looked pretty uncomfortable before she left..."

  Tess ran a hand through her tangled blonde hair, pushing it back off her forehead as she scrabbled over the bedside table with one hand in search of her glasses. She finally found them and slipped them on. "Uncomfortable? Great."

  "I meant the I-just-ruined-my-panties kind of uncomfortable. She even said she would come pick you up for work today since she drove you home last night."

  At the mention of work, Tess shot up in bed, letting the covers fall away to reveal the remains of yesterday's outfit. Completely ignoring Samantha, she stood up and began stripping, leaving her clothes in an uncharacteristic heap on the floor. "Ouch, that looks painful," Samantha said, wrinkling her nose as Tess pulled off her blouse and bra to reveal angry red indents in her flesh. "I've never seen you fall asleep in your clothes before. You really were drunk last night, weren't you?"

  "More like afternoon. What kind of sad excuse for a human being gets drunk in the middle of the afternoon, anyway?" Tess muttered as she scooped up her clothes and tossed them in the hamper by the closet.

  Samantha grinned, wishing she had gotten to see the results of Tess's afternoon binge before she passed out in bed. She resolved to ask Robin for details when she arrived. "I think it was long overdue."