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"New Tracks" by Aelfgyfu
PARTS: 20 plus epilogue
RATING: FRT (fan-rated teen: violence, occasional bad language)
CATEGORIES: Drama, angst, hurt/discomfort, some humour; AU, fix-it
SUMMARY: Noel Miller tries to find his place on Nick Cutter's team; Stephen Hart tries to find his way back onto the team; and Nick has to deal with them, creatures from the past, and his own stubbornness.
SPOILERS: Everything through 2.07 and my own story "Fresh Scars"
WARNINGS: Some tasteless humour, some medical detail
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Many thanks to Brilliant Husband (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dudethemath), kristen_mara, and lukadreaming, all of whom acted as betas and made many helpful suggestions and corrections. All remaining errors, infelicities, and poor judgement are my own.
DISCLAIMER: Primeval and its characters are owned by Impossible Pictures, ITV Productions, M6 Films, Pro 7, and possibly other entities I couldn't easily find on IMDb. No copyright infringement is intended, and indeed the story probably won't make sense unless you've watched. So watch the show, buy the DVDs, etc. I do not profit from fic except insofar as comments make me happy.
Additional notes and links to all posted parts at this story's launch page
Previous Part: 7
Noel had long credited himself with a keen appreciation for the absurd, but he wasn't appreciating it right now. Half a dozen ARC soldiers had surrounded a pillar box while he and three others kept a watch for Helen; insane co-conspirators (should any exist); and, above all, creatures not from 21st century London. They then broke the lock on the postbox. Noel still felt at some level they'd be in deep trouble for that one. They fished Hart's mobile out of a stack of mail and left a guard there to make sure no one robbed the post before someone came in the morning to mend the box. Lester had relieved him of the responsibility for contacting the appropriate authorities at the Royal Mail (though he'd probably handed it over to Ms Lewis).
All this was so far from how he'd planned to spend his Sunday morning it wasn't funny. Now he and some of the soldiers, including a few who'd seen Helen Cutter in person, were combing through hours of footage from the security cameras covering much of London. She'd taken off at a run from Hart's building, slowed within a block—and then somehow disappeared in the small gap between two cameras' areas of coverage. He and Tyler viewed footage taken farther and farther from Hart's flat, in the hope that they'd pick her up again. The rest of the men were trying to backtrack from the camera by the postbox, which had picked up the Cutter woman finishing a phone call and then waving at the camera before she dropped the mobile through the slot.
After two hours, Noel had begun to wonder how long it would take blindness to set in. After three hours, he found himself actively wishing for blindness, though only the temporary sort. He was amazed how many people wandered around London so late, or so early, depending on one's point of view. Many of them appeared to be drunk. At least that explained why they were wandering the streets. He wasn't sure about the others.
"Sir?" asked the sergeant in a small voice. "How long are we going to keep at this, sir? Do you have any idea?"
It was the third time Tyler had asked, but the most direct query yet. Noel rubbed at his temples.
"Everyone take a break," he ordered. "Fifteen minutes. I'll see you back here then."
The room cleared more slowly than he would have thought, but everyone was stiff by this point.
Noel found Captain Robinson already in Lester's office.
"Yes?" called Lester before Noel had even had a chance to knock.
Noel reported their findings, or lack thereof, and his own conclusion that Cutter's wife knew the locations of the cameras.
"Ex-wife," corrected Lester absently, staring into space. "Of course she does." He sounded tired.
Captain Robinson said that they could review more footage later.
Lester nodded. "From what little I managed to get out of Stephen, she had worked out that he was trying to keep her at his flat, so the blasted woman knew people would come after her. She doesn't seem to have expected security on his flat, however, so we—and by 'we' I mean 'you'—should backtrack from her appearance at the flat. We've got the precise time from the alarm. Maybe we can learn a little more about her movements, particularly where she was before she broke into the flat."
Lester then waved him off, telling him to check in with Connor, and clearly meant to resume whatever he'd been saying to the captain.
"Yes, sir." Noel hesitated. "Mr Hart—and Professor Cutter—?"
Lester nodded curtly. "We've stationed people outside Cutter's house. Hart's there with him. Apparently he did not succeed in worsening his injuries despite his best efforts. But Helen Cutter isn't stupid enough to show up there. If she does, she'll be lucky if the soldiers get her; they at least have orders to take her alive. I doubt the men inside will extend her the same courtesy." Lester did not sound too keen about the soldiers' orders himself.
Noel was a little surprised to find Abby in the main concourse with Connor. They were both staring at the bank of screens in front of them. Connor looked up hopefully as he saw Noel coming down the ramp, and Noel could only shake his head.
"Well, I've got nothing either." Connor raised empty hands and let them fall. "Lester even called in a forensics team to do Stephen's flat, but I don't know when we'll get their results."
"What could they possibly tell us?" Abby asked, her arms folded, anger in the sharp angles of her body. "We know who was there, we know how she got in, but nothing there will tell us where she went!"
Both of them looked like they needed more sleep. They also seemed to have dressed in the dark, but Noel sometimes thought they looked that way on normal days.
"Do we even know why she went there?" he asked, pulling up a chair.
"You know more than we do," Abby pointed out. "You talked to Stephen."
"Yeah! Did he say anything?" Connor joined in.
"He wasn't very talkative. He tried to track her from his flat, but of course it's all pavement, so he got nowhere." Noel leaned back, sticking his hands in his pockets. He repeated Lester's status report.
"Why didn't Stephen just hold a gun on her?" Abby asked angrily. "Jenny put through loads of paperwork to get him that special weapons permit so he wouldn't always have to come back to the ARC for them! What's the point if he doesn't use them when he needs them?"
Connor started fidgeting with the fingerless gloves he always seemed to wear.
"What?" Abby demanded of him. "He's not still feeling something for her, is he?"
Noel grimaced. "Oh, I think he's feeling something, but it's not what you think."
Then, of course, they wanted to know everything about Stephen's demeanor. Noel told them what he could. At last he managed to sidetrack them into e-mailing Cutter to see if he needed anything and then sent them home. He had to stay at the ARC in case anything turned up, but they didn't need to be there.
By the time he'd convinced them to leave, Abby and Connor had decided that what Hart really needed was a new flat, and they were cooking up plans to help him with his search. Hart was lucky to have such loyal friends. Of course, if he didn't want a new flat, then Hart was in trouble.
Noel had begun to feel lucky, too. No one had been hurt. Better still, the woman who had divided the team before might be making it stronger now, in spite of herself.
***
Stephen had been awake for less than an hour now, and Nick was beginning to understand why his assistant might rather have Connor stay with him when he moved back to his flat. Connor wouldn't argue with Stephen unless he was being deeply stupid, and Nick did have to admit that Stephen probably hadn't sunk quite that far yet. It was a near thing, though. They'd already argued about whether Stephen needed painkillers, whether it was safe for Stephen to have a shower while still under the influence of muscle relaxants, and whether it even made sense to shower when Stephen had no clean clothes at this house.
Nick could only think he was getting soft in his old age as he listened carefully for the shower to finish. In less than an hour, he'd already lost three arguments. They'd been three surprisingly polite arguments, to be sure, both of them being careful after the trials of the night.
Connor was bringing clean clothes for Stephen, as Stephen had suggested (thus winning the shower argument). He was bringing more than one set, however, and Stephen's laptop, some books, and his toiletries. Stephen didn't know all that yet. The discovery would no doubt make for argument number four, unless they managed another one before Connor arrived. Nick wanted to think that it was a good thing that they could argue as they had before, without him completely blowing his lid or Stephen giving up and walking away angry, but he'd have to wait and see.
Nick wandered around the ground floor of his house, listening. The water went off before the deadline he'd set mentally, after which he'd have allowed himself to start worrying. He ought to lay on some brunch for Stephen and Connor; it was getting on towards noon, and he and Stephen hadn't eaten yet. He'd scarcely put on the water for tea when his mobile rang. The ARC were tracing all incoming calls to both his phone lines, the mobile and the landline, in case Helen called again. Nick found himself relieved to see that the call came from Lester. He'd barely answered when he heard the soft creak of the stairs; he went out to the front hall again while Lester said something about coming to Nick's house for a debriefing.
"Stephen, what are you doing?"
Stephen had put on his dirty clothes from last night and was coming down the stairs, which made no sense, because he'd undoubtedly want to go back upstairs to change into clean clothes.
"Coming downstairs," Stephen said in an isn't it obvious? tone while Lester was silent for a moment. "Have you seen my stick?"
"Oh, it's still in the car."
"What is he doing?" sounded in Nick's ear.
"No, Stephen, you're only going to want to go back—"
The doorbell rang.
"I'll get it," Stephen said with forced brightness while Nick easily beat him to the door.
Connor and Abby stood there, with an overnight bag and a laptop case.
"No, Stephen, stay there!" Nick tried to direct while opening the door and holding onto the phone.
"Morning!" Connor said happily while Stephen ignored Nick and came the rest of the way down the stairs.
Stephen had made it all the way down before he saw Abby and halted, pushing a hand through his still-damp hair self-consciously. "Oh, erm, Abby," he fumbled, but Nick lost the rest of what Stephen said because Lester had raised his voice.
"As I was saying, Cutter, I'll be there at 12.30 for a proper debriefing, since you're obviously both awake—"
"Connor, what's—my laptop? Why are you...." Stephen's voice rose in volume. "Cutter, what—"
"—reviewing footage," Lester's voice continued. "I don't—"
"Why don't you get dressed and properly dried while Cutter talks to—is that Lester?" Abby asked in an obvious attempt to keep the peace.
Stephen huffed slightly but reached to take the bag from Connor.
"No, Connor, don't make him climb the stairs with a bag right now!" Nick said in exasperation.
"—even listening to—" said the little voice on the phone that was sliding down his shoulder away from his ear.
"Sorry, right, I'll—" Connor's eyes darted about as he apparently tried to decide to whom he was apologising.
Stephen was hefting the bag already. "That's more than one day's clothes," he said suspiciously, carefully using his right hand to start unzipping the bag.
Nick grabbed for the phone he was about to lose. "We're rather busy at the moment," he snapped to Lester, raising his voice so that he could hear himself over the others.
"I don't care. Clear your schedule for forty minutes from now," Lester shot back before hanging up.
"How many days' clothes did he tell you to bring?" Stephen asked Connor in disbelief.
"Well, we didn't know what you'd want to wear," Connor hedged.
Connor turned his questioning look and Stephen his glare on Nick at the same time, and Nick wished Lester was still on the phone, or that he'd had the presence of mind not to lower the phone so that he could pretend he was still talking.
"Why don't I help you make tea or something?" Abby asked, and she put a hand on his arm to turn him.
Cravenly, Nick allowed himself to be led back to his own kitchen.
"Connor will help Stephen, we'll give him some time to cool down, and then you can face them," she said with a gentle smile as soon as they were out of earshot.
"Idiot's going back up the stairs!" Nick growled, but it sounded like he had Connor with him to carry the bag—and make sure he didn't fall back down. "I told him not to come down!" He added, "And Lester's coming to debrief us, and I started making tea for three, not five...." He petered out. None of this was Abby's fault.
"That's all right," she said, lifting the kettle and putting more water in it. "I should have warned you I was coming." She put the kettle back on and gave Nick a sympathetic look. "She broke into his flat, Nick, and stole his phone. She invaded his space and took what he uses to keep in touch with us. Stephen needs to feel like he has some control."
"Oh" was all Nick could say. She was right, of course.
"Did you know he has no weapons in his flat?" she asked. Her tone was mild, but she was watching him very closely.
"Stephen? Since when?"
Abby nodded, apparently satisfied with his answer. "That's what I said. They're all at the ARC, even the ones he owns. Connor knew. Noel said... you don't leave a man with PTSD with guns in his bedroom."
"Why the hell does Noel even need to know about it?" Nick asked angrily, not asking how Noel knew about it when he didn't. Noel had only met Stephen twice, hadn't he?
Abby shrugged, leaning her hip against the kitchen counter. "He's part of the team now. And he was the first one of us to Stephen's flat last night." She crossed her arms. "I don't think he needed to know, but Connor...."
"Connor should have shared that information with me, if he was going to share it with anyone," Nick said, annoyed. "Not with the new man on the team, and certainly not with someone who hardly knows Stephen."
"So Stephen hadn't told you, either," Abby confirmed again.
"No." Nick sighed. "But he did call me right away about Helen, and he told me what she said. I don't think he's even told Lester or Miller yet. Stephen's a very private person...." He said it as much to remind himself as to remind Abby. Everyone at the ARC knew about the affair—and about Stephen getting fired, and the extent of his injuries. They probably even all knew that he was seeing a psychiatrist. Nick oughtn't to grudge him keeping the one piece of information private.
With steps sounding on the stairs again, Abby had no time to respond, other than to nod understandingly.
***
Stephen had managed to get past his initial anger at Cutter's unilateral decision that he'd be moving in here for the time being, and brunch was pretty pleasant. It made sense, as Abby argued, that the two of them be in the same place for a while, so that soldiers could watch them without spreading themselves too thin. He found arguing with Nick oddly reassuring as well. Helen might have caused the latest trouble, but they weren't arguing about her. It felt almost like old times again.
Unfortunately, Lester arrived before they'd finished eating.
Stephen still thought Helen wasn't likely to approach either of them for quite a while now, but then again, he'd never expected she'd come to his flat only the second night that Connor was gone. He said as much to Lester, who debriefed him in Cutter's study while the rest finished their brunch.
Lester stayed surprisingly civil while questioning him, keeping his snarky remarks to a minimum. Stephen had told him everything he could remember, as honestly as possible. The last time he'd tried to keep secrets, he'd nearly lost his whole team to Helen's mad plot. So he told Lester everything, including Helen's comments about having changed the time line. Stephen hoped she had only been trying to get a rise out of him; he didn't want to think about her deliberately tampering with time. He certainly didn't want to think he had been dead at some point. Lester's eyebrows went up a lot during that part of the story, but otherwise he did not react much.
"Do you think she's just lying?" Stephen finally asked Lester. "She didn't really go back and...."
Lester just asked Stephen what he thought, however, and moved on. At last Stephen had told all he could remember.
"So is there anything else you'd like to tell me?" Lester asked for what must have been the fifth time. "Is there—"
"No," Stephen insisted, "I've told you—"
"If you'd let me finish," Lester cut him off. "No one is letting me finish a sentence today! I was going to say: did you notice anything that seemed odd? Any clues about what she thought she was doing or where she had been recently? Maybe not something she said, or did, but something she didn't say, or didn't do. Any... impressions that could help us?"
Stephen raised his eyebrows.
Lester shrugged. "I didn't get much sleep last night either." He sighed. "Well, if you think of anything later, please don't keep it to yourself. You never know what might be important. And here." He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a mobile—Stephen's mobile. "The technicians had a look; they found no signs of tampering, and no calls after her call to Cutter last night, but you should have a look and see if anything's been changed. Settings, that sort of thing."
Stephen didn't want the mobile back, but Lester held it out to him.
"Take it!" Lester said. "We've got a trace set up so that we'll know where any calls you receive originate, and we'll do our best to track them. We've done the same on your landline and Cutter's phones. And we need you to answer if it does ring, in case it is Helen again. You know the game. Do try a little subtlety this time in keeping her talking, if you can."
Stephen reluctantly took his mobile. "Oh," he said, suddenly remembering a detail that had slipped his mind. "She was looking through my contacts. She read Noel Miller's name out loud and said she didn't recognise it."
Lester made a note, in addition to the tape recorder he had going. "That's something, at least. Anything else?"
Stephen had already related Helen's remark about Cutter still being first on his speed dial. He wondered what else she'd been looking for on his phone, or why she cared—or expected to know everyone in his contacts list. He said so while he flipped through his phone book and his call log, looking for any changes. Connor had been the one to enter much of the information, putting everyone in the ARC Stephen could possibly want to call, and a few he wouldn't, into his phone list. He wasn't certain he'd even recognise minor changes.
Wait—Noel Miller wasn't on his speed dial, though Stephen had dutifully entered his number into the contacts list. Maybe he ought to have put him on speed dial, but he hadn't yet. "She wasn't only looking at my contacts list," he told Lester, "or she couldn't have switched from Cutter to Miller so fast. She pulled up the first speed dial number, but then she must have switched to my incoming call log. Miller called me late Friday afternoon with some questions about tracks he was studying, and I only got a couple of calls after that. Why does she care who calls me?"
That thought was quite disturbing, but the next one that came into his head was worse. He hesitated to say anything, but Lester must have seen something in his face and prompted him.
"One of the first things she said to me, actually, was: 'Didn't you used to sleep in the nude?'" Stephen could feel his face flushing, and the expression on Lester's face didn't help; it looked like he was choosing amongst the cutting remarks that crossed his mind. "And I did, but—we didn't spend the night together. It was an affair. We... met in the afternoons. So how did she know what I, what I did, or didn't, wear to bed normally?"
Lester blinked at him but, to Stephen's surprise, didn't crack any jokes. "How long did she stay at your flat before... the incident?"
"One day," Stephen admitted, his face still burning. "Oh, and one night. But one night is hardly enough to base 'used to'—oh, maybe it is. I suppose I'm...." He wished he could sink into the sofa.
"But I'm guessing," Lester said, "that any nudity that one night would not be merely for the purposes of sleeping?"
Stephen stared at him. Was the man making some sort of attempt to spare his feelings?
Lester pressed on, undiscouraged by Stephen's silence. "So she may have been observing you before she turned up to get you fired? Perhaps she was making certain that you weren't already living with someone? Maybe she was even seeing how you were getting on with the rest of the team, and with Cutter?"
"Oh, God." Stephen had thought he'd plumbed the depths of his own stupidity, but apparently he hadn't. "If she was spying on me, or getting into my flat—I hadn't been making... social calls. Of any kind. On the phone, in person. She'd know that. I'd lost contact with friends from outside the ARC, and... well, I had pretty minimal contact with... with the team, at the end, there."
He lowered his face to his good hand. "No wonder she scarcely argued when I took her to talk to Nick, that day with the mammoth—she probably knew we were hardly speaking to each other at that point. She knew he'd get angry at me. God...."
"I think we're finding there's no end to the the scheming she'll do," Lester said grimly. "And she's still interested in you both, though damned if I know why."
Was that an insult? Somehow the idea that Lester had insulted him again made Stephen feel better.
"Anything else she said that might have indicated she'd been observing you? Anything she did?" Lester pressed.
Stephen concentrated on remembering the details of the previous night.. "She didn't sit on the side of the bed nearest the door. I woke up, and she was already moving to the far side, my right side. That could be because she knew I still have the cast on that arm, or it could be that she knew I have a bedside table there. Maybe she meant to turn on the light if I didn't."
Lester sighed. "But presumably she'd have noticed the table before—"
"She couldn't have. I didn't have it. Connor and Abby, probably Abby, thought to get it for me before I came home. The lamp, too. It's so that I don't have to get out of bed to turn the light on and off, and I can see my clock by turning my head. I'd had the clock on the floor, before." The flat had come sparsely furnished, and he'd never felt the need to add much.
"So she probably had been observing you both before and after the incident," Lester said. He said 'the incident' so easily, unlike everyone else. Cutter didn't even have a consistent word for it yet. Usually Cutter didn't call it anything; he left a break in middle of a sentence, and Stephen knew what he meant. Abby avoided talking about it. Connor, when he spoke of it at all, always did so in such a jumble of words that Stephen had enough work to follow the main thread.
Stephen didn't know what to call it himself. 'The incident' was as good as anything else.
He couldn't remember anything further, so Lester let him go.
After the debriefing, the rest of the day went fairly well. Cutter insisted he shouldn't work, but he didn't press Stephen to take his tablets. He didn't even try to argue Stephen out of going for a walk in the late afternoon, though he wouldn't let him go alone. Stephen learned that Lester had told Cutter he'd concluded that Helen had been spying on Stephen, although Lester seemed to have spared Cutter some of the details about how they'd decided that. Cutter said he had no way of knowing whether she'd been spying on him as well. Cutter refused to discuss how soon Stephen could move back home again, and Stephen knew he'd already pushed his luck more than enough for one day. He did persuade Cutter to take his own bed back, however, and make up the spare bed for Stephen. Sleeping in the Cutters' bed was too strange.
When he did wake up that night from a too-vivid dream, Stephen had to admit that he felt better knowing someone was within shouting distance, even though he didn't do any actual shouting. He got back to sleep relatively quickly again.
Part 9
PARTS: 20 plus epilogue
RATING: FRT (fan-rated teen: violence, occasional bad language)
CATEGORIES: Drama, angst, hurt/discomfort, some humour; AU, fix-it
SUMMARY: Noel Miller tries to find his place on Nick Cutter's team; Stephen Hart tries to find his way back onto the team; and Nick has to deal with them, creatures from the past, and his own stubbornness.
SPOILERS: Everything through 2.07 and my own story "Fresh Scars"
WARNINGS: Some tasteless humour, some medical detail
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Many thanks to Brilliant Husband (
dudethemath), kristen_mara, and lukadreaming, all of whom acted as betas and made many helpful suggestions and corrections. All remaining errors, infelicities, and poor judgement are my own.DISCLAIMER: Primeval and its characters are owned by Impossible Pictures, ITV Productions, M6 Films, Pro 7, and possibly other entities I couldn't easily find on IMDb. No copyright infringement is intended, and indeed the story probably won't make sense unless you've watched. So watch the show, buy the DVDs, etc. I do not profit from fic except insofar as comments make me happy.
Additional notes and links to all posted parts at this story's launch page
Previous Part: 7
Noel had long credited himself with a keen appreciation for the absurd, but he wasn't appreciating it right now. Half a dozen ARC soldiers had surrounded a pillar box while he and three others kept a watch for Helen; insane co-conspirators (should any exist); and, above all, creatures not from 21st century London. They then broke the lock on the postbox. Noel still felt at some level they'd be in deep trouble for that one. They fished Hart's mobile out of a stack of mail and left a guard there to make sure no one robbed the post before someone came in the morning to mend the box. Lester had relieved him of the responsibility for contacting the appropriate authorities at the Royal Mail (though he'd probably handed it over to Ms Lewis).
All this was so far from how he'd planned to spend his Sunday morning it wasn't funny. Now he and some of the soldiers, including a few who'd seen Helen Cutter in person, were combing through hours of footage from the security cameras covering much of London. She'd taken off at a run from Hart's building, slowed within a block—and then somehow disappeared in the small gap between two cameras' areas of coverage. He and Tyler viewed footage taken farther and farther from Hart's flat, in the hope that they'd pick her up again. The rest of the men were trying to backtrack from the camera by the postbox, which had picked up the Cutter woman finishing a phone call and then waving at the camera before she dropped the mobile through the slot.
After two hours, Noel had begun to wonder how long it would take blindness to set in. After three hours, he found himself actively wishing for blindness, though only the temporary sort. He was amazed how many people wandered around London so late, or so early, depending on one's point of view. Many of them appeared to be drunk. At least that explained why they were wandering the streets. He wasn't sure about the others.
"Sir?" asked the sergeant in a small voice. "How long are we going to keep at this, sir? Do you have any idea?"
It was the third time Tyler had asked, but the most direct query yet. Noel rubbed at his temples.
"Everyone take a break," he ordered. "Fifteen minutes. I'll see you back here then."
The room cleared more slowly than he would have thought, but everyone was stiff by this point.
Noel found Captain Robinson already in Lester's office.
"Yes?" called Lester before Noel had even had a chance to knock.
Noel reported their findings, or lack thereof, and his own conclusion that Cutter's wife knew the locations of the cameras.
"Ex-wife," corrected Lester absently, staring into space. "Of course she does." He sounded tired.
Captain Robinson said that they could review more footage later.
Lester nodded. "From what little I managed to get out of Stephen, she had worked out that he was trying to keep her at his flat, so the blasted woman knew people would come after her. She doesn't seem to have expected security on his flat, however, so we—and by 'we' I mean 'you'—should backtrack from her appearance at the flat. We've got the precise time from the alarm. Maybe we can learn a little more about her movements, particularly where she was before she broke into the flat."
Lester then waved him off, telling him to check in with Connor, and clearly meant to resume whatever he'd been saying to the captain.
"Yes, sir." Noel hesitated. "Mr Hart—and Professor Cutter—?"
Lester nodded curtly. "We've stationed people outside Cutter's house. Hart's there with him. Apparently he did not succeed in worsening his injuries despite his best efforts. But Helen Cutter isn't stupid enough to show up there. If she does, she'll be lucky if the soldiers get her; they at least have orders to take her alive. I doubt the men inside will extend her the same courtesy." Lester did not sound too keen about the soldiers' orders himself.
Noel was a little surprised to find Abby in the main concourse with Connor. They were both staring at the bank of screens in front of them. Connor looked up hopefully as he saw Noel coming down the ramp, and Noel could only shake his head.
"Well, I've got nothing either." Connor raised empty hands and let them fall. "Lester even called in a forensics team to do Stephen's flat, but I don't know when we'll get their results."
"What could they possibly tell us?" Abby asked, her arms folded, anger in the sharp angles of her body. "We know who was there, we know how she got in, but nothing there will tell us where she went!"
Both of them looked like they needed more sleep. They also seemed to have dressed in the dark, but Noel sometimes thought they looked that way on normal days.
"Do we even know why she went there?" he asked, pulling up a chair.
"You know more than we do," Abby pointed out. "You talked to Stephen."
"Yeah! Did he say anything?" Connor joined in.
"He wasn't very talkative. He tried to track her from his flat, but of course it's all pavement, so he got nowhere." Noel leaned back, sticking his hands in his pockets. He repeated Lester's status report.
"Why didn't Stephen just hold a gun on her?" Abby asked angrily. "Jenny put through loads of paperwork to get him that special weapons permit so he wouldn't always have to come back to the ARC for them! What's the point if he doesn't use them when he needs them?"
Connor started fidgeting with the fingerless gloves he always seemed to wear.
"What?" Abby demanded of him. "He's not still feeling something for her, is he?"
Noel grimaced. "Oh, I think he's feeling something, but it's not what you think."
Then, of course, they wanted to know everything about Stephen's demeanor. Noel told them what he could. At last he managed to sidetrack them into e-mailing Cutter to see if he needed anything and then sent them home. He had to stay at the ARC in case anything turned up, but they didn't need to be there.
By the time he'd convinced them to leave, Abby and Connor had decided that what Hart really needed was a new flat, and they were cooking up plans to help him with his search. Hart was lucky to have such loyal friends. Of course, if he didn't want a new flat, then Hart was in trouble.
Noel had begun to feel lucky, too. No one had been hurt. Better still, the woman who had divided the team before might be making it stronger now, in spite of herself.
***
Stephen had been awake for less than an hour now, and Nick was beginning to understand why his assistant might rather have Connor stay with him when he moved back to his flat. Connor wouldn't argue with Stephen unless he was being deeply stupid, and Nick did have to admit that Stephen probably hadn't sunk quite that far yet. It was a near thing, though. They'd already argued about whether Stephen needed painkillers, whether it was safe for Stephen to have a shower while still under the influence of muscle relaxants, and whether it even made sense to shower when Stephen had no clean clothes at this house.
Nick could only think he was getting soft in his old age as he listened carefully for the shower to finish. In less than an hour, he'd already lost three arguments. They'd been three surprisingly polite arguments, to be sure, both of them being careful after the trials of the night.
Connor was bringing clean clothes for Stephen, as Stephen had suggested (thus winning the shower argument). He was bringing more than one set, however, and Stephen's laptop, some books, and his toiletries. Stephen didn't know all that yet. The discovery would no doubt make for argument number four, unless they managed another one before Connor arrived. Nick wanted to think that it was a good thing that they could argue as they had before, without him completely blowing his lid or Stephen giving up and walking away angry, but he'd have to wait and see.
Nick wandered around the ground floor of his house, listening. The water went off before the deadline he'd set mentally, after which he'd have allowed himself to start worrying. He ought to lay on some brunch for Stephen and Connor; it was getting on towards noon, and he and Stephen hadn't eaten yet. He'd scarcely put on the water for tea when his mobile rang. The ARC were tracing all incoming calls to both his phone lines, the mobile and the landline, in case Helen called again. Nick found himself relieved to see that the call came from Lester. He'd barely answered when he heard the soft creak of the stairs; he went out to the front hall again while Lester said something about coming to Nick's house for a debriefing.
"Stephen, what are you doing?"
Stephen had put on his dirty clothes from last night and was coming down the stairs, which made no sense, because he'd undoubtedly want to go back upstairs to change into clean clothes.
"Coming downstairs," Stephen said in an isn't it obvious? tone while Lester was silent for a moment. "Have you seen my stick?"
"Oh, it's still in the car."
"What is he doing?" sounded in Nick's ear.
"No, Stephen, you're only going to want to go back—"
The doorbell rang.
"I'll get it," Stephen said with forced brightness while Nick easily beat him to the door.
Connor and Abby stood there, with an overnight bag and a laptop case.
"No, Stephen, stay there!" Nick tried to direct while opening the door and holding onto the phone.
"Morning!" Connor said happily while Stephen ignored Nick and came the rest of the way down the stairs.
Stephen had made it all the way down before he saw Abby and halted, pushing a hand through his still-damp hair self-consciously. "Oh, erm, Abby," he fumbled, but Nick lost the rest of what Stephen said because Lester had raised his voice.
"As I was saying, Cutter, I'll be there at 12.30 for a proper debriefing, since you're obviously both awake—"
"Connor, what's—my laptop? Why are you...." Stephen's voice rose in volume. "Cutter, what—"
"—reviewing footage," Lester's voice continued. "I don't—"
"Why don't you get dressed and properly dried while Cutter talks to—is that Lester?" Abby asked in an obvious attempt to keep the peace.
Stephen huffed slightly but reached to take the bag from Connor.
"No, Connor, don't make him climb the stairs with a bag right now!" Nick said in exasperation.
"—even listening to—" said the little voice on the phone that was sliding down his shoulder away from his ear.
"Sorry, right, I'll—" Connor's eyes darted about as he apparently tried to decide to whom he was apologising.
Stephen was hefting the bag already. "That's more than one day's clothes," he said suspiciously, carefully using his right hand to start unzipping the bag.
Nick grabbed for the phone he was about to lose. "We're rather busy at the moment," he snapped to Lester, raising his voice so that he could hear himself over the others.
"I don't care. Clear your schedule for forty minutes from now," Lester shot back before hanging up.
"How many days' clothes did he tell you to bring?" Stephen asked Connor in disbelief.
"Well, we didn't know what you'd want to wear," Connor hedged.
Connor turned his questioning look and Stephen his glare on Nick at the same time, and Nick wished Lester was still on the phone, or that he'd had the presence of mind not to lower the phone so that he could pretend he was still talking.
"Why don't I help you make tea or something?" Abby asked, and she put a hand on his arm to turn him.
Cravenly, Nick allowed himself to be led back to his own kitchen.
"Connor will help Stephen, we'll give him some time to cool down, and then you can face them," she said with a gentle smile as soon as they were out of earshot.
"Idiot's going back up the stairs!" Nick growled, but it sounded like he had Connor with him to carry the bag—and make sure he didn't fall back down. "I told him not to come down!" He added, "And Lester's coming to debrief us, and I started making tea for three, not five...." He petered out. None of this was Abby's fault.
"That's all right," she said, lifting the kettle and putting more water in it. "I should have warned you I was coming." She put the kettle back on and gave Nick a sympathetic look. "She broke into his flat, Nick, and stole his phone. She invaded his space and took what he uses to keep in touch with us. Stephen needs to feel like he has some control."
"Oh" was all Nick could say. She was right, of course.
"Did you know he has no weapons in his flat?" she asked. Her tone was mild, but she was watching him very closely.
"Stephen? Since when?"
Abby nodded, apparently satisfied with his answer. "That's what I said. They're all at the ARC, even the ones he owns. Connor knew. Noel said... you don't leave a man with PTSD with guns in his bedroom."
"Why the hell does Noel even need to know about it?" Nick asked angrily, not asking how Noel knew about it when he didn't. Noel had only met Stephen twice, hadn't he?
Abby shrugged, leaning her hip against the kitchen counter. "He's part of the team now. And he was the first one of us to Stephen's flat last night." She crossed her arms. "I don't think he needed to know, but Connor...."
"Connor should have shared that information with me, if he was going to share it with anyone," Nick said, annoyed. "Not with the new man on the team, and certainly not with someone who hardly knows Stephen."
"So Stephen hadn't told you, either," Abby confirmed again.
"No." Nick sighed. "But he did call me right away about Helen, and he told me what she said. I don't think he's even told Lester or Miller yet. Stephen's a very private person...." He said it as much to remind himself as to remind Abby. Everyone at the ARC knew about the affair—and about Stephen getting fired, and the extent of his injuries. They probably even all knew that he was seeing a psychiatrist. Nick oughtn't to grudge him keeping the one piece of information private.
With steps sounding on the stairs again, Abby had no time to respond, other than to nod understandingly.
***
Stephen had managed to get past his initial anger at Cutter's unilateral decision that he'd be moving in here for the time being, and brunch was pretty pleasant. It made sense, as Abby argued, that the two of them be in the same place for a while, so that soldiers could watch them without spreading themselves too thin. He found arguing with Nick oddly reassuring as well. Helen might have caused the latest trouble, but they weren't arguing about her. It felt almost like old times again.
Unfortunately, Lester arrived before they'd finished eating.
Stephen still thought Helen wasn't likely to approach either of them for quite a while now, but then again, he'd never expected she'd come to his flat only the second night that Connor was gone. He said as much to Lester, who debriefed him in Cutter's study while the rest finished their brunch.
Lester stayed surprisingly civil while questioning him, keeping his snarky remarks to a minimum. Stephen had told him everything he could remember, as honestly as possible. The last time he'd tried to keep secrets, he'd nearly lost his whole team to Helen's mad plot. So he told Lester everything, including Helen's comments about having changed the time line. Stephen hoped she had only been trying to get a rise out of him; he didn't want to think about her deliberately tampering with time. He certainly didn't want to think he had been dead at some point. Lester's eyebrows went up a lot during that part of the story, but otherwise he did not react much.
"Do you think she's just lying?" Stephen finally asked Lester. "She didn't really go back and...."
Lester just asked Stephen what he thought, however, and moved on. At last Stephen had told all he could remember.
"So is there anything else you'd like to tell me?" Lester asked for what must have been the fifth time. "Is there—"
"No," Stephen insisted, "I've told you—"
"If you'd let me finish," Lester cut him off. "No one is letting me finish a sentence today! I was going to say: did you notice anything that seemed odd? Any clues about what she thought she was doing or where she had been recently? Maybe not something she said, or did, but something she didn't say, or didn't do. Any... impressions that could help us?"
Stephen raised his eyebrows.
Lester shrugged. "I didn't get much sleep last night either." He sighed. "Well, if you think of anything later, please don't keep it to yourself. You never know what might be important. And here." He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a mobile—Stephen's mobile. "The technicians had a look; they found no signs of tampering, and no calls after her call to Cutter last night, but you should have a look and see if anything's been changed. Settings, that sort of thing."
Stephen didn't want the mobile back, but Lester held it out to him.
"Take it!" Lester said. "We've got a trace set up so that we'll know where any calls you receive originate, and we'll do our best to track them. We've done the same on your landline and Cutter's phones. And we need you to answer if it does ring, in case it is Helen again. You know the game. Do try a little subtlety this time in keeping her talking, if you can."
Stephen reluctantly took his mobile. "Oh," he said, suddenly remembering a detail that had slipped his mind. "She was looking through my contacts. She read Noel Miller's name out loud and said she didn't recognise it."
Lester made a note, in addition to the tape recorder he had going. "That's something, at least. Anything else?"
Stephen had already related Helen's remark about Cutter still being first on his speed dial. He wondered what else she'd been looking for on his phone, or why she cared—or expected to know everyone in his contacts list. He said so while he flipped through his phone book and his call log, looking for any changes. Connor had been the one to enter much of the information, putting everyone in the ARC Stephen could possibly want to call, and a few he wouldn't, into his phone list. He wasn't certain he'd even recognise minor changes.
Wait—Noel Miller wasn't on his speed dial, though Stephen had dutifully entered his number into the contacts list. Maybe he ought to have put him on speed dial, but he hadn't yet. "She wasn't only looking at my contacts list," he told Lester, "or she couldn't have switched from Cutter to Miller so fast. She pulled up the first speed dial number, but then she must have switched to my incoming call log. Miller called me late Friday afternoon with some questions about tracks he was studying, and I only got a couple of calls after that. Why does she care who calls me?"
That thought was quite disturbing, but the next one that came into his head was worse. He hesitated to say anything, but Lester must have seen something in his face and prompted him.
"One of the first things she said to me, actually, was: 'Didn't you used to sleep in the nude?'" Stephen could feel his face flushing, and the expression on Lester's face didn't help; it looked like he was choosing amongst the cutting remarks that crossed his mind. "And I did, but—we didn't spend the night together. It was an affair. We... met in the afternoons. So how did she know what I, what I did, or didn't, wear to bed normally?"
Lester blinked at him but, to Stephen's surprise, didn't crack any jokes. "How long did she stay at your flat before... the incident?"
"One day," Stephen admitted, his face still burning. "Oh, and one night. But one night is hardly enough to base 'used to'—oh, maybe it is. I suppose I'm...." He wished he could sink into the sofa.
"But I'm guessing," Lester said, "that any nudity that one night would not be merely for the purposes of sleeping?"
Stephen stared at him. Was the man making some sort of attempt to spare his feelings?
Lester pressed on, undiscouraged by Stephen's silence. "So she may have been observing you before she turned up to get you fired? Perhaps she was making certain that you weren't already living with someone? Maybe she was even seeing how you were getting on with the rest of the team, and with Cutter?"
"Oh, God." Stephen had thought he'd plumbed the depths of his own stupidity, but apparently he hadn't. "If she was spying on me, or getting into my flat—I hadn't been making... social calls. Of any kind. On the phone, in person. She'd know that. I'd lost contact with friends from outside the ARC, and... well, I had pretty minimal contact with... with the team, at the end, there."
He lowered his face to his good hand. "No wonder she scarcely argued when I took her to talk to Nick, that day with the mammoth—she probably knew we were hardly speaking to each other at that point. She knew he'd get angry at me. God...."
"I think we're finding there's no end to the the scheming she'll do," Lester said grimly. "And she's still interested in you both, though damned if I know why."
Was that an insult? Somehow the idea that Lester had insulted him again made Stephen feel better.
"Anything else she said that might have indicated she'd been observing you? Anything she did?" Lester pressed.
Stephen concentrated on remembering the details of the previous night.. "She didn't sit on the side of the bed nearest the door. I woke up, and she was already moving to the far side, my right side. That could be because she knew I still have the cast on that arm, or it could be that she knew I have a bedside table there. Maybe she meant to turn on the light if I didn't."
Lester sighed. "But presumably she'd have noticed the table before—"
"She couldn't have. I didn't have it. Connor and Abby, probably Abby, thought to get it for me before I came home. The lamp, too. It's so that I don't have to get out of bed to turn the light on and off, and I can see my clock by turning my head. I'd had the clock on the floor, before." The flat had come sparsely furnished, and he'd never felt the need to add much.
"So she probably had been observing you both before and after the incident," Lester said. He said 'the incident' so easily, unlike everyone else. Cutter didn't even have a consistent word for it yet. Usually Cutter didn't call it anything; he left a break in middle of a sentence, and Stephen knew what he meant. Abby avoided talking about it. Connor, when he spoke of it at all, always did so in such a jumble of words that Stephen had enough work to follow the main thread.
Stephen didn't know what to call it himself. 'The incident' was as good as anything else.
He couldn't remember anything further, so Lester let him go.
After the debriefing, the rest of the day went fairly well. Cutter insisted he shouldn't work, but he didn't press Stephen to take his tablets. He didn't even try to argue Stephen out of going for a walk in the late afternoon, though he wouldn't let him go alone. Stephen learned that Lester had told Cutter he'd concluded that Helen had been spying on Stephen, although Lester seemed to have spared Cutter some of the details about how they'd decided that. Cutter said he had no way of knowing whether she'd been spying on him as well. Cutter refused to discuss how soon Stephen could move back home again, and Stephen knew he'd already pushed his luck more than enough for one day. He did persuade Cutter to take his own bed back, however, and make up the spare bed for Stephen. Sleeping in the Cutters' bed was too strange.
When he did wake up that night from a too-vivid dream, Stephen had to admit that he felt better knowing someone was within shouting distance, even though he didn't do any actual shouting. He got back to sleep relatively quickly again.
Part 9
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So creepy that Helen had been spying on Stephen like that *shudders*
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I did think Helen went along with Stephen's suggestion that they both go talk to Nick awfully easily, from which I logically deduced... yes, very creepy. She's a deeply disturbed person.
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Helen conspired with Leek, so I'm not sure why anyone would be surprised that she spied on Stephen! (Except Stephen, who seems perpetually surprised at Helen.)
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Do Not Like Helen. You write her very well though... creepy and disturbing.
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The Odd Couple live again *G* LOL at the 'coming down the stairs' scene of chaos, and Nick getting into trouble for insisting that Stephen stay.
Hearts Abby and Connor flat-hunting for Stephen.
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