Beyond the Family Ties

Part 24

Otis Graves didn't tell them anything. Not that first day, when Becky was cranky after a long flight, having left her daughter asleep on a few chairs in the hallway, sitting in a chair across from the handcuffed burly man, asking blunt questions, one after the other, to no avail. It didn't work a week later, when he was moved to a high security location outside of London, when she was softer, more coercive, her and Jack playing nice as they tried to get their witness to spill. They already had him in custody, he'd been brought in on concealed weapons charges, assault, theft and a dozen other minor things. He'd be found guilty, it was just a matter of trying to get him to help them before he was. They could bribe him with a plea deal, get him a shorter sentence. But he gave them nothing.

For weeks they tried, sometimes taking it in turns to go by themselves, going together as a tag team, yet he wouldn't give them anything useful. Instead, Otis would lean back in his chair, one arm slung around the back, and he'd smirk, a self-satisfied look on his face, and make jokes that fell flat in the face of the two stoic agents. That was more frustrating than anything else, the fact that weeks went by with nothing. September came around with no new leads - nothing. Not even her mother cooperated and gave her a few snippets from her penthouse imprisonment, leaving Becky sitting impatiently and irritably in her London apartment. Her trip back to Albany City had been cut short for this and it had amounted to nothing.

Even her near-daily talks with Freen did little to make her feel better. There was a distance growing between them, and Becky could feel the hole in her chest widening, growing bigger and aching just a little bit stronger each day. She could almost feel the threads that tied her to Freen weakening, and no matter how much Sam assured her that Freen wasn't replacing her, the more it felt like she was. It wasn't anything she said over the phone, it was almost the opposite. All of their conversations had a gaping hole where all mentions of Mike were left out, but Becky could see them anyway, knowing that when Freen said she was going to a party that night, it was with Mike, or that when she said they all had a game night, he was there too, playing as her partner, like Becky had used to.

The weeks sped by, October coming and going with little fuss, except for Halloween, where Jack showed up at her apartment dressed as Dracula, cut arm and necks holes into two black trash bags and jammed witches hats onto Becky and Laurel's head, before dragging them out to knock on a few doors in the area. That was the most relaxing thing she'd done in weeks, because even the moments spent taking her daughter to various locations around and outside the city were tainted by the looming thoughts of her job. It was like she couldn't escape it, like she was doomed to be trapped in London forever, chasing after her brother from afar. She almost would've preferred to be in Albany City and been the live bait that Freen seemed to think the DEO were using her as. At least she would've been happier. But it would've been a selfish happiness, risking her friend's life for the sake of her own comfort.

But as the weather grew colder, six months turning into seven, and then eight, Becky found herself spiralling deeper and deeper into a black hole of helplessness. Jack took her to his dad's house for dinner one night, ordering Chinese from his local, and she sat there in silence for the most part, going through the motions as they played Uno , he brought pizzas to her apartment as they read over files, trying to comb through the information they'd been through a dozen times, piecing together the ever-growing puzzle, to no avail. It was like she was running on autopilot, her whole body drained as she dragged herself through life. The only times she was genuinely happy was with her daughter. When she laughed it was because of Laurel, her smiles were quick to come at her daughter's antics, and when she enrolled Laurel in daycare - one of the high security places where politicians and government officials sent their kids - she missed her every moment that she was gone.