Ethan sat down quietly in Bree’s chair, tucking his legs in close and leaning his head back. He really did not want to be here right now, but it was as Bree had said. This was the final stretch to the finish line. All he had to do was get through this without doing something stupid and he would be set.
He was, however, grateful that Bree was going in to speak with her boss before Ethan’s interrogation began. He fully understood that coming to the office was the only way to clear his name of all the strange situations surrounding it, but since the evidence against him was muddled some small part of him was still anxious that something was going to go drastically wrong. There was nothing to suggest that he had ever had anything to do with Victor, but he had escaped from police custody without permission in Seattle. Bree’s prudent preface might make the conversation that was soon to follow that much smoother.
Of course, significant tidbits would be left out of the conversation; both of them had agreed that would be for the best. According to Bree the FBI would be more than willing to close any hanging cases relating to him so long as there was something even resembling an acceptable answer, and they would have no reason to dig any deeper than the basic facts they needed to close the case and redirect the wasted manpower to a more valuable location. So far, the numbers had given him no reason to doubt her.
Such, he knew full well, would not have been the case if he had allowed himself to be brought in back after the casino. At that time they would have dug until they were certain that they had cracked open every secret he possessed, and Ethan had a lot of secrets he did not want revealed. Not the least of which was several million dollars scattered across the county in various bank accounts under various names. The only thing protecting him now was Bree’s apparent belief in his innocence. Now that she no longer had a desire to plumb his deepest secrets he should be protected from most, if not all, plumbing of any sort. All he had to do was sit quiet for a few minutes, eat a candy or two, and make sure that whoever spoke to him had no reason to doubt Ethan’s story. The only one who had ever witnessed any of his truly miraculous events was Bree, and she was not going to hinder his bid for freedom now.
Unfortunately, it soon appeared that sitting quietly was the only thing he was not going to be allowed to do. There was someone moving his way unavoidably towards Bree’s small office, and that someone was very, very interested in having a long and rather rude conversation with a certain green-eyed man.
The man was not particularly tall, nor particularly heavy set. He was muscular but not bulky by any means, and though his jaw was strong and his eyes were deep set there was nothing particularly intimidating about his physical appearance. All the same, he might as well have been a giant from the way everyone and everything around him reacted to his presence. He should have been a brown-eyed brown-haired everyday man, but he wasn’t. He should not have been intimidating, but there was no doubting the fact that the man who was now approaching Bree’s desk was very, very good at intimidation.
He had clearly not been expecting to see anyone as he passed by Bree’s office, but it only took him a couple of seconds to put the details together and determine exactly who was the man sitting before him.
“So,” he said with no preamble, voice clipped. “You are the one Walsh has chased halfway across the country and back. Why aren’t you in handcuffs?”
Without the context it actually would have taken Ethan a few moments to remember that Bree was actually Brigit Walsh. It was a name he had only just gotten on the flight here, and was one he would never truly associate with her. But in that context the man could have told Ethan any name, and he would have known that he meant Bree. There was only one person in the world who fit that description.
“Handcuffs?” Ethan asked, playing the innocent even as the numbers told him with near certainty that it would do nothing to sway the agent who was now firmly rooted to one side of the doorway, and who seemed to be preparing for a long fight. “Why would I be in handcuffs?”
The man snorted, folding his arms across his chest. “No way the innocent routine worked on her. Been a long time since I’ve seen anything get to her the way you did...” he trailed off, intense gaze locked onto Ethan, clearly trying to figure out just what he could have done to get Bree to change her mind about him.
“Who are you?” Ethan asked, knocking off the ‘anyways’ a moment before it would have slipped from between his lips and made an already unpleasant situation that much worse.
The man eyed him for a moment before deciding that giving his name could do no harm. “I am Special Agent Tanner. I’m also Brigit’s... Agent Walsh’s to you... partner. And you are?”
“Ethan Sampson,” he replied, giving his cleanest and most unobtrusive false identity without the faintest tremor. It hadn’t taken Ethan long to settle on that identity when the plane had landed in Denver, giving Ethan and Bree a day to gather what he needed. Sampson was a gambler who made millions on the lottery and lost most of it just as fast in Vegas. Nothing spoke of truth more than a man who lost far more than he won. Sampson owned an apartment complex in Denver, left it to be managed by a realtor, paid his taxes every year through an auto-pay service, and somehow managed to stay just pennies above deficit year after year. It would take a massive amount of digging to discover that Sampson had appeared only a couple of weeks before he won the lottery, digging that no one, according to Bree, would be willing to do. Suddenly, Ethan was starting to have concerns about her certainty. Bree had a very good partner. It was clear he had no interest in letting her investigation go until he was satisfied with it, even if Bree herself had decided to end it.
Ethan had to find a way to nip this in the bud, and do it now. The only problem was even he could not see a way to change things. The human mind was unpredictable. It made connections in a split second that had nothing to do with probability . There could never be any certainty, no matter how much he pulled at the numbers.
Neither of them spoke at that moment. For Ethan there was simply nothing to say, and tanner seemed far more interested in staring at Ethan than actually talking to him. It was a star that spoke volumes, and suggested that Tanner knew far more than he was telling. If Ethan didn’t know for a certainty that the man was only grasping at straws, he might have actually been somewhat concerned. And so they sat, and Ethan watched with growing irritation as everything he attempted with the numbers was immediately rendered null and void by this man’s stubborn persistence. It truly seemed that there was nothing he could do.
But self-preservation was an incredibly strong instinct within him. He had sacrificed Victor in the name of self-preservation, and he wasn’t about to let one over enthusiastic FBI agent ruin things now. That line of thought had gotten him in a lot of trouble last time, but he had to believe that a recognition of that vain darkness within him, along with the new found knowledge that it did not need to either define or control him, would keep him from stepping over the edge of humanity again.
The fact that everyone, Bree, her boss, the people who were soon to be questioning him, were going to support the claim for Ethan’s innocence was going to slow Tanner down. His investigations would have to be subtle enough that no one would wonder what he was doing. By the time he even got started Ethan would be long gone, buried back in the woodwork with a clean record. But if Tanner kept digging he would eventually find out that Sampson did not actually exist, and he would certainly bring the information back to the agency. If he did that the hunt would be back on.
Of course, without Bre chasing him, it was doubtful that they would ever be able to catch up to him. But the whole reason he had come here in the first place would then be rendered null and void. Equally important was the fact that Ethan truly did not want to spend the rest of his time in America looking over his shoulder. He wanted to be free, and that was all he had ever wanted. But how could he get away when someone was insisting on chasing him? It sent a bit of a chill down his spine to realize that, even with his abilities, it was possible for his life to turn into such a mess with just a single, apparently simple, act.
Finally, Ethan let out a sign, breaking the silence between the two men. “I truly am sorry that there is nothing I can say that will convince you I am innocent of whatever it is you suspect.”
His tone seemed to take Tanner by surprise. “That may very well be the first honesty thing you have said to me,” he replied. “doesn't change anything, of course.”
Ethan let out a humorless laugh. “Of course.”
“You could just save me the time, and tell me everything I want to know now.”
“I don’t think it is possible for me to tell you what you want to hear, and tell the truth at the same time.”
Perhaps it was the fact that Ethan spoke first, but Tanner seemed to have gained whatever he wanted from the silence. He barely even paused before beginning his interrogation. “What were you doing in Richmond?”
“Working. The best dealers are always the best gamblers. They know how to stretch the rules for the house.”
“So you admit to working for an underground gambling ring?”
“I don’t think anyone could dispute that. But nor do I think that is what you want to know.”
“But you ran.”
“Of course I ran. Everyone there was either running or trying to run.”
“But then you continued to run.”
They were getting closer to the question that Agent Tanner really wanted to ask. How? But that was the one question that Ethan did not want asked. It was time for him to throw a little kink in the Agent’s carefully planned script.
“No.”
“No?” Tanner repeated incredulously. “What about Seattle? Or Chicago?”
“In case you’ve forgotten, I was very cooperative when the police arrested me for no apparent reason in Seattle. When I tried to open the door and it wasn’t locked, I assumed I was free to go, so I walked out. No one tried to stop me. I really don’t see how that qualifies as running.
“As far as Chicago,” Ethan continued before the agent had a chance to interrupt, “everyone there knew the place was a meth lab. Like everyone else, I simply assumed it was a drug bust. I didn’t know they were after me until Br... Agent Walsh found me in Oregon. Now here I am, willingly explaining how all of this is just one giant misunderstanding. Thus, no handcuffs, and no running.”
Agent Tanner had been growing more and more frustrated the longer Ethan talked. Finally, he was able to explode. “A misunderstanding?! What you are suggesting is entirely impossible. A person in lock-up can’t just walk out of a police station.”
“Exactly.” Ethan interrupted gracefully. “What else was I to assume except that I was free to go? When the alarm went off, I was just as glad to b missing all the hubbub.”
Tanner was gaping, his mind desperately trying to come up with a new explanation as Ethan put more and more pressure on to him. “But...”
“Even if someone let me out,” Ethan began again, using the numbers to predict Tanner’s next argument. The fact that he could predict it would make it seems all the more invalid. “I walked past another ten to twenty people on my way out. I didn’t even know I was going to be arrested. How could I have arranged any of that without you hearing something from someone?”
“What about Chicago?”
“What about it?” Ethan desperately wanted to laugh as a vein in the agent’s forehead twitched. His frequent and fluid interruptions were doing far more to put the man off than his actual argument.
“They chased you up to the room. How could you not know they were after you?”
“I don’t know who they chased up there, but it certainly wasn’t me.”
Tanner opened his mouth, hoping to interrupt Ethan’s own monologue and regain a touch of control, but Ethan pressed on, unwilling to relinquish the control. “If it was me, I would have been completely cornered. They would have arrested me then and there. Unless,” Ethan's lips twitched slightly as he contained a smile, “you are suggesting I can jump off the roof of a fifteen story building and live to tell the tale.”
Finally Ethan seemed to have stumped Tanner. At least for right now he had run out of arguments. For a moment, even against the evidence of the numbers, Ethan allowed himself to believe that might be the end of it. But only for a moment.
“Goddammit, I don’t know where the truth ends and the lies begin, but I know you are lying. There is no way it is all as simple as that. You be able to fool everyone else with those sweet words, but I know Walsh’s instincts about you are right. There’s something off about you, and I’ll be damned if I won’t prove it.”
“Your loyalty to her is truly admirable,” Ethan said quietly. “But if you are so ready to trust her on that, why won’t you trust her now?”
“Her first impressions are never wrong. She knows that and, apparently more importantly, I know that. I wasn’t here to help her at the beginning of all of this, but I’m here now.” A small smile twitched at the corner’s of Ethan’s lips as he noticed a certain red-haired someone approaching her office. Agent Tanner was about to help dig his own grave. “I don’t know if you seduced her or blackmailed her somehow, but I won’t let her stay under your control.”