The Oval Office ✓ (Book One)

Chapter Fifty Five

                               Eleven Years Ago

If the events of the past twenty four hours weren't already enough, here I am, at the New York headquarters, waiting on the director. I'm half expecting to get chewed out, but ya never know. When an individual agent gets a visit from the director using taxpayer Dollars, it's either to yell at you or bring you to national headquarters for an important investigation, so I'm hoping it's the later.

I nervously tap my foot, my brain wandering back to yesterday. At around four pm, I received an untraceable phone call threatening my life. According to Ethan, the only truly untraceable phone is a Nokia 5000 D-2 with SMS encryption, so we had that to go off of, but it was still hours before we found the person.

—

"Come on, you don't have to be at work for another hour." Kyle pouts.

"You're going to make me late-" I laugh. "Let go, besides, you're already late." He doesn't technically have a time that he has to be in the office, but he's usually there by seven, and it's already nine. He gets that "oh shit" look on his face, jumping up to get ready while I take my sweet time. As he's rushing out the door, he stops for a second to kiss me goodbye, and I sigh, not wanting to leave the bed. Any day in my line of work that starts off slow is always referred to as "the calm before the storm", because something major almost always happens in the afternoon. I wonder, for a second, what it'll be today.

As my feet hit the floor and I open the curtains, the morning sun that comes with being halfway through summer nearly blinds me. I cover my eyes, and like a vampire, quickly pull the curtains closed again. I grab a clean uniform out of the closet, pulling the shirt over my head as my eyes slowly adjust to the sunlight peeking through the crack of the curtain.  The chef and housekeeper are both off today, so I grab some random container of leftovers out of the fridge, eating the noodles cold.

  I glance at the clock- and I have about twenty minutes left before I have to leave. My phone rings- an unknown caller, which is an automatic red flag for any agent. A call like that could come from any fbi headquarters in the country when they need to discuss a highly sensitive case, or from somebody you're investigating whose found out that you're investigating them. Hesitantly, I pick up the phone.

  "Hello?" I say.

   "You put my fucking brother in jail you bitch I swear to god I'm going to-"

  "If something that I discovered led to his arrest, he deserved it. Who is this?" I ask.

  "You really I'm fucking stupid enough to tell you my name?!"

  "No." I shrug even though he can't see me. "What I'm thinking is that the longer I can keep you on the phone, the easier it'll be for me to remember your voice and identify your personality, then match it up in a suspect line up when you're arrested for threatening a federal agent."

  There's silence on the other end for a second. "I'm going to kill you. That is a promise."

  I roll my eyes- this isn't the first time something like this has happened and it probably won't be the last.
—-

  We were able to find him by pulling up a list of all Nokia's purchased by people residing in the state in the past five years and going through the arrest histories of their families. As it turned out, the dude's a member of a prominent mafia family in New York. Ethan tracked his car to an apartment building on the outskirts of the city, we sent agents in, and he continued threatening to kill me.

  His brother? The boss. Having both of them in custody certainly won't help me stay alive, but I've never been easily intimidated. "The director should be here in ten minutes." The lady at the desk says. I shift uncomfortably in my seat, the hard plastic pressing against my ass bones. If it were anybody else I was waiting on - and if I hadn't just arrested the American mafia boss and his brother, I would have left by now- but here I am.

  I'm constantly doing something- if there's not an active investigation for me to work on, I'm firing idiots that Kyle's too nice to fire or going to some public speech with him, since they seem to really like me. That's something I'll never get used to- complete strangers knowing my name, and every now and then, no matter how rare- recognizing me in public.

  I would rather be as busy as I am than sit around all day, but fuck. A little bit of a break would be nice. "Ms.Wells-" Director Roberts introduces himself. "I'm sorry to keep you waiting for so long. Something came up at the White House that I had to attend to."

  "It's Lauren." I say. "And you had to do your job. Don't apologize."

  He leads me to an empty office and shuts the door. It reminds me of what the Governor's office looked like when the previous one was moving out and Kyle had yet to move his stuff in- just with an fbi emblem painted on one of the walls. "Your investigation led to the arrest of one of the most notorious, violent criminals in the country. You are a phenomenal agent, Lauren."

  "I wouldn't go that far-"

  "I would. You're not giving yourself enough credit." He leans against the desk and sighs. "The White House's investigators have been looking for the guy for months and as soon as you caught wind of him existing you found him in days."

  "Again, Director Roberts, I was just doing my job."

  "You did way more than just your job." He sits up, crossing his arms. "There's a vacancy at my office. Of course, we're constantly scattered across the country for one reason of another, so you wouldn't have to actually move, but-"

  "What are you saying?" He smiles.

  "My field investigator got shot in the head a couple of times. I need somebody to fill his position-" He checks an invisible watch. "Like, last week."