Butter Pecan #24, Watermelon #25
Author: winebabe
Title: Person of Interest
Story: LNOVERKILL
Rating: PG
Flavor(s): Butter Pecan #24: light; Watermelon #25: here we go again
Word Count: 1424
Summary: Reilly has been dreading receiving his morning notes for a week now.
Notes: Reilly Desmarais, Brett Schofield, Madelyn Gauthier. Set somewhere in canon; just a little deleted scene. (Hey look I finally did something!)
"Good morning, Dr. Desmarais," Madelyn chirped from behind her desk, candy-pink lips spread across her face in a sweet smile. There was music coming from her computer, the telltale black background of Spotify on the screen beside her, and although it wasn't unusual Reilly found it to be obnoxious in the cold light of morning. How anyone could manage to look so put-together before the sun fully rose was beyond him.
"Good morning, Madelyn," he replied, the flat tone of his voice doing nothing to dissuade the young receptionist from being anything less than elated to see him. "Is Dr. Reese in yet?"
"Not yet," she told him, picking up her pink mug as he set his briefcase on her desk. She took a sip of her coffee, and the prints her lipstick made blended in perfectly with the painted ceramic. "I think he'd planned on getting in later. I do have some messages for you, though."
Reilly couldn't stop the audible sigh that escaped his lips, but Madelyn only smiled to herself as she turned away to grab her notepad. He pulled his glasses from his face and scrutinized the lenses while she flipped through the pages.
"Uh, okay, I'm sorry--this one man called yesterday evening, and I didn't get his name. He just gave me his extension and told me to have you call him." Madelyn ripped a page from her notepad and slid it across the desk top.
After replacing his glasses, Reilly picked up the note with a scowl. On the top of the page, Madelyn had drawn several question marks, and he couldn't help but be mildly amused. Even without the man's name, he knew exactly who it was who'd called him, and it was no surprise that he hadn't given his name. A twenty-something year old woman wasn't exactly going to make the cut for "need to know" people. "Thank you, Madelyn," he replied, folding up the note and slipping it into his pocket.
"That's not all," she interjected, and then tore off another sheet of paper. "Agent Schofield called for you, again."
"Again," Reilly repeated, and when Madelyn nodded, he rolled his eyes and accepted the note. "What did he say he wanted this time?"
"He said he had some questions for you," she replied, "and I insisted you were far too busy and tried to get him to, you know, lay off--like you asked me to. But he's an FBI agent, Dr. Desmarais. He wasn't rude about it but he was very firm on the matter. He'd like you to call him. Today."
"That's fine, Madelyn," Reilly assured her. He could imagine that it would be difficult to do anything but comply with an FBI agent's requests, especially for someone like Madelyn, so he couldn't fault her for giving in. The research laboratory was quiet, secluded, and even on busy days she never had more than a handful of people to deal with. The sudden arrival of men in suits, waving badges around and claiming to be FBI agents, was enough to throw anyone off. Reilly himself hadn't handled their first visit with too much composure.
“Are you sure, Dr. Desmarais?” Madelyn asked, frowning. “I could, I don’t know, stall some more? I know you’re busy, and--”
“Not a doctor, Madelyn,” Reilly interrupted. He patted the top of her desk with one hand. “And I’m sure; it’s fine. I’ll call him immediately and get this over with.” The clock on the wall read just after 7:30 in the morning, and Reilly felt a small burst of satisfaction at the fact that he, too, could possibly be inconveniencing the agent with a phone call so early. “Can you have Dr. Reese stop by my lab when he gets in?”
“Sure thing,” Madelyn said. She cupped her hands around her mug and smiled at him.
Reilly nodded and returned the smile for all of two seconds. “Thank you,” he replied, swiftly grabbing his briefcase from the reception desk and heading off down the narrow hallway. He was still holding the piece of paper in his hand, rubbing it between two fingers as he tried to prepare himself for the phone call. There was no telling how much Agent Schofield knew about what was truly going on behind the closed doors of CMS Labs, but whatever he did know, Reilly could be sure it wasn’t the whole story. All he had to do was remain vague enough that Agent Schofield didn’t learn anything new. It wouldn’t be too hard of a task.
The piece of paper with Agent Brett Schofield’s number weighed heavily in his hand as Reilly set his briefcase down on the floor and fumbled with the lock on his door. He nudged it open with his shoulder as he stepped inside, then haphazardly tossed his briefcase onto a nearby table and went straight for the phone.
Madelyn’s cursive sat on the page in thick, black letters and Reilly glanced back and forth between the phone’s number pad and the note as he first dialed a 9 to get out of the system, a 1, and then cautiously punched in the remaining ten digits. Reilly barely had a moment of peace before the ringing cut out, replaced by a disappointingly alert-sounding, “This is Agent Schofield.”
“Hello, Agent Schofield,” Reilly said, leaning all of his weight into the edge of the table in a way that was both painful and grounding. “This is Reilly Desmarais. You wanted to speak with me?”
“Ah, Mr. Desmarais, thank you for calling back so quickly.” Agent Schofield sounded positively delighted, and that made Reilly’s skin crawl. “The other day, that colleague of yours--Dr. Reese, I think his name was?--did most of the talking. I was hoping you would answer a few questions for me.”
“Of course,” Reilly agreed, mindlessly scraping the side of one fingertip with his thumb nail. “What would you like to know?”
Over the phone, he could hear what sounded like papers being shuffled. “I only have a few questions,” Agent Schofield insisted, as if somehow that was supposed to change the fact that an FBI agent was questioning him for the second time in a week. The pleasant tone of voice he was using only served to worsen Reilly’s anxiety about the whole situation. “You said you’ve been helping Dr. Reese with his cancer research?”
“Yes.”
“And is that all you’ve been doing? You haven’t been working on anything of your own?”
Reilly could hear it in his voice: Agent Schofield knew he was lying. “I have my own research I’ve been working on,” he replied.
There was a pause before Agent Schofield asked, “Would you care to elaborate on that?”
“I’m not authorized to talk about it,” Reilly told him, and let out a hiss as his thumb nail cut into the skin of his finger. He tried to mask the sound by following it with a sigh, scrutinizing the blood welling up in the space beside his nailbed. “I signed a confidentiality agreement with my financial sponsors. I’m not allowed to talk about the nature of my work.”
Agent Schofield’s silence indicated to Reilly that the man thought he was lying, but the response was as close to the truth as he could get. He hadn’t signed any explicit confidentiality agreements, but he also knew what would happen to him if he told anyone what he was working on. The consequences were far worse than anything the FBI could slap him with.
“Fine,” Agent Schofield finally said, and Reilly could hear other voices in the background. “And you have absolutely no idea how, if this substance wasn’t created by someone in the lab, it ended up in one of the lab’s vials?”
“I don’t,” Reilly replied. “But it’s not as though we have a shortage of vials around here, Agent Schofield. If any went missing, I doubt we would notice.”
“You mean empty ones,” Agent Schofield clarified, and Reilly laughed.
“Oh, we would notice if any of our preparations had gone missing.”
“Hm.”
“Is there anything else?” Reilly asked, balling up the piece of paper in one hand. “You aren’t asking me anything new, Agent.”
“That’s all for now,” he confirmed, “but unfortunately I’m not done with you yet, Mr. Desmarais.”
The lightness that had just begun to form in his Reilly’s chest was immediately crushed by a heavy, sinking feeling in his stomach. “You know where to find me,” he replied in a much harsher tone than he’d intended, and immediately hung up the phone.