Fic: Due Process (1/4)
Title: Due Process
Author: Melyanna
Summary: Cameron Mitchell gets to D. C. for a temporary duty assignment just in time to land on the sidelines of an impending scandal - this one involving his old friend Ainsley Hayes.
Notes: Credit and/or blame goes to auralan and freifraufischer, who alternated between encouraging and enabling. sache8 came up with the title in about thirty seconds, when I'd spend weeks trying to think of something. ;)
This story takes place several months after "A Finite Number of Monkeys". Also, fair warning: this is babyfic, though the plot is a good deal more involved than that.
"No, you may not keep the baby T-rex!"
There were many things Kate Harper had had to say in her life that she'd never really thought would ever come up in conversation. Before today, the top line on that list had been a threat to invade Canada. And that had been surreal enough.
Cameron Mitchell, who was clearly a ten-year-old boy masquerading as a grown man and a colonel in the United States Air Force, was standing in front of her with the baby T-rex sitting at his feet. They were both looking at her rather pathetically.
The look on Cam's face was why she was off-world in the first place. He'd been coming to this planet with a group of archaeologists, intent on setting up a long-term dig site. Somehow he'd gotten it in his head that she needed to get out more, and this time, instead of coaxing her into getting ice cream with him in the middle of January, he'd convinced her to come to Jurassic Planet.
It had been really fun at first, too, right until the point where they discovered that the fossils being dug up weren't of extinct animals. Their first clue was the baby T-rex in question wandering up to SG-1 and apparently wanting to play. He did look like an awfully playful thing, but still, it was a dinosaur, for heaven's sake.
"Okay, just tell me why we can't keep him," Cam said to her, using his most plaintive tone once she'd dragged him and the animal into the nearest empty tent.
"Aside from the fact that our regulations pretty strictly say that we don't bring animals back?" Kate replied. "It's a dinosaur, Cam! What are you expecting me to say?"
"No," he told her, grinning while the baby dinosaur started to lick at her hand.
Kate rolled her eyes and started to leave the tent.
"You look cute with the pony tail," he called after her.
She stopped short and looked over her shoulder. "What part of 'I'm married' are you tripping over this week?" Normally she wouldn't have been this irritated - maybe even flattered - but today he'd made her announce that he couldn't keep a baby dinosaur and that kind of thing just made her cranky.
Cam shrugged. "Consider it a message from your husband, half a galaxy away."
Kate left the tent then feeling much as she had when she'd threatened to attack Canada if a bunch of cowboys didn't put their guns down. As usual, Cam owed her a drink.
Possibly several.
Admiral Harper was still a little cranky with Cam by the time they headed back to Earth. He wasn't sure he blamed her. Kate had a lot of stress in her life and this time he'd probably stepped over a line.
Then again, the baby dinosaur had been awfully cute.
Once they were back at the SGC and had handed over their weapons, the admiral removed her vest and said, "Colonel, I want a word with you in my office."
He tossed his vest at one of his team members and followed the admiral into the control room, up the spiral stairs, across the briefing room, and into her office. He shut one door while she shut the other. "Ma'am?" he prompted.
Kate walked behind her desk but didn't sit. "I have a TDA for you."
"Oh, come on," he protested immediately. More than seven years earlier he'd nearly died in Antarctica, and after spending months in rehab learning to walk again, some of the brass above him had attempted to send him through an endless cycle of temporary duty assignments. Only Jack O'Neill had been able put a stop to that.
Harper raised a brow. "Is that really what you wanted to say?"
"No, ma'am," Cam replied, standing a little more rigidly.
Kate nodded once. "Some defense contracts pertinent to our operations here are up for review," she explained. "I need someone there who's familiar with the technology, and you're the only person I've got with practical experience with our weaponry and spacecraft."
"What about General Carter?" he asked. "She designed damn near everything we use here."
The admiral sat down and started sorting the paperwork on her desk. "You don't require a translator fluent in technobabble, Colonel," she replied. "Which is why she's running Nellis and you're going to Washington."
Cam bit his tongue, knowing there was another reason for not sending Sam for this, aside from the fact that it was rather beneath her now that she sported a star on her shoulder. He liked her an awful lot, but she wasn't known for playing well with Congress.
"Well," he said, resigned to his fate, "I guess I can visit an old friend of mine while I'm there."
"That's the spirit," Harper replied with false cheer. She handed him a file. "College buddy?"
"College buddy's little sister, actually," Cam said. "Our paths cross every three or four years, we promise we'll stay in touch this time, and inevitably fail." Once, after the crash in Antarctica, he'd had a really good excuse for falling out of contact with her, but it wasn't like he could have explained to her what had happened. Heck, there at the beginning he couldn't even reach the phone.
Kate smiled a little. "Never pegged you as the love-'em-and-leave-'em type."
"Yeah, she's married to some Congressman."
Kate dropped the pen she had just picked up and looked at him incredulously. "What is it with you and married women?"
"I don't know!" he responded, waving his hands for effect. "You're both blonde and Republican and I just can't help myself."
Unlike the last time he'd started teasing her, she smiled and rolled her eyes. "You know, Will's not at all threatened by you, which has its own degree of hilarity."
"Yeah, this friend's husband doesn't like me very much." He paused for a moment, remembering where the admiral had worked before the SGC and Annapolis. "Hey, you might actually know her. She was White House counsel until just recently, and she worked for President Bartlet, too."
"Ainsley Hayes was your college buddy's little sister?"
"Yep. So you do know her?"
"No, she left the Bartlet White House about a year before I was hired. Besides, I never had much contact with the lawyers," Kate replied. "Well, the lawyers who were hired to be lawyers, anyway. But I know who she is."
"So when do I leave?"
"As soon as possible. You're needed in a meeting tomorrow morning."
Cam sighed, hefting the file up dramatically and heading toward the side door. "Well, thanks for the generous amount of time to get there." Kate glared at him as he opened the door and walked out. "See you whenever they're done with me."
Around eight o'clock, Ainsley Hayes finally gave up on getting the kitchen reorganized. The pantry was still a mess, but the refrigerator and most of the cabinets were straightened up and baby-proofed to her satisfaction. It would be a while before that was actually necessary, but she wanted everything in order before the baby arrived so she didn't have to worry about it.
And the baby was just a little more than a week away now. Her husband was away in his Congressional district in North Carolina, though he was supposed to be back in the DC area by the end of the week. Ainsley had a feeling that Seth would have told her to stop worrying about it, to let the maid take care of it, but she was a little glad he wasn't here to chide her about it. She'd always been the type to want to do things herself.
One hand on her aching back, she walked - waddled, really - to the nearest comfortable seat in the house and lowered herself down as gently as she could. Even though part of her brain was pointing out that she wanted Seth there for the birth of their child, she just wanted to get this experience over with as quickly as she could. She was really looking forward to what every woman had told her about pregnancy - forgetting as much of the unpleasantness as possible.
Ainsley got up eventually and headed upstairs, thinking about how great a long shower would be before snuggling into her warm bed. But when she walked past the bed, she noticed a paper sticking out from the drawer of Seth's nightstand. Curious, Ainsley came up to it and tugged the paper out.
It was a crumpled, handwritten receipt from one of the best jewelers in the D. C. area. Her birthday had been just a week ago, and Seth had given her a gorgeous diamond pendant. She'd been mildly irritated that he'd given her a necklace she wouldn't dare wear until after their child had outgrown the grab-and-chew phase, but the piece was so beautiful that mostly, she didn't care.
Clearly, Seth had had the receipt in his pocket and shoved it into the drawer there when he'd realized he still had it on him. Ainsley was about to put it back when something scribbled on the sheet caught her eye.
He'd bought two of that necklace?
Despite having an office there, C. J. Cregg was not often in Washington. These days she split her time mostly between Santa Monica and various places in Africa, still doing the aid work Franklin Hollis had hired her to do after leaving the White House. Charlie Young was still working for her, of course - she couldn't seem to shake him no matter how many better jobs she tried to steer the young lawyer toward - but these days he was running the operation on the east coast and dealing with politicians much more frequently than she was. Despite being Jed Bartlet's son-in-law, Charlie had far less political baggage than C. J. had.
But occasionally she was obliged to visit D. C. and sit in on meetings with dignitaries and people with money. Sometimes it was difficult to tell the difference between the two but today had been a good day. Even so, Charlie was trying to rush her out the door.
"Got a hot date tonight, Charles?" she asked as he turned her computer off for her.
"As a matter of fact, yes," he told her. "One of Zoey's friends is taking Sophie tonight and we're going to have a nice evening to ourselves."
She smiled as she stood up. But before she could reach for her jacket, the phone rang. "You can let it go to voice mail," Charlie said.
"What the hell, I'm feeling congenial," she remarked, hitting the speakerphone button. "This is C. J.," she said.
"C. J., oh, thank God you're in town," said a frantic female voice on the other end. "This is Ainsley Hayes. I don't know who else I would have called, but you've been through a Congressional investigation before -"
C. J. looked up at Charlie, whose alarmed expression must have mirrored her own. "Ainsley," she interrupted, "this might be a good time for me to mention that you're on speakerphone."
There was a heavy silence, and then Ainsley said in a small voice, "Is there someone with you?"
"Hi, Ainsley," Charlie said.
"Hi, Charlie," she replied, sounding quite frazzled now.
"Ainsley, are you in trouble?" C. J. asked, sitting down again. On the other side of the desk, Charlie covered his face with his hands. He'd gotten so close to leaving.
"Not as such, no," Ainsley said. "But I'm pretty sure my husband is."
C. J. had to think for a moment to recall who exactly that was. Seth Conrad, Republican Congressman from the North Carolina 11th, the western tip of the state, including Asheville. "What has he done?" she asked.
"I'm not entirely sure what all he's done, but I'm dead sure he's cheating on me."
C. J. gaped. "Ainsley," she said incredulously, "aren't you, like, enormously pregnant now?"
"Gosh, C. J., I hadn't thought of that!" Ainsley replied, at a particularly high point of Ainsley-ness. "Here I am waddling around and it never occurred to me that Seth decided to cheat on me while I'm as big as a house!"
"Ainsley, calm down," Charlie said. "Why'd you call C. J.?"
Ainsley sniffled loudly. "Because I need some help," she replied. "There's so much stuff I'm finding. And I know C. J. can exercise discretion while I figure out what I'm going to do about all this."
C. J. looked down at her desk. "Do you need me to come over?"
There was more sniffling. "Could you?"
C. J. got to her feet. "I'll be over there as soon as I can. Try to stay calm till I get there, okay?"
"Thank you, C. J.," Ainsley said, and then there was a click.
C. J. grabbed her jacket and put it on. "Well, Chuckles, have fun on your date," she said. "I'm going to wade into a cesspool of Republican scandal."
"It'll be just like old times for both of us," he replied. "Only thing missing is Danny trying to figure out what you're up to."
"I think I'd have to duct tape him to a chair," she said, sighing. "And possibly use chloroform on him."
It was after twenty-one-hundred hours by the time Cameron's flight landed at Andrews, but instead of going to the hotel set up for him, he took the rental car that had been provided for him and headed to Ainsley's house.
He'd been there only once, and once to her house (or probably more appropriately, her husband's house) in North Carolina. Seth Conrad didn't like Cameron. Cam wasn't sure why, but suspected it had something to do with the fact that Cam had known Ainsley far longer than Seth had. Seth had struck him as the type of man who didn't really want his wife getting much attention from other men, which made it remarkably strange that he'd married a woman who worked in such a male-dominated field.
Ainsley had seemed happy with him, though, so Cam didn't question it. He just made sure his visits to her were brief, and usually in some public place instead of at the house.
It occurred to him as he drove up her street that he maybe should have called first. But there were lights on in a couple rooms of the house, so he pulled in the driveway and headed up the front steps, his bags slung over his shoulder.
It seemed like he was standing on the porch for a while after he rang the doorbell, just staring at the old red brick house with all its perfectly proper landscaping. There was a horse farm on the other side of the property, and Cameron could smell the horses from here.
He heard footsteps within, and the door swung open. There was Ainsley, a white tissue at her nose, but that wasn't the most remarkable thing about her. She was pregnant, heavily pregnant. Cameron's jaw practically hit his boots.
For her part, Ainsley started bawling.
"Hey, hey," Cam said, opening the storm door and stepping inside, setting his luggage down. Awkwardly, he wrapped his arms around her as she kept on crying. "Ainsley, I know I haven't called in a while," he continued - something of an understatement since it'd been at least nine months since they'd talked. He was pretty sure he'd have remembered if she'd told him she was having a baby. "But really, it's not worth crying over."
She just started crying harder and clung to him, and Cam rubbed her back and kept his mouth shut. A couple minutes later, he heard someone coming down the stairs and started preparing himself for Seth's reaction to seeing them like this. But instead of Seth, a very tall woman with brown hair turned the corner at the foot of the stairs and said, "Who the hell are you?"
"I'm Cameron Mitchell. Old friend of Ainsley's," he said. "Who are you?"
"C. J. Cregg. She and I used to work together."
Cam nodded and turned his attention back to his friend, who seemed to have calmed down a bit. "Ainsley," he began, cautiously, "where's Seth?"
Ainsley let out a high-pitched wail and sobbed.
"That would be the problem," C. J. said quietly.
It took a while for Ainsley to calm down again, and at that point, Cam followed C. J. up the stairs to the office, his arm around Ainsley's shoulders. "Now," he said, while C. J. sat down at the computer, "would someone explain what's going on?"
Ainsley sniffled loudly, her hand on her belly. "I found a receipt tonight for a necklace Seth gave me a couple weeks ago," she said, wiping her eyes with a fresh tissue. "He bought two of them."
Cameron had known enough scumbags to know immediately what that meant. "He had a girl on the side?" he asked as gently as he could.
He half-expected Ainsley to burst into tears again, but she just looked down. "That's only the half of it."
Considerably alarmed, Cam guided Ainsley over to the loveseat on the other side of the desk. "Ainsley," he prompted.
She took a deep, shaky breath. "His mistress," she replied, "is the director of research at Cencal Technologies."
Cam frowned. "They're one of the biggest defense contractors developing for the SGC," he said.
"And Representative Conrad is on the House Armed Services Committee, not to mention Appropriations and Stargate Oversight," C. J. added.
Cameron raised both eyebrows. "Oh."
"Yeah," Ainsley said.
"So what are you two doing?" he asked, carefully.
Ainsley blew her nose and reached for the box of tissues, so C. J. explained, "I think Ainsley felt like the only way to know for sure was to go hunting for information. She called me a couple hours ago because it was starting to get overwhelming."
Without thinking about it much, Cam put his arm around Ainsley's shoulders again. "He didn't have anything password protected or anything?"
"He did," Ainsley said, leaning against him. "His passwords were on a piece of paper taped to the underside of the desk inside the top drawer. He knew I knew about it."
She sat up, wiping at her eyes with both hands. Cameron let his hand rest on her back. "Ain, were there any other women?" He hated to ask it, but he knew that for some, infidelity was a habit, not a mistake.
Ainsley swallowed hard and nodded silently.
C. J. looked between the two of them, then back at the computer screen. "We've only found evidence of one beyond the woman at Cencal," she said. "But that's enough to establish a pattern."
Evidently done with crying for the moment, Ainsley pushed herself up from the loveseat. "C. J., let's look at the books," she said. "No reason to assume there isn't more evidence in there."
Cam watched her while she walked to the other side of the desk, standing next to C. J.. She looked like a mess but he recognized the resolve in her voice well enough. "I'm not sure what all you're going to find here," C. J. said. "There's a stack of email we've printed out. That should be enough in court."
"I want an iron-clad case," Ainsley replied, a great deal of bitterness in her voice. "Besides, I want to start closing joint accounts before he can move anything, and I need to know what's where according to him."
Cameron only half listened as Ainsley directed C. J. through file directories until C. J. asked, "Which one of these files do you want?"
Ainsley looked at the screen. "Venture?" she said. "I've never heard of that one."
"Well, let's look at that one."
Cam got up to stand behind C. J. too. "Was he providing venture capital for a start-up?" he asked.
"Yeah, but we kept that in with our checking account as far as I know," Ainsley replied. "He wouldn't need separate books for that."
"Seth keeps the books?" Cam asked while the file loaded on the screen.
Ainsley nodded. "He's always been more on top of these things than I am."
Cameron frowned, wondering how exacting Seth Conrad was about finances.
Ainsley leaned forward, looking intently at the screen. "There's way too much money here," she said, astonishment in her voice.
"How much?" C. J. asked.
"Power of ten too much," Ainsley replied. "He told me he was investing five thousand a month in these guys, not fifty thousand."
Cam whistled lowly. "That's a huge difference."
"No kidding," C. J. said, looking at him like he was a bit of an idiot. "Ainsley, do you recognize any of the names of the people the money is coming from?" she asked, moving the cursor over the column of names.
Ainsley didn't answer immediately, and the other two turned to see her valiantly trying not to cry again. Cam rushed to the other side of the desk again to get the box of tissues. "Ainsley, honey," C. J. said, and Cam wondered if she'd been doing this all evening.
"He's getting ready to leave me, isn't he?" she sobbed. "He's keeping all this money a secret so when he divorces me I won't know it's there and he won't lose as much of his assets!"
Cameron wouldn't have believed that anyone else could have said all that while crying, but Ainsley always was special like that.
While she blew her nose again, which by now was bright red, Cam looked at the screen, curious. "Hey," he said, pointing to a name on the screen, "I know this guy."
"What?" C. J. and Ainsley said at once.
"This guy, Derek MacNaff," he said. "He was my CO right after I got transferred to the SGC. I spent about three months on an exploratory team before getting into the F-302 squadron. MacNaff was the team commander. He retired a couple years ago." Cameron frowned. "Ainsley, what's he doing giving your husband $30,000?"
It turned out that Mitchell recognized more names, and C. J. did too, many of them people who had given to the Hollis Foundation. Some quality time with Google revealed their connections to defense contractors and other people who really shouldn't be giving money to Congressmen, let alone in these quantities.
Eventually Ainsley had to use the bathroom, not that anyone was surprised by this. C. J., left alone with the uniformed man who'd just shown up on Ainsley's doorstep, felt a bit awkward with the silence that remained. "So," she said, "you're at the SGC?"
Mitchell nodded. "I'm commander of SG-1." After a brief pause, he added, "You worked at the White House, I imagine."
She smiled wryly. "It cracks me up that I was on TV every day for years and people don't recognize me. I was press secretary and then I was chief of staff."
The man walked back to the loveseat and flopped down. C. J. looked at the computer monitor idly. "So how do you know Ainsley?" she asked.
"Her older brother and I were roommates at UNC," he replied. "Dean's family was just twenty minutes away and I had a car. We spent most of our weekends doing laundry at the Hayes house."
C. J. smiled. "How old was Ainsley?"
Cameron sighed. "Twelve or thirteen when we met?" he said. "Just a kid."
"She'd probably object to that characterization."
"She did at the time." He chuckled. "When she turned fifteen I took her out to the back roads outside of town thinking I'd teach her how to drive. It went so badly she didn't speak to me for months. Didn't help that Dean insisted on going along for entertainment value."
C. J. laughed, trying to imagine Ainsley as a teenager. "Did she always talk like she does now?"
"She always talked a lot, but I think Harvard Law made her what she is today."
C. J. was laughing again when Ainsley walked in the room. "What's so funny?" she asked warily.
"The colonel was telling me how you two met," C. J. explained.
"Did he tell you about the time I nearly wrapped his car around a tree?"
Cameron shrugged. "More or less, yeah."
Ainsley leaned against the desk next to C. J. and looked down at her. "Do we know anything else?" she asked.
"We've got a list of people here who've given your husband money who really, really shouldn't be," C. J. replied, shifting back to business.
Mitchell got up and came around the desk again. "I know it's not pleasant, but I think we have to start thinking about the unthinkable," he told Ainsley.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"It's possible he's taking bribes," he explained, putting his hands on her shoulders. "There may be some perfectly innocent explanation for all this, but it sure doesn't look like it."
"To be honest it looks like a money-laundering scheme," C. J. put in quietly.
Ainsley pressed her lips together tightly for a moment. "We have to have more than this," she said. "We have to know what he was up to. I was White House counsel while all this was going on, and if he's really taking bribes... My career's on the line too, guys."
C. J. looked at the clock on the wall. It was already close to midnight. "Well," she said, "I've got time if you've got time."
Ainsley was determined, obviously, to keep going, and Cameron nodded. "Let's get this done."
By about two in the morning, they had examined Seth Conrad's financial records, email, schedule, and even text messages enough to make the conclusion almost inevitable. The congressman was taking money from people representing corporations he either regulated or secured contracts for. It was possible they weren't bribes, but it was hard to imagine what else it could be.
C. J. stood up and stretched. "And here I thought I stopped this nonsense years ago," she said. "I think I've done as much damage as I can. Ainsley, unless you need something else, I'm going home."
Ainsley looked up from her seat distractedly. "What? Oh, sure, you can go."
The three of them migrated out of the office and downstairs. Ainsley settled carefully onto the couch in the living room. Cam cast a concerned look at her but accompanied C. J. to the door. "Hey, thanks for the help," he said quietly.
"Well, you too, Colonel," the woman replied. "I'm not sure you could have timed an unexpected arrival any better."
He shrugged. "Sometimes I'm just lucky."
C. J. looked back in the room, where Ainsley was sitting listlessly on the couch. "She going to be okay?"
Cam nodded. "I think so."
Once C. J. was gone, Cam headed to the kitchen and brought back a glass of water for Ainsley. She took it from him wordlessly but didn't drink from it. "Talk to me, Ainsley," he said, putting his arm around her.
"Where do I start?" she asked rhetorically, choking a laugh that was almost a sob. "In the last six hours I've found out that my husband has been committing a felony and cheating on me. Honestly, I don't know which is worse. Then I went and called C. J. because she was the one person I could think of who'd understand all this and not want to cover it up or skewer Seth. I don't know why I didn't think about talking to Seth first or, I don't know, exercising spousal privilege or something. I can't even decide what I'm madder about, the bribes or the affair!"
She sniffed loudly, and Cam rubbed her shoulder. "I'm having his baby in a matter of days, and I don't want to see him ever again."
"Ainsley," Cam began, but he didn't know how to finish a thought. He couldn't blame her for being angry. He was pretty angry about it all too. After all, Seth had always been a little suspicious of Cam and his decades-long friendship with Ainsley. There was also the fact that Ainsley was finding out about this when she could be going into labor at any time. Cam couldn't bring himself to be very forgiving of a man who cheated on his pregnant wife.
That didn't even touch the criminal activity.
Ainsley leaned against him heavily, and when the still-full glass of water started to tilt, Cam gently took it from her and set it aside. She didn't respond, her breathing deepening, and he shifted her around carefully. Cam leaned back into the corner of the deep couch and settled Ainsley more or less on top of him, her belly pressing against his side.
He was just starting to drift off when he felt a weird pressure on his side. He was tired enough that it took him a while to realize that the baby was kicking. A sudden surge of pity caught him off-guard. This poor kid wasn't even born yet and had probably already lost its father.
Cam reached up and smoothed a lock of Ainsley's long, blonde hair back from her face. Then he rested his hand against her belly. The baby didn't stop moving, but eventually Cam drifted off anyway, just thankful that Ainsley wasn't alone tonight of all nights.
Ainsley awoke uncomfortably, the baby pressing against some part of her body she hadn't been aware of before reaching this point in her pregnancy. She was also sleeping on top of Cameron on the couch in the living room, which was definitely not made for sleeping.
Oh. Cameron.
Ainsley pushed herself up, rubbing her sore neck, and found Cameron snoring softly next to her. He woke up shortly after she moved, though, looked around, and groaned. "What time is it?" he asked.
She looked at her watch. "Six."
"Oh, goodie, four whole hours of sleep."
Ainsley moved a few inches away from him to let him get up more easily. He stood and stretched. Suddenly it occurred to her that with everything that had happened the previous night, they hadn't really talked much. "You never did say why you're here, Cam," she said.
Stiffly he walked over to where he'd dropped his bags the night before. "Admiral Harper sent me to advise a committee that's reviewing some defense contracts," he replied, hefting up a garment bag and duffel bag. "I have a meeting at oh-eight-thirty at the Hill."
"On the Hill," Ainsley corrected automatically, picking up the glass of water Cam had brought her the previous night and then left on the coffee table.
"What?"
"On the Hill." She took a drink. "You said at the Hill. It's on the Hill."
"Well, I have to say," he replied, "I'm not sure you can call anything around here a hill. But then, I live in Colorado where there are, you know, mountains."
Ainsley just rolled her eyes.
He cleared his throat. "I probably need to press my shirt."
Slowly, she got to her feet. "I'll show you the laundry room."
After showing him where everything was, Ainsley headed upstairs to take a shower. She'd never actually gotten around to that the night before. When she came back downstairs, her wet hair up in a towel, Cameron had finished with the iron and was in the guest bathroom with the shower running.
She had just finished getting her breakfast ready when Cam came into the kitchen, his light blue shirt hanging open over his undershirt and his darker blue jacket in his hand. She forced a smile as he came up to the island countertop. "I don't have many breakfast options," she said. "Seth's not big on breakfast."
"As long as there's something other than cantaloupe, I'm fine," Cam replied.
Ainsley got a bowl out of a cabinet for him. "Cantaloupe?" she repeated.
"It was back in freshman year," he said. She passed a box of wheat flakes and the bowl to him. "The second or third time Dean and I ended up staying the night at your house, your mom asked me what I liked to eat for breakfast. I was having cantaloupe that morning and told her whatever she had in the house was fine, I wasn't picky. She took that to mean I liked cantaloupe and then proceeded to serve it to me two or three times a month for four years."
This time, Ainsley did laugh. "That's Mom for you."
Cameron started pouring cereal into the bowl. "How's your mom doing these days, anyway?"
"Pretty well. She'll be up here in a couple days."
The reasons for that were obvious, and an awkward silence fell as they came closer to the subject they hadn't addressed yet this morning. "So," he said carefully, "when is your husband supposed to be back?"
"Friday," she replied.
"Have you decided what you're going to do yet?"
Ainsley picked up her glass of milk and brought it to her lips. "I need to talk to a lawyer," she said quietly.
Though he watched her carefully, he didn't ask which topic she was going to talk to a lawyer about. She wondered if he thought of the two issues separately - she certainly did. At this stage, Seth's adultery and his apparent criminal activity were two different things and needed to be dealt with accordingly. As soon as Cameron left, she was going to get in touch with a lawyer and start working on divorce proceedings. She knew Seth was cheating on her, and she wouldn't have her child in a situation like that.
The other question was more complicated.
What she'd said to Cam the night before was true. Spousal privilege meant she didn't have to testify against her husband in court, though she wasn't sure if she'd given that up by telling first C. J. and then Cameron. But what would she do about it? She couldn't let Seth get away with this, could she?
After a few awkward minutes, Cameron spoke again, changing the subject to something far more pleasant, but Ainsley, in the back of her mind, started thinking about how odd it was that the dissolution of her marriage was somehow the easy decision here.
Cameron was reluctant to leave Ainsley alone that morning, but she assured him that she would be fine. He was less than convinced but left anyway, having seen enough of her last night to realize that fine or not, she was going to get things done.
He gave himself extra time to get to his meeting on the Hill and was still almost late. A page led him into the basement, and Cam was briefly reminded of secret midnight poker games in the laundry room of his freshman dormitory. He was greeted by a bunch of suits, most notable among them, Andrea Wyatt, the tall, red-haired woman who had co-chaired the hearings on the SGC some years ago when the program was disclosed at the end of President Bartlet's administration. "Colonel Mitchell," Wyatt greeted. "I have to say I'm surprised. I was expecting Admiral Harper to send someone a little lower ranking."
Cameron shook hands with the rest in the room. "The admiral said you needed someone with practical knowledge of a wide spectrum of technology in service at the SGC," he replied. "I'm one of the few who's been on the ground in an SG team as well as flying F-302s."
When the introductions were finished, the legislators and Cam settled in on either side of the long table in the middle of the room. "As some of you may have noticed," Congresswoman Wyatt said, "this is not exactly the House Stargate Operations Oversight Committee." Cameron glanced around the room and decided he really should have been aware of that already. "We have here two Democrats and two Republicans from the committee. We also have with us three representatives from the Department of Justice, as well as Colonel Mitchell of the SGC."
"Enough with the theatrics, Andi," said a pudgy, balding man as he took off his glasses. "You told us we were here to review contracts related to Stargate operations."
"A few weeks ago I got a call from DOJ," Wyatt replied. "They had a source stating that something fishy was going on with contracts held by Cencal Technologies."
It took every ounce of restraint in Cam's body to keep from snapping his head toward the congresswoman. Seth Conrad's mistress was from Cencal Technologies.
Was this the proof he and Ainsley and C. J. had been unable to unearth the night before? Was the link right in front of his face?
The meeting was going to continue, of course, his own bewilderment notwithstanding, so Cameron forced his brain to compartmentalize things. He didn't have to contribute much beyond his knowledge of the operations at the SGC, rattling off numbers about how often they replaced machine guns, how frequently F-302s were completely overhauled, and how often such things actually needed to be done. Meanwhile, he expended a fair amount of brain power trying to figure out what he needed to do with this information. He was sure that Ainsley needed to be aware that an investigation into her husband's actions was already underway. He was also relatively sure that he didn't need to be the one in the room for this investigation, but he had no idea how to tell Andrea Wyatt what he knew without Ainsley's consent.
The truth of the matter was, he couldn't.
When they eventually took a fifteen-minute break, Cam pulled his cell phone out and paced through the building trying to find a place with halfway decent reception. Finding a place in the lobby where he could get a signal, he dialed Ainsley's cell and listened impatiently to the ringing.
Her voice mail picked up, and he cursed so sharply that a woman walking by jumped and glared at him. Cam ignored it, waiting for the beep so he could record his message. "Ainsley," he said, "it's Cam. We've got to talk. This is really... I don't know how big this is but I've just got to talk to you. Can we meet somewhere for lunch?"
He hung up then and hurried back to his meeting, trying to focus more than he had before the break. It wasn't until his cell phone vibrated and he checked to see Ainsley had sent him a text message that he broke his concentration.
Surreptitiously, Cam pulled his phone out and flipped it open. The message was brief. Ainsley would be waiting in a coffee shop a few blocks away.
It was past thirteen-hundred hours before anyone called for a lunch break. Cameron hurried out as quickly as was dignified, got in his car, and headed in the direction Ainsley had given him.
She was actually waiting for him outside the little store, a white paper bag in one hand, her other hand holding a light jacket together just above her belly. Cam pulled over and he reached over to open the door for her as best he could. Ainsley got in the car quickly. "I got us lunch," she said, balancing the bag on her knees as she got her seat belt on. "This didn't sound like something you'd want to talk about in public."
"It's not."
She directed him to a nearby parking deck. Cameron found an empty spot, and Ainsley handed him one of the two sandwiches in the bag. They both started eating, and Ainsley asked, "So what happened in your meeting?"
He paused for a moment, trying to figure out how to tell her this. "Cameron?" she pressed.
"Ainsley, I was told I was coming here to help a Congressional committee with contracts that were up for review and renewal," he said. "That's not what this meeting is. It's four members of Stargate Oversight and an investigation by the Justice Department."
Ainsley blanched. "Seth's on that committee," she said softly.
"I know." Cameron reached over and took her hand. "Ainsley, they think there was some foul play involved in the awarding of contracts to Cencal Technologies. Nothing huge, just that Cencal got orders that were bigger than anything we needed at the SGC, or in Atlantis. It was systematic."
She looked away. "Do they have a suspect yet?"
"No," he replied. "This investigation seems to be preliminary. They haven't gotten to a point where they can narrow it down to anyone."
Ainsley rested her elbow on the door frame and leaned her head against her hand. After a minute or two Cam realized that she'd started crying. In the last eighteen hours he'd seen her cry more than in the nearly thirty years he'd known her. The previous night, she'd started crying at nearly every new revelation about her husband's activities, though she'd managed to push through the tears and continue, so he shouldn't have been surprised when this time, she swallowed hard and said, "Don't say anything about this to them yet."
Cam nodded, knowing she needed time and space to figure out what she was going to do and how she was going to do it. In the meantime, while she dug in her purse, he asked, "How did your meeting this morning go?"
She pulled out a tissue and blew her nose before answering. "Better than I expected," she said. "I thought I might have to file for divorce in North Carolina because that's where we were married and that's where his residence is, but since I'm registered to vote in Maryland, I can file here."
"Is that going to cause delays?"
Ainsley shook her head. "North Carolina was going to make me wait a year after separating to file for absolute divorce. Given Seth's... what he did, I don't have a waiting period in Maryland."
A little startled, Cam reached over and laid his hand on her knee. "Ainsley," he said, "are you sure you want to make this decision so quickly?"
Her lower lip trembled but she didn't start crying again. "We'd been having problems," she replied after a minute. "We were fighting over a lot of stupid things and sometimes I wondered... but then I found out I was pregnant and we talked and we decided we were going to try to do better. Before I was showing we were fighting again."
Some intensely protective streak of Cam's reared up, and it was with difficulty that he kept from digging his fingers into Ainsley's leg. "He wasn't... hurting you, was he?" He rather doubted that she would stay in a relationship that got abusive, but he figured the question had to be asked.
Ainsley shook her head. "No, he never hit me. He's barely touched me since we found out about the baby. I haven't had sex in months."
Cameron immediately bit down on the inside of his cheek, knowing that whatever he might say in response to that would be totally wrong. Ainsley seemed to realize she'd made him uncomfortable. "I'm sorry," she said, laying her hand on her belly. "That was more than you wanted to know."
He pulled his hand away from her knee and stared at the steering wheel. "Yeah."
To his surprise, she laughed just a little. "It's true, though," she added after a moment. "Seth's never been the type to be very affectionate physically. He's never been the type to cuddle in bed or anything. I guess I just figured he wasn't too comfortable with the idea of having sex with a visibly pregnant woman."
Cameron kept staring in front of him, knowing he needed to keep his mouth shut. He and Ainsley had only ever been friends, but the idea of a man not finding her attractive was completely foreign to him. Right now she looked uncomfortable with her body and her eyes and face were red from so much crying, but at the same time Cam thought she looked as beautiful as ever. That her own husband had been avoiding her even long before this point was baffling.
"It all makes sense now," Ainsley concluded quietly. "He's had a girl on the side as long as I've known him. I guess it's kind of remarkable it took this long for him to get caught."
"Even idiots get lucky."
He cast a glance at her and saw a weary look on her face. "I suppose."
There was an awkward silence between them, made all the more strange because Cam couldn't remember being awkward around her in years. "Have you talked to your mother yet?" he asked.
"No, why do you ask?"
"I don't know," Cameron admitted. "I guess I just thought she might come up earlier than she planned if you asked her."
He left the rest for her to fill in. After another long pause, she said, "I parked my car on the next level up. Can you drive me up to it? My feet hurt."
Without hesitation, he started the car up and took her to the next level. As he waited for her to get in her car and start it up, he made a note to himself to be a good guy that evening and massage her feet.
Part II
Author: Melyanna
Summary: Cameron Mitchell gets to D. C. for a temporary duty assignment just in time to land on the sidelines of an impending scandal - this one involving his old friend Ainsley Hayes.
Notes: Credit and/or blame goes to auralan and freifraufischer, who alternated between encouraging and enabling. sache8 came up with the title in about thirty seconds, when I'd spend weeks trying to think of something. ;)
This story takes place several months after "A Finite Number of Monkeys". Also, fair warning: this is babyfic, though the plot is a good deal more involved than that.
"No, you may not keep the baby T-rex!"
There were many things Kate Harper had had to say in her life that she'd never really thought would ever come up in conversation. Before today, the top line on that list had been a threat to invade Canada. And that had been surreal enough.
Cameron Mitchell, who was clearly a ten-year-old boy masquerading as a grown man and a colonel in the United States Air Force, was standing in front of her with the baby T-rex sitting at his feet. They were both looking at her rather pathetically.
The look on Cam's face was why she was off-world in the first place. He'd been coming to this planet with a group of archaeologists, intent on setting up a long-term dig site. Somehow he'd gotten it in his head that she needed to get out more, and this time, instead of coaxing her into getting ice cream with him in the middle of January, he'd convinced her to come to Jurassic Planet.
It had been really fun at first, too, right until the point where they discovered that the fossils being dug up weren't of extinct animals. Their first clue was the baby T-rex in question wandering up to SG-1 and apparently wanting to play. He did look like an awfully playful thing, but still, it was a dinosaur, for heaven's sake.
"Okay, just tell me why we can't keep him," Cam said to her, using his most plaintive tone once she'd dragged him and the animal into the nearest empty tent.
"Aside from the fact that our regulations pretty strictly say that we don't bring animals back?" Kate replied. "It's a dinosaur, Cam! What are you expecting me to say?"
"No," he told her, grinning while the baby dinosaur started to lick at her hand.
Kate rolled her eyes and started to leave the tent.
"You look cute with the pony tail," he called after her.
She stopped short and looked over her shoulder. "What part of 'I'm married' are you tripping over this week?" Normally she wouldn't have been this irritated - maybe even flattered - but today he'd made her announce that he couldn't keep a baby dinosaur and that kind of thing just made her cranky.
Cam shrugged. "Consider it a message from your husband, half a galaxy away."
Kate left the tent then feeling much as she had when she'd threatened to attack Canada if a bunch of cowboys didn't put their guns down. As usual, Cam owed her a drink.
Possibly several.
Admiral Harper was still a little cranky with Cam by the time they headed back to Earth. He wasn't sure he blamed her. Kate had a lot of stress in her life and this time he'd probably stepped over a line.
Then again, the baby dinosaur had been awfully cute.
Once they were back at the SGC and had handed over their weapons, the admiral removed her vest and said, "Colonel, I want a word with you in my office."
He tossed his vest at one of his team members and followed the admiral into the control room, up the spiral stairs, across the briefing room, and into her office. He shut one door while she shut the other. "Ma'am?" he prompted.
Kate walked behind her desk but didn't sit. "I have a TDA for you."
"Oh, come on," he protested immediately. More than seven years earlier he'd nearly died in Antarctica, and after spending months in rehab learning to walk again, some of the brass above him had attempted to send him through an endless cycle of temporary duty assignments. Only Jack O'Neill had been able put a stop to that.
Harper raised a brow. "Is that really what you wanted to say?"
"No, ma'am," Cam replied, standing a little more rigidly.
Kate nodded once. "Some defense contracts pertinent to our operations here are up for review," she explained. "I need someone there who's familiar with the technology, and you're the only person I've got with practical experience with our weaponry and spacecraft."
"What about General Carter?" he asked. "She designed damn near everything we use here."
The admiral sat down and started sorting the paperwork on her desk. "You don't require a translator fluent in technobabble, Colonel," she replied. "Which is why she's running Nellis and you're going to Washington."
Cam bit his tongue, knowing there was another reason for not sending Sam for this, aside from the fact that it was rather beneath her now that she sported a star on her shoulder. He liked her an awful lot, but she wasn't known for playing well with Congress.
"Well," he said, resigned to his fate, "I guess I can visit an old friend of mine while I'm there."
"That's the spirit," Harper replied with false cheer. She handed him a file. "College buddy?"
"College buddy's little sister, actually," Cam said. "Our paths cross every three or four years, we promise we'll stay in touch this time, and inevitably fail." Once, after the crash in Antarctica, he'd had a really good excuse for falling out of contact with her, but it wasn't like he could have explained to her what had happened. Heck, there at the beginning he couldn't even reach the phone.
Kate smiled a little. "Never pegged you as the love-'em-and-leave-'em type."
"Yeah, she's married to some Congressman."
Kate dropped the pen she had just picked up and looked at him incredulously. "What is it with you and married women?"
"I don't know!" he responded, waving his hands for effect. "You're both blonde and Republican and I just can't help myself."
Unlike the last time he'd started teasing her, she smiled and rolled her eyes. "You know, Will's not at all threatened by you, which has its own degree of hilarity."
"Yeah, this friend's husband doesn't like me very much." He paused for a moment, remembering where the admiral had worked before the SGC and Annapolis. "Hey, you might actually know her. She was White House counsel until just recently, and she worked for President Bartlet, too."
"Ainsley Hayes was your college buddy's little sister?"
"Yep. So you do know her?"
"No, she left the Bartlet White House about a year before I was hired. Besides, I never had much contact with the lawyers," Kate replied. "Well, the lawyers who were hired to be lawyers, anyway. But I know who she is."
"So when do I leave?"
"As soon as possible. You're needed in a meeting tomorrow morning."
Cam sighed, hefting the file up dramatically and heading toward the side door. "Well, thanks for the generous amount of time to get there." Kate glared at him as he opened the door and walked out. "See you whenever they're done with me."
Around eight o'clock, Ainsley Hayes finally gave up on getting the kitchen reorganized. The pantry was still a mess, but the refrigerator and most of the cabinets were straightened up and baby-proofed to her satisfaction. It would be a while before that was actually necessary, but she wanted everything in order before the baby arrived so she didn't have to worry about it.
And the baby was just a little more than a week away now. Her husband was away in his Congressional district in North Carolina, though he was supposed to be back in the DC area by the end of the week. Ainsley had a feeling that Seth would have told her to stop worrying about it, to let the maid take care of it, but she was a little glad he wasn't here to chide her about it. She'd always been the type to want to do things herself.
One hand on her aching back, she walked - waddled, really - to the nearest comfortable seat in the house and lowered herself down as gently as she could. Even though part of her brain was pointing out that she wanted Seth there for the birth of their child, she just wanted to get this experience over with as quickly as she could. She was really looking forward to what every woman had told her about pregnancy - forgetting as much of the unpleasantness as possible.
Ainsley got up eventually and headed upstairs, thinking about how great a long shower would be before snuggling into her warm bed. But when she walked past the bed, she noticed a paper sticking out from the drawer of Seth's nightstand. Curious, Ainsley came up to it and tugged the paper out.
It was a crumpled, handwritten receipt from one of the best jewelers in the D. C. area. Her birthday had been just a week ago, and Seth had given her a gorgeous diamond pendant. She'd been mildly irritated that he'd given her a necklace she wouldn't dare wear until after their child had outgrown the grab-and-chew phase, but the piece was so beautiful that mostly, she didn't care.
Clearly, Seth had had the receipt in his pocket and shoved it into the drawer there when he'd realized he still had it on him. Ainsley was about to put it back when something scribbled on the sheet caught her eye.
He'd bought two of that necklace?
Despite having an office there, C. J. Cregg was not often in Washington. These days she split her time mostly between Santa Monica and various places in Africa, still doing the aid work Franklin Hollis had hired her to do after leaving the White House. Charlie Young was still working for her, of course - she couldn't seem to shake him no matter how many better jobs she tried to steer the young lawyer toward - but these days he was running the operation on the east coast and dealing with politicians much more frequently than she was. Despite being Jed Bartlet's son-in-law, Charlie had far less political baggage than C. J. had.
But occasionally she was obliged to visit D. C. and sit in on meetings with dignitaries and people with money. Sometimes it was difficult to tell the difference between the two but today had been a good day. Even so, Charlie was trying to rush her out the door.
"Got a hot date tonight, Charles?" she asked as he turned her computer off for her.
"As a matter of fact, yes," he told her. "One of Zoey's friends is taking Sophie tonight and we're going to have a nice evening to ourselves."
She smiled as she stood up. But before she could reach for her jacket, the phone rang. "You can let it go to voice mail," Charlie said.
"What the hell, I'm feeling congenial," she remarked, hitting the speakerphone button. "This is C. J.," she said.
"C. J., oh, thank God you're in town," said a frantic female voice on the other end. "This is Ainsley Hayes. I don't know who else I would have called, but you've been through a Congressional investigation before -"
C. J. looked up at Charlie, whose alarmed expression must have mirrored her own. "Ainsley," she interrupted, "this might be a good time for me to mention that you're on speakerphone."
There was a heavy silence, and then Ainsley said in a small voice, "Is there someone with you?"
"Hi, Ainsley," Charlie said.
"Hi, Charlie," she replied, sounding quite frazzled now.
"Ainsley, are you in trouble?" C. J. asked, sitting down again. On the other side of the desk, Charlie covered his face with his hands. He'd gotten so close to leaving.
"Not as such, no," Ainsley said. "But I'm pretty sure my husband is."
C. J. had to think for a moment to recall who exactly that was. Seth Conrad, Republican Congressman from the North Carolina 11th, the western tip of the state, including Asheville. "What has he done?" she asked.
"I'm not entirely sure what all he's done, but I'm dead sure he's cheating on me."
C. J. gaped. "Ainsley," she said incredulously, "aren't you, like, enormously pregnant now?"
"Gosh, C. J., I hadn't thought of that!" Ainsley replied, at a particularly high point of Ainsley-ness. "Here I am waddling around and it never occurred to me that Seth decided to cheat on me while I'm as big as a house!"
"Ainsley, calm down," Charlie said. "Why'd you call C. J.?"
Ainsley sniffled loudly. "Because I need some help," she replied. "There's so much stuff I'm finding. And I know C. J. can exercise discretion while I figure out what I'm going to do about all this."
C. J. looked down at her desk. "Do you need me to come over?"
There was more sniffling. "Could you?"
C. J. got to her feet. "I'll be over there as soon as I can. Try to stay calm till I get there, okay?"
"Thank you, C. J.," Ainsley said, and then there was a click.
C. J. grabbed her jacket and put it on. "Well, Chuckles, have fun on your date," she said. "I'm going to wade into a cesspool of Republican scandal."
"It'll be just like old times for both of us," he replied. "Only thing missing is Danny trying to figure out what you're up to."
"I think I'd have to duct tape him to a chair," she said, sighing. "And possibly use chloroform on him."
It was after twenty-one-hundred hours by the time Cameron's flight landed at Andrews, but instead of going to the hotel set up for him, he took the rental car that had been provided for him and headed to Ainsley's house.
He'd been there only once, and once to her house (or probably more appropriately, her husband's house) in North Carolina. Seth Conrad didn't like Cameron. Cam wasn't sure why, but suspected it had something to do with the fact that Cam had known Ainsley far longer than Seth had. Seth had struck him as the type of man who didn't really want his wife getting much attention from other men, which made it remarkably strange that he'd married a woman who worked in such a male-dominated field.
Ainsley had seemed happy with him, though, so Cam didn't question it. He just made sure his visits to her were brief, and usually in some public place instead of at the house.
It occurred to him as he drove up her street that he maybe should have called first. But there were lights on in a couple rooms of the house, so he pulled in the driveway and headed up the front steps, his bags slung over his shoulder.
It seemed like he was standing on the porch for a while after he rang the doorbell, just staring at the old red brick house with all its perfectly proper landscaping. There was a horse farm on the other side of the property, and Cameron could smell the horses from here.
He heard footsteps within, and the door swung open. There was Ainsley, a white tissue at her nose, but that wasn't the most remarkable thing about her. She was pregnant, heavily pregnant. Cameron's jaw practically hit his boots.
For her part, Ainsley started bawling.
"Hey, hey," Cam said, opening the storm door and stepping inside, setting his luggage down. Awkwardly, he wrapped his arms around her as she kept on crying. "Ainsley, I know I haven't called in a while," he continued - something of an understatement since it'd been at least nine months since they'd talked. He was pretty sure he'd have remembered if she'd told him she was having a baby. "But really, it's not worth crying over."
She just started crying harder and clung to him, and Cam rubbed her back and kept his mouth shut. A couple minutes later, he heard someone coming down the stairs and started preparing himself for Seth's reaction to seeing them like this. But instead of Seth, a very tall woman with brown hair turned the corner at the foot of the stairs and said, "Who the hell are you?"
"I'm Cameron Mitchell. Old friend of Ainsley's," he said. "Who are you?"
"C. J. Cregg. She and I used to work together."
Cam nodded and turned his attention back to his friend, who seemed to have calmed down a bit. "Ainsley," he began, cautiously, "where's Seth?"
Ainsley let out a high-pitched wail and sobbed.
"That would be the problem," C. J. said quietly.
It took a while for Ainsley to calm down again, and at that point, Cam followed C. J. up the stairs to the office, his arm around Ainsley's shoulders. "Now," he said, while C. J. sat down at the computer, "would someone explain what's going on?"
Ainsley sniffled loudly, her hand on her belly. "I found a receipt tonight for a necklace Seth gave me a couple weeks ago," she said, wiping her eyes with a fresh tissue. "He bought two of them."
Cameron had known enough scumbags to know immediately what that meant. "He had a girl on the side?" he asked as gently as he could.
He half-expected Ainsley to burst into tears again, but she just looked down. "That's only the half of it."
Considerably alarmed, Cam guided Ainsley over to the loveseat on the other side of the desk. "Ainsley," he prompted.
She took a deep, shaky breath. "His mistress," she replied, "is the director of research at Cencal Technologies."
Cam frowned. "They're one of the biggest defense contractors developing for the SGC," he said.
"And Representative Conrad is on the House Armed Services Committee, not to mention Appropriations and Stargate Oversight," C. J. added.
Cameron raised both eyebrows. "Oh."
"Yeah," Ainsley said.
"So what are you two doing?" he asked, carefully.
Ainsley blew her nose and reached for the box of tissues, so C. J. explained, "I think Ainsley felt like the only way to know for sure was to go hunting for information. She called me a couple hours ago because it was starting to get overwhelming."
Without thinking about it much, Cam put his arm around Ainsley's shoulders again. "He didn't have anything password protected or anything?"
"He did," Ainsley said, leaning against him. "His passwords were on a piece of paper taped to the underside of the desk inside the top drawer. He knew I knew about it."
She sat up, wiping at her eyes with both hands. Cameron let his hand rest on her back. "Ain, were there any other women?" He hated to ask it, but he knew that for some, infidelity was a habit, not a mistake.
Ainsley swallowed hard and nodded silently.
C. J. looked between the two of them, then back at the computer screen. "We've only found evidence of one beyond the woman at Cencal," she said. "But that's enough to establish a pattern."
Evidently done with crying for the moment, Ainsley pushed herself up from the loveseat. "C. J., let's look at the books," she said. "No reason to assume there isn't more evidence in there."
Cam watched her while she walked to the other side of the desk, standing next to C. J.. She looked like a mess but he recognized the resolve in her voice well enough. "I'm not sure what all you're going to find here," C. J. said. "There's a stack of email we've printed out. That should be enough in court."
"I want an iron-clad case," Ainsley replied, a great deal of bitterness in her voice. "Besides, I want to start closing joint accounts before he can move anything, and I need to know what's where according to him."
Cameron only half listened as Ainsley directed C. J. through file directories until C. J. asked, "Which one of these files do you want?"
Ainsley looked at the screen. "Venture?" she said. "I've never heard of that one."
"Well, let's look at that one."
Cam got up to stand behind C. J. too. "Was he providing venture capital for a start-up?" he asked.
"Yeah, but we kept that in with our checking account as far as I know," Ainsley replied. "He wouldn't need separate books for that."
"Seth keeps the books?" Cam asked while the file loaded on the screen.
Ainsley nodded. "He's always been more on top of these things than I am."
Cameron frowned, wondering how exacting Seth Conrad was about finances.
Ainsley leaned forward, looking intently at the screen. "There's way too much money here," she said, astonishment in her voice.
"How much?" C. J. asked.
"Power of ten too much," Ainsley replied. "He told me he was investing five thousand a month in these guys, not fifty thousand."
Cam whistled lowly. "That's a huge difference."
"No kidding," C. J. said, looking at him like he was a bit of an idiot. "Ainsley, do you recognize any of the names of the people the money is coming from?" she asked, moving the cursor over the column of names.
Ainsley didn't answer immediately, and the other two turned to see her valiantly trying not to cry again. Cam rushed to the other side of the desk again to get the box of tissues. "Ainsley, honey," C. J. said, and Cam wondered if she'd been doing this all evening.
"He's getting ready to leave me, isn't he?" she sobbed. "He's keeping all this money a secret so when he divorces me I won't know it's there and he won't lose as much of his assets!"
Cameron wouldn't have believed that anyone else could have said all that while crying, but Ainsley always was special like that.
While she blew her nose again, which by now was bright red, Cam looked at the screen, curious. "Hey," he said, pointing to a name on the screen, "I know this guy."
"What?" C. J. and Ainsley said at once.
"This guy, Derek MacNaff," he said. "He was my CO right after I got transferred to the SGC. I spent about three months on an exploratory team before getting into the F-302 squadron. MacNaff was the team commander. He retired a couple years ago." Cameron frowned. "Ainsley, what's he doing giving your husband $30,000?"
It turned out that Mitchell recognized more names, and C. J. did too, many of them people who had given to the Hollis Foundation. Some quality time with Google revealed their connections to defense contractors and other people who really shouldn't be giving money to Congressmen, let alone in these quantities.
Eventually Ainsley had to use the bathroom, not that anyone was surprised by this. C. J., left alone with the uniformed man who'd just shown up on Ainsley's doorstep, felt a bit awkward with the silence that remained. "So," she said, "you're at the SGC?"
Mitchell nodded. "I'm commander of SG-1." After a brief pause, he added, "You worked at the White House, I imagine."
She smiled wryly. "It cracks me up that I was on TV every day for years and people don't recognize me. I was press secretary and then I was chief of staff."
The man walked back to the loveseat and flopped down. C. J. looked at the computer monitor idly. "So how do you know Ainsley?" she asked.
"Her older brother and I were roommates at UNC," he replied. "Dean's family was just twenty minutes away and I had a car. We spent most of our weekends doing laundry at the Hayes house."
C. J. smiled. "How old was Ainsley?"
Cameron sighed. "Twelve or thirteen when we met?" he said. "Just a kid."
"She'd probably object to that characterization."
"She did at the time." He chuckled. "When she turned fifteen I took her out to the back roads outside of town thinking I'd teach her how to drive. It went so badly she didn't speak to me for months. Didn't help that Dean insisted on going along for entertainment value."
C. J. laughed, trying to imagine Ainsley as a teenager. "Did she always talk like she does now?"
"She always talked a lot, but I think Harvard Law made her what she is today."
C. J. was laughing again when Ainsley walked in the room. "What's so funny?" she asked warily.
"The colonel was telling me how you two met," C. J. explained.
"Did he tell you about the time I nearly wrapped his car around a tree?"
Cameron shrugged. "More or less, yeah."
Ainsley leaned against the desk next to C. J. and looked down at her. "Do we know anything else?" she asked.
"We've got a list of people here who've given your husband money who really, really shouldn't be," C. J. replied, shifting back to business.
Mitchell got up and came around the desk again. "I know it's not pleasant, but I think we have to start thinking about the unthinkable," he told Ainsley.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"It's possible he's taking bribes," he explained, putting his hands on her shoulders. "There may be some perfectly innocent explanation for all this, but it sure doesn't look like it."
"To be honest it looks like a money-laundering scheme," C. J. put in quietly.
Ainsley pressed her lips together tightly for a moment. "We have to have more than this," she said. "We have to know what he was up to. I was White House counsel while all this was going on, and if he's really taking bribes... My career's on the line too, guys."
C. J. looked at the clock on the wall. It was already close to midnight. "Well," she said, "I've got time if you've got time."
Ainsley was determined, obviously, to keep going, and Cameron nodded. "Let's get this done."
By about two in the morning, they had examined Seth Conrad's financial records, email, schedule, and even text messages enough to make the conclusion almost inevitable. The congressman was taking money from people representing corporations he either regulated or secured contracts for. It was possible they weren't bribes, but it was hard to imagine what else it could be.
C. J. stood up and stretched. "And here I thought I stopped this nonsense years ago," she said. "I think I've done as much damage as I can. Ainsley, unless you need something else, I'm going home."
Ainsley looked up from her seat distractedly. "What? Oh, sure, you can go."
The three of them migrated out of the office and downstairs. Ainsley settled carefully onto the couch in the living room. Cam cast a concerned look at her but accompanied C. J. to the door. "Hey, thanks for the help," he said quietly.
"Well, you too, Colonel," the woman replied. "I'm not sure you could have timed an unexpected arrival any better."
He shrugged. "Sometimes I'm just lucky."
C. J. looked back in the room, where Ainsley was sitting listlessly on the couch. "She going to be okay?"
Cam nodded. "I think so."
Once C. J. was gone, Cam headed to the kitchen and brought back a glass of water for Ainsley. She took it from him wordlessly but didn't drink from it. "Talk to me, Ainsley," he said, putting his arm around her.
"Where do I start?" she asked rhetorically, choking a laugh that was almost a sob. "In the last six hours I've found out that my husband has been committing a felony and cheating on me. Honestly, I don't know which is worse. Then I went and called C. J. because she was the one person I could think of who'd understand all this and not want to cover it up or skewer Seth. I don't know why I didn't think about talking to Seth first or, I don't know, exercising spousal privilege or something. I can't even decide what I'm madder about, the bribes or the affair!"
She sniffed loudly, and Cam rubbed her shoulder. "I'm having his baby in a matter of days, and I don't want to see him ever again."
"Ainsley," Cam began, but he didn't know how to finish a thought. He couldn't blame her for being angry. He was pretty angry about it all too. After all, Seth had always been a little suspicious of Cam and his decades-long friendship with Ainsley. There was also the fact that Ainsley was finding out about this when she could be going into labor at any time. Cam couldn't bring himself to be very forgiving of a man who cheated on his pregnant wife.
That didn't even touch the criminal activity.
Ainsley leaned against him heavily, and when the still-full glass of water started to tilt, Cam gently took it from her and set it aside. She didn't respond, her breathing deepening, and he shifted her around carefully. Cam leaned back into the corner of the deep couch and settled Ainsley more or less on top of him, her belly pressing against his side.
He was just starting to drift off when he felt a weird pressure on his side. He was tired enough that it took him a while to realize that the baby was kicking. A sudden surge of pity caught him off-guard. This poor kid wasn't even born yet and had probably already lost its father.
Cam reached up and smoothed a lock of Ainsley's long, blonde hair back from her face. Then he rested his hand against her belly. The baby didn't stop moving, but eventually Cam drifted off anyway, just thankful that Ainsley wasn't alone tonight of all nights.
Ainsley awoke uncomfortably, the baby pressing against some part of her body she hadn't been aware of before reaching this point in her pregnancy. She was also sleeping on top of Cameron on the couch in the living room, which was definitely not made for sleeping.
Oh. Cameron.
Ainsley pushed herself up, rubbing her sore neck, and found Cameron snoring softly next to her. He woke up shortly after she moved, though, looked around, and groaned. "What time is it?" he asked.
She looked at her watch. "Six."
"Oh, goodie, four whole hours of sleep."
Ainsley moved a few inches away from him to let him get up more easily. He stood and stretched. Suddenly it occurred to her that with everything that had happened the previous night, they hadn't really talked much. "You never did say why you're here, Cam," she said.
Stiffly he walked over to where he'd dropped his bags the night before. "Admiral Harper sent me to advise a committee that's reviewing some defense contracts," he replied, hefting up a garment bag and duffel bag. "I have a meeting at oh-eight-thirty at the Hill."
"On the Hill," Ainsley corrected automatically, picking up the glass of water Cam had brought her the previous night and then left on the coffee table.
"What?"
"On the Hill." She took a drink. "You said at the Hill. It's on the Hill."
"Well, I have to say," he replied, "I'm not sure you can call anything around here a hill. But then, I live in Colorado where there are, you know, mountains."
Ainsley just rolled her eyes.
He cleared his throat. "I probably need to press my shirt."
Slowly, she got to her feet. "I'll show you the laundry room."
After showing him where everything was, Ainsley headed upstairs to take a shower. She'd never actually gotten around to that the night before. When she came back downstairs, her wet hair up in a towel, Cameron had finished with the iron and was in the guest bathroom with the shower running.
She had just finished getting her breakfast ready when Cam came into the kitchen, his light blue shirt hanging open over his undershirt and his darker blue jacket in his hand. She forced a smile as he came up to the island countertop. "I don't have many breakfast options," she said. "Seth's not big on breakfast."
"As long as there's something other than cantaloupe, I'm fine," Cam replied.
Ainsley got a bowl out of a cabinet for him. "Cantaloupe?" she repeated.
"It was back in freshman year," he said. She passed a box of wheat flakes and the bowl to him. "The second or third time Dean and I ended up staying the night at your house, your mom asked me what I liked to eat for breakfast. I was having cantaloupe that morning and told her whatever she had in the house was fine, I wasn't picky. She took that to mean I liked cantaloupe and then proceeded to serve it to me two or three times a month for four years."
This time, Ainsley did laugh. "That's Mom for you."
Cameron started pouring cereal into the bowl. "How's your mom doing these days, anyway?"
"Pretty well. She'll be up here in a couple days."
The reasons for that were obvious, and an awkward silence fell as they came closer to the subject they hadn't addressed yet this morning. "So," he said carefully, "when is your husband supposed to be back?"
"Friday," she replied.
"Have you decided what you're going to do yet?"
Ainsley picked up her glass of milk and brought it to her lips. "I need to talk to a lawyer," she said quietly.
Though he watched her carefully, he didn't ask which topic she was going to talk to a lawyer about. She wondered if he thought of the two issues separately - she certainly did. At this stage, Seth's adultery and his apparent criminal activity were two different things and needed to be dealt with accordingly. As soon as Cameron left, she was going to get in touch with a lawyer and start working on divorce proceedings. She knew Seth was cheating on her, and she wouldn't have her child in a situation like that.
The other question was more complicated.
What she'd said to Cam the night before was true. Spousal privilege meant she didn't have to testify against her husband in court, though she wasn't sure if she'd given that up by telling first C. J. and then Cameron. But what would she do about it? She couldn't let Seth get away with this, could she?
After a few awkward minutes, Cameron spoke again, changing the subject to something far more pleasant, but Ainsley, in the back of her mind, started thinking about how odd it was that the dissolution of her marriage was somehow the easy decision here.
Cameron was reluctant to leave Ainsley alone that morning, but she assured him that she would be fine. He was less than convinced but left anyway, having seen enough of her last night to realize that fine or not, she was going to get things done.
He gave himself extra time to get to his meeting on the Hill and was still almost late. A page led him into the basement, and Cam was briefly reminded of secret midnight poker games in the laundry room of his freshman dormitory. He was greeted by a bunch of suits, most notable among them, Andrea Wyatt, the tall, red-haired woman who had co-chaired the hearings on the SGC some years ago when the program was disclosed at the end of President Bartlet's administration. "Colonel Mitchell," Wyatt greeted. "I have to say I'm surprised. I was expecting Admiral Harper to send someone a little lower ranking."
Cameron shook hands with the rest in the room. "The admiral said you needed someone with practical knowledge of a wide spectrum of technology in service at the SGC," he replied. "I'm one of the few who's been on the ground in an SG team as well as flying F-302s."
When the introductions were finished, the legislators and Cam settled in on either side of the long table in the middle of the room. "As some of you may have noticed," Congresswoman Wyatt said, "this is not exactly the House Stargate Operations Oversight Committee." Cameron glanced around the room and decided he really should have been aware of that already. "We have here two Democrats and two Republicans from the committee. We also have with us three representatives from the Department of Justice, as well as Colonel Mitchell of the SGC."
"Enough with the theatrics, Andi," said a pudgy, balding man as he took off his glasses. "You told us we were here to review contracts related to Stargate operations."
"A few weeks ago I got a call from DOJ," Wyatt replied. "They had a source stating that something fishy was going on with contracts held by Cencal Technologies."
It took every ounce of restraint in Cam's body to keep from snapping his head toward the congresswoman. Seth Conrad's mistress was from Cencal Technologies.
Was this the proof he and Ainsley and C. J. had been unable to unearth the night before? Was the link right in front of his face?
The meeting was going to continue, of course, his own bewilderment notwithstanding, so Cameron forced his brain to compartmentalize things. He didn't have to contribute much beyond his knowledge of the operations at the SGC, rattling off numbers about how often they replaced machine guns, how frequently F-302s were completely overhauled, and how often such things actually needed to be done. Meanwhile, he expended a fair amount of brain power trying to figure out what he needed to do with this information. He was sure that Ainsley needed to be aware that an investigation into her husband's actions was already underway. He was also relatively sure that he didn't need to be the one in the room for this investigation, but he had no idea how to tell Andrea Wyatt what he knew without Ainsley's consent.
The truth of the matter was, he couldn't.
When they eventually took a fifteen-minute break, Cam pulled his cell phone out and paced through the building trying to find a place with halfway decent reception. Finding a place in the lobby where he could get a signal, he dialed Ainsley's cell and listened impatiently to the ringing.
Her voice mail picked up, and he cursed so sharply that a woman walking by jumped and glared at him. Cam ignored it, waiting for the beep so he could record his message. "Ainsley," he said, "it's Cam. We've got to talk. This is really... I don't know how big this is but I've just got to talk to you. Can we meet somewhere for lunch?"
He hung up then and hurried back to his meeting, trying to focus more than he had before the break. It wasn't until his cell phone vibrated and he checked to see Ainsley had sent him a text message that he broke his concentration.
Surreptitiously, Cam pulled his phone out and flipped it open. The message was brief. Ainsley would be waiting in a coffee shop a few blocks away.
It was past thirteen-hundred hours before anyone called for a lunch break. Cameron hurried out as quickly as was dignified, got in his car, and headed in the direction Ainsley had given him.
She was actually waiting for him outside the little store, a white paper bag in one hand, her other hand holding a light jacket together just above her belly. Cam pulled over and he reached over to open the door for her as best he could. Ainsley got in the car quickly. "I got us lunch," she said, balancing the bag on her knees as she got her seat belt on. "This didn't sound like something you'd want to talk about in public."
"It's not."
She directed him to a nearby parking deck. Cameron found an empty spot, and Ainsley handed him one of the two sandwiches in the bag. They both started eating, and Ainsley asked, "So what happened in your meeting?"
He paused for a moment, trying to figure out how to tell her this. "Cameron?" she pressed.
"Ainsley, I was told I was coming here to help a Congressional committee with contracts that were up for review and renewal," he said. "That's not what this meeting is. It's four members of Stargate Oversight and an investigation by the Justice Department."
Ainsley blanched. "Seth's on that committee," she said softly.
"I know." Cameron reached over and took her hand. "Ainsley, they think there was some foul play involved in the awarding of contracts to Cencal Technologies. Nothing huge, just that Cencal got orders that were bigger than anything we needed at the SGC, or in Atlantis. It was systematic."
She looked away. "Do they have a suspect yet?"
"No," he replied. "This investigation seems to be preliminary. They haven't gotten to a point where they can narrow it down to anyone."
Ainsley rested her elbow on the door frame and leaned her head against her hand. After a minute or two Cam realized that she'd started crying. In the last eighteen hours he'd seen her cry more than in the nearly thirty years he'd known her. The previous night, she'd started crying at nearly every new revelation about her husband's activities, though she'd managed to push through the tears and continue, so he shouldn't have been surprised when this time, she swallowed hard and said, "Don't say anything about this to them yet."
Cam nodded, knowing she needed time and space to figure out what she was going to do and how she was going to do it. In the meantime, while she dug in her purse, he asked, "How did your meeting this morning go?"
She pulled out a tissue and blew her nose before answering. "Better than I expected," she said. "I thought I might have to file for divorce in North Carolina because that's where we were married and that's where his residence is, but since I'm registered to vote in Maryland, I can file here."
"Is that going to cause delays?"
Ainsley shook her head. "North Carolina was going to make me wait a year after separating to file for absolute divorce. Given Seth's... what he did, I don't have a waiting period in Maryland."
A little startled, Cam reached over and laid his hand on her knee. "Ainsley," he said, "are you sure you want to make this decision so quickly?"
Her lower lip trembled but she didn't start crying again. "We'd been having problems," she replied after a minute. "We were fighting over a lot of stupid things and sometimes I wondered... but then I found out I was pregnant and we talked and we decided we were going to try to do better. Before I was showing we were fighting again."
Some intensely protective streak of Cam's reared up, and it was with difficulty that he kept from digging his fingers into Ainsley's leg. "He wasn't... hurting you, was he?" He rather doubted that she would stay in a relationship that got abusive, but he figured the question had to be asked.
Ainsley shook her head. "No, he never hit me. He's barely touched me since we found out about the baby. I haven't had sex in months."
Cameron immediately bit down on the inside of his cheek, knowing that whatever he might say in response to that would be totally wrong. Ainsley seemed to realize she'd made him uncomfortable. "I'm sorry," she said, laying her hand on her belly. "That was more than you wanted to know."
He pulled his hand away from her knee and stared at the steering wheel. "Yeah."
To his surprise, she laughed just a little. "It's true, though," she added after a moment. "Seth's never been the type to be very affectionate physically. He's never been the type to cuddle in bed or anything. I guess I just figured he wasn't too comfortable with the idea of having sex with a visibly pregnant woman."
Cameron kept staring in front of him, knowing he needed to keep his mouth shut. He and Ainsley had only ever been friends, but the idea of a man not finding her attractive was completely foreign to him. Right now she looked uncomfortable with her body and her eyes and face were red from so much crying, but at the same time Cam thought she looked as beautiful as ever. That her own husband had been avoiding her even long before this point was baffling.
"It all makes sense now," Ainsley concluded quietly. "He's had a girl on the side as long as I've known him. I guess it's kind of remarkable it took this long for him to get caught."
"Even idiots get lucky."
He cast a glance at her and saw a weary look on her face. "I suppose."
There was an awkward silence between them, made all the more strange because Cam couldn't remember being awkward around her in years. "Have you talked to your mother yet?" he asked.
"No, why do you ask?"
"I don't know," Cameron admitted. "I guess I just thought she might come up earlier than she planned if you asked her."
He left the rest for her to fill in. After another long pause, she said, "I parked my car on the next level up. Can you drive me up to it? My feet hurt."
Without hesitation, he started the car up and took her to the next level. As he waited for her to get in her car and start it up, he made a note to himself to be a good guy that evening and massage her feet.
Part II