"Bonnie, they aren't trying to shut down FLAG again, are they?" Kitt asked.
"No, not exactly. Devon got a heads up call yesterday. Certain members of the board are trying to have him replaced."
Michael slowly reached down to retrieve the flashlight that was lying on the floor. He swung the beam in a slow, wide arc, getting his first look at the German shepherd mix that was standing in the middle of the aisle, near an open cage door. Its teeth were bared, its ears were back, and it was crouched low to the ground.
The music ended and Bonnie's dance partner took his leave. She tried to memorize his eyes. She wanted to figure out who he was later.
Michael stopped cold. There was something right in front of him inches from his face. It was dark. In fact, the only reason he could see it was that there was no light reflecting off of it at all. The small amount of light from his lantern sank into it completely.
The high overhead fluorescents cackled to life and Michael blinked in surprise. In front of him sat his beloved partner of 5 years, looking pristine and beautiful, except that he was purple.
He remembered returning to the Foundation, late at night after most everyone had left. He wasn't actively scanning, so he didn't even realize there was a problem. He was surprised that the garage was dark though. Normally Michael would be there, waiting for him to arrive home.
She was in the most mundane of places when the link finally went silent. It was almost an after thought, an inevitable footnote to the whole experience.
Michael glanced down at his watch. Damn. It was later than he thought. They didn't have much time and he wasn't about to get blamed for blowing the schedule.
"Kitt, you didn't fail, and there is no way on this earth I would want you deactivated. It was an accident. They happen. It wasn't either of our faults."
Glancing around the room, Michael spotted a beautiful blonde woman, heading his direction. She was wearing a short, loose skirt that swung with the movement of her hips, and showed off a very nice pair of legs.
What happened to a dream when one hired mercenaries to keep it alive?
They had always flirted after a fashion, but something had definitely changed and it confused him. Maybe he had just been conditioned to ignore his attraction to her after all those early shoot-downs and death glares. But he wasn’t getting glares now.
You steal a glance at the woman in the passenger seat and your heart breaks all over again. It's not that she looks like Stevie -- she doesn't -- but there's something in her voice, in the way she talks that's like salt in your wounds.
It hurt so much that he couldn’t even think, couldn’t tear his mind away from the fact that he’d lost her again just when he thought he might get her back.
Becker was what Michael might be like if he’d grown up wealthy. And he wasn’t even bothered by all that, really. But Becker had managed to snag something that Michael had always wanted.
New!!
Did they think she couldn’t handle it? That she was some delicate wallflower who needed protecting? She could work through a little pain.
