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Author's Chapter Notes:
Reference to one of those pairs that really squicks you - but nothing graphic, thank goodness.
59. Sex, Lies and Videotape


Ethan waited as long as he could, but he was too excited to let too much time pass. Everything had worked out even better than he himself could have imagined. Oh, Warren had done his part, but it was what Buffy and Spike had done to themselves that was going to be the icing on the cake. Really, it was too delicious. And the best part of that was that he hadn’t had a hand in it at all.

Finally, it was all beginning, he could hardly keep himself from whistling.

Ethan Rayne smiling was a rare enough sight that those who knew him stayed well out of his way. Ethan Rayne smiling as he walked into his boss’s office, Quentin Travers’ office, was so unheard of that gossip started spreading immediately.

No one thought that any good could possibly come of such a meeting. Although Travers was the man in charge, everyone knew that Rayne was the man to be afraid of. It seemed like Rayne had finally found something to hang over Traver’s head. Scuttlebutt was that it was something that could necessitate a change of command.

Wishing that she could be a fly on that particular wall, Lydia Chalmers let Rayne into the inner office. It didn’t go unnoticed that he carried a DVD case in his hand. It didn’t seem likely that it was a rental from the local blockbuster. Perhaps there had been a major breakthrough on one of his cases, and Rayne had the proof on tape. The other thought that flickered through the secretary’s mind was that the surveillance tape contained possible blackmail material. And she wondered if there were any credence to the rumors that she was about to get a new boss.

Hurriedly she wondered if she had always been cordial enough to Rayne? She couldn’t remember. She didn’t care for him personally, but then she was enough of a professional not to let her personal feelings show. No, there were only two things that worried her – and she was afraid that if she didn’t get one, she’d be stuck with the other.

Either Rayne would fire or demote her if he took over, moving in his own personal assistant and his own staff, or even a worse prospect, he would keep her in her current position. There were rumors about Rayne and his personal staff. Rumors that she had never wanted to know the truth about. Staunchly she made up her mind that if it came to that, she would simply quit.

Aside from the fact that she didn’t want to sleep with a man that she found personally distasteful, from the rumors that circulated the office, Rayne’s tastes were somewhat, unusual. No, she would much rather lose her job than submit to a man like that. On the other hand, even if she did quit, that didn’t mean that Rayne would necessarily let her go quietly. There were all manner of things he could still do to her – preventing her from getting another job was the very least of the things that she could think of. She’d have to speak to Travers as soon as this meeting was over to see if she could get a sense of how the wind was blowing.

If it looked like the old man was going to be tossed out on his ear, she’d make a big stand and go with him. That way she wouldn’t have to admit that her real reason for leaving was to escape Rayne’s attentions. Travers may be a pompous arrogant fool, but at least he wasn’t completely evil.

~*~


Contrary to her expectations, when the door opened again, both men were smiling and laughing like they had a good time together. She couldn’t understand it. She had been so sure that Rayne’s grin had been one of malicious intent. Perhaps she had misjudged the man all together. Perhaps they all had.

“I think I need to see Ms. Walsh next,” Travers ordered. “I need to see her just as soon as she can get up here. Oh, and in case I forgot to mention it – I’m not to be disturbed for any reason during these meetings. Right now this is all still very confidential. An internal matter. No doubt you’ll figure it out in good time, Lydia, along with everyone else. Now get Maggie on the phone. There’s a good girl.”

Lydia was tired of Travers supercilious attitude. He may be head of the Agency, but nobody had died and made him God. Besides, he wasn’t fooling anyone with that tripe about “Ms. Walsh.” It was common knowledge just what exactly Ms Walsh had done in order to earn herself her job title. What she continued to do. What she was probably going to do for Travers in his office right now.

It’s not like the two of them even cared for one another. The whole thing smacked of a business arrangement, pure and simple. Lydia determined to put on a headset and do some dictation so she wouldn’t have to hear any stray thuds or grunts and groans. Plausible deniability was what she needed right now.

Even so, she couldn’t help but glance at the time when Maggie left the office with a self satisfied grin. She had been in with Travers more than twice the time it had taken him to have the same meeting with Rayne. Something was definitely up between those two, and she really, really, did not want to know any of the details.

The flip side was that Travers was always much more pleasant to deal with after he’d spent some private time with Ms. Walsh. Where before he had been short tempered and touchy, now he was far more forgiving. It was almost scary, if she didn’t know the reason for it.

“We’re agreed what has to be done. I suppose I need to see Rupert Giles next, and let him know what we’ve decided. It involves one of his operatives. Tell him he needs to come up here right away. I have something that he needs to see.”

“Of course, sir,” she replied, even more surprised than before, but a bit pleased. If Giles was going to be brought in on whatever it was, she might have a chance of finding out for herself whatever it was that had so pleased the two older men, and inspired Quentin to call his lover up for an afternoon quickie. She couldn’t remember a time when she’d seen Travers so pleased with himself. Not even after he’d been with his mistress.

And so it was again with puzzlement that Lydia watched as Rupert Giles stormed out of Traver’s office less than five minutes after entering. Instead of looking pleased, his face was red and he was wiping his brow with the handkerchief he still always carried, although it was an incredibly old fashioned thing to do.

“No,” he stormed back over his shoulders at the beaming Travers. “I will not watch it, and neither should you, you old lech. It proves absolutely nothing. Nothing at all.”

“Oh, come on Giles. Just because the girl works for you doesn’t mean you have to wear blinders. She’s obviously been lying to you all along. How else do you explain what’s on that tape? To say nothing of the half million dollars recently deposited into her account. The girl is quite a looker, I’ll say that, but she’s obviously as guilty as sin. Even if you don’t want to see the whole tape, that much should be pretty plain just from the first bit that you saw. If someone was being raped on that tape, it sure as hell wasn’t Buffy Summers.

“Maybe after she’s canned she’ll get a job at a nightclub, and we could all go by and help support her in her new career. Except I suppose she won’t have to, what with the half mil Thorndale paid her off with. I’m guessing the fuck was just a perk.

“I’ll have Rayne’s division work on the internal investigation. I can understand how you wouldn’t want to handle an indictment of one of your own. If you want, I’ll let you tell her she’s under investigation, though I think the resolution of the case if a foregone conclusion. Still, I suppose it’s only fair to see what she has to say in her own defense. You never know, if faced with the evidence she may come clean right away in an attempt to save her job. Either way I want her out of here – but it would save us a lot of trouble if you could find out what she’s really been up to all these months. Something more is going on here than we know – I’d stake my reputation on it.”

Giles huffed and stormed out of the office. He couldn’t imagine what he’d tell Buffy. Despite what the other men thought – Giles trusted Buffy Summers. Would have trusted her even if he hadn’t recently discovered that she was his daughter. Buffy was a good person, and unlike others at the Agency, she didn’t have a duplicitous bone in her body.

That was why she had been such a good undercover agent. When she was with Thorndale, it hadn’t been an act. She had genuinely liked Thorndale. He understood that now. Understood how difficult it had been for her to spy on a man that she cared for.

He still didn’t understand why she had slept with him, and how she had been stupid enough to let him record it. Maybe that was how she had been able to get a look at the contents of his safe? From Travers comments, he gathered that there had been less than subtle bondage involved. Maybe she had tied him up and… He didn’t want to think about it. Really didn’t want to think about it.

He would have to call Buffy in to his office and tell her that she was on permanent leave pending the outcome of an internal investigation. He paled as he thought of trying to explain what evidence they had against her.

He still didn’t understand why Buffy had apparently gone to see Fred Burkle the next morning, and had a rape prep done. It was clear that there was a lot going on in this case that she hadn’t seen fit to share with him. Was the whole physical exam merely to cover her tracks in case it became known that she was sleeping with Thorndale?

It wasn’t his preferred method of working undercover, but Giles knew, intimately, that sometimes it was unavoidable. But Buffy hadn’t wanted to admit that the two of them were intimate, and instead had laid the groundwork for claiming that she had been forced. What would motivate her to do that? And how did the supposed half million dollar pay off work in? Was the pay off for something? Surely not for getting him off the drug charges. That had been ludicrous to begin with.

But perhaps it had been for something that had happened earlier. Had Buffy some how rigged the polygraph to show that Thorndale was innocent when he really wasn’t? But then why would they have left so many loose ends about the incident in Romania? One key bit of information he didn’t have was the timing – when had Buffy begun sleeping with Thorndale, and why?

There was nothing left for it. He was going to have to confront Buffy, and tell her the bad news.

It was a measure of how perturbed he really was that it didn’t even occur to him that he should inform Travers of his personal relationship with Buffy Summers. That by not coming forward, and telling Travers that Buffy Summers was his daughter, he was opening himself to possible allegations.





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