My phone ringing awoke me the next morning. At first, I panicked, thinking I had overslept and was late for work. Luckily that wasn't the case and I breathed a sigh of relief after looking at my clock.

"Hello?" I finally answered, forcing the sleepiness out of my voice and waking myself up.

"Ah, Agent Jones, I didn't mean to wake you, I just have quite the pressing matter..."

I perked up, curiosity and confusion chasing away the last of my sleep. "Mr. Jarvis?" I asked. "What's going on, is everything okay?"

"Not quite, at least not in the way you're thinking. You don't get a newspaper delivered there, do you...?" Mr. Jarvis asked. The way he talked worried me.

"Not directly to my apartment, but we have some downstairs. Why?"

~~

I found out why very quick. I got ready for work as fast as I possibly could and got everything together for the day, and made my way down to the first floor quickly to see if what Mr. Jarvis said was true.

Unfortunately, when I got to the bottom of the stairs, I immediately knew it to be. Every girl there immediately looked at me with varying emotions. Pity, anger, jealousy, sadness. I did my best to cover the remnants of my busted lip with makeup this morning, but there's only so much some powder can do.

One girl, Lindsey Hill, new around the place, came up to me quickly. "My gosh Tiff, are you okay? If you need someone to talk to about it, I am always here for you. My sister just left her husband who was doin' the same thing."

I smiled gently at her, because moving my lip caused pain in all kinds of ways. "Thank you, Lindsey, that means a lot. Do you, um, have a newspaper I can look at? Just to see what everyone's saying?"

She nodded and pulled one out of her bag. "I'm so sorry, but it seems to be everywhere." I took the paper and tried not to have an outward reaction. I knew this wouldn't go well at work.

On the walk, I made sure my hat and hair covered my face. The less people on the street that saw me, the less people would put two and two together.

At the SSR, all the ladies in the telephone operator room looked at me, the same varying emotions on their faces. Rose at the end was the only confused one, and I knew it was because she knew about Jack and I. I never told her, but she's pretty smart.

I just shook my head to her and stepped into the opening doorway. I was barely a few steps into the bullpen when I heard the voice I had been dreading to hear.

"Jones. My office."

Chief Thompson stood outside the door to his office, and he was pissed. Of course, he had every right to be. Once he finds out the truth of the whole ordeal, he'll be even more upset and angry.

Every agent in the office stared without shame as I walked to the Chief's office. Along the way, I set my hat and coat down on my desk. My busted lip was on full display, and I briefly wondered if there had been any point to putting powder on in the first place if was still so obvious.

The Chief was in his desk chair by the time I entered and closed the door. A newspaper just like the one Lindsey had shown me was sitting on his desk. "'Billionaire Brawler: World Shocked as Beloved World War II Hero Lands Left Hook on Lady Love!'"

"Can I just say-"

He held up a hand. "No, no you cannot." I shut my mouth and laced my fingers together in front of me. "I cannot believe that you not only went out on the town with Stark, but you also neglected to tell me! Do you know how upsetting it is to find out my girlfriend went out to a swanky party with the one guy I hate and I had no idea? And she left with an injury? It makes me want to go find Stark and show him exactly what I'm capable of."

I didn't exactly know what emotion to focus on as Jack spoke. The most prominent of all was guilt and shame mixed together. I didn't realize how stupid I had been to not tell Jack what I was planning. I couldn't imagine the betrayal he must felt when he first saw the news. The headline was no help at all, that's for sure.

However, there was another feeling sneaking up on me. Protected and... loved, maybe? He was ready to kill Howard over the idea of him possibly being the one to cause me harm. It was more than I ever got from George, who knew I could hold my own so he never offered anything. Jack knew I could take care of myself, but that has never stopped him from letting me know he's there.

Jack was looking at me weird, and I realized I had been staring at him, smiling even, while he had been very madly talking. "What?" he asked, annoyed and confused.

"I just... I love seeing you all protective, even though we both know I can hold my own just fine," I said, unable to keep the giddiness completely at bay. I could even see Jack fighting to keep his smile away. "Now, may I tell you what actually happened?"

Jack nodded, gesturing for me to finally take a seat across from him. I did and explained it all to him. The receiving of the file, figuring out that I was being followed, figuring out how to lure him out, getting Howard involved because I thought I could do it all on my own, and then the moment I learned I could not do it on my own.

He sat patiently throughout the entire story, although I could see his jaw flexing as I talked about the confrontation with Derek Peters. He let me get through it all, up to when Howard offered to walk me back inside, but I insisted it would be better for me if I just went in alone and hurried up before anyone saw my bleeding face. What good that turned out to be.

Once I was done, we sat in silence for a few seconds straight. Jack was the first to break the silence. "I don't know how much better that is."

I shrugged. "At least I'm not dating your sworn enemy," I offered.

"Yes, but Tiffany, you need to tell me when someone is stalking you and when you're going to confront them so we can avoid situations like this," he said. He was certainly less mad now, which made me relax a bit more.

"I know, and I'm sorry, I just... this all begins with Miami. I thought I'd be able to do it myself."

Jack smiled. "I'm sure you could do it all by yourself, but you don't have to. You have people in your corner who want to help you with this. All you have to do is ask." He stood up, so I followed, and he came around to the side of the desk I was on. "Besides, one of my agents is being targeted? I'm sure I, the Chief, can find a reason to dedicate resources to this search."

I laughed and nodded. "All right, seems like a fair deal. When do we start on this... new case of ours?" I asked.

"Now. Get Sousa and Carter to the conference room and bring that file you mentioned. The quicker we get this guy, the quicker we can figure out who's really behind all of this," Jack said, grabbing some items from his desk.

Following his instructions, I hurried out of his office and to my desk. "Daniel, Peggy, conference room!" I called out, not really caring about the others overhearing. They would simply have to remain curious.

They went on without question- well, without out loud question. I got confused looks from them both. I grabbed the file from Frank out from my desk drawer and followed them into the conference room.

Jack- Chief Thompson, now, was already in there, so I went ahead and shut the door and locked it behind me. When I caught Martinez and his prying eyes, I went ahead and closed the blinds as well.

Peggy finally asked the question. "What's going on? Does this have to do with that headline...?" she asked, giving me a raised eyebrow after looking down at my injury.

I rolled my eyes and answered before Jack could get to mad. "In a way. To start, Howard Stark did not land a left hook on my face. I hope none of you actually believed I'd let Howard Stark get the drop on me."

Daniel shook his head. "I think that's why I was so confused," he said, and it made me smile. "You wanna tell us what really happened?"

I sat and went about explaining, except this time, I talked more in detail about what had happened in Miami.

As I spoke, I realized I had never really talked about it, just said something caused my delay and it happened to leave me slightly injured (which made Jack scoff because 'slightly injured' doesn't describe a GSW all that well). At first, what had happened didn't involve them at all. But now, with it all finding me in New York and landing me on the cover of every newspaper, they had to be involved.

It was a long process, going from start to finish considering they all interrupted more than once. By the time I got to the point where they came into the picture, they were more than dedicated to the cause.

"Tiffany, we've got you, okay? We are going to work with you on this and find this bastard, figure out who he knows and how it all connects on their side of the network," Daniel said.

I smiled at him and laughed a bit. At least I considered everyone in the room a friend. And more.

Speaking of the more, I turned to Chief Thompson- Jack, for this moment- to gauge his reaction with everything.

Of course there were the classics: seething rage, determination, murderous intent. But then he looked at me, and for a second I could tell he was mad at me. What for, I had no clue. That was either something I was misinterpreting or making up. Either way, we'd have to talk later.

Then, I looked at Peggy. Possibly my closest friend, my best friend. We may be grown adult women, but we were still allowed to have best friends, and I considered her mine.

She had so much sympathy. Not pity, just sympathy. "We're going to figure this out together, Tiffany, I promise. We've had no recent leads in finding Dottie, I can find someone else in the office to take on that task for a bit while we focus on this."

"Speaking of others in the office..." I started, trying to move on from this moment, "we need to keep this here, only between us and whoever else is needed. And I don't mean that loosely, I'm going to be strict with who is let in on this."

Jack nodded, finally getting himself out of his emotions. "We know you don't want Martinez on this. He'll stay far away, we'll find him other things to do, other assignments. Hopefully we won't need anyone else until possibly the very end. Depends on where this whole thing takes us."

He was back in Chief mode, showing off why he earned the title. But I could still feel some of the emotions he just showed lying inside. I knew I'd need to talk with him outside of work.

A/n: I hope you guys are super excited! I know I am, because this portion of the book is going to take some very dramatic twists and turns ;)