Fandom:

The West Wing AU

Pairing:

C.J./Danny

Rating:

PG-13 for topic

Distribution:

How much do I owe you for hauling it off?

Spoilers:

Up to and including Full Disclosure, from which the series follows on

Email:

exfilia at livejournal dot com

Disclaimer:

if I owned them, they'd have a lot more fun

Warning:

mentions nonconsensual sex

Note:

Hoynes lovers should probably be hitting delete right about now.

Charlie Young squeezed into Josh's office and shut the door behind him.

"She wouldn't talk," he told the conclave gathered there. "Butterfield came in just as I was leaving, though."

"She's sure as hell not going to talk to the Secret Service," said Josh.

"No," said Danny, "but after a few hours with them, she'll be a lot more forthcoming with me and Charlie."

"Just me," said Charlie. "You're the bad cop."

"Butterfield wants us to quit playing cops and robbers," said Danny. "He says we pay perfectly good professionals like him to do this, and we should let them."

"And you're ready to fold up and go home 'cause he said so?" asked Charlie.

"I'm a repor... okay, I was a reporter. I want to find out what's going on. It's like a drug."

"Is there a twelve-step plan for recovering journalists?" asked Josh.

"Guys," said Donna, "about this girl: we're not going to let her go home, are we?"

"You know of a way we can stop her?" asked Josh. "I mean, short of having her arrested, at which time she would stop telling us anything...."

"I know that if she's working with who we think she is, they've already killed one person to shut her up. Miss Preppy can't tell us anything from the bottom of a pond in Delaware."

"Her name is Tracy," said Danny. "Tracy Kovatnic, from St Louis, and keeping her alive is not just a matter of convenience."

"Are you okay?" asked Josh.

"You ever seen a dead body? Not at a funeral, but just dead?"

"I almost became one, if that counts."

"Katie had the butt-ugliest cat on the face of the earth. She put a little avi movie of it on her computer for a screensaver, and any time we got somebody new in the press room, we'd find an excuse to show them that cat and gross them out. Katie played jazz piano. She could make lasagne from scratch. She didn't deserve... don't look at me that way. I'm just saying, Tracy is a human being, too."

"Tracy," said Donna, "helped kill Katie."

"Not intentionally," said Charlie. "She may not even know."

"Well," said Josh, "we need to make it very clear to her, before there's anybody else added to her totally unintended body count. What did you find out about Hoynes, Donna?"

"He owns an eight unit apartment building in Kent County, a few minutes from the pond. I told Ron Butterfield about it, and he's going to have someone check."

"Going to?" said Danny. He shook his head as he stood up.

"Where are you going?" asked Josh.

"To leak the apartment building to a reporter with a smidgen of initiative and get somebody out there to look it over without waiting for the Treasury Department to finish the paperwork!"

"Hang on!" said Donna, following him out. "I'll give you a copy of the property list to accidentally leave lying around...."

"Good plan," said Danny. "Hey, Steve! Who let you back here?"

The reporter, obviously not in the best of shape, scrambled to keep up with Sam until he had mercy and slowed his pace for her.

"Congressman," she puffed, "can you tell us anything about the Hoynes scandal?"

"I can't comment on an ongoing investigation."

"Is it true that there are victims on the president's senior staff?"

"I believe that's public knowledge."

"More than one?"

"I haven't seen the list."

"What about the allegations that the abuse occurred with the approval of the president?"

"I don't believe that."

"An aide to Vice President Hoynes said last night in the Star that he believed the president's staff had been told to keep Hoynes happy, and that that was interpreted...."

"That's bullshit."

"Congressman...."

"Nobody ever told me any such thing."

"Yes, but the victims were told...."

"Excuse me, but I was one of these so-called victims, and I can tell you that there was no 'authority' invoked except John Hoynes's own overwhelming megalomania. Nobody set this up, all right? There is no one to blame here but John Hoynes."