Assistant U.S. Attorney Luke Cameron

tomorrow is the only soul that knows;
Luke isn't sleeping when he gets the call from Janet. He'd tried but he was just laying in bed staring at the ceiling. He hadn't even undressed, just thrown himself onto the bed trying to get his brain to stop thinking. It hadn't worked.

He knew. They all had a sense when something was really wrong, one honed by years of experience and particularly now with taking on some of the biggest cases of their careers, and he knew this was wrong. He was trying not to panic knowing he'd gotten Janet into this. And she'd gotten Michael, and whoever else, and he didn't want this for any of them. He was supposed to protect her, not hurt her the way he had a thousand times before.

I got her into this.

The ringing gets his heart to stop racing. "Can you make it to the FBI office?" she asks. "I need you to come in."

"Yeah. Yeah, I can get there." He sits up and runs a hand through his hair, taking deliberately slow breaths. "Just let me get a shower." Luke hesitates then, almost afraid to ask. "Is it bad?"

"Yeah, it's bad." She replies. "I'll explain it when you get here."

Luke feels a wave of emotion hit him when he hangs up the phone. He's never been the stoic type but he can feel the frustration. What the hell did he actually see? How much further does it go? He's savvy enough to understand that in Washington almost nothing is ever simple and it's only been a few hours since he was walking through burned rubble where he'd been standing the night before. These are all the messy things that are normally neatly figured out and tied up before it ever gets to him. All he has to do is win the case. He doesn't have to live it.

He pushes himself into the shower and makes the drive to the Hoover Building. Michael's nowhere to be seen and Janet is working with someone else when Luke gets to the third floor. "What's going on?" he asks, which unintentionally comes out a little more defensive than he wanted it to.

"Luke, I want to introduce you to Bradley Leonpacher," Janet says. "Brad is the Special Agent in Charge of criminal investigations in our Miami office. He recognized the other man in your photo."

"He's a document forger out of the Beach," the other man explains from where he's leaned over the bullpen table. "My guys found him booked on a flight from Tampa to D.C. three days ago. So far, he doesn't have a return ticket."

"How does that make sense?"

"It doesn't. That's what we have to figure out."

Janet exhales tightly. "There's something else I have to tell you," she says. "We found a body in the wreckage. We haven't been able to identify her yet but it looks like she died last night."

"Somebody was murdered?" Luke says. "Fuck. Is there any possibility Wexler paid Levko to have someone killed?"

"At this point, anything is possible."

"You need to fucking find him. And get a search warrant for his phone records. Find out how long these two idiots have been talking to each other. I'd say check the security cameras but those don't exist anymore..."

His thoughts are cut off when Janet pulls Luke into her office and shuts the door. She's going to be responsible for handling him. The same way he had to handle her during the Vincent trial. It's uncomfortable for both of them to have the tables turned like this. "I need you to step off," she tells him. "You're not a U.S. Attorney right now. You're a cooperating witness."

"Sorry," he mutters. "I just..." Luke doesn't like people telling him what to do and he'd never expected that label being applied to him but he knows Janet is absolutely right. He's the only proof that John Wexler and James Levko are connected. Without his testimony there's no reason to suggest that what happened Friday night was anything other than a coincidental tragic accident. And his connection to Bryan Alexander means that like it or not he has an in with that whole circle of people who are now either possible witnesses or potential roadblocks.

"What do you want me to do?" he asks Janet with a heavy sigh.

"I'm going to have to use you in this investigation. We might need you to ask some questions or look at a few things. But unless you're specifically told to, don't say anything about this. Lay low and stay around your apartment just to be safe. If you notice anything out of the ordinary then you call me immediately."

"Anything I can do to help." Luke doesn't hesitate in saying it. As much as he doesn't want to think about Miami thugs showing up at his building and as out of his comfort zone as he is right now that doesn't change his morals. He wants these people caught as much as she does. "I still say I should ask Bryan how he got to that party. I don't think he knows Wexler at all but just to eliminate the obvious conflict of interest."

"I don't think he's involved either." She agrees. "But do it after the news breaks so you have a reason to bring it up."

"At least I haven't pissed him off recently." Luke chuckles humorlessly.

He drops into Michael's chair and runs a hand over his face. When he'd been sitting in Las Vegas on his third cocktail he'd told himself that something had to change. It was impossible not to with everything they'd been through. The breakup, three high-profile prosecutions, two attempts on someone's life. He'd had a feeling in his gut ever since First National that there would be no going back but he'd never said it because he didn't want Janet to hear it. The idea that she could get back to normal was all the hope she had. He knew better. Now he was seeing it in front of his face. He couldn't be the same person he was before. He couldn't stand back and let her or anyone else do the hard work. He needed to get his hands dirty.

"You know, I wondered when this was going to come for me," he tells her. "After all the hell you went through. Michael dealing with his mom and all that baggage. Holden's nervous breakdown. I always thought that some day I wasn't going to be able to stay out of this."

"You did the right thing, Luke."

"That's not the point." He replies. "I'm a lawyer, Janet. That's the game I play. That's the set of circumstances I can control. It's not that I don't care about the investigative part but you can handle that. You're strong enough to look it all in the face. I just have to look at the photos when it's over. Maybe it's selfish but I liked having that layer of security." Past tense because it's not coming back.

"It's not shameful to be afraid of the things you don't know." Janet's tone softens as she watches the way his body language has collapsed. "I'd love to pretend all my cases were as safe and simple as they used to be. But that's not the path I'm on now. Through fate and probably my own inherited bullheadedness I'm the one who started pushing the limits. It hasn't gotten easier. I'm still nervous every time I step out of my comfort zone. But this is one of those times I have to face that. And you're strong enough to face it too."

"You're right." Luke twists the ring she bought him on his finger. This is just another giant he has to slay. He's just doing it from the other side. He glances up at her almost apologetically. "You don't mind if I'm not okay?" he asks. "I might make a complete ass of myself sometimes."

"It's okay not to be okay." She smiles thinly. "My therapist taught me that."

Luke chuckles genuinely this time. He's forcing his brain to reform this situation around the things that he knows and that he can control. Pushing the problem to fit into the box he can handle. "Okay," he says. "Do what you need to do."

Janet settles her hands on her hips and sizes him up. Now she has to be an FBI agent and not his friend of eleven years. "I need to take an official statement from you," she informs him. "Document everything that you saw and heard on Friday night."

"Sure."

She can hear the resignation in his voice. "You need a minute?"

"Yeah, give me a second."

Janet nods and walks out of the room. "Fuck Bryan for inviting me to that party," he mutters as soon as she's gone. He could have been at home working on his cases or at a bar somewhere completely safe and uninvolved. Now he has to get involved in political bullshit with the off chance that someone tries to put a bullet in his head. For all the arrogance that Luke puts forward at work he's still human. He's pissed off and he's scared.

But he looks through the window and sees Janet. Luke reminds himself that she's been through a hell of a lot worse and she's always shown up anyway. If she can actually be shot and suffer the way she has and keep going he has no right to complain about this. He swallows those emotions down and goes through the door. It's time to put the new Luke Cameron to the test.