Max was still steaming as she came out of her father's office in the CIA's primary office building at Langley, Virginia. Mark Harold's, Deputy Director of Intelligence and one of the best spies in the world, outrageous comments were still buzzing through her brain and ears. "Why on earth did you have to start training at the FBI? Langley is in your blood. It was your predecessors who started this place anyway." She knew that. Had heard it over a thousand times over her life span of twenty-seven years. But Max firmly replied that she wanted to make her own way and not be judged by her family's past with the Central Intelligence Agency. Besides her older brother Jack was already coming through the ranks extremely rapidly.

As Max was walking out of the elevator she felt a painful THWAK! against her right temple and slumped to the floor.

She woke up sometime later in a standard CIA issue office. Cheap desk, two chairs, and a nearly out of date computer were all that was in the room. Max felt a cup being put to her lips and drank as much of the cooler water as she could before she started coughing. "Damn security gates." she muttered as a hand gingerly reached up to touch a throbbing temple.

"Yeah," an unfamiliar voice replied, "I got clobbered by one my first five minutes in the building. I had a nice purple lump on my head for a week." Max looked up into a pair of startling green eyes.

"Thanks for getting me out of the way of general traffic, but who are you?"

"Oh, I apologize for not introducing myself but I'm Nick McAllen. I was right behind you in the elevator and when I saw you go down I carried you over to a friend's office."

"Well, thanks. I'm Maximillia Harold."

"Harold, now why does that name sound familiar? Oh yeah, Mark Harold's the DDI. You related?"

" Yeah," Max grudgingly admitted. She really did not want to be treated like some lost daddy's girl. "Besides, aren't you a friend of Jack's?"

"Jack Harold? Another relation of yours?"

"My brother." Yes, this was just perfect. She got to be both a daddy's girl and kid sister. Wonderful.

"We worked on an op a few years back."

The door opened. "Jesus, Max. I've been looking everywhere for you. I saw you go down in the crowd but loss track of you."

"Hi, Jack. Mr. McAllen was kind enough to get me out of the general walkway. I believe you two know each other?"

"Oh, yeah. Hey, Nick, its been a while."

"Three full years is a long time. I lost track of you after the Serbia mission. Where did you hide yourself."

"Well, I…"

"I can see this is going to take a while so I'm going back to work." Max interrupted, "Some of us have work to do."

"Bye, Max," answered Jack, "See you at Mom and Dad's on Sunday?"

"Yeah," she answered and left. Jack turned to his old friend.

"So where HAVE you been hiding yourself. I couldn't even track you down to win my money back."

"As I was saying, I spent a little time in East Europe tracking down rouge KGB cells for the company and then was on loan to MI-6 in London to help them with a mole problem. After that I just floated around on different clean up missions." Jack was not surprised his old friend was known as a drifter throughout the community and had no real ties anywhere.

"Well, why don't you come to dinner on Sunday. I know I want to hear a few stories and I think Dad would like to hear them as well."

"That sounds great, man. What's with your sister? The way she came down the hallway I thought she was gunna set the place on fire."

"Yeah. She must have come from a meeting with Dad. They're kind of rifted because she decided to join the FBI rather than be recruited into the CIA."

"Wow. That must have sent some waves up. Everywhere I go I always hear stories about how hard core the DDI is about the Agency."

"Yup, that's good old dad," Jack replied, "He went through the roof when the Homeland Security bill came through. He couldn't stand the fact that the CIA would be forced to share information with the FBI. I believe his exact words were, ' I'm not sharing anything with a group of CIA washouts with no sense of subtly whatsoever.' " Nick chuckled at Jack's impression of his father. It sounded exactly like Hardass Harry, the nickname everyone in the agency called him but not to his face.

"So I'll see you at your parents' house around four?" Nick asked.

"Yeah," Jack agreed, " the guards will know who you are. Hope you like pot roast."