when an old friend of penelope garcia gets in trouble with her ex and she ends up at the door of the fbi with her daughter and the two women end up reconnecting in all the chaos
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IT WAS NEARLY MIDNIGHT when Layla marched through her small apartment that she had been living in for the past four months with her daughter. It took a lot of a place like that to become home but the people had been welcoming to them, a single mother and her daughter were easy people to warm up to.
Layla would miss the friends she made there, Bridget from across the hall who always gave Lainey cookies when she baked a fresh batch. Walker from down the way who would take her daughter on walks with his girlfriend Matilda and she would even miss her grumpy neighbor Stanley who once gave Lainey hard candy when he thought Layla didn't notice but when it came to her daughter, she picked up on everything.
"Are we leaving again?" Was the first thing Lainey McNamara asked her mother when she felt the woman pick her out of her small bed. It wasn't hard for Lainey but it was for the better and Layla hoped that one day she would understand. "Come on, I'll buy you something sweet from seven eleven." Layla wrapped one arm around her daughter as she unlocked the front door, a duffle bag strapped over her right shoulder. She turned to lock the door when a voice called out to her.
"Where are you going at this time of the night?" It was Stanley, much like Layla, he had also been an insomniac who spent his nights either reading or playing jazz at an ungodly volume.
"To visit a friend." She didn't have time to explain, she never did. She should have been better and sneaking away in the dead of the night, she did it every time they had to move but she had never been caught before now.
"Well, take these. She likes 'em." Stanley held a veiny hand out to her, in it a small bag of hard candies. She took it and thanked him before she walked away, into the elevator and then out of the building. "I'm gonna miss Mattie." Lainey said when her mother placed her in her car seat, she didn't know how tell her daughter why she would never see her friend again. How can you explore to a five-year-old that you got a note in the mail from her father and that meant that you two weren't safe anymore? How can you explain to a five-year-old that her father was not a good man? That he would hurt her and her mother if he could? She didn't have an answer to that yet, so she settled for kissing her daughter on the cheek and shutting the back door.
Layla got into the front, didn't bother to put on her seatbelt as she started the car. It sped through the night, she didn't know where she was going but she had to create as much distance between herself and Pittsburgh as she possibly could. She drove for an hour, playing music softly to put Lainey back to sleep.
For an hour she thought she was safe and by then she made a plan in her head. She had a friend in Washington who worked for the FBI, a friend who could most likely help her get out of her current situation and maybe once they got there, they wouldn't have to run anymore. Layla could see the image of her and her daughter living in a house in D.C as clear as she saw the road ahead of her and as clearly as she saw the white police car parked in the middle of the road.
She slammed her foot in the brakes so fast that her body shock with the sudden stop the car made, her daughter waking up in the back seat. Layla was a former police officer in Chicago and she knew it wasn't normal for cops to park in the middle of the road. She still had a gun on her from those days, she plucked it out from under her seat, strapping it in as she looked over at her daughter. Lainey was frightened, she hand never seen a gun in real life before and Layla hoped it would be the last time.
"Sit down here for mommy, okay?" She moved the small girl out of her car seat and hid her behind the driver's seat as she got out, slowly approaching the car.
"Valentine wants to see you," A short, white man got out of the car. It was obvious he wasn't a police officer, not only because of the dirty t-shirt and sweatpants he wore but she could also tell by his whole demeanour. He was proud of himself for getting away with something and maybe even for catching her. She didn't even know how he found her.
"The thing is, I don't want to see him," she locked eyes with the man and hid her gun under her pastel pink hoodie. "Good thing he said he wants you dead or alive," He gestured to his gun, thinking he had intimated her with it.
"I'm gonna put so many bullets in your head, God won't even recognize you,"
"I'm an atheist. Fire at will," She spoke and before he could reach for his gun but she pulled her out her own before shooting him right between his eyes but he had already sent out his own bullet and it lodged itself in her thigh as pain ripped through her body.
The man in front of her was already down when she dropped to her knees, the pain in her thigh only getting worse. She was bleeding pretty badly and she knew she wouldn't make the drive, she was losing too much blood. All she knew was that she had to make her way to her daughter. She pulled herself up slowly, a groan leaving her lips as she wobbled to the car. She grabbed ahold of her phone on the backseat, called 911 and told them she had been shot and then she hung up before she dialed a more familiar number.
"You've reached Penelope Garcia, your wish is my command." A cheery voice on the other end spoke as Layla struggled to open the door, falling down on her seat as she held her hand out for her daughter to grab ahold of.
"A wish would be really great right now." She felt a comfort in her chest and the pain in her thigh grew as her daughter sat on her left thigh while she bled from the right, but it still stained her pink nightgown along with her hoodie.
