Besides security, their apartment was barely a block away from her new school. All the way out in Alexandria, it would have been all but impossible to get Kara to school every day, especially when he was out of town. Now, besides being able to walk to school, Mary Jane would be available to give her rides, if she needed it. He did not want to stand in the way of her future and opportunities like this did not come around often.
Still, he could not help but second guess the idea. Normally, Taylor was not one for worrying over the decisions he had made. Once a decision was made, he moved on to the next problem. The parenting thing, especially by himself, was so far outside of his experience, it was difficult to trust he had made the right call. His best option would have been to talk it over with Whitaker. Despite their estrangement, she had not stepped away from Kara and still communicated with Taylor regularly about their adopted daughter. Her willingness to put up with seeing Taylor regularly to do the right thing by Kara was one more reason he regretted how things had turned out.
Unfortunately, going over Kara’s new living arrangement was not an option at the moment. She had left for Berlin before the Senator had made her offer, and Kara needed to start the new school next week. She had not left a number he could reach her at, and his relationship with her sister, which had been only acquaintances before Whitaker put a hold on his engagement to her, had become awkward after. The few times he called her house, where Whitaker was staying, she had been extremely cool with him.
He did not begrudge her the reaction; she was just a good sister. The attitude did, however, make calling her to get a number for Whitaker problematic.
The time crunch and lack of a direct method to reach Whitaker meant he had to make a decision himself. He weighed the options, worked out as many scenarios as he could think of, just like he had been trained to do with every problem, and this remained the best option. It being his best option still did not mean liked it.
Taylor pulled into the Hoover Buildings parking garage and was in the elevator headed up to his office. As happened every time he arrived at the Bureau, he felt strange having an office in the building after more than a year of bumping heads constantly with the agency.
They had created a special position for him, outside of the regular chain of command and answerable to Solomon directly. They used him as a troubleshooter, dealing with situations that required an ability to think laterally but did not require a lot of sensitivity or tact, traits Taylor was admittedly lacking.
He quickly found that, while the cases he had been assigned so far had their interesting moments, they were mostly fairly routine and did not involve imminent life or death scenarios. He had been working edge cases for so long he had somehow convinced himself that was what working cases was like. Taylor was not bored, but this also was not what he saw himself doing, forever.
Caldwell had been the deciding factor in convincing him to take the position. He knew having an official position gave him some legitimacy in the eyes of a public that had trouble understanding how an ex-soldier private investigator was friends with someone running for president. A Federal agent, on the other hand, was an easy to understand and respectable job.
Had Taylor really not wanted the job, he would have been able to say no to the Senator, but there had been enough other factors that he had only needed a nudge over the edge to agree.
A stack of files waited on his desk when he walked into his office.
He was just starting to sit down and look at the case on top when an agent who worked on the same floor stuck his head in the door.
“Joe’s looking for you.”
“Damn, what did I do now?”
“Don’t know, but he said to tell you to go up to his office as soon as you got in.”
Taylor groaned, pushing himself back up. His back had a slight twinge in it from all those boxes he'd lugged up the brownstone’s steps.
On the elevator ride up to the top floors of the Bureau offices, Taylor tried to think what he could have possibly done to upset Joe now. Not that it was out of the question. While the AG and layers of politicians were throwing themselves to congratulate both himself and Whitaker, Joe had been dead set against letting Taylor into the FBI. The political animal that he was, Joe realized quickly he was losing that battle and had Taylor assigned to him directly, most likely to minimize any contamination Taylor might cause among the 'real' agents.
Not that Taylor minded, since he agreed he did not really belong in an organization like this. Even though he understood Joe’s attitude, he was not a fan of the now weekly ass chewings he was getting about violating this or that policy.
Walking into the entrance way, Solomon’s secretary waved Taylor through. He was surprised to find that Joe was not alone. A man in a very well-tailored suit sat in a chair across from the director.
“They said you were looking for me?”
“Yes. This is Kriminalhauptkommissar Torsten Graf
