Charlie's Bath

"We need to talk"

"Okay, that sounds serious" Charlie had immediately picked up on the unusual harshness in Joey's tone "Is this a shower chat or a bath chat?"

"Bath" the answer came without hesitation "Probably a long one."

Ordinarily there wasn't much in life Joey enjoyed more than a bath chat with Charlie. Rubbing various soaps and lotions into her moist, naked body while they shot the shit was always a pleasure. He would usually make up any old flimsy excuse as a pretence to set up such a conversation, and his handler-turned-friend-turned-lover always seemed happy to indulge him. However, this would not be a talk to be taken lightly. His future relationship with Charlie - professional, personal and romantic - would hinge almost entirely on the responses she gave to the grilling she was about to get from him, and whether or not he believed her answers.

His feelings on the other three women he was closest to seemed pretty set for now.

Joey would trust Dawn with his life. She had never given him a single reason to doubt her and always seemed to come through for him when he needed someone to.

Liv could be trusted too. She was an innocent civilian in all of this, with very limited knowledge or understanding of all the mayhem that was happening around her. Joey's greatest desire for his girlfriend would be to keep her well out of range of the shit that was so obviously about to hit the fan for everyone else. That could prove a little tricky though, as she was not only closely and indelibly linked to him, but a high profile guest on the show Kayleigh and the US Vice President would be starring in tomorrow.

For now, his trust in Kayleigh had been severely compromised. Joey's feelings for his best friend had been so strong that he couldn't bring himself to completely condemn her yet, though. He hadn't given up hope that, once he had got to the bottom of everything that happened, she would have some kind of understandable or vaguely justifiable excuse for what she had done. He certainly didn't see her as the mastermind pulling all the strings here, much more likely a pawn who was used or coerced by someone else into doing their bidding for them. He also felt sure a lot of their relationship had been genuine -why would she ask him to make her believe he wasn't seeing anyone else so they could be together otherwise? Joey was sure Kayleigh had some degree of authentic feelings for him. However, he also had to accept the overwhelming evidence that she had tricked and used him to serve a cause he had never signed up to.

If anything. Joey's relationship with Charlie was the most complicated of all. He knew she had come to him as an operative for some shady organisation or other - almost certainly one that had a large hand in everything that had happened to him up until now. She had, at least, been surprisingly honest about that from the start. As the pair had formed a closer bond, Charlie had begun to hint that she had lost faith in her bosses, was going rogue and had now chosen Joey as her ride or die whatever happened from here on in. The idea was incredibly alluring to him, not least because he had by now fallen in love with her,

But was it all bullshit? A story concocted to gain Joey's unfaltering trust and ensure he would go along with literally anything she said. It was quite convenient that their most intimate conversations had to take place while she was in the bath or shower. It was hard enough saying no to a beautiful, charismatic and highly persuasive woman like Charlie when she wasn't naked and he wasn't massaging lotion into her tits. Had she been playing him all along? Even the thought of that was extremely tough to handle, especially on top of the recent revelations about Kayleigh, but he needed to know the truth, however painful it might be. More than anything, he had to establish if the two of them had been working together from the start.

"I've been helping Dawn to investigate how all of this shit started so she could try and figure out why it happened to me and who was behind it" Joey began as the bath filled and Charlie undressed "We went to Connecticut together, actually. What she uncovered there was pretty eye-opening?"

"And?" Charlie enquired as she began to unhook her bra.

"What do you think of Kayleight?"

Fuck! Joey had intended to pay close attention to Charlie's reaction to that question, to see if there was a noticeable change in her facial expression, even for a second, that might give him a clue as to how much she really knew. Unfortunately, had had managed to ask it at the exact moment her bra came off, so instead he found himself gawping at her breasts like a horny teenager, just like he did every time he saw them. Charlie's nipples, as pretty as they were, gave away no clues.

"Your friend Kayleigh?" she asked, sounding pretty unfazed, as she pulled her panties down, again distracting Joey from any visual tells her face might have given away "She seems nice. Good journalist. Appears to have her heart in the right place, though I've always found her a little naive. Obviously she knows about your situation and has never told anyone, despite what she does for a living, which I guess makes her pretty trustworthy."

"Except she may have known about it even happened."

"What do you mean by that?"

Charlie was crouched naked by the tub, poised to test the water with her fingers like she always did before stepping in. She had turned to face Joey after he made his slightly cryptic remark and this time he did get a chance to gauge her facial reaction. As far as he could tell, she genuinely didn't have a clue what he was talking about.

"Dawn thinks it was Kayleigh who set me up to get covered in that gunk."

"What?!"

Charlie quickly switched off the faucet but, rather than climb into the bath, she instead walked over so she was inches from Joey, an intense expression on her face as she looked right into his eyes.

That wasn't ideal. He wanted to try and maintain at least some physical distance between himself and a nude Charlie for this conversation, so his judgement wasn't entirely guided by his hormones. This did appear to be an authentic reaction, though, even if he wasn't quite sure what it indicated. Anger? Concern? Did he know too much and she was about to take him out there and then? Charlie was such an expert in martial arts she could probably finish Joey even while she was naked and unarmed. It wouldn't be the worst way to go.

"Why would she think that?" she asked tensely.

"Kayleigh was the only one with me at the facility when the vat exploded. She may have had a key to open the door to get in and..."

"Oh fuck! She gave them a signal!" Charlie suddenly did the math. Or, at the very least, made it look like she had "It was never an accident! How did I not see that?!"

"So you think Dawn is right?"

"She's always fucking right!" Charlie began pacing the room. Joey had never seen her looking this shaken before. It was either a truly brilliant piece of acting or she had been every bit as blind sided by this development as he was "Now it all makes sense!"

"Charlie, I need you to be completely honest with me here. Have you and Kayeligh been working together all along?"

"What?! No!" she looked outraged at first, before her expression softened, as if she realised it wasn't unreasonable for Joey to have come to that conclusion "The cunts I work for never tell me anything, it seems. They said the thing went off by accident, that you were just some random schmuck of a local journalist who had been poking around too near it and did something to set it off. I had no idea the whole thing was pre-planned from the start."

"Do you think this was all Kayleigh's idea?"

"Are you kidding me?" Charlie laughed bitterly "She's as much of a fool as I am. They have totally played her, used her as a pawn to do their dirty work for them. They have a way of making you think you're saving the word by going along with whatever shit they tell you to do. Believe me I should know! Fuck, this must be why they didn't want me to brainwash her!"

"Wait, what?!"

"It never made any sense to me. Why not turn the person who was closest to you into their puppet so they could control her and she could control you? She was just there for the taking! But they always told me she wasn't a person of interest for us, beyond her appearance on the show."

"Charlie. I need you to slow down a little here. How could you brainwash anyone? And what has Kayeleigh appearing naked on TV tomorrow got to do with anything?"

"I brainwashed Dawn into making the show using a tape of your voice. It was a clips where you said something like "everything my friend Charlie says is true". I coaxed that sentence out of you when I got you to tell Liv she needed to trust me. I'm really sorry Joey. I then used it to get Dawn to agree to do this show and think it was her idea."

"Fuck, so Dawn doesn't really want to get naked on TV?" Joey realised "Of course she doesn't, She's already established herself as one of the top journalists on the planet. There is literally no need to get her tits out publicly."

"The point is, I always wondered why they didn't ask me to use the tape on Kayleigh as well. That never made any sense. But I guess she had agreed to be their puppet anyway."

"And how the fuck is a naked news show going to save the world?"

"Obviously it isn't. But it will get millions of people watching, and then your voice over could have been used to convince the viewers of anything. At least that plan has been scuppered now. Good for Dawn, taking you off the show and inadvertently saving the day."

"Yeah, about that..." Joey suddenly realised.

----

"It's okay, we can still fix this" Charlie assured Joey as she drove them towards the studio where the first episode of the Naked Truth was about to be filmed "We're on the audience guest list anyway, so nobody will think there is anything off when we show up together. You just need to find a way to distract Kayleigh for a couple of minutes, I'll grab her phone and wipe the files. I'm extremely good at covert shit like that. What was it you said exactly?"

"There were two that I recorded. One basically said that everyone should believe everything Kayleigh says without question, the other one was to reverse it at the end of the show."

"Yeah, the second one has probably been wiped already" Charlie smirked and shook her head "I can see why she asked for you to record it though, it stopped her from looking suspicious. I have to hand it to your buddy, she's proving to be one hell of a useful idiot. I bet they never dreamed she could turn herself into this much of an asset for them. They barely even need you anymore if she can turn herself into Bullshitgirl.."

As Joey and Charlie reached the front of the queue to be let into the studio, one of the two burly security guards put his hand out to stop them. Both were armed, which would ordinarily seem a bit much for a TV show, but the Vice President was in the building so Joey figured that made sense. They also head large headphones on, which seemed a little more peculiar.

"Sorry guys, I can't let you in!"

"But we have VIP tickets!"

Joey held them out to prove it.

"You're not coming in. Please step out of the line."

"I'm a close personal friend of Dawn Fraser who's hosting the show. Bring her out here, she'll tell you!"

The guard pointed to the large pair of noise cancelling headphones he was wearing.

"I can't hear a word you're saying, so whatever shit you're trying to pull, it isn't going to work on me. You need to leave now, and that's my final friendly warning" he then turned and looked pointedly at Charlie "You too, Natalia."

"But..."

"Come on. let's go"

Charlie grabbed Joey by the hand and led him out of the line and back towards her car with a sudden sense of urgency.

"But Charlie, we need to.."

"We have to get out of here now Joey, it isn't safe for either of us."

"What?" Joey pulled his arm away from Charlie's as they reached her vehicle "You think I'm going to just leave Dawn and Liv in there with whatever shit is about to go down? And maybe we can talk to Kayleigh and persuade her not to do anything crazy. She's still my friend."

"We're not going to get in there Joey, we have to find another way to deal with this" the blonde agent told him as she opened her car door.

"I need to leave now. IF you don't come with me, this will be goodbye for us. I also won't be able to protect you any longer. I would really hate for our relationship to end like that after everything we've been through, but I won't have a choice."

"But Charlie.."

"I'm sorry Joey, I don't have time to explain myself out here in the open. I'm leaving. if you've ever cared about me at all, then please just trust me and get in the car."