Carrie stood alone and stunned, watching the door close on Jonas, and on what remained of their relationship. Jonas had said he loved her. But that was over lunch, a few days ago, an eternity ago. Back then, he didn't know the real Carrie - all of her shit, her past, and what he was really getting into. Carrie off her meds, for example. What a fiasco that had been.
But even more difficult for Jonas to swallow had been the risks and dangers of her previous life, and the way she made her decisions. How could she not go to the authorities? Take Quinn to a hospital? It clearly had baffled Jonas. Her strange priorities were too much for a normal person to take.
So, he had gone, and angrily too. Jonas's last words rang in her ears.
"Quinn walked out that door," he had roared, "bleeding to death! To protect you, Carrie. Does that register?"
She knew that, she understood that in her gut, and the consequences and meaning of it almost choked her. She could only stammer out, "Please," but Jonas had left anyway. Maybe for the best, she thought. Certainly for him. My old life is back, and now I poison everything I touch.
In Quinn's lair now, there was nothing but silence. No sick, feverish Quinn, no prickly, silent Jonas. She turned and looked at the blood soaked sheets on the makeshift bed where Quinn had so recently lain.
She walked slowly to the bed, to the side nearest the wall, and sat down. Her eyes had been full of tears since Jonas walked out. Now, sitting close to the groove of Quinn's body on the bed, they spilled down her cheeks.
Her hand stroked the sheet. Was it her imagination that it was still faintly warm? It couldn't be, it had been too long, but she imagined his warmth there all the same. Fussily, she smoothed the sheets up, trying to command control of her emotions. Then, her hand touched the blood-soaked spot. The spot where Quinn had been in terrible pain, wracked with illness and finally bleeding out. Literally spilling his lifeblood for her. She lay slowly down; hand on the blood spot, her cheek on the damp pillow where Quinn's head had been.
"So much blood on your hands," Jonas had said accusingly, during her manic days. How right he was. Now, though, now it was much worse. It was Quinn's blood on her hands. She pulled her legs up, curled into a ball, her hand on Quinn's blood, head on his pillow, and a single gut-wrenching sob came from Carrie's mouth. She let the tears fall.
The pillow still smelled like him. She remembered his smell, had not forgotten it when she parted with him more than two years ago, been comforted by it even as he was smearing his own blood on her face- he certainly was generous with his blood, wasn't he? Even in the depths of her terror and confusion, waking up bound to his bed, she had never really been afraid of him. She had been startled, asked him to wait, but she knew he didn't want her dead. He wasn't going to harm her in any way. He couldn't, she thought. And she had been right.
Later, she had breathed his scent in deep as his head lolled on her shoulder, fading into and out of consciousness, while she bandaged his gunshot wound. "Stay with me," she had encouraged, holding him close. She had never doubted that he would. He always had.
In her heart, she had felt that Quinn was unkillable, that he could never die, not because of something like this. He'd been shot before. They had both been in the shit, so much and for so long, that Carrie didn't believe anything could take him out. But as her tears soaked into his pillow, she realized something could kill him. If he hadn't been so loyal to her, he wouldn't have faked her death, and he wouldn't have taken her to the drop and gotten shot up in the process. If he hadn't cared, he wouldn't have crawled off to die 20 hours ago, in order to remove his body and his life from her world. All to preserve her anonymity, her freedom.
All those years, all the many times he had her back – Langley, Islamabad, and now Berlin – he had been there. Taking better care of her than she did herself. Her gut was tight in a knot, and the tears kept falling. Her hand was slick with Quinn's blood – the closest she could come to still touching him. The most essential meaning of a soldier's life, she thought, dying to make someone else free. Whether they were deserving or not.
She knew it was insufficient, knew that it didn't begin to encompass the meaning of what he had done for her all those years. All the many times he'd looked out for her, at cost to himself. But still, it was all she had. Carrie uttered her apology to the empty warehouse, to Quinn's blood, to the ghost of his consciousness and all her memories of him. She had never given voice to her feelings – whatever they were – and anything she said now was worthless, inadequate. Now speaking to an empty room, this was all she could feel, and all she could bring herself to say.
"Quinn," she sighed, "I'm so sorry."
She had to use whatever time he'd bought her, and put some space between herself and the people who wanted her dead. At least Franny would be safe, she thought. She hoped Quinn would have thought that Franny's happiness made his sacrifice worthwhile.
She had one last contact that hadn't been exhausted. She would take care of a few loose ends, then go see Otto. Carrie sat up and wiped her eyes. Swiping open her phone, she began to delete her pictures and contacts, and prepared herself to disappear. As she flipped through old pictures, she came across one she hadn't seen for a long time: a photo of herself and Quinn at Maggie's, with Lockhart and Saul.
It was taken at Maggie's house on the patio, the night of her Dad's funeral dinner. Considering the occasion, Carrie herself looked relaxed and happy. She remembered Maggie jollying them into the frame, taking Carrie's iPhone and saying, "Come on, you guys, how often are you all together?" She was right about that, it wasn't often. Quinn held a paper cup of whiskey, as had they all. Saul smiled at the camera, sanguine, at that time, one of her most trusted friends. Lockhart's lasagna stood cooling on the table: it would be devoured by her father's sobering-up friends an hour later, she recalled.
The photo captured Quinn looking not at the iPhone, but across the table at Carrie. She had seen that look on his face later that night, when he'd kissed her before he said goodbye, and drove off. There was more than friendship in it, she knew that now. The camera had captured a heated glance that left no doubt in Carrie's mind about his feelings for her. As if she needed more proof than the blood on this bed! The weight of that feeling had been in his heart when he'd exited this building, on Jonas's watch, the previous night. Going off presumably to disappear, or die. So Jonas said.
It hit her like a lightning bolt. What in God's name was she thinking? Jonas didn't know Quinn, he didn't know how to look for Quinn. Calling police stations, calling hospitals, that's an amateur night search plan, Carrie thought. That's suitable for finding drunks and tourists, but not a trained operative. Jonas is smart, but he has no training. He's not an agent, and he wouldn't know where to begin to search. He doesn't know Quinn. Who might still be very much alive.
He's out there, somewhere, hopefully still alive, somewhere in the underbelly of Berlin, Carrie thought. And even if all I do is recover his body, I owe him this much. It was a terribly jarring thought, but it got her moving. The clock was ticking.
Standing up, she looked around the room for any and all traces or clues that might help – but no, it looked like he'd hobbled out of here, patched up but bleeding, with the clothes on his back. She scanned the floor for a blood trail, but could see none. He was too cagey for that. She was moving fast now, her decision made. She found Quinn's trusty sidearm, with a fully loaded clip next to it, sitting on a case near the sink near a scattered pile of loose Plasticuffs. She grabbed the weapon, then loaded the clip and shoved the handgun into her bag. Not ideal, but it would have to do until she got a holster. If she was going to find Quinn, she'd need to move fast, because his trail was getting cold.
Jonas doesn't know Quinn, she thought, hurrying towards the door. He has no idea how to look. But I do.