I don't own any of the characters you recognize, I really wish I did though!

Maddsgirl75, thanks again for being such an awesome Beta!

John Reese was angry...really, really angry. He rarely got that angry; his years in Special Forces and the CIA had taught him how to control his emotions, how to beat back the anger and box it away so that it did not interfere with the mission. He had spent years as an emotionless machine, a monster really, doing his country's bidding without question or hesitation, no matter how bloody or awful the job had been. His ability to toss emotion aside like an empty cup had served him well.

Of course, the trouble with being so good at not feeling meant that when you did feel something you were very bad at it, and John Reese was not good at dealing with feelings. He had assumed when he took the job with Finch that he could just switch his emotions off like he had done so many times in the past, but for some odd reason, the more he interacted with "normal" people as he worked the numbers, the harder it was for him to switch them off. He had grown comfortable with his emotional switch in the OFF position, and was unsure of himself in this new territory.

Chief among his problems was NYPD Detective, Josselyn Carter. Reese had told himself that his feelings for her were just admiration for a tough cop with a moral compass that consistently pointed in the right direction without fail. She challenged him at every turn to be a better person, to stop taking short cuts, and stay on the right side of the law. She had been helping people and putting bad guys away for a long time, and Reese acknowledged that he and Finch were 'Johnnies Come Lately' to the whole 'Helping People' game, compared to her. She was also beautiful, with flawless skin, large expressive brown eyes, and a smile that could outshine the brightest Broadway marquee.

If he were being honest with himself, he really should not have been surprised when he finally figured that his feelings for her went much deeper than just admiration. He was most definitely falling in love with that woman, but Reese had little experience in being honest with himself, so the revelation hit him like the proverbial ton of bricks. She was not his usual type; he usually preferred a less challenging woman, one who would look up to him as a White Knight and Protector. Carter was more likely to punch him in the arm; hard, and snarl, "what were you thinking?" Usually when he would smirk and flirt with a woman, they would get all giggly and give him what he wanted pretty easily. With Carter, she would roll her eyes and give him that death glare, or shut him down with a smirk and a quip of her own. Only then would she hand over whatever it was he needed because it was the right thing to do, not because he had batted his baby blues at her.

So it was a shock to discover that his dreams now regularly included the kick ass cop and she was very much out of uniform. He also caught himself staring at her lips; wondering if they felt as soft as they looked, and would grin like an idiot when her name popped up on his caller ID. But, when you have spent much of your life as an emotional cripple, you find these things upsetting, not pleasurable the way normal people do.

A normal person would just call up the object of their desire, and ask them out for coffee, or buy them some dinner. But Reese was not normal, so he didn't do anything like that. He tried to box up his feelings the way he had always done, not realizing that when it came to love, that tended to make things worse, not better. He had become a volcano just waiting to go off.

The volcano finally erupted the previous night. He and Carter were working on a case involving a drug dealer who was blackmailing a doctor. The dealer had taken a potshot at Carter during a chase, and though the shot had missed by a country mile, John had let his rage get the better of him. Nobody was going to take a shot at Joss Carter and get away with it as long as John Reese was alive! Reese had put the dealer down like a rabid dog with one well-placed shot to the forehead. Carter had been furious, it had been an unnecessary kill in her opinion, and she always got angry at him when he killed someone.

But, for some reason Reese could not understand, instead of handling the situation with his usual smirk and quip, he had gotten angry back at her. Really angry. Angry like he had not been in a very long time, and it had scared him. He had yelled at her, John could not even remember the last time he had yelled at anyone, much less someone he cared for as much as he did for Carter.

"He was trying to kill you! I wasn't going to let him shoot you!" He shouted at her.

"I don't need some lawless vigilante to tell me how to do my job! The shot wasn't even close! We could have taken him alive! I told you, I have rules!" She snarled back.

"How about you dig the stick out of your ass and get real! Your precious rules could have gotten you killed!" John moved so that he was practically right on top of her, looming over her in her personal space, and trying to use his height advantage to intimidate her.

Unfortunately for him, Joss Carter does not intimidate easily. The tactic failed, making her even angrier at him and she had jammed her finger into his chest to make her point. "I've been doing this job for a long time before you came along, and my precious rules, as you call them, haven't gotten me killed yet!"

When Carter began jamming her finger into his chest, John's emotions shifted from very angry to blind fury. He didn't hear a word she said, and he had grabbed her wrist in an iron grip that made her actually gasp in pain and then she had looked up at him in complete and utter shock. Reese looked down at her, intending to get right down in her face to make his point, but he stopped when he saw the hurt expression on her face. That had snapped him back into reality. He had dropped her wrist and stepped back from her, forcing his cold, emotionless mask back into place and beating the anger back into its box.

"I need to leave now", was all he'd said to her in a low even tone, then he'd turned on his heel and walked rapidly away.

He ignored her when she called out to him to wait. He was sick to his stomach, he had done the one thing he had sworn to himself long ago that he would never do; he had touched a woman in anger. To make it worse, he had not touched just any woman in anger, he had touched HER. He knew he should go back and apologize, and see if she was alright, but he was scared. He was scared of the reaction she had provoked from him, and scared that he had damaged what had become a very important relationship in his life.

He had hung up on Finch when the older man had called him to ask if he was alright. He suspected that Finch had overheard the argument, but he didn't want Finch's pity, he didn't deserve it. He had been right about himself all along, he was a monster, and he needed to get away, to bring himself down off of his anger high and get back to being the stone cold agent he was so good at being.

He had walked the twenty-odd blocks all the way back to the library, hoping it would clear his head. It didn't. He headed to the garage under the library, for the Ducati. He saw a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye as he entered the building; Finch must have seen him coming on the cameras he had monitoring the area. Hell, Finch probably watched him walk all the way back from the alleyway where he had left Carter.

"Oh thank God, Detective Carter was so worried about you!" Finch called out to him. But Reese ignored his boss and started strapping on his helmet. Finch reached him just as he mounted the bike.

"You should call Carter, she is very upset. She said you were not acting like yourself. She's very worried, John."

Reese turned his hard, cold eyes on Finch. "I am acting like me, Finch. Maybe it's time the two of you figured out just what kind of a monster you let in." Finch stopped, eyes wide open in shock. Reese rode out of the garage at top speed.

Reese whipped through traffic like a man possessed. He wove in and out and drove far too fast until he finally arrived at his destination; a secluded beach on Long Island that he discovered a while back as a good place to think undisturbed. He sat cross legged on the beach, morosely watching the waves roll in and out while he systematically destroyed a blade of grass with his thumbnail.

Finch was right, he should call Carter. He should apologize to her for losing his temper and for touching her the way he did. And he should cut her loose; having her around was too dangerous for both of them, he had trouble keeping his head in the game when she was with him. But the thought of never seeing her again just about killed him.

He briefly entertained the idea of actually allowing himself to try to woo her. He closed his eyes and smiled as he thought about the possibilities. Waking up next to her in the morning, being able to kiss her when he felt like it, cuddling on the couch while they watched movies together, having Taylor for a son. He wanted that, he wanted that very badly. But there was a small, no - make that huge, problem, he wasn't a normal guy. He was a killer, many times over, and she knew it. Carter was a good person, and he was not. She put up with him for the sake of doing good things, but he suspected that she would probably be horrified if she knew how he felt. She would probably run from him in Olympic Medal time if she knew he wanted to kiss her until she begged for mercy.

One thing was for sure, he had to find some way to deal with his feelings for her. He could not let what happened last night happen again. He had to keep the monster bottled up around her; he couldn't let it out again.

His thoughts were interrupted by the buzzing of his phone. He checked the number, it was Finch. Carter had tried to call him several times last night, but he'd ignored it, he was not ready to deal with what had happened between them yet. Maybe Harold had a new number, and a new number could distract him from his problems right now, so he decided to answer.

"Mr Reese, you need to return as soon as possible." Finch sounded upset, and Reese's stomach clenched. Something was very wrong.

"Do we have a new number?"

"No, there has been…there has been a shooting. Detective Carter has been critically wounded, and Fusco has been hurt as well."

Reese was already at the Ducati, strapping on his helmet. "What happened? Why wasn't she wearing her vest? Dammit, I told her to always wear her vest!"

"She was, as was Fusco, but the assailants were using Kevlar piercing rounds."

John straddled the bike and started it, roaring back towards the city at top speed. "What happened, tell me everything you know."

"It started as a bank robbery. The alarm was tripped right after the bank opened, at 10:06. Carter and Fusco were in the area working on one of their cases so they responded, along numerous uniformed policemen. John, these men were prepared; they had complete suits of top of the line body armor, and their weapons were loaded with Kevlar piercing ammunition. I believe they wanted to provoke a confrontation with the police. Carter and Fusco, with their handguns and department issued vests, never stood a chance." Finch's voice broke.

Reese felt the bile rise in his throat. He should have been there; this was the kind of thing he could do better than the police. He was one of the best snipers in the Army; he had high powered weapons in his arsenal that were far and above anything Carter had access to. He trained for this type of combat. Had he not been mooning about on the beach he could have prevented this….

"Where are the bank robbers now?"

"One is dead. Carter managed to take one out with a head shot, that's when she was hit. The other one hijacked a vehicle, and got away."

He forced himself to ask the next question because he was so afraid of the answer. "How bad are Carter and Fusco hurt?"

"Fusco was hit in the arm by a bullet that pierced the car door he was using for cover, and again in the ankle by a ricochet. Carter…Carter…is hurt much, much worse."

John was forced to pull off to the side of road. His eyes were so filled with tears that he couldn't see, and he was about to throw up.

"Tell how me bad, Finch", he pleaded.

Finch took a deep breath. "She has two bullet wounds to the torso, resulting in a collapsed lung and massive internal bleeding. One wound to the shoulder, and another to her leg. She and Fusco lay there and bled for several minutes before anyone could get to them. She lost a lot of blood." Finch's voice was almost a sob.

John dropped to his knees and vomited. He remained on his knees for a few minutes gasping for air, trying to bring his racing heart under control. He called upon all his CIA and sniper training to calm himself and forced his body back on the bike so that he could get to Carter as quickly as possible.

"Where is she, Finch?" John didn't even notice his voice breaking.

Finch gave him the name of the hospital, and Reese headed straight there. Finch was already there, arranging for Carter and Fusco to have private rooms next to each other and for them to have to best care possible. Neither one would have to worry about medical bills not covered by their insurance.

Carter was still in surgery when Reese arrived. The last news Finch had was that she had nearly bled out in the ambulance, and she was still in surgery. No one could tell him if she was going to survive. However, the effort to re-inflate her injured lung in the trauma room had been successful and John clung to that good news like a drowning man clings to a rope.

Carter's mother, Alice, and her son Taylor arrived shortly after John did. Taylor was immensely relived to see Finch and Reese. John appreciated Taylor's trust, but felt like a fraud since he could have prevented the whole thing in the first place if he had just acted like an adult instead of an emotionally stunted brat. But Taylor did not need John to dump his guilt onto him right now, so he kept his mouth shut and did his best to be a rock for the teen.

All they could do now was wait.