Prologue
Boots hit hard against the pavement as he rounded the corner, nearly losing his balance at the speed in which he took it. He compensated, though, and made it, a bullet ricocheting far too close for his liking. He ducked down, adjusting his grip on his own gun and picking up the speed. They were going to lose him. If they lost him, they were back to square one, and that was something that he couldn't do. It had been over a month since any of them had seen home, following one lead after another, and all he wanted to do was to go home and-
He slammed to a stop, the figure at the end of the alley catching him by surprise. He couldn't see his face, and he barely registered as he turned, gun raised, and a shot went off. He didn't feel the first one, not really, but he stumbled back as a numbness spread. It was the second and the third that told him without a doubt that the gunman hadn't missed his target.
The pain hit hard, ripping his breath from him and he found himself on his back staring up at the sky. It was blue and he his mind wandered to a set of eyes a similar colour. They were wide and beautiful, belonging to a woman that he'd promised to come home to as soon as the assignment wrapped up. They had even talked about him taking an extended leave from the task force so that he could spend more time with her, but she had said she couldn't make him choose between his work and her. She would be there when he got home as long as he always promised to always come back to her. He did. He had. He had meant to.
"Easy, easy," a voice said and Jacob Phelps blinked rapidly, trying to clear his vision. Liz wasn't there with him. He wasn't home and with a sinking feeling he knew that there was a chance he never would be now. "Easy, Jake," the same voice said and he felt pressure against the injuries.
"Didn't see him," Jacob managed, tasting blood in the back of his throat as he choked the words out. "Don't know how."
"No one saw him."
"Should have-" The sentence was lost as a pained sound escaped him and the hand around his shoulders tightened.
"Jacob?"
He blinked hard, or tried, but it didn't do any good. The voice hadn't belonged to the figure stooped over him, trying to keep him from bleeding out in some foreign alleyway. He must have been closer to unconsciousness than he'd thought.
"Jacob, babe? You need to wake up. Open your eyes. Hey?"
Jacob blinked hard and the alley was replaced by a shadow-filled bedroom and the voice had, just as he'd thought, belonged to the woman whose eyes had been the only things he'd wanted to see as he had laid dying. He found those same eyes looking worriedly at him now, and her name tumbled from his lips, his voice rougher than he would have liked. "Liz?"
"Hey," she greeted, the worry easing just a little and she smiled at him. "You were having a nightmare. I couldn't get you to wake up."
He pulled in a deep breath and loosed it a half a beat later, slow and steady. He was home. The woman that sat in the bed next to him was not just the one he loved, but the one that had married him. It had been nearly three years since he'd been laid out in that alleyway and less since he had watched her walk down the aisle towards him. It was more than he'd ever expected in life, and certainly more than someone like him deserved. Driven and focused, it had been a wakeup call to figure out what was really important in life. He hadn't thought that marriage and family was something that he would ever want for himself, but Liz had changed that, and continued to change him bit by bit every day. She made him feel things that he had been about sure that he was incapable of feeling, and he loved her more than he thought he could.
"Babe?" Liz called gently, leaning forward and stealing a quick kiss from him.
He found himself following her, not wanting it to end. "I'm okay," he murmured hoarsely. "Really."
"You want to talk about it?"
He shrugged, finally settling back against his pillows again and sighing. "Just Vienna."
Liz winced. "Definitely not on the list of places you ever want to go back to, huh?"
"No, I think we can leave that one off." His lips perked just a little at the corners and he reached forward, pulling his wife closer to him. She leaned in willingly and Jacob wrapped an arm around her as she sank into the kiss and it helped to wash away the last remnants of the nightmare-memory. He felt one of her hands snake back around to the back of his neck and he sat up just enough to roll, pulling a giggle out of her.
"Don't you have to give that lecture at Quantico today?" she asked as he kissed her.
"Yeah, it's all week," he managed, barely distracted by the question.
"You're going to be late."
"Hmm?"
His wife laughed as he kissed her and she didn't remind him again. Instead she tightened her hold on him and was halfway to tugging his t-shirt off when his cell started buzzing by the bedside. Jacob let out an exaggerated groan as he flopped over, glaring at it. Finally he grabbed it and tapped the accept button. "Phelps."
"You're in town, aren't you?" came the familiar voice from the other end.
"Good morning to you too, buddy" Jacob greeted sarcastically. "Yeah, but I'm about to head out to Stafford. I have a lecture I'm teaching all week at the academy."
"Who is it?" Liz whispered.
Don Ressler, Jacob mouthed and his wife beamed.
"Hi, Don," she called cheerfully and Jacob rolled his eyes. "You still owe us a dinner from the last time you canceled!"
"He says he knows," Jacob answered for the man on the other end of the line. "And he says hi."
She grinned and Jacob's gaze followed her as she slipped out of bed, a tired Hudson yawning at her feet and his tail hitting the hardwood floor happily as she scratched him between the floppy ears.
"You need to cancel the lecture. I'm sending a detail to pick you up."
Ressler's words caught him off guard and Jacob blinked hard. "What?"
"Can you be ready to leave in about fifteen minutes?"
"What the hell is going on?" he demanded, throwing the covers back and swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
"I'll tell you when you get here. Call and cancel the lecture. Trust me. You won't be sorry."
The other end of the line went dead and Jacob loosed a long breath.
"What's Don have to say?" Liz asked around her toothbrush.
"I'm getting called in on something. I have no idea what."
She disappeared long enough to rinse her mouth out and come back. "Please tell me he's not pulling you back into the Reddington thing. We've been down that path, and that's what landed you on recovery for months."
"Yeah, well aware. Lived it," he reminded her with a quirked eyebrow and moved to the closet to find something more appropriate for meeting with the kinds of people that Ressler worked with these days. Quantico days were supposed to be his more casual days.
She wrapped her arms around his middle and pressed her cheek against his back. "Babe," she said softly and he felt his chest tighten.
"I'm not going back into the field," he promised softly. "Whatever it is, I told you I wouldn't."
"Thank you," she breathed and pressed a kiss to his back. "I love you."
He turned around in her arms, the smile he wore small but real. "Love you, too babe."
Donald Ressler had been lead agent on the Raymond Reddington case for years. Whenever anyone needed something on it, he was the man they came to. He'd earned every ounce of respect that he had in his position, and when he was the one that needed something, often all he had to do was call in the request. There were times, though, that even that didn't cut it. He had halfway hoped that Assistant Director Harold Cooper would simply check off on the names that he gave him to call in on the case, but he wanted detailed information before allowing any of them into the war room. The one he'd paused at, of course, had been Jacob Phelps.
The older man's dark eyes skimmed the paperwork and Ressler knew what he was looking at by the expression shifting his features ever so slightly. "Sir, if I may, I've worked with Phelps. I know that there may be some things in his record that might cause you to pause, but I can vouch-"
"You were in Quantico with him?" Cooper asked, cutting him off.
"Yes sir."
"Friends?"
"By the end of it," he said carefully. Their rocky start had landed Jacob with a broken nose, Ressler with a fractured wrist, and both of them hating each other for the first several months of their dorm experience. Somehow, though - and there were times even then when Ressler couldn't quite trace the events perfectly - they had won each other's respect and Ressler had become one of the very few friends that Jacob bothered with. In many ways the two men were polar opposites in their approach to cases and their general approach to life, but it had worked well. When they allowed it, they balanced each other nicely.
"It says in his file that he was medically discharged from active field duty."
"This isn't field duty, sir. It's just a consultation. There are few men in the FBI with his knowledge on the subject."
Cooper looked up. "His psych eval-"
"I know what he looks like on paper, sir. I'll be honest with you, Phelps can be a difficult man to get along with. He's egotistical, sarcastic, and half the time you want to punch him in the nose, but I vouched for him to be on my team in '06 and I'm vouching for him now." Ressler stood stiff and straight, waiting for the Assistant Director to respond. He was putting himself out there for this, but it would be worth it. Well, it would be if Jacob's wife didn't kill him for pulling him back into this mess.
Cooper sighed, the file falling flat on his desk and he plucked his glasses off his nose. "He's your responsibility, Agent Ressler."
"Understood," Ressler answered with a nod.
"Give him a call. I want this taken care of immediately."
"Already did. He's on his way."
"And if I'd put a stop to this?"
"Well, I guess he wouldn't have been allowed into the Post Office."
Cooper snorted and shook his head. "I hope we don't regret this."
They took him to a black site. Jacob had worked out of enough of them to recognize the signs immediately. His escort led him down a clunky elevator and into the site itself where he spotted a familiar face. Donald Ressler strode forward like a man on a mission.
"Liz is ready and waiting to be pissed at you. You've been warned," Jacob said with a half smirk, reaching out to catch the other man's offered hand.
"I don't plan to get on her bad side today," Ressler answered. "Come on."
Jacob tilted his head to the side, gaze sweeping out over the space. "What's going on, Ress?"
"Patience has never been your strong suit," the fair-haired man pointed out and started forward without any further explanation. Jacob wasn't entirely sure if he was being secretive because he was stubborn or if the information was need-to-know and the people around them hadn't been cleared. He followed without any further argument, hands stuffed into his pockets as he looked around, mentally filing the path they took away in case he needed it later.
The two men moved silently through the black site until they made it to a viewing room in which they were still trying to get their feeds up and running. A man turned around and Jacob recognized him instantly from various speeches he'd sat through after being stationed in the DC field office. He'd never met the man personally until that day, but most agents in the bureau would know him on sight.
"Harold Cooper, Assistant Director of Counter Terrorism," he introduced himself.
"Yes sir," Jacob answered. "Jacob Phelps. I'm out of the DC office." He glanced back at Ressler. "Do I get to find out what I'm doing here or do I just need to start tossing out theories and hope one of them sticks?"
"Feeds are up," someone called from across the room and Jacob turned, watching as a face he hadn't seen in several years flashed across the screen. Raymond Reddington was strapped to a chair, sitting patiently as someone injected what was probably a tracker into his arm. He was dressed in his usual attire sans the hat, sleeve pushed up only for the purpose of the tracker. He was calm, almost zen like, and it was always interesting when the universe reminded him that some things never changed.
Jacob chuckled softly to himself and glanced back at Ressler. "Oh yeah, Lizzie's going to kill you."
Ressler snorted. "Glad you canceled lecture?"
"Definitely."
TBC
Notes: So this story has been eating my brain the last couple of days. I told the idea to a couple of people and they seemed to really enjoy it. Major thanks and kudos to SaraBeth1 and theBlacklister23 for being my sounding board for Ressler's character. Writing Ressler and Red always makes me a little nervous, but they'll both have major roles in this story, so I'm hoping to do their amazing characters justice. I've written about 8K of this in twenty-four hours in and around life and work. Hold on, this is going to get really twisty before it straightens out!