Content Warnings: Torture (mostly offscreen, but the aftereffects/first aid is dealt with onscreen), non-consensual alcohol use, discussion of suicide, some harsh language. This is primarily a casefic where Fusco & Shaw find and free Finch and then deal with first aid and the aftermath of the kidnapping.
"Lionel. Where's Finch?"
There's rough concrete under your cheek, and it feels… wet. You blink blearily at a blob of color blocking out part of the sun, before your brain quite connects the blob to the voice and identifies Shaw. It takes a few more seconds to replay the words through your brain and pull out the thread of uncharacteristic concern: Where's Finch?
Groaning, you roll over, try to get up, but then back off with a hiss: Your knees protest when you put pressure on them. You manage at least to sit up, leaning on one arm while trying to place the damage, but suddenly Shaw is right there in your face. It's dizzying as she checks you over, darting her head around faster than you can follow.
Then her hand is over your eyes; you retreat, but the hand follows the movement, keeping you in darkness. When you reach up to grab her arm, she intercepts you, holds you still.
"What the hell are you—"
Abruptly her hand is gone, and you squint into the sudden brightness, the late afternoon sun. Through your watering eyes, Shaw is a dark blur, but to the side, not blocking the light like she was just a moment ago. After a few seconds, she draws back.
"Headache?"
Not exactly—you hurt, but it's not on the inside, it's—
You touch your temple, your fingers coming away wet. Red. It takes you a second to put it together.
Someone blindsided you.
"Headache? Lionel. Focus."
"Nah, it's just—" You were standing there, laughing with Glasses over… some odd detail of the case. Closing it up on this end, with Reese finishing the rest of it over in Sag Harbor, now that you'd managed to track down the last piece of the puzzle and relay it to him. Another murderer about to do time, possibly with a busted kneecap; it's what you would call a good day.
"Where's Finch? What happened?"
Still dazed, you think back to that moment after the phone call, to the shared relief of having rescued a victim, staved off another untimely death. Cops don't get to do that so much, not as much as you'd expected during your rookie years; more often, you're just the cleanup crew after things go south. One of the reasons you're glad to be on this team, working alongside some of the most frustrating people you know. Lawbreakers, sure, but these guys are doing what the law was meant to do, what you thought you'd signed up to do: Protect the innocent, keep the streets a little safer.
And Finch was there beside you, laughing—
"Eyes on me, Lionel. You with me?"
"Yeah, I'm—"
"What happened?"
How often have you even seen him smile? It's like a luxury he doesn't allow himself… maybe more like a weakness, like something he needs to hide, keeping his feelings masked the same way he always bottles himself up inside those fancy suits. And if smiles are rare, laughter is rarer still—at least where anyone could hear him. And yet that unexpected moment caught you off guard, and you were… sharing it with him, standing just outside that… warehouse, and waiting for Shaw to swing by and pick you up because…
…and then there was that car…
"Don't make me start the questions, Lionel."
At the best of times, Shaw sounds a little put out with life; right now, her tone's a bit more pissed than usual. You blink up at her, a bit easier to make out now that there aren't spots in your eyes, and then something clicks. Oh. Because she just found you unconscious. Bleeding on the sidewalk. And she's got medical training—
"I'm fine," you grouse, "just help me up here."
As Shaw's pulling you up to your unsteady feet, you're still searching your memory, trying to put the pieces in order. That car—stopping right beside you, doors opening—should've hit your instincts, should've… because the businesses here are all closed, and—
—and then, "Professor Hornbill?" and Finch had turned, his eyes going wide—
Being a cop, you learn how to take in a stranger's notable features pretty fast. But you'd barely registered the basics—male, late 40's, Asian, short black hair slicked back—when the pain exploded from the side of your head, followed by the crack of your knees as you crumpled to the sidewalk.
Dazed, you'd watched as the two men—how did you miss that there were two men?—cornered Finch right up against the side of the car. He'd glanced at you first, horror painted across his face, before one of them had grabbed him by the chin, directed his attention back at them.
The ringing in your ears had covered over whatever they were saying, but Finch was wide-eyed and breathing fast.
Then you'd blinked, and they were pulling a bag over Finch's head as he cringed away with nowhere to go—and then they were turning him, yanking his hands behind his back, pulling out a thin rope—
—pulling him back along the car, popping open the trunk, and you… you tried to pull yourself together in time, couldn't… do anything, nothing but lie there, blinking dazedly until the car peeled out and the darkness finally caught up with you.
And then Shaw.
"Hell, you're gonna make me ask the questions," Shaw mutters, rolling her eyes.
"They got Finch," you get out before she can start. "Two men—"
As Fusco lays out the data, you close your eyes and try to picture it. White car, two-door. He missed the make and model, but it's not sleek or classic, which narrows it down a bit. Didn't notice any distinguishing features, decals, bumper stickers, anything like that… but then, a kidnapper sporting bumper stickers would be the worst kind of amateur.
Two doors, though, that's noticeable, that's good.
Two Asian men—got a good look at the one, but not the other, just barely enough to classify them together. He's pretty sure they weren't Korean or Vietnamese, says he's gotten fairly good at picking those groups out even if he still can't tell "most of them" apart. Not the most reliable intel, but it narrows it down to East Asian; you're (probably) not looking for Indians or Arabs. Heard them say Professor Hornbill, which isn't a lot, but it didn't sound like they had a strong accent. So you're after Americans… or spies.
With anyone but Finch, the chance of spies would be pretty low, but, given what Finch is involved in—what you're all involved in—it'd be foolish to rule it out.
On the up side, Fusco's conscious and alert, if a little disoriented, but that's going away fast enough that you don't think it's a problem. He's talking, answering questions, pointing out details—you're not gonna have to ask him who the President is or how many fingers you're holding up. No worrisome fluids leaking out of his ears or building up beneath the skin in noticeable places.
You had to improvise about the flashlight, but his pupils both contracted, and he doesn't seem to have a headache. Hasn't mentioned anything like a seizure.
Which is good, because you don't have time to be driving him to the hospital when you need to be tracking down Finch.
Reese is two hours away, tip of Long Island, pretty much useless for now. You're not even going to bother telling him unless he calls you first; out there, he can't do anything, other than let the worry go to his head. Wasn't exactly rational the last time Finch got taken.
So you've got two hours to track down your boss before his 'poorly socialized guard dog' starts tearing apart the city looking for him.
Reese got understandably paranoid after the first time Finch got taken, and that paranoia has, if anything, turned prophetic. So there are two easy ways to track Finch… but you found them both, his phone and his glasses, on the street near Fusco, probably knocked down during the kidnapping.
Makes you wish that GPS tracking units were small enough to be subdermal implants. The smallest you've ever seen was still bigger than your thumb, and the transmission itself could be a threat to Finch if anyone else got ahold of the frequency. Finch's ability to disappear is still worth more than your ability to find him.
Still, not knowing which direction Finch got taken makes you itchy. You get Fusco in the car and head for the nearest gas station, just in case they're going farther than you think. En route, you try to piece together what you can conclude about the case so far.
It isn't Root. She doesn't need goons to grab Finch, doesn't need to tie him up or throw him in the trunk; just wave a gun at people—even the thought of a gun—and Finch will surrender himself to her care. First time you had to deal with this, he called the cops on his own partner. It's a teamwork flaw that you're not yet sure how to correct. Or if it's even correctable.
Besides, Root's got this weird respect for Finch, this bizarre mix of devoted awe and perverse affection. You honestly can't see her putting him in the trunk of a car. No, Root's not behind it… this time, anyway.
Hornbill's interesting. It's taken you ages to dig into even a handful of Harold's identities, so it's not like you're working from an overabundance of data, but Hornbill sounds like an outlier. Probably not an inhabited identity, like Wren or Finch; more likely a paper suit over an imaginary man. One of his new covers? Or just another piece of his collection, dusted off less frequently than the rest? Is this a new danger, or an old one?
At the gas station, you have Fusco fill up while you hunt through the feeds on Finch's laptop. It's his field laptop, the one that you're allowed to know the password to; it's also the one with all the neat (and mostly illegal) homebrew apps and algorithms that you spent most of an afternoon exploring, the day after he'd deemed you trustworthy enough to access his secondary login. (Not his primary—that one's hidden beneath the surface, accessed through command codes, and not even Reese gets the password for that one. Finch himself doesn't use it unless it's time to pull out the big guns.)
One of the algorithms works like facial recognition, but for cars, tapping into traffic cams. But you have to feed it a license plate, or at least a make and model—so it's useless until you can find the car. Should tell Finch to upgrade it for color and more general descriptions.
As you pull out the real-time surveillance access, you recall complaining that the laptop didn't have a way to match license plates to details. Afraid that's a police privilege, he'd replied, with a quirk to his lips. We do need to leave some tasks for the good detectives.
A sense-image flashes through your mind: a heavy bag in your hand. Dropping it at Carter's feet, under a table. The weapons that really started the ball rolling… countdown to her getting shot just outside the precinct.
Her death doesn't make you sad, exactly. More like… something's missing. Carter was a woman with unwavering conviction and good taste in guns; you'd traded snarky comments with her, seen her with her hair down, shared drinks. Had been kinda hoping to get to know her better, and now that's impossible.
So the feeling that rises up in you—if you could call it that, and you're not always sure—isn't so much about her death. It's not regret; you can't do anything about the past, so you tend not to dwell on it. Maybe it's more like wanting to keep a regret from happening in the first place. You can't save Carter, but you can save Finch, and, right now, that's the primary mission.
Browsing manually through the feeds, you make some guesses as to likely direction, and, given the traffic, how far they've gotten in the past eight minutes. Nine minutes. It's real-time only, which means you can't backtrack to where the car started, but the algorithm cracks into more than just traffic cams: anything nearby and online, anything with default or easily guessable passwords, which means shops and even a surprising number of cell phones. But the traffic cams have the best overall coverage.
As Fusco puts the gas nozzle away, you finally spot it: a white two-door on the Expressway, headed southwest. Possibility number one, but it might not be the right car. You're going to need to hunt for others, as well as getting a good enough shot to make out the license plate, and there's no way Fusco could make use of the laptop like you can.
When he opens the door, you ask, without looking up, "Feel dizzy at all? Any headache yet?"
"You worried about me while Glasses is in some guy's trunk?"
"Lionel."
He considers, shakes his head. "Nah, I'm good—why?"
"Go around—you're driving," you say, clambering over the cup holders without letting go of the laptop.
Fusco hesitates. Then he shrugs and heads around as you're pulling up four views at once, trying to home in on the license plate.
There's a pause after he starts the car. "…You want me to drive like some old Wisconsin granny so you don't fly through the windshield when I brake?"
Rolling your eyes, you buckle yourself in one-handed while following the feeds. Partial match; that's enough to plug into one of Finch's algorithms, get it running.
"Head for Staten Island," you say, eyes still glued to the screen as he peels out. Can't make out if there's two guys in the car, but—full match, there you go. You plug that into the tracking app before canceling the partial-plate search. Don't have time to think about it being an out-of-state plate, but you file that tidbit away for later.
Now that the computer's doing the tracking for you, you start hunting for other possibilities. How many white sports cars in New York? How many within range? Within minutes, you've spotted three more, and discarded them all. One's full of teenagers, windows all rolled down. Another's covered in political stickers, so much that you'd be surprised if their rearview mirror actually functioned at all.
(The thought crosses your mind that coating your car in noticeable stickers might be a great way to throw off a tail… if you got away and could hide for a bit and had the time to apply them. Still, that doesn't mesh with this car's position compared to the kidnapping, and some of the stickers are old, faded, peeling. (You note down the license plate, just in case.))
Third one's an old goat, more cream-colored than white, not a lot of trunk space, and classy enough that it doesn't jive with Fusco's comments earlier.
No, best bet's on the first hit, and they're heading straight across the bridge to Staten Island—fifteen minutes ahead of you, with traffic widening the gap. Fusco's cursing his lack of lights and siren, the easiest way to part the tide, but you tune him out. Now that you've got a bead on the captors—probably—you're focused on not losing them. Finch has been in that trunk for twenty-five minutes now; if it weren't overcast, if there weren't a decided chill to the air, he'd be in real danger of heatstroke, and you can't say that it isn't a risk even now.
Plus, you know—firsthand, more than once—what it's like to ride in a trunk, and it's not pleasant even for a body in great shape, one that's used to getting bruised up during missions. True, the roads you got driven over were in considerably worse repair than anything you've seen in the States, but still.
"Got any painkillers in here?" you ask.
"Glove box," Fusco responds. "Why?"
"You ever ride in a trunk before?"
He swallows and falls silent, which is fine by you—easier to focus. You don't have time to hunt through the glove box right now, but at least you know where to find them later. Because Finch is gonna be sore.
If you can catch up with him in time, he'll be alive and free enough to complain about it.
Well before you hit the bridge, the car turns off the Expressway, but the lack of street cam views doesn't stop Finch's app—at first. It pulls up data from nearby shops until the car moves into a more residential area and you're watching the marker on the map sidebar blip in and out between coverage and dead zones.
"Fuck," you spit out when the feed goes down completely, the map marker blinking their last known whereabouts.
Fusco glances at you. "What?"
"Just keep going. Head north."
"They heading for Jersey?"
They're not. Because if they were headed for Jersey, they would have stayed on the Expressway—unless, possibly, they were trying to shake a tail. But they're not using tricks from Escape & Evasion, or even the amateur attempts that just make you stick out worse.
They're not the least bit concerned about being followed.
Which could mean that they intend for you to follow them. Could be a trap. But Finch is a far bigger prize than you or Fusco—so unless they're trying to take out the whole team and lure in Reese…
Okay, the chance of that is pretty low, the chance of it working is even lower, and the Machine would likely have warned you in any case… but the fact that you're considering a trap scenario means that Reese needs a little more warning than just radio silence.
You pull up Zoe's number and send a quick text: If u dont hear frm us by 6PM, frwd 2 John, and add in the license plate and this month's code phrase and Trackers dn, wht 2dr got F, Sh&Fsc on trail in mins, toward NE Staten. Zoe plz cnfrm u got this ASAP
That done, you're back to the problem at hand: Any minute now, they're going to hole up in some warehouse or garage somewhere, and the chance of you tracking them down in a timely manner goes right out the window. You're making a guess based on general location, gut instinct, and the fact that they haven't shown back up on any of the cameras, but you think you can get to their destination—wherever it is—faster if you get off at the exit closest to Jersey.
You've narrowed down the search perimeter and cut down their lead, but there's something gnawing at you. Mostly, it's the exits they didn't take. If they were headed all the way up to this corner, then why get off at the second exit instead of the last? Can't be to pick something up en route, since they didn't even stop anywhere. If it's to spare Finch a little damage in the trunk, why not the first exit? What exactly are they playing at?
Are they talking it over, hashing out their game plan before they reach their destination? No. They didn't grab Finch on a whim. So it's planned, but they're, what, wasting time? Waiting for a third party to show up? Waiting to be told the exact meeting place?
Are these guys mercenaries, picking Finch up to deliver him to someone else? Possible. Likely, even. Lionel said that Finch had seemed surprised—even shocked—but was that a reaction to their faces (indicating that he knew them), or merely to the name Hornbill? If Finch knows them, who's the third party?
You rub your forehead, irritated by the lack of concrete data to work from. Figuring out connections on the fly was never your strong suit; that was Cole's job. Finch's job. The hand pointing you, pulling your trigger. But you're a field agent, and adaptability is just as much a part of the job description as being able to strip a rifle or bypass a security alarm.
So they might be meeting a third party. But if they're not, why the inefficient route? Why wouldn't you take—
A humorless grin tweaks up the side of your mouth. Ohio plates. They're new in town. They're used to one specific way of reaching their destination, and they haven't been around long enough to figure out the best way to get there.
It doesn't eliminate the chance of a third party, but the chances of them being mercenaries or bounty hunters just took a nosedive. A third party hiring mercenaries would likely choose agents already familiar with the area; if they were hiring out of state, it'd be to choose highly skilled agents, which these guys aren't. Taking their prey while he's standing next to someone—especially a cop. Knocking out a cop in broad daylight. Standing next to a dazed cop while threatening their victim—and letting the cop, potentially, get a good look at their faces and their car. You could tick off any number of amateur mistakes, including the out-of-state license plate.
Assuming, of course, that it's not a trap… and also assuming that you've tracked the right car.