Author's Note: Hey guys, I'm back.
After like, a 5 year break.
Anyhow, this is written AFTER Number Crunch but BEFORE ...whatever episode comes after that. Sorry it took so long to get up. I'm a slow writer.
Hope you enjoy,
Phoenix
He had told her she wasn't alone.
It is a lie.
One month ago, it was not a lie. And now today, exactly one month later as of 10:54 PM, it is a lie. She finally accepts that she will no longer be receiving cryptic phone calls or be seeing dark shadows following her. She knew he was dead the time she saw the bullets soar through the air and create crimson art across her vigilante's abdomen and leg. But she never really accepted it.
She knows he is dead. She knows exactly where he was shot and she heard the sickening splash of blood at the car, as he and the Little Guy paused on her demands. She saw the blood spatters in the stairwell and she saw the beginning stages of someone who is going into shock.
And what does she do to repay his help and the life debt she now owes him?
She kills him.
Mark Snow was furious that night, that night exactly a month ago. But now he shows up in her office, a pleased and content look on his rat face.
She wants to put two bullets in him: one through the lower part of his lung, where surely her vigilante—John, she now knows him as—was hit, and another in his thigh, exactly where his femoral artery is. So either way, he will suffocate to death (through the puncture in his lungs) or he will bleed out do death. So either way, Snow feels the exact pain John felt moments before his death.
Snow calls her into a private room.
Fusco gives her a concerned look, and watches her as she leaves.
Snow speaks first, "Please, take a seat, Detective."
She knows her lip curls at his tone. "I'd rather not."
He narrows his eyes. "I must insist."
They are at a standoff.
It is then that she realizes he is a sadist. A power-hungry sadist. He likes being in control. And he likes to cause pain—emotional, psychological, and physical. That's why he aimed to injure, rather than to kill. And that is what has been bothering her all these days: if they wanted John dead, why not shoot for a kill shot that would have put him down right then and there? A kill shot that would have stopped his heart or put a bullet in his head? And that is why Mark Snow is personally here to deliver information: he wants her reaction, and he wants to cause her psychological and emotional pain.
Well, she's not going to give it to him.
"You'll be pleased to know that John is dead," he says triumphantly as she acquiesces and takes a seat. "We found his body and made a positive ID."
She doesn't answer or ask the many questions in her mind.
"Do you have paperwork for me?" She asks stoically. "Because I have cases I need to work on. I do not need information I already know."
He raises an eyebrow and pounces on the bait she foolishly left hanging from her hand. "You already know this, do you?"
She is momentarily flustered and he gazes at her intently. "Well, yes," she answers quickly. "I haven't gotten any cryptic phone calls nor has he been showing up at my crime scenes. And there's been a mysterious lack of my suspects being neatly tied up waiting for me."
She stares back at him, challenging him to continue questioning her. But he doesn't. Instead, he goes into his briefcase and pulls out files:
"TERMINATION OF OPERATION ACHILLES IV," it reads, with the CIA emblem printed in embossed silver.
"We just need you to sign on the 'witness' line," he says conversationally. "And sign the waiver allowing your statement to be included in the file."
Operation Achilles IV? She mulls over that in her mind as she numbly signs "Jocelyn Carter" in the two lines he'd indicated.
He continues talking, "On the behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency, we thank you for your cooperation in the termination of one rogue agent, known as John," he continues, neglecting to say his last name, and instead saying something about her assistance in the case as helping save countless innocent lives.
She stands up and cuts him off. "Is that all?" She asks harshly. Without waiting for a reply, she leaves.
Detective Carter likes to characterize people she knows in terms of animals. She likes to think of herself as a raven: intelligent, dangerous, and sociable. Her son, Taylor, right now is like a young coyote: curious and smart and cunning, but still gangly and stupid at times. Mark Snow, on the other hand, she thinks of as a blue jay: a species of bird that some admire because of their charisma, but once you get to know a blue jay, you will know that they are a species of bird that will shamelessly kill other birds and eat the eggs of other birds.
Quite despicable, but quite true.
And she had always thought of her vigilante, John, as a wolf, or maybe like a black panther. Some animal that is a bit of a loner. So yes, a panther, because wolves are pack animals and she knows John isn't sociable. Panthers, on the other hand, keep to the dark and watch, observe, and then pounce.
Too bad she was the foolish native guide that lead the poachers straight to their trophy kill in the concrete jungle of Manhattan.
Fusco looks back up at her. "What did la cia want?"
"My signature," she sighs quietly. "It's confirmed," she says louder, raising her head, her fingers to her temples. She meets Fusco's gaze. "My vigilante—John, I don't even know his last name—is dead."
Fusco looks taken aback. Surprised. "Really?" He asks, someone shocked. "I thought he was invincible. He sure acted like it."
"Yeah, well, so did Achilles," she answers quietly, picking her coat up. "At least, until someone exposed his Achilles Heel for him."
She leaves the office.
The days pass by in a blur. No cryptic phone calls, no helpful hints, no reports of a man in a suit at her crime scenes. It dawns on her that she might want to start wearing her bulletproof vest again. If he is gone, that means no one is keeping Elias in check. And Elias might want to make another attempt on her life again.
But then she realizes, she would relish the pain of a bullet passing through her body. She would love to feel the pain he did, that pain she caused him. But she remembers Taylor, and ultimately decides to wear her Kevlar again.
She is walking uptown, back to her apartment one night. She is no longer keeping track of the days, but is keeping track of the number of cases she is solving.
It is surprisingly high, compared to the numbers before the vigilante's death. (She still can't rationalize 'John' with 'the vigilante'. It doesn't sound right to her.)
She hears her phone ring, and answers numbly. "Carter."
"Detective," the other side answers—a man. "I want you to hear something."
She freezes. "Who is this?" she demands. But is greeted with silence.
"Mom?"
Ice courses through her veins. "Taylor? Taylor!"
"Mom, don't—"
The man's voice replaces Taylor's and her hand flies to her gun.
"I'm sending you GPS coordinates, Detective," he says smoothly, "Involve no one else. I will know if you do. You have thirty minutes."
The phone is silent.
And she knows immediately, that this is Elias. She doesn't think—she acts immediately. She calls a cab and plugs in the GPS coordinates into her iPhone, that was sent to her by a restricted number. She numbly instructs the cab driver to stop a block before the exact coordinates given to her. She is repeating one phrase in her mind: Save Taylor, save Taylor, save Taylor…
And she walks the rest of the way. No one is going to save her this time, no one is going to protect her and no one will be there to shoot her killer this time.
The best she can hope for is for Taylor to walk away unscathed. The best she can hope for…
Her phone rings again. "What do you want?"
"Walk towards the warehouse," the man, Elias, directs smoothly. "Stop approximately 20 feet in front of it."
"Let Taylor go and I will," she answers defiantly.
"Do what I say and I will," he fires back. "Or I can shoot him right now."
She numbly follows his instructions.
She stops, mentally counting the feel from the entrance to the warehouse. Four men emerge.
Charlie Burton is the first, flanked by two men holding her boy between them. He is handcuffed and he shouts when he sees her, "Mom!"
"Let him go," Carter demands loudly. "Let him go and I'll give you what you want."
He smirks at her. "That's not how it works, Detective," he says smoothly. "I just have one question for you to confirm—is John dead?"
So he knows John too. She has two options: lie, and bluff and threaten, or tell the truth, and risk death.
Taylor is tense and trying to look brave, and she opens her mouth to give an answer, when Elias' phone rings.
He frowns at it as he looks down, and answers, "You better have a good reason for interrupting me, darling."
Darling? So he does have some sort of weakness. There's a broad involved in all this. She watches him carefully, debating whether or not to draw her weapon and take a chance at shooting—but she knows that a risk like that would still result in Taylor's death. And she cannot risk that, no matter what.
Elias' demeanor suddenly changes from annoyed to furious as he answers, "Prove it."
As though in reply, there is a loud blast and there is now a hole through Elias' pant leg. Precision. It didn't actually hit Elias, but rather, went through the fabric on the side.
Elias is snarling as he whips his head toward the direction of the gunshot. Carter wishes she knew what was happening, but even she is stunned at the turn of events. She has a suspicion, but it's not plausible.
"Let her go," Elias says suddenly as he turns to the warehouse rooftop behind Carter. "A trade," he says. "I let the kid go, you let Cora go." A pause. "No. One or the other; the kid or your pet cop."
Carter turns slightly to glance over her shoulder in the direction of Elias' furious gaze to see two figures on the roof. The taller one, a man, is holding a gun to the smaller one, a woman. Across the man's chest she can see the clear outline of a sniper rifle.
Her heart skips a beat.
Elias is visibly antagonized now. "Fine," he spits, and orders his men to release Taylor. He runs to her and she embraces him, choosing to draw her gun now that there is no threat to Taylor.
"You win, this time, Detective," he spits at her. And suddenly, like that, Elias and his men melt away into the shadows. She turns, her gun drawn and cocked, Taylor behind her—and glances back up at the warehouse, but both figures are gone.
"C'mon, Taylor," she says urgently, "We're getting out of here."
She knows for the time being she will be safe, with that benign dark shadow watching her every footstep, but still, doesn't risk it as she calls Fusco to pick her up.
She is starting to feel more emotion as she considers what happened. She may not be responsible for the vigilante's death. Her joy is more palpable, the pain more hurtful. And for once, she feels less guilty.
Although she is starting to get impatient, waiting for him to contact her. She waits restlessly by her office phone, and finds herself whipping around suddenly in the streets to catch him. Of course, he's never there.
Still, she waits.
For the time being, however, she sent Taylor to stay at his grandmother's house. She doesn't want him caught in the crossfire and after the scare he suffered from Elias' men, he agrees to stay there, although he is increasingly nervous for her own safety. He has many questions about that night, but she refuses to answer them until she gets clearer answers.
So, she waits.
It doesn't take long. 72 hours pass before he contacts her. In a rather startling way, too.
She unlocks the door to her apartment and steps through the threshold, hanging her coat up neatly on the coat rack and kicking off the heels she had been wearing all day at the office. She drops her purse and files on the sofa before heading down the dark hall to her bedroom.
She passes her office first on the right of the hallway, and immediately senses him emerge behind her. Instinctively, her right hand grips her sidearm—a Ruger- and begins to withdraw it—but he is fast and already has her forearm in a vicelike grip. Again, instinctively, she counteracts with her left hand and brings it up to break his nose—but he hooks his left arm around hers and brings it down, then shoves her forward, so she is pressed against the wall firmly. It doesn't hurt, but it does immobilize her.
She is tense and breathes heavily, trying to regain her bearings.
"You know, Joss," he says softly, close to her ear. "I don't fancy getting shot again, nor do I fancy the idea of getting a nosebleed."
She forces herself to calm down, caught in his arms quite literally. She breathes heavily, more startled by the body contact he was making with her: his chest is pressed right up against her back, and she could feel his leg hooked around her left one to keep her immobile. If this was anyone else, she would have been fighting to the end—no way would some strange man manhandle her like that!—but she knew that there was no way she could beat him even in a fair fight, and she also knew that, more importantly, he wasn't going to harm her. He slowly lets go of her arms and she turns around. She feels his hand brush against her hip and the weight of her firearm is no longer resting on her waist. There's a click as he ejects the magazine and tosses it across the hall. She ignores the clack! it makes when it makes contact against her hardwood floor.
He gazes down at her in the dim light of the hallway as she sizes him up.
"You aren't dead," she states.
He cocks an eyebrow. "Well noted." He hands her weapon back to her. She numbly accepts it.
She shakes her head vigorously and then pushes past him back into her living room and kitchen area. He stands to the side, and then follows her, a dark shadow.
She goes straight to the kitchen area and pours herself a glass of red wine, offering him a glass as well. He graciously accepts the offer, and then she leads him to the living room.
She observes him as he walks. He is not limping, and he does not act like he is in pain. His grey-blue eyes are steady on her dark brown ones as he takes a sip of the red wine.
"I'm quite surprised you aren't trying to arrest me, Joss," he says softly, setting the glass down on the coffee table between them.
"I'm quite surprised you aren't dead," she shoots back, almost in a furious tone. "I don't get it, John—if that is your real name—how did you survive that? Snow even told me they had your body!"
He leans back and waves his hand flippantly. "They have a body that was in a terrible car fire up in LBI, that I planted with my DNA. As for how I survived it, there are many people who owe me life debts. I chose to utilize those a month ago."
"I still don't understand, John. What is it that you do? Why do these people owe you life debts?" She is confused.
He tilts his head slightly, and blinks twice before answering, "I receive intel on people who may be involved in murders. I do my best to either prevent a killing or to direct police to arrest the person responsible."
"Where do you get this intel?" She is fascinated at this point, and suddenly, she realizes that she doesn't want to arrest him. She just wants to listen to him.
"Various sources," he answers vaguely. "I cannot give you any additional information past that."
"Okay, fine," she says, recognizing that he won't. "Will you at least tell me how you knew immediately that I was in danger, that Taylor was?"
He leans forward and smirks, before sticking his hand into his suit pants pocket and pulling out an iPhone. "I cloned your phone."
"You did what?" She is stunned. "John, that's illegal!"
He shrugs, his eyes glittering with laughter. "So is my vigilante work. So is being in possession of a grenade launcher. So is shooting multiple people. So is entering an NYPD detective's home without her permission. And besides, would you rather I not be watching out for you?"
Carter rubs her temples, and picks up the glass of wine again. "I don't understand," she says softly. "Why are you following me? Why are you so interested in me? If I didn't know you weren't going to hurt me—something I'm still not so sure about—" he looks genuinely offended at this remark, but she continues, "I would think you are stalking me."
"I'm not going to hurt you," he repeats, but doesn't answer her other statement.
"So then, why are you following me?"
He leans forward, his eyes trained on her. "You intrigue me."
"Stalker," she mutters under her breath, breaking his very direct gaze. He doesn't give any indication that he heard her, although she knows he must have.
She stands up with her empty wine glass and picks his up as well, and places both gently in the sink. She sighs, breathing deeply, trying to decide her next course of action. Arrest him? Call for back up? Invite him to stay the night?
She is very tempted to resort to the last option. Seeing him in decent light, without blood and sweat drenching every pore of his body makes her realize that he is quite attractive.
She turns away from the sink, to find that John had followed her into the kitchen and had somehow taken her Ruger from her holster. Again. She didn't even feel it. She passes by him to get to her kitchen table: a modest little light pinewood table, seeing as it's only her and Taylor that live in the apartment. She realizes suddenly how comfortable she is with him in her home as she unbuckles her belt and relieves her waist of the pressure of carrying the gun, holster, handcuffs, pepper spray, etc…. She doesn't make any attempt to stop him or get the weapon back from him.
"Impressive piece," he says casually, as if chatting about sidearms was regular every day talk to him. It probably is. "I'm surprised you use a Ruger. I made you out for a Beretta kind of cop."
She shrugs. "Berettas are nice, but my father trained me with a Ruger when target shooting. In the military I used a Smith & Wesson but after that, I went back to a Ruger because I like the feel of it in my hands. They are more reliable."
He flips it in his hands and offers her the handle. She hesitates a moment before accepting it, then takes it to lock into her gun cabinet in her room.
"Wait here," she orders him. "I'm just going to lock this up in my room."
He raises an eyebrow at her and smirks. "Nothing I haven't already seen before."
"You—what?" Then she remembers, he was in her apartment before she even arrived home. "You went through my room?"
Her hand twitches on the Ruger, as though she briefly considers shooting him. She expects him to back up and apologize, but instead he takes a step closer to her—and says, "I prefer to know the people who are trying to get me killed."
She doesn't like the way he is looking at her. His gaze is so direct, he doesn't stop watching her. She ducks away from him, choosing not to pursue the topic of him being in her room. She would actually prefer not to know the details.
"Yeah, sorry about that, John," she answers wearily. "I didn't expect them to open fire."
Unsurprisingly, he follows her again, his soft footsteps similar to the panther she had pictured him as. "Speaking of," she continues conversationally, "How are you, anyways? Bullet-hole wise, I mean."
"Your friend Mark Snow and his sniper pal gave me two new scars to show off," he answers. "Numbers nineteen and twenty. Still some soreness. But it takes a lot to kill me. Can't quite bend over entirely, but my leg is fine. I was in a wheelchair for a week, crutches for another week, and now I'm almost able to go back to my job."
Nineteen and twenty? He's been shot twenty times total? Carter is shocked, but she tries not to let it show. He stops at the threshold to her room as she enters and opens the safe, then slides her handgun in.
He leans against the frame of the door, one foot slightly inside her room. She analyzes the implications of him even watching her move about in her bedroom, and immediately shuts him out.
"Get out, John," she says, but she is smiling as she approaches him and puts her hands on his chest, pushing him away from her bedroom. He obediently backs up, although she knows he could easily subdue her. His eyes are dancing with laughter.
"Another question," she begins as she leads him out of the hallway and back into the living room. "What is your real name?"
He laughs softly. "You're not going to get that out of me. You already know I go by John. That's enough for now."
"No, John, it's not!" she says angrily. "I don't know enough about you. Somehow, it seems like you know everything about me, and I still have no clue about your identity."
He turns his back on her—the first time he's done so, she notices, and walks to the door.
He's leaving, she realizes suddenly. No!
"Wait!" she calls. He stops, his hand hovering on the doorknob. "You're leaving?"
He turns around and faces her, steely blue eyes locked on her brown ones. "I've overstayed my welcome. When you start asking personal questions, I leave."
"But I—will I see you again?" She doesn't mean it to sound pleading, but to her surprise, it does. She wishes she could take back that question, but it's too late.
He smirks. "Jocelyn Carterrr—" he is practically purring, she realizes. Her breath hitches at the implications. "You want to see me again? I would think you would demand I disable my phone, refrain from monitoring you, and breaking into your home."
"I—" She pauses, confused. "You're monitoring me?"
"Whenever someone gets involved with me, it's a given that their life will be in danger. That is why, to my parents, my sisters and my brother I am dead. To my former fiancee, I am dead. I was intending on staying dead to you, too, after Snow took the shot at me, but I knew I had to do something to save you and Taylor. I wasn't going to sit by and watch Elias kill a fourteen year old boy's mother, not after he had already lost his father. Oh, and also—do you still plan on trying to arrest me, or have you decided that it is a fruitless endeavor?"
"I…" she thinks this over. "I can't arrest someone who is dead in the eyes of the United States," she finally says. "But…but if I do see you while I am on patrol, I will try to arrest you. When I'm off duty though… I am no longer representing the interests of the United States. Sound…sound fair?"
He laughs softly, "You really do want to see me again, don't you, Jos." It's not a question. It's a definitive statement, a declaration. She doesn't try to deny it. What's the point, anyways? She does want to see him again. She does want his advice and his counsel, she wants him back in her life. His cryptic demeanor and his unpredictability was reassuring from a professional standpoint. From a personal standpoint, she's also relieved he is back in her life and that he is watching over Taylor for her. And watching over her, as much as she tells herself that she doesn't need his protection.
So she replies simply, "You fascinate me too. Or rather, you intrigue me."
His eyes flicker, and he opens the door before leaving her with a last warning: "Also, Joss, the CIA is monitoring your phone calls, email and even the security footage in your office. I've seen some people tailing you. They are afraid that I might not actually be dead, and reach out to you. Just something to keep in mind."
And then he's gone.
Read and Review! Part II to be updated February 25, but if I receive 10 reviews before then, it will be updated then. (Part II already finished and editted.)