Part One.

The room was buzzing with activity. Men and women in tuxes and dresses moved and chattered and drank, oblivious to what was really happening around them. A deal was going down somewhere in the large room full of laughter and dancing, with a piece of intelligence that could cause a lot of trouble if it fell into the wrong hands. There were plenty of people there to make sure that didn't happen, but numbers didn't always matter in these cases. Skill did, and Tom trusted no one's skills above the woman that stood at the bar, watching those around her with a careful eye and dressed for her part of the op in a long black dress that dipped low in the back, daring him to be distracted from the job at hand.

He touched her arm as he circled around, letting her know he was there before he spoke quietly with her. "So how pissed was Reddington when he heard that you guys were using Halcyon to follow the lead?"

Liz looked up at him, a bit of mischief flashing through her blue gaze as she sipped from the martini in her hand. "He's never going to be a fan of the two of us working together. Red never learned to share well. "

Her husband smirked and brushed a stray wisp of hair out of her face as an excuse to lean close so they wouldn't draw too much attention with their conversations. "What did you find?"

Her gaze swept the crowd and she set her drink down on the bar. "Private security littered through the crowd, high-end targets all through here. The intel could be a person or a thing. Hard to tell. Have you guys gotten any intelligence on who was hired?"

"Not until I did a sweep. You see the young woman in the blue dress at your two o'clock?"

"The blonde? She's pretty, even if a little young for you," Liz teased and Tom offered her his arm.

"Not my type," he assured her with a wink. "I'm rather partial to brunettes. A very particular one."

He saw her roll her eyes playfully. "Well, if you need to go get information, I'm sure I can always get the gentleman at the bar to buy me another drink."

"See, this is what happens when we leave the wedding rings at home."

"You coming home to me?"

"Definitely," he answered without missing a beat.

She tightened her grip on his arm. "Then I trust you."

Tom felt his smile turn real as they made their way towards the dance floor. He felt her hesitate and he turned. "What?"

"I've seen you dance, Tom. Not exactly your most reliable skill."

"Ouch," he grumbled, feigning insult. "To be fair, I was nervous at our wedding."

"Is that your excuse?"

"And I'm sticking with it."

His wife shook her head as she finally followed him out on the dance floor. She knew the drill, and as they moved he saw her gaze discreetly watching their mark whenever she came into her line of sight.

"Okay, Tom Bond and your hidden dance skills," Liz said as they shifted seamlessly so they could start moving closer, "why are you so sure it's her?"

"Tom Bond? Have you just been holding that one back?"

"You had to know it'd come back up eventually."

He snorted and rolled his eyes a little. "She's St Regis."

"What makes you say that?"

"Everything. My guess is that she's on her graduate assignment. Probably specialising in undercover ops. She's nervous, but she hides it really well."

"Too well. Her expression is too controlled," Liz mused.

"Exactly. A lot rides on these assignments."

"What happens if you fail it?"

"When Bud ran the organisation, a failed graduate assignment meant a bullet to the head. Not sure now, but I'd guess probably the same."

"What was your assignment?"

Tom's gaze shifted back to her and he blinked hard. "I've told you about that, haven't I?"

"Pretty sure you haven't," she answered in that tone that told him he wasn't squirming out of the answer that easily. Or at all.

"Funny. Well, remind me later. We have a graduate assignment to throw a kink into."

He started to move away and towards the girl, but Liz snagged his coat sleeve. "Tom, we're not just going to let this girl take a bullet are we? She looks like a kid."

"She's probably younger than she looks with the makeup. I was sixteen when I started my exam."

"Tom."

"Breathe, babe. I'm not planning to sacrifice the kid. Have some faith, would you?" He flashed her a smile. "You have my back?"

"You know I do," she answered softly, still not sounding entirely convinced.

He squeezed her hand before slipping off and towards the girl in the blue dress. She was eighteen, maybe nineteen, even if she had done an excellent job of making herself look older. It was a talent many St Regis operatives used early on to broaden their options. It presented an illusion, nothing more. The experience wasn't actually there, and the experience was what would have helped her here.

There were protocols in place that had been there since Bud had started St Regis. They were drilled into Tom's mind like a second nature, and they would be into hers as well. Whoever had taken over the organization after the Major's death would have needed to keep many things as steady as possible until he - or she, if Tom's suspicions were right - had won the trust of the operatives.

"Business or pleasure?" he asked casualty, jerking her attention around to him.

There was a beat of hesitation before an easy smile fell across her lips. "Bit of both," she answered, looking him up and down. "And you?"

"This one's always on business," a voice said from behind him, and Tom felt what he was pretty sure was a muzzle of a gun press against the small of his back.

A smirk tilted his lips as he placed the voice. "Gina."

"Jacob," she greeted coldly. "What are you doing here?"

"Conducting business. I was sent for the intel. Since when do you accompany graduates personally? Bit below your pay grade, isn't it?"

"You're not the client," she hissed in his ear, "so what the hell are you here for?"

"Maybe not, but-" his gaze drifted around - "your clients were gone the second they knew you recruit was made. She's not ready, Gina. What the hell are you doing sending her out to the field?"

"Don't you dare question my judgement, Phelps. You're the one that left."

He let his gaze drift. Liz wouldn't take a shot into the crowd unless she knew he was in danger, and as of right now, he had things mostly under control. He just hoped that she let him handle his end. A sigh escaped him. "Put the gun away, Gina. You and I both know you're not going to shoot me in the middle of a crowded room with armed security. You've lost your client, but you need this op to succeed or you wouldn't be here. Let me guess, she's your first personal recruit since you took over and things aren't going well. You need to produce another me or another you to keep the organization loyal."

"What do you want, Jacob?"

He glanced over to the girl who was desperately trying to hide her discomfort. "For us both to walk away happy. I was sent here for the intel. My employer wants it, and she's willing to pay for it. You know me well enough to know I'm leaving with it, so you can either sell it to me or I can take it and make you look like an idiot in front of every asshole in the organization. Your call."

There was a beat of hesitation before the telltale sign he'd won. Gina growled lowly and the pressure on his back let up. "Not here."

"Wouldn't dream of it. Lead the way."

"Tom? It's Aram," a voice came buzzing quietly through his comm in his ear. "Agent Keen fed me the intel about Zanetakos. We've run all her known aliases and there's a room in the hotel upstairs under one. 1528. She'll be there before you guys will, and if either of you give the signal, Ms Rowan is waiting as backup with a team."

Tom schooled his expression as he fell into step behind Gina, the young would-be graduate watching him carefully. "Are you really Jacob Phelps?" she asked after a long moment.

"Sometimes," Tom answered with a shrug.

She glanced ahead to Gina who wasn't bothering with their conversation as they wound around towards the back hallway. "Are the rumours true?"

"Depends on which ones you're referring to."

She swallowed hard, her mask cracking briefly. "That you were supposed to take over St Regis, but you killed McCready and married a fed instead. That you left."

"I didn't kill McCready," Tom answered and reached out to grab Gina by the arm. "Stairs."

She glanced back at him. "Don't you trust me?"

"Last two times I trusted you I nearly died, so no. Not really. Stairs."

Gina flashed him a flirtatious smile and bent down, peeling her heels off. "It's a ways up."

"I think you'll manage." He glanced back and rolled his eyes at the kid staring at them. "Yeah, that rumour is true too. Move, Gina."

"How's the ball and chain? I hear you two have been all over the place. Are you really working for Halcyon Aegis now?"

"Shouldn't you be putting your limited resources into something else other than keeping tabs on me?"

She turned, several stairs above him so that she was looking down, and her dark eyes flashed angrily. "I have full control over St Regis. McCready left it to me."

"Doesn't mean they've accepted it. You've been at this over two years, right? Almost three? Not running it quite like Bud?"

"Do you want me to shoot you and leave your body for them to find in the stairwell?"

"Do you want to get paid?"

Gina bristled and the rest of the climb was made in silence. They reached the fifteenth floor without another word and she glared as he pulled the door open for her, flashing her his most charming smile. It might not have been the smartest move to push Gina when she was so obviously close to a breaking point, but it wouldn't shove her over the edge.

They filed into the room and his former partner reached for her gun at the sight of Liz sitting in the chair and waiting on them. Tom moved, but he wasn't able to immediately pull the gun away. Gina got one good blow to his jaw in before he wrenched the weapon free and the recruit was already putting hers on the ground. What on earth had possessed Gina to put the girl up for her final tests?

"You son of a bitch," Gina growled and Tom aimed the newly acquired gun at her.

"We have plenty of backup, so let's make this as easy as possible. I'm sure you can imagine why I don't trust you, Gina, but I'm not going to screw you. I just don't like the idea of you being able to pull a gun on me or my wife."

"You're her?" the recruit managed, gaze turning to Liz.

Tom snorted before his wife could answer. "Gina, any other weapons need to go on the bed. Now. You too, recruit."

Liz was circling the bed, but still keeping her distance so she could switch her aim as she needed to. Gina eyed her for a moment and turned a look on Tom that he didn't like. "Need to make you work for it, handsome," she all but purred and he rolled his eyes hard.

"Seriously, Gina?"

She just smirked as he shot Liz a look begging her not to hold this over him as he checked the woman he used to sleep with for hidden weapons, surprisingly finding none. "What the hell is going on?" he asked as he straightened, catching her eye.

A sarcastic remark must have been ready to roll off her tongue, but she glared instead. "What do you care?"

"This isn't the way to keep it afloat, you know. If you try to run it and tank it, they'll kill you. You have to know that."

"If you were so worried about that you shouldn't have left," she snapped.

And there it was. Tom pulled out his cell and handed it over to her. "Halcyon's willing to pay for the intel. I'm not taking it from you, Gina."

"And handing it over to the feds leaves us where exactly?"

"What happens to it once we have it is on us, not St Regis."

Gina motioned and the recruit and she pulled the necklace she'd been wearing from her neck and tossed it over to Tom who caught it. He shot Gina a warning look before he started working at the pendant, opening it to reveal a chip.

"Check the bag against the wall and you'll find a machine to check-"

"We've got it covered," Liz cut her off and held her hand up for Tom to toss it over.

He did and leveled his own gun at Gina. "Don't make me shoot you."

"Thought you said you'd forgiven that."

He shrugged. "I'm not stupid enough to forget it. Just hold still while we verify it." He watched Liz slip the chip into a reader that would send the information over to a room where Aram and Dumont could view it. His gaze drifted over to the recruit and back to Gina, weighing his thoughts carefully. "Are you in trouble?" She snorted and he glared. "Five seconds put it aside."

"What do you care?"

"Tom, we're good," Liz said, and he knew that look. She was trying to pull him back on task, and he kicked himself. Gina wasn't his concern anymore. This was business. If she ran St Regis into the ground, that was her problem, not his. He'd already gone out of his way to play nice because Scottie didn't want to actively make an enemy out of the organization.

Gina handed him his phone back. "Good doing business with you," she said stiffly and didn't even bother trying to make him believe it.

For just a moment he thought he saw traces of the girl he had met when they were teenagers in her eyes, and his mind pulled the mental image of a thirteen-year-old Gina covered in dirt and grime from the streets, underfed, alone, and angry at the world. He pushed it aside hard and he and Liz left the hotel room to finish the op.

The last thing Liz had expected was to run into her husband's ex on the case the night before. It had gone well enough after everything was said and done, but her jaw still ached a little with the force she'd kept her mouth closed when Gina had steered the situation to him frisking her. It wasn't Tom's fault, necessarily, but she hadn't missed the distraction or the quietness from his end that followed after they left, or the fact that he had avoided talking about it when they had gotten in that night. It had been late, they both had been tired, and Agnes hadn't even stirred on the way home from the Coopers' house where Charlene had been watching her that evening. They had both been out the door first thing the next morning as well, so it hadn't left any time to talk, but plenty of time to think.

It wasn't that she was a jealous person, or even that she didn't have quite a few more partners that she'd been emotionally intimate with than he had, but Gina rubbed her last nerve raw. Tom had told Liz time and again that she was the first person he had ever loved, but there was still a connection to Gina, and it left her in a foul mood.

"Momma, I wanna go to the park."

Liz blinked out of her thoughts, realizing that she had been staring at the file in her lap for an unaccounted for amount of time and hadn't even heard Agnes' approach. The toddler looked up at her with wide, blue eyes, and she found herself smiling. "But your daddy's making dinner and then it's bedtime. This weekend, okay?"

"With Uncle Red?"

"Maybe. We'll ask." She glanced over, a half wall blocking her view of the kitchen. "Weren't you helping your dad make dinner?"

Agnes shrugged her shoulders in a way that was all Tom and Liz uncurled herself from her seat. She reached her hand out and took her daughter's. "Let's go see."

"Okay." She stopped, a funny little expression crossing her face like she was trying to decide if she wanted to say something or not. When the decision was made she look up, tugging a little on Liz's hand as if she were trying to make sure she had her attention. "Daddy smiles more when you do."

She looked down at their little one who had said it so matter-of-factly that it nearly made Liz laugh. She knew that children had a tendency to watch the adults in their lives carefully, but their daughter was quicker to pick up subtle hints than many adults that Liz knew, and often voiced them with the bluntness of her age. This, though, left her with the smile that Agnes must have been going for. "I bet if you give him a big smile he'll smile for you."

That brightened the little girl up. "Okay!" Agnes let go of her hand to run back into the kitchen, calling for her daddy the whole way. Liz rounded the corner in time to see Tom scoop her up and she wrapped her tiny arms around his neck. "Love you," she told him as she squeezed.

"Love you too, baby girl. You want to put the napkins in the table?"

"Plates?"

"Let's start with napkins," he encouraged and set her down to start her task. He turned back to Liz who had been standing and watching the interaction. He offered her a strained smile. "Hey."

Liz reached out, his hand readily fitting in hers and she pulled him into a kiss, everything that neither of them knew quite how to put into words filtering into it. When they parted she glanced over. "Sauce."

"Right," he managed and turned back to the pasta where his sauce was nearly boiling over. "Lizzie, about last night…"

"Let's talk after Agnes goes down for bed?"

"Are you angry?" he asked hesitantly.

"We're okay," she promised with a smile and move to the cabinets to grab plates. "We should talk, though."

Dinner was always an adventure with an almost three year old that loved to make her parents smile. She was a hoot most of the time, but getting her to settle down and eat could be a chore. It was easy for Liz to lose herself in those moments with her family that had nothing to do with the dangers she and Tom faced every time that they went to work. The questions about Reddington, about Scottie, and everything that had come crashing down around them faded with their daughter's laughter filling the room, and it put her at ease.

Between dinner, cleaning up the kitchen, and bath time it was nearly two hours later before Liz flopped back on their bed, feeling more exhausted than she should. She heard Tom lock the front door behind him as he came in from taking Hudson on his last walk before bed and she cracked an eye open as he entered the room. "I don't know if you've noticed, but we're raising a precocious little girl."

Her husband snorted. "Agnes? Never."

She smiled and closed her eyes again. The bed dipped down next to her as he joined and scooted close, pressing a kiss to her shoulder. "I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault. She just gets under my skin and…"

"She knows it. That's why she did what she did."

"Yeah… You were worried about her, weren't you?"

He hummed softly, not quite committing to it, and Liz turned so she could look at him. They laid there like that, across the bed horizontally, and watching each other for a long moment before he sighed. "I've known Gina for… a long time."

"You guys were fourteen, right?" she asked carefully.

He nodded. "She'd been through hell already and it was my job to find a way to bring her into St Regis. Most kids that came through the school, even if they wouldn't admit it, still wanted something to belong to, you know? We wouldn't have called it family, but something like that."

"It's a pretty base desire."

"Yeah, well not one Gina had," Tom chuckled. "Someone always wanted something from her and she wouldn't believe you if you told her you didn't, no matter how smooth."

"How'd you convince her?"

"I saved her life and then walked away. It was a gamble, and one Bud was ready to go at me over, but it paid off. She was waiting for us at the airstrip the next day. She and I… We've watched each other's backs since then."

Liz loosed a breath, watching her husband carefully. His gaze was distantly, like he was a million miles away. Carefully, she reached forward, her touch pulling him back. "It's not your fault, you know that right? She chose to stay."

"We were supposed to take over together when Bud died. She doesn't know how to run a school."

"Tom…"

"It's fine. It's not my problem."

She sighed, rolling and pushing herself up on her elbows. She leaned in, kissing him. "You're not responsible for her anymore, babe. You're not kids. You haven't been in a long time."

"I know."

"Easier said than accepted, I know," Liz acknowledged softly.

He swallowed hard and offered her a thin smile. "I love you."

"Love you too," she promised and kissed him again.

He pulled her in closer, his touch gentle even if a little desperate as his fingers tangled in her dark hair and she made a small sound of surprise as he rolled them over so she was flat on her back. Liz fell back against the bed, grinning at him. "Not so fast. You still have to tell me about your graduate assignment."

He groaned and she smiled, playfully kissing the tip of his nose before settling back for the serious conversation that was sure to follow. It never seemed to fail to make him nervous when she asked for a specific story from his past. He always told her, though, and trusted her to listen with the understanding that he had changed. That he was still changing and growing and figuring things out that people that had grown up in a more stable environment knew much younger. He was better than his past, and so was she. As she listened to his voice, soft and even, Liz reached out and took his hand, reminding him of that too.

TBC

Notes: I really didn't mean to start another story before I left on vacation. First I wasn't going to start writing one, then I just wasn't going to start posting it... you see how far I got with both of those. I'm three full chapters into this thing, it has a name, and so I'm posting the first chapter. I'll see what I can do about getting another chapter edited down for you guys while I'm gone, but I'll be hit and miss with internet connection for the next couple of weeks, so no promises. In other words, if you don't see another chapter in another week or two, don't stress. I haven't abandoned it. I know I'm usually much better about updates than that.

I'm getting to work with a lot of small theories in this story, which makes me absurdly excited. Hope you guys enjoy the ride! Maybe this one will take us up to the show?

Next time -

A visitor shows up at the Keens' apartment that drags them into a war that should no longer be theirs to fight.