Disclaimer: It's fanfic, meaning I don't own anything or make any money off of it. It's a labor of love. Please don't sue me.
This story is rated M. Apart from some language, there's nothing here that wouldn't pass muster on an episode of The Following. If you're old enough to watch the Following, you're old enough to read this. However, it is The Following, so bad things can happen. Expect possible violence, dark themes, angst, and a certain amount of general awfulness. No serial killers, FBI agents, or small furry animals were harmed in the making of this fanfic. And don't try anything you read here at home.
Hi gang. Absolute Elsewhere here. I always wanted to write a Christmas fic for The Following, but I wasn't really sure how I wanted to go about it. I also wanted to do a fic that took place around the time that Ryan and Gwen's son was born. And then it occurred to me that their child must have been born late in the year. Maybe during the Holiday season., depending on when the events of S3 took place. So I realized that something hopeful would be taking place at the same time as something sad. Mike, Max, and Gwen would be facing their first Christmas without Ryan. And suddenly I knew that I had to write a fic about it.
But as anyone who knows me can tell you, nothing can ever be that simple. It may be the season of Peace on Earth, but it's still the Following. And as you'll see, the bad guys don't take Christmas off.
A Kinder Light
"I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then."
- Lewis Carroll Alice in Wonderland
"Happiness is that which excites, and the only thing that excites is crime"
- The Marquis De Sade
"You are not your opinions. You are not their opinions either."
- John Michael Greer
Chapter One - I'll Be Home For Christmas
The young man sat in front of a heavy workbench, intent on the laptop in front of him. Next to the laptop sat a phone in a case splattered with iridescent red, green, and turquoise glitter. It didn't look like a guy's phone, because it wasn't. It belonged to the dead girl lying on the workbench across the room. The young man connected the phone to the laptop with a cable, and waited as the driver software installed.
His friend sat down next to him, a can of Red Bull in his hand. He shook his head, as if in disbelief. "Hey Kyle," he said, when his friend did not look up from the laptop.
"What?" the young man with the computer asked. "Not what you expected?"
"It's way better than I expected," his friend replied. But the look on his round, pale face was troubled.
"So what's wrong?"
"It stinks down here. I mean, she pissed herself and everything."
"Well, yeah. That tends to happen when people are being tortured to death. And of course you've got the burned meat smell from the hot iron we used. It's normal. Reality is all five senses."
"So you get used to it?"
Kyle thought for a moment before answering. "No. You don't really want to get used to it. You want to savor it. It's like proof of what you did. Of what you took. And look at it this way. You gotta break some eggs to make that omelette. So it has to be painful. Slow. And a burn is the most extensive injury the human body can sustain and still function. I told you things would change for you. For the better. You're like me now. A made man, so to speak. You'll never look at things the same way again. And this is just the beginning. There's a whole journey ahead of you, and you're just starting out."
"I guess so," the second man replied. He looked at man with the computer with a kind of longing, as if he felt conscious of his deficiencies. His companion wore jeans and an untucked gray shirt with one button undone too many. His shirt was untucked to present a casual appearance, not to hide a belly that overhung his belt, and it made the second man conscious that his baggy sweatshirt was there to conceal a bit too much fat and too many empty carbs. Kyle's angular face and neatly trimmed dark brown hair made him more conscious of his own disheveled sandy brown mop. Why couldn't he carry off a better look?
He set his Red Bull down on the table and looked over at the dead girl lying on the work bench. Next to her sat a propane torch in a stand, along with a screwdriver, a few other metal tools, and a thick asbestos glove. He looked at his watch. "We can't dump her for a few hours."
"I know," Kyle said. "Just relax. Nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything, and nobody's coming."
"You're sure? I can't believe you do this shit in your house."
"It's not really my house, you know. My Dad travels a lot on business, and he won't be back until tomorrow. And all of this will be cleaned up.
"The help never comes down here?"
"Never. Not even to clean. A little bleach and elbow grease and we'll be golden."
"And you're sure this is soundproofed?"
"Trust me."
"Why was it soundproofed?"
"The previous owners did it," Kyle explained. An impish grin appeared on his face. "Who knows? Maybe they were, like, serial killers and shit."
Red Bull gave a nervous laugh. "Wouldn't it be easier to move her if we cut her up?"
"Yeah, but we want her found in one piece. It's more dramatic that way. We need artistic, not gross. It's like..." He paused, searching for the right words. "We need to make a good impression."
"Because you only get one chance to make a first impression," the round faced man said, grinning
"Exactly," Kyle said, as he focused once more on the laptop. "We'll use that ladder over there for a stretcher, and clean it up with bleach after." He put his hand on the wireless computer mouse and began to move it around.
"You sure you wanna do this?" the second man asked. "Because once you do, it's gonna be on."
"That's the whole point," Kyle replied. "We have to make a splash. Cheer up, man. We're gonna be so famous."
"Yeah," his companion said thoughtfully.
"Remember, this carries over. Women are inherently attracted to dangerous guys. And you are now officially a killer. Truly, your life is about to change. For the better. Becoming dangerous transforms you. Now you can become their ultimate bad boy fantasy object."
"And for one of them, we become a target."
"Scared?" Kyle asked.
"No," second man replied. He paused for moment, and broke into a smile. "I'm actually kind of looking forward to it."
"Right." Kyle finished what he was doing and unhooked the girl's phone from his laptop. He handed the phone to his companion, who pressed the button on the side, and sat looking at the wallpaper, and nodded in approval. He handed the phone back to the first man. "There," he said. "All done. The game commences."
II
Gwen Carter put the finishing touches on the lunch she was preparing while light flurries drifted past the window and soft jazz played in the background. She'd thought about eating out, but with the remaining shopping days to Christmas relentless ticking down, the traffic would be miserable. Better to stay in and cook for her family, and that was how she had come to think of Max and Mike. They were family, and that family would be joined by her son in just a few days.
They'd helped her clean out and redecorate Ryan's old digs, which she'd kept after his death. She was going to need a larger place with an infant on the way, but some changes had been necessary. She was going to need a nursery, and they'd helped with that, and they had also helped with the Christmas decorations. These included an artificial tree with built in colored LEDs, and while there was no chimney to hang stockings by, the bookcase worked well enough. A tiny stocking for an unborn son was pinned between two larger ones for the late Ryan Hardy's niece and his best friend.
She heard the doorbell ring, and went to the peephole knowing who she'd see on the other side. From the look on Mike's face, she guessed she was about to hear good news.
By the time she got the door open, his look had gone from a half smile to an ear to ear grin. 'Come in," she said.
He stepped inside, and the moment the door was closed she hugged him. His jacket was still cold and damp from the weather outside.
"So how did your checkup go?" she asked, as he hung up his jacket.
"It's official. I go back on full duty at the end of January. I'm almost there."
"Congratulations. And I'm almost there too. He kicked a while ago. I think he's in even more of a hurry to get started than you are."
"Well, he'll get there first. Something smells good."
"Tomato basil soup," she explained. Homemade. And curried chicken salad. No alcohol for me, I'm having sparkling mineral water , but there's a Sauvignon Blanc if you want some."
"Mineral water is fine. I'll help you set the table."
"So are you going back to work this afternoon?" Gwen asked as they sat down to eat.
"No, I'm playing hooky for the rest of the day. Christmas shopping. Not that I have that much to do. This is great, by the way."
"Thank you."
"So how are you holding up?"
"You know how it is ," she said, with a faint smile. "In fact, you of all people know how it is. Christmas doesn't suck. It just seems a little lonely this year."
"For me," Mike said, "last Christmas did officially suck. There was no one. I spent last Christmas in a hotel room in Brussels. I just said bah humbug on the whole thing. That was a mistake. Dad wouldn't want me to stop living. And neither would Ryan. I've got Max. I've got you, and I'm going to have a Godson. So whatever happens, I'm not giving up. Ever. Facing things alone when I didn't have to just made it worse."
"Speaking of making things worse, the Joe room, as Max likes to call it, is now cleaned all the way out and it's a nursery. I'll show it to you later. So you don't need to hurt yourself trying to move furniture. Again."
"Please. Max already gave me ten different kinds of hell about that. I'm a lot better now and I'm finally going to get back out there."
"She's going to have mixed feelings about that. You don't exactly have a great track record for staying healthy on the job."
"That's going to change," he said. "Because I've changed."
"How is Max?"
"You know Max. She's tough."
"She is. But that's not an answer."
"She struggles with it. I warned her that the first Christmas would be rough. Sometimes she has trouble sleeping. She drinks a little more than she did. I mean, she doesn't get drunk or anything, but..." he let the thought trail off.
"But what?"
He paused for a moment, staring into his soup bowl as if it contained answers instead of soup. "She asked for one of Ryan's old cases. One he was working last year, back before Mark Gray resurfaced. It was an organized crime case. There were these mob guys who were leaning on stock market analysts to write bogus reports. .They could use that to manipulate the prices of certain stocks. Well, there were a couple of analysts who refused to play ball. One weekend, they went on a fishing trip together and never came back. It never got solved. Ryan wasn't the only agent on that case, but he was lead agent for a while. She asked Dan Shelby for the case, and he approved it. From what I hear, she and this guy she's working with now are close to breaking it."
"Who's she working with now?"
"A guy named Dennis Fuchida," he explained. "He's good. He transferred here from Denver back when we were hunting for Theo. If I can't be there, at least I know that someone's going to have her back. So maybe they're finally going to get these guys."
"So that's good, right?"
"Yeah, it is, except that I found out that she also went over Ryan's case notes from the Strauss investigation. Theo Noble, too. She's been...I don't know. Pulling at the loose ends from Ryan's old cases. Of course there's nothing to find. But she's got the idea that maybe there was some chance that Ryan...that he survived. And it's impossible. When I found out that she was checking out those old case files, I talked to her about it."
"What did she say?"
"That there were no bodies, and a lot of loose ends."
"But those cases are all closed, right?"
"Yeah, except for Lisa Campbell's murder, and that's a cold case at this point."***
"Have you talked to her?" Gwen asked.
"Yeah. She says she's OK, but I worry. I think she's still burning a candle in the window for Ryan. Do you think I should talk to her about seeing someone?"
"That first Christmas is hard," Gwen said. "You already knew that, and I'm finding it out. Give her a little more time. Be there for her."
"I will," Mike said. "I am. Of course it would be a lot easier if I could actually be there right now. This mob case she's working sounds interesting, and I think she's going to be the one who finally nails these guys."
III
Warfield Import Export was located in a row of run down brick buildings on a two lane street in Brooklyn less than a block from the East River. It was identified only by a small sign on the door. A larger sign on the roll up door next to it read NO PARKING IN DRIVEWAY. The windows on the roll up door were frosted over. The occupants, apparently, liked their privacy.
A slender fiftyish man, his head shaved and sporting a few days growth of salt and pepper stubble walked up to the door, opened it, and stepped inside. He found himself in a small waiting room dominated by a large and vacant desk. There were a few chairs, and table with some newspapers and magazines, but he remained standing, waiting for one of the secretaries to appear in the window on the back wall.
A few seconds later, a brunette in her early thirties with a pageboy appeared in the window. "Mr Kelso," she said. "Good to see you. He's in the office."
"Thanks Maggie," Kelso replied. He opened a door to his right and found himself in a short hallway. He knocked on a closed door on the right. "Come in," a voice said. He stepped inside and found himself in a large office. A heavyset man with a thick shock of gray hair wearing an expensive suit was half sitting, half leaning on the two acre desk at the back of the room. Two other men sat in easy chairs.
"Sit down," the gray haired man said. "Take a load off. Whiskey?"
"Always," Kelso replied with a smile. He took a seat in a vacant easy chair while the gray haired man produced a bottle of rye whiskey from a liquor cabinet behind the desk. He poured a double into a glass, and handed it to Kelso. "Straight up as always," he said, and resumed his place on the front edge of his expansive desk, next to his own glass of whiskey.
"Thanks, Vince," Kelso said, and took a generous sip of the whiskey.
"You've met Jake, haven't you?" Vince said to Kelso.
"Yeah," Kelso replied. "In Atlantic City."
"So how was St Kitts?" Jake asked.
"A hell of a lot warmer than this place," Kelso replied. He took a sip of his whiskey before continuing. "I think we've got things pretty much straightened out. There was a screwup with the invoices, and I had to arrange a bill of sight to show the customs people."
"How much did that set us back?" Jake asked.
"Not much. Fifteen thou. But I'm tired of this sort of crap. Louis is slack."
"That he is," Vince agreed. "I think we might need to start looking for a new guy to handle his end of things. Meanwhile, we've been talking things over here, and Benny here has a few ideas. He's been talking to a guy in securities. Works for a major brokerage. Excellent track record, they say. Benny thinks we might be able to work something out."
"Who does he work for?" Kelso asked.
"Stryker Mutual. Benny thinks he'll be reasonable."
"I'd like to meet him," Kelso said.
"You will," Jake replied. "We can set something up this week."
The office door opened, and Maggie entered, looking a little flustered. Behind her were two strangers. One was an Asian man with short hair wearing a light gray business suit and red tie with a dark overcoat, gray scarf, and leather gloves. The other was a slender brunette with shoulder length hair and striking blue eyes. She wore an olive pantsuit, a pale
blue dress shirt, and a black hooded trench coat.
"I' m sorry sir," Maggie said. 'They insisted. They're..."
The woman produced a wallet and opened it to reveal a badge. "I'm Special Agent Max Hardy ," she said. "This is Special Agent Dennis Fuchida. We're with the FBI. May we come in?"
"Did you remember to bring your search warrant?" Vince asked irritably.
The two agents looked guiltily at each other. "We uh...we don't actually have one." Dennis said.
"Then you need to get the fuck out," Vince said.
"What he means," Max explained, "is that we did have one. But we don't anymore. And that's why we need to come in."
"What the fuck?" Jake asked.
"You see," Dennis said, "we had a search warrant to do a wiretap on this office. So we planted a bug. But the problem is we didn't get anything. You see, when we do get a warrant for a wiretap, it's only good for a limited time. That's to keep us from violating your civil rights. Well, the warrant has run out, and the court says we have to remove the bug. That's why we're here. To get our bug back."
"It'll only take a minute.," Max added.
"You bugged my office?" Vince asked.
"Well, we had to," Max explained. "We were investigating you."
"For what?"
"Racketeering," she said. "Export import fraud. Extortion. Money laundering. Stuff like that."
"Where's the goddam bug?" Vince asked.
"In the ceiling," Dennis replied, pointing.
"Well get it out of here. Now." he turned to Kelso. "Can you believe this shit?"
"How did you plant it?" Jake asked.
"We did a black bag job," Max replied. She turned to Dennis. "Can you give me a leg up?"
"Sure," Dennis said. He stood beneath the spot on the ceiling he had pointed at, laced his fingers together, and held his hands at waist height.
Max produced a small flashlight from her pocket, put her foot in his hands and stepped up. She lifted a ceiling tile and searched for a moment with the flashlight. "I've got it," she said. She pulled out a small black plastic square that fit easily into her palm, and stepped back down. "Done," she said. "Sorry about all of this."
"We really appreciate this," Dennis said. "We're financially responsible for these."
"Now get out," Vince said.
"Wait a minute." One of the men, who had remained silent so far, got up from his chair. He was short, broad, and even in a suit looked powerfully built. He had sandy brown hair that was starting to thin. "Are you really Max Hardy?"
"I really am," she said.
"I met your uncle," the man said.
"Yeah?"
"Too bad what happened to him. I mean, he was an OK guy. Even if he did try to bust me."
"Thanks," she said, breaking into a smile. "I'm sure it wasn't personal," she said. "Just business."
The man gave a short laugh that sounded like someone trying to unstop a toilet. "Yeah," he said. "Business." He looked sheepishly at his companions. "Before you go," he asked, "can I have your autograph?"
"Sure."
The man looked around for something for Max to sign. Vince rolled his eyes and then got a memo pad off of his desk and handed it to the man. "Here," he said with disgust. "Fuckin' hell." He offered the memo pad to Max, who took it and pulled a ballpoint from the inside pocket of her suit jacket.
"Who's this for?" she asked.
"Benny," the man said.
"For Benny," Max said, as she wrote. "It wasn't personal, it was just business." She signed her name with a flourish, handed him the memo pad, and put away the pen.
"Thanks," Benny said. He looked at the memo pad appreciatively.
"Are we through?" Vince asked. "Because if we are, you need to leave. Now."
"We're going," Dennis said. "And thanks. We're really sorry about this." They left, and Max flashed a brief, thousand watt smile at Benny on the way out the door.
" Jesus shit," Vince said. "Can you believe this?"
"Well at least it's gone," Jake said.
"Vince shook his head in disgust. "That's not the point. They bugged my office. It's like a fucking police state."
"They said they didn't get anything," Benny pointed out.
"Well you got something, at least, " Jake said. "You got her autograph."
" You sure they didn't get anything?" Kelso asked.
Jake took a sip of the whiskey that had been sitting in a small lamp table near his chair. "They removed the bug didn't they?"
"Yeah," Kelso said. "But how long has that fuckin' thing been there?"
Benny stuck the memo pad into his pocket. "I don't know. They didn't say when they planted it."
"That's the point," Kelso replied. "They didn't say. I mean, was that thing there week before last?'
"What if it was?" Benny asked.
"Well wasn't that when you guys were talking about getting rid of Sam?" Kelso asked.
"He's right," Jake said. "It was a week ago Thursday, remember? We found out he was skimming the skim. So what did we actually cover?"
Vince grew thoughtful. "We were gonna have Bill and Charlie pick him up," he recalled. "And take him to the docks at Carlin Marine. They were gonna cave his skull in and weight him down."
"And they did," Benny said.
"But they said they didn't get nothing," Vince argued.
"So they planted the bug after," Benny said. "They must have."
"How long is a warrant like that good for anyway?" Jake asked. "Maybe we should ask George. He's a lawyer, he'd know."
"It's probably not good for more than a few days," Kelso said. "I mean, if they didn't get anything, it must have been put there after, right?"
"Shit," Vince said. "We gotta stop planning rubouts in my office."
IV
The unmarked FBI surveillance van sat parked a block away, its motor off to avoid attracting attention. In the back, Max and Dennis sat listening to the men argue. Two other agents, John DiPaulo and Gary Burnworth, sat in front.
Dennis shook his head slowly, in apparent disbelief. On the speakers, Vince was explaining that there was no way the bug could have been there last month, since if had been they would already have been arrested for putting Al's body in that fucking Lincoln and compacting it. "Why can't it always be this easy?" Dennis asked.
"It wasn't all that easy," Max pointed out. "I mean, we did have to do the break in."
"Yeah," Dennis replied. "We do pretty good cat burglar.."
"We do," Max agreed. " It's good to know we've got something to fall back on if the Bureau ever chucks us out.." She paused to listen to Jake remind Benny that they'd talked about that manifest that Louis had dummied up last Friday, and the time they'd talked about having Ernie's's fucking arm broken. "And I was right that they'd fall for it and not check for a second bug," She added.
"You were."
"Which means you're buying the first round tonight."
"I'm buying the first tonight," Dennis agreed. "But it was so worth it."
"We gonna take 'em now?" John asked from the front seat.
"No," Max replied. "Orders from Shelby. We'll do it later, because we're not supposed to get Kelso. Since he's an informant he'll quote unquote elude capture and disappear into witness protection. They're gonna work up a new identity for him, and I'll be delivering that to him before the actual bust. "
"Didn't Ryan work with Kelso at one point?" Dennis asked.
"Yeah," she said. "He was working an organized crime case when I first reported here from Quantico. That guy Benny was a suspect in the murder of a couple of stock analysts. But they were never able to nail him."
"So you're gonna clear one of his old cases finally," Dennis said. "He'd be proud of you."
"Well I did have a little help. " She sat silent for a moment, remembering. "Yeah. I think maybe he would be ."
V
Kelso drove slowly down a narrow one way street in Brooklyn, making his way carefully through the heavy traffic. Making allowances for the cars parked down the right hand side of the street, the road here was basically one lane. On the left side of the road was a five story office building, on the right a coffee shop, and next to it, a locksmith. He could see the man he was here to meet coming out of the coffee shop. Into the light snow that was falling outside.
Kelso slowed to a stop and rolled the window part way down as the man stepped to the curb. "Get in," he said.
The man did, Kelso resumed his slow progress down the crowded street. "So you're back in town," he said to his passenger.
Ryan Hardy smiled. "Like the song says, I'll be home for Christmas."
VI
The Criminal Division had staked a long standing claim on a warren of small offices and cubicles down the hall from the Command Center. Max made her way from the break room, a cup of coffee in her hand. On her way back to her desk, she passed the copy machines, where someone
had set up an artificial Christmas tree.
It was a cheap affair that bore little resemblance to bigger and much fuller tree that had been depicted on the box. The label had claimed it was four and half feet high. It might barely have cleared four. If Charlie Brown had gotten an artificial tree, Max thought, it would have looked just like this. It was lit with tiny permanent white lights, their electrical cords not hidden by the sparse green plastic boughs. A few colored balls hung from the branches. As she walked past, she noticed something else hanging from the branches as well. Something black in color. She paused, and looked more closely.
A black plastic bat hung from one of the tree's limbs. She did a double take and then examined it more closely. As she did, she noticed another, and then a third.
She shook her head in amazement and continued on her way. She stepped into the open office she shared with Dennis, John, Gary, Mike, and another agent named Jermain Waller. Dennis, John, and Gary were beavering away at paperwork. Jermain was out in the field, she wasn't sure exactly where, and Mike of course was gone for the day.
Three corner desks were placed down each side of the room. She and Dennis had adjacent desks on one side of the room, while Mike had the third desk on that side. Their chairs were placed so that she and Mike faced each other much of the time. John Gary, and Jermain had the opposite side of the room.
"There are bats," she announced. "In our Christmas tree."
In answer, Gary pointed wordlessly at Dennis, and then turned back to his computer screen. "I bought them back during Halloween," Dennis explained. "They're Christmas bats."
"Christmas bats?" she asked.
"Yeah. You don't know about the Christmas bats?"
"No, I don't. Tell me about the Christmas bats."
"Well," Dennis began, "most people think that Santa uses Rudolph to find his way in bad weather. But that's actually a myth. Santa uses Rudolph every year, but that's for air traffic safety. SO he doesn't get sucked up in the jet intake of a 747. You see, that red nose doesn't really provide enough light to navigate by. So in bad weather, Santa uses the Christmas bats. Because the bats have echo ranging."
She laughed out loud. "I work with a crazy person."
The phone on her desk buzzed for attention, and she picked it up. "Max Hardy."
"Come down to the Command Center. Bring Weston and Fuchida with you." She recognized the voice of her boss, Dan Shelby. He'd been brought in to replace Gina Mendez after Nick Donovan had gone back to Washington.
"Mike's gone for the day, sir," she replied. "He has a medical checkup. But Dennis is here."
"Well the two of you then."
"Yes sir."
VII
Dan Shelby was a rangy, fiftyish man with brown hair starting to show a hint of gray and glasses that made him look a bit like Clark Kent. Of course Clark Kent didn't have slightly crooked nose from a savage beating administered by a biker gang when he was working undercover in West Texas. He was looking over the shoulder of an olive skinned young woman at her computer monitor., which showed surveillance footage of Kelso walking into Warfield Import Export this morning. "Good job this morning," he said. "Now I got another one for you." He turned to the woman at the computer. "Show 'em"
The picture on the monitor changed to a woman in her early twenties with shoulder length blonde hair.
"We got a call from the Sheriff's Department in Picton County Connecticut," Shelby said, "requesting our help with a case. This is Melissa Canning.. She was a student at Marston University in New York. Early this morning, she was found dead in the woods near Magena Reservoir Since that's across state lines, it puts the Bureau on the playing field."
"Why us?" Dennis asked. "I mean, yeah, it's Federal, but it's also Connecticut Why not send someone from the Hartford Field Office? It's Connecticut, it's their turf."
"Because," Shelby replied, "The job sort of got addressed to us. Someone dumped her phone along with her body. There was a picture on it. Show 'em"
The woman clicked the mouse and the picture on the monitor changed. In place of Melissa Canning was a picture of a slender brunette with blue eyes. A CNN logo in the corner of the picture identified it as a screen grab. Across the lower part of the picture was a news crawl talking about an air strike in the Middle East. But Max and Dennis were instead focused on the words above it, which had clearly been added by whoever had done the screen grab. THIS IS NOT RESURRECTION, MAX. THIS IS YOUR LEGACY
"That was taken right after Ryan died," Max said. "I got interviewed on one of the talk shows."
"Looks like you got a fan somewhere," Shelby said. "Any idea what that might be?" he pointed at the screen. At the very bottom, below Max's picture and the message about her legacy were the letters EMHN.
"I don't know," she replied.
"You ever see that when you were working the Joe Caroll or Lily Gray cases?" Shelby asked.
"Never," she said.
"Well, you gotta figure it out. Because I don't think whoever did this is finished. Start packing."
"Yes sir," Max and Dennis said in unison.
Shelby turned and walked off in the direction of his office. "So we're going on a road trip," Dennis said.
Max stared at the picture of her on the screen for a moment before replying. "Yeah. I hear Connecticut's lovely this time of year."
Musical Interlude - The Devil's Back by The Pretty Reckless.
=================== Chapter Notes ===============
*It seems totally inconceivable to me that Mike and Ryan wouldn't have kept in touch at all for a whole year. (Which becomes a plot point in my fic The Hunting Of Men). If they were in touch at all, it follows logically that the subject of Max would have come up at some point, and Ryan would have told Mike that she was seeing someone. In The Hunting Of Men, I have Max and Tom meeting in mid September of 2014, shortly after Max graduated from the FBI Academy and reported to work in the New York City Field Office. They may not have been seriously involved that entire time, but I'm assuming that they were by Christmas of 2014, and that Mike would have learned of it from Ryan. None of this is canon, but it seems a reasonable assumption.
** I did some research trying to estimate Mike's recovery time. Having him on limited duty in December may seem excessive, but given the extent and severity of his wounds it seems possible. Infection, in particular, will slow recovery time, and it's canon that he suffered an infection. There was also the possibility of postoperative infection that could have occurred after the series finale. Post op infections are a serious problem in hospitals these days, and they can be drug resistant. A good friend of mine got one that was literally life changing.
*** Readers of Terudom will recall me discussing this topic. We were never told the cause of Lisa Campbell's death, but she wasn't on life support and was well enough to carry on a conversation. It seems unlikely that Ryan could have concealed the fact that she was murdered. This wouldn't in itself cause the FBI to suspect that Ryan was alive. The world is full of crazy people, and as an FBI agent, she could have had enemies.
I used Google maps extensively in writing this fic. The places described are often real places, or close approximations of such, but place names have usually been altered.
The FBI has divisions that specialize in different types of cases. The Criminal Investigative Division is self explanatory. There are also divisions responsible for counterintelligence, counterterrorism, and cyber crime, among others.
16
