First Shot

By Badgergater

A missing scene for S1, Episode 5, Judgment

Missing scene; after the boy is kidnapped… and before John storms out of the library

Author's Note: A special thank you gift for Corine… my first POI fic. Thanks, Corine for the beta.

In just these few short weeks he'd been working with John Reese, Harold Finch had already spent countless hours listening over the comm link to his employee's activities. Harold had quickly learned to recognize the many unspoken clues to the unseen action Mr. Reese was involved in: John's calm and unruffled tone while on a stakeout, when the man could be unbelievably silent; the sarcastic mocking tone when Reese was annoyed, or bored; the tightness that crept into the low voice when things were happening. No agitation, no panic, always calm, cool, professional, at least on the surface, although Harold knew the man might be seething behind the calm facade.

Most of all, though, Finch had learned to recognize the unique sounds of violence. The thud of fist against flesh, the thump of a body thrown against something, the crash of breaking glass, the rolling thunder of gunfire, the gasp of a human in pain, those were all unmistakable over the wireless link, even without any accompanying visuals.

This time, this fight, there was a sound Harold couldn't immediately classify. Amid the noises of a clearly vicious hand-to-hand battle the computer genius could all too easily visualize, including the sharp crack of breaking glass, there was suddenly an entirely new sound. It vaguely resembled a gunshot, but it was duller in pitch, softer, more pfft than the deafening sharp crack of gunfire that still made the computer genius jump, even though he knew he was far from whatever was happening.

And then, while he was still puzzling over it, the man in the library heard screeching tires and the unmistakable sound of a car racing away. An ominous silence followed, one that set Harold's blood pressure soaring and his heart racing.

Something had clearly gone wrong.

"Mr Reese?" No answer, no sounds. Harold's heart rate ramped up another notch. "Mr. Reese!"

The next identifiable sound was, amidst harsh breathing, definitely a mostly but not entirely suppressed groan of pain.

"Mr. Reese?" Panicked now, Harold didn't try to keep the alarm from his voice.

xx-xx

John forced himself to his feet. Fire burned across his left shoulder as he staggered a step before steadying himself. He shook his head and started jogging down the street toward the corner where he'd left his car. "They got the kid, Finch," he growled.

The words conveyed bad news but Harold sighed in relief at hearing John's voice. That reprieve was short-lived, however, as the worrisome sound of more harsh breathing carried through the link. The computer genius assumed John was running, but the man sounded more winded than usual for someone as fit as the ex-CIA agent. Harold silently cursed the lack of a video feed on the quiet side-street where Judge Gates resided. "Mr. Reese, what's happening?"

"I got there too late, damn it, Finch. They already had the kid out of the house. They were shoving him into a car." John reached his own vehicle then, parked on the nearest cross street. Digging in his pocket for the keys, he found them, clicked the door opener and slid in behind the wheel. For a brief moment he leaned forward and rested his head on the steering wheel, wanting to pound it against the hard surface in frustration. He'd screwed up, he'd been way too slow in assessing the situation and figuring out what was happening. And an innocent child was now in grave danger… because he hadn't gotten there in time to prevent the kidnapping.

"Who were they?" Finch inquired.

Harold's voice in his ear snapped him back to the present moment. "I didn't exactly have the chance to ask them their names, Harold," John retorted sarcastically as he started the car. "But there were two of them carrying the kid. And then another guy jumped into the fight; I think he was the driver."

With only John's voice to help him understand what was happening, Harold was listening closely, not just to words, but to context as well, interpreting silences and background noise. Reese didn't do idle chatter; when he spoke he always had something to say, often wry or sarcastic, sometimes snappish, but always succinct. And the man in the suit's voice was invariably low, always calm and unruffled, always measured and in control, even in the midst of mayhem. John's hand to hand combat skills were second to none. Harold had seen him take on three, four, even five foes and prevail while barely breaking a sweat. But now there was something off in John's tone, an odd timber to the familiar rhythm of Reese's speech that was more than just a man who had been hurrying to reach his car. "You let two men take the boy?"

"I didn't see the third one, he must have been their lookout. And he had a gun."

Harold had not heard any gunfire. "Didn't you have one too, Mr. Reese? I'm not generally one to advocate violence but in this case a boy's safety was in jeopardy and I am aware of your propensity…"

John cut him off sharply. "In this case, Finch, I couldn't take a chance on the boy getting caught in the crossfire," Reese snapped.

Harold couldn't argue with that; he went quiet.

Several moments of strained silence followed as John pulled the car away from the curb, gunning it as he headed up the street. A red light forced him to stop and, as he waited, he reached his right hand up inside his suit jacket, gingerly touching his left shoulder beneath the ragged tear in the material. When he withdrew it, his fingers were covered with blood. Damn. He sighed; this was no time to be slowed down by a wound. "Finch, do you think there's enough money in the budget to buy me a new suit?"

"A new suit? Mr. Reese, this is hardly the time for us to be discussing your sartorial requirements. A boy has been kidna…." The implication of John's words suddenly hit him. The sound he hadn't recognized— that had been a gun fitted with a silencer! Across town in the library, Harold jumped to his feet, suddenly deeply frightened. "Mr. Reese, are you injured? Have you been shot?"

Reese looked down at the blood on his hand. "Sort of," he admitted.

Harold knew very well John's ability to understate a serious situation. "There's no 'sort of' being shot, Mr. Reese. Either you have been or you haven't."

"Then I guess that's an affirmative, Finch."

"I'm calling 911."

"No! I don't need an ambulance."

"Then I'll route you to the nearest hospital." Harold was once again seated in front of his computer screens, his fingers already flying across the keyboard, searching for the fastest route to the closest emergency medical services. "We'll deal with issues relating to your identity and the consequenc…."

"Harold!" John could hear the alarm overwhelming his boss and softened his tone to try to calm him. "I really don't need a hospital."

"You were struck by a bullet, Mr. Reese? And you're bleeding?"

In the car, John shrugged, rolled his eyes and nodded, then remembered Harold couldn't see his actions.

Finch's thoughts, meanwhile, raced from alarm to panic at the momentary silence. Horrible visions were flashing through Harold's mind, of Reese going down, of him bleeding out, dying. "John!"

"Yes, Harold, I'm bleeding," John answered wearily.

"Then I'm routing you to the closest medical facility..." He was not going to lose another employee, especially not this one, not this good man.

"Harold! You're not routing me anywhere. I'm on my way back to the library."

"Here? This isn't a hosp..."

"I know that. I don't need a hospital. I need you to run a license plate for me…"

"Let me decide what you…"

"I've already decided. No hospital. Run that plate, Harold. Now." John rattled off the number he'd glimpsed as he was down on the ground, watching the kidnappers' car as it sped away.

Harold typed as fast as his fingers could move across the keys, hacking into the New York state motor vehicle department records, silently cursing the slowness of the system. "That plate comes back to a Corine O'Neill.. .on a red 2012.. SmartCar?" Harold did a double take. "The kidnappers fled in a SmartCar?"

John swore, vehemently, slamming his hand on the steering wheel. "No, Finch, it was a Buick. Obviously the plate was stolen. Which means we don't have a lead."

The link went silent for a long minute, the only sound John's still too-rapid breathing.

Harold's overactive brain pushed the panic button once again. The silence was terrifying- had John passed out from the effects of his wound? "Mr Reese? Are you all right? You sound… upset."

"No, Harold, I'm not upset," the man in the suit's mocking voice was tight with barely contained fury, anger directed at himself and Harold and the world in general for what he had been unable to prevent. The judge's young son had to be terrified. "A little kid has just been kidnapped because we failed to stop it. Why would I possibly be upset?" The tone was perfectly level and even and at the same time dripping with sarcasm, which meant John was furious.

xx-xx

John could feel wet, sticky liquid dripping down his chest. Pausing at the stop sign at the end of the block, the tall man dug the handkerchief from his pocket with his right hand and stuffed it up under his coat, pressing it tight against the bleeding wound. An involuntary gasp escaped his lips in reaction to the pain unleashed by that slight contact. Damn, even with his high pain threshold, a bullet wound hurt.

Finch's voice in his earpiece once again sounded alarmed. "Mr Reese! What's wrong?"

The man in the suit inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly, forcing the pain back under control. His voice was once again steady and even. "Just… doing a little first aid work here, Finch."

Flashes of memory, images of Mr. Dillinger dead on the sidewalk, of Nathan Ingram's broken and bloodied body, raced through Finch's memory. "How bad is it?"

"I've had worse."

"That is not a helpful answer, Mr. Reese." It didn't ease Harold's mind in the slightest, in fact. He'd seen a bit of John's military medical records, the small fraction of them that hadn't been redacted, and they'd indicated the soldier had been injured several times. And the scar on John's left side, even to Harold's untrained eye, was obviously an old bullet wound. And it was not the only one. "Well, just keep talking to me, Mr. Reese."

"And what will that accomplish?" John's growing frustration was palpable.

"I will know you're still conscious, which will ease my mind considerably."

"Finch…"

"Just humor me, John. Please. Tell me where you are."

The computer genius was tracking his employee via his cell phone's GPS, both men were aware of that. But John, realizing Harold's panic from his frenetic tone of voice, called off the cross streets as he made his way through town to their hideout.

The travelogue stopped when John reached the street outside the library and hastily pulled the car into the hidden parking spot beneath the empty building. Still listening over the link, Harold clearly heard the car door slam. The sound of footsteps on the stairs followed shortly after; even they sounded furious.

Abandoning his computers, Finch headed into the adjacent room to a storage cabinet where he kept a substantial first aid kid. Despite the short period of their association, Harold had already put it to use several times to patch up John's various cuts and bruises. He placed the kit on the table and hurried as fast as he was able to the end of the hallway. There he paused at the top of the stairs, watching anxiously.

John was nearly to the top step before he looked up and saw Harold's frazzled looking face. "You look worried, Finch."

With relief, Harold noted that John looked better than he'd expected, much better. In fact, there was no sign of a wound except for a small ragged tear in the left shoulder of Reese's suit coat. The big man was steady on his feet, Finch noted thankfully, but to what extent that was due to the adrenaline surge he was surely undergoing Harold wasn't sure. And the adrenaline was compounded by the anger that smoldered from the man like a banked fire- that was an emotion that could carry an injured man a long ways.

"In here," Harold directed, leading John into the reading alcove next to the computer room and pointing him toward a waiting chair.

As Reese took the seat his coat flapped open. Harold gasped. John's white shirt was splashed with bright scarlet, the bloody wet stain running from the shoulder down toward his waist.

Harold blanched at the sight and felt his head spin.

John noted his boss' face go white and tried to reassure him. "It's not as bad as it looks, Finch. Really."

"I sincerely hope you're correct, Mr. Reese, because that looks like a lot of blood."

"Then don't look at it, Harold," John suggested.

"I can hardly avoid it, Mr. Reese." The computer genius pointed at John's shoulder. "Is that the only place you're wounded?"

"One hole in my hide isn't enough for you?"

"It is more than enough, Mr. Reese, believe me," Finch insisted, stepping closer to help John remove his suit coat.

As careful as he tried to be, that action obviously hurt the tall man- John paled, his face momentarily tightening, the expression so fleeting Harold wasn't sure he'd actually seen it.

Harold tossed the offending coat over a stack of books on the table and turned away to carefully don a pair of sterile gloves. He next sorted through the first aid supplies for gauze pads and a bottle of disinfectant.

John impatiently snatched the disinfectant out of Harold's hands. "I'll do this. Go ask your machine for help."

"It doesn't work that way, Mr. Reese. You know that."

"I know you can look for something," the tall man growled, frustrated.

"For what?" Harold questioned logically.

"Something!" John insisted, his eyes snapping. "Go do what you're best at, finding information," he demanded, desperation accenting the anger in his tone. "This I can do for myself."

"Possibly." Harold was calmer now, now that he had something to do, now that he could see John wasn't about to die on the spot, at least at the moment.

"I've done it before." John insisted stubbornly.

"I've sure you have, Mr. Reese, but it is difficult to administer first aid one-handed."

John jumped to his feet, pointing a finger toward the adjoining computer room with its table ringed with monitors. "Finch, you can be a lot more useful to me in there, finding me a lead to that kid…"

Harold reached out and carefully placed a pacifying hand on Reese's good shoulder. It was time for him to check his own emotions and be the calming force for both of them. "John, until you are fit to go after those men, nothing I can find will help that boy. He needs you at your best. So sit down and let me help you. Just a few minutes and I'll be finished," he suggested optimistically, holding up the medical supplies. "May I?"

Harold wouldn't be bullied; John had very quickly learned that Finch could be pushed but he was much more stubborn than he looked. Conceding to the reality of the situation, Reese shrugged, then grimaced as pain flashed through his shoulder like a jolt of electricity. Bad move. The tall man reluctantly sat back down. "Hurry up, then."

Harold quickly set to work. He started cutting apart the ruined shirt to get at the wound, realizing he was chattering in an attempt to control his nervousness over all the blood he was seeing. "It's a shame to ruin a shirt like this, Mr. Reese. Such fine quality material and workmanship, hand stitched and… oh, my…" He stopped, having discovered that the blood-soaked handkerchief was stuck fast to John's wound. "I'm not sure how to…"

"Use some of the water and soak the cloth a bit, then pull it off."

"Won't that hurt?"

"It hurts already, Finch."

There was no arguing with that. Harold used some of the First Aid kit's sterile water to dampen the material, then began to gently loosen it, frowning in concentration as he worked intently at the task. "This will take a moment…"

"No, it won't," John insisted impatiently, reaching across his body and taking hold of the handkerchief. With one quick motion he jerked it free. "Damn." His breathing hitched and he momentarily closed his eyes, containing the pain.

Harold looked aghast. "John…"

The tall man took a deep shuddering breath, then straightened and looked up, his face a determined mask. "Just get on with it, Finch."

Harold had to fight to control his shaking hands. With the wound now revealed, to his relief he found not a bullet hole but a deep furrow angling up and over John's shoulder. The shot had obviously been a glancing upward blow, the bullet cutting the skin and into the flesh just below but thankfully not penetrating the body. The gash was bleeding sluggishly, the area around it already appearing red and raw.

Finch touched the wound tentatively. John tensed and inhaled sharply as Harold steadied himself and continued wiping the blood away. Next, he poured disinfectant on a gauze pad and dabbed tentatively at the wound.

John flinched, jerking away with an angry glare.

"Sorry," Harold apologized.

"Don't be sorry. And don't be dainty," the tall man ordered tersely. "Wash it out with the disinfectant, and use some of those butterfly bandages to close the edges."

Harold once again sorted through the materials in the medical kit, but what he held up wasn't disinfectant but one of the many pill bottles from the first aid kit. "Don't you want a pain killer?"

"What I want is to find that boy," John snapped.

"We will, Mr. Reese, we will. But we need to do this first so that when we do find him, you're in a fit condition to help him."

Harold noted John's tense shoulders relaxing slightly and, taking that as consent, he went back to work, following the ex-agent's instructions. He poured the full strength disinfectant straight onto the gash. The sound of John's teeth grinding was loud in the quiet of the library. Harold wasn't sure if it was pain or frustration at the delay, and concluded it was likely a great deal of both.

With the blood now cleaned away, Harold could more clearly see the damage the bullet had caused. The gash was deep, and he thought he could see white that might be John's collarbone. "This requires more than just what minimal first aid we can do here, Mr. Reese. You really do need a doctor, stitches if not surgery, and some serious antibiotics."

"Let me be the judge of that."

"I don't think you're the best one to make that decision at the moment."

John turned to stare coldly at Harold, focusing a glare so glacial that Harold was quite sure it could singlehandedly halt global warming. It was terrifying in its intensity, and Finch suddenly understood why men recoiled from it.

He, however, did not. Harold had his own steely resolve.

"I have a gunshot wound, Harold," John enunciated slowly and clearly, as if talking to a child. "If I were to go to a doctor, any doctor, he or she would be required by law to report treating said gunshot wound, to the police. And we are wanted by the police, Harold. Who would promptly lock me up. I can't help that kid if I'm in jail."

"We know a doctor. We could call Dr. Tillman…." Megan Tillman had been one of their first numbers.

"NO! We will not involve her in what we do."

"She already is involved, Mr. Reese."

John shook his head. "She has a normal life now, Finch. We helped her for that very reason, so that she'd have that opportunity. She's been through enough already, we can't drag her into this… this thing…that we do."

"She would help, Mr. Reese."

"And we'd be wrong to ask her," John insisted. The tall man looked down at his shoulder. Only a few drops of fresh blood had appeared. "Just get done with this, Finch. Now. Get it clean and bandage it so I can get after that boy."

With a sigh Harold returned to his task, rinsing the wound again with sterile water, then peering closely at the raw flesh. "There's some dirt in here, Mr. Reese, it's quite small, it looks like threads from your jacket or perhaps your shirt…"

"And being such high class material, it shouldn't pose an infection risk at all," Reese suggested mockingly.

Finch rolled his eyes at John, then rummaged through the first aid kit until he found a tweezers and a magnifying glass. "Hold very still." The debris was small and difficult to grasp, but finally he was able to get hold of the thread and pull, ignoring the sound of John's teeth grinding. Using the magnifying class he found another bit of thread and then another and cleared them away. After a careful inspection, he finally announced that he was done. "This is as clean as I can get it under these conditions, Mr. Reese."

John nodded. "It'll do. Now you can stitch it. Four or five ought to be enough, I think…"

The man in the glasses took a step back, eyes wide, horrified at the idea of pushing a needle through human flesh. "Oh no, I couldn't, Mr. Reese, I couldn't do that."

"Well, if you can't then I will." John sighed and reached for the medical kit and the stitching needle there. "It wouldn't be the first time."

The man in the glasses reached out and put his hand out to block John's. "I'll do it," he offered, softly. First, though, Finch dug through the bottles of pills in the medical kit, once again retrieving the one he'd had out before, and emptying two capsules onto his hand. "Take these. Painkillers."

John shook his head no. "I already said no. They dull the senses."

"They dull the pain."

John ignored the pills Finch was offering and reached past him to the medical supplies. Finding the bottle of antibiotics, he poured four onto his palm, tossed them into his mouth and dry swallowed them. "These will do. Now just pretend you're sewing a button on your shirt. On your favorite shirt," he added, trying to calm Finch's nerves.

Harold nodded and picked up the packet containing the needle and thread, forcing himself to take a deep, calming breath. It was a good thing that the needle was pre-threaded because the computer expert was quite sure his trembling hands wouldn't be capable of the task; he was barely able to tear open the package.

Favorite shirt, he thought as he touched the thin, curved needle to John's skin. He felt Reese tense and heard his teeth grinding once more, but the tall man didn't move as Harold pushed the thin metal with its trailing thread through John's flesh.

Reese sucked in a breath, held it and let it out slowly as Harold completed the first stitch. "There you are, Harold. Easy."

It was Finch's turn to roll his eyes. "Oh certainly, Mr. Reese, very easy. Nothing to it at all," he answered sarcastically. But bolstered by his initial success, he placed and tied three more stitches, quite neat ones if he had to say so himself, and sighed in relief that the job was done. "I'm not sure these will hold, Mr. Reese. I'm not exactly practiced at this." Harold started, tentatively.

"You did fine, Harold. You probably have a future as a tailor, if you decide to give up the vigilante trade," John joked, testing his shoulder cautiously by first making a fist, then flexing his arm, slowly. The shoulder hurt, but it functioned. "Good as new," he smiled in reassurance. "Bandage it and we're done."

Harold applied a liberal dose of an antiseptic ointment and then carefully placed a square bandage over his handiwork, fussily taping it into place. "I still don't think this is wise, Mr. Reese," he objected.

"Is anything we do wise?" John couldn't rein in his impatience any longer. The image of that terrified boy in the back of that car was egging him on to action. He climbed to his feet, brushing past Harold on his way out of the reading nook toward one of the back rooms. It had probably once been a librarian's office but it now contained a sagging but surprisingly comfortable sofa. He sometimes crashed there while they were working a number, and kept several changes of clothes in the room, in case he required them during a surveillance job. John opened the cupboard, skipped past the white shirts and picked a dark colored one this time, one that wouldn't show a stain if his wound started to bleed again. He slipped it on, wincing slightly, but focusing now on the job he had to do.

Harold had followed him. "You really should take…"

"Not now, Harold. Find me some information, some good information this time."

"And what does that mean?"

"I can't be there in time if I'm getting bad information."

"The machine did not send us the wrong number," Harold insisted. "If it says that Judge Gates is in danger, then he is."

"Tell that to his son," John snapped.

"The kidnapping must connect. It may be the first step in a larger plot that ends with the judge dead." Harold paused, searching for the right words that would convince Reese that the machine hadn't misled them. "We can still put a stop to it. All of it. But we need a plan."

"I have a plan." John had finished buttoning his shirt and picked up his black jacket to replace his damaged suit coat. "Find Sam. The man just lost his wife, I won't let him wind up alone."

Harold, still worried, could only watch as John, gun in hand, hurried out of the library. The bespectacled man observed his employee depart, then returned to his computers to begin searching. He would find something, some clue no matter how obscure, that could lead them to the judge's young son, he vowed silently.

At the same time he filed away in the back of his mind a mental note that he would deal with as soon as he had a free moment. This was hazardous work they were engaged in and John, as his man on the street, was clearly exposing himself to deadly danger. Today that fact had become abundantly clear, and in truth, they'd been lucky this time.

Very lucky.

They needed much more than a simple first aid kit.

He would not be caught unprepared again, Finch promised himself. There was no doubt in his mind that something like this, or something worse, much much worse, would happen again. It was only a matter of time.

But next time he would be ready. There would be a medical contingency plan as thorough as his other contingency plans. He would find a medical professional whom he could turn to in an emergency, someone he could recruit who would be available, whenever needed, day or night. Someone who would, with the proper incentives, render medical aid to a wounded fugitive, no questions asked.

x-x-x The End x-x-x

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