Chapter Two:

Tragedy

When Rick got the call from Javier Esposito he was in the middle of the quarterly performance reviews. He had always hated paperwork especially when it came to this particular area. He worked with good people and it felt like a violation of their trust to critique them behind their back.

It had taken him the better part of a year to weed out all of Senator Bracken's conspirators from his personnel. During that time he rarely allowed Kate to come to the office, and only if she used the car service and brought Sergei.

It was part of the reason they had fought that morning. She didn't like being told what to do, much less being treated like she couldn't take care of herself. The rest he knew had come from the pregnancy hormones. Her words had cut him deeply, they had hurt and he had felt tired and crestfallen all day, but he didn't hold it against her.

He had answered the phone with a cheerful tone, genuinely glad to hear from him, not only for the distraction but also for a chance to check up on his favorite precinct. The two of them had bonded during his time there.

"Javi! Good to hear from you! How is the new FBI liaison working out?"

The first inkling that there was something terribly wrong was the silence on the other end of the line. Espo was rarely one to be at a loss for words. His next were carefully chosen, spoken with such empathy and desolation that it sucked all the air out of his office.

"Bro, it's Beckett...there's been an accident...she's being taken to Presbyterian...it doesn't look good...better hurry..."

Rick's hands shook so badly that he nearly dropped his cell phone. With a single phone call there was a helicopter on the rooftop helipad. Within moments he was airborne. He didn't trust himself to drive, and it would take too long to get there in rush hour traffic.

Kate needed him...right now.


Twenty Minutes later

When Rick arrived he was in full panic mode. Though he wasn't in the sorry state he had been when she had been shot two years ago, he was not processing his emotions very well at all. He marched up to the nurse's station in the Emergency Room and flashed his credentials.

"I'm looking for Kate Beckett Rodgers, I'm her husband."

When the nurse nodded her assent and asked him to wait she had the attending paged. When she approached, Rick double timed it to intercept her and they walked toward the waiting room where Ryan, Esposito and Lanie were waiting for him. He saw the younger FBI agent who had been assigned to replace him as the 12th Precinct's liaison. He seemed bored, like this wasn't worth his time.

"You're wife is stable, Agent Rodgers," Dr. Lydia Simon informed him, to which he exhaled a sigh of relief, "her injuries, for the most part were not severe, though there have been some complications."

"You are aware that my wife is ten weeks pregnant, Doctor?" Rick replied heavily, not sure if he liked the ominous sound of the word 'complications'. It sang out to him like a funeral dirge for his soul.

" Yes, we are aware that she was pregnant when she came in." Dr. Simon stated.

Panic sank its icy grip into him at her use of the past tense. "What do you mean was Doctor Simon?" He breathed out heavily.

"Perhaps you should sit down, Agent Rodgers?" she replied, not realizing it was the wrong thing to say.

"Just tell it to me straight, Doctor...right now!" He shouted, he hadn't realized that his hand had unconsciously drifted to his belt where normally his Sig Sauer P226 would be, but in his haste he had left it in his desk. He checked himself and shoved the hand into his pocket.

Her voice rang out quiet and even as she told him the truth.

"Though her injuries were not, in and of themselves severe, or life threatening primarily a mild concussion bruised ribs and a sprained ankle, the trauma of the crash caused a tear in the placental wall. By the time she was brought in, the damage had been done. Her own immune system perceived the fetus as a foreign body and attacked it aggressively, for all intents and purposes, terminating the pregnancy. Her uterus expelled the fetus shortly after she arrived, I'm sorry."

Rick staggered back a few paces at the news, his eyes wide, all color had drained out of his face.

"Kate...oh God...dear God...no.." he moaned out, as Lanie carefully took his arm and helped him onto the waiting room couch as the room began to spin wildly. The last thing he heard before the darkness claimed him was Doctor Simon calling for an oxygen mask.


Jessica Bennet fumed, alone in her apartment as she finished cleaning her 9mm tactical Sig Sauer. From her sources at the hospital she knew that though her own wounds were not particularly severe, she had lost the baby she had been carrying. She was still asleep, under heavy sedation, her husband lying in a bed next to her with an oxygen mask on his face. The news of her miscarriage coming so soon on the heels of the news of her "car accident" that he had collapsed from the enormity of it all. She really couldn't blame him, it was simply one blow too many.

She reassembled the weapon and worked the action sliding a round into the chamber and closing the breech, before slapping home a fresh magazine. Johanna Beckett, her old self, would have been horrified at the thought that she found disassembling, cleaning and reassembling a deadly weapon comforting. She hadn't permitted Jim to have any of his hunting guns in the house.

She checked the sharpness of the folding knife she carried since discarding the K-bar she had used seemingly a lifetime ago to frame Dick Coonan. She had never liked the thing, it was too bulky to carry regularly. Another thought that Johanna would have found horrific, comparing deadly weapons on their lethality and convenience for concealment, like she would have, at one time contemplated shoes, purses and other accessories.

She was going to have a word with the driver of the other vehicle. It seemed far too convenient that Katie would have an auto accident the one time she was alone driving a very distinctive car. If she didn't like what he had to say, he would not live long enough to regret his mistake. Another reason why she was no longer Johanna Beckett, and, in all the ways that mattered, never would be again.


One hour later

Her State Department security credentials got her past most of the hospital security checkpoints, even the NYPD officers standing guard near the door to Kate's hospital room. She had had to invent a threat to the budding mystery writer to justify the added security she was certain was necessary in spite of the lack of any evidence that this was anything but merely the tragic outcome of a tragic accident.

She was more than a little infuriated that the driver of the vehicle that cost her daughter her baby, and could easily have cost her her life was actually on the same floor, and not under guard or even restrained to his bed. That was until she overheard his conversation with a woman who had to be his wife.

"Janet...what have I done...dear God what have I done." he moaned into his wife's embrace.

"Shh... George, it wasn't your fault...the brakes failed...you did everything you could."

"But I heard the nurses talking...she lost her baby...the two of us have been trying for months...and I killed that woman's baby...I should have had the brakes checked sooner...could have done it the day before but I was too busy...it's all my fault...all my fault..." he sobbed into his wife's shoulder.

Jessica looked on as his wife tried desperately to console him, tears in her eyes and running unashamedly down her cheeks. She contemplated the silenced pistol in her purse, the folding combat knife in her pocket.

She had come here to threaten him, possibly even to kill him, prepared to conduct an aggressive interrogation to find out who put him up to it, only to hear him mourning for the miscarried fetus of her own daughter, while she herself had been consumed only by thoughts of revenge. Her own eyes were wet with tears of shame not only for what she had been contemplating, but that she had not even spared a single thought for the pain her daughter would be in when she woke.

She felt sick.

She fled, doing her best to school her features as she passed her daughter's door on her way to the elevator. Inside she was a mess, unsure of what she should do. She knew of only one man who might possibly be able to help her figure out what her next move should be. She knew what she wanted to do, she simpply wasn't sure if it was the right thing to do. As she breezed past the exit and out onto the street, her cell phone in her hand, she dialed a number from memory.

"The warm breeze blows colder after midnight." she stated into her phone when prompted, then hung up.

The head of Project Archangel doesn't simply directly call the Director of Operations of the CIA. Even if he is her predecessor. There was protocol to be followed, especially since this was a personal matter. She would receive instructions later where to meet with him and when.

She hoped it was soon.


11:25 PM

Kate Beckett Rodgers woke in a hospital bed to find her husband seated next to her, clutching her hand in a near catatonic state, anguish and grief written all over his face. The last thing she remembered before she lost consciousness was the squeal of brakes the tinkle of breaking glass and the shrieking of rending metal as the other car had run the red light and t-boned her sedan on the passenger side.

Though there was relief in his eyes that she had survived, his grief had not subsided. In that instant, as her eyes locked on his, she knew something was wrong. Something was terribly, horribly wrong.

"The baby?' she choked out, "Rick...please...no."

He hook his head, because he couldn't get the words past his throat, and as if they were one being they both burst into tears. Their shared grief over the loss of a child who had not yet even had a chance to draw breath was physically palpable in the room. She had only been pregnant for ten weeks, but they had both been excited beyond measure, only to have their hopes dashed in an instant.

"I'm sorry Rick...I'm so sorry...I'm so sorry" she breathed into his chest as his own tears dripped into her hair, her breathing coming in shallow, ragged sobs as the waves of grief rolled over her, consuming her. "should have listened...I was so awful to you...It's all my fault...I'm so sorry..."

They clung to each other as if for dear life. This was the only thing in his life that Rick had never wanted to share in common with his beloved Kate, the crushing grief of losing a child, even one who had not yet been born, and now never would be. They hadn't even given her a name yet, didn't even have a body to bury. It wasn't fair.

"Shh...Kate...shh...it wasn't your fault...it was just an accident...I love you...shh..."

He knew how close to "It was just a random wayward event" he was coming and stopped. She didn't need to be reminded of her mother's death. Not now.

He would not let her face it alone like he had. They would get through this like they had gotten through everything else that life had cruelly thrown at them...together.

He just wasn't sure how.