Part Two

Liz had been bogged down in a case that just didn't seem to end. They had a track record of quick wrap-ups, for the most part, and the longer it went, the more she was certain that someone was trying to distract them. Every time she thought about asking Ressler that outright, though, Tom's reservations came to mind. If she wanted to protect them, she wouldn't tell them until he knew who was behind all of this and just how far up the food chain it went.

It could be a lie, she thought as she chewed at the end of her pen, staring idly at the computer screen as she waited for Aram's formula to finish running. It would fit what she knew of his real personality, as far as she could tell. Where Tom had always put her first, Jacob relied heavily on manipulation to get to the point he thought they needed to be at. That didn't mean that he had any malicious intentions, she knew, just that he didn't respond to things the way many people did. The healthier way that many people did. She wasn't sure yet if he just didn't know how or if he just didn't care.

Funny, Red did the same thing.

"You heard from Tom recently?"

Liz blinked, blue eyes shifting to look at her partner who hadn't bothered to look up from the notes that he was pouring over. It was well past the time that normal people closed up shop for the day, but there they were, working a case that none of them had any heart in. It was like they knew they'd been given busy work.

"Why would I have?" she asked at last.

Ressler shrugged and glanced over. "As far as any of us can tell, he still hasn't left town. I figured he would have reached out to you by now."

She didn't bother to dignify it with an answer as she reached for her phone that had begun to buz. A blocked number. It could be Mr Kaplan or Dembe, but it could also be Tom. She stepped away from the desk as she answered. "Keen."

"Hey, it's me," came the familiar voice, hushed as if he weren't supposed to be calling her either. He had been undercover a week and, just like when he'd gone searching for the information, she hadn't heard from him. Liz had done her best not to let the worry overtake her. From what she understood it was part of his training not to reach out to people on the outside when he was immersed in a role. At least not until he had what he'd gone in for. "Sorry I haven't called. Any change on your end?"

"Someone's keeping us from having time to look," she murmured, walking out of earshot and glancing back to make sure that no one was paying attention. "Red woke up, but he hasn't been conscious much. They really did a number on him and there have been complications."

"Damn," Tom breathed on the other end. "Is he…"

"Going to die?" Liz finished for him and her ex-husband made a small sound of affirmation. "I hope not. Do they think he's dead?"

"I don't know. Trust isn't something groups like these come by easily, but I have gotten the attention of a guy with some authority. Not sure where it's going to lead, but we'll see. I'm supposed to listen in on a meeting tonight."

"Gotten his attention in a good way then?"

"Hope so. If you don't hear back, you'll know I was wrong," he chuckled and Liz felt her breath catch.

"That's not funny."

She could almost hear his smile on the other end. "I'll be okay. Got to go. I'll call you after if there's anything to share."

"Hey? Be safe."

"You too."

The line went dead in her ear and Liz leaned against the wall of the hallway, her skull thunking lightly against it as she squeezed her eyes shut. She was being paranoid. He was good at this. This was what he did. He went in, he gathered information, he eliminated threats. She'd wrangled a story or two she wished she hadn't out of him on the boat, leaving her with a sick feeling in her stomach at how callously he spoke about ending another person's life. When she'd said so he had shrugged and told that if it came down to him or the other person, he'd choose himself. Not that that had proved entirely true when it came to her. He kept walking out on very brittle limbs for her.

"Uh… Agent Keen?"

Liz jumped at the hesitant voice and turned, finding Aram standing at the corner where the hall turned down the other direction. He looked terribly guilty, even as he raised his hands as if she were worried he'd have something in them. "How long have you been there?"

"I was coming back from down the hall and I heard you on the phone. I thought maybe it was Dembe about Mr Reddington, so I thought I'd just wait, but… It wasn't, was it?"

"Aram-"

"I won't tell them if you don't want me to. I just… Well, you're my friend. I don't want to see you get hurt."

Liz's lips quirked up. "I'm not. I'm going to find the people that went after Red, even if someone doesn't want me to."

His dark eyes widened. "Okay, so I'm not going crazy."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, these leads we've been getting? They don't lead anywhere, but the people that set the case on the table seemed so certain… It's a distraction, isn't it?"

"I think so."

"We have to tell Director Cooper."

Liz sighed, reaching out to Aram. "Hey, not just yet. Let's find something concrete first, okay? Tom's taking a big risk for me going in like he is. No matter how much we trust Cooper, if his boss or his boss' boss is involved in all of this, we could be putting him in danger too."

Slowly Aram nodded. "So now what?"

"Tom has an in this evening. We should know more soon." She glanced down at her phone and took a look at the time. "I'm going to head over and check on Red."

"Liz," Aram called hesitantly, "are you going to tell Agent Ressler?"

Liz's lips thinned out at the thought. "I think when I have something concrete."

"But you will tell him?"

"Of course. Don't worry. We're going to get these guys and we're going to bring them down. We just have to be careful when we do it that we don't put our own team in the line of fire. Someone above Cooper's head doesn't want us working on this."

"Some of those algorithms I've been running may have been on information having to do with Mr Reddington's shooting." He offered her a sheepish grin, and Liz couldn't help the small laugh that escaped her. Leave it to Aram. "Is it safe to keep going here? You think there's another mole?"

"I'm not sure that there aren't several. If you can keep doing it quietly, do it. I'll let you know. Just… keep it between us for now, okay?"

He nodded and she knew she could trust him. He'd kept her secrets before.

He was filling the role of an aid, but that meant so much more in an organization like this. If he were willing to take his time, do things the way he normally would, Tom knew he could have found out more secrets than he could have used in a lifetime, but that wasn't the goal. The goal was to find out exactly what this group wanted with Raymond Reddington and why they were willing to kill innocent people to get to him.

Not that Tom didn't understand the inclination to snap the man's neck. He had to shove it down often enough himself.

Most of the staff had left for the evening already and it was dangerous to be ghosting around the halls of the building, but at least he was supposed to be there. He was attending a meeting that evening with the Deputy Director that would also require the presence of her boss, who had shown some interest in him already. He wasn't so focused that he missed the careful gazes of those that surrounded him. These people were involved in branches of the clandestine services. They weren't idiots to be trifled with, and working quickly like this was a calculated risk that he needed to take.

Voices drifted around the corner and Tom paused, taking a careful step back and glancing around to make sure that he was, in fact, alone in the hall. When he was certain that he was he craned his head just a little so that he could hear the two men speaking better.

"You said that you had that task force under control."

"They are under control. They're buried chin-deep in an assignment that will have them chasing their tails for weeks."

A sigh escaped the first man and Tom glanced back down the hall, checking. Still alone. The others would be on their way to the meeting that he was supposed to attend shortly.

"I brought you on to handle the task force, Connolly. If you can't do that-"

"They are handled," the second man - Connolly - stressed. "Cooper owes me more than he could ever pay. He'll be trying though, that's the beauty of it. I've known the man long enough to know what strings to pull."

There was a short pause. "As long as we are in agreement as to where your loyalties lie. The decision to deal with Reddington as we did was done on a vote. Your… personal gain with the task force-"

"Will not get in the way of this alliance," Connolly assured the first man. "You have my word, if you need all of that."

Tom pulled back a couple of steps and was moving forward again by the time the door at the end of the hall opened, his timing falling into sync enough to make it appear that he was in the process of walking down the hall. He glanced around to see the woman that was Eric Miles' boss. She gave him a brief nod and he held back long enough to let her catch up and take the lead into the conference room.

The two men that had been speaking looked over as they enter and Tom kept a purposefully neutral expression. He recognized one of the men. He wasn't sure which one belonged to which voice just yet, but he would as soon as they spoke. Goodson offered a brief nod towards the man in glasses. "Director."

"Kat." His gaze drifted over to Tom. "This must be Mr Miles that I've heard so much about. You made quite a stir your first couple of days here."

"Just doing my job, sir," the operative answered easily. The other man was Connolly, and with that recognition the memory snapped into place. In the judge's chambers, just after he'd come back to plead Liz's innocence, there had been a man that had made it all go away, exactly as Tom had hoped the judge would. He wasn't entirely sure who he was then, but they had called him Connolly as well. Tom only hoped that he looked just different enough in his suit and half-rimmed glasses, hair starting to grow back, and tattoos from the latest assignment covered carefully - and perhaps that the older man hadn't cared enough for the desperate man there to beg for his wife's life - that his cover wouldn't be blown.

The look in Connolly's eyes said that he wasn't so lucky.

"Well I'll be damned," he drawled, looking back at the Director. "This is the one they've been talking about all week? Dealt with the Talton incident?" A smile stretched across his face, sly and calculating, as the Director quirked an eyebrow. "Well, you do get around, don't you, son?"

Tom didn't dare risk his voice, but mentally searched the room for the nearest exit. As other members entered with their security in tow, he had to wonder when he had begun slipping. In twenty years of studying and working with the Major, he had not had his cover blown as often and as quickly as he had that day. For his last assignment, he really was breaking all the records. He would have preferred to leave that one well enough alone.

"Spit it out, Connolly," the Director groused.

"Mr Keen. That's the name that you gave the judge the day we crossed paths, wasn't it? Not your real name, of course, but the one your wife knew you by. I suppose it fit well enough."

"I'm not sure who you're-" Tom didn't get the statement out before two men came up on either side of him and he instinctively knew that he'd be put down if he moved even an inch.

"You think I didn't look into you after all of that, Jacob Phelps?" Connolly asked.

"Guess I'd hoped you didn't care enough," Tom answered, his arms wrenched around behind him by his new captors and he smirked. "People like you tend to underestimate people like me."

"Not all of us." Connolly's smile continued to broaden. "You want to handle the task force, Director, you handle Agent Keen. You'll want to bring her in and you've just found the way to do it."

"She won't come for me," Tom argued.

"I don't think you give your ex-wife enough credit, Mr Phelps. I think she'll come running the minute she thinks you're useful." Connolly strode forward and pulled Tom's phone from his pocket. The young operative watched him carefully, jaw clenched and pulling a bit against his captors as the older man flipped through the previous calls. He waved it around towards the Director. "I say we text her and bring her to us. We'll deal with her once and for all."

"Do it," the other man answered and turned, waving over his shoulder. "I want to know everything that Mr… whatever his name is…. knows. Everything."

"She won't come. You're wasting your time."

"We'll see," the Director answered. "I think it's about time that I met Elizabeth Keen. She's caused enough trouble as it stands."

He was sitting up when she got there and Liz felt a smile break out despite herself. Red looked up from his book, propped in his lap, and returned the smile easily enough. "Lizzy."

"You look like you're feeling better."

"Oh, a bit. Still trying to shake this cough."

The bullet had torn through him, ripping him apart from the outside, in, and back out again. The surgery had stretched on and two weeks into the recovery phase it was very slow going. The doctor had kept him a little loopy, so the fact that he was awake and sitting either meant that he'd somehow managed to both tug the IV out without anyone noticing and sat the bed up himself, or he really was starting to get better. Liz hoped it was the second.

"You've been asleep most of the times that I've dropped by. I didn't want to wake you."

Her gaze lingered on him when he just sat there smiling, the expression a bit tired around its edges, and he closed the book. "Lizzy, I haven't had time to discuss with you-"

"No, not now. You're still sick and I…" She pulled in a deep breath. Since the shooting she had utterly ignored the fact that there had been no closure on the fact that he had inserted Tom into her life. It stung that he had lied to her, and while she wanted to know - to an extent - she wasn't sure she could handle it right then. Even if Red had thought he was doing her a favour by inserting someone into her life to protect her, he had still lied when he said that he never would. Not only had he put Tom there, but he'd taken him away bit by bit until she had been forced to admit that something was terribly wrong. Until her world had been ripped apart.

Part of her wondered what would have happened if she hadn't discovered that box. Would they have continued on until they were old and grey? Would they have adopted Jenni's child together and raised him, loved him, and would he have always been her Tom? She thought so. Heaven help her, she really did think that he would have just sunk deeper and deeper into the part until he completely became it and didn't even bother with Jacob Phelps anymore.

I liked being Tom Keen.

She had liked him as Tom Keen too. It didn't seem fair that Red was able to pull the strings of her life in any way he chose without her consent. If they moved forward - much like the decision she had made with Tom on the fact that he couldn't choose which truths he was comfortable with telling her - he had to be honest as well. She wouldn't accept anything less from those she cared about anymore, no matter how much it might hurt.

"It's a conversation we'll have," she promised him. "When you're feeling better. I won't coddle you on it, and I won't be the reason you relapse."

Reddington's thin lips pressed together thoughtfully. "If that's how you prefer it."

"It is." Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she pulled it out of her jacket, seeing a text scrawled across it from Tom's burner number. It gave an address and a time.

"You wouldn't be looking into all this, would you, Lizzy?" Red asked softly.

"I'm not going to just let them get away with it, Reddington. I don't know what's between you and this group, but no matter what you've done or what they've done, they can't be your judge, jury, and executioners. They can't be allowed to just shoot a man down in the street without repercussions."

He shifted, almost as if he wanted to swing his legs over the side of the bed and stand up. "You must not get involved anymore than you are. Your safety is worth more to me than my own life, do you understand that? You-"

"Then give me the answers I need so we don't go in blind!"

"Stay away from it."

"I'm not going to." Her phone buzzed again and she glared at it. "I have to go."

"Lizzy-"

"Just rest. I'll be back tomorrow."

He looked exhausted as he frowned. "Your team is helping you?"

A beat of a pause past between them before she let the lie slip out. "Yes." He watched her carefully and she tried for a smile, failing miserably. "I have to go. Goodnight, Red." She didn't think that he believed her, but it didn't matter. She had to meet Tom if she was going to get the answers she needed to protect her friend.

Maybe she understood why they lied to her a little more than she would admit even to herself.

Every inch of him hurt, and he knew that he hadn't seen the worst of it. They'd taken his phone and texted Liz, and he prayed that she knew better than to follow a text blindly. He called her for a reason. She knew his voice. There was no verifying a text.

Tom blinked hard against the darkness that clawed at the edge of his vision as the door to the room they had tossed him into opened. The Director offered him a lazy sort of smile as he circled around the chair that he was tied to and stopped in front of him. "Hello, Mr Phelps," he greeted and Tom glared, frowning deeply under the ducktape that covered his mouth. He twisted his hands, still tightly fastened behind him, and felt the ache spread at the movement.

The Director grabbed hold of his chin and tilted his head up to force him to look directly at him. They'd taken his glasses away - they had actually been knocked from his face during the beatdown - but the older man was close enough to merely be a little blurry in the details of his features. "I understand that there are a lot of people looking for you. Very powerful people. What on earth could have possessed you to take a risky job such as infiltrating our organization? " He smirked and ripped the tape from his mouth.

"Guy's got to work," Tom answered flippantly.

"Raymond Reddington couldn't have paid you enough to do it." He tilted his head a little, studying him. "But this isn't for Reddington. This is for the girl. Elizabeth Keen. Her name just keeps coming up everywhere, doesn't it? Mr Connolly seems to think she's the key to pulling Reddington out of hiding so we can finish what we started. I think she'll show with that text coming from your phone. What do you think?"

"I think it's pointless to go after Elizabeth Keen. She's nothing in all of this. Reddington's who you want."

"True, but she has the Fulcrum."

Tom blinked. Lizzy had it? No, he was sure she'd gone to take it to Reddington. He wasn't able to argue it, though, as the door opened and the two thugs from before entered and a fresh strip of tape was fit over his mouth, silencing him.

"I hope you understand that if you choose to try to give her any warning at all that we will shoot her. You, on the other hand, will be handed over the Major shortly and will no longer be our problem."

A bag dropped over his head almost immediately and Tom tried to jerk away. Strong hands clamped down and he was hauled from the chair, the warning repeating in his ear about Liz's safety. Despite his natural instinct to pull away, he stilled, feeling himself being dragged out the door.

He lost count of the turns and by the time they got to wherever they were going, the men on either side of him were all but dragging him and he felt his body beginning to protest in earnest. Deep bruises would be showing for weeks and his head ached terribly from where one of his captors had slammed him into a wall before tying him to the chair. His left wrist twinged when he turned it the wrong way and his right knee wouldn't hold all of his weight and kept giving every few steps. They finally stopped and the hood came off with a yank, leaving him blinking into a warehouse. He was surrounded by the Alliance's thugs and turned a threatening glare towards the Director.

The older man and his people weren't the only ones in the warehouse though. Blue eyes came to rest on a very familiar figure. One that he'd known well since he was fourteen years old. Bud sneered at him from his place, his own protection surrounding him. He wasn't a fool. He knew that he was no match for his best agent if they went head to head, even if Tom had been roughed up before being brought to him. It likely wasn't the end of it either.

The sound of footsteps echoing across the hard floors caught his attention and caused him to pull hard against one of his captors and try to tug away, but the Director motioned to snipers already in place and he froze again. They weren't aimed at him. They were aimed at Liz, and he thought he saw a satisfied smirk settle on Bud's lips.

"Tom?" she called and he closed his eyes, willing her to listen to her instincts and run. They'd kill him, but she could be safe. That was enough, wasn't it? Surprisingly it was.

"Agent Keen," the Director greeted as he stepped forward out of the shadows.

Betrayal flashed across Liz's face and she lowered her weapon as the grey haired man motioned to show that she was very much out-armed. "Who the hell are you? Did Tom send you?"

Tom was shoved forward, hands still bound behind his back and his knee gave at just the wrong moment, sending him to the ground hard. He looked up, still unable to speak around the tape, and his eyes caught Liz's, a silent plea in them to know that he hadn't meant for this to happen. Her expression softened and she started towards him, his name on her lips, but the Alliance director stopped her.

"Now, Agent Keen, I'd suggest that you take a step back there. Your ex-husband is about to take a ride with Mr McCready here that he won't be returning from. You and I have something to chat about, though. Namely the Fulcrum."

"The what?" Liz managed. "I don't-"

"Both of you seem to think I'm a fool. I know exactly who both of you are, so don't try to play your games."

Gunshots echoed outside and eyes turned towards the huge windows against the wall as it was blown inward, glass shattering down around them.

Liz gave the Director a smug smirk. "You think I came alone? Do you think I trust my ex that much, do you?"

TBC

Notes: Well, the Keens have gotten themselves into quite a mess. And poor Tom. Always with the ducktape.

So here's the question: do you think that Liz meant to bring re-enforcements or does she just have a guardian angel?