Grave
Tuesday, 18th September, 2018
10:12pm LT, Washington DC
As she had come home, to her cousin Monica's apartment, the table had been set already with some delicious food for dinner. They had eaten together and had sat on the couch watching TV together, just like in the old times.
Audrey really loved her cousin. They had been best friends, on from the time when they had been five years old. At the age of sixteen they had been out, hunting for boys. Later on, Monica had been the witness to her marriage with Paul and also her best friend as her liaison with Paul had come to an end. She really was a true friend.
Slowly Audrey strolled through her room, had a short look outside the window and then went over to the bed. She had made herself at home in here, and that was not the first time.
She had lived in here before, for a few weeks, as Paul had constantly fought with her. That had been the occasion, when Monica had also met Jack.
She lay down and pulled the blanket up to her shoulders. Whenever she lay down here and then looked at the large mirror at the other side of the room, she had to think of Jack. Monica had probably been the only member of her family who had known about their affair. He had spent a few nights with her in here, as she had lived with her cousin. She could still remember the nights when they had made fun of the large mirrors.
In the aftermath, their nights here had for sure belonged to the best they had ever shared. Nobody except her cousin had known they were here. This wasn't one of these many hotel rooms, which she had shared with Jack, living with the constant fear if somebody came to knock at the door any other second – or even worse – if that person would be her husband.
Monica had asked her earlier, why she was taking all that effort to find him again. She could very well remember the time after China, when he had left her. In her opinion, this man was not worth being found again.
She had then told her about how she had met Jack again, a month ago. He had saved her life again, by getting her out of one of the places where a major terrorist attack had gone down. Even Monica had changed her bad mind about him as she had listened to her story.
One thing had never completely gone out of her mind. Again and again, he had told her that he had had no choice but to leave her. She hadn't been able to make any sense out of that. Twice she had asked her father what Jack could have meant with that but he hadn't had any good answer for her. She had begged him to find out to which place Jack's unit had been deployed, but he hadn't answered her on that question either.
A week ago she had told her husband Miles that she needed a few days for herself. He had been mad with her, had tried to talk her out of this, but she had just left him back alone in their house in L.A.
The travel across the whole country had been unspeakably difficult. There was almost no air traffic. The few flights were expensive and overbooked. She had made a part of the way on a flight from San Francisco to Atlanta. The rest of the way she had had to travel by train. It had been horrible and in the aftermath, she had to admit, that it had been very dangerous to do all this.
For some short moments on the way she had begun to think if this all was worth it. Was it worth to take all this risk just to find him again? The bad feeling came back when she remembered that she had done exactly that before, in China.
Feeling uncomfortably Audrey lay in bed and stared at the flame of the candle on her bedside table. There were far too many bad memories in her head right now to sleep.
Somehow she managed to push the memories of China aside. But the emptiness inside her mind freed the pictures of the day when she had seen Jack for the last time. She had left him. She remembered how her husband had come over to her, had hugged her, had kissed her, while Jack had watched. She remembered how he had finally turned away and had left. She hadn't seen him again ever since.
Every other night, since that day, she had seen him in her dreams. But they had hadn't been pleasant ones. It was the same picture most of the times: they were torturing him in front of her eyes.
Though she desperately starred at the light of the candle and tried to keep her eyes open sleepiness got the better of her.
Cheng appeared. With this sadistic grin on his ugly face he nodded to his guards. They switched on the light and suddenly she saw the bloody, beaten up heap that once used to be Jack.
She screamed.
11:07pm LT, Cypress Hills Cemetery, Brooklyn
Chloe stepped out of the cab for the second time within this hour. The first time she had driven to the little apartment which had used to be Jack's hideout a few months ago. But he hadn't been there. Instead, the whole building had been burned down by somebody in the vicissitudes of the civil riots.
There was only one other place where she suspected Jack could be, and that was where she had gone now- to Brooklyn, to visit the Cypress Hills cemetery. She had been here before, only four months ago, when Rene had been buried.
As she strode through the dark rows of gravestones she could remember the way very well.
It was ghostly dark.
A thick layer of clouds hung from the sky, covering the stars and the bit of moon light. The few street lamps which normally lighted the alleys through the cemetery were now dark.
Chloe zipped up her jacket and turned left. Her eyes had adapted to the darkness a bit better now.
She went through an endless seeming aisle between small white gravestones. It was a ghostly situation, since she could only a few yards to every side. For a short moment she stopped and looked back to where she had come from- but it looked the same in every direction.
Somehow she wished she wouldn't have paid the taxi driver already. She had been so sure that Jack was here when she had gotten out of the cab, but she wasn't any longer. This place had a frightening atmosphere. It was dark, windy, drizzling and cold. She went on, hoping to find the place that she was looking for. She tried to remember the day of Renee's funeral. A handful of people had only been here, maybe ten or fifteen.
Finally she found the memorial square which was familiar to her. She went across. In front of her, on the other side, was a row with relatively new graves. Renee's was at the very end of the row.
She saw Jack, sitting there, on the grass, from far.
"Jack.", she said aloud, as she approached him.
He turned his head, slowly. "Chloe.", he answered, surprised by her sudden appearance.
She sat down onto the grass, next to him. Soon she felt the wet ground soaking her pants.
Jack had been here for a much longer time. His hair and his jacket were still wet from the rain showers which had passed a few hours ago. Silently Chloe eyed his uniform. He had mentioned earlier that it was not a disguise.
The unit badges and shoulder epaulets identified him as a captain within 5th battalion of 22nd infantry regiment. At the name plate there was his name engraved. This uniform was definitely no disguise.
"Jack?", she silently asked again.
"You shouldn't have come here, Chloe.", he silently answered. "Morris is right." The view at Renee's name on that gravestone stung in his chest.
"No, he's not. It's not your fault that she died.", Chloe said.
"She died in my arms.", he took a deep breath, hugging his legs tight to him. "She was shot lying in my bed." They sat in silence for a few moments, before he continued. "It's the first time ever that I'm here." Right after she had died he had had to disappear. Since they had forced him to join the armed forces again, one month ago, he hadn't been off duty for one single day.
Chloe sighed and hesitatingly placed her hand at his shoulder. "You know, that you can come with me, home, to our place.", she offered. "I talked to Morris."
"He's right.", Jack repeated. "I shouldn't be doing this. I just wanted to know a name, Chloe. Nothing else."
She sat there, at a loss for words, not knowing where to start. She hadn't talked to him in weeks, when so much had happened in between.
"The things you did… after Renee died…", Chloe began, "when we started to work together, to find the responsible ones behind all this...", she stammered and took a deep breath before she continued- "all the evidence was a fake. Wellington, the director of CTU was behind all this, together with President Taylor."
"Wait a moment.", Jack cut in. This story was so unbelievable to him, he couldn't believe it. "Who were these people that I went after, if they hadn't been…?"
"They were part of a conspiracy against the President Hassan and Taylor, mainly Russian. Some of them might even have been part of the mob where Renee had been undercover, but… they just used us to get them out of the way."
Jack suddenly felt like having been hit with a sledgehammer. The extent of this whole story was growing to a dimension which he had never even considered possible. He stood up and went a few steps back and forth. "Why me? Why not let somebody else do the dirty work?"
"They wanted no confidants. If something went wrong they could have always blamed it all on you and your revenge trip. It was a perfect solution for them. I found it out only a few days before all their attacks happened. I had recorded a few calls and I wanted to end it…", Chloe desperately told him, "but then everything went out of control." She watched him, as he went around her, circling the adjacent graves. His face was unreadable in the darkness. He seemed to be close to losing his mind in one second, the other second he was again calm and composed. Finally he stopped right next to Chloe and offered her his hand to help her stand up. "So it was Wellington.", he said.
"Yes."
He nodded, and then grabbed his backpack from the ground. "That was all I wanted to know, Chloe. Let's go and get you home."
"Don't you even want to know why? Why I gave them your location?", she asked, as he had already gently grabbed her arm to guide her away from here.
Jack shook his head. "No, not really. You had your reasons, for sure.", he murmured.
She saw that he didn't want her reasons because he simply didn't want to hear any more bad news. "Jack…", she began.
"No, you don't have to tell me, Chloe. I told you, I just wanted to know a name. I'm going to find this man and swear to god..."
"No, Jack, listen!", she stopped and held him back from walking, too. "Listen now! I need you to listen to that!"
He stopped and turned around, facing her. "Didn't they instruct you not to tell me?", he asked. A second later he saw how she nodded her head yes. "Why are you here then?"
"He came to me because you were the only one who had a lead to these terrorists left. Wellington forced me to give away your location. I was threatening him and Taylor with a bunch of recorded phone calls from a few days earlier. But they were suddenly threatening me and my family…", she had a hard time not to start crying. "I'm so sorry. I never wanted to sell you out.", she whispered, but tears and sobs drowned out her words. "You can't go after him. He'll know it was me who gave you his name and… and they…" she didn't even finish the sentence.
Jack stepped forward and softly hugged her. "It's alright Chloe…", he silently said to her, "I won't go after him, not like that. I'll find another way some day." He held her close for a few moments, until he finally felt she had calmed down. "Everything alight again?"
Imperceptibly she nodded a yes. "I'm so sorry for that all.", she repeated again, staring at the service ribbons at his chest.
Jack saw that she was freezing in the cold night's air. He grabbed his backpack and took out the jacket of his army combat uniform and hung it round her shoulders. "We should really get you home now.", he murmured, "before Morris becomes my worst enemy."
Chloe gladly took his jacket and showed him a little smile. "No, I think he won't become your enemy. He was long asleep when I left the house. And Jack, he doesn't know anything of this. I didn't want him to know in how much danger he and Prescott already were."
"I understand. Come on, let's go.", he said and guided her away.
Once, after a few feet, he looked back to the white gravestone, but Renee's name had already become unreadable in the darkness.