Not a Fan of the Bittersweet
Chapter 3
Trembling In the Balance
"The suspense: the fearful, acute suspense: of standing idly by while the life of one we dearly love, is trembling in the balance . . . ."
— Charles Dickens
"Where's Sara?"
Peter didn't need to say anything else. The grim implications of Black's being on the loose were all too obvious. For now, he set aside his fury at the Canadians for failing to notify the FBI of Black's release.
He had much bigger worries at the moment.
Jones was already speed-dialing the office. He listened, face creasing into a frown. "According to Blake, she and Caffrey left the office about an hour ago."
"Caffrey's with her?" Peter rubbed his forehead and tried to keep the worry out of his voice, with limited success.
"He borrowed a car, offered her a ride home."
Damn it. "Of course he did," Peter said resignedly. How the hell did Neal always manage to be in the middle of trouble? Could the man, just once, be where he was supposed to be? Jesus.
Jones held up a finger, listening again. "Hold on—what?" Another pause and then the agent added, "Blake thinks they were stopping off at her office first."
Peter seized on that shred of hope. "Maybe they're still there."
Caffrey was fading fast, Sara grimly acknowledged to herself. She'd talked to him, yelled at him, cursed him, ordered him to wake up and answer her. And she wasn't the pleading type, but finally, as a last resort, she'd even tried that. Caffrey was unresponsive to the threats, orders, cajoling.
Of course, she kept talking to him anyway.
Meanwhile, the pool of blood she was kneeling in was alarmingly large. She knew it probably meant there was an exit wound that was bleeding freely. Fear sliced into her heart at the realization that he didn't have much time. Sara had done a few ride-alongs with friends who were cops, years ago. She'd seen two homicides and a couple of fairly gruesome crime scenes. But she'd never seen this much blood on anything—well, not counting the corpses she'd seen.
And right now she really, really didn't want to count those.
The initial burst of adrenaline had faded, leaving her limp and exhausted. The gun weighed heavy on her right hand; she finally rested it on the floor, still keeping a tight grip on it and still pointing it at the killer. Though he hadn't moved, she was taking no chances. Her legs were cramping painfully, but she couldn't allow herself to move. She'd been kneeling here—how long? It felt like hours, but she knew it had only been a few minutes.
They were minutes Caffrey couldn't afford, though.
Her mind started to wander, stream of consciousness taking over. She was trying to think about something other than the utter, damning helplessness she felt as Caffrey lay dying beside her.
She replayed her conversation with the world's most inquisitive 911 operator. No, that wasn't fair. The operator was just following her training, but the endless questions had made her want to scream and, well, the more Sara thought about it, she knew she hadn't handled it well.
She thought about how long it would take the police to sort this out when they got here. About what it would look like to them when they found her, weapon in hand, while two men lay bleeding on her floor with gunshot wounds.
Well, Burke would help. He knew the score.
Sara winced. Oh, Christ. Another big mistake. She should have given Peter's name to 911, told them to call him. Maybe they would have asked you, Sara, if you hadn't hung up on them. Or if you hadn't left your phone on the other side of the room, you could call him yourself.
What stupidity. Her brain had gone to mush. Meanwhile, her abandoned phone had rung multiple times since she'd dropped it. It was probably—oh, shit.
Peter doesn't know.
A scene flashed through her mind where she had to tell Peter Burke that Caffrey was dead.
Sara was a good talker. She was accustomed to thinking on her feet and had always considered herself glib. Okay, not Neal-Caffrey-glib—who was?—but reasonably competent. Still, when she tried to imagine the words she'd use to tell Burke that Caffrey had been killed, she failed utterly.
She flashed back to their conversation of yesterday in the conference room. The memory of her flippant comment about Caffrey sent a chill through her.
"Neal came by. We had a nice little chat," she'd said.
"Is he in one piece?" Peter had asked dryly.
"Yes, I left him whole."
"Good. I prefer him that way."
So, take two of that conversation would go something like this . . .
"Neal came with me. We were surprised by Mr. Black."
"Is he in one piece?"
"No, I wasn't quick enough, Peter. I'm so sorry."
Just a few days ago, in this same apartment, she had held a gun on Caffrey and come this close to firing it; she shuddered now to think how close. Now she was fighting to keep him alive.
And she had to keep him alive. If she didn't, Burke might kill her himself.
Peter's optimism about Neal and Sara's whereabouts was short-lived.
A quick call to Sterling Bosch's New York office confirmed that Sara Ellis had stopped by to pick up her mail and then left. When, exactly? No one was quite sure—maybe a half hour ago?
Initially, when the driver admitted that Black had returned to finish the job, Peter had thought his worst fears were being realized. He'd been worried about Sara.
How wrong he'd been—given what he now knew.
Neal's with her.
As Diana drove to the apartment, Peter and Jones took turns dialing Caffrey's and Sara's phones. No answer, no response to texts. Neal's phone went straight to voicemail, which in and of itself was not a good sign. Peter also attempted—unsuccessfully—to reach some NYPD contacts.
After a while, they gave up and watched silently as Diana fought through the traffic.
Peter tried not to focus on the overwhelming sense of dread he felt, cold and dark, pooling in his gut. He couldn't shake the feeling that something terrible had happened.
He'd never hoped so fervently to be wrong.
Sara had resorted to watching the movement of Neal's chest. Shallow and barely there, but visible. It was all she had, and she clung to it like a drowning woman to a life preserver.
She had resorted to praying. Please, God, let them get here now. Please, before he dies.
Neal was long past moving, long past talking, long past any awareness of himself or his surroundings. She'd tried to rouse him, kept trying and trying, until finally she'd had to admit there was no point. So she hung on every rise and fall that proved he still lived; as if he would keep breathing so long as she watched. Each breath was a small victory she treasured.
And all the while, she talked to him. Neal couldn't speak, couldn't respond, but maybe he could listen. So she kept up a steady stream of inane chatter and commentary that she hoped perhaps, somehow, would help keep him tethered to the here and now. Talking was better than screaming, which was what she felt like doing. Plus, when she stopped, the quiet in the apartment became like a living thing, threatening to overwhelm her, to swallow her.
In the quiet, everything was more real. In the quiet, all she could think about was that nightmarish sound he'd made when she pressed on the wound. The plaintive, helpless quality of his voice – it burns. The pain-dulled blue of his eyes just before they slid shut. The warm wetness of the blood Caffrey was still losing, soaking the scarf and her fingers in red.
And whether the message he'd given to her to tell Peter would be his last words.
In the quiet, it was hard not to cry. So instead, Sara kept on with her desperate soliloquy.
She started off with the background of the car repossession she'd brought Peter and Neal into the other day. True, grand theft auto wasn't Caffrey's specialty, but still, he might be curious. Curiosity, in fact, seemed to be one of his defining traits. So he'd probably be interested, right?
She shared a couple of her pet theories about how he'd nabbed the Raphael and where it was now. Then she debated with herself the question of whether Neal had it cached somewhere with the rest of his loot, or if he'd fenced it when he'd needed cash.
Having exhausted that subject, Sara moved on to speculation about how in the blue hell he had convinced Peter Burke to agree to this crazy arrangement they had. Though, to be honest, she had known Peter when he was chasing Caffrey the first time—and when she thought back on that, Peter's acquiescence wasn't quite as far-fetched as it had appeared at first glance . . . .
She even apologized—well, in a roundabout way—for how she'd acted after the night of the break-in, when they'd faked her death. Sara had been shaken, more than she wanted to admit, by the evening's events, and it had shown in her acerbic comments to Peter and her curt manner toward Neal afterwards. The truth was, Neal hadn't been standing over her with a gun. He'd come in the door and stood there, not approaching. Only after having some time to think had she considered it from his perspective—how terrifying it must have been for Neal, forced to enter a stranger's house, with a gun, in the dead of night. Knowing that he risked the driver shooting him if he didn't enter, and an armed homeowner shooting him if he did.
Neal had also been very, very careful never to point the Ruger at her—even when she'd aimed at him. For lots of people, when faced with a gun, it would be a natural, instinctive reaction to raise your own weapon—well, if you were in any way predisposed to violence, that is. The fact that Neal hadn't done so spoke volumes. And when she'd hatched the plan to make it appear that he'd killed her, Neal had wanted no part of firing those shots, harmless though they were. Wordlessly, he'd handed the gun to her so she could do it.
So, yeah, she talked about all of that, trying, awkwardly, to tell Neal that she'd overreacted, that she probably could have handled the aftermath better. Sara wasn't much of an apologizer, but she did her best.
Finally, when she was starting to run out of things to say, Sara heard the blessed, glorious scream of sirens. Normally they were the scourge of any New Yorker trying to get a moment's peace, but now they'd suddenly transformed into the sweetest sound in the world. Her prayers had been answered.
Not bad for someone who never went to church anymore.
She leaned down, close to his ear, again sending up a prayer of thanks that she could still feel a faint breath. "They're here, Neal. You're going to be okay."
The first part was true. The second part—well, she wanted to believe it was true.
The sound of footsteps pounded out in the living room; she could feel the vibration through the wood as she knelt.
"In here!" she shouted, registering dimly that the frantic note in her own voice was new to her. "We need help in here!"
Two NYPD uniformed officers entered the room cautiously, guns drawn. Slowly she released her weapon, moved her hand away, and held it out in the air non-threateningly.
"You're Sara Ellis? You called this in?"
"Yes, there's the man I shot. He was still alive last I checked." She jerked her head in Black's direction, temper making her even more bitchy than normal. "It's great you're here, but where the hell are the paramedics? This man is dying."
In a moment, they were next to her, introducing themselves as Officers Barrett and Martino, and assessing the shooter and Caffrey. She swallowed hard when she saw the unmistakable look they exchanged after seeing the blood on him, on her, on the floor.
"Are you injured, ma'am?" Barrett asked. He bent carefully over the shooter, first scanning the body, then feeling for a pulse.
"No. It's . . . it's his blood, not mine." She looked down at Neal, concentrating on his face and not on the ghastly wound. His lips had begun to take on a slight bluish tint, she realized in horror. "He's an FBI agent. His name is Neal Caffrey. He needs help. Please."
She heard the pleading note in the last word, hated how it sounded, but it was for Caffrey, so she put her pride aside.
"Where's the other weapon?" Barrett asked.
"I kicked it over there—under the shelves." With her head, she indicated the far corner of the room.
"Only one shooter?" Martino chimed in.
"Yes," she said. "Just him. Well, not counting me."
Barrett smiled grimly at that. A cop's smile.
Martino was already kneeling in the small space next to her, carefully picking up her weapon, and spoke into his radio, anger lacing every syllable. "All clear. Repeat, all clear. Officer down. I got an FBI agent bleeding out here, for Chrissake. Where the hell's the bus? We needed it five minutes ago, understand?"
She'd only known Martino for about thirty seconds, but she loved him already.
A moment later he said, "ETA for the paramedics is less than a minute."
She smiled and nodded her thanks, bent down again. "Hear that, Caffrey? Almost here."
No answer, but the faint wheezing of another shallow breath. Better than nothing.
Barrett stood up from his examination of the gunman. "He's dead," he told his partner. Martino nodded, called it in.
So the bastard's dead, after all.
Good.
While Diana drove, Peter was as restless as it was possible to be while wearing a seat-belt in a moving car. His gaze darted back and forth, alternating between checking his phone, frowning as he stared through the windshield, and turning to look out the passenger side window, never resting anywhere for more than a few seconds. In between fruitless calls to Neal and Sara, he consulted his phone. He called more NYPD contacts, who'd promised to get back to him, who'd promised him to have a patrol car check it out (maybe they'll get there first, Peter thought). He shifted impatiently in his seat, fiddling with the belt. He drummed his fingers on the car door. Finally he switched on the rarely-used police scanner. It crackled to life with all the police activity of a typical New York City day—robberies, traffic accidents, muggings, break-ins. The usual.
Suddenly they heard the words, " . . . 8602 Second Street, Park Slope?"
Sara's address.
Peter grabbed for the volume, turned it up high.
The dispatcher responded, "Roger that, we have a 187 confirmed."
Peter froze, his hand still on the knob of the scanner. He and Diana exchanged a tense glance.
187 was cop-speak for homicide.
Through the static, the dispatcher spoke again, dispassionate tone belying the import of the words. "One dead, one wounded, shooting at 8602 Second Street, Park Slope. Uniforms and EMS on site, homicide and ME on the way."
For one long, heart-stopping moment, the three of them sat in stunned silence.
"Jesus." Jones' voice was low, but filled with horror.
Diana said simply, "No. No, it can't be." Just in time, she brought her eyes back to the street and hit the brakes, narrowly avoiding the taxi in front of them as the light up ahead turned red. With the car stopped, she took a quick glance at Peter.
All the color had drained out of her boss's face. In an instant, Peter had gone ashen.
He let his hand fall away from the scanner, face contorted with rage as he snarled an expletive Diana had never heard him utter before. Then Peter slammed his right elbow into the window hard enough that Jones, watching anxiously from the back seat, was afraid he'd crack the glass, or the bone, or both. Finally, Peter sat motionless, staring unseeing out the window. In moments of crisis, Peter was a fidgeter, a pacer. Jones couldn't remember ever seeing him so completely still.
Peter started to speak, had to stop and clear his throat before starting again.
"Drive faster," he said tersely, in a voice that sounded like a stranger's, but Diana was already speeding up. A horn honked as she cut someone off, swerving around stopped traffic. No one spoke again.
Just then Peter's phone rang, sounding loud in the silence. He grabbed it, hoping somehow to see Neal's name there (Peter, you'll never guess what happened . . . or, Peter, we need help, Neal would say, breathlessly), but it wasn't Neal, of course. Because Neal was . . . Neal might be—
No. You don't know that. Don't say it, don't even fucking think it.
One dead, one wounded. The words reverberated inside his head, mocking him.
As horror flowed through him, chilling him to the marrow, Peter stared at the phone's display.
It was Elizabeth.
He swallowed hard, conscious of his heart racing in his chest, and jabbed at the button to send the call to voicemail. He didn't like doing that to El, but he couldn't talk to her right now. What the hell would he say?
"Well, Neal might be dead, hon, but I'm not sure—let you know when I find out."
He wasn't ready for that conversation. Not now.
Not ever.
TBC . . . .
A/N - Thanks to everyone who's along for the ride, following, favoriting, and, most especially, reviewing. All feedback is precious and greatly appreciated. Also, a special note of gratitude to the guest reviewers out there—sorry that I can't thank you personally the way I can the other reviewers, so this will have to do. It means so much that you take the time to share your thoughts—it's very motivating!
I know this is a tough place to leave things—sorry about that. Next part will be up before long….