Chapter 4: Let Me Count the Ways

Note: I loaded this chapter on the 28th, but several folks let me know that even though they got notification that a new chapter had been posted, they couldn't find it, so I am reloading it.

A/N: In this chapter, John begins to execute his plan. We meet a new character and spend a little time with a repeat 'customer' of Reese and Finch.

XXX

How I hate you Leon Tao, Tim Wiltshire thought, let me count the ways, as he met with a tall dark haired man in a ferry parking lot.

XXX

It wasn't always that way. Leon and Tim met in high school. Sharing the pain of being shorter, smarter and younger than their classmates, they clicked instantly. Leon was a wiz with math and computers, while Tim excelled in biology and chemistry; tired of being ignored, resented and bullied, it was only a matter of time before they began to exact their revenge.

Just little things at first - hacking into the school's grading database to bump up their test scores in the classes they hated, turning mounds of cafeteria mystery meat into goo - but then their schemes escalated. The chess club's budget increased tenfold and the cheerleaders' hair was dyed bright purple when they showered one afternoon with a new free shampoo. The football team failed all their exams before a critical game and an adrenaline gas was pumped into the teachers' lounge, revealing some pent up hostilities.

Students and staffers blamed each other, their crosstown rivals, the school board, various parents groups and God, but never suspected Leon and Tim.

Emboldened, the two expanded outside the halls of academia. Need to get a parking ticket deleted? Leon could take care of that. Want to convince your parents that you're too sick to attend that boring family reunion? Tim had you covered. Their strategies paid for cars, Spring Break trips to Florida and their college educations.

When their former tormenters requested their help, the two friends smiled and nodded – and then charged them ten times what they charged everyone else.

Leon got a coveted job on Wall Street and Tim accepted a prime position at the government's Plum Island Animal Disease Center* off the east end of Long Island, but of course, they wanted more, more schemes, more money, more danger. They began hanging out at illegal gambling games, at first lending assistance to other gamblers with their unique ways and then becoming players themselves.

Tim and Leon had a lot in common, except for their taste in women. Leon liked them tall, pale and thin; Tim liked them short, dark and plump. Neither one had any luck.

Until Tim met Ronnie.

Leon had dragged Tim to one of the dozens of wineries on Long Island's North Fork for a tasting and a chance to ogle his latest crush, one of a quartet of tall, slender blondes that Leon had been mooning over on a rotating basis for months. Ronnie was their boss.

Tim fell in love with her at first sight.

Perfectly round, he thought, from her round, fluffy Afro, to her strong round calves. She had big round eyes, round toned arms, a softly rounded belly and firm round thighs. Her skin was a deep golden brown and she had green eyes that seemed to change color by the second, lightening when she laughed, darkening when she thoughtfully answered a customer's question.

While customers were initially intrigued by the blonde quartet, it was Ronnie who held their attention. She was an expert vintner, smart and funny, and she truly loved what she did. Tim had PhDs in biology and chemistry, but Ronnie made science come alive in a way that made him feel stupid and inadequate.

He started attending her tastings on a regular basis, at first staying in the background, but then over time slowly getting to know her. When he made Ronnie laugh for the first time, Tim thought his heart would explode with happiness.

But then he caught his reflection in a row of windows that looked out over the vineyard, saw his narrow, slight form, his receding hairline, his weak spectacled eyes.

Someone like her would never be interested in someone like him, he thought.

But Tim knew he had to have her.

In his private lab at home, working until he could barely stand, Tim created a special pheromone that would attract her to him. He walked into the winery the next evening ready to spray it on her hand, when Ronnie smiled at him, truly smiled at him, and asked his opinion on a new yeast formulation she was working on. He stayed after the tasting and they talked until the next morning, not just about science, but about so many other things.

When Tim finally walked out into the cool dawn, he took the vial out of his pocket, holding it in his light brown hand.

He didn't need to manipulate or trick her. He could just be himself.

He threw the pheromone away.

Their friendship developed into love and Tim and Ronnie were married a year after that night and had a beautiful round little girl eighteen months later. Life was more perfect than he ever could have even imagined.

But as always, Tim wanted more.

This time he wanted more for Ronnie – her own vineyard and winery. He'd found the perfect place, but a large California based distributor, looking to develop a boutique vineyard on the East Coast, had designs on the property and more importantly, tons of money. Tim knew that the owner wanted to sell to someone local, but money talked, and Tim needed it – lots of it – to make a quick deal.

Leon made silly faces at his goddaughter, gurgling happily in his arms as the two men talked. "I know just the game for us, but it's gonna to cost big money, buppie, everything you got, including the money for the new house, and," he smiled at the baby, "my future daughter-in-law's college fund." He eyed his friend shrewdly. "You sure you want to do this? You could lose it all. What are you gonna tell Ronnie?"

Tim sighed. Ronnie believed that he was a brilliant investor, not aware that the money for their seaside cottage, the housekeeper, the personal assistant and the nanny came from his monthly gambling excursions with Leon. How could he explain if he lost it all, overnight?

But then he thought about those big round eyes looking at him with awe and adoration as he proudly showed her around the property.

"Let's do it."

Leon chuckled. "Just like old times." He gave his friend the look that Tim knew meant he wanted something. "You'll have to stake me…"

Tim shook his head. "Leon…"

Leon shrugged helplessly. "How did I know that Nevaeh should have been named Lleh?"

Tim had never met Leon's latest romance, but he had heard all about the 'business opportunities' and numerous dead relatives that had drained Leon's bank accounts and maxed out his credit cards in an effort to help her. The capper was when she unceremoniously dumped Leon at the end of Tim's driveway and then took off – in Leon's car, which was found abandoned and stripped two weeks later.

"The way you should have known about Harmony and Charisma and Eden," Tim shot back, but he smiled softly at his friend as they began to formulate their plan. It had been this way since they met – Leon spent all the money he had and then some on bad schemes and bad women.

Two weeks later, Tim and Leon entered a tandem tractor trailer, paying the seven figure entry fee in cash to a burly looking trucker. Strong hands frisked them for weapons and electronics, then asked to examine the small packets both men had, filled with several tiny vials. "What are these for?"

"Allergies," Tim said, sniffling. Leon sneezed.

Rolling his eyes, the trucker handed the kits back to them and let them pass.

They squeezed between several large packing crates and entered another world.

"For Love of Ivy**," Tim whispered to himself, recalling the old Sidney Poitier film his mom used to watch. The rear trailer contained a fully appointed bar and lounge area, all leather and burled wood, the walls, floor and ceiling covered with some material that blocked any external sounds, including the truck's powerful engines. Two gorgeous servers glided forward and took each man's beverage order, murmuring to them softly about the delicacies at the lavish buffet where the runner up to a popular reality television cooking competition was putting the final touches to the items he had meticulously prepared.

Even though several players knew each other, no names were used, and the tuxedoed host skillfully put them at ease, handing each participant a different jeweled colored marker with the name of some far off natural landmark, so that Leon became Mr. Botany Bay, while Tim was Mr. Khyber Pass, their host relaying some interesting fact or amusing anecdote about the locations selected, so that the conversation was light and easy.

An elegant grandfather clock chimed the hour, and Tim felt just a slight shiver of movement as the truck left the industrial park. They were on their way.

As Tim and Leon drank, ate, and chatted with the other players, they moved about the space, sprinkling, spraying, dripping or blowing various concoctions on their competitors. Each one was designed to put their opponents off their game just enough to affect their play, but not enough to arouse suspicion – or cause them to withdraw from competition. One might have a queasy stomach, another a dull headache, a third a burgeoning interest in one of the servers, who seemed to share his desire, and so on, according to Tim's meticulous designs.

After a while, the connector between the two trailers was opened, and the players walked into the gaming space. Tim sprayed a concoction on the tray full with decks of playing cards. This formula would make the players feel just a little jittery, something they would pass off as excitement with the prospect of winning so much money, but the effect would also make it harder for them to hide any facial expressions, body movements or tics that could clue you into how good, or bad, their hands were.

Tim had injected himself and Leon with serums that would block the effects of all the items used tonight, and he slid into his chair, marveling at how steady everything was – he could almost forget that they were barreling along some busy thruway.

Hours later, their plan was working like a charm, piles of chips were growing steadily in front of them and Tim began to visualize the look on his wife's face when he handed her the keys to her new business.

Tim smiled to himself. Just a little while longer and he and Leon would be home free.

At that precise moment, all hell broke loose.

Gunfire erupted as two armed men burst into the trailer. Through the opened connector, Tim could see the splintered remains of the packing crates they had squeezed between at the start of the evening. Placed at the back of the rear trailer to ward off any suspicion of the rig's true purpose if they got pulled over, it was clear that the gunmen had hidden inside until this exact moment, then burst free, surprising and immobilizing the guards.

A third gunman herded the screaming and crying staff from the lounge into the gaming area, but as they and the players were crowded in a corner of the trailer, Tim noticed that one of the servers was eerily calm.

Tall and slender, she pulled off a curly red wig and her long blonde locks spilled over her shoulders as she smirked at Leon.

With a sinking heart, Tim realized this must be Nevaeh.

The woman whose name was 'heaven' spelled backwards, really should have been named lleh.

He turned to his friend, stunned. "Leon? You told her about this?" Tim whispered.

"She was just going to take one of the cash bags at the end of the night, Tim, I swear! Ten, twenty grand - nobody would have missed it!" Leon smiled weakly. "I guess she needed more than I thought."

The rig suddenly took a sharp right turn, picking up speed. Realizing that the driver must be in on the scheme as well, Tim knew they were totally at their mercy. They watched helplessly as the safe was opened and tens of millions of dollars were swept into dark duffel bags.

As they were being tied up, the leader of the men told them that they were being driven to a secluded area, barricaded in and left alive. "You'll be fine – you'll manage to untie yourselves eventually and you've got enough liquor and food here to choke a horse. A few days from now, we'll let the authorities know where you are – we'll be long out of the country."

"With our money!" the captives cursed and screamed. Since the game was illegal, they couldn't ask the authorities to go after the thieves, and the gang knew it.

"Be glad we let you live – well, almost all of you live. This miserable shit," he grabbed Leon by the collar, "dies. You slept with Nevaeh. My wife."

"I didn't know she was your wife, I swear! She said you were dead!" Leon turned to her, "Nevaeh, tell him!"

"It was the only way he'd tell me what we needed to know, baby, and trust me, he wasn't that good." Nevaeh looked at Leon with utter contempt. "And Leon, I told you that he died three different times."

Sputtering, Leon cried, "Wasn't that go – now wait just a minute, you said that –"

Tim couldn't believe what he was hearing. Leon was about to be murdered and he was worried about whether he was good in bed with the woman who betrayed him.

The head gunman began dragging Leon towards the rear trailer. "Don't worry, I'll make it quick. Nevaeh says you're used to that."

A series of explosions rocked the trailer sideways. Skidding, it began careening wildly in a fishtail pattern, slammed into something solid and then shuddered to a halt. The lights went out and another explosion ripped the side of the trailer open.

Knocked to the floor, dizzy and disoriented by a blow to his head and the smoke from the explosions, Tim thought he was hallucinating as a tall dark figure, framed by the early morning sky, burst through the hole torn through the thick metal. There was gunfire, a flurry of thuds and the trailer became eerily still for several long moments. Tim heard a gasp, a clinking sound and then a series of small, muffled explosions.

"Leon…we've got to stop meeting like this." A low voice said.

Tim struggled to sit up. The gunmen lay groaning or unconscious on the floor, Nevaeh was handcuffed to her husband and the rest of the captives were stirring about, their faces showing that they were just as confused about what had just happened as Tim was.

"I knew you'd save me, John!" Leon chortled as a tall, dark haired man, dressed in motorcycle gear, walked over to him. "But…how did you know where I was?"

"Finch. Math. The GPS in your phone was the starting point." The tall man began cutting the cords around Leon's wrists and ankles.

Tim shook his head, trying to understand what he was hearing. Leon knew this guy? He had saved him before?

Leon nodded as he stood up. "Finchy! Yeah… we had to leave our phones behind when we got picked up…major highways… maybe a small airport for their escape route…Finch was able to triangulate our position!"

"Something like that." The tall man had freed Tim while Leon was talking and pulled him to his feet. "I'm John, Dr. Wiltshire. I understand that you're a friend of Leon's."

Tim nodded.

"We need to leave now, Doctor. The police are on their way."

"Leave? But…" Leon looked around the trailer.

John smirked at him. "The money's back in the safe, Leon. Those small explosions you heard? Dye packs. By now they've soaked through the duffel bags and drenched all the money. Anyone who touches it…"

Leon shook his head. "No – John - Come on! There are millions of dollars in there! We can't just leave it!"

John shrugged. "The price of freedom, Leon…Finch and I decided we could use a few days of peace and quiet until you scraped up enough cash for your next scheme. Let's go."

"But –"

Tim could hear sirens in the distance. They needed to get out of here before they lost more than his life's savings. "Leon, it's over. Let's go."

Leon's shoulders slumped, but he nodded. "Okay, okay."

As the three men started to walk away, Nevaeh called out, "Leon! He made me do it, I swear!" She tried to pull her handcuffed wrist away from her husband's, who had begun to stir. "I was terrified of him. Help me, baby, please!"

Leon stopped, turned around. "Really? He made you?" He began to walk towards her.

John raised an eyebrow at Tim; Tim rolled his eyes. They each grabbed one of Leon's arms.

Leon looked at them both incredulously as he tried to twist out of their grasp. "Guys! She needs our help!"

"The only help she'll need, Leon, is explaining to her husband why the driver thought he was dead, too," John said as they dragged his kicking and squirming body towards the hole in the trailer.

Tim could hear Nevaeh trying to explain to her furious husband as they made their way outside. Glancing at the truck's crumpled cab, Tim could see the unlucky driver feebly pushing against the jammed door, unable to get out.

John handed Tim two bus passes. "Walk through that stand of trees. There's a commuter parking lot about two miles down where you can catch a bus." His eyes flickered over Tim's and Leon's suits. "You'll blend."

Tim realized the man was right – to the casual observer he and Leon looked no different than thousands of other men after a long night out – tired, slightly disheveled, maybe still a little drunk. Nobody would pay the slightest bit of attention to them. He nodded, unable to speak.

John turned his brilliant blue eyes on Leon. "Next time, Leon, I bring Bear. He'll be more than happy to drag you out by another body part."

Leon gulped.

John's teeth flashed as he pulled on a black motorcycle helmet, his face hidden by a mirrored visor. His long legs straddled a sleek machine and he roared off into the morning mist.

The sirens were getting closer. As a crowd began to gather around the smoking wreckage, Tim and Leon slipped through the stand of trees and disappeared.

XXX

Tim and Leon had spent their whole lives fighting not to be ignored, but ironically, being ignored proved to be a blessing in the aftermath of the crash.

The robbers, players and staff, all facing serious criminal charges, had more than enough to worry about without being concerned about them. (A few tried to spin a ridiculous tale about being attacked by some stranger, but as the police interrogated them, it was revealed that there were multiple plots to try to take that huge sum of money. Nevaeh and her cohorts might have struck first, but as more weapons and explosives were uncovered both inside and outside the vehicle and a dozen other conspirators were rounded up, it was clear that they wouldn't have been the last. Others said that they had attacked the gang in self-defense, and the elegant tuxedoed host claimed that he had set off the dye packs to keep the money safe from all of them.)

The rig had been used for numerous games for months - there were hundreds of sets of prints and the authorities decided to focus on the slam dunk case they already had instead of trying to find out whom those other fingerprints belonged to.

On the news, video from the crowd's cellphones clearly showed the two men walking away from the site, but with a tale full of illegal gambling, armed robbers, a love triangle among the thieves, a disgraced television 'personality' and millions of purple stained bills, the 24 hour news cycle, for once, was truly full.

This time, Tim thought, they really were home free.

When Tim suggested to Ronnie that they delay purchasing a home and finish out the lease on their seaside cottage, she teasingly reminded him that he was the one who wanted to move, not her.

When Tim's boss informed him that he was the top choice to provide consulting services to Shetler Pharmaceuticals Animal Health division, across the Sound in Connecticut, a move that would not only advance the Center's profile, but his own career as well, Tim breathed a sigh of relief as the hefty fee would cover his expenses for several months.

When Tim told the vineyard's owner that he wouldn't be making the purchase after all, the man actually thanked him, telling Tim that his offer was one of several that had created a bidding war between the top two contenders – the final offer was more than he ever could have hoped for.

And when Leon, embarrassed and forlorn, did manage to scrape together some money in ways that Tim was afraid to ask about, and offered it to his friend instead of using it on a new scheme, Tim told him to keep it.

Tim had his family and his career, and as the weeks passed, he started convincing himself that what had happened in that truck was just a combination of a little bad luck and a few bad people.

He had even started considering a plan that Leon had suggested over a year ago as a possible way to get back the money that he'd lost.

But then that afternoon a tall dark haired man walked into his office.

XXX

How, Tim thought at first, but then the scientist shook his head slightly as the tall man closed the office door behind him – after seeing everything else the man could do, breaking into a secure facility like this undetected would be child's play for him.

Homeland Security ran the Center with the mandate of keeping undesirables out – there were strict protocols, screenings and background checks for the staffers and visitors to Plum Island – but once you got in, everyone assumed that you belonged there and this intruder was no exception. His badge, his crisp white lab coat, the lightly tinted glasses – even the way he held himself as he walked in was markedly different from the man that had burst into the trailer weeks ago.

It wasn't until he sat down across from Tim and removed his glasses that the scientist saw his whole persona shift into that other man and Tim couldn't help but shiver as those startling blue eyes gazed at him.

"Dr. Wiltshire."

The man – Tim didn't want to think of him as John; he was 'him', 'the tall man', 'Leon's friend' – placed several printouts on his desk.

Tim had always been extremely careful regarding the taking of items from the Center – a little of this chemical here, a bit of that biological organism there - that went into the concoctions he made for his exploits with Leon. He knew that some loss of materials were expected, and recorded, as part of the day to day activities in the labs, and while there were daily and weekly checks at the facility to safeguard against wide scale theft, compiling how much disappeared over a long period of time was never even considered.

Tim passed through Security on his way out of the Center night after night with barely a word from the guards, much less a glance as they did a cursory examination of his briefcase and laptop bag, never realizing that he had secreted materials in the hem of a pant leg or the lapel of a jacket.

Leon's friend tilted his head at Tim. "It's really quite impressive."

The scientist sat there, stunned, as he ran his fingers down the columns to the totals on the bottom of the printouts – he had never calculated how much he had taken over the months and years. "How –"

"You've been friends with Leon since high school, Dr. Wiltshire. He has certain skills; so do you – it made sense that you'd been working together for a long time." The tall man slid a copy of the inventory that the police had taken of the items inside the trailers to Tim. Circled on the list were several small vials.

Tim closed his eyes for a moment. It wasn't until that evening when he was destroying his own packet of vials in his home lab that he had called Leon in a panic, asking his friend if he had disposed of his packet as well. Leon had assured him that he had, but had conveniently forgotten to mention that some of the vials must have fallen out of his pocket when the truck crashed.

"The police did examine the contents of the vials, Dr. Wiltshire, but there wasn't enough trace material left for them to determine what had been in them. They assumed that there was some drug activity going on, maybe stimulants for players to stay awake, but not enough to warrant further investigation."

The scientist sighed. "But you suspected something else."

The tall man nodded. "There had to be a reason for those vials being there. Several of your fellow players complained of being ill when they were arrested – their symptoms were noted by the arresting officers on their reports, but each person had something distinctly different from the others. That pointed back to the vials, which then pointed back to you, the only scientist among the group."

Tim slumped in his chair. "What do you want - John?"

The man smiled softly. "Just the answers to a few questions, Dr. Wiltshire."

XXX

The ferries from New London, Connecticut to Long Island's Orient Point run all year. Even though it was April, the unusually warm weather added to the streams of people and cars disembarking or lining up to board the huge white vessel gleaming in the early morning sunshine.

As part of the consulting contract with Shetler Pharmaceuticals, several of their employees would be getting a tour of the Center. Tim was waiting for them to get off the ferry so that he could drive them to the island.

"Dr. Wiltshire."

The scientist jumped. He'd been scanning the parking lot and didn't even see John approach, much less realized he was right beside him. Tim turned slowly towards him, not meeting his eyes. "I don't have what you want," he hissed, clenching his fists in anger and frustration.

He was furious at John, furious at Leon, but most importantly, furious at himself.

John folded over a map in his hands, as though he was a tourist.

"I don't." Tim insisted weakly.

John calmly leaned against Tim's car, waiting.

Finally Tim jammed his hand into his jacket pocket, withdrew a small packet and slapped it in the other man's hand. "The Center was used for biological weapons research from the early 1950s until President Nixon shut down the program during his first term. They called this one 'Browning'."

The tall man smiled softly. "Let me count the ways…***"

Tim nodded. "It will do everything you asked and then some."

"Thank you, Dr. Wiltshire. I won't contact you again."

As John straightened up to walk away, Tim whispered, "Did you ever want something – someone – you shouldn't? Someone you don't deserve?"

The other man looked at him solemnly. "Every day."

"My wife – I wanted it – the money - for my wife. She deserves something special."

"She already has that, Tim," John said, and Tim was struck at how soft and wistful the man's voice was. "Your little girl."

Tim smiled at the thought of his precious round daughter.

"And you, Tim. She has you."

Tim kept his eyes on the other man as he walked towards the ferry, but somehow John melted into the crowd and disappeared.

*Plum Island actually exists, not far from the fictional Owen Island depicted in the Season Two episode Proteus. The scientists at the Animal Disease Center study dozens of foreign and domestic animal pathogens, including hog cholera, hoof and mouth disease and African swine fever.

The center's mission includes diagnosis, research and education, including training government and military veterinarians, diagnostic laboratory staff and veterinary school faculty, which in my head, was how Reese was able to get past the strict security ("Paging Dr. Reese…") and compile the data he needed for his chat with Tim Wiltshire.

Tim's comment about the center conducting biological weapons research against livestock is true – the program ran from 1954 until 1969. The government denied it for years, but in the early 1990s Newsday unearthed documents proving the program's existence. Russian scientists conducted an inspection of the facility in 1994 to verify that the experiments had actually ceased.

In my head, while the experiments have stopped, the results are still viable and stored at the Center, where forty-plus years later, few, if any of the staffers are even aware of their existence.

**For Love of Ivy was a 1968 film starring Sidney Poitier and Abbey Lincoln as Ivy. Here's the synopsis from the Turner Classic Movies website. I've highlighted the part that Tim refers to when he enters the truck:

Because she wants more excitement in her life, a 27-year-old black woman, Ivy Moore, decides to leave her job as domestic to a Long Island family and go to secretarial school. When she announces her plans to her employers, the Austins, the entire family is upset at losing their maid-housekeeper-confidante of 9 years' standing. Deciding that Ivy's decision results from a lack of romance in her life, the Austins' teenaged daughter, Gena, and hippie son, Tim, decide to play matchmakers without their parents' knowledge. Tim persuades Jack Parks, a young black trucking executive, to date Ivy by threatening to expose his sideline operation-a gambling casino located inside a moving trailer truck. Afraid to lose Austin's department store contract, Jack agrees. After an awkward first date Jack and Ivy warm up to each other, but their romance cools when Ivy learns that Jack was blackmailed into dating her. Despite his aversion to marriage, Jack follows Ivy back to the Austin house and confesses his love for her, even promising to give up the gambling operation. And, as the lovers depart arm in arm, the Austins are left to face their domestic problems.

***Sonnet 43 from Sonnets of the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, published in 1850. We've all heard the famous opening line – "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways."

A/N: So Tim has given Reese something that "will do everything you asked, and then some." Should we feel sorry for Steven?

Next, Reese goes North, South, East and West for the next phase of his plan.