He drove for over ten hours. John didn't let it show, but he felt a certain level of panic, more than he'd allowed himself to feel in a very long time. Judging from her ongoing note-taking and questioning, Carter was a hell of a lot calmer than he was. Maybe because she still had her original goal in mind: take down the Machine. Not that either of them had any idea how to actually accomplish that.
He'd been hoping to prove his theory wrong, but instead he had more evidence that he was probably right. And he still didn't have an easy way to contact Finch without putting Carter in more danger.
After a quick stop in Memphis for food and a few more supplies, Reese found a place to pull over: an empty stretch of land not far from the Mississippi. He napped for a bit and then questioned Carter while he decided where to go next. Cities they'd visited before and places where they had friends or relatives were out of the question. Reese suggested that they try cities along the Gulf of Mexico, because the Machine wouldn't have eyes on the water—not like on land, at any rate. He preferred to have an escape route in case they needed it.
That's how they ended up in Houston. Carter slept some along the way; it was still dark when they arrived, although the sky was turning light along the eastern horizon.
After another nap break—timed to wait out the morning traffic jams—he drove them around the city, trying to learn the area and figure out what to do next.
He hadn't known much about Houston before. The sky here was almost opaque, a pale milky blue from the haze of humidity and pollution. The city sprawled, buildings strewn in seemingly haphazard fashion across miles of land; an entirely different kind of town than New York City.
Pockets of urban decay near skyscrapers—that was still familiar. The ring of suburbs around the big city as well; he catalogued as much as he could as he drove, Carter navigating with an unfolded map of the area.
She rubbed her eyes and picked up the map again, watching his hands on the steering wheel, zoning out. He knew that feeling. It was past time for a break from the car, from driving.
"What we need is internet access," she told him.
"What we need is a safe place to stay," he countered.
Carter took off the hat for a moment and massaged her scalp. "Okay. I'll take care of a place to stay. You figure out how we're going to get internet access."
He glanced at her. "You have something in mind?"
"Maybe. Drive back to the south part of the six-ten loop," she ordered.
He couldn't complain (much) about her not giving details, considering his own tendencies. Following her directive, he drove south of downtown again until the road they were on intersected with Loop 610.
"West or east?" he asked.
"East." A couple of minutes later she told him, "Exit here, I'm getting out."
Unable to help himself, he said, "Watch out for cameras."
She rolled her eyes. "I'll watch. But I'm wearing a hat. And I'm walking slow." They had discussed the possibility that the Machine had gait analysis. "Maybe I'll throw some hip action into it," she said dryly.
"Maybe I'll stick around and watch." He looked at her face, waiting for the dimple to pop in her cheek as she tried not to smile.
Schooling her features again, she said, "I'll text you soon." He noticed the deliberate way she said it—no promises of any results. Whatever her idea was, she wasn't sure it would work.
It was time to switch vehicles again. Might as well tie that into Carter's request for internet; he'd been thinking about it anyway. After finding a vehicle that fit their needs, he literally ditched the current car, driving it into a leafy ravine and then walking back to the mini-van he'd picked.
Then he drove around, looking for computer stores that carried the kind of supplies he wanted. Not the big chains; he was looking for locally owned places that would have unusual gear. If they didn't appear to have security networked in somewhere, he went in and bought supplies, paying with cash. Otherwise he made a list of the stores to revisit later with a lock pick.
The cell phone in his right-hand pocket beeped twice; Carter's text read, "May have something, meet me." She included a street corner; he sent a reply that told her to look for a gray mini-van.
Driving back to the south side took twenty minutes. Carter was waiting for him in the shade; she walked to the mini-van and climbed in, making an amused face. "Feel like a soccer mom yet?" she teased.
He glanced at her; she had an amused smile on her face. "No, but give it time."
"So I went to the salon and used a sob story and I have a name and number. Someone who might give us a place to stay for a few days, no paperwork needed."
It took him a moment to notice that her hair was shorter. The hat mostly hid it, but it was definitely shorter than before. He was surprised; in New York City Carter made regular treks across town to see the hairstylist she'd been going to for years.
She went on. "You'll have to stay out of sight at the apartment, but I got something in mind if you get spotted, so..."
Joss was clearly pleased with herself and trying hard not to show it; he stifled a grin of his own. "Didn't know you had experience doing undercover work, Detective."
She huffed out a laugh. "Nah, that's not my style. But bluff someone? I can do that." The difference being how long you had to maintain the story; he could see that about her.
Apparently she could maintain the bluff long enough for their purposes. She got hold of the contact person and by that evening they were ensconced in a tiny one-bedroom apartment with minimal furnishings. The location wasn't bad and it had functional air-conditioning, which was what mattered most. He'd figured out how to give them time for safe internet access, but that meant sleeping during the hottest part of the day; Houston was too warm and humid to be without a good air conditioner.
Reese went to a tiny local supermarket and brought back food. "You're going to have to tell me my potential role in your sob story," he told her after taking a bite of his sandwich.
"Right." Inside the apartment she refused to wear that damn hat, as she called it. Her new hairstyle was short enough that it didn't quite brush her shoulders unless she shrugged. It looked good on her. "I walked around the area and picked a salon that was busy—someplace where I knew I'd have to wait for a while. And I kept talking about how I had a cheating boyfriend and that I needed to get away from him for a while without him finding me—that I didn't trust myself not to go back to him if he begged me for forgiveness."
Clever. Just enough pathos to elicit sympathy, not so much that anyone would call the police or investigate further. "Is my role the cheating boyfriend?"
She shot him a mischievous look. "Not exactly. If someone sees you, then I'm actually the one doing the cheating, and you're the guy I'm cheating with."
Reframing them as the villains of the story—a twist that wouldn't result in interference from someone telling her not to take her boyfriend back. "Nice," he told her, admiring the neatness of it.
She tilted her head in wordless acknowledgment of the compliment. "Recycled story. I used it once before when I was tracking a suspect who ducked out of sight by renting an apartment off the books."
With a safe place to stay for now they quickly fell into a routine: during the daytime one of them would sleep in the bedroom while the other kept watch in the living room. She slept in the morning; he cleaned the weapons one at a time, or exercised, or read through Carter's notes. Early afternoon they would eat something and run any errands that needed to be done during business hours. (There was always an errand to run; John finally decided that Carter thought them up as a way to get outside while the sun was still up.) John slept after that while she typed notes or did yoga.
Late evenings they scrounged some more food and shared ideas from their enforced quiet in the daytime. Each night they drove to a different Houston suburb, driving around different subdivisions until they found available wi-fi. Hacking networks took time, but enough homes had unsecured systems that it wasn't a problem. From the back of the van they used the internet access to research questions they had about the Machine; nothing direct that would draw attention to their searches, but anything that could give them more information.
Keeping out of sight during the daytime made sense. While no US city was as heavily surveilled as New York City, Houston had its share of cameras; most of them didn't have any special filters or settings for nights.
But after three days of this, he was getting antsy. Three days in Houston, four days on the run together before that. It wasn't the enforced company; while Carter had her moments of stridence and she really wasn't a morning person (or a just waking up person, since their schedule wasn't normal), he was comfortable around her.
And that was part of it, really. He shouldn't be letting himself feel so at ease—not with her. Comfortable enough to continue the teasing they'd always done before, but this time there wasn't the safety of retreating to their separate worlds after the flirtation.
It meant that the hours together inside the back of a cramped mini-van each night were both more appealing and more volatile. And then each afternoon he slept in the same bed where she'd been sleeping earlier.
"Okay, we need to make a list of what the Machine wants." Carter's voice was low but determined; even with the windows up, they tried to keep conversation quiet in the van, in case anyone walked by in the middle of the night.
He'd taken out the seats in the back of the mini-van; Joss was leaning against the side wall, one of the laptops next to her, her knees pulled up. They were both wearing lightweight exercise clothes: shorts and tee-shirts.
"It's a machine. It doesn't want anything." He'd had a different response the night before; this discussion was ongoing, and he still didn't have answers to satisfy her.
She raised both eyebrows. "Should we talk about satisfying its protocol standards instead?" After a moment she huffed out a laugh. "What are the Machine's protocol standards in regards to knowledge of its existence?" she asked with a pompous voice.
John wiped the sweat from his forehead; Houston didn't cool down enough overnight to make the enclosed van comfortable. "The set-up keeps the Machine secret. I don't know if the Machine itself is programmed for that."
They'd been talking about Henry Peck again earlier, so Reese added, "Peck just didn't let it slide when some of his reports were altered. I don't think Finch made the Machine to have self-defense, though. It's the information about Finch that's the key."
For her, anyway—the reason why she was targeted. People had gone after Peck of their own volition, not the Machine's.
As soon as he said Finch's name, a dark look crossed Carter's face. An ironic twist that Carter had so many doubts about Finch when John was the one who had killed people. Finch might feel guilty about what he'd ignored in the past, but it couldn't compare to the literal blood Reese had had on his hands before.
Carter clicked something else on her laptop. John said, "As for why Finch's information is a big secret, well, Finch was the programmer, and he's... paranoid. Secretive." Both accurate descriptions; it still felt like a betrayal to say them out loud to her when Finch wasn't able to hear them.
"He's God," replied Carter. John looked at her in surprise. "To the Machine, he is. The creator, whatever other word you want to use." She sighed. "I just—there are too many things we still don't know."
She leaned forward, resting her head against her knees, wrapping her hand around the front of her calves. He brushed his hand against her temple before turning back to his computer to look again at satellite photos of Arizona.
They'd made a list of hypotheses about the Machine: that its physical location would require a large share of electricity; that the drives and other hardware required for this level of information analysis would require space the size of a city block (if not more), that it wouldn't necessarily be above ground, that it would probably be located in the western part of the US—away from any large metropolitan areas, making the intermountain west more probable...
The questions about the Machine's functions, however—what it wanted, as Carter had asked—those questions left them literally and figuratively working in the dark.
He was tired of it. Tired of fruitless guessing, tired of watching Joss's increasing frustration, knowing that she couldn't just go home and see her son because she'd gotten involved in this crusade. Because he'd wanted her there.
Reese pulled back the dark fabric blocking the windows. At the edge of the horizon he could see the faintest hint of light. "Want to go for a swim before we head back?" he asked.
Carter raised her head and made a noise in the back of her throat. "Didn't bring my swimsuit."
"You could go skinny-dipping," he teased, watching to see what reaction Carter would have.
She shook her head. "Are you serious about going swimming?"
He'd walked around the area earlier, just as he always did before choosing to stay somewhere. A clean-cut white guy wearing jogging clothes didn't draw that much attention, even in the middle of the night. This particular subdivision connected to an empty block; no houses after this set. The Houston area was full of these gaps between neighborhoods and cities, emphasizing that space wasn't at a premium here.
"Everyone's asleep here," he told her, indicating the house with the unsecured internet, "and no one's home next door, and they have a pool."
"Are you just looking for a reason for someone to chase us again?"
Her eyebrows slanted down, but he could tell she was tempted by the idea. Shrugging, he said, "They'd be chasing us for trespassing, not anything else." It was an impetuous idea, but the risk was minimal.
"People are armed in Texas."
"Carter, we're armed." He stopped making arguments after that and waited.
Sure enough, after another minute she said, "Okay."
"Okay? That's it?"
"Okay, but I'm not actually skinny-dipping." He hadn't expected her to anyway; it was another way to rile her. "And I reserve the right to say I told you so if something does go wrong." She shut down the laptop.
Reese made sure everything was secured in the van. Just before they slipped out, he said, "You'll need to keep quiet, you know. Sound carries on the water."
She turned and raised one eyebrow at him. "This isn't the first time I've done this," she replied. "Me and my cousins used to sneak over to their neighbor's house to swim in the middle of the night." Her cousins in Virginia, he assumed; as far as he knew, Carter didn't have any family in New York other than her son and mother.
They walked quietly into the back yard, Carter looking both excited and nervous in spite of her past experience. They stripped down to their underwear, avoiding eye contact with each other. Funny how even now, after everything he'd experienced, he could still feel that flash of awkwardness, however brief, in a situation like this.
Carter went into the pool first, walking down the steps and then plunging in. He followed. The water wasn't cold, but it was cool enough in contrast with the stifling air in the back of the mini-van. The chlorine felt sharp in his nostrils as he breathed in, but in a pleasantly nostalgic way.
When he was younger—what felt like multiple lifetimes ago—the pool had been one of his favorite places.
Close to the horizon the moon was almost full, fuzzy around the edges from the haze. The half-grown trees in the back yard made ghostly shadows on the ground.
Carter went from swimming underwater to a side stroke, switching dominant arms for each lap. If she'd been at home, she would've had doctor's check-ups, maybe some physical therapy appointments to make sure everything was healing as it should. Instead she had her own stubborn insistence on using the arm even when it was painful.
Reese went underwater, swimming several yards close to the bottom of the pool. The concrete finish scraped his knuckles a few times. Surfacing for air, he located Carter and tugged her ankle once, just for the hell of it. She stopped swimming long enough to make a face at him and then switched to floating on her back.
They both ended up at the deep end of the pool, holding on to the edge, looking at the back of the house. Carter alternated between treading water and pushing her legs up.
"I miss swimming in the ocean," she said quietly.
He surprised himself by volunteering, "I never liked it much. The Pacific was always was too cold." His family had lived in various cities in California, Oregon and Washington—always looking for a prosperity that was just out of reach.
"Swimming lessons," Carter said abruptly, not bothering to explain or make a question of the words. She looked tired, but not like he's been seeing all too often lately—tiredness from the late (or early) hour rather than from hopelessness.
"I was scared to put my face in the water."
She turned and looked at him, a slow smile spreading across her face. "You were. Huh." A few seconds later she added, "I don't really remember if I was," her voice trailing off.
The moon had sunk below the horizon; he could barely see the beads of water on her skin. Her short hair was slicked against her scalp except for one strand clinging to her cheek. He thought about pushing it back, about tracing that curve to her ear.
Carter said something, and then turned and swam to the ladder. Time to leave, that's what she had said. Past time; John pulled himself up the edge of the pool and walked over to his pile of clothes.
During the drive back to the apartment Carter was talkative rather than taciturn. The two previous nights she'd been quiet, her mood low after so much fruitless speculation. Now she was telling him an anecdote about working the late shift after her transfer to the seventy-first precinct. "Thank God it only lasted a few months," she concluded. "Taylor was eight, and he had to stay with my mother every evening that I had work."
Reese thought about working overnight with the Rangers. Some of the time that meant crawling through tunnels with his teammates; not always bad memories. Other times it meant wearing a ghillie suit and staying still for hours, waiting for a target to come in range.
Best not to dwell on some of those overnight jobs he'd done with the CIA; the faces still haunted his nightmares.
Finch probably knew more about them than anyone else alive, other than Mark Snow. Reese was certain that Finch had accessed records about his time there and with the Army. And while Carter had her doubts about the man, Reese had faith in his good intentions.
As ridiculous as the idea was, he'd decided to mail one of the extra encrypted phones to the insurance business Finch had under the name Harold Wren. He could imagine Finch's reaction: You're going to trust the vagaries of the US postal service? Better than doing nothing.
Reese finally noticed the silence in the van. He turned; Carter had an inquisitive look on her face.
"What?" he asked.
She shook her head. "Never mind. You were a million miles away from here."
"Sorry."
Carter shrugged, looking untroubled. He was usually better at this—at keeping up a conversation and making plans at the same time.
When they got back, he walked up to the apartment, feet squelching damply in his shoes. Carter waited nearby while John went through his usual routine of checking for intruders.
After showering, he let Carter have the bathroom and bedroom. He picked up some fruit from the kitchen and sat on the couch, eating and skimming through a copy of the Houston Chronicle. While choosing a city that neither of them had visited was a logical choice to avoid patterns the Machine—or humans—might detect, it made getting some supplies difficult.
He wanted that extra layer of protection that a fake ID offered. That was part of what he'd researched online their first night. He'd gone out the second night and started working on contacts. This evening he was supposed to meet someone in person. It was problematic; he didn't want to bring down more trouble, but doing nothing wasn't an option either. And staying long enough in one area to find the kind of contacts he needed meant that their activities were more likely to be noticed.
In the afternoon when it was his turn to sleep, he found himself staring at the ceiling instead. He was lying on top of the sheets instead of under them, hands twisted in the fabric as he tried not to tried not to worry about Finch, tried not to think about losing Carter, avoided imagining Carter asleep in this same bed hours ago...
Last night they'd driven east of Houston; tonight they were in a suburb on the western edge. Reese had two windows open on his laptop: one to search for information about power plants in Arizona, the other to look for new leads on false papers. The contact he'd met with before going out with Carter didn't do the kind of work Reese wanted.
Last he knew, Joss had been paralleling his search, looking at details about the electrical power grid in the west. He was good at following people, watching for the smallest detail; she had more patience sifting through other kinds of information.
Even her patience was finite, apparently. The laptop was on the van floor; her legs were sprawled in front of her, her hands clenched in frustration. "I'm just not sure what the Machine wants."
The same question again; just to change it up, he replied, "World peace?"
She gave him a look. "Anyone ever tell you that you have a smart mouth?" she asked. Their glances caught and suddenly the question felt more fraught than it should have.
"All the time," he said.
She looked away first and muttered, "I'll bet." Looking down, Joss grabbed a pen rather than pick up the laptop again. He surreptitiously watched her flip it around in her fingers, glare at it, and drop it before she looked in his direction again.
John didn't notice just how much his boundaries had eroded over this past week until he was already kissing her. Even then it took a moment for the realization to kick in, because she was kissing him back, one of her hands curling around his shoulder and the other behind his neck, holding him in place.
The quiet and warmth in the van felt like a blanket shielding them from the outside world. Joss pulled her head back for a moment, switching angles and then pushing her body closer to his. His mouth strayed to the corner of hers, to her eyelids, returning to her lips each time, reveling in the sound of her quick breaths. With his left hand he drew a line up her throat to her ear; she shivered and whispered his name.
He didn't know how long they stayed like that; deep, wet kisses and hands tracing patterns into shoulders and necks. Joss stroked the back of his neck, fingertips sliding upward into his hair.
Still kissing him, she moved her right hand down, pressing against his abdomen through his shirt. Suddenly she pulled back slightly, tilting her head down and resting her forehead against his shoulder, taking deep breaths.
As his head cleared John wasn't sure what she would do next. He didn't know what to say or do himself.
After several seconds of silence and stillness she finally raised her head again. "This isn't the best idea right now," she said.
He'd been expecting something more along the lines of What the hell were you thinking?, so he couldn't help but be amused at her uncharacteristic tactfulness. "Yeah," he concurred.
She looked like she might say something else; instead she scooted back again, untangling her legs and grabbing her laptop. He did the same, grateful to have something to look at that wasn't her. It took him several minutes to focus on what was actually on the screen.
As they both continued using their limited internet time, Reese debated what to say—if anything. He'd made mistakes working with people before, but he'd never crossed this particular line... and what was this line, anyway? Potential victim, asset, partner—it didn't really matter now, because he'd fucked up.
The drive back to the apartment was quiet again. He'd decided that an apology for making a move might be the best course of action—maybe over lunch, or whatever the meal was that they ate between taking turns sleeping and keeping watch.
Checking the apartment led to different plans, though. He carefully opened the door and knew immediately that someone had been inside. John motioned for Carter to stay away; she watched, eyes wide as he went inside.
No one there now; whoever had been in their apartment was long gone. Reese and Carter had both been careful each time they went out, making sure they didn't leave anything behind that might reveal anything. In fact, the place barely looked occupied; their most significant acquisitions since leaving New York City had all been tech-related, and all of those supplies were still in the back of the mini-van, waiting to be carried inside.
Speaking of the van—John walked to the apartment door to note that Carter had already anticipated his next thought. She'd gone down to the parking lot to check between the vehicles parked closest to theirs. She gave him an all-clear sign.
John walked around the small apartment one last time, checking for any vital supplies. Nothing that couldn't be replaced, and they were better off not taking anything with them. The intruder could have been someone looking to make a quick score, grab something to sell. Or it could have been someone planting bugs, trackers, or cameras.
They had no way of knowing. He went down to the parking lot. "Someone went in while we were out," he told her. "I don't know if they were targeting us specifically or just looking to steal something, but—"
"Time to leave," she concluded.
"Yes."
They climbed into the mini-van. He drove out of the parking lot and headed for the highway, watching the cars, trucks and SUVs as they went east.
"I have a really bad idea," he finally said.
She turned toward him and raised one eyebrow. "Do you have any other kind?" The hint of humor in her eyes took away any sting from the comment.
"Yeah, well. You're not going to like it."
She didn't.