Disclaimer:noting you recognise belongs to me.

Trigger warning: there are racist and ant-semitic comments made by characters in this chapter and in the whole story from now on. The things the characters say do not remotely echo my own beliefs which are based on tolerance and equality for all.

Carter isn't sure how much time has gone by. Struggling to keep hold of consciousness had been a losing fight after her aborted attempt at trying to get free, and for a while she had drifted, dimly aware that there was something that she had to do but without the will or the energy to actually do anything about it. When the fluorescent lights are abruptly switched on and the door to her cell slams open it's so much of a shock that she panics, disorientated, falling onto her wounded shoulder with a cry of pain that awakens every limb that had become blessedly numb from the restraints into a bright supernova of agony. Cheek laid against the cold linoleum, she struggles for breath, wishing for the darkness of unconsciousness again.

Instead someone grabs her by the hair and drags her upwards into a sitting position. It takes a while for her vision to clear, longer still to actually get oxygen back into her lungs, but eventually she can make out the face of the man who eventually lets her hair go so that her head thuds back against the wall.

"Well, well, well, finally the black bitch awakens. Thought my boy had gone a bit over-zealous when he caught you." The tall man squats down infront of her, dark eyes searching hers with a mixture of curiosity and contempt. Joss doesn't say anything, conserving her strength but trying to study both the man infront of her and the two men behind him without either being too obvious about it or arousing their anger. "Bet you didn't expect to see me again Detective Carter."

Fuck. He knew her. But how? She searches his face desperately. Maybe early sixties, greying hair, brown eyes – could have been a thousand anonymous people were it not for the scar on his face. What looked like burn marks twisted his mouth into a sneer and made the skin on his left cheek resemble molten wax. There's no way that she would have forgotten a face like that. Despite the fact that the man knows her name she wonders if this is all a terrible mistake by her abductors.

The man narrows his eyes at her obvious confusion. "I look a little different now, not as pretty as I used to be." Shoving up the sleeve of his camouflage print shirt he yanks his wrist up towards Joss so quickly that she flinches. "Maybe this will remind you." It takes a moment for her to recognise the symbol inked upon the thin skin of his forearm. A cross. An eagle. No a phoenix. Memories whirl around her mind before coalescing into a form that fills her with cold fear. Looking up again at the face of the man before her she can see it now. Get past the scarring and the face of Owen Banks is unmistakable.

"You're dead," she whispers.

He laughs, a wholly mirthless sound, before getting up and pacing to the far end of the small cell. The two men he has brought with him, maybe mid-thirties, dressed in camouflage gear look at him with interest, and Joss immediately writes them off as being any sort of help. "You see now," Banks approaches again and looks down upon her. From her position he seems huge, and Joss tries to squash down her panic. "You and your little buddies tried to take us down. Honest Americans, true Americans trying to rid our country of filth like the Jews in the government and the bitches preaching for liberties and the coons who think that they are better than us.." There was spittle forming at the corner of his mouth and his eyes blank before now gleamed with suppressed rage. "You turned one of us against us. You tried to take us down with fire and with bullets, and what do we say to that?" His voice rises to a roar, and behind him the two men cry out on cue "we will rise again!"

"That's the spirit boys," Owen Banks looks at them almost paternally before turning back to the woman slumped beneath him. Bending down, he tucks a strand of sweaty hair from Joss's forehead. She feels the touch of his fingers and fights the urge to spit in his face. "Now you see I have a problem, one that I think you can help me with. Can you be helpful Detective Carter?" His voice is almost kind – somehow that's worse than when he was yelling at her. She tries to keep her voice steady but it still doesn't quite sound like hers when she manages to get past the dryness in her throat to reply.

"I can try."

"I bet you can." He tweaks her nose, and pats her cheek when she flinches away. "You see I need to know where Craig Ward is, the bastard who turned on our group, his country and made all sorts of trouble for me and mine. Somewhere out there he's snuggled up tight as a bug in a rug in witness protection, and it's high time we paid a visit to him."

Joss feels her heart sink. If that's the reason that she's being kept alive then she's utterly screwed. Witness protection is so safely guarded, for damn good reason, that even if she was let loose and had John and his friend helping her with every move it would still be almost impossible to get any details about the informant. Banks must have seen the flash of uncertainty in her eyes.

"Don't worry, I'm not expecting you to show up at FBI headquarters and request a file. I'm going to ask you to request your good friend Detective Fusco to do you a favour."

"Fusco?" The conversation has taken another abrupt swerve into what-the-fuck and Joss is finding it increasingly hard to keep up. Every part of her feels like lead and feeling her eyes start to close, she leans forward slightly and falls back against the wall. The pain in her shoulder is so sharp that she has to bite her lip to keep from crying out, but it clears her head a little, and she glares at her captor defiantly. "What makes you think he can get the information you need, and what makes you think that he'd help me anyway?"

"Well," Banks speaks slowly as though to a small child. "For one he's got contacts on the lets just say dirtier end of the law enforcement family, and for another he's a colleague of yours. Probably makes you two pretty tight. Once I start sending pieces of you to the office and threaten to do the same to his son who should be arriving in oh, a couple of hours, I think he'll turn out to be extremely co-operative. Getting payback on you is just the icing on the cake." Kneeling down he looks at Joss sorrowfully. "You and the rest of your drones really made things difficult for me. We had things going pretty as can be in Brooklyn before you fucked things up." Before she can jerk away he jams his thumb into the flimsy gauze covering her bullet wound and she doesn't even have time to scream before she passes out.


Reese often takes the motorcycle out on his few and far between days off. There's something about it that's steadying, that almost makes him feel safe, even when he races past trucks that could knock him off the bike and possibly into the next world if either of them made a misjudgement. Perhaps it's the false notion that he is free for at least a little while that makes it so appealing. Even Finch can't get in contact when he's racing the bike down the highway as though the devil himself is behind him.

There is nothing about him that is calm as he dodges between taxis and cars tonight, forcing himself not to run red lights and keep within the speed limit. Getting pulled over by a traffic cop would be beyond idiotic – just the idea of it makes him ease up on the throttle a little although it feels as though he's yanking his panic and fear down like a raging pitbull on a chain. The little song that dances around his head like one of those stupid nursery rhymes: couldn't save Jessica, won't save Joss. Couldn't save Jessica,won't save Joss, means that he stops half a block from Eileen Banks's house, both to take the time to conceal the bike in the parking lot of an antiques store that has closed for the night and to calm himself down a little. He mentally counts his weapons, checking that they are located where they should be, and runs quickly through several possible ways of getting information from Mrs Banks starting with charm, mild threats and through to torture that he does not enjoy but is very,very good at. Pulling off his helmet he looks around before locking the bike. It doesn't seem like a bad neighbourhood – the houses are small but well maintained, most of the gardens well looked after. The street is well lit, so it's not hard to find number 31 on Brookes Street. There's a light on in a room at the top left of the small house, from the looks of it the master bedroom. Most of the houses along the street seem to be made from a familiar pattern, and he's broken into more than a few of their type in his time so it's not difficult to guess the layout of the house. The security light is taken out with a quick shot from a silenced pistol, the glass falling noiselessly onto the grass below. Keeping low against the fence John's glad that there isn't a guard dog to deal with when he jumps over the side gate. Finch hadn't warned him of any but he's had a couple of unfortunate surprises when a supposedly dog free abode had turned out to be anything but. He'll shoot a guard dog if he has to, but if forewarned he 'll use a tranquillizer dart given the choice, after all it's not like the dog had a say in what was happening. The only light brightening the small back yard is from the moon and what has filtered through from the street, but it provides enough for him to see well enough to pick the lock to the back door and slide noiselessly into the kitchen.

John waits for a moment, listening intently and waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. The kitchen is clean and utilitarian, from his position he can see the hallway and a splash of light coming from a room upstairs illuminates the staircase leading up to it. What is also evident is that Mrs Banks is not alone. The faint grunting and moaning emanating from the bedroom makes him fairly certain that he's going to be one of the more terrifying examples of coitus interuptus in recent history. Flicking back the safety catch of his Glock, he pads up the stairs and peers around the corner. The door to the master bedroom is partially opened, within it he can see a man of perhaps fifty with a shaven head enthusiastically pumping away on a bleached blond woman whose cries of ecstasy sound a little forced in John's opinion. Shoving his way inside, Reese grabs the man by the neck and hauls him backwards before slamming his fist into his face. The shaven headed man tumbles back off the bed without so much as a yelp, and John grabs the shocked looking blonde by the arm, pulling her out from beneath the sheets. "Get dressed", he says quietly, "we need to talk."

"Ok, ok." Eileen Banks's eyes are huge as she takes in the gun pointed at her. Sliding back over the bed she bends down to collect her discarded peignoir. "Don't shoot, please, you can have whatever you want."

Skin head Romeo takes the moment that John looks away to come out of his daze and charge forward with a roar, fists swinging. It's not that hard to evade him – Reese steps side ways and backhands him, following it up with a knee to the groin before delivering the knock out blow. Just as Eileen Banks leaps up from the other side of the bed brandishing a knife. There's the snap of bone that could only be her arm breaking as the unconscious man falls heavily upon her, but her scream of agony is abruptly cut off when she goes down beneath him on the bed. Instead she makes a quiet gurgle, and having heard that sound too many times before John feels his blood run cold. Pulling the man off her the reason she's not screaming for help is painfully obvious. The knife she still held was embedded in her chest and more specifically her heart.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, John inwardly swears. How the hell did he let himself get so sloppy? There is nothing to be done for Mrs Banks – her eyes are open and glassy, whatever information she may have had died with her. On the arm outstretched on the pillows he can see the same tattoo that Jamie Kenyon had drawn, but when he rolls over her lover he finds that although he has several tattoos of dubious quality he does not sport the cross and phoenix. That didn't bode well either. The Ember group relied on absolute loyalty and security amongst their members and that meant being able to identify them on sight. It would seem that this man was merely a distraction for Eileen Banks while her husband away – the likelihood of him knowing anything at all about the group was extremely unlikely. Quickly tying up the man with the satin sash of the robe that hung on the back of the door, John checks the drawers of the bedside cabinet and then the dresser, searching under clothes and leafing through the books on the small bookshelf. There's nothing useful in the small jewellery box nor taped under any of the furniture. The wardrobe doesn't give up any secrets when he checks the pockets of the clothes within, but spying a shoe-box tucked on the top shelf he reaches up and opens it. Inside is evidence of an alter-ego very different to the image presented by the woman living in the normal house in a respectable neighbourhood. There is about ten thousand dollars bundled up in an elastic band along with two passports for both her and Owen Banks with false identities. Reese pauses a moment when he looks at Owen's photograph. The man in the picture is heavily scarred – apparently he didn't escape the bomb that was supposed to have claimed his life unscathed. There are also some love-letters that reveal nothing more than sentimental proclamations of love and a severely twisted world view but no real information, and at the bottom of the box a leaflet for what appears to be a psychiactric hospital. The paper is old and faded, there is no website or email address on the contacts page only a phone number. However someone has scribbled a mobile number on it in red ink along with several dates starting from the october of last year and continuing roughly twice a month until the last one which was two days ago. Flicking his mobile on Reese gives Finch the name and address of the hospital as well as the mobile number and the dates.

A quick sweep through the rest of the house reveals nothing helpful and so he rings Fusco with the address of Eileen Banks's house and an order that he makes whatever excuse he can for what he finds there. John wipes down his prints before closing and locking the door behind him. Jogging back to his bike he feels the bile churning in his stomach. His best chance at a lead, his best chance at finding Joss is dead because he messed up. He can't let himself wonder that by making this mistake he might have damned her to whatever terrible things the people could be doing to her even now, he can only keep going and pray with whatever tiny fragment of himself believes in God that he's not too late.

A/N thanks very much for everyone who has got this far for reading, and thanks so much to my kindly reviewing people – it really does serve as encouragement to keep writing (thanks Blacktop for pointing out my mistakes!)