Author's Note: This chapter is something of a break from my usual style because this sequence of events was really pivotal and had to be followed more closely. I really hope it reads well to all of you, and I really truly hope you'll let me know what you think of it.

a thousand thanks for the moral support and beta assistance to solitaryguardian/elizabethkeen, irish-buzzsaw/lovelylittlefreckle and roominthecastle, all of you kept me sane and moving forward on this beast of a chapter! And as I usually forget to say, thank you kindly for all your reviews.


Everybody knows that the dice are loaded

Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed

Everybody knows that the war is over

Everybody knows the good guys lost

Everybody knows the fight was fixed

- Everybody Knows, Leonard Cohen


That Thursday was another grim grey morning with an enveloping chill, like so many mornings in the dimmest, darkest part of the year, with a certain silvery quality, a misty diffusion like the world itself was half in rest and bleary. It was the sort of morning that had always seemed to her nearer to it's fellow midwinters than the other days of the year, like she might be able to shut her eyes and turn around and and when she looked again the windows would be banked with that same winter glow, and her bones would ache with the same endless tiredness and anticipation, but she would find herself getting ready for school as a child instead, and looking forward to being handed out red and green glittering sugar cookies or making tiny lanterns by hammering holes in tin cans in the long, stuffy afternoon. It was an expectant feeling, born of a moment's wandering remembrance as she stood in her kitchen making the coffee, knowing in only a day or two the routine of these last years would be shattered forever more, and she couldn't even picture what her life would look after that.

She couldn't see what her future was. There was only blankness and a sense that if she tried to hard to picture it, she would jump towards it, having lost all patience with these creeping careful days. But as desperate as she was to be done, there was still the sense of something ending, as though these were the final days of her ordinary life - the dying remnants of the life she had pictured as a girl, that she had thought would stick her to the world where her cousins lived, her friends. She knew she was about to turn away from that world, let go of her claims on it and pass through a gate, or climb inwards and enter into another place entirely. It wasn't just the unmasking of her husband that made her feel so, it was these past few days of revelations. It was sitting with Red in that Temple, where they had been safe from prying eyes and the way he had spoken to her bluntly about how much they didn't know and she had felt the weight of that looming over her but she had also felt how inescapably she'd begun to crave, to lean in, to find comfort.

She had been sustained, buoyed up by the memory of their hands shifting together, his skin warm and callused against hers, and her shoulder coming to rest gently against his, for days this small nourishment of contact had distracted her and kept her afloat when she slid towards panic. It was the smallest communication, but those moments seemed to be the only unvarnished, effortless exchanges left in her life and she clung to them.


Tom came down as she was almost ready to head out the door, scruffy and rumpled in his pajamas. Even looking as harmless as he did at that moment, it was hard not to picture that cheerless, weapon filled lair of his and not want to fly at him and make him explain.

"It's the kid's holiday play for the parents today, after school," he said after mumbling good morning and kissing the side of her head as she held very still. He was watching her carefully as he spoke, trying so hard to read her it made her want to withdraw and she worked to hold some kind of mild, pleasant look on her face. "I thought since you said you were finished with your case, maybe you could come watch it with me and then we could go out to dinner or something. Or we could finally get a tree to decorate? I feel like we've been drifting apart, Liz, and I think you feel it too and I just wanna do something to reconnect, so we can start moving through this rough patch."

He was standing over her, leaning down with his most earnest, beseeching look, but she still saw something sharp in his eyes, like he was tracking her every move, as though he was beginning to doubt.

She felt her face freeze, and her heart still in her chest like it was wrapped up in ice and then speed on again with a profound jolt. He knows, she thought, He isn't certain but somehow he knows.

"I… we've been having a difficult time," she said, uncertain and awkward and trying to keep herself from glancing around for the nearest exit, "It's alright. It's not just you, I… Things have been difficult lately, especially since my dad. But work is really intense right now, our… project is back on track, so I don't know…"

"C'mon, Liz, this is important. Can't you at least make time to come home and have dinner with me? I'll get the tree, okay, and we can decorate it tonight… It's only a week 'til Christmas and I know it won't be the same this year but my winter break is starting tomorrow and I would hate it if we went on through the holidays with this tension."

The words were all perfect. It was just what he should have said, and if it had been even a month before she would have accepted it without question - and yet there was this edge to his voice, a hard undertone. She heard it clearly, this note of frustration in him, she knew he was testing her, feeling her out. She had no idea what had happened, what he'd picked up on, or perhaps what he'd been told, but she knew he'd begun to see her disbelief.

She did her best to soften her posture, smile up at him, nodding slowly. "That would be nice, Tom. It is almost Christmas after all. Barring any new cases coming in, it's a date. We'll make an effort," she said, and it was her best acting, but she couldn't help the dull tone of her own voice, couldn't help feeling her own frustration that she would have to pick her way through a night of trying to play house, convince him all was well. Or maybe this would be the night, maybe he planned to ambush her when she came home. Maybe she was just reaching a new, astonishing level of paranoia - but she knew that she wasn't.

She told him that she had to go to work, and grabbed her coat and her bag and walked out the door, all at a carefully measured pace, but not too measured, trying not to give herself away. He called out a promise to see her later as it were a normal day in a normal marriage and nothing was amiss.


She called Red once she'd driven some distance away. He had claimed to despise cell phones, calling them a nuisance and inconvenience and a handy vehicle for people to try to lie to him, but all the same he'd started carrying a series of burner phones on his person so that she could reach him directly at any time, and that alone was a sign of how tenuous the situation had become. She realized he had been anticipating this very moment, the news she had to give.

"I think he's on to me," she said as soon as he picked up, skipping all preliminaries, "He didn't do anything, but I could see it in his face. He was talking about reconnecting and trying to see if I would flinch."

"You're away from the house now?" He demanded, instantly on alert.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I just don't know what the next move is. He wants to have dinner tonight and I don't know if he's trying to reassure me that everything's normal, or if I'll be walking into an ambush."

"But you're sure he's knows you suspect him."

It wasn't a question, but she still felt the need to defend her instinct, and the beginning of a strain of worry at the grave, fierce tone Red's voice was taking. She realized he might still take matters into his own hands, that she might be inciting terrible violence. It made her hesitate, not out of any lingering protectiveness over Tom, but she remembered the stiff, pained way Red had moved the night he had returned; the strange, bleak light in his eyes as though he had still been looking out into a dark and evil place like a man that had been in a warzone, and she wanted more than anything to stop him from going to that place again.

"I don't know how I know, but I do. He's suspicious. He's going to make a move soon," she said at last. "I said was going to turn him in, Red, and I meant it. I have to if I want to keep my job, there will be too many questions otherwise. So, I'm going to need those surveillance photos, some of them anyway, and the documentation of the bunker. I know Kaplan gave those to you to look into."

He was quiet for a long time, and she could hear a faint sound over the line like he was somewhere with people talking or music playing or some kind of commotion. She wondered what kind of plans or calculations were running through his head. "Alright," he said slowly, "Let me wrap up here and we'll meet. In two hours, I think. I don't have the materials with me, the usual place. Why don't you go have breakfast or a coffee in the meantime, somewhere nice and public with plenty of holiday shoppers, and no lingering on any lonely sidewalks, do you understand?"

"You don't really think they'd try something do you? Things only shifted today," she said, incredulous, "And anyway, if they wanted to hurt me, Tom had plenty of opportunity this morning and he didn't lift a finger."

"Please, let an old man indulge his paranoia, if you will, my dear, it's the only reason I've lived half this long. I'm afraid I'm in the middle of something just this moment, and meet with you as soon as I am able, but until then I would like to know that you're safely out of harm's way," he said with a kind of strained levity that meant he was genuinely concerned but didn't want whoever he was with where he was to catch on, and when she failed to agree after several long second he continued, "I know you're perfectly able to take care of yourself, but considering the circumstances…"

"Yes, okay, Red. I get it, I do. So, I'll see you in two hours then," she said, and that was that, the decision had been made. They would be going public about Tom today and her life was about to get turned inside out. She wouldn't mind a couple hours to herself indulging in a leisurely breakfast and the company of her own thoughts because it was likely to be the last opportunity she had for a long time. But unfortunately she had other plans.


It was like those dreams you have in times of stress, where you dream self knows with a leaden certainty that there is a fire burning or a flood come and that you must pick and choose among your dearest possessions to carry out, and only so many, only what you can hold, as you escape the wreck of your home. And though the fire never grows nearer and the great destruction never comes the anxiety of the choosing, the planning is what forces you to wakefulness and saves you from that doom, not any pardon being granted. She had some time to think, knowing this day was coming, and realized she would have to save some things before the agents descended on the house she had shared with Tom and a plan to put into action for Hudson's safety and security.

She drove around until she knew it was well past the time when Tom would have left for the day and then doubled back to the house. His car was gone and a quick text to the surveillance team confirmed that he had left several minutes ago. She parked out front and went in, running through the list again in her head, the things she meant to put in a bag and stow away before chaos descended.

Putting together a couple bags took almost no time at all. She thinks its because she had so often had she rehearsed this moment in her mind. Some clothes to keep her going while she was away from her things, a few things from her box of files that would be better off in her hands alone, a couple artifacts from her life before. She made the bed carefully, not wanting the scene techs and investigating agents to see the churned shape of the sheets and quilt, or to capture the indentation of her head on the pillow in their cameras, she smoothed and fluffed as if it were a hotel room, and if she'd never been there. She paused at the doorway and, propelled by an impulse of finality, she slid the rings from her fingers and walked over to set them on top of the dresser in plain view. Then she called to Hudson, who had come to watch her as she moved briskly about the room in her packing, and left her marriage bedroom forever more.

She was overheated from her bustling about and from the way her body was now full of nervous energy, so she shucked her coat and left it on the front seat, and ushered Hudson into the back seat where he had his big plush towel to sit on and put her bags in the trunk. She had gone back in to gather some of Hudson's essentials, intending to only be another minute or two, when she heard the front door open and close. She froze, straightening instinctively and reaching to her hip to touch her holster. Her phone trilled cheerfully, most likely with an alert from the crew across the way that Tom was back. For her instinct was correct in the assumption it was Tom. She watched him stride into the kitchen with a lithe, sharp kind of posture and a blank, hard expression neither of which she'd seen on him before now. Even knowing what she'd known for weeks, it was still a shock to see the coldness of him, the predatory watchfulness, like he was come to tear her into pieces.

"Tom," she said, her voice startled and unsteady, "What are you doing here? I thought you'd be at school…" But bluffing was no good, not when she couldn't convince her fingers away from where they rested on the snap of her holster, baldly giving away her fear.

"I could ask you the same thing, Liz. Didn't you have to hurry off to work? Or is this work now? You've finally decided it was time to investigate good ol' Tom again, hmm?"

"What are you…"

"Don't play dumb, Liz. Did you really think I wouldn't notice somebody following me on and off this last week? Did you really think I wouldn't be able to tell that somebody had been in my storehouse? I haven't made it to where I am now if I were so bad at the game," he accused, his voice hard, sneering, almost outraged, and then, strangely calm. "You know, at first I thought you were having an affair, you were pulling away, staying out at all hours, getting urgent phone calls and having to rush away."

"You knew my job was demanding," she said, not sure why she was defending herself like it was a real accusation, or a real marriage, or like he a real husband rather than what he was. Perhaps it was just reflex, and her voice was hard in any case, distant, as though this had nothing much to do with her.

"You were coming home smelling of another man's cologne and you wouldn't let me touch you, an affair seemed kind of obvious - I mean that night, with that flashy red dress, you floated out of here on a cloud, blushing like a virgin bride, for 'work,' what was I supposed to think?"

She felt her cheeks heat at that, uncontrollably, a bolt of fizzing embarrassment at how it must have looked, at how inspite of the fact there were innocent reasons for all of this, she knew those reasons weren't so innocent at all. For a fraction of a second, less than that, she relived the excitement she'd felt as she'd dressed that night with new eyes, relived the head of Red's hand against hers, and knew it for what it was.

"And it's completely fucking nuts, but I was hurt, you know? Here I was putting on all this effort be this perfect husband, and you were still going to play away… But whatever, what did it matter, I had you, I could keep tabs on you, you did what I said, and that was enough for requirements."

"Whose requirements, Tom?" She cut in, unwilling to let him just rant on and on, trying to get him to focus his attention on her in the present, hoping he might remember some the affection he'd pretended for her and hesitate. Because as he spoke he advanced, and she was now backed into the corner of the kitchen, another few inches and she would be against the counter. Still her hand hovered on her gun ready to draw, but she wasn't willing to aim at him just yet, somehow, "What are we talking about here? Who sent you?"

"But I finally figured out it was Reddington you were always running off to meet," he said, not even acknowledging that she'd spoken, looming over her. "Do you even know what he is? What sick, amoral things he does? Or does he have you just as wrapped around his finger as I once did?"

She'd had enough, something in her snapped and sparked and she felt herself sink within that fury that consumed her sometimes, as though she was untouchable and righteous, and looking down from a vantage of perfect clarity and everything around her limned with hard edged brilliance- and she found she had her gun pointed at Tom's chest without even telling her arms to rise.

"Who's Berlin?" She demanded, snarling back with venom, "What's your game here? Tell me right now or I swear to god, I'll shoot you dead and get it over with."

But she'd miscalculated, hesitated too long, and Tom put up his hands in a feint towards surrender but struck out instead, grabbing the wrist of her gun hand before she could pull away, twisting and slamming her hand back against the granite countertop so that her whole hand was an icy shock wave of pain and she lost her grip on the weapon. She struck at him, trying to knock the wind out of him long enough to retrieve the gun but it was a clumsy attempt, her hand still smarting, and all Tom had to do was keep a hard grip on her shoulders to keep her from getting near enough to do any damage. He slid the the gun away with a hard shove of his foot, sending it spinning, and it lodged under cabinet under the sink, well out of easy reach, and the struggle began in earnest.

She was trained in self defense, she was fit and not easily winded, but Tom was tall and he was fast and he was ruthless and she was soon trapped, facing away from him, her arms pinned behind her back, awkwardly bent against the countertop so that it dug into her diaphragm, she found herself gasping and struggling against Tom's bruising grip and the feeling that she couldn't catch her breath. She had to rein herself in from tumbling headlong into dead panic.

She thought for a second and then let herself go entirely limp, forcing him have to shift his grip to keep her in place and it gave her the chance to shift back from the counter and shift upright enough to giver her leverage. She brought her heel down on his nearest foot as hard as she could, thankful for his habit of wearing ratty Converse like a teenager and not something sturdier and when he involuntarily shifted his weight, she pushed off as hard as she could and pitched them both over to the floor. She'd landed clear of his hands, he'd hit his head against the counter as he went down. She heard the solid thud of the connection of head meeting granite as she scrambled round to take up her gun, and he seemed slightly dazed. She quickly put some distance between them so he couldn't take her down by the ankle and pointed her weapon down at him, taking off the safety. She was breathing heavily and every nerve felt alive, her hair was falling awkwardly against her cheek and it itched but she didn't dare soften her stance to push it back.

She was alight with the chemical fire of adrenaline, every movement seemed to happen so slowly as though, these few minutes had stretched as though to span hours. She wondered if there was help coming from across the way. She heard Tom shift against the broken crockery on the floor and she wondered if she was going to shoot him right there, right then.

"Don't move," she ordered, close to shouting, her arms already tiring from their awkward posture, the gun heavy in her hands, "Don't you dare move, you bastard."

"I know you, Liz, you don't have it in you," he said, levering himself up from the floor to launch himself again, his hand slipping briefly on a piece of shattered dinner plate, slowing him down.

So she reacted, without deciding consciously and yet with absolute conviction, sure that she would certainly lose in another physical confrontation with him and she didn't think she could trust him to be merciful with her once he had the upper hand again. Her whole frame was filled up with the vibration of impossible impulse calling her to finally act. She re-aimed and felt the kick of the gun in her hand and found that she had shot him in the leg.

He landed awkwardly on the floor with a grunt of pain, and he looked up at her for a half second, face slack with shock that she had, in fact, pulled the trigger . And in the scant seconds as he absorbed that hurt, she lunged forward and struck him over the head with the butt of the gun as hard as she could, because a shot in the leg slows you down but it's not like in the movies where it would be incapacitating, and he slumped down.

She held a hand in front of his face to check he was still breathing, which he was to her profound relief, for there would be no information wrung from a dead man. She set aside the gun and dug through the nearby drawer for the blue masking tape she'd once meant to use while repainting the dining room and used that to bind his wrists in case he woke. It's was surreal handling her husband-turned-stranger as he lay unconscious. She found she was squeamish over touching his skin and she made a clumsy job of restraining him, but wrapped well because she knew the tape would tear easily.

Then she paced furiously up and down her dining room and made calls, to get the Post Office which was the most difficult as she had to explain a great many details very quickly, to dispatch for medics, to Kaplan and the team across the street, which turned out to be unnecessary because there were members of the team pounding on the front door and then picking the lock even as she told Kaplan what had happened, and that Cooper was sending people immediately so they had to decide whether or not to disappear before the cavalry arrived.

There was another call she didn't make, should have made. He would be furious that she didn't let him know personally, as soon as possible, but first she had to rush to meet the two from the surveillance team, reassuring them she was okay, Tom was subdued, it was alright they didn't let her know in time that he was back.

"We heard the gunshot and came running," said one, a tall, weathered looking man with a long blondish ponytail.

"It's just as well you dealt with him, you know," said the other, a slight, black man who looked like he was just a kid, with a wry smile in her direction, "We're not exactly the muscle. If we're doing our jobs right, we don't actually meet anybody, if you see what I mean."

"But we would have protected you, Ms. Keen," put in the blond man, but she wasn't paying attention because she heard muffled noises coming from the kitchen.

She put her hand to her holster and swore under her breath to realize she had left her weapon on the counter when she looked for the tape. She took off down the hall, the two men from Kaplan's team on her heels. She saw that there were a lot of bloody smears on the floor and the cupboard where Tom had been slumped, and a wad of blue tape on the counter. The gun was gone. Tom was gone. The back door stood open.

He must have been feigning unconsciousness the whole time, the noise she'd heard must have been him staggering to his feet and bolting for the door.

She let out a wordless noise of pained frustration and took off out the door, calling back to the surveillance guys, "Go around front, see which way he went, he should have been slowed down at least."

The side gate was open and there were some spots of blood in the narrow alleyway between the houses. She spared a thought to wonder what her neighbors must think about all the strange goings on these last weeks, and now a gunshot and soon even more strange goings on. She ran out to the side street and didn't see anything, so she jogged a circuit around the block looking desperately for some sign of her quarry. There was no sign of his car, which probably meant he was no longer on cold damp stung against her face, but she was too overheated with panic and desperation to care that she didn't have a coat, that a light mist was beginning to fall, sticking her bangs to her forehead and chilling her skin.

She'd lost him. She'd given herself away and then she'd lost him. And now she would have to tell the medics, whose sirens she could hear approaching, and Cooper shortly afterwards. And then she would have to tell Red.


She couldn't actually process the ensuing chaos of that afternoon. There were the medics to turn away, and Kaplan's people had vanished by the time she got back inside, unnamed and unknown and that seemed likely for the best. Then the team descended, Cooper and Meera both made personal appearances and a whole slew of people in FBI windbreakers came to photograph the mess of her kitchen and then tear apart her house.

She was allowed to retrieve her dog from her car at one point, and she discovered that her hand was so sore and achy she had a hard time gripping his leash as she lead him into the house. He was utterly bewildered by all the commotion and sat whining on her feet. She called Meera aside for a moment and begged her to take Hudson for a walk when she had the time, knowing she had a dog that was ostensibly her children's, and would know how to mind him.

Cooper wanted the whole story, so she told him, although she couldn't later remember what words she'd used or what parts she'd told. Her mouth felt cottony, and her brain felt sluggish, now everything seemed the reverse of before, everything around her moving in a quick and dizzying flurry of activity that made her feel faintly sick and she herself was winding down like a bit of clockwork with tired springs. He wrist ached and throbbed and she found herself focusing on how to cradle it against her shoulder so it didn't hurt so rather than tracking what went on around her.

"I tried turning him in once and it didn't work," she insisted at one point, "And I didn't have enough to go on to try again. I thought if I could just figure out what he was up to first, we'd have a better chance."

Cooper took pity on her, probably noticing her distress, the way her mind was wandering, and wrapped up his interview. He told her that oversight would probably have questions in the coming weeks and that she was back on leave for the time being, but he assured her that he felt she'd done the best she could under the circumstances. And that if she kept her receipts the the Bureau would foot the bill for her hotel stay for the next few nights because her house was going to be a designated crime scene for at least that long. "Look at it this way," he said, trying to joke and looking at her with the particular brand of avuncular concern that she always seemed to bring out in male authority figures eventually - it was somewhere between vague disapproval and the kind of worried look that often went with trying to show her to a chair and offer her a drink, "At least you're guaranteed some time off for Christmas."

But she just frowned stonily up at him and feeling unable to form a polite response. She wished there was somewhere to retreat to but her whole house was filled up with swarming techs with cameras and lights and evidence tags. It was funny, but it hadn't really bothered her when Kaplan's people came through and did their sweep, but this felt like an invasion, perhaps even an accusation. She wondered abstractedly if the team across the street hunkered down in place.

And then, creating his own chaos in the ranks in his wake, Red strode in through her front door, Dembe following right behind looking as imposing and downright menacing as she'd ever seen. Red headed straight for her, ignoring Cooper who stepped up to challenge his presence. She couldn't read the look on his face at all, it's not something she's seen before, but his eyes were wild with a furious light and he looked flushed and his mouth hard, and had that imperious lift to his chin that she used to see as judgement. She withdrew a few steps under an instinct to find somewhere private where they might talk, but knew even as she did that such a thing was impossible. She felt the attention of everyone in the room snap towards her and Red. She wanted to put her hands out to him, to forestall him, and just maybe in her disordered and distraught state to invite comfort from him, but instead she crossed her arms tightly and set her jaw, all defiance.

"Lizzy," he called, his smooth tone cutting across the sudden quiet, "Imagine my surprise when I found I'd been stood up, and my downright horror when I received a phonecall from a certain person telling me about… all of this," he gestured sharply with an agitated hand.

"He had another name for us, Sir," she interjected towards Cooper, who looked surprised by the phrase "stood up" and got an annoyed look from Red for her trouble. If Tom hadn't said the word 'affair' to her just hours earlier she wouldn't have stumble over the subtext, but now she was rattled, seeing potential for innuendo everywhere. She took an unsteady breath and looked up at Red. He cut an impeccable figure as always, dark hat perfectly situated, the heavy gray cashmere overcoat again, and shadowed under the brim of his hat, his eyebrows drawn together in a pained frown. "I'm sorry," she said, leaving aside all pretense to speak to him directly, hoping he would understand how deeply she was rocked by her failure here, "He's gone."

To her absolute shock, he reached out his hand as though unthinking, stopping just short of touching the small bruise on her temple where she'd fallen against handle of a drawer and she looked at him in alarm, glancing around the room again at all the people who were taking this in. For a second his face was completely open to her, she could read every ounce of worry and frustration in him now that he stood so near but she hoped against hope that those standing by couldn't see it as well as she did. His hand dropped and he seemed to subside somehow, his face smoothing and his posture straightening as if he'd been shored up from within. He nodded, just a faint dip of his chin as if to say, yes, I understand, not here, and later we will talk.

"Are they through needlessly interrogating you yet?" He asked, his tone was a tired imitation of his usual jovial bluff, but it seemed to go over seamlessly and she was reassured by this one small note of normalcy, as though she had finally found her one steady point at which to look.

"For the time being, I think," she answered.

"Then, if Harold is amenable, I think you'd better come with me and tell me all that has happened, and then I can give you those files we spoke about," he said, already taking her arm to tow her away.

"You don't need to be here for this part, Keen. So, if you feel up to it, with Reddington might be the safest place for your right now," said Cooper, moving aside to let them pass. If it weren't so convenient, such a perfect excuse to finally escape the peering and prodding, she would have been more than a little outraged at how easy it was for Cooper to throw her over to Reddington at the slightest hint of useful intel and yet look askance at her for how closely she'd formed ties with the man.

She leaned very slightly into Red's grip on her arm as they left her house, and tried to look like she wasn't. She kept her eyes down and didn't look around, even knowing it would likely be a long time before she was back. They paused before her front door, Red indicating to Dembe that he should go on ahead and wait by the car, and then asked her quietly, gently if there was anything they should take, where her coat was since it getting colder and colder out.

"I left it in my car," she said, "I thought I'd be right back out. I didn't even lock it."

His expression tightened at that but he didn't comment, just ushered her out ahead of him of him and shut the door behind them with a final sort of snap.

The sky was still light outside as they walked down the front steps, just beginning to dim towards pale, pearly winter twilight. This shocked her somehow, as though she had expected the world to have come over in an apocalyptic dark, or that hours and hours had passed in this endless day and it should now be the middle of the longest night. She spared a thought to realize that right about now, the 4th grade students in Tom's class would be putting on their holiday play for their parents and wondering what had become of their teacher.

She stopped short on the sidewalk, causing Red to turn to look at her in surprise. "We'll have to take my car," she said, "I packed a few… I have a couple bags in the trunk and I don't want them seeing me move them."

"Alright," he said slowly.

"And we can't forget about Hudson, he's got to come with us," she continued, standing stalk still.

"Of course, Lizzy, I'm not heartless. I love dogs, you know, but the life I lead isn't exactly…" he trailed off, coming around to face her, and whatever he saw in her face seemed to make him terribly unhappy. He brought a hand up to rest ever so gently against her waist inside her unbuttoned blazer where no one inside the house could see. She jumped at the contact, but it grounded her, prompting her to refocus on his face, his dear, lovely face and the way the diffuse silvery light caught up in his lashes, and the way the line of his jaw worked as he tried to find words. She wished he wouldn't frown so, it made her eyes mist up and her breathing shudder and she was determined there would be no tears with her coworkers looking on.

"I'm fine," she said hoarsely, "Really. Nothing happened, he didn't really hurt me. I should have just listened to you, huh?" She tried a smile, feeling bitingly, radiantly tender towards Red at the moment, seeing that he needed reassurance, and that they would need to have the rest of the conversation somewhere off the street. She reached into her pocket and dangled her keys at him.

"What's this?"

"You'll have to drive, I think I've sprained my wrist," she said, and he withdrew to a decorous distance once again and took the keys lightly with the finest brush of his fingers against hers. He watched her closely with a speculative look for a long, dragging piece of time, as though coming to a decision and she let herself relax, knowing the ordeal of this afternoon was almost over, knowing she was safe letting Red take charge, for the next few hours anyway. She smiled up at him in weary relief.

"You two wait here for a moment," he said to her and Dembe, "While I go and collect the dog."