They're in New York in the afternoon; Kate allows herself exactly five minutes in the shower, scrubbing furiously at her hands, her face, her neck. That's all, then she clamps down hard on any further reaction to last night's job, dresses carefully and joins Fowler and two other agents in the living room. She manages to stay awake until sunset, watching them go through the flashdrive for additional clues, before she retreats to her bedroom.
She curls on her side under the blankets, facing that giant poster of The Greatest Cake hung on the wall; she sleeps like a rock until well after eight, and if she dreams she remembers nothing.
"You're moving," is all Fowler says when he bangs on her door the next morning. She's nearly dressed, tucking the scarf carefully around her neck as she opens it. She can see the other two agents watching from the couch.
"Good morning to you, too," she says. "Where am I moving to, exactly?"
"Down the hall."
She yawns deliberately, stretching both arms over her head. "And why's that?"
"Information security." At her raised eyebrows: "You have a habit of … snooping where you shouldn't, and we deal with sensitive information here."
She glances up coolly at the other two, who've come to stand behind him, says quietly, "I think that horse is out of the barn and halfway to New Jersey, but if it makes you feel better …"
"And don't get any ideas about escape plans, either. You know what's at stake here."
They lock stares for a moment, then he jerks his chin toward the door.
She takes her time rolling up the posters carefully; she can practically feel him rolling his eyes behind her. It makes her smile.
There's not much to move, only her coat and her bag; she carries the posters in one hand down the carpeted hallway. It's a suite at the end of the hall, right next to the door to the stairwell, smaller than the other but still more space than she's had to herself in - God, she can't think how long. She stows her things in the closet, walks across the floor to pull open the blinds over the balcony doors.
"Oh, you shouldn't have." She turns in a circles, surveying the couch, the tiny counter with a coffee machine and a minibar by the sink, two mugs and two wine glasses set out neatly upside down on coasters, along with a tiny foil-wrapped chocolate.
If he doesn't want her watching him, fine. She'll take the space to work without him watching her so closely.
"Don't get any ideas," Fowler says, as if he hears her thoughts, then turns to the other two agents. "What are you two staring at? I want a full report on Reilly in an hour." After they've disappeared, he says, "Come on."
And he walks away without looking at her, clearly expecting her to follow.
She can decorate and sweep for bugs later. She waits until the elevator doors close on them before asking, "Now where are we going?"
"There's a courier van out back," he says. "Arrived from DC this morning. This was your brilliant idea, you can help me carry the boxes up."
Cryptic, she thinks, but says nothing; they go out through the back doors behind the hotel bar, out to an alley where a van is idling by the door.
The two boxes in the back are stamped DC Metro Police.
"All the files are here. There's a flashdrive in one of these with everything the Bureau dug up after they got the case. I've been over these." Fowler shoves one box in her direction and picks up the other. "The investigation lasted six months. I could recite everything in every one of these files for you backwards in my sleep."
"That won't be necessary." She grabs the door handle, pushes the door open with her shoulder as she lifts the other box. It's heavy, she decides, but not unmanageable. "Never know what fresh eyes might find."
He gives her a doubtful shrug. "You think you can dig up something useful, here's your chance to try. If nothing else it might keep you out of trouble for a while."
"I dug up plenty on you," she says, with an edged smile.
"Someday you'll have to tell me how you did that."
"Don't hold your breath." And then, when he walks past the elevator bank toward the stairwell door in back of the restaurant, "We're carrying these up thirty flights of stairs? Seriously?"
The door bangs shut, echoing off bare concrete walls. She stares up at the first landing, at the harsh fluorescent lights.
"Less likely to run into people back here," he says, and abruptly she gets it.
"Information security." Silence, until they reach the third landing and she pauses for breath, resting the edge of the box against the cold metal railing. "You don't want your other agents to know I'm looking into this."
His only answer is a well, no shit look.
"You don't trust them."
"I don't trust anyone and that includes you."
She gives the wall a thin smile as she trudges up toward the next landing. "Are they squeaky clean boy scout types who think Mentor's a legitimate op? Or are they watching for your friend on the phone to make sure you don't step out of line?"
"I have no idea. All I know for sure if none of them actually work for me."
Her legs are burning by the time they reach the thirtieth floor, but she doesn't allow herself to flop into a chair; she doesn't drop the box with a thud, either, but sets it carefully in the back of the closet on top of the other one.
"It's safer for both of us," Fowler says quietly, after setting the chain across the door, "and Caffrey, too, if this side project stays between us."
She gives him a do I look like I'm stupid? look.
When he's gone she allows herself the luxury of walking through the suite and soaking up the silence and the unexpected solitude. Then she puts on a pot of coffee, lets the tiny dark chocolate melt in her mouth while the coffeemaker gurgles, and does a more careful sweep. She finds two audio bugs, one in the bedroom and one in the living room; there's a hidden camera just over the coffee pot.
She stomps the bug in the bedroom; it makes a satisfying crunch as she twists her heel on top of it, grinding tiny wires into the thick plush carpet. She's been told she talks in her sleep, though Neal swears it's never anything coherent.
He'll expect her to check for bugs; he won't believe she'd miss all of them. But if she removes them all he'll only plant new ones. She makes sure to hang the posters on the wall in full view of the camera, and spends a good ten minutes seriously considering adding pink sparkly hearts after all.
She loosens the scarf when the wool against her neck starts to make her skin crawl, stretches sore arms over her head and allows herself to fall backward onto the bed, staring up at the still fan blades. She's still got it, she thinks. She hasn't executed a real break-in in nearly a year, but she can still scale a wall and think on her feet with the best of them.
She kicks her shoes off and draws her legs up onto the bed, sitting up and clasping her arms around her knees, wishing fiercely for Neal and Mozzie. She's still wired, even after more than twelve hours' sleep; something like this, she needs to talk it through with Neal and Mozzie to wind down, but they're not here.
She wishes for cheap pizza and expensive wine in hastily-rinsed coffee mugs; they'd be sitting on the floor in some dingy highway motel right now, punch-drunk on success and still buzzing from the near brush with disaster, dissecting every moment, every call and every unexpected turn. Mozzie would be critiquing her climbing form, Neal telling her she's beautiful in black; they'd be up all night, until they'd taken the operation apart, then Mozzie would grumble something about kids these days taking too many risks while his eyes said Neal was brilliant.
Then he'd leave, and Neal would pull her onto his lap and they'd try to be quiet, tearing each other's clothes off; they'd try to be quiet, giddy laughter lost in adrenaline-soaked, desperate kisses; she'd shove him backwards onto the carpet, tug her hair down (he loves to run his hands through it) and let it fall around his face, leaning forward, her arms bracing her above him; she'd brush her nose against his, lightly, teasing, watching his slow grin, his eyes dark with wanting her.
Some days all she can think of is the last time he touched her, his arms wrapped around her in that long-ago interrupted reunion; some days she can't think for wanting him. And some days she thinks it's been so long since anyone touched her that when he finally does, she won't be able to feel anything at all.
She remembers the coffee half an hour later, when her eyes start to cross trying to decipher notes scribbled in the margin of a witness statement.
Fowler is on the phone when he comes back, some seven hours later; he chains the door shut behind him and barks, "I've been on hold for twenty minutes, are you telling me -" Silence, and a scowl; she raises both eyebrows. "You want my badge number again?" He recites a number, then shakes his head in frustration. Looking at her, he asks, "Learn anything interesting?"
"Metro detectives have godawful handwriting?" she offers. "I feel like I need a cryptographer, here."
"I could've told you -" He stops, half turning away to speak into the phone once more. "Yes, this is Agent Fowler." A pause. "No, he's not family, he's a person of interest in a case I'm - all right. You're sure?" Another pause. "All right. Thank you." The last is bitten off, impatient, and then he snaps the phone closed.
"What was that about?"
"That was the hospital in Alexandria. A Michael Simpson was admitted two nights ago. He's a security guard at a private residence, came in with a knife wound in his neck." He puts the phone back in his jacket, looks up and holds her eyes. "They say he's in stable condition, expected to make a full recovery."
"Oh." She tries to picture the man's face and can't; she can only see blood along the side of his neck, and the pattern carved into the chest he'd fallen against, some stylized twisting vines. Her voice is remarkably calm and cool, she thinks. "That makes things less complicated."
He's still watching her, waiting for some further response, but she has none to give. Then he's crossing the room in two quick strides; she can't see a reason for the sudden alarm in his face until her legs fold up with no warning, pitching her toward the floor.
She can't see; she feels him shove her into a chair, one hand forcing her head down between her knees. A black haze spreads in spots across her eyes, lit by dizzy sparkles; her lungs feel heavy and squeezed flat. She can feel the hard wood of the chair under her, she can feel the carpet against her feet and still the dizzy tumbling in her stomach tells her she's falling. A wash of heat prickles across her skin; her mouth waters and she tries, three times, to swallow; for a long moment she's afraid she's going to be sick.
Fowler's hand is not gentle; his grip is iron, holding her down when she tries, weakly, to sit up. She can hear her own breathing, harsh and unsteady and strange; her heartbeat is a thundering rush in her ears, the voice of the ocean trapped in a shell.
Her vision clears slowly, purple sparks still dancing at the edges as she hears him walk across the room. The balcony door slides open and a breeze sweeps over her. The air is too cold but she welcomes the bite of it, a startling slap against her face as she sits up, wiping sweat from her forehead with the end of her scarf.
"Don't," Fowler says, somewhere behind her, as she tries to stand; her legs are weak and turn to water at the attempt. She leans back, breathing carefully through her mouth, staring at her hands and trying to calm rising nausea.
The scarf has come loose; she ought to wrap it again but she doesn't think she can stand the feeling of anything touching her neck right now.
She hears a clink of glass and then Fowler is beside her, setting a coffee mug on the table with a short, "Drink."
Whiskey, she thinks, and by the smell of it strong enough to strip paint. Her hands are shaking badly but she downs it in a single gulp, warmth spreading along the back of her throat. Fowler is still holding the bottle; he pours another generous shot as she sets the mug down, then walks away to return the bottle to the minibar.
He stays there, standing at the counter with his back to her, feigning interest in the coffee pot or the top of the counter for a good ten minutes while she lets the buzzing lassitude of alcohol soak through her, giving her a degree of privacy while her breathing returns to normal and her hands (mostly) stop trembling; it is a gesture of consideration she did not expect from him.
Finally, he turns and moves to take a chair across from her; he says, quiet and serious, "Reilly is dead."
He slides a printout of a news article across the table; Edward Reilly, thirty-three, shot dead on a street corner just after dark. The implications sink in quickly enough, even in her current shocked state. "Someone's cleaning up loose ends."
"So it seems."
She stares at the photograph, thinks of the narrow-faced little man at the Argentinian mission who'd pointed them toward Reilly in the first place. He'd been frightened and alone; Reilly was a professional, and a dangerous man to cross. Whoever took him out knew what they were doing.
"He knew too much," she says; she's half drunk or she wouldn't speak so calmly. The whole thing is detached, somehow, like a puzzle she's working out, one of Mozzie's training exercises. Still she can taste adrenaline, sour and familiar, as she looks up. "We're not getting out of this, are we?" She breathes out slowly, shivering in the cold wind from the balcony. "No matter how far away we get. Whoever this is he's not going to let us go."
Fowler doesn't answer. She thinks he ought to look more disturbed than he does; they're not going to let him go, either. He's in this as far as she is, farther, most likely. He says softly, "We don't have much of a choice, here."
"He knows about the plane." Words come slowly, thoughts moving thick and syrupy like honey. "Our escape plan." Fowler only nods. "He'll follow us."
"You and Caffrey are pretty good at hiding," he says.
She laughs, short and sharp. "If we were that good I wouldn't be here. And he wouldn't be -" She lets out a shaky breath. "He won't stop until we're dead." A pause. "Or until he thinks we're -" She stops. "We can fake our own deaths."
Fowler's voice is dry. "That's very Romeo and Juliet of you."
"It's a classic."
"Yeah, and as I recall it didn't work out too well for them." He regards her seriously. "Look, once we've got the box -"
"We can crash the plane." The breeze from the balcony stirs her hair, tugs at the edge of the nearest poster. "Ditch it in the water and swim to shore."
He continues as if she hasn't spoken. "He wants the music box, and once we've got it -"
"You think once you have the box you can use that as leverage to get some answers." She leans forward, resting her elbows on the table. "You think he hasn't planned for that? He's going to have some kind of contingency plan for you not handing it over, and he's not going to be stupid enough to meet you himself for the handoff." Fowler's only response is half a shrug. "You want to get at who's really behind all this, or you just want to go down in flames for her?"
"If you've got a better plan, by all means feel free to share."
"Look, our deal was you get the box and then you cover our escape," she says sharply. "Does he know what names you're giving us?"
"I don't even know what the names are yet," he says. "But even if somebody sees the plane go down over the water you can't assume he'll be satisfied with that. Even if you can slip ashore without being seen by anyone, he'll keep looking unless he sees bodies washing up on the beach."
"What if it explodes in midair?"
"Then you both die quickly?"
"We can get parachutes or something." She waves a hand in the air. "One of those inflatable rafts. We can do it at night - easier to see the explosion, harder to see us jump."
"That is the most ridiculous plan I've ever heard." He shakes his head. "You ever jump out of a plane before?"
"No, but -"
"Caffrey?"
"Does base-jumping count?"
"No, base-jumping does not count. Believe me, if you're looking to get yourselves killed there's quicker and less painful ways to do it." He sighs, short and explosive. "You're not jumping into the Med, here. You'd be coming down somewhere off the west coast of Ireland. Even if this drags out till spring the water's going to be frigid. You'll both freeze if you don't drown, and that's assuming you know what you're doing with the parachutes and you don't smash into the tail as soon as you go out the door."
"You have, though." She leans forward as he rolls his eyes. "You were in Special Forces. You can show me what to do."
"I spent weeks at Fort Benning training under highly qualified instructors with specialized equipment. That was over a decade ago. As I'm sure you know, since you've read my file."
"You keep the token with your laptop password in your right jacket pocket," she says, with a slow smile. He looks up, surprise flickering in his eyes. "Oh, come on. How did you think I got on the FBI servers?"
He studies her carefully, his face still; his voice holds only dry amusement when he says, "I should get you drunk more often."
She blinks, and decides she wasn't likely to get any more opportunities to get at his laptop anyway, now that she's in her own room. "You've been sharing hotel rooms with an accomplished pickpocket for nearly a year now. Don't tell me this is a surprise."
"You want to tell me how you got to what's not on the FBI servers?"
"Nice try." She shakes her head slowly; she's still a bit lightheaded, but she decides that's the alcohol this time. "I'm not that drunk."
He gives a can't blame me for trying shrug.
"I'm serious," she says, after a silence. "Tell me what we'd need to pull this off."
"A couple months training for both of you and a completely different type of aircraft," he says. "And at this stage we can't get either without tipping our hand. He knows I've got a Learjet ready to go already. I swap that out for something with a proper jump door and he'll know you're planning a jump, which would kind of defeat the purpose."
"You're telling me we can't jump out of a Learjet that's about to explode?"
"Only if you -" He shakes his head. "I can't believe I'm even having this conversation."
"Come on -"
"Kate." He fixes her with a measuring look. "You're drunk and you're tired and we are not discussing this tonight."
She sits at the table as the wind from the balcony turns colder; she closes her eyes and sees dark water, steep whitecaps rising in ridges all the way to the horizon.
She wakes up and she's slumped over the table; it's dark, and the blinds rattle an irregular tattoo in the cold wind. Yawning, she manages to close the balcony door and find her way to the bedroom in the dark; lying on top of the blanket, she doesn't bother to take off her shoes. Her head is clearer, now, and she knows she's right.
If they're going to survive, she and Neal can't just disappear. Someone who can get to Edward Reilly won't stop until he's sure both of them are dead.
***
It's a familiar game, dragging a pair of young agents through the streets, letting them think they're tailing her until she decides to slip behind a sign and duck through a shop and out the back door. Half an hour's back and forth travel on the subway later, she's sure no one is following. She hasn't played this game in a while; it's reassuring to know she can still shake a tail when she has to.
Fowler is waiting in her room when she returns, standing when she comes in.
"Where the hell were you?" he demands, angry and suspicious. She studies him coolly, leaning against the back of a chair. She hasn't dropped off the grid like that since before they'd made their deal, she realizes.
"Keeping my skills sharp," she says; he does not look amused. "Sporting goods store on 4th. You can ask the clerk if you want."
He blinks, then shakes his head, anger fading to exasperation. "Looking for parachutes?" At her nod: "I take it they didn't have any?"
"They know a company that will special order them."
"You're serious about this."
"I'm serious about getting Neal out of here alive. I'm serious about the two of us not spending the rest of our very short lives looking over our shoulders. If you've got a better plan, please share."
He shakes his head and walks out without answering; a few hours later he comes back long enough to throw a small book on the table; the nondescript green cover reads Special Forces Military Free Fall Operations.
"Read it."
She keeps it tucked behind the bible in the nightstand; she pulls it out and reads a few pages of technical descriptions when she needs a break from deciphering illegible handwriting and staring at crime scene photos. Fowler spends the next week in DC, and the subject doesn't come up again until he returns.
He arrives in the evening; she hears him barking at the other agents all the way down the hall. Fifteen minutes later he's in her room; he says nothing at first, only gives her a measuring stare until her eyebrows go up, impatient.
"We're picking up chatter from independent sources," he says finally, "saying the box is in New York."
She doesn't yell HA! Or I told you so, however tempting it is. She only nods firmly. "Like I said. You give me a reason to work with you, and we start getting somewhere."
His mouth twists in something that's not quite a smile. "Let's go."
"Where are we going?" she asks, as the elevator doors slide shut.
He doesn't answer.
***
They leave the car in a lot some twenty minutes away. Fowler pulls a duffel out of the back seat and says, "Turn off your phone."
He pulls out another set of keys as they approach a weathered pickup parked in the shadow of a nondescript office building; whatever is piled on the back is covered by a dusty tarp. "Get in."
She can hear the muted call of a foghorn as they pull up in front of an abandoned warehouse, some few blocks away from the docks. The door is caked with rust, but it rolls up smoothly and silently like it's been recently oiled. The concrete floor is dusty and marked with bird droppings, and a drift of leaves tapers into a pile of trash in one shadowed corner. But the newspapers taped carefully over the windows are dated from only last week.
An empty swimming pool opens in the center of the floor; it looks nearly fifty feet long and nine feet deep at the far end. The tiles are yellowed like old ivory, and speckled black with mildew stains.
The ceiling is high, at least twenty feet; she hears a rustling and a chirp as a pair of birds take off and disappear through a gap in the corrugated iron roof.
Fowler flings back the tarp over the truck bed, revealing a load of wood chips and handing her a shovel.
She looks at him. "You want to explain what we're doing here?"
He hefts a shovel full of wood chips, throws them onto the floor beside the empty pool. "Moving all this -" he waves at the loaded truck bed "- onto the floor over there. Unless you'd rather practice falling on bare concrete?"
The air is cold; she's sweating by the time the truck bed is empty, her arms and shoulders sore, and she shivers once she's standing still. Fowler drags the duffel out of the truck, pulling out a tangled mess of heavy straps.
"What's that?"
"Parachute harness. Pay attention," he says. "You'll be doing this for Caffrey, if you go through with this."
He points to each of the different straps in turn and then makes her practice fastening and unfastening the clasps half a dozen times before he even lets her put it on. Patience and curiosity are wearing into frustration by the time he actually puts it on her back, the parachute hanging in a folded square like a backpack from the shoulder straps.
It's heavier than she expected, sliding down to knock at the backs of her thighs.
"Now lean forward and fasten the chest strap," Fowler says. She bends over and locks the chest strap into place as he shoves the folded parachute up her back until it bounces off the back of her head. And then, as she's about to straighten up again, "Don't stand up,"
She stares at her shoes, feels him tugging at various bits of the harness, and the whole assembly tightens around her chest and shoulders.
"Now the right leg strap," he says, and then he has one hand on her hip and the other reaches between her legs to pass her the end of the strap.
"Okay, seriously -"
But he only says, "Take this, don't twist it, and attach it to the leg strap in front," impatiently, as if she's not bent over with her ass practically in his face, so she takes the clip and slides it into the other end before he repeats the process with the left leg strap.
"Can I stand up now?" she asks, with exaggerated patience. He shows her where to hook her thumbs through two metal rings on the chest strap.
"Pull down and then stand up straight," he tells her, and she feels him pull on something else and then the whole thing is wrapped uncomfortably tight around her. As she fastens the waist strap in place, he says, "We've gone over how this is a stupid plan, right?"
"More or less stupid than assuming we can hide forever if we don't convince whoever's behind all this that we're dead?"
He doesn't answer at first, dragging a box about two feet high next to the pile of wood chips. He takes the parachute off of her, and puts on a second harness without a chute on the back, without responding to her raised eyebrows.
"Marginally less stupid, or we wouldn't be here," he says finally. "There's maybe a fifty percent chance that both of you will survive this. That's assuming everything goes according to plan."
She spends the next three hours jumping off that box.
Halfway through he adds a second box. "Keep your feet and knees together," he says; she loses track of how many times he's said that. He has her practice landing, touching down on the balls of her feet and then falling on her side, coming to land on her back.
There's a cable hanging from the rafters, attached to a pulley of some sort with a carabiner clip on one end. It's nearly dark by the time he clips this to the straps on her back, wraps the other end around his waist in a belaying knot.
She sees the end of the rope in his hand half a second before her feet leave the ground. Cold air streams past her face; she flings her arms up instinctively, shielding her head as the ceiling rushes toward her, but she stops some two feet from the roof.
Someone's initials are carved into the long wooden rafter beam just above her head; she can see a long-deserted bird's next resting on it as she spins slowly in midair. The roof itself is corrugated iron, sagging in places, leaking white light around the seams. A biting breeze stirs her hair; Fowler says something below but she can't make it out.
Then she's falling.
She's fallen farther, both on purpose and by accident, so her only audible reaction is a brief, startled squeak; the place echoes, but she tells herself she's far enough up he might not have heard.
She lands in a bruised, graceless sprawl the first time, but the second time she's prepared and lands the way he showed her.
"How's that?"
She's reminded again of Mozzie as he gives her a measuring stare; it's almost like the early days with Neal, learning to scale security fences and crack safes. She is reinventing herself again, crawling out of an old skin that will no longer serve her, but she comforts herself knowing she's done it before.
"This is not how you're supposed to train for this," he says.
"No shit," she says. But they don't have the luxury of an entire Army base to work with, so they'll have to make do the best they can. "What about a boat? What else are we going to need?"
"I can get a boat," he says. "And you'll need lights, and wet suits."
"We're trying to be stealthy, here."
"You need to be able to find each other and the boat. Quickly." His eyes are serious. "It's going to be freezing, even if you don't get out of here until next August. The plane's not big enough to get you to any warm water that's outside US jurisdiction."
She sighs. "What else?"
"I know a guy who knows a guy who can do something with the door." He shakes his head. "I have no idea why I'm even doing this."
After another three falls, she stands and brushes splinters out of her hair and says, "Because you get a sadistic pleasure out of dropping me on my head over and over?"
"There is that."
"What's wrong with the door?"
"It's not the kind of door you jump out of."
"It's a door. It opens, you go through it. What's the issue?"
"It's in the wrong place." At her look: "Jump door needs to be behind and below the wing. Even with a draft baffle attachment rigged up you'll need to cut the engines on that side before you go or the draft will blow you straight into the tail."
He shakes his head again. "Once this goes down," he continues, "you'll have to take off and get out of the country right away. There's no telling what the weather's going to be but you could be jumping in rain or snow or high winds or God knows what other conditions where any trained military team would abort."
"Fifty percent chance, huh?"
"That's a best-case scenario."
She closes her eyes, sees the terrified face of their contact at the Argentinian mission; she sees that news article about Reilly, shot dead on a street corner.
Her legs ache and her back and shoulders are a mass of bruises when he finally unhooks her from the ropes nearly two hours later. She still watches him, watches the ends of the ropes, wary and untrusting of the steadiness of the floor under her feet, but she can't help feeling pleased with herself for all that; it's the same sweaty, exhausted sort of triumph she'd felt each time Mozzie looked at her like maybe she wouldn't turn out to be completely useless after all.
She's exhausted and sweaty and covered in sawdust once she's hauled herself up the stairs to her room, but it's a bruised exhaustion that comes with dragging herself forward another step. She's making progress, and so is Neal; she can learn this.
She won't be able to tell Neal any of this until they're in the air, she realizes, as she stumbles into the shower.
She can close her eyes and see him, the exultant light in his eyes, his wide open grin whenever Mozzie grudgingly acknowledged she'd done something right. She wants to tell him all about it now; she's learning how to jump out of planes. He'd be so excited for her.
But she can't tell him about this plan. She loves him, and she knows he loves her, but this is not a brilliant, stylish heist they're planning. Both their lives depend on absolute secrecy, and she's still afraid of his inexplicable trust in Burke.
She'll tell him all about it later. Once they're away, once they're safe; she lets the hot water pound her aching shoulders, soaking her hair and running down her face, lets herself imagine a hotel in the south of France where they'll spend all day in bed, watching the sun drift lazily across the sky and telling stories of everything that's happened since they've been apart.
***
They come back to the warehouse the next two nights, and do the whole thing again. The next three nights she doesn't leave the hotel, but he has her stand on her bed and fall, repeatedly. It's at once deadly serious and mildly ridiculous; the whole thing feels faintly surreal. She thinks she's going to start hearing feet and knees together in her dreams.
He has her spend hours putting the harness on herself; then she practices putting it on him. After the first twenty times, she's over feeling awkward about the whole thing. After that, he puts it on himself and makes her check the whole assembly, altering some tiny thing each time to see if she'll catch the mistake; this exercise is accompanied by detailed commentary on what will happen if each tiny mistake isn't caught.
But for the first time in a long time she feels like she's making progress toward a goal; the motions are becoming automatic.
She can't help wondering at the amount of time Fowler is devoting to this, all amusement value of watching her add to her collection of bruises aside. Perhaps he's as tense as she is, waiting for Neal or Alex to make the next move with the music box and needing to be busy with something. Or perhaps he figures she's less likely to try anything if he makes sure she's exhausted all the time.
On the fifth day, she says, "Not that I'm not having fun, here, but why am I practicing falling on the ground when we're landing in the water?"
"I have a guy coming to fill the pool tomorrow morning," is all he says.
It's late in the afternoon when they arrive; reddening light slides along the surface of the water. The smell of chlorine mingles with the salt smell from the docks.
"Depending on the wind," Fowler is saying, pulling something out of the truck with a rustle of dull green silk, "the chute might fall on your head as you come up out of the water." He thrusts the edge of the canopy into her hands; the material is thinner than she expected, trailing ropes of differing thickness; seams branch out from a hole in the center, giving the whole thing the appearance of a spider's web. "You panic and get tangled up in it, you're going to drown."
She nods, watching as he shakes it out, letting it spread over the surface of the water like a net, or a blanket. "You come up underneath the canopy you want to feel for a seam and then follow it. It'll take you to the edge or the middle." He tilts his head toward the water. "Get in."
She shrugs out of her coat, kicks her shoes off and lowers herself quickly into the water; it's cold, and the breeze from the door blowing past her wet hair is colder still once she surfaces. She shivers, treading water more vigorously than strictly necessary as she watches him.
"Duck under and find a seam and find your way to the middle. Don't," he adds, "dive under and swim the whole way. You'll be wearing a life jacket, so you'll have to stay at the surface."
The material is disturbingly clingy when wet; still the seams aren't hard to find, and she ignores the clammy, cold silk trying to press against her face and holds her breath until she feels empty air and her head finds the hole at the center.
He has her practice some two of three dozen times; the air is cold and she's shivering, her fingers fumbling with the seams. The sun has set, twilight leaching light from the corners of the room, when he rolls the door shut, blocking the last of the sun and plunging the room in darkness.
"You're going to be doing this at night, remember?"
She can do this, she thinks, after she's found her way out from under the chute several more times in the dark.
The next afternoon, she's got a life vest on under the harness; he goes over how to remove the straps before he drops her in the water. She's starting to get the motions down after half a dozen falls, unhooking the chest strap as she descends, releasing the leg straps as she hits the water and swimming out of the harness.
The sixth or seventh time she breaks the surface of the water and something wet and clammy wraps around her face, stopping her nose and mouth when she tries to breathe. She can't see, and the only sound is the slap of water and the sudden fierce rush of her heart thudding in her ears; she tries to retreat underwater but she bobs back up almost immediately, held by the vest.
Her vision greys out and her lungs burn and she can feel hands at her throat, squeezing; she's not sure what happens after that, until she inhales water and the burn of it snaps her back to the present, the smell of chlorine thick and choking and something wet and filmy and impossible to grasp as spider-silk slowly suffocating her.
Grey darkness turns to bruised yellow sparkles as she tries to feel for a seam but the whole thing is hopelessly tangled and her arms feel heavy and useless, dragging at her. Then abruptly she feels cold air on her face.
She gasps, coughing; she blinks and for a second she sees blood on her gloves and her knife in a man's neck before Fowler squeezes her arm, shaking her. The chute is a crumpled wet mess floating amid trailing lines a few feet away; Fowler is beside her, still holding her arm, and she has a sudden feeling he knows exactly what she's seeing.
She kicks instinctively, treading water, though the vest is still holding her up; she thinks if he offers the least expression of sympathy she'll hit him.
But he only holds her eyes and says, "You sure you still want to do this?"
She allows herself a few more gasping breaths; she's not about to give up after one mistake, however frightening and humiliating. She doesn't have a choice; she glares at him and bites out, "Yes."
She barely has a chance to think before she's flying out of the water. Find a seam, she's thinking, but the cold breeze shocks her, brings on another fit of coughing and she can't get a deep breath; she has no time to recover near the ceiling before she's falling again, and by the time she can inhale deeply water fills her mouth, closing over her head.
She surfaces into a faceful of wet silk; she tries to breathe, tries to cough and this time blind panic takes over; the more she flails at it the stronger and more closely wrapped it feels, and colored lights explode in twisting ropes of fire behind her eyes and now she can't tell which way is up or what she's fighting. Hands grip her arms and she lashes out blindly, moving slow and lethargic despite the thrumming escalation of her heart; the shroud is finally peeled back from her face and she still can't see.
The room is dim, the sun nearly gone; this time Fowler has to drag her to the edge of the pool; her stomach lurches, twisting suddenly inside out and she hangs on the concrete lip at the edge, retching, for nearly five minutes.
Fowler's voice holds neither amusement nor sympathy as he says, "We're done with this as soon as you say we're done."
She swore, once, that she'd never let him see her afraid.
She spits in the water, caught by a surge of shame and fury and absolute loathing; through chattering teeth she snarls, "Go to hell."
He gives her no more time to recover; ten seconds later she's falling again. This time she accidentally flails upward, stabbing with her hand, creating an air pocket between the chute and her face; she's able to grab one breath that way, and that's enough. Her fingers are nearly numb by now but she feels for a seam, holding her breath and running her fingers along it until she reaches the end, pulling the chute off over her head, paddling in a graceless, exhausted stroke for the side.
She clings to the side, gasping, knowing she has only a few more seconds before he pulls her up and drops her again and not wasting any of them on triumph.
The next time she stabs upward deliberately at the chute, and again the resulting air pocket gives her enough breath to remember how to extricate herself. It's completely dark by now; she loses track, quickly, of how many times she's done this; the next hour is blur of dark water and wind on her face and her hands are learning the motions, releasing the straps and fighting free of the chute, and somewhere in the middle of it all her mind shuts down and retreats somewhere dark and cold.
Sometime much later a blanket is wrapped around her shoulders; a blast of wind hits her as the door rolls up and a hand at her elbow guides her toward the truck; a second blanket is draped over her as she sinks into the seat. She blinks as the overhead light comes on, temporarily blinded; the engine starts and when she can see again Fowler is leaning across her to point the dashboard air vents in her direction.
She's shaking violently, even with the heat turned up full blast, and she doesn't stop until they're back at the hotel.
Three times she wakes up to find herself sitting on the concrete stairs; three times she manages to stagger upright again and continue up a few more flights before she decides to sit down and rest. The fourth time Fowler shakes her awake, she squints up at him and sees a purple bruise and drying blood on the side of his face.
She blinks, asks blearily, "Did I do that?"
He nods once; she shivers involuntarily, caught by a blurred memory of darkness and water burning her throat. It hardly seems fair; after all the times she's wanted to punch him in the face, over the past year, once she finally does she doesn't even get the satisfaction of remembering it.
She doesn't realize she's spoken that last thought out loud until he laughs; it's a real laugh, brief and startled, echoing sharply in the narrow stairwell.
Sometime after that she's leaning against the counter in her tiny kitchen nook, in a dry bathrobe with the blanket still wrapped around her shoulders; Fowler has disappeared into her bathroom. She pours herself a shot of whiskey as she hears the shower come on, sips slowly until he reappears in dry clothes, rubbing a towel over his hair.
"Aren't your other agents going to start wondering where you've been?" she asks, setting the glass down. "Or do you really think they haven't noticed us sneaking up and down the stairs at night?"
"Oh, they've noticed." He drops the towel on the counter. "But they've jumped to their own conclusions about what we're up to, and I doubt any of those involve parachute training."
Her brain is sluggish enough that it takes a moment to sink in; when it does, she snorts. "I'm offended at their low opinion of my taste."
That gets half a smile, as he pours himself a shot. She thinks of where his hands have been, and hers, simply in the process of attaching the legs straps, and laughs out loud.
"I'm working on getting a plane," he says, serious now.
She pauses with her own glass halfway to her lips, glaring at him. "You said you already had one."
"I do." He sighs. "But we can't use that one to practice. He'll be watching it; if it moves before I tell him I've got the box -"
"So we need another plane to practice." She wonders, again, at the lengths he's going to here; she'd been trying to think of a way to suggest a practice jump, but she didn't expect him to go for it, much less suggest it himself. "Can we get one?"
"I'm working on it," he says. And then, "You do realize all of this - everything we've done here - you're going to have a few hours, max, once you're in the air to teach Caffrey everything he needs to know so he'll do it all right the first time. Or -"
Or he'll drown. She lets out a shaky breath, shivering again as she pulls the blanket closer around her shoulders, dull fear struggling with exhaustion.
"Do you still want to do this?"
The question is quiet and serious; she looks up. "I don't have much of a choice, do I?"
He holds her eyes, repeats it deliberately: "Do you still want to do this?"
The certainty and confidence she'd been building over the past few days is gone, lost in the memory of chlorine clogging her throat. But she's tired of running. She's tired of being a sitting target. She's tired of looking over her shoulder; she's tired of being angry and afraid all the time. It's a risk, and a terrible one, for both of them, but it's also the only chance she and Neal will ever have at any kind of permanent security and freedom together.
She nods once, swallows the rest of the whiskey in a single gulp. "Yes."
She dreams of floating on a raft in the ocean, tall waves and a dark sky, patches of stars peeking between heavy clouds. The waves are tall, whipped by the wind, throwing cold spray over them; it's raining but she and Neal are both soaked so they hardly notice. They're huddled together, Neal behind her, his arms wrapped around her and his head resting on her shoulder; she can feel him shaking, hear his teeth chattering and that's how she knows he's still alive.
She wakes slowly; the dream clings like morning fog and there's a moment of panic as she realizes she can't feel Neal at her back anymore. She reaches for him and her hand strikes the side of the tub; she's in the shower, she realizes, still wearing the bathrobe, and the water coming down has long since gone cold.
Wrenching the water off, she has just enough strength left to peel out of the wet robe and stagger toward her bed; crawling under the blankets, she curls up in a tight, shivering knot and lets sleep break like dark water over her head.
***
Three days later they're driving back sometime after midnight and he says, "Maurice has been looking into the Italians. The Consul-General is stopping in New York for a day and a half before he goes to DC, supposed to be picking something up."
"When?"
"Two and a half weeks," he says. "Your boy's running out of time."
"He'll get it." Still her nerves are stretched thin, not knowing Neal's plans or being able to work on it with him. "We're running out of time. What about a practice plane?"
She stifles a yawn; it's barely two AM and she knows she won't be able to sleep until sunrise. Tonight, like last night, was spent dragging a heavy life-sized mannequin onto a tiny inflatable raft; once dawn comes, she knows she'll dream of Neal, floating unconscious in cold water. She shivers.
"I've called everyone I know, and nothing's available in the next two weeks." He sighs, short and frustrated. "If you know anybody who's got one -"
She's falling back into old sleeping patterns, since they've started training at night; the old crawling itch to get moving is back, with a force she hasn't felt since those first weeks after she'd been caught. A few nights spent flailing in the water and once again she's unable to sleep in the dark; she tries, for a few days, and finds herself starting awake in the early morning dark, staring at the window and fighting the nameless, clawing urge to run.
By now she's given up; once they get back to the room, she'll drag out those case files and make coffee and sift through old witness statements until the sun comes up and the light tells her it's not safe to move anyway so she might as well hide and rest.
She sleeps lightly, even during the day, and wakes suddenly and completely at each noise in the hall.
The next evening they're waiting for the coffeemaker when her phone rings.
It's a sudden, loud buzz, vibrating against the hard surface of the table, and she whirls, wide-eyed, before she realizes what it is. Fowler looks up but doesn't comment on her reaction; she startles easily, these days. Somehow over the past two weeks her unconscious reflexes have reset back to flight mode, and it's becoming increasingly inconvenient when she's not ready to run yet.
She lets out a slow sigh, breathing in the smell of coffee and forcing herself to relax as it rings twice more, before picking up.
"Who is this?"
For half a second she expects to hear Neal's voice; he doesn't have this number, and she could only lie to him if he called, but for a second she's caught by a desperate, aching need to hear him.
"Kate."
Adler.
Her hand clenches around the phone; Fowler is watching her face, quietly alert.
"What do you want?"
"I want to help you," he says, and there's a note in his voice that's both cold and condescending at once, familiar and infuriating, scraping away at her badly frayed composure. "I hadn't heard from you, and I thought I'd check and see if you'd thought about my offer. I have resources that could be useful."
She can't deal with him tonight. She's tired and she's sore and she's holding herself together by her fingernails and she needs all the emotional reserves she's got to face another few hours of flailing about in the water in the dark, and she's about this close to hanging up on the smug bastard when some part of her brain more concerned with self-preservation says bluntly, "I need to borrow your plane."
Fowler's eyebrows go up; she's almost as surprised to hear the words as he is. For a long moment there's only silence on the other end of the phone.
"That's - an unusual request," Adler says mildly. "Are you going somewhere?"
"No, I'm looking to fly it around in circles," she snaps, and breathes out slowly, counting to five before she continues. "A short trip upstate." She mouths tomorrow? at Fowler, and he nods once. "Tomorrow afternoon. I'll have it back to you by the next morning."
"Any particular reason you need to get out of the city in such a hurry?"
"You said you wanted to help." Her fist clenches on the table; her voices rises sharply, and she calms herself with an effort. "This is how you can help me. I need an answer, now, and I'm not going to beg. Yes or no?"
The words hang in the air; by the look on Fowler's face, she wonders if her voice sounds more frayed than she realized.
"There's an airstrip by the river," Adler says at last. "The plane will be waiting at five."
The coffeemaker spits as she hangs up on him, announcing a full pot with a sputtering hiss. "We have a plane," she says. "Courtesy of Vincent Adler."
"Your friend from Argentina."
She nods, pouring coffee and covering another yawn; she's exhausted and keyed up at once and she thinks she hasn't had three hours' sleep at a stretch in over a week; she's hoping tonight's training might wear her out enough so she can sleep.
"Can we get a pilot by tomorrow afternoon?"
She doesn't doubt Adler will send one with the plane, but she's not about to trust the least details of this exercise with anyone connected to him.
Fowler nods, and says, "There's something we haven't talked about."
She looks up, sips at scorching black coffee, wary. "What's that?"
"What's going to happen to your pilot? When you do this for real?"
"I don't suppose you can find us someone we can trust to keep a secret."
He only shakes his head. She stares across the room at the warm circle of amber lamplight pooled on the carpet, her own reflection in the glass doors across the balcony.
She crosses the room, pulls the blinds closed with a rattle that's loud in the sudden stillness. Comes back and leans against the counter, picks up her coffee mug and sets it down again, watches the blinds swaying.
She hears Fowler pouring his own coffee, doesn't look at him as he says, "You'll have to kill him or convince him you're both dead."
And she wants nothing more than to be fighting with the straps and that damn raft, held under with the water filling her mouth and stopping her ears so she doesn't have to hear this, doesn't have to even think it.
Fowler continues, quietly, "The former would be less complicated."
"Neal will never go for that." And she stares down into her coffee, closes her eyes against a sudden intense surge of love and gratitude that steals her breath. Neal will never agree to any plan that involves leaving a man on a plane that's about to explode to preserve the secret of their survival; he'd refuse to jump at all. He'd offer the pilot his own chute first. She knows this like she knows the sound of her own heartbeat. If by some miracle she got him off the plane, he'd never be able to live with himself; he'd never be able to look at her again.
Neal won't let her make that decision; the choice is out of her hands.
I love you, she thinks, and sips slowly at her coffee and waits for the fierce wash of longing to subside before she looks up. "How do we convince him we're dead?"
Fowler looks at her for a long moment like he's about to argue, and then sighs. "You can force him to jump a few miles before you do," he says finally. He's thought about this, she thinks. "Tell him you're stealing the plane. Have him set the autopilot. He'll see the explosion but he shouldn't see you jump if you're far away enough."
She makes herself ask the question, though she doesn't want to hear the answer. "What are his chances of surviving alone in the water?"
"Not good," he says. "Not that yours are much better."
"We can give him a radio. So he can call the Coast Guard, or something." She's grasping at straws.
"Do you really want patrol boats in the water only a couple miles away from you two when that plane explodes? They'll be looking for wreckage right on top of you."
She sets down the mug hard enough to slosh hot coffee over her hand and onto the counter. After a few beats of silence, she asks, "Can you find us a pilot who's trained in water survival? Ex-military, or something? Someone who'd have a fighting chance?"
He nods, and if the slight catch in her voice is audible he pretends not to notice.
"And another boat for him. And a chute."
"Anything else I can get for you? A pony, perhaps?"
She snorts a laugh, inhaling hot coffee and burning the roof of her mouth before she glares at him.
"Something else to think about," he says. "Anyone with that kind of training is going to know he's got a better chance on the plane than in the water. Unless you're going to tell him it's about to explode, which would kind of defeat the purpose of making it look like an accident." He looks at her. "I can get you that pilot. I can get you an extra boat and an extra chute. And I can get you a gun." The words hang in the air between them. "But you have to understand it's not a magic wand you wave at somebody and they do exactly what you tell them. The gun's worse than useless if you're not prepared to use it."
He continues as she looks down, studying the carpet, "If you tell him to jump and he doesn't, you'd damn well better be prepared to shoot him."
She swallows with an effort, asks finally, "What about tomorrow? Where are we going?"
A long silence, and he decides to let her change the subject. "Lake Champlain," he says, looking away at the door. "There's a place along the shore where we can pull the boat up, get dry clothes and spend the night. And a car we can borrow to drive back in the morning."