Disclaimer: It's fanfic, meaning I don't own anything or make any money off of it. It's a labor of love. Please don't sue me.

This story is rated M. Apart from some language, there's nothing here that wouldn't pass muster on an episode of The Following. If you're old enough to watch the Following, you're old enough to read this. However, it is The Following, so bad things can happen. Expect possible violence, dark themes, angst, and a certain amount of general awfulness. No serial killers, FBI agents, or small furry animals were harmed in the making of this fanfic. And don't try anything you read here at home.

Chapter 7 - Game On

Max looked out the window of Gavin Leach's apartment and saw two cars in the parking lot below disgorging agents. "They're here," she said in a tone of voice that mimicked the line from Poltergeist. Mike walked over to the window to join her. "Galen's decided to come out and join us," she said.

"Yeah," Mike said, "it's real important to be seen taking charge. Especially after everything has gone to hell in a bucket"

A few minutes later, Miles Galen walked into the apartment, with Andre and Dani close behind and JJ bringing up the rear. "What have we got?" he asked.

"A laptop," Mike replied."Some flash drives. Lots and lots of cash."

" So he was the guy," said Galen.

"We don't know that," Mike said. "This stuff could have been planted. It doesn't look like he was spending a lot of money on himself."

"So maybe he didn't have to time to upgrade his lifestyle," Galen said. "The real question now is how did they know we were on to him?"

"Because they put us on to him," Max replied. "This is all smoke and mirrors".

"He made threatening statements about the company online," said Galen.

"You don't think these people can hack a Facebook page?" she asked, with evident irritation.

"I don't see any evidence that they did," Galen said. "It was an inside job, and they silenced him as soon as we got on to him."

"OK," Max said, her voice rising. "So they did it. They are behind it all. So who are they?" She put strong emphasis on each repetition of the word "They". "And why was it worth so much money to hack this company in the first place? You're taking everything at face value. Whoever they are, they are leading us around by the nose. They picked this guy out at random, they framed him and then they killed him. And I'm sure that they have dotted every I and crossed every T."

Galen turned his head in her direction and looked at her balefully for a few seconds before responding. "If anyone is leading us around by the nose, " he said, "it's because we have some sort of leak. "

"Great," she said. "So now we start a molehunt and do their work for them."

"We certainly need to look at everyone who knew that Gavin Leach was a person of interest, Agent Hardy. Including you."

"Now wait a minute," Mike said, stepping forward.

"Guys!" JJ interrupted. "Enough! Before paranoia strikes any deeper, we need to bag and tag this stuff. "

After a moment of poisonous silence, Galen said ""Right. Let's get this locked away as evidence. Tomorrow Marchetti and Nickson can start going through these thumb drives and the laptop."

"I'm pretty good with computers," said Max.

"I'm sure," Galen replied. "That would be really useful. If you were on the case."

II

Later, with the cash, laptop, and thumb drives loaded up into Galen's car, they headed out into the night, Mike at the wheel. They returned their Bureau car to the parking deck, and Mike started towards his car, looking forward to the end of a long day. He stopped when he noticed Max heading toward the door to the main building. "Where are you going?" he asked.

"I want to check our email. Maybe the CIA finally answered."

Mike looked at his watch. "It's after ten o'clock".

"This won't take long."

He followed after her. "I know this case has got the hooks in you. And I know that Galen was a dick..."

"Yes," she interrupted. "He was."

"How can you be so sure Leach was framed?" Mike asked.

"I'm not," she said, keeping up a brisk pace as she talked. "But I'm sure of one thing. If I knew that Gavin Leach was a person of interest, it's because Galen told me. In front of a witness."

In their office, Mike opened up the secure email program and hit send/receive. "OK," he said. "Looks like our friends at Langley came through. And Interpol. So...nothing on the European guys, but get this. Nathan Conway, who was bodyguarding that guy who was sniped...was fired by the CIA."

Max leaned over his shoulder and peered a the screen.

"He was ex military," Mike continued. "When he got out he went to work for a private military contractor called ZR Security Ops. He guarded some Agency black sites and some VIPs in Afghanistan. Seems that back in 2010 he was guarding a VIP who was being motored around Kabul. The convoy got ambushed on Maiwand road. The ZR guys opened up and shot anything that moved. Killed forty odd civilians, and apparently no Taliban. They called it the Maiwand Massacre. Conway was charged with murder by the Afghan government, and Interpol had a warrant out on him for a while. The charges got dropped somehow, but the CIA came down hard and said that he couldn't work any more Agency contracts. He got fired."

Max stared intently at the monitor. "Do you remember when we were on our way to RCS that first day? I told you that one of the companies hit with the Shiny worm provided security for VIPs, ambassadors, things like that? Well...boom"

"OK that's it for tonight," Mike said. "I've had it, and so have you. Did you even get dinner tonight?"

"Gwen left some stuff"

Mike closed the email program and logged off the computer. "Come on," he said, rising from his chair. "Our day started at 6:00. This will be here tomorrow. We're going home. If I have to drag you off to bed I will."

"Is that a promise?" she asked, smiling.

III

Mister Hands normally prepared his own breakfast, but no other meal. But here he was pulling into a cafe early on a cold morning. This place was open 24 hours, and at this hour on Sunday morning wasn't busy. He walked in and looked around. A few city workers in bright green vests. A couple of men from the gas company. The radio station was playing a David Allen Coe cover of Take This Job And Shove It. He saw Zack Coleman sitting in a booth near the window on the opposite side, drinking coffee, and reading a news paper. He walked over and slid into the booth opposite Coleman.

"So how did it go last night?" Coleman asked.

"How do you think? He's dead Jim."

Coleman sat in silence, looking uncomfortable. "Feeling a bit like Judas?" Hands asked.

"No," Coleman said. "It's just..." he let the thought trail off.

"Just what? That you never picked anyone out to be killed before? It's for the greater whatever. He died that the Organization might live. We get paid to do this shit."

"Did you do it?" Coleman asked.

"No, she did. And it's best if you don't ask about things you don't need to know. So let me come to the point. We're pretty deep into the FBI's computer systems, right?"

"Yeah."

"So can you get me a copy of a case file?" Hands asked, " Without telling the Head Bitch?"

"I guess," Colman said cautiously. "We have a lot of access. What's this about?"

"The Shiny case," Hands said. "I want to see the file."

"Why?"

"I want to see what Max Hardy found out about it."

Coleman took a cautious sip of his coffee. ""Didn't they take her off the case?"

"They did," said Hands. "They ordered her to drop it. That doesn't mean she has. Ryan Hardy used to do some unauthorized investigating back in the days. Well, maybe there's something to this genetics stuff after all. Maybe unauthorized and hell bent runs in the family."

Coleman gazed out the window, fogged over with condensation in the morning cold. "If she's holding out on the Bureau, then whatever you're looking for won't be in the file."

"I know that. But I have to start somewhere. I want to get an idea of what she found before they told her to cease and desist. I talked to Adrian about Shiny. I'm pretty sure he lied his ass off. But I think now he told me more than he realized. I have a theory. If I'm right, then things are worse than I thought."

"So what's your theory?" Coleman asked.

"Better that you not know," Hands replied. "I'll tell you something. Eliza's smart. Maybe too smart for her own good. Because of that she underestimates people. Me, for one. And she underestimated Ryan Hardy. And maybe, just maybe, she's underestimating his niece. Get me a copy of that file. Hard copy, please. None of this uploading and downloading shit. The world went digital. And I'm still analog."

The waitress appeared. , and poured Hands a cup of coffee. "Scrambled eggs and hash browns," he said.

Once she was safely out of earshot, Coleman smiled and said "You know it occurs to me that you and Eliza seem like an odd couple."

Hands snorted in derision. "Couple? We're strictly business. It's a working relationship. Dysfunctional working relationship. Me, I'm a professional. And I'm working for this twisty little wannabe supervillain Don't get me wrong, we respect each other. But we're basically incompatible, and we just don't get along."

"Sounds like you've got the hots for her."

Hands contemplated Coleman for a moment through narrowed eyes, then leaned back in his seat and smiled. "The blue coral snake,", he said, "which is native to Indonesia, is a very beautiful snake. Really, it's one of the most beautiful snakes on the planet.. But it's still a fuckin' snake, and venomous as hell. I might admire its beauty, but I would definitely shoot it on sight. Unless, of course, I was getting paid really well not to."

IV

Max came awake and found herself lying on her side looking at the night stand and the closet door beyond it. She could sense Mike lying next to her and hear his slow, even breathing. He was still asleep, as she should be. What had awakened her? She felt on edge. Had she been dreaming?

The events of the previous day began to replay themselves in her mind. Her meeting with Dennis. Galen's refusal to put her on the Shiny case. Having to call Gwen, and tell her that she would have to cancel her plans for the evening because the Bureau had called. Her argument with Galen. So what had happened over the last couple of days, really?

Galen had claimed the shiny case for the task force., even though it had nothing in common with any other Terudom case. He had given it to someone else, even though she had worked the case and was familiar with it.. Galen had informed her that there was a person of interest. In front of a witness. Well, she had asked. But then, wasn't that to be expected? The suspect was ambushed in a parking lot. Galen now suspected a leak. Well, he'd have to, wouldn't he?

Worst case. Assume there's a mole. What does a mole do? He covers his tracks by making sure there's an alternative explanation for any leak. If Galen were a mole, he'd do exactly what he's doing.

It cut both ways. She had no alibi for when Gavin Leach was killed. So someone could claim that if she were a mole, she'd do exactly what she was doing. Did someone know she would be keeping Ryan Junior that night? How? Who had she told? She'd told Dennis. But she could trust him, surely. Dennis, who'd had her back those long months when Mike was recuperating, who could quote everything from samurai philosophy to long movie monologues from memory, whose jokes and good humor had brightened so many dark days, surely she could trust him. Or could she?

She had talked to Gwen, over the phone. Was her phone tapped?

So what to do? For the moment, she had no hard evidence against anyone, and no proof that a mole even existed. But if one did, was she at risk? What about Mike? What about Gwen?

Oh Jesus. Gwen. And Ryan Junior. The thought of it froze her heart.

God, she was tired. She wanted to go back to sleep, but couldn't. Maybe the double shot of Jack Daniel's she had drunk before turning in, to Mike's disapproving look, was catching up with her.

Mike's alarm sounded. She felt him rise from the bed, but made no move to get up herself. She heard him moving around, and then felt his hand on her shoulder. "Come on," he said. "Wakey. Up and at 'em". Reluctantly, she sat up on the edge of the bed . Mike leaned down for a good morning kiss.

"Do the bad guys get days off?" she asked.

"They do," he replied. "But they've got us outnumbered, and they run in shifts."

VI

They sat in the computer room in the Batcave, Mike studying the monitor, and Max nursing a cup of coffee. "So ZR was hit with this worm," Mike said. " Did you go to their offices yourself?"

"No," Max replied. "Their corporate office is in southern Virginia. A team from the Richmond field office went out, and they set up a remote hookup, which is how I looked at their system. I spoke to the company's operations manager by phone. A guy named Myers."

"But he doesn't own the company."

"No. The company was founded by a man named Peter Getman. He was all over the news at one time. Especially after that shootout in Afghanistan. ZR was all over the news, too. I think someone even wrote a book about it. Come to think of it, the ownership changed after Getman disappeared."

"Disappeared?" Mikes asked.

"Yeah, three years ago. At the time, people were wondering if maybe some terrorist group had got him. ZR operated all over the Middle East, mostly working for us, and their operators racked up quite a body count in Iraq, Afghanistan, and some other places nobody even read about at the time. I think the Bureau even investigated the disappearance, but nothing ever turned up. I don't think he's been officially declared dead."

Mike began tapping keys. "Normally with no body it takes seven years, unless a preponderance of..." he let the thought trail off. Crap, he thought. No need to go through the stuff about missing declared dead. She knows. "You OK?", he asked.

"Yeah. I was just thinking about Gwen. I hate I had to ruin her evening. She had to rush home so I could leave."

"Uh huh.," Mike said. "I'm sure she understood. She knows what we do for a living. I'm thinking about Max. I think maybe she should get a little down time."

"They've got us outnumbered, remember? And they run in shifts."

"Yeah, but between bad guys and babysitting you might be spread a little thin, there." OK, better he thought. That got a smile out of her.

"Just a second," he said. "OK, I spoke too soon. Turns out he was declared dead a couple of years ago. "Here's his obituary. Mr Peter Getman, born Pyotr Getman in the Ukraine in 1957, father escaped to the West when he was eight. Americanized his name to Peter, and married an American woman. Served in the US Army, rose to the rank of Colonel. Founder of ZR Security Ops, a controversial private military contractor that was accused of war crimes in the Middle East and elsewhere, and which operated all over the world...Mr Getman was also accused by Pentagon critics of securing lucrative contracts through political favoritism...court declared him dead after being missing for a year... he was believed to be murdered by terrorists...Mr Getman's wife died in 2007 of cancer...he is survived...Jesus. He is survived by his daughter. Eliza."

Max shot bolt upright, as though the chair beneath her was wired for electricity. "Is there a picture?" she asked.

Mike did a brief search that ended at a Facebook page. "There," he said, pointing at a picture of an attractive brunette. "That's her."

Max stood, and peered over his shoulder at the young woman on the monitor, a look of astonishment on her face. "I met her," she said. "We met her. I was with Ryan."

"When?"

"Right after you were stabbed. We were looking for Theo. There was a glitch in a video feed. Ryan thought it might be important. Like maybe it had been hacked. So we went to the area, it was on the Upper East Side, and we started knocking on doors. We met her coming out of a penthouse. But she told us her name was Annie Bouchard. And she said the penthouse belonged

to a guy who ran a hedge fund. Is there an address?"

"Upper East Side," Mike said. He looked at Max. She seemed almost transformed. The fatigue had fallen away and her once bleary eyes were lit with excitement.

"You wanna go off the reservation some more?" she asked.

"Oh hell yeah."

They logged off and headed down the hall to the exit. As Mike was opening the door to the Batcave, JJ emerged from the storeroom carrying a package of printer paper. "Where are you guys headed?" he asked.

"Lunch," Max replied, and then she turned and walked out.

JJ stood for a moment, staring at the door as it closed behind them. "Lunch? Jesus Christ," he said to no one in particular, "it's nine thirty."

VII

Eliza sat on her living room couch, a cup of coffee, her second of the morning, on the lamp table next her. A volume of Proust was open on her lap, but she found it hard to focus on it. It was a lazy Sunday morning, and she had slept late. Over breakfast, she had kept thinking back to the night before, and Chris. He had lasted for hours. She had loved his face as she had worked on him. She had loved his looks of shock, horror, panic, hysteria, pleading, and finally despair as she worked on him. It wasn't his screams, it was his face, and above all his eyes. He had suffered beautifully, and she would be replaying every moment of it in her head for weeks to come.

How had Proust put it? "No exile at the South Pole or at the summit of Mont Blanc separates us more effectively from others than the practice of a hidden vice." The man was more right than he could possibly have known. She would always be separated from others by the knowledge that she could take their lives when and how she chose. They were there to fill her life with energy. You never, she reflected, look at another person the same way after you've killed one for pleasure.

She tried to focus on her book, but couldn't. She considered going back to bed. She felt deliciously sleepy. She finished off her coffee, now lukewarm, and gazed out the sliding glass door to the deck beyond. The view was magnificent, although at the moment it was much too cold to enjoy it outdoors. In the summertime, she practically lived out there.

She heard the doorbell, and wondered irritably who it could be. She considered just letting it ring, but decided to go look. She peered out through the peephole...and her heart nearly stopped. Mike Weston. And Max Hardy. Oh God.

What had happened? How had they tracked her? Had someone seen something last night. Had Chris called someone from the drug store? Had someone seen her at the coffee house? No. They weren't here to arrest her, or they would have brought more agents. They were here to ask questions. Should she call her attorney? Refuse to answer? No. That would make her look guilty. She could bluff it out. She had done it before, and not just that long ago day with Ryan Hardy and his bitch of a niece.

As a precaution, she went to the storage room near the entrance, and got her P30SK. She took it to the living room, and placed it under a throw pillow at the end of the U shaped couch she had been sitting on. She left her book on the couch, and threw a copy of The New York Times down next to it. When Weston and Hardy came in, she would offer them seats on the couch. They wouldn't sit where the book and magazine were, so she could resume her seat by the lamp table. They would then be seated across the couch from her, as it was U shaped, and if the worst came to the worst, she'd have a clear shot.

VIII

"Maybe she isn't home," Mike said.

"Try one more time," Max replied.

The door opened, and Eliza, looking a bit flustered, stood before them. 'Remember me?" said Max.

"Yes, you're Ryan hardy's niece, aren't you?"

"Max Hardy, FBI," she said, shower her credentials. 'And this is Mike Weston. May we come in?"

"Yes, please"

Max stepped inside, looking around as she did so. To her right was a closet, to her left a toilet. Past them the entryway angled left to a living room with a large white U shaped couch acing a wall TV. To the right of that a sliding glass door led to a deck. To the left, she cold see a long dining room table, and a bar with four stools. A large double door led to what max guessed was the master bedroom.

"Would you like to sit down?" Eliza asked indicating the couch.

"No thank you," said Max. "We're here on business."

"Do you mind if I sit?"

"Of course not," Max replied. She glanced at Mike, and nodded he head toward the large screen TV mounted on the wall. Mike walked over and took a position leaning casually on the wall next to it. Max walked around to the end of the cough opposite Eliza, but remained standing behind it. She stood with her arms folded over her chest. She kept her eyes on Eliza's hands. Watch their hands, Jim Woloszyn had told her long ago. Because hands kill. She noticed Eliza's right hand inching closer to the throw pillow on the couch. Max shifted her own right hand a bit, to be closer to the Glock 19 under her left arm. She and Eliza looked directly at each other, making eye contact, and for a moment, Max thought she saw something. Anger. Anxiety. And something else. A cornered animal, perhaps. Or a predator sizing up it's prey.

"So, " Max began, "Ms Getman. Why did you lie to us about who you were and where you lived?"

"I was in a very difficult position," Eliza said. "I was having an affair with a married man. Someone very prominently placed. Someone whose career and prospects could have been damaged. I was expecting him to arrive soon, and I was afraid of what would happen if he showed up while the FBI was here. He had political enemies. Our affair could have become public knowledge."

"What was his name?" Max asked.

"I can't tell you that."

"Then how do I know you're telling the truth?"

"Please believe me, I am telling the truth. I am. But even if I gave you his name, he'd just deny it. Look, I cooperated with you in every way. I let you into my penthouse. I didn't have to do that. I let you in voluntarily, you didn't have a search warrant. I let you see everything you wanted to see. I asked for Ryan Hardy's card in case I saw Theo, and I would have called if I'd seen anything. Is that why you're here? Because I lied to you months ago about something trivial?"

"How did you know I was Ryan Hardy's niece? We were never introduced."

"I read a lot about him. About Havenport. About Lily Gray and Joe Carroll. I'm fascinated by that sort of thing. He was a remarkable man. And I admired him. Also, I saw you on TV, after his death. I'm so sorry for your loss."

"Thank you," Max replied. "He was a remarkable man."

"I would have shown my identification if you has asked for it. But you didn't, and I just didn't think it was that big of a deal."

Max glanced at Mike. "Did you know Jason Rickard?" Mike asked.

"Yes," Eliza said. "I did know him."

"Tell us about your relationship," Mike said.

"I tried to sell him a package. Corporate and personal security."

"He could have used that," Mike said. "Did you know he was killed?"

"Yes"

"So your relationship was strictly business? Mike continued.

Eliza looked from Mike to Max, and back again, as though trying to decide who might be more sympathetic. "No," she said. "It began as business, but it became personal."

"As in you were involved personal?" Max asked.

"Yes"

"Were you involved with him at the time he was killed?", she asked.

"No," Eliza said.

"When was he killed?" she asked.

Eliza paused for a moment, her mouth open. "I don't know," Eliza said miserably. "We broke up weeks ago."

"Were you ever in his house?" Max asked.

"Yes"

"He had what looked like a prison cell in his basement," Mike said. "Would you happen to know anything about that?"

"I didn't spend time in his basement," she said, sarcastically.

"So this relationship ended weeks ago?" asked Max. "Why did it end?"

"I wanted a more serious relationship. As in committed. He didn't. To him I was just something on the side. I loved him. But he..." She looked at Max. "Have you ever had the experience of loving someone, and finding out that they aren't who you thought they were? It wasn't working out. We had no long term future. Why do you have to keep asking about something like this?"

"Because he's dead," said Max, raising her voice. "Where were you about 2:00am Wednesday morning?"

"Here. In bed."

"Alone?", asked Max. "No important highly placed married men? No business associates? No hedge fund managers?"

"Alone", Eliza said, her eyes spitting fire.

"Let's talk about something else," Max said. Did you know Nathan Conway?"

"Not personally," she said, seemingly relieved to be changing the subject. "He worked for ZR . We fired him."

"He was working as a bodyguard for man named Bernard Chilcott. Did you arrange that job for him?"

"No. I didn't arrange any jobs for him. I fired him."

"Did you know Bernard Chilcott?" Mike asked.

"No".

"Lawrence Gentzler?" He asked. "Jill Mallory? Clark Chandler?"

"No", she said icily.

"Did you sell any of them corporate security packages?" Max asked.

" I have clients all over the world. I don't know them all by name. If you're going to ask me questions like this, then I need to have access to my records. And an attorney, for that matter."

Max looked over at Mike. Eliza was focused on her. Mike shook his head slightly. She understood, and agreed. Enough. We don't want her to lawyer up. "Thank you, ma'am," she said. "That will be all for now"

IX

They were on their way back to the office, Mike driving. "You said when you and Ryan were there, that she was coming out of that penthouse, right?"

"Right," Max replied.

"So maybe she was on her way to meet her very important married guy, but if that's the case, if she was on her way to some place else to meet him, then why lie about living there?" Mike asked. " Why lie at all?"

"Because she was startled to see us," Max said. "She wasn't expecting to see the FBI at her door, and she had something to hide. What, I don't know. But she lied to us that day, and she knows she's busted on that. So maybe whatever she was lying about, she covers it up with another lie.

"We were there looking for Theo. He wasn't there, we checked. And she's right that she did let us in. But the story about Mister Hedge Fund was a lie, and I think the story about the well connected boyfriend is a lie, too. "

"I don't know what she was covering up that day," Mike said. "But I don't see how it could tie in to Jason Rickard's death or Mr Shiny."

"Neither do I," Max replied. "So it must tie into something else..." She let the thought trail off.

"What?" Mike asked.

"Nothing," she said. "Just thinking out loud. We need to get back." Because there's something I need to check. And I'm not ready to talk about it yet. "I think I'm going to read up on her when we get back."

X

Eliza paced up and down in her living room, phone in hand. "You are absolutely useless. Do you have any idea what happens to people we deem useless? Mike Weston and Max Hardy were just here! At my penthouse! I wanted that bitch taken off the case! I wanted her kept well away from this!...Well obviously she wasn't paying much attention to you!...No, I don't want them suspended! I need them out there for the moment, just not knocking at my door!...No, I have no idea how they found me. Can you control those two or not?...Threaten them both with suspension. Read the riot act. Do. Something. And do it soon."

XI

They sat side by side at separate terminals in the computer room. Mike was researching ZR and its history, and reading about the disappearance of its founder. Max sat with her monitor angled slightly away from Mike. She was calling up a case file from ten months ago, when she and Ryan had been searching for Theo.

"Her dad disappeared on a fishing trip off the Virginia coast," Mike said. "Chesapeake Bay. He had a boat. Sometimes he stayed on it when he was on vacation. Apparently he disappeared while the boat was tied up at the dock. It happened after 11:30pm, because that's the last time anyone saw him. Anything interesting on her?"

"Lots. She lived all over the world, with her father being in the service. She speaks Russian, French, Arabic..." She had gotten that earlier, and continued studying the file on Theo. She closed the file, having found what she'd been looking for. "Excuse me," she said. She logged off and headed to the ladies' room.

She returned a few minutes later. "I'm not feeling to well," she said. "I'm a little nauseous. And I'm really tired. I think I'm gonna take half a day. I want to lie down for a while"

"You want me to come home with you?" he asked.

"No, it's OK. I'm just going to sleep for a while."

He stood, and put his arms around her. "I'll come home a little early."

"You don't have to do that"

"Yeah, I do. I'll call first, and see if you want me to bring you anything. Silence your phone if you're going to sleep." They kissed, and then Max turned and headed for the door.

Time to go shopping.

XII

Max went home, but did not sleep and did not stay. She went into a closet and found a set of lock picks that had belonged to Ryan. She had never expected to need them. She had found them among his belongings after he was gone. She certainly didn't approve of him having them or using them, and had kept them only for sentimental reasons. However much she disapproved of them, they were a link to him. She also found something else that had belonged to Ryan, a folding knife with a black oxide blade, four and a half inches long, curved like a fileting knife. It wasn't legal. Neither were the lock picks.

She dropped them both into her coat pocket.

Next, she dug out a Smith & Wesson airweight that she had carried as a backup piece when she was in the NYPD.* It was a five shot snubnose with a matte black finish. She found a box of hollow points and loaded it, then dropped it in her pocket along with a speed strip and the rest of the box of hollow points.

Her next stop was the hardware store.

XIII

Max walked down the sidewalk, being pelted constantly by the cold afternoon rain, and occasionally by spray thrown up by passing cars. She had left her car parked in a deck, and chosen to walk the rest of the way to her destination. On foot, she could better check for surveillance. She had dressed warmly, in a raincoat, rain boots, neck warmer, and a wool cap. She could not use an umbrella. She needed one hand for the black nylon bag she was carrying. She might need the other for her gun.

She could see her breath, and feel the rain on her face. Despite her warm clothes, she felt chilled to the bone. She had lied to Mike, and told him that she felt sick on her stomach. She wondered if she would have pneumonia by the time she got home.

In the parking deck, she had opened the trunk of her car, and checked the contents of the two bags inside. They held the day's purchases, although a few items were still missing from the bag she would leave in the car. Those would be added later. But the bag in her hand had to be ready today. And it had to be delivered undetected.

Ahead, she could see a Ford Explorer, it's motor running, parked in a lot bordered by a supermarket, a nail salon, a Greek restaurant, and a McDonald's She made one final check behind her. It looked like she was clean. She walked up to the passenger side of the Explorer, opened the front door, and got in.

Behind the wheel was Jim Woloszyn, drinking a cup of coffee. "Hi Max," he said. "God, you look like a drowned rat."

"I feel like one. Thanks for coming out on such short notice."

"So what's up?"

"I may be in a lot of trouble. And I need help. Before you say yes, I have to tell you that this could get rough. I'm on a task force. What we do is classified. I'm up against some serious people, and I think they may have put someone inside the Bureau. Do not, repeat do not, tell anyone I told you that. I'm worried that they may come for the people I love. There's an envelope inside this bag. In it is contact information for a woman. A woman with a baby. She was in love with my uncle. It's his son. Jesus, he never even saw his own son. I've got some burner phones. If I call you, and tell you that I'm from Singleton Security, and you've been chosen to receive a free home security system, it means that these people are in danger. And I don't even know who I can trust anymore. I need someone to get to them, and get them moved. Fast. I have no right to ask you to do this. But I don't know who to turn to."

"Who are they?" Jim asked. "Are we talking wiseguys, drug cartels, terrorists...'

"I don't know. That's the worst part. I realize that you can't take these people in, or guard them, or put them up long term. If they come for me, if they come for my family, all I can ask is that you buy me some time. A couple of days. Buy me forty eight hours. Give me time to arrange something more permanent, and give me a shot at taking them down."

"What's in the bag?" he asked.

"Diapers. Baby formula. Wet wipes." Seeing Jim's surprise, she said "What were you expecting, Krugerrands? She has a baby. She's gonna need this stuff."

Jim laughed, reached out, and put his hand on hers, still clutching the bag. "I haven't forgotten, you know. What was it, a dozen stitches you had when that crackhead came at me from behind with that broken bottle? Of course I'll do it."

"Thank you," she said. She leaned over, and put her arm around him. "I have to go. I don't have much time."

She got out of the Explorer, and walked off into the rain, which was starting to pick up.

XIV

"So let me get this straight.," Hands said. You lied to the FBI about something checkable?"

"I didn't know why they were here!" Eliza said angrily. They were in the living room of her penthouse. Hands was sitting on the couch, Eliza was pacing a hole in the carpet.

"The hell you didn't," Hands replied. "They were looking for Theo, and you'd been in contact. But then Theo wasn't there, was he? Or maybe you were worried that upper management might find out you two had been in touch. Your off the books fangirl Hardy hunt. Oh what a tangled web we weave..."

She turned on him, fury in her eyes."Mouth off one more time, and you'll be amazed what I can do off the books."

"OK, so you didn't call me over to enjoy my rapier like wit. Why did you call me?"

"I want to make sure we have everything in place and that we're ready to move, because we may have to move sooner than planned."

"We," he said, putting a strong emphasis on the word, "have been ready. We are always ready. But the fact that they tracked you to your lair, and God would I love to have seen the look on your face, is no cause for panic."

"I am not panicked.."

"Well, you're highly agitato, and there's no cause for that either. Chill. I've been skeptical of this contingency plan of yours, but if you're going to do it, then at least do it right. Our people on the inside will give Weston and Hardy the wave off. Let things play out."

"That's easy for you to say. I have to consider..."

But whatever it was Eliza had to consider remained unsaid, because the doorbell rang. "Excuse me," she said irritably.

She went to the door, looked out the peephole, and returned with a look of astonishment. "Max Hardy," she said. "Wait in the guest bedroom. No noise."

Max stood in front of the door, wondering why she had come here without telling Mike. Partly, she told herself, because he wouldn't approve. And his reasons, she reflected sourly, might be good ones. . And partly because, looking back on an earlier talk she'd had with Mike, he wouldn't believe her.

And maybe he'd be right not to.

The door opened, and Eliza stood before her. OK, she thought. I'm committed now. "May I come in?" she asked.

"Please do," Eliza said. As Max stepped into the entryway, she said "Would you like some coffee?"

"No thank you," Max replied. "This will only take a few minutes." Eliza motioned towards the living room. And Max followed her. "More questions?" Eliza asked. "And where is Mister Weston?"

"Mister Weston is back at the office. Ms Getman..."

"Eliza," she interrupted. "Call me Eliza."

"Alright," Max said. "Eliza. And I'm Max."

"Nice to meet you, Max. So, you have some more questions?"

"No. No more questions. I wanted to have a talk. Just the two of us."

"OK," said Eliza. "You start."

"So we understand each other," Max said, "I can't prove anything I'm about to say. If I could, I'd be here with HRT. When Ryan and I came here that day, it was because of a glitch in a video feed. Ryan thought that Theo might have hacked the video cameras. We searched the area, including this penthouse, and of course we didn't find him. But that glitch in the video feed was never explained."

"Maybe it was just a glitch," Eliza said.

"Maybe. But I saw that same glitch later on a video feed that Theo did hack when he was trying to cover his tracks. So maybe the feed here was hacked. I don't believe a word you said to us this morning about your married boyfriend. You lied then, and you're lying now. So maybe that puts Theo in close proximity to your penthouse. But of course there's no proof."

"No," Eliza said, smiling. "There isn't"

"Later," Max continued, "Theo took Ryan prisoner. He escaped, and I killed a man who was taking aim at Ryan with an AR. Ryan said he worked for Theo. I never questioned it at the time. Later...he was different somehow. That evening, he told me that he was going to be a father. Only he wasn't happy about it. He talked about how there would be no end to the violence, the craziness...I thought he was talking about Theo. Only now, I'm not so sure."

"You said your uncle had been a prisoner of Theo," Eliza said. "I can easily see how that would upset someone."

" After it was all over, I was a wreck. Ryan was gone. Mike was hanging on by his fingernails. So I wasn't involved much in the cleanup afterwards. But after our talk this morning, I got curious about the man I killed that day. He had no ID on him. Which is kind of unusual in itself. So they had to run fingerprints. Turns out that he was ex United States Army, military police. BCD because he couldn't keep his hands off lower ranking female troops, and he had a beef for sexual assault after he was thrown out of the Army. So he was pretty much unemployable. And that weapon...it was fitted with a selector switch. Three round burst, which made it all kinds of illegal. The serial number traced to a batch that went overseas to equip the Iraqi army. Now Theo knew a lot of people. But when I saw that this morning, it occurred to me that here you are, running Armies R Us, and you probably have a list of every hired gun and dirtbag contractor on the planet. That might just put one of your guys standing next to Theo. But of course, there's no proof."

"No," Eliza said. "There isn't. For this to be true, it would mean that Ryan lied to you. Why would he do that?"

"I've been asking myself that question. Maybe he thought he was protecting me from something."

"Max, have you thought this through? I mean, all the way through? You believe I'm masterminding a conspiracy so vast. . That I command hired killers who will do anything I say. That I'm a threat so lethal that Ryan hid my very existence from you. And yet you walked in here alone, with no backup, and I think without even leaving a forwarding address. That seems...rash. I think you're obsessed. I think you've become as reckless and dangerous as your uncle Ryan."

Max glared at the smiling woman before her. "Uncle Ryan is the reckless one in the family," she snarled. " But if you're looking for dangerous, I'm a chip off the old block."

"Is? You speak of him in the present tense. Do you know something I don't?"

"They never found a body."

"No," Eliza said. "They didn't. In all those rocks and currents, they never found any bodies at all. It must have been very hard for you, not having his body to bury. And I suppose it must be very unpleasant to imagine someone you love in their last moments of life, in pain and despair, knowing that this is the end, and that nothing can save them."

In the poisonous silence that followed, Max and Eliza regarded each other, Eliza with a kind of smug satisfaction, and Max with barely controlled fury. "So what now, Max?" Eliza asked. "Will you go back to the Bureau and tell them that you see dead people?"

"I'm going to find you out. I'm going to find out how you were involved in Jason Rickard's death. I'm going to find out how you were connected to Theo, and what you did to my uncle. I'm going to find out who you're working with, and who you're working for. And then I'm coming back, with HRT, and a whole stack of warrants. And I'm coming for every last one of you. See you around, Eliza."

"Looking forward to it, Max."

Max walked back to the entryway. As she did, she kept her head turned so as to keep eyes on Eliza. Then she backed out the penthouse door, and was gone.

Hands returned from the guest bedroom to find Eliza with a feral grin on her face. "Well?" he asked

"Game on," she said. "This is going to be fun."

XV

Mike came home early, as promised. He had tried calling several times, but had gotten no answer. Max, he decided, was probably asleep. So he opened the front door quietly, and slipped in. He put away his heavy jacket and gun, and made his way across the thick carpet to the bedroom. He peered inside, and saw Max lying on her side, her back to him. She seemed to be asleep, but as he turned to steal out, he heard her voice. "Is that you?"

"Yeah. Sorry I woke you."

"I've been awake. I took a shower. I've just been taking it easy. I feel a lot better now. I really do."

"Good," he said, and sat down on the edge of the bed.

"Is it still raining?" she asked.

"Off and on. You sure you're Ok?"

"Oh yeah. I can even prove it. You said something last night about dragging me to bed. Well, I'm there already. No dragging required."

Musical Interlude: Snakes by Concrete Blonde

From the café - Take This Job And Shove It by David Allen Coe

* Max Hardy was never seen to carry a backup gun, but she was in the NYPD where the practice has been quite common. It dates from a time when police officers were armed with revolvers, and it was faster to draw a backup gun than to reload a revolver that had gone dry. Backup guns have been so widespread among NYPD officers that carrying one has come to be known universally as a New York reload.

Hi gang. Absolute Elsewhere here. I said earlier that this fic was off the meter, and then I said that it was out where the trains don't run. So I guess now we're pretty much off the edge of the map.

One of the questions that you have when you watch a James Bond movie is where does the villain get his henchmen? He has a secret rocket base under a volcano, but where does he do his hiring? Does he put an ad in The New York Times? And what about the guys who work at the secret rocket base under the volcano? Do their families know they have this job? I decided that for The Organization to work, it needed a couple of things. First, how do they get their moles. The answer I came up with was Opticon Scintil, which we've already covered. The second question that had to be addressed was where do they get their staff, and all that firepower. The answer I came up with was a rogue private military contractor. It also gave a way for Eliza to rise so high in The Organization at such a young age.

Private military contractors are very real. PMC has really become kind of a modern politically correct term for mercenary, a word which has fallen out of favor for reasons I won't go into here. For the record, there are many legitimate PMCs which do good and necessary work. There are also some dodgy outfits, although ZR Security Ops is absolutely not based on anyone real world.

Research for this part of Terudom included a book called Emergency Sex And Other Desperate Measures, which talks about some of the problems the UN has had with some of its dodgier peacekeeping troops. Also, I read up on Blackwater, an infamous PMC that was in the news off and on at one time. The Maiwand Massacre is sort of based on a real ambush in Iraq involving Blackwater operators that left a lot of civilians dead. That having been said, this is not meant to be a screed against PMCs in general or Blackwater in particular. I will say that I was kind of taken with the idea that The Organization might have grown partly out something we did with the best of intentions that later turned around and bit us on the asteroids. Readers are strongly cautioned against trying to infer anything about my political beliefs from anything that I write here. If you want to read up on Blackwater or PMCs, you can certainly do so elsewhere, but be warned that much of what you will read was written by people with axes to grind of one sort or another.

For the record, Maiwand Road in Kabul is a real place. I picked a traffic circle there as the site of the Maiwand Massacre, but to my knowledge no ambush or massacre has ever occurred there. On the other hand, Afghanistan has been a killing ground since 1979, so for all I know there has been a massacre there. If so, it's purely a coincidence, I assure you.

There's Dr No, and there's Goldfinger. In Dr No, Bond doesn't meet Dr No until he gets captured poking around Crab Key. Goldfinger he meets socially, and the two characters get to meet, size each other up, get in each others faces, and get on each other's nerves before all of the defecation completely hits the rotary oscillator. The Following tended to do Dr No. I like Goldfinger better. Which doesn't mean that Max is going to threatened with being cut in half with a laser beam, or that Mike is getting suspended over a shark tank. But they may be endangered in other ways.

Administrative note: I've opened an AO3 account as Absolute_Elsewhere (Note the underscore AO3 doesn't allow the use of the space bar in account names), and plan to eventually post Terudom there as a backup. This came about because of the recent outage at . I am NOT moving away from , the AO3 account is only backup just in case. I consider AO3, from what I have seen of it, to be inferior to . It also contains a rather high percentage of smut, which I have no interest in writing.

I note an increase in hits from overseas, Australia in particular. So thanks to all of my readers, wherever in the world they live. Thank you for your interest and support. Questions, comments, and feedback, positive and negative, are always welcome. So that's all for now. See you next time.