A/N Written after 4.2 Became au around 4.6

Restless

"It's been almost a week."

On his way to the Post Office, Raymond had spotted Elizabeth at the park. He took a seat next to her on the bench. "I know."

"Maybe Mr. Kaplan is angry because Tom and I didn't do enough to help her."

"No Lizzie. It's not that."

She didn't look at him – wouldn't meet his eyes as she spoke. "I should have known what you would do. I should have anticipated it and told you not to. I should have pushed more and earlier for you to tell me where Mr. Kaplan was. Maybe then I could have found her before -" Liz broke off. "Maybe that's why she's punishing me. Because after everything she did for me, I didn't care enough to ask the question, to go looking for her."

When Lizzie turned to him with tears in her eyes, Raymond had to blink rapidly in an effort to keep his own tears at bay. "Mr. Kaplan isn't punishing you, Lizzie."

"She has Agnes."

"And she will bring her back to you. You just have to be patient."

"It's been almost a week."

"I know."

"If she's not punishing me, why hasn't Mr. Kaplan brought Agnes back?" Liz asked.

Red shook his head. "I don't know, Lizzie."

As she started to cry, Raymond pulled her closer and wrapped his arms around her.

When she finally quieted down and pulled away, he handed her his handkerchief.

Taking it, Liz asked something else of him. "You said that Brimley found the men who took Mr. Kaplan's baby. Did Mr. Kaplan get her baby back?"

Raymond didn't want to talk about that. He hadn't been quite himself at the cemetery. He tried to remember exactly what he might have said. "Lizzie, this isn't helpful."

"It is … to me." Liz responded. "I need answers. You have them."

"Not about this."

"You know things. Tell me what you do know. Did Mr. Kaplan get her baby back?"

Raymond looked down at his hands. Looking back up, he pleaded with her. "I don't know how to answer that."

"With the truth." Liz pleaded.

Raymond shook his head. "Please don't ask me that."

"Because I won't like the answer?"

"Because I'm not sure what the truth is."

"You know." Lizzie insisted. "Tell me."

Unable to answer, Raymond shook his head.

Liz read an answer in that. "She never did."

Liz bit her lip. He could tell she was trying to keep from crying again. "You said she had children."

Raymond cringed and rubbed his hand over his face. "Before that, she had a son."

Liz didn't have to ask if, just how. "How did he die? Mr. Kaplan's son?"

He shook his head. "Elizabeth, you are asking about people and events that happened before I came into Mr. Kaplan's life. Things Kate never talked about. Things I only have at best second hand knowledge of."

"So you don't know or you won't tell me?"

"I don't know."

"What was his name? Mr. Kaplan's son?"

"I don't know. His grave marker doesn't have a name on it."

"Was it a natural death or was he murdered?"

"I can't answer that."

"What can you tell me?" Liz pleaded.

Raymond shook his head. He gave her the closest thing to first hand knowledge he had. "He was between three and six months old."

It was an odd answer. Liz looked at him.

"At Kate's house, there was a door upstairs that was always locked. I was curious about what was in there. I thought it would be something exciting, something interesting, something -" Raymond shook his head. "- I don't know what I thought was going to be in there, but Katarina knew I was curious so she took me there once. He had been dead since before Katarina was even born, but everything of his was still there in that room."

Liz said it for him. "Baby clothes are sized in ranges. 0-3 months, 3-6 months."

As far as Liz was concerned that answered that. "So it was a natural death. He must have been sick or -" Raymond didn't have much of a poker face of late. He looked away, but not before she saw.

Liz gasped. "It wasn't. Someone killed Mr. Kaplan's baby?"

"No!" He protested adamantly before admitting. "I don't know.

"What did my mother tell you happened to Mr. Kaplan's son?"

Raymond looked down. "Kate was a new doctor, an intern or a resident. They didn't have the time limits that they do now. She worked seventy-two hours on followed by seventy-two hours off to eat, sleep, study, and then head back in for another seventy-two hours on. Kate didn't have time for a baby, but her girlfriend wanted one so Kate had one as something to keep her girlfriend busy and happy while she was at work."

"What happened to her son?" Liz asked.

Raymond protested. "Kate and I never talked about any of this. All I know is what Katarina told me, but Katarina wasn't always a reliable source. She used to make up stories to try to explain things."

"What did my mother tell you happened to the baby?"

Raymond looked down at his hands. "Kate's girlfriend was a narcissist. Kate only had the baby because her girlfriend wanted one, but then her girlfriend got jealous of the affection Kate had for him and the time she spent with him. She -"

Breaking off, he shook his head adamantly. "- I don't believe Katarina. I never believed Katarina – not on that."

"Why would my mother say something like that if it wasn't true?"

Raymond tipped his head. "Children make up stories to explain things that they don't understand."

"Like how another child could just die." Liz supplied with something of a relieved sigh.

Raymond didn't quite nod.

They lapsed into merciful silence.

OOO

"Where are we?" Cooper asked.

Samar answered. "The autopsy reports have started coming back. Those with no obvious C.O.D. from Kirk's hideout are coming back as poison.

"Poison. That's a woman's game." Donald pointed out.

Cooper countered. "It's also a smart solution if you are greatly out numbered. By their matching stomach contents it looks like it was put in some kind of communal meal that Kirk's security force ate."

Donald responded. "According to Liz, Vanessa already admitted as much."

"Where is Keen?" Cooper asked.

"She's in our office." Donald answered, but when he turned towards their shared office, it was empty.

"She said she needed some air … after the files came in from the M.E." A glum Aram told him.

"Where are we with the Woodsman's victims?" Cooper asked.

"They've found fourteen bodies so far – not including the one that Dembe thought was Mr. Kaplan. That one had other injuries consistent with the other bodies, but the body in Liz and Mr. Kaplan's grave died of the gunshot wound to the face. The first few autopsies are back on the ones buried around the cabin. Most of them are coming back as strangulation, possibly accidental, but there is enough other trauma that the M.E. isn't ready to commit."

"Accidental?" Donald repeated.

Samar's tone clearly conveyed how distasteful she was finding the situation. "The Woodsman appears to have strangled his victims repeatedly. Based on the varying degree of other trauma on his victims, the medical examiner thinks he may not have intended to kill some of them when he did."

"I don't think that qualifies as accidental." Donald objected.

But Samar was already moving on. "One of the victims shows signs that she may have made an attempt to escape or ... been released to be hunted. Her throat was ripped out by some kind of animal just like Kirk's was. They're comparing DNA from the saliva to see if it's a match."

"They've found fourteen bodies so far around the cabin, but ..." Ressler pointed out. "... it's bear country. There's no telling how many more they won't find. There's no telling how many more there would have been had the Woodsman's luck not run out finding Mr. Kaplan."

Staring at his monitor, Aram spoke softly. "Not so lucky for Mr. Kaplan."

"Luck had nothing to do with it." Samar scoffed.

At the others' blank stares an incredulous Samar asked. "Am I the only one who doesn't believe in coincidences? Raymond Reddington has been feeding us a list of degenerates one by one for years now. I can't be the only one thinking that Reddington handed Mr. Kaplan to the Woodsman."

Grabbing his jacket off the chair, Ressler left.

OOO

"Lizzie, we should get you back to the safe house."

"No way." Donald stepped in his way. "Elizabeth isn't going anywhere with you."

They both turned to stare at Ressler. "Come on, Liz. Let's get you back inside."

"Donald -" Reddington started, but Ressler didn't let him finish.

"- You tried to kill Kaplan and you screwed up. Big time. I've seen Kill Bill enough times to know that this is not going to end well for you or any of the people around you. Keen is safer with me than she is with you."

Reddington didn't say anything.

"More than that … " Donald looked at him appalled. "You tried to kill Kaplan – a woman you have known and claimed to have cared about for decades. I don't trust you anywhere near Elizabeth."

Herding Elizabeth away from him, still not quite finished, Donald turned back to add. "For what's it's worth, if it comes down to it, between you and her, my money is on Mr. Kaplan."

OOO

It had been just a flesh wound. A no doubt horribly disfiguring flesh wound, but just a flesh wound nonetheless. She knew by how much it hurt in the beginning that it had to be bad, but there wasn't a mirror - at least not that she had seen yet – for her to judge just how bad.

No vital organs has been damaged and the bleeding had been stopped so there was no longer any immediate danger – besides the homicidal maniac keeping her chained to the floor. The problem now was the amount of blood she had lost.

Head wounds always bled a lot.

The body of a woman her weight and height only contained approximately six pints of blood. It was difficult to estimate based on the visual evidence given how much of it could have soaked into the grass in the woods while she was unconscious, but based on her symptoms – her continued tachypnea, the tachycardia, and her thready peripheral pulses, combined with her lethargy, pallor, her inability to properly regulate her body temperature resulting in cold extremities, and her oliguria - she would rank her blood loss as a class III hemorrhage. She had to have lost at least two pints, maybe even two and a half pints out there in the woods.

It took the human body four to six weeks to replenish itself of the red and white blood cells and the platelets when you donated a pint of blood – and that was for a single pint.

Absent the intervention of a transfusion, she was looking at an even longer recovery time.

As for the prospect of escaping …

Even if she had been in peak form, he hadn't been fooling around when he installed that chain. Pulling it out of the floor didn't even look like it would be an option for Baz or Dembe – it certainly wasn't for her.

She had yet to see a key for the shackle.

The way she saw it she had a few options.

If she could find or fashion a weapon, she could kill him now and take off the foot. Using the camp cook top he had, she could cauterize the wound.

She could and would do it, but even being prepared in advance for it with a tourniquet and something to cauterize the wound, it was still too risky. She had already lost too much blood. If she passed out from the pain of cutting off her own foot or the blood loss before getting it fully cauterized she was done for.

Even if she did succeed in cutting it off and cauterizing the wound in time, then what? 55,000 acres. That was 86 square miles. How far could she really expect to get on one foot?She knew how long they had been driving on the service roads through the forest before Raymond had stopped the car.

She hadn't been fully cognizant during her sleigh ride here, but she found it doubtful that he had taken her anywhere closer to civilization.

She hadn't heard or seen any evidence of a car nearby.

No … She needed get him to take off the shackle – even if it was only for a moment so she could see where he kept the key. She needed to gain his trust.

tbc

A/N If anyone is actually reading this story, speak now or forever hold your peace.