Excursion
"How will you ever trace Harold?" Megan wondered a few days later. "If he's still alive, he's more than capable of covering his tracks." She couldn't help thinking to herself that John might be better to simply let it lie. He had enough information about himself to start patching his life back together, surely? But as she watched his face, intent over his laptop screen, she knew that this man simply didn't know when to stop. She supposed she should be grateful. Most people with injuries as severe as his would have given up the fight and died. Maybe his inability to recognise a lost cause was the reason he was alive at all.
"Harold was good," John replied in a slightly absent tone of voice. "But no-one's perfect. Sooner or later he'll make a mistake."
They were sitting outside on the park bench across from the Starling Building. Megan's run of ten day shifts was punctuated with – bliss! - two whole days off. She had slept in this morning, schlepped around her apartment for a couple of hours and then come in to see John. It was only then that the fact that it was a weekend had sunk in: no therapy sessions for him until Monday.
His recovery continued to be amazingly rapid. He had already abandoned one of the canes, and as far as she could tell his upper torso and shoulders had regained nearly all their mobility. The t-shirts she had bought for him only a few weeks ago were going to be too small pretty soon as his muscles bulked up again. The pelvis was always going to be the tricky thing, she knew, but even that seemed to be improving daily. His memories were another story, though – she could always tell when he reached the edge of one of those voids in his mind: the look of mingled exasperation and fear.
"What are you doing there, anyhow?" she asked him.
He sighed. "Checking airline databases to see if Finch turns up on any of them. But there's nothing there." He sounded disconsolate.
"Listen. You feel like taking a trip out tomorrow?" she said, changing the subject.
He looked up from the screen. "Where to?"
"Surprise. But I bet you'll like it."
"Huh." He looked unconvinced.
POI*POI*POI*POI*
Convinced or not, the next day he consented to walking with her to the main road entrance to the hospital. An Uber car met them there and whisked them off to Megan's mystery destination.
His brows rose as they arrived. "Well, Meg - I've gotta hand it to you. You were right. I do like it."
They entered the shooting range and she was happy to hand him off to an instructor. She wasn't a huge fan of guns. I spend too damn much of my time cleaning up after them, she thought to herself. But she had the strong sense that his skill with weapons was important to him, a major part of his identity. So maybe getting that back would help him. It was worth a try.
Megan sat herself down in a waiting area behind the indoor shooting gallery: glassed in to keep the sound out and with comfortable chairs. A couple of other women were there, obviously waiting on their men. One had her smart phone out and was flicking and prodding at the screen; the other one was sitting with a stoical expression on her face knitting. Megan turned her attention to John.
And it was certainly an education, watching him carefully placing the earmuffs on, taking a stance and methodically squeezing off a dozen rounds into the target at the other end of the range. He shook his head at the spread of the bullet impacts, though his instructor seemed pleased. More than pleased, actually: a little impressed. Megan contented herself with analysing the lingering stiffness he was obviously experiencing in his hips and right knee. After a while he returned the handgun and picked up his cane from where it was propped against the wall. The instructor said something to him, and he looked interested. Then both men came back through the glass sliding door, bringing the thunderous noise of the range in with them for a second until it slid shut behind them.
"You want to come along with us out to the outdoor range, ma'am?" asked the instructor. "John wanted to use a rifle."
"Okay," said Megan. As they went, the instructor snagged a pair of earmuffs for her off a rack.
"I'm not just sure how this'll go," said John to the instructor. He gave the man an apologetic smile. "I might need a little help getting down..."
In the end it was a bit tricky getting him down lying prone. But once he was set up with the big Barrett M-107 he looked… natural.
He seemed almost bored with the target at four hundred yards. Eight hundred yards out and he was concentrating a little harder. It wasn't until the target was almost lost in the distance at twelve hundred yards away that he seemed to have any sense of challenge, and even then he rattled off six shots with hardly a pause between them. The instructor glanced down at him from where he had been tracking John's shots with a telescope. He was frowning slightly. "I'm really sorry, John. Your first hit was a bull's-eye. But you only seem to have hit the once."
From his position on the ground, John rolled slightly on one side and smirked up at him. "You wanna bet on that?"
The instructor smiled politely. "There's only one hole in the target..."
"Of course there is," said John gently. He held out a hand to Megan and she helped him lever himself up. "We can go on down there and check if you like."
Frowning, the instructor said, "Ah, no, I'm sure-"
"Oh, but I insist," purred John. So they made the long hike down to the target. It took a while, since John still wasn't up to anything much like a normal walking pace yet.
When they got down there, the instructor removed the paper target. The hole – right in the centre – was a little on the large side for the size of ammo John had been using. And buried in the soft earth of the butts exactly behind the hole were his six bullets.
The walk back to the main building was a very quiet one.
POI*POI*POI*POI*
Megan called another Uber ride for them to go back to the hospital. John was looking really quite smug, she thought – but also about ready to drop in his tracks. He folded his long body into the back seat of the car, leaned his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes.
"Tired?" she said to him, despite the answer being pretty obvious.
"Mm." He didn't open his eyes. "You know, I'm going to have to get a job," he said after a moment.
"A job? Why?"
"Well, you keep doing all these nice things for me. How'm I going to do anything nice for you?"
Megan sighed. "I thought we'd been through all this. More than once, actually."
"Doesn't change things though. I was just doing my job, Meg. You don't have to pay me back."
"Suck it up, John. I'm doing this for you because you're a friend. If I decide I don't want to any more, I'll stop."
He grunted at that. They were nearly back at the hospital when she said musingly, "You said that once, when you were dreaming."
"Said what?"
"'Pay you back'. It was a couple of nights after your pelvic reconstruction surgery. Remember, you got an infection? I checked in on you and you were febrile. You must have been dreaming, because you were saying Harold's name over and over. And you said "It's okay. Pay you back, pay you back" a couple of times too."
"'Pay you back all at once'," he said very quietly. His eyes were open again.
"Huh?" She glanced at him, frowning.
"I said it to Harold. When I was up on the rooftop. I said I was going to pay him back all at once."
"What for?"
He was frowning too, that look of intense concentration back on his face as he searched his brain for some image, some impression that might help. But he huffed out a long, frustrated breath and shook his head. "No. It's gone. I can't remember."
Just then they pulled up outside the hospital. Megan paid the driver and got out, passing John his cane as he wallowed up out of the back seat. Together they strolled up towards the Starling Building. As they approached it John glanced up at the stainless steel letters over the main entrance which spelled out the building's name. A look of wonder came over his face. "Starling..." he breathed. "Finch, you sly dog..." he suddenly began hobbling as fast as he could towards the entrance doors.
"What? What's up, John?" Megan found herself trotting to keep up with him.
"Finch! Starling!" he tossed back over his shoulder at her. "He loved to use bird aliases, Meg! And he was a billionaire! So who do you think funded this building?"
POI*POI*POI*POI*
"He was a billionaire, he was a tech genius connected to Nathan Ingram, he funded this building...I can't believe I've been living in it for weeks… if I can get into the hospital donor records I might just be able to find him..." John was almost babbling as he got out the laptop and booted it up.
"Whoa. Whoa, John. Do you think he won't have covered his tracks with this as well?" Megan hated to burst his bubble, but she really couldn't see much hope of finding the elusive Harold this way.
"It's worth a try, Meg," he replied, though his excitement seemed to abate a little.
He didn't seem to have a lot of trouble getting into the hospital's records, but as Megan sat next to the bed he seemed to deflate a little. "Damn. Damn. Yeah, it was him all right. But look, Meg." He turned the laptop towards her. "See this payment? Came out through his asset manager. John Rooney."
"So?"
"So Rooney was an alias he created for me. I've done a great job of tracking myself down." He gave her an ironic smile.
"John," said Megan suddenly. "While you're in there – take a look at who's paying your bills."
"Good thought," he agreed. Some more clicks and swipes, and he brought up a new screen.
"Ernest Thornhill," read Megan, mystified. "Is he something to do with Thornhill Industries? Why is he paying your hospital bills?"
"Huh," said John, gazing at the screen before getting rid of it with a swipe of the tracking pad. "Concerned third party?"
Megan let this ride for a moment before commenting quietly "I know you're not telling me everything, John."
He was still for a second. "Just trying to protect you, Megan."
"From what?"
He gave a slight double take, shrugged and smiled, closing the laptop. "Cut me some slack, Meg. It's kind of a reflex."
Megan returned the smile, and they sat quietly for a moment. "I wonder," she said thoughtfully. "Are we approaching this wrong? Think, John. If Harold survived the missile somehow, he must have disappeared somewhere. So where would he go? If you were Harold, where would you run to?"
He lay back, closed his eyes and rested his head on the pillows. "I might have to think about that one, Meg." He sounded very tired. She sat quietly with him for a while longer, and when his breathing deepened and slowed she got up and tiptoed out.
POI*POI*POI*POI*
When Megan got home she dug out her cell, weighed it in her hand for a moment, and then put in a call to Fusco.
He picked it up quickly enough.
"Detective? It's Megan Tillman here."
"Oh, hi, Doc. How's John?"
"Still recovering well. Physically, anyhow. But he's pretty fixated on tracking down Harold Finch."
"Yeah, that's Tall, Dark and Stormy all over. He and Finch were practically welded at the hip. I'll tell you this much for free, as long as there's even a hint of a hope Finch is alive he won't stop looking."
"I was afraid you'd say that," she said.
"Well, everyone needs a hobby," said Fusco.
She snorted at this. "He's not telling me everything, though. Says he wants to protect me – though God knows from who."
"Yeah, that's John all over. He and Finch were birds of a feather where information was concerned. Never gave away anything if they could help it."
"What's he not telling me?" she asked.
There was a long pause from Fusco. "You know," he said slowly, "those two kept me in the dark about some really important stuff for a helluva long time. And I was pissed as hell at them, but now all of a sudden I'm wondering if they weren't right. Keeping things from me for so long."
Megan grimaced, though she knew he couldn't see it. "Why do you say that?"
"Well, it's kind of like that old saying about how you can't unring a bell." There was a silence from him for a moment. "Listen, Dr Tillman-"
"Megan," she said. "Just call me Megan."
"Okay, Megan. John's secrets are his to tell. If you really want to know, you need to ask him."
Megan let out an aggravated sigh at this.
"But if he won't tell you, and you really can't let it lie – call me. I'll tell you as much as I can."
And with that she was forced to be satisfied. For now, at least.
To be continued….