Still don't own a damn thing, even after all this time.

Cooper was going to be up in the office with Diane Fowler for a long time. It was time Liz didn't have to spare; she and Dembe left immediately to go meet with Red's resource. Meera had already promised to cover for them by saying Liz was going to get looked over at the hospital.

At the moment, she couldn't really care if she was directly going against orders, if Dembe thought he knew someone who would be able to find Red's body, she'd do whatever it took.

Liz pulled out the Wanted poster that she'd lifted from one of Fowler's team and stared at the black and white surveillance capture.

She was trying to figure out how a comatose man was being photographed easily enough to have those photos passed through intelligence channels to the FBI to update his Most Wanted poster and coming up empty handed. That same man was apparently on the top of an extremely secret hit list that only the upper echelon of the US intelligence community knew about, for reasons that were pretty similar to the ones Cooper was going after him for. Raymond had told her there had been several months between the fire and the first thing he could remember as a ghost...what had happened in between?

Garrick had wanted his body, needed Red for some reason, had said he was willing to share.

Dembe's vehicle had been parked around the corner; he'd felt it when the EM pump on the Box had been cranked up and come running, and as a result, had been taken hostage by Garrick's team but his car was out of the barricaded zone. It felt a little surreal to walk out of the chaos of the Morgue to the familiar comfort and quiet of the town car.

It was, however, missing someone.

Liz tried once again to call for Raymond, but had no luck. She cursed and turned to look out the window, trying to keep her tears from being seen by the driver.

"You're exhausted, Liz," chided Dembe. "Give yourself some time to rest and try again."

"Because we have time for that right now," she exhaled heavily and ran her hands over her face and through her hair. "That was totally him in that photo, Dembe. This makes no sense."

"I don't understand it either," he replied, shoulders rising. "But if he has a body, he has a place to come back to. We just need to find it. The woman we are going to see, Samar Navabi, she can find just about anyone alive. She's a tracker, the only one I have ever met so far."

Liz gave him a worried look. "We sure she's good?"

Dembe looked directly ahead, but she knew him well enough to read his embarrassment. "She realized that Raymond Reddington was close to impossible to find, so she looked for me. It worked."

"Wait a second," the woman twisted in the passenger seat and gave him a wide-eyed look. "You're telling me Red's contact is a person who previously had been hired to find him?"

Of course. Not only would he admire the skill, but he'd find a way to flip someone to his side.

"Forget that, I should have realized that's exactly what he'd do," Liz laughed to herself, shaking her head and sitting back.

"Raymond has that effect on people."

"We weren't aware he was alive until today, but I can name a good seven people that would gladly take a bullet for him...he's...maybe it's another ability and he doesn't know it."

The brief moment of lightness dissolved and her throat felt tight. Red was as scared as he had been last time, but for the time being, she was trying her best to not project her own panic back to him; it was the last thing he needed right now.

"He can't leave us," she said out loud, voice wavering. "He...we'll get him back."

Dembe glanced over at her, as if considering something for a moment, but then faced the windshield again and continued to race through the city.

The tracker met them in the kitchen of a nearby restaurant, a human sleek shadow against the bright white and metal of the space. Samar Navabi listened to what they could tell her, which wasn't much, and promptly pulled a world atlas out of a heavy bag, placing it flat on the workstation. She clipped the Wanted poster to the shelf above with practiced efficiency.

After a few moments with her eyes closed and her palm flat over the map, she huffed and turned towards them.

"This would be much easier if we had something of his, something he had a connection to - something he touched, physically," Samar amended, plummeting the rising hope in Liz's gut, because she had an apartment full of things he was attached to. There were only a few items from before the fire, though.

"I've got - he has some of his old records in our apartment," Liz offered, realizing the slip a half second too late, but pressing on regardless.

"How far away is that?"

Too far. Anything was too far. She wanted him back and now, knew how much that place frightened him.

Liz turned to Dembe for the keys, but he shook his head.

"I think...I have something in the car."

He returned a minute later with something small in his hand, a sad look in his eyes.

"He was going to give this to you today," Dembe told her while pressing the item into her hands.

The ring box was older, the felt faded at the edges. She opened the box, and small noise of shock choked in the back of her throat.

"Ray," she whispered, and ran her thumb over the thick, austere gold of his Navy class ring. It had been threaded onto a sturdy-looking gold chain disappearing beneath the box's padding.

Liz closed her eyes. She wanted him here, with her. After a steadying breath the dull ache in her chest dissipated enough for her to open her eyes again.

"Will this work?" she asked, voice tight and rough as she passed the ring and chain over to the silent, watchful tracker. Liz felt exposed, emotionally, but pushed the feeling aside.

Samar nodded and took the gold from her with great care, more delicacy than needed really, and Liz felt touched by the respect.

"He has a very strong emotional bond to this," she told them as she cupped the gold in her hand and turned to the map. "We're going to be able to find him with it."

The two friends watched in silence as Samar moved her hand over the map, flipping furiously through the pages. She swiveled suddenly and yanked out another, slimmer book, and flipped to a page with a silhouette Liz recognized very well.

New York state.

The noise Liz made must have been louder than she realized; Dembe put a comforting hand on her shoulder as they looked on.

Another map came out of the bag, this time for New York and the tri-state area. Samar was flipping between several pages, testing something, just as Liz' phone buzzed. She saw Cooper's name on the screen and ignored the call; happy with her or not, he didn't know where she was and it was going to stay that way for the time being.

"Done. There."

Samar's fingernail pressed into the page over Long Island and, yes, Liz knew that street. She knew it because she went to a party and ended up on that street four fucking times while she was trying to find her coworker's home.

There all along. He was so close to her, so many times, and she had no idea.

Her voice cracked and wobbled and she had a false start before she was able to get the question out. "Do we...do we have a team-" she cut herself off, knowing full well the answer with only half a second of thought "-How soon can we get in there? How fast?"

Dembe was already dialing someone on his SAT phone, speaking quickly in German to someone on the other end of the line.

Samar, understanding whatever the commands were, immediately turned to Liz and placed the ring carefully back into her hand.

"I will be able you if they try to move him. I've got a hold of his trail now. If anything happens while we're moving in, we'll know."

"Thank you," she told her, and meant it.

Samar dipped her head in subtle acknowledgement. "We were to meet next week, you know." When Liz's response was a quizzical expression, she continued. "He hoped I could help with his attempt to track them down, the people that did that."

The woman pointed to the scar on Liz's upturned wrist, beyond the ring and chain; self-conscious, she curled her hand around the medal and brought it to her chest, protecting the jewelry and herself.

"He wished to let you know of my loyalty to him, to both of you, before I became your coworker."

Liz echoed the last word questioningly.

Samar smiled. "Your Assistant Director Cooper was convinced by the right people to take on a Moussad agent and liaison who could help your team as a Tracker. Red felt that you and your team could benefit from my assistance - he did not want you to think of me as your protection, since he could not always be with you, but as a friend...our meeting in the week ahead would have served as a chance for you to make the final decision. He stressed his desire for you to be made completely aware of the situation."

Liz snorted, despite the severity of the situation. "He knows how well I would have responded otherwise."

The other woman gave her a somber nod, and seemed to study her for a moment. Liz felt her hackles rise, tried to calm her nerves even as she felt herself on guard.

"He sees you as his equal." She confided, quietly enough that her voice barely carried. "I hope you know that."

Liz didn't respond, not sure how to really, but busied herself with taking the ring out and securing the chain around her neck. Dembe gestured both of them to precede him out of the kitchen, and then for the rest of the race through the city, she curled her finger through metal circle resting low on her sternum.

Time and streets flew by, and they were wheels up before she knew it. Liz continued to play with the ring on the chain, realizing it was definitely going to be one of her tells moving forward. Red could tease her for it all he wanted, she didn't care as long as he was with her.

There was little fanfare. Her heart pounded in her ears and everything was bright, sun bleached almost, and everything seemed to rush by until she set foot through the damn doors of the quiet, well-maintained duplex. Samar slipped past her, lethal and stealthy like the rest of Red's team, and even though Liz was prepared to mirror those actions a half-second earlier, the moment her foot hit the threshold, it was as if everything slowed down.

The weight of the pull in her chest, drawing her up the stairs behind the team as they cleared the house, was heavier than her flak vest.

The house was so well kept. So clean. So bright.

The room she stepped into was familiar to her. She saw now why she was mistaken in the past, during those strange visions. The hospital-like, clinical clean of the space was precisely as she recalled it, though seeing it from the other direction was disorienting. There was that flat screen tv that should have tipped her off in the first place. There was that chair, now empty.

A large man in a tacky sweatsuit was being held on the ground, his hands secured behind his back. She recognized his sneakers now from the vision.

Distant popping noises seemed to bring her out of her state of shock as she moved into the space, pushing past two of the team members to the bed; for a half second she worried they were too late... was she too late? Wouldn't she have known somehow if they were too late?

The heart monitor chirped to assure her of his heartbeat - his heartbeat! - and Liz grabbed onto the handrail on the foot of his bed, eyes hungrily taking in the shape beneath the waffled white fabric.

Raymond Reddington looked like he was sleeping.

Of course, most of the people who had worked with him at the Morgue would not have recognized him for who he was. The years had marked him. His shoulders appeared more rounded as he was now. The hair he prided himself on was darker, clipped short out of practicality, and he had a bit of a beard beginning.

She didn't need to know the contours of his face by heart. She didn't need to recognize the thick gold eyelashes against his cheeks. Something deep in her gut told her who it was before she'd even really taken in the sight of him.

Someone brushed past, a figure in white with a large black duffel bag.

Dembe appeared beside her, a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"We'll question them but we think they're all hired third-party to care for him."

She couldn't tear her eyes away from Red's sleeping form, from the gentle rise and fall of his chest, even as the medic flitted around him, stethoscope on his chest, then lifting the comatose man's eyelids.

The medic gave both Dembe and Liz a grim sort of look. "No response that I can see, but we're going to have to get him set up properly to test if there's any brain activity."

Dembe's hand on her shoulder tightened, even before she processed what was being said.

"No," she finally voiced, quietly, looking at the medic. "He's not...we'd know if he wasn't…"

Wherever he was he still had some connection to this side, if his body still haven't given up. She could still feel him.

If he wasn't giving up, neither was she.

She approached the head of the bed slowly, extending her hand before her, holding her breath as her fingers brushed along his skin - so warm and soft and alive - and waited for one moment, hoping that it would be all it took to wake him up.

But there was no spark, and there was no dramatic wake up.

Liz remained by his bedside the entire time they packed him up and prepared to transfer him somewhere safer, one hand curled around his and the other holding onto his ring.

To be honest, the secured setup for Red wasn't very different from the place he'd been kept before, except now he was surrounded by his own armed and vigilant team.

Liz was sitting in a plush armchair beside his bed when her phone started to ring; it had been powered off for half the day, and the missed call log had given her a small clue of just how irked Cooper would be when she eventually did pick up.

"Agent Keen," he started, a note of warning already edging its way in. "You had better have a damn good reason for going off the grid like that."

"I do," she assured her boss quietly, watching the man in the bed beside her, considering what she should reveal.

"Has your sudden and unapproved departure gained you any clues to his location?"

"That depends, sir."

There was a moment of silence, and she heard the Assistant Director's heavy sigh on the other end of the phone, crackling in her ear.

"Yes?" he asked finally, clearly already aware of where this was going.

"There are a lot of people who want to find him, too," she said slowly. "For very different reasons...You were meeting with one of them before I left."

"She's been brought up to speed."

"Really?"

"I'd rather not repeat that experience again," her superior responded in a clipped tone. "As hard as it was for her to initially comprehend, Diane Fowler has happily turned this investigation over to our team...partially because she doesn't understand half of it, but mostly because she'd rather not be tasked with explaining the situation to those she reports to."

Mr. President, one of our Most Wanted thought he was a ghost for the last 25 years...

"Did you find him, Keen?" Cooper's voice was softer, more hopeful and she bit her lip for the moment where she weighed telling him the truth.

"Yes," she told him with a heavy exhale. "He's safe, sir. We're having his caretakers questioned right now, but I think Dembe can have it arranged if you'd like our team to have a turn."

"Caretakers...Keen, is he-"

"-He's gotten a pretty thorough medical exam, and they're just waiting on blood tests to come back, but right now it looks like his body is fine. But sir, he's…." Liz felt her throat grow tight, and she swallowed before continuing. "I have tried everything I can think of to wake him up. And he's...I don't know how much longer we've got."

She could feel him slipping away from her. It was slow, which was making it more tortuous. After their last attempt to have Liz literally shock him awake didn't work and only caused his heart rate to grow erratic for a brief period, Liz had grabbed Dembe by the shoulders and begged him to think of something, someone who could help.

"Is there anyone else who can call a spirit back? Maybe it needs to be someone else," she'd said, and he was gone again, with a promise to return with someone, leaving her to keep watch over their friend.

Cooper was quiet again on the other end of the phone. "I'll see...we'll…" he sighed, defeated already and her stomach turned at the noise. "I'll see if we can come up with some ideas here and call you back."

Liz hung up the phone and placed it back on the bedside table before rising and sitting on the edge of the bed beside the prone man, drawing his hand into her lap. She leaned back against the headboard and watched him.

"You really don't get a choice in this, Red," she told him quietly, her thumb brushing over his. "You have to wake up."

She wanted to know what it was like, to wake up beside him. She wanted to watch him live the life he'd dreamed of, had been so desperate to have, to share it with him. She wanted to fall asleep to the sound of this steady breathing beside her.

Liz leaned down and pressed a kiss to the top of his head, running a hand over his closely clipped scalp...oh man, he was going to be pissed when he woke up and found out he was already balding.

"Can you still sense him?"

Liz grabbed her gun and whirled on the small dark-clad figure in the doorway. The woman was older, dressed all in black save for a string of white pearls at her neck and the camel coat on top of the outfit. She had a severe sort of face, with lips puckered in what appeared to be distaste, and shrewd eyes behind square frame glasses.

The woman made a lazy sort of wave in her direction and the gun was suddenly knocked out of Liz's grip and sent across the room.

"Focus, girl," the woman chided Liz, who angrily stood up from the bed just as Dembe appeared in the doorway beside the stranger.

"Liz, this is Kate Kaplan," he explained quickly, already aware of the tension in the room. "She's a witch and can help us."

Kaplan noticed her disbelief, despite her best effort to smother the surprise on her face. "What, you two can see the dead, Raymond can move things with his mind, but witches are where you draw the line?" she asked her, barely pausing before continuing to speak. "We don't have much time if we're going to get him back."

Out of her large handbag, the woman withdrew an old, leather book with rough-edged pages and put it on the edge of the bed. Liz could smell it, musty and decaying and something else, from where she stood.

"What is this?" she asked while reaching for the book, curiosity piqued.

The older woman slapped her hand away. "Something very old and very powerful, and not for you to touch," she chided, and then proceeded to pull off her coat off and drape it over the hand grip at the foot of the bed. "Now go sit down so we can get our boy back."

Kaplan opened the book, found whatever it was she was looking for, and cast a glance over the edge of her glasses at Liz where she sat, a look that pinned her to her seat, before turning fully towards her.

The witch stood with her hands folded over one another against her stomach and watched her for a moment, as if looking for something. Dembe shifted nervously at the door, and Liz looked to the stranger expectantly.

"Whatever it is, do it."

"If we do this, you will be going somewhere the living are never meant to go...it changes a person, leaves its mark. Might not let you go at all. So before we start, dearie, I need you to think long and hard about this - is he worth it to you? Is he worth the risk?"

"Yes," she answered, without hesitation and full confidence, never more certain of anything in her life. "Yes he is. Now help me get him back."

Kaplan pulled an old iPod out of her bag, and a small speaker, and set them on the bed. She squinted down at the thing, having to lift her glasses to read its screen and Liz was at the end of her patience, ready to burst, when soft, soothing music started to play on the speakers.

"Got to get you to relax somehow," the woman muttered, and then began to talk Liz through counting backwards in a surprisingly soothing voice, through deep breaths, before starting to speak in a language Liz didn't understand, and for a half second, she balked, but allowed herself to follow the instructions and -

It was strange - it wasn't sudden, but if there was any way Liz would describe it, she'd say she was smoke, hazy and drifting, and came to find herself standing in a hallway, dark and winding.

There was in incredible sense of wrongness to the space, and she had to keep reminding herself why she was there, who she was there for.

"Raymond?" she called out, and focused on the pull towards him to guide her.

She followed the twisting hallway to the left, swallowing down the rising terror that left her wanting to scream out.

The doors that randomly dotted the hallways were inky black patches in the dark hallway. Some had light beneath them. Some did not. She wouldn't stop in front of any of them; some gut-level knowledge, etched deep in her bones and primal, told her they were waiting on the other side. Waiting and watching. Waiting and watching and pacing.

She didn't know who they were but they terrified her, shaking her the very same way memories of the fire did.

She picked up the speed of her step when she caught sight of a shadow passing inside one of the rooms, just on the other side of the door where the milky green light eked onto the floor

Liz started to sprint when she heard the sickly creek of one of the doors somewhere behind her open.

Her skin prickled with the sense of wrongness, an understanding she should not be in this place. For all her time around the dead, this was a place she should never have tried to enter.

Then give him back, she thought, as if the space could hear her thoughts.

Apparently it could. It grew colder and she continued to run, trying to keep a hold on her connection to Red. There was no way to tell where she was, or how far she'd gotten - for all she knew, the hallway was a circle - but there was no way she was going to stop. Not with them waiting. Waiting and watching. Waiting and watching and pacing. They wanted her to stop. They were waiting for her to stop. They all stopped, eventually. In time she would st-

Someone grabbed her arm, and immediately, she whirled around and hoped that a punch to the throat and a knee to the groin would have the same effect on this plane of existence as it did normally.

The grunt that came from her attacker emerged from the person beginning to say her name, and she immediately realized her mistake.

Even as he remained doubled over, she slipped her arms around his neck, and Ray instinctively wrapped his own around her waist, curling somehow into her and then tightening, almost desperately.

Liz squatted on the floor beside him, and reveled in the feeling of his fingers on her face as they traced her cheekbones delicately.

"Sweetheart," he uttered, grief so openly on display it made her chest hurt, "what happened to you? You shouldn't be here, I never wanted-"

She couldn't stand seeing him so shattered, thinking she'd died.

"Neither should you, apparently," she said firmly, wrapping his wrists in her grip and pulling his hands away from her face so he would look at her, albeit with eyebrows knitted in confusion. "Red, you're not dead."

Liz gave his hands a squeeze and repeated her words. "You're not dead, Garrick wasn't lying...we found you, but there isn't a lot of time. If you don't come back with-"

"-Oh God Lizzie, no," he suddenly said, dismay etched into his features. "Please don't tell me Kate sent you-"

"-Last I checked we can't exactly lie to each other, so that's not possible," she replied, jumping a bit too soon in her response to his unfinished request, and softened her voice. "Of course I came for you. I would never leave you here."

And in that moment, she knew this was where she was supposed to be, as strange as that sounded. Whatever happened, she was happy she was here with him.

But she wanted to see him open his eyes, to have a chance at a life with him.

"Come on. We're getting out of here," she announced, and they stood up.

Of course, once they were standing again, it was very clear that neither had an idea how to get out. It wasn't like Liz had some kind of line to pull on and reel them back in...Kaplan certainly made it seem like this was a place most avoided…

"Can't blame them," Red responded beside her, despite her never voicing her thoughts.

They walked a little more quickly, hand in hand as they tried to find something that was an exit. As time passed, Liz found her steps slowing. The man beside her gave her a concerned look.

"Something's wrong," he stated, instead of asking, and Liz nodded.

Something was definitely wrong; until now, she'd been able to sense her body back in the chair, was planning that if nothing else, she could use that as some kind of connection to get them back.

It was gone.

"We have to try anyway," she said.

A door opened with a squeak, like some sick animal, and icy panic filled her gut.

"Run!" Red shouted, and they took off, speeding down the hall.

It sounded like the slapping, tapping noise of a barefoot child or an animal behind them, and then more than one of whatever it was, and a voice in Liz's head told her don't look don't look whatever you do just don't.

"There!"

They had rounded a corner, a hard one unlike anything else they've passed, and the door was grey, and hung at a normal angle. It had the appearance of a normal, everyday door, and Liz felt her tiring shoulders sag with relief as they made for it.

"Oh thank god," she panted, half-laughing.

The metal of the doorknob was cool under her touch, but not repulsively so. She took it as a good sign.

"Wait."

Liz slid her gaze over to him from the doorknob in her hand, barely able to wait for whatever it was he was going to say. There wasn't time for this - they needed to go. It wasn't like he could have left something important behind…

But he was about to, she suddenly realized, her leap of logic aided by her connection to him and his thoughts.

"Oh God, no." Liz pulled her hand from the door like it had burned her, and stepped away from it. "No. No."

She continued to repeat the word even as the man beside her said her name like a plea, trying to comfort her.

If she walked back through that doorway with the love of her life in tow, he was going to wake up without any knowledge of her, or their friends, or their work.

Raymond Reddington was not able to see the dead before he ended up in a coma. He'd probably wake up being able to see them now, but the last two and a half decades would be wiped from his memory.

"I"m not...I didn't come this far to get you back just to let you go...no "

He slid his arms around her waist and shoulders, and she clung to him, suddenly more furious than she could ever remember, and unsure who she could lash out at for this.

They weren't waiting or watching or pacing anymore. They were coming. Liz and Red needed to move now. They were almost to the corner of the hallway now, and they'd see whatever it was in just a moment.

"You better come back to me, Raymond Reddington," she warned him, voice a fierce whisper in his ear as they held on to one another.

"We've beaten all the odds so far…" he trailed off, pulling back just enough to give her face one of those lasting looks, like he was trying to ingrain her into his memories in these fleeting seconds. If there was anyone who could be an exception to this rule, it would be him, and she had to hold onto that belief.

She kissed him, because seconds were precious, and she had no idea what was going to happen once they went through this door.

"I have you," she whispered, leaning her forehead against his, even as she wrenched the door open behind them. It took a lot of effort, made more difficult by the heavy exhaustion that was leeching the energy out of her. "And you have me."

He gave their joined hands a quick squeeze. "That's all that matters," he finished.

Her whole body shook with fear and fatigue as she stepped back into the empty space beyond the door, and she lifted her head to tell him one more time that she loved him as they stepped through, hoping it would make a difference.

But the hallway was shaking and a shrieking, savage scream was racing its way towards them, so Liz pulled with all of her might and walked through the space that had been a doorway and it was dark so dark did they pick wrong were they too late she could still feel him, both his hand in her hand and the piece of him that resided in her - wait for me Lizzie - deep in her chest a part of her heart beating beat beat beat beep beep beep beep-

Liz sat up and arched forward, taking air into her lungs in a rough gasp, moving so forcefully the chair slid out from her jackknifing body and she tumbled onto the floor.

The room was chaos.

"You're back, you made it," Dembe was assuring her, somewhere behind her and trying to help her off of the floor all while not touching her, but his voice was lost in the din of medical equipment emitting warning noises and the voice in her head that was screaming that something wasn't right.

She reached out for the rail of Raymond's bed, but thought better of it when she realized she probably had little control at the moment over her ability, and if that equipment was still keeping him alive, she had to rein herself in to make sure she didn't unintentionally damage any of it or him.

"Is he going to be okay?" she asked, voice hoarse, addressing any of the rapidly moving people in scrubs, but they were working furiously over Red, calling out drugs and orders for more and Liz pushed herself back up and into her chair, only then realizing there were EKG leads on her chest and her shirt had been unbuttoned.

"You gave us a good scare there, kiddo," Kaplan explained from her spot by the window, where she stood, arms crossed and her purse in the crook of her elbow, her eyes never leaving Reddington's form. "Stopped breathing. Had to get a little nasty to make them leave you be."

"Is he going to be okay?" Liz repeated, looking from Kaplan to Dembe and their twin expressions of worry.

Adrenaline was rattling through her veins, and her heart was in her throat. The medical staff continued to try to work, battling the long tone emitted from the heart monitor.

Flatline. Raymond was dying.

Liz did the only thing she could think of.

She lunged out of her chair, grabbing hold of his wrist despite the shouts to stop. She couldn't lose him, not again, not ever.

Raymond Reddington's eyes flew open.