Chapter Twenty: Plans and Promises

She hadn't slept the night before. Aram had managed to ping Tom's phone and they had found it in the side of the road. It had taken longer than it should have to get in contact with Nez, but she finally picked up just as the sun was coming up towards the horizon. Tom had been taken and they were convening at Howard Hargrave's home in New York. They hadn't given her many details over the phone, but nothing about the situation was good. She and Agnes had been used to get Tom where they wanted him to be to take him, and that left her feeling the nauseating mixture of angry and terrified for her family, but she hadn't been able to do a thing about it until she was certain Agnes was safe and hidden away.

She may have been angry at Reddington, but his had been the first number that she had called. Just because his resources were more limited now than they had been before didn't mean that he couldn't find a safe, out-of-the-way location for Agnes to stay in while this new storm blew over. She needed to be somewhere and with someone that knew the dangers that they were facing, and Red would know how to do that. He'd come as soon as she had called, never questioning it, and hadn't pushed for any details that weren't needed then and there. Instead he'd taken the fussy little girl in his arms, picked up her bear, and promised to keep her safe.

Now Liz stood outside of a large home that her husband might have grown up in had these people not stolen him away. Nez hadn't said on the phone, but she would bet that those same people that Scottie Hargrave worked for were responsible for Tom's disappearance.

She squeezed her eyes shut just a moment, trying to push back the headache lingering from the car wreck. Finally blue eyes popped back open and she rapped her knuckles against the large, wood door.

There was a long pause before it opened, revealing her father-in-law on the other side. "Liz," he greeted. "Come in. Are you alright? Nez told us about the wreck."

"Agnes and I are both okay, just sore. What do you guys have? Nez couldn't tell me much over the phone, but Tom said that you guys had found the mole."

Howard motioned for her to follow him and he led her back through the house. "One of them, and he has a lot of access to Halcyon surveillance. We're playing it safe until we have a way forward."

"What kind of organization are we dealing with that goes through all this trouble to take him? And why?" Liz asked as she followed him back into a study.

"Miles always did like his flare."

Liz stopped abruptly at the door, staring at the collection of people. She'd expected Nez and Dumont, but the sight of Scottie Hargrave and Matias Solomon was unsettling. "What the hell-?"

"Agent Keen. It's been a while. How's that precious little girl of yours?" Solomon asked with an obnoxious smile that set Liz's temper on edge.

"Enough," Howard snapped. "Scottie has been filling us in on the organization that she worked for. Everything Tom wanted to find out from her, just here where McKinney and the rest of them can't get their paws on the intel."

"And you trust them?" Liz demanded, her glare shifting from Solomon who was still grinning to Scottie who was seated very quietly in an overstuffed chair. Liz hadn't actually met her mother-in-law yet, but she had heard plenty of things about her. There was certainly enough to question if she had been responsible for all of this.

"To a degree," Howard answered. "You know all about making deals with the devils you don't trust to get what you need."

Liz turned her glare on him and he flashed an innocent smile that she'd seen on her husband's face over the years.

"Elizabeth," Scottie said slowly, "I understand the distrust. If you weren't wary, you probably wouldn't be very good at your job, but we have a common goal. My son has been taken by the same people that took him thirty years ago to keep me in line. I won't lose him to them again."

Liz watched her carefully, noting every twitch and every breath she took. She weighed the words against the tone and the speech patterns, all of her training coming in to carefully consider Susan Hargrave. Finally she turned her attention to Nez. "What do we have?"

Her husband's partner nodded, taking the cue. "Eva Phelps is dead. Our blacksite was attacked and she was killed. A burner phone was left with her body, a text already waiting on it with proof of life."

"I'm still working on tracing the signal," Dumont said from his place behind his laptop at Howard's oversized desk. "It's bouncing all over the place. Whoever they have handling it is good."

"Better than you and Aram combined?"

Dumont blinked at her. "Would he be willing?"

"We do not need to bring the feds into this," Solomon piped up from his place. "You're more than enough of that."

"My team is good, and Tom and I were going to them before the wreck. I trust them. He trusts them. We're going to need help with this if Halcyon resources are limited."

Howard nodded. "I agree."

"Then it's settled. I'll reach out to Cooper and we'll put a plan together."

Liz turned to step out and make the call, but she paused at the quiet footsteps that followed her. "Elizabeth, I'm afraid we've gotten off on the wrong foot," Scottie said quietly and Liz wasn't fooled.

"What gave you that idea? The fact that you nearly killed me and my daughter, having Solomon shoot up Tom's and my wedding? Or maybe the fact that I pushed Tom to trust you because you're his mother and should have chosen him over everything, but you had Solomon beat the hell out of him? Or that you set up a dangerous jailbreak that put federal agents in the ICU and my husband in the medical wing at Halcyon? At every turn you've proven that you have no problem throwing him to the wolves to get what you want, so please, Scottie, tell me why this time is different."

The older woman straightened. "Everything I've done has been for him. Even when I wasn't sure if he was alive or not. Even when they stopped sending proof. I hoped. A small part of me hoped, and everything I did was to protect my family."

There was a fierceness that worked its way into her voice that reminded Liz of Tom in the moments when people questioned his loyalties to she and Agnes. If that was an indication that she was telling the truth or Liz just wanted her to be, she wasn't sure, so she leveled her own dangerous look at her mother-in-law. "I hope that's true, because if you betray him or any of us, I'll make sure they drop you in a hole so deep and so dark that you won't remember what the sun looks like."

She spun on her heel and dialed Cooper's number.

Tom jerked awake out of the dream, soaking wet and shivering. He blinked hard, trying to clear his vision and decide if he were actually awake or if it was just a new level of the nightmare.

The face of the man shoving him under the water appeared over him, but he wasn't on the beach. He was being hauled to his feet by a thug on either side as McKinney tossed a newly empty bucket to the side, balled his fist, and hit Tom hard enough to drive the breath out of him. Tom choked and cough, bent over as far as he could with the grip they had on his arms. Once he was able, a breathless sort of chuckle left him. "So you try to drown little kids and have to have the person you're beating on restrained. You're a real badass, you know that?"

The next blow had been expected, but it was hard enough to know that he'd hit a nerve. He pulled in a struggling breath, his knees a little unsteady under him. "What? Can't handle a fair fight?"

McKinney snorted. "I know more about your record than most. That fight wouldn't be fair."

Tom watched the older man. "Yeah, and what do you think you know?"

"A hell of a lot more than you do. You think Bill McCready found you by accident?"

Dark blue eyes focused in on the man standing before him, a cold, sinking feeling clawing at his chest. He didn't say anything in response and McKinney smirked. "Good old Bill McCready. He had no idea who you were. No hint that you were Scottie Hargrave's son, but you were right up his alley. He would have wanted something for his efforts if we'd asked him to keep an eye on you for us, but instead we handed him a file mixed in with a few others and asked for a favour to cover our tracks."

"You people put me through St Regis," Tom managed, his throat suddenly going dry.

"We needed you alive, but you'd made it clear that the Phelps' weren't going to work out. St Regis suited you better than we could have ever hoped." A cruel sort of smile perked his lips as he leaned forward. "Wouldn't it have been ironic if the day had come to put Scottie down and we'd hired you to do it?"

Without warning Tom lunged forward, his head slamming hard into McKinney's and sending him reeling back. The two guards that were supposed to keep him under control jerked him backwards and one threw him up against a wall. Adrenaline was kicking in and he dodged the blow meant for him, bobbing to his left and coming around, using momentum to slam the man into the unmoving wall. He crumbled to the floor and Tom turned to the other one. He smirked, motioning for him to give it his best try and the second man came swinging. Tom was able to dodge the first and then the second blow, giving one in return that looked like it made the other man see stars, but he felt a prickly pain between his shoulderblades and he reached back, finding a dart there. Ellington stood at the door, watching him as his knees turned to rubber and gave beneath him.

"I had him," McKinney growled.

"You didn't have him when he was four years old. What makes you think you had him now?" Ellington answered. "If you let him get away this time and it'll be your head."

When Tom had sunk entirely to the floor, he wasn't sure, but he watched as a pair of polished shoes moved towards him. He couldn't move, his body going numb quicker than it should have and he blinked hard, trying to grab onto anything that would keep him conscious.

Ellington nudged him with his foot. "Smile for the camera." There was a flash and Tom blinked again, this time trying to focus his gaze.

"All you're doing is giving her time," McKinney said, his voice irritable and Tom couldn't quite make his face out now.

"Scottie used up her last chance and she knows it. She'll come for him. She won't risk losing him permanently."

"How do you know?"

"Because I know her."

The last words sounded like they were being spoken down a long tunnel and Tom was drifting in the opposite direction. He lost his battle with consciousness and slipped down into the murky depths.

Not one person in the room - save maybe Solomon - trusted her. Scottie could feel the discomfort stemming from her presence, but Elizabeth Keen had just had to bring her team from the FBI in on this matter. All they were going to do was make things more difficult. She'd called them out on their selective morality before, but she'd been in a position of power then. Now they were, and she had little interest in fighting enemies on two fronts.

"What can you tell us about Miles Ellington?" Harold Cooper asked and Scottie's gaze flickered over to him.

"Quite a bit, I should imagine. From my understanding the two of them grew up together."

All eyes turned to the entrance of the living room that they had relocated to to accommodate the number of people now brainstorming how best to get themselves killed and Scottie's eyes narrowed just a little. "Who invited you?"

"Your husband? Ex husband? Howard," Raymond Reddington answered flippantly and he offered a quick look towards Elizabeth, some kind of silent conversation exchanged between her sharp look and his smile. Finally she seemed to relent on whatever she was trying to get across and sat back in her chair hard.

"Red may not have his old resources, but he has enough information locked away that something is likely to be useful," Howard answered with a shrug and his gaze moved to meet Scottie's. "And we need a way to confirm what you're saying."

"You needed someone to trust and you called Raymond Reddington? I was right. You are delusional."

"Aren't you supposed to be behind bars, or does Halcyon just not do that anymore?" Samar Navabi ground out, her question directed at Scottie.

The older woman stood. "You're not interested in listening to much that I have to say anyway, so what am I doing here? They'll kill him before any of you come to a consensus on what you want to do."

"I don't think it's too much to want some confirmation that what you're telling us isn't a set up, Scottie."

"It's Christopher's life in the line. Why would I-?"

"Stop." All eyes turned on the young woman who had sat up straighter in her chair, voice and eyes sharp. "You're right. It's Tom's life, so we can discuss who knew what and when -" Elizabeth shot a pointed glare in Reddington's direction- "and if we'll trust each other after all is said and done. Right now our goal needs to be to find Tom and take down Ellington. The more we fight with each other, the less likely that's going to be."

The room fell silent for a moment and the burner phone on the table buzzed, sounding off an alert about a new message. "The first thing that we need to know is what this Ellington wants," Harold Cooper said as Scottie reached for the phone and flipped it open.

A new photo and new message was addressed to her and she frowned at the bruises and cuts.

"I should think that's obvious enough," Reddington murmured from his place.

"He wants me," Scottie clarified and she found her daughter-in-law watching her carefully she handed the phone over. "He had his people take my son to keep me in line when he was young, but he knows there's no way to salvage the op now."

"He knew that the moment you tried to escape," Howard murmured.

"I did what I had to do. As soon as they realized I was never going to be able to do what they wanted, they would have killed him. I couldn't help him if I was locked away."

"And you did him so much good free," Reddington said with a raised eyebrow.

"That's not helpful," Elizabeth grumbled at him.

"Or maybe it is."

All eyes turned to the FBI technician who had been working with Dumont to track the origin of the proofs of life being sent. "Whoever they have scrambling their signal is good. I mean, really good, and while we can probably find it, we're working on a time crunch."

"You want to send Scottie in," Donald Ressler asked, sounding as surprised as the others looked.

"Not blind, of course, but we could track her and jump in to get both she and Tom."

"That's presuming Ellington wouldn't shoot her on sight," Howard pointed out, and Scottie glanced over at him, wondering for half a moment why he would have any reservations about that if it would lead them to Christopher.

"He wouldn't," she answered. "Miles has a certain way of doing things. He would make sure he knew everything that I did about Halcyon before putting a bullet in my head. The issue would be the tracker."

"We have some that are virtually undetectable," Mojtabai said, and Dumont chuckled at his side.

"And Halcyon has some that are entirely undetectable. Let's go that route."

"This needs to happen quietly," Nez said, her gaze sweeping the room. "The only people we trust in this are the people sitting in this room. Any slip can and will get not just Tom killed in all of this, but us as well. These people are well trained and well supplied. We have to play this smart."

Quiet acknowledgements were murmured around the room and Scottie retook her seat as they began to go over all of the options.

"I have a confession," Howard Hargrave said quietly, his blue eyes meeting Reddington's in a calculated way. "I didn't ask you here just to confirm Scottie's story."

Red hummed softly, a small smirk playing on his face. "I never would have guessed."

"I've heard the rumours and I know that things are… tight right now. Whatever you need to make it happen is yours, but I need information that I can't track down myself. I need to be involved with this."

"He's your son. I my question your motives if you weren't."

"You'd question my motives anyway," Howard chuckled and he wasn't wrong. Since he'd started to suspect Scottie there'd be a change in Reddington's old friend, but when confirmation came through and he'd realized that his son's disappearance was linked to his wife's betrayal, it had broken him in ways that Reddington knew too well. It wasn't that he was incapable of being truly loyal to his son, but Red wasn't a fool enough to fully trust that he would be just on his word. No matter what had happened over the years, Tom was Elizabeth's husband and Agnes' father, and that earned him some protection.

Howard handed him an envelope. "Everything's here. Look it over and tell me what you need. I'll have it for you within the hour."

"Hey? Can we talk?"

Elizabeth's voice caused both men to turn and Reddington shoved the paperwork back down into the envelope and out of sight. "Of course. How are you feeling?" he asked, hearing Howard mumble an excuse to step aside.

"I'm fine." He could almost feel the tension between them as she struggled with what to say. Finally she pulled in a breath and met his gaze. "Thank you for having Dembe take care of Agnes."

"Of course. Keeping her as far away from all of this is the best way to protect her."

She paused just a moment before looking him directly in the eye. "How much did you know about Scottie?"

He stopped the words before they tumbled out of his mouth. They wouldn't have been a lie, but they wouldn't have been the truth either. "A fair amount, but certainly not everything."

Elizabeth nodded. "You and I are…. I get that you have secrets. I even get that you think you have valid reasons for keeping them and that in some twisted way you think you're keeping me safe. I don't question that you think that, but I want you to look at this. My husband is being held hostage, my daughter had to go into hiding again after she and I were both put in danger, and-"

"Because of the dangers that Tom's family have brought to your doorstep. I warned him over a year ago that he needed to stay away from Scottie Hargrave. I continued to warn him right up to the point that he chose to go undercover and open you and Agnes up to all of this."

She didn't break eye contact with him, nor did she flinch. "I'm not blaming you for Scottie's past. I'm asking you to understand, Reddington. I want you to take one moment and see how, if you had just told us what you knew about Scottie Hargrave, how we could have had more information to make better choices with."

Her voice was surprisingly calm. She was upset with him, but as he listened Reddington heard the pleading undertone for him to try to see what she saw. He closed his eyes briefly, searching for just the right way to explain what he was thinking.

"You and Tom are stubborn. For everything you've seen, everything you have both experienced, you want it to be better. You hope that it'll be better. If I could make they true for you, Elizabeth, I would give anything in my power to do it. I have given as much as I know how to give you a chance at it, but some things… Howard was right. Tom wants to believe in Scottie and the similarities in your situation and his parents' is enough that he would have convinced himself it was possible. He would have taken and your daughter down in that desperate hope. By… withholding that information, I was doing what I could to mitigate the damage."

"Or you could have trusted us to make decisions about our own lives," she pressed. "We're not children anymore, Red."

A sad smile pulled at his lips. "I'm more aware of that every day," he admitted softly.

"I want to trust you, but you make it hard. I need you to trust me too."

He hummed softly. She wasn't a child, it was true. She was clever and talented. It was hard for him to share his plans with anyone, but if he were to choose one person, Elizabeth should be the one. "One thing at a time, Elizabeth. We'll bring your husband home, and then… when this is done and over, we can speak about what Kate left you."

"Do you mean that?"

Reddington nodded, not trusting his own voice and he saw her smile. It was small and tired, but it was for him. He just hoped when all was said and done that she could remember that she was the one that had begged him to know. He wasn't sure he could take losing her again.

Notes: I've really been looking forward to bringing everyone around together to face a problem head on, and here we are. Halcyon's Grey Matters team and the Task Force all working off the books together. And what do you think Howard asked Red to do?

Next time - Scottie goes in to set the trap.