Chapter 21

Too Late For Prayin'

"Where are we going?" Tom asked after they had been driving for a while.

"Not much farther." Mr. Kaplan promised him.

Just a few minutes later she asked him. "Are you sure this is what you want, Tom? Because my way is better for everyone involved. Agnes is in a place where no one will ever know who she is. No one will ever be able to use her to get to you or Liz or Raymond ever again."

It wasn't a question he could even entertain. He had to get Agnes back. Agnes was his daughter … and she was his way back home to Liz.

He pressed his gun forcefully to the back of her head. "Drive."

True to her word, a minute later, she brought the car to a stop. They were in front of a cemetery - the cemetery that Liz had supposedly been buried in. Mr. Kaplan turned off the engine.

Tom shook his head. "No! You told Liz -"

"- I know what I told Elizabeth." After stepping out of the car, Mr. Kaplan leaned back in to sadly admonish him. "I told you my way was better."

"I don't believe you!"

Tom scrambled to get out of the car and follow as Mr. Kaplan began slowly walking away.

Unconcerned about her, he said nothing about her limp or the cane she was using to help support her weight on one side.

There was no tombstone, just a statue without any name or words carved into it. The little stone angel looked old but the flowers that had been there before their arrival were fresh.

Stunned, it was all Tom could do to get the words out. "How?! What happened?!"

"Constantine - Kirk couldn't get to Liz to use her stem cells so he used what he had on hand. It was too much for little Agnes. To get the amount of cells Kirk needed, he ..." Pursing her lips, she shook her head and went silent.

"No!" Coming out of his stupor, Tom choked on his sob. Angrily, he started to lash out. "Reddington! This is all his -"

Kaplan stopped him before he could even get started. "No Tom. This is on you. You were the one that let Kirk get a hold of that baby in the first place. I had Liz out and I was getting Agnes out! You let him track you with that phone. What kind of a beginner mistake was that? Keeping that phone?"

Realizing she was right, oblivious to the pain, Tom turned and pounded his fist on a nearby marble grave marker – Liz's grave marker - again and again until he remembered who he was dealing with.

Hope flooded in to wash back out his despair.

Turning back to face her, he accused her. "I don't believe you! You're lying! Agnes isn't buried here! This is the same place where you pretended to bury Liz! This is another one of your tricks! She isn't dead!"

Her eyes were shiny as they met his. "There are two shovels in the trunk. Don't bother bringing both. I'm not going to help. I'm through helping you, Tom."

Desperate, he tried to call her bluff. He came back with the shovel. Determined, he looked Mr. Kaplan right in the eye as he started.

But as soon as he bit into the ground with the shovel, he knew it was all true.

It was the desperate, inhuman sound that escaped Mr. Kaplan's throat before her hand could make it up to cover her mouth.

Letting go of the shovel, Tom sank to his knees convinced. "Oh God! What am I going to tell Liz?"

"Nothing." Mr. Kaplan instructed him. "You are not to tell Elizabeth anything!"

Tom shook his head. "How can I not tell her?"

Mr. Kaplan countered. "How can you tell her?"

Tom didn't have an answer.

"Elizabeth never needs to know. Leave her with her hope, Tom. With her dreams for your baby girl."

Tom looked torn, but only for a moment. "You're right." Tom nodded and wiped at his runny nose with his bloody, broken hand.

Mr. Kaplan warned him. "Tom, if you love her, if you truly love her, you'll keep your distance from her. One look at your face and Elizabeth will know."

Tom realized she was right. The full, true horror of the situation hit him. If he wanted to protect Elizabeth from the truth, he would have to walk away from her. "Oh God! Why did you bring me here? Why would you show me this?"

"I don't care about you, Tom." Mr. Kaplan admitted. "You're not my concern. You never were. I don't even like you. I never have. It was my idea and your screw up with the phone, but Raymond and Elizabeth, they didn't deserve this."

Tom agreed – or more accurately, he half agreed. "Liz doesn't deserve this."

OOO

Kate wasn't ready to let the foot go. She was still very attached to it - after all, she'd had it for as long as she could remember.

So upon further consideration, she had decided not to be the first to break character.

Instead, she would take a risk and make one last attempt to save the foot by seeing just how far he was willing to take his harmless woodland recluse act. She didn't need him to take the leg iron off and keep it off – she just needed him to keep playing the part of the concerned rescuer and move it to the other leg so that she could see where he kept the key.

After liberally, but carefully applying the sap from the stems of the wild turnips, she had had to sit on the floor to reach the sunlight that filtered through the gaps in the cabin's poor construction.

She had been creeping along chasing the sunlight for the better part of the morning.

She was taking a chance leaving the mattress where her weapon was hidden, but her latest hand-me-down skirt and blouse had no pockets in which to conceal her weapon and it wouldn't do to give the game away prematurely by being caught red handed. To use it, she would need the element of surprise.

Usually, she had some warning of his imminent arrival from the jangling sound of the dog's collar.

They'd never been given a proper introduction, but then she suspected that much like herself, the dog had never been given a proper name by her rescuer.

Today, he must have left the dog somewhere because today, his return came with no warning.

Seeing her on the floor with her ankle red and blistered in the area where the metal clamp went around her ankle, he put down his rifle and her latest bouquet to hurry toward her. "City mouse! What happened?"

Feigning ignorance, Mr. Kaplan said nothing. She just shook her head.

Leaning down, he examined her ankle as best he could with it half covered by the metal.

He admitted. "We need to get that off of you, but ..."

He looked at her with open admiration.

As he reached out to caress her cheek – her scarred cheek – with the knuckle of one finger, Kate found his what he made seem to be genuine affection wholly unsettling. "I've been searching, wanting to find someone like you for such a very long time. You're so small and you look like you would be so dainty, but you're not. You're just so full of grit. I don't want to risk losing you."

Kate forced down her revulsion to reply. "You won't lose me. I'm not going anywhere. Where would I go? I've been here with you all this time and no one has reported me missing or come to look for me."

Raymond hadn't even sent anyone to bury her or otherwise dispose of her body.

She found his smile at her answer chilling. "No, if they haven't noticed by now, no one is going to be coming looking for you."

Kate tried to further assure him. "I don't have anyone else. Just you."

Seemingly satisfied by that answer, he stepped back. He took the key down from a top a cabinet just out of her range - a cabinet so tall that even he had to reach up and blindly grope to find it.

As he left to retrieve it and while he was returning with it, he kept talking. "City mouse, there's something that's been bothering me for a while. Now I know I may be just a little old country mouse who doesn't understand these things, but ..."

His voice started out in that sickly sweet tone but then it changed. It started to have that cruel edge to it that Kate had detected a few times before – the times she should have cried out and didn't.

" … since when does a cleaning lady wear designer suits and Hermes -"

Her advantage of surprise wasn't just gone – she'd never had it.

Kate didn't wait for him to finish. Scrambling to her feet from the floor, she tried to dive back to the camp bed to where her makeshift weapon was hidden.

He still had the height and weight advantage.

He simply grabbed her tether and yanked her back. She had to make due with the only weapon at hand. Picking up the chain still attached to her foot, she wrapped it around his neck and darting behind him began to pull.

It was a little Princess Leia/Jabba the Hutt, but if you apply the proper pressure to the carotid artery, unconsciousness can occur in as little as seven to twenty seconds.

But he was a bit more mobile than Jabba. She dodged his first few enraged attempts to get her, but there was a reason that fighters were separated into different weight classes in boxing and mixed martial arts. Unfortunately for her, he only had to make contact once and it was over.

tbc

A/N So my recent internet search history includes how long to strangle someone to achieve unconsciousness, how long does it take after death for the bruising caused by the process of burking to become apparent, and can cadaver dogs distinguish between a dead human body and a dead animal.

If I stop posting updates could someone kindly come post my bail?

As always, reviews would be greatly appreciated.