Chapter Thirty Five
Action Commenced

When Rick and Kate walked into the small diner, Kate nodded her head toward the booth where former Detective John Raglan was sitting. He had obviously seen much better days. He had sallow skin and sunken, hollow, haunted eyes.

Rick could tell that the man was sick...very sick. He barely resembled the photo of him that was on his smart board. He knew the side effects of chemo by heart. He could tell the man had gone off the meds fairly recently too, as his hair was only just starting to come back. Alexis had looked very much the same in the six weeks between the first and second courses of chemotherapy when the oncologist had called a stop to the injections to run tests to see if they had been working.

Her eyebrows had grown back first, but later, he remembered his little girl looking like she'd just gotten out of boot camp. He had bought her sailor dresses to wear out of the house and camouflage outfits to play laser tag in to help her keep her spirits up. For a few short, blissful weeks she was his happy energetic little girl again. Sadly, it wasn't been meant to be.

He did his best to school his features, though. He wouldn't allow his own grief to intrude on this opportunity for Kate to finally get some answers. Answers that killing Dick Coonan last year had denied her. It took all of his willpower to clamp his traitorous emotions down hard.

In spite of being in her own personal hell, Kate noticed the faraway look on Rick's face as he studied Raglan's features, certain what they were reminding him of. The painful, heart wrenching memories he had been trying so hard to put behind him so he could live again that she could plainly see were being dragged to the front of his mind. She took his hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze, saying "Are you ok?" and "I'm here." all in the same gesture. She knew it probably wasn't enough.

She could chart the sea change when he closed himself off and his "Special Agent Rodgers" persona that she so hated to see, yet understood its necessity so well took hold and with it all emotion disappeared from his body language. She both envied him and pitied him for his ability to turn all of his feelings off.

As they eased into the booth across from Raglan, he noted that Kate wasn't alone, and didn't miss the noticeable bulge under his jacket.

"Lady, what part of no cops didn't you understand?" Raglan said quietly but firmly.

"He's not a cop," Kate replied just as firmly.

"Well who the hell is he then, because he's pretty well armed." Raglan shot back.

"He's someone I trust a hell of a lot more than you." Kate replied, as the waitress walked up with the decaf pot and offered Raglan a refill of his coffee cup, which he accepted then waved her off when his cup was full enough.

"Tell me what I don't know about my mom's murder." Kate said firmly, trying to bring the conversation back to the reason she and Rodgers were here instead of at Remy's eating breakfast, holding hands under the table and trying to forget that yesterday's fight had ever happened. She was here for answers, not a pissing contest over why she refused to meet with him alone.

Raglan gave her a solemn look and a nod before he began.

"Everybody drinks their coffee out of cardboard cups these days, or those plastic travel mugs." Something about the wistful look on his face caused Rick to place one of his hands on hers to stop him from cutting the man short as he lifted his coffee cup to illustrate his point.

"But this...there's something about the way ceramic warms your hands that.." he chuckles for a moment, "it's weird...the things you notice."

He takes a shallow breath before looking back up at them.

"I just got the long face from the doc...Lymphoma...chemo didn't take...I have six months."

"Sorry to hear about that." Kate replied unsympathetically...now understanding why he'd called her after twelve years.

"Every year around the holidays, they run that Christmas Carol on local TV. When I was a kid, I remembered Jacob Marley scared the hell out of me...forced to drag that that chain around in the next life."

"I wear the chain I forged in life..." Rick began and Raglan's eyes locked on his for a moment, seeing something almost akin to sympathy there.

"...I made it link by link." He finished carefully emphasizing the links.

"I hid a lot of sins behind my badge, and now I gotta carry em." the former detective continued softly, "But your mother's case...that one weighs a ton."

"Because you wrote it off as random gang violence when you knew it wasn't?" Kate asked harshly, anger beginning to creep into her voice.

"I did what I was told to do." he stated flatly, answering her angry scoff with a little flash of his own anger, "But, I kept quiet because I was afraid."

"About a year ago you were held hostage in your precinct, a hit man named Dick Coonan was killed by a federal agent. It was a big deal in the papers...people noticed."

"Who hired Coonan to kill my mom?" Kate asked point blank, trying to get him to get to the point.

"You need some context here." Raglan said quietly, "This thing started about nineteen years ago, before I ever knew who Johanna Beckett was. Nineteen years ago, I...I made a bad mistake...and that started the dominoes fallin'...one of em was your mother..."

Raglan was cut off when the coffee cup he had raised to his lips exploded as a high velocity round penetrated the window, whizzing past Rick's shoulder between the two of them, striking Raglan in the chest before he could continue further. Rick shoved Kate roughly to the floor as he rose from his seat, his weapon drawn.

"Everybody down! Now!" Rick shouted as he pushed past Kate's prone form on the floor to get out of the booth, trying to get a clear sight of where the shot had come from.

When he looked down at Raglan he could tell the man had taken the hit nearly dead center in the chest.

"Kate!" Rick hissed, "stay down, Raglan's hit."

He knelt down to put pressure on the wound on Raglan's chest, knowing the man's chances of living dropped every second as Kate called it in.

"One Lincoln Forty, I have shots fired...on fourth and main I need backup and an ambulance!"

"One Lincoln forty..." came the clear reply from dispatch, "...repeat your last transmission...you are broken...One Lincoln forty, repeat..."

Rick grabbed the radio from Kate and stated coldly into it, "This is FBI Special Agent Richard Rodgers with Homeland Security. You heard damn well what the detective just said! Stop stalling and get that ambulance and backup here now mister, or I'll have you up on Federal charges of aiding and abetting an act of domestic terror! Do I make myself clear?"

The dispatcher on the other end gulped loudly and replied in a shaky voice,

"Affirmative, one Lincoln forty, ambulance and backup are rolling."

As those tense words were spoken, former Detective John Raglan breathed his last. When Rick returned the radio to Kate, she pressed the call button again.

"Dispatch please be advised that this is now a homicide."

When Kate looked up at Rick, all of the color went out of her face and her eyes went wide with terror when she noticed that he was bleeding.