Author's Note: In which Jeller cuddle and plan things. I totally just want to wave a magic wand and get this case over and done with, but since I was the one who turned this into a case-fic, I'm the one who has to see it through to its potentially disastrous conclusion before I can get Jeller home. Here's hoping I don't stall again before I get that far! Thank you for reading along, as always.
By the time Shapiro declared it was 'time for bed', Kurt was thinking longingly about grabbing him and beating his head against the table until it broke—either the table, or the guy's head; it made no difference to Kurt.
He was ushered back to the floor of the warehouse that contained the kids' cage—how the hell did these people sleep at night?—and tried not to look in their direction. At least, not until he heard Jane's voice, softly addressing the children.
As they got closer, he craned his neck to catch a glimpse of his wife, rationalising that it was what the stalker ex-husband he was pretending to be would do in the same situation. Truthfully, he just needed to check Jane was okay.
She left the cage a moment later, shooting a long-suffering look at the guard at the door. "They should behave tonight, but if they don't, come and get me, okay? No point terrorising 'em—it just means more noise and maybe more injuries."
"You got it," the guy said, looking as bored as if he were guarding eight sacks of potatoes, instead of eight scared, sad children.
Jane looked up and saw him approaching. Her eyes lit up, but she quickly put on a scowl and sighed. "Oh, great. Did they tell you about our sleeping arrangement?"
It was the only thing that had stopped Kurt from going crazy and trying to take out the entire crew of traffickers on his own. Knowing he was guaranteed a long period of time to brief Jane on the plan—at least, as much of a plan as the team had come up with before he'd told them he wasn't waiting any longer to go in and help his wife—had given him reserves of patience he'd otherwise struggle to find.
He grinned at Jane. "Don't worry, honey. Maybe we can use the time to reconcile. Don't you think you've been apart from me long enough?"
Jane cursed under her breath and beckoned for him to follow, then stalked towards a passageway on the opposite side of the warehouse floor. Kurt noted the camera that slowly swivelled from one side of the hall to the other, centring on the door Jane shoved open.
"This is where we're sleeping. Your cot stays on that side. My cot is on this side. You don't approach my cot while I'm sleeping for any goddamn reason, you got it?"
"But what if I need to cuddle for warmth?" Kurt asked sarcastically, following her inside.
Jane made an infuriated noise and crossed to the filing cabinet in the corner of the room. Using a key, she unlocked it and pulled a toiletry bag and pyjamas from the top drawer. "I'm gonna go brush my teeth and get ready for sleep. When I come back, you can go in. Then the guards are gonna lock us in all night, so if you need to pee, you're just gonna have to hold it."
Kurt glanced towards the door. Finding no guard watching them, he turned back and winked at Jane as he said, "I'll just go in the corner."
Jane let herself laugh silently, her eyes shining with amusement. Then she pulled her pissed-off expression back into place. "The hell you will! Try it, and I'll cut off your balls with my nail clippers, I swear to God!"
She stormed back out into the hall, while Kurt didn't have to feign his wince.
Jane seemed to take forever to get ready for bed, though he was pretty sure it was part of her feigning reluctance to spend the night locked in with him. When she came back out, Kurt made sure to complain about women and the time they took in the bathroom before he went to prepare for bed himself.
Someone had even managed to find a spare toothbrush for the unexpected new recruit. Might still die before this mission's over, but at least I'll do it with good dental hygiene, he thought, wishing he could find the gallows humour more amusing.
Once he was done in the bathroom, he returned to their designated room, where a guard now stood in the doorway. Jane was curled up under a blanket on her cot, facing the wall.
"I'm back, baby. It's just you and me, all night long."
"Are you talking to the guard, or your hand?" Jane sniped, not turning over.
Kurt couldn't help but grin, and covered for himself by saying to the guard, "She still loves me. This is how she shows she cares."
"Listen, I'm the one who has to sit in the next room all night, so how about you two keep it quiet tonight, okay? I don't wanna hear arguing, I don't wanna hear fucking—"
Jane gave a loud, derisive snort.
Kurt clapped the guard on the shoulder. "Thanks for believing in me, man."
"Whatever." The guy sighed and stepped back from the door. "I don't care if you sleep, argue, fuck…hell, you can kill each other for all I care. Just do it quietly."
He shut the door before Kurt could say anything else. The lock clicked into place, and footsteps retreated, though not far.
Jane rolled over on her cot, while Kurt gestured to her that they should keep the charade going for a few more exchanges.
"Come on, Penny, you're really gonna make me sleep all the way over here?" Kurt sat down on his cot, wishing he could just shake off the deadbeat ex act and pull Jane into his arms.
"Damn right, I am. I almost died today because of you. Least you can do is let me get a good night's sleep."
Kurt gave an exaggerated sigh. "If I let you sleep all night, can I take you out on a date?"
Jane paused, then said, "How about you let me sleep all night, and tomorrow I'll decide?"
"You're just gonna say no," Kurt complained, gesturing to his wife that they should bring the conversation to an end.
"It's either a solid no tonight, or a 'let me think about it' until the morning," Jane snarled back. "Go to sleep, Mark."
Kurt groaned. "Fine. Sleep well, baby."
They sat for a couple of moments, their attention split between the locked door and each other, listening for any signs of movement from outside. Then Jane slid off her cot, crossed the room and sat beside him on his, whispering, "I wish you hadn't come, but I'm so glad you're here."
Kurt wrapped his arms around his wife, burying his face against her neck for a moment, then positioning his mouth close to her ear. "Hey, I waited a whole twenty-four hours before I came rushing in to rescue you. How're you holding up?"
Jane held him tightly, taking a deep breath, then letting it go in a shuddering sigh. "Not great. God, Kurt, those little kids… They're so scared. They miss their moms and their dads. They just want to go home."
"We're gonna get them home. Every single one of them," Kurt vowed, hoping he wasn't being overconfident. "And if any of these bastards survive the takedown, we're gonna make sure they're locked up for the rest of their lives."
Jane kissed his shoulder. "You always know what to say. Thank you."
Wish I didn't need to.
"I'm so sorry about all the things I had to say earlier," she whispered. "And the questions they asked us… I know this can't be easy for you."
"It's okay. I'm sorry, too." He drew back to look at her, cupping her face in both hands. "Anything to get us home safe, right?"
"Right," Jane agreed sadly, touching her forehead to his. "Us and the kids. Ugh, I wish I could have spared you this case. They're Bethany's age. You shouldn't have to see this."
"Neither of us should." He knew Jane loved Bethany as fiercely as if she were her own daughter. Not to mention, a case with captive children must be bringing back memories of the orphanage for her, even though she and Roman had been older than the kids here right now.
Jane sighed. "Yeah, I know. But still…I hoped I could get in, take advantage of a hole in their defences, and be out again before you got back from Portland. I know you've always hated cases with kids."
His thoughts had been swinging back and forth between Taylor, Bethany, Jane and baby Avery all day—his mind was exhausted from keeping up the charade of being Mark Mason, and from keeping the horror of what was going on in this facility from the forefront of his brain. Knowing that his wife had tried to spare him this case gave him new strength, and further renewed his belief in their relationship.
It meant the world to him that she'd wanted to protect him from this, though she had her own child-related trauma to battle through. And if he could have done the same for her, he would, without hesitation. Even if it meant he had to suffer in her place.
"I love you so much," he murmured, stroking her cheek with his thumb.
Jane closed her eyes and leant into his touch, a smile touching her lips, though she looked on the verge of tears. "I love you, too."
Kurt gave her a lingering, tender kiss, then held her close, stroking her hair. For a few minutes, they remained that way, drawing strength from each other, but as the faint sound of a child crying came to them through the closed door, they straightened. Kurt saw the same determined anger in Jane's eyes as he felt in his own chest.
"We might not have much planning time tomorrow. I'm not supposed to want to be around you, and you don't want to push Shapiro too far by looking like you want to slack off to come and bug me." She shot him a pleading look. "Please tell me the team are standing by, and there's a plan."
Half of one, at least.
"We're gonna have to improvise a little, but only until your original deadline of noon tomorrow. That's when the strike teams are hitting this place, and they're trusting us to get the kids out of the line of fire by then, and as much incriminating evidence as we can secured."
Jane considered, looking worried. "I know where Shapiro keeps his log book—it's got everything we'll need for a prosecution and to take down the guys at either end of the chain. It's locked in a filing cabinet in his office; should be pickable, but the cameras have prevented me from getting time alone in there. With the kids so vulnerable and me being new, even taking one camera out was too risky."
Kurt nodded, storing the new information with what he'd learned of the operation and premises that day. "As soon as Shapiro learns there's a raid, he'll go straight for the log book and try to burn it. We'll have to come up with some reason for him to be away from his office, and for you to be near it, as our backup arrives. You pick locks faster than me, and you know where to look, so I'll be the distraction."
"I don't like this," Jane said. "There's too much we don't know. We'll somehow distract everyone, and grab the logbook, and shield eight terrified toddlers at the time of the raid? Just the two of us, defending ourselves with whatever we manage to scrounge up?"
Kurt relaxed slightly, glad to be able to deliver a little good news.
"There's been a development since you went in. Patterson's been chatting with one of the drone pilots who works on the top floor of the NYO, and long story short, they flew a drone carrying a remote-controlled car onto the roof of the warehouse."
Jane blinked. "Uh…okay."
"The car's got a video camera embedded in it. They remotely removed a vent cover from somewhere up there, and long story short, we have eyes in here—and a way to get the kids out before the raid, if we can manage it."
She heaved a relieved sigh. "Thank god for Patterson."
Kurt knew exactly what she meant, but couldn't help himself. "So I come in here risking my life to help you, but it's thank god for Patterson?" he murmured, not bothering to conceal his amusement.
She nudged him affectionately. "Come up with a way we can get all eyes away from the kids for long enough to get them out, and I'll revise my statement."
"That's still up in the air, but Patterson's shorting the video cameras out just after one in the morning. They might not let us out to help search the warehouse, but on the other hand, they might. And if they do, we can try to come up with something we can use tomorrow."
Jane frowned down at their joined hands, deep in thought. "But if they don't?"
"Patterson will hopefully find a way to cause a distraction tomorrow, an hour before the raid. And I'll try to come up with something to get you to that log book unseen." Jane still looked doubtful, so he delivered the really good news. "There are weapons waiting for us at the escape route for the kids. We won't be able to get out through there, but the kids will, and Patterson had the radio-controlled car drag a bag of weapons up the tunnel to the hatch."
Jane sagged with relief. "That makes me feel a lot better. Assault weapons?"
"And handguns, and a couple of smoke grenades each. I know—thank god for Patterson."
"Have you found the tunnel entrance from the inside? How far from the kids' cage is it?" Jane asked.
That was the not-so-great news. "Same floor, but the other side of the warehouse. There's a hatch in the floor. It was partially covered by crates, but I moved them back. The weapons are there, easily reachable, but I didn't have time to grab anything before the guy with me came back."
"And they just left a child-sized exit unsealed? That doesn't seem like this group. They're cautious to the extreme," Jane said.
Kurt grinned. "They didn't. It was welded shut until Patterson had one of her gadgets apply a plasma torch to it. Only had to give it a couple of hard tugs, and it opened."
At last, Jane managed a smile. "Okay, so we have weapons and a way out for the kids. We can't get them out until just before the raid, or the guards will notice. Maybe we can get one or two out without them noticing – have the rest of the kids bunch up together so it looks like there might be a couple more sleeping in the middle."
Kurt nodded. "We need some way to get the kids to trust me before the raid. I could try to hang around outside the cage in the morning."
"There's always a guard outside the cage, day or night. No one wants the job because the kids' diapers smell, plus they're noisy when they get upset. You could volunteer to be the cage guard, make it seem like you want to sleaze on me some more. Then I can point you out to the kids."
Kurt kissed her temple, unable to help himself. "What if I do wanna sleaze on you some more?"
She laughed under her breath. "I think you've been playing this role a little too long already. But you can sleaze on me all you want when we get out of here."
"Good. 'Cause ever since I heard you went dark yesterday, I've been trying not to think about you dying before we get to share a bed again." The words came out more seriously than he'd meant to say them.
Jane's expression softened in response. "We're gonna get past this. This mission, and this thing with us."
"I know." Maybe they were fooling themselves, and tomorrow would see them both dead, along with the kids they were supposed to be protecting. But they had to have hope. Hope would keep them fighting.