'Now I've been crazy,
Couldn't you tell?
I threw stones at the stars
But the whole sky fell.'
"The Stable Song" ~ Gregory Alan Isakov ft. The Colorado Symphony
If bliss is as simple as the absence of pain, then life is good. Life is really good.
"Is he coming around?"
"Yes, sir."
"Is it working?"
"You doubt me, Saul? Be nice to the man who's stitching you back together. Yes, it's taking the cop's cranial swelling down."
"I still say we should have drugged or knocked him out for the whole trip."
"That would counteract any medications we give him to the point that he could die. And then where would we be, hmm? Probably in a grave right along with him."
Ed feels worlds better. The smell of leaves has vanished, no Spike in his arms, replaced by a soft surface under his head. Fresh, chemical tinged air vents up through his nostrils and there's the pinch of an IV in his wrist, which must hold some serious painkillers or anti-inflammatory meds for how euphorically relaxed he is.
Did they find us? Is it over?
Ed likes this theory best. The idea that they were rescued while the concussion knocked him out.
Spike should be in the bed right next to him, being fussed over by Greg, probably while Jules badgers them both to go to sleep already.
It's a homey image. Familiar. Comforting in its predictability.
Then Ed tries to move and a creak of leather around his wrists resists him.
When Ed opens his eyes, there is indeed a man on the bed next to him. He's sitting on the edge of it, his shoulder being treated for what looks like a messy bullet wound. Not clean through. The entry site alone is a floret, peeled back by the burn of a rifle bullet.
He's got an IV too, but it doesn't seem to be working, if his tattooed captor's wincing is anything to go by. A Middle Eastern man who appears to be a paramedic, tying off the bandage, nods to one of the pilots who steps out of the cockpit…
Wait.
Pilots?
Ed struggles harder against the restraints tying him to the gurney. He's not in a hospital. He's not even on the ground.
Through tiny cabin windows, Ed watches fluffy white clouds pass by against a glossy blue sky. If he cranes his head just right, green patch work fields span into view, dotted with gold. It's beautiful. It's amazing to be in a fully furnished medical suite on board a private plane.
It's shattering.
"Where are you taking me?" Ed croaks. He's not dehydrated, thanks to the IV, but his mouth feels like cotton balls. Still, a snarl starts up in his throat. "Where's Spike? What did you do to him?"
"Oh, him?" The pilot steps closer, face indifferent. The only slip in the emotionless mask is a hint of disgust when he glances at Tattoo. Then his eyes are back on Ed, mild. "I imagine they're burying that poor boy as we speak."
Ed stops moving. "Excuse me?"
The pilot shrugs. "He's dead, officer. Saul here—" Another glare at Tattoo, apparently named Saul. The pilot's voice is flippant. "—Decided he was too much of a risk, too much of a fighter, and gave him some of our boss's homegrown anthrax. Foolish mistake."
"Can't say he went down easy," Saul growls. He gestures to his arm. "The brat popped one in me."
Any bolster leaks out of Ed at once. He goes boneless, leaning back and huffing through his nose. It does no good. Tears, plump and quick, slip down his cheeks in tandem with the droop of his gut, the forest fire flare of devastation. All that time, the blood, the coughing, the lack of oxygen...Spike was poisoned long before Ed found him, dying from the inside out. Nobody survives anthrax poisoning without intervention.
Spike…oh, Spike…
Ed thinks of his wife, their children. Getting back to them in one piece.
He knows, even with a miracle rescue, which is more fantasy than reality at this point, that Spike's wet, dying breaths will haunt him for life. They're the last memory of their boy he has and something inside him, always rattling for a better way out, for a fight, dies. He can't even fathom returning to 'normal' life after what happened, having left their boy as a corpse in the woods because Ed was helpless to save him. Just the thought of life without Spike, holding a memorial for him, is enough for Ed to want to lie down and never get up again.
The stillness inside Ed's chest doesn't stop his mourning, however.
His captors don't care. They move fluidly around him, not mocking his hitched sobs nor doing much to assuage them.
"Are you in any pain?" the medic asks.
Ed shakes his head, swallowing back yet more tears. "Where are we going?"
The pilot cants his head. He looks almost…peaceful. "To your new home. Saul?"
Saul now has a laptop perched on his knees, an archaic cellphone beside him. "We're almost ready. The connection is spotty while we're in the air."
Ed might have trained, beaten, the bias out of himself long ago but he's not stupid. He notes the ethnicity of both these men, except for Saul.
"Is this about terrorism?" Ed asks. "Taking me to fight for your side?"
All the men laugh, real, surprised sounds. Even Saul.
"Not for us, it's not," says the medic. "Not at all."
Before Ed can ask anything else, a second pilot steps out, this one Caucasian. "Sirs, we're coming in for landing. You'd better strap in—this is going to be a bumpy ride with the field freshly plowed. I would prefer not to stop at all, but we need more fuel to make the jump from so far away."
"That's my cue." The medic locks the wheels of Ed's gurney and double checks the restraints. "Sorry for the barbaric method of keeping you from doing anything unpleasant. We know how well trained you are. If I lengthen one of the straps so you can eat, will you promise not to strangle anybody?"
Ed glowers at him. He's still shaking, reeling from the news of Spike's death. "You're willing to take that chance?"
The medic shrugs. "My orders are to keep you healthy and alive. Eating is priority at the moment. You haven't had solids in days."
Ed is inclined to agree, the room spinning if he exerts himself beyond a certain point.
"Sure," he whispers. "I won't try anything."
Saul scoffs but there's no more talking while the medic hands Ed a thermos of corn chowder, watching with a keen eye—and a gun—while Ed sips at it. There's a biscuit on the side that sloshes in Ed's stomach for a nauseous few minutes, until hunger wins the battle and it sits.
He wishes they'd given him a plastic knife, something, anything to pick at the restraints. He can't even reach his boots.
It concerns him, deeply, that none of them have masked their faces. There's nothing radical or passionate about their behaviour.
It's…professional. Like this is a business trip and not an international abduction. Ed finds he's forced to psyche himself up to even want to try anything retaliatory, for now it doesn't seem as appealing. He's distracted by the shudder of tires emerging from the belly of the plane.
"Hang tight," says the medic, strapping himself into a chair by the door.
Their descent is rough and they haven't even touched land yet.
Ed caps the thermos before it can spill. "Where are we landing?"
Saul stops, looking up at Ed with such hatred in his eyes that Ed's tongue cleaves to the roof of his mouth. "Nowhere you need to worry about. We're not staying long."
Then he knocks on the wall. One of the pilots swivels around in his chair.
"We're ready," says Saul. "The bidding is about to start."
It's an unusual spectacle, especially for a little county hospital like this one.
Though not even lunch time, every last person in the waiting area outside a private hospital room is slumped over, fast asleep. Though fast asleep might be a stretch.
There's lots of dozing and hazy eyes that occasionally blink open and the twitches of bad dreams. When this happens, Jules softly rests a hand on the person's arm until they still.
Right now, to her surprise, it's Sam.
"Honey." She squeezes Sam's taut arm. "We're okay. I'm fine and Sadie's safe."
He doesn't wake, but his forehead smooths.
Sam is a lot like Spike, despite how far he's come. He tends to give people just enough of what he's feeling so they'll be satisfied and back off, his innermost, brittle emotions carefully hidden. In sleep, however, they're not so easy to hide.
Mission accomplished, Jules continues her 'rounds,' a vigil over their team.
Spike's room is tiny, hence why they haven't camped out on top of each other inside it. Spike lies now on his side. The whistle of oxygen feeds up through to a cannula in his nose and on his chart is a new note about another round of antitoxins.
His eyes are closed, roaming around in the throes of deep sleep.
He faded shortly after Leah's bomb shell phone call. The nurse moved him while Greg, Jules, and Sam held a hasty meeting.
Spike isn't in any distress, but Jules lingers anyway, because even stacked against all the bomb calls and all the shootings he's been through, this is still the most bone chilling assault on him yet, at least to her.
She soaks in the fact he's safe like a sponge left in the sun.
Then her eyes catch what he's wearing. Her lips turn up in a soft grin.
The yellow hoodie Sam brought now sits on the bedside table, replaced by an SRU sweater zipped up to Spike's chin since he's perpetually cold, thanks to the blood loss. Jules isn't sure who sneakily brought it along, but it doesn't belong to Spike.
It's Ed's.
It fits Spike's arms, since they're close in height, but width wise the fabric swims around Spike's torso, not helped by the concave stomach that's now disconcertingly underweight. Not lethal, but just barely. His blanket has shifted at some point, revealing a pair of sweats—these are Sam's.
Spike's nose brushes the top of the sweater and even from an arm's length away, Jules can smell the evidence of Ed, his signature whiffs of gun powder and cologne.
The whole effect is that it seems to be keeping Spike's sleep calm. No nightmares yet.
Jules hasn't allowed herself to dwell on Ed too much, the fact she'll probably never see him again. Multiple law enforcement agencies around the world are involved in the case, so it's in good hands. Mourning will have to wait until they get justice and peace for what's been done.
A light tap rattles the door frame. "Has he shown up yet?"
Jules quietly closes the door to Spike's room and then sighs at Greg's question. "Hartford is a ghost, boss. He disappeared after Spike got out of surgery."
Greg steals a quick peek at Spike through the window. "You sure we don't want to tell him the truth?"
"It'll make it worse," Jules insists, like she has every time this comes up. Taking his statement before he fell asleep had been hard enough. "Do you really think it will help Spike to know that Hartford is—"
"Parker?"
They're interrupted by a commotion in the waiting area. Jules goes instantly on alert at the sounds of their team rousing and the growing volume.
When she rounds the corner, she's surprised. Not to see Holleran and Agent Cho, for they have called plenty of times since the plane landed in Pennsylvania, with evidence and ballistics from the chocolate factory still being processed by a federal team…
"Director?" asks Greg for her, his eyes wide.
Director Hartford isn't handcuffed. This doesn't stop him from having the same slumped, defeated posture as any other perp they've cuffed.
He looks dejected. He looks desperate.
Holleran shakes Greg's hand. "Good to see you in one piece, Parker. We tracked our friend here trying to escape onto the interstate. We simply brought him along. Or…brought him back, I suppose."
Sam's eyes are groggy, but Jules can still read them loud and clear when they meet hers.
"Spike's doing better," she says. "No change, though the antitoxin is working."
"You should all be under arrest," Cho blurts, before Holleran can get another word out. "You've nearly started an international relations nightmare over this and I had a top official from Homeland Security call me this morning because of the fact you bull rammed border officers while being shot at!"
"Sorry," says Jules in a small voice, and almost means it. Sam's lips twitch.
Then Damien eyes them all with a burgeoning hint of respect. "But you finally found the safe house location of a known international human trafficker. CSIS, at least, has agreed to call it par."
An older, white haired man stands near the back, flashing a familiar badge. "So has the FBI and our UN liaisons. Director Lazlo. I'll be taking over for Hartford here."
Greg shakes his hand too. "Greg Parker."
"I know who you are." Lazlo cracks a dry smile. "I know who all of you are. We extend our profuse thanks."
"We also got word from our CIs…" Cho looks uncomfortable. So does Holleran, which gets their attention. "There's some sort of bidding war starting on the black market."
Everyone stiffens.
"A bidding war?" Greg asks.
"This is good, right?" Dean's hopeful voice cuts over the rest. He stands from his 'bed' on the chair. "If there's someone to auction, it means Ed is alive!"
Jules hesitates. So does everybody else, all of them too experienced to possess such candour.
Greg finally steps close to his son and clasps his arm. "Not necessarily, Dean. They could be auctioning off a different person or nothing at all, trying to make some money. I'm sorry."
Dean tugs violently out of his father's grip, the adults' eyes following him with worry. His sniffling cuts to Jules' heart. He paces to Spike's window and back, his face grooved where his cheek rested against the back of the chair.
Holleran pulls out a laptop and sets it on the coffee table. He types a few buttons and shakes his head. "It's all encrypted. We have techs working on it, but the bidding site keeps re-writing its own code unless you know the failsafe to key in."
Jules tunes out the shop talk, watching Hartford sink into a chair, hands over his face. After a moment, she sits across from him, elbows on her knees so she can lean forward. Just a hair too close into his space.
When she found out the truth and went to confront Hartford, he was long gone. Perhaps that was for the best—for had he still been present, she isn't sure she would have been able to hold back the verbal and physical beat down she longed for.
Now, Jules feels strangely…
Commiserating.
She gets it. Having had time to mentally place herself in Hartford's shoes, all she feels is a deep sense of pity. She'd probably do the same in his position.
There is no yelling. She doesn't strike him across the face or spit at his feet. No shrieked speech of outrage.
Jules simply waits for Hartford to meet her eyes and says, "He's your son. Saul O'Leary is your son."
Hartford shakes his head with an agitated frown. "No. I trained him from Quantico to his position as an agent. We're not related."
Jules doesn't take back what she said. Having seen how two people who don't share the same blood can become such close family, she knows she's right, for the sorrowful, wrung out love in Hartford's eye is a look she's witnessed many times before, on both of her team leaders.
A weak exhale, too high pitched to sound controlled, escapes Hartford's lips. It's the whine of paper disappearing in a fire, unraveling. Particles dissolving to their original, base elements. "There was a case, one of the first I ever sent Saul on by himself as an agent…undercover at a plant that had suspected terrorist ties."
Leah read Jules the file. She knows what happened.
Jules still asks, "You lost him?"
"He disappeared. Just like that." Hartford's eyes flare. "I was his training agent, his mentor—Saul had a terrible home life and I tried to step in where they'd failed him—and one night he disappeared like he never existed. We searched for years, with no trail to speak of. I eventually gave up and we had a small memorial for him. His name is still on the wall of valour to this day."
"And then he suddenly popped up seven months ago," Jules finishes for him.
Hartford nods. "I thought it was a miracle! A second chance! I could save him like I wanted to five years ago."
Sam jumps in, hovering over his wife's shoulder. He speaks to be heard over Greg and the agents' low murmurs. "Only it didn't work out that way."
Hartford clenches his jaw so hard that tendons pop. It's a tight, primal action. "I thought…I thought he'd simply been kidnapped, held hostage. But there was no ransom demand. No word of him anywhere. Then he appears overseas, in Afghanistan, sporting a new tattoo and working for someone I can't find."
Jules weighs the misery soup in Hartford's eyes and decides he needs to hear it. "Saul isn't like the others, Director. From what we can tell based on Spike's statement, he isn't brainwashed or confused. He knows exactly what he's doing."
Hartford slides his hands over his face again.
Sam's voice hardens a little. "You were never assigned this case, were you?"
"Actually," Lazlo pipes up. "Being so emotionally involved with this case, we sent him on leave three months ago. Which I see he didn't adhere to."
"If you know something, anything," says Jules to Hartford, "you need to tell us."
"You lied to us, to the Bureau. You recognized who the kidnapper was seven months ago and kept it to yourself." Sam's voice climbs. "I'll even bet you were the one who sent out the kill order."
Jules swivels to place a placating hand on Sam's chest. "Honey, calm down. That doesn't make any sense. Sure, he manipulated us to help find Saul but that doesn't—"
"No!" Sam's eyes are deadly now. "He risked all of our lives—Spike and Ed's lives—to find his protégé. That isn't right. We nearly got shot!"
"Sam—"
"No, Jules, he doesn't just get to walk away—"
"We have a dirty agent in the Bureau."
Lazlo's voice stops everyone in their tracks. Even Holleran looks away from his screen to blink, shocked, at the director.
Nodding, satisfied he has their attention, Lazlo points to Hartford. "Your instincts were right, William. This case has been shoved under the rug from the beginning. Paper trails shunted or disappearing. Whoever Saul is working for has an agent, most likely several top ranking agents, in his pocket through that bribing account."
"Or," says Greg, "Saul's boss is an important figure, a sleeping bear no one wants to poke at."
Jules nods before he finishes speaking. This makes the most sense.
Sam is still bristling. "So you mean to tell me that our friends are paying for the FBI's mess?"
Lazlo sighs. "That's not exactly what I meant…"
"And if they do have Ed," Holleran cuts over him, "then we have no way to stop them. This site is unhackable."
Jules wishes he hadn't spoken, for it adds fuel to Sam's already angry fire. His body language is controlled but his expression creases into a glower.
"You did this." He points at Hartford. "You're responsible."
Hartford straightens, eyes sharp. "I did what I had to for my agent. My protégé. You would all take the same steps in this scenario."
"I wouldn't lie to the family of a kidnapping victim!" Sam shoots back.
Hartford stands. "This was my only chance! This was it. Your stolen men were the first solid lead in five years. Was I supposed to throw that away?"
"No." Sam's nose wrinkles in his mounting ire. "You were supposed to go about this the right way—"
"Right way?" Hartford goes red. "There is no right way when it comes to saving people! We do what we have to and that's it!"
Jules steps between them. "Okay. We get it. There's mistrust on both sides and—"
"You never would have found Scarlatti if it weren't for me!" Hartford's volume matches Sam's now.
Holleran jumps in. "Yes, they would have. Dean Parker put this together long before you did. You needed us more than we need you."
"That's rich," says Hartford, "coming from the team that Fast and Furious-ed their way through an international border crossing. Very professional."
The shouting match continues, Sam's hands wadded into fists. Greg limps to Jules' side as backup, trying to diffuse the hostility.
Doctor Lightfoot comes scurrying out to the waiting area. "Folks, if you could please keep it down…"
"We're running out of time," Holleran frets, hardly hearing him. Lazlo joins the commander in front of the laptop. "This bidding closes in an hour."
Lightfoot grabs Hartford's arm. "That's enough, Director. Don't make me call security."
"And if it hadn't been for you," Sam is raging in Hartford's face, "we might have both Ed and Spike in that hospital room right now!"
"What?" Hartford's shoulders twitch. "You're blaming me and not the officer who let his unconscious friend get taken?"
Sam has both hands twisted in Hartford's shirt before Jules can suck in a horrified breath.
It might have come to blows then. Sam wears all the electric eyed fervour of a man ready to round house punch someone in the jaw. Without restraint.
Jules lunges for his reared back arm, for all the good it will do—
"Let me take a crack at the laptop."
