Chapter 14: for Reese instead; Greer in the middle;
Airspace over the Atlantic, late December, 2014
Little by little Shaw was aware of the sounds around her: the low vibration of the jet engines, someone talking to one of the flight attendants in the back, a wrapper torn open and the crinkle of the cellophane. She opened her eyes slowly and looked around her. The jet was full tonight, every seat taken by passengers flying for the holidays. It was night now and the aisles were empty, bathed in the glow of soft blue light.
Next to her, Reese was sitting up in his seat, eyes half-closed, and she could hear his breathing – faster, deeper than normal, as though he were caught up in the middle of something, dreaming of something – or someone. The sound of his breathing had wakened her.
She'd seen Reese disturbed like this – before, when things were bad, after Carter.
Shaw remembered it too well; the curse of having a memory like hers - back when they weren't even sure he'd survive the night – that first night, when they'd found him barely standing, pointing a gun at the man who'd ordered the hit. Reese was so close to death that night - he'd collapsed just after they'd found him, with the gun in his hand and his target still alive. And Shaw remembered Harold down next to him, kneeling on the floor at his ear, imploring Reese to stop.
But his arm came up with the gun in his hand. They could see the struggle in his face, to hold it steady, to stay alert: this one last thing, must do this one last thing, for Carter. Shaw remembered the clicks, as pull after pull, the click from no bullets chambering - none left in his gun to fire.
The gun wobbled in his hand and dropped down to his side. Useless. It was over. Reese was done.
They'd rushed him to Harold's library office, where the desk and computers were pushed to the hall - swapped for a hospital bed and trauma room. If they'd had any hope of saving Reese they'd need it - one just like the one where Shaw had trained.
When Reese went missing, shot in the same ambush with Carter, there was no time to waste. They could save him, but only if they found him in time. He'd gone dark, chasing the men who'd shot Carter. One step behind, they could just catch a glimpse on surveillance. Single minded, pushing himself to find them, he was bleeding to death in pursuit. Shaw readied a room. If she could find Reese in time, they'd have a chance to save him.
And when the room was ready, she'd gone looking, too, looking for the hit man just like Reese - find him, find Reese. This was brute force, the kind she'd have to keep from Harold. She needed answers, and needed them fast. No time for finesse, no time for mercy. Time was running out.
In the end, it had taken every skill of a surgeon-friend of Harold's to save him. So close, he'd been so close to death. They could have lost him a couple of times that first night, his pressure dropping and his heartbeat erratic - but he just kept coming back. Not because he'd wanted to. It was almost as though something was pushing him back from the other side each time he'd let go.
That first night was the rockiest, up and down in a tug of war between this world and the next. But then, after that, Reese steadied. By the next night he'd started to show signs that he might make it. Shaw took over from the surgeon then and stayed at Reese's side for days.
So anxious to lighten his sedation. Shaw hadn't let on to the others. She needed to know if his brain was still working. After losing that much blood and crashing over and over that first night, it was possible his body had survived, but his brain hadn't. She'd begun titrating the dose down as fast as she'd dared.
That was a mistake.
When Reese started to wake, she was sitting next to him in her chair in the early morning. She remembered his body jerking a few times, and the sound of it woke her. She reached out with her hand to settle him. But he bolted upright in the bed, and reached around to his IV lines in one motion, grabbing them up and ripping them out with one hand. She could see it in his eyes. He didn't know where he was, or what was happening. He only knew he had to get away.
Reese went wild, thrashing, striking out at anything around him, throwing them off him when they tried to stop him. On his chest and side, fresh blood started bleeding through the dressings in the struggle. He was too dangerous to leave him awake like this. So she'd knocked him out again, stabbing him with a syringe in his shoulder, enough drug to bring down a racehorse. And then she'd kept him under like that, for days, until she could try again.
At least she had her answer. He was in there. Vile, cursing all of them, out of his mind with grief. But he was in there. She was relieved.
Shaw gave him the one mercy she could, keeping him under for a few days with the meds – to give him some small measure of peace in his grief.
Fever had come next, and Shaw wasn't surprised. Before they'd found him, he'd tried to stop the bleeding himself with whatever he could find – grimy dish towels stolen from the back of a Chinese takeout, taped over his wounds with strips of duct tape. Reese hadn't cared. He'd just wanted to live long enough to find his target. After that, he'd find a place to rest - and whatever happened, happened.
The surgeon had had some choice words when he was undoing the mess. He'd complained to Shaw, shaking his head, cursing as he cut away the duct tape and found the filthy towels underneath.
The fever raged all day and through the night, Reese drenched in sweat, shivering and moaning until, finally his fever broke. An hour passed with no fever, then two, and three. Just a small rise that night, but the worst was over. Shaw would sit at his side, watching him then, the slow rise and fall of his chest with his breathing, and the quiet tracing of his heartbeat on the monitor next to his bed. He looked peaceful at last. And gradually, over days this time, she'd lightened him up until he was awake again.
He was different this time. Sullen. Angry. Mute. He didn't want to talk. He would barely eat. His world had collapsed out from under him and Reese had lost his way.
Shaw had no idea how he got well enough to stand, but he seemed to will himself to do it. He wanted out, and the only way to do it was to stand.
Those were the days when she'd first noticed him breathing like this, his face twisted, his body jerking each time he tried to sleep, as though he were re-living the ambush over and over.
Painful progress. And then, as soon as he could stand and walk, he vanished.
Shaw frowned. That had been one hellish time. For all of them. It seemed so long ago, but just a year and a half had passed. So much had happened in that short time. She'd watched him – measuring him against the man she knew before. He was too quiet. Brooding. Reese was not the same man when he'd come back to them.
When she thought about it, it was different for Reese than the rest of them. He'd had something special, some kind of deeper connection with Carter – and when that connection was broken, the fire had gone out of him. He was lost, alone in an exile of his own making.
In the glow of the blue light Shaw watched his face. She wondered if he was thinking of Carter again. He'd seemed different lately, like something was on his mind. Reese hadn't come back that night, after he'd left the safehouse to go get Bear. She'd thought it was odd that he'd left so late that night.
He was gone all night and most of the next day. And then, when he did come back, he was alone – Bear was nowhere to be seen. Something was up, she thought, something that he wasn't talking about.
She couldn't quite get it yet, but Reese seemed different somehow.
Maybe it was his eyes, she thought. Yes, that was it.
There was a look in his eyes that she hadn't seen for a long time.
Shaw had always had trouble reading people that way.
How was she supposed to know what their eyes were saying? Everyone else seemed to know how to tell, but not her. So often, she'd tried to read people's eyes – and usually she guessed wrong. Her condition. It was part of her condition. She just couldn't guess what people were thinking. Not by reading their eyes, anyway, or their faces.
And because she couldn't read them well, she'd never learned to react the way they'd expected. It was hard for her to do. She had to stop everything else she was doing – concentrate completely on that one thing. It was exhausting to do it. And way too much trouble.
But people seemed to need this from her, expect this, this one thing that she couldn't seem to do. Sometimes, it made her want to shoot something, or wreck something, from the frustration of it. So, she'd discovered early in her life that it was better if she didn't stay around people. Then she wouldn't have to try to figure them out. It was safer for everybody.
Shaw leaned back in her seat and let her mind drift as she watched Reese's face. They'd been through some tough times together lately – the two of them run off the road together in their SUV, dragged out, taken by the Zheng to Queens. And when the two of them woke up, soaked with buckets of cold water thrown on them, they didn't know where they were. But soon, it was clear.
She was stretched out on a long table, face down, tied by her hands and feet to the table. And she remembered turning her head, seeing Reese hanging by his wrists from ropes in the ceiling.
Seeing him like that – something went off inside her; that same thing that had made her sit by his bedside for days after Carter. It made her have that sound in her voice – like a threat, like a challenge to the Zheng. She hadn't cared at that moment what would happen to her. She would take it. And they'd responded to her taunt in just the way she'd expected, punishing her, slapping across her skin with a wooden stick. Here was something she could understand. Combat.
But instead of stopping her, it only made things worse. The stinging slap incensed her, steeled her, and more words poured out in another taunt. Followed by another slap across her bare legs with the stick, harder this time.
If the Zheng thought this would break her, they were wrong. She was prepared to do battle with them, make them come for her. But in the end, they went for Reese instead.
When she looked back at him in his seat, he was awake, watching her.
"We're over France now," she said. He sat up a little higher, looking around him. And then he straightened his seat a little more. He twisted the top off a small bottle of water, offered her a sip, and then downed the rest.
"We'll be there by noon, and then we can check on Finch. I talked to one of my men yesterday. They found Finch wandering around in a building across the street from Grace. He was alone. But if they hadn't followed him in, Greer's people would have grabbed him."
"What was he doing there?" she asked.
"Don't know. He didn't say," he said. She was silent for a little while. And then:
"How's Bear?" She didn't look at Reese. She wanted to concentrate on his voice, instead. She knew his voice – how it sounded when he was serious, when he was joking, when he was mad, and when he was lying.
He hesitated for just a second, and his shoulder twitched.
"I left him at the Vet," he said. She nodded, like it was normal conversation, and sat back in her seat.
Dakar, Senegal, late December, 2014
A taxi had come for them once they'd cleared customs, with documents brought on-board by a man from the U.S. Embassy. He had brought their papers, passports, a thick envelope full of cash and three suitcases. The suitcases he'd left in his car, but the rest he hand-delivered to Greer on board the Argos.
The taxi wound through the streets, away from the docks, toward the high-rises gleaming in the sun. The three of them were silent on the trip, and then they exited slowly when the cab pulled in front of their hotel. Inside, fans whirled overhead in the high ceilings, moving the air in the bright white lobby. Their bags were whisked up to their rooms, and Greer picked up his mail from the desk. Soon, they were shown to their rooms, Greer in the middle, with one of the women on either side.