Apologies
by Aria
Disclaimer: They're not mine, but I wish they were, cos then I'd have a different ending to the series.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Three months after twenty-four, a body is found. Includes an alternate 11-12pm, unless I'm psychic!
To 'flamingteen' whose story I flamed on her review page. I apologise profusely (again)
Author's note: Seeing as I haven't seen all of 24, I'm making the day up from what I've 'heard' happens along the way. Whilst I _so_ doubt that this is what happens, I needed to write it so that can deludedly pretend that Nina isn't the mole and I can still watch her scenes and be a little interested in what she does rather than what I know she will do. I have to get this story out before the series finale (please, Fox, even she is the mole, have her not die and then she can come back to haunt them in the next series) so I apologise if it's a little half-baked, also I don't want anyone to tell me if I get the events of the day muddled up, cos I'd like to still have some surprises. This one will be nowhere near the length of 'Nobel Business' and will probably end up not being a shipper fic.
-24-
It was his office phone that rang. "Bauer." He answered, pressing the phone into the crook of his neck as he shoveled papers into his workbag.
"Jack? Hi, it's Harold." Harold Tillman was one of Jack's friends over at the police department, working a precinct quite close to his home. The last time Jack had contacted him was to ask him to keep a look out for Kim, his daughter, when she'd snuck out of the house and subsequently been kidnapped a few months back.
"Uh," Jack was distracted; he was getting late to meet Kim. "Yeah, Harold, what's up?" Harold Tillman preferred to be called by his full name, he led a room full of cops, and preferred to keep his name to impress his age upon people even though he was probably younger than most he came across.
"Jack, we found a body out here, buried at the side of the road, we've done a dental search..." Harold paused here, "can you come down here?"
Jack struggled with the last folder, and turned his case in his hands, checking that the seams hadn't ripped any where on their way round. "What's up?" He asked, really not having enough time to follow a half thought out lead.
"Jack, it's your wife."
Jack was surprised. "Teri's dead." He said quietly.
"Yeah, the coroner says she's been out here for nearly three months, you haven't spoken to her? I know you guys split up, but I still have to bring you in for..."
Jack cut him off, Harold didn't understand. "No, she's dead. Three months ago, it was related to my work, a terrorist killed her. I've buried her body, Harold, we gave her a proper funeral."
"Well, the dental records confirm it's Teri Lynette Bauer." Harold said, his voice no longer quiet and reserved; now he didn't think he was telling a good acquaintance that his wife was dead.
"What are you saying? Somebody dug up my wife's body?" Jack was angry at this, although he wasn't sure why. Jack had always considered a dead body to have no resemblance of the life it once held, this was why he had no problem with the work he did. As far as he was concerned, the body was to be respected until dead as the person, and then it didn't matter. He could only think of a few reasons why people dung up dead bodies. For organs, which would have been possible if the body had been lying on the road for three months, but Teri was an organ donor, and after Nina had shot her, they'd removed all but one lung and her heart, both of which were ripped apart when the bullet tore through her body. They would have dumped the body as soon as they realised it was useless. For DNA, but this was something they worried about more when a top-level agent was murdered, to be used as access for their systems, necrophilia was the last one, and it made him physically sick.
"You'd have been notified by the mortuary if that had happened." Harold stated.
"Is it possible they only did it last night? That they only just dug her up?" Jack was grabbing at straws.
"The coroner said something about bleaching, I don't know, anyway, he says she's been lying here in the sun. Probably died out here." Jack was getting increasingly more confused.
He had a vague idea of what to do. "Okay, um can you do me a favour? Have them do as much of an autopsy as possible on the remains? Find out what's going on? And call 'Greenacres' cemetery. Exhume my wife's body?"
Harold considered this for a moment as Jack made his way across his office and collected his coat and car keys from his locker. "I'll see what I can do." He said.
"Thanks, do you have my cell number?" Jack asked, he wanted to be updated on this; he had absolutely no idea what he was going to find out, what was going on.
"Yeah, I've got it back at the office. I'll keep you posted." Jack thanked him again, and Harold Tillman hung up the phone. Jack placed it back in it's cradle and corrected the collar of his jacket, his gaze passed over the photo on his desk. The photo was about a year and a half old now, taken before Teri died, before their separation, back when he thought she was happy with him, Christmas 1999, a few months after Operation Nightfall, and a few weeks after Kim's birthday, after their wedding anniversary. If she were still alive they'd have been six months short of twenty years together.
-24-
Kim was sitting in the living room when he arrived, eating a packet of potato chips, and watching a preschool cartoon. Her rolling suitcase was next to the sofa, and her carry on bag was stuffed to the brim with magazines, books and cd's. "Sorry, I'm late." Jack said as he leaned over the back of the sofa to kiss her forehead. "Did you eat?" he asked her, making his way over to the kitchen. He opened the fridge and pulled out a tub of chocolate pudding, licking the lid before he grabbed a spoon off the dryer.
"I'll get something at the airport, I didn't feel like cooking." Jack sighed, not relishing in his daughter's dietary choices. He wasn't exactly one to talk, shoveling a pile of chocolate goo into his mouth. She turned down the television and turned so she could see him over the top of the sofa.
He eventually finished up the pudding, dropping both the spoon and container into the bin before he realised what he'd done, he wasn't bothered enough to sort it out right now, and so settled onto the chair next to his daughter, hugging her to him. "When do we have to leave?" He asked as the television show prompted the audience to tell them to walk through a banana field.
"Check in starts at two." She said, glancing up at the wall clock. It was twelve forty and just over an hour to the airport. He kissed her hair, smoothing a few strands behind her ear.
He debated telling her about his unusual phone call, but knew he couldn't until there was some meaning behind it. He settled for squeezing her tighter. "I'm going to miss you." He confessed.
"I'll be back in a month." She told him, "July 2nd, I'll be back so we can do something for 4th July weekend. So book it off from work." Jack nodded into her hair, and settled his gaze on the television. Kim took another handful of chips and swallowed them quickly, spilling crumbs down her top; she brushed them off quickly, and settled back into her Dad's hug.
"Don't bananas grow on trees?" Jack wondered, reaching over for the remote.
"Yeah." Muttered Kim, and then she turned the tv off for herself, she jumped off the sofa and clambered over her suitcase. "I'm just gonna go check my makeup and then we can go." Jack nodded, watching as she walked round the sofa and then out of his view, he stood in time to see her disappear into the bathroom.
-24-
Jack walked back to his car, he was depressed, and for the next month he was going to be living alone in the house he'd raised his daughter in with his wife. He'd become a rather dour person the last few months, constantly depressed. He couldn't help it, every time he looked over at a doorway, or up from the sofa, he'd see little Kim, and younger Teri.
A few days ago he'd woken up and heard laughter in the other room, he was so sure he'd gotten up from bed and seen Kim finger painting at the counter, giggling, and Teri making coffee, trying to keep the paint away from the food and china. In his eyes he could see them, Teri was about to come over and ask how his leg was, and he was going to shrug her off. But Kim had called him, she was getting a lift to school with a friend, and he should get out of bed. He'd had to keep the tears from his voice as he called out 'good-bye'.
He hadn't wanted to confess to Kim about his feelings a lot recently, she was hanging on by as loose a thread as he was, and it wouldn't have been at all helpful. He wanted to let her go to San Diego, see her aunt and cousins. She should enjoy herself.
His cell phone rang and he took a moment to recognise it. He pulled the phone out and answered it, only to have a plane fly low over his head as the voice spoke. "We've got a match." He recognised the voice, as Tony's when he returned the phone to his ear.
"A match with what?" he asked.
"The body that the LAPD sent in? They said you needed this done, and they were backed up." Jack suddenly remembered what Tony was referring to. The body on the roadside.
"A dental match, it's a Yelena Drazen, we pulled her records from Interpol."
"No," Jack was confused, he could feel a headache coming on. "We already had a dental match for that body, look, are you sure its the same one? Where did you get this from?"
"Some mortuary. They said you ordered it exhumed." Tony had even less idea what was going on than Jack did. Between the two of them there was very little logic to the conversation.
Jack finally got away from the jet engine sounds, shutting the car door. "Wait, so you got a dental match on the dead body, from the mortuary to be Yelena Drazen?"
-24-
His mind was reeling. He'd buried Yelena Drazen as his wife and Teri had been found dead just off the road not far from his house. He had to get back in to the office if he wanted to sort this out. He may have posted out, but he needed to find out what Tony knew.
Tony was surprised to see him. Jack didn't bother with pleasantries, he walked past his agent on the floor, and called his name, as requested by the tone of his voice, Tony followed him up the steps. He ignored Tony for the first few seconds as he logged onto the CTU network and told his computer to scan for anything written on or about March 9th.
"Where did you get the name Yelena Drazen?" he asked.
"Well, after super Tuesday, Interpol put everything related to the Drazens on the enforceweb." Tony said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"When we tried Nina, we charged her under the name Yelena Drazen." Jack reminded him.
Tony hadn't been at the Court Marshall and judiciary committee meetings that week. He had no reason to know that. "Could they have switched the records?" Tony suggested.
Jack hadn't even considered that. He ran a hand over his face and then rested his chin on it. "I hadn't even considered that." He admitted. "They found a body whose dental records matched Teri's out on a road near Bell Air. Mulholland drive, where she was abducted from."
"But we saw her after that." Tony remembered, "Didn't she also have a car crash along that same strip? She got amnesia after that."
Jack took a deep breath, exhaling loudly. "When Teri was sent off to the mortuary, I presume no one did any identification exams on her."
"She'd been with us for hours, and when Nina shot her, you pretty much gave us a positive id." Tony told Jack. Jack nodded, agreeing with him, it had been Teri that was shot. "What if they switched the bodies after Yelena shot her?" Tony suggested, correcting himself.
Tony could remember that day in his mind, he could see Nina yelling at him and Jack, telling them they didn't understand, and that they had to keep back. They'd just run out to the parking garage having deciphered a code message on Nina's note pad, it said when Kim was being moved, and had a number which to call. Outside in the garage, Nina was holding Teri at gunpoint, and Jack and he were at a face-off, both their guns drawn but unable to shoot as Teri covered Nina's body.
She was a good shot, and they knew if her finger slipped, Teri would either live her life as a vegetable or die. Teri was sobbing to Jack, asking him to stop her. Nina started saying something to Teri, pressing the butt of her gun into her neck, and then Teri had ducked, trying to faze Nina, who recovered just enough to fire her gun at the base of her neck, Teri slumped to the floor, instantly dead.
Jack fired quickly without hesitation, hitting Nina's shoulder low, collapsing her lung, avoiding her heart by a very narrow margin. Jack had run to Teri, desperately doing CPR, having hit 911 on his cell before he reached Teri. He was sobbing and couldn't stop the simple rhythm, crying her name as he did so.
It still hadn't been absorbed by Tony that she'd been a traitor. His first instinct was to run to her, to support her head as she gasped for breath. The gun was still in her hand, her finger over the trigger, and she had enough motion to pull it, but she didn't. She didn't even try to shoot him, or Jack who was positioned right in front of the barrel. Tony had stripped off his jacket, pressing it over the sucking wound in her chest. He'd cracked a rib with the pressure, but he didn't care. At that point she was still his girlfriend as she was dying.
Teri had been dead from the second the bullet had hit her, but Nina was still alive when the paramedics arrived, and so they took her to hospital, and she was treated, finishing recovery in the hospital wing of Virginia's military maximum-security prison convicted of treason, espionage and multiple murders. Four consecutive life sentences, and she hadn't even been conscious for her trial.
"Unless they switched the records before Interpol released them, we've got a dead Yelena Drazen, so who does that make Nina?" Jack wondered, once they'd both relived the moment they discovered Nina as a traitor.
Tony was bitter, and spat out his words. "Just someone who needed the money." He muttered, and threw a pile of dental x-rays on the desk in front of Jack. "Or maybe that was a handy extra, maybe if she thought that she got rid of Teri then the two of you could be together."
Jack hadn't even considered that possibility. He hadn't thought Nina had even still harbored feelings for him after they split. From her attitude afterwards, he'd presumed she had considered it an interesting interlude in her life, nothing more. She even ridiculed him when he suggested otherwise. He could hear her voice in his head. "What do you want to know Jack, am I over you? And why are we talking about this now?" There were thousands of moments when he'd just thought, if I had killed you then, Teri and Kim would be safe now, having never had their lives threatened. He found it difficult to think of her with anything other than hate, whenever he thought of their affair, he wondered how much calculating she'd put in to it, whether she'd deliberately been upset that night at the conference, whether she'd thought she'd blown it when she'd told him off for kissing her the first time and he'd apologised, whether she'd ever actually enjoyed herself in bed with him, if any of it had been true.
"Where are they holding her?" He asked Tony.
"Maximum security detention centre, Virginia, they're still calling her Nina."
"She woke up?" Jack asked.
Nina had spent a month in a coma from complications from the gunshot wound, pneumonia, bronchitis an assortment of chest infections that they hadn't caught until they became blood poisoning and she stopped waking up in the mornings. "Last I heard, I stopped paying attention about two months ago."
Tony would never admit it, not to anyone anymore, but he'd been in love with her. Maybe, to some extent, that made her betrayal of him even more painful than her betrayal of Jack.
by Aria
Disclaimer: They're not mine, but I wish they were, cos then I'd have a different ending to the series.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Three months after twenty-four, a body is found. Includes an alternate 11-12pm, unless I'm psychic!
To 'flamingteen' whose story I flamed on her review page. I apologise profusely (again)
Author's note: Seeing as I haven't seen all of 24, I'm making the day up from what I've 'heard' happens along the way. Whilst I _so_ doubt that this is what happens, I needed to write it so that can deludedly pretend that Nina isn't the mole and I can still watch her scenes and be a little interested in what she does rather than what I know she will do. I have to get this story out before the series finale (please, Fox, even she is the mole, have her not die and then she can come back to haunt them in the next series) so I apologise if it's a little half-baked, also I don't want anyone to tell me if I get the events of the day muddled up, cos I'd like to still have some surprises. This one will be nowhere near the length of 'Nobel Business' and will probably end up not being a shipper fic.
-24-
It was his office phone that rang. "Bauer." He answered, pressing the phone into the crook of his neck as he shoveled papers into his workbag.
"Jack? Hi, it's Harold." Harold Tillman was one of Jack's friends over at the police department, working a precinct quite close to his home. The last time Jack had contacted him was to ask him to keep a look out for Kim, his daughter, when she'd snuck out of the house and subsequently been kidnapped a few months back.
"Uh," Jack was distracted; he was getting late to meet Kim. "Yeah, Harold, what's up?" Harold Tillman preferred to be called by his full name, he led a room full of cops, and preferred to keep his name to impress his age upon people even though he was probably younger than most he came across.
"Jack, we found a body out here, buried at the side of the road, we've done a dental search..." Harold paused here, "can you come down here?"
Jack struggled with the last folder, and turned his case in his hands, checking that the seams hadn't ripped any where on their way round. "What's up?" He asked, really not having enough time to follow a half thought out lead.
"Jack, it's your wife."
Jack was surprised. "Teri's dead." He said quietly.
"Yeah, the coroner says she's been out here for nearly three months, you haven't spoken to her? I know you guys split up, but I still have to bring you in for..."
Jack cut him off, Harold didn't understand. "No, she's dead. Three months ago, it was related to my work, a terrorist killed her. I've buried her body, Harold, we gave her a proper funeral."
"Well, the dental records confirm it's Teri Lynette Bauer." Harold said, his voice no longer quiet and reserved; now he didn't think he was telling a good acquaintance that his wife was dead.
"What are you saying? Somebody dug up my wife's body?" Jack was angry at this, although he wasn't sure why. Jack had always considered a dead body to have no resemblance of the life it once held, this was why he had no problem with the work he did. As far as he was concerned, the body was to be respected until dead as the person, and then it didn't matter. He could only think of a few reasons why people dung up dead bodies. For organs, which would have been possible if the body had been lying on the road for three months, but Teri was an organ donor, and after Nina had shot her, they'd removed all but one lung and her heart, both of which were ripped apart when the bullet tore through her body. They would have dumped the body as soon as they realised it was useless. For DNA, but this was something they worried about more when a top-level agent was murdered, to be used as access for their systems, necrophilia was the last one, and it made him physically sick.
"You'd have been notified by the mortuary if that had happened." Harold stated.
"Is it possible they only did it last night? That they only just dug her up?" Jack was grabbing at straws.
"The coroner said something about bleaching, I don't know, anyway, he says she's been lying here in the sun. Probably died out here." Jack was getting increasingly more confused.
He had a vague idea of what to do. "Okay, um can you do me a favour? Have them do as much of an autopsy as possible on the remains? Find out what's going on? And call 'Greenacres' cemetery. Exhume my wife's body?"
Harold considered this for a moment as Jack made his way across his office and collected his coat and car keys from his locker. "I'll see what I can do." He said.
"Thanks, do you have my cell number?" Jack asked, he wanted to be updated on this; he had absolutely no idea what he was going to find out, what was going on.
"Yeah, I've got it back at the office. I'll keep you posted." Jack thanked him again, and Harold Tillman hung up the phone. Jack placed it back in it's cradle and corrected the collar of his jacket, his gaze passed over the photo on his desk. The photo was about a year and a half old now, taken before Teri died, before their separation, back when he thought she was happy with him, Christmas 1999, a few months after Operation Nightfall, and a few weeks after Kim's birthday, after their wedding anniversary. If she were still alive they'd have been six months short of twenty years together.
-24-
Kim was sitting in the living room when he arrived, eating a packet of potato chips, and watching a preschool cartoon. Her rolling suitcase was next to the sofa, and her carry on bag was stuffed to the brim with magazines, books and cd's. "Sorry, I'm late." Jack said as he leaned over the back of the sofa to kiss her forehead. "Did you eat?" he asked her, making his way over to the kitchen. He opened the fridge and pulled out a tub of chocolate pudding, licking the lid before he grabbed a spoon off the dryer.
"I'll get something at the airport, I didn't feel like cooking." Jack sighed, not relishing in his daughter's dietary choices. He wasn't exactly one to talk, shoveling a pile of chocolate goo into his mouth. She turned down the television and turned so she could see him over the top of the sofa.
He eventually finished up the pudding, dropping both the spoon and container into the bin before he realised what he'd done, he wasn't bothered enough to sort it out right now, and so settled onto the chair next to his daughter, hugging her to him. "When do we have to leave?" He asked as the television show prompted the audience to tell them to walk through a banana field.
"Check in starts at two." She said, glancing up at the wall clock. It was twelve forty and just over an hour to the airport. He kissed her hair, smoothing a few strands behind her ear.
He debated telling her about his unusual phone call, but knew he couldn't until there was some meaning behind it. He settled for squeezing her tighter. "I'm going to miss you." He confessed.
"I'll be back in a month." She told him, "July 2nd, I'll be back so we can do something for 4th July weekend. So book it off from work." Jack nodded into her hair, and settled his gaze on the television. Kim took another handful of chips and swallowed them quickly, spilling crumbs down her top; she brushed them off quickly, and settled back into her Dad's hug.
"Don't bananas grow on trees?" Jack wondered, reaching over for the remote.
"Yeah." Muttered Kim, and then she turned the tv off for herself, she jumped off the sofa and clambered over her suitcase. "I'm just gonna go check my makeup and then we can go." Jack nodded, watching as she walked round the sofa and then out of his view, he stood in time to see her disappear into the bathroom.
-24-
Jack walked back to his car, he was depressed, and for the next month he was going to be living alone in the house he'd raised his daughter in with his wife. He'd become a rather dour person the last few months, constantly depressed. He couldn't help it, every time he looked over at a doorway, or up from the sofa, he'd see little Kim, and younger Teri.
A few days ago he'd woken up and heard laughter in the other room, he was so sure he'd gotten up from bed and seen Kim finger painting at the counter, giggling, and Teri making coffee, trying to keep the paint away from the food and china. In his eyes he could see them, Teri was about to come over and ask how his leg was, and he was going to shrug her off. But Kim had called him, she was getting a lift to school with a friend, and he should get out of bed. He'd had to keep the tears from his voice as he called out 'good-bye'.
He hadn't wanted to confess to Kim about his feelings a lot recently, she was hanging on by as loose a thread as he was, and it wouldn't have been at all helpful. He wanted to let her go to San Diego, see her aunt and cousins. She should enjoy herself.
His cell phone rang and he took a moment to recognise it. He pulled the phone out and answered it, only to have a plane fly low over his head as the voice spoke. "We've got a match." He recognised the voice, as Tony's when he returned the phone to his ear.
"A match with what?" he asked.
"The body that the LAPD sent in? They said you needed this done, and they were backed up." Jack suddenly remembered what Tony was referring to. The body on the roadside.
"A dental match, it's a Yelena Drazen, we pulled her records from Interpol."
"No," Jack was confused, he could feel a headache coming on. "We already had a dental match for that body, look, are you sure its the same one? Where did you get this from?"
"Some mortuary. They said you ordered it exhumed." Tony had even less idea what was going on than Jack did. Between the two of them there was very little logic to the conversation.
Jack finally got away from the jet engine sounds, shutting the car door. "Wait, so you got a dental match on the dead body, from the mortuary to be Yelena Drazen?"
-24-
His mind was reeling. He'd buried Yelena Drazen as his wife and Teri had been found dead just off the road not far from his house. He had to get back in to the office if he wanted to sort this out. He may have posted out, but he needed to find out what Tony knew.
Tony was surprised to see him. Jack didn't bother with pleasantries, he walked past his agent on the floor, and called his name, as requested by the tone of his voice, Tony followed him up the steps. He ignored Tony for the first few seconds as he logged onto the CTU network and told his computer to scan for anything written on or about March 9th.
"Where did you get the name Yelena Drazen?" he asked.
"Well, after super Tuesday, Interpol put everything related to the Drazens on the enforceweb." Tony said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"When we tried Nina, we charged her under the name Yelena Drazen." Jack reminded him.
Tony hadn't been at the Court Marshall and judiciary committee meetings that week. He had no reason to know that. "Could they have switched the records?" Tony suggested.
Jack hadn't even considered that. He ran a hand over his face and then rested his chin on it. "I hadn't even considered that." He admitted. "They found a body whose dental records matched Teri's out on a road near Bell Air. Mulholland drive, where she was abducted from."
"But we saw her after that." Tony remembered, "Didn't she also have a car crash along that same strip? She got amnesia after that."
Jack took a deep breath, exhaling loudly. "When Teri was sent off to the mortuary, I presume no one did any identification exams on her."
"She'd been with us for hours, and when Nina shot her, you pretty much gave us a positive id." Tony told Jack. Jack nodded, agreeing with him, it had been Teri that was shot. "What if they switched the bodies after Yelena shot her?" Tony suggested, correcting himself.
Tony could remember that day in his mind, he could see Nina yelling at him and Jack, telling them they didn't understand, and that they had to keep back. They'd just run out to the parking garage having deciphered a code message on Nina's note pad, it said when Kim was being moved, and had a number which to call. Outside in the garage, Nina was holding Teri at gunpoint, and Jack and he were at a face-off, both their guns drawn but unable to shoot as Teri covered Nina's body.
She was a good shot, and they knew if her finger slipped, Teri would either live her life as a vegetable or die. Teri was sobbing to Jack, asking him to stop her. Nina started saying something to Teri, pressing the butt of her gun into her neck, and then Teri had ducked, trying to faze Nina, who recovered just enough to fire her gun at the base of her neck, Teri slumped to the floor, instantly dead.
Jack fired quickly without hesitation, hitting Nina's shoulder low, collapsing her lung, avoiding her heart by a very narrow margin. Jack had run to Teri, desperately doing CPR, having hit 911 on his cell before he reached Teri. He was sobbing and couldn't stop the simple rhythm, crying her name as he did so.
It still hadn't been absorbed by Tony that she'd been a traitor. His first instinct was to run to her, to support her head as she gasped for breath. The gun was still in her hand, her finger over the trigger, and she had enough motion to pull it, but she didn't. She didn't even try to shoot him, or Jack who was positioned right in front of the barrel. Tony had stripped off his jacket, pressing it over the sucking wound in her chest. He'd cracked a rib with the pressure, but he didn't care. At that point she was still his girlfriend as she was dying.
Teri had been dead from the second the bullet had hit her, but Nina was still alive when the paramedics arrived, and so they took her to hospital, and she was treated, finishing recovery in the hospital wing of Virginia's military maximum-security prison convicted of treason, espionage and multiple murders. Four consecutive life sentences, and she hadn't even been conscious for her trial.
"Unless they switched the records before Interpol released them, we've got a dead Yelena Drazen, so who does that make Nina?" Jack wondered, once they'd both relived the moment they discovered Nina as a traitor.
Tony was bitter, and spat out his words. "Just someone who needed the money." He muttered, and threw a pile of dental x-rays on the desk in front of Jack. "Or maybe that was a handy extra, maybe if she thought that she got rid of Teri then the two of you could be together."
Jack hadn't even considered that possibility. He hadn't thought Nina had even still harbored feelings for him after they split. From her attitude afterwards, he'd presumed she had considered it an interesting interlude in her life, nothing more. She even ridiculed him when he suggested otherwise. He could hear her voice in his head. "What do you want to know Jack, am I over you? And why are we talking about this now?" There were thousands of moments when he'd just thought, if I had killed you then, Teri and Kim would be safe now, having never had their lives threatened. He found it difficult to think of her with anything other than hate, whenever he thought of their affair, he wondered how much calculating she'd put in to it, whether she'd deliberately been upset that night at the conference, whether she'd thought she'd blown it when she'd told him off for kissing her the first time and he'd apologised, whether she'd ever actually enjoyed herself in bed with him, if any of it had been true.
"Where are they holding her?" He asked Tony.
"Maximum security detention centre, Virginia, they're still calling her Nina."
"She woke up?" Jack asked.
Nina had spent a month in a coma from complications from the gunshot wound, pneumonia, bronchitis an assortment of chest infections that they hadn't caught until they became blood poisoning and she stopped waking up in the mornings. "Last I heard, I stopped paying attention about two months ago."
Tony would never admit it, not to anyone anymore, but he'd been in love with her. Maybe, to some extent, that made her betrayal of him even more painful than her betrayal of Jack.