Ned had a strange sense of déjà vu as he prowled around his hotel room, smoothing the cover on the already-made bed, checking for extra pillows and blankets to use while sleeping on the couch, tidying the month's worth of clutter on his bathroom sink. She had asked him how long they were to use this arrangement, and he had been vague because he himself didn't know; as long as it takes was what he wanted to tell her, but he didn't know how long it would be and he knew that there was little point in leaving their daughters with Hannah while they waited in a hotel room for something to happen. Besides, maybe nothing would, maybe Ned's mere presence would be enough to scare Michael and Jean off, but Ned had his doubts.
He couldn't go home, not like this.
Once she arrived she told him that she would need to return to the house in the morning, because the milk she had left for the babies would last through ten o'clock at the latest and their shrink appointment was for eleven. Her red-rimmed eyes avoided his, and she changed for bed early, into a tank top and flannel pants.
They watched television on the couch in his room, pointedly not touching, but when her tranquilizer started taking effect and her head lolled, he reached over without thinking and led her head to his shoulder. She fought him a little at first, but he was stronger, especially as her eyelashes fluttered.
When he thought she was finally out he picked her up and carried her to the bed, put her under the covers and pulled them over her, sat down beside her and called the front desk for an 8 AM wakeup call. When he hung up the phone Nancy was blinking sleepily up at him.
"Come to bed?" she asked.
He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. "I was gonna sleep in there."
"Please," she said, then yawned, and he could sense no guile or pretense in her. She held his gaze for another long moment, and he finally gave in.
The bedroom was dark and quiet, with only the sound of the air conditioner hushed in the corner, when he turned to her, watched her face for a moment, then cupped his hand over her cheek.
"Nan," he breathed.
"Mmm," she replied, barely moving.
"I'm sorry it had to be like this," he murmured.
"It isn't over," she said. She turned away from him and buried her face in the pillow.
--
Her sleep wasn't easy. She had two nightmares, one on the heels of the first, and when he woke and tried to hush her, he wasn't sure if she was even aware of his presence. After the second one, when he had almost succeeded in comforting her again, she turned her face, eyes closed, toward him.
"What made you come back to me," she asked, her diction slow and lazy from exhaustion.
"I had a dream," he told her, stroking her cheek again. "Go back to sleep."
She had another nightmare and fought him like a cat when he tried to comfort her. He finally wrestled her to her back and pinned her underneath him, her head whipping back and forth, and he kept one hand on her joined wrists and the other against her face as he whispered soft comforting things to her, reassured her that she was safe and he wasn't coming and everything was going to be all right, but she kept shaking, kept keening high unintelligible words that he couldn't understand.
During her third nightmare was when the lock on their door clicked back with nearly noiseless motion; during her third nightmare was when the police detective who had been alerted by Ned's call down to the desk drew his gun and waited; and as Nancy begged her husband not to lose her again, the cop grabbed Michael Delgado as he broke into their hotel room.
--
The cop, Officer Ryan, a friend of Ned's who owed him a favor, called him out of the room to tell him what had happened, to ask what Ned thought they should ask when they brought him down to the station. After Ryan left the room, Ned walked in to find Nancy sitting up in bed, sipping the glass of water he'd left on the table next to her side.
"Nan?"
She looked at him. "He's gone?"
Ned nodded slowly, keeping his eyes on her. "Yeah."
She put the glass down and slid down under the covers. "You just think that," she whispered.
He stood motionless until her breathing evened out, then walked over and watched her until he was sure she was asleep. Then he walked out and placed another call.
--
When Alex Cabot came to work the next morning, among her many voicemails were two messages. One from Ned Nickerson, just wanting to make sure that Jean was still behind bars and not eligible for parole or anything of the sort.
The second was a slightly less coherent call from Officer Ryan's supervising officer.
--
Nancy still didn't entirely trust him.
He wasn't sure how much of it was due to good old-fashioned self-preservation, because of the way he'd had Paul treat her over the past month, his threatening to leave her over a night that he was beginning to believe she had no recollection of living.
He'd wanted it all to be a bad dream. And in a way it was, but in that way the rest of their lives were slated to be a nightmare in themselves.
She was across the table from him, cup of coffee at her right hand, a generous stack of blueberry waffles slathered in syrup before her. She had no appetite, and neither did he. Not for this.
He was seized by a sudden urge to run away with her. Go back home, get the babies and as much as they needed to get by, and the two of them would vanish somewhere. Change their hair, their names, their jobs, all the things that were unimportant, all the facts that didn't change who they were. They knew enough languages like a native that it wouldn't be difficult to hide them in some provincial French town, some busy German city, somewhere, anywhere that he wouldn't dread Nancy picking up the phone and hearing Jean's voice on the other end, powerless to do anything but obey it.
He was tired as hell and her tranquilizing pills didn't make for the most inspired of mornings.
"You're going to leave again, aren't you." Her voice was low, melting into the echoing coffee cup as she took a singularly unenthused sip.
"What?" he asked, surprised that she would come out and say it, and so calmly.
"I said you don't mind if I leave, do you," she repeated, her eyes dull. "I need to go make sure things are okay with the kids before we go see the doctor again. You're welcome to come with me," she said, and at that he saw the first hint of anything near interest in her eyes. A very, very guarded hope.
You coward, he thought. At least you could have told her last night. You could tell her now.
But he couldn't. "Go ahead," he told her. "I have some other things to take care of too, but I'll meet you there."
--
His phone was still silent an hour later. No missed calls, no messages. He hadn't heard anything since he had been informed of Delgado's capture. What he was really waiting on was a call from Alex Cabot, to let him know that even if Jean did still live, at least he was far enough away to do only this limited damage, this flailing of his arms through the bars, instead of the direct interference of his actual presence in their lives. He could still remember his wife startling awake next to him so many times, in a cold sweat, tears pouring down her cheeks, absolutely certain that he was in the room, that he was there, that he was coming, it was only a matter of time, the stubborn insistence that even if Ned couldn't see him that he was there.
And in a way, he had been.
"You're going to leave her, aren't you."
Ned turned his head and met the doctor's gaze steadily. "I've been thinking about it," he admitted.
"Why? She never slept with Michael, and the more recent difficulties in your marriage, the ones that started in the middle of her pregnancy, she's just confessed were influenced by Michael's interference."
"It's not going to stop," Ned said, and hearing the words come across his lips, in his own voice, he knew it was true, knew that all Nancy's whispered warnings had been right. "He's going to send someone else, someone else, someone else, he's going to wait until I'm sick of this and my guard is down and until he's out, until he can be the one. Michael is keeping her for him, but I've taken care of Michael, and now I get to wait until there's another one. A teller at the bank, one of her operatives, one of our friends. I can lock her in our house, blackout, quarantine, make sure she never hears another human voice, sees another human face, but I can't. She wasn't made for that and I can't."
"And that was what you promised when you married her, wasn't it."
Ned slumped down into the chair, his head in his hands. "Then tell me what to do," he said.
"You be the voice," Strathman said. "You be the voice she hears on the other end of the phone."
--
When Nancy breezed in thirty minutes later, she gave them a tentative smile. "The kids are fine, Hannah's about to take them over to your mom's. So, ready to poke around in my head again?"
Ned patted the couch next to him. "How about we talk about what happened last night."
The doctor looked back and forth between the two of them. "What happened last night?"
Nancy didn't remember any of it, especially not the cryptic remarks he repeated back. As they talked Nancy drew away from her husband, her lip curling down.
"And Michael...?" she asked.
"Is being questioned now," Ned replied.
Nancy wrapped her arms around her torso and hugged herself. "Great," she murmured.
"Nan, we... we have an idea," Ned said. "Something that could help, we think."
"I can't do it," Strathman said. "It would be unethical. But Ned has expressed a deep interest in learning how to hypnotize."
Nancy looked at Ned searchingly for a moment. "What?" she asked softly.
He reached up and touched the side of her face. "Let me make sure he never gets in your head again."
--
"Did you ever trust Michael?" Strathman asked, once she was under.
"Not from the moment I met him," Nancy replied.
"So how did he get in?"
Her only response was a faint smile.
"Did Jean make a way for someone else to get in?"
She nodded, but didn't elaborate.
"A word, a gesture, something you would know when you heard it?"
She nodded.
"Where am I right now?"
"You can't get there from here," she replied, and Ned looked at the doctor.
"Did you trust Jean?"
She shivered. "That didn't matter," she said, her voice so low they could barely hear it.
"Do you trust Ned right now?"
She drew her knees up to her chest, her lip drawn down, but didn't reply.
"Maybe?"
"He's lying to me," Nancy said. "Not until he tells me the truth."
Strathman shook his head at Ned. "Do you trust me?"
She nodded. "Mostly."
"Why only mostly?"
"You're his friend before mine."
"Why do you think that?"
She shrugged. "If this doesn't work he'll leave me."
"Do you think that or know it?"
She turned her head, let it rest on her shoulder, the skin around her eyes creased in concentration. "He never thought it would be this way. I never wanted it to be this way. I knew he'd lose patience with it eventually. I knew when Michael took me under the first time that Ned would leave me. I knew it. And he did. If he can't fight it then he's going to give up and leave me alone to face it, and we both know I can't.
"And because I know it, Jean knows it, and Jean is just waiting for Ned to realize there's no way he can win this."
Ned touched his own face and his hand came away damp.
--
"It's not going to be easy," Dr Strathman said. "You've been in here with her enough times, I could teach you to do it right now. But I don't even know what he's left in her head, what kind of minefields we're going to have to go through. And on top of that, Ned, she doesn't trust you, and I can't blame her. Not with what you just told me. Until she trusts you, there's no way she'll even let you in, much less let you be the only one she does."
Ned smiled, bitterly. "And even if I'm the only one who can get into her head, he can still take her away from me."
They heard her honk impatiently from the parking lot, and Ned shook the doctor's hand. "Thanks," he said.
"The hard part's not over yet, Ned."
Because even if I did get her to trust me, she'd still find out about Danielle.
--
Nancy was first home. As Ned was negotiating the turn his cell phone finally did ring, and he grabbed it. Nancy was unlocking the door, although he noticed that she didn't touch the keypad first. He tensed, waiting for the squall of the alarm, but it didn't come. Nancy had made some comment about how Hannah wasn't accustomed to locking a keypad every time she left the house, and packing Amy and two babies into the car probably hadn't helped.
"Ned?"
"Yes," he replied, still staring at the keypad, his door ajar and chiming.
"This is Alex Cabot. I got your message this morning, and I heard from Officer Ryan. Michael talked. Jean was planning a jailbreak, and Michael was going to get Nancy to him before he left the country. Is she with you?"
"Yeah," Ned replied, climbing out of the car.
"When we checked, Jean was gone."
Ned's mouth went dry. "When?"
"He's been gone all morning. Overpowered the guards and walked out. We haven't found any sign of him yet, he's not where Michael was expecting to meet him later today. And as far as Michael knows, there is no way to contact Jean. Where are you now?"
"At the house," Ned replied. He reached back into the car and grabbed his gun out of the glove compartment, locked the car, and began approaching the door. "At our house. Send someone here."
He heard her call something over her shoulder. "They're on the way," she said. "Is he there?"
"I hope to hell not," Ned replied, and pushed open the door.
--
Ned thought he was ready for it. He'd been in the situation once before, after all.
But he wasn't. Not once he took it in.
This is what you would have left her to face alone.
Jean had his left arm up around her neck, gun in his right hand, barrel angled up so that if he pulled the trigger the bullet would travel nearly straight up, neatly avoiding him in the process.
And she...
You would have left her like this.
And Nancy had indeed been here before, but this time her hand was not in a desk drawer, was nowhere near the carving knives or heavy kitchen equipment, that was all on the other side of the kitchen. Her back and his against the island, face pale, eyes wide.
Ned's gun was out of sight, safety off, at the small of his back.
"Shut the door."
His voice was cold and held no charm, but it never had for Ned, anyway. Without looking behind him, Ned shouldered the door closed and deadbolted it.
"Who have you called?"
Ned licked his lips. "No one," he replied. Entirely true.
"Put your phone on the table," Jean said.
Ned reached into his pocket and put his cell phone on the hallway table, then stood motionless, feet shoulder's-width apart, hands hanging loose at his sides.
"Is there a back way out of here?"
Ned shook his head. His entire body felt like it was resounding with the overloud beating of his heart, and his head was painfully full, the way it felt when he was so hyped up on adrenalin that it was hard to think.
All he had to do was wait until the cavalry arrived, he'd thought, but then he remembered the bright idea he'd had just after purchasing the house, to put bulletproof glass in the windows, to replace the door with a steel-cored safety version. Now that Jean was inside the impenetrable fortress, it was up to the two of them to get out of this mess.
He knew by the look on her face that she had nothing up her sleeve.
"Could he have a gun?" Jean asked Nancy, leaning his face in close to hers, so close she could probably feel his breath, and Ned had to fight hard to stay in control. She flinched back from him and didn't answer, her wide eyes on Ned, and when he tightened his grip on her Nancy swallowed and said just audibly that he might.
Jean nodded at him.
When she was in danger, when any of them were in danger, maybe because it had happened so often, they managed to function in seamless tandem, without the use of words or signals. Familiarity that five years apart hadn't been able to break, that a month of joint custody and self-recriminations hadn't been able to dispel. And there was no time for anything, no signals or blinked Morse code or mouthed words.
The deadness was in her eyes. She was reaching for Jean's elbow. If she pulled it down and managed to disarm him, fine; if she managed to kill herself, fine. Leaving their house with him was not an option.
Ned saw the policeman in his black kevlar vest and ballcap, with the laser sighting on his gun, visible through the kitchen window.
He shook his head at all of them, but his eyes were on Nancy. Her hands stilled but did not reverse their course.
faint, he thought.
She blinked. He put his hand behind his back, Jean's grip tightened, the policeman took aim.
Nancy closed her eyes and let herself fall.
The sound of the gunshot was deafening.
--
Simultaneous, as well.
The weight of Nancy on his arm pulled Jean's aim, and when he pulled the trigger the bullet struck the wall near the ceiling instead of Nancy's chin. The two shots Ned fired punched neatly through Jean's neck and his right eye, and before Nancy's knees had struck the floor Jean was dead and she had pulled his corpse down with her.
The roaring in Ned's head reached its highest pitch and began to recede as he walked over to the graceless bundle of warm flesh that had been human and pulled it off his wife, who had released a single scream in the few heartbeats' worth of time. What was left of Jean's head released a warm gout of blood that flooded over Nancy, and she let out a low horrified groan, her eyes wide and staring.
He lifted her to her feet, and she buried her face against his chest, smearing blood over the grey fabric. The policeman at the kitchen window was jarring the glass with repeated impacts from the butt of his gun, trying to get inside. Ned managed to half-stumble and half-drag Nancy to the front door, where he snicked back the lock and let the force behind the pounding knock inside.
She laughed then, suddenly, hysteria at the edge of it, and he lost his grip and collapsed with her against the wall next to the door, she was in his lap, her fingers dug into his shirt at the shoulders, his vision blurring into the marching black legs of the unnecessary hostage rescue team as they cleared the house.
--
She looked like she'd been up all night.
She also looked like an older version of Carrie on prom night. He'd made an effort at cleaning her face, but her hair was matted red with blood, it was in the curves of her left ear, and her eyes were wild, never staying on one thing for more than a minute or two. After a cursory check that confirmed what he'd thought, that she was in shock, and what he hadn't, that the nurse said he had a milder case but one nonetheless, he had loaded her into the car, away from the flashbulbs and the news cameras and the police going over the scene, loading the body bag. He called his parents with the brief message that they were fine, they would be at his hotel overnight, and Hannah could take the kids if they couldn't stay through the night.
Then he turned his cell off.
The clerk's mouth fell open at the sight of her. Her teeth were chattering, and most of her weight was against his arm as he led her to the elevator, up to his floor, into where he'd lived without her. The bed was made, plenty of fresh towels were in the bathroom. He unplugged the phone.
She didn't make any response when he started taking her clothes off. He put her carefully sitting, facing him, on the lip of the tub, stripped off his own clothes, and started the shower running.
"How did we get here," she asked thickly. Her hands rose to her hair, and she winced as she tried to pull a hand through it.
"We came in my car," he said, taking her arm again, until she rose to unsteady feet at his side.
She climbed in easily enough. He was tired, so incredibly tired, all the adrenaline having drained out of him hours before. She was speechless. He washed her hair, gently, three times, the drain running red with it, he went over the inner curves of her ear with a washcloth and the tip of his trembling finger, he traced the line of her cheek and her shoulder blades looking for more of it. When he was finished with her and was standing under the shower head, his face tilted back so the water fell against his scalp, eyes closed, he felt Nancy put her arms around him, lean her face against his chest. He slipped his arms around her and felt her tremble with sobs against him.
They stayed that way until the pads of their fingers were wrinkled and waterlogged, swaying softly, and when he turned off the water she clambered over the lip of the tub, pushed up the lid of the toilet, and sank to her knees, retching. Tears stood in her eyes when she finally stopped, and looked over at him, shivering on the cold tile floor.
"He's gone?" she breathed.
Her husband nodded.
--
She had never been so afraid in her life.
Ned didn't look upset enough. And he was stalling for time. She knew that, just like she knew he was hiding something from her, but she couldn't figure it out. Nothing had been amiss when she'd walked in, nothing to tip her off, and she hadn't even had enough time to scream before he'd grabbed her.
She swallowed against her dry throat and it spasmed, and she almost coughed, but the weight of his arm against her collarbone helped stifle the urge. She didn't want to upset Jean. In fact, a great deal of her mind was occupied by simply ignoring the fact that she could feel his breath against the curve of her ear
(again)
and she could feel the slow, steady beat of his heart against her back, and the feeling of terror those mere facts raised in her. Being so close to him was the panic, the frenzy that the nightmares he had given her caused deep in her chest, times a thousand, so total and consuming that very little seemed to make sense.
Except she knew, somehow, that Ned's presence was the only thing keeping her from losing it completely. Dashing under Jean's arm, finding something sharp and just ending it.
"Ned--"
"Shh," came his reply.
Her chest was tight with terror as she opened her eyes to their dark hotel room. She was wearing some of his clothes but didn't remember putting them on. Loose t-shirt and thin cotton boxers.
He'd made her take the tranquilizing pills the nurse had given her, and she'd held her fingertips over his chest, the vibration of his speeding heart against her skin as he took a half-dose and talked her into laying down. She had laughed but hadn't been able to form the words matching her black amusement, like we're making a suicide pact--
Oh God, it hadn't been a nightmare, it hadn't--
She drew in a breath sharply and his arm tightened over her, pulling her to his side. "Nan, shhh, shhh, it's over," he whispered, pushing her hair back, the stubble on his cheek rough against her skin.
"You killed him?" The tears she thought she'd run dry of were welling up again, nudging her voice up a pitch, making it waver, and she hated the sound but she couldn't stop it.
She could feel him nodding. "Yeah," he breathed.
"Because he was going to hurt me."
"Yeah," he whispered. He pushed his hand in wide smooth circles over her back, until her breathing was slow and even.
She rolled over and he nestled her to him, her back to his front, put his left arm over her and rested his hand on her stomach. She put her hand over his, felt the ring back on his finger, and fell asleep with a smile on her face.
--
Ned was packing the next morning when his cell phone rang.
Nancy was in the bathroom. Ned didn't recognize the number, so he silenced his phone until the voicemail would pick up.
Thirty seconds later he received a text message from the same number, telling him to answer his phone.
He picked it up this time, silencing his ring on its first tone. "Who is this?" he asked.
"You have twenty-four hours to tell her."
Ned flushed and found himself unable to speak.
"If you don't, I will."
He pulled the phone away from his ear, the call ended. All he knew was the voice hadn't been Danielle's. Not that Danielle ever would have done such a thing.
He wondered if Nancy could trace the number for him, then laughed harshly. There was no more effective way of committing suicide, than to have his wife find the number of the person who could tell her--
Tell her what, exactly, some part of him asked. That Danielle kissed you? That you two are friends?
But he didn't believe that. Danielle didn't believe it.
And more importantly, Nancy wouldn't believe it. Because he had to tell her. He had a feeling the voice on the other end of the phone wouldn't stand for any excuses or justification.
Save the deeper, more important lesson, that he would consider leaving his wife to the mercy of those he could not fight.
Nancy opened the bathroom door. "Ready?" she asked, wide smile, the happiness in her eyes unmistakable.
Ned forced a smile, his heart sinking. "Sure thing," he replied.
--
The kitchen had been cleaned when they arrived. The countertop had been a red nightmare, blood had been seeping into the pile carpeting, but all that was left was a suggestion of dampness and darkness in the carpet next to the kitchen. The bullet hole left in the wall by Jean's unintentional shot had been covered over.
Twenty-four hours. "Hey, let's go out to dinner tonight," he suggested, keeping his hands at his sides with an effort. Normally he'd be all over her, flirting with her, touching her cheek, brushing her hair back, but maybe she'd remember that later with fire in her eyes. He fought the urge to go buy a bottle of vodka, wine, rum, something, pour it down her throat, pour his heart out to her and beg her for forgiveness while she was too inebriated to realize what he was doing or deny him.
"Okay," she agreed, looking up into his eyes.
He realized that he wanted very badly to kiss her.
Hannah brought their children back from his parents. To distract himself from doing anything she would make him regret, he took the babies upstairs, put them into their cribs, gazed down at their faces. They were calm. They had been fussy, angry, unable to be consoled for the longest time.
Since he'd left.
He heard his cell phone, but it was distant.
Then he heard the house phone ring.
His heart dropped to his feet. By the time he had pounded down the stairs, Nancy was staring blankly through the French doors, in the direction of her garden, tears standing in her eyes, telephone in her hand.
"Danielle called for you," Nancy said, her voice trembling.
Then she threw the phone so hard that it shattered on the linoleum of their kitchen floor.
