Author's Note: In this chapter: angst, angst, angst! And I'm glad you guys liked my Sarah scene. I enjoyed writing her. :)
"Uncle Kurt? Your cell phone is vibrating."
Weller groaned and opened his eyes to see that Sawyer was holding his phone two inches from his nose. Was it even morning? He'd been dreaming something, but he couldn't remember what.
"Thanks, buddy."
He took the phone from his nephew and glanced at the caller ID. Patterson. Instantly, his grogginess disappeared, and he answered the call in a hurry.
"Patterson. What's up? Are you at work already?"
"It's like nine-twenty, Weller." Patterson sounded amused. "Are you still in bed?"
"If it's nine-twenty, why is my nephew not at school?" Kurt asked, his eyes on Sawyer.
"I have a dentist appointment," Sawyer filled in, as Patterson told him she had no idea.
Sarah appeared in the doorway. "C'mon, Sawyer, let's get going."
As they departed, waving at Weller, he tried to tune in to what Patterson was saying.
"...anyway, are you free to talk?"
"They just left. Go ahead." Kurt sat up, focused now.
"The CIA's only Oregon black site is just outside of Springfield, about a two-hour drive from Portland. It's in the basement of a small construction supply warehouse that looks like it's owned by a shell company. I'll send the location to your phone, but only if you promise you're not gonna run in there alone, without a plan."
Welller was already halfway through getting dressed when she stopped speaking. "When have I ever run in anywhere alone, without a plan?"
"When it comes to Jane, I'm kind of worried about what you'll do. Don't make me be the one to tell Reade and Zapata you're dead because you wouldn't wait for backup. Not after we've already lost Mayfair."
He sighed. "Okay. Let me head up there and do some recon. No point in mobilising backup if there's nothing there. I'll get back to you by lunchtime and we can talk about how to handle this."
Patterson's voice was almost timid. "Please don't make me regret giving you this, Weller. She's been through months of torture already. Waiting a few more hours while we get you the proper support isn't going to make much difference."
"I know. Thanks for having my back."
After leaving a quick note for Sarah, Weller rented a car from a place he'd noticed a couple of blocks away from the apartment. He'd already visited Portland FBI's field office to requisition a bulletproof vest and rifle, drawing some curious questions from the people in charge. The word 'classified' could sometimes be an irritation, but in this case, it had been a godsend. Since he was so high-ranking in the New York office, he'd run into little resistance.
As he drove south, he felt as though a fog was lifting from his mind, leaving him with a clarity of purpose he hadn't felt in months. Finally, he was moving towards answering the questions that had plagued him, towards getting Jane back and having the confrontation they should have had the day after he'd arrested her.
Would she come willingly, or would he have to arrest her again? Since he'd be breaking her out of CIA custody, she'd most likely come with him at first, but once he got her free and clear, what she'd want would be anyone's guess. If he had to arrest her again, though, he damn well would. And this time, she'd be staying in his custody, even if he had to handcuff himself to her to guarantee her safety.
You did this to yourself.
The words from Jane's notebook haunted him. It had been easy enough to categorise her actions as belonging to past-Jane and present-Jane when her actions post-amnesia had been so clearly ethical. Together, they'd righted wrongs, averted catastrophic events and rooted out corruption. It had seemed she shared his passion for justice, which drew him to her just as strongly as his assumption that she was his childhood friend.
But present-Jane had kept things from him, things that must be critical to understanding who she used to be, and what past-Jane's endgame had been in having his name tattooed on her back. If not for Jane's sketch of Oscar, the revelation that the tattoos had been past-Jane's choice wouldn't have bothered him so much. But Oscar tied Jane to Carter's death. Mayfair had been framed for Carter's murder. That tied Jane to Mayfair's downfall, and maybe even to her disappearance.
Weller was no longer able to put present-Jane's actions in an ethical box he could approve of, could no longer be certain that she was worthy of his respect or admiration. And that bugged the hell out of him.
He'd assumed the small warehouse would be in a built-up area, the way the black site in New York had been. Instead, there was woodland nearby, and the place was so out of town that it almost had a rest stop feel.
Weller opted to park half a mile down the road rather than have his rental car stick out as not belonging in the area. The weather was overcast enough that he could wear a jacket over his bulletproof vest, though he opted to take only a concealed handgun at this stage of recon. He kept off the road as he headed back down the hill, hoping to stay off any surveillance cameras the CIA might be monitoring in the area.
At one point, he heard the roar of a truck engine speeding recklessly past on the road, but the trees prevented him from getting a look at the vehicle. Other than that, his walk was quiet.
When he got back to the warehouse and skirted around the side of the building, something immediately struck him as off. The door next to the large shutters was ajar, and he could have sworn there were two cars parked outside earlier, not one. Everything was quiet. Too quiet.
As he approached the door, he heard a soft groan and curse from inside.
"Hey. You're awake," came a male voice.
Weller tilted his head to try to get an angle on what was happening inside. A man in a blue plaid shirt, sporting a split lip, helped an older guy to his feet.
"Shit. What the hell happened? Did we lose her?"
"She took your weapon, made me give her your keys. I was just about to call it in when you started moving."
Despite his anxiety, Kurt couldn't help but break into a relieved smile. Jane had broken free by herself, and he'd only missed her by a few minutes? Thank god she's okay.
The other guy shrugged off his help. "Then call it in! I'm gonna go check on Keaton."
As he lurched out of Kurt's sight, the first CIA operative dug his phone out of his pocket. Almost without thinking, Weller stepped into the doorway, his weapon drawn.
"FBI. Nobody move."
The previously unconscious agent sighed. "We're CIA, asshole. Put that gun away."
Weller's shooting stance didn't waver. "I'm Deputy Director Kurt Weller from the FBI's New York office."
"Oh, fuck. Here we go."
"I have reason to believe Jane Doe was being tortured here. On US soil. In a CIA black site. Illegally. I'm assuming you just lost her, though?"
The unarmed agent sneered at him. "Peters, call it in. Every second he holds us up, she gets farther away."
Peters gave Weller a nervous glance. After a moment of internal debate, Weller lowered his weapon. At least when Jane had been with the CIA, he'd known where she was. Now she could be heading anywhere, and he needed to know as much as possible.
As the agent called in Jane's escape and gave the details of the silver pickup truck she'd stolen from him, Weller noted the license plate in a text message and sent it to Patterson. She sent back an immediate text confirmation, and he made a mental note to buy her a drink when he got back to New York. At least now the FBI and CIA were on equal footing in their search for Jane.
"What happened?" Weller demanded.
"We have no idea," Peters admitted. "There are five of us assigned here. We were up here running the place and making sure no one got too curious about the door no one's allowed to go through. All of a sudden, she just comes barrelling through that door and takes down Rutherford, grabs his shotgun, holds me at gunpoint and demands my keys. I gave them to her. She floored me and by the time I stopped seeing stars, she was gone."
With the two agents in tow, Kurt headed through the door Peters had indicated and down the metal staircase. The large underground room was lit by a single floodlight set in the corner, giving it an ominous atmosphere.
He couldn't bring himself to care about the three men collapsed at various points around the room. While Peters and Rutherford checked pulses and administered first aid to the agents—all three had been efficiently knocked out but not seriously harmed—Weller looked around at the various pieces of equipment stored here. A chair with heavy restraints for both wrists and ankles. A long, knee-high bench with an adjustable tilt—all the better to waterboard you, my dear, Weller thought in disgust. Electrical paraphernalia made it clear that the CIA had been using electric shocks on Jane. A large, sturdy industrial hook hung from the ceiling, and he was pretty sure it wasn't corn syrup that had stained the concrete beneath.
His gaze landed on a waist-high basin filled with water. A crowbar. A baseball bat. A high-pressure hose. With each new discovery, his awareness of the current activity in the room grew fainter, a buzzing in his ears increasing as horror after horror flashed into his imagination.
Jane electrocuted. Jane beaten. Jane powerless to stop any of it.
For a brief moment, he wished she'd killed them all.
He continued through a doorway into a narrow hallway. One door on either side. A bathroom on the left, nothing more than a toilet and basin. On the right, a small, rectangular room with cinderblock walls, an open drainage spout in the centre, and a rusty bucket in the corner.
The room smelled of human waste, sweat, blood. It was chilly and damp, windowless and utterly depressing. There wasn't even a bed.
Weller's jaw ached from how hard he was gritting his teeth. He'd dug his nails into his palms so hard, he'd drawn blood.
Jane. I am so sorry.
"You must be Kurt Weller, FBI." A weary, yet mocking voice from down the hall finally allowed him to look away from the prison she'd had to endure. "Step into my office."
Someone had turned on the fluorescent overhead lights and killed the floodlight in the corner. Kurt wished they'd left the lighting the way it was. At least then, there were things in the room he hadn't been able to see properly.
"What the hell were you doing to her?" he demanded. He was becoming blessedly numb to all emotion, as though his body were shutting off all but the most vital functions so that he didn't lose his goddamn mind.
"The more pertinent question is 'how did we lose her?', don't you think? She was in our custody for three months, and you show up just after she makes a break for it?" The sharp-eyed agent was developing an impressive swelling on his jaw. In a few hours, his bruise would be a vivid purple.
"The only reason I'm here is that you have a leak in your organisation. My people found a list of your current black sites on the dark web. I only knew where to look because of chatter that Jake Keaton—I'm guessing that's you—had been spending way too long in Oregon trying to crack a tough prisoner."
Keaton shot a severe look at Rutherford, who was standing nearby. "Follow up on that."
The older agent left, and Keaton scowled down at something on the floor. Weller realised it was a makeshift weapon of some kind. "This is how she got out?"
Keaton picked up the object, not bothering to use gloves. None of this would ever end up in a court of law. They both studied the length of crude rope and the drain cover attached to it with disbelief bordering on admiration.
"That cover must have been over the drain in her cell," Weller said, remembering the open spout.
"Yeah. It is. And this rope is made from threads from her clothing. For it to be this long, she must have started making it the day she got here." Keaton shook his head. "I'll give her one thing; she's determined. Three months, and I didn't get so much as her name."
"That's because she doesn't know it. This whole interrogation was completely futile."
Keaton sighed. "I thought the amnesia thing was just an excuse, or at the very least, an exaggeration. Maybe I was wrong."
"You were wrong to take her in the first place." Weller had to get out of here before his emotions kicked back in and he killed the bastard. "When I had her in our custody, she wanted to talk. She begged me to listen to her. But I needed some distance and some sleep. I would have gotten what I needed from her the next day if you hadn't taken her."
"Yeah, well, hindsight is twenty-twenty." Keaton touched his wounded jaw and winced. "Even if you get to her before we do, you might not get anything out of her now. I told her you personally asked us to take her into our custody."
Kurt laid him out with a punch right over his developing bruise, not realising he'd planned to do it until it was already done. "You son of a bitch!"
The two black-shirted agents in the room immediately drew their weapons, and Kurt stepped back, holding his hands up. "I'm done. I'm gone."
He left the torture chamber before Keaton could say anything else that would make him lose control.
Upstairs, Rutherford was nowhere to be seen, but Peters was sitting on a cabinet, looking dejected. A twinge at the back of Kurt's mind made him stop in front of the man. "I heard her drive off a good two, three minutes before I got close to this place on foot. She didn't knock you out, did she? You had plenty of time to call it in, but you waited until your partner gave the order. You wanted her to get away."
Peters hung his head. "It was a long interrogation. We got nothing from her. She hadn't committed any crimes that we knew about. I didn't think we'd do anything but throw her in a hole if we caught her. I gave her some extra time to escape. Are you gonna tell Keaton?"
Weller shook his head. "Thank you."
He left without any more discussion, striding back down the road to his rental car at a fast pace to work off some of the numb shock that had coated his mind. Mindlessly, he stripped off his jacket and bulletproof vest, stashed them in the trunk and got behind the wheel.
The slam of the driver's door, shutting out the outside world, unleashed everything he'd been suppressing since he'd descended into that torture chamber. The rage, guilt and grief overwhelmed him, and he wept for Jane, for what she'd been through, and for what he hadn't been able to prevent.
Author's Note: I know, this is all very Kurt-man!pain and not really Jane-centric even though it's Jane's escape. I chose not to write it from her point of view, since we pretty much got that during the first episode of season two anyway. I also noticed a few people asking what I'm going to do with Nas' character/how I'll introduce her. I'm a little bit undecided at the moment how far into season two the fic is going to go. After all, I'm already twelve chapters and 20,000 words in! :)