Author's Note: Phew! Finally finished the goodbyes and got Jane out of there. That took a couple of chapters longer than I was expecting! Thank you so much to everyone who's been leaving encouragement/reactions lately. You guys rock!
"And I think that's about enough." With visible relief, Nas added a final document to the pile on Jane's desk. "Unless you can think of anything else?"
Jane glanced at the copied file—an old one from 2007, on CIA/FBI cooperation and taskforce guidelines—and slotted it into a manila envelope with the rest. "I think we're good to go. If I stay here much longer, I won't have much time to stage my kidnapping before I meet Roman."
"And I promised Pellington I'd have a quick meeting with him in Kurt's place, about the Sandstorm operation, so I'd better get going." Nas closed her laptop and picked up her purse.
Jane stood up awkwardly. "I guess this is it, then."
Nas reached out to clasp her upper arm. "I believe you can do this, Jane. You're resourceful and tenacious, and when you set out to get something done, you get it done. Even if your methods can be somewhat…unexpected. I'm sorry I've had to treat you as a potential threat, but I've seen the way things go when that doesn't happen."
"I get it, Nas. Really. Even if I don't like it. And compared to the CIA, you've been great."
"Ouch. Damned with faint praise," Nas said, but she was smiling, and Jane couldn't help but ruefully return the expression.
"Really, though. If not for the immunity you offered, and getting the CIA off my back, I don't know what I would have done, so… Thank you for that."
"You're welcome." Nas shook her head. "Now, be careful. I won't bore you with more instructions; you know better than I do what you're walking into, and what you can handle. But honestly, I think you're our best hope of stopping Shepherd. Maybe our only hope. Tread softly until you know what ground you're on."
Jane nodded. "If I don't come back…what will you guys do?"
"That depends if we have any other leads, from Nigel Thornton or any other avenues. We might get lucky and pay you a visit at Shepherd's compound, or we might stay in the dark until phase two has devastated the country. It's impossible to say."
Jane grimaced. The idea that Sandstorm might succeed, without the FBI having any prior knowledge of her death, was a grim one. "If Shepherd pulls phase two off, assume that I'm dead."
"Hopefully, we won't have to." Nas' face suddenly brightened, and she opened her purse. "On a brighter note—I forgot to mention this earlier, what with all the commotion—I got an unexpected piece of correspondence sent to my office at the NSA yesterday. I thought it was just junk at first—the envelope was full of statistics reports I hadn't asked for, and when I looked into it I found they were all copied off various sources on the internet— but then I found this, in between two of the pages."
She handed over a postcard depicting a mountainous region, with gaudy lettering in the bottom corner spelling out Venezuela. Frowning, Jane turned it over to find handwriting in a messy, masculine scrawl that sent a vague tingle through her memory.
Once she managed to start deciphering the words, her mood lifted a little—the written language was Bulgarian, and the postcard was addressed to 'RB/JD'.
"This is from Cade." She looked up at Nas. "He made it out."
"With your help, yes." Nas smiled at her. "I'm glad I remembered to show you this before you left. I wanted you to see that you're doing good work. I ran it past a friend of mine who speaks Bulgarian, so there's no need to translate."
Jane read through the postcard a second time.
RB/JD—Here I am in Venezuela. Thought I'd send a postcard to let you know I got here okay. Not the ideal place I would have picked for a vacation, but given the alternative, I'll take it. Good luck with the family reunion.—C.
For a moment, she let herself feel relieved at what she'd managed to accomplish, knowing there wouldn't be any more morale-boosting moments like this on her mission. Then a small detail leapt out at her. "It's addressed to 'RB/JD'. He called me Remi at the compound, so maybe—"
"Your last name begins with B, yes. I'd assumed that, too." Nas shrugged. "Just another piece of the puzzle, I suppose. It might help us narrow down the search for Shepherd, assuming you took her last name when she adopted you."
Jane searched her memory, but came up blank. "Yeah, I guess so."
Nas held out her hand for the postcard. "I think it's best this stays in here, under the circumstances, but once this is all over, you can take it home. Remind yourself of the good that came from that upsetting night."
Jane watched Nas pin the postcard to the empty noticeboard on the wall. I wish we could get in touch with him, get more information. He must know everything we need to know. But he doesn't want to be found, and I don't blame him.
"Take care, Jane. You know how to reach us. And you might not be here with us, but you're not alone. We'll all still be working this case from our side, as hard as we can." Nas hesitated, as though she wasn't sure her work here was yet done.
"Thanks," Jane replied, her lighter mood dimming as her mind turned to the future again. "I appreciate that."
Nas touched her shoulder one more time, then left at a brisk walk, her heels clacking across the floor. On the way out, she passed Patterson, who was just returning to Zero Division.
"Hey. Good timing. I was just about to start shutting everything down." Jane leaned across her desk and logged off her computer, then glanced around. "No point taking anything with me that I wouldn't take any other day, I guess. These false records are the only thing Shepherd needs to see."
"Ugh, I'm gonna miss you." Patterson enfolded her in a tight hug.
Jane returned her embrace, tears stinging her eyes again. "Thank you for everything, Patterson. Right from the beginning, you've been such a great friend, and it's more than I deserve—"
"Hey, shut up. You're important to us, and we all want you back safe. Things won't be right until you're home again." Patterson drew away, holding her at arms' length. "I'm sorry I gave you such a hard time about Borden. I was just—"
"Shocked. I know." Jane nodded. "I don't blame you."
Patterson nodded back, seeming reluctant to release Jane from her hold. "We'll take care of Kurt. You just worry about taking care of yourself, okay?"
"Take care of yourself, too. I mean, with him." Jane inclined her head in the direction of Borden's holding cell. "Just because he's asking for you, that doesn't mean you owe him anything."
Patterson glanced in the same direction, her expression unreadable. "We'll see, I guess. If it looks like he knows something, maybe we can play him somehow."
"Like I said—take care of yourself." Jane gave her one last hug. "I should go. I'll…I'll be in touch, I guess."
"We'll be here. Bye, Jane." Patterson sat on the edge of a nearby desk, smiling sadly.
Jane took one last look at the annex, knowing she couldn't put this off for a second longer. "Bye, Patterson."
Jane headed out of Zero Division and towards SIOC, keeping her face as expressionless as possible, though her emotions were difficult to control. She could only hope anyone observing her would think she was suffering from the migraine she'd made up earlier. There might be no more Sandstorm moles in the NYO, but they couldn't take that chance.
Now that she'd said goodbye to everyone who knew she'd be gone, and the work she'd been focusing on no longer had her attention, her mind returned to the primary reason this departure hurt so much. Kurt. I hope you're staying safe out there.
She had so many memories of him in this place, from their first, impersonal meeting to their tearful goodbye.
I'm Special Agent Kurt Weller. I'm the lead agent on your case.
Come back to me, Jane. I love you.
Jane swallowed hard. If she couldn't come back to him—if she died—would he be able to continue on as Deputy Director of this office? If she were in his position, she'd find it too painful. Even now, as she walked through the building for what could be the last time, memories of their interactions kept drifting to the forefront of her mind.
As she'd left Zero Division, she'd remembered the hungry way he'd kissed her during a moment alone, the Monday after their first weekend as a real couple. In the lab, she'd recalled how he'd often touch her hand or brush against her while they listened to Patterson—just little things that told her he was aware of her presence, and glad of it. As she passed the interrogation rooms, she recalled how much she enjoyed joint interrogations with him, working off his cues to get the information they needed from a suspect together.
SIOC held a million different memories of Kurt, but one leapt out at her as she entered today—the flashes of relief and concern in his face, as she'd returned from her failed loyalty test at Jeffrey Kantor's place. They'd barely even been friends at that point, the trust between them strained by the secrets they'd kept and the lies they'd told. But he'd worried about her during her unexplained absence, and defended her to Nas in the annex, when Nas had berated her for not killing Kantor.
He was going to worry so much more now. How many times a day would he glance towards the opening elevator doors, hoping she'd managed to return to him?
She glanced towards Kurt's office, half hoping to see him coming out of it, but through the open blinds behind the glass walls, she could tell his desk was unoccupied and the lights were off. She knew he was still out in the field, so what had she been hoping for? Even if he had been there, she didn't think either of them could stand another goodbye. It had been difficult enough to let go of him after the one they'd already shared.
Recalling how she'd found him drinking in his office, the day he'd realised Shepherd had been monitoring him since military school, Jane almost caved in to the urge to go and leave a message on a sticky note attached to his bottle of Scotch. She couldn't do anything today that she wouldn't do any other day.
Veering into the locker room with a quick smile at a couple of junior agents who passed by, Jane crossed to her locker and paused for a moment. This room was where she and Kurt had shared their second kiss—the first one he'd initiated without her making a move on him first. And this was where he'd seductively kissed her neck after zipping up her dress, minutes before they'd been due to leave on an undercover mission. It was where she'd often laughed and joked with the team as they'd all grabbed their belongings to leave for the day, and where she'd once argued furiously with Zapata about the torture she'd endured, before Kurt had stepped in and given the whole team hell for their unprofessional conduct.
As she pulled her jacket out of her locker, she remembered the words Kurt had spoken in this room, as she'd prepared to meet Roman after her failed loyalty test, when they'd both been half convinced she'd be walking into her own execution. You know who you are. You know what you're capable of. Trust your own instincts.
Those words had often come back into her mind in Roman's car, on the way to Shepherd's compound—comforting, almost a mantra, despite the uneasy, distant state of their relationship when Kurt had spoken them. She got the feeling she'd remember that advice a lot during her time away.
The subway was crowded, the lack of personal space putting Jane on edge. She was relieved to get off at her usual stop—maybe for the last time—and walk the short distance back home.
She let herself into the apartment, then leaned heavily against the door to close it, her sense of dread growing as she looked around. Did she really have to ruin the neat, ordered comfort of the place she'd come to think of as home? Wasn't there some other way to stage her kidnapping?
But those were Shepherd's orders. Trash the place. Make it look like she'd fought back against an assailant. Then leave everything behind.
Jane had the feeling Shepherd was punishing her—for finding a small slice of happiness in the wreckage of Remi's life, or for standing up to her mother one too many times.
Unable to face destroying the room just yet, she crossed the open living space and went into the bedroom, crawling onto the bed and wrapping her arms around one of Kurt's pillows. It smelled like him—familiar and comforting—and her heart contracted with longing.
Please don't make me do this, Shepherd. I need this. All of this. I need Kurt, and the apartment, and my friends, and my job…
She couldn't help but laugh bitterly under her breath. If she actually said that to Shepherd, her mother would pull out her sidearm and shoot her on the spot.
Jane opened her eyes for just long enough to check the clock on the nightstand. She had less than an hour until she was supposed to meet with Roman.
Now would be the perfect time to cry, to mourn what she was about to leave behind, but she couldn't summon any more tears. Her emotions felt like a heavy mass growing in her chest, solidifying with every second that passed. It was hard to breathe.
Things had gone downhill so rapidly. Had it really been yesterday morning that she and Kurt had lain here, snuggled up under the blankets, talking sleepily about the way their relationship felt so right, even though everything else was going wrong?
This morning had been similar, but so very different at the same time. They'd still been reluctant to get out of bed, but mainly because they'd known that once they left it, there was no guarantee they'd be able to curl up together again. Between sex and Jane's nightmares, they'd barely gotten any sleep, but when Jane had realised what was going to happen today, she'd reached for Kurt, choosing one final bout of lovemaking over a few minutes more rest.
Lying here thinking about everything you're losing won't help anything. Jane pushed up into a sitting position and took one long look around her, soaking in the quiet, cosy ambiance of their bedroom, then got to her feet. To kill time, she took a quick shower, using Kurt's preferred brands of shampoo and shower gel to immerse herself in as much of his scent as she could replicate. Then she towelled off and dressed in her favourite shirt—long-sleeved and heather grey—and pair of jeans. If she was going to leave everything else behind, at least the clothing she wore could be comfortable.
She took a couple of minutes to stand out on the balcony, leaning on the railing and watching the world go by, one last time. Then, her spirits low, she headed back inside to assess her final task as Jane Doe, Sandstorm plant inside the FBI.
Both Shepherd and the team had brought up concerns about the way the room needed to be trashed. The FBI CSU, not to mention Patterson, could occasionally find inconsistencies in the way a crime scene had been set into disarray, indicating the mess had been staged, rather than made as a result of a violent attack. Jane had been instructed to stand in the middle of the room and imagine a fight—which moves she'd make and which objects would be knocked over as a result. She wouldn't need to fool Patterson, but if there was a mole in the FBI who read the CSU report, they'd wonder why the team wasn't acting on the information that the crime had been staged.
Jane stood and looked around her for a moment, not with an eye to ruining anything, but just to memorise the room. When Kurt had brought her back to New York from Oregon, Jane had thanked him for allowing her to return to the safehouse, the only home she could remember. Now that she compared the safehouse to the apartment, she knew the safehouse had never really been a home at all.
Stop thinking and start trashing.
"I'm sorry, Kurt," she whispered, then threw herself backward against a cabinet, making several objects on its shelves shift position or fall over.
There was a framed picture of Kurt, Sarah and Sawyer on one wall—the only thing Kurt had said he really didn't want her to break as she wrecked the room. Sawyer had decorated the frame as part of a school project, then given it, with the picture inside, to his Uncle Kurt as a birthday gift. Jane made sure to avoid that area of the room as she circled, mentally dodging most imagined attacks, then shoving items off tables or knocking cushions off the couch to create the illusion of chaos.
Every time something hit the floor, she wanted to cry, and the violence in her movements grew as the frustration of her situation overwhelmed her. The whole thing took less than a minute, but by the time she was done she was breathing hard from exertion, rage and despair.
Damn you, Shepherd. Someday soon, I'll wreck your plans as badly as you've wrecked my life.
The thought didn't change Jane's circumstances, but it calmed her a little.
She turned to check the clock on the wall, and almost tripped over a heap of spilled papers and books she'd knocked off the dining table. As she looked down, she saw a book had fallen open to a page marked with a sticky note, and the photograph on one of the pages caught her eye.
With a sad smile, Jane picked up the book. She studied the picture of Kurt and three other teenage boys, all clustered together, wearing basketball uniforms. Was he still in touch with any of them? He'd been more serious than his peers even as a teenager, barely smiling as the other three were grinning at the camera. She knew the weight of the world had fallen heavier than him than on most kids. He'd once told her he'd broken curfew at school more than once, visiting Sarah at home to check she was safe from their child-murdering bastard of a father—not that he'd used those exact words.
She checked the cover of the book, noticing that it was his military school yearbook. There were several sticky notes protruding from the pages, which Jane assumed marked the sections with mentions of Kurt. She'd tried to help him sift through the paperwork of his early life, to figure out why Shepherd had taken an interest in him, but this book hadn't been one she'd looked through before.
Acting out of curiosity more than hoping to find anything, Jane leafed to a couple of more marked pages in the yearbook. His yearbook quote was, 'I dunno. Find something inspirational and use that,' which made her laugh under her breath. Clearly, he'd had very little time for the yearbook staff.
A lot of teenage girls would have found him attractive, she thought, skimming her finger over his yearbook picture. She wondered if he'd come into much contact with girls, since he'd been at an all-male military academy. The extra couple of decades had aged him like a fine wine, though, and he'd grown into a stunningly handsome man. Sometimes Jane wanted to pinch herself to check she wasn't just dreaming he'd fallen for her.
Rolling her eyes at her own thoughts, she turned to the next marked page, and froze. She'd barely even registered that Kurt was in the picture, making a shot on a basketball court, before a very familiar face jumped out of the crowd in the background. She was watching Kurt with a proud smile on her face.
Did Kurt know Shepherd was in this picture? He must not have noticed, since all he had to go on was the sketch she'd drawn of her mother's face.
I should call him, tell him about this—
Just as she reached for her cell phone, a distinctive knock sounded at the apartment door, and Jane's memory immediately flashed up an image of an identical knock—and herself opening the door, to find a grinning Roman on the other side.
What the hell is he doing here?! We agreed to meet on the corner in twenty minutes!
She looked down at the book in her hands, a vital clue as to Shepherd's identity, if the team could find a lead from this picture. Roman couldn't know about it. She had to hide it.
Quickly, she headed into the bedroom and shoved the yearbook under one of the pillows on the bed, ensuring it was open to the most important page. She wanted write a note to accompany it, but as she frantically looked around for a pen and some paper, Roman's knock sounded again, louder and more persistent.
There was no time. She'd have to hope Kurt would put it together on his own, and that he wouldn't knock the book onto the floor as he discovered it, losing the page she wanted him to see.
After one final check that the book was properly hidden, she ran for the door and threw it open, then dragged Roman inside. "What the hell are you doing here? It's not time for us to meet yet!"
Roman looked around at the mess as she shut the door behind him. "Nice work."
His approval of the destruction she'd wrought irritated her. "Answer my question. You told me you'd be taking out the cameras, so law enforcement wouldn't know I walked out of here without being coerced."
Roman shrugged. "That was the original plan, yeah." He pushed a bowl of fruit off the breakfast bar with a gloved hand, and Jane had to resist the urge to take a swing at him.
"What are you doing? I carefully calculated what needed messing up, based on an imaginary fight with an imaginary kidnapper. You're adding inconsistencies!" She glared at her brother.
He sighed. "Fine. I'll pick it up. You take a final look around, see if there's anything you think we can use."
As he passed her to enter the kitchen, Jane said, "Aren't you worried about leaving evidence for the Feds to find? Hair, clothing fibres—"
"They won't be able to find a match for anything in their databases. Same as they couldn't with you. Shepherd has her ways of getting her people erased from the system." He bent to pick up the apples and kiwi fruit that had spilled from the bowl, setting the container back in its original position before transferring the fruit back into it.
"You'd better hope Weller doesn't wonder why all his fruit is bruised," she muttered.
"Relax. He's gonna be too frantic searching for you, to have time to eat his apples," Roman said. "You manage to lift any documents from the NYO before you left?"
Jane gestured to the envelope on the counter. "That's everything I could copy at short notice."
Roman took the envelope and tucked it inside his jacket pocket.
Jane took a last look at the room, unable to shake the feeling that something was wrong. "Anything stand out as staged to you?"
When Roman didn't reply, she began to turn to face him, her unease growing. As she realised he wasn't where she'd expected him to be, a damp cloth was clamped over her nose and mouth, and the impact made her inhale reflexively, even as her brain screamed, No!
"Sorry, sis," Roman said in her ear, holding her tightly as her body remembered how to struggle. Her senses were blurring, even as she tried to hold her breath against the familiar scent of chloroform. "Shepherd decided it'd be more convincing if I actually carried you out of here. I wanted to at least warn you about it, but she said it was…"
The rest of his words faded as Jane's legs gave out, the world spinning crazily. Unable to fight the chloroform in her system, she lost her grip on consciousness.