Author's Note: So this ended up longer than I thought it would, meaning that instead of one chapter left to go, I now have two. But I'm happy to say that I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it won't be more than two after this. Chapter 111 will be the last one.
Thank you, as usual, to everyone still hanging around for this, and especially to Ansku and Camila. Without you guys, I would have trailed off at about chapter 50. Still trying not to trail off at chapter 109. :p
"Are you sure you don't wanna come in?" Kurt hesitated as the cemetery entrance came into view, the rest of the team a few steps ahead of him. "They can handle it on their own. They know who they're looking for."
Conflicted, Jane shot a quick glance at the undercover agents ahead, who were already on their way inside to pose as groundskeepers. Then she offered Kurt a weak smile, shaking her head, then reaching up to adjust the lapel of his black mourning suit.
"It's okay. I started this. I should be here to finish it."
Kurt lingered a moment longer, and though he didn't speak, Jane could sense the phrases running through his mind. He'd already tried to persuade her earlier this morning. Mayfair wouldn't mind if you were there. If she knew you were at her service, she'd know everything else you've done since she died. She'd forgive you, Jane.
She might have given in—to offer him moral support, and to say a final goodbye—if not for the way Mayfair's death was still burned into her memory. Her betrayal. Her anger. Her final, agony-choked words.
I just wish I could be there to see his face when he finds out what you really are.
Mayfair hadn't even known the full scope of what Jane had done, or what her family had planned to do. But she'd known enough, and she'd died fearing for the lives of her people, even though her last words had been cruel, rather than pleading.
"Text us if you need more backup, Jane." Patterson laid her hand on Kurt's arm. "We should get going. Everyone's waiting."
Kurt brushed a kiss over Jane's forehead, then stepped away. "Good luck."
"You, too."
Jane hung back, pretending to examine the merchandise displayed in a store's window, as Kurt, Patterson, Reade and Zapata went on ahead.
A minute later, she finished assessing her surroundings and carefully made her way inside the cemetery, sticking to the outer borders until she reached the memorial garden and chapel. Satisfied that she hadn't been noticed by anyone who mattered, she crouched within sight of the chapel's entrance, hidden between an overgrown gravestone and one of the memorial garden's walls.
One of the doors was left ajar—an invitation to any latecomers and potential eavesdroppers. A sign nearby gave permission for Mayfair's mourners to enter late, but warned everyone not there for her memorial service to respect the loved ones' boundaries by staying away.
Normally, the chapel doors would just have been closed during the service. But this wasn't just a memorial service. It was also a trap.
At least it's a trap we're laying, not one we have to walk into, she thought wryly, pushing the comms earpiece into her ear.
Another first for a mission: the comms weren't for her to receive and send updates. She had her phone for that. This was a one-way feed, and it allowed her to listen to the service without actually being there. If it had been a less risky operation, two-way comms would have been far safer and more efficient, but they only had one target—unskilled in combat, unlikely to be armed, and unaware of their intent.
She sent a quick text to the agents a few yards away, confirming that she was in position, as the organ music—clear through her comms, but faint to the ear without her earpiece—came to a stop. After a moment, Kurt's voice followed, welcoming everyone to the service, and thanking them for coming. He followed that by introducing himself, explaining that he now held Mayfair's job, and that had thought of her as a substitute parent.
He also explained that there'd been a long delay between Mayfair's death and the FBI being able to declare her dead, and inform her family and friends. He apologised for that, adding that a case vital to national security had led to her death, and that revealing it sooner would have led to many more deaths.
Understatement of the year.
"It feels a little odd to be referring to her as Bethany; I think at least half of us here today just called her Mayfair—Special Agent Mayfair, then Deputy Assistant Director Mayfair, or some variation on that. But it must seem even more jarring to the people here who just knew her as Bethany, so I'll do my best."
Jane smiled sadly, scanning the chapel grounds for any new signs of movement. Aside from an elderly couple at one of the plots near the exit, and the undercover agents, who were pruning rosebushes and clipping hedges, nothing stirred.
"Some of you might be wondering why we're having the memorial at a chapel, even though there's no pastor here today. For anyone who doesn't know, Bethany was raised Catholic, but in her early forties, when she divorced her husband to begin a relationship with a woman, the reaction from her pastor, her family, and a lot of her friends… It wasn't what she'd hoped for. She told me once that she still believed there's a God, but she was done with organised religion. When we were planning this service, we considered a few options, but this seemed like a good compromise."
Jane hadn't known that, though she was willing to believe Remi had, before she'd taken the ZIP. Remi and Oscar had dug their claws deep into Mayfair's life, before the woman who'd died in Jane's arms had ever met her.
"After most of her family disowned her, she made a new family. She had a big heart, and she collected people. Put her trust in us, forgave us when we screwed up, and she made us worthy of that trust."
Jane couldn't help but nod in agreement, and she imagined a lot of people in the chapel would be doing the same.
We took you in…
Mayfair's habit of trusting her people had enriched so many lives—but it had also led to her downfall. She'd never been naïve, holding herself back a professional distance from Jane while she waited for the bigger picture to emerge, even as Kurt and the team had let her into their lives. But how could Mayfair have foreseen Remi's treachery if she hadn't even met her? Even Jane herself hadn't seen the consequences of her actions, and she'd been the one committing crimes under duress. Sandstorm hadn't played fair.
Hot tears of grief stung Jane's eyes, but she stubbornly blinked them away. She had to remain alert, or else stop listening to the service.
"When I first joined the FBI, Bethany was my supervisory agent—not my partner, but the head of our team. I thought I knew how law enforcement worked, and how things would be. She started taking those ideas apart the first day I met her, forced me to look at things from other people's perspectives, not just my own. She still had new things to teach me, right up until the day she died. She was a mentor, a friend…" His voice broke. "She was family."
Jane tried to swallow the painful lump in her throat, her heart breaking for him. She wanted to rush inside the chapel and throw her arms around him—but even if she hadn't had a job to do, the thought of Mayfair's gathered loved ones all laying eyes on her at once made her shudder. Aside from those with clearance for the Sandstorm case, no one would know Jane had been there, and had failed to save the woman they were gathered here to mourn. But Jane would know, and the guilt would crush her.
Kurt cleared his throat. "That's enough from me. Marcus?"
Jane scrubbed a tear from the corner of her eye, as a man Jane had never met began to speak. He introduced himself as a close friend of Mayfair's, who'd adopted her dog, Felix, after her death. Maybe Felix was in the chapel, too.
As Marcus read a few stanzas from a poem about the loss of a dear friend, the screen of Jane's phone lit with a text message. Immediately, her focus sharpened.
Woman matching suspect's description approaching from east entrance. Dark brown jacket, black hat, shades. Please confirm ID.
Jane sent a swift response that she'd let them know, then shifted her position, watching and waiting. One of the undercover agents working on the landscaping headed past, making for the hedge closest to where the suspect would appear.
The cemetery was large, and it would take a couple of minutes of walking to reach the memorial garden from the east. As Jane waited, tense and watchful, a new voice diverted her attention back to the service.
"Bethany Mayfair was amazing. I wanted to work with her from the first time I heard about her." Zapata's words were sad and wistful. "They say you should never meet your role models, but Mayfair— Bethany—she lived up to the expectations I had, and more. She wasn't perfect, but nobody is. And she didn't give up on people unless they were truly beyond hope. That meant the world to me, and I know a few other people here feel the same way."
A figure appeared, and Jane immediately recognised her target—and not just by her face, which was half hidden by a large pair of dark shades. The woman had always moved furtively to and from their meetings, Jane remembered—shoulders hunched and head lowered, as though her very existence caused her shame. Now her posture was much the same.
Still, she waited rather than coming straight out of hiding, sending a quick message to the agents lying in wait. 99% sure of ID. On the approach.
Their target hesitated at the edge of the courtyard in front of the chapel, glancing nervously towards the landscaping agents, who were good enough at their jobs to seem absorbed in their tasks, paying no attention to the lone woman. Jane took advantage of her distraction, swiftly and silently moving from her covering shrubs to the thick tree trunk just behind the target.
Through her comms, Reade's voice was a temporary distraction. "Bethany Mayfair was the first person of colour to rise so high in the New York Office of the FBI. I remember standing in the same room as her for the first time, and she just had this presence, this competence—"
Jane regretfully pulled the comms earpiece from her ear. She wanted to listen to more, but her moment had come.
The target walked across the courtyard to the chapel door, resting a hand on the sign that temporarily bore Bethany Mayfair's name. From her position, she'd be able to hear the service, though she was out of sight of any of the mourners within.
A good place to grieve alone—or it would have been, if not for Jane, who quietly approached from behind, stopping ten feet away.
"Sofia." Her voice emerged icier than she'd intended, made brittle and sharp by her grief for Mayfair.
Sofia Varma snatched her hand back from the sign with a panicked gasp, spinning guiltily to face Jane. She only relaxed slightly when recognition flickered across her face. "Remi."
"No. I'm Jane." She would never be Remi again. "Shut the door and step away. I don't want them disturbed by this."
Sofia's gaze roamed to Jane's hands, then lingered nervously at her hip, where her holster rested. Yeah, I'm armed. You're lucky I'm not pointing my gun right at your head. But I don't need it. You were never a fighter. Compared to Remi and Oscar, you were barely even a schemer.
Once she was convinced Jane wasn't about to attack, Sofia nudged away the wedge holding the door open. It swung quietly closed, blocking any sound of their conversation from the people within.
"Part of me can't even believe you had the nerve to show up here," Jane told her. "But part of me knew you would."
Sofia must have been cut out of the loop soon after Mayfair's death—maybe she hadn't even been told Jane had been there, when Oscar had shot Mayfair in the back. She didn't look as though she really understood what the implications were of Jane not being Remi, even though she'd met Jane just after Mayfair's arrest.
"I just wanted to be here, to remember her. To say goodbye." Tears came to Sofia's eyes. "I thought she'd run away with me, when I came back—after she realised someone knew about Daylight, and Carter was dead. Oscar said that if she chose to run, you'd let us go. That you just wanted Bethany away from the FBI—out of the country or in jail, it didn't matter to you. But she still wouldn't come with me."
"Of course she wouldn't." Jane couldn't keep the contempt from her voice. "Did you even know her at all? I worked with her for a few months, and I could have told you that. You were her lover. You should have known."
"I never wanted her to die." Sofia looked utterly lost. "That was never part of the plan. Oscar said she found the warehouse. She shouldn't have been able to find it. She should have been under house arrest."
"She traced your cigars. She got her team to trace the number you gave the tobacconist back to the warehouse. And then she went looking for answers." Maybe it was a little merciless, but Jane wanted this woman to know the extent of her involvement in Mayfair's death.
"Oh, dear Christ," Sofia whispered, the blood draining from her face in horrified realisation. "It was my fault? Oh, Bethany…"
As she began to silently weep, her hand pressed to her mouth, Jane risked a subtle hand signal to the nearby agents. They abandoned their cover and began to approach. As a consultant, Jane didn't have the power of arrest that full agents did—if she'd managed to bring Oscar to the FBI, it would have been a citizen's arrest at best, a kidnapping and delivery to the NYO at worst. Not that she'd managed either.
An unexpected voice cut into the conversation. "We'll take it from here, Jane."
Jane didn't dare take her eyes off Sofia, in case she missed the signs of an impending escape attempt, but she wanted to turn and stare. "Nas?"
Sofia desperately wiped away tears, her panicked gaze darting from the FBI agents on the courtyard periphery to Nas Kamal, who stopped at the edge of Jane's field of vision. Unlike Jane, Nas had her sidearm drawn and aimed at Sofia.
"What are you doing here?" Jane demanded, although she already had her suspicions.
"Daylight was an operation run with data gathered by the NSA. Sofia Varma is the only wild card still living. We're taking her into our custody." Nas gestured to the NSA agents behind her. "Sofia Varma, we're from the National Security Agency, and you're under arrest. You have the right to remain silent"
With the NSA and redundant FBI agents all watching Sofia, it was safe for Jane to confront Nas. "Kurt's not gonna like this. He wanted to interrogate her, for Mayfair."
Nas shrugged. "He can submit a request to the NSA. I won't block it. That'll have to be good enough."
"You killed Bethany and Carter, and now you're selling me out. I can't believe I ever trusted you," Varma said, barely struggling as the cuffs clicked around her wrists. She seemed drained of all energy, dully resigned to her fate.
"I might look like her, but I'm not the same person you made a deal with. I didn't know I was targeting Mayfair until I saw her arrested. If I had, I would have gone straight to my FBI team and told them the truth."
"You had two weeks after she was arrested, up until the time she was killed. Why didn't you go to your precious team then?" Sofia glared at her. "You were protecting yourself, just like I was. Don't pretend you're any better than I am, Remi."
Jane could only stare at her, guiltily speechless, as Nas stepped between them. "Let's get her back to the office."
The NSA agents began to lead Sofia away, while the FBI agents joined Jane, looking perplexed. "Are we just gonna let them take her?" one of them asked.
"I don't think we have a choice," Jane said, then called, "Nas!"
Nas turned, as though she'd been expecting it.
"You know how I feel about black sites," Jane said, through gritted teeth.
"You won't have to worry," Nas replied, and resumed walking.
Jane wasn't sure if the implication was that there'd be no black site, or that she'd never know if there was a black site, but she'd have to let Kurt argue it out with Nas later. Today was for Mayfair.
"You guys should head back to the office," she told the agents, and began walking numbly towards the cemetery exit, and the subway.
Sofia's parting words had hit on the one thing that weighed on Jane the heaviest about Mayfair's fate—those two weeks when she'd known what she'd done, but had said nothing. If she'd just told her team…
But she'd kept quiet. Her own selfish, fearful desire not to lose what she'd built at the NYO, and with Kurt, had led to disaster. Mayfair had been murdered. Jane had lost everything she'd been trying to hold onto with that cowardly, confused fortnight of silence, and she still could hardly believe the team had allowed her to win their trust a second time.
Maybe true atonement for her sin of silence would have been to be left friendless and alone, for the rest of the Sandstorm case and beyond—but Jane couldn't bear to think how she could have survived the past few months without her team.
At the edge of the memorial garden, she turned to look at the chapel once more.
I'm so sorry, Mayfair. Rest in peace.
Author's Note: I loved my Mayfair, and I'll forever be bitter that she never got to be at Jeller's wedding, or get any real knowledge of who was targeting her, or why. Mayfair would have punched Madeline off the face of the Earth. Let's pretend that's really what happened.
Anyway...next up is Jeller later in the same day this chapter was set in. I'm not entirely sure yet, but there might be smut.