Chapter Eleven

It had been three days since they had parted ways. Nearly twenty-four hours into the first day she had finally worked up the courage to try the number he'd left for her. It was silly to think he'd give her a fake number. There was no point in it, but every night since she had walked into that warehouse to find him strung up by his wrists with Tolliver's man beating the hell out of him, Liz had wondered if maybe she had finally cracked. If her mind was so tired of fighting it all alone that it had worked up a way to convince her she didn't have to. If the man that had shown up at her door drenched from the rain was nothing more than a ghost. The longer that she went without seeing him or speaking to him, the more the irrational fear crept in.

Tom had answered though. He'd been distracted and a little snippy - clear signs that he was deep into whatever he was doing - but he had answered. They hadn't spoken long, but the sound of his voice had helped to ease some of those darker fears back into the shadows. She slept that night. Not well, but at least she slept.

Liz tried to focus on her own case. The situation with Petrov was worse than they'd thought. Reddington believed that he was linked to the Cabal as well as the KGB. He was tight-lipped about the details, but whatever he'd told Cooper was enough to convince their boss that it should be top priority. He wasn't saying that who Tolliver was or what had happened to Tom's memories weren't important questions to ask, nor was he telling them to drop the research into the Sikorsky Archive, but national security came first, and when the Cabal was involved they all knew how dangerous life could get.

"I think Tolliver can be useful."

She could almost feel Ressler swivel to give her the have-you-lost-it look. "She's not who you thought she was."

"So? Neither was Reddington and he's pretty damn useful most days."

"You're not playing Reddington," Park stated and Ressler turned the quirked eyebrow on her. He was going to get stuck that way if he wasn't careful. Park held her hands up in mock surrender. "Okay, but there's a difference in not telling him everything and letting Tolliver think she still has you fooled."

"She lied first," Liz argued.

"I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm just saying it's dangerous. I mean, I may not have been here nearly as long as the two of you, but I know the name Katarina Rostova. I knew the kind of stuff that they say she was responsible for. If Tolliver is Rostova, but isn't your mom, then you're playing with fire."

"Just another day in the life," Liz sighed. "She knows about this man though. More than Cooper does and more than Reddington will admit to. I'm in her confidence, and if I read her further into this -"

"You may end up jeopardizing the case," Ressler pointed out.

"You think she's Cabal?"

"I think we don't know what she is," Ressler grumbled as he took a heavy seat into a chair at an unoccupied desk in the War Room where they'd gathered around. "Park's got a point."

"Thank you." She turned to look directly at Liz, the levity of her tone sliding out of her expression. "I'm just saying, maybe you shouldn't go alone."

"She doesn't know either of you. I'm not sure I want her to."

"So take your husband," Park offered with a shrug. "She knows his face, knows his connection, and he's less of a threat legally."

"It would make it easier to explain," Ressler agreed, almost like he hated admitting it.

Liz sighed. "He's tracking down Ilya."

Ressler pushed a frustrated sounding breath out through his nose. "It'd give you an excuse, Keen. Call him."

She looked over to find both partners staring at her expectantly. "I can't. I promised him that I'd help him get his memories back, but Orchard hasn't even called me back. I can't leave her another message, but if I ask Tom to help me with another thing that has nothing to do with that…."

"He'll do it," Aram said from his place a desk over, not bothering to look up from his screen. Well, obviously he wasn't funneling music through his earbuds like he looked like he was. Finally he turned to look at her, and Liz couldn't help but see some of the heartbreak behind the mask he was trying to wear, and while part of it had to do with the whole Elodie debacle, she'd put money that Elodie wasn't the one at the forefront of his mind right then. "He loves you. Any idiot can see it, even without his memories. He can't stop looking at you when you look away and he just…. He'll do it if you ask."

"Do you trust him?"

Liz turned back to Ressler. "You know I do."

"Then if we can't be there, have some backup you trust. Play it smart."

She looked between the three of them for a long moment, at war with herself. She shouldn't be though. She knew she shouldn't be. They were right. She reached for the phone and hit the speed dial.


He didn't like it. It wasn't the fact that Liz had called. Strange as it was, he lit up every time he received a message from her. It was like a weight he hadn't realized was pressing down on him was lifted and he could breathe again. Her voice soothed him. It cleared his head. It was funny. He'd always thought love was a lie that people told each other to keep some weird hope alive that it was true. They'd describe it and someone else would say that that was exactly how they felt, and somehow the lie would keep going a little while longer. Maybe it wasn't all a lie, though, because while Jacob couldn't remember this woman, she stirred up the strangest feelings in him that he wasn't aware he was capable of. Hell, he'd been told he wasn't capable for more years than he could remember.

It wasn't the fact that she'd called that put him on edge, it was why. Tolliver. The woman had found his surveillance far too quickly and they didn't know what kind of reach she had or intel she could have gathered. Before her connection with Liz might have protected them both, but the instant that she knew that Liz knew the truth - that this woman wasn't her mother - their usefulness would dry up and they'd be targets.

There were too many unknowns and they were walking straight into them. He wasn't going to let her do it alone though.

"Usually she has me meet her in some remote location or another," Liz murmured as they entered the highrise office building and started for the elevator. "This is weird."

Jacob shrugged. "Not really. There are a lot of vacant office spaces right now. Play your cards right and no one knows you're there."

She turned, a small smirk tugging at her lips. "You know from experience?"

"I really shouldn't admit that to a fed," he murmured, echoing her smile.

Liz leaned in as the elevator doors closed, her fingers brushing his. On an instinct he couldn't explain he took her hand, their fingers closing around each other. It was a strange feeling that swept through him. One that told him he wasn't alone in this chaos anymore. He didn't want to leave her alone in it either.

The doors opened on an upper level and they took the stairs the rest of the way up to the top level. The door to the floor was locked and Liz knocked a pattern and took a step back to wait. After a long moment the door opened to reveal the man that Liz referred to as Simms on the other side. His distrustful gaze swept Jacob up and down, his lips tilting down at a little as it did. "She told you to come alone."

"He's good." Simms didn't look convinced and Liz squared her shoulders. "She may not know him, but I do. He's my husband. My family. If she trusts me, she trusts him."

Jacob kept his expression even, but he couldn't ignore the strange, fluttering feeling inside his chest. While Tolliver shouldn't trust either of them any more than they trusted her at that moment, he believed the rest of it. He wasn't sure he knew how to be someone's family or to be deserving of the trust she'd already shown in him.

"Let them in, Simms," Tolliver called from inside. "You know that I trust Elizabeth's judgement. She's proven that she's on my side."

There was something eerie about the way she said it, and as they moved further into the open office space where she'd set up her research, the way she looked at them only intensified his initial reaction. It was like there was an unspoken warning at the end of it. No, not a warning. A threat. She knows what will happen if she's not.

"I'm keeping my team away from you," Liz lied, "but I need your help. We're hitting a dead end with the Collector. All we have is the name."

"Petrov," Tolliver confirmed and Liz nodded.

"What do you know about him? Did you ever run across him in the KGB? Connected with the Cabal…?"

Tolliver's eyes narrowed and Jacob resisted the urge to step closer to Liz. "Why do you think he's connected with the Cabal? Something Raymond said?" She tilted her chin up and gave a short, mirthless laugh. "He does know how to pull the FBI's strings, doesn't he? Is that why he's saying he had him killed?"

"I think we both know why he had him killed," Liz said.

Jacob watched Liz as she held the older woman's gaze, and as she spoke he had to admit he was impressed. She was subtle in the way she steered the direction, using information they'd clearly talked about - information the other woman wanted - to get Tolliver where she wanted her to go.

"His secret. Whatever it is… my guess is that it has to do with the Archive. I know you don't trust my team, and I get that, but if you know anything that can help us get out in front of Reddington on this we can use it to find who really stole the intel."

And if Jacob were to put money on it, his bet was that Tolliver bought it. It was the best sign he could have spotted that she wasn't onto them. Nothing had changed for her. It looked like Liz still thought she was helping her mother, even as she was funnelling all of those feelings of betrayal that he'd seen overwhelm her a few days before into the act. Liz was the one in control.

Tolliver's gaze slid over to Jacob. "You've been looking for someone. Who?"

"You following me?"

"You're in my daughter's life and she wants to trust you without any proof that you're still the man she knew. Of course I'm having you followed."

"He's looking for Ilya. For me," Liz stated firmly, drawing the woman's attention back around.

"You said he was gone."

"That doesn't mean we can't find him. If he knows something about the Archive, he could be our best lead." She squared her shoulders a little. "But if you know something, we can use that."

"Petrov helped piece together part of the Archive. He..." Her voice trailed off as one of her people entered the alcove they were standing in and spoke quietly in her ear. "Really? Well then."

Jacob shot Liz a questioning look and she returned it with a small shrug. "What were you saying about Petrov?"

"Petrov will have to wait," Tolliver answered, her expression unreadable. "Someone's continued where you left off, Mr Keen."

He didn't like the sound of that, but Tolliver motioned for them to follow. He looked to Liz who gave the barest of nods. They had to risk it. If they didn't, they would tip their hand.


Tolliver liked playing things close to the chest, but this didn't feel right. If the look Tom was giving her was anything to go by, he felt the same way. The good thing was that they were in an office building. Presumably there were other tenants that would hear a gunshot or the shouts that would accompany a fight.

Or not.

They followed Tolliver into an adjacent office to see a man bound to a chair. He was beaten and bloodied, but Liz recognized the man that Tom had called Fitz. The man he'd tasked to run Tolliver's DNA. This was not good.

One of Tolliver's men moved to block their exit the way they had come in and Sims reached a hand out for their weapons, his gun trained on Tom.

"Do as he asks, Elizabeth, and you won't make me put you through watching your husband bleed out in front of you all over again," Tolliver said, her voice calm.

"You shoot one of us, someone's going to hear," Tom pointed out.

Tolliver huffed. "Seven full floors below us are empty. So is the building across the way there. No one will see you and no one will hear you, so I would suggest you provide Simms with your weapons and be on your best behaviour." Her gaze remained cold as she watched both of them surrender their guns. "Mr Fitz here provided some very interesting information to my people. He ran my DNA. That much I knew until just a few moments ago when he gave up the name."

"I'm sorry, Jake. It was you or me," Fitz managed from where he was and gave an audible shutter as Tolliver laid a hand on his shoulder.

"Still might be you," Tom growled, his voice low and dangerous.

"Or you," Tolliver answered him. "That really depends on Elizabeth." Her gaze shifted to Liz and the younger woman straightened, tilting her chin up. "I thought we had trust between us. What changed?"

"You used me," Liz said lowly.

"Like you were about to use me. Like Reddington used me. Like she did." Tolliver was calm for all the venom in her voice.

"Your trust has obviously run out. What now? You gonna kill a fed? You think it's bad having the Townsend Directive after you, you'll have the full weight of the FBI and Reddington on top of that if you touch either of us."

"Tom will depend on you, but as for you, you're no good to me dead," Tolliver said thoughtfully. "She'll come for you. I thought I'd need Raymond to lure her out, but she's already setting the board. Not for him. For you. She'll come."

"What are you talking about?" Liz asked, her tone uncertain. "Who?"

Tolliver's response, if they could expect one, was cut short by the sound of something small breaking through the thick, floor-to-wall windows at the far side of the room. Sims crumbled instantly and before Tolliver's other goon could do anything, a second shot took him out, leaving only the Keens, the trembling Fitz, and Tolliver who slowly raised her hands up in surrender.

Tom's cell phone buzzed loudly in his jeans.

"I'd suggest you get that," Tolliver said, her tone more resolved than anything else.

Liz's eyes narrowed and she started for the window to find the holes that had been punched through the glass. Behind her she heard Tom answer, his voice gruff and then surprised as he said, "It's for you," and handed the phone over to Tolliver. Liz saw the reflection behind her, but focused on the general trajectory that the bullets would have had to follow to hit their targets.

"I knew it was you. You're the only one he'd protect. That they'd all protect," Tolliver hissed into the phone and Liz finally saw the figure two stories above their own in the building across the way. She could make out a woman there dressed in all black with her hair either cropped short or pulled back. She was set up with a sniper rifle. If she was the one on the other end of the phone, she must have been on bluetooth.

"And now you're exposed," Tolliver continued. "It doesn't matter if you -"

Liz saw the signal - a flash of a light on top of the rifle - and she lunged away from the window, hitting the ground as the bullet broke through the window at a new angle. She rolled, looking to Tolliver who was standing there. Crimson quickly blossomed across her beige blouse from the wound in her chest and the phone slipped from her fingers. She looked to Liz. "She'll never give you the answers you need."

The second shot struck her again and she fell to the floor, blue eyes wide and unseeing. Liz was on her feet, diving for the dropped phone and somewhere behind her she heard Tom call out her name. No further shots were fired, but when she got to the phone the line was already dead.

Liz knelt there for a long moment next to Tolliver's dead body, phone in hand, and trembling. She squeezed her eyes closed and struggled to breathe. Everything was folding in itself and a single thought broke through:

You missed your chance.

Tolliver was dead. She had had answers and now she was dead.

"Liz?" She jumped as Tom's hand gently touched her arm. "We gotta go. We can't be here when they find the bodies."

She nodded, desperately still trying to get enough breath into her lungs to be useful. "What about…" Her voice trailed off as she looked over to see Fitz. One of the bullets must have passed straight through Tolliver and struck him. He was slumped to the side, still bound to the chair and dead.

"Not our problem anymore," Tom said quietly and pressed her firearm into her hand. "C'mon."

Liz let him help her up. There was nothing to tie them to this. No cameras in the stairwells or the elevator, no one left to point fingers. All that was left were questions. So many questions. They were in the car before Tom loosed a long breath and she noticed his hands were shaking too. "You okay?"

"It was her."

"Who?"

"The voice. On the phone. It was the woman that hired me. Brigitte Tremblay. She killed Tolliver."


TBC

Notes: And again with the need for dramatic music. It's like I like cliffhangers or something.

Well that was a wild ride, huh? Blonde Kat is gone and the woman that hired Tom to inch him back into Liz's life is responsible. Thoughts? Theories? Concerns for chaos ahead? ;)

Next Time: Tom and Ressler end up on a stakeout with Aram and Tom comes face-to-face with Brigitte Tremblay.