A/N: This is a short, transitional chapter based entirely off of the plot and dialogue of 2x15. Starting in chapter 3, things will begin to diverge and change. Some pieces of dialogue once attributed to some characters will be spoken by others, just to help the flow of the story in written form. We are setting the stage for what is to come! :)
"You looking for where Craig died?" Kevin Flynn, handsome and tall, if a little unnerving, emerged from the shadows just beyond where Maura had laid out the plans for the Whistler factory on a singed shelf.
She froze when she heard his voice, expecting someone, but still on edge nonetheless. He came from behind, stalked forward, and he emanated the danger of a man divorced from inhibition. The catwalk above them, charred and warped, groaned as if to warn her of his instability. She replayed Jane's I got you over and over again as a calming mantra. "Yes," she replied openly. She looked as if she had no fear.
Flynn had been one of several men Boston Homicide had considered for the arson that gutted the Whistler factory. He was a legacy firefighter, his father and grandfather also in the same company as he. He had been vocal to the union about layoffs and lack of funding in recent years, as had a few others. Ultimately, it was the St. Florian's cross decal affixed to the back of the car that struck Constance Isles that narrowed it down to him and two others. Three men they could investigate for murder.
When he approached her, started to circle her, Maura circled back. They walked in tandem, pushed outward and pulled forward by some centrifugal force as he pointed to the ground below. "We found him right about here. You know, my grandfather died fighting the '72 Vendome fire," Kevin said, sounding measured despite his aggressive stance.
"I'm sorry," Maura replied in politeness. She shook, but only minutely. Not in a way that he would notice. To him, she knew that she looked in control, that she looked in charge.
"City kept cutting back, and cutting back... " Kevin continued, stopping so that he could see Maura's face, so that he could close in on her, "how do you fight all these fires without enough firefighters, huh?"
Ah. Maura narrowed her gaze in insight. This was about money, and death. Two driving factors in many of the cases she watched Jane work. She almost felt for Kevin, knowing how slow the wheels of progress could move when the city or the state funded your livelihood. In the meantime, good men died putting out preventable fires with old gear that could have saved them if it were newer.
But, Kevin was not a good man. He hid behind the guise of goodness, using the story of his grandfather's death and the plight of his fellow firefighters to justify murder. And Jane, hidden behind some still-standing shelving just beyond the two of them, Frost at her back, bristled with disgust. She imagined murdering Frost to draw attention to police budget cuts, or torching Korsak's apartment to make a statement about the lack of department accountability when one of their own used excessive force. Insanity. Kevin was bad.
She watched Maura, her heart thumping in a voracious semi-rhythm as Maura went toe to toe with him, and banished her previous thoughts. What she needed now, what Maura needed now, was for her to focus all of her brain power and her willpower on negating the Flynn threat. Her gun felt light in her hands, too light. She wanted to empty the magazine into him for how he threatened Maura with his body. She took a small nasal breath and forced the oxygen to calm her as best it could under the circumstances.
When she heard the crunch of a footstep trying and failing to be quiet just a few feet away from her, she expected to see Korsak. She expected to open her eyes and give him a nasty signal that told him to shut the fuck up, something subtle and completely Jane in that it would also tell him that he was clearly getting too old for this, given how loud he was.
When she opened her eyes and saw Gabriel Dean, her blood screamed. "You follow me?" she mouthed, no sound, fearing that she would growl at him if she vocalized.
He stood there in a poor mockery of her stance, gun at his side, and shook his head no. This confused Jane further, angered her further. Clearly it was a lie. Why the hell else would Dean be anywhere near her very Boston, not at all federal, case?
However, she couldn't afford any more attention to him. She turned back to Maura.
"You shouldn't have come here by yourself," Flynn said to Maura, getting even closer.
Maura shook her head in confusion. "Why not?" she asked, and Jane internally congratulated her for buying the detectives as much time as she could. Maura's innate curiosity combined with her intellectual superiority made her uniquely suited to deflection and obfuscation. This filled Jane with pride. She shook out her shoulders under the pretense of readying her gun hand, but really it was to repress the shiver of delight at how well they worked together.
"You know why not," Flynn answered. "I had to make sure people understand that they can't keep laying us off."
This was the first thing like a threat he had uttered to Maura in the few minutes that they had been talking. Maura took a step back, and Jane's right foot took a step forward.
"How did you do that, Kevin?" Maura asked, and things began to turn. The question sounded a little too much like a push, a little too much like a trap.
Flynn smiled in the way that a man who has made up his mind does. "You know how - I burned a few buildings. Then Craig started digging around, just like you. You both should have just left if alone," he whispered, and then his gun was out.
"Kevin no! Don't!" Jane screamed, emerging from her cover. Maura dipped in self-preservation before Flynn could shoot her, but he was falling to the ground, a bullet hole right in the middle of his chest, before Jane could even raise her weapon.
Maura flinched at the sound of the gun, still kneeling, and whipped her head towards the source of the killshot. Paddy Doyle stood on the catwalk that had swayed only minutes before, gun raised and clearly the reason that Kevin Flynn laid dead in front of her. She looked back to Jane, to put eyes on her, to make sure she was ok, but Maura saw Gabriel Dean instead, aiming straight at her father.
"Drop your weapon, Doyle," Dean ordered, voice hoarse and a weak imitation of force.
"Gabriel, no!" Jane screamed again, but the shot was fired before she could even finish. Dean's bullet clipped Doyle in the shoulder and he stumbled back.
Doyle recovered, Dean raised his gun again, but this time, Doyle's shot hit, and Dean went to the ground with a hole in his leg. Doyle stood, proud, unbothered, purpose undiminished, as Frost pointed his firearm toward him. Doyle, without hesitation, waved his gun towards Frost, intending to kill, but Jane hit him in the belly with a bullet of her own.
It dropped him over the railing and fifteen feet to the debris-ridden ground below before Maura even finished yelling "no!" at her.
Maura ran to him, put her hand to his wound in a sickening mirror of how she had tried to keep Jane's viscera from spilling out only a year before. "Hope," Doyle whispered, straining to look Maura in the face. "Hope," he repeated.
"Maura!" Jane yelled, her voice gruff with shame and fear.
"Hope? What do you hope?" Maura asked Paddy, desperate to keep him conscious, desperate for anything he could give her before his life faded away. She held onto him as though to keep that very life inside. Her blood rattled in a frenzy inside of her, her heart pounding and squeezing, and suddenly all that mattered was that her father was here in front of her, and he was dying.
"Hope," he struggled to get the word out again.
"Maura!" Jane shrieked, wild with worry, and she sprinted toward the two of them, Doyle and his daughter, tearing off her blazer as she ran. "Oh God, Maura," she sobbed when she kneeled next to them. She bunched the fabric of her jacket in her hands, still hot from the shot she fired off, and tried to put it to Doyle's bleeding torso.
Immediately Maura smacked her hand away. "Don't touch him," Maura screamed through clenched teeth, eyes burning with fury. Her father was here in front of her and he was dying and his killer was trying to touch him.
"Hey, Maura," Jane whispered and tried again, hoping to push through shock and find some sympathy.
"No I mean it!" Maura spit, her voice loud and venomous and all directed at Jane. She pushed her away again. "Don't you dare touch him," she threatened, and Jane knew that it is a threat. She knew that Maura meant what she intended when she laid that boundary down, and Jane wanted so badly to bleed all over the boundary, hoping that her bleeding could save them like it always had, but knowing it couldn't when she was the reason, her bullet was the reason, that they were there.
So, she only stared back at Maura in fear, in mourning of all that she felt she had just lost.
