Chapter Twelve: Weakness
It was a strip of stores and small restaurants, almost all of them empty now. Tom had used an old alias to purchase one at the end through one of his shelf companies years ago to use as a safehouse. It had sat there, waiting and empty, in case he ever needed it. Now they would use it to to lure out the organization he'd grown up in and, if all went well, to their end. Liz knew she would sleep better at night after this was all over.
Across from the seemingly abandoned restaurant was an aged apartment complex, one of the units with a perfect line of sight to set up shop in. She knocked twice on the door and heard the hollow sound echo through. A moment passed, then another, and Katarina shifted behind her.
Liz shot a warning look from the corner of her eye. "You're the one that wanted to come along."
Katarina raised her hands in mock surrender.
The door finally opened to reveal Donald Ressler standing there. His expression immediately darkened as he looked past her. "What is she doing here?"
"She says she wants to help," Liz answered, moving inside. She paused next to him, her voice quiet. "I'd rather have her close so I know what she's up to."
Ressler snorted at that, but he didn't argue it. Instead he turned and motioned to where Aram and Dumont were set up. "The place is wired and set. Samar, Rowan, and Solomon have the angles covered with sniper rifles. Scottie and Howard have a tactical team on standby." There was something in his voice that left Liz with the impression that there'd been a battle of some sort there. Halcyon tactical versus SWAT. Ressler didn't seem pleased.
"Is Tom already there?"
"He hasn't shown yet."
She looked over to Dumont. "How long ago did you text him?"
"'Bout an hour ago."
That wasn't right. "He should be there by now. When did he slip the detail?"
"Just under an hour ago," Aram said, his voice tight and Liz felt the worry creeping in. She had managed to convince him not to tell Gina everything, but what if that hadn't been enough? What if she had somehow managed to double cross him anyway?
"Why aren't you tracking his phone?" Katarina asked as she crossed the space, standing directly behind Aram that looked instantly uncomfortable.
"Because he had to ditch it to make it believable to Gina," Liz huffed. "Did he turn his watch off too?"
"We lost signal about forty minutes ago," Ressler offered, "but if Zanetakos questioned it…"
"Yeah," Liz agreed, moving to the window. All was quiet outside and she couldn't help feeling like something had gone wrong. "Or she could have turned on him." Her gaze flickered over to Aram and Dumont. "Can you guys pull up the traffic cams?"
"Done and done," Dumont cut in, fingers flying over his keyboard.
Ressler loosed a breath, motioning for Liz to step away from Katarina. "Listen," he said quietly, "I need your help with your inlaws."
"Are they trying to run it?"
"They want to take whoever shows up into Halcyon custody. That can't happen."
"You and Tom have a deal. He'll stand by it."
"He will if he's in a place to stand by it. Those two-"
"Are manipulative as hell, but they're trying to help."
"Like she's trying to help?" he asked, motioning to Katarina as subtly as he could.
"Still figuring that one out," Liz answered honestly.
"Agent Keen?" Aram called, from where he was standing over Dumont's shoulder, the two men watching the screen.
She moved over, the lack of explanation not setting well with her any more than the expressions the two men wore. Something had gone wrong.
As Dumont backed the footage up, she saw exactly what that was.
Liz swallowed hard as she watched a van slam into the car that her husband had been using to get to the new safehouse, sending it rolling twice over before it landed on its side. Smoke poured from it and she watched as operatives in black swarmed the car and pried the door open, pulling an unconscious Gina out first and then, a few moments later, dragging Tom's limp body from the vehicle.
"Son of a bitch," Ressler breathed.
"Time stamp lines up with when his watch went dead," Dumont said quietly.
Liz dragged a shaky breath down her throat and into her lungs and looked to Ressler. "We have to use them, now more than ever."
"Yeah."
"We've got a clear shot of the vehicle that they loaded Tom and Ms Zanetakos into," Aram said as he returned to his own computer. "We can track them."
"Through the Artax Network too," Dumont added.
"Do it," Ressler ordered and turned back to Liz. "We're going to find him."
She nodded, a numbness threatening to take hold. She pushed it back and let anger take its place. She would be damned if she let anyone threaten to take him away again.
He had come to with his wrists zip tied and surrounded by darkness. It had taken a few moments for his rattled brain to piece together that the rough material against his face and the musty smell was a bag over his head.
Tom shifted trying to get a better feel for where he was laid out. He was moving. A vehicle then, and with another small twitch he felt Gina at his back. She didn't respond and he struggled through what had happened.
Everything had been going well up until the point Gina started to ask questions. She'd caught some small slip in his approach, but any explanation he might or might not have given to her was cut short when they had been slammed by a van. Tom remembered the feeling of tipping over, but immediately after things went fuzzy. The left side of his head ached where he could only assume he'd hit the door as they rolled.
The vehicle pulled to a stop and for a long moment there was nothing. Finally he heard the back doors open and he was being hauled out. Between the momentum and the bag over his head Tom couldn't keep his feet under him when they hit the hard surface and he felt himself pitch forward, slamming knees first. He stayed there for a long moment, struggling to regain his balance so he wouldn't topple the rest of the way to the floor if he miscalculated.
A rough, familiar chuckle sounded off above him as the bag was ripped painfully from his head. Light flooded in and Tom squeezed his eyes shut for half a second before forcing them back open to focus up on Justin Masterson. "You look pleased with yourself."
The older man's grin bordered on obnoxious as he squatted down so that he was on eye-level with the man still on his knees. "Oh, I am."
"You shouldn't be."
He couldn't have predicted it, but it was as if he'd given the cue. The operative going for Gina yelped and then went tumbling out of the van. Tom smirked as he watched that condescending smile vanish from Masterson's face, but he didn't have time to get fully to his feet before Tom got one foot under him and launched shoulder-first into Masterson. The tackle worked, throwing both men off balance and into the hard floor. Masterson had been halfway to pulling his gun and it went sliding out of both of their reach.
Tom didn't lose any time as he rolled, fingers finding the switchblade that the other man had always kept on him and he slid the knife through his restraints as Masterson struggled to pull air into his lungs. "And you think I'm predictable," Tom chuckled.
"You are."
He turned to see a face he hadn't seen in a decade. Victor Franks stood with a gun pressed to the base of Gina's skull. She remained where she was, the bag removed but her hands still bound behind her, rigid and angry. Franks' cold gaze remained on Tom. "Give Masterson the blade and stand up."
A thin laugh escaped on a breath. "I'm not an idiot, Franks. I know why you want her, and she's no good to you dead."
"I never said I was going to kill her. I just needed to see if your whirlwind romance with the federal agent dampened the loyalty you two always had."
Masterson kicked out, his foot landing hard against the back of Tom's knee to buckle it. Tom caught his balance, but the other man was already up, going for the knife. He dodged, bobbing around, but the earlier blow to the head was slowing him down and throwing his balance. Masterson saw it too, and he caught hold of the younger man's wrist, twisting it hard to force him to release. Instead, Tom slammed forward, his head connecting with Masterson's, and he could feel everything pulse in and out along with his vision as Masterson stumbled back. It was a mistake. As he felt his fingers loosen around the knife and it clattered to the floor he knew he'd made a mistake.
Somewhere through the buzz he heard Gina yell for him, but Masterson was already on his feet and going for the knife. Tom dodged back, his head starting to clear just enough from the blow to do so, but Masterson was on him in an instant, swiping out so that the blade left a long, bloody mark along his ribs. Tom reached down, fingers trembling a little as they clutched at the material on his shirt, the pain starting to catch up with the fresh wound.
A sick smile tugged at Masterson's lips as he kicked out, his boot connecting hard with Tom's middle and the blow sent him stumbling back land hard on his back against the concrete floor, still clutching at the source of the pain. Behind him Gina let out a vicious curse in Russian, and Tom managed to turn enough to see a look that he hadn't seen in years. Only she or Franks was walking away from this now. Well, at least Tom could say that she hadn't played him. Small wins.
Franks wasn't bothered. If anything, he was amused. "Not another move, Zanetakos," he warned, "or I'll bleed him out one hole at a time while you watch."
She stilled at that, though the expression didn't fade. Tom's eyes squeezed closed as Masterson loomed over him.
Scottie was ready to murder someone. Zanetakos, her employers, it really didn't matter. What mattered was that, even with the the lengths that they had gone to to ensure that Gina Zanetakos didn't betray her son, Tom was missing. They had dangled him out as bait and had lost the gamble.
"We'll get him back."
She spun, ready to lay into Howard, but she swallowed the biting comment at the look he gave her. "They've wanted him dead for years. What makes you so sure?"
Her husband tried for a smile, but the expression was just as pained as Scottie felt. "Because it's you and me, and we swore we wouldn't lose him again."
"What if we have? What if our focus on finding who took him costs him his life now?"
"It won't." He crossed the office, his fingers brushing her cheek as he fit a loose bit of hair behind her ear. "We won't let it."
She grimaced, leaning in so that she could lean her forehead to touch his. "We should have been there through all of this. If we had…"
A knock drew both of their attention and Dumont stood at the door, looking a little awkward at the interrupted moment. "Got the feds set up in the conference room and Aram patches into my equipment. We're working on remotely getting Tom's watch back up and running and finding that van."
"And the others?" Howard pressed.
"Navabi's tracking down a lead with a Mossad contact and Solomon went with her. Nez and Liz are about to follow a lead that Liz's mom -"
"Katarina reached out?" Scottie demanded.
Dumont blinked, the confusion brief but certainly there. "She's here. Didn't someone tell you that?"
"It must have gotten lost with everything else," Howard said calmly. "What about Agent Ressler?"
"In the conference room with the others."
Scottie nodded and took a step back from Howard, but felt his fingers brush hers in subtle, quiet support, the promise lingering between them. They would get their son back. He would be alright. He had to be.
The conference room had just been redone as part of the headquarters relocation that Tom had put into motion when he took over Halcyon. The equipment matched the war room in their New York office and Aram Mojtabai was sitting at the long table, Agent Ressler leaned over and looking at whatever he had found. Nez and Elizabeth were speaking to Katarina, and Elizabeth didn't look pleased.
"She has a point," Nez said tightly, motioning to Katarina.
"About what?" Scottie asked, pulling three sets of eyes around to her.
Katarina shrugged. "All I said is that Halcyon has more leeway in getting people to talk than the FBI does."
"You're talking about torture," Elizabeth said firmly.
"I'm talking about enhanced interrogation. You know something about it, don't you?"
Scottie watched her daughter-in-law stiffen at that and Katarina's lips tilted up at the corners. She'd won something, but what was yet to be seen.
"Tom and I have a deal," Ressler said from his place.
"And Halcyon will stand by that," Howard answered him, his voice calming. "Let's focus on getting Tom back before we squabble over who goes where."
Ressler didn't look convinced, but it didn't matter as Aram stood abruptly. "Hey, I hate to, uh, interrupt all this but…"
"What did you find?" Scottie asked, starting towards his screen.
A couple clicks later his display was mirrored to the screen that was mounted on the wall at the end of the table. It showed a display of DC, several locations marked. "Dumont and I have been running half a dozen searches through different sources. Samar called in what her Mossad contact knew about St Regis safehouses in the area and we narrowed it down to five of the most likely locations before cross referencing those with the other searches and -" the screen narrowed in on one of the markings, showing an old factory.
"Bingo," Dumont finished.
"I need proof before we raid it," Ressler murmured.
"I know, and while I couldn't find a path through the traffic cameras, we were able to reposition one of the satellites from the Artax Network and caught sight of the van parked around back."
Elizabeth pulled in a breath, her gaze fixed on the screen. "It's our best chance, Ress."
"Any chance I can talk you out of going in?"
"You know you can't.
"And I'm going with you." All eyes turned on Scottie and she tilted her head up. "That's not a request."
"You're a civilian," Ressler argued.
"I'm a trained operative. Nez, Solomon, and I will be joining your infiltration team."
"For what it's worth, she's always been good," Katarina offered and Scottie shot her a look. The shorter woman smirked.
Ressler sighed. "We don't have time to argue this. The quicker we get in there, the more likely we are to get Tom out alive."
She'd made a bad call. If she were honest, she'd made a series of bad calls, the first one going to Jacob himself. He had been the only one that Gina knew beyond a shadow of a doubt would help her - despite the fact that he'd been ready and willing to take St Regis from her himself - but in the end he was a weakness, not a strength. It was embarrassing how quickly Franks had proven that.
Gina pulled on her restraints from where she was tied to chair. It was bolted to the floor, not giving in the slightest when she shifted her weight back and forth. She was stuck, at least for the time being, and Jacob sat tied across from her.
He was pale, the bruises from the wreck starting to show in his skin, and the blood that had soaked through from the long gash Masterson's knife had left dried his shirt to him. If they had patched him up at all was impossible to tell.
There was a reason they had left him beaten and bloodied in front of her. They knew they couldn't break her by coming after her directly and it was no secret that she held very little close. Part of her wondered if they knew that she'd been the one to pull the trigger on McCready. She'd let them all believe it was Jacob, because he was gone and it hadn't mattered in the end. She had never confirmed it or denied it, but she let them believe it. Maybe they'd only let her believe that they believed it.
A soft sound from him drew her attention and she found his jaw clenched, Jacob trying to shift into a more comfortable position. He wasn't likely to find one. "You know you can't tell them."
"I know."
"No matter what."
Gina snorted. "You think I'd give up everything for you?"
Those dark blue eyes flickered up to meet her own brown ones and he didn't have to answer out loud. She saw it there, clear as if he'd spoken the words. He knew she would. They knew she would. Now she just had to prove them wrong, or they'd both be dead.
The door behind her opened, the metal scraping against the floor and the hinges screaming. She couldn't help but wince just a little, even as Jacob raised his head and set his jaw, that defiant look in his eyes.
Franks circled around, an old toolkit that Gina recognized from her days in his class in his hand. "You need new toys."
"The old ones work just fine," he assured her and started towards Jacob.
TBC
Notes: They definitely found trouble, no question about it.
I'm so out of practice right now. I came so close to forgetting to post this. Here it is though!
Next Time:Liz and the others go in to rescue Tom and Gina makes a dangerous decision.