A/N: Hi there, so lovely to see you're back for more! Thanks to everyone who's read, reviewed, followed and favourited this story so far. I appreciate each and every sign that people are still reading and enjoying this piece.
This chapter is going to provide some more insight into Hannah's story, so I am going to reiterate my warnings from chapters 3 and 11. The story is rated T for a reason, and this chapter will turn pretty dark in the middle. There is going to be a passage about severe violence against a minor, and other crimes. I intentionally kept it vague, but if you're sensitive to the subject matter, please proceed with caution or skip the chapter altogether.
Domestic
Her mobile phone rang in the worst possible moment, no surprise there. Gingerly putting aside the large knife covered in chocolate frosting, Hannah wiped her sticky fingers on a tea towel and dove over to the breakfast nook before the call went to voicemail. "Hello?"
"Dr Silverstein?"
"Speaking. Who's there?"
"Hi, this is Joss Carter. Is this a bad time to call?" The other woman's voice came over the line clear and warm, and Hannah thought she understood why John seemed to have taken a liking to the detective.
She smiled and licked at a spot of frosting on her pinkie finger. "Not at all. What can I do for you, Detective Carter?"
"I am sorry to spring this on you on such short notice, and I realise it's late, but I was wondering if we could meet. I need to talk to you."
The doctor's smile turned into a frown. "I take it it's urgent, and about him? Has anything happened?"
"I'd rather not discuss this on the phone, but yeah."
"All right. There's a Starbucks on Canal Street. Can you meet me there in an hour?"
"Sure. Thanks, Dr Silverstein."
The lines on Hannah's forehead deepened as she hung up the phone. With an absent-minded look she studied the almost-finished birthday cake she had made for the little surprise party for John they were planning for the weekend. Would be a shame to see it go to waste ...
*POI*POI*POI*POI*POI*
"What is it you're asking me, Detective?"
Joss Carter had a spontaneous flashback of the morning when she had met John for coffee at the Lyric Diner. He had regarded her with the same patient, calculating look that was now being cast at her by his sister.
She had just finished recapping the broad lines of today's events and was waiting for Hannah to comment, to react, to do something, anything, that gave her a clue as to where to go from here.
"I guess I'd like to know what I should expect to be dealing with when he returns." The policewoman didn't really know if this even began to cover what she wanted to know, but it was as good a starting point as any.
Hannah leant back and took a sip from her caramel latte. "You're a detective. Don't you think you'll figure it out?" she asked, shrugging lightly.
"I'm not asking as a detective here. That ship sailed long ago when I agreed to work with John and Harold," Joss admitted.
The calculating look returned to the piercing grey-blue eyes. For a moment, there was an intent silence between the two women. Finally Hannah spoke: "I think you've already made up your mind. I think you'll continue to be his friend, no matter what he is doing right now. I think you don't want to know what he is doing right now. I think you sympathise more than you dare to admit, because it makes you think what lengths you would go to, what lines you would cross, in order to do what needs to be done."
Joss Carter winced as Hannah unwittingly echoed the words John had spoken earlier this evening. She also remembered her own harsh words to John right before that, and the look of thinly disguised disappointment in his eyes. Suddenly she felt very guilty. "Dang, you're good," she deflected with a nervous half-giggle.
"So I ask you again: what is it you're asking me, Detective Carter?" The doctor's voice was barely above a whisper, a tone the detective knew only too well, a tone she had come to miss when she had to go a day without it.
"I guess I'm not really asking you anything," Joss replied with a resigned sigh. "I'm just trying to make sense of it all."
Hannah nodded and fell silent for a long minute. Reaching a decision, she scooted closer to the table between her and Joss and slightly leaned over. "What I am going to tell you now can never leave this room. You can never repeat it to anybody, or discuss it with anyone. If you did, it could put me and other people in lethal danger. Do you understand?"
The policewoman paled a little, but gave a curt, affirmative nod.
"Good. Now please turn off your phones. Both of them."
Joss did as she was asked, her pulse speeding up slightly in anticipation. "You're not CIA, too, are you?" she quipped to ease the tension. In a minute, she would regret her remark.
*POI*POI*POI*POI*POI*
"When our parents died, I was eight and John was sixteen. We both ended up in separate foster families. It didn't go well. I guess John was coping okay, considering the circumstances, but I was miserable. My foster family wasn't too bad at first, but I was missing my parents and my brother, and I shut down completely. I guess they just weren't equipped to deal with that.
"I kept pleading to be put in a family with John, but I was ignored. My foster parents thought I was just being obnoxious and tried to solve the problem by cutting back my visiting time with my brother.
"When John turned eighteen, he applied for guardianship, but it was denied ... over and over again. Around the same time, things really took a turn for the worse at my foster family. The younger brother of my foster mother got out of prison where he had been serving time for substance abuse, drug dealing, and aggravated assault. For some reason he was giving me the creeps. I tried to talk to people ... but no-one would listen to me. By that time, John had enlisted in the army and was hardly ever around."
Hannah paused for a moment to take a sip from her coffee, and Joss took a deep breath. Her gut feeling told her this story wasn't going to end well, but like a car crash one sees coming without being able to prevent it, there was nothing she could do but brace for the impact.
The doctor's slender fingers tensed around her coffee cup when she continued. Apparently twenty-odd years hadn't done nearly enough to soften the painful memories. "One day, a few weeks before my twelfth birthday, I came home from school to an empty house. At least that's what I thought. While searching the house for my foster parents – one of them was usually at home when I returned from school – I heard a sound from the garage. Thinking my foster father was probably there, working on something as he often did, I went in ... and I walked in on what turned out to be a major drug deal. Of course, I didn't know that. I just saw my foster mother's brother with two other men, passing back and forth plastic bags with white stuff and lots of money. Also, they were all armed.
"I tried to turn around and run, but my foster mother's brother grabbed me and shoved me against the wall. I didn't know what was happening, but I fought back. Hard. He slammed my head into the wall and I went down. He kicked me in the side, so hard that I felt my ribs crack. He was so furious, he screamed abuse and just kept kicking me until I passed out.
"At one point, I came around very briefly. I was so dazed, I didn't know what was happening. I just remember the three men standing over me, looking down at me. My whole body was aching so badly, I could hardly breathe, and I just passed back out."
Hannah took a deep breath, pulling her chair even closer to the table as if trying to anchor herself, before she went on. "The next time I came to, I was alone and everything was quiet, but I was in a world of pain. I remember thinking I should maybe go and call 911, so I tried to sit up. When I did, the pain got even worse, and it was in a place I didn't remember being hit. I looked down ... and that's when I noticed the blood. A lot of blood. I don't think I fully realised what that meant, and as I said, I didn't know what had gone down after I had passed out, but I knew it was bad. I was so ashamed. I couldn't wrap my head around what had happened, and I clearly remember thinking that no-one would ever believe me, especially since I didn't remember half of the attack.
"I felt so alone. I wished I could call John and ask him to come, but I knew he was abroad on his first deployment. I just wanted to die." For the first time, Hannah's voice cracked a little. She was staring at a spot behind Joss, and if she noticed the tears streaming down the other woman's face, she didn't let on. "I was in so much pain and so dizzy from the blood loss that I just lay back down on the floor and prayed for God to take me quickly.
"I must have passed out again, because I have no recollection of anything that happened afterwards up to the point that I woke up in hospital. The first thing I noticed was that the pain was gone. I opened my eyes to look around the room, and there were a man and a woman sitting by my bedside. I didn't know them, but both were wearing scrubs and lab coats, so I thought they were doctors. They didn't notice right away that I was awake, so I had a moment to watch them. The woman was holding my hand, and the man had an arm around the woman. They both had their eyes closed, but they looked very sad. The man was even crying very softly, and the woman had tears on her face, too. The only other man I had ever seen crying was John, and only once, in the court room when the family judge separated us for good. I didn't know why they were so sad, but since they were sitting at my bedside, I guessed it had something to do with me. They were looking so kind, I didn't want them to be sad because of me, so I said, 'Please don't cry.' Of course, when they saw me awake, they only cried harder."
Hannah paused again, a small smile on her face. "The man and the woman were indeed the doctors who had treated me from the moment I was brought into their hospital. They were also the people who would adopt me a few weeks later, on my twelfth birthday. They gave me a home and nursed me back to health. They also got me the help I needed. They were there for me when the news came that John was missing, presumed dead. They got me through the entire police proceedings, and when it turned out there was a larger-scale drug ring behind what the brother of my foster mother had done, they went into witness protection with me. They left behind their lives and their careers, starting from scratch in a place they didn't know, just for me."
Joss Carter wiped at her tears with a napkin, the movement pulling Hannah completely back to the here and now. "This is why you can never, ever tell anyone about any of this. I'd never do anything to endanger their safety. They have a happy life now. I won't have that taken away from them."
The detective nodded. "I promise," she whispered. "I promise." She cleared her throat and looked at the doctor. "Does John know all this?"
"Yes, he does. That's the only reason I told you the whole story." Hannah leant forward again. "Detective Carter, my brother is accustomed to violence, but he is not a violent man. In fact, he detests violence for violence's sake. However, John also knows that some things are worse than death, and despite all appearances to the contrary, he believes in justice."
For a long moment, the two women looked each other in the eye, sizing up, calculating, formulating questions and answers.
"So you trust him?" the detective finally asked.
"With my life."
Of course, that was the answer of a sister about her dearly beloved brother. "But do you condone his actions?"
"I trust that he'll do what needs to be done."
*POI*POI*POI*POI*POI*
John was standing at the window of his new apartment, his gaze wandering from the benches down below to the sky and coming to rest on the building on the opposite side of the small plaza. His face lit up in a warm smile. He's really gone and done it. 'I respect your privacy, John.' Yeah, right.
He wanted to be at least a little angry. All his instincts, ingrained and refined by army and CIA over so many years, were screaming at him that this was a very bad idea from a security point of view. Of course he had made the connection immediately when Harold had passed him the business card on the bench by the river. Now, looking over at the opposite building and recognising the shade of the curtains in a certain window, he found he couldn't mind too much. This might be a bad idea, but for once he could put his stealth skills to use for something really good. Yeah, this might work.
A knock on the door pulled him from his reverie. Half knowing who was outside, he went to open – and found himself face to face with a huge chocolate-frosted birthday cake, complete with the appropriate number of burning candles. "Happy belated birthday, and welcome to the neighbourhood!" announced a smiling Hannah.
"I should nick your phone," he grumbled good-naturedly while pulling his sister inside, relieving her of the cake and putting it on the dinner table. "You in cahoots with my boss is gonna give me grey hair one of these days."
"Too late for that, buddy," Hannah giggled, pulling him into a tight hug without the intention of letting go anytime soon. "Happy birthday," she repeated quietly.
John tightened his arms around his younger sister and dropped a soft kiss on the top of her head. "It is," he smiled. "It is."