Chapter 5

Ruth started awake, shivering from cold. She pulled herself up from the concrete floor, and sat against the wall for a moment. She wondered how long she had been in the cold room in the darkness. She closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the wall. She had lost complete track of time passing, and there was no way to tell if it was day or night in her small concrete cell. No one had come into the room: not to interrogate her, not to offer water, not to see if she was still breathing. She had not heard a sound beyond her door.

Her mind wandered to Harry. She wondered if he and the team were looking for her and if they had any leads. She wondered. She stood and walked around her cell to stretch her legs. Her shoulders hurt from her hands being bound behind her still. The movement began to warm her slightly, and her legs felt better and less stiff. She walked aimlessly with a shoulder touching the wall so not to become disoriented in the dark, outlining the box she was in. Her thoughts turned again toward Harry Pearce. She stopped moving and closed her eyes against the images and feelings invading her mind. The part of her she couldn't control betrayed the cold exterior that she put on for his benefit. While she could lie to him, Ruth Evershed couldn't lie to herself. It was something she vowed she would never do.

No matter how much she had tried to park him in the farthest recesses of her mind, her heart kept him close by, always. Ruth could be cool to him, keep everything business-as-usual all she wanted: but Ruth couldn't deny to herself that when he walked past her desk, her heart would beat faster; the sound of his voice in her ear on the phone soothed her; and when she wasn't working with him, she was at home, thinking of him. Ruth gritted her teeth: it was unbelievably annoying, and impossible. Her logical mind wanted nothing more than to cut him out of her; in Cyprus she had almost done it. But even then, in the middle of a beautiful life with George and Nico, she often imagined sharing that life with Harry. And the truth of that made her sick.

"Damn you, Harry," she muttered into the stillness of the room. "Damn you."

Ros, Tariq, and Lucas were at their stations reviewing the material Ros had pulled from the UTMB security system. Hundreds of hours of camera footage, pages and pages of bank statements of customers, employee records; it was all there, and somewhere in the gigabytes of data was the answer. Somewhere in the data was the who and what of a terrorist attack yet to happen on the UTMB. And they needed to find it.

Mace sat in the comfortable leather chair of his club, sipping his scotch, and slowly puffing his Cuban cigar. With so many difficult, out-moded members of the JIC gone, the stage was set for him to make sweeping reforms to the agencies under the purview of the JIC; the members who were still there would not put up much a fight against him and the new members he recruited. Oliver didn't really care how it looked, nor did he care about the talk in the hallways. He only cared about the end result, which was going to be him getting his way. Even Harry Pearce would be unable to stop him, nor find any paper trails leading to him. He smiled. Harry Pearce was going to be very busy trying to keep his head above water with all the investigations that were about to come his way. His smile widened.

The voice suddenly in his right ear made his smile fall.

"You shouldn't count your chickens before they hatch, Oliver, or did no one ever teach you this as a child?"

Mace allowed his eyes to roll to his right slightly. "They'll let anyone in here these days, won't they?"

Harry sat down in the chair next to Mace. "That's what I hear."

"Shouldn't you be out and about, appearing and disappearing, chasing bad guys, Harry?" Mace smiled again, only this time the smile never reached his eyes. "I doubt very much that MI5 fancy paying Spooks to be in a gentleman's club in the middle of the day." Mace took a long drag on his cigar and blew the smoke into Pearce's face. "What exactly are you doing in this part of town, Harry? I thought your lot was busy looking for the new Integralists…"

"You are well informed, Oliver," Harry sneered, "and since you are, I don't imagine you'll mind telling me where she is."

Harry grabbed Mace's scotch glass and drained it in one swig. One of Oliver's eyebrows raised up at the move, but he simply said, "What are you talking about, Harry?" Mace waved for the waiter, "Reid, might I have another scotch, and one for my friend, Sir Harry?"

"Certainly sir," the waiter said and quickly disappeared.

"You were saying, Harry…"

"Don't mess me about on this, Oliver, I'm warning you—"

"—You're warning me? About what?"

Harry's teeth gritted together in barely contained anger. "Ruth. Where is Ruth?"

Oliver smiled, "You spaniel's gone missing?"

Harry got into Mace's face. "Oliver," he said in warning.

"Alright, alright. I can see you're upset, Harry." The waiter returned with two glasses of scotch and put one in front of each man. "Thank you, Reid." The waiter nodded and left. "Drink up, Harry," Mace purred, "and tell me your woes."

Harry picked up the glass and took a large swallow of the amber liquid. "Oliver… I know you're behind it. If you harm her, I swear to you—"

Oliver leaned forward, close to Pearce, "—Harry, I'm not lying to you. I don't know what you're talking about." He frowned at Pearce. "Why in the hell would you think I made your analyst disappear?"

"Really Oliver, all of your opponents on the JIC suddenly resign, retire, move to other positions elsewhere, and you think no one is going to wonder why?"

"Whether they do or they do not, Harry, is beside any point of interest to me, and I still don't see what this has to do with your analyst."

Pearce stomped down his own anger, trying, but failing to keep his voice even, "You and I both know that Ruth is just the person who could uncover your duplicity in this, Oliver." He stared into Mace's eyes. "You and I both know that you engineered the departure of your colleagues so that you could push your policies through. And we both know that if you made any tiny mistake in covering your tracks, Ruth will find it."

Mace sighed and set his glass and cigar down. "Listen to me, Harry. First, if Ruth Evershed has gone missing, I had nothing to do with it. Second, you don't want to pick this fight with me, old son. You don't."

Harry stared at Oliver for a moment. "I'm coming for you, Oliver, and if you're lying to me about Ruth, and any harm has come to her, I promise you, you won't live to regret it. Old. Son."

Harry stood, drained his liquor glass, and pointed to Oliver's barely smoked cigar. "Is that a Cuban?"

"Yes. A rare one at that."

Harry smiled, and never letting go of Oliver's gaze, violently smashed it out, destroying it in the ashtray. "What a shame."

Oliver watched Harry's retreating figure, pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed a number. "We have a problem."