Part Five
Sara drew back further from the bed as Agent Mahone stretched out across it as if he might even sleep, while her heart was still beating at a bird's pace from the way that he had yelled at her. She cast a glance towards Michael, who was looking at little wide-eyed himself. The savagery in Agent Mahone's voice had been almost as thick as it had been while had thrown his prolonged fit in the car earlier.
'Jury's closer to a decision now,' Sara thought as she backed away from the bed even further. Watching a moment longer until she was sure that Agent Mahone was determined to continue ignoring her as long as she was going to continue standing there, she stepped quickly around the bed and towards Michael. The gun looked awkward and unnatural in his hands, and Sara did not like it.
"That was unexpected," Sara said in a low voice as she and Michael retreated by a mutual unspoken agreement to the bathroom doorway. Her midsection twinged and she touched at it, wincing. She had taken a heavy dose of aspirin while she had been cleaning herself up, but it had yet to take effect.
Michael frowned at her. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah." Sara took a deep breath before deciding that it was a mistake. "Some bruised ribs, I think."
Michael eyed her with a tenderness that seemed strange, coming from a man who was holding a gun. Sara rebuked herself a bare second later for this thought, as several of the guards at Fox River who were not associated too closely with Bellick were very nice people, but none of them were able to make her shiver like Michael could with a glance.
Sara fought back that shiver and told herself that she had left in the first place to get away from that kind of effect that he had on her, before she remembered that she had also been preparing to go back when Lance-slash-Kellerman had caught up to her.
"Do you need to be seen at a hospital?" Michael asked her. Sara wanted to point out that this would be one of the very most foolish things that they could possibly do, as if Michael himself did not already know that himself. He was willing to do it, anyway.
"No," Sara said swiftly, and added when Michael gave her a look, "They're only bruised. If we can keep the high-speed pyrotechnics to a minimum for a while I should be fine." That was far more a vain hope than it was a realistic assessment of reality, Sara thought as she watched Michael peek around the corner to make certain that Agent Mahone was still where they had left him. She was not sure that she could take many more days that included high-speed chases, a car crash, a gun standoff, and then the kidnapping of a federal agent.
Michael ducked back around the corner and flashed her a quick smile. "I'll try to keep things sedate." He seemed so genuinely happy to have her there with him, in spite of the danger and the blood and the very real crimes that the both of them had committed, justified or not, that Sara could not help letting the air out of her lungs on a shaky sigh. He was not in any way going to be pleased by what she had to say next, then.
"Michael, when this…Agent Kellerman found me, I was coming back," she began. Michael had been peeking around the corner again so that he could check on the very largest of the crimes that they had committed that day. He jerked his head back towards her, his eyes first lighting up and then becoming wary and dark only a second later. Her tone had not been that of a woman finally agreeing to run off on a romantic getaway, which Sara was convinced that a significant part of Michael still thought that the Panama plan would be. That was a part of the problem. "But I wasn't coming back to tell you that I would go with you."
"Oh." Though Michael leaned away from her by scarcely more than an inch, it felt much larger. Sara was reminded of how they had stared at each other over the hood of Michael's car earlier that day, where feet had become miles.
Much as Sara hated that distance, neither was she going to allow it to deter her from what needed to be said. "Panama's not a plan, Michael," she said. The slight flicker of his eyes was the only betrayal of emotion that he gave. Sara had known even at Fox River that she hated his ability to do that. She fought down the urge to wrap her arms around herself and went on, "These guys are killing people, Michael. They killed my father. They'll kill anyone else who tries to stand against them, or even the ones who are just inconvenient and in the way. How can we possibly run away and let them just keep doing that?"
Michael made a soft huffing sound. "That's not an argument for staying," he told her. There was a far-away light in his eyes that let Sara know that he was thinking of his brother and the rendezvous point, and about more than merely the mechanics of making the next day work. Faced with a whole nation of potential dead bodies, Michael would still ask first how this was going to affect Lincoln.
Protect Lincoln, Sara figured, and maybe now he would protect her with the same zeal, which was a thought so looming and awesome that Sara was still not entirely sure what she was supposed to do about it.
"It does when you realize how many people will die if we leave," Sara countered in a soft, level voice. It was I right /I that they stay and fight, she realized, right in a way that had nothing to do with how legal or illegal the action might be. She could still remember the sick sense of vertigo that had overcome her after she had unlocked the infirmary door and realized that she had done something that could not be considered legal under any stretch of the law at the same time that she could not convince herself that she had done anything wrong. Sara's history of differentiating what was moral or immoral independent of what was legal was not so great. She didn't have any such uncertainty in her gut right now. Call it progress, or maybe there was a still a far-down part of herself that was still getting a little too much of a kick out of running around and pretending to be Bonnie.
Michael peeked around the corner again. Unless Agent Mahone had the ability to teleport-though given the eerie way in which he had stalked them to the meeting place and then the motel, Sara was also not sure that she was willing to discount it-then Michael was doing it in order to give himself a break from having to look at her. "I have to get my brother someplace safe before I even think about doing anything else," he told her. "I'm sorry, but I have to."
Deflated, Sara nodded. "I understand," she said, feeling terrible because she thought that a part of her did. Worse, she realized as she saw the way that Michael was looking at her now, Michael thought that she was staying only because the other options were so much worse. He touched lightly at her shoulder, forcing Sara to fight down another of those shivers. Touch had always been alternately a comfort and a tool for manipulation between them, and the cynical part of Sara was not sure which one of them she was experiencing now. She listened to the rumble of voices as Michael and Agent Mahone spoke to one another without being able to discern the words, sighed, and closed her eyes. The urge to either shoot up or take a drink was stronger than it had been in months, even on the night when she had let Michael and all of the others out of the prison, and took a long time to subside. Sara balled her hands into fists and counted it as a victory when it finally did.
---
Sara was not sure that anyone slept that night. Agent Mahone was steadfastly ignoring everyone, a tactic that Sara would call fundamentally childish if she was not convinced that there was much more going on beneath the surface, with no way of knowing if he genuinely slept at any point or merely feigned it. Sara herself would not have thought it possible to sleep while surrounded by people who at best had no problem hauling her around like luggage and, for all that Agent Mahone knew, if push came to shove might not have a problem killing him at all. She did not think that it would be even possible for herself to sleep, no matter how exhausted she was from all of the grieving and running that she had done over the past few days. Even the moments when she fell into a light doze startled her as soon as she inevitably woke a few moments later. Every time that she did, it was to find Michael's eyes on her.
By the time that the dawn had come around, the few scattered moments of rest that she had been able to collect had done her so little good that Sara rather crankily thought that she might have done better off not sleeping at all. She swung her legs over the side of the bed that she had commandeered and noticed that Agent Mahone had woken up, or at the very least was seeing fit to act as if he was awake now, and was watching her. Even though his face was smooth and blank of any emotion that might have allowed the person watching him to gain a handhold, Sara could not shake the feeling that she was being assessed for some kind of future purpose.
It was eerie, that stare, and the very eeriness of it spurred Sara to realize that Agent Mahone's eyes were nearly the same shade of blue as Michael's. She lifted her chin and stared back with the same cool lack of expression, assessing him through a doctor's eyes and trying not to wonder too strongly about what framework he was applying in his assessment of her. The trembling had stopped, Sara began to think, until she noticed the rigid way that he was holding his arms fixed behind him, many miles beyond what the cuffs themselves demanded, and realized that this was as not the case at all. He was merely taking pains to keep it hidden after he had reacted so badly to Sara's simple examination the night before. Control, or the appearance of control, was of the utmost importance to him. Noticing this, Sara added it to the mental dossier that she was creating on the man that they were keeping as their temporary prisoner before she went on with her visual examination. Sara was sure that Michael would be amused to know that she was capable of standing back and taking the measure of a person from all angles as he was, and perhaps better. She, after all, was still in possession of all of her toes. It was necessary in a prison to immediately take stock of all of the threats that surrounded her. Sara had only been wrong three times in the past three yeas. One was the man that she had described to Agent Mahone, the one who had turned around and in under fifteen minutes had gone from friendly and charming into hell-bent upon raping and murdering her. The second man was Agent Kellerman. The third, and the person whom Sara had allowed to blindside her to the largest and most traumatic degree, was sitting in the chair on the opposite side of the room.
Sara could not stop her gaze from turning for a second or two in the direction of Michael as she thought of this. Agent Mahone had made note of the movement when she turned back towards him. Sara was sure that her eyes betrayed an irritated flicker before she was able to pull her expression back under control again, but she pushed forward without acknowledging it. Agent Mahone had stopped sweating the way that he had been the night before, at least, and Sara severely doubted that that was a physiological reaction that the could fake, no matter how anal retentive he actually was. There were dark circles beneath his eyes that Sara was sure that all three of them were sharing at this point, and the same symptoms of headache that he had been displaying the night before. Twice Sara watched him turning his face away from the light that was crawling through the window and the soft glow that was emanating from the bedside lamp as if it hurt him. Sara watched all of this and could not help but feel a stirring of concern, whether it was a pure doctor's instinct or a sense shared with Michael that something was not quite adding up here.
Michael startled Sara in her examination by standing up abruptly from his chair, causing her to jump before she could get control of herself again. So, she noticed, did Agent Mahone, even if his was markedly less pronounced. Sara did not think that she would have seen it at all if not for those circles.
"I'm going to get some coffee, some food," he told Sara in a low voice as he walked over to the bed and handed her the gun that had been Agent Kellerman's. It was on the tip of Sara's tongue to tell Michael that it was not worth the risk until she remembered that she had eaten nothing since the previous morning and had no way of knowing when the other two had eaten at all. Sara touched at her forehead and winched when she felt the long bruise that had grown even more tender over the night.
"Maybe I could wear your hat," she suggested.
Michael eyed her for a moment before he shook his head and said decisively, "No, I don't think that that's a good idea."
The look on Michael's face was such that, in spite of everything, it was all that Sara could do not to smother a laugh against the back of her hand. It was possible, she thought, that nerves were finally catching up to her. "I look that bad?" she asked.
A faint smile touched the edges of Michael's mouth. "I've learned not to respond when a woman asks that question," he said. Sara did not know if he was genuinely putting their conversation from the night before out of his mind or merely pretending that he had, but he touched at her cheek as he handed off the weapon. "Safety off."
"Safety off," Sara echoed as she sat back down on the bed with the gun that she was still not sure she could bring herself to use. It was only important that Agent Mahone believed that she could use it, she reminded herself, choosing to ignore for the moment that she had been a terrible liar ever since she was a child. She watched as Michael slipped out the door before she looked back to Agent Mahone and sighed. "Do I really look that bad?" Sara winced and squirmed as she realized that it really was that bad. As much as she knew by now that she and the wide world of opiates had too much bad blood between them to ever be considered friends, she could not help but wish that she had access to something stronger than aspirin.
Agent Mahone looked first startled that he was being addressed at all, then by the fact that Sara was using such a silly question to do it. "You're like a department store mannequin, Dr. Tancredi," Agent Mahone said in a dry voice, quirking his eyebrow slightly before he turned his head so that he could watch the light playing in around the cheap motel curtains. Sara thought that there was a defiance in the gesture, as if he knew that it was going to hurt him but needed to show that he could take it all the same. There were lines drawn into the flesh around his eyes.
"Do you have a physical condition that I should be aware of?" Sara asked. Agent Mahone snapped his head around towards her, too fast; Sara could see the barely controllable wince in the way that his mouth tightened. Having experienced far more than her share of hangovers in college before she had discovered that there were other, better drugs, Sara could sympathize. It did not, however, change her original point. "If you do, I need to know. I could help-"
"Could you now, Dr. Tancredi," Agent Mahone interrupted her in a low, silken voice that made all of the hair on the back of Sara's neck and along her arms stand up. She had not known that human speech could have that kind of power. "Why would you want to do that?"
"I'm a doctor," Sara said, pleased to note that the moment of purely visceral fear that she had experienced was not entering her voice. Whether or not it was showing in her face, with the way that Agent Mahone's eyes were so efficiently following her every move as if he, too, was working out a puzzle whose ultimate shape was just starting to be know she could not say. "I don't like to see people in pain."
"You've kidnapped someone," Agent Mahone countered in that dry, dry voice. Sara was convinced that a small and perverse part of him was enjoying this, and that man was quite a different one from the man that she and Michael had encountered so far. "A federal crime. I'd say whether or not I experience any mild discomfort is the least of your worries."
Sara felt one of her eyebrows quirk up. "I'd say that whether or not I'm committing a federal crime is I also /I the least of my worries," she said, mimicking Agent Mahone's tone. He looked startled and even, in that small and perverse part of himself that was still good, amused. "Your pulse was racing when I took it yesterday, and you were displaying both headache symptoms and trouble focusing. You're either in withdrawal to something or having an anxiety attack." Sara cocked her head to one side so that she could stare at him until he began to show the first signs of being discomfited by it. "And you're not much better this morning."
The man whom she had glimpsed for a moment and who had been so much more interesting was banished by a flickering of Agent Mahone's eye. He took a deliberate glance at the dingy bedside clock. Seven a.m. "Try to keep your better instincts under control for the next five hours, Dr. Tancredi," he told her. "They're not good traits for a fugitive and novice Bonnie to possess."
Sara felt a high flush of blood entering her cheeks, as the words had been intended to make her angry, and then tilted her head to one side. She had heard something else buried within them as well. "I don't imagine that they're too wise for a mercenary to carry around, either," she answered coolly. The gun was heavy and her palms were slick with a nervous sweat, so that she was afraid that she was going to drop it. Sara set the gun to the side on the bedspread so that she could scrub her palms off quickly against her jeans. Agent Mahone followed every move that she made with her eyes. She really hoped that he didn't think that she was missing that.
Agent Mahone indulged in a slight roll of his eyes. "At least you're not convinced that I'm being blackmailed," he said. He looked towards the window again. Sara wondered why he kept doing that, even though it was clearly hurting him.
"I didn't say that you weren't being blackmailed," Sara said. He turned back to look at her, the subtle change in his expression saying that, for the first time, she was becoming interesting. "It doesn't stop you from being a mercenary. After all, you're still making an exchange for your soul. I don't really care what your price was." Sara could hear the edge in her voice and knew that it was not entirely reserved for Agent Mahone. She didn't care, either, because Michael was not there and she was getting the feeling that the two of them were so similar that yelling at one could stand in for yelling at the other in a pinch. Michael's price was Lincoln, and the consequence was everyone else that the president would kill as a result. Even as Sara knew that this was wrong, she could not be sure that she would not make the same decision in that position, if the price was high enough. Sara had not been given the time to grieve for her father with the way that crises had started to fall one after the other like dominoes, but it was a sharp ache in the center of her chest every time that she paused and allowed herself to think about it. "You're still trading everyone else in the country for one stupid person." Sara was honestly not sure if she was talking to Agent Mahone at that point, to the phantom of Michael who was not there, or even to the part of herself who would trade the nation for her father in a second.
Agent Mahone had rolled his eyes and made no attempt to hide it when Sara had accused him of selling his soul, only to go very still and focused by the time that she had finished. Sara was aware that her blood was high in her cheeks and that she was breathing harder than she had been at the start, but Agent Mahone for once was not watching every twitch as if he was waiting for the point when he turn it to his advantage. He looked more instead as if he was visiting some inner world all his own, and that he was not having a pleasant journey in the going there.
"Would you really have killed me?" Sara asked him. Still riding high on anger and grief that couldn't find a safe place to find a voice, the words emerged ragged and savage.
Agent Mahone leaned back as he returned from that inner landscape, but he did not seem surprised. "Yes, I would have," he told her, watching her face carefully. "Does that give you enough for your jury to finally make a decision?"
"Yes," Sara told him before she scooped the gun back into her hand, stood from the bed, and stalked off towards the bathroom. She turned on the water, thinking that she was going to cry, and instead stood with a bowed head and dry, burning eyes. Sara could not scream at Michael and was not sure that she could even scream at Agent Mahone, not when the temptation to make the same choice was so great, and she could not scream at her father for making such a stupid alliance in the first place. There was no point in raging against the dead.
Sara thought that she might give it a good try all the same, but she settled for bringing the butt of the gun down against the counter once, hard enough to crack the plastic before she decided that enough was enough. She set the gun to the side long enough to cup her hands beneath the faucet and gulp down several palms full of water, splash a few more across her face. A few moments of scouting turned up a mug that was covered with dust but would still do. Sara rinsed it out and filled it with water before she reclaimed the weapon that she hardly knew how to use and stalked back into the main room.
"Here," she said shortly, thrusting the mug out towards Agent Mahone's mouth. When he only looked at her, Sara went on, "Five hours of dehydration still won't be pleasant. I want to keep my better instincts."
"Of course," Agent Mahone said before he tipped his mouth to the cup and began to drink. Sara set the mug down on the nightstand once he had finished and reclaimed her seat on the opposite bed. He probably needed to relieve himself, as well, but Sara was not about to negotiate that arrangement with him. Better instincts did not mean that she had to be foolish.
Agent Mahone did not try to speak to her any further as they waited for Michael to return. Sara doubted that this was a kindness; more likely than not he merely saw in her face that she was going to be an unresponsive conversationalist. Though it surely too no more than ten minutes longer than that for Michael to come back, Sara still stared at him as he slid through the door as if he had been gone for years and she needed to memorize the contours of his face all over again.
She would have made the same choice, if it had been her father's life. That still did not make it right. Sara sighed.
Michael caught the noise and looked up from where he and Agent Mahone had been mutely studying each other. He was carrying a tray of coffees and a bag that smelled unmistakably and tantalizingly of grease, both of which he set down on the dresser before he asked, "Everything go all right?"
"Fine." The sweat was slicking her palms again. Sara ignored it. Putting the safety back onto the gun, she rose to her feet and went to help Michael unload the food. Leaning close so that they would have some semblance of privacy, Sara murmured, "We still need to talk. About Panama."
Michael's sidelong glance was surprised and even, Sara thought, the smallest bit hurt. "I have to get my brother to safety."
'But what about you?' Sara wanted to ask, for she had yet to see Michael even hint that this was one of his concerns, until she realized that her plan was hardly one that was going to be promoting anyone's safety, either. "Michael-" she started.
"Later," he said, stepping away from her and pulling the key to the handcuffs from the pocket of his jacket as he did so. Unless she wanted to turn a private conversation into a public one, Sara had no choice but to fall silent. She did so, even finding room within herself to fume a little and swear that Michael had done that on purpose. Sara could have happily kicked him in the shins.
"There aren't any windows in the bathroom," Michael told Agent Mahone as he first unlocked the cuffs and then stood back cautiously. Nonetheless, a look still crossed Agent Mahone's face as if he was considering attacking Michael right then and there. At the moment, Sara was not sure which one of them she would even root for. "Or anything that can be used as a weapon."
Agent Mahone quirked one of his eyebrows up for a moment, as if he was asking what Michael really thought he was doing playing this role when they both knew that it didn't suit him, before he disappeared into the bathroom. Sara watched him go and didn't relax even when she heard the sound of water running. "He isn't trying very hard," she mused.
"How do you mean?" Michael asked, taking one of the cups of coffee and pulling a long swallow from it. It was nice to know that he was still human and thus incapable of running for days on end without suffering the ill effects of it. Frankly, Sara had been starting to wonder.
Sara paused before answering so that she could look, really look and not merely glance over, this man that she had committed herself to go on the run with across countries and continents. She still, running over the list of ways that he had used her in order to get Lincoln out and the way that he was exhibiting such frustrating tunnel vision now, thought that she could punch him right in the kidneys, but neither was she feeling the urge to run out the door. Sara thought that only a comparatively small portion of this had to do with the daring, dangerous, and incredibly chivalrous rescue that he had performed. She sighed before she said, "You would think that Agent Mahone would by trying a little harder to get one over on us," she said. "Being a prisoner? Not fun." Her short trip under Agent Kellerman's authority certainly had not been. A few seconds later, Sara realized what she had said and flushed. "Though I guess you already knew that."
Michael's smile was soft and warm. In the tangled, buzzing mess of emotions that Sara was still trying to sort out, she found room to wish that he would do it more often. "I know what you meant." He glanced towards the bathroom, the smile being replaced by a troubled frown. "He's looking for an excuse."
'No,' Sara could not stop herself from thinking, remembering the man who had fought in the backseat the day before and then snarled at her so fiercely a few hours later that she had been certain that he was going to attack her, handcuffs or not. 'He's looking for an opening.' Before she could voice that thought, the bathroom door opened and Agent Mahone emerged. He had cleaned off the few traces of blood that Sara had missed on his face and on his arms and hands, though he had had to take off his suit jacket in order to do it. The sleeves of Agent Mahone's shirt were rolled up to his elbows, revealing forearms corded over in lean, capable muscle and a light dusting of freckles. The bandages around each wrist made it look easily as if what he had really done the day before was try to commit suicide.
Sara took all of this in at a glance and then moved on, her gaze never probing any deeper than warranted by professional concern. It was not until she glanced over at Michael that she realized that his eyes had yet to leave Agent Mahone's, and that it was becoming a thing much more intense than Sara's had ever been. She shivered once and turned her face away, feeling the intruder on something that she had no right to be witnessing. When Sara finally realized that taking her eyes off of the man who had already spoken so easily of killing her and Michael both was perhaps not the wisest idea that she had had since going on the run. Sara watched Michael's face and saw only wariness there as Agent Mahone walked towards them both, still fussing with the sleeves of his shirt. There was blood dotting the fabric and ground beneath his nails, while the butterfly bandages that were holding the cuts on his face together only added to the calm, gleaming intelligence in his eyes rather than detracting from it.
'He's waiting for an opportunity,' Sara thought again as Agent Mahone reclaimed his seat on the edges of the spread his arms wide to show that he carried no weapon in his hands. "This well-behaved enough for you?" he asked Michael. There was a light shining in his eyes that made Sara think of prophets and revolutionaries. She might as well have not been there at all.
The corners of Michael's mouth twitched. "It'll do," he answered. He seemed to have momentarily forgotten that Sara was there, also, right when she most wanted to shout a warning and only managed to keep herself silent because she could not figure out what she would say, exactly, what she planned on shouting a warning for.
"I'm going to lock your hands in front of you," Michael began, reaching out and taking one of Agent Mahone's wrists in his hand. Agent Mahone allowed it. "And then-"
Sara's first thought was that she could not think of anything specific to warn Michael about because they needed to be wary of everything. The second thought was that Agent Mahone was so fast.
Sara saw the gleaming of the metal and heard the quiet clicking sound that it made when Michael fastened it around Agent Mahone's wrist. She saw that the agent's eyes had begun to gleam, also, and opened her mouth to finally give voice to that warning, but it was too late. Agent Mahone had jumped back up to his feet before Sara had a chance to say a word and dragged his wrist from Michael's grasp. Michael had been alert and paying attention to Agent Mahone should he try just such a thing, and Sara saw that in the end it did not matter. Neither she nor Michael were fighters born, the last six weeks for Michael and the last six days for Sara notwithstanding, while Agent Mahone had been doing this job for years. Decades, probably. He grabbed Michael by the throat and then whirled him around so that he was standing in front of Agent Mahone, the chain of the handcuffs pressed taut against Michael's neck. Michael tilted his head back as far as he was able and gagged when Agent Mahone responded only by increasing the pressure; Sara could see angry red marks rising up on Michael's skin where the chain was being pressed down into the flesh.
And Michael's gun had been resting beside her on the dresser the entire time, Sara realized. The entire time, and her hand had not so much as twitched towards grabbing it. If she and Michael thought that they were going to be the next Bonnie and Clyde until they made it down to Panama, then they had a learning curve that they needed to get caught up on.
Sara fumbled fro the gun and flicked the safety off before she swung it around to bear on Agent Mahone. The sight of the weapon was not making him nearly anxious enough for Sara's comfort. That could have been because he had Michael in front of him as a shield and knew full well that he was one of the last people on the planet that Sara would ever shoot. She didn't think so, though. She thought that it was here. Sara thought that Agent Mahone was looking at her and then very deliberately saying that he didn't think she had it in her to be a killer any more than Michael did.
"Put the weapon down, Dr. Tancredi," Agent Mahone confirmed her suspicion a bare second later. "That's a very dangerous thing to be carrying around if you do not intend to use it."
The light in Agent Mahone's eyes was feral even as his voice was smooth and self-assured. 'If you're still trying to convince that jury, don't worry. They've already made up their minds,' Sara thought as she raised the gun and aimed it at Agent Mahone's head. Her hand was trembling slightly; it did not translate down the barrel. "Don't assume that I won't use it," Sara said. Her voice sounded like that of a woman who was entirely in control of the situation, even if she herself did not feel like one. "Let him go."
With the chain snapped taut against his throat, Michael was getting just enough air to stay conscious. His eyes were beginning to go glassy and his lips were pulled back from his teeth as he struggled to hook his fingers beneath the chain and pull free of it. Michael drove one of his elbows into Agent Mahone's abdomen in the same way that Sara had seen him use in order to get the upper hand the day before, but either the oxygen deprivation had made Michael weaker or Agent Mahone was merely expecting it this time. He winced and made a soft sound as some of the air was expelled from his lungs, but that was all. The marks on Michael's necks were of such a vivid and angry red color that Sara could not see how they could avoid darkening into bruises later.
"Dr. Tancredi," Agent Mahone began, giving Sara a moment to marvel that he was continuing to address her with a title of respect at the same time that she was busily calling him every unsavory name that she could think of in English and a few other languages besides within the confines of her own head. "I think that we both know that if you were going to shoot me, then you already would have taken the numerous opportunities that you have had to do so. Put down the weapon, step back, or watch me strangle him right here."
Sara looked towards Michael for clues while her finger was shaking with indecision against the trigger. She saw no help coming from that quarter. Michael was clearly struggling just to breathe. Sara noted that his hands had begun to sag at the same time that she realized that the chain across his neck was shaking, and not because Michael was continuing to struggle fruitlessly against it.
Sara had been allowing the barrel of the gun to drift down towards the floor in her moment of uncertainty. It only took her a moment to raise it again. Agent Mahone's hands were trembling; the shaking in Sara's had already stopped. "So kill him," she said simply.
Michael paused struggling for only a second, the minimum time that it took for him to lock eyes with Sara. Sara did not dare send him any kind of overt message, not with the way that Agent Mahone was right there and staring at her as if she had just announced her intention to topple Caroline Reynolds from the presidency and run for the position herself, but she hoped that he understood. Surely the man who could break out of a maximum security prison with nothing more than his brain could put the pieces together.
The problem with that thesis was that, from what Michael had told her, Agent Mahone was easily of a comparable intelligence. He had the look of a wolf figuring out all of the lamb's tricks on his face.
"If you think that I won't kill him, Dr. Tancredi," Agent Mahone told her, punctuating his statement with a hard jerk against Michael's windpipe. Michael gagged and, rather than going limp as had probably been his intention, only began to struggle harder. He threw his weight to the side with enough force to make Agent Mahone drift a few steps closer to the dresser or else let go of Michael altogether. Sara hoped that her face was remaining as still and uncomprehending as she needed it to be.
"You may want to ask David Apolskis," Agent Mahone finished.
"I know that you'll kill him," Sara answered. "I know that you'll kill me, too." Agent Mahone's voice was commanding and in control, but his eyes belonged to a man on the verge of coming undone. They might as well have belonged to a different person. Sara wondered how she had missed it; she wondered if this was what Michael had seen all along. "But you want to kill us both at a distance. You want to shoot us, so that you can pretend that there isn't just as much blood on your hands." Sara's own hands were wanting to tremble again. She commanded them sharply that now was not the time. "If you want to kill us, you're going to have to do it up close. You don't get to hide from the bodies and the blood."
Sara had, perhaps naively, thought that she might even be getting somewhere until she said the last sentence. She knew the moment that the words were out of her mouth, the second that she saw Agent Mahone's face go closed-off and cold again, that she had miscalculated. "I don't hide from them, believe me," he informed her before he abruptly increased the pressure that he was putting on Michael's throat, so that the red marks grew that much deeper and uglier and Michael's chest began to jerk as he struggled to draw a breath.
Given one or the other, Sara didn't guess that there was any real choice to be had. She jerked her finger back on the trigger and felt bile surge up in her throat.
Michael jerked hard to the side again, pulling Agent Mahone along with him, less than a second before the boom of the gun going off shook the room. Agent Mahone's face twisted, and Sara could have cried as she realized that Michael's sudden movement had caused her to miss Agent Mahone by a margin so slim that he might even have felt the bullet go whistling past him. She raised the gun for another go before she realized what Michael was doing.
Both of his lurches, hidden beneath the guise of being the panicked, frenzied struggles of anyone discovering that oxygen had without warning become a precious resource, had really been about getting him closer to the dresser. He closed his hands around one of the remaining cups of coffee, flicked the lid off with his thumb, and then threw the coffee over his shoulder at Agent Mahone's face. Agent Mahone had to duck backwards to avoid being scalded, and as he did so his grip on the chain about Michael's neck began to loosen. Michael thrust his fingers beneath the chain without hesitation and jerked back hard against Agent Mahone. For a few seconds they were flush against one another, as if Sara did not already have the worst of all possible times to feel as if she was intruding upon a scene where she should not. Michael threw Agent Mahone off balance long enough to draw in a few deep breaths before he was seizing the gun from Sara's grasp. She was thrilled to let him take it.
Agent Mahone let out a laugh that sounded shaky and nearly amused as he backed away and put his hands into the air. Sara wrapped her arms around herself; it hurt to look at him for too long. "Might as well pull that trigger," he rasped at Michael. "It's the only thing that will stop me from hunting you."
Michael made a hissing noise as he exhaled from between clenched teeth. Sara thought that he might even be on the verge of frustrated tears. "Whatever they have on you," he spit at Agent Mahone in a voice that did not know whether it wanted to be angry, frustrated, or desperate. Sara glanced out the window and swore that she could hear the approach of sirens. "Whatever…" Michael's face cleared. "Whoever they're using to blackmail you," he finished in the same voice that he would use to talk a jumper down from a ledge. Sara did not miss the shudder that ran down Agent Mahone's spine as he heard it. "You have to realize that they will never honor that promise. You know that much." Michael paused long enough for his face to light up with another one of those mental leaps. "Pam and Cameron, right. They know too much. They know too much, and you know it. You're selling your soul without even getting anything back for it."
Agent Mahone looked as if he wanted nothing more than to put his fist into Michael's face. "I wouldn't involve them in this," he said, but he was listening. Listening, and clearly believing what Michael. That still didn't seem to be taking him down from the brink of violence.
"Doesn't matter," Michael said smoothly. He was warming to his argument, Sara could see it, as he realized that there was something in Agent Mahone that was capable of listening at all. "You could, you might have. That will be enough."
Agent Mahone glared at Michael through slitted eyes, his entire body wound up in tension, before he said, "We go to Colorado. We get my family. You want me to stop hunting, those are my terms."
Michael blinked, as if he was stunned to get even that far, and nearly shook his head before he stopped himself. "My brother is waiting for us at the border," he said. "And as long as you stop hunting us, we don't need you-"
"Those are the terms," Agent Mahone repeated. He had a stubborn look in his eyes that reminded Sara much more of Michael than she cared for. "I'm replaceable." He was back to using a smooth tone that jarred against the expression on his face. Remembering how the situation had turned explosive the last time that he had done that, Sara shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "They can have someone else hunting you within the day." He looked on the verge of an anxiety attack. That was fair enough; Sara herself felt as if she was on the verge of one, and she was not even the one who had just essentially flipped her moral compass around to point in an entirely new direction. "And they'll hunt you to the ends of the earth." Agent Mahone's smile was thin, colorless. The glance that he slid over Sara was, she was certain, quite deliberate as he said, "You want to sell your soul, too, I suggest that you make it worth something."
Michael stared at Agent Mahone for a long, long moment, until Sara was sure that she was not imagining the sound of approaching sirens. That stupid gunshot. Even in this fleabag motel, some things could not be done without attracting attention. Surely Michael was going to argue, Sara thought. If she had not been able to convince him to stand and fight rather than running away to Panama, then surely the man who had professed allegiance to the other side a mere sixty seconds before would not be able to do it. Michael turned a glance towards the window as he thought.
Surely. Sara looked back and forth between Michael and Agent Mahone, again feeling that tension that she could not explain.
Michael instead flicked the handcuff key at Agent Mahone so that he could unlock single cuff that Michael had managed to get fastened before Agent Mahone had nearly choked him to death. As much as Sara was willing to grant that Agent Mahone did not appear to be like any of the other pursuers that their mysterious enemy had sent after them, as much as she had felt uneasy about Agent Mahone's professed motives from the start, she felt that someone should remember that.
Agent Mahone earned some points by looking nearly as surprised as Sara felt as he caught the key from the air.
"We'll talk in the car," Michael said.
That left only one option. Sara sat down on the edge of the bed, feeling cold, and wondered how long it would be before Michael and Agent Mahone both caught up to what she already knew.
End Part Five