Part Seven
Lincoln thought that he could count on both hands the number of words, total, that had been spoken on the trip south, and he liked that just fine. The only thing that concerned him was that, of even those few words, not a single one of them had been spoken by LJ. The boy sat in his seat and stared out of the window with an impossible to read expression. Maybe there were signs there, minute cracks spreading across the surface before the ice cracked altogether, that Lincoln would be able to see if he knew his kid better. It was a sour thought; Lincoln could not stop himself from glancing towards Aldo in the front seat as he had it.
Remembering what LJ had said to him the day before and that LJ was still just a kid even though he had been sucked against his will into a man's fight, Lincoln reached over and touched his son lightly on the shoulder. LJ didn't jump before he turned to look at him. Lincoln supposed that that was a good sign.
"Yeah?" he asked.
"You all right?" Lincoln asked him. He could see Aldo watching them both from the rearview mirror and only barely resisted the urge to flip the old man off. He needed to set a better example than he had been doing.
LJ turned back towards the window and gave the sort of shrug that teenagers had perfected, the kind that could mean everything or nothing at all. "Fine." He was a crap liar. Lincoln guessed that, as a father, he ought to be proud of that.
Lincoln felt the weight of a gaze and glanced towards the rearview mirror, expecting to see Aldo again watching him. he could not say that he was altogether surprised, though, by the reflection of Jane's cool gray eyes, or even particularly dismayed. Lincoln held Jane's gaze, thinking that sooner or later she would collapse to social conventions, but in the end he was the one who looked away. He squeezed at LJ's shoulder. "Everything's going to be all right."
LJ turned away from the window long enough to give his father the kind of perfectly eloquent look that, on reflection, Lincoln guessed was the only response that he really could have expected. The kid's mother had been dead less than two months, Veronica for less than two weeks, while LJ had not had time to grieve for either of them as he was imprisoned, chased, and shot at many times over. LJ's look asked Lincoln without saying a word just how in the hell he thought that he was ever going to be able to make things right again.
What LJ's mouth said was, "I know, Dad." After the force of that look, the words were almost worse. Lincoln squeezed at LJ's shoulder again and spent the rest of the night in silence.
These thoughts were weighing heavily on Lincoln's mind still as they drove the van out onto the sand and towards the place where he and Michael were supposed to meet. It made Lincoln's scalp prickle and his nerves all stand on edge, bringing new places into the plan that Michael had arranged with such precision in the first place. He knew full well that every alteration that was made to it created a ripple effect that multiplied upon itself in ways that even Michael could neither foresee nor control, and that Lincoln himself had personally created a great many of those ripples that Michael was so curiously trying to graph now. He was not stupid; he understood cause and effect. It was only that, when he was in the moment and faced with protecting his boy or giving into those white-hot pulses of rage, he could not bring himself to fully care. It didn't matter how strong the remorse would be later. In the moment, there was always a voice in his head telling him that he could defy the math by willing it hard enough.
They parked the van a short distance away from the location that Michael had given and walked across the final fifteen minutes or so. Aldo said that he didn't want the van to become mired down in the sand if it should become too deep, while Jane lifted one eyebrow and as usual offered no argument. Lincoln thought that it was far more likely than not that Aldo in reality simply did not want whoever might be within the shack that they could see across the sand dunes to hear the engine and know that they were approaching, at the same time that he didn't want to frighten LJ by saying this outright. Lincoln found himself agreeing with his father, an experience that put a scowl onto his face. He did not think that it was likely to be pried off for several hours.
"Wait," Jane said shortly as they drew close, suddenly lowering her voice into a whisper even though they had all been speaking in normal tones up to that point. When they fell silent but stared at her without comprehension, she sighed and pointed towards the shack's meager porch. "Look."
Lincoln held his hands over his eyes so that the glare from the sand was less severe and squinted off in the direction that Jane was indicating. It took him several moments to see it, even with Jane's helping hint; she had good eyes. There was a shadow that ought not to be there, snuggled up so closely against the shack that it was nearly impossible to pull the figure from the surrounding wood. Lincoln felt his eyes narrowing as he ran his eyes across the shadow from its head down to its feet and realized that it was not one that had any business being there.
"Do you know him?" Jane whispered to Lincoln. She studied his face with the expression of a woman who was trying to unlock the secrets of a great painting upon seeing it for the first time. Or, more likely, Lincoln thought as he reminded himself of the more relevant features of the woman who stood in front of him, a brand new weapon that she could not wait to try out. He was unused to receiving such a close scrutiny from anyone else but Michael.
Lincoln shook his head and, ignoring the concerned expression on the faces of Aldo and LJ as well as the rapt one worn by Jane, growled, "No." He reached for the back of his jeans, where there was a gun kept within easy reach. The only one in their part who was unarmed at that moment was KJ. Based upon what Aldo had said on the long drive south, Lincoln thought it very likely that he would never consent to walking around unarmed again.
What Lincoln might have done, he did not know, for the voice that always managed to convince him that he could defy math and manage the consequences this time around was beginning to rise in his head again. He was halted by Aldo grabbing his bicep and whispering, "Wait," at the same time that a second shadow appeared around the edge of the shack. It had approached from the other side and had thus been invisible until that moment. Didn't matter. Lincoln knew that silhouette and knew that it, at least, belonged. He felt a grin spreading across his face as one shadow dispatched the other with a ruthless efficiency and then slipped into the shack itself.
"I know that one," Lincoln said, hearing a certain grim satisfaction enter his voice, feeling LJ's heavy gaze as a weight against the back of his neck, and still did not stop. "Come on." Sucre might be able to bring the situation in hand on his own. Lincoln did not plan on taking that chance.
It took mere moments to cover that last expanse of sand and reach the shack, from which yelling could already be heard. When the sound of a gunshot echoed out from inside, Lincoln knew that he was now in the place where all thoughts of consequences ceased to matter at all. Michael was good with those; Lincoln himself never had been. He thumbed the safety off of the gun and stepped inside.
Going from the blinding light to the sudden dark wreaked havoc on Lincoln's eyes, so that he could not immediately make out the occupants of the shack even though he was having no problem pointing his gun at them. The first person that he was able to identify with any degree of clarity was the doc, pushed back against the wall by all of the yelling male testosterone and looking as if she might pick up one of the rickety chairs that were scattered about and beat someone with it. Her eyes only widened slightly when she saw Lincoln; Lincoln had a feeling that she had been expecting him to arrive. He gave her a brief nod of acknowledgement but still found his eyes moving inexorably towards Michael. Michael was holding a gun in his hand and pointing it towards a Latino man that Lincoln had never seen before, but who was not wearing an expression that inspired Lincoln to confidence.
The third man turned his back to Lincoln and was pointing a gun at yet another-the shack was getting crowded-while Sucre continued to yell. Lincoln could not understand what was being said, though he was willing to hedge a bet that there were some fairly significant threats involved. The man being menaced dropped his gun almost immediately and kicked it away from himself, while the one who had been doing the menacing turned around. Lincoln knew who he was as soon as he saw the profile, and had the gun up and pointed at Mahone's face before Mahone could even fully face him.
"Drop it," Lincoln growled, jerking his head to indicate the gun, as if Mahone could possibly have any doubt. With the calm and perfectly ruthless way in which Mahone had pursued them across the country, splashing both of their faces and, after Tweener, his own across every television and newspaper in the country, Lincoln was almost ready to believe that Mahone could read Lincoln's own thoughts. When Mahone proved himself inclined to be either stubborn or stupid, Lincoln tightened his finger upon the trigger and growled, "That means now, in case you were wondering."
Mahone had depths of either stupidity or plain bullheadedness that rivaled Lincoln's own, for he was not putting down the gun. The twitch of his arm said that he might even be considering raising it. Lincoln did not want to kill a man, but he took a breath and prepared himself to do just that.
"Lincoln, don't!" Michael called over to him hurriedly. Lincoln thought that maybe he could have chosen a better time to do so, such as when there wasn't a man whose biggest job was to bring in the most wanted man in the United States and who had a weapon that he was showing himself inclined to use standing right in front of Lincoln. He grit his teeth and pretended as if Michael was not there. "Put it down," Lincoln repeated in a soft and dangerous voice. Mahone's eyes suggested a number of crude things that Lincoln could go do to himself, if he was feeling so inclined.
Lincoln did not turn his head to see what Michael was doing, though he heard his brother say to Sucre, "You have this?" and Sucre reply, "Sure, papi," before there was the clink of a gun being set down. Lincoln hoped that Michael was remembering to keep it well away from anyone else's easy reach. For all of Michael's brilliance, it was exactly the kind of street-ignorant mistake that he would make.
"Did you do it?" Mahone asked him. His voice was hardly more than a whisper, more akin to a growl; he sounded as if the entire world depended upon what Lincoln said next.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Lincoln asked, feeling blank and stupid. The narrowing of Mahone's eyes told him that, if there really was a test being administered at the moment, then Lincoln was failing it rather spectacularly.
"Alex," Michael said as he reached both Lincoln and Mahone at last. Lincoln thought for a second that Michael was actually going to reach out and take Mahone's arm in order to pull the gun away, and wondered what had happened over the course of the previous few days to put Michael on such friendly terms with a federal agent. "Alex, put the gun down, you've already proven yourself better-"
"Scofield, shut up," Mahone said in a tone of deep dismissal that made Michael blink in surprise, and frankly made Lincoln do the same. Maybe the first name basis had been a mistake on Michael's part. Staring hard at Lincoln, Mahone repeated, "Did you do it?"
And suddenly, Lincoln understood. The universal it, the thing that had shoved this entire mess into motion in the first place. In the chaos of the past few days, Colorado, getting back from it, and everything that he had learned along the way, Lincoln had managed to shove his conviction to the back of his mind altogether. What had at one moment seemed like such a big event that it had encompassed his entire universe and would never be forgotten had been rendered very small after Aldo had laid out the full extent of the corruption for him to see.
"No, man," Lincoln told him. He watched Mahone's arm twitch and was sure that he was going to have to pull that trigger, Michael or not, but it turned out to be only an involuntary flinch and nothing more. "Frame job from start to finish."
Mahone did not look surprised; he looked instead as if he wished that he could be. He closed his eyes and let out one of the longest, deepest sighs that Lincoln had ever heard before he nodded his head once. Between one blink of the eye and the next, the agent standing before Lincoln was five years older. He flipped the gun around in his hand, a movement so quick that it made Lincoln's twitch hard against the trigger in a way that was not good for anyone's survival, before he gave the weapon handle-first over to Michael.
"Thank you," Michael said in a voice that sounded as if he meant it. He did not look any more comfortable holding that weapon than he had the first, but they were running out of places to set down inconvenient guns.
Mahone only shook his head in response, his face dark and his eyes hooded, before he began to shoulder his way past Lincoln. "Hey," Lincoln said, putting his hand upon Mahone's shoulder and thinking that it would be a bad plan for anyone, but most especially the federal agent who had been dogging their steps ever since they had left Fox River, to go anywhere until a few things had been explained. At the feel of Lincoln's hand on his shoulder, Mahone twisted around and gave Lincoln a look suggesting he would not mind snapping Lincoln's hand off at the wrist if he continued to put it where it had no place being. Lincoln had a feeling that it had very little to do with him, at its heart. He also knew that he did not care, and would not mind putting his fist into Mahone's face even now that he was no longer holding a weapon.
"Linc, it's fine, let him go," Michael said. Lincoln decided then that Michael had even more questions to answer than Lincoln himself would have, once Michael had dealt with the matter at hand long enough to notice the new people that Lincoln had brought along with him. He took his hand from Mahone's shoulder and watched as the agent walked over to the wall where the doc was still hovering. While they were standing side by side, Lincoln noticed for the first time the bandaged cuts that marked Mahone's face and the deep bruise that crossed Sara's forehead. Michael at the moment looked like the only one who had not been injured in some way over the past few days.
Yeah. A lot of questions.
"What the hell, Michael?" Lincoln asked. He could see Sucre ordering Michael's two other friends, the ones that had felt such a close bond that they had had no problem holding a gun on him, into a corner where they were relatively isolated from both the weapons and the conversation itself. Sucre could resist peeking a glance over his shoulder as he went, though he made it a short one when Lincoln glared. Their family dramas were going to need a flow chart before much more time went by; they did not need to invite others into it as well.
Michael shook his head once and then scrubbed his hand over his scalp, the surest proof that he was becoming frustrated. "He's on our side now," he said in the same half-sheepish, half-defiant tone that he had used when they were young and Lincoln had felt the rare urge to act as a replacement parent come over him.
"You sure about that?" Lincoln asked, because from where he was standing Agent Mahone certainly did not look very happy to be on their team. His stare out the grimy window was fixed and hunted, as if it was only the very slimmest of leashes that was keeping him from bolting out the door and pursuing his own agenda altogether. If he had noticed the three figures standing just outside of the door any more than Michael had, then he was not finding it within himself to care.
"No," Michael said, and Lincoln found himself relaxing in spite of all of the instincts telling him that he needed to stay tense. If Michael had not gone completely round the bend in bringing new people into the plan who had proven themselves to be very, very good at working for the other side, then Lincoln could be assured that the world had not spun completely off of its axis. He preferred not to think about the two people that he had waiting outside who had also been so very good at working for the other side and had switched for reasons that neither one of them cared to explain.
"But he has a stake in this," Michael continued. Lincoln cut his eyes towards Mahone again and decided that this must be true, for that was not the body language of a man who was there under anything but the very most extreme kind of duress.
There were enough issues for Michael and Lincoln to argue over to keep them here al day, if they really wanted to dig into it, and Lincoln did not share Michael's faith that Mahone would not find a way to bring the feds screaming down on their heads at any moment. He jerked his chin in the direction of the two men who were being kept firmly cowed by Sucre's gun and scowl. The third man, outside, was being stood over by Jane, just in case he should be belligerent when he woke up. Lincoln privately thought that the guys in here and under Sucre's control had gotten the better end of the deal.
"These the guys that were going to take us to Panama?" he asked.
Michael's normally controlled face was twisted in a rare uncertainty, but he nodded at the same. He did not seem to have noticed that Lincoln had referred to his entire endgame in the past tense. Lincoln knew that whatever distraction was keeping Michael's mind turned elsewhere and away from his all-important master plan must be a powerful one. "Yes."
"We can't go," Lincoln said. He had been turning the problem over in his mind for hours and had yet to find any way that there could be any choice in the matter. He was not Michael, he did not have Michael's brilliance or cool ability to maintain his head under exploding circumstances, but the path was still too clear to be mistaken.
Lincoln expected the biggest fight that he and Michael had ever had to erupt from those words, telling Michael that they could no longer follow the plan that Michael had spent so many meticulous months building and had essentially thrown his entire life away for. He did not expect Michael's shoulders to sag as if Lincoln had lifted an enormous burden from them and then thrown it to the side, or for the corner of Michael's mouth to quirk upwards and into a smile. "Really," was all that Michael said.
Lincoln was not sure that what he was getting was a concession, exactly, or that Michael was even responding to him directly. His brother was looking over his shoulder at Mahone, who finally seemed to realize that there were people outside of the shack who had not come in yet. His posture had changed from that of a man about to sprint off into the wilderness into one who had been jerked roughly back onto the path. He had probably seen LJ.
'Lay a hand on my kid,' Lincoln thought in Mahone's direction before he turned back towards Michael, 'and I will stake you out in the desert. Michael can find a new playmate.'
"We can't keep running," Lincoln said bluntly, resolving to ignore Mahone for now even though he could still see the man from the corner of his eye and knew that Mahone was watching him every bit as intently. "Everywhere we go, they'll just follow us. They killed Veronica already, sooner or later they'll manage to kill my kid." Mahone, back in his position reclining against the wall, shifted abruptly. Lincoln cast him a suspicious look and then otherwise ignored him. "I can't just look over my shoulder and wait for that day to come."
Michael responded by looking over his shoulder and at Mahone again. God I damnit /I , Lincoln was on the verge of yanking Michael to the side and asking what in the hell Mahone was using to keep Michael's attention fixed so firmly upon him, when all of their lives were at stake this very moment. "I was going to say the same thing," Michael replied at last. "So our new question is one of how."
This was the part that Lincoln knew that Michael was not going to like in the slightest, but they were all going to have to do things and associate with people that they did not like from here on out, Lincoln was thinking. He threw another glance towards Mahone, only because his father was out of reach. Mahone's entire body was written into one long line of indifference towards Lincoln's interest, his gaze inexorably fixed out that window. It was a perfect display, so perfect that Lincoln knew it at no more than a glance to be false. Michael knew the math, the science, the theory. That was the requirement of his job; people were not. They were, however, a part of Lincoln's. You couldn't work the people that you couldn't read. He might not be great at controlling his temper afterwards, but on the first read he was just fine. Good enough to tell that Mahone was a liar; not, to Lincoln's frustration, good enough to tell what he was lying about.
'Trust Michael,' Lincoln told himself as he turned back to his brother. As far as mantras went, it had gotten them both of prison and halfway across the country. Lincoln guessed that he could maybe listen to it for a little while longer.
"There's a way," Lincoln said at last, even though he had an idea that Michael's question had been largely rhetorical. His brother had already been getting the look which said that all of the synapses in his brain where starting to fire faster than anyone short of Einstein could hope to keep up with. Michael raised his head and quirked his eyebrows, asking all of the questions that needed to be asked without saying a word. Lincoln sighed and, turning, gestured to Aldo, LJ, and Jane to come inside. He frankly expected Jane to stay out with the fallen shadow, and lifted his eyebrows when Jane trailed in behind LJ. She looked Mahone over with a line appearing between her eyes that might have been recognition as she took up a post by the door. It both divorced her from the impending family drama and allowed her to watch the desert for impending threats.
"I didn't hear a gunshot," Lincoln told her.
Jane's response was a quick thinning of the lips that might have passed for a smile if it had taken place on anyone else's face. She took a peek out the door before she turned back and gave Lincoln that movement of her mouth again. Even though it was neither the time nor the place, Lincoln found himself wondering what she would look like if he was ever able to pull a smile from her that reached her eyes.
"No." Michael's voice was soft, hardly more than a whisper. It still whipped Lincoln's head around so fast that for a moment he was certain he could hear his brain rattling around in his skull. Michael was staring at Aldo as if he was viewing Charles Manson and not a man in his sixties, in decent enough shape but not anything that would turn heads as he walked down the street. While he very well might have racked up a body count that would put Manson to shame during his tenure with the mysterious Company, there was no way that Michael could know that.
Unless, of course, the real reason that Michael had been able to construct such an intricate plan was that he had superpowers. Brother or not, finding out that Michael could read minds would hardly be a shock at this point.
"Michael?" Lincoln asked, stepped forward quickly to grab at Michael's forearm, for Michael looked for a moment as if he might actually faint.
"Papi?" Sucre asked at the same time. He started to step forward in the same way that Lincoln had done, his face written large with concern, and was stopped by Lincoln making a savage chopping motion at him.
"Pay attention to them," Lincoln ordered, thrusting his arm out in the direction of the men that Sucre was holding the gun on. They had used the moment of distraction to start creeping up on him. When Sucre jerked back around and snarled a series of Spanish at them in the unmistakable tone of a threat, they abruptly found that it was better to stay where they had been.
"And you stay where you are," Lincoln said to Aldo. Aldo did not seem inclined to obey, starting at the son that he had supposedly never seen before with a mixture of regret, horror at Michael's reaction, and what Lincoln had no other choice but to admit was love. Lord help the man who tried to make him admit that, though.
"You, too," Lincoln said to Mahone after a moment's more reflection, for the agent had yet to leave his position by the wall but was all the same leaning forward as if an iron force of will was the only thing keeping him back. The genuine concern that moved his face and altered the lines of his face before he shut it down was enough to make Lincoln wonder if Michael could not afford to be even more certain than he was about which side of the fence Mahone was standing on now.
"You're the boss," Mahone said as he settled back, folded his arms over his chest, and looked as if he was perfectly content to watch the scene without interference from there on out. It was one of the most eloquent fuck yous that Lincoln had ever heard, and it made him feel much better about the glare that he threw back before he reached for his brother again.
"Agent," the doc said in the kind of reproving tone that only she could pull out without sounding sanctimonious. Lincoln had heard her use it on inmates who had injured themselves through their own willful stupidity more than once. The use of his title was a smart move on her part, for Mahone gave her a wry look before he spread his hands in a conciliatory gesture and settled back against the wall again. He still watched Michael, though, and in a manner that Lincoln could not help comparing to a hawk watching a rabbit run across a field. He didn't like it.
"Michael? Are you all right?" Michael responded to the sound of Sara's voice and to her going to him and putting her hand upon his arm more than he had Lincoln doing the same, putting his fingers over hers and then giving a quick squeeze, but he still had eyes only for Aldo.
"You can't be real," Michael said.
Aldo's smile was sad, equal parts weary and wary. He knew exactly what Michael was panicking about, Lincoln realized then, and knew that Michael's reaction to him was not overdone. "I am, son."
A flash of Michael's normal life came back into his face in the form of a slight narrowing of the eyes when Aldo addressed him as 'son'. "Then I watched you kill a man," he said. Lincoln saw Sara's fingers tightening on Michael's arm before he himself was spinning back to catch Aldo's reaction.
The old man's days as a poker player were behind him. Lincoln took one look at his face and knew immediately that what Michael was saying was true. He took a step closer to his brother, keeping Michael separated from Aldo with his body. "What's he talking about?" he demanded.
Michael seemed to be getting control of himself again with Sara beside him, Lincoln in front, and Sucre behind, all three of them forming their own wall of support around him. He did not seem inclined to answer through anything more than a glare. Aldo sighed and said, "That man would have killed you eventually, Michael. I was doing what I thought was right."
"What you thought was right was murder," Michael said in a cold voice that made the air shiver. Mahone and Jane both straightened in their respective posts, a pair of predators scenting potential blood on the air. That was not making Lincoln feel any better.
"There was no other way," Aldo gritted at Michael. Lincoln had a mind that he had pictured this reunion playing out quite differently in his head; the remorse was being swept away by a pulsing anger before Lincoln's eyes.
"There is always another way," Michael replied and, for reasons that Lincoln did not understand, looked Mahone's way. Mahone stayed in his position against the wall, arms folded over his chest, in that position of calm that all of the focus in the world was never going to make convincing. "You could have stayed."
"You and Lincoln were safer with me gone," Aldo said softly. Mahone stirred, his face becoming complicated for a moment before he was able to pull it under control again.
Michael made a scoffing noise. Lincoln said, "Michael, listen to him. He can help us take out these people after us." It felt strange, actually being the one advocating that someone else should pause and listen.
Michael was working himself up to a towering anger in the way that he had been able to do ever since they were children. Most people did not realize until they knew Michael very well that his normal calm rationality was a veneer over a deep well of emotion. Michael could cut it off swiftly, though, and did so now. His face shut down even as his eyes lit up with the need for knowledge. "How?" Michael asked.
"Because I helped to cause it," Aldo said simply.
It was nothing that Michael did not know, nothing that Lincoln had not already relayed back to him after their father had saved Lincoln's life, but it still made Michael's eyes go moody and dark. "We all have to make sacrifices," he muttered in a dark tone that Lincoln liked even less when he saw Mahone lift his head as if he understood. "But that's not a plan." The last part was spoken by the Michael that Lincoln knew. He saw that the was not the only one in the room who was relieved to hear it.
Aldo shook his head. "Only the beginnings of one," he said before he gave a deep, almost gentlemanly nod in Sara's direction. Under different circumstances, in a different era, Lincoln thought that he might even have bowed to her. "Dr. Tancredi. I'm very pleased to meet you. I was worried that we would not be able to reach you in time."
Sara looked both startled and wary, taking a step back from Aldo on instinct. She didn't get through medical school on her looks, Lincoln was glad to note. Sara touched at the bruise on her forehead and said, "I don't have anything to do with this."
"Your father did," Alex told her. "We think that he gave you something before he died."
Sara twitched and grabbed for her purse before she caught herself and stilled the motion. Her and Michael both, Lincoln felt like sighing. The two people with the greatest chance of bringing down a conspiracy whose borders Lincoln's mind could hardly begin to fathom, and of course they would wind up being the two who could not tell a convincing lie to save their lives. "Gave me I what /I ?" she asked.
"You know, I think," Aldo said, nodding towards Sara's purse before he lifted his eyes towards the two men in the corner. "That's about all that we need to share now. There's a van about a quarter mile from here. It will hold everyone." Aldo glanced at Mahone for a moment as he spoke, clearly wondering if he really needed to be a part of the everyone who came along on their little road trip. Lincoln did not know if he ought to be gratified that someone was sharing his thought, or upset that the person turned out to be Aldo.
"We gotta fight," Lincoln said simply to Michael, lifting his shoulders into a shrug.
"Yes," Michael muttered, his voice tight. Lincoln still thought that he was more relieved than he was willing to let on. "Do you remember when this plan was simple?" One corner of Michael's mouth lifted upwards and into a wry smile.
It was that smile that made it easy for Lincoln to throw back his head and laugh. "No," he said. "Never."
"Hey, papi?" Sucre asked. He was turning his head to look at Michael over his shoulder, but he wasn't making the mistake of taking his attention away from Michael's traitorous friends again. "Look, you guys can stay if you want, but I gotta go. I gotta meet my girl."
"Of course," Michael said. His mouth twisted into a smile that looked genuine and relaxed. He did not do that very often. Michael reached out and grabbed at Sucre's shoulder. "Thanks for coming, papi."
The use of Sucre's nickname made him grin. "Like I'm going to leave you twisting in the wind."
Michael's expression changed, becoming ominous, as he looked towards the friends. "Where is the plane landing?"
The leader sneered. "The deal was a plane for nitro, hombre. One part of the equation is missing."
Lincoln ground his teeth together and made a sound that was very close to a growl. It made Michael and Sucre both look over at him in alarm. He did not even realize that he had begun to move until he was on the other side of the room and using his superior height and weight to loom over the man. Lincoln had cast a long shadow since he was eighteen, but the leader did not appear cowed. Not until Lincoln slammed his fist into the wood directly beside the man's head, hard enough to make the entire shack rattle and to drive splinters into Lincoln's knuckles, did the mans' expression begin to display some uncertainty.
"And you tried to kill him," Lincoln said in a low, rumbling voice that felt as if it was coming from down within his chest rather than out of his throat. "Think that makes you the one who needs to be making amends. Where?" Lincoln punctuated the question by slamming his fist into the wood again. Dust drifted down from the ceiling, and Lincoln knew that the man in front of him must be thinking about how much damage his fist could be doing if it were to be striking flesh rather than wood. Good. Lincoln wanted him to be stewing long and hard over that.
"Finley Road, off Highway 8," the man said after a long beat, and glanced towards his henchman. Lincoln felt his eyes narrowing and his blood rising. Michael looked satisfied by that answer. Michael was not the one who made it his business to read people, and to see the very worst potential that crouched in each of them.
"He's lying," Mahone said from behind Lincoln. Lincoln turned far enough to see that Mahone had left his position of detached distance against the wall and was stalking forward. He moved like a predator, he looked like a man who belonged on the other side. Lincoln wondered what in the hell Michael was thinking.
"I know," Lincoln snapped. The thin smile that crossed Mahone's face made it difficult for Lincoln to remember why he should not drive his fist into Mahone's face. He ground his teeth together, turned back, and drove his fist into the wood mere inches from the man's head again. More dust fell down from the ceiling and into everyone's hair. Lincoln's arm ached from the force that he was using. "Next time it's your face," he warned. "Where's the goddamned plane landing?"
Lincoln knew how to read people. So, it would seem, did the man that Michael had employed in order to get them all to Panama. It left Lincoln with little doubt as to which side of the law that the man was standing on. The man's eyes flickered before he said in a sullen tone, "Route 4, on the Mile 7 marker."
He was telling the truth this time. That did not change in the slightest Lincoln's urge to draw his fist back and then put it forward into the man's face again and again. Lincoln took a shaky breath and stepped back before he could give in to that urge.
"Thanks, man," Sucre said, sounding equal parts wary and impressed. "I won't forget this."
"Go find your girl," Michael said to Sucre. He was watching Lincoln as he spoke, and his expression was not approving.
"Sure," Sucre said, but chose the moment to pull Michael into a spontaneous hug rather than heading for the door. Michael's second or so of evident surprise ended quickly, and he returned the gesture, clapping Sucre on the shoulder before he let him go. "Someday, I'll send you pictures of Maricruz when her belly is big." Sucre grinned and was gone.
Lincoln then glared at both of the men who were left and said, "You're gone." They bolted nearly as swiftly as Sucre had. Maybe they would run to tell the police exactly what had gone down, maybe they would not. To Lincoln's eye, they had not looked like the sort of men who would have a great relationship with the law. He saw Michael staring out the door after them and knew that he must be thinking the same thing, but his brother's face was still troubled.
"You trust those men?" Aldo asked him.
Michael looked over, narrowed his eyes. Lincoln thought that his brother was on the verge of telling his father that he at the moment trusted those criminals much more than he did his own father, but Michael swallowed back the words and said only, "No."
"Then we need to move," Aldo turned away, his voice and posture stating clearly that he believed himself to be in control of the situation. Lincoln watched both Michael and Mahone stiffen up in defiance in the same way that he knew he himself had done when the situation was first explained to him. Sara still looked lost in her own world, fingering her bag as if it now contained precious jewels, as well as wearing ad deep line between her eyes. "There are a series of safe houses in Colorado that haven't been compromised-"
"Good," Mahone cut him off. Aldo nearly stepped back. Lincoln did not think that people interrupted him very much. He could not help but give Mahone a few points for that in the running tally that he was keeping in his had. "Then one of them will be near Durango. I'll need a car and a gun." The tone of his voice was not a request, and neither was the glance that he turned Michael's way. Michael lifted his eyebrows, Lincoln noticed, and even looked approving. "I'm going to pick up my family."
The annoyance that wrote Aldo's face could have been as a result of seeing a genuine flaw in the plan or merely as a result of someone not leaping to follow his lead. Either way, the reluctant amusement that Lincoln was feeling did not seem as if it was going to fade soon. "We can't afford distractions," he started.
"I'm not going to abandon them," Mahone interrupted him again, wearing a thin and unpleasant smile and leaving the 'like you did' unspoken. Lincoln was beginning to see that Mahone had a distinct talent for an unspoken 'fuck you'. "How long have you been off of the leash? A couple of decades, sounds like." The longer that that smile wore on, the more unpleasant and dangerous it became. "I've been off of it for about eighteen hours. Who do you think has the best idea about what's going on on the inside?"
This was the first that Lincoln had heard of Mahone being allied with the Company at all, rather than merely chasing the wrong men without realizing that he was doing so. He threw Michael an alarmed look. The rate of Lincoln's pulse was not coming down as Michael still didn't look alarmed by this admission.
"Don't count on it," Aldo said softly. "I've been fighting them for far longer than you even thought about working for them, I'm willing to bet."
Mahone's eyes narrowed, the room crackled, and Lincoln was certain that he was going to have to physically separate the man who might be an ally and might be an enemy from his own father, who also might be an ally and might be an enemy. "He gets his family," Michael said before an actual fight could break out. Mahone swallowed back the tension that Lincoln was now beginning to realize had nothing to do with Aldo at all and most likely never had, and looked over to Michael instead. The look that passed across both of their faces was too complicated for an outsider to figure out and very well might have been too complicated for they themselves to decipher, but it made a prickling feeling run up Lincoln's spine all the same. Sara, he noticed, had also seen, and looked nearly stricken as a result.
'Oh, kid,' Lincoln thought in his brother's direction, 'for someone who is so smart, there are times when you are so goddamned stupid.' Michael was never going to be able to read people the way that he could read virtually everything else. It was his single biggest weakness.
"Before we do anything else," Michael concluded at last. He did not seem to realize that he had drawn the eye of everyone else in the room in addition to Mahone. "That was the promise."
Aldo clearly did not like the sound of doing anything that involved delaying his quest against the Company, now that he might finally have a chance of bringing them down. He also liked the idea of losing Michael even less. With Michael would go Sara, and the only lucky break that they had managed to get so far. Lincoln would have liked to think that a part of Aldo's motivation was simply a desire to be with his son, but he could not quite force himself across that distance.
"Fine," Aldo said. "But we still have to move quickly."
As they turned to leave, Mahone made eye with LJ, who had been lingering near the door with Jane. Lincoln and LJ both tensed, but Mahone's response was a weary sigh. "You're innocent, too?" he asked LJ. He already knew the answer.
"Yeah," LJ said. He began to fidget under Mahone's gaze, only to make a visible effort to halt himself. "These, uh, Company guys. They killed my mom to get my dad under control."
Mahone sighed again before he reached out and gripped LJ on the shoulder in passing. Because there seemed to be a real apology written into the gesture, and because it ended quickly, Lincoln decided that he would let it pass. Mahone and Jane shared a look as they passed one another, as if each was recognizing the other and could not quite remember where. That did not make Lincoln feel any better. He supposed that he was going to have to get used to a lot of things doing that.
With these thoughts weighing heavily on his mind, Lincoln dropped back so that he could speak to Michael privately. "You're too trusting," he said in a low voice.
Michael's lips curved up into that self-satisfied smile that he could get sometimes. Lincoln was going to have to take a poll one of these days, and find out if that smile drove anyone else straight up the fucking wall like it did him. He didn't think that he was going to be disappointed.
"And you don't trust enough," Michael replied. "People are better than you think they are, Linc."
'Is that why you nearly jumped out of your skin because you saw your own father?' Lincoln wanted to ask, and restrained himself just in time. He brought up the rear instead, watching the people in front of him and thinking that if Michael's theory on human nature was correct, then they would not be trudging across the sand like a ragtag group of knights finally turning to meet the dragon in the first place.
'The dragon always falls,' Lincoln reminded himself in a grim internal voice, so fierce that it would have made everyone flinch away from him if he had said it out loud. 'Don't forget: in the end the dragon always falls.'
End Part Seven