A/N: This chapter is for SWWoman and Blacktop who so kindly left reviews for the previous two chapters. Thanks!

The disorientation of being in the black hood didn't last long. She was being hoisted up bodily, placed on some firm, wide, padded surface and strapped down. She didn't bother to struggle. Her mind was working fast. This whole situation had gone completely sideways… the moment that black bag came down over her head the CIA had really broken every rule in the book. They would never let her go now. There was no way this ended without a bullet to the back of her head, or being rendered to some deep, dark hole somewhere. So the only thing to do now was to endure, and hope for rescue. Because they hadn't taken her phone. She consoled herself with the mental image of Finch poised over his keyboard, tapping and clicking away until he found her. Once she had been exasperated by his surveillance. Not any more. You are being watched… watch me now, Finch, she thought. Watch over me now.

The bag was yanked off. She was lying on a table in another grimy room. Dirty white-painted walls, light coming from more filthy windows, supplemented by a single bare bulb. A depressing combination of gloom and glare. There didn't seem to be any other furniture in the place, apart from a chair – Jen was sitting next to her head. She could hear the small shuffling sounds of Jen's two goons, waiting somewhere out of her line of sight.

Jen stared down at her expressionlessly. "Okay, Joss. This is where you tell me what I want to know. Last chance before things get messy."

Joss sighed. "Right now I don't know anything. And even if I did, there is no way on God's green earth I would tell you."

The blonde woman shrugged. "Your funeral."

Joss wished she didn't feel the urge to take Jen literally. "Tell me something, Jen. Do you have children?"

The CIA woman gave her another emotionless stare. "No."

"Huh. Then you have a problem."

Jen raised one eyebrow. "Really?"

"Yeah, really. Because you know something about giving birth? It hurts like hell. Even at the best of times, and my son's delivery wasn't a good one."

"So what?"

"It's just that it means there's not a lot you can do to me, short of killing me, that'll be worse than that. So whatever you're going to do, get on with it. It's only pain, after all."

It was impossible to tell whether this speech had hit home. Jen simply shrugged. Then she hit a lever somewhere near the ground with her foot, and the table lurched backwards so Joss's feet were higher than her head. One of the men reappeared in her field of vision holding a towelling pad and a bottle of water.

"Waterboarding?" Joss scoffed, though her heart sank. "Is that the best you got?"

"No," replied Jen. "But I bet it'll be enough."

Joss took a deep breath, and set her teeth.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

At first she tried to hold her breath, feeling the cold of the water invading her nose, pooling in the back of her throat and making her want to gag. But it wasn't long before she had to exhale, and try to inhale again, and then it got really bad. She was gagging, choking… when the cloth was removed her breath came in searing gasps. She tried to swallow the vomit which was making its way up her gullet. She was aware of warmth at her crotch, travelling along her back. Oh, dear God. I wet myself. Merciless hands shoved the cloth back over her face.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

Fusco took up his position just behind Wonderboy's right shoulder. He'd given long and earnest thought as to the safest place to be whenever he ended up tagging along on one of these junkets. Not there at all was the truest answer, of course, but failing that, behind the right shoulder was best, Mr Sunshine being left-handed and all. You wanted to leave him room on that side, though actually he seemed just as happy using either hand. The one place you really didn't want to be, was anywhere between him and his target.

So he had a great view of John picking the lock, easing the door open and then taking point as they moved down the dark corridor inside the old warehouse. There were doors to both left and right, but Wonderboy seemed to know where he was going, so Fusco concentrated on making sure no-one got the drop on them from any of those doorways. As usual, he wished he had eyes in the back of his head. Some backup would be nice too, but Fusco had learned long ago not to eat his heart out over that one. Not with these guys.

There was light leaking around the door at the very end of the gloomy corridor. When they reached it, John raised his hand for silence. The thin door didn't do much to block out the noises coming from inside. Fusco kind of wished they'd just burst straight in, because the sounds coming from in there weren't pleasant. A bubbling, gurgling noise, the sounds of water splashing on something. Then as they listened in dismay, choking, sobbing breaths.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

She was wrong, she saw that now. This was way worse than giving birth to Taylor. Pain with a purpose, that was what they'd called labour pains. What was the purpose here? She couldn't remember any more. This wasn't pain, it was a gasping, vomiting, choking desperation. No air, no air! A roaring in her ears like static as she twisted and writhed against the straps holding her to the table, trying to cough as drops of water or vomit or something made their way into her lungs. But there was no air. She was falling, falling into darkness- the cloth was jerked away. Air again. Coughing, trying to control her heaving stomach. More breaths.

"Tell us where he is, Joss. Or we'll start again." Jen was sitting next to her head, her expression neutral.

"I don't know." Was that her voice?

The cloth appeared again. She began to struggle against the straps. "I don't know! I really don't!"

Her frantic cries died as the cloth was shoved over her nose and mouth again.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

Reese bent to murmur in Fusco's ear. "They're waterboarding her," he said rapidly in a low voice. "There'll be two to four bad guys in that room, Lionel. I'll take care of them, but your job is to get her face clear the second we get in the room, okay?" The ferocious look in his eyes, like a wild animal, made Lionel awful glad he wasn't one of those bad guys. There was gonna be blood on the walls over this one, oh yeah. And for once, Fusco was in total agreement with Tall, Dark and Deranged. Bring it on.

Reese kicked the door in with one swift movement and then flowed into the room, shooting as he went. Fusco had his weapon raised too, but as he entered the room he tried to ignore everything else in favour of the woman strapped to the tilted table, a wet cloth covering her face. There was a plastic water bottle on the floor, slowly disgorging its contents in a spreading puddle; the guy who had been holding it was sliding down the wall leaving a long smear of blood and grey matter behind. As Fusco watched, the dead man reached the floor and slumped there against the wall. But there was no time to take in any further details. Fusco wasn't even sure how he crossed the three or four yards to Joss's side, but suddenly he was there, grabbing clumsily for the stained wet cloth covering Carter's nose and mouth.

As he yanked it off she took a shuddering breath and opened her eyes. He could see the pounding of her heartbeat in the arteries on the side of her neck; she was coughing convulsively. He fumbled at the straps which were holding her on that damned table. "Hey, Carter. It's okay. We got you. We got you," he found himself muttering over and over. He got her free of the straps and searched for some way to get the table back level. A heave and a clunk and it was locked into place, no longer tilted. Carter was moving feebly, and so he called on his old first responder training and pulled her into a recovery position. Only then did he have the leisure to look over his shoulder.

As well as the dead guy at his feet, there was another CIA bastard slumped on his face in an untidy heap in another corner of the room. As Fusco watched, the guy twitched and shuddered. There was a rapidly spreading pool of blood coming from under him. Probably shot right through a major artery. Too late to do anything, even assuming he had the inclination to try. John was standing over the third figure – the tall blonde woman from this morning. He'd grabbed her by the shoulder and shoved her up against the wall. She was still alive, though she'd caught some blood spatter from one or both of her henchmen. Reese had his Sig jammed right in the woman's face, and Fusco could see her eyes wide open and rolling in fear. There was a truly crazed look in John's eyes, and Fusco could see Wonderboy's knuckles showing white as the fingers of his right hand ground into the woman's shoulder. She whimpered as his left forefinger tightened on the trigger.

Fusco cleared his throat. "Hey. John."

Reese's nostrils flared. He seemed to be ignoring Lionel. The finger continued to tighten.

"Wonderboy. Time to stop."

But it was no use. The crazy look didn't change one bit. He tried one last time.

"Listen to me. We got no backup, and we gotta get Carter out of here. Snap out of it, Wonderboy, and come and help me with Joss."

Really Lionel couldn't work out why he was even trying to save Blondie's life, but somehow it didn't seem right for her to be gunned down by Reese. Not like that, anyhow.

"John." The voice was hoarse and breathless, but it seemed to snap Reese out of whatever little world he was trapped in. He didn't slacken his grip on the woman, but he turned his head to meet Joss's eyes. Lionel heaved a sigh of relief.

"Kill her. Kill the bitch." Carter had lifted her head. Her eyes were blazing, and she was shaken by another series of racking coughs.

Like a robot Reese turned his head back towards the helpless woman. His lips peeled back in a smile so devoid of any human quality at all that Lionel felt sick to his stomach.

"Hey. Wonderboy. You gotta stop. Remember? You help people. You don't kill them any more." Lionel cast a glance at the two dead bodies on the floor. "At least, not like this you don't."

There was a long, long moment in which Reese continued to hold the panting woman in a vice-like grip. But then he seemed to relax. The finger came off the trigger. Slowly, one by one, his fingers released her and allowed her to slide down the wall to sit in a huddle on the floor.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

Finch was sitting at his desk. He'd heard the gunshots, the thuds and laboured breathing as Reese and Fusco went about their business. Joss sounded simply awful, terrible. Waterboarding! Finch's gut tightened as he imagined the scene. Thank God, Detective Fusco had once again acted as a choke chain on Mr Reese. It seemed safe now for him to break in on the scene.

"Mr Reese. May I suggest you collect Detective Carter and pull out. I'm monitoring the police bands, and someone in an adjacent building has reported shots fired."

"Okay, Finch. I'm bringing this Company woman with us, though." Mr Reese's voice had its usual calm, clinical tone, as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

"Are you sure of that, John? It might make for some unneeded complications."

"Right now we have one single, solitary thing going for us, Finch. We have one of theirs. We might be able to find some way to use that to get the Agency off our backs."

Finch paused for thought. Then he sighed and nodded his head slightly. "I see your point, John. But we can't have her at the safe house. It'll have to be a hotel room. Not the Coronet, either. Get out of there, and I'll send you an address as soon as I've arranged something."

"Okay. I can always disappear her afterwards if we change our minds."

Finch gulped. "I sincerely hope you're joking, Mr Reese."

Mr Reese didn't reply.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

The motel Finch had arranged for them was carefully anonymous. Not top-of-the-range, but not a rent by the hour type of place either. Shaw was waiting for them there, her doctor's bag in hand. Joss was still coughing every so often, her eyes were watering and she was pale and sweaty. Shaw looked concerned.

"Shit, Joss. Come and lie down before you go into shock." She hustled Joss into a bedroom while Reese and Fusco frogmarched the CIA woman in from the car. She still seemed to be stunned by her sudden change of fortune; well, she'd be getting a whole lot more stunned pretty soon, Reese thought grimly. Fusco might have saved her life, but Reese was going to have no qualms at all about squeezing this subject as hard has he needed to. Maybe even giving her a taste of her own medicine. He found zip ties in his pocket and pushed her into a chair while Fusco closed the door. The woman flinched as the sunshine outside was abruptly cut off when the door shut with a sold 'thunk'.

"John." Shaw had emerged from the bedroom and was speaking to him in a low voice. "We need to get Joss to a hospital. She's aspirated something – could be water, could be vomit. But if she doesn't get treated fast, there could be real trouble."

"Trouble?" he murmured back.

"Trouble. Pneumonia-type trouble," she clarified.

Shit. "Call Finch, see what he can work out. Maybe he can get her in somewhere with a fake identity."

"Will do." Shaw faded back into the bedroom.

"I heard, Mr Reese," came Finch's voice through his earpiece. "I'm putting in a call to Dr Enwright. I'll let you know when I've worked things out."

Reese turned his attention back to the woman in the chair. "Jen's your name, right?" He fixed her with his interrogator's stare: very calm, very neutral, completely indifferent to any plea or prayer the subject might produce. "Okay, Jen. Now you can tell me why the Agency is still after me."

A muscle in the the woman's jaw worked. "Because there weren't supposed to be survivors of the Ordos thing-"

"Yeah, Ordos." Reese settled himself in a chair facing the woman. "But Ordos was five years ago. Old news. Why the big furore now?"

Jen hesitated, swallowed. "Having you running round is an embarrassment to the Agency."

Reese stuck his feet out, simulating a posture of relaxed ease. He pursed his lips. "Plenty of things the Agency has done have been embarrassing. The Bay of Pigs. Castro's exploding cigars. Extraordinary renditions. Waterboarding, even. It survived. Damn sure it'll survive one ex-agent trying to turn an honest dollar in New York."

Jen snorted. "Yeah, if that was what you were doing." She glared at him. "But you're not, are you."

"Careful, Mr Reese," came Harold's voice.

"I'm not?" He raised one eyebrow.

"You sure weren't making money off that fake private detective's agency, anyway."

Reese shrugged his shoulders. "It was a start-up. You don't expect to make money off a start-up, not at first."

"Huh. I saw the way your identity was built. Layers on layers. Some serious computer know-how, there."

Reese smirked a little. "Maybe I'm just that good."

Jen snorted. "You wish. I saw your file from when you worked for us. You've got a great skill-set, but not that one."

"You might be surprised at how far I've come since I left the Agency, Jen," said Reese. His smile faded. "I admire your attempt to take control of the interrogation, but you need to remember who's tied up at the moment." He paused to let this sink in. "Why is the Agency suddenly after me again?" He repeated his question in the same polite, neutral tone of voice, the one which said, I'm going to keep asking this question over and over until I get an answer.

Jen gave him a defiant look, exhaled deeply, and was silent.

To be continued….