Thanks so much to everyone who has reviewed so far. The feedback really helps me stay motivated to keep writing, so keep it coming (constructive criticism as well as praise welcome). Several people have asked when Tony was actually going to be in this, so at long last, here he is!

"He'll be here in just a minute," the warden says to Jack. "Brian Hastings from CTU said this needed to be kept secret, so I'll set you up in my office."

"Thank you," Jack says appreciatively. "While I talk to Tony, can you give Agent Walker access to his records? We need to know about any visits he's had, phone calls he's made or received, and any packages or letters he's sent or received since he's been here."

"Sure thing."

"Thank you. Remember, we need to do this without there being any record...if you have a program that monitors access to prisoner records shut it off."

"Yes, sir."

Jack sighs as he sees a guard escort Tony into the warden's office in handcuffs and shackle him to the desk. He wonders if Renee is right - he can't help but feel a twinge of sympathy for Tony, as wrong as he knows that is. Maybe Tony has used that to his advantage. But Jack doesn't think so.

He looks at Tony now and realizes that he seems different. Gone is the defiant, angry man who was dragged away screaming insults at Jack to make himself feel better. Gone is the bitter apathy Tony first showed when Jack came to talk to him six months ago. Now Tony's eyes show nothing but emptiness and hopelessness. Suddenly Jack doesn't quite know how to begin or what to say to him.

Tony looks surprised when he sees Jack enter the office. "Jack...what are you doing here?"

Jack doesn't answer right away. He tries to gage if Tony is genuinely surprised to see him or whether he has an idea what this is about. "I need to talk to you," he explains, not wanting to give away information until he gages how much Tony knows.

"Yeah, I figured that much out, Jack," Tony says with a scoff. "You're going to have to be a little more specific."

"Did you hear about what happened this morning at the UN?" Jack asks.

"Yeah...I'm surprised you're not right in the thick of it, trying to track down the people responsible."

"That is what I'm doing," Jack says warily.

"Hold on a second - you think I had something to do with this?" Tony says defensively.

"No, I don't," Jack says firmly. "Chloe already ran your name and all the aliases you used through everything and they came up clean. But we think you might have some information that can help us. I can't offer you a reward for cooperating...there are a lot of people who thought you got off too easy as it is. But I have a written guarantee of immunity from the president that anything you tell us that could help us figure out who's responsible will not be used to incriminate you or increase your sentence. Nothing you say will be used against you, and you can help us save lives."

Jack looks at Tony meaningfully, hoping against hope that what he says is getting through. He is relieved when Tony responds.

"You don't need to preach to me, Jack, alright?" Tony says with mild irritation. "I get it. If I knew anything about what's going on today I would tell you."

Jack eyes him carefully, trying to figure out if he is telling the truth.

"I know you would," Jack says softly, not entirely sure that's true but wanting to appeal to Tony's better angels by showing that he still has faith in him to do the right thing. Tony looks surprised to hear him say that.

"So what's this about?" Tony asks. "Some sort of a background match?"

Jack decides that Tony probably doesn't know anything about the threat and that he's going to have to give him more information if he wants to get anything useful out of him.

"Yeah, something like that. We traced several calls on the cell phone of one of the terrorists from the tunnel bombing to someone you said you worked with on Emerson's crew, a man you identified as Vincent Cardiff."

"Cardiff?" Tony asks, surprised. "I thought you told me he was picked up by the border patrol," Tony says to Jack after Jack has finished explaining the situation.

Jack studies Tony's expression carefully, trying to make sure he's not playing him before sharing more.

"Apparently not. It looks like the border patrol vehicle transporting him to the FBI that night was ambushed and the agents transporting him were killed. He then disappeared and started using another alias, Don Cardelli." Jack looks Tony square in the eye. "Tony, do you have any idea who might have helped him escape?"

Tony thinks for a minute, then shakes his head. "No," he answers, looking genuinely stumped. "You said this happened after I was taken into custody?"

"Yeah, a few hours later," Jack answers, still trying to figure out if Tony is really trying to help him figure this out or just trying to pry information out of him.

"That doesn't make sense," Tony says. "He was Emerson's point of contact with Juma...he helped get us the gig building the CIP device for Dubaku. But I don't think he knew anything about Starkwood or the bioweapon or Wilson's group. As far as I know, anyone who would have needed to prevent him from talking was either in custody or dead at that point."

"Is it possible that he had already signed onto another job by that point, something that had something to do with what happened this afternoon?"

"Yeah, it's possible. I didn't know he was involved with anything that happened today until you told me, but like I said, it doesn't make sense that anyone in Wilson's group would have broken him out of custody at the time you described...as far as I know his part in that operation was done. So it makes sense that he could have picked up another job by then...it wasn't uncommon for Emerson to have us working on multiple things at once."

"But you have no idea who else Cardiff might have been working with?"

"Not on this, no. All I know about what's happened today is what I've seen on the news and what you told me. But I can give you some names of people he might have worked with. We had a client a couple years ago who was involved with smuggling weapons to India...Cardiff worked with us on that. Maybe that will turn up some leads."

"Alright. Can you write them down here so I can have Chloe cross them with names on the watchlist?"

"Yeah," Tony agrees.

He writes down some information.

"Thank you, Tony," Jack says genuinely. He is still wary, but feels fairly certain at this point that Tony is telling the truth, and he has to respect the fact that Tony gave him the information and didn't try to leverage it. It's more than most people in his situation would do.

Tony nods. "Do me a favor and let me know if any of this pans out, okay?"

"Yeah," Jack agrees. "Listen, I'm going to go call Chloe now...stay here in case we have any follow-up questions, alright?"

Tony chuckles. "Not like I have much choice, Jack," he says, indicating the shackle on his leg.

"You're right...I'm sorry," Jack says, feeling a little uncomfortable.

Tony hesitates for a second as Jack walks toward the door, then decides to speak up.

"Listen, Jack, there might be an easier way to get to Cardiff," he throws out. Jack turns around and looks at him skeptically.

"What's that?" he asks.

"Use me to lure him in."

"How?" Jack asks warily.

"You said you have a phone number for him, right?"

"Yeah, that's how we got his name, from the phone of the man who detonated the bomb in the Lincoln Tunnel."

Tony sighs, knowing his plan is going to be a tough sell. "Modify the databases to look like I received some kind of payoff from whoever was involved in this morning's attack. Then take me to a pay phone near here and make it look like I was being transported to CTU for questioning and I escaped. I'll call Cardiff and tell him CTU is onto him and he better hide...make it look like I killed one of their agents and used his ID card to hack into the CTU servers. If I can keep him on the phone for a minute you can get his location. Unless they've changed the way they do it in the past year, I know how we used to encrypt the locations on our phones, so I should be able to help you decrypt it."

"And what's to stop you from actually escaping?" Jack asks skeptically.

Tony sighs. "I guess my word doesn't mean much to you anymore," he says glumly.

Jack chuckles with disbelief. "After what you pulled?"

"Yeah, I figured you'd say that. I don't blame you for not trusting me, but think about this logically. Even if I cared enough to escape, I'd need help getting outside the perimeter, and who's going to help me with that?"

Jack looks confused. "You're not the only one I betrayed, Jack," Tony continues. "For the five years before I was arrested, everything I did was about uncovering the person responsible for Michelle's death and hunting him down. I never had any other agenda, and everyone I've dealt with was someone I was using in one way or another to achieve my goal. So it's not like I have any friends left on either side...let alone anyone who would stick their neck out to help me escape. Besides, it's not like I have a lot to escape for," he says sadly.

Jack sighs. "And what's in it for you? I already told you, you're not going to get a better deal than the one you got."

"I know," Tony says firmly.

"Then why are you so eager to help?" Jack asks.

Tony sighs, looking down at the table. "Because you were right," he says softly.

"Right about what?" Jack asks, even though he has a pretty good idea what the answer is.

Tony takes a deep breath. "When I started out trying to find out who was ultimately responsible for Michelle's death, I never thought I would have to go as far as I did to get the job done. When I started out I thought I was doing this for her, but once I started having to break the rules I forced myself not to think about whether she would want me to do what I was doing...I was so determined to succeed that nothing else mattered. And as much as I haven't wanted to admit this to myself, the truth is, you were right when you said I let my desire for revenge get the best of me...I guess I was so determined to take down Wilson at all costs that I didn't stop to think about the fact that I was doing to other people what he had done to me. I guess I convinced myself that more people would die in the long run if I didn't do what I did, but you were right when you said that was just my way of justifying it to myself. And you were right..."

Tony chokes up a little as he struggles to articulate a realization that has been painful to admit even to himself, let alone say out loud. "You were right that Michelle...if Michelle were here she'd be so disgusted she probably couldn't even look at me," he says softly, struggling not to cry.

Jack sighs, finding it hard not to be sympathetic. But at the same time he is angry. Does Tony really think he can do something heroic and it will make everything else he did go away?

"There's no easy shortcut to redemption, Tony," Jack says softly. "Learning to live with yourself is a long and painful process and if you think this is going to make you feel better..."

"This isn't about making myself feel better, Jack."

"Then what's it about?"

"It's about doing what Michelle would have wanted me to do. You see, the morning she was killed, she was getting in the car to go to CTU," Tony explains.

"CTU? Why was she going there?" Jack asks.

"She wanted to help after we heard about the Palmer assassination on the news. She figured we had been there during the other attempts on his life so maybe we could help. I tried to talk her out of it, because I was afraid to go back to that world. I had seen you try to leave CTU several times only to get sucked back in and lose everything because of it, and I didn't want that to happen to us. I figured I had done my part...Michelle was four months pregnant at that point, and all I wanted to do was protect her, but she still wanted to step up to the plate when she thought there was something she could do to help. And I know that if she were here, she would want me to step up to the plate and do what I can to help."

Jack sighs. "Even if I were crazy enough to trust you, there's no way I could get CTU to go along with it," he says.

"Oh, come on, Jack," Tony says with a chuckle. "When has that ever stopped you before?"

Jack chuckles slightly. Tony does have a point.

"Look, you're the one who told me six months ago that it wasn't too late to honor her memory," Tony continues. "You're the one who said that it wasn't too late to be the man I would have wanted my son to look up to. You're the one who reminded me that if I did what I could to help save innocent lives I could save others from going through the pain that you and I went through. And I know you didn't come all the way out here just to ask me a few questions that you could have asked over the phone. You made sure to keep your visit a secret because you thought you might be able to use me to lure in Cardiff. We both know it's the best move you've got. Let me help, Jack," Tony pleads, looking Jack square in the eye.

Jack sighs. He knows Tony is right about it being the right move, if he could only trust his old friend. He knows he shouldn't, not after everything Tony did to manipulate and deceive him and exploit his trust. But despite everything, he can't help but believe that this time Tony is telling the truth.