2. The Morning

The sun was muted by the dusty windows as it shined into the guest room where Elizabeth was sleeping. The alarm she had set was cheeping brightly at her and she tiredly floundered for it, her eyes still closed and hair a mess. Lizzie ran a hand over her face and sniffed at the morning, flopping back down on the bed. Instinctively, she reached out across the bed, her hand searching for Tom's shoulder. When her fingertips only graced empty sheets, the memories of the night before sucked the air out of her lungs. With a tight chest, Elizabeth Keen looked around and realized she wasn't at home.

Home is gone, she thought bitterly, her eyes darkening as she snatched up her phone again, looking at the digital clock. 7:00 am. Text from Ressler.

Where are you?

Liz shook her head and closed her eyes, trying to figure out what to do next. The world lurched underneath her and she was thankful for the bed she was laying on, she didn't quite trust her knees. The needling thought that she was laying in Red's apartment certainly didn't help her nerves. If anyone at the Bureau found out where she was…

A knock ticked against the wood of her door.

"What?"

"I just wanted you to know that I sent Dembe over to your place to get some clothes," Red's smooth voice answered, "I figured you couldn't save the country in yesterday's business slacks."

Elizabeth clenched her eyes shut in the slight annoyance that followed Reddington's light tone.

"Can I come in or not?"

"Fine."

The knob turned and Red waltz inside the guest room, a light grey shirt with slate slacks and vest, along with a red tie at his neck fit his body in neat, well-tailored lines. Liz completely ignored the fact that she had slept the clothes she had worked in the day before, her pants wrinkled and shirt untucked.

Red couldn't help but notice how charming her mussed hair was.

He bit the inside of his cheek and pushed the thought away as he handed her a few hangers full of clothes.

"Did you move my whole closet?" Liz asked, standing from the bed and rolling her eyes.

"Granted, you are in need of a shopping trip, but no. We didn't take the entirety of your wardrobe," Red said, his lips tilted in a closed smile. He smelled like coffee and books.

"Wait, we? I thought you said Dembe went?" Red was in my house…

Reddington cocked his head and his smile grew, crinkling his eyes with sly little lines. "There's coffee and scones in the kitchen," he called over his shoulder after he turned and headed towards the door, "When you're done, I'll give you a ride to the agency. I actually need to speak with our dear friend Harold Cooper this fine morning."


The black Lincoln glided through the streets smoothly, Dembe calm and collected in the driver's seat, his thumb tapping against the leather of the steering wheel as he nodded his head with the quiet music that hummed from the radio.

Red was lounging comfortably in the back, his trademark smile tilting the corners of his mouth upwards as he looked out the window through the amber tinted lenses of his sunglasses.

"Beautiful day," he mused, turning and looking at Elizabeth. She had her hair twisted into a bun at the back of her head, dark bangs framing her face. The sun shone through the tinted windows and Reddington noticed how tired she looked. Agent Keen didn't register his words, just stared at the back of the passenger seat. Red glanced at the hands in her lap and thought back to the time in the park, where he sat next to her and wrapped his fingers around hers, pushing her fears away with a reassuring squeeze. The memory made his thumb twitch.

"Are you going to tell them?" he leaned toward her slightly when he spoke, crossing his arms.

"I don't see how I couldn't," Lizzie answered, shaking her head and bringing her fingers to rub at her temples. "Chances are they already know."

"Ah, the downfall of being a federal agent…privacy doesn't exist."

"Why didn't I see this coming?" Elizabeth asked, more to herself than to Red.

Reddington was silent. As much as she wanted to help her, he knew she needed this time to herself. Elizabeth wasn't a weak woman, far from it, and he knew if he pressed her, tried to comfort her, especially now, without her acceptance, she would pull away.

The car slowed down as they pulled up to the national federal building. Red got out and quickly moved to Liz's side, opening the black door of the Lincoln with his signature smile on his lips, the amber lenses of his sunglasses glinting in the morning light. Normally, Elizabeth would've rolled her eyes or snarked at him, but she didn't have the strength this morning.

Once the two made it past security, they stepped into the metal elevator and were brought up to the taskforce's level. Red took off his fedora, tucked it underneath his arm, and strolled past the lines of computers and analysts as if he owned the place. The heels of his expensive Italian shoes clicked against the tile and Liz followed him, her palms sweaty.

Silently, in the elevator, she had made a plan. Elizabeth would follow Red to Cooper's office, wait until they had a chance to speak in private, and then she would tell him all the information she had on Tom Keen. She would open up her house for searches, tests, whatever the taskforce needed to catch him. As much as she wanted to bring the bastard down herself, she couldn't deny the fact that she needed help.

Liz watched as Red strode into Cooper's office without so much as a knock. Cooper looked up from his desk, his dark brows furrowed harshly against the lines of his forehead. He took off his wire-rimmed reading glasses and leaned back in his big leather office chair, watching as Reddington settled down in the chair across the desk. Once Raymond Reddington was settled and smiling, Cooper's eyes flicked to Elizabeth. She could only shrug and shake her head.

"Alexander Knapp," Red finally said, crossing his legs and entwining his fingers in front of his knee. "Bosnia, 1993."

"What?" Cooper asked, leaning forward, his elbows on the glossy wood of his desk.

"There were a series of armored truck robberies in Bosnia during the winter of 1993 and the spring of 1994," Red recited, sniffing and removing his sunglasses and slipping them inside his jacket pocket. "The news played it off as an organized crime ring, Russian Mafia hidden behind the eastern European borders, but it was so much more than that."

"What do Bosnian robberies have to do with the FBI?" Cooper asked, cocking his head to the side.

Red's chuckle was sly, "I told you Harold, I'll be giving you names of people you didn't even know you wanted. Alexander Knapp is a notorious middleman. A smuggler. Whatever you have, he'll move it, for a momentous price. His specialty is human trafficking, women, children, any person in the world, he'll make disappear and reappear several hundred miles or a few countries away in only a few days."

"So what does this have to do with the Bosnian robberies?"

"Every great entrepreneur needs funding," Reddington mused, pursing his lips and cocking his head. "Knapp started out in the 90's, he needed money to get resources, training, people he trusted."

Cooper leaned back. "I understand he's a criminal…but unfortunately if we were to monitor every human trafficking ring all over the world…we'd have no time to do anything else."

"Oh, I understand that, Cooper," Raymond murmured. "But I really think you'd like to look into Knapp's. He's a master of moving people…from all over the world…and sending them wherever they want, or where their owners want them. There are many, many groups who would love to get into America's borders to cause some trouble."

"Terrorists?" Elizabeth asked, snapping out of her own personal thoughts and stepped closer to the desks.

Reddington chuckled, shaking his head and looking at Lizzie, his eyes bright as he saw her old self flash to the surface. "Oh, no, Lizzie. Much more than that. Terrorists want to cause fear. The type of people Knapp transports are only around to wreak havoc, take out the very pillars that governments are built on."

"What are you saying?" Cooper asked, his dark eyes flicking from Reddington to Liz.

"Harold Cooper, what got us out of the Great Depression?" Reddington asked, flicking a piece of fuzz off of his trousers. Their lack of an answer didn't faze him. "One of the best things that happened to this country's economy was World War II. We boomed. Business boomed."

Liz stared at Reddington, starting to connect the dots. "Knapp's people, they're going to start a war? Why?"

"What better way to fund your smuggling business than in wartime? People need guns, food, ammunition, perhaps even drugs, money and women. A time of chaos is a time of business."

"I can see why this is a threat…but why are you interested in him, Reddington?" Cooper asked, finally standing up and stepping behind his chair, grabbing his suit jacket from the coat rack and pulling it on.

Raymond answered while Cooper was doing up his buttons. "Wartime means bad commercial for me," his head cocked to the side, his fingers interlaced and brought up in front of his face. Liz couldn't help but watch the way his content smile made his eyes crinkle. She immediately spotted it as a defense. He was only giving them half the truth. "Let's just leave it at that."

"How many of his transports are in the country right now?" Cooper was growing more invested, his arms crossed. Liz could see the gold glint of her boss's watch.

"Oh, I'd say three or four, each one has nearly twenty men recruited beneath them. Criminals, hit men, counterfeiters. You better get going, Harold," Reddington quipped, wetting his lips with his tongue and working his jaw in the habitual way he usually did. "Knapp is notoriously efficient and he's had plenty years to grow his business."

"How do we stop him?"

"There's a nasty little weapons ring that operates outside of Baltimore. The last time I checked, Knapp uses them as a checkpoint for his eastern clients. Scrappy little guys."

"Do you have an address?"

"There's a fish market right on the edge of the water on the south side. Not the place where the tourists go, and not the place to head at night. There's an old man that works there, he's a Sicilian I believe. Big tattoo of a compass on his neck."

Cooper's eyes squinted with skeptical disbelief. "How is it you know all this?"

Red's smile returned as he regarded the man in the low light of the office. The dark walls muffled them, the stress of Reddington's information making Harold Cooper's brow furrow. Liz watched the two, leaning up against the wall, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth, her mind spinning with ideas of Tom and the draw of a new case.

Standing and pulling on his jacket and walking towards the door. Liz watched him, meeting his eyes before he pulled out his sunglasses and slipped them on his face. "I'm telling you Harold…you're wasting some valuable time."

And with that, he turned and headed back through the way he came, back through computers and to the elevator.

"Where's the crook going?" came a new voice as Donald Ressler came up to Cooper's door. Liz clenched her jaw and straightened the way she was standing. Don had become more accommodating towards her over the last month or so, yet she still noticed the way his eyes glanced at her suspiciously whenever she was around Red. His hand was on his hip and Liz could see the butt of his gun as it settled in the holster. As Raymond waited for the elevator, Ressler turned to Elizabeth. "And where were you this morning?"

Elizabeth shook her head and thought up a lie, "Car trouble. Had to get a ride."

"With him?" Ressler asked, nodding his head towards Raymond.

Liz felt the creeping heat of embarrassment start to creep up her neck.

"Elizabeth, I want you to go with Reddington, see if you can get any leads on Knapp. Ressler, you stay here, I'll fill you in, go and grab Meera."

Cooper's interruption gave Elizabeth the split second she needed to build her walls back up. Flawlessly, her composure set her jaw straight and smothered out the fearful sparkle of her eyes. "Yes, sir," she said with a nod and brushed past Ressler, very much aware of his eyes as they followed her back.

"I was beginning to worry I'd have to ride by myself," Red's low voice hummed as she reached his side just as the doors of the elevator opened.

"Where are we even going?"

Red reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled out a sleek black phone. Red was aware of Lizzie's eyes as he tapped the keys, texting Dembe to pull the car around.

Raymond turned and made sure he held Elizabeth's gaze as he spoke to her. "I have rented out a storage locker. We're going back to your house, you can grab whatever you need."

The realization of what he had done for her made her stomach clench and her eyes darted over his face. A place for her to build a case against Tom, somewhere to try and fit the pieces together in privacy and away from the emotional wreck that was her home. The storage locker was a torch in the dark, the gravel bed of a rushing stream.

He was going to help her.

"Give me a few days to help you find him, Lizzie," Red murmured, as if reading her thoughts.

The elevator's gears creaked and hissed as they were lowered to the main floor. The two walked out to the front. Lizzie couldn't help but smile gratefully at Red. First he had offered a place to stay and now this? The idea of having someone to rely on, someone who was concerned about her, was intoxicating and for a moment Elizabeth Keen had forgotten that Reddington was a master criminal. In reality, she had known almost nothing about him, yet he always seemed to want to know everything about her. Sam had died and Tom had turned out to be a lie, yet so far, since the moment she had met him, Raymond Reddington had not broken her trust.

Dembe hadn't arrived yet and the cool spring breeze tickled Liz's hair. The year was still too early for the cherry blossoms of DC, but the sky was still blue and there was no grimy snow piling up in the gutters. Her breath didn't puff out with the whiteness of cold and the air didn't bite at her nose like the frosts of winter did.

"What's the real reason you want Knapp?" Liz suddenly asked, her head turning as the black Lincoln slid up to the curb.

Reddington muttered a breathy chuckle as he held the door open for her. He rattled off an address to Dembe and his friend nodded silently. After a few clicks of the blinker, the car easily merged out into traffic and started to wind its way throughout downtown DC.

"Now, to answer your question…while it's true that Alexander Knapp's success would be catastrophic to my own business deals, that's not the only reason." The way Red lounged in the back seat of a car made Liz wonder if he was born to do it. He was never uncomfortable around her, his shoulders were always relaxed, his jaw never clenched, his eyes never twitched.

"Alexander Knapp took advantage of my business," Red said and for a moment Liz watched as his eyes darkened, his mind traveling to somewhere far away. "I paid him a huge sum in order for him to ship something for me and instead he…broke our contract."

The pause did not go unnoticed by Elizabeth.

"Again you're not telling me everything."

Raymond sighed, looking at how blue her eyes are, how bright they shown when she was chasing some truth.

"Lizzie, believe me, you'll know everything you need to in time," Reddington said quietly, knowing full well that they were talking about more than just Alexander Knapp.