Hey guys! Update for you right before the holidays! This chapter is mostly a backstory, trying to flesh out a few characters here. If you're at all interested, the song that i listen to whenever i think of Dana is Sorry- by Kyteman. If you're interested i highly suggest looking it up! Thanks so much for the feedback!
13: Split Sides
The woman was thinking, her eyes glazed over behind the tinted shades of her glasses. The busy DC street blurred in front of her and was replaced by the images of her past. She sorted through them one by one, musing at how far she'd come.
Dana's fingers pressed against the chapped surface of her lips. The cool morning combined with the salt of last night's take out had dried her skin. Her nails were shaped into stylishly narrowed tips and painted a deep plum color, the nail of her ring fingers painted a standout gold. Her auburn hair was pressed into straight strands that hung around her thin face, the smooth skin of her cheekbones catching the light whenever she turned her head in just the right way. Circular sunglasses sat perched over her eyes and one could see each well-trimmed eyebrow arch over the rims of the glasses.
However, those chapped lips were plain when she sipped from her coffee.
When she had come to America from her once home, she was disgusted by the weakness of American coffee, but she often drank it in public, blending in as much as possible. The Americans ran on the stuff when it could barely get her through the day.
Little was known about Dana, even to herself. The darkness of her features and the slight tan to her skin suggested something other than Scandinavian or British ancestry. With her beauty, one could see the crashing of waves and the shine of the sun gaze on a country that glistened with decadence and warmth. A place of shouting mothers and laughing children, with laundry that hung out of apartments and mopeds that zoomed in between compact cars and bumped down cobblestone. Her memory was filled with old squares and plaster and stucco buildings. Sometimes, the memories of spices would still cling to the inside of her nose and she would close her eyes and remember. Spain.
But in her area life was cruel to young women. Her father would drink day and night and her mother would often leave the house only to return a few days later. When she was at home, there were no hugs, no home cooked meals, no love or laughter. Dana's mother would stay and pack a suitcase as quickly as she could and hide it in the back of the closet before patting little Dana's head and telling her to go cook some food for her father. Then, Dana's mother would dip quickly out of the house and into the sunbathed streets.
Her father wasn't that considerate. Many different women would be at the house, each one a little more deplorable than the last. The Spanish language, beautiful to most, would crash and bang around the narrow hallways, yelling and screaming until the words clawed their way into Dana's small ears. One time, her father had scorned the wrong woman. She had returned a few nights later and smashed a few windows. After that, Dana's father had turned his attention back to his daughter, blind and drunk and unaware of his actions. She would go to sleep some nights with bruises, other nights with handprints pressed into the soft flesh of her arm or on her thighs, pain flowering deep in her core once she would turn on her side in her little bed.
In order to keep out of that house, Dana took to the streets when she was around 14. Stealing came natural to her. She found out that there was no better camouflage than that of beauty. No one suspected the beautiful woman, and she was able to slip this or steal that without detection. One time, in a book store, she saw a translation book for English. It fit in her bag without trouble.
She began to study English and found it remarkably easy to learn. Dana discovered she loved languages and immersed herself in the spoken words of the world.
When she was 18, Dana finally was able to get out of Spain.
That's how she met Alexander Knapp. He was able to do her a favor, struck by how beautiful the woman was and how cunning she could be. What he saw was an investment. So, in turn for her safe transport into America, Knapp would keep her contact information, all the information he could gather, and keep the woman on file in case he needed her in the future.
On American soil, she quickly forgot all about the cold man with the hazel eyes and the contract she had signed. She lost herself in the hustle and bustle, free of screaming and narrow halls.
Dana's coffee had run out and she pulled out her wallet, placing two bills as a tip and getting up. The eyes of other café goers followed her, followed the languid way she moved in dark jeans and knee high boots. After ten minutes of walking, she ducked down into the subway system and rode the metro until she found herself in Arlington. She loved the cemetery. The sky was cloudy overhead and Arlington always seemed to mute out the sounds of the world.
Each uniform row of white headstones stretched out for acres on every side of her as she climbed the gentle rise of Arlington. Soon, the uniformed whiteness started to give way for the taller, weathered stone of the older graves. Some obelisks, some crosses, some tombs even. The pillared Curtis-Lee Mansion stood somberly above her, looking over all the graves like a roosting mother hen.
She passed Kennedy's grave, a little cluster of people looking down at the flame and snapping pictures. A few tourists milled about, holding on to little maps and souvenirs as they climbed the hill, some looking at their watches, muttering to each other about making it to see the changing of the guard. She let the pack of people move in front of her and followed, making her way to the amphitheater.
Dana was relieved to finally be able to sit down. She was on the top seat, some distance away from the tourists that sat quietly and respectfully as the guard marched back and forth, guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. There weren't too many people, the cool and gray had convinced most of the tourists to stay inside in the museums. She watched them quietly.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of a man move into view. He watched the soldier for a bit, then moved in front of her, sliding into her vision before sitting next to her, a cartoonish souvenir map folded in his gloved hand. The amphitheater was circled in red marker.
Tom Keen was able to blend in easily. To put up a front, he had actually asked the security guard how to get to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. He folded the map in half and tucked it into his computer bag, adjusting the glasses on his nose and leaning forward, his eyes trained on the guard.
"Amazing how they do that all day," he whispered, leaning towards her and motioning to the tomb with his head.
Dana got up and he followed. With everyone's attention facing the front, it was easy for them to slip away without detection. Once they were out of ear shot, Tom spoke.
"Why did you text me?" He looped his arm around her waist and the corner of his mouth lilted upwards when he felt her stiffen.
She responded through her teeth. "What happened to Keen? Knapp came to me. I thought that was your job."
Tom looked out over the cemetery. "I was compromised."
Dana scoffed, "You were found out."
Tom's fingers tightened around her side and she bit the inside of her cheek to keep from wincing.
"In Spain I was a thief. I've never captured anyone, I've been a kidnapper. Why did he come to me, after all these years? Is he getting desperate?"
"Knapp never gets desperate. I always figured he just thought you would be a good lay, that's why he kept your information."
Dana felt the hot poke of anger in her stomach.
"Obviously you're pretty useless if he's dropped you after all this time." She ripped herself away from his grasp, but continued to walk. She wasn't going to let this big-eyed screw up pushing her around. Clearly Knapp thought she had potential in some way and, even though he was such a disgusting man, the thought excited her in some way. In some dark part of their brains, everyone fantasized about what it would be like to be a master criminal.
"Look. You can help me, or you can't. You were the last one that knew of Elizabeth's Keen's whereabouts better than anyone else. If you help me, you'll be back on Knapp's good side. It can't be fun being part of America's unemployed," Dana mused, turning and facing Tom, her round glasses blocking her eyes and her arms crossed in front of her.
Tom bit his lip, thinking.
"I won't be able to take down Elizabeth on my own. Not with my size or lack of experience."
"She's always with Reddington."
"Raymond Reddington?"
"Yeah," Tom said, running a hand over the stubble of his beard before looking back at her. He liked the way her hair looked straight and how her full lips pressed against each other in a hard, unyielding line. "Fine. I'll help you. But only because I need to get back in with Knapp."
Dana regarded him distrustfully. She didn't like the way he looked, his eyes falsely wide and innocent looking, goofy with his hair flopping over his forehead. His hands were shoved in his pockets.
"If anything goes wrong," Dana hissed, her Spanish accent barely becoming traceable when she leaned forward and pointed at him, "I'm going to make you wish you were never born. You may be a killer but I grew up learning how to survive."
Tom took a step back and raised his hands defensively. "You have my word."
Eyes narrowed behind her round sunglasses, Dana nodded, turned, and walked back down the hill towards the Arlington gate. Tom followed suit, every now and then glancing at the way her jeans hugged her body and the swing of her hips with each step.
"You want to put Orazio back on the streets?" Liz asked, pinching the bridge of her nose and blinking. The scotch had given her a slight pressure behind the eyes that morning.
"As an informant," Ressler explained, motioning with one hand through the two way glass. "The trail went cold at Grayson Moss, we're trying everything we have."
"Actually Donald," Raymond chirped up, stepping into the surveillance room, "You're not at a dead end."
Ressler rolled his eyes.
"Keep rolling your eyes, Don, perhaps you'll find a brain back there," Red said with a pleasant smile. "I was just talking to Cooper. Our contact with Carter went well last night and I have this." Reddington slipped his hand into his vest pocket and withdrew the small microchip. He held it out in his palm like a pile of birdseed baiting in pigeons. Ressler snatched it and looked it over.
"What is this?"
Red slipped his hands into his pockets and rocked backwards on his heels. "Contact information."
"For who?"
Red cocked his head, as was his habit, and Lizzie noticed the annoyed little twitch of his mouth. "Knapp's right hand man, Schmidt. I handed you Alexander Knapp on a silver platter and you could say thank you."
Donald said no such thing. He left the interrogation room. Red stared at Lizzie, his head still cocked and his eyes wide with irritated disbelief. Lizzie just shrugged and tossed her head to tell him to follow. Ressler was approaching Aram, who was crouched over the information table, papers scrawled out in front of him. The pages were photocopies of screens, scrambled codes, images from grainy black and white surveillance cameras, all jumbled together in a big mess.
Ressler was holding out the microchip and Aram looked up and blinked at the small piece of technology.
"Run it," Ressler urged, tossing his head to the laptop that sat to the techie's right.
Aram looked at Red and Lizzie before he slipped it into the drive. The screen illuminated with a small grid. There were a few names, Orazio and the new man, Schmidt, included. From her left, Lizzie heard the smug little huff of Reddington's self-satisfaction.
"It was that easy? No codes, no little transcribed documents?" Ressler asked, looking at Aram, then back at Red and Liz. "All of that work with Orazio and all we had to do was put a flash drive into a computer?"
Reddington shrugged. "Carter isn't that smart, maybe he needed things as simple as possible."
Ressler's brow furrowed and he quickly jotted down the name, address, and last known phone number for Schmidt. "Keen, you come with me," he said, straightening up and slipping the paper into his pocket. "We're going to give this information to Cooper and see if we can get a team ready. We'll go to this location and I want you there."
"Hold on, Donald," Red said, speaking up. "Carter recognizes her and associates her with me. If she is seen with your taskforce in some guns-blazing raid, our cover will be blown."
"We get Schmidt, we get Knapp, then Carter along the way. They won't even identify her."
Red's eyes darkened and the strong muscles in his jaw clenched and unclenched. "There is a risk here that I am not comfortable with. The risk is too high, I don't know who was at those parties, I don't know who would notice her."
"Listen, she's a part of this team, not your little piece of arm candy." Don's words surprised Liz with their sudden hostility. "She is not reserved for your little errands."
"I'm right here," Lizzie snapped, speaking up for the first time. "Unless you two forgot that. Red, Ressler has a point, this taskforce comes first. This is my job. I'll keep an eye out for Carter or anyone else that could positively identify me. If there are in fact associates of Knapp's at this address, we'll be taking all of them into custody."
Her words sated Don, but Reddington's eyes remained dark and hard.
When he spoke, he tilted his head back and crossed his arms.
"I don't agree with this."
