Chapter 27
Donatello met them at the door. "I was wondering if you'd be back early," he said, glancing out at the lessening but still steady rain and the glow of a sunless dawn. He did a double take at their newly acquired weapons and the box Raphael was carrying. "What are those?"
"You'll never believe it," Mike said, setting down a chain whip, two daggers and case of smoke bombs before drying himself off with one of their sleeping blankets.
"Well, there's something else you'll never believe," Don said. He pushed open the door to the apartment's single bedroom.
The blanket fell from Mike's hands. "Tami?"
The Rising Hand ninja was sitting in Don's only chair, her hands and feet tied around it securely, her blue hair spiky and disheveled. At the sound of Mike's voice, she raised her head, her face set in a mask of defiance at the sight of the three turtles.
"I caught her," Don explained, "trying to get to Holly."
Raphael crossed the small room in two strides. His hand shot out and clamped like a vise under the woman's chin, forcing her face up and nearly tilting the chair backwards. "Where is he?" His voice was a low, deep threat. "Where?"
"Raph!" Mike grabbed his brother by the elbow. "C'mon, take it easy!" He saw Tami stiffening under the tightening grip, her eyes bulging with pain, fearful but resolute. With real heat, he shoved Raphael back with both hands. "Let go!"
Raphael looked as though he would deck his brother across the face. Donatello caught hold of him by the rim of the shell before he could do so, and Mike stepped between him and Tami, spreading both hands in conciliation, checking the anger in his own voice, bringing it down, way down, to bear-soothing level. "Let's go to the other room and talk, okay? Let's just talk first."
Though his furious glower stayed in place, Raphael turned and stalked into the main room. Mike followed him and Don shut the door to the bedroom, cutting Tami from sight. Raph wheeled on Mike and pointed a rigid finger at the closed door. "She knows. If anyone knows where he is, she does."
Mike said, "Let me try talking to her."
Raph put his face close to his brother's and his voice dropped. "I swear Mike, I don't care how soft you are for her, if I have to, I will break every bone in her body..."
"Just let me talk to her." He put his hands on Raphael's upper arms. "This night has been... crazy. Go take a hot shower. It won't hurt, to give me an hour, will it?"
Raphael considered it, then turned away with a grunt. "Have it your way."
Mike let out a breath. He felt Don's even gaze on him and asked, "Is Holly okay?"
"She's fine. I saw her make it back to her dad's place from the subway station where I left her, after all the cops and firemen were gone." At Mike's nonplussed expression, he added, "I'll explain later."
Mike nodded distractedly, then went into the bedroom and closed the door behind him. Tami, her jaw line reddened by Raphael's fingers, seemed intent on studying the carpet and did not look up.
"Hi," he said. "Sorry 'bout that." He looked around the unfurnished room and palmed his forehead. "Again, a chair. What I wouldn't give for another chair around here. Even a beanbag or a cushion or something." He sat down on the floor near Tami, his shell against the wall. "Are you okay?" he asked gently. When she didn't answer, he said, "Your wrists look kind of raw. You really shouldn't try to work free of that rope. Don does the best knots in the family." A long pause. "Okay, I know how ridiculously ironic this is going to sound, but I'm...glad to see you. I mean, not like this, tied up and all. I'm just glad to see that you're alive, that the Foot didn't get to you."
After a moment, she gave a very small nod. "Me too," she said quietly.
He wasn't sure if she meant 'me too' as in she was also glad to see him, or 'me too' as in she was also glad she was still alive. He let it go and asked, "What happened, Tami? Why are you here?"
Without looking at him, she said, "I had to finish the assignment."
The depth of sadness in his voice surprised even him. "He sent you, to kill an innocent woman?"
"I asked to go. That woman is a threat to Agete, to everything that we've built."
"I know about the drugs that Doshida has been selling to Alliant, and about the deaths." He grimaced. "To kill people with that stuff, and then kill more to keep it all secret..."
"Those overdose deaths were isolated incidents," she retorted, jerking her head up with a defensive glare, apparently abandoning her previous resolve not to make eye contact. "Saito is improving the formula and dosing protocol to reduce the side effects. There will be far fewer fatal reactions with the next version." She sped on, impassioned. "It's going to be a big business, almost as big as covert ops. All we needed was a little more time. We can't let some little blabbermouth medical intern ruin it all."
Michelangelo shook his head, appalled. He got up and left the room. Several minutes later, he returned and dropped a folded newspaper into Tami's lap. "That's the early morning edition of tomorrow's New York Times."
Tami read the headline of the article he'd laid open. Drug Deaths At Military Contract Firm Raise Suspicions.
"It's already out and gaining speed," he said. "In a few days, they'll be asking what the drugs do and where they came from."
Tami's bottom lip quivered. She bit down on it, still staring at the paper. "You did this." Her accusation was a statement.
"Me? Nah, I'm not that bright. It was mostly my brother, and we had help." He took the paper off her lap and knelt down to look up at her face. "It's over, Tami. It's no use trying to cover it up any more. Maybe it's time you got out of this, don't you think?"
She chuckled humorlessly. "Then you should let me go."
"I'd like to. Tell me where Doshida is."
She studied his earnest expression. "Either you plan to kill him, or hand him over to the Foot as a peace offering. Which is it?" When Michelangelo's face betrayed pain, she nodded in understanding. "They got to you somehow, didn't they? Is that why that other one isn't here?"
He spoke around a stone in his throat. "His name's Leonardo."
"I'll never tell you where Saito is. Never." She bit the word off, turning her face away from him. "You can send in your crazy brother to torture me now."
"He's not going to torture you. I'm sure he wants to, but he won't." Mike turned her face back to him gently but firmly. "But he won't give up either. He'll hunt Saito down sooner or later, even if it means taking out every member of the Rising Hand along the way. He would burn down a city to get our brother back." In a quieter voice, he added, "So would I."
"You'll have to kill me sooner or later then."
"Tami," Mike pleaded. "I don't want to see you get hurt, I really don't. After what happened with Snake, and what I saw happen to Ren..." He put his hands on her shoulders, the small bones rigid under his hands. "You trusted me once, didn't you? Would you believe it if I told you I'm not just trying to use you to get to Doshida? When he falls to us, or the Foot, or the law, you don't have to go down with him. You have your own life to think of, don't you?"
"You actually think my own life matters to me?" Though she tried to stop them by blinking fiercely, tears beaded in the corners of her eyes. One of them rolled slowly down her left cheek. With a sniff of anger and shame, she wiped it off her chin onto her shoulder.
The realization dawned slowly but with certainty. He let go of her shoulders and sat back. "You love him."
When she didn't answer, Mike bowed his head in comprehension and defeat. "Is he worth it?"
She closed her eyes. "He's the future."
Michelangelo stood up and left the room without speaking.
###
The apartment was muted and gray, rain still spitting at the windows, dusky morning sunlight barely providing enough illumination for it to be considered daytime. Michelangelo realized suddenly how tired he was, not just physically, but emotionally. Wrung out, like a towel, heavy and saturated, being twisted painfully dry, then filled and twisted yet again.
Don was back at his computer, and Raph, a blanket draped over his shoulders for warmth, was fruitlessly opening and closing the compartments of the bare fridge in search of anything besides cherry-flavored power bars, graham crackers, or beef jerky. Both of them looked up expectantly as soon they saw him.
He shook his head. "She won't say."
"Like hell she won't." Raphael closed the fridge and started for the bedroom door.
Mike moved into his brother's path. "Please, don't go in there, Raph. You won't get it out of her. Just...let it go."
"Let it go? Let it go?" Raphael repeated the words as though they were in a foreign language. He stepped back, his face hardening into something despairing and cruel. "Let me talk to her, you say. Oh, I get it now. You're just so hard up for a pretty human girl to throw you a bone that you would choose her over the life of your own brother!"
"Raph." It was shocking to hear that tone come out of Donatello's mouth.
Mike shook his head vehemently. "No, it's not like that at all, I would never-" He felt his face burning. "How can you even- think that-" Words failed him.
Donatello grabbed Raphael by the arm and turned him around. "That's going too far, and you know it. You think you're the only one who's desperate to get Leo out of that compound?"
"Maybe I'm the only one who'll do what it takes," Raph shot back, but Donatello's very rare, blisteringly icy reproach had put a hint of uncertainty in his voice.
Michelangelo pulled himself back together, feeling like a man madly collecting spilled marbles. "She loves him," he said. "I'm sure of it. She'd rather die than give him up."
"Easy enough to test that theory," Raphael said.
"What do you think you're going to do? What would someone have to do to one of us in her place? You're not a monster. You're just not. And I- I won't let you become one." His voice struggled against his constricting throat. "Leo would never forgive us."
Something in Raphael's face slowly crumpled under the unassailable conviction of Michelangelo's words. He tore away from both his brothers with a cry of frustration, pacing a slow, anguished circle around the room, his hands clasped tightly over his bowed head, as though he could hold himself together in the space between his elbows. Had they been underground, or had it been nighttime, he surely would have bolted from the room.
Gently, Donatello said, "We're all fried. We should get some sleep."
A small nod; an act of enormous willpower. Raphael raised his eyes to Mike's face, then turned away. "About what I said..."
"It hurt," Mike replied. "Worse than anything you've ever said to me. But it's forgotten."