Will woke up the next morning with a knot of dread in his stomach. He'd managed to worm out Beth's address from Jayje in an entirely underhanded way – he'd taken her phone and looked in the contact list for it. It was a weasel move, but he hadn't found a glib way to ask her for it straight out.
"Good morning, honey." He accepted the wake up kiss from his wife with a smile.
"Morning, Jen." He got out of bed and wrapped his arms around her waist, hugging her tightly. "I love you."
"I love you, too." He breathed in the spicy scent of her shampoo and felt the knot grow tighter, rather than easing. That was never a good sign, and he rubbed her back, trying to will away the feeling of impending dread.
"You're ready to head out, aren't you?"
"Yeah, and I'll drop Henry off at daycare today. Call me at noon, maybe we can go out for lunch?"
"Maybe. We'll just have to play it by ear." She kissed him once more and then grabbed her gun and credentials from the gun safe. "Have a good day."
"You, too." He watched her leave before getting up and taking a quick shower. There was no way he could eat anything, so he skipped breakfast and picked up the travel mug of coffee his wife had prepared for him on his way out the door.
By the time he made it in to work, he saw a black sedan parked in the lot and knew Bill and Laura were there already. Heading inside, he nodded and waved to his friends before making a beeline for his captain's office. Sure enough, the pair was there, talking with his superior. "Ah, you're here, Will. There have been some developments to our case over the course of the evening. It turns out your Ms. Clemmons is part of something much larger. We need to bring her in alive, if possible, and take down this ring."
Will nodded tightly, his stomach knots hardening even more. "I had always assumed that would be the case, Agent Adams. I have Clemmons address here."
"Good, we'll be heading out shortly. We already informed the museum to tell Beth to take a day off, that there had been an unexpected water main leak, and she bought it. We have a SWAT group ready to go with us, and we were just waiting on you to come and make the arrest. Grab your flak jacket and we'll take you with us to the meeting point."
Will could only nod once more, overwhelmed at how quickly everything had come together. His captain smiled bemusedly at him and motioned for him to follow the other two agents out. He grabbed a flak jacket from the closet as he passed it by and trailed after them as they walked along. "Should I call my wife?"
"I would," Laura said, looking over at Bill. As Will watched, they clasped hands tightly before letting go. As Laura drove, Will pulled out his phone and called JJ.
"Hey, I thought you weren't going to call until lunch."
"I wasn't, but something came up in that case that I'm working. I, I don't know what time I'll be home, so don't wait up for me. I love you."
"What are you not telling me, Will?" He could hear the apprehension and anger in her voice and he shrugged his shoulders.
"The unsub might not go down without a fight. I didn't want to worry you, cher, but you know the type of work we do."
"I know. Just be careful as you do your job. I'm going to need you around for this second pregnancy." Her words shocked him and he gulped.
"I'll try, for the peanut. Talk to you later?"
"I'll be counting on that, Will." They hung up and he stuffed his phone back in his pocket, focusing on the task at hand. The drive was actually quite short, until he noticed that cops were directing traffic away from the street that Beth lived on. They had started doing so twelve blocks back, and by the time they got three blocks away, there were barricades up. They pulled onto the cross street and parked the car, and once more Will followed the pair over to the command truck.
"Will, this is Cass Jenkins. He'll be leading the SWAT group."
He reached out and shook the man's hand. "Good to meet you."
"Likewise. Sorry to heart that you're involved in something like this so soon after the bank heist. Now, we have some of our people in the houses the surround Clemmons's and we're about ready to move in on her. Bill told me that you wanted to bring her in?"
"Yeah, this one is personal."
"Okay, just give me the word, and we'll roll on down to her front door." Will tugged on his flak jacket and checked his gun to make sure that it was loaded and ready to go at a moment's notice. Then he nodded to Cass and followed him over to an armored Hummer. This time, Bill and Laura got in the back, and Will watched them in the mirror. They looked out of their element, and the knot of tension that had been slowly untying itself suddenly pulled taut once more.
"We'll bring her down clean."
"Yes, we will," Laura replied softly.
"So say we all," was Bill's quiet answer. Will felt like he had heard that phrase before, sometime long ago, and he shook off the feeling of déjà vu, knowing that rabbit trail would only break his concentration. And if he had no concentration, then something could go wrong. He was not about to let that happen again, not after the bank incident and almost losing Henry to a madwoman.
The Hummer stopped in front of Beth's home, and from the corner of his eye, Will saw more SWAT members surround the back of the house, getting into a tactical position, should she decide to make a run for it from the back. They all stepped out of the vehicle and Cass handed him a bullhorn. "This is your rodeo, Will. You do the honors."
"All right, sure." He brought the bullhorn up to his lips and began to speak. "Elizabeth Clemmons, this is the police. We have you surrounded. Please exit the house through the front door with your hands up."
Silence greeted him, and he wondered if she had flown the coup already, if something had given them away and she had decided to run rather than wait for capture. Something caught his peripheral vision and he turned to the window, only to watch it open in slow motion and the barrel of a gun appear.
"Everybody, down!" he cried out, feeling as if his limbs were mired in quicksand, unable to follow his own instructions. The sound of gunfire startled him and he pulled his own weapon, shooting at what he hoped was the window as he dove to cover Laura. Will felt the sharp sting of a bullet enter his arm and he hissed as he dragged Laura behind the Hummer. "Are you hit?"
"I, I think so." He looked her over and noticed blood seeping from her leg. "Oh god, I hope that's not my artery she hit." He nodded and applied pressure to the wound.
"How did you figure me out, Will?" He looked up into steel blue eyes and the barrel of a gun. Instead of answering her, he just glared at the woman.
"You've shot a federal agent and a cop. I don't think you're going to make it out of here alive, do you? So does it really matter, cher, how I figured you out? You'll be dead either way."
She had the audacity to laugh at him, and he shook his head. "You have no idea what you're talking about. I'm Aaron's girlfriend, nothing will happen to me. I'm just an innocent bystander in all this. Didn't you think I had this all planned out until the end."
"And this is where you fail. Did you never learn that monologueing is always a dumb move to make?"
"What?" she asked incredulously as Bill came up behind her, pressing the barrel of his gun to her back.
"Turn around slowly with your hands up." Beth made like she was going to comply, only at the last possible second, she brought her gun up and shot a bullet through Bill's head.
"BILL!"
Will quickly raised his arm from off Laura's leg and pulled his gun, pulling the trigger three times in rapid succession. Each bullet found their mark and Beth went down on the ground. When he was sure she was dead, he turned back to Laura and reapplied pressure on her wound.
By the time the paramedics came, he was starting to feel a little woozy, and he recognized that he had lost a lot of blood. "Take care of her first. Her wound was a lot worse than mine," he said as the young man came up to their side.
He nodded and carefully took Will's hand off Laura's thigh. "Can you tell me your name, Ma'am?"
"Laura, Laura Adams." Will gasped as the truth hit him, they had been married, and she had just lost her husband to something he should have stopped. If he had only paid closer attention, fired his weapon a little more accurately, then Bill would still be alive. "Will? Have you called your wife yet?" she gasped out, tears making her voice a little difficult to understand.
"I'll do that just as soon as I know that you're okay. I'm so sorry I failed you, Laura."
"All of this has happened before, and will happen again." The cryptic remark spilling from her lips made him wonder if she knew something he didn't. Will leaned against the Hummer, letting it support him. Another paramedic came up to him, and Will slumped into his arms, giving himself over to unconsciousness.
When came to awareness, he could hear everything going around him, yet felt like he couldn't respond to them. "I'm sorry, Agent Jareau, but there was so much blood lost on scene and then he insisted that Agent Rosen be seen first. And it's a good thing he did, as she's about three months along."
If he knew his Jayje, she was touching her stomach at that comment, and he longed to find the strength to say something, anything to her. All that came out was a weak moan and she was at his side, picking up his hand. "You weren't supposed to be a hero, William. You were supposed to come home to me. Aaron's quite devastated, too. I love you."
Will squeezed her hand, or at least, he thought he did, and he felt her hand grip his all the more tightly. "I never expected me to the widow. I assumed it was going to be me taken out in the line of duty." Her tears splashed down onto his skin and he used the last of his strength to smile at her. "I don't know what I'm going to do without you."
Her voice continued on, but it seemed to his ears that she was fading away. And then, he began to hear his Daddy's voice and he closed his eyes, only to open them and see his father standing there, a sad smile on his face. "You cheated death once already, William. I'm sorry you couldn't do it again this time."
"I know, Daddy. But I had to make sure Laura was okay. She lost the love of her life."
"She's lost the love of her life a hundred times over now. But, you'll find that out when you talk to Bill."
"But what about the babies?"
"They'll both be born healthy. Will LaMontagne the third and Lauren Adams. Maybe this time, their love story won't end in sorrow." He nodded and followed his father towards the warm light he had been told to expect, somehow at peace with the knowledge that all of this had happened before and would happen again.