Chapter 11

The hospital doors bent back like broken wings as the gurney raced through, the prone body under the white sheet being frantically tended to by a squadron of emergency personnel and paramedics, red and blue lights flashing from the ambulance bay. There were three people hurrying in after it, one man holding the woman by the elbow and the other standing among the chaos, staring after the gurney as it vanished into the trauma room, as the on-call doctor ran by still scrubbing up, pulling a mask over his face. Robert Gold didn't move, tapping his cane slowly and steadily on the floor, as he considered his options.

"What the hell!" David Nolan, the peasant, clearly did not intend to give him the luxury of time. Steering his distraught wife gently into a chair, he lunged forward and grabbed the pawnbroker by the arm, almost shaking him in desperation. "Is this what you were talking about? Who hurt her? Who would even want to hurt her? Are you just going to stand there and – "

"Let go of me, if you'd be so kind." Gold crisply removed himself from the man's grasp.

"We made a deal!" David roared, startling several passing residents. "You were going to help Emma! You were going to save her!"

"I did save her, in case it escaped your attention." Gold still didn't turn. It was, so far as it went, the truth. When he'd concluded his business on the BC campus, confirmed his suspicions, and realized that this was already several orders of magnitude worse than previously assumed, he'd suggested to the Nolans that they go look in their daughter's dormitory. Having arrived at the correctional facility only to be told that a mysterious man had paid her bail and absconded with her, they were at a loss as to where else she could possibly have gone. But Gold had inquired discreetly, found out the name of this convenient benefactor, and put the pieces together from there. He'd been hoping still, somehow, that it was a mistake, that there just so chanced to be two men named Killian Jones, but he knew now that it wasn't.

A professor, indeed. Would wonders never cease. He had to give the bastard credit; where better to hide than in plain sight, masquerading as a productive member of society? This did, however, raise the troubling question of just how Hook had followed him. Gold was quite sure that every avenue was closed off, that the curse had at least worked sufficiently to destroy magic (much to his chagrin) and there was no possible way to open a portal. But speak of the devil, there was.

As much as he wanted to pin Emma's current indisposition as due to his bitter rival, however, he had a hunch that it wasn't. No, he smelled someone else's lovely fingers all over this. I warned them. I told them what would happen if I left. It was far too much to hope that Regina's faithful watchdog had somehow missed his departure; she'd been wagering on it all along, after all. But nothing before now had moved him to even try. It was too dangerous. The rose left back in his shop, no magic even to ward the property, vulnerable to anyone who'd walk in, who'd. . .

David's voice snapped him out of his trance. "It doesn't count," Nolan said. "Cure her."

"With what?" Gold snapped. "What do you think I can do for her? Wave a wand? I'm a respectable businessman, dearie. Not a witch doctor."

The man's lips went white. Assuredly it had been a shock for him and his dearly beloved spouse to stroll into their daughter's college dorm and find not just her, but her convulsing on the floor in some sort of fit, catatonic and frothing at the mouth. Mary Margaret had screamed and fallen to her knees next to Emma, David had madly fumbled for his telephone to call 911, and Gold had stood observing pitilessly. It was time that they knew the pain of losing a child. It was time they knew, even if badly and piecemeal, the price he had paid to keep them safe.

Nonetheless, for that very reason, it was still in his supreme interest to keep Emma alive, and when the paramedics arrived, Gold had been down at the door to meet them and show them where to go, as they got her strapped up and intubated and racing downtown to Massachusetts General. She was still alive, but barely, and he was hideously aware that it balanced on a knife's edge, that there was less than bugger-all he could do about it. Can it truly be so easy for Regina to win? He doubted it, but the evidence was decidedly tilting in her favor just now.

Gold turned to pace. He wanted to scream at the delay, the time he was wasting; he had less than forty-eight hours left to be out of Storybrooke, and if Emma died, that window was shut forever. He'd agreed to help the Nolans in the first place out of the desperate conviction that this Neal Cassidy was Bae; he'd used the last drops of his own magic to look for his boy's face in this world, his name, leaving him only with those trinkets, Bae's shawl and Belle's cup. Now even that power was spent. I am as helpless as a child. And with that thrice-cursed pirate skulking in the nether. . .

At that moment, the shroud of silence in the waiting room was snapped as a pair of uniformed police officers stepped in. "Mr. and Mrs. David Nolan? You are Emma Nolan's parents?"

"Yes." David jerked up. "We are. Is she all right? What happened?"

"She's. . . " The officer was clearly choosing her words carefully. "Stable. For the moment. We'd like to ask you both some questions, if that's all right."

"We have our lawyer with us. You can talk to him."

Yet again, the dirty work falls to me. Gold stepped forward, smiling as pleasantly as if he actually didn't want to murder everyone in this building, Emma possibly excepted. "Yes? What can I do for you, officers?"

"Your clients are aware that their daughter was bailed out of county jail yesterday night, and is awaiting trial on felony drug charges?"

Mary Margaret and David both went pale. They'd known that Emma had been arrested, of course, but not for what reason or under what alleged misdeed, and Gold decided to spare them the rigmarole. "Yes," he said briskly. "Next?"

"During police questioning, Miss Nolan claimed that the individual actually responsible for the crimes was one Neal Cassidy. Is this a person familiar to your clients?"

It was Gold's turn to jerk in surprise, though he thought he did a fair job at not letting it show on his face. He could feel David and Mary Margaret's eyes boring into the back of his head, but what they expected him to do about it was quite beyond him. This was a twist he hadn't foreseen, and he intensely disliked being caught so off guard. If it was his boy. . . a dark suspicion began to form in his mind. If Bae was still running from him, and for whatever reason had caught wind of this entire sordid saga, what better way to cover his tracks and flee. . . but wait, the Nolans had said that Neal Cassidy was Emma's paramour, her boyfriend, and if all this time Gold's son had been here in Boston, with their daughter, and they'd never thought to say a bleeding word. . . and gods knew where he'd gone now. . .

"Sir?" the police officer repeated.

Gold bared his teeth. "Yes," he said, soft and lethally. "Yes, it is."

The officers exchanged looks. "Can you elaborate on that?"

"It is my understanding that Mr. Cassidy was in a romantic relationship with Miss Nolan." Gold's fists clenched, aching for their vanished magic. If he had it, he'd level this place, turn it all to rubble, burn a trail of ruin across the city if need be. To be so close, to realize that his chance had in fact flitted away in the gloaming, eluding his grasp by a breath, was driving him to the bleak black edge of insanity. He might as well tuck his tail between his legs and return to Storybrooke now, crawl into his bed and quietly die like the old used-up cripple he was. There was nothing left. Gone. All gone.

Killian Jones had taken this from him as well. Again. Somehow. Gold was unclear on the details, but he didn't need them. The wretched bloody pirate had destroyed his life, his hope, the last slender thread he was clinging to. And in that moment, Gold realized that there was still one thing he could accomplish here. Forewarned was forearmed, as he always liked to say, and there was as yet the faintest chance that Jones didn't yet know that he was here in Boston. Though Gold's pride had gotten the better of him, leaving that note in his office, and all secrecy would thus be shot to hell when it was uncovered.

But still. He could do it. More than that, he would. Destroy absolutely everything the bastard had built here, let Boston College know in no uncertain terms just what sort of a viper they had taken to their breasts. Once Gold began to ply the board of trustees with incriminating information, they'd have no choice but to save face and dispose of Jones – a move easily made with a young professor in his first year, bereft of the security of tenure. Once his job was gone, Gold would see to it that he lost his apartment, his possessions, his money, his place in this world, his pride, anything and everything and everyone he loved or even remotely cared for, until he had finally ground the crawling vermin to dust beneath his heel. I should have done it long ago. Should have killed them both. But instead I thought to leave him alive to suffer.

He felt very much, just then, as if he was about to explode. Let these innocents know who he was, what he was, even if any sense of their own identity was long fled. He didn't need magic to be the Dark One, didn't need eerie eldritch lightning to kill them all and –

"Excuse me?" Right as he was about to fly off the handle, they were interrupted again – fortuitously for the Nolans and the police officers, who might never know how closely they'd diced with death. This time it was a white-coated lab technician, holding something sealed in a plastic bag that very closely resembled an inoffensive bakery pastry. A turnover, in fact. "You are David and Mary Margaret Nolan, Emma Nolan's parents?"

This was the second time they'd been asked that, but David still nodded. "Yes. What did – ?"

"Your daughter appears to have eaten from this." The lab tech held it up. "We've run diagnostics on it, but we can't tell exactly what's wrong. All we can tell was that it was laced with an extremely virulent poison. If she'd eaten a bite more, sorry to say, you folks would be preparing for a funeral right now. The hospital has been made aware of Miss Nolan's legal situation. Is there anyone you can think of who might have a vested interest in. . . say. . . making sure she didn't talk further about her criminal charges?"

David and Mary Margaret exchanged an utterly aghast look, plainly shocked to realize what a gruesome underworld of crime and moral decay they'd inadvertently permitted their beloved daughter to be led into, Hades and Persephone redone in suburbia. But before they could open their bloody mouths, and say what they were doubtless about to say, Gold interrupted.

"Yes," he said. "And I can tell you exactly who."

Killian Jones took the stairs two, three, even four at a time, galloping headlong through the dark landings and hallways of Stokes, as if in total heedlessness of the fact that one false step would send him tumbling to break his bloody neck at the bottom. He didn't stop until he'd reached the security desk in the foyer, whereupon he took a moment to recollect himself and then launched himself at it. "Who the hell did you let into my office?"

The bored campus police officer, who'd been watching the Red Sox playoff game on his smartphone, looked up with a start. "Professor Jones? Can I help you?"

"Yes, you bloody well can help me, you miserable buggering carbuncle. Someone's been in my office to leave me a charming little note, and I am most interested in what fable he foisted off on you in order to let him do so. When was he here? How long ago?"

The officer held up both hands. "Whoa, whoa. Professor, slow down. What are you talking about? I didn't let anyone into your office. Is something wrong? Was it broken into?"

"That's what I'm trying to tell you, you half-witted sack of sheep turds! Does it look like I'd be here if it hadn't been? Now get off your pasty doughnut-fed arse and tell me who – "

"Sir – sir, cool it one second, let's be civil and deal with this properly, can you just – "

Killian took a noisy breath through his nose, then clenched his fists hard enough to send a renewed jolt of pain through his left wrist. Ignoring it, he gritted through his teeth, "Very well. My apologies. That was not gentlemanly. Can you at least inform me when he was here?"

"When who was here?"

"We need to take a look at your security tapes. Unless I quite badly miss my guess, there will have been a man here. Inconsequent stature, limp, walks with a cane, longish brown-grey hair. Likely wearing a suit. Robert Gold by name."

The officer still looked confused, but seemed to be coming around to the urgency of the situation, and beckoned Killian behind his desk to access the closed-circuit footage. They rewound at high speed, figures blurring by, until at last Killian's sharp eyes caught sight of a stomach-turningly familiar sight, one he couldn't forget in all the years that had passed. "Stop!"

The officer hit the freeze button, and there he was. No mistaking. The crocodile, tailored suit and slow limp, crossing the foyer at a stately pace and vanishing. The time stamp read 5:15:42 – literally mere minutes before Killian had arrived back with Miss Nolan. I missed him by the slimmest of margins. And there's absolutely no telling where he's gone now.

How had the bastard even left Storybrooke, for that matter? Emma had been quite clear that this was an event so rare as to be entirely unprecedented. He wasn't supposed to be able to! He was supposed to bloody stay! Yet as before, the wretched reptile had somehow slipped the noose, wriggled free another confounded time. The wise thing to do was to count his blessings that he'd avoided him and carry tidily on with his life, but Killian Jones, seeing Gold there, right there in front of him after so long and so much rage and so much loneliness, was in no mood for the wise thing to do. His blood was up in a way it hadn't been in an age, and he most ardently desired to disembowel something or someone. Briefly, he wondered at the feasibility of finding those small-time thugs he'd chased off for Emma in the gas station. Surely nobody would notice or care if they happened to go missing and were never seen ag –

It wasn't the sound that snapped him out of his murderous reverie, but rather the lack of it. The sirens outside had finally stopped, rolling off into the night, and calmness and order were being restored, more or less. Once again, Killian reminded himself that even if the ambulance had been at Emma – Miss Nolan's – dormitory, it was nothing to do with him, and he still had no desire to be tarred and feathered and frog-marched off campus in disgrace, living proof that the "hot young foreign professor" experiment ended badly every time. He wasn't even overly interested in her. He was older than her – how much so, she had no idea – and her accusation was correct. He would, if he was successful, destroy everyone and everything she had ever known about herself, her home, her life. She didn't need that kind of cruelty, his cruelty. Didn't deserve it.

Killian shook his head and turned back to the officer, who was looking at him questioningly, clearly in search of further instructions. "Professor. . . what do you want me to do about this? I can issue a campus alert to be on the lookout for him if you think he's still here – did he take anything from your office? I can also be in contact with the city police department so they can mark him as a person of interest, or – "

Killian hesitated. He would be enraged if anyone else claimed the honor of taking the crocodile down, but he'd be a fool to spurn any advantage. He hadn't done so bloody well on his own these past years, and if there was any way he could kill Gold (or have him killed) with only minimum repercussions on his part, that was certainly something to be prized. While physical evidence of the crocodile's crime might be a bit thin on the ground here, Killian had confidence in his ability to improvise if need be. And besides, he'd almost forgotten how ragged and rotten vengeance wore him. He'd come here and started a new life, and having this old ghost rear its head again, casting a long and horrible shadow, potentially destroying everything he had come to care for, was like being plunged back into the nightmare all over again. He wanted it over. He wanted it to go away. He wanted to sleep a hundred years. He wished he'd never grown up.

"All right," he said at last. "Call the Boston Police Department. But you'll be wanting to tell them not just that he's a sneak and a thief. No, there's something else."

The officer, hand already on the phone, looked confused. "What?"

Killian smiled mirthlessly. "He's a murderer."

When the call had been placed, Killian headed out into the night. He didn't feel nearly as triumphant as he'd expected. Yet with any luck, Gold would slip up under questioning and inadvertently reveal enough dirt to make them start digging. Like any bully, he was utterly unused to being called out or challenged on his malarkey, and if they found out he was from a town that for all intents and purposes didn't exist, that should at least raise a few antennae. What would come of it. . . well, fuck it if he knew.

Killian started toward the parking lot, intending to go home. He'd wanted to set up shop in either the Back Bay or Beacon Hill, as the brownstone row houses, cobbled streets, and gaslamps of these historic Boston neighborhoods reminded him of London, but no doubt precisely for that reason, both were far beyond the financial capabilities of a first-year professor. He had thus been forced to relocate his real estate aspirations elsewhere. While he wasn't out on the street by any means, it was still a bit of a grotty step down, in his estimation. Still, it kept the rain off, and it was currently the soundest option. Try to get some sleep, and perhaps. . .

Once more, unwillingly, he glanced up the hill toward Walsh. It couldn't hurt just to look. Whatever the hell had happened with the queen earlier – he'd not been in any doubt about the malevolent looks she was giving the both of them. Even though he had already been almost entirely certain of what Storybrooke was, it was still an unpleasant shock to have confirmed. And the turnover. . . to speak of things that boded ill. He intended to take it home and subject it to a few very pointed tests, see if it was what he thought, and then if so, have a few more private words with law enforcement. Then they'd have to at least look into whether Regina Mills had –

The turnover.

Killian stopped in his tracks, seized by an awful suspicion. Oh Christ. All this time, he'd been under the impression that he'd clandestinely confiscated it from Emma and stashed it away for investigation, but he was suddenly, horrifying unable to remember if he had or not. The thought was enough to make him freeze in his tracks, kneel down, click his briefcase open, and madly ruffle through it, the papers and the rubbish and the rest – but no turnover. It wasn't there. And if he'd forgotten, if Emma had taken it all unsuspecting, thinking it was nothing more than a –

Bloody hell. Bloody. Hell.

Killian remained motionless an instant longer. Then he flung himself to his feet, barely remembering to latch the case again, and broke into a full-on, head-down, arms-pumping sprint.

Moving at such speed, almost flattening a startled couple coming down the path toward him, he dodged and weaved up toward Walsh, cursing himself savagely for an idiot with every stride. He hurdled a hedge like an Olympic champion, though it snagged and tore his sport coat, and landed on the far side, racing toward the front doors of the building. There was a young woman standing just outside, a faintly familiar-looking one, hanging up her cell phone, and Killian approached, doing his damndest not to look as if it was a national emergency. "Excuse me, lass," he said, trying his best charming smile. "Would you be so kind as to swipe me in just a moment?" Boston College key cards didn't work after a certain hour, if you were someplace you weren't supposed to be. Such as, say, the bloody sophomore dorm.

She did a double take. "Professor Jones?"

"Aye," Killian said, confused. He didn't recognize her, didn't think she was a student in either of his classes – but she did have that look. . . and. . .

Bugger it. He was in a fucking hurry. "If you would?" he repeated. "Won't be long, I just – "

"Hold on." She hit redial on her cell phone, her face pinched and fraught with anxiety. "Emma isn't picking up, she's not in the room, someone told me they took somebody away in an ambulance, and – "

"Emma?" An avalanche of freezing sludge broke off and roared down Killian's back. It wasn't, again, the wise thing to do, but he was too startled to dissemble. "Do you know Emma?"

The young woman looked at him queerly, and not a little suspiciously. "Of course I know her. She's my roommate. Why?"

As Killian scrambled for some shabby alibi, a third voice interrupted. "Wendy!" Another young woman rushed out the front door, looking just as panicked. "The people in the next room say that the paramedics were in our suite! I think it was Emma!"

For the God knew which time, Killian felt as if the world had tilted out under from him, crashed and sent spinning away. And not even due to the confirmation of what he'd been fearing, but that name. There were nine thousand bloody undergraduates enrolled at the school, that had to be good for at least a handful of Wendys. . . but she had looked familiar and now he was certain almost beyond doubt that he knew why. She must be the granddaughter of – oh God, if she caught wind of this whole mess and confronted her grandmother, and said grandmother discovered the role that Killian had played in all this, or rather that Captain Hook had –

You can't turn back into him. Ever.

And he'd promised, but as usual when it came to Wendy Moira Angela Darling, he'd failed her.

He didn't think he'd said anything, but standing there with a gobsmacked look on his face must have been enough. Wendy – this would be Jane's daughter then – was frowning at him, only listening with half an ear to whatever her friend had just told her. "I'm sorry – ?" she said. "Do I know – ?"

"Not – not likely. I – I just – " Killian barely heard what he was saying. Don't tell your grandmother, please, I'm begging you – but that was sure to go over as a lead balloon. Even more so than his previous mishaps. "I don't – believe so?"

"But Emma – what happened with Emma?" Wendy had the bit between her teeth, clearly smelled a mystery, and wasn't going to let go so fast. "First we hear she's arrested, then someone said they saw her come back, and now it sounds like she was taken away in an ambulance – have you. . .?" She took a step forward. "Alice, do you know anything about this?"

The other young woman – Alice, oh bloody hell, he knew her, she was in his literature class, it must have been her paper he'd just been marking, Alice Carroll – shook her head, not taking her eyes off Killian. "Sounds fishy, but. . . we don't have time to look into this right now. If they took her to a hospital, it was probably Mass General, and I think we should – "

Doubtless she finished that sentence. Doubtless it was even important. But Killian never heard. Instead, doing nothing to diminish their suspicion, he was already running.

"Who the hell is Killian Jones?" It was the first question David had gotten in edgewise in the last ten minutes, and he was determined to have it answered. "I mean, I thought he was just a history professor and you're talking about him like he's Ted Bundy or something. Can you please explain why he's supposedly gone all to this trouble to attempt to murder my daughter and – "

Gold held up a hand, dismissing him. To the attentively scribbling officers, he said, "As I have explained in great detail, I have absolutely no doubt that Professor Jones is the one behind the attempt on Miss Nolan's life. You'll want to consider that in your calculations."

"We will. We'll be looking into this, trust me." One of the officers removed his radio from his belt, then stepped out of the room. A tense few moments passed, but when he stepped back in, he had an odd look on his face. "Sir – you gave your name as Gold, didn't you? Robert Gold?"

"Yes," Gold said curtly. "Why?"

"It's just. . ." The police officer scratched his head, looking bewildered and rather embarrassed. "Sir, according to my colleagues downtown, there's a warrant for your arrest."

David's mouth fell open. He exchanged a wild look with his wife, who was staring just as blankly back at him. They took hands and turned to face Gold, determined to inquire as to just what he'd been hiding from them – was there another reason he hadn't left Storybrooke in so long? They had the feeling that they'd stepped directly onto a motherlode of quicksand, and with everything Gold had said about no longer being able to protect them if he left town – they couldn't help but wonder sickly if this was in some measure their fault. It was a parent's worst nightmare, and it was only getting worse. "Why?" David demanded.

"Because," a low, lethal Irish voice said from the door. "He's a murderer."

The communal double-take the entire room performed was almost – almost – comical. They spun around and then beheld the man standing there, whom both David and Mary Margaret recognized from their brief introduction in the dining hall. He was disheveled, windblown, and staring down Gold, who was staring back, just as chalk-faced, hot-eyed, and completely transfixed. The silence that endured between them was depthless, almost alive in its fury. Then both of them turned to the police officers and barked in unison, "Arrest that man!"

The officers, pardonably even more dumbfounded by this point, exchanged looks, first at Jones, then Gold, then with each other. "Scuse. . . is this some kind of joke?"

"Not at all," Killian Jones snarled.

"I was wondering that myself," Robert Gold snapped.

"Holy Moses, both of you." David Nolan, for his part, had had it up to here with their shenanigans, especially thinking of his daughter unconscious in the intensive care unit after a very nearly successful poisoning, while this pair of lunatics argued over her body. He stepped forward angrily, displaying what his wife had often called his "Prince Charming" streak – his need to step in and valiantly save the day. "Can you both just calm down and explain what the hell is going on?" He shouldered between them; they were both starting to stalk in a circle, lions closing in on a wounded gazelle. "This is a hospital!"

Mary Margaret shot a look at the officers. "They're right. Arrest them."

"I don't think so, dearie!" Gold bellowed, making everybody jump again. "You'll recall the terms of our deal? If you don't want me to – "

"Deal?" Jones cut in scathingly. "Oh, so you're patting their heads with one hand and picking their pockets with the other, is that it? That's low even for you, crocodile. Do you – "

"Do you even know what I'm doing here? No, you don't, do you? Didn't know how I'm protecting them?" Gold took a two-handed grip on his cane, as if its imminent use as a whoopass stick was shortly to be required. "Vastly though you do not deserve it, I'll make you a deal of your own. Walk out that door and never be seen in our lives again, in any shape or form, and I'll forget I ever saw you. I won't even do what I was planning – and believe you me, you don't want me to do what I was planning."

Jones laughed, raw and scraping. "I don't know about you, officers, but to me, that sounds a bloody lot like a threat. You are going to pay attention to that, I trust?"

"Look." The officer who'd been questioning Gold earlier stepped forward. "I don't know what this is, if this is some kind of prank or private feud or what, but both of you jokers had better not be trying to get the force involved just to frame each other or set each other up or whatever the hell's going on here. In fact, I think both of you could do with a little trip down to the – "

"Emma," Killian Jones interrupted. He shot a look at David and Mary Margaret. "Your daughter. She must be here. What happened to her? Is she all right?"

"No," David said coolly. "No, she's not."

He had an interesting opportunity then to examine the other man's face, the way he flinched, the open despair in the blue eyes, and be uncomfortably reminded of everything he had thought regarding not liking the way his daughter had been looking at her professor. For him to turn up here, moreover, and confront Gold – there was clearly a great deal that needed to be unearthed, and he fully intended to find out what it –

Gold himself, at that moment, grimaced. He took a step back, defusing exactly none of the tension of the gathering storm, and made a sharp motion to the Nolans. "As it happens," he remarked to the room at large. "Not to worry, we're leaving. You'll excuse us."

"What?" Mary Margaret hissed, as he limped closer. "We can't leave now! We don't know if Emma's going to be all right, we don't know why you and Professor Jones are going at it like – "

"As I was just saying." The look he turned on her was terrifying, cold and inexorable and pitiless as a glacier. "You'll recall the deal we made. The part about how we'd return to Storybrooke at once, no questions asked, if I said so? Well, I'm saying so."

"If you think we're leaving, you're out of your – "

"Which do you value more, dearie?" Gold breathed. "Your daughter's life, or everyone else in the town's? Because that's what the choice is going to come to, you know. How do I know? Because I can feel it. This is only beginning. Someone has just broken into my shop."