Note: A little closure.
Also, almost 50,000 words, dang! I wasn't expecting the story to grow this much.
Going to write an interlude soon, then I might take a short break to gather my wits about me and do a bit of story planning.
Thank you so kindly for all the wonderful reviews!
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Two Years Prior
John Reese arrived at the library far later than usual. He carried a large pink cardboard box, still warm from the bakery.
Reese had long ago learned that he could get away with quite a lot, so long as Harold Finch was properly mollified with pastries and other delicacies.
The folding gate protecting Finch's inner lair had been slid aside and the chamber was filled with the soft mutterings of computer hard drives and cooling fans. Finch himself was seated in front of the computers, tapping away at the keyboard with a look of idle disinterest on his face. Bear had curled up on the doggie bed by the desk. When the dog heard Reese's near-silent footsteps, he leaped up and rushed forward eagerly, tail wagging, nose sniffing at the sweet, sweet smell drifting from the box borne by his Alpha.
Finch said, "Good morning, Mr. Reese. You're running far later than usual."
"'Morning, Finch," he said, setting the box of doughnuts on the desk. Without looking away from his work, Finch reached out with one hand, unerringly flipped open the box lid, picked up a napkin, and used it to select a pastry from within.
Reese said, "I had some business to attend to. You didn't call, so I assume we don't have a number."
Bear sat patiently by the desk, his tail still, his gaze fixed on the box as though he could make it spill its contents by sheer will.
Finch said, "No number this morning, Mr. Reese. Our docket is clear." He glanced at the box, noticed its unusually large size, and then peered up at Reese, who was looking innocently around the chamber. "Anticipating a pastry shortage, Mr. Reese?"
"You know, Harold, 'the library' just doesn't have that ring to it. I think we should start calling this place the Batcave. You've even got a Batcomputer here. Six of them, actually. Plenty of Batbooks. Batguns. Batgrenades. Batsuits. We even have a Batdog."
Finch raised an eyebrow. Bear tilted his head.
"Nevermind," Reese said, sitting down next to his boss. He grabbed a doughnut of his own. Munched on it. Looked at the monitors.
"What are you doing, Harold?" Reese asked. "Hacking the Pentagon? Reprogramming the Machine? Updating your FriendZone status?"
"Editing several Landis personnel files," Finch muttered. "Ensuring that the company will offer Elizabeth Ruben a full-time position worthy of her skills when she graduates. If they don't, I hear IFT is looking for a lead security engineer."
"I think she'd like that."
"According to Miss Ruben's file, Tara Dodson attempted to have her fired multiple times for minor infractions, all of which are utterly frivolous—dress code violations, for example. Each time, Isaac Leroy vouched for Miss Ruben."
"A jerk with a heart of gold." Reese took another bite from his doughnut, then tore off a chunk and tossed it to Bear.
"I returned the thirty thousand dollars to his account, plus a little interest. I disguised it as a banking error. But I'm still trying to ascertain what sort of blackmail material Tara Dodson has on him."
"I wouldn't worry too much about her, Finch."
The steady clattering of the keyboard stopped. Finch rotated his chair to face Reese, who shrugged.
"I'm just saying, Harold," said Reese. "When the police find Tara Dodson, she will be very, very cooperative. I doubt she'll be blackmailing anyone."
There was a long pause. Finch opened his mouth once, closed it. He finally said, "I don't want to know." He returned his attention to the monitors.
Reese threw another chunk of doughnut towards Bear. The dog tracked the flying projectile with all the accuracy of a computer-guided missile defense system and snapped the tasty tidbit right out of the air.
For awhile, the Batcave was quiet.
Finch said, "I'm glad you found her in time, John."
"Just barely. We never would've found her without your magic on the GPS unit."
"Do you think she'll be alright? Not everyone can shrug off a near brush with death as easily as you."
"She's got a long road ahead of her...but she's pretty stubborn. I think she'll be fine."
"We should keep an eye on her." said Finch. When Reese raised his eyebrows, Finch quickly added, "For—for her own safety."
Reese smirked.
"You like her, Harold."
"I respect Miss Ruben's abilities as a fledgling colleague," Finch said, sounding rather stiff about it. "She has great potential as a security programmer and the world would be a worse place without her algorithms."
He paused, leaned back as best he could in his chair. Adjusted his glasses.
"Yes, I like her," he said softly.
"That's good," Reese said. "I like her too."
He checked his watch, threw the rest of the doughnut to Bear, and said, "I'm meeting with Detective Carter for lunch at Addison's. Want to join us, Finch?"
"No, thank you, Mr. Reese. Thanks to the overabundance of pastries you've provided, my nutritional needs will be satisfied for the next two weeks."
"Not if you let Bear sneak any. Guard the box, Harold."
"I wouldn't need to guard it if you would cease slipping him food when you think I'm not looking, John."
"Hey, a dog's gotta eat. For a rich guy, you buy the lousiest dog food." Chuckling, Reese swung his jacket over his shoulder and strode towards the gate.
"Oh, Finch?" he said over his shoulder. "I really think 'the Batcave' is better."
"Enjoy your meal, Mr. Reese," said Finch.
He waited until Reese's footsteps had faded away before returning his attention to the monitor. His work in the Landis database was done, as was his modification of Isaac Leroy's bank accounts. He closed the windows and brought up the files he had been examining earlier that morning: Elizabeth Ruben's source code for the Landis wireless encryption systems. The files were among those he had managed to copy from her desktop before the backdoor had been removed.
Miss Ruben's code was good. It wasn't flashy, it wasn't excessively verbose. Succinct enough to get the job done, yet self-documenting, making the comments she added superfluous. To Finch, reading her source code was like reading a book. He understood what each component did and why it did it.
He spotted three places where her algorithms could have been optimized, but the performance gains would have been negligible. Either she had not noticed the potential optimizations, or she was wise enough to realize that the effort needed to optimize the code wouldn't have paid off in the end.
Smiling, he closed the file and began looking through the rest of Elizabeth Ruben's projects directory. There were a few other encryption programs, including what looked like a small daemon to encrypt DNS queries and responses; a small web server she had written herself; a patched, high-performance version of OpenSSH augmented by her own algorithms...
It looked like she'd even written her own cryptographic hash function.
As Finch examined each of the projects, his mind began to wander.A little voice in the back of his head said,You stole these files, you know. Right from her hard drives.
His initial reaction was, Well, she should have protected them better.
But the voice refused to be silenced.This source code does not belong to you.
He browsed through Elizabeth Ruben's projects directory, and each time he opened another source code file, he felt incrementally more and more guilty.
You shouldn't be looking through her code. How would you feel if she did this to you?
He thought of the anguish in her voice, distorted by distance and Reese's phone, as she had held Bobby Tam at gunpoint and accused him of hacking into her network.
Reese's voice echoed in his head.
You like her, Finch.
Yes, he liked her—as a colleague, of course. And in general, colleagues didn't hack each other's networks. Not unless they were penetration testers, anyway.
He frowned. Sighed.
Finch pulled the keyboard closer to him, brought up a command window, and typed: rm -vrf ~/raid4/ruben/
"Professional courtesy, Miss Ruben," he muttered. He hit the enter key, sat back, and watched his computers purge Elizabeth Ruben's files from their hard drives.
#####
Addison's was a tiny bar and grill in Lower Manhattan. The place was dark, which suited John, and they grilled the best mushroom cheeseburger this side of 23rd street, which suited Detective Carter.
"Mmm," she said, wiping her mouth with the corner of her napkin. "I forgot how good this place was." It was hard to hear her. What with the bustle of the lunch crowd, the blaring flat-screen TVs, and the music of the Doors blasting from the overworked stereo speakers by the bar, Addison's was an auditory nightmare—but it made it very difficult for anyone to eavesdrop.
And the food was great.
John had finished his own hamburger already. He sprawled lazily in the booth opposite Detective Carter and watched her eat.
"Did Taylor eat all the food at home?" he asked. "You look like you've been starved."
"Ha-ha." She pointed at him. "You ate even faster than I did. I like to actually taste what I'm eating, y'know?" She popped the last bit of cheeseburger into her mouth and chewed, savoring the flavor of the grill-seared mushrooms.
She swallowed, settled back with a sigh, and said, "We gotta come here more often."
"Yes, we should," John said, smiling—a true smile, the kind that only Jocelyn Carter could coax out of picked up his water glass, took a sip. "Especially when we have reason to celebrate. Elizabeth Ruben is safe and sound tonight. And I didn't shoot anybody. Not a single person."
Carter shook her head. "She's safe, but I dunno about sound. Getting locked up in a cargo container and left to die? That's not the kind of thing you just up and walk away from. She's gonna have a few demons to fight."
"It's better than being dead," Reese said.
"Well, I've known a couple of people who've offed themselves from less traumatic experiences."
"Finch and I will check in on her from time to time," Reese said, nodding. "But I think she'll pull through."
"I just hope she's not too pig-headed to call somebody when she needs it." She sighed, clenched her fists. "God, when I find Tara Dodson..."
"Ah," Reese said. His face lit up with a look of mischief. "That reminds me." Reaching into his jacket pocket, he withdrew a business card and pen, scrawled something on the back of the card, and handed it to Carter. "Here's an address you might want to check out."
Carter looked dubiously at the card. "And what will I find there, John?"
"You'll see. But, you can take your time. A few hours won't hurt. Probably should go there before tomorrow afternoon though. The forecast for tomorrow is looking very hot."
Carter's eyes narrowed. "What's that supposed to mean?"
He smirked and slid out of the booth, tossing a couple of $20 bills onto the table. "Gotta go," he said. "Thanks for lunch, Joss. We really should do this more often."
"Wait—John! John, come back here!"
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I spent most of the next day curled up on the couch. I got up twice; once to use the bathroom and once to find something to eat. I didn't have the energy to do much else, but I was afraid to fall asleep.
John had been right about the nightmares.
So I stayed in the living room, curled up on the couch beneath a thin yellow blanket. I hadn't bothered to put on more than the nightgown Detective Carter had bought me last TV was on with the volume down low, but I wasn't really watching. I was just...existing. Trying not to fall asleep. Trying not to think.
From time to time, my body shuddered, but I wasn't cold.
Late that afternoon, I was startled by the ringing of the phone. I didn't want to answer it, at least, not until the answering machine beeped.
"Elizabeth Ruben?" Detective Carter's voice filled the living room, distorted by the tiny speaker on the answering machine. "You there? It's Detective Carter, from the 8th precinct—"
I forced myself upright. My bare feet swung down to the carpet and a second later I was standing. I stumbled to the phone. Nearly dropped the handset.
"H-hello?" I said.
"Elizabeth?"
"Yeah. Yeah, it's me."
"Hey, hun, I thought you'd want to hear this sooner rather than later. We arrested Tara Dodson this afternoon."
I blinked. "Really? Already?"
"Yeah. It gets better. She confessed to kidnapping, assault, attempted murder...she's goin' to prison for at least fifteen years, maybe longer."
My knees quaked. I leaned against the wall to steady myself.
"For real?" I said. "Like, for sure?"
"For real," Detective Carter said. "She won't be able to hurt you or anybody else again, Elizabeth."
"And—and she can't—she won't get acquitted, or anything?"
"There won't be a trial. She made a deal. Fifteen years. From what I understand, that's about a year for each hour you were in that breadbox."
"Oh my god," I breathed. "That's—that's great."
I could hear the smile in her voice. "I thought you'd like to hear that."
"Thank you for letting me know," I said. "I wasn't really expecting her to...get caught. Thought she was going to get away with it."
"'S my pleasure." For a second, there was static on the line, then she said, "You sure you're all right, hun? You went through a lot."
"I'm fine," I said.
"Well, you've got my card. Like I said—you ever need anything—"
"I'll call you," I finished, glancing at the kitchen table, where I had left the card. "Thank you, Detective Carter."
We exchanged pleasantries and hung up.
I made my unsteady way back to the couch. Sat down. I was pretty sure I should've been elated, but it was tempered by a dull sense of emptiness. I mean, I was glad that Tara had been arrested, but right now, I didn't really want to think about her at all.
I curled back up on the couch and watched TV until I dozed off.
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Miles away, sitting before a bank of computer monitors in a decrepit library, Harold Finch said, "Detective Carter sounded quite cross with you, John."
Reese shrugged. "I figured."
"Do I want to know what you did to Tara Dodson?"
"Not really. But it was nothing less than she deserved, if that makes you feel better."
"It really doesn't."
"At least I let her keep her clothes. It was more than she did for Elizabeth Ruben."
Finch gave Reese a long, hard look and turned back to his computers.
"I really don't want to know," he muttered.
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