Finch stared at the map on his screen. The tracker signal had appeared, just as designed, when he activated it. Then it had vanished again.

There was no longer any doubt in his mind that his partner was in serious trouble.

He hit the 'back' button until the location of the tracker re-appeared, then saved the screen before he zoomed in. It was twenty blocks from the address Mrs. Zane had provided for her children. A very tony neighborhood, very large single houses with fenced yards, swimming pools. Houses with staff. It was where the one-percenters who didn't live in penthouses lived.

Finch had been to a home in that neighborhood once. On that same street.

He'd attended a party there. With Grace Hendricks.

The 'aunt' Helen had referred to had considerably more income than Finch had anticipated. In any case, he had to get there.

He should take a weapon with him. He opened his desk drawer and brought out a little canister of pepper spray. It wasn't a great weapon, he acknowledged, but it was something.

Bear hurried over and sat at his feet.

He hated to think of the dog as a weapon. But the Malnois was very well-trained, and frequently useful as a diversion. "Yes," he decided, "you can come."

The dog wagged his tail happily. Then he hurried off, down the stairs. Finch knew that behavior: Bear was going out to the little courtyard to relieve himself before they left. A device in his collar opened the dog door for him. It would delay them for a minute or two, but it would save time later.

His cell phone chirped. Finch scowled. It was the alert the Machine used to tell him it had a Number for him. He already had two new Numbers, and no time for either of them. But the AI would continue to alert him every fifteen minutes until he received the information.

He was desperate to get to Mr. Reese. But he had to wait for Bear anyhow. He hurried to get the indicated books.

By the time he got back to his desk, Bear had returned and was waiting eagerly. "One moment," Finch said. He sat down and typed in the first number.

A woman's name came up. Laurie Webster. An address in Brooklyn. A drivers' license photo dated 1988. There was nothing more recent. No activity at all on that Social Security number after 1989.

Finch stared at the picture for a long time. A woman in her late twenties with long, light blonde hair. She was very pretty.

Bear nuzzled his hand, ready to go.

"Wait," Finch said absently. He sent the image to the printer, then typed in the second Number.

Liesl Horvath was the same age, with pale brunette hair, short. Also very pretty. She also had no activity after 1989.

Harold took a deep breath. He printed the second photo, then stood and walked to the board. He put the two photos side-by-side. Then he removed the photo of the mother, Elizabeth Zane, and put it between the two.

"Oh, dear."

She was older, of course. But all three photos unquestionably showed the same woman.

Finch stood up, grabbed the leash, and snapped it onto Bear's collar as they hurried down the stairs.

"Uncle Scott?" Sarah said.

Scott jiggled the door handle to make sure it was locked. "It's okay," he said. He was surprised how calm his voice sounded. Old habit, he supposed. "Your mom's okay."

"Is the cop?" Helen asked drily.

"For the moment." He tried to make it seem like he was kidding. "Where are the boys?"

"Uncle Mickey's bringing them."

"Good."

"Do we really have to leave?" the older girl asked.

"Mom said we had to pack," the younger one added.

"I don't want to go home," Helen finished.

Scott shook his head. He'd been an only child – as far as he'd known when he was a child – and had only had one child himself. The way these children finished each other's thoughts was unnerving. It was worse when all four of them were there. "We're … still sorting that out," he said. "Aunt Becky's on her way, too. With any luck we can find out what's going on, maybe still save the summer."

"It's all Helen's fault," Sarah pouted.

"I didn't do anything wrong!" her sister insisted.

"Stop," Scott said. "Just stop." He moved away from the garage door and the girls followed. "Look, I don't know that you'll have to go home. But I do know that your mom is already on edge and she doesn't need you bickering. Or disobeying. You all made a deal when she brought you down here that you'd do exactly what you were told, remember?"

"But it's so unfair! I've got horseback riding Monday."

"You can ride horses at home," her sister snapped.

"Listen, both of you. We'll try, all of us. If there's a real threat then you have to go. If there's not, if this is just some misunderstanding, some coincidence, then we'll reason with her. But if your mom told you to pack – go pack. Just do what she asked. It'll be a lot easier for her to change her mind if she doesn't think you're being defiant."

"Mom taught us to think for ourselves," Helen pointed out.

"Then think for yourself. Your mom is on high alert. She's already got one foot across the border. Do you want to give her any excuse to go? Or do you want her to know that, even if you don't like it, you'll do what she decides is best?"

"But it's not fair!" Helen argued.

"No," Sarah said solemnly, "he's right. It's better if we're all packed. Mom'll be less pissed."

"Language, Sarah."

The girls looked at each other. "Fine," Sarah finally said.

She moved towards the stairs. Helen remained. "Uncle Scott …"

He knew what she was going to ask. "She's got him tied up, but she hasn't hurt him."

"I think … I really think he was just trying to help."

"Maybe so. We'll find out."

The girl still hesitated. "Is this … what they were like before? My parents?"

Scott took a deep breath. Dangerous and determined? Oh, yes. Helen's parents had been exactly like that. So had his own father, and Mickey. And he'd been older than Helen when he realized exactly how deadly they all could be. "Efficient?" he suggested. "Yeah. They were."

She made a little face and swallowed, hard. "I didn't mean … to get him killed."

Scott put his hand on her shoulder. "He's not dead. He probably won't be. We just need to sort this out." He remembered what Lily had told him: if she had to kill the man in the garage, she'd make sure he never found out about it. She would make doubly sure her children never knew. "It'll be okay. Go get your stuff together."

Helen sighed heavily, then shrugged and followed her siblings upstairs.

A small alarm sounded. Scott glanced at the monitor by the door, then gratefully went out to greet Mickey and herd the boys.

It had been a long time since there had been guns and danger all around him, but it was all coming back to him much too fast.

There was a sound at the door behind him. Not a knock, but a scratch. Elizabeth heard it, too; she turned and picked up Reese's gun, racked a round, and held it in both hands, low, ready.

She knew her way around a firearm, but she seemed uneasy with it.

The lock snapped and the door creaked open, fairly fast. The gun came up.

"Put that down," a man said without concern, "before you shoot yourself."

"Bite me," Elizabeth answered. She lowered the gun. "Did you talk to Scott?"

"Sure did. Cheddy biscuits. I'm happy."

His voice was deep, a little scratchy. He sounded older, and he had just the faintest hint of a southwestern twang.

"About the guests," the woman prompted. Her posture changed; she was suddenly a lot more at ease. Whoever the man was – Reese didn't bother to turn, he could tell from his voice he was still in the shadows, out of sight – Elizabeth trusted him completely.

"Yeah. That's been a long time."

"Uh-huh. You got the boys?"

"They're inside. All safe."

She gestured toward Reese. "He yours?"

The man strode slowly past Reese and turned around. He was older, as expected, somewhere north of sixty, definitely older than Elizabeth. From the look of his skin they'd been hard years. He had deep wrinkles, an extra twenty or thirty pounds, and he moved like he had a lot of old wounds. Something not quite right with his legs. His hair was sandy mixed with gray and was a little long. It looked like it had been unruly every day of his life. He sported about a week's worth of grizzled stubble.

He wore old jeans and a faded black t-shirt and work boots.

He might have been the gardener, the handyman. Except he wasn't.

John had met him before. Heard his name a dozen times. Mickey Kostmayer. Quiet, unassuming, easy to overlook. Deadly. Very senior field operative, Central Intelligence Agency.

And also – retired. Which might, possibly, be Reese's salvation.

But he'd retired on good terms. It had been years back, before Ordos. Something about knee replacement. He remembered Kira smirking his name, something about finally turning the old bastard out to pasture. If he was collecting a pension, he might be inclined to collect a bonus by turning in an op who'd strayed off the reservation.

The man took the gun from Elizabeth's hand. Her willingness to give it up confirmed that Reese had already guessed about her: She was Agency, too, or had been.

But she thinks the Agency's coming for her – and here's Kostmayer, and she just handed over her weapon.

Kostmayer turned and looked at Reese for a long moment. "Yeah, he's ours." He checked the gun and put it on the bench. "Or he used to be. Until he got himself dead in China a few years back."

"The Company still hasn't learned to check its kills."

"Uh-huh. His partner was supposed to be dead, too. Made it kind of hard to explain why they were scraping little bits of her DNA off three square blocks of Manhattan last year." The man did not seem at all saddened about that fact.

A safe house in Kiev. Stanton was washing her hands in the kitchen sink; blood ran in dark trickles down the drain. She was laughing, sweaty, giddy with cooling bloodlust. They had left a hell of a mess behind. Snow came into the room, quick and quiet, trying to shush her, and then Kostmayer entered. He'd looked much like he did now, soft, scruffy and unthreatening. Only the dangerous glint in his eye gave away his status and his power. "What the fuck happened?" he said quietly.

Stanton looked him up and down, decided he was a nobody, and went on washing her hands. "They resisted. We killed them."

"I wasn't talking to you," he said, still quietly. He looked John over, then he turned to Snow. "We wanted them alive."

"Like she said," Snow answered, his voice edged with tension, "they resisted. We had no choice."

"There's always a choice." He looked at Reese again. "How long you been with us, son?"

"About a year," John answered carefully. He'd met the man once, briefly, years before, when he was still in uniform. He was impressed that he'd remembered him.

"There's always a choice," Kostmayer repeated. He looked at Stanton, who was still smirking, and then back to Snow. "Get your psycho back on her leash."

Mark nodded solemnly. Snow evidently respected him – or feared him. But Stanton was too high from the kills to notice, or to care. "Or what?" she demanded.

"Or we'll put you down," he answered without hesitation.

Kara grinned. "You, personally?"

"If need be."

He looked at Snow, gave a little guy-nod to Reese, and left.

"Who the fuck was that asshole?" Kara demanded, loud enough for the departing man to hear.

"Kostmayer," Snow answered grimly. "That was Kostmayer."

Stanton went suddenly serious, a little pale. Then she laughed it off. She splashed some of the bloody water at Reese. "You boys worry too much."

It took Reese three weeks of careful questions – none while Kara was around – to learn that Michael Kostmayer was Control's right hand. No one could tell him much about him, but they all gave him one piece of advice: Don't cross him.

Elizabeth Zane was perfectly at ease with him. "So who's this guy?" she asked.

"John Reese. Most of the time." Kostmayer considered. "His partner, Stanton, I told you about her. She was twisted. Psycho. This guy, not so much. Good at his job, but he never got off on it."

"Well, that's good to know," she said sardonically. "Hello, John Reese. It's nice to meet you."

Reese smiled fleetingly. "And your name is …?"

She smiled back, but didn't answer.

Kostmayer put the battery back in Reese's phone and scrolled through the settings casually. "So what's your plan?" he asked. "Turn her in and buy your way back into the good graces of the Company?"

"I'm never going back there," John answered honestly.

"Good for you, son. It wouldn't work anyhow, you know."

"I know." He took a chance. "You're Kostmayer."

"Yep."

"If the Agency wants her – you obviously knew where to find her."

Kostmayer shrugged. "It's complicated."

Elizabeth said, "I'll get the kids packed. We'll be out of here by midnight."

He raised one laconic eyebrow and slipped the phone into his pocket. "You're gonna run, huh?"

"I don't see any option."

"He's not on the payroll."

"He's still an op. Still Company."

"I'm just sayin', maybe we ought to think this through." The man was calm, easy-going. Strong enough to know he didn't need to bark. "Scared is stupid. They may have sent him to bird-dog you. Flush you right into the snare."

"Damn it, Mickey …"

"The Agency didn't send me," Reese said. "I told you the truth. I was only trying to protect Helen."

The two looked at him for a long moment.

The man shrugged. "Let's see what the chef says."

Elizabeth nodded. "Only reason I'm not already digging a hole."

"Just like the old days, huh?"

"You better not be enjoying this," she snarled.

"Oh, come on. Tall drink of water like this tied up in the garage, all dark and dangerous? You can't tell me it's not kinda fun."

"I got four kids in that house to look out for. It's not fun."

The man made a little face at Reese. "She's having fun," he assured him.

"At least one of us is."

"Beats the hell out of fishing."

Gusev groaned when he saw the caller ID on his phone, but he answered. "Mr. Black. We're going to need a little more time."

"For what?"

"To locate the girl's home …"

"I've already done that," Black answered.

"You have?"

"I didn't figure you idiots were up to it," he snarled. "I know where the girl is. And her mother."

"And the files?"

There was a little pause. "Of course, the files."

Gusev grinned. "You forgot about the files, didn't you, Black? But I didn't."

"You'll get your files."

"When?"

"Tonight. I'll meet you at the diner. Nine o'clock. We'll need four or five men."

"Why don't you just give me the address," Gusev suggested, "and we'll meet you there."

"You really do think I'm an idiot, don't you?"

The mobster shrugged to himself. "You're sure the files are there?"

Black hung up on him.

Finch lifted his foot off the accelerator and let the car roll past the point where the red dot appeared on his phone. There, somewhere behind the graceful white wall, was where John Reese's car was.

Or at least, where John Reese's car keys had been.

He did not have to look at the house. He knew the house. Tall, stately, conversative. Large. With a professionally groomed lawn and a state-of-the-art security system. He had been inside once. Carlos Zaccardi was a senior vice president of a major Wall Street brokerage house. His wife Yvette was a sculptor of some renown. Mrs. Zaccardihad hosted a gathering for local artists' groups, a fund raiser for art materials for storm-damaged schools throughout the city. Harold remembered every detail. It had been springtime, a breeze sunny afternoon. Grace Hendricks had worn a soft green dress, new and very becoming. She'd been giggly, pleased but nervous to be at such a lofty gathering. She'd had no idea, of course, that her escort had more money than everyone else in the house combined. Harold had been acutely aware of the depth of his deception that afternoon. He'd regretted it. Grace had read his tension as social anxiety, and she'd stayed by his side. But Yvette – she'd insisted that they call her Yvette – had been a warm, friendly woman, intelligent and approachable, and she'd put them both at ease. Many of Grace's artist friends had been there, and most of the conversation had been art-related, of course, but Harold had been unexpectedly comfortable. The food had been exceptional.

If Yvette Zaccardi was there, if she recognized him – well, that would be very bad. Very bad.

Perhaps the couple had sold the house and moved to France or to Quebec. They had connections in both places, Finch remembered.

Perhaps Elizabeth Zane and her brood had broken into the estate and were simply squatting there.

He doubted he would be that lucky.

The gate was closed. Finch glanced between the bars as he drove past. There were cars in the drive, but John's was not among them.

He continued without accelerating, down around the corner and out of sight of the house.

Bear whined softly.

"We'll get him, Bear," Finch said calmly. He parked the car at the side of the street, in the shade.

A quick internet search showed no change of ownership for the property. It was still held by one of Zaccardi's trust companies. Whether the couple was still in residence was unclear. If she recognized him, if she knew that Grace Hendricks believed he was dead …

But he had no option. "We have to go in there, Bear," he said simply. "If John's in there, we have to go for him." He would sort out his lies later. Perhaps he could persuade them not to tell Grace.

Newly-married, happy Grace …

"We have to go in there," he repeated.

He pulled out his phone.

There was a soft, almost timid knock on the door.

Elizabeth sighed. "I don't know why I even bothered to lock it." Louder, she said, "What?"

"Mama, there's a man on my phone." It didn't sound like Helen; John guessed it was the younger sister.

"What?"

"He says he needs to talk to you. About John."

The woman glared at Reese. Then she hurried to the door behind him and opened it quietly. "Give it here."

"Mama …"

"It's okay, Sarah. You're not in trouble."

"Aunt Becky's here."

"Good. Tell her I'll be in in a minute." The door closed.

The man picked up Reese's gun and moved to stand close behind him. He didn't tell him to stay quiet; they both understood.

Elizabeth returned to the work bench and clicked the speaker on. "Hello?"

"Mrs. Zane?" Finch said over the phone. "Thank you for taking my call."

"How did you get this number?"

"That's not important."

"It is to me."

Reese could see that the woman was on full alert again. She held her body perfectly still. Her full attention was focused on the phone. She trusted, he noted, that her partner had John under control. They had been together a very long time, in some form or another.

"Is my friend there with you?" Finch said. "I believe he introduced himself as Detective Stills."

"He's not Stills."

"No. He is not. Is he safe?"

"For now," Elizabeth said. "Who are you?"

"I'd like to speak with him."

"No."

Reese barely moved his head. There was an immediate touch on his shoulder. He didn't bother to look up for the warning.

"Then I'd like to speak with you, Mrs. Zane."

"I'm listening."

"I hoped we could meet in person. I assure you that neither my partner nor I intend you any harm."

Elizabeth looked up, over Reese's head at her partner. "You're Harold, aren't you?"

Finch did not hesitate. "Yes."

"Harold what?"

"That's not important, Mrs. Zane."

"I don't see any reason I should meet with you."

Good, Reese thought. Harold would try another approach, but at least this would keep him out of danger for the moment.

"Is your name really Elizabeth Zane?" Finch asked calmly. "Or is it Laurie Webster? Or Liesl Horvath? Or something else entirely?"

Elizabeth Zane sagged suddenly. It was as if Finch had reached through the phone and hit her with a stun gun. He might as well have. Reese guessed with some certainty that his partner had come up with two of her old CIA aliases.

John felt the hard cold of a gun barrel against his temple. "Shit," Kostmayer whispered.

Harold had caught both of his captors entirely by surprise.

Nice trick, Finch.

He half-expected the gun to go off in the next second.

Instead, Elizabeth Zane straightened and picked up her knife.

She was burned and she knew it. There was no point in prolonging the drama. She would dispose of the witnesses, pack up her children, and flee. Harold Finch, Reese realized, had just signed his death warrant.

Elizabeth took three steps toward him before Kostmayer said, "Wait."

He gestured for the phone, after a long moment she held it out toward him. "Do you have a dog?" Kostmayer asked clearly.

Finch hesitated for the first time. "Yes."

"You should come for dinner. You should bring your dog."

The gun barrel moved a little against Reese's head. He would have shouted anyhow if he'd thought it would do any good. But his warning and the sound of a gunshot wouldn't have kept Finch away. It was better if John was alive when he got there.

There was a long pause. Reese wanted to think that Finch was weighing the options, thinking of another way – but he suspected that Harold was simply dumbfounded by the turn of events.

"I … beg your pardon?" Finch finally said.

"Dinner," Kostmayer repeated calmly. "Bring your dog."

Finch gathered his wits with predictable speed. "Shall I bring wine?"

"You're sitting right outside the gate, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Run down to the corner, get some desserts from the Italian bakery. Get lots. I like cannoli."

"Very well. I'll be there shortly."

Elizabeth clicked off the phone. She stared at Kostmayer for a long moment, then at John. Without a word she picked up John's watch and went into the house.