The former operatives went out to the garage together. Reese reclaimed his jacket and earpiece. Kostmayer turned over his phone. He didn't let John have his weapons back, and Reese didn't push it. They understood each other. They might have a new-found trust, but it was narrow.

Finch got his own phone back and set up an effective four-way comm for them. Before they left, Kostmayer crowded Reese in the narrow entranceway. "Just so we're clear," he said quietly, "I know we're all friend now, but if that comm goes down for any reason while I'm gone, I'm gonna get really nervous, and I'll probably take it out on your friend."

"Likewise, I'm sure," Reese answered simply.

The older man grinned. "I love working with professionals."

"Mama," Sarah Rose said, "can we go bowling?"

The boys hovered behind her, but the youngest was definitely the spokesperson.

"Dishes all done?" Elizabeth asked.

"Yep."

"Go ahead, then."

Reese was about to protest; they had largely identified the threat, but leaving the house now was a terrible idea. The children headed for the basement stairs.

"There's a bowling alley in the basement?" he asked.

"Billiard room, too," Zane answered. "And a theater. And a bar. Locked."

"Because I'm sure your children don't know how to pick locks."

"Fair point."

"I'd like to take a look around. Get a feel for the house and grounds."

Elizabeth nodded. "I'll come with you."

By habit, John reached back to check his weapon. It wasn't there, of course. He straightened his shirt instead. The woman's eyes glinted in amusement.

They walked through the ground floor of the house. From a security standpoint, it was very tight. Finch-safe-house-level tight. Reese nodded in satisfaction.

They called the dogs and went out to check the grounds.

"I was in Bosnia," Reese said. "Infantry."

Elizabeth glanced at him. "Good. They needed infantry there."

"It was a mess," he agreed. He looked up at the tall wall that surrounded the yard. There was a thin line of razor wire at the top, invisible from the outside. Nasty. And effective. "But I never saw anything that made me want to cut all my hair off."

"You were infantry. You didn't have any hair."

"True." Reese grinned crookedly. "You want to tell me about it?"

"No."

John sighed quietly and continued his walk-through.

Mickey Kostmayer's home was only a few miles from the Zaccardi estate. It might have been on the other side of the world. The neighborhood was half-way through gentrification, but the building the man stopped in front of had not been updated in probably fifty years or more. There were clotheslines strung between posts and bikes leaning against front stoops. Every car parked on the street was more than ten years old. Two streetlights were out.

The loft on the second floor of the building, however, was remarkably well-furnished. It was a comfortable space, clearly the home of a man who lived in blue jeans, nothing formal or fancy, but it was spacious, clean and well-maintained.

There were literally hundreds of framed photographs on the walls. But the very large photo on the far wall stopped Finch in his tracks. It was a picture of a young boy's face. He was seven or eight and very serious. There was something about his eyes.

They were the eyes of a child who knew he was about to die.

There was nothing else clear in the photo, nothing to indicate the danger the child might be in. No sign that he was trying to escape. Just the eyes.

It hurt to look at, and Finch could not look away.

"You get used to it," Kostmayer said at his elbow. "This way."

He walked to the far side of the loft. There was a room that had clearly been added after the original construction of the building. It was sealed off by a steel door with a heavy-duty electronic lock. On the outer wall of the addition were twelve framed pictures, all covers of art books.

"Anne Keller," Finch read in surprise. He recognized the name, of course. Anne Keller's work in combat and conflict photography was legendary. Her stunning photos frequently splashed across the front pages of national newspapers, and of course now the internet. He looked again at the large photo of the boy's face. His impression that the boy was about to die seemed more reasonable now that he knew who'd taken the photo.

Kostmayer nodded. "My wife." He keyed in the security code and opened the door. "Don't mess anything up in here or she'll kill me."

Inside was a large, professionally-equipped dark room.

"Oh, my," Harold said.

"You okay, Finch?" Reese asked immediately over the comm.

"Yes, fine. Thank you. I just … most home dark rooms are not nearly so well equipped."

In addition to the usual development equipment, there was a large safe. Finch assumed that it held the more expensive camera equipment, and probably her negatives and proofs. It would be fireproof, to a large degree.

On the side of the safe there were more photos, not framed but stuck on with magnets, a small private gallery hidden away from casual visitors.

Kostmayer handed him the film and retreated to a soft chair in the corner. It was obviously his spot, where he could keep his wife company while she worked without being in the way.

Finch surveyed the work space while he took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeve. Everything he needed was available and conveniently organized. It had been years since he'd developed film, but with the process so neatly laid out before him, he felt perfectly confident. He opened the film canister and got to work.

When he had the process underway, he looked around the room again. The photos on the safe drew his attention. In contrast to the professional photos that lined the walls outside the darkroom, these seemed like family snapshots. The subjects were casually posed, smiling. There was one of Kostmayer with his arms around a lovely woman; Ms. Keller, Finch assumed. In the next one was just the man and a very large fish. There was one of Scott and Becky McCall with a young man in a graduation gown, and a second of the same graduate with a much older man. Then a photo of the older man with a second man of the same age, with a prominent brow and chin and a sharp nose. Between them was a younger woman. It was years old, but Harold recognized Yvette. "If you don't mind me asking," he gestured to the photo, "how do you know the Zaccardis?"

Kostmayer grunted. "A better question would be, how do you know them?"

"I attended a party at the house once."

"You an artist?"

"I was dating an artist at the time."

"Robert McCall," Mickey pointed casually to the man on her right in the photo, "was Yvette Zaccarrdi's father."

"So she's Scott's sister."

"His half-sister."

Finch gestured to the picture of the two men with Yvette. "Then would this be Mrs. Zane's late husband?"

"He was Yvette's godfather."

"What the hell is he looking at?" Mrs. Zane demanded over the comm.

"Family pictures," Kostmayer answered easily. "He hasn't got to the one of you in Berlin yet."

She groaned audibly. "Do you still have that?"

"In the darkroom."

Finch looked further down the row of photos. The last one was indeed Mrs. Zane, though he doubted he would have recognized her. She was wearing a t-shirt and jeans. A bottle of vodka dangled from her fingertips. Her face was turned up to the bright sunlight. There was a crowd around her, a celebration.

She was standing on top of the Berlin Wall, and it was being torn down around her.

"Ohhhhh," Finch said warmly. He remembered that day, everyone at IFT crowded into the cafeteria, watching the scene unfold on the television mounted in the corner. Days, he corrected mentally, the celebration had gone on for days. The world was changing and everyone wanted to watch. The revolution had indeed been televised …

That was where the Cold War had ended. And a new world had been born. They didn't realize then that the new world would be so much more dangerous.

Mrs. Zane had been a very beautiful young woman.

Finch wondered what she would think if she knew that he, personally, had replaced the old repressive governments that she'd help to dismantle with something so much more insidious, invisible, and inescapable.

The timer sounded, and he went back to work.

Helen Zane stepped through the doorway that separated the bowling lanes from the bar. She didn't bother to turn the lights on as she pulled her phone out.

There were two messages from Hailey. Both read,

Are you coming to the movies?

Helen texted back quickly,

Mom's blowing a gasket. No way in hell I'm getting out tonight.

As she moved to put the phone away, a new message pinged. This one was from Dylan.

Meet me at ten. Gonna be off the chain.

Helen made a face. She wasn't sure anyone said off the chain any more. And of course there was no way she could go. Her mom had already almost killed one guy today – literally almost killed him – and Helen wasn't about to risk Dylan's life, too.

He wouldn't get it, and Hailey wouldn't either. Normal kids scratched the car and said, my mom's going to kill me, without ever thinking that might actually be true. Not that her mom would ever hurt her, Helen thought, but someone else? She wasn't sure when she'd first realized that her parents, both of them, were that kind of different. But it had been most of her life. Other people's parents might scream and shout about situations. Helen's parents just handled them.

And when they handled them, the situations went away.

Other people's parents took them to baseball games. Helen's did, too. But they also took them to the shooting range. Other people's parents played hide-and-seek with them. But they didn't make it an all-day, highly competitive exercise in evasion and concealment like Helen's parents did.

Other people's parents drove them home from school. But they didn't take one of a dozen different routes at random every day.

Other people's parents hadn't been spies. Helen's had. And that came with a lot of cool perks – like knowing how to use a gun long before she could legally drive a car. And driving a car long before it was legal, too. But it also came with a lot of drawbacks.

Reluctantly, she texted back to Dylan,

Can't do it, under house arrest. Sorry.

From the alley, Michael called, "Helen, you're up!"

"Coming!" she called back.

Dylan texted a frownie face.

You'll miss all the fun.

I know. Sorry.

Next week. Rocky Horror. Be there.

Helen was pretty sure she'd be in another country by the next weekend, but she didn't try to explain that to Dylan.

I'll try.

"Helen!"

She hit send and put her phone away.

"Weeelllll," Kostmayer said slowly, his word revealing his long-abandoned Texas drawl, "this looks like a whole lot of nothing to me."

Finch nodded his agreement. They had the twelve photos spread out on the counter, the white lights back on. At first glance he couldn't see a single thing that would warrant the abduction of a teenage girl.

"What are you seeing?" Reese asked in his ear.

"A dozen perfectly ordinary photos of Time Square," he answered. They had all been taken from the same location, and Finch was willing to bet that location was directly in front of the wax museum. Mid-day, he guessed from the lighting and the crowd. No single subject in focus. Tourist snapshots. "So why was our mysterious man so determined to hide them?"

"Maybe he caught something," Reese mused. "Someone's husband or wife out with someone, and he wanted to hide the evidence until later?"

"Maybe." Kostmayer leaned over the prints with a magnifying glass. "Lot of people to look at."

"But he couldn't be sure the film wouldn't get jostled into the trash and taken out," Elizabeth countered.

Finch cleaned up the darkroom thoroughly; there was nothing out of place. He dropped the empty film cartridge and canister into the waste basket, but since the basket was otherwise empty he retrieved them and put them in his pocket instead.

"Everything good there?" Kostmayer asked.

"All quiet," she answered.

"We'll bring the prints back. Maybe we can spot something. Make more coffee, will you?"

"I'm on it."

Mickey looked around the dark room one more time. "Good," he said. He scooped the pictures into a stack. "Let's go."

Finch picked up the magnifying glass and followed him out.

Dylan Kozlow checked his phone one more time at the bus stop. He was pretty sure the girls weren't going to change their minds and meet him. That was too bad. But there were always lots of girls on the prowl at the outdoor movies. He shouldn't have any trouble.

He heard brakes squeal and a car horn sound, but the noises were all a part of the city; they didn't grab his attention.

He barely glanced up when the white van pulled up in front of the bus stop.

He didn't even see the man who grabbed him until he was being crammed into the back of the van. And by then it was too late.

Joss Carter was about to get into the shower – she showered in the morning before work, but on a day like this one, a cool shower before bed was pretty much a requirement if she wanted to get to sleep – when her phone buzzed.

She growled in annoyance as she picked it up off the counter. She didn't care who was dead at this point; they could stay dead until she had a shower and a couple hours of sleep. And if it was Reese – but surprisingly, it wasn't the precinct or John. "Agent Moss," she said, surprised.

"I hope I didn't wake you," the FBI agent answered.

"No, it doesn't look like I'll ever get a chance to sleep again. What's going on?"

"I wanted to talk to you when I knew you were away from the precinct."

Carter looked around her bathroom. "Well, I am now."

"That … event … we spoke about. It's scheduled for Tuesday morning."

The detective let out a slow breath. "Okay."

"For security reasons we've made a special arrangement for the judge to hear the matter in closed court on Monday after hours. We'll hold the paperwork for as long as we can. But word's going to get out. As you know."

"So this would be a good time to take that vacation I've been thinking about."

"I would say so, yes."

"I thought we had another week or so."

Brian Moss sighed. "The bigger fish want to move it before the case corrupts."

"I can see their point."

"Sorry I couldn't give you more warning."

"No," Carter said. "This is fine. I can make it work."

"Call me if you need me."

"Thanks, Brian."

She clicked off the phone. It would be a little bit of a scramble, getting tickets bought, rooms booked, getting packed. She'd wanted a little more time to shop. And to get Taylor ready. But it wasn't like the old days, either, when taking her son somewhere required a stroller and a playpen and a ton of other equipment. He was big enough to pack his own bag and carry it, too. But she needed to get busy.

Right after she showered.

She slipped her robe off her shoulders, and her phone rang again.

"Brian?"

"Sorry to disappoint you," Reese said quietly.

Carter laughed softly and shrugged her robe back on. "That'll teach me to check my caller ID. What do you want?"

"I need to know if anything went down on Time Square today."

"I'm sure lots of things went down on Time Square today. You want to be more specific?"

"Anything that would involve the police."

"What, like somebody getting shot in the kneecaps?"

"Especially that, since I wasn't there," Reese answered, amused. "Maybe a mugging, a stolen car, something like that."

"I can ask," Joss said. "But as hot as it's been, reports are way backed up. They might not be filed yet."

"Maybe you could check with dispatch," Finch said, "and let us know about any calls that were placed from that vicinity."

Carter moved her phone down to look at it. She hadn't realized that John's partner was on the call. "I hate it when you do that. I want you to know that."

"My apologies, Detective."

"I'll see what I can find out."

"We appreciate it."

The call went dead. Joss clicked off her phone again and set it down. She started to take off her robe again – whatever the boys were up to, it could wait twenty minutes while she cooled off. Then she paused, picked up the phone, and took the battery out.

It was just a cool shower. But she wanted to take it alone.

"Gusev's boss in Russia," Kostmayer reported, putting his phone away, "is Grigory Cherkashin."

"Cherkashin?" Elizabeth repeated. "Didn't you kill his father?"

"His uncle," Mickey answered. "Great-uncle, maybe. It's hard to keep track."

"Is that information helpful to us?" Finch asked carefully.

Kostmayer shrugged. "Maybe. We've got a some intel on him, a little leverage, but not much."

Reese continued to scan the photos spread on the coffee table with the magnifying glass. "These were all taken in rapid succession," he said. He pointed to a man walking a white poodle in the first photo. "This guy, he's here, and then here, and then here." He pointed to different photos.

"And here," Elizabeth added, pointing to one where just the back half of the dog was visible. "So these were all shot in the time it took him to cross the Square."

"Taken in rotation, as well," Finch added. He demonstrated with empty hands. "First to the left of the photographer and then turning slowly to his right. But whatever he was photographing – it's not obvious."

"They look like burn-off to me," Kostmayer said. "When Annie gets near the end of the roll, she'll just point and click until they're gone, so she can load a fresh roll for the next important thing."

"But this was the whole roll," Elizabeth countered.

"The cheapest possible roll," Finch observed. "Maybe he was testing a new camera?"

"Which brings us back to, why hide it?" Reese said.

"And why try to snag the girl who picked it up?" Kostmayer added.

They sat in silence.

"If I had use of a computer," Finch finally offered, reluctantly, "I could probably access the security cameras at the wax museum. We could identify the man Helen saw drop the film."

There was another long silence. Reese watched while the Kostmayer and the woman exchanged looks. They knew each other well enough that neither had to speak. They didn't like the idea, either of them. But they didn't have any other leads to follow. Elizabeth stood up, walked to the desk, and brought a laptop out of the drawer. "Will this do?"

"Yes. Thank you."

Carter called back. There had been two cars stolen off Time Square, one minor traffic accident, three pockets picked, and four reports of shoplifting. Reese made notes, then thanked her and hung up. The cars had both been stolen well after Helen Zane had left the area. The fender-bender was in the early morning. Two of the shoplifters had been caught at the Disney store, a third at the Hershey shop, and the last at an electronics store. Only the last one seemed even remotely likely to be involved. The victims of the pickpockets had all been from out of town.

Elizabeth brought him more coffee. "I let the dogs out," she reported in general.

Reese glanced up in time to see the three of them romp past the French doors and out onto the dark lawn. At least Bear was enjoying himself.

Still, it was better than being zip-tied to a chair.

Need to talk to you.

Helen frowned at her phone screen.

Call me.

Need to see you. Can I come in?

The girl's heart raced. Could Dylan come in? Hell no, Dylan couldn't come in.

No. Where are you?

Outside the gate. Really need to see you. Emergency.

She looked at her siblings. The boys were sprawled at opposite ends of the long couches in front of the big screen TV, engrossed in some old Bond movie. Sarah Rose was on the floor, half asleep.

Be there in a minute.

She stood up. "I'm going upstairs."

"Tell your boyfriend hi," Robert smirked.

"Shut up."

"Night, Helen," Sarah said sleepily.

"Night."

She went up the stairs, thinking furiously. She wasn't going anywhere with Dylan, obviously. If she could sneak out and get down to the gate, she could at least tell him to go away in person. But it would be tricky. All the alarms were on, and her mom and Mickey were both on high alert. Plus those other guys were still here.

And maybe, maybe, Dylan was involved with the guys who'd tried to grab her. Her mom sure thought so. But then her mom was suspicious of any guy who so much as looked at her. But he might be, somehow. And him showing up at the gate was a little stalkery.

But him on the outside of the gate and her on the inside – she was pretty comfortable with that. It was a lot better than if he pressed the buzzer or tried to climb the wall.

Helen hurried up to her room and looked out the window. She could see a white van parked down by the gate. Dylan didn't have a car, and his brother drove some kind of little Prius thing, but maybe he was with friends.

Dylan always seemed to be broke; he was always getting his older brother to pay for his lunch. So his emergency was maybe about money.

Helen grabbed two twenties out of her sock drawer – American money still looked weird to her – and brushed her hair quickly. She also stashed a weapon, just in case. Then she trotted back downstairs.

The alarms would be on, sure. But she knew the alarms like the back of her hand. Because Mom had insisted.

The door to the study was open. The adults were all looking at a bunch of pictures on the coffee table. She stuck her head in. "I'm going up to bed," she said.

"Night, Helen," Mickey called.

"Let the dogs in before you go up," her mother added, "and reset the alarm, please."

"Will do."

Well, Helen thought, that made things a lot simpler. She went to the front door and opened it, then whistled softly. The Rotties raced around the corner of the house to her, and the other dog came right with them. They barreled past her into the house, skidding on the bare tile.

Helen Zane simply stepped outside and closed the door behind her.