Kurt took a deep breath to reign in his conflicting emotions as he and Jane arrived at the MWA building in Queens. With a hostage crisis in process, he needed all his wits about him, but all through the largely silent drive over here, his thoughts had kept drifting back to his conversation with Mayfair. Could she possibly be right that Jane wasn't Taylor? Was his attraction to her merely based on her uncanny resemblance to his ex-wife, rather than a shared history she no longer remembered, a remnant of the unfinished business he had with Taylor?
No, Kurt decided as he exited the vehicle, he wasn't wrong. He couldn't be. He and Taylor had always shared a soul-deep connection, the same connection he now felt with Jane. A connection he wouldn't feel with two different women merely because they looked alike. The two of them were one and the same; they had to be. He couldn't account for the conflicting evidence Patterson had uncovered, but just because he couldn't see an explanation at the moment didn't mean there wasn't one.
It just meant that he hadn't found it yet.
Suddenly feeling much more hopeful, he focused his attention on the business at hand as Reade and Zapata began bringing him up to speed on the situation, and negotiating with the hostage takers soon drove the matter from his mind completely. The man he was speaking to was understandably jumpy and tense, but Kurt was initially hopeful they could resolve things peacefully.
Unfortunately, as was all too often the case in these situations, when things took a turn for the worse, it devolved quickly. "All right," he said as he hung up the phone with the lead hostage taker for the second time. "They're separating the hostages. That's not good."
"This is so crazy," Jane commented. She'd been hanging back since they arrived, trying to make sense not just of what was going on, but of how anyone could have anticipated today's events. And how she fit into it all. "These people are willing to risk hurting all those innocent people just because they lost their jobs?"
"People snap," Kurt retorted, glancing away to clear his head. How was he supposed to maintain a professional distance when the shadows lingering in her brilliant green eyes from last night's disastrous dinner made him want to sweep her up in his arms and kiss them all away? He never should have told Sarah about her desire to meet. He never should have passed Sarah's dinner invitation on to her.
"Why . . . why do you think this is tattooed on my body? How could they have known that this was going to happen?" Jane asked.
"I don't know," Kurt admitted. Three of his least favorite words, and yet he seemed to be uttering them with alarming frequency of late. And not just speaking them: they had invaded every facet of his life until all of the certainties that made up his existence were in danger of being swept away in the tidal wave that was this case.
"Jane." He stepped closer to her, lowering his voice to avoid being overheard, and gently took hold of her arm. "Are you okay to be here today? Last night, you seemed . . . kind of . . ."
"No!" Jane interrupted. He couldn't send her home, not now, not today, not when her thoughts were unsettled and the four walls of her safe house would feel more like a prison than ever. "Uh . . . The field is the only place I feel comfortable."
"I know that feeling." Kurt kept his eyes trained on Jane, but she glanced down at her hands, refusing to meet his gaze. It wasn't one that he'd ever wanted to have in common with Taylor. She'd been the light in his world to balance the darkness he saw every day, and once she was gone, it had enveloped him. Just as it now seemed to have her. "Trust me."
"I'm sorry about last night," Jane said abruptly, hoping that he would accept her apology without pressing her for an explanation for her actions. Hoping that they could regain their old footing without her having to hurt him further. If the look in his eyes as he'd watched that elevator door close last night was any indication, she'd done that more than enough already.
"It was a lot to take in," Kurt responded. "Probably too much. My sister . . ." He scoffed lightly. Sarah meant well, but she had all of his stubbornness and none of the perspective that came from watching Jane struggle daily to find her place in the unfamiliar world she had woken up in. "Sarah, she . . ."
"No . . ." Jane had no choice but to correct his mistaken assumption. She was going to have to be totally honest with him here in order to make things right between them, and she steeled herself as she met his warm blue eyes. "Actually, Kurt . . . it wasn't Sarah." She glanced away from his confused gaze but was inevitably drawn back to it like a moth to a flame. "I see the way you look at me . . . and like I told you when we first met, I don't know how to be this person that you lost."
Kurt was stunned. Jane didn't have to do anything; she simply was. He opened his mouth to reassure her that she didn't have to be anyone other than herself, but before he could speak, could even think how to phrase what he wanted to say, Zapata entered the van to announce they had eyes inside the building, and the moment was lost.
Things moved quickly after that, and within minutes, he was standing in the lobby of the building staring down at the bodies of several dead hostages. They'd been played, Kurt thought viciously, but for what?
He got his answer when he and Jane discovered the vault with the three dead men inside, one of whom had clearly been tortured, but before he could even begin to make sense of the scene, they were confronted by the CIA, by Deputy Director Tom Carter himself, and everything became crystal clear. The deaths of the innocent people upstairs had been nothing more than a smokescreen for a hit on an operation that was totally illegal within the US to begin with.
Kurt struggled to keep his temper in check as he and Carter bantered. It was clear to him that the man viewed this as a game, and the unnecessary loss of life was nothing more to him than collateral damage in service to some nebulous greater good that the public would never know about. It would be hollow comfort to their grieving families, anyway. God, he hated the CIA.
"This is the illustrated woman." Kurt fought the urge to step in front of Jane protectively as Carter's gaze once again landed on her with an expression that made him very uncomfortable. The same look he had fleetingly seen in his eyes when he first caught sight of her. A mixture of unease and . . . recognition?
His brow furrowed, but before he had time to ponder the thought, Mayfair arrived. He was relieved his boss knew Carter and was able to hold her own with him. He was less thrilled that Jane was ordered to leave, but on second thought, he decided it might be for the best that she was out of Carter's line of sight—and he out of hers.
And by the time she was out of his, he had convinced himself that he must have been mistaken and put the matter out of his mind . . . until Carter's taunting words about Jane being a weapon, words fraught with the same edge of unease he had glimpsed in the man's eyes, caused him to reconsider.
Kurt glanced at Mayfair as soon as he left. "Do you think . . . could Carter have known Jane? He seemed . . . unsettled by her when he first arrived." The entire time he'd been here, really.
Mayfair took care to maintain her own poker face as she pretended to consider the question. She would have loved to downplay the possibility, but Kurt had just reminded her that he was good enough at reading people that it would be dangerous to do so. But it was potentially even more deadly not to, if her own growing suspicions were correct. If Jane really was who she thought. She was damned if she did, and damned if she didn't.
She did her best to find a middle ground. "Carter? It's possible, if Jane really was Special Forces. They've been known to do off-the-books work for the CIA. But you'll never get him to admit it if he did. It would be classified."
"The mission itself, maybe, but not the fact that he knew her," Kurt argued. "Not the details of her whereabouts the last few years when she was stateside. What possible motive could he have for concealing that?"
What, indeed. Mayfair managed a casual shrug. "I've known Tom Carter for years, and trust me, he doesn't need a reason. I don't know if his position went to his head, or if CIA training requires a course in being an asshole, but he's always been a power unto himself."
That fit with his own observations of the man, so Kurt reluctantly let the matter drop. He still had a case to solve, after all, and he was more determined than ever to do so after the CIA had all but ordered them to stand down. He turned to leave, but Mayfair's final words chilled his blood.
"And Kurt?" she called as he headed out the door. "Watch your backs out there today." It was as close as she could come to an acknowledgement that he was right.
She was going to have to keep a close eye on her team during the remainder of this case.
xxx
"Dodi fell off the CIA's radar years ago, right?" Jane asked Kurt as they walked down the hall to take the elevator to the interrogation room where his two suspected accomplices were being held. "And then, when he reemerged, he was a completely different person."
Kurt glanced over at Jane as he pushed the button for the elevator but didn't respond, and she swallowed hard before continuing. She hadn't been happy with how they left their conversation in the van this morning, and she thought perhaps drawing a parallel between his situation and hers would help Kurt better understand her point of view. "I fell off your radar, too, and then something happened to me . . . a lot of things, maybe . . . none of which we know." And she was beginning to think maybe she didn't want to know.
"Yet," Kurt corrected. They didn't know what had happened to her yet. But they would. When Jane finally recovered her memories, she would remember that he was far too stubborn to give up until he had accomplished his objective. And never before had he been so personally motivated to do so. He would get the answers they sought—that both of them desperately needed—even if it killed him. Even if he didn't like what he found.
Which was looking increasingly likely to be the case. Kurt frowned slightly. When he'd taken over this case, he'd thought the hardest part of it would be meeting Taylor's new lover, the man she had left him for, but the certainty that she had done so was increasingly being eroded these days, just like so many other strongly-held beliefs he'd had about his life.
In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he wondered why he'd ever believed her capable of such a thing in the first place. Taylor had been nothing but tenaciously loyal and loving and kind her entire life; she was no more a cheater than . . . well, than he would have been. Would ever be. And if she had been, she would have faced him and owned it, just as she had every other mistake she'd made in her life. The fact that she'd run away, had refused to see or speak with him, should have been a huge red flag, but he'd allowed his anger and grief and injured pride to blind him to the facts and she had paid the price.
Though what that price was, exactly, was yet to be determined.
"It feels like you're waiting for me to remember something that is never going to come," Jane said in frustration. Like he was waiting for her to be someone that she was never going to be again. Other people and situations were triggering memories; why not him? Why not the one person she'd been friends with the majority of her life? Unless . . .
Unless she wasn't Taylor Shaw.
Jane was loath to give credence to the idea, but now that it had crossed her mind, she couldn't stop thinking about it. What proof did they have, really, that she was this Taylor Shaw? Certainly Weller's ID of her should be conclusive, but they had no DNA match to back it up, no fingerprints, nothing that would provide proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Was it possible that she was simply an imposter who bore an incredible resemblance to his old friend?
"If your coming back has taught me one thing, it's to never give up hope," Kurt told her, holding her gaze for a moment before the elevator arrived, and they stepped inside. After all, that was what he had done in the past that had led to this mess, wasn't it? He'd lost faith in Taylor, and the consequences had been personally devastating for him and disastrous for her.
He wasn't about to make that mistake again.
xxx
"Think they'll find it?" Jane asked anxiously as she watched the numbers on the monitor. They were gradually increasing, but none of them were nearly high enough to contain the radiological material they were looking for. Even with the Geiger counters, thirty blocks was an awful lot of ground to cover.
"You don't remember playing hot or cold, do you?" Kurt asked, feeling a pang at this fresh reminder of just how much she had lost. He couldn't imagine not recalling something as simple as a favorite childhood game.
Jane gave her head a slight shake. "No." Could that be because she had never played it?
"As long as those Geiger readings are going up, it means we're getting hotter," Kurt explained. Taylor had always had such a knack for finding the hot zone that if he hadn't known how honest she was, he would have thought she was cheating.
"What happened after we . . . lost touch?" Jane wanted to know. She was dangerously aware this was approaching forbidden territory, but she needed to know. "I mean, with you?"
Kurt glanced at her briefly before looking away. "I was . . . I was in the FBI Academy at Quantico at the time. After I graduated, I was assigned to this office, so I went back to California and packed up ou—my stuff and moved here. And I've been here ever since." He looked at her again. "I know that your being Taylor might not be an answer to all of your problems . . . but it's a starting point. It's something to hold onto. It's something to build from."
How could that be, Jane wondered, when she hadn't even recovered one faint memory that made her feel connected to that past? That made her believe she might have once been the Taylor Shaw he had so clearly loved? Perhaps as more than a friend. His slip of the tongue had not been lost on her.
Before she could think how to ask him that, however, the Geiger counters picked up the readings they were looking for, and their conversation was once again interrupted.
Perhaps it was just as well, Jane mused, as Reade and Zapata joined them, and Weller gave the agents the order to breach the location. He had mentioned that her return had given him hope, and the last thing she wanted to do was snatch that away from him again. She knew all too well how it felt to have none.
She swallowed hard as she listened to the team leader describe the conditions in the building. "Pretty dark in here. Lights don't work. There's a staircase to the basement. Heading down now."
"Pretty cold down here." Her eyes closed, and she tuned him out after that.
How could she be cold when everything around her was burning? she wondered as she groped her way through the smoky blackness down what was left of the stairs toward where she had last seen . . .
Her eyes flew open as gunfire erupted.
The popping sound was reminiscent of gunfire, and she fought her panic, fought the natural urge to get out of a doomed building, as she inched her way forward through the doorway at the base of the stairs, a sliver of light from the fire now illuminating her path, and saw . . . No!
Jane rushed out of the room and down the hall, leaning against an open doorway, her breath fast and shallow as the images played on a repeating loop in her head. Images that only served to further deepen her confusion between what she had been told of her past and what she was now remembering. Who was she? And who was . . .
"Find out where those guys went," Kurt ordered as he followed her. "Jane," he said softly as he came to a stop beside her, and then when she didn't respond, didn't even seem to hear him, a little louder. "Jane! You all right?"
Jane's eyes were wide and shaken as she looked up into Kurt's concerned face. "I saw . . . I saw . . ." Who had she seen? Herself, presumably, but how was that even possible? The images made no sense.
"Who, Jane?" Kurt asked gently. "Who did you see?"
Me, she thought as her brow furrowed and the tears that had been threatening finally overflowed, sobs shaking her slender body as they tracked their way down her cheeks. She'd seen herself laying still and nearly lifeless, half-buried beneath the rubble of a smoldering building. "Oh, no. What happened to me?"
"Jane! Hey," Kurt said, trying to keep her focus on him, to no avail. He acted on instinct, responded just as he had done when Taylor's mother died, grabbing her hand and placing it over his heart. "Here. Jane. There." He covered her hand firmly with his own, pressing it against his chest until he was sure she could feel his heartbeat. "Do you feel that?"
Sobs clogged her throat as she looked up at him, still unable to answer.
"I'm here. I'm here with you," he assured her, just as he had done the day Emma Shaw had died. Just as he had been for her every day since—until she no longer needed him. Or so he'd thought. Just as he would be every day from now on if she would allow—He stopped that thought in its tracks. "You're okay. Keep breathing, Jane. You're okay. Just keep breathing."
"Keep breathing, Taylor," Kurt urged his wife of just a few weeks as the sobs shaking her slim young body threatened to choke her, tears flowing freely down his own cheeks as well as the two of them grieved the loss of the woman who had been a mother to them both. Emma had only been gone a few minutes, and already the world felt like a much colder place. He reached for her hand, threading his fingers through hers as he brought their hands up to his heart, pressing them firmly against his chest until they could both feel his heartbeat. "I'm here. I'm here with you. We're in this together. We're going to get through this together. Just keep breathing with me."
"Is everything okay out here?" Reade asked as he followed them into the hall, raising an eyebrow at their closeness.
Kurt glanced his way as he felt Jane begin to tug free of his hold, silently cursing his interference. "Yeah," he said, watching as Jane hurried away from him once again. It was getting to be a habit. Reade turned to watch her leave as well. "We're good," he reiterated.
"You sure?" Reade still wasn't convinced. "She seemed a little . . ."
So would he, if his past had been erased and he'd been tattooed and left in a bag for a stranger he had a nebulous history with to decode. Really, it was a wonder Jane was functioning as well as she was, rather than curled up in a ball in a corner somewhere. "She's fine."
He determinedly put Jane's well-being from his mind for the moment and got back to work.
xxx
Mayfair rushed from the office the moment she heard the cesium was at the cemetery and headed there as quickly as the typically backed-up New York traffic would allow, praying she wouldn't be too late. If the cesium was there, Dodi would be as well, and where he was, Carter was sure to be close behind. And if he got the chance . . .
She parked on a grassy knoll that gave her the best vantage point of the area and followed the sounds of gunfire toward her team, taking care to stay covered as much as possible. Carter and his people were as big a threat at this point as Dodi and the Dabbur Zann. She spotted him about twenty feet ahead of her just as Jane set the urn of cesium down, and she and Weller began walking Dodi away from it, and began carefully, soundlessly, easing toward him.
She allowed him to raise his rifle and take aim at Jane's head, wanting to be sure of his intentions, before she deliberately cocked her own gun and aimed it at the back of his head. "Don't you dare," she warned in a voice colder than ice.
"You have your shot," Carter said, glancing back at her without taking his finger off the trigger. Taunting her to see just how far she would go. "Take it."
"I'm not you," Mayfair responded, willing to take the shot if he forced her hand but hoping it wouldn't come to that. "Drop it."
Carter reluctantly lowered his rifle and half-turned toward her. "You think you're saving her," he commented. "All you're doing is killing us. She's not what you think, Bethany."
She had a pretty good idea what Carter thought she was: a loose end. If she had included a picture of Jane in that file she had sent him, Jane would undoubtedly already be dead. "And what is she?" she asked evenly as she put the safety back on and lowered her own weapon. She would have liked to ask who she was, but she didn't want to overplay her hand. She didn't want him to know that she'd already made the connection to Orion. She had no proof, after all, and he was the only person she knew who could supply that.
But from his silence, it was clear he wouldn't be doing that today.
Though he made one last attempt to gain control of the loose end he was clearly so worried about. Mayfair stared at him stone-faced as he made the offer to trade Dodi for Jane, staying silent for just a beat longer than was necessary to make him that she was considering, that the right circumstances might induce her to hand Jane over, before declining in no uncertain terms.
Inwardly, she was exultant. Carter had just showed her his cards, and her supposition had been right. The CIA was not an organization known for fair trades; Carter would have never have been willing to strike such a bargain if Jane's value wasn't exponentially higher to him than any intel Dodi could provide, even if it was just the value of saving face. Of keeping the public from ever finding out how his overreaction six years ago had cost two innocent American girls their lives.
Well, one apparently, Mayfair amended, glancing at Jane as she ordered her team to stand down. Live to fight another day, she told herself. And she would; she most certainly would. While her culpability in Orion was almost negligible compared to her actions in Daylight, its consequences had haunted her dreams far more often. Never would she have imagined that she would be granted the privilege to make even partial amends for it, but she was going to take full advantage of the opportunity she'd been handed.
Jane was under her protection now, and she wouldn't rest until she set things right.