This chapter is really pretty long, because there seemed no good place to split it. Hope you all like it!
Street light leaked in through his bedroom curtains as Reese finally lay down on his bed. Knowing the best way to get to sleep was to not try, he rolled over on his side and concentrated on breathing, slow and deep. He allowed his mind to wander...Carter was back. Those moments on the sidewalk cradling her body returned to him like a combat flashback. The pain from his gunshot wounds was utterly overshadowed by the devastation which had washed through him in those seconds. You survived by not thinking about things too much; that time in the morgue and then the hours in custody before Carter'd sprung him had allowed him far too much time to think. You changed me, Joss...changed my mind. Finch had given him a purpose, but he knew that the real beginning had been the moment in the precinct when Joss had looked at him and seen a person, not a bum or a troublemaker. It was in that moment he'd begun, not to hope again, but to want to hope. And then Finch had come, and the Numbers, but Carter was always there, baying on his trail. An amusing game of cat-and-mouse at first, but gradually he'd come to see someone he admired. Trusted. Depended on. The realisation of what he might, just might, have stumbled on... not a replacement for Jessica, never that, but a new beginning. Then to have the cup dashed from his hand before he could drink - his hands clenched, and again he made himself relax, breathe deep...Then the hunt for Simmons, and the terrible depression afterwards, like wading thigh-deep, neck-deep, in thick, cold, black mud. He'd nearly drowned in it. Relax, relax...breathe deep, in and out. In. And out. Carter had been there with him still, carried in a silent secret place somewhere deep in his chest. Never forgotten. But not examined either. Too painful. No new beginning, just another incentive to not think about things too much. Relax... breathe... And how to start again with her? A second chance, God knew those came all too seldom. Maybe dinner. A walk in the park. Friendship, conversation. All those simple, ordinary things which were so hard to come by in his bizarre life, especially right now. Dinner. A walk. Soon...he drifted off to sleep.
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A few hours later Detective Riley was woken by his alarm, and rolled out of bed to face another day. With extreme prejudice. He detested the process of showering, shaving, dressing and eating. With every movement he was packing Reese into a box, hiding him somewhere safe and dark and quiet, deep inside. The only problem was that Reese was a tricky bastard, a real escape artist. Riley was playing catch-up to Reese all day, and he knew it. In many ways he felt just as he had back working for the Agency. He was trying to throttle part of himself, play a role so convincingly he even convinced himself, and he knew that if he failed the consequences could be dire. There was one difference, though. At least his partner wasn't a mind-molester like Kara Stanton...He almost groaned aloud. Fusco. What the hell was he going to say to him? "Hi Lionel, guess who I met yesterday? Your late partner and dear friend, who wasn't dead after all, just never told you or anyone else..." He had promised not to tell Fusco just yet, but in the light of day he recognised that the longer he kept Carter's secret the harder it was going to be to tell him in the end. Dear God, it was just like being in high school all over again. Wonder if he could persuade Carter to come to the prom with him? He left the dishes in the sink, pulled the door shut behind him, and headed off to work.
Fortunately most of the day was spent working independently from Lionel, Riley was relieved to find. He re-interviewed two witnesses from a case which if not cold was at least chilling rapidly. Veronica Stevens, a nurse coming home off an evening shift, had been assaulted and robbed, no apparent sexual motive. She had died in hospital without regaining consciousness; her workmates along with domain awareness cameras gave a fairly precise time line of her last movements. Her purse had been recovered from a dumpster several blocks away, but the assault itself had taken place in a camera blind spot. The witnesses, workmates who'd been with her as they'd left at the end of the shift, had nothing else to add to their initial statements. That left them with the unis canvassing the area, prints off the purse, and the surveillance footage from a dozen cameras to wade through. CIs might bring news of someone bragging over the next few days, but most likely it would be the dull, methodical step-by-step of routine police work which would close the case. Long periods of boredom, punctuated by moments of even more boredom...
The end of his shift finally brought him relief. Neither Finch nor Shaw had contacted him, so he pulled out his VHF phone as he walked back to the brownstone apartment. To his surprise, it vibrated in his hand and he answered immediately.
"Good afternoon, Detective. We have a number." He thought he could hear suppressed amusement in Finch's voice.
"Oh yes?"
"Yes. 013-00-6062." Definite amusement.
Reese took a moment to process this, and then groaned. "Leon. Again."
"Indeed. I haven't yet dug into the exact nature of the trouble he's landed himself in this time, but I do have a location for him. It might be quicker if you simply head over there and find out from him directly."
"Hell, Fin-, Professor, do we really have time for Leon's troubles right now?"
"He is a number, John. Remember, isn't this what it's all about?"
"Do we have any further ideas about Carter?"
"If by that you mean, do we know whether she's compromised, no. When she phoned in this morning it was treated by her office as a normal sick call. She can afford to stay away another day or so before her absence becomes hard to explain as illness. The next move would be to take a closer look at her apartment, to see if it's been disturbed in any way or is being watched. I've asked Ms Shaw to take care of that this evening. In the meantime, you can look in on Mr Tao."
Armed with Leon's current whereabouts, Reese ducked down some stairs to a subway station. It would be a reasonably short ride, he figured, followed by about a ten-minute walk to find the little man. Hopefully his latest piece of idiocy would be easy enough to sort out, and then he could head back to base and look in on Joss.
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Unsurprisingly, Leon's location turned out to be a seedy bar in a run-down neighbourhood. With a profound sense of deja vu, Reese walked into the bar's dim interior and squinted. Yes, there he was, at a table in the back looking shifty and surrounded by three men. Not especially large men this time, more the scrawny, rodent type. But all of them were carrying. They all looked up at him as he approached. Leon's face lit up. "John! Amigo! Boy, am I glad to see you!"
"Shut up, Leon." Reese reached out and plucked Leon from his chair. Dangling the little crook by his collar, he put a winning smile on his face as he gazed at the group of men in front of him. Not Aryan Brotherhood, but something pretty similar. Yep, deja vu all over again.
He switched his smile to Leon. "Now Leon. How about you return to these nice men whatever it was you stole from them, or I'll hold you down while they hit you."
One of the ratlike ones climbed to his feet. "We don't need your help, boy," he said in pure hillbilly - eastern Kentucky, Reese thought. There was a scrape of chairs as his friends got up. Reese allowed his eyebrows to rise. "I'm sure you don't," he agreed peaceably. "But the thing is, I can't allow you to kill Leon. Now beating him up a bit, that I'm fine with-"
"Hey!" protested Leon.
"- but really, wouldn't you agree that the best solution all round is for Leon to give you back your property, and for me to remove him to some other location?"
The only reply he got was three handguns pointed at him. One was held sideways; he momentarily debated whether to bother with the safety lecture, but it seemed more efficient to simply throw Leon aside, grab the man's gun hand and perform the by now customary kneecapping. Sometimes the old ways were best.
Back out on the street, he spun Leon around and pinned him against a wall. "Okay, Leon. What was that all about?"
"Nothing, John. Honest."
He didn't even bother to reply, just shot Leon a look.
Leon sighed theatrically. "Best piece of good luck I had in years," he grumbled. "See, those bozos asked me to set up a computer network in the rathole they called their HQ. That's my new business, you see. Much less risky than... anyway, in the process I persuaded them to replace the ancient hardware they must have inherited from their great-grandmother – did I mention they're all cousins from some inbred clan of rednecks from the hills somewhere? So I offered to dispose of the old hardware, and then for no reason at all they got all homicidal on me!"
"So where was the good luck in all this, Leon?"
"No good luck! I never said it was good luck!" There was a slight tinge of panic in the little man's voice.
"Leon..." Reese put a world of threat into the single word.
Leon sagged. "Okay, okay. The hard drive on one of their old computers had, like, twenty thousand coins on it."
"coins? That virtual currency?"
"Yeah. You have any idea how much that's worth?"
"A lot. Now Leon, I know this will probably have no effect whatsoever, but I am not your big brother and I have other things I want to be doing which do not involve being your bodyguard. So shortly I will be getting on the subway and disappearing from your life, I hope permanently. I suggest you find a way to disappear too. The quicker the better. Do. You. Understand. Me?" This last was delivered in the most stone-cold menacing manner he could summon. It seemed to work. Leon melted completely.
"Okay John. I really do appreciate you helping me out again. I'll try to do better, honest."
Leon's hangdog expression did not convince him, but Reese knew that was the best he was going to get out of him.
"Right." He let go of the small man. "Now get moving before any enraged relatives of your friends arrive."
Leon nodded vigorously, looked cautiously over his shoulder in the direction of the bar, and began to walk away.
"Oh. Leon?"
A twitchy smile. "Umm. Yes, John?"
"Where is that hard drive right now?"
Leon's hand jerked towards the breast of his jacket.
Reese raised his eyebrows.
"Oh, John. You're killing me, buddy."
Reese said nothing.
"Oh, man. Oh, man." Leon bit his lip in distress. Then he sighed. "I guess I do owe you. Again."
He reached into his jacket and pulled out the drive. Handing it to Reese, he asked plaintively, "Do you think I could come over and walk the dog some time?"
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Reese was getting seriously hungry by the time he made it through the commuter crush on the subway and then negotiated the streets towards the refuge. He ran down the steps and rounded the corner to the platform. The bright fluorescent lights from inside the subway car reflected off the ceramic tiles on the station walls. There must be something wrong with him, Reese thought, that it looked homelike.
Finch was sitting stiffly erect in front of the computer screens, of course. Carter was on a laptop, sitting across three seats, back propped against the semi partition next to a door. No sign of Shaw. Bear jumped up from his bed and approached, wagging and grinning. Reese crouched to exchange greetings with the dog.
"So how did things go with Leon, Detective?" asked Finch.
Reese gave a slight shrug. "Nothing out of the ordinary. His latest dissatisfied clients are now off his back and I've strongly suggested he disappear for a while. He gave me this." He stood up and held out the old disk drive.
Finch regarded it in much the same way that he looked at Bear's disemboweled rats. "And this would be...? Apart from a piece of industrial archaeology?"
"It was the bone of contention between Leon and another bunch of wannabe neonazis. Apparently it has twenty thousand coins on it."
Finch's brows rose and he pursed his lips. "If we can recover them it would certainly give us a nice little reserve fund." He took the drive and placed it carefully on the desk, his fingers lingering on it thoughtfully.
"So, Joss. How was your day?" Reese turned his attention to Carter, who had watched the exchange over her laptop screen.
"Well, as you know I called in sick. No apparent problems at work. We'll just have to see what Sameen comes up with when she goes looking at my apartment tonight. I've been looking through my current case load to see if there's anything which might have aroused someone's interest. Nothing so far. I simply can't bring myself to believe it was HR. That ship has sailed, and I just do not believe there are any rats left that weren't cleaned out last year." She nodded to herself, and Reese suppressed a smile. Having seen the meticulousness with which she had collected evidence and planned her campaign, he could only agree. Joss had been nothing if not thorough.
Still... "If it wasn't muggers that only leaves Samaritan, though." He considered. "Nothing to report from my work day. Surely it would target me first – I was the one acting strangely."
"That is encouraging in that it suggests the hard coding is holding - for now at least," said Finch. "Ms Shaw will be reaching Ms Carter's apartment in less than half an hour. We'll know soon."
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Shaw's report was brief. No sign of anyone watching the apartment. When she entered there was no sign of disturbance. Mail from the previous day was still undisturbed. "In some ways I hate to say this, Joss," she said, "but I really can't see a reason why you can't just come back here. Nice place, by the way. Nicer than the old one."
"Thanks," replied Joss. "I could really use a shower. I don't feel quite happy, but I can't stay here in limbo any longer either."
"Probably a genuine coincidence, then. I just wish we could be certain," fretted Finch.
"I don't like it either, Harold. But Joss is right. We need to make a decision," said Reese.
"If it was Samaritan and she comes back here it could lure them out of the shadows and we could get a better look," said Shaw.
"No. We're not using her as bait," said Reese flatly.
"But we're running out of choices here. If it's Samaritan it might be our first opportunity to push back," Shaw argued.
"I don't care. We're not using Joss as bait," snarled Reese.
"Well, what the hell do you suggest, John? Keeping her in an abandoned subway station until she grows mushrooms between her toes?"
"If it stops her being killed – again – then yes, Shaw, maybe that's what has to happen-"
"Excuse me, but don't I get a vote here?" Carter seemed more amused than annoyed by the conversation. "I bet between us we can work something out. And I really do need a shower."
"It would be easier to keep an eye on you, Ms Carter, if we had an extra pair of hands on this case," said Finch enticingly.
"Meaning...?" inquired Joss warily.
"Meaning it might be time to reveal your continued existence to Detective Fusco," said Finch.
There was a long pause. Carter shot Finch an exasperated, I-might-have-known look. Reese smirked slightly. Evidently Finch had been applying some pressure during the day. "Soon, Harold. I promise. But not right now," she said.
Reese's stomach gurgled loudly in the silence that followed. Finch politely ignored the sound, but before Reese could apologise Carter chuckled and began to collect her things. "Come on, John. Let's go find a diner and get something to eat before you fall over. And then you can escort me home."
He opened his mouth to argue, but his stomach gurgled again and the light in Carter's eyes told him he was not going to win the argument and that if he tried to continue she would laugh at him. And, dammit, he didn't have the heart to deny her a decent dinner. Maybe he could persuade her not to go to her apartment afterwards – a hotel instead, maybe... At that point his mind started to go off in some completely different directions. Low blood sugar, that was it. Dinner. Dinner...
To be continued...