It was very late by the time they made it back out to Queens, and the temperature had dropped to nearly freezing. Joss's breath made clouds in the still air as they waited on the front steps of Paul Carter's house after ringing the door bell. It seemed to take a long time before anyone heard the bell, but finally they heard footsteps and the door opened a crack, secured by a chain.
"Taylor, honey, I want to talk to you and your Dad," said Joss.
The brown eye - all Reese could see of the boy from his vantage point behind Joss's shoulder - looked suspiciously at them. Taylor glanced back and called, "Dad! Mom's here, should I let her in?"
Reese set his teeth, but a shout came from further inside the house. "Let her in!"
Paul appeared as the door swung wider. He gave Reese a short nod as he gestured for the two of them to come in.
They followed Paul and Taylor through to the living room. The boy's face was set, his expression closed as they all seated themselves. Reese could see the simmering resentment just below the surface. He shifted his gaze to Paul. Harder to read. A roiling mass of shame, resentment, guilt, gratitude...this whole thing could go any number of ways.
Joss sat awkwardly, plainly ill at ease. The silence stretched. At last, Reese could bear it no longer. Time to take a hand.
"I have something to say to each of you," he said softly. "You first, Paul.
"You are no longer Joss's husband. Whatever the rights and wrongs of your divorce, or what's happened since, you no longer have that part in her life. Whatever she chooses to share, or not share with you is not really your business. Your only role in her life is to support her in her relationship with the child you had together. If you feel angry at her about something, that's your privilege. But when you allow that anger to influence your son against his mother you are crossing a line. And that stops tonight."
Paul heard this with a frown. He looked down at his feet and said, "You should have told me, Joss. I know I'm not your husband any more, but you still should have told me."
Joss stirred in her seat. "I wish I had, Paul. But what's done is done. Somehow we have to go on from here."
"And in the end it still isn't your decision, Paul. You might disagree with it, you might resent it, but you have no business holding it against this woman, and more importantly ruining your son's relationship with his mother," Reese added. "And after the events earlier this evening, you owe Joss. Big time." He held Paul's gaze until the other man dropped his eyes. Good. He turned his attention to Taylor.
"Which brings me to you, Taylor. Your Mom has laid herself on the line for you over and over again since before you were born. Everything she has done with her life, interrogating terror suspects in Iraq, working in law enforcement here in New York, it's all been to make a better world for you. So it's time to get your head out of your ass and realise how much you owe her."
Taylor looked defiant. "I know all that, but it still doesn't change it. When it really mattered she didn't trust me." He looked directly at Joss for the first time. "You left me for nearly a year thinking you were dead. I cried myself to sleep for weeks after you die-, got shot. And then suddenly you come back and I'm supposed to just pick up where we left off? No! I can't do that, Mom. I just can't."
Joss buried her face in her hands. "Do you think I don't know that, Taylor?" Her voice was muffled. "Baby, I hated every minute I was stuck there, wondering how you were, wishing I could talk to you. If I could go back I would never do what I did to you. But I'll never get that time back. I just want to try to find some way to go on from here."
Taylor said nothing in response to this. Reese sighed inwardly. There had to be some way to get through to the boy, pierce that shell of resentment he had surrounded himself with.
"Taylor," said Reese, "I want you to think about something. What do you or anyone else gain from you continuing to punish your mother for a bad decision she made when she was sick and vulnerable? No, don't say anything," he said as Taylor seemed about to reply. "Just think for a moment."
Taylor sat in silence, looking at his fingers. At last he raised his head. "I'm sorry I hurt you, Mom. But things aren't the way they used to be. I hate the way they are now, but I don't know how to change it."
"You could apologise to your mother for that stunt you pulled with your birthday present, for starters," snapped Reese.
Taylor jumped at the sudden change in tone. He shot a slightly cowed look at Reese, perhaps remembering that this was Mr Badass sitting on his sofa. That's right, boy. Take a good look, you can't just lash out at Joss with impunity any more.
"I'm sorry, Mom. I really am sorry." The words were mumbled, but Reese could see tears starting in the boy's eyes. He let out an inward sigh of relief. They'd got there, past the anger and into the hurt. Hurt, they could deal with. They sat in silence for a while, Taylor trying to muffle his sniffles.
Reese rubbed his eyes. Joss still had her face buried in her hands. Paul looked tired and sad. Finally Reese broke the silence. "I don't know where to go from here. But it's late and most of us are working tomorrow. Joss and I will be going now. Maybe you could phone your Mom tomorrow, Taylor, just to let her know how your day went. And we could take it from there. Do you think you could do that?"
Taylor nodded. "Okay," he said quietly. They all rose as Reese and Joss stood and made their way to the front door. As Paul opened it, Taylor reached out and gave Joss an awkward one armed hug. She hugged him back hard, tears in her eyes. He broke the contact first, but Joss was smiling as she and Reese walked down the steps and out on to the street.
Xxxx
They took the opportunity to pick up Reese's car, abandoned down the street when he'd set off after Paul earlier in the evening, and drove slowly in convoy back to Brooklyn. But ten minutes out from the apartment they hit an area where the street lights were out. So was everything else – total blackness. The darkness didn't let up when they got to the apartment building. Reese had to drive around the block to find a place to park his car, and by the time he made it back to the front entrance of the building Joss was standing there with a look of frustration on her face.
"The card access won't work without power," she explained to him. "Any ideas?"
He frowned. "Nothing that'll leave the reader usable afterwards," he told her.
"Oh." She bit her lip for a moment. "No power on up there anyway. I wonder how far this goes?"
Reese got out his phone. He called Shaw first. "Hey, Shaw, is the power out where you are?"
"No," she said, sounding a little blurry. There was a lot of noise in the background.
"So where are you?"
A long pause. "Do you know," she said, sounding as though she had just made an interesting discovery, "I'm really not too sure right now. How about I call you back when I find out." She ended the call. Reese snorted and called Fusco.
"Lionel, you know the power's out in Brooklyn? Is it okay where you are?"
"How the hell would I know, Wonderboy?" snarled Fusco groggily. "It's way after midnight, I was asleep and it's dark." There was a pause. "Yes, the power's on. Now can I go back to sleep, please?"
"Uh, yeah, sure, Lionel." Feeling a little stupid, he ended the call.
He looked over at Joss. "It's obviously not out all over town. Shall we head to my old apartment again?"
"I guess we might as well. Right now all I want is to get horizontal." She saw his smirk. "And go to sleep, John." He made a pretend sad face, took her hand and they strolled back to her car.
Xxxxx
"You know, I'm starting to wonder what the hell is wrong with this town these days," Joss said as she drove. "Power outages, traffic problems like yesterday. That problem with the subway. Did you see the garbage men are still on strike?"
"Really? I thought they'd fixed that one."
"Yeah, they got them back to work for a couple of days, but then their new pay system quit completely, none of them got paid and they all went on strike again. I hear a lot of them have drifted off and found other jobs anyway, so they'll be shorthanded even when they do get it all fixed. And in the mean time they've got State troopers trying to clear at least some of the trash so we don't all drown in it." She grinned. "So if they ever throw you out of the NYPD for excessive force you'll always be able to get a job as a garbage man."
"Great, I could collect garbage and not get paid instead of catch killers and not get paid." He told her about his own pay issues.
"Well, let's hope they fix it in the next pay. You need a loan to get your landlord off your back?"
"Thanks, you're the third person to offer. I think I'll be okay."
She nodded in the darkness, her face lit by the dashboard lights.
Thankfully the power was on by the time they hit Manhattan. Exhausted by the day's events, they were both asleep within minutes of collapsing into bed.
XXXXX
Reese's phone went at just before eight. UNKNOWN CALLER. He answered sleepily.
"Mr Reese, we have numbers," came Harold's voice. "And I think we'll need to get Detective Fusco's help on this situation."
"Situation?" He ran a hand through his hair as he blinked himself awake.
"Yes, please get down here as quickly as you can." Finch sounded perturbed. "I'll explain when you're here."
As he dragged himself out of bed Joss stirred and sat up.
"Gotta go, Joss. Finch just called."
"Yeah, so I gathered. I'll call you later, okay?" She picked up her watch from the nightstand and looked at it. "Oh God, is that the time?" With a sudden burst of speed she was out of bed, dressing rapidly. "What have you got in the house for breakfast? No, never mind, I'll just grab something on the way..."
As they dodged around each other preparing for their day he was struck by a strange feeling. Was this what normal life was like? Did other couples do this, not just sometimes, but most mornings? He could definitely get used to this. He couldn't understand how people could get bored with it, it was just such a wonderful thing, ordinary life.
The strange feeling evaporated as he walked down the steps to the subway station. Shaw was there, looking bleary as she and Finch contemplated no less than six photographs taped to the window.
He squinted at them. They all seemed to have something in common. The five men and one woman depicted all wore similar clothing, and had been photographed against a similar background, a pale coloured surface of some sort.
"Cameron James, Phil Potter, Cory Clayton, Gemma Smith, Matthew Traynor, and Eduardo Gomez. All psychiatric patients confined by court order because they posed a risk to the community. All released yesterday because their court orders had been suddenly rescinded." Finch's face was grim.
"How the hell did that happen?" Reese was astonished.
"That I am still trying to ascertain," said Finch. "But right now, regardless of what the authorities may think, they all pose a grave risk to anyone they come in contact with. We need to find them and get them off the streets as quickly as we can."
"I'll take James and Potter," said Shaw.
Finch went to his computer and rapidly jotted down some information from one of his screens. "Here, Ms Shaw. These are their last known addresses." Shaw grabbed the piece of paper and was gone.
"Clayton and Traynor used to live fairly close to one another in the Bronx, John. Here are their addresses," said Finch. "While you're looking for them, I'll get in touch with Ms Carter and see if she can find out what happened at the court end. And you could pass the last two addresses on to Detective Fusco."
He nodded somberly and turned to go.
To be continued...