Lizzie slept for seven hours, but she felt like she was hit by a truck. She was groggy and irritated, she never got more than five hours of sleep at the most. Her seven were interrupted immensely—too many nightmares and a lot to process didn't allow her to actually have some rest. She went downstairs and found Red seated on one of the armchairs in front of the television. He was concentrating on the content displayed on the screen, pressing the remote buttons, but there were no signs that he noticed her presence, even though the room was quiet and the waves outside were only slightly audible.
"Do you have anything for a headache?" Red took a quick breath and rapidly lifted his gaze to see her. His tongue rolled inside his mouth and his eyes searched for an answer. He frowned and smiled.
"I don't know, to be honest." He stood up and started to walk in her direction. He was wearing dark jeans and a shirt, unbuttoned at the top, She wondered if that was the way he wore himself when he was not being "social". Red touched her arm lightly when he was passing by so she would follow him to the kitchen. He opened a few doors before finding aspirin in the cabinet near the fridge. As he handed her the medicine, he opened the fridge and reached the orange juice jar left from the morning.
"You must be hungry. Teca prepared lunch, so you only need to heat it. Want some?" She held the fridge opened as Red stepped away with the jar and offered its content, but she declined. "You can prepare a sandwich if you prefer. Or-" he stopped, filled the empty jar with water, and looked at her "We can make some more pães de queijo?" He smiled like a boy asking his grandmother for dessert. Liz smiled back.
"There's no need. Unless you want some," she said smiling. She took a can of Coke from the refrigerator to take the aspirin, hoping the caffeine would boost the medicine effect. Red looked as it was a letdown so he nodded and went back to the living room carrying his glass of juice.
"Let me show you something." Liz walked right after him. "This is our security system. We have cameras on the entire property and on the track. When any vehicle enters the track, it triggers the silent alarm, turning on multicolored LEDs on each room and on the deck, so we can check who comes closer. We're not allowed to isolate the beach, but we monitor who passes by. The wanderers are more frequent in the summer, not many of them venture themselves this time of the year around here. the surveillance covers two miles of the beach, also ready to activate the silent alarm. If someone gets too close and the video system isn't activated by one of us, the alarm bell goes on in three minutes." Liz was paying close attention the security detail. Red showed her the screen, she saw the entire outside of the house from different angles. Then he showed her the activated alarms: they were discreet, though none of them would pass unnoticed even from the beach. "The system can be activated from any of the rooms and the cameras are only outside."
"What about the water? I imagine it's not easier to access the house from the sea," Lizzie asked, knowing that Red hadn't been on the run for twenty years with loose ends in his contingency plans.
"I don't know if you already had the opportunity to check, but there are devices spread out over a mile radius that look like the Styrofoam used on the fishing nets in this region. They work basically in the same way as the others. Follow me, please," Red said getting up from the couch and offering her his hand so she could stand up easily. "It's planned so we can escape if anything happens. We have the SUV, ATVs, and a boat that can take us out of here fast enough." Red escorted her out of the house through the glass sliding door and from the deck pointed out to a storehouse at the north of the property.
"Our biggest vulnerability lies on an eventual air attack. There are sensors that can let us know if some aircraft comes too low, but we'll probably won't have enough time to run. In any case, if we can't escape..." he stopped to push the outside couch. During the last few days she came to believe Red was completely recovered from the shot and the surgery, but at that moment it was clear he put his own health and recovery in danger by running away with her. Liz helped him push the couch and opened the floor hatch. They went down the stairs and reached a panic room.
"We have here supplies to get us through a week. Once we're in, no one from the outside can access this room. Except Dembe and Mr. Kaplan, of course." She chuckled, of course they could access it, his rescue team, his most loyal allies and the ones responsible for Red's Pandora's Box. Raymond went to the surveillance center and picked up two small devices. "These are panic buttons. If anything happens, be sure to press it, Lizzie. The location of your device will be shown at the screen of mine."
Liz analysed it, it was as small as a USB flash drive. Nevertheless, there was something in his voice that made her unsure of it.
"It works the other way around, right?" Reddington confirmed with a nod and a grave semblance. "And will you press it? I need to know you will, Red." His sobriquet came out of her lips as a prayer, in a whisper. "This won't work if you don't let me do the same for you. We're a team, right? Isn't it what you wanted since day one?" He gulped and Elizabeth felt her face burning as tears began to sting her eyes. She sighed and choked up trying to articulate. "You're all I have, Red. I don't know if you wanted this, but there's no turning back now, this can't be undone. And I can't overcome this without you, I can't clearly see what this battle is that I'm fighting, but at this moment I'm fighting for my life, for your life. And you're not even fully recovered yet. I just..." Liz stopped as she noticed her sentences weren't making sense anymore.
Raymond Reddington held his tears back. There was this intense feeling trying to come out of his chest, but he wouldn't let it out.
"I never wanted you to..." Reddington adopted the serious tone he often used, but stopped as she bluntly turned around and left the safe room.
Liz knew she acted like a child running away to avoid the conversation, but she wasn't ready to burst into tears in front of him. It was the first of God knows how many days where the two of them were alone together. If she learned something over those almost two years in which Reddington was in her life, it was that he never responded well to being cornered, it was always a lost battle doing it that way. On the other hand she knew that she could hold a grudge for some long and be a bitch about it. It was easier to handle that familiar conformation if she retreated and calmed herself down, she tried not to attack him when he showed himself ready to be as transparent as he considered possible. She always felt like he had specific timing for things, and she knew on an unconscious level that he would tell her everything in good time, but her lower self wanted answers, answers he wasn't ready to give. Liz knew as she retreated to her room that they both were in for the proverbial emotional roller coaster.