A/N: Guess who's back with the second chapter of part two in my Breakout Kings trilogy? So, I can definitely confirm that this will be the last chapter of this particular installment, but that I'll be back sometime with the third installment as well, where things get extremely tense. (Mainly because everything up to the third installment was background and filler up to the climax of the entire thing, which essentially is the third installment. Hooray. We've got that out of the way.)
Anyway, I recently went back through all of my fanfiction for Breakout Kings and noticed something kind of weird. Somehow, in all my revisions and brain time just thinking about BK, I've always thought Ray's name was Raymond. Literally, Lloyd only called him Raymond twice in the show and my brain just hardwired everything around that. So I've gone through this and corrected all of the Raymonds to Ray - unfortunately, I'll have to go back and revise my other BK stories as well, which sucks, but I guess that's what I get for pretty much only paying attention to Lloyd in that show.
Also, just a blathering side note, I didn't realize Breakout Kings was a spinoff of Prison Break until like a week ago, so since then I've watched all of the episodes on Netflix, and damn, that was a good show. Like, a really good show. Unfortunately, that also means I've got like five plot bunnies jumbled in my head at once and I probably won't get any relevant writing done any time soon.
Oh well. Besides all of that, I don't own Breakout Kings, and am writing this for 'fun' (read: my mental health). Read and Review, and I'll see you guys at the bottom of the screen! Enjoy.
"And I can feel the pull begin / I feel my conscience wearing thin / And my skin / It will start to break up and fall apart… " -21 Pilots, Fall Away
Lloyd sucked on his lower lip, grazing through the pages of the scrapbook in front of him with lazy flips. A scrapbook filled with pictures of smiling family and fun times - and no Max Morris. Lloyd knew the feeling. Once he had been sent to prison, he was burned out of every scrapbook and forced into becoming a taboo subject for the whole family.
It was starting to scare Lloyd, how alike Max and him seemed to be. Out loud, he exhaled his frustration with a sigh.
"There's not even a single picture of Max in this whole thing. It's like he doesn't even exist," he said, picking up the front and sliding the book closed. Could it be that Max would ever come to this sort of place, where he surely knew he wasn't welcome from the day of his birth? Lloyd wouldn't.
His musings, however, were interrupted by a short, muffled buzzing that became quite clear when Ray took the cellphone out of his back pocket. Lloyd didn't even glance up, still inspecting the cover of the scrapbook with slightly more intensity than necessary. His words were strong, yet almost pleading.
"Do not get that," he said, and felt Ray's gaze on his back. The hairs on the nape of his neck stood up. "I know it seems like a counterintuitive approach, but trust me, it's gonna drive him crazy." He's driving me crazy already, why not add one more parallel to the basket?
Ray seemed caught between a concerned frown and a heated glare, so when Lloyd turned to look at him, he held an odd expression that couldn't be directly defined. "Then if you don't answer this phone, I will."
He was telling the truth. That much Lloyd could tell. It was a likely threat, and in a few seconds it would be substantiated. So Lloyd did what he did best and lied through his teeth.
"Fine," he relented, walking over and picking the phone out of Ray's hand. He walked behind the marshal, reached out with his other hand, tentatively searching… and in one fluid motion, wrenched the door open and bolted as fast as he could past the threshold. He didn't get very far, and didn't expect to, but when Ray caught up to him, he had his hand outstretched and clasped tightly on the mobile.
He was going to throw it. Was supposed to throw it. That was the original plan. But in the end, he kept it in his hand and relented under the wrenching of his arm by Ray during the scuffle. He supposed if he threw it, Ray would've been even angrier at him. A part of him also didn't like the plan to ignore Damien. That part of him had several possible motives, and if it were up to Lloyd, none of them would ever surface. But he didn't throw the phone.
In the end, brawn won over brain and he was left cradling his arm as Ray flipped open the phone. Lloyd sneered, hissing a soft, "Jerk," over his shoulder.
Evidently, Ray either heard the off-hand remark or was already enraged enough to be open to torture that he grabbed a hold of Lloyd's shirt collar and dragged him backward. Lloyd gave a rather undignified yelp. "Come here. You don't want to talk to him?
"I'm gonna make you listen." Lloyd flinched harshly, though he couldn't tell if Ray had noticed it for what it was or just as an escape attempt. Bastard.
"He doesn't want to talk to you, Damien, and I can't blame him," he said, and Lloyd almost - almost - laughed at the ludicrousness of it all. Ray doesn't know a fraction of it. "So you're stuck with me."
Close as he was, Lloyd couldn't hear much from the receiver except staticky silence. Perhaps Damien had finally run out of things to say. Wishful thinking, probably. Lloyd curled his hands into fists, attempting some indirect form of control over the situation as Shea and Erica doubled back to hear the conversation. Meanwhile, Ray clenched his jaw.
"Come on, I know you're there, pathetic mental case. Why don't you drop some of your wisdom on us?"
At last, Damien's voice echoed across the line. Lloyd suppressed a shiver, and made an attempt to sprint out of the situation - he didn't get a step in before Ray pulled him back. He wasn't going anywhere.
"What's happened to you, Deputy Zancanelli?" Damien inquired. Lloyd, hard as he tried, couldn't hear anything other than an honest question through the receiver. Perhaps malice couldn't be heard through a speaker. "Did they demote you?" Ah, there it was.
Ray's jaw clenched in the same way it did when Lloyd was being especially annoying or when he was promising them they would catch Charlie's killer or when his daughter was in some kind of trouble. "How do you mean?"
"Well, there are some big fugitives out there. I should know, because I'm one of them." Admittedly, with the amount of danger he was putting himself in, Damien's voice was disturbingly calm. Smug, even. Lloyd felt, not for the first time, that he would have really really liked to sink his fist into Damien's face. Instead, he bit his lower lip hard enough to draw blood. "But your bosses aren't letting you chase me, are they?"
Ray's chuckle was just a tad wry, the sound both grating and immensely disquieting to those on his side of the phone call. "Oh, I haven't forgot about you."
"Of course not. But you can't do anything about it, can you?" Damien's voice soured, rusting, contempt fraying the edges of his consonants. "Too busy hunting down circus freaks."
Ray was quick to respond, which Lloyd was grateful for, as he wasn't so sure his audible swallow would work much in their favor at the moment. "Oh, don't worry about that, I can multitask."
Lloyd shifted his jaw in discomfort. It was almost like they were flirting. Even worse, Lloyd had to shove down that small twinge of jealousy that surfaced at the thought. What was wrong with him?
"Give it up, Zancanelli; you lost me. I'm the one that got away." Damien paused, and Lloyd ceased his escape attempt, cowed. He straightened his back, looking around Ray's head as if to catch a glimpse of Damien off in the trees. In reality, he was simply suppressing his discomposure by avoiding everybody's line of sight. "First you lost your partner, then you lost me. No wonder they don't trust you to track me down. Not even with the help from the eminent Lloyd Lowery."
Lloyd abruptly raised his eyebrows pointedly and jabbed a forefinger in the direction of the phone's receiver. He noted with resigned dismay the difficulty Ray had to employ just to stop his eyes from rolling. "How about we get together, Damien? Just you and me."
"I have nothing more to say to you," spat Damien, his voice abruptly acidic, scathing. As if speaking to anyone else but Lloyd for a maximum of a minute was degrading, somehow. A deep breath was heard over the line, and he began softer, gentlier. "I want to speak to Lowery. But I understand if he's in too delicate a state."
The line cut off with an audible click, and Ray snapped the phone shut angrily. Not even giving Lloyd a sideways glance, Ray began to walk. Lloyd took the opportunity to emphasize his point.
"I told you. I'm driving him nuts."
"No, you're driving me nuts."
Oh, good. We're all crazy, then.
The phone rang again. Ray wasted one more glare on Lloyd before picking up the phone with a sharp jab to the call button. "Go ahead, Jules."
"Ray, I got a hit. A big one." There was a stifled slamming noise, probably when Jules set her coffee cup down on her desk.
Without thinking, Lloyd already knew she had picked it back up again to pace while she talked. It was a familiar behavioral safety blanket of sorts. He did the same thing with unneeded gestures in stressful situations. It was incredibly calming for him to be able to predict the actions of someone he knew. Damien had put him off-kilter for too long.
"Okay," Jules began, "A man was found dead on the side of the road in Wurtsboro. Now, his credit card records indicate that he was in Deerfield, Massachusetts earlier today at a truck stop where a cashier was found murdered. Now, Deerfield is not too far from the prison where Max Morris broke out of this morning." Max was leaving a trail of bodies, it seemed.
Erica nodded as though it all made sense. "So Mad Max must have caught a ride."
Ray's gaze lingered on her for a moment longer than necessary before he snapped into the receiver, "Well, where the hell is Wurtsboro?"
There was a vague swishing sound that could have been the wind if this place had had anything close to a breeze since they arrived. "That's the thing, Max is already west of you guys."
"Max isn't coming after Tony," Ray deduced pointedly to Lloyd, who rolled back on his heels, shaking his head. Whether it was an apology or just a simple loss of words, Lloyd didn't know. Ray scoffed under his breath while Jules continued.
"Check this out, Wurtsboro is only 20 minutes from Monticello, where Tony's legitimate son lives." Legitimate son, legitimate son, legitimate son… why would he seek out his father's other son?
"Max's half-brother," Erica reasoned, "Maybe he's going there for help."
Oh.
"No, not help." Lloyd cut in, "Maybe the 'Him' Max was talking about wasn't Tony." At the wide range of confusion and irritation around the circle of colleagues, Lloyd continued. "I mean, look, children instinctively want to form attachments with their fathers, but Max's dad only bonded with his other son, his dwarf son, Kurt."
"So, we could be talking about, uh, just some sibling rivalry here." Lloyd paused, his left hand reaching to scratch at his collarbone anxiously. "Max - doesn't know that Tony's dead. He's still trying to win his love, and he's trying to do it by eliminating the competition." He bounded on the balls of his feet from side to side, feeling as though he could do with a bit of tea to calm his nerves. Talking to Damien made him inordinately jumpy.
Ray shut his eyes and shook his head. His unspoken threat hung in the air: if you're wrong about this again… "All right, Jules, tell Monticello PD I want eyes on Kurt Peebles. We'll be there as soon as we can."
"You got it. Oh, and Detective Estes called. He wanted to tell you that Tommy Fitzgerald was taken off life support this afternoon." She paused respectfully, then choppily summarized, "He's dead."
"Alright, just get a hold of Monticello PD," Ray reiterated, beginning to walk back to their car. He gave Lloyd's shirt a harsh tug, and the genius followed on his heels like a reprimanded puppy. The glance he sent backward to Shea and Erica was nothing short of pleading, until he caught the silent interaction between them. His gaze turned suspicious, but he had to time to act on it before he was pulled away.
They were hiding something, he knew it. And if it meant harm to their team, there wasn't a chance he would keep it a secret.
But, then again, he was keeping his own secret that he would much rather bury than announce in the open to the entire world. So he pushed the thought of snitching out of his mind.
He followed Ray back to the SUV, where the reinstated Marshal took the wheel. Lloyd, in a misguided act of disassociation, popped open the side door and took the seat farthest from Ray. Shea and Erica had lagged behind by at least a minute, giving Ray enough time to twist in his seat and pin Lloyd with a stony glare.
"Listen, Lloyd - hey, over here. I'm about up finished with your 'plan' to find Damien. Now, if you need a break from all this with a specialist or something, I'm willing to set that up for you. But whatever you're doing here with Damien isn't working."
Lloyd sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose with his finger and thumb in the universal 'this is giving me a headache' gesture. "I don't need a break, Ray, and the plan is working, all we need is a little patience - "
"Yeah, well I've run out of that now," Ray interrupted, pointing a meaty finger at the phone in his hand. "The next time Damien picks up the phone? You're gonna answer it. End of conversation."
And, indeed, it was the end of the conversation leaving no room for Lloyd's response, as Shea and Erica piled into the SUV before he could even open his mouth. Either the tense moment was ignored or just unperceived, and not a word was spoken about it in the car as they made their way to Mad Max's half-brother.
A pit began to curdle in Lloyd's stomach, and he knew it wasn't car sickness. If it did a sickening flip the next time Ray's phone rang - only Jules, thank God - Lloyd didn't let it show. But when Ray met his gaze, the command was clear.
Because Damien was going to call again. And Ray would make sure Lloyd was going to face up to it.
The rest of the case went as smoothly as expected. They talked to the half-brother, the half-brother was murdered, and Erica took down Mad Max in a running car chase. Textbook, as far as Breakout Kings cases went.
Focusing on distractions such as Mad Max, Lloyd found, was a nice vacation for his mind since that day with Nina Paulson. Okay, so Damien had interrupted the case several times and there were occasions when Lloyd's mind wandered away for periods of time, but it wasn't anything too unusual or detrimental to the team.
The only time the darkened pit in Lloyd's stomach reared its ugly head was when they were back in the warehouse with Mad Max in all the chains they could find. Apparently, anxiety wasn't the only thing choking Lloyd's thoughts because now Jules was taking off her pantyhose in the middle of the room and putting them on Max's head and Lloyd's mind went completely blank. His eyes were glued to the fabric on Max's face and yet his mind was still on the other side of the room, sitting down at Julianne's desk and thinking about her legs.
By the time he had come back down to earth, Shea had a scathing insult ready and Lloyd felt vaguely like there was some part of himself missing. Taunting the maniac who was wearing Julianne's drawers made him feel a little bit better.
Shea didn't start small, either, for which Lloyd was grateful. "You lost to a guy whose daddy was so short, he could have posed for trophies." Max reared his pantyhose-leaden head, enticing several amused exclamations from Shea and Lloyd.
A smirk teasing at the edge of his mouth, Lloyd intoned, "Wow. That got a rise out of him. Do his mother."
Shea's eyes twinkled. Both pairs of eyes never left Max, anticipating another reaction from the tormented man. "Oh, his mama?
"Oh, yeah, his mama was so fat - " Shea began.
"How fat was she?" Lloyd cut in.
"Her cereal bowl came with a warning sign." Shea continued.
"Mm-hmm." Lloyd goaded.
"'No lifeguard on duty.'"
Max lunged sideways, in the vague direction of their voices. Both Shea and Lloyd moved forward when the blind escape artist almost tipped himself over. Shea then reached over to give Lloyd a fist bump, which the ex-psychiatrist refused clumsily, amending that he doesn't do that sort of thing.
He was saved by the bell when the office phone went off, dragging everyone's attention to Julianne when she picked it up. Office phone usually meant convoy for a captured fugitive, but with every passing second of silence it seemed clearer and clearer that the person on the other end of the line wasn't anyone with government.
In a subdued voice unable to mask the anxiety pulling it taut, Lloyd spoke, "Put it on speaker, Julianne."
He could almost feel everyone's eyes on him - Shea right beside him, Erica peeking in from the bathroom, even Ray from inside his office, and always, always, Jules - as he tentatively tried, "Damien?"
"Well, well, well." In a surge of well-deserved insolence, Lloyd scoffed. Condescending, pompous, conceited bastard. Lloyd vaulted from his chair, purpose heading his steps as he practically ripped his jacket off of his shoulders and made his way to Julianne's desk. Damien's voice rolled through the silent room in the same way a snake would slither through the desert. "Why are you ducking me, Doc? Was it something I said?"
The sardonic half-smile across Lloyd's face bled into his voice with the language of contempt coloring each syllable. He rolled up his sleeves as though getting ready for a fight. It wasn't an unreasonable assertion; dealing with Damien often gave the impression of beating a dead horse into its next life.
"It wasn't you Damien. It's, uh, it's me." Lloyd swallowed, comprehending that he was appealing to the side of Damien - conscious or not - that believed they had some sort of a working dynamic between them.
It wasn't uncommon for regular relationships to end with the very words, 'it's not you, it's me'. Lloyd, for all of his mistakes, knew exactly how to use his words to his advantage to play on Damien's need for Lloyd to recognize their 'relationship'.
"I know that really sucks to hear, but I needed a challenge. You know? Needed something shiny and new, something to hold my interest. Think I found it. Might have heard of him. Max Morris, the, uh, escape aficionado."
Damien scoffed through the line. In person, it would have sounded casual. Over the speakers, the underlying scorn was just prevalent enough for notice. "The circus tool?"
"Now, now, with the names," Lloyd chided. "Come on." Play nice.
"Speaking of names, remember Nina Paulson?" The deflection stuck out like a sore thumb against the previous complexity of their conversation, but the intended effect obviously completed its job. Lloyd shifted in his crouched position by Julianne's desk, a vein in his jaw pumping out an uneven tattoo. Any trace of superiority in his expression dissipated, leaving the only underlying emotions: contempt and regret.
"Little dame we two-wayed," Damien passed off, as if Lloyd needed any reminding at all. However, it was a sign of their respect for Lloyd that everyone else averted their gaze from Lloyd, allowing him his privacy. Damien's taunting smile pulled his words tight, entangling Lloyd in their meanings. "Well, I did all the heavy lifting, but you were a commendable sous killer. Man, was she hot. Cute smile, taut little body. And her feet - the way they wiggled in her last throes - "
At last, Lloyd stopped the tirade, his intensity drawing the gazes of everybody back to the focus at hand. If Lloyd's eyes cut to Jules for a millisecond in anxiety, it didn't show in his voice. "This investigation is ongoing, and it's only a matter of time before we find you."
"'We?'" Damien huffed. He paused, his angered tone indicating that he wasn't going to take anymore bullshit from Lloyd. "You're not even on the case."
Lloyd sighed into his forearms, lifting his head to give his, admittedly flat, reply. "I meant the royal we, okay? We are through."
Lloyd, though he knew Damien wasn't watching, pointed firmly at the receiver to enforce his point. The hand shook slightly, but no one gave voice to the concern. "You are officially in my rearview mirror, Damien," - another side glance to Jules - "I'm all about Max Morris now, so Nina's death is on you."
"Had you pressed harder when you had the chance, I wouldn't be out. You know that, and you want to right that," Damien pointed out. As fiercely as Lloyd protected himself and his actions from prying eyes, Damien had the uncanny ability to read him like a book. The assumptions weren't difficult to make, the dots not hard to connect, but Damien always knew exactly what would get a rise out of Lloyd. "So, put your coat back on and come after me like a man, because there's another girl missing, and she needs your help." Lloyd lunged forward, puffed up like a peacock, about to respond with an insult as vile as Damien until -
… What?
There was a terse moment of silence before Lloyd blurted, "How did you know I took my coat off?"
Ray indignantly stood from his perch by his office windows. "Son of a bitch is watching us."
"And he calls when he knows we're in the office," Shea indicated, using a finger to emphasize his point.
Erica bolted to the window, trained eyes scanning the scenery before she pointed at a certain building. "He's got to be on that rooftop."
Ray acted immediately, pulling his gun from its holster. "All right, Jules, grab a firearm, keep an eye on Max." As Jules nodded and voiced her assent, Ray was already making his way out the door, Erica hot on his heels, Shea right behind her, and Lloyd tugging slightly on Shea's hoodie.
By the time they arrived at the top of the roof of the adjacent building, all of them knew Damien was long gone. Lloyd's slip tipped the bastard off and he most likely took off in any direction. That didn't stop Lloyd from running around the edges of the roof like a chicken with its head cut off, but it did give credit to Shea and Erica, who were looking down at the streets as if to spot Damien making a break for it in the crowd below.
Ray, however, already had Jules on the phone, "Jules, put an alert out. Call everyone. The son of a bitch is here."
In less than a minute, Ray had scanned the rooftop, his gaze catching on a piece of plastic on the ground. Laminated plastic, an ID with a photo. Immediately, he was back on his phone and Erica was taking the ID from his hands to inform Lloyd and Shea of the development.
"It's Ray's daughter's ID."
Knowing the situation had just ratcheted up in categories of danger - not only because Ray's daughter was missing, but because it was Ray's daughter who was missing and the Marshal's ability to act on reason would be out the window. He wouldn't be able to lead effectively with his daughter's life on the line. No one would.
"Yeah, Christina, it's Ray," he spoke hesitantly, as if there was a possibility, however slight, that Theresa was okay. Lloyd flinched with every word. "Let me talk to Theresa. What do you mean, she's late? How late? Five minutes? Five hours? Because I want to talk to her! She's my daughter! Where is she?"
Gone, Lloyd thought, the dread in his heart climbing up into his head and burning his eyes, sharpening his ever-present headache. And it's my fault.
A/N: So that's that. Hopefully I haven't set this whole thing up for disaster, like most of my writings tend to spiral into. In any case, I hope you guys enjoy, and be on the lookout for the next and final installment to the trilogy, 657556.
Read and Review, y'all. Peace!
~Alas, Poor Yorcake