While Sarah was safely recovering in Matt's apartment, her absence at the hospital hadn't gone unnoticed—and neither had Aaron McDermott's disappearance.
On the top level of a parking garage several blocks away, Ronan stood waiting, smoking a cigarette as McDermott's partner, Officer Connor Donovan, pulled up in an unmarked car.
"You find out where she is?" he asked the police officer without preamble as he got out of the car.
"No," Donovan answered. "Don't know where she went after the hospital, but she hasn't been back to her apartment."
"Well, that's just great detective work, officer. Isn't it your fault she managed to get out of the hospital in the first place?"
"My job was to tell you she was there, not to keep her there until you arrived," Donovan snapped. "Besides, I don't know how she got out of there. She looked half dead when I saw her."
"There's something going on there," Ronan said. "Those two idiots I hired to bring her to me never came back. Now McDermott's gone, and she managed to slip out of that hospital unseen. Sarah isn't smart enough to be doing all this on her own. She's got someone helping her."
"Who do you think it is?"
"Dunno yet."
"Well until you figure it out, we need to be focusing our attention on finding McDermott."
"Aw," Ronan cooed. "Does he mean something special to you? Are the two of you some kind of buddy cop rom-com?"
Donovan didn't take the bait.
"He knows about this arrangement," he said slowly, pointing from himself to Ronan. "And him being missing means the department is going to start looking closer at all of the arrests he and I have been bringing in lately. What if they connect the dots and realize we haven't been finding these guys on our own?"
"Why should I care if that happens?" Ronan asked in a bored tone. "So you'll get outed for being bad at your job."
"Alright, try this instead. What if McDermott skipped town because he decided to tell some of your criminal friends that you're the reason all of their hideouts keep getting busted? That you're ratting them out just so you can keep a tail on some girl?"
Ronan's face twitched into a sneer, but he had no retort.
"It's best for both of us if we find McDermott, and quick," Donovan continued. "So if you think your little girlfriend knows something then let's go to her apartment and make her tell us."
"No."
"Why not?" he demanded. "I know you like playing around with her but I'm not about to risk my job because you want to drag this out—"
"She doesn't react to being attacked. You threaten her and she just stares at you like an idiot," he said bitterly. "If we want her to tell us who she's working with and what she knows about McDermott, we have to get under her skin. And the only thing that ever seems to get a rise out of her is the people she cares about. Mess with them and I'd be willing to be she'll come ot us."
"Fine," Donovan said impatiently. "Her dad, then. We already know where he lives. Who else?"
"There aren't a lot of options. She's not Miss Popular," Ronan said. "But she has a best friend. I don't have a name, but she's in a lot of Sarah's photographs. Tall, blonde. Seems to mean a lot to her."
At the mention of Ronan's collection of Sarah's photographs, Donovan gave him a vaguely disgusted look before rolling his eyes.
"Anyone else?" the officer asked.
Ronan nodded, inhaling from his cigarette before answering.
"I think she's got a new boy toy," he said, his lip curling up in anger. "Another one. She moves on quick. One of the lawyers that showed up when you and McDermott were interrogating her."
"The blind asshole or the asshole who needs a haircut?"
"The blind one."
Donovan scowled. "That guy creeps me out. I think it's the glasses. Can't tell what the hell he's thinking."
"Who cares? Just keep an eye out for either one of them to show up around her, and let me know. We'll figure something out from there."
"I can't follow her twenty-four seven, you know. I do have an actual job."
Ronan tossed the cigarette butt on the ground and stomped it out. "Yeah, well, you won't for much longer if you don't find your partner, right?"
The slamming of Donovan's car door was his only response.
It didn't take as long this time for Sarah's brain to catch up to where she was. She lay still and took in the high ceilings and the tall, multi-paned window that clouded the weak early morning light. Then her gaze fell to the bed next to her, where she blinked at the sight of Matt still stretched out where he had been when she had fallen asleep, his head leaned back against the wall, his eyes closed and his lips parted slightly. From the uncomfortable way he was still leaning up against the pillows and the sea of Braille papers that had slid off his lap and into the space between them, it looked like he had fallen asleep while doing his paperwork.
Blurrily, Sarah fumbled her hand on the nightstand for her phone to check the time and was immediately greeted with an email from Jason, letting her know that he expected to see her at work today—though for whatever reason he was allowing her to come in at noon and work a half day. His emails and texts were always very short and terse, as though he didn't know how to convey his fake cheerfulness in writing. The summons wasn't a surprise—she was shocked she'd been allowed this much time off at all—but the idea of going back to that building after what had happened there made her stomach turn anyway.
Setting her phone aside, she slowly sat up, biting back a groan as the pain in her skull immediately increased. She ran a hand through her tangled hair and looked over at Matt again. The kind thing to do was probably to wake him up from his uncomfortable sleeping position, but she didn't. Partially because he looked so unbelievably tired that she couldn't bring herself to bother him, but partially because she rarely got the chance to see him unguarded like this, and it was fascinating.
People always looked younger when they were asleep, and Matt was no exception. She remembered how thrown she'd been to find out that he was only two years older than her. It was easy to forget that when she spent so much time with him as Daredevil, but right now she could easily see it. The tightly coiled tension that always lingered just under the surface wasn't there now, and without it he looked very much like the normal lawyer he pretended to be. The only indication that he wasn't was the scattering of injuries he always sported: this time it was a nasty bruise on the inside of his forearm; a small cut that began above his ear and disappeared into his hair; the faint outline of a thick bandage under his t-shirt, wrapping around his side. And, of course, the ever present bruising along his knuckles. It occurred to her as she watched him that for as often as he came to her to get basic first aid, there must be dozens of times that he didn't. She frowned as she thought about him coming home every night and being alone with nothing but a bunch of bruised ribs and old scars. The image bothered her more than she expected.
Alright, weirdo, she reprimanded herself. Enough creepily watching people sleep.
Sarah quietly gathered the Braille papers that had spilled out onto the bed and set them on the nightstand next to her. It was cool in the room, and she reached down towards the foot of the bed for the heavy, knitted blanket that Foggy had been adamant about her using (despite her insistence that she had a concussion and not pneumonia). Carefully, she draped it over the sleeping vigilante, hoping it wouldn't wake him up. He didn't stir; apparently he needed the sleep. Sarah watched his chest rise and fall evenly for a moment longer before slipping out of the bed, warily testing her balance as she stood. Her head still ached, but the room stayed in one place as she made her way to the bedroom door, which seemed like a good sign to her.
The image that greeted her in the bathroom mirror was almost comical. The coverup she had so carefully applied for the baby shower had worn away, leaving the vivid bruise on her temple clearly visible again. Her eye makeup had run, resulting in a raccoon-eyed look, and her hair was tangled from sleep. She let out a rueful laugh as she realized that if you left out the important details of whose apartment this was and why she was there, this entire scenario wouldn't look entirely unlike several mornings she'd had in college after a night out.
She turned the faucet on and began trying to get the makeup off of her face before moving on to untangling her hair. Sometime during her stay—she wasn't sure when, since it all blurred together—Matt had procured a toothbrush for her from somewhere in his apartment, still in the package. As she brushed her teeth, she wondered briefly if he kept spare toothbrushes around for the parade of one-night stands that Foggy made it seem like he had. How did that work, anyway? Did no one notice that he was covered in cuts and bruises? When did he have time to meet women when he spent all of his nights beating people up? She shook her head and spit the toothpaste into the sink; this was not an appropriate time to be wondering about Matt Murdock's sex life. Actually, scratch that—there was never an appropriate time to be wondering about Matt Murdock's sex life.
Satisfied that she no longer resembled a celebrity mug shot, Sarah made her way into the kitchen in hopes of locating something caffeinated to drink. The coffee maker took a few minutes to figure out—Matt had opaque Braille labels overlaying the buttons, obscuring the original print—but she finally set it to brew and took a seat at the kitchen table to wait, a glass of water in one hand and a bottle of Aspirin in the other. A little taken aback at how tired she still was, she closed her eyes for a moment and rested her head on her hand.
Now that her mind was a little less clouded, it was also increasingly more apt to dwelling on things she didn't want to think about. As soon as she closed her eyes she was greeted with the image of McDermott slumped in that office chair, and how heavy his body had been as she'd maneuvered it through the building. The logical part of her knew that there was nothing she could have done to prevent Jason from killing him—he had acted so quickly and irrationally, there was no time to react. But it didn't help dispel the echo of the police officer's wet, gasping last breaths from her memory.
She felt a light touch on her shoulder and jerked up with a startled gasp to see Matt crouched next to her chair, his eyebrows knitted together in concern.
"Just me," Matt said, holding his hands up. "I was talking to you for a minute and you weren't responding. You alright?"
"Yeah, I…" Sarah shakily ran a hand through her hair, pushing the thoughts of McDermott out of her mind as her heart rate settled down again. "I…didn't hear you get up."
Matt lowered himself into the chair across from her, rubbing the back of his neck; it looked like she had been right about the uncomfortable position in which he'd fallen asleep. Her gaze lingered on the dark scratches she'd left across his neck, and she winced guiltily—another small injury to add to his collection.
"Did you decide the table seemed like a more comfortable place to sleep?" he asked.
"No. I was waiting for the coffee to brew, and I just…got lost in my thoughts."
"I didn't think you'd be out of bed this early. Or at all, really."
"Well, getting out of bed is a key step towards going to work, I've heard."
She was unsurprised when Matt's mouth twitched downward in displeasure. "I was wondering when they were going to make you come back in."
"I don't have to be there until noon, so…it's not a full work day, at least," she pointed out helpfully.
His frown only deepened, and he shook his head. "I don't like it. You shouldn't be there alone. Not in this condition. Not with him."
"Well, you can't come with me," Sarah said tiredly, resting her head on her hand as she observed him over the table. "It's not 'Bring Your Vigilante To Work Day'."
"I'm glad you think this is funny."
"I don't."
The coffee machine beeped to signal that it was ready. She moved to stand up but Matt shot her a stern look.
"Sit down."
"I can do things like get my own coffee, you know," she told him, but she remained in her chair. "I'm not made of glass."
"Yeah, I've caught on to that," he said as he set the hot mug of coffee in front of her. "How are you feeling?"
She watched the steam rise from the surface of the liquid for a few moments.
"My head feels better," she said finally. "I feel worse."
"Your speech is a definitely better," he noted.
She squinted at him. "Was it that bad before?"
"Pretty slurred. You weren't always making a lot of sense."
"Oh. Good thing I wasn't trying to explain anything important, then," she joked weakly.
Matt's mouth twitched into a grin before he grew serious again, taking a seat across the table from her once more.
"Mind if I ask you some follow up questions about what happened? I think you left out a few major points. Like how you ended up on the business end of a hammer meant for McDermott, for one thing. How you managed to get a full grown man from Orion all the way down to the warehouse on your own, for another."
Slowly, Sarah filled Matt in on everything she could remember from what had happened: Jason's speech about loyalty, and calling McDermott to meet them. Several times she had to backtrack, remembering earlier things she had left out, like Jason and Vanessa talking about the bribe at lunch. She went through Jason's whole speech about names, and Rob's implication that Orion employees had brought him dead bodies before. Trying to remember and explain everything in order was surprisingly exhausting, and it started to show.
"Alright," Matt said as she stumbled over a few words again. "That's…that's good for now."
"Okay," Sarah agreed, relieved to not have to talk about it for a while.
"You need to eat. Do you want me to make you something or do you want to order in?"
Sarah shook her head. The thought of food was still very much unappealing. "Oh, no, I'm…not really hungry."
Matt nodded, taking a drink from his coffee, and for a second she thought that was the end of it.
"Your options include me cooking you something, or getting food delivered," he repeated, setting his mug back down on the table and leaning back in his chair. "But 'not eating' isn't on the list."
"Matt—"
"You've been here since Tuesday night. Now it's Thursday morning, and you haven't eaten anything. I really don't think you want to fight me on this."
She looked at him for a moment, debating whether it was worth the effort. Finally she let out a long, exasperated sigh. "Fine."
"Good. What do you want?" Matt asked as he stood up from the table and started towards the kitchen.
"I thought Foggy said you didn't have any food."
Matt chuckled as he opened the fridge. "Foggy's idea of food doesn't include anything that requires preparing. Frozen dinners, boxed macaroni and cheese…that's what Foggy tends towards. But I have more than enough to make breakfast. Or lunch. Whichever you want."
She followed him into the kitchen, gathering her hair over one shoulder. "I'm not picky."
"Alright. I'll figure something out."
Sarah rested her hands on the counter and used them to carefully lift herself up so she was sitting on the surface, next to the sink where she could lean back against the kitchen wall. "I didn't know you could cook."
"Learning to cook at home becomes a necessity when you can taste the brand of dish soap that a restaurant uses on their plates," he told her wryly. "I've gotten pretty good at it."
The idea of Matt being good at something as ordinary and non-violent as cooking struck her as amusing for some reason, and she watched with interest as he set an assortment of vegetables on the counter, along with a box of pasta and a few spices. Suddenly she remembered something she had meant to ask about the night before, but hadn't gotten the chance.
"So…how did meeting Lauren go?" she asked, watching him closely.
Matt's hesitance before answering didn't seem like a good sign.
"It went…fine," he said evasively, and Sarah narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously.
"You're definitely lying," she pointed out. "It didn't go well?"
"I…don't think she likes me very much."
Sarah couldn't help but laugh. "That's crazy. Daredevil is so friendly."
Matt grinned as he filled up a pot of water to boil the pasta, turning to her once he had set it on the burner.
"Speaking of Lauren," he said, his sightless eyes aimed somewhere over her shoulder. "Think you can tell me why she seems to be under the impression that my name is Leonard?"
There was a long pause.
"Um."
Sarah could her face heat up. Matt quirked an eyebrow and leaned against the wall next to her, effectively blocking her in as he waited for her to answer.
"I don't know," she said with an innocent shrug. "That's weird."
"Mhm," Matt said, nodding his head and looking thoroughly unconvinced. "Yeah, that is weird."
"Maybe you just give off that kind of vibe," she suggested.
"That's really not helping your case."
Sarah's phone buzzed on the kitchen table, and she glanced at it over her shoulder.
"Speaking of Lauren, that's probably her," she said, carefully slipping down from her seat on the counter and skirting around Matt, who just shook his head resentfully.
At least she didn't tell him about the Devil Emoji.
"Hi Lauren," Sarah answered.
"You picked up! How's your head?" Lauren asked immediately. "Also, how's the rest of you? Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm—I'm fine," Sarah said. "Listen, I'm so sorry about the baby shower—"
"What? Who cares about the baby shower?"
"…I do. Because I ruined it."
"Actually, it kind of worked out really well," Lauren said dismissively. "I got all of the gifts I wanted, but I didn't have time to open them in front of other people and pretend to like everything. And then I only had to socialize with people for a little while before everyone left because you freaked them out. It was perfect. I mean, except for you almost dying."
Sarah groaned. "Does everyone think I'm crazy?"
"Oh, yeah," her friend said bluntly. "Also, they think you're on, like…a lot of drugs. I think Cecilia helped get that rumor circulated when you passed out."
"Great. That's great. At least your mom wasn't there." Sarah shifted the phone from one ear to the other as she came back into the kitchen.
"Oh, she'll find out somehow. But I didn't call to talk about the baby shower, I called to talk about you. What the hell happened?"
"That's…a long story. One I'll tell you in person," she promised, partially to make sure she was clear headed enough to discern which details to include and which ones to leave out.
"Fair enough. Are you home yet?"
"No, not yet. I'm going home today," Sarah said. She chose not to mention that she had to go to work first; Lauren would only get upset while having no way of helping, which was never a good combination.
"You're still with tall, dark, and scary, then?"
Sarah laughed at the description and she sent a sideways glance at Matt. He didn't show any reaction as he continued slicing up some zucchini, but she knew he was listening.
"Yeah, I am."
"That dick hung up on me and then didn't call me back," Lauren informed her indignantly.
"You guys have each other's phone numbers?" Sarah asked in bewilderment. She hadn't realized their interactions had extended beyond that one meeting in the hospital.
"I needed a way to check on you after he basically kidnapped you from your hospital bed. Which I did not approve of, by the way," Lauren said with a frustrated sigh before continuing uncertainly. "But…he said he was taking you somewhere safe?"
Sarah leaned back against the counter next to the stove, watching Matt for a moment as he continued working on the cutting board.
"Yeah. Safest place I can think of," she said. Finally showing some indication that he was listening to the conversation, the corner of Matt's mouth tugged up into a small smile.
"Good," Lauren replied, sounding relieved. "That's something, at least. I know you guys are like, chill or whatever, but he seems like kind of an asshole."
Matt's smile disappeared as he cast his blank eyes up to the ceiling in exasperation.
"Yeah, he can be," she agreed lightly, earning an unamused look from Matt. "But he has his moments."
"If you say so," Lauren said doubtfully.
"Did it go that badly?" she asked. "Because he said it went just great."
"Well, I'd hate to see how his not-great conversations go, then. First of all, he was literally lurking in the corner of your hospital room, waiting for me to come in, and then he turned all the lights off and pretty much jumped out at me," Lauren began, and although Sarah knew she was exaggerating—she always did, without fail—she narrowed her eyes at the vigilante next to her anyway, who was now paying suspiciously close attention to the task of moving the vegetables around in the pan.
"Did he really?" she asked, wishing that Matt could see the look she was giving him, but positive that he was picking up on it anyway.
"Yeah! Oh, and he put his hand over my mouth, which, like—gross. I don't know where that glove has been. I mean, I do know—it's been all over a bunch of dirty fire escapes and door handles and probably had, like, criminal blood on it and I could have any sort of blood-borne disease now. What if I have hepatitis?"
She rolled her eyes. "I really don't think that's how blood-borne diseases work."
"Well, we'll see. You tell him if my baby gets hepatitis because he decided to cover my mouth up, I will literally fight him."
Matt's eyebrows went up in slight amusement at the possibility.
"Okay, I'll give him a heads up."
"Good. But don't ever actually tell him that. Dude is scary as hell," Lauren said, then after a pause she added, "But also kind of hot. You know? Maybe that's just the pregnancy hormones, I don't know."
Sarah should have known her friend would turn the conversation in that direction. She closed her eyes in exasperation for a second before glancing over at Matt, who looked like he was carefully suppressing a smirk.
"I'm glad that's what you were focused on while I was unconscious, Lauren."
"Listen, I'm a multitasker. I can be concerned for my friend's health and also be observant of what her rude and mysterious vigilante friends look like. I mean, you've seen him with his shirt off, right? When you guys are playing doctor, or whatever. He has to be fit as hell under that costume. Isn't he?"
Matt tilted his head and raised his eyebrows expectantly as he waited for her to answer the question, a cocky smirk on his face. Obviously Lauren was correct, and Matt knew it as well as Sarah did.
Sarah felt her face heat up. "He—it's—weren't you just saying he gave you hepatitis?"
"Like this is the first time I've thought a guy was hot while simultaneously thinking he maybe gave me a disease. Come on, I need to know these things."
"My brain isn't functioning enough for this conversation," she complained.
"Alright, fine, you prude," Lauren relented with a dramatic sigh. "Go back to bed. And stop by Mrs. Benedict's place when you get the chance—she's totally noticed you haven't been home in a while, and she keeps calling me asking if you've moved in with that dentist."
She could always count on Lauren to say the very thing she didn't want her to. "Okay. I will. Bye."
She ran a hand through her hair as she hung up. How was talking to Lauren so exhausting?
"Dentist?" Matt asked her curiously.
Just the boyfriend I made up to get Mrs. B to stop asking about your Columbia sweatshirt after you nearly died. But Sarah was way too tired—and too embarrassed—to explain that entire scenario, so instead she changed the subject.
"So, is cooking like your back-up career? If Daredeviling falls through?" Sarah lifted herself back up onto the counter again, this time next to the stove so that she was facing Matt as he cooked.
Matt tilted his head. "I think we've had this talk before. Daredevil isn't actually my career."
"Right, right. Lawyering. Did you get all of your boring legal paperwork done?" she asked, reaching out and stealing a piece of green pepper from the assortment of vegetables in the pan. Despite her earlier protests, the smell of food was actually making her hungry.
"Ah…no," he admitted. "I'll get it done soon."
Sarah didn't know how he ever got any paperwork done. Maybe it was just her tendency towards nosiness, but if she could hear everything going on in her apartment building she would never do anything but eavesdrop.
"You got too distracted?" she asked.
Matt's hand stilled as he reached for one of the jars on his counter. "Sorry?"
"Well, you can hear all of your neighbors and stuff, right? I'd never get anything done," she said with a shrug.
"Right," he said, shaking his head and running his fingers down the rubber bands on the side of one of the jars to identify it before picking it up. "No, my neighbors aren't very interesting. It's all kind of white noise anyway. I don't register it for the most part, unless something unusual sticks out."
Sarah reached over to take another piece of green pepper out of the pan.
"Will you—?" Matt waved her hand away with the kitchen knife he was holding. "Knock it off."
"I'm not doing anything," she protested, but her laughter gave her away.
"Sure," he said skeptically. "Keep doing nothing, see how that works out."
"You're a lot less intimidating with your hair like that, you know."
"Yeah? Remember what I said about not being a morning person?" Matt raised his eyebrows, emphasizing his words by gesturing in her direction with the knife.
"You aren't allowed to threaten someone with a concussion, Matt," Sarah informed him, receiving only a shrug in return. "Plus, Foggy said not to let you boss me around so much."
"Yeah, but Foggy's not here."
Sarah laughed and held her hands up, refraining from stealing any more bites from the pan. She leaned her head back against the wall, watching as Matt finished cooking. She found herself thinking about the baby shower, and how she'd felt more alone than ever while surrounded by music and drinks and people who had once been her friends. Yet somehow, sitting on the counter in this tiny kitchen with just her and Matt, that feeling of loneliness ebbed away, if only temporarily.
Unfortunately, Sarah couldn't stay there forever. When she got to the office, Jason was in a meeting with his door closed. A glance at the itinerary that she herself had scheduled told her that the meeting should be over in just a few minutes. She took a seat at her desk while she waited, idly glancing at the newspaper that lay nearby. One headline in particular caught her eye:
Daredevil: Let's Stop Cheering For People Who Break The Law
Sarah did a double-take as she saw the byline and accompanying picture: Cecilia Gladstone. The photo next to the name was tiny and grainy, but unmistakably the woman Sarah had been arguing with at Lauren's baby shower. Had Lauren ever mentioned that her cousin wrote for The Bulletin?
Leaning forward, she quickly scanned the article, which appeared to be a sensational opinion piece—a far cry from the hard journalism that the newspaper had once been known for. Her eyebrows steadily went up as she took in the various points the woman was making. 'Daredevil is just as much a menace to Hell's Kitchen as Wilson Fisk ever was; arguably more so. While Mr. Fisk had ties to the community—owning several companies and contributing to causes and small businesses across the city—Daredevil has no apparent connections to the city beyond his desire to control how the people living in it behave.' Further down the article, Cecilia repeated the point she had made to Sarah about the police: 'Our police force is carefully trained to protect and to serve; they take an oath and they must uphold it or face legal consequences. The vigilante has taken no such oath, and even if he had—who would dole out punishment if he were to break it? Can we leave our safety—and the safety of our children—in the hands of someone who has no one to answer to? Many citizens say they feel safer knowing The Devil of Hell's Kitchen is watching the city, to which I can only reply: But who is watching him?'
The article was conspicuously absent of the scornful victim-shaming that Cecilia had exhibited at the baby shower—she had some sense for what wouldn't go over well with the public, at least—but the holier-than-thou tone was still unmistakably there.
Sarah slipped her phone from her pocket and texted Lauren. Since when is your cousin Cecilia a reporter?
Lauren's response was quick: I wouldn't really call her a reporter. She usually just writes online clickbait articles, but I know she's been trying to get published in the actual paper. Why?
Sarah shook her head. It looked like Cecilia had found the easiest way to get into the actual paper: write controversial articles about something everything has an opinion on. In this case, that 'something' was Matt. It was a lazy and easy tactic. Though she had to hand it to the woman: publicly insulting Daredevil and attaching her own name to it was ballsy.
Still, the knowledge that Cecilia worked for The Bulletin rattled Sarah more than she had expected; after all, it's not like she'd actually said anything about Daredevil that she shouldn't have known. But she'd had enough alcohol in her system that she could have. She so easily could have drunkenly let something slip, not realizing she was speaking to a reporter. Worse, a reporter who Sarah assumed wouldn't hesitate to publish anything incriminating without bothering to corroborate. She'd never forgive herself if she woke up one day to find out that she'd blabbed Matt's biggest secret during a black out.
"Don't like the news today?"
Sarah jumped slightly and jerked her head up to see Jason standing next to her desk, observing her with a raised eyebrow. "S-sorry, what?"
"You look like you're reading your own obituary," Jason said, then gave a delighted chuckle at his own joke.
"Oh. No, no, it's just…" she gestured at random to a different story on the page, hoping to divert attention away from the one she had actually been reading. The other headline read: 'Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck: What Went Wrong After Ten Years Of Bliss?' "Just, um…Ben and Jen drama. I'm really invested in them."
Jason raised an eyebrow at that. "Well, once you've recovered…join me in my office for a chat."'
Ignoring the way her stomach twisted nervously, Sarah followed him into his office, where he closed the door before taking a seat at his desk. He didn't gesture for her to do the same, so she stayed standing, remaining in the somewhat safer ground between his desk and the door.
"So," he began, flashing her a wide, toothy smile. "I assume the delivery to the warehouse went fine the other night? It is so delightful to have an employee who I don't have to keep an eye on every second to know they're doing their job right."
"Yeah, the…the warehouse went fine," she said. She refused to call it a 'delivery'.
"Wonderful, wonderful," he said, continuing to grin at her widely but not saying anything else for a long time.
Sarah glanced around the room uncomfortably as time stretched on without him speaking, just watching her with that unnerving smile. Was that the entire conversation? Was she dismissed? Finally she asked tentatively, "Um, was that—all you needed?"
"Tell me, what do you remember from after you got hit in the head?" he asked.
"Um…it's all a little fuzzy," she said. "But I think I remember the big parts."
"That's what I thought," he said, disappointment coloring his voice. "It's a shame, though. You did such a wonderful job. So I thought you might like to see."
Sarah furrowed her brow as Jason tapped a few keys on his keyboard before turning his computer monitor so that she could see the screen.
"Take a look," he said.
Sarah knew what she would see on the screen, but it was unsettling all the same. The picture was crystal clear—not the grainy images that some of the old security cameras had shown—and her face was easily identifiable as she stood in the empty office upstairs next to McDermott's body. There was a hint of movement on the edge of the screen, near the door—it must have been just as Jason left. Sure enough, she saw McDermott grip the hammer and swing it at her head, and winced as she watched the impact knock her off her feet.
"Now, this next part is a little boring." Jason tapped the fast-forward button and the footage sped up as the Sarah on the screen slid down the wall and leaned her head back, closing her eyes. "You stay there for a long time. I honestly thought you were dead for a while there," he said with a pleasant chuckle.
Sarah frowned briefly at the comment, but remained silent with her eyes on the screen, where she watched herself finally stumble to her feet. She didn't remember swaying that much, or moving that slowly. But she did remember smashing McDermott's cell phone, and the image was incredibly damning.
"Fantastic. I didn't even think about the cell phone till I watched this. You're a natural. Tell me, have you ever done this before?" he asked her seriously, and she couldn't help the incredulous look that spread across her face.
"Moved…dead…people?" she asked him slowly.
"Precisely."
She stared at him for a long moment. "…no."
"Really? Well, I'd never guess," he said, turning back to the screen. He hit the pausing the image right as Sarah's face was in plain view. "Brilliant job, Sarah. If I ever need a reminder that you're a dedicated and loyal employee to this company…" He reached out and tapped the monitor, smiling widely. "Well, there's the proof."
He had phrased it as a compliment, and in a sick way she knew that he actually meant it as one. But it was also very clearly a threat; no one would ever believe that she wasn't complicit in Orion's illegal activities for as long as that video was around. Sarah's stomach flipped at the thought, but she had to remind herself of that small movement near the door at the very beginning of the clip: somewhere in that computer there was also footage of Jason being the one who actually killed McDermott.
"I was just doing my job," Sarah said quietly.
"Oh, I know. That's what you do. It's why I chose you for this position instead of bringing Ronan back on board. He's so emotional, like a child throwing a temper tantrum. But you—you're the opposite. It's interesting, because you're personality is really quite boring sometimes," Jason informed her cheerfully, and she bit back an offended frown. "But it works. No emotion. I like that. You just get it done. And Ronan never quite managed to do the same."
It was laughable to her that Jason saw her as emotionless—sometimes it felt like she was more emotional than anyone she knew. Her mind was a constant swirl of anxiety and guilt and confusion and a million other things. She could never get it to calm down. It made her feel slightly better, knowing just how wrong Jason was about her. She couldn't read him for the life of her, but apparently he couldn't read her either.
Despite only working a half day, Sarah was so exhausted when she got off work that she was ready to go to sleep as soon as she got off. She called Matt to let him know that he could skip stopping by that night. She'd been halfway expecting him to try to convince her once again to stay at his place, but instead he just told her to get some sleep, and that he'd come check on her soon. She barely had the energy to take a shower before crawling into bed, not caring that it was still light out. She didn't wake again until it was time for work the next day.
Friday was a full work day, and even more exhausting. The smart decision would have been to go home and sleep more after she got off, but she'd put off having dinner with her dad too many times to cancel again. Besides, there were a few things on her mind she wanted to discuss with him. And so she found herself outside Mitch's front door Friday night, waiting for him to answer. He took longer than usual to come to the door, and when she stepped inside she immediately noticed that things had gotten worse. Her eyes wandered over the haphazard way the living room furniture had been rearranged, and the blankets that had been hung over several of the windows like makeshift drapes. She pressed her lips together and didn't mention it, deciding to first gauge what his mental state was at the moment.
"What are the flowers for?" she asked casually, noting the flowers that sat in a vase in the middle of the table. They still had tiny clumps of dirt on the roots, like he had pulled them straight from the ground outside somewhere. Next to the vase there were three plates set out instead of two.
"I got flowers for your mother," Mitch called from the kitchen, where he was rummaging around with something. "She's late coming home tonight, isn't she?"
"You…got them for mom," Sarah repeated softly, at a loss for words as her father came back into the room. What was she supposed to say to that?
"She's still mad at me, isn't she? Feels like she's always mad at me these days. She was just yelling at me yesterday for forgetting to pick you up from school. But I don't…know what I did this time," he said, giving her a sad, beseeching look. "How do I apologize?"
"I don't…" Sarah didn't know what to say. "I don't know, dad. I'm—I'm sure it will be fine."
The doctor had told her to use her best discretion when it came to explaining reality versus delusions to her father. Sometimes it was better to go along with it and avoid upsetting the patient, he'd told her. Especially if they were likely to fall back into the same delusion once they forgot having been told it wasn't real.
"She'll be here soon?"
Sarah swallowed hard. "Yeah. She'll be here soon."
"Good, good," he said, the cloud on his face clearing immediately. "Are we cooking something?"
"No," she said, wishing she could snap out of it as quickly as he could. She set the take out bag in her hand on the table. "I brought Italian food, remember?"
"Right. That's right," Mitch said with a vague nod. "Well, let's eat then."
They made light conversation as they ate, though they never touched on the topic that she'd hoped to talk about when she arrived. She'd been hoping that her father would be lucid enough to talk about some of the struggles he'd had with addictions—to drinking, to gambling, to who knows what else. She wanted to know how many times he'd done something he regretted because of something he was hooked on, and how many times it had to happen before he quit. But the Mitch who could have given her advice about that wasn't home tonight.
After dinner, her father turned on the news while Sarah began quietly sorting through the pile of unopened mail on his desk. She set aside anything that looked like bills so she could take them home and look at them, along with any medical correspondence. Almost all of that kind of mail already got forwarded to her, so the stack was mostly junk mail. However, there was one large envelope that stuck out from the rest, and Sarah froze when she recognized the handwriting scrawled across the front—she'd had to transcribe it into emails dozens of times before. It was Ronan's handwriting.
Slowly slitting open the top of the envelope, she tipped it to the side, her stomach twisting as the contents spilled out: the photographs Ronan had taken from her apartment.
He'd scratched her eyes out of every photo she was in; in some of them he scratched her mouth out as well. She brought a hand to her mouth as she picked up the photo of her and her father at her first piano recital. Graphic slurs were scribbled across the image of Sarah in her carefully selected recital dress and Mitch in the cheap suit he'd bought just for the occasion. She knew from memory that the two of them had both been smiling widely in the photo, but now their faces had been scratched out beyond recognition. The rest of the photos hadn't fared much better.
Mixed in with the photographs were images of other women that looked as though they'd been cut out of adult magazines. The women in the photos were all either naked or nearly so, posed in various suggestive ways. Their eyes had been scratched out as well, and similar crude words had been scrawled across their faces and bodies.
A rush of anger surged through her, and she gripped the photo in her hand tightly. How dare Ronan send her dad something like this? How sick was he? She bit back the wave of nausea that was building in her throat and hurriedly stuffed the offending pictures back into the envelope before her father could see. Underneath the buzzing anger, she was distantly grateful that neglecting the mail was one of the habits he'd developed lately.
She slipped the folder into her purse then rejoined her dad on the couch.
"Do you know what's taking your mother so long?" he asked her as she sat down.
"I don't know, Dad," she said, accidentally letting some of her anger at Ronan seep into her voice.
"Oh." Mitch twisted his fingers anxiously, so unlike the confident person she had grown up around. "I'm sorry. I already asked you that."
"No, I didn't mean…" Sarah's heart twisted at the lost look on his face. "I'm sorry, Dad. I just meant that I'm not sure what time she'll be home. But I'm here."
"I know, honey. And I'm glad you're here," he said, patting her hand. Then he gave her a sad smile. "Don't you miss her?"
Not sure how to answer that, Sarah just shrugged. "I miss both of you."
She could tell from the distant look on his face that he didn't know what she meant. It was unsettling to look him in the eye and see that he truly had no idea what was going on around him. But as Sarah gazed at her purse, where the envelope full of threatening photos still sat out of sight, a small, selfish part of her almost envied him.
There was still a very faint lingering smell of multiple perfumes floating through Sarah's apartment when she got home, and she scrunched her nose up as she heaved her windows open to air the place out some more. She was tempted to go straight to sleep yet again, but tonight she had more important things to do.
Standing on her tip toes, Sarah grabbed the two wine bottles on top of her fridge, one half full and one still unopened, and set them on counter. Then she retrieved a bottle of whiskey from her freezer and the last few beers of a six pack from her fridge before digging out a few airplane bottles of liquor stashed around her kitchen, lining them up as well. She took a deep breath and then, starting with the whiskey, she poured the bottles down the drain, one by one. It was more symbolic than practical—the liquor store was just down the street, after all—but she decided maybe she needed that jolt of apprehension that hit her as the last bottle swirled down the drain.
The first task done, she opened her kitchen drawer and dug around until she found the assisted living pamphlets she had shoved in there weeks ago and brought them over to the couch, where she opened her laptop.
An hour of financial aid research later, there was a dull ache lingering behind her eyes. She tilted her head back against the arm rest of the couch, letting her eyes close for a moment. It wasn't long after that she heard the sound of boots lightly landing on her fire escape.
"Not sure I'm crazy about this new habit of leaving your window wide open," came a familiar low voice from across the room.
Her eyes still closed, Sarah shook her head. She couldn't help but laugh a little at the fact that the first thing Matt greeted her with was a lecture.
"You wouldn't be crazy about my apartment reeking of perfume, either," she replied with a yawn, sitting up slowly. "It's just for a little while."
Matt's mask obscured the top half of his face, but from the way his mouth pressed together tightly she had a pretty good guess he looked unhappy with the idea. But Sarah ignored it, focused on his heavy breathing, like he'd come straight from a fight.
"Are you alright?" she asked.
"Yeah. Busy night out there," he said with a dangerous grin. "I probably won't stay for long. I just came by to talk about the news today."
She tilted her head back against the couch, covering her eyes with her forearm to block out the light from the table lamp, which seemed excessively bright tonight.
"Ugh, you mean that stupid article in the Bulletin?"
There was a short silence.
"What are you talking about?"
Sarah moved her arm away from her eyes and squinted at him. "…what are you talking about?"
"McDermott," Matt said, pushing his mask up so that it was above his eyes. "The police department officially declared him missing. He's one of their own, so they're going to pull out all the stops to find him."
Her stomach dropped at the news, though she knew there was no way she could have expected anything else.
"Shit," she whispered.
"The warehouse owner you brought the body to…he knows your name?"
"Yeah," she said distractedly.
Matt nodded as he adjusted one of his gloves. "Alright. I'll go talk to him soon. See if he's planning on talking to anyone."
That caught Sarah's attention, and her head snapped up. "What? No, Matt, don't…don't do anything to him."
"Are you serious?" Matt replied, letting out sharp laugh that bordered on a scoff. "He's the main recipient of Orion's illegal shipments, and apparently their go-to man for body disposal. And he can name you as the person who brought him McDermott."
"I know, I just…" Sarah didn't really know why she didn't want Matt to have one of his 'conversations' with Rob, who she barely knew. But she couldn't get the image of Rob's teenage son out of her head. "I get the feeling that maybe he's…he's in a similar situation to me."
"But you don't know for sure."
"No," she admitted.
Matt tipped his head back towards the ceiling in frustration. "Sarah…"
"Just, let me talk to him first. Okay?"
"And say what?"
"I don't know, just—I'll try to get a read on—on what he's about," she said, sounding less than convincing even to her own ears. She pushed her hair behind her ear and continued more insistently. "It's not like you can go around asking about what's going on there anyway. Not without making me look suspicious."
Sarah watched as Matt worked his jaw before finally jerking his head in agreement. "Alright. But I want you to tell me when you're going to talk to him, so I can be nearby. This guy holds a lot of Orion's secrets, and he might not be happy to hear you asking about them."
"Okay," she agreed, relieved that he didn't push the subject. She slowly stood up from the sofa and grabbed her glass, making her way to the kitchen for a water refill. Matt followed, leaning against the counter as she turned on the tap.
"What article were you talking about?"
"Just some opinion piece about you that this girl Cecilia wrote," Sarah said, feeling slightly foolish for even mentioning it. "It wasn't anything interesting."
"Not the positive kind of opinion, I'm guessing."
"Not especially. Do you pay attention to all of the things people write about you?" she asked curiously. "Or what they say about you on TV, on the radio?"
Matt frowned as he considered the question.
"Not usually. I can't do what I do and not expect people to talk about it, but…unless it sounds like they're getting somewhere close to figuring out actual information about me, I usually ignore it."
Sarah couldn't imagine knowing that every person in the city had an opinion of some sort about you, and simply ignoring it. As she drank her water and contemplated that, she saw Matt's blank eyes flick around her kitchen.
"Lot of empty bottles," he noted casually, but she didn't miss the way his head tilted just a fraction in her direction—probably trying to figure out if the contents of those bottles were now in her bloodstream.
"Yeah. I didn't need the temptation," she said tiredly. He turned towards her fully now, brow furrowed in confusion, and she continued. "I was thinking I might take a break for a while. From drinking. Just…just until it's not so much of a crutch anymore."
After an initial moment of surprise, Matt nodded earnestly. "Good. That's…that's really good. I'm glad."
"It's not like I'm addicted to it," she said, sounding more defensive than she had intended. "It's just…I don't know, when things are going badly…"
"You don't have to explain anything to me."
Sarah acknowledged that with a small, tired smile before it faded again. "I went to see my dad today."
Matt cocked his head at her serious tone. "Is he alright?"
"He's…" He's not even there. "He's not the problem. Ronan's been…sending him things."
A shadow crossed over the vigilante's face at the mention of the name. "What kind of things?"
Sarah hesitated before answering. She felt that mixture of anger and nausea again just talking about it, but she knew it was something Matt would want to know about.
"Photos. Of me, mostly. With the eyes all scratched out, and…death threats and other things written all over them," she said vaguely. She could tell from the way Matt's fingers twitched that she didn't need to elaborate on what those other things were. "And then a bunch of magazine cut outs of women from…I don't know, dirty magazines, I guess. Which I didn't actually realize existed anymore, with the internet being around, but…" She trailed off with an uncomfortable shrug.
Matt's face was carefully void of any expression as he listened, but there was a tick in his jaw that she recognized well. He was quiet for a long moment after she was done.
"What did your dad say about that?"
"He didn't get a chance to see any of it. I took it with me."
"I'm guessing there wasn't a return address on there anywhere that I could check out?"
"No," she said softly.
"Of course not," Matt said, his face darkening even more. He smacked the counter in frustration, and Sarah instinctively jumped a little at the loud impact. His expression softened slightly as he noticed her reaction. "Sorry."
"It's okay."
"Do you want me to stay with you for a while?"
She did. But unfortunately, she couldn't justify monopolizing the local vigilante just because she was having a bad day. There was almost certainly someone else having a worse one out in the darkness of Hell's Kitchen, and maybe Matt could actually do something to help them.
"No, I'm fine," she said, waving his concern away. "I'm probably going to bed soon anyway. I just thought you'd want to know about it."
He didn't look convinced. "You sure you'll be alright?"
"I'm positive," Sarah insisted. She reached up and tugged his mask back down so that it covered his face again. "Busy night out there, remember?"
"Alright," Matt said, the corners his mouth twitching up. "Call—"
"—call you if I need you," she finished for him. Matt started lazily walking backward towards the window, effortlessly avoiding the furniture in the way as he listened to her. She trailed after him, smiling slightly as she continued the list. "Lock the window, drink lots of water, don't run with scissors…did I miss anything?"
Matt nodded with a faint smirk, taking the light ribbing without complaint. Then he reached out and hooked a loose piece of hair behind her ear.
"Take care of yourself, Sarah," he said, letting his hand linger for a second longer.
Her breathing hitched slightly at the contact. Then he was gone.
Pouring all of her alcohol away had seemed like a good idea at the time, but by the next night Sarah found that she mildly resented herself for it. She was alone in her apartment, caught in an unpleasant combination between jumpy and bored. Lauren was at some sort of parenting class with Greg, and Matt was working on tracking some arms dealer back to whatever group he was working with, so he wasn't stopping by that night. He'd told her that he'd have his phone on and ordered her several times to call if she needed anything, but she didn't think that avoiding her own thoughts really counted as an emergency.
So Sarah turned on some TV show—she didn't even know the name of it, just that the plot was easy to follow and didn't require a lot of attention. Trying to focus on anything too hard still gave her a dull headache. Even simple tasks at work the past two days had exhausted her, and she found herself drifting off on the couch as she watched the screen.
She had just started to fall asleep when her cell phone rang, unpleasantly jarring her out of her daze as she scrambled to answer. It was a Hell's Kitchen area code, but not a number she had saved in her contacts, and she could only think of one person that could be. Her anger from earlier hadn't faded much, and she answered against her better judgment.
"What do you want, Ronan?" she snapped.
There was a long pause on the other end, and she wondered briefly if he had hung up.
"Sorry, what?" said a female voice.
Sarah frowned and glanced at the number on the screen again. "Who is this?"
The person on the other end was silent for another couple of moments.
"This is Karen," the voice said finally. "Um…from the post office. I'm trying to get in touch with Sarah."
Karen from the post office. It took Sarah a few moments to remember who that was: the blonde woman who had let her cut in line. The one who had gotten so rattled when she'd seen the photo of James Wesley in Sarah's purse. Sarah sat up quickly, causing her head to spin.
"Karen! Yeah—yes. I—I remember you. This is Sarah."
"You said to call you if I wanted to get together and talk," Karen said, her voice hesitant on the other end of the line.
"Yeah. I'd still like to do that," Sarah said sincerely. In part because she was dying to know why Karen had had that particular reaction to that photo, and in part just because she had been genuinely nice. "When do you want to meet up?"
"Can you meet now, by any chance?"
Sarah blinked in surprise, then glanced at the clock on her wall: it was only nine o'clock, and the prospect of not being stuck in her apartment—alone, jumpy, and painfully sober—was alluring.
"Yeah, actually," she said. "Do you remember that noodle house I told you about?"
Half an hour later, Officer Donovan sat in an unmarked car, sipping his coffee as he watched Sarah through the front window of the restaurant he'd followed her to from her apartment. There were other tables between the window and her, but as people moved in and out of his line of vision he could still see her, sitting alone and fidgeting with her hair. He assumed that was a nervous habit, and it annoyed him. Or maybe it was just the situation that annoyed him.
For the most part, he didn't care what this woman did with her time. He didn't even really care where McDermott was, when it came down to it—all he cared about was whether or not he was about to get put under a more scrutiny than he wanted because of something Sarah was doing. But Ronan wanted to know where she was and who she was with, and every time he reported those details back to him he got a new arrest dropped cleanly in his lap. Little to no work required.
After a while of waiting, his attention was drawn to a woman in a floral dress as she entered the restaurant. She was tall, with long, wavy blonde hair, and she was looking around for someone. Sure enough, she spotted Sarah near the back of the restaurant. The brunette waved her over, and the woman took a seat across the seat from her.
Donovan slipped a small flip phone out of his inner jacket pocket and dialed Ronan's number.
"What is it?" the man answered, pleasant as usual.
"That best friend you were saying to keep an eye out for. You said she was tall and blonde, right?"
"Yeah."
Donovan kept his eyes on the woman sitting across the table from Sarah and a grin spread across his face. "I think we found her."