No 1421
Lincoln Crescent
South Beach
17:30 Hours
Sam went past from mild concern to full-blown worry at the end of the half-hour drive to reach the safe house. It was one of Elsa's beach houses that she had graciously allowed him to stock up with emergency supplies. Michael hadn't made a sound throughout the entire drive, and was now sitting on the bar stool Sam had manhandled him to, like a statue. He hadn't moved or looked up from the marble counter for the past few minutes, during which Sam and Jesse had spent gathering up the fresh water and first aid kit.
"Mike," Jesse said, touching the man on the arm slowly to bring him out of his stupor. "This could go easier if you took the t-shirt off, buddy."
Sam watched the way Michael slowly looked up and blinked, noticing for the first time the assorted medical supplies they had piled up on the counter before him. Then he looked down at himself, taking in the dried blood and the material of his clothes stuck to it.
"Shit," he grimaced. "That's gonna hurt."
"Cut it off then?" Jesse suggested.
"If you can find me a spare?"
Jesse turned around and gave him an inquiring look. Sam nodded to his left. "The second room down that hallway. There should be something that would fit him."
"On it." Jesse declared and went off on his search.
Sam turned his attention back to his unnaturally silent friend. "You lost a little weight, Mikey."
"Prison fare is hardly five-star cuisine, Sam." He said with a crooked smile, and started playing with a painkiller pill container.
Sam couldn't think of anything to say to that, to his surprise. He had known that it was the most likely place Michael could have been for the past year. But a part of him had always hung on to the hope that the man had somehow managed to pull an impossible stunt out of his ass and had stayed out in the open. Hearing the confirmation contrary to what he had been hoping left Sam wordless for a moment.
He started to cut the dirty T-shirt. He wasn't prepared for the patchwork of old and healing bruises, scars and wounds Michael had on his back when one half of the material fell apart.
"Jesus, Mike!"
His trained gaze took in the details despite his shock at seeing them. Most of the bruises were still dark yellow, which told him that those had been recent. The jagged, long gash that went from the back of his hip across his spine was new enough it still had stitches that hadn't yet popped out.
"It was just a brawl, Sam," Michael murmured. "It's fine."
Sam started to cut off the rest of the t-shirt, pulling off the right half that wasn't stuck to Michael. "I don't even want to know what the other guy looks like."
"Best not."
The admission sounded like the other guy had ended up in the morgue rather than an infirmary. Sam said nothing to that, and scratched his head instead to figure out a way to remove the material that was left on Michael in the least painful way.
Michael sensed his hesitation and pulled it off himself with a barely audible grunt, causing most of the dried gashes to start bleeding again. It was then Sam witnessed that most of the skin on his bicep and forearm was torn and badly scraped. There was a patch of skin missing on his side just above the hip, as well.
"Yikes! That looks nasty." Jesse made a face when he came back with not just a spare shirt, but bottles of beer for the three of them and a big tub of yoghurt for Michael. The man broke into a bright grin as if Christmas had dawned and grabbed the dairy product with both hands.
"I was going to take it off slowly," Sam scolded, starting to wash off the blood with a hand towel that rapidly changed from white to red. "Now you're bleeding all over Elsa's furniture."
"I won't for long if you'd just get on with it." Michael had the audacity to advise him in between spoonfuls of his yoghurt.
"Bossy, aren't you?" Sam muttered, but got on with it as he had been told, while Jesse drank his beer perched on another barstool to Michael's right. After three towels and an entire bowl of fresh water later, Sam decided he was clean enough for antiseptic and bandages. Michael's luck had held when he hadn't broken any bones with his crazy stunt, or opened himself up deep enough to need stitches.
"You know, you had us worried all this time," Sam remarked after sticking the last bandage on his side with an adhesive, finally finished with patching Michael up.
"Sorry." Michael ducked his head.
"I'm not trying to blame you, buddy–"
"I know."
"Do you?" Sam frowned, because from where he was standing, it sure as hell didn't look like it. Michael shrugged half-heartedly and scraped the last bits of yoghurt into his spoon.
"Where were you exactly, anyway?" Jesse interjected.
Michael raised an eyebrow at him, the one Sam knew he used when he tried to deflect a line of questioning. "Today?"
"Yeah," Sam said before Jesse could, and added, "Let's start with that."
Michael sighed in a resigned sort of way. "Stuck in a CIA surveillance van, following you guys around."
"That's what I thought," Jesse said, "Were you shadowing our investigation?"
"Yeah," Micheal's admission was very quiet. "They have all your phones, homes and offices bugged–"
"Really? You were spying on us?!" Sam couldn't help but yell indignantly at that, and regretted it immediately when Michael flinched away from him with a wince.
"Wasn't my call, Sam," he said, averting his gaze to fix it on the beer Jesse moved towards him. "Andrew Strong, one of the senior agents, is running the show. I hated doing it just as much as you do hearing about it."
"Why couldn't you just call?" Jesse asked. "Things could have gone a lot easier if you had, don't you think?"
"I know. I tried to make that asshole listen. But, hey! I was just here to play bait. So I was told not so nicely to shut the fuck up and sit aside."
Play bait? Sam frowned. What the hell did he mean by that? Jesse looked over Michael's head and gave him a confused head shake.
"Mike, why don't you start from the beginning?" Sam said, settling on the seat next to Michael with the final beer. He had a feeling there was a whole separate layer to the situation they had yet to learn about. "And I mean the beginning, as in from the moment you handed yourself to that bloodhound they sent after you."
"I will," Michael said, finally opening the beer to take a sip. "But let's wait for Fiona too, shall we? I don't feel like repeating that story twice."
"Fair enough." Sam agreed.
They didn't have to wait long. The sound of squealing tyres just outside the driveway announced her arrival.
"Well," Jesse said. "Speak of the devil–"
"You think I can have another, yoghurt?" Michael said. "Please?"
Carlos exited the car and followed a seething Fiona at a much more sedate pace into the nice beachside villa Sam had charmed out of Elsa.
Throughout the drive there, he had witnessed her going through a tangle of emotions:
First, it had been a form of dissociation, as if she had been caught in a trance where only her and that man, Michael, existed. It had happened the moment she had laid her eyes on him outside the warehouse, their gazes locking onto each other as if they had been connected by an invisible tether. Carlos had been quite taken aback to realise how everything around her, including him, had completely faded from her consciousness to make space for a man she insisted she had long gotten over.
She had been in that almost dreamlike state until she had started Sam's car. Then, as he watched, her expression started to change, twisting into something filled with hurt and hate as the inevitable memories of the past year intruded, reminding her of the mess he had left behind.
It had been a thing of beauty to witness the raging fury that had followed hot in the wake of those memories and the realisation.
She was still simmering in it as they pulled over to the meeting place, and Carlos had no idea what to expect when she finally confronted Michael.
They found the trio seated around the L-shaped kitchen counter just to the left of the foyer. Michael had a different shirt on, a fresh one that looked a few sizes too big, which made Carlos think that it must belong to Sam. It hung on his thin, almost skeletal frame as he continued to calmly eat what looked to be a yoghurt, supremely unconcerned. Carlos knew that loose, indifferent posture was not to be trusted, not in the least. He had already found out the hard way that it was a cover for deceptively fast reflexes, strength and, if he were honest, a touch of madness.
Fiona walked up to the marble counter and came to a halt across from Michael with a stormy glare on her face. He stayed completely still when she grabbed the yoghurt he was eating right out of his hands, but Carlos saw his gaze track her movements like a predator as she chucked it into the nearest waste bin. Jesse and Sam, who were flanking him, shuffled in their seats, displaying great discomfort, as if they were about to become front-row audience to a fiery lover's spat. That particular notion made Carlos feel rather awkward because, as things stood, he was the one who was supposed to be Fiona's boyfriend.
"So, how's the new gig, huh?" She planted her hands on her hips and snarled at Michael. "Are you enjoying yourself? Tell me, Michael, how did you talk yourself out of that one?"
Michael looked up and met her heated gaze with a calm one of his own. "What new gig?"
"Oh please, don't even try that, not with us," Fiona scoffed. "Aren't you busy running black ops for your precious CIA in hellholes all around the world?"
Carlos walked over to the fridge he spied in the corner and grabbed two cold beers. He had a feeling he was going to need it.
"Is this about what Gamble's been saying?" He heard Michael asking in a quiet voice.
"He couldn't shut up about it," Fiona bit back. "What sort of a deal could possibly get you clean and free out of murder, Michael?"
She wasn't pulling any punches. Carlos walked back to stand next to her, and tried not to sigh when she grabbed one beer out of his hand and started gulping it down like a woman parched.
"Absolutely nothing," Michael said, staring at her angry display with a zen-like calm that frankly scared Carlos. "There was no deal, Fi, Gamble was lying."
Fiona slammed the half-empty bottle on the counter, somehow managing not to break the glass bottle into pieces with the force behind it. "Oh yeah? Prove it."
"Check my left foot," Michael said, inviting all of them to duck under the counter to do as the man suggested. Sure enough, there was a police-issue ankle monitor strapped just above his boot, complete with a blinking red light that announced it was actively broadcasting a signal.
"I don't have to explain what that is, do I?" Michael went on, ignoring the surprised mutters that erupted from both Sam and Jesse. "It's there for the show, so the bad guy can cut it off and feel good about himself. I also have an RFID chip in my upper arm so I can tell him all about it and get on his good side. Then there are at least two more implanted somewhere on me, which I don't know about. That's going to lead the agency right into the bad guys' front yard, in which case I catch a bullet in between my eyes for being a two-timing bastard before he's taken down."
As far as tirades went, that was delivered calmly, clearly and with a low, level tone, Carlos reflected, which was what made the meaning of what he just shared all the more terrifying.
"Mike," Sam urged when Fiona just stared, shocked into silence. "What bad guy?"
"His name is Randall Burke," Michael replied after a sip of his beer. "He's a known terrorist wanted by almost all the alphabet agencies around the world."
"Mike, I've heard of that one," Jesse piped up, his face going white in alarm. "He went rogue about a year before your burn notice went up. He's bad news, man."
"Yeah, I know," Michael let out a weary sigh. "I worked with him once in Afghanistan before he changed sides. He wasn't a crazy bastard then."
"What do you have to do with this guy, Mike?" Sam asked.
Carlos watched Fiona while she continued to stay silent, her gaze locked on Michael. Michael, for his part, answered all the questions without breaking eye contact with her, as if he were speaking to her alone. To Carlos, it looked like they were slipping into a world of their own all over again, and it made him uneasy to stay and listen to the unravelling history of Michael Westen.
"Nothing that I'm aware of," Michael replied softly. "But for some reason, he decided to show his face here in Miami about five days ago with Gamble, looking for me, which in turn led agent Strong and his team out on a manhunt."
"And you just let him tag you like this?" Sam's voice was loud with anger and indignation on his friend's behalf. "What was he planning to do, huh, Mike? Throw you in the streets like a piece of meat for a rabid dog?"
"Pretty much, yes." Michael shrugged and drank some more of his beer.
"Why on earth did you let them do this to you?"
Fiona finally found her voice, which came out soft, quiet and full of worried concern. It was as if her previous burning anger had vanished without a trace, gone back to cool inside the volcano that lived inside her as if it had never broken out to wreak havoc.
Carlos had no idea that Michael could turn her volatile nature around like that with a few calm, reasonable words.
"It's not like I had a choice, Fi," he flashed a small, crooked smile at her, one that coaxed out a tiny tremble on her chin. It was one of Fiona's tells that Carlos had only seen making an appearance when she was truly upset. The unease he had been feeling continued to grow into rather uncomfortable levels.
"I'm a detainee in a place where there aren't many laws," Michael continued, drawing more surprised looks, raised eyebrows and a few muttered curses. "When Strong showed up outside my cell, he came with two choices. Either I came along willingly to make sure things went according to his plan, or he just brought me along anyway and stuck me in the local jail until he found a use for me. I chose the option that let me keep an eye on you guys and keep the collateral to a minimum."
"Fucking hell, Mike." Sam sounded like he wanted to go find the man named Strong, and shoot him in the face. Jesse looked like he wanted to wrestle Sam for the first shot.
"We were on our way to get you out when Strong got a call," Michael said, looking directly at Fiona again. "They found Burke in some private airfield back in Lauderdale. He diverted the van. Said whatever happened here was not his problem." He shrugged again and tipped the bottle in his hand all the way back, gulping down the last of his drink. "I disagreed."
"Hence your swan dive out of the moving vehicle," Jesse muttered, shaking his head resignedly.
"But you were out in the field before that too, weren't you? Back at that auto shop?" Fiona asked, cocking her head to the side, recalling their adventure back at the garage where they had been pinned down by automatic rifle fire. "You took that shot, didn't you?" There was no accusation or anger in her tone, only curiosity.
"Yeah," Michael admitted. "Strong had some common sense left then and let me take the shot."
"Michael–"
"None of this was supposed to happen," Michael sighed wearily and buried his head in his hands, cutting off what Fiona was about to say. It was a long moment before he spoke again, and when he did, his tone was low and heavy with a level of self-recrimination Carlos had never imagined he was capable of.
"I thought my past would follow me to jail and stay there with me. The point was to let you guys move on with your lives without my shit throwing curve balls at everyone at every fucking turn. I had enough of seeing people get hurt because of me. I hated that Nate had to bleed out in my arms to drive the fucking point home."
"Mike," Sam was the first to shake himself out of the disbelief and utter shock Michael's quiet admission managed to engulf the rest of them in. He placed his hand on his shoulder and squeezed, desperate in his attempt to reassure him. "That wasn't your fault."
Michael let his hands fall back on the counter and turned to Sam, pinning him with a tired, reddened gaze. "It was though, Sam, wasn't it?" He asked a little brokenly. "Mom's never going to forgive me for that. When Nate died, most of her died along with him. I don't have a family anymore."
Carlos had heard that Michael's brother, Nate, had died during an operation gone wrong. Other than that, he had no knowledge of the relationship the two brothers had shared. Judging by the way the others reacted to the claim as if the man had dropped a frag grenade in the middle of their conversation, he thought they may have been close enough for it to mess the remaining brother up quite a lot.
Fiona reared back with a gasp. "Michael–"
Jesse almost fell off the bar stool in shock. "Mike–"
Sam shook him, letting his head snap back and forth like a puppet's. "That's not true!" He yelled angrily. "Are you insane? That's not true at all!"
Michael smiled resignedly and shook his head, letting all their intense reactions wash over him without reacting any further. Carlos had a feeling this was something he had never shared with the trio before he had gone to prison.
"In any case, now you all know everything there is to know," was all he said when others continued to stare at him in various states of disbelief.
"What happens now?" Jesse was the first to regroup and get back on track.
"Strong should show up any minute," Michael said, checking his watch. "After he's done bagging Burke like he said he would."
Sam frowned. "You don't sound so sure."
"I'm not," Michael said, back to sounding like the trained spy that he was. It was alarming how he changed from one intensely emotional layer to a vastly different, calm, professional layer so easily, and seemingly without much effort.
"The timing was suspicious. I have a feeling Burke was yanking Strong's chain around. I think all this drama involving Gamble and you guys was a set-up," he continued as if he was thinking out loud. "Burke needed to lure me out, or maybe find out where I was like you all did. When he got what he wanted, he went back to the ground. There's no way he would have been careless enough to show his mug around in an airfield of all places–"
"Do we have any idea why this guy was looking for you?"
"I don't know, Sam, and nor does Strong," Michael said, sounding frustrated. "I just have a feeling he's not done. He's going to finish what he started."
"But, Mike–"
"I'll be fine," said Michael, in a light tone of voice meant to put his friend at ease. "Strong will just take me back to Cuba. That place is as secure as it gets. Burke can't break me out."
Before the other three could talk all at once to tell him exactly how ridiculous that claim was, they all heard the sudden sounds of growling engines just outside, announcing the arrival of Michael's jailors.
Michael wordlessly slid off the stool in a smooth motion and walked out of the kitchen towards the entrance of the house. The rest of them followed him out.
"That's not the face of a man after a successful mission," Jesse commented when a man in his early fifties climbed out of the passenger seat of the lead SUV and slammed the door before walking towards them.
"Nope." Sam agreed.
"Westen, wrap up your little meeting," the man, whom they all could guess was Strong, growled, "Visiting time's over."
Michael flashed an insolent smirk and leaned lazily against the door frame. Carlos privately thought that the man had perfected the method of pissing people off to a finer art.
"You got Burke?" He drawled.
"The tip was a dupe." Strong spit out through clenched teeth. "I saw what you all did back there with Gamble before I came over. The only other lead we had on Burke, now dead and gone. It's all your fault." he ended his diatribe, pinning Michael with an accusatory gaze.
Michael straightened to his full height and narrowed his eyes. "I told you I was not going to let anything happen to any of my friends," he said calmly as if it had been a foregone conclusion. An uncontested truth. A promise he had meant to keep. "You should have listened to me."
Strong smiled. It wasn't a pleasant one. Carlos saw it putting everyone on their guard as they closed ranks around Michael.
"Yeah, well, you can commiserate about your good deed back in the camp," he said, waving a hand, gesturing for Michael to join him. "Let's go."
Michael took a deep breath and stared straight ahead, not making eye contact with anyone. "This is it, then," he nodded to himself. "I probably won't see any of you again. Take care."
With that, he climbed the small step down to the patio and strode towards Strong without a backward glance.
Sam, Jesse and Fiona watched Michael climb into the second SUV until Strong closed the door behind him. The black-tinted windows on the SUV finally hid him away from the rest of the world. Carlos watched their expressions.
Jesse's face was twisted into a grimace equal parts angry, frustrated and pained. Carlos figured his own knowledge of Michael's final destination made it painful for him to watch his departure.
Sam had a lost, distant look in his eyes, his face as pale as a ghost's, as if he had just heard his best friend say goodbye for the very last time.
However, it was Fiona's expression that scared and upset Carlos the most.
In the course of the seven months he had known her, Carlos had realised that Fiona used her anger as a means of keeping her true feelings hidden, refusing at every turn to let anyone see what was really going on with her. From the moment of their arrival at the safehouse, he had seen her anger slowly dissolving into genuine concern, which had then led to the feeling of utter helplessness. Michael had disarmed her fury and gotten through to all the vulnerable, caring and loving parts of her with nothing but stark sincerity.
She had folded like a house of cards in the face of it, ending up where she was now, staring into the distance as if all her hopes and dreams had just been cruelly stolen from her.
"You had to go and do the damned right thing, didn't you, Michael–" Fiona's quietly murmured words were unnaturally loud in the thick silence. "Take it all on yourself and not give us a fucking chance to have a say in it…"
"Fi–"
"Tell me something, Sam, Jesse…" She whirled around to face them angrily. Carlos saw the watery sheen in her eyes that threatened to betray her true hurt. He also noticed that she didn't include him in her address. "Wouldn't we have followed that bastard to the depths of hell if that's what it took, had he chosen to run? He didn't have to give up like he did, did he?"
"Maybe that's exactly why the self-sacrificial idiot did what he did," Sam sighed, slumping in on himself as if he had aged a decade in the past few hours. "Did you think about that?"
"He was trying to put an end to all of it, Fi," Jesse added in a barely audible mumble.
"Remind me to throttle him when we see him again, Sam," she said, as if she was convinced that they would be seeing Michael again even when he had made it sound like they wouldn't. "I'll probably shoot him too, you know, just so he learns this kind of bullshit is not acceptable."
"Whatever you need, Fi," Sam said, dejectedly.
Carlos felt like an outsider as he watched them standing together - Fiona in the middle with Sam and Jesse flanking her - a subtle, almost invisible barrier separating him from the trio as they quietly dealt with their shared grief.
A memory surfaced then, something Madeline, Michael's mom, had said to him when he had first met her after two months of dating Fiona.
"Are you really okay with me being here?" Carlos asked, watching Fiona pushing Charlie on the swing. Madeline sat on the bench next to him.
"What do you mean?"
Carlos smiled at the cagey look she gave him. "You know what I mean, Madeline."
"Fiona is family," she said, waving a hand in an unconcerned manner. "And anyone she trusts enough to bring into my home, I have no issues with them."
"I'm not just someone she trusts, you know," he pointed out. "I'm the guy dating the girl your son brought home first."
That earned him her full attention. "Ah, Carlos, is that what this is? Are you asking me how I feel about that?"
"Yeah, I guess so."
"Let me tell you a little something about how I see things," Madeline said with a small, private smile, her gaze fixed on Charlie's joyous laughter and Fiona's grin as they played together. "Fiona – I've always seen that girl like a hurricane. She will come sweeping in, turn everything around you inside out without you ever realising what is happening to you, and will leave you reeling in shock once she's gone."
Carlos thought it was an apt description of the women he had begun to fall for in earnest. More importantly, he was certain that the feeling was mutual.
"Is that what you think your son will feel now that she's with me?" He had to ask, to gauge how Madeline felt about that.
To his surprise, she let out a ringing laugh. "Carlos, Michael's never been a port of call she pays a visit now and then to see how much destruction she could leave behind once she's done," she said as if that was the most obvious thing in the world. "My son had always been the eye of her hurricane, the calm centre in the middle of the storm, you realise? The only safe place a storm can never do anything other than anchor itself and revolve around…"
She hadn't meant to drive a wedge between him and Fiona, or meddle in their relationship, and that much had been obvious. She had gone on to tell him that he probably stood a real chance with her since Michael was well and truly out of the picture. And that Fiona had begun to settle and enjoy more mundane aspects of life.
All the same, Carlos hadn't really heeded her caution for what it was, confident that he was the one Fiona would choose in the end, since he knew he would never disappoint her the way Madeline's son had. He had thought that her tumultuous past with Michael wouldn't stand a chance in the face of a true, committed and loving relationship he could offer her, something he had been sure she had never really experienced with Michael.
It only took a single glance at Fiona's direction, the look in her eyes, to make him realise how absurdly wrong he had been in his convictions.
The Westen Residence
Miami
The Next Evening
Fiona watched Michael's mother fiddle with the nicotine patch on her inner arm, the mug of coffee next to her, entirely forgotten. She had just finished telling her about Dexter Gamble and…Michael.
"He didn't even call…" Madeline muttered, mostly to herself.
"I'm sorry, Madeline," Fiona said, covering the back of her hand with her own, "Yesterday was a rollercoaster ride. He never really had the time before they hauled him back out."
Fiona thought that Michael wouldn't have called even if he'd had the time. There had been something in his tone when he had mentioned Nate and Madeline, something full of grief and a sense of finality. It had caught them all by surprise when he had revealed that little insight.
She didn't know exactly what Madeline had told him that day before they had gone to confront Card. She figured it must have been something irrational and cutting… something hurtful that may have felt satisfying at the time to lash out at the neatest target. It was obvious to Fiona that whatever it was, Madeline was regretting it all. Fiona had seen guilt take her over the moment she had learned how Michael surrendered that day. While Michael had his own way of dealing with his mother, especially when he was exposed to her cruel side, Fiona thought it couldn't have come at a worse time, when he had already been blaming himself for Nate's death. Madeline's wrath would have found its way to cut as deep as it could when all his armour had been fractured.
"How… how is he?"
It was Fiona's turn to look away, unable to face the reluctant hope in Madeline's dulled gaze. No amount of swallowing brought forward the words she could use to describe how her son had looked without making her feel even worse than she was already feeling.
She was saved then by the arrival of Sam and Jesse, as they had called half an hour ago to let her know that they were dropping by to share some news.
Sam went straight to the fridge to grab a beer and Jesse took his time closing the door and walking towards the dining table to find a set across them.
Their demeanour told her that whatever they had to share was nothing good.
"Just spit it out, Jesse," Madeline snapped when the man continued to shuffle on the chair, holding onto a thin folder he looked very much reluctant to show them.
"Alright then, here."
Fiona took the file and opened it. It was a copy of a police report written in Spanish. It was basically a detailed incident report on an attack that happened at a private airfield, along with a collection of crime scene photos of the wreckage of a still-burning cargo plane.
"What is this?"
"I still have some contacts in Cuba from my counterintelligence days," Jesse said, nodding at the file Madeline snatched from Fiona's grip. "That's a police report. There was an incident on the airstrip next to Guantanamo Bay–"
Mention of Cuba was enough to send a chill down her spine. That was where the CIA was keeping Michael. "Jesse–"
"A military cargo plane was attacked by a group of what looked like trained mercenaries, ex-special forces," Jesse went on, hiding his own unease behind a recitation of facts. "Four fatalities, one casualty. They set the plane on fire before they left. All of it took only twelve minutes in total, according to the witnesses and the surveillance feeds. They moved in, hit hard and then took off like clockwork."
"What's not on the report is that Strong is the casualty," Sam added from where he was leaning against the kitchen counter. "I contacted a buddy of mine when Jesse showed me that. According to what he could find, Agent Strong's on life support. They're keeping him there for now since he's too unstable to fly home."
"What about Michael?" Madeline asked, her words barely more than a whisper.
"Not dead," said Jesse, "Or in the hospital."
"So Burke did finish what he started after all, didn't he?" Fiona said, closing her eyes.
"Yeah," said Sam. "They got Mike."
