A silver BMW with Connecticut plates parked at the edge of the park. Reese strolled over to the newsstand and bought a paper, then sat on the bench near the car and paged through it.
The mother and father that got out of the car were middle-aged, well dressed, and deeply worried. When the young lovers walked up from the park, they converged on the girl. Both Lis and her mother began to cry. Clay stood a little ways off, awkward. He glanced at Reese, then looked away.
He looked, just a little, like he wished someone would hug him, too.
After several minutes of fussing, the mother turned to the young man. “You should come back with us, Eddie. Your family’s worried about you.”
He shook his head miserably. “They don’t want to see me.”
The woman stepped away from Elisa, walked over to the boy and put her arm around him. “You’re wrong. I’m sure you’re wrong. Your mother must be worried sick about you.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
She steered him toward the car. The boy shot another look at Reese, but he moved with her.
Reese shrugged. Going home had been one of the options they’d given the boy.
The women got in the car. The father held the back door open for Clay. But before he could get in, he touched the boy’s shoulder and stopped him. “I’m glad you’re coming home with us,” he said, his voice so low that Reese could barely catch it. “But if you’re going to keep seeing Elisa, there are going to be rules.”
Clay shot one last, desperate look at Reese. Then he got in the car. The father shut the door, rolled his eyes, and got behind the wheel.
Reese chuckled behind the newspaper. Rules from Dad. That sounded like an excellent idea.
***
They got take-out and went back to Chaos: Christine, Finch and Bear. They barely spoke along the way. Finch was trying to figure out exactly what to say and how to say it. Christine seemed to be simply waiting. They went upstairs to her apartment in silence.
The dog bounded through the door and immediately sought out the kitten. He found her sleeping on the computer chair and picked her up by the scruff of her neck. She protested, loudly. Finch started after him, but Christine touched his arm. “They’re okay,” she promised.
While he watched with concern, the dog dropped the kitten onto the rug in front of the couch and proceeded to bathe her roughly with his tongue. Smokey continued to protest, in decibels that a body that size should not have been able to produce. Then she rolled onto her back to have her belly cleaned.
Christine carried the food to the kitchen. She tucked the bags into the refrigerator; neither of them was hungry. Finch sat down on the couch. “Bear,” he said quietly.
The dog looked at him. Then he picked up the kitten, carried her over, and dropped her, still complaining, into Finch’s lap.
Harold had never liked cats much, and this one was covered with dog drool. But she was undeniably cute. She sat up on his knee and regarding him calmly with her steel-blue eyes. He reached up hesitantly and petted her. Her fur was predictably damp, but beneath that it was very sleek. She had grown to nearly the size of his hand.
Smokey began to purr, again far more loudly than her size should have allowed.
She licked Finch’s hand several times. Then she walked up his thigh, stepped clumsily down onto the couch, and waved a lazy paw at Bear. The dog obediently took her in his mouth again and carried her back to the carpet. He lay down; she snuggled against his side, still purring.
Finch looked up. Christine sat at the other end of the couch, watching him, waiting. Her blue eyes were wide, patient. Wary.
“She’s cute,” he commented lightly, gesturing to the little cat.
“She has John’s eyes. I’m not sure how he managed that.”
“Coincidence, I suppose.”
“Sure.” She sat back. She was being very careful about the space between them, Finch noted. Consciously careful. Giving him space.
She was ridiculously good at reading him.
Finch looked at his hands in his lap. He had very short fingers, he noted, not for the first time. Good for a qwerty keyboard; terrible for a piano. Not that he’d ever had any musical talent anyhow. He could appreciate music, certainly, but he could not string together more than the most rudimentary tune …
He looked at Christine again. Her own hands were folded in her lap. She was waiting, watching. But the longer his silence continued, the more frightened she became. His words weren’t going to ease her fears any, Finch thought grimly. He opened his mouth, and then closed it.
Christine leaned forward just a little. “How can I help, Random?”
Random, he thought. Prince Random of Amber. Zelazny’s rogue turned ruler. You are the only woman in the world who has ever habitually compared me to a prince, even a fictional one. I’m actually far closer to the Frog Prince of fairy stories. But you don’t see that, do you? You will never see me that way.
“About a year ago,” he began, “before I found you again, we encountered a very talented hacker in the course of an investigation. She called herself Root. We managed to stop her from framing an innocent man for murder. But she got away.”
“Root is the woman in the pictures?”
“Yes.” Finch took a deep breath. “A little over a month ago she re-appeared. She’d learned about the Machine, and about the Numbers.”
“The … ?”
“What you called the Medusa. Although the Hydra would be a more apt description. The Machine.”
“The Machine?” Despite her anxiety, a little smile danced around in her eyes. “No name, not even a project designation number? You just call it the Machine?”
Finch came up with his own wan smile. “You know, I knew that was the part of this story that you’d latch onto.”
“How can you not give it a name?”
“It’s one of a kind. It doesn’t need a name.”
She sighed, exasperated. “And what are Numbers?”
“You are. Were.” Finch started over, from the beginning. He told her about the irrelevants list, the Numbers. He skimmed over how he’d found and hired John Reese, but went into some detail about how they worked. By the time he got back to Caroline Turing and her fascination with the Machine, he was calm and the words flowed easily.
Until he got to Alicia Corwin’s murder. The words started to stick then. But Christine scooted a little closer on the couch, put her hand lightly on his arm, and that helped. Bear left his kitten and came to put his head on Finch’s knee, and that helped, too. Smokey woke, complained loudly, and stalked off to the bedroom.
Finch got through it. All of it.
When he was finished, Christine warmed up the food and they made each other eat, though neither of them had much appetite. She asked a few questions, not the judgmental sort but just to clarify details. She was processing, Finch could see, and it would take a while. Christine on-task, meticulous, methodical, detail-oriented.
In the end, they sat together silently for a long time.
“I should go,” Finch finally said. He was very tired. His neck hurt, and his back, and his hip. “If you have more questions, later on …”
“I’ll call you.”
“She’s not here now, Christine. You don’t need to be afraid yet.”
“I know.”
Finch studied her. She was quiet; her hands, her eyes, her voice. He couldn’t get a read on her. Tiny quick flashes of emotion blinked and vanished. Fear, certainly. Anger. Determination. She’d gone deep in her own thoughts, and she’d shut him out.
She does what I do, Finch thought, not for the first time. Maybe I should make her go out for a beer. Mr. Reese would. But Christine was clearly as exhausted as he was, emotionally and physically. She’d had two days of constant company with Elisa Holland, and now she had the whole story of Root to digest. She does what I do, and she processes the way I do. An unrepentant introvert. That means she needs a minimum of two days of solitude to recover from this. He made a mental note to call her late Saturday and make her go out with him, for a beer or anything else she wanted. No, not call. Just show up and insist. Don’t give her a chance to refuse.
Unless there was a new Number by then. There probably would be.
Still, he might be able to get away for a few hours.
I’ll deal with that on Saturday, Finch decided. He’d need until then to recover, too. He stood up stiffly and looked around for the dog. “Bear?” he called.
There was a pause, and then a distinct two-part thud of the dog getting down off the bed. Bear came back into the living room, carrying the kitten again.
“You do not sleep on beds,” Finch said sternly.
The dog wagged his tail endearingly. He dropped the kitten at Christine’s feet.
Smokey yawned, stretched, and meowed loudly. Then she clawed her way up the front of the couch and settled in for another nap.
***
Carter pushed through the press of people to where Fusco was nursing a beer at the bar. He looked very much alone in the crowd. “Hey,” she said, squeezing in next to him.
He looked at her. “Hey, Carter. Want a beer?” He waved to the bartender.
“Thanks.” She looked around. “Hey, I, uh, I found that file you left for me. I’m sorry about before. I really thought you were pulling my leg.”
Fusco frowned at her. “What file?”
“About Fitzgerald. The kid, the shooting?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t leave you that file, Carter. Last time I saw it …” He stopped, made a face. “Last time I saw it, Mr. Kneecaps had it.”
“Ahh. Figures.” Carter picked up her beer and took a long drink. “I still don’t get it, though.”
“What?”
“After what happened, the girl’s still … you know. The way she acted when you walked into that bar. Like you were her best friend in the world.”
Fusco drank, too. “She’s like that with everybody. Next time you walk in there, you’ll be her best friend in the world.”
“You shot her father, Fusco. I know you didn’t have any choice, but how does somebody get over something like that?”
Fusco looked at her for a long moment. Finally he shrugged. “That’s the kind of girl she is. The kind of girl she’s always been.”
They sat quietly for a moment and drank.
“You’re lucky,” Carter finally said.
Fusco nodded seriously. “I know.”
***
John Reese waited in the car “ Christine’s car “ in the alley outside the Chaos Café. It was dark, and raining again. The café was busy, as usual. Under-thirties, mostly, gathered around their laptops and vast mugs of coffee. He could hear the bass notes of the music from across the street, occasionally friendly shouts, laughter.
There were soft lights on in the apartment on the top floor.
Reese glanced at his watch. Three hours and twenty minutes since they’d left the park together. That was good. It meant that Finch had had plenty of time to tell Christine all the details about Root.
It also meant John had had time to get over being angry about the Donnelly situation. He wasn’t quite there yet; he still didn’t like it. But he was getting there. Yes, he acknowledged, Finch could have stopped it with a single word of disapproval. But given the number of men Christine Fitzgerald dated, that was a bad precedent to set. Screening her dates could become a full-time job.
None of them seemed to last, anyhow.
When he thought about it, someone like Donnelly might do Christine a world of good. He was the steady sort, patient, reliable, even-tempered. He might be a stabilizing influence in her life. And he seemed too smart to leave his dirty socks on the floor, which Reese guessed was a breaking-up offense in Christine’s OCD world.
You don’t get to mock her neatness, he told himself, when you have hospital corners and a drum-tight blanket on your own bed right now. It was no wonder her interested tended toward military men. Uncle Sam had already trained them for her.
And, too, that potential relationship would have been much simpler if it weren’t for the fact that Christine would have to lie to him repeatedly about whether she knew his Man in the Suit. Which would have been simpler if Reese had taken Finch’s first suggestion and simply let him vanish from her life …
He looked up at the apartment windows again. Well, that ship’s already sailed. He didn’t regret it.
He couldn’t honestly even fault Donnelly for trying to poach one of John’s assets, since the agent was completely unaware that she was his asset.
Reese took a long breath. Not as asset. Stop thinking of her as an asset. Christine’s a friend. Finch’s, and mine.
But she is undeniably an asset, too.
It broke all the rules the CIA had trained into him. Asset or friend, not both. You could be friendly with an asset, but that wasn’t the same. It was essential to maintain separation; an agent might be reluctant to exploit a friend if it became necessary.
To exploit, or to sacrifice …
The front door of the café opened, and Finch came out, with Bear on his leash. Christine was with them. They all stopped under the front awning together. Bear looked happy enough, but from their body language, the humans were both exhausted.
While he watched, Christine put her arms around the genius. He hugged her back. Reese nodded with satisfaction. Finch disliked physical contact with most people. Christine Fitzgerald was one of the few exceptions; Will Ingram, his former partner’s son, was the other. Since the kidnapping, Finch had been even more reserved than usual. If he was willing to let himself be hugged, he’d taken a huge step in his recovery.
Finch opened an umbrella, took the dog, and went to his car.
John waited.
Christine waited, too, until the car was out of sight. Then she stepped out into the rain and walked down the street to the little corner store.
She came back out a few minutes later and stood under the store’s awning. She tapped one hand firmly and repeatedly against the palm of the other one, almost as if she was clapping. When she stopped, Reese realized she had a fresh pack of cigarettes in her hand. She opened it, shook out a single smoke, and lit it.
Reese nodded to himself. Christine didn’t smoke often; when he’d first met her, she’s had the same pack of cigarettes for a month. But when she was under pressure, stressed, it was her go-to outlet. There were worse choices she could make.
She leaned against the building and smoked rapidly. As before, she held the glowing end in the curve of her hand, concealing its light from view. An old soldier’s trick, one she’d learned from her father. When the first cigarette was nearly gone, she lit a second from the first before grinding it out against the wall.
When the second cigarette was gone, she field-stripped both butts. But she didn’t return to the café. She stayed where she was for a long moment. Then she pushed off the wall, walked across the street, and came down the alley toward the car.
Of course she knew I was here, John thought wryly.
She got into the passenger seat and closed the door. Before John could speak, she touched her fingertips to his lips. Then she touched his ear, where his earpiece was on but silent. Finally she turned forward, opened the glove compartment, and ran her fingers along the top of it, searching for something.
A very quiet white static began in the earwig. Reese reached up and slipped it out. “You have a jammer in the car?”
“Yes.”
“You might have mentioned that.”
“I was going to tell you when you brought the car back.”
Reese nodded, accepting her gentle rebuke. He’d borrowed the car for a night and kept it for a month. But there was a more important issue: She had protected the car from surveillance, when there was only one person who would be likely to be listening in.
She was shielding their conversation from Finch.
He didn’t have a problem with that, but it was surprising.
“Why didn’t you call me?” she asked, without preliminaries. Her tone wasn’t judgmental or angry; she seemed genuinely puzzled. And hurt.
“You were in Argentina when he was taken.”
“They have airports. And internet.”
“I didn’t know how much you knew then. About the Machine. Harold’s not good at sharing that kind of information, even when it’s important.”
Christine nodded thoughtfully. “I noticed.”
“If it happens again,” Reese promised, “or anything like it, trust me, you’ll be the first one I call.”
“Good.”
Reese studied her. In the shadows of the dark car, her skin seemed much too pale. But her face was calm, her words even. There was rage and there was fear, but they were well below the surface. Her mind was cold and functioning. “So Harold told you about Root. Where’s your head on this?”
“Thermite,” she answered flatly.
“Thermite?”
“I started with find her and kill her. Escalated to find her and kill her with fire. Then to find her, kill her, stuff her mouth with garlic, drive a stake through her heart, cut her head off, and burn the body. Then I dismissed old superstitions and went modern. Find her, kill her, thermite.”
“Always knew there was something I liked about you.”
“I hacked his servers and ended up in a padded cell. She kidnapped him and she’s still running the streets.”
“Not for long,” Reese promised. “We will find her.”
Christine nodded solemnly.
“You can have tonight,” Reese continued.
“What?”
“You can have tonight. Spin your scenarios, indulge your darkest fantasies, wallow in your imaginary revenge. Have at it. Enjoy. But tomorrow I need you to be smart again.”
“I can get her …”
“No, you can’t,” Reese snapped harshly. “You need to get this straight. Root is incredibly dangerous, and she is nothing that you’ve met before. She’s a psychopath ” that’s easy, you’ve dealt with a few of them. But she’s also smarter than you. And outside of Finch, I don’t think you’ve met anybody like that.”
“She’s not …”
“She outsmarted me and Finch at the same time. She completely fooled us, caught us dead flat-footed. Don’t kid yourself; she can fool you, too.”
“But …”
“There is no but, Christine. Listen to me. The knowledge that you have puts you in danger. If Root finds out that you have it, she will come after you.”
“Let her come,” she said with raw defiance.
Reese shook his head. “You think if Root comes after you she’ll try to get information from you. And you think you’ll make her kill you before you’ll help her get control of the Machine.”
“I will …”
“You’re wrong. If Root gets her hands on you, she won’t ask you for information. And she won’t kill you. Root will use you to torture Finch.”
Christine stared at him. Her eyes got wide; her face went paler still. Reese was relieved to see his words get through. And he felt like a complete bastard. She’s sacred. Don’t lighten up. Where Root is concerned, she cannot be scared enough.
“She couldn’t break him,” he went on ruthlessly. “She couldn’t get to him by torturing Weeks ” but she came close and she knows it. If she finds you, someone he truly cares about, she has the leverage she needs. If she can get to you, she can get to him. She can use you destroy him. And believe me, she will.”
Her mouth opened just a little, and her breath came in short little sips. Her pupils were huge, even for the darkness. He didn’t stop.
“So get this straight. I know you’re angry. I know you want to go after Root. You want to chase her, and you think it doesn’t matter if she catches you. You think it doesn’t matter if you throw your life away to stop her. You’re wrong. You are absolutely wrong. It matters. If you care about Harold, then doing this right is the most important thing you will ever do.”
Christine turned and looked out the windshield into the rain. Reese waited, letting her work it through. It took a few minutes. Her breathing slowed, deepened, and he knew that was deliberate, that she was calming herself.
Finally she swallowed. “I could leave. I should leave.”
Reese frowned at her, surprised. It wasn’t a solution he had anticipated. “Leave the café? Your business, your friends? The city?” New York City was the only home she had ever known.
“Yes.”
“And never touch another computer as long as you live?”
Her breath caught on that one, but after a moment she answered, “Yes.”
Her voice was small, sad, but full of certainty. Damn, Reese thought. I knew she was devoted to Finch, but damn. “No,” he said flatly.
“It would work.”
“No,” Reese repeated. “She doesn’t get to win. She doesn’t get to take your life away.”
“If it would protect him … take me out of the equation …”
“That was the first solution Harold came up with,” he told her. Her head snapped around. “To never talk to you or see you again, to keep you safe. I talked him out of it. Don’t make me regret it.”
“But … why?”
“Because Harold needs you.”
She shook her head, bewildered. “He needs me? For what?”
“You connect him to the world,” John told her simply, with certainty. “You’re his Chaos.”
She stared at him. Her eyes filled with tears, and she blinked them back. “Then what do I do?”
“You help us. And you trust us.” He put his hand on her shoulder. Her shirt was a little damp from the rain, and her skin felt too cool beneath it. Her eyes held his, searching, desperate. She was usually so sure of herself, so perceptive. Reese didn’t enjoy seeing her so lost, but it was necessary. She needed to be afraid, of Root and for Finch. But too much fear was an unhelpful as too little. “We know now who she is, what she wants, and how she works. We know she’s coming back. We can stop her, and we will. But you need to do exactly what you’re told, when you’re told. We need to stay coordinated and to limit our exposure. Understand?”
Christine nodded.
“And right now we just need you to watch for her. Just watch. You can’t go looking for her, no matter how tempted you are, no matter how careful you think you’re being. Got it?”
“Yeah.”
He heard a little more certainty in her voice, but it wasn’t enough. He squeezed her shoulder, then took his hand away. “I don’t think you’re very good at doing nothing.” What had Finch said once? You need a purpose. More specifically, you need a job. She needed something, anything, useful to do. Reese considered a moment, rolling over in his mind all the things he might need if Root returned. Her computer skills, certainly, if Finch was out of the picture. Beyond that? “What do you know about guns?”
She looked almost relieved. “Not enough.”
“I can teach you, if you’re …”
“Yes.”
He gave her a fleeting grin. She’d grabbed at the idea like he’d thrown her a lifeline. Always knew there was something I liked about her, he thought again. “But here’s the deal. You don’t carry until I say you’re ready. Right?”
“Fine.”
“Finch won’t like it.”
“Finch doesn’t need to know.”
Reese studied her. Her eyes were calm again, focused, clear. He’d read her exactly right. She needed something concrete and at least potentially helpful to do. If he had any say, she was never going to have to shoot anybody. But backup was a good thing. And Root was damn unpredictable. If Christine was going to have a gun, at least he could be sure she knew what she was doing with it.
“I’ll call you tomorrow, unless something comes up. And, uh, I’ll bring the car back.”
She half-smiled. “There’s no rush. I never drive anywhere in the city anyhow. Parking’s too big a pain in the ass.”
“Then why did you buy a car?”
Christine tilted her head. “Who says I bought it?”
Reese blinked. So the sweet little car was yet another Finch arrangement. “Ohhhhh.”
“When you decide to switch up, bring it back. Until then, don’t worry about it.”
“Fine. Do we need to talk about Donnelly?”
“No. We don’t.”
“I liked it better when you were chasing military men.”
“He was a Marine.”
“Of course he was,” Reese smirked. ”That explains a lot about him, actually.”
“Be nice, John.”
“I still don’t see the attraction.”
Christine shrugged. “He’s forbidden fruit. Almost like trying to seduce a priest.”
“Have you done that?”
“Not as far as you know. But Random’s right “ the fact that he tells me ‘no’ is a big part of the fascination.”
“You don’t like to be told no, do you?”
“Nope. Not about anything.” She reached for the door handle, then hesitated. “Thank you. For clarifying, about Root. I needed to hear it the way that you put it. Random wasn’t nearly … blunt enough. Terrifying enough.”
“I didn’t think he would be.” She opened the door. “Hey, Christine?”
“Yeah?”
Reese held his hand out. “Give me the rest of cigarettes.”
“What?”
“You’ve had two. That’s enough.”
She genuinely smiled. “Kiss my ass.”
He nodded, satisfied. She was herself again. As much as
she could be, under the circumstances. “Good night, Christine.”
“Good night, John.”
She climbed out of the car and walked back to the café.
John watched her safely though the front door, then reached into the glove box and turned off the jammer. He slipped his earwig back in and turned it on, but there was no voice in his ear.
Finch was going to need some down time after tonight. So was Christine. If John was honest with himself, so was he. But they had the girl on board now, fully briefed, ready to go with the briefest instruction. Solidly in the asset column. Root would come back. John was certain of that. But he was one step closer to being ready for her.
He watched the café for a moment longer. It was bright, loud, warm. Christine had disappeared into it. Her own safe haven, her carefully constructed world. She would have abandoned it right now, tonight, to protect Finch. And Finch would have left her, though she was a source of rare joy to him; he would never have seen her or spoken to her again, to protect her. He had left Grace Hendricks that way, for that reason, and though his relationship with Christine was very different, Finch had to know exactly how much it would hurt. And yet it had been his first instinct.
There was a word for a relationship like that, though Reese doubted that either of them would call it by its real name. In his book, it was love, pure and simple.
It was not the kind of blind, self-destroying love that Elisa had for Cash, nor the senseless passion that Teeny harbored for his murderous Holly. It was closer to the love that Rosa Antonucci had displayed: Completely aware of the consequences and yet willing to make the sacrifice without hesitation. Not innocent, not deluded. Honest, wide-eyed, fully informed. Knowing exactly what it would cost. And still willing to pay the price. Any price.
If Jessica had been alive when I got to New Rochelle, Reese thought. He stopped, feeling a sudden sharp pain in his lower ribs. He put his hand there, though it was only a scar now. Thanks, Kara, he thought with mild bitterness. I will never think of New Rochelle without feeling that pain. He shook his head. If Jessica had been alive, if I’d know she was unhappy, in danger, with Peter Arndt …
… he would have asked her to do the same thing. To leave everything she knew, her home, her job, her family, to turn her back on all of it and run away with him. A cabin in Montana, Snow had guessed, and he would have been pretty much right. A little house in the country, a quiet ordinary job, an old car … a home, just him and Jessica and maybe a baby or two. And a dog. Hiding from the Agency, looking over his shoulder forever. Cut off from their pasts, but together.
He could have been happy. He could have been so happy.
He didn’t know how happy Jessica would have been. But he would have asked her. He would have let her make that sacrifice.
He wasn’t sure that she would have said yes. And if she had, he wasn’t sure she would have known what she was agreeing to. Not the way Christine did, or Finch did, or Rosa Antonucci did.
And if she’d been happy with Peter?
Could he have wished her well and walked away?
John closed his eyes. None of it mattered any more. She hadn’t been happy. And she hadn’t been alive. Jessica was gone, and with her his chance for anything even remotely like a more conventional life.
A happy life.
His phone buzzed insistently in his pocket. For every time he had cursed the device in the past, John blessed it now. He opened his eyes as he took it out. “Finch.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Reese …” Finch sounded very weary.
“We have a new Number.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be there shortly.”
Reese put the phone away and started the car. He paused a moment more to look toward the café. Loud, bright, warm. It was about as far from a cabin in Montana as you could get. It was Christine’s sanctuary, her own cabin in the woods, New York City Edition. She’d built it for herself, and she’d damn well earned it.
Christine had Chaos. Finch had Christine. And John had a purpose, and a job, and Finch.
His mouth narrowed into a tight line. Root didn’t get to take any of that away from any of them.
“Thermite,” he mused aloud, easing the car into gear.
“I beg your pardon?” Finch asked in his ear.
John smiled grimly. “Nothing, Finch. Just … indulging a little fantasy. Put some coffee on for me, will you? I’m on my way.”
The End
q95;
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