Title: What If You Catch Me, Where Would We Land
Author: leigh57 
Fandom: 24
Pairing: Jack Bauer/Renee Walker
Word Count: 33,500
Rating/Warnings: R; sex, violence, language, references to physical and sexual abuse, spoilers for the entire series
Betas: adrenalin211 and dealan311
Summary: But every once in a while when the guards were down, he'd click off the filters and let himself have her back, only for a minute. Light of her smile, smell of the skin on her neck, brush of her hand on his chest, checking for wounds. Rich stereo soundtrack of her voice.
Author's notes: A more complete version of these notes follows the story, and I will also be putting up a giant 'thank you' post in my LJ. But I have to thank Adrienne, without whom this story would never have been started, let alone finished, and Kay, who not only made me stunning art but listened to me freak out repeatedly throughout this whole process. And to everyone else who cheered me on, there are not words to convey my gratitude. A giant shoutout to irony_rocks for taking on the insane task of modding this endeavor. Thanks to the brilliant artists whose lyrics I'm borrowing for this story. Specific information about that is at the end.

I need to add one more thing. This big bang has been an entirely new style of writing experience for me. I'm down to the wire, with way less time to edit than I would normally be comfortable with. But this community has been so amazing and supportive and wonderful that I'm going to post what I have, and try to be okay with the fact that it falls short of my usual standards. All errors, large and small, are my own and not my betas'.

Adrienne, this is for you. Really.

~~~~


Chapter One: When you're weary, and haunted


She's walking down the beach, red ponytail flashing back and forth in the wind, bare feet making imprints in the sand that vanish with each fresh wave.

Her flip-flop are looped over her fingers, swinging with her arm as she walks, and there's a smudge of brown sand on the pale skin of her ankle.

The sun is almost gone, hazy gold glow at the horizon, the water sparkling where it catches the last persistent rays of light.

She stops, gazing out at the waves, digging her toes into the damp sand.

He walks up behind her. "Hey. Thanks for the note."

She turns, a smile washing over her face, pink cheeks and lips a little chapped from the breeze. "Hi! You're welcome. But I thought you had to work late." She leans in, quick touch of her lips on his, salt and that cinnamon gum she loves.

"We caught a break." He grins. She's contagious.

She slides her hand down the inside of his arm until she can slip her fingers into his, intertwined.

"Wow. Look at the sky." She nods toward the water and he turns his head to glimpse the final flares of pink and orange that fade even as he watches.

"Do you want to try that new Indian place for dinner?" he asks, still looking toward the sunset. "Or we could-" Suddenly he notices that his fingers feel empty. Cold.

He glances back.

She's gone.

_________________________

The insistent shake of a hand on his shoulder dragged Jack from his exhausted, drug-induced oblivion. His skin was hot all over, burning in his cheeks and the tips of his ears. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to clear the fog from his vision and his memory.

"Still alive?" A tall, thin, sandy-haired man in dirty jeans and a beaten-up t-shirt stood by Jack's bed. He was riffling through a medium-sized red duffel labeled 'medical.' The room rocked back and forth as Jack fought to focus, and then the memories – sharp, stabbing, unwanted – came back in a rush that rolled through his body with physical force, sweat and nausea welling.

"Unfortunately," Jack muttered, closing his eyes.

"Well if you want to stay that way, you'll swallow these antibiotics and let me clean up at least the gunshot and stab wounds. Best thing you can do for the ribs is rest. Does your head hurt?"

The pain in his shoulder was so bad that it overshadowed everything else, but Jack thought for a second and said, "Yes."

"Ricker said to keep an eye out for concussion. I'm Evan, by the way. This is my brother's boat." He reached into the bag and pulled out a bottle of peroxide. Handing Jack the pills and a plastic bottle of water, he said, "Take these and pull off your t-shirt. I let you sleep as long as I could, but you've already got a fever."

That's why he was so hot. Jack took the pills and popped them into his mouth, guzzling almost the entire bottle of water with them. He hadn't realized how thirsty he was.

Thirsty.

Renee's lips, soft on his. Her shy, delighted smile. His thumb, back and forth across the smooth skin and warm brown freckles on her shoulder. The feel of her fingers tracing the shape of his scars.

He wished he had died, that Logan's man had put a bullet in his brain, that the phone call that 'saved' him had never come.

But he was here, on a boat to fuck knows where (did it matter?), and this guy was, for some reason, helping him instead of turning him in. That alone made Jack edgy, nervous. There had to be an impressive amount of money available for information on him, given how badly whoever succeeded Taylor most likely wanted his ass for questioning. Not to mention that if this guy knew Jack's identity and had been following the news at all, he had to know the Russians were on the hunt, too.

"What's your angle?" His voice sounded like someone had put his vocal cords through a paper shredder.

"Angle?" Evan poured a bunch of peroxide onto a large piece of cotton.

"Yeah. What do you want?"

"Nothing. Jim called my brother Patrick and said he needed a favor. Patrick owes him. Case closed. No questions. Are you gonna let me clean those wounds or what?"

"Yeah." Jack flinched as he sat up enough to pull off the filthy t-shirt, tugging where blood had turned into an adhesive. "Where are we going?" The fizz of peroxide hitting his skin helped to keep his wandering thoughts focused.

"Quick stop in Portugal to pick up some supplies and then down the coast to Senegal. You can stay as long as you want, but I'm pretty sure Patrick's mood would improve if you got off in Portugal."

"That's fine," Jack answered quietly, hands digging into the sheets as Evan poured more disinfectant on his shoulder. "Be great if you didn't drop me in the middle of Lisbon."

Evan grinned. "No worries. We stop there, but Pat has some cargo to pick up in a couple of fishing villages that don't show up on most maps. None of my business, but if you're trying to shed an identity, that's as good a place to start as any."

When Jack didn't respond, Evan reached into the duffel bag he'd tossed on the floor and pulled out a t-shirt, some boxers, and a beat-up pair of jeans. He held them out to Jack. "Not sure how these'll fit, but it's what I could find. The shower's two doors down the hallway on your left." He paused, looking uncomfortable. "Patrick asked me to tell you that when you feel up to it, we could use some help packing supplies." He capped the peroxide. "Pat's kind of a hardass. Don't let him get to you. Just whenever you're ready."

Jack rubbed the fabric of the t-shirt between his thumb and finger, studying the blood caked under his nails. His own, sure. But also . . . hers. "What time is it?"

"A little after six. We get started early."

"It's not a problem. I'll be out to help in forty-five minutes."

"Shit!" exclaimed Evan. "Pat didn't mean today."

The slight grin Jack thought he felt preparing to move his mouth didn't materialize, like an almost-sneeze that threatens for a second and recedes. "I can pack boxes. Today I'll sit down while I do it."

Even shrugged. "Whatever." He picked up the medical supplies. "Water in the shower only stays hot for about ten minutes."

"Thank you." Jack watched him stride out, closing the door behind him.

A little after six.

Not even a full day since he'd been in his bed, cool sheets below him and above him, the heat of sunlight and Renee's body. He could hear her breathing, fast and heavy, see how the tiny hollow where her throat met her chest made him need to put his lips there. His fingers. His tongue.

Just over a day since he'd watched Teri bouncing a stuffed animal in her car seat, clutch of Kim in his arms, always a little more power than he meant to pack into a hug.

You're not letting me down. I understand.

But if something terrible happens, and you could have done something to stop it, I don't think you could live with yourself.

He could smell Kim's shampoo, that expensive tea tree stuff she'd started stealing from Teri when she was about thirteen. If he'd known – when he put his hand on her face, when he glanced at his granddaughter smiling in the back of the car – that the goodbyes weren't temporary, that it was the last time he'd ever get the chance to hold Kim in his arms and try to tell her (beyond words) what her presence in the world meant to him . . .

He jammed his fingers into the hole in his left side.

Pain rocketed out from the wound in a rapidly expanding circle.

Familiar. Comforting.

Jack put his hands on his face, holding them there for a few beats before he rubbed harshly (stubble scratching) and took them away, forcing his eyes open. The soles of his feet met the chill of the tile floor.

Already, the desire to live – sense of hope, unfamiliar thrill of looking forward to something – felt like blurry nostalgia, like a scratched-up faded picture from twenty years ago, not twenty hours.

He'd been here before.

He remembered what to do.

_________________________

Jack rented an apartment on a narrow, meandering street at the edge of town. His landlady owned a flower shop a few streets down; she always smelled like a collision of incompatible bouquets. She had renovated the lower floor of her house, breaking it into four one-room apartments for extra income. The room came furnished with a twin-sized mattress on a mass-produced metal frame, a tall chest of drawers, a fridge approximately the size of the one he'd had in college, a microwave, a hot plate, a sink, a small wooden table with one mismatched chair, and a bathroom so cramped that when he sat on the toilet his knees bumped the wall in front of him. Jack paid Mrs. Cachulo weekly, in cash, and he didn't sign a single form. The radical departure from standard procedure in the States amused him, but he assumed that the first week he didn't pay, he'd return from the docks one evening to find that she'd changed the locks and sold his things.

Not that he owned that many things. He didn't.

It took no more than a good word from Patrick to get him a job on a large fishing boat owned by Michael Fielding, an American expat who liked expensive liquor, British university girls on holiday, and reading by his pool. As long as Jack worked from 5:30 a.m. to whenever they made quota, six days a week, Evan reassured him that Mr. Fielding would have no inclination to ask questions.

With his first paycheck, he bought three pairs of work-grade jeans, a couple packs of t-shirts, underwear, and the few items necessary for personal hygiene – toothbrush and toothpaste, razor, soap, rubbing alcohol, some Band-Aids, and a large bottle of Ibuprofen.

To this he added several boxes of crackers and those noodles you could in theory make into a meal by pouring hot water over them. Finally, he went to the one-room public library and, after staring at the half a shelf of books in English, checked out A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Jack knew that, for the rest of his life, no matter what happened, no matter where he went, he had to be prepared to leave in five minutes or less. If not comforting, the idea was at least familiar. He'd spent the better part of the past decade running from something. So he used only the lower middle drawer of the dresser, folding his sparse wardrobe neatly when he came back from his twice-weekly trip to the laundromat. He kept a sturdy duffel bag under his bed, packed with a change of clothes, a gun and extra ammunition, a few bottles of water, and a couple protein bars.

At night, he'd crawl under the cheap scratchy sheets, stretch out with his fingers laced behind his head, and let his eyes wander around the small empty room. No pictures, no books of his own (even from the library, he only checked out one at a time), no knick-knacks.

Nothing useless or beautiful.

He liked it that way, the pure raw emptiness. He had nothing left to lose, and he was determined to keep it that way.

_________________________

Jack sat with his legs hanging off the edge of the pier, sipping coffee from the scratched-up travel mug he'd bought at the thrift store and dabbing at his eye with the neck of his shirt, because he'd managed to get sunscreen in there and it was tearing up and stinging like hell. He couldn't get over the brutally dark blends he'd found at the local market – Kim would have made that face and called them 'motor oil' – but he savored every rich bitter swallow.

It was part of his established routine to arrive at the boat at least half an hour before anybody else showed up, even though that meant rolling over and slamming his hand into the snooze bar of his alarm at 4:30 a.m., often only two or three hours after he'd managed to pass out from exhaustion. Whatever calm he could collect in that solitary half hour made it possible for him to power through the remainder of his day.

The sun was working its way up, but the sky was still a fading greyish-blue, outlining the boats that rocked back and forth in their ties. Jack stretched his feet inside his steel-toed work boots and listened to the morning – the seagulls screaming across the sand (fighting over something), the waves rolling onto the beach and breaking with a rush, the water slapping the long wooden stays of the pier beneath him.

He thought about Chloe – pictured her face in a scrunchy frown while she tried to explain a concept to someone less technologically gifted or breaking into a baffled smile when Prescott popped off with some phrase that surprised her.

He thought about his granddaughter, the feel of her little hand around his finger, the ripple of her laugh when he swung her up over his head, the way she got that look of intense concentration just like her grandmother's when you asked her a hard question.

He thought about Kim. He wondered how angry she was, whether there was a chance she could forgive him one more time. He remembered the joy in her face when he'd said he was coming to L.A., the hope (even belief?) that maybe, finally, they could be a 'normal' family and do all the things normal families do – barbecues and birthdays, trick-or-treating and Christmas.

He'd let her down, again, and for what?

For nothing.

He didn't think about Renee.

He'd broken down on Patrick's boat (once, alone in his cabin in the middle of the night – fever and searing pain and self-loathing so deep that he'd glanced around, searching for ways to die). But that had been beyond his control – all of it so fresh and raw that even his most elaborate defense mechanisms hadn't been able to stem the internal flaying, the deluge of 'what ifs,' the silent torture of imagining his life without the interference of those two bullets.

However, when he'd pulled himself together (icy water on his face and neck, three shots of whiskey to dull the pain enough to let him think), he'd stretched out in bed, staring at the ceiling, and realized that this was his life now.

Again.

Whatever.

There, in the quiet shifting cabin, he'd begun the practice of doing everything within his power to block her from his consciousness. He couldn't erase her (didn't want to), but he could discipline his mind not to visit those places where he asked the questions that held the power to drive him insane. What if he had forced her to sit out the Hassan assault? What if he had closed the blinds in his apartment? What if neither one of them had gone back at all? Would he be sitting across a table from her right now, watching her twist linguine with Parmesan cheese onto a fork and smile while she told him about her day?

He'd never seen her eat. Or laugh. Or read. There were a thousand small ordinary things he'd never gotten the chance to watch her do.

In the worst moments, when the dancing curiosity in her eyes, the feel of her hands in his hair, or the sound of her voice saying his name ambushed his subconscious, he held his breath and bit his tongue while the pain hammered through him. Then he selected a new mental topic.

Baseball. The weather. All the words he could remember from Yeats' 'Easter 1916' (he'd been forced to memorize it in Honors English). What he planned to make for dinner tonight on his hot plate.

With practice and discipline, he could redirect faster. Eventually he became so skilled at re-tasking his mind that the memories of her would appear only in snapshot form before he blacked out the images and replaced them with stock footage.

He hated the weakness in him that prevented this approach from working one hundred percent of the time. But every once in a while when the guards were down, when it was three a.m. and he hadn't even managed to shut his eyes yet, when he could hear nothing but the whirr of the tiny fan he'd bought to offset the summer heat, he'd click off the filters and let himself have her back, only for a minute. Light of her smile, smell of the skin on her neck, brush of her hand on his chest, checking for wounds.

Rich stereo soundtrack of her voice.

I don't know what to say.

So what do we do now?

I'd like that.

What's her name, your granddaughter?

Perfect.

Jack, you need to hear this.

Jack.

Since every time he indulged it ended the same way, he'd get up, open a can of the generic diet soda he bought because it was cheap, drink the entire thing in a few gulps (never quite cold like soda back in the States, even when he'd chilled it in his humming mini-fridge for days), and start the process of blocking all over again.

No matter what he did, he'd still catch himself at the oddest of times (playing cards with the guys, taking out the trash for Mrs. Cachulo, putting more waterproofing on the dented brown leather of his boots) with his fingers pushing the scar where Renee had stabbed him, jagged raised ridges through a layer of cotton.

A permanent reminder.

_________________________

"Jensen, you playing this game?" Rick puffed on his cigar and Jack watched the smoke vanish into the dusk. He glanced at his cards, realizing that once again – despite his determination to be right here right now, screw the past and the future – his mind had wandered someplace way the fuck away from this barely-there Portuguese town where he was currently supposed to be playing a bi-weekly game of poker with the rest of the English-speaking guys who worked on the boat.

"I'm playing." He took a sip of warm beer and reached for a red plastic chip, his finger rubbing the indented edges. "I'll raise you ten."

Nelson laughed, popping the top off another beer. "What makes you so rich tonight?"

Jack shrugged, tossing a wadded up napkin at the fire. The flames licked it up in seconds. "Guess you'll find out."

"Yeah." Nelson reached for two red chips and tossed them on the table. "Raise you twenty. If I'm gonna lose, I can at least be interesting."

"That's not the word for you, jackass," retorted Peters.

"Fuck you," Nelson responded good-naturedly, stretching his feet toward the fire.

"Hey Jenson," said Rick, staring at his cards and not at Jack. "Leticia says Holly Winslow asked you out for a drink last week and you turned her down. There's not a woman who looks that good within five hundred miles any direction. I hear she likes to talk about books, too. The fuck is wrong with you?"

He'd been anticipating the question for days, so Jack's answer slid off his tongue. "She's nice to look at, yeah. But I'm staying away from women for the moment. My ex-wife took the bank account and my Harley and moved to Baton Rouge with the cocksucker who did our taxes. Stupid bitch." The last words tasted gritty on his tongue and his lips, hung in the smoky air while everything went silent, save an occasional pop or hiss from the fire.

"Shit." Rick lit another cigarette off the butt of the one he was finishing. "All the more reason to nail Holly. You're a free man, and that English prick who was here doing the museum study a few months ago says she can do things with her tongue that would-"

"I said I was taking a break, not becoming a monk." Jack took a deep breath, trying to master the crawling sensation that worked its way up his chest into his throat. "Are we playing? If not, I'm going to bed."

"Relax, Jenson." Peters flicked the edge of his cards with his thumb. "You're not the only asshole who's here for a dumbshit reason. I call." He threw his cards on the table.

_________________________

"That was insane what we did today." Rick shrugged into a frayed blue hoodie and threw his wadded up paper towel into the fire. "We should get tomorrow off. That had to have been two and a half times our quota."

"More like three," said Peters. "Thank god Jensen figured out how to jury-rig the engine or we'd have been towed in here by seven-thirty and spent the whole day sitting on our asses waiting for Sam to get the boat fixed." He took another bite of his hot dog. "Where'd you learn to do that anyway? Last time that happened we were out of work for three days."

Jack glanced up from the chair where he was awkwardly positioned, trying to rub antibiotic ointment into a deep gash on the back of his calf, the result of an accidental encounter with a gutting knife. "I told you. You learn a lot of weird shit in the Marines." In another lifetime he'd have washed it with soap and water, slapped on a (hopefully sterile) bandage, and forgotten all about it. But here he was hyper-vigilant about his health, because he couldn't afford the questions that would have resulted from a trip to the doctor or worse, the emergency room in Cascais, twenty miles away. So he took his vitamins, washed his hands before he ate, and tended to injuries before they got infected.

"How's the leg?" asked Rick. He clicked his lighter and the shadows flickered over his face as he took a long drag on his unfiltered cigarette, blowing a cloud of smoke into the cooling evening air.

"Stings." Jack shrugged and stuck on another extra-large Band-Aid, just to be sure. "Be fine by morning."

"Holy fuck. The Orioles beat the Red Sox." Nelson peered over the glow of his laptop screen; he'd been silent for so long Jack had almost forgotten he was there.

"That's bullshit," retorted Rick.

"Final score's right here on CNN, asshole. See for yourself." Nelson tilted the computer in Rick's direction.

"How are you on CNN anyway? You're not close enough to anyone to steal bandwidth."

"Don't have to. My mom sent me one of those prepaid 3G sticks in my last care package." Nelson laughed, reaching for his beer. "You know, the one with the brownies you stole?"

"Well my mommy doesn't send me brownies, so I have to eat yours." Rick rolled his eyes and fished in his shirt pocket for another cigarette.

Jack's mind spun and his stomach jerked unpredictably. Searching for something to occupy his hands, he jammed a stick into one of the jumbo hot dogs Mrs. Cachulo had given him as a present for keeping the grounds so nice and held it over the fire.

Nelson had Internet access. Jack hadn't been able to check the emergency email address he'd left for Chloe in over a month, since the last time they'd all piled into the bed of Peters' rusty 1993 Chevy Silverado and driven into town. Even in the remote anonymous Internet café, he'd jittered on the edge of his chair, shifty, glancing over his shoulder as he typed in his password. When the page loaded to reveal an empty inbox, he'd try to ignore the cold achy nothingness that had spread outward from his chest, chilling his face and fingertips. No news was good news in this case. The message-free inbox was a positive sign that his ad-hoc plan was working, that at least his temporary insanity hadn't gotten his daughter incarcerated or killed.

But so much could have happened since then.

He chugged several generous gulps of his beer and said (willing the pitch of his voice to be low and casual), "Hey Nelson. Could I borrow your computer for five minutes to check my email? I'll spot you twenty when we start playing." Slow down. Make it seem like you barely care. He grinned and tipped his beer back again, although the alcohol was starting to make him nauseous. "I should make sure there's not a message from my lawyer saying my ex has found the other bank account."

"Sure. Take your time." Nelson walked over and handed Jack the computer. "I want that twenty though. You kicked my ass last week."

"Deal." Jack took the laptop and tilted the screen up, discreetly shifting to make sure that the other three men couldn't see what he was typing. Then he quickly loaded the page and entered his name and password. He was so edgy it took him three tries to get the password right, and he had a brief flash of panic when he thought it might lock him out before his inbox popped up.

From: HR47013@netstar.net
To: HR28956@globalink.com
Re: I didn't know what else to do

His heart slammed. He clicked the subject line without thinking but surveyed the guys before he returned his eyes to the screen. They were oblivious, munching on hot dogs, arguing about a baseball game they'd somehow managed to catch last night on Nelson's barely functional 13-inch TV.

Jack dug the heel of his boot into the dirt and read the message.

Jack. I don't know a good lead-in for what I'm about to say. Renee's alive. I got an encrypted message from her early this morning. I don't know any details, but she's been in Witness Protection. She didn't say where. She doesn't want me to find her.

The words wiggled. There was an odd, high-pitched noise that seemed to come from inside his head and very far away at the same time. He tried to swallow, but his throat was so dry that the motion failed and he coughed twice, lungs burning. He blinked and kept reading.

She's ditching WP. She didn't say why she decided to do it now, but she's flying to London on Tuesday the 27th. She'll be at a sports pub called Euston Flyer (it's in King's Cross) at 22:00. She says she's going whether you show up or not. She knew I'd tell you even though I think it's a terrible idea.

He put his hand to his lower left side, felt through the fabric for the uneven ridge of scar tissue there.

I know you're going to think it's not true. That's what I thought. But I did some checking. A lot of checking. Jack, she used codes that were active when Tony resurfaced. Codes that only people at the top would have known. Renee, Larry, maybe Janis. That's it. I only have them because I was brought on with Level 6 clearance. She also made a couple references to the day Hastings called her in on Red Square. Cole and Hastings are the only other people alive who have that information.

His mind was working some brutal fucked up distortion of the stages of grief.

It wasn't true. It wasn't.

He heard the pop of a beer bottle top and Rick's voice yelling, "That's a cocksucking call! He was safe."

He'd held her in that taxi. He could see her eyes now, every time like the first, visceral repeat lashing of his insides. He could feel her hand on his face, every part of her body trying to talk to him because she didn't have enough air in her lungs to use words anymore. He remembered the last time her eyes had fallen shut, how her body had gotten more heavy in his arms.

It had felt like giving up, like losing.

It wasn't true. It wasn't true. It wasn't-

But each time he repeated it inside his mind, forcing himself to hear the words even though he couldn't say them out loud, Chloe's voice went into combat with his own. The pure reason of her neatly typed black on white words on the screen in front of him. The fact that she never would have sent him a message at all if she had the slightest doubt that Renee was actually alive.

"Hey Jenson. What's up with you? You look like you're about to puke." The circle of light at the end of Rick's cigarette grew brighter and rounder as he inhaled. "Your ex clean out the other bank account to buy her new guy an Omega?"

He could have puked (easily), but instead Jack made the face they'd forced him to practice for weeks before they sent him undercover. Engaged neutrality, his training officer had called it. When he was as close as he was likely to get under the circumstances, he took a chance on his voice and said, trying for a combination of disappointment and apathy, "Not yet. Give her time." Good. Steadier than he'd expected. "One of my stocks went south. I'm supposed to tell my broker what to do with the forty bucks I've got left."

"You can lose it playing poker with me," announced Peters, sardonic. The cards snapped together as he shuffled them, corners cracking.

"Deal. I'll be there in two seconds." He ran his trembling finger down the track pad to see the final part of Chloe's message. Normal. Act normal. "You ready for me to clean you out? I gotta make back the five hundred bucks I just lost." His eyes dropped back to the screen.

I wish I knew another way to do this, but you of all people know how she is. She's going. I thought you should know.

As long as I'm sending this, I'll make an awkward subject change to say that Kim and Teri are fine. I talked to Kim last week. Teri's taking ice skating lessons and playing an aardvark in her preschool play. Apparently she even knows how to spell it. Stephen got a promotion – he's assistant head of surgery now.

Jack rubbed the edge of his fingernail over the laptop's smooth cool plastic, picturing his granddaughter in an aardvark costume. His heart was beating so rapidly it made him feel sick.

I know you'll go if this email makes it to you. Just be careful. Everything's fine here. They're surveilling me but they've stayed out of my space since a few weeks after you left. Don't answer this unless it's urgent. Take care of yourself.

Love, Chloe

With laser focus, committing as much of it to memory as he could, he read the entire email one more time. His finger shook when he hit the delete key and closed the window. He allowed himself three more long breaths that seemed to rattle and shake in his lungs before he closed the laptop and walked over to join the others.

"Not forgetting our deal, right?" Nelson asked, shoving the computer back into its hippie flower-colored sleeve, a gag gift from his younger sister.

Jack sat down at the picnic bench near the fire, his knees iffy even though it couldn't have been twelve steps from his chair. "Not a chance." He yanked the bottle top off one of the fancy beers that had also come in Nelson's latest care package. Lifting the bottle to his lips, he closed his eyes and swallowed convulsively as the icy sting of carbonation amplified in his throat which each gulp.

He didn't realize he'd finished it until he opened his eyes again and found Peters staring at him, amused. "You won't be conscious long enough to make your money back if you keep that shit up."

Jack shrugged and picked up his cards. "I was thirsty. Let's do this."

_________________________

He didn't go to sleep that night.

At 3:34 a.m. he sat at the wooden table in the dark, swirling a spoon in the cinnamon spice tea he'd made for himself hours ago and listening to the occasional squeak or snap of the building settling.

His face was sweaty, his stomach burning. The five Advil he'd tossed back the second he'd closed the door behind him had barely taken the edge off the pain that pulsed at the base of his neck and radiated up until it exploded behind his eyes.

He hadn't missed heroin this badly in a decade.

After a few more minutes, he forced himself to drink the cold tea in a few nauseating gulps. Then he walked quietly into his tiny bathroom and dampened a washcloth with cool water, holding it to his face and neck. He stripped off his sweaty t-shirt and threw it at the hamper on his way back to the table.

When he sat down again, shivering a touch as the fan blasted his damp skin, he replayed Chloe's email in his mind. In less than a minute, those few paragraphs had destroyed all the intricate defense mechanisms he'd spent months constructing and perfecting. Now, rather than kicking into automatic deflection mode when the word Renee snuck its way into his mind, he was working to make it inhale-to-inhale through the onslaught of memory that assaulted him from every corner of his consciousness.

He could see the stubborn jut of her chin when he'd slammed her against the back of Emerson's van. He could smell the perfume she'd been wearing when Hastings called her in, the way it had lingered in the car even after she slammed out, determined not to let him see how much his attitude was breaking her. He remembered the socked-in-the-gut feeling, how he'd wanted to put the entire operation on pause so he could take five to make her get it.

Mostly, as the fan dried the sweat on his face and the headache finally began to recede, he heard her voice. He'd tried so hard to shut it off, drown it out.

I don't have anything. Anyone.

He didn't either.

Now that the shock of Chloe's email had dulled a touch, at least a dozen emotions fought a turf war across the exhausted landscape of his mind.

Behind the euphoria of knowing that she was alive, flashes of anger exploded and faded, moving around and melding into the confusion.

He had nothing but questions. Why would she risk her safety like this by contacting him now? Even if he went to her, what was her plan? How was he supposed to keep her as safe as possible now that she'd clearly decided safety wasn't her top priority?

He got up to put on water for another cup of tea; his hands trembled as he filled the kettle.

When he allowed all the dissonant thought fragments to slow down and settle, two central ideas emerged from the chaos.

He needed a plan.

And god, he wanted to see her.

~~~~

Chapter 2: I lie awake and try to recall how your body felt beside me


Something was wrong with the lemons.

Their scent, tart and tangy, hung thick in the air around her, but it wasn't pure. There was something underneath, a smell that reminded her of-

She couldn't make the connection before a cold spike of pain pricked her arm and the defective lemons vanished into the dark.

_________________________

She was floating, warm and comfortable. A soft, swishing whir whispered in her ears, filtered down her back in a lulling vibration.

But . . . she was forgetting something. This thought darted at the edges of her consciousness, flitting like the tiny white butterflies she used to follow in her backyard at dusk. She reached for it with her mind, grasping, trying to keep up as the elusive memory swooped at an angle and feinted left.

She was still playing shadow tag when again she felt a chilly stab on the inside of her elbow and she had no choice but to let the thought rush upward and escape.

_________________________

Her chest was on fire.

Renee opened her eyes, cringing as her pupils adjusted to the glare of the ceiling lights. She had to breathe in tiny shallow gasps, but she worked to press the pain inside so she could figure out what the hell was going on. Shifting her eyes a little, she saw the reflective metal of a railing on the side of her bed. Beyond that, a small brown table (the kind where they tried to make the plastic look like wood grain) covered with gauze, tape, and several bottles. She couldn't read the labels, but there was a great deal of black type and multiple fluorescent orange and green warning stickers. The only other thing she could see was an IV stand, holding two plastic bags that dripped into a tube, rhythmic.

Explosion, shattered glass, blood, no air, Jack's hand on her neck and his voice in her ear.

Oh god, Jack.

Despite the pain that made her chest feel as if it might burst open at any second, she tried to sit up. Out of nowhere, a hand hit her shoulder, pressing her down. Firm, but not threatening.

"Stop. Even if you could make it up, you'll pass out in ten seconds. Lay back and I'll get you some pain meds."

"No, please-" Her voice was a rusty croaking whisper, but she was scared to tighten the muscles required to clear her throat. "Where's Jack?"

"Ms. Walker." Renee squinted to bring the source of the voice into focus. A dark-haired twenty-something woman in standard blue scrubs, wire-rimmed glasses, hair pulled back.

"Where-" The pain morphed into a rolling tide of nausea. Beads of sweat rose prickling on her chest, over her scalp and down the back of her neck. "Is. He?"

The woman (Renee assumed she had to be a nurse) took a step closer, her hand still on Renee's shoulder. "Listen carefully. I'm under orders to sedate you the second your level of agitation indicates you could hurt yourself, and you're already dangerously close." She moved her hand to Renee's wrist, pressing for a pulse. "If you want me to tell you what's going on, I suggest you close your eyes for a minute so you won't vomit, take a few deep breaths, and stop trying to move. Understand?"

Renee nodded.

"Good. My name's Gretchen. I'm a nurse with the FBI." She walked over and fiddled with something on the wall. The lights dimmed, and the hammering in Renee's skull became slightly less audible. "You're in the medical wing of our Covington facility."

Covington.

The place that wasn't on the tourist maps, in the brochures, that didn't show up on any Internet search under 'FBI.' The place Renee only knew about herself because she'd spent almost a decade as a field agent.

The place they held people for recovery and/or training before releasing them into Witness Protection.

Renee shut her eyes and felt for the fabric under her palm, scratchy and cool. A demon scream swelled inside of her – the condensed sound of rage, panic, frustration, and helplessness.

For at least a full minute, she concentrated only on the sheet under her hand, the faint back and forth friction of her skin on cotton. When she trusted that words and not the scream inside would come out, she whispered, "Witness Protection then. We'll get to that in a minute. Where's Jack?"

_________________________

One windy grey Tuesday morning, Renee walked the long tiled hallway ten times each way, chanting the word "breathe" in her head to distract her from the burning in her stitches. When she made it back to her room, sweaty, her head pounding, even the starchy white hospital sheets on the bed looked inviting. She made herself sit in the chair instead, because that kept the call button a few steps further away, lessening the temptation to ask for more meds. As she'd predicted, the acute pain lasted only a few minutes before it began to slink away, replaced by an achy throb that she found irritating but bearable.

She ate a bowl Frosted Flakes – mental eyeroll about how this was living on the wild side here, a step up the hospital's culinary ladder after oatmeal and plain Cheerios – and read the boring mystery Gretchen had left her (something about a forensic pathologist who had visions) until she felt strong enough to get up and take a shower.

That afternoon, a tap on the door startled her out of her doze. Still in the chair (she found herself determined not to get in bed except at night), she pushed up to a more vertical position.

"Come in."

A balding, middle-aged man in a dark suit walked in, the heels of his shoes louder on the floor than the Crocs or sneakers she'd become accustomed to hearing. He had a deep mahogany briefcase in one hand and a thick folder tucked under his other arm. "I'm Glen Owens. Gretchen says you've made enough progress to get to work on your relocation file."

She pushed her palm into the smooth cotton of her sweatpants. "Good. Let's get started."

He grabbed the portable brown table and wheeled it over. Then he dropped the briefcase and opened the folder, spreading it out on the Formica in front of her. Renee stared at the stack of white pages, black type, no wrinkles in sight.

"Your name is Ashley Martinson," said Glen.

Ashley.

The name of the short, dark-haired cheerleader who sat next to Renee in tenth grade biology – citrus smack of Juicy Fruit, ripped jeans, and notebook doodles of dolphins, whales, or John Stamos's name with a heart beside it. She'd gotten pregnant the following year and dropped out of high school to get her GED. The last time Renee saw Ashley, she was buying diapers and chocolate-chip toaster waffles at Safeway.

"Ms. Walker?" He sounded uncertain. They'd probably warned him about her – unpredictable, uncooperative, 'handle with care.' "If you'd like me to go over the details with you-"

"No, thank you." She smoothed her thumb over the corner of the paper. "Leave it with me and I'll get started. How soon can I leave?"

He looked more at the edge of her hair than into her eyes (everyone did, here, except Gretchen). "You're scheduled to testify a week from Friday. Once that's over, you'll be out of here as soon as Dr. DeWitt green-lights the move."

She nodded. Minimizing words seemed like a good idea at the moment.

"I'll let you get to it. My number's in the file if you have questions or need clarification on anything." He picked up his briefcase, eyes darting toward the doorway.

"I appreciate your time. I'll call if I have a problem."

His loud shoes echoed as he tapped down the hallway. Renee looked at the top page of the stack, realizing (fingers digging into her upper arms as she hugged herself) that she would probably never again hear her own first name.

And Jack was the last person who had said it.

_________________________

They moved her into a 1400 square foot two-bedroom rambler – blue-grey with burgundy shutters and a matching door – on a dead-end street in a sleepy Flagstaff suburb.

Pine Hollow Drive.

In some super secret compartment of herself she wasn't ready to think about at all, she had to acknowledge she appreciated the hollow part.

It was already dusk when she pulled her green 2007 Civic (careful conversation about what type of car a communications assistant could afford, given her 'mortgage') past the moving truck and into the driveway. She smelled barbecue smoke and fresh mulch. A couple of preschoolers on Big Wheels blew past her on the sidewalk as she gazed around, absorbing the neighborhood.

Evergreen trees, neatly mowed lawns, daffodils and marigolds, porches where silver-tasseled pink bikes parked by covered grills and discarded scooters rested by scratched helmets.

She pulled her briefcase, her purse, and the empty McDonald's bag (grease spots and smell of salt) out of the passenger seat and walked toward the front door, scuffing her feet against the sidewalk the way her mom had always told her not to when she was little. Across the street, a small sandy-blond girl with what looked like a Twinkie in one hand and a Power Rangers helmet in the other skipped down the stairs from her front porch, stuffed three quarters of the Twinkie in her mouth all in one bite, and strapped the helmet under her chin, shoving hair away from her face.

Renee tightened her grip on the white paper bag, crinkling it beneath her fingers, because what she felt wasn't the bag but the cool wooden border that framed the picture of Teri she'd lifted from the box in Jack's apartment. She wondered whether Teri lived in a neighborhood that looked like this, whether she liked Twinkies or Power Rangers, whether she still had a trike or if she'd graduated to a two-wheeler.

She wondered what Kim told Teri about her grandfather.

The achy softness in Jack's voice played in her mind, the way he could smile with sound.

Teri. Kim named her after her grandmother.

She watched the little girl slam up the kickstand and pedal away with only one hand on the bars, licking Twinkie remains off the opposite thumb. The image went blurry as the girl grew smaller, wheels spinning into the distance.

Renee put a sweaty hand on the door to her new life and pushed it open.

_________________________

She stood by the window and watched the moving van pull away, breaking up the glow of the streetlamps as it drove under each one in succession. She wanted to leave the room dark, but Glen's training booklet had apparently had some effect, because she realized it would seem weird to the neighbors if the woman from Seattle who just moved in didn't turn on any lights to unpack.

She flipped the switch to illuminate the living room and walked into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of Merlot. The wine was unexpected, a housewarming gift from Evelyn, the seventy-something woman who lived across the street and a couple houses over. (Ashley? she had said, restraining the Sheltie that bounced around her knees. That's a beautiful name. You let me know if you need anything. You name it, I've got a can of it in my basement.)

Renee kicked off her shoes and took a swallow, enjoying the bitter tang that washed over her tongue and coated the back of her throat.

In the bedroom, she shoved aside several boxes labeled 'clothing' (she wasn't up to facing what she might discover in there) before she found one that said 'sheets' in neat black Sharpie. Ripping the packing tape aside, she moved the stiff cardboard flap and lifted out the sheets that some data analyst with Level Six Clearance at the Washington Bureau had chosen for her.

They were pale yellow, with tiny pink and green flowers inside a paisley pattern, and they smelled like cardboard mixed with one of those floral laundry detergents.

Apparently Ashley liked flowers.

Renee stood for a long time, holding the foreign fabric in her hand and trying to make her mind blank, trying not to think of her own plain navy sheets that smelled like original Tide, trying not to think about Jack's soft ivory sheets that smelled like . . . him. When the sharp bark of the lab next door caught her attention, she sucked in a deep gulp of air, held it while she counted to ten, and blew it out, slow and deliberate.

Then she flicked the overhead light and threw the sheet across the bed, yanking it tight where it didn't want to stretch.

_________________________

After several days spent discussing her skill set, her comfort level with various types of work, and the obvious concern about putting her in a position where there was a greater risk of her being recognized, Glen had found her a job as a communications assistant for a small public relations firm with an office just outside the city center. The bushes that lined the walkway to the main entrance were all trimmed into perfect rectangles. Renee walked along, her low heels clicking on the concrete, and wished she could find one branch that was taller than the others, or that stuck out sideways to disturb the symmetry. But the landscape people must have made a pass over the weekend, because each verdant polygon looked exactly the same.

Approaching the Windex-spotless front doors, Renee caught a glimpse of her reflection in the shiny unsmudged glass. Below-the-knee navy skirt, skin-toned stockings, ivory button-up blouse that looked grey in the tinted glass, navy pumps that matched her skirt. Her dark brown hair was pulled back, and she found herself grateful that the early morning light reflecting off the doors made it impossible to see the deep brown of the contacts that covered her eyes.

She tried to remind herself that she'd worn plenty of less-than-comfortable clothes at the FBI – rayon pantsuits and shoes that pinched her toes. But she also remembered the soft denim of well-worn jeans, her Glock against her hip, stretchy cotton shirt that she didn't even feel when running after a suspect or staying up all night trying to prevent terrorists from taking out half the nation's power grid (for example).

Here, she wasn't responsible for saving . . . anything. She would show up at 9 a.m., take an hour-long lunch break from 12-1 (Glen had spent like five minutes detailing his research on the pros and cons of each restaurant within walking distance, as if where she'd spend lunch break for the rest of her mundane life was high on her list of concerns) and go home at 5:30 sharp.

She'd never had regular hours in her life.

Her mind slipped back to one particular all-nighter with Larry, Janis, and Tina. The four of them, high on quadruple shot lattes and Snickers, each at their own computer, working their asses off to sort through the data but sometimes exploding into fits of hysterical laughter over a funny name or street address.

They'd found the key piece of information at something like 5 a.m. Renee remembered trying to yell to the others with her teeth stuck together, noise muffled by a mouthful of sticky-sweet peanuts and caramel.

Fuck. She had to stop. It was gone, that life, and a huge part of the new one waited for her behind the spotless amber-tinted doors.

She grabbed the handle and walked inside, wishing she hadn't eaten that extra-large bowl of Chocolate Cheerios for breakfast.

_________________________

Her first day at Pan Communications Inc. felt more like five.

Renee followed her boss, Kelsey Iverson (5'2" if that, gold hoop earrings, and a flowing gypsy skirt with a lavender paisley pattern) through the office tour, nodding or responding with "okay" or "sure" at the appropriate moments. She'd been psyching herself up to confront the expected sea of cubicles, but when Kelsey stopped at one and announced brightly, "Here's your home base," Renee had to squeeze her fingernail into the pad of her thumb until she idly wondered if she'd drawn blood.

She glanced around, absorbing the spectacular lack of personality in the 5 x 5 space. Computer on a small Formica corner desk, telephone, credenza, file cabinet, and what appeared to be one of those expensive ergonomic chairs you could adjust to provide lumbar support or . . . whatever.

At the FBI, she'd never spent enough time sitting to need a fancy chair.

Kelsey scribbled something on a pink sticky note and handed it to Renee. "Here's your login info. There should be a file on one of our new clients in the dropdown list from the D server. The company name is 'Bread In Motion.' Don't ask – we're talking to them about that. Take a look at the company profile and start to brainstorm ideas. We'll meet tomorrow morning to work out a more concrete project plan. No stress. You'll have lots of time to settle in." She was about to walk away when she whipped around and exclaimed, "Oh! Come meet Emma. She's next door."

Renee stepped a few feet sideways and found herself staring into a cubicle that, while set up precisely like hers in terms of amenities, could not have been more different in aesthetics. Emma's computer desktop was a high-res photo of two little girls, maybe five and seven, with their heads resting on the soft fur of a large chocolate lab. A framed wedding photo stood next to the computer, and a corkboard on the wall was covered with a mishmash of thumbtacked photographs, interspersed with random company announcements. Several coffee cups dotted whatever free space was available (which wasn't much). One of them featured a pale, grumpy-looking cartoon woman, and the black lettering read, "Do I LOOK like a people person?"

The edges of Renee's mouth turned up a little.

"Emma, this is Ashley Martinson, our new hire from Seattle. Her cube's next door. Can you help her out if she needs anything?"

"Absolutely. Nice to meet you." Emma extended her hand and Renee took it automatically. "It'll be nice to have someone over there again. Not that I was sad to see the jackass you're replacing leave."

"Emma." Kelsey sighed, rolling her eyes a little in resignation. "Sorry. We'd fire her if our three biggest clients weren't convinced she's a genius." Her Blackberry beeped and she glanced at the display. "I'm late for my 9:30. Please try not to scare Ashley away on her first day? I'll check in with you later." She disappeared around the plastic corner of the 'room.'

"You'll get used to her," said Emma. "She just has too much energy for one person."

Renee didn't have a response to that, so she shifted her weight uncomfortably and said, "I guess I'll go have a look at that file." She could already feel the beginning of a headache tightening the back of her neck, spikes of pain expanding upwards.

"Seriously, interrupt me if you need anything at all."

I need to go home, thought Renee, but she smiled her most practiced fake smile (it was getting a lot of use lately) and replied, "Thanks." She rubbed the back of her neck.

"Headache?" Emma asked, and Renee tightened her stomach muscles, irritated that she was already relaxing her guard too much.

"Just a touch."

"Coffee machine is a quick left at the end of the hall. It's one of those pod things, and Kelsey orders the best flavors. Try the pumpkin spice. Mocha java is pretty fantastic, too."

"That sounds amazing," Renee sighed, the first sentence of the day that felt like truth. She headed down the hall to make herself a cup before she got started on the unbearable excitement of her workday.

_________________________

It was never the predictable things that got her – cop shows on TV, a couple walking hand-in-hand along the sidewalk, Hallmark commercials, all the dating gossip at work. Alone in the pre-dawn hours at Covington, pain lancing through her chest every time she breathed or moved, Renee had considered what would be the hardest to handle after her relocation.

She never would have guessed that the worst part of her new job would be Emma's radio. It played every minute of every day, inescapable unwanted soundtrack to her new existence.

Renee had grown up in a house filled with music. Her dad played acoustic guitar in an ad-hoc band with three of his friends, so there had always been Clapton, David Gilmour, and Carlos Santana records vibrating in the living room, sneaking under the crack of her bedroom door even when she tried to hide. Her mom had loved classical, so when it wasn't blues or rock, it was Beethoven and Rachmaninoff.

Now, on a good day, Emma listened to the local hip-pop station that played Ke$ha, Katy Perry, The Black Eyed Peas, and Bruno Mars on an endless repetitive loop. On those days Renee could (for the most part) focus, using the insane concentration she'd learned from years at the FBI to more or less 'profile' clients, figure out what they wanted and how they wanted it.

On bad days, Emma would turn on some station that featured mostly Alison Krauss, Sarah McLachlan, Patty Griffin, and fifty other female singer/songwriters likely to perform at Lilith. Renee would sit, hands clenched, chewing her lip and staring at her computer screen, as the words to 'You Are Not Alone' or 'If Wishes Were Horses' made their muffled distorted way through the thin cubicle wall.

And at that point, no matter how hard she fought and tried to redirect, she thought about Jack.

She knew the government hadn't caught him – that would have made the news. But where was he, right now? Was he listening to music, too? Did he jolt awake every night (like she did), struggling for air, hands on his face until reality regained control? Did he have crazy dark coffee to drink in the morning, help him prep for the day? Had someone taken care of all the holes in his body?

On Friday nights, after she'd made herself a bowl of tomato soup, rinsed out the single dish and put it in the dishwasher, after she'd changed out of her work clothes into sweats and a t-shirt, after she'd watched CNN for a while (because she could never be sure), after the sun had slipped away and there were no more neighborhood noises of thudding basketballs, chattering kids on bikes, or beer-fueled conversations around the grill, after it was so dark that she couldn't see the pine trees from her living room window unless the moon was almost full, Renee would pour herself a glass of wine, click the room into darkness, and sit smushed into the corner of her couch, knees clutched to her chest.

And she'd let herself cry.

_________________________

On Wednesday nights, Renee had dinner with the McPhersons, a sixty-something retired couple who lived four doors down. Their house always smelled like cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves, because when Jed wasn't painting exotic birds he'd whittled from sticks he picked up in the back yard or tinkering with his '56 Ford Thunderbird, he was baking. The first time they'd invited her (the phone had rung during one of her Friday night breakdowns – Renee remembered holding her breath for a count of five before she picked up, smearing tears over her face with the back of her sleeve, trying to level her voice when she finally managed, "Hello?") she'd almost said no, because to be honest, making it through each day at work was about seven and a half more hours of interpersonal contact than she was in the mood for. But Jed had already mowed her lawn twice and refused any sort of payment, and Eileen insisted that if she didn't have someone else to help her eat the cherry tart he'd just made she'd gain five pounds, so Renee relented.

It was also the fastest way to get off the phone and continue with her regularly scheduled breakdown.

Sitting in the warm glow of their dining room, watching Jed pile her plate with more eggplant parmesan, grilled asparagus, and fresh-from-the-oven garlic bread than she would ever manage to eat, Renee had to admit that she was starting to look forward to this one night a week where she could be with other people and yet remain quiet inside.

"Is your car still making that noise?" Jed handed Renee the pitcher of water. "Sorry. I meant to get some of that pop you like but I got sidetracked before I made it to the store."

Renee smiled. "You don't need to buy me pop!" The word felt unnatural in her mouth, but Glen had beat it into her. Pop. Not soda. Pop. "And I'm not sure. The buzz seems to stop if I hit 25 or 30."

"If it's not too dark I'll take a look after dinner. Otherwise, do you have a minute to stop by after work tomorrow?"

Renee reached for her knife and began cutting into the perfectly grilled asparagus. "Definitely. Thanks. It's probably nothing."

Eileen cleared her throat, holding a bottle of ranch dressing in her hand as if she'd forgotten what she meant to do with it. "This might be presumptuous of me, but-"

"Honey, I told you to leave her alone." Renee's spine stiffened, because she'd never heard that note of flickering anxiety in Jed's voice before. He was one of the calmest people she'd ever met. "She doesn't need you messing with her life. Let's eat dinner and watch the movie. I got The Best Years Of Our Lives. It's long."

Eileen was undeterred. "I told you I'd take full responsibility for this conversation. You're off the hook."

Jed made a grumpy noise and reached for a piece of garlic bread.

"What were you going to ask me?" Renee slipped her free hand under her leg. The food smelled a lot less appetizing than it had two minutes ago.

"My friend Stephanie has a son who just moved back here after working with some NGO in India for almost ten years. He doesn't know anyone, so I thought maybe you two could go out to dinner or the movies or-" She stopped, and Renee realized that whatever look was on her face was not the neutral one that should have been there.

Jed's fork gave a shrill squeak over the surface of his plate. A dog howled in the distance.

Eileen took a sip of water, more color than usual in her cheeks. "I'm sorry. Scott is such a sweetheart, and I can never leave anything alone." Jed made a gruff noise of assent. "It's not good for you to be by yourself so much. Sometimes I wake up at two in the morning and your living room light is still on. Do you have trouble sleeping? I know a doctor who-"

"Eileen, for Christ's sake. Leave it!" Jed brought his glass down on the table so hard that water sloshed over the side, darkening the taupe cloth as it soaked in.

"It's okay. Really." Underneath the table, Renee rubbed the tip of her finger over the wooden corner of her chair until she could feel the top layer of skin peeling off. She and Glen had rehearsed this countless times in Covington, the construction of a convincing story for why an attractive woman in her mid-to-late thirties refused to consider dating. (Her own voice echoed in her head, furious and argumentative. You'd better come up with something because I'm not having dinner with a succession of idiots who have no chance of getting in my pants). "I don't-" The word felt wrong but she forced it out anyway. "Date right now."

She concentrated on the throbbing in her finger, anything to distract her from this lie that was so close to the truth. "I was engaged when I lived in Seattle. His name was Eric." Her words wavered, material from her Friday night meltdowns bubbling to the surface. She felt a tear slide down the edge of her nose and swiped at it, irritated and unsettled. "He died in a construction accident a little over six months ago."

"Oh, sweetheart. I'm sorry." Eileen put her hand on Renee's arm, a brief warm squeeze. "Someday I'll learn to listen to my husband and stop letting my crazy ideas run away with me."

"Believe that when I see it." Jed pushed his chair back and stood up. "I'm gonna make us some decaf for the movie." He picked up his plate, pausing to glare at Eileen for another few seconds. Then he turned to Renee. "Any chance you're still in the mood for the peach cobbler I made this afternoon?"

Renee blinked back tears and the unwelcome flood of memory that knotted her stomach and pulsed in her head. "I'd love some."

~~~~

Chapter 3: Dance me through the panic, 'til I'm gathered safely in


Jack stretched his arm back until his shoulder gave a satisfying snap. Unzipping his bag, he pulled out a pair of small black binoculars and looped the strap around his neck. He picked up his Sig and checked the clip for the fifth or sixth time, slamming it back into place before he returned the weapon to the top of his bag, secure in case he had to grab everything and get out, but equally ready to pick up and fire if necessary. Twisting his neck one more time to make sure he could settle in and be still, he tucked his body into the corner by the window.

By angling the binoculars precisely, he could see through the tiny opening where the curtain didn't quite meet the window casing. The street outside was lit with the blending neon glow of blue, green, red and orange signs, but he knew the window would only reflect the light. On the off chance someone happened to be staring directly at the four square inches of space occupied by his binoculars, they'd still see nothing but a shiny piece of glass. He'd checked last night.

He focused on the bar across the street, twisting the knobs with small movements until he could see the black snake tattoo on the bartender's neck and read the labels of the beers on tap. He scanned the length of the bar, half-hoping she'd decided to come early. No matter how much logic told him it was all true – that Renee was alive and on her way, that Chloe would never have risked contacting him if there was the slightest slice of doubt – something inside him wouldn't let him believe until he she was there, until he could see her standing at the bar, watch the way she held her face neutral and guarded like she always did when she felt threatened or unsure.

He didn't have to pause for a second look at any of the people who were perched on barstools – laughing, drinking, and talking. She wasn't there. He glanced at his watch. 21:34. Of course she wasn't there. The smart play in this situation would be to leave herself exposed for the minimum amount of time necessary. It's what he would have done, and despite the foggy unreality that had settled over him since the second he'd clicked opened Chloe's frantic email, if he knew one thing it was this: Renee wouldn't make any mistakes.

Jack rested his head against the wall behind him and shut his eyes, squeezing to moisten them and remove the blur of exhaustion. He'd spent all of last night and a decent portion of the morning shifting from one uncomfortable position to another on the hard bed of his shitty hotel room. The few times he'd managed to drift off, he'd blinked awake fifteen or twenty minutes later, staring at the brown stain on the ceiling (it incongruously reminded him of the otter in those books he used to read Kim) while his heart skipped beats and he forced himself not to look at the clock every three minutes.

The room was so quiet that he could hear the tiny tick of his watch's second hand. He refocused his eyes on the bar and counted the seconds as a method of distraction (something almost hypnotic about the rhythmic, precise sound), inhaling deeply to fight the trembling in his hands and the twisting in his stomach. As it got closer to 9:50, he took a slow sweep of the bar, stopping briefly to assess each patron. A twenty-something couple holding hands and leaning in to whisper to each other between sips of beer. A foursome of university kids laughing and making crazy hand gestures while the bartender set up another round of shots they didn't appear to need. A fiftyish man sipping what looked like scotch and soda while he watched the soccer game on the enormous widescreen TV mounted in the corner. Standard crowd for a Saturday night, Jack assumed, not that he was an expert in British culture.

No one set off his radar, even pinged it a little. He moved the binoculars to the bar's main entrance, twisting the focus knob a millimeter back and forth (more to occupy himself than because he couldn't see). His head throbbed and his stomach hurt; he realized he hadn't eaten anything since the club sandwich he'd gotten at some hole-in-the-wall pub near his hotel last night.

At exactly 9:50, Jack saw two men near the entrance shift their eyes to the door with unmistakable interest, and he knew she was there.

His eyes swept over her at a frantic pace, trying to absorb every small detail at once.

Her hair was shorter and a shiny deep walnut, her eyes dark brown. She was thinner, paler if that were possible, and the way she held herself was so rigid and self-contained that she almost seemed to occupy negative space. Everything about her posture screamed Fuck off, and Jack braced himself against the wave of memory – her expression when he'd pulled up her sleeve to reveal the scar on her wrist, the way he'd wanted to grab that flash of vulnerability, hold it tight so she couldn't shut him out again.

Even someone who had known her before would have had a hard time recognizing her.

He didn't.

All the cosmetic changes meant nothing. Not when all the details of her – the countless tiny things he'd spent months working to force far away into unvisited sections of his mind – were in front of him now in living color. The way she stood with her arms crossed over her chest, elbows jutting, just like she had when she took command after Larry's death. The way her eyes never stopped moving, sweeping the room, fight-or-flight at full throttle. The set of her jaw, so different than when she had her guard down, when she trusted, when her face relaxed into that smile he'd replayed so often there were scorch marks on his neural pathways.

Despite the tension that shook him relentlessly, his body a high-voltage wire, he allowed himself a minute to stop. Pause. Inhale.

And drink in the reality that he was watching her from no more than a couple hundred feet away, the smooth skin of her cheek so clear in his binoculars that he had to close his free hand over the heat that flooded his palm.

_________________________

He wouldn't be late.

Renee pressed the balls of her feet against the wooden barstool. Her palms were ice cold but sweaty, and her heart had been hammering at twice its normal speed for hours (she was vaguely beginning to wonder how long it could do that before she had a heart attack). She swirled the red plastic stirrer counterclockwise in the vodka tonic she hadn't touched, creating a miniature whirlpool orbited by ice. Her left wrist rested against the glass, enabling her to stare at her watch while giving the impression that she was gazing into her drink.

He wouldn't be late.

It felt like the only solid thing she knew. If he was going to show up at all, he'd arrive exactly on time or a minute early, because anything else would be sadistic. She'd attempted to prepare herself for this moment from the second she'd made the decision to contact Chloe, but now that she was here – breathing in beer, cigarettes, breath mints, and shitty cologne – she wasn't sure what she'd do if ten o'clock came and went and Jack didn't appear.

"Can I buy you a drink?" Only her extensive training that kept her from startling. A tallish blond guy wearing a lime green shirt and unfortunate sideburns stood looking at her expectantly. Her stomach made a sickening twitch and she wiggled a little to fight the nausea. She wanted to say, I already have a drink, dickwad, but she needed to focus on her central goal, which was to be noticed as little as possible. So she arranged her face into what she hoped was a pleasant but neutral smile and said (doing everything in her power to keep the tremor out of her voice), "No, thank you. I'm meeting someone."

Lime green man stopped looking at her before she even finished her sentence, mumbled, "Enjoy," and moved away as quickly as the crowded bar permitted. Renee stirred her drink faster and thought how much she had always hated dating rituals. Her eyes darted back to her watch. 9:54.

She realized the analogy was imperfect, but after all the time in Witness Protection, being out here on her own made her feel like a zoo animal – once free but long in captivity – abruptly rereleased into the wild. She was accustomed to constant vigilance, but only now did she understand how much she'd come to take it for granted that no one was going to find her in Flagstaff. Every loud noise (glasses dropping, drunk patrons yelling, the screech of the beer tap that clearly needed oil), every brush of a passing body against hers made her nervous and jumpy. She couldn't help thinking that at some point the adrenaline would have to run out. In case the trembling in her hands was bad enough to be visible, she wrapped them around her still untouched drink, careful to keep her left wrist tilted up.

She waited, forcing herself to control her breathing. In. Out. In. Out. Over and over, while her eyes tracked the needle-thin red second hand. It had circled the oval face one and three quarters more times when she felt a body nudge hers. She shot a sideways glance at the arm to her right. It wasn't Jack's, so she returned her gaze to her watch and tried to slow her stirring so as not to spill her drink.

Then the man was leaning over, his mouth near her ear, voice so low she was astonished she picked up his words. "Listen carefully, because he said to tell you this exactly. His words. 'If it hadn't been the end of the discussion, maybe we'd be having Coronas on Kim's back porch right now.'"

Renee could hear her pulse in her ears. She knew she shouldn't react, but she couldn't stop herself. She glanced up and sideways, her eyes meeting the grey unfamiliar eyes of the man next to her.

"Don't look at me," he muttered. "Take a sip of your drink, pretend you're half-interested, and listen."

She didn't follow his instructions, looking directly at him while her hand reached for the reassurance of the Glock under her jacket. Conflicting thoughts bombarded her like tireless zombie darts, but one clear thread emerged from the chaos.

The man sitting next to her was referring to the conversation she'd had with Jack after he got off the phone with the president. And there was no possible way anybody else on earth could know anything about that conversation.

The man grinned a touch, the bar lights reflecting off what appeared to be several days' worth of stubble. "You don't need your gun," he said, smiling as if they were having a friendly meaningless bar conversation. "If I put a hand on you, he'll know. Then he'll find me and kill me, our long friendship notwithstanding. I'm armed because he asked me to be, but I'm not a threat."

Renee still hadn't found her voice when the distracted bartender yelled over the mixed conversations of the crowd, "What can I get for ya?"

"Scotch, neat." The man pulled out a five-pound note and stuck it on the bar. He leaned closer; she noticed he was careful not to touch her body. "I have to admit, I'm surprised. I thought you'd be hammering me with questions."

She cleared her throat and said (with a tiny quirk of her mouth to offset the tone in case another patron caught a word or two), "Maybe I'm trying to decide whether or not to kill you."

He picked up the dark amber drink the bartender had put in front of him and took a generous sip. "Your choice, but as I said, it's not necessary. As soon as I know you believe me, I'll deliver the message and you'll never see me again."

Message. Oh god. He wouldn't.

"Fine. Let's assume I believe you. What's the message?"

"Not that easy. He insisted that I should be a hundred and ten percent sure you knew he'd sent me."

Sent me. Of all the possibilities, this was one she hadn't even considered. She clenched her hands until she could feel the tips of her fingernails piercing flesh. "Did he give you anything else?" she asked quietly. "That was supposed to make me believe you?"

"Several things."

"What's one?"

"He says he still feels the same way about the fifteen people on the bus."

She wanted to curl into a ball, right there in the middle of the bar. Her stomach felt as if thousands of tiny fists were punching it, inside and outside, everywhere. Heat blistered in her face and her heart pounded with so much force it hurt her chest.

He was alive. He was okay. But he'd fucking sent someone else to tell her.

Why?

She pulled the stirring straw out of her drink, picked up the glass, and took a large gulp, slamming it back on the bar so hard that some of it sloshed out over her fingers. She didn't bother to pick up the white square cocktail napkin, but she did study the indentations stamped in a neat pattern around the edge, trying to triage this onslaught of information and figure out what to do.

She'd prepared for two possibilities. Jack would show up or he wouldn't. Pain lanced through her left temple, warning sign of the migraines she'd started getting as soon as she woke up in the hospital. She fumbled in her purse for one of her pills (the last thing she needed was to have to excuse herself to throw up, although given the way things were going she couldn't guarantee this situation wasn't headed in that direction no matter how many pills she took) and tossed it back with another large swig of her drink. Then she said, her voice as cold as she could make it, "He's okay then? He's safe?" She looked up again. "Do you have a goddamn name?"

"Ben. I was on LAPD SWAT with Jack." He paused for a beat, watching her. "And yes, he's safe for the moment, but you know the drill. That can change at any time. There's a long list of people looking for him. That's why he didn't come himself."

"Where is he?"

Ben shook his head. "He told me not to tell you even if you pulled out my fingernails, which he said you might." He let an ice cube from his now empty drink slide into his mouth. "Besides, he may have moved on already. He trusts me as much as he trusts anyone, but that's not saying much."

"When did you last communicate with him?"

"Yesterday afternoon." Had she not spent years (both in training and in the field) learning to pick up on signals any average person would have missed, Renee wouldn't have observed Ben's microscopic hesitation, the sixteenth note before he spoke, the way his face betrayed confusion for a millisecond before it hardened back into the conviction of a practiced lie.

Suddenly it all made sense.

The ambient bar noise (conversational mishmash, clink of glasses, drunken laughter, roar of soccer on the flat-screen TV) faded into eerie silence in Renee's head while she let the pieces snap into place, thought about what she would have done in the same situation.

Holy shit. He was here, watching her, probably even listening to her.

Intentionally catching the bartender's eye, she smiled and leaned closer to Ben, putting her mouth a few inches away from his ear. "Jack, you son of a bitch." The pounding in her head was escalating, but she couldn't control the red fury that snaked through her midsection and up into her cheeks. "Don't do this. Please. Tell me where to go, what to do, anything. But don't do this."

Ben pulled back, his face impassive. "He didn't mention that you were insane."

"Fuck you," she whispered, hoping the dim bar light obscured the flaming red of her face. "And you too, Jack." She closed her left hand over the smooth coldness of her glass, condensation dampening her already sweaty palm. The pain slicing through her head made the lights dangling from the bar above her shimmer. "I'm not going back," she said, struggling to keep her face pleasantly neutral while she looked at Ben and spoke to Jack. "I'm not. So you're not keeping me safe by staying away." She swallowed, breathing in because she needed to not lose control, not freak out or throw up or do anything to make herself stand out in the crowd.

She picked up Ben's drink, tipping it back and chewing on the last few pieces of ice. For a second, she studied the only window from where Jack could possibly see her. She could see nothing. The darkness outside turned the bar window into more of a mirror, reflecting the glow of the lights and the faces of the patrons. Renee leaned forward again. "I'm gonna count to ten, Jack. Silently, so you'll have to guess when I get there. If you haven't told me where to meet you by then, I will walk out of this bar and start looking for you. You'll have a time advantage, but there's probably only one building that would give you the exact angle you need, and you know I can find it."

She flattened her palms on her jeans and began to count.

Ben declined the bartender's offer for another drink and muttered, "He also didn't mention that you're a complete pain in the ass."

Renee didn't respond, focusing on the word seven as she heard it in her head, trying to concentrate on the numbers so she wouldn't plow a path through the fifty or sixty people between her and the door. The moment she hit ten she put her hand on her bag, digging for a couple of pounds to pay for her drink. She was opening her wallet when she felt Ben's hand on her arm, polite but restraining.

"Wait."

~~~~

Chapter 4: If my heart was a house (you'd be home)


Maybe I'm still trying to decide whether or not to kill you.

When did you last communicate with him?

Jack, you son of a bitch.

Her voice. Alive. Not a nightmare or a memory or a dream.

Her words swirled in his head, colliding off one another like the balls in those damn Lotto drawings. He knew he had about half a second to make a decision, because Renee didn't throw down unless she meant it and she would be out on the street identifying his position in less than a minute if he didn't stop her.

He tried to say something but coughed, eyes stinging. Finally he cleared his throat and spoke quietly into his comm unit. "Tell her to stay at the bar for another half an hour. No less. Then take a cab and meet me at Cygnet House in Greenwich. I'll be checked in under Luke Jensen."

"Are you crazy?" Jack could hear the irritation in Ben's voice even over the comm static and bar buzz. "If she's followed she could bring someone right to you."

"She knows how to spot a fucking tail. Just tell her."

"Fine."

"And Ben?"

"What?"

Jack paused, working to corral the automatic terror that came from trusting something like this to anyone but Chloe, Renee, or Kim. "Thank you. I know this isn't what I asked you to do, but-" A burst of interference hurt his ear. "A plane ticket back to Shanghai is waiting for you at the airport."

"Dammit, Jack. I owed you."

"Take the ticket and shut up. Tell her."

Jack watched, sweaty free hand on the butt of his gun, as Ben looked back at Renee.

"Listen carefully. Wait here for no less than a half hour. A minute more might be better. Then take a cab to Cygnet House. It's a bed and breakfast in Greenwich. He'll be checked in there under the name Luke Jensen." Ben picked up his coat. "And for fuck's sake don't let anybody follow you."

Jack could see Renee's lip trembling, but she answered evenly, "I know when I'm being followed."

Ben laughed, pushing himself off the barstool. "That's what he said." He touched her hand and gave her a casual grin, and although he knew it was all part of the performance, Jack released his gun and flattened his hand into his jeans. He heard Ben whisper, "I'll tell you the truth. I didn't think anything could make him cave. Good luck."

Jack kept his eyes on Renee while the loud commotion of the bar was replaced by the comparative quiet of the night street in his ears. He heard Ben say, "I'll smash this comm unit and dump it in one of the trashcans on my way to grab a cab. Unless you need something else."

"No, get rid of it," Jack replied, his eyes still mapping Renee's face (soft pink lipstick, deep purple circles under her eyes, the freckles on her cheekbone he remembered kissing). "I've already gotten you in deeper than I wanted to."

"Forget it, Jack. As far as I'm concerned we're still not even. Get in touch if you need help."

"Thanks, Ben."

Jack heard the static of Ben removing the comm, then a smash and nothing. He took off his own comm and stowed it in the bag next to him, shifting a bit to stretch his cramping muscles.

Across the street, he could see Renee's knee bouncing up and down on the bar stool, her fingers nervously twisting the edges of a cocktail napkin. She said something to bartender and a second later he put a tall glass in front of her. Jack didn't have to hear to know it was soda.

He knew he needed to leave, to put away the binoculars and get the hell to the hotel so he could make sure everything was safe before she arrived. But for another few minutes he just watched her (her whole body jumpy and anxious, ceaseless motion, wiggling her feet and fiddling with her straw), still not quite sure how to believe any of this, joy and relief sucker-punching him over and over until he felt sure his system couldn't handle another hit.

When he was finally about to force himself to stand and get the hell out of there, Renee looked directly at him. It was all in his head – he knew that – because she couldn't see past the window of the bar. But she could guess his general location and for a suspended moment she gazed right there, her eyes shiny, small smile at the edges of her mouth.

It was wrong, all of it. He never should have come. But when she turned back to sip her drink (enabling him to get up), the only thing left in his mind was that in less than an hour, he'd be able to touch her skin, smell her hair, and hear her voice.

_________________________

First, he pulled the heavy blackout curtains over the windows, small screech of friction as he drew the cord. Once that was done he checked everything – opening and closing drawers, lifting the box spring to look at the impressively clean carpet under the bed, and flipping on the light in the bathroom to glance in the shower and behind the door.

Even when he was finished he couldn't stay still, so he put his gun on the corner of the bed (center of the room so he was never too far away from it) and paced back and forth between the door and the window, the repetitive sound of his shoes muffled by the carpet's thick padding.

He looked at the digital display on the clock each time he passed it.

Wondering if time actually could stand still, he waited.

_________________________

Renee walked into the small lobby of Cygnet House, squinting as her eyes adjusted to the warm lamps after the relative darkness of the street. Normally she would have taken a moment to admire the understated elegance of her surroundings, cozy and inviting with overstuffed leather chairs in clusters around two small wooden tables. Instead, she cased the room quickly to be sure that nothing set off warning signals and then shifted her focus to the woman at the desk.

"May I help you?"

Renee swallowed, trying not to worry about how her voice was likely to sound right now. "Yes, thank you. I'm looking for Luke Jensen."

The woman smiled, flipping over the page of the book in front of her. "Of course. He said he was expecting someone. He's in Room 5. Would you like me to call and have him come down?"

"No, I'll go up." Renee felt a bead of sweat slide down her back. She had her hands folded in front of her so the clerk wouldn't see them shaking.

"It's on the fourth floor. Take these stairs-" The woman nodded at a door to her left. "And his room will be down the hall on your right."

Renee was moving before the woman finished speaking, but she remembered to say, "Thank you so much" over her shoulder as she reached for the handle of the door.

Once she was in the stairwell, she abandoned any pretense of patience. Pulling off her boots so that the small heel wouldn't slow her down, she took the stairs two at a time, hoping she didn't run into anyone who might wonder why the hell she was in such a hurry to get to her room in the middle of the night. When she reached the fourth floor, she slipped the boots back on before opening the door to the hallway and glancing down the empty corridor. She wanted to keep running, but she held herself back, fifteen or twenty quick paces until she found herself standing in front of Room 5.

Her heart hammered so hard that it hurt, but she lifted her hand and knocked softly, three times, cool tap of painted wood against her knuckles. She heard light footsteps and the metallic zing of the chain being unfastened. Her eyes followed the silver handle as it moved down. The door opened, but before she could process the fact that Jack was standing in front of her, his hand closed over hers and he pulled her inside, glancing both ways down the burgundy-carpeted hallway before he pulled the door shut, flipping both locks and sliding the chain back into place.

When he turned to face her, his eyes were glassy and panicked. For a suspended minute, they stared at each other, their eyes instantly deep into the conversation they couldn't yet figure out how to have in words. Then, without knowing quite what she was doing, she let her bag slide to the floor and walked directly into him, wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing her face into his shirt. After a second of hesitation during which it shouldn't have been possible to feel as uncertain as she did, he drew her even closer, his arms locked and holding on so tightly that she couldn't expand her chest enough to take a full breath.

She didn't care.

He was shaking, and Renee could feel him swallowing reflexively, the movement of his jaw against her face. She'd imagined this moment countless different ways since she'd made the decision to contact him, but even the most lifelike of those daydreams seemed like a poorly shot movie in comparison to this, to the harshness of his breathing and the softness of his hair, the rough scrape of stubble against her skin. She thought about flowered sheets and safety, about a house so quiet she could hear the floorboards creak as she stared at the ceiling wide awake in her bed, about a job so tedious she had to invent new tricks every day to prevent herself from looking at the clock every thirty seconds.

She was terrified, uncertain, and apparently unable to speak, but now that he was here (still holding her with enough force that she had to take small frequent breaths), all of that seemed irrelevant.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, voice so tired and raspy she could barely hear him. "I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have sent Ben. I couldn't stand the thought-" He cleared his throat. "Of anything happening. Of them finding you again because of me."

"It's okay." She started to draw back, but his grip didn't loosen so she relaxed into his arms. "I would have killed you if you hadn't changed your mind." She shut her eyes and breathed in, aftershave and sweat, her mind floating back to that morning and the magic half an hour when they'd both been stupid enough to believe they could run. "But you did, so forget it." She rubbed her thumb over the hard line of his jaw, stubble and bone. "God, you're shaking."

"So are you." His words still came out with effort, a strained whisper.

She paused, realizing he was right. So much adrenaline had flooded her system over the past couple days that she wondered how she was standing at all. "I missed my Clif bar this morning," she replied, trying to relax him a little. She'd been prepared for him to be almost anywhere on the emotional spectrum, but his agitation didn't seem to be dissipating.

"Are you hungry?" She hadn't figured out how to answer him when he plowed forward, quick nervous talking as if that might settle him down. "Because I stopped on the way here and got some burgers. This place is really good, but I wasn't sure what you'd like." He paused only long enough to breathe. "If you want something else, there are lots of takeout places-"

"Jack."

"Yeah?"

"I love cheeseburgers."

"Really?" For the first time since she'd walked into the room, she watched his shoulders relax, and his eyes stopped darting everywhere at once. "Because that's what I brought you."

_________________________

"Kim wound up on the news for a charity benefit she organized at Stephen's hospital. The minute I turned off the TV, I couldn't deal with it anymore, so I figured out how to get in touch with Chloe. I knew she'd be able to contact you even if she didn't know where you were." Renee stuffed the last bite of her burger into her mouth and took a long swallow of soda before putting the cup on the floor next to the couch. She was stretched out and halfway reclined, her feet resting on Jack's thigh. She noticed that he'd eaten his entire meal with one hand. The other he'd placed on her right ankle when they settled down with the food, and he hadn't moved it since. Now he was rubbing his thumb over the top of her foot, and the sensation was so soothing she could feel the exhaustion that had been hovering around the perimeter of her body moving in, threatening to take over.

"How long were you in Flagstaff?" Jack reached over to steal one of her fries but paused before he picked it up. "You're not gonna eat this, right? Because if you're still hungry-"

"If I eat anything else I'm gonna get sick." She grinned as he swirled the fry in her ketchup. "I was there for a little over six months. I stayed in the hospital at Covington for almost three months because it took quite a while before they trusted I could . . . " She trailed off because Jack had swallowed hard, and he was staring at her, his face pale and tired. "I'm sorry. I know-" She shifted down, pressing her feet more firmly into his leg. "You remember all of it, and I don't. I know you think that what happened is your fault, but Jack, goddammit, you know that's crazy. You couldn't have done anything." She paused, reluctant to stop talking because words seemed to be keeping the tears away. "I'm the one who should have been smarter, called Chloe as soon as I recognized that guy."

"Tokarev." Jack's fingers closed over the arch of her foot.

"I know. They let me see the file once I was off the Vicodin."

"So you know what I did to him." Jack didn't look at her.

"Yes."

"And to Dana Walsh. The Russians."

"Yeah."

"That doesn't bother you?" He looked up then, and the pain in his eyes made her want to launch herself across the couch into his lap, kiss him, make him understand how well she knew, now, that everybody has a breaking point.

Right now he needed the logical part of her answer, so she said quietly, "It bothers me because you'll never see Kim and Teri again. I feel responsible for that. I hate it. Every day."

"But that's it?"

"Yeah. That's it."

"I need you to tell me you'll stop feeling responsible. Nothing I did that day was your fault." His voice cracked. "I made some shitty choices, but they were all mine." He squeezed her foot. "You're the reason I stopped, actually."

"What?"

"Chloe told me not to dishonor your memory." The words sounded thicker in his throat as he spoke. "That you wouldn't want me to start a war in your name."

"She was right. But I'm not angry with you."

He rubbed his finger over the stitched seam of his jeans. "How did Kim look?"

"Great. Beautiful." Renee took another swallow of her soda. "Sad." There was no point in lying; he knew.

Jack went silent, his hand still clutching her foot. Something in the ceiling made a crack and Jack glanced up, eyes darting back and forth, but it must have been the building settling. Now that she was full and the adrenaline assault she'd been living off of for almost 48 hours was receding, Renee was so tired that her eyes were starting to slip shut even when she fought to force them open.

"Hey." Jack's voice sounded further away than the other end of the couch. "You're exhausted. Why don't you go to sleep for a few hours?"

"I forgot my toothbrush."

Jack smiled; she felt the pad of his thumb trace the arch of her foot. "I asked for an extra one when I checked in," he said, and she watched the flush rise into his cheeks. "Because I thought you might-" He stood up abruptly and glanced at the door, jittery and unsettled. "Do you want to go back to your hotel?"

"No." Are you insane? she thought, but she didn't add that. She pushed herself off the couch. "But you could get me that toothbrush."

The relief that transformed his expression made her chest hurt, and she wondered again about all the things she didn't know, the shit life had done to him that made him think she'd even consider walking away now. "It's on the bathroom sink," he said. "And I think there's stuff to wash your face with, if you want it."

"Thanks." When she reached the bathroom doorway she looked back at him. He hadn't moved. He was still watching her with his hands curled into fists, his eyes alive with vibrating energy despite the exhaustion evident in his posture.

_________________________

When she came out of the bathroom, her mouth filled with a cool mint chill and her face tight from the hotel soap, Jack was standing by the window, the curtain pulled back no more than an inch, looking into the darkness below.

"When was the last time you slept?" Renee asked, rubbing the painful knot that ran down her neck into her shoulders.

"Good question. I tried to sleep last night, but I kept thinking about-" He'd turned around, and suddenly he was looking at her with an expression she couldn't identify.

"Do I have toothpaste on my chin?" Her hand went automatically to her face.

He shook his head but still didn't say anything, his eyes locked on hers.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing. You took out your contacts," he answered quietly, and he walked the four paces that closed the space between them, reaching out to cup her face, his thumb on her cheekbone.

"I hate them," she whispered.

He put his other hand on her face, holding her still for a few seconds. He was so close now she could feel him breathing, smell the cinnamon mints he must have been munching when she was in the bathroom. She could see the edge of his lips in her peripheral vision but she kept her eyes on his, because she knew what he was doing. Just as she was thinking that if she didn't step back within five seconds, she'd have her mouth all over him, he dropped his hands and said, "I'm sorry. I don't know-" He walked over to the window again, then halfway back to her, relentless motion like he didn't have the control to stand still. "I should let you sleep."

"Aren't you going to sleep, too? You look like hell." Which was a lie, because at this moment (despite the pallor and the jitters and the t-shirt that smelled like sweat and bar smoke) he looked like everything she had ever wanted in this life, and then some.

"Thanks. I just don't think-" He sighed, rubbing his face. "I don't think I can sleep right now."

"Well I'm not getting in this bed unless you're getting in with me."

"Renee."

Renee.

Her name. The real one. The room wavered in her vision, arcs of light and shifting curtains.

"Jack, for Christ's sake. You don't have to sleep. Will you just get in bed?" She moved sideways until the edge of her leg hit the cool comforter, something solid. "You can't just . . . stay awake forever."

"I can try."

She wanted to cry, to scream or to throw things, to tell him that this wasn't how it was supposed to work. She'd bottled up months of ideas, thoughts, feelings, things she wanted to share with him, and now they were in the same room, wasting time. But she was too goddamn tired to put her frustration into words. She yanked up the hem of her shirt, fingers going for the button of her jeans. "Fine." She pulled the zipper, shoving the jeans down her thighs, standing on one empty cuff so she could step out of the other. When she'd managed to get them off, she looked up to find Jack's back to her. Some miniscule fraction of her wished he wasn't always so goddamn polite. She pulled back the covers, shivering when the cool sheets hit her bare legs.

The room was silent for a long weighted moment. Renee lay studying the mahogany wood of the bedside table, eyes stinging, trying to breathe, so tired she could barely think. Then she heard a zipper, Jack shuffling, his jeans hitting the floor. Another long pause and with a click, the room went dark. The bed bounced a touch as he crawled in, sliding his body over until his arm covered her stomach.

"I'm sorry." He kissed her temple and she bit her lip to keep the tears back, determined not to do anything that might make him move. "I feel like-" In the dark, his fingers stroked down her arm until they found her hand, closing over her freezing palm. "If I keep my eyes open, I know what's coming."

She rolled over, trying to see his face as she adjusted to the dark. "Thank you," she whispered. Her eyes slid shut. Apparently her body had decided to stop listening to commands.

"For what?" He pulled her closer, one hand warm and firm in the middle of her back.

"For not leaving." She slipped a hand under his t-shirt, expecting him to startle or pull away, but his only reaction was to kiss her hair again.

"I should have." His fingers moved up to the base of her neck, rubbed relaxing ovals in her hair. She felt his mouth on her ear. "I missed you. I just-" He was shaking again, and her arms tightened around him even though she was barely awake. "Missed you."

"Me, too," she managed. The smallest movement made her dizzy now, and she knew she'd hit that place where nothing she thought or said would make sense. "I can't stay awake," she mumbled.

"Stop trying." His breath lifted her hair.

"Mmkay." She felt the warm pull, the soft sinking that made her body relax and her thoughts scatter. Jack's hand kept a cadence in her hair, and his heart thudded, a vibration on her fingertips.

Images flashed past her as she drifted.

Jack's face as the stretcher rolled away from her, her own disbelief and denial, refusal to accept the inescapable fact of his death.

Metallic cold of the razor blade in her hand, burn of whiskey coating her mouth, her throat, her stomach. The red rush once she'd done it, her own surprise when there was no pain at all, only the deepening silence as the color leeched out of the room.

Jack's fingers stroking the inside of her wrist, the awakening inside her, how determined she'd been to fight him as he effortlessly made it happen.

His smile when he kissed her in his bed, thumb on her shoulder. You okay?

Fury in Covington. Curling into a ball in her hospital bed (as much as should could with a hole in her chest and tubes everywhere) the night after she woke up, tears until she couldn't breathe. Denial again, because it couldn't happen twice, could it?

She'd never had the chance to fall asleep with him.

She startled awake just enough to realize this before she shut her eyes again, Jack's whispered, "It's okay" playing in her head.

_________________________

Jack lay very still, gritty eyes focused on the strip of light from the hallway. It snuck under the door, unbroken by shadows. Renee was asleep, her head on his chest, arm over his ribs, her knee tucked between his thighs. She'd wiggled closer as she drifted off, as if the more parts of him she touched the less likely he'd be to disappear. Her body jerked occasionally (as his did when he was overtired), but she didn't wake up. As the minutes passed, her breathing slowed down and the jerking stopped, until she was still and quiet in his arms.

He was so tired.

Confused. Terrified.

Cold sweat pricked over his back despite the heat of Renee's body. Even though he could feel the lift of her chest each time she took a breath, he couldn't help wrapping his fingers around the wrist that draped over his torso and pressing until he could detect her pulse, slow and even.

His heart slammed, and he forced himself to take long deep breaths. Fuck if he was going to freak out and wake her up when he'd finally convinced her to sleep. He let himself stop looking at the strip of light under the door for a minute and turned his eyes to her. He'd adjusted enough to the darkness that he could see the shiny walnut brown of her hair. Her skin was so pale, freckles blending as he squinted to focus.

He thought about himself out on the fishing boat (blind determination and laser focus on nothing but the task at hand, hauling nets or securing rigging), or in his tiny apartment in Portugal, Ramen in the microwave and one library book at a time, living each five minutes because the thought of anything beyond that took his mind to places that frightened even him.

Once he'd woken up in the middle of the night after a dream about Teri, pulled the gun out from under his pillow, clicked the safety off, and put the muzzle in his mouth. He couldn't remember how long he'd sat there, simultaneously disgusted by his inability to pull the trigger and by the fact that he had the gun in his mouth at all.

He shouldn't have come.

But he watched her -- face smushed into his chest, foot sneaking out of the sheet he'd pulled over her -- and wondered how the hell she got him to break all his own rules without saying a word, just by raising her eyebrow or shooting him a look.

She mumbled something incomprehensible in her sleep and scooted closer, shampoo and salt and all the closed doors flying open. One hand on her back, he gingerly felt under the pillow beside him for the gun he'd placed there. He ran his thumb over the cool metal.

You can't just stay awake forever.

He wrapped the other arm around her and shut his eyes, determined to sleep for the briefest amount of time that would let him continue to function.

_________________________

She was used to waking up to what she had come to think of as the easiest three seconds of her day – that suspended moment when she wasn't yet conscious enough to remember everything about her circumstances, so she'd lay there in a haze until her eyes drifted open and reality snapped shut and trapped her.

This time, she woke up to the heat of Jack's knee between her thighs, the soft rhythmic brush of air where he exhaled into her neck, and the smell of his skin on the sheet he must have pulled over her.

She lay very still, watching light from the street lamps hit the wall when the heater moved the curtains. Watching Jack's fingers where they wrapped around the inside of her wrist.

It took her a solid minute to convince herself she wasn't dreaming again.

When she did, the only clear thought left in her mind was that she wanted to touch him, hands on his skin, lips on his mouth.

everywhere. closer.

She rolled over in his arms; her nose bumped his as he opened his eyes.

"Hey." That improbable mixture of gravel and velvet that would have knocked out all her higher-order processing, had there been any left in operation. "What's wrong? Can't sleep?" He ran his hand up her arm before rubbing at the edge of his eye, sleepy and half-smiling.

"Now I can't." She leaned in and kissed him, soft for maybe half a second before he surprised her by opening his mouth, rush of his tongue touching hers, and oh Jesus Christ this was the only thing she'd wanted for so goddamn long . . .

He pulled back, his breathing choppy and his voice strained. "Renee, I think-"

She cut him off with her thumb over his lip before she kissed him again. She let herself drift, almost dizzy with how good it felt to have his mouth on her, but after a second she pulled back just far enough to see his eyes. "I know. You have a thousand reasons why we shouldn't, starting with the part where you never meant to be here in the first place." Her words escaped in small jumbled rushes. "You're gonna try to stop me." She inhaled, trying to steady herself, and despite the near-darkness she could watch the heat rise into his face. "Jack, please. Just don't. Don't stop me."

She left the final decision to him though, holding his gaze while she tried to control the slamming of her heart and her need to interpret the fifty different things she could watch happening in his eyes as he scanned her face and circled his thumb over the inside of her elbow.

After another thirty seconds (during which she realized she was holding her breath) he wrapped his fingers softly around the back of her neck and drew her towards him. A tiny grin flickering at the edge of his mouth, he whispered, "When have I ever been able to stop you from doing anything?"

_________________________

She'd never had sex that felt so much like healing.

His hands and his mouth were like sutures everywhere they landed, stitching the broken places inside, erasing the hurt that had been there for so long she'd forgotten what it was like to feel anything else.

With her shirt pushed up, Jack's hands holding her hips, and his tongue in her navel, she remembered.

God, she remembered.

She grabbed the hem of her t-shirt, intending to yank it off, but his hands closed over hers and he shook his head. "Let me?"

She nodded and released the cotton, unable to resist the mischief in his eyes – underneath the serious layers, a playfulness flickering there that she'd never been lucky enough to glimpse before.

He kissed his way up her body a couple inches behind the fabric, circles with his tongue, every now and then a little hum against her skin that made her arch into his hands and shiver with the realization of how much she wanted him to never stop.

It must have taken them ten minutes to get their clothes off, and they were hardly wearing any.

She memorized as she went, noticing everything.

The way he sucked in a sharp breath when she slid her mouth over the hollow of his throat and across the length of his collarbone.

The Jesus Christ, Renee, when she pulled down his boxers, stroking her hands all over him (playful) before she tossed them aside.

The way that licking him just below his left ear resulted in a frustrated growl and landed her on her back, hands held above her head (gently) as he repeated the move on her.

The first time – that morning in his apartment that would forever exist as her ultimate moment of cognitive dissonance – it had been all about frantic rushing, desperation, frenzied comfort and the need to forget.

This time, Jack seemed determined to discover everything about her body all at once, his hands and mouth skimming, touching, tasting. His voice (sound she'd missed with such force it threatened to close her throat even now, when her body was so hot and achy that she couldn't keep still) a rumble that traveled across her ear and down her neck.

Tell me what feels good.

Please.

I wanna hear you tell me.

So she told him, let him play, until it was too hard to talk because she had to concentrate on breathing, until she knew what it was like (incredible) to feel his mouth on the inside of her knee or his tongue learning each indentation of her spine, until (finally) he was inside her, hands on her face, the irresistible heat of his body pressing her into the bed.

She realized she was trembling all over.

You okay? His body went very still.

She nodded.

Jack didn't take his eyes off her face for a second as he rocked into her (soft and rhythmic in a way that kept the entire length of his body flush with hers) and murmured, Did I mention how much I missed you?

Jack, she heard herself saying, and then everything faded out as he pushed her down one more time.

She shut her eyes, heat everywhere like a match flare as she gave in and let it happen.

And it was everything all at once, the forbidden wishes and dreams she'd wrestled into some barricaded corner of her mind. It was Jack's skin warm and sweaty against hers, the sound of his voice saying her name (the real one) as his arms pulled her tight into his chest. It was him touching her, inside and out, when she'd gone without human contact for so long she'd almost forgotten how fiercely she needed it.

Wanted it.

Wanted him.

For a few more seconds she kept her eyes closed, lightheaded and out of breath, letting herself revel in every tiny detail of that moment. She could feel the rapid smack of Jack's heart against her chest, and his fingers clutched her shoulders so tightly it almost hurt. She was thinking how warm he felt all over her (a million times better than the fanciest blanket she'd ever owned), when she heard him whisper into her hair, "Please tell me you don't have to get out of this bed for . . . a week."

"How about a month?" she mumbled on the skin of his shoulder, teasing, but when she opened her eyes he was watching her face, focused and anxious. His eyes had gone wide and shiny, and everything in the room felt very, very quiet.

She almost spoke to break the silence, but something in the way he held himself above her, the tension in his muscles, and the panic that flickered in his eyes (as if she might disappear if he blinked or looked away) kept her quiet.

He smoothed his thumb over her cheekbone, back and forth, and she could see his jaw working with the effort to maintain control.

Another minute ticked by before he said, voice achy and strained, "I never thought-" He cleared his throat, steadier. "I'd get to touch you again." He inhaled. "Hear you."

She lifted her head to brush her lips over his. "I know. I'm sorry. Maybe I should have contacted Chloe earlier." All the things she hadn't done branched out in her mind like one of those color-coded maps on the subway. "I thought I could handle it. That you'd be safer. And for a while I figured out how to power through. But I just-"

"I know." He tucked a piece of hair behind her ear and she shivered, her body's response to his hands apparently beyond her control. "It's why I couldn't leave, even though I should have. I should have." He rolled off of her; her skin went cold everywhere he'd been touching.

She turned to face him and reached for his chin, her fingers mapping the outline of his face. He was staring at the off-white sheet bunched between them. "Jack. Look at me." It took a second, but he finally lifted his eyes and let them lock with hers. "Do you have any idea how happy I am, right here, right now?"

And she got what she wanted, because he smiled – not the one-sided gallows humor quirk she'd seen once or twice during some of their worst moments together, but a full-out grin that reached his eyes and radiated outward. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." The single syllable was all conviction.

"Me, too."

She felt her stomach do that funny swirling dropping thing it had the tendency to do in his presence. She scooted closer, knees knocking into his, fingers on his ribcage. She could feel each bone, sharp. "Hey. How much weight have you lost?"

He shrugged, and he looked so uncomfortable that she instantly regretted the question. "I don't have a scale. I always tried to keep working, because then I wouldn't have time to think about-" He flipped her hand over, placing his palm on hers, linking their fingers. "I know it doesn't look good."

"You are full of shit," she announced, pushing him over and pinning him to the bed. She kissed him, lightly, but with just enough enthusiasm to distract him until she felt his hands sliding up her thighs. Then she pulled back. "I've lost weight, too. Is it bothering you?"

"Uh, no." He raised an eyebrow, all flirty mischief and teasing and that expression that made it hard for her to form linear thoughts. "But I think we should order more takeout and help you gain it back."

She nestled her face into his neck. "I thought you were gonna help me work the takeout off."

He chuffed. "We'll get a lot of takeout." His voice dropped even lower, a rumble that felt like gift-wrapped joy where it vibrated her chest. "A lot."

"Okay." She stretched out and wiggled her toes until they were touching his feet. "Can we do that in a minute? Right now I just wanna stay here." She closed her eyes again.

Jack's fingers stroked lightly up the naked skin of her back. "We can stay here as long as you want," he murmured, moving her hair aside so he could reach her neck. "Just tell me when you want to move."

Never, she thought, listening to his heart under her cheek. Never is good.

_________________________

"This stuff smells like lilacs mixed with limeade. Not a good combo." Renee made a face as she lathered the hotel shampoo into her hair, white bubbles sliding down her face and neck.

Jack wiped water out of his eyes. "I think I have a little bottle of something else in my bag. Want me to get it?"

"I don't want you to go anywhere." She paused and took her soapy fingers out of her hair, grabbing his face and kissing him, again and again, laughing when the soap dripped into their mouths. "Sorry."

"Don't be." He rubbed the washcloth over the back of his neck, enjoying feeling clean for the first time in days even if she was right and the crap did smell kind of weird.

Renee reached for his shoulders and deftly relocated him so that she could rinse her hair. While she leaned back into the spray, eyes closed, Jack let his gaze drift down below her left breast. The raised white scar went in and out of focus as suds slipped over it, and he snapped his head up a second later, worried she'd catch him looking. Squeezing water from her hair, she opened her eyes. "What?"

"Nothing. Are you done with the shampoo?"

"Yeah." She handed it to him.

He squirted way too much from the small bottle and didn't meet her eyes.

"Jack."

"What?"

"Just look at it. Touch it. Stop pretending-" She sighed. "That you're not thinking about it."

Renee reached for his hand and placed it on her ribs; his knuckles brushed the curve of her breast. All the time he'd spent not remembering those ten minutes cascaded back to punish him now – crash and thud and her feet so still on the floor, Jack, blood pouring from her mouth, soaking the sheet and his shirt, weight of her body in his arms, her ghost-white face on his in the taxi and the promise he'd made.

The one he'd spent nine months convinced he'd failed to keep.

He moved his thumb lightly across the raised round scar, circling it several times while his throat burned and his head pounded. He was back in the taxi (choked gurgle of her lungs searching for air they couldn't find), in the hospital (hands behind his head, double doors swinging shut while he held his breath), in the room with her sheet-draped body (pain so intense and unrelenting that he'd had to force his brain in another direction in order to stay standing).

He let his hand drop to her hip and leaned forward, closing his eyes and resting his forehead on hers. "I thought I could get you there in time. I thought-" He choked on the words and the water he'd inhaled.

"And you did what you promised." She wrapped her arms around him, pulling him closer, and pressed her face into his neck.

"You remember?" he asked. His body had gone shaky like he was having a blood sugar crash.

"It fades out after that," she admitted. He could feel her smiling. "You know what else I remember?"

"What?"

"Thinking you were insane."

"When?"

"When you said we'd make it." She paused, and he could tell she wasn't smiling any more. "I couldn't breathe. Everything was turning grey. I could hear you talking and-" Her fingers dug into the muscles of his shoulder. "I wanted to believe you."

His mouth filled with saliva as nausea caught him off guard. He swallowed and reached for the grey metal fixture, turning the water colder. "Can we talk about something else for a minute?"

She nodded, her cheek wet on his shoulder. "Sure."

"Tell me about the hospital." His words sounded jagged, even to him.

She lifted her head, hands braced on his arms. "That's something else?"

"Maybe not," he answered, quiet. "But I want to know."

She backed away completely and leaned against the off-white tile, palms pressed until her knuckles whitened, as if she needed girder beams to talk about this, and when she finally began to speak her voice went flat, one-key monotone with no rise or fall. "It hurt. Everything. I didn't know it could hurt that much to breathe or swallow or try to move myself an inch sideways in the damn bed with the prison rails. Even when Vladimir cracked two of my-" She paused. She wasn't looking at his eyes. "Anyway, I didn't take much of the medication they kept trying to shove down me."

"Why?" He knew, but he wanted to hear her say it.

"The more I could focus on the pain, the less time I had to think about anything else."

"I know." For months after Nina killed Teri, at least once a week he'd jumped into his truck and driven toward the mountains, roads quieter and quieter as he got further away from the scattered explosion of multicolored electricity that was L.A. He'd had a favorite spot, a secluded area of the woods where he could park his truck and walk a little way in, gun tucked into the waist of his jeans (not that he would have cared much if someone had wanted to kill him). Then he'd found his favorite tree, the Sequoia so tall that trying to see its tip gave him a neck ache. Hands balled up with rage and terror that had no place else to go, knuckles bare, he'd hit the rough surface of the trunk.

Bark scraping off skin, splinters working through flesh, blood trickling off his knuckles until his palms were damp and sticky.

After Renee, on the boat, it had been pushups. Hundreds and hundreds of them until it hurt to use a fork, to reach for a washcloth, to pull the covers up when he forced himself to crawl into the tiny bed.

"Hey." She stepped forward and put her hands on his chest; he covered her fingers with his. "Where'd you go?"

"Sorry. Just thinking. I wish-" He studied her eyes, the crazy concentrated focus that flickered there when she looked at him. Despite all his coping strategies, this is what he'd missed, the way that words only had to do half the work with her, if that. She filled in the blanks, natural and effortless. He squeezed her hands. "I wish you hadn't been alone."

"And now I'm not." She bounced up on the balls of her feet and touched her lips to his, smirking. "But you know what? If you don't get out of here, I'm never going to actually finish my shower."

He snuck an arm around her waist and pulled her closer, kissing her until her mouth opened and she made that noise he loved (one of them, anyway). Then he released her and smiled. "You're probably right. I'm going."

He closed the bathroom door behind him, rubbing a towel over his damp hair. He stood there, silent, listening to the rush of water and the muffled thud of Renee dropping the soap or something, and realized that the room already smelled like all his memories of her, the ones he'd systematically barricaded for so long that setting them free felt terrifying and yet . . . so fucking good.

By the bed, their discarded clothes lay in a chaotic intertwined heap.

The water swished off. He heard the staccato clicks of the shower curtain sliding open, and then Renee's amused voice. "Did you take all the towels on purpose?"

And with a deep breath, he decided to stop thinking about the shitstorm that awaited them in the future, the heart-wrenching conversation there was no way to avoid, and allow himself to enjoy the hell out of this moment, in which Renee was waiting for him in the steam-clouded bathroom, naked, laughter in her voice.

"Maybe?" He grabbed a dry towel and opened the door.

_________________________

"What happened to your leg?" She squishes water out of the tips of her hair and drops the towel on the back of the chair.

"What?" He's thinking he should put a shirt on, because even though the scars don't seem to bother her, it feels . . . strange not to cover them up. He glances to where she's staring at his leg. "Oh. Just a cut. Caught the edge of a gutting knife."

"Well you need a new bandage. That one's soaking. Do you have some in your bag?" She's already moving toward his duffel. He watches the towel brush the top of her thighs. Swallows.

"Yeah, but you don't need to-"

"I want to. Sit down on the couch. One sec." She rummages in the bag until she finds what she's looking for and then walks over to kneel in front of him.

He's touched and appreciative and god help him, turned on, which is so ridiculous because all she's doing is rubbing a thin layer of antibiotic ointment into the cut. But her fingers on his skin create a sensation clipped directly from every last fantasy he's been suppressing for months, a shaken soda exploding in his nervous system.

"Does that hurt?" She's squeezing more ointment onto her finger, pressing softly at the edges of the pain.

"No. Not at all."

She rips the bandage open with her teeth and pulls out the tan rectangle before glancing up at him, eyes sparkling. "What?"

He shakes his head. "Nothing."

The tip of her finger covers the full perimeter of the plastic, sending quivers of heated current up the inside of his leg.

She stands up, surveying him. "You have a look."

And for fuck's sake she's wearing nothing but an off-white towel, the damp dark tips of her hair a contrast where they meet the pale skin of her shoulders.

"That felt-" He can feel the flush in his face. "Good."

She can't master the quirk at the edge of her mouth, although he can tell she tries. "Like, good good?"

"Yeah."

"Really." But it's a statement, not a question. She takes two strides forward and straddles him on the couch, the haphazardly tucked towel loosening with each movement of her body. The only thing between his skin and hers is the thin barrier of his boxers. She rocks forward, and he can't stop the sound that slips out.

Renee reaches for his face, thumbs brushing his cheekbones. She leans in, freckles and tang of toothpaste, and he thinks (hopes) she's going to kiss him. But she stops maybe two inches away from his face, eyes serious. "I wish I'd been there. After."

He wraps his fingers around her wrists. "So do I."

_________________________

She dips a tortilla chip into the giant bowl of queso they're sharing and stuffs it into her mouth – chilies, smooth cheese, and crunchy salt. Jack licks the dip off his thumb and plays without looking at his cards, the seven of spades she's needed for the past two turns. She snaps it up and fans her cards on the table. "Gin."

"That's three in a row." He reaches for the soda between them and takes several long swallows. "You're kicking my ass."

"Here's a tip. Looking at your cards helps." Under the table, she strokes the arch of her bare foot against his ankle.

"I can't concentrate when you're doing that."

She smirks. "That's the first time I've touched you since we started playing. Want me to stop?" Her foot climbs higher.

"Hell, no." He throws down his cards and takes her wrist, flipping it over, calloused thumb brushing her skin. She has instant goosebumps, and okay, it's only Jack, but she still flushes. He makes her so fucking easy.

"That feel good?" he murmurs in that voice that reminds her of smoke and honey, of everything that makes her body alive, of the word, 'euphoria.' And she's fully intending to hit him with some flirty comeback, no question, but without warning she sees his eyes, the way he's watching her, like she could sit there and eat queso all night and that would be fine with him.

Her throat tight, she whispers, "God, I missed you. Do you have any-" She stops, because her chest is funny now and it feels weird to breathe, like something's pushing on her lungs.

"Yeah, I do." One of his hands slides down to close over hers, and with the other he pulls her leg into his lap.

For a few minutes she sits there, trying not to let herself consider what's coming. Because the thing is, she knows how he thinks. She always has. Which means that the smackdown in which he tries to send her back to Witness Protection is a question of "when," not "if."

Still, at the moment he's holding a queso-coated chip toward her mouth, giving her that unfiltered grin she can feel from the inside out, shivery jitters that spark in her hair. She nabs it in one bite, sucking cheese off the end of his thumb in the process.

He eats another one himself and says, "You wanna play again?"

"Are you planning to look at your cards?"

"Maybe." As he deals, he takes a deep breath and then says (quiet), "I did pushups. Thousands of them." The cards click onto the table. "Or shots of whiskey. Not thousands." He puts down the deck. "What about you?"

She doesn't understand it, but he knows how to untie the knots she didn't realize were there. "Running," she replies, wishing he could keep his hand on her leg forever. "Miles and miles of running."

_________________________

He watches her trace her finger around the rim of the mug, grabbing the occasional marshmallow and sticking it in her mouth. She licks the chocolaty froth off the end of her finger and sinks deeper into the water, her feet on his stomach. Her toes tickle, warm, and no matter how ferociously he tries to think of nothing but this moment, soap and chocolate and way he'd forgotten how it felt to laugh, to fall asleep with the heated jut of a shoulder blade on his chest, he can't stop himself from wondering if he'll be sorry.

She tips the cup all the way up, obscuring her face for a second before she lowers it. She has a chocolate mustache, and when she catches his eye, she grins and raises an eyebrow. "What are you thinking?"

That I've never had a fucking ounce of self-preservation.

"You have chocolate all over your face." He grabs her ankles and yanks her toward him, her legs sliding over his.

"Hey!" The mug slips into the tub with a splash.

She's laughing.

He touches the bruise on her forehead (unfortunate encounter with her cupboard one morning when she'd run out of coffee, she'd explained when he asked) before he kisses her. He tastes suds and marshmallows, and when her hands graze his throat, it stings from the inside.

~~~~

Chapter 5: Walk away now, and you're gonna start a war


When it happened, it felt like the blinding white of flash photography, gone before you notice it's there, leaving behind nagging round purple echoes.

Jack had set his gun on the table so he could get dressed, and although he was relatively confident by now that no one had tailed either of them to London, years of fugitive living and ingrained habits made him glance back and forth between the door and his weapon as he pulled on a pair of jeans. He had just stuck his head into a black t-shirt when he heard a click. He scanned the door; there were two distinct shadows blocking part of the light.

He'd managed one of the two strides to the table (arm extended to grab the gun faster) when something smashed into the middle of his back, slamming him headfirst into the dark wood. Hands pinned his arms and searing pain blurred his vision, but he refocused quickly enough to throw his body sideways, knocking his assailant off balance so that Jack could ram an elbow backwards, hard. With the half second that bought him, he went for the gun again. His fingers closed over it and without turning around he pointed it under his arm and fired two shots, muffled by the silencer. The body behind him hit the ground with a dull thud, and he spun around to find himself face to face with the barrel of a 9 mm.

He opened his mouth to yell for Renee (not that she could probably hear him over the insane bathroom fan that you couldn't turn off without turning off the light), but the man holding the gun grabbed him by the throat.

"You don't want to do that," he said, his voice a low menacing whisper. "One sound, and I will walk in there and splatter her brains all over the pretty tile before she has the chance to retrieve the weapon I'm sure is no more than a few feet away. Understand?"

Jack nodded.

"Good." The man was taller than Jack, six one or two, with dark brown hair and greyish-blue eyes. His English was better than most Americans', but the precise consonants and the occasional oddly shaped vowel told Jack he was Russian.

Fuck. They'd finally found him and, because of his idiocy, Renee.

"Give me your weapon."

Jack released the gun, praying that Renee was in one of her moods where she washed her hair three times.

"Whatever you want," Jack whispered, "I'll do it. Just leave her out of it. She has nothing to do with what I did."

"That's sweet, dickhead." The man jerked his head at another man standing closer to the door. "Check Alexei. Is he dead?"

Jack watched as he strode forward and bent over, holding two fingers to the neck of Jack's victim. "Yes."

"Well. You can call me Peter. You've already got our team a man down, so if you don't want to piss me off more, listen up." Jack swallowed, taking in the way this asshole used American idiom despite the slight accent. Interesting. "Come with us, no questions, and we leave her alone. Deal?"

Jack heard the brief squeak as Renee switched off the water. Blood welled in his mouth where he'd bitten down on his tongue.

"Deal. Let's go. Now."

The other man gestured at Alexei. "What about him?"

Peter shrugged, pinning Jack's arms behind his back and binding them with tape he'd pulled out of his leather jacket. "Leave him. She'll know we're serious." Throwing the coat over Jack's shoulders so nobody glancing at them would notice that his hands were tied, Peter shoved Jack toward the door.

_________________________

Renee turned off the shower, squeezing water from the ends of her hair as she watched the steam float around her in a mini cloud. She rotated her neck and shrugged her shoulders, trying to shake out the remaining tension the shower hadn't vanquished. The last few days had been . . . well she didn't know the words for the sensation that had enveloped her the second Jack opened the hotel room door. What she did know was that despite the insanity of the circumstances, she had no memory of the last time she'd been this happy, the last time she hadn't felt as if there were millions of tiny holes inside her, missing pieces she'd never figure out how to find.

Still, the full-out emotional intensity of it all felt something like sprinting a marathon, and she was exhausted.

Climbing out of the shower, she wrapped a towel around her chest and shot a look at her Glock sitting on the back of the toilet. Jack wouldn't let her shower alone unless she took it with her, and what the hell – humoring him on that subject was easy enough. She patted her face dry and squeezed some toothpaste onto her toothbrush, the green gel a neat S just like in those idiotic commercials. As she brushed, she surveyed the pile of clothes she'd tossed on the porcelain countertop.

Crap. No bra.

"Hey Luke," she called through the door, teasing. "Could you hand me my bra?"

Silence.

"Luke?" she yelled, louder.

Silence. Nothing but the last remnants of her shower water dripping out of the faucet and the loud drone of the bathroom fan.

An avalanche of ice exploded at the base of her neck, cold that rocketed down her spine and out across her shoulders and arms.

She tightened the towel and picked up her gun, cocking it at quietly as possible. After two deep breaths, she opened the bathroom door.

A body on the floor, dark blond hair and oh god please no, but higher-order processing kicked in and with a glimpse of the man's face she knew it wasn't Jack. Heart slamming with relief and barely suppressed terror, she surveyed the large room, making sure that nobody else was hidden, waiting for her.

When she was satisfied that she was alone with this presumably dead body (she checked for weapons, felt for a pulse), she began going over the room, inch by inch.

Training, goddammit. Focus. Think about right now.

She was reaching into the dead guy's jeans pocket, searching for ID (or anything that might help her figure out what the fuck was going on), when the room phone rang, the eruption of sound so loud and so unsettling to her frayed nerves that her startle reflex almost knocked her over.

Two long strides and she grabbed the receiver, the cool plastic slippery in her sweaty hand. She didn't get a word out before a deep distorted male voice said, "Did you enjoy your shower? It's good that you decided to take a long one."

"Where is he?" She couldn't help thinking about the last time she'd said those words, the terror and hopelessness that followed the answers.

"Safe."

"Let me talk to him."

"Oh I offered," said the voice, a hint of amusement detectable even through whatever he was using to mask recognition. "He refuses to say anything."

Renee shut her eyes. Jack. Of course he wouldn't get on the phone, even though his refusal to cooperate only cemented her belief that she was talking to the asshole who had him.

"Fine. What do you want?"

"You."

"So come get me."

"Save the commands for when you have your boyfriend here back. Are you listening?"

"Yes." She clutched the carved wood at the edge of the bedside table, her fingernail tapping down each curved layer.

"Meet me at 2350 Bankside, in the alleyway to the left of the building. I'd tell you to come alone but I don't think I have to worry, do I?" She heard him chuckle into the phone.

"And then what?"

"We'll take it from there. And don't even think about surprising us by showing up ahead of time. If I so much as smell your fancy shampoo, I'll kill him." A click indicated that he'd hung up.

For a few seconds she stood there, receiver in her hand, staring at the worn tread pattern on the bottom of the dead guy's shoe. Then she slammed the phone down and grabbed whatever clothing was closest, yanking on her shirt and jeans at practically the same time. Her Glock clutched in her right hand, she pulled both her and Jack's duffels from the suitcase rack. She tossed them on the bed and went methodically through the room, picking up only what was absolutely necessary and shoving it into Jack's bag, because it was larger. One change of clothes for both of them. Toothbrush and toothpaste.

Jack's shoes.

What were they doing to him, right now, because of her?

Keeping the inert man on the floor in her peripheral vision, she pulled the extra clips from her own bag. From Jack's bag she extracted his spare pistol and the half dozen clips with it. She wiped her right hand on her jeans before taking a firmer grip on her gun as she slipped into her jacket and began to load the interior pockets with ammunition. When she was satisfied that she had taken everything possible that would still permit her to move around without arousing suspicion, she checked the dead guy's pulse again. Nothing. She inhaled sharply and tucked her gun into the waistband of her jeans before pulling her shirt over it.

At the door, she listened for sounds in the hallway. When it was quiet enough to take the risk, she slung the "Do Not Disturb" sign over the door knob on the off chance it would buy her a few minutes before all hell broke loose. Then she slung the heavy duffel over her shoulder and walked down the hallway as quietly as she could, turning into the stairs that would take her to the emergency exit rather than through the lobby.

_________________________

"We should have killed them and gotten the fuck out of here." Jack heard the crack of a can snapping open, soda or beer and what was probably the scrape of a chair leg along the floor.

"Yuri wants her alive. No money unless she's alive."

"You saw what she did to Ziya. And Vladimir. We could put a bullet in his head, shut her up, and be on the plane to Prague before they found the body."

A crinkling noise, some kind of wrapper. "And then we don't get paid. Why are you so stupid? You'll never see the kind of cash we'll get if we bring her back for Yuri to play with." Jack squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block the images that rose in his mind and focus on the conversation he could barely hear through the partially open door.

"Maybe I like my thumbs more than you like yours."

"There are four of us. We know she's coming." Peter chuckled. "Did you read her file?"

"I scanned it. Yuri should use bullet points. I fell asleep a third of the way through. Takes him three paragraphs to explain what I could say in a sentence."

"That's why you're never running the op, jackass." A thud, like something slamming on a table. "As long as we've got him, she won't do a fucking thing. Drink your goddamn soda and wait for her." A pause. "Fuck."

"What?"

Peter switched into rapid Russian. It was too fast and too colloquial for Jack to catch anything beyond, "Why the fuck are we speaking English? And close the door before he-" The rest got lost in a swirl of tangled syllables Jack couldn't keep up with fast enough to decode. Footsteps approached the door and it slammed, leaving the room in semi-darkness. A click and the slide of grinding metal indicated at least two locks in place.

Breathing while his eyes adjusted to the half-light, Jack felt the bouncing echo of Peter's words pinging on repeat in his brain.

Bring her back for Yuri to play with.

He swallowed the taste of blood that lingered in his mouth where he'd bitten his tongue and concentrated on right now, on requirements, what he needed to do within the next five minutes, ten minutes, half an hour.

The room was small, ten or twelve feet square, with concrete block for walls. They'd blindfolded him in the van, but they'd taken him down a flight of stairs, so he was below street level. No windows, confirming that theory, although there was another door on the wall Jack was facing, the door they'd used to bring him in, so he knew that it led to a corridor or hallway. The only light in the room shone in from two long bright rectangles under the doors.

Scanning the area, Jack didn't see much that might prove useful. Two folding chairs (like the one to which he was bound) leaned against the wall. He twisted his neck to look behind him. A battered scratched-up card table stood in the corner, and a couple of empty plastic crates were stacked beside it.

Fuck.

He couldn't be sure what time it was, but he had no doubt that Renee would show up early, perhaps by hours. She'd give herself time to assess the situation, but she'd also want the possibility of surprise on her side.

He needed to get his hands free. Squinting at the card table, he noticed that one of the screws on a crossbar near him was loose – jutting out. Perfect. He gave an experimental shove sideways, testing how much noise his chair would make moving across the floor. Fortunately, the rubber caps covering the cheap metal legs prevented any scraping, and the only noise was a slight swish.

He paused, waiting to see if he'd attracted attention. When the voices in the other room continued to chatter in rapid Russian, he resumed movement, working his chair toward the table a few inches at a time.

Within five minutes he'd closed the distance. It took some maneuvering, but he managed to get his back to the bar from which the screw protruded. Stretching his arms until the strain pulled uncomfortably at his shoulders, he tried to hook the rope on the screw. On the third time it caught, and he exhaled in relief while continuing to watch the door.

Quietly, he began to saw the rope back and forth over the sharp bands of the screw, ignoring the pain when the metal caught his hand again, tiny slices. He watched the door and worked as he felt sweat spreading out across the front of his shirt, rolling in beads down his neck and back, and dripping (salty sting) into his eyes. He kept his breathing even, his eyes focused on the door and his mind focused on the goal.

He had to be mobile by the time Renee got there.

Because if he wasn't, she'd try to take them alone.

_________________________

Five blocks away from the designated meeting point, Renee parked the green Chevy Aveo she'd hotwired a few streets down from the bed and breakfast. In this industrial section of town (warehouses and the permanent smell of dust and burning), vehicles were rare at this time of night, and although she didn't love the idea of approaching on foot – no comm, no surveillance, no backup to call – she knew her only choice was to move forward, preferably with so much speed that she didn't have time to ponder the insanity of what she was about to do.

Even in the cool damp air her jacket felt oppressive, weight of the clips and their jutting edges pressing her ribs as she ran. Her hair stuck to her sweaty temple and she jammed it aside, irritated by the way each slap of her shoes on the pavement seemed to reverberate down the silent street.

A few hundred yards away she slowed, moving in the shadows of the building next to the address she'd been given. Clouds obscured the moon, so she had that working for her. She held up the night vision binoculars she'd found in Jack's bag, moving the twin circles slowly across the adjacent building's façade. One guard that she could see, pacing back and forth in front of a double door, automatic slung over his shoulder. A Kevlar vest covered his dark t-shirt. He had a walkie talkie in his hand (bursts of static fuzz she could hear even from her vantage point), and Renee held herself still in the shadows to see if she could pick up a pattern to his communication. Holding her watch under the sleeve of her jacket, she illuminated it to check the time.

9:14. She waited.

At 9:15, the guard spoke briefly into his comm. She was too far away to catch what he said, but his report must have been satisfactory. He resumed pacing.

For fifteen minutes she stood in the large building's recessed doorway, observing. Although the guard's body language was tense and he held his weapon as if he expected ambush at any moment, he reported in precisely on the five-minute mark, but otherwise he didn't respond to the intermittent traffic on the comm.

When he checked in at 9:30, she was ready. She heard the click indicating he'd received a reply and without hesitation she fired two rounds at his head; the silencer muffled most of the noise. He hit the asphalt, a dark splatter on the concrete wall behind him. Renee darted across the street, her gun pointed at the inert body on the ground. Even ten steps away it was clear she didn't have to worry. One of her shots had missed, but the other had hit him almost directly between the eyes. She pulled the AK-74 (unpleasant flash to her undercover time with Vladimir's organization) off his limp arm, stuck his comm unit in her pocket, and – after a final scan of her surroundings to make sure nobody else was outdoors on this side of the building – reached for the door.

_________________________

Jack felt the give as the final thread in the rope binding his arms snapped. He rolled his aching shoulders in three quick circles and then, faster this time because he could use his arms to partially lift the chair, began to move to his original position. He was surprised they hadn't checked on him already – unexpected luck. The second he had himself back where Peter had placed him, he put his arms behind his back again and concentrated on slowing his breathing, hoping the sweat trickling down his temple either wouldn't show in the half-light or could be chalked up to the warmth of the room.

Within a minute Peter walked in, munching on a Crunchie bar. The gold wrapper crinkled as he pulled it down. "You comfortable?"

Jack stared at him as he chewed. In the small echoey room Jack could hear the sound of honeycomb cracking apart. He held his arms very still behind his back.

"Don't feel chatty? That's too bad." He thumbed a smudge of chocolate off his lip. "My boss wants me to find out what Ms. Walker told the CIA. And you know, don't you? Since you two seem-" Peter popped the last bite of the candy bar into his mouth and laughed. "Close." He balled up the wrapped and aimed it at Jack's head. "You must have been pretty surprised when she turned up not dead."

Jack fixed his eyes on the second bar of Velcro decorating Peter's Kevlar in an attempt to distract himself from how satisfying it would feel to smash the bones of this motherfucker's nose up into his brain.

Peter sucked chocolate from his teeth and leaned forward, his face so close to Jack's that Jack held his breath for a second, hoping the angle of the other man's vision wouldn't allow him to see that Jack's hands were no longer secured. "Doesn't matter what you say or don't say. You know that, right? As soon as she gets here I'll let her watch while I put a couple bullets in your brain, and then we'll take her back to my boss. I'm sure he won't have a lot of trouble getting her to talk to him." He smirked. "Yuri has a way with people."

Peter walked toward the door and turned with his hand on the knob. "I'd better check the perimeter. She'll undoubtedly be early. So predictable." He was yammering in Russian before he even shut the door behind him, locks scraping into place.

Immediately, Jack stretched his arms to loosen the muscles and went to work on the duct tape that bound his feet (Who were these guys? Why hadn't they used rope for his feet, too?). He had to take it inch by inch, or the ripping adhesive would make too much noise. When he finally managed to free his legs, the rope that held his torso to the chair was effortless. Scraped fingers and a little rope burn, but in thirty seconds he was free.

Standing silently, he cased the room for anything he could use as a weapon, but there was nothing, not even a pen or a thumbtack. Jack coiled the length of rope he'd just pulled off himself around one hand, walked cautiously across the room, and put his ear to the opposite door, listening for noise in the hallway.

All he heard was the whoosh of the ventilation system. He tested the doorknob, astonished to find it unlocked. It wasn't as if he spent a lot of time thinking about his reputation, but given what he'd done to the Russians, Jack was certain that if these assholes knew who he was, they'd be a bit more concerned with containment. He tabled that to puzzle over later, because Renee was either on her way or already here, and he needed to find her before they did. He opened the door a millimeter, checking to see if the hinges would squeak. When they didn't, he slipped out into the hallway (dim fluorescent lights apparently on the nighttime energy saver setting) and ran, his bare bruised feet painful and cold where they hit the tile.

_________________________

Renee padded down the hallway in her socks now (boots discarded just inside the door because the hallway's acoustics made the tap of the small heel sound like a jackhammer), trying to GPS the building in her head. She'd come in on the opposite side from where she'd been instructed to enter, but that told her nothing about where they were holding Jack. Her Glock was tucked into her jeans, and she held the dead Russian's rifle in front of her as she moved.

She'd decided to work her way to the other side of the building when the door no more than ten feet in front of her (marked 'Stairs') opened. Renee raised the AK-74, but before she could pull the trigger the man had launched himself at her. She slammed backwards, expecting to feel the crushing impact of the hard tile on the back of her head, but . . . why the fuck was he holding her shoulders, partially breaking her fall? Her head still knocked into the ground with a nauseating thud, full weight of a muscular body on top of her.

"Dmitri!" His thumbs dug into her muscles of her upper arms, holding her still. His breath smelled like cigarettes and candy. He shouted in Russian, "She's here. Hurry up!"

Suddenly Renee realized that although he had her mostly immobile, her thumb was still on the trigger of the AK-74 that was pinned between them. Sucking in her stomach and chest to give herself a few centimeters to move, she angled the gun and fired off a burst of bullets. Red Square had never used anything but armor piercing, and as the recoil jolted into her ribs she could only hope they hadn't changed that practice.

The clutching fingers released their grip on her arms. A sucking gurgle rattled through the man's chest. He choked, violent convulsion of his upper body, and half a second later blood poured from his mouth, gushing onto Renee's neck and down her chest. She tried to push him off of her, but he still had enough strength to press her down with his legs. She paused, working to breathe, but when she heard the slam of footsteps running, fast, she threw her arms forward and rolled sideways with all her strength, and she was free.

She didn't even manage to stand all the way up before another man was on her, this one shorter and thinner, but just as strong. He grabbed her wrists and threw her against the wall, where her head smashed into concrete. Despite the pain ricocheting through her skull, she tried to bring her knee up and sideways into her assailant's groin, but he shifted left and all she got was her knee in his hip bone.

"You are a crazy bitch." His fingers squeezed her wrists so tightly she could already feel the tingling where her circulation was cut off. "I will never understand why Yuri insists we can't kill you, because we're three men down and he doesn't even have you yet." She struggled, determined to fight him until he did kill her or she couldn't move, whichever came first, but he had her pinned too well. The man laughed, chilly grey-blue eyes and the scent of peppermint breath spray. "I don't remember him saying we couldn't hurt you."

One of his hands released her wrist and went for her throat, fingers pressing into her, cutting off her air. "Yuri says you're beautiful. I bet I'll find you a lot more attractive when you're unconscious." The atmosphere began to float with silver and gold sparkles.

Something moved in her peripheral vision.

An explosive crack and the hands gripping her throat and wrist were gone. Another snap as she choked, sucking in air. She slid down the wall a few feet, dizzy and disoriented, working to make her eyes focus.

A dark shape moved toward her and she reflexively went for the gun she could feel tucked under her shirt.

"Don't. It's me. It's okay."

The air swirled into focus again and she found herself staring at Jack, who had stopped moving forward the second she went for her gun. Coughing again, she rubbed at her throat, working to revive circulation.

Suddenly Jack was in front of her, face chalk white, his hands pulling at her shirt. "Where'd they hit you? Did the bullet go through? Does it hurt to breathe?"

The dry ache in her throat made it hard to talk, but Jack's voice told her he was on the verge of meltdown so she responded rapid-fire, the words tumbling out as fast as she could make her mouth move. "Jack, stop. The blood's not mine. None of it, unless I scraped myself or something. Nobody shot me."

She nodded toward the motionless body on the tile in front of them, a red pool widening around his chest. "He had me pinned and I managed to pull back enough to get a good angle." She drew in a steadier breath. "But I couldn't get him off me right away."

"You're sure?" His voice was almost inaudible.

"I'm sure." She wiped a bloody hand on her jeans and nodded toward the other body that now lay on the floor of the hallway, the man's neck twisted at a horrifying angle. "We have to get out of here. How many more of them are there?"

Jack swallowed convulsively and for a beat she thought he wasn't going to answer her, but he muttered, "At least three. Maybe four. I wasn't in the room with them so I had to guess from the voices."

From the hallway around the corner she could hear the scuffling thud of boots, syncopation of several pairs, growing louder with each step. She pointed to the "Exit" sign maybe fifteen yards down the hall. Her steps as silent as she could make them, she ran the few strides and pushed open the doorway. She held it, heart hammering, while Jack pulled the bloody AK-74 off the man whose neck he'd snapped. When he'd retrieved it, he sprinted through the door and she pushed it shut behind them just in time to hear the impact of boots echoing off the walls as their pursuers rounded the corner. Bolts of pain lit up the back of her head, but she leaned into the wall, rough cement on the skin of her spine, and waited.

_________________________

Jack held the borrowed automatic ready, trying to make sense of the confusion in the hallway outside the stairwell. His ear was near the door, but he couldn't stop staring at Renee, at the vivid red that stuck her shirt to her stomach and chest and was beginning to cake on the skin of her arms and neck. The only discoloration on her face was a smudge of dirt on her left cheekbone, and that was comforting. She stood focused, listening to the exchange in rapid Russian. After a second she caught his eye and held up two fingers before pointing outside the door. He nodded.

Suddenly, one of the men said something, to which the other one responded, "Da," and it went quiet. Greenish-white in the fluorescent light, Renee mouthed, "They're checking this door," and stepped backward to give herself a better angle and more cover when the door opened.

With no warning, an explosion of gunfire hit the other side of the door, deafening ring of bullets on steel. In English, Peter said, drawing out the words as if to demonstrate his complete control of the situation, "You've killed Dmitri and Sergei and I assume Luka is dead too if you made it past his checkpoint, Ms. Walker."

Silence. Stillness. A bulb in one of the overhead lights made a faint pop and flickered out.

"Yuri knew what he was dealing with when he sent us to get her," Peter continued. "If you put your weapons down and come out, I'll kill you quickly, Mr. Jensen. I'll also make sure that Ms. Walker is delivered to Yuri unharmed."

Quiet again. Jack could hear the faint ticking of his own watch. With each click, he thought about what this motherfucker would do to Renee if he got his hands on her. Even on the off-chance he managed to make her talk, he wouldn't kill her. Jack had seen how Vladimir and his people played. The higher-ups were probably fifty times worse. They'd toy with her for god knows how long. He glanced at Renee, whose eyes were fixed on the handle of the door.

Thirty more seconds of silence, and a staccato burst of bullets hit the outside of the door. The handle turned and all Jack could see from his angle was the weapon's muzzle, sparks of light and bullets spraying a few feet to the left of where Renee was standing. He couldn't fire at the gun without the risk of hitting Renee, but he nodded at her and stepped back. Without a second's hesitation, she took a step forward and began firing, short controlled bursts. One of them knocked the gun sideways a few inches, and the ammo stopped.

On autopilot, Jack jumped forward and grabbed the gun, yanking Peter into the room. Renee was waiting. She dropped him with several rounds to the chest and kicked his weapon, sending it clattering across the room. It bounced off the wall with a thud, and in the beat of silence that followed Jack heard Renee's rapid breathing and the sound of footsteps, boots thudding down the hallway. Each tap grew fainter.

His weapon still pointed at the door, Jack walked over to Renee. In the dim light she looked ghost-white against the red smears on her skin. He had to take deep breaths to keep himself locked in this moment, focused on the current problem. He touched her face, his eyes scanning hers. "You're sure you're okay?"

"I could use a handful of Advil now, but yeah, I'm fine." She rubbed at the back of her neck with her free hand. "Any idea where he's going?" Renee walked a few steps and picked up Peter's AK-74.

"Probably back to where they were holding me, if he didn't run." Jack couldn't ignore the way she winced when she straightened up. "How bad is your head?"

She half-smiled. "Don't start. It's fine. Let's go."

Before he could respond, she shoved the door open with the barrel of her gun, glanced both directions, and said, "You coming?"

He wanted to say, No. And neither are you. But he couldn't afford to stop and think about this—about the fact that he'd been back in her presence for less than three days and she was already barefoot, covered in blood and bruises, one gun ready to fire, one stuffed into her jeans, another slung over her shoulder, ready to walk into a situation that could easily end with her taking a bullet to the head or worse – because if he did there was no chance he'd stay on task.

Right now, they needed to stop the remaining man or men from contacting anyone else. He pulled a clip out of Peter's coat and rammed it into the weapon. "Yeah. Let's get this done."

_________________________

"What's your name?" Jack flipped the folding chair around and straddled it, one hand resting on the cheap fabric while the other held his SIG in sweaty tired fingers.

"Nikolai. Now go fuck yourself."

"Maybe later." Jack chuffed and moved his chair a few inches closer, scrape on the floor amplified by the acoustics of the small room. "Right now I need you to make a phone call."

The prisoner stared at Jack and said nothing. Blood trickled down the side of his face where Renee had caught him with the butt of her Glock.

Jack looked up at her. She was half-sitting on a stool near the wall, white and sweaty. Her knee bounced back and forth, but she held the AK-74 steady at her side, pointed at the thin, dark-haired Russian tied to the chair in front of her. The blood on her shirt was beginning to dry, the cotton material sticking to her stomach and chest. Jack could feel his head spinning from low blood sugar and adrenaline aftermath, and he had to fight the urge to put a bullet through this motherfucker's brain, grab Renee, and get the hell out of there.

Focus, goddammit. Think. Anything that buys time..

"Tell me about Yuri."

Nikolai attempted a stark smile. "He likes Pizza Hut breadsticks and pissing off the CIA. And he'll cut your girlfriend into small pieces once she tells him what he wants to know and he's had the chance to enjoy her a little." He smirked. "He was always jealous of Vladimir's toys."

Jack tightened the grip on his gun, careful to keep his finger away from the trigger. "No," he hissed, his face heating with rage. "That's not what's gonna happen."

"Dmitri called him." Nikolai didn't blink. "Before he went with Sergei to find her."

"Bullshit," Jack replied, forcing his tone to remain level. "Yuri doesn't know a fucking thing. Let me tell you how I think the last half an hour went down." In his peripheral vision, he saw Renee slide all the way onto the stool, one hand massaging her temple. He swallowed and refocused on Nikolai. "Your plan to use me to as bait worked, except for the part where she's three times smarter than you realized." He held the cold muzzle of the gun to Nikolai's cheek. "And a better shot. What you should have done is called in to say you'd fucked up and ask for instructions. But you and Dmitri figured you could get it back under control and none of the higher-ups would have to know, right?"

Nikolai was quiet, but he broke eye contact with Jack, looking at the opposite wall, his face shadowed with the light of the single bulb that hung suspended from the ceiling.

Jack shifted in his chair, pushing his scuffed-up feet into the dirty floor. "Look. You're a professional. You know there is no scenario where you walk out of this alive." Nikolai's eyes snapped back to Jack's. "The question is how you want to die. Do it my way, and it's one bullet. You won't even feel it." Nikolai swallowed. "Screw with me or make me work for this, and I'll make it hurt."

Then Jack leaned closer, his face near the other man's ear, breathing in the blend of dirt, sweat, greasy unwashed hair, and overused French cologne. He whispered, fighting the tremor that worked its way into his voice when he got close to this subject, "But if anything happens to her, not only will I find the slowest, most painful way to kill you, but I will make it my mission in life to do the same thing to your entire family." He backed off and cleared his throat, making eye contact with Renee for a split second before refocusing on Nikolai. Maybe it was the poor lighting, but a hint of color seemed to have washed back into her face, and she wasn't rubbing her head anymore. "Do we understand each other?"

"Who the fuck are you? We told Yuri you were some guy she picked up on her vacation."

Jack chuffed. "That's as close to the truth as you're going to get. I'm waiting for your answer."

The room went almost silent. Jack could hear the hum of the central heating system. Renee's stool squeaked as she tipped two of its legs off the floor and reclined against the wall.

Nikolai coughed and readjusted his body to sit straighter. "You're right. Yuri knows only that we found the two of you. We thought we could grab her, get rid of you, and he'd never find out."

Jack felt his body relax, the muscles in his legs and torso loosening a little. "Good. Now tell me what Yuri wants with her."

"When Tokarev shot her, everyone believed he'd completed the task and she was dead. Novakovich. Even Suvarov. But something didn't sit right with Yuri. He kept pushing, making inquiries even after Suvarov told him to leave it alone and stop risking exposure by seeking out information." He twisted his neck until it gave a pop. "Yuri doesn't listen. Through some backchannels he found out that she was being held at Covington, but that's as far as he got. Whoever ran that op should get a medal, because Yuri has contacts everywhere, but there were no leaks. Nothing." He shrugged, bound hands bouncing in his lap. "He knew she'd testify before they relocated her. All he wants is to know what she told them." He looked over his shoulder, addressing Renee. "You knew everything about Vladimir's operation, didn't you?"

Renee managed to look grim even as one edge of her mouth tipped up. "Among other things."

Nikolai smirked. "We all told Vlad he should have killed you when he had the chance. He was so determined to get another piece of you that-"

Jack bolted from his chair and sent it flying sideways as he bashed his forearm full force into Nikolai's chest. The chair smashed into the floor; a splinter of wood cracked off and slid along the tile. Jack was on top of him (searing white fury and helpless flashbacks to watching Vladimir put his hands all over Renee's body, knowing what he'd done to her, what she'd given up for a government that had been willing to sell her out without a second thought), knee in his stomach, cocked gun on his cheek, when he heard Renee's voice through the fog.

"Jack. Stop. Let him go so he can make the call."

Jack jabbed his knee into the other man's ribs where he knew it would hurt the most and then stood up, watching Renee's face for a second before he wiped a hand on his jeans and hauled the chair into the upright position. "Here's what you're gonna do if you don't want the slower version of what I did to Tokarev."

Nikolai paled. "That was you?"

"Yeah. That was me. You think I'm serious now?"

Nikolai nodded.

This your phone?" Jack asked, holding up the cell phone Renee had found in the man's pocket when she'd patted him down.

"Yes."

"I'll call Yuri. When he picks up, you'll tell him that the plan worked perfectly. You killed me, but you've got Agent Walker. You're bringing her in, but you can't get a flight out until early tomorrow morning." He slid the phone open and clicked into the 'contacts' menu, but he paused. "Don't even think about fucking with me." He cocked his had in Renee's direction. "She speaks flawless Russian, which I'm sure you know, down to idiomatic expressions. If she thinks you've screwed up or tried to tip this dickhead off-"

"I won't," interrupted Nikolai. "Leave my family out of it. I'll do whatever you want."

_________________________

Renee stepped closer as Nikolai dialed, her eyes focused on his face. He spoke in bursts of rapid Russian, a bead of sweat rolling down his temple and off his jaw. Jack's eyes darted back and forth between Nikolai's white face – almost green in the pale overhead light – and Renee's, her mouth set and her forehead lined in concentration.

The conversation was over in less than two minutes. Nikolai slid the phone shut and handed it to Jack. "It's done. You've got at least a day now, perhaps a day and a half." He swallowed. "Do it. You promised quickly."

Jack lifted his eyes to Renee's, absorbing the horrible collision of emotions in her exhausted expression. She nodded.

The vibrations from his SIG traveled up his arm into his neck, making him shiver as he squeezed the trigger and put a bullet through Nikolai's brain. The body collapsed to the floor with an echoing thud; the chair legs rattled as they settled back to the tile.

The oppressive silence that followed felt almost alive. Jack watched as blood flowed in an expanding pattern across the floor. He could hear Renee's shallow breathing, the friction of her weapon against her shirt. After another beat she said (the words low and enervated), "Jack, let's go. We need to get cleaned up before dawn." She rotated her shoulders, shrugging out tension. "I brought a bag with a change of clothes. The car's a couple blocks away."

"Okay." He walked to the corner and grabbed another AK-74, popping out the magazine to see if it was full. "How's your ammo?"

"Fine. I grabbed a few more clips from their box. We need to get rid of these guns though."

"Not 'til we're locked down somewhere with a concrete plan. We should be on our way out of the country by tomorrow morning."

"We can't go anywhere looking like this!" She pulled a hair tie off her wrist and looped the sweaty mess into a listless ponytail. "We have time for a goddamn shower and a sandwich." He didn't miss the edgy irritation that had filtered into her voice.

"Fine," he relented, still distracted by the crimson that covered her chest. "But we need to get at least a couple hours out of London before we stop."

_________________________

In the cramped Chevy, Renee huddled into the jacket she'd brought, hugging it around her torso in an attempt to cover the blood. Even with the extra layer she shivered, nauseous yet hungry at the same time, so tired that she had to squinch her eyes shut to moisten them.

Jack stared at the dark road ahead. He clutched the steering wheel with both hands, knuckles pale from the force, and Renee's peripheral vision caught the tight line of his jaw and the way his shoulders were locked two inches higher than they needed to be.

He hadn't spoken since they got in the car over an hour ago. Just before she was about to pull open the door, he'd stopped her, fishing a flashlight from the duffel.

I think you might have a concussion. Let me look at your eyes.

Jack-

Please. If I need to take you to the hospital, we'll figure it out. Let me look.

So she'd humored him as he put his hand over her eyes and held it there, fingers rough and cold, then removed it and made her headache worse by shining the light a few inches above her face. When he'd clicked off the light, he'd paused for a second, hand above the door of the car for support.

I think you're okay.

I told you it was fine!

You are not a reliable source of information. I'll check again when we find a place to stop. How much does it hurt?

Not enough to worry about. Let's go.

She'd touched his hand and tried to catch his eye, but he only gave her finger the briefest squeeze and walked around the car, slamming the door and leaning over to connect the wires.

So she gazed out the window, pressing her aching feet against the glove compartment and watching the trees rush past framed against the faint glow that began to lighten the sky.

She took long, deep breaths (but exhaled inaudibly so Jack wouldn't hear). She squared her shoulders and straightened her back.

And she got ready to win the fight they'd been waiting to have since the second she hit 'send' on the email to Chloe.

_________________________

Jack listened to the swish of the shower spray. It should have been soothing, but under the circumstances it reminded him of the beep on a timer-rigged explosive, each passing second one click closer to detonation.

He'd tried to sit down when Renee got in the shower (he'd offered to let her go first but she said he'd be faster). That had lasted maybe fifteen seconds before he jumped back up, pacing a diagonal path across the small floor of this shitty hotel room. He flexed his hands open and shut, knuckles dry and cracking from cheap soap on top of the various scrapes and cuts he'd received over the last twelve hours. He could feel the skin pulling apart as he stretched it, a welcome distraction from the coming confrontation.

She had to go back.

It was the only option that made sense.

But his mind fucked with him with while he fidgeted – images and sounds, scents and flashes of feeling. The quirk of her eyebrow when he said something she found ridiculous. The low vibration in her throat when he skimmed his finger up the inside of her thigh. The smell of her heated skin when she wasn't even awake yet, his face pressed between her shoulder and her neck so he could breathe her. The soaring lift in his stomach when she just looked up at him and grinned, smile he hadn't known she had in her until the past few days, the one that snuck up on him, knocked him sideways every time.

He forced all of that away and replaced it, brutal and surgical.

Eyes closed, he held Teri's cooling, heavy body in his arms, felt the sticky dampness of her blood on his stomach. He clutched Audrey's hand, struggled to speak in a way that might make her understand. He ran down the hallway barefoot, blood and the sheet and his own voice that sounded far off in the distance. He put his lips on Renee's forehead, everything about her face unnaturally clean, as if washing off the blood made death prettier.

He couldn't do it again.

"Jack?"

He yanked himself back into the present. Renee stood by the bathroom doorframe, a damp towel in her hand.

"You need to go back to Flagstaff," he blurted, like the statement was all one word. "One phone call and-" He surprised himself by needing to breathe in the middle of his sentence. "They'll bitch a little and get you a ticket. You'll be back by tonight and it won't take them any time to reassign-"

"Jack, for Christ's sake just shut up. I'm not going back."

"Renee, you can't-"

"No!" she exclaimed, a scary spin as her pitch arced up. "You're not listening."

He shook his head, vehement. "You're the one who's not listening. It took them less than three days to find you. Three days. His voice was rising, love and terror and fury twisting in his gut. "It'll be less than a day now before they figure out that their operation went south. And when they do, they won't send their second tier people for you this time."

"Then we'd better get moving." She reached for a shirt she'd tossed on the chair and walked over to the bed, stuffing it into the duffel bag.

"I can't do this again." For all his rage, his voice had dropped to a strained whisper.

"You?" She pushed the duffel aside and faced him full-on. "I can't do this again. I can't go back to that fucking silent house and that fucking job where the clock goes backwards and eat a bowl of fucking tomato soup every night because I'm too lazy to make anything else. I'm not going back there. It doesn't matter what you say." She took a deep breath, but she didn't bother to push away the tear that was sliding past her cheek to her chin. He watched it splash, soak into her shirt.

"Goddammit, Renee." He was yelling now, uncontrollable. "You don't remember the hospital. I couldn't sit but I couldn't stand. I was talking to Chloe but I didn't even know what she was saying. When the doctor came out of the operating room, it was like ten fucking years went by before he even spoke." He tried to breathe, hands jammed into fists. He wanted to hit something so much it was like compulsion. He pictured his fist hammering into the doorframe, knuckles and blood and indented wood. "And when he did, it was like-"

He stopped. He could hear them both breathing, and further away, the drip of the crappy shower faucet.

His throat so tight that he wasn't sure how he jammed the words out, he managed, "I'm so angry I shouldn't even be in this room right now." Another suck of air. "But I can't leave you alone, because if anything-"

She moved forward, but he took a step back and said quickly, "Don't touch me."

"Okay." If his words stung her, she didn't flinch. After a second she sat on the edge of the bed, looking down where her toe made an imprint on the stained grey carpet.

A minute passed, or ten. The faucet stopped dripping and the heating unit pinged and rumbled to life.

When Renee spoke again, her tone was level and calculated. "Jack, listen. If you want to ditch me, I'm sure you can. You have a lot more experience at this than I do." There was a waver on the last few words, and Jack felt his stomach drop even further as he realized what it was costing her to say this. "So that's up to you. But even if you leave, I won't go back to the States. I'd rather run than plant myself somewhere and wait for them to come get me."

She rubbed a fingernail on the table. "Besides, you said it yourself, Jack. The smart thing is for me to go back, get reassigned. New identity. If you arrived at that conclusion, so will Yuri. Disappearing is at least unpredictable. And I think if the past couple days have proven anything, it's that I'm safer with you."

After a beat, he lifted his head and looked at her eyes. They were bloodshot and shiny, but so goddamn determined, one thing that had never changed since his first glance at her face.

"You have a hole in your chest because of me."

"That is bullshit." She stood up, cheeks bright pink, and this time when she walked towards him he stayed put. "I have a hole in my chest because I had a dangerous job. A job I loved. Her voice was thick and wavery again, but she didn't bother trying to control it. "Jack, please. You're the only thing that's left."

He tried to hold onto the anger, desperate because it was his only leverage, but it evaporated as quickly as it had arrived. He should have remembered, should have factored in that against all logic, he'd never managed to stay pissed off at her for more than two minutes at a stretch, even if she was leveling her weapon at him or slapping his face until it stung, left marks.

"I can't leave unless I know you'll be safe," he muttered, defeated. His knees ached; he stepped sideways and sank into a chair, the wood hard on his back. In the moment of silence that followed, he suddenly realized he had one weapon left in his arsenal. "But you need to sit down and take a few minutes to think about what this means."

"What are you talking about?" She didn't move.

"Running. It's not-" He flicked the pad of his thumb over a scab on his arm. "It gets old. Fast."

"I didn't figure we'd be hanging out in five-star hotels," she retorted.

"You're missing the point. Will you please listen to me?"

"I'm sorry." She sat down across the tiny table from him, but she held herself stiff and made no move to touch the hand he was resting on the wood. "I'm listening."

"You never stop looking over your shoulder. Never. When someone stares at you for a second longer than normal, you don't have the luxury of thinking, 'It's probably nothing.' You have to wonder, put it on your radar." He slumped in the rigid chair, his foot bumping the table leg. "You get comfortable somewhere, start to feel a little bit settled, and have to leave in ten minutes because something doesn't feel right. You lie to everyone. You can't make friends. The college student at the coffee shop – the one who knows you like the double tall skim latte with a half shot of vanilla and carries around pictures of her kid? You talk to her while she makes your drink and wonder if she is a student or she has a kid. The nice old man at the newspaper stand is a potential threat because he might have seen your picture. You never sleep more than two or three hours at a time, and even that's a luxury." Jack glanced up, irritated by his sudden awareness of exactly how many places on his body hurt. "Is that what you want your life to be?"

She looked at him for several seconds. Then she whispered, "I want you. So I guess that means 'yes.'"

~~~~

Epilogue: I don't have a choice, but I still choose you


She misses a hundred small things about her former life (Froot Loops, real Diet Coke, that amazing face cream she used to spend ludicrous amounts of money on, scent of pine trees at night, her own goddamn hair color). But what she misses most is being a part of something, feeling as if her presence on the planet makes a difference. She never understood, all those years at the FBI, how much she took that idea for granted, how much her job defined her and taught her who she was, until the day Larry died and she blew her career all to hell.

She had to reinvent herself, and she's still learning.

So wherever they go, she volunteers. Helps the local kids with their English, distributes medical supplies after a flood that puts a quarter of the town under water, uses one of her fake IDs to let her build houses with Habitat For Humanity.

Turns out she's a lot better with a gun than with a hammer and nails.

Forking salad onto her plate, Jack looks at her swollen, purple finger. "That must've hurt."

She holds up her other hand to show him the impressive bruise across her thumb. "Well, now I match. Sort of."

_________________________

He watches his grandkids grow up in digital pictures, pixels and .jpeg scaling instead of tub damp bodies snuggled up for Goodnight Moon and sticky cotton candy hands at the fair. Chloe figures out a way for him to call Kim two or three times a year. The crack of her voice when she says, "Daddy?" hurts more than any of the most creative things Cheng ever thought up to do to him.

He wants (desperately) to ask for her forgiveness. But he doesn't deserve it, so he bites back the urge, does everything he can to keep their conversations light.

How does Teri like her new skateboard?

Is advanced math making her nervous?

Be sure to send me the pictures from Travis's play, okay?

He could listen to Kim's voice forever, soaking it in while she tells him a funny anecdote about the kids or complains about L.A. heat in the summer.

Teri wants to go to the pool every damn day!

I'm thinking about going back to work now that Travis is in preschool. My resume's a mess though.

Stephen got another article published.

I love you, Daddy.

Whenever he hangs up the phone after one of these conversations, he goes running. Ten or twelve miles straight, no destination in mind (which often results in encounters with brutal hills), despite the fact that his body rebels after four and he'll favor his right knee for a week. It's only by making everything in his body hurt that he can take the edge off the horrifying pain in his heart, the vacuum of space where Kim's supposed to be.

When he comes home – limping, sweat-soaked, gasping for air – Renee never says a word. She just hands him a huge glass of freezing water and an ice pack for his knee and goes back to whatever she was doing.

Waits for him to tell her, if he wants to. Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn't.

One Wednesday night, a few days before Christmas, he and Kim are about to say goodbye when all of the sudden, she's so quiet he can hear her breathing. Then she says (higher pitch than usual), Hey Daddy?

Yeah, sweetheart?

I forgive you. Her words slow time. I just . . . you know that, right? I forgive you.

It takes him a full two minutes before he can manage, I wish you knew how much I love you.

When he hangs up, he walks straight into the living room, where Renee is attempting to decorate one of the most pathetic excuses for a Christmas tree he's ever seen – sparse branches with one string of lights and some ornaments the two of them hand-painted from a kit. He grabs her, hugging her with so much enthusiasm that her feet swing off the ground, and he doesn't put her down for a long time.

_________________________

Somehow, they manage to stay in an apartment in the south of France for almost two years. Though he knows he shouldn't (the comfort of attachment, risk of things), Jack builds – a coffee table, a small bookshelf, cabinets to expand the kitchen. A frame for their bed.

When he hauls the bed frame up out of his makeshift workshop and puts the fresh line-dried green sheets over the mattress, Renee strips off her shirt and backs him up until his knees hit the foam. "We should test this, don't you think?"

Although she claims she could never keep a cactus alive for more than a three weeks, Renee manages to start a miniature garden on their patio. Cherry tomatoes, Poblano peppers, loose leaf lettuce, basil, purple zinnias, sunflowers.

The phone rings while Jack's pouring himself a glass of lemonade, watching Renee put the watering can down to strip dead leaves from the stems of her tomatoes.

"Yeah."

"It's Jim. You need to go."

"What the-"

"Jack. Get out. Then call me and I'll explain."

He studies Renee, humming to her iPod while she rotates the plants to face the sun. "We'll be gone in fifteen minutes. Thank you."

The slide of the patio door sounds like mortar fire in his mind. Renee glances up, grinning, a smudge of dirt on her cheek. "Hi! I thought you were reading."

"Jim called. We have to go. Now." The way he can watch the color slide from her face makes him sick. "I'll grab the duffels."

When he returns to the patio three minutes later, she's holding a tiny canvas bag, one that will fit (easily) into the larger duffel. Into it, she's stuffing one or two of everything, even the sunflowers, which will be wilting before they reach the docks.

Tears run down her face, dripping off her chin onto the wooden slats of the patio floor, but she acts as if nothing is different. And this is the part that cuts him in half. His own pain is one thing, so familiar it's boring, but hers is what pushes him to the edge of what he feels capable of handling. Dropping a shiny green pepper into the bag, she wipes the back of her hand over eyes and says, "You ready?"

"Yeah. I grabbed that lemon soap you bought at the Farmer's Market on Saturday."

"God, I would have forgotten it. Thank you." She walks past him, fingers brushing his arm.

He hears her rummaging in the bedroom. Remembering, he hurries into the kitchen to pick up the package of that cayenne dark chocolate she loves. It's insignificant, the candy, but when they arrive at whatever the hell their next destination might be, she'll pull open the zipper to find it mixed in with her shirts and her jeans.

A tenuous connection. A link to before.

She yells from the bedroom, "I'm grabbing that crossword book I just bought. Right behind you."

He tries, but he can't remember ever loving her more.

_________________________

"Are you ever sorry?"

"Hmm?" Half asleep, she blinks her eyes open in an attempt to process his question. She's snuggled across him in their backyard hammock, her favorite thing about the minute coastal Norwegian town they've called home for a little over two months now. The autumn wind raises goosebumps on the back of her neck. "Sorry about what?"

"That you didn't go back."

"No." The temperature at night drops rapidly here; she scoots closer to his body. He's her personal furnace.

"Just . . . no?"

Wide awake now, she pushes up on her elbow. "Yes. Just 'no.'"

"Why?"

"Jack, what's going on?"

"Nothing." He rubbed his hand up and down her arm, reducing the chill. "Sometimes I can't help thinking that . . . there's no way this is even close to the life you thought you'd have." He clears his throat. "Wanted to have."

She sits up to reach for the fleece blanket bunched at their feet. "It's not the plan I had when I was 25. Is that what you're talking about?" She pulls the blanket over them, stretching out on her back with her head on his shoulder. The sky is clearer tonight than she's seen it for weeks, midnight blue with stars splashed everywhere. "I wanted to be an SAC. Take over the world." She rubs a piece of his fuzzy flannel shirt between her fingers. "I mean. I'm assuming this isn't what you imagined when you were 25 either."

"Not even close."

She falls silent, listening to the shimmer of the wind chimes on their back porch. The hammock rocks with the breeze.

"Are you sorry?" she asks suddenly, her voice small ripple under the giant expanse of sky. "That I stayed? Is it easier to run by yourself?"

"Yes. It's a hell of a lot easier. Because there's nothing to worry about, nothing to protect." His hand slips under her sweatshirt, surprisingly warm on the skin of her stomach. "And no. I'm not sorry. I haven't gone this long without putting my gun in my mouth since Teri died."

There are a hundred things she could say to that, but not one of them would come close to letting him know how different it is now – how she can listen to the radio without having to tighten her stomach muscles to keep from crying, how the nightmares that still haunt her lack their former power because all she has to do is roll over and tuck herself into him when she gasps out of the blackness.

How sometimes, she wakes up smiling and she has no idea why.

What she says is, "Please don't ever do that again."

"I won't. I promise." he replies, and his voice holds the steel she learned not to doubt the first day she met him.

"Good." She curls herself into his body, fleece blanket up to her chin, his arm a firm curve over her back.

And she's not thinking, even for five seconds, about all the things her life is not. What she's thinking is what her life is: stars, fleece, trust, safety, Jack.

"You wanna go inside?" Jack's voice is sleepy.

She shakes her head. "Not yet. Five more minutes."

~~~~

More author's notes: First, I need to give credit to the artists from whom I've stolen story and chapter titles. The story title is from 'Fair' by Remy Zero. The chapter titles are from 'I Hurt Too,' by Katie Herzig; 'Wintersong,' by Sarah McLachlan; 'Dance Me to the End of Love,' by Leonard Cohen; 'If My Heart Was a House,' by Owl City; 'Start a War,' by The National; and 'Poison and Wine,' by the Civil Wars. Finally, epic thanks for everyone who kept me going through this when I truly thought I couldn't pull it off. I'll use LJ names for simplicity: lowriseflare, poeelektra, century_fox, paladin24, sardonicynic, slumber, tanyareed -- you all have had my back the entire time, and I can't say thank you enough. I'm sure I'm missing people, but it's way past my bedtime . . .




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