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leigh57Title: What If You Catch Me, Where Would We Land
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
leigh57
Pairing: Jack Bauer/Renee Walker
Word Count: 33,600 total – approximately 6000 for this chapter (I’ll put one up every couple days so as not to spam the comm.)
Rating/Warnings: R; sex, violence, language, references to physical and sexual abuse, spoilers for the entire series
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: Under the cut.
This story was written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
het_bigbang 2011. The link to that epic site is HERE.
I feel as if there is not room enough for the thanks. But I’ll try.adrenalin211, without whom this story would never have been started, let alone finished. dealan311, who not only made me stunning art but listened to me freak out repeatedly throughout this whole process. Everyone else who cheered me on, there are not words to convey my gratitude. A giant shoutout to irony_rocks and peanutbutterer for taking on the insane task of modding this endeavor and getting the het_bigbang site up and running on time. lowriseflare, poeelektra, century_fox, paladin24, sardonicynic, slumber, and tanyareed – you all have had my back the entire time. Finally, thanks to the brilliant artists whose lyrics I'm borrowing for this story. The story title is taken from “Fair,” by Remy Zero. This chapter title is taken from “I Hurt Too,” by Katie Herzig.
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-flops 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 some 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 skin. 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 Dean Koontz novels 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 a few basic necessities 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 book at a time), no knick-knacks.
Nothing useless or beautiful.
He liked it, 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 the slightest 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 took a drag of his cigarette 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 Jensen,” 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, Jensen.” 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 this 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 if she had the slightest doubt that Renee was actually alive.
“Hey Jensen. 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 crept 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 flared 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 safe when 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, drift down, and settle, two central ideas emerged from the chaos.
He needed a plan.
And god, he wanted to see her.
Next Chapter
Author:
leigh57Pairing: Jack Bauer/Renee Walker
Word Count: 33,600 total – approximately 6000 for this chapter (I’ll put one up every couple days so as not to spam the comm.)
Rating/Warnings: R; sex, violence, language, references to physical and sexual abuse, spoilers for the entire series
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: Under the cut.
This story was written for
het_bigbang 2011. The link to that epic site is HERE.I feel as if there is not room enough for the thanks. But I’ll try.
adrenalin211, without whom this story would never have been started, let alone finished. dealan311, who not only made me stunning art but listened to me freak out repeatedly throughout this whole process. Everyone else who cheered me on, there are not words to convey my gratitude. A giant shoutout to irony_rocks and peanutbutterer for taking on the insane task of modding this endeavor and getting the het_bigbang site up and running on time. lowriseflare, poeelektra, century_fox, paladin24, sardonicynic, slumber, and tanyareed – you all have had my back the entire time. Finally, thanks to the brilliant artists whose lyrics I'm borrowing for this story. The story title is taken from “Fair,” by Remy Zero. This chapter title is taken from “I Hurt Too,” by Katie Herzig.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-flops 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 some 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 skin. 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 Dean Koontz novels 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 a few basic necessities 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 book at a time), no knick-knacks.
Nothing useless or beautiful.
He liked it, 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 the slightest 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 took a drag of his cigarette 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 Jensen,” 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, Jensen.” 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 this 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 if she had the slightest doubt that Renee was actually alive.
“Hey Jensen. 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 crept 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 flared 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 safe when 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, drift down, and settle, two central ideas emerged from the chaos.
He needed a plan.
And god, he wanted to see her.
