Fanfic: Close to Home Part 8
Title: Close to Home
Author Lindao
Rating: PG
Summary: Secrets, plots, and lies. For Team Machine, these things are a way of life. But for a few days in December, all the conspiracies are just a little sweeter. And though none of them have a real home, this Christmas, together, they might find something that’s close.
Word Count: 45,000 total-ish
Notes: Season 2, before "Shadow Box".
Yep, it's a late Christmas story, Sorry it’s so late! Next in the Chaos AU, after "Sacrifice".
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7
“You look beat,” Christine said.
Fusco sighed heavily. “Yeah. Rough day.”
She put a cup down in front of him. “It’s decaf. I want you to be able to sleep.”
“Thanks.” He tasted the coffee. Most decaf tasted like crap to him, but this wasn’t bad.
Christine went away and came back with a big shopping bag. Inside were his gifts for Lee, all neatly wrapped with fancy bows. She put it on the chair beside him, then went behind him and tried to rub his shoulders. He still had his vest on under his shirt. She chuckled, annoyed, and moved her hands up to his neck.
“Thanks for wrapping those. And for the laptop. He’s going to love it.”
“Good.”
Fusco rolled his head to one side and then the other. “God, that feels good.”
“You’re all knotted up.” She straightened his head up and dug her thumbs into the corded muscles on each side of his spine. Her touch was very firm and came just short of hurting.
e’d seen Simmons on his way out of the precinct. The man hadn’t even spoken to him. Just gave him that smug eyebrow thing as they passed. Fusco growled under his breath.
“What’s bugging you?” Christine asked quietly.
“Nothing,” he answered. “Just the day. It always gets to me, people killing each other just before Christmas.” Her thumbs continued to knead his neck, and almost against his will, Fusco felt himself start to relax. “I always think about the families, you know? How they’ll have to remember these people who got killed right at Christmas time.”
She murmured something without words. Fusco sipped his coffee, then dropped his head, gave her full access to the back of his neck.
“Do you have plans for Christmas Day?” she asked after a minute. “I have tickets for Les Miserables, the matinee, if you’d like to see it. Bring a date, maybe?”
“Mmm. Not really into musicals,” Fusco answered. “And I’ve got Lee for the day. I don’t think he’d be into it.”
“Okay. Maybe I’ll find you something else to do.”
“You don’t have to do that.” He gestured to the bag of gifts. “Really, this is more than enough. And I probably won’t be able to pry him off his computer anyhow.”
“Nah, none of his friends will be online until late in the day.”
Fusco shook his head. “Ten years old and he knows more about computers than I ever will.”
“Ten years,” Christine said quietly. “I admire your courage, Lionel.”
“For having a kid?”
“For having a kid right after 9/11. That took some stones. As it were.”
Fusco smirked. “Yeah, well. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“It wasn’t?” She dropped into the chair next to him.
He took another long drink of coffee. “After the Towers came down, my ex - my wife - she was obsessed with it, you know? All those shows on TV, the documentaries, the news shows? She watched all of them. Taped them and replayed them over and over. She was scared to death. She never stopped thinking about it. Nightmares, the whole thing.” He shrugged. “So I got this bright idea, you know, once we were pretty sure there wouldn’t be another hit, that maybe if we had a kid it’d give her something else to be obsessed with.&rdquo
“It didn’t?”
“Sorta. Once she was pregnant she was obsessed that she’d die because she was too big to run away. And after Lee was born, she was sure he was going to die horribly somehow. She wouldn’t leave the house for six months. She was scared to death all the time. It was awful.” He shook his head. “And since the kid was my idea, it was my fault that she was so scared.”
“I’m sorry,” Christine said.
Fusco sighed. “Don’t get me wrong. He’s a great kid, and I love him to death. But yeah, my timing sucked.”
“Good idea. Bad execution.”
“Yeah. I do that a lot.”
“Don’t we all?”
“Maybe I’ll bring him in over his school break.”
“If you’re sure you want to,” she answered vaguely.
“You don’t think I should?”
“No, I’d love to meet him,” Christine said. “It’s just … you know who I used to be. I didn’t think you’d want him anywhere near me.”
Fusco stared at her. “Are you serious?”
She looked away. “Well, yeah.”
“I know who you used to be,” he said firmly. “And I know who you are now. People change, Christine. You’re living proof of that. Of course I want my boy to meet you. Heck, when he’s older I’ll make him come do the present thing with Carter’s kid.”
“I’d like that.”
“You aren’t who you used to be, kid. Seems like everybody knows that but you.”
She leaned against his shoulder. “I thought I was supposed to making you feel better.”
“Actually, you are.” He looked around the bar. There were lights and Christmas decorations everywhere. It was bright, warm. There were couples and groups, talking quietly. Happy people. A group of young soldiers by the front window. “’Cause if you aren’t who you used to be, maybe I’m not, either.”
Christine sat up. “Lionel, what’s going on with you?”
He shrugged. “Nothing. Like I said, just the season. Maybe feeling my age a little bit. I don’t know.” He stood up, patted her shoulder. “Thanks for the decaf. And everything. I’ll see you later.”
He took his bag of presents and walked out, aware that Christine watched him every step of the way.
**
There weren’t any spots in front of the café in the morning, so Carter stopped her car down the block and let Taylor out. She watched him walk back to the coffee house. It wasn’t necessary, of course: He was old enough to walk half a block on his own, even in the early morning darkness. But it was a mother’s habit and she was reluctant to let it go.
In the time it took him to walk to the front door, two cars pulled out of the spots right out front and two more pulled in. The morning coffee shuffle, Carter thought. She was tempted to go get a cup herself. Chaos coffee was about ten times as good as she could get at the precinct. But she was running late, so she decided against it.
She was a little surprised when Scotty got out of the passenger side of the second car. The driver got out, too. He was tall, fit, blond, and wearing Army fatigues. “Really?” Carter said, leaning forward. “At this hour?”
The two met in front of the car and kissed. If she’d been called to the stand, Carter decided, she would have characterized the kiss as passionate, but brief. And she would have been fairly comfortable in guessing that they’d spent the night together. The man was regulation tidy, but the woman looked a little rumpled.
Nothing wrong with that, Carter thought uneasily. They were both single adults - she assumed the soldier was single, anyhow - and what they did behind closed doors was their own business. If Taylor saw his temporary boss wandering home at the crack of dawn, well, he wasn’t a child. He knew grown-ups had sex. Some grown-ups, sometimes, anyhow.
The soldier got back in his car and drove off. Scotty stayed on the sidewalk and waved, then went inside.
“Huh,” Carter said to herself. She didn’t know why it struck her as so odd. So wrong. She knew Fusco didn’t have any romantic feelings for the woman; he treated her like his wayward little sister. John and his partner had some interest in her, but it seemed to be limited to making sure she didn’t get killed or kill anyone. That only left Donnelly in the picture …
She sat back and laughed at herself. Scotty might be a player, but she didn’t have enough game to get Donnelly’s tie off, much less the rest of the suit. As far as she knew, the man who’s life work was chasing the Man in the Suit never took his off, either.
**
Reese said, “Can you get away for an hour?”
“Seriously?” Christine asked. There was a loud crash somewhere behind her. “I’ve kind of got things going on.”
“It’s important.”
She sighed. “For you, love, of course. When?”
“I’m out back.”
There was a distinct pause. “Damn it. Two minutes.”
“I’ll wait.”
Reese put his phone away and waited. It was raining, trying to snow, and the windshield wipers fought against the freezing mixture. He turned the defroster back on.
As promised, in two minutes she slid into the car next to him. “Nice upgrade,” she said, looking around her.
“Buckle up.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
He drove just over fifteen blocks from the café, turned right and went up another two. He parked the car in front of an empty building, brick, three stories and a basement, with a sloped roof. There was a “For Sale” sign in the front window. It was faded with age. He got out and went around, opened the car door for her. “Come on.”
“Okay.” It was still raining ice water, but she climbed out gamely. “What’s this?”
“You’ll see,” he said again. He climbed the stairs to the front door. There was a combination box lock on it, the sort that realtors used.
“I’m not really big on surprises,” Christine said.
“I know.” He keyed in the combination from memory and opened the door. “Do you trust me?”
“Roughly as far as I can spit.” But she grinned and followed him into the building anyhow.
The ground floor was open, except for support columns. The floor had been beautiful hardwood once; now it was crap. But Reese wasn’t interested in the floor or anything else. He led the young woman to the stairway at the side of the big room, then down toward the basement.
Four steps from the bottom, the wooden stair bowed under his foot. He paused, tested the next one. It was worse. He reached his foot back to the next, which was reasonably solid, so he skipped over the third. The bottom step actually cracked when he tested it. He jumped down to the floor, which was safely concrete, then reached back, took Christine by the waist, and simply lifted her off the stairs entirely. “We’ll need to deal with that,” he mused as he set her on her feet.
“Why?”
John ignored her and walked to the wall opposite the stairs. There was a lot of rubbish there, old shelving, boxes and crates of junk, some old chairs in stacks, and pieces from a couple of broken desks. Behind the hulking furnace, he saw what he was looking for. He pushed the debris aside and studied the door.
Christine came and stood beside him. “Ohhhhh,” she said.
Reese grinned. “No promises.” He looked at the padlock on the door for a moment. Then he took out his gun and rapped the lock sharply with the butt. It fell open immediately, sprinkling rust flakes onto the floor.
The door screamed on rusty hinges, but the two of them managed to push it open enough to get through. On the other side was darkness; Reese pulled out his little flashlight, and gave a second one to Christine.
The tunnel was smooth and straight, concrete on the floor and cement blocks on the walls. But it had obviously been abandoned for some time. There were cobwebs everywhere, and the blocks were badly cracked in places. Patches of dampness showed at the corners of the floor, though there was no standing water.
Reese moved carefully, slowly. There were side tunnels about twenty yards in. The one on the right ended after five feet, in another block wall. The one to the left continued further, then ended in a dirt cave-in.
They returned to the main passage and went on.
Perhaps two hundred yards from the basement entrance there was another large steel door. It had a standard key lock. It was very old, and it took Reese several tries to pick it. When it finally clicked, he pushed against the door. It opened stiffly, but more easily than the first one had.
A blast of cold air and noise came through the opening.
John held one hand out to the woman, warning her back. Then he flattened himself against the wall and peeked past the door. After a minute he pushed it further open and slid around the side into the space beyond.
“John?” Christine said.
“Come here,” he said.
She slid around the door to join him in the vast cavern beyond.
John stayed very close to the wall, hidden in shadows. He grabbed Christine’s hand and drew him next to him. Then they simply stood and looked.
Six feet from the doorway there was a narrow ledge, and then a drop to train tracks. Six sets of train tracks, to be exact. And not trains, but subway cars. While they watched, one train passed them from the north. There was a screech of breaks just after it passed.
Reese moved to the end of the short tunnel.
The ledge was two feet wide, easy enough to walk on with a little care. At its end, twenty feet away, was a subway platform.
He glanced at Christine. “You know where we are?”
“Yeah.” She grinned. “I know this station. You can catch two lines up there, both directions.”
He gestured to the doorway behind him. “Must have been construction access or something. You could hide in there. Or use it to escape.”
She nodded. “And once you got out here, to the subway lines, you could go anywhere.”
“Let’s see.” He moved along the ledge carefully. She followed him closely. Once they got to the platform, it was simply open. They stepped into the sparse crowd, unnoticed. Waited while another train rolled into the station and then departed. Then they slipped out again, still unnoticed.
“Well?” Reese asked, when they were back in to quiet tunnel. “Will this work for you?”
Her body was tense, her eyes nervous, but she nodded. “This could work.”
“We should go look at the building, then.” Reese led her back to the basement, lifted her over the rotten steps, then followed her back to the ground floor.
“How did you find this?”
“I do my homework,” Reese answered. “I’ve been looking for a while. I wasn’t sure about the tunnels, though.” He looked around the big open floor. “Office space,” he mused aloud. “Maybe accounting, a travel agency, something like that. Or you could make it an apartment.”
Christine shook her head. “Ground floor windows are not my thing. Maybe office space. It’s got good light, I bet.”
There were windows on every wall. She was right; it probably got great light on bright days. Reese walked to the back of the room and looked out. “It has a yard,” he said.
She joined him at the window. “A what?”
“A yard. With grass. Or it could have.”
“Eh,” she answered, unimpressed.
“You’d like grass between your toes, I bet,” he said. “You could have a patio.”
She looked at him like he’d lost his mind.
“Then I could grill steaks,” he continued.
“Ahh. Now you’re talking.”
“My little carnivore,” he said fondly. “Let’s see what’s upstairs.”
She started up the stairs, but Reese stopped her and went first. “I fall better than you do.”
The stairs to the second floor seemed solid. The floor had been divided into four small apartments, one bedroom each. “Yuck,” Christine pronounced, looking at the tiny rooms in the first one. It was empty, but the remaining carpeting was olive green and had been plush once. The kitchen had badly-dated wallpaper that was supposed to look like brick. The linoleum floor was the color of nicotine. Everything was dirty, and many things were broken. “But the windows,” she added. “The windows give it possibilities.”
Like the ground floor, there were windows on every side. Reese nodded. “If you tore out all the interior walls, made it two apartments, or maybe one big one … maybe leave it open, like loft space?”
“It’d be enormous,” Christine answered. “I can’t imagine a loft this big.”
“Here.” He brought out his phone and scrolled through it, held it out to her.
Puzzled, she looked at the screen. Reese flicked through the next several pictures. “That’s gorgeous,” she said.
“That’s my place,” he told her.
“Seriously?” She flipped back through the pictures, looking more closely. “It’s really nice. Really nice.”
“Finch bought it for me,” he said casually. “You could do something like that here.”
“I don’t know. That’s a lot of wide-open space. I think I like walls. Just not walls quite this close.”
“Fair enough. But you like this building? The tunnel, the location?”
“I like it,” she agreed. “I like it a lot, John.”
“Let’s see what’s upstairs.” They went back to the stairway and started up. “There’s just one problem with this property,” he said easily.
“Oh, there are hundreds of problems with this property,” she corrected. “But I’m already seeing ways to overcome them.” She sighed happily. “Oh, I like it.”
“One insurmountable problem, then,” he corrected.
“What’s that?”
He paused, his hand on the door to the top floor. “It’s not for sale.”
“Yes it is. There’s a sign downstairs.”
“Nope. It was sold yesterday. It’s off the market.”
“What?”
“I talked to the real estate agent. It’s sold.”
“Well, crap.” She shook her head. “Maybe I can find the buyer, talk him into flipping it.”
“I don’t think so.” Reese pushed the door open, let he go ahead of him onto the third floor. “He seems pretty determined to get rid of it on his own terms.”
The third floor had been gutted before the original owner ran out of money. Like the ground floor, it was wide open except for the support beams, and the windows on all four walls let in the gray light of the afternoon. The floor was gritty with dust.
“You’ve met him?”
“So have you.”
Christine stopped dead. “Son of a bitch!”
Finch stepped out from beside a column. “That’s hardly a helpful starting position for negotiations,” he said mildly.
“Damn it, Random. We had an agreement about this. I was very specific.”
“You were,” he agreed. “You specifically forbid me to buy Nathan Ingram’s loft for you.” He gestured to the empty room. “This is about as far from that loft as I could get.”
She glanced at Reese for support. He shrugged, walked to the back windows, and looked down at the yard again. There was even an oak tree, way back by the property line. He liked the possibilities.
“I can’t let you buy me a house. A whole building. I can’t.”
“Why not?”
He bought me the loft, Reese willed her to remember. There was a reason I told you that. But he stayed silent and physically separate from their discussion. He probably couldn’t help, and if Christine felt like they were ganging up on her she was likely to dig her heels in. More than she already had.
Christine made a little strangling noise, but she couldn’t put words to her objections for a minute. “I can’t,” she repeated.
“You can’t stop me, actually,” Finch answered gently. “It’s already in your name. The title transferred this morning.”
“I won’t accept it.”
“Then don’t. Leave it. Let it stand empty until it crumbles, or until some vagrant burns it down, or until they sell it for back taxes. It’s yours. Do as you will.”
“Random …”
“Or make it your home. Build the walls you need, tear out the ones you don’t. Rip out the carpeting and polish the hardwood floors. Run new wiring, make your wi-fi the fastest in the city. Let in the light from every side.” Reese could hear him moving closer to where the woman had been. He didn’t turn around; it seemed like the moment called for privacy. “And keep your tunnels in the basement, just in case,” Finch continued. “But whatever you decide, please, please let yourself move away from Chaos. Call it a gift to me, if you like, because it’s what I really want. More than anything, I want this. That you give yourself a little space.” His voice went soft, and very gentle. “That you give yourself permission finally to put your father’s death behind you.”
Reese stared fixedly at the ground outside the window. There was a lump in his own throat. He could almost feel how conflicted Christine was. She was silent for a very long moment, and without looking John knew her eyes were locked up with Harold’s. Their feet didn’t move. He held his breath, held very still, desperate not to disturb them.
Finally, he heard Christine inhale. It sounded shaky, like she was about to cry. “Damn it, Random …” she whispered.
And then there was movement, and fabric rustled, and when he glanced over his shoulder the woman was in Finch’s arms.
Reese grinned and turned back to the window. It would need to be fenced, he decided. A decent fence around the yard, and a patio around the back door. Not concrete. Sandstone or granite, something with a little style. With a propone line for the grill. Charcoal was better, but too slow. He wasn’t patient, where red meat was involved. Maybe a bird feeder.
Christine muttered something against Finch’s chest. Reese only caught the last few words, but he got the gist of the question. “…have pie?”
Harold laughed out loud. “Yes, little Dierdre, you can still have pie, too.”
Reese nodded to himself. He rarely heard Harold laugh, and almost never like that, open and actually happy. It was worth all the tunnels he’d climbed through in the past six months. Worth a lot more than that. He smiled to himself and turned to join them.
Author Lindao
Rating: PG
Summary: Secrets, plots, and lies. For Team Machine, these things are a way of life. But for a few days in December, all the conspiracies are just a little sweeter. And though none of them have a real home, this Christmas, together, they might find something that’s close.
Word Count: 45,000 total-ish
Notes: Season 2, before "Shadow Box".
Yep, it's a late Christmas story, Sorry it’s so late! Next in the Chaos AU, after "Sacrifice".
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7
“You look beat,” Christine said.
Fusco sighed heavily. “Yeah. Rough day.”
She put a cup down in front of him. “It’s decaf. I want you to be able to sleep.”
“Thanks.” He tasted the coffee. Most decaf tasted like crap to him, but this wasn’t bad.
Christine went away and came back with a big shopping bag. Inside were his gifts for Lee, all neatly wrapped with fancy bows. She put it on the chair beside him, then went behind him and tried to rub his shoulders. He still had his vest on under his shirt. She chuckled, annoyed, and moved her hands up to his neck.
“Thanks for wrapping those. And for the laptop. He’s going to love it.”
“Good.”
Fusco rolled his head to one side and then the other. “God, that feels good.”
“You’re all knotted up.” She straightened his head up and dug her thumbs into the corded muscles on each side of his spine. Her touch was very firm and came just short of hurting.
e’d seen Simmons on his way out of the precinct. The man hadn’t even spoken to him. Just gave him that smug eyebrow thing as they passed. Fusco growled under his breath.
“What’s bugging you?” Christine asked quietly.
“Nothing,” he answered. “Just the day. It always gets to me, people killing each other just before Christmas.” Her thumbs continued to knead his neck, and almost against his will, Fusco felt himself start to relax. “I always think about the families, you know? How they’ll have to remember these people who got killed right at Christmas time.”
She murmured something without words. Fusco sipped his coffee, then dropped his head, gave her full access to the back of his neck.
“Do you have plans for Christmas Day?” she asked after a minute. “I have tickets for Les Miserables, the matinee, if you’d like to see it. Bring a date, maybe?”
“Mmm. Not really into musicals,” Fusco answered. “And I’ve got Lee for the day. I don’t think he’d be into it.”
“Okay. Maybe I’ll find you something else to do.”
“You don’t have to do that.” He gestured to the bag of gifts. “Really, this is more than enough. And I probably won’t be able to pry him off his computer anyhow.”
“Nah, none of his friends will be online until late in the day.”
Fusco shook his head. “Ten years old and he knows more about computers than I ever will.”
“Ten years,” Christine said quietly. “I admire your courage, Lionel.”
“For having a kid?”
“For having a kid right after 9/11. That took some stones. As it were.”
Fusco smirked. “Yeah, well. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“It wasn’t?” She dropped into the chair next to him.
He took another long drink of coffee. “After the Towers came down, my ex - my wife - she was obsessed with it, you know? All those shows on TV, the documentaries, the news shows? She watched all of them. Taped them and replayed them over and over. She was scared to death. She never stopped thinking about it. Nightmares, the whole thing.” He shrugged. “So I got this bright idea, you know, once we were pretty sure there wouldn’t be another hit, that maybe if we had a kid it’d give her something else to be obsessed with.&rdquo
“It didn’t?”
“Sorta. Once she was pregnant she was obsessed that she’d die because she was too big to run away. And after Lee was born, she was sure he was going to die horribly somehow. She wouldn’t leave the house for six months. She was scared to death all the time. It was awful.” He shook his head. “And since the kid was my idea, it was my fault that she was so scared.”
“I’m sorry,” Christine said.
Fusco sighed. “Don’t get me wrong. He’s a great kid, and I love him to death. But yeah, my timing sucked.”
“Good idea. Bad execution.”
“Yeah. I do that a lot.”
“Don’t we all?”
“Maybe I’ll bring him in over his school break.”
“If you’re sure you want to,” she answered vaguely.
“You don’t think I should?”
“No, I’d love to meet him,” Christine said. “It’s just … you know who I used to be. I didn’t think you’d want him anywhere near me.”
Fusco stared at her. “Are you serious?”
She looked away. “Well, yeah.”
“I know who you used to be,” he said firmly. “And I know who you are now. People change, Christine. You’re living proof of that. Of course I want my boy to meet you. Heck, when he’s older I’ll make him come do the present thing with Carter’s kid.”
“I’d like that.”
“You aren’t who you used to be, kid. Seems like everybody knows that but you.”
She leaned against his shoulder. “I thought I was supposed to making you feel better.”
“Actually, you are.” He looked around the bar. There were lights and Christmas decorations everywhere. It was bright, warm. There were couples and groups, talking quietly. Happy people. A group of young soldiers by the front window. “’Cause if you aren’t who you used to be, maybe I’m not, either.”
Christine sat up. “Lionel, what’s going on with you?”
He shrugged. “Nothing. Like I said, just the season. Maybe feeling my age a little bit. I don’t know.” He stood up, patted her shoulder. “Thanks for the decaf. And everything. I’ll see you later.”
He took his bag of presents and walked out, aware that Christine watched him every step of the way.
**
There weren’t any spots in front of the café in the morning, so Carter stopped her car down the block and let Taylor out. She watched him walk back to the coffee house. It wasn’t necessary, of course: He was old enough to walk half a block on his own, even in the early morning darkness. But it was a mother’s habit and she was reluctant to let it go.
In the time it took him to walk to the front door, two cars pulled out of the spots right out front and two more pulled in. The morning coffee shuffle, Carter thought. She was tempted to go get a cup herself. Chaos coffee was about ten times as good as she could get at the precinct. But she was running late, so she decided against it.
She was a little surprised when Scotty got out of the passenger side of the second car. The driver got out, too. He was tall, fit, blond, and wearing Army fatigues. “Really?” Carter said, leaning forward. “At this hour?”
The two met in front of the car and kissed. If she’d been called to the stand, Carter decided, she would have characterized the kiss as passionate, but brief. And she would have been fairly comfortable in guessing that they’d spent the night together. The man was regulation tidy, but the woman looked a little rumpled.
Nothing wrong with that, Carter thought uneasily. They were both single adults - she assumed the soldier was single, anyhow - and what they did behind closed doors was their own business. If Taylor saw his temporary boss wandering home at the crack of dawn, well, he wasn’t a child. He knew grown-ups had sex. Some grown-ups, sometimes, anyhow.
The soldier got back in his car and drove off. Scotty stayed on the sidewalk and waved, then went inside.
“Huh,” Carter said to herself. She didn’t know why it struck her as so odd. So wrong. She knew Fusco didn’t have any romantic feelings for the woman; he treated her like his wayward little sister. John and his partner had some interest in her, but it seemed to be limited to making sure she didn’t get killed or kill anyone. That only left Donnelly in the picture …
She sat back and laughed at herself. Scotty might be a player, but she didn’t have enough game to get Donnelly’s tie off, much less the rest of the suit. As far as she knew, the man who’s life work was chasing the Man in the Suit never took his off, either.
**
Reese said, “Can you get away for an hour?”
“Seriously?” Christine asked. There was a loud crash somewhere behind her. “I’ve kind of got things going on.”
“It’s important.”
She sighed. “For you, love, of course. When?”
“I’m out back.”
There was a distinct pause. “Damn it. Two minutes.”
“I’ll wait.”
Reese put his phone away and waited. It was raining, trying to snow, and the windshield wipers fought against the freezing mixture. He turned the defroster back on.
As promised, in two minutes she slid into the car next to him. “Nice upgrade,” she said, looking around her.
“Buckle up.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
He drove just over fifteen blocks from the café, turned right and went up another two. He parked the car in front of an empty building, brick, three stories and a basement, with a sloped roof. There was a “For Sale” sign in the front window. It was faded with age. He got out and went around, opened the car door for her. “Come on.”
“Okay.” It was still raining ice water, but she climbed out gamely. “What’s this?”
“You’ll see,” he said again. He climbed the stairs to the front door. There was a combination box lock on it, the sort that realtors used.
“I’m not really big on surprises,” Christine said.
“I know.” He keyed in the combination from memory and opened the door. “Do you trust me?”
“Roughly as far as I can spit.” But she grinned and followed him into the building anyhow.
The ground floor was open, except for support columns. The floor had been beautiful hardwood once; now it was crap. But Reese wasn’t interested in the floor or anything else. He led the young woman to the stairway at the side of the big room, then down toward the basement.
Four steps from the bottom, the wooden stair bowed under his foot. He paused, tested the next one. It was worse. He reached his foot back to the next, which was reasonably solid, so he skipped over the third. The bottom step actually cracked when he tested it. He jumped down to the floor, which was safely concrete, then reached back, took Christine by the waist, and simply lifted her off the stairs entirely. “We’ll need to deal with that,” he mused as he set her on her feet.
“Why?”
John ignored her and walked to the wall opposite the stairs. There was a lot of rubbish there, old shelving, boxes and crates of junk, some old chairs in stacks, and pieces from a couple of broken desks. Behind the hulking furnace, he saw what he was looking for. He pushed the debris aside and studied the door.
Christine came and stood beside him. “Ohhhhh,” she said.
Reese grinned. “No promises.” He looked at the padlock on the door for a moment. Then he took out his gun and rapped the lock sharply with the butt. It fell open immediately, sprinkling rust flakes onto the floor.
The door screamed on rusty hinges, but the two of them managed to push it open enough to get through. On the other side was darkness; Reese pulled out his little flashlight, and gave a second one to Christine.
The tunnel was smooth and straight, concrete on the floor and cement blocks on the walls. But it had obviously been abandoned for some time. There were cobwebs everywhere, and the blocks were badly cracked in places. Patches of dampness showed at the corners of the floor, though there was no standing water.
Reese moved carefully, slowly. There were side tunnels about twenty yards in. The one on the right ended after five feet, in another block wall. The one to the left continued further, then ended in a dirt cave-in.
They returned to the main passage and went on.
Perhaps two hundred yards from the basement entrance there was another large steel door. It had a standard key lock. It was very old, and it took Reese several tries to pick it. When it finally clicked, he pushed against the door. It opened stiffly, but more easily than the first one had.
A blast of cold air and noise came through the opening.
John held one hand out to the woman, warning her back. Then he flattened himself against the wall and peeked past the door. After a minute he pushed it further open and slid around the side into the space beyond.
“John?” Christine said.
“Come here,” he said.
She slid around the door to join him in the vast cavern beyond.
John stayed very close to the wall, hidden in shadows. He grabbed Christine’s hand and drew him next to him. Then they simply stood and looked.
Six feet from the doorway there was a narrow ledge, and then a drop to train tracks. Six sets of train tracks, to be exact. And not trains, but subway cars. While they watched, one train passed them from the north. There was a screech of breaks just after it passed.
Reese moved to the end of the short tunnel.
The ledge was two feet wide, easy enough to walk on with a little care. At its end, twenty feet away, was a subway platform.
He glanced at Christine. “You know where we are?”
“Yeah.” She grinned. “I know this station. You can catch two lines up there, both directions.”
He gestured to the doorway behind him. “Must have been construction access or something. You could hide in there. Or use it to escape.”
She nodded. “And once you got out here, to the subway lines, you could go anywhere.”
“Let’s see.” He moved along the ledge carefully. She followed him closely. Once they got to the platform, it was simply open. They stepped into the sparse crowd, unnoticed. Waited while another train rolled into the station and then departed. Then they slipped out again, still unnoticed.
“Well?” Reese asked, when they were back in to quiet tunnel. “Will this work for you?”
Her body was tense, her eyes nervous, but she nodded. “This could work.”
“We should go look at the building, then.” Reese led her back to the basement, lifted her over the rotten steps, then followed her back to the ground floor.
“How did you find this?”
“I do my homework,” Reese answered. “I’ve been looking for a while. I wasn’t sure about the tunnels, though.” He looked around the big open floor. “Office space,” he mused aloud. “Maybe accounting, a travel agency, something like that. Or you could make it an apartment.”
Christine shook her head. “Ground floor windows are not my thing. Maybe office space. It’s got good light, I bet.”
There were windows on every wall. She was right; it probably got great light on bright days. Reese walked to the back of the room and looked out. “It has a yard,” he said.
She joined him at the window. “A what?”
“A yard. With grass. Or it could have.”
“Eh,” she answered, unimpressed.
“You’d like grass between your toes, I bet,” he said. “You could have a patio.”
She looked at him like he’d lost his mind.
“Then I could grill steaks,” he continued.
“Ahh. Now you’re talking.”
“My little carnivore,” he said fondly. “Let’s see what’s upstairs.”
She started up the stairs, but Reese stopped her and went first. “I fall better than you do.”
The stairs to the second floor seemed solid. The floor had been divided into four small apartments, one bedroom each. “Yuck,” Christine pronounced, looking at the tiny rooms in the first one. It was empty, but the remaining carpeting was olive green and had been plush once. The kitchen had badly-dated wallpaper that was supposed to look like brick. The linoleum floor was the color of nicotine. Everything was dirty, and many things were broken. “But the windows,” she added. “The windows give it possibilities.”
Like the ground floor, there were windows on every side. Reese nodded. “If you tore out all the interior walls, made it two apartments, or maybe one big one … maybe leave it open, like loft space?”
“It’d be enormous,” Christine answered. “I can’t imagine a loft this big.”
“Here.” He brought out his phone and scrolled through it, held it out to her.
Puzzled, she looked at the screen. Reese flicked through the next several pictures. “That’s gorgeous,” she said.
“That’s my place,” he told her.
“Seriously?” She flipped back through the pictures, looking more closely. “It’s really nice. Really nice.”
“Finch bought it for me,” he said casually. “You could do something like that here.”
“I don’t know. That’s a lot of wide-open space. I think I like walls. Just not walls quite this close.”
“Fair enough. But you like this building? The tunnel, the location?”
“I like it,” she agreed. “I like it a lot, John.”
“Let’s see what’s upstairs.” They went back to the stairway and started up. “There’s just one problem with this property,” he said easily.
“Oh, there are hundreds of problems with this property,” she corrected. “But I’m already seeing ways to overcome them.” She sighed happily. “Oh, I like it.”
“One insurmountable problem, then,” he corrected.
“What’s that?”
He paused, his hand on the door to the top floor. “It’s not for sale.”
“Yes it is. There’s a sign downstairs.”
“Nope. It was sold yesterday. It’s off the market.”
“What?”
“I talked to the real estate agent. It’s sold.”
“Well, crap.” She shook her head. “Maybe I can find the buyer, talk him into flipping it.”
“I don’t think so.” Reese pushed the door open, let he go ahead of him onto the third floor. “He seems pretty determined to get rid of it on his own terms.”
The third floor had been gutted before the original owner ran out of money. Like the ground floor, it was wide open except for the support beams, and the windows on all four walls let in the gray light of the afternoon. The floor was gritty with dust.
“You’ve met him?”
“So have you.”
Christine stopped dead. “Son of a bitch!”
Finch stepped out from beside a column. “That’s hardly a helpful starting position for negotiations,” he said mildly.
“Damn it, Random. We had an agreement about this. I was very specific.”
“You were,” he agreed. “You specifically forbid me to buy Nathan Ingram’s loft for you.” He gestured to the empty room. “This is about as far from that loft as I could get.”
She glanced at Reese for support. He shrugged, walked to the back windows, and looked down at the yard again. There was even an oak tree, way back by the property line. He liked the possibilities.
“I can’t let you buy me a house. A whole building. I can’t.”
“Why not?”
He bought me the loft, Reese willed her to remember. There was a reason I told you that. But he stayed silent and physically separate from their discussion. He probably couldn’t help, and if Christine felt like they were ganging up on her she was likely to dig her heels in. More than she already had.
Christine made a little strangling noise, but she couldn’t put words to her objections for a minute. “I can’t,” she repeated.
“You can’t stop me, actually,” Finch answered gently. “It’s already in your name. The title transferred this morning.”
“I won’t accept it.”
“Then don’t. Leave it. Let it stand empty until it crumbles, or until some vagrant burns it down, or until they sell it for back taxes. It’s yours. Do as you will.”
“Random …”
“Or make it your home. Build the walls you need, tear out the ones you don’t. Rip out the carpeting and polish the hardwood floors. Run new wiring, make your wi-fi the fastest in the city. Let in the light from every side.” Reese could hear him moving closer to where the woman had been. He didn’t turn around; it seemed like the moment called for privacy. “And keep your tunnels in the basement, just in case,” Finch continued. “But whatever you decide, please, please let yourself move away from Chaos. Call it a gift to me, if you like, because it’s what I really want. More than anything, I want this. That you give yourself a little space.” His voice went soft, and very gentle. “That you give yourself permission finally to put your father’s death behind you.”
Reese stared fixedly at the ground outside the window. There was a lump in his own throat. He could almost feel how conflicted Christine was. She was silent for a very long moment, and without looking John knew her eyes were locked up with Harold’s. Their feet didn’t move. He held his breath, held very still, desperate not to disturb them.
Finally, he heard Christine inhale. It sounded shaky, like she was about to cry. “Damn it, Random …” she whispered.
And then there was movement, and fabric rustled, and when he glanced over his shoulder the woman was in Finch’s arms.
Reese grinned and turned back to the window. It would need to be fenced, he decided. A decent fence around the yard, and a patio around the back door. Not concrete. Sandstone or granite, something with a little style. With a propone line for the grill. Charcoal was better, but too slow. He wasn’t patient, where red meat was involved. Maybe a bird feeder.
Christine muttered something against Finch’s chest. Reese only caught the last few words, but he got the gist of the question. “…have pie?”
Harold laughed out loud. “Yes, little Dierdre, you can still have pie, too.”
Reese nodded to himself. He rarely heard Harold laugh, and almost never like that, open and actually happy. It was worth all the tunnels he’d climbed through in the past six months. Worth a lot more than that. He smiled to himself and turned to join them.