Second Chances Chapter Three
The Beginning of John Reese and Harold Finch
It was going to be cold tonight, not cold enough to freeze to death, but cold enough to make John feel miserable if he spent the night in the abandoned building the transient had called home these past months. So here the vagrant Reese had become was riding in the subway car keeping warm, nipping occasionally at the whiskey bottle, trying to slip into an alcohol induced haze once more.
Reese drank enough tonight, enough to make most men pass out, but he became fully aware of the five young men entering the subway car and instinctively knew they were trouble. The bum John was tried to make himself unnoticeable, to not appear to be seeing what was going on, even though he watched them through lidded eyes hassle the two black men that were already in the car. The two gang-bangers didn’t want to fight and left.
Reese appeared to remain oblivious even as the leader noticed him and walked over. The punk grabbed the bottle, and after a moment John let go of it. But the idiot wasn’t ready to stop at that. His buddies got a silent signal to attack. In less than a minute, it was over. They were on the floor groaning from injuries the ex-CIA operative had inflicted, and their leader with John’s hand around his throat.
The ex-assassin stopped himself; he wasn’t going to kill again; something deep inside Reese kept him from ripping out the guy’s throat. John let go. They were still staring at each other when the police arrived and arrested them all.
While in the interrogation room, with a Detective Carter, as she introduced herself, John tried to answer the policewoman’s questions as little as possible. Yes Reese was lost; as Carter had perceived. When she took the cup to get his fingerprints, John wondered if maybe it was best to let the agency come get him, let them finish something the booze hadn’t.
When the detective left, cup covering her fingers, Reese waited for some officers to come back, take him to a holding cell where he would await his fate at the CIA’s hands. The transient never expected the high dollar lawyer to appear and to bail him out before that happened.
The well-dressed attorney escorted him outside to a couple of hired guns and abruptly left. Reese could have dealt with them; left those men lying on the ground next to the Lincoln they had arrived in, but curiosity got the better of him. John got in the car and peacefully rode with them.
The sun was just beginning to rise, there was a cold wind blowing off the river, when John got out of the car after it had pulled up under a bridge. One of the muscles for hire told him to get out, their employer was waiting.
There was a lone figure waiting there in the cold, his short brown hair ruffled from the wind, his face slightly reddened from the cold. So this was the man who bailed him out. This man, Mr. Finch as he wanted to be called, went on to tell Mr. Reese, the name John went by now even though there were others, “I know everything about you, Mr. Reese.” Somehow the strange man with the glasses knew about the government betraying John, about Reese’s death wish now.
The man called Finch analyzed the former soldier as a man who needed a purpose, a reason to live, and Finch had one for him if John so chose. Reese desperately wanted to believe, the deeply ingrained instinct for survival compelling him to grab at some invisible lifeline, so he went along with Mr. Finch in the Lincoln back into the city. John’s shaky belief in the man disappeared the moment the stranger told him he wanted a woman followed.
‘Why did I come with this guy?’ Reese thought to himself. There is no purpose, no cause left for me. This Finch is just some spoiled rich fool who thinks money can buy everything, the woman in question probably dumped him and the man wouldn’t let go. John told him as much, and walked away, leaving the two goons trying to right themselves after a push from John into one another, and a surprised Finch watching the retreating Reese.
Reese spent the rest of the day pan-handling, accumulating enough cash and coins to buy some shaving cream, disposable razors, and a cheap bottle of whiskey. He spent the rest on a cheap flop for the night.
While roaming the streets begging for handouts, the ex-operative had decided he wasn’t ready to give the CIA the satisfaction of pulling the black hood over his head and making him disappear. Reese had been CIA long enough to know what that meant. The despondent man still had no reason to live nor cared to, but John wasn’t going to let the agency get their hands on him. Reese still had a death wish, but it wouldn’t be granted by an agent like Snow or one of his people.
Reese cleaned himself up, thinking to temporarily wash away the homelessness. He could hide from them all; the police, CIA spooks and this Mr. Finch, whoever he was. No John thought while drinking from the bottle, he would just lay low for a while before he drifted off….
John awoke to the sounds of something crashing and a woman’s screams. ‘What the hell?’ He was zip tied to a bed in a hotel room, not in the flop house where he had passed out. Reese would have to find out why later, the woman in the next room needed his help. The former agent smashed the lamp into the mirror, using a glass shard to cut through the ties and then burst through the door.
It was a trick, an audio recording was playing, there was no woman and Finch sat in a chair close by the table. John was irate at being fooled, hardly heard the man talking about how he had knowledge of things, about that woman’s death years ago, how Finch had been incapable to do anything to stop it. The stranger told John again how the former operative could help him save the lives of others and not be powerless to do anything like when John couldn’t be there save Jessica.
Reese just snapped when he heard that, slamming the man against a wall, arm under his throat. The former assassin could have easily killed him then. Rage coursed through John, but he felt something else too, even though he was angered with this man Finch, Reese also felt a kind of connection with him. Maybe it was in Finch’s eyes, the bravery, the honesty, the lack of fear, “I’m not the government, Mr. Reese. They lied to you. I never will!” Finch rasped out, Reese’s forearm across his windpipe. John released the gasping man.
As Reese backed away he still felt it. The connection was intense, strong, like John somehow had found a missing part of himself. The now hopeful man continued to listen to Finch trying to convince the former CIA agent to help, starting with the woman the bespectacled stranger had had pointed out to a disbelieving Reese that morning. It really hadn’t changed anything; John had already made up his mind to help.
The former soldier did need a purpose, a reason to go on, and if the other man believed in his cause so much he’d risk death at the hands of the trained killer he’d sought to hire, then John believed in it, in Mr. Finch. How could he not?
An operative once again, the recent derelict from the streets started on his first mission for his new boss, learning Finch had resources, cover identities for John and intelligence surveillance that rivaled anything the CIA had. In the end they had found out the woman, DA Diane Hanson, was not being threatened, she was the threat. Reese saved the brother of a man attacked and killed while in custody; then stopped the murder an ADA, his son and the life of an ex-con being set up for the murder by a group of dirty cops under Hanson’s employ.
John also found out Finch was not just wealthy but brilliant. He had built a super computer, known as The Machine, capable of tapping into, well, anything, and using the data it gathered to find out dangers to the general population and send that info to the government. The computer itself was in the government’s hands now but there had been a side effect so to speak.
The computer could also pick out single acts of aggression. TM still sent its creator that information secretly, but only a number, in most cases a social security number. It was up to them to figure out victim or perpetrator.
After DA Hanson was arrested, the dirty cops either dead, arrested, or now under John’s control, he and Finch met again under the bridge. Reese could have left, never looked back, started a new life. But John chose to stay, for however long, ‘til death stopped him, ‘til both were truly dead.
~*~
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen