Interception

Perez flipped open the blinds on the window and looked down at the street below. The FBI building lay at a busy and utterly charmless intersection given to regular traffic snarls and the view was scarcely inspiring, but she was, in any case, looking inward rather than out, and her gaze was unfocused. She turned over her shoulder briefly, casting a nervous look at the open door of her office, then turned back to the dismal view.



“You're out of line,” said Strahm, from behind her. He hadn't raised his voice and there was no particular inflection in his words other than a mote of disappointment. She waited until she heard him close the door of the office and then turned around, keeping her expression carefully neutral. After a pause for thought she unfolded her arms, not wanting to appear defensive.



“No,” she told him, “I would have been out of line if I'd gone to Erickson.” She faced him down and sighed. “What I said was between friends, not partners. We are still friends, aren't we?”



“I hope so,” he said, soberly, “or I may have wasted my time getting you this,” and he set a steaming coffee on the desk between them. Perez hesitated for some seconds and then relented silently, picking up the modest peace offering as her partner visibly composed himself.



“I'd really like a chance to explain,” he said, eventually.



“Of course,” said Perez, nodding.



“There's nothing going on between me and Jill Tuck,” said Strahm, sitting down heavily behind his desk. She watched him lean back and run his palms down his face as if profoundly exhausted; and, indeed, there were subtle shadows in his eyes. In fact, as she studied him at length, she noticed another small discrepancy between this man and the Peter Strahm she'd known for five years now: usually forthright to the point of character flaw, today he seemed unable to meet her gaze.



“I never said there was.”



“You implied it,” he said.



“I didn't do that either,” she insisted gently, walking over and perching on the corner of his desk. “What worries me is how it looks, especially since you're cutting me out.”



“I just thought this needed careful handling,” he said. Perez put down her coffee and looked at him sadly.



“We can do that,” she said, nodding agreeably. “We can handle this as carefully as you want and I'll follow your lead if it makes you happy, but we handle it here, in the interview room, on the record and by the book,” she said, punctuating her emphases with soft beats on the desk blotter. “What's happened to you lately? I learned all this from you, remember?”



“I really don't know,” he told her. “It's this case. I don't know where to go from here, and that's the truth of it.”



Privately, Perez was more than a little shocked at this. She had never before heard him admit to anything less than consummate confidence in his own abilities and methods. If anything, he had occasionally to be dissuaded from a habitually bullish approach, prompted by a temper she knew to be slow to rouse but tough to subdue. She tilted her head at him.



“You follow procedure, talk to the witnesses, collect the evidence. That's all anyone expects of you,” she said. “You could also be a little more cooperative,” she added, calmly. “Work with Detective Hoffman, not against him. You didn't have to play the alpha wolf at the crime scene, you know.”



“That's not what –” Strahm began, but Perez cut him off. “Oh please,” she retorted, “I could barely breathe for the testosterone in that room!” She smiled good-naturedly as she said this, however. “Look,” she went on, earnestly, “he's a good officer and he can help us. Try to play a little nicer, huh? For me?”



For a second, she swore that Strahm's expression became analytical, his eyes narrowing fractionally and the smallest of furrows denting his brow. Then he raised his hands in mock surrender and the moment passed. “All right, I'll try,” he conceded. He looked at her doubtful expression. “Really, I will,” he insisted. She nodded amicably.



“All I ask is that we communicate,” said Perez. “A little give and take. I'm not asking a lot, am I? Anyway, we'll talk a little more later if you like. Meanwhile,” she went on, glancing at her watch and sobering up, “I think you should report to Erickson before he comes looking for you, because the last time I saw him he did not look happy.”



“Not the best news, but okay,” said Strahm, hauling himself out of the chair. He paused at the door, however, and gave her a backward glance. “By the way...thanks,” he said quietly, and left before she could acknowledge this.



Perez stood quite still until his footsteps had died away entirely, and then she moved over to her screen, opened her e-mail inbox and deleted Hoffman's message.



--------------



(Don't move)

(I've got you, shhh now)



The echoes faded and pain jabbed her awake.



Amanda rolled over, groaning faintly, and sat up as quickly as her spinning head would allow. Her eyes were bleary, sticky, and she blinked once or twice, furiously, before rubbing at them with the knuckle of one hand. Finally, she looked down and around.



Against all expectation, she'd not only been put to bed on her cot dressed in a clean hospital gown but also meticulously cleaned up beforehand, the smears of blood wiped from her face and lips and her various scratches washed down with surgical alcohol; she could still smell it and feel the cold sting upon her, so she realised she had not been unconscious for too long. She glanced to the left and saw her tin box on the night stand, the bottle and swabs removed and arrayed beside it. Her stomach turned over with humiliation; she had no idea that anyone else knew about the box and its contents, let alone Hoffman. She stretched out a shivering hand and lifted the lid. Her knife had been returned.



Clutching one hand to her mouth to stifle a brief twitch of nausea, Amanda hauled herself out of bed and stood upright on the second try. Moving slowly and carefully, she pulled off the gown and hunted in her trunk for some clean clothing, trying to ignore the memory of what had befallen the clothes she'd been wearing earlier. Her throat convulsed with shame as she located her boots beneath the bed and pulled them on, her movements mechanical and her eyes bleak. A warm tear escaped from her eye and she batted it away with an absent swipe of her fingers.



(You've only yourself to blame)



Her hands froze in the middle of tying her laces, and for a second, Amanda was a study in stillness as she probed her hazy recollection. It was Hoffman's voice, she was sure of it, infused with oddly dissociated sorrow. She suddenly recalled his hands on her face and shoulders, curiously solicitous, and the way he'd gathered her into his arms with insolent ease, lifting her as her head lolled back over the crook of his elbow. Even as she'd battled unconsciousness, she had reached out to touch his bare skin, idle fingers brushing the fresh wound she'd inflicted.



(See what happens when you fight me?)



But she hadn't fought him, had she? Not in the end. Amanda beat one small fist against her head, but instead of shaking the memory loose it triggered some kind of short circuit, and the connection was broken, the fractured picture of Hoffman's regretful gaze flaring and fading from her mind. She finished lacing her boots with a pinched, unhappy frown and walked out into the workshop.



The place was in chaos, as it frequently was. Hoffman was meticulous when he had nothing else on his mind, but from the look of the benches he'd lately suffered a particularly colourful fit of pique. She picked a shard of glass off a nearby table and noticed that the bulb in the lamp was smashed. Wrinkling her nose at the devastation, she resolved to clean it up later, but right now there was work to be done.



Reaching beneath the nearest workbench, she pulled out a gleaming double-barrel shotgun and cracked the breech in a businesslike manner. She verified first that it was unloaded, as she'd been taught, then lifted the weapon and blew gently down the barrels. Finally she jacked the breech shut once more and tested the triggers, one after the other, and nodded as she heard both firing pins click. Then, picking up a box of shells as well, she left the room.



The Rack was a fearsome piece of machinery, and one of the few that genuinely raised the hairs on the back of Amanda's neck. She had studied the schematics, of course, and the theory behind the operation was elegant – but she knew that it was quite another thing to see the power and beauty of a trap in action and, so often, a disappointment that most were only built for one use. John was so much more artist than engineer, and she knew that as carefully as he hid the fact, it wounded his dignity to have to work through the hands of others.



The glass box for the shotgun was ready for installation, the rear door standing ajar with the mortise key in the lock. She stood on tiptoe and peered into the box, craning her neck to remind herself of the layout. The key was already tied; all she had to do was load the gun and put it in the mechanism.



Easier said than done, she thought, bitterly, and thought it typical of Hoffman to have left her with the difficult job. She could see at first glance that it was going to require considerable delicacy. She would have preferred to load the shotgun only after it had been set in the cradle, but there was no room.



She bit her lip nervously and thumbed a single shell into the breech, then angled her head and carefully slid the muzzle of the shotgun into the box. She hooked the gear pin behind the trigger guard, exhaled slowly to try to ease the quiver in her hands and prepared to set the weapon into place.



(This is all your fault, Jill)



Amanda jerked back, wailing pitifully, and the shotgun discharged, the report booming within the confines of the box. She scarcely heard it as she swirled in the rip tide of returning memories.



...his cold lips on her as she lay barely conscious, playing with her broken, twisted body, his lascivious fingers in her mouth and his smile like broken glass. He had whispered into her ear and she had forgotten the words then, but now they were creeping back. Hoffman had walked away leaving her bloody and naked on her bed and then the lights went out and the door slammed and then, in the gloom, someone else had sat down beside her and far gentler hands had tended to her injuries...



“No,” she croaked, knees buckling. She sank to the filthy floor, her hair hanging in her eyes and her chest aching with strangled sobs.



--------------



John snapped to consciousness as the door was quietly closed and bolted. He struggled against thin air for a second before remembering where he was, then he turned his head to the side to study his silent visitor. Gordon stood stiffly beside the gurney, his lips bloodless and eyes narrow with barely restrained fury. John reached up and pulled off the oxygen mask the better to speak, but before he could frame a word the doctor had lifted one hand, palm turned out. His elegant fingers were streaked with drying blood.



“This has gone far enough,” he said.