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st_aurafinaTitle: Light Becomes What it Touches
Fandom: Person of Interest
Rating for this Chapter: Teen
Words: 7,605
Embedded art is by MulaSaWala, you can see her art post here: Light Becomes What it Touches Fanart
Summary: When Grace's number comes up, Harold asks John to take her out of the city and keep her safe. On the road trip upstate, John and Grace must work around the secrets between them to stay alive.
Also at the Archive
It's been more than a week but John can't move on from that cold moment back in New York when Harold walked away. They'd just got back from Washington, Shaw was leaning hard against John while they slipped past police, trying to get back to the library, and Harold? Harold pulled his old disappearing act, and vanished between breaths.
The numbers come in thick and fast after that, two or three a day, as if the Machine wants to keep him busy. Shaw alternately rides him for trying to be the leader of their group or for not trying hard enough. And Root is everywhere which means she's nowhere when it comes to back-up.
All the way through this, John does what's needed to hold his remnant team together and focused. Eats, drinks, walks the dog. Works out, sleeps, jacks off, showers, and then goes out to save people. Rinse and repeat. Harold doesn't call.
One night he's flat on his back listening to Bear prowl the loft, and wondering why his neck hurts, until he realises he's been clenching his teeth, probably for days. Then he can't stop analysing the situation. John didn't kill the Congressman. Harold left anyway. And okay, John can respect the ideology, but not the way Harold vanished. He can't even justify this anger that's brewing inside him, because he and Harold never talked about… God, he can't even think the word "relationship." They never talked about what they were together, and now John's on his own with a team to protect and nobody to talk to about what he did or didn't have with Harold.
That's not entirely true: one very early morning he drunkenly spills his guts to Zoe on her doorstep after she gets home from some event. She doesn't say anything, just drags him into her place and onto the sofa, wraps a blanket around him and rests her chin on his shoulder. He falls asleep in her arms wondering how he could miss physical contact so much, when Harold's only been gone for eight days. It's not like he slept with Harold every night. Not even every second night.
When Harold breaks his silence, it's because Grace's number has come up. John's phone rings while they deal with the bogus driver outside Grace's home.
"Get her out of the city," Harold says without preamble. "Keep her safe."
John looks at Grace, at Shaw, at the Samaritan agent she's throttling. He's got the phone to his ear, even though Harold is silent. Hearing him breathe on the other end of the line is like coming home. For a moment he lets himself forget that Harold doesn't want to be part of their lives anymore.
Shaw pauses with her arm crushing the man's throat. "Is that…?" She doesn't say his name. John is grateful, for that and the ability to make his face blank.
"I trust you to protect her, John." Then the line goes dead.
Shaw touches her own earpiece. "This isn't the time. Root…" Her face goes grim and she nods towards the end of the street. "Reinforcements on the way."
She reaches into Grace’s luggage and pulls out a tablet, throws it to the ground with a tinkle. Grace shrieks and Shaw takes the chance to grab the phone from her pocket and sends after the tablet. Grace stares appalled at the sad pile of glass and plastic, and Shaw shrugs. “It’s full of tracking software, apparently."
John pushes a protesting Grace towards the car. "I'm sorry; we need to go." It's easy to slip into bodyguard mode: Grace is moved into the vehicle, it's secured, and they're away from the curb in less than a minute. Behind him, he can see Shaw lining up her shots; as they turn the corner, Root zips past steering her bike with her knees so she can aim the Uzi. They turn the corner before the street lights up with muzzle flash.
Grace is silent in the back seat, watching him, glancing nervously over her shoulder. John can see the questions lining up in her mind, but fortunately she’s got the sense to wait until they’re not driving to let them spill out.
He’s picked up a tail: two black SUVs driving aggressively, forcing their way through traffic with hoots and the occasional shove to clear a path. His phone dings and he glances at it: the number is unfamiliar but the text is undeniably Harold, sending directions, precise and succinct. He takes a sharp left where Harold says, throws off the tail, comes out closer to the park, where tourists are still thronging even at this hour. The phone dings again from another new number. Harold must be rerouting his number with every text to throw off Samaritan’s trackers. John is parsing the instructions when he nearly runs down a pair of backpackers who have wandered into the street.
Grace makes a squeak of terror, equal to the expression on the backpackers’ faces, and lunges for the phone beside John on the front passenger seat. “There’s not much point in this if they’re only going to pull us out of a wreck,” she says, and reads the message. “It says to change vehicles now, and remember to disable the GPS tracking.” She watches him, dubious. “Do you know how to do that? Because I sure as hell don’t.” The phone dings again, and she glances down. “Oh. It’s got instructions.”
John conceals a smile. Harold is nothing if not thorough.
He picks a nondescript family sedan in a crowded parking garage, flips open his knife and cuts out the security and the satellite tracking while Grace sits in the passenger seat and chews on a nail. She’s holding onto the phone like it’s her last connection to civilisation. John wonders if Harold is listening in, then chides himself. Of course he’s listening in. John slides in behind the wheel and reaches under the dashboard.
“Can you do something for me?” he says as he works on the ignition.
Grace is watching him boost the car, her expression showing the realisation that this is not normal cop behaviour. “What do you want me to do?” she asks, warily.
“Send a text on that phone, ask for them to give us a window in the security cameras,” he says. If Harold’s listening in, she won’t really need to text, but it will give her something to focus on. He hopes that Harold is okay with it.
The engine kicks over, and he’s blasted with pop music, some boy band. It’s loud enough that they both jump and then wince at the same time. Grace is faster to the controls of the stereo.
“Anything about that surveillance window?” he asks, backing out swiftly but with care.
Grace checks the phone, which buzzes almost as soon as John has finished speaking. “You have two minutes. And you should head for the Holland Tunnel.” She holds the phone like it could explode at any moment. John bounces them through the exit and into traffic.
Grace doesn’t speak again until they’re off the island.
The darkness, once they've left the city behind them, is intense: it sits heavy on the road, makes everything outside the twin cones of light seem menacing. Grace sits quietly in the passenger seat, watching road signs fly past as the road empties and the car is the remaining source of light. Then she lets out a breath, as if the solitude is a kind of freedom.
"Where are we going?" she says, while John drives in silence down a long, tree-lined road. "Please tell me there's a plan." She looks down at the phone she is still clasping. "Actually, if there's no plan, can you just lie? I can't function with more uncertainty in my life."
John checks the clock on the dash: it's a little past two in the morning. They've been driving upstate through the night. He guesses Harold intends them to lose Samaritan by moving outside areas of high surveillance. He glances to the side quickly and sees that Grace is still watching him, waiting patiently for him to answer her question.
"There's always a plan," he says. "Even when a rescue is unexpected, I've done this often enough that the fundamentals are ingrained: lose the pursuit, find a new temporary base of operations to rest and recoup, then work towards a permanent safe location."
"A permanent…" says Grace, horrified and a little bit angry. "Wait. Are you trying to tell me I can't go home? You try and stop me, mister." For a moment, John worries that she's going throw open the door to jump out and he lets his hand fall away from the wheel, ready to grab for her if she moves quickly.
"There's no point in worrying about that," he says, reasonably. "Let's concentrate on surviving the next twenty four hours."
Grace pulls her knees up to her chin and hugs her legs. "I was supposed to be on a plane," she says. "They were flying me over first class: I was going to drink martinis and steal all the free stuff from the bathroom."
John can't help it, he laughs. "In first class they give you the stuff from the bathroom. In a little purse."
"Really?" Grace says, amazed. "Now I'm even more sorry I didn't make it onto the flight." Her expression is mock wounded, amazing when you consider that three hours ago, she had been frightened for her life. Still, Grace wouldn't be the person Harold loved if she weren't someone remarkable.
It's a surprise to be smiling while he drives, but John finds that he is. "How are you doing?" he asks. "You want a coffee break?"
"We're grown ups. Call it what it is: a bathroom break," says Grace. Her grin falls away. "Actually, coffee would be great, but will it be safe to stop?"
John turns to look at her directly. "I'll keep you safe," he says. "That's my job."
"Okay." Grace's tone is blithe but there's a little crease between her eyebrows.
The phone, silent for some hours now, buzzes to life, and Grace jumps, startled. She'd left it in the cup holder after it had been silent for a whole hour, and apparently she'd forgotten about it. Now, she reaches for it with two fingers, as if picking up something frightening.
"It's my partner," says John. "He's probably checked ahead, researched the rest stops."
Grace is delighted by the idea. "It's like my own personal Trip Advisor," she says, scrolling through the list avidly. "Oh, look, there's a place that does Belgian waffles all night. I love eating stuff like that in the middle of the night."
That's why it's on the list, thinks John, but doesn't say anything. He takes the turnoff to the waffle house. It's a good location, he finds, when he pulls into the parking lot, which is well lit but too far off the highway to warrant security cameras. There are big glass walls, but John can see a few places he can tuck Grace in safely. The clientele at this time of night seem to be mostly middle class stoners.
In the parking lot, Grace pauses, her hand on the car door. "How did your partner know we'd need to stop around now?" she says, looking down at the phone.
John takes the phone from her and slips it into his pocket. "We've been working together for a while," he says. It wouldn't do for her to realise Harold is listening in to every word they say. That would be creepy. It isn't until he's holding the heavy glass door open for Grace that he realises he doesn't find it creepy at all anymore, and hasn't for a long time. He's not sure how he feels about that.
He orders coffee for them both, and Grace gets a ridiculous heap of waffles and ice cream. When it arrives, it's nearly as big as her head, and she laughs as the waiter puts it down in front of her. As soon as they're alone again, she picks up the long narrow spoon and turns the plate looking for a good place to start.
John sips his coffee and watches her poke it experimentally with her long spoon.
"I guess this isn't so bad, if it's a last meal," she says, toppling a scoop of ice cream from the teetering tower. She spoons a mouthful in, and rolls her eyes. "Oh, that's good. I hope we don't have to run for our lives or anything, because I'll be groaning and holding my belly instead."
The ice cream is melting and John is on his second coffee when she gives up and flops back in her seat.
"If I eat another mouthful, I'll explode," she says, nevertheless cramming a final spoonful of ice cream and sauce into her mouth. "Do you want any? It's not like we can take it away in a doggy bag."
John shakes his head. "If we have to run for our lives, I'll need to be able to throw you over my shoulder," he says, only half joking. "Can't do that on a full belly."
Grace is appalled at this. "Please leave me to die. I'd rather die than barf all down the back of your suit," she says, earnestly.
John laughs, an honest, easy laugh that startles him. He reminds himself to concentrate, to maintain a good distance between him and the subject, but Grace is too fascinating, both for what she informs him about Harold, and for herself. He scans the restaurant, checks the parking lot is clear then catches the waiter's eye for the check. "Time to go," he says.
He makes Grace wait while he checks the bathroom, going right into the women's cubicles with no embarrassment. Grace offers to check first if there's anyone in there.
"That kind of defeats the purpose," he says. He hasn't drawn his weapon – he doesn't want to panic Grace – but his hand hovers over his holster.
Back in the passenger seat, Grace is asleep in minutes, lulled by sugar and chocolate. John drives, watches her sleeping, and when he's sure she's in REM, slips his earwig in place.
It gives a hiss the moment it's there: Harold has been waiting for a chance for them to talk.
"How is she?" he asks.
John can speak without moving his lips much, and the sound shouldn't wake Grace. "Crashed out after all the adrenaline," he says, not looking in her direction. The road is deserted, and he is starting to hope they've escaped Samaritan's grasp.
"Ms Shaw and Groves made plenty of noise to cover your escape. They're still leading Decima on a wild goose chase." Harold sounds impressed despite himself. "I believe we can reassure ourselves that you were not followed. Samaritan should not be able to reacquire a trace on you, unless Grace triggers a facial recognition response."
"Samaritan means the country isn't big enough to get lost in anymore, Finch. She won't be able to avoid cameras forever." There are certain names that are sure to pull Grace out of sleep, even a deep, exhausted sleep like this, so for now Harold is Finch, if John has to say the name at all.
Harold's voice is dry, sarcasm covering up his concern. "Well, that was the reason I wanted Grace to leave the country, but that's out of the question now. I'm collating a new identity for her now. Getting her across the border will give you the best chance for relocation."
John considers it while he drives. It isn't impossible: he'd smuggled people in and out of the country before, and while Samaritan's ability to listen in on every conversation and see through every lens will make it more difficult, it isn't impossible. "I can get her across the border but I have to tell you, she's pretty upset at the idea of being uprooted."
"I would rather Grace was alive and unhappy in another country than dead in this one," Harold speaks short and deliberately, making certain that John knows he has no voice in this decision.
John's hand clenches on the wheel, a reflex action. He and Harold didn't argue often, but when they did, it was like this: scrupulously polite and scathing.
"She's not the same person she was back then. Neither of you are," he says, in the affably reasonable tone that he knows Harold finds infuriating. "Besides, I think you're underestimating Grace. She's better able to handle this than you realise."
The line cuts off, an abrupt little snap that is as close as Harold gets to hanging up on someone. John should feel bad about riling him up, but right now, with Grace under his umbrella of care, it's easier to see the flaws in the way Harold has managed his life – and Grace's – since the bombing.
Harold doesn't call again, and John drives through the night over back roads and past state forests, wending his way towards the nearest point for a covert border crossing.
They're in a used car lot on the edge of Scranton when he taps Grace on the shoulder. She snaps awake with a small scream, staring around herself in bewildered panic. When she sees John standing outside her window, she grimaces.
"I had convinced myself this was a dream," she says, opening the door and clambering out.
John shakes his head. "Sorry. We need to change vehicles and it's easier to take one that nobody's going to miss for a few hours." He points to the workshop, where he's disabled the security system. "There's a bathroom in there, if you need it. I'm going to be working on getting our new car started."
It's barely morning: the light is thin and grey, and there's mist still clinging to the dips and hollows of the ground. Still blinking, Grace checks her watch, rubs her eyes and walks towards the workshop, stretching her arms and rolling her shoulders.
John pops the hood of a nondescript grey sedan, solid enough to give them good protection should there be a pursuit, but old enough that there's no GPS installed. He flicks out his knife and starts cutting wires on the alarm before he hotwires it.
He jumps at approaching footsteps, reaching for his gun but it's just Grace. She puts a chipped mug of black coffee on the engine block. John stares in surprise, then stands straight and accepts the cup. The coffee isn't great, but it's scalding hot and sweet. The cup, cheap and mass-produced, says "Warning: do not feed the mechanics!"
Grace cradles her own mug. "They had a machine so I made a pot. I wasn't sure how you took it, when it's not waffle house espresso." She leans against the car opposite with her ankles crossed and hugs her cup close for warmth.
"This is fine," John says, and after another mouthful, balances the mug carefully on the engine block again. He reaches deep into the engine, feeling for the wires that feed the GPS signal to the dash.
Daylight breaks properly when John's sitting in the driver's seat working under the dash. The light creeps along the field facing the lot, flooding the straggly grass with gold. Outside, Grace makes a soft noise and reaches out to catch the sunlight in her cupped palm. She seems to be breathing carefully, as if a loud noise will startle the magic of the morning away. Completely unselfconscious, she wriggles her fingers in the golden light, turns her hand over and over in it. She looks up and, catching John watching her, gives him a goofy smile.
"I don't get to see this as often as I should. I'm not really a morning person."
John is briefly struck by an image of her, soft-limbed and sleepy as light creeps over the counterpane, hair mussed and eyes half open. He blinks and swallows.
"Harold was," Graces continues, still holding light. "He was a runner. But I think it was something ingrained, you know? He would never tell me much about his childhood but I bet he had to get up at the crack of dawn so often he couldn't sleep much past that anymore, not even if he wanted to."
There is something wretchedly awful about hearing these intimacies from their life together, knowing that Harold is listening. It's wrong to be learning things that Harold has chosen not to tell him, from someone who is grieving for him.
Grace obviously feels a little vulnerable, too. She hunches her shoulders and nods towards the field. "Can I go walk over there? I need to stretch my legs before we get in the car again."
John gives the area a professional once-over: there are a few scrubby trees on the other side of the road, but the area is clear and flat. He could be there inside a minute if anyone appeared on the road.
"Sure," he said. "Don't go past the trees, though."
While she's out of earshot, he opens a line to Harold. "You awake?"
"Did you not hear all about my predisposition for early mornings, Mr Reese?" Harold's voice is dry – not the dry sarcasm that John knows is Harold's way of expressing affection but a tight, formal dryness that Harold uses as a shield.
"Stop it," says John. He doesn't have space on this mission to indulge Harold's emotional mind games. "That kind of bullshit is going to put Grace in danger. I'm with her; I'm going to hear about things that you might not want me to know. Get over it or send Shaw to relieve me."
There's a long pause on the line. "I'm sorry," said Harold. "Thank you for protecting her. I know that she will be safe with you. And yes, I realise this is uncomfortable for both of us. "
It hasn't been too bad, John almost says, then he thinks about how that sounds, and he bites back the words. It's true though. Travelling with Grace hasn't been uncomfortable, her company is pleasant, and she has shown surprising endurance and flexibility for someone new to being danger. There hasn't exactly been that crisp distance that comes from protecting a stranger, either: even though their connection is unspoken, they have a shared knowledge of one very important person in their lives, someone they both love. John wonders if she suspects that he knows Harold – knew Harold, he reminds himself. He needs to keep it in the past tense.
He pulls his mind back to the mission. "Do you have any idea about where we should be heading? I'm pointed towards the border, but I can swing around and back to the city if you want."
Grace is walking through the sparse field opposite. She slipped between the wire strands of the sagging fence with an experienced manoeuvre that identifies her as someone used to hiking in the countryside. After pacing up and down the uneven ground, she turns to face John and gives him a little wave. After he waves back, she whips a notebook out of one pocket, a pencil from another, then works busily, her hand moving freely over the paper with wide gestures.
Harold was still speaking in John's ear. "It's a little more difficult to arrange a new identity now that Samaritan is everywhere, but I have a few that I've kept for Grace in the eventuality that my work would put her in danger even at this distance. I'm arranging a new employment opportunity for one of those identities. Heading for the border is the best plan for now."
"I can do that," says John. Realistically, it's the best option for Grace, he tells himself, while Grace stands in the middle of the field and draws. "We'll be on the road again pretty soon." He's been ready to go for a while, actually, but this place is isolated enough for Grace to get some fresh air before they are trapped in a car for hours. He slips behind the wheel, backs neatly out of position then pulls a U-turn on the road so that the passenger side is closest to Grace.
"Break time's over?" she says. She's smiling, but there are shadows under her eyes, bruise blue on her pale skin. John wants suddenly to tell her that this nightmare is over, and that her home is safe and will be so forever. He can't, so he simply leans across and pops open the door.
"For now," he says. He passes her a folded blanket from the back seat: there was a sample picnic basket there to demonstrate the idyllic family life that comes with a car like this, complete with plastic fruit, empty wine bottle and a tartan rug. "Try to get some sleep. I'll wake you when it's time for breakfast."
Grace unfolds it and drapes it neatly across her lap. "This is cozy," she says. "I'll pretend we're on one of those fifties road trips in a big old Cadillac. You'll wear a black derby and I'll have fifteen petticoats and the whole world will be a perfectly pastel ad for the motoring age."
John pulls onto the freeway. "And billboards for Burma Shave?" he says.
Grace laughs, and leans her head against the headrest. "When do you sleep?" she said. "Should I offer to drive for a bit?"
John shakes his head. "Hasn't even been twenty-four hours yet," he says. "I won't need to stop for a while yet."
Grace is watching him; he can feel it without turning his head to check. "What?" he says, into the silence.
"Just wondering who you are," says Grace. She turns on her side and curls her legs up under the blanket. "My questions should be more pointed, I know, like, why is this happening to me? Why are people trying to abduct or kill me, and where did you come from, out of the blue, to rescue me? But what I want to know is who you are – you're not a cop, don't even show me that pretend badge." She reaches out to touch his elbow, reassuringly. "Don't worry. I believe you about this threat, and I believe that you're keeping me out of danger. I just wonder how you got to be the kind of man who knows these things: how to avoid security cameras, how to rip the GPS out of cars, how to drive all night on alert. Knows exactly how long he can keep doing all this without sleep."
John doesn't know what to say, so he drives and thinks. When he glances back again, Grace is tucked under the blanket, still turned in his direction, but with eyes closed and her breathing regular. In his earpiece, Harold sensibly remains silent.
It's four or five hours on straight roads after that, avoiding town centres and stopping at the most rundown of places. John changes cars again – an early Audi coupe, someone's weekend treasure – and they're eating up the miles towards the border.
John feels that prickle of sweat he gets from adrenaline bursts before his brain registers that something is wrong. He pulls the car off the road, slowly, so slowly, and holds up his phone as if he's taking a call. On the overpass, drivers are hanging out of their cars, waving phones, trying to get a shot of something he can't see yet.
"Taking a detour," he says into the earpiece, as softly as he can, for Grace's sake as much as security. Then he hauls the car onto the service road and down a narrow wooded track, speeding up as soon as they're out of sight from above.
There's no answer, but John knows that at the other end of the line, Harold is working equally hard, trying to determine what's ahead.
The back tires slide out on the next corner and Grace startles out of her doze with a shriek, clutching at the safety belt that has snapped tight on her chest. John puts out his arm to hold her in place as he slews the Audi fast round a steep hairpin, and that's when he sees the drone through the foliage, flying in the distance, low and quiet on four rotors.
"Drone," he says, for Harold's benefit, but Grace leans forward, peers through the windscreen, looking for the thing. Around the next corner, a large branch covers half the road. John swings the car out of the way so they don't clip it, but that's too much for a city car: the little Audi slides on the loose surface. One side of the car lifts and the scenery tilts by thirty degrees as they fly along on two wheels. The momentum sends Grace slamming into John's body.
"It's okay," he keeps saying, while he's wrestling with the wheel and the weight of the car, trying to keep them upright. "Hold still, it's okay."
The car comes down back on four wheels, but one tire blows and then another, and then they're travelling on rims, juddering along the dirt road. John brakes carefully again and again until the Audi slides to a halt.
They both sit there a moment, breathless. John somehow has his arm around Grace's shoulders, holding her to his side.
"You okay?" they both say at the same time, then Grace laughs, shaky.
John takes her face in his hands, runs his fingertips over her hairline looking for bruises. "You didn't hit your head?"
"Nope." Grace allows this examination, watching him at the same time. "What happens now? Do you know where we are?"
Harold chooses this time to pipe up. "I have your approximate location plotted, Mr Reese. Will you be able to drive out?"
John gets out and examines the car. The wheel rims have cut inches deep into the dirt. John could dig it out, but the longer they stay in one location, the more risk there is to Grace.
"I could with time," he says. "But I'd rather get clear of this site now."
There's typing in his ear. "There's not much around," Harold says, slowly. "Wait – I'm checking police reports, and there was a raid on an illegal cannabis site a month ago."
Harold is nothing if not thorough. John considers it. A month is long enough for the police presence to fade but not so long that the growers will have taken it over again. "How far?" Grace is watching him talk now, her face wary. They need to get moving.
"Four miles," Harold says. "I'm sending you directions now. I can follow up with a car in a few hours if… authorities have turned their attention elsewhere."
The map, when it comes, is a photograph drawn in notepaper that John recognises from the library. That gives him an unexpected pinch of emotion he can't identify. Homesickness, maybe? He memorises the layout, by which time Grace has opened her door and extracted herself from the car which, on two flats, sits a few inches lower than it had originally.
"That's not good," she says, poking one with her toe. "Do you want me to go find some branches? Could give it some traction so you can drive out again."
John pops the trunk and gathers his arsenal-in-a-bag, stuffs in a couple of water bottles, and from the back seat grabs the tartan blanket. "It will take too long. I don't want us stuck here if they come searching."
"Okay," said Grace, sounding the word out long, suspicious. "Where can we go? There isn't much out here."
"Have you ever been hiking?" John slings the bag over his shoulder and turns Grace in the right direction. There's no path, as such, but he can see a track further into the brush.
An hour later, they are making progress, heading gently uphill, though the forest is thick and filled with undergrowth, tree falls and boulders. The tracks that weave through the trees are narrow, fading and out of existence with little notice. John is glad of Harold's map, and also of the compass from his bag, which keeps them pointed towards their destination.
"I don't really like hiking," Grace says at their first pitstop, an hour away from the car. She sits on a fallen tree with her ankles crossed. "There's a reason I moved to New York. I like a metropolis. I like buildings." She passes the water bottle back to him and he takes a sip then screws the lid back on and pushes it into his bag.
"You ready to get going?" he asks. He is pushing them both harder than Grace is likely accustomed to walking, but he wants them under cover as soon as possible. He has no idea how many drones Samaritan can deploy at once. He hopes they don't have to hike all the way out of the forest. What they really need is a chopper. What they really need is for Samaritan to give them some breathing space.
"Yep," says Grace with false joviality. "I'm bushwhacking through uncharted forest with a man and a bag of guns. There's no way this is not going to end in murder and death." She gives him a grim smile. "You're lucky I get a good vibe off of you, John. Not every girl would go this far into the woods with a stranger."
"We're not really strangers anymore," John says, and feels the connection between them crystallise into solidity. By saying it, he makes it true: they're not strangers. They were strangers when they went on the run, but they've been in close proximity for nearly a day and things are different.
Grace pushes her hair out of her eyes again, takes a deep breath and shakes her legs. Her hair falls immediately back in her face, and John sees her press her lips together. She's tired and frustrated and afraid, and her resilience will only go so far. He slides the bag off his shoulder, rests it on the tree beside her, and rummages in it for his cleaning kit. The cotton swabs inside are kept neatly gathered by a hair elastic, bright pink with plastic Hello Kitty bobbles. He'd found it in a bar once, and snuck it into Shaw's kit for a laugh. She'd snuck it right back a week later, and they'd continued to shift it back and forth while trying to keep their gear hidden. At least this will end the cycle, he thinks and passes it to Grace.
She laughs weakly at the ridiculousness of it. "It's so you, though, John," she says, as she pulls her hair back into a ponytail.
They stop twice more along the path, at roughly hourly intervals. Coming into the fourth hour, Grace has stopped chatting, hasn't really said a word since the last breather. John has her walking ahead, because the biggest risk is going to come from the rear. He can see she's getting footsore from the way she's walking, up on her toes for a while to spare her heels, hissing quietly when she comes down hard on a rock or her shoe snags on a stick. He's about to suggest they stop and bivouac at the suitable site when Grace turns a corner and comes across police tape.
She spins on her heel and stares at him, horrified. "Is this a murder scene? Do we need to talk about bringing girls to your murder sites, John?"
"No!" says John. "No, it was a drug bust. Marijuana."
Grace opens her mouth to protest, and then her shoulders sag. "I guess beggars can't be choosers," she says, instead. Then she brightens. "Oh, well. Maybe there's leftovers. I could use a little chemical relaxation."
There are no leftovers, apart from a funky smell in some of the cabins. There are cabins, though, and while there's no power or running water, John thinks he can make them comfortable there for a while if he has to. There's an open-sided shed which obviously served as a gathering point for the growers, with stools fashioned from large pieces of wood arranged around the fireplace, and a cast-iron pot still hanging over the grate.
"This is more like the camping I've done," Grace says. "I'll go find some kindling so we can light a fire when it gets dark."
John hopes they're not still here by dusk, but he keeps an eye on her as she wanders along the trees while he shakes down the rest of the cabins. There's no way the cops found every stash of food here, not when the growers were surrounded by pot every day. He comes back to the shed with an armful of junk food: oreos, goldfish crackers, corn chips, half a pack of twinkies, and a head-sized jar of Nutella that he feels certain was forgotten because the seal is intact. Grace is crouched by the fireplace carefully poking kindling between the logs she's piled in there, and when she sees the giant jar of Nutella in John's arms she starts to giggle uncontrollably.
"Don't laugh yet," says John. "There's no spoon." He is having another one of those disturbing moments where he wants to tell Harold how lucky he is to love Grace, how Grace is strong and resilient and always able to find joy in her circumstances. He hopes Harold knows this already, but he's starting to wonder.
As it happens, he has a spoon in his mess kit. He gives it to Grace, who wriggles her feet while she sips from the water bottle. "How are your feet?"
Grace groans. She tears the foil off the jar, and sniffs the Nutella. "I don't know," she says. "I figure I'm not going to look until I absolutely have to. How are we getting out of here? Please say we're getting out of here – I don't want to live on an old pot farm forever." She sits with her back to the brick wall that holds the fireplace, and her feet elevated on an overturned milk crate.
"It would be pretty good cover," John says. He sits near her, tears open the bag of goldfish and eats them one at a time. Grace scooches over and grabs a handful, dipping them into the Nutella. She passes every second one back to John.
Harold takes advantage of the quiet to speak in John's ear. John's glad he doesn't have to explain that Grace is leaning against him right now, dreamily dipping crackers into a giant tub of Nutella.
"The drones are otherwise occupied," Harold says, with typical circumspection.
John snickers. "I almost feel sorry for the drones," he says.
"No robots were harmed, I promise," said Harold. "I bribed a few privacy groups to stage a protest, and then gave it a bump on Twitter." He does sound pleased with himself. "It is going to be difficult for our enemy to carry out any covert operations in this area. For some time. Meanwhile, I've despatched Ms Shaw with a replacement vehicle, but she is still several hours away. I realise this isn't ideal."
"We're secure for now," says John. When Grace looks up at him, he points to his earpiece and mouths, "The boss." She raises her eyebrows in mock-alarm and keeps eating his goldfish. "Though a place with walls would be better for a longer stay. Recharge some devices, eat a meal that doesn't come in plastic bags." He hopes Finch picks up on the cues: Grace is fine for now, but she can't maintain this pace forever.
"Absolutely. Do you have a border crossing in mind or should I organise it?"
John nudges Grace upright so he can stand without disturbing her. He walks a little distance from her so he can talk freely. "I've got a contact who runs cigarettes through the Akwesasne reservation. I've left a message for her, I doubt it will be a problem." After what he'd done for Yvonne's son, she'd happily move a bus full of people across the border at John's request.
There's a silence for a moment, presumably while Harold fills in some gaps in his background research. "Ah," he says. "I see. I assume your contact is a Ms Dubé, who operates from Cornwall Island. I have a place where you can stop on the way, just outside Helena, in the Brasher Falls state forest. I'll arrange for it to be made ready." He pauses again. "Grace is all right?"
John glances over his shoulder, to where Grace is watching him with narrowed eyes. "She's tired," he said. "She's pushing through it, but she won't be able to maintain this pace, not without slowing us down. And…" He stops, uncertain of how to words this in a way that Harold will understand. And not get angry about.
"Mr Reese?" Harold says, concern in his voice.
"I don't think she likes all this planning behind her back," he says, eventually.
There's another long silence, but this time John feels the stillness on the other end of the line. He can imagine Harold's expression, based on the quality of that silence: thin-lipped, cold-eyed, frightened and angry at the same time.
"I know you don't want me to talk about this," John says, expecting Harold to cut into the conversation with something blistering.
Instead, he just sounds tired. "I understand your concerns, John, I do. Please don't think me dismissive when I say that I've known Grace for a long time. I know the best way to settle this without hurting her."
People change. Grace is not the person she was back then. John wants to say it out loud, but now is obviously not the time. "It's your call, Finch. Give me a buzz when Shaw's getting close."
Grace is still watching him, suspicious, when he walks back to the fireplace. "Did you make all kinds of strategies and plans?" she asked, then sees something in his face that softens her tone. She reaches out to touch his hand. "Are you getting in trouble on my behalf?"
John shakes his head. He doesn't want Grace to get the impression that the people who are keeping her alive are bickering. "There's some stuff I can't talk about – like how we're crossing the border, for instance. And, yeah, we're having some debate on how that should be done, but that's how we come up with the best plan." His confident statement is somewhat diminished by the way he kicks a stone right out of the campsite and into the trees.
Grace offers him the Nutella jar, her expression solemn. "I think you need this more than me."
It's well past noon when John's earpiece wakes up again to warn him Shaw is close by. Grace is dozing by the cold fireplace, wrapped in the blanket stolen from the Scranton car yard. John has been patrolling the grounds, restless and unsettled by the quiet. When he hears the crunch of tires on dirt, he waits at the point where the access road opens out on the campsite, gun drawn. He sees Shaw in a Mercedes that lumbers heavily up the track, steps out with his hand up in greeting, and then goes to wake Grace.
Shaw brings the car to a halt – it bounces on the shock absorbers when she puts on the parking brake – and gets out. She tosses the keys to John.
"That thing is a freaking tank," she says, walking past him to the fireplace. "Handles like a whale but you can drive right over an IED." She rummages in the pile of junk food. "This all you got to eat?"
Still blinking, Grace stares at Shaw for a moment then waves a hand. "Hi again," she says, hesitant. "We have Nutella." She offers up the jar and Shaw snatches it out of her hands.
"Use your own spoon," John says, slinging his gear into the back seat. "You want us to drop you off?"
Shaw doesn't bother with a spoon. She gouges out a huge fingerful of Nutella and crams it in her mouth. "Nah, I got a ride home," she says thickly. "Tailed me all the way but I managed to lose her in the forest."
John can hear another engine now, a low hum that occasionally becomes laboured and high-pitched. A gold and black motorcycle emerges out of the trees. It's sleek and futuristic but the bodywork has some ugly scratches, and the rider is splattered with mud all down one side. Root pulls off her helmet and shakes out her hair, but the cinematic effect is spoiled by her expression of rage. She kicks the stand down on the bike and storms over to where Shaw is still licking Nutella off her fingers.
"That was unnecessary!" She is inches away from Shaw's face. Shaw shoves her Nutella-coated fingers in Root's mouth, and Root splutters in outrage.
"You ready to go?" John says to Grace who is watching the two women in amazement. He helps her get upright, lets her lean on him when her feet protest, and helps her to the car.
"Are they always like that?" she says, settling into her seat with a sigh.
John takes one last look at Root and Shaw, where the fight is devolving into something much stickier. "There's usually less Nutella," he says, and walks round to the driver's side.
Master Post // Chapter Two
Fandom: Person of Interest
Rating for this Chapter: Teen
Words: 7,605
Embedded art is by MulaSaWala, you can see her art post here: Light Becomes What it Touches Fanart
Summary: When Grace's number comes up, Harold asks John to take her out of the city and keep her safe. On the road trip upstate, John and Grace must work around the secrets between them to stay alive.
Also at the Archive
It's been more than a week but John can't move on from that cold moment back in New York when Harold walked away. They'd just got back from Washington, Shaw was leaning hard against John while they slipped past police, trying to get back to the library, and Harold? Harold pulled his old disappearing act, and vanished between breaths.
The numbers come in thick and fast after that, two or three a day, as if the Machine wants to keep him busy. Shaw alternately rides him for trying to be the leader of their group or for not trying hard enough. And Root is everywhere which means she's nowhere when it comes to back-up.
All the way through this, John does what's needed to hold his remnant team together and focused. Eats, drinks, walks the dog. Works out, sleeps, jacks off, showers, and then goes out to save people. Rinse and repeat. Harold doesn't call.
One night he's flat on his back listening to Bear prowl the loft, and wondering why his neck hurts, until he realises he's been clenching his teeth, probably for days. Then he can't stop analysing the situation. John didn't kill the Congressman. Harold left anyway. And okay, John can respect the ideology, but not the way Harold vanished. He can't even justify this anger that's brewing inside him, because he and Harold never talked about… God, he can't even think the word "relationship." They never talked about what they were together, and now John's on his own with a team to protect and nobody to talk to about what he did or didn't have with Harold.
That's not entirely true: one very early morning he drunkenly spills his guts to Zoe on her doorstep after she gets home from some event. She doesn't say anything, just drags him into her place and onto the sofa, wraps a blanket around him and rests her chin on his shoulder. He falls asleep in her arms wondering how he could miss physical contact so much, when Harold's only been gone for eight days. It's not like he slept with Harold every night. Not even every second night.
When Harold breaks his silence, it's because Grace's number has come up. John's phone rings while they deal with the bogus driver outside Grace's home.
"Get her out of the city," Harold says without preamble. "Keep her safe."
John looks at Grace, at Shaw, at the Samaritan agent she's throttling. He's got the phone to his ear, even though Harold is silent. Hearing him breathe on the other end of the line is like coming home. For a moment he lets himself forget that Harold doesn't want to be part of their lives anymore.
Shaw pauses with her arm crushing the man's throat. "Is that…?" She doesn't say his name. John is grateful, for that and the ability to make his face blank.
"I trust you to protect her, John." Then the line goes dead.
Shaw touches her own earpiece. "This isn't the time. Root…" Her face goes grim and she nods towards the end of the street. "Reinforcements on the way."
She reaches into Grace’s luggage and pulls out a tablet, throws it to the ground with a tinkle. Grace shrieks and Shaw takes the chance to grab the phone from her pocket and sends after the tablet. Grace stares appalled at the sad pile of glass and plastic, and Shaw shrugs. “It’s full of tracking software, apparently."
John pushes a protesting Grace towards the car. "I'm sorry; we need to go." It's easy to slip into bodyguard mode: Grace is moved into the vehicle, it's secured, and they're away from the curb in less than a minute. Behind him, he can see Shaw lining up her shots; as they turn the corner, Root zips past steering her bike with her knees so she can aim the Uzi. They turn the corner before the street lights up with muzzle flash.
Grace is silent in the back seat, watching him, glancing nervously over her shoulder. John can see the questions lining up in her mind, but fortunately she’s got the sense to wait until they’re not driving to let them spill out.
He’s picked up a tail: two black SUVs driving aggressively, forcing their way through traffic with hoots and the occasional shove to clear a path. His phone dings and he glances at it: the number is unfamiliar but the text is undeniably Harold, sending directions, precise and succinct. He takes a sharp left where Harold says, throws off the tail, comes out closer to the park, where tourists are still thronging even at this hour. The phone dings again from another new number. Harold must be rerouting his number with every text to throw off Samaritan’s trackers. John is parsing the instructions when he nearly runs down a pair of backpackers who have wandered into the street.
Grace makes a squeak of terror, equal to the expression on the backpackers’ faces, and lunges for the phone beside John on the front passenger seat. “There’s not much point in this if they’re only going to pull us out of a wreck,” she says, and reads the message. “It says to change vehicles now, and remember to disable the GPS tracking.” She watches him, dubious. “Do you know how to do that? Because I sure as hell don’t.” The phone dings again, and she glances down. “Oh. It’s got instructions.”
John conceals a smile. Harold is nothing if not thorough.
He picks a nondescript family sedan in a crowded parking garage, flips open his knife and cuts out the security and the satellite tracking while Grace sits in the passenger seat and chews on a nail. She’s holding onto the phone like it’s her last connection to civilisation. John wonders if Harold is listening in, then chides himself. Of course he’s listening in. John slides in behind the wheel and reaches under the dashboard.
“Can you do something for me?” he says as he works on the ignition.
Grace is watching him boost the car, her expression showing the realisation that this is not normal cop behaviour. “What do you want me to do?” she asks, warily.
“Send a text on that phone, ask for them to give us a window in the security cameras,” he says. If Harold’s listening in, she won’t really need to text, but it will give her something to focus on. He hopes that Harold is okay with it.
The engine kicks over, and he’s blasted with pop music, some boy band. It’s loud enough that they both jump and then wince at the same time. Grace is faster to the controls of the stereo.
“Anything about that surveillance window?” he asks, backing out swiftly but with care.
Grace checks the phone, which buzzes almost as soon as John has finished speaking. “You have two minutes. And you should head for the Holland Tunnel.” She holds the phone like it could explode at any moment. John bounces them through the exit and into traffic.
Grace doesn’t speak again until they’re off the island.
The darkness, once they've left the city behind them, is intense: it sits heavy on the road, makes everything outside the twin cones of light seem menacing. Grace sits quietly in the passenger seat, watching road signs fly past as the road empties and the car is the remaining source of light. Then she lets out a breath, as if the solitude is a kind of freedom.
"Where are we going?" she says, while John drives in silence down a long, tree-lined road. "Please tell me there's a plan." She looks down at the phone she is still clasping. "Actually, if there's no plan, can you just lie? I can't function with more uncertainty in my life."
John checks the clock on the dash: it's a little past two in the morning. They've been driving upstate through the night. He guesses Harold intends them to lose Samaritan by moving outside areas of high surveillance. He glances to the side quickly and sees that Grace is still watching him, waiting patiently for him to answer her question.
"There's always a plan," he says. "Even when a rescue is unexpected, I've done this often enough that the fundamentals are ingrained: lose the pursuit, find a new temporary base of operations to rest and recoup, then work towards a permanent safe location."
"A permanent…" says Grace, horrified and a little bit angry. "Wait. Are you trying to tell me I can't go home? You try and stop me, mister." For a moment, John worries that she's going throw open the door to jump out and he lets his hand fall away from the wheel, ready to grab for her if she moves quickly.
"There's no point in worrying about that," he says, reasonably. "Let's concentrate on surviving the next twenty four hours."
Grace pulls her knees up to her chin and hugs her legs. "I was supposed to be on a plane," she says. "They were flying me over first class: I was going to drink martinis and steal all the free stuff from the bathroom."
John can't help it, he laughs. "In first class they give you the stuff from the bathroom. In a little purse."
"Really?" Grace says, amazed. "Now I'm even more sorry I didn't make it onto the flight." Her expression is mock wounded, amazing when you consider that three hours ago, she had been frightened for her life. Still, Grace wouldn't be the person Harold loved if she weren't someone remarkable.
It's a surprise to be smiling while he drives, but John finds that he is. "How are you doing?" he asks. "You want a coffee break?"
"We're grown ups. Call it what it is: a bathroom break," says Grace. Her grin falls away. "Actually, coffee would be great, but will it be safe to stop?"
John turns to look at her directly. "I'll keep you safe," he says. "That's my job."
"Okay." Grace's tone is blithe but there's a little crease between her eyebrows.
The phone, silent for some hours now, buzzes to life, and Grace jumps, startled. She'd left it in the cup holder after it had been silent for a whole hour, and apparently she'd forgotten about it. Now, she reaches for it with two fingers, as if picking up something frightening.
"It's my partner," says John. "He's probably checked ahead, researched the rest stops."
Grace is delighted by the idea. "It's like my own personal Trip Advisor," she says, scrolling through the list avidly. "Oh, look, there's a place that does Belgian waffles all night. I love eating stuff like that in the middle of the night."
That's why it's on the list, thinks John, but doesn't say anything. He takes the turnoff to the waffle house. It's a good location, he finds, when he pulls into the parking lot, which is well lit but too far off the highway to warrant security cameras. There are big glass walls, but John can see a few places he can tuck Grace in safely. The clientele at this time of night seem to be mostly middle class stoners.
In the parking lot, Grace pauses, her hand on the car door. "How did your partner know we'd need to stop around now?" she says, looking down at the phone.
John takes the phone from her and slips it into his pocket. "We've been working together for a while," he says. It wouldn't do for her to realise Harold is listening in to every word they say. That would be creepy. It isn't until he's holding the heavy glass door open for Grace that he realises he doesn't find it creepy at all anymore, and hasn't for a long time. He's not sure how he feels about that.
He orders coffee for them both, and Grace gets a ridiculous heap of waffles and ice cream. When it arrives, it's nearly as big as her head, and she laughs as the waiter puts it down in front of her. As soon as they're alone again, she picks up the long narrow spoon and turns the plate looking for a good place to start.
John sips his coffee and watches her poke it experimentally with her long spoon.
"I guess this isn't so bad, if it's a last meal," she says, toppling a scoop of ice cream from the teetering tower. She spoons a mouthful in, and rolls her eyes. "Oh, that's good. I hope we don't have to run for our lives or anything, because I'll be groaning and holding my belly instead."
The ice cream is melting and John is on his second coffee when she gives up and flops back in her seat.
"If I eat another mouthful, I'll explode," she says, nevertheless cramming a final spoonful of ice cream and sauce into her mouth. "Do you want any? It's not like we can take it away in a doggy bag."
John shakes his head. "If we have to run for our lives, I'll need to be able to throw you over my shoulder," he says, only half joking. "Can't do that on a full belly."
Grace is appalled at this. "Please leave me to die. I'd rather die than barf all down the back of your suit," she says, earnestly.
John laughs, an honest, easy laugh that startles him. He reminds himself to concentrate, to maintain a good distance between him and the subject, but Grace is too fascinating, both for what she informs him about Harold, and for herself. He scans the restaurant, checks the parking lot is clear then catches the waiter's eye for the check. "Time to go," he says.
He makes Grace wait while he checks the bathroom, going right into the women's cubicles with no embarrassment. Grace offers to check first if there's anyone in there.
"That kind of defeats the purpose," he says. He hasn't drawn his weapon – he doesn't want to panic Grace – but his hand hovers over his holster.
Back in the passenger seat, Grace is asleep in minutes, lulled by sugar and chocolate. John drives, watches her sleeping, and when he's sure she's in REM, slips his earwig in place.
It gives a hiss the moment it's there: Harold has been waiting for a chance for them to talk.
"How is she?" he asks.
John can speak without moving his lips much, and the sound shouldn't wake Grace. "Crashed out after all the adrenaline," he says, not looking in her direction. The road is deserted, and he is starting to hope they've escaped Samaritan's grasp.
"Ms Shaw and Groves made plenty of noise to cover your escape. They're still leading Decima on a wild goose chase." Harold sounds impressed despite himself. "I believe we can reassure ourselves that you were not followed. Samaritan should not be able to reacquire a trace on you, unless Grace triggers a facial recognition response."
"Samaritan means the country isn't big enough to get lost in anymore, Finch. She won't be able to avoid cameras forever." There are certain names that are sure to pull Grace out of sleep, even a deep, exhausted sleep like this, so for now Harold is Finch, if John has to say the name at all.
Harold's voice is dry, sarcasm covering up his concern. "Well, that was the reason I wanted Grace to leave the country, but that's out of the question now. I'm collating a new identity for her now. Getting her across the border will give you the best chance for relocation."
John considers it while he drives. It isn't impossible: he'd smuggled people in and out of the country before, and while Samaritan's ability to listen in on every conversation and see through every lens will make it more difficult, it isn't impossible. "I can get her across the border but I have to tell you, she's pretty upset at the idea of being uprooted."
"I would rather Grace was alive and unhappy in another country than dead in this one," Harold speaks short and deliberately, making certain that John knows he has no voice in this decision.
John's hand clenches on the wheel, a reflex action. He and Harold didn't argue often, but when they did, it was like this: scrupulously polite and scathing.
"She's not the same person she was back then. Neither of you are," he says, in the affably reasonable tone that he knows Harold finds infuriating. "Besides, I think you're underestimating Grace. She's better able to handle this than you realise."
The line cuts off, an abrupt little snap that is as close as Harold gets to hanging up on someone. John should feel bad about riling him up, but right now, with Grace under his umbrella of care, it's easier to see the flaws in the way Harold has managed his life – and Grace's – since the bombing.
Harold doesn't call again, and John drives through the night over back roads and past state forests, wending his way towards the nearest point for a covert border crossing.
They're in a used car lot on the edge of Scranton when he taps Grace on the shoulder. She snaps awake with a small scream, staring around herself in bewildered panic. When she sees John standing outside her window, she grimaces.
"I had convinced myself this was a dream," she says, opening the door and clambering out.
John shakes his head. "Sorry. We need to change vehicles and it's easier to take one that nobody's going to miss for a few hours." He points to the workshop, where he's disabled the security system. "There's a bathroom in there, if you need it. I'm going to be working on getting our new car started."
It's barely morning: the light is thin and grey, and there's mist still clinging to the dips and hollows of the ground. Still blinking, Grace checks her watch, rubs her eyes and walks towards the workshop, stretching her arms and rolling her shoulders.
John pops the hood of a nondescript grey sedan, solid enough to give them good protection should there be a pursuit, but old enough that there's no GPS installed. He flicks out his knife and starts cutting wires on the alarm before he hotwires it.
He jumps at approaching footsteps, reaching for his gun but it's just Grace. She puts a chipped mug of black coffee on the engine block. John stares in surprise, then stands straight and accepts the cup. The coffee isn't great, but it's scalding hot and sweet. The cup, cheap and mass-produced, says "Warning: do not feed the mechanics!"
Grace cradles her own mug. "They had a machine so I made a pot. I wasn't sure how you took it, when it's not waffle house espresso." She leans against the car opposite with her ankles crossed and hugs her cup close for warmth.
"This is fine," John says, and after another mouthful, balances the mug carefully on the engine block again. He reaches deep into the engine, feeling for the wires that feed the GPS signal to the dash.
Daylight breaks properly when John's sitting in the driver's seat working under the dash. The light creeps along the field facing the lot, flooding the straggly grass with gold. Outside, Grace makes a soft noise and reaches out to catch the sunlight in her cupped palm. She seems to be breathing carefully, as if a loud noise will startle the magic of the morning away. Completely unselfconscious, she wriggles her fingers in the golden light, turns her hand over and over in it. She looks up and, catching John watching her, gives him a goofy smile.
"I don't get to see this as often as I should. I'm not really a morning person."
John is briefly struck by an image of her, soft-limbed and sleepy as light creeps over the counterpane, hair mussed and eyes half open. He blinks and swallows.
"Harold was," Graces continues, still holding light. "He was a runner. But I think it was something ingrained, you know? He would never tell me much about his childhood but I bet he had to get up at the crack of dawn so often he couldn't sleep much past that anymore, not even if he wanted to."
There is something wretchedly awful about hearing these intimacies from their life together, knowing that Harold is listening. It's wrong to be learning things that Harold has chosen not to tell him, from someone who is grieving for him.
Grace obviously feels a little vulnerable, too. She hunches her shoulders and nods towards the field. "Can I go walk over there? I need to stretch my legs before we get in the car again."
John gives the area a professional once-over: there are a few scrubby trees on the other side of the road, but the area is clear and flat. He could be there inside a minute if anyone appeared on the road.
"Sure," he said. "Don't go past the trees, though."
While she's out of earshot, he opens a line to Harold. "You awake?"
"Did you not hear all about my predisposition for early mornings, Mr Reese?" Harold's voice is dry – not the dry sarcasm that John knows is Harold's way of expressing affection but a tight, formal dryness that Harold uses as a shield.
"Stop it," says John. He doesn't have space on this mission to indulge Harold's emotional mind games. "That kind of bullshit is going to put Grace in danger. I'm with her; I'm going to hear about things that you might not want me to know. Get over it or send Shaw to relieve me."
There's a long pause on the line. "I'm sorry," said Harold. "Thank you for protecting her. I know that she will be safe with you. And yes, I realise this is uncomfortable for both of us. "
It hasn't been too bad, John almost says, then he thinks about how that sounds, and he bites back the words. It's true though. Travelling with Grace hasn't been uncomfortable, her company is pleasant, and she has shown surprising endurance and flexibility for someone new to being danger. There hasn't exactly been that crisp distance that comes from protecting a stranger, either: even though their connection is unspoken, they have a shared knowledge of one very important person in their lives, someone they both love. John wonders if she suspects that he knows Harold – knew Harold, he reminds himself. He needs to keep it in the past tense.
He pulls his mind back to the mission. "Do you have any idea about where we should be heading? I'm pointed towards the border, but I can swing around and back to the city if you want."
Grace is walking through the sparse field opposite. She slipped between the wire strands of the sagging fence with an experienced manoeuvre that identifies her as someone used to hiking in the countryside. After pacing up and down the uneven ground, she turns to face John and gives him a little wave. After he waves back, she whips a notebook out of one pocket, a pencil from another, then works busily, her hand moving freely over the paper with wide gestures.
Harold was still speaking in John's ear. "It's a little more difficult to arrange a new identity now that Samaritan is everywhere, but I have a few that I've kept for Grace in the eventuality that my work would put her in danger even at this distance. I'm arranging a new employment opportunity for one of those identities. Heading for the border is the best plan for now."
"I can do that," says John. Realistically, it's the best option for Grace, he tells himself, while Grace stands in the middle of the field and draws. "We'll be on the road again pretty soon." He's been ready to go for a while, actually, but this place is isolated enough for Grace to get some fresh air before they are trapped in a car for hours. He slips behind the wheel, backs neatly out of position then pulls a U-turn on the road so that the passenger side is closest to Grace.
"Break time's over?" she says. She's smiling, but there are shadows under her eyes, bruise blue on her pale skin. John wants suddenly to tell her that this nightmare is over, and that her home is safe and will be so forever. He can't, so he simply leans across and pops open the door.
"For now," he says. He passes her a folded blanket from the back seat: there was a sample picnic basket there to demonstrate the idyllic family life that comes with a car like this, complete with plastic fruit, empty wine bottle and a tartan rug. "Try to get some sleep. I'll wake you when it's time for breakfast."
Grace unfolds it and drapes it neatly across her lap. "This is cozy," she says. "I'll pretend we're on one of those fifties road trips in a big old Cadillac. You'll wear a black derby and I'll have fifteen petticoats and the whole world will be a perfectly pastel ad for the motoring age."
John pulls onto the freeway. "And billboards for Burma Shave?" he says.
Grace laughs, and leans her head against the headrest. "When do you sleep?" she said. "Should I offer to drive for a bit?"
John shakes his head. "Hasn't even been twenty-four hours yet," he says. "I won't need to stop for a while yet."
Grace is watching him; he can feel it without turning his head to check. "What?" he says, into the silence.
"Just wondering who you are," says Grace. She turns on her side and curls her legs up under the blanket. "My questions should be more pointed, I know, like, why is this happening to me? Why are people trying to abduct or kill me, and where did you come from, out of the blue, to rescue me? But what I want to know is who you are – you're not a cop, don't even show me that pretend badge." She reaches out to touch his elbow, reassuringly. "Don't worry. I believe you about this threat, and I believe that you're keeping me out of danger. I just wonder how you got to be the kind of man who knows these things: how to avoid security cameras, how to rip the GPS out of cars, how to drive all night on alert. Knows exactly how long he can keep doing all this without sleep."
John doesn't know what to say, so he drives and thinks. When he glances back again, Grace is tucked under the blanket, still turned in his direction, but with eyes closed and her breathing regular. In his earpiece, Harold sensibly remains silent.
It's four or five hours on straight roads after that, avoiding town centres and stopping at the most rundown of places. John changes cars again – an early Audi coupe, someone's weekend treasure – and they're eating up the miles towards the border.
John feels that prickle of sweat he gets from adrenaline bursts before his brain registers that something is wrong. He pulls the car off the road, slowly, so slowly, and holds up his phone as if he's taking a call. On the overpass, drivers are hanging out of their cars, waving phones, trying to get a shot of something he can't see yet.
"Taking a detour," he says into the earpiece, as softly as he can, for Grace's sake as much as security. Then he hauls the car onto the service road and down a narrow wooded track, speeding up as soon as they're out of sight from above.
There's no answer, but John knows that at the other end of the line, Harold is working equally hard, trying to determine what's ahead.
The back tires slide out on the next corner and Grace startles out of her doze with a shriek, clutching at the safety belt that has snapped tight on her chest. John puts out his arm to hold her in place as he slews the Audi fast round a steep hairpin, and that's when he sees the drone through the foliage, flying in the distance, low and quiet on four rotors.
"Drone," he says, for Harold's benefit, but Grace leans forward, peers through the windscreen, looking for the thing. Around the next corner, a large branch covers half the road. John swings the car out of the way so they don't clip it, but that's too much for a city car: the little Audi slides on the loose surface. One side of the car lifts and the scenery tilts by thirty degrees as they fly along on two wheels. The momentum sends Grace slamming into John's body.
"It's okay," he keeps saying, while he's wrestling with the wheel and the weight of the car, trying to keep them upright. "Hold still, it's okay."
The car comes down back on four wheels, but one tire blows and then another, and then they're travelling on rims, juddering along the dirt road. John brakes carefully again and again until the Audi slides to a halt.
They both sit there a moment, breathless. John somehow has his arm around Grace's shoulders, holding her to his side.
"You okay?" they both say at the same time, then Grace laughs, shaky.
John takes her face in his hands, runs his fingertips over her hairline looking for bruises. "You didn't hit your head?"
"Nope." Grace allows this examination, watching him at the same time. "What happens now? Do you know where we are?"
Harold chooses this time to pipe up. "I have your approximate location plotted, Mr Reese. Will you be able to drive out?"
John gets out and examines the car. The wheel rims have cut inches deep into the dirt. John could dig it out, but the longer they stay in one location, the more risk there is to Grace.
"I could with time," he says. "But I'd rather get clear of this site now."
There's typing in his ear. "There's not much around," Harold says, slowly. "Wait – I'm checking police reports, and there was a raid on an illegal cannabis site a month ago."
Harold is nothing if not thorough. John considers it. A month is long enough for the police presence to fade but not so long that the growers will have taken it over again. "How far?" Grace is watching him talk now, her face wary. They need to get moving.
"Four miles," Harold says. "I'm sending you directions now. I can follow up with a car in a few hours if… authorities have turned their attention elsewhere."
The map, when it comes, is a photograph drawn in notepaper that John recognises from the library. That gives him an unexpected pinch of emotion he can't identify. Homesickness, maybe? He memorises the layout, by which time Grace has opened her door and extracted herself from the car which, on two flats, sits a few inches lower than it had originally.
"That's not good," she says, poking one with her toe. "Do you want me to go find some branches? Could give it some traction so you can drive out again."
John pops the trunk and gathers his arsenal-in-a-bag, stuffs in a couple of water bottles, and from the back seat grabs the tartan blanket. "It will take too long. I don't want us stuck here if they come searching."
"Okay," said Grace, sounding the word out long, suspicious. "Where can we go? There isn't much out here."
"Have you ever been hiking?" John slings the bag over his shoulder and turns Grace in the right direction. There's no path, as such, but he can see a track further into the brush.
An hour later, they are making progress, heading gently uphill, though the forest is thick and filled with undergrowth, tree falls and boulders. The tracks that weave through the trees are narrow, fading and out of existence with little notice. John is glad of Harold's map, and also of the compass from his bag, which keeps them pointed towards their destination.
"I don't really like hiking," Grace says at their first pitstop, an hour away from the car. She sits on a fallen tree with her ankles crossed. "There's a reason I moved to New York. I like a metropolis. I like buildings." She passes the water bottle back to him and he takes a sip then screws the lid back on and pushes it into his bag.
"You ready to get going?" he asks. He is pushing them both harder than Grace is likely accustomed to walking, but he wants them under cover as soon as possible. He has no idea how many drones Samaritan can deploy at once. He hopes they don't have to hike all the way out of the forest. What they really need is a chopper. What they really need is for Samaritan to give them some breathing space.
"Yep," says Grace with false joviality. "I'm bushwhacking through uncharted forest with a man and a bag of guns. There's no way this is not going to end in murder and death." She gives him a grim smile. "You're lucky I get a good vibe off of you, John. Not every girl would go this far into the woods with a stranger."
"We're not really strangers anymore," John says, and feels the connection between them crystallise into solidity. By saying it, he makes it true: they're not strangers. They were strangers when they went on the run, but they've been in close proximity for nearly a day and things are different.
Grace pushes her hair out of her eyes again, takes a deep breath and shakes her legs. Her hair falls immediately back in her face, and John sees her press her lips together. She's tired and frustrated and afraid, and her resilience will only go so far. He slides the bag off his shoulder, rests it on the tree beside her, and rummages in it for his cleaning kit. The cotton swabs inside are kept neatly gathered by a hair elastic, bright pink with plastic Hello Kitty bobbles. He'd found it in a bar once, and snuck it into Shaw's kit for a laugh. She'd snuck it right back a week later, and they'd continued to shift it back and forth while trying to keep their gear hidden. At least this will end the cycle, he thinks and passes it to Grace.
She laughs weakly at the ridiculousness of it. "It's so you, though, John," she says, as she pulls her hair back into a ponytail.
They stop twice more along the path, at roughly hourly intervals. Coming into the fourth hour, Grace has stopped chatting, hasn't really said a word since the last breather. John has her walking ahead, because the biggest risk is going to come from the rear. He can see she's getting footsore from the way she's walking, up on her toes for a while to spare her heels, hissing quietly when she comes down hard on a rock or her shoe snags on a stick. He's about to suggest they stop and bivouac at the suitable site when Grace turns a corner and comes across police tape.
She spins on her heel and stares at him, horrified. "Is this a murder scene? Do we need to talk about bringing girls to your murder sites, John?"
"No!" says John. "No, it was a drug bust. Marijuana."
Grace opens her mouth to protest, and then her shoulders sag. "I guess beggars can't be choosers," she says, instead. Then she brightens. "Oh, well. Maybe there's leftovers. I could use a little chemical relaxation."
There are no leftovers, apart from a funky smell in some of the cabins. There are cabins, though, and while there's no power or running water, John thinks he can make them comfortable there for a while if he has to. There's an open-sided shed which obviously served as a gathering point for the growers, with stools fashioned from large pieces of wood arranged around the fireplace, and a cast-iron pot still hanging over the grate.
"This is more like the camping I've done," Grace says. "I'll go find some kindling so we can light a fire when it gets dark."
John hopes they're not still here by dusk, but he keeps an eye on her as she wanders along the trees while he shakes down the rest of the cabins. There's no way the cops found every stash of food here, not when the growers were surrounded by pot every day. He comes back to the shed with an armful of junk food: oreos, goldfish crackers, corn chips, half a pack of twinkies, and a head-sized jar of Nutella that he feels certain was forgotten because the seal is intact. Grace is crouched by the fireplace carefully poking kindling between the logs she's piled in there, and when she sees the giant jar of Nutella in John's arms she starts to giggle uncontrollably.
"Don't laugh yet," says John. "There's no spoon." He is having another one of those disturbing moments where he wants to tell Harold how lucky he is to love Grace, how Grace is strong and resilient and always able to find joy in her circumstances. He hopes Harold knows this already, but he's starting to wonder.
As it happens, he has a spoon in his mess kit. He gives it to Grace, who wriggles her feet while she sips from the water bottle. "How are your feet?"
Grace groans. She tears the foil off the jar, and sniffs the Nutella. "I don't know," she says. "I figure I'm not going to look until I absolutely have to. How are we getting out of here? Please say we're getting out of here – I don't want to live on an old pot farm forever." She sits with her back to the brick wall that holds the fireplace, and her feet elevated on an overturned milk crate.
"It would be pretty good cover," John says. He sits near her, tears open the bag of goldfish and eats them one at a time. Grace scooches over and grabs a handful, dipping them into the Nutella. She passes every second one back to John.
Harold takes advantage of the quiet to speak in John's ear. John's glad he doesn't have to explain that Grace is leaning against him right now, dreamily dipping crackers into a giant tub of Nutella.
"The drones are otherwise occupied," Harold says, with typical circumspection.
John snickers. "I almost feel sorry for the drones," he says.
"No robots were harmed, I promise," said Harold. "I bribed a few privacy groups to stage a protest, and then gave it a bump on Twitter." He does sound pleased with himself. "It is going to be difficult for our enemy to carry out any covert operations in this area. For some time. Meanwhile, I've despatched Ms Shaw with a replacement vehicle, but she is still several hours away. I realise this isn't ideal."
"We're secure for now," says John. When Grace looks up at him, he points to his earpiece and mouths, "The boss." She raises her eyebrows in mock-alarm and keeps eating his goldfish. "Though a place with walls would be better for a longer stay. Recharge some devices, eat a meal that doesn't come in plastic bags." He hopes Finch picks up on the cues: Grace is fine for now, but she can't maintain this pace forever.
"Absolutely. Do you have a border crossing in mind or should I organise it?"
John nudges Grace upright so he can stand without disturbing her. He walks a little distance from her so he can talk freely. "I've got a contact who runs cigarettes through the Akwesasne reservation. I've left a message for her, I doubt it will be a problem." After what he'd done for Yvonne's son, she'd happily move a bus full of people across the border at John's request.
There's a silence for a moment, presumably while Harold fills in some gaps in his background research. "Ah," he says. "I see. I assume your contact is a Ms Dubé, who operates from Cornwall Island. I have a place where you can stop on the way, just outside Helena, in the Brasher Falls state forest. I'll arrange for it to be made ready." He pauses again. "Grace is all right?"
John glances over his shoulder, to where Grace is watching him with narrowed eyes. "She's tired," he said. "She's pushing through it, but she won't be able to maintain this pace, not without slowing us down. And…" He stops, uncertain of how to words this in a way that Harold will understand. And not get angry about.
"Mr Reese?" Harold says, concern in his voice.
"I don't think she likes all this planning behind her back," he says, eventually.
There's another long silence, but this time John feels the stillness on the other end of the line. He can imagine Harold's expression, based on the quality of that silence: thin-lipped, cold-eyed, frightened and angry at the same time.
"I know you don't want me to talk about this," John says, expecting Harold to cut into the conversation with something blistering.
Instead, he just sounds tired. "I understand your concerns, John, I do. Please don't think me dismissive when I say that I've known Grace for a long time. I know the best way to settle this without hurting her."
People change. Grace is not the person she was back then. John wants to say it out loud, but now is obviously not the time. "It's your call, Finch. Give me a buzz when Shaw's getting close."
Grace is still watching him, suspicious, when he walks back to the fireplace. "Did you make all kinds of strategies and plans?" she asked, then sees something in his face that softens her tone. She reaches out to touch his hand. "Are you getting in trouble on my behalf?"
John shakes his head. He doesn't want Grace to get the impression that the people who are keeping her alive are bickering. "There's some stuff I can't talk about – like how we're crossing the border, for instance. And, yeah, we're having some debate on how that should be done, but that's how we come up with the best plan." His confident statement is somewhat diminished by the way he kicks a stone right out of the campsite and into the trees.
Grace offers him the Nutella jar, her expression solemn. "I think you need this more than me."
It's well past noon when John's earpiece wakes up again to warn him Shaw is close by. Grace is dozing by the cold fireplace, wrapped in the blanket stolen from the Scranton car yard. John has been patrolling the grounds, restless and unsettled by the quiet. When he hears the crunch of tires on dirt, he waits at the point where the access road opens out on the campsite, gun drawn. He sees Shaw in a Mercedes that lumbers heavily up the track, steps out with his hand up in greeting, and then goes to wake Grace.
Shaw brings the car to a halt – it bounces on the shock absorbers when she puts on the parking brake – and gets out. She tosses the keys to John.
"That thing is a freaking tank," she says, walking past him to the fireplace. "Handles like a whale but you can drive right over an IED." She rummages in the pile of junk food. "This all you got to eat?"
Still blinking, Grace stares at Shaw for a moment then waves a hand. "Hi again," she says, hesitant. "We have Nutella." She offers up the jar and Shaw snatches it out of her hands.
"Use your own spoon," John says, slinging his gear into the back seat. "You want us to drop you off?"
Shaw doesn't bother with a spoon. She gouges out a huge fingerful of Nutella and crams it in her mouth. "Nah, I got a ride home," she says thickly. "Tailed me all the way but I managed to lose her in the forest."
John can hear another engine now, a low hum that occasionally becomes laboured and high-pitched. A gold and black motorcycle emerges out of the trees. It's sleek and futuristic but the bodywork has some ugly scratches, and the rider is splattered with mud all down one side. Root pulls off her helmet and shakes out her hair, but the cinematic effect is spoiled by her expression of rage. She kicks the stand down on the bike and storms over to where Shaw is still licking Nutella off her fingers.
"That was unnecessary!" She is inches away from Shaw's face. Shaw shoves her Nutella-coated fingers in Root's mouth, and Root splutters in outrage.
"You ready to go?" John says to Grace who is watching the two women in amazement. He helps her get upright, lets her lean on him when her feet protest, and helps her to the car.
"Are they always like that?" she says, settling into her seat with a sigh.
John takes one last look at Root and Shaw, where the fight is devolving into something much stickier. "There's usually less Nutella," he says, and walks round to the driver's side.