Work Text:
Carrie paced back and forth in front of the hotel. She had waited in the lobby for half an hour, but on getting frantic, tried the outside. Not that this was any better.
Quinn had more or less been carried from her house by the FBI the day before, beaten and hurt. Before that an angry crowd had followed one of her clients, mistaking him for a terrorist. The man had sought refuge in her house, the mob was closing in, and Quinn had tried to shield Frannie. Someone had spread the word that a kid had been taken hostage by, first, a terrorist, second, an ex-soldier gone nuts, and the situation quickly went out of hand. In the end, the FBI had stormed her apartment. Quinn had given them a fight, desperate to protect Frannie.
Carrie and Quinn had been afraid that Javadi might try to get to Carrie through Frannie, but now it was FBI-officers, THE FBI, that had taken Frannie away and put her into custody.
Carrie had spent all day yesterday to get her back. In the end, a judge had ordered Quinn to stay away from her daughter, until the „hostage-incident“ was clarified. But no one seemed to know anything about Quinn’s whereabouts anyway. So Carrie set out to get HIM back next.
And there was only one person she could think of who might have a say in this.
Come on, she kept murmuring to herself, come on, motherfucker, show your face. She had nothing to use on Dar Adal, nothing really. At least nothing she wanted to use. She briefly considered bringing up Haqqani, but that was more than three years ago, not very useful. Besides, the days of dubious methods, of blackmail and fucking assets into submission were over.
She had to ask Dar Adal about Quinn. Maybe like … ask nicely? Carrie shrugged off the thought and resumed her pacing up and down the sidewalk.
It was another hour before the balding head showed up. With everything that had passed through her head by then, she just couldn’t hold it. Carrie practically jumped through the cordon his bodyguards were forming and almost had her hands on Dar Adal’s throat, before his men locked them behind her back.
She shouted: „Tell me where the fuck he is.“
Involuntarily, Dar Adal took a step back, almost knocked over by the sheer force of the small blonde his three men had not been able to fully block. He looked at her with contempt. Mathison losing it, again. When, God, when would this stop?
Very soon, he would have Peter Quinn taken from her grip, once and for all. Peter would be able to get over his PTSD then, as he had fought his recent drug addiction, which had been, Adal was absolutely certain, fueled by his juvenile infatuation for this crazy ex-agent who had run over to the other side and would always ignore his feelings, no matter how many letters he handed over to her.
Peter had made extraordinary progress with his sarin-inflicted disabilities. He had to work on the mental side a bit ... and then ... it would all be back to old times!
Adal inhaled deeply. „I have put him in a safe place.“
„Where?“ Carrie snapped.
„Carrie, let him be! He may never be his old self again.“
„He will die if you just leave him with the FBI, you know that!“
„Bullshit! You can’t host him anymore, he’s not good for your daughter. Nor for you.“
„They fucking don’t know what’s going on. Where is he?“
„He might hurt himself, and from now on I will protect him.“
On hearing „I will protect him“ from Dar Adal, Carrie was suddenly all calm and focused.
„I don’t doubt that,“ she said with a sober voice. „Let me make sure he’s ok, tell him that it’s not his fault.“
Maybe it was good to grant her that, Adal thought. Mathison would tell Peter that he couldn’t stay with her any longer, he’d understand that it was better not to be around and then he’d be gone anyway.
Adal cast her a long look. And spit out the hospital’s name.
Carrie shrugged off the bodyguards’ hands and turned on her heels.
Adal’s look followed her, and he would have been surprised had he been able to see the hidden admiration in it.
***
It was a nondescript small hospital. When identifying herself as a visitor, they waved her through at the main entrance, but on the third floor there was a second ward, and of course the nurse asked for Carrie’s ID. When she took it away to make a photocopy, Carrie considered staging a fit. But from the corner of her eyes she spotted Quinn’s file on the desk and checked herself.
The nurse disappeared into the adjoining room to use the Xerox, and Carrie quickly went through the papers. It made her gasp: A referral to a psychiatric clinic in Pennsylvania, the transfer due tomorrow morning. Signed by Adal himself. But worst was the diagnosis: severe PTSD, depression and potentially suicidal. Quinn would be completely at Dar Adal’s mercy if he was committed to a mental institution with this.
That bastard!
She knew at once what she had to do.
The nurse gave her clearance, and Carrie marched down the hall, taking determined steps, resolved to carry Quinn out of here if she had to.
But on turning the corner, there were two men in suits, the letters „FBI“ practically written on their foreheads. Carrie came to an abrupt halt. No need to confirm this was Quinn’s room. The two returned her stare with a dumb expression.
Carrie smiled her sweetest smile, just in case, and rushed past them, cursing inwardly. Damn, this would be complicated.
Automatically she started to check the surroundings and when she reached the next corner, a plan had formed in her mind. She took out her phone.
„Virgil,“ Carrie said, „I need you and Max. Now!“
There was a deep sigh at the other end of the line.
***
Max insisted on wearing a mask.
He had just found some peace and quiet, he said, and didn’t want to risk this new life. He would go to the hospital and get Quinn out, but it had to be quick, silent, and he would Not. Show. His. Face. So Virgil had to wear a mask too.
They got past the entrance ok, up to the third floor, and that’s where Carrie had spotted surveillance cameras. It was masks on now and drugging the nurse at the second entrance, which was not really a challenge.
When Carrie showed up on his doorstep an hour before, Virgil in tail and a ridiculously risky plan at hand, Max had silently listened and then produced a small bottle of chloroform from his closet. Virgil was clearly impressed with what his little brother had in stock, but when he started on it, Max shut him up with a very serious look. They would get to this later.
For now they concentrated on quickly pacing up to the police officers and pressing chloroform-bathed rags to their mouths. It went well with number one, but the second managed a muffled cry before he went down on the floor.
Time mattered now, they would be spotted on the cameras within minutes.
Quinn heard the noise in front of his door and, although only half-conscious from a high dose of pain killers, managed to get up halfway when the two masked men came in. They were at his side in an instance and struggled to restrain him. Carrie had said Quinn would be drugged and wouldn't be able to move much anyway, and they did not expect any serious resistance.
But this was Quinn, they should’ve known.
Virgil tried to duck the hand going for his throat, but Quinn was too quick, and Virgil, throat pressed tight, managed only a grunt.
Max grabbed Quinn’s hand, but the other one reached his face and almost pulled off the mask.
„The mute,“ Quinn said, eyes wide in surprise.
Max had not intended to do this, really, but he was annoyed with Carrie’s op not going as smoothly as planned, and there was no way he could be identified, and besides, time was running out, and he still had the chloroform-rag in his hand, and actually it was more like a reflex, but he pressed it to Quinn’s face.
It instantly knocked him out.
„Are you fucking crazy,“ Virgil whispered. „This could kill him!“
Max just gave him one of his stares, and then they were out, with Quinn on the bed, rolling him down the hall, elevator, basement, another hall, up to the exit and there was Carrie waiting in a car with Frannie in the backseat.
Max just wanted to hand him over and leave. But he didn’t reckon how heavy the guy would be. Getting him off the bed was easy, but into the car? Virgil had his arms around Quinn’s chest and was struggling, and Max was really impatient now.
He hated fucking things up when they were almost done.
He let Quinn’s legs slip to the ground and reached into his pocket, congratulating himself on his foresight. Max held a small flask of smelling salt to Quinn’s nose, and Quinn instantly started kicking his feet.
Virgil yelled at Max at first, but his brother’s surprising equipment silenced him again. Quinn was struggling to break free now, then Carrie was at their side, talking to him in a soothing voice. Together they managed to get him into the car.
They all jumped in, Frannie was delighted to see Uncle Max and disappointed when he and Virgil left after a short ride, but she was a big girl now and didn’t cry, and anyway, they were on a weekend trip with mommy and Quinn.
The brothers silently vanished into the crowd.
***
Quinn looked out of the window of the car, head throbbing, feeling dizzy, muscles aching, but he had an idea of what was going on.
„Carrie, what the fuck,“ he said under his breath.
„You can thank me later. Adal was going to lock you up in a mental ward. Gotta get out of town now.“
„Where to?“
„A ... cabin.“
„Cabin? I won’t go to any cabin of yours ...“ He groaned, holding his head. Just thinking about Carrie’s cabin was ...
„Quinn! It’s upstate. About two hours.“
Quinn’s mind was racing. Getting out of town was good, but he’d rather have a say in where they would head to.
„Ok,“ he said. „What guns do you have?“
„Guns?“ Carrie looked at him as if he had made an incredible proposition.
„Guns, yes. Weapons.“
„I don’t have any weapons. I have a child in the car!“
„And the FBI on your tail, maybe the CIA and probably the Iranian secret service too.“
Carrie felt a familiar anger rising in her chest. Here was Quinn, doubting her decisions. Again.
„Quinn, I have discarded my phone, this is a rented car, and nobody knows where we’re going. Not even Virgil, Max or my sister. No one will find us.“
Quinn sighed and braced himself for a fight. As if the pain in his head wasn’t enough.
„Who does this cabin belong to?“
„A ... friend!“
„A friend?“
Quinn raised his eyebrows. Which made Carrie raise hers too.
„A friend, yes ... and this friend is not Otto Duering!“
„Oh, great, we’re not staying at Mr-Marry-me-and-let’s-try-our-wings’ place!“
He paused, then: „Carrie, we’re doing a detour. Take the next right and drive up north.“
„Detour? I’m not going on any detour. Frannie will fall asleep soon and I want to be there before she wakes up.“
„I have to get something.“
Carrie was getting angry now. „I have all we need. And we can do some shopping when we arrive. We’re a family on a weekend trip!“
„Oh, come on! Family ... who’s gonna buy that? Carrie, without any means to protect you and Frannie, I’m not going to any fucking cabin!“
„Quinn!“ Carrie motioned to the back, mouthing „Frannie“.
There was a prompt reaction: „Mommy, Quinn, stop it, I don’t like it when you yell at each other like this!“
Quinn turned and smiled at Frannie.
„It’s ok, sweetie, we’re just joking, like we always do.“ And, turning to Carrie. „We will take this detour.“
„But why, to do what?“
Now Quinn was losing patience: „To get some guns.“
„Quinn, I am not loading any guns into this car with Frannie in it. I am not!“
Quinn looked at her very calmly.
„Yes, you will. You will fucking go where I tell you to go.“
So Carrie drove north into an industrial area. Frannie fell asleep and so did Quinn. He had given her direction to a storage facility, but was still passed out when they arrived. Carrie broke into the stash unit, as the key was somewhere among Quinn’s stuff in the basement of her house. Just bring everything there is, he had said, and Carrie took the two briefcases, a small and a big one, which were the only contents of the garage-sized unit anyway.
***
Another hour and with the setting sun they arrived at a beautiful and very large house by a lake. It was much bigger than Carrie had expected, almost a small mansion, well furnished and very well equipped. Carrie was impressed.
Quinn climbed out of the car, much steadier on his legs now. „So, this is a cabin,“ he said, looking up and down the posh two-storey building.
Frannie ran around like a young dog. „Mommy, it’s so beautiful,“ she was up and down the steps, opening doors and closets and tossing curtains, claiming not one but two of the upper rooms for herself.
Quinn had a different perception.
„Carrie, we can’t stay here.“
Ok, Carrie thought, here we go again.
„God, Quinn, why not?“
„This house is not safe. And I can’t make it safe. Anybody could jump through those windows. We can’t see what’s coming from the woods. And the lakeside is totally unprotected.“
„Quinn, don’t get paranoid. No one will find us because no one will look for us here. Javadi is not chasing us, at least not yet. It was all about that client, they took him for a terrorist. The situation has been resolved, and we just have to convince some people that you didn’t take Frannie hostage.“
„You won’t tell me who this place belongs to - ok! But someone will make a connection,“ Quinn said, shaking his head. He disappeared outside. Carrie sighed.
Quinn had been on high alert the moment his eyes snapped open in the car. After they left the main road and pulled into the woods, he was constantly scanning the trees for anything suspicious, cars following them, parked cars, assassins hidden behind trees or perched on the ground, anything.
The house was a security nightmare. The doors were reinforced, but it was a ridiculous measure considering the huge glass windows, the trees much too close to the building, and he didn’t even want to think about the lake. The road that led to the house was a narrow driveway, easily to be blocked, no escape route. Anybody could break into the house, and Javadi’s goons would be inside within seconds.
He ignored his screaming body, let himself down and started working on the car first.
When Quinn came back in, Carrie had opened a can of tuna and was mixing it with cream cheese, adding salt, pepper and some capers. Half of the tuna went into a salad.
„At least there is no tracking device on the car!“ Quinn said.
Carrie wondered how he had managed to crawl under the car in his state, but Quinn was very resilient after all. He started rummaging through his cases, but Carrie made him take them away so Frannie would not see his impressive collection of guns.
After dinner, Carrie put Frannie to bed ...
... and when she came down, she found Quinn preparing a syringe on the kitchen counter.
Carrie’s jaw dropped. She had painfully weaned him off, just weeks ago.
Now she almost screamed: „Quinn, what the fuck are you doing?“
„Calm down! It’s caffeine.“ He put the needle into his arm. „I have to stay awake.“
„God,“ Carrie said, „you have serious security issues!“
„No, hunches. You used to have them too!“
„Quinn, this is insane. You ought to sleep, you need the rest.“
He didn’t seem to listen.
„I’ll check outside.“
Carrie walked by his side down to the lake, telling him to come to his senses, trying not to yell, but getting more excited every moment. She breathed in deeply, repeating „stay calm, just stay calm“ to herself like an inaudible mantra.
They stopped by the shore. The moon was out, diffusing a white light over the water, very small waves were gently brushing the shore, the howl of an owl the only noise hovering over the water and over the woods. It shut Carrie up. She took in the beautiful scenery, inhaled the fresh, cool air. It was peaceful.
She seriously considered taking Quinn’s hand.
But then she realized Quinn was looking through night-vision glasses, scanning the distant shore. He completely ignored her.
„Quinn ...“
„Shh.“
„What is it?“ Carrie whispered.
He put down the glass. „There is some movement on the left.“
Carrie rolled her eyes. „Well, there are people living there.“
The spell was irrevocably broken.
„Let’s go back inside,“ she suggested.
„I will stay here tonight.“
„Outside? That’s crazy! You can hardly stand.“
„Look, I take the chair.“ He dropped down on one of the deck chairs by the small jetty.
Carrie shook her head. „I don’t believe this.“
She marched up to the house and came back with a blanket, stuffed it around Quinn and snapped: „I’ll be inside!“
As soon as she was out of sight, Quinn reached for his backpack, took out a gun and screwed a silencer to the muzzle. Then he stood up and disappeared between the trees, into the shadows by the shore.
He didn’t have to wait long. They came out of the water, two men in wetsuits, silent killers or abductors, Quinn didn’t care to find out. He let them get ashore and when they were hunched over their backpacks, he brought the first one down with a clear shot through the shoulder, and took the second with a bullet into each leg and then a firm blow over his head. Quinn was fixing them with handcuffs, when he heard a noise from the house. He started running toward it, cursing his still stiff legs.
***
Carrie had poured a glass of wine and installed herself on the sofa. She had resolved to wait for one hour, hoping that Quinn would abandon his silly mission of lake-and-wood-patrolling and join her.
She looked at the huge window. „Jump through“, she thought, „what a ridiculous idea“, when a hooded figure, clad in black and dandling from a line on the tree, crashed through the glass.
Carrie instantly jumped behind the couch.
Fuck fuck fuck!
Quinn had been fucking right. And she had never hated it so much to be wrong!
Carrie’s mind went into overdrive, checking with her hand on the floor if, by any chance, Quinn’s gun-cases were hidden under the couch. Nothing! Closest weapons were the knives on the kitchen counter, too far for a jump. It would be seconds now before the attacker took her.
And suddenly she sensed someone coming from behind. She turned on her back, just when the second man threw himself on top of her. Carrie managed to get her legs up into the air, and the guy came down on them with his stomach, full force. He practically surfed over her body on her legs and crashed into the wall, head forward.
It left him unconscious.
Carrie was on top of him in an instance, but she had nothing to fix him with, and then she noticed the first attacker heading for the stairs.
Frannie! Carrie was about to jump after him, when he suddenly just dropped to the ground. And then Quinn was hitting him hard with his gun, binding him with cuffs. Quinn turned and for an instance Carrie thought he would pick her up, but he went past her and very matter-of-factly shackled the second attacker.
Carrie just stayed on the ground, wide-eyed, feeling a little numb. Finally, she started to laugh quietly.
„Fuck, Quinn! You were right! How did you know?“
„Just a lucky guess,“ he said, and then he moved over and took her into his arms, and Carrie had never ever in her whole life felt so much relief.
And suddenly there were lights outside, and people, and Saul peeled himself from a car, Dar Adal was talking to Quinn, shaking his head. And after checking on Frannie, who slept like a log, Carrie just started to wonder how they all got here so quickly and why, and if there had been a tracking device on the car after all, when she heard a voice, yelling her name.
„Mathison, what the fucking fuck?“
Andrew Lockhart stood outside, staring at the broken window, mouth agape. „I fucking had to abandon my dinner for this shit!“
Carrie thought he would stomp his feet.
„What the fuck is he doing here?“ Quinn asked.
Lockhart gave him an incredulous look. „This is my house!“
„Fuck me,“ Quinn said.
„Your house?“ Saul asked, equally impressed.
Carrie confirmed.
„Don’t tell me you beamed yourself up from town just because your window is broken,“ Adal said.
Lockhart was still catching breath, opening and closing his mouth like a fish on the ground. „We are staying at the other house,“ he said. „But I get notified if something happens.“
„The other house?“ Saul asked.
Lockhart motioned to the other side of the lake.
„My wife loves this lake-house, she insisted we buy it. But my security advisor won’t let me stay behind windows like this," he shook his head with an air of regret. "I have been director of the CIA, after all.“
„Windows ... interesting,“ Carrie said.
„I'd like to see the other house,“ Saul said. „And the contract you negotiated for your directorship.“
Lockhart’s phone started to buzz, which spared him an answer. „Yes, darling, nothing serious, just some kids. No, don’t wait for me, just leave it on the counter. I’ll heat it up when I get home!“
Lockhart closed his phone and looked around apologetically. „We’re having lasagna,“ he said.
Carrie couldn’t help but smile.
And giving in to a strong urge, she took Quinn’s hand and did not let go.