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Beth’s heart stutters and tumbles and stops and shatters.
Rio doesn’t fight, exactly - when has he ever done anything without an endgame - but he pushes against his captors enough to twist his head and see her, and she can read in his face that he knows.
It all comes together very quickly. There are only three feelings, she thinks. There’s the dull ache of Dean’s disdain and “tuna fish, keep it in the fridge” and what her life had become. And there’s the sharp prickle of “we robbed a grocery store”, and pointing her toy gun at Boomer, and “so we don’t go back”.
And somewhere, there’s that third feeling, the balm to both the others, the choice, all hidden in the smallest shake of his head, in “you delivered” and the down-and-up looks, in breakfast foods and “you don’t need it” and “what are you doing with someone like me?”, and in waiting when she asked, in explaining the rules over and over, even in “oh, me too”.
Even in “Elizabeth. Go home”
And her heart knew it when her head didn’t, because they decided to take him down, and she made and executed the plan perfectly and as soon as it was done, when everything was broken, then she ran to him anyway.
Beth’s heart is in too many pieces to ever come back together as it was.
———
It hasn’t even sunk it that’s she’s been arrested, honestly.
Well. She thinks she has.
She’d been cuffed along with everyone else at the warehouse, marched out and into the back of an unmarked but very government-issue black sedan, walked into a building through two doors that said “FBI” and then siphoned off into this tiny white windowless room.
And left. For ninety minutes, so far.
The door finally opens at around minute one-hundred on a harried looking Agent Turner, and she thinks, this is it then, but he doesn’t even come all the way in, just looks at her sitting quietly with her wrists uncuffed and her coat neatly over the back of her chair, and asks “Would you like some water?”.
And she could say, “What’s happening?”, but she doesn’t want to know. Or she could tell him something about Rio, but she doesn’t know what.
“No, thank you.”
He nods, lets something strange fly across his face, and he’s gone.
———
“Mr. Boland?”
“Yeahh” Dean mumbles. It’s 3am. He’s not awake.
“Sorry to wake you so late but this is an important call. I’m an administrator here at the Detroit branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
The words ‘Federal Bureau of Investigation’ meander round the sleepy mess of his mind. FBI. FBI.
“We have your wife Elizabeth here in the office.” and he’s bolt upright in bed, wide awake and panicking and ready to go. Go where, do what, he doesn’t know. Beth. At the FBI.
He struggles to form thoughts, let alone words. “Is she…okay?”
“She’s not hurt.” Somehow, that’s not a relief. It hadn’t even occurred to him that she might be hurt. Just that she might be…not okay.
“I know it’s late, but it would be really helpful if you could come down to the office.”
“Right. Yes. Yes. I’m on my way right now. I’ll be there. Thank you goodbye.”
He hangs up before he blurts “But is she going to jail for washing all that fake cash?” and starts looking for pants, wallet, phone, keys.
It’s when his hand touches his cellphone that he remembers she hates him. He thinks she probably didn’t ask them to call him, wonders who she would have asked for instead. Remembers her bailing her sister out of jail, the sister that’s been here so much recently, that Beth’s been inseparable from ever since the money started pouring in…
He dials Annie on the way to the car.
———
So. Much. Paperwork.
Agent Turner can’t hold back a laugh of joy.
He’s not doing any of it, because there are people to book and the tail ends of operations and arrests to oversee and, when he finally does get a minute, an Agent to heartily congratulate. So it’s just stacking up on his desk, and he’s kind of aware he should be cringing at his lost weekend, but honestly? To think that every file in the stack is one less creep on the streets, might be one less trafficked kid or exploited junkie?
That’s pretty damn cool.
Of course, there are a few bigger loose ends that bother him a little more than the paperwork, men and women that got caught up in all this, crimes he’ll have to overlook and covers that need concocting. But maybe not right now. Maybe tonight the files can sit there and everyone can stew a little. He figures pretty much all of them deserve it.
And he can go get what he deserves - a nuclear-strength coffee and a giant slice of cake.
———
Annie gets in the car still in her pyjamas, but holding an actual mugful of coffee and a packet of Oreos, and off his raised eyebrows, snaps “What? I’m stress eating!” before course-correcting to “Besides, you’re a jerk and an idiot and I don’t care what you think.”
He drives, skipping every red light. Annie holds the Oreos like a comfort blanket.
“What did they say? Exactly?”
He tries to remember. “That she was okay. No, wait- that she wasn’t hurt. Just that.”
“That’s real different than being okay” Annie says quietly
Dean looks across at her, searching, at exactly the wrong moment; the other car on the intersection honks loudly, he swerves and Annie swears as hot coffee spills down her front.
Dean slows the car, just a little. If they got in an accident now, who would there even be to bail them out?
They’re almost at the building, anyway.
He barely expects an answer when he says “You know something, don’t you?”
Annie’s eyes wander, not meeting his. “I know a lotta things.”
———
Beth’s world has shrunk down so far she can only hold one thought in her head.
If she had gone home, she would be home now. Safe.
“Elizabeth. Go home.”
And when he told her to do it, she should have gone home.
There was so much fear in her head then, and she was so caught up in believing it was fear that he’d come closer and not fear he’d walk away, she never looked past the fear at all.
All he told her was be safe.
(And she didn’t hear him then. She hears him now. Too late.)
———
“I’m sorry, it’s been a hectic night”. The FBI receptionist sounds apologetic, but for some annoying reason, she can’t quite keep a smile off her face. “I have her on the system, but I can’t quite tell where she’s being held.”
Dean can tell they both want to ask about the word held, but neither does. It’s odd, this temporary unity with Beth’s pain-in-the-ass sister. He kind of hates it.
“Why don’t I find you somewhere to sit and wait, and I’ll find out what’s going on?” The receptionist, impeccable even at this hour and clearly feeling a little bad for making them wait, looks at Annie’s coffee-stained shirt and adds “We can go via the equipment locker and I’ll find you something to change into.”
They follow her along a corridor and turn into another equally stark one before their guide pushes open the door to something that looks like a break room.
Annie’s still mopping at her pajama top, so Dean sees him first.
Leaning against a desk, laughing with the guy and a girl he’s talking to, beside what is obviously some kind of celebration cake. It’s the guy. The not-a-bounce-house-guy. The guy-with-the-throat-tatts. (The man-in-the-bed, he thinks, still).
Only the throat tattoo is gone, clean skin visible over the neck of a plain gray t-shirt.
And if the way the Agent who came to their house stops to clap him on the shoulder is any indication…well, still not a bounce house guy. But also not the not-a-bounce-house-guy they thought.
Dean stops still, staring, and Annie almost barrels into him.
“Hey” she looks up “what the hell-“
She’s loud, and the…the guy, looks up and spots her the same moment she spots him. He freezes, comically, with a wedge of cake almost to his mouth.
“Gang Friend?” Annie asks meekly, eyes huge.
“Gang Friend?!” Dean echoes incredulously under his breath, because really?
“Ah, hell” says Rio, also under his breath, and then “wait, you called me gang friend?!”