And now you won't love me for a second time.
I don't know why I run away.
I cannot even recall the hour I zoned out, but when it was the time for me to rub my eyes open, the dawn was peering out.
Waking in an empty bed was always a relief. I threw the covers off me, letting my legs drop off the bed when I stood up. On the chair at the side, there were pairs of folded clothes left out for me. The cold December morning made me put on a brown pair of sweatshirt and sweatpants before I left the room.
In simple words, it looked like a vacation lake house.
In more complicated, there was an open space where the kitchen and dining hall took one side of the room, while the couch stood at the other side, right next to the open balcony. A shiver goes through my spine, stimulatingly with the wind slapping across my face.
It's quiet. Landon isn't here.
My fingers are tapping over the wood surface of the counter while I search for any sign of surveillance even here. Corners are empty, the book shelf at the left side of the open door is suspicious but too much work to be examined at this moment.
Like a jolt of energy, the memory shakes me up when my hand flies at my chest and I can breathe again.
The ring is still there.
There is a folded blanket over the couch backrest which I use to wrap it around my frame when I walk outside. The air is wet, but the rain has stopped for this moment when I lay my palms at the wooden fence.
Mud is drawing over all the grass, dirtying over the natural paths which are leading into the wood. Remembering the pattern from the bedroom, along with this it's quite clear that we are in the empty circle, surrounded by forest.
The sun is hidden, barely seen when I enter the house for breakfast. Fridge was filled with food, fairly new but looking over each expiration date I would guess it's been bought and stored at least a week before this. Giving them at least another two weeks to plan out and find this place.
I suppose Landon spent three years yearning for this, but the actual escape plan was most likely two months old.
Taking a last bite of an egg, my hand is whirling around with a knife while I think of everything that happened.
He escaped on the anniversary of his arrest.
Send me a warning into the Bureau building.
He was aware about Leah being my child.
He knows where she is.
Those are not just the things he would guess, or send his dogs to run around and collect information. Those were highly hidden things, stored into safety for a reason and he couldn't know about it unless-
The cutlery slipped down my hand, reaching up to massage my forehead as I loudly exhaled.
Of course.
Not wasting a second I am up off the chair, the drawer being pulled open as I gather all the knives in my hand and are walking towards the front doors. Trying once, I don't mind as they are locked when I return back to the balcony door.
Walking out, there are stairs leading down when I go through the freezing air with blades almost cutting through my skin.
The trees are tall, beyond my capability of seeing when I stop next to low and thick branches where I store them, making sure to look around for trees. My stand is stern with slightly parted legs and a blade gripped between my fingers.
I close my eyes, remembering the distance for a specific throw. My old teachers would tell me not to try and throw a knife without a spin further than twelve feet. It would be a waste of time, they said.
When I throw the first one and it buries itself into the tree bark from almost twenty five feet apart, I want to laugh at them.
But I don't, instead I throw another, then two more, then one more, then I take a step to the left, focusing on the next tree.
This one is further, so this time the blades do half spins through the air. Next tree, full slip, then another one and two, then three, then I'm done and I repeat it.
First two hours pass as I create personal challenges in my mind, painting on perfect images when I make a pattern. For a while it was simply reaching the target, then it became how deep can I penetrate it, then from which distance, then without vision.
Walking back and grasping them out was the most exhausting part of it all, but I didn't complain.
It would be a lie if I said I haven't placed faces on the target field. Simon. Dead. Meredith. Wounded. Landon. Fine.
Lilah. Jackson. Daniel. Alena. The whole fucking department. Fine.
It's their fault. They were the one who sent me on this mission, their stupidity allowed Landon to escape and it was their recklessness and overly trust in others that allowed a mole to enter their organization.
It has no other explanation. It's the one and only way onto how he could know about all of this.
Bureau has a mole inside its walls.
It looks like Landon is really back for karma.
Caitlin. Fine.
I look at this tree and I imagine her face when the blades run around without any sort of pattern. Splattered blades through the air, inside the tree when I harshly take them out.
She did this. Ignoring my warnings, signing on that fucking deal and letting my baby go on her own.
I knew this would happen, but nobody listened. Nobody fucking listened.
When I feel another drop over my hair, I don't stop, instead the exercise is increased as I intend to waste another five hours on it.
I wasn't even sure how much of the day had passed when I flinched at something small being thrown right across my face. I turn my head in the direction where it came from, stilling in the spot when I see Landon.
He is dressed in an all black suit, leaned on the glass door with crossed arms as he glares at me with a lost look in his eyes.
I haven't broken any rule.
It's what I tell myself when I avoid his stare, walking back to the tree to pick up all the blades then head back through the now air-poisoning rain and wind.
Praying silently that I haven't done anything to anger him, I walk past him to spare him a glance. I don't have to see it again, because I recognised the way he looked at me before. As if I am foreign theme, something to be experimented with to find the truth. Something so unfamiliar despite everything.
"You don't mind the rain?" is the first thing I am asked once I walk out of the bedroom with dry clothes.
There is gray cloth in my hand as I dry out the kitchen knives, not looking up when I answer. "Never claimed to do."
"I remember." he answers. "I do, however, also remember you being a liar whose words cannot be trusted."
My hand pauses only for a moment. "A liar can also tell the truth."
"Why do they lie then?"
Fully turned back from him, my hand is steadily placing blades back where they belong when I ask. "Why do killers kill?"
A stretched out silence is in the room, neither doing much other than breathing until my hand is slamming the drawer shut and I am turned, almost surprised by him now sitting not more than five feet away from me at the other side of the counter.
"They are killers." he says, drawing in the smoke in his lungs while his hand is wrapped around whiskey glass from before. "It's what they do."
My arms are crossed for the fear to be hidden. "But why?"
He shakes his head, putting out the cigarette on the hardwood. "Depends. Wealth. Power. Survival. Justice. Adrenaline and rush. Or simply because they can, such as me."
I am nodding, putting away the cloth to the side when I take two steps closer. My palms are resting over the counter when we both stare at each other.
"Which one was yours then?" he bends his head a little closer. "Why did you lie?"
"Because I could." the tone is tedious. "It was my job, so I did it. I was falling asleep and waking up in your arms, making you believe the warmth you had in your chest was reciprocated. I would kiss you senselessly and drown myself in pleasure and make you believe you were the only one who made me feel that way. I lied that I loved you and that love killed you inside while I got everything I wanted."
His clenched fists are white as the snow from where he took me, but my voice has no mercy. "I lied because it was all the game to me and I fucking won."
For the very first time, I couldn't see what he was thinking when I spoke. Eyes half closed, tired from everything when his body told me he could run another dead marathon. His face and body were desert and the sea, mixed into an unexplainable liquid of agony.
It should feel good.
It really should.
"But how could you believe that?" there is no sly tone in me anymore, only an isolated mind when I pull away. "How could you believe that any of those things was the truth when all you heard from me were lies?"
"I couldn't." it's all he replies, sounding more as a question which waits for confirmation.
"You couldn't." I confirm and the sorrow once again is on his face but I pretend not to see it.
"Tell me then." he takes a sip of his drink. "You have nothing to hide anymore so tell me one thing that is the truth."
A question was somehow expected, but I would rather cut my own tongue with those knives then admit to it now.
"The truth." Licking my bottom lip, I am pulling back when I turn to head back into the room, opening my mouth for one last sentence. "I fucking hate Meredith."
I hear a quiet and shy chuckle before it's dulled out with closed doors when I drop down on the bed.
I don't remember falling asleep, not even how the next day passes, but when the third arrives it's clear to me that Landon's absence is a pattern of something.
On the fourth day, I decide to try and find out where he is going. After I feel the mattress being lifted of weight, he sits there for a while but I cannot open my eyes to see why.
The urge to find an answer is the only thing which saves me from stirring when I feel his fingers brushing over my forehead. There is a knot in my throat when he moves the strands of my hair back, pulling fingers through it as he used to.
Back when it was appropriate for us.
Not now. Not when he went through all of this to get his revenge on me. Not when he hates me from his bottomless heart.
His phone buzzes, his hand stuttering at the noise when I hear him picking up the call.
"Meredith." It's even harder to fight the urge of not gagging at that name.
"I am aware...No...Yes. Yes, Meredith." he is muttering quietly, hand still gentle to me. "I have spoken to her, but we are only waiting for their plan to be in the process so that we can proceed further."
My brows are somewhat furrowed while I try to think of what he's saying. Them. Does he mean the Bureau?
I don't even recall them having any sort of a plan.
"He will. I know he will, yes we can trust her."
Her? Who is her? Don't tell me-
Whichever words Meradith replied made him remove his hands from me, clearing his throat and answering. "I made a mistake with him and have learned from it."
Soon after ending the call he leaves the room and I am quickly but soundlessly up from the bed, walking towards the desk at the side and picking up the oval mirror.
The window is closed, wood old and could make a lot of squeaking noise to reveal me so my head is resting at the door, waiting for him to enter the bathroom.
The moment he does, I am running towards the window, opening it slightly and biting my lip over the noise. I am slipping away from the room, still standing on the support of the window while I extend my arm holding the mirror.
It's not heavy, but the position is hurting my arm, but I put it away and wait.
When the reflection, presenting the whole room from the kitchen window far up, shows Landon's existing bathroom I begin searching for clues.
He doesn't do much at the beginning, pouring some milk and whatever else must be in the bowl as he sits with crossed legs and a distant look in his eyes.
Groaning from the cramp pain, my other hand is massaging the other, making me almost slip but as I managed to grab ahold of myself. It made noise.
He is quick to turn towards the noise, but I am quicker to pull away. My feet are hitting the floor as I abandon the mirror, practically rushing across the room and back in the bed, pulling the covers over me when the doors open.
He doesn't say anything, just stands there for a while. I imagine he is trying to see what made noise, but gives it up soon and leaves all together.
I spent the whole day searching for clues, but I found nothing.
Next day I plan the same thing, only this time Meredith does not call him and he never reaches out to stroke my hair.
I suppose it was a moment of weakness, even more from my side for wanting it.
This time, I am more careful and it pays off.
My eyes are narrow in wonder when he looks around, then walks over to the couch, ripping away some thick fiber from inside then pulls it away.
I raise my brow when he pulls the seat of the couch, revealing the pile of papers as if they belong in an office.
He takes two of them, watching them while licking around his teeth with a cruel smirk which I can't understand.
Why? I don't know, but it doesn't matter.
All that it does is when he pulls away, closing it back again and heading towards the front door with car keys.
It is so close to finding out, which is why I barely waste any time after the doors close to enter the living room. Repeating the same action as he did, I pulled on the first sight just a loose out fiber and dragged it back.
When it opens, I am back at the opposite side, crouching down and mulling over the papers.
But they aren't usual papers.
I roam over the copies of files belonging to each agent from the Washington headquarters. The faces of my acquaintances, even friends, are in my arms when I read all about them. Names, families, addresses, phone numbers, credit cards, IDs, but it's no end.
Telephone contacts, each day of phone calls back and forth, lasting, numbers. Their usual spots, people they see every day, missions that shouldn't be given to anyone but Mrs. Brooks.
It's all there.
"What the fuck?" I mutter in disbelief, hands shaking as I go to grab another file, but then the world around me freezes.
The front doors close.
My head is staring ahead, a paper crumbled between my fingers and I don't even have to turn to know who it is.
I never heard the car leaving.
Shutting my eyes, cursing myself out I stand up, slowly turning to him.
There is an agitated look in him. "I thought I was clear?"
"Who is it?" I ask, not caring about him when he strides over the room. "You obviously have someone pretending to be an agent so who is it?"
He smiles, so hostile. "Can't even follow one simple rule?"
"Do I know them?" I ask when he grabs my body, pulling me while I try to fight back. "Is it someone close to me?"
He is hovering over my face. "I don't know, are you fucking anyone in the Bureau? If you are, that would be the most poetic revenge wouldn't it?"
"Who is it?" I hiss at him, but I get no answer from him, because he only laughs in disbelief, which is so strange to me that my mind goes blank.
It's only then that I understand my confusion has nothing to do with it. The needle in my neck does.
"Fuck you." I spat at him, body going numb in his arms when he kept me close with a hand around my waist. "I hate you so-"
I don't have time to finish it, my tongue feels heavy and lips dry when the vision gives up, but before my hearing disappears all together, I hear him saying.
"I wish I could too."