Chapter Text
Liz awakens and looks around the familiar plane in sleepy bewilderment.
Right. They're probably somewhere over the Atlantic.
Dembe is sleeping near the front of the jet, his leather seat reclined. Red is reading in the seat opposite her, the small overhead light falling upon the open pages of a hefty hardback open in his lap.
Liz lays her head back and studies him from under her all but closed eyelids.
He's in shirtsleeves and vest, his tie discarded, his cuffs rolled up. As he turns a page, she watches him with an odd sort of delicate enjoyment. She can tell from the lines around his mouth that he's enjoying what he's reading.
It's been a long six months they've been apart, Liz assigned to relatively menial work in San Francisco as an analyst, Red who knows where. He just vanished, until she was reassigned back to the task force and sent on this mission the day she arrived back at the Post Office.
A brace of missiles in private hands, in central Europe.
Red has been contracted to supply the warheads, but they don't know where the delivery systems are coming from.
Tomorrow, or maybe today, they are meeting one of his contacts in Andorra, to broker the deal. They'll be landing in Barcelona by sunrise.
The bureau decided Liz wasn't completely trustworthy, when she took a bullet for Reddington in the course of their hunt for the last blacklister. Well, three bullets. Liz had been pretty confident the vest would stop them, that she was moving fast enough to escape a head shot.
Red was lying by the pool in a white hotel robe, drinking a martini, when she came running towards him. When she inadvertently attracted the attention of their target.
Liz remembers how the bullets pounded her as she flung herself on Red. The scratch on his cheek where she knocked his sunglasses askew. The smell of coconut oil on his skin.
The sound of the blast as Red pulled a weapon from beneath his beach towel and shot the man twice, so fast she barely registered the movement.
They would not be welcome back at that five star hotel. It had taken long months for Liz to convince the bureau that she had only been doing what she saw as her job. Protecting a valuable asset. The fact that Red did not contact her once during that time was helpful, if unexpected.
"Yes?"
Red closes his book, marking his place with one finger, and meets her gaze across the narrow aisle of the plane.
Liz shrugs. She does not need to think about how much she missed him, not when he's looking at her.
"Just wondering about tomorrow," she says.
"Three hours in a car - beautiful mountains, too many of them," he responds. There are deep circles under his eyes. He doesn't seem to sleep much, or deeply. She can't help but wonder what Red looks like, fully asleep. Probably determined, even then.
He looks down at his watch. "Today, actually."
Liz doesn't like the plan. They will be depending on Red's contact for the transport, while Dembe takes the plane to pick up the warheads. He's got to purchase them first, and that may take time. They will be staying with their hostess, in her private villa.
Marietta, Lady Martingale, looks elegant and self-assured in her file photos. Not the sort of woman to broker arms deals on three continents.
"You'll enjoy Andorra," Red assures her. "Mari sets an excellent table."
Liz closes her eyes and pretends to sleep.
***
The cars that meet the plane, three of them, are small and shiny white. Guards in the front and back cars, along with their luggage.
"Go on, sit up front, enjoy the views" Red urges Liz, holding the door to the middle car. Liz climbs in, gives the uniformed driver a dubious smile. He nods, then stares straight ahead as Red then ushers their hostess to a seat in the back. Climbs in next to her.
Lady Martingale is small and even more elegant in person, with waved black hair and large black eyes, wearing a long white fur and tiny, narrow boots with high, high heels.
"Mari, my dear, I can't remember seeing you look so well," laughs Red, bending over her hand and actually kissing, kissing, each of her fingers. Liz can see what he's doing in the rear view mirror. As they chat, switching rapidly between English, French, and some other language which she assumes is Catalan, Liz watches them turning towards each other, body language mirrored.
Liz looks out the window, wishing she could have slept a few more hours.
More than two hours later, she's peering down at a snow-field, the ribbon of road they have driven up unwinding below in short, steep curves, when the snow suddenly seems to come rushing up at her.
Struck by an oncoming van, the car rolls off the road and bounces several times.
Liz hits her head and blackness overtakes her.