The Road Home

[abrightboy]

Raylan's loose ends had been tied in Kentucky and Malcolm's were as tantalizingly close as they'd ever been. He and Raylan made the trip to New York with the intent of discovering the fate of the girl in the box, so they could head down to Miami without... baggage.

They would have to start with the revelation Jessica and Ainsley had made to Malcolm right before Raylan was shot, sending Malcolm back to Kentucky: that Eve had infiltrated the Whitly family to learn more about the Surgeon's victims.

Malcolm let them into the New York loft - a space he considered theirs now, more than his, since they decided they might weather the hurricane season there after moving to Miami - smiling as Sunshine tweeted greetings. Once the door was shut behind Raylan, he opened the door of her cage. Ainsley would have fed her diligently, but nobody would have let her out to fly. Sunshine took off across the loft and Malcolm grinned, watching her go.

He looked at Raylan. "We can still bring her with us when we leave, right?"

Comments

[tinstar]

"Good for you, we'll get you the Soundproofing of the year award," Raylan replied flippantly. "So, why'd you bring her on your trip then?"

[abrightboy]

“The camping trip wasn’t for her,” Malcolm said softly. “He took me on the camping trip to kill me. Killing her there, too, was… two birds and one stone.”

“And as it turns out, you stabbing John threw all the stones into the river, as it were. Has it occurred to you that maybe I didn’t kill anyone on the camping trip?” Martin countered.

[tinstar]

Raylan kept his reaction to that buried deep inside, keeping his eye contact on Martin's face as his jaw flexed a little.

"So the plan went bad and what, she escaped?" It was a failing, but Raylan couldn't imagine Martin letting her go. It didn't fit into the narcissisms of the man.

[abrightboy]

Martin looked at Raylan and smiled, just a little. It wasn’t a friendly look.

“What does it matter? I haven’t seen her since. She went to ground and, honestly, I don’t care where.”

[tinstar]

There it was. The answer Malcolm was looking for. Raylan smiled broadly, lips kept together for a supremely dry 'friendly' look of his own.

"So last time you saw her, she was alive." It mattered why, but the semantics of that was Malcolm's to fight, not his. Malcolm wanted to know if she was alive, Raylan wasn't sure the Why of it mattered if they could find her.

[abrightboy]

“You’re lying,” Malcolm told him in a low but fierce voice. “Why wouldn’t she go to the authorities? Why wouldn’t she ever tell anyone what happened? Why wouldn’t she resurface for twenty years years to tell her family that she was alive??” he pressed with increasing desperation in his tone. “She saw you. She knew who you were.”

“She had bigger problems than little ol’ me,” Martin told Malcolm matter-of-factly. “And that’s why you need to leave this - and her - alone,” he advised them.

[tinstar]

"Bigger problems than the serial killer that kidnapped her in the first place?" Sounded a little like bullshit to Raylan, who's eyes narrowed, head leaning back a fraction as he stared at Martin.

"You oughta know Malcolm enough by now to know he's not gonna leave it alone, which means neither am I." What was enough to make someone like Martin Whitly scared?

"You're scared, ain't cha?"

[abrightboy]

Martin snorted. “If I were, it wouldn’t be for myself.”

He leveled his gaze at Malcolm.

“And if you won’t leave it alone because I’m asking you to, then do it for your mother and your sister. Believe it or not, son, I’m trying to be a good father here.”

Malcolm’s eyes stayed on him, on his face, even as Malcolm seemed to almost vibrate inside his skin.

“What are you hiding?”

“Nothing that needs to be disturbed.”

“That’s your opinion. If I find her, I can ask her.”

“No,” Martin said. “You can leave it alone.”

Malcolm looked at Raylan, then turned towards the door, moving to knock.

“Malcolm Whitly, you will drop this at once!” Martin all but howled at his back.

[tinstar]

As Malcolm turned away, Raylan ambled over to take his place, a physical barrier between Martin and Malcolm, despite the teether that was doing all the work.

"You give us a head start, I can put the whole of the Marshal's Service into protecting him. You know he won't stop. You know I'm not gonna encourage him to stop. So help me keep him safe, hmm? Give me somethin' to go on, somethin' to look into."

Martin's yelling had been meet with the same even, friendly tone Raylan had carried before, hands propped on his hips.

[abrightboy]

Martin laughed at him, boldly, right in his face… but there was an almost maniacal edge to it.

“The Marshal’s Service. Go on; give it a try. The Marshal’s Service can’t protect my family from him,” he hissed.

Malcolm turned away from the door.

“From whom?” he asked. “What’s this all really about?”

Martin held his gaze for a moment, his jaw tensing. He glanced at Raylan, then looked at Malcolm. “Nicholas Endicott,” he said, quietly enough that it was clear he was reluctant to even be heard saying the name. “My boy,” he said earnestly, “forget about him. Forget about the girl in the box. Go to Miami. Get married. Live. If you get any further into this, that dream is over.”

[tinstar]

Raylan blinked casually, head canting to the other side like Martin had said something faintly interesting as he was laughed at. He was going to take a lot of pleasure in proving Martin wrong; Raylan had been chasing all sorts of men for twenty years. He knew more about tracking a man than most agents of the FBI.

The immovable force vs unstoppable object.

The petty smarminess of it all faded away into a narrowed attentive look as it looked like Martin was and did spill a fraction of his beans. Better two beans than none. Raylan looked over at Malcolm and nodded faintly. He could work with that. Plenty of ways that he could run afoul of the Marshal's and Raylan was willing to ply and deal where he needed to, to bend some rules and make someone's life uncomfortable. If he decided that was the right course of action.

Just because he could, didn't mean he would.

"What's he got over you?" Raylan ventured with a faint lift of his chin. "Why's he scare you so bad?"

[abrightboy]

“The same reason he scares anyone with half a brain,” Martin scoffed. “He’s spent his life and his fortune snaking his tentacles into every level of the halls of power. But your girl Sophie, she worked for him. When she recovered from her little ketamine nap, she told me about some files she had on him. Insurance for my lifestyle that she offered in exchange for her life.”

“So you let her go,” Malcolm said, calculating, more willing to believe it in this light. “So where are the files? If they can end him, we’ll use them and put him away.”

Martin rolled his eyes expansively. “Do you really think you’ll get that far? He promised to ruin my family if I so much as ever breathed his name…”

“So give me the files,” Malcolm insisted, his voice rising, “and he won’t be a threat to us or anyone anym…”

“THERE ARE NO FILES!” Martin finally shouted at him. “Are you happy? It was all a lie! We’ve got nothing except a thin belief that there’s some files out there, hidden.”

[tinstar]

"Hey," Raylan said softly, whistling lowly to get Martin's attention back on him. "Alright. He's big and he's bad and I respect what you're sayin'-" It took a lot more than some bullshit power to spook Martin to this kind of degree, to balance his family's livelihood so neatly on a pin's head.

"What did you get for promisin' to not breathe his name? How's he get pulled into this beyond her tellin' you about him? You let her go, to go get the files, right? Files that don't exist. So she played you. How does Endicott get in front of you to hand out this warnin'?"

[abrightboy]

Martin looked at him. “Isn’t it obvious? I used the same bluff she did.”

Something clicks for Malcolm. “The prosecution wanted capital murder. A federal death penalty.”

“And I, personally, did not,” Martin expanded. “But your options are limited when you’re accused of murdering twenty-three people.”

“So you used the leverage and Endicott used his power to intervene, reducing your sentence to life in a secure psychiatric facility.”

“And here we are today, putting it all at risk,” Martin added with biting mock cheer.

[tinstar]

Malcolm was quicker on the uptake than Raylan was but by the time the smaller man had blurted it out, the Marshal had put it together and he couldn't help but smile, eyes narrowed almost proudly. Had to appreciate a good scam.

"And you're worried that if we turn him over, you might be out of your cushy little box here with your notes and your personal butler, huh." Raylan's everything said 'Interesting.'

After a long second, Raylan shrugged with his face and one shoulder. "No reason the unravelin' of Endicott's reach needs to come here. If you behave. It can stay faar away from ya."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm had more background than Raylan, was all.

Martin sneered at him. “He said he would ruin my family. Maybe you can protect my boy. Maybe. Who’s going to protect my wife and my little girl, hm?”

[tinstar]

"Malcolm's protection will also extend to them, insomuch as it can. When I marry him-" Yes Martin, your boy was going to be a Givens, "-That's gonna make your wife and daughter extended family. They start gettin' threats, havin' accusations leveled against them.. They got a speed dial port into one of the more successful and powerful Government services."

Raylan shifted on his feet, bringing him a fraction closer to Martin.

"We are on the same side of this argument but I know men like Endicott. Men who think they're gods or untouchable. Uncatchable. They're not," he assured with a lift of his eyebrows and a shake of his head. "And lettin' them lord over you leaves you weak to their whims. Better to cut that cancer out and deal with it head on than livin' life lookin' over your shoulder."

This was something Raylan knew from experience several times over, intimately. He was still going through it; what was one more name on the list of people looking to ruin or kill Raylan Givens.

[abrightboy]

Martin held his gaze, Malcolm behind his shoulder watching intently.

“The only thing over my shoulder is a wall. But if something happens to my family because you poked this hornet’s nest, I will find my way through it to visit on you the worst day of your miserable backwoods life,” he snarled.

“Dr Whitly, if you know anything else, it seems like protecting your family would be a good reason to give it up.”

“I don’t have anything else,” he snapped. “You’re going to ruin all of us. You’re going to ruin your mother and your sister and for what? The fate of a woman that left my custody unharmed? She’s not your responsibility, Malcolm.”

Malcolm swallows. “You made her my responsibility the day you put her in a trunk in our basement. You’re the one that brought all of this down on us, not me and not Raylan.”

[tinstar]

For now. But Raylan didn't say that. Instead he smiled a sickeningly sweet smile and stayed quiet as Malcolm spoke up. Malcolm was right, of course, and Raylan signed up to co-sign on this mystery when he decided to ask Malcolm to marry him. Getting an answer didn't mean tearing everything down but he understood Martin was prone to ~dramatics~.

"We appreciate your help, Dr. Whitly." A small concession, but an important one as Raylan turned, one hand hovering protectively and guiding Malcolm towards the door.

They were done here.

[abrightboy]

Raylan’s hand at his back was like a tether to the Earth and he left the cell feeling a lot less unsettled than he usually did.

Then it occurred to him as they left the cell that the guard went in and, for the length of their stroll down the hall, he hadn’t come out.

And it wasn’t Mr David.

Malcolm frowns and turns around, giving Raylan’s arm a squeeze as he headed back towards the cell, but once he glimpsed through the glass, he broke into a run, trying the door (locked) before banging on the glass. The guard had a garrotte around Martin’s neck.

“DR WHITLY!!” Malcolm shouted through the glass. Martin’s eyes fluttered shut. “DAD, NO!” Malcolm cried out despite himself. Martin’s eyes snapped open and he quickly had the killer on his back.

Digging his thumbs into the man’s eye sockets, Martin looked up at the window he knew Malcolm was at giddily.

Malcolm looked sick.

[tinstar]

Raylan frowned at Malcolm's frown, staying where he was until Malcolm broke into a run. There was no question about him sprinting along behind the profiler to glance into the cell.

"Shit," he swore, turning to pull the emergency alarm that set the hall to blinking long with the strobes of red of the alert lights to match. When he stepped back, everything had changed and Martin was grinning at them like the psychopath he was.

It didn't take but 30 seconds for the hall burst with life as guards rushed in and pushed them to the side to start getting into the cell themselves.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm stepped into the cell behind them as they rushed Martin, who put his bloodied hands up as soon as they drew near him, easily acquiescing to being steered to sit on his cot while one of the guards checked the one on the ground. Malcolm paced tightly in the corner by the bookshelves, careful not to cross the red line.

Martin had done this damage tethered and cuffed.

“Thank god you were still around,” Martin tells Malcolm and Raylan, looking up at Raylan bright-eyed. “I was viciously attacked.”

[tinstar]

As Raylan followed in, his hand pushed his jacket aside and rested on the butt of his gun, ready to use it if needed. Any civility that Raylan had previously in his face and eyes were gone, replaced with a cold hardness that wasn't here to fuck around.

"That's well beyond self defense," Raylan said with no hint of kindness or understanding in his reply. He shifted only to move out of the guards way, eyes locked on Martin.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm watched warily from his corner.

Martin shrugged a shoulder. “Put it on my tab,” he said breezily. He canted his head slightly. “As much as I’m sure you’d love an excuse to shoot me,” he added, holding up his bloody but cuffed hands and wiggling his fingers. “You wouldn’t shoot a man who’s restrained.” He levels his gaze past Raylan’s shoulder to Malcolm. “In front of his son.”

Malcolm took an unsteady breath, his eyes on Martin, then he walked swiftly out of the cell, leaving the guards cleaning up, one of them standing by with his taser at the ready while they worked.

“REMEMBER WHAT I TOLD YOU, MY BOY!” Martin shouted after him.

[tinstar]

Raylan's eyes didn't move. He waited until all the guards but the two that were waiting to take Martin cleaned up were left.

"Ya know, I don't think he'd have a problem with it." Still, Martin was, on the books, correct. Raylan couldn't shoot a man in cuffs. But got he wanted to.

Instead of saying anything else, Raylan lifted his eyebrows slightly and turned to leave out of the room, hand falling back to his side as he left the dog in its pen. He could walk out of here. Martin couldn't.

Raylan caught up to Malcolm on the way out to the car, jogging a little to catch up and hook him gently by his arm. "Hey, hey, slow down."