A/N: I hope this doesn't disappoint... you'll see that there are a lot of answers in this chapter, but of course, it doesn't mean the story's going to be finished soon. I still have tons of ideas, so this is definitely going to be a long one.

Happy reading, and thanks for the reviews... Avery, you definitely deserve the credit : ) If you remember correctly, Chapter 4 ended with someone knocking on Sam's door...

Chapter 5 - Pictures
Same night

She could say hello, sigh, smile, or turn away, but all she can manage is a startled, "Jack?"

She moves from the door to let him in, offering to take his soaked coat. She's tired but… Jack will always be Jack. Even if having him here is a very wrong idea, and not only because he's trying to work things out with his wife.

"Still raining, isn't it?"

"Pouring." Following her lead, he takes a seat in her living room, facing her from the couch. When he runs a hand through his hair, it causes it to stick up at off angles, but he doesn't notice, too intent on letting his eyes revisit her apartment. He hasn't been here in a long time.

"I'm sorry I woke you up."

She lets her eyes wander over the pile of old magazines on the coffee table. Thinking about her drink with Eric, she makes up a quick excuse. "I wasn't asleep, I was just… watering my plants."

He doesn't challenge it, just gives her this soft parody of a smile. Awkwardly, he pats a cushion and then lets his arm fall at his side. "I, uh, I'm sorry I hit Douglas."

"You're lucky he didn't call his lawyer." A small silence settles, neither joyful nor comfortable. Deciding to be direct, Sam asks, "You're not here about Douglas, are you?"

He shuts his eyes for a moment and presses his fingers onto his brow, fighting a coming headache. And suddenly, she knows. Maybe no one else does, but she can read his emotions like an open book− a combination of indecision, guilt, tiredness… fear.

Taken aback at the latter, she states softly, "You know who killed Mathew and took Ryan."

It isn't a question. She knows him too well to make it one. What she can't understand, though, is the deadlock he feels he's in. "Why can't you have him arrested?"

He looks up, catching her gaze across the coffee table. "What makes you think it's a 'him'?"

If his voice hadn't been so hollow, she might have laughed. "A woman?" her eyes widen. "They represent less than five percent of serial killers."

He doesn't smile, and she doesn't feel like laughing anymore. Regrouping, she casts around for additional arguments. "Stabbing Marines isn't consistent with female assassination methods."

"Unless the method is a ritual."

"To achieve what?"

"Vengeance." His voice is even, but it has an odd ringing to it, like he's spent the past hour working hard to make it so. "Say this woman's father was killed when she was a little girl, stabbed by a couple of Marines who wanted his wallet and some cash. Say the family never got justice. This girl would grow up with only one idea in mind: to kill the same sort of men who kept her from knowing her father."

Sam stares at him. "These Marines could have fought back against a woman."

"Not if they were drugged."

Drugged... Drugged with C15H11HN3O3, aka Nitrazepam. Mathew was at a bar. Ryan stopped for a coffee. A woman could easily have been in both places. It's both admirable and terrifying how the pieces of the puzzle are falling into place.

Feeling like they're back to square one, she does her best to say serenely, "Have her arrested then."

He averts his eyes. "It's not so simple, Sam."

Taking a few steps around the coffee table, she takes a seat again, this time on the couch beside him. "Why not?"

The distance between them has been reduced, and now she wonders if the wetness on his brow is really due to the rain outside, or to sweat.

"Jack?"

"She's blackmailing me."

Her mouth opens, but no sound comes out. This conversation is getting weirder and weirder, and she tries to clear her mind and look at this objectively, but the lateness and fatigue aren't helping. "Blackmail goes both ways, she'd have to have something against you."

"She does, Sam. God, she does. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone has secrets. I do," his voice drops to a whisper, and she has to lean in to hear the last part. "We do."

Ignoring how the air has suddenly become very thin, she brushes her fingers against his arm. He stills at the contact.

She retrieves her hand.

He rests his head against the back of the couch for a moment. "I should've known she'd keep tabs on me all these years," he speaks quietly. Reaching inside his jacket, he retrieves a brown envelope− the same one he opened the day before. "I'm sorry, Sam. I should've− I should've known."

She takes the envelope and flips it over, as if the gesture will somehow alleviate the weight of what's inside. It feels like paper between her thumb and index, only a little thicker. As she retrieves the envelope's contents, her mind gradually becomes aware of what she has in front of her eyes. Pictures. They're pictures of−

Shit.

She bolts from the couch, and he doesn't hold her back.

Feeling like someone just slapped her, she goes to lean against the window, looking at the night and the rain outside, New York rain, lashing against the entire goddamn city. There's no place to take cover, no place to escape. Rain is like truth, like evidence, it just… doesn't go away. She sees the darkness and imagines people in the streets running and swearing and for a moment, she tries to… tries to hear above the sound of hammering water, honks, engines, wipers, traffic that moves too slowly; her mind conjuring surreal images of extra-large umbrellas and waterproof shoes and… the world stops making sense.

Reality falls back into place slowly, and at the same time, anger surges through her. Suddenly, she understands what prompted Jack to hit Douglas− the need to compensate confusion and shock by rage, a cold rage that runs through every part of her body.

Abandoning the window, she turns back to the couch. "What the hell am I supposed to say?"

He looks at her, at a loss for words.

"Fill me in," she tells him brusquely.

"Sam, I don't think−"

"If you don't want my help, fine, but then just… just get out."

Something breaks in her voice as she looks at him, looks at him and at the pictures… the pictures of their past.

She'd never thought this could happen. Never imagined someone would detain the proof that they'd had an affair− much less envisioned a serial killer blackmailing Jack with this knowledge.

But she knows where these pictures were taken, knows exactly when. On the first one, they were in his car. It was dark, really dark. They were in front of her apartment, bidding each other good night in an undeniably more intimate way than colleagues should. Picture number two was taken a few weeks later. She remembers that night− a warm evening, a place just outside the city. That picture is dark, heavily contrasted, with red light in background and the first four letters of the word motel on a neon sign. With the room's key in her hand, Jack's arm around her shoulders, and her arm around his waist, not even the best lawyer could convince a jury that there's nothing going on between them.

On the third and last picture, they're not physically touching. It's the one that makes her breath catch. Sometimes, looks speak more than words, and this is one of those instants when the way they're standing and the way their eyes are locked scream that he's more than her boss, more than a friend. And the light around them, the electricity in this picture could make a light bulb glow.

She can't deal with this− not here, not tonight. Can't− won't face these pictures and what they show and why on earth is this coming back to haunt them now?

He stands and walks around the couch, crossing the distance that separates them in a few strides. One of his hands finds her arm, but she pushes it away, pushes him away.

"Just leave, Jack, please," she says weakly, her eyes starting to burn.

Instead of doing so, he takes hold of her arms again, and draws her to him. Her weight falls against his chest as she tries to hold back her tears, breathing in the scent of him and of his arms wrapped around her shoulders, holding her for just a short moment. He feels wonderfully solid, but also close, too close for now.

"God, Jack," she whispers, pulling back from his embrace. He lets her go, giving her some space again. "Do you have any idea what this means?"

He nods in silence, his face pale. "I'm sorry," he says quietly.

"How could− how could this even happen? We were being careful."

"Not enough," his voice cracks a degree.

Her anger, resentment, shock are suddenly replaced by a numbness that makes her muscles weak. They both go back to sit on the couch, further apart this time because she still doesn't know what to think of all this.

"Who is this woman?"

"Her name is Irina Connelly," he begins, taking a deep breath. "At twenty-one, she attended psychology courses which awakened her childhood traumas. She decided to avenge her father. In June 1987, she drugged and stabbed Jeremy Holloway, a Marine, in Central Park. I, uh, was the investigator on the scene." Jack closes her eyes at the memory. "Irina claimed Jeremy had tried to rape her, and the jury ruled the case as self-defense with aggravating circumstances because she killed him when she could have just incapacitated him. She took fifteen years."

Sam rapidly calculates that the woman was just released. "If she targets Marines, I understand why she killed Mathew and abducted Ryan. But why the pictures? Why would she be after you?"

His jaw tenses. "What do you mean?"

"You've put a lot of people behind bars. Thank God they don't all end up chasing after you." He doesn't answer, so she presses. "Spaulding wanted his damn fifteen minutes. What did you promise this woman, Jack?"

"I knew her from College."

A minute clicks by, or at least it seems that long. This is yet something else she never knew about Jack Malone. Secrets.

She's one of them.

"I have a Master's degree in Psychology," he reminds her, still with this maddening calm of his. "We were in the same year. We met a few times… during classes and at a couple of parties. We were just acquaintances, but that's enough for her to consider that I betrayed her."

She does her best not to look at the pictures spread out on the coffee table. God, how could they have been taken without them noticing? She shuts her eyes briefly, not wanting to be reminded of that time, a time when everything was complicated, a time when it became so wonderfully simple when they were together. "What does she want from you?"

He answers her question with a rhetorical one. "Do you think anyone else could link her to the murders?"

She falls silent, her conversation with Eric replaying in her mind. They're thinking random death for Mathew. They're never going to check archived files, much less look for a woman. This is so… so clever. Irina must've been careful not to leave evidence behind− no DNA, no fingerprints, just dead bodies. With no element of comparison, everyone will think the killer is someone with no record.

As if reading her thoughts, Jack adds, "She knows I'm the only one who could ever find a match so quickly. As long as I keep quiet, she'll have time to kill more Marines."

Now, Sam knows exactly where that look of dread in his eyes comes from. It comes down to a simply choice. Their careers, or more murders. Truth or silence, a silence that will cause others to die.

They look at each other for what feels like an eternity, weighing their secrets against innocent lives.

"I'm going to call Van Doren tomorrow," Jack says, barely audible. "I have to tell her everything about Irina."

He doesn't add the obvious. Tell her everything about us. It's not only his career he's going to jeopardize.

Rising from the couch once more, Sam takes a few uncertain steps, not knowing what she's doing until she's standing in front of a closet. Opening it, she retrieves a folded blanket.

When she returns to Jack, he looks at her, then at the blanket, and back at her again.

"It's raining outside."

They both know how lame the excuse is, but they need it all the same. She turns to the door, knowing it's less dangerous, less risky to stare at it than into his eyes, those dark eyes that seem to follow her wherever she goes, into those places in which she tries to hide. "There's, uh…"

She's never managed to hide. Not from his eyes, not from him. "There's a pillow in the closet if you need−"

"I know."

Of course he does. He knows those things about her and her apartment; where to put away his shoes and how to make coffee in her kitchen and where she keeps her spare keys. He knows there are pillows in the closet.

The words catch in her throat. "Good-night, Jack."