Chapter Text
There aren’t any people with unusual powers involved in food safety, Karen thinks to herself as she reaches the warehouse. She looks around before quickly and quietly picking the lock on the chain keeping the main door closed, then slips inside. She puts the chain and the lock just inside the door.
“I’ll put you back when I leave,” she says to the lock and chain, who only clatter a little bit as she sets them down.
Karen pulls out her flashlight and heads down the hall towards what should be the main storage room, based on the sketch she has. “Just get in, take the pictures, and head out,” she repeats to herself as she reaches the main door. The door opens without a sound, and she flips off the flashlight, giving her eyes time to adjust to the dim lighting provided by the streetlight spilling in through the high windows ringing the room.
She pulls out her camera and heads towards the line of tallest shelving, peering up at the labeled boxes on the top shelf. The warehouse closed for the day hours earlier, and there shouldn’t be anything in the aisles, which is why her first thought when she trips is utter confusion.
“What in the world?” she says out loud, catching herself on the shelf nearest her.
“Ma’am,” says a familiar voice from ground-level.
Karen straightens and frowns at the shelf in front of her, carefully not looking down. “Frank?” she says incredulously.
“You mind keeping it down a little?” Frank—because that’s definitely Frank—asks. “I’ve been staking these bastards out for two weeks and I don’t wanna lose ‘em.”
“I’m getting photographic proof of their callous disregard for food safety and the health of the public, Frank,” Karen says through slightly gritted teeth.
“Well, I don’t know anything about food safety, but I’m here ‘cause these guys’ve been kidnapping a buncha college kids and selling them for parts on the black market,” Frank says.
“Are you sure you’re at the right warehouse?”
Frank chuckles, the sound mostly coming from underneath the bottom shelf, where he must have crammed his body. “No offense, ma’am, but if somebody’s in the wrong warehouse here, you really think that somebody out of the two us is gonna be me?”
“Yes,” Karen says, moving her gaze from the shelves so she can glare at Frank’s head. He doesn’t seem to notice or care, though, as he continues looking through the scope on his rifle, the other eye squinched closed.
“Well, everybody gets to have their opinion, I figure,” Frank says.
Karen glares at Frank’s head for a few more seconds before she has an idea. “If you help me find the proof I need, I’ll be gone sooner.”
“What kind of proof’re you looking for, exactly?”
“Open containers of cooking oil with contaminants introduced.”
“We talkin’ bottles or drums?”
“Drums,” Karen says.
“Alright,” Frank says, managing to sound begrudging in exactly two syllables. He slides out from under the shelf and pops up onto his feet, rifle still in hand. He has on the same black bulletproof vest with white spray-painted skull that she’d seen him in over a year ago.
Karen rolls her eyes and shakes her head a little at the vest. “They’re going to be white or light grey.”
“So we’re looking for some conspicuously open white drums full of cooking oil?” Frank asks. “And once we find ‘em, you’re gone.”
“Once we find them and I document them, I’ll go back out the front and relock the door, yes,” Karen says.
Frank chuckles again. He has a fresh black eye, and his nose looks like it was broken in the recent past. “You pick the lock to get in here?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Good to learn new skills, I guess,” Frank says. He keeps his rifle in his hands, pointed towards the floor, and quietly starts down the row of shelves in the direction opposite of where Karen came from.
Karen scowls at his back and shakes her fist a little, then heads the direction she was walking before tripping over Frank. The row she’s on mostly has huge boxes, but she can’t make out the label on the sides. “Probably toilet paper,” she mutters scornfully.
“Yeah, it’s a good front,” Frank says without looking back at Karen. “Crates and barrels coming in and out all the time.”
“And organs?” Karen asks.
“In some of those crates.”
Karen walks another ten feet before stopping suddenly. “Are the… could the ‘extra parts’ be the contaminants? If you’re in the right warehouse.”
Frank’s shoulders rise and drop slightly. “Could be. Food contamination ain’t exactly on my radar.”
“Unless you’ve figured out a way to survive on only air, it probably should be,” Karen says tartly, pivoting to continue walking past the shelves.
“Benefit of being in the military, I guess. I eat what’s in front of me and I don’t ask questions,” Frank says. “Doesn’t keep me up at night.”
Karen smiles a little to herself. “It might if you eat the wrong thing.”
“Sixteen straight months of MREs, and it’s gonna take more than a little dirty cooking oil to keep me up,” Frank says. He raises his rifle slightly, gesturing with it towards the endcap of the next row of shelves. “Those your drums?”
“MREs follow strict guidelines,” Karen says as she turns to look where Frank’s rifle is pointing. “Only the finest for America’s finest.” She scrutinizes the drums and then raises her camera, taking several quick shots. “I think they are. Can you read the labels?”
“Ain’t exactly fluent in Russian,” Frank says. “Some kind of fat. Vegetable, maybe?”
Karen walks closer, zooming in on the labels for several shots, then more of the broken seals on the drums. “I’ll confirm it once I’m back in the office.”
“Alright. You got your pictures. Time to get out of here,” Frank says, jerking his head in the direction of the front entrance.
“What are you looking for?” Karen asks. “A crate labeled ‘Human Kidneys’?”
Frank shakes his head. “I already got all the proof I need.”
“They won’t be coming in the front door, will they?”
“No ma’am, they will not.”
“I’d just hate to run into some bad guys and have to scream,” Karen says with a sigh, tucking her camera back into her bag. “My story should be in the paper day after tomorrow, or you can read it online.”
“Go on,” Frank says, gesturing at the door again. “You wanna be gone before they get here.”
“Or I want pictures,” Karen says honestly. “I’ll check around after I’m out.”
“Whatever you hear, don’t come back in,” Frank says.
Karen frowns, then shrugs and heads down the hallway, waving over her shoulder to Frank. “There you are,” she says to the lock and chain, picking them up as quietly as possible. “Thanks for waiting on me.” She slips out the front door, replaces the chain and the lock, and then steps into the shadows near the building, edging towards the side and listening.
Fifteen minutes pass, then automatic gunfire starts echoing through the warehouse, punctuated by screams. “That was unnecessarily loud, Frank,” Karen says to herself. She moves around the side of the building, waiting for Frank to emerge.
Another few minutes later, Frank exits the building in one piece, though bleeding from his left shoulder. He glances around, notices Karen, and gives her a nod before jogging off into the night.
“What a ridiculous human being,” Karen says with a huff, then walks in the opposite direction through a few alleys before hailing a cab to take her to her apartment. She transfers the photos off her camera, immediately emailing copies to her editor, and then spends an hour verifying her Russian translation.
After her story is more or less ready for editing the next day, Karen spends another hour typing up the story she would submit about Frank, with names redacted. She know she won’t submit it, but it’s still safer to leave names out.
Two and a half weeks pass before Karen runs into Frank again, and it isn’t even in a secluded spot or after dark. Instead, it’s 1:30 PM, inside a bodega. Karen spots the back of Frank’s ballcap-covered head and goes up directly behind him.
“Those aren’t MREs.”
“Never said that’s all I eat,” Frank says. “Though I gotta say, the chili mac’s way better than the canned kind.” He holds up a can of chili and waggles it.
“And how do either hold up to diner chili?” Karen asks.
“Oh, diner beats ‘em both, hands down.”
“Then why would you even purchase that?” Karen asks, pointing to the can of chili. “Waste of money.”
“Don’t exactly have to luxury of dining out every night,” Frank says. “These are three for a dollar.”
Karen laughs. “Diner food is hardly ‘dining out’, Frank.”
“Show me a diner with three bowls of chili for a buck, then.”
“They say there’s something called cooking that’s cheaper,” Karen says with a shrug. “I wouldn’t know.”
“Heating up chili’s about all the cooking I can do on a hotplate,” Frank says. “Don’t you got someplace to be other than worrying about my eating habits.”
“It’s called a lunch break. People who are gainfully employed have them.”
“Probably got dental, too, huh?”
Karen smiles widely at him, flashing her teeth. “What do you think?”
“Yeah. Bet you floss every night, too.”
Karen shakes her head. “Evening is too unpredictable, so I started flossing after breakfast.”
“Course you did,” Frank says. “Well, I’m gonna go pay for my waste of money in a can.” He taps his fingers to the bill of his cap. “Ma’am.’
“Frank,” Karen replies, feeling somehow both amused and exasperated.
Despite herself, Karen goes back to the same bodega at least seven times in the eight days following their encounter, and on the eighth visit, nine days later, she spots Frank walking a block ahead of her in the direction of the bodega. “I almost didn’t see him,” she admits quietly to herself. “I never thought he’d have a dog.”
She darts across the cross-street, earning her at least three different horns honking, and then walks as fast as she can to catch up with Frank before he can enter the bodega or anywhere else. Nearly out of breath, she takes a deep breath and then asks “Can I pet your dog?”
“You stalking me now?” Frank asks, sounding amused. He stops walking, though, and waves his hand at the dog in an invitation. “Don’t touch her ears. She don’t like her ears touched.”
“Most people don’t either,” Karen says, holding her hand out for the dog to sniff. The dog is somewhat stocky and white, with a bunch of what Karen can only call red freckles. After a moment, she starts petting the dog, who pants happily at her. “What’s her name?”
“Well…” Frank gives Karen a half-hearted smile. “Her name’s Karen, but I figure I’ll have to change it now, huh, what with me apparently not being dead to you anymore and all.”
Karen opens her mouth to retort, then closes it, thinking as she keeps petting the dog. “It’s very efficient of you,” she finally says.
“Is that right?” Frank asks, sounding amused again.
“Fewer names to remember. Your entire social circle has the same name this way, right?”
“Didn’t realize I had a social circle. Does stalking count?”
“You’re the one who keeps turning up where I am,” Karen says mildly, still petting the dog. “Two points really only makes a line though, right? Social line.”
“She likes popcorn,” Frank says.
“Do you take her to the movies?” Karen asks as she straightens.
Frank pffts. “No, I don’t take her to the movies. She likes the bagged kind. You know, for next time you decide to follow me so you can pet my dog.”
“I didn’t know until five minutes ago you had a dog,” Karen says. “I’m going to be breaking into an office a few blocks over soon. I’m thinking that probably you won’t need to be there, at least?”
“Depends. What’d they do?”
“Fraudulent profit reports in order to run up stock prices, or at least that’s what I need to confirm.”
“Yeah, doesn’t really sound like my kind of venture,” Frank says. “See you ‘round, I guess. C’mon, Karen.” He tugs gently on the leash, and Karen-the-dog reluctantly pulls her muzzle away from Karen’s hand, which she had been snuffling. Karen-the-dog looks mournfully at her human namesake as she trots away; Frank doesn't give so much as a single glance backwards.
Karen confirms that the firm is running up stock prices, which gets her another byline on the front page, albeit below the fold. Even though she knew the likelihood of seeing Frank while she was executing her breaking and entering was slim, she still feels oddly disappointed the day the story runs. She picks up a small bag of popcorn later that day and throws it into her purse. Then she thinks about Frank’s comments and promptly avoids the entire street the bodega is on for two days straight.
Another week passes, even after she goes back to the bodega, without seeing Frank, and she replaces the bag of popcorn with a newer one, in case Karen-the-dog doesn’t appreciate stale popcorn. She finally literally runs into Frank one evening three blocks from the office, when she turns sharply down an alley, just in case someone’s following her. She runs directly into Frank’s back.
“Ouch!” Karen says.
“You ever consider getting you one of them sticks like your lawyer boyfriend’s got?” Frank asks. “Seems like seeing where you're going ain’t your strong suit.” He looks rough, even by Frank-standards, his face the healing aftermath of fight, with a busted lip, a bruise spread over one cheekbone, and a gash through his eyebrow that Karen would bet her entire week’s grocery budget he stitched himself.
“I’m walking home!” Karen says sharply.
“Don’t recall you living in an alley. Kind of a downgrade, yeah?” Frank asks.
“I walk home a different way every day. For safety.”
“You walk down an alley,” Frank says. “In Hell’s Kitchen. For safety.”
“No one expects it.”
Frank sighs, his eyes rolling heavenwards before giving his head a resigned shake. “Guess you could walk me home, then.”
“Where is that, Frank?” Karen asks.
“It’s, uh…” He scratches the back of his head. “Fluctuating. Yeah.”
“Where is it tonight?”
“How ‘bout you can get me as far as your place, and I’ll make my way from there.”
“That sounds more like you walking me home, doesn’t it?”
“Are you accusing me of having an ulterior motive?” Frank asks, putting his hand on his chest in mock disbelief. He doesn’t have the stupid vest on, at least.
“I think you just need to be more careful and precise with your language. Say what you mean,” Karen says.
Frank looks like he’s holding back a laugh, or at least a smile, as he sticks out his elbow in Karen’s direction. “Ma’am,” he says, sounding amusingly gallant, “can you do me the honor of escorting me as far as your place, at which point I’ll go wherever else I need to go?”
“Hmph,” Karen says with a small snort as she grabs his elbow. “You just want to see where I live.”
“I’m sure that’s it exactly,” Frank agrees, a little too fast.
Karen gives him a suspicious look but starts walking again. “What were you doing in my favorite alley?”
“Business.”
“Mmm,” Karen says, checking the alley behind them and the street ahead as she turns left to continue home. “Stock trading, right?”
“Yeah, you know it,” Frank says. “I’m a Wall Street guy.”
“Almost anyone can clean up well enough to blend in there, if necessary.”
Frank just nods, and Karen briefly imagines Frank in an Armani suit. It reminds her of George of the Jungle, although with more blood and murder than that movie, not to mention less hair. She snorts once, then wonders about how many gallons of body oil they used in the movie, which all too quickly leads to the idea of Frank ripping off his shirt and putting on body oil.
“Dammit!” she says as they turn another corner.
“You alright?” Frank asks. “Remember a deadline or something?”
“No!” Karen says, a little more sharply than she means to. She walks another half a block trying to block out the images now in her brain and failing miserably before she realizes she’s still holding Frank’s elbow. She pulls her hand away and shakes both it and her head.
“Yeah,” Frank says quietly. He sighs, more of a slightly raising and lowering of his shoulders than a sound. “Alright, yeah.” He gives Karen a faint smile, nods at her once, and turns to walk away from her, back in the direction they had just come from.
Karen shakes her head again, mostly in annoyance with herself, and finishes walking the rest of the way home. She makes herself look through her own files, reminding herself of who, exactly, Frank is, and how they’re connected. She’s lying in bed before she remembers that she forgot to eat dinner, and she sighs and pulls her pillow over her head. Better to sleep than to keep thinking.
The next time Karen sees Frank, he doesn’t just have his rifle. He’s using it. Karen flattens herself against the wall, resisting the urge to pound her head against the wall. Frank’s full attention is focused through his rifle scope, and on the street below, at least three bullets find their mark, sending a man wearing the distinct yellow and purple of the 39th Street Gehenna to the ground, bloody and still. Two more men rush from the building into the street, one of them also bleeding and being dragged by the second. Karen realizes that one of the shots must have gone through the wall, effectively taking out a second target, intentionally or not.
Knowing Frank, she’s going to go with at least semi-intentionally. Her suspicion is confirmed when two clean headshots drop both fleeing Gehennas. Frank begins calmly disassembling his rifle and packing it and his other equipment into a case. Karen decides that she may still be able to determine what’s going on in the building next door if she slides around to the other side of the roof, and she quietly starts doing just that.
“You come up here to judge me?” Frank asks without looking up from his rifle case. “Or you just like to watch?”
“You’re the one interfering in my investigating!”
“Well, I’m all done now. You can get on with your investigating,” Frank says. He snaps the case closed and picks it up as he stands.
“At least I don’t have any evidence I’ve shot anyone, when the police find me up here?”
Frank looks down at the battered-looking watch on his wrist. “You probably got six, maybe seven minutes to get what you need before the cops come. Better get to it, yeah?”
“You’re ever so helpful for a murderer,” Karen says dryly.
“You’re welcome,” Frank says. He slings a pack over one shoulder and heads towards the other side of the roof and its door.
“I really really want to dislike you more than I currently do!” Karen whispers to the door after it swings shut. She slides to the other side of the roof and pulls out the binoculars she had originally planned on using as soon as she reached the roof. Most of the windows have closed blinds, and she’s putting them away when she freezes, feeling like someone else is there again.
“Karen,” a soft, familiar voice whispers from the shadows.
“Oh, tonight just gets even better!” Karen hisses.
“I heard you up here,” Matt says, stepping forward into the dim light filtering up to the rooftop. “First I heard the gunfire, but then I heard you. You’re not hurt?”
Karen resists the urge to roll her eyes at the Daredevil costume, even though she knows Matt can’t see her doing it. “The gunfire wasn’t me.”
“I know. It was Frank, wasn’t it?”
“I only wanted to look into those windows across the street!”
“He didn’t—” Matt breaks off, shifting foot to foot. The Daredevil costume creaks as he moves. “You should stay away from him, Karen. He’s a dangerous man.”
“Working on a story, Matthew! And you have no right to attempt to give me advice,” Karen says.
“I care about you, Karen, you know that I—”
“Spare me the sermon!” Karen says, scowling at Matt and hoping he senses it. He must, because he huffs, and some of the fight goes out of him.
“Fine. You’re right,” he concedes. “How have you been, Karen?”
Karen can feel her mouth drop open. “How have I been?”
“Is the Bulletin treating you well?” Matt asks.
“Dental,” Karen says, baring her teeth at him in some odd cross between a grimace and a smile.
“Good. That’s good.” He pauses, then suddenly quirks his head to the side. “The police are coming. You should go.”
“I was about to leave when you showed up,” Karen says.
Matt stands there awkwardly for a second, then says, “Be safe, Karen,” before performing a running dive off the side of the building, because why not add a little ninja showboating to this already frustrating night?
“‘Be safe’,” Karen mimics. “Just like you’re safe and honest, Matt?” She does go down the stairs and out the back of the building, away from the growing police presence. “How did I manage to run into two idiots in one night?” The streets of the city don’t provide any answer, which is both what Karen expected and immensely irritating at the same time.
None of Karen’s leads on that story pan out, which means that a few days later, she ends up spending most of the day in the office, trying to find enough information for one of the possible stories on her radar.
“Ugh!” Karen says to her computer.
Ellison must have had an ear out for her, because he swings into her office with one hand on the door frame. “I’ve got a story for you, if you want it.”
“I don’t want to investigate the bike scam,” Karen says quickly.
“Who gives a shit about bikes? I’d never waste you on bikes,” Ellison says. “Kids.”
“What about them?” Karen asks, shifting to look at Ellison.
“Almost a dozen girls missing, ages eleven to fifteen. You interested?”
“Yes. What else is known?”
“Manhattan and the Bronx,” Ellison says, holding up a manilla folder. “I’ve got the file right here, everything we know, point of contact at the 52nd precinct in the Bronx.”
Karen holds her hand out for the folder. “Families talking to the press or no?”
“Girls are all black and Latina. Nobody’s picking it up, except for us,” Ellison says.
“Of course,” Karen says, even though she knows Ellison isn’t the one to be angry with. “I’m on it. Maybe a profile of some of the girls first?”
Ellison nods. “However you want to tackle it. You know I’ve got faith in you.”
Karen returns the nod, opening the folder and beginning to look through it. A couple of hours later, Karen has a few interviews set up with family members, as well as other sites she wants to look into. Her next several days planned out, she leaves in plenty of time to eat dinner at a reasonable hour in her apartment, which feels weird to her.
After two days of talking to teachers, family members, and friends of the missing girls, and trekking across the city, Karen notices the feeling of being followed right about the time she’s only a few blocks away from her apartment. She notices the feeling again when she leaves the next morning, and it only takes a few blocks before she decides she will not give Matt any satisfaction of acknowledging he’s following her, since it almost certainly has to be him. The feeling of being followed comes and goes during the day, but becomes almost constant in the evening over the next few days, which cements that it must be Matt.
After she’s stopped herself from yelling at Matt for the fourth time, it occurs to her that it could be Frank. She considers going back to his bodega—with a bag of popcorn—just to find him and possibly yell at him, but overall, he hadn’t been following her so much as coincidentally being the same places.
That leads her back to the conclusion that it’s Matt following her, but she still doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of admitting it, which precludes calling him or otherwise contacting him to tell him to stop.
“Maybe one day he’ll get close enough I can just turn around and tell him to stop,” Karen tells her take-out container. “I could start walking very slowly tomorrow.” The second story, profiling four more of the missing girls, prints in the morning, and Karen knows that may mean more calls to the Bulletin for her to investigate as the day goes on.
Karen even tries to turn a corner suddenly, or duck in a doorway a few times, but she never has the feeling that Matt is close at all the next night, despite the continuing feel of being followed. Karen sighs and tries to push the feeling away, and even manages a few times.
Two days after that, after a couple of odd tips that Karen’s beginning to think may turn out, she’s walking cautiously but briskly down the street when a hand reaches out and grabs her around the waist. Another hand clamps itself over her mouth as she’s dragged into a dark, recessed doorway.
“Shhhh,” Frank whispers, close enough to her ear that she can feel the warmth of his breath. Karen relaxes a little when she recognizes Frank’s voice, and once she has a moment, she realizes his smell is familiar, too—gun oil and dog. The smell is more reassuring and less unpleasant than she would have expected. Karen sighs, wondering what, exactly, is going on.
After a few more beats, Frank moves his hand away from Karen’s mouth. “Watch,” he says quietly. Not long after, a large white guy with a shaved head walks down the sidewalk, casting his eyes around like he’s looking for someone. When he moves, Karen can clearly see the gun strapped at his waist, and what looks like a second gun on his ankle.
Karen waits long enough to be sure the guy is gone. “That’s not Matt,” she whispers.
“He’s been after you for a couple of blocks,” Frank says, releasing her. “Didn’t mean to scare you or nothing, ma’am.”
“If he’s the same reason…” Karen says, trailing off. “It may be more like a couple of weeks.”
Frank sighs, taking a step away from her to give her some space. “You caught the story, yeah?”
“The girls? If you read the Bulletin, you’d know that.”
“Ain’t exactly got a lot of time for pleasure reading.”
“You could skim the bylines!”
Frank sighs again. Karen realizes he’s wearing the skull vest, which means he’s probably—she doesn’t like to think of it as ‘punishing’—working. “Maybe let this one go, Karen,” he says, strangely gentle. She can’t remember the last time he called her by her first name, which makes her briefly consider that he must truly mean what he says.
“No,” she says after another moment passes, shaking her head. “I have good sources. I don’t need you trying to protect me or whatever it is you’re doing.”
“I’m not,” Frank says. He sounds honest, not like he’s protesting. “But it’s ugly. It’s uglier than you think.” The line of his mouth hardens a little. “Just let me take this one. Write about it when it’s done.”
“Frank, you know that’s not going to happen.”
“Just this one,” he asks. “Please.”
Karen can tell he’s being as sincere as possible, but she still shakes her head. “I can’t do that.”
Frank’s face goes blank as he nods slightly. “Alright. Stay out of my way then, yeah?”
“I don’t think we’re likely to overlap too much.”
“You’re wrong about that one,” Frank says. He leans out of the doorway, looking up and down the street. “If you’re onto this story, overlap’s already a kinda foregone conclusion.”
“Some of us still prefer to contact the authorities, Frank.”
“Once you put it all together, I don’t think you will,” Frank says. He steps out onto the sidewalk and gives her a nod.
“So infuriating!” Karen whispers after she’s almost sure Frank is out of earshot. On the off chance that Matt is nearby, she waits a few more seconds, then adds, “You too!”
After another thirty seconds pass, Karen decides to go back the way she came, then call a cab to get her home. The cabbie complains about the short fare, but Karen tips him and hurries inside to her apartment. She hadn’t really thought her feeling of being followed was related to the story she was investigating, but the more she turns over the idea in her mind, the more it makes sense.
She thinks about being tailed and what it might mean for far longer than necessary, because she doesn’t want to think about what Frank, of all people, would consider ugly. Whenever her thoughts drift towards that, she shakes her head physically, as if she can redirect her thoughts through kinetic energy. She also doesn’t want to think about the fact that despite Frank more or less admitting he was planning to murder the perps, she doesn’t want to go to the cops and let them know that Frank Castle has a plan.
Karen doesn’t want to think about any of that, or about the fact that she found Frank almost comforting while he was holding her, so she re-reads her notes and then goes to bed, her pillow over her head and not blocking out any of her own thoughts.
Three days pass. Three days where Karen dodges the man she is now thinking of as her tail, while still investigating the disappearances of the girls to the best of her ability. She’s pretty sure she sees Frank from a distance at least four times, but he doesn’t approach her, and she decides not to approach him. Karen isn’t interested in a lecture about why she shouldn’t continue investigating the story. Someone has to investigate, since most of the media isn’t, and the police seem to be making almost negative progress on the cases. One girl’s family was told that they had a sighting and a lead, only to be told twelve hours later that there had been no sighting, no lead, and the officer who had told them that had been reassigned to a precinct on Staten Island.
While Karen’s eating dinner on the third day, she looks back over her notes, trying to find any pattern. Her soup is getting cold as she looks at the disappearance details, and a little bit of it splashes when she jumps. “Tonight!” she says out loud to her otherwise empty apartment. “If the pattern holds, tonight!”
She leaves the soup on the table and scrambles back into her shoes, checking the time on her phone. If she’s right, she has forty-five minutes to get herself in a position to see what is happening. The taxi gets her around the corner from the right spot, and she hauls herself up the fire escapes to find a likely vantage point.
Somehow, though, she’s unsurprised when she sees an admittedly familiar-shaped shadow on the next building over. “Hello, Frank,” she whispers under her breath. Nothing happens for about twenty-five more minutes, and then a car drives up the block before stopping and idling. Karen makes a note of the time, writing on her notepad in the dark and hoping she can read the information later. When she glances to the next building, Frank is no longer visible, but Karen doesn’t assume that means he’s gone.
The back door to the car opens, and a guy who looks around twenty-five gets out first, then he half-helps, half-jerks a young girl out of the car. Karen has enough data floating in her head, enough pictures of missing girls, that she immediately pegs the girl as fourteen or fifteen, despite the fact that she’s dressed like she’s trying to be older. The girl is stumbling and seems out of it, and Karen wishes she could see her face clearly, especially her eyes. She can guess at what she’d see.
The girl is just clear of the back of the car when a shot is fired, and Karen registers a few seconds later that it went cleanly through the driver’s window and the driver’s head, and the driver is now slumped to the side, car still idling. The guy who got out of the car jumps and crouches down almost immediately, but the girl doesn’t react, confirming for Karen that she’s been drugged in some way.
No more shots come, and Karen stays as still as she can. The guy on the ground seems to regain some confidence, and he straightens, pulling the drugged girl with him down the street and towards a door in what Karen had thought was likely an empty building. The door starts to swing shut behind them, and a moment later, a hand stops it from closing completely.
“Frank,” Karen says softly, then stands and walks towards the fire escape. Frank goes into the building, and Karen isn’t even completely sure why she feels the need to follow him following the guy and the girl. By the time she reaches the ground, she can hear distant sirens, and since there’s a body in an idling car nearby, she hurries to the door Frank went through.
The building is dark, and there are multiple doors off the main corridor, but Karen can see that most of the doors aren’t disturbed, so she walks quietly down the corridor, straining for sound or light near her. She nearly bumps into Frank, as still as he is, his breath barely making noise. Frank gestures for her to get down, and she squats immediately, even as she feels a little annoyed.
“Where?” she mouths more than says.
“Get outa here,” Frank mouths back at her, wearing his default murderously-angry face. “Go.”
Karen makes what she hopes is her best stubborn face and shakes her head vigorously. “No.”
Frank huffs out a barely audible breath, eyes rolling skyward. “Goddammit, woman. Can’t you just do what you’re told for once in your life?”
“No,” Karen hisses. “I am constitutionally unable.”
“Stay here, yeah?” he says, now visibly grinding his teeth. “You’re gonna get us both killed.”
“I’m more concerned about the drugged girl not being killed!”
“I’m not gonna hurt that girl!” Frank says. He looks even more murderous, somehow, his mouth a thin, pale line.
“Not you, the other guy!”
“Tell me you’ll stay here, and I can go take care of that guy!”
“I’ll do what I think is best,” Karen says. “That’s all I can promise.”
Frank might not have any teeth left, the way he keeps grinding them. “You’re as bad as that do-gooder lawyer boyfriend of yours,” he says. “Just stay out of the line of fire.”
“Not my boyfriend!” Karen says, feeling the need to clarify that as quickly as possible. Frank doesn’t acknowledge her response as he starts walking down the hall, and Karen suppresses the urge to grind her own teeth.
Karen hears nothing for what feels like at least ten minutes. She knows it’s probably closer to a single minute, but the longer the silence stretches, the more she worries about the girl and, a little bit, about Frank. She’s already considering getting up to follow Frank, despite his concerns, when she hears a shot. She knows she’s not a ballistics expert, but the gun sounds different than Frank’s, and she immediately pushes herself back to a standing position, heading down the hall as rapidly as she dares.
Another gunshot is helpfully fired as she goes, which lets her find Frank, the girl, and the guy all. She rounds the corner and looks to the girl first. She’s still standing, looking drugged, but a cursory scan doesn’t suggest that she’s been shot. A moment later, however, another figure enters the room, and before Karen can do much more than decide it’s a man, not a woman, Frank dives in her direction, grabbing her and tucking her against his chest as the new man in the room creates what sounds like a third distinct gunshot noise.
Frank lets out a soft grunt as they hit the ground together. His left arm keeps Karen pressed against his stupid Punisher vest, her face against the kevlar, as he pulls another gun from some hidden holster, shooting at the new guy. One, two, three shots hit the man center mass, and he falls to his knees in what feels like slow motion before falling to the side with a muffled thud. Through it all, the girl remains standing, looking more confused than frightened by the commotion around her.
“Shit,” Frank says softly, the arm around Karen going slack.
“Frank?” Karen asks, then when the arm doesn’t tighten again, she begins to feel the first tendrils of panic. “Frank!”
“The girl,” Frank says.
“She’s fine,” Karen says, but she starts to pull away from Frank as best she can, thinking that she’ll get to the girl, and at least get her sitting down. When she looks down at Frank, though, she realizes he’s gone utterly pale. “Frank! What happened?”
Frank shakes his head mutely, then jerks it in the direction of the girl. When he moves, Karen suddenly can see the blood on the lower part of his shirt, and she wants to curse. Instead, she sends up a silent prayer to a God she may not believe in, and looks between Frank’s back and the girl several times.
“We’re going to get out of here in just a minute,” Karen tells Frank, before dashing over to the girl and leading her out of the room, out of sight of the bodies. Karen finds the girl’s own cell phone on her, turned off, and after it turns on, she dials 911 and leaves the phone next to the girl, sitting in the hallway.
When Karen returns to Frank, the blood has spread over more of his back, and somehow, Karen hauls him up over her shoulder. “Okay, we’re going to get you taken care of,” Karen says firmly.
“Jus’ get the girl,” Frank slurs. “Get ‘er outa here.”
“You’re bleeding. We’re going to get you out of here.”
“‘M fine,” Frank says.
“You aren’t fine until I say you’re fine,” Karen says. “Let’s go.”