Sarah's head felt impossibly heavy, and her mind couldn't stop bouncing around, unable to complete one thought before it shifted to a different one. She was hit by a wave of nausea and rested her head against the wall behind her, closing her eyes for a few moments to try to collect herself.

When she opened her eyes again, she blinked at the darkness outside the window. It had been light out just a few minutes ago. How long had she been sitting there? Her eyes flicked to the bloody man still slumped in the office chair. She waited for the familiar feeling of panic to well up in her chest, but strangely it didn't come. Instead, she just struggled to figure out what to do.

Her first thought was to call Matt.

No, she reminded herself, resisting the urge to look up at the security cameras she knew were above her. If Jason looked back through them and saw her calling someone, he would undoubtedly want to know who it was. She would have to do this alone.

Sarah struggled to her feet, leaning heavily on the wall behind her for support as the room tilted. Even that simple movement made her head feel like it was splitting open.

She approached McDermott hesitantly, holding her breath as she patted down the front of his blood-soaked suit jacket until she felt the outline of his cell phone. She reached a shaking hand into the inner pocket of the jacket to retrieve it and was surprised to feel not one, but two phones. A smart phone and what felt like a flip phone—probably a burner. Sarah hesitated for a split second, still very aware of the cameras above her, before pulling out the smart phone and leaving the burner phone out of sight.

The smart phone's battery wasn't the removable kind, and she wasn't sure if just turning the phone off would be enough to stop its location from being tracked. Placing the phone on the desk, she grabbed the hammer and brought it down onto the screen. The fiberglass shattered immediately upon contact, and she hit the phone a few more times until she was sure the battery was destroyed.

With the phone out of the way, she turned back to McDermott. Her eyes drifted down to the bottom of the chair and she sent up a silent thank you that the office chair he was on had wheels. Stumbling a bit, she began to slowly and clumsily steer the chair out of the room. There was nothing she could do about the cameras as she guided the heavy man towards the elevator, but surely this wasn't the most illegal thing they had witnessed in this building. Jason was the only one who viewed them anyway.

Several times she had to stop and push McDermott's body upright as he began to slump out of the chair. The process was slow, and she was exhausted by the time she exited the elevator on the very bottom level, which consisted of an underground parking garage for employees. It was mostly empty by this point, save for a few company cars. One of the security guards—a thin, greasy looking man she thought might have been there the night of Ronan's failed kidnapping trap—was lounging in his booth, watching a basketball game on his laptop. Sarah steadied the chair against the wall just out of sight before approaching the booth.

"Hey," she called through the glass, but the guard didn't move. With a frustrated groan, she smacked her hand against the window as hard as she could. "Hey!"

Finally he looked away from his laptop, blinking as he took in the blood that covered the front of her dress. With a sight he leaned over and slid open the window.

"I'm not a cop, lady," he said in a bored tone. "If you need help call 911."

She narrowed her eyes at him as he started to close the window.

"It's not my blood," she snapped. "I need the keys to one of the company cars."

"What?" he scoffed. "And who the hell are you?"

Sarah licked her lips, debating how to make this conversation as short as possible.

"I—I work for Jason," she said finally, instead of giving her name.

"Jason?" he repeated, looking significantly more serious now.

"Yeah...white tie, big smile."

"I know who Jason is," he bristled, before squinting at her doubtfully. "You work for him?"

"Yes. Call him to check if you want," she said tiredly. "He'll love to be bothered after hours."

It couldn't be more clear from his expression that bothering Jason was the last thing the security guard wanted.

"Christ," he muttered, reaching for a set of keys and tossing them to her. "Fine."

She hesitated as she saw the windbreaker draped over the back of his chair.

"I need that, too," she said, nodding to the jacket.

"What? It's mine."

"I'll bring it back to you," she said impatiently as another wave of pain went through her head. With a roll of his eyes the guard grabbed the jacket and held it out through the window for her.

Getting the police officer into the trunk of the company car was a struggle, but his upright position in the chair meant he was already almost level with the trunk, which helped. His limbs flopped lifelessly as she maneuvered him into the small space, almost feeling like she would pass out from the effort. But she couldn't. Not yet.

Once he was inside, she dipped her hand into his jacket and pocketed his burner phone, using the lid of the trunk as cover from any cameras. Impulsively, she grabbed his badge and shoved it into the pocket of the windbreaker as well, not wanting to leave any more identification on him than necessary. Then she slammed the trunk shut, the loud sound making her head ring.

The warehouse Jason wanted her to go to was by the Hudson; she remembered that much as she pulled out of the parking garage. But which way was that? She had lived in this area her whole life, and she couldn't recall which way to turn to get to the waterfront. She turned the wheel to the left, then changed her mind, clumsily turning to the right instead. A car zoomed by her, swerving slightly to avoid clipping her front bumper. The driver honked angrily as he continued on his way.

"Shit. I can't do this." she whispered to herself. "I ca—I can't do this."

Her hand was sweaty on the gearshift as she coaxed the car to the other side of the intersection. A few seconds later, blue and red lights lit up her rearview mirror and her blood froze. No. She could not get pulled over with the body of a murdered police officer in her trunk. What if they asked to search the car? She didn't have to let them. Right? Didn't they need a warrant for cars? But this wasn't her car, it was a company car. Did that change the rules? She couldn't recall.

She slowed down and started to pull over to the side of the road, her heart pounding.

The cop veered around her and sped out of sight, towards something more important than a careless driver.

Again, Sarah sent up a silent thank you, though she wasn't sure to whom. Surely no kind of god was on her side in this situation.

Half and hour and several wrong turns later, she stood in the gravel parking lot of the warehouse, the man who she had met last time standing in front of her. She'd been relieved when he'd been the one to answer her buzzing at the gate and not his teenage son.

"What's this about?" he asked, watching her warily.

For some reason, she couldn't stop thinking that she didn't know who he was, didn't know who is family was. Who she was dumping this responsibility on.

"S'your name?" she slurred, before taking a breath and trying again. "What's...what's you're name?

He gave her a strange look before answering reluctantly. "Rob."

Knowing his name didn't make her feel better. Just guiltier. She popped the trunk open before she could think about it anymore.

"Holy shit," Rob said when he saw the bloody body. He quickly backtracked away from the trunk. "Jesus."

Sarah watched him as he recovered from the shock, which quickly seemed to turn to anger.

"No. You guys promised me."

"What?"

"After the last one, I was promised that you guys wouldn't be sending me any more of...these," he said, pointing to the trunk. "I told them that I'll store your weapons and your drugs and whatever the hell else, but people?"

In the back of her mind Sarah wondered who the last one had been, but she couldn't focus enough to really think about it.

"I'm...I'm sorry. I don't...I'm not in charge of these things," she said weakly. It sounded pathetic even to her. If the disgusted look Rob gave her was any indication, he agreed.

Muttering a few more choice curses under his breath, he approached the trunk again, looking down at the body inside.

"Who is he?" he asked after a long silence.

Sarah looked down at the man in the trunk. "He's...he's not anyone anymore."

There was another long pause as the two of them stared at the body.

"I'll...I'll go get a tarp," he said in a resigned tone. She couldn't help but wonder what Orion must be threatening him with that he was willing to do something he so clearly disagreed with. Something just as bad as they threatened her with, she was sure.

Suddenly she remembered the hammer sitting in a trash bag under the front seat of the car.

"D-do you have cameras around here?" she asked Rob as he started to walk away.

"No. Never needed 'em. This was an upstanding business at one point, you know."

Sarah ducked back into the car and grabbed the bag with the hammer. She walked around the building until she came to the back side, where it led out to a shadowy shipping dock. The wood creaked as she went as far out on the dock as she dared, not entirely trusting her balance.

She quickly wiped the handle of the hammer with her dress before throwing it into the water. The heavy weight sank immediately. She reached into her pocket and withdrew McDermott's badge, weighing it in her hand for a second as something in her chest tightened. Then she flung it out as far as she could, watching it spin through the air and wondering how many other dark and guilty things it was joining at the bottom of the river.

--

The first thing Sarah did when she got home—after stuffing her bloody clothing into a trash bag and hiding it in the closet to be dealt with later—was to take a shower, as hot as she could stand it until her skin no longer felt like it was covered in a dead man's blood. Afterwards, in the living room, she was hit with a dizzy spell and leaned against the wall for support. Her shoulder knocked hard into a small shelf on her wall that was covered with decorative trinkets, including several colorful bottles of perfume that she never wore but had thought were pretty enough to display anyway.

Sarah cursed as the shelf tilted and the small trinkets and perfume bottles shattered across the floor, immediately flooding the air with several thick, competing scents: light florals mixed with heavy musks, all sweet and strong and overbearing. The smell tugged at the nausea that still sat low in her stomach, and she stumbled over to open the window before returning to clean up the broken glass.

She had just gotten done soaking up the perfume with a towel when a familiar sound on her fire escape made to lift her head up. Her heart skipped nervously as she tried to figure out how she was going to tell him about what had happened. Matt, hit by an overwhelming wave of perfume, didn't seem to notice.

"What is that?"

The cloying mixture of fragrances was giving her a headache—or, rather, making the one she currently had even worse—so she couldn't imagine how bad it must be for Matt's insane senses.

"Broke some perfume bottles," she mumbled, looking down at the shards covering the floor. It suddenly seemed like so much to clean up, and she debated whether it was even worth it. Considering how much danger lingered in every corner of her life, how much did it really matter if there was broken glass on the floor?

"Hey. Are you okay?"

Sarah realized abruptly that Matt had been talking to her and she hadn't been responding. She forced herself to focus.

"Sorry, I—yeah. I'm just tired. Stressed," she mumbled. Matt looked unconvinced, so she abruptly continued. "Um, I—I think I found out who the new big boss is that's running Orion."

Matt blinked in surprise. He leaned back against the low windowsill, tilting his head intently.

"Seriously? That's great. Who is he?"

"She," Sarah corrected him. She thought about standing, but even shifting slightly made her feel dizzy—maybe from inhaling so much perfume—so instead she just gingerly leaned back against the chair behind her. "It's a woman named Vanessa."

The moment the name left her lips, Matt's relaxed demeanor changed completely.

"Vanessa?" he repeated sharply. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah...why?"

Matt swore softly under his breath. "What was her last name?"

"I—I don't think she told me," Sarah said uncertainly, straining her hazy memory. Had she? No. Definitely not. "Just Vanessa."

"What was she like? Describe her," he ordered, sounding not unlike he had when they first met.

Even in her fuzzy mental state Sarah couldn't help but notice that the restless drumming of his fingers, tapping against the wooden windowsill where his hands rested on either side of his legs. Who could this woman possibly be that Matt was so agitated just hearing about her? She concentrated as much as she could on remembering what she could from the lunch.

"Well, she was...pretty and she had dark hair," Sarah began, before realizing belatedly that he probably hadn't meant a physical description. "Um...she had an accent. Like, Israeli, maybe? It was hard to...hard to tell."

It was a poor description, but it was all she could think of. There had to be something else significant about her, but she just couldn't recall.

Matt had pushed himself off the windowsill as she talked and was now pacing around the room. Sarah watched him for a few seconds before his edgy movements began to make her dizzy, and she looked back down at the broken glass.

"I'm guessing she's not a friend of yours," she surmised.

"It's not her specifically that's the problem. I've only met her once, as Vanessa Marianna. Although by this point I'm sure she's Vanessa Fisk," he bit the last name out as though it tasted bad in his mouth.

"Fisk?" Now Sarah was the one to sound dumbfounded. She had figured that the woman had some connection to Fisk if she was in charge of his assets, but she had assumed it was just a business relationship. There had been company gossip for a while about Fisk having a girlfriend, but everyone had been so afraid to talk about him that nothing solid ever came up.

"She didn't mention him?" Matt asked, only seeming to be halfway paying attention to her. The rest of his focus was somewhere deep in his own thoughts. "Anything about trying to get him out of prison? Or him giving orders from inside?"

"No. She just...talked about getting the company back in order. Jason wants her to give it to him."

"Anything else?"

Sarah bit her lip. She knew she should tell him—she should have told him as soon as it happened. But she couldn't help but wonder how he would react. Would he be as disgusted as the warehouse owner and his son? Would he start seeing her as just another Orion lackey again? Matt didn't kill people, and he generally held others to the same standard. Where did hiding a murdered body fall on his moral scale? Above or below torture? What about the fact that he was only dead in the first place because of information she had willingly given to Jason?

"No," she lied after a beat. "That's everything."

Maybe it was the disconnect between her head and her body, or maybe Matt just wasn't listening closely enough. Either way, her lie appeared to go undetected.

"Alright. I need to go," he said. "There's a few of Fisk's associates still floating around out there. I think I can track a few down."

Sarah nodded. As Matt slipped through her window and back onto the fire escape, she couldn't figure out if she was relieved or disappointed that he hadn't picked up on her lie. Part of her was tempted to call him back in and tell him everything, to grab onto that sense of peace she was sometimes able to find with him and use it to block out the clutter in her head. But she just couldn't bring herself to do it.

"Sarah," he said from across the room, and she looked up to see him leaning back in.

"Yeah?"

"Make sure you lock this," he said, tapping the window.

Sarah smiled weakly at the well-worn reminder, and then he was gone.

--

She called out of work the next morning.

When she woke up, her head pounded even louder than before, and her dizziness and nausea hadn't passed. After ten minutes of staring blankly at her cell phone's screen and trying to recall her passcode to unlock it—how could she have possibly forgotten something she used dozens of times every single day?—she dialed his number.

He was chipper on the phone—apparently murder put him in a good mood—and as she had suspected, he had already watched the tapes. As such, he was well aware of the blow she had taken to the head. After cheerfully informing her of what a spectacular job he thought she'd done, he'd told her to take the day to recover before she had even brought it up. The entire conversation was strangely upbeat on his part, and she almost felt like it was a trap. Either way, she accepted the offer and took the day off.

She checked the time and saw she had roughly eight hours until the baby shower that night. It had originally been scheduled for a weekend morning at Sarah's place, but due to the constant rescheduling and the questionable safety of the location, they were now having it that evening at Lauren's own apartment. Meaning Sarah had only a few hours until she had to get to Lauren's to set up, and she wanted nothing more than to spend that time sleeping.

The eight hours passed quickly, and the next thing she knew Sarah was standing in Lauren's kitchen by herself, realizing with a sinking sensation that at some point in the last year she had lost the ability to interact with normal people.

Just over forty people ended up coming, some of whom Sarah was familiar with and others whose faces she could vaguely place but not match with a name. With each person who walked though the door, Lauren's apartment became louder and hotter and somehow brighter. She couldn't track conversations beyond a few minutes, and after so long of not having seen anyone she had to answer endless repetitions of the same questions that somehow felt oddly intrusive now.

"Where have you been lately?" Very busy with a new job.

"What happened to your face?" I hit it on a taxi door while getting out.

"Are you dating anyone?" I'm really focused on my career right now.

So here she was, half an hour into the party, hiding in the kitchen as she steeled herself to go back into the room full of too-loud noises and too-fast talking.

"Why isn't your mother here, Lauren?" she heard someone ask, their voice muffled by the kitchen door as they passed by.

"Ugh, she missed her flight back from vacation in St. Barts, so she couldn't make it," she heard Lauren's voice reply. "Thank Jesus, right? She already gave me a whole lecture about how it's bad luck to have a baby shower in your own home, and how it's weird to have one at night, and it's inappropriate to have a coed invite list, blah blah..."

Their voices faded as they moved down the hallway.