Chapter Text
Tim’s fingers shook as he leafed through the near-ragged file he had literally stolen from Jason’s apartment.
That in and of itself was a little fucked up.
Not the stealing part. Yes. It was. But… his family knew to expect that from him by now. Tim was invasive. He wasn’t much good at hugs, or baking, or emotional talks, but he could research and plan and monitor people’s safety, and that’s how he showed his love. It was dysfunctional, but what in this family wasn’t?
No, what was fucked up was the fact that Jason hadn’t told him about these files. And it had clearly been an open case for over… he flicked back to check the earliest dates on the upper right-hand of the papers.
Two months. This case had been open for two months.
Jason had agreed to share his open cases with the family. Tim was his go-between. They’d worked cases together for over a year now, and Tim held on to all his hard copies because Jason hated keeping any of his records anywhere hackable. Tim scanned them into the computer, decided which files absolutely had to go into the shared files, and stowed the rest behind a firewall they’d built just for Jason’s fragile peace of mind. Tim then was left to destroy the sensitive hard copies. He alerted Bruce to anything he thought was too much for Jason. It was also his job to loop in police, federal, and Justice League help where it couldn’t be avoided.
Tim was not just Jason’s secretary, though. Yes, Tim focused mainly on white-collar crime in the diamond district while Jason was more hands-on in the East Side. But they worked their cases together. Jason helped point out Mob or gang involvement in Tim’s cases, used his contacts and influence where needed, and advised on the best way to make convictions in the kangaroo courts. Tim helped Jason with research, planning, and occasional backup for his often solitary existence.
And that was the real kicker, wasn’t it? Tim HELPED. He thought he was doing something worthwhile. He thought Jason… needed him.
It wasn’t like he was Bruce or Dick. He couldn’t actually help Jason the way they could. When it came to a fight, Tim was far from useless, but Jason operated best with one of the people he’d originally trained with as Robin. Even then, he preferred to handle things himself. Even when he worked with the Outlaws, it was only on cases that were too big for any one person. Or for the fun of it. Like a working vacation... as messed up as that was.
The one thing Jason really needed Tim for was the files. For his brain. Now, Jason didn’t even want that.
No. Tim tried to shake the familiar despondency out of his head. He had to focus. There was more to this. There was more. He blinked away the stubborn mist collecting in his eyes, cursing himself for being such a pathetic, needy child, and started thumbing through the evidence.
It was a pretty simple case. A murder. High visibility, but low profile. The victim had been shot in the head by the taxi driver who had picked him up from his divorce hearing before he was pushed out into the gutter right outside the courthouse. Not exactly subtle.
Even if Tim hadn’t seen the news and heard about it on the police scanners, he would have known. Bruce was working this case.
Bruce isolated the ex-wife as the killer. By proxy. She’d hired a hitman, who’d posed as the taxi driver and waited for his moment. Bruce had solved the case less than a week after the actual murder; it wasn’t hard to do. But the ex-wife had disappeared, along with the two kids, and Bruce had lost every lead he tried to pick up.
All those leads had been cut short, and the answers were now filed away here.
Jennifer Alden. Thirty-Six. Ex-wife of Geno Bianchi. She was the mother of three children. One, the product of a teen pregnancy that was ‘disappeared’ not long after. There were copies of adoption paperwork for an unnamed little girl and proof that the family who’d taken her was a front. The girl was gone.
The additional two, a young teen boy and an elementary-age son, were from the marriage. Geno’s kids. The court had handed custody of both of them to their father, which was likely what had promted the hit.
The next several inches of the folder are comprised of hospital records, printouts, copies of written threats, and financial statements. The abuse perpetrated on this woman and her kids was horrendous. Bad enough that even Jason’s typical, scrawled notes were absent. He was speechless.
Then the file moved on to Bianchi. Son of a Mob family. Old money, the dirty kind. He had no rap sheet, but there was evidence of over fifty murders in his name and worse, covered up with bribes. It also looked like he’d not exactly wooed his wife into his marriage.
Jason had uncovered some sickening shit.
Geno’s Uncle was the one who’d purchased Jennifer from her father, a mob henchman, when she was around fifteen. The teen pregnancy was the result of that. Then he’d gifted the girl to his nephew in exchange for a dockside slaughter, and Geno had liked her enough to put a ring on it. Make her long slavery legal. ‘legit’.
God, the courage it must have taken for this woman to leave.
And that brought them to the last several documents. Bank statements. Fake IDs. Several leases under one of Jason’s less-known aliases. Everything she might need to disappear.
Tim ran over the things he knew for sure:
Jennifer Alden had hired a low-level hitman to take out her ex-husband when it looked like he had bribed his way into full custody of the kids. As with most low-level hits, it was easily traceable to her. Not only did the police know, but Batman and Geno’s Falcone-connected knew.
The Police were hunting for Jennifer and her two ‘kidnapped’ children.
Because it had been such a public execution, Commissioner Gordon had asked for Bruce’s help. Thus, Batman was hunting for Jennifer and her two ‘kidnapped’ children.
The Falcone family was also hunting for Jennifer and her two children.
And from the look of Jason’s research, Jennifer wasn’t leaving the city until she had found and rescued her last kid.
Red Hood was sheltering Jennifer Alden.
Fuck.
Bruce was going to be pissed.
>><<
Jason had circled the block three times. The first time, he’d laid a trail for the cameras and anyone following, before stopping by a skinny little alley he used to hide in when he was still a street rat, and changing into something non-descript and fully unlike anything Red Hood would be caught in. The final time, he’d spent an additional thirty minutes leaning up against a wall, eating a chili dog, and people watching. He was glad he had when Tim, clad in the cheesy Hawaiian shirt with T-Rexes hidden in the hibiscus that Cass had gotten Bruce for Christmas last year, approached with his own chili dog.
“Funny seeing you here,” Tim said, tilting his baseball cap down over his sunglasses.
“Fuck, Baby Bird. I’ve spent the last three hours trying to make sure I didn’t have a tail, and you wasted that all in five seconds flat. What about you doesn’t scream ‘suspicious’ right now?”
Tim looked down at his skinny jeans and Converse shoes and shrugged. “I think my tattoo is on Alley trend,” he held out his arm where he’d pressed on one of those shitty stick-ons of a minion.
“You suck,”
“You depend on your paranoia and street smarts,” Tim said around an oversized bit of hot dog. “I just recruit my little army of cameras and sensors. No one is following.”
Jason rolled his eyes. “False.”
Tim straightened. “What? Where?”
Jason stared pointedly at him.
“Ahhhh,” Tim at least had the dignity of blushing a little. “Right.”
“Take a hint, Timbers. Get lost.”
“No,” Tim said, scowling.
Sometimes Jason was very tempted to sock his kid brother in the face. This was absolutely sometimes. “Not now, Tim. I’m not arguing this.”
Tim jerked the worthless sunglasses off and glared at Jason. “Yeah. I gathered as much. You aren’t arguing. Instead, you’re fucking HIDING.”
There was a hint of Alley in his cuss words. Just a hint. A reminder of where he’d picked up the habit. Of how he’d once followed around Batman and Robin just like this, getting himself near-killed more times than he ever would have told anyone. Tim might not have looked like much, but he had a spine of pure titanium.
He was going to do what he wanted.
“Leave, Tim.” Jason tried again.
“Look. I get why you wouldn’t want B to know. Or Dick. Or the others. But me? You really think I would… what… put some twisted form of mindless pseudo-justice before a traumatized family’s safety?”
“I’m not talking about this here,” Jason spat. He couldn’t stop by Jennifer’s now. There were too many eyes on him.
Pushing off from the wall, Jason started talking back to where his bike was parked. As he did, he jerked the burner phone out of his pocket and shifted his shoulders high enough to block out Tim tailing him back through the crowd.
“Stop being such a paranoid asshole,” Tim snapped. “No one is watching you. You can bring Jennifer her dinner.”
“Shhhhhh,” Jason hissed, spinning on his heel.
Tim looked exhausted. Which was ironic, because he’d only just stepped into this situation, and Jason had been dealing with it for months.
“Jay, you’re being over-cautious,” Tim said. “See, this is the kinda shit you used to be able to trust me with. It’s the middle of the afternoon in the middle of one of the biggest, busiest cities in America. No one has any reason to connect… whoever you are… to Jennifer. And I can promise you that B thinks she’s at the bottom of the bay right now. You can enter an apartment building without all the switchbacks and… wardrobe changes.”
“You have no clue who is after us,” Jason argued. There wasn’t a lot of heat behind it, though. Tim was probably right. Jason’s paranoia might have been planted in the fertile ground of his childhood fears, but it had flourished and grown in the League of Assassins, where it was more than a little warranted. No goon in Gotham could escape his notice if he was on the lookout.
“How many times have you forced this poor woman to move?”
Jason hated how well Tim knew him. “Once a week. Twice if I think I’ve seen someone nearby.”
Tim raised an eyebrow. “Jason.” That single utteration dripped disappointment.
“I think Bats knows.”
Now it was Tim’s turn to be surprised. It seemed pure habit as he turned and scanned the rooftops briefly, despite the fact that the sun was still just starting to dip below the tallest buildings.
“Why do you think that?”
“He’s been edging a bit deeper in the last few patrols. And last night, he followed me through the first third of my own route. He’s been pinging my trackers. A lot.”
Bruce couldn’t know. That’s why Jason had worked so hard to keep this off the Bat Family’s radar. There was only one solution Bruce knew to a situation like this. Jennifer was a wanted woman. Batman was a tool for ‘justice’. Even if this was the furthest thing from Justice.
Jennifer had already lost her freedom, her safety, one of her kids, the vision in her right eye, and her future. Geno and his ilk had systematically stripped her of all of it. And at the end of it, the only thing the “justice system” had done for her was to legally take the last two of her kids. Her only reason for holding her head up.
With Bianchi dead, if Jen got taken in, her kids would go into the system. And after what happened to her daughter, Jen had good reason to be terrified about that.
Batman wasn’t coming anywhere near Jennifer Alden. Not while Red Hood had any say in the matter.