𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑴𝑨𝑮𝑵𝑼𝑺𝑺𝑬𝑵 𝑭𝑰𝑳𝑬𝑺 ↬ 𝑹. 𝑹𝒆𝒅𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒕𝒐𝒏

𝑬𝑳𝑰𝒁𝑨𝑩𝑬𝑻𝑯 𝑪𝑯𝑰𝑳𝑫𝑺

ᴇʟɪᴢᴀʙᴇᴛʜ ᴄʜɪʟᴅꜱ (ɴᴏ. 53)

The Taskforce had been working with Raymond Reddington for four months now. Ever since he had turned himself in to the FBI and helped save the little girl, the man had been feeding the taskforce a steady stream of criminals, each one of them a name on what he liked to call his personal blacklist. The amount of criminals apprehended was growing consistently, and although Harold Cooper had clear suspicions about Reddington's true intentions, he couldn't deny that having him as an informant was like stumbling on a gold mine.

Elizabeth Keen stared at the screen, the name Elizabeth Childs flashing across it along with the sole picture they had of their latest target. The image was blurry, but not hazy enough to conceal her appearance. The woman appeared to be in her late thirties, she had black hair and deep hazelnut eyes. She didn't appear to have any defining attributes except for a small scar on her upper lip. The image had been taken by a security camera at a gas station somewhere in Nevada, local authorities had tried to apprehend her, but by the time they arrived, she was gone.

"Allow me to introduce our latest target, Elizabeth Childs" Reddington spoke as he walked into the Post Office, Dembe and Luli following closely behind him.

The man didn't have any particular feelings regarding the Taskforce, it was just a means to an end, and now the he had found Elizabeth Childs, that end was getting closer and closer. Reddington made his way across the room until he was facing the screen, eyes scanning the image with a satisfied grin. He'd been looking for the woman for a long time, and now, he had finally cornered her to the point that she allowed herself to be caught in camera for the first time in months.

"I'm sorry, but Childs as in Edmund Childs, the former assistant of the president and chief of staff Childs?" Ressler asked, a hint of disbelief in his voice.

Reddington smiled. Of course, he had expected for someone on the team to figure it out, though at this point he had hoped Meera Malik would have been the one to make the connection. Thought, in hindsight, it wasn't that big of a surprise.

They would have found out eventually, and concealing the man's identity, and therefore his wife, wasn't even conceivable considering they were talking about the president's right hand. Well, his previous right hand. The Concierge of Crime corrected himself.

"The one and only" Reddington said as he turned to face the rest of the team "Unfortunately, the man went missing two years ago after what was believed to be a naval accident"

Elizabeth crossed her arms.

"Let me guess, it wasn't as much of an accident as it was murder" she concluded, staring once again at the picture of the woman.

Elizabeth Childs seemed, for a lack of a better word, completely harmless. However, Elizabeth Keen was a profiler, and she knew that appearances were often just that, appearances.

"Not exactly" Reddington said, taking off his hat and leaving in on top of one of the tables "True, it was no accident, and Edmund did die"

The man moved to the front of the room, taking the remote of the screen and changing to another image, this time it was a man, laying face down on a hotel room with his eyes wide open and a pool of blood staining the white sheets. Elizabeth flinched as she fought the urge to look away, in her lifetime she had seen many gruesome crime scenes, but she had never seen something like that.

"However, he died fourteen months later" Reddington stated.

Meera stared at the picture. Despite the bad quality of the photography and the strange positioning of the body, it was an image she was quite familiar with. She was CIA, and as such, she had seen her fair share of interrogations gone wrong.