[back]
When the world was created wasn't it like this?
A little flame illuminating a rough sea, a question
of attraction, something fermented, something sweet?
'Anniversary,' Joy Harjo
I never knew that bubbles actually made a sound when they burst into existence. Tiny and furious, they rose, jostling, soft and chaotic, to join one another. Their clash was almost musical, and somewhere beyond that, I could barely make out a distant voice...
"Ellison. Do you copy? Ellison, you awake or what?"
With a jerk I tore my attention away from the boiling water. I groped for my radio to respond, then paused. The pan was half- empty, but it had been almost full before. How long had I been sitting here, lost? I clicked the radio on. "I'm here."
"SWAT's on standby," said Reynolds. "We have a red Jeep Wrangler coming up the north access road. You should be making visual contact any minute."
"Copy that." I said. "I'll give you the green. Out."
I watched the Switchman enter the lumber mill. But he didn't come out when we surrounded the place. And when we smoked the building and searched it, top to bottom, our suspect wasn't there. The bastard was gone.
"Hey, Ellison!" called a member of Reynolds' team from a far corner of the mill. "He left something for you."
He was pointing at a glossy magazine, lying face up on a table. Already suspecting what I'd see, I trudged over and looked down at a picture of myself bordered in red. A haggard, dirty face. That photo had been taken five years ago, but I looked ten years older.
"Looks like someone's got a crush on you, Ellison."
"Yeah, I know," I said distantly, and then made a face. The sharp scent of gasoline was cutting through the air, and I looked around, trying to find the source. "Reynolds, you smell that?"
"What?" he said blankly. Jesus, what was wrong with him? I tracked the fumes to the north end of the mill, down some rickety wooden stairs that creaked alarmingly under my feet.
"It's stronger over here." I knelt, squinting, to peer between the floorboards, and red numbers flashed into my sight, huge and bright and counting down--
13
12
11
"Shit!" I was on my feet in an instant. "Everybody clear the building, now! Move!"
We ran for our lives. Reynolds radioed everyone outside to back off, and somehow everybody made it out. The shock knocked me to my face in the grass, and the heat of the explosion rolled over my body like a wave.
I lay there, cursing, and then somewhere faraway, I heard a motorbike. No, not faraway. Underground, the vibrations coming up through the dirt... I was on my feet running, and then ahead of me, I saw two trap doors outlined beneath the yellowing grass. Then they slammed open, and I saw the Switchman.
He hadn't yet fully accelerated, so I had a chance. I gave it a burst of speed, jumped before I thought, and locked my arms around the Switchman's torso.
I would have taken the son of a bitch down, too, if he hadn't turned his head. The curved surface swam into my field of vision, warping the treeline, the skyline, my own reflected face, dizzying me instantly. I tumbled off the bike, down a muddy slope, and came to rest in the dirt again, pounding my fist against the ground in futile rage.
As I entered Major Crimes half an hour later, I was still off-balance. Was I was just imagining things? Maybe, but I could almost see everyone's heads jerk up, see their eyes flicker to take in my ragged appearance and hostile demeanor.
Okay, so I wasn't at my best. Well, you stake out a lumber mill in the middle of nowhere for four days, then get blown across a meadow and see how you look. I pushed open the door to Simon's office, passing my ex-husband, Carl Plummer, on his way out.
"Jesus, Jenny," he said. "You look like hell."
I made a face. Gee, thanks, Carl. Remind me again why we split?
Sitting down, I glanced sideways out the window. We were on the seventh floor, but the traffic noise from the street was loud today. Or was it just another symptom of... whatever the hell was wrong with me? Coolly, I added it to the list. You never knew what might be significant to a doctor. Simon offered me a cup of coffee, but I ignored him. The scent of today's special blend was too strong, too bitter. It made my stomach turn. Besides, I was still trying to figure out how best to ask for time off.
Since joining the force five years ago, I'd built up a reputation for being as tough as any male cop, and ballsier than most. I'd worked a couple of high-profile cases since joining Major Crimes, but the Switchman was a completely different animal. And by e-mailing me with his taunts and gloating, he'd taken it to a whole new level. He'd made it personal. I really didn't want to take the time off.
But I couldn't do my job if I was going crazy.
Glaring down at me from his perch on the edge of his desk, my Captain responded predictably to my request for leave. "Are you nuts?"
"I don't know," I said wearily, running a hand over my face. My skin smelled sharply of soil and wet grass, and I dropped it back into my lap. "Maybe. I ran a blood test to see if I'd been drugged, but I'm clean, so--"
"Hey, slow down." Simon said, reaching out to put a hand on my shoulder. "What drugs?"
"How else can I explain what happened to me, Simon?" I could hear my voice rising, getting more emotional, but I'd been stretched too far today. "I fell off the back of that bike because I was seeing things!"
"So you were stressed." Simon shook his head. "You smelled some fumes, got dizzy, and fell off the bike. Now you want a vacation?" I just sighed. From his point of view, I was being unreasonable. "Come on, Jen." he cajoled me. "Is this the woman who toughed it out in the jungle for a year and a half? Take a shower, some aspirin, and get back to work."
I had to threaten to go AWOL, but eventually Simon gave me the afternoon off to see a doctor. Heading home to the loft, I stripped off my grimy clothes and stepped into the shower, hissing as the water came on hot, scalding me. Something must be wrong with the pipes, I thought-- unless it wasn't the pipes, and there was something wrong with me. Hurriedly, I scrubbed down with a soapy washcloth, not missing any spots but not taking my time about it, either. No matter how badly I needed to get clean, I hadn't lingered in the shower for almost a year.
Not since Charlie Warner.
The back of my neck had been prickly as I descended the narrow stairway. I'd been edgy all day, but as soon as I emerged into the hotel basement, I knew it was a setup. There were five men slouched around the dusty storage area. Nearest the door was my contact, Al McCormick, who'd managed to set up this meeting for me. Charlie Warner, the king of illegal weapons sales in Cascade, was seated in the only chair in the room. A huge, broad-shouldered man with a dark bushy beard, Warner had ties to all the local paramilitary and hate groups. Including the Sunrise Patriots.
Warner was their main supplier. He knew who their leaders were, where they met and how strong they were. And so I was trying to infiltrate his organization.
I'd expected Al and Warner, and I'd further been expecting Warner to bring a bodyguard along. But he hadn't brought one. He'd brought three. Their eyes glittered darkly from points around the room.
"Hey, Janet," Al said, running his hand back through his greasy black hair.
I nodded, resisting the urge to play with the tousled fall of my blonde wig. I was dressed casually, in jeans, ratty sweater, and a short suede coat that came down over my ass and hid the nine-millimeter in its holster at the small of my back. Casually, I unbuttoned my jacket, pulling a stick of gum from one of the inside pockets and popping it into my mouth. "Hey, Al."
"Ms. Fisher." said Warner, his voice surprisingly cultured. "How good of you to join us."
"Call me Janet," I said, and he just smiled thinly. "So. You ready to do business?"
"Let's not rush into anything, Ms. Fisher. I hope you're not averse to a little friendly conversation?" he asked. "I do like to be friends with the people I do business with. After all, there can be no bargains made without trust."
I popped my gum with a crack, breathing through my mouth for a moment, tasting bubble-gum and dust. "Hey, no sweat. I trust you."
"Of course you do," Warner said with a smile. "And I must trust you, too. And Alexander here. For instance, I trust him implicitly when he tells me you're not a cop."
"Sweet." I said. Charlie Warner's nickname on the street was The Fat Man, and I was beginning to see that it wasn't just because of his bearlike build. Like the villain of 'The Maltese Falcon,' this was a guy who liked to hear himself talk.
"But let's adjourn to someplace a bit less bleak," said Warner, sniffing the air, and his bodyguards tensed, but not so visibly that just anyone would have noticed. For instance, Al didn't see a thing.
"Okay," I said, sweating.
I'd known coming here was a risk, but I'd done it anyway. Even worse, I'd come alone. It was a gamble-- I'd figured that Al was more scared of me than he was of Warner. As I followed Warner and Al to the elevator, two of Warner's bodyguards fell in behind me and I knew I'd lost that bet.
I was a walking dead woman. It was just a matter of time. I didn't know why they were taking me out of the basement to do me. Maybe they were going to take me up to the roof and toss me off-- or, more likely, to the parking garage. They'd shoot me, stuff me in the trunk of a black Cadillac, then drive someplace secluded and leave my body in the woods.
I bet Warner knew all the best hiding places.
One of Warner's boys punched the button to bring the elevator down to us while I did the math in my head. Maybe Al was armed, maybe he wasn't. Warner was definitely carrying, but I bet he wasn't too quick on the draw. The three goons were my biggest worry. My only advantage was that right about now, they were probably pretty sure of themselves. Why wouldn't they be? Three against one, and that one a woman. And I knew as well as they did that I had no chance once we got out in the open.
The sound of the elevator arriving made me wince, the rattling screech of worn gears just barely catching each other and finally clutching into their grooves. Warner and his bodyguards stepped aside to let me in first. Gentlemen to the last. They entered after me, and Al punched the button for the parking garage level. My stomach lurched. The only light in the claustrophobically small space was a lone bulb behind a dusty, frosted-glass oval. It flickered as the steel cage lurched and began to lift us up through the shaft.
"Goddamn slow, isn't it?" Al said nervously. I shrugged, and casually moved my hands behind my back, face turned up toward the light. Carefully, I peeled the safety strap off my holster, and my gun slid into my hand.
"You in a hurry?" one of Warner's bodyguards kidded Al, and he half-laughed.
"No, man, I got no place to be." He wasn't looking at me.
The elevator strained upwards. In a single motion, I slipped my arm out of the sleeve of my coat, flicked the safety off, and put a bullet in the back of Warner's head.
Then I shot out the light.
I didn't think Simon had really taken me seriously when I threatened to walk off the job. But he must've thought better of it later, because I was barely done with my short, perfunctory shower when I heard a knock at the front door.
"Shit." I grabbed a towel and scrubbed my short, dark hair quickly. Not bothering to check the effect in the mirror, I tossed the towel on the floor and grabbed my old gray floor-length bathrobe. As I headed for the front door, I noticed for the first time that wet feet really made an odd sound on the floor of the loft.
"What is it, Carl?" I said impatiently, pulling open the door.
My ex-husband stood outside, scratching at his ginger beard thoughtfully. He lowered his hand, startled. "How'd you know it was me?"
I paused. I was suddenly conscious of my fist, almost at my throat, clutching the lapels of my bathrobe together tightly. How had I known?
"Who else would Simon Banks send to get me to come back to work?"
"He didn't send me..." Carl began.
"Oh, and how many times have you come over here since last July just to talk? How about none?" I started to shut the door.
"Okay, he did!" Carl said quickly. I sighed and opened the door again. "Listen, Jenny. I bet a hot meal would make you feel a lot better. Let me take you to lunch, okay?"
"Thanks, but no," I said. "Go back to the office. Tell Simon it won't work."
He smiled. "I didn't think it would."
"So next time don't try it."
He sighed, moving a little closer to lean against the doorframe. "You're not the first cop who's ever lost a suspect, you know."
I backed up. "I'll see you at work, Carl."
"Sure," he said as I moved to shut the door again. "Why did I think things might have changed?"
I jerked the door open again, then glanced left and right. There was no one in the hall, so I followed him out towards the elevator. "What the hell's that supposed to mean?"
He looked startled, like he hadn't meant for me to hear him. "I just... you're shutting me out. Like always," he said. "What are you so afraid of?"
He paused, and I stood still, turbulent emotions warring within me. God, I was scared, I was scared out of my mind-- "I give up," said Carl wearily, and headed for the elevator. He punched the button for the lobby, and paused outside the doors. "Take care of yourself, Jenny."
Don't go, I wanted to say, and go to hell, but what came out was "Carl--" in a half-broken voice that made me grit my teeth with inner rage. "I'm sorry. Okay?"
I moved closer, trying to tell him with my eyes what I'd never been able to make him believe any other way. "I never meant to--" I shook my head, and he put his hand on my arm. Even through the cloth his hand was warm, incredibly warm. I could feel his hand shaking, the fluctuations in pressure as it moved. The silence seemed to rise in my ears and ring like a bell.
Even at the time, I'd known that marrying Carl was a mistake. I'd had lots of male friends in my life, but the minute things got romantic I always started sabotaging myself, withdrawing, fucking it up. If it were up to me, I'd never fall in love again. I'd lost too many friends, in my life. But none of that seemed to matter, there in the hall. I stared into Carl's eyes, and my hand seemed to move to his chest without me consciously choosing to put it there. My chest was tight, and I could barely breathe.
I'd wanted to believe it could be different. I'd fooled myself into thinking it could work. And when I left him I'd ripped his fucking heart out. How could you ever say you were sorry for something like that?
"Sometimes I miss you so much," I said. He bit his lip and pulled me close, and the way he kissed me was like a firestorm. My world became a tangle of sensation, the smell of his aftershave sharp in my nostrils, the bitter taint of coffee sliding over my tongue, his body a blanket of warmth against mine.
And then the elevator thumped, and went 'ting', and I was leaning into Carl's chest, breathing hard. "Sorry."
"Don't be," he said, and then laughed. "Maybe if you'd kissed me like that before, we'd still be married."
I went back into the loft, locked the door, and dropped the bathrobe, wonderingly, on the floor. It felt strange to be walking around naked; it just wasn't something I did anymore. But now I was tingling all over, and even the air seemed to be caressing my skin. I shuddered, hot and cold, and walked back into the bathroom, studying myself in the mirror. My chest and breasts were flushed. The ugly, gnarled gunshot scars on my left shoulder and the right side of my abdomen stood out even more than they usually did against my pale skin. I touched the mass of scar tissue on my shoulder, and as usual, I didn't feel a thing. It was dead tissue now.
I'd always figured it was a good trade I made, that day in the elevator with Charlie Warner. When the elevator had finally reached the parking garage level, it was full of dead men, blood and me. The doors opened, slowly, and faint light spilled across my face. It was my first clue that I wasn't dead. Then came the pain.
Sliding slowly down the wall, I fumbled with my left hand for my cellphone, managing to dial 911 before the agony totally disabled me. Simon told me that when the paramedics arrived, they had to pry my empty gun out of my hand. But that was later.
Carl and I had been divorced for a month.
About six square inches of me, total, ended up dead. But I lived.
I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror. My nipples were really hard. I cupped my breasts gently and pinched just underneath my left nipple. Just experimenting, but I had to suck in a deep breath, flail and grab the sink, shaken by the pure erotic agony that spiked up between my legs. I clamped my knees together, mouth falling open more in surprise than ecstasy. What the hell. Just a kiss had turned me on like this?
It had taken me a long time to recuperate after the shootout in the elevator. Well, a long time according to my own standards. The doctors said I was lucky to be in such good condition, generally lucky all around, and then warned me not to push it. But even after I'd gotten back on my feet, I'd been on pain meds for months afterwards... and it had really fucked with my libido. I could still bring myself to orgasm, but it took more effort, more time. Honestly, most of the time it just didn't seem worth it. Especially if I was going to be the only one at the party.
I slid my hand down over my belly and shuddered again, my muscles fluttering like jello before I even reached my clit. What the hell was happening to me?
I got dressed quickly, and headed for the doctors'.
Sitting there in that stupid robe with no back while a couple of impersonal nurses asked questions, did tests, asked more questions... I kept thinking about the kiss. I didn't like taking my top off any more, even for physicals, but for some reason this time none of the nurses commented on my scars. I suppose the medical history was probably right there in my chart, if they were curious. So I was free to sit and wonder, without giving the nurses too much of my attention. Why the hell had I kissed Carl, and what had that last comment of his meant? Sex was never our problem. Was it?
The last nurse told me I could get dressed again while I waited for the doctor, so I was pulling my gray turtleneck over my head when the door bumped open without anyone bothering to knock.
"Hey!" I yanked the front of my shirt down over my stomach, opening my mouth to bite someone's head off. But there was just this little, ponytailed brunette beaming at me over the top of a clipboard. The smile was encouraging, I thought. She didn't look like someone about to use a phrase like 'brain tumor' or 'psychotic episode.' "Detective Ellison," she said cheerily. "I'm Doctor McKay."
Looked more like Doctor Barbie to me, but who the hell cared. "You have the results of my tests?"
"Forget the tests," she said, stepping closer. "You don't need medicine. You need information."
I narrowed my eyes, noticing for the first time the ragged jeans and scuffed sneakers that peeked from beneath her white medical coat. "What are you, an intern? Will you go get the doctor for me, please?"
"Now wait just a second," she insisted, eyes gleaming behind silver-rimmed glasses. "Hear me out. Loud noises that shouldn't be loud. Smelling things that no one else can smell. Weird visuals. Tastebuds off the map, right?"
"That's all in my chart!"
"Yeah, but I bet I can add one more thing. A hyperactive tactile response."
I stared at her fingers, tapping nervously on her clipboard, the wild tendrils of hair escaping from her ponytail. If there was a crazy woman in the room, I thought, I might not be her. "A what?"
"You know, uh," she gestured, mouth twitching, "you had a little extra-sensitive touchy-feely lately?"
"That's none of your business," I said, taken aback. "Who the hell are you, anyway?"
"Me?" she said digging in her pocket hurriedly, "I'm no one. But this person is. The only one who can truly help you." She pressed a business card into my hand, sidling back towards the door. "You're too far ahead of the curve for any of this techno trash. You're a cop, right? Get some answers." And with that she was gone.
When I met the real McCoy a minute later, I wasn't really surprised.
Safely back at home base, my office at Hargrove Hall, I slammed some tribal rhythms into the tape deck, cranked it to nine, and did the patented Sandburg Funky Dance around my desk.
It was time. Time for earnest Lois Lane to disappear and Super Anthro Babe to re-emerge. I whipped off my glasses dramatically. Put my amber earrings and my bangle bracelets and my beaded necklace back on. Threw my hair tie across the room and thrashed my head a little to set the curls flying. Shaking my wrists over my head to hear my bracelets jingle, I continued to do the Found-a-Sentinel Victory Shuffle. "Bayle, babe, you rock!" I sang. "You friggin' found her! Who's the man!"
Drum roll, musical flourish, applause: The Sentinel!
I did a little spin, earrings clicking, and dropped into my office chair. I'd found one, I'd found one, and she was everything I'd ever imagined a Sentinel would be. Tall, lean, tough and those eyes-- man, she was a warrior. You could tell.
Looking down at the top of my desk, drums still banging in my ears, I almost squealed-- the library staffers were good. I'd only put in a request for this copy of NEWS magazine two hours ago. Fluttered my eyelashes and pursed my lips at the boy behind the counter, and here it was! That was Jennifer Ellison on the cover all right. Haunted eyes, sunken cheeks, but she still had that steely look, that same raw strength.
"Lone Member of Peace Corps Team Survives Jungle Crash--" I skimmed for the important details. Jennifer Ellison, born right here in Cascade, did a hitch in the Army after high school and joined the Peace Corps at twenty-five. Five years ago, at age thirty-one, she'd been the leader of a team going to Peru to build bridges, so that a couple of rural villages could have easier access to local doctors. But the plane had crashed several hundreds of miles short of her destination, and Ellison, the lone survivor, lived with the Chopec deep in the heart of the La Montanya region for eighteen months until her rescue by a U.S. military unit working with the Peruvian authorities, yadda yadda.
The article kind of raised more questions than it answered. Like, it said Ellison had grown up in Cascade, but there was no mention of any family or childhood friends, and any quotes from Ellison herself were totally short, to the point, and impersonal. Like, of course she'd been in shock after the plane crash. Who wouldn't have been? "I gradually adapted to life with the Chopec." Yeah, well, that's what human beings do, adapt or die, really.
There were other articles, newspaper clippings, and I scanned them hurriedly, getting a quick rush of info about Jennifer Ellison's life since Peru. She'd made detective in record time, and apparently gotten married sometime in her first two years back; a couple of the articles quoted a Lieutenant Plummer, referred to equally as "Detective Ellison's husband" and "head of the Cascade Police Department's technical support division."
She'd had apparently kept her maiden name, which, as it turned out, was a good choice. Four articles later, there was a long story about Jen being shot while trying to go undercover with the Sunrise Patriots. Near the end was the quick throwaway line: "Detective Ellison's ex-husband, Lt. Carl Plummer, refused to comment." Ouch.
Still, cop marrying cop. How utterly tribal. Was that a sign that Jen Ellison only felt the urge to merge with members of her own warrior tribe? Well, I'd have a chance to find that out. Later. I mulled over the last few articles thoughtfully, then stuck them inside the magazine and stuffed the magazine in my top desk drawer. I'd have to remember to photocopy the profile on Jen before I returned it. The drums were still banging in my ears and I danced a little in my chair, waiting, waiting. She'd be here any minute, I knew it, I just knew it.
When had I ever felt this giddy before? Maybe on the day I'd actually decided to go into anthropology... I turned around, pushing aside a couple of layers of papers that were pinned to the corkboard behind my desk. When I'd moved into this artifact storage room and turned it into my office, I'd tacked up this particular snapshot first thing. Just to remind myself of why I was here.
The picture was of a pudgy eighteen-year-old wearing geeky horn-rimmed glasses. With every year that went by I cringed more at the clothes she was wearing. The pale purple hair was still cute, though. The bleaching and dyeing process had made my hair freaky-wild-- my nickname was "Sea Anemone Sandburg" for months, and it looked so weird when it started growing in I just chopped it all off and kept my hair short for years.
But it had been a good look at the time. I was currently attending Beaver Creek Community College, and the ladies in the advising office just loved me; I had changed my major three times in four months, skipping from film studies to history to sculpture. Well, actually I'd changed it four times if you counted psychology, where I'd started, but I figured I'd keep that as a minor no matter what.
So there I was. Young, bright and earnest. Agonizing about what would be the best path, sculpture or my new love, welding? And that was when Noreen, one of the more patient student advisors, told me that whatever I did, I'd probably need at least a few hard science credits.
Hard science, like picking up rocks or being stuck in a lab playing with dangerous chemicals. How appealing. But anthropology sounded cool. The study of human culture. That was such a broad topic, it had to be an easy 'A,' right?
So Noreen signed me up for the next term, and five minutes after I walked in the door I was hooked. Not on anthropology; that would come a little later. No, I was hooked on the teacher. Logan Stafford.
He wasn't really handsome in any sense of the word. He had wild dark hair, deep brown eyes, an unremarkable face and build. His energy, though, his passion for teaching, his passion for his subject...
He was dreamy.
I took four terms of anthropology in a row.
The last class was the one that took me on my first archaeological dig. It was about a month and a half into the term, and we'd spent the time studying all the necessary procedures, paperwork, and terminology. It's not an arrowhead, it's a projectile point. Right. I studied hard, in between bouts of gazing shyly at Logan. The step-by-step, the dos and don'ts. How to fill out and file a proper data recovery plan. Things like that. But none of it actually prepared me for what, it turned out, anthropology could actually be.
Our site was next to a levee, near a floodplain that had once been a marsh. The pits we were excavating were each a meter square and two meters deep. The work was slow and methodical: we could only dig down ten centimeters at a time. We worked eight hours that first day. I wore a bandanna to pull my hair back out of my face, and when my dad picked me up from the school afterwards, my ears were sunburned so badly they were already cracked and peeling. It had rained, too, off and on, so I was tired, worn-out, hungry, damp, and muddy up to my elbows and knees. Later I discovered a bruise bigger than my hand on my upper right thigh, acquired trying to steady the sifting-trays where we examined the dirt we'd removed from the pits.
But none of that had mattered to the freaky little geek I'd been.
I was flying.
I tried to explain it to Dad at the time, but I don't think I made much sense. It all seemed so simple, but so miraculous. The day before the dig, no one on the planet had known what I now knew about that spot by the levee under the apple trees. Yesterday it had all been under the surface, totally unknown. And we'd gone down, ten centimeters at a time, finding and picking out the burned animal bones and fire-cracked rocks and projectile points. We'd bagged and tagged the data, taken notes and marked down the location and level of everything on its own grid.
And now we had knowledge. Raw knowledge, bare facts that hadn't been interpreted or analyzed or examined in a lab or brought to a conclusion. Not yet. Cataloging and classification, the application of theory, spinning a narrative thread-- that was the important part, and it hadn't happened yet, but still. I had held it in my hands, harvested it up out of the ground as easy as picking an apple off a tree. Real, actual, raw knowledge.
Cute professors aside, that's when I'd been hooked for life.
I was jolted out of my reverie by a loud click from the tape player. The tribal rhythms had come to an end and I heaved a sigh, turning around to flip the cassette over. What was taking her so long? When would she get here? I'd order in, eat lunch in my office if I had to, I thought as I punched some buttons to make the music blare again. Hell, I'd grab a blanket and sleep here tonight. I wasn't leaving till the Sentinel came to me.
When I turned back around she was looming in my open doorway. She was wearing charcoal-gray slacks and a loose blazer over a lighter gray turtleneck, her short, sleek hair pushed back behind her ears. She looked slick, casual, and maybe a little dangerous.
"Oh, hey," I breathed, smiling.
She checked the card I'd given her, then looked at me. "Bayle Sandburg?" she asked, saying it like 'Bailey.' I beamed and corrected her.
"No. I mean, yes. It's 'Bale' actually. My name, I mean. It's pronounced 'Bale,' it's, um..."
She was looking pretty pained, and I jumped when her eyes flicked to the stereo behind me. "Do you mind?"
"Oh! Sorry," I said, and shut the music off. When I turned back around, she was giving me the grimmest Cop Stare of Death I'd ever seen.
"Listen," I said, coming around the desk, "I'm so sorry about all that Shakespeare stuff at the hospital, really, but I just had to find some way to get you here, into my area, to talk."
"So talk."
"Okay, um..." I cleared her a seat, trying really hard not to snicker to myself. Finally I straightened up and just spilled everything. "My name is Bayle Sandburg, and I'm working on my doctorate in anthropology, and you just may be the living embodiment of my field of study."
She frowned. "You're losing me, sweetheart."
I laughed nervously. "Well, if I'm correct, Detective Ellison, you're a behavioral throwback to a pre-civilized breed of humanity."
That got a reaction. "Are you out of your mind?" She stood up, looming over me threateningly. "You dragged me all the way over here to tell me I'm some kind of Neanderthal?" I was getting a really good close-up of that blue stare now. "Listen, you little hippie bitch," she hissed, backing me into the corner, "I could slap you right now with larceny and false impersonation, and you're heading real quick into harassing a police officer--"
"Whoa, hey! G.I. Jane, relax!" I managed to get my hands up, palms out: no threat here, okay? "Look, I want to help you, okay? But you mess with me, and you are never gonna figure out what's up with you!"
Surprise crossed her face, and she backed off, just a little.
"Now I know about your time spent in Peru," I said, "and it has got to be connected to what is happening to you now. Now, let me just show you something. This is a monograph by Sir Richard Burton..."
She took the book, and my heart leaped. I was pretty sure I had her. But she stayed cool, so I just gave her the nervous patter I'd been rehearsing ever since I'd gotten a glance at her chart at the hospital.
I told her she needed me, and she didn't argue, but when I said I wanted to write about her, wow. Another trigger. Her face went harder, she brushed my hands away and bang, she was out the door.
With a sigh, I slumped against the doorframe. How could she just walk away? Did I take it for granted, the magic of anthropology, the draw of it? Well, maybe sometimes I did, I realized glumly. Sometimes I just forgot that other people didn't crave knowledge the same way that I did. Now, I'm not implying that I'm somehow higher-minded, or more intellectually gifted than the next chick with a B.A.-- it's just that knowledge is my obsession. Heck, it's my drug.
Studies say you shouldn't forbid your kids to eat sweets, because it just creates these huge cravings for unhealthy things. Well, when I was a kid, according to all accounts I had my dad wrapped around my little finger. There wasn't much that he would have forbidden me, but there were some things he just couldn't give me, even if he'd wanted to.
Like knowledge. Not in general-- I learned a lot about life in general just from being Nathan Sandburg's daughter. No. What I was missing was a couple of very specific pieces of information.
Who my mother was, for example, and why she'd left me on my father's doorstep when I was only two months old. He'd waited for her to come back, to write or call, but she never had. When Dad put the wheels in motion to officially adopt me, he'd hired private eyes to try and track her down, but no one ever found a trace.
Maybe she'd gone on to have a family of her own. Maybe she was dead. Maybe she just didn't care. Whatever the truth was, by the time I was a teenager I'd had to accept it: I'd never know.
So I don't know anything about my mother. Although I kind of like to think she looked like me. Dark curly hair, sort of a petite earth mother. That's a pretty safe assumption, actually, because I sure don't look like my Dad. He's tall and pale, with reddish hair that came from his mother's side. People say I have his eyes, but that's not proof. Just a resemblance.
Yeah, call me slow, call me a daddy's girl, but I was fourteen before it even occurred to me that Nathan Sandburg might not be my biological father. A person accepts the reality she's presented with, and what I had was a father who loved me more than anything. Who knows if Nathan and my mother were lovers, or just friends, or not even that? Maybe she'd just left me on his doorstep because she'd heard he was a good man, caring and resourceful.
If I'd wanted proof, well, we could've had tests done. There was that option. But I didn't want to know, and Nathan let me be the one to make the decision; which is exactly the kind of thing that makes him such a great dad, makes me love him so much. If there was a chance that I might get the wrong answer, I would rather stay in the dark.
Half of me would always remain mysterious, the half of me that was someone else's daughter. I couldn't bear to give up anything more. With every fiber of my being-- I just didn't want to know.
Well. Maybe I could understand Jennifer Ellison's point of view after all.
"Oh, damn!" I murmured, and launched myself away from the doorframe. There was still one thing she definitely needed to know about--
Fuming, I stalked out of Hargrove Hall. Maybe I wasn't sure what was wrong with me. Maybe the doctors didn't have any answers either. But that didn't mean I had to listen to some junior miss snake-oil salesman who wanted me to be her personal science project. Slamming open the double doors, squinting against the sun as I came down the steps, I was caught in red. Whirling. Slowing. Red, unnaturally bright, the color of blood and fire. It grew like a red flower blooming, and I drew closer... There were other noises, other colors, but I was lost in red, and then the world went sideways, I slammed to the ground, and the shadow of death passed over me one more time.
I could feel a heartbeat against my skin, and then Bayle scrabbled, gasped, and pushed herself off me. Just like I'd known it was Carl before I opened the door, I knew it was the little hippie chick without seeing her. Her curls tickled my neck, and her scent-- books, vaguely musty vintage clothing, and some pure, natural-smelling perfume-- was somehow already familiar.
I took the hand she offered me and stood up shakily. My heart thudded in my chest as I tried to make sense of the swirling impressions in my mind: fresh-cut grass, flying red, heat of a body pressed against my back like another explosion. "What happened?"
Bayle brushed gravel off her jeans, gasping. "Uh, hello! That thing I was trying to warn you about!"
"God almighty, you ladies all right?" the truck driver shouted at us, drawing more attention from the bystanders.
"Don't worry about it! We're okay!" Bayle shouted back, and I grabbed her shoulder.
"Come on, let's get out of here, let's go."
The scent of roses folded me in, and I breathed deeply, feeling a faint smile spread across my face. I'd been listening suspiciously to Bayle's patter, wondering how this little grifter and her big innocent eyes had managed to suck me in. But she'd knocked me out of that weird trance, that zone, so I owed it to her to at least listen. Then she'd told me to smell the roses, and despite my doubts, it was working. Some guys came up to chat with Bayle, but I ignored them. It was working! Hell, I could almost tell the kinds of roses from each other--
"Hey, hey!" Bayle's elbow dug into my side, her bracelets jangling as she called my attention back. "Those guys, over there-- see if you can hear what they're saying about me."
"What?!"
She grinned up at me. "Come on!"
"You gotta be kidding me," I muttered, but I looked over, and it was like I could send my hearing out, across to them, and I was almost getting it...
"--not dating coeds, Eric--"
"Hey, lay off. Bayle's a TA, I'm clean."
"Her? No way."
"Way, man. Anthropology. She writes these friggin' brilliant papers on tribal structures and stuff."
"Not just a pretty face, huh?"
A short, thoroughly masculine snicker. "Who's looking at her face?"
"Dude. You're such a sleaze--"
"Well? What are they saying?" Bayle's voice rang in my ear and I jerked back, unsettled by her sudden nearness. This focusing thing could be fucking dangerous. Forget runaway garbage trucks, if anyone had wanted to sidle up and stick a knife in my guts while I was running surveillance on Rainier's most eligible bachelors, they could have done it easy as pie.
Still. I got a little tingle in my palms just thinking about how useful it could be to eavesdrop on any scumbag I wanted to. Of course, the catch was, I had to have someone to watch my back.
This partner thing might be something to think about.
Meanwhile, Bayle invaded my personal space and gave me the big eyes again, which just made me want to smack her. There was no reason anyone over six years old had to be that cute. "He says you're smart," I said. "More smart than pretty."
"Oh." she said. Sorry, sweetheart; life's a bitch and so am I. Besides, she probably had guys falling all over each other to tell her she was pretty. One little swipe wasn't going to take the bounce out of her for long.
And it didn't, and the afternoon flew by. Bayle chirped and rambled and gestured and told stories and took notes, leading me all around the marketplace. Around six, I got a call on my cellphone. It was Maureen Friedlander, Taggart's second-in-command on the bomb squad. There'd been another explosion, and apparently the Switchman's setups were getting trickier. A couple of people had been seriously injured, but Maureen couldn't tell me if Carl had been at the scene or not. I warred with myself for a moment, then finally decided I felt good enough to head back to the station and look for him.
Bayle only reluctantly turned me loose. "You still have my card, right?" she shouted after me as I walked away, and I waved without looking back. "Come on! Call me, okay! There's so much more I can do to help you!"
Well, it was thanks to her that I felt confident enough to be back on the case.
What the hell.
I went back to the warehouse, prepared to pull an all-nighter. First thing I did was light some scented candles: cinnamon and cardamom for inspiration, jasmine with lemon oil for clarity. Then I changed my mind, blew them all out and lit some sandalwood incense instead. Tranquility was really what I needed. I'd been hoping this would happen for years, but I'd never expected to find a Sentinel right here in Cascade! I was totally jazzed, but it took me till almost one in the morning just to get my notes and source materials in one place. At that point I figured sleep was a better investment than actually trying to, like, organize anything...
It was good that I got some rest, because Jen actually called me the next morning at seven. I had twenty minutes to find someone else to take my classes, and then I met Jen in town and we headed out to an old lumber mill outside Auburn. Apparently she'd been on stakeout there when things started getting weird.
I inhaled deeply, turning away from the gutted mill and staring out into the forest. It was so fitting. The Pacific Northwest's old-growth forest was one of the few remaining truly mythical American landscapes, and now it was the birthplace of the modern Sentinel. Beautiful.
And Ellison. Wow. I'd known her for about half a day, and I just loved her already. She was so neat. I wanted to take her home and stare at her instead of the TV. She reminded me of some moon goddess, one of those harsh huntress incarnations. Diana, Athena, and Jennifer. I bounced a little on my toes, breathing in the fresh forest air. To me it smelled like pine and smoke and rain, but to her it must be totally different...
I heard a noise and looked back, thrilling as Jen came into sight, clambering under a fallen rafter. A ragged smear of ash was smudged across her cheek, a frustrated snarl escaped her, and she hurled a piece of metal debris at another pile of debris. And then kicked it. "Nuts!"
Okay, well, maybe not one of the classic goddesses.
"I don't know what the hell I expected to find here," she growled, and I wiped the grin off my face and headed over, trying to look helpful.
"Come on, man. Yesterday you think you're going crazy and today you're complaining because you can't make it work?"
"Damn right I'm complaining--" she began, and then jerked her head to the side, staring up over my head.
I tried to follow her line of sight but didn't see anything, not even a speck of movement. "What? What is it?"
"Shush!" She waved me off, taking a few steps away towards the woods. I followed, trying to step lightly, and then she turned to me, almost smiling.
"How good are you at climbing trees?"
I had a gut feeling it wasn't a purely academic question.
I pointed Bayle to the tree, and she clapped her hands together and took a deep breath before looking back at me, over her shoulder. "Hey, why me, anyway?"
Raising an eyebrow, I looked at her, and then I looked at me. I was wearing pressed slacks, a tailored cotton blouse and a battered suede jacket. Professor Hippie was wearing ripped jeans-- not designer ripped jeans, actually ripped jeans-- an oversized gray men's overcoat, and an unraveling knit tank top striped with awful colors that were starting to give me a headache.
Following my eyes, she looked down at herself, then at me. With a sigh that was more resigned than sulky, she shucked her coat and tossed it to me, spitting on her hands and rubbing them together before taking on the tree. Well, hell. There'd been people, over the years, who were actually under my command that didn't take orders half as well as Bayle Sandburg.
Good for her.
Now that I was holding Bayle's coat, her shoulders and arms were bare, and I could see the straps of her bra digging into her skin as she climbed. Red. Who wore a red silk bra under a ratty knit tank top to an arson site?
I guess my own personal Margaret Mead did. Well, whatever floated her boat. "It's right there..." I raised my voice, trying to direct her, "right there in the crook of the limb. Yeah, you got it."
"Man, I am not in the mood to have some pissed-off mama magpie trying make a nest out of my hair... Okay, I got it. Heads up!" She tossed the nest down to me and slid down out of the tree as easily as she'd clambered into it.
There was a scrap of navy blue fabric in the nest, which I picked out and rubbed between my fingers thoughtfully. Moving on pure instinct, I put it to my face and inhaled deeply, trying to get a fix on something, anything concrete.
I stood next to Jen, trying to keep quiet, to let her work. "Well?" I finally said. "Come on, whatcha got?"
"Lots of different... Different things. Rich chocolate. And coffee." She pressed it to her nose and sniffed it again, then raised her head and sniffed the air. "Flowers... but not from here. Like exotic plants." Delicately, she stuck her tongue out and dabbed the scrap of fabric against it, looking half-embarrassed, half-thoughtful as she mulled the taste in her mouth. "Lemon chicken sauce. And water... water from the river."
"Chocolate, coffee, exotic plants, lemon chicken sauce, and water from the river," I echoed, waiting for Jen to make that all-important deductive leap that would solve the crime.
She stared at me. "Yeah."
Oh, boy.
As we drove back into town, Jen insisted that we should take the scrap of fabric to the forensics labs at the police station. But I was convinced we could put together the clues if she'd only concentrate a little more.
"Exotic plants, river water, chocolate, Chinese food, and coffee. Exotic plants, river water, chocolate, Chinese food, and coffee," I said under my breath, sitting next to Jen in the passenger seat of her Jeep. After about a minute of that she jerked her head around, probably to tell me to stop repeating myself or shut up, so I just shrugged and muttered, "That's like a, an aromatic tour of Cascade."
After a minute of silence I glanced up at her. She was still staring at me, with only occasional glances at the road. "What'd you say?"
"What?" I said nervously.
"What you just said! Say it again."
I blinked. "I said it was like a tour of Cascade. Like all the stuff the tourists come to see. You know, exotic plants would be Beacon Park, and the shopping mall down by the waterfront, that'd be your river water, and ya gotta hit Chinatown and the Keiser chocolate factory--"
"And a stop someplace with good coffee. Shit!" she said, sucking in a breath. "The city bus tours, they've got a tie-in with Java Junkies-- that's always their last stop!"
My eyes went wide, and I leaned forward, clutching Jen's arm. "Those guys, the tour guides? They wear blue blazers just like that scrap of cloth!"
A steely smile spread across Jen's face and she put the pedal to the medal, knocking me back into my seat again. Oh, yeah, I thought, hastily fastening my seatbelt. The Sentinel was on the prowl now.
"Ronald Sarris," I said grimly, handing Simon the record I'd just printed out from my desk computer. "His mother was with me in the Peace Corps... on my last assignment." He glanced up at me, startled, and I nodded grimly. "Amanda Sarris. She died in the crash."
"So her kid blames you, and blows the hell out of Cascade just to make you look bad?" Simon said, raising an incredulous eyebrow.
"Ronnie had demolition experience in the Navy and was discharged due to mental instability." I said, drawing Simon's attention to the printout again. "He left Washington State Psychiatric Hospital eight months ago and he's employed now as a tour guide. I've got an address, Simon."
"And what am I supposed to do?" he asked. "Give you a warrant? On the basis of something you smelled on a piece of cloth you pulled out of a bird's nest?!"
"Well..."
Needless to say. No luck.
Bayle was waiting for me outside the station. She raised her eyebrows; I shook my head and pulled out my cellphone.
"Um, okay, so what now?"
"I'm gonna do some sightseeing." I said. "Hello, Cascade Bus Tours? I need to locate one of your tour guides. Yeah. Ronnie Sarris."
Albert Einstein once said that imagination was more important than knowledge. Well, good old Albert never had Jen Ellison tell him to stay with the car while she went up to the top of Cascade Panorama Tower to chase a terrorist, or he might have changed his mind. Me, personally? I was wishing like hell that I knew what was going on up there, 'cause my imagination was running all over the place. Jen had told me to stay down here, she'd even given me her cellphone. I checked my watch again. Eight minutes, twenty seconds till I could call 911.
Nineteen seconds. Eighteen seconds. And then I did know what was happening at the top the tower.
Jen was up there. But she wasn't finding Ronald Sarris. Because Ronnie was down here with me.
Pulling the crumpled printout from my pocket, I compared it to the young man waving people onto the bus that had just pulled up to the curb in front of Jen's jeep. It was him, all right, the same short guy with wavy reddish hair and freckles across his nose. He didn't look like a mad bomber, and I had a sudden moment of doubt. What if Jen was wrong and this wasn't the guy at all? But no. The scrap of fabric had pointed us to the bus tours, and it couldn't be a coincidence that this guy had such a personal connection to Jen. His bus was filling up fast, and Jen still wasn't down yet. God, how long did it take to totally not find someone?
For some reason Ronnie didn't spot me as I sidled around and snuck on board the bus. Well, what did he care about his job? He was probably planning to blow something up right now, something big... but who knew what it could be?
I sat and smiled nervously at the other passengers who slowly but steadily filled up the rest of the bus. Retired couples on vacation, local families with kids... and the Switchman, standing up in front of us and welcoming us to Harbor Tours' special family day package. Where the hell was Jen?
Finally the driver started the bus. The engine roared to life noisily, making me jump, and we pulled away from the curb with a lurch. I tapped my foot against the floor, trying not to be too obviously jittery, trying not to stare too desperately at Panorama Tower as we eased into traffic. Oh, god, what if Jen had zoned up there? I knew I should have gone with her...
We drove through the park blocks and then along the waterfront for a while. The bus was filled with chattering and laughter. I was the only one who knew what was going on, but what could I do? Fake being sick and get the driver to pull the bus over? Okay, but what then? What if Ronnie wouldn't let him? What if-- oh god. Oh no. I leaned slightly to the left, trying to see around the couple in front of me. Ronnie was whispering to the driver, his right arm held awkwardly in front of him. The bus lurched suddenly, something thumped on the roof, and Ronnie swayed. Oh god, he did have a gun-- which he immediately turned and revealed to the crowd of passengers.
He waved the gun back and forth, aiming it indiscriminately at adults, children, anyone. "No one move!"
People began to whimper. I slid slowly down in my seat. Distantly I heard Ronnie and the driver yelling at each other a little more, and then the bus lurched and slammed upwards. We were going up the onramp to the Green Street Bridge, which I had heard was closed to traffic. I peeked my head up for a second-- oh, yikes, I was right. I clutched the back of my seat as we bashed through the barriers and came to a slow stop in the middle of the bridge.
I clung to the top of the bus desperately, squinting against the wind. Amazingly, I hadn't knocked myself out or broken anything pulling that stupid-ass stunt. And, even more luckily, the bus got to the middle of the Green Street bridge and began to slow to a stop. I took a gasping breath, and my hearing went suddenly up, slamming into my head. I peeled my hands off the bus and pressed them over my ears, blocking some of the voices from inside the bus. I tried to breathe, wishing I'd paid more attention to Bayle back at the market. I could hear the people inside whispering to each other, I could hear footsteps from inside the bus--
And I could hear Bayle. Son of a bitch. Bayle was on the bus.
"...an emergency," she whispered, "I need to speak to Captain Banks. I'm on the Green Street Bridge with the Switchman."
And I heard her gasp. And then a second voice, low and deadly calm, rose above the other passengers' terrified noise. "This is the Switchman..."
Already moving towards the back of the bus, I reached behind me, under my jacket, and pulled my piece from its holster. My heart was pounding, but the nagging headache that I'd had all day long was suddenly gone.
"You're not listening," Ronnie said, and he turned away from me, almost casually. "I want the one that couldn't catch me. I want to talk to Detective Ellison."
With an effort, I breathed again, tasting bile. All Ronnie's attention was with the police dispatcher on the other end of the line, but the silver gun was still clutched in an almost white-knuckled hand. He'd pressed that gun to my chest gently, his eyes like glass, like he completely didn't care if I lived or died. I wasn't a cop, I wasn't trained for stuff like this. Where the hell were the cops, anyway? Where the hell was--
A spray of glass shattering inwards caused passengers in the back of the bus to duck and cover as Jen crashed through the back window. Falling, she tucked her legs underneath her and rolled to her feet with the surefootedness of some sleek jungle beast. Her gun was clutched in her hand, and fire burned in her eyes, locked precisely as a laser beam on Ronnie.
"First the gun!" she roared, and her voice sent shivers down my spine, startling me out of my frozen shock. Feeling around under my seat for my backpack, I groped for my camera, hurriedly flicking the lens cap off. "Put it down."
"No," Ronnie said, and his eyes were just like his mother's: pale green and full of pain. I gritted my teeth, overcome by a sudden rush of sensation. It was memories overwhelming me this time, not my senses, but it was no less disorienting for that. Fire crackling, the scent of gasoline and blood--
"Remember my message?" Ronnie said. His voice was shaking slightly. "End of the line, Detective. I want to die."
"And I want an arrest," I said. In that moment, it all came together. My hearing seemed to dip inaudibly, and in that half-second of utter stillness, my eyesight zoomed in. I remained undizzied, though, and shooting the gun out of Ronnie's hand was easier than hitting the broad side of a barn. I knew it was a clean shot, and was moving ahead almost before he'd dropped it, taking him down with a right to the jaw.
There was a whirring noise behind me. I spun to see Bayle, with that stupid video camera perched on her shoulder, waving at me.
"What the hell are you...? Put that down!" I shouted at her, then turned back to Ronnie, crouching over him. "Where's the bomb? Ronnie, talk to me!"
He began to shiver, a glaze of pain marring the wild joy in his eyes. "You let her die," he said. "You let them all die!"
"No," I said hoarsely. "Your mother was my friend. I tried to save her life. Ronnie, please."
"Tick, tick," said Ronnie. "Time's up."
I turned to Bayle. "Help me look for it--"
"Don't look!" she said urgently, catching my arm. Her eyes were a steady, hypnotic blue. "Listen."
I pressed my gun into her hands, then looked up just in time to stop the driver from opening the door of the bus. "Don't touch that-- it could be wired!" I warned him, then turned to stare down the aisle of the bus.
This was crazy. I couldn't hear a bomb like that even without all this pandemonium, people shouting and praying, the shrill shrieks of terrified children ricocheting around inside the tiny enclosed space. But I couldn't pay attention to any of that. I had to focus. I held the sound of the timer in my head, focused in on it desperately. And then, slowly, as though I were sinking into deep water, falling away from the world, all the noise began to fade away.
I could hear the beating of my own heart, and I could hear the ticking of the timer attached to Ronnie's bomb. Drawn to it, unable to move more quickly for fear I'd lose it, I moved slowly towards the back of the bus. Mouths opened and closed mutely in my peripheral vision. Glass crunched silently beneath my feet.
I reached down for it as the digital timer ticked down. The clamor of the bus rushed back, time seeming to resume its normal speed. I drew my arm back and chucked the compact package as far as I could out the broken back window of the bus.
"Everybody get down!" I shouted, hearing the bomb bounce on the surface of the bridge. Hearing, impossibly, the faint click as the detonator tripped...
"Good work, Jen," Simon said, patting me on the back. "I've been worried about you the past few days. Glad you finally came to your senses."
I raised an eyebrow to stare after him as he walked off, chuckling. Funny, Captain. Very funny. He wouldn't be laughing if he knew the whole story.
Then again, I was in no huge rush to tell him that story.
"So," Carl said, and I winced, already uncomfortable. This was the part of being divorced that I hated, the part that didn't get any easier no matter how many months went by: the complex calculations of neutrality. How many minutes did we have to stay in the same room before one of us could leave-- without making the reason for leaving obvious? How many extraneous words did there have to be in any given conversation? How much small talk would it take to create the illusion that everything was all right?
"Do you want to have dinner tonight?"
"What?"
"What you said yesterday," Carl said, staring out over the water. "It made me think. We really don't talk any more, do we." He shrugged. "I miss that, Jenny."
His face was open, warm and friendly. "Well," I said. "Okay."
"Great. What time's good for you?" He checked his wrist, then frowned. "Damn watch fell off again." He started patting down the pockets of his overcoat, and I smiled, remembering that utterly tacky timepiece. Carl's dad had gotten it from his pals when he'd retired from the force, and I'd used to joke with Carl that his father had encouraged him to go into law enforcement just so he'd have someone to pass it on to. The watchband was loose, and it had always had a funny tick. Only sentimental value kept it on Carl's wrist, and not even that most of the time.
"It's on the rear floorboard of your car." I said suddenly.
He looked at me, then back at his car, parked at the edge of the bridge. "How could you..."
"I'll meet you at the Szechuan Golden Dragon at eight," I said, and walked off, smiling. She shoots, she scores.
I tracked down Bayle and found her getting her wrist wrapped up in the back of an ambulance. Apparently Sarris had tried pretty hard to twist the gun out of her hands before she'd kneed him in the balls. I still couldn't believe I'd missed that.
But Bayle was fine, ignoring the paramedic working on her in favor of giving Joel Taggart a hard time about her videotape. "It's just that there's some really special footage in there--"
"Hey, what was it, Spielberg?" I interrupted dryly, and Bayle's face lit up. "Relax, you'll get your tape back."
"Ha ha, funny, Jen," she said. "Did anyone ever tell you you're a laugh riot? 'Cause they lied."
Joel glanced from me to Bayle and back. "You two know each other?"
"Sure I do," I said, turning away. Glancing back over my shoulder, I added, "She's my new partner."
"Partner?" I heard Bayle gasp, and then she scooped up her backpack and came dashing after me as I walked away. "Hey! Hey, are you serious?"
"Sure," I said, watching her push an unruly mass of curls out of her face. "Every, uh, what's it called, Sentinel needs a partner. That what the book says, isn't it?"
"Oh, wow," she said softly. "Excellent. You know, I thought this was gonna be a thesis paper. But I think we're talking best seller here. Maybe a movie--"
"Hey, hey, hey!" I turned and caught her shoulders. Her amber-bead earrings swung wildly, and her curls shivered and twitched in the breeze; the fritzy energy of it almost hurt my eyes. "Slow down a minute, Jane Goodall. You're not publishing anything just yet."
She gave me the big eyes. A silent-film starlet couldn't have done a better 'Who, me?' face. "Why not?"
"Because! I don't want every lowlife in town knowing I've got an edge," I told her. "Especially one I can barely control. We'll just keep this between us, you got it?"
"Sure we will. Definitely," Bayle assured me. "Oh, hey, who was that guy you were talking to? With the beard? He was cute."
Jen just gave me this look-- kind of horrified, and kind of like the look I try not to give to really dim students. She walked off, and I followed her down past the ambulances and crowds of onlookers the base of the bridge. Wandering out onto the sidewalk, she stood still, quivering a little, like a pointer. She pursed her lips and sniffed the air a few times. "I'm hungry. You hungry, Doc?"
"Me?" I suddenly realized that I was starving. "Yeah, I could eat."
"The tour didn't get to its last stop," she said thoughtfully. "You want to hit Java Junkies?"
"Uh, I think I'm already wired enough," I said with a nervous giggle. I was pretty sure I was visibly vibrating. Well, it was either me or the world. With an effort, I tried to focus. Jen was getting that faraway look again, that Sentinel At Work look. "What? What is it? Are you sensing something, what--"
"Hot dogs," she announced greedily, and strode away.
And the intrepid anthropologist followed, observing as the modern-day Sentinel hunted down and provided sustenance for the tribe. Okay, so it was basically a tribe of her and me, but Jen actually ponied up for my dog too, waving off the couple of bucks I managed to dig out of my backpack.
We ate as we walked away from the waterfront, up through town for a few blocks. But after the first few bites, I couldn't finish. Maybe it was the shock catching up with me, the shakes beginning to set in, the realization that hey, I could've just died.
Jen glanced over at me suddenly, like she could sense my inner tension. "Hey..." she said softly, then jerked her head towards my hot dog. "You gonna eat that?"
"Uh. No. You go ahead." I handed it to Jen, and she wolfed it down in a few bites as we walked. I had no idea how she could stay so fit if she ate like that all the time. Sentinel metabolism? Or maybe she just spent a lot of time in the gym.
"Thanks," she muttered, her mouth half full. I couldn't look. It wasn't unattractive, just not entirely appetizing. I mean, if I were the one with super-active taste buds? Chili dogs off a cart on the pier might not be my first choice. I'm just saying. Jen, on the other hand, actually licked her fingers when she was done, then glared at me. "What?"
"Nothing!" I said. "So, um, I'm your partner. How's that going to work?"
She smiled. I hadn't quite learned to fear that yet. "Well, first you'll have to go through the Academy, get your badge, just like every other cadet..." She broke up snickering at the look on my face. "Oh, jesus, Sandburg, I'm just kidding."
"You really aren't funny," I told her.
"Yeah, yeah. We might be able to get you in as an observer, actually. Reporters do that sometimes, you know, writers." Jen swiped a crumb away from her mouth, then glanced at me. "You could say you're studying the police, right?"
"Oh. Yeah," I said, startled. It was a good idea. I was just surprised I hadn't thought of it first. "Cops are a prime example of a modern microculture. Your basic tight-knit, insular community with strict behavioral codes, it's actually... What?"
She blinked down at me, bemusedly. "Just tell me-- will it fly?"
"Like a bird, man!" I replied. "Actually, my advisor will love it. Urban anthropology is very hip right now."
"Good." she said, turning into the doorway of a small apartment building. "You need a ride somewhere?"
"What?" I said, and Jen nodded upward.
"This is my place. You could call a cab if you wanted to."
"Oh, yeah. They towed the Jeep, didn't they?" I ducked my head. "Sorry about that."
She just shrugged, pushing the doorway open. "It's not mine, it belongs to the motor pool. They'll figure that out when it gets to the yards." She squinted back at me. "Well, come on if you're coming."
"Okay." I grinned. Cool. A foray into the Sentinel's home turf. Too bad that big guy took the tape out of my camera. "Hey," I said, following Jen, "when do you think I'll get my tape back?"
She shrugged as we got into the elevator. "We might want to keep the original for a while, but I can get you a copy any time." She slanted a dark look at me. "If you do get a ride-along pass, the camera stays at home, Sandburg, you got that?"
"Sure, sure," I said agreeably, and Jen led the way into her loft apartment. It was neat, and spare, and looked exactly like what it was: converted industrial space. Hardly any extras-- no pictures on the walls, no rugs, one kind of weak-looking plant in the corner. From just inside the door, I could see about five or six serious violations of basic feng shui principles. Dad would go nuts. "Nice place." I said politely. "Lots of space."
"Yeah, the interior decorator was really thrilled with the way it turned out." Jen said, shrugging off her leather jacket and draping it across the back of a chair. She flicked her eyes at me expectantly, and I followed her lead. Wouldn't want to look like I was rejecting her hospitality or anything. "Phone's over there," she said, then blocked me with her arm. "You're not in a rush, are you?"
"Well, no," I said.
"Okay then," she said, and seemed to relax a little. "Hang out a while. You thirsty? Want a beer or something?"
"Do you have Snapple?" I asked, and she did it again, gave me the 'Just admit it, you're a space alien' look. "Okay, beer's fine!" I said, and watched as she headed for the fridge. Jeez. I had kind of figured Jen's big butch manners were some kind of put-on, just something she did in order to be accepted into a traditionally masculine subculture. I mean she had to let her hair down sometime, right? But now I was thinking, maybe it was just her usual way. She didn't hide her strength, or her strong emotions. She used them, like tools. Like weapons. Was that a Sentinel attribute, or just a Jennifer Ellison thing?
The beers Jen pulled out of the fridge were actually in bottles, and actually from a pretty good local microbrewery. She set one down on the counter, then twisted the top off another one and handed it to me, going right and then switching so I could grab it in the hand that wasn't bandaged up. "Thanks," I said. "So how long have you had this place?"
"About four years," she said, taking a long pull. "God that tastes good!"
I looked around, a little more startled by the length of time that this place had been her home. It looked so bare, so impersonal. I supposed a Sentinel, even an offline one, would be more comfortable in a minimalist environment, but still.
"After I got divorced I did some housecleaning. Then some stuff came up," Jen said, frowning slightly. I nodded, and then it clicked and I tried really hard not to gape. Yeah, stuff had come up. Like going undercover with the local homegrown fascists and getting shot twice in the chest. "I never brought a lot of stuff back up from the basement," she said, then shrugged and looked away, out the balcony windows.
God, she was so alone. Suddenly my throat hurt, and then I realized-- that's what this whole Officer Friendly thing was about. Buying me lunch, offering me a beer, asking me to hang out. Today had been pretty freaky for me, but I could see now that it had unsettled Jen, too. In a major way. She was all about being in command-- of herself, of other people, of The Situation. But now she had this new variable, this weird ability that was probably going to disrupt her life in a big way, and she didn't have anyone else to tell. I was the only one she could talk to, and once I took off, she'd be alone again.
I took a deep breath and a thoughtful drink. I was Jen's partner, right? I was the expert, the one she was depending on. And even I didn't know how long it would be until she could really control her senses. Then again, total control wasn't really the issue. What mattered was Jen's need to feel in control.
"Hey," I asked, "you mind if we try something?"
"Like what?" She squinted at me.
"I was just thinking," I said, "it might be helpful if we tried to um, familiarize you with the limits of some of your senses. Like your hearing. Today, on the bus, you could hear the bomb almost right away, right?"
"Yeah," Jen said, "once I started listening for it." She looked at me and smiled. "That was a good suggestion, by the way."
"Right, well," I said, waving that away. And maybe blushing. Just a little. "My point is, you focused in on that one specific sound, despite all the noise and confusion. Which is just... incredible," I said, getting distracted for a moment, "I mean, really. Totally phenomenal job of filtering. But what I'm thinking is, you can do better."
Jen raised her eyebrows, and I could see she was intrigued despite herself. "Okay, doc," she said, setting down her beer on the kitchen counter and crossing her arms over her chest. "Tell me. How do I do better?"
"Well, you could hear the timer, right? But you couldn't find it right away," I explained, gesturing with my ace-bandaged hand. "What I'm thinking is, once you're familiar with your range of hearing, you won't have to do that. You'll be able to automatically judge the approximate distance of sounds."
"Like sonar," she said skeptically.
"Yeah, exactly like sonar! Bats do it naturally with brains this big." I switched my beer bottle to my bandaged hand and held up my thumb and forefinger.
Jen gave me a minor-league version of the space alien look, and I realized, too late, that maybe that wasn't exactly the most flattering analogy. She uncrossed her arms, stepping away from the counter and swinging her arms a little. "Well, I'm not a bat. So how do I do it?"
"Awesome. Cool." I said, and held up my hands, thinking for a moment. "All right. Let's start slow, here. What I want you to do now," I said, grabbing her wrist and pulling her into the living room, "is not use your senses. Switch 'em all off, radar down, y'know?"
She stopped next to the couch and stared off into space. After a second, I saw her wince slightly. "I don't think I can," she said finally. "Ever since I got off the bus, everything's brighter. And louder. I can't..."
"Well, you should have said so," I said, shaking my head. "I mean, you gotta let me know these things. That's what I'm here for."
"Most of the time I'm not in control here," she said, frustrated. "I don't even mean to use them, it just happens."
"Well, you're pretty stressed," I said. "Adrenaline, you know? Everybody gets amped when they're in danger. For you, it's probably hard-wired that the senses get cranked all the way up when you need them most."
"Then how do I turn them off?" Jen demanded.
"You have to relax. Let your body know the emergency's over. Come over here," I said, and pushed her down the couch. "Here, take off your shoes." She raised an eyebrow, but I didn't even give her a chance. "I'm serious. Kick your shoes off, then pull your feet up. Sit like this."
I dropped down and settled into the lotus position on the floor at her feet, hands on my knees, palms up. Demonstrating, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
"Fine," she muttered, leaned forward with a sigh and started to unlace her boots.
Smiling encouragingly, I scrambled to my feet again, patted her shoulder, and crossed behind the couch. Kicking off her boots, Jen tucked her legs up underneath her. I noticed she had a little trouble with her right leg, rubbing her knee for a second before resting her hand there.
"Comfortable?" I prodded.
She shrugged, and I studied the back of her neck.
"Great. Now, I want you to breathe deeply and slowly." I waited, taking a few moments to slow my own breathing, then reached out and put my hands on her shoulders. She didn't flinch or startle, but she was incredibly tense. Carefully, I searched out the relevant pressure point at the base of her neck, and applied some gentle force with my non-sprained hand. Jen's head tipped forward slightly, and I could almost feel the tension draining out of her.
I started rubbing my thumbs in little circles, and lowered my voice, consciously trying to make it smoother, softer. "Just let everything go. All you gotta do is breathe." I stopped for a moment, looking over Jen's shoulder at her stereo. "Hey," I said, "do you have any music or anything that you listen to, you know, to relax? Maybe some candles?"
"What is this, science or a seduction?" she muttered, then twitched under my hands. The back of her neck actually got a little pink-- it was cute.
"What?" I said, taking my hands off her shoulders. Then I laughed. "Hey, come on. As a frat boy once said to me... actually, as a lot of frat boys once said to me," I said, and lowered my voice again, "relax, baby. I just wanna make you feel good."
Just the right touch. She snorted with laughter. "Whatever you say, Doc."
I put her hands back on her shoulders, rubbing a little harder this time. "Let's try some positive imagery. What do you do to relax?"
"I don't know. The usual stuff... just hang out, I guess." she said, a little muzzily. Chalk another victim up to Bayle's magic hands.
"C'mon, seriously," I insisted. "What do you do when you just want to be totally zen?"
"Used to be a pretty decent surfer," Jen muttered. "Don't get much of a chance any more."
"Hey, surfing's cool." I said, pleased. "Okay. Now close your eyes, and just... imagine. You're at your favorite beach. It's a great day, totally quiet. The sun is shining on your face, and it's warm, relaxing." I said, my voice getting softer and lower. "The beach is totally empty, there's just you. The only thing you can hear is the ocean, and--"
She leaned forward suddenly, away from my hands, breathing speeding up, getting rougher. "That's not relaxing," she choked, and I came around the couch to see her eyes wide in shock and her face flushed. Her fists were clenched in the couch cushions as if for dear life.
"Oh my gosh. It's okay," I said hurriedly, "it's okay." Kneeling in front of the couch, I started running my hands over her arms, trying simultaneously to calm her down and figure out what the heck I'd done to get this reaction. Her breathing quickened again, and I looked up into her eyes. She shuddered once, and her face dipped towards mine. And then she kissed me.
Bayle's hands quivered as they moved over my shoulders. I could feel the soothing warmth of her skin through my shirt as though I were wearing nothing at all, and then my senses seemed to amp up even further with a throb that ran though my entire body. I had been aware of myself, my body, in a weird way all day. The Jeep's leather seats, my blouse against my skin, even the slick glide of a beer bottle against my lips-- they weren't necessarily erotic sensations, just more intense. Just more. And Bayle's soft touches killed me; it was like being tickled and getting a slow, heated massage at the same time.
She was so close, so warm. I could have taken her pulse with six inches of air between us. She knelt in front of me, lips moving, and I could track the subtlest waves of heat rushing under the surface of her skin as her heart beat. Her body's tides beat against my skin. Hot. Demanding. Pulse, impulse.
Seduced by nothing more elaborate than a backrub and the sweet melange of sandalwood and sweat in the air... I lost myself. I couldn't not kiss her. Her faintly glossy lips tasted of strawberries and the bitter tang of beer, and I knew in my bones that one chaste kiss wasn't going to be enough, couldn't be enough.
Jen pulled back and stared down into my eyes. Her pupils were startlingly wide. The round black pools edged with icy blue gave her a dazed, almost drugged look.
"Can I...?" she whispered, reaching up to touch my cheek, and I laughed disbelievingly, nuzzling at her palm. She'd saved my life, saved a busload of people from being blown into hamburger, and she was asking could she? She could do anything she fucking wanted.
She shuddered, closing her eyes, and traced my face with a strong, callused hand. Her skin smelled sharply of gunpowder, and then she was sliding off the couch, her knee slipping between my thighs. Strong hands closed on my shoulders, gathering me close. "Oh god," she breathed, "I can't believe how this feels."
"Oh, yeah," I said dizzily. Working with my good hand, I unbuttoned the first button of her blouse and pushed it to the side. I lowered my head to kiss her throat, but she moaned as I breathed softly on her skin, and pushed my head back to take my mouth again. I didn't mind. She was an utterly fantastic kisser. It was like drowning in warm honey. Slow, soft, irresistible. Her strong hands slid up and down my back, stroking gently through my hair, mapping every inch of me.
"So good," she murmured as we kissed, and there was no more shock in her voice, just pure desire. Bringing my hands up, I cupped her breasts boldly, squeezing just a little. Jen's reaction was instant, violent, and for a moment I thought I'd hurt her-- she arched her back, knees clamping shut around my thigh. Her whole body shuddered, her mouth closing with a snap to bite back a shriek. Her hands tightened around my upper arms, and I couldn't suppress a grunt of pain.
"Ow," Bayle said, and I came back to myself, shuddering and sweaty and wet. I pushed myself away from her, hit the couch and stopped.
"Wow. That was. Wow. Did you just--?" She sounded amused, impressed even.
Already flushed, I cringed inwardly. I was still trying to catch my breath, trying to catch myself. My jaw was sore and my throat hurt. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to--"
"What?" she said, pushing her hair back behind her ears, and then she finally picked up on the shock on my face. "Oh. Hey. Haven't you done this before?"
She sounded surprised... very surprised, and my first reaction was to be offended. A female cop, especially one that looks like I do-- well, most people just assume. And most people can just stay the hell out my personal life, thank you very much. But Bayle wasn't one of those people who just assumed I was a lesbian because of my haircut or my job. No, she was probably thinking I was a lesbian based on the fact that I'd just stuck my tongue down her throat.
"Well, no..." I inhaled deeply. My clit was throbbing against her thigh, and everything about her smelled so good: the heat from her skin, the sweat between her breasts. "I haven't. Have you?"
"I don't know," she said, and lifted her hand to stroke my jaw. "Do threesomes count?"
I winced and pushed her down on her back. Her hair spread out around her face like an explosion. She laughed, delighted, as I positioned myself between her knees and grabbed a fistful of that ugly striped tank top. It was just as disagreeable to the touch as it was to the eye: itchy and knotted.
"'Cause, see, we were all a little... whoo!" Bayle said as I pulled it up over her breasts, exposing that red bra again. "Drunk. Not a lot, just a little. So I thought, okay, fun, but not really necessitating a major re-examination of my sexual self-identity." She lifted her legs and wrapped them around my waist, crossing her ankles above the small of my back. Then, pushing herself up on an elbow, she wriggled out her tank top the rest of the way, one-handed.
I watched her contortions, entranced, then lowered my head to inhale the clean scent of her sweat. "Which is like," she continued breathlessly, "a problematic concept for me anyway. Can you really separate your sexual self from your, like, intellectual self or, I don't know, soul? Spirit? Whatever you want to call it?" Her breasts, slightly more generous than mine, heaved as she spoke. "I'm an adventurous person. I like discovery. That applies to all of me. Intellectual me, sexual me, spiritual me."
"Shut up," I breathed into her ear, and we were done with words.
I was totally relaxed, floating in a candy-colored afterglow, and she was different now, wordless, utterly open to me. I was sensing her, sizing her up, not as a potential ally or threat, but as an object of desire. Making love to a woman wasn't something I'd ever thought about, not really, but Bayle was beautiful, I couldn't have denied that to save my life: slightly tanned, gently curved, pliant and warm.
Not to mention I owed her one already.
A good one.
Feeling magnanimous, feeling triumphant, what the hell, I thought, and unsnapped her bra in front. Her breasts were tawny but perfect as pearls. My searching fingertips demanded more sensation, more heat, more everything, and Bayle sighed as I cupped her breasts in my hands. Her nipples were the color of caramel, small and neat and hard against my palms. God, I could almost feel her ache.
The heat trapped between us made sweat glitter on her belly, on her body. Her head twitched and her curls twisted like snakes as I bit her nipples gently. She was making quiet, needy sounds in the back of her throat. I wondered if she even knew she was doing it.
Moving my hands to the button at her fly, I flicked it open. I didn't even have time to be startled at my own boldness before she stopped my hands and sat up. For a moment I was afraid I'd gone too far, but she just laughed. "Hey, I'm having all the fun."
She shook her ace-bandaged hand out, wincing a little, then started to unbutton my shirt. This time I moved away. "Wait," I said, catching her wrists, and she paused, curls dangling over her shoulders like creepers. "I don't, um..."
"Hey, how shallow do you think I am?!" she said.
I gaped at her, then turned my head away, jaw tight. Of course she knew I'd been shot. After all, she'd known about Peru, which meant she probably knew everything else about me that had ever made it into the news. "It's not about you," I said. "I'm just not--" Comfortable, I meant to say, but she interrupted.
"Screw you, it's not about me." Her cool hands turned my hot face back up, to look into my eyes. "What's my last name?" she demanded, and shook her head at my look of incomprehension. "Look, you're a cop, not fucking Kate Moss. Take your shirt off."
I looked at her, and she blushed a little, turning her head.
"I'm sorry. I get a little. Aggressive. When I'm horny," she muttered. "Now, that's something that's really unattractive, as quite a few--"
"Frat boys have told you. Right, I remember," I said, and started unbuttoning my shirt. This was even scarier than trying to get into her pants. My fingers felt cold and clumsy. I wasn't quite sure what would be worse; if she backed off when she saw the scars, or if she didn't. Impatiently, she moved her hands to help me along, then pushed my shirt off my shoulders. It crumpled audibly, sliding to the floor. Then she pushed me down on my back, and the first white-hot, teasing trail of her hair across my bare skin made it all fucking worth it.
Jen was right. The scars... well, they made my stomach twist. I could hardly imagine the force demanded to rip and reshape human flesh like that. Modern medicine did miraculous things, but my god. The determination to overcome her body's physical limitations, to work past the fear and the pain and to go back to being a cop-- that was incredible. It just increased my awe of her.
She'd gasped and heaved when my hair brushed across her breasts, but now her breathing was shallow as I studied her body, first with my eyes, then with my hands. She was pale, her skin faintly luminescent except for the scarring. I pushed the straps of her soft cotton bra off her right shoulder, then her left, kissing the gentle slopes of her breasts before reaching around back and unsnapping her bra with my good hand. I don't know why guys think that's so tricky, really.
Her breasts were small but perfect handfuls, her nipples pale pink and soft as rosebuds. I made a soft noise, almost a moan as I bent to kiss one, and Jen groaned raggedly, her head tipping back to expose the strained tendons in her throat. "God, do that again."
"What, this?" I sucked at her nipple, humming slightly, the vibration buzzing against my lips. She whimpered, sucked in a shocked breath, and had another of those violent, apparently unexpected orgasms. Jerking and shaking with it, she rolled me over and began kissing my throat desperately. I was going to have bruises on my arms by the time this was over, but I didn't want it to stop. Not yet.
Jen seemed to have lost her inhibitions with her shirt. She fucked me with a ferocious single-mindedness, as though we were the only two people in the world. Maybe to her, we were. The senses are the body's doorways, and right now, as she tasted me, touched me, made me whine and beg, I was the only one standing on the threshold of Jen Ellison.
I was glad I'd worn my lucky underwear: wine-red silk with just a hint of lace around the waistband. I'd picked them out to wear because it was my first day working with the Sentinel. How much luckier could a girl get?
This much luckier: we ended up on the couch, my jeans flung halfway over the coffee table. Jen was nuzzling me through my panties, one arm stretched up to trail her fingers across my face. I was breathing hard, and her fingers curved between my lips, lazily tracing the inside of my mouth, stroking my tongue. I sucked her long, strong fingers, shaking, and then I was naked. She stroked my hot button with her slick knuckles, then slid her fingers deep inside me.
It was like no sexual experience I'd ever had before. And not just because Jen was a woman. In fact, if being made love to by Jen Ellison was like anything, it like was the climax of some cheesy Harlequin romance. The controlled, disciplined detective had disappeared, and in her place was a greedy, helplessly aroused, savagely intense lover. A brazen huntress toying with her helpless prey. It was intense. I couldn't think, I couldn't breathe.
She twisted and throbbed on my fingers, and I watched her, flushed and half in shock. It had been a long time since I'd come like that. Over and over. I felt like a wrung-out towel, like I'd just spent an afternoon on that sunny beach she'd been going on about. I watched Bayle writhe almost distantly, my heart pounding not with desire now, but with something like awe, and something like fear. It wasn't the intensity of her pleasure that frightened me, but how readily, how easily and how entirely she seemed to give herself to it.
A deep mottled blush spread upwards from Bayle's breasts to color her cheeks, and she moaned. "Oh, yeah, oh yeah, now now now--"
Even if she hadn't been wet as hell, slick around my fingers like silk, even if her lush moans and hoarse cries hadn't been taking me with her every step of the way, I would have known when she was about to come. I could feel it, feel her teetering on the brink.
She held nothing back. She threw every part of her body into the pursuit of pleasure, twisting her legs around me, thumping an elbow against the side of the couch. Her breathing was husky, noisy, unashamed. Her jaw stretched open as she came, white teeth bared in a perfect arch and her face scrunched into a grimace; she wasn't even trying to look sexy.
"Oh fuck yeah! Fuck me!" she shouted, her head snapping violently from side to side, mazy curls tangling and flying. And then she arched further, tightening unbelievably on my fingers. She drew in a shocked gasp, jerking and shaking, then slumped back down to the floor, moaning softly under her breath. "Oh, man... oh, wow."
We ended up tangled on the couch, Jen's head resting on my shoulder. Her hand was low on my belly, stroking me gently, slowly, and the tickling sensation was the only thing that kept me from falling asleep. Restlessly, I moved my arm to trail my fingers through her short, sleek hair. Despite the intimacy of what we'd just shared, it felt daring, like petting some kind of proud, wild animal.
Jen moved in response, shifting away towards the back of the couch, and I cocked my head curiously before realizing. She was trying to keep the scar on her shoulder from coming in contact with my skin. "Would you stop that? I don't care."
She pushed herself up with one hand to look defiantly into my eyes. "You don't know me. Don't presume--"
"I know all about the Sunrise Patriots," I said. "The hate crimes, the intimidation, the attacks. I know you were the only one who volunteered to go undercover to try and stop them."
"I went under as a gun dealer," she muttered.
"And got shot. Big fucking deal. You lived-- it was practically a miracle--"
"It was not a miracle," she said and sat up, reaching for her shirt. She put it on without bothering to look around for her bra, and I sighed. She hadn't even taken her pants off, and now she was buttoning her shirt. Oh, well. "When the doctors took the bullets out of me, they turned them over to Forensics. They found out that the bullets I got shot with were defective. Underweight."
"Let me get this straight." I sat up, staring at her. She glanced away from my nudity, and I shook my head and started collecting my clothes. "You got shot by two different guys with two different guns, both bullets were defective and you don't find that a little weird?"
"No," Jen said, getting up and stalking into the kitchen. "Not if whoever loaded their guns got the bullets out of the same batch. Do you want another beer?"
"Um, water's fine," I said as I slipped back into my jeans. It was a little complicated with the ace-bandage still on my hand, but my wrist was really feeling better, which I chalked up to the endorphin rush from the sex. Oh, yeah. Better than aspirin, really.
Jen was silent for a while, getting a glass down and filling it at the sink. Then she set it down with a clatter on the counter. I finished tying my shoes and looked up. "I get where you're coming from, Sandburg." she said, but her tone was angry, resentful. "But in my mind, the miracle would've been not taking two .38s to the chest in the first place." She rubbed her shoulder reflexively, a distant look on her face. "The way it happened? That's just life."
That's just life. It wasn't such an impressive philosophy until you actually applied it to her life. Crash in the jungle, have to bury your friends? Suck it up, kiddo, that's just life. Get shot twice in the chest and almost die? Well, get back on the horse, honey, that's just life. I sat on the couch and watched as she twisted the cap off another beer and took a long drink. So much for meditation, it was time for self-medication, apparently. Which reminded me.
"So how are your senses?" I asked, coming into the kitchen.
She handed me my glass of water, sighed, and then her jaw dropped slightly. She looked down, wide-eyed, at the beer in her hand, as if surprised by its taste. "They're fine," she said sharply, then relented. "Better."
"Great," I said, taking a sip. "No more headache?"
She blinked. "How did you know--"
"You've been squinting all day. I just figured," I said, and smiled. "Didn't I say you just needed to relax?"
The look on Jen's face was priceless, but I knew it wasn't smart to tease. She was obviously freaking out about what had just happened, trying to pick a fight with me, push me away. Even having only known her for two days, I was more than familiar with what Jennifer Ellison looked like when she scared, angry and freaking out. Once again, it was up to me to make it okay.
"But, um, really," I said, "we probably shouldn't do that again. I mean, it wasn't a good idea."
She lifted her head and fixed that adamant blue gaze on me, again. It was still a little unsettling, but of course that was why she did it-- even unconsciously, she still felt the need to be on top of this encounter.
"The thing is, I have to be objective." I explained. "I mean, modern day anthropologists mostly agree that total objectivity is pretty much impossible, but that still doesn't translate to 'Run out and fuck the subject of your study.' If it did, anthropology would probably be a lot more popular."
She laughed at that, despite herself, and I had her.
"People do crazy things after stressful experiences," she said softly, and I knew she was letting me off the hook. "Believe me, I know."
"Exactly," I said, trying not to wonder if I'd actually wanted her to reel me in. "My adrenaline, your senses-- let's face it! We're both a little off kilter. Maybe," I continued, "we should just call it a night. Both try and get some rest. Regroup later."
She nodded, leaning against the kitchen counter. Her pupils were back to normal, and her eyes deep blue in the dim light, watched me with a lazy intensity that made me itch to be out the door. I didn't know what she could want from me that badly, and then I remembered yesterday, those same eyes so pale and vacant, fixed in the same unvarying way on nothing, and the garbage truck bearing down.
"I really am looking forward to this," I said, looking away, "this partnership thing. When's a good time to get together for you? Tomorrow?"
"Not tomorrow." Jen said. "I'll probably have to work late. Writing reports." she explained, and snorted. "I don't know how the hell I'm going to explain half the stuff I did today."
"Okay," I said, undeterred, "so what's the day after tomorrow, Thursday? Right. So just stop by my office any time in the afternoon. Oh, and about this ride-along gig-- if you can get me some details I can show my advisor? And, really, about before," I said, keeping my tone stable, keeping it light, "no harm, no foul, really." I paused, eyes fixed on hers expectantly, and grinned. "We are still partners, right?"
She raised an eyebrow, but obviously couldn't think of anything else that needed to be said. "Well. If you still..."
"Come on, man!" I said, picking up my coat. Best to leave before further awkwardness set in. "I am so into this. I'll see you Thursday?"
Jen nodded, once. "Seeya, Sandburg."
Sometimes I have stupid impulses, and sometimes I give in to them. Before I could think better of it, I walked over and wrapped my arms around Jen. She stiffened as I got close, but I made the hug as non-sexual as I could. "This is life too, you know."
I locked the door as soon as Bayle left. Just me being compulsive. Nothing new about that. She was humming to herself, and I listened as she waited for the elevator, unable to move away from the door. When it arrived and she got in, I had to close my eyes tightly, trying to pull my hearing back before it followed her all the way out to the street and, who knows, maybe farther.
It worked. Suddenly, the loft was empty of sound except for my own breathing. Not opening my eyes yet, I turned around and tipped my head back against the door.
I wasn't really looking forward to being alone with myself.
Finally I opened my eyes, and frowned. After the divorce, I'd done a lot of housecleaning. Well, 'housecleaning' had been what I'd called it at the time, but mainly it had consisted of packing up everything that Carl had bought and everything Carl had liked and everything that reminded me of Carl, and trucking it down into the basement. Then had come the undercover job that ended in a shootout with Warner's men, and what with hospital time, recovery, and feeling generally crappy for a long time afterwards, I'd never gotten around to unpacking any of that stuff. Or buying new stuff.
Why bother? I didn't bring guys home, and I saw all my friends at work. Who needed to invite them over after hours? But now I'd been forced to see the place through a stranger's eyes. Bayle had been too tactful to say anything, but I knew what she'd been thinking, and she was right. The loft looked like a stage set or a furniture showroom. Like nobody lived here at all.
I walked into the bathroom, unbuttoning my shirt again. And maybe it was too much for me to actually appreciate what I saw, but I could look at myself now, for the first time in a long while. My hair was mussed into sweaty spikes, my eyes a little wild. The scars just seemed like part of the picture now, the same as my strong chin, my slender arms. My breasts, still reasonably perky.
Who the hell knew. Maybe it was time for a change.
"Oh, my, god," Bayle spluttered, clutching at the doorframe and dashboard like she was barely restraining herself from flinging herself bodily out of my car. "Are you even listening to yourself?" she demanded. "I mean, do you hear what you're saying?"
I smiled, but only to myself. After filling out reports all day Wednesday, I'd gotten the rest of the week off from Simon. I'd spent at least a portion of the four free days that followed with Bayle Sandburg, and I still couldn't figure out if it was green tea, pep pills or what that gave the kid her special little zing. Maybe I'd been a cop too long; I couldn't see why anyone in their right mind would want to argue with me. Still, it was kind of a kick to get into it with Bayle. She occasionally got incredulous, but never pissed off.
Besides. it reminded us both where we stood.
While Bayle helped me figure out the limits of my senses, we'd begun my debating safe topics like where the best Thai food in Cascade could be found and if the Jags could take it all the way this year. But discussing sports had led to talking about illegal gambling, which had led to the legalization of marijuana. Which led to spotted owls, gun control, capital punishment, and whether or not Pat Benatar's cover of 'Helter Skelter' sucked or not.
The other thing I still couldn't figure out was if Bayle just waited to hear what I thought and then argued the reverse, or if I'd actually found the one person in the world guaranteed to drive me crazy no matter what we talked about.
Needless to say, I made every effort to return the favor.
"I'm just saying. Why wouldn't this Sentinel thing, this mutation or whatever it is, be more common in men?" I argued, and Bayle sighed dramatically. "You know, like, hunting, gathering-- or is that even still an accepted theory in anthropology?"
"Well, first of all, you have to know a little something about the original nomadic hunter-gather societies," Bayle interrupted. "They weren't cavemen by any definition of the word, especially not the popular one--" I sighed and listened with half an ear, concentrating on driving through the slick streets of Cascade. The on-again, off-again sprinkling rain didn't tend to make people drive more safely, but the roads were still wet.
"I'm just saying," I talked over her without shame. "The guys are out there hunting mammoths and the girls are at home, not 'cause they're weaker or shit, so just shut it," I pointed without taking my eyes off the road, "they have to stay still, because they're mostly either nursing or pregnant--"
"Well, that's mostly true," she allowed.
"So tell me, Doc," I said, squinting through the windshield as the wipers smeared the rain across the glass. "What good is being a Sentinel to the cave mommy,"
"Oh, don't say cave mommy--"
"--when the most dangerous thing she does all day is dig roots and pick berries?" I finished, and sighed. We were almost to the police station; we really had to stop this. Okay, so maybe it was fun to debate trivialities in Bayle's office at Hargrove Hall or over lunch at the Beau Thai (which, no matter what Bayle said, was still a lot better than that grungy Thai Me Up cafe.) But now my short, hard-earned vacation was over. It was time to get back on the job. Bayle was coming with me. I'd tried to prepare her for the station, but I didn't think I'd actually made an impact.
I hadn't dented her grin at all, either. "But it's medical fact that women are more sensitive than men. Perceptually, I mean. Women, on the average, have a stronger sense of taste than men, better eyesight in general and in the dark--"
"Higher pain tolerance," I added, and she nodded enthusiastically, bright beaded earrings swinging like pendulums. Case in point: I'd said dress nice, and maybe this was nice if you were going to an art gallery or a faculty fundraiser, but...
"Yes, exactly!" she said. "My own personal theory is that it has to do with pregnancy and labor. Women get pregnant and, like you said, nurse, providing most of a child's food in its earliest years of life. So it's vitally important for us to be able to detect poisons and toxins in food. Some have theorized that's one of the reasons for nausea early in pregnancy."
"Really?" I said.
"Well, it's not hugely accepted or anything," Bayle mumbled, and tossed her head. She looked like a goddamn gypsy. Long, gauzy purple skirt, crushed-velvet jacket, some kind of African-looking bracelets and a matching necklace carved from pale wood. I wouldn't blame Simon if he took one look and told me to go get my head checked again. "But then, neither is this Sentinel thing," she added. "The study of perception, it's all new frontiers these days. So exciting, really. We're gonna do great things together."
"Oh, I know I'm in good hands, Dr. Haber," I said under my breath, and Bayle goggled at me for a few long seconds. Oh, this kid was hilarious.
"You've read The Lathe of Heaven?"
"No, I saw the movie," I said, deadpan. I was just going to have to keep this as quiet as possible, I could see that. Just as long as Bayle shut up once we got into Simon's office, I could probably get her ride-along pass approved without much fuss... "So what you're saying is, I have a jump start on this Sentinel thing just by virtue of being a woman?"
"Well, I couldn't say for sure unless I had a male Sentinel to study. You don't have any brothers, do you?"
"No!" And then, well, how long would it take for me to nail these senses of mine down? Three weeks, a month maybe? I could keep Bayle under the radar for that long, I thought as I pulled the truck into the parking garage.
No problem.
"I bet it's been really fascinating for you, being a woman in a traditionally male environment like the police department," she said cheerfully, and I shook my head, glancing around for a parking space. From girl genius to this utter naivete-- the Sandburg roller coaster. "Do you find that you're accepted more readily if you stick to expressing yourself in a traditionally feminine way, or if you adapt masculine modes of bonding and communication?"
"Oh, for Christ's sake," I said, exasperated, pulling the car into a free space near the elevators. "I haven't expressed myself in a traditionally feminine way since I was twelve."
"Really? What happened when you were twelve?"
"I had this Easter hat. White, with big fake flowers," I said, turned off the engine and stopped, realizing that I'd never told this story to anyone else in my life. Jesus. Bayle Sandburg would have made a hell of a psychotherapist...
She blinked at me, fumbling with her seatbelt. "C'mon, what happened? Don't leave me hanging, man."
...or an interrogator.
"I buried it in the yard and told my mother the dog stole it." I admitted, and got out of the car. "Now, listen. When we get into Simon's office--"
"Yeah, yeah, you do the talking." Bayle was grinning at me irrepressibly, bouncing on her heels. "Come on, Cave Mama, let's go!"
I ground my molars. "Do not go there."
No problem, I thought.
Yeah, right.
A lot of times the big decisions slip right past you. My dad always said "Slow down, Bayle. Pay attention to Life." Always Life, with a capital L. Which, as a snotty know-it-all kid, I'd thought was such a slacker point of view. But as an adult, I was beginning to see his point. So many important decisions were made without knowing all the facts, so many important people came into your life almost unnoticed. You didn't understand what you were doing, what you'd fallen into or lucked out of until so much later.
But this was definitely wasn't one of those times. I knew exactly what I was getting into and what I had, right here. I could see it all laid out before me. A couple of months studying Jen-- six, max, would be enough for a rough draft of my thesis. Then my doctorate, and bang! --opportunity would come knocking. I'd have my pick of all the really prime fieldwork opportunities. Maybe my own lecture series. A book contract. Tenure!
And in my free time I'd perhaps explore my suddenly more interesting sexuality. Hey, better to do it now, right? While I was still young. And pretty, natch.
But I wasn't going to be exploring it with Jen Ellison. No, I was going to do this thesis right-- which meant slow and methodical. Ten centimeters at a time, just like pit excavation. Which also meant no more spit-swapping. "Hey, I look okay, right?" I asked, baring my teeth at Jen. "Do I have lipstick on my teeth...?"
It just wasn't a good idea for so many reasons. Like, I'm not saying I've got Jen all figured out or anything after just one week, but wow. She's obviously still hung up on her ex-husband.
"You're fine." Jen said. "There's just one thing, though."
I looked myself over. "What? What is it?"
"That thin blue line crap!" Jen said, leaning forward to get in my face. I rolled my eyes.
"Come on, that's some of my best stuff!" I said. Honestly, it never should have happened in the first place. But I was giving myself a break. Like I'd said at the time, when you took into account Jen's suddenly heightened sensuality plus my adrenaline in the aftermath of a dangerous experience... the mitigating circumstances were endless. Heck, when you added it all up like that, the confluence of all those totally coincidental factors, it was practically, like, the will of the universe that we'd gotten it on. Life with a capital L saying hey, girls. Live a little.
"I'm telling you, drop it," she said warningly. So I did. For the moment.
"So, hey, do you like Ursula LeGuin's work?" I asked, following Jen through the parking garage. "I mean, what else of hers have you read besides Lathe?"
A convergence of coincidences. That was actually a good way to think of it. I mean, what were the chances of something so crazy happening again? It really made things a lot simpler. As long as we managed to avoid psycho kidnappers, mortal danger, daring rescues and all that jazz, we'd be totally fine.
Right? Right, I told myself as we crossed towards the elevator. Jen and me, it'd all go according to plan. We'd be partners, I'd get my thesis and she'd get control.
As we walked towards the elevators, I tried not to grin like a lottery winner on laughing gas. I love it when a plan comes together.
The End