| Besterette's Basement | Fiction for "The Sentinel" | "SSS #3: Girl Guide" by Besterette |

Disclaimer: The Sentinel is a Pet Fly Production and all related characters and situations belong to those who hold legal copyright. No money is being made and no infringement is intended.
Spoilers: Up to The Sentinel by Blair Sandburg
Warnings: Blair Sandburg only makes a brief appearance in this story. Although Beau acts as temporary guide, it is not an attempt to replace him. This is a continuation of events in Mimsy's Wedding; it's just a plot point. Therefore flames will be used to light aromatherapy candles while I chant, "I'm letting this go, I'm letting this go..."

Girl Guide
#3 in The Sparrowhawk Sandburg Series
by
Besterette
Besterette@aol.com

James Ellison couldn't sleep. He figured out why he couldn't sleep when he found himself propped up on one elbow, listening. Normal loft at night noises. The steady beat of his guide's heart below. He couldn't shake the nagging feeling that there should be an echo. She's not here. He closed his eyes and rolled over onto his back with a small sigh, remembering...
Lying wantonly in a hotel bed in the middle of the afternoon, running his fingers lightly over Beau's bare hip, soothing the marks he'd left during their first frenzied coupling. "Love at first sight," he said softly.
"Hmmnn?" she muttered drowsily.
"You say you don't believe in love at first sight but that's what you keep calling this."
"Don't know what else to call it. You walked right through my walls, Ellison. Most guys, I'd still be trying to decide how many gates I'm going to open for them, and here we are."
"Here we are." He kissed her. "In bed together, again."
"Keep having to remind myself that you're practically a stranger... too easy to talk to you, feels safe to let you get close..." Her own fingers were drawing aimless patterns on his bare chest. "... to want you like this."
"Like we skipped over all the giddy romance and went straight to being together," he agreed, inhaling deeply. The lemon scent of her shampoo and her lavender perfume were almost buried beneath a rich musk of pheromones, fading now.
"Meant for each other." There was a melancholy catch in her voice, she sat up suddenly, drawing up her sheet covered knees and resting her chin on them. "We're not in love, Jim, we're in heat."
He tensed. Did she hate him? Did she hate herself? Regret it? "Is that so bad?" He asked softly, waiting.
"Humans are animals, Jim. But we have to be more... there has to be something more than instinct and reaction... or there's no point to any of it. I'm not looking for a declaration of undying love, here, Jim, it just bothers me that I surrendered so easily."
"You never surrender to anything easily."
"How would you know?"
"When that sniper David Harrington hired took a shot at you... the next morning the first thing you did was to go out onto the balcony. You were terrified and you did it anyway."
She turned to face him, surprised. "Maybe you do know me better than I thought. Doesn't it bother you, being manipulated by this sentinel/guide thing?"
"Not really. If Blair's right about this... this empathic bond... between sentinels and guides, all that does is make us feel close, lets us know we can trust each other, maybe it was a way for sentinels and guides to recognize each other before language was invented. I don't know." He leaned forward and sat up, trailing little nibbling kisses down her spinal column. "I do know I made love to you because I wanted to, not because anything forced me."
She shivered, then settled back into his arms. "It just happened so fast. I really need to process." She smiled. "And maybe I'm feeling a little guilty. Blair asked me not to sleep with you right after we met."
"He did?"
"I was flirting. And the whole sister and best friend thing can get messy after a break-up. We don't do that to each other. Hell. What are we going to tell him, Jim? I just got back into his life, I don't want another fight."
"We don't have to tell him. You're driving back to Boston tonight, we fly back to Cascade tomorrow. Who knows when we'll see each other again, or how we'll feel when we do?"
She kissed his temple. "Not a lie exactly, not behind his back... just not in his face with it, huh? I can live with that."
And they had. Jim and Blair went back to Cascade and life got back to normal... or as normal as it got in Cascade: bank robbers, terrorists, the Canadian mafia... routine. He'd even gone out a few times with this redhead named Michele from the DA's office. It was just—late at night, occasionally he'd catch himself listening for a heart that was beating on the other side of the country.

Blair Sandburg ladled stir-fried vegetables and chicken over the second plateful of rice and carried them over to the table while Jim grabbed them a couple beers. Blair waited until they had started eating—he'd half expected Jim to balk at the improvised addition of a handful of salted peanuts that had been rattling around the bottom of the can, but he could almost see the big guy's mental shrug when the first one turned up on his fork.
"So, uh, last year I sent in this application, I never expected to get it, it's like winning the lottery or asking for a pony for your birthday when you're a little kid, but, well, I got it."
"I'd say congratulations if I knew what you were talking about."
Blair took a sip of his beer. "A chance to see Burton's source material, his expedition journals, the notes for his books, all his papers. The ones his wife didn't burn anyway. Who knows what's there, man? The original legends of sentinels. And I've been granted two weeks to study them... at the British Museum."
"In England?"
"No, Jim. The British Museum of Kalamazoo, Michigan. They may have moved London Bridge to Arizona but I'm pretty sure the British Museum is still in Great Britain."
Jim just grimaced at him. "So when are you leaving?"
"Next Friday. Short notice, I know, but somehow the paperwork ended up in Bryce Sandorsen's mailbox, over in Archaeology. I just found out about it." He started digging through his plate, in search of bamboo shoots. "You okay with this?"
"It's just two weeks, Sandburg. It's not like I'm going to starve to death because you aren't here to do your share of the cooking. This is pretty good, though."
"Yeah, right. You're going to be hitting WonderBurger every night. Got news for you man, grease, sugar, starch and burnt crunchy bits are not the four food groups." Blair grinned suddenly. "Maybe I should see if my sister can babysit."

"You need a life."
Beau Sandburg stopped typing long enough to check her pulse. "Nope. Got one."
"A social life." Anita Calhoun corrected herself. She wandered idly around the office/living room. "I need somebody in Germany to do the castles tour. You want to go? The Romantic Road, with Karl as your photographer..."
Beau snorted. "Conan the Bavarian? I try not to make the same mistake twice."
"You two made such a cute couple."
"I am trying to work, you know. Some of us don't have trust funds. Some of us don't have husbands with trust funds of their own."
"You may be trying to work but you aren't working or you wouldn't have let me in. And if you'd like a husband with a trust fund I could introduce you to a few people..."
Beau sighed. Anita was her best friend, and technically her boss. She edited Global Village magazine as a hobby. And Beau was having trouble getting a new romance novel started now that Confederate Kiss was at the publisher. She was at the creating characters stage... and all her heroes turned out to be Jim.
"Why aren't you home irritating Jason?" She sighed again.
"Because he's off on one of his little golfing trips. Oooh. Who's tall dark and handsome and where have you been hiding him?"
Beau glanced across the room. Anita held the framed photo of Beau dancing with James Ellison at her cousin Mimsy's wedding. "Just a friend of my brother's."
"He looks very friendly."
"Anita," Beau said softly, "back off."
"Okay. Want to go shopping?"
"I don't like shopping. That's why I like LL Bean. They deliver."
"You like the Filene's Basement Sale."
"That's not shopping, that's a contact sport."
"Just come with me. I'll try things on and you can tell me I look fabulous."
Beau grinned and turned off her computer.
She ended up buying an outfit much snappier than the jeans and T-shirts she lived in. And she agreed to go out with one of Jason's golfing buddies. He was handsome, charming, attentive, he wanted to see her again, and with nothing better to do, she went. After their third date, he was obviously waiting for an invitation in, which she didn't give, and their kiss was goodbye, not goodnight.
She'd run out on an errand, to pick up a few things that had been overlooked on her monthly grocery stock-up shopping list, and grabbed the mail on her way in, absently waving to the neighbor walking her Yorkies. Bills, magazines, postcard from Naomi... the phone was ringing. Beau dropped her mail half-sorted on the pewter tray on the gateleg table in the entry, then went to her desk in the corner of the front room to pick up the portable.
"Hello."
"I have a great idea."
"I'm not going to Munich, Anita."
"See America First. The Pacific Northwest is hot right now. I'm thinking Cascade, give it the full 'native tourist' treatment."
Beau turned and looked at the framed photographs on her bookcases. The silver-framed photo of her cousin Mimsy's wedding reception. Of herself dancing with Jim Ellison. He was smiling down at her, her head thrown back, laughing. "You want me to go to Cascade?"
"Yes."
Beau smiled. "I can do that."

Distracted, he answered the phone with a flat statement of identity. "Ellison."
"Sandburg." The amused alto voice replied. "The other one around?"
Jim sat back on the couch, suddenly losing interest in the movie he'd been watching for over an hour. "He's in the shower. How're you doing, Beau?"
"I'm fine, and yourself?"
"Fine, we're both fine." He almost told her he'd been thinking about her, but held back.
"That's good. So... it looks like I'm heading out there again soon. My travel magazine wants me to do a series on Cascade."
"You need a place to stay, you know you're welcome."
Beau hesitated. "Well... just til I can find a furnished apartment. I'll probably be in town a couple of months."
"A couple of months? That's going to be some series."
"The native tourist bit. Usually do it abroad. The reader discovers the city with me as I do all the obvious touristy things, then as time passes I ferret out the hidden treasures, things only people who live there know about."
"Didn't you live here for awhile, growing up?" Jim asked, his memory supplying a few stray comments Blair had made.
"The artists' colony out on Spruce Island, actually, while Naomi was in her sculptress phase and dating one of the glassblowers. Cascade's really changed, from what I saw while I was visiting. More skyscrapers, they've cleaned up the waterfront, and way more lattexpressichino joints."
"I take it you aren't a coffee gourmet."
"Yeah, more of a coffee-white-two-sugars-now-and-put-down-the-hazelnut-extract-before-somebody-gets-hurt kinda gal."
Jim laughed, then felt faintly disappointed as Blair came out of the bathroom and he reluctantly surrendered the phone to her brother. He got up and puttered around the kitchen, freezing when he heard Blair exclaim, "When are you coming? Remember that idea I had?"

Blair got to his feet as boarding was announced, shouldered his backpack, and grinned at Jim.
"Try not to cause any international incidents over there, will ya Chief?"
"Hey, two weeks of purely scholarly pursuit. Should make a nice vacation." His smile quirked. "And I'd say 'don't do anything I wouldn't do,' but that doesn't narrow it down much, now does it?"
The forty-one year old, six foot two, 195 pound, ex-Ranger-captain-turned-cop suddenly felt like a four year old covered in cookie crumbs half an hour before dinner.
Blair continued. "This'll give you two a chance to work out whatever's going on between you two. And Jim? I want you to remember one thing, man. You're my best friend, my sentinel—the personification of my life's work." He paused, letting that sink in. "She's my sister. Make her cry and I'll rip your liver out and feed it to the wolf." He smiled.
Jim smiled back. "Understood."
Blair just nodded and got on the plane.
Jim had enough time to walk the length of the airport, sit down, and read through a Seattle paper before the Boston flight arrived and the passengers disembarked. He tried to ignore that little thrill that shivered through him when he finally saw the dark head at shoulder-height among the crowd.
Sparrowhawk Rainbow Sandburg, who preferred to be called Beau—he didn't blame her—was on the short side of average height, average weight, with bobbed brown hair and brown eyes. She was dressed for travel and comfort in sneakers, faded blue jeans, a white V-necked short sleeved T-shirt, with a silver Spanish coin on a chain around her neck. The Purse was slung over her shoulder, the shapeless patchwork leather sack was a cross between her brother's backpack and a defensive weapon; Jim had seen the stopping power of five pounds at the end of a strap and learned to respect it. He had no idea what she carried in there and was a little afraid to ask.
Her face lit up when she spotted him, and she lifted one arm to wave for his attention. "Hey Jim!" She grabbed hold of his biceps in her typical not-quite-hug, he caught himself bending to kiss her and brushed his lips against her cheek instead. That was a sociable greeting, perfectly allowable.
They collected her luggage, not that there was much, and went out to the truck.
"We've got to go into the station for you to fill out the ride along paperwork," he informed her, disapproval heavy in his voice.
"You don't want me riding along, do you?"
His hands shifted on the steering wheel. "It can be dangerous."
"Life is dangerous, man. There could be a nuclear war. Earth could get hit by an asteroid." She winced as Jim took a corner a little hard. "We could get hit by a bus. Food poisoning." She spoke flippantly, but seriously. "I can handle it."
"I know that but you shouldn't have to."
Sharply, she asked, "Because I'm a woman?"
"Because you're not a cop. Stay on the job long enough and you see things no one should have to. I'm hoping it'll be a quiet two weeks."
"I hear that," she said gently. "But not too quiet. I had to promise a book to get my publisher to pull the strings for this research pass—I actually have to write one now."
At the station, the captain made a general announcement that a different Sandburg would be tagging along with Ellison for awhile and that she was a writer researching a book. Connor asked what she wrote, and Beau admitted to the romance novels and her pen name, which spawned the inevitable jokes and catcalls Jim had been expecting. Rhonda gave Beau the thick stack of forms from Personnel and Jim sat her down in her brother's chair at his desk to get to work. He began catching up on his own paperwork, taking a sip of coffee as he eavesdropped on a whispered conversation across the room.
"... almost enough alike to be twins."
"I've noticed one difference, H. When this Sandburg bounces... she bounces."
"That's sexist, Rafe. It's true, but it's sexist."
Jim choked on his coffee, but swallowed, and glared at the younger detectives, then glanced at the woman seated at the side of his desk. Beau didn't look exactly like her brother, but you could tell they were related. There was a family resemblance there, and she acted just like Blair sometimes. And Rafe was right. Her figure was in proportion for her height, but curvy wasn't quite enthusiastic enough and stacked was just plain crude. She took after their mother, Naomi, there.
She glanced up with some concern as he choked. "You okay?" He nodded, and she looked down at the papers again, signing the last few lines with a flourish. "That have anything to do with the Fashion Police undressing me with his eyes over there?" Jim looked at her but she seemed amused. "Boys will be boys, even when they're grown men."
He gathered up the completed forms. "I just have to drop these off with Simon and we can get out of here."
As he passed Rafe's desk, he noticed the younger man lean forward slightly. He glanced back. Beau was stretching, seated, her arms over her head, arching her back. Frowning, he whapped the darkly handsome detective lightly on the side of the head with the sheaf of papers. "Hey Rafe, do you spell 'harassment' with one 'r' or two?" Rafe quickly pretended to be busy.
He rapped his knuckles on the open door frame before walking into Banks' office and dropping the papers on the desk. The captain of Major Crimes looked up at him over the rims of his glasses. "You know, there's an office pool that someone's going to steal the crown jewels and Sandburg walks in on them."
Jim just grinned at his partner's reputation as a trouble magnet. "I'm no expert on British national treasures, but I think that's a different museum, Simon."
"You comfortable with the lady auxiliary as backup?"
"She brought me out of a zone during a robbery all by herself. She's strong, Simon, and a lot less excitable than her brother. She'll do. Just hope I don't end up breaking her in with a trial by fire."
Simon grinned broadly. "Well, I do have an art gallery opening requiring discreet security. Which means..."
"... mingling, staying alert, and being decorative. We can do that."

Beau took her luggage and got settled in Blair's room while Jim dished up and reheated two servings of chili—beef chili—and sliced the loaf of sourdough bread he'd picked up at Bread And Circuses, which he still thought was a dumb name for such a good bakery. They ate at the table, making conversation easily, talking about the things that had happened in the month since they'd seen each other at Mimsy's wedding, but ever so carefully not mentioning what had happened between them. Jim didn't want to bring it up because he didn't want Beau to think he expected her to... it was still there, though. The Sentinel/Guide Connection, as Blair insisted on calling it now.
Four years ago he'd started to like this little neo-hippie witch doctor punk, in spite of himself. Felt affectionate and protective. He felt the same way when he met Blair's sister, with a strong dose of attraction added. It was mutual, and they'd given in to it on their second meeting.
This was the third. At least we have some history now. Maybe if we spend enough time together, we'll catch up, and we can stop second-guessing everything. He'd caught himself reaching for her several times, for the playful slaps or casual touches that were second nature between him and her brother, and restrained himself, not knowing how she'd react to being pawed. It was just so awkward.
"So what's the schedule here?" She asked after dinner while he washed the dishes and she dried.
"Well, the paperwork won't be official until Monday, then you can come into the station for a couple hours every day, whenever you aren't writing."
"Monday..." she said thoughtfully. "Gives me the weekend free. If I take the harbor front tour and hit the Heron Street Market tomorrow, that's the first two pieces researched."
A thought occured to Jim. "You bring anything nice to wear, y'know, dressy?"
She looked at him curiously. "Travel rule number twelve: Never go anywhere without the little black Audrey Hepburn dress. Why?"
"Monday, we're assigned security detail for an art gallery opening. Mayor'll be there, society types... and I uh, thought I'd take you out to dinner." He looked at her sideways and said carefully, "It's about time we had our first date, don't you think?"
Beau snorted a laugh. "Technically, Mimsy's wedding was a date."

They watched a couple of sitcoms until the jet lag caught up with Beau. Yawning, she excused herself. "Think I'd better turn in." She went into her brother's room, came out with a small bag, and went into the bathroom. Jim sprawled more comfortably on the couch, idly channel-surfing, glanced up when she returned. And swallowed.
The flannel nightgown was modest. Even demure. High-necked, long sleeved, ankle length. Except the flannel was threadbare, would be soft as velvet to the touch from years of wear and the loose drape of the cloth swirled around her body when she moved, obscuring it, then clinging to every curve. Their eyes met.
Beau's mouth opened. "Goodnight, Jim," she said quickly, and vanished into the bedroom, closing the French doors.
It was going to be a long two weeks.

The harbor front tour took most of the morning. Beau actually had to take it twice, the first time just experiencing it, the second to take notes. A few stops on the tour deserved articles of their own, like the amusement park on the pier. It was early afternoon before she reached the Heron Street Market, after a small amusing adventure involving the bus schedule. She'd spend a couple of hours here, pick up something for dinner, then head back to the loft and start looking in the paper for that furnished apartment. Any hope she'd had that that night and part of the next afternoon was just some kind of Sentinel/Guide thing fling had been shattered by the sheer amount of intestinal fortitude it had taken not to jump James Ellison again last night.
Seducing him on the sofa is probably against house rules anyway.
Beau hated it. Usually the only absurd compulsion she had to deal with was the occasional chocoholic fits where she'd eat six Heath Bars in half an hour, but those were thankfully rare. She tried to imagine explaining this problem to Anita.
I'm attracted to this sentinel. He's got brown hair, blue eyes, and a body that makes the statue of Hercules in the National Museum in Athens look like a rough draft. He's tough, he's gruff, got that whole 'so macho I don't have to prove it anymore' thing going for him, he understands honor, duty and loyalty, the kind of man who is the best friend you can have and the worst enemy. The second I met him I felt like I'd known him my whole life, or I'd been waiting for him my whole life. Something. My baby brother Blair, who is the world's foremost expert on sentinels—even if he is making it up as he goes—says it's because he and I are both guides, which I don't understand, but has something to do with being able to reach Jim while he's zeroed in on one sense, and watching his back while he's concentrating, and helping him figure out which sense to concentrate on, which seems like a Zen riddle to me—when is sound more important than smell?—whatever. What's pulling us together is just this Sentinel/Guide Connection and anything else is how we subconsciously interpret that. Which is only natural. Since Jim and Blair are both guys it manifested as a kind of best friends-almost brothers thing, and since I'm not a guy, for us it's... this. Which is, um, the same thing with the added bonus of the kind of sex I thought only happened in books written by people like me.
Beau stared out the window of the bus. The problem is, I don't know how much of that is true, or even if it's true, how important it is. Because it feels like falling in love. Maybe I've never really been in love before and this is what it feels like. Is this the Guide's connection to the Sentinel, or Beau being attracted to Jim? How would I know? Rather like the old question, What came first, the chicken or the egg? Which reminds me of the other old clich(tm): peeling the onion. I can't stop thinking about it; if I keep peeling off layers to see what's underneath, am I going to end up with nothing? All I really know right now is it's only an inability to commit, a need to believe in free will and ingrained paranoia that are keeping me from throwing myself at Ellison's feet.
The bus pulled up to the Heron Street Market. "Snap out of it, Sandburg, you've got work to do," Beau muttered to herself and got to her feet.

After trying the loft without a response, Jim punched in the number of the cellphone he'd insisted Beau carry if she was going to act as temporary guide. After a few rings he heard her muted mutter, "... over complicated yuppie toy. Hello?"
"Still out and about, eh?"
"Still at the Market, Jim. Oh, man, is this place incredible! I may move here just to be close to this market. How does filet of salmon broiled with lemon, butter and rosemary sound?"
"Like dinner?" he asked hopefully.
Beau laughed. "I'll go back to the fishmongers then. I'd better hurry, don't want to miss my bus—"
"I'll pick you up."
"Or you could pick me up. I'll be waiting, no, I don't know where I'll be. But hey, you should be able to find me, right?"
"Right. Coming up with tests must be a natural part of the guide-thing, huh?"
"Or a Sandburg thing. Cocky self-confidence, an experimental bent and good hair."
He laughed. "I'll see you in a few minutes."
That was easier said than done. The huge complex in the gentrified part of the warehouse district was utter chaos. Standing just inside the main entrance, Jim looked around in dismay. How was he supposed to find Beau in all this? Sound. He knew her heartbeat, but not well enough to pick it out of this crowd, and she wasn't talking to anyone. Smell. He knew her scent. Her own scent, mingled with Crabtree and Evelyn Citrus shampoo and lily of the valley soap and toilette water. He was intimately acquainted with the smell of her skin and sweat... no one else in this madhouse would smell exactly like Beau Sandburg.
He inhaled deeply, ignoring the smells of food and flowers and everything else. The faint lingering trail of her passage through the market was obvious. She'd spent some time here among the crafts, had handled this green patchwork vest, and then had come over here to the booth where Blair bought his meditation candles.
He threaded his way through the aisles, followed the scent as it grew steadily stronger, then piggybacked sight to smell and let his eyes follow his nose to where Beau stood peering into a tank of live lobsters, with a wire basket over one arm that contained a plastic bag of red potatoes and two lemons.
While she was contemplating the murky depths, he came up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder. She glanced up at him and smiled. His arms went around her of their own volition. She leaned back into his embrace, tensed, then very deliberately relaxed. He pretended not to notice, and watched lobsters scuttle around the bottom of their tank.
"Change your mind about the salmon?"
"No, I just figured I'd wait 'til you got here before I buy it, I wasn't sure how long it would take you and that's not something I want to be carrying around."
"Well, no, not in this weather..."
"Jim?"
He let go of Beau and turned, stunned, to face Carolyn Plummer. She was wearing a yellow sundress and had done something different to her hair. She looked good.
"I thought that was you." Her eyes flicked over him, raked Beau from head to foot, and returned to him.
"I didn't know you were back in town." He said the first thing that came to mind.
She laughed. "Wendy's getting married again, and this time she swears she's going through with it." And she stared at Beau again.
"Oh." Jim changed his mind about his relationship with Beau being awkward. This moment redefined the word awkward. "Well, give her my congratulations. Uh. This is my ex-wife, Carolyn Plummer, Beau Sandburg."
Her smile became a little less brittle. "I didn't know Blair had gotten married." Carolyn glanced around as if expecting to see him at a nearby booth. "One of his star-struck students?"
Beau was enjoying this entirely too much. She let her eyes widen slightly and suddenly looked about eighteen, despite her thirty-one years. "No, actually Blair's my brother. Jim's showing me the sights."
Vocal temperature dropped ten degrees. "I'm sure he is. Well. It was nice seeing you again, Jimmy. I'll tell Wendy you said hello. And nice to meet you, Beau?" She said it as if she hadn't quite caught the name.
Jim watched her stalk away, and meet up with her sister at the end of the aisle. Beau was looking down at her battered sneakers, blue jeans and today's periwinkle blue V-neck T-shirt and shaking her head sadly. "Costuming error. If I'd known I'd be playing the Scarlet Woman, I would have dressed appropriately. Something in spandex, perhaps."
Wendy was saying, "You know, some men get to be a certain age and—"
"She couldn't be more than twenty-three! I bet he's gone out and bought himself some ridiculous sports car too..."
Jim just shook his head and waited for Beau, who was taking a large white-paper wrapped package from the man behind the counter.

Dinner didn't take long to prepare, not with both of them working on it. Beau handled the fish while he scrubbed and quartered the potatoes and set them to boil. He read the paper while the food cooked and Beau settled down with a notebook and pen she'd pulled out of her purse after much rummaging. She flipped through several pages, rereading them, then balanced the notebook against one drawn-up knee and began to write.
Dinner was excellent. They cleaned up the kitchen together, headed back to the couch to relax. Jim eyed her uncertainly. "How do you feel about SportsCenter?" She'd probably want to watch the TV movie they'd been advertising all week, the one with the soap opera actress who was crying.
"I don't need Dan Rydell to tell me that the Celtics suck. I love their commercials, the one with Tiger Woods about to putt, and the camera pulls back to show the goalie guarding the hole and the announcers says 'Golf would be better if it were hockey.'" She picked up the remote. "What channel is SC on?"

That night, he dreamed.

He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans and stared at the black jaguar, calmly regarding him from atop a boulder. "Hello kitty," he said wryly. "Let me guess; I AM having a midlife crisis."
The cat jumped down and disappeared into the brush. He followed. The jungle thinned out on the banks of a wide river. As he watched, the cat straightened, changing into his Peruvian doppleganger, wearing what had remained of his fatigues. The cat began to walk downstream, and Jim fell into step with him.
"The Consort has returned to you. Why do you not share your bed with her?"
Consort? "Because she's afraid of this. Us. What it might mean."
"She fears this?" the jaguar-spirit repeated.
"Yes." Jim was suddenly irritated with all this cryptic spiritual mumbo-jumbo. "Where were you when I was in Sierra Verde and could have used some advice?"
"The Other chose unwisely and was lost. She could have been saved, just as you could have been destroyed. The choice was yours to make." The cat dismissed Alex Barnes and looked across the river. A group of Chopec women tended a garden in a clearing. The flutter of a sparrowhawk's rust colored wings became the sunlight in Beau's hair as she joined them in their work. "Why do you not share your bed with her?"
Jim, who had been admiring the view, looked away. "You know why." And they were no longer by the river, but in an elegantly furnished formal dining room where a man and two small boys ate in chill silence. "I'm... my father's son," he admitted bitterly. "I drove Carolyn away, just like Dad and our mother. Beau..." He sighed, trying to find words for something he knew in his bones. "Beau doesn't bend. And I won't be the one to break her."
His own eyes gazed back at him, serene. "Is it her heart you fear breaking, or your own?"

Blair had to read the instructions on the phone three times before he understood them well enough to try making a call. He grinned as the call went through and his sister answered.
"You just missed Jim," she told him. "He went to work out."
Disappointed, Blair sighed, "Then I'll talk to him next time."
"Any luck?"
"Mmmm. Reference to a Khalil who led them to an oasis because he could smell the water. But I'm still getting organized. How are you doing?"
"Good. Just finished the first draft of my first article and I'm vegging in front of the tube to clear my head before proofreading."
Blair smiled at the image of Beau sprawled on the couch in front of the TV. "What are you watching?"
"Martha Stewart: Live From Stepford, Connecticut. She's sprucing up for a dinner party by refinishing her dining room furniture, and sewing new curtains and a tablecloth to match the wallpaper. Next she's going to make minature spinach and cheese puffs for appetizers, so I beeped it to Braddock's Way. It's 'Blondes Have More Guns' with Barbara Eden as the evil skirt of the week."
Blair laughed.
"You okay?" Beau asked.
He should have known. He could never fool her, never. "I guess I'm just... homesick. It's kinda hard to tell, we never had a place to call home to miss."
"Yeah, home was never a place, wherever we were, as long as we were together, we were home."
"Yeah. So. You sleeping with Jim yet?"
"BLAIR!"
He grinned at her outraged yelp and the embarrassment behind it. "C'mon, Beau. I saw the way you and Jim were looking at each other at Mimsy's wedding reception. I was drunk, not blind. You two have done the lateral lambada, haven't you?"
"Um. It was, um. Yeah. We did. But we haven't, we're aren't..."
"Why not? I mean, I wasn't exactly thrilled with the idea, I'm going to be caught in the middle of every arguement, but you're my sister, and Jim's my best friend, he's a great guy, a little stoic, a little repressed, a little obsessive-complusive about the bathtub grout, but a great guy, and if you can make each other happy, go for it."
Beau sighed. "I wish it was that simple, bro. If I was sure about these feelings... is this the Sentinel/Guide thing or what? Am I bound to him now? I've never felt so... so connected to someone, so fast, so deep. But then I've always been reserved, independent. Like Mom. I've never had a relationship I wasn't ready to walk away from, detach with love but still—detach. Jim just feels—right. Like he's supposed to be in my life, like I've been looking for him my whole life and now I've found him, I know what was missing for so long. God, this sounds crazy. I sound like a ten year old describing her first crush."
Blair swallowed. "Not so crazy. There's something I never told you about Alex Barnes, the woman who tried to drown me. She was a sentinel."
"What!?!"
"I met her at the station. Megan brought her in after she cracked up her car, blinded by the headlights. They thought she was stoned. After the wreck, the rest of her senses spiked and she started screaming, tried to take off her clothes because the cloth felt too rough. So I talked to her and she fed me a line about being lost on a camping trip and noticing these strange senses and headaches after she got back. She really manifested in solitary confinement in prison, but I didn't know that and I started helping her get control. Thing is, I didn't tell her about Jim. It just didn't feel safe. She seemed nice enough but I just didn't like her. She felt... wrong. After one of our sessions, she kissed me on the cheek and asked me out, to thank me for helping her with her senses. And... nothing. Oh Beau, you should have seen this woman. We're talking blonde goddess here, tall, beautiful, built like a life-sized Barbie. Being the kind of dog that would jump a table leg, I should have been all over her, but I wasn't. I. Felt. Nothing. Which is good because she turned out to be a sociopathic bitch from Hell, but looking back..."
"The exact opposite of what I'm going through with Jim."
"Basically."
"Whoa." They shared a pensive silence, and Beau asked, "What happened to her?"
"Well, she stole some nerve gas, whacked me over the head and left me in the fountain. Jim found me, did CPR, dragged my butt back from the dead and hung around until he was sure I was okay, then he and Simon went after Barnes. Megan and I followed them, and then we all—including this druglord she was gonna sell the nerve gas to—wandered around Sierra Verde for awhile until we stumbled across the ruins of the Olmec temple of sentinels, where she knocked Jim out and made him undergo this ritual involving mild—very mild—hallucinogens and ancient sensory deprivation tanks which heightened their senses further. She went all wacky because she went into the pools a second time—Jim tried to talk her down, but she wouldn't listen and went into a totally catatonic permanent zoneout.
There was a long moment of silence, then Beau said, "Blair, if we know how to help sentinels, then we know how to hurt them, and if we instinctively know the difference between the good guys and bad guys..."
"Who shall guard the guardians? Yeah, the thought has occured to me."
"Is there anything in your research about this?"
"I'm looking, sis, but there isn't a hellava lot. Burton just mentions the sentinel needing backup in passing in the finished monograph. Of course, Burton didn't even use the term 'Guide'. That was coined by a rogue CIA agent who kidnapped Jim and me and tried to make us steal a plane for him. I just liked the sound of it and started using it myself."
There was a really long silence on Beau's end of the line. Finally she said, "There's never a dull moment for you two, is there?"
Blair laughed. "Great, isn't it? I haven't been bored since 1994."

Beau twisted the Raspberry Glace lipstick down and capped it, dropping it back into her cosmetic bag and fished out the little chamois cloth bag with her good earrings. She always brought the little black Audrey Hepburn dress and the heels which raised her height to a staggering 5'9" when she travelled, but Great-Aunt Eugenia's emeralds rarely left the safe deposit box at her bank. She was glad she'd brought them. The setting was old-fashioned, but she loved them and didn't wear them often enough. She tilted her head at the mirror, fastening them securely. Jim's voice drifted in teasingly through the bathroom door, "Hey Beau, you need some help with that zipper?" and she laughed, remembering the night of passion those innocent words had led to, checked herself in the mirror once more, and went out into the loft.
Jim looked quite debonair. The well-tailored dark gray suit emphasized his wide shoulders and lean hips, the subtly patterned tie picked up the color of those startlingly brilliant eyes set in the sculpted patrician planes of his face. Beau wet her lips. "You, uh, you look great." She saw his nostrils flare and blushed, knowing she must be spraying pheromones like a cat in heat.
The predatory gleam in Jim's eye as his own appreciative gaze swept over her didn't exactly help. "So do you." He purred. "I see why you call that the little black Audrey Hepburn dress."
Fighting to regain her composure, she sent her accent social-climbing, imitating Anita's Boston Brahmin tones. "Thank you, James. I can pass for class when the need arises."
"You do more than pass." He offered her his arm and looked surprised that the top of her head was closer to his nose than his shoulder, looked down. "Nice stilts."
"They look nice, but if we're going to be standing around all night you may have to carry me back in from the truck." She joked.
Jim gave her a remarkably goofy grin. "Okay."
The Kensington Gallery was three times the size of the loft, with golden oak floors and walls painted oyster-white as background for the art. Jim was in full 'sentinel' mode as they stood a little apart from the crowd, his eyes sliding slowly over the assembled guests, head tilted slightly, listening, in a pose that reminded Beau of the RCA dog. She swallowed her smile and went back to examining the sculpture on the nearest pedestal. It was merely bent pieces of metal, some of which had been painted primary colors, and was titled "Oops 42".
Jim touched her arm and they moved on. He glanced at the painting, then turned his full attention to it, and in a quiet voice commented, "I don't know much about art, but that's nice."
"Very nice." Beau agreed. A seascape almost photographic in its realism, an old lighthouse on a cliff. There was something almost familiar about it... Jim had gone back on guard duty. Frowning slightly, Beau walked a little ways away, to the next canvas. This one was of one of the old lumber barons mansions, in the same style.
"Sparrow?"
Her shoulders stiffened as she recognized that voice. She turned.
"Paul? Paul Strauss?" He was still taller than her, but not by much, slender, the same blond boy next door good looks. It had been a very long time since he was the boy next door.
"Sparrowhawk Sandburg." She found herself engulfed in a social hug-and-cheek-kiss greeting. Then he squinted at the painting. "I still don't think I got the brick the right shade of brick."
"These are yours?" She exclaimed, a second glance showing her the 'Strauss' in the corner. "They're wonderful!"
He gave a self-depricating little shrug, then waved over a well-preserved sixtyish woman in royal blue. "Mother, you remember Naomi Sandburg's daughter Sparrowhawk."
Lenore Strauss seemed inclined to deny it. "Oh, yes. How is your mother?"
"She's fine." Beau began, and was spared having to come up with further polite chit-chat as Jim joined them with sentinel-stealth, firmly installing himself at her side. "Oh, Jim." She looked up at him, startled, as his arm slipped possessively around her waist, and he brushed a kiss to her temple without breaking eye contact with Paul.
"You wandered off." He chided her.
Real subtle, Jim. You could have just tossed me over your shoulder and shouted, "Mine!" Or whipped it out and pissed a circle around my feet. She smiled wryly. "Paul Strauss and his mother, Lenore, James Ellison. Paul painted these beautiful landscapes, Jim. We knew each other when we were kids, out on Spruce Island."
Lenore's pencilled eyebrows climbed briefly, she studied Jim and gave Beau a sly, catlike glance. "James Ellison. You're William's older boy, aren't you? I just saw your father last month at the museum fund raiser. Dear man. A reliable charitable donor, but not much of one for these purely social events, hmmm?"
Beau watched the transformation in wonder, as Jim's comfortable and at ease body language shifted into a posture that could only be described as aggressively defensive, his eyes suddenly icy and distant.
"No, he never was. He usually has previous obligations."
"Ah, yes. Noblisse oblige." Lenore gave Beau another pointed look, and Beau, who had made a few connections, seethed silently. "Paul, I do so hate to interrupt, but I promised Charles you'd have a private word."
Paul made a face. "Fame beckons." He said lightly, kissing Beau's cheek again and pressing a card into her hand. "Give me a call." Looking at Jim, as if to reassure him. "We'll talk about the good old days."
Beau waited until the party had broken up, thankfully without incident, and they were in the truck halfway to the restaurant where Jim had made reservations, before she said anything. "Ellison." His eyes met hers briefly. "As in, 'This broadcast of Financial Review was made possible by Ellison Consulting: Believing In Cascade, Building A Better Community.' on the local PBS station. That Ellison." She grinned at the man beside her on the bench seat, thrilled by the unexpected discovery.
"Yeah." He admitted, giving her another oddly uncomfortable glance.
"You don't look like you grew up on the right side of the tracks." She explained, giving a fond pat to the dashboard of the blue and white '69 Ford pickup truck he drove. "Did you go to Bentwood Prep? I bet you looked awfully cute in that blazer. I bet you had a best friend named Thad."
"I grew up in Harbor Point and I escaped as soon as possible." He said wearily. "You got a problem with that?"
"No, man." She said, aware that she'd been picking on the scab of some half-healed wound. Let it alone. "I got a problem with people assuming I'm your new favorite toy, but I should have expected it from Mrs. Strauss. She never liked Naomi and she wasn't too fond of me, either."
"Now how can you not like Naomi?" Jim asked, mock-incredulously, then added, serious. "She didn't approve of your relationship with her son?"
"That's a formal way to put it, since we were thirteen at the time, but yeah."
She kept things light during dinner, watched the tension slowly drain out of Jim, leaving the man she knew behind, and she wondered what his childhood had been like.

Jim was actually enjoying guard duty for once. Beau had a lot to do with that. She looked spectacular, and it was fun watching her mingle with the invited guests, cooly elegant, reserved. A well-known ner-do-well banking scion hit on her and she stayed close to him after that, which sort of amused him. So that's how you rebel against a mother like Naomi. You're shy. He was looking forward to dinner. He turned his attention toward a group just entering, and when he looked up again, Beau was standing a few feet away being greeted effusively by a man who was a little too good-looking for his own good. His jaw set. This wasn't exactly deep cover, but they were supposed to appear to be just another couple... He walked over.
Golden Boy turned out to be one of the artists whose work was being featured tonight, and an old friend of Beau's, Paul Strauss, and his mother Lenore. Lenore smiled like a barracuda when Beau introduced them.
"You're William's older boy, aren't you?"
She apparently knew his father socially, so Jim admitted it, noticing the older woman's assessing glance at Beau, knowing she thought he'd paid for the dress on her back and those rocks in her ears, and he was insulted on her behalf, but kept it hidden. 'Keep the enemy from knowing you're their enemy and you've won half the battle' was one of his father's favorite sayings, Dad could play tennis with a man in the morning and fire him after lunch.
And the whole thing brought back memories of the bad old days, dinner parties when he and Steven would be brought down to greet the guests, to be shown off as handsome, well behaved children, the way a dog fancier might show off well trained pups. Jim found himself slipping into 'Ellison Manners' with an ease that was slightly disturbing.
He felt uncomfortable and on display for the rest of the night, tried to forget it and just do his job. It didn't help to hear some woman ask Lenore Strauss about them and she described him as "James Ellison of the Harbor Point Ellisons" and Beau dismissed as no one of importance.
People thinking that Sparrowhawk Rainbow Sandburg was some kind of gold-digger was ridiculous. Not that there was much gold to dig, he lived on his salary, the modest inheritance from his mother socked away for retirement. He just didn't like the unspoken assumption about her character... and his. It was insulting, it was demeaning... I'm letting it go, I'm letting it go... He tried Naomi's calming mantra. Nope, still want to pound something. Meditation just wasn't his style. The dark glitter in Beau's eyes dashed his hopes that their late supper might set a romantic mood, he'd better go back to walking on eggshells around her for a few days. He didn't want to rush things.
She teased him a little about his privileged background in the truck. He didn't want to talk about it, and let her know that. He relaxed during dinner, she was quietly impressed with the restaurant he'd chosen. She made charming conversation, even flirting with him a little, and when he flirted back, her scent grew richer with pheromones. That gave him some hope that she wasn't seeing him as some kind of clich(tm)d bourgeois pig, the kind of man her mother had probably warned her about.
Jim parked the truck in his assigned space in the garage. Beau fumbled with the unfamiliar outdated latch of the lapbelt. He leaned over and unhooked it for her, reminding himself he really should take the truck in and get regulation seatbelts installed. He looked into her eyes, her suddenly very wide brown eyes that shimmered with flecks of gold and green, realized that if he leaned just a bit closer and inclined his head their lips would... he did. Her mouth opened against his, inviting a more intimate kiss. She tasted of garlic and shrimp, rare beef and red wine... his hands closed gently on her forearms, pulling her closer on the bench seat, pulling her into the kiss.
Her hands rested on his shoulders, tightened, then pushed away. He ran his tongue over his lips and stared into her eyes as she took a deep breath and shook her head a little, to clear it. "Jim, don't—"
"I'm sorry," he whispered back, sickly. Ruined it."I didn't mean to..."
"I didn't mean to tease—" she interrupted, flushing.
"You aren't!" he protested, but she was shaking her head.
"I don't... I'm not saying it won't happen... I don't know when it will, but not tonight." She took another sharp breath. "I'm not ready yet."
"Beau, it was just a kiss. It doesn't have to mean anything more than that."
"You're being very..." She wouldn't look him in the eye. "... patient with me. Thank you."
"If you're not... not interested... I'm not going to force you." Now it was Jim who couldn't meet her eyes, afraid of what he would see. He ignored her almost inaudible "I know" and continued. "We aren't talking about just a fling here... and with the sentinel stuff... I can see why you'd hesitate about getting involved with a... with a guy like me." Freak.The word was on the tip of his tongue and it tasted like ashes. He faced her, bracing himself for the pity in her eyes.
She fixed him with that oddly intent gaze of hers, that made him feel like he was made of glass, transparent. She reached up to caress his cheek. Her voice was tender and gently amused. "Jim, you are one big muscle-bound bundle of insecurity, aren't you?" She smiled a twisted smile. "Maybe we are a perfect match. It's not you, it's me. I'm realizing a few things about myself that I never really thought about before, because I didn't want to think about them. But I'm going to get it sorted out soon. I promise." He felt like objecting to the insecurity remark, but the hand on his cheek slid around to the back of his neck and this time she kissed him. "Soon."
Jim woke at the sound of footsteps below. Beau. She moved restlessly through the loft, the bathroom, the kitchen, sitting down and standing again, going to the balcony doors and back to the kitchen, almost pacing. The footsteps approached the stairs and he rolled over, pushing himself up on one arm, anticipating... She wheeled around abruptly, and he heard her whisper, "... losing what's left of your mind" just before the Grench doors closed. He settled back, feeling suddenly cold.

Beau sat on the park bench, looking out at the mainland and the Cascade cityscape. "Despite everything, I almost climbed into bed with him last night. We aren't talking about just a fling, he says. And that's the problem, isn't it? If we were just looking to have some fun with each other, I can do that. But I look at the man and my heart says 'forever' and that never happened before, I never wanted it, hell, I never even believed in it, not for me. No one owns me. But I'm beginning to believe that belonging to Ellison won't be that bad." She looked over at her confidante. "What do you think?"
The seagull turned its head to look at her from out of the other eye and squawked impatiently. Beau threw it the tail end of her hot dog bun. "Thanks, Jonathan Livingston. You're still the cheapest therapist around."
She got to her feet and left the little park, heading back into town. More tourist traps than she remembered. When they lived on Spruce Island, there was a grocery store, a post office, gas station, bank, the school and three churches, and that was about it. She probably should have saved Spruce for last, she was going to be too moody and nostalgic to give Six Bears and Charlotte the attention they deserved, she'd heard someone had reopened the Charlotte Hotel. Still, she couldn't leave without stopping at the cottage. You can't go home again...

Cascade 1980...
Blair Sandburg bounced down the sidewalk from the bus stop, springing into the air and trying to touch a shop's awning with his hands over his head, but he was too short.
"Could you calm down a little? Geez..." Sparrow told her brother.
"I can't believe Orville Wallace signed my card, that was so cooool!"
"Yeah, it was really worth hanging around the Sports Arena for two hours."
Blair snorted and gave her a playful shove. "You're such a girl."
Sparrow shrugged. "Basketball isn't even that interesting when you're playing it. Jags are doing good this year, though." She flipped her long brown braids back over her shoulders.
Blair was craning his neck to look at nearby buildings. "Are we near Rainier University? Why are we going there?"
"I've got some babysitting money, I want to go to Wordsworth Books."
"Okay." Blair kicked a bottlecap, scraping the sole of his Converse All Stars on the concrete. "Uh... Naomi said she's making red beans and rice for dinner. Again. Can we stop at WonderBurger on the way home? Please?"
Sparrow hesitated, thinking of the twenty dollars and whatever she had in her changepurse, which wouldn't go far at the bookstore, she loved new books, glossy covers, crisp pages, new adventures... She looked at her brother's thin face framed by rumpled short curls and his big blue eyes. "Sure." She could buy one book and put anything else that looked interesting on her library list.
They passed a black convertible parallel parked with the driver still at the wheel. She could see the bookstore down the street, she walked faster.
"Hey Birdbrain!" A familiar despised jeering voice. Real original, Joey. She peeked back, yep, Joey Hall, current bane of their existence, had just come out of the record store.
"Keep walking," Blair murmured.
Good advice, but the sharp pain of Joey pulling one of her braids brought Sparrow to a halt and spun her around. Joey Hall loomed over them, all big for their ages, the Hall brothers could be their own football team. An Island kid, from one of the fishing families who resented the newcomers coming in as their traditional way of life was dying out. Sparrow could sympathize, but Joey was still a creep.
"Birdbrain, I'm talking to you." She didn't like the way he was looking at her, at her front. "Why don't you ditch the baby?" He reached out and pinched through her greek-embroidered blouse, snapping the strap of her training bra. She squealed and shoved him back, hard.
"Joey!"
He laughed. "Come on, Sparrowhawk, thought all you artsy hippie types were always looking for a party." He reached out again, this time his fingers brushed against the budding swell of breast... her face flamed, but before she could do anything Blair punched Joey in the stomach.
"LEAVE HER ALONE!"
Joey staggered back, mostly out of surprise, grinned wildly, and swung at Blair, sending the smaller boy sprawling. She hit him, he raised his fist...
"HEY!" An angry shout stopped the fight, they all looked up at the grownup coming over at a jogging run—the man from the car. Sparrow almost had to tilt her head back to look at him—he was tall—and as he reached them he planted his feet and crossed his arms over his chest in a way that made muscles bulge in his arms, below the short sleeves of his tight T-shirt. He smirked down at Joey and Sparrow swallowed against the sudden strange fluttering in her stomach. "Didn't anyone ever teach you to pick on somebody your own size?"
Joey backed away. "I'll see you two at school," he threatened, then broke into a run.
Blair had gotten up, brushing off his jeans. The stranger caught his chin, tilting his face up, Blair's eyes widened but he allowed it. The man probed delicately at his eye, and he flinched.
"You're gonna have quite a shiner there, Sport, but no real damage." He stepped back. "That was pretty brave, but..."
Blair and Sparrow traded a resigned glance, the usual lecture about getting into fights with bigger kids that every grownup seemed to give Blair sooner or later, and then they told Sparrow that it wasn't ladylike to fight.
"... two against one just isn't fair, now, is it?" he grinned at them.
Blair laughed.
"Thanks mister, Sparrow said, unaccustomedly shy.
"You two watch out for that kid. He looks like trouble." He warned them, and headed back to his car. She watched him go.
"Spare-rose in luh-of..." Blair sang softly.
She turned on him furiously. "Shut up, you jerk!"
He fluttered his eyelashes at her and simpered "Thanks mister!"
Sliding back into a comfortable habit of circular bickering, they went on down the street.
Jim Ellison grinned when he saw Cindy leaning against his car, watching the whole thing. He squared his shoulders and swaggered a little. "Hi babe."
She greeted him with a hot kiss. "That was so sweet."
"I'm a sweet guy," he told her.
"You are," she purred. "And this is our last weekend together before you go off into the army, so why are we still standing here?"
He raised his eyebrows, opened the door for her gallantly before getting in. He checked traffic, glanced back... the boy in the tie-dyed shirt and the girl with the braids were going into Wordsworth's. Boy's got a lot of guts and that girl's sure gonna be something when she grows up. Then Cindy leaned over and whispered into his ear, and he forgot all about the two kids and pulled out into traffic.
In the bookstore a misguided but well-meaning clerk found Blair curled up with a book about the Crusades and assumed he was looking at the pictures, and tried to lead him over to the Young Adult section.
He smirked at her and explained, "I'm eleven but I learned how to read when I was three and I read at college-level comprehension. Thanks, though, the Hardy Boys books are fun." He quietly closed the historical reference, gave it to the open-mouthed clerk to be reshelved, and wandered over to join his sister.
"You love doing that, don't you?" Sparrow asked him.
Blair's eyes burned. "I hate people thinking I'm some dumb little kid." He glared over at the clerk. "She'll probably want to sell you something by Judy Blume."
"Yuck," she muttered, picking up a book of Greek mythology, knowing that any words she didn't understand she could always look up or ask somebody. She glanced at Blair, remembering when he used to read to her before she learned how. The college student who'd chased Joey off was right, his eye was already starting to look puffy. She glanced back at the heavy slick weight of the book in her hands. "Did you want to get that book you were looking at?"
"Nah. I'd rather get books from the library. I'd spend all my pocket money on 'em and we can't keep them all when we move anyway."
They stopped at WonderBurger on the way home, and ate their burgers and fries on the ferry, picked up their bikes from the rack next to Barry's Bait Shop, and rode to the cottage their mother was renting.
Naomi Sandburg was in the kitchen, stirring a large pot. "Hello darlings. Did you have a nice time in town?"
Sparrow breathed in the thick starchy smell of beans while Blair rummaged in the fridge for a soda. "It was awesome! Orville Wallace signed my card." He said.
"That's nice..." Blair closed the fridge and Naomi saw his face. "Blair! Oh, baby, who did that to you?"
"That jackass Joey Hall," he muttered.
Naomi put her spoon down and came over, a few steps in the small kitchen, carefully touching his eye and then ruffling his thick curls. "Blair, you know how I feel about fighting." She sighed. "But if you had to defend yourself..." She turned an inquiring gaze at his guilty flinch.
"I threw the first punch," he admitted.
"Oh Blair..."
Sparrow winced. Their friends always thought they were so lucky, because they never got spanked or grounded or sent to their rooms, but that had to be better than that sad, disappointed little gasp of their names.
"He was defending me," she spoke up, feeling the blush burn her face again, so she counted blue tiles in the mosaic behind the stovetop. "Joey made a grab at my boobs."
"Oh. Oh, Sparrow. How traumatic... do you need to talk?"
"No." She was more mortified by this than when it happened.
"You're becoming a woman, sweetie, and boys are going to start noticing, and some boys don't have very good impulse-control yet, but you know your body is your body..."
"I know, Mother," she said through gritted teeth.
Naomi smiled. "I hear that. Why don't you two go wash up?"
"We already ate, we got WonderBurger," Blair told her.
Naomi shook her head. "Fat. Grease. Red meat." She sighed again, then smiled. "Well, I guess you needed a treat, after that." She turned back to the stove, looking at the large pot. "It's better the second day anyway." She bent, opening a lower cupboard, and took out a casserole dish, spooning rice into it, then covering the rice generously with the bean gravy. "and you can take this over to Dennis. He's been living on TV dinners since Margery's been away."
"I'll take it," Sparrow offered. Dennis and Margery Henderson had the cottage next door. Margery painted and Dennis had a suit-job in Cascade.
"Careful, Spare." Her mother handed her the potholders. "It's still hot."
She kicked the screen door open, carrying the dish through the scruffy back yard over to the Henderson house. She managed to balance the casserole against her hip while she rang the ship's bell hung on a hook on their back porch. After a moment, Dennis Henderson opened the door.
"Hi, Mister Henderson, my mom sent you over some beans and rice."
He smiled. "That's nice of her. Come on in a minute, I have that book on herb gardens Margery borrowed from her." He held the door open for her, then took the casserole from her, potholders and all, and disappeared deeper inside. Sparrow put her hands in her pockets and moved aimlessly over to the easel.
Most of the artists used these back rooms as work spaces because of the light. There was a sketch charcoaled onto the prepared canvas, a lighthouse on a cliff, waves frothing against stone. Sparrow raised her eyebrows, knowing that Margery Henderson did abstract explosions of color, like frozen fireworks. Maybe Mrs. Henderson was experimenting with her style, like Naomi always said, "You are who you say you are, you can choose again and change."
Mr. Henderson came back out with the potholders and the book. "You be sure to thank your mom for me, now."
She shrugged. "No trouble."
As she was crossing between houses, Paul Strauss spotted her from the sidewalk and stopped his bike. "Hey, Sparrow, want to go down to the beach?"
"Yeah, wait up." She ran back into the house long enough to put down the book and potholders, yell out where she was going, and then got her bike.

Jim glanced up as Beau threaded her way through the bullpen to his desk. His nose wrinkled. "What have you been eating?"
"Oh, I got a Hungarian hot dog with hot peppers." She deliberately aspirated each 'h'. He scooted his chair away from her. She swung her purse up on a corner of his desk and unzipped it. "Hang on."
Jim sat back and watched in bemusement as a bewilderingly eclectic assortment of items were removed from the patchwork leather sack and piled on his desk; a tapestry changepurse, a lipstick, a disposable camera, a dog-eared paperback with the unlikely title of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, a Heath bar, a gallon-sized Ziploc bag with three Ziploc sandwich bags folded inside it, a baseball-sized ball of blue yarn, a small cast-metal toy plane, a large gray rock...
"You actually have rocks in your purse." It was something he'd always suspected about women.
"It's a fern fossil," she said, as if that explained everything.
Four notebooks, one with a pen stuck through the wire spiral, folding sissors, a small umbrella, a badly crumpled butterfly-print silk scarf, a MiniMaglite flashlight, a tin of Altoids... she opened the tin and scooped up several of the strongly flavored pepperments and tossed them into her mouth. Crunching, she began to stuff things randomly back into the purse.
"Better?" She breathed a peppermint scented puff of air at him.
"Terrific," he said wryly, and looked up as Captain Banks came over.
"Looks like your discreet security was a little too discreet. The Kensington Gallery was robbed."
They spoke with the distraught owner, Charles Kensington. All the paintings had been taken, and one of the smaller, more portable sculptures. Beau looked around the emptier gallery. "So how does this work, exactly?"
Jim half-smiled. "I'm not allowed to tell you."
She made a face. "Blair's 'guidance' theory again, right? He wants to see if I already know how to do this." She blew out an exasperated breath, still looking around. "Ooookay. Sight. You could look for fingerprints, they probably wore gloves but you should never underestimate the stupidity of the human race. Use me as a secondary focus to keep from zoning... listen to my heartbeat."
Jim nodded and started to anchor himself to his temporary guide... the steady familiar beat of her heart, the mix of soap, shampoo, perfume and the unique, indescribable scent of Beau herself underneath, she was standing so close he could feel her body heat... coloring, he dragged his attention away from her and began scanning the room with his vision telescoped up. No fingerprints, but on one of the arms of a sculpture that looked like someone had run over a wrought-iron fence and then spraypainted it...
"Hey Jerry..." he called. "You got any tweezers?"
The forensics tech came over and Jim pointed out the hair-thin fiber caught on a rough edge of metal.
"Now how'd you see that?"
"Good eyes," he said flatly. Sometimes the ex-Special Forces reputation came in handy for a cover. Jerry would be thinking sharpshooter, not superman.

Beau watched as Jim's pupils dilated and his eyes took on a glazed, distant look. He began turning, very slowly, then walked over to the sculpture she remembered seeing last night.
Paul Strauss came in, going over to Charles Kensington with a worried expression. "Charles, I just heard. How awful!"
"I'm sorry, Paul. They took everything. Everything. The police are here, but..." The white haired Englishman shook his head in dismay.
"The police?" Paul repeated, and turned toward Beau. "Sparrow? I didn't realize you were with the police."
Still keeping one eye on Jim, who was talking to one of the forensics techs, she explained, "I'm not" and tapped the ID badge clipped to the waistband of her jeans. "Officially I'm an observer, I'm gathering background material for a book, following Detective Ellison around for a few weeks."
Paul's eyes slid over the other man. "Oh. I thought you were..."
"We're friends," she said firmly, ignoring the mocking little voice that suggested, very good friends.
"Oh," Paul said again. A frazzled-looking associate of Kensington's with a clipboard arguing with a man in a suit began gesturing wildly, Kensington left to deal with it.
"I'm so sorry, Paul," she said, looking at the empty walls of the gallery, knowing that every blank space represented months of work. "All your paintings."
Paul shrugged. "I can always paint. It's Charles who's going to take a big jolt in the wallet. Are you free for dinner tonight?"
Beau blinked at the sudden change in topic. "Well, I don't have any definite plans..." They had never discussed having dinner together every night and trading off on the cooking, it had just started out that way, a comfortable, cozy routine...
"Why don't you meet me at Claudine's? At seven? We can catch up on old times. Just the two of us."
"Claudine's. At seven," she agreed, smiling as he winked at her and went over to have another word with Kensington, winking at her again as he walked out the door. Her full attention returned to Jim, and she realized she'd been half-consciously tracking his movements while talking to Paul. Jim...

The robbery of one art gallery didn't exactly qualify as a major crime. They'd checked out the scene as a courtesy, since they'd been on loan for the opening, and because so many of Cascade's movers and shakers were on the fringes of the art world, it was a good political move for Simon Banks to be seen taking an interest. Jim was just glad he'd given Robbery something to go on with the fiber he'd found, from the inter-station scuttlebutt, they didn't have much else.
The phone rang. He wiped up the vinegar that had spilled while he was mixing the salad dressing and went to pick it up, grinning broadly at the sound of Blair's voice, trying to ignore the reawakened pang that speared through him. It was nice having Beau around, but he missed Blair, realizing he couldn't remember being separated from his guide for so long.
"How do you like England?" he asked, forcing a cheerful tone.
"Oh, man, boiled vegetables, warm beer, I'm in Hell. The museum's great, though, if I could, like, live there, I'd be set." Blair laughed. "Hey, you get a case yet?"
Jim shrugged, walking over to the balcony to check on the grill. "Uh-huh. Robbery."
"All right! So how'd Beau work out on the scene?"
"It was, uh, a little different." Jim crossed his free arm over his chest, uncomfortably.
"Different," Blair repeated, in a calm, patient tone designed to drag details out of recalcitrant sentinels. "How different?" Jim hesitated, and Blair verbally nudged him again. "Jim, I may need to know this."
"I..." Jim glanced back across the loft, using his hearing to make sure Beau was still in the bathroom. "She figured out that splitting the focus would keep me from zoning... but when I tried keeping half my attention on her, I, uh... I started to get a little turned on." There was a long pause. "Too much information, Chief?"
"Noooooo..." Blair was embarrassed, but, being Blair, wouldn't let that get in the way of scientific curiosity. "Okay. Um. Look, I know you and she have, uh, done it, and you crank up the dials a bit when you're with a ladyfriend, right? I mean, I know I would. And since you and she have been together... you're subconsciously associating heightened senses in her presence with sex."
"Yeah. That sounds right," Jim admitted. "And I had one of those dreams."
He could hear Blair's smirk. "One of those dreams?"
Jim sighed. "Not one of those dreams, one of those dreams. The jaguar called Beau my Consort."
"Consort, not Guide," Blair repeated thoughtfully. "Actually, you had your senses as a kid, you just learned not to use them. If you breed true, and your kids will be sentinels, then back in the pre-historic days of yore, you'd need your mate to be able to keep Jimmy Junior from zoning and being carried off by a sabre-tooth tiger while we're off looking for antelope."
Jim grinned at that mental picture. "You sure you're an anthropologist?"
"Hey, man, your concept of Neolithic culture is based on The Flintstones. Just going with a metaphor you can follow. I'm saying a female guide is the perfect mother for sentinel kids."
"Lord knows I could have used one." He tried to imagine what his life would've been like with a more understanding parent. Beau came out of the bathroom. She'd changed into a silky cream and rose-print sundress, surprisingly formal and feminine for her. He handed over the phone and went back into the kitchen, half-listening.
"Hey Blair." An amused snort, and their eyes met. "No, I'm letting him eat butter out of the box. Don't start with me, Nature Boy, I remember when you used to put three or four tablespoons of sugar on your Frosted Flakes and watch cartoons and twitch for the rest of the morning." She laughed. "Yeah, I am. You be careful, now, bro, some of those fair English roses have thorns. Uh-huh. Love you, bro. Bye." She hung up the phone and faced Jim with a studied casualness. "I'm going out, I won't be too late..."
Jim stared at her, suddenly understanding the dress and not liking it. "Out?"
"I'm having dinner with Paul, I should have said something earlier..."
Paul. Paul Strauss. Her old friend. The artist. His jaw set. "I don't think you should be going out with one of the suspects." He crossed his arms over his chest.
She looked at him with wide-eyed innocence. "Paul isn't a suspect, he's one of the victims."
"Insurance?" he suggested, fumbling for something more reasonable than "I don't want you to."
She shook her head. "That's motive for Kensington, not Paul, isn't it?"
"Fine. Go out with him, then." He turned, opened a can of green beans and dumped them into a microwave bowl. "Have fun."
"Jim?"
He turned again, meeting her troubled eyes.
"Jim, I'm just having dinner with him."
"Yeah. Dinner with an old flame. Go on. You don't want to keep Paul waiting." He couldn't keep the hurt, sarcastic edge out of his voice.
Something sparked in her dark eyes. "Are you jealous, Jim?"
He took a breath, trying to calm down. "Should I be? What happened to 'let's see how we feel next time we see each other?' I thought—I thought there might be something between us, that we might be building up to something here. Was I wrong?"
Her lips thinned. "I never made any promises, and I never asked for any."
"No," He growled back. "You didn't."
"He's an old friend." Her voice had gotten deeper. Rougher. "I'm having dinner with him. That has nothing to do with this. With us."
"You're right. It's not like we're 'going steady' here. Go on, go out with him, stay out all night if you want." He slammed a cabinet shut.
"I might!" She bit out, and stomped out of the loft, slamming the door and taking the stairs. He heard her snarl "Men! Why do they have to complicate everything?" halfway down.
He wanted to go after her... and what? Argue some more? Haul her back upstairs? Prove he was a knuckle-dragging throwback to a pre-civilized breed of Man?
He put the second steak back in the freezer, and cooked and ate his own dinner. Alone. Washed up. Sat down in front of the TV with a beer. Alone. He was out of practice at being alone. This felt too much like after Carolyn had walked out. What his life had been, once, what he always knew it would be again someday, when Blair got his degree and left. He changed channels continuously for a couple of hours, then went to bed.

"Men! Why do they have to complicate everything?" Beau snarled. She knew that she was lucky she'd gotten out of the loft before she started throwing things, or told him that she loved him, or something equally disasterous. She did love Jim, she just wasn't sure she wanted to. The words she'd almost said burned at the back of her throat. You don't have to worry, I haven't been attracted to another man since I looked over my brother's shoulder into your crystal blue eyes. Haven't felt that thrill, that rush, that lightening bolt of desire. I'm yours now.
That didn't give him the right to decide who she could or couldn't spend time with. That infuriated her. Their relationship, whatever it was, already came with more strings than she was comfortable with, she'd be damned if she'd let herself become Ellison's puppet.
The challenge of navigating her brother's antiquated automobile through the streets of a city she was barely familiar with provided enough of a distraction to help her calm down. Blair's Volvo and Jim's truck weren't the only classic cars she'd seen on the streets of Cascade, the milder weather helped preserve vehicles that became salt-rusted junkers back east.
Claudine's was a nice, unpretentious little French restaurant. Paul greeted her with a quick brush of his lips against her cheek, and held her chair for her. The boy she'd known had grown into an intriguing man. They talked about old times. It wasn't hard to get him to talk about his life, the Cascade art scene, and he asked her questions and laughed in all the right places.
And he really was rather handsome, with all that brass-blond hair and those thick-lashed brown eyes. Beau found herself considering him as potentially more than just a friend, and he seemed just as interested in pursuing the possibility. Two differing views of reality collided in her head and sent it spinning. She excused herself and fled to the relative refuge of the ladies room.
She was attracted to Paul. She hadn't thought it possible. Head bowed, she held onto the green marble vanity with a white-knuckled grip and took in desperate deep gulping breaths. She'd been preparing herself for the inevitable surrender. And all along she'd been fighting the wrong battle.
She freshened her lipstick, then washed her hands, feeling there was some symbolism in the act, in the coolness of water on her skin, after this revelation. I have to stop this. It isn't fair. Not to Paul, not to Jim, and not to me. God, I've written too many romance novels, they rot the brain, I'm starting to sound like one of my dimwit heroines.
Staring at her reflection in the mirror, some odd scrap of memory surfaced, an image from a dream. Her own voice saying, "what do you fear?" The eyes are the windows to the soul. Beau looked into the mirror, into her own eyes, and answered the question.

Jim was still awake when he heard Beau come in. A glance at the clock on the nightstand told him it was a little after nine. An early night. He inhaled deeply, found no trace of the other man's scent and took a certain bitter satisfaction in that. He listened to her move around downstairs, between the bedroom and bathroom, until he heard her feet on the stairs. He sat up, his heart beating a little faster, but heard no further footsteps.
He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, craned his neck to see over the railing, his eyes adjusting to the lack of light. Beau sat on a step, halfway down, back to the brick wall, wearing an oversized green Boston College T-shirt, her bare legs tucked beneath her.
"I wanted Paul," she said into the darkness.
His hands clenched into fists, he forced them open and let them fall to his bare thighs, rubbed down to his knees and back again.
"I was attracted to you, the first time we met, and I thought it was just a flirtation. Then we met again at my cousin's wedding, and I found out you were a sentinel, and we slept together. Blair's theories about male sentinels and female guides... I thought he was right, that it was a mating instinct. I haven't been able to look at another man since, not without comparing him to you. I've never... needed... anyone like this before." Her voice broke. "I thought it was the Sentinel/Guide thing, that it bound me to you, that I was yours now, and not my own, alone, ever again. But I went out with Paul tonight, and I wanted him, I could have gone home with him, and that meant that I'm free to choose, that how I feel about you is really how I feel about you and not the Sentinel/Guide thing at all. I love you. And if it's my choice, then I choose to be with you. If you want me."
"Beau? I want you." He raised his voice over the tightness in his throat. "I love you."
She came upstairs and before he could move, knelt straddling his lap. His hands closed on her hips, her arms went around him loosely, fingers lacing at the back of his neck.
"This can be just for tonight, or we can try for forever, but we have to decide, Jim. Trying to stay in between will kill me." She said quietly.
"Try for forever." The warm silk of her lips closed over his. He pulled away. "Before we do this, you need to know..." He wet his lips, forcing the words out. "I'm not, I'm not a nice guy. Stubborn, stiff-necked, uptight, withdrawn, I don't do the touchy-feely emotional stuff, I don't do vulnerable..." he confessed, the litany of accusations Carolyn had shouted at him that horrific night the marriage finally fell apart tumbling out, he listed his faults in some confused belief in fair play. "I'm jealous, possessive..."
"No, really?" she sighed teasingly, tickling his ear.
"We do this, I don't care if you're in Boston or Bulgaria, I don't want you sleeping with anybody else, I'll want to hunt him down..."
"Ex-Ranger," she purred, scattering little kisses down the line of his jaw and the column of his throat. He groaned deeply in response, tilting his head back. "You know eight ways to kill somebody with a toothpick, soldier boy?"
"Twelve."
"God, I love a man with an inventive mind," she breathed with an emphasis that made him shiver. "Same here, we get together and it's the two of us. I'll come to Cascade as often as I can, take every assignment that even comes near here, and I have enough frequent flyer miles to qualify for the space program, but if you find yourself some local lovely, you tell me and we'll say goodbye. I'm giving you my heart here, Ellison, break it and you'll destroy me. To my face, not behind my back."
"No," he agreed, kissing her.
"Stubborn, you don't know the meaning of the word until we've had our first fight. I carry grudges, I don't forgive easily, and I never forget... no middle gears... and I've never let myself really love anybody before, I don't think I know how..."
"We'll learn together," Jim promised.
She looked into his eyes again and said simply, "Lovers, til we part, do we part" and then kissed him. He broke the kiss long enough to drag her T-shirt over her head, then reclined, pulling her down on top of him.

Jim woke, and smiled, reaching out to gently stroke from shoulder to the smooth curve of her hip. "Beau," he called softly. "Beau..."
"Again?" She murmured, sleepily incredulous.
His grin widened. "No, honey, it's time to get up."
"Mmmmm. Uh-uhn." She squirmed away, burrowing deeper into her pillow.
"Beau..."
"Go 'way."
"Why is it you'll do anything in bed but wake up?"
"'Cause we did everything in bed last night but sleep!" Bleary brown eyes peered at him from beneath a veil of mussed brown hair. "You're forty-one! You shouldn't be able to do that!" His grin went smug and he leaned over to nuzzle at the nape of her neck. She swatted at him. "Go shave. You've got a chin like a cheese grater."
Chuckling softly, he grabbed the black boxers that had been draped over the railing at the head of the bed, and slipped them back on.

Jim kept glancing at her and grinning, which bothered Beau a little, because his driving was scary enough when he was paying attention, but after last night she couldn't help grinning back at him. She still felt kind of odd after the realization that she was in love with him. It had been easier to believe that it was a Sentinel/Guide thing, some biological imperative that she had no control over. Not that she had any control over this, either. Last night, for the first time, she'd finally said the 'L' word and meant it.
What really blew her mind was that Jim had said it back, like he meant it, not like he was just in a hurry to get to the good part. That made her want to stand on rooftops and sing torch songs. Songs she understood the words to now.
At the station, Jim proved that policework wasn't all car chases and shootouts by doing paperwork, then reading through an enormous case file that had been sent up from Robbery, a string of hold-ups that seemed connected but the investigating officers couldn't figure out the pattern. Beau was content to sit by his side and drink in the ambience, priming the pump for the book she was going to write, and making a few notes for it.
After a couple of hours of sitting in the same position, she had to move. Glancing at the coffee mug on the corner of Jim's desk, she remembered him pointing out the breakroom to her. "You want some coffee?"
He looked up with a nod. She took his cup and crossed to the breakroom, reveling in the chance to stretch her legs. She fixed his coffee, and brought the cup back to him, then returned to the breakroom, fishing a box of Bigelow Earl Grey teabags out of her purse and finding a styrofoam cup, glancing over her shoulder as Jim came in behind her.
"I need some more sugar."
She picked up a couple of white packets and came over to the table where he sat, only belatedly noticing that he'd closed the door, drawn the blinds to the window looking out on the bullpen, and didn't have his mug.
"Coffee's fine," he said, lazily reaching out and hooking a long arm around her waist and pulling her into his lap. "I need some more sugar."
She let out a strangled squeak. James Ellison in a playful mood was slightly unnerving.
"Ummmm, Jim?"
He let go of the earlobe he'd been nibbling. "Uh-huh?"
"We're... We're making out in the breakroom, here."
"Mmmhmmmm." Moving down the nape of her neck.
"Okaaaaay..."
There were no words for a little while, just a quiet moment of casual kissing. At last, Jim pulled back with a reluctant sigh. "Smooch break over?" Beau asked, equally disappointed.
"I've got to go down to Robbery, tell Nelson to check the bus routes, every place that's been hit is down the block from a bus stop."
"That simple?" she asked, sliding off onto her feet.
He stood. "You work a cold case long enough and you start to lose perspective."
"Mind if I tag along?"
Her eyes, hungry for detail, noticed the almost identical layout of Robbery, the detectives, a paunchy older man with greying blond hair, a tired-looking Hispanic woman with a cuffed and sullen teenager by her desk, and a red-headed man whose face was the very map of Ireland, as they used to say.
Jim dropped the case file on the redhead's desk, Beau only half listened to the conversation as she looked around, aware that the other man was watching her.
"Hey, Ellison, you finally trade Sandburg in?"
Jim ignored that, but walked over, asking him, "Lab results in yet, Graham?"
"Yeah. Cashmere." The Robbery detective sighed. "Probably there from the opening. The stuff's probably in someone's private collection by now. Don't suppose you saw anyone really drooling over it while you were there?"
"No such luck." Jim admitted, reaching down onto Graham's desk and tugging a color photo free, part of the gallery's catalog. It showed one of Paul Strauss' works, boats and the ocean and the setting sun.
"Damn shame. This guy did some nice work and now he's not going to see a dime from any of it." Graham commented.
"The things were so real they looked like photographs. And these shots don't show the trick signature."
"Trick signature?" Beau repeated, puzzled.
"Yeah, like 3D, sticking out from the background..." Jim looked up suddenly and Beau caught a flash of something crossing his face, and realized that he was so used to his heightened senses, after years of Blair's training, the control almost automatic. He couldn't remember normal limits, and had to guess at them. She filed that tidbit of insight under Things To Tell Blair.
Jim and Detective Graham talked about the case a little, using a jargon filled verbal shorthand she couldn't quite follow, and then they headed back upstairs to Major Crimes.

Jim shifted the grocery bag in his arms as Beau hit the button for the elevator. "So ground beef and onions..."
"You just brown the meat and let it simmer in the steak sauce with mushrooms then you serve it over rice. The less time we take to cook, the more time we'll have to... work up an appetite." She grinned.
Jim grinned back. "Y'know, there's a couple thousand takeout joints in town."
"Uh-uhn. I promised Blair I'd keep an eye on your diet." She tapped him lightly on the chest, fingertips tracing a small circle. "And now I have an ulterior motive for keeping this body in perfect condition."
"Promises, promises." He leaned down for a quick kiss.
A quiet cough interrupted them, and he guiltily moved them aside so old Mrs. Crater could step out of the elevator, to take her Chihuahua Ittybit out for his evening walk. As always, Ittybit began an urgent, high-pitched irritating yapping bark as soon as he saw Jim, the walnut-sized brain dedicated to warning his owner and the world at large that James Ellison was the most dangerous creature on the face of the Earth. Jim liked dogs... he just didn't think Chihuahuas qualified.
"I'm so sorry, I just don't know what gets into him." Mrs. Crater raised her voice over the hysterical yapping.
"It's okay, ma'am. I'm used to it." Jim looked down into a pop-eyed glare and imagined lifting one sneakered foot and putting it down again. Heavily. As if the little mutant gerbil could read his mind, lips curled back revealing teeth easily the size of grains of rice.
Mrs. Crater scooped Ittybit up before he could savage Jim's ankles, smiled at Beau, and went out into the muggy evening air with a murmured, "Enjoy your evening."
They did.
Days passed. Beau learned more about the thrilling life of Cascade police detectives, spending six pointless hours in the truck on stakeout, going to court, and the ever-present paperwork. In her spare time, she produced articles, outlined her novel, and looked at apartments.
Jim decided it was time to get the loft into shape for Blair's homecoming, was a little surprised when she mucked in without complaint, and that she actually knew how to clean instead of her brother's method of making neater piles. He commented on it.
"Nana and Great-Aunt Eugenia tried to turn me into a proper hausfrau everytime they could get their hands on me. Only part that sank in was the cleaning and a potato pancake recipe that would probably kill you if I forgot to leave the horseradish out." She looked up from polishing one of the legs of the dining table and smiled. "And if that speculative gleam in your eye has anything to do with getting me a little French maid's costume, you get yourself a football uniform first and then we'll talk."
When they had the loft cleaned up, they ordered a pizza and then watched a Thin Man movie on the nostalgia channel while necking on the couch. The couch wasn't really wide enough for two people to stretch out comfortably, so Jim was lying on the couch with Beau's warm solid weight on top of him. He spun the dials up a little and lost himself in the perfect way their bodies fit together, the height difference not mattering when they were lying down, the bitter musk of her sweat and the steady, calming beat of her heart.
William Powell and Myrna Loy traded arch, urbane banter, Asta—Now there's a dog—found the clue, and Beau fell asleep in his arms.

Beau whistled off-key as she let herself back into the loft. Thanks to Blair's suggestion, she'd finally found a decent furnished apartment near the university. And the best part was that she could move in the day before Blair came home. They'd have to do something special to celebrate. Beau spent several minutes in happy contemplation of special things she and Jim could do to celebrate, then went and took a long shower. Being involved with a sentinel seemed to make you a little paranoid about personal hygiene.
Just trying to see the world through Jim's eyes, ears, nose, etc. boggled the mind. There was so much that was potentially irritating, annoying or just plain disgusting... it was no wonder that Jim was so fastidious.
There was someone knocking at the door when she came out of the bathroom, she answered it, and was surprised to see Paul, more surprised by what he had in his hand. Damn. I was wondering when the guy with the gun was gonna show up. I'm getting real tired of this.
"Let's take this inside," he ordered quietly. She backed up, and he came into the loft and closed the door. She struggled to stay calm.
"What are you doing, Paul?"
"Cleaning up the details. Ellison doesn't know, does he? Or he didn't believe you, laughed at you for playing Nancy Drew, since I haven't been arrested for theft and forgery. I suppose, to be thorough, he'll have an accident a suitable interval after your disappearance."
Beau swallowed. Forgery? Stall for time, lead him on, try to figure out what he's talking about. "How did you know I was onto you?"
Paul smiled a cold, cruel smile. "Ah. Like one of your books. This is where I, the villain, gives exposition to fill in any holes in the plot? Very well. I did not paint the works I was showing at the Kensington Gallery. They were done by Dennis Henderson, to pass the time, I expect, while his wife was travelling. He never bothered to sign them, just stacked them in the attic. Forgot about them when his wife died in that plane crash and he left the island. I found them when I bought the cottage after I left school, recognized the quality, and now badly needing a success, signed them as my own. Your family lived next door, your mother was friendly with the Hendersons, you were in and out of their cottage as much as your own. You recognized the paintings at the opening. I hadn't expected that, that was why I was forced to break in and collect them before you could examine them closely. You were poking around on the island, you could easily have found out I own the Henderson cottage now, and started to put the pieces together. And all those questions about local artists and dealers at dinner... clumsy... you really should have left this sort of thing to the professionals."
It would have been funny if her life wasn't at stake. Actually, I've been too preoccupied with my new hobby of trying to find a spot on Jim's body that isn't an erogenous zone to notice any of this. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but, you'll never get away with it."
She'd never realized how easily his finely featured face could take on an expression of petulance.
"Oh, I think I will. I had it all planned out... until you showed up at the wrong place at the wrong time. I just had to adjust things a little, to get rid of you. And you were quite happy to tell me how you travel all over the world, nothing tying you down... no one to miss you. So... you're going to pack your things and write Detective Ellison a nice thank you note and then you and I are going over to the island and wait for sunset... and we'll go for a walk along the cliffs that only I'll be coming back from."
Beau packed her things slowly and methodically. If this was one of her books, a heroine would have been able to find some clever means of escape, or some cryptic clue to put in the note that would go over the villain's head but give the hero the means to rush to the rescue. But this wasn't a romance novel and Beau was almost numb with the certainty of her death.
She lingered over the note, making a ceremony out of folding the paper in half, zen origami. I'm sorry, Jim. I'm glad I knew you. I'm glad I loved you. I'm glad I let myself tell you. She gathered up her luggage, took one last look around the loft, and let Paul Strauss march her out to his car.

Jim was tired and not in a great mood. Beau had only come in for half an hour in the morning, and left saying there were some things she needed to take care of. The day had gone downhill from there, Cascade deciding to welcome summer's arrival with an uncharacteristic and humid heat. Reminded him of Peru. A witness in the Antonelli case had taken a powder, three new open cases from other departments wound up in the pile on his desk, Brown and Rafe finally cracked that fishing boat smuggling case of theirs and brought the suspect in... after a fight that had knocked Rafe into the hold. The image of Rafe, stained, smelling of rotten fish guts, and swearing a blue streak in Swahili might be one he could laugh at, one day. When he'd gotten the smell out of his nose.
He'd called the loft to tell Beau he'd be working late and had to leave a message. Mrs. Crater was coming out just as he went in, thankfully unaccompanied by Ittybit. He held the door for her.
"Good evening, Mrs. C."
"Evening, Jim. Oh, I am sorry it didn't work out with your young lady. And she seemed like such a nice girl, too."
He stared at her, not understanding. "Didn't..."
"I saw her leaving, just after supper. I was out on my balcony, hated to in this heat but it's cooling off a bit finally, anyway, I was trimming the dead blooms on my ivy geraniums when I saw that girl that's been staying with you get into a Lexus with a blond man..."
"Excuse me," he said faintly, and took the stairs two at a time.
The loft was empty. Blair's room no longer held the neatly stacked suitcases, the zippered cosmetic bag wasn't nestled against his shaving kit in the bathroom closet, and there was a single folded sheet of paper on the dining table.
With a sick feeling of foreboding, he picked it up.
Jim, I do want to thank you for allowing me to tag along with you at work. I've gathered enough material for my book, I'm sorry I couldn't stay to say goodbye but I'm on my way to New Zealand and I can't miss my flight. Love SRS.
Love. Yeah. Right. Jim swallowed against the burning in his throat. He should have been expecting this. Love. Sweet words, sweet lies whispered in the darkness, implied promises she'd never intended to keep because all she wanted was to get into his bed again. Why'd she have to do that, if all she wanted was a couple rolls in the hay, she just had to say. She didn't have to tell him what he wanted to hear. The role-reversal made him feel off-balance. Isn't this what the guy is supposed to do? At least she didn't write "I'll call you" in the note.
He crumpled the page in his hand. Should have listened to Sandburg, he warned me about getting involved with his sister, I should have known, it runs in the family, Naomi flits from man to man like a hummingbird, and Blair goes through women like he's working his way through the damn phone book— The dark shape of his soul uncoiled and roared in denial. No. She is mine as I am hers. She gave what she never has offered, for which I never could ask.
He didn't know where the words came from, only that they were true, found himself remembering her fierce whisper, "I'm giving you my heart here, Ellison, break it and you'll destroy me. To my face, not behind my back" and "Lovers, 'til we part, do we part." She'd made him the only oath she could.
No. She wouldn't do this. She wouldn't leave him willingly. A blond man... he grabbed the phone. "Elizabeth? Jim Ellison. I need to know if there's a Lexus registered to a Paul Strauss. Address?"

Beau sat, handcuffed to a cheap wooden kitchen chair, waiting. Paul seemed to be taking her captivity in stride, busying himself with some little mundane tasks and only coming in occassionally to check on her. In a strange way, the worst part of it was the gag he'd used to cover her mouth after her first scream. If she was going to stop breathing, she wanted to enjoy it while it lasted. And the whole right side of her face ached from the disapproval he'd shown after her one attempt at escape by walking out carrying the chair. She was only handcuffed to the spindled back by her left wrist. He always had the gun ready when he came back in or she might have tried something really stupid.
She'd decided to fight him, right at the very end. With a lot of luck she might be able to surprise him and escape in the dark... with a little luck she might manage to pull him over the cliff with her. It wasn't a great plan, but it was the best she could come up with. She couldn't let him win. She couldn't let him survive to arrange that accident for Jim...
Her eyes widened hugely as Jim entered the room, gun drawn, moving as silently as a cat stalking prey. He holstered the weapon and crossed to her, taking the gag off. His jaw tightened as he saw her bruised cheek, he cupped the other side of her face in a reassuring caress. She started to speak. And then Paul was in the doorway. Jim turned. Paul fired. Jim fell at her feet.
And the world went grey around the edges. Jim was dead—Paul had shot him and Jim was dead—Beau screamed wordlessly, an ancient banshee shriek of rage and loss, stood, grabbed the chair, stepped over the body—Jim... Jim's body... Jim's dead...—and hit Paul in the face with the chair, violently, again and then again. Paul fell, unprepared for the savagery of the attack. She turned, swung the chair down on the counter, shattering the brittle wood, freeing herself, brought her foot down hard on the hand that still held the gun, feeling bones break under the sole of her sneaker. She dropped to her knees on top of him to prevent his escape, and he was screaming and cursing, cradling his ruined hand, in pain—the gunshot, Jim falling—and Beau bared her teeth. I'll show you pain. The shiny metal of the gun caught her eye, but no, that was too quick. A jagged piece of the chair leg was within reach, she lifted the makeshift club over her head to bludgeon, to punish... and whirled as a hand caught her wrist.
He'd been too focussed on Beau, checking her for injuries, and Strauss surprised him. The bullet hit like being kicked in the chest by a horse, it knocked him off his feet and knocked the wind out of him, and Beau went insane. A sound came out of her the likes of which Jim had never heard before and he hoped to God he'd never hear it again, and then she went for Strauss, intent on killing him with her bare hands or anything she could reach. The pain fading, he managed to push himself up and crawl over, stopping her before she could inflict any more damage.
Impossibly wide dazed brown eyes stared up at him. "... Jim... you're dead..."
Soothingly, he worked the blunt instrament free of her white-knuckled grip. "No, Kevlar, I'm wearing a vest, it's okay, I'm okay..." She turned at the waist, flinging her arms around him and burying her face in his neck.
"Don't you ever do that to me again!" she sobbed a strangled scream into his shoulder.
He rubbed his cheek against her hair. "Yes, dear." She pulled away and slapped at him, but whatever was looking out of her eyes seemed a little more human. He heard his backup arrive and yelled, "In here!" and climbed to his feet, helping her up and holding her. Strauss scrambled back into a corner. "You okay?"
"... no..." Overcome by terror and adrenalin, she started to tremble.
Captain Banks walked in with a couple of uniforms, took in the scene, Jim cradling Beau in his arms, the wreckage, Paul Strauss snivelling, a deep gash in his forehead bleeding freely while he held his oddly flattened hand.
"Jim, I know you were provoked, but this twerp's the type to yell police brutality..."
"I did it," Beau admitted. The captain and the uniforms looked at her. Five foot five, 155 pounds, bruised, shaking like a leaf. "He shot Jim, I thought he'd killed Jim." Her voice broke. They looked at the cowering man, and back at her, and it seemed ridiculous... until you looked into her eyes.
Jim cleared his throat. "Simon, I'm taking her home." Banks nodded. As Jim led her out, he heard one of the uniforms mutter, "Brave man."

"... mmmmm... and Mister Henderson must've varnished the paintings when he finished them and then Paul signed them as his own and put another coat of varnish on, and... oh that's so good... and that's why you saw the signature as 3D, you saw it floating between the layers of varnish... ooohhh Jiiiiim... and—"
He raised his head and sighed. "You really are a Sandburg, aren't you?"
"Huh?"
"Less talking. More foreplay."
"Oh. Right. Sorry."

Blair sat cross-legged on the couch, eyes dancing as he watched his sentinel and his sister. Beau wasn't exactly sitting on Jim's lap, but to an experienced anthropologist, the relationship dynamic had definitely changed, the body language now screaming "couple."
"... so it's just a line about the sentinel leading the expedition to an oasis across the desert, but it got me wondering if it's possible for you to get lost in your home territory, which is something I want to test. Maybe blindfolding you and airlifting you out to the boonies with camping equipment and seeing how long it takes you to hike back to town."
Jim made a face. "Sounds like Basic."
"We could get him drunk and put him on the Tilt-A-Whirl at the Pier first," Beau suggested brightly.
Jim swatted at her. "Hey, he comes up with plenty of ways to torture me on his own, he doesn't need your help." He got to his feet. "Food should be about ready, anybody want anything else while I'm out?"
Blair asked Beau, "You see how he assumed he'd be the one to go get the take-out?"
She nodded. "And so the great Sentinel ventures forth to provide chicken fried rice for his Guide and Consort." She said in her best Discovery Channel narrator voice.
Jim sighed theatrically and asked nobody in particular, mock-plainitively, "What did I do to deserve these two?" on his way out.
Beau laughed. Blair shifted to face her. "So... you and Jim are together."
"Yep." Her eyes sparkled.
"Together-together or fooling around together?"
"Together-together." Her sparkling eyes narrowed. "Why?"
Blair took a deep breath. "Because your longest relationship was with Karl Mueller and it only lasted a year. Six months of which you spent screaming at each other. Are you really serious about Jim? Because you could hurt him. And I'm not going to let that happen."
It was Beau's turn for a deep breath. "Karl was... a mistake. Jim... those feelings I wasn't sure of kept getting stronger until I knew. I love him, Blair."
"How do you know that?"
She looked into his eyes. "You said that I could hurt him. If I thought I was... I'd walk out that door, little brother, and never come back. The thought of hurting him breaks my own heart."
Blair nodded. "Good. Y'see, Jim... His mom left when he was little, and then she died, so there's no closure there, and his dad, well, his dad did his best, but he came from that whole 'the man makes the money and the wife takes care of the kids' mindset, and suddenly he didn't have a wife anymore, just two kids he didn't have a clue about relating to, so he basically let the housekeeper raise them and he was just around to lay down the law. Which, what with being an Ellison and the oldest, set Jim up for a healthy dose of Great Man's Son syndrome. Almost everything he did was to please his father and earn his respect, and nothing was ever good enough. And the old man did not react to the manifestation of Jim's senses well, I think he thought Jim was going crazy. So Jim repressed them, until the chopper crash in Peru when he needed them to survive." Blair took another deep breath. "It's actually amazing that Jim functions as well as he does, but he definitely has abandonment issues, he doesn't like to let people get close enough to hurt him and he has trouble believing people care about him because he doesn't believe he deserves it. He's always waiting for that other shoe to drop. His definition of friend seems to be 'someone who hasn't let me down yet.'"
Beau slowly sagged backward on the couch. "Wow."
Blair swallowed. "Yeah."
"I do love him. I'll do my best to pound that through his thick skull."
Blair relaxed. "Well, I've been studying the man for four years now. Sometimes the psych. minor comes in handy. Any questions?"
Beau sat up with a familiar gleam in her eyes. "Any questions? Okay. Why does Megan call you Pony Boy?"

Months Later...
Jim walked back into police headquarters in a downright sunny mood. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, he'd just added another arrest to his record, making the streets of Cascade that much safer, and he was seeing Beau that night. All was right with the world.
He heard a couple of wolfwhistles and catcalls as he got on the elevator after turning his perp over to Booking, the closing doors preventing him from seeing if Vice just brought in a round up, the usual excuse for that behavior.
He passed Officer Evelyn Walters on his way to his desk, and she greeted him with a smile that was almost lascivious, which made him blink. Sorry Evie, I'm taken.
He glanced around the bullpen as he sat down, Brown and Rafe were out, the captain was in his office, Connor and Rhonda were at Rhonda's desk, talking. He turned on his computer, to get a head start on the paperwork before Booking sent his perp up, and idly tuned in while waiting for the machine.
Rhonda was saying "—think she really based him on Ellison?"
Megan replied, "James Ellison, John Emerson? And look at the description here..." A rustle of pages. His head snapped around to stare at the fat paperback Megan Connor held. Handcuffed Hearts was written in fancy gold lettering, so was Beau's penname, Drusilla Beauventure. The glossy cover showed a square-jawed man pointing a gun outward, a shorted hourglass-figured brunette tucked in the crook of his arm.
Connor continued. "'... dark brown hair, piercing blue eyes, tall and lithe, taut silken skin over slabs of muscle... ' You can bounce quarters off Ellison's arse, don't tell me you haven't looked."
Rhonda sighed. "Oh, I've looked..."
Jim grabbed his phone, punched in a number, and growled, "John Emerson?"
"Oh." Beau said sheepishly. "You've seen it. Uh... look, Jim, my books all follow four families, The O'Rileys, The Emersons, The Rostovs, and the Duloches, I planned it all out when I started writing romances so I'd never have to work out the geneology again. John Emerson was the only one who could be a police detective without contradicting an earlier book. Sorry. And everybody would think it was you anyway since I was following you around."
He sighed. "You could have warned me."
"Sorry. You're right. I'm a horrible person. You still coming over? You can help me with some research, see, I'm not sure page 253 is physically possible..."
"I'll see you tonight." He hung up, then got up and walked over to Rhonda's desk. He held his hand out. "Mind if I have a look?"
The women handed the book over like guilty schoolgirls. Jim took it back to his desk and turned to page 253. Rhonda, or Megan, or whoever owned this copy, had helpfully highlighted the relevant paragraph. He read it. His eyes widened. He read it again.
He glanced around the bullpen. If Booking had a backlog it could take a good fifteen or twenty minutes... he opened the book to the first page and began to read.

~ End ~

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Page last updated 8/15/03.