Disclaimer: Pet Fly's guys.Spoilers: (Most episodes)
Rating: R
Author's Notes: For Hephaistos, who asked for it. <g>
Brothers in Arms
#13 in The Sparrowhawk Sandburg Series
by
Besterette
Besterette@aol.com
Beau Sandburg yawned a little, looking down the twilight-shadowed streets surrounding Riley's Grill. The valet parking boy had started to smirk as Jim described his precious '69 Ford pickup truck, but quickly schooled his expression at a particularly Ellisonian glower.
It had been a perfect night. She'd been rather dubious when Jim suggested the dinner date, but getting out of the house for a few hours, to go to a romantic restaurant appealed to her. And her practical side pointed out the dresses languishing in the back of her closet, the cosmetics and jewelry gathering dust, since she lived her life in tee-shirts and jeans. If she was going to get her money's worth out of them, she couldn't pass up a chance to take them out for a wearing. Painted fingernails felt strangely heavy, something she'd never noticed before.
A cool wind blew in from the sea, and she hugged her shawl around her, grateful for the layer of merino wool between her and the elements. It had been wonderful, Riley's had a full band and torch singer tonight, and Jim had taken her for a couple of turns around the dance floor, arguing good-naturedly over whether It Had To Be You or Someone To Watch Over Me should be their song.
Dinner had been a medium-rare filet mignon and Alaskan king-crab legs with a garlic-lemon-butter sauce, followed by a small but densely rich wedge of triple chocolate cheesecake. Jim had a thick steak with grilled vegetables and matchstick potatoes. Solid hearty food, prepared with subtlety and flair. Beau felt a little guilty at how nice it felt, to be served a meal she didn't have to cook or clean up after, to eat without interruption, to wear grown-up clothes that made Jim look at her that way, and watch all the other women in the room envying her for Jim's doting attention.
It had been a wonderful night, but she was ready for home and bed. They'd been out long enough for her to miss her boy, long past his bedtime but she could look in, reassure herself that her brother had remembered his favorite CD of lullabies. And then, of course, Jim should be rewarded for his thoughtfulness.
The truck pulled up to the sidewalk, the valet hopping out. Jim helped her into the truck, making sure the trailing end of her shawl and it's embroidered border was tucked in and in no danger of being caught in the closed door, before getting behind the wheel. He gave her an amused glance, the corner of his mouth turning up in a smile as she immediately kicked off her slingback heels and unclasped her earrings, heavy gold oak leaves supporting dangling acorns formed from bronze-colored freshwater pearls.
"Want me to find a dark alley, so you can shed the dress too?" he teased her.
"Don't tempt me," Beau murmured, trying to wriggle toes still tightly encased in her stockings. "Home, James." She leaned back in her seat and watched him drive, watching the movement of his hands on the steering wheel, simply drinking in the sight of him, the lines and planes of his face in profile, half-drowsing until the truck swerved slightly.
"Jim?"
"Thought I saw... reflection of the headlights. Sorry."
They reached her building without further incident, and parked the truck, going in through the garage. Jim wrapped his arms around her in the elevator, pulling her close. "Good time?"
"How did you stay single long enough for me to find you?"
He grinned at her, but solemnly replied, "Because most of the women I dated were insane."
"They must have been," she sighed. "Have I told you that I love you in the last five minutes?"
"Yeah. You did." His eyes crinkled at the corners.
Having stuffed her feet back into the shoes, she took advantage of the height boost in the heels to kiss him, comfortably. Without having to go on tiptoe or urge him to stoop a bit. The elevator reached their floor quicker than Beau would have liked. They parted, reluctantly, and walked down the hall, Jim fishing for his keys.
Beau dropped her earrings on the small pewter tray on top of the gateleg table in the entry, so she wouldn't lose them. Her half-brother Blair Sandburg, Jim's partner, roommate, and guide, looked up from the book he was reading.
"Back already? Wow, I didn't realize it was this late," he commented, shoving a bookmark in to keep his place and getting to his feet. "Have a good time?"
"Yeah," Jim nodded, casually picking up Blair's book and backpack and holding them out. "Nice to have a night out on the town. Thanks for babysitting."
"Did Jake behave himself?" Beau asked, hiding a smile. "We really owe you one for taking him tonight."
"Jake's great. We played for a little while, he had his supper, a bath, and a story. He's out like a light." Blair collected his things, and dug his heels in against the friendly hand Jim had dropped on his shoulder, the better to steer him towards the door. He traded an amused glance with Beau. "So how was Riley's? Still pretty swanky or going downhill? Megan's kind of hinting that she's tired of doing take-out or Claudine's."
"It was gorgeous... the band tonight was great, service was prompt, and dinner was perfect... a real four stars." Beau warmed to her subject. "The menu's expanded from the steakhouse standard, but..."
Jim yawned loudly and unconvincingly. "And it's getting kinda late, you should get going, Chief, before..."
Beau cut back into the conversation, innocently. "Oh, if you're too tired to drive, Blair, there's the daybed in my office."
Blair held up a hand, laughing. "No, I'm going, I'm going. Glad I could be of service, you two needed a night out."
Jim looked slightly ashamed of himself. "I really appreciate it, know this was short notice..."
"That's what family's for." Blair gave him a friendly slap on the back. "See you at the station," and was out the door.
Jim locked up after him, sentinel patrolling his territory before turning in for the night. Beau went to look in on Jake, being very careful not to wake the sleeping infant-sentinel, then continued down to the bedroom. Jim came in, and she looked at him over her shoulder, flirtatiously.
"Hey, handsome. I need a little help with this zipper."
His eyes lit, and he obediently came over and helped her undress. Her fingers pulled his loosened tie free and began unbuttoning buttons in turn.
Jim sighed, staring at the ceiling, then turned his head to study Beau's sleeping face resting against his shoulder. He'd fallen asleep for a few hours, after... but now he was wide awake and he didn't know why. Not just awake, but feeling unsettled. He carefully disengaged himself from the loving tangle of limbs, and got up without waking Beau.
He stopped for a long moment in the open doorway of the nursery, and watched his son breathe. The funny clenched feeling eased a bit, looking in on Jake, but something was still raising the hackles on the back of his neck. He continued prowling through the apartment, double-checking that the door was locked, then circled back to the kitchen to open the fridge and stare at the contents for a long moment before closing it again. Back out to the living room to open the blinds. The wall of windows looked out over a few shorter buildings, out to the bay. He leaned his forehead against the cool glass, closed his eyes, and listened.
Half-hoping for an argument, a fight, a robbery... something elsewhere in the building would prove to be what had disturbed him. Nothing.
He was sure it was nothing. It had been the reflection of headlights in dark-mirrored glass. A yellow flash of light he'd glimpsed for an instant, turning a corner. The human mind was trained to look for patterns, for shapes. Ancient instinct forced it to sort for anything dangerous first, and then look for other explanations. For a spilt-second, out of the corner of his eye, he'd thought he'd seen a cougar sitting on the sidewalk on Dawson Street, but when he'd looked back, it was gone.
Just the reflection of headlights. He was sure of it.
He had been sure of it. He didn't want another strange sentinel in his city. Not tonight, when he had been relaxed, content. Well-fed, tastebuds tingling with the complex tapestry of subtle flavors, skin humming in anticipation, affectionate and appreciative consort at his side. Now, he wasn't sure of what he'd seen at all. Maybe he'd just talked himself out of believing it was a cougar because he didn't want to deal with the possibility of another sentinel. Because he didn't want to stir up the past, didn't want to think about Alex Barnes, and the look in her eyes when he'd pulled the trigger.
He didn't regret it, not knowing that letting her live would eventually cost him the life of someone he loved. He just wished she hadn't made it necessary for him to kill her. There was a long list of ghosts who came to whisper coldly in his ear, when he was in a black brood. All those dead and his responsibility, from his men who'd died in Peru on. Alex was just one of that number.
He hadn't wanted to spoil the evening with it, and at the time, he'd been sure it was just a trick of the light. He thought about calling Blair. First time around with Alex, his guide had come too close to joining that ghostly chorus, Jim had vowed never to let things get that far out of control again. He took a step toward the phone, then shook his head. Sandburg wouldn't appreciate being woken at one thirty for something as vague as a possible spirit animal, when he still was uncertain. His own jaguar lounged around, and Alex's snarled at him. This had been there one-second and gone the next.
It still might have been the reflection of headlights. Hell, maybe it was a real, flesh and blood mountain lion. After they'd had an alligator loose in the station, anything was possible. People kept big cats as pets and didn't report escapes because it was illegal. He'd talk to Blair at work, first thing.
"Jim?" The soft whisper from the bedroom caught his attention. He moved silently back to the bedroom, to Beau, tousled and blinking sleepily at the shadows, sitting up in bed. He climbed back in beside her, letting his consort gentle him with soft kisses and caresses until he drifted into sleep.
Blair chuckled to himself as he rode down in the elevator. Jim's not-so-subtle attempt to give him the bum's rush so he could go get horizontal with Beau. Maybe he should have hung around a while longer, and helped Beau torture him some more. Nah. Although Jim had looked like he was ready to offer him babysitting money to get him out of the apartment.
Not that he'd take it. Jake was a little doll, no trouble. And now that he had a steady paycheck coming in, a good bit more than the pittance Rainier paid its Teaching Fellows and the scrabbling for grant money had gotten him. Paring expenses down to the bone, he was keeping current on his school loans and building up his savings slowly.
He reflected on his musings for a moment. I'm a grown-up? Whoa, when did that happen?
Making his way down to the parking garage and his Volvo, he started the drive home. He liked driving through Cascade at night, when it wasn't raining. The city was lit up, there were still people around, a college town never sleeps. But not enough traffic to slow him down, he could get across town in fifteen, twenty minutes. He liked this weather, too. Just cold and crisp enough to notice it, to be grateful for his flannel shirt and jacket, but not cold enough to bother with the Volvo's unreliable heater.
He pulled into his parking spot and headed upstairs, not thinking of anything in particular, thinking about the years he'd spent here, and Jake, about Megan Connor, and the stars, and sleep. So when he unlocked the door and stepped inside, the scene didn't register with him immediately. Disorder, things from his room on the kitchen table, a shadowy figure standing in the bathroom hall.
Before he could react, there was an explosion of pain, stunning him and dropping him to the floor. Voices...
"Christ, Seth, didja have to hit him so hard?"
"S' a cop, ain't he? You want to get caught?"
"He's a cop all right. That's Sandburg himself. Shit, the boss only wanted the papers, because a grab would be too tough to arrange. Pick 'em up, if the boss doesn't want him we can always dump him later."
... And then he heard nothing at all.
Ellison looked at the clock again, and bit the inside of his cheek. Blair was late. He hadn't noticed, at first, getting settled into the morning review of current case files and checking his email, spotting one from Sneaks setting up a meet. He went to the break room and fixed himself a cup of coffee. Still no sign of him. Too long to account for a late start. Long enough that he'd have called in if he had car trouble. Jim picked up the phone, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. No answer at the loft. No answer on his cellphone.
Jim got up and went to knock at the door to Captain Banks' office, stepping in when Simon called for him to enter, and bluntly stated the case. "Sandburg isn't here yet. He isn't answering his cell or at the loft." He paused. "He watched Jake for us last night. I haven't seen him since around eleven."
Simon nodded wearily. "Take Connor. Find out if he even made it to the loft."
Jim reflected that it was a hell of a life, when experience led you to expect the worst.
The loft had been tossed. Not vandalized. Someone had been searching for something and been interrupted. Probably by Blair's return. The scent of blood by the door made Jim grind his teeth.
It was Connor's soft gasp of "Oh bloody hell..." that brought him out of his own rage and fear. He had to remember that he wasn't alone here, that Connor was just as worried about Sandburg as he was. That she loved him too. Oh hell. Beau. Thank god Naomi's in Santa Fe, I don't have to face her. Beau... He started taking a quick inventory, trying to figure out what they were looking for and if they had found it.
"Any ideas on who grabbed Sandy?" Connor asked.
Jim shook his head. "Haven't heard of any old enemies escaping, none of our current cases are squirrelly enough to try something like this," the corner of his mouth quirked up, wryly, "and this time I'm reasonably sure it wasn't his girlfriend."
Megan arched an eyebrow. "Quite. I was on stakeout last night with Joel." She watched Jim looking around, running a hand over his head. "Anything on the sensory front?"
"Nothing," Jim sighed. "Fingerprints on the glass pane of the door to Blair's room. Nothing else."
"It's a start. I'll call it in, get a CSI team over here to collect the prints. You've got to go and tell Beau," Megan said, gently.
Jim just nodded a little, looking lost, but as he passed her on the way out, he paused to squeeze her shoulder lightly. "We'll find him, Meg. We always do."
Connor blinked the burn of tears out of her eyes, and flipped open her cellphone. She could have hysterics later. Sandy needed her now. And so did Jim.
Beau marked her place in The Concise History Of Scotland and got up to go to the kitchen. Armed with a can of soda and an apple, she returned to sort through her notes. She was priming the pump for a new historical romance novel, learning everything she could about life in Scotland in the 18th century. Once she had enough background, she could begin creating characters and a plot, but first she needed to build a solid foundation of fact for her imagination to build on. Jake was gurgling happily in his playpen. Beau paused to pick up the stuffed rabbit he'd tossed over the side, and was just sitting down to work again, when the door opened.
She glanced up, and her pen fell from nerveless fingers at the frozen expression on Jim's face. She knew. Before he even spoke, she knew something was wrong. An imagination all too practiced in possibility began spinning horrors, and some small corner of her soul began to wail in terror. "Jim?" Her voice sounded remarkably normal in her own ears.
He came over to sit beside her, and took her hands in his. "Blair's been kidnapped. They ambushed him when he got home last night. We don't have any leads on who took him. Yet."
"... No..." she whispered. Jim pulled her closer, letting her bury her face against his shoulder. Holding her. She pulled back, collecting herself. "Do you think he's still alive?"
"Yeah. They searched the loft for something, didn't find it. They're probably holding him for a trade. Megan's on it, and I'm going back to work... if you'll be all right?"
She took a deep, shuddering breath. "Get the bastards, Jim. Bring my brother home."
He kissed her forehead, and got to his feet. "I'll let you know, when we know something. And I may be in late tonight."
She sat for a long moment after he left, staring at nothing, and then got up. She couldn't work now, not on a new book. She felt too cold inside, too much like a shattered pane of glass in that instant before the shards began to fall. But she wasn't going to fall apart.
A casual observer would have been surprised by her actions for the rest of the day. A close observer of human nature would not. She gathered up her research, reshelving the history books and dropping the notes into their labeled folder. Putting it into the file cabinets in her office, she paused, took out all the folders and began to reorganize them. When that was done, she cleared off her desk and dusted it, going through the scraps of paper with phone numbers and reminders, other debris. Little mundane tasks that had been put off as unimportant were attended to with a distracted intensity. Tears ran down her cheeks, she swiped angrily at them, and went on. She looked at the clock often, and stopped in the middle of her tasks to pick up her son and cuddle him.
The first thing Blair was aware of was pain. A steady sullen throb behind his right ear, and a sensation like his scalp was on too tight. The second thing he was aware of was the soft surface under him. A couch. Suede. The next things he became aware of simultaneously; his hands were cuffed behind his back, and he wasn't alone.
"... A mistake," a familiar male voice was arguing with someone. "I know these two. Ellison's a damn persistent son of a bitch, and he won't stop until he finds Sandburg. You couldn't have announced our presence in Cascade more clearly unless you walked up to the man and spat in his face."
"Nonsense!" A woman's voice now, one he didn't recognize. "Seth and Mauser are very good at what they do, there'll be no traces that even a sentinel can follow."
Blair's heart started pounding in time with his head. The woman knew about sentinels. The situation had just gone from bad to very bad.
"With respect, ma'am. You have no idea what a fully trained sentinel is capable of. I do."
"Well, you're going to show me, aren't you, Lee? And now that we have Doctor Sandburg with us, you'll be getting a private crash-course in Guidance, instead of reconstructing his notes. So I'd better see some results." Despite himself, Blair shivered at the implied threat in the woman's words. "I'll leave you to get started."
Blair played possum for as long as he could, but it wasn't more than a few minutes before a hand started gently shaking his shoulder.
"Sandburg. C'mon, I know you're awake." The cuffs were unlocked, and Blair reluctantly sat up. It was a pleasant enough living room they were in, decorated tastefully, French doors looking out on a terraced patio and manicured garden. Except for the company.
Blair glared at the man who had walked over to a small table and now held out a bottle of water and another of aspirin. "You were right about one thing, Brackett. Jim's coming after you."
Lee Brackett shrugged, still holding out his offerings. "This wasn't my idea. I'm not the one in charge around here, kid. And believe me, it's in your best interest to cooperate."
Blair took the water and aspirin, wincing as he touched the back of his head, checking for injury. "Not if this is another attempt to blackmail Jim into doing something illegal for you."
"No," the rogue CIA agent agreed with a nod. "That's not what this is about."
Blair squinted up at him. "Then what—"
"Lee?" a voice interrupted from the doorway. A handsome youth, fourteen years old, with clear intelligent green eyes and black hair that fell across his forehead, dressed in tan chinos and a white oxford shirt. "Mother said when Doctor Sandburg woke up, we were to have our first lesson."
Blair stared at the boy, then back at Brackett, a sinking feeling in his chest. "Who is this?" he asked, faintly.
Brackett bared his teeth in a smile. "Doctor Blair Sandburg, this is Anthony Paco. Tony, this is Doctor Sandburg. He's going to teach me how to help you control your senses."
"He's a sentinel?" Blair gaped, then tried to cover. "That's impossible. Sentinels were an evolutionary dead end."
Brackett gave him an amused smile. "Nice try, Professor. You may have convinced the academic world of that, but you and I both know the truth. Your friend Detective Ellison is a full-fledged sentinel. So is young Anthony, here."
Blair paused to study the boy. "Do you know what a sentinel is?"
"Yes, sir. A person born with heightened senses, who can be trained to use them to protect his people."
Blair's eyebrows climbed. A polite kid, obviously quoting someone by heart. Whether he actually was a sentinel or not remained to be seen. Blair knew he had to have been missed by now, Brackett had been right about that. His kidnapping had been a mistake. The smart thing to do now was to play along, and stall for time. Jim had to be looking for him by now, and all he needed was time to find him. Keeping his eyes open for a chance to escape or call for help.
"I'll need to see what he can do," he said, after a moment. "Test him for range, accuracy, and sensitivity index."
Brackett nodded. "What do you need?"
A mischievous glint in his eyes, Blair started to list improvised equipment for the kind of elaborate tests that made Jim hide in the bathroom until he gave up and went away. After a minute, Tony produced a notebook and pen from the secretary desk in one corner, and Brackett made him start over.
They wanted an expert? They wanted him to teach Tony how to be a sentinel and Brackett how to be a guide? Welcome to Homework Hell.
The full list made Brackett blink at him. "Damn, Sandburg. I guess you did earn your keep."
Blair bared his teeth at him. "I assume it's going to take a few hours for you to collect everything and get set up. I still have a headache from that goon knocking me out. Can I go to my room, or my cell, or whatever, and rest?"
"Sure," Brackett nodded, ripping pages out of the notebook and handing them to Tony. The boy left, to take the request to someone in authority around here. Blair followed Brackett into the hall. As they reached a palatial entryway and a broad staircase, Blair frowned. The decor and furnishings were different, yet there was something familiar about this place...
"This is the Currasco house, isn't it?" he asked, mind racing. Maya, the girl he'd seduced to get information about her gunrunning father. Maya had been deported back to Chile after their last encounter, and her father was still in prison. But her uncle, Gustavo Alcante, was still on the loose. The 'retired' gunrunner had a bit of the con artist in him. So far, all their dealings with the man showed an old-fashioned honor among thieves, but Blair couldn't forget their first meeting. Alcante had threatened him with a blow-torch. The man could be ruthless when it came to protecting those he loved.
"Yeah." Brackett gave him a sidelong glance. "Mrs. Paco rented it... they've got 'family' connections."
Blair almost stumbled and fell. Paco. Family. Things had just gone from very bad, to worse. He'd heard Jim mention them a few times, he'd thought it might be an interesting subculture for a braver man to document. The major mob families of the country. The Pacos had been active in Chicago since the Thirties.
Brackett deposited him in a well-appointed room, closing and locking the door behind him. Blair sat on the end of the bed and stared into space. He was supposed to help Brackett train a Mafia princeling to be a sentinel. Alex had been bad enough as a freelance thief. If this kid was indeed a sentinel, all his senses heightened, as strong as Jim's... with the full power of his 'family' connections... he'd be almost unstoppable.
Jim dumped another tub of non-dairy creamer into his coffee and stirred it around, watching as the inky liquid lightened to a mud-puddle brown. He wasn't going to drink it, but ordering a cup of coffee and sitting hunched over it gave him an excuse to hang around in this greasy spoon waiting for Sneaks.
He ripped a packet of sugar open, and poured it into the cup. He didn't want to be sitting here. The need to be out looking for Sandburg was like an itch. But the fact was that Sneaks suddenly arranging a meet just when Blair disappeared could well be related. Megan was back at the station chasing down leads an old cases, just making sure it wasn't anyone recently released or escaped, with an axe to grind. The worst part of it was that Connor was worried that it was Alex Barnes. Jim couldn't do much to reassure her that Alex wasn't a threat. Not without coming right out and telling her that Alex Barnes was dead and buried. By his hand.
He added another packet of sugar to the coffee, almost hearing Sandburg's voice, alternating between condemning him for wasting food, then pointing out that since refined sugar wasn't at all good for the human body, at least he was sparing a few people. The corner of his mouth turned up, just a bit, at the thought. Then he frowned into the muddy depths of his coffee cup again, and looked at his watch.
Sneaks dropped into the bench seat across the booth, eyes darting nervously around the diner. "Hey there Jimmy. You weren't followed, were you?"
"No, I wasn't followed," Jim reassured him, with careful patience. Sneaks lived his life looking over his shoulder, fears both realistic and illogical haunting his every step.
"Black ops stuff comes in handy, huh? Gonna need it now. We got some heavy hitters in town. Paco family, from back East. Everybody keeping their head down, keeping their noses clean. Gonna be a war, maybe. World war three, maybe. They say Mama Paco's keeping company with a Company man now, and we all know what that means. She's crazy too. All them Pacos've been crazy, all the way back."
"A Company man?" Jim asked, a sinking feeling in his gut.
Sneaks glared suspiciously at the waitress, two tables away, and leaned closer. Jim ignored the man's fetid breath. "They say his name's Brackett. Straight out of Bond and Clancy, a stone-killer gone AWOL with some big government secret. And I know what it is, too. He's gonna sell Mama Paco some o' them alien ray guns."
Jim sighed, knowing that when Sneaks got started on the aliens there was no chance of getting anything else useful out of him. The rest of his information was good... he just always had to bring the aliens into it somewhere.
Brackett. That fit, unfortunately. Jim could think of several equally nasty reasons the former CIA agent would have for abducting Blair. For one thing, Brackett knew about sentinels. He'd used the threat of releasing a deadly virus in Cascade to blackmail Jim into helping him steal a plane; they'd barely gotten out of that one. Brackett was supposed to be safely locked away, but Jim had no illusions. He'd escaped. He'd called in markers to be released. Someone had found him useful, and Lee Brackett had gotten loose. And now he was here, and he had Blair.
Jim smiled like his spirit animal, and slid the shoebox containing Sneaks' payment, a new pair of track shoes, across the table. It was Brackett. They'd found him before. The hunt was on.
On his way back to the station, he made a few calls to old contacts from his days as a CIA liaison officer. Old friends, bartering the currency of favors and debts. They could only confirm his suspicions. Brackett had been removed from prison to identify a player in the Game, and had vanished during the drop.
After Jim reported in, Simon put Rafe to work looking for the connection to the Paco family, then Jim took Megan to look for Brackett, filling her in on the previous case on the way. They'd tracked him the first time by his addiction to authentic South American cuisine. It was possible Brackett knew this, and was avoiding it this time around, he was a trained agent. Changing your name, your hair and eye color, that was easy. It was the little habits ingrained so deeply you weren't even aware of them that always tripped you up.
They started out simply, showing Brackett's picture around to the local ethnic markets and restaurants. No luck. Returning to the station, they found Rafe had put in a call to the Chicago PD's Major Crimes Unit, for information on the Paco family, and was down in Records, looking for connections to Cascade.
Megan sat and worried. Jim paced, trying to think of the next move on their investigation. Rafe came back in, but the look on his face told Jim he hadn't found anything.
"The only connection to the Paco family we've got is to the Lazar family. They loaned out a hitter, when that mess over the dockyards went down, ten years back."
"Lazar," Jim sighed as he dropped back in his desk chair, and ran his hand over his head. "Dead end. We shut down their operation. Thanks, Rafe."
The other detective looked at him with a desperate sympathy. "Chicago might have something on their end, should call back tomorrow."
"Yeah," Jim sighed again, looking around his desk, some part of him searching for some action to take, there had to be something else he could do.
But for right now, there wasn't.
Beau looked up, heart in her mouth, as Jim came into the kitchen. She'd reacted to the siege of uncertainty with her usual pragmatism. She didn't have much of an appetite, but you had to eat. Keep your strength up. There was a casserole in the oven, and a pot of thick soup bubbling on the stove. Comforting, nourishing food to stockpile against possible calamity.
"What's going on?" she demanded.
"We know who took him, we just haven't found them yet, but we're working on that. The people who have him aren't likely to kill him," Jim told her. "They need information from him."
Beau took a deep shuddering breath, and absently turned to stir the soup. "Should I call Mom, do you think? I'd like to spare her this... but... if. If something happens and..." Her voice quavered and she fell silent.
Jim thought for a long moment. Naomi had accepted the dangers of Blair's life since he joined the police force, but she was his mother.
"Don't call," he said, at last. "But when she calls, if she asks, don't lie to her."
She just nodded, as a timer went off and she took the casserole out of the oven, setting the supporting foil-wrapped cookie sheet on the cold side of the stove. She shut the oven off, and turned to face Jim.
"Let's sit down. I want details."
Jim sat down with her on the couch, and paused, trying to find words. The sick feeling in his gut that this was a sentinel thing, that Brackett's grab of Blair was only the beginning. He'd had a car out front all day. Just in case. He thought of his infant son. An infant sentinel. And something deep inside roared and unsheathed claws.
"They want information from Blair... about a case you're working on? When the bust is, that sort of thing?" Beau pressed him. "Is it drugs?"
"No. It's not about police work. Beau, I have reason to believe that the man who kidnapped Blair is Lee Brackett." He couldn't meet her eyes. "He was the CIA station chief in Peru when I was debriefed after the rescue. He was... interested in my sensory 'hallucinations', and did some research. He read one of Blair's early papers on sentinels, and connected the dots. After he went rogue and started selling his services to the highest bidder, he kept an eye on me in case a sentinel ever became useful."
"My god," Beau breathed. "No wonder Blair erased you from the thesis."
"Few years back, they're building a new experimental stealth fighter nearby. Brackett turns up, and threatens to release the Ebola virus in Cascade unless we help him crack security to steal it."
She stared at him wide-eyed.
He shrugged. "So we helped him crack security and steal the plane, but I managed to stop him before he got away, and forced him to disarm the virus release mechanism. And I decked him. He was supposed to be in prison... but somebody needed to verify where some information was coming from, and Brackett had been the guy's contact. Somehow he slipped his leash."
"And this man has Blair."
"Yeah." Jim found his hands clenching into fists and forced them flat. "It's business. Brackett's a pro, there's no percentage in revenge. I figure he's got another little job for me. He knows that I need Blair with me... and that I'll come to get him."
"Oh. Great," Beau said, faintly. "Anything else?"
Jim nodded reluctantly. "I've had Simon assign someone to you for protection. In case... in case Brackett knows about Jake."
"God," she muttered again. She looked smaller somehow, and tired. Pale. Shock, Jim thought.
Jake chose that moment to start crying. Beau got up to go care for him, moving mechanically. Jim let her go, then got to his feet and started setting the table for dinner. He didn't have an appetite, but it was something they drilled into you in the service. Eat when you can, fuel up for fighting.
As usual, after dinner, they brought Jake out to the living room to play for a little while. Jake, always cherished, and too young to notice the heartsick difference in the attention being lavished on him, the forced gaiety covering the tension in the adults.
In a flannel nightgown, under a blanket and bedspread, tightly spooned by Jim... Beau felt strangely cold. She'd thought she'd come to terms with the dangers of their lives. Anything could happen to anyone at anytime, that had always been a favorite saying.
They took Blair. They're using him, forcing them to do something. They're going to hurt Blair. They might kill him, she thought, trying to grasp the concept of the world with a brother-shaped hole in it. She couldn't. Blair was a year younger than she was. He'd always been there.
Jim sighed in his sleep, ruffling her hair. He'd made no advances tonight, merely holding her close. Needing to be held himself. The consort knew her sentinel needed the comfort of a beating heart, warm skin, the rush of breath beside him. Jim blamed himself for Blair's kidnapping.
If. If he wasn't a sentinel. If Blair hadn't found him. If Brackett hadn't found them. If...
Utter nonsense, and she'd tried her best to convince him of that. It was true, but there was no blame in it, no guilt. It wasn't Jim's fault. There were dangers in their lives because both men were cops. Because Jim was a sentinel and Blair his guide. That was simply how things were. The rewards outweighed the risks. Even now.
Blair was going to be fine. They'd find him in time. They'd rescue him and bring him home, and the bad guys, the kidnappers, would be put in prison, and everything would be fine. She just had to believe that.
She wriggled a little, to make Jim let go, and got up. Shrugging into her bathrobe, she went into the nursery to sit in the rocking chair for a little while. Where the white-noise generator would keep Jim from hearing her cry.
The inescapable conclusion was that Tony Paco was a sentinel. He'd found by scent the cup containing a drop of vanilla extract diluted in water. The mansion, of course, considering who had built it, had a shooting range in the basement. Tony had gotten twelve perfect bullseyes in a row. He'd heard the whisper from the far end of the house, had been able to tell the denomination of bills by touch, and had been able to taste a tiny drop of lemon juice diluted in water.
He was also a very polite kid, for what he was. Blair thought of his undercover work as a tutor to the grandson of the boss of the Lazar family. That boy had been younger, but full of attitude and anger.
Blair found himself starting to like Tony... After the target practice test, as they were going back upstairs, the boy had paused and looked at him with old velvet brown eyes—the eyes of a child whose grown up too fast—and quietly said, "I'm sorry about all this, Mister Sandburg. I hope you weren't hurt when you were taken. Mother... just wants the best for me."
Blair didn't know what to say to that. "You know I'm here against my will," he finally said, slowly. "But if you'd come to me and asked for help, I still would have evaluated how you're managing your senses."
Again, there was that silent, sorrowful plea for forgiveness. "Mother doesn't ask people. She just gives orders."
Blair had also been watching Brackett interact with Tony, and found something there that surprised him. A flash of affection and pride in Brackett's eyes. Patience. And Tony looked at him with the hero-worship of a student to a beloved mentor.
The sentinel/guide bond. With a barracuda like Theresa Paco for a mother, Tony could do worse than an ex-CIA agent to watch his back.
They were back in the drawing room. "So. You satisfied?" Brackett asked.
Blair nodded. "He's a full sentinel."
"Strong as Ellison, too. We've been training him. Now we need you to teach me to be a guide."
"I think... you already are. There's certain instinctual imperatives at work here. You've been training Tony, he trusts you. That makes you his guide."
"Yeah?" A look passed over Brackett's face too quickly for Blair to read it. "In theory, maybe. I need to know the practical stuff."
The corner of Blair's mouth turned up despite himself. "The zone-out factor. You have to watch out for him while he's concentrating on one sense. Or he'll get distracted in the middle of a minefield."
Brackett shook his head at the memory of their first meeting. Tony looked at the older men, and Blair knew the boy was going to be digging the story out of Brackett later.
He settled down to go over the basics of sentinel care with Brackett. The importance of staying on top of allergic reactions. Brands of detergents and cleaners to use in the house, for his clothes. Natural equivalents for over the counter drugs, practicing the dial control metaphor since painkillers wore off so quickly. Sedatives that did work on Jim long enough for bullet extractions.
It was only fair. Blair planned to try to escape at the first opportunity. But it wasn't Tony's fault that he was a sentinel... and that the family he'd been born into was a Family. These were things he needed to know.
He waited. Dinner time. Tony and Brackett ate at the table. Somewhere between a guest, a prisoner, and the hired help, one of the bland-faced burly thugs who filled the house like furniture escorted him to his room, then brought him a tray.
He didn't touch the food. He waited, then went out the window, down a convenient tree, and started walking. Heart pounding, trying not to break into a run. Something he'd picked up over the years. How he'd bluffed his way into Jim's examining room to meet the detective with the weirdly familiar medical history. Act like you're supposed to be going where you're going, and doing what you're doing, and no one will challenge you.
It very nearly worked. A perimeter guard pulled him down off the wall and marched him back to the house at gunpoint. They brought him to a home office this time, off the kitchen. Thug number one stood at his shoulder, looming silently, as he sat and waited in a plain wooden chair.
And then Theresa Paco came in. A beautiful woman. Cloud of dark hair kissed with silver, dressed to impress in green. She sat at the counter-desk, and Blair found himself watching her legs as she crossed them. Silk. Beautiful. Graceful. Hypnotic. Snake something deep inside whispered, warning him.
"Mister Sandburg," she smiled at him, warmly, and complimented him. "Tony tells me he enjoyed his first lesson, that you make something of a game out of exercising his senses. Excellent approach. Rainier truly lost a gifted teacher when you chose to change professions." Her face hardened, the affable expression fossilized. "But you tried to run out with the job unfinished. I don't like that. Do as you're told, and you'll be set free when my boy's ready. Try and run again and..."
She never took her eyes off his. Eyes bright as a new penny. Blair suddenly tasted chlorine. She lifted a rolltop cubby's door, and her soft white hand with it's manicured nails came out smoothly with a handful of automatic. She never looked away from Blair's face as she pulled the trigger. He met her gaze, but flinched, at the gunshot and the wet meaty thump of the thug's body hitting the stone tile.
Blair thought, inanely.
Two more of the thugs came in, at the sound of the shots, and froze as they saw the tableau.
"Take Mister Sandburg back to his room," she ordered, pleasantly. "And see that he stays there this time. Hurt him a bit to slow him down, if you like."
One of the new thugs smiled, a tight and terrified smile, and punched Blair in the face.
Tony flinched at the sound of the gunshot, and his mother's threat to Mister Sandburg. He turned frightened eyes to Lee, who gave him a reassuring smile, but Tony could feel the tension coming off him in waves. Tony tried not to listen to the men punishing Blair for his mother.
It was nothing new. Gunshots, tension in the air. Tony had grown up in an ocean of fear. Everyone around him, and he himself. He couldn't remember ever not being afraid of his mother. Only his father, and Tony remembered the night he'd tried to leave, taking Tony with him. Stupidly announcing his intention to get a divorce, and what she'd done to him. After that, Mother started using her maiden name again, and legally had Tony's changed. Pretending that Father had never been part of their lives.
Tony put down his fork, having lost his appetite.
Mother came back into the dining room, kissed his cheek, and sat down to finish her lamb. Lee took a nonchalant sip of his wine.
"I do hope they aren't breaking anything important, like his head. We aren't done with him, yet."
Mother looked up. "Just making sure he doesn't try anything stupid again, for such a smart man." She frowned slightly, noticing that Tony wasn't eating. "Not hungry, darling? Does it taste funny again?"
He gave the tiniest shake of his head. "May I be excused, Mother?"
"Finish your milk. It's good for you."
He quickly drained the glass, and got up from the table. Lee met his eyes, and nodded slightly.
Tony hurried through the kitchen, in time to see Bernard give Mister Sandburg one last kick in the ribs. He glared, and the man subsided. There was only a small bloodstain on the stone to show where Keyser had fallen. Mister Sandburg was curled into a ball against the pantry cabinets.
Tony knelt, and gently eased the man onto his back. One thing about Mother, she demanded perfect obedience and her methods ensured that she got it. She hadn't wanted Sandburg hurt too badly... and the men knew how to make people hurt without killing them.
No internal injuries, then. Tony ghosted his hands along the other man's body, trying to find broken bones. Mother had been interested in that aspect of his abilities. She'd joked about sending him to medical school, and had people's bones broken so he could practice.
Hands. Wrists. Forearms. Shoulders. Ribs... oh. Not broken, but sore, judging by the gasp and wildly rolling eyes. Deep bruising. "Jim?" Sandburg was calling out for his sentinel, muttering, maddened by pain. "... Hurts, Jim..."
Tony swallowed against a dry mouth. "I know. Blair," he tried tentatively, trying to sound like a grown up, a true sentinel, someone who could help, instead of the fellow captive he knew himself to be. "It'll be all right."
Legs and feet, nothing. Only the ribs, and one eye that was going to be black before long.
He glared at Bernard again. "Help me get him up, and take him to his room." Bernard hauled Sandburg to his feet. He promptly passed out. Tony made Bernard carry him, and took his feet. They put him on the bed, and Tony did what he could to make him comfortable.
Lee came in with the first aid kit. "He okay?"
Tony shook his head. "The ribs are bad. Not broken, but—"
"He's going to be one big walking bruise in the morning. Keep him from taking another walk." Lee shook his head and sat down on the side of the bed. "Sandburg?" He patted the man lightly on the good side of his face. "Come on. Come to."
Sandburg opened his eyes. "Brackett," he muttered. "Sonovabitch."
"No. I am," Tony said quietly. Lee shot him a warning look.
"Come on, Sandburg. Prove you don't have a concussion and I'll tape your ribs and give you some nice legal drugs and you can go to la-la land and not hurt for a while."
Sandburg swore again, but recited his full name, birthdate, the current date, and the president in office. Brackett helped him sit up and get his shirt off, taped him up, and gave him a couple of pills, while Tony got him a glass of water from the bathroom.
"Will he be all right?" Tony asked, looking at the sleeping man.
Lee's eyes were troubled. "I don't know, kiddo. We'll do what we can."
Morning. Beau collected Jake, her bodyguard trailing behind, and went out for supplies. She'd cooked, she'd cleaned until the apartment sparkled, she'd edited and mailed the galleys for her last book, and now she needed something else to do. She was starting on the Scots novel... but other books were a must.
It was one of the reasons she'd started writing herself. If life offered you no other respite, you could always escape into fictional worlds. Lose yourself in the problems of people who didn't actually exist, when yours became overwhelming.
So after going to the grocery store and stocking up on those items on the eternal list; eggs, bread, milk, bottled water, baby food, wipes, and diapers... she headed for a bookstore. The big Stables And Royale outlet downtown. She usually preferred independent bookstores, hating the cookie-cutter corporate culture, but she had to admit, the chain had a larger selection, when she was just out to browse. And the coffee wasn't bad.
She found a few new storybooks for Jake, picked up a few magazines, then went through the mystery and science fiction sections. She picked up The Thief Of Time by Terry Pratchett and Curse Of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold. Paid for her purchases, then went to skim through the music section, before heading to the cafe. She got Jake settled with a bottle, and tore into her muffin and coffee, idly paging through one of the magazines. Not paying much attention to the vapid fashion articles, wondering how far Jim had gotten, and where her brother was. Aware of the cold knot of fear in her heart.
Midmorning. The cafe was crowded, and she glanced up at an approaching figure, a tall, good-looking, familiar-looking man with reddish brown hair, holding a cup of coffee and a copy of The Wall Street Journal. He smiled down at the stroller, and asked, "Mind if I join you?"
It was the voice that clicked things for her. John Smythe. A ridiculous name for an 'embassy attache.' She'd known at the time that it was some sort of alias, some sort of cover, by his ease with firearms, arranging transport, bluffing and bribing his way past checkpoints. For a moment she was twenty years old again, in the middle of an Adventure she'd carefully never told her brother about. Her brother. And suddenly, horribly, knew.
"John Smythe. That's a funny way to pronounce Lee Brackett," she said flatly, as he seated himself and opened his paper.
"I should have known he was your brother, Dove," he confirmed, casually using the nickname he'd bestowed back then, amused that such a pacifist innocent was named after a hawk. "The resourcefulness runs in the family."
She slapped him once, hard, across the face. His head rolled with the blow, and he blinked, slowly.
"I suppose I deserved that," he said ruefully, touching his cheek. "You trusted me with your life, once. Trust me with his."
"All I have to do is scream, and you'll be in police custody. In Jim's custody. You'll tell me where Blair is right now or I'll let Jim make you."
He snorted. "Why do you think I dropped by? For coffee? I thought I had control of the situation but the people I'm working for... I was wrong about a couple of things. It's getting ugly, fast. Tell Ellison we're at the Currasco place, he'll know where that is. Four armed men and one armed and dangerous woman. Your brother's in the first bedroom on the second floor. There's a teenage noncombatant in the house, I'll try to get him to ground when the time comes."
"You have my brother. You think I'm going to send my lover walking into a trap?" she asked him, evenly.
"I got you out of Qurac. I'm trying to get your brother out of that house. I know what Ellison's told you about me, he has good reason to believe that. But that's only one side of the story. I was never going to release that virus. I'd better go, I've been out too long as it is. Tell Ellison."
Beau watched him walk away, mind racing. At last, she sighed, and looked down at Jake. "He's right, damn him. Even if it's a trap, it's a lead." She dug out her cellphone to see if Jim was at the station. She'd go in, because this wasn't the sort of thing to say over the phone.
The uniformed officer followed her into Police Headquarters, and asked if everything was okay. She explained that she that just wanted to check in, while getting her visitor's pass. He probably felt a little silly, parked outside of the cop shop itself. She took the elevator up to Major Crimes, shrugging off the hollow feeling she had. A type of premonition, if she believed in such things. The balance of futures were here, now, and from this point on, things could go either way. Triumph or tragedy.
Jim met Beau at the elevator, worried. She'd sounded... odd... on the phone. Maybe it was starting to hit her, get to her. He didn't know. He kissed her cheek, gave Jake a tickle, and led her to the break room, leaving Megan on the phone with Chicago and frowning as she scribbled down notes about the Paco family.
"What is it? We've got a few new leads, ties to organized crime, we're getting there," he said, to reassure her. She frowned, and absently pushed the stroller back and forth a bit, rocking Jake.
"Lee Brackett approached me at a bookstore this afternoon," she said.
Jim felt his shoulders tense. "If that bastard threatened you..."
"No. I know him. Knew him, years ago..."
For a minute, Jim couldn't understand what she was saying. Then he almost couldn't hear her over the roaring in his ears.
"... Twenty years old, Anita's father had just given her control of the magazine, to see if she could turn it around before giving up and folding it. I was in Qurac, and overnight the government changed, there was a coup. And with this faction in power... it wasn't a good idea to be a female American college student with a Jewish last name. He was calling himself John Smythe, if you can believe that, hanging out at the hotel bar. He got me to the airport, and put me on a plane."
Beau. Knew Brackett. Before he went rogue, when he was a young Intel operative and she was a traveling photojournalist. Brackett, who had looks and charm. This was years ago and he knew about the string of boyfriends before they'd met, scattered around the world, Brackett...
"Did you sleep with him?" The words slipped out. Clipped. Harsher than he'd intended.
Beau looked at him. A particularly Sandburg sort of look. He winced, but asked again. "Back then. Were you..."
She didn't hesitate. "No. He's physically attractive, but not my type. And anyway there wasn't enough time, with all the running and hiding and getting shot at. I didn't sleep with him."
"Okay," he reached for her hand, tentatively. "I had to ask," he admitted, quietly. She always understood, he hoped she could understand this, as well.
"Yeah," she sighed, with fond exasperation. "My track record's getting as bad as yours. First Paul Strauss, and now this." Jim squeezed her hand gently. "He said they're holding Blair at the Currasco place, that you know where it is. There's four armed men, and one 'armed and dangerous woman.' A teenaged kid Brackett's going to try to get out of the line of fire. Blair's in the first bedroom on the second floor. That he wants you to come rescue Blair because the whole thing's gotten out of control."
Jim snorted. "Yeah. This is the move I've been expecting. He wants me there, all right. Okay. Now we know, we can plan." He slapped the table lightly, and started to stand. "You want me to drive you home?"
"No. Officer Johnson is waiting downstairs."
"Okay. Take care of yourself," Jim hesitated. "We'll talk, okay? When we've got Blair back safe."
"You be careful Jim. I don't want to lose either of you." She kissed him, and he walked her back to the elevator. Then went over to Megan. She stood to meet him with a grim smile.
"Chicago came through with a Cascade connection. It seems the Paco family has done quite a bit of business with a former Cascade weapons dealer..." she began.
"Hector Currasco," he interrupted. She looked at him in mild surprise. Before she could attribute this mysterious knowledge to his sentinel abilities, he explained. "Brackett turned up, approached Beau. Turns out she'd run into one of his cover personas a few years back. He tried to convince her that he was trying to switch sides, told her they're holding Blair at Currasco's house."
"Shall I call for a search warrant?"
Jim shook his head. "This situation calls for subtle."
Megan bit her lip. "I've seen your definition of subtle, Jim. Bloody hell. I'll end up fired, and deported as an undesirable, most likely, but as long as Sandy's safe..."
Sneaks was right. Sometimes the black-ops training came in handy. Hanging from a tree, he patched the security camera into an interrupter... and waited. The intermittent static before the network went dead would look less suspicious to the guard watching the monitors than a sudden blackout. He waited, then went over the wall.
Meanwhile, Megan was going up the drive to the door, distracting another of the guards with her lost Australian tourist act.
That left Jim two men, the woman, and Brackett to deal with. He smiled, and headed for the house.
He took out one man who had spotted him from a terraced patio, and collected his gun. The second one on the stairs. Using his heightened sense of hearing to track everyone else. One man trying to fix the camera system. The remaining man at the front door flirting with Megan and giving her directions. Brackett and the boy with Blair. The woman taking a shower.
Brackett. Part of Jim hoped that Brackett would try something, and give him an excuse. He mounted the stairs, made it to the bedroom.
Blair was sitting propped up on plenty of pillows, in a four poster bed. One of his eyes was black and his lip looked a little puffy. Brackett and the kid were seated in chairs, Brackett had a notebook on his lap and had been taking dictation as Blair talked sentinel theory. The kid—Jim's heart skipped a beat as he realized the kid was in the middle of the seed-bead test.
Another sentinel.
The mountain lion.
"Hey Jim, what kept you?" Blair sounded kind of glazed. Jim glanced at him, noticed a water glass on the nightstand and a small unlabelled bottle of pills.
"Can't let you out of my sight for a minute, can I, Chief?" he asked humorlessly. "Brackett. You're under arrest. Again."
"Good to see you too, Ellison."
Jim's attention was split, watching Brackett's hands, watching the younger sentinel, and checking out Blair. He never heard Theresa Paco coming up behind him, until the cool muzzle of the gun touched the back of his neck.
"Detective Ellison, I presume. My, Lee, you're easily impressed. Tony, darling, come here, please, and take his gun."
The boy, Tony, looked at Brackett quickly, then stood up. Jim shifted, aiming his weapon at the teenager. A momentary pause, before the cool kiss of metal left his neck. He caught a whiff of Opium as the woman, in a blue silk bathrobe, dark hair still wet and brushed back seal-sleek, brushed past him and aimed at Blair. Jim knew he wasn't going to pull the trigger, but he couldn't say the same for her. With what Megan had relayed from Chicago, he wouldn't put it past her. He handed over his weapon. The boy took it uncertainly, held it pointed away from everyone.
Jim held himself ready. He had Megan for backup, if he wasn't out in ten minutes, she was calling in the cavalry. He had to stall, watch the weapons, and wait. The count went down as Tony suddenly put the safety on Jim's Sig Sauer and took the clip out, laying them down on a bookcase nearby. Jim's attention shifted back to the woman. Whose attention shifted back to him.
"So this is the sentinel," she approached him, keeping her gun firmly centered for a kill-shot on his heart. "One of those biological imperatives Sandburg kept talking about, that he'd do something this dumb, bursting in here on his own to get his guide? On the other hand, he did get past my best men. We could use a talent like that on the team."
She looked Jim over, open speculation in her eyes. She stroked his cheek, burgundy nails lightly scratching along the line of his jaw. He didn't let himself flinch. "Yes, I could find a use for you," she breathed huskily. "Any chance I can turn you, detective? I assure you, the salary and... benefits... I can offer are much better than the police department."
Jim smiled, ready to play along to stall for time. Blair, however, hopped up on painkillers, angrily rose to his defense. "You're crazy, lady, even crazier than you look, if you think Jim's gonna go on the take, on the make, with you! He's a good cop, and he's involved, and he's got too much honor, and integrity, and... and taste to get into it with something like you."
This time, Jim winced, as he could see the effect of the insult register in her eyes.
"Tony? Come here," she ordered. "Time for another lesson."
The kid looked horrified as he walked over to her and she handed him the gun. "You're old enough to earn some responsibility, to take part in the family business. Ellison here is a sentinel. He's the only other one like you. You know what to do with the competition. And now that we have an expert like Doctor Sandburg, Brackett's outlived his usefulness."
Brackett's head came up, and Tony went white.
"You want me to kill them?" he asked softly. "Detective Ellison? And Lee?"
"Yes." She sounded impatient.
The boy took a deep shuddering breath, looked at Brackett, then back. "No." And he turned the gun on her.
"Tony..." She couldn't quite grasp this turn of events.
Ellison was pretty shocked himself, but decided not to question it. "You're doing the right thing here, Tony," Jim encouraged him. "Give me the gun and nobody has to get hurt."
"You ungrateful little bastard..." She hissed, and lunged forward. Everyone froze. There was a brief struggle, and a gunshot. As Theresa Paco sank to the floor, a bright red stain blossoming on the front of her bathrobe.
Tony, if possible, was even paler. "I... it went off... I didn't mean to..."
Jim dropped beside the fallen woman. "She's alive." He glanced up, noting with surprise that Brackett was hugging the kid, who had burst into tears. Blair was fighting his way to his feet, moving slowly and resting for each movement.
Jim heard Tony mutter, "I meant to... a sentinel's supposed to protect..." He concentrated on the woman, and watching Blair creakily kneel to join him. When he looked up, Brackett and the boy were gone. He went for the phone, to call an ambulance. He could hear sirens already approaching the house, Megan had done her job.
Beau finished fluffing the pillows on the daybed, and sprayed a little Healing Garden Zzztherapy room spray around the room. Shuffling footsteps in the hall and her brother came back from the bathroom. He offered her a weak, lopsided grin as he climbed back into bed. She got him settled with a throw over him, and headed back to the nursery. She still wasn't sure what had happened, other than that her men had survived it. Jim had appeared an hour ago, with a battered Blair, just dropping him off after the hospital had checked him out and released him.
Something had happened out there. She didn't know what, and Blair was too sleepy on pain medication to make much sense. She just had to wait for Jim to get home from work to get the story.
She changed Jake, washed up, and tiptoed back into her office to gather up some of her work. Blair was out, a herd of elephant wouldn't have bothered him. She curled up in the living room, and lost herself in her work for a couple of hours. Getting up every so often to check on her baby son or her baby brother.
After a few hours, Blair was just starting to come around, and Beau got him a bottle of Clearly Canadian Blackberry. She didn't interrogate him about the last few days, just made sure he was comfortable.
Jim came home with a bag of groceries. He rested the bag on his hip, kissed her fervently, then gathered up the bag again securely. She followed him to the kitchen, where he put the bag down.
"How's he doing?" Jim asked.
"Slept it off, mostly. God, Jim, I know you said he took a beating, but he's black and blue. He can barely move."
"Yeah. He tried to escape, and they caught him. It's a long story, give me a second." Jim gave her a peck on the cheek and went down the hall.
She unloaded the bag while he checked on Blair and Jake. Smiled to herself as she lifted out a bag of onions and a butcher-paper wrapped fresh tongue. The frozen lasagna Jim had brought for himself went into the freezer, and she got her big pot out and started peeling and chopping onions.
Jim came back into the kitchen. Beau was concentrating on her onions. Jim started filling the pot in the sink. "So. Brackett fell in with a mob family from Chicago, because the son of the boss is a sentinel. They were supposed to grab his research so Brackett could learn how to guide Tony, but Blair walked in on them, so they kidnapped him. The kid didn't really want any of this, but his mother has a one-track mind. Blair tried to walk out, and they knocked him around a little. Nothing broken, just bruised, but he's not going to be feeling great for a couple of weeks. Brackett didn't like that, so he came to you. I went in after Blair, almost made it. The kid, Tony... his mother wanted him to take Brackett and me out, so he could keep Blair. He ended up having to shoot her. She's stable. Brackett and Tony took off while I was seeing to her. We gathered up her muscle, and Ms. Paco is being charged with kidnapping and conspiracy to commit murder." He hauled the pot over to the stove and put it on the largest burner, to boil.
Beau shook her head, and dumped the onions into the pot, then began to unwrap the tongue. "Thank god Blair's going to be all right, but this isn't over, is it, Jim? Peppercorns and bay leaf. Are we talking witness protection program here?"
Jim opened a cabinet, found the bottle of bay leaves and the tube of brightly colored peppercorns, watched as Beau dumped a handful of peppercorns into the pot and crumpled a bay leaf with her fingernail, releasing the scent.
"No. We should be okay. She's going to be more interested in going after her son and Brackett when it comes to revenge." He eyed her thoughtfully, as she used wooden spoons to stir and reposition the tongue at the bottom of the pot. "Uh, Brackett's good at disappearing, he probably had contingency plans, so if you're worried about him..."
She looked up and smiled. "I'm not." She tapped his nose with the bowl of a wet wooden spoon that smelled of onions. "He was just a guy I knew a long time ago, Jim. Not one of my old boyfriends."
"I know... It's just..." he shifted his weight. "Brackett?" It came out incredulous.
"Brackett," she shrugged, and looked at him from under her eyelashes. "Brackett. Paul. Karl." The corner of her mouth turned up. "Veronica. Lila. Laura. Alex..."
He sighed. "Point taken. Kind of reassuring, that you've got a past too. Made the same kind of mistakes."
"Mmhmmm. But we're both done with dating disasters. I'm your girl, you're my fella."
There was a pleasant interval, until Blair woke and called out. Jim went down to see what he needed, and fill him in on the case. Beau turned the water down to simmer and cleaned up the kitchen.
Blair was feeling better, so he came out to the futon couch to watch a little television. They made the 6:00 news. Megan Connor came over after work. She'd stopped at the loft and packed a bag for Blair, clean clothes, the book he'd been reading, and his laptop.
Jim and Beau withdrew to the bathroom, to give Jake a bath, and Blair and Megan a little privacy. Jim bathed the baby while Beau was in charge of the boat-shaped sponge and the rubber duck.
Over dinner, Megan filled them in on the news from Chicago and the recent developments in the case. Theresa Paco was in no position to go after anyone. Quite a few accounts in the Cayman Islands had been cleaned out and closed. Brackett's contingency plan, no doubt.
Night. And the sentinel patrolled his territory, double-checking that they'd locked up after Megan's departure. He looked out the windows, wondering. There were others of his kind out there, one young one, lost and troubled, with only his guide. If his guide was anyone but Lee Brackett, that would be enough. There was nothing Jim could do but hope that Tony Paco would be all right.
He walked through the dark and silent apartment, retying the belt of his robe, and stopped in Beau's office. Blair lay on the daybed, breathing the deep, and even rhythm of drugged sleep. Jim paused, and gently brushed a stray lock of hair back from his face, then pulled up the quilt that had been shoved down around the sleeping man's waist. A little bemused at himself for tucking his partner in. Sandburg was milking this for all it was worth, but he deserved it, a couple of days of being waited on hand and foot. Another close call. Jim checked on Jake, and then went back to bed.
It was a few months later. Jim was at the station, and unfortunately it was a paperwork day. He settled himself at the computer with a cup of coffee and a buttermilk donut and started to work.
Blair came in, light dancing in his eyes, and he perched on the edge of his desk. "Jim, you aren't going to believe this. I got a letter from Terry Fraser, my friend from Rainier working at the Temple of the Sentinels in Sierra Verde? She says that they're making a lot of progress, despite the government opening the temple to tourists. And a couple of my friends stopped by." He tossed a photo on Jim's desk. A tanned and healthy Lee Brackett and Tony Paco, in resort-wear, posing in front of a stone jaguar.
"Our old friends, 'Richard Burton and his son Taylor."
~ End ~
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Page last updated 8/15/03.