Coastal Shelf
by Mab
Sometimes, I get by with a little help from my friends, in particular, Elaine, Wordwitch, Lit Gal and EE
1992
Lee Brackett liked puzzles. He liked setting them up because most people were too lazy to see connections. He liked solving them, whether it was the mystery of the cryptic crossword puzzle in the weekend newspaper, or the link between that crooked DEA officer and that particular supply of cocaine, leading to that particular congressman. He'd really enjoyed that one. There'd been excellent fringe benefits. So, he was looking forward to solving the puzzle of James Joseph Ellison, Captain, honourably (by the skin of his teeth) discharged the service.
The puzzle with Ellison was faceted. There was the question of what actually happened in Peru. The retrieval team had seen evidence of behaviour that was, in an off the record conversation with the officer in charge, `more than a little spacey. He was jumping at everything, like he was living thirty seconds ahead of the rest of us.' Given that Ellison's previous record had suggested many things but not spacey, this was interesting. Scuttlebutt implied and inferred too many native potions. It was, Brackett mused, always a possibility. If he'd been stuck in the middle of South America with no modern conveniences, he might have turned to some bitter drink laced with exotic `herbs' too. But he had a gut instinct that there was more.
There was the way that Ellison had been stymied in his efforts to enquire about the intelligence and planning for the mission. Brackett reached for the transcripts of one particular conversation. Yes indeed, Ellison had been pissed. It was hard, however, to get his righteous wrath taken seriously when the man admitted to serious gaps in his memory of the eighteen months that he was lost. Most unRanger-like, that delay in following up the loss of the team. The significance of where Colonel Oliver chose to bestow his influence would bear watching.
And then there was Brackett's own fascination to the point of obsession with this business of a nearly forgotten soldier with odd behaviours. He had ended up with a lot of reading on mental disorders, ranging from stress disorder to schizophrenia. Very stimulating, all of it, but none of it quite fit the picture that he had put together in his review. And thinking of pictures, he pulled out the copy of News Update that he had on file. James Ellison looked almost drugged, his eyes huge as they stared somewhere the photographer could never go. The picture moved Brackett in some obscure way. He wanted to know where the hell Ellison was in that picture. He wanted to reach in and drag him back and know, with a fierce passion that might have frightened him if he hadn't given up feeling more than curious amusement about his own impulses years ago.
He put the file away with a sigh. He would do another search on his keywords tonight - something would give him the clue as to what Ellison was, and when he knew what Ellison was, maybe Brackett would solve the puzzle of the compulsion that drove him.
2004
Every time the phone rang Blair picked it up with nervous hope that it was Jim. There'd been a few calls - colleagues and students calling to wish him well; back and forth calls with the landlord and the utility company. Blair had taken a week - not so long really, but still one of the longest weeks of his life - to dismantle his life in Keepston. He'd made his apologetic excuses to his employers, invoking his mother's supposed health crisis, and sparing a brief moment of shamed relief that Tom Quirke, Naomi's friend, had died a couple of years back. He'd held a yard sale, and given anything that was left over to a Catholic colleague who coordinated a local St Vincent de Paul network. His little house was currently furnished with a mattress, a suitcase, and a small grouping of boxes which held the things that he really couldn't bear to part with - favourite books and music, his one very small photograph album. He'd wiped and sold his desk-top PC, and his laptop lay by his mattress. For twenty years of independent living, it looked pitiful but there would still be plenty of room for it in the trunk and back seat of Jim's car. Jim seemed to own a few changes of clothing, and nothing else except perhaps, knowing Jim, a gun or two.
And among all the other things he had to do Blair had called Naomi.
"Hey, Mom?"
"Blair! It's lovely to hear from you again so soon. Is everything okay?"
Naomi had never been a worried mother. It wasn't that she didn't accept and acknowledge troubles. She had serenely learned to make her way through life's little problems, such as being the teen mother of an illegitimate child, and had approvingly observed that Blair seemed to have inherited her ability to push through or brush off obstacles. Until, that was, the disaster of the dissertation and its aftermath, which Blair wryly suspected had considerably darkened his mother's aura.
"Everything's fine. But I have some news for you. I've decided to follow your example and turn gypsy, so it'll be tricky to contact me for a while. I thought that we could use Jeannie as an exchange - you know, the way we did when you did your big trip."
Jeannie was one of Naomi's long-term friends, as opposed to the infatuated acquaintances who came and went, fascinated by his mother's charm and exotic behaviour.
"I'm sure Jeannie will be just fine with that, sweetie. I'm glad you're branching out a little. Keepston is a nice enough place, but I never really envisaged you staying there all the days of your life. Any particular plans? Because there's this adorable meditation centre in Boston, and if you were going that way..."
Blair tried to sound good-humoured.
"Don't worry, Ma. I can organise my own itinerary."
"Oh, of course you can." It was her best, warmly maternal "I know I'm silly but you can't blame me for wanting to be useful" tone but there was a brief, uncomfortable pause, and just as Blair was scrambling for something to fill it, Naomi asked, "Is everything really all right? Because I know that you don't have to explain everything to me, but this is a little sudden, honey. I might have thought that Keepston was too small for you, but you seemed very settled there."
"Everything's fine," Blair repeated.
"Have you met someone? Is that the big secret?" Her voice was gently teasing.
"I'm setting out all on my lonesome," he said jokingly, while congratulating himself on avoiding flatly lying to her. "I'll keep in touch, Mom, okay." He supposed that outright lies would become inevitable over time. It was strange the way they were more attuned to each other when things were strained between them. But then maybe they were both making more of an effort to understand each other these days, and the spaces between what they said and couldn't say.
"Sure. Take care, sweetheart, and have fun. Love you."
"Yeah, Ma, love you too." He took a long walk after that, realised that it was a small ritual of farewell to what he acknowledged were pretty much five wasted years of his life. It was hardly the fault of the Keepston community that he'd gone to earth there to spend his time licking at wounds that wouldn't heal. Time to move on.
Jim had refused to hang around in Keepston and had instead arranged to meet him in Portland, where they would sell Blair's car and then head off. When Jim finally called him, Blair clutched the phone pathetically hard and felt quite ridiculously happy.
"Hey there."
"Jim! Good to hear you, man." Not for a million dollars, (or three million and a Nobel nomination) would he confess to his occasional fears that Jim wouldn't call back, wouldn't be at the motel they'd agreed on.
"You nearly ready to go?"
"This place is so empty it damn near echoes. Yeah, I'm ready to go. Missed you, babe."
"Missed you too. So haul ass."
Blair laughed. "Romantic bastard. See you soon."
He loaded up the car, dropped the key off at Schultz's and drove out of Keepston without a backward look.
Blair woke to Jim's restless movement in the bed, some incoherent noises that might have been Blair's name. Jim's arms started flailing and Blair rolled neatly to the side, all the while talking, not loudly, but persistently, "Jim, Jim, it's okay, man, it's okay, come on Jim, wake up." His new mantra, he thought wryly. He put the lamp on - it was low wattage and much of the glare was blocked by Blair's body, but Jim jerked upright and with a moan clapped his hands to his eyes as if struck. Blair took the chance of kneeling on the edge of the bed and placed a cautious hand on Jim's shoulder. Immediately he was flat on the bed on his side, the arm that had reached to Jim extended and pressed into the mattress with a punishing hold. Jim's face dropped out of unfeeling intensity into horror. "Shit." He pulled Blair into his arms and muttered, "Sorry, sorry. God, that's twice this week, I'm sorry."
Blair wriggled against the grip that held him. "Hey, Jim, no problems with the hug, but you're not trying to turn coal into diamonds here." Jim's arms eased their hold but only a little.
"I'm not usually this bad. Don't know what's got into me."
Blair extricated an arm and laid a hand along Jim's cheek, which was pale and a little clammy. "I have a theory about that - well, actually it's not my theory, it relates to work studies where people get sick in the weekends or on holidays."
Jim watched him with wary, uncertain eyes, as his hands started to travel up and down Blair's back and flank. "You have a theory. Well, that's a new one."
"People get sick in their down-time, Jim. Their bodies and minds recognise that it's appropriate to deal with stress. So, if you look at it the right way, this is actually a positive sign, because it means that your mind and body recognise a certain level of safety."
"Your eyes should be brown, not blue. You are that full of shit." Jim's face had relaxed a little, but his hands were growing increasingly bold, and Blair rocked gently against Jim's thigh. "Only you could find something positive about the fact that I could have dislocated your shoulder."
"But you didn't," Blair replied. He was a little sore but nothing that wouldn't be okay in a day or so. Besides, right now he had Jim's touches to distract him, the feel of Jim's cock pressed against his belly. He ran the knuckles of a loosely fisted hand down Jim's spine and smiled at the shiver that ran through the big body pressed against him. "So which dream was it this time?"
Jim leaned his face against Blair's and said, "The usual crap. Everyone's dead and it's my fault." He pulled back a. little to look at Blair with gentle but determined hunger. "That was when I was asleep, but you feel pretty alive right here." He twisted long fingers around Blair's by now very interested cock. "Yeah, can't get enough of that, can you?"
Blair sighed and arched into the hold. "No, so just keep on doing just - that - oh god." Blair couldn't shape any more words because Jim kissed him, leaned over and cradled him in the crook of one arm while his other hand stroked, while clever sentinel fingers found the right places and the right pressure. Jim had a thing about Blair's mouth, which was fine, absolutely fine with Blair, if it meant the sort of attention lavished on it now. And maybe he couldn't talk but he could make appreciative noises in the back of his throat for the sweetness of the hand at his groin and the sweetness of the lips and tongue lapping at his own. He gasped and moaned his appreciation of his ultimate pleasure, and Jim leaned up and surveyed Blair with a hunger that was maybe a little less gentle.
Jim wiped his hand with mock-fastidiousness across the skin and hair of Blair's torso. "You look good like this - with your spunk smeared all over you and your eyes all dark and hazy." He moved on top of Blair, only partly supporting his own weight, his heavy cock rubbing against Blair's skin seemingly a weight all its own, warm and smooth and demanding.
"You like making me like this," Blair said, his palms tracing patterns against the heat of Jim's skin, as he carefully rocked into Jim's rhythm.
"Always knew you were brilliant." Jim shut his eyes and moved, while Blair held him, surrounded Jim with arms and legs and whispered encouragements. It didn't take long - quick and dirty sex to work off the stress and adrenaline after nightmares seemed to be becoming a ritual. Blair could deal with that. There were worse ways. Blair couldn't conceive of any situation where Jim wanting him would be an imposition, certainly not during this weird honeymoon limbo as they slowly headed for Los Angeles. But it was a little heart-breaking the way that Jim reached for him after bad dreams, as if he was using the sensations of sex to prove to the throw-back part of him that Blair was truly okay. Blair flailed a hand out of the bed and grabbed a discarded t-shirt to wipe them both down. Really, they should wash properly. But he was comfortable and relaxed now and he liked the thought that something of both their bodies was mingled on their skin. Maybe Jim wasn't the only throw-back in the bed.
“Want the lamp off?" he asked. Jim nodded and Blair reached out an arm and flicked the switch. The only problem was that he wasn't tired.
"What about Bergman?"
"Ingrid or Ingmar?" Jim questioned lazily. This earned him a small prod to the ribs. They'd spent some of the drive working out possible names and backgrounds for Blair's new identity.
"As a new name. You don't think that it's too like my real name?"
"It's a pretty generic Jewish name, Chief. Jacob Bergman." Jim drawled it experimentally. "Sounds like you should be cantor at the local synagogue."
Blair chuckled. "I'm not sure I'm ready to get that much in contact with my cultural and religious heritage." But he felt a little wistful as he imagined how delighted his deeply traditional grandmother would have been at the idea. Abby Sandburg had been very much like her daughter - wanting only the best for her family, but perhaps not always going the right way about it. One thing three generations of Sandburgs had in common - they couldn't leave well enough alone until somebody rubbed their noses in the results.
Jim's voice was slowing, lowering to a grumble as he grew less alert. "Not to mention you're not much of a singer. Course, you could always go for Darwin. Or Einstein. I can just imagine you when you're sixty - grow a soup-strainer and you'd look the part."
"Yeah, you're a funny man." Blair indulged in a hit-and-run set of kisses to the nearest portions of Jim's skin. "Go back to sleep."
Jim grunted, and rolled to his side. Blair spooned up behind him and draped one arm around his waist. He had no idea if the embrace as Jim dropped off to sleep kept the nightmares at bay, but it made Blair feel better, as if he was watching Jim's back against whatever demons might ambush his sleep. He told himself that the coming changes would be an adventure at least, but he was grateful for the anchor of Jim's warmth.
It was the only anchor at the moment. Once they'd both acknowledged that they would stay together there'd been little discussion of the future, except for the immediate need to set up a new identity for Blair. It had all been very - what had Jim said - precipitate. But then it always had been like that. Bull-shitting his way into the examination room at the hospital; convincing Jim to let him move in for just a week; jumping out of planes over Peru - now that was definitely precipitate. Blair snorted. Give up the puns, Sandburg. He nuzzled his face against Jim's back. Blair Sandburg was going to be no more than an alias very shortly. It wasn't an easy thought, but any uneasiness was dispelled by the warm, breathing weight of Jim, who was alive and come back to Blair. He'd spent a lot of time just looking at Jim with startled joy, and sometimes surprising the same expression when he saw Jim looking at him. He realised that he could sleep after all.
It had seemed appropriate to put The Doors' LA Woman into the CD player. Jim Morrison was really getting into it, roaring `Mr. Mojo rising,' his voice punctuated by the cascading whine of electric guitar. Blair was getting into it as well, growling along, `gotta keep on rising' until Jim grumbled, "Mr. Mojo is going to find himself six feet under where no-one will ever find him if he doesn't shut up. Jeez, how am I supposed to concentrate here?"
"Sorry." Blair decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and even turned the sound down a tad. Jim relaxed a little, although his eyes kept checking the exit signs.
"We'll get ourselves a motel, and then we can go see Michael and Andy - get your IDs sorted out."
Blair groaned a little at the thought of yet another motel. He was becoming a connoisseur of motel style, and the lack of it too. Jim didn't tend to indulge in flash - while they never stayed in fleapits, they hadn't exactly gone five-star either. Blair decided on a question, since he wasn't allowed to sing.
"Jim, just how much money have you got behind you?"
"Planning to marry me for my stock portfolio, Chief?"
Blair looked over at Jim. The voice was jocular, but his expression was just a little tense.
"Is there something you haven't been telling me here?"
Jim scanned the road with what Blair thought was slightly exaggerated attention.
"Andy - he was multi-purpose for the computers. Setting up fake backgrounds, laundering funds, the whole shebang. And since we knew that we weren't going to get much in the way of a government pension, he sort of set up a retirement fund for us."
"How big a retirement fund?"
"Several million," Jim admitted.
"Million!"
Jim's head went down, his shoulders went up, like some startled turtle. "Speak a little louder - they didn't hear you in San Diego."
"Sorry. But, man..." Blair was about to ask why on earth Jim was living so quietly, but that, he realised, was a no-brainer. Make no fuss, draw no attention. Do nothing that might make people remember you. Blair pushed a hand through his hair, looked at the strands that fell forward from his shoulders, and wondered whether ageing hippie-types counted as memorable.
"Any reason that your friends picked Los Angeles?"
Jim shrugged. "Nothing in particular. It's big, and Michael's family was mid-west, so he's less likely to meet anyone he knows here. Andy went into the Group when he was fourteen. His parents died in a convenient car crash - he was born and raised in Texas."
Blair felt a small chill. "You mentioned he was in a wheelchair. The car crash?"
"Something else when he was younger I think. He didn't talk about it, and it's not like I had much to talk about with some geek kid."
"That's actually pretty amazing, that he was prepared to help you and Michael get out, when it was his familiar environment and everything."
Jim's voice was dry.
"Delayed adolescent rebellion if you ask me. And he and Michael always did get along okay."
Unlike Jim and Andy. Blair amused himself in the trek across the freeways and streets with trying to work out the personalities of Michael and Andy as seen through the prism of Jim's perceptions. He had a theory that they weren't visiting in person simply because of Jim's distrust of electronic communication, or the urge he had to keep moving. No, this was a wedding journey, in the fashion of the nineteenth century. Blair was about to be presented to the only family that Jim felt he could acknowledge. The idea was peculiarly bittersweet. Blair looked across at Jim and decided that he wouldn't pass that thought on. Jim caught the look and said, "What?"
"Just thinking I was glad that you tolerated at least one geek kid."
Jim smiled tightly.
"You grew on me." And then, as a blue SUV cut in front of them, "Hey, dickwad, what do you think your turn signals are for?"
Blair rolled his eyes, but decided that he'd let Jim get away with a little road `irritation' just once - or maybe twice.
The petty business of finding accommodation, shaking out clothes and taking showers accomplished, the two men set out on what Blair assumed was the more complicated errand of making him into a whole new person. It felt more than a little weird, especially since Blair had no intention of being anything different. Jim wouldn't park too close to Andy and Michael's apartment, and the two of them walked down streets smelling of sun-shower rain.
'Jacob Bergman'. He tried it out in his head, imagined introducing himself. `Hi, I'm Jacob' or maybe it should be `Jake', accompanying it with the patented Blair smile, and no doubt the patented Blair dorky nervous laughter when he wasn't sure of himself. He could foresee quite a lot of nervous laughter, and had a mad desire to hold hands with Jim, like kindergarten kids walking in a crocodile down the street. That of course would be noticeable, so he didn't. He needed to talk to Jim about just what sort of life they were going to live. Would they be out? He had an absurd fantasy of them hiding in plain sight as the campest of gay couples. That would surely put any avenging agents off the trail. He took a sideways glance at Jim, trying (from a purely academic viewpoint) to put him in the role, but Jim's stern profile derailed any thoughts of eyeliner and nail polish.
It had never been easy to notice Jim without being noticed in return. That certainly hadn't changed. "So what are you thinking this time, Chief?"
Blair suspected his smile was a little manic. "Just wondering what you'd look like femme." Jim's eyebrows climbed towards his handsomely receding hair.
"I wear make-up for no-one." This was sneered in quite a good Bogart impression. "Besides," Jim continued in his usual tones, "even that hypoallergenic crap stinks like you wouldn't believe."
"And you would know this how?"
Jim tugged gently on Blair's hair. "You don't want to know."
"And that," Blair returned, "is where you'd be wrong."
Jim's eyes narrowed. He looked very smug.
"Yeah, I know."
Michael and Andy, Blair observed, were also eschewing a fancy lifestyle. The neighbourhood was respectably middle-class, but no more than that. Jim's fellow-escapees had a ground-floor apartment, with a back entrance that had been adapted with a ramp and widened doors. Michael was tall and broad, and sandy-haired, perhaps thirty years old. He welcomed them in with a friendly smile, and shook hands with them both in a cordial way. The apartment was a decent size, with one long wall taken up with a geek's array of computer equipment. Andy came forward, working the controls of his chair with his right hand. He had a bony face and lank dark hair, and his expression was openly curious as he looked Blair up and down.
"Hi. So you're Blair."
"Uh, yeah. Not for much longer, though."
Andy grinned. "That is the whole point of you being here, aside from Jim being paranoid." Blair stiffened, suddenly understanding why Jim didn't like Andy. He found that he didn't like him much either.
Michael spoke in relaxed rebuke, "One day you'll learn not to say everything you think. You guys want anything - coffee, or I can do you a beer."
Jim shrugged. "A beer would be good."
Andy spoke up. "Blair, have you and Jim worked out what you want? Because if you have, I'll work better without any extra audience. Mike, how about you take Jim to Russo's? You can compare the best methods of killing people or something, and I'll make a new man of Mr. Sandburg here."
"May not be a bad idea at that," Michael replied. "Come on, old man, I'll renew your acquaintance with the neighbourhood."
Blair looked up to see how Jim took to that particular form of address. Surprisingly, it didn't seem to bother him. He walked over to Blair, who half wondered if Jim was going to kiss him when he stooped towards him. But all Jim did was fold one hand briefly across the nape of Blair's neck. "Have fun, Chief. Don't let Andy blind you with science."
Michael and Jim departed, to Andy's snorted, "Yeah, right." Then he looked at Blair, a motion of eyes more than the head. "Chief. That's cute." The chair engine whined as Andy headed for his bank of electronics.
"Sorry for getting rid of Mr. Intense, but I do not need him glowering at me when I'm trying to concentrate. He doesn't like me that much."
"I wonder why?" Blair remarked sourly.
"Shit, I don't care if he thinks I'm an asshole, because I am. I do get pissed by his attitude that I'm some wet behind the ears dumbo. I have as much to lose as he does if the wrong people catch up with us. Help me with this will you?" Andy's hand had partly raised a head-wand, and Blair helped adjust it. Then the two of them plunged into the creation of an identity; a social security number, driver's license, birth certificate, educational qualifications. Blair had thought long and hard about those - he was attached to the letters MA after his name, but suspected that people would be less likely to enquire into a simple BA. There was a tearing sensation in letting go of that little extra bit of education. It was a slow process, despite the head-wand and a truly weirdly shaped keyboard designed for one-handed use. Blair watched it all in fascination, particularly when Andy leaned his good hand on the computer tower and looked almost as if he was going to sleep. He looked up apologetically afterwards. "Sorry, that wasn't yours. Extra business." Blair almost might have suspected an elaborate con, if it weren't for the way that Andy's abrasiveness turned to an impression of brusque competency as they worked their way through the process of making Blair that new man.
Blair realised that the process had taken nearly two hours, and Michael and Jim weren't back yet. "The guys are taking their time aren't they?" he said, trying not to sound over-concerned.
"Michael will have found somewhere to eat. He's always hungry, and besides, it's a good chance for him to get out." There was a certain edge to Andy's voice. Blair raised his eyebrows in what he hoped was an encouraging manner, out of curiosity as much as anything.
"Have to say, if I'd had to peg anyone as queer, Ellison wouldn't have been my first choice." Not what Blair was expecting. "That's why you're here, isn't it? Because you're his," there was a pause before the last words were said, laden with meaning, "significant other?"
Blair's jaw went up. "And if I am, how is that your problem?"
Andy barked out a laugh. "Oh, no problem, dude. I'm just amazed by this new side of Jimbo. And nosy. Let's face it, Michael and I get along okay but we wouldn't be sharing this fine apartment if I was capable of independent living. So true love is kind of interesting."
Blair's laughter was tinged with more than a little outrage. "One of these days somebody is going to pop you, wheelchair or no wheelchair."
"Be still my heart, a chance to be treated as normal." 'Normal' was dragged out in a sing-song drawl. "Look, get me a beer from the fridge, wouldja? And don't worry about having to do anything embarrassing, I'm all provided for."
Andy was slurping his beer through a tube, and Blair was starting on his second when Michael and Jim returned. They were carrying bags of take-out.
"Sorry we were so long," Jim said.
"It's okay, we've just finished up."
"Michael was saying we're welcome to hang around if we want, but there's someone coming in to work with Andy shortly. I thought it'd be better if we went before then."
"Fair enough," Blair said. He turned to Andy. "It's been interesting."
Andy smirked. "It has at that. Take good care of yourself, Jake." Farewells were made and Jim and Blair made the return trip to the car, accompanied by the savoury smells of the food.
"You and Michael have a good time?" Jim looked, if not relaxed, then certainly as relaxed as Blair ever saw him in a public place.
"Caught up with the basics, talked sports. I think I'll just watch you eat - I'm stuffed. Nobody can put it away like Michael - if he ever goes out of training he'll end up like Brando. Things go all right with Andy?"
"Well, he's not Miss Congeniality but he sounds like he knows what he's doing. We have the back-up IDs set up too, just like you wanted. A few untraceable email addresses. I'll pass one of those on to Mom and Carolyn. God, I feel like James Bond."
"I seem to recall that Bond had more in the way of nifty gadgets."
"Oh, I don't know," Blair said slyly. "I'm sure that you've got some interesting weaponry you could demonstrate to me."
"I'm not dwelling on that imagery, `Jake'." Jim's voice was disapproving, but the look he gave Blair was frankly anticipatory. Blair let his own anticipation dizzily fizz in his blood, and turned his thoughts to something a little more suitable for walking down a public street.
"We get things set up, and then what?"
"Well, I seem to recall that you suggested that we either buy a motor home or stick a pin in the map. Any preferences?"
"Research time, man." Blair felt suddenly expansive. "Our place in the sun, our love-nest, our little piece of paradise is out there somewhere."
"Damn, but I'm hoping that sex shuts you up."
Blair grinned.
"Not a chance, Jim, not a chance."
A place in the sun indeed. Three hundred and thirty days of sun a year shone down on Phoenix and its surroundings, and Blair basked in it like a lizard. Phoenix, he thought smugly, had been a good idea.
Watching Jim's face as he adjusted the stirrups for the excited child sitting in the saddle, Blair decided that he was definitely having a run on good ideas.
"There you go, sweetheart. How does that feel?"
The little girl let out a gabbling crow of laughter, before saying what might what have been, "it's high!" The cerebral palsy that twisted her legs and arms also twisted her speech, but clearly she was happy. Jim was gently simultaneously patting the child's back and the horse's neck, and his expression was relaxed and open. Blair avidly took in the look on Jim's face, and let the sentinel do his thing. Blair was just there to drive the horse trailer.
They'd settled in Phoenix, and settled into the humdrum of life. Blair knew that Jim valued that humdrum the way a miser would treasure a chest full of gold. The ordinary routines of suburban safety were precious to them both, but when Blair saw an advertisement asking for volunteers for a local organisation which provided therapy for disabled children through horse-riding, he'd had a wonderful feeling of serendipity. He clearly remembered, not without some embarrassment at his hero worship, the sheer idolatrous joy he'd felt when Jim had leapt into the saddle at the Cascade Race Course and taken off in pursuit of Pat Reynolds. `Like fucking Gary Cooper,' Blair had thought exultantly.
This wasn't so glamorous. A local woman had indicated that she could provide a gentle hack, but not time out of her commitments. Jim had the skill with animals, Blair had the skill with large vehicles, even if they were both maybe a little rusty. Peggy Roberts, the co-ordinator, was not at all rusty on her organisational and networking skills, and Jim and Blair, or more precisely Carl and Jacob, had found themselves with a once a month engagement.
Jim turned to him, and smiled. "Hey, JB," he called. "You planning to mosey on along with the rest of us?"
"I bet on horses, man, I don't need to get up close and personal with them. I let you do that. I'll just sit quietly in the shade and watch you commune."
Blair made himself comfortable in the shade of the trailer and watched as Jim and the other volunteers set up the slope with their charges, making a meandering path among the scraggly bushes. Some of the parents walked alongside, others also sat and waited for the riders and supervisors to make their short round trip. Life, thought Blair, was good. Besides, Jim owed him for dragging him along to that damn gun club. So what if Jim still had nightmares. So what if Blair had the occasional bad dream as well, a fact that Jim had elicited one night, drawing out a confession of Blair's repetitive dreams of searching for Jim's body.
The dreams and Jim's occasional problems with his senses were, if not a small thing, then usually manageable. The bickering as the two of them settled into daily life was a small thing, and almost welcomed by Blair. Jim was anal. Blair was a slob. The truth was somewhere in between and gloriously normal. Blair took a bottle of water out of a cooler and he toasted normal, and he toasted Jim, a slightly worn Marlboro Man among the special needs children; he watched Jim be almost at ease among the group of people and horses. Blair sighed - almost at ease was usually as good as it got, and he knew that he was greedy for more. These things take time, he told himself. Then he grinned. Time, and maybe some more sex.
In a quiet way, Lee Brackett considered himself as much as of an expert in sentinels as anyone, the lately disappeared Blair Sandburg, for example. As a man who specialised in his own particular disappearing acts, he admired the skill with which Mr. Sandburg had slipped sub rosa. Technically he existed, but whenever you tried to track him down, he slipped through your fingers, to hopefully be discovered at the next address or reference. He was impressed by the craftsmanship of it all, but then working with professionals was like that. Not that the Kershaw brat would have counted as that, but he imagined that Jankowski and Ellison would be bringing him up in the way that he should go.
Tracking down Ellison through Sandburg would have been a good idea if he'd been just a few months sooner. He tapped his pen against his notebook and put chagrin aside. Sometimes things worked for you and sometimes they didn't and certain sorts of research were harder to achieve when you were once again only partly legit. It was just as well that Ellison kept himself fit. He was going to need his stamina to deal with the hyperactive Mr. Sandburg. He smirked and raised his eyes to the ceiling. So, if the elusive Mr. Ellison had made himself known to one auld acquaintance, then maybe he hadn't been able to resist visiting others. He considered likely candidates. There was Banks; maybe not the ex-wife in the circumstances - he imagined that meeting with amusement; and there was Ellison's brother and dear old dad. Given that three of them were handily placed in one location, Cascade was an obvious starting point. Besides, he could check in on Alex again. It had been a while and she kept on improving. He was hoping that she might end up quite useful.
2005
Blair looked at the attachment that Carolyn had sent him, and wondered exactly how the hell he was going to tell Jim about this. Not telling him wasn't an option. On the other hand, Blair could feel his stomach doing flip-flops at the idea of showing this to Jim.
"8yr Old Saves Baby-Sitter" said the headline. It didn't come from a big paper like the Examiner, just one of the little community papers that were filled with local news about schools and Rotary, scrunching it in between the ads. Carolyn had scanned the article and sent it to Blair with a breezy covering message that, to Blair's sensitivities, didn't quite cover her worry. "To be honest," she'd written, "Gloria was set on her fifteen minutes of fame, and he may really have saved her life. It didn't seem fair to make a big deal about not letting the paper do its story."
Gloria was the pretty sixteen year old who'd been minding Robbie at a nearby park. She and Robbie made an appealing picture together. She was also a diabetic who had overdone her insulin. Disoriented on a wooded track, she'd stumbled into the cover of vegetation, until Robbie had unerringly led another adult to her. "I could hear her," the little boy declared. Nothing to suggest anything particularly unusual. Any readers would most likely assume that he'd seen her collapse or heard her cry out for help. But Jim, with his mania for secrecy, would be, at the very best, deeply concerned.
Blair sighed. He could hardly blame Jim for his determination to live as invisibly as possible. They'd made a modest life for themselves. They were out in a discreet way, lived in a decent apartment, drove respectable cars. But Jim, who had never been what most people would call laid-back, was always alert, always suspicious, always monitoring people's actions and reactions. He seldom let go of that awareness of his surroundings except in sex and sleep, and sometimes, Blair suspected, not even then. It was an infectious attitude, especially when Blair had always been something of a people-watcher anyway.
There was no point in delaying trouble. He looked at Jim, slouched on the couch, the sports section of the newspaper held in his hands, the rest neatly folded on the floor beside him.
"Hey, Jim, you may want to have a look at this. It's from Carolyn."
Jim looked up, an expression of hope and concern combined on his face. "Robbie okay?"
"Yeah, he's fine." Blair swallowed nervously. "As a matter of fact, this is a nice picture of him. It's a newspaper picture," he said, and watched Jim's face darken. Blair sat there in his chair as Jim leaned over his shoulder to read the screen.
"Oh, for - " Jim bit off whatever he was about to say, and then stood very tall, his spine stiff with disapproval. "No doubt Carolyn knows what she's doing." His tone suggested that he doubted his ex-wife could find her ass with both hands and a map.
Blair took the plunge. "I think that maybe it's a good thing for Robbie. I mean, obviously he and Carolyn aren't yelling `sentinel' but don't you think that it's a good thing for him to feel good about what he can do?"
He wondered if maybe he should have stood up before making this declaration, as Jim looked down on him as if he was an interesting but particularly repulsive variety of worm.
"Oh, right. I'm sure that Robbie will feel just great in some lab with some explorer of science taking a few blood samples."
One of Naomi's friends had been fond of asking, `are you ready to stop digging your grave with your teeth now?' Blair suspected that he'd have to answer `no', but he'd been thinking about this for a long time and he felt that he had to say something.
"Jim, have you ever wondered what would have happened if your father hadn't told the cops that you were imagining things when you said that you'd seen Karl Heydash's killer?"
Jim stared at him. "Sometimes. But there was about an ice-cube's chance in hell of my old man letting that happen."
Blair did stand up - he had to pace. At this point it was as necessary to him as breathing.
"See, sentinels must have originally been treasured members of their communities. They had a place. And sometimes I wonder if your father didn't take you out of your place. He knew what you could do, Jim. He made himself, and you, accessory to murder. That's one hell of a burden to put on yourself and your family, however you perceive things, morally, or religiously or whatever." Jim was silent, but he watched Blair with an impatient, uncomprehending look. "If Mick Foster had been caught - well maybe it still would have been too late for Aaron, but who knows? All those ripples, out of one man's fear."
"And this relates to Robbie's picture being splashed all over the homes of San Francisco, how, Professor?" Jim's voice was darkly sarcastic.
"Jim, one way or another, you ended up a deeply isolated man. You were a loner even inside the groups that you took part in. And I ended up enabling your isolation, which is very weird given that I started out looking to prove the existence of sentinels in the modern day world."
Jim looked as if the light had dawned and he didn't think much of the view. His voice was curt. "I don't need to listen to this shit." Blair stood by in shock as Jim headed for the door, before anger and confusion together impelled him to try to cut off Jim's escape. He couldn't block the route to the door, but he did manage to grab at Jim's wrist.
"Wait a minute. You haven't even heard me out. You don't even know where I'm going with this." He was babbling. Babbling brooks, wasn't that the old cliche, and water wearing away stone, but not, it seemed, in this case. Jim turned a pale, impassive face to him.
"Let me guess. The next thing you're going to say is that your press conference was a mistake."
"Well, maybe it was," and Jim flinched as if struck. He yanked his wrist out of Blair's grip, and held it poised in the air as if he might hit Blair. Then he lowered it. "If you think this was a mistake," he hissed, and one brusque gesture suggested quite effectively their home and life together, "then there are less long-winded ways of saying it."
Blair's mouth gaped, before he gathered it up with a snap of teeth. "Oh, no," he snarled, "you are not trying this crap again." He grabbed Jim's arms, and hauled him away from the door. Jim stiffened in outrage and shock, but his feet took him back to the couch as if Blair were leading him in a dance.
"Sit down, and listen, and no more fucking brinksmanship, or jumping to conclusions or any of that shit." Blair took a deep breath, and then another and prepared to deliver his lecture to an unappreciative audience of one. "You and your dad tried the `let's keep the sentinel senses a big secret' thing and if it had been such a roaring success then I don't think that Carl James McKinley and Jacob Bergman would be having this little discussion." Jim's eyebrow plainly commented on the fact that Blair was doing most of the talking so far. "So, okay, I accept that we're committed to it now because you were stuck with the lesser of two evils choice, and everything snowballed, but wouldn't it have been better if you hadn't been in that situation in the first place?"
"Chief, it's a nice idea, but I don't think the world is set up for sentinels anymore." Something inside Blair cried a resounding `no!' to that idea.
"Jim, maybe it's right for Robbie to be part of his community. Maybe it was wrong of me to connive with you about keeping the big secret."
"And maybe I would have just ended up `disappeared' that much sooner. So what are you gonna do with your big theory, Darwin? You planning on outing me or Robbie?" Jim sounded more exhausted than angry as he sat looking at nothing in particular, his hands loose in his lap.
Blair found himself crouched beside Jim, tamping down on hurt resentment. They might have new names but old issues remained the order of the day. "No, no," he protested, determined to focus on his argument. "But you and Robbie, there are - there are powers around you, man, and I don't know if they're personal or just forces of nature like the tides, but they want you to be a sentinel, they want Robbie to be a sentinel, and maybe fighting it just screws things up."
Jim's far-away gaze journeyed back to Blair. "So I should have just fucked Alex, then?"
Blair winced, but he looked Jim in the eye, and returned crudity for crudity. "Maybe if we'd been fucking each other that mess would have gone down completely differently."
Jim said nothing. Blair felt that he wasn't a brook any longer, he was an absolute Niagara of painfully failed communication. Or maybe he wasn't failing at the communication. Perhaps it was all just a bad idea. "Can't you see, Jim? Maybe it's not such a bad thing if Robbie gets known. Carolyn's savvy enough. Maybe she can avoid the sort of feeding frenzy that happened to us, because she won't be too damn scared to act before things get out of hand."
"You can't know that. There are sharks out there."
"Then all the more reason that Robbie should be part of a community, so that he doesn't have to hide, so that he can be the fucking wonderful being that he's meant to be. Because the hiding, it's wrong, it's just fucking wrong and it messes everything up." Blair's eyes stung, and he could feel the heat of anger on his face, the complicated mix of grief and rage nearly ready to brim over. It wasn't Robbie that he was grieving over for being messed up. It was Jim, it was always Jim, who had spent too much of his life being afraid of what he was and what he felt, and it was wrong, fucking bad karma, simply - wrong. He bowed his head, ashamed, because this wasn't supposed to be about him. Jim put his arms about him and hauled him onto the couch, and he leaned his head against Jim's shoulder. He didn't cry, he wouldn't cry, but he found himself rocked a little, as if he was a child.
After a while, Jim put his hands either side of Blair's head, and drew back so they could look each other in the face. Jim's face was troubled, and resigned, and oddly amused.
"Chief, when you're busy worrying about my issues, do you ever take some time out to worry about your own?" And all that feeling that Blair pushed down on came out in a sobbing, almost hysterical laugh.
"Ah, god." He stood up, trying to collect himself. Jim stood up behind him and placed placating hands on his shoulders.
"I'm not saying it's not an - interesting idea, but..."
"I know the stakes are pretty damn huge. But, Jim, you couldn't hide what you were without denying it altogether. Neither can Robbie, and with you, it still came out, all that repression not withstanding. You two, you have the dreams and everything, the connection. It has to be there for a purpose."
"I can't come out of hiding. You know that."
"Maybe it can be different for Robbie."
Jim sighed, and pressed a kiss to Blair's nape.
"Maybe."
William Ellison lived in respectable comfort, which Brackett always regarded as an oxymoron. People who lived in this level of comfort could usually have something shady traced to them. Ellison Senior had his son's taste for comfortable austerity, although in a rather more traditional form. Where Jim Ellison went for plain brick and a few nice pieces of contemporary ceramics, his father's house leaned more to the style of one extremely tasteful piece of porcelain placed in an alcove.
William Ellison was getting old and he'd never been much for the mad social whirl. So Brackett had decided that if he wanted to check out his opportunities before either he or his subject died of old age, he was going to have to resort to old-fashioned burglary. It was no problem. Games were fun, but sometimes simple was best. Neutralise the alarm system, put the pen-light between your teeth - ah, happy days. Except that there was depressingly little to go on. Certainly, there was quite the shrine to Jimmy boy in the old man's study, but nothing to indicate whether Jim Ellison had been in contact recently. Then one of the photographs caught his eye. Like little Jimmy Ellison, very like, but just a little modern and unfaded; and not quite as like Jimmy as the others. Brackett stared at the young face looking out of the picture, willing it to reveal its secrets. Then he cheated, and quickly lifted it out of the frame to check the back.
'Robbie in his soccer uniform. March 2005'. Brackett wasn't lost enough to common-sense to speak out loud, but his feelings needed a vent. "James Ellison," he mouthed exultantly, "you were holding out on us." A quick check of other photographs, and the old man's address book made Lee Brackett a happy man. Robert James Plummer, born 7th February 1997. Brackett was a man enjoying a vision of whole new vistas where he could satisfy curiosity, not to mention make trouble and above all, profit.
"Blair, wake up, damn it. Now!"
Not the kind of awakening that Blair enjoyed. The light hurt his eyes, although not as much as sudden anxiety hurt his chest.
"What is it? Jim?"
"Call Carolyn." Jim had shoved back bedding and was dragging on clothes at speed.
Blair checked his watch. It read 4.15 am. "Jim, even if she's the lark type, it's still practically the middle of the night. What the hell is going on?"
"Just do it."
Blair scrabbled for the phone. "Fine, but I'm taking any humiliation out of your hide, man."
Jim came and kneeled on the floor beside Blair. He was pale, as pale as Blair had ever seen him, and despite his frantic activity he had a look of a man who was far, far inside himself. Blair was punching in numbers, but halted briefly as Jim said, "Check that everything is okay with Robbie."
The phone rang twice before Carolyn said breathlessly, "Hello?"
Startled by the quick response, Blair said cautiously, "Carolyn, it's Blair."
Carolyn's voice was tautly low. "You got my message, then? Oh, god, Blair, I don't know if I should give you the details or just get you off the phone. The police say I should keep the line free until we're sure that nobody's after ransom." Blair felt as if his body must be radiating cold rather than heat. Ransom.
"Do you want this number? Or I'll call you later."
He was cut off as Carolyn said, "Mail me back. I've got to go." The connection died, and Blair shot out of bed. Jim had been listening and at Carolyn's mention of a message he'd turned on the computer and was checking one particular mail account. Blair leaned over him, his hands on Jim's shoulders. There was a message from Carolyn, logged in ten minutes ago. "Robbie is gone. What do I do?"
Jim sat hunched on the chair, his arms curled around his gut. Blair hugged him, hard. His forehead rested against the crook of Jim's neck and shoulder. There was warmth there, but also rigid tension. "God, what do we do? How did you know?"
"I dreamed it." Blair lifted his head, tried to read Jim's eyes, but all he could see was Jim's bowed profile, set in stiff, massive calm. "What sort of dream? Come on, man, this is important."
Jim raised his head to stare unseeingly at the computer screen. "There was a jaguar cub, and a coyote with a twisted jaw picked him up and took him away. And there was an adult jaguar, a spotted jaguar, in a tree, watching them and hissing. Angry."
"A spotted jaguar." Blair licked his lips. "Not Alex?" The last that Blair had bothered with Alex Barnes's whereabouts she'd been safely placed in a secure facility in Oregon. Conover didn't deal with long-term physical as well as psychological care.
Jim stood up. "If it is her, I'll kill her."
Blair didn't doubt it. But the dream suggested that Alex wasn't the instigator.
"Even if the jaguar is Alex, who the hell is the coyote?"
"I don't know! Jesus." Jim went to the phone, punched in a number. He waited for a long time, still as a statue. Finally, there was a response. "Michael. It's Jim. I need Andy to do his thing. Now. I need everything you can get on Alex Barnes, last known at Forrester Hill Hospital, Oregon. Send it to the address. All of it. Also, if you can hack the San Francisco PD and find anything on the abduction of Robert James Plummer. The case may not be in the system yet, so keep checking." There was a pause. "He's my son. You heard me. Everything, down to how often Barnes takes a dump. ASAP."
He ended the call and, all efficiency, began to pack a bag. "Get your ass into gear, Chief. I don't know what we'll be doing, but a little preparedness might be good." Jim moved into the kitchen. Blair could hear the noise of cupboard contents being disarranged as Jim shifted the fake backing that he and Blair had spent a weekend installing. There were various items stored behind it - fake driving licenses and other IDs, fake gun licenses, a small cache of illegally obtained guns and ammunition, a store of cash. Blair sighed and got out his usual gun, the legal one, looked at it, heavy and ugly in his hand, and then put it away. Then he went and sat by the PC. It was pointless, it would chime when the mail came in, but he glared at the screen as if he could will information to just appear. Then he acknowledged the futility of his watch, and got dressed, but in the meantime Jim had returned, to also glare at the computer.
"Come on," he snarled. "Come on, come on."
It took three-quarters of an hour, during which time Jim stalked the house, and Blair made and drank two cups of strong coffee. He'd offered a cup to Jim, but he'd shaken his head and kept up his restless movement. The files finally arrived, accompanied by a short message reading, "Sorry this took so long (!). SFPD has the case logged but no more. Checked Oregon Police as well as Forrester Hill. Nothing. Presumably AB is tucked up in her bed, which is where I'd like to be. M insists on us monitoring for you, so I guess this means I'm awake till you give us the all clear. A."
There were several files, all clearly hacked out of the hospital system. Jim started skimming some, and Blair transferred other items that were clearly treatment notes to his laptop and started reading. What he read didn't suggest that Alex was capable of dressing herself, let alone being involved in the abduction of a child. He sighed - the dream suggested that Alex disapproved - but of what? The Alex he remembered had no moral scruples. So what was her problem and why the hell was she haunting Jim's vision anyway? Frustration overwhelmed him, until he was distracted by Jim's curse.
"Son of a bitch."
"What?"
"There's some visiting doctor on log as visiting Alex a few times, even taking her out."
"And how the hell did he get the permissions for that?"
"How would I know? But get this - his name was James Blair. Cute, huh?"
The cuteness escaped Blair. Either fate or `Dr Blair' had a nasty sense of humour, and while fate could certainly be a mother, Blair was inclined to suspect Alex's visitor.
"So, somebody who knew about us. From the Group maybe?"
Jim rubbed a hand across his face. "I'd almost say it was Brackett, it's his style of humour, but he was dead by this."
Blair adjusted his glasses, peered over Jim's shoulder. "You sure of that?" Jim stared at him, and Blair felt a little sick as he realised what he was saying. "I mean, I'd have to check it, but the files you gave me, I'm pretty sure I saw references to Brackett, well if LB is a reference to him, and the context does fit, around these dates..." He faltered.
"Show me." Blair had to think about which files they were, it had been a grab-bag of saved messages and notes. Jim standing over his shoulder like the wrath of god didn't help his concentration.
"Here." Jim leaned down, inspected message dates and footers.
"That motherfucker." Jim picked up the phone and stabbed one button - redial, Blair presumed.
"Get me Michael." A brief pause, while Jim stood as still as a snowfield just before the avalanche.
"You told me he was dead. Brackett!" A pause while Michael presumably explained himself. "God damn it!" Jim exploded. "You told me - you and Andy do your hoodoo. If it is that bastard - look, try checking out a Dr James Blair - yeah, some fucker has sense of humour."
Jim sat down, the phone clutched so hard in his grip that Blair wondered that it didn't break.
"Fuck." It was an intense, passionate exclamation and clearly did nothing to make Jim feel better.
"So what did Michael say?"
"He reckons he saw Brackett go down. And we certainly didn't see him around after his supposed death." Jim got up, and looked again at the files. "Rasmussen knew. But by the looks of it, not Tillotson. And those two were usually joined at the hip."
Blair took another look at the files in question. He had conscientiously gone through everything but had paid far more attention to the information that clearly related to Jim. Tests, debriefings, summaries of physical examination - all of it had been a source of grieved fascination and slow-burning anger. Now he looked at the screen with new attention. "By all means, follow up on your lady friend." That was Rasmussen to Brackett. "Alex?"
Jim sighed. "Maybe. Brackett certainly seemed to have a jones for the sentinel thing."
"If Brackett was Dr Blair, and if he has this thing for sentinels, then could he be the coyote?" A coyote with a twisted jaw - yes, Blair could imagine that representing the rogue agent.
Jim's face was set with a dreadful determination. "Maybe. Too many maybes, but we have to start somewhere. There has to be some record of `Dr.' Blair and his credentials, maybe even an address." A search of the records revealed a brief resume of Dr. Blair's work and a hotel telephone number - nothing that was of any use. Blair banged a fist on his thigh in frustration.
"If he was taking her out, there must be more, but it's probably on paper file. Shit."
Jim bowed his head, before lifting it to declare, "Alex is in the dream, she's in Oregon, we go to Oregon. What sort of flights are there?"
They pored together over the laptop screen, and Blair sighed in relief that not only were there flights, there were direct flights. Now all they had to do was hope that their last minute booking wouldn't get bumped.
There was a last email, this one signed with the initial M.
"James Blair's ID and career is fake - not set up by Andy, but it looks like some of his work was the springboard. Andy says that there's a Group house in rural Oregon - right out in the boonies - check the attached PDF. It feels right. Good luck."
Blair could feel his eyes getting a little round. "Feels right. Is that Michael-speak for one of his hunches?"
"Yeah." Jim's voice was non-committal.
"But this is good, Jim, we're on the right track." That was if any situation that involved Lee Brackett and Alex Barnes together could be said to be a right track. Talk about putting all the bogey-men in the same place, Blair thought, but found that he couldn't raise any amusement.
Jim's face was hard, but the tell-tale jaw twitch had a life of its own. He reached for Blair's hand.
"Blair." His real name had become a love-name, seldom used and that only in private. "I want you with me, but there's not going to be any due process here, no shooting only in self-defense. Can you handle that?"
Blair decided that he would just have to handle it. He was almost startled at how relaxed he was at the idea, but then he'd never told Jim about the number of times he'd imagined Brackett's face in front of him during their regular visits to the local gun range. There was no way that he would let Jim go off on his own, not to face Alex Barnes and Lee Brackett.
"Let's go and get your son, Jim."
Blair always had talked. He talked when he was happy; he talked when he was worried or nervous. Occasionally life overwhelmed him into silence, but not too often. He could talk to other people, he could talk to himself, he could address the cosmos. Right now, he suspected that he was being as annoying as hell, but the tension in him was wound so tight that he couldn't shut up.
"Think about it, man, in what is exceedingly arguably an advanced, civilised society what do our highly professional airlines provide? Careful instructions for the safe passage of firearms. Now, does that strike you as weird or does it not?"
Jim worried him. He was turning inward, the way that he did under stress, sometimes. Maybe it wouldn't bother Blair so much if Alex's shadow wasn't looming over them right now. Maybe Alex's shadow wasn't looming over Jim but Blair certainly felt the chill of blocked light. Jim would respond to Blair, the way he was answering him right now, but Blair still felt that Jim wasn't really with him. It was unpleasantly reminiscent of one of life's shittier episodes.
"It strikes me as convenient, Chief. Like direct flights to Oregon."
Blair raised his eyes to the Sky Harbour ceiling. Presenting his gun license, demonstrating that his gun was indeed unloaded in its safety box inside his suitcase - his mother hadn't brought him up to be some gun-toting cowboy. Naturally, normal people took guns to the hotbed of danger that was Portland, Oregon. Of course they did.
"And what is it with antlers?" he hissed, knowing that Jim would hear him. That was the first entry in the special items page on the website - the safe transport of antlers. Maybe that was a good sign, evidence that all those guns that were being safely transported were only being used to kill animals for pointless sport. They certainly weren't being used to kill people. No way, nuh uh. In which case Blair and Jim should have been carrying rifle cases rather than pistol cases.
Jim shrugged. Blair stood up.
"I'll just go round the shops again."
Jim looked up, and it seemed to Blair, saw him for the first time since they'd entered the airport.
"No, no, stay here, Chief. Things - the noise - it's getting to me a little."
"I'm not getting on your nerves?"
"Sit. Breathe."
`Heel!' Blair thought, but he sat down anyway, relieved and a little embarrassed. Jim put his left hand on Blair's right shoulder, his fingers kneading soothingly. They sat like that, almost at peace in the mutual comfort, until a well-modulated voice announced over the PA system that their flight was delayed. Jim's reaction was immediate.
"Fuck!" He stood up, Blair hurriedly following his example. "God damn it!" Jim exploded.
"Hey, come on, Jim, calm down."
"Don't you tell me to calm down!" Jim's voice wasn't any less vehement for dropping in volume. He looked around the airport with an expression like a hunted animal. Then he looked at Blair, the fear in his face uncamouflaged by stoic indifference, or even anger. "He has Robbie. And -god..." Jim sat down again. Blair rejoined him, leaned his head close to hear the muttered words. "I was in her head at the end. She was going down in flames. How sane do you think she is? Brackett's a bastard but at least he's not crazy."
"It'll be okay," Blair said quietly. "Even with the delays this is as quick as anything. It'll be okay." He held Jim's hand, not really caring if anyone observed them or not.
Robbie looked at the locked door. He really, really wanted to go home, but old slimeball wasn't letting him go anywhere. He looked at the plate of canned ravioli he'd been offered and swallowed back nausea. He was hungry, and he had told old slimeball that he liked the stuff but he just couldn't face it. The food smelled off, like it had been sitting too long in an opened can. He knew it hadn't, he'd heard the man opening it and heating it before he brought it in.
He bowed his head and blinked hard. He had to be brave, and wait for his chance. That was what you did - either the hero figured out how to escape on his own, or he bravely endured until he got rescued. The cops came busting in, or the PI, or else the cavalry came over the hill. So all he had to do was wait, and try to be clever. He could do that. He just wished that everything didn't irritate him. The sheets were too rough, and the sound of a stream outside distracted him. He wanted his own bed. He wanted to be home. He wanted his mom. He turned restlessly, and wondered if a storm was coming. There was something in the air, a weight, a feeling that something was bearing down on the house. He shivered. He hated storms. And he really, really wanted his mother.
He lay down on the bed, and fell into a fitful doze filled with animal noises, the yips and howls of dogs, the snarls of hunting cats.
Alex could be patient, although she didn't like it. But Lee had promised her. He'd come to visit her, and he'd spoken quietly to her, and some of the pain and confusion had lifted with his visits. He had left tapes behind him and sometimes mailed them to her. She listened to them all the time, both the messages that the staff could hear, and the messages on the ends of the tapes that only she could hear. She was getting better, so much better. Lee was so good to her, and what he told her worked, unlike Blair's efforts to help her. Her mind skittered away from Blair. Blair was dead, she'd held him face down in that pompous fountain, but she'd seen him on the beach, in the temple with Jim, when Jim had tried to help her, but he hadn't really helped her, he hadn't listened to her and her mind and body had fallen into the fire and Lee was the one who had helped her back...
"You okay there, honey?" It was Smitty's rough voice, Smitty of the nightly medicines, and the gentle eyes and a restrained smell of sex whenever she got up close to Alex. Alex shivered. That was something that Lee often reminded her of. `Make them think that you're worse than you are.' That made sense. She'd already overheard talk of reassessment and Conover. Lee was going to get her out, soon, surely soon, and it would be easier to get her out of Forrester Hill facility than Conover. But she played up to Smitty, made her think that she was something special, that she could get a response out of Alex that nobody else could.
"Bad dreams," she whispered, and looked up at Smitty, wide-eyed as a child. Smitty looked down at her in protective compassion, the wanting banked behind her eyes, because Smitty was a good person and she wouldn't take advantage of a helpless patient. Smitty was good and Alex would do her very best to leave her alive whenever the time came.
"Now don't you worry, honey, there'll be no bad dreams if you take your medicine." But the medicine didn't stop the dreams. It didn't do anything. Lee told her that, said it was because she was a sentinel, and then he'd laughed. She didn't know why he'd laughed and she'd asked him. He'd told her that Jim had told him and man, was Jim pissed about it. She didn't know why Lee was talking to Jim, but he clearly thought it was funny, and she supposed that it must be. And the dreams were good, her and Lee, resting side by side in the oily water of the stone troughs in the temple, seeking visions together.
Karma; that was what Blair knew about. Maybe it was karma that she said `bad dreams' to Smitty, and then had the worst of dreams. Lee wanted his little baby sentinel. He wouldn't want Alex any more. She couldn't stand the thought. Lee was hers, he was always going to be hers, and nothing and nobody would take him away from her. She would stop it. She would get away and she would stop it.
She was Smitty's pet and Smitty would help her. Smitty had better help her, if she knew what was good for her.
Jim was pushing the speed limit and Blair's limits. Jim had always been a skilled if sometimes reckless driver, but he didn't have a badge or police siren to explain away the risks he was taking. Given Jim's pathological care to slide under the radar up until now, this hell for leather drive along Oregon's highways was a standout. They weren't about to get pulled over, because Blair was fairly sure that Jim wouldn't stop for anything other than Armageddon, and maybe not even that. Not even, Blair saw in horror, to correct a slow but sure slide into the opposite lane. He shouted Jim's name, and punched at his shoulder. Jim's face was blank, while Blair stared at the traffic that was coming at them in speedy slow motion, and then Jim returned to himself and with a curse hauled the steering wheel that little more to the left and brought the car to a rattling jerky stop on the shoulder of the oncoming lane. A car zoomed past, with a Doppler effect of angry horn noise. Blair had both hands gripped around Jim's right arm, and he hid his face in Jim's shoulder as tremors ran through him, the same way they did with Jim. Blair lifted his head.
"Out. I'm driving."
"Yeah, okay."
Jim's simple agreement set off Blair's fury. "What the hell was that?"
Jim turned to look at Blair. "She's out. She's on her way."
Blair licked his lips. "Alex? You're connected with her?" Little flickers of fear and jealousy ran through him as well as shame for both of those emotions.
Jim loosened the death grip he had on the steering wheel. "No. It's Robbie. He can feel her coming, but he doesn't know what she is. And I can't reach him, it's just flashes the way it was that first time!" Jim's voice rose in frustrated fear. He undid the safety belt with enough energy that it clattered noisily back into its housing, and the two men swapped seats.
"Okay," Blair breathed, and crossed the lane to get them back to the right side of the road. "How about you navigate us, huh? Probably safer that way," he joked weakly. He was pushing the speed limit himself now, but if Jim said that Alex was loose then he believed it, and it changed everything. At least their near death experience confirmed without doubt that they were heading in the right direction. He risked a quick look at Jim who sat on the passenger side like some graven image, stiffly upright, his hands in fists on his lap, head raised as if scenting something.
"I won't forget this time, Blair. Not what she is, and not who you are. That's going to go down differently."
"Yeah, sure," Blair replied, wanting to believe it, hoping that a year of what he presumed was a full bond between sentinel and guide would be enough.
It had been a long time since she drove a car. It smelled terrible and everything in it felt wrong. She took all her tapes with her, all the tapes with Lee's soothing, lying voice telling her how to be the best sentinel she could. She had Smitty's key-card with her. Smitty could get the drugs after all, and people should always be careful with drugs. Lee's voice helped, but it was hard to concentrate sometimes. The lights were so bright, and the world was so noisy outside of Forrester Hill. But she knew where to go. Hadn't she known where the temple was? And Lee was at least as important as the temple. She wanted to kiss Lee, the way she'd kissed Smitty, but Lee could kiss her back, because Lee was alive and Lee would look after her, and there would be no other sentinels.
It was hard, but she was careful because the cops mustn't find her before she found Lee. The car fish-tailed a little when she turned onto the dirt road, and she remembered to slow down. She remembered to stop before she got up too close to the house. She wanted everything to be a surprise for Lee. He thought he had a surprise for her too. She readied the syringe. She listened a lot in Forrester Hill when they thought that she was lost in zones and catatonia, and listening in a place like that was a useful education. She remembered drug names and doses, and how many steps it took to get to the rooms where they were stored and the tones of the keypad to get into the rooms. She read charts and bottle labels and books across rooms whenever she had the chance. Lee would be proud of the way that she learned things.
There were all her old skills too, like moving quietly and getting into places without being noticed. She wished she wasn't so tired or so thin, but she was determined, and the look on Lee's face when he saw her was so funny.
"Hello, darling. I missed you," she purred, as she held the syringe carefully against her side.
He stood up. "What the hell are you doing here, Alex? Jesus, what harebrained thing have you done now?" He reached out for her and she stabbed the syringe deep into his thigh, the way the doctors did to her sometimes when she got upset. He swore and hit her hard in the jaw. She fell back, felt the sickening jolt as her skull banged against the floor, but she lifted her head enough to watch him drag the needle out of his leg with another curse. He moved towards her and she watched concern flash across his face as the potent mix of muscle relaxants and sedatives introduced itself to his body.
"You idiot bitch! What the hell have you done?" She forgave him. When guides started messing around with other sentinels they got stupid. Look at Blair. If he'd stuck with Jim she wouldn't have had to have hurt him. But she wouldn't hurt Lee. Once the other sentinel was out of the picture, everything would be all right. She scrabbled back across the floor to evade his increasingly clumsy reach and got up. Where was he? Where was the little bastard? Fee, fi, fo fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman. She giggled. That room. The one that was locked.
"Where's the key, darling?"
He looked at her at through glazed eyes, but then he saw sense. "Just a minute," he slurred, and stumbled across the room to open the door. She appreciated that, it was a nice gesture on his part. He opened the door, and she saw him, the other sentinel, the interloper. But not for much longer. And then weight landed on her with a stomach-turning thud, and Lee was shouting, his voice hardly recognisable and he hurt her ears, he was so loud.
"Run! Run!" And the other sentinel scrambled over their bodies and she reached out to grab his ankle, but she wasn't as strong as she used to be and with a startled cry the other one dragged himself free and with a slam of the door that again hurt her ears he was gone.
She dragged herself out from under Lee. He couldn't stop her, although he tried.
"No, Alex." His tongue stumbled over sounds until he forced out, "He's valuable." `Valabilll' - that was how he sounded. She smoothed gentle hands over his head. "It's all right, baby. Everything will be all right."
She left him huddled on the floor and ran out to the porch. This was better than the hospital or the car. It smelled sweet with plant life and the wet scent of water lapping on dirt and rock. The breeze beautifully carried the smell of frightened runaway to her. She could hear panicked breathing, the crunch and slither of lakeside stones, the dull resonant thud of footsteps on muddy ground. She turned her head swiftly the other way. She could hear a car coming. There were no other houses on this road. They were coming here, and she stood, pinned between the need to escape, to get Lee and herself to safety, and the need to deal with the threat of the other sentinel. She took off along the lakeside, after the threat she understood.
He didn't need to check the map anymore. He just let Blair drive, and impatiently checked off the miles, noted the way that he knew that he was nearly there, nearly wherever his enemies were holding his son. His hands clenched and unclenched in his lap, and all he could feel was the sense of threat, just the way it was that time that Alex came to Cascade. He looked at Blair. Blair's face frowned in concentration as he negotiated the unfamiliar road at speed, Jim's urgency communicating itself, perhaps. But then, who knew better than Blair what Alex Barnes was capable of? He knew that Blair was still a little scared that the connection Jim and Alex had known in Sierra Verde might kick in. It had worried Jim earlier, but not now. He was sure of his territory; sure that Alex was invading it with Brackett's connivance. He wanted his son back. Brackett and Alex threatened Robbie - they could pay the price. It was simple. He put a hand briefly on Blair's thigh. They could pay the same price if they threatened Blair.
"It's this turn-off."
"Right." And then, as the car slewed as the tarmac turned to dirt, "Shit!" Blair straightened the car and, recovering his nerve, sped up again. "Sorry."
Jim's voice was clipped. "It's okay. Keep going."
He opened up his senses, looked through the fast fading dusk, listened over the noise of the car. There was a house about a half a mile at the bottom of the road, a small lake, another car. Blair braked hard and Jim was out of the car even before it had fully come to a stop. He could smell his son and the scent of violence in the house and he was through the door without a thought. Brackett lay on the floor, his scent rank with some drug, his reflexes slow. He smiled at Jim as if he was the funniest thing Brackett had seen in a long time, even as Jim gathered up the front of Brackett's shirt in his fists.
"Where is he?"
Brackett's eyes were the old trickster's eyes, but his glib tongue was constrained by whatever drugs ran through him. "Outside. Alex..."
But Jim didn't wait any longer. Blair stood there when he turned back to the door.
"Watch him." Then he was running down the porch-steps. It was the work of a moment to orient himself, to know where Alex and Robbie had gone, and he ran in their wake, careless of the uneven ground, his heart thumping in terror and fury, his mind working over his options, which ones would work if he was in time, which ones would work if he wasn't. It took perhaps a long minute of hard effort before he saw two struggling figures ahead of him, the tall thin woman dragging the child towards the water, her hand gripped around his wrist.
"Alex!" he roared, gun at the ready. He didn't want to drop her where she stood, not with Robbie so close, but he would do it if he had to. She looked at him, her face confused. It was easy enough to see her. The sleek, tempting predator was gone. Instead of the rounded muscles he remembered, her body was stringily thin; the smooth golden hair had gone to bedraggled mouse-brown. Her face was bony and there were lines of stress and pain on it. Maybe he could have found some pity for her if she wasn't planning to drown yet another person dear to him.
"Let him go, Alex."
She couldn't seem to find words, just stared at him, her chest heaving. Robbie took the moment to bite hard at her hand. She shrieked and yanked at Robbie's arm unmercifully, but didn't let go.
"Let him go!" Jim yelled.
"You don't understand. If he's not here then Lee will need me. Two sentinels, two guides, Lee for me, Blair for you. You brought Blair back, you don't want another sentinel making a mess of everything."
"He won't make a mess, Alex." Jim tried to keep his voice steady, as steady as the aim of his gun. "I'll take him away. He won't come between you and Lee, I promise. Just let him go."
She shook her head, and turned purposefully for the water. Jim found that he couldn't shoot her, not in front of his son. Instead he ran at her and tackled her, and they all three went down in a tangle of limbs. Alex let go of Robbie's wrist. It wasn't hard to contain her. She was crazy, but not strong, and he guessed that she'd already used up most of her reserves. Alex lay under him, barely struggling but crying out wildly. Robbie's quiet plea cut straight through her noise.
"Dad?"
Jim turned his head, saw Robbie crouched a few feet away.
"It's okay, Robbie. Go back to the house. I'll be there soon."
The boy sobbed.
"It's getting dark."
Alex lay still, but Jim didn't dare get off her. He sat astride her, moving his legs to pin her scrawny arms. There were no risks to be taken with a woman mad enough to think that murdering an eight year old boy was the answer to her problems.
"It's okay. You can see just fine, I know you can. Blair's there, you remember Blair, he'll look after you. Go on back, buddy." It was hard to keep a calm, cajoling tone with Alex's wails filling the air, but he did his best.
"I'm scared."
So was Jim.
"Damn it, do as I say and go back to the house!"
Robbie wiped under his nose with the back of his hand, but he got up and started walking. Jim looked down at the contorted face of the crazy woman underneath him. Alex had dissolved into tears of her own.
"He can't go back to the house," Alex sobbed. "Lee's there. You promised, you promised."
He had dropped his gun in the struggle, and he scrabbled for it with one hand. "Yes, I promised. You and Lee, I promised." He could reach the gun, but before he did so, he stroked her face, tried to calm her and offer some sort of comfort. Then he took the gun in his hand, as she looked at him with awed comprehension. "You promised," she whispered.
"You and Lee together. Shut your eyes, Alex. Shut your eyes." She sniffed, her breath hitching, but she obeyed him, and as gently as he could, he rested the gun at her temple, and he dialled down his hearing, chose to look somewhere inward as he steadily pulled the trigger. He wiped as much of the gun as he could on his shirt and then wrapped her hand around it. It was one plan, but then he saw the marks of Robbie's teeth on her wrist. Any forensic pathologist worth the name could identify that the marks were made by a child. It would be inevitable that Robbie would be traced to this place, associated with Brackett and Alex. He left her lying on the damp ground as he rinsed his hands in the lake-water. It was no good. He could smell her all over him, smell the scent of death a few feet behind him. He shivered, imagining Robbie lying in the water, an image which shifted to the memory of Blair lying face-down in the fountain outside Hargrove. The smell of the lake suddenly translated to the dull taste of Blair's unresponsive mouth. He shook his head. It could have been worse, he told himself. Alex could have simply decided to break Robbie's neck. She'd done it before. He looked out at the still water, and wondered how deep it was.
Jim turned back towards the house. Robbie was perhaps a hundred yards ahead, no more. Jim was pierced through with the memory of the woods by the park, all those years ago. From how far away had he seen Foster? As if to confirm Jim's suspicions, the child stopped and looked back at him. It was nearly full dark, but Jim could see Robbie clearly, and he knew the child could see him, would have heard, if he chose, the sound of the gun firing, despite the silencer. "I'm coming," he said and raised his hand in a vague salute. The little boy waited as Jim caught up to him.
"Hey. You okay?" And for the first time, Jim put flesh and blood hands on his son's shoulders. "I - god, are you okay?" He knelt down and pulled Robbie into a crushing hug, as the child started sobbing again and nearly strangled Jim with the grip around his neck. "It's okay, it's okay," Jim crooned, with no idea which of them he was trying to comfort. He tried to get a hold of the chaos inside him. This wasn't the end of the dark things to be faced this night.
"You'll be tired, huh, sport? How about I give you a piggy-back ride?" Robbie sniffed, and nodded, and climbed onto Jim's back. Jim stood up, settled Robbie's weight and warmth and started the short walk back to the house.
"I should've run up the road," the little boy said sadly. "That wasn't smart." His voice was low, and his breath tickled in Jim's ear. Despite their relative sizes, Jim felt oddly enveloped by the small body clinging to his back.
"Hard to say," Jim replied. "She could have chased you in the car. But you must have run pretty hard." Any topic of conversation, rather than debrief an eight year old on how he could have escaped a psychotic.
"I have to be fit for soccer." Jim suppressed a completely ludicrous sense of disappointment. It didn't matter that Robbie played soccer instead of football, so long as he was alive and safe. Alive and safe - that was what mattered.
Jim looked at the cabin up ahead. Killing Alex had been a disgusting necessity like putting down a rabid animal. Thinking about Brackett helpless roused a fiercely heated pleasure that was only a little restrained by the presences of Robbie and Blair. There wasn't even the chance of safety for any of them so long as Brackett was alive. Time for a reckoning. He trudged on, reaching out to listen ahead. What he heard made his anger surge.
"Dad?"
"Nothing, sport. Here, hop down." Robbie did so, but still clung to his side
The door opened to Blair's pale, relieved face. There wasn't much that could engage his interest more than Blair, but the sight of Brackett, leaning against the wall and clearly disoriented, was almost worth a zone-out. Brackett turned to his hands and knees, trying to push himself up. Jim watched this as if Brackett was some writhing upside- down beetle, as he off-handedly instructed Blair to take Robbie away.
Blair looked at the struggling man with loathing. "Jim, you might need help." Jim understood what Blair was offering, but it wasn't necessary. This was a pleasure he wanted all to himself.
Jim smiled at Blair, and then looked down at his son, ruffling the boy's hair. "That's two of you showing your teeth tonight, little jaguar." He looked back at Blair. "I'll be okay, Chief. Just take him somewhere safe for me."
Blair and Robbie gone with the sound of the car heading up the road, Jim crouched down by Brackett, felt a smile of entirely another variety blossom on his face.
"Dr Blair, I presume."
Brackett bared his teeth.
"Who knows about Robbie? Anybody else coming to this exclusive party?"
Brackett's face was chagrined. "Nobody. Didn't expect Grand Sentinel Station either." Jim tried to measure the truth of that, given that Brackett lied as a hobby. But there was a defeat in Brackett's face that satisfied Jim in more ways than one.
"Alex did a number on you, didn't she? You might die, even if I don't touch you. Your heart isn't sounding too good there, Lee."
"Screw you, Jim." Brackett's breathing didn't sound too good either.
"Wouldn't be the first time. It wasn't enough to fuck up my life, you had to do the same to my son as well?"
"You didn't want my help. Wanted to try guiding the next gen'ration ." The glowing embers of Jim's anger flared into blue flame.
"You're no guide." He spat it out.
"Analytical, quick, easy liar, laying on the charm." Brackett's breathing was rough. "Obsessed with sentinels. Remind you of anyone?"
"He is nothing like you."
"True. Never fucked me three ways from Sunday. `s he good, Jim?"
"I was never going to work willingly with you, be anything for you. Just so long as we understand each other here."
Brackett's hard battle with the drugs was ending. He was silent now, clearly sliding towards unconsciousness. If Jim left him, he might wake up again. He might not. Not that he was going to have the opportunity to work the drugs out of his system. Jim reached to grip Brackett's face, aware of the parody of affection. He had gripped Blair's face almost like this, not so very long ago. He twisted viciously, laid a dead man on the floor, then stood up. "Just so we understand each other."
Blair had entered the house with his gun drawn, even though he felt like a fool, never mind the hollowness that fear made in his chest. Jim had barely spoken a few words to Brackett before he dashed out of the house with the curt instruction to Blair, "Watch him." So Robbie was out there in the deepening grey dusk, with Alex. All the memories of Jim's irrationality when faced with another sentinel on his territory came back to him. The thought of Alex under that influence and anywhere near Robbie moved him to sick panic. He wondered if he should leave Brackett and go in search of the others, and then realized that it was pointless. He could do nothing that Jim wouldn't do, and he recognized resentfully that there was a part of him that didn't want to test the psychological stress of facing down his murderer. And even a man who looked as out of it as Brackett could still have a trick or two in reserve. Or so Blair told himself. He'd pointed a gun at people before, but there'd been few occasions where he was quite so afraid that he might be forced to fire it rather than merely use it to threaten.
Brackett lay pretty much as he had landed once Jim let go of his shirt, but then he struggled to sit upright, while Blair watched him warily.
"Mr. Sandburg." Brackett's tongue stumbled over the words. "Enjoying your jaguar ride?"
"You've read my dissertation. What a surprise."
"Ver' interesting stuff."
"Bastard."
Brackett just looked at him, clearly aware, but slow. "Help me get `way."
Blair laughed. "Are you kidding? Jim would kill me."
"Kill me." Not, Blair realised, a command, but a statement of fact. Jim would kill Alex, and then he'd come back and kill Brackett. "You're not a killer." Blair looked at Brackett, this rogue who'd maybe used Jim as a price of re-entry into agency favour, who would have tried to use Robbie.
"I wish I was." It was the truth. He couldn't use the gun in cold blood against a drugged and helpless man, even this one, and part of him regretted that.
Brackett roused a little, anger and fear pushing through the veil of drugs. "You'll cheer him on? Thought you were the liberal faggot."
Blair ignored the jibe. "Why is Alex here? Is she armed?"
Brackett smirked tiredly. "Scared? She came after her guide. Said your book was interesting." He leaned his head against the wall, and shut his eyes. Blair looked at him in horror. He was startled out of his introspection as Brackett struggled upright.
"What do you think you're doing?"
"Alex is no contest. Not waiting for Jimmy to come back and kill me." He eyed the gun that Blair held. "Gonna shoot me, liberal boy?"
"I don't have to," Blair declared in disgust and relief. "One good push and you'll be back on the floor."
Brackett's gaze traveled the room, looking oddly disconnected from what he must be seeing. "So, no honour among guides."
"You are not a guide, anymore than Alex is a sentinel," Blair said heatedly.
"Keep telling yourself that," Brackett jeered. He leaned against the wall, before slowly sliding down it once more. "What the fuck was in that shit?"
Blair watched him, honouring the post that Jim had given him, but so on edge he felt as if he could scream or throw up - although neither would really purge him. If Jim was alive (and he had to be alive and Robbie had to be okay) then these were Brackett's last minutes. No due process. Jim had warned him. He nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard the scrape of footsteps on the porch.
"Chief. Open the door, it's okay."
"Yeah, okay," Blair called out, and moved to open the door while still watching Brackett. Robbie stood huddled against his father's side, and Blair felt one weight among the many lift from him. Jim barely looked at him. The hand that didn't rest on his son's shoulder held his gun and his gaze was pinned on Brackett with painful intensity.
"Take Robbie to the car, Chief. I want you to drive back the way we came and book into the first motel you find that isn't a complete dive. Don't let anyone see Robbie. I'll track you back later."
"Jim." He paused, and looked back at Brackett, who was trying to get to his feet. "You might need help."
Jim smiled at him, and then looked down at his son, ruffling the boy's hair. "That's two of you showing your teeth tonight, little jaguar." He looked back at Blair. "I'll be okay, Chief. Just take him somewhere safe for me."
"Okay." Blair turned his back on Brackett and took Robbie's hand. Jim shut the door behind them as they walked down the steps of the porch.
"Back seat, buddy," Blair said. Robbie obeyed without a word, and Blair drove the car away as fast as he dared on the rough road. Children, he knew, were curious, and he wanted the child well out of even sentinel earshot. When the dirt road turned to asphalt once more, he stopped the car, popped the trunk and got out a blanket, a water bottle, a package of crackers and cheese-spread, and an apple. "Here," he said. "If you get hungry or anything."
"Thank you." Blair spread the blanket over Robbie. It was a mild night, but he would be in shock. Blair felt a little cold himself. He drove on to a small town some ten miles down the road, and spotted a small motel. Tension tightened in him. It was late at night and if the cops made their way here, late night travellers would be the first thing they asked about. He scraped his hair back into a tidier tail and popped the end under his jacket collar, thought that maybe he should get it cut if he and Jim were going to keep up the covert stuff. The manager was grumpy at Blair's late-night registration but handed over the key. Blair found himself desperately wishing for sentinel senses as he quickly ushered Robbie into the unit. There was nobody else around, no chinks of light or shade to show drapes pulled back, but his heart still pounded as he settled the child into one of the beds. Robbie huddled under the covers, looking impossibly little. Blair knelt down and cupped the small head in his hand.
"You okay?" A silent, solemn nod was his only answer. "You try and get some rest. Your dad will be here real soon." Another nod, and then Robbie shut his eyes. Blair felt as if he was on the edge of a dose of the shivers and dragged the spread off the other bed and draped it over himself, careful not to get tangled in it. He sat up against the headboard and watched the door as if he could will Jim into walking through it, his hearing alert for any evidence of someone nearby - the scuff of feet on the path outside, the slam of a car door. He huddled into himself, preyed on by his concern for Jim and Robbie, and by his distress at the whole shitty situation. He wanted to be with Jim right now, regardless of whatever it was that Jim was doing. He had a vivid picture in his head of Alex's blank, sightless eyes staring up at a dark sky, and however repulsive the idea of that was, he wished that Jim didn't have to be on his own. Despite that, he was uncomfortably grateful that the cast-iron excuse of Robbie's care meant that he wasn't there.
He waited nearly three hours, getting up and quietly pacing the small space whenever he thought he might fall asleep, occupying his mind with the implications of Brackett's claims. His heart jolted into a race at the sound of a quiet knock on the door.
"Blair. It's Jim."
He opened the door, as sure as it was possible to be that it must be safe. Jim would die before he knowingly led anyone back to Robbie, of that Blair was certain. Jim entered, pale and somehow slumped, despite his usual straight posture. Blair reached out to grasp his shoulders. Jim stood still, but unresponsive. There was a bruise on his face. Blair realised that he was covered in sweat, his clothes clammy beneath his jacket. "Are you okay?" Blair kept his voice low, mindful of the child lying in bed.
Jim's voice was equally quiet, somewhat breathless. "I'm fine. I'm just a little cold. I had to go in the lake. Tropical it wasn't." Jim dumped a small duffle bag on a chair.
"Clothes for Robbie. I'll say this much for Brackett. He could organise." Blair pushed Jim's use of the past tense away from his thoughts, and watched as Jim knelt by the bed to look into his son's face. A hand was lightly dropped onto the child's blanket covered shoulder before Jim stood once more.
"You are okay?" Blair felt a little tongue-tied. If they'd been alone he would have spoken without inhibition, but he was acutely aware that a sentinel child was sharing the room with them. He could guess approximately how Jim had spent the last few hours, but again, how could he ask Jim to talk in detail about - his thoughts stumbled, and viciously he told himself to use the word - murder, and the disposal of bodies, with Robbie nearby.
"I'll be fine. But I'm thirsty. We have anything in here or is it still in the car?" Wordlessly, Blair offered a bottle of water. Jim took it, and took several deep swallows and then dropped the bottle and took Blair's wrist instead, and pulled him close. He bent his head and kissed Blair, not exactly passionately, but with an unabashedly open mouth. Blair stiffened a little and he drew back and looked at Robbie.
Jim smiled tiredly. "He's asleep. And if the worst he'd seen today was me kissing you, I'd be a happy man." Blair's questions desperately wanted out, but given the number of things he'd seen and heard as a child when people thought he was asleep or too young to notice or care, he forced them down. Later.
"So, what now?"
"First I take a shower. Then, we take him back to his mom." Jim took a change of clothes out of his bag and then took Blair's hand and led him to the bathroom. "I know it's not really privacy," Jim sighed, "but I just need some time with you. Senses are going in and out like a motherfuck."
Blair snorted. "Always know when you're in a bad way. Your language reverts to Vice standards." Jim made no response to the teasing, simply leaned against the bathroom wall, head back, eyes shut. Blair turned the shower on and started methodically stripping Jim's clothes off, with Jim's passive assistance.
"I shouldn't be so cold, I've been running for miles."
"You said you'd gone in the lake?"
"Yeah, but I dumped her car off the road about ten miles back that way." A jerk of Jim's head indicated the route they'd come earlier in the day. "There's forest, hopefully when they find it they'll waste time looking for her there. If we're really lucky they won't find Brackett for a while, but I'm not holding my breath."
Blair gently guided Jim under the shower, dropped towels over the floor, and watched as Jim absently stood under the water, seeming hardly aware of where he was.
"The water feels okay - the temperature's all right?"
Jim nodded. "It's okay, when I can feel it. Touch is going in and out a bit."
Blair reached into the stall, uncaring that he was getting wet, put a hand on Jim's shoulder. "Steady the dials, Jim. Come on, you can do that."
Jim reached and pressed his hand on top of Blair's, as if he wanted to merge Blair's hand into his skin.
"I was thinking about what you said, Chief." Jim stopped then, and shut his eyes against the water coursing down his face. He didn't finish the thought.
"I say a lot of things, Jim, which thing that I said are we talking about here?" Blair took his hand away, Jim following the movement like a sunflower. "It's okay, man, I just think I should squeeze in there with you."
"No, it's okay, I'll get out." Jim's hands fumbled to the shower control.
"Which thing, Jim? That I said."
"That my Dad took on a heavy burden when he didn't back me up about Foster. That he made me an accomplice to murder. Just thinking like father, like son. Although at least my old man didn't actually do the deed."
"Well, you can stop thinking like that," Blair said angrily, and wrapped a couple of towels around Jim. "It's completely different."
Jim looked down at him with miserable eyes. "How? How is it different?"
"Jim, I know you think he's asleep, but I don't think this is the time or the place. Let's just get you some sleep, and we'll head off once you're rested."
"How is it different, Chief?" Blair patted Jim dry with shaky hands, dressed him as if he was a child.
"Because Alex and Brackett sure as hell weren't innocents, for starters. I'm glad that they're gone, because now they can't hurt you or Robbie or anybody else."
"Yeah, sure, and all Robbie has to do is keep quiet, just like his old man'll tell him."
"Stop it." Blair couldn't bear it, that Jim had run all those miles in the dark thinking about how he was failing Robbie.
"My feet hurt," Jim said after a pause.
"I'll rub them for you another time," Blair said, trying to joke about it. "Come on, just a little sleep."
They went back to the other room. Jim looked at Blair with an uncertain expression. "I think that maybe I should sleep with him," he tilted his head at Robbie's form in the bed. "Do you mind?"
Blair suppressed a little selfish disappointment. He would have liked to have comforted his own stress and fears by wrapping around Jim, but it made perfect sense that both Jim and Robbie would need each other's touch. He patted the small of Jim's back.
"Get some sleep."
"Not too much. We should get out early. It's not like we want anyone to notice Robbie."
"6 am start then. God, I'm going to get sick of snack food."
Jim carefully got into the bed, but as his weight pressed into the mattress, Robbie whimpered and turned in his sleep. Jim caught the child up, and muttered, "Hey, it's okay, it's okay." He carefully arranged the boy against him, and shut his eyes. Blair could almost see the military-born determination that Jim would sleep while he could, and he blessed it. Jim's breathing slowed, and Blair found that he was standing over them both, on guard again it seemed. He looked at their faces, separated by the years, but so alike as well; connected by shared genes, the sentinel gift, and the shared experiences of the last day.
He made an odd, self-conscious little patrol of the unit, picking up the towels in the bathroom, and then dozed on the other bed, waking periodically to check his watch. He woke a last time at about twenty past five, and leaned gently over the two sentinels sleeping in the other bed.
"Jim, hey, Jim. Time we got organised." Jim didn't move, but his eyes opened to look at Blair with perfect alertness.
"Did you sleep?" he asked.
"Some."
"I'll drive. You can catch up on your shut-eye in the car." Jim woke Robbie, who complained about the hour, but took a shower and dressed in clean clothes without any drama. He sat on the bed sipping at an unchilled juice box and watching Jim and Blair.
"Dad?"
"What, buddy?"
"Are you and Blair gay for each other?"
Jim looked more than a little startled at this example of the old quote about out of the mouths of babes.
"When I was your age I didn't know about that sort of stuff."
"All the kids at school say something's gay when they mean it's gross, and Mom told me off and said I shouldn't use gay that way."
Blair kept his head down and concentrated on packing his bag. He was filled with an uncomfortable mix of unholy glee, and genuine concern that Robbie might say something to hurt his father.
Robbie took a reflective sip of his juice and patiently looked at Jim.
"Ah, right, well, I - yeah, I guess we are, Blair and I are together. Is that okay?"
Blair found that he was holding his breath.
"I s'pose so. Mom wondered about it, I heard her talking to Granma once."
Jim eyes helplessly sought Blair's across the room. "I think I did tell you about this," Blair murmured.
"It's not polite to listen in to other people's conversations," Jim said repressively.
"But it wasn't my fault. I couldn't help it."
Ah, thought Blair, so that was the Jim Ellison expression of paternal disbelief. Robbie squirmed. "I hate not knowing stuff."
"There is that," said Jim. "But people deserve their privacy." And then to Blair, "Ready to go?"
"Pretty much."
"Put the bags in the car, and keep your eyes and ears open."
Blair did so. It was quiet and dim. None of the other units were lit. He closed the trunk as quietly as possible, and then took a minute simply to enjoy the pleasant early morning illusion that the day and the place were just for him. When he came back in, Robbie was sitting in Jim's lap, crying. Jim was talking quietly into his ear, and rubbing one hand soothingly over the child's back.
"Uh, you want me to go for a walk or something?"
"No, Chief, it's fine. Come on, sport, it's nearly time to get going. You can sleep in your own bed tonight. But let's do this first."
Jim reached for the hood of the sweatshirt Robbie was wearing, and pulled it up over his head.
"I'll just finish up checking outside."
Jim headed for the door, clasping one hand on Blair's shoulder as he did so. "He wanted to know if Brackett was the man who took me away."
Jim looked into Blair's face in a complicated search for comfort - Blair just wished that he had any to offer - and then Jim turned away and stepped outside. His head tilted in a way that Blair was well familiar with, and that always quietly thrilled him. Yes, he liked to see Jim using his senses, but more, he liked to see Jim assured and relaxed about using them. Jim gestured with his hand, clearly satisfied that the coast was clear, and Blair hustled Robbie into the back seat. Blair dozed for a while, and when he woke again properly, it was full daylight. Robbie had dropped off to sleep again. Blair adjusted him into a more comfortable position, and sat and watched the Oregon roads and Jim's face with equal attention. There seemed to be a lot of police cruisers on the road, but no roadblocks. They drove on undisturbed.
Once in Portland another motel room was rented. Blair went out with their cash reserves and bought a car for the long drive back to San Francisco. The rental car was returned to its rental centre with Jim following to pick up Blair. Blair was fast deciding that illegality was harder work than was usually acknowledged. "What's the chance of a coffee break, Jim?"
Jim's face was wry. "Yet more proof of the addictiveness of caffeine. It'll have to be somewhere quiet, Chief. It'll be early days on the investigation but child abductions tend to be big news, even in the next-door state."
"If he sits in the car with his head down it should be okay. We need gas anyway. Service station coffee it is, then. Yuck."
Service station coffee it was, plus more junk food, plus some kids' magazines for Robbie to read, plus gas. Plus a newspaper. Alex's escape was the main item on the front page. She'd killed one of the staff, stolen a car. They made no comment on the item, just shared a look. There was no indication as to what sort of progress the police were making, although there were plenty of warnings not to approach Alex. And then it was the long limbo on the road to drive back to San Francisco. Blair had always liked long journeys, the in-between, neither-here-nor-there feelings they engendered. But this journey ... It was his turn driving on the last late-night stage as they entered San Francisco. Jim and Robbie sat in the back seat.
"Robbie. We need to give you a story to tell the police. I ..." Jim's voice faltered. "I don't expect you to lie to your Mom. But you can't tell the cops that Blair and I brought you back. So this is what you tell them. You didn't see anything - a man took you but he kept you blindfolded. You found it hard to keep track of the time. You heard the sound of men fighting, shouting. You were scared. Then another man dumped you and your Mom found you. That's it, that's all you need to tell them."
Robbie nodded. "Okay."
"Robbie, it's important."
"S'okay, Dad, I won't tell on you."
Carolyn's house wasn't large, but without Robbie it felt like an echoing vault. Even when it had been full of her colleagues earlier in the day, she had felt that emptiness, in her house and in her own body. Fear was an infinite space inside her. She would have liked to have lain down on Robbie's bed, but technically his room was still a crime scene, picked over by detectives and her own forensic staff. It was purely luck she had discovered him gone before the morning. She had been thirsty before bed, her bladder awoke her about 2 am, and she had poked her head in the door to admire her sleeping son, only to discover him gone. His bed had still been warm then.
Her mother lay asleep on her own bed. Jessie had come over in response to Carolyn's panicked call, but of course her mother was - as her father had sourly expressed it once - the emotional one of the family. Trying not to let Jessie fall apart had at least stiffened Carolyn's spine. Additional stiffening had come in the form of William Ellison, contacted as a matter of courtesy. He had immediately packed himself onto the first available flight and knocked on her door by five that evening. He'd made no comment about any likely reason for her son's abduction, for which she was grateful. She tried to work out if it was more revolting that her sweet, serious Robbie should be taken away because of some obscene interest in sentinels, or a more mundanely obscene interest in little boys.
Bill Ellison could be stoically restrained on that subject, but it was clear that what he regarded as Jessie's vapours were wearing on his temper, and Carolyn had felt her nerves starting to shred until she had finally convinced her mother to take a sleeping pill and go to bed. Bill was currently taking a long time in the bathroom. Whether the trouble was an old man's prostate or an old man's need to gather his nerves in peace she didn't know.
When the knock on the door sounded she thought she would jump out of her skin. Surely if it was news from the investigation there would have been some sort of phone contact? Although of course the worst news was delivered in person. Reporters? If it was, then she was going to give them the interview of their lives. Trying to convince herself that she was braced, she turned on the porch light and looked through the spyhole. Blair Sandburg stood there. Hurriedly she opened the door to him.
He thrust a piece of paper at her. "Sorry, I didn't call you, but I didn't know how much you were being monitored by the cops. Look, just come to that address, and don't lose the paper, and don't let anyone follow you."
She stared at him in total bemusement and growing anger. "I can't just leave."
He turned a beseeching look on her. "Carolyn, it's important, I swear. As soon as you can, please." And then he zipped down her steps and drove away with no more than that. She shut the door behind him and looked at the piece of paper, which had what looked like a hotel address written on it, and most oddly, the words, "Don't talk to the cops". Bill came in.
"I thought I heard somebody else. Any news?"
"That was Blair Sandburg of all people. Wanting to me go here." She held out the piece of paper. Bill took it and glared at it.
"Blair? What was he doing here? Where is he these days anyway?"
"Woudn't have a clue, all I have is an email address."
Bill looked at her. "Are you going to do what he wants?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. Presumably it's to do with Robbie, some sentinel wrinkle or other, but why he can't just come in and talk about it like a normal human being..."
"Nothing that young man does would surprise me. Are you going?"
She looked at the crumpled piece of paper in indecision. Blair Sandburg always did annoy her. Partly it was simple jealousy. She had wondered how such an apparently flaky young man got under what she had found to be Jim's nearly impenetrable emotional defences. Partly it was what she had thought was the sentinel nonsense. Even knowing better about that issue, his abrupt departure from San Francisco last year hadn't encouraged her, especially when she suspected it had to do with his discovery about everyone's assumptions about his relationship with Jim. She didn't know if he was a man shocked by a new idea, or just a man found out.
The information and occasional support he had given her to help Robbie was solid enough, however. She couldn't see how anything he had to tell her could be good news, especially with that odd request on the paper - he had looked appallingly anxious on her porch - but it might be important, and right now she'd give a lot for even the illusion of useful activity.
"I may as well. What else do I have to do?"
"I'll come with you." She started to protest, but he cut her off. "I may be old, but I'm not senile, even if I'm not as much of an expert on sentinels as Blair Sandburg. This has to do with my grandson."
"Oh - all right. I'll just leave Mom a note."
With Bill somewhat creakily eased into the passenger seat, she took off, wondering what the hell she was doing. Her boy was gone, and she was away on what was probably some completely pointless academic jaunt, in company with an elderly man she respected but didn't particularly like.
The area where the hotel was located was dubious. She parked the car, and, looking around nervously, made sure she locked it. "It had better be here when we get back or I'm suing Blair," she muttered to herself. Bill also looked unimpressed by his surroundings.
She knocked on the right door, heard what might have been another man's voice saying Blair's name, before the door opened and she stepped briskly inside, already regretting her decision to come. Then all thought was gone as Robbie called out, "Mommy," and launched himself into her arms, wrapped his own narrow lanky limbs around her like he was a baby monkey. She made some astonished, broken noise and buried her face in his hair. She looked up to thank Blair for this miracle and realised that there was indeed another man with him. Not a stranger, this man, although he was changed from when she last saw him. "Oh, my god."
Blair and Jim were looking past her, at Bill standing in the doorway. Their silence was broken with Blair's reverently horrified, "Holy shit!" She turned to look behind her, and reflexively reached out one hand. Bill Ellison looked like he was about to collapse. Her hand wasn't needed as Blair brushed past her to put an arm around Bill and sit him awkwardly on the bed. She leaned against the wall, holding onto her son, as Jim's voice furiously cracked out, "Why didn't you tell me?" and Blair snapped back, his voice breaking on the last word, "I didn't know!"
"I was in the bathroom," Bill added, by way of irrelevant explanation. Then his own voice broke as he reached out a shaking hand, "Oh, my god, Jimmy, Jimmy." Jim looked as if he was walking through water, before he sat down and put tentative arms around his father. Bill promptly dissolved into croaking sobs. Blair straightened up and stepped back from the two men on the bed, looking completely flustered. Carolyn's joyful awareness of her son's sturdy little body didn't take any bite out of her voice when she said to Blair, "You have a lot of explaining to do."
"I already knew that," he said softly, raking a hand through his hair, "but it looks like it just increased exponentially. Fuck, Jim is going to kill me. You were bad enough."
"Thank you, I don't think." And then, "God, I'm being a bitch. I'm sorry, and thank you. Truly. But..."
Blair surveyed the gaggle of shocked, amazed people in the room. "Yeah, I know." He hooked a packet of tissues out of a pocket and knelt on the floor, one hand on Jim's knee, the other hand offering the tissues. "Uh, Bill, can I get you anything? You want a glass of water or...uh," his voice trailed off.
Bill straightened up, and grabbed the tissues, fumbled at the wrapping and emptied the whole pack as he tried to get a hold of one. He blew his nose with an undignified honk. Jim sat by, pale, his eyes traveling from his father, to Blair, to Carolyn. He gave her an uncertain smile, and she smiled back. "Welcome back, Jimmy," she said, warm with gratitude. She had remained fond of him once the stress of the divorce was over, grieved when she thought he was dead. He had brought their son back safely. She hoisted Robbie's weight a little higher. "Are you okay, baby?" she asked, and kissed the soft skin at his temple. Robbie smiled. "I'm okay." He showed no inclination to climb out of her hold, which was a good thing, but her back was beginning to ache. She gingerly sat down on the foot of the bed.
Blair stood. "Um, this isn't quite welcome back. I mean, we were just going to drop Robbie off and be on our way again."
"Don't be stupid," Bill barked hoarsely. "Jimmy, whatever's happened, you can't just go off into the night, son, you can't."
Carolyn couldn't see Jim's face, just the broad back covered by a dark jacket, the grey hair. "That's exactly what I'm going to do, Dad." Jim's own voice had gone a little rough.
"Jimmy," Bill paused, "Jim. We can deal with things. You can't let whoever was responsible for all this get away with it."
Jim stood up. "Nobody's getting away with anything." He looked at Carolyn. "The man who took Robbie - he won't bother you anymore. I tried to keep Robbie out of it, make it look like something else."
Carolyn cradled Robbie on her lap. "It was because he's a sentinel." Jim nodded. Carolyn looked at Robbie, content in her embrace as if he was two, rather than eight. "And what's to stop somebody else coming after him?"
Jim shrugged painfully. "Me, I guess. But Brackett, he was a special case. Obsessed. I dealt with it."
Carolyn's eyes were burning. She wished she could have this conversation out of earshot of Robbie (and how far would that be?). "How do I keep him safe, Jim?"
"I don't know, Caro. Keeping him out of the army might help." There was bitterness in Jim's voice.
"That's a little long-term, don't you think?"
Jim exchanged a look with Blair, who'd been hovering at Jim's elbow since he got up, and Carolyn acknowledged a flicker of jealousy. She and Jim were long over, but there was nobody else either. Blair gripped Jim's hand briefly.
"Carolyn, I don't know whether it's better for you to go public or not with Robbie. I don't know what the best thing is, but make him part of it. A friend told me that a sentinel is a sentinel as long as he chooses to be, and after this crap, I could hardly blame Robbie if he chose not, but let him choose, okay?"
"And what about you?"
"Just leave me out of it. We won't be bothering you."
Bill burst out with "No!" He stood up and put his hands on Jim's shoulders. "You should do something, Jimmy. I've still got contacts, we could..."
Jim cut his father off.
"Dad, I know you were a big wheel in Cascade, but think about this. I did - field work - I was out walking the streets, admittedly with a controller, but I went back like a good boy because they held you and Stephen over my head. Let's assume you find somebody willing to stir the shit, and let's assume that you don't end up," Jim looked at Robbie and Carolyn, "up close and personal with somebody `professional'. Let's assume that the government acknowledges what was at very best a systems failure." He spat out the words. "The powerful roll over and bleat `mea culpa'," Jim's face revealed his opinion of the likelihood of this, "and what happens then? It's a huge scandal, and my family is going to be at the centre of it. I don't think so." Jim bowed his head. "For god's sakes, Dad, how do you think I got out? You think that I smiled sweetly and said `pretty please'? You don't want to be involved with me."
Bill took his hands away. He looked as if he might cry again. "I note that Blair is getting the choice to be involved."
Jim laughed, a harsh, unpleasant sound. "I wish." He stepped back from his father and ran a hand across Blair's shoulders, before he turned to sit on the bed with Carolyn and Robbie. He embraced them both, rested his face in Robbie's hair. "Look after him for me. Go with public or quiet, whatever seems best. I'm sorry."
Carolyn wound one arm fiercely around his neck. "I'm sorry, too. Look after yourself." She could hardly get the words out, her throat was so tight.
"So. Robbie." Jim's hand brushed across Robbie's hair. "See you round, maybe. And be good for your Mom."
"Yeah, sure, Dad." Carolyn shivered a little. She wondered how much of Robbie's calm through all of this was shock.
Jim stood. "Dad. Don't try looking for me, or for Blair. I mean it. For Robbie's sake, if nothing else. Jim Ellison is dead and that's the best way for everybody. Come on, Chief." And they were gone.
Bill had sat back down on the bed again, his hands in his lap, his head bowed. He wasn't a man who showed much vulnerability, but now he looked frail and fragile. Carolyn pivoted her body towards him. "Are you all right?"
He straightened and said testily, "I'll be fine." He did a last clean-up with one of the tissues scattered across the bed. "It would seem that we need to get our stories straight."
Carolyn stroked Robbie's head. "Yes," she said regretfully, "I guess we do."
They'd made their way to a parking building.
"We'll just abandon the car. Andy deletes the spare IDs out of the databases once the paperwork's done. Should make it tricky to track us back."
So, thought Blair, that was that. Loose ends tidied up and back to Arizona. Depending on what Carolyn chose to do.
"Jim, I know that it's perfectly normal to experience guilt in the context of a parent/child relationship, but leave me out of the equation, all right?"
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"What you said to your dad. As if you thought I didn't have any choice about being with you." The way that Jim had sounded when he said it. It was just Jim in a stressful situation, but it still hurt. "We all get choices."
"Damn it..." Jim reached across to hold Blair's head, kissed him hard. He drew back, his hand still in place, his thumb rubbing against Blair's cheekbone. His eyes didn't meet Blair's. "I've figured out why people take to their families with axes and shotguns. It's not that that they hate them, they just want things not to be so damn complicated."
Blair chuckled wearily. "So, I guess I should hide the axes and shotguns, then?"
"Hell, yeah, you're definitely family by now." Jim kissed Blair again, gentler this time. "Come on." They headed for the elevator.
"If Carolyn decides to go more public with Robbie - what if people start digging into the background?"
Jim put on a show of nonchalance, but Blair knew how much his apparent neutrality about Carolyn's choices had cost him.
"Depends how big it gets. You might need a haircut, Chief. If it looks like it's getting too bad, we'll just have to use our passports. Canada, South America, there'll be somewhere."
"I could get something really short," Blair said teasingly. "And you could grow a beard." He made a show of assessing Jim's face. "It'd look pretty sexy, in a survivalist sort of way."
"Equal opportunity for beard burn if nothing else," Jim said. They got in the elevator, and Jim snagged an arm around Blair's waist, ignoring the unwieldiness of their bags. "Let's just get home."
Home. That place where Jim would probably have a few more problems than normal with zones and spikes, because Blair knew what he was like in the aftermath of a bad situation. The two of them would go to the gun club, and Blair would keep imagining Brackett's face in front of him as he fired, because that bastard could never die too many times. Jim would bitch about how much more the organic food cost than the ordinary supermarket produce, and Blair would grunt some vaguely soothing assent and buy it anyway. Home. Where Blair could get more than two kisses in a parked car.
"Sounds good," he said.
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