Once Upon A December by CarleeAK
Summary: Was it possible to fall in love with someone just by reading their FBI case files? Devon Wallace is about to find out as she tries to outsmart a kidnapper bent on revenge. *Graphic added to first chapter*
Rating: PG-13
Categories: Long Stories
Characters: JC Chasez
Genres: Drama, Romance, Mystery
Warnings: violence/death, sexual situations
Challenges: None
Series: None
Published: 08/14/05
Updated: 09/01/05
Index
Chapter 1: Prologue
Chapter 2: Pattern
Chapter 3: Foiled
Chapter 4: Fear
Chapter 5: Connection
Chapter 6: Dawn
Chapter 7: Normal
Chapter 8: Adrenaline
Chapter 9: Epilogue
Chapter 1: Prologue
Prologue
“Once upon a time, there was a dark and wicked sorcerer, who lived only to create evil in a world that he would never be a part of…”
The little girl blew her bangs out of her eyes as she lay propped against her pillows. “Grandma, can’t you tell me a normal fairy tale for once?”
“Normal?” her grandmother scoffed. “What’s normal, and what do you know about normal anyway?”
The girl sat up and looked down at her hands, playing with the top of her blanket. “Well, why can’t it be about a beautiful princess instead of something dark and evil? Why can’t the story end with ‘And they lived happily ever after.’”
“Because there are no such things as princesses and happily-ever-afters.”
“There could be,” the little girl protested in her small voice, not wanting to meet her grandmother’s eyes. She didn’t want reality, she wanted a happily-ever-after, fairy tale, bedtime story. Why couldn’t she have that?
“Well there aren’t, and you may as well face it now, instead of when you’re an idealistic young woman.”
The little girl heaved a great big sigh as she lay back down. That was her grandmother’s answer for everything: may as well face it now.
“Now, can I continue with the story?” her grandmother asked, slightly cross. The little girl nodded, as she stared at the ceiling, trying to imagine the story with a fairy princess instead of a wicked old sorcerer. It was kind of hard. She had heard this same story more times than she could count, though she couldn’t count very high. It was such an ingrained story, it was hard to imagine it being told differently than the way her grandmother always told it.
“Alright then. Now, this sorcerer worked in time with the blood moon so that he could have the greatest power when he decided to wreak vengeance upon the town that had scorned him…”
**********
(Twenty years later, October 21, 2002)
The Cougar watched as the group of boys danced their way across the stage, singing half to the crowds, half to the dozen or so video cameras circling them. From the Cougar’s position, he could see the wings of the stage, where a little boy sat on a stool with his nanny, waving to the five guys anytime one of them happened to look his way.
He looked like such a happy little boy…and who could blame him? the Cougar wondered bitterly. The child had everything that a two-year-old boy could desire. And for all intents and purposes, he had five doting uncles or parent figures. Bodyguards and babysitters to wait on his every need. The Cougar could foresee the day that the boy would become nothing but a wimp, a brat unable to fend for himself. Hmmm…it was just too bad that that day would never happen.
As he watched, the nanny lifted him off the stool. Apparently, it was the little boy’s bedtime. And it was time for the Cougar to go into action, to strike again. He had watched the sky, watched the moon as he had entered the arena, and he had known it was a sign. The sign. The one he had been waiting for. It was time to continue the game of cat and mouse. Time for these boys to suffer as he had. To go through the worry, the anxiety.
The Cougar smiled. He had enjoyed watching them go through that worry eight months ago; it wasn’t hard. They lived in such a public sphere that the media was only too happy to broadcast their grief on national news. The media had been so accommodating, making sure that the world over was able to see their grief-stricken faces as they begged for the monster to return the child. As they pleaded.
Such a pleasant sight.
The Cougar left the arena as silently and as unnoticeably as he had entered. He knew where he was going; he knew where THEY were going, and it was all he needed. He took one of the city buses to their hotel, smiling out the window. Oh yes. It was time for the Cougar to attack, to play with them just a little more. The signs were with him.
Chapter 2: Pattern
Chapter One(December 19, 2002)
Was it possible to fall in love with someone just by reading their FBI case files?
The question plagued Devon Wallace as she grabbed dinner at the deli down the street from the FBI building. Her eyes hurt, her hand was cramped, and what she really wanted was some nice, ever-so-long alone time with Vin. Was that too much to ask?
She grabbed some Tylenol on her way out of the mini-drugstore/deli. She hadn’t seen Vin in three days, ever since those pop-star boys had entered her territory, and become a major pain in her ass. And though Vin could give her pleasure like no other, she ignored him, focused all her attention on this case.
Having been over the details more times than she could count, there was something about the case that kept bringing her back, though she had long since finished with the files, and should have turned them over to Hard Records by now. Devon was unsure whether it was the fact that the hairs on the back of her neck jumped up every time she reread the facts of the case or if it was the handsome 26-year-old whose picture stared at her every time the folder fell open on her desk. Which happened a lot, she had to admit.
But there was something about JC Chasez that kept drawing her back to the folder. She had read more notes on him since the boys had relocated to Reno, Nevada for the Christmas holidays three days ago than she had read on most criminals from their records that passed through her office. She supposed that it had something to do with the Bass kidnappings being so public, that the FBI took this ever so seriously. It was almost like the Lindbergh kidnapping from the early 20th century.
Except there was something about this guy, the Cougar, something purely evil. He wanted to toy with the members of *NSYNC. He obviously knew how attached they were to the little boy, and played on this fact, tortured them.
Meandering back to her desk, in the cramped, closet-size office of the FBI Transferors, she opened the first case file yet again. The note from the October kidnapping stared up at her. It had been left on the pillow, where little Gregory Bass had been sleeping. It had been found somewhere between one and three hours after the child had been taken.
Isn’t it funny how attached we become?
And isn’t it funny how these attachments can be ripped apart?
Funny. Yes.
Amusing. Yes.
What cat doesn’t enjoy their little mouse?
--The Cougar
Shivers crept quickly down Devon’s spine as she reread the copy of the note found in Gregory’s Denver hotel room that morning. From what the Denver FBI office had been able to figure out, the Cougar had lowered himself from the balcony of the room above Bass’. Used a glass cutter. Slipped in as easily and silently as a cat. Never disturbed the nanny sleeping next to the boy. The bodyguard in the hotel hallway never heard a sound. When Lance Bass had returned to the room at the end of his concert, the boy had been gone.
The October kidnapping played out almost exactly as the February kidnapping had played out in Japan. A week after the disappearance, with the FBI and the local police forces unable to find even a trace of where he had gone, they had received an anonymous tip. And found the sleeping two-year-old exactly where the man had said he would be, in a nearby motel room. None the worse for the wear. No physical or psychological damage. And just like in Japan, unable to tell them anything about the man who had kept him in the room for the past week. There were no fingerprints, no hair samples, nothing. Just another note.
Is it still funny?
I think so.
Fun.
Until I see you again, Gregory, sleep well.
And I will see you again.
The child will sleep well.
Will you, Daddy?
--The Cougar
Yet, as much as the Cougar’s notes gave her the creeps, it was the Special Agents’ notes that drew her back to this first folder over and over again. Notes on the father of the child and his friends. Or, more specifically, his friend. JC.
Good Lord, there had to be something wrong with her! How could she fall for a guy who only existed in print for her? But it was true, as embarrassing as it was to admit.
The Special Agents had noticed everything about these guys when the pop band had met with the Las Vegas branch. For the little over a week that the band would be filming their Christmas special and their Christmas concert out at Lake Tahoe, and staying at a resort outside of Reno, they would be in Vegas’ territory. And the FBI was nothing if not meticulous with details and paperwork.
Devon groaned just thinking about the day and a half that she had spent transferring all the different Agent’s and officials’ notes into the Las Vegas database, catching the occasional nap on the office couch. Whoo hoo. What a glorified job she had! She had joined the FBI Support Team in an effort to escape her grandmother’s myths and legends, wanting to catch the evil doers with facts and truth.
Yeah. Right. She was nothing more than a high-security secretary. In another ten years, she might be transferred, promoted to a real secretarial job. Yay, even more to look forward to.
But at times like this, she didn’t mind her job so much, she mused as she browsed through the handwritten notes once again. JC’s name jumped out at her like a freaking flashing-red light. He played with the hemp necklace around his neck when he was agitated, as he often became when discussing the kidnappings. He’d been the one to put a strength-giving hand on Lance’s shoulder when the father had gotten emotional. He had been the one to finish for Lance when the younger man could no longer speak about those terror-filled nights in Japan or Denver.
JC had a fascination with water. It was such an odd note for an Agent to make that Devon had reread it three times, and got her fellow Transfer personnel and best friend, Melinia, to double-check it. But sure enough. Apparently, JC had discussed taking the child to the beach for Christmas. He found the water more soothing than the mountains.
He wasn’t superstitious (Ooh! Big bonus right there!). He didn’t believe in the boogey-man; he knew that the Cougar was an evil man, but a flesh-and-blood man nonetheless. He was wary about putting all his faith in the FBI. And though no one was sure that the Cougar would even strike again, and many of the FBI Agents were doubtful with the security as pumped up as it was, JC KNEW that he would.
That was probably the thing that Devon liked the most about him, right there! He didn’t care what others assumed, didn’t care if they thought he was being an overprotective uncle, didn’t care if the FBI thought it was silly to keep the security as beefed as it was. He knew what he believed and didn’t back down. Devon sighed. Yup, that right there did it for her.
“Oh, my God, Dev, you have got to be kidding me!”
Devon turned as red as her t-shirt as Melinia came in, saw her co-worker sighing over this guy yet again, and slammed the case file shut. “I’m sorry! I couldn’t resist.” Devon threw her head down on the desk miserably. Ugh! She was nothing more than a teeny reading a magazine!
Melinia dropped herself onto the cheap, disgustingly-green-colored couch that took up a third of their mini-office. She grabbed one of the carrot sticks from Devon’s instant salad and shook it at her. “I’d be worried about you and this obsession, if I didn’t know that Vin was more than enough to keep you pleasured at home.”
“I haven’t seen Vin for three days.”
“Devon! You said you were gonna go home after I left last night,” Melinia scolded.
“I know, I know. But there’s something about the Cougar, something that’s bothering me about this case. I reread everything through again after you left and figured I was better off sleeping and showering here than in trying to make it back to my apartment.”
“Devon, that’s what the Special Agents are trained for. We, you and me, we’re trained for typing.”
Giving Melinia a look, Devon looked down at the closed case file on her desk. “You cannot tell me that with your criminology degree from UCLA that you don’t analyze as you type.”
Melinia had the grace to look a little embarrassed as she admitted, “Well, yeah, I do. But we’re never gonna come across anything that the Agents or the computers haven’t already.”
“I know. It’s just that…” Devon trailed off as she tried to explain. “Did you know I had the instinct? HAVE the instinct that MAKES an Agent as good as he is? Unfortunately, the Bureau dudes weren’t too interested in an Agent who refused to carry a gun.”
“Imagine that.”
“But there’s something about this case, and I’m not talking about JC. Something about the Cougar that’s making everything kick into overdrive. Something about this case that bothers me…”
Melinia snorted. “Yeah, it bothers you enough to keep you away from Vin. Not much can do that!”
“I know! You know, it’s gotten even better between us since I bought satin sheets? I never thought of myself as a satin girl, but something about mixing Vin and satin…” Devon licked her lips.
Rolling her eyes, Melinia looked at Devon sadly. “I don’t suppose you even realize how odd it is that you named your bed Vin and treat him like he’s your significant other.”
Devon tilted her head, looking for all the world as though she was in deep contemplation. “Nope. It seems perfectly normal to me. Vin gives me more pleasure in eight hours than any boyfriend or mere mortal man could manage to give. Vin is all about the pleasure.”
Melinia shook her head. “You’re a very disturbed person, has anyone ever told you that.”
Throwing her a fake, sunny smile, Devon nodded enthusiastically. “Oh yeah. Lots of times. It’s probably the real reason they never considered me for a Special Agent position.”
“You with your psychology degree. You ever considered analyzing yourself instead of those notes you’ve been reading over and over again for the past few days?”
A chill passed over Devon yet again as she glanced down at the file on her desk, then let her gaze stray to the ten or so other files littering the floor around the office, all on the Bass kidnappings, most of them having to do with the national office, the Denver office, or the Orlando office. “This case doesn’t give you goosebumps?”
Melinia sat up as she grabbed a file off the floor, idly flipping through it. “Of course it gives me the creeps. I mean, this guy is playing some sick cat-and-mouse game with these people. Sometimes he takes the boy, sometimes he just leaves a cougar figurine outside the boy’s play-pen, just to show how easy it is for him to get to the little boy. This guy is one sick bastard. Yeah, it’s creepy.”
“No,” Devon said, shaking her head as she wandered towards the window, the one redeeming quality about their itty-bitty office. “It’s different from just a creepy sicko. It’s that…chill you get when someone’s in the room. When someone’s watching you. That warning chill.”
“I dunno, girl. Maybe it’s just the full moon making you feel that way.”
Devon’s whole body stilled as the chill moved through her at lightning speed. She looked up at the sky, knowing what she would see.
“Blood moon,” she whispered. The blood moon. When the evil sorcerer’s power was at it’s peak, according to her grandmother. Bad things happened when there was a blood moon. Her mother had killed herself during a blood moon. Her grandmother’s car accident had been during a blood moon. Her last boyfriend had broken up with her on October 21. During a blood moon.
“October 21.”
“What?” Melinia asked, sensing the difference that had come over her co-worker.
“Shit, Melinia! That’s when he hits! The blood moon!” That’s what it was. That’s when the Cougar came out!
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Devon grabbed her arm, pulling her to the window. “Look. Look at the moon. What do you see?”
“I don’t know. The moon?”
“Around the moon!”
“You mean the reddish-purple circle? What about it?”
“When it’s red, it’s called a blood moon. I grew up hearing stories about how bad things happen when there’s a blood moon.”
“Okay. Yeah. Price of tea in China?”
Devon blinked. “Huh?” Another thought occurred to her. Her body froze. “What day is it?”
“Today? It’s the 19. Maybe you’ve been staying at the office for a little bit too long if you can’t remember that much…”
“Oh, shit, Melinia! That’s a full moon tonight! No no no no no no! It’s December. The black month.”
“Devon. You’re scaring me. What are you mumbling about?”
Devon turned slowly. “Black month. Full moon. A purple ring that even we can see through the lights of Vegas. This is what he’s been waiting for!”
She pushed past Melinia and grabbed the phone off her desk, hitting the speed dial for her superior. It started to ring.
“Devon, would you tell me what’s going on?” Melinia asked, standing on the other side of Devon’s desk, having noticed which number Devon had hit. “Why are you calling Melovidov?”
Making a motion with her hand to shush her, Devon heard the phone picked up at the other end. The bubble-gum smacking secretary at the twenty-four hour main desk said, “Federal Bureau of Investigation, Las Vegas. How can I help you?”
“Felicia? This is Devon down in Transfers. I need to speak to Agent Melovidov, right now.”
“Who?”
Devon closed her eyes, praying for patience. “Melovidov.”
“No, who’s this?”
Lord save her from idiots. “This is Devon Wallace. It’s an emergency, I need Melovidov.”
“Oh, hey, Devon. How’s Vin doing?”
“Felicia. Melovidov. Can you please transfer me!”
“Sorry, Dev, he’s casing out the BlackJack Casino. There’s a raid going down tonight, you know.”
Godammit all to hell! “Okay, what about Larson?”
“You wanna talk to the head of the LV FBI? Sorry, no can do. I don’t even know where he is.”
“Felicia…this is important. It’s about the Bass kidnappings. Is there anyone in the department tonight that I can talk to?”
“Not really.” Devon could almost see the girl shrugging on the other end of the phone. “Everyone who’s anyone wants a piece of the raid tonight. They won’t be back till early morning, most likely. If it’s about the Bass case though, you could try calling to Reno. They got a twenty-four hour line at the Resident Agency office up there.”
Devon scribbled down the number as Felicia reeled it off. “Thanks.” She hung up the phone, glancing at her desk clock. 6:47 pm. No telling what time the Cougar would hit the pop group tonight. And Devon had no doubt that it would be tonight. All the pieces fit. Keeping track of blood moons and blue moons and the like was something that she’d grown up doing. She never thought about it anymore. But all the dates fit!
“Devon? What the hell is going on?”
Punching in the numbers for Reno, Devon glanced up at her near-frantic fellow Transferor. “He’s following the Wiccan calendar of the moons. The full moons are when he strikes. And December is the dark month of the year. With a purple ring around the moon, which almost never happens. I think he’s done playing with his mouse. I think he’s gonna finish this game. And he’s going to do it tonight!”
“Oh boy.” Melinia sank into her desk chair. All this moon stuff and Wicca was kinda creepy.
Devon breathed a sigh of relief as the phone was picked up. It was short-lived. “Hello, you’ve reached the Reno Resident Agency twenty-four hour tip line.”
She was going to kill Felicia! “Hi, this is Devon Wallace with the LV FBI. I need to speak to the Special Agent in Charge for the Bass case.”
“Oh? Why didn’t you call straight through?”
What, was the man irritated that he’d been interrupted from his boring night life? “Because, this was the number I was given.”
“I’m sorry, I’m unable to connect you with the Agent in Charge. If you have a tip, I can pass it on for you.”
Shit. She was about to be given the run-around again. “Fine. Listen, the Cougar is coming out tonight. The moon is full, it’s a blood moon, and it’s the black month of December. He’s going to finish his game tonight. He’s done playing; this is the exact time he’s been waiting for. It’s going to happen tonight.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” Click.
Devon threw the phone against its base.
Melinia sat in her chair, chewing on her lip. “The hotline?”
Sinking into her own chair, Devon rubbed her temples. “Yes. God, I only hope the idiot boy will know to pass it on.”
“Dev, I’ve been thinking while you’ve been on the phone. Do you even realize how many tips they must be getting over this case? It’s so highly publicized, no doubt all the crazies are calling stuff in. Combine that with a million and one teenies trying to help out their idol with whatever info they think could be useful…they’re not going to get to your tip anytime soon.”
Devon growled, “But it’s not just a tip. I’m telling you, I can feel it. It’s going to happen tonight.”
“Yeah, I believe you. But they won’t. We’ve both read this case through, file to file. They’re looking for precision. An intelligent, educated, resourceful man. Not someone following Wiccan traditions.”
“He’s not Wiccan,” Devon answered, sure that anyone bent on kidnapping and hurting others wasn’t exactly of the Wiccan faith. “He’s just following their moon calendar and some of the superstitions attached. Maybe he’s superstitious. Maybe he thinks when there’s a blood moon, he’s unstoppable. Undetectable. Invincible.”
“He’s never even hinted in his notes about anything with moons or Wicca. How can you be so sure that it’s going to end tonight?”
“The kidnappings happened on full moons. That’s tonight-”
“The first one didn’t. Someone would have noticed something. It happened February 28.”
“In Japan. That would make it February 27 here. Full moon.”
“What about when the Cougar left his sick clues that he could have taken the boy but didn’t?”
Devon went over the dates in her mind. “There were rings. But not around a full moon. A green ring in April. Orange in June. Yellow in July. He’s following the Wiccan moon calendar. Why, oh why, didn’t I realize what all these days meant sooner!?”
“Doesn’t matter. You’ve figured it out now. So…what do we do next?”
“Now…I don’t know. No one’s going to listen and everyone in Vegas is out at the casino raid.” Devon sat down, with a defeated sigh. “That sicko is gonna get that little boy tonight. I know he is.”
“Hey! No, you are not going into shut down mode!” Melinia commanded. “Get off your ass!” She yanked Devon up out of the seat.
Devon stared at her in shock. Melinia was so not…this…in charge, take-no-prisoners, with an attitude girl! Wow. “Okay…so what do we do?”
“You. Get in your car and drive your ass up to Reno, to the Mt. Rose ski resort they’re staying at. See if you can’t use your FBI papers to get in there and warn them yourself.”
“Right. Good. Let’s go!” Devon said, nodding as she grabbed her jacket from the back of her chair.
“No. You go. I’ll stay here and keep trying to get a hold of someone.”
“Mel! You can’t make me do this on my own! We’ll keep trying to call them with my cell phone.”
Melinia gave her the you’re-an-idiot look. “Where do you think we are, the east coast? As soon as you’re out of Vegas, you’ll lose service. Won’t get it back till you almost hit Tahoe.”
“Goddamn! I hate Nevada!”
“Right. That’s why you moved back after going to your fancy-pants school. Now, there’s almost nothing between here and there. Just take 95 the entire way then cut west on 50. Mt. Rose is just north of Carson City. This is your chance to drive 100 miles an hour; you can make it in four hours. Now, GO!”
Chapter 3: Foiled
Chapter Two“J, J, J, J, J!” the little boy squealed as he ran away from his attacker. Joey made a fake lunge for the three-year-old Greg. The toddler dodged on his little legs and ran laughing to his other uncle, Justin, for help.
“Tree!” JC warned, scooping Greg up right before he ran smack into the undecorated Christmas tree drying out in the kitchen area of their cabin.
“Uncle C, Uncle C! Joey’s gonna get me!”
JC laughed as he bounced Greg into the air. “Not while I’m here! I’ll protect you.”
“Yay!” The child stuck his tongue out at his Uncle Joey. “Ha ha, Joey. C’s here!”
“Awww, c’mon Uncle C. Can’t I have just a little tickle war with him?”
“Now, Joey, you know we can’t allow that. You never win, and you’re a sore loser!” Justin said, taking the child from JC’s arms and twirling him around like an airplane. “Besides…It’s getting just a little late. If Lance were awake, he’d kill us for keeping Greg up past eleven.”
Joey shrugged. “Oh well. A cranky Greg will be Lance’s problem…Won’t you?” he asked the little boy as he blew on his tummy.
“No fair! That tickles! And Uncle J said nooooooo tickling,” Greg instructed, shaking his finger at Joey.
Making a face, Joey scooped him away from Justin. “So, is it my turn to read you a bedtime story yet?”
Greg giggled as he tried to get down. “No! You did last night!”
“Awww, shucks. I guess that means it’s Chris’ turn!” Joey yelled as he airplaned Greg over to where Chris was concentrating on his video game and dropped the toddler in his lap.
Chris looked up, confused for a moment before having Greg in his lap, smacking his face, registered. “Oh! Bedtime!”
“And he comes out of his video game coma,” JC announced dryly as he sat back into his chair, getting back to the song he had been writing before the hell-on-two-legs toddler had run headlong for the tree.
“No. No bed! Uncle C!” Speaking of the devil… JC looked down at the leach attached to his pant leg, which Chris was currently trying to remove. JC stared at him, rather than trying to interfere between Chris and the kid. It was something they all made an effort to do, not wanting the kid to grow up playing all five of them against each other in order to get what he wanted.
“Chris! No bed! I wanna do the tree!”
“Tell you what,” Chris said as he hefted the kid to his shoulders. “Tomorrow, as soon as we all get up, we can do the tree. Tonight, after you’re in bed, we’re gonna set it up, so it’s all ready for you to go at it tomorrow!”
The little boy pouted, then thought about it for a minute. “Kay. Will you read Thomas for me?”
“Thomas it is,” Chris agreed as he entered the bedroom that the tyke shared with Lance. A few minutes later, he was back, with a stumbling, eye-rubbing Lance.
“Why’d you let me sleep so long?” he complained as he descended the stairway.
As JC watched him with raised eyebrows, he took another look around the cabin they would be spending their holidays in. If JC were to buy a mountain getaway, this would be it. The living room was the central feature, with its ceiling rising all the way to the pitched cabin roof. The furniture was focused towards the huge fireplace against the back wall. There were two circular staircases on either side of the cabin; four bedrooms and two baths upstairs. Downstairs, underneath the bedrooms were the kitchen, dining room, office, another bedroom, and another bath. Even though he had to share a bedroom with Joey, who snored like a bear, he loved the place.
There was a get-back-to-nature theme to the place, JC decided, looking at all the wood finishing on the walls, the wood furniture, the colors of the cabin all browns, tans, burgundies, greens, and creams. Everything was so…natural. Peaceful. Calm. Quiet.
Up until a three-foot snowball rolled through the doorway right then.
Everyone in the cabin stood up. The three bodyguards who had decided to wrestle the tree into its stand dropped it unceremoniously on its side (they had been losing horribly, so it wasn’t a hard choice for them to make). The two FBI men drinking coffee in the kitchen had their guns unholstered before JC could blink. Chris dropped his controller. Lance looked up from his mystery novel. Joey actually put his sub sandwich down (which was a rare occasion indeed, since Justin had a habit of stealing Joey’s food). Justin never even noticed the 9 inches of Subway left and took his headphones off when he felt the cold rush of air, putting his Discman down on the couch. Even Marissa, Justin’s self-centered latest girlfriend, put her Cosmopolitan magazine down and stood to see what had interrupted her scholarly reading.
“Bedroom. Greg!” the snowball managed to get out between its great puffs of breath and chattering teeth.
The bodyguards looked at each other for half-a-second before Lonnie and Mike ran up the stairs, leaving Tyson with the tree. Agent Callaway and Agent Mendoza picked up the snowball between them. It took JC a second to realize the three-foot snowball was actually a five-six or so young woman. Other than that, JC couldn’t tell much. She was covered in white from head to toe; it must be quite a snowstorm outside, since he couldn’t even tell if she was wearing a hat or gloves. Everything was just…white.
Mike came out of the bedroom then, and everyone glanced up as he walked along the open hallway that looked down on the living room. When he noticed the toddler in Mike’s arms, JC felt like twenty-pounds had been lifted from his chest. He could breathe again.
“The window was open, but Greg was still in his bed, counting the glow stars on his ceiling.”
“How’d the window get open?” Mendoza asked gruffly. He looked at Chris and Lance. “Did one of you leave it that way?”
JC thought it was a rather dumb question, since they had both turned as white as ghosts when Mike had made his announcement. “No. I double checked that it was locked before I left the room,” Lance confirmed.
Lonnie came out of the room then, shaking his head. JC cursed silently. Window open, but the Cougar had escaped yet again. With the bodyguard’s negative answer to whether there had been anyone hiding in the room, all eyes turned back to the snowball, who had thawed enough for JC to see that she had worn no hat or gloves and her fingers were bright red. JC thought that she made a much prettier girl than she did a snowman; blonde hair, light brown eyes…and freckles. He decided that he had a thing for freckles; they were so damn cute.
He shook his head, wondering what the hell he was thinking. This girl was probably the Cougar’s partner…and here he was thinking about her freckles.
He frowned at her.
But if she wasn’t working with the Cougar…then the freckles might be cute.
His frown lessened.
And she had warned them in time to keep Greg in the house rather than in the Cougar’s clutches.
His frown disappeared and a half-smile replaced it. Yeah, he liked freckles.
**********
Devon decided, as everyone stared at her, that now would be the perfect time to sink through the floor. Especially when she caught sight of Agent Callaway on her right. Of all the freaking agents to be on the Bass case, they had to choose Dick Boy and his I-have-no-feelings-whatsoever control freak of a partner Mendoza?
“Devon? What the hell are you doing here?” Callaway asked as he roughly shook her arm. Mendoza, realizing who it was dropped her left arm and went back to the kitchen counter.
Staring at Callaway, Devon realized that she didn’t even know his first name. Though Callaway was one of THOSE agents who felt the need to style himself after every FBI stereotype ever invented, it still didn’t say much for her. Who slept with a guy without even knowing his first name?
“I came to warn you that the Cougar was going to hit tonight,” she chattered, trying to pull her jean jacket closer around her. The thing was soaked with all the melted snow and it was worse than useless. When she looked up, hoping to see a glowing fireplace somewhere, she realized everyone was starting at her (except the leggy, exotic beauty who had gone back to reading the “How to Keep Him Pleased” article in Cosmo, which Melinia had read to her before the Bass case hit Vegas). And it wasn’t nice staring. It was oh-my-you’re-in-league-with-the-Cougar staring.
“What?” she asked irritably as she brushed away the snow that had yet to melt off her shoulders. She looked around the cabin, which was entirely visible from the front door in the kitchen. And there he was.
Oh Lord, he looked even better in real life than in that old picture from the file. His hair was longer, shaggier (which made Devon itch to run her fingers through it). He had scruff on his face, and though it usually disgusted her on most guys, his scruff brought automatic thoughts about how it would feel against…various…parts of her body as he worked wonders with his full, sexy mouth.
And he really did deserve to have her in love with him, she realized, as he stepped forward, taking his overly large Maryland Terrapins sweater off and handing it to her. “Thanks,” she shivered, jerking her arm away from Callaway and peeling off the wet jacket. She threw the sweater on.
“Now, explain,” Callaway commanded gruffly as he grabbed her arm and forced her onto his recently vacated kitchen stool. Glaring at him, she jerked her arm away again, hitting him in the stomach in the process, and wandered over to the fireplace, holding her hands out to it. They still glowed an angry red.
“I tried calling to the Reno office to warn someone but the hotline guy wasn’t exactly putting a priority on it. I left Melinia in Vegas trying to get a hold of someone, but I’m guessing she never did. And I drove my baby all the way here, going a hundred miles-an-hour, except when climbing the mountains in a snowstorm where I was forced to slow down to sixty, just to warn you. I almost slid off the road three times AND my baby broke down at the gate from being overheated, though with the snowstorm that caused me to crash into the front gate in the first place, I don’t see how that’s possible. THEN I had to run the half-mile from the gate to the front door, during a goddamn blizzard, and you all look at me like I’m Jack-the-freaking-Ripper.”
“How’d you know the Cougar was going to be here tonight?” Lance asked as he held his son like he would never let him go again. JC brought over the ottoman and placed it in front of the fire for her. Devon sat down gratefully, turning to face everyone and warming her back.
“Wait. I want to hear this. But we need to check the perimeter,” Mendoza ordered. He pointed to Mike, Lonnie, and Tyson. “You three go make sure all the windows in the house are locked. The rest of you stay here.” He and Callaway were out the door in the next second. The bodyguards rolled their eyes at being ordered around by the G-man, but did as he said.
Lance walked over to where Devon was sitting and sat on the couch in front of her, laying Gregory on the couch next to him. The toddler yawned and rolled over, burying his face in the cushions, finally tired. Lance looked away from the little boy, towards her. “Thank you. I take it you know Callaway?”
“Yeah. Oh! I’m Devon Wallace, one of the FBI Vegas Transferors, not some weirdo off the street. I’ve been typing up the notes from this case for the past three days, which is how I figured it out. I’m not buddies with the Cougar, like some of you might think.”
Joey whistled and suddenly discovered the ceiling to be a fascinating thing indeed, as he scuffed the toe of his shoe on the hard wood floor.
“Didn’t think so,” Justin assured quickly.
“Nope, nothing of the sort,” Chris agreed just as quickly.
“So, how did you figure it out?” JC asked, pulling up a foot stool to the fire. Devon could see that he was cold without his sweater, but there was no way in hell he was getting it back any time soon.
“And why didn’t anyone figure it out before the Cougar got the window open?” Lance asked, growing agitated as he looked at his now-sleeping son. He started to pace around the living room, circling the couch. It made Devon a little ill to watch him turn in circles and she turned back to the fire. She noticed that JC had too.
“He acts on the patterns of the full moon, but only if there’s a blue or a blood moon,” she informed them. No one said anything and she glanced over her shoulder to see that everyone had the Huh? look on their face, except the girl who never glanced up from her magazine. Even the bodyguards had come back by this time and were giving her the same bewildered look.
She had opened her mouth and was about to explain when the front door opened and Callaway and Mendoza came back in, stomping their feet. The wind blew in around them, swirling snow inside before they managed to push the door back against the raging storm.
Callaway gave her a look, as though he knew she had been talking when she wasn’t supposed to be. She rolled her eyes, but closed her mouth and looked at him expectantly, even though she knew they hadn’t found anything. The Cougar was too smart to get caught because he hadn’t left the freaking perimeter of the house. And there wouldn’t be any footprints to follow. There was a blizzard going down out there and it had brushed her footprints away as she ran towards the house. The snow was so thick she’d only been able to see one of the houselights and had followed that till she hit the house. Course, she did hit a tree too on the way, she remembered, rubbing her forehead.
“Nothing. No sign of him,” Callaway said, confirming her thoughts.
“Course not. The snow’s coming down so fast and thick and with the wind blowing, he could have been walking next to you the entire time without you even knowing it,” Devon pointed out. Callaway glared at her and she glared back.
“How’d you get through the gate, Wallace?” Mendoza asked.
“When my baby hit the gate, it knocked the thing open enough for me to squeeze through. But I think the Cougar already had it unlocked and ready, cause there was a black SUV parked there. I didn’t think it was any of yours; I guessed it was his.” When no one contradicted her, Devon assumed she had been right.
Callaway had run to another room off the kitchen when she’d started talking and came back out now. “The gate security’s down. All the video cameras are out; he must have knocked out the power for the security.”
“Or the snowstorm did,” Mendoza mused.
They both turned to her, pulling the kitchen stools to the edge of the tiled floor, the boundary between the kitchen and the living room. Devon guessed this was her cue.
“Okay, so looking at the dates, I figured out that he kidnaps the boy when there’s a full moon. The first, there was a blue moon. In October, there was a blood moon.”
“Wait,” Callaway interrupted as she took a deep breath to explain the rest. Devon knew what he was going to ask. She had never spoken of the Wiccan moon calendar; she’d wanted to forget her growing up years, when everything she’d done was dictated by the moons. She hadn’t even been allowed to go to her senior prom because there was a blood moon. Not that anyone had asked her; everyone on that side of Vegas was scared of her grandmother, the Las Vegas witch.
But she let Callaway ask anyway. “What are blue and blood moons?”
“A blue moon is a moon with a blue circle around it. A blood moon has a red circle. It’s actually astrophysics, not magic, although a lot of Wiccan and spiritual folklore claim their magic has greater power at these times. Crystals in a top, extremely thin cloud layer reflect the moon’s light. The crystal’s angles determine the color and the size of the ring. Blue’s the easiest, and most common color of the spectrum, and then it moves through the spectrum, till purple, which is the hardest color and almost never happens. And it happened tonight. You can see it even from Incline Village and Carson City; just not out in the valleys hit by this low snowstorm. And that’s how I knew that he would hit tonight, and why I think tonight would have been his last night; no more cat-and-mouse stuff for him.”
“Why would the game end tonight?” Callaway asked.
Devon looked around the room again, having turned to face forward when she’d started talking. She could tell that they’d never really thought that the Cougar would END the game in the no-more-Gregory sense. Devon knew from the files that because Gregory had never been harmed and was always returned, they had thought the Cougar was one of Gregory’s mother’s relatives. Someone who loved the boy, but hated the father and wanted to play with his emotions.
“The game would have ended tonight because it’s the dark month of the year. February is the blue month and there was a full blue moon. And yes, it was full,” she added when Mendoza opened his mouth. “It was February 28 there, but February 27 here, and there was a full moon that night. April is the green month and there was a green ring, but not a full moon, so he didn’t take the boy. June is the month of the orange moon. Again, the night he left something, there was an orange ring, but no full moon. Yellow is July’s color. And October’s moon is already called the blood moon. So having a blood moon during the month of the blood moon meant it was time to take the kid again. And tonight, it’s a purple moon, the rarest of rings, during the Dark Month. I can’t ever remember that happening before, not while I’ve been alive. I think he thinks it’s the sign he’s been waiting for, that all of the powers are with him.”
Lance had gotten nervous while she’d been talking and was pacing again. Devon felt bad for him; all this talk of ending the game wasn’t exactly a comforting topic of conversation for the father of the child. Justin was munching a sub sandwich. The girl was still reading her magazine (who the hell was this chick anyway?). Joey was sitting on the piano bench and the three bodyguards were sitting at the dining room table. And JC…he was sitting next to her, fingering his hemp necklace and running it around and around his neck. Devon feared he might be getting a rope burn at the back of his neck, but didn’t say anything.
“Well, the Cougar’s long gone by now, Mr. Bass, so you don’t have to worry for now,” Mendoza instructed. Lance sat back down next to Gregory, pulling the couch blanket off the back of the couch and covering his son with it.
“Umm, actually,” Devon said meekly. Oh man, they were going to kill her. “He can’t be gone.”
“You got in, I’m sure he can get out,” Callaway reasoned.
“I dunno,” Joey murmured, looking out the dining room window. “It’s coming down pretty fast.”
“Uh…even if it wasn’t, he can’t really drive away,” Devon said. She pulled a set of car keys out of her back pocket and dangled them in front of her.
“Please tell me those aren’t his!” Mendoza growled.
“Well, he left his car running and ready for a fast getaway. I wasn’t sure if I would make it in time…”
“So you took them. Dammit, Dev, that was stupid!”
“Oh, shove it, Agent Callaway. Even if I hadn’t, I still don’t think he’d be leaving without Gregory. This is the night he’s been waiting for. And he thinks he’s invincible tonight. He won’t just say ‘Shucks,’ and head home!”
“Shut up, you two,” Mendoza said, glaring at the two of them. “We’ll just have to make sure he can’t get to the child.”
“So, he’s out there, but he can’t get to the kid and he can’t get away. What does this mean?” JC asked, looking at the agents and at Devon.
Devon turned to him. “Have you ever heard the term ‘loose cannon?’”
Chapter 4: Fear
Chapter ThreeJoey, sitting at the piano, began to tap out the keys for the beginning of the 5th Symphony of Beethoven, deciding to sing along. “Dun dun dun dun; dun dun dun dun…”
“Joey,” Mike growled warningly.
Sighing, Joey quit playing the dramatic 5th Symphony and moved onto Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. When Lance threw a couch pillow at him, he shrugged and started playing Fur Elise instead.
“JOEY!” the guys and the bodyguards all shouted at once.
Rolling his eyes, Joey laid off the keys.
It was deathly silent without the distraction of Joey on the piano. Everyone glanced around at each other uneasily. What were they supposed to do now, hang around like sitting ducks?
“So, what now?” Lance asked, looking at his sleeping child. He would easily give up his life for this little kid, but everything was out of his control. For someone who was always IN control, it was the worst sort of anxiety, the worst feeling of helplessness.
“Why aren’t there more agents up here to begin with? I thought there were like ten agents on this case,” Devon wondered aloud. She remembered reading from the files that there were six of the Vegas agents set up in Carson City, and had been joined by two of the Reno agents.
“We were taking shifts; Mendoza and I have been staying here, with other agents coming in every once in awhile to check out security, and give us a break. They’re all down in the City right now; the last two left right before the storm, and the replacements don’t come until morning.”
Devon gave Callaway a disdainful look. “And this is how the FBI protects against a known kidnapper?”
“It’s not like WE have anything in common with the Cougar…WE don’t have the same calendar as him. Sorry we didn’t know he was going to strike.”
Mendoza, as usual, stepped in before they could really get going in their argument, telling them both to shove it. Still, it hurt Devon to realize that these people thought her the same kind of person as the Cougar, following the same schedule. She got up from her spot by the fire, walking towards the window, wondering where the Cougar was, having no doubt that he was out there somewhere. Waiting for just the right moment. She tried to brush the goose bumps off her arms.
“Callaway, call Carson and let them know what’s going on,” Mendoza ordered as he pulled Devon away from the window. “And until we know that he’s gone for sure, stay away from the windows. We don’t know what kind of weapons he might have. Or what his plan is. So until we know for sure, take every precaution. Stay here in the living room, and in sight of each other at all times.”
“Mendoza, the phone’s down,” Callaway said quietly as he put the phone back into its handset. As he said it, the lights in the cabin went out.
The girl on the couch finally noticed that something was wrong, as she lost her reading light. The glow of the fire lit the room, giving it a glow that would have been warm if the circumstances had been different. As it was, the fireplace glow gave the room a creepy light.
Devon watched everyone sit up straight or rise from their seats in much the same way they had when she had first come into the room. They looked at each other uneasily. The phone down, the lights out…
“Hey, I’ve seen this movie,” Joey complained. “The next thing that happens is we lose our food and water and start turning on each other…”
“Joey, shut it!” Mendoza commanded. Joey rolled his eyes, but sat back down and stayed quiet.
“Do you…” Justin asked, clearing his throat. “Do you think this is the storm or the Cougar?”
Mendoza and Callaway looked at everyone looking at them. It was Mendoza who answered. “The storm has been going strong for awhile, and though it might have finally caused the power outage, it’s safer to assume that this is the Cougar and be prepared. I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“Great. We’re isolated out in the middle-of-freaking-nowhere with a madman on the loose outside,” Lance said, sitting on the couch with his son again. It didn’t look like he was ready to leave the boy’s side anytime soon.
“Hey, wait, I really HAVE seen”” Joey started. Objects from around the room flew in his direction again, but at the same time, Joey’s comic relief lightened the despairing mood in the room.
Mendoza sat down to think as everyone began to relax again. There wasn’t much they could do, and panicking certainly wasn’t going to help anyone. Devon leaned against one of the round staircases and watched everyone getting back to where they had been before Callaway’s announcement and the subsequent black out. She was just glad that they had a fire; not that she would admit it to anyone, but she was scared like nothing else of the dark, which she supposed had something to do with her grandmother always telling her scary stories at night instead of comforting fairytales.
Justin sat next to the girl, whom Devon assumed was here with him and NOT one of the guy’s sister out to spend Christmas with them. And she assumed right, she decided, as they began to make out on the loveseat. Joey tried to go back to eating his sub sandwich, but it had already disappeared. Lance pulled his book back out, but realized pretty quick that it was a dumb idea since he couldn’t see anything. And since Chris couldn’t play his videogames anymore, he sat down on the floor in front of Lance and Greg, leaning back against the couch. Joey soon sat next to him. Devon supposed that they didn’t quite know what to do with themselves without electricity to entertain them. They stared into the fire instead. The bodyguards went back to talking among themselves as they tried to set the tree up to the left of the fireplace, sending a shower of pine needles down onto the lovebirds on the sofa every once in a while. Devon could see that neither party noticed.
She was shivering a few minutes later as JC joined her in her vantage point. Her clothes were soaked from the inside out from all the melted snow, and without the adrenalin rush to keep her warm, even JC’s sweater wasn’t helping anymore.
“You okay?” JC asked, leaning against the railing and crossing his arms in front of him as he looked at everyone in the room. Lance, Joey, and Chris had found a Monopoly game in the corner of the room and had pulled it out and were setting it up on the coffee table in front of the fireplace.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she lied, still shivering. She glanced at Justin and the girl. “Do they ever come up for air?”
“Who?” JC asked, then followed her line of vision. “Oh, Justin and Marissa. Sure, eventually. But he just met her at the Victoria’s Secrets Fashion Show, so they’re still going at it all the time.”
“Victoria’s Secrets Fashion Show?” Devon asked, her eyebrows raised.
“Yeah. I think Justin finds a girl there every year.”
“Wait…I thought he was with””
JC snorted. “Don’t ask.”
They were silent for a minute, during which Devon’s chattering increased. “Hey, do you need some extra clothes?” JC asked, finally realizing that she wasn’t exactly warm.
Devon looked JC up and down. He had about six inches on her. “I really don’t think you’re my size.”
Laughing, JC shook his head. “I’ve got some sweatpants and a t-shirt that you can fit into. I’d offer some of Marissa’s clothes to you, but something about her tells me that she’s not the type to share.”
“And something tells me that I wouldn’t exactly be comfortable in her clothes,” Devon said dryly. At the moment, it looked like Marissa was wearing a Victoria’s Secrets dress and little else. The dress was a skintight red, with a fluffy white ruff around the sleeves and neck. Devon could imagine the rest of her wardrobe. “Hey, Mendoza, can I run upstairs to get some new clothes and change?”
Mendoza looked up from his thoughts and began speaking before Callaway could say anything, which Mendoza knew he would do. “Yeah. Stay away from the windows though, and don’t take too long. You going up with her, JC?”
JC nodded as Devon started up the stairs, following behind her. She stopped at the top and allowed him to pass her since she didn’t know which room was his. He led her to the far room and headed into the darkness.
Devon halted at the doorway. There was very little light coming in from the window, and the fire downstairs lit the upstairs bedroom not at all. She could vaguely see the outline of JC turn towards her when she didn’t follow him in.
“Hey, we’ve got a bathroom in here that you can change in,” JC offered as he searched through the dresser drawer for the promised sweatpants and t-shirt. She still stood in the doorway. “Do you want to change in here or the downstairs bathroom?”
“Oh, well. I was…going to go…and see if there was a tank-top of Marissa’s that I could borrow to wear under your shirt,” Devon said, grasping for straws as to why she wouldn’t enter the dark bedroom. What kind of adult was still scared of the dark?
“Oh, okay, her and Justin’s room is down at the end of the hall, where we first came up the stairs. Do you want to take these and change in their bathroom?”
Devon nodded, then shook her head again. “Umm…can you…will you come with me to get the shirt?”
JC gave her a weird look, but agreed. He pulled his bedroom door shut behind him and they walked down the hall to Justin and Marissa’s room. Devon paused outside their door and peered over the banister, at the couple still busy making out on the loveseat. “Hey, Marissa, can I borrow a tank top?”
Devon got the expected response, an agreeing wave of the hand, not paying any attention to the request. Shrugging, Devon opened the bedroom door, but still didn’t go in. “Hey, JC, can we go downstairs and get a flashlight or a candle or something to help me find the shirt?”
“Yeah. We have some Christmas candles. I think they’re in my room, hold on.”
Staying where she was, Devon watched JC disappear back into his room and come back in a few seconds holding a lit red candle. Even with the candle, Devon didn’t want to enter the room by herself. “Will you hold the candle for me while I look for the tank top?”
“Sure,” JC said, finally sensing that she wasn’t about to enter a dark room all by herself. It was something that she would never admit aloud, her fear of the dark, but for some reason, she wasn’t uncomfortable with JC figuring out her unreasonable fear. Maybe it was because she knew so much about him that his knowing this little factoid about her didn’t cause Devon too much grief. Hell, she knew he had a weird fear of shots, maybe he didn’t think her fear of the dark was all that odd.
JC pointed out what he recognized as Justin’s stuff on top of one of the dressers, so Devon started looking through the other one. She found a black tank top pretty quickly, and finally took the offered clothes from JC. Opening the door to the bathroom that Justin and Marissa shared with the bedroom next to theirs, she noticed the small circular window. Again, not much light. She didn’t know how she was going to manage this.
Trying to conquer her fear, she entered the large bathroom and closed the door almost all the way, leaving a small crack, with the tiniest shaft of dim light coming into the room from JC’s candle. He stood right outside the door with it. Turning away from the door, Devon took off his sweater, chanting to herself silently that she could do this. She wasn’t a little kid anymore, there weren’t any monsters in her closet, nothing hiding in the floor waiting to grab her ankles. With this last thought, she hopped up on the bathroom sink, scared out of her mind.
She didn’t dare turn around, knowing that the bathroom mirror would be above the sink, right behind her. It was the one thing that scared her about the dark more than anything else: mirrors. She could remember her grandmother’s tales about spirits in the mirror, and had tried playing Bloody Mary in their bathroom once. A greenish glow had appeared in the mirror in the middle of what she thought was merely another one of her grandmother’s games, and Devon had flipped, running to the bathroom door and yanking it open. Only, it didn’t budge and Devon had grown hysterical trying to get the door open, terrified of turning around and seeing what might be in the mirror.
Remembering all this, Devon started to freak out again and jumped off the sink, pushing the door open with a great shove and tearing out of the room, running straight into JC. His arms went around her in an effort to keep his balance, hold the candle, and stop Devon from running him down.
“Devon, you okay?” JC asked. He could feel her shuddering and knew instinctively that it wasn’t from the cold anymore. “Devon? What’s going on, was there something in the bathroom?” Thoughts of the Cougar instantly filled his mind and he tried to get Devon to look up from the front of his shirt.
“No. No, there was nothing in there,” Devon mumbled against his shirt front, trying to get a hold of herself and stop the chills that were coursing through her. She started chanting in her mind again, that there was nothing in the dark to be afraid of, that she could handle this. It didn’t work any better this time than it had the first.
“Devon, what happened? You’re still in your soaked clothes.”
“I know. I know. I just…I freaked. I’m sorry,” Devon said, her hands still clenched in the folds of his shirt.
“No, hey, that’s alright. It’s understandable at a time like this,” JC murmured comfortingly as he rubbed small circles on her back with his free hand.
“It had nothing to do with the Cougar. Just something that happened when I was little. I...I just don’t like dark rooms, especially bathrooms.”
“Okay. Well, you can change in here, if you want. I’ll stay with the candle, but I’ll turn around. Does that sound okay?” JC asked, his hand still on her back. Her face was buried in his shoulder, but he could feel her nod.
“Can you get the clothes? I left them on the bathroom counter.”
“Of course. Do you want to keep the candle while I do that?”
Devon nodded again. JC would have gone to get the clothes, but she didn’t show any signs of being ready to let go of his shirt, and she felt oddly right with his arms around her. Moving his hand to her hair, he started stroking it, slowly, comfortingly, waiting till she was ready to let him go before stopping.
Another few minutes passed before she started to unclench her fingers. She slowly lowered her arms to her sides and JC ran his hand over her hair one last time before letting her go. Handing the candle over to her, he went into the bathroom quickly, feeling for the clothes as his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting. He wondered what could have freaked her out so much that she had run from the room almost hyperventilating. Not wanting to leave her alone too long, he quickly went back, and took the candle from her still shaking hands. He saw that the wax had dripped onto her fingers, but it didn’t look like she had even noticed.
“Here you go,” he said quietly, passing the clothes over to her, and turning to face the bedroom door. Having the candlelight moved further away from her knocked Devon out of her near-comatose state and JC heard her changing in a hurry. She tapped him on the shoulder when she was done. Silently, JC took the clothes from her and handed her the candle again, then walked into the bathroom and hung the clothes over the shower rack. Realizing as he hung her clothes up that he had forgotten about getting her socks, he went back into the bedroom.
“Do you need to borrow some of Marissa’s socks or anything like that? She probably has a pair of slippers or something.”
Devon shook her head. “Not really, as long as you don’t mind me stepping on the bottom of your sweatpants,” she said, pointing to her feet. JC looked down and saw that his sweatpants were long enough to entirely cover her feet.
“I don’t mind at all. You ready to head back downstairs?” At her nod, JC put a hand on her lower back and ushered her from the room. He took the candle from her before she could get more melted wax dripped onto her hand and blew it out when they got out into the hallway.
They went down the stairs slowly, with Devon in front and being careful not to slip on the polished wood stairs with the sweatpants covering her feet.
“Took you long enough,” Callaway grumbled as they descended into the living room. JC gave him an odd look, wondering why the two of them always seemed to be at each other’s throats. Devon was still too shaky from being in the dark bathroom to start one of their arguments. After putting the candle in one of the candleholders on the fireplace mantle, just in case someone needed to use it to go to the bathroom later on, JC moved back to the staircase where Devon had stayed.
“All right,” Callaway said, looking somewhat disappointed that he hadn’t gotten a rise out of Devon. “Well, while you two were up there, Mendoza and I decided to go for help.”
This finally got Devon’s attention. When JC had joined her at the staircase, she inched herself closer to him until she was pressed against his side, still chilled from what had happened up stairs. Although she did have to admit that being in JC’s clothes had an oddly warming affect on her. But now she turned to Callaway. “Going for help? In a snowstorm. Now I’m sure Joey’s seen this one.”
“We don’t exactly have much choice, now do we, Devon? It’s not like the Cougar can go anywhere,” Callaway started, but was cut off by Mendoza before anything could get started.
“We have to do something, Devon. We have no way of contacting the Reno office, and anyone who comes in is a potential target of the Cougar’s. If we go out first, we have a chance of getting away undetected. The nearest neighboring estate is about three-quarters of a mile to the west. With any luck, their phones won’t be down, and we can call in reinforcements and apprehend this guy once and for all.”
“So the two of you are just going to run off to play Hero, leaving us alone here?” Devon asked, growing angry. This was the exact reason she couldn’t stand most of the agents that she came across in the Vegas office. They were all so assured of their own superiority, their own skill, their own power that they sometimes threw caution to the wind, so sure that FBI Agents, of all people, couldn’t be taken down.
“You’re hardly alone,” Callaway pointed out dryly. “You’ll have three highly-trained bodyguards here to protect you.”
“How do you think you’re even going to be able to find the neighbor’s house? I could barely find this house walking from the front gate.”
“You found it because of the lights. We’ll just head west until we see some houselights and follow those,” Mendoza intervened.
“And if their electricity is down? Then what?”
“Then we just keep walking west,” Callaway said. “We will have some flashlights, we just won’t turn them on until we’re far enough away that the Cougar won’t be able to follow us.”
“Repeat after me, BLIZZARD! You weren’t raised out here like I was, Callaway. You have no idea how easy it will be to get lost out there.”
“Oh, please, you were raised in Vegas! You have no idea either. The next house is just over the fence, so if we lose our way, we walk till we hit a fence and follow it till we see the house. You guys will have to keep candles burning in the windows in case we need to find our way back. The house only has two flashlights, which we’re taking, but plenty of candles, so you should be fine.”
“This is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard!” Devon protested again.
“Well, we don’t have too many others,” Mendoza said tiredly, shrugging into his winter jacket and slipping a hat on. Both he and Callaway already had their ski pants on, and Callaway was already to go with his jacket, hat, gloves, and scarf, holding onto both of the flashlights.
Devon could only shake her head as the two agents went out the backdoor, guessing that the Cougar was watching the front door and hoping to escape his notice.
The room was eerily silent as the guys went around, lighting candles in the window while trying to stay out of what could possibly be the Cougar’s sight.
“Why didn’t you guys say anything?” Devon asked, frustrated after all the windows had been lit and they were all back in their previous positions, even Justin. The bodyguards were still struggling to get the tree set up.
Mike looked up from his position under the tree, trying the screw the damn thing into the stand so it would be straight and less likely to fall if hit by a running three-year-old. “We’ve been living with those G-men for three days. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to change their minds when y’all were down in Vegas, but even after three days, we know that those guys are arrogantly stubborn in thinking they know what is right.”
Devon sighed, silently admitting that Mike had a very good point indeed.
The room was silent again, except for the occasional curse from the bodyguards as Tyson or Lonnie got poked in the eye by a wayward branch, and the sound of the dice rolling their way across the Monopoly board.
Leaning tiredly against JC’s shoulder, Devon realized she was very ready to get some badly needed sleep. Adrenalin rushes like the ones she’d had a couple of times already that day left the worst drained feeling.
She was almost asleep standing up, leaning against the stairway and JC, when they all heard the gunshot from outside.
Chapter 5: Connection
Chapter FourEveryone stared at each other. Though there was no sound, it seemed like the shot echoed around the room for hours.
Chris sat down on the edge of the Lazy Boy. “Do we…should we check on them?”
Mike, Tyson, and Lonnie looked at each other. An unspoken agreement was reached. “Tyson and I will go,” Mike stated. They stood up to go to the closet and get their winter gear.
Devon stepped forward, away from JC and the staircase. “Sit your asses back down! No one is going anywhere!! That’s how this all got started in the first place, because those two idiots had to go and play Hero. If they took down the Cougar, they’ll be back in a few minutes, we just have to wait!”
The people in the room stared at her in shock. Hell, she had shocked herself. But she HAD tried to stop Callaway and Mendoza from running off, they just hadn’t listened to her. Although, why should they? She was just a lowly Transferor, what did she know when compared to the Special Agents?
They all sat around for a few minutes after Devon’s outburst. Chris’ leg was tapping like he was a freaking jackrabbit. Lance alternated between pacing and rushing back to his son’s side, then getting up and pacing again. Devon rested back against the stairs again. Everyone was waiting for the door to open, for Mendoza and Callaway to come rushing in, telling them that the Cougar had been taken down.
Finally, after what had seemed like hours but was really only minutes, the back doorknob rattled. Everyone was on his or her feet, ready to celebrate or rush for cover. Going to the door, Tyson leaned against it, wanting to be heard over the wind. “Who’s there?”
“It’s me, God dammit! Open the door, NOW!” Callaway didn’t sound like he was in a celebratory mood. Tyson rushed to open the two deadbolts and turn the door lock. Callaway blew in with a swirl of snow.
“Everyone DOWN!” he ordered, dropping to the ground himself and closing the door with his foot. People stared at him in shock for half a second, and it was then that the gunshot exploded the window next to Devon and JC.
Devon screamed as JC dragged her down to the floor with him. The floor was showered with glass as the bullet embedded itself in the far wall. The other people in the room immediately dropped.
Looking around, her mouth gaping, a breeze blowing in from the now open window, the glass twinkling in the candlelight on the floor. Speaking of candlelight…the candle that had been in the window had fallen to the floor but was still lit. Devon leaned over and blew it out.
“What the HELL?” she shrieked as she and JC crawled around the couch to join the others on the floor in the area in front of the fireplace.
“Mendoza and I got separated by the storm. I had just seen him, when the Cougar came up behind me. It feels like he hit me in the back of the head with a tree branch or something. I don’t know. He jumped me and we started fighting for the gun; it went off and I had a bullet in my side. I blacked out for a few seconds, and when I came to…Mendoza was only a few feet away from me. He had been shot in the head. The Cougar got HIS gun too, his bullets, his clips. Everything.”
Covering her gasp with her hand, Devon swallowed hard. “And…and Mendoza.”
Callaway looked up. “He’s dead.”
“Oh my God, oh my God.” It looked like Marissa was about to hyperventilate. Devon could only lay there in shock. It wasn’t like this was the first time a field agent had died, or the first field agent that she knew who had died…but this…it wasn’t like she had ever been IN the field with the agent when he had been taken out.
“We need to blow out the candles in the windows. The less he can see of us inside the house the better. Mike, Tyson, and Lonnie, think you can handle it?”
The bodyguards nodded.
“Good. Remember: stay LOW!”
Nodding again, they were off, creeping across the carpet. Luckily, there were only six windows, and one of the candles was already out.
Mike was on his last window, next to the one JC and Devon had been standing by, when another bulled shattered the glass above him.
“LOW!” Callaway bellowed. Mike, covered in glass, turned slowly and glared at the G-man. As if he’d WANTED to be the target for the psycho outside. Grumbling, he threw off his sweater and made his way back.
“Now, blow out the candles upstairs. And bring some blankets back down. We need to cover up the windows so he can’t see in anymore.”
Though they didn’t look any more amenable to taking orders from the FBI agent, Mike, Tyson, and Lonnie made their careful way upstairs on the right staircase, wanting to avoid the Cougar’s line of sight.
Silence reigned as they waited for the bodyguards to come back down. Every once in a while, a blanket would fall down from above. The trio crept back down a few minutes later, Mike wearing a new sweater, ready to board up the windows.
Devon looked around, looking for…Ah! There! “Guys! Hey, big bodyguard guys!”
Mike, Tyson, and Lonnie, all in the kitchen looking for something to hold up the blankets, turned to look at her.
“You should use the cardboard from those boxes over there to board the windows; it’s less see through, and more insulating than the blankets will be, especially on the broken windows.”
Looking between each other, they nodded. Lonnie and Tyson crawled into the living room to empty the Christmas decorations and tree ornaments from the boxes, before ripping them up. Finding some duct tape in the kitchen, Mike joined them, and they started boarding up the windows. Everyone breathed easier when the windows were blocked.
They all seemed to realize at the same time that Agent Callaway had been shot and blood was pooling under his body. Devon’s eyes widened at the size of the red puddle on the hardwood floor.
Groaning as he rolled over onto his back, Callaway shrugged out of his winter jacket, trying not to jar the injury, now that the blood flow was finally starting to ebb.
Devon gasped as she saw that the side of his white shirt was almost completely soaked in his blood. Glaring at her, Callaway went back to being his nasty little self. “Want to play nurse, Dev?”
Flipping him off, Devon shook her head. “Gee, I actually think that Mike or Tyson or Lonnie would be better at first aid than I would.”
Callaway glared at her as he tried to get his shirt off, but already some of the blood had dried and was sticking to his skin. He started tugging at it, trying to rip it off. Marissa, who had stood up when they were given the all-clear signal, promptly fainted at the near-Velcro sounds of his shirt and skin. Catching her, Justin carried her to the loveseat, contemplating whether to try to wake her or let her sleep through as much of this mess as she could.
Rolling her eyes, Devon was all for his letting the princess sleep through this one. Thus far, she had proved not to have any redeeming qualities. Although…Devon looked down. She WAS extremely grateful that Marissa’s tank top could substitute for her soaked bra.
**********
The Cougar smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. It might not even have been a real smile. But it was there on his face, the position of his mouth indicating his malicious satisfaction. He took a deep breath, imagining he could smell their fear, even through the thick log walls of their safe, little cabin.
Silly people. Didn’t they know no one was safe from him tonight? Didn’t they realize? Tonight was the night. Tonight was his night.
And they were sitting ducks. They were his toys. And he’d just had a boatload of fun. He could still feel the endorphins rushing into his brain after the fight with those agents, shooting at the cabin like it was a target range, giving him a natural high like nothing else in his life. The only other times he’d even felt close to this high were the nights he’d kidnapped their precious child. The nights he’d snuck in and out without being caught. The nights the signs had been with him and he had succeeded in his mission of terror, pain, grief, worry, and anxiety.
These boys and their little entourage…it was like a drug supply right at his fingertips tonight. Whenever he wanted. Whenever he started to come back down, all he had to do was reach out. They were right there. Scared. Vulnerable.
He smiled.
Sitting ducks.
**********
“Augh! Stop that, you little shit!”
Trying to stifle her laughter, Devon watched as Mike and Tyson cleaned Callaway’s bullet wound with the alcohol from the first aid kit. They had probed it to make sure that the bullet hadn’t taken any pieces of fabric with it on its way through Callaway’s body. And they were being none too gentle with the agent who’d had his head stuck up his ass for the entire three days that they’d known him.
Making her way to Marissa and Justin’s couch, Devon leaned back against the couch, getting comfortable. There was definitely something to be said about watching your ex-boyfriend writhe in pain while being cared for by three burly bodyguards. He was just lucky that the bullet had passed through his side and that no one would have to dig the bullet out of his abdomen.
JC walked over and joined her. “If I didn’t know better, I would think that you were getting some supreme satisfaction from watching this.”
Devon smiled. “Oh, hell yes I am. Callaway’s such a jerk; anyone who can bring him off his I’m-a-Special-Agent pedestal is a friend of mine.”
“So you knew Callaway and Mendoza back in Vegas?”
Sobering a little at the mention of Mendoza, Devon nodded. “Yeah. I knew Callaway.” Shrugging, Devon decided there was no harm in telling the truth at this point. “Hell, I went out with him for awhile. But I didn’t really know Mendoza. He’s a firm believer in the tough-guy image; I don’t think anyone really knew him, even Callaway, and they’ve been partners for over three years.”
“That’d be weird,” JC said. “I can’t imagine spending that much time with someone and keeping your distance. Me and the guys, we’ve been together for almost…wow, it’s about seven years now. I can’t imagine not knowing everything about them. Sure, there are downsides to having your every secret known. I mean, they even know that…well…that I…it might sound weird, but I like to buy classic Disney paintings from its early period.”
“I know.”
JC gave her an odd look. “And I collect the Disney McDonald’s toys.”
“I know.”
“And I love to watch All in the Family.”
“I know.”
“Okay, that’s just…bizarre. This isn’t the kind of stuff we’ve exactly shared during our million and one interviews with the press.”
“I know.”
JC gave a frustrated growl. “I know! I know you know. I get the concept. And yes, that is from Disney’s Hercules. I like Disney movies.” As Devon opened her mouth, JC cut her off. “Let me guess, you know that too.”
Devon shrugged. “Yeah. I guess I did know that too.”
“How do you know all this?” JC asked, continuing in a whisper when he saw that they were attracting attention. Callaway was sitting in the Lazy Boy, a white bandage wrapped around his midsection, the guys had gone back to their Monopoly game, and after a long struggle and a lot of curses, the tree was almost up.
“Well, I did tell you guys that I had been transferring all of the notes from this case into the computer.”
“And those notes include my love of Disney?”
Another shrug. “You can’t say that FBI agents aren’t thorough. I also have all the notes from the entire case, not just Vegas.”
“And you’ve just been studying them? Or do you have a really great memory? What’s Justin’s favorite movie? I know that’s been mentioned at some point during those interviews.”
Devon didn’t really like the idea of a quiz. “I don’t know.”
“Are you just saying that because you don’t want to admit anything else, or do you really not know?”
“I really don’t know.”
“Chris’ favorite design from the FuMan line?”
“Don’t know.”
“Other possible names for Greg that Lance considered?”
“Well, one was Travis, but I don’t remember the others.”
“Joey’s next Broadway play?”
“I don’t know!”
“My favorite Disney movie?”
“Robin Hood.”
JC’s hands went up in aggravation. “So you can’t tell me Joey’s next play, but you know my favorite Disney cartoon?!”
“Ummm…yeah, that’s kind of how it goes.” Devon, realizing that she REALLY didn’t like how this conversation was going, buried her face in her hands. He was about to come to some not too cool realizations in a few seconds.
“Whhhhhy?”
Keeping her face buried, she explained, “Well, you know how a lot of little girls read all those magazine and TV interviews and get all these little girl crushes? Well, it’s kind of like that…only with FBI interviews instead of magazines.”
“Little girls read those magazines over and over again before they start memorizing stuff like you have!”
“Imagine that.”
“You’ve read them over and over again!?”
“Imagine that.”
Silence.
“JC? How mad are you?”
He looked at her. “I’m not…mad. It’s just…weird. It’s rare for me to actually spend TIME with any of those little girls that memorize stuff like that.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
Giving her a disbelieving look, he snorted his doubt.
“Well, okay…so I did read those reports a lot. But I didn’t really mean to memorize all that stuff. It just…kind of happened. I mean…there was something about you that I liked, so I remembered stuff like what your favorite cartoon was or that you liked to watch All in the Family.”
“Sooooo, you know what my favorite TV show is. What’s yours?”
Devon’s eyebrows raised in surprise. He wasn’t screaming and running for his life, away from a twenty-five year old teeny? “Friends. Me and my friend Melinia watch it every week together. It’s like a set date.”
“Melinia…this is the one that works in your office with you?”
“Yeah. We’ve been best friends since I first got hired to work with her in the Transfers office, three years ago.”
“And you’re missing out on Friends tonight to be here.”
“No worries. It’s a rerun. And I’m pretty sure Melinia understands.”
“What if you had a date on a Thursday night?”
Devon turned a little towards him, as they both leaned back against the couch, and they shared THAT look. The kind that means something more is being asked than what is really being said. “I don’t do dates on Thursday. Neither does Melinia…we agreed on it a LONG time ago. What about you and the guys? Do you guys do something together that can be interrupted by no one or no thing?”
“Unless you count one of our tours, or some legally binding contract…not really. We’re not even that close anymore, since this past summer. Lance went off to Russia with Greg and they just got back. Justin has his solo thing going and goes to most shows and interviews and everything by himself. Joey just finished doing Rent, although him and Justin did get together a lot since they both pretty much lived in New York. And Chris…well, he’s off running his own business. The one time we got together in the past six or seven months was to do a benefit concert in October, the night Greg was taken again.”
“What about you? Certainly you must be doing something while *NSYNC takes their break?”
JC shrugged. “I’m not sure what I’m doing. Sometimes I want to release a solo album, and then I spend all my energy and effort working towards that goal. And at other times…I guess I just want to relax. It’s been a LONG time since I had a break from work, and I kind of want to take advantage of it. But surely you know all this, it must have been in the file.”
“JC, I admit, I know a lot of facts about you. I know that you’re a scheduled person, I know that you hate to wake up in the mornings, I know that you have some…amazing piano talent…and that you took Greg to Disney World as soon as Lance and the kid returned from Russia. But I don’t know anything about how you feel when you play the piano. Or how happy or sad or jealous you were when you took Greg to the park. Everything I know is from a factual perspective, not from yours.”
“How did you know I was jealous of Lance that day I took Greg to the park? That was just a couple of weeks ago.”
Devon looked down at her feet…covered in JC’s sweat pants. “Wild guess, based on what I DO know about you. That’s something that I never understood from reading those files: why you haven’t gotten married yet. Out of all the guys, you’re the one who seems the most likely to have settled down with one girl already. Just reading about how much you worry about Greg…surely you want kids yourself one day.”
“Yeah. Of course I do,” JC agreed, nodding. Somehow, his arm had gone around her shoulders while they’d been talking. Maybe because he was a whole hell of a lot colder without his sweater. Maybe because he felt more comfortable around Devon than he’d felt around anyone in a longer time than he could remember. He didn’t know what it was, only that it felt right, his arm around her shoulders, her head resting against him. “You got that part of your assessment correct. But I don’t want a family with just anyone. I want to make sure that I’m doing the right thing when I finally do it…I mean, how many families end up as broken families these days?”
“You’ve been watching Lilo & Stitch,” Devon decided, smiling.
Grinning, JC nodded again. “Yup. Turns out Greg has a thing for Hawaiian girls. Who knew? But yeah, I can’t take failure in anything I do, especially not my family. Did you know that my grandparents have been married for fifty-some years?”
Devon shook her head against his shoulder. “That was one factoid not included.”
“Well they have been. And you should see them. They’re as disgustingly happy now as they have ever been. It’s almost weird to watch them; I mean, they’re my grandparents! And they act like teenagers around each other. They still go out on dates, and go dancing, and he takes her to the movies. They’re crazy, but that’s what I want.”
“I think that sounds rather nice. I was raised by my grandma, but she doesn’t sound anything like your grandparents. I used to think she was like a praying mantis, and had eaten my grandpa after they finished having sex.”
“Yeah, nice images there,” JC said, making a face.
“You know what I mean! I don’t think he was ever around. But my mom, I think she wanted what you want. But she was desperate for it. She met my father while waiting tables at one of the Vegas Casinos. He was some high roller from Europe, and I think she actually thought he would take her away, and they would live in a castle, happily ever after. It didn’t work out that way of course; like my grandma always said, there are no such things as happy endings. And my mom couldn’t handle that, losing her happy ending, trying to raise a child alone.”
“So you don’t believe in happy endings?”
Devon looked around the living room scene. Not too many happy endings here, that was for damn sure. And she had yet to find hers. Turning back to JC, she shook her head. “Nope.”
“That’s too bad. Because they are out there. I mean, look at my grandparents; they’re still delirious, half-a-century later.”
“Yeah. I guess that is a happily ever after story. I used to wish for those when I was a little kid. Beg my grandmother to tell me bedtime stories that were fairy tales and not horror tales. But I never got them. You were lucky to grow up with that.”
JC squeezed her shoulder. “Yeah. I was. But just you wait. One day, you’ll find your happily ever after.”
Giving him the “whatever” look, Devon shrugged as she settled closer to JC’s warmth. Damn, but the room was getting colder. “I guess I will. Well, technically, I hope I will. But hopes are dangerous, because I hate disappointments.”
“Who doesn’t? But if you don’t take the risk…”
“I know, I know. I’ll end up just like my grandma, old and alone, the Las Vegas witch.”
“The Las Vegas witch?”
“Yup. Everyone in my neighborhood knew who she was. You ever seen Practical Magic with Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock? Well, I grew up like that, with desperate people always showing up at our backdoor, begging for spells and such.”
“Which you don’t believe in.”
Devon looked up at him oddly. “No. No, I don’t believe in all that stuff. But how did you know?”
“For one, your tone when you talk about these ‘desperate’ people. And for another, well, you joined the FBI…there’s nothing too supernatural about the FBI.”
“Yeah…you’re right about that.” Devon looked down at JC’s other hand, wondering what he would do if she just grabbed it, pinned both his hands above his head, and had her wicked way with him. The images alone were enough to…she licked her lips.
“What are you thinking?” JC asked, noticing the slightly mischievous half-smile.
“Uhhh…” Devon stalled, still looking at his arm. She didn’t think he’d appreciate being taken down and roughed up, even in her fantasies; JC looked like a guy who would want to be in charge of…well, just about everything. Grabbing the first innocent thought that came to her mind, she blurted out, “That you’re probably really cold. You have goose bumps on your arm.”
JC shrugged. “I guess I do. It seems like it’s been getting colder in here.”
They looked up at the others in the living room. Mike, Tyson, and Lonnie were all rolled up in the blankets from upstairs and appeared to be dozing off. Justin had fallen asleep buried under some covers with Marissa on the loveseat. Lance was still sitting next to his son, and appeared to be deep in thought. Either that, or fighting to stay awake. Chris and Joey had fallen asleep in front of the fire, and Callaway was as alert as ever in his Lazy Boy.
Standing up slowly, still wary of wayward bullets, JC grabbed a blanket and tossed it over to Devon. Noticing that the fire was dying down, which had brought on his chills in the first place, he moved towards the fireplace, reaching automatically towards the wood pile they kept stacked up to the side, before he noticed that there was no firewood there.
Looking around, he noticed Lance shaking his head at him. “What? What does the head shake mean? Where’s the firewood?”
Lance pointed his deep-in-thought finger steeple towards the back door. “Out there.”
Chapter 6: Dawn
Chapter Five“Out there?”
Lance nodded. “As in not in here.”
“And I take it that no one is exactly volunteering to go out and get some more firewood?”
“Well, hey, if you have a death wish…” Callaway said from his chair, resituating himself and getting more comfortable. He pulled his blanket tighter around him.
JC looked at the dying fire and then longingly towards the back door. Maybe if he ran really fast…maybe the Cougar had fallen asleep, being outside in the middle of a blizzard and had died of hypothermia…maybe…
“Sit down, JC,” Lance ordered. No matter how cold it got inside, no one was going outside to try to get more wood and be gunned down by the Cougar. No way, no how.
Grumbling, JC grabbed a couple of blankets and sat back down next to Devon, who had been watching the exchange with interest. He tried handing her a blanket of her own, but she shook her head.
“Oh, hell no. I’m from Vegas; do you know how easily I get cold? And I’ve read enough books to know that body heat is best. You are not sticking me in a blanket all by myself.”
JC gave her a small, half-smile. She was so darn cute when she got sassy and bossy. Normally, he didn’t like bossy girls, but since Devon WAS right most of the time she was ordering people around, this was one case where he could overlook that quality.
One case? he wondered as he wrapped the two blankets around the both of them. Well, yeah, he had only known her for a few hours, but she was definitely one of the more…intriguing girls he had ever spent time with. And with her, he had skipped all the small talk and some how delved deeper into both of their personalities. He supposed that might have something to do with the slightly desperate circumstance they found themselves in.
“What are you thinking?” Devon asked as she snuggled even closer to him. JC guessed that even in HIS sweater she was still cold, having lived in the desert for most of her life.
“Just wondering what it might have been like had we met under different circumstances.”
Devon looked thoughtful at the idea.
“Oh, please, spare me!” Callaway muttered from his Lazy-Boy.
“Shut it!” Devon said glaring at him.
“I would be happier if you two were the ones to go silent. I’ve had to sit here for the past couple of hours watching you two just…TALK…and get all…mushy,” Callaway complained.
“And you think that’s so bad?” Devon argued. “You think I felt any less sick to my stomach watching you hit on Melinia a week after we broke up? Ewwww. You could have at LEAST gotten some new lines so I didn’t have to listen to recycled material.”
Callaway smirked. “What can I say? Melinia was the only girl left in the Vegas office I had yet to screw.”
“You’re SO disgusting,” Devon said, her voice going lower when she noticed that Joey and Mike both looked to be on the verge of waking up. “At least Melinia was smart enough not to fall for all that crap. So your perfect record was broken.”
JC watched them arguing, surprised at the past that they DID have. He had thought it was just a regular break up, but apparently not. He waited for Callaway’s retort, thinking that if the Agent hadn’t been so pale from blood loss and pain, he might have gone as red as Devon had when they started sharing their private business.
“Do you ever wonder, Devon, what would have happened had I chosen to go after Melinia first? I mean, you two did show up at the office around the same time…I really don’t think you would have been smart enough to…resist me, even AFTER I had finished with Melinia.”
JC saw Devon’s eyes go wide, before they narrowed dangerously. He was suddenly desperately wishing the stick-up-his-ass Mendoza was still around, playing referee. It didn’t seem like in the three years since they had broken up that their arguments had ever gotten this far.
“Here’s something that you wouldn’t understand, Callaway. It’s called friendship. Even if you had gone out with Melinia first, she would have told me what a slime ball you were, the same way that I had warned her.”
“Will you two knock it off? Some of us are trying to SLEEP through this mess!” Mike growled from underneath his blanket. JC was supremely glad that the gruff, commanding bodyguard had woken up and put an end to their arguing.
Devon looked surprised for a moment, then extremely embarrassed, finally realizing just how public their argument had become. JC could imagine how embarrassed she felt; thus far, he had gotten the idea that she was a very private person, for the most part.
“I can’t believe I just…said all that…in front of, like, seven perfect strangers. I am SO sorry,” Devon whispered, leaning even closer to JC.
He couldn’t say that he exactly minded the extra closeness. “That’s alright. It seemed like you two needed to say all that, be done with it. I’m guessing that Mendoza was always around to break the two of you up?”
“Yeah. We run into each other every once in awhile, since we DO work in the same building…but it doesn’t happen too often. So wait, you were saying…”
“I was saying…?”
“You know, about meeting under different circumstances…” Devon said suggestively. She looked ready to beg for JC to continue with his thought, and JC finally took pity on her.
“I was saying that I had been wondering””
“Dude, why is it so cold in here?” Joey grumbled as he sat up. He looked around grumpily before grabbing one of the nearby unused blankets. He lifted his head up to look at the fire. “Lance, man, put on some more firewood.”
“Hey, Joey, we were waiting for you to wake up so you could add the wood,” JC called out quietly, grinning. Joey gave him a dirty look before getting up to put more wood in. Realizing the pile was empty, he turned back to JC.
“Dude, that’s mean. Lemme guess, no more firewood inside the house?”
“Right.”
“So we have no other way to keep warm? What kind of modern cabin did you score for us, C?”
“Hey, if I recall, you all thought the whole ‘rustic’ thing was going to be cool for this MTV Christmas special,” JC defended himself.
“Aww, man!” Joey said, wrapping one of the blankets around him as he laid back down. “This never happened on Scooby-Doo!”
“Welcome to reality,” Lance said dryly.
JC smiled. “Hey,” he said to Devon. “Do you think Kevin Williamson would be willing to buy this script?”
“Yeah, right,” Joey piped up. “I already told you guys: I’ve seen this movie before!”
JC rolled his eyes as he got more comfortable, leaning against the front of the couch and wrapping the blanket tighter around Devon and himself. He and Joey made eye contact as Joey looked from JC to Devon.
“Dude, I need to get me one of those,” Joey complained under his breath, pulling his blanket tighter around himself. JC made a face at him, but ignored Joey. Looking around the room, he watched Lance grab a blanket and lay down with his son on the couch. Mike would move around every once in awhile, obviously unable to sleep yet. Callaway appeared to be dozing, but JC would bet against that being an actuality. Joey was staring off into the fire, and JC didn’t even want to know what he was daydreaming about.
“Okay, get back to what you were saying!” Devon instructed in an impatient whisper, elbowing JC in the side at the same time.
Giving her a slight elbow back, JC finally continued. “Just thinking about what it would have been like if we had met under different circumstances.”
“And?”
“And what?” JC asked in a teasing voice.
Devon elbowed him again in frustration. “And what do you think would have happened?”
“I don’t know; I think it would depend on WHERE we had met.”
“Okay, say we had met in the middle of a Las Vegas casino, what do you think would have happened?”
JC thought about it for a moment. “I would have asked you out to dinner. Or asked you to join me at one of the card tables, because you would no doubt bring me some good luck.”
“You would have asked me out to dinner? Even if we had never met before or even talked before?”
“I’d like to think so. I don’t want to think that I would have passed up a chance to get to know you.”
“But if we’d never me before, why would you want to get to know me?”
“Because I like your freckles,” JC said, adding a nod for confirmation. And he really did. They added something to her face, making her seem more innocent, more honest, in the ugly world he and the rest of the guys had been living in since the first February kidnapping. A world where they generally shut out strangers because they had no idea who the Cougar might be.
“My freckles? My freckles?!” she repeated incredulously. “Do you know how long I’ve been struggling to hide these with make-up?” she asked, pointing to the freckles that spread across her cheeks and on the bridge of her nose.
He leaned down and placed an innocent kiss on the feature in question. “Don’t hide them. They’re cute.”
“Great. Twenty-five and cute.”
“Okay, now it’s your turn. If we had met…in…D.C. Say you were there for some FBI training or a conference or something, and we ran into each other on the street. Or in a store. What do you think would have happened?”
“Well, unlike YOU,” Devon began, and JC could tell she just couldn’t help herself in making a dig at him. “I would have had to actually hear you talk, or have talked with you before I asked you out to dinner, or to go for a drink.”
“You’re so sure about that?”
“Yes. Because what first drew me to the reports, besides the feeling that there was something there that I should have been figuring out, was the argument you had with the Vegas office when our office was first contacted about you being in our territory. When you refused to let them decrease the number of agents or bodyguards on duty.”
“That? That argument was the first thing you noticed? Of all things, why that?” JC was confused. He had behaved like a belligerent jackass during that first interview and he knew it. Although, hindsight HAD proved him to be correct.
“Because no matter how much debate went on about the security detail, you didn’t back down. You stuck with what you knew or felt. I liked that. A lot. In fact, that was what caused me so much…confusion about those case files.”
“Confusion? About what?” JC asked. He could almost feel Devon distancing herself, like she had when she’d first confessed to knowing all this stuff about him. He tightened his arm around her, just in case she decided on some physical distance, which he didn’t feel all too agreeable about at the moment.
“I don’t know. It was bugging me, because I didn’t know…I wasn’t sure if it was even possible to fall for someone like I did for you, just from reading their FBI files. It was driving me crazy, before I came up here.”
“And now that you’re here?”
“You were the only one that noticed that I was cold when I first showed up. I decided then that maybe it was entirely possible to get to know a person, and fall for them, without ever meeting them, with only their case files to go by.”
JC felt her almost petting the sweater she was still wearing. He was glad she was so attached to it. Although he had to admit, it was kind of odd to see a girl dressed in his clothes from head to foot, without a sexual explanation being behind it. And though he was not exactly used to it, he also had to admit, he liked seeing Devon in his clothes. It was definitely something he COULD get used to.
“So…after we had met, in D.C. or Vegas,” Devon continued. “Then what? One dinner? Then I would go back to Vegas, and you would go back to…everywhere else in the world, I guess. Interesting, how circumstances can decide everything.”
JC could tell there had been an undertone to what Devon had been saying. That in other circumstances, nothing would have worked out between them. That even in these circumstances, she was going back to Vegas, and he was going back to D.C. Or Orlando. Or wherever his music took him. “I don’t know. That would be another reason I’m not in a near-marriage relationship, or even in a serious one. It’s hard to make long distance relationships work, if both people aren’t…as willing to make it work.”
“And you have yet to find someone willing to make it work? I find that hard to believe…I mean, you’re JC Chasez, you’re hot, talented, caring, sure of yourself, you actually WANT a family, you’re sexy as all hell…what more could most girls ask for?”
“Yeah, that attracts a girl into a long distance relationship for all of a few weeks, until she gets bored, because she never actually wanted to make a go at it in the first place. I’m a novelty, Devon. They’re excited by the prospect of dating me, until it becomes a reality, and then they’re never willing to make it work.”
“And you are?”
Damn, was she a mind reader or something? “Alright, I admit. Lately, I’ve given up on even TRYING to find someone who would want to make it work.”
“So if we had met in Vegas?”
“We would have had dinner, and I would have walked away. Like I said, I get tired of trying. We, me and the guys, talk about it sometimes, the effort of making a long distance relationship work. They’ve all had a serious relationship or two, found someone special enough, who loves THEM as themselves enough, to make it work.”
“But you haven’t.”
“Not really, no. But I will. I just…it just takes so much effort, and I want to make sure I’m putting forth the effort with the right person, with someone who’ll meet me halfway.”
They were silent for awhile. Well, nothing like talking about a serious relationship to kill a conversation, JC mused. He wondered what they could possibly talk about now. Thus far, they had managed to have so many serious conversations, talked about serious stuff. He kind of wondered what she really WOULD have been like out on a date, whether she was really charming and witty under normal circumstances, or whether she was morbid and depressing. What kind of a sense of humor did she have, or what kind of restaurant would they have been eating at…
“So, if we’d met in D.C., where would we be eating dinner?”
“What?”
“Come on, play along. Where would we be going on a date, what would we be doing tonight?”
“Tonight? We would have been watching Friends, while I got on the phone with Melinia during every commercial so we could gab about the episode.”
JC rolled his eyes. “Okay, okay. What if it was a Friday night? C’mon, Dev, I just want to figure out what kind of food you like, what you would have ordered, stuff like that.”
“Oh,” Devon said, now that the question didn’t seem so out of the blue. “Well, I probably would have taken you out for…I don’t know.”
Giving her a look, JC gave her a nudge with his elbow. “I can tell that you had the answer right there, so spill. Where would we have gone for dinner?”
“Well, would I be wanting to impress you or would we be out on a comfortable date?”
“That’s for you to decide,” JC said cryptically, wondering which she would choose. Impressing him, or being comfortable with what they were doing. That kind of a decision usually set the tone for the dates he had been on before, with girls who knew him as the *NSYNC member, JC.
“Alright then. I would suggest going to Subway.”
JC stared at her for a moment. He had thought she meant comfortable as in a small, lesser known restaurant, in the middle of some chic area of D.C. He had yet to have a date take him or be taken to a place like Subway.
“What?!” she asked defensively when he still hadn’t said anything after a few minutes. “You said I could choose whether or not I wanted to be comfortable or if I wanted to impress you. Subway’s my favorite place to eat. It would have been a quick, comfortable, easy-atmosphere date. If we were in Vegas, I would have suggested getting ice cream and walking down the strip after we finished our sandwiches. But I can’t think of any exciting places to go in D.C. while eating ice cream in December.”
“Walking down the strip, eating ice cream. I kind of like that idea,” JC said. Once the idea had been planted in his head, he had to admit, it had some definite possibilities. And just the idea of her date carried a million and one suggestions about what she was like as a normal person, under normal circumstances, with someone she regarded as a normal guy. Wait a minute… “Have you done this with Callaway or someone before?”
“With him?” she asked, trying to contain her laughter, her words muffled by the hand she had thrown over her mouth. “You’ve got to be kidding me! He always insisted on fancy-pants places; it’s all part of his wine-and-dine routine. And as for other guys, no, I’ve never done that, because I’ve never been comfortable enough to do something so casual.”
“But with me you would have been?” he asked disbelievingly. “Why?”
“Why? Hmmm…I guess it would be your hair.”
“My hair?!”
“Hey, if you can answer my ‘why?’ with my freckles being the reason, why can’t I say your hair? It has this look to it, even though I imagine it must be high maintenance in reality, like you just rolled out of bed, or as though you run your fingers through it when you get stressed or worried or just as a habit. As though you don’t particularly care what it’s doing or what it looks like. It looks casual enough for my dream date.”
“So you would have been comfortable enough with me to go to Subway, because of my hair.”
“I’d like to think so. But we’ll never know will we?” she asked, a touch of regret in her voice. He wondered what could cause her to pull away from their daydream date like she just had.
But she appeared to be making an effort to brighten up, because she then turned to him, and asked the same question. “Where would we have gone to dinner?”
He smiled. Maybe she wouldn’t be such a bad date in real life, after all. Maybe she wouldn’t be so serious under normal circumstances. “All right, if my hair makes you relaxed enough for that, I have to say that your freckles would have encouraged me to ask you to dinner in the hotel or casino restaurant. That is, if we had met in a Vegas casino.”
“The restaurant at the casino…imaginative.” She looked deep in thought as she contemplated the possibility.
“Yes. For one thing, I’m not as shallow as I might have appeared, asking you out because I liked your freckles, or because you’re hot. I would have wanted to talk to you, the sooner the better. And the casino restaurant would be convenient, quick, and likely a place where a celebrity wouldn’t have attracted as much attention.”
“Quick and convenient, huh?”
“Yup. Because if you had turned out to be an airhead, or a self-centered celebrity attachee, then it could be quick and convenient to excuse myself,” he teased.
“And leave me at the table alone to foot the bill because you ordered before you realized I was an idiot?”
Trying not to smile, he shook his head in mock outrage. “Of course not. In all likelihood, we would be at the casino in the hotel I was staying in, and I would have had them charge it to my room. You would have gotten a few minutes with your celebrity date, a free meal, and maybe even a picture in the tabloids.”
“Ooh, what more could a girl want?” Devon asked wryly.
And so their dream date conversation and their more casual talk went, for hours into the morning. It seemed to JC that they talked about everything. It was weird, how easy it was to talk to Devon, and how easy it was to listen to what she had to say. They talked about their childhoods, Devon’s growing up with her grandmother, her aversion to guns after her mother’s shooting suicide, her odd attentiveness to the moon phases, college on the east coast, and the following FBI training. And even though Devon already knew all about him, she said that she still wanted to hear it from him, and not through an Agent’s eyes or ears. How he had gotten the scar underneath his chin, from falling out of a tree he and a friend had been climbing, how he had originally gotten into show business, onto the MMC, his move to Orlando, his years with the group, his embarrassing stories about each one of the guys, even himself, what it was like to live on a bus, what he did during his vacation time.
By the time morning rolled around, it seemed to JC that he had never known anyone as well as he knew Devon, or she knew him. He wondered if there was anything that they HADN’T talked about. Doubtful.
JC cracked his neck as he checked his watch. Wow, it was already 7:30 in the morning. They had made it through the night. Devon got up, stretched and went to the back door, cracking it open and peeking outside.
“Damn, the storm’s still going. So how long do you think it will take for the FBI to plow the roads and get their sorry government butts up here after it stops?” Devon asked, turning and making her way over the still sleeping bodies back to JC.
Callaway groaned from his chair. “You two are still up? Jesus. And to answer your question, Devon, they will get their… ‘sorry’ butts up here as soon as they can. Might take them half an hour after the storm stops for them to follow behind the plow.”
“And they couldn’t step it up any?” JC asked as he opened the blanket to let Devon back in. The room had grown frigid over the hours without the fireplace going. She shivered as she got comfortable in the blankets again. Comfortable in the blankets…somehow, that had always carried a different connotation for him. But with Devon, this new implication wasn’t so bad. The same as seeing her in his clothes. Something that he could get used to.
“That IS stepping it up. They have to know that something is wrong by now; neither Mendoza nor I have checked in all night.”
“So we still just sit around and wait,” Devon finished with a great big sigh.
“And hope we don’t hear from the Cougar again before they get here,” JC said, as they both got comfortable again, still waiting. He kind of thought they were like big red targets in their not-quite-a-fortress cabin. Although, he was glad that these targets could at least defend themselves, thanks to Callaway’s ankle holster gun, that he was now pulling out.
“What are you doing?” JC asked, confused. Why was he pulling out his gun NOW, hours after the Cougar had been shooting through the windows?
Callaway took his time answering, as he checked to make sure the gun was loaded and that he had an extra clip in his belt. “I’m just thinking that with the sun coming up, that…blood moon going away, and the storm soon to be stopping, the Cougar’s got to know that reinforcements are coming in. And since he’s off his perfect record and agenda, thanks to Devon’s warning, I just want to be prepared for any…desperate measures that he might come up with.”
Chapter 7: Normal
Chapter SixAn hour after Mendoza had pulled out his gun, there was still no sign of the Cougar, although the luxury cabin was starting to come alive again.
A small face peered over the side of the couch at JC and Devon, a small chubby hand accompanying it. Little Greg Bass rubbed his eyes and yawned before waving. “Hi, Uncle C. Who’s that?”
Devon waved back at the kid. “Hey, Greg. I’m Devon. A friend.”
The little boy nodded. “Okay.” He sat up and started shaking Lance. “Dad, Dad. Get up. We decorate tree, ‘member? You promised!”
Lance groaned as he stretched, rolled over, and fell off the couch. “Oof. I didn’t promise you anything about a tree, Greg,” he said, yawning.
Greg started jumping up and down on the rest of the recently vacated couch. “Uncle Chris did.” He took a flying leap off the couch and landed next to Chris, quickly losing his balance and toppling over onto his uncle’s stomach. “Chris, time for tree!”
Chris muttered something under his breath before dragging his blanket over his face. “When we all wake up. Do I look like I’m awake?”
Greg pulled the blanket back down and lifted his uncle’s eyelids. “Uh-huh.”
Laughing, Devon turned to JC. “Does he always wake up this hyper?”
JC nodded. “That’s how we know he’s Lance’s son. He has no problems with getting up in the morning.”
Soon Greg had woken everyone in the room up, except Marissa, whom the little boy wouldn’t go near. But he had walked over and tugged on Justin’s arm until he, like Lance, fell off the couch and woke up. Lance was always two steps ahead of his son, putting the candles out of the little boy’s reach, making sure he had on at least two layers of clothing, keeping Monopoly pieces away from the kid’s hands and mouth. All of the guys glared at Callaway when he refused to put his loaded gun out of the toddler’s reach, keeping it in plain sight.
Devon supposed she couldn’t really blame him. This was his high profile dream case and with Mendoza dead, he was carrying it alone. It was his time to shine, the only problem being that the assailant was still deadly and still out there.
Watching everyone through tired eyes, Devon couldn’t believe that she had stayed up all night, talking with JC. Good Lord, she was tired now. She tried to keep her eyes from drifting closed as she leaned her head against JC’s shoulder, but the effort was almost too much for her. JC, finally seeing her tired state, eased himself away from her, stood up, and held out a hand to her.
Although she glared at him for not letting her just fall to the floor and sleep, she accepted his help and stood up.
“So, feel like making some hot chocolate?” JC asked, as he held her hand and led her toward the kitchen.
Devon glared at him. “Hot chocolate? Thanks, I’ll take some coffee.”
JC gave her a cheeky smile. “All out. One of the replacements was supposed to bring it up this morning, but it looks like it still might be awhile before it gets here.”
Groaning, Devon agreed to the offer of hot chocolate as she filled two small tea kettles with water and lit the propane stove. JC grabbed a box of hot chocolate and a bag of tiny marshmallows from one of the kitchen cabinets. After Devon had hopped up onto the counter to keep her near-bare feet off the cold tiles of the kitchen floor, she realized JC needed to get into the cupboard behind her to pull out the mugs for the drinks.
Eyebrows raised, she waited to see what JC would do if she didn’t move out of his way, a million and one sexy scenarios running through her head. Oh yeah, adrenaline and exhaustion were wreaking havoc on her sense of judgment, if she was contemplating sexy situations with JC in the kitchen while ten people ran around in the living room ten feet away and a killer ran around outside, God only knew how far away.
JC cocked his head as he looked at her, contemplating the cupboard behind her. Oh God, had she really just thought cocked, head, and JC all in the same sentence? Where the hell had the logical, serious Devon gone in the last five minutes?
Obviously, completely crazy, she realized as she watched JC inching closer to her, and still didn’t move out of his way.
Closer…closer…until he was comfortably between her thighs, his hand running up the side of her leg, towards her hip. She wondered if he would really pull her closer or if this was a teasing game, where he would disinterestedly reach for the coffee mugs just when she thought he would grab her.
And unfortunately, it was not for her to find out, she realized, as a tiny toddler ran into the kitchen, jumped onto JC’s leg and started pulling on his pants.
JC quickly took a step back, leaving an almost respectable distance between him and Devon, then looked down at the kid.
“Joey said come get hot chocolate. Is it ready yet?” The kid started hopping up and down in place, anxiously waiting for his hot chocolate and marshmallows.
JC and Devon both looked into the living room, where Joey gave them an innocent, yet evil, wave.
“Yeah, sure Greg. Devon was just helping me get out the cups for everyone. You go wait in the living room with your dad and I’ll bring it out to you. Get started on the tree!” he called out as the kid made a beeline back to his dad and uncles in the living room.
“Great…I bet THAT never happened in one of Joey’s movies. Somehow, the horror films I remember watching always have an uninterrupted sexy scene,” Devon complained.
JC grinned. “I guess ours is just yet to come.”
Giving him a teasing grin, Devon raised one eyebrow. “Is that a promise?”
JC nodded as he looked her up and down. “Indeed it is.”
“I’m gonna hold you to it,” Devon warned, as she reached behind her, opened the cupboard and started passing mugs onto to JC, who placed them between the stove and the hot chocolate supplies.
She sat on the counter until it was time to move the hot chocolate from near the stove to the counter separating the kitchen and the living room.
As JC led her back into the living room, Devon stopped suddenly. Watching the scene in front of her, she didn’t even notice her cold feet, glued to the kitchen floor. The guys, Greg, the bodyguards…they were all so…happy.
Greg had insisted on being lifted onto Tyson’s shoulders, to see if he could be taller than the tree (which he wasn’t). Justin had woken Marissa himself, and they sat on their same loveseat, huddled together to ward off the chill of the early morning, both smiling the private smile of two people still in the happy stage of cupid’s arrow. Lance and Joey sat on the living room floor, in front of the empty fireplace, doing their best to untangle the many strings of Christmas tree lights that had been provided for them. Mike and Lonnie were arguing over whether the angel or the star should go on top of the tree. And Chris was trying to convince Tyson to let HIM up onto the bodyguard’s shoulders to see if he was any taller than the tree.
So this was what Christmas looked like in normal households…
Had Devon been an uninformed outsider, she would have assumed that these were people with not a care in the world except for making sure that their Christmas tree looked perfect. Nobody seemed to notice that they could almost see their breath inside the cabin. Or that their only sources of light were the candles spread about the room. And if she hadn’t seen Lance dart a look towards the back door every once in awhile, it would have seemed like no one in the room was worried about the psycho stalker-killer on the loose outside their seemingly safe haven.
Well, except for Callaway, she thought, as the Agent still sat in his chair, in watchdog position. Mike had changed his bandage right before Greg had woken up (and woken everyone else up), so Devon knew that he was still losing large amounts of blood, though one would never have been able to tell; the Agent looked as alert and healthy as ever.
“Hey, Dev, you okay?”
Snapped back into reality, Devon looked up at JC and smiled. “Of course. I was just…thinking that this was the way Christmas was supposed to be.” Since she had already told JC that her grandmother hadn’t been into Christmas, and that the only thing Devon and Melinia did every year was to eat at a fancy place and exchange a present on Christmas day before they went back to her apartment to watch whatever marathon was on one of the cable channels, he understood and didn’t question it or offer weak platitudes that were supposed to make her feel less of a loss.
Instead he grabbed her hand with one of his own, grabbed two mugs of hot chocolate with the other, and tugged her the rest of the way into the living room, sitting on the large couch with her.
“Lance, toss me a tangle!” Growling and frustrated, Lance threw part of the mess that he and Joey already had separated at JC. “Here you go,” he told her with a smile as he passed the jumbled lights onto her lap.
She looked at them in consternation. Just how in the hell did one go about untangling these things, anyway?
**********
The Cougar watched them through a crack between the window frame and the cardboard they had put up to keep him out. Yeah, right. As if they were so much smarter than he was. He was the Cougar for crying out loud, the one they had feared for almost a year now. And they thought a little piece of cardboard would be able to stop him?
He knew their every move, their every emotion. When Lance smiled as his son put the angel on top of the tree, the Cougar grimaced in disgust.
And pain. He longed for those days, for days when he’d had what they had.
Well, it didn’t matter. Because of them, he had lost what he had loved most in the world. Now it was their turn to suffer. He had waited all night…After all, where was the fun if one couldn’t see them suffer? No, this had been the best way, to wait until they had reached the levels of supreme happiness again. To wait until they thought he wouldn’t possibly have time to attack before the Calvary arrived. To wait until the exact moment that they thought they were safe. Then it would be time to strike.
**********
Devon put the tinsel on the tree like it was real silver, JC noticed, watching her hang the sparkly decoration with care. As though it were the most important job in the world, she was putting the finishing touch on the tree, working with Greg to finish it off. While Devon carefully hung a single piece at a time, Greg threw globs of the clingy stuff at the tree, hoping it would land someplace and stay stuck. Every once in awhile, Devon would inconspicuously follow behind him, unclumping the silver mess.
“Seven swans a swimming, six geese a laying, five golden riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiings! Four calling birds, three French hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree!” Joey sang. Without electricity, having no CD player to play their Christmas CDs, he and Chris were alternating verses on different Christmas carols.
“On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,” Chris continued the tune. “Eight…ducks in a row, seven-”
Lance gave him a disbelieving look as he handed Greg small handfuls of tinsel. “Eight ducks in a row, Chris?”
Shrugging, Chris nodded enthusiastically. “I don’t remember the other verses, and ducks fit with geese and swans. “Eight ducks in a row, seven swans a swimming, six geese a laying, five golden riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiings!” On each verse, they tried to outdo the other on holding the last note of the “rings” line. JC cringed and waited for him to continue. “Four calling birds, three French hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree.”
Joey’s turn. “On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, nine Broadway dancers…”
Yeah, they were alternating verses…of course, it would have been better had they actually known the REAL verses. As it was, it seemed to JC that he had heard every parody of every Christmas song thus far. Heck, they could probably sell their verses to the Bob Rivers Comedy group…
“Uncle C, Uncle C, I like this one!” Greg was tugging on his pants leg again, holding up a Snoopy ornament for JC. “Hang it high!”
“You sure you don’t want me to lift you up there to hang it?” JC asked, trying to hand it back to the kid.
Greg shook his head. “Nope. I have tinsel. Hang it there!”
JC looked at the spot of the tree in question, right above Devon’s head. “Okay, kiddo.” Standing behind Devon as she carefully separated strands of tinsel and laid them across the pine branches, he stretched on his toes to reach the spot Greg had pointed to.
“Uncle C, Uncle C, look up!” Greg called out gleefully.
JC glanced skyward and saw the mistletoe hanging above him and Devon. Glancing suspiciously at the kid, he then turned to Joey, and found him smiling gleefully. He rolled his eyes at Joey’s oh-so-subtle machinations.
Slowly putting his hands on Devon’s hips, he leaned into her, whispering into her ear. “Well, we seem to have been maneuvered towards the mistletoe.”
Devon whirled around, surprised to find him behind her; she had been so intent on draping the tinsel, she hadn’t even noticed him coming up behind her. “Hi. Now what was this about mistletoe?”
Greg answered her question. “You’re under the mistletoe!”
Raising her eyebrows, she looked from Greg to JC. “He knows what mistletoe is?”
JC blushed. “Ah…Justin’s been dragging Marissa under it every chance he gets, so we kind of explained it to Greg.”
“Hmm…Well, we wouldn’t want to make liars out of you and the guys, now would we?” she asked as her arms went around his neck. Oh, the wonders of mixing adrenaline and exhaustion…leading to being uninhibited in situations like this…She pulled his head down, slowly, gently.
Finally! Good Lord, but the man had the sexiest mouth she’d ever seen, and now, she was finally getting to taste it…
Okay…well, maybe not quite the way she wanted, Devon realized as she remembered the three-year-old that they had for an audience. She pulled back after he’d placed a beginning, gentle first kiss on her mouth, and spared the kid a glance. He was watching them like they were the best entertainment he’d had in a long time. He clapped when JC put a little distance between them.
Great. She had a three-year-old cheering for her and JC’s kiss. She felt like a Disney cartoon character.
“Hey, guys, the snow’s starting to slow down!” Joey called out from the back door, which he had cracked open and looked out to see the snow drifting down, a lot lighter than the wind-driven blizzard it had been all night.
JC and Devon looked at each other. It looked like the night was almost up. Although the sun had begun to rise, it failed to shed much light in the cloud-covered area. Devon glanced at her watch to see if they really had made it through the night.
Almost ten o’clock in the morning. Wow. The night was indeed over. The FBI agents couldn’t be far behind the lighter snow. Devon could just imagine how panicked all the G-men in Carson City had become when they’d lost contact with the cabin.
Now that the fear of the Cougar was almost past, it was time for her to face her other fear. She had to go to the bathroom.
A candle had been placed on the kitchen counter, for those needing to go to the bathroom, and Devon’s gaze swung between the candle and the closed bathroom door. She could do this, she knew she could. Even with the feeble outside light, some light had to be coming through the glazed bathroom window by now.
“Devon, you okay?” JC asked, looking at her determined expression. She nodded slowly. She could do this.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I just have to go to the bathroom.”
JC looked…lost. He knew what had gone on in the bathroom before, and she could only imagine what he must be thinking. Wondering if she would be able to go in. Thinking about how she had freaked out earlier. She had told him about her childhood Bloody Mary bathroom experience, so he knew WHY she was so scared of going in there.
Obviously undecided on what he might be able to do to help her, he offered, “I’ll stand just outside the door…”
Devon nodded. Yeah, it would be helpful to know that he was right there. Moving slowly, she stopped before the bathroom door, holding the candle. Taking a deep breath, she pushed the door open. With the candlelight glow from the rest of the cabin, the barely-there stream of light coming in the window, and the candle she was holding, the bathroom didn’t look like a thing of nightmares. Sink, toilet, shower, towel shelf…mirror.
She willed herself not to throw JC a last, desperate “help me” glance and closing the door behind her, started chanting to herself, I can do this, I can do this, I can do this…
Doing everything in her power to avoid looking in the mirror, she kept her back to it, and inched past. No scary thoughts, no scary thoughts…
A noise in the room spooked her. Oh God, was she hearing things now?! First seeing glowing green things of nightmares in the bathroom mirror, and now hearing bumps in the night.
I can do this, I can do this, I can do this…
The shower curtain moved and she started to hyperventilate. Oh God, she couldn’t do this, she couldn’t do this, she couldn’t…
Oh shit…she’d never heard noises in her nightmares before! Her eyes darted to the shower as a man stepped out holding a gun.
Chapter 8: Adrenaline
Chapter SevenJC listened at the door, wondering if she was okay in there. Last time, she had run out near hyperventilation, and the idea that she might become paralyzed by her fear kept his ear to the door.
“Hey, JC, I know you guys just met, and you’re feeling that whole, can’t stand to be apart thing, but surely this is going a little too far,” Joey teased from the living room side of the counter.
Throwing him a dirty look, JC admitted to himself that he was being just a little too overprotective. If she got freaked out, she would come running out like she had before. He took a step away from the door, towards the fridge, where Mike and Chris were pouring themselves a glass of juice. Maybe a drink would help calm his nerves. And if he had nerves like this, just from knowing that she was in there, he could only imagine what she must be feeling.
It felt like hours, but in reality had been less than a minute when the door opened again. JC rushed over, wondering if she had become too scared and had decided to wait till the reinforcements came…
He literally skidded to a stop on the smooth tiles when he saw the man come out behind Devon. His gun pressed to her temple. Or rather, Mendoza’s gun.
The Cougar backed himself against the wall, towards the front door, making sure no one was behind him, and that he could see everyone in the cabin.
“Nobody move. You, Special Agent Callaway, put your gun down, or I’ll blow her head off, I swear I will.”
JC watched Devon’s eyes widen. She shrieked, “Don’t tell him that! Now he’ll never put his gun down! He’d welcome the man who’d kill me!”
The Cougar’s eyes narrowed dangerously, and JC froze when he looked at Callaway and realized the Agent had risen from his armchair and obviously had no intention of putting the gun down. Damn the G-man anyway!
“No heroics now, Lover Boy,” the Cougar growled menacingly when he saw JC watching Devon.
Lover boy…damn, but that was familiar…lover boy. He recognized the voice and the given nickname from somewhere…
“McClain,” Lance breathed, from his position by the tree. Greg was hiding in front of him, laying on the floor with Tyson between the tree and the armchair that Callaway had been sitting in, where the bodyguard had grabbed him and fallen when he’d seen the Cougar.
JC looked at the man again. Lance was right.
“Alex McClain, former bodyguard and baby-sitter at your service,” the man said. JC got the feeling that he would have bowed, or waved his gun with a flourish, if he wasn’t so intent on pressing the muzzle against Devon’s temple.
JC also got the feeling that Callaway would have been glaring at all of them, if he’d dared to take his eyes off of McClain, as he asked, “Why did he never come up on the suspect list?”
“He resigned right before Lance got custody of Greg. About June of 2000. Before that, he was Lance’s personal bodyguard,” Lonnie explained. He was standing between Justin and Marissa and the Cougar.
“That’s right. After accompanying Lover Boy to Oregon every damn weekend, I quit. Had I waited two weeks, I never would have needed to quit. But no, Lover Boy never told anyone that he was about to bring the kid to live with him in Orlando. Instead, I lost my job. I had already lost my family, thanks to Lover Boy and his need to travel every GODDAMN WEEKEND!”
“So you decided to go off the deep end?” Devon said, her voice getting higher as McClain tightened his arm around her neck.
“Off the deep end? I assure you, my little Rescue Ranger, that I am quite sane. How else would I have been able to plan the perfect crime? Or should I say, crimes? You never had a clue. Any of you. So I assure you, I have NOT gone off the deep end. But I wanted to see you suffer!” he yelled at Lance, still not moving the gun from Devon’s temple. JC feared that she might pass out soon, whether from fear or lack of oxygen, he wasn’t sure. “Suffer, like I did. Do you know what it’s like, to watch your only son, your only child, slip further and further away from you? To watch the boy you held as a baby slip into drug use? He started doing drugs when he was eleven or twelve, and I didn’t even know! Because I was off, baby-sitting you, while you knocked up that whore in Oregon! My wife left me because of you, took my son away from me! I wanted you to know what it felt like, to lose everything you held dear. I wanted you to know how I felt in January when the cops told me my son’s body had been found in a dumpster! He’d been missing for a year, and after all that worry, all that false hope that he would come home again, they found him in a dumpster! That’s where they were supposed to find your son. But, thanks to this one”” he pressed the muzzle even harder into Devon’s head, and JC saw her wince “”that just won’t happen.”
As he said it, he swung the gun away from Devon, toward the armchair that Tyson and Greg were behind. He fired off a shot, and JC followed the bullet as if it was in slow motion. Watched the stuffing from the chair explode into the air. Heard people screaming. Saw Callaway lift his gun to fire back, and his gaze followed that bullet back into the kitchen.
He wanted to scream. Wanted to pull a Superman and catch the bullet in his hand. Anything, to stop it from ripping its way through Devon before it could hit the psycho bodyguard.
But no. The bullet hit McClain in the center of his forehead. Blood and brain matter splattered onto the door behind McClain. JC watched Devon fall to the floor when McClain’s arm went slack.
And then time returned to normal. Everyone was yelling, running around, darting between the kitchen and the living room. Chickens with their heads cut off.
JC dropped to the cold kitchen floor, kneeling next to Devon. Her eyes were closed, and JC was unsure if he was supposed to check her pulse, slap her awake, kiss her awake, or…wait, this was not a fairy tale, this was a scary movie. Where was Joey when he needed him?!
Mike was standing next to the Cougar; Mike had grabbed the ex-bodyguard’s gun before checking his pulse to make sure he was good and dead. He was. Mike turned to JC. “She okay?”
Looking down again, JC was unsure how to answer. Then, Devon opened her eyes.
Oh God, JC was so relieved he felt like crying. Instead, he pulled her up a little and hugged her, wondering if he would ever stop reliving those moments when he was unsure whether she would live or die.
She was hugging him back, her face buried in his shirt. He pulled her up the rest of the way, off the cold kitchen floor, standing up and looking over her shoulder into the living room. Lonnie, Callaway and Lance were crowded around the back of the armchair, and JC waited anxiously for news that Greg was okay. Just the images that McClain had painted in his mind of some cop pulling Greg’s body out of a dumpster were enough to give him nightmares. He adored the kid, and the idea that the Cougar might have succeeded…
Then Lance was lifting the scared little boy into his arms, squeezing him tight. Lonnie and Mike were helping Tyson stand up, and even in the dim candlelight, JC could see the back of the bodyguard’s right shoulder, a dark blood stain spreading from the hole left by the bullet. Lonnie and Mike turned him around, easing him into Callaway’s armchair, where JC could see the front of the shirt, where there was no blood. Apparently, the bullet was still in his shoulder. JC could only hope that the rest of the FBI agents really were on their way.
JC led Devon out of the kitchen-living room pathway, to their old spot by the stairs. She was still taking deep breaths, her face still hidden in JC’s shirtfront.
He heard a muffle from her that sounded like Greg’s name. “Greg’s fine, just a bit scared. Tyson took the bullet in his shoulder; he’s bleeding, but not dead.”
Feeling her nod against his chest, he could only assume that he’d answered her mumbled inquiry.
Devon’s heart was still racing five minutes later when someone started pounding on the front door. “Mendoza! Callaway! Open up!”
She nearly sank to the floor in relief when she recognized the voice of Tom Larson, head of the Las Vegas FBI office. It was over. It was really over.
Finally looking up at JC, she saw that same emotion reflected in his eyes. They had made it. The Cougar was gone. And they were alive.
An unspoken signal passed between them; JC leaned down, she stood on her toes. And then, finally, for real this time, Devon was tasting him.
Hot. Wild. Sexy. All that and more. It got out of control faster than she could have anticipated, not that she was complaining. JC’s hands went from her shoulders, to her hips, to her butt, lifting her slightly. It was all the encouragement she needed. Her legs were wrapped around his waist in half-a-second, and he was pushing her against the round staircase.
The railing pressed uncomfortably into her back, but she didn’t even care. All she knew was JC. His hands. His mouth. His hair. One of her arms was wrapped tightly around his neck. She lifted her other hand and ran it through his tousled hair. Gripping it. Probably hurting him, but neither of them noticed any pain.
“Up up against the wall…”
A little voice was singing in their ears, and JC moved his hand to swat it away, rather like an annoying fly. As she lost some of her support, Devon started sliding down, and her feet fell back to the floor.
Perhaps she would have gone on kissing JC, if she hadn’t heard the discreet, yet authoritative cough. She pulled away from JC, opened her eyes, and looked over his shoulder. Larson stood there, watching them, an inquiring look on his face.
Shoot me now, was her immediate silent plea. She would have backed up, moved away from JC as fast as possible, if she’d had any room to move. Yet the staircase against her back apparently didn’t feel like letting her do that, and she was forced to stay sandwiched between JC and the stairs. Two seconds ago, she wouldn’t have minded, rather, she would have fully appreciated it. But two seconds ago, her boss hadn’t been looking at her with that disapproving stare.
“Wallace. We were told that you would be here. I just hadn’t known that it would be in…this capacity. I rather thought you had arrived here last night, to tip off the agents already on site. Was I misinformed?”
Apparently, Larson had been talking to Melinia. JC finally sensed that something was wrong with her and took a step back, turning half-way around to see the imposing G-man behind him. “No,” she answered. “No, that’s true.”
“Your first time being on site, is it? Hmmm,” was all he said before moving on. Not that he needed to say any more. She knew exactly what he had been implying…
She looked at the activity behind JC. How long had she been kissing JC? she wondered, amazed. Tyson and Callaway had apparently already been taken away, no doubt being rushed to a hospital in Carson City at the moment. Lance was pacing the living room, Greg in his arms, the toddler’s tear stained face resting on his shoulder. Justin and Marissa were on their loveseat, surprise, surprise, kissing rather as heatedly as JC and she had been. Mike and Lonnie were talking with a couple of the G-men, as was Chris. Joey was standing next to Devon. She guessed that he had been the one singing in their ears.
Her eyes closed as she finished taking in the scene around them. She felt like she had just committed the ultimate FBI sin. Which she just might have. She’d made a classic rookie mistake. And her boss knew it.
“I have to go. I have to go now,” she realized aloud. Opening her eyes, she saw JC watching her with troubled eyes. Guilt overcame her. She had taken advantage of the adrenaline rush that he had been feeling, had let herself get taken over by her own adrenaline-exhaustion mixed body. She KNEW better than that. What person associated with danger didn’t? Hadn’t she heard the men in the office talk about the dangers of adrenaline rushes enough to recognize her own? And his?
“Devon, wait, what happened? What’s wrong?” JC asked, holding onto her arm. She still moved to leave, and his grip slipped to her hand, where it tightened. Obviously, the man wanted some answers. And she couldn’t blame him. He deserved to know what exactly had come over him. And it wasn’t Cupid’s arrow!
“It’s called adrenaline, JC. That’s what happened.”
“What are you talking about?” He didn’t loosen his grip. He looked so confused…a minute ago, they had been kissing like mad, and now she wanted nothing more than to run away. She wanted to be confused with him, but it was too late. She knew the truth.
“I’m so sorry. I knew all along what could happen between two people when adrenaline took over. It’s so common, JC, from what I’ve heard at the office. It happens all the time to the Special Agents. Adrenaline, from a dangerous situation. It clouds your judgment, makes you feel things that aren’t real. You do things you wouldn’t normally ever consider doing.”
Realization dawned. Devon watched as his face changed, his eyes narrowed. “And you think that’s what this is?”
“JC, I KNOW that’s what this is. Trust me on this one, JC. This past night…all adrenaline.”
“You’re calling this adrenaline?” JC asked, using his grip on her hand to pull her back into his arms. His mouth was on hers in an instant, and Devon wondered how she was ever going to be able to walk away from this man. He could make her mind melt, her stomach tighten, flip over, rise into her throat and drop again in an instant.
With him, she felt things she’d never felt before. And she knew that for her, the adrenaline had only intensified what was already there; the adrenaline hadn’t created these feelings. They’d been there before, while she was still in Vegas. And this night had been amazing…talking to him, getting to know him aside from everything that had been in the file. She’d realized that it was true, she could fall in love by reading an FBI case. And she’d had that love validated by spending this night with him. But JC…he had just met her, known her only in this situation where the danger and the worry and the anxiety made everything seem immediate, real, and intense.
She wished with everything she had, everything she was, that they’d met under normal circumstances, like they’d talked about during their “What if” game. That she could know that JC’s feelings were like hers. Real. Not created by a textbook adrenaline rush. But they weren’t. And they hadn’t met under normal circumstances.
The last thing she wanted to do was walk away. And it was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. She didn’t want to. She didn’t even know if she could.
But she had to. It wouldn’t be fair to JC for her to stay, not when she knew the truth, that what he was feeling wasn’t real. That it WAS adrenaline. As sure as she was that what she felt was real, that it had been based on something far more substantial than adrenaline, she couldn’t take advantage of JC in this way, using his adrenaline-based feelings to make her happy. Not when he would soon be miserable. She forced her face to become expressionless. Devoid of all emotion. Especially the longing that she really felt.
“JC, I’m sorry. Trust me on this one…in two months, hell, two weeks, you won’t remember my name. It would be the same for me…but you’re JC Chasez. I’ll remember your name; I mean, how could I forget it? But I’ll be ‘that girl’ from the cabin. And you’ll wonder what the hell you were thinking, falling so quickly. What the hell you were doing, trying to make me stay. Trust me…It’s NOT REAL!”
She finally pulled away from him, and stepped backwards. One step. Two steps. Three. She could do this. She HAD to.
His face. It was killing her. He was hurting, she knew it, and she had been the one to cause it. She turned around, turned the corner into the kitchen, slipped into her shoes and walked out the door. And as much as it hurt, she didn’t look back.
Chapter 9: Epilogue
EpilogueDecember 31, 2002
**********
She wished that her feelings HAD been adrenaline-based. More than anything, she wished that were true. Maybe then, it wouldn’t hurt so much. Maybe then, eleven days after she had walked out that door, and walked down that long, cold driveway, and driven all those miles back to Vegas…Maybe then she would be able to stop crying.
Tissues. She needed more tissues. Grabbing one, she glared at the Kleenex box. She hated crying. It made her eyes puffy and red, and then they hurt.
She had hurt JC. Eleven days later and she could still see the expression on his face. She’d told herself over and over again that she had done the right thing. It had been the right thing for him. But for her? No way. The right thing for her would be to have stayed with him, loved him. But when the adrenaline rush was over…he would have wondered how the hell she had managed to trap him into a relationship that he didn’t want to be a part of, and he would have hated her for it.
It was better this way. It was.
Oh, who was she kidding? Or trying to convince? Because after crying every night for eleven straight days, there was no way that she could convince herself that she was better off without him.
She had walked away from the perfect guy. She had to be the stupidest girl on earth, without a doubt. What did it really matter if he ended up hating her? She would be with the guy of her dreams. Someone who cared about more than advancing their career, a guy with strong convictions that he didn’t back down from. JC, who didn’t laugh at her nightmares or her ridiculous fears. Someone that she could stay up all night with, talking to. Respect. Love. Honesty. She would never find anything more than what she had found with JC that night.
But he was gone, and she had been the one to let him go. It was her own fault that she’d had to watch the MTV Christmas special from Vegas, crying on Melinia’s shoulder, while it was being shown live from the cabin in Tahoe. It was her own fault that she would never be able to even meet another guy without comparing him to JC. It was her fault that she was alone now, on New Year’s Eve, and not with JC somewhere, ringing in the New Year.
She needed another tissue.
**********
He stood at her apartment door. What would happen when he knocked? If he knocked.
Oh hell no, he had come this far. He had to at least see her. He had to know if she had meant what she’d said. If she was as desperate for him as he was for her.
He didn’t know how, or when, but sometime during that night, she had managed to make a place for her in his heart. A secure place. He loved her, and it hadn’t died like she’d promised that it would. The hurt hadn’t gone away. He could only hope that she felt the same way. That she had been lying to herself that morning at the cabin. That she had been lying to him.
The first time that he actually wished for a girl to be lying to him. But he needed his wish to come true, needed it more than he could say.
He knocked on the door.
After waiting all of two seconds, he convinced himself that she wasn’t there, or that she wasn’t going to open the door because she knew who it was, and she really felt nothing for him.
He hadn’t taken three steps when the door opened behind him. He stopped. Turned.
There she was. Standing there in the doorway, gripping the frame for support. Her eyes wide. He was so happy to see her that he didn’t notice the bloodshot eyes, the red nose, or the fact that she looked like death warmed over. All he saw was her. The girl who hadn’t left his thoughts since she’d left his cabin.
Neither of them said anything, and JC wondered what would happen next.
She looked down at his hands, and noticed the bundle of clothes he was holding. “Did you come to return those?”
The clothes. Oh yeah, he had forgotten that he even had them in his hand. “Uh, yes. I did. Thought you might want them back.” Her face fell as JC watched. Maybe, just maybe, she had missed him as much as he had missed her.
“Oh, okay. Hold on, I’ll get your clothes.” She took a few steps back into the apartment and JC followed. Closed the door behind him. She was halfway across the room before he spoke again.
“Devon, wait.” She stopped, but didn’t turn around. Okay, he could do this, he could say this. He NEEDED to say it, because there was a slim possibility that she might feel the same way he did. And it was that possibility that had made him borrow Justin’s car and drive from L.A. to Vegas. “That’s not all. I came…I came here to see if you still felt the same way you did when you walked out of the cabin that morning.”
She didn’t move, didn’t say anything. His breath caught; maybe he had made a mistake in coming here. Maybe she never really had felt anything for him.
Watched her turn. Waited for her to say something. Anything.
“No. I don’t feel the same way. I never did.”
JC was rooted to the floor. Was he hearing her right? “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that I never did mean what I said up at the cabin.” He could breathe again. Finally.
He had crossed the room in two strides and then she was in his arms again. He was so…relieved that he didn’t notice the clothes falling from his hands. All he saw was her. God, eleven days without her, wondering what would happen if he tried to meet up with her, spending every moment thinking about her, wondering how she was doing since she’d returned to Vegas. Until he couldn’t stand it anymore and he had to see for himself.
“I’m sorry, JC. I love you. I am so sorry I said any of that. I just wanted to be fair to you.”
The only time he had ever felt relief of this magnitude was in those moments when the rest of the FBI team had shown up at the cabin. “Fair? You wanted to be fair? What was fair about leaving me alone, right before Christmas, wondering if anything that you had felt that night was real? I knew what I felt; I knew that I loved you. You just never gave me a chance to tell you. You left; how is that fair to me?”
“I wasn’t sure if what you felt was real, and I was scared. Scared that it was all fake, scared that one day you would hate me if I stayed.”
She pulled back, her hands drifting from his shoulders to his arms. Her fingers were tight enough to bruise. He hoped that meant she didn’t want him disappearing on her, because he had no intention of leaving her apartment until…well, he didn’t know if he would ever be ready to leave. Right now, he just wanted to be with her.
He cupped her face in his hands, gently. Kissed her slowly. Wanted nothing more than this.
Well, okay, so maybe a little bit more, he thought as he looked down at her. He wanted to be with her, more than for just this day, this night. He wanted to bring in the New Year with her. Be with her for that New Year.
“So…I know this might seem sudden…or odd…but…uh…” he stalled; how did one go about asking someone to change their entire lives for them? “What do you think of Orlando?”
She smiled, and JC wondered what she was thinking. What had brought that almost mischievous smile to her face? “Actually, I put in a request to be transferred to the Orlando FBI office.”
“You did? When?”
“The day after I got back to Vegas.”
“So the day after you told me that it was really only adrenaline?”
Devon had the grace to look embarrassed. “Yeah. That’d be right.” She scuffed her toe as she avoided eye contact. Finally looking up at him, she grinned. “Oh hell, you know how obsessive I can be; how unwilling I am to let some things go. I was just thinking about what might have happened if I moved to Orlando and ran into you on the street.”
“And if I hadn’t known your name?” Her eyes widened, and he felt like the biggest jerk in the world for even suggesting it, because he could tell that even the thought had hurt her. “I’m sorry. I am so sorry, Devon. I shouldn’t have even joked about that. You know it was a ridiculous idea, don’t you? As if I could ever forget you.”
“It could take as long as six months, or even a year for me to actually get transferred to Orlando, you know.”
“Well, like I said that night; it would take both of us to be willing to make it work like that.”
“Oh, I’m willing all right,” she assured him, a sexy grin gracing her face as she wound her arms around his neck. “Definitely. Willing.”
He kissed her mouth, his tongue darting out to taste her lips. Damn, but it was a taste that had haunted him for the past eleven days. A taste that he would never get tired of. He finally managed to pull away from her, long enough to add to her confirmation. “As am I, Dev. In fact…I had actually checked out Vegas for some good recording studios. And although there aren’t too many, or any, for that matter, that I could use, Vegas is only a four hour drive from L.A., which is an ideal place for me to be working, at least until me and the guys need to start meeting for the next group CD.”
“So,” Devon began as she worked her way along his jaw line, from his neck to his mouth, punctuating her words with kisses. “It wouldn’t be as distant as we thought.”
“Nope. Just think,” he whispered, kissing her mouth. “Every weekend. Here with you. There with me. Whatever. Hell, we’d probably be together more in these few or many months than during a normal work or promotional schedule for me, even if you’re in Orlando.”
“And the weekends where either you or I am too busy working?”
“Well, you’ll be one of the first girlfriends I’ve had whose work schedule can be as hectic or as unpredictable as my own. Just remember: If we’re both going to try to make it work, then we can. We already know just how stubborn we both can be when it comes to something that we believe in.”
“Me?” she protested. “I’m not stubborn.”
“Really? So why not just give up when you couldn’t get a hold of anyone about the Cougar that night?”
“Because Melinia wouldn’t let me?” she suggested. He pinched her side and she laughed. Rolling her eyes, she added, “Alright, already. I didn’t give up because I knew I was right.”
“So…are you right about us two being able to make it work? To be together, even if we aren’t TOGETHER?”
She grinned before kissing him again, walking backwards through the apartment to her bedroom. As she reached behind her to open the bedroom door, she pulled away just slightly, not wanting to put too much distance between them before she absolutely had to. “Oh, hell yes. You know I’m right.” Her head tilted to the side as some realization hit her. She looked at him. “Wait…does this mean that I was WRONG about fairy tale endings?”
“I guess so,” JC agreed, looking down at the woman he had fallen in love with. He smiled and kissed her again. “Which means that this is my cue to say that we lived…happily…ever…after.”