Chapter Seven
JC 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.
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