Endear You To Me, Chapter 25
Title: Endear You To Me
Part: 25 of many
Fandom, Pairin The Closer, Brenda/Sharon
Rating: PG-13 because creepy Fritz is creepy.
Summary: It's all the moments in between that endear you to me.
Note: Trigger warning for stalking behavior.
It was typical, selfish Brenda Leigh Johnson to start a new relationship and not even have the courtesy to let him know. Fritz knew he was brooding, and had been since his confrontation with the woman earlier in the day, but he couldn’t bring himself to care that he was only half listening to the wire-tap recordings he was supposed to have completed his report on today, or that he hadn’t fixed himself dinner yet. He kept seeing another man’s ring on his wife’s finger; a more expensive ring than Fritz could afford, even dipping into his savings and retirement. And Brenda had been wearing it openly, unashamedly. It had taken months for her to wear his ring into the office, and he suspected that, in the end, one morning she had simply forgotten to take it off before getting out of her car and heading into HQ.
So he was fuming. And fretting. How could he possibly get his relationship with Brenda back on track if he had no idea who the competition was? He pressed stop on the audio program on his laptop, currently reeling through 14 hours of recordings at double time, and opened up a new tab in his browser window. Although LAPD policy dictated that officers changed the password on their work email every eight weeks, he knew Brenda never, ever changed the passwords on her personal accounts. And they were all the same thing: her initials, the four numerals of her parents’ street address in Atlanta, and the last four digits of her cell number in some combination. It galled him that someone trained by the CIA could be so cavalier about the security of personal data, and had told her so on many occasions. Brenda had always insisted that if someone wanted to read emails from her mama and see the pictures Jimmy sent of his dogs, Lola and Marco, or the stupid chain emails that Clay Jr. thought were just hilarious, they were welcome to all of it
He typed her username and password into Gmail’s log in and cringed, half-expecting it to kick out a message that the password had been changed. He gave a little hiss of victory when Brenda’s inbox loaded, though he was disappointed to find not much of interest there: payment confirmation from a florist regarding an arrangement due to be delivered on Friday - it didn’t say who the recipient was to be; another confirmation from a bakery about an order of cupcakes that Brenda could pick up Thursday evening or Friday morning; a rambling email from Willie Rae about family news and not-so-subtle talk about Fritz. At least someone was on his side in this.
Brenda didn’t really have any interest in social media, so there were no Facebook or Twitter accounts for him to check, though she did have an iPhone - maybe logging into her Apple account would provide him with some information. He could always use that find my iPhone thing, provided she had turned the service on on the device itself. He couldn’t allow himself to feel guilty at this invasion of Brenda’s privacy - he needed to know these things, after all, and it wasn’t like Brenda would ever tell him anything; she hadn’t even when they lived together. Maybe this was the only way to get into Brenda’s head and figure out what she was really after with this charade of a new relationship - and the only way to fix their marriage - snooping and investigation.
The iCloud.com mail account gave him no clues - it was all promotional crap from Apple. Contacts wouldn’t help; it didn’t show who was on Brenda’s favorites list or who she’d recently called. The calendar was empty but for a dentist appointment the week after next, and a reminder for Friday to pick up the cupcakes mentioned in the email he’d read earlier. He wondered what that was about; someone’s birthday maybe? Though he’d never known Brenda to be aware of anyone’s birthday, not even her own. There were a few saved notes: three saved grocery lists, though none of them had a single frozen meal listed on them, only things that required actual preparation, one list of high end jewelry retailers (Bvlgari, Van Cleef and Arples, Cartier, Chopard), and the last was a cryptic list of dates beginning in September and ending with last Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving.
None of this was actually helpful in regards to who Brenda was seeing, but Fritz took a moment to parse out what he had learned. Brenda was bringing treats to the office, was either making forays into cooking or had found someone to do it for her, and had been shopping for jewelry - maybe she had picked out that ring herself. With a sigh he clicked on the next to last web app, the Photostream. He didn’t have much hope for it; Brenda had never been one for photography so he expected to find photos she had snapped at crime scenes for one purpose or another. What he found were very much not random snaps from crime scenes, but a few dozen pictures of Sharon Raydor, some including Brenda, but more without.
The newest was dated the day before, and it featured the Captain, dressed casually, her hair a riot of messy waves, driving. The Jaguar emblem gleamed on the steering wheel in front of her and the interior of the vehicle looked brand new. Next was the Captain in a one-piece swim suit, wrestling with a dark haired child in an indoor pool. Other, unfamiliar faces populated the background of the photo. The Captain cutting into a pie. The Captain with her arm around a tiny, steely haired older woman with a heavily laden table between them and the photographer.
The next photo made Fritz pause for another look. The Captain in a black dress and Brenda in a shimmering blue number shot through with gold. Both women looked exceedingly beautiful. They weren’t looking at the camera, but at one another, smiling, bodies angled in intimately. There was no contact, but the pose screamed of familiarity. No way.
He kept scrolling. A ring on Brenda’s finger - the ring he had caught a glimpse of earlier that day. The Captain driving again, her hand out stretched towards the camera. The Captain roasting a marshmallow, lit only by firelight, the faces of a few members of Brenda’s team swam in the shadows in the background. The Captain and Brenda, sitting on the end of a lounger, lit by that same fire, Brenda’s blonde head resting on the Captain’s shoulder, a soft, rather knowing grin on her face. He scrolled faster, not wanting to see the Captain backlit by the setting sun, turning her hair the color of a burning ember, or the Captain in a black bikini, manning a barbecue grill. Fritz reached the end, a picture of a gorgeous bouquet of wild flowers. The time and date stamp seemed familiar, and when he checked, it matched the first date on Brenda’s cryptic list in her notes.
Was this some sort of cosmic and stupendously unfunny joke? It had to be, right? As far as he knew, Brenda tolerated Sharon Raydor because Sharon Raydor was a fixer - the only person who could save her career from Taylor and Pope and Goldman and Brenda herself. Raydor’s motivations had never been clear to Fritz (or to Brenda, as far as he knew), but Brenda had constantly railed against the woman’s presence in her murder room and around her investigations, with fire in her eyes and contempt in her tone. And now he was expected to believe, what, that they were engaged? That Brenda, notoriously and almost hilariously unromantic Brenda Leigh Johnson, was chronicling their romance with pictures and lists of dates and pal-ing around with Raydor and the Major Crimes squad? Fritz needed an explanation, and he wasn’t prepared to wait or to go through Brenda’s lawyer.
It wasn’t strictly policy to use the FBI’s databases to track down errant spouses, but Fritz was positive he could explain away the Captain’s name in his search history were his account audited. The question was, as he navigated to the Silverlake address that the computer had kicked out, how to approach the situation. He couldn’t really make a plan without a better idea of what was going on, anyways
Raydor’s house was certainly charming and neat, and in a nice neighborhood, Fritz could give her that. The tree-lined street was quiet as Fritz made his way up the slate walk and tried to step silently onto the porch. The flickering light of the television punctuated the glow coming from one of the front rooms, and he discreetly peeked around the casement and into the house.
Brenda was sitting on the floor, leaning against the couch, bracketed by Raydor’s legs, her head resting on one of the Captain’s thighs. The other woman was massaging his wife’s scalp with her fingertips, and Brenda appeared to be so relaxed she was nearly comatose; eyes lidded, jaw slack. It was a surprisingly tender scene and not what Fritz had expected - there was nothing of the tension that had characterized their interactions during the lawsuit and before. In fact, he wouldn’t have thought that ‘tenderness’ was part of the Captain’s emotional range; it didn’t fit within the spectrum of ‘officious’ or ‘nosy’ or ‘frustrated’. And Brenda was most often tender as an act, when she was conning a con in her interview room, or conning Fritz himself. All that aside, this could still be friendly; head touches were sort of on the borderline of friendship intimate versus intimate intimate, in his mind anyway.
He observed a while longer; they were obviously watching something on TV, not talking, though Brenda said something once, and the Captain threw her head back and laughed. The head massage continued for what seemed like endless minutes, until Brenda dropped a kiss on the Captain’s thigh where her head had been resting, and rose to her feet. In a blink, she was on her knees on the couch, straddling the Captain, kissing her, busying herself with the buttons of her shirt, as if she was desperate to feel the older woman’s skin under her hands. The Captain’s hips bucked up, her hands trailed up the back of Brenda’s thighs to grip her ass possessively. Fritz knew the smooth, inviting planes of Brenda Leigh’s body and Fritz knew the potent force of Brenda Leigh’s desire, and watching it directed at someone else was too much for him to bear without interrupting.
He pounded on the door, waited a few seconds then pounded again. It flew open to expose a highly annoyed Brenda.
“What the hell are you doin’ here?” she snarled.
“What the hell am I doing? What the hell are you doing, Brenda,” Fritz countered indignantly. “What the hell,” he repeated.
“I’ve tried to make it clear to you, Fritz,” Brenda intoned slowly, hands on her hips, like she was talking to a particularly slow interviewee, “that what I do is no longer any of your concern, but it doesn’t seem to be getting through.”
“What you are doing is cheating on me,” he spat, voice raising with every word. Raydor appeared in the vestibule behind Brenda, her face still and almost emotionless. That was more to Fritz’s expectations. “And making a mockery of our wedding vows. For what? For her?” Neither of the women spoke, they just looked at him, eerily calm, which he expected from the Captain, but Brenda had a tendency towards the dramatic. Her apparent calm was disconcerting.
“You’re fucking someone else and I’m supposed to just roll over and accept it?.” He caught Raydor’s cold green eyes with his and addressed her. “Do you honestly think she isn’t just using you?” Her lips nearly disappeared, pressed together, and the fine lines around her mouth deepened; she looked old to him, in that moment, and Fritz was satisfied to have caused a visible reaction in someone so stoic.
“I’m not usin’ anyone for anything - and all you’re doin’ is making yourself miserable, comin’ over here like this, all worked up.”
“I’m not miserable, I’m confused,” Fritz nearly wailed. “You’re my wife, and you’re straight, and you don’t see why I’m having a hard time with this? Are you being coerced? Is she holding something over your head, Brenda? Can I help?&rdquo
“Either I’m usin’ her or she’s coercin’ me. Make up your mind, because it can’t be both.” She narrowed her eyes at him, considering. “Are you drinkin’ again? Is that what’s going on here?”
“I am not,” he spat, “drinking again. You were practically fucking that woman in full view of the street and you accuse me of that?”
“You were watchin’ us,” Brenda shrieked, fingers coming up to press against the bridge of her nose.
“I’m curious,” the Captain joined in the conversation in that slow, deadly monotone she often affected, “how Agent Howard found out where you were in the first place. Not to mention how he found my address. Due to my position, after all, I’m not listed in any LAPD database that he would have access to.”
“That is a damn good question. Clearly, Agent Howard,” Brenda said, using his title mockingly. “You’ve misused FBI resources. What other crimes have you committed tonight? Did you tail me home? Tap my cell?”
She would find out; she always did, so Fritz figured confessing would be less painful in the long run. And was it really hacking if she didn’t ever change her passwords?
“I needed to know what was going on with you, so I logged into your email and then your Apple account to try to figure out where you were staying. Imagine my surprise when I found all those disgusting pictures…” he trailed off as the expression on Brenda’s face went from merely furious to implacable, icy rage. He knew that look; people, usually criminals, turned up dead when Brenda got that look. Her face softened, became a bit less terrifying, and Fritz realized it was because Raydor had placed a steadying hand on Brenda’s hip.
“You need to leave,” Raydor ordered, still frustratingly monotone and cool. “Now.”
“Fine,” he shrugged. “But don’t think this is over.” Fritz was fine with leaving this farce behind. He didn’t want to look at it, or at them anymore. All of a sudden, he was freed from his desire to reconcile with Brenda. He imagined the amount of havoc the information he now possessed could cause in Brenda’s life. And in Raydor’s too. Pope alone…
Before he could finish that thought, he found himself trapped between the porch railing and a furious Captain, the prongs of a hand-held taser digging painfully into his ribs. Fritz was uncertain if he could overpower her and get away before she depressed a button and shot 50 thousand volts into his torso.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she hissed in a low tone, green eyes flashing fiercely. “And I am warning you, any hurt that you cause her, I will take it out of your hide, Fritz Howard, and enjoy doing so.”
He growled in frustration, not daring to move. She stepped away, the taser still held low in warning. Fritz looked up at Brenda, half expecting to find some sympathy there, or outrage that Raydor had threatened him, but her eyes were hard. He turned and left, the adrenaline of his close encounter with the taser carrying him quickly to his car.
Sharon flipped the dead bolt on the door and snapped on the security lights that often went unused; if Fritz came back tonight, there would be no shadowy corner from which he could watch them. She was afraid to turn around and look at Brenda, worried that she’d overstepped some boundary in threatening Fritz, who was, by unspoken agreement, Brenda’s problem.
“I’m sorry,” she began, still looking out the glass panel in the door to be sure Fritz’s car turned off their street. “I shouldn’t have…” Brenda cut her off.
“Sharon,” Brenda said, stopping Sharon’s apology short. “Look at me, Sharon.” Sharon obeyed, but couldn’t bring herself to look Brenda in the eye. “I’m not mad at you, baby. A little warning next time would be nice, because you nearly scared the stuffing outta me when you pushed past.” Fears assuaged, Sharon met Brenda’s sad, dark gaze.
“Are you alright, Brenda Leigh?” asked Sharon, and Brenda paused to actually think about the question and to take stock of how she was feeling.
“I would be much less alright if you weren’t here, Shari. I feel a little violated, that Fritz was lookin’ at the pictures I have saved of you and of us. And that he was watchin’ us through the window.”
“Maybe the first thing you should do is sit down and change the passwords to all the personal accounts that you use regularly. And I’ll browse drapes for the front windows.”
“Ok,” agreed Brenda. “But what should we do about him? We could report him to his SAC, or file a report for trespass and identity theft?”
“Or his behavior today could get you a restraining order from a sympathetic judge, but let me sleep on it, ok? I might be a little too angry to be objective right now.” Sharon walked over to her desk to unplug her laptop, truly intending for Brenda to sit down and change her passwords. Brenda’s tendency to take photos of her was surprisingly sweet, and the thought of Fritz having access to them for any longer turned Sharon’s stomach. She felt a tentative hand on her hip and turned to find herself caught up in a fierce hug.
“He coulda hurt you,” Brenda sobbed, struck by that reality that, as strong as Sharon was, Fritz had six inches and probably 80 lbs. on her.
“I’m sorry,” soothed Sharon, near tears herself now that the immediacy of the situation had dissipated somewhat. She hadn’t really thought about her actions before slipping out the door and digging her taser into Fritz Howard’s ribs. It had just sort of happened, the same way that jumping out of her car and putting a forearm across the throat of a creepy young man who had touched her thirteen year old daughter in a grocery store parking lot had happened. When people she loved were threatened, sometimes Sharon Raydor just reacted - something quite out of character for her. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” she murmured.
“I know you didn’t,” Brenda replied, her voice trembling with unshed tears.
“I can’t promise it’ll never happen again.”
“I know that, too. Just promise me you’ll be careful, please.”
“I promise, Brenda Leigh,” Sharon asserted, stroking the messy tumble of curls that spilled over Brenda’s shoulders and down her back. “Will you promise me the same thing?”
“‘Course I will, baby. Of course I will.”
Part: 25 of many
Fandom, Pairin The Closer, Brenda/Sharon
Rating: PG-13 because creepy Fritz is creepy.
Summary: It's all the moments in between that endear you to me.
Note: Trigger warning for stalking behavior.
It was typical, selfish Brenda Leigh Johnson to start a new relationship and not even have the courtesy to let him know. Fritz knew he was brooding, and had been since his confrontation with the woman earlier in the day, but he couldn’t bring himself to care that he was only half listening to the wire-tap recordings he was supposed to have completed his report on today, or that he hadn’t fixed himself dinner yet. He kept seeing another man’s ring on his wife’s finger; a more expensive ring than Fritz could afford, even dipping into his savings and retirement. And Brenda had been wearing it openly, unashamedly. It had taken months for her to wear his ring into the office, and he suspected that, in the end, one morning she had simply forgotten to take it off before getting out of her car and heading into HQ.
So he was fuming. And fretting. How could he possibly get his relationship with Brenda back on track if he had no idea who the competition was? He pressed stop on the audio program on his laptop, currently reeling through 14 hours of recordings at double time, and opened up a new tab in his browser window. Although LAPD policy dictated that officers changed the password on their work email every eight weeks, he knew Brenda never, ever changed the passwords on her personal accounts. And they were all the same thing: her initials, the four numerals of her parents’ street address in Atlanta, and the last four digits of her cell number in some combination. It galled him that someone trained by the CIA could be so cavalier about the security of personal data, and had told her so on many occasions. Brenda had always insisted that if someone wanted to read emails from her mama and see the pictures Jimmy sent of his dogs, Lola and Marco, or the stupid chain emails that Clay Jr. thought were just hilarious, they were welcome to all of it
He typed her username and password into Gmail’s log in and cringed, half-expecting it to kick out a message that the password had been changed. He gave a little hiss of victory when Brenda’s inbox loaded, though he was disappointed to find not much of interest there: payment confirmation from a florist regarding an arrangement due to be delivered on Friday - it didn’t say who the recipient was to be; another confirmation from a bakery about an order of cupcakes that Brenda could pick up Thursday evening or Friday morning; a rambling email from Willie Rae about family news and not-so-subtle talk about Fritz. At least someone was on his side in this.
Brenda didn’t really have any interest in social media, so there were no Facebook or Twitter accounts for him to check, though she did have an iPhone - maybe logging into her Apple account would provide him with some information. He could always use that find my iPhone thing, provided she had turned the service on on the device itself. He couldn’t allow himself to feel guilty at this invasion of Brenda’s privacy - he needed to know these things, after all, and it wasn’t like Brenda would ever tell him anything; she hadn’t even when they lived together. Maybe this was the only way to get into Brenda’s head and figure out what she was really after with this charade of a new relationship - and the only way to fix their marriage - snooping and investigation.
The iCloud.com mail account gave him no clues - it was all promotional crap from Apple. Contacts wouldn’t help; it didn’t show who was on Brenda’s favorites list or who she’d recently called. The calendar was empty but for a dentist appointment the week after next, and a reminder for Friday to pick up the cupcakes mentioned in the email he’d read earlier. He wondered what that was about; someone’s birthday maybe? Though he’d never known Brenda to be aware of anyone’s birthday, not even her own. There were a few saved notes: three saved grocery lists, though none of them had a single frozen meal listed on them, only things that required actual preparation, one list of high end jewelry retailers (Bvlgari, Van Cleef and Arples, Cartier, Chopard), and the last was a cryptic list of dates beginning in September and ending with last Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving.
None of this was actually helpful in regards to who Brenda was seeing, but Fritz took a moment to parse out what he had learned. Brenda was bringing treats to the office, was either making forays into cooking or had found someone to do it for her, and had been shopping for jewelry - maybe she had picked out that ring herself. With a sigh he clicked on the next to last web app, the Photostream. He didn’t have much hope for it; Brenda had never been one for photography so he expected to find photos she had snapped at crime scenes for one purpose or another. What he found were very much not random snaps from crime scenes, but a few dozen pictures of Sharon Raydor, some including Brenda, but more without.
The newest was dated the day before, and it featured the Captain, dressed casually, her hair a riot of messy waves, driving. The Jaguar emblem gleamed on the steering wheel in front of her and the interior of the vehicle looked brand new. Next was the Captain in a one-piece swim suit, wrestling with a dark haired child in an indoor pool. Other, unfamiliar faces populated the background of the photo. The Captain cutting into a pie. The Captain with her arm around a tiny, steely haired older woman with a heavily laden table between them and the photographer.
The next photo made Fritz pause for another look. The Captain in a black dress and Brenda in a shimmering blue number shot through with gold. Both women looked exceedingly beautiful. They weren’t looking at the camera, but at one another, smiling, bodies angled in intimately. There was no contact, but the pose screamed of familiarity. No way.
He kept scrolling. A ring on Brenda’s finger - the ring he had caught a glimpse of earlier that day. The Captain driving again, her hand out stretched towards the camera. The Captain roasting a marshmallow, lit only by firelight, the faces of a few members of Brenda’s team swam in the shadows in the background. The Captain and Brenda, sitting on the end of a lounger, lit by that same fire, Brenda’s blonde head resting on the Captain’s shoulder, a soft, rather knowing grin on her face. He scrolled faster, not wanting to see the Captain backlit by the setting sun, turning her hair the color of a burning ember, or the Captain in a black bikini, manning a barbecue grill. Fritz reached the end, a picture of a gorgeous bouquet of wild flowers. The time and date stamp seemed familiar, and when he checked, it matched the first date on Brenda’s cryptic list in her notes.
Was this some sort of cosmic and stupendously unfunny joke? It had to be, right? As far as he knew, Brenda tolerated Sharon Raydor because Sharon Raydor was a fixer - the only person who could save her career from Taylor and Pope and Goldman and Brenda herself. Raydor’s motivations had never been clear to Fritz (or to Brenda, as far as he knew), but Brenda had constantly railed against the woman’s presence in her murder room and around her investigations, with fire in her eyes and contempt in her tone. And now he was expected to believe, what, that they were engaged? That Brenda, notoriously and almost hilariously unromantic Brenda Leigh Johnson, was chronicling their romance with pictures and lists of dates and pal-ing around with Raydor and the Major Crimes squad? Fritz needed an explanation, and he wasn’t prepared to wait or to go through Brenda’s lawyer.
It wasn’t strictly policy to use the FBI’s databases to track down errant spouses, but Fritz was positive he could explain away the Captain’s name in his search history were his account audited. The question was, as he navigated to the Silverlake address that the computer had kicked out, how to approach the situation. He couldn’t really make a plan without a better idea of what was going on, anyways
Raydor’s house was certainly charming and neat, and in a nice neighborhood, Fritz could give her that. The tree-lined street was quiet as Fritz made his way up the slate walk and tried to step silently onto the porch. The flickering light of the television punctuated the glow coming from one of the front rooms, and he discreetly peeked around the casement and into the house.
Brenda was sitting on the floor, leaning against the couch, bracketed by Raydor’s legs, her head resting on one of the Captain’s thighs. The other woman was massaging his wife’s scalp with her fingertips, and Brenda appeared to be so relaxed she was nearly comatose; eyes lidded, jaw slack. It was a surprisingly tender scene and not what Fritz had expected - there was nothing of the tension that had characterized their interactions during the lawsuit and before. In fact, he wouldn’t have thought that ‘tenderness’ was part of the Captain’s emotional range; it didn’t fit within the spectrum of ‘officious’ or ‘nosy’ or ‘frustrated’. And Brenda was most often tender as an act, when she was conning a con in her interview room, or conning Fritz himself. All that aside, this could still be friendly; head touches were sort of on the borderline of friendship intimate versus intimate intimate, in his mind anyway.
He observed a while longer; they were obviously watching something on TV, not talking, though Brenda said something once, and the Captain threw her head back and laughed. The head massage continued for what seemed like endless minutes, until Brenda dropped a kiss on the Captain’s thigh where her head had been resting, and rose to her feet. In a blink, she was on her knees on the couch, straddling the Captain, kissing her, busying herself with the buttons of her shirt, as if she was desperate to feel the older woman’s skin under her hands. The Captain’s hips bucked up, her hands trailed up the back of Brenda’s thighs to grip her ass possessively. Fritz knew the smooth, inviting planes of Brenda Leigh’s body and Fritz knew the potent force of Brenda Leigh’s desire, and watching it directed at someone else was too much for him to bear without interrupting.
He pounded on the door, waited a few seconds then pounded again. It flew open to expose a highly annoyed Brenda.
“What the hell are you doin’ here?” she snarled.
“What the hell am I doing? What the hell are you doing, Brenda,” Fritz countered indignantly. “What the hell,” he repeated.
“I’ve tried to make it clear to you, Fritz,” Brenda intoned slowly, hands on her hips, like she was talking to a particularly slow interviewee, “that what I do is no longer any of your concern, but it doesn’t seem to be getting through.”
“What you are doing is cheating on me,” he spat, voice raising with every word. Raydor appeared in the vestibule behind Brenda, her face still and almost emotionless. That was more to Fritz’s expectations. “And making a mockery of our wedding vows. For what? For her?” Neither of the women spoke, they just looked at him, eerily calm, which he expected from the Captain, but Brenda had a tendency towards the dramatic. Her apparent calm was disconcerting.
“You’re fucking someone else and I’m supposed to just roll over and accept it?.” He caught Raydor’s cold green eyes with his and addressed her. “Do you honestly think she isn’t just using you?” Her lips nearly disappeared, pressed together, and the fine lines around her mouth deepened; she looked old to him, in that moment, and Fritz was satisfied to have caused a visible reaction in someone so stoic.
“I’m not usin’ anyone for anything - and all you’re doin’ is making yourself miserable, comin’ over here like this, all worked up.”
“I’m not miserable, I’m confused,” Fritz nearly wailed. “You’re my wife, and you’re straight, and you don’t see why I’m having a hard time with this? Are you being coerced? Is she holding something over your head, Brenda? Can I help?&rdquo
“Either I’m usin’ her or she’s coercin’ me. Make up your mind, because it can’t be both.” She narrowed her eyes at him, considering. “Are you drinkin’ again? Is that what’s going on here?”
“I am not,” he spat, “drinking again. You were practically fucking that woman in full view of the street and you accuse me of that?”
“You were watchin’ us,” Brenda shrieked, fingers coming up to press against the bridge of her nose.
“I’m curious,” the Captain joined in the conversation in that slow, deadly monotone she often affected, “how Agent Howard found out where you were in the first place. Not to mention how he found my address. Due to my position, after all, I’m not listed in any LAPD database that he would have access to.”
“That is a damn good question. Clearly, Agent Howard,” Brenda said, using his title mockingly. “You’ve misused FBI resources. What other crimes have you committed tonight? Did you tail me home? Tap my cell?”
She would find out; she always did, so Fritz figured confessing would be less painful in the long run. And was it really hacking if she didn’t ever change her passwords?
“I needed to know what was going on with you, so I logged into your email and then your Apple account to try to figure out where you were staying. Imagine my surprise when I found all those disgusting pictures…” he trailed off as the expression on Brenda’s face went from merely furious to implacable, icy rage. He knew that look; people, usually criminals, turned up dead when Brenda got that look. Her face softened, became a bit less terrifying, and Fritz realized it was because Raydor had placed a steadying hand on Brenda’s hip.
“You need to leave,” Raydor ordered, still frustratingly monotone and cool. “Now.”
“Fine,” he shrugged. “But don’t think this is over.” Fritz was fine with leaving this farce behind. He didn’t want to look at it, or at them anymore. All of a sudden, he was freed from his desire to reconcile with Brenda. He imagined the amount of havoc the information he now possessed could cause in Brenda’s life. And in Raydor’s too. Pope alone…
Before he could finish that thought, he found himself trapped between the porch railing and a furious Captain, the prongs of a hand-held taser digging painfully into his ribs. Fritz was uncertain if he could overpower her and get away before she depressed a button and shot 50 thousand volts into his torso.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she hissed in a low tone, green eyes flashing fiercely. “And I am warning you, any hurt that you cause her, I will take it out of your hide, Fritz Howard, and enjoy doing so.”
He growled in frustration, not daring to move. She stepped away, the taser still held low in warning. Fritz looked up at Brenda, half expecting to find some sympathy there, or outrage that Raydor had threatened him, but her eyes were hard. He turned and left, the adrenaline of his close encounter with the taser carrying him quickly to his car.
Sharon flipped the dead bolt on the door and snapped on the security lights that often went unused; if Fritz came back tonight, there would be no shadowy corner from which he could watch them. She was afraid to turn around and look at Brenda, worried that she’d overstepped some boundary in threatening Fritz, who was, by unspoken agreement, Brenda’s problem.
“I’m sorry,” she began, still looking out the glass panel in the door to be sure Fritz’s car turned off their street. “I shouldn’t have…” Brenda cut her off.
“Sharon,” Brenda said, stopping Sharon’s apology short. “Look at me, Sharon.” Sharon obeyed, but couldn’t bring herself to look Brenda in the eye. “I’m not mad at you, baby. A little warning next time would be nice, because you nearly scared the stuffing outta me when you pushed past.” Fears assuaged, Sharon met Brenda’s sad, dark gaze.
“Are you alright, Brenda Leigh?” asked Sharon, and Brenda paused to actually think about the question and to take stock of how she was feeling.
“I would be much less alright if you weren’t here, Shari. I feel a little violated, that Fritz was lookin’ at the pictures I have saved of you and of us. And that he was watchin’ us through the window.”
“Maybe the first thing you should do is sit down and change the passwords to all the personal accounts that you use regularly. And I’ll browse drapes for the front windows.”
“Ok,” agreed Brenda. “But what should we do about him? We could report him to his SAC, or file a report for trespass and identity theft?”
“Or his behavior today could get you a restraining order from a sympathetic judge, but let me sleep on it, ok? I might be a little too angry to be objective right now.” Sharon walked over to her desk to unplug her laptop, truly intending for Brenda to sit down and change her passwords. Brenda’s tendency to take photos of her was surprisingly sweet, and the thought of Fritz having access to them for any longer turned Sharon’s stomach. She felt a tentative hand on her hip and turned to find herself caught up in a fierce hug.
“He coulda hurt you,” Brenda sobbed, struck by that reality that, as strong as Sharon was, Fritz had six inches and probably 80 lbs. on her.
“I’m sorry,” soothed Sharon, near tears herself now that the immediacy of the situation had dissipated somewhat. She hadn’t really thought about her actions before slipping out the door and digging her taser into Fritz Howard’s ribs. It had just sort of happened, the same way that jumping out of her car and putting a forearm across the throat of a creepy young man who had touched her thirteen year old daughter in a grocery store parking lot had happened. When people she loved were threatened, sometimes Sharon Raydor just reacted - something quite out of character for her. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” she murmured.
“I know you didn’t,” Brenda replied, her voice trembling with unshed tears.
“I can’t promise it’ll never happen again.”
“I know that, too. Just promise me you’ll be careful, please.”
“I promise, Brenda Leigh,” Sharon asserted, stroking the messy tumble of curls that spilled over Brenda’s shoulders and down her back. “Will you promise me the same thing?”
“‘Course I will, baby. Of course I will.”