(fic) Window of Opportunity ~ Part 2 of 3 ~
Everything was a blur, and it had been killing him to not visit Jensen, but there were things he needed to do, thoughts he needed to sort out. It had taken days to get the police to stop questioning him, and he had finally relied on playing the distraught husband card to get them to ease up. In truth, he was numb to everything but his own sense of determination.
The fact that the severity of this situation hadn't smacked him in the face yet had him almost concerned. He was sure that anyone might consider his actions extreme, that it would be foolish to throw his life away in order to pull something so intricate off...and hell, he thought he was crazy himself...but there was never any doubt in his mind of what he had to do. Jensen was innocent, and if the courts didn't realize it, then it was up to Jared to get Jensen back. For better or worse.
Jared had remained on his regular scheduled rounds at work and the only routines he had to change were those where the press did their damnedest to cut him off--parking and walking into the hospital. The cameras in his face were starting to really piss him off, more so now that he knew each and every picture taken could end up in the paper the next day, accompanied by another insane headline. Like yesterdays 'Local Surgeon knows Ridge Point Butcher.'
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The jail felt stuffy, his collar was suddenly too tight, and Jared was sure that every guard was eyeing him with knowledge, but the quantity of information swimming around his head made him feel claustrophobic. Everything settled and calmed when Jensen sat on the other side of the window and picked up the phone. It was so good to see him, and the ache in his body to touch and hold him gave Jared the wave of loss that he'd questioned if he was ever going to feel. Nothing had been real until now. There was no footage of Jensen arrested because he was cuffed and in the station before daylight and press hadn’t been allowed on site when the bus unloaded the prisoners at the gate. Jared had no conversations with him, only officers telling him this was happening and that their life together was over--in not quite so many words. All the press released seemed speculative and fake because no one had a photo of his husband doing anything. But here, with Jensen led in by a guard, ankles shackled, sitting behind a glass and talking through a phone...this was real. It broke his heart to fucking pieces.
He sat in the chair, shifting as the phone sat cold in his hand, and they stared at each other, Jared taking in the changes in Jensen despite the logically short amount of time since he saw him. The energy and happiness normally in his eyes was gone, but a more determined look set in, his hair less groomed than usual-fluffier, and Jared kind of liked it-and then there was the cut on his cheek. Jared wasn’t sure he wanted to know the circumstances of the fight that had probably inflicted the injury, so he kept his mouth shut.
“I did not kill anyone.”
Jared focused on Jensen again, his eyes steady. “I know.” His heart pounded, and he had to get out of the chair, out of the building. It was wrong, and sitting here made him begin to think about details pertaining to his husband’s case, and he didn’t need that. In his gut he knew that Jensen was innocent, and that was all he needed. Evidence be fucking damned.
Jared lifted his hand to press it against the cool glass, but thought better of it, instead thinking back to an old code, and flicking the window three times with his middle finger before turning to leave. It killed him to see Jensen like this, but he knew if he stayed too long, he’d be inclined to talk, and if he talked--he was afraid of ending up on the other side of the glass with Jensen. There was a kind of power in having the guards unlock the prison doors for him at his request, but it was short lived. They wouldn’t be so obliging next time. Jared gripped the steering wheel tight as he drove away from the prison - away from Jensen - and back toward the heart of the city.
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Maybe it was the anxiety of being alone every night, or the stress of working long days after being up all night, but Jared couldn’t keep himself from flipping his pen rapidly between his fingers and on the rickety old motel desk. He couldn’t bring himself to go back to their home. He hadn’t sorted through his own feelings yet, let alone any of their belongings. The computer screen flickered in the late night as if taunting Jared.
Jared determinedly slapped his pen onto the pad of blank paper beside him and unfolded himself from the chair to reach for the now-cold “hot” chocolate he had bought from the nearest caffeine hub. If he didn’t hear from Jim soon, he was going to---
The phone rang, and Jared answered it with a swift plea for information. It took a lot of discussion, and a number of coffees, but they had a plan before the night was over. They would meet the next morning, make the appropriate trades and then it was just a hurdle of an impossible task to set the ball rolling. Jared could be arrested, he could lose his license to practice--he knew this, but despite that, every night when it came down to one question...can I do this?...the answer was always a resounding yes.
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Jared screeched to a stop at the end of the back road that he’d been directed to. He twirled the coin in his coat pocket around and around in his fingers while he waited, tapping his foot impatiently. When the truck turned the corner and the older man sitting behind the wheel climbed out, adjusting the hat lower on his forehead, Jared stepped forward and pulled the envelope of cash out of his pocket.
He handed it off, and watched Jim’s face as he flipped through it, counting. He tossed a small plastic baggy at Jared and tossed the envelope backwards through the window to plop on the passenger seat. Jim reached through the window to remove a beer from his seat and pulled a long drink, and all Jared could do was stare at the new items in his hands. Of course, it wasn’t like passports were foreign to him. Both he and Jensen had them, but those wouldn’t be of any use within the next week. These passports, for Mr. Robert Halkin and Mr. Jeremy Malone, represented a whole different level of ‘new’. identity fraud, potentially ruining the career he’d worked his entire life for. Conning the fucking police - not long ago, he’d have said it was impossible; now he was praying for just the opposite.
Mark had given him one hell of a defense lawyer.
Jim laughed into his bottleneck, tipped it to his hat beak like a salute, and climbed back into the truck, rumbling on down the road to the tune blaring on the radio.
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The passports were burning a hole in his pocket. He wanted to stash them away, but there was nowhere he trusted himself to put them where they couldn’t be found. He was notoriously bad at hiding things, as had been proven repeatedly every birthday, Christmas and Valentine’s Day celebration for years prior. He didn’t dare take them from his dress shirt to ease the imagined burn against his skin, but it left him distracted and off his game, and it was pulling attention to him. The last thing he needed was eyes on him. His best defense? Pull out his acting skills and hope they were convincing.
He was angry, hurt and heartbroken; how could he have been so stupid as to marry a murderer? How could he not know? No, he never wanted to see the bastard again (it had broken a piece of his heart to take his wedding band off and wear it on a chain). Yes, he appreciated the offers for drinks, but he had an early shift tomorrow, so he was going to jog around the motel and just try to forget for a little while. No, Richard, he did not need ‘Naughty Nurse Neil’ but thanks for the offer.
It was difficult to withdraw from everyone, but it was all he could do to keep people from prying too hard, from coming to ‘console’ him at the motel room and seeing the chaos. The last thing he needed was a visitor to see the packed bags he was readying to ship out of country to wait for them, the fake passports or the scribbled papers everywhere. Yet for all his efforts, he couldn’t ditch Richard on the day that he’d set up to drop the book off at the prison for Jensen. He insisted on riding along, so that afterward, he could take Jared ATV’ing and get him to ‘loosen up’. Jared knew what would relax him--Jensen back in his arms. Still, Jared played along.
“I really appreciate the thought, man, but you don’t need to come with me. I know you’re Jen’s partner and all, but it’s not like you have to take care of me.”
“Oh I know I don’t need to,” Richard answered with an easy smile. “But it must suck to be alone through all this. I’ve got your back, Jared, no matter what.” The words sounded odd coming out of Richard’s mouth, like something he should say to his partner and not his partner’s husband, but Jared pushed it to the back of his mind. He had bigger things to worry about.
“Thanks,” he said absentmindedly, barely noticing when Richard reached over to pat his knee reassuringly.
After parking at the prison, Jared let his new shadow follow him inside. He snarked at the guard that this would be his goodbye ‘gift’ to Jensen, and that he figured since “Jensen is such a religious man, the bastard will need all the help he can get from this thing.”
With his hand in his pocket, Jared needed to dig his nails into his palm to keep from imagining how that would translate to Jensen through the guards’ filter, but he hoped it would get the point across, and also help him fly under the radar. Jensen had to know that such an uncharacteristic book given “specifically to him” would be meant as a tool to help him. He had to, or Jared might accidentally break his heart.
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Routine was easy enough to fall into - not like he had a choice - but the nights were the longest. They left him with way too much time to think. And Jensen had a lot to think about. He kept remembering the shine of his gun under that couch, the way the blood had dripped off its handle. He had no idea how it had ended up there, but it was clear that - just like his fingerprints - it hadn’t been left by him.
So then who? Jensen hated to admit it, but he wasn’t short of enemies. He’d put a lot of men away for a lot of years, arresting them and then testifying against them in court. Men like Clif Kosterman, who’d already proven he held a grudge. And then there was Matt Cohen, recently released from the prison Jensen had helped put him in. Maybe Matt had set him up; now that he knew what it was like to be falsely imprisoned, Jensen almost wouldn’t blame him. Or maybe this wasn’t a professional issue at all. The letter he and Jared received from Misha the day of the shooting lost all its comedy in the weak glow of the single bulb hanging in Jensen’s cell. Though he’d never seemed dangerous, Misha was smart, and he had access to police files and resources.
The ridiculous part was that Jensen didn’t spend nearly as much time trying to solve his own case, as he did trying to figure out Jared. Jared had been brief and very hard to read during his last visit - which was unusual for him. Jensen knew Jared inside and out, and to think that he couldn’t even tell how he was feeling during that short visit shook him. Jared believed that he was innocent…right? He had to. But then, why hadn’t he come back to visit? Another thought that shook him. And the damn flicking on the glass-what the hell was that? It annoyed Jensen to no end and he was beginning to feel sure that it was really just an annoyance to emphasize the fact that Jared was leaving; maybe for good.
A tap dripping nearby seemed to drill a pin into his head with each drop, and it was all Jensen could do to keep from throwing his pillow against the wall in an attempt to do something--anything--about it. He knew it would prove useless, so he chose to rap his knuckles on the stone to the same beat-at least that way he might trick his mind into thinking that he was making the noise. It almost reminded him of a camping trip they had taken years ago, and they had devised a system of knocking.
Jensen sat straight up in the bed, smiling like an idiot. How had he not thought of this before? Jared knocked three times. Three meant ‘I’ve got your back, be right there’.
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A guard shoved the book through the slot in his cell, and for the next ten minutes Jensen sat, examining it, turning it over and over in his hands. Why the hell did Jared give him a Bible, of all things? The cover fell open as he turned it over again, and he noticed a small tear in the binding. He glanced around, pulled the spine apart and a fat cigar fell out. The wrapper around it unrolled as Jensen picked it up, and he read the few words scrawled across it in Jared’s familiar chicken scratch. 5cc Tetrodotoxin Infused Cuban Cigar. It didn’t make sense, he knew nothing about drugs or medical terms, but he trusted Jared, and that was what mattered.
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The smoke swirled in his mouth as he held his breath and then slowly exhaled as he lay back on his bed. It had been a while since he enjoyed a cigar, and the intoxication of the smell helped him relax, closing his eyes and taking another pull from the thing, drifting into a world in his head. It wasn’t until a sharp pain tore through his chest that Jensen remembered that he was in a jail cell, and that somehow, Jared thought this would help him. He needed to remember that, and he repeated it to himself with each fresh bolt of pain ripping through his body. He yelped, clutching his chest, and scrambled to the bars, screaming for help as another burst of pain tore through him and brought him to his knees.
The approaching guard slammed his night stick against the bars, trying to settle Jensen, but Jensen knew something was wrong now, and he reached through the bars again, pleading. It was hard to breathe, and everything was turning fuzzy with the pain, but the guard seemed to take it as an attack and whacked Jensen on the forehead. That was when he fell to the ground, writhing in pain.
The last thing he heard before his heart seemed to shrink to the size of a dime, were footsteps echoing down the hallway and voices shouting too loudly to decipher.
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Jared yawned, rubbing the back of his hand across his eyelids, then stared into the empty coffee cup, wondering why he had chosen to do a double shift today when he clearly wasn't fully up to it. Something inside of him had just told him that he was sick of waiting around at home and wondering what was going to happen next, that he needed to spend what little time he had left trying to help people.
It was the shrill wail of a siren pulling into the adjacent ambulance zone that pulled him out of his daze. He groaned out of habit, but was internally thankful for another emergency. His buzzer would go off, and he'd be back on his feet and busy again. His mind would be, mostly, occupied. As he stood, he suddenly blinked to attention. That wasn't an ambulance siren. That most definitely wasn't a hospital related siren; it was most distinctly a police car. Or three. Jared spun to face the window in time to see four police cruisers fly by with an ambulance smack in the middle of them. His heart stopped. Was this it?
He abandoned his cup on the table and hightailed it for the emergency department. He cursed to himself when one of his attendings pulled him aside for a critical patient update. It was another ten minutes before he was able to make it to the emergency ward, and the ambulance had already pulled in, emptied and taken off, but there were still three police cars hanging around. Everyone had their eyes on the patient with the ventilator who was being wheeled out of sight down the hall.
Jared's heart pounded. Was it--?
He cleared his throat and took a deep breath before he stepped up to the administration desk. It was Jensen. His Jensen. He'd started yelling for help about twenty minutes ago, and the guards had thought it was a ruse, until he'd fallen and started seizing. The paramedics had done what they could, but couldn't determine the cause of his arrhythmic heartbeat and had done what they could just to keep him breathing until they had gotten to the hospital. Now, the triage nurses were scrambling to determine a cause of the seizures, and so far nothing.
That was enough information, but the fact that the cause hadn't been determined, ironically, put fear into him. Had he fucked up? What if he'd put too much in the cigar, what if he really had killed his husband while trying to break him out of prison? He pinched his wrist and reminded himself of the hours he'd spent thoroughly researching every medical book he could find for the perfect cocktail that would create an emergency situation, but really be of no risk to Jensen. He hadn't gone to medical school for nine years without learning a thing or two, and he needed to remind himself he knew his stuff.
Jared was dismissed from the area--thankfully no one seemed to realize that this man was his husband--or maybe that was why they had dismissed him. He couldn't tell, maybe his colleagues were as adept liars as he was beginning to be. He didn't need to be asked again, because he took the time to go to his locker. He pulled out the plastic gift shop bag that was filled with the most basic of Jensen's clothes and a few of his own, and walked the halls to head back to the ER. Checking his watch, he fidgeted with the handles of the bag while he ran through his research in his head. If Jensen had started seizing twenty five minutes ago--he had another five or ten before Jensen woke up--but how was he going to make sure that no one was watching the room when that happened? That was something he hadn't thought of. Fuck.
Doubling back to the nurses’ station, Jared ditched the bag under a specimen cart that he pushed with him. He casually mentioned the extensive paperwork the police should fill out immediately to ensure the room was properly protected. The nurse - new- became obviously flustered, apologized for not thinking of it earlier, and skittered down the hall. Jared turned the corner when the investigating officer who -- from what he knew -- had arrested Jensen came from around the corner towards the station on his police radio.
Taking an alternate route past, Jared peeked down the hall to see the officer still filling out papers. There were no officers outside Jensen's door, and he prayed that there weren’t any inside either. Abandoning the cart outside, he glanced back and slid through the cracked door, easing it closed behind him. All fears, worries and panic melted away when he saw Jensen wide eyed, sitting up and looking at him. Jared smirked despite himself; the hardest part was over. He had broken his husband out of jail. He. Was. Awesome. They were together again, and fuck the world; they would make the rest of it work, no matter what.
Jared made short work of the ankle cuffs confining Jensen to the bed and the look that crossed Jensen's face was almost priceless in its shock and relief and confusion all at once. Jared tossed the bag of clothes at him, and then rattled off what they now needed to do. He couldn't stop himself from watching Jensen pull the gown off and the shirt over his head, realizing how much he’d missed having his husband - and his husband’s body - around. He shook his head to focus, because right now, he needed to get an accused felon out of a guarded room and secure hospital, and then out of the freaking country.
He guided Jensen out the door and hurriedly around the corner after ditching his own lab coat for a different shirt. Reaching the end of a corridor that would allow them to reach their escape route, Jensen stopped dead and spun around. Jared quickly followed his lead as a uniformed guard wandered past the two of them on his way towards Jensen's room. When he disappeared through another door, Jensen and Jared hurried around the corner and out a back door.
Jared tossed Jensen the keys that had been burning a hole in his pocket since the plan went into action, and guided him to the waiting sleek black car. Jensen eyed the car and asked Jared where he’d gotten it, but Jared only cautiously replied that he’d learned a few things. It was kind of amazing how easily he’d learned to play with the law once he’d had reason to. Easing into the car as the engine roared to life, they looked over at each other and smiled. Jared guided Jensen on a back route towards the airport and after Jensen waved him off once, he sat back in his seat, trying to calm his pounding heart. It would be okay. He needed it to be, because the last few weeks without Jensen had been fucking hell, and he still didn't even know what had happened at the prison itself. Jared was steeling himself for that information, but he kept himself from asking; he couldn’t handle that knowledge until they were both safely out of harm’s way.
His phone vibrated in his pocket, and Jared glanced at the new text as Jensen steered them to their escape. He smiled to himself at Richard’s message, which asked if Jared had freed Jensen, and if so, if he could help by getting the force off their back while they escaped. He knew Richard would understand, and having someone on the inside would really help. He replied with their flight number and departure time.
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Jensen eyed each of the cars that they passed, and each one made him more and more nervous. He knew the local police force; he knew how many undercover cars they had access to. It was a kind of hurting his head thinking about how his life had been devoted to catching criminals, and here he was, breaking the system he’d worked so long to protect. It made him wonder how secure the justice system really was if they’d slipped it so easily, but Jensen had no idea what Jared had done to pull this off, and he was pretty sure he wanted to leave it that way. After all, he was happy to no longer be at the mercy of the people who had been ready to hand him a life sentence for crimes he hadn’t committed.
Jensen tore around a corner, pulling into the stretch of parking lots in front of the airport, and in a scan of his side mirror he caught a glimpse of something he thought he recognized. With a double check in the rear-view, he realized he recognized the license plate number of a car a few lengths back. It was a vehicle that shouldn’t be anywhere near here, if things were going to work. He cursed, snatching Jared’s phone out of his hands and sending a quick text off to a distant relative, someone he’d always known he could count on.
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Jensen sped past the main parking lot, and Jared frowned, scanning his profile for a clue as to why, but he decided not to ask. If Jensen had reason to change the route, then he’d trust him-Jensen was the expert in the police stuff anyway.
The car screeched to a halt, and Jensen ripped his seatbelt off before flying out the door towards the terminal entrance, weaving between people with more determination than Jared had ever seen. Jared stayed close behind him. Jared’s phone beeped in Jensen’s hand, and Jared gave him a flustered look when he glanced down at it. They were in the middle of running for their lives here!
Jensen tucked the phone away and then grabbed the arm of Jared’s coat, steering down a different hallway, and Jared felt a sudden sense of hysteria fall grip him. These were the freaking cops they were running from. Cops. Police. Certified criminal capturers. He laughed slightly to himself as he realized he’d been a fool for thinking they could escape. How the hell would they get on the plane without being detected? Sure, fake passports-but their faces hadn’t changed and he knew Jensen’s had been plastered everywhere since his arrest.
A desperate tug on his arm pulled him back to the here and now, and he stumbled after Jensen, slowing to a brisk walk as they neared another gate. He tried hissing something to Jensen about this not being their gate, but when Danneel came into view, he realized it didn’t matter. He’d had that kind of faith in her since they’d all gone to high school together, and he couldn’t think of anyone more suited to a career as a flight attendant. Danneel always had the situation under control.
Jensen nodded and smiled politely to her before grabbing the passports from Jared’s coat and handing them to her. The sign above her blinked “Final Boarding” and the double blink she batted at him when they locked eyes was enough. It was her version of a wink, always had been, and Jared knew that he owed her the world’s biggest favour, now. She took Jensen’s passport in hand, and Jared felt a little bit more of his anxiety melt away as he realized the document never completely passed under the scanner: no blink on the computer indicating that Jensen was boarding, and a second later, the same for his own, a fresh boarding pass pressed between the pages indicating their seats.
He began to say something, but she cut him off, firmly stating that the plane was late for departure and they needed to board immediately. Jared fought the urge to hug her, but he knew there were security cameras all over the terminal, and the last thing he wanted to do was show a connection to the employee who had let them on the plane. He smiled, willing all his gratitude to show in his eyes before hurrying behind Jensen to the attendant showing them to their seats.
Once they both had their seatbelts on, Jared leaned to Jensen, asking him why the hell he’d changed the flight that Jared had set up already. Jared blinked in confusion when Jensen revealed that Richard had been following them. He had spotted Richard’s car, undercover, leading other cruisers to the airport. Jensen’s voice sounded flat and his expression fell as he recounted how he saw Richard entering the terminal, ready to draw his weapon as he scanned the crowd. Jared had been too busy blindly following Jensen to notice any commotion.
Jensen elbowed him in his side and glanced behind him to the window across the aisle. Jared leaned forward slightly so that he could see the commotion outside and smiled as they began their taxi down the runway.
They had done it.
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Danneel looked at her supervisor as she stepped away from a uniformed officer and strode over, a definite sense of purpose in her step.
“Samantha, what is this all about?” There were police all over, and, with a glance out the window she noticed there were vehicles pulling in to surround a plane further down the strip, holding it from take off.
“A convicted felon escaped from the hospital earlier with aid from his spouse, and is believed to be aboard Flight 708. An officer just boarded to search the aircraft.”
Danneel put on her best concerned look, and nodded. “I hope they’re found-that’s horrible,” she lied, glancing to the sergeant who was waiting with his radio in hand, tapping it against his shoulder as he waited for an answer from the officer on board.
Samantha nodded, and they both jumped when the radio crackled to life with a buzz, and a voice broadcast through: “Sorry, there’s no one by that description on this flight.”
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~ Epilogue ~
~ Master Post ~