A Fair Distance: Comes a Time. Chapter Six.
Title: A Fair Distance: Comes a Time. Chapter Six
Fandom The Sentinel
Author: Laurie
Type: Slash
Rating: PG-17 (for the series)
Word count: 4445 words
Warnings: Yes! This could be triggering so if that is a concern please check the warning page. Link to warnings for the entire series
Written for Sentinel Thursday Challenge 176: Death
Beta’ed by t_verano She's a star. Her assistance is always deeply appreciated.
Summary for A Fair Distance: A year after Blair left Jim, and Cascade, they meet again in a small Tennessee town. Blair's been arrested and is being held for questioning at the request of the Cascade PD.
This is the third and final arc to the story, and the two earlier arcs, A Fair Distance:Running on Empty and A Fair Distance: Ball and Chain, as well as several time stamps, can be located at my LJ here or at Artifact Storage Room 3 here or at AO3 here. I believe that AO3 has a nifty feature that allows you to download onto E-readers.
~oo~oo~oo~oo~
'Blair, oh God, are you still alive?!'
I reached out to touch Jim, to reassure him - weird, my fingers looked funny - but while I could see my hands on his face, I couldn't feel him. Jim, he looked so scared. What was wrong?
I heard the panther roaring and suddenly I wasn't with Jim anymore. I was back in William's house. I wasn't sure where I'd just been, either. I must be dreaming. Yeah, I was still dreaming because the last thing I remembered was feeling out of it, and William holding me. He'd been trying to move me to the couch; he'd been saying something about lying down.
And there I was on the couch. I could see my legs, partly covered with a blanket. William was bending over me, blocking me from seeing the rest of my body. Without realizing I was doing it, I moved to where I could see what was going on.
Must be dreaming; this was totally bizarre. I was floating now horizontally over my body, like I was flying to Never-Never Land, and William was holding a pillow near my face. He threw it on the floor like it had burned him. Then he leaned down and kissed me on the forehead.
I tried pinching myself to wake up. William kissing me like that was just... not like William, and I didn't want this to turn into some weird sex dream thing. If it did, I wouldn't be able to look William in the face when I woke up.
Pinching myself had no effect whatsoever. Crap. Maybe I should try to travel to Blue Jungle Land and regroup from there, since I was making no progress in waking up here. I started to visualize a pathway, tried to slow my breathing down into a deep rhythmic pattern, make my heart calm into slow, steady beats.
But I couldn't feel myself breathing or my heart beating. I wasn't going anywhere. I felt like rolling my eyes. Dreams were so strange.
William rearranged the blanket, uncovering my body for a moment, and shocked, I saw that my hands and feet were bound together with duct tape. He covered my face with the blanket, and I, being the brilliant scientist that I am, finally put the pieces together.
Fuck! Holy unbelievable fuck, fuck, fuck! This wasn't a dream. William hadn't been trying to make me comfortable with a pillow and a blanket, he'd smothered me! This was like a textbook out-of-body experience!
I might be dead. William thought I was, which explained the blanket covering up my face.
Santa Muerte, I could be dead. I had materialized in front of Jim. My soul had gone to his when I left my body. I flashed on the terrified look on Jim's face. My Jim, who didn't think twice about hanging from helicopters, or jumping on semis from bridges, or hurtling himself off cliffs, was scared. For me.
Okay, I needed to re-enter my body. I closed my eyes and willed myself to wake up, body and soul in one place again.
I opened them cautiously. Shit. It hadn't worked. I watched William put the finishing touches on wrapping me up. He laid his hand on the blanket where my forehead was and it seemed to me that he did it tenderly.
Whatever I had done that made him think I had to die, he seemed to have forgiven me.
What was I going to do? Was I still alive, or was I dead? I didn't want to die. Damn it, Jim and I had just worked things out between us. It wasn't fair to kick it now!
Concentrate, Blair. I attempted to move down closer to my trussed-up body but now that I was purposefully trying to do it, I couldn't seem to budge an inch. Fuck a duck. I felt helpless, like a butterfly pinned to a board. Oh, God, bad choice of images. Those butterflies were dead when they were pinned. Killed by poison. Apparently something else I had in common with them - William must have drugged me or poisoned me.
He sat down heavily in the recliner in the opposite corner. He looked so sad. It was crazy; he'd tried to kill me, maybe he'd even succeeded... and I wanted to comfort him.
I wondered if I was breathing under that blanket. If so, it wasn't very apparent. I tried again to make myself go into my body. No luck.
I hoped that Jim had found my note. If he had, he'd know I had gone to his father's house, and after seeing me all spooky he'd check on me. I supposed Jim's cell phone was turned off or crushed by now. But Henri would come, surely? Jim would call him or he'd get bored sitting out in the car and find some excuse to check on me. Jim would be on his way, driving like a crazy man probably. When he got here, maybe he could see me again, if I hadn't figured out this whole out-of-body gig and slid back home. Could I talk to him?
There was a knock on the door, and William went out of the room. He came back moments later, accompanied by two men.
The dark-haired, good-looking guy said, “He's dead, right? The boss told you to take care of that yourself. 'Cause snuffing him out ain't in the job description.”
William nodded, then added. “He didn't suffer. I made sure of that.”
The second man, tall, built like a gorilla, and I swear he could probably walk on his knuckles, piped up. “We don't give a shit if angels descended to carry him to Heaven. We aren't getting paid enough to do anything except clean up your mess. You should have done what the boss told you to and laid low, let him set up something. You jumped the gun, and you put the boss in a bind, calling him at the last minute like this. He said to tell you he's charging you double the price for the rush job. And we aren't hanging around here for our health. You get the door, and me and my associate here will handle Chuckles over there.”
Oh, crap. It was obvious they were here to get rid of my body. If they checked first before taking me out of here and I was alive, then they'd make sure William did the job right this time.
Now I wasn't sure I should try and go back. If I did and William killed me, I'd know it this time. I experienced a flash of panic, remembering what it had felt like to drown when Alex had killed me. I didn't want to leave this plane and travel to the great unknown carrying memories of what it felt like to smother to death, too.
Jim. I wanted to see Jim before the light came for me, or the door opened, or the Grim Reaper arrived to escort me onwards.
Jim would come. I needed to stay for him. Poor Jim. He'd figure out what William had done. I ached suddenly with pity for him; the ordeal he was about to be put through would be excruciating.
Dark-haired guy went to stand by my head. He pulled on a pair of leather gloves and touched the blanket. I was powerless, unable to move, and horrified, I yelled at them to get away from me.
They didn't hear me. I kept yelling anyway.
“Look, old man, we're just gonna do a little check on your work, understand? If you screwed it up, well then, you get to have a do-over.” Gorilla guy smirked at William, and I wanted to clock the asshole. My death wasn't some sort of joke, God dammit.
They were all intent on seeing if William had really killed me, and as they bent over my body, the dark-haired guy's hand beginning to pull down the edge of the blanket, a voice, strong and determined, barked out a welcome order.
“Cascade P.D. Step away from the couch and spread your hands out where I can see them. Then slowly get face first down on the floor. Now, assholes.”
Henri. God, it was Henri and I was so glad to see him that I could have kissed him. He was standing partly in the doorway, ready to duck sideways for cover.
The three men reacted differently. William froze, dark-haired guy started cursing while he began his descent to his knees, hands above his head, and the gorilla threw himself at the end of the couch for partial cover, pulled out a gun and started shooting at Henri.
The dark-haired man took advantage of the distraction to lunge for cover by the recliner across the room when Henri ducked back into the kitchen. He started adding his gunfire to the racket. It was crazy and chaotic and I was worried about Henri being there by himself, and this was all my fault, all of it, I shouldn't have come here, I should have told the truth to Henri and now he might pay for my mistake with his life. And William, God - Jim was going to be devastated and if I hadn't given in to William's demands to see me tonight, Jim might have figured out his father wanted me dead and stopped him before he got himself into any more trouble.
Gunshots were echoing through the room, and Henri was shooting back and yelling at them to give up. Police sirens were wailing, coming closer and closer.
William seemed to awaken and apparently realized he was in the middle of a shootout. It was a miracle he hadn't been hit by a bullet already. He did what Henri had ordered. He lay down flat on the carpet, a little way from the couch.
I wanted to help Henri so badly. I tried directing energy at a crystal paperweight on the desk near the other locked door, to use it to clobber one of the assholes, but I failed. Damn it, if I was dead, then I wanted to go all poltergeist on their asses.
Screams of pain from the dark-haired guy accompanied the slow blossoming of red on his shoulder, and the gun that he'd been firing flew up into the air, landing near William's hand.
Sirens were screaming right outside now; I heard doors crashing open and Henri yelling to his backup what was happening.
Gorilla guy fired off a burst of shots, then tried for the locked door near the couch and recliner. When it didn't open he shot the door knob off, but before he could get out of the room Henri got him in the leg.
Gorilla guy still had his gun, although he was bellowing from the pain. A uniformed officer took over firing when Henri stopped to reload a new magazine into his Glock. Henri called out again for the guy to put down his weapon but, cursing and screaming, he just kept shooting until he was hit in the chest. This time he slumped over.
William acted then. I watched in horror as he got to his knees, grabbed the abandoned gun and brought it to his head. I tried so hard to move, to stop him. I could only hover, helpless.
I was letting Jim down. His father was going to...
William held the gun to his temple and as Henri shouted at him to stop, to talk to him, William pulled the trigger.
~oo~oo~oo~oo~
We were running with lights and sirens, but over that racket I still heard gunshots long before we arrived. Henri still hadn't responded to the radio, but two units had arrived and reported that they had entered the house and that shots were being fired by two men at an officer, and that there was a third man not involved with weapons fire in the same room as the shooters. I didn't know if that man was Blair or my dad. God, was my dad shooting at the police? He did keep guns in the house, for protection.
Blair wasn't talking; I would have heard him. I had to go on faith that he was alive and that he was okay. I had to function; I couldn't fall apart - Blair and my father needed me. And who the fuck were the other men involved in this gun battle?
There were more shots, more screams. My father's house, turned into a killing field. This was so unreal but I concentrated and connected my sense of hearing with touch to ground myself, since going into a zone was the last thing I could afford to do.
About half a mile from the house I heard Henri yelling at one of the gunmen to put the gun down, to not shoot, to talk to him. I heard another officer saying that they needed two rigs here, and then the radio channel was busy with a request for two ambulances to be sent to my father's address.
One last shot was fired; Joel turned around from the front passenger seat and faced me.
“Jim, what else can you tell us?”
I held up my hand as Simon turned into the end of my father's street, listening intently.
“There are two men with gunshot wounds - leg and chest for one, and shoulder for the other. There's one man dead.”
“Is it--”
“I don't know yet. Simon, the scene is secured. I'm going in.”
He agreed as he skidded to a stop in front of the house, garish blue and red lights swirling in a dance in the darkness.
Before he'd barely stopped I was out of the car, holding up my badge and announcing to the uniform who was restricting access at the driveway that I was Major Crimes.
As I ran up to the house, the black jaguar loping beside me, I heard the pulsing wail of ambulance sirens in the distance, ETA seven or eight minutes. One man in the house was screaming in pain. I couldn't hear my father or Blair.
I held out my badge so that the cop at the front door wouldn't stop me. I blew past him and sprinted for the kitchen. I took in the coffee cups and the plate of turnovers on the table as I ran by, following the black jaguar as it disappeared into the next room.
I had been smelling blood ever since I'd jumped out of the car, but now the scent of it, metallic and heavy and nauseating, was overwhelming as I followed my spirit animal into Dad's study.
Henri looked up from where he was working on a guy on the floor, applying pressure to a shoulder wound.
The injured man wasn't my father or Blair. I heard Henri say my name, sorrow in his tone of voice, and I knew then that I was going to forever hate this day.
I saw my father sprawled out on the floor, and I knew he was dead. The cop in me cataloged the scene and concluded that the shot to the head that had killed my father had been self-inflicted, and I felt my stomach heave. I started to go to him, but the jaguar's roar stopped me.
The big black cat was standing on the couch, and underneath him was a blanket-covered figure. Suddenly Blair's astral body was before me again, floating vertically a few feet away, and he looked imploringly at me. I reached out to grab him, to shake him, but as I tried to close my hands around his biceps he was again out of reach.
“Don't you be dead!” I screamed at him, and he looked guiltily towards the couch.
I don't remember moving, but I must have because I was yanking the blanket off Blair's body and dropping to my knees beside him, the black jaguar next to me.
I placed my fingers on the side of Blair's neck and felt the fast, faint, fluttery beat of his heart. He was breathing, but barely, so shallowly that his chest hardly moved. His right leg was blood soaked, the wound bleeding through the fabric still, and I put pressure on it. I quickly felt down his body with my free hand, seeking any other injuries, looking for more blood. I found none. The black jaguar roared again. I looked up at the image of Blair now floating horizontally above his body. I yelled up at his astral projection, “Don't you die on me, Sandburg! Don't you die!”
I clenched my fist, wanting to hit the wall. I wanted to dismember the two men who were receiving first aid from Henri and the two other cops. I wanted to see Blair open his eyes and really look at me. I wanted my father to be alive. I wanted it to be years from now and all of this in the past.
“Jim, is he alive?! I had to stop this asshole from bleeding out!” Henri said, still putting pressure on the wound of the man laid out on the floor. Henri sounded shaken, horrified, and I wanted to scream at him that Blair was barely alive, and why had he let Blair enter this house, but I couldn't make my voice work.
Oh God, Blair, keep breathing!
I looked up at Blair's soul?, his image, floating above me. He looked so frightened. I unclenched my fist and reached up to him, ready to drag him down and into his body, but once again I couldn't seem to reach him.
Was he frightened because he was separated from his body? Over what my father had done to him? At my father's death? Or...
I found my voice.
“This isn't your fault! None of it, you understand me, Sandburg? Now get your ass back in your body where you belong!”
I felt Simon's hand on my shoulder. “The ambulances will be here in a few moments, Jim. I'm so sorry about your father. What's wrong with Blair, can you tell?”
“My father did something, I'm sure of it, but there aren't any obvious wounds, except for being shot, probably by a stray bullet. He's barely breathing, heartbeat is fast and weak. And he's not in his body, he's floating right here.” I jerked my head to where Blair had come down a little, still floating horizontally with his arms out. He had a look of concentration on his features, even with being translucent.
I had a sudden, unwelcome memory of Blair floating in the fountain.
“He's trying to re-enter his body, I think, but he's having trouble. He needs help, and I don't know what to do.” Simon looked up but obviously couldn't see what I could. Blair's image touched my cheek. I still couldn't feel the touch of that translucent hand. How on earth did a soul, or whatever you want to call it, reunite with that person's body? I wished with all my heart that Incacha wasn't dead and could be here to help. I whispered to Blair, “C'mon, sweetheart. You can do this. Keep trying.”
I hadn't forgotten that my father lay dead just a few feet away. I didn't think I'd ever be able to wipe away my memory of how he looked and the blood and brains spatter. I couldn't let myself think about that now. Just like when I had been on missions, you dealt with what was needed and grieved later. Oh, Dad. What were you thinking to do this to yourself and to try to harm Blair?
The ambulances' wails stopped abruptly as they halted outside the house and I could hear EMTs opening doors and gurneys being rolled up the sidewalk.
Simon squeezed my shoulder again. “What do you need, Jim?”
“Have somebody look through the house for anything that could have been used to poison Blair. Start in the kitchen. He was drinking coffee and there were turnovers on the table. See if the hospital lab or ours can check the cups and food, maybe find out if he ingested poison or a drug. I'm going to start stripping him, see if there are any needle marks. Simon, get a knife or scissors so we can cut off this damned duct tape. Make sure that the EMTs understand he's priority here.”
He returned with a pair of scissors and took over putting pressure on Blair's leg using some of the wadded-up blanket. I freed Blair from the duct tape, and started cutting his clothes off him, first his blue-checked flannel shirt and then the long-sleeved black T-shirt I'd bought him yesterday. My hands were covered in his blood, and I wiped them off on the rags I'd made of his shirts.
I looked carefully at his upper body, but I couldn't find any needle marks. I didn't want to risk moving him yet, so I didn't roll him over to check his back.
A guy dropped beside me and said he was a paramedic; he asked me if I knew what had happened as he put a pulse ox on Blair's finger and wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his biceps. I explained what I knew, and what I'd done so far, and he nodded. He told Simon to keep applying pressure to Blair's wound. After checking the sensor on Blair's finger, he placed an oxygen mask over his mouth and started an IV line.
He told Simon he could stop holding the blanket against Blair's bleeding leg. Simon got up and leaned down to where I was still kneeling by Blair; he squeezed my shoulder. Then he walked around my father's body and went to talk to Henri and Joel.
The paramedic cut away the jeans around Blair's wound and examined it. It was a deep groove from the bullet skimming across the top of his thigh. It wasn't serious in itself, but I suspected Blair couldn't afford any blood loss, or the shock of being shot. After the paramedic bandaged the leg, he put a neck support on Blair, who still hadn't moved, and shined a light in his eyes. His pupils contracted, which was a good sign. His blood pressure, forty-five over thirty, was dangerously low.
The paramedic and I shifted him carefully to the gurney, and we tucked a soft, thin blanket around him before strapping him in. The EMTs carefully maneuvered around my father and rolled Blair out. I saw that Blair's astral body was still floating above him. How long would Blair hold on? What would he do if a doorway to another place opened for him?
EMTs were working with the other two injured men, and they loaded the one with the shoulder injury onto a gurney. I called out to them, pointed to the wounded perp who looked ready for transport. “That guy doesn't ride with my partner. Police matter.”
Simon added, “He's going to be brought in for questioning, so an officer will be staying with him.” Simon beckoned one of the uniforms over. “Stay with him at the hospital and make sure he's kept secured.” The uniform nodded and handcuffed the guy's ankle to the gurney.
Henri had been conferring with Joel, and they both strode over to me. Joel gripped my upper arm.
“Jim, how are you doing? How's Blair?”
“He's not good. I'm leaving to go with him, but I needed to...”
I glanced at my father's body. I was torn, wanting to stay by Dad and needing to go with Blair. Joel let go of my arm, and I dropped down next to my father's body and I touched him gently on his back. Then I stood up and faced Henri.
“What happened?”
Henri grimaced. “I know that you told Blair it was okay to stop by and for me to give him and your dad some privacy, but we needed to get going to the safe house. I was going to call your cell phone, tell Blair that. Then I saw a van pull into the open garage. The doors shut before I could see who got out. I thought it might be the housekeeper Blair had told me about, but I didn't want to take a chance. I decided Blair was coming out of there, and privacy be damned.“
I said dazedly, “I didn't ask Blair to stop by, my dad did. If Blair hadn't left me a note I wouldn't have known he was here.”
Henri's eyes widened and he swallowed. “God, Jim. Well, I tried to phone Blair as I snuck up to the house, but I didn't get an answer. I listened enough at the unlocked kitchen door outside the garage to realize that Blair was in trouble. I tried to call for backup, but my cell phone didn't work for that either, and I didn't have a radio on me. I made the decision to act. When I ordered everybody to get down on the floor, the three of them were getting ready to check if Blair was dead. The assholes started firing at me. Your dad, Jim. I'm so sorry. One of the guns ended up near him, and after the other two were down, he grabbed it and put it to his head. I tried to get him to stop, but he was too fast. I'm sorry, brother.”
I stared in anguish at my father's body for a long moment. Henri pulled me into a fierce hug, and then I pulled away from his embrace and headed through the kitchen and out into the front hallway. I slammed my fist into the drywall, leaving a hole, before I went out the front door, and the throbbing pain felt good. Outside, I saw Simon and pointed to the ambulance that had just finished loading Blair's gurney. He nodded back, and I knew he'd follow as soon as he could. Blair's astral body was floating flat above his physical body. I climbed into the back of the ambulance.
“I'm staying. Deal with it,” I told the EMTs. The black jaguar nosed in at the back of the ambulance and I stared at him through the open doors.
“Get the wolf,” I thought at him, and he disappeared.
We left my father's house, sirens screaming and lights running, and I never wanted to come back there again.
~oo~oo~oo~oo~
Laurie
A Fair Distance: Comes a Time. Chapter Seven.
Fandom The Sentinel
Author: Laurie
Type: Slash
Rating: PG-17 (for the series)
Word count: 4445 words
Warnings: Yes! This could be triggering so if that is a concern please check the warning page. Link to warnings for the entire series
Written for Sentinel Thursday Challenge 176: Death
Beta’ed by t_verano She's a star. Her assistance is always deeply appreciated.
Summary for A Fair Distance: A year after Blair left Jim, and Cascade, they meet again in a small Tennessee town. Blair's been arrested and is being held for questioning at the request of the Cascade PD.
This is the third and final arc to the story, and the two earlier arcs, A Fair Distance:Running on Empty and A Fair Distance: Ball and Chain, as well as several time stamps, can be located at my LJ here or at Artifact Storage Room 3 here or at AO3 here. I believe that AO3 has a nifty feature that allows you to download onto E-readers.
~oo~oo~oo~oo~
'Blair, oh God, are you still alive?!'
I reached out to touch Jim, to reassure him - weird, my fingers looked funny - but while I could see my hands on his face, I couldn't feel him. Jim, he looked so scared. What was wrong?
I heard the panther roaring and suddenly I wasn't with Jim anymore. I was back in William's house. I wasn't sure where I'd just been, either. I must be dreaming. Yeah, I was still dreaming because the last thing I remembered was feeling out of it, and William holding me. He'd been trying to move me to the couch; he'd been saying something about lying down.
And there I was on the couch. I could see my legs, partly covered with a blanket. William was bending over me, blocking me from seeing the rest of my body. Without realizing I was doing it, I moved to where I could see what was going on.
Must be dreaming; this was totally bizarre. I was floating now horizontally over my body, like I was flying to Never-Never Land, and William was holding a pillow near my face. He threw it on the floor like it had burned him. Then he leaned down and kissed me on the forehead.
I tried pinching myself to wake up. William kissing me like that was just... not like William, and I didn't want this to turn into some weird sex dream thing. If it did, I wouldn't be able to look William in the face when I woke up.
Pinching myself had no effect whatsoever. Crap. Maybe I should try to travel to Blue Jungle Land and regroup from there, since I was making no progress in waking up here. I started to visualize a pathway, tried to slow my breathing down into a deep rhythmic pattern, make my heart calm into slow, steady beats.
But I couldn't feel myself breathing or my heart beating. I wasn't going anywhere. I felt like rolling my eyes. Dreams were so strange.
William rearranged the blanket, uncovering my body for a moment, and shocked, I saw that my hands and feet were bound together with duct tape. He covered my face with the blanket, and I, being the brilliant scientist that I am, finally put the pieces together.
Fuck! Holy unbelievable fuck, fuck, fuck! This wasn't a dream. William hadn't been trying to make me comfortable with a pillow and a blanket, he'd smothered me! This was like a textbook out-of-body experience!
I might be dead. William thought I was, which explained the blanket covering up my face.
Santa Muerte, I could be dead. I had materialized in front of Jim. My soul had gone to his when I left my body. I flashed on the terrified look on Jim's face. My Jim, who didn't think twice about hanging from helicopters, or jumping on semis from bridges, or hurtling himself off cliffs, was scared. For me.
Okay, I needed to re-enter my body. I closed my eyes and willed myself to wake up, body and soul in one place again.
I opened them cautiously. Shit. It hadn't worked. I watched William put the finishing touches on wrapping me up. He laid his hand on the blanket where my forehead was and it seemed to me that he did it tenderly.
Whatever I had done that made him think I had to die, he seemed to have forgiven me.
What was I going to do? Was I still alive, or was I dead? I didn't want to die. Damn it, Jim and I had just worked things out between us. It wasn't fair to kick it now!
Concentrate, Blair. I attempted to move down closer to my trussed-up body but now that I was purposefully trying to do it, I couldn't seem to budge an inch. Fuck a duck. I felt helpless, like a butterfly pinned to a board. Oh, God, bad choice of images. Those butterflies were dead when they were pinned. Killed by poison. Apparently something else I had in common with them - William must have drugged me or poisoned me.
He sat down heavily in the recliner in the opposite corner. He looked so sad. It was crazy; he'd tried to kill me, maybe he'd even succeeded... and I wanted to comfort him.
I wondered if I was breathing under that blanket. If so, it wasn't very apparent. I tried again to make myself go into my body. No luck.
I hoped that Jim had found my note. If he had, he'd know I had gone to his father's house, and after seeing me all spooky he'd check on me. I supposed Jim's cell phone was turned off or crushed by now. But Henri would come, surely? Jim would call him or he'd get bored sitting out in the car and find some excuse to check on me. Jim would be on his way, driving like a crazy man probably. When he got here, maybe he could see me again, if I hadn't figured out this whole out-of-body gig and slid back home. Could I talk to him?
There was a knock on the door, and William went out of the room. He came back moments later, accompanied by two men.
The dark-haired, good-looking guy said, “He's dead, right? The boss told you to take care of that yourself. 'Cause snuffing him out ain't in the job description.”
William nodded, then added. “He didn't suffer. I made sure of that.”
The second man, tall, built like a gorilla, and I swear he could probably walk on his knuckles, piped up. “We don't give a shit if angels descended to carry him to Heaven. We aren't getting paid enough to do anything except clean up your mess. You should have done what the boss told you to and laid low, let him set up something. You jumped the gun, and you put the boss in a bind, calling him at the last minute like this. He said to tell you he's charging you double the price for the rush job. And we aren't hanging around here for our health. You get the door, and me and my associate here will handle Chuckles over there.”
Oh, crap. It was obvious they were here to get rid of my body. If they checked first before taking me out of here and I was alive, then they'd make sure William did the job right this time.
Now I wasn't sure I should try and go back. If I did and William killed me, I'd know it this time. I experienced a flash of panic, remembering what it had felt like to drown when Alex had killed me. I didn't want to leave this plane and travel to the great unknown carrying memories of what it felt like to smother to death, too.
Jim. I wanted to see Jim before the light came for me, or the door opened, or the Grim Reaper arrived to escort me onwards.
Jim would come. I needed to stay for him. Poor Jim. He'd figure out what William had done. I ached suddenly with pity for him; the ordeal he was about to be put through would be excruciating.
Dark-haired guy went to stand by my head. He pulled on a pair of leather gloves and touched the blanket. I was powerless, unable to move, and horrified, I yelled at them to get away from me.
They didn't hear me. I kept yelling anyway.
“Look, old man, we're just gonna do a little check on your work, understand? If you screwed it up, well then, you get to have a do-over.” Gorilla guy smirked at William, and I wanted to clock the asshole. My death wasn't some sort of joke, God dammit.
They were all intent on seeing if William had really killed me, and as they bent over my body, the dark-haired guy's hand beginning to pull down the edge of the blanket, a voice, strong and determined, barked out a welcome order.
“Cascade P.D. Step away from the couch and spread your hands out where I can see them. Then slowly get face first down on the floor. Now, assholes.”
Henri. God, it was Henri and I was so glad to see him that I could have kissed him. He was standing partly in the doorway, ready to duck sideways for cover.
The three men reacted differently. William froze, dark-haired guy started cursing while he began his descent to his knees, hands above his head, and the gorilla threw himself at the end of the couch for partial cover, pulled out a gun and started shooting at Henri.
The dark-haired man took advantage of the distraction to lunge for cover by the recliner across the room when Henri ducked back into the kitchen. He started adding his gunfire to the racket. It was crazy and chaotic and I was worried about Henri being there by himself, and this was all my fault, all of it, I shouldn't have come here, I should have told the truth to Henri and now he might pay for my mistake with his life. And William, God - Jim was going to be devastated and if I hadn't given in to William's demands to see me tonight, Jim might have figured out his father wanted me dead and stopped him before he got himself into any more trouble.
Gunshots were echoing through the room, and Henri was shooting back and yelling at them to give up. Police sirens were wailing, coming closer and closer.
William seemed to awaken and apparently realized he was in the middle of a shootout. It was a miracle he hadn't been hit by a bullet already. He did what Henri had ordered. He lay down flat on the carpet, a little way from the couch.
I wanted to help Henri so badly. I tried directing energy at a crystal paperweight on the desk near the other locked door, to use it to clobber one of the assholes, but I failed. Damn it, if I was dead, then I wanted to go all poltergeist on their asses.
Screams of pain from the dark-haired guy accompanied the slow blossoming of red on his shoulder, and the gun that he'd been firing flew up into the air, landing near William's hand.
Sirens were screaming right outside now; I heard doors crashing open and Henri yelling to his backup what was happening.
Gorilla guy fired off a burst of shots, then tried for the locked door near the couch and recliner. When it didn't open he shot the door knob off, but before he could get out of the room Henri got him in the leg.
Gorilla guy still had his gun, although he was bellowing from the pain. A uniformed officer took over firing when Henri stopped to reload a new magazine into his Glock. Henri called out again for the guy to put down his weapon but, cursing and screaming, he just kept shooting until he was hit in the chest. This time he slumped over.
William acted then. I watched in horror as he got to his knees, grabbed the abandoned gun and brought it to his head. I tried so hard to move, to stop him. I could only hover, helpless.
I was letting Jim down. His father was going to...
William held the gun to his temple and as Henri shouted at him to stop, to talk to him, William pulled the trigger.
~oo~oo~oo~oo~
We were running with lights and sirens, but over that racket I still heard gunshots long before we arrived. Henri still hadn't responded to the radio, but two units had arrived and reported that they had entered the house and that shots were being fired by two men at an officer, and that there was a third man not involved with weapons fire in the same room as the shooters. I didn't know if that man was Blair or my dad. God, was my dad shooting at the police? He did keep guns in the house, for protection.
Blair wasn't talking; I would have heard him. I had to go on faith that he was alive and that he was okay. I had to function; I couldn't fall apart - Blair and my father needed me. And who the fuck were the other men involved in this gun battle?
There were more shots, more screams. My father's house, turned into a killing field. This was so unreal but I concentrated and connected my sense of hearing with touch to ground myself, since going into a zone was the last thing I could afford to do.
About half a mile from the house I heard Henri yelling at one of the gunmen to put the gun down, to not shoot, to talk to him. I heard another officer saying that they needed two rigs here, and then the radio channel was busy with a request for two ambulances to be sent to my father's address.
One last shot was fired; Joel turned around from the front passenger seat and faced me.
“Jim, what else can you tell us?”
I held up my hand as Simon turned into the end of my father's street, listening intently.
“There are two men with gunshot wounds - leg and chest for one, and shoulder for the other. There's one man dead.”
“Is it--”
“I don't know yet. Simon, the scene is secured. I'm going in.”
He agreed as he skidded to a stop in front of the house, garish blue and red lights swirling in a dance in the darkness.
Before he'd barely stopped I was out of the car, holding up my badge and announcing to the uniform who was restricting access at the driveway that I was Major Crimes.
As I ran up to the house, the black jaguar loping beside me, I heard the pulsing wail of ambulance sirens in the distance, ETA seven or eight minutes. One man in the house was screaming in pain. I couldn't hear my father or Blair.
I held out my badge so that the cop at the front door wouldn't stop me. I blew past him and sprinted for the kitchen. I took in the coffee cups and the plate of turnovers on the table as I ran by, following the black jaguar as it disappeared into the next room.
I had been smelling blood ever since I'd jumped out of the car, but now the scent of it, metallic and heavy and nauseating, was overwhelming as I followed my spirit animal into Dad's study.
Henri looked up from where he was working on a guy on the floor, applying pressure to a shoulder wound.
The injured man wasn't my father or Blair. I heard Henri say my name, sorrow in his tone of voice, and I knew then that I was going to forever hate this day.
I saw my father sprawled out on the floor, and I knew he was dead. The cop in me cataloged the scene and concluded that the shot to the head that had killed my father had been self-inflicted, and I felt my stomach heave. I started to go to him, but the jaguar's roar stopped me.
The big black cat was standing on the couch, and underneath him was a blanket-covered figure. Suddenly Blair's astral body was before me again, floating vertically a few feet away, and he looked imploringly at me. I reached out to grab him, to shake him, but as I tried to close my hands around his biceps he was again out of reach.
“Don't you be dead!” I screamed at him, and he looked guiltily towards the couch.
I don't remember moving, but I must have because I was yanking the blanket off Blair's body and dropping to my knees beside him, the black jaguar next to me.
I placed my fingers on the side of Blair's neck and felt the fast, faint, fluttery beat of his heart. He was breathing, but barely, so shallowly that his chest hardly moved. His right leg was blood soaked, the wound bleeding through the fabric still, and I put pressure on it. I quickly felt down his body with my free hand, seeking any other injuries, looking for more blood. I found none. The black jaguar roared again. I looked up at the image of Blair now floating horizontally above his body. I yelled up at his astral projection, “Don't you die on me, Sandburg! Don't you die!”
I clenched my fist, wanting to hit the wall. I wanted to dismember the two men who were receiving first aid from Henri and the two other cops. I wanted to see Blair open his eyes and really look at me. I wanted my father to be alive. I wanted it to be years from now and all of this in the past.
“Jim, is he alive?! I had to stop this asshole from bleeding out!” Henri said, still putting pressure on the wound of the man laid out on the floor. Henri sounded shaken, horrified, and I wanted to scream at him that Blair was barely alive, and why had he let Blair enter this house, but I couldn't make my voice work.
Oh God, Blair, keep breathing!
I looked up at Blair's soul?, his image, floating above me. He looked so frightened. I unclenched my fist and reached up to him, ready to drag him down and into his body, but once again I couldn't seem to reach him.
Was he frightened because he was separated from his body? Over what my father had done to him? At my father's death? Or...
I found my voice.
“This isn't your fault! None of it, you understand me, Sandburg? Now get your ass back in your body where you belong!”
I felt Simon's hand on my shoulder. “The ambulances will be here in a few moments, Jim. I'm so sorry about your father. What's wrong with Blair, can you tell?”
“My father did something, I'm sure of it, but there aren't any obvious wounds, except for being shot, probably by a stray bullet. He's barely breathing, heartbeat is fast and weak. And he's not in his body, he's floating right here.” I jerked my head to where Blair had come down a little, still floating horizontally with his arms out. He had a look of concentration on his features, even with being translucent.
I had a sudden, unwelcome memory of Blair floating in the fountain.
“He's trying to re-enter his body, I think, but he's having trouble. He needs help, and I don't know what to do.” Simon looked up but obviously couldn't see what I could. Blair's image touched my cheek. I still couldn't feel the touch of that translucent hand. How on earth did a soul, or whatever you want to call it, reunite with that person's body? I wished with all my heart that Incacha wasn't dead and could be here to help. I whispered to Blair, “C'mon, sweetheart. You can do this. Keep trying.”
I hadn't forgotten that my father lay dead just a few feet away. I didn't think I'd ever be able to wipe away my memory of how he looked and the blood and brains spatter. I couldn't let myself think about that now. Just like when I had been on missions, you dealt with what was needed and grieved later. Oh, Dad. What were you thinking to do this to yourself and to try to harm Blair?
The ambulances' wails stopped abruptly as they halted outside the house and I could hear EMTs opening doors and gurneys being rolled up the sidewalk.
Simon squeezed my shoulder again. “What do you need, Jim?”
“Have somebody look through the house for anything that could have been used to poison Blair. Start in the kitchen. He was drinking coffee and there were turnovers on the table. See if the hospital lab or ours can check the cups and food, maybe find out if he ingested poison or a drug. I'm going to start stripping him, see if there are any needle marks. Simon, get a knife or scissors so we can cut off this damned duct tape. Make sure that the EMTs understand he's priority here.”
He returned with a pair of scissors and took over putting pressure on Blair's leg using some of the wadded-up blanket. I freed Blair from the duct tape, and started cutting his clothes off him, first his blue-checked flannel shirt and then the long-sleeved black T-shirt I'd bought him yesterday. My hands were covered in his blood, and I wiped them off on the rags I'd made of his shirts.
I looked carefully at his upper body, but I couldn't find any needle marks. I didn't want to risk moving him yet, so I didn't roll him over to check his back.
A guy dropped beside me and said he was a paramedic; he asked me if I knew what had happened as he put a pulse ox on Blair's finger and wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his biceps. I explained what I knew, and what I'd done so far, and he nodded. He told Simon to keep applying pressure to Blair's wound. After checking the sensor on Blair's finger, he placed an oxygen mask over his mouth and started an IV line.
He told Simon he could stop holding the blanket against Blair's bleeding leg. Simon got up and leaned down to where I was still kneeling by Blair; he squeezed my shoulder. Then he walked around my father's body and went to talk to Henri and Joel.
The paramedic cut away the jeans around Blair's wound and examined it. It was a deep groove from the bullet skimming across the top of his thigh. It wasn't serious in itself, but I suspected Blair couldn't afford any blood loss, or the shock of being shot. After the paramedic bandaged the leg, he put a neck support on Blair, who still hadn't moved, and shined a light in his eyes. His pupils contracted, which was a good sign. His blood pressure, forty-five over thirty, was dangerously low.
The paramedic and I shifted him carefully to the gurney, and we tucked a soft, thin blanket around him before strapping him in. The EMTs carefully maneuvered around my father and rolled Blair out. I saw that Blair's astral body was still floating above him. How long would Blair hold on? What would he do if a doorway to another place opened for him?
EMTs were working with the other two injured men, and they loaded the one with the shoulder injury onto a gurney. I called out to them, pointed to the wounded perp who looked ready for transport. “That guy doesn't ride with my partner. Police matter.”
Simon added, “He's going to be brought in for questioning, so an officer will be staying with him.” Simon beckoned one of the uniforms over. “Stay with him at the hospital and make sure he's kept secured.” The uniform nodded and handcuffed the guy's ankle to the gurney.
Henri had been conferring with Joel, and they both strode over to me. Joel gripped my upper arm.
“Jim, how are you doing? How's Blair?”
“He's not good. I'm leaving to go with him, but I needed to...”
I glanced at my father's body. I was torn, wanting to stay by Dad and needing to go with Blair. Joel let go of my arm, and I dropped down next to my father's body and I touched him gently on his back. Then I stood up and faced Henri.
“What happened?”
Henri grimaced. “I know that you told Blair it was okay to stop by and for me to give him and your dad some privacy, but we needed to get going to the safe house. I was going to call your cell phone, tell Blair that. Then I saw a van pull into the open garage. The doors shut before I could see who got out. I thought it might be the housekeeper Blair had told me about, but I didn't want to take a chance. I decided Blair was coming out of there, and privacy be damned.“
I said dazedly, “I didn't ask Blair to stop by, my dad did. If Blair hadn't left me a note I wouldn't have known he was here.”
Henri's eyes widened and he swallowed. “God, Jim. Well, I tried to phone Blair as I snuck up to the house, but I didn't get an answer. I listened enough at the unlocked kitchen door outside the garage to realize that Blair was in trouble. I tried to call for backup, but my cell phone didn't work for that either, and I didn't have a radio on me. I made the decision to act. When I ordered everybody to get down on the floor, the three of them were getting ready to check if Blair was dead. The assholes started firing at me. Your dad, Jim. I'm so sorry. One of the guns ended up near him, and after the other two were down, he grabbed it and put it to his head. I tried to get him to stop, but he was too fast. I'm sorry, brother.”
I stared in anguish at my father's body for a long moment. Henri pulled me into a fierce hug, and then I pulled away from his embrace and headed through the kitchen and out into the front hallway. I slammed my fist into the drywall, leaving a hole, before I went out the front door, and the throbbing pain felt good. Outside, I saw Simon and pointed to the ambulance that had just finished loading Blair's gurney. He nodded back, and I knew he'd follow as soon as he could. Blair's astral body was floating flat above his physical body. I climbed into the back of the ambulance.
“I'm staying. Deal with it,” I told the EMTs. The black jaguar nosed in at the back of the ambulance and I stared at him through the open doors.
“Get the wolf,” I thought at him, and he disappeared.
We left my father's house, sirens screaming and lights running, and I never wanted to come back there again.
~oo~oo~oo~oo~
Laurie
A Fair Distance: Comes a Time. Chapter Seven.