Fic: Hostages, Ch.2
...I am so totally not up at 3:30 in the morning writing/posting IPS fic. Nope, nope. (And since it is not an odd and insane hour of the night, you'll have to excuse my probably prodigious and plentiful typing errors. >>) Anyway, comments are the fuel of a slightly-deranged author, so keep 'em comin'. :D Happy reading.
Title: Hostages
Author: Ryn
Pairings: M/M
Rating: T because Mary has a big vocabulary... ;D
Spoilers: None
Summary: Mary and Marshall hunt a sociopath while Mary faces the very real possibility of dying-- and struggles to keep it from her partner.
Prologue
She sat on the hospital bed, legs crossed awkwardly in the blue-and-white gown, a cup of jell-o in her left hand, a plastic spoon in her right. Her partner sat on the end of the bed, legs dangling off the edge; his black pants and jacket was in stark contrast to the rest of the room, all white and sanitary. Mary toyed idly with the idea that his black collared shirt made him look something between a priest and an angel of death-maybe both.
“Marshall, please,” she asked, voiced strained. Her gaze was fixed on the green gelatin in her hand.
“I’m not sure I could do it, Mare,” he replied after a beat, and she raised her head to meet his eyes; he knew he would eventually agree the moment their eyes met-- how many times had he seen that expression? The one she wore when she was sure that a suspect had a piece of information that she needed? “Your mom, your sister-even Raphael. It’s not my place, Mare, I’m not even family.”
“No,” she snapped back, “you’re different, but that doesn’t mean you’re worth any less. And you’re the only one I can trust to make the decision, if you have to.”
He didn’t say anything, just looked at her with his brows furrowed, shoulders slumped. Mary vaguely wondered if he’d gotten any more sleep than she had in the past few weeks, and the dark shadows under Marshall’s eyes answered her. He said, “Mare, I just-I just shot a man through the chest point-blank. I don’t think I could take killing you, too, even if that’s the right thing to do.”
“Marshall,” she finally said, taking a breath to calm her voice, “if this goes wrong… you know I couldn’t stand spending the rest of my life hooked up to a machine and eating through a tube. If I don’t come out of it, I want you to end it for me. You’d be…” she hesitated, searching for the right word, the key to appealing to his knight-in-shining-armor chivalry. “If I don’t make it out okay, you’d be saving me, not killing me.”
“Don’t-“ he began, voice sharper than he’d intended. Another pause, another breath, then in a calmer voice, “You’ll be fine, Mare, don’t say things like that. It’s a perfectly routine--”
“I don’t plan in dying, numbnuts, it’s just a precaution. And you know if I asked my mom or Brandi to do it, they’d just hang on and cry until someone else made a decision for them. They’d probably just ask you, and you’d have to decide anyway, so I’m just saving them the trouble. Besides, they’d have to know about this, and they’re happily ignorant in New Jersey right now. And Raph-he would never let go.” She dropped her spoon and jell-o on the nightstand and picked up the sheet of paper next to it, then shifted to sit next to her partner. “If you don’t do this, I’ll just sign a DNR, and they can’t even try to save me if I crash.”
He signed.
Ch. 1
----One Month Earlier----
Taylor Goza’s parents had always been a little more paranoid than the rest, but with good reason; the ten-year-old girl was the pride and joy of the forty-something Italian couple from Boston who had, five years ago, testified against a once-close friend and mafia man who had gunned down a police officer right in front of their house over a parking ticket. Ben, Brittany, and their five-year-old at the time were whisked into Witness Protection after testifying, when the FBI learned of a hit out on the family, called for by aforementioned mafia man. They became Ben, Brittany, and Taylor Gore and dropped into Santa Fe.
Which was why, when ten-year-old Taylor was out with her bicycle thirty minutes after curfew, Santa Fe marshals were called in.
After twenty-four hours and the discovery of her abandoned pink bicycle with the lavender streamers handing off the handlebars, the FBI was involved.
After twenty-nine hours, when the initial search turned up nothing but a pink shoe three blocks from Taylor Goza’s home, Santa Fe’s WitSec office relocated the frantic parents of Taylor Goza aka Taylor Gore to a motel seven miles from their home and called Stan McQueen.
Which was why, at three o’clock in the morning in the middle of June, despite her headache and lack of sleep, Mary was irritably tapping the dashboard of the WitSec-issued Avalanche, listening as Marshall filled her in on the details.
“Santa Fe PD has been tracking a man who abducts children, male and female, ages seven to thirteen,” he rattled off the facts as he changed lanes on the highway, “Up ‘til now, all they’ve got on him is an FBI shrink’s profile and some duct tape with a partial print and a thirteen-year-old boy’s epithelials.”
“The family?” Mary prompted, massaging her head and trying to fight off the affects of the medication she had taken a few hours ago. She barely heard Marshall’s quick description of the Gore family’s circumstances upon entering Witness Protection for the pounding in her ears.
“Mary!” Marshall’s voice cut through the car’s dim interior and her own mental haze.
“What?!” she snapped back, annoyed.
He hesitated a moment, sending her a worried, sidelong glance, then said, “I’ve been calling your name for the past two minutes. You okay?”
“Fine. Tired.”
“If it’s the headaches again, you should go see your doctor. You know, headaches can be a symptom of a veritable cornucopia of-“
“I already went,” Mary snapped again, more emphatically this time, “and I’m fine. I’ve got some painkillers. God, Marshall, if I knew you’d bitch about the headaches, I wouldn’t have told you. I’m fine.”
She saw him send her another glance but nod slowly, taking her word for it; he knew just as well as she did that she could take care of herself, and he let her. But what if I’m not fine? It was this confidence that he afforded her that made her dead certain that he couldn’t, shouldn't, and wouldn't find out. About any of it.
They drove the rest of the way in silence, for which Mary was eternally grateful, and by the time they pulled up to the red brick building in downtown Santa Fe, Mary’s headache had subsided to a dull soreness in the back of her head.
They were directed into a Santa Fe PD conference room that was full to the brim with men in suits-every person in the room carried a badge and a gun. The large table in the middle was covered in maps, pictures, and plastic bags of evidence. Along the far wall was pinned the pictures of eleven children.
A tall man in a black suit stood and greeted Mary and Marshall when they pushed into the room at six o’clock in the morning and stood to shake Marshall’s hand. Mary bee-lined for the table of evidence and was analyzing a map with red circles around certain exits on the Interstate before the man had finished introducing himself as the chief inspector of Santa Fe WitSec.
“You’re just in time; we’re dividing up, and we need a team on a suspect’s house. That’ll be you two, starting this morning, after we brief you on the details of the case,” Chief Inspector Donald David told them before addressing the group. “These two are U.S. Marshals Miller and Shepard from Albuquerque.” Then, “This bastard’s going to mess up, and we’re going to catch him at it. We’ll keep you all updated, but for now, keep your eyes open.”
Recognizing dismissal, the room emptied quietly and quickly. When the room was empty except for the chief inspector and Mary and Marshall, he briefed them.
“We’re looking at a twenty-four hour stakeout at our main suspect’s house. His name is George Shaw, and he’s a teacher at the local high school-a history teacher. The elementary school gets out the same time the high school does, and nine of the eleven missing were from Wyatt Elementary. That, and the fact that he was on leave for the disappearances of the three students who disappeared who weren't from Wyatt makes him a person of interest. He was arrested in ’97 on drug charges, then again in ’98 for violating a restraining order against an ex-girlfriend and her three-year-old son. They suspect that he’s part of a child smuggling operation that includes Illinois, Mexico, and Chile, which is why Interpol is now involved. Anyway, I’ve got teams watching the high school teacher parking lot and the elementary school, got a team tracking the latest little girl--”
“Taylor,” Marshall interjected sharply. “Her name is Taylor Gore.” Mary looked up from the stack of pictures she was flipping through-all of little children’s items fallen haphazardly on the sidewalk or grass-and saw that Marshall’s jaw was a little more firmly set that usual.
“Right,” Inspector David amended quickly, “Taylor. I’ve got her assigned marshals running down every lead and a team of marshals from Amarillo taking their caseload for now, but I need the two of you on the day shift stakeout at Shaw’s house. The night team is from the FBI, but we’re short on manpower, so we had to use those idiots. You’re taking over at nine, and we don’t have enough vehicles to provide you another one, so you’ll have to use whatever car you drove. You can rest up until then, I’ll give you the address.”
They left the Santa Fe police station an hour later, armed with a folder full of pictures, addresses, and reports they were instructed to read to familiarize themselves with the case.
“Bastard,” Mary grumbled under her breath as she climbed into the truck, nose in the files they were given. “Little kids. Picks on little kids.” Marshall said nothing because nothing had to be said.
They had breakfast at a small diner on Rodeo Rd., each of them ordering then retreating into a stack of police reports as they waited for their breakfasts to come. Neither said a word until the waitress-a pretty brunette not over thirty-brought them their plates, put a hand on Marshall’s shoulder, and asked him sweetly, “Anything else I can get you, hon?”
Marshall grinned and was about to respond, probably with some random bit of trivia, when Mary, without looking over the top of the folder she was exploring, said roughly, “Yeah, we could use a few napkins. My partner here drools like a rabid dog when he eats.”
“Hey, I--”
But the waitress had retreated.
“What was that?!” Marshall asked, exasperated but grinning.
Still without looking up, Mary replied, “I was just helping you keep it zipped up. Besides, the last thing I need is a bunch of kids making out in the back of the truck.”
“I wasn’t--”
“Uh-huh.”
Marshall sighed, knowing he couldn’t win as he dug into his pancakes, practically inhaling them after the long, foodless drive from Albuquerque. Mary looked at her food and felt her stomach churn mutinously as the thought of digesting something hit her. She went back to reading police reports and just pushed her plate toward Marshall when he was done with his.
“You’re not going to eat?” he asked, sounding like he just saw pigs fly by on the horizon.
“No.”
Silence as Marshall waited for an explanation. There was none.
“Mare, you okay?”
“Oh, for the love of God,” she slammed the folder down on the table, causing a couple two booths down to look at them, startled, “I’m fine, and if you don’t want the food, don’t eat it. I’m concentrating on catching a pedophile, and if you ask me that one more time, I’m going to put a bullet through your foot.” She glared at him as he stared back, bewildered. After an intense moment, she roughly went back to scanning the pages of the police report, and after another, he picked up his fork and ate her flapjacks slowly.
When they got up to leave, she didn’t comment about the extra-large tip he left for the waitress, instead saying impatiently, “Come on-we’ve got a scumbag to catch.”
Ch. 2
They arrived outside George Shaw’s residence at approximately 8:50am, ten minutes before schedule. Marshall called the FBI team sitting on the house to let them know of the shift change, and not twenty seconds later, a ratty turquoise van peeled out from in front of the one story red brick house, and Mary and Marshall were alone.
“This is Marshall Miller and Mary Sheppard on duty,” Marshall said into the small black radio affixed to the dashboard, “eyes on suspect number 939081.”
“Check that,” replied a disjointed male voice from the radio. “Zero nine hundred, Miller-Shepard checking in.” Pause, a ruffling of papers. “Suspect left for work at approximately zero seven hundred this morning, and we’ve got another team staking out his car and the high school; the house is vacant at the moment, but keep your eyes open for anyone else going in or coming out. Radio in with any updates.”
“This ought to be fun,” Mary grumbled, taking off her seat belt, settling into her seat and putting her feet on the dashboard, a habit which annoyed Marshall because it meant that he would probably have to wipe off the shoe prints later. Which, of course, was exactly why she did it.
“Especially with you all perky and upbeat in the mornings.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Duly noted.”
They spent the rest of the morning in the black Avalanche parked across the street from George Shaw’s house. At approximately eleven fifty-two, a man with dark hair, a navy baseball cap, and sunglasses came by to stuff a handbill in the doors of the neighborhood, which was innocent enough, but still, Marshall updated Santa Fe PD on the detail, and an undercover agent was sent to walk along the street and casually extract the handbill from the door.
Agent Peter Douglas did not want twenty percent off his annual lawn care bill, and the advertisement was discarded.
At 12:20pm, with the Santa Fe sun beating down on the truck, Mary snapped shut the folder she had been going through and said, “God, couldn’t this guy have lived in Maine or something? It’s like an oven in here.” She had long ago taken off her jacket and blouse and was curled up in her seat in a tank top.
Also dressed thusly, Marshall replied, “Evil knows neither boundaries nor weather patterns.” He had long since finished reading the case files and had, for some bizarre reason Mary couldn’t even begin to fathom, taken apart the car’s CD player and was rewiring it using the toolbox he kept under the backseat.
“What I wouldn’t give to just go up to this son of a bitch and shoot off parts of his body until he tells us where the girl is,” she muttered, yawning and stretching.
Marshall raised his eyebrow, looked at her, and paused with a screwdriver in the hole in the controls where the CD player had been and said, “Hm, this coming from the Olympic gold medalist in subtlety. You know, if you’re tired, you can sleep while I watch the house.”
“So you can draw on my face while I’m unconscious? Don’t think so, not a chance.”
By 12:30pm, Mary was snoring softly, head against Marshall’s shoulder so she didn’t sweat and stick to the leather seats. He fiddled on with the CD player.
She awoke with her head in his lap to the coarse sound of the radio.
“Suspect leaving local HS, presumably heading home. We’ve got a team tracking him. Miller-Sheppard still on his house?”
Gingerly and without having realized that his partner was awake, Marshall reached over the steering wheel to press the button on the radio. “Affirmative.”
“All right, eyes open, people.”
Mary shifted and turned, blinking up at Marshall, who grinned ruefully. “Did that wake you?”
“Time?” she asked, ignoring him and rubbing her eyes.
“Five-thirty.”
“Seriously?” Mary demanded, surprised, bolting up and immediately regretting it as bright spots overwhelmed her vision and her stomach turned viciously. Her hand quickly went to her mouth as a preemptive move against anything that might come up as her brain thumped mercilessly against her skull.
“Mare?” Worry.
“Got up too fast.” She took a deep breath to clear her head, and it didn’t help. “I’ve been asleep for the past five hours?”
“Yeah, but Mare, if you don’t feel--” Marshall began, reaching out to hesitantly to put a hand against her forehead, as if checking for fever.
“Headache,” she replied, squeezing her eyes closed against the heavy pounding, leaning into Marshall’s cool hand.
A pause while Marshall juggled disbelief at her words, irritation at the disbelief, and worry despite both. Worry won out. With a sigh he said, “Come here,” and turned her face toward him.
“What--?!”
“Just relax,” he cut her off, taking her face in both his hands. He pressed his thumbs against her temples and rubbed gently in circles, then pressed his fingers against her forehead with light pressure, then ran his thumbs over her eyelids. “Relax,” he said again, and she couldn’t help but listen, sagging tiredly against the car door despite her nap.
When she felt his fingers pause against her eyelids five minutes later and tense, she could see straight again. She turned her head toward George Shaw’s house as the garage door opened and his Toyota Corolla pulled in.
“Looks like maggot’s back in the dog crap,” she muttered.
A chuckle, then Marshall asked softly against her ear, “Better?”
“Yes.” She pulled her face somewhat hesitantly from his grasp, ear tingling from his breath, then gave a somewhat foreign, “Thanks.” He just smiled crookedly.
At 7:30pm, a gray Chevy pulled up and parked two houses down and across the street from Shaw’s red brick lair. Two minutes later, the radio came to life and croaked, “Brown-Anderson here to relieve you, Miller-Sheppard. Report back tomorrow at zero seven hundred.”
They pulled out of the residential neighborhood with the relief that always followed a fruitless day of bored watchfulness and into a motel five miles away with the “T” in the sign unlit, the pole for the sign covered in profanities courtesy of red spray paint and rowdy teenagers, and the parking lot littered with garbage. “And dear old Uncle Sam couldn’t even spring for a Motel 6 or something,” Mary muttered as they parked in front of the office. “We love you too, America.”
Marshall checked in and came out of the office with key cards to two joined rooms. They moved to the other side of the building then carried their respective overnight bags into their rooms. Just as Mary was beginning to dig through her bag looking for a change of clothes, Marshall’s head popped through the adjoining door, and he asked, “Pizza? Though I’d pick us up some.”
“Beer,” was Mary’s reply.
“I live to serve, Your Majesty.”
A shower was an absolute must after a day of sitting in a car in the hot New Mexican sun with the air conditioning off. Mary took her time standing under the water, just a little bit too cool after the oven she spent the day in, feeling if not refreshed then at least clean when she stepped out, wrapped in a towel, stumbling slightly on the edge of the tub. She shook out her hair, very aware that she was dripping as she made her way to the bed where her change of clothes were, mildly amused-concerned that the edges of the destination were blurring a little with each step and that her knees felt like gravy.
She was halfway to the bed when her legs gave out, and for a moment it was like she was out of her body, looking at her own crumpled form on the floor from another perspective wondering who is she, and why is she shaking so hard? The sensation passed quickly, and Mary was back in her own head, wrapped in a towel on the floor, hands shaking too hard to even hold her own throbbing skull.
Where the Hell were those painkillers?
She tried to open her eyes and find her bag, but the moment she did, the too-bright colors of everything around her and the sick glare of the lamp next to the bed made everything in the room whirl, and she shut them again.
“Mary!” Marshall’s voice came from a lifetime away, as did his touch, but she was vaguely sure that she was being lifted then put down on something softer than the floor. Her entire world shook, however, when he jerked her shoulder roughly and asked wildly, “Mare? Mare, what’s wrong?” She forced her eyes open if only to avoid having him shake her again and making her feel like she was stuck on a tilt-o-whirl. Focus on his eyes, those deep, sky blues.
“E-E-Eletriptan,” she breathed, finding herself curled up against Marshall’s shoulder on the bed. She tried to point to her bag but aborted that operation halfway through when she realized that her hand shook to hard to keep it in one place long enough to point and trying to just made the bridge of her nose sting. She shut her eyes again and managed to choke out, “Front pouch, two pills.”
She was all too aware of her head shifting when Marshall moved abruptly to unzip her bag but was nonetheless grateful when she felt something pressed into her mouth, and then liquid poured slowly to help her wash it down.
The effects were not immediate, and it could have been an eternity she spent curled into a tight ball against her partner, fighting off and trying to ignore everything her senses registered because it was just too much to deal with-sight, sound, smell. The only thing she was comfortable with was the gentle stroking against her hair; when the ache had subsided enough for her to breath easily again and her hands had stopped shaking, she kept her eyes closed for a few extra moments to savor the peace that came with that action.
“Mary?” Marshall whispered cautiously when he felt her shift in his arms so that her head was in the crook of his neck. He was still running his fingers through her still-damp hair.
He felt her pause, felt her check herself, and felt her make a decision.
“It’s… stress. And I’m tired; some rest should do the trick. Um, the doctor said.”
And it was her turn to feel him tense, feel him register her lie, and feel him decide to accept without question what she told him because he trusts me that much and trusts that I can take care of myself.
Oh, God, Marshall, you’re an idiot.
“All right... You up for food?” he asked finally. She silently noted the long-forgotten pizza box lying on the floor near the connecting door next to the six pack of beer. “You didn’t eat breakfast, haven’t eaten all day. You keep this up, and you’ll lose your food baby, and you know how the men all love your extra pounds.”
“Jackass,” she laughed affectionately, pinching his arm in retaliation. He didn’t say anything about the pinch being less vicious than usual-as if she didn’t have the strength to abuse him any harder-and flinched for her benefit. She let him pull him arms away from around her and retrieve the beer and pizza, and they ate in companionable silence on the bed.
“Shower,” Marshall sighed after he put away three quarters of the pizza and half of the beers. “You change and get some sleep. I’ll wake you in the morning.”
He got up and may have been less than graceful when bolting out of the room-Mary couldn’t be sure because she was distracted by the quick and sloppy kiss he planted in her forehead before he left.
----
“It’s been over forty-eight hours,” Mary sighed in frustration, legs propped up against the steering wheel-she had stolen the keys from Marshall’s hands before he could denounce her driving-at 7:00am. “I’m going crazy just waiting here… Her chances of survival just went from… from…”
“Probable to slim, I know,” Marshall replied, just as agitated as they watched the gray-haired history teacher lock his front door and make his way to his garage. He was an average height with small, brown eyes tilted upward, a potbelly, and a pasty complexion. They watched as he opened his garage door, got into his Corolla, and backed out.
“He’s left the premises,” Marshall said into the radio as the car drove down the street.
“A team will tail him to the school,” came the reply. As usual, Marshall put the radio back on the stand on the dashboard. He looked at his partner, who was staring intently out the window toward the house.
“Is Shaw married? Family?” she asked out of the blue, but Marshall had long since learned not to question her process.
“No. Lives alone.”
“Any other properties? Vehicles?”
“Not that the feds know of. Why, what are you thinking?”
She turned towards Marshall and fixed him with an intense hazel look, head tilted and the corner of her mouth folded up. “Did you notice now big his garage is?”
“It’s a two-car garage. Like all the garages on this street.”
“Yes,” she said impatiently, “but when he pulled out, you could see another car. A white van.”
Marshall frowned. “You sure?”
She shot him a dirty look at his questioning her observations. She fiddled in her pocket and extracted the orange prescription bottle, popped two pills in her mouth-ignored Marshall when he asked, “Didn’t you already take two this morning?”--, washed them down with water, and started the car.
“What are you doing? We’re supposed to watch the house, Mare,” Marshall asked, incredulous as Mary drove halfway up the street and parked.
“We are going to watch,” she replied nonchalantly, getting out of the car. In disbelief, Marshall followed after her as she started back toward Shaw’s house.
“Mare, we don’t have a warrant, anything you find won’t be admissible in court, what the heck are you thinking?” he demanded seeing her walk up to the door and jiggle the doorknob.
She grinned at him mischievously and twittered innocently, “Mr. Shaw left his front door ajar when he went to work this morning, and it was suspicious, so we thought we’d check it out. It’s not our fault that he left his door open-anyone could have stepped in, and we had to search the premises to make sure it was safe.”
“I- you- what-” Marshall sputtered, half-amused and half-flabbergasted. He licked his lips and asked in a strained voice, “And how are you going to let yourself in without breaking down the door? Or leaving any other signs of forced entry?”
Mary smirked again, and Marshall decided that perhaps he shouldn’t have asked. He pointedly looked the other way when she jimmied the front porch window open-“Learned this when I was a kid, and my mom kept forgetting the house key”-and eased herself into the house. A few seconds later, the front door opened, and Mary leaned against with the same smirk. “Come on in, I insist.”
George Shaw’s home was alarmingly clean, unlike any other bachelor’s home either Mary or Marshall had ever seen-and this was saying something because Marshall, you’re like a housewife-who in their right mind would alphabetize their spices?
They did a quick search of all the rooms in the house, which turned up nothing not even a few damn dust bunnies. When they let themselves into the garage, however-
“I told you there was a van,” Mary said triumphantly as she flipped on the garage lights. Indeed, there was a gleaming white van sitting in the garage, front windows tinted.
“Touché,” Marshall breathed, following Mary as she approached the vehicle. They both carefully made their ways around the van, surveying every inch multiple times, looking over and under before they finally congregated at the back by the doors.
Without a word, Marshall took one door handle and Mary the other, and they flung the doors open at the same time to find-
“The Hell?” Mary hissed, looking into the back of the van. “What the--”
“I have no idea,” Marshall told her, looking into the carpeted and padded truck; the floor of the van was covered in a fuzzy blue carpeting-the thick, soft kind used in bathrooms-and the walls were a plush, electric violet padding that was almost three inches thick.
Mary pulled herself into the small space, edging through the heavy carpet on hands and knees to the far corner, then crawling back with her eyes glued to the floor.
“Find anything?” Marshall asked patiently while she searched through the fibers of the rug.
“No, not--” A pause as Mary froze to the spot. “Marshall… Marshall, what color were the streamers on Taylor Gore’s bicycle?”
“Uh… lavender.”
Mary scrambled out of the back of the van and held he hand out to her partner; in it, a single strip of shiny lavender plastic. Marshall looked from it to her and back. “This is enough for a search war-”
They both froze, eyes wide, as the garage door began to open.
Title: Hostages
Author: Ryn
Pairings: M/M
Rating: T because Mary has a big vocabulary... ;D
Spoilers: None
Summary: Mary and Marshall hunt a sociopath while Mary faces the very real possibility of dying-- and struggles to keep it from her partner.
Prologue
She sat on the hospital bed, legs crossed awkwardly in the blue-and-white gown, a cup of jell-o in her left hand, a plastic spoon in her right. Her partner sat on the end of the bed, legs dangling off the edge; his black pants and jacket was in stark contrast to the rest of the room, all white and sanitary. Mary toyed idly with the idea that his black collared shirt made him look something between a priest and an angel of death-maybe both.
“Marshall, please,” she asked, voiced strained. Her gaze was fixed on the green gelatin in her hand.
“I’m not sure I could do it, Mare,” he replied after a beat, and she raised her head to meet his eyes; he knew he would eventually agree the moment their eyes met-- how many times had he seen that expression? The one she wore when she was sure that a suspect had a piece of information that she needed? “Your mom, your sister-even Raphael. It’s not my place, Mare, I’m not even family.”
“No,” she snapped back, “you’re different, but that doesn’t mean you’re worth any less. And you’re the only one I can trust to make the decision, if you have to.”
He didn’t say anything, just looked at her with his brows furrowed, shoulders slumped. Mary vaguely wondered if he’d gotten any more sleep than she had in the past few weeks, and the dark shadows under Marshall’s eyes answered her. He said, “Mare, I just-I just shot a man through the chest point-blank. I don’t think I could take killing you, too, even if that’s the right thing to do.”
“Marshall,” she finally said, taking a breath to calm her voice, “if this goes wrong… you know I couldn’t stand spending the rest of my life hooked up to a machine and eating through a tube. If I don’t come out of it, I want you to end it for me. You’d be…” she hesitated, searching for the right word, the key to appealing to his knight-in-shining-armor chivalry. “If I don’t make it out okay, you’d be saving me, not killing me.”
“Don’t-“ he began, voice sharper than he’d intended. Another pause, another breath, then in a calmer voice, “You’ll be fine, Mare, don’t say things like that. It’s a perfectly routine--”
“I don’t plan in dying, numbnuts, it’s just a precaution. And you know if I asked my mom or Brandi to do it, they’d just hang on and cry until someone else made a decision for them. They’d probably just ask you, and you’d have to decide anyway, so I’m just saving them the trouble. Besides, they’d have to know about this, and they’re happily ignorant in New Jersey right now. And Raph-he would never let go.” She dropped her spoon and jell-o on the nightstand and picked up the sheet of paper next to it, then shifted to sit next to her partner. “If you don’t do this, I’ll just sign a DNR, and they can’t even try to save me if I crash.”
He signed.
Ch. 1
----One Month Earlier----
Taylor Goza’s parents had always been a little more paranoid than the rest, but with good reason; the ten-year-old girl was the pride and joy of the forty-something Italian couple from Boston who had, five years ago, testified against a once-close friend and mafia man who had gunned down a police officer right in front of their house over a parking ticket. Ben, Brittany, and their five-year-old at the time were whisked into Witness Protection after testifying, when the FBI learned of a hit out on the family, called for by aforementioned mafia man. They became Ben, Brittany, and Taylor Gore and dropped into Santa Fe.
Which was why, when ten-year-old Taylor was out with her bicycle thirty minutes after curfew, Santa Fe marshals were called in.
After twenty-four hours and the discovery of her abandoned pink bicycle with the lavender streamers handing off the handlebars, the FBI was involved.
After twenty-nine hours, when the initial search turned up nothing but a pink shoe three blocks from Taylor Goza’s home, Santa Fe’s WitSec office relocated the frantic parents of Taylor Goza aka Taylor Gore to a motel seven miles from their home and called Stan McQueen.
Which was why, at three o’clock in the morning in the middle of June, despite her headache and lack of sleep, Mary was irritably tapping the dashboard of the WitSec-issued Avalanche, listening as Marshall filled her in on the details.
“Santa Fe PD has been tracking a man who abducts children, male and female, ages seven to thirteen,” he rattled off the facts as he changed lanes on the highway, “Up ‘til now, all they’ve got on him is an FBI shrink’s profile and some duct tape with a partial print and a thirteen-year-old boy’s epithelials.”
“The family?” Mary prompted, massaging her head and trying to fight off the affects of the medication she had taken a few hours ago. She barely heard Marshall’s quick description of the Gore family’s circumstances upon entering Witness Protection for the pounding in her ears.
“Mary!” Marshall’s voice cut through the car’s dim interior and her own mental haze.
“What?!” she snapped back, annoyed.
He hesitated a moment, sending her a worried, sidelong glance, then said, “I’ve been calling your name for the past two minutes. You okay?”
“Fine. Tired.”
“If it’s the headaches again, you should go see your doctor. You know, headaches can be a symptom of a veritable cornucopia of-“
“I already went,” Mary snapped again, more emphatically this time, “and I’m fine. I’ve got some painkillers. God, Marshall, if I knew you’d bitch about the headaches, I wouldn’t have told you. I’m fine.”
She saw him send her another glance but nod slowly, taking her word for it; he knew just as well as she did that she could take care of herself, and he let her. But what if I’m not fine? It was this confidence that he afforded her that made her dead certain that he couldn’t, shouldn't, and wouldn't find out. About any of it.
They drove the rest of the way in silence, for which Mary was eternally grateful, and by the time they pulled up to the red brick building in downtown Santa Fe, Mary’s headache had subsided to a dull soreness in the back of her head.
They were directed into a Santa Fe PD conference room that was full to the brim with men in suits-every person in the room carried a badge and a gun. The large table in the middle was covered in maps, pictures, and plastic bags of evidence. Along the far wall was pinned the pictures of eleven children.
A tall man in a black suit stood and greeted Mary and Marshall when they pushed into the room at six o’clock in the morning and stood to shake Marshall’s hand. Mary bee-lined for the table of evidence and was analyzing a map with red circles around certain exits on the Interstate before the man had finished introducing himself as the chief inspector of Santa Fe WitSec.
“You’re just in time; we’re dividing up, and we need a team on a suspect’s house. That’ll be you two, starting this morning, after we brief you on the details of the case,” Chief Inspector Donald David told them before addressing the group. “These two are U.S. Marshals Miller and Shepard from Albuquerque.” Then, “This bastard’s going to mess up, and we’re going to catch him at it. We’ll keep you all updated, but for now, keep your eyes open.”
Recognizing dismissal, the room emptied quietly and quickly. When the room was empty except for the chief inspector and Mary and Marshall, he briefed them.
“We’re looking at a twenty-four hour stakeout at our main suspect’s house. His name is George Shaw, and he’s a teacher at the local high school-a history teacher. The elementary school gets out the same time the high school does, and nine of the eleven missing were from Wyatt Elementary. That, and the fact that he was on leave for the disappearances of the three students who disappeared who weren't from Wyatt makes him a person of interest. He was arrested in ’97 on drug charges, then again in ’98 for violating a restraining order against an ex-girlfriend and her three-year-old son. They suspect that he’s part of a child smuggling operation that includes Illinois, Mexico, and Chile, which is why Interpol is now involved. Anyway, I’ve got teams watching the high school teacher parking lot and the elementary school, got a team tracking the latest little girl--”
“Taylor,” Marshall interjected sharply. “Her name is Taylor Gore.” Mary looked up from the stack of pictures she was flipping through-all of little children’s items fallen haphazardly on the sidewalk or grass-and saw that Marshall’s jaw was a little more firmly set that usual.
“Right,” Inspector David amended quickly, “Taylor. I’ve got her assigned marshals running down every lead and a team of marshals from Amarillo taking their caseload for now, but I need the two of you on the day shift stakeout at Shaw’s house. The night team is from the FBI, but we’re short on manpower, so we had to use those idiots. You’re taking over at nine, and we don’t have enough vehicles to provide you another one, so you’ll have to use whatever car you drove. You can rest up until then, I’ll give you the address.”
They left the Santa Fe police station an hour later, armed with a folder full of pictures, addresses, and reports they were instructed to read to familiarize themselves with the case.
“Bastard,” Mary grumbled under her breath as she climbed into the truck, nose in the files they were given. “Little kids. Picks on little kids.” Marshall said nothing because nothing had to be said.
They had breakfast at a small diner on Rodeo Rd., each of them ordering then retreating into a stack of police reports as they waited for their breakfasts to come. Neither said a word until the waitress-a pretty brunette not over thirty-brought them their plates, put a hand on Marshall’s shoulder, and asked him sweetly, “Anything else I can get you, hon?”
Marshall grinned and was about to respond, probably with some random bit of trivia, when Mary, without looking over the top of the folder she was exploring, said roughly, “Yeah, we could use a few napkins. My partner here drools like a rabid dog when he eats.”
“Hey, I--”
But the waitress had retreated.
“What was that?!” Marshall asked, exasperated but grinning.
Still without looking up, Mary replied, “I was just helping you keep it zipped up. Besides, the last thing I need is a bunch of kids making out in the back of the truck.”
“I wasn’t--”
“Uh-huh.”
Marshall sighed, knowing he couldn’t win as he dug into his pancakes, practically inhaling them after the long, foodless drive from Albuquerque. Mary looked at her food and felt her stomach churn mutinously as the thought of digesting something hit her. She went back to reading police reports and just pushed her plate toward Marshall when he was done with his.
“You’re not going to eat?” he asked, sounding like he just saw pigs fly by on the horizon.
“No.”
Silence as Marshall waited for an explanation. There was none.
“Mare, you okay?”
“Oh, for the love of God,” she slammed the folder down on the table, causing a couple two booths down to look at them, startled, “I’m fine, and if you don’t want the food, don’t eat it. I’m concentrating on catching a pedophile, and if you ask me that one more time, I’m going to put a bullet through your foot.” She glared at him as he stared back, bewildered. After an intense moment, she roughly went back to scanning the pages of the police report, and after another, he picked up his fork and ate her flapjacks slowly.
When they got up to leave, she didn’t comment about the extra-large tip he left for the waitress, instead saying impatiently, “Come on-we’ve got a scumbag to catch.”
Ch. 2
They arrived outside George Shaw’s residence at approximately 8:50am, ten minutes before schedule. Marshall called the FBI team sitting on the house to let them know of the shift change, and not twenty seconds later, a ratty turquoise van peeled out from in front of the one story red brick house, and Mary and Marshall were alone.
“This is Marshall Miller and Mary Sheppard on duty,” Marshall said into the small black radio affixed to the dashboard, “eyes on suspect number 939081.”
“Check that,” replied a disjointed male voice from the radio. “Zero nine hundred, Miller-Shepard checking in.” Pause, a ruffling of papers. “Suspect left for work at approximately zero seven hundred this morning, and we’ve got another team staking out his car and the high school; the house is vacant at the moment, but keep your eyes open for anyone else going in or coming out. Radio in with any updates.”
“This ought to be fun,” Mary grumbled, taking off her seat belt, settling into her seat and putting her feet on the dashboard, a habit which annoyed Marshall because it meant that he would probably have to wipe off the shoe prints later. Which, of course, was exactly why she did it.
“Especially with you all perky and upbeat in the mornings.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Duly noted.”
They spent the rest of the morning in the black Avalanche parked across the street from George Shaw’s house. At approximately eleven fifty-two, a man with dark hair, a navy baseball cap, and sunglasses came by to stuff a handbill in the doors of the neighborhood, which was innocent enough, but still, Marshall updated Santa Fe PD on the detail, and an undercover agent was sent to walk along the street and casually extract the handbill from the door.
Agent Peter Douglas did not want twenty percent off his annual lawn care bill, and the advertisement was discarded.
At 12:20pm, with the Santa Fe sun beating down on the truck, Mary snapped shut the folder she had been going through and said, “God, couldn’t this guy have lived in Maine or something? It’s like an oven in here.” She had long ago taken off her jacket and blouse and was curled up in her seat in a tank top.
Also dressed thusly, Marshall replied, “Evil knows neither boundaries nor weather patterns.” He had long since finished reading the case files and had, for some bizarre reason Mary couldn’t even begin to fathom, taken apart the car’s CD player and was rewiring it using the toolbox he kept under the backseat.
“What I wouldn’t give to just go up to this son of a bitch and shoot off parts of his body until he tells us where the girl is,” she muttered, yawning and stretching.
Marshall raised his eyebrow, looked at her, and paused with a screwdriver in the hole in the controls where the CD player had been and said, “Hm, this coming from the Olympic gold medalist in subtlety. You know, if you’re tired, you can sleep while I watch the house.”
“So you can draw on my face while I’m unconscious? Don’t think so, not a chance.”
By 12:30pm, Mary was snoring softly, head against Marshall’s shoulder so she didn’t sweat and stick to the leather seats. He fiddled on with the CD player.
She awoke with her head in his lap to the coarse sound of the radio.
“Suspect leaving local HS, presumably heading home. We’ve got a team tracking him. Miller-Sheppard still on his house?”
Gingerly and without having realized that his partner was awake, Marshall reached over the steering wheel to press the button on the radio. “Affirmative.”
“All right, eyes open, people.”
Mary shifted and turned, blinking up at Marshall, who grinned ruefully. “Did that wake you?”
“Time?” she asked, ignoring him and rubbing her eyes.
“Five-thirty.”
“Seriously?” Mary demanded, surprised, bolting up and immediately regretting it as bright spots overwhelmed her vision and her stomach turned viciously. Her hand quickly went to her mouth as a preemptive move against anything that might come up as her brain thumped mercilessly against her skull.
“Mare?” Worry.
“Got up too fast.” She took a deep breath to clear her head, and it didn’t help. “I’ve been asleep for the past five hours?”
“Yeah, but Mare, if you don’t feel--” Marshall began, reaching out to hesitantly to put a hand against her forehead, as if checking for fever.
“Headache,” she replied, squeezing her eyes closed against the heavy pounding, leaning into Marshall’s cool hand.
A pause while Marshall juggled disbelief at her words, irritation at the disbelief, and worry despite both. Worry won out. With a sigh he said, “Come here,” and turned her face toward him.
“What--?!”
“Just relax,” he cut her off, taking her face in both his hands. He pressed his thumbs against her temples and rubbed gently in circles, then pressed his fingers against her forehead with light pressure, then ran his thumbs over her eyelids. “Relax,” he said again, and she couldn’t help but listen, sagging tiredly against the car door despite her nap.
When she felt his fingers pause against her eyelids five minutes later and tense, she could see straight again. She turned her head toward George Shaw’s house as the garage door opened and his Toyota Corolla pulled in.
“Looks like maggot’s back in the dog crap,” she muttered.
A chuckle, then Marshall asked softly against her ear, “Better?”
“Yes.” She pulled her face somewhat hesitantly from his grasp, ear tingling from his breath, then gave a somewhat foreign, “Thanks.” He just smiled crookedly.
At 7:30pm, a gray Chevy pulled up and parked two houses down and across the street from Shaw’s red brick lair. Two minutes later, the radio came to life and croaked, “Brown-Anderson here to relieve you, Miller-Sheppard. Report back tomorrow at zero seven hundred.”
They pulled out of the residential neighborhood with the relief that always followed a fruitless day of bored watchfulness and into a motel five miles away with the “T” in the sign unlit, the pole for the sign covered in profanities courtesy of red spray paint and rowdy teenagers, and the parking lot littered with garbage. “And dear old Uncle Sam couldn’t even spring for a Motel 6 or something,” Mary muttered as they parked in front of the office. “We love you too, America.”
Marshall checked in and came out of the office with key cards to two joined rooms. They moved to the other side of the building then carried their respective overnight bags into their rooms. Just as Mary was beginning to dig through her bag looking for a change of clothes, Marshall’s head popped through the adjoining door, and he asked, “Pizza? Though I’d pick us up some.”
“Beer,” was Mary’s reply.
“I live to serve, Your Majesty.”
A shower was an absolute must after a day of sitting in a car in the hot New Mexican sun with the air conditioning off. Mary took her time standing under the water, just a little bit too cool after the oven she spent the day in, feeling if not refreshed then at least clean when she stepped out, wrapped in a towel, stumbling slightly on the edge of the tub. She shook out her hair, very aware that she was dripping as she made her way to the bed where her change of clothes were, mildly amused-concerned that the edges of the destination were blurring a little with each step and that her knees felt like gravy.
She was halfway to the bed when her legs gave out, and for a moment it was like she was out of her body, looking at her own crumpled form on the floor from another perspective wondering who is she, and why is she shaking so hard? The sensation passed quickly, and Mary was back in her own head, wrapped in a towel on the floor, hands shaking too hard to even hold her own throbbing skull.
Where the Hell were those painkillers?
She tried to open her eyes and find her bag, but the moment she did, the too-bright colors of everything around her and the sick glare of the lamp next to the bed made everything in the room whirl, and she shut them again.
“Mary!” Marshall’s voice came from a lifetime away, as did his touch, but she was vaguely sure that she was being lifted then put down on something softer than the floor. Her entire world shook, however, when he jerked her shoulder roughly and asked wildly, “Mare? Mare, what’s wrong?” She forced her eyes open if only to avoid having him shake her again and making her feel like she was stuck on a tilt-o-whirl. Focus on his eyes, those deep, sky blues.
“E-E-Eletriptan,” she breathed, finding herself curled up against Marshall’s shoulder on the bed. She tried to point to her bag but aborted that operation halfway through when she realized that her hand shook to hard to keep it in one place long enough to point and trying to just made the bridge of her nose sting. She shut her eyes again and managed to choke out, “Front pouch, two pills.”
She was all too aware of her head shifting when Marshall moved abruptly to unzip her bag but was nonetheless grateful when she felt something pressed into her mouth, and then liquid poured slowly to help her wash it down.
The effects were not immediate, and it could have been an eternity she spent curled into a tight ball against her partner, fighting off and trying to ignore everything her senses registered because it was just too much to deal with-sight, sound, smell. The only thing she was comfortable with was the gentle stroking against her hair; when the ache had subsided enough for her to breath easily again and her hands had stopped shaking, she kept her eyes closed for a few extra moments to savor the peace that came with that action.
“Mary?” Marshall whispered cautiously when he felt her shift in his arms so that her head was in the crook of his neck. He was still running his fingers through her still-damp hair.
He felt her pause, felt her check herself, and felt her make a decision.
“It’s… stress. And I’m tired; some rest should do the trick. Um, the doctor said.”
And it was her turn to feel him tense, feel him register her lie, and feel him decide to accept without question what she told him because he trusts me that much and trusts that I can take care of myself.
Oh, God, Marshall, you’re an idiot.
“All right... You up for food?” he asked finally. She silently noted the long-forgotten pizza box lying on the floor near the connecting door next to the six pack of beer. “You didn’t eat breakfast, haven’t eaten all day. You keep this up, and you’ll lose your food baby, and you know how the men all love your extra pounds.”
“Jackass,” she laughed affectionately, pinching his arm in retaliation. He didn’t say anything about the pinch being less vicious than usual-as if she didn’t have the strength to abuse him any harder-and flinched for her benefit. She let him pull him arms away from around her and retrieve the beer and pizza, and they ate in companionable silence on the bed.
“Shower,” Marshall sighed after he put away three quarters of the pizza and half of the beers. “You change and get some sleep. I’ll wake you in the morning.”
He got up and may have been less than graceful when bolting out of the room-Mary couldn’t be sure because she was distracted by the quick and sloppy kiss he planted in her forehead before he left.
----
“It’s been over forty-eight hours,” Mary sighed in frustration, legs propped up against the steering wheel-she had stolen the keys from Marshall’s hands before he could denounce her driving-at 7:00am. “I’m going crazy just waiting here… Her chances of survival just went from… from…”
“Probable to slim, I know,” Marshall replied, just as agitated as they watched the gray-haired history teacher lock his front door and make his way to his garage. He was an average height with small, brown eyes tilted upward, a potbelly, and a pasty complexion. They watched as he opened his garage door, got into his Corolla, and backed out.
“He’s left the premises,” Marshall said into the radio as the car drove down the street.
“A team will tail him to the school,” came the reply. As usual, Marshall put the radio back on the stand on the dashboard. He looked at his partner, who was staring intently out the window toward the house.
“Is Shaw married? Family?” she asked out of the blue, but Marshall had long since learned not to question her process.
“No. Lives alone.”
“Any other properties? Vehicles?”
“Not that the feds know of. Why, what are you thinking?”
She turned towards Marshall and fixed him with an intense hazel look, head tilted and the corner of her mouth folded up. “Did you notice now big his garage is?”
“It’s a two-car garage. Like all the garages on this street.”
“Yes,” she said impatiently, “but when he pulled out, you could see another car. A white van.”
Marshall frowned. “You sure?”
She shot him a dirty look at his questioning her observations. She fiddled in her pocket and extracted the orange prescription bottle, popped two pills in her mouth-ignored Marshall when he asked, “Didn’t you already take two this morning?”--, washed them down with water, and started the car.
“What are you doing? We’re supposed to watch the house, Mare,” Marshall asked, incredulous as Mary drove halfway up the street and parked.
“We are going to watch,” she replied nonchalantly, getting out of the car. In disbelief, Marshall followed after her as she started back toward Shaw’s house.
“Mare, we don’t have a warrant, anything you find won’t be admissible in court, what the heck are you thinking?” he demanded seeing her walk up to the door and jiggle the doorknob.
She grinned at him mischievously and twittered innocently, “Mr. Shaw left his front door ajar when he went to work this morning, and it was suspicious, so we thought we’d check it out. It’s not our fault that he left his door open-anyone could have stepped in, and we had to search the premises to make sure it was safe.”
“I- you- what-” Marshall sputtered, half-amused and half-flabbergasted. He licked his lips and asked in a strained voice, “And how are you going to let yourself in without breaking down the door? Or leaving any other signs of forced entry?”
Mary smirked again, and Marshall decided that perhaps he shouldn’t have asked. He pointedly looked the other way when she jimmied the front porch window open-“Learned this when I was a kid, and my mom kept forgetting the house key”-and eased herself into the house. A few seconds later, the front door opened, and Mary leaned against with the same smirk. “Come on in, I insist.”
George Shaw’s home was alarmingly clean, unlike any other bachelor’s home either Mary or Marshall had ever seen-and this was saying something because Marshall, you’re like a housewife-who in their right mind would alphabetize their spices?
They did a quick search of all the rooms in the house, which turned up nothing not even a few damn dust bunnies. When they let themselves into the garage, however-
“I told you there was a van,” Mary said triumphantly as she flipped on the garage lights. Indeed, there was a gleaming white van sitting in the garage, front windows tinted.
“Touché,” Marshall breathed, following Mary as she approached the vehicle. They both carefully made their ways around the van, surveying every inch multiple times, looking over and under before they finally congregated at the back by the doors.
Without a word, Marshall took one door handle and Mary the other, and they flung the doors open at the same time to find-
“The Hell?” Mary hissed, looking into the back of the van. “What the--”
“I have no idea,” Marshall told her, looking into the carpeted and padded truck; the floor of the van was covered in a fuzzy blue carpeting-the thick, soft kind used in bathrooms-and the walls were a plush, electric violet padding that was almost three inches thick.
Mary pulled herself into the small space, edging through the heavy carpet on hands and knees to the far corner, then crawling back with her eyes glued to the floor.
“Find anything?” Marshall asked patiently while she searched through the fibers of the rug.
“No, not--” A pause as Mary froze to the spot. “Marshall… Marshall, what color were the streamers on Taylor Gore’s bicycle?”
“Uh… lavender.”
Mary scrambled out of the back of the van and held he hand out to her partner; in it, a single strip of shiny lavender plastic. Marshall looked from it to her and back. “This is enough for a search war-”
They both froze, eyes wide, as the garage door began to open.