Chapter Text
It was turning out to be…not “one of those days.” Actually, Jim would’ve killed for “one of those days” right then. There really wasn’t even any easy way to describe what kind of day he’d had. How do you describe a day in which a group of gun-toting crazies walk right into your house, lock you on the outside, and threaten everything you care about? Bad, Ellison. You’d describe that as bad.
He’d grabbed a quick shower and a fresh t-shirt down in the locker room, but his arms still ached from hanging off that chopper; the bruises on his chest from the bullet he caught to the vest throbbed in time with his heartbeat and sent a painful twinge through him every time he moved the slightest bit. And every twinge made him angrier.
Garrett Kincaid and the Sunrise Patriots. Spoken in the right tone of voice, and Jim could’ve been convinced by the name that they were some kind of folk singing group or something. But every time he’d come into contact with this psychotic faction of military wannabe freaks, it was because they’d done something stupid and violent and worthless, and this just took the cake.
After they’d shipped Kincaid and the rest off to some cell that was way too good for any of them, Jim had had to stay and help sort through the chaos they left behind. Which was therapeutic in its own way, he supposed. Clean up the mess they’d left. Realize that they were really gone, that it was over. Make sure things were back to how they should be, that the streets were safe again. That the machine that was his city’s law enforcement was well-oiled and back in working order.
He’d seen Taggart off in an ambulance. The man seemed weary and in pain, but certainly in stable condition. Then there were a thousand things to be coordinated, righted, or mended. He’d coordinated his curly-haired observer into a chair by his desk and told him to stay put and out of the way, and for once the university student had nothing to say in return. Satisfied and unable to process much of anything beyond the fact that Sandburg was now safe, Jim set his attention on all the things that scrabbled for his attention—mostly that shower he’d desperately needed—ignoring the niggling headache that sat teasing the base of his skull from all the noise and disorder.
Until, after coming out of a conference call he’d taken in Simon’s office over hour later, he looked back at that chair. That now empty chair.
Nerve endings fired, forgotten adrenaline kicked back in, and all the unprocessed desperation from when the kid had been trapped in the building without him was right there like it never left. It was the same unprocessed desperation that had sent him leaping up onto a helicopter skid just a very short while ago.
“Hey.” He said to no one in particular, scanning around the room. Logically, he knew nothing was wrong. He knew nothing had happened. They were in the police station. The threat had been eliminated. Sandburg was fine. Didn’t lessen the edge in his voice even a little. “Brown. Hey.”
The detective was sitting at his desk, talking on the phone. He held up one finger and kept talking.
Patience was not an option right then. “No. Hey. Right now. Real quick. You know where Sandburg is?”
“Oh, hold on a sec,” Brown said into the phone before shooting Jim a look and covering the receiver. “What, man?”
“Where’d Sandburg go?” Jim had given him a ride in—was that this morning? Wow, that felt like days ago—so he knew the kid hadn’t gone home.
“That kid you brought in? Ah, Rafe took him to get his statement awhile ago. I think they were using one of the interrogation rooms. Little quieter, you know?”
He found himself inexplicably annoyed. “Why wouldn’t they wait and let me take his statement?”
Brown shrugged, the receiver still against his shoulder. “I don’t know. You were busy? What’s it matter?” Jim couldn’t imagine what about his face could have the man backtracking the way he did. “I mean, you could probably still catch ‘em, maybe. If you go now.”
“Yeah,” he said, considering. “Hey, thanks.”
“Not a problem; not a problem.” And Brown went back to his call.
Jim started out of the bull pen and down the hall toward the interrogation rooms. And nearly ran straight into Carolyn.
“Hey, Ellison,” she greeted with a bit of a crooked grin. She sounded tired. She had good reason to be.
“Plummer,” he nodded, allowing a smile to tweak his lips.
“What’s the rush? We’re post-disaster now, right? There’s plenty of time for calm, normal-paced walking from place to place now. Or didn’t you get the memo?”
“In other words, ‘No running in the halls’?”
She gave a short laugh. “Oh, boy. Is that what I sound like? I'm a hall monitor?”
“You? Nah…” He shook his head, scrunching his brow a bit, teasing her. It was good to see her. But he really didn’t want to be distracted too long from his mission. “I was actually just on my way through to interrogation. You doing all right?”
“I’m fine. On your way to see Sandburg?”
Oh, that’s right. Those two had met now. Up on the roof. Still, she was making some kind of expression he couldn’t interpret. Put him immediately the slightest bit on edge. “Right. Yeah, he’s giving his statement now.”
“Uh-huh. Well, good. Sooo…” she said wisely, “your cousin’s kid?”
Ah. Yeah, that was bound to come back to bite him, he supposed. “Well…you know. Kind of. It’s a…It’s more of a, um, thing through marriage, you know, twice removed and all that. On my mother’s side. We’re barely…barely related. Like just…you know, barely.” Everybody was related if you went back far enough, right?
“Right.” She clearly wasn’t buying it. “And now he’s your partner?”
“Sort of. He’s…observing. For awhile.”
“Mmhm.” She looked at him a long time. Several seconds past the point of awkward. Her gaze was narrowed, penetrating. Suspicious. And then she said, in an entirely chastising voice, “You should be aware that your new partner is the third most adorable thing on the planet.”
Of all the things he would’ve expected. He didn’t even… “I...What?”
“You heard me. Number three on the universal list of adorable things. Right after kittens and small, chubby-faced young children who speak with a faint lisp.”
“Wha…?” Jim sighed and rubbed his eyes. Third most…? “What about…puppies?” Why would he even ask that? Why would that be the question he asked? He was losing his mind.
“Mmmm…nope.” She hardly even considered it. “He’s cuter. He’s cuter than puppies.” And she looked at Jim as though it were somehow all his fault.
“I’m…sorry?” He meant it in the sense that he didn’t understand. But after he’d said it, it really felt like an apology. “Carolyn, have you taken pain medication?”
She shook her head. “There should be a law,” she said regretfully. And then she shared with him the events of her first experience with one Blair Sandburg. In her voice was the bewilderment he was starting to associate with being around Sandburg in general.
Carolyn was just getting to the point where the adrenaline was draining to her fingers, leaving her hands trembling as the last bit of pent-up stress ebbed out of her. It was over, and they were okay. Jim was okay. The terrorists were caught. And just at that moment, as she was catching her breath, a young, disheveled looking figure stepped right up in her space, holding out his bound wrists to her, nearly touching her lapel. He looked up at her with these big blue eyes, and said all at once, “Hi. Would you mind?”
She was struck, rather suddenly, with a memory of her four-year-old nephew looking up at her much the same, presenting one foot with its conspicuously untied Batman sneaker. It was such an odd parallel, she didn’t move for a moment and could only stand there gawking at him.
He stared back for awhile, fidgeting and bouncing on his toes a bit, looking awkward. “Um.” He reached up and bumped her shoulder lightly. “Are you okay?”
Carolyn shook herself. “Yes. Fine. Fine. I’m sorry. Yes, of course. Let me help you.”
His smile was bright and immediate. “Thanks. Oh!” He dug in his pocket, which was quite a chore the way his hands were taped up. “I have a pocket knife.” Another second and he managed to fish it out. “Here.”
“Great.” She took the knife from him and made short work of the tape keeping his wrists together. The trembling had mostly left her hands. It hadn’t completely left his even as he rubbed his wrists to get the blood flowing again and get rid of leftover adhesive that stuck to his skin. “You doing okay?” she asked.
“Yep. I’m good. Great, actually. Just, um…” he made a face and nodded a bit at the helicopter and at everything. “This was weird. This was a little weird for me. But good. Good now. So you’re Carolyn, right? Jim’s ex-wife?”
The directness surprised her a little. She’d like to have been annoyed. She felt like under any other set of circumstances, she would’ve been. But for whatever reason, this scruffy little figure got a reprieve. “Yes, Carolyn Plummer. And you’re Blair Sandburg. Jim’s new ride-along.”
He rolled his eyes at the title. “Yep. Although I believe the newly-approved term is ‘observer.’”Crazy wild curls blew all around his face, adding to his tousled appearance. He had on an oversized, tattered tan corduroy coat, the sleeves of which went down nearly to his fingertips. He was shaking a little, and even though his expression stayed pleasant and open, he wrapped his arms around himself like he was cold.
“Rough first day,” she said with real sympathy.
“I know! Man. Tomorrow’s going to feel…downright boring, am I right?” And he added, with slight desperation, “Please say I’m right.”
"Oh, we live for dull moments around here." She grinned at him through her weariness. “You’re taking this whole thing rather in stride.”
“Oh.” He blinked. “Well, thanks.” She hadn’t even necessarily meant it as a compliment, just an observation. But his genuine surprise made her want to compliment him again.
“Must be why Jim’s letting you work with him. You seem to keep a level head.”
He shrugged his eyebrows and brushed some curls out of his face. “Must be.” Like he didn’t think that was it at all.
“Well, it has to be something. I have to say, I never thought he’d let himself get partnered up again. Even temporarily.” She took in the entire picture he presented. A couple inches shorter than she was. Layers of worn out clothes. Too-long hair. Earrings. Innocent blue eyes. A quick-to-smile, fast-talking mouth. A positive, in-your-face demeanor with sudden sprinkles of awkward shyness. If she had decided to scour the world to find the exact opposite of Jim Ellison… “You must be something special.”
“I have joie de vivre,” he volunteered cheerfully.
“Is that right?” And even if she’d been trying not to grin, she wouldn’t have stood a chance.
“Mmhm.” He nodded simply. “It’s been documented.” A quick flash of a smile, and he looked over to where Jim stood with Simon. “Well, thanks for…” He held up his freed wrists and then pointed over his shoulder at the two men. “I’m gonna go over there now. Nice to meet you, Carolyn. Um, Ms. Plummer? Carolyn?”
“Carolyn,” she confirmed a first-name basis.
“Blair.” He shook her hand, and his look went from little boy to charming young man quick as a wink. Oh, he was destined to be a heartbreaker. Then he was darting over to Jim, waiting impatiently for the detective to finish talking with Simon. Then as she watched, the two had a brief discussion, both of them rubbing their abused wrists as they talked.
Standing so close, everything that was so different about them was immediately apparent. Then Jim patted the kid’s face softly with both hands, intending to walk away when Sandburg stopped him with hands on his vest and said something else. She watched as Jimmy’s exhausted face stretched into a wide smile, the blue eyes laughing as he walked away, trying unsuccessfully to hide his chuckling behind his hand. And that young guy—the observer—looked almost comically exasperated as he skipped along behind the detective, trying to catch up, chattering all the way.
Carolyn raised an eyebrow. She wasn’t sure how long this ride along thing would last. Knowing Jim like she did, she gave it a week. Tops. But she fully expected it would be an interesting week.
Jim felt the tired smile that had taken up residence on his face at some point while listening to Carolyn’s brief Sandburg tale. “‘Joie de vivre,’” he said, nodding. “That’s French for…‘really loud mouth,’ right?”
“Something like that. All I’m saying is: thanks a lot. Now that you’ve got one of…whatever we’re calling him, it’s only a matter of time before all the other teams in your department want one, too.”
“Seems like that would lead to a supply and demand issue. Want me to put your name on the waiting list?”
“Make sure it’s spelled correctly.” She looked at him straight in the eye, and her joking tone faded into the other one. Curiously enough, it was a warning, mild though it was. “Be careful with him.”
He tilted his head to the side. “What do you mean?”
“He’s not a cop. Make sure you’re fair to him. You can’t play your normal Jim Ellison Lone Ranger part with him in the passenger seat. You attract a lot of bullets sometimes, detective. And if you’re going to have some civilian college student riding with you, you need to make very sure you adjust accordingly.”
The sudden flash of irritation certainly brought back memories. “What are you saying; that I can’t do my job while he’s observing?”
“I’m saying that while you do your job, don’t forget he’s observing. The bad guys don’t usually check for credentials before they start firing. Or hauling people onto helicopters. You may have noticed.”
So she thought what? That this was going to be a routine? That he would just leave the kid in harm’s way whenever it suited him? “Hey, I didn't leave him with Kincaid. I left him in the middle of the Cascade PD, surrounded by cops. While we went out to lunch. And I got him back, didn’t I?” He distinctly remembered jumping onto a chopper. Not that he was looking to get a parade, but didn’t that prove something? Shouldn’t that reassure everybody that he could keep the kid safe? It should, right? It should.
Her voice remained neutral. “You did. You sure did, Jimmy. I’m just saying. Be careful. Not just for his sake, either.”
“Who else…?” He trailed off at her pointed eyebrow. Sometimes this woman knew him far too well. She’d never known him when he was teamed with Jack. But she’d seen the aftershocks of his former partner’s disappearance. And before that when Delgado, his very first partner, got shot. That had messed him up, too. So she knew the damage that had been done, had seen it in the way he’d flatly refused to work with anyone else. Until now. Until Sandburg. Until he’d had no choice. And now she worried what would happen to him if he lost the kid on his watch, too.
He could’ve died today. On some logical, academic type level, he’d known that. It was some of what fueled his rage at Kincaid—that his partner was up there under threat, being held hostage. But adrenaline did funny things, made things seem less…real sometimes. The reality was, though, that it would’ve been a real easy thing for Blair Sandburg to be one of the ones that didn’t make it out of this one. Six people had died. Six people who had gone into work like it was any other day had swiftly and without warning or mercy been murdered. It rankled him. Even more so the possibility that there could so easily have been a seventh. And that was something he didn’t want to…think about. Blair was Jim’s responsibility. Jim had even said as much to Simon just that morning. What would it do to him if the kid died on his watch?
Jim shook his head. Suddenly. Almost violently. Because that line of thinking wouldn’t do anyone any good. Right?
“Yeah, well. Look, I gotta go. You all right? You doing all right?” Had he asked her that already?
“I’m fine. Just about to head home. You should get out of here soon, too. You look beat.”
“Yeah,” he answered absently and was already moving past her. “I’ll do that. Goodnight, Carolyn.”
He heard her answering “’Night,” behind him, and he focused on taking regular, deep breaths. He was tired all of a sudden. He was tired before, but…he was tired now. All he wanted was to go grab the kid, see him safely to that vagrant’s paradise he called home, and then go collapse back at the loft and sleep for a day or two or twenty. Mostly he wanted to stop thinking.
“Hey, Ellison.” Rafe was coming around the corner, carrying a video camera in one hand, tripod in the other. Jim frowned at him. If Rafe was here, where the heck was Sandburg? “Hold up a second.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be taking Sandburg’s…?”
“Yeah. He finished up a little while ago.” The man was smiling broadly, looking at Jim a little bewildered—the now-familiar hallmark. “I have to know: that guy really your partner now?”
Jim didn’t bother answering. “Where’s he at?”
“I don’t know. We got done…maybe half an hour ago. Hey, he tell you what happened to him yet?”
“What…” Jim paused and worked his jaw a second. “What happened to him?”
“Oh, boy.” Rafe rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, and it was somewhere between sympathy and reluctant humor. “Kid had quite the adventure. Rhonda and all the other witness reports so far back up his statements. He seemed okay about everything, but wow. I’d lay down odds right now that he’s not coming back here again. And it is not like I can blame him.”
Something cold settled in his stomach. “You got his statement on video?”
“Yeah. Chief’s idea. He wants detailed records on everything that went down today. We’re going to be picking apart our security protocols around here for awhile I’m guessing. And I don’t think anyone here will mind at all.”
“No doubt. Is the tape in there?” He tapped the gray, plastic camera.
“Hm? You mean Sandburg’s report?”
“Yeah.”
“Uh, yeah. You wanna take a look?”
“You mind?”
“By all means.” He held it out. “I gotta make some rounds myself. Don’t leave without getting this back to me. I’m supposed to get the tape to the higher ups before my shift ends.”
“Yeah, no problem.” Jim took the camera. A newer one from the looks of it. Small. Used the little mini cassette tapes. He studied it as he walked back toward Major Crimes. He wasn’t a hundred percent sure why he wanted to know what Blair had said so badly, but… That’s a lie. You know why. Because he needed to know, before he found the young anthropologist, what that kid was going to say to him.
I’d lay down odds right now that he’s not coming back here again.
Why did that bother him so much? That Sandburg would say to him—wisely—that he hadn’t signed up for all this. That it was too much to ask, too dangerous, too deadly. That this whole thing was over even before it began.
It wasn’t even like Blair would stop helping him outside of work. Jim couldn’t believe that would be the case. The kid was practically giddy over the whole Sentinel thing. Called Jim his holy grail. Wasn’t like Sandburg would completely walk away. Just that he wouldn’t be there to help out in the field. And that was fine. That was good even. Safer. Simpler. Would definitely put all Carolyn’s unfounded fears to rest. And they were only her fears. So why in the world did the prospect of one goofy, unpredictable civilian not being around scare him so much? This whole thing was temporary anyway. By design.
He walked through the bull pen to Simon’s office, wanting to get away from the noise, figuring his captain wouldn’t mind if Jim borrowed the room while the man was away. He sat at the conference table facing the windows, back to the door. His body melted into the hard chair a little, shoulders slumping, and it seemed like it had been a long time since he’d been sitting down. He flipped open the little monitor on the side of the camera and turned it on, fast forwarding the tape past a few haunted-looking familiar and unfamiliar faces until the object of his search walked timidly into frame. Then he hit play.
Blair looked a little nervous, his kid-in-the-principal’s-office eyes darting around as he sat down at the table, finally settling somewhere to the left of the camera where Rafe presumably sat. “So, um. This is where the bad guys, sit.” He patted the arm rests of his chair lightly and glanced over at the one-way mirror to his left with a small grin. “Is there anybody on the other side of the glass listening in?”
“Nope.” Rafe’s voice, sounding amused. “Or at least…not that I know of. Just relax; we’ll keep this simple. We just need your statement for the record. Why don’t we start off with your name?”
“Blair Sandburg. I’m an anthropology graduate student at Rainier University.” He looked right at the camera then, settling into his seat a little bit, getting comfy, the already-familiar spark of defiant humor lighting his eyes. “And, ahem… Let the record show that I am currently the partner of Detective Jim Ellison. Major Crimes.” Jim couldn’t help the slight smirk. He rolled his eyes.
“Partner, huh?” Rafe asked, and his skepticism was friendly enough.
Sandburg found a pencil on the desk and started fiddling with it. Kid really just could not keep still. “Yeah. Observer status, man. Apparently when my paperwork goes through I’ll get a badge. Not like a badge badge. But, uh, you know. It’ll probably be laminated.”
“I see. All right, Mr. Sandburg. Why don’t you tell me what happened when you came in today? Just start from wherever you feel comfortable.”
There was a slight pause. Just a tiny thing where he glanced from Rafe to the camera, licked his lips, and swallowed. A single second of apprehension that made Jim’s exhausted body sit up straighter in the chair, put his nerves that much more on edge. Because Jim didn’t know what had happened to him in the time they were separated, but now he knew it was bad enough that there was fear just in the retelling. Why hadn’t he talked to Sandburg the moment he got him off that chopper? Why hadn’t he made sure he was all right? Why hadn’t he at least made it a point to find out what he’d been through?
Then Blair was chattering about coming in to the precinct with Jim and getting the paperwork started with Vera and the awkward and unfortunate situation with having to provide a urine sample. Kid even made it entertaining. Like he always did. Light and fun, and he even elicited a chuckle from Rafe a time or two. Not that that was particularly hard to do.
“Jim?”
Jim looked up and hit pause, startled by the familiar deep voice. “Simon? What are you doing here, sir? I thought you’d gone home with Darryl.”
The captain stood in the doorway, looking tired and determined. “I did. He’s with his mom now.”
“How’s he doing?”
“You know. He’s been through a trauma. He’s shaken up pretty bad, but he’s handling it…surprisingly well, actually, all things considered. Still, I’ll be back there tonight. If he doesn’t have nightmares over this I’d be very surprised.”
It went without saying. Jim expected they’d all have nightmares over this one. “He’s a strong kid.”
“He is. So what are you doing in my office, detective?”
Jim held up the camera, briefly considered if there was any way to get out of answering, and said, like it was perfectly reasonable, “Sandburg gave his statement already with Rafe. I was just going through it.”
The captain’s eyebrows rose. “Can’t you just ask the kid about it later? You don’t have better things you could be doing?”
Jim didn’t answer that one. Because sure, there were a thousand other things he could be doing. But right then he didn’t think he could call any of them better. And he really didn’t know any way to say that out loud.
Simon looked at him. And apparently saw something in his expression. He pulled out a chair and sat down next to him, scooting close enough to see the small monitor. “Go. Hit play. I want to hear this, too.” At Jim’s look, he shrugged. “If the kid’s gonna be on our team, I figure it’s best I get to know how he handles himself in a crisis.”
Jim nodded at that, shrugging off his surprise, and hit the play button. “He’s just getting started.”
Onscreen, Sandburg sat in his seat, and Jim could hear a faint tapping, and he realized it was the kid’s shoe beating out a nervous rhythm under the table. “Um. So I was in the bathroom, just failing at providing a urine sample, when I heard a gunshot. It was…really loud. I looked out the door. I saw Joel—um, Captain Taggart. I’d met him before. Nice guy. But um, he’d been shot in the leg. It looked…really painful. So I saw him and Captain Banks’s son and some others getting pushed along by Kincaid—although I had no idea who Kincaid was at the time. I just saw a bunch of guys all with guns.”
“So then what happened?”
As Jim watched, Blair pressed his lips together, keeping his eyes down on the table. He rubbed the eraser end of the pencil on the table for a moment. “I hid,” he said quietly. Like an admission of guilt. “In one of the stalls.”
What was that? Wait, what was that? Was the kid ashamed that he was an unarmed civilian all alone with no backup or resources in a building full of dangerous terrorists? For Pete’s sake, if Sandburg hadn’t been smart enough to keep his head down, Jim would’ve throttled him. What? You think we expected you to storm the place and take back the building with your bare hands? Rambo couldn’t do that! And Rambo is pretend!
“That was a smart move.”
Sandburg looked up in surprise at Rafe’s words. He looked suspiciously at him, like he wasn’t sure whether he was only being placated.
“You kept your head in a situation that you had no way of understanding, and you stayed low instead of going off and getting yourself killed. That’s a very smart move any way you look at it.” Jim was all at once grateful to Rafe for saying what needed to be said and irritated at himself for not being the one to say it. And annoyed at Sandburg for making it necessary to say at all.
The blue eyes blinked. “Oh.”
“So then what? They eventually found you, I guess.”
“Well, kind of. A guy came in. But I sort of kicked the stall door at him, and it knocked him in the head pretty good.” Jim felt his eyebrows shoot up to the top of his head at that. Really? “He was out cold, and the hallway was empty, so I went out and made it to the break room. I stayed there awhile, hiding behind the snack machine in there, you know? Did some soul-searching. Did some praying. It was a pretty pivotal time in my life. As a person, you know?” He gave one of those funny, defusing grins he did.
Rafe chuckled. “Okay, okay. Wow. All right, then what?”
“Um, well I was there awhile. And then this guy came in and was trying to get something from the snack machine, but I guess he didn’t have the right coinage. Said something about ‘exact change,’ and then he just freaked right out, man. Like went nuts. Shot the thing up, and I was right behind it, you know, so I was just…yelling. Because I thought I was gonna get shot. Obviously. And so he was freaking out, and I was also freaking out, and somehow…I guess I shoved it just right; I’m not really sure, but the whole snack machine fell over on the guy, and he was down for the count.”
Really? Because really?
“So I ran out of there. Oh.” Sandburg looked guilty again. He reached uncomfortably into his pocket and pulled out a yellow bag of peanut M&Ms. “I did go back and take these. From the snack machine. Well, from the floor in front of the snack machine where the snack machine was broken. I didn’t pay for them or anything.” He rubbed his head fretfully. “I don’t know why I did that. I don’t even eat a lot of candy; that stuff is terrible for you. I think there were just some adrenaline things going on, and…anyway, you can have ‘em.”
He slid them nervously across the table and held up his hands in surrender as his mouth kept running. “You can take them right back, man. I wasn’t trying to steal them, I just…I don’t know; there was just this broken snack machine and peanut M&Ms lying abandoned, and I was right there, and a guy with a gun knocked out there on the ground, and I was thinking like…survival, man, and needing calories and…”
“Whoa, whoa. It’s okay.” Rafe cut the babbling young man off, and it was clear from his voice that he was holding back helpless laughter at the grad student’s dilemma. The candy was pushed back across the table to Blair. “You just keep those, okay? You earned them. Call them a gift from the department.”
Blair took a deep breath. “Okay,” he nodded. “Cool. Okay.”
“Now, you okay? You need a drink of water or something?”
The kid shook his head, catching his breath a bit. “No, I’m good. I’m good, man. Thanks.” The candy went back in his coat pocket.
“Okay. Well, let’s keep going. What happened after the break room?”
“Well, it was harder to be in the halls after that so I stuck to the stairwell for a little bit, but that didn’t last long. Too much foot traffic. Then there was that…explosion. It was…loud. Just rocked the place. I had no idea. I mean, you hear explosions in the movies and stuff all the time, so you think you’d know what to expect, but it is…not the same. They blew up the building across the street. At the time I didn’t know what happened.
“I left the stairwell, trying to figure out what it was, trying not to totally freak out. I guess they were looking for me after their two guys were missing. Or maybe they found ‘em; I don’t know. It just seemed like they were everywhere. So I had to duck into this office upstairs. I don’t know whose office it was, but there was this, um…” he gestured vaguely, “One of those platform things that window washers use? A little ways below the window on the next floor down. There wasn’t any other way out of the room that I could think of, and the guys were going through all the offices. So I broke the window.”
He winced like he thought he’d be in trouble again. But then he scowled. “Those things are stupid hard to break by the way, man. Anyway, I figured I could ride that thing down to street level, and then I could find Jim. You know, Detective Ellison? I knew he had to be close because no way could all this go on and him not be trying to fix it. I figured he was outside the building. He went out to lunch with Carolyn—that’s his ex-wife; she works in forensics—you probably already know that. I think it’s great they still go out to lunch together, personally. I met her today; she seemed…" He shook his head. "That’s not important. So anyway I thought if I could just get to him, to Jim, I could tell him what I knew about the guys inside, and he’d know what to do.”
There was so much blind confidence there it was almost overwhelming. Jim glanced over at Simon just in time to catch the other man’s small, amused smile. It brought their conversation from that morning suddenly to mind, back when they were trying to pitch the idea of Sandburg tagging along to a reluctant Simon.
“And you’re requesting full access credentials to observe Detective Ellison on the job?” the man had asked.
And Sandburg, with all the clueless hero worship of a kid brother had said, “Well, yeah. He is the best on the force, isn’t he?” Jim had figured at the time it was all part of the act. It was part of the act wasn’t it?
Jim snapped back to the tape as Rafe’s voice came on again, “But you never made it out.”
“Nope. Well, I made it out onto the platform. But I guess the window breaking thing alerted the guys on the roof. I didn’t think about whether there’d be a guy up there. Didn't even consider it. But they had guns and were shooting. And I don’t know if it was an accident, but the platform started falling. I’m not sure how far; I was still pretty high up I think. Somebody stopped it though, but when they did, there were guys at the window pointing guns at me, and I was pretty well caught.”
“So they were firing at you from the roof?”
Blair nodded, and his face remained neutral but looked a little paler to Jim’s eyes, fingers which had abandoned the pencil now tapping a rhythm onto the tabletop. He tried to imagine that kid dangling out on a suspended platform, ultimately helpless, with bullets falling all around him. He did not like the image.
Sandburg swallowed with some difficulty, but managed to somehow make his voice sound pretty close to normal. “They missed, though.” And he was very much reassuring himself, but the reassurance might as well have been meant for Jim’s ears.
“Yes, they did,” Rafe acknowledged warmly. “Okay, so then there were members of the Sunrise Patriots who pulled you back into the building; is that right?”
“Yeah.”
“Did they hit you?”
Rafe was cataloging their crimes. Had to know if there was another count of physical assault to add to the list. It made sense. And yet, the short, direct question with its professional nature and still with sympathy around the edges, hit Jim right between the eyes. Because why was Rafe asking this question? Why hadn’t Jim asked that question the moment he’d gotten him off that helicopter? He knew as well as anybody that just because there weren’t bruises on the kid’s face didn’t mean he hadn’t gotten beat on. But surely it didn’t matter because surely the answer was no, because surely Sandburg would’ve told him if he had!
Blair blinked his eyes a couple of times before sitting up a little straighter. He shrugged a shoulder and wasn’t looking at anyone or anything when he said, “A little bit. Not much.” Something that felt a lot like loathing dropped from Jim’s throat to his stomach as he swallowed. “I think they didn’t want to do a whole lot to me before they took me to their leader or whatever. Mostly they were just mad about what happened to their guys and because I wasted so much of their time. And also…I’m a bit of a nervous talker. Bad habit I guess. Been trying to work on that. They were gracious enough to give me a few…pointers.” He gave a short, nervous little piece of a laugh.
There was a creaking of plastic, and Jim wouldn’t have noticed if there hadn’t been a large hand that had come to rest on his forearm. He realized he was squeezing the camera much too hard, and he felt the muscle in his jaw twitch. He was just so unbelievably angry.
“Take it easy,” Simon murmured beside him before removing his hand. “It’s over.”
It was. Yet it still took some effort to relax his grip on the camera somewhat.
Onscreen, Sandburg fidgeted as Rafe asked him, “Did you let the paramedics check you out?”
“I’m fine. It really wasn’t anything. Just a couple bruises.” And he sped on before anyone could call him out. “After that I met Kincaid. He thought I was a mole. Some hotshot sent in from the outside to take them down one by one or something.” A sudden sweet smile lit his face. “So basically he thought I was Jim and the Captain.” Then the smile was gone. “Anyway, he said he was going to execute me.”
“Did you believe him?”
“Oh, yeah,” he breathed. And the simple truth of it played in those blue eyes that were suddenly a million miles away, probably seeing all the things he’d been so certain of, and for those seconds, Jim found he couldn’t breathe.
Rafe gave him a moment and then moved on, his voice quieter. “What did you think of Garrett Kincaid when you first met him?” And just like that, the horrible spell was broken.
“Um…that he was shorter than I expected?”
“Right?” Rafe chuckled, and the sound seemed to relax Blair a little. “Okay, what else?”
“He was, um…he was creepy.” There was a sudden blank, uncomfortable sort of expression, and he leaned back a little in his chair before he shook his head past it and went on, more clinically. “He was definitely the guy in charge. The other guys wouldn’t do anything he didn’t tell them to do. Except that snack machine guy, maybe. He was just…nuts. Kincaid was pretty unhinged himself. Paranoid. Major control issues. And he took everything that happened really personally. Like me being there was about deliberately undermining his authority or something. Totally classically narcissistic. He thought he was brilliant. Like there was no way he was gonna fail. Like…like victory was owed to him.” He tapped his lip as his brain went into what Jim recognized as analysis mode.
“Why do you think he didn’t kill you?”
Jim shook his head. “Come on, Rafe.” Go easy on him.
But the question didn’t seem to bother Sandburg too much. “Because I let him think I was the hotshot he thought I was. I told him I was a lieutenant with the Narcotics Division and would be a valuable hostage.”
“Smart kid,” Simon mumbled.
“He probably still would’ve killed me, but Captain Taggart backed me up. He was over by one of the desks with a bullet in his leg, still taking care of that young kid—Captain Banks’s son—and still he backed me up. Kincaid even shot a gun really close right over his head, but he backed me up.” He suddenly looked up at where Rafe was, and his eyes were troubled and vulnerable. “He’ll be okay, right? Joel I mean.”
“Last I heard, everything was looking fine,” Rafe said, and his tone was comforting. Jim appreciated that.
“Good,” Blaire nodded and flicked the pencil a little too hard, sending it skittering off the table. “Oops.” He glanced apologetically at Rafe and then plowed ahead. “After that, Kincaid got his helicopter. He took me with him out of the bull pen. He said I was ‘one of the lucky ones,’ and I knew they were going to…just…kill everybody.” He paused, and there was another glimpse of the fear and horror. “They didn’t, though,” he rushed on. “Because Jim and Captain Banks, I heard after. I wasn’t there for any of that, though. You’ll have to ask the others. So…Kincaid took me up to the roof, and there was this yellow chopper. I was yelling at him that I wasn’t a cop. Telling the truth, you know? Because it was becoming really apparent that I was not gonna end up one of the lucky ones. But he wasn’t listening by then.
“Anyway, then we were flying around, and then there’s Jim…doing his Die Hard thing. Man, that guy…I mean, seriously. Kincaid freaked out and opened the door, trying to shoot Jim off. We were already a little sideways, so it didn’t take much to nudge him out. Which I feel kinda bad about now because I’m pretty sure that made everything a whole lot harder on Jim. He was just like, hanging off the skid while they were trying to shake him off, and then Kincaid goes out and ends up hanging off of him. It’s crazy, man! But then the chopper pilot wasn’t going to turn around and land because, obviously, he didn’t want to get arrested. But there was a flare gun in a case on the floor, so after Jim—and Kincaid actually—yelled up to turn back, I got the pilot to agree.”
“You threatened the pilot with a flare gun?”
“It wasn’t even loaded,” he hedged. “I just pointed it at him and shouted a bunch of nonsense and made crazy eyes.” He tilted his head back and gave a demonstration of his crazy eyes.
Jim distinctly remembered hearing the words, “I don’t think so, punk! I flew Apaches in Desert Storm! Now turn it around! Now!” He leaned closer to Simon. “He was pretty convincing.”
“How do you know? Weren’t you outside the…?” Simon paused. “Oh right. Your Superman senses. Yeah, that’s still a conversation for another day.”
“I’m with you there, sir.”
Rafe was still laughing at Blair’s crazy eyes. “All right. So what happened after that?”
Sandburg shrugged. “Nothing. We flew back in. Kincaid and everybody got arrested. Um, the day was saved? And now that guy is going to prison for a very, very long time. Right?”
“Right.”
“Good. So that’s it. Are we done?”
“We’re done. Thank you. If we need anything else, we’ll call you.”
Blair shot out of his seat and was already out of frame before he called back, “Cool, man, thanks.” And the sound of a door closing. There was some shuffling around and chuckling before Rafe got to the camera and switched it off. Jim pressed stop as the tape cut to the next interview.
“Well,” Simon rumbled after a moment, leaning back in his chair. “Your observer had quite the day.”
“Mm,” he acknowledged quietly as he sat unmoving. “If he still wants to be my observer.”
The captain looked sideways at him, one eyebrow raised.
Jim sat back, pinching the bridge of his nose. “He hasn’t even gotten his paperwork turned in, and already he’s been hunted, shot at, dropped, tied up, knocked around, threatened, and taken hostage. And furthermore…I may have let him think this was just a typical Wednesday.”
Simon grinned briefly. “He did manage to take out two of their guys with a bathroom door and a vending machine. Not to mention shoving the leader of a terrorist organization out of a helicopter. Which he then held up with a flare gun.”
What could he even call that? Luck? Guts? A really disconcerting amount of both? “Yes he did. Yes. He. Did.”
Simon leaned back, watching him carefully. Still reading him. Had he become an easy read all of a sudden? Must be, because the next words out of the captain’s mouth basically hit the nail on the head. “You think he’s gonna back out now?”
“You think he won’t?”
Simon countered easily, “You see his face when I told those officers he was on our team?”
Jim had seen it. And he’d heard it. Relief and joy and almost incoherent babbling.
He glanced over to see Simon studying him. “You’re really worried about this, aren’t you?” the man asked point blank.
“Guess I am.” He tried to sound neutral on the subject. Seemed like a failed attempt.
“What do you need him for?” Banks just asked straight out.
Jim thought about that. It was a fair question. It took him a moment to word his answer. “You said I was awesome today. All the things I could see and hear and smell.”
“Yeah, so?”
“That’s what I need him for.” He looked at Simon looking at him and sighed. “If this had happened two weeks ago… If Kincaid had moved his timetable up two weeks, I would’ve been useless to you. I never would’ve made it through that sewer. No matter how many lives were depending on it, that smell would’ve wiped me out. I wouldn’t have been able to focus my hearing. Those explosions…those would’ve torn me apart. I might’ve ended up ‘zoning out,’ practically catatonic because that’s a weird part of this whole deal that’s happened before. None of it would’ve worked, Simon. Today would’ve just been me, on my knees, with a knife running through my brain from all the sensory overload while Kincaid took our city and killed our people.” There was a thread that ran through his very core that absolutely hated even the thought of that happening. Interestingly, it was the same thread that raged against the thought of anything happening to the anthropologist he’d only known for a week and a half.
Simon regarded him thoughtfully for a long time. “Sandburg still here?” he asked, his tone neutral.
“Yeah. I think so.”
“All right, well?” he pointed at the door. “Go get him. And get out of here.”
“Sir, there’s still…”
“Tomorrow. Today’s been taken care of, Jim.” His voice sounded in that rare, understanding tone. “Go get your friend. Get some rest. There’s still tomorrow.”
Jim paused a long moment before nodding his head. “Thank you, sir.” He stood and set the camera on the table. “You want to make sure this gets back to Rafe?”
“Right. Because I needed one more thing to do,” he groused, but waved Jim out all the while. “Will do. Goodnight, Detective.”
“Night, sir.” When Jim got out to the bull pen, his mission to find one missing grad student resumed, he found the chair he’d left Sandburg in still conspicuously vacant. “All right, Chief. Where are you?”