Losses (an OBfic)

by Ronnee

"Hey, Blair!" Henry Brown stared in amazement as the younger man stalked past on his way out of the bull pen. He turned to his partner and saw a flash of a rueful smile. "What happened to him?"

"Don't ask, H. You don't want to know!" Rafe answered softly before darting into the men's room. A moment later a glowering James Ellison strode past the bewildered detective.

Henry was still standing in the hallway several moments later when Rafe's head popped out of the men's room. "Did Jim leave?"

"Yeah. Are you going to explain?"

"Nope." Rafe scuttled into the bull pen. Henry watched as his partner carefully glanced around the room, almost as if he expected to be attacked. he knew that sooner or later he would get his garrulous partner to speak. So he could be patient.

It was about an hour later when Simon Banks and Joel Taggart arrived. They looked around the room before making a beeline to Rafe's desk. Henry watched his partner pale and sat up. The explanation was here and he knew it.

"Rafe?" Simon's voice was deceptively mild. "Still hiding from them?"

The cornered detective nodded. "Yeah, they didn't look any happier about the situation this morning."

"Can you blame them?" Joel's voice was amused. "Just don't let the lady touch your work computer."

"I warned Blair. Kyrie warned him too. But he didn't want to believe she could melt his hard drive." Rafe's whispered words were partially mortified and partly amused. "But no, the computer expert claimed it was impossible for a person to shock the computer like that!"

"Well, it solves a problem I've been having." Simon seemed to satisfied for the situation.

"And that was?" Joel asked.

"I've been trying to find a way to prove that Blair was doing all of their paperwork. I just hadn't expected it to be on Blair's home computer." The captain smiled and it was an evil smile. "Now, Jim has to write out each and every case for the past two weeks by hand."

Even Henry fought a smile at that comment. Jim Ellison hated paperwork with a passion. Blair seemed to find it a breeze and while not enthusiastic about it, could churn out the forms rapidly. Now he knew the reason. He typed the information at home and then copied it into the files. Yeah, Ellison being ordered to manually write the paperwork was a fitting punishment. A sudden thought occurred to him, "Rafe? Do me a favor? Don't let her get near the computer at my place!"

The other men turned to Henry in surprise and then they all understood. They all began chorusing, "That goes for me too!"

***********

Here's the explanation. Sometime over the past 9 days I managed to 1st catch a computer virus and 2nd magnetize my harddrive. Now, this means I had to get reformated, I lost all my e-mail and all the addresses and worst of all all my unfinished fic. (the stuff backed up in last week is corrupt and had to be destroyed b/c it couldn't be saved or restored w/o risking catching the virus again)... Whatever it was mystified the techies and killed my computer by eating the Windows 95 INI file. My server checked all the outgoing emails I sent after the techs say I caught the virus and didn't find it but please double check anything you received from me around 9 days ago. According to them I didn't pass it on, but I don't understand what they say half the time.

Oh, yeah, anything sent back to me from mybetas is gone. and so are all my e-addies and url's. So if y'all could send me addies, I'd love it. Thanks

Ronnee the eternally mystified 's voice was amused. "Just don't let the lady touch your work computer."