Title Seeds
Author/pseudonym: Fluffy Rabbit
Fandom: Sentinel,
Pairing: Jim/Blair
Rating: 13
Status: New
Archive: To WWOMB
Email address for feedback: kevin schmidt@ntlworld.com
Series/Sequel:
Other websites: No
Disclaimers: The Sentinel guys belong to Petfly, the rest are mine.
Warnings: AU, language
Notes:unbetaed.
Summary:
Warning Female Blair
Seeds
by Fluffy Rabbit
It was either one hell of a coincidence or somehow Simon had developed the ability to know when Blair was just about to get out of the shower, Jim thought, going to answer the door. Still, they had invited him over so that Blair could explain the whole sentinel thing to him. Not that he was expecting his friend to believe it as first, because it was a pretty far fetched story. He had to admit that if it hadn't been happening to him then he wouldn't have believed it either.
"Chief, Simon's here," he called, opening the door.
"Coming," Blair replied from inside the bathroom.
"I wish," Jim muttered.
"Wish what?" Simon asked entering the loft, puffing on his ever present cigar.
"Nothing," Jim replied, "do you have to smoke that?" He'd discovered that the scent of Simon's cigars hung around in the air for a long time and after a while it gave him a headache.
"Kid got you on a health kick?" Simon grinned.
"The smell gets on my nerves, that's all," he replied, "I notice things like that more now." Only he seemed to have some measure of control because of Blair's help. To be honest he wasn't entirely sure what it was that she did, but whatever it was he wanted her to keep on doing it. No longer did he feel that the only way out was by eating his gun.
"You said that she was going to explain about this things that's supposed to be going on with you," Simon said.
"It's called being a sentinel," Blair said, finally coming out of the bathroom, "and it's a perfectly natural if somewhat rare thing to be."
"Blair's made a study of people like me," Jim said.
"Only recently, though," she said, "it's not a subject that my dad wanted me to pursue."
"So what does it mean?" Simon asked.
"Basically, Jim is a walking crime lab," Blair replied, "all his senses are advanced well beyond normal ranges."
"And you believe this?" Simon asked, looking at Jim.
"Simon, it's the truth," Jim said, "to be honest I'm not entirely sure how it works, just that I can sense things a lot better than I ever did before." Already it was helping him to be a better detective, and he suspected that the more control that he got over his senses the better he would be at tracking down criminals.
"This is some fairy tale, Kid," Simon said, "but I deal in facts."
"I can prove it," Blair said, "I've been doing some tests with Jim."
"A lot of tests," he said. Some of which he hadn't understood the point of. Still, Blair had convinced him that they needed to know what sort of range his senses covered.
"At least I tried to make them fun," she said, "and you'll be grateful that I ran then when you're hanging underneath a speeding train."
"Do you have any idea what she is talking about?" Simon asked.
"No," Jim replied, "but she tends to make sense when she gets to the point." He had to admit that in the time that Blair had been staying with him he had started to get used to her impromptu lectures and sudden change of subjects in the middle of a conversation. Although, he suspected that some of the stories she'd told him had come from other people. "Why don't you show him the journal and photos," he added. Once Simon had seen them he would know that she was telling the truth.
"Okay," Blair replied, heading towards her room.
This was a bad one, Henri thought, and not something that he and Joel could handle on their own. While he hated to disturb his captain while he was off duty he didn't have any choice, there had been a double homicide and the victim's five year old daughter was missing. There had been a couple of cases similar to this one over the past couple of months, but so far homicide had drawn a blank. It was different this time though, they had a witness who had seen the suspects go into the house, but it was going to take a lot more than just the word of someone across the road to put these guys away once they'd caught them. Not that catching them was going to be easy, because they never left anything behind that might reveal who they were. As for motive, that was all too clear, and sickening. There was a big market for kids, one that didn't always stay out of public view. He knew that already there was a very slim chance that the child had been able to get away and stay hidden while her parents had been murdered, but he hoped to god that she had been able to, because he didn't want her to go through the hell that she would suffer at the hands of people like that.
No matter how many criminals they caught, there were always more ready to take their place, and they were getting more vicious. It had gotten to the stage where his mother and sisters were prisoners in their home, and now it looked as if they weren't even going to be safe there. He had to admit that he did sometimes wonder what the point in going to work every day was when he knew that the majority of the people that he arrested would be allowed to walk free. Still, what else was he going to do? He had his family to support and it just wasn't safe for his sisters to go out to work these days. Even when they went to the store he was afraid that something might happen to them. Only nobody seemed to be doing a damned things about it. The law was definitely working against the victims, and he couldn't see that changing any time soon.
"Joel, are you okay," he asked. His new partner was looking very pale, but that was hardly surprising considering how much blood there was in that house. Those people had died painfully and slowly.
"I will be," Joel replied, "I couldn't have stayed in there much longer."
"I'm going to call Simon," Henri said, "we need help on this one." He wasn't afraid to admit that, and neither was Joel. It would have been totally different if he'd still been partnered with Rafe. Brian had never liked to admit that he couldn't handle something by himself.
"See, it's all in the journal," Blair said, handing Simon the book that she was holding.
"Let him read it, Chief," Jim said.
"Be careful with it, okay," she said. The journal was irreplaceable, if anything happened to it she would have serious trouble helping Jim without putting him as risk. She might have pretty much memorised the important stuff, but when it came to things that he might have a reaction to there was no way that she could memorise the whole list. As it was she was still trying to work out what the counterparts to the things on the list were, and that wasn't turning out to be that easy. "It was written by my namesake before the VX attacks," she added, "there are some photos of him and his friends in it."
"They could be our twins," Jim said.
"I can see that," Simon said, looking at a photo, "and you're descended from this other Sandburg."
"Not directly," Blair replied, "he died before having any children. I'm descended from his cousin, Robert. He was a pretty colourful character in his own right, he was a bookie..."
"Chief, try and stick to the point," Jim said.
"Sure, but he plays a pretty important part in the story of how my family ended up in the commune," Blair said, "along with Blair's mom, Naomi." From what she'd read in the journal Naomi had been a woman who had lived life to it's fullest so it must have been devastating for her to have buried her son. "I know just about everything that there is to know about my family," she added. She'd also started to research into the history of Jim's family. so that she could put it in her journal when she started writing on.
"My dad always rammed the family history down my throat," Jim said.
"I know nothing about mine," Simon admitted, flicking through the book that he was holding.
"Then you should find out, because it's important to know where you come from," Blair said.
"This planet not fairy tale land," Simon said, "would have thought that you would have learned that by now, along with always expect the worst from people because then you won't be disappointed."
"And where does that leave all the good people?" she asked. She'd lost some of the naiveté that she'd had when she'd come to the city, but she still preferred to think that there was some good in everyone, and that all you had to do was look for it.
"In deep shit," Jim muttered.
// They seemed to have recovered from her abduction, Jim thought, but things didn't seem to be getting any better in Cascade. The harder that they tried to make a difference the less likely it seemed to him that they were going to succeed. Blair, on the other hands was confident that the balance would soon start to swing back in their favor anytime soon. Well, it couldn't come soon enough for him.
"He does it on purpose," he said, when Blair appeared next to him.
"Does what on purpose?" Blair asked.
"Wait until she's about to come out of the shower before going up to the loft," Jim replied. Only like his namesake he hadn't been able to work out how Simon knew when that would be.
"Could be worse," Blair said.
"How?" he asked.
"He could wait until Jim's coming out of the shower," Blair grinned.
"Chief, doesn't it bother you that Simon's hoping to see her naked?" he asked, because it bothered the hell out of him and his counterpart.
"Jim, nudity is perfectly natural," Blair replied, "and you're not telling me that he's not tempted to take peek into the bathroom while she's having a shower,"
"He might be tempted," Jim admitted, "but he respects her right to privacy."
"For what good it does him?" Blair said.
"Meaning?" he asked.
"That he still hasn't made a move on her yet," Blair replied, "if he did, he wouldn't be turned down. You saw the way that he kissed her on that beach."
"It takes two to tango, Chief," he said.
"Well, he's dancing along at the moment," Blair said.//
"Kid, you'd better stay out here," Simon said. Since getting that phone call from Brown it had been a rush to get to the crime scene. From what Henri had said it was a blood bath in there, and he didn't want to expose the kid to that.
"But..." Blair began.
"Do as he says, Chief," Jim said.
"You might need me," she said.
"If I do I'll call you," Jim said, heading towards the front door with Simon.
"This has got both Brown and Joel rattled," Simon said. Having been a captain with the bomb squad Joel was not the sort of man who was easily rattled.
"I could smell the blood from two blocks away," Jim said.
"That bad?" he asked.
"Yeah," Jim replied, "you did the right thing insisting that she stay out here."
"Have to admit that I'm not looking forward to this," Simon said. It was never easy going into a crime scene like this, knowing that what you were going to find was how cruel and vicious people could be to each other.
"Any survivors?" Jim asked.
"Their five year old daughter is missing," he replied, "brown thinks that it's another grab case." He hoped to god that it wasn't because there had been far too many of them recently.
"This had got to stop," Jim growled, "people have a right to be safe in their own homes."
"I know," Simon said, "but until we catch them I can't do a damned thing about it." Even then these sick bastards were caught the chances where that they wouldn't find any of the children who'd been taken and some judge would give them such a light sentence that they would be out in a couple of years and it wouldn't do anything to deter anyone who decided to do the same thing.
"don't worry I'll catch them," Jim assured him, "with Blair's help."
"She shouldn't be involved on this one," Simon said. It was going to be rough on the whole department and the kid wasn't a cop.
"I'll keep her away from the really bad stuff," Jim said, "but she's my partner and if she's with me I can keep an eye on her."
"Make sure that you do," he said. The kid had already gotten grabbed once and he didn't want to go running all over the city looking for her. Not that it had been her fault that Rafe had decided to grab her, but they had been damned lucky to have gotten her back in one piece. If anything had happened to her then it would have been hard as hell to have gotten charges brought against Rafe.
"If you'd done something sooner about Rafe he wouldn't have been able to take her," Jim said.
"Do you have any idea how hard it is to find people willing to become police officers?" Simon asked, "nobody wants the job, and as soon as they have a problem they expect us to be there. The Mayor is still talking to the Patriots."
"So we'll go from poor justice to no justice, at all unless you can afford to pay for it," Jim said.
"That's not my call," Simon said, "and until I'm told otherwise I'll keep coming to work." Even though it was a constant battle to get things done at times.
"Blair, I can't let you go in there," Joel said, blocking the way into the house."
"Jim might need me," she said.
"Trust me, you don't want or need to see what's in that house," he said. Not that anyone should have to. During his time in the department he had seen a lot of times, but never anything like that. It was like something out of one of those slasher movies that Simon was always complaining about Daryl watching.
"H.C, Ellison is going to bust our asses if we let you go in there," Henri said, "and I'd like to keep my ass in one piece."
"I just want to help," Blair said, "we're partners."
"The best thing that you can do it stay out here and wait for him," Joel said, "sometimes the best way to help your partner is to do as they ask." Even Ellison would be moved by the scene inside the house. It had taken all his willpower not to throw up and he'd only been inside for a short while.
"Okay," Blair said, "but I've seen some pretty bad things since I came to Cascade."
"Nothing like that though," he said.
"They didn't die easily or quickly," Henri said.
"Jim will find whoever did it," she said confidently.
"I hope that he does for everyone's sake," Joel said, "because they're going to do it again." Nobody deserved to die like that, least of all good people who had just been trying to do the best that they could.
"Why would anyone want to do something like that?" she asked.
"Because they can get away with it," Henri replied.
"That's not right," Blair said,.
"Unfortunately what's right has very little to do with it," Joel said. If right was made a lot more important then there would be a lot less injustices happening.
"They're from The Shades, aren't they?" she asked.
"They might be," Henri replied, "but you don't want to go anywhere near that place, because it's seriously bad news."
"If it's that bad why don't you do something about it?" Blair asked.
"Politics," Joel replied, "it might be hell on earth in there, but it's also where the rich and powerful like to slum it." He could hardly tell her that Ellison had been known to visit the outskirts of The Shades on a regular basis. Still, what a man did when he was off duty wasn't really any of his concern unless he intended to get Blair involved in whatever he was doing there. She was a good kid and he'd hate to see her end up in something that was way over her head. Still, if he saw anything like that happening he would try and put a stop to it before it went too far.
He had to get out of here, Jim thought, because the smell of blood was overwhelming. He'd thought that he could handle it, but he couldn't. All he wanted to do was get away from the blood and make sure that his Chief was away from this place as soon as possible, because it wasn't safe for her to be here.
"Let's get out of here," he said. From the look on Simon's face he wanted to leave as well. He wasn't going to be able to find anything useful here. Maybe if he'd practised some of the things that Blair had taught him he might not have been so overwhelmed, but he hadn't seen the point of the tests that she'd run. However, now he did, she'd been doing it so that he would be able to control his senses in situations like this. Not that he expected to come across another crime scene like this for some time to come, at least he hoped that he didn't.
"Jim, are you okay?" Simon asked.
"I'll be fine as soon as we get out of here," he replied. If he wasn't okay then Blair would know what to do to put things right.
"It's a good thing that the kid listened for once and stayed outside," Simon said.
"Yeah," he agreed. He didn't ever want his Chief being exposed to something like this. she acted as if she could handle anything that was thrown at her, but she couldn't. He'd hear her tossing and turning in the middle of the night after Rafe had abducted her. He'd been tempted to go downstairs and see if there was anything that he could do to help her, but she probably would have taken it the wrong way. Maybe he could suggest that they went out somewhere, but it would have to be somewhere safe. Unfortunately, it was going to be some time before she would be able to go out on her own at night, but he would work on it, only at the moment it wasn't something that he could make happen on his own. A lot of people's attitudes were going to have to change before things got any better and it wasn't going to be easy to change people's minds.
"You want to go for a beer?" Simon asked.
"I can't," Jim replied, "it's not safe to take Sandburg into a bar." They would be just asking for trouble if they did that.
"You could drop her off at home," Simon suggested.
"Then I'd spend the time worrying about whether she was safe or not," he said. It was much easier to go home and have beer there.
"Jim, I hardly think..." Simon began.
"Do you know how many women were attacked in their own homes last month?" Jim asked, "one hundred and fifty, that means that tonight five women who did the right thing and stayed home after dark willl still be attacked, and you think that I should drop her off at home."
"How did she find that out?" Simon asked.
"People talk to Blair, tell her things that they won't tell us," Jim replied, "they trust her. It's open season on half the population and we're not doing a damned thing about it."
"What do you expect me to do, Jim?" Simon asked, "because no judge is going to find anyone guilty, it's the law."
"Is it?" he asked. He wasn't so sure that it was anymore, Blair had told him that the settlers who had founded New Cascade had wanted to make a fresh start and he really couldn't see them having wanted half the population living in fear of the other half.
//"That's // it think for yourself," Blair said, "don't just accept what you think as being true as that." This was a pretty big break through for Jim's namesake, up until now he'd just accepted that there were some things that he couldn't do anything about, but now he was starting to question things. His namesake had started that process, but the other Jim could probably use some moral support even though he didn't know that he existed yet.
"What are you up to now, Chief?" Jim asked, wrapping his arms around Blair's waist.
"Just offering him a little moral support," he replied, "it's taken him a while but he's finally started to realise that things can change, that it's alright to question the status quo."
"What did she do this time?" Jim asked.
"Nothing," Blair replied, "well, except point out a few truths about being a woman in Cascade. Simon wanted to go for a beer and he pointed out that it wouldn't be safe to take her with them, and that she wouldn't be safe at home on her own."
"So what are they working on?" Jim asked.
"double homicide and child abduction," he replied, "the blood really got to him. They made her stay outside because it was bad," he added when he saw the look on Jim's face. There had been times when Jim hadn't wanted him to see certain crime scenes, because he'd wanted to protect him.
"I don't see anything changing," Jim said, "if anything, things are getting worse."
"It takes time for the really big changes to happen," Blair said, "but you can see the little ones happening all around them." Patience was not one of Jim's better virtues, but eventually even he would see the effect that their counterparts were having on Cascade.
"So I have to be patient," Jim said, "and what happens in the meantime?"
"They do the best that they can," he replied. They were just two people and it was a huge city that they were trying to change, but he was confident that they would do it.//
There was little point in asking him whether he wanted to talk about it, Blair thought, as Jim drove them back to the loft, because he wouldn't tell her what was bothering him. So, instead she was going to let him have some space once she'd made sure that his senses were alright. While he had a shower she'd cook him something that he liked and make sure that there was a bottle of beer in front of him in case he wanted something stronger than coffee to drink. She'd quickly learned that Jim took some cases harder than others, and this was going to be one of those cases that really got to him. Most people saw Jim as being some sort of uncaring monster, but he was anything but that. Most of the time he had to keep his emotions in check because he had a job to do, but she saw the man behind the mask. To her he was a man who was doing the best that he could to make a difference in a world that didn't want to change.
"There should be plenty of hot water left," she said. He would probably be glad to be able to wash the smell of blood off himself. "I'll take your clothes down to the laundry room," she added. The sooner that she got them cleaned the better, and he wouldn't want his clothes stinking up the loft.
"Thanks Chief," Jim said.
"If there's anything that you want me to do, all you have to do is ask," Blair said.
"For the time being I just want to get home and cleaned up," he replied, "I know that you wanted to help out back there, but there wasn't anything that you could have done."
"Joel and Henri told me that it was really bad," she said, "but we're going to get them, right?"
"We're going to give it our best shot," Jim assured her, "but there might be times on this case where I have to leave you at the station, and I want you to stay there, is that clear?"
"But..." she began. She was his partner, and what if he needed her help, there was no way that she would be able to do that if he left her behind.
"Chief, there are going to be some very dangerous people that I'll be tracking down," he said, "people who wouldn't think twice before hurting you if they got the chance to."
"Jim, we're supposed to be partners, that means we stick together," she said, "and who is going to help you if you have problems with your senses?" He could find himself in all sorts of trouble if she wasn't there to help him.
"Chief, the chances are that I'm going to have a hard enough time taking care of myself, let alone you as well," he said.
"You're going to The Shades, aren't you?" Blair asked, "that's probably the last place that you should do." Even if only a tiny percent of the rumors that she'd heard about that place were true then he could be exposed to all sorts of substances that he didn't know how to handle.
"It's likely to be where they're hiding out," Jim replied.
"You're planning on going in there alone, aren't you?" she asked.
"It's the only way that I'm going to find them," he said, "I know some people who go there, they'll be able to point me in the right direction."
"So I have to stay at the station while you're playing lone wolf," Blair said. She didn't like the thought of that at all.
"yeah," Jim replied, "but I want you to look into something for me."
"What?" she asked.
"The law," he replied, "because I don't want them walking after I've arrested them."
"Sure," Blair said, "any particular area of the law that you want me to look into?" He was just asking her to do some research so that she wouldn't worry about him, but she was going to. she had a great deal invested in making sure that he had control over his senses, not the mention the fact that he was her friend.
"The parts relating to women and children," Jim replied, "let's see if we can't find a legal way to make the streets safer for you."
"For everyone," she said.
She hadn't believed his reason for wanting to go to The Shades, Jim thought, standing under a red hot shower, trying to wash the scent of blood off himself. He supposed that he was lucky that Blair hadn't asked him how he knew people who went to The Shades, because he wouldn't have been able to give her a straight answer. There were still some parts of his life that she didn't need to know about, parts that he had left behind him since she'd come into his life. He had to admit that going to The Shades looking for company had lost it's appeal. Why spend the night talking to someone who was being paid by the hour, and who didn't really give a damn about him when he could stay at home and talk to someone who did care about him. Besides, it would have been difficult as hell to explain how he had gotten those marks on his back. Blair had said that she had seen the dark side of the commune, but it probably came nowhere near close as to what went on the back alleys of The Shades. People had been known to disappear in there, what happened to them, nobody knew, or if they did they weren't telling, but he certainly never ate anything when he visited The Shades.
"It's okay, Chief, you can come in," he said, hearing a knock on the bathroom door.
"Just getting your clothes," Blair said, entering the bathroom, "dinner's not going to be long," she added.
"I've nearly finished," Jim said, turning the shower off, "could you pass me a towel?" he added, stretching a hand out through the gap in the shower curtain.
"Sure," she replied, "enough hot water for you?" she added, handing him a towel.
"Plenty," Jim replied, "there's no need to be nervous, Chief," wrapping the towel around his waist before opening the shower curtain.
"Who's nervous?" Blair asked.
"You blushing, Chief?" he asked.
"It's hot in here," she replied, "I'd better take these down to the laundry room." She then hurried out of the bathroom.
"Sure was," Jim grinned. He'd seen her watching him when he came out of the bathroom after having had a shower, and when he came downstairs half dressed in the morning. She was interested, but it had been a long time since he'd made a move on someone like her, and then there were the guys at the station to consider. It had taken a while and some people getting slammed up against walls, but he had just about stopped all those rumors about her being a Baby Doll. However, those rumors would soon start up again if they got involved. As it was some people thought that it was strange that he kept touching her, but he had to admit that it felt good and if she'd wanted him to stop doing it all she would have to do it tell him, but she hadn't.
The kid was going to end up causing problems for him, Simon thought, still the miracle that she seemed to have worked with Jim would probably turn out to be well worth the price that he would eventually have to pay. Being Captain wasn't easy, he got the blame when things went wrong and no praise when they went right. Still, he'd chosen this career and it was too late in the day for him to change it. At least for the past two months he had been able to show the Mayor that his department was producing it's best ever arrest record. Of course, the Mayor had wanted to know what had been responsible for this sudden U-turn and he'd had to give a story about more public co-operation, that people were more willing to talk to his officers. Well, he could hardly have told him the truth, that it was all down to a kid from the commune. For a start the Mayor would never have believed it and then he would have wanted to meet her, that would mean Jim getting involved and the Mayor's dislike of Jim was well known in the department. He didn't know what it was about the kid that made people want to talk to her, but he hoped to god that she kept doing it.
He had to admit that he didn't understand some of her sudden lectures, but they seemed to be the solution to a lot of problems. She'd even turned out to be a good influence on his son, now Daryl stayed in most nights studying and his grades were now a steady 'B' average. He was getting requests for the name of Daryl's tutor from other parents. While the kid could probably use the extra money he seriously doubted that Jim would be too happy to have hoards of teenagers descending on the loft for tutoring sessions.
"Chief, I didn't mean to embarrass you earlier," Jim said, handing her a bottle of beer.
"You didn't," Blair lied, "I've seen naked men before." Just not ones who were as well built as he was.
"Sure, you have," he grinned, sitting down next to her on the couch.
"I've seen my dad naked," she said.
"That doesn't count," him said.
"It's just a body," Blair said. And she hadn't seen that much, because the shower curtain had been in the way.
"I can see it's going to be one of those late night talks," Jim said, taking a sip of his beer.
"What talks?" she asked.
"The sort where you reveal your darkest secrets," he replied, "well, if you're hoping to get anything out of me you're going to be out of luck."
"I don't want to get anything out of you," she said. She had absolutely no intention of telling him anything either. "but if there's something that you want to tell me, go right ahead," she added.
"There's nothing to tell," Jim said, "so let's just watch the movie."
"Fine," she said. She could do that, and as soon as she started to feel sleepy she would go to bed so that she didn't fall asleep on him.
"This is going to be a really rough case to work on, Chief," Jim said, "and I need to know that you're going to be able to handle it."
"I can handle anything that you want to throw at me," she said, "I handled Rafe, didn't I?"
"Yeah," he replied, "but I would feel a lot better if you had a gun and knew how to use it."
"No guns," Blair said, firmly, "you know how I feel about violence."
"So it was someone else wielding that baseball bat," Jim grinned.
"That was self defense," she said, "and I thought that Rafe might have been hurting you." There were some situations where the threat of violence could be useful, but that didn't mean that she was prepared to just throw away all the principles that she'd been raised with.
"Having a gun would be strictly for self defense," Jim assured her, "I know that you don't like violence, but sometimes it's the only thing that works."
"I'm never going to believe that," she said, "and using violence only brings you down to their level."
"Chief, if I didn't use violence I would have been dead a long time by now," Jim said, "but I would never use it against you."
"I know that," she said. And she was smart enough to get the hell away from any man who thought it was all right to hit her.
"There are going to be times when I get angry, though," Jim said, "and I don't want you to take that personally."
"I won't," Blair assured him.
// They'd had the gun argument several times, Jim thought, and in the end Blair had used a gun when he'd been forced to, but he had never felt totally comfortable at putting his guide in situations where he'd had to do that. As for getting angry with Blair, their biggest fight had been over that bitch Alex Barnes. If he hadn't thrown Blair out of the loft then the world might have been a very different place than it was. Blair kept telling him that it wasn't his fault, but even after all this time he was still trying to convince himself of that fact. Guilt trips weren't allowed or at least they weren't supposed to be. But it was hard not to feel guilty when he saw the consequences of his actions everyday. Sometimes he got so angry with himself, and there wasn't anything that he could do to directly influence events. All he could do was to offer his namesake advice from time to time, hope that he took it and avoided some of the mistakes that he'd made.
She was a great kid, if still a little naive about how the world really worked, but then his Blair had been exactly the same when they had started working together. Even at the end Blair had insisted on seeing the good in other people, even though that was hard to do at times. Some people would see that as a weakness, but he saw it as being one of Blair's finer qualities, along with his boundless energy and insatiable curiosity. Even if that curiosity had gotten Blair into some situations that he'd rather he hadn't. They were still together though, but if he could go back and change things then he would have.//
"Chief, are you sure that you've got enough books?" Jim asked, seeing Blair struggling to carry all the books that she'd checked out of Rainier's library.
"for now I have," she replied, "but it's going to take me a while to plough through this lot."
"you think that you're going to be able to come up with something that might help?" he asked. He hoped that she could, because then the streets would be a lot safer, especially for his Chief. She deserved to be able to walk the streets without worrying about some creep trying to take advantage of her.
"I'm going to give it my best shot," Blair replied, "when are you planning to go to that place?"
"As soon I've got you settled," Jim replied. He had to admit that he wasn't looking forward to going into The Shades, but someone had to do it, and he had contacts there who would hopefully be able to help him.
"Jim, what if..." she began.
"Don't worry, Chief, I have every intention of coming back in one piece," he assured her.
Although, some of the people he was likely to run into would probably have a very different idea. Not everyone that he was going to be talking to would take his presence there kindly, but he didn't want her to worry about that as it wouldn't do either of them any good. "All you have to do is concentrate on your research," he added.
"I can do that," Blair said, less than confidently.
"I'm the only one who has the contacts that's why it's got to be," Jim said. There were probably a couple of guys in Vice who also had contacts in The Shades, but they couldn't be trusted not to screw things up. Besides, if he got a lucky break they might be able to make some sort of dent in the activities that went on in The Shades. However, his most important job was to find that girl before her body ended up in various pieces around the city. Already, though, it might be too late to stop her from being abused by someone who had paid a great deal of money to the men who had taken her.
"She's already dead, isn't she?" she asked.
"Probably," Jim admitted, "but if she's still alive I'm going to find her." Along with any other children that were with her. Some people were going to have a serious problem with him taking away what they saw as their property. While slavery was illegal in Cascade if you had enough money and power you could get away with anything.
"I don't understand how anyone could do that to a child," she said, "it's not the sort of thing that could happen in the commune."
"I don't know why they do it either," he admitted. Life in Cascade was hard for a lot of people, but that in his opinion was no reason at all to abuse children and others who couldn't defend themselves.
The kid was going to turn the place into a library if she brought any more books in, Simon thought, why anyone would need so many books was beyond him. Still, she was the department's consultant so he was prepared to give her some leeway for the time being, but the moment that someone complained about her he was going to have words with her. There was little point in asking her what she was working one, because he was likely to get a lecture on some obscure fact or other. It was when she lectured that he realised that his education was severely lacking, but then he had gone to a public school where there had been fifty other pupils in the class. That was why he was paying a small fortune for Daryl to attend a private school, not that the academic standards were much higher there, but at least it had damned good security so he didn't have to worry about there being a phone call to say that there had been a shooting incident. There were all too many of those these days, and as usual he got the flak for it. He supposed that he should get Ellison in so that he could tell him what the kid was doing.
"Ellison, my office now" he growled. He then closed the door to his office.
"You wanted to see me," Jim said, entering Simon's office and closing the door behind him.
"What's the kid up to now?" Simon asked, pouring himself a mug of coffee.
"Her name is Blair," Jim reminded him, "and she's working on something for me,"
"What?" he asked. He didn't mind her helping out on cases, hell, he was even prepared to accept the fact that she worked the streets with Ellison, but if Jim was starting to have her work on personal projects then he had a problem with it.
"I've got her checking to see what laws there are concerning women in Cascade," Jim replied.
"We both know what the law is," Simon said, "the DA and the courts keep reminding us." He'd seen countless investigations end up with no charges being filed because the law said that a crime hadn't been committed.
"I just want to make sure that they've got it right," Jim said.
"Why?" he asked. It was their job to uphold the law and arrest anyone who broke it, and not to question the way things were too closely.
"Because we're failing half the population, that's why," Jim growled.
"guess the kid going off with Rafe really hit home," Simon said.
"He grabbed her, and you're blaming her for that," Jim said, "that's what's wrong with this city. Double standards. They aren't allowed to fight back ,and if they get attacked it's their own fault."
"Jim, I just enforce the law, not make it," he said, "and the kid should have known better." She'd had plenty of warning as to what Rafe was like and she'd still let herself end up in a situation where he and Jim had had to go charging to the rescue.
"Well, maybe it's time that things started to change around here," Jim said, "and if any more perps walk I'll be going with them."
"You'd quit?" Simon asked.
"In an instant," Jim replied, "so you'd better make sure that they don't." He then left Simon's office.
"I'm not a miracle worker," he said. There was only so much that he could do and it didn't matter what he said to anyone in power they weren't going to listen to him. However, it would be a shame if Jim decided to quit, because he as probably the best cop on the force at the moment and they really couldn't afford to lose anyone else.
It was going to take some time to find what Jim wanted her to, Blair thought, making notes as she read through the first book of the stack that she'd gotten from the library. Still, she was determined to find something that would help. She knew how the legal system in the commune worked, because Nathan had told her that it was her responsibility to know how all the commune worked, because one day she would be running it. Yeah, right, like that was really going to happen now. Even if she decided to call her dad he wouldn't talk to her, because as far as he was concerned she had turned her back on both him and the commune by staying in Cascade with Jim rather than going home like he had wanted. Well, Cascade was her home now, and she was happy her. Perhaps not as happy as she had been in the commune, but she had important job to do and no matter what happened she intended to do it. So she wasn't a teacher like she should have been at Rainier, but that wasn't stopping her from passing on her knowledge to other people. The thing that had surprised her the most was just how little people knew about the world outside Cascade, and about the history of the city itself. The only person who really listened to any of her talks on various subjects was Jim, but she suspected that he felt that he had to listen in case she said something that might help him with his senses.
"I thought you could use this," Joel said, putting a mug of coffee down on Jim's desk.
"Thanks," she smiled, "if you're looking for Jim he's tracking down a lead." He hadn't said that she wasn't supposed to tell anyone where he'd gone, but she really couldn't see anyone being too happy about Jim going to The Shades by himself.
"And he left you here on your own?" he asked.
"He thought that I'd be safe here," Blair replied, "and I'm supposed to do some research for him. Maybe you could give me a hand with it?"
"As long as it's not going to take long," Joel replied.
"All I need are a couple of names," she said, "one of a female lawyer, and one of a female police officer."
"A female lawyer," he said, "I know that there was one over in the DA's office, but I think she was fired."
"Why?" she asked.
"I don't know," he replied, "as for female police officers, they never leave the station, the streets are too dangerous for them. You're not thinking about going to the Academy, are you?"
"No," Blair assured him, "I'm strictly the consultant type. Jim just wants to make sure that when he catches the perps they'll be charged with everything possible."
"The female officers work in the dispatch office, but you have to go through Vice to get there," Joel said, "I wouldn't go down there alone if I were you."
"Let me guess, it's too dangerous," she said, "Joel, is there any where that it isn't dangerous for a woman to go alone in this city?"
"I'm afraid not," he replied, "and if anything happens to you Jim is going to kill us."
"Trust me, he won't," Blair assured him. She really didn't need protecting inside the station, it was only outside of it that she had to worry about for the moment.
Two months was a long time in The Shades, Jim thought, in that time people came and went, or came and disappeared forever. It was the people who stayed in the shades that he needed to find and talk to. Naturally, they would want something in return for the information that he was looking for, and at the moment he didn't have anything of great value to give them, but hopefully, the threat of future police raids would make them more talkative. If not, then he might have to get violent and some of the people he was looking for would enjoy that a great deal. Spotting a familiar face he followed it as they went into a building with green lights festooning the outside. It had been quite a while since he'd last been in this particular bar and he hadn't enjoyed the experience. At one end of the bar was a small raised stage, men of various ages sat around it staring intently at a too thing woman as she slowly and inexpertly took her clothes off. Before he might have watched her act and thrown a couple of bucks onto the stage afterwards, but he was here to do a job, and if he wanted to watch someone gyrate then he could do that at home for free. Blair put on one hell of a lot better act when she was doing the dishes.
"Hello Orion," he said, sitting down opposite a man in his late fifties, "long time no see. I thought that you were still inside." He'd busted the man opposite him what eight months ago and he'd been sentenced to two years.
"Out on good behavior," Orion replied, "what can I do for you?"
"I need some information," Jim said, "and a five year old girl."
"You know me, I don't touch minors," Orion said.
"But you know people who do," he said. Orion knew everyone who had extreme tastes.
"I might," Orion replied, "but it's going to cost you."
"How much?" Jim asked, taking his wallet out of his back pocket."
"you know your money's no good to me," Orion said, "I heard that you've got a woman..."
"She's off limits," Jim growled. He was not going to involve Blair in this, that was why he'd left her back at the station.
"All I want is a pair of her shoes," Orion said, "surely that's not too high a price to pay for an introduction to the right people?"
"You'll have them tomorrow," he said, "now tell me who I need to talk to." Blair probably wouldn't understand why he was giving Orion a pair of her shoes, but he would buy her another pair so that she wouldn't be losing out.
"We'd better go now," Orion said, "or they'll have moved. They are very cautious people."
"Of course they are," Jim said. They probably had a very lucrative business supplying children to the highest bidder, and he intended to put them out of business.
"Even if I introduce you to them there's no guarantee that they'll talk to you or that they still have the child," Orion said as they left the bar together.
"That's a risk that I'm willing to take," he said. Although, he still had to work out how he was not only going to persuade them to hand the girl over but get them both out of the shades afterwards.
"H.C, how's it going?" Henri asked.
"Great," Blair replied, "I've found some pretty interesting things out about the law."
"I know one of the female officers in the dispatch office," he said. He wasn't sure why she wanted to talk to them, but it had to be pretty important.
"That's okay," she said, "I've found out what I needed to know."
"And that is?" Henri asked.
"The law isn't what you think it is," Blair smiled.
"I don't understand," he said. Every time that he'd gone to testify in court he'd been made out to be a liar and that somehow he was responsible for an innocent person facing a prison sentence.
"And that is the problem," she said, "have you ever checked to see what the law says about self defense?"
"No," Henri admitted, "but everyone knows that women aren't allowed to fight back." Much to his shame he had arrested women who had done that.
"Show me where it says that," she said, turning the book in front of her around so that he could read it.
"My readings not that good," he said. He'd had to miss a lot of school so that he could help to keep a roof over his family's head after his dad had died.
"That's okay," Blair said, "what the law says is that self defense is permitted as long as excessive force isn't used. There is nothing in it about women not being allowed to defend themselves."
"But..." Henri began. That wasn't what he'd been taught at the Academy. If what she was saying was true then it meant that he had arrested the wrong people and innocent people had gone to jail.
"Simon needs to know about this," Blair said.
"I don't think that's a good idea," he said. Simon was not going to be happy if she told him that he'd been arresting the wrong people for his entire career.
"Why not?" Blair asked, "I know that you have sisters, don't you want them to know that they can fight back?"
"Of course I do," he replied, "but what I think doesn't count for much, and no jury is going to let a woman walk free, no matter what the law says." she was going to find herself in serious trouble if she went around telling people that they weren't ding their job properly.
"I have to tell someone about this," she said, "it's wrong and it's got to be stopped."
"It's not as simple as that," Henri said, "a lot of people are going to be really upset if you point something like that out. You could even get arrested." Ellison was not going to be happy if that happened when he and Joel were supposed to keeping an eye on her.
"In that case you'd better introduce me to that officer in the dispatch office," she said.
"What are you going to do?" he asked.
"Just talk to them," Blair replied, closing the book and picking it up as she stood up. "Unless you have a problem with that," she added.
"No," he replied. He suspected that she was lying, but there wasn't a great deal that he could do about it except hope that he didn't get the blame for anything that she did.
//" Way to go," Blair grinned, "see I told you that things would start to change."
"Chief, she's got a long way to go before things get better," Jim said, "and it's not going to be easy to convince people that she's right."
"She's a Sandburg, she'll make them listen to her," he said. He could always pay her a visit and offer some advice about the best way to go about things.
"Your family does have a way with words," Jim said.
"She won him over and the rest will start to fall in line as well," Blair said.
"And how is that going to change things?" Jim asked, "because even if she can get Simon to believe her there are going to be a lot of people who won't, and they are the ones with all the power."
"Don't worry she'll find a way," he said, confidently. He was very proud of the fact that she had made her mark on Cascade. So what if it was just a little dot on the map so far, it would soon grow into a huge splodge. "How's he doing?" he added.
"About to find himself in serious trouble," Jim replied, "Have you seen where he went without backup?"
"Yeah," Blair replied, "but I did warn you that he went to some strange places for company." And that was putting it mildly. Jim's namesake had a thing for being punished, and that was something that he shouldn't even consider doing again until he'd gotten his senses under control, and even then he would be taking a hell of a risk unless it was with someone that he trusted.
"It's not wonder that he wanted her to stay at the station," Jim said, "I worked vice and never saw anything like that."
"You were obviously going to the wrong places," he joked.
"Chief, this isn't funny," Jim said, "if I were still alive I would have zoned by now."
"Why don't you go keep an eye on him while I make sure that nothing happens to her at the station," Blair said. People were not going to be too happy when she started telling them that they weren't doing their job properly. As it was their Simon was still in a foul mood because of Jim's threat to quit and he was more than likely to really let her have it when he found out what she'd discovered.//
"And where do you think that you're going?" Simon demanded coming out of his office.
"To the dispatch office," Blair replied, "I need to..."
"I don't care what you need," he growled. He'd let her had a certain amount of leeway and now she was trying to take advantage of it.
"but..." she began.
"You work for this department, so I suggest that you get back to work," Simon said, "or you will find yourself looking for another job, is that clear?"
"Perfectly," Blair replied.
"Now where the hell is Ellison?" he asked.
"He went to check up on some leads," she replied, "I don't know when he'll be back.
"So you don't know where is he?" Simon asked.
"I know the general area where he might be," Blair admitted.
"And that would be?" he asked. She was really starting to try his patience now.
"The Shades," she replied, "and you shouldn't shout at me like that."
"Why not?" Simon demanded, walking over to where she was standing.
"Because it's wrong," Blair replied, "you don't scare me either."
"Ellison's not here to protect you, kid," he reminded her. When Jim got back he would tell him that she was being demoted back to being a gofer, because she had a serious attitude problem with it can to authority figured. This was his department and he wasn't going to let any jumped hippy tell him what he could do.
"I don't need Jim to protect me," Blair said, "I have to law on my side, and you'd know that if you could read properly."
"She didn't mean it," Henri said, "she's just worried about Ellison."
"I never say anything that I don't mean," Blair said.
"Give me that book," Simon growled snatching it off her.
"It's on page 42 if you're interested," she said, "I could read it to you if you like."
"I'd be very quiet if I were you," Simon warned her, "I'm your boss."
"In that case I want a raise," Blair said, "legally I'm entitled to the same pay as the male consultants."
"H.C, don't push it," Henri said, "you're only going to make things worse."
"They couldn't get much worse," she said, "you're locking women up for no other reason than they're defending themselves, and you wonder why no one trusts you."
"It's the..." Simon began.
"If you say that it's the law one more time I might just forget that I'm a pacifist," she said, "it's not the law as that book proves, so you should be ashamed of yourselves for perpetrating a myth."
"Get back to your desk and stay there until I've had a chance to read this," Simon said. If it was true then there was going to be serious trouble.
"If you won't do something about it then I will," Blair said.
"What?" he asked.
"You'll just have to wait and find out," she replied.
"But it was the right thing to do," Blair said.
"You shouldn't have said that stuff about not being able to read properly," he said, "some of us had more important things to do than sit in a classroom all day." She'd grown up in a place that was a lot better than Cascade, where people were looked after and didn't have to worry about being evicted because they couldn't afford to pay the rent.
"Henri, if you can read properly, you're a lot less likely to be taken advantage of," she said, "and how many women have been locked up because nobody thought to see what the law really said?"
"I don't know," Henri admitted, "but I warned you that talking to Simon was not a good idea, and there is no way that he going to give you a raise." She would be lucky if Simon didn't fire her for what she'd said to him. " My mom says that you attract more flies with honey than you do with vinegar," he added.
"Meaning?" she asked.
"That you shouldn't have shouted at Simon, even if you're right there's no way that he's ever going to admit it now," Henri replied, "he has his pride and you've just given it one hell of a knock."
"He's the one with the attitude problem, not me," Blair said, "I was going to use the subtle approach, but he never gave me the chance to."
"Well, you're going to have to go in there and apologise to him," he said, "and I wouldn't mention a raise or that stuff you found out either." It was going to have to be one hell of an apology if Simon was going to forgive her.
"But I haven't done anything wrong," she said, "I just pointed out what the truth was."
"H.C, you can't just drop a bombshell like that and not expect him to react," he said, "and you were lucky that he didn't fire you and the spot."
"Do you believe that I'm right?" Blair asked.
"Yeah, I do," Henri admitted, "but I'm only a lowly detective so there's not a lot that I can do." Even though he knew that she was right he couldn't risk his job over this.
"I guess that means that you won't introduce me to those officers in the dispatch office now," she said.
"I'll still do that, but god help us if Simon finds out," he said. It was probably better if he didn't know what she was planning to do, because then he couldn't be blamed by Simon for it, but it was going to be a different matter entirely when Ellison found out that he and Joel had let her go head to head with Simon. Although, he had to admit that she had put up one hell of a fight, and at one point he'd been expecting Simon to hit her.
"If you don't introduce me to someone who knows something soon I'm going to take you in," he said.
"It's not my fault that they didn't know anything," Orion said, "people tend to be very careful who they talk to these days. Word has it that the Patriots are coming. People are scared of them."
"It's good to know that you're scared of something," Jim said. There was very little else that the inhabitants of The Shades were afraid of.
"Militias are bad for everyone," Orion said, "and the Patriots are the worst of all."
"Let's just find these people you know," he said. He had to admit that he was more than a little worried about what would happen if the Mayor gave in and handed over law and order to the Patriots. Things would get a lot worse very fast, he had a place that he could go to that was outside of Cascade, but there was no way that he would be able to leave Blair behind. Then there were his friends to consider. He might have threatened to quit, but he would probably find that hard to do. Before Blair had come into his life he hadn't had any friends, now he felt closer to the people that he worked with.
"I'm doing the best that I can," Orion said, "they're not easy people to find even at the best of times."
"There is a little girl who is going to wind up dead if I don't find her soon," Jim growled. He was waiting valuable time, he should have just started busting heads as soon as he'd entered The Shades, instead of relying on Orion to help him find who he was looking for. He couldn't even use his senses to try and track down her scent because he was worried that he might zone. But this wasn't the sort of place that he could have brought his Chief, yet she was the only one who could help him to focus his senses without him zoning.
"They probably killer her hours ago," Orion aid, "and got another one to sell."
"Then we'll find that one," he said. He wasn't going to leave The Shades empty-handed. He'd told Blair that he would get that child back, but he couldn't guarantee what state she would be in by the time that he found her.
"You're going to tell me off, aren't you?" she asked, "but he really deserved it."
"You are going to have to cool it," he said, "because Simon has the power to fire you, and if he does then you're not going to be able to help Jim."
"He won't let me help him at the moment anyway," she said, "because it's too dangerous. Innocent people are getting locked up and I have to try and stop that from happening again."
"This has been going on for a long time," he said, "and you can't expect to change to world in one day."
"I just want to change my part of it," Blair said, "they all know it's wrong and they just accept it."
"Let's get a few things straight," he said, "your job is to help Jim. If you want to start a moral crusade, that's fine, but for something this big you're going to need his help."
"He's the one who asked me to check up on the law," she said, "now he's gone to that place and..." What if Jim didn't come back.
"He'll come back," he assured her, "and it's okay to be worried about him."
"Tell me, was your Jim as stubborn as mine?" Blair asked.
"At times he was," he replied, "but he's still a good man."
"am I ever going to meet him?" she asked.
"I don't know," he replied, "and if I were you, I'd go after your Jim, because staying in the truck isn't always a good idea."
"I can go after him," she said. After all, how hard could it be to not only find a way to get there, but find Jim once she was in The Shades.
"Don't worry, I'm going to be watching over you," he said, "now move it."
"I'm going," Blair said. First of all she was going to have to get out of the station without the desk sergeant seeing her, because if he did he would call up to Major Crimes and then Simon would in all likelihood fire her for not staying at her desk like he had told her to, but if Jim need her then she had to go. Although, she wasn't entirely sure how much use she would be to him.
"I think that you're going to be waiting a long time for her to apologise," Joel said, closing the door behind him.
"I'm in charge of the department," Simon said, "and I know that the law is."
"Or so you thought," he said, "I've suspected for a while that things should be different." Only he hadn't been sure how different they should be.
"This is just a book," Simon said, "nobody is going to take it seriously just because she says that it's true."
"Have you talked to the DA and the Mayor?" Joel asked. They were the two people who were bound to know exactly what the law was.
"Who do you think wrote the book," Simon replied, "the DA, that's who."
"So what so we do?" he asked. If the DA had written that book it meant that they'd arrested innocent people and put them in jail for no reason at all. He had never like doing that and in some cases he'd tried turning a blind eye to something's that he should have reported.
"Nothing at the moment," Simon replied, "the Mayor is still talking to the Patriots, something like this could make his mind up and not in our favor."
"The whole thing stinks," Joel said. There had to be a reason why the DA had prosecuted cases when he'd known that the law might not have been broken.
"I couldn't agree more," Simon said, "but if we try doing something it could end up costing us our jobs, and then the city would be in serious trouble."
"And it's not now?" he asked. People rarely reported cases, because they knew that they weren't going to see any justice. The only thing that would change if the Patriots took over was that there would be no justice for even the rich when the money ran out.
"I suppose that you'd better send the kid in to see me," Simon said.
"She's not here," Joel said, "I think that she went for a walk so that she could calm down." It was probably better not to tell Simon that she'd borrowed his car keys on her way out of the Bullpen.
"She has no respect for authority," Simon said, "you'd have thought that Ellison would have taught her that by now."
"I don't think that she's going to change," Joel said. And he wasn't sure that he would want her to. Blair had brought a much needed fresh attitude to the department and it was good to see someone smiled a lot, bit then not too many other people had a reason to smile these days. "You have to admit though, that she's made a huge difference in Jim's attitude," he added.
"That still doesn't excuse the fact that she shouted at me," Simon said.
"It's not that often you see a woman standing up for herself these days," he said, "because we usually arrest them when they do."
Ok too many questions. But that was all behind him now that he had Blair to talk to. Although, he had to admit that he did miss the sex, or was it just having a woman next to him. The women whose company he'd paid for hadn't understood his need to just touch them. Some of them had even thought that it was creepy.
Now he knew that he was in serious trouble, because he could hear Blair's voice and that wasn't possible as she was supposed to be at the station. So why did he get the feeling that she had completely ignored what he'd said and had decided to follow him. Well, he supposed that he had better go and find out whether it was her or not, because if it was her she could quickly find herself in a great deal of trouble, and that didn't include what he was going to do to her. He would make it perfectly clear to her that the next time that she disobeyed him that there would be serious consequences. She had to learn to do as she was told, because he had to be able to rely on her as his backup. They were supposed to be partners and along with that went a certain amount of trust.
file://She could give his Blair lessons in how to ignore what she was told, Jim thought, but she was going this with the best intentions in the world. So he might have been wrong about her being able to handle his namesake, but in the beginning she had been a very naive kid, now she was starting to understand that nothing was the way it seemed to be. She had certainly put the cat amongst the pigeons with her discovery. He could remember plenty of times when his Blair had had a stand up argument with Simon. Only their Simon had understood that Blair had felt very passionately about some things, that was something the other Simon didn't have time to understand, not that it was his fault. He certainly didn't envy the man's job at all. It had gotten a hell of a lot worse with Blair's revelation that they'd been following someone else's idea of what the law should be instead of the real law. If he could, he would drop in and reassure him that things would be fine, but that if he ever shouted at her again then he would need medical treatment, because you did not mess with the guide and get away with it, no matter who you were.//
She really didn't understand why Jim had been so worried about her coming here, Blair thought, because so far nobody had given her so much as a second glance, but then why would they want to when there were naked women sitting in windows all around her. It wasn't nearly as bad as she'd imagined it would be. The streets were a lot cleaner than the ones near the loft and people really seemed to be enjoying themselves, however, that probably had something to do with the heavy scent of drugs which hung in the air. God only knew what sort of effect this would have on Jim's senses if he spent too long breathing it in. Pot had been the drug of choice for most people in the commune, because they could grow it themselves. Besides, it wasn't good to pump your body full of artificial chemicals. Whenever she got sick she stuck to natural remedies because that was what she was used to.
Jim was in here somewhere, so all she had to do was find him which might not turn out to be as easy as she'd first thought it would be. There were a lot of people around and she wasn't entirely sure where she should start looking. She supposed that it wouldn't hurt if she kept going in the same direction because it seemed to be a main street. After all, she could run into him while she was looking for him. Then again she could have always used her cell phone if she hadn't left it back at the station. Well, she had been in a hurry to get out of there before Joel had realised that she'd taken his car keys. That was a skill that she didn't intend to reveal to Jim unless she was forced to. Stealing was not something that she was proud of, but it would have taken her some time to have walked from the station to The Shades and she wouldn't have felt at all safe out on the streets alone. There was no way that she could have asked either Joel or Henri to come with her, because they would have said that it was too dangerous. Personally, she thought that they were over reacting, because there was nothing even the slights bit threatening about this place.
"Get your fuc..." she began as someone grabbed hold of one of her arms and spun her around. "Hi Jim," she added.
"I thought that I told you to stay away from here," Jim growled, dragging her in the direction that he had just come from.
"I thought that you might need," Blair said, "and you have to admit that this is a pretty cool place." She wouldn't mind hanging out here sometime.
"It won't be so cool when someone drags you down a back alley and rapes you," he said, "which is why you're leaving right now."
"You didn't find her, did you?" she asked.
"No," Jim replied, "my contacts were able to help, but that doesn't mean that I'm giving up," he added when he saw the look on her face.
"I could help you to find her," Blair said, "isn't it worth a try. We've done a lot of work getting you to focus on one sense." Not that he'd been very happy about the tests that she'd come up with to help him control his senses better, but it was all part of her responsibility to help him.
"What do you want me to do, Chief?" Jim asked.
"Use your sense of smell," she replied, "you picked up the perps scent at the crime scene, right?"
"I've already tried that," he said, "there are too many scents mixed together."
"You need to filter them until you find the right one," she said, "don't worry I'm not going to let you zone."
"O know you won't," Jim said, "but once this is over we're going to have a long talk about you not following orders."
"Sure," Blair said. Anything that he would say to her would have little impact on her future actions, well at least the ones that he didn't know about.
"She's gone to the Shades," Henri said, joining Joel in the break room, "that's where Ellison is."
"For god's sake don't tell Simon," Joel said, "because she's in enough trouble as it is."
"But anything could happen to her there," he said, "shouldn't we do something?"
"What?" Joel asked, "Simon's not going to authorise a search for her. He had more important things on his mind at the moment."
"Like that book?" Henri said, "you want to know something, I believe her. I'm not going to arrest any woman who's attacked and defends herself." He knew that he would want his mom and sisters to fight back, but there was no reason why they should be punished for doing that.
"Neither am I," Joel said, "I know a few other officers who might be willing to do the same, but this could cost us our jobs."
"I know," he said, "but I can't do my job knowing that I might be arresting the wrong people." That wasn't the way that he'd been raised. If he was fired his family might have to leave Cascade so that he could find another job, but that might not be such a bad thing, because somewhere else might have better laws. "I bet that H.C. could convince a lot of people to read that book if she got a chance to," he added. People listened to her when she talked because she was smart, a lot smarter that anyone else at the station.
"But she might not get a chance to," Joel said.
"Then we'll have to do something about it," Henri said. They couldn't just leave things the way that they were because that was wrong. However, it wasn't going to be easy to convince people that what they were doing at the moment wasn't the law as it was written.
"We could start by getting hold of a copy of that book and reading it," Joel said.
"Learning to read properly would be a good idea as well," he said.
He supposed that he should read that damned book, Simon thought, if only so that he could point out to the kid where she was wrong. She had to be wrong, because if she was right it would mean that the police department had been lied to for at least the past thirty years. This was precisely the sort of thing that would be used by the Patriots to push home the fact that they would do a much better job of enforcing the law. But this had been going on a long time before the Patriots had even come on the scene, although, he seemed to remember there being some rumors when he'd been at the Academy about an earlier form of the Patriots making suggestions the then Mayor that they could do a much better job of policing the city. Of course, they'd been literally kicked out of the city. By rights he knew that he should contact the DA's office and tell them about the book, but as the man had written it there was a strong possibility that every copy of the book would disappear before anyone else had a chance to read it. He still had absolutely no idea what he was going to do. Was this something that he wanted to risk his job over? But he had taken an oath to uphold the laws of Cascade so it could come down to him arresting both the DA and the Mayor. There was no way that the Mayor couldn't have known about this, after all, he had been a lawyer until he'd gone into politics. What the hell was going to happen to the city if he had to arrest them? The Patriots would probably take advantage of the situation and then all hell would break loose, but he couldn't unlearn what he'd found out and he wasn't sure that he would ever be able to trust the legal system again.
//"You :// know that ripple in a pond thing I told you about," Blair said.
"Yeah," Jim replied.
"Well, she decided to throw a big rock in and then run for the high ground," he said, "and he doesn't know what she's done yet." She was really going to be in serious trouble when her Jim found out what she'd said to Simon.
"How does this change things?" Jim asked.
"I'm not sure yet," Blair admitted, "but it could go one of two ways, either things get better real fast or they get worse." At the moment it looked as if they might end up getting work, but at least she had made people think that change might be possible.
"She's a lot like you, Chief," Jim said.
"I know," he grinned.
"For a start she doesn't listen to anything that he says," Jim said.
"She listens, she just does what she wants anyway," Blair said. He thought that she might have too much of Naomi in her, but she had certainly gotten her Jim to relax a great deal.
"She's not having any problems handling him," Jim said.
"She's a Sandburg, she can handle anything," Blair said. Well, anything that didn't involve a great deal of blood, she might have worked in the commune's hospital but she didn't like blood.
"Just how big was this rock she threw?" Jim asked.
"Pretty big, okay, it was huge," he replied, "it's going to make Noah's flood look like a puddle." There was going to be so much fallout from this that they would be cleaning up for years. "And that's not the best part," he added, "she had a shouting match with Simon."
"That's not going to earn her any favors," Jim said.
"Maybe not," he said, "but at least she showed him that she's not afraid of him." The next time that Simon tried to bully her he wouldn't find it so easy to do that.//
He had to give her credit for keeping up with him, even though she was a lot smaller than he was, Jim thought. running down a side alley with Blair following closely behind him. They were getting close to the source of the scent that he had been tracking. The best part was that he hadn't even come close to zoning, which was good, because he couldn't afford to do that at the moment. It wasn't going to be easy to get the location of where the girl was being held from the people that they would be running into shortly, and he didn't want Blair getting hurt in the process, but he couldn't trust her to stay outside and at least if she was with him from the beginning he would be able to protect her.
"Chief, I don't want you saying anything when we go in there," he said, stopping just short of a building that wasn't as brightly decorated as it's neighbors were. "Remember what I said about how asking questions can get you into trouble," he added.
"Yeah," Blair replied.
"Well, in there asking them could get you killed," Jim said, "so let me do all the talking, and we might just get out in one piece." If he had to he would make sure that she was the one who got the chance to get away.
"Okay," she said, "but I haven't had any problems so far."
"Chief, these people aren't going to be too happy to see us," he said, "so I don't want to upset them anymore than I have to." As it was they were going to be outnumbered and they weren't going to be getting any backup.
"What if she's not here?" she asked.
"We'll deal with that problem when we're faced with it," Jim replied.
"Let's do it then," Blair said.
"Remember to keep quiet and stay behind me," he said. With any luck they wouldn't pay too much attention to her being there, and it they did notice her then he would make it clear that she was his and that he wasn't going to part with her under any circumstances.
"I can do that," she replied, following him as he entered the building.
"It's okay," Jim said, "you wanted to see the dark side and now you're seeing it." If her heart beat any faster it was going to burst out of her chest. This was precisely the reason why he hadn't wanted her to come with him. From now on she would have to do exactly as he said otherwise he would take her back to the commune.
"I didn't think that it would be this dark," Blair admitted, staying close behind him as he ventured further into the building.
"Don't worry, Chief, I'm not going to let anything happen to you," he assured her. The sooner that they got what they'd come for and got the hell out of here the better as far as he was concerned, because some of the patrons were already starting to eye Blair up as if she was going to be providing the entertainment. If he wasn't careful then she would be whisked away to some back room before he knew what was happening. She wouldn't last long if anyone here got their hands on her.
"You were right, I shouldn't have come here," Blair said, almost bumping into his back when he stopped, "I have a really bad feeling about this place," she added.
"You're not the only one," he admitted. Still, it was too late for them to turn and leave as they'd attracted the attention of everyone in the place, "They're in the back," he added. Somehow he was going to have to get into that room while protecting her.
"So?" Blair asked, "don't tell me that you don't have a plan worked out."
"You can't plan for something like this," Jim replied. Usually he just thought on his feet and prayed that things would work out, and more often than not they did, but she was a factor that he hadn't included in his plans.
They were going to have to tell Simon where she'd gone, Henri thought, because if anything happened to H.C then Ellison was going to blame them for not keeping her at the station instead of letting her go wandering around Cascade on her own. However, they couldn't even be sure that she'd made it out of the station in one piece. He supposed that it would be a good idea if he checked with the other departments to see whether she was there or not before going to see Simon. With any luck H.C would be sat talking to someone and then everything would be fine. If not it would probably be a very smart move on his part to make a will and then pray that Ellison left something for his mom to bury, because pleading for mercy wasn't going to do him much good. The incident with Rafe had really shaken him up, and he knew that some people thought that she had asked to be abducted by Rafe. In fact, some of them even thought that what his ex-partner had done was funny. Well, they would be laughing all the way to the cemetery if Ellison caught them. Not that he would blame him, H.C, was pretty special and she deserved respect. It couldn't be easy for her not only working with Ellison but living with him as well, but she didn't seem to mind.
If it turned out that she was okay and Ellison let him, he'd ask her if she'd like to meet his family. After all, his mom would really like to meet her because his mom didn't get out of the house at all these days. H.C would be able to tell her all sort of stories and that might just prompt his mom to start feeling better about things. He knew that it wasn't her fault that she couldn't go out, but at times he wished that it was safe for her to.
"I told you that I could get us in here," Blair said, as a door was closed behind them.
"What did you say to that guy?" Jim asked.
"I just told him that we were looking for some privacy," she replied. It had also cost her all the cash that she had on her, not that she'd had that much, because Jim had warned her about carrying too much cash. Most of the money she'd earned tutoring Daryl had already been spent on things for the loft. He wasn't going to be too happy about that, but she'd needed to make the place more comfy. Besides, it was expensive living in Cascade, she had to pay a great deal more for food that she'd had to back in the commune. Anything that was organic was in short supply and she wanted to make sure that Jim only ate the best sort of food. She had thought about trying to grow her own food on the roof, but she wasn't sure whether she would be allowed to do that or not.
"Chief, he thinks that we're going to be..." Jim began.
"I know," she said, "but it got us in here, didn't it? Now start looking for her." She wasn't sure how long that they would have before someone either decided their time was up or wanted to watch what they were doing.
"Keep an eye on the door while I look around," he said.
"Remember a child's heart rate is faster than an adults," Blair said. That was hopefully something that he could use to find that girl. Although, in her heart she knew that it was probably too late to save her, but they'd come this far so they couldn't turn back now. A Sandburg didn't turn their back on someone who was in trouble, especially when that someone couldn't protect themselves. This sort of thing would never have been allowed in the commune, because they had laws to prevent it and that guilty were punished.
"I'll do my best, Chief," Jim said, "but if anyone comes through that door I want you to get the hell out of here, is that clear?"
"But what about you?" she asked. She couldn't just leave him here.
"I can take care of myself," he replied, "and no heroics."
"I'll try to remember that," Blair said. Not that it was going to be easy to remember if someone decided to take a swing at him. If her dad knew how much violence she'd committed he would be thoroughly ashamed of her, but then he had a lot to be ashamed of as well. He had always told her that he would never do anything to hurt her, but he'd gone and done exactly that by paying Rafe to abduct her to that he could take her back to the commune. He hadn't even called to find out how she was doing, so much for him caring about her and her well being. There was no way that she would ever be able to go back to the commune unless it was on her terms and Nathan accepted the fact that Cascade was her home now.
Getting out of here wasn't going to be as easy as getting in had been, but she was confident that it wouldn't be long before they were on their way back to the station. No doubt when they got there she would be balled out by Simon and probably fired for what she'd said to him, but there was no way in hell that she was going to apologise for telling the truth. Jim would back her all the way, at least she hoped that he would. After all, it had been his idea in the first place for her to do some research on the law, but he had probably expected her to tell him what she'd found instead of going off on her own. Still, she had never been very good at taking orders from anyone, and especially not from someone who thought that they could bully her just because she was a woman and smaller than them. Simon's attitude really sucked, only no one else seemed willing to do anything about it. From what both Joel and Henri had told her about Jim, people had avoided him like the plague, because he was a hard man to please. That just did not tally with the man she knew. Jim had done more than anyone to help her settle into her new life. Without his offer of a home she would probably have ended up sleeping on the streets her first night in Cascade.
If they weren't in this room then he didn't know where the hell they were, Jim thought, opening the door in front of him. Every other room that he'd scanned using his senses had been empty, in this one however there was a very faint heartbeat. Whoever was in this room was in some sort of trouble.
"Hey Sweetheart," he said, seeing a little girl cowering in a corner of the room, "it's okay I'm not going to hurt you," he added. Not that she had any reason to believe him after what she'd probably been through. "I'm going to get you out of here and to a safe place. He then slowly walked over to the corner where she was and knelt down in front of her. "You have to come with me." Blair would be a lot better at this than he was, but he was the one with the gun and he might have to use it to get them all out of here. "Let's get you out of here," he said, carefully picking her up. It was a good thing that he'd dialled his sense of smell down before entering the room because she'd wet herself, probably more than once. Still, her comfort and well being wouldn't have been high on the list of priorities of the people who taken her. "Are you going to tell me your name?" he added.
"Becky," she sniffed, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck.
"Let's get you home," Jim said, This was not the girl that he was looking for, so that meant that yet another family had been destroyed by those people, and he still hadn't found the,. However, Blair would be pleased that they'd been able to save one child, even if it had turned out to be the wrong one.
"And where have you two been?" Simon demanded when a somewhat bedraggled Jim and Blair entered the Bullpen. They had been gone for hours and he hadn't exactly been overjoyed when Joel had told him about the kid borrowing his car keys. Then there had been the fact that Jim had gone to The Shades without telling him where he was going.
"Rescuing a little girl called Becky," Jim replied.
"We've just left the hospital," Blair said, "they think that she wasn't abused so that's good news."
"I see," he said. There was very little that he could say in response to that without it making him look like a completely heartless bastard.
"The bad news is that her dad's dead," Jim said, "and her mom's in prison for trying to defend herself and Becky."
"Becky's going to live with her aunt," Blair said, "the bad guys walked, but that's okay because we have to uphold the law at all costs, don't we?"
"Sandburg, there is no need to be sarcastic," Simon growled.
"Isn't there?" she snapped, "the law isn't worth the paper it's written on if nobody knows what it really is."
"She'd right," Jim said, "and I'm not sure that I can go one being a detective if things don't change."
"So either of you know what would happen if I went to the Mayor with that book?" Simon asked, "he'd fire me along with everyone else in this department, and first thing tomorrow morning the Patriots would be running Cascade." Jim had never been any good when it came to dealing with office politics. "I can't take that risk," he added.
"I can," Blair said, "I'm not afraid of the Mayor or the Patriots, but I'm scared as hell of people who know that there's something wrong but won't do a damned thing about it because they're afraid of rocking the boat. Well, if the boat's going to capsize anyway you might as well give it a push."
"Speak English Sandburg," Simon said.
"You keep going on about the Patriots replacing you guys, well did any of you stop to think that the DA might have a hell of a lot to gain by that happening?" Blair asked, "think about it, who is the one person who can fuck up the legal system, make sure that cases never make it to court no matter how good the evidence that you have is."
"We've all seen that happen," Joel said.
"That still doesn't mean that we can do anything about it," Simon said.
"What about people power?" Blair asked, "if enough people know what the law really was they'd want it enforced properly, wouldn't they?"
"Chief, what exactly is it that you're suggesting?" Jim asked.
"Revolution," she replied, "but absolutely no violence because that would be counterproductive."
"I don't want to know what you're planning to do," Simon said. That way he couldn't be blamed when it all went horribly wrong which he suspected that it would. But if the kid gave it her best shot and failed then she might shut up about being here to change things. Of course if by some miracle she succeeded he would have to eat a hell of a lot of humble pie and he'd probably never hear the last of it.
END