Leaning forward to peer through the windshield at the highway ahead, Blair looked for a landmark to give him some idea where they were, but was defeated by the night and the rain hitting the glass. The little light from street lamps, road signs, billboards, and buildings that made it through the sheets pouring down from the heavens was twisted into brilliant ropes of color that were beautiful to look and told him nothing about what part of Cascade they were in. He sat back, absently adjusting his seatbelt, and didn't bother to worry about it. As far as one of Jim's random patrols was concerned - and he had certainly ridden enough of them with his partner over the years - one stretch of road was as good as another.
Of course, if he really wanted to know, he could just ask, and Blair slanted a look at Jim from the corner of his eye to gauge just how deep he was into the sentinel/cop mindset. Jim caught him at it and turned enough to give him a smile that said he could talk, if that was what Blair wanted. The faint glow of the dashboard did kind things to that smile and the loving eyes bright above it, taking away the marks of Time, giving Jim the youthful appearance of the half-insane cop who had thrown Blair against a wall in a janitor's cabinet so long ago.
Not that there were so many signs to erase - a little less hair with a little more gray in it, a few more wrinkles and lines, a few too many scars from battles won and lost. But the leg pressed up against his was still corded and strong, as was the rest of Jim's body, and he still had the power to leave Blair breathless with want and love with a single caress. Blair suspected that was always going to be the case for them, and he spared a moment to be very, very grateful.
Jim must have caught the direction of his thoughts. His smile heated, and he asked, "How are you doing over there? Want to stop?"
"No, I'm still good to go," Blair said after a moment's thought, weighing the pleasure of anticipation against how long it would take for Jim to shift gears from sentinel to lover once they navigated home.
Apparently not quite ready to call it a night himself, Jim nodded and went back to keeping watch over his city. Leaning his head against Jim's shoulder, Blair let himself be lulled into introspection by the beat of the tires over pavement and the long streaks of radiance rushing at him through the darkness. Miles streamed by, seemingly as perpetual as the rain.
He felt the change in Jim almost as soon as Jim sensed whatever trouble it was that caught his attention. As Blair sat up, rubbing his face to bring himself to full alertness, the truck smoothly picked up speed, dodging through traffic with an abruptness that was heart-stopping. With terrifying skill, Jim steered them through a tiny opening in the median between lanes, half-spinning it to send them in the right direction to merge with the other vehicles. They swung close enough to a pickup truck that Blair could see both driver and passenger clearly, expressions glazed over with road hypnosis and boredom.
Though they seemed oblivious to the near miss, his stomach dropped and for a second he thought he heard sirens and the horrifying crash of metal into metal. Blair smelled fire and blood; tasted the despair of loss in his wail of Jim's name. An incredible pain shot from his shoulder into his gut, ripping away all the air in his lungs, and as quickly as the flash came, it went, spinning him into a luminous haze that took away his momentary terror. In the distance he could hear Jim urgently saying his name, and he blinked hard, taking in a deep breath.
"Blair?"
"Sorry, sorry - just drive. Sometimes you still scare the shit out of me with stunts like that, despite it all."
Though he looked incline to argue the point farther, Jim dropped it - no doubt only momentarily - in favor of getting to where he thought they had to be, right now. When he judged they were close enough to the target, he turned off the headlights and engine, coasting on the shoulder of the road in what Blair privately called their 'silent running' mode. Not wanting the wrong people to suspect that they did these unofficial patrols and have to explain them, they had adopted the technique the first time a patrol officer had made a joke about Ellison never being off-duty. Sometimes they had to announce they were with the cops, but for the most part, no one questioned their pose of being passing motorists.
Bringing the truck to a stop in the deep shadows of an overpass, Jim murmured, "Car jacking, woman, two kids, one really small - a baby, I think from the sound. Mom's playing it pretty cool, just trying to get the kids out of the back, already surrendered her purse."
"Going to let them run as long as they don't hurt anybody?" Blair asked. He hated that he had to, but knew that as long as Jim had the license plates on both the stolen and the getaway vehicles, the perps would get caught.
"Yeah, she's got a cell hidden somewhere, and already has 911 on the line," Jim said distractedly. "Operator's a good one; keeping silent and just listening, reporting what she hears to Dispatch. Should be a patrol car ... damnit!"
Hand on his weapon, Jim erupted out the driver's side door, and Blair followed him instantly, keeping low and staying in his wake as they rushed toward the other cars. He could hear voices coming from that direction, and there was no mistaking the growing anger in the men's words, or the frightened pleading in the woman's. Under that he could make out the sounds children crying with a growing edge of hysteria that could so easily freak out a man unused to dealing with kids.
When Jim split off, running forward a few feet before rising to his full height to make himself visible, Blair stuck close to the guard rail without being told. Once he was at the back of the SUV, Jim gave a 'go ahead' not to him, then shouted, "Freeze! Cascade P.D."
The two men twisted toward Jim, one of them still holding the woman by her upper arm, hand half-raised for another blow, for the moment too startled to do more than gape at him. Leaving them to Jim, but keeping part of his attention on his partner, Blair took advantage of their distraction to get to the rear passenger door. Carefully, so he wouldn't scare the kids more than they already had to be, he inched up until he could peek into the back seat.
A five-year-old girl was huddled on the floor, holding a toddler protectively close and fumbling with the door handle to get out. She was struggling to keep her cries down to muffled whimpers, but her little brother was howling with an abandon that only small children had. To Blair's surprise, she had a cell phone clutched in one fist, the blue glow from the screen bleeding through her fingers.
Through the glass on the other side of the SUV Blair could see two pumped up young men who couldn't have been much more than kids themselves. Their thick necks and rising panic told him that they were most likely out for a thrill to satisfying steroid-enhanced testosterone, too used to their BMOC status and success to know how to handle a real crisis. The taller of the teens had yanked the woman up against his chest to use as a shield, face contorted in a bizarre mix of confusion and fury. The other apparently had a 'hammer them first, figure it out later' attitude; he hefted a tire iron and inched toward Jim, his intent clear in his posture.
From his crouch Blair couldn't see his partner, but didn't really need to have him in sight to know what he was doing. Weapon at the ready and radiating a calm confidence that would have warned a more experienced criminal, Jim was probably staring at the boys, oozing intimidation and waiting for them to make their move. While that momentary impasse held, Blair had a move of his own to make, and he gingerly opened the car door a bare crack, trying not to make a single noise.
Gasping, the little girl tried to wedge herself and her brother underneath the front seat, ducking her head down as if expecting a blow. Blair held up a badge, a finger on his lips to ask for her to be quiet and did his best to project an air of trustworthiness and protection. Eyes going round, she nodded, touched the badge with a single finger as if to make sure it was real, and scrambled toward him, pushing the baby into his arms.
"Hey there, kiddo," Blair murmured against the baby's downy curls, jiggling him a little. "It's okay now, it's okay. I'm going to help you guys, and my policeman friend is out there with your mom to give her a hand."
"Make the mean boys go away?" the little girl whispered. "They wanted Mommy's car, but it's all broked and we was waiting for the big toe truck to come and get us, and they didn't like it when she couldn't make the engine go."
"Wow," Blair whispered back, easing them both from the SUV and down by a wheel well, just in case. "You guys are having one big adventure, aren't you? And yes, my friend is going to make them leave you alone."
"Good!"
Hearing a rising rumble of challenge and promised violence from the other side, Blair asked to distract her, "Would you like to do something to help?"
With a wicked grin that did not bode well for bullies when she was older and could hold her own better, she said, "Yes, yes, yes, please."
Lifting the hand with the cell phone closer to her lips, Blair said, "Tell the nice lady on the phone about that car over there. What color, the numbers you can see on the back - you're a big girl, aren't you? You know your numbers."
"Course, but why?"
"Cause if the mean boys decide to run, my friend won't chase them; he'll stay to make sure everybody here is okay. But if you tell the lady about the car, *she'll* send more policemen to catch them and punish them for doing bad things."
"Like scaring 'Topher," she said solemnly. Holding the phone awkwardly, she added, "Kay. Hey, lady, did you hear what the copfriend said? Whatyamean you didnt? Okay, I'm 'sposed to tell you about the shiny blue car. You know like the one in the 'merical?"
She started humming the jingle to the commercial, and Blair tuned her out to check out how Jim was doing. Though he couldn't make out exactly what his partner was saying, his patient, reasonable tone was coming across clearly, which Blair knew from experience meant he probably had the teens ready to either bolt or surrender. With a potential hostage on hand, though, and Jim seemingly alone, there was always the chance that the situation could take a turn for the worse.
Police sirens blared in the distance, and a split-second later the woman did something that made her captor swear. She dove head first into the SUV as footsteps pounded away, and Blair craned his neck to watch the teens pelt for their car and jump into it. They squealed away, but even as they made the lane, a black and white unit raced past in hot pursuit. Another unit braked sharply and pulled in front of the SUV, search light swiveling back to sweep over it. Blair nodded to himself in satisfaction and lifted the little girl and her brother to put them back where they belonged, staying underneath the probing beam.
Just in time, too. The mother shouted, "Marlie! Christopher! Where are you! Marlie!!!"
"Here, Mommy, here." Marla bounced up, waving the phone. "The caller lady sent more policemen, just like the copfriend said he would." Blair carefully eased the car door shut, grinning at the confused 'what, honey,' from Marlie's mother.
Slipping over the guardrail, Blair scuttled back toward the deep shadows and the truck, not surprised to find Jim standing by the hood, waiting for him. Fitting himself along his lover's side, arm around his waist, Blair leaned into him and watched the young mother pat both her children over, just to be sure both were safe. "What'd I miss?"
"Not much. Those jocks were all bluff and bull; all I had to do was remind them of what the coach would do if they complicated a simple attempted robbery that could be dismissed as high spirits with a charge of deadly assault, which would get them jail time."
"And of course all jocks are more scared of their coach than a cop holding a gun on them," Blair said dryly.
"Some things never change; still better than nothing, I guess." Jim drifted back to get into the cab of the truck, pulling Blair with him. "Lady had it on the ball," Jim said admiringly, eyes on the small family. "Held still, let herself be dismissed as harmless, then when the sirens spooked those spoiled, thick-necked jocks, she drove her elbow into the balls of the one holding her and squirmed out of his grip."
Snorting in amusement, Blair said, "Her daughter takes after her, I think. Five years old but she was holding it together pretty good."
"Well, her new 'copfriend' certainly made an impression on her," Jim said with only a hint of laughter under his voice.
"What's she saying?" Blair asked, knowing he'd get ribbed for it later and not giving a damn.
Eyes going distant and intent, Jim listened, then put the truck in neutral so it would drift backwards. "There's our cue to go. The mother just described me, with Marlie chiming in about her 'all curls and niceness copfriend,' and they're looking up and down the highway, trying to spot us."
"How're they handling it?"
"Those men were policemen?" Jim said, obviously quoting the mother for Blair's benefit. "They are with you, right? Right?"
He merged into traffic, picking up speed immediately so that they would be a blur to the officers as they went past. A small, proud smile graced the corners of Jim's lips, and he gently squeezed Blair's knee. "The younger one crossed himself, and his partner just said, 'Yes, ma'am, those two are ours,' like a man claiming his first born."
Not fighting the surge of warmth around his heart, Blair half-turned in his seat to get a last glimpse of Marlie, and accidentally caught her mother's eye instead. Her jaw dropped open, and Blair couldn't help but wonder what she, and others like her over the years, saw as he and Jim sped by without a flutter of wind, a splash of water from the rain, or the sound of an engine. Then the rainy night closed around them, and Blair settled himself comfortably beside Jim, sighing a little in contentment.
"You still good to go?" Jim asked gently.
Closing his eyes to feel the almost subliminal tug toward the patient, welcoming light that filled him every time he did, Blair weighed its presence against the good they did. When he opened them, he smiled at Jim's loving willingness to let him make that final decision for them. "Yeah, for a while longer, anyway."
Jim trailed his fingers over Blair's cheek, thumb pausing to glide sensuously over Blair's lower lip. "You let me know if that changes, Chief."
"Have I ever been shy about getting what I want from you?"
Laughing, Jim turned his attention back to his driving. "There is that."
Leaning his head against Jim's shoulder, Blair watched miles stream by, seemingly as perpetual as the rain.
Warning - Jim and Blair are ghosts, but still protecting their tribe. finis