DISCLAIMER: It wasn't me! But honestly, this is stolen intellectual property of Rizzoli and Isles. While I do have qualms about intentionally stealing and altering other people's characters, I apparently don't have enough to desist.

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Into the Sunset

Chapter One: The American Nightmare

The birth of our nation, as every American school child knows, happened in Massachusetts. The Bostonians had thrown themselves a tea party, and Mother Britannia was not happy. The American Revolution, a mere fantasy, was pulled off by farmers and servants with nothing to lose but their shackles. Thus it has been proven, time and time again, that the strongest weapon always wins. The strongest weapon there has ever been is the human will, and its most ardent design is freedom.

The Revolution wasn't kind to Boston. By the end of the eighteenth century the city was sparsely populated. The party was over, and Boston was in shambles. Thus it was Boston's early nineteenth century immigrants who rebuilt the city's former glory. The Irish and Italians had come in great number and established themselves in legal and illegal enterprises. There were those who considered themselves Natives of America, whose family had clung to the hard land through the dismal centuries of colonization. There were the broken Native Tribes, shoved into the margins of society in a land universally acknowledged as their birthright. All were sloshing about in the great melting pot as it boiled them into one brew without their knowledge.

In 1848 an immigrant to California found a fortune in gold just laying around on the ground. Over the next decade, over 200,000 immigrants would join him in pursuit of the same fortune. They would face a three month overland journey through every possible terrain. It was a landscape of certain death if the slightest factor went askew. In 1846 the Donner-Reed Party were starved in the Sierra Nevadas and the tale of their nightmare had spread to every corner of the fledgling nation. But beyond the horrors still lay the American Dream: the chance to start a new life with the freedom to choose for oneself. So the strongest weapon barreled along across the perilous Western Trails until it had carved a path for all the dreamers and schemers alike.

Patrick Isles was an Irish born immigrant who had fled from his father's tyrannical criminal dynasty on Winter Hill. Hardened from a life of famine and violence, he nonetheless possessed a gripping love for his wife and child and a tenacious desire to see them prosper in the world. Patrick knew he must act fast to secure an independent future for his family, so he set out for California in the Fall of 1848. Through tremendous hard work in the foothills of Mount Shasta, he amassed an impressive cache of gold which he eventually parlayed into a Mining business.

Back in Boston, Patrick's wife Hope had given their child an immaculate education with the money he sent them. Hope was a Suffragist before the term existed, and she instilled her beautiful young daughter with the grace of a lady and the determination of a charging bull. Hope had helped to found a Ladies Physiological Institute in Boston and through intense personal study became a keenly skilled medical professional there.

For the next decade Patrick managed his business with arduous trips back and forth across the budding nation. But in the Fall of 1859 he became permanently embroiled in Boston politics, which were rapidly heating up due to the growing divide between Northern and Southern Ethics. Patrick sensed that a war between the States was coming and he tried to convince his wife to take Maura to California where they would be safer. Hope refused to leave the Institute, but she agreed to send Maura to their estate in Mount Shasta.

Although Maura had been educated in almost every concentration, she had also been kept more or less inside buildings. She had read how to camp and shoot, and about Natives and their cultures, but her only time spent outside Boston was to attend an elite girls school in Paris for three years. She had returned feeling mature beyond her years and at least a few sizes too big for her britches. She was itching to get into the social life of Boston and to begin a career, but no sooner did she settle back at home from Paris did her parents inform her she was going to California for a few years to wait out the impending war.

At first she was devastated by the news but she gradually began to see it as an adventure. Patrick promised she could help to manage their business in Mount Shasta, and she knew there would be cultured young people with whom to socialize in California. Over the next few months, as Patrick made the many tedious preparations for her trip, Maura warmed up more and more to the idea until she had turned it into a fantasy of rip-roaring adventure in her mind.

Patrick had said she would travel along the California Trail in a wagon train with a personal armed escort. Maura imagined herself fishing in great rivers, swimming in crystalline lakes, and riding on horseback along the ridges of the tallest mountains. She knew she was Romanticizing the idea, but she really had no choice. It would be three miserable months of difficult travel with an armed stranger toward a place she had no desire to go. Maura hoped her stranger at least turned out to be the sexiest young sheriff's deputy in Boston.

The many routes to California had been updated heavily since Patrick nearly perished on them in 1848. Although it was not a safe trip, by any stretch, it was getting safer. Pony Express stations had begin to pop up along the trail, which were accompanied by armed guards. Most towns which had sprung up around the trail now had sheriffs keeping an eye out for bandits and hostile Natives. Yet the trails were still incredibly dangerous for women, the young and the wealthy. Thus he knew Maura would be a primary target.

Patrick spent months interviewing possible experienced escorts. He hired a detective to check into their backgrounds. He went shooting and trapping almost daily with one hopeful fellow or another. But having become quite an adept outdoorsman himself on his sojourns, Patrick's standards were high and he eventually rejected all his candidates. As the time for Maura's trip drew near, he was still struggling to find someone he felt sure he could trust to protect his daughter.

One day as Patrick sat in his office, a young woman walked in and politely announced she was replying to his advertisement in the Boston newspaper for an experienced escort to California. Patrick could immediately tell the woman was part Native, her long dark hair and penetrating black eyes gave her a halting feminine beauty although she was dressed in the clothes of a Californian man. She wore deerskin pants beneath a long men's collared shirt. Her unkempt dark hair hung defiantly down her back. But he noticed the polite way she wiped her boots before entering his office. Her manner was guarded but sincere.

Over the next few weeks he came to know the story of Jane's life. Although it sounded more fiction than fact, Patrick knew a straight shooter when he saw one. Her name was Jane Rizzoli, she had been born in Mount Shasta, California in 1837 to a rich Italian immigrant and his gorgeous Okwanuchu wife. Their marriage was entirely tolerated and even admired in California, but the wealthy young Rizzoli eventually lost his money in the partially formed economy. He had no remaining option but to move his wife and twelve year old daughter to his extended family's estate in Boston.

Although the Rizzoli family enjoyed rare wealth and status for Italians at the time, they loathed and looked down on Jane and her mother for their strange race and simple manners. Her father engrossed himself in his family's business, attempting to right the debt he had gotten his wife and daughter into. But he died before his endeavor was complete, and his wife was not surprised that his family had nullified his will and effectively cast she and Jane from their household. Jane and her mother were made destitute in Boston in the year 1853.

Without the money to return to her native land, Jane's mother fell into depression and became increasingly ill. Sixteen year old Jane began to work any place that would have her, realizing she had few skills but those acquired during her childhood in the wooded expanse of Mount Shasta. She started fishing, trapping, and trading but soon found that her pretty young face left her frequently at the wrong end of a pistol, being robbed for her goods or services.

Soon she decided the way to best use her gender and looks to her advantage was in the seedy betting parlors that proliferated the Boston slums. It turned out she had an excellent poker face. She made much more money betting, playing cards, competing in shooting contests and other assorted criminal ventures than she ever had at an "honest" living. By the time she saved enough money to make the trip back home, her mother had caught pneumonia and passed away. Jane was devastated. She spent the next three years gaining and losing her shirt at the poker tables in her favorite brothels.

Since taking to her life of petty crime and waywardness, she had developed a serious longing for prostitutes and liquor. It was the combination of these that eventually convinced her that she would ruin herself if she stayed any longer in Boston. She had just put the remainder of her resources together in a last ditch effort to leave the city, certain she didn't have enough money or supplies to reach the her homeland, when she happened to see Patrick's advertisement in the newspaper. Evidently Patrick was willing to pay an impressive sum for the job, in addition to funding the trip itself, and Jane was certainly qualified considering her now vast array of skills.

Jane was forthright with Patrick during his many inquiries into her past. She told him the entire truth about her life. She described her upbringing in the extremely rural towns and dwindling Native villages of Mount Shasta, her harrowing journey across the nation as a child, her desperate situation in Boston, the death of both her parents, her life of petty crime, her many skills and shocking talents, and even her taste for whiskey and women. He had taken it all in with a carefully suppressed smile. After all, Patrick had pulled himself and his little immigrant family up from his bootstraps as well. He wasn't without misgivings, but he secretly admired the girl.

After an exhaustingly thorough search through her past, weeks of camping and shooting with Patrick on his land, and an intimidating stack of legal contracts she was obliged to sign, Patrick slapped her on the back and congratulated her. Then he told her if anything happened to his daughter, including Maura's sinful seduction by any hand, he would execute her himself. Having stared into the eyes of every variety of murdering psychopath, she knew he was serious. But she also knew it was her only hope of ever getting back to her homeland in California. So with both reluctance and elation, she accepted the job without having met this enigmatic young woman she was slated to protect.

Finally the weeks before their departure arrived, and Patrick began to discuss the details with Maura. He spent many days teaching her about Natives, the trails, about plants and animals, about what to do in case of emergencies, and other things he felt she must know if the worst were to happen. Although he had balked at Jane's application in the beginning, Patrick had quickly become convinced she was a highly capable marksman, trapper, hunter and an otherwise impressively talented person who was unlikely, due to her need and desire to make it to Mount Shasta, to abandon his daughter or the money she was to receive upon her safe arrival. He had decided that he had found the safest and most capable escort possible. But he forgot to mention Jane to Maura, and she forgot to ask. Her mind was occupied with designer hat boxes, which books she wanted to read on the way, how to mend her lace sleeves should they be snagged on a bush. If she could have only known all these possessions would soon be swept down the Missouri River she would have focused on more essential details.

Jane was waiting on the train platform smoking a cigarette. All her belongings fit into one ragged suitcase, which she had already given to an attendant to take to their suite. She had never ridden a train in the proper way, with a ticket. All her train riding had been done as a stowaway. Soon they would take the newly built railroads with their luxury train cars to St. Joseph as the first part of the trip.

Her ticket informed her the ride would take two weeks. Jane never felt as Native as she looked, but certain Native stereotypes applied to her. Mainly, she preferred the outdoors and rural towns to crowds and big cities. She preferred the gentle sway of a horse than the rickety squeal of a train. But she certainly wasn't complaining about a luxury train ride to Kansas. There were sure to be Spirits and women aboard somewhere, so she wouldn't be short of things to drink or eat.

As she waited she found that she was increasingly nervous, and she realized with a pang of embarrassment that it was the girl she was worried of. She had imagined Maura Isles as the typical rich Bostonian, the type who had cruelly outcast she and her mother. She pictured Maura cloaked in enormous gaudy dresses, armed with a haughty accent and demeanor, and possessing a long nose to look down on the unworthy world beneath. When she accepted the job, she had pushed the idea away that Maura would be a petulant brat. Jane barely believed in her ability to shoot a bear while dodging Native arrows and clasping a small porcelain hand, she knew it would be plainly impossible if the girl were a pest.

Patrick hadn't really described Maura to Jane more than to say she was as unbelievably intelligent as Jane was as unbelievably talented. His sole comment about them getting along was that if their minds were put together correctly they would form an undefeatable partnership. But Jane doubted she would have a single common interest with an elite Bostonian socialite who had recently come home from three years abroad at a private girls' school in Europe. She just hoped the girl would keep quiet and obey her commands until she could deposit her at their family home in the foothills of Mount Shasta and collect her fee.

With the money Patrick had promised her, Jane knew she could afford a small farm with enough left over to get a household going for herself. She just hoped there would be a brothel nearby, otherwise she feared her little cabin might get lonely. And yet she craved the loneliness of Mount Shasta after having felt trapped in the swarms of impoverished masses in Boston. Whatever the journey may bring, Jane knew to complete it was her only chance at making a better life for herself.

Jane had used the money Patrick had given her to prepare for the trip to buy herself some clothes, as she only owned a few pairs of pants and ragged shirts. She chose her best new outfit to wear for their departure, and as she stood on the platform waiting for Patrick to deliver Maura, she felt more eyes staring at her than she ever had.

It was one thing to dress as a man in the slums of Boston, and an entirely different thing to stand at Boston's bustling train platform in a dashing pair of trousers, a beautifully fitting vest, her new jacket pushed back over her hips and her hand tucked elegantly in her vest pocket. Her wild mane of dark hair had been trimmed and carefully pulled into a ponytail, upon which she balanced a short black top hat. She felt while dressing herself that she had never looked so sexy and refined. But out on the platform with so many bulging eyes appraising her apparel, she realized how sorely she stood out from the crowd. She was anxiously straightening her vest and jacket when she felt Patrick's friendly hand embrace her shoulder.

Jane turned to see the most delicate looking woman she had ever seen poised before her in a dress clearly tailored individually for her impressive shape. She had enormous emerald eyes which thoughtfully penetrated all they fell upon. Her hair was the color of the warm evening sun and fell angelically around her perfect face as light falls through parlor windows.

Jane nearly grimaced at the extravagance of the enormous dress she was wearing until her eyes crossed Maura's exposed cleavage where they heavily lagged despite Jane's effort. Finally she dragged her gaze to the woman's face where it lingered briefly on her unhappily pursed lips before meeting the severely critical expression in her eyes.

"Who is this?" Maura asked in a patently annoyed tone.

Patrick grinned. Apparently he either forgot to mention that Jane was an unorthodox Native woman or he thought it better to let the two meet without preamble.

"This is Jane Rizzoli, Maura. She's going to escort you safely to California. She will protect you from every possible threat, including drowning, mountain lions, scalpings, getting fleeced at market and especially from young presumptuous men with bedroom eyes."

He looked at Jane very pointedly. "You will deliver my daughter with all her innocence and integrity intact," he warned her.

Maura rolled her eyes over her slight blush at his meaning.

"I'm sure I'll have the offender shot long before he makes it through that fortress of a dress," Jane replied in an affirmative tone carefully laced with sarcasm.

Maura glanced down self consciously at her gown. It was her best and she took offense to Jane deriding it.

Maura clasped the arm of her father's jacket with one delicate hand and pulled him down to talk into his ear, "Father, this … woman … is obviously not fit to accompany me. What credentials can she possibly possess?"

"Maura Evangeline Isles, I have seldom thought it my job to make up your mind for you, but on this matter I must inform you that my experience is far superior to yours. I exhausted every outdoorsman in Boston and didn't find one as capable with a gun, trap and horse as this woman, who is not much older than yourself. I know she isn't very convincing to the eyes, but I promise that you will be safer with Miss Rizzoli than with any man in Boston."

Jane had heard their conversation, Maura didn't exactly hide her disapproval. She listened amused, half expecting the girl to throw a tantrum and refuse to be accompanied by her. But Maura only sighed and set her jaw.

"Yes, Father," she finally replied.

The train's attendants had already packed Maura's many suitcases and crates onto the train. Jane stood stoically finishing her cigarette while Maura reluctantly told her father goodbye. Jane expected a teary, pathetic goodbye to flow from the girl but she only clasped her father briefly and told him not to worry about her. He kissed her head and held her hand in his as he extended it for Jane to accept.

Jane felt stuffy when expected to display proper manners, but she took Maura's hand ceremoniously, laid it atop her bent arm, nodded goodbye to Patrick and guided the girl to the train. Maura looked over her shoulder grimly but Patrick was grinning back at her assuredly. She glanced up at Jane who appeared from her expression to be marching them to their death.

Once they boarded, they were led to their suite which turned out to be half a train car beautifully carved into a living niche. There were two separate twin beds across a room for sleeping and dressing that connected to a room lined with windows in which to eat and sit, and a little washroom. Maura immediately started nervously fussing with her luggage, dragging its varied contents to every corner of the train car. Jane tossed her bag on the bed not yet covered with bloomers, and went to the window to light another cigarette.

"Must you smoke where my things will pick up the smell?" Maura asked her indignantly.

Jane frowned, closed her lighter and put it and her tobacco back in her jacket pocket. She stared at Maura for a moment, but became overwhelmed by her rapid, erratic movements. Jane suddenly felt very caged by Maura moving around so quickly in the relatively small space they were to share. The train began to move, and it dawned on her that she had actually agreed to do this. She had agreed to drag this awful little brat all the way to California. What was she thinking?

"I'm going to … watch the … and get some …" Jane stammered quickly before jetting through the door of their suite and down the hall. She found an open place between cars and took a few deep breaths before resuming her cigarette. Just as she was flicking the remainder away, she felt a gentle hand run across her back and she turned to see a very sexy and slightly older woman with dark red hair smiling at her.

"I like this vest. You are by far the sexiest woman on this train," her tone was slow and seductive, her words carefully pronounced.

Jane stared back at her with careful consideration.

"I'm in cabin C4. You should join me for a cocktail one evening. Are you taking the train all the way to St. Joseph?"

Jane nodded.

The woman smiled like a cat who had successfully pounced on her canary, "So am I. What a coincidence." She extended her hand and ran her fingertips up and down Jane's vest. "I hope I see you soon," she concluded seductively before removing her hand and walking away. Jane looked after her with a sly grin. Maybe it wouldn't be such a nightmare after all.