Shawn woke up slowly. It took him a minute to organize his thoughts, which were all over the place as he realized he wasn't sleeping on the futon in his apartment.
"Coffee?" Lassiter asked him.
Shawn sat bolt upright and looked around the detective's house, then relaxed slightly when he remembered the previous day's events. "What time is it?" He asked, giving a yawn.
"Just after eight, I figured we would need all the sleep we could get." Lassiter stirred his three creams and four sugars into his mug and then went to look at the case board again.
Shawn followed him and studied the time line.
"O'Hara left last Monday." Lassiter tapped the beginning of the time line, going over the same information they had plotted out the night before. "She called me on Tuesday to remind me to water her plants."
"And you got the call on Wednesday morning," Shawn finished, noticing a red mark on the time line.
Lassiter nodded. "I haven't been able to reach her or her boyfriend, so the odds that they're together are pretty high."
"Where were they going on vacation?" Shawn asked, ignoring the lump that had settled in his stomach when Lassiter had said the word boyfriend.
"She didn't say, but I would assume they're going here," Lassiter pointed to a map. "He owns a small cabin in the woods. They went there last summer and O'Hara said it was about a ten minute drive from the main road.
"If they went there last summer, then whoever took her might have been watching her for a while." Shawn studied the board. Besides the timeline and the map, there was a list of all the cases Shawn had solved for the SBPD. "What's the list for?" Shawn hadn't noticed it the night before.
Lassiter glanced over to it. "If the kidnapper wants you then odds are that you helped bust him."
"We need to drive out to that cabin," Shawn decided after looking over the board one more time.
"I went out there as soon as I got the call; there was nothing out of the ordinary."
Shawn shook his head. "Lassie, how many times did I solve a case which you couldn't?" He felt a bit of happiness as the banter from before came back to him. He hadn't anyone to argue with like this for eight years.
Lassiter rolled his eyes, but grabbed his suit jacket from off the counter and shrugged it on. He checked the pocket for his keys and then jerked his head towards the door. "What are you waiting for?"
"I didn't have any breakfast," Shawn faltered as he pulled on his shoes.
"There's pop-tarts in the car. I figured you'd still be on a diet consisting of sugar," Lassiter grumbled.
"Did you get the ones with frosting?" Shawn asked hopefully as he followed the detective out the door.
OoO OoO OoO
Buzz McNab was in a quandary. He was back at the station after getting a few hours of sleep. He was sitting at his desk and tapping the floor with his foot as he thought about what he had done last night. Shawn Spencer was a wanted man. He had left Detective Lassiter's house without arresting him. Sure, Juliet was kidnapped... Detective O'Hara was kidnapped. McNab felt his stomach drop. Lassiter had told him not to mention it to anyone. If he did, he was dead.
"Detective McNab, my office, five minutes," Chief Vick snapped out as she passed by his desk.
McNab jumped as she startled him and then mumbled a "Yes ma'am." He hurried to straighten his tie and brush the crumbs from his morning bagel off himself.
"Close the door behind you, Detective." The chief didn't look up when McNab came into the room. "I hear you had an interesting night," the chief commented still absorbed in the report in front of her.
McNab's stomach dropped even further. She knew. She had to know; maybe Dobson had followed him to Lassiter's apartment. Maybe the police department had installed security lenses in his eyes and so whatever he saw they saw. He couldn't tell her about Juliet, but McNab could tell she didn't know that. If she did, there would be a manhunt out right now.
"I didn't expect him to show up after all this time," he blurted out.
The chief snapped her head up to look at him.
"I mean, we've always know he was out there. But we didn't know where and the crime has kept us busy enough that we haven't had time to execute a warrant." McNab was blabbering. "I just didn't think I would find him at Detective Lassiter's house. He's the last person I would expect Shawn Spencer to be hanging around with."
"I thought Tyler had to go to the ER after he fell out of bed." Vick's tone was clipped. "Shawn Spencer was at Detective Lassiter's house? Carlton said he was going to visit his mother."
Buzz wished the floor would open up underneath him and swallow him right then and there.
OoO OoO OoO
"Why does her boyfriend live all the way out here?" Shawn complained as he and Lassiter surveyed the secluded cabin. "There's no cable, and I bet the internet quality sucks."
"It's not his normal home." Lassiter made his way through the gravel drive to the four room cabin. "He has an apartment in town. This is something he got from his parents after they passed away."
"You approve of this ridiculous relationship?" Shawn asked, pulling his sleeve down over his hand before he cautiously opened the door.
"I just know a lot about it." Lassiter quickly changed topics. "This wasn't unlocked the last time I was here."
"Key, under the fake plant. It's as bad as Gus' old hide-a-key." Shawn stopped as he said Gus' name. Of course Shawn had thought about his best friend almost everyday since he left Santa Barbara, but he hadn't really talked about it to anyone.
OoO OoO OoO
Shawn had called. Shawn had emailed. Shawn had even had written a letter and mailed it to Gus. But that stubborn best friend of his had refused to call him back. He hadn't even responded to any of the adorable bunny emails that Shawn forwarded to him on a weekly basis.
It was four weeks of silence. Shawn was traveling around the country. He had ended up in Chicago for a while, working at a carnival for the summer. Not as a psychic, but as a pickle stand worker. He made deep fried pickles, which were actually pretty delicious, but no one ever bought them because they liked them. They bought them because they wanted to laugh at their friends eating deep friend pickles.
It had been four weeks of silence, when Shawn got a voicemail from Gus.
"Don't think that I don't know who keeps sending me bunny emails, Shawn. Don't think that I don't know it's you that calls me every day." Gus was angry. Angrier then Shawn had ever seen him. "Here's the thing, Shawn. In all those years that you pretended and lied to everyone we knew, you never realized that it wasn't just your reputation on the line. It was mine too." There was a pause as Gus regained his momentum. "So stop with the emails, stop with the phone calls. Stop with everything until you can come face things here." There had been a click and then silence.
That was the day Shawn lost his best friend. That was the day that Shawn packed up and moved to Ohio. Moved away from the pickle cart and got a job at the aquarium.
OoO OoO OoO
"If you're done reminiscing," Lassiter broke into Shawn's thoughts.
"Right," Shawn swallowed and slowly entered the cabin. He gave it a quick overview. There was a main room, with a fireplace, couches and a TV. A doorway in the back led to a kitchen and a doorway to the left led to what was probably the bed room. Another door to the left was either a bathroom or another bedroom.
Shawn raised a hand to his temple, then caught the pained look in Lassiter's eyes and pretended he had been intending to run a hand through his hair.
"Just cut it out with the," Lassiter paused, "psychic stuff."
"I have no idea what-" Shawn tried to pretend he didn't know what Lassiter meant.
"The word psychic turned into a four-letter word the day you left." The detective hated that he was the one who had to explain this all to Spencer. "Every time someone said your name, O'Hara burst into tears. Finally we started referring to you as 'the psychic' but that just made it worse. In the end, we put your case to rest and tried to forget about you."
"I'm still me, with or without the psy- supernatural abilities." Shawn protested.
"You lied to us, Spencer. You lied to every single person you met over the past five years, and then when we found out you didn't even have the decency to come face up to it like a man."
Shawn didn't know how to respond to that. It hurt that Lassiter was being so blunt. It hurt that he had never really thought about who exactly he had told he was a psychic. The first year it had been something he had needed to remember, but the years after that being psychic was natural.
"What did you see that prompted the hand thing?" Lassiter tried to get back on track with what they were supposed to be doing.
"Just that there aren't any pictures. If I were dating Jul- someone, I would have pictures all over the place."
"Some people don't like pictures,"
"But there's nothing here. No scratchy homemade blankets that smell like your grandmother. No suitcases." Shawn flung his arms around the room.
"What are you saying, Spencer?" Lassiter crossed his arms.
"That they were never here on Monday. They went on vacation somewhere else."
"How are we going to find out where?" Lassiter frowned. "I can't go to the station and look up O'Hara's credit history."
"We should be able to do it on your computer at home." Shawn thought about it. "Yes, I should be able to do it from there."
OoO OoO OoO
As they drove back to the city, Lassiter tried not to think about all the time they were spending running around. He didn't want to think about it as wasted time.
When they got back to his house, Lassiter grabbed his laptop from the desk. He was about to open it, when Shawn slammed it shut.
"What the hell, Spencer!" Lassiter glared at him.
Shawn held a finger to his lips and motioned through the front window, pulling the curtain back just enough for Lassiter to see that there was a patrol car pulling up to the curb.
"Damn it, McNab must have blabbed." Lassiter hissed.
"He has the iron will of a two year old." Shawn muttered. "Grab the laptop and everything from the case board. We're going to need a new bat cave."
Lassiter threw everything into his briefcase. "I know a place, but if you complain once about it I will shoot you in the knee cap."
OoO OoO OoO
McNab had been forced to sit at his desk for the rest of the day. The chief had informed the other detectives that McNab was more than happy to file any reports they had sitting on their desks. That meant McNab now had a stack of folders six inches high, waiting for him to type up summaries and submit them to the record keeper.
The task was monotonous enough that McNab was able to keep tabs on the chief while he worked. He knew she had sent a patrol car over to Lassiter's house, but without physical evidence that the detective was harboring a fugitive they couldn't do anything except sit and wait.
"What do you mean you haven't seen him?" Vick's door was open and she was on the phone with the officer outside the house.
McNab made sure that the chief wasn't watching him and pulled out his cell phone. He dialed Lassiter's number and hoped that the detective would just let it go to voice mail.
"What is it, McNab?"
No such luck, McNab winced. "I accidently told, sir,"
"I know, my house is surrounded. Spencer and I had to sneak through Mrs. Robertson's yard. Thankfully we parked my car in the back." Lassiter's voice was not happy.
"I only said that... he was here, not the other part." McNab glanced around the station to make sure no one was paying attention to him.
Lassiter sighed. "Just, if anything happens let me know."
"Will do, sir," McNab quickly hung up and got back to working on the reports.