"How was your eleven o' clock?" Maura asked. Since she had taken a seat next to Jane on the call room sofa, nothing had been said. Never had the din of an air conditioning unit proved as ominous; she had to cut through it somehow.
"Routine," Jane answered, pausing for a good while, "listen, Maura. There's somethin' I need to tell you."
"Is it what you didn't want to burden me with before?"
"Yeah. 'Cept it didn't have anything to do with you then. It does now."
"I see."
Jane exhaled. "Ok, so, my brother, Tommy, he's… he's involved with some people. Some not so good people."
Maura's eyes crinkled in confusion. "and what about that has to do with me?"
"Remember Mr. Brannon? The laryngeal ORIF?" Jane asked, her voice low, as another doctor thought about entering before receiving a glare from her.
"Yes. He's still touch and go from this point," Dr. Isles answered.
"Yeah, he is. Well, I guess… I guess my brother had him beat up," said the brunette, waiting for Maura's response.
"Oh my God." It was simple, and it was enough.
"Yeah. Only, I think Tommy intended to have him killed, and the guy they recruited didn't succeed."
"And how does this involve the two of us being followed?"
A sigh. "I guess the guys in Brannon's court thought he was dead, and now they found out that he came through this trauma bay. And they think we tried to help Tommy out, by keeping him alive, so he and his people could extort Brannon. So we're implicated and a threat to them." Jane said severely, as though it hurt her pride to say such things aloud.
"But that's simply not true," Maura reasoned.
"I know that. And I've tried very hard, as you may have heard, to convey that to Tommy. That he needs to right his wrongs. Make sure you and I are protected from all this."
"That's absurd: why haven't you told the police? Your… your brother, Frankie?"
"Frankie knows that Tommy's people are involved, Maura, I guarantee it."
"But you know for a fact that Tommy did it. You could make it all go away," Maura reasoned. She saw Jane stiffen in her periphery and wondered if that last statement should have made it from brain to mouth.
"He's my brother, Maura," Jane said coldly. She looked at her friend, close to her on the sofa, and regretted her tone immediately. "You got siblings?"
"No," said Maura, meekly. "No I do not. I can imagine that this is hard for you."
"Yeah, it is. But, I'm hoping it's something I can handle."
Maura chuckled humorlessly.
"What?" Jane said.
"Nothing, It's just... strange and dangerous men were following us. I should be terrified and take no confidence whatsoever that you can solve the problem. But I am not and I have confidence in you," Maura smiled as she shook her head.
"So… you're not mad? You still want to hang out with me?" Jane inquired with one eye open and teeth bared in anticipation of what response was to come.
"I'm very angry. A week of knowing you and I'm being tailed by some criminal? But, against what I consider my better judgment, yes. I do still want to hang out with you," said Maura. She patted Jane's wrist when the other woman exhaled theatrically. "Just promise me that if this gets out of hand any more than it already has, you will call the police."
Jane nodded seriously. "I promise."
"Should I be scared that you're choosing the hangout today?" Jane smirked as she approached the trauma desk. Maura sported a chiding look in response, and Nina marveled at the two of them.
"You should not, especially because you went to school at BCU. Public open night at the Observatory is nothing to be afraid of, either," Dr. Isles said before she spun on her heel with an upturned nose toward the head and neck center. She had been called in by Jane to establish a particularly tricky airway, and of course had accomplished it in minutes.
One week had passed since their discussion of Tommy's situation. Jane kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the drama to come to a head, but it hadn't. It had been a quiet week in the trauma bay, and apparently a quiet week in the streets of Boston.
"Y'all going stargazing?" asked Nina, her words pulling Jane from her inspection of the retreating form of the otolaryngologist on call.
"I don't want to hear it, Holiday," Jane barked with no bite.
"Well that's too damn bad, Jane," Nina countered. "I mean, we don't even do those things. And we've been working together since practically day one."
"Maura's fun to hang out with. She's funny and nice and wicked smart," Jane shrugged, sipping on her hospital coffee. Not very good, but she needed the caffeine to get through the next eight hours of her twelve hour shift.
"Yeah, and wicked hot, Larry Bird. Don't think I don't see what's happening."
"What's happening?!" Jane nearly shouted, defensive.
"What's happening is that girl wanna be the only one on your team, CLEARLY," explained the trauma nurse. Jane blinked at her. "And, you're over here gushin' at her internal fixations. I didn't even have to do any work. Y'all did it for me."
"You know, the more time you and I spend together, the less and less I understand you," said Jane before gathering some files to take to her office.
"Wicked hot, Jane," Nina called after her.
"Thanks for noticin', Nina," Dr. Rizzoli countered while she turned her head back and winked.
The hours slithered on, always winding and never speeding when she had something to look forward to. Those files had mocked her since she picked them up: reports needed to be filed and signatures needed to be applied, but damned if that would happen in the next few minutes. Jane had seen about four more people wheeled into trauma after her interesting conversation with Nina. Two gunshot wounds, an MVA, and a TBI - all critical, but approaching stable.
She took pride in what she did, in the work she accomplished. Her father taught her that much; for all his problems with loyalty and duty, he honored a hard day's work. Yet, it was also he who taught her that some things could wait until tomorrow – this paperwork certainly qualified in her mind, so she rose up from her desk, grabbed her trenchcoat and change of clothes, and headed for the locker room.
Once there, she tossed the bag onto the bench in front of her locker, threw off her scrubs, and peered down at her body, clad only in a black bra and some women's boxer briefs. Wicked hot, she thought to herself with a smirk, recalling Nina's words earlier. Her body pleased her, but she was by no means indulgent. She preferred clothes and keeping mum on the topic of sex, like a good catholic: that didn't mean she didn't think she looked good out of them or hated having it. But, with her hang out with Maura at night, at the BCU Observatory, layers were a necessity, and she was thankful.
It was an off day for the ALCS against the Mariners, and she'd agreed to go. Maura had commented that she couldn't watch another baseball game without something fun in between. Jane had balked at the statement, but had to admit that she looked forward to the evening, too: this just meant that she needed to plan her outfit with care and Boston cold in mind. So, she shoved on jeans, thick socks, her favorite black boots, and a dark grey sweater over a t shirt. She shrugged her coat on after that and, with a wave to a few of her stodgier colleagues, boarded the elevator that would take her to the exit.
It surprised her to see Maura Isles, in her brand new Prius, waiting for her just outside the automatic doors. She rolled the passenger window down. "I did my undergrad at BCU, you know. I figured I can at least get us there," she said.
Jane chuckled as she got in. The chill had immediately set in at 7PM, and she watched her breath creep away into the bruised atmosphere after she had settled in her seat. "I should hope so. How'd you know I'd be coming out right now?"
"I didn't," Maura admitted. "You caught me on my way to park. I was going to text you my whereabouts."
"Well, I guess we have perfect timing then," said Jane.
They eased into a conversation revolving around swallowing work and the debate about otolaryngologists working with the esophagus until they pulled up to the campus and parked near the astronomy building.
"I managed to procure tickets from an old friend who works in the department now," Maura said as they walked toward the building together. A few students brushed past them here or there, but most were either gone home, in class, or at the library. The sight of their old haunts infused the both of them with the nostalgia of the newness of higher learning, of learning for learning's sake, without needing to apply it to a life skill. Lights illuminated the winding pathway to the doors of the building, and something about the evening's crisp called to Jane's heart.
She studied Maura then, when they entered the doors and her Prada heels clacked against the buffered tile. Poster printouts of stars adorned the walls, work done by students past and present, and Jane thought it fitting that among them all, Maura shone brightest with her gold bangle and earrings against the black of her coat. She resembled each poster, a smattering of explosive light on the milky expanse of space, with one key exception: the void in those photos expanded forever, remained shapeless and nameless and quite simply unknowable. Maura, however, was all those things in the silhouette of a woman, all of those things mapped onto the curvy ebb and flow of flesh. Wicked hot, she gulped.
"Jane?" a honey voice called, snapping her back into the present.
"Huh?" she called out in the empty hall of classrooms and labs, just a few steps behind Maura.
"The stairway to the observatory is here," Maura said, pointing a delicate finger toward a door that simply stated: Roof.
Jane nodded, too busy compartmentalizing a brand new sort of feeling to respond with words. They climbed the stairs up and walked out on the roof of the building. It certainly had been awhile since the trauma surgeon had seen her city this way.
Maura, however, had never seen the skyline quite like this. "My goodness," she gulped, steadying herself by threading her arm through Jane's. The jolt of cold air caused it to seem natural to the both of them. She handed an attendant their tickets; he directed them to a telescope, and they sat on the fold out chairs provided. "I wonder if the night is clear enough for us to view Fomalhaut," she whispered as she took the tool in her hands.
"I'd be fine just seein' the city like this for a few hours," Jane replied, whistling at the clarity with which she saw the skyscrapers. "Good choice, Maura."
"You and I both like science, as much as I think you are loath to admit it," Dr. Isles said smugly when Jane tried to protest. "So it was a natural choice."
"Well, whatever the motivation is, we're here now. That's what counts, right?" Dr. Rizzoli asked, and Maura nodded, pulling her down by the sleeve into the seat next to her own.
They watched the sky for longer than most of the other patrons that night.
Jane thought about that night amongst constellations often in the two weeks since it had happened. A wall had been torn down by it: Maura trusted her, wanted to be around her, despite the newness of their connection. She would not deny the power that such a fact produced in her: her shoulders cocked back a little further as she pushed through the halls, her hand was faster, surer, in the operating theater.
In the twenty-one days since their talk in the call room, they had seen each other outside of work for seventeen of them. Maura had convinced her to take up running as her partner on the weekend mornings, despite Jane's insistence that she used basketball for cardio, and Jane had been to Maura's place with pre-work coffee and tea more times than she cared to admit.
She would not deny to herself that she found Maura attractive. She would deny the hell out of it if Nina or anyone else asked, though. Being a private person, it came with the territory. However, being the object of Jane Rizzoli's attraction, however infant, also meant being the object of her protection and loyalty. This was why, at 6PM, Jane left her office to drive by Maura's apartment. Three weeks of silence on the part of Tommy and his world of crooks did not mean that at any moment, everything couldn't go haywire. So, until she heard the personal ok, with proof, from her brother, making sure Maura was safe was one of her top priorities.
She hopped into her A4 and pulled out onto the main road, intending to stop for only a moment or two to confirm her friend's safety, and then she planned to go home and sleep off the effects of the past week on call. When she pulled up, she saw a man climbing up the steps to open the door with his key, so she hustled behind him to avoid the hassle of the call up. Maura lived in a sprawling condo on the top floor, and despite climbing in the elevator with three other people, Jane was the last to disembark.
The silence of the hallway allowed her ears to be assaulted with the rushing of her blood and the pounding of her heart. This unsettled her. She tiptoed toward Maura's door, listened for any sounds that signaled danger, and then crossed the hall til she reached the end.
Intent on knocking, she suspended her curled knuckles in the air when she saw that the door was already open.
It left a crack of light that spread out from the long entrance hall, and Jane could see that all the lights seemed to be on. Her spirits and stomach plummeted, and when she pushed open the door with her shoulder, she grabbed the walking stick Maura had set out from her travels. She gripped it tight, like a baseball bat, and one by one, stalked through the rooms of the condo, hoping to find nothing amiss.
Instead, she found that the living room and master bedroom were in disarray. It looked like a lazy robbery, but Jane knew it was an orchestrated break in. Hit the rooms in the home that were most comfortable, most lived in – cause psychological damage. As soon as she was certain that no one was in the home, she pulled out her cell phone to dial Maura and prayed.
"This is Dr. Isles," answered her distinct voice on the other end of the line.
"Oh thank Christ," Jane exhaled, louder than she realized she was going to. "You alright?"
"Jane? What's wrong?" Maura answered a question with a question, concern bleeding into her voice.
"I'm at your place, Maura; you know, to check on you? Well, I get here and your door's open and shit's been thrown around in the living room. There's been a break-in."
A/N: Thank you for reading and for all your kind comments! Leave me a review to let me know what you think of this chapter.