Chapter 11 BC----Here's the latest chapter of this FF story. Hope you enjoy it and thanks for the comments!
"You must be Uncle Roy," she had said when she first saw him.
He nodded.
"And you're C.J."
She smiled back at him, feeling at ease with Matt's uncle.
"That's what he tells me."
Roy had kept their plates filled with plenty of wonderful food and glasses filled with his freshly squeezed fruit juice. The women, Fran grudgingly, had complimented him on his culinary skills. Roy explained that he had picked them up while working in more than few kitchens as part of covert operations.
"There's plenty that can be learned by just being a good listener," he said.
Rhonda nodded at that.
"Yeah, when I was a waitress, I heard secrets from men they wouldn't tell their own wives," she said, "Well actually, especially their own wives."
"I know," Roy said, "I worked as a waiter once in an exclusive Italian restaurant where some KGB men held regular meetings in the corner booth. Plotting to infiltrate the White House. "
"Sounds exciting," Rhonda said.
C.J. listened to Roy talk and tried to remember him, but drew a blank. Still, she felt very comfortable around him and that must mean something. She ate plenty of his food, having felt her appetite return in a rush once her infection had abated.
"Those agents are going to come back," she said, quietly.
Matt looked over at her.
"We'll be gone by then," she said, "We should be leaving for Arizona in the morning."
She nodded, not knowing if she felt ready to go back there where her life had begun. But knowing that she couldn't run away from it, not if she wanted a better life to return to when they were done.
"So you came back to L.A.?"
Both Matt and Roy looked at C.J. who appeared to be sorting out something inside her mind. Roy nodded.
"I hadn't seen my nephew for years," Roy explained, "His father and I…we didn't see eye to eye and he died before I could set it right. I knew I had to do much better with his son."
"So you helped him when he came to you?"
"He needed my connections to the underworld," Roy said, "Most of the research on brainwashing and mind control was done by the covert organizations."
"I think I tried to help him…"
"You nearly died in the process," Roy said, "My nephew knew then he had drawn you into too deeply."
"He risked arrest to get me to a hospital?"
Roy nodded.
"You would have died if he hadn't."
She sighed, her brow furrowing.
"I didn't want to tell him that I'd been shot."
Roy looked at her seriously.
"Your life was more important than his freedom," he said, "Fortunately he had a friend in the police department to help him escape."
C.J. nodded.
"I think I remember that."
"When we caught all the bad guys with your help of course," Roy said, "I picked up stakes and moved out here to be closer to my family."
"You had a son…"
She saw the older man's eyes dim and wished she could take back her words. He saw her indecision and shook his head.
"No it's okay," he said, "My son Will has been MIA for years. Back when he and Matt were in Vietnam."
"That must be very difficult," she said, "to not know what happened to him."
Roy nodded.
"Sometimes I think even if he is dead, it's better to know," he said, "Others, it gives me hope that he's still alive and will come home some day."
She reached out to touch his arm.
"I hope that he does return."
C.J. didn't have any memories of Matt's cousin that she recalled but she could tell from Roy's expression and his words that he deeply missed him.
"Would you like some more juice," Roy asked.
She nodded and he refilled her glass.
They sat near Baby and tried to map out the prostitution ring as much as they could do so based on what the super computer had revealed to them and what the women remembered.
"It looks like Butz and Piser were in partnership with each other," Matt said, "and one of them is dead."
"Shot to death," Roy said.
C.J. nodded.
"Then I didn't kill him," she said, "but who did?"
"That's the question we're going have to answer," Matt said, "Because the authorities don't seem all that intent on figuring it themselves."
Roy agreed.
"They don't want to see the truth," he said, "That Bannon County and probably much higher is embedded with corruption."
Fran snorted.
"Tell us something we don't know."
"We're going to have to be able to prove it," Matt said, "And Baby's been a great help."
"She usually is," C.J. said, "Isn't she?"
Matt turned to look at her.
"More times than I can count," he said, "But she seems to like you better than me."
C.J. smiled at that.
"Maybe it's a woman's touch."
She stood outside on the helipad, a place she sensed she spent most of her time when she needed to think about something. Matt came out with his drink to join her as she looked out into the incredible span of L.A. covered as usual with a layer of brown haze in the direction of downtown. Look over towards the ocean, and the sky looked crystal clear. A study in contrasts, she thought.
"It's quite a view isn't it?"
She turned to face him.
"I spend a lot of time out here don't I?"
"Some," he said, "I do too. Everything looks so different from up here than down at ground level."
"I see what you mean," she said, "I feel much smaller up here, but I feel like my problems are smaller too."
"We're going to take care of these men," he said, "Then you can come back home."
She turned to face him.
"I don't know what home is Houston," she said, "That's what I call you isn't it?"
He hid a smile.
"At various times, yes," he said, "See, your memory's coming back in bits and pieces."
She frowned.
"I wish it would come back faster."
He looked out at the skyline.
"It will," he said, "You just have to give yourself a chance and have faith that you'll remember who you are soon enough."
"And what if I don't?"
He reached to tilt her chin up with his hand and she didn't flinch.
"Then you'll start from scratch if necessary," he said, "and you'll have friends who will be there to help you."
She smiled.
"Chris and your uncle have been so nice," she said, "considering I don't really remember them."
"They care about you just like I do," Matt said, "They want to do whatever it takes to help you get your life back."
She nodded.
"I'm so lucky to have friends like them," she said, "Like I'm lucky to have you."
"C.J.," he said, "They feel the same way about you. You've helped many people through your work as a lawyer and through working with me with the agency."
"I remember parts of it but not a whole lot."
"We've worked on cases all over the world," Matt said, "We'd been very busy the past several months and I didn't want you to go to Santa Fe on the business trip because you'd been traveling a lot."
She knit her brow.
"I wanted to go, didn't I?"
"You said that you could handle it," he said, "You'd combine your work schedule and vacation time by driving there."
"And you said something about driving through a barren desert for hundreds of miles not being much of a pleasure trip."
He nodded.
"You remember?"
She tilted her head.
"Not very much of it," she said, "I remember thinking that you were right. It was mostly desert but I ran into some friends in Phoenix and had dinner there."
"That was the last time we'd heard from you."
Rhonda and Fran came out to join them and to check out the view.
"I don't remember much about that," C.J. said, "Just that I was lying on the ground, and there was fire everywhere. I looked up and saw a bunny rabbit…"
"Hey, maybe that's where you came up with your name," Rhonda said.
C.J. thought back and believed that might have been true. She remembered the heat of the flames on her face, the aches in her muscles as she tried to stand up and the sun beating down on her face as she walked from one town to the next.
"I tried to get a ride but no one stopped," she said, "then I walked into that diner and met Rhonda."
Rhonda shook her head.
"I knew you were some fancy broad," she said, "I guess I was right."
C.J. furrowed her brow in deep thought.
"The diner owner must have been in on it too," she said, "Because suddenly Butz and a deputy showed up and said they were taking us in for solicitation."
Rhonda laughed.
"Like I'd be interested in that dirty old man," she said, "What crap."
"I tried to run away, but he grabbed me from behind," she said, "I tried to knock him down to get him to let me go but I couldn't get away."
Matt looked at both women.
"He must have called Butz to come pick you up," he said, "He'd probably worked out an arrangement with him in case any women wandered in that wouldn't be missed."
Fran nodded.
"I think some of the other girls mentioned that when they came in," she said, "But someone did care about her enough to keep looking."
"I guess that they didn't anticipate that I'd show up," Matt surmised.
"Probably not," Fran said, "They thought that no one cared about most of the women and they'd be right."
"They're going to be held accountable this time," Matt said,
"What if they get away," Fran said.
"We'll make sure they won't," he said, "that they go exactly where they deserve to go which is prison."
C.J. looked at the certainty in his voice when he said that and wanted to believe him. She somehow sensed in her other world that she would but now, she still needed to figure out what she could be certain of in a world of uncertainty. But she also realized that Butz and Piser had been operating their prostitution ring for a while before it had caught up with them. In large part, because most of the women they victimized didn't have anyone out there looking for them.
She had sat in that jail cell when they first put her in there with Rhonda, wondering if she would spend the rest of her life inside, with no way of knowing where she had come from or who she had been. Had anyone missed her enough to come looking for her? Now she felt luckier than most of the women she had known inside that lockup, that she did have someone who cared enough to do more than just look for her.
Rhonda had tried to help her find her memory, by asking her questions about her past which still remained a mystery to her. She had remembered a birthday party when she had been a little girl, the day of her father's funeral when they had buried him in the cold ground and then the man sitting beside her hospital bed who turned out to be her best friend. Glimpses of memories that hadn't told her much but had left her wanting for more while she had sat in jail
Roy came out to join them.
"They had something on the news about Piser's murder," he said, "Butz told the media that C.J. was responsible for killing him."
C.J. looked up at Matt.
"That's not true," she said, "It was one of them."
"Maybe even Butz," Fran added.
"Everything's going to be okay," Matt said, "They don't even have a murder weapon."
Roy looked serious.
"They do now," he said, "They found it on the garbage dump and they claim that it has C.J.'s finger prints on it."
C.J.'s eyes widened.
"How can that be," she said, "I didn't touch any gun."
"Who does it belong to," Matt asked, "Did they release that information?"
"It was Piser's gun like the agents told us," Roy said, "and I'm sure the ballistics will match the bullet taken out of his body."
"That might be," Matt said, "but she didn't kill him."
"It might not matter at this point," Roy said, "if they put another dragnet out looking for her and the other women."
"Uncle Roy, those men are the criminals," Matt said, "and C.J. was only defending herself against what Piser."
C.J. just looked at both of them talking back and forth.
"I've got to get out of here," she said, "I can't let them find me with you."
She began to walk towards the penthouse. Matt followed her.
"C.J. you can't leave," he said, "They'll find you much quicker. They've probably got the airports and train stations cased."
She countered with her hands on her hips.
"I don't want you to be arrested as an accomplice."
He stepped closer.
"Why don't you let me take that chance," he said, watching her indecision.
"Because I don't want you to get hurt or imprisoned because of me," she said finally, "You've done so much for us already."
"I want to do that," he said, "When I needed you, you've never hesitated to be there."
"He cares about you a lot," Rhonda added, "You're lucky to have someone like that in your corner."
C.J. knew that but that was why she felt she had to leave him. Visions had passed through her mind of other times when his life had been endangered, including when he himself had been shot because he had chosen a dangerous line of work. She didn't want to add to them.
"I just wanted him to let me go, to get his hands off of my body" she said, "So I pushed him off of me and he fell and hit his head."
Fran scowled.
"He deserved it," she said, "You just did what you had to protect yourself."
"C.J., someone else killed him after you left," Matt said, "and we're going to find out who's responsible."
She looked up at him, drawn by the resolve in his voice but inside, she felt less than sure.
