To say that Shawn was unhappy with his current circumstances would have been the understatement of the century. Lassiter had personally escorted him away from the crime scene right after he had given them the break that they needed. He was now awkwardly sitting at his desk in the Psych office doing anything he could to ignore the presence of his burly bodyguards.
Shawn already felt confined – despite the fact that he'd only had bodyguards for the last couple of hours. He was a free spirit, dammit! He catapulted his chair backwards as he suddenly stood up.
"Gus, we're going to the station!" Shawn announced.
Gus had just opened his mouth to protest the forceful decision Shawn made on his behalf when he noticed Shawn tilt his head ever so slightly towards the guards. He narrowed his eyes, "This better not be a plan to ditch the guards, dude. As annoying as they are, they're here for your own protection."
In response to the comment, the guards, who were standing about 5 feet to his left, moved so they flanked him on both sides. "Actually, I thought that if we went to the station filled with cops and guns, the guards might BACK OFF!"
The guards took a half a step backwards and the fake psychic gave Gus a pointed look. His friend looked a little startled by his sudden shout but shook it off and grabbed his car keys. "You better not be pulling my leg, Shawn."
"I'm calling shotgun," Shawn said happily, bouncing out the door towards Gus' car. His bodyguards were careful to stay within three feet of him at all times.
"Hell, no. I can't have a walking target in my company car. You're riding with your new friends."
"Please tell me you're not on the Spencer revenge bandwagon too," Shawn gasped. He pouted and put on his best set of puppy-dog eyes. "It's me buddy, your best friend since kindergarten. We don't do revenge. We deal with our issues by downing pineapple smoothies and eating jerk chicken."
Gus smirked and quickly got into his car and locked the doors so Shawn couldn't follow him in. The pharmaceutical salesman put on his seatbelt and gave a mock-wave before pulling out of the carpark next to their office.
Shawn stared into the distance for a couple of minutes before turning to his bodyguards. "Is there any way that we can beat his smug ass to the station?"
The two guards looked at each other before giving him a blank stare. Shawn was about to tell them to forget it when he was pulled into the backseat of their car. As the African American man drove wildly, the ginger-haired man pulled out a cell phone and typed in a message.
From where he was sitting, Shawn couldn't make out what they were trying to do. All he knew was that, in exactly twenty minutes, they had made it to the station and he was feeling a little woozy from the erratic driving. Despite the impressive time, he still doubted that they would have beaten Gus.
'Don't these guys know how to take a joke?' he thought as he tumbled out of the car and onto the ground. He managed to get up and walk unsteadily to the Station's front steps where he sat down and waited until his heart rate slowed back down to a normal speed.
He was so absorbed in calming himself down that he didn't notice until the very last moment that a bright, blue car had just pulled into the parking lot. A door slammed and his friend stomped towards him and the bodyguards flanking him. Surprisingly, they ihad/i beaten Gus.
Gus irritated voice yelled out, "How the heck did you get here before me, Shawn!?"
Shawn smiled knowingly and, deciding to take advantage of the situation, faked a yawn. He slowly got up and stretched himself out before walking up the stairs and into the station. As he walked up, he heard his friend mumble something about a conspiracy between traffic lights and pedestrians at crossings.
When he entered the police station, Shawn was surprised to see that they had definitely implemented a more rigid I.D. checking regime at the door. In fact, when officers patted the two consultants down before entering, Shawn began to regret his decision to escape to the station.
Lassiter walked up to them and smirked, "I'm so sorry, all visitor's without official I.D. will have to be thoroughly searched before entering the precinct."
"You're not sorry at all, Lassielass," Shawn responded. "I bet you were looking forward to mocking us about this."
"A little," the man admitted unabashedly.
The men walked into the precinct to where Ewing and Juliet were standing next to a data projector and discussing something. Nearby, there were some computer nerds typing rapidly into their computers.
"What's up?" Shawn asked the pair.
Jules smiled at her boyfriend and gestured to the graphs that were being projected in front of them. "We're trying to find a pattern to The Broker's victims but so far none of the connections we could think of have garnered anything. If you could think of anything we've missed, feel free to pass it on to our programmers."
"What have you got so far?" a dark-suited, blonde-haired woman and a brunette man that Shawn had never seen before planted themselves next to Ewing.
"We've tried sequencing the Date of Death of the victims, the times they may have been turned, when they joined and left the academy… but we still don't have any conclusive findings. It was naïve to think that adding new information to the mix would change anything."
"Excuse me, but who are they?" Shawn cut in.
"My team," Ewing explained. "Steve and Mandy will be the other half of your protective detail; they'll be taking the night shift. You'll see them in a couple of hours when they take over from Randy and Burt."
Shawn filed this information in his head but for the most part decided that it was inconsequential to the case at hand. He turned to the graphs and studied them for a second. There was something to this case that just didn't add up but he couldn't put his finger on it.
Since desperate times called for desperate measures, Shawn closed his eyes and brought his hands to his head. He could almost hear his father telling him to i'close his eyes and focus'/i.
"Are you getting a vision, Shawn?" he heard his girlfriend ask.
He 'shhed' her as he continued to picture all the elements of the case at hand. Eventually, the pieces of the puzzle began to put themselves together in his mind.
"Stop with the psychic charade already," he heard Lassiter grumble.
"Shh, I'm thinking."
"iThinking?/i" Lassiter repeated.
Shawn inwardly cursed himself before covering for himself, "Yeah. The spirits are being a lot more cryptic lately but that's not the point… I've found the hidden connection between all the victims."
