Stupid

Chapter Twelve

He decided, as he opened his car door and stepped out, that he detested guns right now.

Rubbing his face tiredly, needing nothing so much as a good night's sleep and, from the headache pounding his temples, a good amount of Aspirin, he reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out the gun, grimacing at how many bullets she had left in the clinic, having spent all of them when she finally snapped.

Popping out the clip, he shook his head unenthusiastically, seeing that, indeed, it was empty. They had all those little pieces of evidence littered around now, all the things that could trace back to her and, far worse than that, he had no idea what had happened to all the rest of them. Two had gone into the bastard…

The rest were God only knew where.

He wiped the clip furiously with a towel he had brought with him, scrubbing at it feverishly as he sought to erase any lingering traces to be followed back to her. The rest of the gun got an identical treatment, his sharp eyesight a plus in the dim light of the night before, finally, he stopped, using the clothe to pick up the pieces and headed into the deeper shadows of the forest.

The clip went under a tree, hidden into a mix of roots and dirt, his fingers tearing up some of the mess and shoving it down, kicking leaves back over it and studying the spot for long moments before turning away and heading for a different spot to get rid of the other piece. He finally found it nearby the remains of what had once been a cabin and, after circling a few times, he crouched and removed a hunk of rotting wood from what had once been a porch.

Even if they did think there was some metal here, there were enough nails and, nearby, a hammer to throw them off and, sighing, he slid it into the spot available, covering it with dirt before replacing the plank of rotted wood, straightening and checking once or twice, nodding to himself before he turned around and headed to his car, climbing in and stowing the rag under his seat, which he would toss in the fireplace when he got home.

Now, the question would become whether or not Tad Martin survived the next thirty-two hours.

Joanna Daniels was, except for the hideous fashion sense, an extremely gifted human being. Since her teenage years, she had been fascinated with psychology and, more than that, the minds and hearts of abuse survivors. Anyone who thought to trace this fascination back would find themselves meeting a child who had once lived down the street from her, a boy who had never been rescued.

She could remember, in stark detail, the last time she had seen him, standing before his front door, staring up at the peeling entry with wide eyes and a pale face and, hours later, standing by her father and her dad behind the police tape with the rest of the crowd, she had wondered if, just maybe, he had known what was going to happen to him when he finally took those last steps.

Jonathon Lavery had become her fascination.

Stirring her coffee sullenly, she gazed down at it, as if she could find the answers to everything if she just looked deep enough. But, no… of course not… answers never came that easily, not to her and not to anyone else she knew. Sighing, pressing her hand against a temple tiredly, she dropped the stirrer against the side of the cup and leaned back in the cafeteria seat, staring at the wall across from her with glazed eyes.

And then, quite by accident, she caught a movement and much like a hunter dog, she stilled and straightened in her seat, leaning forward in her chair and watching Jamie Martin from across the large room, spotting him standing in the far corner, staring with his usual expression as he smacked his hand furiously against the soda machine.

No one was coming to help the Lab, of course.

Standing, running hands down her clothes, Joanna took off across the cafeteria, finally finding someone she could speak to about her patient, as wrong as that might sound to some people. Didn't matter, not when it came to a case like Jonathon Lavery's and, if what she was beginning to think was true, than she needed any insight she could possibly get her hands on… legal or not.

Reaching past him, she smacked the side of the machine once, near the coin deposit and, with a strangely peaceful sounding whir from within, a bottle of grape soda popped into view—and then, with a hiss, it exploded when he set his hand on it, spraying him and the machine with a liberal coating of bright purple froth and his strangled yelp of surprise filled her ears.

Looking over her shoulders, she felt a touch of pity for the boy when she saw Joe Martin—the boy's own grandfather—bent over his lunch, shoulders shaking and tears streaming down his face from laughter, struggling to hide himself from view as he, apparently, lost all hold on his sanity.

Pulling a dollar from her pocket, she inserted it into the machine, pressed the top button and then, as needed, gave the massive shape a proper smack on the side, stepping back as a bottle of Sprite Zero dropped neatly into view. Bending, scooping it up, she twisted off the lid and took a long swallow before reaching out and patting a soggy shoulder, nodding to the exit. "Come on, James, we need to talk."

With a slight look of awe on his face as he stared at her, he followed her out of the cafeteria and down the hallway, towards her office. By the time they entered her office, he was noticeably freaked out and, with an insane urge to point at him and laugh herself silly, she reminded herself what she was doing—Jonathon… this was about her patient. "Please sit down, James," she suggested, gesturing to the chair in front of her desk with the half-empty bottle.

He obeyed and, once again fighting that sinister little urge, Joanna took her own seat, leaning back and crossing her legs, settling a cool gaze on the boy, reaching up to brush strands of silver-touched dark hair from her face, tucking it back behind her ears silently, waiting for him to break—which, of course, he did.

"What do you want?" he finally blurted out, and, annoyed without quite understanding why, she snapped, "You live with Jonathon, right?" He gave her such a blatantly nervous look that she sighed and rubbed her forehead, soothing him in irritation, "I need to talk to someone who knows him rather well—I'd go to his sister but, if it is what I think it is, then she'll work just as hard as he does to keep these things hidden."

"What things?"

A bit of her bravado faded slightly and, after a moment of tapping her fingertips along her thighs, she noted, "I've heard the conversations between Jonathon and her brother, Jamie and, if it were up to me, Jonathon would cut any ties he had to his brother. However, and of this I have no doubt, I believe there's something deeper to Jonathon's recent withdrawals in our sessions."

"'Deeper'?" he echoed nervously, patting his hands against his knees in a anxious jig, one foot drumming on the floor as an odd form of accompaniment. He looked to her like nothing so much as a kid who had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar and, while not quite able to put it out in words, there was an almost painful kind of plea in his gaze as he stared at her.

So she clearly wasn't the only one who was worried about Jonathon.

Contemplating the words for a few moments, she finally decided to just go for it—after all, fortune favors the brave, right? "James—" Joanna hesitated and straightened in her seat, lacing her fingers and bracing her elbows on the desktop, regarding him intently. "James, does Jonathon ever talk about his mother?" she finally asked quietly.

They were planning something.

Standing in the doorway to Adam Chandler's office, Erin found herself the source of two pairs of eyes, one sharp and dark with a glittering intelligence and the other a frosty blue, a light of skim of boyish guilt in their depths. The darker pair made her lift one eyebrow in mock suspicion—the quick flick of the blue gaze past her hips, the shift of boyish guilt to something hungry and predatory enough to make a flush fill her neck and face.

Damn.

"What are you two doing?" she questioned, cautiously stepping a bit deeper into the room and crossing arms self-consciously over her chest, regretting her move when the change did nothing but prop her breasts up even more for anybody to look at—not that she minded him looking at them… she was just baffled as to why a man would find them all that interesting.

Any other woman she could understand, but her?

Father and son exchanged a shifty glance and, where he was leaning against the large desk, JR straightened, setting his glass of watered down Scotch on the edge of the wood and grinning at her with such a nervous kind of glee that she half-expected them to bring silly string from behind their backs and nail her.

Crap.

Bad thoughts came when she thought of JR nailing… things…

Reaching up, she pressed her hands against the sides of her face and then pulled fingers through her tresses, giving him a look and finally, with a glance towards the older man, chuckled, "I ask, again, what are you two planning in here with your Scotch and your shifty looks and your evil, little boy grins?"

Adam stood up abruptly, snapping a file folder closed and, gripping it calmly in one hand, he patted his son's shoulder with the other and, pausing, they once again exchanged that look. "You don't forget now—" JR smacked him in the arm quickly, jerking his chin at the redhead watching them with narrowed eyes. "Shush!" he hissed and, sighing, Adam slunk out of the room, closing the door behind him.

"JR—"

"When's your birthday?"

The sudden comment threw her off slightly and she stared for a moment or two before, with a startled blink, she cautiously noted, "March seventeenth—" The blush returned in full at the slight snort of laughter her words got and, smacking him on the chest angrily, she snapped, "Don't you dare make fun of me, Junior!"

He just kept grinning at her and, turning away, he began digging in the pocket of his jeans and, absently, she watched the movements, from the way the shirt rode up a bit to reveal muscled skin to the way she could acutely see the way his back moved beneath his light-colored shirt.

Swallowing at the sight, she rubbed her neck nervously, feeling heated very suddenly as she leaned her head the smallest bit to the left, trying to see more of the bare skin as he dug in the pocket and feeling intensely frustrated when she was unable to get more than a flash. Add to this the sudden itchiness in her own hands and she was suddenly a flustered woman.

By the time he turned back to her, she was breathing a little more rapidly than normally and, setting her eyes on the cloth bag in his hand, she let her arms dangle at her sides, forcing herself to relax and remember that this was her job, damn it! "—too bad I'm a few months late," he was saying.

"What?"

JR upended the bag into his palm and she took an automatic step forward when she caught the glitter of light on something metallic, a glint of brilliant gold. Cramming the pouch back into his pocket, he let the necklace dangle from his fingers and she swallowed, watching it ripple slightly. Looking up at him, she squeaked slightly, "What's that?"

"Something I found when I was picking up Brooke's gift from the antique store," he said lightly, turning his wrist and letting her eyes settle on the end of the jewelry. "It's old but that's what you like, right?" he asked, a queer sort of something at this back of his gaze as he met her gaze, something that left her, again, feeling heated. "I know your tastes run more along thrift-store treasures than Lacey's junk."

Odd, how much it meant that he knew that and didn't laugh at her.

Reaching out cautiously, she caught the strand of precious metal, a deceptively delicate looking strand of dark gold that spun slowly in the light, casting flashes of brilliance and, stepping closer again, she studied the dangling beads of some black stone, something she couldn't identify right at the moment but immediately loved.

Twisting one slowly in her hand, she suddenly let out a sound that could only be called a giggle, something that felt foreign to her but she savored, the giggle bubbling up again in her throat as she smoothed a thumb against one of the stones, enjoying the feel of it. "Like it?" The almost goofy grin on her face was answer enough and he let out a warm laugh, a roll of heat that made her shiver slightly.

He gestured and she obeyed, turning and reaching up to scoop up the hair at the back of her neck, giving him access and she got a sudden shock when hands brushed her pulse, pulling back a heartbeat later to fasten the chain and then leaving her. Turning, still grinning like an idiot, she looked down at the chain, at how it draped down her top.

"You got it because it fits between my breasts, didn't you?" she cracked, only the slight tremble in her voice betraying the emotions that were now surging through her system like fire, smoldering and then blazing within her in some way that defied logic. He grinned, reaching out to lightly brush his thumb against one of the shining beads, lifting an eyebrow in amusement and, again, there was that something in his eyes, something that heated her from the inside out and, beneath his hand, she shivered suddenly, hard enough to catch her breath and make her bones ache for a minute.

"I can see your breasts just fine," he joked quietly, finger catching on the neckline of her blouse, not tugging it down so much as making his presence known to her and, swallowing again, harder than before, she tightened her hands into fists at her sides, her eyes dropping to where she had spotted that skin, bare flashes that taunted her viciously.

"I think Brooke's calling me…"

"What—" was all he managed to get out before, with a flash of red hair and a glitter of gold, she was gone, vanishing out the room and leaving the door open behind her, and he was left, blinking and feeling extremely irritated as, with a sigh, he rubbed his face furiously, wondering how far he had to go before, damn it, she decided he was worth interest.

Did she not understand the meaning of signals!

Brooke had no idea how Erica had been invited but there she sat, checking her make-up and hair in a compact as Colby and Kate made faces behind her back. Her hair was simply too big for her to see the little vixens behind her and, despite her best tries to remain mature, Brooke continued to feel insane urges to point at her and laugh.

Times like these left her wanting to give in to those urges.

"So, how's Kendall doing?" she finally asked, absently letting her hands roam across Colby's gift to her—a framed picture of JR and Little Adam with Colby at his side, a small promise of the family she was about to inherit. "I mean, she and Ryan are going to be renewing their vows, right?"

"Well, of course," Erica laughed in delight, snapping her compact shut and waving one hand lightly. "And, let me tell you Brooke, they could not be more excited, especially Ryan?" At the cock of one eyebrow, her smile became slightly brittle and edged and she leaned forward in her seat, dropping hands onto her knees. "What's with that look, Brooke?"

"Erica—" It was exhausting to talk to Erica but, here she was, about to try for about the fifteen thousandth time, setting her photo down on her lap and sighing softly. "Erica, are they really going to be getting their vows renewed… there?" Erica laughed at this, tossing her hair and lightly caressing her earrings with an almost disturbing amount of glee.

They reminded Brooke of oversized dream catchers, honestly.

"It's a suitable place, Brooke, really! What better place then where Kendall ruined everything and everything went wrong?" she asked with another laugh, shrugging her sharp shoulders and slapping hands down on her legs happily. Colby rolled her eyes, set Kate on a hip and left the room, mouthing something to Brooke about going to see Stuart.

"Erica—" Again, she stopped, reaching down to skim fingers along her trousers before standing, stacking her gifts quickly on a nearby table and then rubbing her hands together, wanting several things at once and, catching sight of herself in the photo frame in one hand, she smiled slightly as she reached up and fiddled with the sequined crown that Colby had made her, several feathers and beads swinging across her face and hair. "Erica, maybe you should loosen your grip on Kendall's life?"

"'Loosen my grip'?" Erica echoed with such a maddening amount of chipper glee that Brooke felt a flood of pure irritation, wanting to turn around and slap her like a madwoman. She barely even saw Kendall but even she could see it in her eyes! How could her own mother be so damn dense! "I know what's best for my daughter, Brooke."

"No, Erica, I don't think you do," she snapped before she could stop herself and, hearing that chilly silence freeze completely behind her, she sighed and turned completely, taking her usual stance when dealing with people who had no connection to reality anymore. "Erica, how much longer does your daughter have to suffer like this before you stop pressuring her into something she doesn't want?"