Finished another update to this FF, hope you enjoy it and thanks for the feedback!
C.J. lay in bed inside the abandoned house and watched him sleep for a little while. She had been unable to slip into slumber as easily herself because she had so much on her mind. How easy was it for men to just put aside everything that had been happening that day and what filled their minds to find respite in sleep.
Not as easy for her.
The interview with the city attorney who had nearly been blown up at the men's only club hadn't really illuminated as much as they had hoped. The man had been more concerned about his own political career and future given that he had aspirations of running for state attorney general and wasn't about to let this whole mess with the prostitution ring and its players not to mention a bunch of dead lowlife women lost in the desert derail his own path.
C.J. had wanted to smack him in the face or worse after listening to his sleazy attitude. Fran had remembered at that point that the attorney had showed up at an earlier party and the girl he had chosen for himself had torn loose from the group and had tried to run away. Carrie, her name had been, some blond girl who had been picked up for hitch hiking and dragged down to the detention center. She had been caught quickly enough because she hadn't been able to run far in her high heels which had been part of the costume all of them had been required to wear at least partly for that reason. The deputy had dragged her in front of them kicking and screaming while Butz had told them to handle her as they had all the other runaways and Piser had led the other politicians and their dates of the day back to the swimming pool where the music played and the booze overflowed.
Carrie had never been seen again but they all knew where her body lay right now. Maybe not that far from Roxie or Emily or Sarah or the other women who at least had names right now. Matt had looked over at her just then and seen the expression on her face, the one he knew very well because it came from the woman that he had known most of his life every much as it had come from the one he had only known about a week. The two sides of the same person at least had that in common, a hatred for the men responsible all of them that ran so deeply. Matt wondered not for the first time if out there, there was a woman or women who could take that loathing to the next level and turn vigilante. He knew that C.J. had found herself just in time because the woman whose life had been for the most part shaped by that one experience of being a prostitute for hire had been closing in on that type of action herself.
But she remained quiet for the most part, her arms folded but her eyes fixed on the latest man they had learned about that had been victimizing women. Until she had enough of his attitude and walked out into the parking lot, alone. Shelia had finished her interview with him and a few minutes later Matt had come out to join her knowing that she needed some time to collect her thoughts.
She had been rubbing her forehead when Matt approached her and she didn't appear to notice him at first.
"He's finished…"
She still didn't look at him until he put his hand on her shoulder and then she turned her head towards him. Her face etched with pain and a bunch of other emotions.
"I wanted to kill him…just like I wanted to kill Semour," she said, "I could have easily done that…if I hadn't been so focused on getting away from him and that place."
He rubbed her back, and he felt her muscles relax somewhat and her head tilt slightly towards him.
"We're going to get him and the rest of them…"
She narrowed her head and tried to breathe through it.
"When….we've been here for days running around doing all kinds of crazy things to end this nightmare," she said, "and we're nowhere to getting justice for the women who are lying dead out there where their families can't even find them."
He couldn't deny what she had told him. It could have just as easily been here out there and the thought that hit him then made him suck in his breath because the pain that hit him…he had to push it away because the reality of anything besides the woman who stood next to him, he couldn't, wouldn't accept…never.
"Come on…let's head back to the house…"
And so they had, the four of them and Rhonda and Fran had gone to their bedrooms and had just hit the sack so tired from it all. C.J. and Matt had stood in the hallway separating their bedrooms and she bit her lip, knowing she had a decision to make. And then she realized soon enough that it had already been made and she pulled him into her embrace and kissed him, his own arms wrapping around her, pulling her against him. She didn't know how they would sort out their relationship which had gotten so tangled up in the past week but she decided to deal with that when they were back in L.A. In the meantime…she couldn't be apart from him. She just needed him so much to erase what had been…what could have happened and to erase what other men had tried to turn her into for a while.
Matt understood that on a fundamental level and their lovemaking had offered them an escape for a while. Away from the world around them and as long as it were just the two of them…she could face each day as it came. Get up in the morning, get dressed and do what needed to be done, without having to worry about getting her heart broken. At least not for now, because the future just seemed a couple steps out of their reach until they finished what they had to do here. She curled up in his arms afterward, her breathing matching his own as he kissed her shoulder, whispering words that didn't have much to do with what they meant but the underlying emotion they conveyed which after all, needed no words.
She settled in the warmth of his embrace right now and closed her eyes.
Matt lay there with his own eyes closed his attention on the woman in his embrace. She had nodded off well after…and he had closed his own eyes and while he hadn't slept, he had held onto her so that she could. He sensed the exhaustion that ran through her, the adrenalin rush that seemed unending as her life remained upside down. He knew from his own experience as a fugitive for a murder he hadn't committed the isolation that could be anyone's undoing.
She had always been beautiful, pretty at first in a coltish way and then when she had blossomed during their stint at university, she had attracted many guys, a few which had become boyfriends. He had watched from afar, his own social circle keeping him quite busy, at her beauty grow. He had been tempted during the more quietly spent nights at what exactly he wanted from his relationship with his best friend but he hadn't really been able to answer that question…because when he had been tempted and had drifted off to sleep thinking he might just…well when his eyes opened in the morning, his earlier thoughts appeared more like a dream. Besides, she had never gone after him at all, and the few times when their platonic friendship threatened to erupt into something more, she had pulled the reins on it, reminding him that it just wasn't like that between the two of them and that she valued their friendship too much to blow on a fling.
But now that they had pretty much blown their relationship right out of the water in a manner of speaking, it had been everything that he had anticipated and much more. He didn't do as she had feared, viewed it as another one of his casual flings, but he had been at a loss of how to see it, knowing that both of them had been thrown together by the circumstances of the past week. After all, if this mess hadn't happened, would they be sharing the same bad, intertwined in each other's arms? He doubted it.
He didn't want to think about it, to analyze it because he knew that the woman who know slept in his arms would do that enough for the both of him. It being the lawyer inside her that would direct that behavior. He on the other hand…he had thrown out joking words to hide his own ambiguous feelings like the day of the frog jumping contest.
But what would happen now, he knew no matter how much he wanted…that when the day came that they solved the case here, caught the bad guys, ceased to be fugitives and went home, that some serious decision making awaited the both of them and at this point…he didn't know what would happen.
He sighed, taking in the scent of C.J.'s shampoo and her skin that had felt so smooth beneath his touch. He just wanted to focus on this moment between them right now and for as long as he would be able to do so, keeping the future and all it held at bay for a while longer.
With that decided, he finally joined the woman who meant more to him than anyone in slumber.
