Chapter Fifty One:

Monday, November 3, 1997 – Burbank, CA

Daisy sat on the front seat of Thompson's Crown Vic sporting a Kevlar vest with LAPD splashed across the back of it. Thompson had picked Daisy up at Kay's more than an hour and a half before sundown and had handed it over to her when she got into the car and said, "I need you to put this on."

When they veered off the direct route to LAX and started heading north, she asked if they had to take a round-about route because they were still concerned about her safety.

"I'll let Strate answer that. I only know that he wanted to talk to you before you left and he didn't want do it in L.A. He's, um, a little paranoid right now." What Enos had really said was that he was still 'skiddish' but as far as Thompson was concerned, it was the same thing and he agreed there was a clear and present need to err on the side of caution. "We're headed for the base of the Verdugos, just northeast of Burbank."

"But won't I be late for my flight from LAX?" Even though she wanted very much to talk to Enos before she left, she also knew how adamant he was that she leave. Kay had made her a believer.

"You're not flying out of LAX. You're on a non-stop to Atlanta from the Burbank airport."

When the car pulled up to a cattle gate, Thompson got out to open the padlock on the chain that secured it. She could see that he was talking to someone on the hand held radio and assumed it was Enos. The gate creaked open, something that could be heard half a mile away and certainly at the small cabin three hundred yards away at the end of the dirt drive. Getting back in the car, Thompson stopped it on the other side and closed the gate, resetting the padlock on the chain.

As they approached the house, Daisy looked around at the landscape. There were random patchy stubbles of scrub grass everywhere, and lots of sandy loam.

"Why would he pick this place? Looks like we would be easy targets out here," she said. Although hilly, the terrain offered no obstacle for anyone with a sniper rifle. It seemed completely exposed.

"Already reconnoitered. Nowhere anyone could secrete themselves close by that he, or I, won't be aware of and anywhere else is too long range for even the best sniper." In answer to the expression on her face, he added, "You can take the man out of SWAT Ms. Duke, but that training never leaves them."

Daisy turned to him to ask where Enos would be but Thompson was way ahead of her.

"You'll find him inside," he said, pointing at the open door.

Ascending three of the five steps, she could see Enos now, leaning on the door jam and silhouetted against the mountain range off the back porch. He looked so far away.

The sky was slightly overcast with dark clouds hovering atop the Verdugo fault line; portent of a storm brewing. She looked around her. From the front steps of the cabin, the landscape looked similar to the Blue Ridge area, if you added more trees, and dew, and red clay, and a lot more trees. Even so, the view was impressive with Burbank and the San Fernando Valley stretched out below and the higher, snow covered mountain ridge in the distance.

Enos turned when he knew she was on the front porch and was there, in front of her, before she reached the door. As if nothing had happened between them, not April, not the last thirty years, she threw her arms around his neck and he pulled her into the closest hug he had ever given her.

"I missed you," she said, still hugging him tight, almost afraid to let go.

"I missed you too, Daisy. But we don't have much time. You have a plane to catch and we need to talk."

"I know," she said, finally letting him go.

He was being the in-charge detective again. Gone were the days when she could wrap him around her little finger with a flirty smile and a sweet-voiced 'sugar.' She had decided that she liked this Enos better. He was real, even more real than the sixteen year old version she had tried to hang onto so many years ago.

Thompson watched the exchange from his car, then shook his head, not for the first time, or the last. Strate had a perfectly awesome woman waiting for him, but he was out here, in the middle of nowhere, with his arms wrapped around his ex, who he had only recently learned had left Strate at the freaking altar! One of these days, he might figure the man out. Didn't give that a chance in hell of being anytime soon, so he unsnapped the tab securing his service weapon in its holster and went back to watching the road and the hill behind the cabin.