Rifiuto: Non Mirena
A/N: Written: 2012. Rewritten: 2013. Found: 2019.- Licia
"Why do dads ruin everything?" She jumped, Zoe's voice passing her by as she ducked back behind the counter. Shai smiled at the older girl as Zoe set a cup of hot chocolate before the her. Jo let out a yawn before sipping her coffee and setting the cup down with a sigh.
"Because they're men and men are ruiners." Zoe chuckled, and then stopped, furrowing her brow.
"Um... Zane drama?"
Shai shook her head, as her mother spoke,
"No. Fear." Brown eyes met confused hazel. "Never date a coward. And that's for both of you." Jo glanced at Shai, reaching over to brush her daughter's curls off her shoulders. "Zane found out about Shai, and... and pretty much told me that even if he'd found out about Shai from the beginning, he wouldn't have stuck around." She sighed. "We haven't talked since."
Zoe nodded, remembering that Shai had told her last week when they were traipsing through the tunnels that Zane didn't want anything to do with her mother anymore; it had hurt Zoe more than she imagined it would. Anyone who would knowingly hurt Jo and Shai, wasn't someone she wanted to be around.
"W... well, here's your chance." Zoe replied, nodding towards the door as Zane walked in, making a beeline for Jo, who didn't turn around. Shai glanced at her mother. Jo smiled softly at her daughter as Zoe busied herself with the tables in the corner, keeping an eye on the pair. She watched Zane take a seat beside Jo, knocking his knuckles on the counter.
"Hey, Jo." He leaned around her, catching Shai's eyes briefly. "Hey Shai." Both Lupo women ignored him; Shai was picking at the rim of her cup, and Jo was simply caught up in her own thoughts. "You uh... eat yet?" He sighed, licking his lips before trying another tactic when he got nothing. "I thought maybe we could, you know, we could have a bite?"
Jo scoffed. "A bite? What, we wouldn't want you to commit to a whole meal." He narrowed his eyes at her, letting her words sink in.
"You got something to say, Jo?"
"I already did." She replied, turning to him. "And you couldn't handle it. In fact, you made it very clear how you felt about the whole situation, especially in regards to my child." And without a look back, she got up. "Come on, carina." Shai glanced at Zane, before hopping of her stool and taking her mother's hand; with the school closed because of the three-day weekend, Shai was staying with Jo at the sheriff's office for the day. Zane sighed. He glanced at Zoe, as she passed by.
"You touched a couple nerves, Ruiner." Her meaning was loud and clear- You've forced at least half of us to pick sides, and the majority of us aren't picking yours.
Around eleven, Jo climbed into the driver's side of her car, making sure Shai was buckled in before pulling away to follow Carter's lead. Not that Shai would have gotten into trouble if she stayed in the office, but Jo wasn't willing to let her daughter out of her site; call her overprotective, but after the week before, she wasn't willing to take that chance. "Where are we going, Mama?" She glanced at her daughter as the girl reached over and fiddled with the radio.
"Carter asked me to speak to this contractor that Thorne had brought in... Hendricks, I think his name was. So while I interrogate him, you are going to stay in the car. I don't want you setting foot out of this vehicle until we're back at the office, okay?" The child nodded. Eventually, they pulled up near Hendricks' trailer and Jo got out. "You stay in the car, Shai Elizabeth. I shouldn't be gone long." Then, she dashed up the steps towards the door. "Dr. Hendricks, it's the police. I need to talk to you!" After several minutes, she sighed. "Thanks, Carter. That was pointless." She headed down the steps, going around to the back; a quick check around the parameter wouldn't do any harm.
"Huh, found you." She stopped, turning at a familiar voice. Zane stood several feet away from her, hands in the pockets of his hoodie, watching her with an exasperated look on his face. Her gaze darted quickly to her car; Shai poked her head up to peek out the window; Zane followed her gaze, watching as the child ducked back down once she was spotted.
"How'd you get here?"
"I rode my bike. And just so you know, this whole passive-aggressive thing is really annoying." She crossed her arms over her chest, tilting her head to the side as she gave it some thought.
"Huh. You want to try just aggressive?" He licked his lips, catching her eye. Oh, she was serious. A moment passed, before he shook his head.
"Um... no. Not... really." She nodded, and he rolled his eyes, turning to go.
"Didn't think so. See ya." She called, turning and heading around the side of the trailer, before stopping. Something was laying by her feet in the grass, and she knelt down to get it. It looked like a normal canister, with a thick silver belt-like over layer, and a series of strange, diamond-shaped black and silver shapes around the face of the silver layer. She wasn't an artist, and if she'd have to describe it, that would have been as best as she could do; there was a reason she was an investigator. It looked almost like a twist top, but she didn't dare try to open it herself. "Hey! Could you come here for a second?"
He stopped, turning back to her. "Wh-" But his first question died on his lips when his gaze flicked to the canister. "Why? So you can hit me with that?" She held up her hands, shrugging.
"Not until you tell me what it is, first!" His upper lip curved briefly into a sneer. "Please?" He sighed, rolled his eyes, and he went to her. Kneeling beside her, he studied the canister. A moment passed, before he sniffed derisively.
"Anodized aluminum with a trapped valve." She raised her eyebrows and turned to look at him, only understanding a couple of words at best.
"Okay. And that means?"
"It's a pressurized container of some kind. It's got a remote trigger."
"For what?"
"To set it off at a distance. You wouldn't want to be anywhere near this thing when it went off. You could pack a hell of a lot of something into a device like this." Jo nodded, setting the canister back on the ground between them as she stood, gaze pulled to whatever was before her.
"How much could you pack into about a thousand of them?" Zane followed her, opening his mouth to speak, surprised at the amount of empty holders there were.
She leaned against the counter, flipping through the files she'd asked Allison to get on Hendricks and the bunker. Zane typed away at his computer, glancing over his shoulder every once in a while, his eyes going first to her and then to Shai, who sat not far away from them, working on the last of her homework that she forgot to finish over the weekend; thankfully it was just an English assignment, and she only had a few questions to answer. Neither looked up as Carter picked up the canister, studying it. It wasn't like he could get it open, so what harm could he do?
"That one's almost empty, but I analyzed the leakage around the nozzle. It's some kind of cement." Zane drawled, looking through whatever he'd pulled up on his computer.
"Can you find out what Hendricks' was doing with about a thousand of them?" Carter asked. Shai looked up as he passed by, trying to wedge his fingers between the lid and lip of the can.
"No idea. Why don't you ask him? And while you're at it, find out why it has a remote trigger-" Shai looked up as something popped; the canister dropped from Carter's hands. Quickly, the child scrambled to her feet, hurrying over in time to watch as the silvery-cement-like substance spilled out of the canister Carter had been messing with. It hardened around her mother's left foot and Zane's right instantly. Both turned to look at the cement before turning to glare at the sheriff. Shai giggled, covering her mouth at her mother's glare. "- there's also a manual release."
"I'm stuck." Jo bit, attempting to pull her leg free.
"We're stuck." Zane replied, glowering at the sheriff as he tried and failed to get away from Jo. "Together." The pair turned to look at Carter, who simply smiled and stuck his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels.
"I... I'm gonna go-" Carter gestured behind him, and then rushed off. The trio watched him go. Shai tried to hide her laughter, stopping immediately at her mother's glare.
"Is your homework done, carina?"
The child paused in her playing with her mother's fingers. "Almost, Mama. I just forgot English."
"Well, finish it. You should have had it all done yesterday. You're damn lucky it's a three day weekend."
"Sorry, Mama." The child scrambled back to where she'd been working. Zane rolled his eyes, returning to the work on his computer, glancing quickly at the child.
"Jeez, Jo, cut the kid some slack, it was one assignment-"
"Don't tell me how to parent my own child, Mr. 'I-was-Kicked-Out-of-Five-Schools-By-the-Time-I-was-Fifteen'. You may not value education, but I do. And I want to make sure my daughter gets an education, a good education, that way she doesn't turn out like a felon like you." Jo was fully aware she'd struck a nerve, but she didn't care. Zane glared at her, curling his lip at the deputy as she shifted to her full height and placed her hands on her hips. Zane raised an eyebrow, before deciding to back down. Something told him to let the young mother have this one.
Two hours later, Shai brought her homework over so Jo could check it. Climbing onto the stool not far from where Jo was leaning against the table, Shai gently tugged on her mother's sleeve, stopping her mid-check. "What baby girl?"
"Mama, we missed lunch. Can we go down to the cafeteria, please?" Jo slowly turned her gaze to the cement encasing her with Zane before turning back to her daughter. She sighed, before reaching into her back pocket and pulling out her wallet. She quickly removed a twenty dollar bill, holding it out to her daughter.
"Go get something to eat, carina, but down the cafeteria and come right back, are we clear?"
"What do you want, Mama?"
"Just a sandwich, is all."
The child took the bill, nodding. She glanced at Zane, before slipping around her mom and tugging on the back of his hoodie. He turned, surprised to find the little girl standing behind him. "What do you want, Zane?" He raised an eyebrow, shrugging.
"Um... just a sandwich is fine." The girl nodded, turning and dashing out of the lab, just as one of Zane's lab assistants came in carrying a jackhammer. "Finally. Thanks, Nick."
Jo raised an eyebrow, setting the file she'd been looking through down. "Really, Zane? A jackhammer?"
He pulled on a pair of safety goggles. "This should get us out of this crap in no time."
"Whatever. Just get us out of this."
Shai returned just as the jackhammer Zane had been using quit. She set the sandwiches she'd picked up for Zane and her mother on the counter, with her mother's change. She raised an eyebrow, glancing at her mother, confused.
"Sonofa-"
"What are you doing?" He looked up, finding Shai standing above him. Jo turned to see Zane straighten, handing the now-bent jackhammer to his assistant. Shai watched them, moving to sit on a stool across from where they stood and unwrapping her peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The look on Jo's face was one of annoyance and exasperation as he met the deputy's gaze.
"Don't you look at me in that tone of voice." He handed the machine to the assistant who'd returned to take it back before going to find something else that would work. "This isn't my fault."
"It's Carter's." Shai spoke up, mid-chew.
"Shai Elizabeth, don't chew with your mouth full. It's rude." The ringing of Zane's phone broke through the tension that followed, and Jo snatched it up before Zane could even think to reach for it. She held up an arm, indicating that she'd jab him in the stomach if she had to. Clearing her throat, she answered the call. "Dr. Bonehead's lab."
Zane rolled his eyes and Shai snorted softly.
"Let me guess, you two are still stuck together?" He asked. Jo met her husband's eyes, sticking out her tongue and tugging on an imaginary rope, in a simulation that she was dying to strangle Carter.
"Just until I can reach my gun-"
Zane grabbed the phone from her, turning to lean on the counter. "What'd you find out?"
Jo lay a hand on the counter, the other on her hip, one eyebrow raised. Her fingers began to drum impatiently on the counter top, and she ticked off all the ways she'd kill Zane if Carter didn't come up with answers for how to get them out of this mess soon. Shai watched her mother and her ex as she continued to munch on her sandwich,
"It's called Instantanium. Some kind of... hardening foam. Nano... elastic foam."
"Nano palymer syntactic foam?" Zane asked, surprise in his voice as Jo tried to move closer. "Wow."
"What 'wow'?" Shai asked, struggling to suck the peanut butter off the roof of her mouth. Both turned to stare at her, before Zane spoke again.
"The nano particles are bound together at a molecular level. If we can find some sort of solvent to... to weaken that bond-"
"Well you do have a gift for making weak bonds." Jo growled. Zane glanced at her, sneering before he turned to find his assistant back, holding a regular hack saw in his hands. Shai's dark eyes widened, and it took her a moment to swallow.
"Just... take her leg." A moment passed before the assistant rolled his eyes and left, passing through the doors just as Jo's screech rang out through the lab and she hit Zane with her file folder.