CHAPTER TWO
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Since Carlton Lassiter had gone to meet his maker, his retirement funds and life insurance had accordingly been dispersed to his beneficiaries: his sister, his mother & Althea, a few of his pet charities, and Juliet. (He'd left her $3,000 with a hope that she'd use it to visit Scotland and Ireland some day, along with a firm stipulation that in no case was it ever to be used to purchase food or 1980s memorabilia for Spencer or Guster).
What the two options Donovan presented had in common was a replacement of the amount of those funds, along with what had been in his checking and savings accounts, plus a bonus amount—a token, as he put it—to make up for their unintentional error.
"Which you must admit is very generous of us," he added, "considering that by pulling you out, we did actually save your life."
Carlton eyed him.
Donovan amended, "It's just not... your life anymore."
He let that pass, but Donovan didn't miss his expression of derision.
Option One was to accept something akin to witness relocation: he'd be given a new identity and home somewhere east of the Mississippi, help in acquiring a job to his liking so long as it had nothing whatsoever to do with law enforcement, and a firm handshake and their best wishes.
Option Two was most of the above, except the job would be working for them.
"Doing what?"
"What your experience and skill set qualifies you to do, including undercover work."
"I'm sorry; did you just say my 'skill set' and 'undercover' in the same sentence?"
Donovan grinned. "You haven't been given the right assignments. You're best at being quiet. Still. Ready," he emphasized. "That's what we need. Sometimes the most important operative is the one standing just behind the guy in front. Sometimes it's the guy who makes the first contact. Sometimes it's the guy who only puts the briefcase behind the dumpster. And sometimes it's the guy who spends a week going glassy-eyed in front of a PC cross-referencing every bit of known data on a suspect. We don't have a lot of Tom Cruise positions, but we've got jobs for detail workers who know how to put in the hours and connect the dots."
Plus you just lost Pollack, Carlton mused, and maybe my resume doesn't suck.
"Can I choose my own name?"
"Too late. Welcome to the world, John Richard Ellery."
John Ellery. He let it roll around in his head a minute while Donovan studied him. Not bad.
"So? Which option do you choose?"
He didn't even have to think about it, and he'd never liked Tom Cruise anyway.
"I'd like to connect some dots."
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Accepting reality didn't mean Juliet wasn't curious about the man who looked like Carlton.
The following week she returned to the Mandolin and looked around briefly to see if he was there, almost relieved that he wasn't.
When Steffie came over with the coffee pot, she jumped right in. "Last week, there was a tall guy in here with a really cool cane, kind of coppery in color? Do you know who I'm talking about? My uncle," she lied like a pro, "is always looking for flashy canes."
Steffie looked at her blankly for a moment before her expression cleared. "Oh—you said he was tall? Big blue eyes and wavy gray hair?"
She hadn't gotten a good look at his eyes, and as to the hair, Juliet would have said silver and black, but no sense arguing; she only nodded encouragingly.
"That was probably John Ellery. He lives up the mountain road a ways. Comes into town pretty often. I don't know about the cane, though." She poured coffee into Juliet's cup. "I think he was in a car accident or something awhile back. You want today's special? It's meatloaf, but a thousand times better than your mother ever made."
"A thousand?" Juliet raised her eyebrows. "Girl, they need to put you in charge of advertising for this place."
"I know! Sides are green beans and mashed potatoes. You in?"
"Of course. Um, you think John Ellery would take offense if I asked him about the cane?"
Steffie shrugged. "I don't know. He seems nice enough. Quiet guy. If he gives you any trouble, just flash your ranger badge at him and tell him it's an official matter." She winked and headed off.
John Ellery, she thought, sinking back into the booth. Quiet guy.
She'd check him out when she got back to the station.
That she had absolutely no valid—or legal—reason to do so was completely irrelevant.
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A year out from the day his previous life came to an end, John Ellery was a well-trained Federal agent. His injuries long healed—though he couldn't run as fast, and his tension headaches tended to be worse—he found himself doing exactly what Donovan had described: detail work and dot-connecting.
Always east of the Mississippi.
He kept his hair long; a beard came and went depending on whether he was working behind the scenes or not. He learned how to stay off camera and avoid leaving fingerprints anyplace fingerprints might be checked: no one needed to track a stray thumb smudge back to a dead California cop.
Part of his new life away from work was interesting; he got to see the rest of the country, or at least the eastern half. That he lacked friends and a social life was nothing new. He read more, and when he had time off he visited the Civil War sites he'd studied. He couldn't participate in Civil War reenactment groups, but he attended sometimes and silently critiqued their performances, staging, and in one notable case, the appallingly inferior quality of their horsemanship.
(Well, maybe that last time he wasn't exactly silent, but he did manage to hide behind a tree before anyone could trace the outraged squawk to where he'd been standing moments before.)
(He would always be himself, after all, no matter the name on his driver's license.)
And if he still dreamed of Juliet, well, who could blame him?
He did dream of her sometimes. Maybe too often.
More in the first few years—daydreams too—but in the last few years, when the dreams came, they were completely out of the blue and left him dazed in the morning, aching with how much he still wanted her.
He dreamed he'd put off visiting the accountant, and the building blew up without him. He dreamed she went with him that day and they died together. He dreamed he got out alive and she didn't—those dreams were nightmares and he would wake in terror.
He dreamed they were on stakeouts, or just working quietly in the station, or arguing over coffee or who got to drive. (He did.)
He dreamed Spencer was blathering on and annoying the crap out of him, and even if Juliet wasn't stopping the verbal onslaught, she was at least standing at his side, arms folded, waiting for the gel-head to shut it so they could get on with their work.
He dreamed she was smirking at him after he said something arrogant or bull-headed, because nobody knew him like she did, and nobody could bring him back to earth like she could.
Sometimes he dreamed of holding her on the clock tower.
And, not that he liked this about himself, sometimes he sought out other women, just for a night.
It was never for the sex, but for simple intimacy... closeness. There hadn't been enough legitimate opportunities for him to get his arms around Juliet, but a slim blonde woman who came willingly to his bed, who didn't know he was pretending she was someone else, sometimes, for an hour or so, could ease the ache he knew he would always feel for Juliet.
He was glad he'd never told her he loved her, but he suspected she'd known. She'd known, but remained his partner and friend anyway.
Maybe that was the way she could love him back. Maybe it was the only way. More than he deserved, too.
Donovan told him, the one time he asked about her, that she'd left the SBPD, but he hadn't seriously tried to track her since.
(And he didn't exactly have the technological capability to be Tommy Lee Jones in Men In Black, calling up satellite images and looking longingly at a life he couldn't share.)
He hoped she was content with whatever path she chose. Spencer and Guster, he didn't have much curiosity about, because he knew no matter what, where or when, they were together. Whether they were still trailing along behind Juliet somewhere, he didn't care to speculate.
He did the work he was asked to do, and it satisfied him. Not being in charge was all right. Not having to live up to his own unrealistic expectations was okay.
Not being constantly undermined and mocked by Spencer was especially okay.
Missing his partner, well, that sucked.
But sometimes he'd missed her even while he had her, when Spencer was prancing around like he owned the place.
Over time, though, the memories of the strengths of their partnership overtook those of its weaknesses, because those strengths had carried him from day to day while he was with her—and sometimes carried him from day to day even now. She had been such a rock in his life, in ways she could probably never have imagined.
Yet at the same time, on his own and responsible for nothing other than the job before him, and no longer feeling compelled to rise, to compete, to get ahead, to outshine—to always, always have to fight to be the best?
It was startling how... uncomplicated it was to not be Carlton Lassiter anymore.
John Ellery might not have been very interesting, but he was alive, and he was productive, and he was still catching—or helping to catch—bad guys.
And for some reason, squirrels didn't even bother him as much as they used to.
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Juliet's illicit search of National Park Service databases into John Ellery didn't net much information. He was born the same year as Carlton, but in Missouri in July. No arrest records, no marriage information, no children.
Quiet life. Quiet guy.
She was trying to access his driver's license photo when she came to her senses—and not just because her commanding officer strolled into the room.
Stop nosing around in this stranger's life. It's not necessary and it's not legal. Without probable cause, you have no business poking into his business.
Besides, she was supposed to be investigating a couple of suspected poachers, not some random guy with a copper-colored cane.
Without warning, Carlton's voice echoed in her head. There are no random guys, O'Hara. Everyone's a suspect.
And not for the first time, she answered him with a sharp you should have waited for me that day. You should have waited until after lunch so we could go see the damned embezzler together.
The embezzler himself was among the casualties, of course.
Casualties. She'd never liked that word.
A word which meant DEAD AND GONE shouldn't include letters which spelled out casual.
There was nothing casual about Carlton having been ripped from her life.
There was nothing casual about the deaths of anyone in the building that day.
And now, dammit, she was hurting all over again, and it had been five freaking years.
One stinking glimpse of a total stranger who looked a little stinking bit like him, and she was on her way back to stinking square one.
"Screw that," she muttered.
Her supervisor looked up from his clipboard. "Pardon?"
"Oh... nothing," she said with a laugh. "Hit the wrong key."
"Technology sucks," he said mildly, and that wasn't the only thing.
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Sometimes the guy standing just behind the guy in front still takes some heat.
John Ellery had been in the government's service for four years when the guy in front went down, and the next bullet plowed through his thigh and laid him right the hell out.
Survival, yes—again.
"You're running low on lives," Donovan said, "but at least John Ellery gets to stick around this time."
No more field work, though.
They let him choose where to relocate, and most of his work hours were now of the glassy-eyed-in-front-of-a-highly-secured-PC type. He liked profiling, and his cabin—also very secure, but discreetly so—here in Virginia allowed him to step outside into nature whenever the profiling and dot-connecting began to melt his brain.
His leg hurt most days, but he considered it a pretty good trade for being alive.
One of his cases had involved a Civil War buff who lived in the Richmond area; posing as a fellow buff he'd worked his way into the man's good graces and helped bring down his side game of more contemporary (and highly illegal) weapons trade. But it was the area—the trees, the hills, the history—which drew him back when he considered where to hang his hat for an extended period.
The nearby town was pleasant enough, with residents who tended to leave each other in peace. No one had yet set off any warning bells, and God knew he was practically hard-wired with warning bells. Some of his training had been about learning how not to attract attention, whereas in his old life, running the detective squad was all about acquiring and maintaining attention.
"When you want to stay dead," Donovan reminded him, as if he needed reminding at all, "you need to blend in."
Blending in was even more necessary now that he had the limp and the cane.
"You know, be... nice," he added. "But not too nice. Don't be adorable or anything. Be bland. People remember jerks a lot longer than they remember bland people."
He might as well have been channeling Juliet.
"You want me to bland in," Carlton countered, and Donovan approved.
Mandolin's diner had spectacularly good food when he tired of his own cooking. He went into town at least a couple of times a week for a meal, sometimes even if he didn't need any supplies; he had friendly chats now and again with a few of the locals, and in mellow moments—and there were more of those than he could ever have imagined long ago—he could see himself living here for a long time.
Donovan checked in occasionally, but most of his interaction with his employers was electronic, and that was fine.
Bland was fine.
A quiet, bland life was a good life.
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There was a little resale junk shop on Jackson street, the town's main drag, and Juliet stopped in after lunch one day to see what was new in the jewelry counter. She didn't get to wear much in her line of work, but stud earrings were okay and a girl liked a bit of color and sparkle now and then even if she wasn't interested in dating or relationships.
Dating sometimes. But no relationships, thank you. Never again.
Her grief counselor, in those first few months after Carlton died, had cautioned her against "nevers" and "not agains." She'd pointed out Juliet's youth and former healthy outlook on life, and although she admitted it was a platitude and everyone processed loss differently—not to mention that technically her relationship with Carlton had not been romantic—she really did have to give it time. Time really would make a difference.
To which Juliet had responded, "I don't even want to be called Juliet anymore. Please call me Julie."
Juliet—something Shawn never called her—was a name which had become precious because of the few times Carlton called her that instead of O'Hara. She didn't want it sullied by ordinary people. In her work life now, she was Julie O'Hara.
Juliet had belonged to Carlton, and died with him that day.
Deep breaths. Focus.
In the window display, she spotted some framed photos of seascapes. Idly tracing one, she realized with surprise that she hadn't been anywhere near an ocean in four years. For a girl raised in Miami who spent half a decade in Santa Barbara as a cop, all she knew when she'd cut out of there was she had to get away from every single thing which might remind her of Carlton.
The National Park Service—the woods and the mountains, and okay maybe a lake or two but no damned oceans—seemed like just the ticket. She had some connections who helped her fast-track into the Investigative Services branch, pending the necessary training, and she had enjoyed the work so far. She'd volunteered herself for reassignment several times, as long as the destinations were well inland, not willing to settle anywhere in particular just yet for fear she'd get attached. She wasn't ready to get attached again.
Not to places, and definitely not to another man, whether friend or lover.
Not yet, and maybe not ever.
Out on the sidewalk, two men stopped to talk. She looked up to see them, and grew very still.
One was Tack Sullivan, who ran a tavern in mid-town. The other was John Ellery, once again standing in profile to her.
He was only about ten feet away, and the angle of the sunlight was such that if he glanced at the shop window he'd see only his own reflection.
Her heart was racing, and her skin was prickling, and she willed herself to settle down—but no part of her senses was obeying.
Turn toward me, she said silently. I need to see your whole face.
But he remained in profile, talking casually to Tack, relaxed, smiling slightly. She could see his eyes were blue and his lashes long. Tanned skin, lean limbs.
She felt goosebumps.
How he stood didn't matter, did it? She knew that profile, even bearded, even with long wavy hair.
That pounding, thudding sound? Was her heartbeat.
But then he did turn, scratching the side of his neck with his free hand, chuckling at something Tack said.
Juliet let out a long breath, releasing all the air in her lungs, every last bit of it.
She even knew that damned crooked nose.
Her shaking hand went to the side of the window for support.
She knew those eyes. Those beautiful, unmistakable, crystal blue eyes.
Her legs were jelly and she needed to sit down but if she moved he would vanish like a mirage... and maybe he was a mirage. He had to be, right?
But she knew him.
That man was Carlton Jebediah Lassiter.
Yet he could not be alive. He could not be ten feet from her. He could not be.
Minutes—years—ticked by in this silence, with Juliet staring out the window at this impossibility, because she couldn't move from where she stood, couldn't think, could barely breathe.
John Ellery and Tack Sullivan parted ways, heading away from the store and out of her sight, and Juliet sank abruptly to the floor, cross-legged, weak and trying desperately not to cry, and when the shop clerk rushed over to see if she was all right, she didn't have to lie at all about feeling dizzy and needing a minute to sit.
The girl brought her some water while Juliet composed herself.
One thing was clear.
This was the last time John Ellery would take her by surprise.
The next move would be hers, and he didn't even know the game was on.
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A cool breeze ruffled his hair. The scent of the pines mixed with that of the sawdust he was stirring up. It was a good day to be working outside.
Technically the cabin was a long-term rental but the owner had given him free rein to make repairs, and on this Saturday afternoon he was replacing some of the rotting boards from the far end of the low porch.
The whine of the electric saw hardly registered; he was making perfectly smooth edges and everything felt right.
He cut the motor and the sound faded slowly, and from no more than a few feet behind him, a soft voice spoke.
"Don't turn around. I have a weapon and I will use it. Put the saw down."
Carlton set the machine on the sawhorse carefully, and raised his hands without being told to. He had a weapon as well, but it was secured in the cabin. His cane, within reach if he needed it, would have to do.
Donovan had trained him to make sure it would "do" if necessary.
The voice spoke again.
"I'm going to say something which will either sound completely insane, or will make perfect sense to you and only you."
Every hair on his head stood on end because... because he knew her voice.
"You promised me fried ice cream."
Dear God.
Dear Mother of all that was holy God in—
"Juliet," he breathed, every nerve end tingling, and turned slowly.
She wasn't holding a weapon at all.
But her luminous dark blue eyes were misty with tears—which damn well felt like a knife.
A different kind of weapon. A surer form of lethal.
"You promised me fried ice cream, and then you died, you son of a bitch."
He was still staring at her in utter wonderment when she punched him right in the face.
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