Yup, here's the eighth part to my story. When will I stop? I don't know! J But when I do, I'll combine all the parts into one big story, I think. But you know the deal…since last I wrote, neither NBC or Court TV has suddenly decided to hand me the ownership rights to Profiler, so for the time being, they own them. The lyrics to 'Into the Void' belong to NIN. J Dana, Dell and Fiona, along with some other characters however, belong to me. J
The Fragile Pt.8
With my green eyes hidden behind my Ray-Bans I decided to pick up before I left for Atlanta, I watch the road pass by.
My driver, Special Agent Michael Miller, is a little afraid of me. I know what he's heard; my reputation seems to either fill a lot of people with admiration or fear. I have that effect on most people, and it no longer bothers me as much as it used to, before I met Dell Morgan, my partner.
~ A freak ~ A voice laughs in my mind. ~ Just like the KoRn song, you're a freak on a leash! ~
~ Shut up, ~ I think back, and the voice disappears. For what has got to be the millionth time, I sigh, wishing that my partner had been able to accompany me. But he had the divorce to deal with, and that was more important.
~ You should have Passed Judgement on her, Dana, ~ The voice says again, and I shiver slightly. ~ You know she deserves it, mistreating their kids the way she does, treating Dell like dirt, thinking that you two were having a fling behind her back -~
~ Shut up or I'll take Jack out without your help ~ I snarl silently in the darkest corners of my mind. The voice disappears again, and I tap my fingers to the rhythm of the song on the radio.
"Talking to myself all the way to the station
Pictures in my head of the final destination
All lined up (All the ones that aren't allowed to stay)
Tried to save myself but myself keeps slipping away…"
"Good song," The young agent says, trying to break the ice. " You have the CD?"
"Yeah. Listen to this song constantly."
"You have any hard stuff?"
"You mean like Disturbed or Slipknot?"
"Yeah."
I smile faintly. "Have them both. I'm more into Disturbed though, at least right now. I listen to Slipknot occasionally, when I'm pissed. Seems to help."
"Sweet." He risked a glance at me and I glance back, my eyebrows raised.
"I'm sorry," He said, blushing. "I just didn't think that someone your age would have those CD's." I let out a chuckle.
"I'm not as old as you think I am."
"Okay then, how old do I think you are?"
"Thirty."
"Good guess," my driver concedes. "So how old are you?"
"Twenty-seven." Michael nods, and decides to change the subject.
"So why were you brought in? I don't mean to be nosy, but I have to admit, I'm curious."
"I was asked by the Director to help you guys out down here. My talents are…quite rare, quite hard to come by." I frown slightly, not wanting to even think of them. Using them was hard enough.
"So what are they?"
"For the moment, they're classified. But I'm supposed to show them off later when we meet your boss. I get the feeling he doesn't trust me too much." I saw him frown slightly, wondering how I knew that little tidbit of information.
We travel in relative silence for the next couple of miles before Michael's stomach begins to rumble.
"Hungry, are we?" He blushes.
"A little," He replies sheepishly. "I didn't have anything to eat this morning."
"Neither did I. Next place you see that serves food, stop at it. I'll cover the bill." He looks at me, surprised.
"You sure?"
"Yeah. Look, there's a place up there. Stop so we can get a bite to eat." Michael does so, and I survey the parking lot of the old restaurant, part of my unconscious routine I seem to go through every day. Only a couple of beat-up cars are in the lot as we walk inside, and we're politely told by a waitress to make ourselves comfortable while she gets ready to take our order.
Once the waitress disappears into the kitchen, Michael and I begin to talk about music again, but are interrupted by angry murmurs coming from the restaurant's entrance.
Five men, all of whom could have fit the description for racist hicks, saunter in like they own the place. They glance our way and begin talking amongst themselves. Michael tenses, but I lay a hand on his dark-skinned arm.
"Ignore them," I say quietly. "Making the news for assaulting a bunch of good ol' boys isn't worth it."
"I suppose you're right," He mutters, forcing himself to relax as I take of my sunglasses and rub the bridge of my nose.
"So what's it like, down here in-'
"Well, well, well…look what we have here," The leader of the hicks says loudly, staring at us as he and his group come closer. "What is such a beautiful woman doing sittin' next to a nig-"
"-Earl, sit down somewhere and leave them alone," The waitress interrupts just in time. My hand becomes a vise grip on Michael's own as tenses once again. "Unless of course you want to pay for the damages," The waitress finishes saying, giving the five men a stern glare before she goes back into the kitchen. Grumbling at having their fun ruined, Earl and his friends slouch away into a shadowy booth in the far corner of the restaurant.
Soon after, the food arrives, and I sigh happily as I dig into my overfull plate. Michael raises his eyebrows, surprised.
"A little hungry, are we?"
I grin as I douse my pancakes with syrup. "A little," I replied, glancing critically at his plate, only half-filled with food. "You on the other hand need to get some meat on those bones." Michael relaxed and smiled.
"Maybe."
"No maybes about it. Eat."
"Yes ma'am."
"Please, call me Dana." My eyes dart to the corner where I notice one of the hicks getting up and going over to the phone, calling someone and talking in hushed whispers to someone on the other end while sending covert glances to our table.
~ Reinforcements! They're gonna ambush ya! ~
~ Really, ya think? ~ I reply sarcastically before saying out loud that maybe now would be a good time for Michael to get the waitress. I hand him a twenty-dollar bill and tell him to let the waitress keep the change. Hearing an odd note in my voice, he nods and heads right for her as I grab our stuff.
"Leaving so soon, honey?" I glare at Earl coldly through my Ray-Bans, all the while listening to that other voice doing running commentary.
~ What an ugly son of a bitch Earl is, Dana! ~ The voice practically shouted with glee. ~ Goddamn, it's a wonder his momma didn't just put him out of his misery just for looking like that! ~
~ Damn it, would you for once shut the fuck up! ~
"Sizing me up, huh honey?" Earl leered. His mean laughed behind him. "Maybe you should look a little lower." His men roared with laughter as I glanced down then turned my attention back to his face.
"I just did," I reply, my voice cold. "Doesn't look like there's much there." His friends stop laughing as Earl's eyes narrowed in anger.
"I'll show you, you little bit-" His voice is cut off as I slide my left foot underneath his own and elbow him hard in the stomach, causing him to fall backwards onto the floor. His men surge forward, but stop as they see a red gleam behind my sunglasses.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" One of the men says, backing away in disgust…and fear. Michael comes up behind me, his hand just barely touching his SIG Sauer.
"I suggest you get the fuck out of my way," I growl, "Before I decide to get angry."
"Darlin', the odds are against you," A big, heavyset man declared flatly after helping Earl into a seat. The waitress and the cook both came out of the kitchen to watch the festivities.
"Not for much longer," I reply.
"And what exactly is that supposed to mean?" I smile slowly, my eyes flaring a brilliant red once again.
"Well if you want to find out, then you're going to have to fight me, now aren't you?"
"I guess I'll have to," The man said, rushing at me with a knife. Sliding out of the way, I grabbed his wrist with one hand and broke the arm with my other, reveling in hearing the bones snap. Snatching his knife, I flung it at a dartboard hanging on the wall a good thirty feet away. It sank into the bulls-eye blade first, impaling the dartboard to the wall.
Ignoring the injured man's sobbed curses, I turn my attention to the three men still standing.
"Anyone else up for a little object lesson?" All three shake their head no, their faces pale as they back away from me.
Michael and I made it out to the car without any more problems.
"You never told me why we had to leave so early," Michael asks as I pull onto Rt. 75 leading into Macon, tires squealing.
"One of them called for reinforcements," I say as my eyes slowly change back to their normal green color. "We would have been surrounded by KKK members in a matter of minutes. As for his arm and the knife…" I sigh. "Under the circumstances, I shouldn't have been able to do both. You saw the size of that man who attacked me; he was a brute. Yet I broke his arm like you'd snap a twig, stole his knife and buried it up to the hilt in the bulls-eye of a dartboard, not to mention the wall behind it."
"It's one of those classified things you mentioned, isn't it?"
"It's part of that, yeah." In the distance, I see the morning sun glinting off truck hoods. I step on the gas, and the needle rises to 70. "You see? There's their reinforcement." Three trucks, all filled with the same kind of men we'd met at the restaurant pass by and fade into the background of the rearview mirror.
"Do you think there's any chance of them coming after us?"
"I don't think so. By the time they do, we'll already be in Macon."
Thirty minutes later, we get to the hospital. Flashing our badges a couple of times works wonders, and soon we arrive at a hospital room. Knocking brings a middle-aged agent around my partner's own age to the door.
"Sir," Michael says politely, "This is Special Agent Dana Green, Fiona's Profiler."
"I'm not Fiona's anything," I reply dryly, and Michael flushes with embarrassment, "But I am a profiler…and if I were you Bailey, I wouldn't start drinking again. It isn't gonna help her any." The Senior Agent glances at me in surprise.
"How did you? - I haven't been-"
"You were considering it," I replied before meeting the other members of the Task Force. All of them were friendly enough, and I sat down in one of the chairs, taking off my duster and stretching my legs.
"So what took you guys so long?" Grace asked politely.
"We had a little problem with some white supremacists on the way here," Michael said mildly, "And Dana felt the need to set them straight, didn't you?"
"Why yes Michael you could say that," I smile back at the young agent. Bailey gives me a look, and I sigh. "No Bailey, I didn't kill any of them. None of them were worth the workout to do so. What did you want me to do? They had three truckloads of their KKK pals coming to the restaurant where we were eating, and I sure as hell wasn't about to stick around and try to fight my way through three times as many men. We would have still made it here, but in the back of a goddamn ambulance. Besides, I'm not under your jurisdiction, and they don't even know we were Bureau agents, so don't worry about it."
"Trust me, I don't intend to," Bailey grumbled. "I just had a press conference that I had to suffer through. Let's just forget for the moment that you mentioned white supremacists, shall we?"
" Fine with me. So tell me what happened," I ask, and Bailey relays the details. "Hmm…very smart, especially on such short notice." I frown, trying to put the pieces together in my mind. "Normally he doesn't work with someone else, according to all the stuff you've been telling me. So that would mean…he's playing to win this time."
"Hasn't he always?" Bailey said with a growl, obviously not impressed with my deductive reasoning.
"No. Everything before…he was toying with you, making you waste your time while his concentration was elsewhere. Listen…since the last time he went for her, everyone knows what this asshole looks like. He could decide to put on one of his masks and go gallivanting around Georgia, but now he's being cautious. He won't risk it, now that you've put every member of law enforcement in this state on high alert. He'll send others…disciples…to do his dirty work instead." I glance over at Agent Grant, who's fast asleep. "Did he see the man's faces?"
"No, Bailey sighs. "All he noticed was that they were wearing cop uniforms and those wide-brimmed hats."
"Jack wouldn't have cops on his payroll unless he was absolutely sure they were totally loyal to him. I think it's more likely that two guys ambushed the cops, stole their uniforms and took their positions at the roadblock, after the real cops got the order not to stop John. Your serial killer really was cutting it close, wasn't he? My point being is, jack's gotten some of what he wants, but he ain't finished yet…not by a long shot."
"What do you mean?" George asks quietly. I pause thoughtfully before I reply. "I read some of Jack's file on the plane here. Jack wants to possess Sam; I'd say from everything he's done the past few years that's become fairly obvious. But even though he's got her, something- or should I say someone? - Is blocking him from his ultimate goal. To ruin her, he'd have to-" I pause, glancing up at Bailey, who's frowning at me
"What?" He says folding his arms. "What's wrong?"
"To break the student, he must break the teacher," I say softly. "He wants to teach her to become just like him; an unbeatable serial killer, right? He's gonna have to break her down first. The only way I see that ever happening is if he goes after you and kills you. Sam, in Jack's mind, will see that he can't be beaten, and she'll join him. If she doesn't…" I shrug. "I don't know, but I know you'll never see her again. So Bailey, now that you know he's gunning for you, are you ready to take the Jack of all trades on?"