Author's Notes: Reviews are greatly appreciated and inspire me to update faster.

Part 30

Age: 32 Years 5 Months

Looking at the photo on her desk of the the corpse wearing a mask made in her image with a lipstick print on it, Samantha felt sick. Beside it was a photo of Jack's black light message, It could have been you Sam. It should have been you Sam. The message made her feel betrayed. Ever since her encounter with Jack at Robin Poole's apartment, her dreams were a torturous mixture of her Jack and Jack-Of-All-Trades. Strangely the thought of Jack-Of-All-Trades with another woman bothered her as much as the thought of her Jack with another woman. When exactly had they started to melt together in her mind? Was it that first kiss in Memphis or the one at Robin Poole's when she got a blurred glimpse of his eyes and saw they were dark like her Jack's had been.

What did Jill look like? Did she look like her? Was Jack sleeping with her, using her as a surrogate, did he still want her or was he falling for Jill? You should be mourning Coop, she chided herself. Actually Sam felt relieved to have Coop gone, she'd tolerated him because Angel said he was good for her and Chloe liked him. Samantha had found his touch every bit as boring as she'd found Tom's, the only man who aroused her was her Jack. And Jack-Of-All-Trades, a voice in her mind taunted. No, she wasn't- Yes she was and it made her miserable because it was horribly wrong and he'd moved on.

Locking the door to her office, Samantha put away the photos from the Trades case and slid her wedding rings off her right hand. When she'd started dating Coop, she'd moved her rings officially as a sign of moving on; but actually just to push Tom further from her life. Taking the chain from her neck, Samantha slid her Alpha ring on and thought of her first husband. Even now after all these years, Jack's ring felt right and natural around her left finger. Maybe eventually, she could wear her first wedding ring all the time. After the disastrous and unsatisfying results of her liaison with Coop, she vowed never to date again.

Age: 32 Years 10 Months

Gritting her teeth, Samantha stormed out of the grocery store holding a gingerbread house for Chloe. Angel had hounded her into attending their stupid reunion and when a classmate died , insisted she help and refused to let the matter drop. There were days if she never saw Angel, Chloe or any of the VCTF ever again, she wouldn't shed any tears. Placing her purchases in her SUV, Sam sighed. Although she really had no where else to go, she didn't want to go home. As the plain looking woman approached her for a jump, Samantha wanted to tell her to go to hell, but forced a polite expression.

From behind her the woman growled, "He doesn't love you. He loves me, Sam!"

Grabbing her tire iron, Samantha spun and hit the woman in the middle, the instant she spoke, she knew it was Jill. As the van came screeching up and she heard Jack yell inside, Samantha drew her gun. Jill had pushed her too far, she had to die. Just as she fired Jill moved and instead of the bullet going into Jill's heart it went into the van and she heard Jack cry out. When the van started to pull away, Samantha fired at it. After causing her to shoot Jack, she wanted to tear Jill into pieces and see if Jack was all right.

Although she was glad that he had escaped the law, the sight of the blood in the van made her heart freeze in her throat. As the VCTF chased Jack through the city, the sight of the Christmas decorations took her mind back to Cincinnati nearly twenty years before when she found her Jack in the snow and he died. Jack Trades couldn't die. Why? Why did she care so much about what happened to him? Because, she thought, as long as he's alive I can pretend that my Jack somehow escaped death. If Jack is caught or dies, then I have to face up to the fact that my husband is buried in a cemetery in Cincinnati.

Samantha had felt horribly guilty that she had shot Jack and tried to talk to her therapist Melinda Gillespie about her feelings.

"Sam, while it's understandable you are shaken up, you can't feel guilty for shooting Jack," Melinda chided.

Partially Samantha longed to confess her entire tale from start to finish and unburden herself, but looking at Melinda's stern expression, she decided to answer, "You're probably right."

"You haven't had any more of those dreams, have you?" Melinda demanded.

Blushing, Samantha lied, "No, none at all. I think the two I had were a fluke."

Once during a session she'd tried to talk to Melinda about her attraction to Jack and wanted to tell her about his kissing her. To test the waters, Samantha had told her about two of her most recent erotic dreams of Jack and was met with a look of abject horror. Dr. Gillespie threatened to recommend Sam be removed from the Jack-Of-All-Trades case. Samantha assured her she was objective and that it was probably her fears manifesting in a strange form. Ever since, Melinda was constantly probing to see if Sam had experienced any more dreams of her stalker and Samantha lied through her teeth at every session.

Age: 32 Years 11 Months

Jack poured himself a drink and tried to refrain from killing Sharon. Although he wanted to kill her after she threatened his Samantha, he still intended for Samantha to kill his Jill. His leg still had a dull ache from the bullet wound, but compared to his suffering as a child it was little more than a mosquito bite in comparison. Bad enough he'd had to go home to his Mother's for treatment of his gunshot wound, but Sharon had redecorated his lair into some sort of 1950's prom queen hell. When he was wounded he toyed with going to Konstantine and Sofia's, but he didn't wish to endanger them and his Mother's place in Savannah was closer to Atlanta.

As if Sharon's transgressions hadn't been egregious enough, she compounded her mistake by deleting Jack's files of Samantha and throwing out all his photos of her. Were she to destroy every image of his wife, nothing would ever change his heart. Samantha was the only woman for him and no woman, least of all crude and ignorant Sharon, could replace her. When he'd first gotten Sharon to his lair and made her over in Samantha's image, Jack had hoped to use her in his wife's stead. After almost twenty years of no sexual release except for memories and his own hand, Jack had been tempted but Sharon wasn't his Samantha. However scantily clad Sharon was, however many times she climbed in his lap and tried to kiss him, he felt nothing.

Jack went to his safety deposit box in an Atlanta bank that catered to only the very wealthy. Starting accounts were five million and less well off souls weren't welcomed. In the darkest recesses of the bank, Jack opened his safety deposit box and poured over the photos of Samantha and retrieved several back up computer disks he'd placed in there for just such and emergency. Around him rows and rows of safety deposit boxes contained easily several billion dollars of jewels, stock certificates and other items of material value. Sipping his champagne from an antique glass, Jack dabbed a dot onto Samantha's photo wishing she could share the bottle with him. Despite huge sums of money surrounding him, a sizable portion of which was his, Jack kissed Samantha's picture and decided it was the only thing of value in the room.

Samantha's shooting him, had pleased Jack. Although it had hurt terribly and he was in no rush to repeat the experience, where the bullet struck he realized she had been trying to shoot Sharon. However what had made it truly worth it was when Samantha had run after the van. Jack had bailed out and hidden in the shadows, watching as Sharon shed her disguise and ran and Samantha came charging into the alley.

After she'd opened the door to the van, she'd exclaimed that she'd shot him. Then she uttered the sweetest words Jack had heard in a long time. Echoing in his mind, he could hear her still. Oh God! What have I done! Please be all right. Run far away. I can't hide this, someone will call the shots in. Oh Jack! Then she'd collapsed to the ground and sobbed until the VCTF had arrived. Throughout the pain and his desperate journey to Savannah, Samantha's words had given him hope. Kissing Samantha's photo again, Jack gathered a couple photos and several computer disks to take back to his lair.

Age: 33 Years 3 Months

They had captured Jack and everyone was celebrating that Donald Lucas was in jail and the killings were over. Samantha didn't feel like celebrating and she wasn't convinced that Donald Lucas was Jack. When they raided the house where Lucas was at, there were hardly any photos of her, only one moderate powered PC and not a single rose in sight. The place felt fake and staged to Sam and the idea of Jack kidnapping a baby, it simply didn't feel like Jack. Lucas was unimaginative with his dozens of cans of beans, Jack was brilliant and creativity was his signature.

Another thing that bothered her was why weren't there any Cheetos at Donald's house? Forensics didn't even find a small trace of the orange powder that clung to the snack food which Jack had included in his game and in the box with his sketches he'd sent to the crematorium. The blank blue eyes were nothing like the dark flashing eyes that haunted her dreams since Robin Poole's. Maybe they were contacts, but his height was wrong too. Lucas was 6'2. Sam was 5'10 and when Jack had kissed her he hadn't had to bend down, she'd gauged him at about 5'11.

Once she'd pushed Lucas about what he remembered from Robin Poole's apartment and Memphis and he said nothing that indicated he had kissed her. Not that Samantha minded, Lucas wasn't how she'd dreamed of Jack. Maybe it was just wishful thinking, she thought frustratedly. At night her dreams continued to be haunted by a dark eyed compilation of her first husband and her fantasy Jack-Of-All-Trades. One night, Samantha woke with a start, Lucas called her Sam every time he saw her, Jack always called her Samantha...