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Chapter 5
Saturday, June 18
6:58 P.M.
I-405, Los Angeles

As the sea of red taillights in front of him got thicker, Don was tempted for a moment to activate the siren and lights on his vehicle. Sure, he was returning from the scene of a crime, not going to one, but surely exceptions could be made on occasion. Oh, maybe if he'd been going back to the office with a suspect in custody. Not on his way to a date, albeit his first date in…well…it didn't matter how long it had been.

He was still surprised it had happened at all. He hadn't had anything but friendly intentions when he suggested to Karen that they meet over lunch earlier in the week. She had just looked so shell-shocked and unlike her earlier self that he felt he had to do something. And then somehow they'd talked for what had turned into a two-hour lunch before he had realized the time was passing.

His initial assessment had been right: she needed to talk about what had happened to her. She'd opened up fairly easily, talking in a low tone about the fear and helplessness she'd felt when McDowd burst into the safe house and started dragging her up to the roof. The convict had told her in detail about what he planned to do to her before killing her, and Don had found his hands clenching into fists as she talked. He wished for a moment that he had taken Cooper's suggestion about dropping the fugitive over the edge of the building, both as a way to deliver justice and to spare Karen from having to go through yet another trial.

Then Don had offered up the story about the first time he'd been held at gunpoint, and how with all of the training he'd had for that type of situation, he was still petrified. Paradoxically, it had seemed to reassure her that even a trained FBI agent would have been scared in her situation. He finally got her to agree to talk to an FBI psychologist if the nightmares she'd been having didn't go away.

Then, a slightly different tone in her voice, she had asked him if the FBI always conducted these "follow-up visits" with the witnesses they protected. Caught off-guard by her question, he had stammered out something about how he felt responsible for what happened to her since he hadn't been wise to Lieutenant Reid sooner, while Coop's teasing about a good-looking witness played through his head. She had looked somewhat dubious, and he had remembered thinking that her tone of voice was the same one she had used when asking if he had come to her office to check up on her. It hadn't really registered at the time, since he'd been more concerned with how to break the bad news to her. But it was definitely a flirting tone.

So he had flirted right back. And somehow in the ensuing ten minutes of conversation, he had asked her to dinner, and she had accepted. It had taken at least another half hour before he was able to drag himself away from the deli and back to his office, and somewhere in there he had realized that Coop was right. He'd been treating her differently from any other witness all along because he was attracted to her. Not that he wouldn't do his utmost to protect anyone in his care, but the way he tried to cheer her up after it was all over, and certainly the way he was checking up on her now, made it clear that Karen Fisher was different.

And now he was going to be seriously late, probably killing any chance he had with her. He dialed up the number that he had programmed into his cellphone just in case, and listened to it ring as he inched along in traffic.

"This is Karen."

"Hey, Karen, it's Don."

"Hi." She paused. "Please tell me you haven't been called away to a crime scene or something."

He smiled into the phone. "No, I'm just a little late. Traffic on the 405, you know."

"That's what they all say." But the tone of her voice was warm. "Do you have any idea how late you'll be?"

"Not more than fifteen minutes. I just wanted to let you know."

She sounded slightly surprised. "That's nice of you, Don. I'll see you soon, then."

"All right." He hung up the phone and returned his concentration to the traffic creeping along in front of him. It wasn't rush hour, it was even a weekday, for God's sake, but this was Los Angeles. He briefly thought of the traffic-free streets of Albuquerque, and then shook his head. Home was better. For any number of reasons, starting and ending with his family.

He thought about dinner last night and smiled. Both Charlie and Dad had shown remarkable restraint in not pressing him about his date tonight. He knew that he sometimes slipped into his Voice of Authority, as Terry called it, without realizing it. Maybe last night had been one of those times. It wasn't that he didn't want to talk about his personal life with his family, but as he had told them, he felt like he would be jinxing it if he said anything. He'd felt this connection when talking to Karen over lunch that he hadn't felt with anyone for a long time, not since Kim and maybe not even then. He was also afraid of reading too much into things, of suggesting there was something there when she really just wanted someone to talk to about what had happened to her.

He finally exited the freeway onto Santa Monica Boulevard and started down the final miles towards the water. They were meeting at a restaurant overlooking the ocean, apparently a short walk from her condo. She said it was a nice, quiet place with a great view, and even though the food sounded a little trendier than he was used to, he said that sounded fine.

Karen had said she'd be waiting outside the restaurant or just across the street. After handing off his keys to the valet attendant, he scanned the line of people outside Cezanne, congratulating himself on making a reservation. But he didn't see a tall blond woman anywhere. Turning around, he saw a park across the street. A woman was leaning against the railing, looking out over the ocean. He smiled and crossed the street towards her. The breeze coming off the ocean brought the faint scent of roses, and as he got closer and didn't see any of the flowers, he figured it must be her perfume.

His feet crunched on the gravel path as he approached, and she whirled around, her expression wary. Then she recognized him, and her face lit up in a smile. She was wearing a long brown skirt and a chestnut-colored top that deepened the color of her hair, and her green eyes were sparkling.

"You look beautiful," he said, suddenly conscious of the wrinkles in his black dress shirt after sitting in the car for the past hour.

A faint blush stained her cheeks. "Thank you," she replied. "My dad always likes to tease me about how nicely I clean up when I'm not wearing a doctor's coat."

"Well, he's right." He offered her his arm. "Shall we?"

They were seated right away, and exchanged small talk while waiting for the menus to arrive. After placing their orders, Don leaned a little closer and dropped his voice. "So, Karen, how are you doing?"

"I'm fine." He looked at her more closely, and she went on, "No, really, I am. I've been sleeping better since we talked, and I don't jump nearly as high when someone startles me."

He gave her a rueful glance. "Sorry about that."

"No, it's not your fault. I'm just a little jumpy still, you know?"

He thought of the wariness on her face a moment ago out in the park. "That's perfectly understandable," he replied. He knew it would take time for her to adjust, but at the same time he wanted to see that strong, fearless woman she'd been when they first met in her office, and he would do anything he could to bring her back.

"I really appreciate you taking the time for me the other day, Don. I know you must have a lot on your plate right now. I saw your name in the paper as the agent in charge of that big smuggling case down at the port."

"Yeah, it's turned into something a lot bigger than I expected. That's why I was late." He hesitated, not sure how much more he should say.

She folded her hands on the table. "Much as I'd like to hear about it, can we make a rule for tonight? No shop talk for either of us?"

He gave a half laugh and fingered the stem of his wine glass. "I'm afraid there's not much else to my life, sad as that sounds."

"You're forgetting that you're talking to someone who doesn't know anything about you. Where you're from, where you went to college, what your favorite color is…"

"Pasadena, UCLA, blue." The corner of his mouth turned up. "Anything else you want to know?"

She propped her chin on her hand, elbow resting on the table. "When's the last time you went on a date?"

He blinked. Not since he'd moved to L.A. three years ago. Before that, he'd been involved with Kim for three years, and he wasn't sure at what point they crossed the line from going on dates to something more serious. Maybe when she'd come home with him for the Christmas that Charlie was in London, or maybe --

His thoughts broke off as he realized Karen was looking down at her plate and fidgeting with her fork. "I'm sorry, that's probably too personal," she was saying.

"No, no, it's okay. I guess you can tell from how long it took me to think of something that it's been a while." It had, indeed, been a very long time since he felt that half-pleasant, half-nerve-wracking rush that came with getting to know someone. He was pleased to find that he was enjoying it, minor awkward moments aside.

She looked up at him. "Yeah, me too."

"So, uh, what about you? Your three questions."

"Oh. Well, I grew up in Sausalito, across the Golden Gate from San Francisco. So of course I went to college as far away as I could, to Dartmouth. Then back to USF for med school, and then I moved down here to start my own practice."

"Is your family still in the Bay Area?"

"My parents, yes. I have one older sister, and right now she's in, let me think…It's June, right? I think she's in Vienna."

"Austria?" When Karen nodded, he went on, "What does she do?"

"She's a concert violinist with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. They're on tour this summer in Europe."

"Wow. Do you play?"

Karen shook her head and took a sip of wine. "No, Missy's always been the musician in the family."

Something in her tone sounded achingly familiar. "Have I told you about my brother?"

For the next half hour, interrupted only by the arrival of their food, they shared stories about growing up in the shadow of a sibling. Don told her how great it was to have Charlie back in his life, and how he thought they were closer now than they ever could have been growing up, because of the age difference and the jealousy that Charlie's special situation had sparked in his older brother. She told him that she was lucky there was a world-class medical school where she could live at home and pay in-state tuition, after her older sister had gone to Juilliard. Not that her parents weren't supportive of her, she hastened to add, but Juilliard was, well, Juilliard. And since she'd wanted to be a doctor ever since she was a little girl, there was no reason to think she wouldn't make it happen somehow.

"How about you?" she asked. "What made you decide to be an FBI agent?"

He swallowed his bite of salad and said, "Oh, a bunch of things. Some classes I took in college, a recruiter I talked to on campus once, a friend of mine whose dad was in the FBI. The desire to get as far away from California as I could, at least for the training."

She chuckled. "I hear you. No one in the family, though?"

"No, my dad was a city planner before he retired, and Mom was an elementary school teacher before we came along."

"What does your family think of what you do?"

He put down his fork and thought for a moment. "They're okay with it. I mean, it freaked my dad out when I first told him what I was going to do, you know, and he still worries when he doesn't hear from me on a regular basis. But they never tried to talk me out of it."

She was regarding him more carefully. "How dangerous of a job is it, really?"

"Hey, I thought we weren't going to talk shop." When she gave a little shrug, he went on, "I suppose there are more risks than most people face on the job. But I'm trained to deal with them, and I know what I'm doing. Besides, it's a lot more repetitive grunt work than you'd think from watching TV or the movies."

Karen opened her mouth to say something, and an electronic ring sounded from the vicinity of the floor. She gave a start, and then dove for her purse. She pulled out a pager and quickly stopped it from ringing further, frowning as she read the number on the display. "Don, I'm really sorry," she said, looking up at him.

He gave her what he hoped was a smile instead of a grimace of disappointment. "Hey, it's okay. I understand." He'd had a mental bet on with himself as to which one of them was more likely to get called away from dinner; it looked like he'd lost.

She was already standing up, gathering her wrap from the back of her chair. "It's one of my patients whose due date is in three weeks, and she's had a few complications already. I'm sorry, but I really have to go."

He rose belatedly, signaling to a waiter as he did so and ignoring the curious stares from the tables next to them. "Can I give you a ride? At least back to your place?"

"That would be wonderful." She smiled gratefully. "I'm sorry," she said again, gesturing at the half-eaten dinner on their plates.

He waved it off. "No problem." A waiter had appeared at his elbow, and he quickly explained the situation. As the man bustled off for the check, he dug out his valet slip and handed it to Karen. "Why don't you get that started and I'll meet you out front." She hesitated for a moment, and he laid a hand on her elbow. "Come on, go. I'll be right there."

She flashed him another smile and headed for the door.

Five minutes later, he was pulling up in front of a high-rise building towering over the ocean below. "I really appreciate this, Don," Karen said as she opened the door. "And I'm sorry."

"Would you stop saying that?" He laid a gentle hand on her arm, and she paused. "Next time, it'll be my turn to get called away. Just you watch."

Then he realized what he had just said, and he swallowed. Was he being too presumptuous?

But a warm smile was spreading across her face, and she said softly, "I'll hold you to that." Then she swiftly leaned forward and kissed his cheek before slipping out of the car and into the building, leaving a faint trace of roses behind her.