A/N: Thank you for the kind reviews, PMs and emails. Sorry for the long delay. Sick kids, Spring Break, other random RL chaos, etc. Thankfully, all is well again in the NTF household. :-)
This chapter has a slightly different tone. More action next chapter. As always, thanks for reading!
(I'm editing the next chapter for Mosaic, too, so that should be up in the next couple days.)
Traffic was heavy, but still moving close to the speed limit. Within minutes, they were slipping beneath the Seattle Convention Center, then falling in line to merge onto I-90. Masen's driving was smooth, blending easily with the cars around them. As they cruised across the floating bridge and up towards the foothills, the traffic congestion gradually increased.
Bella waited until the Seattle skyline was a gray blur in the rearview mirror before speaking. "East, not south?"
"The idea was to put miles between us and the sightings. If we had headed south, we would have hit traffic leaving Tacoma and again passing through the capital. Getting past JBLM is a nightmare in the afternoons."
"I see. And you timed our departure to ride the bow wave of the afternoon rush hour." As with all of his plans, it made sense once she saw it playing out. She was glad she had managed to rein in her impatience that morning. The first crumb in their cross-country trail needed to be big enough to get documented officially, but they had to be fast enough to slip between the good guys' fingers. They needed to get lost in a crowd for their plans to work. Seattle rush hour was a pretty big crowd.
"I had hoped. It seems to have worked. Fortunately there were no accidents to slow things down. It's still possible that we were picked up on traffic cameras, so we need to keep our eyes open for unusual law enforcement activity."
"Like. . ."
"Patrol cars at gas stations or rest stops, speed traps, cars parked on overpasses. If anything catches your eye, let me know."
Bella nodded her understanding and looked out the window. The Cascades were rising up around them, evergreen and stately. They were in the middle lane, holding steady with the pace of the car in front of them. 72 miles per hour with a full tank of gas. . . By evening they would be in another state. She wondered how long until she had to be Marie again.
"How far are we going today?"
"Coeur d'Alene. There's an exclusive resort there that rents luxury cabins. Very secluded. Very discrete."
"Secluded enough that Marie won't be tempted to run again?"
"Not quite. The cabins are close enough to give the impression of community, but they're far enough apart that any noises are subject to interpretation."
Marie was going to try to escape and fail again. Would she have to pull another innocent bystander into their madness? Or did Masen want to incite a more generalized concern without the fireworks of their first scene? "So we raise a few eyebrows. . ."
"But nobody will be confident enough to call the authorities. We'll have a plan in place if they do."
"It's disturbing that people are so slow to react when something horrible is happening right in front of them."
"From your point of view, yes. You were trained in a decision making matrix. You have weapons and combat skills that the average citizen doesn't. Even so, if you were not working in a professional capacity, and you saw somebody commit a crime, you would hesitate. It might only be for a split second, but you would. The animal mind gathers data before taking action. If the threat is immediate and personal, you react instantly. If the threat is directed elsewhere, you assess, measure and judge, then you act. If nobody around you is responding, it diminishes the value of your own judgement within your own mind. The more people who are standing around doing nothing, the longer everyone else waits for someone, anyone, to take the lead."
"Unless it's your job."
"Exactly. Possessing the authority to act makes it easier to intervene."
"Which is why we have law enforcement in the first place."
"Precisely. So, our biggest concern is somebody calling the police. We don't want to push anyone that hard. We want them to see us, notice us, but not feel certain that intervention is needed. Or if it is, we don't want them to feel as if it's their responsibility."
"Gotcha." Bella took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then exhaled with a loud whoosh.
Her knee had begun to ache. She slipped her feet out of her shoes and rested her heels on the front edge of her seat, wrapping her arms around her shins. The fabric of her leggings was glued to her skin with dried blood. Her knee was slightly swollen and the graze stung whenever she moved.
Bella glanced over at her partner, but his eyes were fixed on the road and his expression was blank. She recognized the closed off look and chose not to ask any more questions. Yet.
They passed another semi-truck. This one was bronze with bright green pin lines. The driver was wearing sun glasses and chewing gum. He was probably thinking about the miles ahead or the next gas stop, maybe deciding which diner to hit for his evening meal. Her own mind was consumed by much darker thoughts as they passed him. Behind them, she heard the massive transmission shifting gears to accommodate the steeper grade. She leaned her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes, wiggling her jaw back and forth periodically as her inner ears adjusted to the decreasing air pressure.
"You can listen to music. . . If you want."
Bella eyed him sideways. "We're almost at the pass. I don't think many stations reach here."
"There's a playlist on my phone." He handed her the phone and she scrolled through the selections. She tried not to laughed, but ended up snorting, so she gave up on maintaining her composure and giggled outright.
"Are you going to let me in on the joke, or do I have to guess?"
"No, no. It's just funny. Edward Cullen is a miserable, pretentious prick."
"Now who's being cryptic?"
"Mahler, Bruckner, Saint-Saens, Shostakovich, Rachmaninov. . . all dark, brooding music and not a lyric in sight. You don't have anything light or fun on here!"
"Maybe I should have kept your first phone. It was packed full of Katy Perry and Kesha," he grinned. "We don't have to listen to music. I just thought you might be bored."
"We could always talk."
"Talk? About what?"
"I don't know. Tell me something about yourself." She set the phone back down and twisted in her seat to watch him.
"Like what?" His expression was cautious.
"Um. What are your favorite pizza toppings?"
He furrowed his eyebrows and replied slowly, "I don't really have favorite foods."
"Oh. . ." She licked her lips and thought of another question. "Well then, what was your favorite subject in school?"
"Science," he said without a pause. When she continued to look at him expectantly, he elaborated. "I liked to predict outcomes and measure the accuracy of my predictions."
"So you were a nerd."
"Sort of."
"Favorite color?"
"Blue," he shot her a crooked grin.
"Ah, the truth. I had a feeling." She laughed then changed the subject to something safer. "How fast can you run if you aren't making sure your partner can keep up?"
"Just under a five minute mile. I'm not as fast as I used to be."
"Holy shit," she gasped with her eyes wide. "That's really fast."
"For an old man," he tacked on.
"Yeah. Sure. That's what I was thinking, too."
They continued to talk as they came down from the mountains; Bella leading with easy questions and Masen responding with superficial tidbits of his life and history. Her instincts told her not to ask anything really personal. Nothing about his family or friends. Nothing about his reasons for joining the FBI or doing the type of work he did. No details from his previous cases. She was willing to wait before digging deeper. For now.
They stopped by a rest area where she cleaned the dried blood from her knee and fixed her makeup. Masen kept her within his line-of-sight from the car to the ladies restrooms and back again. Out in public, her movements were hurried and furtive. It garnered some strange looks. There was a woman in the restroom changing her baby's diaper. She looked like she was about to speak, but her baby started fussing, and Bella slipped out while she was distracted. Back inside the car, she relaxed again, but the easy flow of their conversation had been broken.
Miles passed without a single word or look between them. The powerful V8 easily adjusted to the steep grade as they climbed up the far side of the Columbia Gorge. Masen never let off the gas, maneuvering deftly around the slower cars and semi-trucks. Something about watching the other cars fall behind them, their drivers and passengers on completely different journeys, struck a chord within her. Bella finally found the nerve to break the silence.
"Tell me about Jacob."
"I'm not sure if that's my story to tell." Masen didn't take his eyes off the road, but she suddenly felt as if all his senses were directed at her. His shoulders were stiff, as was his jaw. He was uncomfortable. She had knocked him off balance. That set her own senses to high-alert.
"Tell me how you met him. He said that you were his protege."
Masen looked surprised. "He told you that?"
"So you were," she confirmed, nodding to herself. Jacob had given off an air of pride and concern that was distinctly paternal when he spoke about Masen.
"He's the one who introduced me to the FBI."
That revelation shocked her. She had assumed they had met within the agency. "Was he an agent?"
"He was a consultant then, as he is now."
A consultant. . . If Jacob wasn't ever a federal employee, what was he? What role did he play? "So, how did he find you?"
"He didn't. I found him." Masen's words were clipped. He wasn't sparing any breath, biting off each syllable as if it pained him to speak.
"Oh, come on. You can't stop there," she said when he didn't say anything further.
Masen didn't reply for almost a minute. His jaw was clenched shut and his posture was as rigid as a statue. Bella found herself holding her breath, afraid to make a sound. She wanted to know more. but she was afraid he would clam up completely if she showed any sign of impatience.
He finally spoke, his voice heavy and hesitant, "I needed help with. . . a task. I had heard that Jacob could help people transform themselves. Make themselves temporarily. . . unrecognizable. In certain circles, he had a reputation for being a shapeshifter. I wanted to see for myself. He had a salon in downtown Olympia. I staked it out for a few weeks, watching the people who walked in and those who walked out again. Most of them were normal customers. A lot of women. Jacob has magic fingers and the politicians wives loved him. He made them look better than their best." Masen chuckled in a hollow sort of way and shook his head, remembering scenes from another lifetime.
"He had a couple of unique regulars, though. People that I knew weren't just going in for a haircut or a blow dry. I knew that because they walked in, but never walked out. Not just once, but regularly. Most of them were men. I finally figured it out. This one guy, I later found out he was an FBI agent, didn't change his shoes. One of the laces had been broken and re-threaded so it was shorter than the one on the other shoe. That day, I followed him. He was operating undercover as a college volunteer in a state representative's office; part of a white collar sting operation. I knew he was the same man because of the shoes and a couple other subtle details, but it took another two or three transitions for me to see what Jacob had done. With a few changes to his hair, clothes and the lines on his face, Jacob had made him look 10 years younger and like a completely different person."
Masen went on to explain how he had walked in one morning and made an appointment to meet the salon owner himself. He had asked Jacob for help and gotten a rude awakening. Jacob charged hundreds of dollars to do a single makeover, and thousands to equip the client with tools and tips to do it on their own. When he couldn't come up with the steep fee, he got desperate. He eventually brokered a deal with Jacob, agreeing to tell the older man exactly what he was doing and why. Once he had heard Masen's story, Jacob agreed to teach him for free.
Bella was about to ask what the younger Masen had been up to, but his eyes narrowed slightly and she shut her mouth. Whatever it was, he had been driven to accomplish his objective at all costs. And, once he had told Jacob the details, the older man had agreed to help him without any further justification. That private mission had been the start of a relationship that spanned many years and dozens of operations. Masen didn't disclose any details.
Bella felt as if she was standing outside a locked vault. Of the other side of the reinforced steel wall was a complex and fascinating man. She didn't have the key or combination to open the door. She didn't know who he really was, but she was getting glimpses here and there. Each day gave her a few more puzzle pieces to examine and place. Each day added a bit more clarity and definition to the man who would soon hold her life in his hands.
Bella tucked away her other questions for another time. It didn't escape her that he hadn't asked her a single one.
The terrain changed from rolling farmland to scrubby stands of pine and undulating hills. The Rockies gradually rose up in a wall of dusky green and blue peaks in the distance. They would cross the bigger mountain range tomorrow. But first, Marie had another scene.
Bella looked down at her arms and wrists. Purplish fingerprints stood out against her fair skin where Edward Cullen had grabbed her arm. According to their plan, she would have more before the sun rose again. She took another deep breath and looked back out the window. In the game they were playing, pain was a necessary evil. It was as much a part of her disguise as the makeup and new clothes. For a moment, she wondered if it was harder to be the one taking the blows. . . or delivering them. Judging by the impenetrable silence to her left, it was a toss up.
A/N: I insert little tidbits from canon here and there in all my stories. If you see them and they make you smile, let me know! :)