Chapter XLV

Caught!

She didn't want to open her eyes. Her head hurt and opening her eyes would only make things worse. Her stomach felt raw, her throat was sandpaper and she felt like she'd been dragged through the desert with her tongue out.

Sara Sidle cracked open one bleary eye and looked around. She rolled onto her back with a groan and tried to put all the facts together. She was wrapped up in vivid green sheet. The sheets on her bed at home were a delicate gold color. She wasn't in her own bed. She peeked under the thin cotton sheet and let out a very embarrassing squeak. She wasn't in her own bed and she wasn't wearing clothes, could it get any worse? The realization settled in cold and fast, like a bucket of ice water. She was still in Alex's suite. She had slept in Alex's bed, probably with Alex.

She was never drinking tequila again.

She sat up and looked around for one or both of her cell phones. She didn't see either her department-issued phone or her Blackberry.

"Damn."

She half rolled and half flopped to the edge of the large bed. She couldn't believe she'd let herself be so damn stupid. She peeked under the sheet that she was still clinging to and felt her face go from tinged red to completely scarlet. She wasn't naked; she was wearing a lacy pair of panties in a pretty shade of baby blue. Only she didn't own a pair of skimpy blue panties, which made things oh-so-much better.

Sara looked around the opulent master bedroom and couldn't see her clothes anywhere. The floor was devoid of the twin trail of thrown and tossed articles she was expecting. Her head was screaming, her stomach was sourly protesting and she simply didn't have the patience for a post-coital clothing search. Ugh, now there was a train of thought she'd hoped to never have again. She'd had wild drunken sex with her ex, or at least she might have.

She was never drinking again, period.

She pulled the sheet around her and fashioned it into a make-shift toga. The fact that her covering up was completely moot did not escape her. She would like to at least pretend she had a few shreds of dignity left.

She got to her feet, a little shaky but not falling down drunk anymore, and padded to the bedroom's beautiful double doors. Her feet silently sank into the carpet with each step.

"Alex." Her voice was almost a whisper. "Lexa, you here?" Lexa had always been her personal pet name for the other woman and it felt both strange and familiar to say it again. "I can't believe I'm saying this," her voice was louder and filled with a touch of sarcasm now, as it bounced out into the main room, "but where are my clothes?"

Capitan Jim Brass shook his head once again. "You got the warrant, but I still don't like it." Catherine only shrugged, but he went on. "I don't know why the judge signed off on it, it's shaky."

Catherine smiled, and it was the sharp and predatory look of a wild animal on the hunt. "Judge Roth owed me a favor. Besides, we are all ready to get this bitch off of our streets."

Jim watched his reflection in the elevator door run its hand over its balding head. "The ID wasn't as squeaky clean as it needed to be."

He wasn't stretching the truth, not even a little. The kid, Will Jarman, who went by Dozer, was not the most reliable of witnesses. He had been drinking, for one. He hadn't been wasted, but alcohol was still alcohol. Then there had been the small detail of the crumpled, thrashed and decimated remains of the car he had been cut out of. The car he'd been riding in had crossed three lanes of traffic, taking another car, a taxi, and a panel van out along the way, before going through the guard rail and into an empty stretch of dusty desert between a couple of half-finished strip malls. He had been damn lucky that they hadn't plowed into a building. His two party buddies hadn't fared so well. Luis Nelo, the boy in the passenger seat, had been D.O.A and three surgeons had worked on Joshua Roggen, the driver, for hours. They had pronounced him dead less than six hours after his younger brother. Mr. Jarman had been the lucky one; he might walk again one day.

After all of the booze, trauma, surgery and meds, Jim wondered if the kid would be able to recognize his own mother. He was sure, though, adamant even, that the picture Catherine had shown him was the woman that Adam Roggen had left with.

Jim Brass wasn't one to discount the ideas and theories of others and he had to admit that if Catherine was right, everything fell into place. It would close the case and tie it up with a nice neat bow, if Catherine was right. He had known the woman for several years and she was more often right than wrong, but she was not infallible.

"Tox on our vic came back negative, Desert Palm's in-house test on the late Josh Roggen was positive. She killed all those boys in one fucking swoop."

He shook his head, wanting to close this case just as much as anyone else. He was dead tired of finding butchered men in his city. "Let's go."

The elevator slid to a smooth and silent stop at the penthouse level. Jim hadn't seen the inside of such an expensive suite so many times since Sam Braun had died

Prancing around in pretty clothes paid very well—far better than a cop. Even with benefits and overtime he couldn't afford fifteen minutes in this mini-mansion on his cop's salary.

Even the rich and those who rubbed elbows with them, though, could be scum. Through and through complete and utter murderous scum.

Jim pushed those thoughts back and locked them into what he thought of as his 'cop vault'. It was the mental plane where he stored the horrors he saw and the dark thoughts that haunted him.

He locked his emotions in the vault and knocked on the door.

It flew open on the first rap of his knuckles.

"Ghandi on a fucking unicycle, what the hell took you so long? Get the hell in here, Jeni. God, she's going to—oh fuck me, it's you again."

Alexandra Dupree hadn't even turned all the way around yet. Jim was a cop, but that didn't make him any less of a man. As a man, he could not help but admire the picture the model made.

She had obviously not been expecting company. The blonde woman was barely decent, dressed only in a white silk robe that hit her mid-thigh. It was loosely belted and slipped off to reveal one sculpted shoulder. She wasn't wearing makeup and her hair was a wild mess, falling in her eyes and sticking out wildly all over her head. Was her wildly disheveled look genuine or just another put on? Judging from the room's condition, bottles scattered around and a small garbage bag full to bursting with something, he was pretty sure that it was the former.

"Fucking slimy sons of bitches, if you two don't have a fucking warrant then so help me fucking God I will sue your assess so far back into the damn Stone Age that you will have to take out a Goddamned loan to pay the parking meter."

It was her eyes, summer blue and bloodshot from whatever it was she had done the night before, which gave her away. She was averting her eyes and he didn't think it was just because she was cursing and lying. There was something or someone in the suite that she didn't want them to see and Dupree was looking their way.

Jim popped the strap on his holster and looked at Catherine. The woman wasn't a cop, but she had good instincts. She had her hand on the butt of her gun and her eyes on Alexandra Dupree. She was just waiting for the other woman to make one false move.

His heart rate picked up and he felt the flutter and jump of adrenaline soaking into his system. It was what got recruits to sign up with the academy and kept grass green rookies working through midnight shit shifts in the worst part of town. The anticipation, the rush, the insert of danger, the flirting with destruction, disaster and death was what kept the captains and commanders from getting comfortable in their chairs behind their desks.

He moved smoothly down the short hallway that led to the master bedroom and bath. He could hear it now, the subtle sounds of someone moving around: rattling things, soft steps on carpet. Dupree's curses and Catherine's sharp bark of "Shut up" were reduced to white background noise.

He could hear someone running water and moving around behind the door on his right. There was someone in the bathroom. He put his hand on the ornate knob and pulled it slowly.

Her courage had failed her three feet away from the bedroom door, which was convenient because the bathroom's second door had been right there on her left. Inside she had found the mess that screamed that Alex had been there. She had always been rather tidy herself, but Alex had the amazing habit of spreading every bathroom product a human being could imagine all over the room. Sara smiled as she scrubbed last night's aftermath off of her teeth and tongue.

Her talent for coating counters and sinks with cosmetics was not one that she had developed as a model. It stretched back to childhood. That had been one of the embarrassing childhood stories that Michael and Ethan, Alex's brothers, had shared with her. Sara smirked at the mirror and the minty foam on her lips. Alex hadn't changed her brand of toothpaste in almost her whole life. All the dental breakthroughs and she still used plain old Colgate. It was one of those cute Alex things that–

"Oh no."

Her words were muffled by the toothbrush, Alex's, and the toothpaste.

She shouldn't connect Alex and cute anymore. That just simply wasn't a good idea. Not that her head was full of good ideas lately. She started to scrub at her molars and she thought, which wasn't entirely contusive to her headache or her mood.

God, that was just what she needed. She was hip deep in a case, or at least she had been, and here she was standing in a bathroom that was probably bigger then her apartment thinking about her ex.

She was really thinking about her. How many years had she spent trying to not thinking about her? Maybe it was the situation, just like Tristan had said. Alex got in trouble with the law and she came running. That was what had happened again, more or less. Was it the situation, the rush of nostalgia or was she really falling back in love with Alexandra Dupree?

Speaking of Alex, the doorknob started to turn. "Lexa, is that you?"

The door flew open with a quick burst and Sara jumped back. Her eyes went wide and her hand went limp. Alex's toothbrush hit the plush carpet about the same time she screamed. She stumbled back and her heel caught on the edge of the sheet, which tugged it down. She tried to pull it up to cover her breasts, which only threw her further off balance. She couldn't grab at the counter because that would compromise her hold on the sheet. She stumbled backwards again; her usually sharp brain was frozen solid. She kept going backwards and holding the sheet, because that was the only thing she could think to do. She only regained her ability to speak, if you could call one word speaking, when her mostly bare back hit the cool glass of the shower door. "Jim!"

The homicide Capitan had his gun up, ready and pointed dead at her. She was a hairs breathe away from getting a double-tap to the chest. Her brain unfroze in the face of copper-washed lead bullets. "Jim, I can't my raise my hands without dropping the sheet and I am not appropriately attired underneath it." It sounded absurdly proper for a woman who looking down the barrel of Glock 9.

Then, as if one gun in her face wasn't bad enough, she saw another.

"Brass, are we clear or should I call dispatch?" Catherine moved in carefully, she too had her Glock in hand and ready to fire and stopped at the door. Whether she stopped because she shouldn't be in the room without Jim calling the all clear or out of shock, Sara didn't know. She didn't want to know, either. She just wished they would either shoot her or disappear.

Sara had watched Brass's face betray his surprise and then something else. It might have been anger or maybe disappointment, she didn't know.

"Yeah, we're clear." She slid his weapon back into its holster. "We're clear."

Catherine's face was much easier to read. First her pale eyebrows rose, then they waggled in amusement, before settling into the firm lines of a scowl.

"Oh, well, isn't this just perfect. Just perfect!"

Sara held the sheet against her body, one arm holding the sheet to her breasts and the other over her stomach and legs.

She knew she should be angry, livid, even. She couldn't make the leap from surprise to angry. She had fallen short of angry. There was a buzz in her head blocking her thoughts. Her knees started to shake beneath the sheet wrapped around them.

"I–"

She stumbled over her own words.

Sara preferred to keep her world orderly and organized. She knew exactly what to say, most of the time, and how to react to what was said. She was the master of her own environment and destiny. Her well-ordered world had gone all to hell in the matter of a few months.

One of the main instigators of her spiral into chaos burst through the door that lead to the bedroom.

"What the fucking hell?!"

Sara looked at Alex, devastatingly sexy and unconcerned about her near-nudity, and then at Jim and Catherine. She knew what they were thinking, and there was a good chance that they were right.

Alex stepped in front of her. "Get the hell out of here, you fucking pervs! Jesus Christ, she's practically naked and you're about to shoot her?! Are you out of your damn minds?"

Catherine's chin went up and she lowered her weapon. "Someone around here is out of her mind." She looked at Sara over Alex's shoulder. "Or far sneakier then I ever gave her credit for."

Jim cleared his throat. "Where is your personal assistant, Ms. Dupree?"

Though Sara could not see Alex's face—the other woman had her back to her—she could easily imagine what it looked like.

"You barge into my suite, point guns at my fucking guest," Sara winced at Alex's poorly chosen words and knew that there was going to be more; with Alex more was always more, "and now you have the cajones to demand to see my damn employee? I don't know what the hell kind of cowboy cop bullshit you usually get away with but it will not fucking fly with me."

Catherine crossed her arms over her chest. "We have a warrant for her arrest."

"You can take that fucking warrant and shove it up your ass, bitch. Where the fuck is my lawyer?!"

Sara stood to the side, back still against the shower, avoiding Jim's eyes and saw what everyone else must see when she was the one arguing with Catherine—only Alex was doing a much better job, curse words and all. It was like the anomaly that she had only heard about in school, an unstoppable force colliding with an immovable object. It was spectacular, a little scary and could have gone on forever.

"Why is everyone in the bathroom?"

Four heads jerked to the source of the new question quickly and in unison.

Jennica Rawlins stood in the open door that led to the master bed room. She had a large bag in each hand. Each had a label that belonged to one of the boutiques that the Paris boasted downstairs in its shopping promenade.

"Capitan Brass, CSI Willows. Alex, what's going on?" The raven-haired younger woman walked over to Sara and put the bags at her feet with a smile. "If you all excuse me, Sara needs to get dressed."

"Where were you last night, Miss Rawlins?"

Jennica did a double take. "Huh?"

Catherine turned to face the younger woman. "Where were you last night from ten p.m. to four a.m.?"

"She's not answering that, she's not saying a fucking thing. Don't you dare say a word, Jeni."

Alex had her hands on her hips and her face was twisted into a snarl.

"She's not saying a damn word and you two are getting the hell out of my rooms, now."

Brass blew out a sigh. "We have a warrant for your arrest, Miss Rawlins."

Her mouth dropped open and Brass stepped forward.

"You have the right to remain silent."

Alex would have stepped forward but in the time it took for Jim to turn Jennica around, Sara stepped forward and put one hand on Alex's shoulder. It effectively stopped her, but her face was a vicious shade of crimson.

"Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law."

Jennica turned, her wrists pulled behind her back and ratcheted together with handcuffs. "I don't understand, I didn't do anything wrong!"

Catherine looked between Jim and Jennica and Sara and Alex, her face unreadable. "You should come too, Ms. Dupree. We'll let Sara get dressed and then I think she'll have plenty to explain."

"You have the right to an attorney, if you cannot afford an attorney, the state will provide one."

Sara's face was pale again and she held the sheet up with the hand that wasn't holding Alex back. "Catherine, you are taking this way too far."

Her words fell on deaf ears.

"The press is right outside, you can't do this to her. She has nothing to do with any of this!"

Jeni, who was fully handcuffed and being turned around to walk out of the bathroom and to the awaiting squad car tried to turn around. "What is this? I don't even know what's going on!"

Jim sighed. "Do you understand your rights as I have read them to you?"

Alex scowled. "No, she doesn't because she doesn't know what the fuck is happening, none of us do! What the hell is going on here?"

Catherine turned to leave. "Get dressed and come down to the station, Miss Dupree and you can explain why you've been jetting the Male Mutilator around the country with you.

Sara, still holding her sheet, Alex, still dressed in her skimpy robe, and Jennica, handcuffed and under arrest all stopped short. "WHAT?!"

Author's Note: I love this chapter, outside of the one I am currently writing, it's probably my favorite of the story.