Scene 5

"Come on, Carter, pick up." Jo was sitting in her car, half a block away from Café Diem, cell phone to her ear. She'd decided, reluctantly, that faking a crisis was just going to get her in more trouble in the long run. After all, she had to face Taggart eventually.

But when she'd made that decision, she'd been counting on Zane and Carter telling her what she needed to know. Like, oh, most importantly, was Taggart in love with her? Did he think she was in love with him? Were they sleeping together? She didn't need all the details, but some idea of how Taggart would be expecting her to behave would go a long way toward easing her nerves.

And what was the deal with the letters? If Taggart had been writing to her, she would have known. She would have seen his letters and had at least some warning about this relationship. If it was a relationship.

"Damn it, Carter." She sighed, and pushed End, then dialed Zane's number. For the fourth time, she got his voice mail, and for the fourth time, she hung up without leaving a message. He'd be able to see that she'd called from the Caller ID and what could she say in a message? Save me from my unknown past?

She glanced at the time on the phone. 7:02. Okay, she was just going to have to go in blind. She could do this. It'd be fine. Worst-case scenario? Well, it wasn't likely that anything she said would mean Taggart was going to immediately guess that she'd travelled in time and wound up in an alternate universe and reveal her to the government, so hey, how bad could it be?

As she stepped out of her car, Zane pulled up behind it on his motorcycle. "Hey," he said, "hold up."

Thank God, Jo thought. "What did you get for me?" she said urgently, stepping close to him.

"Hello usually comes first," he said irritably, pulling off his helmet and stashing it on the seat behind him.

"What?" he asked, seeing the expression on her face.

"Nothing," she shook her head. "Just—don't you ever answer your phone?"

"Do you want to know this or not?" Zane leaned forward on his motorcycle, making no motion toward getting off it or parking. He was radiating annoyance, and Jo frowned.

She and Zane—the old Zane—fought a lot—but Zane didn't really do angry. She did angry and emotional, he did logical and exasperated. It was one of the unchanging constants in their relationship. Like the time that Julia's DNA manipulation had led to Zane believing that Jo had kissed Fargo in the middle of Café Diem—if their positions had been reversed, and Zane had kissed, say, Zoe, in Café Diem, Jo would have killed him. Well, or at least tasered him. But certainly yelled and screamed and thrown things. Zane had just said, "I can't talk to you right now," and walked away. It was strange to see him showing his feelings like this.

"Are you angry?" she asked, cautiously, trying to confirm her impression.

"Yes," he said flatly. "But I have the complete run-down on your relationship with Taggart from Vincent. Do you want to know it or not?"

No. What she really wanted to know was why Zane was angry. But "Yeah," she said, "I'm supposed to be in there now."

"You started as friends-with-benefits and then got a little more serious. Then this Alaska project that he's been working on came up, and he asked you to marry him and come to Alaska with him. You said no, to both. Happy?"

Marry him? Eep. That was worse than she'd imagined. At least she'd said no. But Zane was already putting his helmet back on, and before she could say anything, even just a thank you, he'd kicked his bike into gear and accelerated away.

She watched him go, frowning. She needed to remember that this Zane was not her Zane. He was harder, tougher, more of a criminal…but all she really wanted was to follow him, find out why he was angry, and fix it. She wanted to make him feel better.

For the moment, though, she'd have to let him go. Taggart was waiting for her inside Café Diem.

Well, sort of waiting for her. As usual with Taggart, he'd gathered an audience. Seated on the low couch, he had a group of eager adolescents and a couple kids listening to the stories of Alaska he was telling. As she walked in, he was in the midst of some tall tale about a polar bear. He spotted her and his eyes lit up and he waved, but continued with his story.

Carter however greeted her immediately. He was standing at the counter, accepting a take-out bag from Vincent. "Just the person I wanted to see."

"I was trying to call you."

"Yeah, I didn't—," he glanced back at Taggart. "I was in the middle of a conversation." His voice dropped. "He's been on some top-secret, ultra-ultra-classified project. He couldn't write, but up until a couple months ago, you wrote him every few weeks. Apparently just chatty, friendly letters. But when you stopped cold, he got worried."

Jo closed her eyes with relief and took a deep breath. Okay. Ex-boyfriend, still friendly. That was a relationship she understood. "Okay," she said. "That's good news, I can handle that."

Carter held up the take-out bag. "I've got to run," he said. "I'm bringing dinner to Alison and Kevin. They've had a long day."

"No problem," Jo nodded. "I'll see you tomorrow." She started toward Taggart, and then, remembering, turned back, "Oh, but hey. What happened with the wolf?"

"Oh, right," Carter shrugged. "Taggart says he didn't bring a wolf with him. I've had Andy calling around to the closest hospitals and doctors' offices, but we can't find anyone whose injuries would fit. But when we tested the blood at GD, it turned out it wasn't human after all."

"Andy got it wrong?" Jo was surprised. She didn't exactly love the robot deputy but his instant testing skills had come in handy more than once.

"Alison thinks maybe the sample was contaminated. It tested positive for human hemoglobin, but then the DNA wasn't human. Unless something else shows up, we'll chalk it up to just another weird incident in Eureka and not worry about it."