Jasper took his time getting to Portland. He wandered along the Pacific Coast highway and even stayed at a KOA one night in a tent he picked up at a nearby store. It was nice not having any agenda or schedule and he decided to check out what concerts were going on in the cities he was passing through. He caught his favorite band again in San Francisco, actually even getting to talk to them again and adding to his t-shirt collection. He found it kinda odd how the tall fella stared at him so much, but he was nice enough and they could put away the beer like nobodies business. He needed an extra day in a hotel to recover from it, and he laughed when he saw them loading up for a late start as well the next day. He was trying to force himself to wear less covering shirts, and he finally broke down and wore and white, v-necked t-shirt with his jeans as he was traveling along. It gave hint of the tattoos underneath, but hid the worst of the damage from the scars, and he found he was able to be less conscious of it as time went on. He didn't think he would ever feel comfortable being shirtless in front of anyone other than Edward ever again, but he was able to do the t-shirt with little stress. It became a moot point once he passed Mt Shasta and began to climb in elevation because his flatlander blood forced him to break out the hoodie and bundle up like he was headed to the arctic.

Edward laughed when he heard he had gone to see his band again. " So you saw your twin again? How was that?

" What are you talking about, I don't look like any of them."

Oh the hell you don't! Even that tall boy noticed it and commented on it. You have a doppleganger in that boy, and it was pretty bizarre.

"Oh you are just pulling my leg, but it was a good show and I will probably catch them again when they hit Portland."

I was glad to hear that he was doing things that he liked. It was progress and it was a good sign that he was moving on. I was stuck in place. The world had become one endless cycle of work and home and work again. I threw myself into it, looking for clues and just trying to appear to be the perfect officer. I was the media darling, so I was always the one making the announcements about ongoing cases and projects the department had going on. I was being groomed to take over and I had to work on learning to project the perfect image, so that is what I did. When Jasper finally arrived in Portland and began to settle into his house and then eventually his department, I was proud of him. I also began to subtly pull back.

"Hey, where were you last night? I missed talking to you." Its fair week and the sheriff has me in charge of the whole damn shooting match. I was out there until so late that I pretty much just crawled my ass into bed and passed out.

I only talked to him 5 times that week.

The week after that I managed to limit it to 4 times, but he was becoming antsy, so I texted back and forth, telling him I was in budget meetings for the next two weeks. He was getting busy as well and often when I did make the first call, he was out on the town and exploring his neighborhood. He had found several places nearby where he could go and play his guitar with other amateur musicians, and though that he had made several friends that kept him busy and distracted from being lonely.

After a month of him being up there, I had managed to whittle our calls down to twice a week, and Skypeing was almost nonexistent. Between his work and his budding social life, and my work and my just pulling back, we were slowly separating. I hated it, but every time I got a leer from Gunny, I knew it was the right thing to do. The one year anniversary of his, "Death" approached and the department decided to hold a memorial service and dedicate a part of the new plaza to him. His picture was going to hang in the front office where I would walk past it every single day. Rose and Emmett grimaced at me apologetically as this announcement was made by the sheriff, they knew that it was going to be a different kind of pain for me to deal with on a daily basis, seeing him and knowing I had to chose to let him go.

The service was miserable. I looked out at all the faces in the crowd of officers and civilians, wondering besides Gunny, who would have been involved, but as of a year later we were no closer to gaining any new evidence. The sheriff had yet to make an announcement about whether or not he was running for re-election, and already two other strong candidates had emerged, one a former officer who was popular with the Hispanic population and a woman who had retired from the detention facility and who had gone into civil law. She was active in the local community and very popular with the conservative, elderly population, so without substantial support from the sheriff, I would be facing a hard fought race, and even with his support, there were no guarantees.

The feds had taken to, 'monitoring" the situation with the disappearances and luckily with Jaspers being such an attention drawing and horrible case, they seemed to have stopped. A couple of Gunny's cronies had gotten into trouble and one had even lost his badge over drinking and driving into a herd of sheep while on duty, and when arrested he had decided to fight his own men, putting one in the hospital with a serious concussion and taking the gun from the other. He had holed up in an abandoned irrigation shed for hours until a well placed bean bag round had convinced him to surrender. He lost his badge and a few years of freedom for that one. I only hoped he ended up several peoples girlfriend on the inside.

Gunny avoided me. He would go out of his way to not be in a room alone with me. It was like he knew I knew and that I was just waiting for my moment. He was always with his cronies or some other officer, but never would he approach me alone. I had halfway thought the memorial service would bring him out, compel him to taunt me in some way, but he didn't. he just sat in the back, staring at me with a smug grin on his face that I wanted to punch off. By the memorial, we were down to once a week, though I saw he had tried to call me more often and he had texted me a dozen times during the day. I decided to call him that night, because I knew it was likely to be a rough one.

"Hey, where you been? Don't you know a dead man was waiting on you?" he was drunk, very , very drunk and not a very happy drunk at that. He was a maudlin and miserable drunk and would probably regret the things he was going to say to me tonight, but there was no point in trying to argue with him while he was like that, I just let him vent.

"You are avoiding me lately! I aint stupid you know, I know when you are busy and when you have a moment to talk. I spent a few years living that life with you, in case you forgot.

" Jas, im…

"J.D.! dammit. You fucking named me, at least you could do is call me the name you gave me."

Oh shit…angry Jas, uh excuse me, J.D. was in the house.

I'm sorry, its been very crazy around here and I just have been tired and stressed out with all that's been going on. We had your memorial service today and they dedicated the plaza to you along with hanging your picture in the main office.

"Fat lotta good that fuckin does me. Why don't they just do something about Gunny? That would be doing a great service for me. That bastard stole my fucking life!" He ranted on for a few moments, pausing to take an occasional drink of whatever he was drinking. I could hear he was pacing around in the house, occasionally running into things, cursing and kicking them.

Hey, why don't you go lay down and talk to me. Lets hook up the video chat and I will sit here and drink a beer with you while we talk.

It took him awhile, but he managed to get it up and going while I got settled into bed with mine. I sat and talked to him about mostly bullshit stuff until the wee hours of the morning when the booze finally caught up with him and he passed out in front of the camera, sprawled across his bed, his hand reaching towards me via computer. It was the last time we video chatted and the first time I shattered a bottle against my bedroom wall because of him.

He seemed to pull himself together after that and he texted me the next day that he was going to be out on a detail with his unit until late for the next few days and thus unable to talk. I took it as a sign that as painful as it was, it was time to pull even further back. Though Gunny had avoided me at all costs since the incident, he made no bones about giving me a knowing leer. He knew we had nothing on him. He knew I was going insane trying to find something, anything to time him or one of his cronies to what had happened to J.D., but nothing had surfaced and we still had no valid cause to search his place and pulling him in for questioning would just alert him that J.D. was alive.

After a few weeks of just occasional texts and rushed phone conversations, J.D. asked, "So when are you coming up for a visit? Emmett and Rose were just here and they said that they thought you had some time coming, are you going to come see me?" I didn't know that they had been up to see him. Emmett had been angry with me for pulling back from J.D. as well, and we hadn't spoke much. I missed him and his family, they had become the one bit of sanity I had down here in the midst of all the work and pressure and stress, but he also knew he was supposed to let me know about any trips up there so I could run interference and make sure Gunny wasn't paying attention to where anyone was going. He kept a close eye on Emmett and me, as if he suspected that all was not what it seemed , and it made my blood run cold to realize that he suspected anything or even cared to watch us, I knew I couldn't go to see him, shouldn't go to see him, and to protect him I was going to have to play the perfect mourning boyfriend. I managed to beg off the phone from J.D., telling him that I had a SWAT call out and had to go, I promised to call him back later, and I called Emmett.

Emmett, we have to be more careful.

" What the hell are you talking about Ed?"

What I am talking about is that Gunny is still watching us and I know he suspects something. We have to be careful when you are visiting him. I need to know so I can make sure Gunnys ass is redirected somewhere out in BFE so he wont be paying attention to where you are going.

"What makes you say that he is still watching us? Jas has been gone over a year now and he hasn't said dick. Even the feds are beginning to think he wasn't involved."

Well the feds are fucking wrong, he was involved, Jas said he was, and I believe him. You heard what he said in front of you that night and I have no doubt in my mind he would finish what he started if given the chance.

"But the case is going nowhere. Gunny has almost behaved himself for the past year and no other reports of disappearances have come in and we haven't found anymore bodies, they had packed up shop for now."

I think all the attention on Jas's case spooked em, and with that one bastard getting himself in prison, I have a feeling that cut down Gunnys playmates a little. There has been a lot of attrition in the department lately too, that one big bastard who always followed him around, left to go to work for his father back in Indiana or some shit like that, so we may just be dealing with Gunny and one other at this point that are left out here, but that is still enough.

"When are you going to go see him again, Ed? He misses you like hell and he's waiting for you to come up there like you said you were going to do."

Em, I cant. I have to get Gunny one way or the other and I have to clean this department up. I have a good shot at doing that and I have to take it. I have to put my obligation to my duty over my relationship with him.

"So the fucking rumors are true? You are going to run for sheriff. Motherfucker! How can you do that to him? He trusts that you are going to keep your word and come up there. He has been waiting and planning for you ever since he got there. The house just about looks like a fucking shrine to you now. He is going to flip the fuck out when he finds out you are going to run, you know that don't you? He is going to be devastated. You ought to at least man up and tell him face to face so that you can see exactly what the fuck you do to him when you tell him that you lied to him."

Emmett was shouting at this point so I just hung up. I knew it was going to be ugly when he found out I was running, and even though the announcement hadn't been made to the media, the department had been rife with the rumors for weeks about my intentions and who was supporting me. I knew it was going to be bad when J.D. found out. I only hoped that he wouldn't do anything rash, and I hoped just as much that Emmett wasn't going to follow though on the threat he made when he first met me.