Till Death Do Us Part
Part 4
Deanlu
Rizzoli and Isles are the property of TNT and Tess Gerritson. I am just borrowing them for a little fun!
Sorry I forgot the update yesterday I was treating my partner to a well-deserved Christmas surprise. She is a happy camper and now I can continue.
West Texas, Rebecca Anderson's Ranch…
Maura stretched out on the king size bed as Jane rolled over and snuggled deeper into her side. "Penny for your thoughts," came the woolen voice of her detective. They had slept most of the afternoon and night from the relief and exhaustion they both felt. Now as the early morning rays brushed the red clay with pinks and reds of the new day forcing the night to give up its hold the lovers were finally rested enough to talk.
"I am just thankful for a new day with you and me in it." Maura rolled toward Jane wrapping her arms around her love. She kissed Jane deeply even as soft tears fell to cover Jane's face. "Shhh, I'm here Jane. I haven't left, nor will I" Jane nodded and sniffled a little.
"I thought you were dead." The detective opened her eyes and ran her fingers across Maura's face, softly tracing her skin and features. "In those moments after I woke and you weren't there I thought I would die too. I think Ma thought I had gone crazy. I wouldn't listen to anyone. I just needed you." Jane's tears ran down her face. "Even now I am afraid of closing my eyes, because I think you will disappear. I think the only reason I slept last night was exhaustion." Maura nodded, kissing Jane softly on the head and then kissing her lips.
"Me too. They wouldn't tell me if you were hurt or alive. Frankie got to me and said you were hurt real bad. I asked him to get a message to you. He said he would tell you I was in the safe house. Korsak said he thought Winez was hiding something. He said when he extricated himself out of the warehouse that we had been buried with rubble. It took them twenty minutes to get us out." Jane planted soft kisses across Maura's face and neck. She groaned loudly when she stretched a little too far causing her stitches to pull and pain to lance through her body.
""Let me see," Maura stated in no uncertain tone. Slowly she raised Jane's shirt to see the multiple bruises, the left arm was out of bandages but had several cuts, and purpling around her wrist caused Maura to suspect Jane had come close to breaking it. Then she noticed the area around Jane's lung where she had recent surgery. Concern twisted her face as she removed Jane's UT sweats noticing the horrible gash that ran down her leg. The doctor had used steri strips where it wasn't bad and stitches where the gash was deeper. "I had to make sure you were safe. I couldn't have handled you not surviving Maura." Maura's eye's swept up to Jane's face as she shook her head.
"I wouldn't have wanted to make it if you had not Jane." Jane let out a deep sigh and slowly sat up.
"Let me see you." Maura slowly removed her night clothes as Jane ran her hands over the bruises and minor cuts. "I don't seem to have protected you well enough." Anger erupted in Maura's face as she grabbed the detectives chin forcing her to look her in the eyes.
"Don't you dare! Don't you say you did not protect me Jane Rizzoli! You risked life and limb for me. We are both here and alive because you made the right choices at the right moment. Do you hear me? Do not doubt yourself!" Jane nodded and then smiled.
"Okay." She pulled Maura into a hug. "Now love me." Maura began to protest. Jane placed two fingers across her lips. "We have both been to hell and back. We can do this without killing each other I believe." Maura nodded as Jane let soft kisses begin to stoke the fire of their love.
Elsewhere on the ranch…
Rebecca laid flat on the top of the red rock watching the events in the canyon below with binoculars. Edward was beside her with a rifle. She watched for thirty minutes and then moved down the rock quietly. Two of her men waited at the bottom. They all mounted and moved away from the location quietly. None of the men's horses had tack, just saddles. They used their thighs to direct the animals while wrapping their hands in the manes. After they were quite a distance Rebecca signaled them to stop.
"They have not listened to my directions. I am going to have to bring in the big guns." Rebecca looked at Jaramillo, an older Hispanic man that worked for her. His dark hair was peppered with grey and his face with worry.
"Did you really expect Gonzalez to listen?" Jaramillo responded. "He believes all this land should belong to him since it was in his family before the War with Mexico. He still feels that the gringo's took it from them."
"I believe those Gringo's did take it from them, especially if I remember my Texas History correctly. But I am not them. I have restored the land back to its original state. I manage it well. But I will not have Gonzalez running drugs, weapons, or money through it. You know that Jaramillo." Rebecca shook her head, dismounted from her horse, and walked to the nearby creek that still flowed. Jaramillo followed and knelt down next to Rebecca.
"I know Rebecca, but he is el diablo in every sense. I have never understood why you try and work with him." Rebecca turned after slurping some water.
"Better the devil you know, then the one you don't." She responded with a glint in her eye to Jaramillo. She looked over at Edward who was talking with Jacob.
"He will kill you for this, you do know that." Rebecca stood and was followed by Jaramillo at her side.
"Not before I kill him." Rebecca turned and looked at the night as it was receding. The scent of another storm on the wind. "Then we both get what we want."
"What do you get then Ms. Rebecca?" Jaramillo asked, though he was pretty sure he knew the answer. Rebecca was watching a dust devil stir across the land in the distance.
"Peace." Rebecca walked away and mounted her horse. The men mounted and headed back to the ranch house.
Two hours later at the ranch…
Rebecca had the boys take care of the horses as she walked quickly to the ranch house. She could smell breakfast and coffee on the morning air. The sun was now off the horizon warming the plains area, though it would not get too warm since it was fall. Rebecca entered the house and went through the main hall to the kitchen. There she found Maura feeding Jane some bacon in a very sensual way. The rancher cleared her voice rather loudly which caused Jane to inhale and choke on the bacon. Rebecca laughed as Maura helped Jane.
"It looks good on you Jane." Rebecca walked over to her housekeeper, Maria, and gathers a plate. Then she sat down as a fresh cup of coffee was poured.
"What looks good on me?" Jane grumpily asked.
"Love." Rebecca smirked. Maura smiled and poured some cream into her coffee. Jane shook her head and then kissed Maura.
"It feels good, never thought it would happen." Jane poured syrup over the pancakes she was preparing to eat.
"Nor did I," responded Maura softly. Rebecca raised an eyebrow and looked at Jane for explanation.
"I'm not exactly the most trusting person." Rebecca chuckled and took a drink of her coffee. She watched the two love birds as they interacted at the table.
"So how did you sleep? Did Doctor Peterson check on you yet?" Maura answered as Jane was eating.
"We slept very well. It was a relief to have things back to normal after so much tension for so long. Doctor Peterson came in this morning to check Jane and declared her a hundred percent better than yesterday." Maura looked over at Jane. "I think he was a little surprised at how much color had returned to Jane's face." Jane choked again on her coffee. Maura helped her again as Jane turned and eyed her. Rebecca just started laughing knowing exactly what Maura was implying.
"You have a live one here Jane. She will definitely keep you on your toes and I believe guessing sometimes. I like that." Rebecca chuckled some more. They ate breakfast talking about the ranch, oil, and the electronics industries that Rebecca was the head of in the corporation. Toward the end Rebecca sighed, and turned to Maura and Jane.
"We need to talk. It seems the federal agent that you had problems with is here. Just a short distance from the ranch." Jane put a protective arm around Maura as she listened to Rebecca spin her story of what she believed agent Winez was up too. She told Jane about the proof she had on him, what the Boston PD had discovered, and what Gabriel Dean had discovered. When she was done Jane sat stunned at the table. Maura just couldn't believe it, yet she remembered Korsak had believed the agent was hiding something.
"I'm sorry. I feel like I have pulled you in deeper into one of my problems." Maura shook her head. Jane now understood why she had been isolated from everyone. He believed she had seen something. Which meant he was looking for her?
"No, he couldn't know you and Jane were friends. He made a mistake without even knowing it." Maura responded as she examined the young woman who sat at the head of the table. Rebecca nodded, but was watching Jane's face.
"Jane, what are you thinking?" Maura turned and examined her lover. Jane was very deep in thought, but Maura knew that look. Jane was making connections, piecing things together to arrive at a conclusion. Jane stayed quiet a few more minutes.
"He is hunting me. He thinks I saw something, but he can't find me. You had Maura taken away before he could track her. So he was left with his problems here. He has come to sort those problems out. Then he will head back to Boston to remove me. He cannot take the chance I saw something." Rebecca stared into her coffee thinking The game was getting more dangerous. She needed help even though she was loath to ask for it. But Jane and Maura had already been through hell. She couldn't risk them getting hurt again.
"Then we need to pull the noose tighter around his neck by cutting off his cover." Amman entered the kitchen at that moment. "Get the link to BPD ready to go, let Cavanaugh know we are going to listen in and contribute our two cents." Amman nodded and headed toward Rebecca's study.
Boston Police Department, Homicide Conference Room…
Regional Commander Lindle looked at the video, checking the different time stamps from the warehouse and several other previous cases, bank statements, email information, cell records, and confessions that Frost, Korsak, and Crowe had spent hours working on from a list of names they had been given. Agent Gabriel Dean sat tapping his knee nervously as file after file was perused by the regional commander.
"You knew about this and said nothing to me." Lindle looked at Agent Dean pointedly.
"I was told to investigate the possibility of a mole within the Boston Federal Bureau of Investigation. I was told to relay only my findings to Washington. Two days ago Lt. Cavanaugh came to me with the evidence he had gleaned from hours of discreet investigation by his officers. I took the information to Washington where the bureau investigated and validated it. There can be no other conclusion. Agent Winez has been using the Bureau to assist in the systematic transporting of drugs, laundering of money, transfer of illegal weapons, and trafficking of young women into and out of the United States for the last ten years," Agent Dean firmly stated. "He was responsible for the explosion at the warehouse that killed three federal agents and four Boston police officers, not to mention injured several others. We believe he is currently stalking Officer Jane Rizzoli because he believes she saw him before he threw the grenade that set off the flammable liquids within the warehouse causing it to blow up."
Lindle threw the report he had been looking at down on the table rose from his chair and walked to the nearby window. Frost and Korsak looked at Cavanaugh who held up his hand signing to them to wait and be patient. "God, he is decorated agent. How could he do this? How could he turn on everything he was entrusted with for what, profit?" The older gentlemen ran his hands through his short hair. "Issue a nationwide bolo for Agent Winez. Consider him armed and dangerous. No one is to take any chances with him. If this is how he has been doing business then he will stop at nothing once he kills Rizzoli to flee the country. Do we know where Officer Rizzoli is right now?"
"Right Here sir!" Agent Lindle looked up at the screen on the far wall. Jane was being helped into a chair by Doctor Isles. Rebecca discreetly kept herself out of the picture for now.
"Officer Rizzoli, you have my apologies for how you have been treated. You heard what has been said?" Lindle looked at the woman. He could tell even through the conference line that detective Rizzoli was still recovering and not up for a major confrontation with Agent Winez. He then noticed over Jane's left should a muscular Middle Eastern man with a solemn complexion.
"Yes, sir." Jane nodded even as Maura whispered to her. Jane shook her head and then looked up at the screen again.
"We checked Agent Winez's house earlier today and several of his well-known haunts Jane, but he seems to have flown the coop." Frost stated, relieved his friends were okay. "By the way, been worried about you both." Jane and Maura's faces softened for a moment.
"You too partner." Jane said, choking up a little. "We think we know where agent Winez is or about where he could be right now. We believe he is very near where we are right now." Korsak rose out of his chair.
"Then we need to get you out of there before he gets to you." Jane shook her head.
"He doesn't know we are here. He is here for a whole other reason. Seems he is having a little trouble with his employer. Something about distribution problems from an outside force causing hiccups in the system." Lt Cavanaugh spoke next even as he laid a hand on Korsak's arm for him to sit.
"Let me guess. Does this outside influence that is causing trouble happen to be a one, Rebecca Anderson?" Jane looked at Maura and then back at Lt. Cavanaugh.
"It might." Lt. Cavanaugh nodded and looked at Gabriel Dean.
"I told you she would not sit back and just listen to you. You have to remember, she has every reason to hate the bureau." Dean nodded, and knew this would cause greater problems.
"Jane are you safe where you are at?" Jane looked at someone beyond the screen and then nodded.
"Yeah, both Maura and I are safe. No harm will come to us. The gentlemen you see over my shoulder is Amman. He is my personal bodyguard." Jane responded, though she made a face when she said it.
"Damn Doc, you work fast in protecting your fiancée," Frost chuckled.
"Actually Frost, I didn't hire him. She did." Rebecca stepped into the picture and Lindle's face went pale.
"Hello Lindle, nice to see you again. I see you have met my friend, Jane and her fiancée, Maura." Rebecca sat down in the chair next to Jane's right. "I believe Lindle; you have been letting the fox run the chicken coop. It must be tough paying attention to your job when you're taking chemo and radiation for cancer." Lindle sat down hard in the nearby chair. "You know, the bureau isn't usually this sloppy. I have found agent Dean to be very open minded and interested when evidence is brought to him about problems within his bureau. Strange how you were not." Lindle was breathing very heavy. "I bet you still have that special safe hidden behind that fake Dega in your office with all the files you should have burned, but couldn't because you needed to cover your butt."
"You WITCH! I should have buried you at the stake when I could have." Lindle snarled, and then suddenly realized where he was sitting.
"Oh, I know it must be very bruising to have all your little house of cards come tumbling down. Did you really think you could make me think Winez could organize all this without someone catching him?" The door to the conference room opened and two Federal Agents walked inside setting down three large files in front of Agent Gabriel Dean.
"All confirmed sir. Commander Lindle has been covering up transmissions and electronic transfers of information for years." Dean looked at the files and shook his head.
"Joseph Lindle you under arrest." Dean began when Lindle jumped up and grabbed at Korsak's gun. A struggle ensued, but was quickly brought under control. "Get him out here and make sure to read his rights to him. I want him under lock and key. Do not let anyone contact Winez." The FBI agents removed Lindle, but not before he got one last parting shot at Rebecca.
"I will get you for this Rebecca Anderson. You will burn in Hell when I am done," Lindle snarled at the woman on the screen even as he struggled in the arms of the agents.
"Get in line Joseph, but remember I will be waiting at the gates of Hell for you." Rebecca got up and walked out of her study. Amman was torn. He was charged with protecting Jane and Maura, but he knew Rebecca needed someone right now. Suddenly he felt a hand on his shoulder.
"I'll go." Maura whispered, and then she bent down and kissed Jane softly on the head. Amman watched Maura leave the study.
"Jane, where the hell are you?" Jane shook her head at Korsak's question.
"I'll let Cavanaugh give you those details. I wouldn't want someone to glean that from this message." Jane looked over her shoulder where Amman had moved to the window and was looking at something.
"Jane we will be forwarding you some information. I'll see you in three days. Stay safe." Agent Dean responded even though he looked very worried. Jane nodded and the link went blank.