The Man Who Bought the World
Hard Rock Hotel – 5:00 PM
They'd been gone all day on the case, Shane and the guys, taking photos of Tuzla's homes and businesses, even the Bucs Stadium for good measure. They spent every moment in espionage, checking out the services of the restaurants, the hotel he owned, and even the management at his estate, while planting taps and wires of a dozen different sizes and purposes. Exhausted and with more information than they had expected, the three rode the elevator back up to the top floor, ready for a good nap or two before they had to go back out.
Following Carter and Andy into their room, she found Jeff outside on the balcony playing his guitar. He heard them come in but ignored it, only pounding into the instrument and biting his chapped lips against the cold air. When Shane came out and sat next to him, she noticed how hard his face looked, something had happened.
"Catch him?"
"Would I be here if I had?"
"Good point. Learn anything then?" As he stopped playing and sat the guitar down on the table, he peered over in her direction, his glasses falling down his nose a ways to reveal the stitches under his eyebrows.
"Yeah." She replied easily, "Learned that we're gonna need a really good mole for this one."
"Well hell, I could have told you that back in D.C." He mocked, standing up with an empty glass and going back inside the room where it was warmer. He heard Carter and Andy when they said hi from opposite sides of the room, and with a short wave of his hand, sat down on the edge of the bed feeling for the remote. Catching it before it fell to the floor, Shane handed it to him, and watched as he scanned channels by sound.
"He's got these places locked up like the fucking White House, one of us is going to have to get in, Jeff."
"I doubt Tuzla's gonna go for Carter or Fruit Loop…"
"Obviously not."
"Which leaves you?" His response was short, bland, as if only stated by routine. Sands knew his sister wasn't afraid to go in alone on anything, she rather preffered it most times, but there was the risk of Jimmy Tuzla's memory, facial memory.
"Yeah…me, or Li--"
"Don't even think about it." He stammered with a toss of remote back to the bed again as he rose. It was as if he had known it was coming, the proposition of such a thing, an undercover doctor. Even though it wasn't his case to run, he certainly wasn't about to let someone like Lily take the weight on her weak shoulders, he knew they'd all be killed. But it was also with great conviction that Shane fought back against it with good reason.
"She said she wants to help, and what if Jimmy recognizes me? All she's gotta do is meet him and--"
"No!" With a growl, he threw his glass across the dresser of the room, causing both Andy and Shane to jump, more so with annoyance. "She's not a part of this, I don't care what the fuck she wants…she'll kill herself and then us, Shane. No fucking way."
"It's just one night, she'll be fine and…wait--" Stopping as she made her way across to the other doorway between the two rooms, she looked around inside to see it empty, "Where the hell is she?"
Sands remained silent as he shuffled around with the bottle of pills Lily had given him on the plane. Downing two pills with rum, and not caring about the effects, he heard Shane start up again, "Jeff…what did you do?"
Earlier in the day:
Their voices had raised an octave over each imperative minute passing, reverberating with words that were meant to have been shared eight long years ago, things that were both good and harmful to them. Sands denied a number of things while Lily did the same, and when he accepted he'd been wrong, she convinced him of the double standard of his wrong-doing. Likewise of him to her. And it continued for half an hour or more, back and forth, until they had completely forgotten why they had even begun fighting. This, was their trademark, the forgetting of problems once the yelling got out of control and their bodies were usually so heated that all they needed was to feel one another again. It was as if the years had never passed, as if they were back in college, on the streets of Boston arguing over where to eat, or a girl that she had seen hanging onto Jeff's shoulder, or even what reason she had for not calling him the night before. They fought over the imperative nothing, the things they knew weren't true deep down, but felt every need to remind themselves of it with words, shouting, public displays of anger until they found one another's lips as the stronghold.
"You think you know everything don't you? Always so smart…always with the answers…"
"No, that's your job now…Doctor Hanson."
"God, why does it bother you so damn much that I wanted to be doctor?"
"It doesn't."
"Yeah right, I'm not stupid."
"Look…" he grabbed her by the shoulders and held her down away from his face while he spat at her, "I don't give a shit if you jump off the balcony…it's not my problem anymore, as you've made so very clear." And with a shove, he took off again.
"Could have fooled me." Wandering behind him for fear that he would run into something, she watched as he fumbled with the bottle of pills she'd given him, taking three of them with a near empty beer, and heading into the bathroom. He didn't bother closing the door that he couldn't see anyway, only walked in and held onto the counter for emphasis of pain. "Are you okay?" Lily finally asked him, laying a hand on his shoulder when he pushed her away.
"I am fine…how many fucking times do I have to say it?!" Falling out of the doorway, she watched his glasses drop from his face onto the tile floor, and three lone pills sling back without the assistance of liquid as he gulped them down. She couldn't bear to believe what her eyes were showing her anymore, because that would be admitting she had been even more wrong about him than she had thought. Jeff wasn't tired, or overworked, or drained of energy from his dilemma, he was gone, completely. His knuckles were red with the fierceness of grasping the countertop, sweat breaking out at the chest of his t-shirt, and his jaw clenched down with a grind as he came towards where he heard her breathing again.
"Jeff…" she tried, holding her hands out for him, but he refused them still and grunted, "Go away Lily. Go home to your mother."
"No."
Hearing the conclusion in her tone, he waited, and wondered at her voice until he felt the cool metal of his sunglasses tuck in behind his ears and realized she had saved them from being crushed beneath his feet.
"I'm not going anywhere."
Coming in as closely as he could manage, his hands holding him up in the doorway higher above her mouth, he felt her breath on his chin, warm, strong, Lily. He knew she was mad at more than just his will to cooperate with her medical skills, and he also knew she was working on pushing her way back into his heart, he could feel that, but was far from ever being ready. Taking a stroke or two of thought before speaking, he lowered himself into her as she stepped back with a wince and twisted brow of confusion.
"Unless you're staying to give someone here a well deserved fuck…you had better just move along, little girl."
Even before she could explain the dropping of her jaw, she felt her hand coil until it landed with a sting against his cheek, a burn following as his head fell away from in front of her and his hand replaced where hers had left the mark.
"You son of a bitch…I-I…" she stuttered, tears welling from the inner corners of her eyes while she tried to move back away from him. "I…I can't believe I ever loved you." And at that, she was gone without another word, only a few patters of feet across carpet, a slam of a door, and a pounding in his head as the entire world spun through blackness without him.
"Nothing."
"Yeah right…" Shane nodded without reassurance, and snatched the bottle from his hand, "How many of these have you taken?"
"Oh Jesus, don't you start too!" Ripping back the pills, he felt his way around her at the dresser until he could make it to the bed and lay down. Convinced that he had screwed things up royally with Lily already, Shane decided to go find her, since her things were still in the room next door. Either she had stayed in the hotel, or gone out into the town, but she certainly hadn't left for home yet. Calling out to the other guys before leaving, she grabbed her jacket just in case, and Jeff's wallet off the dresser before taking off down the hallway again.
"Pain in the ass…" she mumbled under her breath, as a few elder women walked by with shocked expressions. With a smile, she hopped inside of the elevator, pushed the lobby button which was a good twenty floor drop, and waited alone with the music. "At least they don't play shit here," she hummed along to the classic beat for a minute or so, until the metal doors opened to the sound of the lobby's entertainment, slot machines, the nearby bars, and people everywhere. She hadn't even begun to think about where Lily had run off to, but imagined it to be one of the places that Shane herself would have gone to get away from Sheldon, either for a strong drink or to waste money, or hell maybe even both.
Starting in the casino, she made her way around the floor slowly, sizing up every delicate brunette she saw. There were hundreds of people in the room, dropping their life savings into machines, shouting, cussing, kicking the entrapments until hauled away. The air smelled like vodka and cheap cologne, and when she finally made it to the last row of slots, she began to wonder if Lily hadn't just skipped town after all, not caring enough to bring her lingerie and shoes along with her. But as she turned around to head back towards the near empty bar, she heard a sound so distinct, so familiar, that he quit her heels in their own track of carpeting. It was a laugh, another and another until Shane found her way to the hotel lobby and saw Lily, perched high in a stool beside a mysterious man. Trying not to laugh herself, Shane walked up the steps into the bar and made her way around to the back of Lily's swiveling chair with a wide grin.
"Doctor Hanson…alcohol is bad for you." Shane said laughing as she finally saw the man's face, a rugged but handsome man, with rich eyes and soft hair.
"Oh, Shane hey!"
"Hi."
"Luke, this is who I was telling you about, my old friend Shane."
"Shane, hello." He smiled with an outstretched hand, calm but strong she noticed as he shook her hand and replied.
"Well, I should be going Lily, but it was a pleasure meeting you, Shane. I'll let you ladies enjoy your evening, and I've got your number."
"Great, thanks Luke." Lily shook his hand as he leaned down to kiss her on the cheek softly, a smile, a tip on the bar, and a wink to Shane as he stepped away from the bar as if only a ghost. Both women laughed as they watched him walk through the hotel lobby, push his shades over his eyes, scratch his rustic chin a bit, and exit the hotel. When he was officially gone, Shane turned to her as she sipped at the last of the man's Bacardi, and giggled.
"So…Luke. You acquire a knack for picking up random guys in bars since the last time I saw you?"
"I wish." She laughed and finished her wine, " We were just talking."
"Yeah, I'm sure that's all he was thinking about...was your conversation…"
"Hey, I resent that," she screeched with a slap on Shane's shoulder. "I happen to have two very nice conversations…" roaring with chuckles, the two ordered another set of drinks and fell into the discussion Shane had come downstairs for, the one she knew was needed before she asked Lily for her help.
"I hear you had a nice 'conversation' upstairs earlier as well?"
"Oh yeah that…"
"Oh yeah that? I think it was a little bit more than just that…"
Lily huffed silently as she spun her drink on the counter, trying to avoid the topic at all costs, but knowing that it was far from possible.
"Your brother hates me."
"No…" Shane sighed, "He doesn't. I think he's just not sure what to make of you yet."
"What, like I'm a stranger?"
"You are Lily. A lot's happened the last eight years."
"Yeah…" She agreed with a cough and shuffle in her seat. They both pondered life in that moment, the taking and renewing of it, the loss and gain, the joy and pain of a near decade between relationships. Yes, they knew one another, as did she and Jeff, but they knew what once was, not what had become. In eight years, Lily had become a doctor, Shane and Sheldon had not only joined the CIA, but signed their lives away slowly, and even given one's eyesight and stability now. What Lily didn't know, was that Jeff had dated more than he could ever possibly keep track of, bedded, paid, induced sex from a plethora of women as she had always feared he one day would. Shane, had been through roughly indecent relationships with men, ones that gave her brother no other choice but to leave them wounded and unconscious in hospitals. And yet Lily didn't know this either. She didn't know that Shane had graduated with a minor in English Literature, or that Jeff had sailed to Bermuda with his dad's yacht and crashed it. She didn't know that together the Sands' team had killed a total of 62 people, in a matter of only six years. Lily just hadn't known, and now, was kicking herself for having run out of the room on Jeff, and not forced him to hear her out.
"I didn't mean to yell at him, he just…he won't listen to me. Ever."
"I know, he's been like that for a long time, even worse now."
"He has good reason I suppose, I see men and women like him all the time, who just really hate life.
The pain, it's more than they want to deal with. I guess I was just hoping he'd let me in..."
"You think he's in a lot of pain?"
"Yeah I do."
"But he's been taking all kinds of pills…?"
"Not that kind of pain Shane," Lily replied, looking up with a hand gestured to Shane's right temple, where she tapped lightly with a sigh. "Pain here." Nodding, Shane took another sip of her drink and tried to contemplate it, the fact that she had always known Jeff was suffering somewhere, in his head, his heart, since forever it seemed. Yet now, it took on another form, because now, he was practically trapped inside of himself, in his mind, spending every minute in complete darkness. "I just wish he would let me help him, I know I can. But…he'll never trust me with his emotions again."
"I don't think that's true, he needs you Lily. More than he knows probably."
"But he didn't before?"
"Because you didn't need him." This was the settling ground, and Lily took it for all it was worth, Shane had finally laid it out for her to see. Jeff wasn't pushing her away because he didn't want her around or to be with her, he was doing it to save her the trouble of having to fight for the past, of having to fight her heart for him. But what neither him nor Shane knew, was that eight years had done quite a number on her heart, and with the lessons gained in secondary relationships, she learned from her mistake with Jeff and also learned that the only mistake she really ever made, was walking away from Tommy's grave without him.
Trying to break the tension, Shane decided that it would now or never that she would get Lily into the case, and get her to clear her head of the trouble with Sheldon by helping out.
"The reason I came down here to find you, was because I need your help too."
"With what?"
"Well…" she began, tapping her fingers on the bar nervously with a smirk, "We've got a job for you."
