Absence and Misguided Hearts

Venetian Hotel & Casino – Las Vegas

Delmonico's Steakhouse

8:45 PM


It was surprising still to Lily, how very nonchalant four CIA agents could be, especially inside of one of the cities' most secure hotels. She sat next to Jeff, barely paying any attention to the hushed conversation being spewed between them, mostly because she didn't understand most of the technical, agency type gibberish that was coming out of Shane or Andy's lips. So she sipped meekly at her red wine and picked through her $100 plate of pasta as she pretended to listen in.

Sands' kept his hand on her leg under the table the entire meal, sensing her disinterest.

"Andy already has the entire top floor of Treasure Island wired, right?"

Shane shoved a forkful of steak into her mouth as she raised her brow at him.

"Yeah, it was easy. Tuzla is tapped to a pulp."

"How did you find out what room he was in anyway?" Carter asked with an equally full mouth.

"Believe it or not, he checked into his suite under his own name."

"You've got to be kidding me?"

"Nope."

"Is this guy finally losing his damn mind?"

Sands shook his head and swallowed lobster before answering, "He lost it a decade ago."

"So he's running the city under the name Jimmy Tuzla…did intelligence say anything about the motel yet?"

"No." Shane replied, "But that doesn't mean we didn't wire it anyway."

"You did?"

"We did." Andy chimed in with a proud smile.

"We also rented two rooms."

Lily suddenly became aware of the conversation and honed in when she saw Jeff do the same.

"Rooms for us I assume?"

"Gee, however did you guess that one, Shel?"

He growled at the hazing in her voice but Lily interrupted the beginning of their battle.

"Are we all going to the motel instead?"

"No."

"Then who--"

Shane cut her off with a pointed finger at her and Carter beside one another.

"You and Danny are working surveillance. It's safer there right now anyway."

Lily looked up at Danny beside her with a nervous glare, but he patted her back to reassure her.

"No worries, Hanson. We'll just keep an eye out for someone to show up and try some shit."

"Oh very technical sounding there, Carter," Andy chided him.

"Hey, I like to simplify our dealings for the ladies…"

The conversation dwelled into the logistics of their separation and what sort of contact would have to be kept, but all Lily could do was watch the way Jeff's head hung over his plate, the way his hand on her leg had loosened and eventually fallen off. He wasn't satisfied with Shane's decision, but before Lily could voice her request for any additions in company at the motel, he spoke up.

"I don't know if sending Lily into that seedy hell hole is such a good idea."

Shane looked up at his solemn face and tinted glasses with a smug assumption.

"Carter will be there with her. He's the one that trained her anyway."

"Yeah man, she'll be safe with me. Besides," Carter wrapped his arm around Lily's shoulder and pulled her into him as she giggled anxiously, "She's more than capable of holding her own."

If he had them, he knew he'd be rolling his eyes at what he could sense was happening around him.

"I'm going with her."

"No, I need your help tagging the guys we pick up on the taps. You're the only one who knows their voices at all."

"What the hell does it matter who they are, they're all involved. Just arrest them."

Shane crossed her arms and fell back in her chair while the others were quiet and listening to the bickering siblings. At least they were in a private corner of the restaurant.

"We have to take this thing easy out here, you know that. We can't just jump on a herd of guys. We have to take them out one by one until there's no one left protecting Tuzla."

"That could take months."

"Or hours…depending on your cooperation, Jeff."

"I don't like the idea of that motel, or you sending Lily in to tackle it alone with Carter. Tell me you don't see the fucking danger in that choice?"

"Do you?"

Everyone paused at Shane's harsh response. Lily gulped her last sip of wine and clenched her fists against the awkward silence. But no sooner had the alcohol hit the pit of her stomach, than the entire table was jolted with his tumbling, half drunken body reacting to a million points of pain and vulnerability. Sands pushed away from his chair and swaggered through darkness to get out of the maze that was the restaurant to him.

"I'll follow him," Lily said peaceably, tossing her napkin down before running after him.

He was inches away from the pummeling into a waiter with a huge overhead plate of dishes, when she caught up to him and grabbed his arm.

"Jeff, wait a minute."

He stopped but only to let the uncertain patter of the waiter's step cross in front of him. Then he began pacing again, faster, with Lily slipping in attachment, but never releasing.

"You didn't have to leave. Go back and eat, Lily."

Lily tripped over his boot heels as they exited the restaurant for the main lobby of the hotel again, a squeak of rubber soles and tile being what halted the movement. She felt into his back and stayed there, her forehead resting against his black jacket, inhaling the stale cologne left behind.

"Shane's right you know, I'll be okay with Carter out there," she whispered.

"Oh you think so, huh?"

His voice was cruel, lacking confidence when he turned and felt her breath on his neck and chin.

"You think running surveillance right under Tuzla's fucking nose is going to keep you alive?"

"Someone has to do it."

"Yeah, Carter. Andy. My brilliant, renegade sister. Not you."

Her brow twisted at his words, sensing through the disgust a more sincere notation. Something he was saying out loud, but could be heard through the blank spaces of grey in him. Lily took both of his distressed, tightened hands and unwound them in hers.

"I swear I'll be fine. I know how to protect myself now and I have my great disguise."

"Right," he replied sarcastically.

"Don't think I can?"

"It's not that." Sands moved his hands with hers until he could feel her face and he held her cheeks warmly in his palms. "You shouldn't have to worry so damn much about protecting yourself."

"Oh no?"

He shook his head as his thumbs stroked her face softly.

"Who should worry about it then?"

Sands sighed and let go of her face to keep the demons at bay a little longer. Neither of them said anything and time passed them by like a Ferris wheel in a clouded, angry sky. She didn't know how else to communicate with him, not when she didn't know what he was thinking. Not when she didn't trust the look on his face or the protruding veins in his hands.

So she turned away and left to find Carter instead.


Boston – Quincy Market Café

February 27th, 1996 – 3:45 pm


He sat quietly in the corner of the otherwise noisy restaurant, watching out of the front window to the breezy market square. Jeff didn't know if she would really show up like she promised, she was already fifteen minutes late. He assumed just as easily that he'd been stood up, purposefully, so that she might prove a point to him. A point of what it's like to sit and wait for someone to come, who never does. Even though only blocks of city streets separate them.

"Can I get you another cup of coffee?"

A sweet voice asked beside him, and he turned to see the waitress, as equally sweet in nature. Every woman who interrupted him throughout the long days looked like her in some way or another, this girl, with her long brown hair and dark eyes peeking out from under a spill of curly bangs, she looked like Lily a little. Just enough to cause him to stutter with a sigh when he answered.

"Please, thanks."

The girl took off with the cup to get him a fresh one and his eyes averted back through the glass panel window. He leaned on a fisted hand, biting his lip unbeknownst, and twisting his boots together under the table. The skies outside were grey, ready to let the rain fall any minute, and he almost hoped she wouldn't come and save herself the trouble of getting caught in a late February storm.

The waitress returned with a steaming cup of blackened coffee and smiled down at him before asking, "Would you like to order anything for the person you're waiting on?"

He thought about it, having completely forgotten he told anyone he was waiting for her, but then turned his face back up from the open swirl of his coffee cup to reply simply, "A cappuccino, I guess."

The girl nodded with a flirtatious eye and turned back toward the kitchen.

And almost as soon as his concentration was fixed back on the window, he saw the rain hitting the glass, and between the droplets, a pink polka-dotted umbrella swaying in the breeze. He thought to get up and help her inside the café, or to at the very least make himself endure what she was in the rain outside. And he would have, no doubt about it, if he hadn't seen someone else approach the umbrella and the brown haired girl underneath it first.

It was a guy by the height and weight distribution and boots tapping in the puddle beneath the umbrella she had offered for him to join her under. He saw her laugh a couple of times, and touch the person's arm a few more times, and he even saw the guy brush back a strand of her hair when it flew in front of her eyes.

Sure, he knew he should have gone out and interrupted whatever it was, letting the guy know just who she belonged to, still, if he had anything to do with it. Sure, he knew he shouldn't have sat there watching and wondering what it was. He should have been preventing it from even beginning. But he just couldn't help it, or move, or think to do anything about it. She looked so happy and that always did him in.

He looked away to stir the sugar into his black coffee and to take a warming sip. He refused to look outside again until she was inside and the guy had disappeared. And a moment later, his hope was half restored when it all ended and he saw a wet pink umbrella being shaken out in the doorway of the café.

He heard more laughter and saw the cropped, blonde hair of the guy from outside as he dusted the rain out of it. He couldn't see Lily because of the height difference behind the high separating wall, but he could hear her as clearly as ever.

"That's fine. Just give me a call when you need the help. I'm free all weekend."

Then there was the guys' voice. "You're the best, Lily. Really, I owe you one."

She laughed again, softly to where it played on his senses. "I'll hold you to that."

Then the guy laughed with his goodbye and turned away outside of the café again, never revealing his face to Jeff at all. He was safe from being slaughtered that way at least. Lily came around the corner, her hair damp and her eyes solemn, a second later. He caught her gaze, not a happy one like it had sounded moments earlier, and watched as she slowly approached him.

He hesitated to move, but ever the gentleman when she was near Jeff slid from the booth and stood to help her with her umbrella and bag as she sat down on the bench across from his. Lily felt his hand on the small of her back, and even through her sweater, was affected by the genuine warmth of that which she had missed, as much as it had hurt to miss it.

"I didn't think you were coming." He said flatly as he sat down across from her again.

She looked at him as though she wanted to hit him and said meekly, "When I say I'm going to do something, I do it, Jeff."

He sighed, knowing the connation of her statement. And she was right.

He was going to begin begging her to listen to him and accept him again, but the waitress finally arrived back with the coffee he ordered for her and placed it warmly in front of Lily's unsuspecting face.

"Cappuccino." The girl said with a letdown smile as she realized Jeff must have been taken.

Lily's darted her eyes to Jeff in question of the drink and he nodded to assure her he'd ordered it.

"Thank you." She replied to waitress, never intending for it to be for him as well.

"You're welcome. Let me know if you need anything else."

They both ignored each other a moment longer to smile at the girl and watch her walk away. And when they did turn back, Lily stared down at the drink he'd gotten her as the steam rose to warm her reddened nose from the cold rain, and Jeff watched her, wishing he could be the tiny droplets that were rolling down her cheeks and off of her eyelashes.

He knew she wasn't going to be the one to speak first, since he'd asked her to meet him there. So he took a strong sip of his coffee, and tapped his hands lightly on the table until he thought of how to begin. He had a million romantic opening lines, and a hundred more apologies, but instead the only thing that came out, was what he had tried to subside.

"So, who's the Ken doll?"

She glanced up at him from over the rim of her cup and twisted her brow in confusion.

"What are you talking about?"

"The guy…the blonde, outside." He nodded at the window and she thought for a second before replying very simply, as if it meant nothing to anyone.

"Ty."

"Ty…hm." He sipped at his coffee to cover the jealously. But he knew that she saw it anyway.

"My chem lab partner."

His eyes shifted from the window to her and then back to the rain.

"Don't even start with me, Jeff. I didn't come here to be accused of whatever you're thinking…"

"I'm not thinking anything."

"Yeah right." She whispered out loudly, angered at that.

"What, so I can't be curious as to why my fiancé is hanging around with some good looking kid?"

She stared him down tensely.

"Don't you think I've earned the right to be a little jealous over the years?"

"No. You lost that right."

"Oh is that so?" He questioned back, the fury growing in him even though he knew she was still right in what she was saying, and that he was at complete fault.

"When you don't call to tell your 'fiancé' that you're alive at the end of the day, and that she doesn't need to sit at home and cry herself to sleep wondering if you're lying in a gutter dead…" Her voice was almost too loud and she stopped to look around before returning quietly, but fiercely. "…then you lose the right to judge her."

He felt himself losing it all of it, not mentally, but emotionally. The bittersweet sadness that filled her eyes with a pre-cry gloss nearly sent him reeling into madness, like it always had. His eyes swayed down to see the flicker of her engagement ring, attached firmly but in a negotiable fashion on her wiry finger. He wanted to say a spell and make it stay there forever, but was worried of what its fate would be after this meeting was over.

"I haven't slept in four weeks. I've tried not to care or worry about you, since you don't seem to worry about whether I'm concerned for you, but it doesn't work. I still sit up by the phone, praying you'll call."

"Lily…"

"No, let me finish."

She was firm, and he accepted that the tables had turned completely into her control, where he imagined they belonged.

"The only reason I agreed to come here today, was because I wanted tell you that I'm done with it. I'm done, Jeff." His eyes were glazed in fear when he glanced up at hers. "I can't do it anymore, this twisted, sick thing you've left me in. You and my brother are the reason I came to Boston for school, and you have both abandoned me. And what's worse…" her knuckles tensed into a tight little fist, one he wished he could reach out and smooth over with his love, the love he felt boiling up deep within him. "…you don't call, either of you, ever. You don't write letters, you don't attempt to stop by when you're in town. I just don't get it."

She shook her head in her second, loosened hand and leaned over the coffee, ignoring his eyes.

"I love you, but I…" she paused to gulp and bring a sniffle back. "…I can't do this anymore. It's killing me."

"Lily, please. Just let me talk."

"About what?" Her eyes came back up suddenly, dark and cold.

"I want you to let me explain."

"There's nothing left to say. I got your messages."

"There are a million things to say. I'm not going to let you just walk out of here."

He grabbed her hand quickly, holding it between both of his. She hated to admit that it was the best feeling in the world, the one she'd waited weeks and months for. She hated to admit he had a hold on her that was impossible to fight. But she also hated to admit that she had to.

"Jeff, don't." She tugged back as she reached for her bag and umbrella under the table. "I have to go."

She rose from her side of the booth, sliding out and carefully walking towards the door of the café, well aware of the fact that he had thrown down cash for the drinks and was following close on her heels, begging silently.

"Lily…Stop. Come on, don't do this."

She made it outside and back into the rain, struggling with her umbrella as he jumped out and down the steps to the brick square behind her. His hand on her arm, pulling her back toward him in the pouring storm scared her.

"Please, you don't have to just end it like this. You won't even give me a chance?"

"I've given you a thousand chances a year, for four years!" She yelled back, distraught with the annoying umbrella that refused to suddenly work.

"Give me one more. I'll fix it all this time."

"How? How are you going to change anything?"

Without warning, Jeff took her free hand into his and began pulling her through the drowning rain shower, across the square as she shouted at him and tried to pull away.

"Jeff, cut it out…let me go! There's nothing you can do…It's over."

He grinned in front of her as he continued to pull her along, refusing to accept anything she was saying because he knew better. After a few long minutes of struggling, she eased into his sensitive force and let him guide her until they made it to the shadow of a tree in the middle of the square and he stopped, turning to hold both of her hands.

"It's not over and you damn well know it. It's never going to be over with us."

"You can't just make me--" He cut her off, pressing his wet hand over her mouth as she stared up at him.

"You better realize that I have every intention of driving you back to my apartment and making love to you until you forgive me."

She shook her head in his hand, drenched to the core, but knew it was what she wanted.

"Yes. I'm going to touch and kiss every inch of you until you take me back."

Lily felt herself go weak under his dark, brooding eyes and sinister smile. The two things that nearly always did her in to ravished completion. She said nothing but didn't have to. The second she even attempted to open her mouth against his palm, he swept in and lifted her into his arms, and carried her the rest of the way through the rain and back to where his Trans Am was parked on the street.


"Do you see rooms 84 and 85?"

Lily's eyes were glazed to the burning window of the SUV, watching as cars and blue room doors passed down the desert lot. She saw 81, then 82 and 83, and then she heard Carter turn back the wheel and pull in.

"Here we go. Right in the middle, that's good."

"Yeah?"

"Yep, gives us a fair chance of catching the bastards if they end up on either side of us."

He smiled coolly at her under the automatic light of the truck and then jumped out to grab their bags. Lily unbuckled, slid out and met him at the doorway of room 84, thanking him when he brought her suitcase to her.

"This place is pretty old so I doubt there's doors between the rooms…" He jammed the key in the lock of the room and opened it for her, peering around to check his point, "…nope. So if you need anything don't hesitate to come right over, okay?"

She nodded hesitantly and dropped her bag to the floor, standing feet away from him. He could easily tell there was something not quite right about the nervous way she was acting.

"Lily?"

She looked up at him with wide eyes.

"We can share a room if want. I don't mind, I guess Shane just assumed you'd be more comfortable with your own."

"Yeah…I think I'll be okay. But if I decide I'm not…"

Carter's mood nearly fell and then jumpstarted again at her last words and he smiled at her.

"There's a second bed waiting for you next door."

"Thanks Danny."

"Sure thing," he turned for the doorway again and leaned on it, a foot taller than her, as she held the door beside him. "If you see anything strange or hear anything, just call me or come and knock."

"I will."

"Cool."

They stared at one another longingly, not sure where the conversation was supposed to go or where their minds were running. Lily has always found Danny handsome, any time he would come into her office to woo Allie for the afternoon, she sighed with a little jealousy at how lucky her receptionist really was. He was a great guy, funny, charming, and he seemed to care her the way he did Allison, which had felt nice over the last two twisted weeks with Jeff.

Lily caught herself staring and smiled coyly with her head turned down. But the movement didn't last long, not when she felt the soft tips of a man's fingertips drawing her chin back up again. It was a different feeling than when Jeff held or touched her, and she'd determined this already. But it felt safe and good, despite it. Carter captured her blue eyes with his the same and grinned tightly as his face came nearer to hers at the panel of the door.

"You wouldn't mind if I…"

He didn't finish the question, but she knew how it would end.

"No," she whispered. "I don't."

He held her chin until he could take her face in both his hands and bring his warm lips to rest on hers. They weren't intimidating or threatening, they were soft, like his hands, and kind like his smile. And she felt she'd known they would be all along.

Carter's mouth soothed her anxiousness and her pain from her last words with Jeff. Lily felt revitalized all the more as he slowly moved back inside of her room, still holding her face against his and consuming her lips with his. She found her hands somehow taking the risk of pulling at his jacket and his beaten white tee tucked into his jeans. She then accepted that his moved down her face toward her arms and then her hips; his fingertips digging into the waistband of her jeans and pulling at her skin. And Lily understood exactly what she was doing when a moment later they fell to the well used old bed and began ripping at clothes left and right.

'This is really stupid…this is so stupid…I don't really want to sleep with Danny…'

His thoughts were nowhere near the same and somehow she sensed this too. Carter wanted it; he had wanted her all along this wild journey and she had hardly given him the time of day in comparison to her nights spent in Jeff's room. Danny was happy to have her now, happy to have her all to himself and she felt this when he left delicate kisses down her neck, over her bra and all across her revealed stomach.

'Stop Lily…' the voice said clearly '…stop this now. You don't want him.'

She pulled at Danny's neck harder, wrapping her legs around him to fight away the sound of her own voice in her head, and tried to make the moment move along. She wanted it to be done with and not risk anymore contemplation about it. But what she wanted and what she needed were two very different, very high tempered sides of her, and the latter usually won out in the end.

"Danny."

He kept kissing her arms and chest but hummed a short response.

"Danny…I can't. I can't do this."

His face rose from her skin and hovered above hers for a moment. Carter understood where she was going with it, because he'd only hoped it wouldn't come between them. But nevertheless, it had.

"Is it me? Am I really that bad?" He laughed a little and pressed his forehead to hers.

"No, you're amazing. I swear. It's just…"

"You have a kinky fetish for blind CIA ops."

Lily could tell he was joking and she giggled too under him.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry, Hanson."

He kissed her forehead and sat up with her wrapped in his arms in the middle of the bed.

"I'm glad you really care about him. Sands needs somebody to love him. Trust me."

She smiled and hugged him tight, never wanting to let go.

"I just wish he would love me back."


"Come on, deadweight."

Lily spun back on the heels of her fishing boots to see Jeff struggling for breath behind her.

"Watch it, kid…" he sucked in the cold November air and leapt forward down the path, "I'm your ride back home."

"Do you really think I can't get back without your car? I grew up here, remember."

He breathed in deep and followed her still as she tackled the sandy path like a pro. She was in her element, in the adventure of this magical spit of coastal land, even with the potential for snow flurries. She was perfect to him that day like so many others; her brown hair blowing in the wind, her brother's oversized sweatshirt and her worn Levi's. God, she was a sight and a half to him.

"Jeff hurry up before we miss them!"

He hustled as best he could; arguing her rationale the entire way to the beach.

"I still don't believe you."

"Fine then, don't. But come on…" she skipped back and grabbed his cold hand, pulling him along until the grassy dunes narrowed out onto the wet, yellow sand.

He half ran into her when she finally stopped moving and the wind blew a gust of her hair in his face, making him drown from the intoxication of fresh cranberries that she seemed to so well contain.

"Look!"

Lily pointed down the beach a ways and his eyes turned to follow her finger.

"I told you."

Piled up and tumbling away the blistery afternoon of ice and wind on the freezing shoreline, were a hundred or more seals. The waves rushed over there leathery bodies like they were nothing more than the rocks of the Cape, and he couldn't help but be completely, utterly stunned by the sight.

"My God, that's insane," he whispered in her ear against the wind.

She turned around fast and look him fiercely in the eye, even a foot shorter.

"Don't ever doubt me again, Detective Sands."

He grinned wildly and picked a strand of her hair from between her pink glossed lips and then raised his hand with three adjoining fingers.

"You have my word. Scout's honor."


"Scout's honor…" he mumbled into his pillow with a fair portion of drool to match.

'Don't ever doubt me again…'

There words on his mind played with his sense of sleep and reality, making him mutter through the halfway point of again.

"I won't…I won't doubt you…Lily."

The name alone, when it left his dreaming mouth forced him completely awake to darkness still. He listened to the quiet suite around him, hearing nothing but the low buzz of the ceiling fan and the rush of honking cars and taxis a dozen floors below. He sat up where he'd passed out on the couch and rubbed at his face, trying to think of something other than sand and ice and seals and pink lips.

"Shit. I can't deal with this anymore…"

He didn't know what time it was, but he didn't care.

He didn't particularly know how best to go about achieving what refused to let him sleep, but it didn't matter really, because he was going to do it anyway.

He didn't know how she haunted him so well, but he sat for the first time, in the middle of the night, rubbing the pain in his head away with nothing but utter fascination in the fact that she did.

And maybe that's why he stumbled to his feet and started feeling around for his clothes.