REVAMPED AS OF APRIL 2014

"There's a dead body in his yard? Carmen, you need to get the hell away from here!"

Carmen was starting to regret confiding her findings to Rob Wallace – but what choice did she have? She couldn't very well ask him to help her find out about John Shooter if she didn't explain why they were looking. A-List Magazine paid a great deal of money every month for access to databases of information – mostly for the purposes of targeting demographics for advertising, or digging up interesting old news stories on celebrities who had been long dead when new material was dwindling. Rob was the one who still had access to those databases as head of A-List, and she couldn't send him off willy-nilly to find information. He would be too suspicious about what he found, if he found anything at all.

"I knew this guy was bad news," Rob said, rubbing the heel of his hand to his forehead in annoyance. "You shouldn't be snooping, Carmen, you should be calling the police –"

"No."

"You can't stay out here in the woods alone with that guy," Rob continued. "If it's about finding a place to stay, I've got a spare room, you can –"

"Moving in with you would be the worst thing I could do right now," Carmen interrupted, drumming her fingers impatiently on the coffee table.

Rob rolled his eyes, standing up and pacing a couple of times behind the sofa. "No. No, believing a word that Mort-fucking-Rainey says is the worst thing you could do right now," he retorted, rubbing his face in frustration. "Who knows what this guy is capable of?"

"Don't you get it?" Carmen said, standing up as well. "Rob, I have to believe Mort. I have to believe the stories about Shooter now, because I've seen him –"

"No, you've seen a guy who called himself Shooter in a dream."

"He's the one who told me to go to Mort's house and snoop around. He led me there," Carmen said, and Rob shook his head incredulously at the fact that Carmen actually believed in all of this. "If seeing Shooter makes Mort crazy, then it makes me crazy too."

Rob had no answer for that one. She had a point – but all of this was so outlandish, so horror movie. He shook his head and threw his hands up in resignation.

"I'm just asking you to help me figure out more about this John Shooter," Carmen said evenly. "I'm fine. Nothing is going to happen to me –"

"If you believed that, you wouldn't have needed me. You know my login for the databases, Carmen ," he said in exasperation. "You needed me to spill your guts out to because you're freaked out. You're terrified, and you have every reason to be. And now you're asking me to keep your boyfriend's little secret? If anyone else were to ask something like this of me…"

Rob's voice trailed off, and he shook his head, looking down at the floor. "If you'd loved me as much as you'd loved him, we'd probably be married right now, huh?" he asked with a weak chuckle. The question caught Carmen off guard, and her lips parted in surprise. Noticing that he'd probably said the worst possible thing, given the situation, Rob took a step closer with his hands raised in a gesture that looked like surrender.

"I didn't mean anything by it, honest," he said, enunciating carefully. "I'm not trying to dredge up old issues, we both know it was for the best. I'm just saying – a guy can't help but feel a little used."

"Used?" Carmen asked, her voice laced with outrage. "You let me date Barista Guy who you knew was married – two weeks. Mechanic Guy, tried buying Taiwanese wives off the internet – three weeks. You continually let me date losers because every time I got let down – and you knew I was going to – you were always the friend I came running to. You didn't want that to stop. You still don't! You're trying to turn this into the big event that turns Mort into Creepy Writer Guy so you could feel good about yourself. So who's using who, Rob? Do you really want to start with me?"

Carmen didn't know why Rob insisted on starting conversations like this with her – it wasn't often, but it was frequent enough that after a while, she had started to catch on that something was going on. He sank into the sofa and leaned back, looking upward tiredly.

"It just sucks," he said with a laugh that was filled with weariness rather than humor. "Because it was so easy for you to say that you and I weren't working anymore. We argued a little, we got busy with work, and that was it – adios. And now, you're suddenly willing to go through hell for some guy you just met? It stings. A guy is entitled to his pride, Carmen."

"I assumed you were over it when you hocked the ring you tried to give me for the down payment on that Mercedes you just had to have," Carmen said. "The one I said I wouldn't be caught dead in."

"I remember. I bought it just to spite you," Rob said. "Plus, I thought maybe it was a money thing - that maybe you were just looking for someone who'd already gotten ahead in life, because you were already getting ahead."

"Why do you do this?" Carmen asked suddenly, frowning so that deep creases settled onto her forehead. "Why do you start conversations like this with me? We're good as friends. We work as friends. We didn't work as a couple."

"You and Mort don't work as a couple."

"You know what? You should go. You're right. I have the login info, I can manage," Carmen snapped. "You should go."

Rob, dumbfounded, raised his eyebrows in stunned silence before reaching out and shutting his laptop more roughly than was necessary, picking it up and walking wordlessly to the door.

"No. More. Eyesore."

Mort had tried to do as he had promised and simply get back to work writing something, but the deep sense of anxiety from discovering the state of the tiny cornfield was more than he could work through. So, instead, he made his way outside and uprooted the rest of the cornstalks. His sleeves rolled up to the elbows, he carried them in bunches to the large dumpster that the garbage man only sometimes remembered to come out for, a bit of a way down from his property.

"No more corn. Done."

It felt good, Mort had to admit, finally getting something done around the house - he'd left the corn well enough alone for many months now, and didn't know exactly why he had once cared so much about it. He didn't like gardening. While he appreciated nature, he disliked yardwork greatly, and he relished in the fact that there was one less mess in his yard. If only all messes were so easy to clean up.

Amy always wanted you to fix the place up.

"I didn't do this for her," Mort said, shutting his eyes and breathing deeply through his nostrils. "I did this for me."

You did this for Carmen. You did it because you love her and you're trying not to give her any more reasons to worry about you.

"That's a possibility."

But it doesn't change the fact that you're all kinds of bad for her. All kinds.

Mort, however, was for once able to ignore the voice and simply not care. There was a point, after all, that one simply had to get rid of old things. The corn was an old thing. The baggage from Amy was an old thing. Carmen, on the other hand, was something very new - and the one thing Mort did not dispute outright that he heard from the voice was the possibility that he loved her. It was a possibility. It was a very big possibility.

Just then, he heard the phone ring inside. He hurried up the steps to pick up, and let out a sigh of relief when it was Carmen's voice on the other line.

"Hey, Mort," she said. Her voice seemed a little quieter than normal - a little more tired. "Are you busy right now?"

"Nah," he said, glancing back over his shoulder at the work he had just finished. "Just finished... cleaning up a few things that I've been putting off. Figured it was time. I'll come get you."

ORIGINAL A/N'S

Aww...that was almost "barfy" to write. So Carmen and Rob used to be together, and they had a little "lovers' spat" for old times sake? tsk tsk

And thanks for your reviews on the last chapter. I just needed a little bit of a nudge in building up Carmen's character. I'm planning out the ending. So, if there's anything you want to see happen in future chapters, TELL ME before I have my plotline all thought up and established!

over-dramatic-05: phew! I'm glad that Rob isn't coming off as the next Ted. shudder. Oh yeah, and...actually the whole "Pet Sematary" idea popped into my head at the earlier stages of writing this, but I have something else planned. Believe me, something really is going to come out of that corn eventually. And, finally, don't we all have such ill-will towards the sheriff...haha.

Dawnie-7: Ah, Mort's got a tighter on hold on Carmen than anyone realizes. She's just too independent to admit it still. Just wait for it. Maybe it'll all turn out...

Kurama-13: A person of few words, eh? Well, I still appreciate your reviews! Keep reading!

lordoftheringsfanficreader: Carmen's slightly nosy? Hah. She gets worse.