A/N: Hey, guys! I know I haven't uploaded in actually forever, but I tend not to feel inspired during school because of too much stress. As it is officially the first day of summer, I have spent my time wisely and have finished this for you. It's quite a long chapter, but why wait? I hope you guys like the ending! I had so much fun writing this.
The more she thought about it, the more she was not okay with standing on the corner of 34th and Main, waiting for Frankie or Korsak to show up—if they even would. Maura sighed. They were probably going to aid Jane in the car chase that Maura was sure was going to result. It was nothing that Jane couldn't handle. Her everyday driving was testament to that. Maura simply couldn't help her mind from spitting out the host of facts it had filed away in her brain.
10.8 million accidents in 2012.
3,215 fatal crashes with large trucks.
There is a u-shaped relationship between vehicle speed and crash incidence. An exponential increase in crash injury occurrence at high speeds…
Jane knew that wherever Maura was at the moment, she was computing Jane's risk of dying or coming back hurt. The thought cracked the intense look of concentration on her face and smoothed her chiseled, set jaw, into a softer set of curves. The toe of her boot pulled back ever-so-slightly on the pedal, which was almost parallel to the floor.
She had called a helicopter in to find the location of the truck, but it would be at least another five or ten minutes until it was able to get to the area. She had decided to jump onto the highway headed south. Something told her that he was headed back to his cozy Star Island home in Florida.
Weaving her way through the interstate traffic, Jane was completely unaware that her ME was currently heading up the elevator of the condo building to floor 9.
Maura fidgeted nervously as the elevator ticked closer to the number 9. The restlessness she felt was wholly out of character; of course, what she was about to do was wholly out of character as well. She was about to attempt to break the law, simply out of spite for the abrupt way she was thrust out of Jane's police cruiser. She had been cast off by people her entire life, and was not about to be cast off by the one person who had always remembered and respected her.
Defiance. It was an old feeling, a rusty feeling. One reserved for her youth, the days when riding naked in a riding competition to protest budget cuts was the path to change. Now, ensconced in a "real" job with an impressive title and equipped with discretion over her own trust fund, defiance was rendered simply unnecessary. A word or two from her, a flash of money or a sly drop of her last name would get her almost anything.
Except Jane.
The doors slid open and she smoothed her dress before she reached into her purse and pulled out a pair of blue latex gloves. The door to the condo down the corridor was wide open, baring the destruction inside the posh apartment for the entire world to see.
In plain view. No need for a warrant.
Maura gingerly stepped around the large white armchair that almost blocked the doorway. With a quick sweep of the living room area and kitchen, she decided to veer left, toward a small hallway with a few bedrooms. One of the doors was splintered and slightly open. The white shards of the door lay sprinkled around the threshold, where she stopped to listen for any sounds.
Not hearing any, she pushed the door open and took a tentative step inside. It was a guest bedroom, adorned almost completely in white. The bed was mussed, as if someone had lain on top of it, and there were distinct reddish brown stains littering the bedspread and the carpeted floor.
The pattern indicates
As she was reaching into her purse to find her phone, she heard the bedroom door slam behind her and felt a dull, heavy object hit the back of her knees. Upon hitting the floor, Maura felt said heavy object also hit her occiput.
And then everything went black.
The adrenaline was pumping violently through Jane's being as her toes pressed ever closer to the floor. She had been steadily weaving her way through the Boston traffic and felt comforted by the fact that she knew a horde of no fewer than ten police cars were on their ways behind her. A veritable reenactment of the red sea parting was happening on the road before her, and it brought a satisfied smile to her lips.
Cars were pulling over onto shoulders left and right, clearing a perfect path to the large, lumbering truck ahead of her. She was sure he had the truck going at full speed: a whopping 85 miles an hour, and barely that. If she were lucky, she would make him blow out the engine. She rode up behind him for a bit, marveling as much as a woman with no interest in art could at the painting beneath the flapping black tarpaulin. She increased her pressure on the gas in tandem with the increasing speed of the truck in front of her.
"I'm right behind him. Can ya get some local police off the 333 exit to put a blockade up?" Jane radioed to Korsak.
Before she could hear Korsak's response, she saw the large, rubbery strips of a tire flying toward her windshield.
She had been almost expecting an engine failure; the thought of a tire blowout hadn't even occurred to her.
Her hands instinctively jerked the wheel to the left, causing the flying tire bits to slam into the right side of the windshield of her cruiser. The glass shattered, a fact Jane wasn't particularly aware of as she tried to anticipate to where the swerving 16 wheeler would go next.
She really had nowhere to go, however, as the truck swung around and toppled to a stop across the four lanes of the highway. Jane's cruiser crashed into the wheels a moment later.
All Jane was really aware of was a distinctive crunch sound and her body being flung forward, only to be stopped by a seatbelt and an unforgiving airbag.
Once again, luck was on Jane's side: the right side of her cruiser had taken the brunt of the blow. The cruiser had crunched widthwise, pinning her shoulders between the passenger seat and the door. Her lean frame, however, was able to wriggle out without too much pain. She was sure there was glass lodged in a few places in her right arm and knew she would be suffering from some sort of concussion or whiplash or medical condition that Maura would diagnose her with later, but right now, she had to make it to the cab of that semi.
She clambered out of the windshield and whipped out her gun as she hit the asphalt, ignoring any protestations from her body.
"Boston Police! STOP RIGHT THERE! PUT YOUR HANDS UP." Jane had crept around the semi to find a disheveled, mustachioed man frantically lifting the tarpaulin to assess any damage to the painting. He brandished a thin metal cane at her, yelling at her to stay back.
Noting he was not armed, she took a few careful steps forward, still pointing her gun at him.
"GO AWAY!" The words tore through his throat, raw and animalistic. They were the words of a tormented lover; a mother grieving a dead child; a wounded dog on the brink of death. They were not the words of a man over a painting.
Jane let her eyes peel away from the beleaguered man to look at the painting. The wood supporting the canvas had splintered and pierced the painting, painfully analogous to the current state of its kidnapper.
"Don't take me away from her, please? I've waited so long…" his hands ran lovingly over the painting, carefully assessing its damage.
It pained Jane to pull out the handcuffs from her belt. Slowly, she approached the man and gently pulled his hands behind his back. The broken man put up no resistance.
"Will I see her again?" he whimpered. Jane waited with him behind the truck, unwilling to pull him away from the painting until need be. She could hear the sirens approaching quickly, and soon heard the slam of doors.
"Jane?" the concerned voice of Korsak called.
"We're back here, Korsak. Keep your gun down. There's no need," Jane shouted hoarsely over the fallen form of the semi.
Much to Jane's relief, Korsak came alone, gun safely tucked away. She didn't want to scare the tortured man into doing something rash. Korsak deftly assessed the situation, not needing Jane to say anything cautionary. Jane smiled quietly to herself in appreciation of her former partner's perceptiveness.
"Now, why don't you come with us so you can tell us about your painting?" Jane asked the man softly. Korsak pulled up alongside him, gently but firmly gripping his forearm. As they slowly walked him forward, the man grew rigid, balking as they moved away from the painting.
"We need to—"
The man cut Korsak off with a bloodcurdling scream. It was loud and long and then came in short, sharp bursts. He didn't resist, but his eyes stayed trained on the tarpulined painting, never leaving its mark.
"Jane?" Korsak asked his former partner for permission before the two of them began to drag the man as gently as possible. He was obviously suffering from some sort of mental disorder. The screams continued even after they closed the back door of Korsak's cruiser. They could hear the muffled sounds of it as they began to direct the collection of forensic evidence at the scene.
Jane got a confession only five minutes into her interrogation. Informally, it was a record for her.
"Why did you have that painting?"
"It belonged to me. The studio had no right to sell it to the carnival—it belonged to my grandfather and then to me when he died. Those carnival imbeciles stole it before I could get to it. But, thankfully, they did the hard part for me. I only had to acquire it from them," here, he paused thoughtfully. His eyes glazed over hazily before turning into veritable daggers.
"Only, they wouldn't sell it to me," he continued, his voice sharp and clear. "I offered them $250,000. It was all I could…but they thought they could get more. So I had to eliminate them." The words were said simply and without remorse.
Jane looked at the man before her, wondering what was going on in the mind underneath his silvery hair. What would drive a man to kill multiple people for a painting that he had no intention of selling?
"Why was this painting yours?" Jane asked the man slowly. She had no desire to rile him up again. It had taken him three hours and multiple sedatives to bring him down from the frenzied state he had been in after the traffic accident. The man sitting in front of her now was lucid and disturbingly normal, a far cry from the inconsolable man of three hours ago.
"I was born in 1959 to a woman that had no idea who my father was. It was the time of hippies and communes, peace and love and all of that garbage. My mother was apparently enamored by it, because only a few months after I was born she decided to drop me off at my grandfather's house to live in a commune in Montana. He never heard from her again.
"My grandfather made his fortune in coal, but it was not his passion. No, he loved the arts. He spent all his free time looking at the opera, museums, galleries, looking at art, buying art. Naturally, my grandfather passed this love on to me. I'll never forget my first opera. I was five, and the people were so beautiful—"
"Mr. Cordone, does the opera have to do with the painting?" Jane gently interrupted. She did not have the time to sit through a lengthy description of an opera.
"No, I guess not," he said lightly. He paused to collect his thoughts, and then continued, "In 1944 my grandfather commissioned Salvador Dali to paint a backdrop for a ballet by the New York Metropolitan Opera. He watched Dali work on that painting every day. My grandfather would say to me, 'Looking at art is one thing, but watching the process is awe-inspiring.' He would describe it to me: the blue cape, the stark reds. The dim landscape. The wheelbarrow in the back," he paused, reminiscing.
"It was his," he said sharply. "He commissioned it. He gave it to the opera for use during the ballet—and for no other reason. When the ballet was over in 1947, he sent over a truck to collect the painting, but it was already gone. My grandfather sued for the painting and lost, apparently because the painting 'seemed to be' a gift from my grandfather to the opera and there were no documents signed about it merely being a loan. But it was his. And on his deathbed he said that it was now mine. I waited years for the right moment to reclaim it. When the painting was found in an old warehouse and summarily loaned to that idiotic circus in Canada, I knew it was time."
"Did you kill these three men?" Jane asked the man in front of her seriously. She pushed the pictures of her three victims across the metal interrogation room table. Michael Cordone looked casually at the photographs, completely unaffected by the dead bodies.
"I did. They had something of mine, I took it back. I would like a call to my lawyers now," the man said to her. The words were said so airily, it was as if the man had absolutely no idea he had snuffed out three human lives.
Still, Jane felt pity for the man. There was almost something noble in the way he wanted to recover the painting his grandfather was never rightly given. He had lost his life's obsession, and now would likely spend the rest of his life in jail without it.
Jane stood up, looking at the man with the ridiculous mustache with kindness. "Thank you for you honesty. I'll have an officer come in and take you to a phone."
Jane strode out of the interrogation room and pulled out her cellphone, dialing the number she had memorized long ago. The phone rang multiple times before receiving a message, "You've reached Dr. Maura Isles, Chief Medical Examiner of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I have not gotten to the phone right now but please leave your name and a message and I will get back to you promptly."
It was an annoying long and formal voicemail message, but Jane rarely had to hear it. The ME always picked up for Jane.
Shit.
Had something happened to Maura? Jane turned to the one-way mirror room, where she knew Frankie and Korsak would be waiting.
"Have either of you seen Maura?" Jane asked quickly, worry lacing her words.
The two looked at her with utterly confused expressions on their faces. She had just got a confession to a murder trifecta and all she could ask was where the ME was?
"I dropped her off right outside the apartment where we found Cordone. Carson Buchanan's apartment. I had hoped she would find a cab or something, but what if—I don't know, something happened to her? Go downstairs and ask Chang if she's seen Maura. I'll meet you at Engel's place. I have a bad feeling about this…"
Jane jumped into a spare police cruiser and sped off toward the apartment once more. Her lights were on and she was determined not to take her foot off the accelerator the entire trip there. Halfway there, her phone started to ring.
"Rizzoli."
"Hey, Jane. I'm on my way. Susie said she hasn't seen Dr. Isles. Try not to kill yourself getting there," Korsak informed her.
Jane's chest tightened, her toes lifting ever so lightly off the pedal. "Yeah, okay."
She pulled up to the front of the swanky building once more and stumbled out of the car in her haste.
"Boston PD. Have you seen this woman walk in or out of here?" Jane asked, pulling out a picture of Maura from her wallet.
Her heart twisted a little in shame as she realized that she had a picture of Maura in her wallet. It was from the photoshoot Maura had gone to after she had won some sort of commendation or another. She was asked to submit a photo of herself and had dragged Jane to a fancy studio to get her portrait done. This one had been her favorite: she had said something behind the photographer to make her best friend laugh, and the ME was leaning forward on the stool, eyes sparkling and mouth open in laughter.
She certainly didn't have a picture of Casey in her wallet, nor did she ever feel the need to have one. She didn't have a picture of her Ma or brothers or even Jo Friday. No, just Maura.
"Yes, in fact, she walked in a little less than two hours ago. Just after you left the first time. I assumed she was a friend of one of our families that live here she just…"
"Looked like she belonged here?" Jane interrupted.
"I know I should have checked her ID, but, well, yes," the concierge demurred.
"It's okay. She's with us. She hasn't come back out, though?"
The concierge shook his head no.
"Thank you," Jane said quickly, dashing away toward the elevator, where she repeatedly pressed the up button with impatience.
Two hours. Two fucking hours, Rizzoli, and you don't even notice your best friend is gone!
The elevator stopped at the 9th floor, and Jane barged through the open door, gun drawn. "Boston Police!"
The room was just as destroyed as it had been when she had been there last, only there was a distinctive trail of blood leading out from the east wing of the apartment and to the sliding glass door that led to the balcony and fire escape. Jane kept her gun drawn and followed the trail back into the eastern wing, which she hadn't the chance to explore before she found Cordone.
The wing consisted of a small hallway with three doors. The blood trail was stronger here and led up to the door at the far end of the hallway. The door was closed, and Jane called out again, "Boston PD!" before turning the knob and letting the door swing open.
Maura was tied to a chair sitting in front of a small desk at the far end of the room. She was slumped forward, unconscious, and steams of blood were dried on her left temple.
Fuckdamnshit.
Jane moved forward quickly, slicing the ropes with her pocket knife and gently holding the ME so that she didn't fall forward onto the floor.
"Maur?" Jane asked, kneeling in front of the blonde and gently touching her face. She held her by the shoulders, keeping her upright. The blonde seemed to have been hit on the back of the head with a bat or some similar object. One eye was puffy, and she looked poised to have an intense shiner in the coming hours. She was breathing, which made Jane's heart feel slightly better.
Jane picked up each of the ME's delicate wrists, gently rubbing her thumbs over the red marks she found there. She traced an index finger around the outline of the black eye, and gently cupped the left side of her face, willing all of the painful reminders of Jane's inadequacy to go away.
I failed you, Maura.
She pulled out her cellphone. "Hey, Korsak. I found Maura. She's in Buchanan's apartment. She's in bad shape, but I think she'll be okay."
"I'll call an ambulance for you. Just sit tight and wait for us there."
Jane hung up the phone, feeling utterly overwhelmed. She had never felt so unfulfilled after the closing of a case. Three murders, a confession from a disillusioned, sad old man, and her best friend hurt and unconscious.
Tonight would not be a Dirty Robber night.
"Here, baby. Let's get you more comfortable," Jane said, lifting the ME out of the chair and down onto the floor with her. She leaned up against the large bed that took up most of the room and pulled the ME close into her, cradling the smaller blonde to her chest.
God, I love her.
If she could have, she would have slipped the bulky diamond off her finger that second. As her arms were currently fully occupied with the true object of her desire, Jane did the next best thing.
She kissed her on the forehead, and then on both her eyes. On the tip of her nose and on her cheeks. With Jane's face only inches from hers, Maura's eyes opened sleepily.
Jane smiled. It was lopsided and relieved. "True love's kiss, huh?"
The ME blinked confusedly. Jane touched the tip of her nose to the blonde's, nudging it a little. A slow smile of realization spread across the ME's beautiful features.
She's finally realized, Maura thought.
Jane wanted to lean down to kiss the ME, but heard the familiar tromp of Korsak's work shoes, followed by the sounds of three or so others behind him.
"We're in here," Jane shouted.
Korsak's frame quickly made it through the doorway. "Dr. Isles!" he exclaimed with warmth. "Glad you're awake. Boy you look rough."
Three paramedics filed in behind him, two rolling a gurney and one behind them. Jane helped Maura to sit up.
"I have ecchymosis on both popliteal fossas and likely around the ocular obit. I also have moderate exsanguination from the posterior occiput and a possible MTBI with loss of consciousness," the ME said to the three paramedics.
She turned to Jane, who was looking at her with a mixture of pride and amusement. "I'm fine. I'll just need to have some tests run to see if I have any head trauma."
"In that case, why don't I take you to the hospital?"
Maura smiled a yes.
"All right, boys, looks like we called ya here for nothing," Jane said good-naturedly. They nodded to her and they all made their way back downstairs to their respective vehicles.
"So you only went up there to prove to me you were badass?" Jane asked incredulously.
"Not in so many words, but yes." Maura said, defiantly pouring herself a third glass of wine. It had been a long day. After a trip to the hospital, some BPD paperwork and a trip to the car compactor to collect Jane's belongings before her totaled cruiser was destroyed, Jane and Maura had finally gotten home for a bit of much needed rest.
"You're the brains, Maur! You can't go stealing my mojo. I'm the badass. It's what makes us such a good team," Jane said teasingly.
Her arms reached out without thought to pull the ME closer. Her hands rested firmly on her best friend's waist, her body flush up against the beautiful doctor. Impossibly dark brown eyes meet questioning hazel ones.
And then Jane's thin lips were on Maura's fuller ones. Her long arm thrust itself around Maura, pushing the blonde up off the bar stool and flush against herself. Her hand moved to the dip in Maura's back, over the curve of her ass and to the place where the blonde's nightgown ended.
"Jane," Maura gasped. She smiled a small smile, a calm smile. A fulfilled smile. "Finally."
Her chest was heaving and her sensory receptors at full attention.
Jane's hand carefully traced the place where Maura's ass met the back of her thighs. "Mmm," she growled. "I've wanted to do that for a long time, Dr. Isles."
"A long time?" Maura's voice was unnaturally high. She felt a deep blush creep down her neck and across her collarbone and a deeper smile etch its way across her features.
"Ever since I met you, I suppose."
Jane moved her hands from Maura's ass to her sides, slowly trailing her fingers up her latissimus dorsi muscles and stopping just at the top of her ribcage.
"Why did you wait?" The words were breathy, whispered, barely there.
"I kept telling myself it was normal. It was because you were just so beautiful. That it wasn't attraction." Jane moved a thumb over Maura's right nipple, eliciting a slight gasp.
"But apparently." She pinched the nipple between two fingers, eliciting a light moan.
"It is." She repeated the action to her other breast, reducing the other woman to whimpers.
"God, Jane. I need you. I have needed you…for so long." Maura said, seasoning Jane with peppered kisses.
In response, Jane swept up the medical examiner and hauled her up the stairs, the action hiking up the doctor's thin nightgown and revealing to Jane the most mouthwatering, savory smell her senses had ever been graced with.
Jane growled in response, her lithe body opting to take the stairs two at a time. She threw the blonde down on the bed and commenced kissing her from left foot to mouth, and from mouth back down to right foot. Her nostrils flared, quaffing the scent of Maura again and again, sure she could never be sated.
She found herself on top of the medical examiner, a knee on either side of her hips, her hands on either side of her head, looking desperately into the eyes of her best friend.
Should I continue? Jane asked with her eyes.
Maura responded by pulling Jane's mouth down onto hers, expertly flicking the brunette's bottom lip with her tongue, asking for entrance. The brunette's lips parted slightly, allowing Maura's tongue to slide in and caress hers.
"Ungh," Jane moaned, feeling as though she were falling into the blonde. Her hands gripped the blonde's hair tighter as she felt the smaller woman's tongue lave over her own. It wasn't a battle for dominance; it was an outright conquering. She had no intention of putting a stopper in whatever magic Maura had uncorked.
Her fingers fumbled down Maura's torso and awkwardly between Maura's body and her own. They rested on a light patch of hair, already sticky with wet.
"Do I always do this to you?" Jane growled into Maura's ear.
The ME let out a short note that sounded like one of assent.
Long fingers plunge into milky wetness.
"Oh!" Maura lets out, arching her hips off the mattress in pleasure.
Long fingers drag up a velvety corridor to the center of her newfound kingdom.
"Jane!"
An uncertain, resolved finger begins to gently stroke up and down.
Maura's breathing grows more labored.
"Jane. Pants. Off. I want to feel you, too."
Dark, coiled hair and a dark scent cloud Maura's existence. It's the most beautiful moment of her life, experiencing Jane's pussy for the first time.
Pussy. It sounds so crass—so thrilling—in Maura's head.
Her fingers reach up and tangle in the dark curls, first dancing along the perimeter and then patrolling along the folds.
Jane impatiently grates her hips against her lover's hands.
One manicured finger slips into a dark, moist haven.
"Oh," Maura sighs.
It gathers the moistness it finds there and transports it to the nub she'd been fantasizing about for years.
"Maura. You are… that feels…oh…so good."
Jane's hand moves back to its previous position over Maura's pussy, slowly massaging her clit.
Maura's finger flicks faster over Jane, who responds by moving faster over Maura. The two coil tighter and tighter together, muscles straining, breathing quickening, world fading. Desperately, Jane flicks her tongue over one of Maura's still-nightgowned nipples, causing the blonde to tighten and quake.
"Oh, Jane," Maura moans in a voice not her own, her strokes on Jane now erratic through her own orgasm.
"Come for me," Maura pleads, desperate to feel the detective's body loose itself on her.
At those words, Jane uncoils, spilling the heat out between her legs and onto Maura's eager hand.
"You taste…so good," Maura says, hungrily licking Jane's cum off her hand. "Like truffles."
"Truffles?" Jane asks sleepily.
"Yes. Tuber magnatum, a species of mushroom. They're a delicacy," Maura moans contentedly. "As are you."
Jane kisses the blonde, simultaneously pulling up the nightgown and throwing it somewhere across the room.
"God, you're so beautiful," Jane says reverently, peeling her eyes away from the glorious chest displayed before her to marvel at the rest of the milky body below her.
"You're—this—us… can we be an us?" Jane asked awkwardly, but earnestly. Her genuine brown eyes met the ME's dark forest ones.
"I've always been yours," Maura said with a smile.
"And I've always been yours. I just didn't know it," Jane said, pushing the blonde's nose with her own.
She cuddles closely to Jane, giggling uncontrollably as the dopamine and serotonin flooded through her system from undoubtedly the most powerful orgasm she had ever experienced.
"Jane?" Maura asked, suddenly aware of the rhino in the room.
"Yeah."
"What about Casey?"
"Fuck him and his ultimatums. I've got the love of my life right here," Jane said, squeezing the flesh of Maura's hip possessively with her left hand.
Maura thought she should feel offended, but was too happy to be lying there, naked, basking in afterglow with her detective.
"Does this mean that you're mine now?" Maura asked timidly, not breathing in anticipation.
"If you'll have me."
"Only me from now on?"
"Only you."
A/N: Well, this is it. The actual end. Again, I hope you enjoyed it. I also hope you will review or PM me with any comments, concerns or criticisms. Happy summer, guys! And most important, HAPPY ALMOST SEASON FIVE!