Thanks for all your comments, everyone. They always make me think more in depth about what I'm writing, *and* they brighten my day. (which considering the ridiculous April snowstorms we've been getting, is particularly desirable these days. wth weather?)

A Tangled Web (11)

The familiar sight of her living room was a welcome comfort; noticing the boy sitting at the far end of the living room table, laptop on one side and chess board on the other, even more so. Sharon let the door close behind her and breathed a soft sigh as she stepped out of her heels.

"Hey."

She even managed a half-smile for him. "Hi." There was a plate next to him on the table with the remains of what might have once been a sandwich. Just the image of it made her stomach rumble quietly.

She could feel Rusty's eyes on her while she dropped her bag on one of the side tables and pulled the phone from her pocket.

"How was school today?" she asked as she walked over to her desk, and hoped that he'd actually give her a real answer, as opposed to –

"Fine," the boy said with his customary eloquence.

It wasn't as though the reply surprised her; her previous two teenagers had started rolling their eyes at the 'how was school?' question around seventh or eighth grade, if she remembered well. Sharon had heard dozens of offhand 'fine's from them, too, until she'd eventually instituted a rule that required at least three full sentences in reply to her asking about their day.

Maybe it was time to introduce Rusty to that rule.

"And…?" She plugged in her phone to charge while she prompted for more details.

"And?" At first he sounded genuinely confused as to what more she wanted – but then his tone changed, growing more wary. "I didn't get into any more fights or anything, if that's what you're asking."

Sharon sighed. It wasn't what she'd been asking…or at least not entirely. Although now that he mentioned it… "Did you work things out with your classmate?"

His displeased grimace came as no surprise. "Yeah, Sharon," the boy muttered, "I told you, it was no big deal". He flipped the lid shut on his laptop with a louder noise than strictly necessary.

She dropped it; she was too tired to do this tonight. "Alright, then." The glass of water she'd poured herself was doing nothing to allay her hunger. "What should we have for dinner?" she switched topics, trying for an inviting tone.

Rusty shrugged bleakly.

It was going to be one of those evenings, wasn't it?

"I'm going to get some rice started," she said, ignoring his obvious reticence. "We can have a stir fry with that." Not one of his favorite dishes, but it was the fastest thing she could think of, and easy to make. "Pork or chicken?"

Another shrug.

"Rusty."

The warning in her tone was enough to at least get him to make a verbal response. "Pork, I guess. Whatever." He watched while she pulled the rice out of one of the cabinets. "Do you want like… help, or anything?"

Not if help came with an attitude. "Did you finish your homework?" she asked instead.

Rusty rolled his eyes.

Yup, definitely one of those evenings.

Arguments like this hardly ever happened anymore – they'd learned to pick their battles with each other long ago, and over time had found that they were both much happier to avoid fights altogether. But lately there was something else between them. Something that caused their emotions to run just a little higher, their feelings to get hurt just a little easier. And sometimes, like tonight, that unspoken tension spilled over into the casual conversations where it didn't belong.

Thankfully, the worst of the tension had dissipated by the time they sat down to eat, although Sharon was still half-torn as to whether to revisit his earlier behavior or let it go. On the one hand, his recent tendency to not talk to her about whatever was bothering him was driving her crazy. There was a reason that she felt so uneasy whenever he was out of her sight, and temper flare-ups like tonight's were a big part of that reason: something was clearly on Rusty's mind, and not being able to get it out of him was nerve-racking.

On the other hand, trying to push him to open up was only achieving the exact opposite effect. He was only pulling away harder, deflecting more; he must've told her half a dozen times in the last month to stop worrying so much about everything.

Which of course, only had the exact opposite effect on her.

And incidents like the one on Friday, when she'd inadvertently caught him trying to hide evidence of having gotten into a fight at school… well, that did not help with the whole 'not worrying' thing. It was just another instance in a long string of failures to get a straight story out of Rusty, and Sharon was beginning to lose her patience. Of course she was going to worry, because he wasn't letting her in at all, and now was such a terrible, terrible time to be pulling away, with his eighteenth birthday just over a month off and – she didn't even know how to talk to him about that, not when he seemed so evasive and increasingly eager to break off on his own, and the last thing she wanted was to put any pressure on him, but the truth was–

"Are you sure we're not out?" Rusty's voice broke into her thoughts, muffled slightly by the fact that he'd basically stuck his head all the way inside the fridge. "I don't see it."

Sharon glanced over her shoulder, huffing with involuntary amusement as she noticed the way he was trying to enter the fridge whole, basically. "It should be on the second shelf."

"No, I already looked, it's not here, Sh – oh." She heard the sound of clanging glass and then Rusty extricated himself from the fridge, the hot sauce bottle in his hand. "Never mind, got it." He walked back over to the table and sat down again, and Sharon let out a mental sigh as he proceeded to pour about a gallon of hot sauce over his plate. She hoped that wasn't a reflection on her cooking.

She took another bite from her stir fry, chewing it a little too slowly. She'd been fairly starving on first arriving home, but in the meantime she'd lost some of her appetite. Probably to tiredness. It was just seven p.m., really, but it had been the longest couple of days.

She took a sip of her water glass and watched Rusty surreptitiously flick half a mushroom aside with a suspicious frown. When he caught her looking, he reluctantly pushed the mushroom back to the middle of the plate; then he pulled a face and pierced the offending vegetable with his fork and ate it in stoical resignation. The things he did for her.

Sharon's lips curled a little at the corners.

Nothing's wrong, Sharon. Okay? Just… everything's fine.

Do I need to call St. Joe's?

What – no! You need to trust me when I say that nothing's wrong!

Theirs was such a precarious balance, lately.

I'm sorry for yelling at you. I didn't… I'm sorry, Sharon. It's… it was just a stupid fight at school, and I don't need you to worry about every little thing in my life, okay?

But the truth was that no, it was not 'okay'.

It had been six weeks since they'd caught Wade Weller (the name still set her teeth on edge), five weeks since Rusty had gone back to school, and Sharon still couldn't be convinced, in her heart, that it was all over.

But then, it wasn't, was it? Stroh was still looming over them, and he'd already sent someone after Rusty once, what was to stop him from doing it again? So Rusty's testimony had been entered into official record – but that didn't mean anything. Stroh could want him harmed for the sake of revenge alone. He'd already tried to kill Rusty three times, each a closer call than the last. There was no closer that it could possibly get, and how was she supposed to relax with that chilling knowledge wrapped around her heart like an icy chain?

And Rusty himself was so oblivious, so utterly unconcerned about his own safety. Oh they'd talked about it, and he'd said 'sorry' and 'yes' and 'careful' and all the right words she'd wanted to hear, and he'd meant every bit of it at the time… except then he'd still walked out of the house and nearly gotten them both killed not giving the right of way at an intersection on Vermont Avenue.

He gave his full name when he called for delivery and never turned on the lights in the garage since the switch was too far from his parking spot. He'd let two squatters into their building because he held the door open for strangers behind him. He constantly forgot to charge his phone so she lived with this low-level worry that he'd end up in some abandoned dark hole somewhere and wouldn't be able to call her for help because he'd been playing too much Candy Crush Saga.

Sometimes he was so unmindful that she wanted to strangle him.

Other times she was grateful for that very lack of caution, because it meant that he could still live without fear, even though so much evil had come after him already. He could still be a child, a thoughtless, imprudent child – and to give him that, she'd gladly have done all the worrying for him.

Only when she tried, he resented her for it.

She let out a soft, tired breath, and began to cut her broccoli into unnecessarily small pieces.

Rusty watched Sharon push the food around on her plate, and felt the sudden urge to bang his head against the table in frustration.

He wasn't trying to be difficult. He was perfectly aware that he'd been an idiot earlier, and if she was mad at him now he couldn't blame her, because there had been like, zero reason to get angry when she'd asked him about school. But… she was still thinking about that stupid fight on Friday, he could tell, and the more she brought it up the more he remembered it, and… he'd rather just have forgotten about it. If only Sharon would just... let it go.

It was stupid, anyway.

One of his idiot classmates had asked him what he was going to do when he was out of 'the system'.

It had taken Rusty a few seconds to figure out what system Joel was even talking about. Which was stupid, because he'd been asking himself that question … not a lot, exactly – since until last month he'd had more important things to worry about, such as a psycho trying to kill him – but… he'd been wondering, a little bit. More and more, as time went by and his concerns about the letter writer faded and Emma didn't talk about the trial and the testimony every. single. day, he'd been wondering what would happen when he graduated.

He didn't have a plan. Obviously he wasn't going off to college or anything, even Sharon wasn't holding it against him that he hadn't exactly had time to do applications between the awful security detail and being on house arrest and Taylor and Emma trying to constantly ruin his life. He couldn't tell if she was disappointed, or what, and it wasn't like he could ask her… but anyway, even if Sharon understood and no one was too disappointed that he wasn't going to college next year – he didn't have any plan. He didn't know what he wanted. He didn't know what Sharon wanted.

He didn't know anything.

Are they like, gonna send you into witness protection when you turn 18 or something? 'cause that would be cool, dude.

That would not 'be cool'.

And as such, he'd informed his stupid classmate that it wasn't any of his business and to shut the hell up.

Joel wasn't like, a bad guy, as preppy rich kids came. Retrospectively, Rusty didn't think that he'd meant to be obnoxious. Rusty also hadn't meant to jump down Joel's throat.

But well, what had happened had happened, and then Joel's stupid friends had started 'ooooh'-ing and goading and before he knew it, the argument was getting out of control. Next recess it had just built more momentum, and after their last class of the day, they'd been unlucky enough to not manage to avoid each other on their way to the parking lot. By then neither of them had wanted to back down, and there had been all those stupid kids making stupid comments in the background, and Joel had sneered something about 'trouble kids' and Rusty had called him something to do with male anatomy and…

Well, he wasn't sure how exactly they'd ended up in a scuffle, but they'd both gone home with grass stains on their torn uniforms.

And then Sharon had caught him later that evening when he was trying to do laundry, and of course she'd seen the evidence of the fight and she'd wanted to know what had happened and – what was he supposed to tell her, exactly?

He stabbed angrily at the last piece of meat on his plate, then sighed at Sharon's look of mild irritation. Great, now she was probably even more unhappy with him. She was just going to worry more, and he was running out of ways to try to show her that he was fine, that she could trust him, that he could be an adult – but like… not too much of an adult…?

Rusty didn't even know what he wanted to prove to her, really.

Or why he felt so desperate to prove anything at all. It wasn't as though Sharon had ever asked that of him. But… he didn't know why, but there was still all this pressure – and yes, technically it wasn't coming from her directly, but it still kind of was, because he was almost eighteen and 'the system' and…

He finished an entire glass of orange soda in one breath just thinking about that, and some of it went down the wrong way and made him choke. He broke into sudden coughing, sputtering a little soda over the table, and managing to hit the empty glass with his elbow, too.

"Rusty…" When he finally managed to stop coughing enough to look up, his eyes were teary and his nose hurt and Sharon was putting a glass of water in front of him and giving him a look that somehow managed to be both warm and chiding at the same time. "Take smaller sips, honey. Especially with carbonated drinks."

He was going to inform her that he knew how to drink soda, thanks, only the words came out as more coughs instead, and Sharon squeezed his shoulder lightly and Rusty ducked his head and decided to stay quiet, after all.

They worked in silence, after dinner, Rusty scribbling away on his latest math worksheet at the table, while Sharon had retreated to the sofa and, despite her tiredness, decided to spent some more time thinking about the convoluted Donnell case.

Buzz and Lt. Tao had made her copies of most of the materials they had, and she'd brought it all home in one thick folder. Of course, most of it was probably useless, phone records and background checks, incident reports and all sorts of other information that they'd already looked at that would probably lead nowhere.

Still.

The image of James Donnell's grieving parents flashed before her eyes. She didn't know if there was anything more to tell them about his death – but at least, she could take another look at things before the case was filed away in the bottom of some archive drawer. She couldn't change the fact that come morning, they'd be taking their son's body home, but she could give his case another evening. That much, she could do.

And she hadn't lied to Taylor when she'd said that she had other questions. The case had unfolded at a strange pace, first a slow trudge as everyone felt that a Saturday night jumper was hardly worth the agitation, then a frantic race as more evidence came to light supporting the bomb threat, and finally, when they'd failed to find a bomb or evidence of any more stolen chemicals, the whole thing had skidded to an abrupt end. It wasn't the normal rhythm of an investigation, so maybe that's what made Sharon so uncomfortable. At such an inconsistent pace, it was easy to miss things.

She browsed through Donnell's background first, dating back five years, to when he'd finished high school. He'd been in the top ten percent of his graduating class – a 'smart guy', as Danny had called him. There was nothing that stood out in the records, after that. He'd worked for a while at a public library and taken a few classes at a local community college, where he'd maintained a reasonable GPA and organized a couple of community events meant to raise social and environmental awareness; then, three years previous, he'd gotten the job with Animal Care at the USC.

He had no arrests. Nothing to indicate that he'd ever want to hurt anyone. His mother swore that he'd been a brilliant, goodhearted child, that as an adult he was planning to do something good with himself, even if he hadn't quite found his way yet. That he'd always had great ideas, wanted to make the world better…

Sharon switched to the page that detailed the discovery of the explosives in his locker.

There wasn't much there, either. The quantities and scientific names of the chemical compounds didn't mean much to her, but Lt. Tao had explained the basics, which was that they could've combined to create a blast – though if she remembered correctly, not one large enough to destroy an entire shopping center. The bomb squad hadn't found anything else, at his workplace or his home, and so they'd preliminarily concluded that he hadn't gotten to complete his plans to build a bomb.

That was the first thing that really bothered Sharon.

From what they could tell, James Donnell had planned to plant his explosives on Saturday evening, the day before the mall's grand opening. He'd asked Danny to get the delivery minivan, he'd told his friends that he'd meet them that night with grand plans in mind, he'd all but admitted to those plans during his intoxicated rant. So maybe he'd meant for the three of them to get high together then go break into the shopping center and place the bomb, or maybe he'd meant to just take the minivan and do it himself, or – it was even possible that he wasn't intending to hurt people at all, maybe he just wanted to blow the place up before it opened. Whichever scenario was true, they all had one major assumption in common.

They all assumed that Donnell would have had the bomb ready by the time he'd jumped off the bridge Saturday night.

All evidence, however, pointed to the contrary.

So she didn't believe Andy's conclusion that Donnell had just celebrated victory too early, and his accidental overdosing on the tree frog toxin was what had foiled his plans. It was clear to Sharon that although James Donnell may have intended to blow up "Sun Plaza", when he'd stepped off that bridge, he hadn't had a bomb ready.

And she really wanted to know why not.

But exhaustion was catching up, and her thoughts kept going in circles. She browsed almost absently through her notes from the interviews with Danny and Diego (just re-reading those made her headache come back), through the basic background check on Susan Crowley (no link whatsoever to Donnell), and the brief statement from the geochemistry researcher who'd reported the explosives missing from his lab. She skimmed the old "Zero Footprint" entries on the role of over-commercialized shopping centers in small local communities, and just like Lt. Tao, was impressed at the articulate and well-organized writing.

How had this young man ended up the way he had?

"Hey, Sharon…?"

She blinked against the dryness of her eyes, and glanced over to the table.

"Do you know what those tree frogs were called that your guy used to get high?"

…What?

"So, like, were they, uh… " Rusty frowned at his computer screen and stumbled over the name, "uh, 'dendrobates'? Or, ah…" a click, then another attempt at pronunciation, "…bufonidae?"

It took her a second to get over the ridiculousness of the question ."I thought you were doing homework," she admonished.

"I am! We have this report for biology on natural defense mechanisms, and everyone's doing like, chameleons or weird-looking insects or something, I bet no one's gonna do the frogs. So," he gave her a curious look, "do you know what kind of frogs that guy used?"

Sharon let out a long sigh. "Rusty, I don't know what they were called… and I'm not sure that it's a good idea for you to be using that particular example for your report, anyway," she added as an afterthought.

"What – why not? It's cool! Way better than like, moths or skunks…"

She pressed her lips together. "Just look somewhere else for inspiration," she suggested.

"Why?"

"Because… because I don't think that an ongoing criminal investigation is an appropriate source of ideas for your school assignments." There. That sounded perfectly reasonable.

Not to Rusty, apparently. He gave her a strange look. "Okay, how exactly is this inappropriate?" he wanted to know. "I'm not using anything from your 'ongoing criminal investigation', I was just asking about the name of the frogs! What's the big deal all of a sudden?"

Sharon didn't honestly know what the big deal was. She just knew that she didn't want Rusty in any way associated with this messy case, and she was really tired, and why couldn't he just do what she said for once and not argue so much?

She shifted in her seat and picked up the case file again. "I don't know what the frogs were called, Rusty," she reiterated eventually, in a tone that indicated the conversation was over. "If you really want to write your report on them, then you can just pick whichever species seems most relevant."

Even without looking she could tell he'd hunched his shoulders and adopted a bleak expression. "Yeah, fine." And he pulled his laptop closer, though she didn't hear him start typing again.

It took her all of thirty seconds to start feeling bad about the whole thing.

Yes, it was late and she'd had an impossibly long day, she hadn't slept properly for three days and her head hurt and she hadn't really had as much food as she should've at dinner… but none of that was Rusty's fault and he hadn't actually done anything wrong in asking her a simple question. And okay, maybe she wasn't crazy about his ensuing attitude at her answer (would it kill him to listen to her without the prerequisite litany of objections and negotiations?), but she could've definitely reacted a little better.

Presently, he'd half turned away from her and was sulking silently, head bent over his notes and laptop.

Sharon sighed again.

"When's your biology report due?"

Rusty let just enough time pass without an answer to let her know that he was Not Happy with her. But he wouldn't plain ignore her either, so she just waited him out for the few seconds it took him to decide to talk.

"Thursday."

Sharon nodded a slow acknowledgment. "I'll ask Lt. Tao about the particular frog species tomorrow," she offered quietly. "I'm sure he'll know the specifics."

Her foster son gave her an unsure look. "Yeah… okay."

She smiled a little. "Okay."

Reaching for the wine glass on the coffee table, she took a couple of sips, then sank back against the sofa cushions in an attempt to ease the slight ache in her lower back. Her eyes drifted again to the details of the Donnell case, and she skimmed over the transcript of the young man's raving discourse on the bridge. 'Blow everything up'... but then, he hadn't, had he? Why? Why hadn't he had a bomb ready? What part of his plans eluded her?

But she was too tired to make much sense of anything anymore, and too preoccupied with her own child to wonder about someone else's. Reluctantly, she gathered the few scattered pages back into the case folder, and set it on the coffee table with a weary motion. She wouldn't be getting any more answers for James Donnell's parents tonight. But the case would still be there come morning, and she could spend some quiet time reviewing it then.

She was only half-correct in her thinking.

The case was still there in the morning. As she'd instructed the night before, the murder board remained intact, and someone had even written "Do Not Erase" in red marker at the top; she dropped off the case file on Lt. Flynn's desk, and used the first few minutes to reacquaint herself with the details on the board again.

But the 'quiet time' part, well, that didn't work out so well.

It was quiet at first. Sharon had told the team that if they wanted a late start, they could have it, having been up before the crack of dawn on the two previous days, and so by nine a.m. the only ones there beside her were Lt. Tao, who had a ten a.m. court appearance to testify in a hearing, and Det. Sykes, who was still not comfortable enough to come in late, even when the boss said it was okay.

By nine-thirty the lieutenant had left for court, Amy had gone to get some coffee, and Sharon was about to head into her office, when she heard the sound of familiar heels in the doorway, and turned around.

"Andrea." Her eyebrows rose a little in surprise. "What are you doing here?" she shook her head, slightly confused; they didn't even have an ongoing case, why was a deputy DA in her murder room so early in the morning?

The blonde seemed unfazed – as usual, really. "Don't worry, I'm not here to spring any bad news on you. Just came to sign off on one of your deals…" she took a second to glance briefly into the folder she was carrying, "…Danny Murray."

This time, Sharon didn't even bother disguising her surprise. "They called you in for that?" Was the DA's office really that busy, that they'd send one of their top DDAs to close a minor possession deal with a loopy twenty-two year old stoner?

Hobbs gave her a conspiratorial half-shrug: "It could be that I volunteered. It's been a slow week so far..." She arched her eyebrows at Sharon, "Although not for you, from what I hear."

The Captain let out a long sigh.

Andrea glanced over to the murder board. "This the Sixth Street Bridge bomb guy?" Her eyes zeroed in on Donnell's DMV photo. "He's a kid."

"Twenty-three," said Sharon. "Was."

The blonde gave her an understanding look.

"Is it true he tried to blow up a mall?"

Rumor travelled fast around the DA's office, it seemed. Sharon nodded. "We didn't find a bomb," she amended. "But yes."

Hobbs grimaced. "Guess it's a good thing he didn't get around to it, or your week and mine would be a lot worse…" She stepped closer to the murder board, her gaze wandering over the details. "Psychoactive tree frogs..." She shook her head. "Just when you think you've seen everything."

"Rusty wants to write a report on them for school," Sharon found herself saying.

The DDA spared her a look of wry sympathy. "Of course he does."

Thank God, Andrea just got it sometimes.

The woman turned away from the murder board, crossing her arms with a long sigh. "Okay, before I go scare your stoner into not growing weed on his roof anymore...I may have had an ulterior motive for volunteering to do this deal, after all." She pursed her lips, growing more serious, and Sharon was instantly wary.

"Andrea – am I about to hear those bad news you said you weren't going to spring on me?"

The blonde gave a lopsided nod. "We can be really optimistic and call it a heads-up."

That did not sound good.

"Rumor has it that Roberto Rojas made a fuss," Hobbs continued, "and between that and a nasty press release from the USC, enough important toes were stepped on that the Mayor's sending someone over to snoop."

The Captain's wariness dissolved into incredulity. "Here?"

Andrea returned a commiserating eye-roll. "I know. Election year," she deadpanned, as if that explained everything, "His campaign manager has minions running down every whisper of bad publicity."

Sharon shook her head. This was just what she needed, some entitled bureaucratic lackey trying to throw his weight around. And here she'd been hoping for some quiet time.

"I wouldn't worry about it too much," said Hobbs, "whoever the Mayor sends will probably be gone by the end of the day. But I figured you'd probably appreciate knowing about it in advance. I thought Taylor might not ...get a chance... to share the news."

Right. "Somehow, it must have escaped the Chief's attention," Sharon agreed dryly, then she let out a sigh of her own. "Thank you for the heads-up."

The DDA just smiled, eyebrows arching. "Good luck. Try not to arrest this one on murder charges," she joked. "Although if you do… like I said, it's a slow week for me. You know where to find me." She smirked, and Sharon felt her lips curling into an amused smile despite her general irritation.

"I'll keep that in mind."

I know a lot of you were missing Rusty - so... be careful what you wish for? *shame* I am chronically unable to not drown these two in angst. I promise, they WILL communicate like normal people eventually. Using words and everything! ...one day.

Next chapter, Sharon receives the visit of the above-mentioned entitled bureaucratic lackey, and I'm sure we can all imagine how she will feel about it. And, she and Rusty might have one of their good days, for a change. (Might. Even when I start out with good intentions, sometimes their conversations slip down the depressing slope.)

Thank you for reading :)