She'd buried herself as thickly into the information as she dared to go, wanting as many details as she could scrap into her hands, but not necessarily wanting all the answers when it came to how and when and where the Sons managed to puzzle-piece-fit themselves into everything shit-show-down that managed to land in Charming. And they were out-reaching themselves too – stretching hands into Stockton, Morada. Other names of other places suddenly breaking on her ears as more bikes lined up on streets – Indian Hills, Tacoma. She'd always had a bit of a thing for men on bikes, but it was getting surreally ridiculous. The town was starting to look like a road rally on steroids.
And the fact that they were so tightly entangled into faulted webs that radiated far out of her zone - it had her stomach twisting.
"Lieutenant?" Dulane's voice was a softly wending intrusion, his tone a tacit pull on her as she turned away from the way she'd pinned piles of papers and photos onto the board in the conference room. "Couple of things?"
"Sure." She nodded with a distracted and back tracking glance to the board. "Go ahead."
"Narco got a hit on the Morada meth distribution deal. I'm gonna head out there."
She nodded slowly, grazing her glance over the papers, "Take a second car. Anderson and Grady should be freed up."
"Thought you might wanna ride along." At the culled warmth of his voice she turned a glance back, noting the way he was breaking an awkwardly tight smile in her direction. "Could be good PR. Take the heat off some other problems."
"I'm fine right here, Nick." She banked him a half smile, not letting it really last as she intentionally studied his eyes. "Head in the game."
At least he was clean. And if there was a buzz on him, it wasn't strong enough to ride his eyes. She'd let off on leaning too much over him, giving him a little space to ease the scattering of his light eyes every time she moved into the room. He still took liberally blatant glances of her when he didn't think she was paying attention. Still had a quiet on him that made her cautious and curious. But he'd been too quiet in general, gently calm in a way that almost made her more nervous. Either he was just riding the up-swing before dipping back into a binge, or he thought he had something over on her. Which, in all reality, he did. But she wasn't going to let him see that it was a concern to her.
"You can have the PR." She rushed the faked smile in his direction again. "Yeah? You need a win these days. It'll look good to Patterson."
"Yes, ma'am." The sudden smile he angled her way was too feral to be genial and he had to have realized it the same time she did, turning his head out toward the bull pen with purposefully blanked features. "You have a visitor. Unser wants a chat."
"That's fine." She softened toward him with a nod, "Call into the Morada sub-station, let them know I put you on point."
He nodded with a curbed smile and tightened eyes, "Got it. Thanks."
"Send Wayne in here." She turned back toward the board, eyes cresting over it as she let her tongue run her teeth.
"That boy's too eager."
Ally cocked a surreptitious glance into the way Unser latched the door to the conference room closed, his head turning so he could catch her glance as he caught up the lock and latched it. Her spine straightened as she turned fully from the board on the wall and pinched him a look of questioning, glancing from the lock to his tired face.
"That he is." She nodded slowly in darkening agreement. "What's it matter to you?"
"This room clean?" he circled a finger in the air. "Or should I have brought my Etch-a Sketch?"
"Camera." She was suddenly very aware of the implied questioning in his eyes. "No sound. What's going on, Wayne?"
"I'm a sucker." He shrugged his shoulders up before tugging out one of the chairs at the spacious table, collapsing his body into it as he quickly scrubbed a hand against his bald head. "Got a soft spot for the sweet things in life."
"What the hell, Wayne?" frustrated annoyance shook her head as she let her arms brace over her torso. "Are you high right now? Seriously?"
"Little." He slumped farther back in the chair, "Little buzzed. May have shared a round or two with a mutual acquaintance."
"We have a large number of mutual acquaintances these days, Unser." She finally leaned her hands into the table, catching the way he was distractedly searching the board behind her, a smirk tipping his lips as his head dipped to angle around her.
"Starting to lay it together, aren't you?" he asked quietly, as he carried his glance over the photos and maps and reports and notes she'd tacked up.
"Not sure I want to, really. Not necessarily trying all that hard." She admitted softly, shoulders loosening as she carried a glance back up to him. "I'm assuming Telford got you drunk."
"I'm not drunk. And he didn't drink all that much, actually." Unser gave her a swift look of surprised realization. "He's truly goddamn calculating when he needs to be. Never expected it to come outta that wild little shit."
"How long have you known each other?" she snorted the question in humor as she pulled the nearest chair and leaned into it. "Has to be over a decade."
The older man slowly nodded, lips pursed tightly before he inhaled, "He was angry IRA. Completely spun out and raging when he first got here. Always looking for fights. We've never really been drinking buddies, Ally."
"Things change, huh?" she let off a breathy laugh.
"Not really." There was a sudden sobering to his face. "He still looks for fights."
She cautioned a glance over him, opening her mouth to ask but stalled into the way he just lifted a hand and shook it off. Ally breathed in slowly, watching him wince a slight aching pain into the way he shifted sidelong into the chair, tugging a folded piece of paper from his pocket and landing it onto the table. He stared at it despondently a moment before cocking his head back up at her, eyes suddenly very focused and clear in comparison to a few moments before.
"I apologize for the crack about you becoming Gemma." He admitted softly.
"Accepted." She murmured, glance still focused on the paper. "What is that?"
"Despite the fact that I haven't changed my mind, I may have agreed to help… alleviate the stress of this particular situation." He slid the paper in her direction, fingers rising off it before he sank his shoulders back into a lounging position.
"Passing love notes in class?" she cocked smugly at him before taking the paper into her fingers, opening it slowly to just find the scrawl of Telford's signature on an otherwise pristinely clean space. "This tells me nothing."
"Liar." He smiled indulgently. "Tells you everything. He's setting up a safety net. He's giving you an exit strategy so that any given time, should he have to, he can get you out. And that paper is his way of telling you that I'm being perfectly serious. This is legitimate."
"And you're just suddenly okay with this?" she shook her head in a way that said she obviously didn't believe in an inch of his genial manner.
"Getting you out rather than getting you dead?" the sudden pale of his face made his sincerity obvious. "Yeah, I'm pretty good with it, Jarry. I'm copacetic."
She hadn't really fully appreciated the weight of guilt he was probably still shouldering after Knowles' death until that moment. Hadn't really lingered a thought over the time this man had spent with these unstable people, in these rampantly and ridiculously insane surroundings. Years… he'd watched it go by for years. Decades. And reality said that she very well should have listened to him the very first time he'd warned her away from the situation. Regardless of whether she'd already been damn emotionally invested. His sincerity, and the very fact that he was twisting this offer before her, it laid out how serious he was about he entire situation, clearly crystalline between them.
"You realize how ridiculous this sounds?" her fingers pressed the folds a little flatter, the sound hashing after her words. "I'm not helpless and this is not Dodge City. I want an exit strategy? I call Patterson. Take my punishment but still get out of Charming."
"Could you?" Unser asked quietly, his watery eyes following the tightened up pulling on her shoulders. "Tell Patterson everything and just walk away? Because he can't."
She winced a shaded look at him, voice grazing quiet, "Don't fuck with my head, Wayne."
"I'm bein' perfectly serious, Ally." He nodded.
She let her lungs collapse as she exhaled slowly, dragging the pen from the paperwork she'd left dumped forgotten to the side. She pulled the paper slowly closer and signed off on it with a quick hand, catching the way Unser was smirking over her in shaded humor as he let his jaw ride against a closed fist. He was elbowing the table as he watched her interestedly, eyes riding the way she slid the paper back.
Her hand loosed the pen onto it tiredly, "You tell him that signature is null and void if I don't physically speak to him in the next twenty four hours. Understood?"
"Understood."
"This is getting ridiculous." She murmured slowly as she slacked back in the chair.
Wayne just gave her a shied glance, "Nothing in this town is black and white, Lieutenant. It's a whole lotta gray matter. Get my meaning?"
"And how do either of us know you're not going to screw us if it ever comes down to the point where we need you, Wayne?"
He cocked her a look of surety, "You don't. But it's me or nothin'."
"That's terrifying."
He perked a surprised glance into the way a cup of coffee settled gently to the table at the corner of one of the books he was leaned over, the hand that had left it gentling on his shoulder as Lyla's familiar perfume crowned over him. She brushed her hand off him before tugging at the chair to his side, angling into it with tightly tucked shoulders, arms wrapping her body.
"Thanks." he nodded as he lifted the cup, sipping on it as he perked a glance over his glasses. "You all right, darlin'?"
"You know I'm not stupid, right?" she tipped her head to the side, the fair blonde and light of her a contrast to the shaded darkness that was layering the room. The light fading from the windows and causing him to squint in a way he hadn't noticed until she'd interrupted him.
"In regards to what?" he shied back from the accounting, head angling as he kept the cup tucked up near his chest.
"I hear things. I see things. I don't comment." She shrugged it off as her hand stretched toward the book he'd been pouring over, her head angling as she studied it. "Not my place."
"You - "
"Doesn't mean I'm naïve." The blonde told him softly before reaching for the pen that had been settled to the table, crossing out some of the numbers that had been etched into the margins, "You need the account statements to reconcile this, ya know?"
"If I knew where they were, I wouldn't still be sittin' here." Chibs snorted off a shrug as he glared over his glasses at the book, taking another swallow of strong coffee.
"No," she gave him a sideways smile that wended sad, "you'd be having dinner with a woman who obviously cares about you despite everything else."
"It's not like you and Ope, darlin'." He hushed over the way she was pulling the rest of the paperwork closer, drawing it away from him so that she could scrutinize it. "It's - "
"It's a biker and a porn star. A biker and a doctor." She murmured as she blindly reached for the coffee she'd given him, tucking the chair closer to the table as she sipped at it and continued reading over the numbers, "A biker and a tranny. A biker and a cop. We make shit work, Chibs. Families do."
"Sweetheart - "
"I can get the statements. I have the account numbers." She nodded as she flipped a couple pages, glancing briefly sideways at him. "How about you get some dinner?"
"What about the kids?" he asked quietly, bending leniency into the possibility, a folded piece of paper burning heat in his pocket. "Y'can't sit here all night."
"I'll take it home. Jax is fine with me working on Red Woody's stuff at the house. I doubt he'd have an issue." She shrugged off. "He's at home anyhow. Wanted to spend time with the boys."
Chibs stretched from the chair slowly, both his hands bracing onto her thin shoulders as he bent a kiss to the top of her head, "I'm sorry I couldn't keep him here for you."
"Had to happen." Her voice was a faded whisper over the coffee cup. "We don't get guarantees, right?"
"No, we don't." he squeezed against her shoulders.
She nodded as she leaned forward from his touch, shrugging off the sympathy as she braced against the table and over the book, "So stop being so damn stubborn and go have dinner with a beautiful woman, Chibs. Christ. You're allowed to be happy sometimes."
He smiled into the shunting quality of her voice, "Yes ma'am."