Story 2 of Lou and the guys! I am so excited to get this out because getting my ideas down on 'paper' I don't know makes me feel accomplished. Enjoy!

Six weeks and this will all be over, six weeks and I will finally be free from worry from that man that are my parents. She was up and puttering about the station, knowing that she wouldn't be able to sleep for the rest of the night. Her anxiety was at an all-time high and it didn't help that she could have sworn today that the same Cadillac was following the squad on their runs. Roy tried reassuring her that the car and color were popular, so she was probably seeing different ones and her anxiety was attributing it to being the same one. "Hey." She felt a hand on her shoulder scaring her she jump and went to take off running only to have a wiry arm wrap around her middle and pull her in close. She began to struggle and fight. She felt a sharp pain in her elbow when she drew it back as hard as she could, making connection with something of the entity who had her. "Lou, it's me!" She was about to scream her head off to get her boys to rescue her when she realized who it was.

"Dammit, Gage!" She huffed out, "Give a girl a warning, won't you?" She was trembling literally with fear as he dropped her in pain. "I've been kinda jumpy though, haven't I?"

"Yeah." He massaged his shoulder and then she saw him tentatively touch a spot just above his eyebrow. "Hell of an elbow you throw." She saw him draw back blood and internally cursed before concerned flared.

"Oh god, let me get Roy, we need to take you to Rampart and get you checked out." She made to walk to the dorm just to have him reach out and grab her again.

"Lou, it's ok just a small cut, it's almost stopped bleeding." He saw the uncertainty in her face as she chewed on her lip. "I know what you're worried about, but I didn't have a house fall on me this time. Now worries for swelling this time."

"But once injured, the brain is prone to reinjury." He sighed knowing she was right but also knowing he had taken harder knocks since he had been caught in the building collapse that injured half of A-Shift and almost cost their captain his life.

"Hey, trust me, I'm ok." She continued to eyeball him, "Fine, let's compromise, you clean it up and I'll stay up with you so that I would be under the care of a medical professional." She practically ran to the squad and opened the compartments grabbing the kit she needed and followed him into the kitchen where he flipped on the light. She forced him to sit as she worked on him gently dabbing at the slowly oozing cut. "So, you couldn't sleep either?"

"No, been up since midnight." She continued her dabbing and applied a small amount of antibiotic ointment. "Almost good as new." She whipped out the pen light and to his dismay she began to check his neuro status. "Pupils look good, now squeeze my fingers." He complied, "wiggle those feet." He huffed like a child as he followed her commands. "Those are baseline for you. I'll check again in about fifteen. So why can't you sleep Johnny?" She asked as she cleaned up and closed up the bandage kit.

"Honestly, I wish I knew." He lied, he was thinking about today and how jumpy she had been, constantly looking over her shoulder. Once she mentioned the Cadillac and her suspicions he began his own BOLO and he could have sworn he saw it too. "What about you?" The look she gave him told him that she did not believe him but she decided to appease his question.

"My birthday is coming up, you know?" He nodded, "And it's making me crazy. I keep seeing things that aren't there and expecting him to jump out from behind things." She sighed, "Maybe I should just take the next six weeks off and hide."

He did not like that idea, not one bit at all, if she hid then there was no way for them to protect her. They would never tell her but the men of A-Shift plus several others of the department have been taking shifts staying outside the home of Hank and Emily to make sure they were the only one's spying on her. She knew that her father had found out she worked for the department, but he had yet to figure out the station and LA county was huge. Chief McConnike had called an emergency meeting of A-Shift's men and told them about the multiple false complaints they had received regarding Lou, it came from the cities surrounding Carson, so he knew they were fake, but he was worried they would close in. They considered and threw out multiple ideas which included having her run and hide.

"If you hide there is no way we would know if you're safe and that is just a no go." She smiled at the protective brother tone. "Here we know you're safe and we got your six."

"I know but it's just not right, the longer I stay put the more likely he is to zero in and find me and, Christ Johnny, it's bad. He could literally beat me to a pulp, in front of a cop, and convince the cop it was self-defense!" She sighed, "Have I ever told you guys what he looks like?" He shook his head. "I wish I had stolen a picture or two of him when I left but I didn't want any memories of that place to carry 'round except in my head." He nodded. "Back to my father, he's huge like six foot five and muscle upon muscle. He started weightlifting before it was popular, and he is not afraid to use his size to intimidate and hurt people. He has a permanent scowl to his face and his nose is crooked where it was broken as a kid, I have his eyes." That last feature she admitted that they shared almost seemed to cause the paramedic physical pain. "I hate that I have his eyes so much." She swallowed down the tears, he stood and gave her a hug.

"Hey, no, they are your eyes, they just have his color." He took the box that had their small bandages and walked toward the bay to return it. "Your eyes are, no doubt, much prettier and infinitely warmer." She blushed at the compliment as he left to put up the package. Walking back to the common room he was greeted with two sandwiches and some cups of iced tea.

"If we're gonna be doing neuro checks, might as well be fueled for it." He grinned as they walked over to the television set with their snacks and flipped through the channels, finally landing on an incredibly cheesy late-night movie.

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Engineer Mike Stoker and Captain Hank Stanley had woken before the wake-up tones, both puttered about making coffee and snatching up any paperwork that would need to be finished before they could relinquish over care of the station and engine to the next shift. The older man was musing on how great of a captain his engineer was going to be when he was stopped short by said man who practically ran into him. "Mike, what the hell!"

"Johnny and Lou." He pointed with his thumb behind him. He spun on his heel and practically ran back into the common room with his boss hot on his trail.

In the common room they found the two paramedics in front of the TV. Gage lay on the couch with a cut on his forehead and horrid looking black eye and Lou looked laid out on the floor, from his vantage he didn't know if she was unconscious or not. "Lou!" The female paramedic woke abruptly and sat up in a panic scooting along the floor backward as being chased by an unseen entity.

Mike kneeled and grabbed at her flailing arms and pulled her close, "Hey it's us, what happened?!"

"Huh?" Her face reflected fear, confusion, and then realization as she looked around, "Oh!" She pulled her arms free, stood, and walked over to her dozing partner. "Johnny! Wake up."

"mmmmmmmph...God, Josephine, it's Friday, July twenty second. I'm Johnny Gage, we're at the station and you elbowed me in the face is how I got hurt.

"And I'll do it again if you call me by my first name again, Rodrick." He woke fully and saw two more people than he expected. "Cap! Mike!" He gave an embarrassed chuckle as he sat up.

"Gage, it looks like a boxer clocked you one." Lou snorted out a laugh.

"No just a bony elbow of jumpy female paramedic. I am telling you cap don't catch her by surprise from behind she will knock the hell outta you." He stood and picked up the plates and empty glasses. "We're fine it was all a misunderstanding and she took care of me."

"Fell asleep before the last neuro check," she mumbled. She took the dishes from him, placed them in the sink and turned back around, pen light at the ready. She gave his eyes a look at, "Any tingling, numbness, weakness anywhere? How's your vision? Say the following phrases; tip-top, fifty-fifty and we heard him on the radio last night." He answered in the negative about the serious symptoms and said the phrases.

"Happy?"

"Very."

"Ok, now, what the hell happened." The superior held a tone that said his patience was not just worn thin but gone.

"I couldn't sleep and was just doing a visual inspection of squad when Johnny, here, snuck up behind me, scared me and then he held on so I couldn't run away. I used the tools Emily, Becca, and JoAnne taught me to defend myself and well you see the results." The woman explained as an answer.

"What about," Hank pointed at his own head, "The, you know?"

"Cerebral swelling? It would take a heck of harder hit to cause that, although I did almost drop her." He smiled, "I'm fine trust me I bet it looks a lot worse than it feels." Hank was nodding his acceptance to the answer when the wake tones went off and the rest of the crew began to stumble into room led by the smell of coffee.

Marco, Roy, and Chet all stopped short at the black eye of their colleague. "Get in a fight with the monster in the closet, Gage?" The Irishman asked. Roy on the other hand was busy trying to examine him while his dark-haired counterpart slapped his hand away. Marco just side stepped everyone and grabbed a cup of coffee mumbling about it being 'too early.'

"No, I got in a fight with five-foot four paramedic and she won." He didn't have a smart quip back it was too early and his eye did hurt a bit.

"Why did Lou clock you?" Roy asked.

"I scared her at one AM, she took exception and used the self-defense your wives taught her." He looked accusingly at the three married men as he sat down and accepted the cup of coffee the Mexican firefighter gave him with a nod of thanks. "She did neuro checks the rest of the night and I think we fell asleep in the common room about five AM."

Chet grabbed the aspirin and handed to the grateful man and set out getting his cup of coffee. "So, you got beat up by a chick." The Irishman laughed.

"A jumpy chick who has a legit worry about her crazy family." Johnny retorted.

While he told the story no one saw the expression that had been adopted by the female paramedic. She was busy cooking a quick breakfast of eggs and oatmeal and abruptly slammed a pan down, causing everyone to jump. "I said I was sorry!" She sighed. "I need to leave, I'm putting you guys in danger from my crazy family. It's not fair. No one should have to live with that anxiety." She filled the serving bowls and plopped them on the table and made to leave only to be stopped short by their engineer as he grabbed her wrist and gave her a concerned look.

"Please sit." She did and he sighed, "Lou, we're the ones who should apologize. We shouldn't be talking about you and your situation like you're not here or have feelings about it." The other men look ashamed. "I can't begin to imagine what you're going through."

"Thank you, but I honestly have been playing with the idea of hiding for the next six weeks or resigning." The reaction at the table was instantaneous and unanimous but Hank voiced it.

"You will not!" She flinched at his shout, "That is what he wants and if you give in then he will find you and we don't want that, at all." She scoffed.

"So what, six weeks of looking around corners? Watching our backs at every run? Having firefighters watch the house each night?" Heads snapped up at that statement, "You think I didn't know about that? For twenty-three years I had a team of people dedicated to watching me, I know." She sighed again, "I can't have you guys do this anymore, it's not your job. The way Mike and Cap looked this morning it was something else, one was worried and the other looked like he was gonna murder whoever did this to Johnny."

"Well since it was you, I think they'll hold off." Marco joked now woken up by his coffee and functioning. "And we know it's not our job but we do it because we're family. If you haven't figured that out by now..."

"No, I've figured it, but I didn't really have a great example as what a family is till I was living at cap's." She shrugged her shoulders.

"Well you're stuck with us now, La familia es vida y no podemos vivir sin ti." Tears gathered in the female paramedic's eyes at what he said and her shoulders sagged the argument to leave, now gone.

"Ok, I give." She sighed, "What's six more weeks?"

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A black late model Chevy Caprice was parked across the street, the occupants chain smoking and drinking stale coffee. They had to change the make and model of the car when they noticed they had been made in the Cadillac. "Think that's her?" The passenger asked as he looked through his binoculars.

"Doesn't really look like her picture." The driver responded. The picture they had of their target was about a year and half old and while the woman they were looking at bore a resemblance she still looked different enough for them to question. This woman's skin was tan, her curves were filled out and her hair was shiny and bounced with soft curls. She got into a truck with a tall skinny man, laughing at something he had said. The passenger clicked away on the camera taking several shots of the woman and the station she had walked out of.

"Don't know, don't care if it looks like the picture. It's close enough, we'll just bring these to the boss and see what's what." He took some close ups of their target's face. "She has those eyes though, blue as ice." The driver grunted and once the truck pulled away so did they in the opposite direction. They didn't need to follow till there was confirmation of target and unwanted attention was something they couldn't afford if they were wrong.

La familia es vida y no podemos vivir sin ti.-Family is life and we cannot live without you