The fantastic thing about being an assistant detective in a team which frequently engaged in hot pursuit was that there was really no point in Cho and Ronnie going running all that often. The less-than-fantastic part was that, when they did go running, they found themselves running in the unforgiving Sacramento heat.
Cho jogged beside her, form and breath carefully controlled. He looked like a comical secret service agent, running in a black t-shirt, black track pants, shiny aviators, and a black ball cap.
Ronnie admired his composure. She ran better than he did, but she couldn't stand running in sunglasses.
They jogged in silence for forty minutes and then alternated sprinting and jogging for the last twenty minutes.
When they came to a stop at their cars, parked behind Reggie's Gym, Ronnie fell against her car, huffing for breath, struggling to get her shaking hand into her pocket for her keys.
Cho poured water from his bottle over his face. "You heard anymore from your mom?" He asked, wiping his neck and arms down with a towel. He'd managed to get into his car faster than she did. When she didn't answer immediately, he turned to look at her and found her digging through the front seat of her own car.
Before he could repeat himself, Cho's phone beeped.
Ronnie scrambled around her floorboard for her blender bottle, resisting the urge to fall like a corpse over her car seat and pass out right there.
"Hey," Cho approached close behind her to make sure she could hear him, leaning against her open door. "Lisbon called while we were out. We've got another case. It's over in Redwood. You good to go get changed and head over?"
A second later, Ronnie pulled her upper half out of her car and leaned against the opposite side of the door frame. The sun glinted down brightly, forcing her to squint up at Cho. "Yeah, sounds good. And to answer your earlier question: no. I haven't seen nor heard from her. I just feel bad for the beat cops Minelli has sitting outside my apartment." Ronnie tipped back some water, waiting for her pulse to stop pounding into her ears.
Cho watched her carefully, watched her eyes close. "You're pale." He found it concerning that she didn't flush red as she always did after a run. Instead, her face was whiter than it had ever been, even when she wasn't exercising. "You feeling okay?"
She shrugged and wiped her mouth. "Haven't really been able to sleep. I'm alright, though. Just a little tense." She tossed the bottle into her car, itching for a shower. "You ready to go?"
Cho stepped away from her car, adjusting his hat. "Yeah. Meet you at CBI in forty minutes."
THE MENTALIST
Ronnie waved to the uniformed officers parked across the street from her apartment. They nodded back and one of them reached for his walkie, likely reporting to the others that she'd returned. Ronnie jogged up the steps, unlocked her door slowly entering her apartment with a hand on her hip where her concealed pistol was. Eyes tracking every shadow, clearing every corner, she assured herself that her apartment was empty before dropping her gym bag on her arm chair and heading for the shower.
Not for the first time, Ronnie considered boarding up her windows. It would be pointless, however, because if Carla Masters couldn't simply get in through the door or window, she'd merely blow the whole building up.
She showered as quickly as she could, paranoia about being vulnerable in her bathtub niggling in her mind. Ronnie had three suction-cup cubbies stuck on her shower wall: one for her shampoo and conditioner, one for her skin cleaners, and one for her compact 1911.
After surviving the quick, pit stop in her own home, Ronnie met Cho at CBI and switched to one of the company cars, headed out to Redwood. Evidently, the county sheriff had requested the assistance of the CBI after two young women went missing, leaving their empty car in the woods. For all intents and purposes, it appeared as though it was a terrible abduction or something increasingly terrifying.
By the time Ronnie and Cho arrived on the scene, the local police were already there, taking pictures and setting up for forensics. Approaching, Ronnie could see that the object of investigation was a red convertible, top down, one door open, abandoned.
The two CBI agents flashed their badges at the nearest officer and then proceeded to stroll around the outskirts of the marked crime scene, canvassing a larger area.
"What do you think? Are they still alive?" Ronnie murmured, leaning down to examine some old footprints of the side of the road.
They were too old. She straightened again.
Cho shrugged. "Hard to say. He didn't leave the bodies anywhere visible so he could show off, so it's probably not a serial killer. Doesn't look like anything's been stolen, including the car itself, so it's likely we're dealing with a predator looking specifically for a couple of young women. And who's to say what he wants to do with them."
Behind them, the rest of the CBI team rolled up, Lisbon immediately going to speak with the sheriff.
Ronnie stared at the car, struggling to make the same sort of sense out of the situation that Cho did. "What if they made it look bad and ran away?"
Cho shrugged, glancing over to the team. "Could be. You never know how capable someone might be." A minute later, he returned his gaze to the road beneath them, silently following a tire trail.
Ronnie watched him from where she stood, trying to ignore the personnel bustling around her. When she glanced up from the dirt road, she noticed Lisbon waving her over. She turned to get Cho's attention, but he was already moving towards their boss.
"Hey," He greeted. "There's a different set of tire tracks here that pulled off the road. A truck or a big SUV, looks like." He showed Lisbon the tire trail while Ronnie peered into the car curiously.
"They're still fresh," She heard Lisbon say. "Must be from the trucker who called in the car. Make sure forensics gets a mold." The boss moved back towards the car, nodding to Ronnie in greeting.
"Yep," Cho responded dutifully, gesturing for Ronnie to follow him.
She side-stepped an officer and his sniffer dog, rolling up her sleeves as she rejoined Cho. "You thinking he was in a truck? Not, like, hiding out in the woods waiting to catch somebody?"
Cho waved down a CSI. "It makes sense. It's the woods, it's after midnight—it's just more comfortable to be in a vehicle." At that moment, the CSI reached them, and Cho directed him to the tire tracks.
When they returned to the car, Jane and Sheriff Nelson were speaking, wondering about the dog's behavior.
Ronnie glanced down at him. The hound was pleased with himself, giving small tugs towards the can as though he'd done his job. The way he gave no indication that he was looking for or tracking something struck Ronnie as insignificant. "He seems fairly certain that he's found them." She suggested.
Sheriff Nelson stared at her like she was stupid.
Jane shot her a little grin and pointed a rewarding finger at her. "Have you checked under the car?"
Nelson sputtered at him indignantly. "Under the car?"
Lisbon looked from Jane, to Ronnie, to the dog.
"Yeah," Jane pressed.
"Of course we looked under the car."
But when the sheriff glanced to one of his officers for confirmation, the guilty silence was deafening. "Oh, crap."
Cho uttered a heaving sigh as he and Ronnie instantly dropped into pushup position and peered under the car.
"One or two?" Jane wondered.
Ronnie found herself staring into the sightless, dead eyes of a bloody blonde woman. Her body had been shoved un-ceremonially beneath the low-riding convertible, and her limbs were all contorted and jammed between the car, her body, and the gravel road.
Ronnie shivered at the sight, jumping to her feet in a hurry. She slapped her palms off on her pants as the sheriff identified the woman as Kara Palmer. Her pulse raced under her skin at the sight. She couldn't help it; all she could see when she looked at that mangled body was her own face, dead, unseeing, peering out from whatever pit her mother threw her body into.
"So..." Jane smoothed down his lapel. "Where is Nicole Gilbert?"
THE MENTALIST
"Lunch?" Ronnie gestured to a diner about fifteen minutes down the road from the crime scene.
Cho wordlessly steered the car into the diner parking lot. Lost in thought, he hadn't seemed to be noticing her growling stomach which had been serenading them ever since Lisbon and Jane took off to join the search party for Nicole Gilbert. Cho had to be hungry, too. There was no way he could outdo her every day in the gym and occasionally on the track and not be half as starving as she was.
He pulled into a parking spot and took the keys out of the ignition. A second later, he got a book out of the center console and flipped it open, bending the cover back over the spine.
Ronnie inwardly crumbled. "Uh...Cho? This isn't a stakeout, this is lunch."
Her partner looked up, blinking in surprise. Just outside the window, his eyes found the brightly-flashing sign on the side of the diner advertising shakes and cheeseburgers. "Oh." He uttered. He put the book away and opened the door.
Ronnie clambered out after him, wondering at the preoccupied look on his face.
Cho held the door open for her, and was silent until they were seated at a booth and scanning laminated menus. "Why are you staring at me?" His eyes were on the lunch selection, never once glancing up to confirm that she was actually staring at him.
Ronnie had her finger on a listing for a bacon cheeseburger, eyes flashing up to him innocently. "Only because you look like a snack and I'm starving."
The innuendo hit her long after it was too late.
It did, however, finally prompt Cho to look away from the menu and stare at her like she'd cracked. He didn't even blink. The terse creases at the corners of his lips and the worried-looking furrow of his brow marked the arrival of his interrogation mode.
Initially determined to wait him out for as long as he decided to employ CBI tactics against her, Ronnie met his stare until she realized exactly how long they could keep that up. "What's got you so distracted? Something about the case?" When he held the stare a little longer, she actually fidgeted a little. Normally she wouldn't have, except that was the first time she'd accidentally made a suggestive joke concerning the two of them.
It hadn't been her smoothest moment.
But, finally, he dropped the Interview Stare and let his gaze fall back to the menu. "No. Thinking about your mom."
Taken aback, Ronnie gave a little double take. "Was that a 'your mom' joke?"
Strike two, Masters.
Cho flipped the menu over. "No." Apparently decided, he put the laminated sheet down and propped his elbows on the table, forearms laying over his menu. "You haven't heard anything since those pictures, right?"
Ronnie shook her head. "She's holding her silence for now. It's a thing she does to make her target paranoid and panicky, waiting around for the next strike."
The waiter came then, took their orders and left.
"And you're not worried about the next strike?" Cho questioned, weaving his fingers together.
The woman across from him shrugged, hoping he couldn't see the true fear below the surface. "I don't know, Cho. There's no way to prepare for this preemptively. I'll either be ready to handle her next strike or I won't. That's the reality of it."
He sighed and turned his head to stare out the window. "You know how dangerous she is, Masters. You shouldn't be so glib about this."
"I'm not glib," She returned lowly. "I just don't see what I can do about it."
"Yeah, that's what I'm trying to figure out."
THE MENTALIST
The CBI suburban stopped abruptly in front of an old truck parked in front of Sullivan's Tavern, where the two girls had last been seen. Cho and Ronnie jumped out of the suburban, approaching a disheveled, angry young man as he stepped away from his truck.
"Jason O'Toole?" Cho guessed, both CBI agents showing their badges.
Jason, the fiancé of Nicole Gilbert didn't seem to welcome the intrusion. "Get your truck outta my way," He snapped.
"Let's talk, O'Toole," Ronnie insisted, unappreciative of the way he was squaring his shoulders at Cho. "Let's go inside and talk about Nicole Gilbert."
The dirty, exhausted man scoffed. "I don't have time for this."
Despite his annoyance, O'Toole followed them into the tavern and sat at a booth with them. After some questioning, mostly on Cho's part, as Ronnie couldn't get through a sentence or two before resorting to insults, they learned that Jason had been searching the woods for his girlfriend all morning, that he had been too drunk to drive her home himself, and that he had a recording of last night's engagement party in his truck.
Ronnie and Cho took the information and the tape back to the sheriff station where the CBI team had set up camp. The others were still out conducting a search for Nicole, so Cho set the camera up to download the video. While the transfer took place, he leaned back in his chair and smoothed down his tie.
Beside him, Ronnie leaned down and tightened her boot laces. "You don't have to worry so much about Carla, you know." It was a lie, but it bothered her knowing that he was spending so much time puzzling through her problems.
"Why's that?" He asked, glancing over.
The expressionless look on his face was mirrored on her own as she straightened and shrugged. "There are four cops outside my apartment, I'm pretty sure my neighbor is a CBI agent, and Minelli's got every resource looking for her. We'll catch her before she can reach me." Ronnie didn't believe her own words, but she hoped that Cho did.
His eyes shifted down to his knees, nodding slowly. "Yeah."
She patted his chest reassuringly. "Let it go, Cho. Want some coffee?" She got to her feet, wincing at the muscle soreness in her legs.
Cho actually seemed to relax a little. He shook his head. "No, thanks."
Finding the breakroom wasn't too difficult, but subsequently finding the coffee and filters to make a new pot took a little more time. When she found the coffee, she stared down at the bag in disgust. Seattle's Best. The Redwood sheriff station was really making sacrifices .
As she was making the coffee, wishing she was at home with her French Press, someone entered the breakroom behind her.
"Ugh," A man's voice groaned. "That stuff blows."
Ronnie glanced over her shoulder, finding one of the rangers walking in with a coffee mug. He was cute, with curly sandy-brown hair and frameless glasses. He smiled sweetly at her and leaned against the countertop a non-threatening distance away from her.
"I'm Kyle," He introduced himself. "If you don't mind, I was just gonna wait here until the coffee's done."
A little flutter started in her chest at the sincere way his blue eyes were holding her gaze. She shrugged and said, "Ronnie. You look like you need it." He had a red tint to the whites of his eyes, and his broad shoulders were sinking lower and lower.
He gave a little raspy laugh. "Yeah, I've been up all morning out there with the search party for Nicole Gilbert." His eyes looked her up and down. "You're with the CBI team, right?"
At the mention of work, Ronnie kicked herself. She needed to be working to find a missing girl, not flirting over coffee with another on-duty officer.
"I am, yes. I'm working with my partner on it right now." She willed the coffee to brew faster.
Kyle smiled at her again. "Well, here's hoping you dig something up. The longer we go without any word, the more worried I get," He shook his head seriously, and grimaced. "Kara Palmer being killed doesn't bode well for Nicole Gilbert."
Ronnie paused. It wasn't flirting; they were talking about work. Where was the harm in discussing the case with a handsome colleague?