Where's the mutt?" Julia asked when Beth emerged alone from her room.
Kate didn't need to hear Beth's answer to know what it would be. She hadn't given in to the temptation last night to open the door to Beth's room a crack and confirm that both occupants were currently someplace much warmer than Chicago.
"He went home," Beth said as she padded on bare feet into the kitchen and pressed the button labeled espresso on Kate's coffee maker.
Julia stopped arranging the paraphernalia that passed for a tea service in Kate's kitchen and looked at the two sisters in turn. "When?"
The process of dumping used grounds into the waste tray completed and Beth picked up her small handleless cup before taking a sip. "Last night."
Kate was not talking as she continued to stare into her mug. She didn't know how to face her sister in the flesh with the memories from the night before already making parts of her throb. Julia did not fail to notice that detail and continued to look from the one twin to the other and back again.
"Something going on?" Beth asked the room in general finally.
"No," Kate replied quietly. "Tired. Didn't sleep well. How'd you sleep?" she asked Beth.
"Fine. Eventually."
Kate nodded her head as her prominently red face returned its attention to the dark liquid in her mug. "Good."
The silence continued for approximately ten seconds, during which Julia continued to scan the faces of her two friends, who seemed to be actively ignoring each other.
"I slept fine, in case anybody's interested," Julia said as the water for her tea began to boil.
"Nice ride," Trish said as she sat in the passenger seat of Kristen's 2021 Genesis G80, "very swish."
Laurel laughed out loud at Trish's attempt at a British accent. "Don't leave your day job. I'm supposed to get a GPS tracker installed after I drop you off."
"Isn't that a little beneath you?" Trish asked. She'd wondered why they had taken a detour into an underground garage and exchanged Laurel's SUV for an expensive sedan.
"It's my side job that's installing the tracker."
"Right. I forgot. Paragon Security. Still working gigs for them? Not on an assignment over the holidays?"
Laurel could not pass up the opportunity. "Just the one holiday."
"Oh, for fuck sake. Give it a rest."
"Can dish it out, but can't take it, huh?"
Trish's only response was to smile, and shake her head.
Owing to the flight that Trish had picked when she changed her departure from O'Hare, it was still early morning, and the Saturday traffic was very light. The two women had made a brief stop at Kristen Wolf's condo, exchanging Laurel's SUV for the State Attorney's sedan. They were still on South Paulina Street, approaching Old Route 66 when a white cargo van drove past them only to change lanes and slow down right in front of them, which allowed Laurel to give her frustration free reign.
"Entire fucking road full of nobody and this asshole has to be right in front of me. Dickhead."
It was only a few seconds later when an SUV moved up behind them that Laurel understood what was happening.
"Trouble," she said calmly as she applied the brake to avoid rear ending the slowing vehicle in front of them. She glanced again in her rear view mirror that was now completely filled with the dark tinted window of the vehicle behind them. Trish used the side view mirror rather than turning around to inspect the trailing car.
"Not carjackers," Trish said as she looked at the leading vehicle that had finally come to rest, trapping Laurel and Trish between two immovable objects, "their rides are too nice. Wonder what they want."
The side door of the van slid open and two large men stepped out.
"I think we are about to find out."
"You've got the thing at 10, you can't schlep all the way to the Gold Coast and back just so I can pick up my car," Barbara said as they approached Meg's 2018 Kia Optima. Meg's reply was to simply press the button on her key fob to unlock the doors and smile at the tall woman who had slept like a log once sleep finally came. Barbara's hair was still slightly damp from the shower as she began to open the passenger door, her back and shoulder muscles warm and relaxed courtesy of Meg's massage as the warm water ran down both their bodies.
"If you keep it up you'll spoil my finely crafted plan to spend as much time with you as possible," Meg said as she stepped into the road at the driver's door. She had just opened the door when the sound of screeching tires and an accelerating engine from behind her got her attention. She turned around to see a late model sedan careening towards her. It took her mind only a fraction of a second to realize that she had her back to the open door that was preventing her from retreating.
fuck me, she thought calmly just as two strong arms grabbed the left side collar of her coat and pulled her down, into, and then through the drivers door frame, her feet just clearing the plane of the opening before the door disappeared in a maelstrom of sound, protesting metal, and shattering glass.
At some point her brain had decided that it needed a short break, because the next thing Detective Meg Chander was aware of was the pain in her back due to the armrest she was laying across. Her eyes finally focused on the beautiful face hovering just above her, the mop of auburn hair hanging down almost to Meg's forehead. Meg's mind had still not completely recovered, which she demonstrated when she attempted to speak to the woman looking down at her.
"Hey, baby, why you gotta be so rough?"
At least that was what she thought she said. Her ears were still ringing and it took a moment before she could put a sound to Barbara's moving lips.
"I said, are you alright?" Barbara asked, had probably been asking for the last few seconds.
"I don't know," Meg answered truthfully. "Did someone just try to run me over?"
Barbara nodded her head, her silent yes looking a bit odd when viewed upside down.
"Well then since I'm still alive and kicking, I'd say I'm alright."
"Motherfucker tried to kill you!" Barbara said, not still believing it.
"This armrest is going to kill me," Meg said as she began to sit up. Her attempt, with Barbara's assistance, ended with her ass on the passenger seat and her feet on the driver's side, her gaze directed out the ruined door frame. She straightened her back and looked out the front windshield to see the remains of the door where it lay in the street about one hundred feet away. The sound of approaching sirens alerted both women that someone must have witnessed the event and called it in.
"You were right," Meg said as she sagged backwards into Barbara's arms, "we should have stayed in bed."
"Who are you again?" Jessica asked the voice on the phone. She had abandoned her never answer a call from a blocked number rule, thinking that it might be Kyle calling, or his head of clandestine operations, whose real name Jess still didn't know. But it was a woman's voice that answered Jessica's curt salutation what? and the first words out of that unfamiliar mouth stopped Jess's finger just before it ended the call.
"Beth said I should call you, that you needed help locating a car, and that it might be really important to locate it quickly. Does any of that sound familiar?"
Jessica never trusted things that sounded too good to be true, and this certainly fit the bill. The look on Misty's face was not quite as skeptical as she shrugged her shoulders with a sort of it can't hurt to hear her out tilt of her head.
"How do you know Beth?"
"I don't, not really. We met once. We have a mutual friend. Beth and I, that is."
"And Beth asked you to help us find a missing car? She tell you why?"
"Beth asked our mutual friend for help. Well, technically speaking, she didn't ask, he offered. He said he knew someone who could help, someone who could cover a large area in a short time, and she agreed that he could ask me. He called me and relayed the request, and gave me your number. He didn't go into details, except that a lot of people's lives might be in danger. If that's true, and if I can help, then I want to."
She wasn't lying, not technically. It was true that he hadn't gone into detail, but he hadn't needed to. She had been at home in San Diego when the explosion occurred. She had been kept just as much in the dark as everyone else about the cause of the explosion, and when people started to get sick she, like the rest of the residents of Southern California, had been fed the same bullshit story about asbestos and PCB exposure. She had been at work when she'd gotten the call from Aric.
"I'm in the neighborhood. Got time to talk?" he had asked nonchalantly.
"What brings you to our sunny neck of the woods?" she had asked innocently even as her heart rate began to quicken at the thought of seeing him again.
"Something that I can't talk about on the phone."
At her insistence he had stayed at her place during the rare stretches of time when he was not crisscrossing California searching for, and then healing, anyone who was even suspected of coming into contact with whatever the fuck was in those canisters when the massive explosion scattered their contents far and wide. She was embarrassed to think about how much time she had stood silently and watched him sleep.
"He looks terrible," Her sister had said the first time she saw him dead to the world on her couch about a week after his arrival.
"He barely sleeps," she had replied, as close to tears as she had been in quite some time. "I can't remember him eating anything since he's been here. He'll kill himself at this rate. But he won't stop."
His recent request had been short on words, but long on implications.
"Something's come up," he had said to begin the conversation that ended just before her call to Jessica Jones began.
Jessica and Misty had been dreading another day of exhausting work that yielded nothing, and if this mysterious woman had resources to share, Jess was all for saying yes. Misty's nodding head seemed to agree.
"Fine. Welcome to the circus. How many bodies can you give us?"
"Just me. One body."
you're shitting me, right? Jessica thought before speaking. It was at that point that she realized that she didn't even know the woman's name.
"Who are you again?" Jessica asked.
"My name is Kara."
John Dorazio, if he had been anyone else, would have taken a fair amount of shit from his coworkers when they learned that his favorite morning coffee stop was next door to a pot dispensary, and across the street from a shop that had a mannequin wearing a bright green banana thong prominently displayed in the window that had the words Enhance the Romance painted in large script. John would have cheerfully told anyone brave, or stupid, enough to give him grief to go fuck themselves. Happily, John was large enough, and senior enough, that the topic was never mentioned; not to John's face and not behind his back either.
Belmont Avenue was quieter than it would have been on a weekday; quieter, but not quiet. The establishment that advertised that you could find all the caloric fuel you need to get you through the week in their store already had two people at the counter waiting to pay for their morning sustenance when John arrived, and Tâm and Thị Nghiêm were already hard at work.
"Morning, Captain!" Tâm said as he looked at them man who was literally twice his size.
"Morning, Tâm," John replied, "you doing alright?"
" 'nother day in paradise!"
Thị noted John's attire, and asked the same question her husband was thinking. "You work today, John?"
"Yup. No rest for the wicked."
"You not wicked, big guy. We know wicked, see it long time. That not you. Coffee and bagel?"
"You know me."
"Coming right up!"
They had certainly seen wickedness. Most of it in the land of their birth, but some of it after they had emigrated to the States, finally coming permanently to rest in The Windy City. John made a point to check on them, as well as other families like theirs, regularly; and word had gotten around, even to Carmine Falcone's various organizations, that anyone who messed with any of those families would answer to John, and that in those cases John wouldn't give a shit what the law said about due process. Every year or so somebody would fail to get the message and John would have to make a very messy example of them. He thought back to the last time he'd paid someone an unofficial visit while he waited to pay for his food.
Two years, almost, he realized as he handed Tâm a twenty and accepted his change.
His mind had already shifted to the meeting that was a couple hours in his future, and how they were going to expand their investigation to compensate for everything they learned the night before. He was violating one of the cardinal rules of all cops as he gripped his bagel in his right hand and his coffee in his left as he walked down Belmont, his back turned towards Din Foods while his face was pointed towards his truck that was parked a block away. The sound of a speeding vehicle caught his attention as it approached him from behind and he had just begun to turn his head to his left to yell at the asshole behind the wheel to slow the fuck down when he saw the gun sticking out of the passenger window.
John Dorazio had less than a second to make a choice: dive forwards, or fall backwards. He knew in that instance that his life might depend on what he chose.
"So, you want to talk about whatever it is we're not talking about?" Beth asked as they navigated the exit off of 94 and onto Willow Road. They had barely spoken a word on the drive to their father's house, and Beth didn't need Aric's gift to know that Kate had something on her mind.
Kate was not sure how, or where, to begin.
when in doubt, begin at the beginning.
"When you were gone...when we all thought you were...when they had you...did you think about us? Did you think about me?"
Beth had never been hit in the head by a fastball, but she guessed that it probably felt something like she was feeling now, as her sister's question struck her from a completely unexpected direction. It was now Beth's turn to not know how to proceed.
"Of course I did. All the time. All day, every day in the early days. But as time went by..."
Beth's throat began to close up as her emotions began to overwhelm her. She closed her mouth only because if she opened it again in that moment it would be a sob, followed by a wail of grief that came out as her mind went back to those days, that period of time when she wondered if anyone was looking for her, the days before she gave up hope, and then gave up herself, to Alice.
"Did you dream of me?" Kate asked finally in a voice that was not entirely steady. "Did you dream of us?"
Beth used her hands to wipe both her eyes before taking a deep breath.
Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha, she recited mentally until some semblance of calm returned. {Oh awakening that has gone, gone, gone to the further shore, gone completely to the further shore.}
Beth waited until she was sure she could answer, but she kept her reply short. "Yes. For a while."
Kate's voice when she continued was also stronger. "Then they stopped?"
"Not entirely. But they were different after that."
Kate took a moment before continuing. "Different how?"
Beth also need a moment to consider the question, and the answer. "Less clear. More...I don't know how to describe it."
Neither do I, Kate thought. She felt that she was picking her way through a minefield, and that she needed to tread carefully.
"And since then? Still less clear?"
Beth had assumed that the topic of their conversation would also become clear, but that still hadn't happened.
"Since then?" Beth asked.
"The last few months," Kate said as she kept her eyes fixed on the road ahead of them.
"The last few months..." Beth began before stopping. She was finally starting to get it.
The last few months. Since I met Aric. Since he...since we...since I learned to hear him.
"Are you asking me what I think you're asking me?"
Kate was seventy five percent of the way there, but that still wasn't close enough for her to come right out and say it. "I'm asking if you've dreamed of me the last few months."
Beth would have been pacing back and forth like a cornered animal at this point if there had been any room at all to move. "For Christ sake, just say whatever it is that you want to say, but can't bring yourself to say straight out."
It was like a damn breaking inside Kate. "I think when I'm asleep and you and Aric are having sex I'm dreaming about it."
Beth's head felt like it was going to explode with all the extra blood that was rushing to her face. She was stunned into silence for long enough that Kate turned to look at her.
"You think Aric..." Beth began before she was interrupted by her sister.
"No. It's not his perspective I'm dreaming of. I don't think I'm him in the dream. I think..."
Kate's silence gave Beth the time she needed to reach their shared conclusion. "You think you're me in the dream. You think I'm doing it, that it's not just a dream."
"I don't know what I think," Kate said just as the infotainment system in her SUV began to ring.
Babs
"Shit." Kate said before answering the call.
"Where are you? We have a situation," Barbara Gordon said just as Beth's phone vibrated in her pocket.
Trish Walker
"Trish?" Beth asked of the woman who should have been on an airplane by now. The words she heard from her phone gave her a feeling of deja vu.
"Where are you? We have a situation."