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Jules was used to the question – practically everyone she knew had asked her at one point or another. She just didn't expect to hear it from the guy waving a 9mm in the middle of a Wal-Mart parking lot, surrounded by her team, dozens of spectators, and what felt like half the metro police.
She was supposed to be providing support for the boss this call, flanking his left side while he tried to open negotiations, lining up the gunman in case he became erratic. But the gunman kept glancing at her, obviously finding her presence distracting.
“You're such a pretty young girl,” the gunman said finally, turning and staring directly at Jules. He wasn't even pretending to be paying attention to the boss now, or anyone else. Who had he even been waving the gun at ? Himself? Nobody seemed to know.
The report had come in for a disturbed individual who'd suddenly had a meltdown in the middle of loading shopping bags into the back of an old Subaru station wagon. The guy was late middle-aged, with grey-streaked hair floating around his head in agitated wisps. Putty tan windbreaker. He looked like any of a hundred harmless old guys shopping at Wal-Mart on a Saturday afternoon in early fall. What had made him snap?
“Don't you just want to...” The gunman broke off and gesticulated with the pistol, which Jules knew must be making Sam
very
tense from his perch on the Wal-Mart's roof, over the gunman's left shoulder. “Don't you want to settle down?”
Jules' heart was hammering in her chest. It was always weird when they got personal. The gunman's face looked distressed, but it was like he was distressed on
her
behalf. What he assumed she was giving up. He stared at Jules like he was pleading with her for answers.
“Take your time, Jules,” the boss said in a voice pitched low, for her ears only. She nodded just enough to let him knew she copied without acknowledging him verbally in case that annoyed the gunman. “You must remind him of someone. Our info on this guy is still sketchy, so maybe you can draw him out.”
#
Scott had managed to make it to their second date without asking. Compared to most of the guys Jules had been meeting lately, he was actually pretty good. But there was always an awkwardness there, like there was more he wanted to ask but he didn't want to push it. Like he didn't know what his role was supposed to be when they were together.
Like it was
supposed
to
be
anything. Couldn't they just be themselves?
Their first date, a movie, had been nice. They had similar tastes. But the second date, dinner, left more opportunity for “get to know you” type chitchat. Scott worked in marketing for some company that did something, in one of those glass towers downtown. He'd just gotten his own office after three years of having to share, and he seemed really proud of that.
Then the subject of Jules' job came up.
She'd liked Scott well enough, mostly. But she found it wasn't a hardship to beg off their third date to go to the diner with her team for breakfast, instead. And somehow, after that, the timing just never worked out.
#
“My name is Jules, and I'd like to talk with you,” Jules said to the gunman in the even, measured voice she'd practiced over and over. In front of the mirror, in training, for hours. Slower is better, the boss always said. Calm everybody down.
The boss waved Spike over to take her position so she could lower her weapon and step more easily into the negotiator role. “
Why don't you put the gun down, sir, and we'll find out what's going on.”
“What's going on,” the gunman said, sounding sad. He looked around then, as though he was just realizing that he was at Wal-Mart, surrounded by shoppers, and police – some of whom had automatic weapons trained on him. “I don't know.”
“Okay, that's okay. We're going to try to figure that out,” Jules said. “Can you tell me your name?”
The gun wavered. “Mark,” he said, almost sounding surprised. Then he shook his head at Jules, confused. “Why didn't she want a family?”
#
The guys got asked too. The SRU was a pretty unusual job – it wasn't like they never got questioned.
But they usually heard: The SRU, wow. What made you decide to do that?
Not: What made you decide to do that?
#
“Mark, can you tell me about her?” Jules asked, being extra careful with her pitch and cadence.
Trying to get a subject to open up was delicate. The slightest wrong thing could send them off in the other direction and escalate a crisis. But nobody had been able to identify their gunman yet. The metro police were mostly done clearing the spectators out of the parking lot and evacuating the Wal-Mart, but Mark still had the gun, and they didn't know his story.
“She thought she had time, and she didn't,” he said, looking at Jules with some anger. The gun was at waist level, in front of him. Not raised, but not really down, either. It twitched in his hands. “Now she's gone and we have nothing left."
“Your daughter?” Jules guessed, nodding sympathetically.
“She wanted to wait, and now we have nothing.”
#
She'd been a little worried about Sam when he first joined the team. From the very first time she met him and he'd made that “lady sniper” crack, she figured he was going to be one of
those
guys.
Then, god, that embarrassing incident after the drag-the-heaviest-guy drill when he'd freaking applauded her for just doing her job. Boy, would that have gotten old fast. She supposed the boss would have said something to Sam about it at some point if he didn't clue in, but probably not before Ed would have pulled him aside and told him to quit being an asshole.
Rescuing that poor girl Tasha from falling to her death at the mall had been Jules' first major save. Her first major solo negotiation. That the boss trusted her to handle it, to reach a kid in crisis... it made all the questions and all the assumptions and all the bullshit it had taken to make it to the SRU worthwhile.
That hanging from the side of a building by a lifeline with a scared teenager in her arms finally made Sam realize that Jules was right where she was supposed to be? That didn't really matter.
But it was nice.
#
“Can you set the gun down, Mark? I'd like to hear more about your daughter,” Jules said, taking a step toward him and raising a placating hand. “I'd like to hear all about her, but I need you to put the gun down and step away.”
“Good, Jules,” came the boss's voice quietly in her ear. “You're getting through to him.”
Mark's shoulders began to shake, and Jules could feel the tension heighten all around her. This was it, Mark's moment of truth. He was going to put the gun down, or turn it on himself – or turn it on Jules if he couldn't handle pulling the trigger.
“You can keep her memory alive, Mark, but you have to stay here to do that,” Jules said, trying to gently push him in the right direction. “Please put it down.”
His face crumpled and he began to sob audibly, letting the 9mm fall into the back of the open hatchback of the old Subaru, among the plastic shopping bags.
Jules released a deeply held breath as Ed and Lew moved in on Mark, clearing him away from the car and getting him secured. He was still sobbing.
“It's going to be all right, Mark,” Jules called to him. She felt the boss's hand come down on her shoulder reassuringly. “You're going to be all right.”
She felt for Mark. He looked so sad. But whatever had happened with his daughter – if it even had been his daughter he'd come unglued about – she'd been a person too. Her own person, not just his little girl. Maybe that was what Mark really had to come to grips with, as much as the fact that she was gone.
Maybe. But she wasn't going to assume.
#
“I don't know,” she'd taken to answering when the question invariably rolled around. As offhand as she could manage. Usually with a shrug. “My dad was a cop, and I grew up with four brothers. It's never seemed weird to me.”
Ed reminded Jules of Darryl. The way he would tease her, and check up on her, but always kept the others in line and made her feel like one of the group. In fact, Ed was so much like Darryl sometimes it was almost freaky.
Lew was more like Eric, the youngest in their family, too, and... Actually, now that she thought about it, all the guys on the team reminded her of one of her brothers.
Except for Sam.
“You don't really remind me of any of them,” she told him that night when they'd gone out for an after-shift beer.
“Good,” Sam said with a wide grin, setting his bottle down on the counter. “Because I sure don't feel like your brother.”
Jules rolled her eyes and gave his shoulder a slug. But she knew she was blushing.
#
What she never told them was that she just didn't know. She'd worked hard for her spot and she loved what she did. She had the cool pants to prove it.
She loved her handyman special of a house that she'd saved for and bought all on her own. Anybody who teased her for preparing a nest was likely to get hit with a wet paintbrush.
Maybe? Someday?
But right now, Jules loved to sand her drywall, and take her turn on the long-firing range, and keep the world safe so that others could eat pie.
Right now, Jules was exactly where she was supposed to be. No question about it.
-The End-