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He wished he had one of his textbooks or a newspaper or anything really, the wait was driving him crazy.
Jared could see the golden orange leaves rattling on the branches of an oak tree outside the tall windows of the holding room where he was waiting. Beyond the oak, he could make out the brilliant yellow needles of the western larch. Checking his watch for what seemed like the hundredth time since JD and Tim brought him to the room, Jared sighed. He was just so over this entire experience. He didn’t want to be stuck in this room with the recycled air and floor to ceiling dark stained wood paneling anymore, but he didn’t have a choice.
He started to recite all the facts that he could remember about the larch in his mind.
It was a conifer yet deciduous,
inch-long needles,
soft, never spiny,
small, woody cones,
mainly grows in . . .. the larch grows in –
Dammit!
Jared’s forehead hit his crossed arms on the table with a thump. This was ridiculous. He had been in the room for over an hour already. He just wanted out. Out in fresh air dampened with the scent of impending snow. Out where he and Sadie could traipse over rocks and chilly streams, the colors of autumn swirling around them like they never could back in Texas.
Sighing, Jared lifted his head and ran a hand through his carefully combed back hair.
It was really was ridiculous. If someone had asked him a year ago what he thought he would be doing in a years’ time, he would have laughed and replied, ‘the same thing as yesterday.”
Glancing out the window again, Jared let his mind wander back to that night last November when his world changed for the first time.
It was a funny thing, being the middle child of an extremely outgoing and active family, well, make that the gay middle child of an extremely outgoing and active Texan family. The way that Jared could see it back then, was that he could have either acted out and made a spectacle of himself by becoming a bit of an attention whore or he could have hoped to fade into the background, drawing as little attention as possible to himself.
He attempted the first for a short while when he was fourteen, before he told his parents that he thought he was gay, but in the end after he confessed to what he suspected about himself, he opted for the latter, which, of course, led him in a completely different direction. His parents and siblings supported him, in their own pushy, yet well-meaning way, but they, with their live-life-to-the-fullest attitudes didn’t quite understand why Jared didn’t jump at the chance to spread the belief of tolerance and gay rights as zealously as they had done. It hadn’t been a conscious decision at first, he just realized that how he lived his life was nobody’s business other than his own.
It wasn’t that he was scared of the outside world, not really scared at all, but rather he chose to not actively participate in it. That is until that blustery pre-winter day a few short months after his twenty-second birthday.
It was after a rather depressing day of shelving the books that were being largely unread by the general population at the library. A quiet guy needed a quiet job. The only difference in the past six years was the number of hours a week he put in doing the same terribly mundane tasks. He had arrived home to find his parents seated silently, expectantly side by side on the sofa.
Oh, hell.
The ultimatum had been thrown out then and there and he had blindly, stupidly accepted.
He was to move out and become a man or at least attempt to actively participate in his own life, was how his momma had put it. Jared needed to find a college as well and a course of study. That was his dad’s provision to the ultimatum. He didn’t care what Jared studied, just that he made an effort to use his brain.
To reiterate – Oh, hell.
Rent would be paid as well as insurance on his truck, his dad assured him, but Jared needed to find his feet and embrace his life. So that’s how Jared found himself in his dad’s den at half past two in the morning a couple of nights before Thanksgiving with the big red atlas spread open to the map of America on the desk in front of him.
Where was he supposed to go?
Jared was pretty sure that his folks meant that he should just move out of the house and get an apartment across town. But he reasoned with himself, if he was going to do this, the embracing life thing, well, he was going to go far enough away that he could actually live and maybe not be able to hide behind his family anymore. It was a damned if he did or damned if he didn’t feeling. He supposed that it was time to try the did half of that equation. If he did go out there, he probably should make it a little harder to run for the safety of the family home the minute that life got too, well, busy.
He spun the big book in front of him and with one hand over his eyes, the other stabbed out to find his new home.
Dallas.
Texas.
Jared laughed nervously to himself and thought, nope, not far enough.
Giving the book a mighty spin, he watched the colored states whirl by, blurring in to each other so that lines were gone and new hues were formed. It was an interesting sight, so much so that he forgot to stop the book. The atlas spun towards the edge of his dad’s highly polished cedar wood desk. It had already started to tumble off the side, when Jared simply squeezed his eyes shut tight and shot out a hand to keep the book from reeling off the desk.
He sat there a few seconds, his fingers pulling at the dry paper below as the book hung mostly perpendicular to the floor. He couldn’t tell what side of the country his hand had landed on, but since the corner of the book was digging into his palm, he knew for a fact that it wasn’t Texas. He gave a wry smile to the thought and ever so slowly drew the book back up over the edge, its spine snagging along the way. Fingertips white against the page, Jared looked down and saw his future.
He blinked a few times at the name; mouthing it into the stillness of the room.
Thanks to his family’s crazy ass genetics that had bestowed upon him the longest fingers known to man, Jared was going to find the closest college to Manson, Washington. “Great . . .Manson,” he muttered to the empty room. “An insane name for an insane plan.”
Shutting the atlas, he returned it to its spot on the shelf next to the dictionary and the family medical emergency book. Turning, Jared snagged a blue post-it note from the dispenser on the desk and scribbled Manson, WA on it before hitting the light switch and heading to his room. He would research it tomorrow at work, he thought as he climbed the stairs.
*****
“I . . . what kind of muffin?”
“Mixed Berry, I think. The Danish is cheese and strawberry.” He set the large paper coffee cup down, a few sugar packets slid to the tabletop from their precarious balance on the lid. Jared watched him unfold the top of the plain paper bag and pull out the muffin first. “You can have both if you’d like.”
“The muffin’s fine.” Jared replied tersely and the agent nodded, placing the enormous treat down next to the coffee. His hand dove into the pocket of his suit coat and he produced a couple of imitation creamer cups that he dropped to the table. They rolled a bit before coming to a rest next to the coffee. “Is it – how much longer do you think?” Jared asked.
“Not much longer, I think. Lieutenant Morgan and Sheppard just finished their sweep, so we should be coming for you soon. The DA wants us to bring you in first, before they let in everyone else.”
Jared refrained from answering. He was contemplating the muffin as if it was poisoned when Tim placed what was probably meant as a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
“I know this has been a rough couple of days, hell, months for you, but we’re nearing the end, okay?” Out of the four men assigned to protect him, Tim was the one that seemed to be most grounded in reality. Oh, all of them were realistic in the stats and probabilities of their assignment, but it was Tim that Jared felt, understood him the best.
It had been a night early on in his seclusion, over a game of chess that Tim had told Jared about seeing his cousin beaten nearly to death by a gang initiate on a hot summer night in Los Angeles. It had been that first eye opening experience to an act so heinous that it had taken a once nervous teen and set him on a course to enter eventually into the FBI training program.
“Yeah.” Jared said, finally reaching for the muffin. “I just want it over, you know. I want my life back. I want my dog back.”
He knew he sounded like a petulant child, but he had reached the point of not caring some time ago.
“I know and you will, very soon. I talked to Lindberg. He said that Sadie is doing okay. She obviously misses you, but that she wasn’t injured though she’s moping and whining a bit. He said he even got her to fetch a ball a few times yesterday.”
It was supposed to make him feel better, Jared knew that, but hearing about his dog playing with another human, still made Jared bitter. Sadie was his and Jared was her person, the one that hadn’t left her for dead.
“I got to get back out there, but if you need something, just knock on the door.” Tim squeezed his shoulder again and quietly escaped the way he had come in. Jared heard the metallic clicks of the lock re-engaging and sighed again.
He picked at the corner of the paper liner that held the muffin until it started to pull away. It did look good, maybe not as good as his momma’s blueberry muffins with the brilliant purple fruit peeking out everywhere and the soft crunchy topping, but if it was to be his breakfast, he was thankful that he had at least that much.
Reaching for his coffee, Jared took a tentative sip. It was still hot, but way more bitter than he preferred. He set about dumping the cream and sugar into it as he thought back to the worst cup of coffee he had ever had. That had been in a mammoth truck plaza along Interstate 80 in Wyoming. Just thinking of that place made him depressed.
It had been less than a week after Christmas and Jared was heading north. It was nosing in on the evening the second day after packing his truck and saying goodbye to his parents and siblings back in San Antonio, when he pulled into Little America, Wyoming. Jared remembered being astounded at the sheer size of the place. It was a town unto itself. He had driven most of the day before, stopping only long enough to grab something to eat at a drive-thru before he crashed for the night in the cab of his truck at a rest stop outside of Longmont, Colorado.
He had used the facilities, perused the endless racks of tee shirts, kitsch and other novelties that filled the store after filling up the truck. It was with his newly purchased thermal long johns under his arm and hands full of a monster cup of coffee and a silly stuffed snowman from a lucky play at the claw machine that was next to the exit, that he heard the pitiful whimper from beneath a snow covered sedan.
He thought at first that it might have been the wind, which seemed to blow non-stop in the least populous State, but then he heard it again and decided to investigate.
Placing his purchases on the hood of the truck, Jared squatted and then kneeled down to find the source. There between the front tires, beneath the axle, was a pup, well, older than a pup, but all that had mattered then was that those big brown pleading eyes brought tears to his own. He had always loved animals. The Padalecki family even had a cat for a time before Megan was born. But after it was determined that his baby sister’s bronchial distress was from pet dander, the only pets allowed had been the sedate fish swimming repetitively through a ceramic castle in the aquarium in the family room.
“Come here, baby. Come on.” Jared reached out a hand and tried to coax the dog out from its hiding space. “Come on. I won’t hurt you.”
Several more minutes of cooing and soft talking on Jared’s part and grumbles from the owner of the sedan found Jared with an armful of matted fur on a bony frame scowling at the brake lights of the car as it roared away. He carried the cowering dog into the truck stop only to be told by the cashier to take it right back out again. So with the dog safely ensconced in his truck cab, Jared retreated to the building one more time to see if anyone knew anything about its owner. It had been a pointless trip as he was only to learn that the dog had been scrounging around for weeks, eating scraps and leftovers from sympathetic patrons.
Returning to the truck, Jared looked in the window at the tail peeking out from beneath the passenger seat and tried to decide if he dared or not. In the end, he merely turned around and went back in the plaza yet again and armed himself with a bag of dog food, a box of Milkbones, and a couple of Styrofoam boxes to serve as dishes that the cashier happily gave up at no cost, when Jared told her what they were for. He had a dog, a new companion for his new life.
Taking a sip of his now lukewarm coffee, Jared brushed the crumbs of the muffin from his fingers and stood. Walking around the table, Jared let his arms swing loosely, trying to coax the tenseness from his tired muscles. Not even a long day of classes and then work had ever left him this depleted.
Passing by the door, he paused to see if he could hear anything, but there was only a dim sound of murmured voices and the fading staccato sound of heels on tile. Jared thought about knocking to see if he could be escorted to the restroom, but the need from the coffee hadn’t quite built up yet and he didn’t want to use that card too early only to be seated in the courtroom and then have it hit.
Turning he looked out the window again and caught sight of a few lazy flakes of snow hitting the window, melting upon impact. He crossed the room to look out at the low hanging clouds from his perch three-stories up. He did love it here in Washington. Much of the past year had been in limbo and here lately, extreme danger, but the beauty and serenity that he felt when he was out of the town and in the wilderness, more than made up for it.
The flakes were growing thicker in the air, not thick enough to stick to anything yet, but the quiet beauty of them coasting on the soft breeze as they whirled and spun to and fro did a lot to calm his nerves. He remembered trying to explain it to his momma on the phone, one night a couple of months after he had settled in Wenatchee, Washington, which was roughly an hour south of the initial poke prize location of Manson.
His momma was happy at first. The college there had a good reputation as a foundation school before transferring to a university and she had done her research, it had a GSA. Like I hadn’t thought to look that up, he had snorted in his mind at the time. And it wasn’t Seattle, which she thought too big and daunting for her ‘shy boy’. Yeah and San Antonio is a tiny town, but whatever. Plus, his dad’s brother lived over in Boise, Idaho, so there was family somewhat close by she’d reasoned, that way if Jared needed anything. Her voice had trailed off then and when Jared tried to assure her that he would be just fine; his assurance fell on deaf ears.
It had been close, but he was able to sign up for a couple of classes, nothing terribly exciting, just the basic College English, Algebra, and Botany as well as a six-week class on outdoor survival. Next semester he figured he would have to start worrying on what he wanted to seek a degree in, but this semester was just about getting his feet wet in the waters of academia again.
The apartment that he found was small, a second floor of a sagging tan house with matte brown trim. It wasn’t great, that was for sure. Just a bedroom, living room, and kitchen, all with slanted ceilings caused by the peaked roof, which he was continually hitting his head on, and he had to step into the shower to close the bathroom door enough to get to the toilet, but he didn’t mind. It was just him after all and his new best girl that he had named Sadie and their needs were simple at best.
He had also gotten a job after only two weeks in town. Sure, his parents were footing the bills for the big things just to get him out from underfoot, but it was expected of him to put himself out there and to meet people, so he figured that he might as well get paid to do just that. Though working at a library again wasn’t a great way to strike up a conversation, but when he did talk it wasn’t met by a small woof and a wagging tail, or by silence.
What really got to him though, was his momma. The woman that practically paid him to move out of the house wanted him to come home . . . even before the nightmare with Heyerdahl happened. Her attitude about the move was positive, but now that he thought about it, his momma’s eyes never backed her outward appearance. She would always look away or hurry off to the kitchen to do something when he and his dad had been making plans. As he looked out at the snow now, Jared wished that he could call her and reassure her that he was all right and that it would all be over soon. Of course Jared wasn’t positive deep down that that was the truth, but still, he wished he could offer her comfort. He thought of his last phone call he had with her before his life had been so harshly interrupted.
“Hi, baby.” Sheri Padalecki’s normally happy voice was bordering on ecstatic when she answered the phone.
“Hey, Momma. I promised to call and so I am.”
“And so you are. How’s school going?” Ever the school teacher, Jared thought as he grinned down at the pile of books that Sadie was currently using as a pillow.
“It’s going pretty well. I really like my botany class. Mr. Noller, the instructor, is seventy if he’s a day and I’m sure he’s forgotten more than I’ll ever learn, but he’s a really good teacher.”
“Well, you make sure and tell him so, all right? It’s always good to hear that you are making a difference in a student’s life.” Jared switched the phone to his other ear and reached for his bottle of soda. “What about the other classes?”
“English is English, just a lot of writing and reading and Algebra, well, you remember me in high school math?”
“You’re missing your brother’s help right about now, aren’t you?” Her smile could be heard in her voice.
“I didn’t say that,” Jared laughed, “It just takes a bit longer for me to study for that class than any of the other ones, but I still have all ‘A’s’, so I think I’m doin’ okay.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful, sweetie. I knew you could do it.” Jared had known he could do it too, it was just that back home, he had never felt the need to push for it as he did here.
“Did I tell you last time that I think I found what I want to do? What I want to be when I grow up ?” They both laughed at his joke, even though Jared knew that his momma was listening intently to see how she could help her more unassuming son to succeed at whatever he wanted.
“I don’t believe so, JT. What do you have in mind?”
“I told you about that outdoor survival class, right? Well, the guy that taught that is actually a Rock Island State Park Ranger and he said that I had a real aptitude for the job. I didn’t even know that you could go to school for something like that.”
“Well, of course, you can. You can go to school for anything nowadays, JT. Do you think you would like that, being a park ranger?” He could understand the hesitancy in her voice. It wasn’t like he had ever really made any plans before, with the exception being that he didn’t want to follow his brother’s lead into the medical field.
“Well, yeah. I could spend all my time in the mountains, making sure that the parks are kept clean and helping to teach the visitors about conservation and did you know that there are two different types of hemlock trees in Washington State?”
“No, I didn’t,” Her laugh was more sure this time, “but I’m guessing you didn’t either until your Ranger told you that.”
“You’re right, but Ranger Kane, is really cool and he promised that once it got warmer out he and his partner would take a bunch of us up to camp out. How awesome is that?”
“Well, it sounds like fun, JT. Speaking of getting out, are you making any friends up there?”
“Yeah, I’ve got a couple of guys at school that are pretty cool and there’s Adam at the library.” Jared knew that his momma was asking more about guys that may be boyfriend material, but Jared drew the line about talking about his love life with his Momma.
“Is that all, baby? Nobody that makes you heart beat faster?” Her voice was teasing, but the truth of her question was still pretty blatant.
“Momma! I’m not going to tell you that.”
“Oh, JT, I’m going to find out what’s going on with you someday, you just wait and see.” She laughed, “so are you going to come home in a couple of weeks?”
“What for?” Jared tried to prod his brain into remembering if there were any upcoming holidays or family birthdays, but he couldn’t think of any and he had never gotten around to getting a calendar.
“For Easter, silly. Your grandparents are going to be here and Jeff’s bringing home both his new girlfriend, Ali and Kevin. You should really come home too, sweetie.” Just the name Kevin made Jared want to find a way out of it. Kevin Sommers was his brother’s overly obnoxious and incredibly annoying roommate.
“I don’t know if I can get the time off from work. I would have to talk to Ms. Ferris.” He knew that his boss, Samantha Ferris, would probably let him have the time even if he was still considered the new guy, just because he hadn’t done anything yet to make her get frustrated with him, unlike most of the other college-aged staff. “I’ll talk to her when I work next, but don’t get your hopes up, Momma. I just got here and I don’t think that I should be asking for time already. Besides, I’ll have mid-terms around then and I should probably be studying.”
“Well, see what you can do, okay? Your daddy and I think it would be nice if you could make it.”
“It’s only been three months, and I don’t know anyone well enough that I can ask them to keep Sadie.” He had already made up his mind. He wasn’t even going to ask. He knew that he was lying to his momma and God would probably strike him down, but weren’t his parents the same ones that put him on this path in the first place?
“Bring her along, JT. We’d love to spoil her.” That’s when Jared realized his momma saying that it would be nice if he could make it was actually double talk for ‘we miss you’. “And don’t you worry about Megan’s allergies, we’ll get her some antihistamines and she has her inhaler, so she’ll be fine.”
The call went on, but in the end Jared didn’t promise to come home and he thought that his momma, though unhappy about it, could see why. He had just started to get settled in Wenatchee and if he came home now, there was a chance that he would have to find his footing all over again. Her goodbye sounded a bit watery, a fact that Jared truly felt bad for, but he had something to prove now. He was going to make this life his own.
The absolute best part about his move to Washington State, Jared thought, was the fact that he lived just south of the Cascades, nearly on the very banks of the Columbia River. He had gone on day hikes with his family when he was younger and the summer he turned nine was spent in the Ozarks at summer camp that he never wanted to go to again. But here the wilderness was lush and green, wild and mesmerizing, nothing like the flat, rocky terrain of Texas or the low hills of Arkansas.
Jared leaned his forehead against the window and let the coolness numb the tension that was building in his head. He closed his eyes and thought of his place in the mountains. It wasn’t really his, but he liked to think that he and Sadie had kind of laid claim to it nonetheless. He could almost hear the gurgling of the water as it burst and ran against the thinly formed ice sheets along the edge of the banks. Soon, he thought, soon I’m going to get to go back up there. He opened his eyes again when the image of his little nook in this world became clouded with the reality of what he was involved in currently.
The flakes outside were becoming more frenzied as Jared peered down to see several people walking up to the building; some alone, others in pairs or groups of threes and fours. He idly wondered how many were here for his case, would hear him tell the judge about his one and only time of seeing Christopher Heyerdahl, up close and in person.
It had been a long couple of weeks. The semester was in full swing and Jared was realizing just how long he had been out of school. He hadn’t lied to his momma on the phone, but he also wasn’t stupid, he knew that. Having taken nearly five years off between high school and college just seemed to make some of the more trivial knowledge more than a bit obsolete. Throw in working twenty hours a week on top of all the studying he was doing to stay at the head of all his classes and Jared was exhausted.
Spring break came and went, Jared was buried in a mountain of books, both his own and those at the library. What really irritated him was the fact that he hadn’t been able to get up into the trees and the wild for nearly a month. He really wanted to take an overnight trip soon. He was prepared for the cold and the snow with the subzero-rated sleeping bag that he had picked up in the army surplus department of the local wilderness shop. He even had gotten Sadie some Velcro fastening booties that would save her paw pads against the harsher elements. Watching her that first night trying to walk in them had been hilarious.
Finally, all of his mid-terms over and papers turned in, Jared was able to call in a favor from one of his co-workers. Adam was always getting Jared to cover his Friday and Saturday nights, but Ms. Ferris, their boss had taken note and forbidden Jared from doing so for the rest of the semester. Jared deemed himself a pretty good actor as he commiserated with Adam about the injustice of it all, but secretly, he was pleased. He always had such a tough time telling anyone ‘no’ and now he didn’t have to worry about it as he planned his first overnight trip up into the Cascades.
Pulling the truck into the gravel turnout in the foothills, Jared felt the pressures of school and work slip away as he turned off the ignition. He hoped to put some of the knowledge from his wilderness survival class to use this weekend. Not the first aid or anything like that, but he was hoping to be able to build a temporary shelter and maybe even find some of the edible plants that grew in the wild. Ranger Kane had been a thorough instructor and Jared had paid attention. He was serious when he told his momma about his future plans. He really did want to take all the classes necessary to be just like the blue-eyed park ranger.
Locking the doors after letting Sadie out, Jared shouldered his pack and they set out. Sure, he wasn’t out, out there in the crowds like his parents expected him to be, but at least he was out of the house.
Jared felt calmer with just him, his dog and Mother Earth. It was more peaceful than he had ever felt before. He could practically feel the strength flowing up his legs with every step he took on a trail or the energy that crept up his fingers when they pushed a branch out of the way so that he could stoop less to walk beneath a tree. The freedom of the forest made dealing with people and everyday life manageable, as long as he could keep coming up to the wilderness to re-energize himself on his free days. How brilliant would it be if he could do this for a living, Jared thought as he set up their camp for the night.
The sound of a bird chirping and rustling in the low branches overhead woke up Jared. His nose felt frozen and his eyes stung in the icy chill of dawn, but the grin that he had frozen on his face had nothing to do with that cold. He had made it. Sadie snuffled next to him, her short body plastered tightly against his own. Jared scrubbed at her ears and received a gentle nip on his fingers for his trouble. Laughing at her, he set about breaking camp. The sun was almost up and there was a rise just a couple hundred yards away where the view of the sunrise should be beautiful.
Later he would stop to wonder how, what seemed like the best morning of his life turned into the worst day ever, but at that moment, everything was sure and right with his world.
A long black van with the word ‘detention’ stenciled in white on the side door, stopped in front of the building; the windshield wipers were taking sporadic swipes at the dusting of snow that its immobility brought on. Jared could see the forms of several bodies inside, but from his vantage point he couldn’t make out any of the faces or distinguishing characteristics of the passengers. He wondered if this case was the only one going on right now, which would mean that Heyerdahl was in that van or if there were others and those passengers were the other criminals.
The sound of a key being inserted in the lock, caused Jared to turn his head to see who was going to tell him what to do and when. It felt as if that was what his whole life had boiled down to lately. The freedom that he had grown to love, the wilderness, the desire to do something, anything with his life that he had finally embraced as his parents had hoped, had been cruelly snatched away again.
Mark Sheppard’s head rounded the door, his eyes wide and watchful until they fell on Jared, then they return to the cool slits that Jared was used to seeing on the man.
“Hey, so Morgan suggested that if you need to visit the restroom, now would be the time.”
Jared pushed off the window ledge, giving the van a final glance. He hoped that Heyerdahl was in there. He hoped that he was in there and that they would be bringing him into the building soon, because then that would mean that this entire part of Jared’s life was nearly over and he could maybe get things back to normal.
He crossed the room and followed Agent Sheppard out of the door. He could see Jim Beaver and Tim down at the opposite end of the hall, both nodded and resumed their duty of watching out for someone lurking around with the intent to stop Jared from testifying.
“This way.” Sheppard spoke firmly as he headed up the hall to the last door by the window. Jared squashed the desire to roll his eyes at the man. This was his second day in a row stuck in that room and he had been brought to the restroom a couple of times now, he knew the way. “Stay here.”
This time Jared did roll his eyes at the retreating back of the agent. He knew the drill; Sheppard would sweep the bathroom and then return for Jared and then stand guard until it was time to return to his tiny four-walled world again. It took a few minutes, which Jared spent watching out the window at a few Indigo Buntings jumping from branch to branch in the chestnut tree across the way. The tree’s prickly burrs were bouncing along the limbs.
“All clear. Hey, come away from the window. There could be snipers, you know.” Sheppard ushered Jared into the restroom and stood with his back firmly against the door as Jared wandered into one of the stalls. He could have used the urinal, but the thought of anyone, let alone Sheppard, watching him take a piss left a nasty taste in his mouth.
There was a beeping somewhere in the room, an alarm, Jared wanted it to end as it was giving him a headache, but he couldn’t wake up enough to shut it off himself. He moaned his displeasure and mumbled for Sadie to come, but when he called again and got no response, he decided that he was going to have to do it himself.
“Jen!” A unknown name from an unidentified voice.
“Whoa there, big guy.” The soft thud of boots on a hard floor hurried towards him. “Easy now, you’ve got to lie back down.”
Jared was confused. He tried to get his eyes to focus on whomever the voice belonged to, but his vision was skewed. It felt like only one eye was open and then only part ways at that. Damp hands brushed against his neck as they guided Jared back down to what was definitely not his bed.
“You’ve got to take it easy . . . what’s his name again?”
“Jared.” Came the first disembodied voice from somewhere close by.
“Jared. You’ve got to lie back and relax, Jared. Steve, hit your call light, will ya’.”
He wanted to struggle against those hands, to fight back, to lash out, but felt too tired and too weak to do so. The second voice continued to reassure him as those hands rubbed soothingly against his shoulder and chest.
A whisper of rubber soles and then a third voice, high and sweet, definitely feminine spoke.
“Mr. Carlson?”
“I’m okay,” Jared heard the first voice, who apparently was Mr. Carlson say, “but it seems as though my roommate’s having some issues waking up. He tried to get out of bed before Jen stopped him.”
Roommate? Jen? Jared was trying to put everything into order, but he couldn’t. He didn’t have a roommate and the only Jen he knew was Jenny Lawson that was in his Algebra study group. His mind fought to hang on, but the troublesome thoughts wore him down and the alarm faded away.
“You about done?” Sheppard’s voice echoed in the empty room.
Jared sighed and exited the stall. He shot the man a quick glance before crossing to the sinks to wash his hands. Sheppard wasn’t a bad guy, but he and Jared had never warmed to each other in the month that they had spent in one another’s company. Hell, Sheppard wouldn’t even play chess with him after Jared had beaten him the first three games. Jared didn’t know if that made the man a sore loser or not, but he decided that since he hoped he never saw the agent after the trial, he wasn’t going to lose sleep over their lack of friendship.
Their walk back to the room that Jared was coming to loath was as uneventful as the trip to the restroom. Jim Beaver met them at the door and silently handed Jared a roll of Gummi Savers and a bottle of water before he resumed his position at the end of the hall.
“The building’s filling up, so we should be getting underway pretty soon.” Sheppard spoke without preamble before he stepped back into the hall and locked Jared in his wooden cage again. Jared sighed as he dropped into the chair. He leaned it back onto two legs and let his feet dangle. His head tipped back to count the ceiling tiles.
58.
The same as yesterday.
Jared’s mind drifted again to that first time that he had woken up in the hospital. He wasn’t too manly to admit that he was scared, but when he woke up the second time, his brain a lot less fuzzier, a lot of the missing information had filled in the blanks of his memory while he slept.
The sunrise had been just as beautiful as he anticipated. He and Sadie just sat there and watched the sky turn from indigo to periwinkle to a golden grey; the trees of the valley were losing their dark cumbersome shapes to stand tall and lush in the glow and the barren ground warmed to brown before his eyes. The world was beautiful, much more so than he had ever imagined back in his bedroom in Texas. He knew then that he wanted to find a way to see this everyday if he could.
He and Sadie sat there until the sun had risen completely past the horizon. His ass numb from the cold rock that he had been sitting on and the tip of his ears tingled, but he was invigorated by what he had seen and felt that morning. Breaking camp and trundling back to the truck was hard, but Sadie, in her canine wisdom sensed his sobering mood, skipped and scampered after the small woodland creatures they came across. Her antics made his laugh carry away on the breeze.
The trip back to Wenatchee went quicker than he had hoped and as Jared coasted the truck into the gravel lot of the “Sam’s Super Stop and Shop” a couple of miles outside of town, his high from the fresh air was coming down. After he switched off the ignition and promised Sadie some powdered donuts if she behaved, Jared slid from the truck and started for the store.
There were two other cars in the lot besides his, a dark blue Ford Expedition was parked right up close to the door and a highly polished black Cadillac Escalade which sat a couple of car lengths away. Jared glanced at the sound of a man’s voice by the Escalade and saw a stocky man in dark cargo pants and a black tee shirt speaking quickly to the man seated in the back. Another man stood on the porch of the store, waiting.
That man, the one in the Escalade, caught Jared’s eye. His long goateed face and thin nose were lorded over by a heavy brow. A shiver ran down Jared’s spine as the man’s piercing grey eyes drove steadily into his own. Jared remembered hurrying into the store to get away from that chilling gaze. The last thing he remembered before waking up disoriented and surrounded by strangers in the hospital was tossing a bag of Frito’s and a pack of powdered donuts on the counter. He hadn’t forgotten his promise to his four-legged friend out in the truck.
It still bothered him that he doesn’t remember anything other than those few quick glances in the parking lot and someone was trying to have him killed. It didn’t make any sense. The doctors called it hysterical amnesia, which Jared took offense to until they explained it to him, reassuring him that the term ‘hysterical’ wasn’t meant to mean that he had acted in a less than manly way, only that his head took a hit so severe that it decided to forget all the events around that event. He still gets small flashes of what happened and some of the stories that he learned later on seem familiar, but on a whole he couldn’t tell anyone what had happened from start to finish.
That’s why him being the star witness for the prosecution still seemed so crazy to him, but then he learned that he was the only person to see and remember the man in the Escalade. Christopher Heyerdahl, the lead man for a trafficking syndicate that traded in drugs, arms, and human flesh. Jared hadn’t learned his name until much later, but he would never forget it now.
“What happened?” His voice sounded strange to him, as if he had been gargling chunks of ground up glass, but even after he swallowed a few times, it didn’t improve. “What . . . he-llo?”
The sounds of the conversation that he had been listening to died away and a shuffling of feet filled the air around him. The bed dipped down by his hip as a body settled down next to him.
“Hey, you’re awake.”
Jared blinked his eyes a couple of times before his right one cleared enough for him to make out the smiling features of an extremely good looking man. If the pain wasn’t so intense in his head, Hell, his whole body, Jared would have demanded that the guy turn around to show him his wings, but the pain was that bad, so Jared knew that he wasn’t in heaven.
“Ye-ah.” He tried to clear his voice, but it caused his throat to contract and he started to cough.
“Hey, hey, c’mon Jared, just breathe. Give me a deep breath. Yeah, just like that. Okay and another.” Jared fought to calm his lungs as the warmth of the man’s body leaned against him briefly before a glass with a straw entered his myopic view. “Take a small sip, okay? You don’t want to try too much at first.”
Jared did as he was told; he continued to stare at the man on his bed. A few shallow sips and he felt a bit better or at least the moisture aided his ability to speak.
“Who? I’m . . . hurt?”
“Yeah, Jared, you are, but you’re going to be just fine. A few more days of rest and they should be able to let you out of here.” The man’s smile was bright and sincere. “I should introduce myself, huh? I’m Jensen. Jensen Ackles and that freak over yonder trussed up tighter than a Thanksgiving turkey is my friend Steve Carlson.”
Jared tried to tip his head to see the man that said a hearty ‘Hey’, but it pulled at his neck muscles which apparently was one of his injuries. He moaned and the man on his bed, Jensen, winced in sympathy.
“Don’t strain yourself, Steve ain’t nothing pretty to look at, trust me.” This time the ‘hey’ took on a disgruntled air, causing Jensen to laugh which in turn made the bed shake lightly. “We kind of got caught up in the same thing you did and here we all are.”
“Yeah, but you got to be the hero and Jared and I took the beating.” Called the mellow voice from across the room. Jared looked to Jensen to see if his reaction verified that statement and was surprised to see a flush on his cheeks.
“Wh- what happened?” Jared ground out. Jensen held the cup up again and Jared took a grateful sip.
“Wrong place. Wrong time for all of us. We kind of walked into an attempted kidnapping.”
huh?
His face must have shown utter confusion because Jensen elaborated.
“Yeah. I don’t know where you came from because you were already in the store, grappling with this hulk of a man when we showed up, but once we got there. Steve pounced on the guy who was dragging the blonde cashier towards the door and I brained the guy beatin’ on you with the bag rack. Well, actually, I had the bag rack, he was using the butt end of a gun. Anyway, Steve’s guy took off out the door and he took up our fight and I got Samantha, the blonde to hide in the office and I called 911 and that’s pretty much what happened from what we saw.” Jensen smiled again, his hand patted Jared’s hand carefully before it wrapped loosely around his wrist.
“What about the third guy?
“Third guy? I only remember two. Steve did you see a third guy?” Jensen’s face screwed up, his mouth pursed, perplexed.
“Nah, just the two idiots thinking that they were commandos or something.” Steve’s voice came over from the other side of the room. Jared wished that he could see him; it felt odd to be carrying on a conversation with just a voice and no phone in sight.
“The guy in the Escalade?”
“You mean the Expedition? Those were the guys that were trying to kidnap Samantha.” Jensen explained patiently. It had hurt to do it, but Jared shook his head no. He clearly remembered both the Escalade and the Expedition. “Just a sec . . .”
Jared watched Jensen’s back disappear for a minute and heard the door opening to their room. Soon a second face peered down into his; the gleam from light on metal blinded him briefly.
“Jared? I’m Officer Brown. Mr. Ackles here tells me that you saw something that he and Mr. Carlson didn’t. Can you tell me what that was?” The man looked tough even though his voice was kind, momentarily leaving Jared speechless, but once he found his voice and described what he had seen, Jared sealed his whole fate in the incident . . . and painted a target on his own back.
“Jared?” Jared’s heart leapt into his throat when Senior Agent Jim Beaver’s head poked around the edge of the door before the sound of his short rapping on the door died away. He didn’t hear the lock spinning as he was so wrapped up in his memories. Jim must have noticed his uneasiness “Sorry. They’re ready for you, son.”
“Yeah? Um, okay.” He stood and stretched his back by bending briefly to the right and then the left. The resulting cracking sound filled the room. He had only been in the holding room for about an hour and a half while the lawyers for both the prosecution and the defense hammered out some last minute motions before court got underway for the day. To Jared every minute that he was stuck inside the Kittitas County Courthouse was just sixty seconds more of his life that Heyerdahl had stolen from him.
Jared stuffed the unopened candy in his pocket and snagged the water bottle from the table and tucked it under his arm. He was wondering if he should grab the long-empty paper coffee cup and the wrapper from his muffin when Jim told him to leave it as ‘they pay someone for that, boy.’
Jim stepped across the hall from the door as Jared passed through it. He saw two of the other members of his protection detail, Agent’s Sheppard and Hutton standing at the end of the hall, each staring down a length of hallway. Silent as ever, Lieutenant JD Morgan stepped from his position next to the door to flank Jared on the side opposite Jim.
“Ready?” He asked in his smoke roughened voice.
Jared nodded, his fists balled up at his sides as they started down the long hallway.
“Well then, let’s get this over with and get you back to living your life. Now, the DA asked us to bring you in before the prisoner, that way there should be no signals from him to anyone in the gallery that we can’t catch. We’re to be seated in the front row, right behind the prosecutor and Heyerdahl will be sitting with his attorney, which is forward and to the left. Try not to look at him, stare at him, make faces at him, hell, son, don’t even think in his general direction.”
Jared heard Jim chuckle under his breath as JD continued talking. He wished he could find any bit of this entire episode amusing, but, well, he didn’t.
“Do you remember the questions that the lawyer sent over?”
“Yeah.” Jared replied quietly as they finally reached the other two men. Hutton stepped in front of their group, effectively leading them all to the courtroom, which probably meant that Sheppard had taken the rear since he stepped out of Jared’s line of sight.
“Yes.” JD reiterated. “Always answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to any question.”
“And never volunteer any information that you aren’t explicitly asked for.” Jim added. Jared saw Tim’s head nod in front of them. “You don’t want to give the defense any ammunition.”
The small group stopped in front of a pair of broad doors with worn gold fixtures. The officer standing next to the door pulled it open after Tim spoke quietly to him. Jared could feel his curious stare causing him to itch between the shoulder blades as they passed into the courtroom.
*****
A brief flash of panic rushed through his body. It’s strange, Jared thought as he tipped his head to the side when he heard a door opening somewhere behind him. It’s strange that I feel closer to these guys right now than I do my own family.
The past six weeks had been hard, emotionally and psychologically harder than anything that Jared could ever had dream living through, but these guys had been with him every step of the way.
“Sure you don’t want me to walk you to your car?” Jared made the offer every night that he closed, but Sam as always shook her head and smiled.
“Nah, I got some paperwork to finish up on, but thanks for the offer . . . again.” Her pointed look was lost on Adam, who sat at the circulation desk playing solitaire on the computer. “You go on ahead and I’ll make sure that ‘Boy Wonder’ here sees me out safely.”
“I . . . well, okay, see you tomorrow?”
She snorted at his question, “like I get any more time off than you guys. Take off, Jared. See you bright and early.”
He gave her a wave and tossed a ‘night’ out to Adam before he headed out the door to the parking lot. It was growing warmer in the evenings now that they had gotten through the early stages of spring. Jared smiled into the dusk. Only four weeks until break, he thought lazily, and then I am getting lost up in the Cascades for half the summer.
His hospital stay had slowed him down a bit, but with the exception of his Algebra class, he had gotten caught up on everything else. He had petitioned and received a special dispensation for his injuries, so while everyone else was technically done in three weeks, Jared had an extra week to catch up on the missed quizzes and homework. It kind of sucked that it fell right at the time of finals, but he figured with that extra week, he could get it all done. And being done, meant camping and hiking . . . and Jensen.
He and Jensen had been sharing a string of texts and emails since they met in that hospital room. It wasn’t at all where Jared had thought he would ever meet a guy as handsome or as nice as Jensen, but he wasn’t going to complain. In fact, his only complaint was that Jensen and Steve lived nearly five hours south of Wenatchee in Vancouver, Washington.
Once he had healed up enough in the hospital to stay awake for more than a few minutes at a time, Jared had gotten to know Jensen and Steve. They had been up on Lake Chelan with Steve’s boyfriend, Christian, who it turned out, was none other than Ranger Kane. All three men as well as Chris’s fellow Ranger, Aldis Hodge made the week and a half long hospital stay bearable. They joked and teased him as if he had been a lifelong friend. Jensen even helped him convince his panicking momma not to make the trip up to sit with him. He felt bad about talking her out of it, but he wanted to do this on his own.
For his part, Jared had offered his apartment for those that were not currently patients to stay in, provided that they cared for Sadie. Both Chris and Aldis had said ‘thanks’ and refused based on the fact that they had a place not too far out of town, but Jensen readily agreed, saying he couldn’t stand another night with the lumberjacks.
“Lumberjacks?” Jared asked. He had sustained a head injury, but he was fairly certain that there was a broad difference between a lumberjack and a park ranger.
“Ooh, yeah. The way these two saw logs –“ He couldn’t finish the sentence because the pair of them started to try and wrestle him down, which caused both Jared and Steve to laugh at their antics.
It had been a bittersweet day when Steve was finally released from the hospital. Jared had been down in the imaging center, getting another CAT scan, but a flaw with the machine had caused the trip to be extended and by the time he was returned to the room, Jensen and Steve had left for home.
He remembered clutching the small stuffed ‘Smokey the Bear’ that Jensen had left on his bed, in one hand as he had read Jensen’s goodbye note. It was to be the first of many correspondences that they would share in the next several weeks and Jared was hoping that their mutual flirting on paper, through text and across phone lines would lead to something more tangible and real when they finally got to see each other in the summer.
But in stepped Heyerdahl again, maybe not the man himself, but a pair of muscle bound meatheads that worked for him. They had jumped him in the parking lot that late spring evening, but unbeknownst to both of the thugs and to Jared, a third party had been watching him. That was the night that Jared first met FBI Commander JD Morgan. He explained that they had feared a reprisal attack and after a brief stop at his apartment, Jared was whisked away into protective custody.
Jim tapped him on the thigh and flashed a smile that Jared figured was probably supposed to be reassuring, but it looked a little too grim for that. Jared tried to grin back, how successful it was determined by Jim’s cocked eyebrow, which was to say, not at all.
Closing his eyes, Jared could still hear the shouts of violence and threats of retribution from that first attack seven months ago. They mixed in his mind, with the venomous words of barely six weeks later. He still couldn’t put the faces to the words, his memory still spotted, but he could remember what was said. It was as if someone was standing behind him, whispering them in his ear. What really got him angry, even now was that when he was jumped on campus, the second time that someone that worked for the syndicate that Heyerdahl ran with an iron fist tried to kill him, was that the goon mentioned Megan, which means they knew everything about him and his family.
Jared didn’t want this. He wanted to finish school, he wanted to take Sadie up hiking and camping, he wanted to see his family again; to see Jensen again and maybe even be brave enough to kiss him this time.
Lifting his sweaty palms from where they were sliding around the front lip of the wooden bench that they sat on, Jared wiped them along his thighs until he could feel the faint outline of the folded paper in his right pocket. It was the only piece of Jensen he had with him, this letter, the rest being forgotten behind as they whisked him to a new safe house when word got out that someone was coming for them at the motel. They had had to leave behind Sadie as well, which caused Jared no small amount of grief until Tim told him that they had found Sadie and she was being looked after by one of the Bureau’s computer techs until it was determined that he was safe enough to go home and she could rejoin him.
“Here ya go, boy.” Jim’s gruff voice carried across the main room of the safe house that they had been staying in for the past few weeks. “I thought that you might like a piece of home.”
Jared looked up in time to see a spill of mail land in his lap. There were letters of concern from his English instructor as well as a note telling him that he still had a job at the library when this was all over. He was touched that Sam had taken the time to write the nice words she did, but he was thinking about trying to go back to Texas after this was all over. Washington was slowly losing its charm with everyday that he was cooped up.
The letter from his momma sealed the deal. She and Megan were currently spending the summer in North Carolina at his Aunt Bethany’s house. His momma was distraught, but Megan was loving the beach and the sun and the boys. Jared smiled wryly as he imagined his momma’s face as she dealt with her youngest child’s outgoing behavior.
There was a quick note from his dad in San Antonio as well, it was short and to the point, but when Jared read about how proud his daddy was of him, for standing up to men that were tougher and stronger than himself trying to save someone else’s life, he wanted to cry. He still wasn’t sure if that was how it went down, and he had told his dad that when he wrote him back, but the return letter just reiterated the same sentiment.
It had been great to hear from his family and friends, but even better were the small stack of neatly printed envelopes from Jensen. He had put them in order and started going through them one by one. He had made a second and then a third pass through them, wasting an entire afternoon, before he thought to ask if he could write Jensen back.
“Sure can, boy. I left a box of envelopes and a notepad on the counter. Have at it.” Jim laughed when Jared’s awkward lunge for the kitchen nearly toppled Tim from the bar stool he was sitting on. “Whenever you’re done, just leave them right there and I’ll see they go out.”
Jared had read once that letter writing was a dying art form, especially since the advent of the computer age, but for the next couple of months, those letters that he and Jensen shared were practically the only thing that pulled him through. He had those moments when he wanted to give up, but then Jensen reassured him that he was making the world a safer place and he convinced himself that what he was doing was worth it. Each one of those handwritten pages promised that he would get through this and when he did, they could start to get to know one another better, but Jared already felt as if he knew Jensen. In his more optimistic moments, Jared swore to himself that he would never get rid of a single one of the increasingly heartfelt notes. He was going to keep them, so that when he and Jensen were old and wrinkled they could take them out and remember how they fell in love or at least that was how he hoped it all shook out in the end.
Jared frowned as he thought of his personal pledge, his fingers pressed against the small folded paper in his pocket. It was all he had left.
Everything, his books and clothes, his computer, his school books . . . and the letters from his momma as well as those from Jensen had all gone up in flames when the syndicate burned their rooms at the hotel that they had fled to when the safe house location had been leaked. Now, less than a week later and there were still three people in the hospital that were dealing with the burns and the breathing issues brought on by Heyerdahl’s henchmen. It had been close but the agents had kept Jared alive long enough to testify and that was what mattered to them most of all. He alone was supposed to bring down the kingpin.
Jared felt weak.
“All rise.” Jared sucked in a harsh breath before he pulled himself to his feet at the same time as the men on either side of him. He pushed it out slowly as the bailiff continued. “ The is the continuation of the State of Washington versus Christopher Heyerdahl on the counts of attempted murder, attempted kidnapping, first degree assault with a deadly weapon, second degree assault, and attempted arson. The Honorable Judge Mitchell C. Pileggi, presiding. You may be seated.”
Jared could hear the leg chains on Heyerdahl when they rattled, even with the various other shuffling of feet and scraping of chairs within the enormous room. He knew that his time had come. In a few short minutes he was going to be sitting in that little box, microphone stuck up in his face and he was going to be facing the man that had tried to have him killed. Three times now. Granted once was purely circumstantial, but the last two times where completely intentional.
“Just answer whatever Mr. Crawford asks and you’ll be fine, son.” JD rapped his knuckle against Jared’s hand that was gripping the bench tightly. Jared nodded and chanced a glance at the prosecuting attorney. Jared had met with several different people from the States Attorney’s office since this whole nightmare began. This one, Clayne Crawford, was the youngest of the lot, with him only being a handful of years older than Jared, it was disheartening. But he also seemed to be the one that had the most to prove to his superiors, so it might work out, Jared thought. Crawford had worked tirelessly to gather all the evidence and had drilled Jared relentlessly until Jared was sure that he could recite his testimony while asleep after a three-day bender, not that he had ever been on a three-day bender..
Crawford saw Jared as he peered at him and shot him what Jared guessed was supposed to be a reassuring smile, but the dark rings under the attorney’s eyes felt more like an omen to Jared. He cast his eyes down again without smiling back.
Jared swallowed down the fear that had been crawling up his throat ever since he woke this morning. The muffin that he picked over earlier in the holding room was a solid stone in his gut. The echoing sound of the judge clearing his voice came from the speaker over his shoulder. Jared peeked up through his bangs at the man as he spoke.
“Mr. Prosecutor, are you ready to call your next witness.”
“Yes, Your Honor. The State calls Mr. Jared Padalecki to the stand.”
Jim nudged him and Jared rose; his attempt to be smooth exiting the row hampered by his huge feet causing him to stumble across Tim’s. The whispers behind him faded, the closer he walked to the witness stand. The legs on the chair slid across the worn linoleum with a low, stuttering whine. As he sat on the edge of the chair, Jared looked up at the rest of the room and saw such an array of emotion on the faces staring back at him that he felt that it would bury him alive.
A movement to the right caught his eye. Jared saw a pretty, young lady flip a sketchpad over, her hand a blur as she hurried to capture the action of the case on paper.
I knew I should have got a haircut. Jared thought briefly before mentally slapping himself. Focus!
Samantha Ferris, his boss from the city library sat along the aisle, a row behind where he had just been sitting, her face pinched and pale. Jared twisted his fingers together in his lap. Seated a few rows back of her, was his dad and his Uncle Dave, both men with worried frowns etched across their usually jovial faces. He had been supposed to get to see his dad a couple of days ago, but the scramble to safety after the motel fire had made his security team deem all contact a risk, so Jared had spent the afternoon watching a marathon of “MacGyver” on TV instead.
As happy as he was to see that he wasn’t alone, that someone else was there to support him, besides the men paid to protect him, Jared still had that sinking feeling of loneliness in his gut. Jensen wasn’t there. He had promised Jared that he and Steve would make it, that Jared wouldn’t have to go through this alone, but here he was anyway and where was Jensen?
“Sir, please place your hand on the bible and repeat after me.” Jared did as he was told and as he lowered his right hand, he touched the letter in his pocket again. Something had to have delayed Jensen, but Jared took the strength from his written words and braced himself.
“Mr. Padalecki, will you state and spell your name for the record.” Mr. Crawford sounded so formal, so in charge that Jared’s head whipped up. He had seemed intense, yet still somewhat nervous when they had practiced Jared’s testimony before, but now his voice had an air of authority.
“Um, Jared Padalecki. P-a-d-a-l-e-c-k-i.”
“Very well, okay, Jared. May I call you Jared?” He paused to wait for Jared to confirm that he could. They had gone over this all before, but when Jared didn’t speak he asked again. “May I call you Jared?”
“Mr. Padalecki? Counselor, do we need a minute?” Jared heard the words that the judge was saying, but they didn’t register. The only thing that was going through his mind was the glare of pure venomous hate that Jared mistakenly looked into. He couldn’t draw his eyes away from the man in the orange jumpsuit at the defendant’s table.
Those grey eyes bore into him, ripping his memories from his mind and adding to them. He could see the SUV’s parked next to his truck. He could hear Sadie whining to come along as he peered into those eyes for the first time. He felt the pain of steel on his skull, of hands wrapped around his throat and hard, sharp jabs to his body. It was all coming back to him, a flood of hate and rage, sweeping through his mind.
“Mr. Padalecki? Jared? Hey, Jared?” Jared flinched back as Mr. Crawford touched his white-knuckled grip on the railing in front of him.
“May we take a ten minute recess, your honor?”
“Any objections from the defense, Mr. Lehne?”
“None, your honor.” The tone was of smug dismissal.
“Very well. We are adjourned for a ten minute recess after which time we will confer about proceeding.”
Jared could hear the men talking around him. He could even hear the sympathetic apology from the judge. He had jumped when the gavel hit the bench so close to his head, but he couldn’t break eye contact with Heyerdahl, not until Crawford stepped right in front of the box, forcing Jared to look at him instead. Behind the DA were his team, JD, Tim, & Jim had angry yet concerned faces as they circled around the witness stand. Hell, even Mark look worried beneath his menacing glare.
“Jared? Do we need to take a break? Do you need to talk to someone?” He nodded at the last question, ignoring the first two. “Who, Jared? Your dad?”
Jared tried to speak, he really did, but his mouth felt like the desert and his lips stuck together. He wanted Jensen to save him again, he needed it, but Jensen had failed him. He was alone facing the man that swore that he would kill Jared and his entire family if he was convicted. Jared wanted to go back in time and never have asked about a third man. He wanted to never have stopped at the store, to never have been told that he couldn’t work for Adam, to never have packed up his truck and moved halfway across the country.
Dallas. His finger had hit Dallas when he first spun that Atlas a year ago. Why the Hell had he not just moved to Dallas?
He could hear the murmuring of the people in the courtroom behind the wall of flesh that were the Federal Agents. A rattle of chains became a constant distraction, as if Heyerdahl was reminding Jared that he was still there even if they couldn’t see one another.
“Do you think we need a doctor?” Crawford wasn’t talking to him, Jared could tell, but he didn’t hear an answer. The words were barely out of his mouth when the sound of a siren outside, filled the room. It cut off as quickly as it sounded, leaving the confused voices of the people in the gallery to fill the silence.
“ . . . but I’m his father!” Gerald Padalecki’s voice sounded strained and close to tears. Jared didn’t want to see his dad. He did, but he didn’t want Heyerdahl to see him and to do something to him. He shook his head and he saw Tim out of the corner of his downturned eyes, peel away from his place in the group to lead his dad away.
“Lieutenant Morgan? Do we get a doctor?” Crawford clearly thought that Jared need medical attention or else he wouldn’t keep asking.
“EMT. Pardon me; do you guys need a medic?” A new voice added to the fray.
There was jostling and even a disgruntled grunt from JD; Jared heard Mark say something about the circus being in town and Jim told him to can it as he pushed the agent away to let the medic through. The action seemed strange to Jared; Next to Mark, JD was the other agent that was as close to by-the-book when it came to the handling of his charge and all he did was nod at Jim and back up a step. He shouldn’t have moved from his position, Jared thought. His breath finally calming, Jared chanced a glance at Jim, but the senior agent merely smiled and nodded. His view was nearly instantly blocked as pair of men, chests covered with blue uniforms, stepped up close to the witness box.
“Jared? Can you hear me? What do think, Steve?” Jared’s head whipped up to see the serious yet grinning face of one Jensen Ackles.
“Yep, Jen, I think he can hear you.” Steve wrapped his hand around Jared’s wrist, checking for a pulse. He smiled that lazy Californian smile of his and replied.
Realization dawned on the faces of the rest of the men clustered around the witness box. Steve and Jen. Jensen Ackles. They knew the name. There was a sly smile trying to hide in Jim’s goatee.
“Think you can put this bastard away, Jared?” Jensen spoke lowly as he made like he was giving Jared a good once over, but in reality he was letting the strength of his touch and his words and his very presence rebuild the hope that Heyerdahl had stolen from him a few moments earlier. He leaned in and spoke softly against Jared’s ear. “I promised, didn’t I? I would never let you down.”
“Jared?” Crawford looked from the medic’s face to Jared’s and saw only relief. He knew without asking that Jared was going to be able to do what he had said that he would do.
“Yeah?” Jared couldn’t tear his eyes away from Jensen’s.
“Do you think –“
“Yeah. Let’s, um, get this over with. I kind of . . . have plans later.” Jensen gave Jared’s hand another squeeze as he and Steve backed away. Soon the cluster of men dispersed and the judge called order again.
Jared stumbled only a few times in his testimony, but in the end it wasn’t enough to let Heyerdahl win. The jury found him guilty after only ninety minutes of deliberation. Ninety minutes that Jared spent back in his holding room, but this time he wasn’t alone. The agents had decided that he might be experiencing so stress related fatigue and had the pair of medics join him to give him a quick going over again.
The sentencing hadn’t happened yet, but with the guilty charge came distrust and crumbling alliances, Crawford assured him as they stood listening to the ranting voice of a very irate prisoner being led away. Several of the men that worked for Heyerdahl would be arrested, each one throwing themselves on the mercy of the court and their boss under the bus, but Jared wasn’t thinking about that. It wasn’t that he didn’t care anymore, he just had better things to do.
He had lived. He told the truth and he lived.
Samantha Smith, the cashier that Jensen and Steve had saved and who it turned out was an ex-girlfriend of Heyerdahl, entered permanently into the witness protection program. Jared wished her the best and hoped that her memories of that day lessened with the years. He heard Jim asking JD where he was thinking of stashing her, but JD just smiled that enigmatic smile of his and stayed mum on the entire line of questioning.
Jared said goodbye to the agents that had served to keep him from harm, but not before asking Jim how he knew to let Jensen through.
“How do you think I got some of those letters, boy? I swear I saw more of that one, than I did my last wife. Always checking into the office whenever he could get up here and if it wasn’t him it was ne of his friends.” Jim laughed as he clapped a weathered hand on Jared’s back. “He’s a good one, that one. You should keep him around.”
All of the other Agents wished him well, even Mark Sheppard. Tim slipped his card into Jared’s hand saying, “If you ever need anything.” And then they were gone as well.
Jared was standing with his father and Uncle Dave on the courthouse steps when a boisterous series of barks sounded. As soon as Jared had turned towards the noise, the man holding the leash let go and Sadie came tearing towards him, snow flying behind her scrabbling paws. He dropped to his knees and let himself be knocked to the ground by his best girl. Of everyone he had ever missed during this entire ordeal, he missed Sadie most of all. She had been there since the beginning and he hoped that it would be many, many years before he had to say goodbye.
“Hey.”
Jared looked up at the group of legs surrounding him. Jensen, Steve, Steve’s boyfriend Chris and his work partner, Aldis had joined his dad and Uncle Dave to stare down at the overgrown boy rolling in the snow with his dog. It was almost like when he was in the courtroom, but now the faces weren’t distressed, they were joyous and proud.
Jared climbed to his feet before he answered Jensen shyly.
“Hey.” He felt his face flush and he stepped forward into Jensen’s waiting arms. This made it all worth it. Heyerdahl may have tried to kill him, but Jensen was going to give him life.
Jensen smiled and Jared beamed back at him.
Neither man, nor their friends and family would ever forget that first kiss.
-----epilogue-----
He attempted to roll over in his sleeping bag, but Sadie’s weight along his side and the new dog, Oscar, a golden doodle who was lying behind his back, prevented him from getting far. It took some maneuvering but he finally flipped onto his back. His eyes took in the muted morning light that was trying to permeate the nylon of the tent. He reached down and gave both dogs a quick pat. Sadie, savored it before curling up tighter at his side, but Oscar stood and after a quick few licks of greeting, shot out through the gap of the tent flaps.
What a year, Jared mused silently as he scratched idly at his chest, goosebumps rising when the cold air of morning finally met his bare skin. I’ll bet this wasn’t what dad and momma had in mind when they told me I had to start living.
There was a call from a starling somewhere high above outside his warmish cocoon . He smiled at the noise and nestled back down again, one arm out of his sleeping bag to scratch at Sadie’s ears.
He thought of his friends in Wenatchee, because that is what he thought of them as, friends. Adam was probably still trying to get paid for doing nothing. He could picture Sam’s exasperated face clearly then and chuckled. He had quit the library not long after returning to the life that he had been forced to flee. Too much had happened for him to want to lose himself in the stacks again.
I guess I should thank the asshole for that much, Jared thought bitterly, his mind turning to the image of a stark grey stare and a long nose.
Heyerdahl had received a 70 plus years sentence for his planning and less than cunning plan to have Jared taken out, but that wasn’t all. Most, if not all of his minions, out from under his tight rule and weasels out to save their own skins, had rolled on him spectacularly. The last that Jared had heard he was up to multiple life sentences without parole. The once mighty ruler of a drug and flesh empire was now learning how to fold sheets at the Federal Penitentiary in Southern Colorado.
It had taken some time for Jared to stop looking over his shoulder every time he heard a noise, but he was getting better. He met a few times with a counselor at school, which he had actually been ecstatic to return to after his sojourn into the sometimes scary and more oft boring life of witness protection, but he and the counselor realized that he needed a little more. One quick phone call to Agent Hutton and Jared now had a weekly appointment with Gina Bellman, a pleasant and understanding woman that was helping him to battle his fears. He hadn’t missed but one appointment yet and that was when he had returned to Texas to see his family.
Jared smiled wistfully into the dawn as his mind tripped back to the memory of his first journey home for Christmas.
“You’d have thought I was a hero.” His whisper barely broke the silence of the tent. Sadie snuffled beside him.
His momma had smothered him with love and food. Jared could see worry lines that he had never noticed before, along her smooth forehead and around her eyes. He did everything that he could to reassure her that he hadn’t sustained any permanent damage from the beating nine months earlier and that he was staying safe. Going so far as to call Ranger Kane, to have him explain to her how Jared was at the top of the mixed martial arts class that Chris taught once a week. She wasn’t happy, but by the time Jared was ready to return to his home up north, she finally let him go.
There was a rustling and then scratching along the fabric of the tent and Jared raised up on his elbows at the same time that Jensen’s head popped through the opening, hair mussed and smile wide.
“You awake in here?”
“Yep. Just lying here thinking.” Jared grinned back at his boyfriend of several months.
“I got the coffee pot in the fire and some bread warming up. What do you think about bacon and eggs over an open flame this morning?” Jensen dropped to his knees and started to shuffle as gracefully as he could into the shelter. His movements disrupted Sadie’s beauty rest and after a huge yawn followed by a round of ‘good morning’ licks to the faces of her two favorite humans, she scuttled for the tent opening. Jared laughed at Jensen’s good-natured grousing as she gave him a couple of good thwaps with her tail on the way out.
“Hey! It’s not funny.” Jensen responded as he pitched himself forward to nestle along Jared’s side.
“Holy . . . neither are those.” Jared retorted as he flinched away from Jensen’s cold hands that he had shoved unceremoniously into the sleeping bag to warm up.
“Then give me a way to warm them up, handsome.” Jensen nuzzled in to press his nose against Jared’s ear.
“Jesus! You bastard!” Jared shrieked as he simultaneously tried to extract Jensen’s hands from his bag and wrestle the older man down. They rolled over nearly every inch of the tarp-like floor of the tent. Their laughter and playful name-calling echoing filled the air.
“Are you happy?” Jensen’s eyes had grown more serious, yet his lips, which only minutes ago had been begging Jared to stop his tickle attack, still carried a serene smile.
The question made Jared stop his actions cold. He hovered above his boyfriend, long arms propping him up as his lower half still ensconced in his sleeping bag pressed down against Jensen’s legs and hips.
“What? Of course, I am. I . . . do I not look happy?” Jared was genuinely confused right then.
“No, uh, I mean, no, you do look happy, I was just making sure.” Jensen said running a hand up one of Jared’s arms to curl around his neck. “I worry, you know? I think about everything that you’ve been through. I worry that maybe I’ve rushed you, what with the move and all the changes that –“
Jared cut him off with a kiss, it wasn’t as soft or as yielding as their first kiss had been back on that snowy afternoon on the steps of the Kittitas County Courthouse, but he tried to pack as much emotion and as many positive vibes into it that he could. He wasn’t the most experienced of guys, but he was gaining a little more knowledge all the time. He withdrew just enough that he could make out the fight in Jensen’s jade hued eyes, the fight between want and love. “I have never been happier, Jen.”
“Yeah?” Jared smiled down at the hopeful tone that he had heard.
“Yeah. You make me happier than I ever have been before.” He lowered himself down slowly, teasingly and peppered Jensen’s cheeks and chin with small, light kisses before eventually just circling down to reclaim his lips. It was several minutes later, when the dogs decided to rejoin them in the tent that they pulled away, “yeah,” he sighed again.
“I do have one concern about all of this.” Jensen spoke against his hair.
“What’s that?”
“Whether I should have my way with you now and then have breakfast before we head home or do we eat and head home to christen our bed?”
Jared laughed at Jensen’s conundrum, but it then he remembered that heading home meant unpacking all of his belongings into Jensen’s, no, their house and he sobered quickly.
“What’s that face for?” Jensen asked, craning his neck so that he could look at Jared’s expression.
“Just thinking that going home meant unpacking the rest of the day and then starting my first day at Washington State tomorrow.” Jared started to bury his face in Jensen’s chest, the softness of his blue Henley catching at his two-day old stubble, but he lifted his head again as Jensen’s chest shook with mirth. He got caught up in the merriment dancing in Jensen’s eyes and found his lips curving into a smile. “What? I love it up here.”
“That settles it. Sex then food.” Jensen flung an arm and a leg over him and soon more than the down of the sleeping bag blanketed Jared. “And I solemnly promise . . . we will come back up here every chance we get.”
-----the end-----