Yes, that seemed to have worked.
It took another three hours to finish clearing the building. Half of that time was spent waiting for Jim and Joel to settle down enough to go back inside. Simon made good use of the long wait. Very stern conversations with several of the students produced earnest promises that there had only been the one device. Jim, watching the kid's body language from a distance, was inclined to believe that he was telling the truth, but when they went back in to confirm it, Jim searched the halls as slowly and carefully as if he was sure there was another bomb to find.
The lunch Sandburg had picked up had been sitting in the warm truck all afternoon. Jim was starting to get his appetite back, but there was no way he was eating *that*. Sandburg, distracted by the report he was going to have to write up for the afternoon, didn't notice they were heading for Wonderburger until the truck was on its way into the drive-through. "Aw, man, you're kidding."
"I want a milk shake," Jim said. He was pretty sure he had enough sympathy coming for today to convince Sandburg into giving in on almost anything.
"We're three blocks from "Max's." You could get a milk shake that involved real milk. And ice cream."
Jim *liked* Wonderburger milkshakes, but he didn't feel up to a lecture on the benefits of calcium and the dangers of artificial vanilla and high-fructose corn syrup.
"I haven't eaten either," Sandburg coaxed. "They have mango smoothies."
As he turned the truck around, it occurred to Jim that Sandburg was definitely on to his tricks....
The hours they'd spent at the high school had completely derailed Jim's afternoon. Two witnesses who'd been asked in for follow-up interviews had been sent home by Rhonda when she realized how long most of Major Crimes was going to be tied up. Three boxes of evidence from the Terwillager murder had arrived, but in Jim's absence, Adrian Monk had taken charge of them. That left Jim with his backlog of paperwork and no good excuse not to do it.
At a quarter to five he glanced up from the file he was digging through and said, "Hey, chief. We should head home to shower and change before that thing tonight."
Sandburg, sorting through a pile of faxes that had been accumulating on the corner of Jim's desk for the last week, froze. "I forgot," he said.
"We don't want to be late."
"You know, Jim, if you didn't want to go....I mean, getting blown up is a pretty good excuse for cutting out on a dinner."
"We didn't get blown up," Jim grumbled. "Anyway, this is a pretty big deal dinner, isn't it?"
Sandburg glanced away. "Yeah," he admitted.
A couple of the guests for the conference had arrived a day early to acclimate, and Jack was having them over for dinner. It was another parade of healthy, well-adjusted sentinels, apparently. Jim was reluctant to bail, though. Although Jack himself would never say so, some of Jack's colleagues were taking Jim's continued success and survival as proof of Jack's guiding theories. Canceling because Jim was overwhelmed by his job wouldn't look very good--especially since the guest list included someone McKay insisted on calling 'the enemy.' Jim wasn't looking forward to the meal, but he didn't want to bail. "It's a bunch of guides. How bad can it be?"
"And that doctor. Of course, on the bright side, you can abandon your paperwork ten minutes early."
By the time they'd stopped home to wash and change and retrieve the wine Blair had picked up to bring, the sky was overcast and smelled sweetly of rain.
McKay's car was parked in front of Jack's house, and Jim could hear Jack and Marcia in the back yard collecting herbs in the garden, so it was no surprise when John Sheppard opened the door.
Sandburg turned one of the wine bottles and brandished it where Sheppard could see. "See? I told you I could get it. Isobel owed me a favor."
The wines that appealed most to sentinel tastes often weren't the most expensive or hard to find--at least not until word got out that sentinels were interested in them. Some people saw sentinel demand as a sign of prestige, even though they couldn't taste what the fuss was all about themselves. Once word got out about an obscure or cheap vintage, it quickly became rare and expensive.
"Must have been some favor," Sheppard said. He handed off the bottles to an older, shorter, man standing behind him. "Jim, Blair, this is Al Calavicci, an old friend of mine from Connecticut."
"Nice to meet you," Sandburg said.
"Where's Rodney?" Jim asked. He wasn't sure he had ever seen them apart.
"In the back bedroom, finishing his visit with the doctor."
Jim frowned, certain he had misunderstood. "Surely he's not with a medical doctor by himself."
"After all these years, Sam can handle him for ten minutes alone." Sheppard shrugged and turned to lead the way into the living room.
Jim's jaw dropped. "And you just--" It hardly seemed possible. A year ago he would have easily believed that any guide could casually abandon a partner to the wolves like that, but now he was finding it hard to imagine John Sheppard doing that.
"What?" Sheppard asked. "Oh. No. This is the part where Sam asks him if there's anything he'd like to talk about with me out of the room. It's usual for Dr. Beckett--in case there is something embarrassing the client doesn't want to say in front of his guide. Or if he...wants to talk about the guide." He sighed suddenly and sagged onto the couch.
Calavicci laughed. "Right. Rodney's going to complain about you. Tell me another one."
Sheppard leaned his forearms on his knees. "I've been hovering for the last month. It's got to be getting on his nerves. I wouldn't blame him if it did. I just...."
"You and half the guides in the country," Calavicci said, sitting down beside him. "When we don't know what happened, we don't know it wont happen again. There's nothing you can do *but* hover."
Jim risked a glance at Sandburg, but Sandburg was looking miserably at the floor. They both knew exactly what had caused the mass sentinel seizures earlier that fall, but it didn't matter. What they knew was neither believable nor useful in any practical sense. Jim could just imagine what Sheppard would say if they tried to explain that the terrifying events that had twice put McKay in the hospital had been caused by psychic feedback leaking out of a spiritual plane a group of terrified and tortured sentinels had accessed while drugged.
No, that wouldn't go over well at all.
The doorbell rang. It was Joel. He had also stopped home to wash and change, although Jim could still catch a hint of the mayhem left over from lunchtime.
He'd brought a pair of cheesecakes, one chocolate and one raspberry. Jim could smell them through the prissy deli box. "You'd better put those in the fridge, of they won't make it till dinner," he laughed.
"Touch my cheesecakes, Ellison, and I'll run you in for vandalism."
"So we saw Stephen last week," Sandburg said, transparently trying for lighter conversation. "He's very excited about the latest plans for the roller coaster."
Sheppard's face lightened. "We're breaking ground at the end of March on phase one. Rodney is beside himself."
The back door slammed, and a moment later Joel came back from the kitchen with Jack and Marcia right behind him. Jim leaned down to shake Jack's hand, but, conscious of Marcia hovering so closely beside her guide, he didn't give into the temptation to let his hand linger so he could look Jack over carefully. Instead he politely turned to Marcia. She seemed to have an odd smell, and as he opened his mouth to say hello, the scent blossomed into an astonishing flavor. "Congratulations," he gasped. "I had no idea."
Her eyes widened and she stepped back, pulling her hand away.
"Uh, Jim," Joel said quickly, "I need to ask you about the Haskill case--"
"No idea about what?" Jack asked.
"About the baby," Jim said. The scent was subtle but unmistakable, and he'd never smelled it from someone he knew this well before.
Jack went suddenly very still. The temperature in the room seemed to drop, and Marcia turned to Jim with as much venom as he had ever seen from her. "You idiot," she said.
"Dear god," Jack whispered. He turned to Joel. "What the hell were you thinking? Do you even...do you even know what you've done?"
"Jack--" Marcia forgot about Jim and dropped to her knees beside Jack's chair. "Let's not do this now--"
He turned his head to look at her blankly. "Why? Is something else more important?" He turned back to Joel, who looked like he wanted to flee. "How could you be so stupid?"
"You're not being fair," Marcia protested weakly.
"What's going on," Rodney asked, coming in from the hall.
It was Calavicci who answered her: "Well, apparently Marcia is pregnant."
"No, she's not," Rodney said flatly. He turned to the sandy-haired man behind him, presumable the doctor. "She's not. Is she?"
The doctor's silence was answer enough.
"Shit," Rodney said.
Sheppard stood swiftly and put himself between Jack and Joel. "Let's go into the kitchen," he said quietly. "It's going to be all right. Jack--"
"John, he's killed her," Jack whispered brokenly.
"Sam, I could use some help here," Sheppard said. "Come on, Jack. We just need to think about this for a minute. No, Marcia. You wait here. He just needs a few minutes."
The three men slowly withdrew, Dr. Beckett pushing the chair and Sheppard awkwardly close with his arm around Jack's shoulders. The silence they left behind was awkward and painful.
It was McKay who broke it. "Well, you can't blame him, really," he said. "I mean, even if you weren't incredibly fragile, you're really too old to be pregnant. I mean, seriously, you've got to be forty-five."
Calavicci rolled his eyes. "Wow. That's about the most insensitive and tactless thing I've ever heard. How did you do that?"
"Marcia, I'm really sorry," Jim said. "I had no idea--"
She shook her head and blinked hard to banish the glitter of moisture in her eyes. "Forget it, Ellison. It was my tactical mistake. I underestimated your nose. Most of us wouldn't have been able to tell."
Joel put an arm around her waist and whispered in her ear. He had the same look he'd had earlier when he'd freaked about the bomb.
"No," Marcia said. "It's not true. He's thinking with statistical probabilities, not from my specific history. It isn't like forecasting the weather."
Jim didn't say anything out loud, but he did look at Sandburg. The bleak expression he saw didn't encourage him. Marcia had been doing very well for the last several months, but before that she'd been in serious trouble. The little package wasn't making many demands on her now, but in a few months it would be, and her body might not be up to it.
Out front, a car pulled up and parked. "Oh, goody," McKay said. "The enemy has arrived."
Calavicci opened his mouth and then shut it. If the sentinels inside could hear the arrival, the sentinel outside might hear what they were saying.
"Right. Okay," Sandburg said briskly. He made shooing motions at Joel and Marcia, chasing them into the dining room so they could collect themselves. He gently slapped Jim's shoulder and pointed toward the kitchen, took a deep breath, and headed resolutely for the front door.
It would do no good, of course. Jack's living room smelled like one of the interrogation rooms downtown. A sentinel couldn't possibly miss that something dramatic had gone down here.
Sighing inwardly, Jim went into the kitchen. Sheppard had pulled up a chair, seized both of Jack's hands and was speaking to him very softly: "--Pretend you don't know why she's doing this. You were the one who told me she never had much of a family. After all the things she's risked her life for, all the incredibly dangerous things she's done, of course, she'd take the risk for this chance."
"I can't face this," Jack whispered.
"You're her guide, not her owner. It's not your choice," Sheppard answered.
"You're being awfully hard, John," Beckett said. "In his place--"
"He doesn't need sympathy. Marcia's not dead yet. Although, if he gives up now, she'll be a lot closer to it."
"Jack?" Jim said unhappily. "I'm thinking maybe the rest of us should clear out...give you some time--"
"Why?" Jack asked hoarsely. "So we can fight it out in peace? No. No. Sam, hand me a paper towel." He took off his glasses and wiped his face.
TBC