Plain Sight

A/N: Hiya, folks! I realize (very apologetically) that it's been a while since I've posted. If you forgive me, please, please post a little review? Or let me know what you thought of this chapter. Or tell me that I suck monkey balls. I'm not picky. I really appreciate each and every one of them and read them several times over.

ddf


Chapter Four


In the photos in her file, James wore micro-minis and sexy little tops and dangerously high stilettos. Her hair was always perfectly coifed and her face glowing with tasteful makeup as she drank from glasses filled with something pink and fruity. This morning, she looked decidedly worse. The sea-crap green scrubs she wore didn’t do much for her figure, and the color brought out the bags under her eyes. Above the bags, her eyes shot daggers while she guzzled a third cup of scalding coffee. Jake had had a swallow of his, but hadn’t been able to stomach it. It tasted like battery acid, and he was amazed the stuff wasn’t eating holes in her coffee cup.

“Look, we’ve already been over this,” she said. “You can drop me off at work. You can pick me up at the end of the day. Hell, you can even come over for lunch if you want, and watch me eat whatever the sandwich guy brings. But you abso-fucking-lutely cannot hang around in the office all day. Doc Long is not going to let someone with a Glock strapped to his shoulder intimidate his patients. So you’re going to make yourself scarce, okay?”

“No.”

The man was really starting to irritate her.

“Seriously. What the fuck? Aren’t you working for me? Aren’t I your boss? Listen to me. You are not spending the day in the office with me. Got it?”

“No,” he said again. “James, the security in that building consists of a lock on the door. That’s it. There is no way I’m leaving you alone in that place. Anybody could walk in.”

“Yeah, that’s usually the practice at dentist’s offices. You know, in case anyone needs to have their teeth fixed, or whatever.” Jake the Fucker Anders might need his teeth fixed after this conversation, she decided. And she wouldn’t let him use her motherfucking employee discount, either.

“Look, it would be irresponsible of me to allow you to remain in that office by yourself, and I like to think I’m a fairly responsible person. It keeps my clients from getting shot.”

James’s lower jaw jutted suddenly out, and her lips disappeared into white, tense line.

“You’re a shithead,” she announced and let the subject drop.

He really was. It had been a low blow, he knew, saying that to a gunshot victim. He wondered if she ever had nightmares about it. He had seen the sleeping pills in the bathroom.

Well, as long as he didn’t find crack in her bathroom, necessitating him to check her into rehab, it really wasn’t any of his business. It just shouldn’t take anyone that much caffeine to get going in the morning. She would get an ulcer if she weren’t careful.

“Well, if you’re coming with me, you’d better get your goddamned jacket, because I’m leaving this apartment in two minutes, whether you’re ready or not.” She glared at him once more for good measure. Jake slipped on the jacket that matched his charcoal suit pants, pleased that the cut of it mostly hid the bulge of his shoulder holster.

She relaxed a little on the drive to work, so Jake could contemplate the mystery that was Fritzi James. A celebutante turned dental hygienist. The woman surprised him at every turn—especially since she had begun the necessary education before she had disappeared from the media’s sight.

Doctor Thomas Long, the dentist for whose private practice James worked, was in his mid-forties, and the buttons of his lab coat strained over his stomach. He clapped a meaty hand on Jake’s shoulder and almost knocked him over.

“Mm, now, where did you find this one? He’s pretty,” the dentist said with a slightly predatory smile. Jake really shouldn’t have been surprised. Of course James would work for a gay dentist. Of course her boss would hit on him. This assignment could not be over fast enough.

“Hey, Doc. Sorry about him. I tried to leave him at home, but he’s hard of hearing or stupid or something. I can make him wait in the car if you think he’s going to bother the patients.” With the way James was talking about him, Jake thought it sounded like she thought he ought to go back to obedience school.

“Bother the patients? Nah, he’ll be fine,” Doctor Long said with a careless wave. To Jake, he said, “Can I get you anything? A cup of coffee? If F.J. here is putting you up, you’ve probably been subjected to that swill she calls java. I can hook you up with something worth drinking, though.” Doctor Long smiled at him again. His teeth were very, very white against the black of his skin, and Jake found himself remembering several horror movies he’d seen about dentists. With the Doctor around, Jake probably could leave James here without worrying for her safety. He would stay anyway.

“Ten o’clock!” Gladys, the receptionist, chirped. “Time to open.” James heaved a sigh and unlocked the front door. Immediately, a man with a camera for a face filled the doorway, the flash stunning James. Jake pushed her away from the door and grabbed the camera.

“Sorry, no cameras allowed on the property,” he said, and removed the film. He shut the door in the door firmly in the man’s face.

“Fucking A. I’m so sorry, Doc, Gladys. You want me to go home? I’ll understand if you don’t want all this hoopla in your waiting room.” James looked at her boss, only the slight crease between her eyebrows hinting at her worry.

Then the phone starting ringing. Gladys had no more than said, “Doctor Long’s office. How may I help you?” when it rang again. And then again. Before five minutes had passed, Gladys had booked the Doctor through the week and well into the next month. Doctor Long looked, dazed, at James. The media had found a way to get to James—all they needed was a teeth cleaning.

“And leave me to deal with all these patients on my own? Think again, sweetheart. Now, get your cute little butt in back and get ready for Mrs. Donneman’s appointment. And you.” Doctor Long swung his gaze to Jake after James was out of hearing range. “Keep those assholes out of here. Anybody bothers that girl, and it’s your ass on the line, no matter how pretty I think you are.”

Jake nodded. That’s what he was paid to do. Mrs. Donneman, when she tottered in, scowled at him and told him to keep his pervy hands off of her when he asked if she had a camera he should know about. She was the scariest old lady he’d ever met.

The day passed fairly quietly, however. Only two patients caused trouble, the first being a woman who had a camera hidden in the pin on her blouse, and the second a man who asked so many questions about James that finally, Dr. Long asked if the man had come to get his teeth cleaned or talk to F.J. When the man had said he’d come to interview Fritzi, Dr. Long had personally thrown him out of the office.

It was the end of the workday that made Jake want to hit something—or somebody.

After Doc Long had seen his last patient, and Gladys had gone home for the evening, Jake said, “I’m going to put my arm around you so I can get you past the crowd. Okay?”

Pleased that he had remembered her aversion to being touched, James nodded and put on her coat.

“Ready?” Jake asked? When she nodded again, he took her shoulder and ducking, ran them both to her car, parked in the parking lot behind the office. They were jostled and shouted at, but that was to be expected. James held together really well until a reporter shouted, “Hey, Fritzi, how come you’ve never visited your boyfriend’s gravesite?”

Jake shoved the man out of their way, forcibly pulled the stunned James with him, and managed to get her into the car.

James remained silent, for most of the ride back to her apartment. Jake worried a bit about her. Her eyes were huge and unfocused, and her jaw was clenched so tight, he could see the veins in her temple disappearing into her hairline. He’d never seen anyone sit so straight and still.

When they arrived at her apartment complex—the reporters thankfully held at bay by the new security system around the perimeter of the property—Jake reached over to undo James’s seatbelt.

“Don’t you fucking touch me. Don’t lay one goddamned, motherfucking finger on me, or so help me god, I’ll break it.”

Jake pulled back, shocked more by the cool calm of her voice than the words. He watched in silence as she stalked into the building with her head held high.

*****

It was snowing. That was Jake’s first thought, when he followed James into the apartment not five minutes later. Her kitchen was snowing.

It wasn’t snowing, of course. Flour drifted lazily to coat every surface in clingy white as James cussed over the spilled bag. She brushed flour out her hair with one hand, while she barked at the phone in the other.

“Christ with a corndog, Ella, I can’t even believe that cocksucker. Motherfucking moron. Amazing he can even find the power button to that goddamned camera.”

A mixing bowl slammed onto the counter with a force that had Jake wincing. James scooped spilled flour from the counter with both hands and dumped it in the bowl. Then, with a muttered, “What the fuck?” she dropped in another handful. Eggs, butter, and something else that smelled followed. Within moments, the entire concoction was set aside with a towel on top.

James turned on Jake.

“Stop staring at me and make yourself useful. The oven needs to be preheated to 350. Now!” she said when he stood silent for another quarter second. Jake hurried to do her bidding, simply because he was too befuddled to do otherwise.

James continued, “And then that shitty excuse for a pile of crap asked if I’d been to Rand’s gravesite. Can you even believe it? I can’t even wrap my head around the gargantuan idiocy of that!”

Jake felt a moment of panic, wondering the best way to respond to an enraged woman waving an electric mixer around her head—then he realized she was talking to Ella on the phone. She cocked a shoulder up to hold the cell phone to her ear and continued her wild baking spree. By the time the timer dinged, indicating the oven had sufficiently, James was impatiently waiting to slide in something doughy, something promisingly chocolaty in a cake pan, and a casserole made out of real ingredients—none of which were moldy or freezer burned. He had long since retreated to the far side of the kitchen table.

James plopped across from him, wiping sweat and flour on the back of her sleeve. He might have said she sighed, if the sound hadn’t sounded so disgusted.

“Um. Are you okay, or what?” he ventured.

James rolled her eyes and quirked a half-smile.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Butt-sucking bastard had no idea what he was talking about. Rand doesn’t even have a gravesite. He has a memorial. And I really don’t see the point in looking at a rock when his ashes are in his mom’s rec room.” She stood to answer the doorbell.

“I brought proper plates and silverware,” Ella announced cheerfully. By that, she apparently meant that her boyfriend Jim had the stuff.

An hour later, as he sat down to what smelled like a very edible meal that included fresh-baked bread, Jake still felt stricken. He looked at James, forcing more casserole on Jim—and then more yet—and marveled.