Set-up

by K Ryn

  "Yeah..." Jim croaked, still struggling to get his breath. "We've got to go after him, Simon. He knows... where Blair is... I'm sure of it."

  "You're not the only one, Looks like the guys in the van must have realized their mistake." Simon shifted his attention back to the phone. "Yeah this is Banks. I want an APB out on a Caucasian male, 6 feet 7 or 8, 290-310 pounds. Goes by the name of Little Boy... no known address... last seen at 17th and Concord. He's wanted in connection with the disappearance of Blair Sandburg."

  "Simon, tell them to be careful," Jim urged. "If they spook him, he'll hole up somewhere and we'll never find him."

  Simon nodded his head. "Do not approach, do not apprehend... if he's sighted, contact me at this number. And make sure that black van's still on the sheets. Whoever's driving it just took a shot at this guy. Read it back."

  Jim concentrated on taking some deep breaths. By the time Simon was finished he was ready to move again.

  "Well, this wasn't a complete waste," Simon sputtered. "At least we know he's strong enough to have carried Sandburg out of the warehouse."

  "We know he's the one who made the carving. And we've got something else." Jim picked up the ruined shards of what had once been a table knife and used it to pry a bullet out of a splintered wood door frame. He dropped it into the small plastic evidence bag that Simon pulled out of his pocket.

  "But no gun to match it against," Simon cautioned.

  "Not yet," Jim acknowledged, glancing back down the alley to where Little Boy had disappeared.

  "So where to now?" Simon asked as they headed back to the car. "You want to try Crazy Addy again? See if she'll change her mind?"

  "No... she's not going to budge on that decision. It's part of her code of honor."

  Jim leaned against the car and tried to gather his thoughts. The ticking clock in his head was louder than ever. Time... that's what they needed... and that's what they were running out of. Not knowing how badly Blair was hurt made it critical that they find him as soon as possible. And they weren't the only ones looking. The men in the van had to be professionals, otherwise they would have already cut and run. Their contract called for Blair's death, and without meaning to, he had led them right to the only person who knew where his partner was.

  Jim became aware of something painful sticking him in the right leg and dug in his pocket, pulling out the wooden toy. This was the only clue they had, and it told them nothing. Or did it? He stared at the carving as if seeing it for the first time. The wood was an odd color -- stained with streaks of orange. He held it to his nose and sniffed it, catching a faint scent of something citrusy.

  "Fruit... This was made out of wood from a fruit crate."

  Simon looked at him uncertainly.

  "There's a wholesale warehouse only a few blocks west of the foundry," Jim explained excitedly. "It's the only one in the area. That must be where he gets the wood."

  "You think he lives near there?"

  "Maybe... close by at any rate. At least it gives us a point of reference."

  Jim reached into the car and pulled out a city map. He made a mark at the point of the warehouse, another where the wholesaler was located and a third one at the "park". He connected the lines, forming a small triangle. "Somewhere in here... that's where he lives."

  "That still gives us over a dozen blocks and god knows, how many buildings to search. It's going to take some time. How sure are you about this?"

  "Most of the street people have their own fixed areas, like Addy. I'm betting that Little Boy's turf is even more limited. He comes to the 'park' everyday at the same time. We'll check out the wholesaler and find out when they dump their crates. He probably stops there when no one's around. Remember, Addy said he was shy."

  Jim eyed the map again and nodded, convinced he was on the right track. "Somewhere in the middle of this is where we'll find him. And Blair."

  "Wake up..."

  Run... They're coming...

  "We have to find a safe place..."

  The owner of the fruit wholesaler was puzzled by their questions, but eager to help. There was such a supply of the crates that they were broken up daily and dumped into a dumpster behind the building, where a trucking company picked them up every morning. A quick call gave them the time.

  "They're the truck's ninth stop," Simon reported. "Usually between 5:00 and 5:30."

  "And the wholesaler closes by seven," Jim glanced at his watch, grimacing when he saw the time. It was nearly 4:00 pm.

  "We've got time to join the search teams. We can check out some of the buildings and then get back here for surveillance later," Simon offered quietly, seeing the anxious look in Jim's eyes.

  Jim nodded, his face a tight mask. He shifted in the seat and gazed out the window as Simon drove. Neither spoke, but both of their minds were filled with troubling thoughts. Jim's screamed at him that time was slipping away. Blair had been wounded nearly twelve hours earlier. The gunshot wound could become infected in that time -- an infection that could kill him if left untreated much longer. If he wasn't already bleeding to death, and if the gunmen didn't find him first. Just hang on, Chief, he found himself praying.Just hang on a little longer.

  Hanging on was exactly what Blair was doing. He clutched desperately at the huge man that dragged him deeper into the dark building, trying to stay on his feet as everything spun around him.Run... they're coming... Pain... falling... no... Jim, where's Jim?... find him... Pain... it hurts... wait...

  "Wait!" he gasped, frantic to make the giant of a man stop for just a moment. His words were lost in the groan of pain that tore from his throat as his injured shoulder was jostled.

  "Be safe." murmured Little Boy. He maneuvered Blair through a doorway and into a small, dark storeroom. "Be quiet. No one find."

  "No..." A screaming voice inside his head insisted that was the wrong choice.Jim, where's Jim?... find him...

  "Be quiet. No one find." Little Boy repeated, lowering Blair to the floor.

  "No... My friends... they'll... be looking..."

  "Bad men looking. Jim looking..."

  "Jim..." Blair whispered his friend's name in confusion, his head pounding so hard it was difficult to even focus on one thought at a time. He groaned again in objection as the man pulled from his grip.

  "Wait... Jim... he's... my friend..."

  "Jim bad. He hurt you," Little Boy argued, shaking his head. "You told me."

  "No..." Blair shook his head, closing his eyes to try to still the spinning of the room. But that only made it worse.

  "Little Boy help. No one find you here."

  "Please..." Blair pleaded. "You don't... understand... Jim... is my friend... he's a... detective... a policeman... he can help... we need... to find him..."

  "No police," Little Boy said abruptly, his arms waving in distress.

  Blair shuddered as another wave of pain rippled through him. "Jim won't... hurt you..."

  "You stay here. Be safe." Little Boy moved to the doorway. "You be quiet. Be safe."

  "No... no don't..." Blair cried out, panicked at the thought of being closed in the room. "Don't... shut... the door..." His plea fell on deaf ears and he watched the door closing, the room immediately growing darker. Fear drove Blair to try to rise again. Pain stabbed through him and he collapsed on the floor.

  "Please... don't... don't... leave... me here..."

  Falling... Falling forever...

  When Blair woke again, he shivered with feverish chills. His mind was foggy and his world full of pain. He lay in the darkness, barely able to keep his eyes open for longer than a few moments at a time. Dazed as his mind was, there was a part of it that kept screaming at him to keep awake, to move.

  Jim... have to find... Jim... The urgency of the sending drove him to try again. He began to crawl, dragging himself toward the door.

  He managed to move a few feet before the whirling in his head pushed him into blackness once more. When he found himself awake, he tried again. His efforts to reach th
e door became a living nightmare of pain and inky nothingness. Pulling himself up to grasp the knob was an exercise in agony and he cried out in relief when his fingers finally wrapped around it.

  Relief fled when he tried to push it open. Sobbing in frustration, he battered his fists against the door, but it refused to move.

  "No!" he protested, dropping heavily to lean against the wall. "Let me... out of here..."

  His right hand dropped to the floor and he felt a length of metal pipe under his fingers. In a fit of anger, he picked it up and banged it against the door. He shivered again, feeling the draining effects of his rising fever. Struggling to fight off the tide of blackness that threatened to sweep him away, he gripped the pipe tighter.

  The Sentinel stood at the edge of the rooftop, staring out into the falling darkness. He swayed in exhaustion and the glimmer of lights twinkling from the city around him blurred as he lost his focus. But he refused to give up. Closing his eyes he searched with his hearing, desperately seeking the presence of his Guide. He was out there somewhere, and it was his duty to find him. To protect him. Without him he could not protect the tribe. Without him he could not be whole.

  "Jim?"

  Concentrate... sift through the sounds... find the heartbeat of the Guide...

  "Jim, snap out of it..."

  Find your soul...

  "JIM!"

  Simon grabbed his friend and shook him hard, snapping Jim's head back and forcing him to turn around. He felt Jim gasp, drawing a shuddering breath into lungs that were starved for oxygen. Simon watched anxiously, cursing himself for not recognizing the signs of a zone-out. Sandburg had explained it, how many times?

  "Jim, are you all right?"

  Jim's eyes locked onto his. Simon's breath caught in his throat at the glimpse of something ancient and fierce in his friend's icy blue stare. Then Jim blinked and it was gone, replaced by a look of utter weariness and emotional pain.

  "Simon..." Jim rubbed his eyes, forcing himself back into the present. "Anything?"

  "No sign of him yet. The teams are still out, but it's slow going."

  Jim nodded and glanced out over the city. It was full dark now and the lights glittered almost mockingly. He shook himself, pushing back his fears, concentrating on the job at hand.

  "Any sign of Little Boy?"

  Simon shook his head. "I've got a squad on surveillance at the wholesaler. They'll call us the minute they see anything." He eyed Jim worriedly and stared out over the city himself.

  Simon had lost track of how many buildings they'd searched. How many cups of bitter coffee he'd drunk trying to stay on his feet. Trying to keep up with Jim, who plunged on like a man possessed. Well, that was true, wasn't it? He was a man possessed. The look he'd seen in Jim's eyes... it was far beyond the anguish of a cop who'd lost his partner, or a man who'd lost his friend. It was...

  Simon found himself at a loss for words of explanation. He glanced back at Jim, his eyes narrowing in concentration as he tried to understand the connection between Jim and Blair. He still found it almost impossible to believe that the lone-wolf detective had formed an attachment to such an unlikely partner. Of course, there was more to it, if he could believe even half of what Sandburg had told him. The Sentinel and the Guide. An ancient bonding.

  Simon shook off the mystical implications and returned to the concrete world that he knew best.

  "Forensics matched the drug in the dart you found on the roof, to traces in your blood sample. The guys who took you out in the garage are the same ones that are after Sandburg. We've got that connection made. And Taggart's made some progress on Delvenko."

  Jim turned to look at him, his face hard and his eyes fiercely probing.

  "Turns out he's had three repeat visitors over the past month. His lawyer and two others. Joel's trying to match up the security camera shots from the prison with the mug books. If we're lucky we'll get a positive make on one of them."

  Jim nodded, waiting silently for Simon to continue.

  "He discovered something else. When he went to log in the drugs they found in your loft he came up with a surprise. Turns out two of the bags match a load that we took in about three months ago on another case. Same packaging, same sample match."

  "It came out of evidence lock-up?"

  "Looks like we've got a problem on the inside." Simon's face grew hard. "I knew Delvenko had connections, but inside my own squadroom?"

  "That explains why the frame is so tight." Jim's jaw was clenched so hard in anger that he could barely get out the words. "It also explains why the guys in the van showed up when they did. Someone tipped them off that the man in the morgue wasn't Sandburg. Someone on the side... someone I know..."

  His voice trailed off ominously. Simon grabbed his arm.

  "Due process," he said firmly, forcing himself not to flinch when Jim's icy stare turned his way. "No matter who it is, they're entitled to their day in court, Jim. You swore an oath, remember? 'To serve and protect...'"

  "That's a cop's oath," Jim retorted. "It doesn't apply..."

  "It doesn't apply to who?" Simon interrupted him angrily. "To Sentinels? If what I remember Sandburg babbling about is accurate, it applies to Sentinels even more."

  "Simon... you can't expect me to let whoever did this walk away," Jim objected, his voice strained with the emotions he was struggling to hold in check. "They've hurt him... God, they're still trying to kill him! What if I can't find him? What if I can't stop it?"

  "They won't walk away and we will stop it."

  "What if we can't?" Jim whispered, glancing away. "What if he's already dead?"

  "Wouldn't you know? As connected as you two are, wouldn't you feel it if he was dead?"

  "I don't know," Jim admitted softly. "I seems impossible that I wouldn't know... know that I'd failed."

  Simon's hand gripped Jim's shoulder in a gesture of comfort, then he turned his friend toward the stairs. "No one's failed yet. Come on. We've got to keep looking."

  The pipe was almost too heavy to lift again, but Blair forced himself to raise it, smashing it against the door with what little strength he had left. The darkness of the room matched the vacuum in his mind. Time had ceased to have any meaning except for the unending period between the ringing of the metal as it struck and his next rasping breath.

  "Jim, where are you?" Simon called into the headset.

  "Just starting on the third level," Jim responded, shining a flashlight over the darkened expanse of yet another warehouse floor.

  "Meet me downstairs. Little Boy's been spotted."

  Fifteen minutes later, they pulled up behind the unmarked squad car that was on stake-out at the wholesaler. Jim eased quietly from Simon's car and focused his hearing toward the back of the building. He caught the distinct sound of a hammer drawing out bent nails. One heartbeat. "He's there, and he's alone."

  "All right, I'll circle left, you go right..."

  "No, Simon," Jim objected. "We can't take the chance of scaring him off. We'll have to follow him and hope he leads us to Sandburg."

  "Jim, we don't even know if he'll head back to wherever he's got him stashed. We're running out of..."

  "Time. I know," Jim agreed quietly, breaking off as he cocked his head, listening intently. "He's moving... that direction."

  Jim pointed -- straight into the heart of the area that they'd been searching. He turned his head and his pleading gaze locked with Simon's troubled one. Finally, Simon nodded. Reaching into his car he pulled out Jim's gun and badge and handed them to the detective.

  "Go. Stay in touch. I've got the medics on standby."

  Jim pocketed his shield and holstered his gun, raising his eyes to meet Simon's steady gaze again.

  "Go," Simon ordered, "Find him."

  His unspoken thanks shining in his eyes, Jim nodded once, then disappeared into the shadows.

  The air rattled in his lungs as Blair struggled to draw another breath. His whole body felt numb and he had to look down to make sure he still
held the pipe. How long had it been since he'd raised it? He seemed to remember the ring of metal hitting metal, but he knew his mind was playing tricks on him. Maybe he'd never really lifted it at all. It was odd, but even the pain seemed like it was gone now. Maybe he wasn't really even here. Maybe he was at home, asleep in his bed in the loft. Maybe he'd wake and find this was just a bad dream.

  He wished he could wake up. He'd like to see Jim, make sure he was all right. Maybe Jim would come and rouse him. He'd done that before when Blair had had nightmares after he'd nearly overdosed on the Golden. After Lash. After...

  Yeah, Jim would wake him up and this would be all over.

  All he had to do was make some noise.

  Blair glanced down at the pipe in his hands.

  Jim eased around the corner of a dilapidated warehouse and then jerked backward as he saw Little Boy stop and turn in his direction. Breathing hard, Jim struggled to focus his senses, but his own exhaustion was eating at his control.

  "He's stopped again," Jim reported to Simon over the headset. "He's at the back side of the old packing plant."

  Jim closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on his hearing, filtering out the underlying current of city noises and focusing on Little Boy's breathing as a means of establishing his position. He'd been following the big man for hours and Jim was beginning to lose hope. Little Boys' path had been erratic, zig-zagging back and forth from one building or trash bin, to another. He was still headed into the area that they'd been searching, but he moved slowly -- too slowly to suit Jim. Now he was investigating still another dumpster set close to the rear door of the abandoned three-story building.

  The sounding of a fog horn from the bay diverted his concentration for a moment and when he tried to focus back on Little Boy's breathing, he suddenly realized that he'd lost it. Alarmed, he ran to where he'd last seen the big man and looked around in panic. Nothing.

  "I lost him, Simon," Jim gasped into the headset. "He was right in front of me a moment ago, and now he's gone."