Braided Lives

by AR Moler

  Did the man ever turn more toward the headlights?

  Concentrate on that one second." Matt's fingers clenched a little at the blanket. Jennifer could tell he was hovering on the edge of a dark place, someplace his memory didn't really want to go. She waited, giving him a little time to calm.

  "Did you see what happened to Chris Peake?" she asked. That was a tipping point. She was suddenly slammed by a tidal wave of vicious images and emotions. Chris Peake had been a few steps away from Matt, and they had looked at each other as they approached the first car. The gunman had turned in their direction and pulled a gun from near his waist. Matt's gun was already out and he was shouting, "Freeze! This is the Nevada Highway Patrol." The gunman fired and the first shot hit Matt in the chest. Things became more chaotic and the memory swirled. There were more shots and Matt had seen Peake go down too as another person from the second car ran in their direction.

  Matt was lying on the ground at this point, having been struck by several shots. Memory deteriorated further, clouded by pain and shock. Bullet impacts were played and replayed over top of visual images of feet and some snippets of voices. She heard "Is … dead…

  yeah or soon… his face," followed by, "Is he still breathing?" And, "Yeah I think." The voices had to have belonged to gunmen. "Take... useful... otherwise... can dump." It was kind of like bad cell phone reception, cutting in and out. There were noises and the soft sounds of footsteps on sand. Matt's vision was tunneling down to minimal at this point, but his panic level was spiking.

  He was certain he was dying...

  The sharp chirp of the heart monitor had apparently attracted the attention of one of the nurses. Jennifer jerked back to normal reality to see a woman checking on Matt. "Calm down, honey. You're okay," soothed the nurse patting her hand gently on Matt's arm. The woman shot an angry glare at Jennifer.

  Jennifer made herself take a deep breath. Her own heart rate was pounding hard enough to actually hurt.

  The harsh traumatic memories were still clawing at the edge of Matt's thoughts and she had a choking sensation that made her want to start screaming.

  In another instant, Danny was kneeling beside her, a hand on her shoulder. She wrenched away and stumbled up from the stool to the corner of the cubicle.

  "Do not touch me!" she snapped. She slid down the wall, pencil and pad clutched in her grip and began to draw. Core dump. Her eyes didn't really even register what she drew. It just poured out, replicating every image Matt had seen.

  When her hand finally slowed, she had filled eight pages. She looked up. Danny was now the one sitting on the stool. He wore an expression of deep worry as he watched her. Their eyes met.

  "Are you all right?" he asked. It wasn't a question she really wanted to answer, so she evaded it.

  "I'm almost done. Give me a few minutes to pull all this into a composite," she said. Slowly, she began to flip back through the pages and pick out the individual details for the first gunman, copying them into a very specific overall picture. She even had a very vague sketch for the second assailant, a black male of stocky build.

  When she was finished, she stood up. "I… usually only give just the composite to the police, because it's too hard to explain where the rest of the information comes from. What do you want me to do this time?" she asked Danny.

  "You can stick with the same plan for the moment."

  "I have a description of the second shooter, but it's not so great. As best as I can tell, Chris Peake was still alive at the time of the shooting and there seemed to be a plan to take him along, I'm guessing to use as a hostage.

  Although based on a few things Matt partially overheard, I think the backup idea was to ditch the body if he died."

  "So there's a chance Peake might still be alive…"

  Danny said.

  "Maybe. We have no idea how badly hurt he may have been." She turned to Matt. "I have a picture to show you, if you could give me a thumb up or down on whether I got it right." The injured man gave her a stressed look. She showed him the picture. Thumb up.

  The absolutely haunted look in his eyes told her that she was spot on.

  "Thanks, Matt. You've been incredibly helpful. I know it was really hard. This will improve the chances of them catching this man and hopefully finding your friend."

  As she was walking out of the ICU cubicle, Danny said. "I, however, do want to see the other stuff you drew." Jennifer handed him the sketch pad.

  ***

  Adair was awfully startled when Danny gave him the composite. "The guy can't talk at all. How did you…?"

  "Ms. Sebastiano has some unusual methods and I'm afraid that's all you have clearance for me to tell you. If you have doubts, please feel free to talk to Agent Hayes from the FBI. He's aware that the Baltimore field office has used Ms. Sebastiano with great success on several cases," said Danny. He glanced at Jennifer, who was putting her sketch pad and pencils back into her bag. He was worried about her. She had been adamant about not letting him touch her. Her shields were slammed down hard and tight, but her body language screamed tension.

  He thought she would benefit from a hug, but obviously she didn't think so.

  "We're not leaving Vegas until tomorrow. I'll check back with you in the morning and see if you've made any progress." Danny crooked a finger at Jennifer and she followed him out of the hospital. It was after seven and with the flight, it had been a long day.

  In the car driving back to the hotel, Jennifer was unusually quiet. Danny was frustrated and still deeply concerned.

  "Talk to me, Jen. Make me believe you're okay," he prompted.

  "I'm fine."

  "Bullshit."

  "Danny…" she began. He could tell she was trying to rein in her temper. "It's often this way. If the victim was traumatized, especially if it was bad, I get to see it all. In excruciatingly up close and personal detail of what they went through. Every emotion, every terror, just everything. It takes me a while to… get it out of my head, sometimes a couple of days."

  "Is going to the hotel okay? Or do you want to go somewhere as far from people as we can get?" he asked.

  "The hotel's fine. Where are we staying?"

  "The Luxor. The accounting department can chew my ass later."

  ***

  Danny wished Peter was with them. He was still worried about Jennifer. They'd checked into the hotel, just one room. There didn't seem to be much point in separate rooms, and now he was leery of letting Jen out of his sight. She was acting strangely. She had shoved her sketching stuff into a drawer and taken a big plastic box of washable markers out of her suitcase, leaving them on the desk top. She'd drifted around the room, touching things. Not him, just things, specifically the window and the mirrored front to the closet and bathroom mirror. This was getting slightly creepy. She kept a distance of several feet between them. "Are you tired?" he asked.

  "Yes."

  "Come to bed. I'll hold you," he offered.

  "No." She yanked back the blankets of the second bed and lay down, facing away from him. Now he was definitely worried. Even when she had been uncertain about sharing sex with him and Peter, she'd never been so brutally distant. Her shields were still in full force as well. He could try to force the issue, but he wondered if that would make the situation worse. Eventually, he stretched out on the bed he was sitting on and tried to sleep.

  An hour later, movement from Jennifer woke him.

  She was pulling the markers from the box.

  "Jen?" he called softly. There was no response. For a moment he thought she was pointedly ignoring him, but there was something odd and jerky about her motions.

  She pushed back the curtains and began to run her fingers over the glass, in little stroking motions. After a minute or so she began to draw.

  Danny debated trying to talk to her, but there was an absolutely vacant expression on her face. He finally decided she was either sleep walking or in some sort of fugue state. She wasn't doing anything that would put her in physical
danger, so he watched. The scene she drew was absolutely surreal. There were feet and hands and guns and miles and miles of what could only be blood based on the bright red markers she used.

  Distorted faces grimaced and leered. To Danny, the whole thing was reminiscent of Edvard Munch meets Clive Barker: graphic, gory, distorted and just plain disturbing.

  Eventually she finished, letting the markers fall to the floor. She sank to her knees, head bowed and began to make little snuffling sobs. Danny had had enough. He got out of bed and went to her. He scooped her up in his arms and carried her to bed. She made no move to push him away or fight him. He tucked her beneath the blankets and crawled in beside her. He held her for a long time while she snuggled into his embrace and continued the broken little not-quite-sobs. After another hour or so her body relaxed and she slept. Danny wasn't sure she had ever actually woken up and he didn't know if that was good or bad.

  ***

  Get up, pee, clean up the mess. Jennifer slipped out of bed and, regretfully, away from the comforting warmth of Danny's body. She had no memory of getting in bed with him, but then, she seldom remembered the "afters." Returning from the bathroom, she paused for a moment to actually look at what she had drawn on the window. It was neither better nor worse than some other ones.

  "Why the window?" Danny asked. She turned to see him sitting up in bed. He must have woken while she was in the bathroom.

  "Because I got tired of having to repaint my walls."

  "Huh?" Danny looked confused.

  "Remember that I've been doing this for several years. When I first started, I'd wake up in the morning and I had downloaded all the crap in my brain onto the walls of my house, any flat vertical surface. As you can see, it's not real pleasant stuff," she explained.

  "Is this what you saw in Sawari's head? It doesn't match the stuff you drew at the hospital."

  "I was conscious, he was conscious. These are his nightmares. Deep, subconscious imagery of his trauma."

  "Okay, back to why the window?" he asked.

  "After having to repaint the interior of my house three times, I hit up a friend who does hypnotherapy. I got her to plant post-hypnotic suggestions to find glass to draw on. Windows, mirrors, tile in a pinch, something I can clean up without too big a hassle. At home I have an eight foot square sheet of glass mounted on my bedroom wall, and there's always a bucket of markers handy."

  "Does it always happen when you sketch for someone?"

  "No guarantees, but generally," said Jennifer.

  "Is there anything that can stop it? Did you talk to Stephen Benford?"

  "I tried tranquilizers a couple times. That was God awful. I couldn't get it out of my head and I started hallucinating. So basically I just let it happen. And yes, before you start questioning my sanity, I did talk to Benford about it. He seemed to think I was better off just processing it and getting rid of it."

  Danny held out his arms to her. "Does touching you before you get it all out of your head make it worse?"

  Jennifer was about to say yes, but then it occurred to her that anybody who she'd interacted with before was probably headblind. Did it make a difference if they weren't?

  "I'm not sure. I guess I'm guilty of the psi stereotype; I have a tendency to avoid touching most people anyway. The few people I've shaken hands with after sketching jobs… it hurt. I can only guess I was so overloaded that any extra input was just dumping gasoline on the fire. But…"

  "But what?" he pressed.

  "I've never… It's never been another psi. It's never been a lover. Okay, I've had some boyfriends, and it's not like I was ever a long term celibate, but I've always tended to avoid mixing that part of my life with them,"

  she finished. She padded slowly back toward the bed.

  "I'm sorry if I hurt you."

  "I'm not hurt. I'm just worried. Everybody operates differently. If you can't handle physical contact in the immediate hours after plowing through somebody's trauma, then that's life. I just know me. When someone I care about is stressed or upset, it pegs my empathic talents and I just want to hold them or offer some kind of comfort."

  She sat on the bed beside him and leaned into his embrace. "Truly, I don't know if I'd let you hold me there at the hospital if it would have helped or just made it all worse." She cupped her hands against the sides of his face. "Right now, though, I could do with some touch time." She kissed him softly.

  Jennifer was still mostly clothed, having never bothered to undress the night before. Danny slowly stripped her naked and tossed his briefs on the floor with the rest of the clothes. Beneath the blankets, he folded her in his arms and held her against his body. Jen wasn't all that short, but cuddling up to Danny always made her feel petite and protected.

  His hands roamed down her back as he planted a litany of gentle kisses on her mouth and throat and shoulders. His fingers stopped at the base of her spine and made a slow teasing circle. That motion sent flutters of arousal through her lower body and she arched into the touch. Her breasts pressed against the firm sculpted planes of Danny's chest. Lord, he was built like an old Renaissance Master's wet dream.

  Jen's fingertips traced Danny's collar bones to the shallow dip at the base of his throat. She kissed the little hollow softly, and then brushed her lips lower to follow the center line of his chest down to his belly. Soft curls trailed from his belly button downward and his cock jutted stiffly up to lay against them. With the tip of her tongue, she licked along the flat angle of his hip bone.

  His breath hitched and his hands tangled in her long loose hair. His desire for her was flaming from want to need, and she could feel his emotions crawling through her veins as little flits of memories of previous love making wafted past.

  Danny hooked his hands under her arms and pulled her back up the length of his body. "Want you so bad,"

  he murmured, and kissed her mouth. It took a minute to dig a condom from the open suitcase beside the bed. As Jen's hand rolled the condom down, her mind provided the quirky thought that that body part was proportional to the rest Danny's six foot four muscular frame.

  "I'm glad you like the package," Danny teased.

  "I like Peter's, too," she taunted in return.

  "Mmm, so do I."

  Jen moaned as he filled her, and her fingers dug into his flanks when he thrust into her. The stretch of her body around him triggered all sorts of brain-melting pleasure. His teeth nibbled at her ear and his breath was a heavy pant.

  "Love you," he gasped. She could feel the toe-curling deluge of ecstasy hovering. His mouth burned a path of soft fire down the side of her neck and she came in hard pulsing washes. Danny made a faint whining groan and she felt the bright flood of his climax as he pounded into her with total loss of control.

  He laid sprawled half on her and half on the bed, sucking in sharp gasps for several seconds as she lay too blissed out to move.

  After a while, he said, "At some point we're actually going to have to get out of bed."

  "Later…when my legs work."

  ***

  Danny was impressed by the fact that Jennifer had packed a roll of paper towels in her suitcase. That and a tiny bottle of shampoo made for fairly easy cleaning of the pictures she had drawn on the window; it took only fifteen minutes or so. He was getting ready to take a shower when his cell phone rang. "Valentine."

  "Agent Valentine, this is Randall Adair. I wanted to give you an update. We located Chris Peake. They found him in the trunk of a suspect's car, shot three times. He was taken straight to surgery and they say he's in critical condition."

  "Will he make it?" asked Danny.

  "I don't know. From what little the hospital has told us, it's iffy."

  "Is there anything I can do for you?"

  "You've already helped far more than the department ever hoped. We really expected to find just a body, if we found Peake at all," admitted Adair. "Thank you."

  "You're welcome. Could I ask you to drop me an email in a few days and let me kno
w how it goes?"

  Danny asked.

  "Of course."

  ***

  The flight out of Las Vegas left in the early afternoon and was scheduled to connect through Atlanta back to Norfolk. Jennifer walked down the concourse toward the gate in McCarran airport. Danny strode along beside her. "I hope Chris Peake makes it," she said. "Did Adair give any indication what kind of injuries he had?"

  "Only that Peake had been shot three times. I'm sure the two days he spent without any medical care didn't help."

  Jennifer detected a snippet image of Danny staring down at his own arm as it bled from a bullet wound. "I guess it makes it all that much harder, having been on the receiving end of a gunshot wound."

  "Mmm, yeah."

  She slipped her hand into Danny's larger one.

  ***

  About two-thirds of the way into the first leg of the flight, the plane hit turbulence. It was bad enough that drinks got spilled and a couple of overhead storage doors popped open. Danny had flown on military transport flights a few times, so the actual rocking and shaking didn't bother him much. A large chunk of the passengers, though, ranged from uncomfortable to nearly terrified, and Danny was having a hard time shutting out their emotions. Maybe it was the fact that close to two hundred people were all packed into a situation that they had no control over, or maybe it was a combination of jet lag fatigue and his worry about Jennifer the night before. Danny rubbed his temples and tried to draw his shielding up tighter. The rattling and bouncing wasn't helping with his concentration or lack thereof. A couple of stomach lurching drops and the sheer fear from some of the people around him felt more like an assault on the inside of his head. "Danny? Danny? Are you okay?"

  It took a concerted effort to turn his head and focus his eyes on Jennifer. She was looking at him with a mixture of puzzlement and concern.

  "J-jus' too many scared p-people," he said. His tongue felt thick and when he reached out to lay a hand on her leg, his arm banged into the dividing arm rest.