“Your average bounced check would be routed to the bank it originates from, so you’d only really have a few days in one place before you were discovered. This guy’s been filing off the routing numbers, changing ‘em somehow – so cleanly and neatly that it’ll take a real sharp eye to notice. It’s all about the branch you’re cashing it in. A check cashed in at Chase Manhattan with the one changed to ten’s gonna bounce halfway around the country before anyone figures out it’s rotten, and by that point this asshole is long gone. The numbers go East, Central, West – you see how they cover 0-60, 70-80, and of course they require a special kind of ink to be recognized as real checks, which you’d all know if you’d read the report I circulated …”
Juliet doesn’t notice the full cup of orange juice in front of her until it’s too late.
Her head’s still full of Carlton’s two hour long briefing this morning, during which she learned more about check fraud than she’d have ever thought a single person could in one lifespan. Certainly not Juliet, who’d originally studied literature at Florida State. Then again, back then she’d have never expected to end up an FBI agent, either.
Then there’s the wired, tense feeling in her gut that probably won’t go away ‘til this sting is over and they bring in the pathetic local guy Carlton’s been tracking for the last week. His MO is pretty girls in pastel dresses, which made Juliet the right man – woman – for the job. At least maybe doing this’ll help the guys in the office take her seriously as a field agent. And, well … she does love a nice peachy pink cardigan. The color goes well with her complexion.
“This idiot’s no real con man, he’s just a clown who can’t be bothered to work an honest job. Child’s play compared to the real thing.” Carlton tends to pause here, angry that he’s got to acknowledge it like that – the real thing. “You know what they’ve been calling him in the papers these days?”
Him. Always him. They don’t have a name on the subject yet, despite over a million cashed in fraudulent checks. Juliet hums and nods so her partner feels acknowledged.
“The skywayman. Pathetic. Like he’s some magician or something, instead of a two-bit liar who thinks he’s smarter than me.”
“This isn’t personal, Carlton,” Juliet says tiredly. “It’s not like he knows who you are to be deliberately toying with you.”
“Oh yes he is. I know he is. I know him.”
Her hands aren’t quite shaking, because that would be stupid; this guy, their local guy, shouldn’t have a gun on him, and if he does he’s not the type to shoot a woman. Juliet focuses on the paper in front of her and tucks a lock of her hair behind one ear. A window of ten minutes – that’s what Carlton said. Unlike Carlton’s unsub nemesis, they know plenty about this one. He’ll come in, dressed like the middle-aged schlub he is, loose tie probably, gray slacks, thinning hair. He’ll notice her, buy her a soda she’ll accept with a faulty check and then pick her pocket for the cash. The string of pearls at her neck makes her a sweet college girl whose parents have money. She mentally forces herself to stop chewing her lip and instead moves her right hand down to her lap, where she can pick at her nail polish without anyone seeing.
“Well, obviously we wanna catch him,” Agent Dobson says, when they’re a third of the way through the morning briefing and half the room is asleep or dreaming of lunch. Juliet, of course, has been furiously taking notes. He means the Skywayman; he means the real thing. “But you gotta admit, Lassiter, there is a bit of a magic show to a good con, isn’t there? The press has that one thing right.”
“It’s not magic. It’s lies and deceit and a healthy helping of audacity, and a damn good typewriter. O’Hara, write that down. We’re gonna go through that list of makes and models again, see what we can come up with.”
Deep breath. Her purse, orange to match the cardigan, is in her lap. The gun’s in the purse. She’ll draw it, but not to shoot. This is the kind of work she’s begged the Chief for, and she’ll be just fine.
Maybe Juliet would feel less desperate to prove herself if this diner wasn’t in Miami, and her father didn’t gift her the only string of pearls she owns.
A voice clears itself quietly above her.
“Uh, excuse me? Hi, yeah, hi. That’s my seat.”
This is not their guy, is the first thing Juliet thinks when she looks up.
Their guy is in his fifties and probably has very little self respect. This one – well, he’d barely qualify as a man. At most one or two years older than her, even has a half-open book bag hanging from his shoulder that could’ve been dragged from the morning lecture he ran out of an hour ago. He has thick dark hair, a broad mouth that flicks sharply between sweet and irreverent, hazel eyes (clever, almost too much), big nose, and an oxymoronic hunch to his posture, like he’s both slouching and ready to spring into action, mousetrap style, any second. He's just broad enough to be lean instead of scrawny and while he's taller than her he’s certainly not tall. The polo shirt he’s wearing beneath what appears to be a school uniform vest — the sewn on school logo is obscured by the strap of his bag — is a horrible shade of green.
Juliet doesn’t see him through a detective's eyes, though. How Juliet absorbs the boy hovering above her seat in a full body reaction that has nothing to do with her job or her observational training or even her common sense.
Cute.
Oh, he’s cute.
Second, and too belated for it to be a show of good instincts: sh*t, he’s blocking my view of the door.
“I don’t see a reservation,” Juliet says, a beat too late.
“Or my full glass of juice, apparently,” says the guy, so promptly that it more than makes up for Juliet’s delay.
Seriously? She raises her eyebrows. “Are you one of those weirdo compulsives who comes to the same place at the same time every day and orders the same thing?”
His mouth twitches and his eyes flick to the ceiling. Juliet would be offended if he didn’t skip cleanly over a true scoff of irritation, instead giving her a quick, wide grin and saying, “No. I went outside to grab a paper.” He holds this up for her viewing pleasure. “See, I ordered the juice – there – and even got started on this little paper crawly snake out of the straw wrapper, which you’re more than welcome to continue if you think you’re up to the job.” He pauses, tilting his head. “Are you?”
“I’m so sorry,” Juliet says. The part of her that’s getting sick of her mother’s increasingly concerned probes into her dating life is genuinely regretful. The part of her that’s yearning to get laid … even more so. “But I really can’t talk right now.”
“Were we talking?” He hums, leaning against the diner bar. It’s a clever lean, Juliet thinks, her attention skipping between three things at once: he’s angled himself just close enough that it’s clear he’s into her, but not so much that he’s crowding her space or being weird about it, and the small part of her that isn’t focused on not freaking out – she is five minutes from maybe having to pull a gun on a criminal – finds the time to appreciate this with a warm stir in her cheeks. “I think I was more accusing. Or perhaps challenging. That was a challenge, don’t you think?”
“See, now we’ve already talked more than I wanted to,” says Juliet.
“Tragically little,” agrees the guy. “You’re still in my seat.”
“Do you want me to move?” Juliet asks.
He’s looking right at her: not quite intense, not quite curious, not quite up to no good. Juliet’s stomach tumbles over with a fluttery feeling that’s entirely unrelated to her impending sting op.
He grins.
“Not anymore.”
He takes a new seat, the one right beside her. Mentally re-routing herself, she glances at the door again. Diner Guy is still sort of blocking her view, and now he’s –
“So, girl-who-stole-my-seat, on a scale of one to ten, how well do you really think you’d have finished the crawly snake? I’d bet on a solid seven looking at you, but I’ve been known to be wrong in the past. Did you know snakes believe in monogamy? But only some of them. Many are, quite frankly, men and women of the night, though that doesn’t apply to wyrms of the paper persuasion. We’ll just have to test my theory, possibly using that discarded napkin over there –”
Talking.
There’s a rapid cadence to his words that is both distracting and oddly captivating, and the small part of Juliet’s mind that isn’t trying desperately to focus on the door while holding herself back from clutching the gun in her purse thinks that if she let herself, she could start listening and never stop.
But she is trying to focus, and she does have a gun.
“-- orange lace, I’d say it’s more coral. You do seem like a coral kind of lady. Is pink a theme color for you?”
Juliet does love pink, but resists the temptation to share this information freely. With effort, she looks away from the diner door.
“You’ll just have to guess,” she says.
She almost smiles at the way her quiet encouragement turns into a pleased tick of his mouth.
“Hmm. Blues for sure; those bring out your eyes.”
“Low hanging fruit,” Juliet disapproves, pretends her lips aren’t twitching, and adds a mocking tilt of her head to the bit. The gun is getting warm under her fingertips.
“Should I do better? Try a little harder?”
“Knock yourself out. I told you I’m not in the mood to talk.”
“That’s fine! I’ve been told I talk enough for multiple people. Armies, even — the ancient Chinese kind.”
“Now you’re just digressing.”
“A word uncannily similar to undressing. Which would bring us back to your hypothetical wardrobe, but you skipped over the ancient army thing a bit quickly, don’t you think?”
“Let me guess, you were going to compare yourself to some powerful historic warrior.”
“Actually, I was going to say that, like you, the ancient Chinese had a soft spot for cats.”
Juliet’s small startle saves her from picking a loose hangnail in a painful way under the table. “What?” she says, and if an incredulous little laugh makes its way into her voice, she doesn’t quite register it; Diner Guy just shrugs.
“Pretty smart of you to keep to a warm-toned palette when you’ve got two tabbies at home.” Before she has a chance to react, he’s switched his voice into a high, girlish falsetto that grates terribly on the ears, “Oh, how did you know? Well, I know many things. It’s a function of my mysterious and exotic job. Mysterious and exotic? You sound so dangerous, I am so going to tell my adorable little kitties aaaall about you. Oh, gosh, wow,” back in an exaggerated version of his regular voice, “I am flattered. Can I know their names?”
Juliet takes a deep breath and tries not to close her eyes in confusion, or do something stupid, like start giggling, girlishly and unprofessionally, on the job. “How did you know –”
“That you own cats? I just told you! Now it’s my turn to ask a question. First: cat names, because I genuinely do love them. I had one as a kid before my evil father committed felicide.”
“Your dad killed your cat?”
“What? No! Is that what that means?”
Juliet feels that unprofessional giggle bubble up and fight to get out of her mouth. “Yes!”
“Well, I’ve heard it both ways. He did give her away when I was twelve and at sleepaway camp. And I think we’re digressing again; you were about to tell me your cats’ names.”
“Was I, really?”
“How about your name?”
Juliet’s attempt at giving him an appropriately un-flirty, pitying look falls apart. She bites her lip against another smile. He notices, very obviously. Her cheeks are properly warm now. She gives the front door one cursory, flicking glance.
“Juliet,” she admits.
“Juliet!” One last look at her mouth. He sighs, holding his glass of orange juice as if suddenly deep in thought. Then, “Wow, handsome, it’s so nice to meet you. It’s so nice to meet you too, Juliet. Did you just call me handsome? I sure did. I’m so glad we just bonded over our mutual love of cats and Ancient China. Do you think I could give you my number?”
“Oh-kay,” she brings both hands up in a pause gesture and waves them a little. Her gun is forgotten in the purse on her lap. “Let’s stop right there. What was that?!”
“Only truths! I’m conversing on behalf of both of us, remember?”
“You’re making me sound like an eight year old girl!” It’s the same falsetto voice as before, if somehow even more unrealistically shrill.
“Well, maybe I’m addressing the third grader in you as part of an elaborate self-healing exercise – I could have been a psychic in another life, and this is the world of the subconscious telling us both something important. Now, if I was speaking to adult you, I’d ask if it was your mother or grandmother who taught you how to sew, because I’ve always wanted to learn and would really appreciate some pointers. Specifically, pointers from a pretty girl. I’m assuming that applies to your whole lineage.”
Like her gun, the diner door is forgotten. Absently, she’s grateful that an earpiece would’ve been too obvious with her college girl hairstyle; she can’t imagine the looks Lassiter would give her if he overheard this conversation. “My – it’s – what? How did you know I can sew?”
“The same way I know you’re still thinking about how sexy and dangerous I am.”
“That was your job, not you.”
“Hm,” says the guy, sounding – impossibly – caught. “So that’s a no on the number thing?”
Juliet says, “Are you sure I don’t already know you?”
They are in Miami; maybe he’s an old high school classmate she never had the chance to notice. Juliet can’t imagine how.
“No, but I know you,” and now suddenly he leans forward and crosses his arms, “you are the girl who stole my seat!”
Juliet’s watch beeps. Four minutes. She feels like a cartoon character who’s just slipped on a banana, or like she’s had ice water splashed into her flushed, red face. Her hands clench instinctively and she realizes she’d nearly forgotten all about her gun – and the impending arrival of their mark, too. Embarrassed, frustrated, and with warm cheeks and a flutter in her stomach, Juliet determinedly diverts her eyes back to her paper, shoves her hands back down under the bar, and turns up her nose.
“I don’t have time for this right now,” she says.
“An odd comment coming from someone who sews.”
“Okay, Diner Guy –”
“Shawn,” he offers immediately. Hopefully.
“Shawn.” His eyes are twinkling at her. They are very nice eyes. sh*t. Juliet’s annoyance overrides the nerves, and despite the rapid, nervy beat of her heart, the minute waver in her voice that would have likely come out ten minutes ago is nowhere to be found. “Usually I am all for meeting new people. I really am. Any other day, I’d be totally flattered, but unfortunately? I actually can’t talk right now.”
As if on cue, the diner door jingles open.
This time, it is definitely their guy.
Juliet’s body stiffens. She quickly averts her eyes back to the paper. He shuffles in with his hands in his pockets and his expectedly receded hairline and glances Juliet’s way in an obvious attempt at being covert. Why isn’t he coming up to her? The rest of the diner is mostly empty, and Lassiter said it would be a sure shot. Beside her, she can almost feel those clever hazel eyes flicking between her and the door, and she realizes, for the third time: sh*t.
“Shawn,” she says, out of the corner of her mouth, hating the grimace that’s fighting its way into her expression and the easy way his name slips off her tongue, “you have to leave.”
“What?”
At least he’s matching her energy, is the unhelpful thought that pops into Juliet’s head at his whisper. Gone is the lazy lean against the counter and the intentional tilt to his head. Shawn looks at her with serious and sincere concern, lifts his backpack around against his chest and in the second she glances toward him Juliet realizes that he’s blocked the mark’s ability to see her mouth move.
She doesn’t really have time to think about it.
“Now, please,” she grits.
“Sure, I mean – are you –?”
Is he really about to ask if she’s okay? That unhelpful voice in the back of Juliet’s head groans. At the door, the guy eyes her, then does a weird little noncommittal sway in her direction. Juliet gives him a small smile before looking back to her barmate and shaking her head as aggressively as possible without actually moving it. Shawn copies her movements, then gives her a quizzical look. Back to the mark. Back to her. Back to the mark. Juliet is five seconds from throwing caution to the wind and kicking him under the table, her eyes firmly fixed on the mark, when –
“Oh my God,” Shawn breathes. “You’re FBI.”
Of all of his unnervingly accurate guesses, this one is delivered with a tone of genuine shock. Juliet freezes, fingers squeezing around the pommel of her gun, one eye trained frantically on the mark. Just come over here. Just come over. I know you’re guilty. She looks back at Shawn, for a moment completely unable to react. Carlton would react. A more experienced field agent would know how to smooth this all over. Juliet is neither of those things right now. Shawn’s eyes are wide and he just barely muffles his realization into the canvas of his backpack. Over the wild twisting adrenaline in Juliet’s chest, she hears the strange strand of bitterness that slips into his voice, unexpected, as quickly there as it is gone. He covers his face with one hand.
Juliet tries to breathe through her newest bout of nerves and finally hisses, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” through her teeth.
“The vantage point, the paper, and him, of course, he’s … how didn’t I see it?” Shawn’s frustrated muttering could be explained by any number of things. Juliet is too focused on her approaching mark to care. If she flubs this operation, Lassiter’s gonna have her fetching his coffee order and not much else for the next eternity of her stint in the check fraud department, and Juliet is not about to let that happen without a good fight. Shawn seems to still be half-talking to himself, so Juliet chooses to ignore him. Their guy is shuffling forward, eyeing her like he’s not sure an approach would be worth the shot or not.
She grabs her milkshake and takes a long slurpy sip before propping her elbows up on the counter and twirling a lock of hair around her finger.
“Gosh,” Juliet says, loudly and girlishly enough that the diner cashier can hear her, “these are just so good. I could drink them all day!”
Thank God, she thinks, as the guy finally starts making his way over. She doesn’t bother looking at Shawn again, though by the squeak of his chair it sounds like he’s bouncing one leg up and down as if his life depends on it. Fumbling underneath the table with her bag, Juliet takes another deep breath. The window’s closing; Carlton will be following their guy inside any minute now. She looks over at the mark again, and in the two seconds she does, catches the brief expression of incredulous disgust on Shawn’s face at his approach – and then the subtle dip of his backpack, slipping off his knee and swinging around to hang open and enticing from the back of his chair, a stuffed, leather wallet clearly visible at the top.
Low-hanging fruit, Juliet had said earlier. The mark is close enough that his interested expression and reaching hand is obvious to anyone with eyes.
“That’s the thing,” Carlton says, after his presentation is over and he’s worked his way through half the heart attack of a coffee order he always requests. It’s late. The office is dim, and with only Juliet around, his frustration is colored with something she’s very familiar with: the itching need to figure it out. “He makes it look so easy, like everything he’s gone for is just there for the taking. Like an idiot could get away with it. Goddamn figures. These are some of the most sophisticated paper trails I’ve ever seen.”
“Maybe it is easy, for him,” Juliet offers.
“No. This guy puts in the effort. He just doesn’t want anyone to see it unless they’re really looking.” Carlton pauses, gritting his teeth. “He wants us to see it.”
One minute, Juliet’s watch tells her. Her eyes follow the mark’s sticky fingers as they dip into the open backpack, purportedly under the cover of his loose suit jacket sleeve. He glances over at her like he actually has a chance.
“Okay, Shawn?” she murmurs. She doesn’t stop to wonder if the backpack was intentional. Her fingers curl properly around the gun she’s never pulled.
“Yeah,” he looks up at once.
“I’m gonna need you to do me a favor.”
Thirty seconds. Shawn’s staring right at her again: open, and honest.
“Name it,” he says, and something fundamental in Juliet believes him.
“Duck!”
She pulls her gun right before the rest of her team bursts through the door.
A few months later, Carlton and his unnamed nemesis drag her to Santa Barbara on a new lead.
Their unsub is still several steps ahead of them, not that Carlton would ever admit to it, but last week a medical clinic five miles outside of Golita bounced three checks. West Coast Pharmaceuticals – famous purveyors of high-quality scrotal cream all along the California coastline – was understandably displeased.
“Here’s what I don’t understand.” Juliet had expected her partner to brood in silence as they drove their rental through the scenic hills. Instead, he’s twelve minutes into what is shaping up to be a proper hour-long Lassiter-flavored rant. In her short tenure as junior agent in the check fraud department, Juliet has been subject to many of these. “Who cashed the money? The WCP rep said they’d kept record of all their client deals and the clinic was on the damned list. The clinic isn’t printing cash, the pharma guys aren’t making cash, but O’Hara, in the name of Christmas I know this is our guy. I’ll bet the tricky bastard is on a beach somewhere in this very state, sipping a margarita and gloating …”
Juliet has not yet raised the possibility that this whole thing could just be a simple banking issue, and not another lightning strike from their mystery con man. She trusts her partner’s instincts, more or less, and she also has to admit there’s something fishy about the whole thing. They checked the bank records; there’s no reason why the checks should’ve bounced.
She considers the facts. “Well, we know the unsub spent the last several months passing off dud checks to the airlines, right? Maybe he’s bored of being a pilot, and his next fake identity is a doctor.” Something about the evidence so far makes her think: flighty. Not flakey, but definitely not the type to settle in one place for very long. “This could be a diversion from the real money being pocketed.”
Slick enough to keep them in the dark, but dropping just enough hints so they don’t lose the trail.
“You think he’s baiting us again,” Carlton growls. “Figures.”
“No,” says Juliet. “I think you were right the first time, and he wants an audience. Just not one that’s too big.”
A part of her, the part that’s spent her whole life in the shadow of her many older brothers – the part that resents how her father’s lazy lies insulted her intelligence – kind of appreciates this. This Skywayman character (or Doctorman, or whatever the hell it is now) respects her mind. She pretends that thought doesn’t send a little squirm of pride through her stomach. Clearing her throat, Juliet sits up straighter in her seat.
Carlton’s back to ranting.
“... might be right there, you know. Idiots like Dobson don’t end up with nemeses, do they? I ask for a team and they dredge the bottom of the Pacific. You know the guys in National Security get an Italian espresso machine? Not that I drink the stuff, and you shouldn’t either. It’s all about skill and precision, O’Hara, skill and precision – good field work can leave you with a lotta enemies in this business …”
The idea of her intelligence being recognized and matched has her thinking of the diner again. Something about that whole interaction has stuck in her head. She plays it over and around in turns every other week, wondering how Diner Guy – Shawn – guessed the things he did. She didn’t mind. She liked keeping up with him. She liked that he kept up with her. Thinking about him is easy and frustrating at the same time, and maybe Juliet’s just getting way too little action in her round-the-clock, surrounded-by-middle-aged-men line of dry government work, but the fact that she’ll probably never talk to him again is pissing her off. She never did end up giving him her number. When she asked the cashier where he went, the girl just shrugged.
“Paid for your milkshake, though,” she said. “Wrote me a check. Great tipper.”
Juliet chews her lip and crosses her legs against the cramped rental dashboard. Sure, the conversation took a couple bizarre turns, but she can easily chalk that up to the circ*mstances. She liked talking to him. He was sharp, didn’t miss a beat, pushed all the right buttons and pulled back all the right times. In the half moments between Carlton cuffing their mark and Juliet putting her gun (shaking, along with her hands) back into her purse, the thought had popped into her head: he’d probably have given me a kiss, if I asked nicely enough. If I’d had the time to catch him before he left.
She’s woman enough to admit being a little irritated that he never left his number. And by the fact that he made her remember things she’d been repressing for a while.
“Did you know my dad taught me how to sew?”
Cut off mid-monologue, Carlton turns over to look at her incredulously.
“O’Hara, what the hell are you talking about?”
Juliet shrugs. “Most people assume it was my mom or something. But it was actually my dad.”
“And this is relevant how?”
Probably in a lot more ways than she’s willing to admit to Carlton, just now. “I was just thinking about it.”
They pull into the parking lot at West Coast Pharmaceuticals around noon. It’s a drab building, mostly office space, and interviewing management goes about as helpfully as Juliet expected. Yes, all their books are clean. No, there haven’t been any new hires recently. Yes, they’ve done deals with the Golita clinic in the past – are they sure this isn’t a banking issue?
Head of security Leslie Valerie Sally takes the possibility of a breach on WCP’s financials very seriously. The branch manager, a slimy-looking man named Creech, had directed she and Lasster to him about two minutes after they got in.
“I give you leave to question any employee you want,” Sally says pompously, as they’re walked through the main block of offices.
“Isn’t that the manager’s call?” Juliet murmurs to Carlton out of the corner of her mouth. He doesn’t even bother hiding his eye roll.
“I’d rather not waste anyone’s time,” he says. Sally waves a dramatic hand.
“Don’t be silly. Check fraud is no joke, and I will get to the bottom of this. Guster!”
A young African American man in the cubicle closest to them startles violently and shoots up in his seat. Juliet watches him frantically click out of something on his computer before turning to them. At the sight of Juliet and Carlton, who has his FBI badge out, he stiffens, eyes widening.
“How can I help, Leslie?”
“Creech said you gotta talk to the agents.”
“Just me?” the young man asks, casually enough that to Juliet’s ears it sounds forced.
“No, no – send them over to Valdez or something when you’re done, I don’t care. I have to go through our entire checkbook with Marge and match fingerprints.”
“That … seems a little excessive,” says Juliet, as Guster does a bad job at hiding his incredulous expression. His WCP badge is tangled in the front buttons of his fashionable pink dress shirt, but other than that he looks the model of a good employee.
“Excessive, and our job,” grits out Carlton.
Oh, boy. “Mr. Guster,” Juliet interrupts. Sally leaves; the deer-in-the-headlights expression in front of them lingers. “We’ll only need a moment of your time.”
“Oh,” Guster says nervously, “it’s no issue. My schedule’s open today.”
Carlton snorts. “That why you’re so jumpy? Didn’t want your boss to think you’re slacking off? Or have you got something to hide from a man with a badge?”
Juliet is about to purse her lips at her partner when in front of them, Guster’s expression flickers only once before his shoulders square out and relax. He gets to his feet.
“My apologies,” he says, offering them a rueful shake of his head and a warm, genuine laugh. “Call it childhood trauma if you want. My best friend growing up, his dad was a cop, a real hardass. We got in trouble for sneaking video games when we weren’t supposed to so many times, I think my fight or flight instincts just kicked in.”
He turns the computer monitor for them to see: sure enough, the screen is frozen on a game of Lemmings.
Carlton makes a face; Juliet hides a small smile behind her hand. “I guess that’s not a crime,” he grumbles. Juliet elbows him.
“Agents O’Hara and Lassiter,” she says. “It’s probably no big deal, but we’d love it if you could show us where the accounts department is?”
Guster holds out a smooth hand for Carlton to shake. Something about the earnest sincerity in his face is making him immediately likable. “Burton Guster, West-Coast Pharmaceuticals. What you two are lookin’ for is Marge, she manages all the financials. She’s really nice – I can take you to her, if you like?”
They don’t get a chance to say goodbye to him on their way out, which kind of bums her out. They’d have probably gotten along well, under different circ*mstances. Juliet saw the little stack of comic books peeking out from under his desk drawer. But then, maybe it’s just as well that they missed him; Carlton is in even more of a thunderous mood than before.
Santa Barbara was nothing but a dead end.
Their next lead takes them to a speed dating event in Atlanta. The irony is not lost on Juliet, whose mother had called last week to wonder for the billionth time why her beautiful, intelligent daughter wasn’t meeting any eligible bachelors.
“I’ve been on dates, Mom,” Juliet had groaned over the phone. Two or three, yes, and all duds. “Nothing’s really stuck, that’s all.”
“Maybe that’s for the best,” Maryanne said tiredly, after a long and pointed silence punctuated by the habitual sounds of her kitchen cleaning habits. She’d sniffed. “All O’Hara women fall for liars, Juliet. It’s our curse.”
Juliet had scoffed. If she was cursed with anything, it was a lack of any kind of real chemistry with a big wide world of boring, personality-less men. Not to say some relationship stability wouldn’t be nice, but she’d rather be alone than be underestimated, unchallenged, and … well, unsatisfied.
Just like this lead is leaving them, calculated though it was. A sorority girl at Georgia State, recently broken up with by her long-time boyfriend, cashed a gift check to pay off one of her student loans two weeks ago. When asked about it, she claimed a senior-year law student had just won the lottery and offered to help her out.
He was nice – sweet. Sympathetic, great listener, understood her implicitly. And she really needed the money.
That’s about everything Carlton got out of her when they shared the same table ten minutes ago, before the buzzer rang and she all but fled to the next guy.
Juliet sighs. The longer this drags on, the more she gets Carlton’s frustration. She just wishes he wouldn’t take the whole thing so personally.
The chance to dress up a little is nice, though.
Adjusting her hair over her shoulder and fixing the strap of her purse (brown this time, to go with the low-cut fuschia dress), Juliet glances around the room and hums. The event's attendees are mostly college students, many of them upper years, so it’s not the worst waste of time they could’ve come up with. But she’s been through three guys already, and none of them have given any suggestion that they’re the pain-in-the-ass paperhanger Lassiter’s been chasing since last Christmas. Her partner’s on the other side of the room right now, all but interrogating a poor mousy-looking girl with co*ke-bottle glasses and an overbite. Juliet sighs, reapplies her lip gloss, and turns back to face her date with a pasted-on smile when the buzzer goes off.
Her heart skips a beat when an unmistakable pair of clever eyes and matching big nose materialize into the seat in front of her.
“Agent Juliet O’Hara,” says Shawn the Diner Guy, impossibly right across from her at this greasy restaurant table. “Huh.”
Juliet’s voice unsticks after a beat too long. Again.
“I never told you my last name,” she says.
“Mm,” says Shawn, before smoothly holding up the little paper questionnaire that has her full name written over the top. “You can call me Sherlock Holmes.”
“Oh, give me that,” Juliet says, fighting the sudden smile that’s blooming across her face. Is it embarrassing? Yes. Does Juliet care? … Not really. “What on Earth are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“Could you?”
“Not finding love, I hope.” He tilts his head, an expectant look on his face, like he’s waiting for her to say something stupid, like, Only if it’s with you. The fact that her mind goes there is mortifying enough on its own.
“I’m kind of mad at you, you know,” Juliet says. “You never left me your number.”
“And you never gave me yours. We could fix that, Agent O’Hara, right now.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“I shouldn’t be showing respect to the noble badge?”
“Shawn.”
He grins, broad and infectious, one hand tapping two fingernails against the table. “You look great, by the way.”
Juliet tries not to preen. “Thank you. I did try.”
“So I was right. Pink is a theme color.”
“Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Mmm, that’s not where … things … are going.”
“Oh, my God,” Juliet says, unsure whether to roll her eyes or muffle her inappropriate burst of laughter behind both hands. “That didn’t even make sense!”
“You did pick up on the intended scandalous meaning, though, and for that I commend you. Also, sorry. Too lewd?”
“You tried something,” Juliet acknowledges, sympathetic. “Was that your best attempt at sexy talk?”
“The more important question is, are we at a place where I can actually bust out the sexy talk? Scale of one to ten. I’ll also take eleven, because you have mermaid hair right now and it’s doing things to me.”
Like before, Shawn looks at her with a kind of attentiveness that curls her toes, but speaks with just enough premeditated flippancy that she has an easy out if she doesn’t feel like taking him seriously. Unlike before, Juliet can indulge looking at him a little bit. His dark hair is a bit longer at the top, lighter too – sun lightened, like hers used to be when she lived by the coast. His uniform sweater and backpack are gone, replaced by a plain blue t-shirt and old leather vest that’s so edgy it’s bordering on goofy. A thin bead necklace hangs around his tanned neck and a tiny costume jewelry stud dangles from one of his pierced ears. He looks like a beach bum trying to be a rockstar while sporting the general face and physique of the next door neighbor boy you’d pay ten bucks to mow your lawn.
Juliet finds herself unfortunately very into it.
She says, “Really? I’ve been thinking of getting a haircut.”
“No,” gasps Shawn, hand to his heart and everything. “Good hair is not a thing to squander, Jules. I speak from experience.”
“You’ve gotten haircuts you regret?”
“Not a single time. My hair is my best quality, actually. It’s gotten me far in life.”
Jules. She notices the nickname belatedly, and its introduction curls into her smile, tugging it upward into a lopsided little thing that warms her cheeks. Were she playing hard to get she’d call him out, but if this is the alternative to the Agent that could blow her cover, Juliet certainly doesn’t mind.
Their small table is in an alcove to the side of the pool table, and a large potted indoor plant blocks the view to the door, but she trusts that Carlton is keeping his eye out. She fishes the abandoned cherry out from the bottom of her mocktail and sucks on the tip. “So, Shawn, why are you in Atlanta?”
In spite of his suddenly slack mouth and transfixed eyes, Shawn says, “Jazz festival,” quick as a whip.
“Hmm. Is the sexy and dangerous job musician, then?” For some reason she can’t quite picture him as a guitarist.
“No. Though I did play second bassoon in high school.”
“You did not.”
“Scout’s honor. My best friend Gus was on clarinet. As you might imagine, we made out with a grand total of zero girls through the entirety of tenth grade.”
“And I’m sure you really were a boy scout, too.” By this point, Juliet’s half-sincere skepticism is a necessary part of the game.
“Trust me, I wasn’t given much of a choice,” Shawn laughs breezily. “I think my dad put it into the contract at birth. But, hey, enough about me. Who’s the mark this time?”
He waggles his eyebrows, effectively undercutting any risk of someone overhearing and getting suspicious, but something tells Juliet she won’t be able to dismiss this particular guess convincingly. She hums and props both elbows on the table, leaning in under the guise of getting to know him better.
… As if that’s not what she really wants to be doing, right now, anyway.
“Know any law students?”
“Are you interrogating me, Ms. O’Hara?”
“No.” She considers him, and the intentional use of Ms. “I might actually be able to use your help. You seem like an observant person, Shawn.”
Shawn’s expression flickers minutely. “I can be.”
“Our guy’s a paperhanger. Gotten away with millions in bad checks.”
“No sh*t.”
“I …” Juliet leans in a touch further, close enough that she can smell his cologne, and watches his eyes light up with a new thread of interest she hasn’t yet seen, “think he’s skipped town already, but my partner wanted to follow a couple more leads.”
She doesn’t say anything about the girl or her boyfriend or the wild goose chase they’ve been on for the last six months. Juliet’s a professional, and a niggling instinct she doesn’t have time to name tells her to hide her full hand.
Besides, keeping Shawn guessing is half the fun.
His eyes skip past her shoulder and zero in on something to the other side of the room. “Your partner, the hot version of Mr. Bean?”
Juliet has to dip her face into her drink glass to cover her unattractive snort. “Don’t make fun of him.”
“It was a compliment!”
“You think he’s right?” she asks, more deliberately casual. Shawn clicks his tongue, then pokes it into his cheek, apparently deep in thought. She tries not to look too intently.
“What do you know about him? Your guy.”
Juliet gives a noncommittal hum. “Likes the thrill more than the money itself.”
“Does he?” Shawn looks fascinated. “That’s a rare breed. Adrenaline junkie?”
“Not exactly.” She thinks about how much she wants to tell him. “Wants to be noticed, but doesn’t want to be caught.”
“Well,” Shawn says, scanning the room performatively with her. “Speaking as someone who once did half a semester’s worth of magician school –” Juliet doesn’t hide her laughter on that one “-- your guy’s gotta be practicing some serious sleight of hand. It’s all about keeping the audience’s eyes on the wrong thing, right? See, look at that couple over there –”
Pointing over her shoulder, Shawn leans in so close she can momentarily feel the soft brush of his stubbled cheek against hers. Juliet pretends her breath doesn’t catch.
“Look how obviously he’s showing off the keys to his BMW. Then there’s the flowers, the expensive shirt, the way he’s complimented her.” They watch the girl giggle and blush. “Could be his parents’ bankroll is gonna end after college, or maybe he blew all his savings on the douchey car. He’s totally broke, but he’s giving her just enough that she misses all the obvious clues.”
“Aha,” Juliet murmurs in reply. She’d noticed the car keys and roses and douchey vibes, but, despite herself, Juliet’s first instinct had been to give him the benefit of the doubt. “Or …” she drags the word out, “he could just be rich.”
“Ten bucks says he’ll convince her to cover the check.” The way Shawn has extended his arm to point, the crook of his elbow is pressing against the top of her ribcage, where her dress ends and her bare skin begins. He’s warm. She can feel the flighty kick of his pulse, as fast as her own despite whatever cosmic spirits are inspiring them both to play it so chill.
He pulls away and everything is normal again.
“So, not that guy,” Juliet manages.
“Why not?”
“He’d be the one footing the bill.”
“I see. A veritable Robin Hood. I bet he’s good looking, too.”
Juliet’s about to roll his eyes at the dreamy way Shawn’s fluttering his lashes when she pauses. “You know? You might not actually be wrong.”
“Aw, c’mon, Jules.”
“What were you saying about sleight of hand?” she asks innocently. “What, you don’t think you could use your looks to get away with things?”
“I,” Shawn says seriously, “am in fact so good looking that it comes full circle. The other party cannot help but notice everything about me. They’re simply looking so intently, Jules, wouldn’t you agree?” His eyes twinkle at her, the same way they had in the diner.
“Hm,” Juliet says, and pretends her cheeks aren’t matching her dress.
Shawn picks up her half-eaten co*cktail cherry and pops the whole thing into his mouth in one go. He says, “What else have you got on him? Or her. Women can be criminals too.”
“Definitely a guy,” Juliet says.
“Really?”
She won’t tell him why she knows, which he accepts with a pleasant grin and a shrug of his shoulders. “So?”
Juliet runs her tongue over her teeth. She thinks about the sorority girl. She thinks about her dad.
“An honest liar.”
Shawn tilts his head at her. A unique expression that Juliet can’t quite put her finger on crosses over his face, and for a second she thinks he almost looks taken aback. She supposes it was an odd thing to say – certainly an odd thought to have, and share, as if she has any unique insight to his psyche from the half-coherent trail of bounced checks – but in the absence of sharing actual case details, this is how Juliet wants to play the game. She definitely hasn’t told Carlton this one. She waits for Shawn to react, fiddling with one strand of her alleged mermaid hair and holding her chin up straight. She’s not sure what, exactly, she’s testing, but when Shawn’s eyes unexpectedly soften, and the corners of his mouth warm with sincerity, she realizes he’s passed it.
Bzzzzz.
“Oh!” Juliet swears under her breath. She’d forgotten they were on a timer. And the fact that she now has to talk to a different guy. Stupidly, she thinks that they never even filled out their questionnaires.
A gangly blond approaches their table.
“Hey, dude,” he starts, “uh, I think it’s my –”
“Next table, buddy,” Shawn says, without looking away from her. Not too loud, but direct enough that the guy shuts up and listens. “We’re still talking.”
“B-but the whole point of –”
“She’s four years older than you. Probably your sister’s age. Won’t be super into your collection of Pokemon cards, though you do have pretty good taste in booze.” Shawn pauses. “For a sophom*ore, anyway.”
The kid flushes deep red, throws Juliet a flustered look, and moves on to the next table.
Shawn grins. “An honest liar, huh?” he says. “So, not that guy.”
Juliet stares at him. “How’d you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Pokemon cards?”
He holds up the questionnaire again, slowly sliding it against his front until the top of the paper brushes underneath his nose. He gives it a small wiggle. Then he crosses his eyes.
“Seriously?”
“He was holding it right in front of him.”
She sighs and admits defeat. It’s been a long night, and she’s definitely … distracted. Again. She hopes – like a broken record – that Carlton hasn’t had a chance to look too hard in her direction. Glancing over, Juliet sees her straight-laced partner on the far corner of the room, close to the jukebox, doing his best impression of a petrified number two pencil while a middle-aged woman sporting what looks like a decorative bird in her hair flaunts ampler-than-average cleavage at him over the table.
“Definitely not that guy,” Juliet finally agrees. Maybe Shawn’s right, and they are missing the forest for the trees – or whatever the expression is. It’s just, something tells her that their unsub is too subtle to show off in plain sight. And he’s clever. If he was here at any point in the night, he’d have definitely noticed Carlton, at the very least, and slipped out in the chaos between buzzers. Sure, there’s a watch in place at the airport, but no one knows what he looks like. If he was smart he’d use cash, and get away clean. Why wouldn’t he? Juliet can’t figure it out. Absently, while mentally reviewing their stagnating collection of evidence, she wonders if she can get away with running her heel against Shawn’s leg under the table. The flutter in her stomach from when he first materialized has settled into a warm buzz low behind her ribcage. In the dim lighting of the restaurant his eyes are a light brown, and she can just make out the little scar above his lip and the unused piercing in his right ear.
“Papers down, everyone! Time to see who your perfect match was!”
The sudden chaos as everyone rises from their seats brings her back to herself. Get a grip, O’Hara. You’re supposed to be working. Clearing her throat, Juliet looks down and grabs her purse, collecting her things to eventually get to her feet. Her movements are slow and reluctant. She notices the potted plant again, and the way its big leaves give them an odd sense of privacy against the crowded room.
“So,” Shawn says, very slowly, while the rest of the event bustles around them. To signal its end, someone’s put on croony jazz music, something Juliet’s mom would’ve danced around in the living room to, alone, when she was a kid. “Got any plans later tonight?”
“I’m on the clock right now,” Juliet says, “remember?”
“All night?”
“Trying something again, Diner Guy?”
“I dunno,” Shawn says, rubbing two fingers against the damp rim of her empty glass. “Logically there’d be a window of opportunity, even for a diligent federal employee like yourself. Everyone needs sleep.”
“Sleep,” repeats Juliet, the word filled with possibility.
“But then I thought to myself, maybe you’re catching a redeye home to feed your parrot.”
“I don’t have a parrot, Shawn,” she says. The rest of the bemused rejoinder fades when his hand slips into hers to help her to her feet. Not that she needed it. Nice gesture, though. Heels can be tricky. Juliet’s stomach is definitely not full of butterflies. And now he’s standing very close to her, by necessity, and she can smell him again, and he’s looking at her lips.
“Well, in that case,” Shawn says.
Suddenly his mouth is less than an inch from her own.
“Shawn.” Lassiter could walk over any minute. Juliet’s working. She doesn’t even know his last name.
“Yeah?” Shawn breathes. Juliet’s heartbeat is loud in her ears.
“What’d I just say?”
“That you’re a powerful working woman. Who doesn’t own a parrot.”
She can feel his hot breath against her lips.
“We never finished our questionnaires.”
“Mmm,” Shawn says, mock considering, and Juliet’s eyelids almost flutter shut at the light brush of his pursed mouth against hers. “I did. You can keep mine, if you like.”
Between them, Juliet feels him press a crumpled up piece of paper into her hand.
Do it. Do it, do it, do it –
“Anything else?” Juliet murmurs.
“Yeah.” Shawn’s voice is so low she swears she’s processing it through vibrations. “Agent Sternbush at four o’clock.” And, like magic, the mouth in front of hers has disappeared. Juliet barely has time to process how Shawn dips his head to drop the tiniest of kisses on her cheek before he pulls completely away in a graceful, loping turn.
As immediately as he was there, he’s not.
Lassiter’s expression resembles that of a drowned cat. He’s glaring at the paper in his hands and stalking toward her so miserably that Juliet would be compelled to offer him a hug if she wasn’t currently feeling kind of insane.
“Goddamn waste of government time – there wasn’t a single person here with an IQ over 40, O’Hara, please tell me you weren’t this much of a nitwit in college – no, of course you weren’t, you have a brain in your head. Even better: tell me you used your womanly wiles to get something even half useable from one of these idiots.”
Juliet clears her throat and brushes her hair out of her face, shaking her head. “Maybe he’ll slip up and pass a faulty check at the airport.”
It’s a half-hearted reassurance at best.
“I refuse to be humiliated a single more time,” Carlton declares. It sounds very much like he’s talking to himself, and Juliet can’t help but grimace sympathetically when his next statement is a muttered and slightly pathetic, “this was a useless event on principle. Everyone knows all relationships are fiery pits of hellish despair.” He looks up as if finally noticing Juliet is actually standing there in front of him as a three-dee person. “Oh. Who were you just talking to, anyway?”
“Hm?” says Juliet, cringing internally at the sudden pitch to her voice. “Oh, that was just –” She waves her hand out, turning with the full intention of introducing Shawn as a random guy brought into her orbit by the lottery of the speed dating pool, but her voice dies in her throat; the spot next to her by the potted plant is empty. She blinks. “Some guy,” Juliet finishes.
Carlton gives her a weird look.
“Alright. Well, get your – lady date things, whatever it is you brought.”
“My purse?”
“Yes – oh, you’re holding it. Good. I’ll drive. We can go over the bank teller’s statement at the hotel.”
He turns and heads toward the door with a fresh round of muttered grumbles. Juliet uncrumples the paper in her hands.
SHAWN O’HARA is scrawled along the top and decorated lavishly with cartoon heart bubbles. Then, below it, I TOOK YOUR SHEET. HOPE YOUR NUMBER WASN’T A FAKE. YOU SMELL NICE.
Juliet follows Carlton out to the car, wondering at how intimately entangled different types of frustration can be.
In the coming month, Juliet is proud of herself for not thinking too hard about Shawn and the lack of a follow up phonecall. Knowing her luck, he probably lives halfway around the country, and out of state calls can be pricey for sure. Maybe the reason he never told her about his job is because he doesn’t have one, or is one of those drifters who lives out of a van on a beach somewhere sunny and doesn’t pay bills.
Juliet can picture Shawn as a California guy, for sure.
She gets her haircut, painstakingly compiles a list of all the pseudonyms their unsub’s been passing checks as, and starts delegating coffee duty to McNab. Check fraud was an underfunded and easily dismissed department even before it was pawned off on Karen Vick and Juliet’s under no delusions that her assignment here was a feminist breakthrough in the workforce, but she’s come to like the routine they’ve got going. Besides, the minimal supplies mean that she’s the only one Lassiter’s got. Underneath his gruff exterior and total absence of family life (he still wears his wedding ring; she’s sure he would rather shoot her than ever talk about it) Juliet kind of likes him.
One day, amidst the daily slog, he comes to her with a thought.
“Former detective with the SBPD Henry Spencer, fifty-two years old, divorced, lives alone in a sh*tty old house in Santa Barbara, audited about four years ago by the IRS.” Carlton rattles off from the piece of paper in his hand. It could be a napkin from the coffee place down the street, it’s so small and pathetic looking. She wonders if he scribbled this stuff down mid-phone-call. “Somehow has even less money to his name than he does dignity. Lost his savings through a bunch of bad investments, wife left him – for various reasons – the works.”
If Juliet didn’t know any better, she’d say Carlton almost feels bad for the guy. He’s got a cramped edge to his mouth that always shows up when he’s experiencing human empathy but doesn’t know where to put it.
One hand hovering over their spread out fake-names-evidence board, Juliet gives him a look. “And?”
“Well. I don’t know. But he’s connected to this somehow.” Carlton scratches at the back of his neck and leans over the desk. His rumpled, very outdated tie swings forward and barely misses Dobson’s half-full coffee mug. The single functional light bulb hanging in their tiny cramped office flickers. He points. “I was working through our old files again, and I noticed that the original bank account the checks were coming from was routed to a local bank branch in Golita – same place as that clinic, O’Hara, the one we thought wasted our time. Now, this guy – Spencer – has a bunch of accounts at the same bank, has for the last twenty years. Guess they’re useless to him now, poor bastard. But take a look at the list of fake account holder names you put together – great investigative work, by the way – and you’ll see that Imhotep Spencer –” He mutters the name with an appropriately unimpressed eyeroll “-- is also the sender of a series of postcards addressed to this address. And, two years ago, was the name of a public interest columnist working part-time at the Santa Barbara Mirror.”
Juliet scans through her list, skipping over Juan Priestly, Felicia Fancybottom, and Ghee Buttersnaps. “Imhotep. Huh. You think he’s part of the con or a target?”
Something about the latter doesn’t sit right with Juliet. Everything they know about their guy – everything she’s seen – doesn’t add up to maliciously targeting one individual. Their guy steals from the government, and pretty much no one else. Carlton looks like his teeth are being pulled. He says,
“No, he wouldn’t screw over an old man.” She smiles, and he shoots her a look as if to say, fine, there, happy? Juliet is. “But it wasn’t exactly the most fruitful of leads, either.”
Juliet raises her eyebrows in surprise. “You talked to him?”
“Yeah. Had to go down to the nearest Best Western to use their long distance line. Lives alone. Likes to fish. Appreciates the value of a good gun.”
“And …?” Juliet of a year ago would have never gotten away with giving Carlton such an impatient prompt. The fact that he doesn’t bat an eye before responding seriously makes her bite down against a small smile.
“He had a son, who skipped town ages ago – couple years after the mom went. Couldn’t tell me where he was. Wouldn’t drop a name.”
Buzz McNab, whose desk is across from Dobson’s in the office and who once cheerfully told Juliet he’s never had a day of field experience in his life, leans over to join their conversation. He looks troubled. “But that would mean our guy is practically still a kid. Around Agent O’Hara’s age!”
Juliet, who was still in the middle of privately riding the high from Carlton’s unprecedented show of professional respect, frowns at him; he flushes.
“Couldn’t we look into that?” asks Dobson. Up ‘til now he’d been more interested in the homemade cookies Juliet had brought in that morning than the conversation.
“Not unless he was a minor when he left, and even then we’d only get anywhere with it if it was listed as a runaway. For birth records we’d have to do it by hand in the local office.” Carlton huffs. “Figures this asshole would drag us out to California again right before Christmas.”
“You like California.” And hate Christmas, Juliet adds silently. “It’ll be warm.”
“What I like is my time not being wasted,” Carlton says.
“What’d the IRS want with the old man?” This is Dobson again.
“That’s the thing,” Carlton rubs the heel of both hands over his eyes. “You’d think the fraud connection would check out – but it was just bad luck. This guy was an upstanding citizen. Good cop, perfect record, paid his taxes. I looked into it. Probably listened to some no-good friend and put his money into something that went bad.”
“Jesus,” says Dobson.
“You think it’s the son?”
Carlton sucks at his teeth. “We don’t have any proof.”
“You think he was telling the truth? About not talking to his kid.”
Juliet looks at the newest addition to their evidence pile: a bent up postcard sent from the last known address their unsub kept. Never made it out of the post office because of water damage to the recipient address. But she can still make out the bled-out CA through the mess of ink.
“I think if he wasn’t,” Carlton says, “he’s one of the best damn liars I’ve ever met.”
They continue following the papertrail like they have been for the last several months. It doesn’t take them back to Santa Barbara, but it does take them to Hollywood – right before Christmas, and everything.
“I thought this place is supposed to be sunshine all year round,” Dobson complains, as, through the grey thunderclouds enveloping L.A., the sky pisses buckets on them.
Juliet’s still wringing water out of her skirt when they slosh their way up to the motel owner’s office. It’s a nice place, relatively speaking, with a pool and palm trees and a woman in her mid thirties traipsing through the lobby in a stylish bathrobe and movie star sunglasses. Juliet supposes that this is the place for it. Last season’s Christmas hits are playing cheaply over the lobby speakers and a palm tree in the front is wound with red and green lights.
“First two went through totally fine,” the owner says, after Carlton has shown off his badge and explained their mission. He hands over the last check. Juliet peaks at it over Carlton’s elbow and narrows mystified eyes at the flawless finish on the airline logo. “I was gonna cash this one today.”
“Yeah, they would’ve,” Carlton mutters, peering at the thing intently then giving it a little shake. “It’s the bank that deals with the missing money, not you.” More directly, to Juliet, “I told you he’s been using a MICR machine. Look at how the ink settles.”
“Agent Lassiter’s really into this stuff,” McNab explains helpfully to the owner from Dobson’s other side. His raised finger falters at Carlton’s withering look. He turns back to the owner.
“We’ll just take this and be on our way,” he says, in his own approximation of polite. They turn to go.
“Just as well,” calls the owner after them. “Wouldn’t want the feds harassing any of my customers.”
Lassiter and Juliet freeze. McNab trips on his own shoe. Dobson almost spills coffee down his front.
“Customers?” Carlton asks faintly. In a very slow pivot, he turns to look at the owner again. “You mean – he’s still –?”
“Booked two rooms. 201 and 410.” Owner shrugs. “You can go up if you want.”
Carlton starts speaking again before Juliet has fully processed this development. “Two rooms. Two. Okay, so we split up. O’Hara, you take 201, I’ll take 410. Dobson, you and McNab block the back door around the pool in case the asshole makes a run for it. You two armed?”
“Jesus, Lassiter, it’s a pen and ink man –”
“Just guard the goddamn door. O’Hara!”
Juliet’s mind snaps into place. Room 201. He’s here. Carlton’s got a manic gleam in his eye that does nothing to quell the sudden flush of nervousness in her stomach, the one that’s competing with the spike of heady adrenaline that ran through her – the minute she realized he was trusting her to potentially handle the unsub on her own.
“201. 201. Got it!” Juliet nods in place furiously a few times before grabbing her gun out of its holster and fumbling it into ready position. She hasn’t pointed it at anyone since the diner.
Then, with a quick nod at her partner, she peels off to tiptoe up the stairs.
Juliet takes them two at a time. Carlton takes the other flight, and if all goes well they should be able to meet in the middle after their bust. She passes the pleasant ceramic tiling of the musty stairwell and the frightened-looking janitor who waves his hands when she flashes her badge. The carpet feels weird under her high-heeled feet, still soggy from the rain outside. She can hear the thunder echoing through the motel’s open hallway. The humidity from the rainstorm is making her new bob curl and frizz, and little flyaways tickle at her jaw as she creeps toward the door with bated breath.
Heart pounding in her throat, Juliet kicks down the door.
“FBI! FREEZE!”
The room is an evidence goldmine and a total mess. An old typewriter and a MICR machine, bottles upon bottles of ink, stacks of paper, throwaway magazine covers, old bank statements, special craft glue – between the dresser and the nightstand and the kitchenette table, there isn’t a surface in the room that isn’t covered in supplies or boxes of incriminating stuff. At the foot of the bed is strewn a bunch of empty takeout containers and the plates from what Juliet – her heart pounding more rapidly by the minute – assumes is the buffet downstairs. She looks around the room wildly, once. Twice. It’s empty. But it can’t be empty, because there’s so clearly just been a person in here.
The toilet flushes from inside the bathroom.
Juliet jerks around, her gun raised in one hand, her badge in the other. If he doesn’t run, she won’t need the gun. Her heart pounds in her throat. She grits her teeth against it. “FBI!” she calls again, and feels a small sliver of pride that her voice doesn’t quiver. “Come out with your hands over your head where I can see them!” Nothing. One beat. Two. “Now!” Juliet does her best approximation of a bark.
The bathroom door swings open. Juliet pretends her hands don’t shake.
For an impossible, horrifying, discombobulated second, she only stares.
Then her voice unsticks.
“... Shawn?!”
As if this is all a farce of every other interaction they’ve had, he’s already talking.
“That’s one of those old IBM Selectrics, if you can believe it. I didn’t know they made ‘em anymore, Agent O’Hara, did you?”
Juliet’s head is spinning. “Put your hands on your head,” she says.
The man in front of her ignores this. “Clearly effective, if this guy’s anything to go by. You can get a print type in five seconds if you pop out the ball. You know –”
“Put your hands on your head!”
“-- he’s got over two hundred checks in here?” He’s moving across the room as if to show her, and Juliet jerks around so fast that her foot stumbles against one of the boxes and she nearly crashes into the table. “Clearly got a whole operation going, and you know, I think you were right on the thrill thing,” an empty co*ke bottle clatters to the ground, “‘cause no way this kind of audacity wouldn’t get caught eventually –”
“Stop talking!”
“-- even has little payroll envelopes addressed to himself, pretty impressive stuff, really –”
“Stop it! Put your hands up!” He holds out the envelopes in question with a little flick of his wrist and Juliet loses her cool completely. “PUT IT DOWN!” she yells. “WILL YOU JUST –”
“Relax!”
Shawn – or whoever he is – speaks cleanly over her, his two hands raised in surrender, one still holding the envelope. “Relax. You’re late, alright? You guys just missed it. Would’ve been great to have had your help earlier, your guy tried to jump out the damn window. Almost gave my partner the slip.”
“Partner,” Juliet mouths, half-audible. She doesn’t lower her gun.
“Yeah, my partner’s got him in custody downstairs right now. Listen, Jules –”
“I don’t know what – what are you talking about. Shawn! What are you talking about.”
Her hands are definitely shaking right now.
“Jules! Seriously, you think you’re the only ones after this guy? I mean come on, he’s dabbling in government checks here.” He drops the hands and gestures one easily between himself and the typewriter, “we’ve been following a papertrail on this guy for months now, okay, and I’m,” Shawn closes his eyes and looks pained, “sorry, I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you earlier. Now would you mind taking the gun out of my face?”
She feels like someone’s dunked her upside down into a swimming pool, though that could just be her wet clothes.
“Let’s see some identification,” she manages to demand, hating how her voice wavers.
Shawn waves his hands obligingly and pulls a thick leather wallet out of his jacket pocket much faster than any sane person with a gun pointed at them would. “Yeah, sure, identification – take my whole wallet. You wanna see my gun, too –?”
She grabs it from him, one-handed, her own badge fumbling to the floor. Juliet yanks her hand away before their fingers can touch. The little button on the top of the wallet is fiddly.
“Here,” he’s saying, while she struggles with it; frustrated, Juliet looks up out of the corner of one eye, “look, my partner’s walking him to the car as we speak, c’mere –”
Shawn’s arm moves around her back, very carefully not touching her, but enough that Juliet instinctively moves toward the open room window. They’re close enough that if she shoved her arm forward, the barrel of the gun would press right into his chest.
Shawn pulls the curtain back and leans forward. “There, see?” Down on the street, a shaken-looking old man with a grey mustache and thinning hair is being carefully guided into a car, a firm grip on his arm. From the angle they’re at, Juliet can’t make out the other man’s face – he’s leaning too far into the car door, and his umbrella is blocking the rest – and almost all the car is hidden behind a particularly thriving azalea bush. “Old man almost peed his pants when I came through that door. Jumped right out the window and fell into those bushes over there,” Shawn murmurs, pointing to a second bush that’s clearly been roughed up. Bright pink petals are strewn, soggy and haphazard, on the tarmac under the persistent rain. In a louder voice, he says, “Yo Gus!”
“Yeah?” answers a gruff voice from within the car.
“Call the LAPD again, I don’t want any more people walking through my crime scene!”
Juliet sees a brown hand poke up into the rain in the shape of a thumbs up.
The curtain swings back and they move away from the window. Shawn glances at her, still unbothered, before making a face at the check in his hand. He tosses it onto the nearest table, clears his throat, then steps over to the table and pours himself a glass of water, facing the wall.
Juliet feels her mind working a mile a minute. Now that the initial shock has worn off, she can process how he’s dressed: a neat suit jacket, blue button down shirt, dressy jeans that hug his waist with a clean black belt. His hair is shorter; his eyes are still clever.
The sharp guesses, his presence at the speed dating event, the way he knew what she was so quickly …
Very slowly, Juliet’s gun lowers.
“You’re secret service,” she realizes, the words like cotton in her mouth.
Outside the window, they can hear a car engine start. Shawn turns back to face her, giving a little tilt of his head and a boyish shrug – as if to say, Guilty. He sips from his glass.
“Auuunrgh.”
Juliet’s groan bursts out of her mouth as a sudden and unplanned sound. Any tension lingering in the room is effectively dissipated. She smacks the still-closed wallet in her hand against her forehead. “Of course. Of course! I am so – God, I am so sorry, this is really embarrassing –”
Carlton’s gonna be so pissed, she thinks.
“Hey, hey. No. This isn’t on you, okay? This one’s all me. No hard feelings, I get it. You were doing your job.” He smiles brightly at her.
“Right …”
“Too bad for you guys, though – ten seconds earlier and you would’ve nabbed a pretty good collar.”
“Ten seconds earlier and I might’ve shot you,” Juliet says ruefully, watching as his smile turns into a lopsided little grin. She wonders if her cheeks are as flushed as she imagines they are.
“Aw, Agent O’Hara, you can shoot me any day.”
“Very funny,” Juliet says, flattening her mouth and tilting her head. She feels like she’s just finished a marathon sprint, or maybe tried skydiving for the first time. She lets out another strained laugh and finally drops her arms all the way. Instead of mocking her, though, or brushing her off to attend to the mess of crime scene still surrounding them, Shawn’s eyes very obviously flick over her in a quick once-over.
Juliet shivers. Then she shivers again — in an involuntary way that jerks its way through her body and is the opposite of a good thing. She realizes belatedly that she’s still soaking wet from the rain outside. For a mid-tier motel room, the A.C. is blasting pretty intensely in here.
“You must be freezing,” Shawn says. “You look like you took a dunk in the downstairs pool. C’mere.”
“I’m — fine,” Juliet starts, her cheeks’ flush incongruous to the second shiver that jolts through her torso. She doesn't really get much farther than that. In a quick moment Shawn has slipped off his suit jacket and is wrapping it around her shoulders.
The move brings him close enough that Juliet is aggressively reminded of their last encounter. Her cheeks burn. Her heart skips. She shoves those feelings down, and he pulls away, but the warmth of his body heat lingers where the jacket covers her.
“Hey, you mind waiting here while I take some of this evidence downstairs?” Shawn asks lightly over his shoulder, as he turns back and starts picking up a couple of the larger supplies. “Don’t want the cleaning lady coming in and messing with anything, you know …”
“Of course,” manages Juliet. If her heart rate could go back to normal sometime this week, that would be nice. She resists the urge to massage her temples while Shawn shoots her a grateful smile.
When he straightens the MICR machine is balanced in his arms against one of the typewriters and a box of checks. Shawn says, “And hey … maybe when this is all over … you could buy me dinner?”
He sounds hesitant, a small shy thread turning up the end of the last word, something hopeful in his eyes. When Juliet’s heart flutters this time, she does absolutely nothing to ignore it.
“I’d like that,” she says.
Eyes sparkling, Shawn heads for the open door.
“Wait!”
His footsteps halt. Juliet shakes her head and lets out a huffing laugh, holding out her hand.
“You forgot your wallet.”
Shawn blinks at her once. “Oh,” he says easily. “That’s fine. You keep it safe for now, I trust you.” He pauses, presses his tongue against his bottom lip in a way that’s terribly distracting, then adds, “And Jules?”
“Yeah?”
“Nice haircut.”
Juliet blushes. With another grin, he’s gone.
Finally alone, Juliet takes a few seconds to breathe deeply, trying to getting her heart rate back to normal and waiting for the last of her shivers to subside. She wonders what Carlton found in his room – probably more evidence, if this place suggested anything about how elaborate the whole operation was. An old man … huh. That would explain a lot. Criminals are most often dismissed based on age and gender, and she remembers the conversation she and Shawn had about distractions a few months ago at that restaurant …
Biting her lip and sinking down onto the edge of the mattress, Juliet burrows her hands into the pockets of Shawn’s very soft and cozy suit jacket, hoping to speed up the thawing process. When her right hand meets resistance, Juliet’s first thought is that it’s the awkward fist her fingers make around Shawn’s wallet. Then she realizes the pocket is full. Curious, she digs a bent-up pad of post-it notes and what appears to be a medical alert bracelet out of the jacket pocket.
Juliet frowns. The post-it pad is lime green and has two separate fresh notes, poorly peeled off then stuck back on, both of them scrawled over in unfamiliar handwriting.
SHAWN – THE NEXT TIME YOU WANT ME TO KEEP YOUR NOTE TO SELF, WRITE IT DOWN!! THIS IS THE LAST TIME I DO IT FOR YOU
TO DO: GO FIND CAPTAIN CONNORS IN L.A. AND DRIVE HIM BACK TO YOUR DAD’S HOUSE. HE CAN STAY THERE UNTIL HIS DAUGHTER GETS IN FROM TEXAS
On the other note, in slightly different, older penmanship, an address is written. 1048 Gladiola Avenue, Paradise Motel
A third handwriting follows below that one.
Milk
fruit loops
bRead
pitch idea to Gus: zip-line for hot dogs???
In the corner there is a shockingly well-rendered illustration of the hot dog zipline in ballpoint pen.
A slow feeling of dread builds in Juliet’s stomach. She turns over the medical bracelet in her other hand. From the end hangs a little electronic tag, and the back has a message written on it in printed blue letters.
HELLO! MY NAME IS BRETT CONNORS. THIS IS MY MEDICAL ALERT BRACELET. I AM SUFFERING FROM EARLY-ONSET ALZHEIMER'S. IF YOU FIND ME WANDERING SOMEWHERE I SHOULDN’T BE, PLEASE CALL (951) 667-9872
Very slowly, Juliet puts down the notes and holds up the wallet Shawn left in her possession. Very slowly, Juliet pops open the clasp.
Need a couple of hunks to move your stuff? CALL ABS-OLUTELY GREAT MOVERS today!
Buy four coffees from Dunkin Donuts and get one donut free!
CALL 1-800 “ALIEN & UFO EXPERTS” FOR YOUR EXTRATERRESTRIAL NEEDS
With each new and increasingly inane business card she picks out of the wallet Juliet’s heart rate kicks up one more notch. A Heinz Ketchup coupon. A movie ticket from six years ago to Hitchco*ck’s Psycho. Two Altoid mint wrappers.
He doesn’t even have a driver’s license.
Juliet jerks to her feet. Her heart is pounding twice as hard as it was five minutes ago. Whereas before her head was spinning, now it feels utterly blank. With a jolt, she rushes to the open window and nearly crashes into it when her stiletto heel trips over one of the half-opened boxes of printer’s ink. Scrambling to her feet, hands disappearing in the too-long sleeves of her borrowed jacket, Juliet grabs the doorknob leading to the balcony in haphazard movements and wrenches it open. She flings herself forward against the railing, heart in her throat, and looks wildly around the quiet L.A. neighborhood.
Shawn is in the middle of the street. He’s jogging lightly, arms laden with the typewriter, MICR machine, and box of checks, the light blue shoulders of his shirt already darkened by the rain. He’s almost made it to the corner bend.
“HEY!” Juliet yells.
Steps away from the corner, Shawn turns at the sound of her voice. He catches her eye over his shoulder. Her breath is coming out in ragged bursts and her heart is pounding in her ears. Her fists shake, a kind of livid, live-wire, impotent rage Juliet has never before known in her life licking up through her ribcage and into her throat and throbbing through her head and rendering her nearly mute. One corner of his mouth tilts up in a mischievous half-smile.
He winks at her.
Then, before Juliet can so much as open her mouth, he’s hopped the curb, disappeared behind another picturesque hedge of azaleas, and slammed what sounds like a card door behind him; there is a squeal of tires against wet pavement, and he’s gone.
A crash sounds from inside the motel room and loud, angry footsteps clatter into Juliet’s consciousness.
“O’Hara!” sounds Carlton’s grumpy voice. “I made it all the way up to the damn fourth floor and one of the other residents’ bathrooms had flooded, by the time I got in there it was empty – Jesus, have you seen what’s in this room? What the hell are you wearin –”
Juliet screams.
It’s three weeks later that the phone rings.
Their pathetic cramped office should be abandoned for Christmas, but only McNab’s gone home to his family for the holidays; Carlton is muttering to himself at his desk and Dobson’s fallen asleep in the corner. Juliet, miserable, neck deep in the abysmally boring task of differentiating between DMV clerical typos and deliberate fakes that Chief Vick punished the whole department with, picks up the phone.
“Federal Bureau of Investigation,” she says. “You’ve reached the check fraud department.”
“Agent O’Hara.”
Juliet freezes.
Something about her best impression of a stone gargoyle must catch Carlton’s eye, because he looks up, frowns at her for only a moment, then pales three shades under the sh*tty office lights as the realization hits him. He jerks to his feet, nearly spilling an entire stack of files. Dobson snores, then startles (Carlton has thrown a shoe at him) and almost falls out of his chair. The coffee maker takes this exact moment to beep loudly in readiness.
The chaos spurs Juliet into action. Wildly, she gropes at her desk for a usable pen as Carlton dives across the office to pick up the second line.
“Shawn,” says Juliet finally. “You’ve got a lot of nerve.”
“I actually have fewer nerves than the average human male, medically speaking. They did a study on me once. Don’t worry – nothing terminal.”
Juliet’s pen search is proving fruitless. She tries to communicate this exclusively through one-handed charades to Carlton, which results in him kicking a rolling stand of office supplies at her in response; it very nearly crashes into the desk.
“How exactly can I help you?” Juliet says in a sickly sweet voice.
She swears she can hear his grin; a spark of irritation fizzles its way up Juliet’s spine and heats her cheeks. She crosses her legs under the table.
“Oh, you know. It’s Christmas.”
“And you thought we’d all still be at work?”
The voice hums in sincere consideration. For a wild moment, she desperately hopes he doesn’t retort with some witty variation on just you. She would’ve walked right into that one, which would’ve been inexcusable. Table legs scrape dully against the carpet as Carlton almost falls into the wall tripping over a wire. Call McNab, he’s mouthing furiously at Dobson, who is retrieving the thrown shoe from under an office chair. I don’t care if his pregnant wife’s two days from going into labor –
She holds her breath, squeezing her eyes shut and clenching her finally-acquired pen so tightly that her knuckles turn translucent, ready to write down even the tiniest thing he lets slip down.
Then,
“... What are you wearing?”
And, in spite of herself, Juliet grins.
