Redemption (boyxboy) (18+)

Chapter Twenty-four

Ben's staring at swirls of wood grain again, no closer to answers than he was when Bobby delivered his little pep talk weeks before.

It's not his desk this time, though. Ben has devolved into studying the scratched, whiskey stained bar of Sue's, their regular dive bar, the place Reid considers home more than his own apartment.

Ben has never liked it much - everything is covered in a film of grime and grease and alcoholism - but since Sue, Jill's mom, owns the place, law enforcement always gets half-price drinks.

Besides, it's familiar and comforting, in its own smelly way.

The air is so smoky that everything always looks sort of blurry, like a watercolor painting - if Monet had painted desperation and decay instead of buoyant little water lilies. And the jukebox in the corner, when it works, doesn't play anything recorded after 1979. Reid has always said that it just showed good taste, "Real music. A man's music. Way better than that emotional, whiny, emo-pop that you listen to, Benny-boy."

Ben always hated it when Reid called him that; tonight, he doesn't want to hear anything else.

Sue hadn't been behind the bar when he walked in, which just depressed Ben further. He could have used her particular brand of tough love tonight. Instead, it's just Wayne, the homeless alcoholic who usually spends the night sleeping in the back booth. He'd dubbed himself the Patron Saint of Sue's Roadside Bar at least a decade ago, and everyone had gotten so tired of fighting him about it that Sue gave him a job as unofficial bartender for the nights she took off.

Tonight, he'd taken one look at Ben and immediately set a double bourbon on the rocks in front of him with a sympathetic grimace.

And it had helped; Ben was starting to feel a bit less pathetic about his total failure to do his damn job.

Then Jill shows up, her blonde curls bouncing in a perky way that Ben suddenly finds infinitely irritating.

"You still haven't gotten jack, have you?" she asks, sliding onto the stool next to him.

Scratch that - it's not just the hair that's irritating tonight.

Ben sighs, careful to keep staring at his filmy, now-empty glass, because he knows Jill will see the lie if he looks directly at her. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Bullshit, Ben. We're friends, you know - so be straight with me. I know you think someone at the agency had something to do with all the incidents with that Angelev. And now he's disappeared, along with Reid, and you're here trying to make sure that no one else goes after them."

Ben just gapes at her. "How in the hell did you figure all that out?"

Jill leans over the bar and snags the whiskey bottle. Wayne would have gone apeshit if anyone else did that, but there are perks to being the bar owner's daughter. "I'm a federal marshal, dumbass. It's kind of my job to detect and deduce. Besides, I've known Reid longer than just about anyone else on the planet - I'm the one who talked him into this whole career back when he was just a vet with nothing but a drinking problem and ten bucks to his name. So I know there's no way he just cuts us both loose and falls off the grid without a damn good reason."

"Yeah." Ben just slumps further, his tall frame so hunched over the bar that he almost appears average-sized. "Well, it's my job to detect stuff too, but I'm apparently nowhere near as good at it as you. Because I'm no closer to figuring anything out than I was when I first got back from Michigan."

Her gaze goes narrow and sharp as a rapier. "You don't have any suspects?"

"I thought I did...I mean, I still do - I should probably be out there tailing him instead of sitting here getting plastered, actually - but it's been weeks and I still don't have even a shred of evidence."

Jill takes a deep, controlled breath, her gaze softening and shoulders easing a fraction as she pours them both another round. "But you're keeping tabs on Reid and the witness, right? You know where they are and that they're safe?"

Ben knocks back his whiskey in one long, burning swallow. "Sort of. Communication is a bit...patchy."

Jill swirls her finger through the water ring his glass left on the bar. "Why don't you just track Reid's cell?"

Ben frowns; the world is starting to get a bit fuzzy, but something is beginning to buzz like an alarm in the far corners of his mind. "Because they're off-grid for a reason. I'm not going to run anything through agency resources that could compromise them - including running a cell number. Jesus, Jill, you should know better than that."

She leans back and blinks, a little stunned from the verbal slap. Ben thinks about apologizing but something makes him stay quiet.

Jill stays only a few more minutes, just long enough to sip her drink and make some small talk with Wayne. And she doesn't so much as glance back at Ben when she slides off the stool and strolls out of the bar.

Ben gets so plastered that Wayne has to call him a cab, and then help him out the door when it arrives.

Sue never shows up.