Vivian watched as Natasha descended the ladder and hopped off. She stood with her arms crossed in the doorway and waited until Natasha turned around.
"Looking for something?" she asked in her calm, cool voice.
Natasha jumped and put her hand to her heart for a second before throwing her shoulders back and tossing her hair.
"You shouldn't sneak up on people, Vivian," she admonished. She looked guilty and Vivian knew she was up to something.
"I wasn't the one sneaking. You promised Anthony you would stay close to either him or me. What were you doing?"
"Can't a person get a little air without raising the alarms?"
"Not when a person says they are using the restroom, but goes outside instead. And not a person who has committed the felony act of kidnap and should be sitting in a jail cell rather than tagging along with a vigilante team."
Natasha narrowed her eyes at Vivian. "You people aren't ever going to get over that, are you?"
"I'm sure we will. When you start acting trustworthy and honorable."
"See, well... that's the problem. I'm not trustworthy. And I am certainly not honorable. There's a dark side of me that you people can't just ignore. You can't expect me to be like you. I'm not. I might have been once, but that person is long gone."
"We'll see. Where did you go?"
"I told you. To get some air."
"It looks to me more like you followed Detective Wolfe. What is it you want with him?"
Natasha walked over to Vivian and slowly ran a finger down her cheek. She looked her straight in the eyes.
"What I want with him is none of your concern. If you must know something, I will tell you this. Jackson Wolfe is the only person here I feel a connection with. He's the only one I feel like I might be able to relate to. I followed him because I thought he might need to talk to someone. Someone who might understand him. You people certainly don't. That blonde bimbo of a partner of his certainly doesn't."
"Doesn't what?" Macy came down the hall. She walked around Vivian and faced Natasha. "His bimbo partner doesn't what, Natasha?"
Natasha looked down at her and her lip curled upward. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked Macy back in the eyes without wavering.
"Doesn't understand or know how to handle a man like Jackson Wolfe," she purred in her sultry tone. She lifted her hand and studied her nails. "I on the other hand.... well... let's just say I can see what he needs."
Macy didn't say anything for a moment. She just stood there and stared at the tall brunette, her hands on her hips. Vivian took a step forward and opened her mouth to say something but Macy spoke first.
"I think you'd better rethink your plan of action there, you bird-brained bitch," she said very slowly, her voice still it's high, feminine tone. "If you think for one second that Jackson would have anything to do with a street whore, you don't know him at all. Let me tell you something about Jackson. Evil appalls him. People who break the law anger him. And loose women with low morals and their noses stuck so high in the air they have birds perching on them.... disgust him. So if you have your..." She visibly shuddered. ".... claws prepared to sink into my partner... why you've got yourself a lot of work to do. I would suggest you start with your wardrobe and a manicure. Then you've got some serious attitude adjusting to work on. After that, I'd give it about 10 years when maybe he won't recognize you anymore and you can pretend to be someone else entirely. Because there's more chance of a cold day in hell than there is of him having interest in the likes of you."
Vivian's shoulders shook as she laughed silently. Her hand covered her mouth and she struggled not to make a sound. She had to duck behind the wall, but not before she saw the look on Natasha's face. The woman literally looked as though her head was about to explode. Vivian hid her face and regained her composure before peeking back around. Natasha opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again.
Finally she tossed back her hair and walked around Macy not saying a word. She strode down the hall toward the conference room without a backward glance.
Macy let out a small sigh. She turned around to face Vivian and smiled. "There. That ought to take some wind out of those sails!" she sang. "You must get tired of babysitting that woman!"
Vivian just grinned and shook her head. "You really know how to make her angry. It's refreshing to watch. With us, it seems to always be her trying to get our feathers ruffled. You should see the state she's had Jordan in a few times. I walked in once to find him nearly in tears and a vine wrapped snugly around her neck."
Macy laughed. "Really? That sweet boy? What on Earth could she have been saying to him."
Vivian shook her head. "Oh no. Not saying. Doing. She had uprooted his favorite ficus and was stripping it of its branches and leaves. She told him she thought it would make a wonderful club with which she could proceed to smash all of his prized sunflowers. She told him she liked the seeds and they were easier to get to that way."
Macy opened her mouth wide and then covered it. "She did not!"
"Oh, she did. And then she offered to build a fire with the branches she'd stripped from the tree. She told him to grow a few more so they'd have lots more wood."
Both women laughed. "Poor, poor boy!" Macy exclaimed.
"I know. He was so shocked and heartbroken that he couldn't even talk. He just stood there and grew a vine that wrapped itself around her neck and kept growing and wrapping until I walked in. She looked like a cartoon character wrapped in a boa constrictor!"
They both laughed harder until there were tears falling from their eyes.
"You two enjoying yourselves?"
Both women jumped and turned to see Jackson standing there at the bottom of the ladder. Macy gasped. "Jackson, honey, we didn't hear you..."
"No. You wouldn't have. You two were making enough racket that they probably heard you all the way into Salt Lake City. I won't even ask what was so funny. Women have weird senses of humor."
He took a step forward, his eyes on Macy's. Vivian looked from one to the other, wondering if she should leave. She felt kind of uncomfortable. "Well, if... if you two don't mind...."
She pointed her thumbs back over her shoulders toward the conference room. They didn't look at her so she just backed quietly out of the room and made her way back to the others.
............
Macy's heart pumped so hard in her chest that she was afraid it would pound itself right through the bone. She swallowed. "Jackson.. I-I'm sorry if I sounded like I thought differently of you..."
"You do, though. Don't you?"
She looked down and then back up into his eyes. "I don't know what to think, or...." She turned away from him and folded her hands under her chin. She closed her eyes. "This is all a lot to take in, darling."
He moved behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders. Gently, he turned her to face him and put a finger under her chin to raise her face so that he could look her in the eyes.
"I want to know right now." His voice was low and even. "Do you trust me?"
"Of course I trust you..."
"Do you believe in me?"
"I believe in you."
"You have to stop thinking like a cop now, Macy."
It felt strange to hear him say the words. She was so used to him constantly barking at her that they were cops. To behave like cops. Her bottom lip trembled for a moment. "I don't.. I don't know how to think any other way."
"I know. I don't either. We have to adapt. Evolve. Maybe Father Time isn't such a bad guy. Maybe there are people who need to be taken out. Maybe we should try to think about things from a new point of view. A higher point of view."
"Our jobs..."
"Our jobs aren't the most important thing going on right now. There are things that are much bigger. There are countries that have the nuclear power to end all life on our planet and those countries are trying to start World War III."
Macy looked up at him and trembled. "I know. I-I'm scared, Jackson."
He drew her to him and put his arms around her protectively. He slouched down and buried his face in her soft hair, breathing in the smell of jasmine and vanilla. "I won't let it happen."
"How will you stop them?"
He pulled back and looked at her again. "I think we need to rethink how we feel about Father Time. He's probably the key to all of this. If they had planned to use him to start a war, let's turn it around on them. Let's use him to prevent one."
Edited.
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