Chapter Eight: Unfinished Business

Cheryl sat on the chair in Steve's room with her feet tucked up under her reading a magazine as her partner slept. His fever had broken late Sunday night, and he had woken up early Monday morning. After breakfast today, he was doing well enough to be moved to an intermediate care unit. He had grumbled a little when he found out that he would be on IV antibiotics for at least a week and out of work for at least six, but he had still been too weak and tired to put up much of a stink. Kathryn had come by to say goodbye before leaving for Washington again. She had some business to take care of but hoped to be back for a visit before long. Steve was still spending most of his time sleeping, which as far as Cheryl was concerned, was a good thing because it gave him time to build up his strength.

Since Steve had come out of his coma, Cheryl had received a couple of visits from Warrick Brown, the CSI who had matched the fingerprints from the gloves Amanda had retrieved with the ones in her file on Frederick Wilson. Over lunch at a place called the Montecito, she had learned that he was the only CSI on his team who had been born and raised in Las Vegas. As she stared into his beautiful, caramel-brown eyes, he had told her about the strict grandmother who had raised him after his mother's death and his teenage job running numbers for an illegal bookie, which he had kept secret from his grandma because she would have skinned him alive had she found out; and she knew this handsome man was showing her extraordinary trust.

Last night he had taken her dancing at a club run by one of his friends. Then they had gone to one of the casinos where he taught her a little about how to beat the odds at blackjack. When she asked him why he didn't place a bet, he quietly admitted that he was a compulsive gambler. Naturally, she had ended their visit to the casino on the spot, but at Warrick's insistence, the date continued.

As they cruised the strip, admiring the neon light displays of the various casinos and hotels, she asked, "Why don't you leave Vegas to avoid temptation?"

He shrugged and told her, "It's home. I have a good job, I know someone in every hotel and club in the city, and I can use those connections to help me do my job better. I have friends here to save me from myself if I ever get in trouble. There's no need to leave. Why do you stay in LA?"

"Same reasons, I suppose," Cheryl responded coyly, "but then, I don't have any addictions of which LA would be the world capital."

Warrick conceded the point by inclining his head. "I'm managing ok, but I'd probably have to rethink things if the temptation became too much." As they passed the Luxor hotel, he pointedly changed the subject. "The Luxor has one of the most powerful beams of light in the world. Its several dozen 7,000 watt Xenon lamps last up to 2,000 hours each and they come to a total of 315,000 watts. The beam represents the Egyptians' belief that their souls will travel to heaven on its path."

Cheryl smiled. "I like that idea. It's kind of romantic."

"I kinda like it, too." Warrick smiled back at her then, and she leaned over so he could put his arm around her shoulders.

That night she had found it hard to sleep.

Today, he had joined her for lunch at the hotel. He happened to be in the neighborhood because, to her amusement and Warrick's chagrin, Jesse had finagled a tour of the crime lab and he was giving the young doctor a ride back to his lodgings. Over some of the best burgers and fries she could ever remember having, their conversation had taken an interesting turn.

"I really wish we had more time to get to know each other," he said regretfully, then dropped his voice to a conspiratorial tone, "and I don't mean just socially."

"Oh, really?" she said in surprise, trying to laugh it off.

"Oh, yes."

His voice was so sexy and his eyes were so beautiful she almost went for it. Then her mind's eye flashed on an image of Steve giving her a grateful smile when she offered him a strawberry milkshake in the Japanese Gardens after Abby Chadway turned him inside out and stomped on his heart. It was so clear she could hear the birds and smell the freshly trimmed grass. Blinking her eyes and shaking her head to clear it, she gave Warrick a small smile and said, "I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the vibe I'm getting here. Maybe we need to back up a step."

"What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas," he tried once more.

"So I've heard," she said, taking a sip of her iced tea, "but my conscience goes home with me."

He sat back in his chair, putting more distance between them. "Is there someone special back in LA?"

For reasons that escaped her, she told him, "I'm not sure, but if there is, I don't need to complicate things with a romantic fling in a strange city, no matter how attractive the man is."

Quite unexpectedly, Warrick laughed. "Women!" he said, as if the single word fully expressed his thoughts.

Bemused, Cheryl asked him, "What about women?"

"All of you are amazing!"

"How do you mean?"

"Well, I have never known a guy who could reject a person and compliment them in the same breath." He ate a couple of fries, and shook his head. "Look, Cheryl, whoever this guy is, if he doesn't realize how lucky he is to have you, give me a call. Long-distance relationships are never easy, but I'd be happy to make the effort to have a chance with you."

Looking down at her plate when she felt the heat of a blush creep into her cheeks, Cheryl said, "I'll, uh, I'll keep that in mind."

And now she was sitting here, watching her partner sleep.

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS STAYS IN VEGAS

"So, Mark, you never said, how did you know it was Frederick Wilson?" Jesse asked as he shook half a bottle of hot sauce over the heaping plate of crawdads he had gotten from the Cajun table of the late night buffet. The hotel restaurant was having a regional American cuisine buffet, and there were a number of food combinations that he, Mark, and Amanda had ever seen before. His friends had been prudent and stuck with things they found familiar, but Jesse, being more adventurous than either of his companions, had deliberately sought out the most alien dishes available.

"Well, I didn't actually know until Amanda got his fingerprints," Mark said, smiling his gratitude to his lovely friend and getting one of her beautiful smiles in return.

"You know what I mean," Jesse said as he studied his plate full of little red crustaceans with a perplexed look on his face, almost as if he wasn't sure what to do with them now that he had seasoned them to his satisfaction. "What made you suspect him?" Gamely, he picked up his fork.

"Oh, it was a lot of things," Mark said, "but I guess it started with his name. I just had the feeling there was something not right the first time I looked at Steve's chart. Cheryl read his name and said she wasn't surprised he preferred Wil. Then there was that comment about Steve being 'cavalier about his health.' That's when I figured out that Wilfred Erickson is a perfect anagram for Frederick Wilson, but there were other things that happened between the one thing and the other."

"Like what?" Jesse didn't look up as he asked his question. He was too busy choosing his first victim. Mark was prevented from answering the question as the young man speared a crawdad. The resulting crunch made Amanda groan and shudder in disgust and the accompanying spray of juice caused Jesse to jump back, nearly upsetting his chair.

"Jesse!" Amanda reprimanded him as she scooted around the table to be closer to Mark.

"I'm sorry," he replied, "but what do you want me to do?"

"I don't know, but not that!" Amanda shuddered again and turned to Mark, "Anyway, Mark, what 'other things' tipped you off about Frederick?"

"Well, I guess his bedside manner had something to do with it," Mark said, his moustache twitching in amusement as he looked across the table at Jesse,who had selected another miniature lobster and was trying meticulously to break open the tiny claws to get at the meat inside. He silently wondered if the young man had ever seen the movie Without Mercy, and if he had, would he remember the scene where Kim Basinger and Richard Gere, lost in the Louisiana Bayou, had found nourishment in a pot of crayfish?

Jesse finally succeeded in cracking the shells on the claws, and was disappointed to find nothing worthwhile inside. Not to be defeated, he turned the mangled morsel over and began trying to pick the scales off the tail, certain that he would find something there.

"What was wrong with his bedside manner?" Amanda finally asked. Jesse had dropped out of the discussion; he was too busy playing with his food.

"He was smug, and too smooth," Mark answered shuddering as he saw Jesse give up on the crawdad's tail, pick up a fresh one, and bite into it with a crunch.

Amanda took one look at her young friend, saw that he was picking legs out of his teeth, and averted her eyes. "Can you please find something else to eat?"

"Actually, they taste pretty good," Jesse said defensively, "but the exoskeleton is kind of like eating an unpeeled shrimp. If you're not careful, they could cut up your mouth." He popped the remaining half of the crawdad in his mouth, and even Mark had to look away when one of the antennae remained sticking out between Jesse's lips.

Jesse crunched a couple of times, made a face, and tried unsuccessfully to discretely spit his food into a paper napkin. Making another face, he said apologetically, "Excuse me, guys, I think I still have a piece of chitin stuck in my throat."

Turning away from the table with a fresh napkin in hand, he cleared his throat several times like someone trying to get rid of the hard shell from a kernel of popcorn. Finally, he dislodged the sharp little piece of exoskeleton, balled up the napkin, and turned back to the table.

"What do you mean he was smug?" Jesse asked as gave his plate a sorrowful look, and shoved it away. Amanda sighed with relief.

"Oh, well," Mark said, slightly surprised his friend had actually managed to follow the conversation, "when he beat Steve at poker, he was smug, and when he explained his strategy, he took a didactic tone, like he was giving Steve a lesson."

"How could that have made you suspicious?" Jesse queried. "I wouldn't be able to resist doing the same thing if I could ever beat Steve at poker. No one who knows him could." Jesse frowned, then smiled. "But that was just it, wasn't it? As far as you knew, Wil Erickson didn't know Steve, they had no history, and he had no reason to be smug or to want to teach Steve a lesson, am I right?"

Mark nodded. "Of course, that's just one example. Every time I talked to the man, I just had a feeling something was very wrong."

"'Scuse me, Shug," said a friendly, fiftyish woman with wild brown curls piled high on her head and wrapped in a scarf as she approached Jesse.

Jesse smiled uncertainly up at the woman whose eyebrows had been plucked out and penciled back in high on her forehead and whose lips had been made fuller by the application of lipstick well beyond their natural outline. "Yes?"

"Me an' th' ol' man," she gestured toward a portly older man with graying hair, no teeth, and a light blue polyester sport coat that bulged over his round belly and strained at the button. Jesse smiled even more uneasily when the gentleman gave him a gummy grin and a wave.

The woman continued blithely talking. "Well, we war havin' a right good time watchin' you wit' yer crawdads, but it jus' 'bout broke our hearts when we seen dat you give up on 'em."

"I see," Jesse said, but it was clear that he didn't. Her accent, neither Texas nor Cajun, but a muddy mixture of the two, was pleasant to listen to but hard to understand.

Mark chuckled. "My friend was being adventurous," he said. "He wanted to try some foods he'd never had before, but I don't think he knew what to do with the crayfish."

"So Ah noticed," the woman replied. Turning back to Jesse, she said, "Ordinar'ly Ah wou'n't wan' come 'tween a man an' his crawdad bawl, but if you like, Ah kin show you how to eat 'em."

Jesse glanced at Mark, who smiled encouragingly, and then at Amanda who gave a barely perceptible shake of her head, and, grinning mischievously back at his pretty friend, he turned to the woman and said, "Please, do."

"Ain't nothin' to 't," the friendly woman said. "Jus' tink o' it like a perfume bottle wit' a tight cap on."

She confidently picked up a crawdad in her right hand, holding on to the thorax and tail segments and leaving the head exposed. "Hold it upright so you don' spill nothin', den twist off th' haid and suck out th' insides."

She demonstrated, finishing with a slurp and a grin. "Dat's some ser'ous good food," she said. "Gone, now, you try."

As Jesse grinned and picked up a crawdad, Amanda stood up, and trying valiantly but rather unsuccessfully to keep a pleasant smile on her face for the benefit of the helpful stranger, said, "Well, I think I've had quite enough. I'm going back to my room to call the boys."

Jesse followed her with his eyes, and loudly slurped the juices out of his first crawdad just as she walked past him.

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS STAYS IN VEGAS

Cheryl sat beside Steve's bed, still watching him sleep. Jesse and Amanda had come and gone, spending most of their visit arguing about table manners and strange food, and still she sat there. Steve's new doctor, a woman named O'Halloran had come to check on him, and she stayed by his side. Ron Wagner had called from Washington, and Steve had slept through the call while Cheryl told the FBI agent how her partner was doing. She knew, if Mark would let her, she would willingly spend the night on a cot next to his bed, but she didn't doubt that if anyone spent the night in Steve's room looking after him it would be his dad.

And all the while she sat there, she thought about her conversation with Warrick Brown. Was there someone special back in LA? She didn't know, but if Steve's health had been better, she would have shaken him awake and asked him.

She had never imagined that she would still be unattached this late in life, and she never would have thought that the most important person in her world would be someone she worked with. She'd always been fond of her partner, but in the few days since they had boarded the plane together, her feelings for him had deepened and changed to the point where she really didn't know what to do with herself anymore. When she had seen how vulnerable and frightened he looked in the emergency room, all she had wanted to do was take care of him. Then, after her conversation in the hospital ladies' room with Kathryn and the spectacle the FBI agent had made of herself after the Cirque du Soleil show, she had wanted to defend him from the predatory female. When she watched him sleeping that day in the suite, she had started to wonder what other possibilities might lay in store for the two of them. Now she just wanted to know how her partner felt about her.

She brushed away a tear, surprised to find that she was crying. She felt awash in emotions, only a few of which she could name: relief and delight that he was alive, anger and frustration that he had been put at risk again, regret for all the time they had squandered when they could have been more than partners and colleagues, excitement and anticipation of what the future held, and something bubbly and giddy that she wanted to call love.

And a little fear that her feelings might not be reciprocated.

"Cheryl?" The voice was weak, but oh, so welcome.

"Hey, Partner," she said in a voice choked with feeling. "It's about time you woke up again." She poured him a cup of water and held the straw to his lips.

Steve sipped slowly, and then lay back against his pillows with a sigh. "Ahh. Thank you." He squinted at her, and then asked in shock, "Are you crying?"

She sniffed and dashed away her tears with the back of her hand. "Allergies," she lied, knowing how transparent she was to him.

Steve waited a full minute before he said anything more, and then, softly, "You don't have to tell me, but I will listen if you want to." He added a smile so she wouldn't feel pressured, "It's not like I have anything better to do right now."

She laughed and said sarcastically, "Oh, I am so flattered." Then she grew more serious. No time like the present, she told herself. "Have you ever thought about settling down?"

Steve gave her the deer in the headlights look and then asked, "Before I answer that, you're not gonna tell me that you have found a new partner, are you?"

"No, why would you think that?"

"Because Kathryn asked me the exact same question before she told me she was dumping me for some guy named Winnie."

Cheryl laughed for real this time and said, "No, I am not dumping you, not for Winnie or anyone else."

"Good."

"So?"

"So, what? Oh, settling down, yeah, I've thought about it, but it kind of requires someone to settle down with."

"But you've never seemed to make any effort to find that someone. Why?"

He shrugged and looked around blearily for a few moments.

"Steve?"

He shrugged again, and this time answered her question. "I've always kind of thought she would just come along one day and I would know it was her. I mean with five billion people on the planet, the odds of finding the right one by going out and looking for her can't be a whole hell of a lot greater than they are if you just live your life and wait for her, you know? They might even be worse."

"Have you ever considered that you might already have found her?" Cheryl asked.

"And lost her, you mean?" He asked dimly.

Cheryl shook her head, and Steve got the idea. "Oh. Ohhh!"

She smiled and nodded when he didn't dismiss the suggestion out of hand. And then, when he seemed to have nothing more to say, she went on. "Do you remember when you were dating Carrie Langford Adams and she thought you and I had something going?"

"Uh-huh," Steve was still too fuzzy headed and too busy absorbing the realization to do more than grunt.

"Well, I know we both wondered what it would be like."

"Sometimes I still do," Steve admitted, and he could see by the smile on Cheryl's face that it was the reaction she had been hoping for.

"So do I," she replied. "Steve what if we are the right ones, for each other, I mean, and we never do anything about it?"

"It's against department policy for partners to date, Cheryl, we could be split up if we are found out, or even fired if we try to keep it a secret."

"I know that, but Steve, when you were so sick, when I was afraid I would never get to talk to you again, that I would never get to talk to you about us, I wasn't thinking about my job. I was thinking about my life."

Steve just looked at her for a minute, and she wasn't sure whether he had nothing to say or was just afraid to say what was on his mind, so when he didn't speak, she continued.

"When we started partnering together, yeah, there was a mutual attraction and it was fun to flirt and tease and know that's all it would ever be, but somewhere along the line, you became one of the most important people in the world to me. I didn't even realize it until this week, and then, to almost lose you never having told you . . . "

She rubbed her eyes to get rid of the tears that kept plaguing her, and she nodded a thank you when Steve handed her his box of tissues so she could blow her nose.

"Well, now I have told you," she said, "and I'm sorry if it has made you uncomfortable, but I needed to say it." She was silent a moment, then, "Would you say something, anything, please, so I can stop babbling like an idiot? I really need to . . . "

Steve put a finger up to her lips, stopping the stream of verbiage that was threatening to drown them both. He could see the pain and fear in her eyes and silently cursed the circumstances that had caused all of the important people in his life to have to worry about him again; but he couldn't help feeling glad that it had led to this most unexpected confession from his partner.

"I'll be honest with you, Cheryl," he said. "I haven't seriously considered anything more than a professional relationship and a real close friendship with you in a long time, but the last time I did, I thought we could make a good couple some day. I'll be out of work for six weeks . . . "

He struggled to suppress a yawn. The fatigue was coming back quickly despite the sea of happy feelings moving inside him.

". . . and hopefully I'll start feeling a little more energetic before long. That might be a good time for us to, I don't know, see how we feel about dating one another, I guess. Then, when I get back to work, we could decide where we want to go from there."

When he saw her happy smile, he couldn't resist one small dig. Teasing had always been part of their relationship. "I have to warn you though . . ."

She frowned, "What?"

"It isn't easy dating a cop."

She laughed and plumped his pillows as he settled down for some more sleep. "So I've heard."

As he snuggled under the covers, he reached a hand out to her, and she took it.

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS STAYS IN VEGAS

Mark sat in the small room studying his nails while he waited for Frederick Wilson to be delivered into his presence. Everyone had advised against this meeting, but he still felt the need to confront the man who had tried to kill his son. As far as he was concerned, the sooner he got it out of his system, the better. A door opened, and Frederick, wearing an orange prison jumpsuit and irons, was escorted into the room by a guard.

"Hello, Mark," he greeted his former colleague just as cordially as if he had happened across him in the doctors' lounge at Community General.

Mark inclined his head slightly and sternly greeted the prisoner, "Frederick."

"It's good to see you, but I have to admit, I would have thought you'd want to be long gone from Las Vegas by now."

"Not without my son," Mark replied, "and he's not strong enough to leave yet."

"Oh, I see, and how is he doing?"

"His fever broke, he's come out of the coma, and he's been moved to a step-down unit."

"Oh, that is good news!" Frederick remarked. "I'll have to send him a card."

The two men sat in silence glaring at each other for a long moment, and then Frederick filled the void.

"You didn't come here just to stare at me, Mark. What do you want?"

"Why, Frederick?"

"Why what?"

"Why try to kill my son? Steve didn't even recognize you, neither did Cheryl nor I. If you had just treated him and then left him alone, we'd have gone back to LA and never been any the wiser. You were home free. Why jeopardize that?"

Frederick shrugged. "The opportunity presented itself."

Mark shook his head. "I don't believe that. You're not that irrational, there has to be more."

Frederick leaned forward and asked in a conspiratorial tone, "Do you really want to know?"

"That's why I'm here."

"I had a lousy childhood, Mark. I knew I wasn't wanted, I wasn't loved. I could have easily turned to drugs or gangs, done a lot of really horrible things, but I didn't. I made a conscious choice to go the other way. I made a choice, Mark, and I want you to remember that, I made a choice to do something worthwhile with my life. I studied hard and taught myself medicine, and you can't deny that I was a damned good doctor, even if I didn't have the degree and the formal training the law requires. Then my little sister came crawling out of the woodwork."

"She missed her brother and wanted to get to know him again," Mark reminded the man, doubting that he would care what Lily's motives were.

"Whatever. If she had just left me alone, things would have been so different. I would probably still be working at Community General." Frederick gave an ironic laugh. "I might even have been in line for your job someday."

"I doubt it," Mark murmured.

"Eh, I suppose not. You've probably named Jesse Travis your heir apparent by now. Anyway, as far as I knew, Lily was blackmailing me, threatening to ruin everything, and I couldn't allow that. I know it wasn't her fault that Lou Tyler lied to me about why she was there, but I had never asked her to look me up. When I left home, I said goodbye, and that should have been the end of it. Like I said, if she had just left me alone.

"Well, you know how things went from there. You and your son caught me, and I went to jail."

Frederick stopped talking as if he were finished. After a moment, Mark pressed him for more. "You still haven't answered my question. Why?"

Frederick gave a bitter smile and answered with a question. "Do you know what prison is like for a man like me?"

"I've been there," Mark replied. "I have an idea."

"Like hell you do!" Frederick snapped. "You were housed apart from the general population, and you knew you had someone working to get you out. I was thrown in among the common thugs and perverts, abandoned there to fend for myself."

"You murdered two people, Frederick, one of them your own sister, and you hired an assassin to kill a third. What did you expect?"

"She should have left me alone!" he shouted, and then went back to his diatribe about prison life. "No one there was as smart as me, no one was interested in the arts or literature. I couldn't have an intelligent conversation with anyone. And I am not a physically imposing man, so I was vulnerable to all sorts of . . . barbarities.

"You put me there, Mark, you and your son. I had made a conscious choice to live a decent, productive life, contributing to society, despite the neglect I experienced in my formative years, and when my life was threatened, I defended myself. You and your son punished me for that. You gave no consideration to all I had accomplished. You just threw me in jail."

"A jury convicted you, Frederick."

"Because you told them to! If you had left well enough alone I never would have gone to trial." Frederick took a deep breath to steady himself. Then he looked Mark in the eye and said, "I never hated a soul until you and Steve sent me to prison. I learned to hate there, and when fate dropped Steve in my lap, it was an opportunity I couldn't pass up. It was the perfect opportunity to kill him and punish you.

"I'm surprised, though, and a little offended, that when I escaped you never considered me a threat. I always thought you had believed I a was dangerous man, a sociopath, maybe, to have sent me away in the first place, but now, I guess you didn't give me much thought at all."

"On the contrary," Mark said, "we never doubted you were dangerous, Frederick, but we always knew you were too smart to come back for revenge. We just never accounted for the remote possibility that you might go back into medicine and that one of us might become your patient. If you had just been as smart as we thought, if you had done the procedure and then left Steve alone to recover, you'd be a free man today."

Frederick leaned forward across the table until he was almost nose to nose with his visitor. "Watch your back, Mark. I will get out again, and when I do, I won't wait for fate to bring you to me."

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, STAYS IN VEGAS

"Ahhh, it will be so good to get home," Steve sighed as he settled into his seat in the departure lounge next to his dad. "The sun, the sand, the surf. I can't wait."

Mark laughed. "All you're gonna do is sleep for another week."

Steve grinned and gave his dad a sideways glance, "But I'll be doing it at home."

Jesse and Amanda were off checking in their luggage, and Cheryl had gone to one of the restaurants to get them all something to drink while they waited. In the two weeks Steve had remained in Desert Springs Hospital, she had made the LA-to-Vegas round trip three times, and this time, she was happily flying home with him.

"Do you and Cheryl have any plans?" Mark asked offhandedly.

Neither of them had said anything to anyone about the change in their relationship, but if the frequency of her visits to Las Vegas hadn't tipped them off, finding them curled up together, sound asleep on his hospital bed halfway through The Naked Gun certainly had.

Steve shrugged. "Like you said, all I'm gonna do is sleep for another week," he replied coyly and let his eyes drift closed.

"Mark! Steve! I'm glad I caught you."

The effort of walking from the cab to the departure lounge had left Steve too tired to be startled by the unexpected voice, so all he could do was open his eyes.

"Kathryn? What are you doing here? How did you get here? I didn't think they let non-passengers come this far anymore."

She smiled. "An FBI ID opens a lot of doors, Sloan." Turning to Mark, she said, "I don't mean to be abrupt, Mark, but could you excuse us a moment."

Frowning, Mark nodded. "Uh, sure. Steve, I'm going to go check on Jesse and Amanda. I'll be back in about five minutes."

"Ok, Dad." Looking at Kathryn, he asked, "What brings you back to Vegas?"

"I told you I'd be coming back for a visit before long. I was lucky to catch you here. I was surprised to find you had all checked out of the hotel already this morning."

"I just got out of the hospital yesterday," Steve explained, "and Dad insisted that I spend a day resting before I tried to make the flight home. Why didn't you just catch up with us in LA?"

She smiled excitedly and told him, "I have news, and I wanted to tell you personally."

"Oh, what's up?"

"I've applied for a transfer to the LA Bureau and it has been approved."

"Oh." He knew it wasn't the reaction she had been hoping for, but he couldn't come up with anything else.

"Isn't that great?" she continued gamely, trying to help him work up some enthusiasm.

"Huh? Oh, yeah," Steve agreed, doing his best to sound glad for her, "but you didn't do that on my account, did you?"

"Steve, you know I was only with Winnie because he was there," she said in confusion. "Now that I'm in LA you are."

"Kathryn, a good relationship requires a lot more than just physical proximity."

"I know that, but it's sure a hell of a lot easier when the two people at least live in the same state," she said. "What's wrong with you?"

"Hi, Kathryn!" Cheryl called in greeting to the FBI agent as she approached and then plopped down in the seat next to Steve. Turning to him, she handed him a foam cup with a straw poking out the top. "Sorry I took so long, Babe, but most places don't have any soda that's diet and caffeine free, and that's what your dad ordered for you. At least it's cold."

Suddenly realizing that neither of them had returned her greeting, she looked up at Kathryn and said, "I'm sorry, am I interrupting something?"

Kathryn gave her a mangled smile and said, "No, I believe I am." Turning to Steve she said, "Well, I'm glad you're feeling better. Have a nice flight."

She began to walk away, but after she had gone several steps, Steve called out, "Kathryn!"

She turned and told him, "It's ok. I didn't wait for you to come to me. There's no reason why I should have expected you to wait for me. I'll see you around."

"I never meant to hurt you," he said.

"I know."

After Kathryn was swallowed by the crowd, Cheryl asked Steve, "What was that all about?"

"I'll tell you later," he promised as he slouched down in his seat and rested his head on her shoulder.

"Ok." She turned and kissed him on the top of the head and then listened as his breathing got deeper and slower until he had dozed off while waiting for the plane that would take them home. Together.