Time to Escape

[galina]

She was glad she at least won a small battle with him as the bills slipped into his pocket. Maybe there was hope for him yet, that brought a small smile to her lips, especially since she could see the annoyance in his eyes. She returned his nod and started to say something else but his lips brushed across her own and she lost her train of thought.

"We're going to need more than luck on this one," She didn't even want to hit him this time. Maybe she was finally getting used to the idea that he had gotten under her skin and it didn't bother her, or maybe she just knew that now was not the time. Either way it didn't matter, she had wasted too much time already.

She nodded, "I'll be waiting," and she would be. She moved away from him, "Go on get out of here wolf boy. I have a cop to go see." She took a deep breath and turned away, readying herself for what she was about to do. She did her best to hide the trepidation dancing up and down her spine.

[thorn]

There was something in her voice that spoke more than her words and maybe something in his eyes that he was trying hard to hide. Either way, it was time for him to leave. He gave her a quick nod, a faint twitch of the lip and then he turned and vanished through the trees at a trot, blending with the scenery as if he had never been there at all.

He hoped she’d be okay and that was why he would call her. To make sure she was safe. By the time he got to the edge of the woods, he had half a plan already. By the time he got to his truck, he knew what he would do. He’d go to ground, search through that PDA and see if his hunch was right.

[galina]

She watched him go until he vanished among the trees then she went back up the hill toward the body. She too was already thinking, running through what she was going to do and how she was going to do it. First things first, she needed to be messier, dirtier, and have more blood on her. It would make things harder to distinguish later.

She had wasted too much time since finding the body, she had to hurry. And come up with a plausible story to tell Jay. When she reached the place where the body was laid out she paused and looked around carefully. Scenting the air she moved closer. She squatted next to the body and rubbed some of the blood on her pants, making sure it covered over Thorn's blood.

Then she stood, and moving carefully she circled the body so that she was on the side of the path. Kneeling down carefully she reached across the body and slid her hands through the grass, as if she had stumbled and fell over the body, making sure to get some on her shirt as well. Accompanied with the grass stains already on her clothes form her tussle with Thorn in the woods, it should be enough to hold the cops off Thorn's trail for a while.

Then she dug her phone out of her pocket and with a steady hand she dialed Jay's number. When it was picked up she spoke in a rush as if she had been running, "Jay something bad has happened...a dead body in the park...there was a guy..I chased him into the woods...Jay..I've got her blood all over me." She made sure there was enough tremble in her voice to be convincing. All the while her thoughts were of Thorn and wondering if he had gotten away.

[jay]

Jay was almost at his car, he had parked it along a track and was about to step inside when his phone rang. He pulled out his cell from his hoody pocket and glanced at the number on screen. He did not recognise it, maybe it was one of his detectives.

“yeah?” He said as he unlocked his car door and was about to slide into the drivers seat. He paused when he heard the voice. He listened to Phoenix, the tremble in her voice, paying so close attention he didn’t speak after she finished. He let his thoughts tick over in his head,. He hated telephones, he could never judge if some one was lying.
“How far into the woods from where we were?” Jay asked, his voice seemingly calm, in truth he was still attempting to work out if he trusted her, “I’ll be there in ten, don’t move, don’t do anything. And when i get there, you will be telling me the truth.” He hung up the phone and slid into the drivers seat of his jeep, and, keys in the ignition he pulled out a map of the area, noting several dirt tracks that took him pretty close to the area. As he drove he put his phone on speaker and dialled the station, “This is Connor, I request a unit at....” he explained where he was going, that a body had been found by a jogger. He now had just enough time to get to Phoenix and determine what had happened.

He skidded to a halt and stepped out of his jeep, pushing through some undergrowth to where he found Phoenix and the body. He cocked his head to one side and placed his hand on her shoulder, pulling her away from the body.
“So, what happened?”

[galina]

She was worried at first when he answered the phone that she wouldn't pull it off. That she wouldn't make him believe her. He had to, there was no other way. At least not any that she could come up with. When he asked her where she was she, "About a mile further down the track from where we separated."

Hies words echoed in her head, You will be telling me the truth. She really wished she could tell him the whole truth but for now she would have to settle with half truths and omissions. It was the best she could give him, and she just hoped he wouldn't hate her for it later. By the time he arrived she was crying, though she wouldn't have been able to tell anyone why later if she was asked.

Her whole world had been turned on it's ear in a matter of days starting with the first day she met Thorn, it had went downhill from there. Then she thought she had found a bright spot, Jay. Now she was afraid that would be jerked from her grasp before she was even aloud to get a good hold on it.

His hand on her shoulder had her jerking, startling her out of her revelry, "Oh Jay...." The tears started in earnest then, it took her a minute but she was able to gather herself and try to talk, "I came around the corner at the top of the hill...I saw something move over here. I looked and saw a man, or man shaped figure run toward the trees. He had a knife, I saw the flash.." She shook her head and wiped at her face trying to dry away the tears.

"I started to follow to get a closer look at him, then I fell over her." She was pointing and waving, frantically gesticulating to emphasize her words. All the while hot tears streaked down her face, she was protecting one man by lying to another. Thorn thought he was a good liar, Phoenix had proven time and again she could lie and never twitch. She had been doing it all her life just to hide what she was, and that wasn't even talking about being a Lycan.

"I tried to follow him into the woods, but he got out of my sight and disappeared. I did find some jewelry and a knife down there though dropped on the ground." Play it close Phoe, it's gotta be believable, "I think he dropped it when I was chasing him."

[jay]

Jay remained still, his eyes dancing over her face as she talked. He arched his brow, watching how she moved, how her eyes glistened. Taking in each sound of words. Something didn’t feel right. She was telling the truth, but, hiding something at the same time.

“Your senses did not pick up the scent of the body first?” Jay questions bluntly, his eyes darting about the crime scene. He stepped back from the body, his hand grabbing Phoenix’s arm and moving her away. He crouched down and cocked his head to one side, his fingers gesturing at hidden lines he saw on the body, the marks, and the angle of the wounds. All in all playing a replay of the crime in jay’s mind. All the while he was weighing up the possibility and MO of the UNSUB.

“You can lie to me all you want Phoenix, I always find out the truth in the end. But, i would advise you to tell me everything, because in less than five minutes a load of cop cars are going to be coming over that ridge, with cops with questions and not allot of time or patience. I, on the other hand, am one of the good ones, and i do help people. So, tell me firstly, how many weapons do you have on you right now?” Jay looked over his shoulder his eyes lingering over her body, pushing aside any thoughts or feeling and focussing on the job.

“Because they are gonna take ya down the station, and you don’t want the metal detectors to go off and have to explain why you have so many weapons, especially as you discovered the body.” Jay then lowered his eyes and paused, “or, you leave, now. You can outrun the cops arriving, and i will cover your backside, as long as you tell me the truth. Who else was here Phoenix? What really happened?”

[galina]

As soon as Jay spoke she knew she was sunk. Dammit! How the hell was she going to explain that? Then in the back of her mind she realized she had made the wrong choice, she had forgotten one other option that she hadn't even considered. She had spent so many years trying to hide her other ability that she often forgot it herself. She should have just disposed of the damn body and went on her merry way.

She moved at his direction and pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, classic nervous gesture but she couldn't help it. She knew that Jay was smart, she just hand't figured on how smart. She hadn't figured he would see through her charade quite so clearly, or so quickly. How could she explain and not make it worse? And lose any chance that she might have, no matter how remote it was at this point to get to know this sexy cop better.

Phoenix looked down at her toes, "How many weapons? Um....right now? Three." She raised her green eyes to lock onto his crystalline blue ones. She shuffled nervously, could she really trust him? would he go after Thorn? Or try to find the real bad guy? A deep breath and she made the decision, who else did she have to trust? "There were two other people here." She let her eyes wander to the tree line, "I didn't lie about seeing the man... I didn't see the body at first. The man I saw looked like someone I know, someone I have not always had the most friendly relationship with. When I saw him, I thought he had been following me...and I gave chase. That's why I didn't notice the body, all I smelled was wolf."

She was walking a thin line and she knew it, if she couldn't trust Jay she may very well be sinking herself into a quagmire she couldn't crawl out of. "When I left the path I saw her.....and she looks like me!! My blood boiled, I knew it was him...he had done this. I ran into the woods, that's where I found him....but he didn't do this. He had been injured...shot actually and had come out here to shift and try to heal himself. There was someone else here. I had him dead to rights, I had my knife at his throat. He told me he had heard someone running and they had crashed into a tree. The tree fell over, but the other guy was gone."

Her voice was careful now, controlled, unemotional, "You're good, but so am I. He wasn't lying to me. He didn't do this, someone is setting him up, and used me to do it. Someone knows I run here everyday, knows I would find this body and what I would think. They used his persona to get to me and make me do something stupid. There is some heavy duty magic involved here Jay. I don't know what's going on, but it's not good. I knew I had to call you, you knew I was on this path and if someone else called this in you would know I had to have seen it and then I would have been a suspect. I had to give the wolf time to get away, whoever did this put wolf blood on this body, purposely pointing this at the Lycan community."

[jay]

He watched the pause, rising to his feet after examining the victim’s corpse, seeing her nervous bit of the lower lip, the glance down to her toes. He allowed his eyes to meet the emerald hues of Phoenix and waited, seeing the deep breath. He wondered how bad this was, and whether, he had judged her wrong in giving her his number, did he really want to get involved with her? He recalled the last time he had been with someone related to a case, he had been suspended after refusing to arrest her. How had he managed to make things so complicated? When she spoke, jay remained still, his arms folding across his chest, and sub consciously he knew it was an aggressive manoeuvre, but right now, he was angry at being lied to, and a little worried about what he was getting into. So she did have weapons, Jay’s deep sigh at that signalled how he felt about it all, stressed and disappointed all in one go. He sure did choose ‘em, didn’t he!

“Wolf?” Jay questioned, rolling his eyes as this now did involve him and RPIT. Great! Just when he thought he was getting through all the case files, another showed up. Literally at his feet. An attack on the lycan community, well, that wasn’t unheard of, if anything far too many RPIT crimes were a result of anti lycan groups framing others.

“Phoenix, I want you to listen to me, carefully.” He unfolded his arms and looked around, he couldn’t hear sirens yet, so there was still time, “I want you to run, head south, go through water, loose any trail you may create. I can work it, that i can place you on a payroll of sorts, as an anonymous tipster, that would explain, later when i tell the department, what you just told, omitting your...friend from the report. But you know full well once the other police get here, they aint going to believe a single thing you say, and they will get a court order, and they will out you as a lycanthrope and take the easy way out and put the blame of the crime on you. I am taking a chance with you. So run......Now....” jay paused as he heard the sirens approaching, “You owe me...Now Run!”

[galina]

Phoenix stiffened slightly as Jay crossed his arms during her tale, and her heart sunk. He wasn't going to believe her. Or worse yet he would only believe part of it. She did have to admit the part about a man disappearing was difficult to comprehend, but it was the truth. She knew she had chased him into those woods and Thorn said he crashed into a tree and then was gone. Something still didn't add up.

When he repeated wolf she nodded, she wondered if he was thinking it was just another attack against the Lycan community. It was possible she supposed but she didn't think it likely. There was more going on here than that, somehow it felt more personal. Someone was in a sense gunning for Thorn, she knew it. There were too many coincidences for it to simply be by chance.

When Jay started talking at first Phoenix was shocked, he had believed her. Not only that he was telling her to run, to get out and he would cover her retreat. Oh yeah, you're gonna fall hard for this one aren't you Phoe? She didn't know if she had a chance in hell now, with everything going on but she did know that she would be forever indebted to this cop, this man with the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen.

She didn't know what to say, "I'll help anyway I can Jay to catch this beast. Thank you for believing me, for not thinking I had anything to do with this. I'm sorry I tried to lie, I had to protect my.....friend." Was that what Thorn had become? Or was he much more than that? She would have to analyze that later. She heard the sirens. "I'm in your debt, and by the way. You win." She knew he would know what she meant, if he still wanted to go that route with her. Then she did as he told her, she ran.

She took off like a bird taking flight, and she sped as fast as she could off in the direction he had told her, splashing through the creek at the far end of the park, wading it's length for several heart beats before splashing out the other side and making her way to the edge of the park. As soon as she was clear of the park she circled back around to where she had parked. She never parked in the regular lot. She had a place further down that she always hid her car away in, careful as always of situations where she would need to disappear quickly and without anyone seeing her,

[jay]

The cop cars soon arrived, and Jay watched as a sea of police tape and forensics bods arrived and took over. He explained, simply, that he had been jogging and stumbled across the body, went back to his jeep, which had his cell in, called for back up and then drove back. No one thought any different. They of course found tracks of several different people, it was a popular jogging area, so that was not uncommon. As Jay moved around the crime scene, it was light a bulb lit in his mind and he cursed under his breath.

“Max Logan.” He shook his head and marched over to one of the uniformed officers, “Get me Takanashita Now!” he ordered and pushed his hands through his hair, pulling off his beanie hat. Dammit! He thought, that bastard had struck again, and this time, Wolf scent. What the hell was going on. This now made it RPIT’s business and as far as he was concerned, it was now personal.