Between Now and Forever ch. 12 {JB} Finally!!

by Victoria L. on January 17, 19100 at 10:22:16:

Here it is, guys. I hope you all enjoy, especially you, Janis, and please leave a reply and let me know what you think.
Victoria L.

Chapter 12

“Allow me to introduce myself,” the woman said through clinched teeth. “My
name is Drew Jacobs, and I want to know what the hell happened to my boyfriend!”
Carly swore under her breath. Who ever had given them up this time was going to
pay, big time.
“Uh-uh,” Carly said, pulling the gun out of the drawer, aiming, and cocking
it at point blank range. “I don’t know who you are, and it doesn’t make much
difference to me, all I want you to do is back up real slow, and get the hell out of
here, right now.” Drew looked a little shocked, but the look on Carly’s face said that
she meant business. Her face began to tremble, and she searched for the words to
answer Carly’s threats. Carly could tell right then that this girl didn’t know what
she was doing. She’s in pain, and she’s trying to get answers, but she was going
about it the wrong way, and it wasn’t Carly’s job to make things easy for her.
Drew took a deep breath and then began to back up slowly from Carly. She
raised a shaking finger to Carly and pointed at her accusingly.
“This isn’t over,” she said.
“Well it’s over for now, darlin’,” Carly said, her face expressionless. Drew’s
tears began to fall, but her face betrayed no emotion. She turned on her heels and
walked out of BJ’s, her coat floating out behind her. Carly saw her get into her car
and drive away. When she was gone, Carly hopped off the stool she sat on, ran to
the front of the store, threw all of the dead bolt locks, turned over the “open” sign to
read “closed” and then pulled all the shades. She ran to the back of the shop,
gathered all the files she could on this case and then went to her car through the
back of the shop. She was half way home when she called Jason.
“Yeah?” he said, answering the phone.
“We’ve got trouble,” Carly said, running a stop sign. “Someone just came
into BJ’s, a Drew Jacobs. She knew a lot about the case. She knew that BJ’s was a
front for something, but I don’t think she knows for sure.”
“Someone tipped her off,” Jason said, a furrow growing on his forehead. He
glanced at his son and then turned back to the phone and Carly. “What do you want
me to do?”
“Stay there,” Carly said, “I’m on my way home right now. I’m just a few
blocks away. Don’t tell Brenda, I’m just going to wait for her to get here. When she
sees the shop, she’ll know what’s up. I’ve closed BJ’s for now, and we’ll go back
when there’s time.”
“Tell me you got the files,” Jason said.
“What do you take me for?” Carly asked. “I got as much as I could on short
notice, and all of the files from Julia’s cases.”
“Good,” Jason said. “You know the cops are going to be swarming soon, so
one of us should probably try to get back in there before they hit us with a search
warrant.”
“I know,” Carly said, “but I think we may have a few days, a week at the
most. Something tells me this Drew Jacobs wants to handle this without the police,
but if we push her, I think she’ll bring them in.” Jason nodded.
“I’m going to pull up a file on Ms. Jacobs,” Jason said. “If there’s any
information at all, if she’s got a record, I’ll find out.”
“Can you hack into the PCPD’s files without being detected?” Carly asked.
“You know they got that new protective software.”
“Which I helped design, though they don’t know that,” Jason smirked to
himself. “That’s what they get for buying from local distributors. It’s no problem.
If there’s something on Ms. Jacobs, we’ll find it.”

Brenda was about to bring her bags downstairs when she heard a knock on
the door of her hotel room. She opened it, expecting to find the bellman, but instead,
Jax was standing there, his overnight bag slung over his shoulder, and a beaming
smile on his face. She smiled inspite of herself. The moment was awkward, and she
looked down at her shoes, instead of in his enchanting eyes.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
“Uh, yeah,” she said, glancing back and motioning towards her bags. He
nodded and entered the room, his arm slightly brushing across her breasts as she
turned to face him. “Is that all you’re taking?” she asked.
“You know I travel light,” he said, pretending not to notice the sparks that
had just flown between them. “I have one other bag downstairs in the car.” She
nodded slightly, watching him as he bent down to pick up her bags. She took the
lightest one and her coat, and closed the door behind him as they went out.
The plane ride went relatively normal. Jax sat on the aisle so his legs could
have a bit more room. Brenda sat with her legs underneath her, as she often did
when she was uncomfortable. It was an unspoken communication between them,
and without thinking, he put an arm around her and allowed her to rest her head on
his shoulder.
“So,” she said, trying to lighten the mood, “how have you been lately? I
mean, really? We haven’t gotten a chance to talk a lot about how our lives are
going?” He knew she was fishing to find out if there was still a spot for her in his
life. It wasn’t a question he was ready to answer.
“I’m doing okay, I guess. Botanicals is doing really well, we might be a chain
soon. There really isn’t all that much to tell about me. I run a business with friends,
and work is my life. Not much time for leisure.”
“You haven’t kept up your writing then?” Brenda asked, a little
disappointed. Jax was an excellent writer, and he had the ability to weave these
wonderfully romantic stories, high adventures, and dark mysteries. She used to sit
up in bed and read when he’d fallen asleep. He knew she read them without his
permission, but he didn’t really mind, as long as she didn’t share the information
with anyone else. She never had.
“Actually,” Jax said, “I was attempting to have a manuscript published.”
“Really?!” Brenda asked, jumping up to look into his face. “I mean, uh,
congratulations, Jax. That--that’s really wonderful.”
“I think so too,” Jax said. “That is, if they accept it for publication.”
“And why wouldn’t they? If they don’t, I’d say the editor must be crazy.”
“You’re good for my ego,” Jax said, leaning back and closing his eyes. “I
don’t know, I really won’t mind if they don’t accept it for publication. I write for
myself, first and foremost, and hey, I really love a good story.” Brenda paused and
watched his face relax as his eyes closed. She could never fully relax when her feet
weren’t planted on firm ground. But her search for Julia had required most of her
time be spent in the air, searching for her sister. Thinking of Julia made Brenda’s
mind rush back to the matter at hand.
“Jax,” Brenda said, nudging him with her forefinger. “We’re going to be
landing soon, and I just wanted to make sure that you’re okay with everything. I
mean, we may not need you to visualize at all. But if we do, are you okay with this?
I don’t mean to push, but--”
“Brenda, I agreed to this myself, and I am perfectly capable of handling the
consequences.”
“Right,” Brenda said, sitting up and putting her arms around herself. She
looked out the window at the large puffy clouds. She could see the airport runway
lights already, and sat down and buckled her seat belt at the PA’s announcement.
“Jax,” she continued quietly, “what about Jerry?”
“What about him?” Jax asked. He knew very well what. Jerry and Julia had
been so in love once upon a time. Circumstances, and his roaming heart had kept
them apart, and Jax and Brenda knew for a fact that both Jerry and Julia had
always been rather sorry things didn’t work out.
“Well, don’t you think we should tell him? It’s been over three weeks, it’s the
8th already, what if we run out of resources? You know Jerry knows people we
don’t, people that can help.”
“Yes, love, but whomever has Julia will probably see Jerry and his ‘friends’
coming a mile away, and they might kill Julia or run off with her before we could
get a chance to help her.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Brenda said. “But let’s not wait too long to tell him,
all right? I know if it were me, I’d want to know if something happened to you.”
Jax’s head came up and his eyes opened now. He looked at her, his face just covered
in love for her. She knew the look well, and as much as it thrilled her to see it on his
face, it didn’t spell “reconciliation.”

They drove Brenda’s car from the airport straight to BJ’s. It was more of a
shock than Jax anticipated, seeing this shop again after two years, when it was
supposed to be his and Brenda’s. He almost expected to see Carly and Jason behind
the counter, playing with their son and smiling at him. He missed his old friends.
He was shaken from his reverie when Brenda cursed rather loudly.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, getting out of the car as she did, not
bothering to pay attention to the way she was parked.
“You bet something’s wrong. They’ve closed the shop!”
“Is it that big a problem? They’re you’re partners, aren’t they? I mean I
close up early all the time, don’t you?”
“It’s only 4:30 in the afternoon, Jax. Carly, Jason, Ju--” she almost included
her sister’s name, “someone should be here. Someone’s always here. We always
make a decision to close early, Jax. This was impulse. If our clients see we’re closed
early like this, it spells trouble. Most of our clients see this as a sign, and they pull
out, no matter how close we are to solving their cases.”
“I understand,” Jax said, “but maybe it’s a good thing that they closed the
shop.”
“Normally I’d agree with you,” Brenda said, “but I didn’t want anyone to
know how close we were to finding Julia. If you can say that we’re close at all. I
wanted things to appear as business as usual. Now if the people that have Julia see
that we’re closed before normal, they’re going to know that either we’re close to
them, or the cops are close to US, neither of which are good.”
“Look, just calm down, let’s go in, maybe Carly or Jason left some kind of a
note for you. We’ll just check it out.” Jax moved towards the front door, but
Brenda held him back.
“We go in through the back, Jax. Never the front, we don’t want to upset
anything that may have already been set up. I can already tell that Carly left from
the back, and in a hurry.”
“How?”
“Look,” Brenda said, pointing at the alley on the side of the shop. “Those are
Carly’s tire tracks, and she always parks by the back entrance. I’d say she left here
in a BIG hurry.”
“Come on,” Jax said. “Let’s go inside and get to the bottom of this.” Once
they were inside, they didn’t see much wrong with the shop. Nothing was in
disarray, Carly had remembered to turn everything off, but it still looked as though
someone had left in the middle of something. Brenda went immediately around the
counter and into the back. Jax was caught up in the memories of the past. BJ’s had
barely been in business over a year before he’d left Port Charles and Brenda. He
heard Brenda cursing again and went into the back room, placing his hands on her
shoulders. “What’s wrong?” he asked. Brenda was pulling all of the files out of the
cabinet and scattering them on the floor.
“They’re gone,” she said in disbelief. “Julia’s files, all of them,
they’re--they’ve disappeared.”
“Perhaps Carly took them,” Jax said, soothingly. Brenda stopped her
movements, her hands in attack mode on an un opened drawer.
“Oh,” she said breathlessly. “Maybe you’re right--that could have
happened.”
“It’s probably what happened.”
“But why?” Brenda asked. “Why would she have taken them like this?”
“Maybe there’s a message for you at home,” Jax suggested. Brenda nodded
and dropped to her knees, picking up scattered files.
“Will you get my cell phone out of my purse? It’s in the car outside. I just
want to get some of these files and take them with us. Normally when we have to
pull out quickly and go undercover for a few days, we take the most relevant files,
but if we have time, we take everything.”
“Yeah well, if Carly didn’t have a lot of time, that means we don’t either,”
Jax said. “You need to get those files as quickly as possible Brenda, and let’s get the
hell out of here.” She nodded, seemingly still taking her time and putting the files
into two piles. “Brenda!” he said, making her jump. “On the double. We have got to
get out of here. If Carly couldn’t stay, then neither can we.” She sprang into action
as Jax went out the back door and around to the front of the building. He opened
the car door and reached inside, and called the penthouse. It was as familiar a
number as the one at home with Lois and Ned. He listened to Brenda’s melodious
voice on the machine. She was laughing because Jax had been tickling her while she
was trying to record the message. ‘Leave it at the beep,’ she said, before erupting
into giggles. The next sound Jax heard though, was anything but pleasant.
“I see you know nothing about following directions, Ms. Barrett. Well, we’ll
just have to teach you a lesson then, won’t we? We’re moving your sister to a
different location, so even if you were close, there’s at LEAST an ocean between you
and your dear sister, now.” Jax closed his eyes and sighed deeply. How on earth
could he tell Brenda this now? He was about to hang up when he heard the machine
beep and Carly’s voice.
“Brenda? Are you there? I took a chance that you and Jax might be back by
now. Look, someone came into the shop, I think our cover’s been blown, I’m not
sure. I’ve done what I could in the way of damage control and now I’m on my way
home to Jason’s. I’ve got what we need from the shop, so just come over when you
get this, all right?” A long beep was all Jax was hearing now. He hung up the phone
and was gathering up the strength to go and talk to Brenda when she came out,
carrying a huge box of files. He took it from her and helped her put it in the car. She
mentioned that she’d been able to get almost everything there was just a file or two
left. She scurried back in as Jax closed the trunk and a police car pulled up to the
front of BJ’s.
Jax hoped Brenda would have the good sense to stay inside. The officers got
out of the car, and Jax recognized one of them. He smiled brightly and extended his
hand.
“Officer Mitchell, how are you, old man?” The officer was just Jax’s age, not
old at all, but he laughed and shook Jax’s hand heartily.
“I’m well, old friend, and you? I haven’t seen you around here in a while.”
“Yeah, I just got back in today.” The other officer that was with Officer
Mitchell didn’t seem to like Jax at all, though he’d never laid eyes on him before
now.
“You haven’t seen Ms. Brenda Barrett, a Carly Roberts or Jason Morgan,
have you?” Officer Mitchell asked.
“No, I can’t say as I have,” Jax said, totally calm, and praying Brenda would
stay inside. Brenda had been about to come barreling out of BJ’s but she saw the
police car and she over heard Jax say that he hadn’t seen her at all. She took the
opportunity then to clean up as much as she could and make it look to be as in order
as possible. Then she took the last two files that she deemed most important, and hid
them underneath her shirt, one at the back and the other in the front. Her heavy
leather jacket hid them both well and she did what she could to walk straight. She
went to the front of the shop, and lifted a corner just a bit to see Jax still talking with
the officers. She held her breath as he pacified them, and they shook hands, got into
their squad car, and drove away. Brenda let out a breath, and came running out of
the shop. Jax was in the driver’s seat, so she got in, and he sped off before they could
be seen by anyone else.