BountyHunterpart9

Maria yanked the rubberband out of her hair and fought the urge to look back at the store front office and give Mr. Michael Guerin the finger. She slammed the jeep into drive and sped out of the parking lot leaving a dust storm in her wake.

"Mr. Michael 'Jackass' Guerin can kiss my ass at this point," she muttered under her breath. "Here I am trying to be all cooperative after being the bitch with a chip on her shoulder and what do I get in return? Nothing. I get nothing. I go to him with my tail between my legs and he makes me feel like a fool." She roared through a town she didn't know. "Again, no one makes a fool out of Maria DeLuca."

Maria turned the radio back up and listened with deaf ears. Her hope was to see Liz Parker cross the street in front of her and call it a day. She also knew enough about hope that calling it a day seemed the most illogical thing in the world that would happen.

After driving around aimlessly in a town she wasn't familiar with, she decided to go back to her hotel and think things through. See if the bonding agent she was working for, Marco, had any contacts in this circle of hell.

After walking into her hotel room and jacking the air conditioner down to somewhere close to freezing, she lay back on the bed and closed her eyes. She sat up and stripped off her tank shirt and flung it across the room before lying back down. The air kicked into high and she finally felt comfortable. A question of why any reasonable person would want to live so close to hell floated through her mind. Then she remembered, that each person had their own personal hell. So hers happened to be Roswell New Mexico.

She rolled over on her belly and kicked her boots off letting them fall to the floor. Listening to the hum of an air conditioner left over from the seventies, Maria drifted off to sleep. She didn't fight it, maybe, she reasoned, she just needed some sleep and then all her questions would be answered.

* * *

"You're not going to just hang out here with me today, are you?" Isabel asked nervously after Michael hadn't budged from the seat across from her in almost an hour.

"I don't know, Iz. You sound like you don't want me to, which automatically makes me want to sit on your lap." He raised his eyebrows and cocked his head to one side.

"I can't believe she got to you so fast," Isabel mumbled while stacking a pile of folders from the mountain of paperwork.

"There's something about her�" Michael drifted in his thought process. He always found it strange that he could confide in Isabel his women-related problems and/or issues much easier than he could with her brother. He could tell Isabel anything; it was choice that made him keep some things to himself.

"I know what it is," she smiled demurely behind the folder in her hands.

"Okay, hot shot, what is it?" Michael leaned forward and rested his elbows on the precious Teakwood.

"You can't," she made air quotes with her fingers, "get her because she's too much like you." Isabel's eyes twinkled.

Michael pursed his lips before laughing out loud. "Are you high?"

"Seriously, you both think you're some type of big bad ass, but if Maria DeLuca is even close to the what I saw in her, then you're both big softies inside a gruff exterior."

He grabbed her arm and straightened it out in front of her, running his finger along the crease of her elbow. "I don't see the track marks�"

She pulled her arm back and kicked him under the desk for the third time that day.

"Quit it. You can't see it because you're just like her. Okay, you told me you offered to work together with her this morning. How hard was that for you?"

"It just kind of slipped out," he shrugged. "But would I have been thinking about it and not just staring at her, then it would have been terribly hard."

"Exactly, so how hard do you think it was for her to come here and ask for help?" Isabel rolled her eyes and wondered how Michael functioned in life.

"I guess it was pretty hard for her and I was a jackass."

"Oh yeah, King of the Jackasses if you must know the truth."

"When I need some kind words I always know where to come," he rolled his eyes and laughed. "So what are you thinking, Iz? Should I go and grovel?"

"Grovel?" She started laughing so hard she nearly choked. "I didn't even think you knew what that word meant! I should mark this day on the calendar, the day that Michael Guerin grovels."

"Ha ha. So, you want some help going through whatever your doing?" He motioned to the desk. "Before I track her down and grovel?"

"Sure," she handed him a stack of folders and explained the order the papers on the inside should be in. "Then, when we're done I just might take you out to lunch before you go and grovel. And if Maria DeLuca accepts whatever your pitiful attempt at an apology is, then you two can figure out together your next step. If she doesn't, I suggest you stake out Ms. Nancy Parker's home and wait for the return of her wayward daughter."

He saluted her and regretted it as the toe of her shoe met his shin for the forth time. Almost a new record.

* * *

Maria rolled over and opened one eye. The room looked like all the others she had stayed in on various tracking expeditions. From the same smooth polyester patterned bedspread that matched the room-darkening drapes to the same dark veneer on the particle board furniture.

"Life has got to be better than this," she sat up and rubbed her eyes wondering if her neighbor back home in San Francisco was remembering to feed her fish. She smiled thinking about the five Angel fish she had waiting at home for her; her family.

The fish were the only family she had left that she knew about after her Uncle had died almost two years earlier. Even her Uncle hadn't been known family until she was five and the car accident death of her parents forced her to live with the only brother of her father.

It had been rocky for awhile, while the little girl didn't understand why she had to live with a stranger. Then they became friends.

Uncle Chuck DeLuca was a bad ass bounty hunter until he met his untimely death by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. A hold-up in a convenience store a few blocks away from his home had left Chuck DeLuca with a bullet in his head that would kill him two days later. Stepping in to defend the scared female clerk behind the counter, Chuck DeLuca defended her with his life.

Maria closed her eyes thinking about Chuck, he hated being called Uncle Chuck, always said it made him feel old, and smiled. She knew he would be proud of her and she was convinced he watched over her. She carried on the DeLuca name and she did it proudly.

She almost thought about calling her neighbor and asking if her fish were okay. If the largest in the tank, Chuck, was okay. She decided against it knowing that her eighty-two year old widowed neighbor, Lenora, was perfectly competent of taking care of a few Angel fish. And probably a little snooping as well. As Lenora liked to tell Maria, she lived vicariously through her. She missed her fish and she missed Lenora.

She stood up and stretched pushing all wishy-washy feelings away. She picked her tank shirt up from the floor and put it back on. She thought her body had finally reached a normal temperature and wondered how long it would last before she wanted to take a bath in ice cubes. A glance at the bolted down alarm clock informed her it was after one in the afternoon.

She grabbed her cell phone and called Marco, whose secretary told her he was conveniently out of the office. She hung up and rolled her eyes at the lame lie.

She groaned and grabbed her bag and sunglasses ready to venture back out into the heat. Ready to find Liz Parker. Ready to rub it in Michael Guerin's face when she did. Ready for lunch.

She walked to her jeep after asking the counter clerk where she could sit down and eat lunch; drive-thru's just didn't cut it all the time. She got directions and laughed out loud when she pulled up in front of the suggested venue, the Crashdown Caf�.

She smiled at the sheer absurdity of a flying saucer with flashy lights crashing into the building above the door. She parked and walked inside and was immediately assaulted with more alien gaudiness and food smells that made her mouth water.

TBC