Forbidden Territories
by Lucy

It had started out to be a really good day, too.

That's all Rafe could think to himself as he crouched behind his desk, listening to the bullets flying over, wondering exactly which person Jim Ellison had pissed off this time.

"Come on, man," Simon was still trying to talk to the guy, from the distant cover of his office. "Put the gun down. Don't make us have to shoot you."

"Fuck you, man. I don't stop until I know the pig is dead."

Rafe winced and fingered his revolver. Jim was right across from him, in his line of sight, looking tense and ready to move at a moment's notice.

And Rafe knew why he was so high strung. As if the bullets whizzing by at irregular intervals weren't enough, Blair Sandburg was supposed to be showing up in the office any time now. Jim had to be waiting for the sounds of the elevator doors opening, and the unsuspecting observer walking right into this maniac's reach.

Rafe knew it would happen, too, if they didn't do something to prevent it. That was just the kind of luck Blair had.

"Here, piggy piggy piggy," the man's voice was getting tighter and tighter as seconds went by, and Rafe knew the man was a second away from either charging down the aisles, or spontaneously combusting.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jim stiffen with resolve, and start to stand up.

"What the hell are you doing?" Rafe hissed.

Jim ignored him, moving slowly and facing the man in the doorway. He brought his own gun up, aiming at him. "Alright, I'm here. You wanna take your shot?"

Rafe couldn't see the man's reactions, but he heard the words. "Wu...who the hell are you? Put the gun down, cop."

Jim blinked, startled. It wasn't him this guy was after?

"Do it!" The man was screaming now.

Rafe knew exactly what he'd see if he looked up at the guy. White face, shaking hands, sweat, crazy eyes. He'd seen it one time too many on the faces of the men behind barrels pointed his way.

But Jim wasn't moving. Couldn't, Rafe knew.

Rafe saw movement ahead of him, and frowned at the sight of Simon Banks emerging from his office slowly, gun in hand.

"So who is it you're after, man?" Simon spoke calmly, gun trained steadily.

"That cop! I know he works up here, dammit. Putthegunsdown!"

Rafe shut his eyes for a brief moment, wondering why they were opening themselves up for this. But a show of solidarity was not above him, even if it meant getting this guy even more upset. So he tensed, straightening and turning in one movement. "Alright, you're outnumbered here-"

His voice cut off. His eyes went wide, and his jaw fell open.

Not him. Shit, anyone but this guy.

The man grinned. "Yeah, you're the one." He aimed the gun.

The elevator doors swung open, and Blair Sandburg made it out one step before his brain caught up with his feet.

The man spun to face him, finger tightening on the trigger.

Beside Rafe, Jim moved out from around his desk, a ball of fire waiting for this maniac to set him off by making one move against his partner.

The maniac seemed rational enough to realize that the skinny student was no real threat, and he started to turn back, ready to fire at Rafe and end the standoff.

Rafe saw the barrel coming his way, saw the stiffening of the finger.

He fired.

Jim fired.

Simon fired.

The maniac fired.

And when the smoke cleared, three men were on the ground, bleeding or unconscious. Or worse.





"I wanna know how the hell a guy armed like that makes it all the way up to our office. I wanna know what this guy had against Rafe that made him take that chance. I wanna know who the hell the guy was, and I want to know it before I have time to hang this phone up, god dammit!" Simon hung the phone up. He was seething, he was worried, and his adrenaline was still pumping. Not a good combination.

"They don't know anything?" Jim's eyes were bleak as he watched Simon start a rapid pace around the room.

"Nothing. The guy had no ID." Simon shook his head slightly. "I gotta say, though, I think I recognize him from somewhere. But I can't figure out where, and Rafe isn't talking yet."

"Is he awake?"

"No one's come to tell me anything yet."

Jim turned back to face the wall, his eyes dark.

Simon came over and sat beside him in the hard hospital chairs. He glanced at the Sentinel's face, and sighed. "We're here too much lately, Jim. What the hell's going on in the world?"

Jim shrugged. "You're asking me? We can't even figure out what went in on in the office two hours ago."

Simon let out a breath and sat up. "You wanna talk about this now?"

"Yeah, I do." Jim faced his captain squarely. "Rafe, you, and I fired. We killed that guy. He fired, he got Rafe. But he's in the morgue with two holes in him, and my partner is in one of these rooms with a bad arm. One of us shot Blair, and we have to figure out what happened."

"Why?"

Jim blinked. "What do you mean, why? One of us shot Blair. Shot Blair, remember?"

"It was an accident. A stray bullet, Jim. Blair got caught in the way of a shootout, and he got winged in the arm. That's all that happened."

"Simon, we can't let it go at that."

"Why not? If this shootout had gone down in a street somewhere, that's exactly what you'd write in the report."

"Yeah, but it's not what..." Jim shrugged. "I just wanna know...I wanna be sure..."

"That you didn't do it." Simon completed easily. "Why? What difference does it make?"

Jim looked at his captain as though the man had just grown horns. "Simon, if I'm the one that put my partner in the hospital, I....I don't know. I couldn't forgive myself for that."

Simon chuckled slightly.

"I'm really not catching the joke here," Jim stated flatly.

"It's you. You and Sandburg, you're both exactly the same. Ready to blame yourselves for the weather, ready to beat yourselves into the ground because of something you couldn't prevent."

Jim's expression was pained. "But if I COULD have-"

"Jim, what if we did some kind of investigation, ballistics tests and everything, and we found out that I shot Sandburg? Which is a possiblity, you know. What would you do to me?"

"Do to you? C'mon, Simon. What kind of question is that?"

"A perfectly reasonable one from where I'm sitting. You're ready to drill yourself into the ground if you find out you're the one whose bullet went stray. Why would you react any differently towards me if I did it? Or Rafe? Cause it had to be one of us. So tell me, detective, what's gonna happen to me or Rafe if we fired that shot?"

"Nothing," Jim answered quietly. "It was an accident."

"Bet your ass it was. Now you keep saying that to yourself, and unpack from that guilt trip you're planning on taking."

"It's not the same with me, Simon."

The captain snorted. "Oh? Why not?"

"I'm his protector." Jim answered plainly.

"Cry me a friggin river." Simon barked back without a pause. "You ought to get off that high horse of yours, Ellison, cause the view from down here ain't pretty. Sure, you look out for the kid. You're partners. You've got this Sentinel Guide thing." Simon shook his head with an irritated laugh. "You're a good detective, Jim. The best man I've got. And you work those senses of yours pretty well, too. But if part of the Sentinel job description says that you have to be perfect, that you've got to hit the bull's eye every time you fire, than you'd better hang up the title now. Cause that ain't you. And it's nobody else in the world. You see what I'm saying here?"

Before Jim could think about it long enough to answer, though, Simon's cell phone blared out a ring.

He cursed lightly and took the phone out. "Banks." He listened for a minute. "Uh huh. So this guy was...." Another long minute, Simon's eyes growing huge. "Yeah, alright. Thanks." He hung up quickly and stood.

"What's up, Simon?"

"I need to see if Rafe's awake yet."

"What's the word?" Jim stood with him and followed him down the hall.

"That perp we've got in the morgue..."

"What about him?"

"He-"





"-was a cop. Yeah." Rafe breathed out, looking tired and pale in the small bed.

"A cop." Jim shook his head. In his mind's eye, all he could see was the pale, insane-looking man shouting 'Here piggy-piggy-piggy.' "I don't believe it. Why would a cop-"

"No, Jim. Was a cop, past tense. Years ago."

"Yeah?" Simon prodded gently. "You want to tell me why he came gunning for you today?"

"Not really," Rafe answered honestly. "Do I have a choice?"

"You tell me or you tell Internal Affairs."

"IA sounds better."

Simon studied his officer with a frown. "Are you serious, Rafe? You really don't wanna tell me what happened."

Rafe couldn't meet his eyes. "No, Simon. I don't."

Simon and Jim exchanged puzzled looks. Why would the younger man be more willing to put himself through in Infernal Affairs investigation than talk to them?

"Son, are you sure about this?"

Rafe nodded. "Yeah. So why don't you go check on Blair?"

Simon stood abruptly, trying not to show his sudden anger. "You got any more secrets that are gonna shoot up my office, detective?"

Rafe was apparently fascinated by the sheets covering his lap, he couldn't take his eyes off them. "No."

"Fine." Simon looked like he wanted to say something else, but he turned and marched off without a word.

Jim left more slowly, turning back to the injured man. "How bad is it, Rafe?"

The younger man looked up finally. "Bad. Tell Sandburg I said sorry, huh?"

Jim nodded and left quietly.





"Brown, get your ass in here!" Simon had been in a permanent bad mood the last two days, and it wasn't getting any better with time.

Henri Brown sighed and stood, wondering why his partner was never there when he needed him. No, Rafe was laid up in his apartment with a bandage around his side, watching tv and relaxing. "What's up, Cap?"

Simon sat behind his desk and gestured for Brown to sit. "Look, your partner's in a mess. He opted not to tell me what was going on, so I've opted to find out on my own."

"Rafe's in trouble?" Brown repeated in surprise.

"Kind of. I've talked with the guy from IA who's looking at the shooting, Spencer. He's got Rafe cleared of any wrongdoings, no problem. But he also hinted around that if the background on this gets out to the men, Rafe may become distinctly unpopular."

"What? What background? What's going on here, Simon?" Henri was baffled. It figured the one time he took a couple of days off to look after his sick son, something huge would happen and his partner would be in the middle of it.

"I don't know. Rafe won't talk, and the guys from IA aren't letting anything out. So I don't know what the problem is, or if it even ended with this man's death."

"What man?"

Simon flipped a photo to the other side of his desk, within Henri's reach. "Marvin Lugar, worked in Vice. Four years ago he was kicked out of the department and pretty much disappeared, until he came in here yesterday with guns blazing."

Henri stared at the photograph for a long time. He shook his head. "This isn't ringing any bells, Simon, sorry."

There was a knock on Simon's door before he could register his disappointment. "Come in."

Jim Ellison stuck his head in. "Sorry, Simon. Henri, you know why your partner isn't answering his phone?"

Henri sat up. "No. He should be there. Why?"

"Blair said he was gonna stop by today, since both of them are taking days off."

"Uh huh? So maybe they went out somewhere," Henri suggested.

"With Rafe laid up like he is?" Jim replied dubiously.

Simon spoke up impatiently. "Jim, is there a reason this is bothering you?"

"Me and Blair were supposed to have lunch. He knows I like to eat at noon." Jim shrugged.

Simon glanced at his watch. Twelve-thirty. "Huh. You try his cell phone?"

"No answer."

Henri and Jim exchanged looks. "Um, Simon. You just said you had no idea if this trouble with Rafe ended with this dead cop, right?"

Simon stood. "Why don't the three of us take our lunch breaks now?"

The two officers followed him out of the office without a word.





Blair strained against the hands holding him with all of his strength. He yelled, he protested, he pleaded, but it was all lost under the gag that had been tied tightly across his mouth. And finally, it took only a single fist to his stomach to silence even the muffled cries, and Blair sagged to his knees, his eyes watering.

"Dammit, leave him alone. This has nothing to do with him."

The hands holding Blair let him go, and he sank down further to the ground, trying to catch his breath around the confining gag.

"You're right. This is all about us."

"Fine. Look, just let him go and I'll do whatever you want. He's not even a cop."

Blair heard the laughs- two of them. He remembered there were two men there. He remembered they'd come breaking through the single lock on Rafe's door while the two men were calmly sitting on Rafe's couch, talking.

"You'll do what we want anyway."

Blair looked up finally, seeing the desperation on Rafe's face and taking it to mean these were not nice guys they were dealing with.

"Yeah, sure. Just let him go, alright? He's innocent."

"Innocent like Julie Taylor was innocent?" The speaker's voice had gone dangerously quiet.

Rafe swallowed, hard. "Yeah."

"Good. Looks like we'll get to pay you back in more ways than one."

Blair heard the terrifyingly quiet sound of a hammer cocking behind his head.

"No!" Rafe stumbled forward.

"Stop where you are, Rafe."

Now Blair could feel a small, circular pressure on the back on his head.

Rafe froze.

"Now that you see who's calling the shots here, I'm gonna tell you what's going to happen here. You're gonna come with us. And this friend of yours...this 'innocent' friend, is going to suffer the same fate Julie did."

Rafe tried a desperate leap towards them, and Blair could see with surprisingly detached calmness that he wouldn't even get close in enough time.

There was a sudden sound behind Blair, like the opening of a door.

And then the sound he'd been waiting for. The roar of a gunshot, made a thousand times louder by it's location so close to his ears.

And everything went dark.





"Blair? Come on, wake up, kid."

Blair's eyes fluttered open, and he blinked up at the ceiling.

"Hey, Chief. Enjoy your nap?"

"Jim." Blair sat up quickly, surprised at the lack of pain anywhere in his body. "What happened? Why am I still alive?"

Jim's face crinkled in a smile. "Sorry, Sandburg. You didn't even come close to buying it this time."

"But..." Blair glanced around. Yeah, he was still on the floor in Rafe's apartment. Simon and Jim was crouched over him, and Brown was standing beside his partner, who was staring down at the two corpses at his feet, looking distinctly unhappy.

Jim held out a hand, and Blair grasped it, rising to his feet easily. "That guy was gonna shoot me. I felt the barrel, Jim. I heard the shot."

"I think we distracted the guy in time. He turned and tried to shoot at us. That was the shot you heard."

Blair blinked, shaking his head slightly to clear it. "Then what happened? Why was I.."

"Looks like you fainted." Jim couldn't hide his smile. "Fainted?" Blair repeated in shock. "I fainted? But..."

"Hey, you thought you were being shot. Bound to send too much blood to anyone's head."

"Fainted." Blair shook his head in wonder. After all the strange, dangerous things he'd been through, he would have doubted that anything could move him to actually pass out. It was kind of nice to realize that he wasn't as conditioned to the danger as he thought he was.

Simon clapped a hand on his shoulder. "You can thank us for racing to your rescue whenever you want."

Blair grinned crookedly, but it faded. "Wait a sec. Who the heck were those guys?"

At that question, Simon and Jim's faces turned to the one man in the room who knew the entire story. Blair followed their gazes, and saw Rafe sinking to his easy chair.

"I guess there's no way to get out of this, is there?" he asked quietly.

Simon saw the pain in his youngest detective's face. "Rafe, you wanna keep this secret, it's your call. But at this point I think we have a right to know."

"Yeah," Rafe sighed. "You do. I just...I don't want you...want you to..." He blew out a breath, and leaned back in the chair.

"C'mon, Rafe. We've only got a few minutes before the ambulance gets here."

"I know, I know. It's kinda hard, Simon." Rafe looked around the room, at all his friends, his gaze stopping on Henri Brown. A sadness seemed to pass over him, and he started talking almost robotically. "Alright, well, I was first year. Actually only a few months out of the Academy. And this one night me and my partner get sent to back up some guys from Vice who are in the middle of a chase. So we get there, and there's one guy down, and one guy running. My partner stays with the corpse, I go along with the detectives after this other guy. They back him up into this alley, right? And there's a lot of tension. The guy isn't armed, but the detectives aren't making the arrest. They're standing there holding their guns on this guy, who's backed up against a wall, and they're just making all these threats. So I'm standing there with 'em, keeping my mouth shut. I mean, I was the only uniform there, I figured I was out of my league. So I'm following this conversation these two officers are having, and I pick up that the dead guy had been responsible for killing a couple of prostitutes. This guy we have cornered was an accomplice, but only after the fact. And these cops, Marvin Lugar and..." Rafe's eyes went down to one of the sheet-covered corpses. "Jason Taylor. They want this accomplice to go away for a long time."

He paused, letting out a breath, his eyes staring straight ahead.

"Go on, man." Henri reached out and put a hand on his partner's shoulder.

Rafe shrugged it off, almost angry. "Fine. So Lugar pulls out an evidence bag. The murder weapon used to kill those pros. And this guy, the acomplice, Steven Chaney, he's trapped, and Lugar forces him down and covers him while Taylor makes the guy take the gun."

Simon frowned. "Wait a minute. He was-"

"Falsifying evidence," Rafe stated flatly. "So this guy they didn't have anything on would suffer for these crimes. I mean, the killer was already dead, so why not, right?" He laughed slightly.

Jim approached the detective, perching on the arm of his couch. "So you went along with this?"

"No! Not for a minute. We didn't have a thing on that guy Steven. I...well, I guess I ratted. I reported Taylor and Lugar to IA." Rafe gave a smile completely devoid of humor. "I made the ultimate bad move. I finked on fellow officers. Got them fired."

"That's why they came gunning for you?" Jim's frown showed his disbelief plainly.

"Nope, not that easy." Rafe replied flatly. "This guys Steven gets off thanks to my report. But I guess he wasn't about to forget what those two cops tried to do to him. And it wasn't enough they got fired." Rafe stood up abruptly and paced away from the crowd threatening to gather around him. His voice was shaking when he spoke again. "See, what I didn't know was that us not having any evidence against Steven didn't mean he wasn't a killer. So he goes after Taylor, and..." Rafe spun to face them, almost confrontational. "And he kills Taylor's daughter, Julie. His ten year old daughter. Bang, one bullet in the head."

Blair's eyes grew, and he glanced over at Jim, seeing the tightness in his friend's face. "So..wait."

"Wait nothing. I got the guy off, he killed an innocent girl. A child. I got these guys fired, and it was my fault his daughter was killed. So Taylor's wife divorces him, he leaves town with Lugar. And I hadn't heard from them again until two days ago."

There was silence for a minute. "Why would they come after you now?"

"You know, I wondered that myself. So I checked." Rafe moved quickly, over to a bookcase where a thin photo album sat open. He picked it up and returned to his friends, dropping it on the small coffee table with a bang, open to an old, cut out newspaper article with the picture of a young blonde girl featured. "Julie died four years ago today." His voice was wavering, and he moved away quickly.

The men stared down at the smiling girl for a time.

Rafe swallowed. "My fellow officers didn't respond well. And they shouldn't have. I killed that girl, right? So after a few months, when it became clear I wasn't one of the guys anymore, they moved me out, somewhere where the word hadn't spread yet. To Major Crimes. And IA made sure none of you, especially you, Simon, ever got the full story."

Simon exchanged tense glances with his two other detectives.

Blair reached down and picked up the photo album slowly. Almost on instinct, he flipped a page over, and saw the obituary notice for the girl, plus a smaller article about her death.

"Why didn't you tell me, Rafe?" Simon's voice was very serious.

Rafe drew in a breath. "I didn't want to lose my job," he said simply. "I wanted to get away from it."

Blair was hardly listening, turning to the next page of the album. He breathed in sharply.

Crime scene photos. But not of the girl's shooting. Of a break-in and vandalism. Of Rafe's apartment, the same one they were standing in. It was demolished, completely. And the walls were covered in writing. Murderer. Traitor. On and on, vicious words. Close up photos on parts of the wall, which had been papered with the same article and picture he'd seen before, dozens of copies. The words Baby Killer in red spray paint on top of the montage.

Jim had heard the sharp breath, and caught the rising tempo of his Guide's heartbeat. Without a word he came up behind Blair and looked down at the pictures. His face was expressionless as he studied them.

Rafe watched as Simon and Henri were both drawn by their reactions to look at the pictures themselves. "I don't know why I saved all that stuff," he said quietly. "Haven't looked at it since then."

Blair seemed unaware of the crowd looking over his shoulder. He flipped the next page, and found himself staring at Rafe's face. Slightly younger, and barely recognizable. His eyes had been blackened and were almost swollen shut, his face was cut in a dozen places, his lip split. It was just a polaroid, a quick shot someone had taken, probably at a hospital, that had gone to waste when Rafe must have decided not to press charges against his attackers.

Rafe seemed to know exactly what they were seeing. He smiled tightly. "Yeah, that's another reason I didn't tell you. You guys were a lot bigger than the uniforms, and I really didn't want to take another trip to the hospital."

"Cops did this to you." Henri's voice was flat.

"Sure. Can you blame them?"

Simon looked up at him squarely. "You didn't come to Major Crimes until...what? Nine months after this. They kept you there for nine months, knowing this was going on?"

Rafe shrugged. "Yeah, well, my bosses were probably pretty unhappy with me too, you know?"

"No," Simon grated out. "I don't know." He started towards Rafe.

The younger man backed up, a look that was almost fright passing over his face.

Simon stopped in his tracks. Rafe was really scared. Now that his friends new the story, he was actually afraid they would turn on him. "Rafe...."

Jim spoke up when Simon seemed at a loss for words. "There isn't a man standing here who wouldn't have done the same thing you did."

Rafe looked at him sharply.

"I mean it, Rafe. If there was the slightest chance those two cops were trying to frame an innocent man, none of us would have let it go either. It wasn't your fault."

Rafe opened his mouth, ready to argue his guilt.

"Don't even try it, partner. We heard the story, okay? We know what happened. You were in the right, man. Just cause it turned out badly doesn't mean you-"

"Turned out badly? An innocent girl was murdered!"

"Which has what to do with you? If Taylor hadn't tried to pull that crap, the guy never would have gone gunning." Brown spoke evenly.

"Not then, maybe. But he was a killer. He would have gotten someone eventually."

"Yeah. But that's the chance we take, Rafe."

Blair spoke up quietly, seeing that Rafe was unconvinced. "It's called reasonable doubt, man. It's what everyone's entitled too. All these guys we arrest, they go through it in court. Yeah, sometimes justice screws up and a guilty man goes free. But if it keeps innocent men from going to prison, it's worth it, right?"

Rafe frowned. "I don't know, Blair. I'd rather the guy have gone to prison even if he was innocent, then for that girl to have been found dead in her home a week later."

"So it's not perfect. It's the best we can do."

"And it doesn't change a damn thing with us, Rafe." Jim spoke firmly. "I con't care what some ignorant rookie cops thought about what you did, we're smarter than that. You didn't have a choice, really. And it won't change the way we think about you."

Rafe blinked. "You mean that?"

"Hell, yeah." Henri answered for them. "I just wish you'd have told us sooner. We could have been here for you. You don't keep secrets from me, partner."

Rafe smiled slightly. "Just....just the one, Henri. Just in case."

"Well, screw that. From now on you're an open book, got it?"

"Listen to him, Rafe." Simon went up to Rafe, who watched his approach, this time without any apprehension. "We're a tight unit here, we don't keep secrets from each other."

Blair couldn't help it- he looked at Jim. A twinge of guilt had found it's way to his insides. No secrets, huh? Well, he, Jim, and Simon were keeping a big one.

Simon seemed to read his thoughts. He glanced back at Jim, a frown in his eyes.

They were quiet for a moment, the same internal debate raging in all three men. Was this it? The moment of truth? The chance to share their story with Rafe and Brown?

Rafe saw the looks being exchanged, and turned a raised eyebrow to Brown. The other man echoed the look with a smile. Did Simon, Jim, and Blair really not think the other two were in on the fact that they were holding something back? Did they really think Rafe and Brown were blind to the secret meetings, the vague reports, the slips of the tongue that were quickly covered up?

No, Rafe and Brown were more than aware. They'd talked about it before, and had both agreed that whatever they were hiding, it had to be good. It was the story of Blair Sandburg's presence (they bought that closed-society story for maybe a few months at most), the story of Jim's strangely increased arrest rate. And it must have been big for them to hide it so carefully for so long.

And it was okay with them. Why not? Brown knew that whatever it was had made Jim a milder person. It brought criminals off the street, and it kept Blair, a friend, around.

So Brown spoke up before the three could develop ulcers worrying about whether to divulge it or not. "Hey, why don't we go out and celebrate tonight, guys?"

Jim, looking vastly relieved the tense silence had broken, raised his eyebrows. "Celebrate? What are we celebrating?"

Brown shrugged. "This was a big, ugly mess, but hey. It was responsible for Rafe coming to join our little group. That's reason enough for me."

Simon grinned. "Me, too."

Rafe shared an amused look at Brown. "I could stand to get drunk," he put in.

"Good, settled. We'll stick around here just as long as we have to, and then it's off to get wasted."

"I'm in. Chief?" Jim spoke up with a grin.

Blair shrugged. "What are friends for?"





Months later-

"So. Sandburg got himself kicked out of Rainier." Rafe sighed into his cup of coffee. "Damn, I wish the kid hadn't done that."

"Can you blame him? The whole thing was getting out of hand." Brown took a bite of his eggs and chewed thoughtfully. "So. Whaddaya think? Do we go on like we were?"

"Meaning..."

"Meaning, do we keep acting like it was a big joke?" Brown smiled slightly.

Rafe grinned. "I was having fun coming up with jokes about super-senses. I don't see why we should stop now."

Brown returned the broad grin. "I think it's the least we can do for Hairboy and his grouchy friend. A little teasing to pay them back for keeping the Sentinel thing a secret as long as they did."

"You think we should tell them we're clued in? Or do we act like every other dumb schmuck who actually believed Blair's statement to the press?"

"Let's keep em in the dark a little longer. It'll be fun watching for those secret signals now. Besides, have you stopped to think about what kind of fun we can have with Jim?"

Rafe raised his eyebrows. "Why don't you school me?"

"The man can hear us a mile away, and he doesn't think we believe it. We could let him 'eavesdrop' on all sorts of private conversations."

Rafe practically giggled. "Oh, you're evil."

"Yeah. But imagine the possibilities...."