Into her ear, Jaylynn said, "You’re so funny, Dez. I ate way more than usual. How could you eat less?"

"Hmmph. I’ve just spent the last four weeks thinking and crying and remembering and letting Marie the Archeologist excavate out all my best kept secrets." She sighed. "I didn’t have the energy to eat."

The rookie ran her hands down the big cop’s back to the firm waist and then to the tight buns, which she grabbed and squeezed.

"Hey! That’s not the kind of touching I had in mind, you little tease." When Jaylynn snickered, Dez found her lips and kissed the giggle away. The smaller woman responded to her kiss immediately, and slowly the passion between them escalated until Dez came up for air. "Whew. Is the heater in here malfunctioning? Seems a little warm."

The rookie took a deep breath. "No, it’s perfect. I feel very toasty and comfortable. But if you want to cool down, you can take off any clothes you want, you know." With a sly grin on her face, she said, "I’ll even help." She scooted herself up a little, and unbuttoned the top of the dark-haired woman’s flannel shirt, but she couldn’t get to the lower buttons because Dez was lying on them. "Here. Help me out a little..." Reaching past the bigger woman’s head and to the middle of her back, she grabbed on to the bottom of the shirt and tugged it up over the dark head.

Suddenly Dez was all tangled up in her shirt. "Wait a second." Her voice came out muffled as she managed to get one arm out and then her head. "Geez. They always make this look so easy on TV." She let the shirt slip down her arm, and now her skin was warm against Jaylynn’s sweatshirt. In a breathless voice, she said, "What about your top?"

"Hmmm… we’ll get to me in a moment." The blonde ran her hands up the broad back and down the sides of her ribcage. "You’re definitely thinner. I can feel your ribs again." She reached around and unsnapped the clasps on Dez’s bra. "Oooh, you have such nice skin - so incredibly soft." With her arms, the tall cop pushed herself up off the sofa enough to let the bra slip down, and she dropped it out of the way and onto the floor. Before Dez could settle back down, Jaylynn reached up and put her hands on the wide shoulders, then let her hands caress down the collarbones to the chest and then to the breasts. Dez trembled, and Jaylynn whispered, "I thought you were too warm."

"I’m not shivering from cold." She closed her eyes and exhaled a long breath as Jaylynn stroked the front of her. In a raspy voice, she said, "Oh, wow." Every nerve ending tingled, as though a current of electricity had been turned on. She trembled again and swallowed. "That feels really good, Jay." Breathing fast, she lowered her upper body and tucked her face in next to the right side of the blonde’s neck. She leaned a little to the side, shifting a bit, and her hand found its way under the thick sweatshirt. She untucked the t-shirt underneath.

"Ooh, you’re letting the cold air in - ooh - whoa! That feels good." Jaylynn turned a little, and they ended up lying on their sides, with the rookie pressed against the back of the couch and Dez teetering on the outside. With her free left hand, the blonde began stroking her partner’s skin with a gentle, emotion-filled touch. She trailed small nips down the long neck, then found the dark-haired woman’s mouth and kissed her lips and face, which ratcheted up the intensity even more.

When they broke off, Dez opened her eyes and looked into the face so close to hers. "I missed you so much, Jay. I - I just - I don’t know how to explain it."

"Me, too."

The dark-haired woman closed her eyes. In a slow, quiet voice, she said. "I’m so sorry I hurt you."

"I hurt you, too, you know. I didn’t mean to either."

Dez whispered. "I know. I know you didn’t." In the small pink ear, she whispered, "Jay, I will never ever leave you - never for good, anyway. I love you. I just want to be with you now and forever. Okay?"

Jaylynn answered by kissing her once more, then she said, "Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere. I’m stuck like glue."

Dez laughed quietly. "That’s lucky because my ass is hanging off the sofa and without that little bit of glue, I’d be on the floor."

The blonde giggled and tucked her head under Dez’s chin. She tightened her grip. "For all the things I want to do to you, I think we require a little more space."

"I agree."

"Shall we retire to a little larger playground?"

Dez nodded. "Good idea. Don’t let go too fast, though, or you’ll be picking me up off the floor."

* * *

Jaylynn lay on her side, swaddled in blankets, and pressed up against her sleeping partner. They had made love three times over a period of a couple of hours, and she was now pleasantly fatigued. It was mid-afternoon, and she knew she would soon be hungry, but until then, she lazed next to the dark-haired woman, reveling in the warmth. Before Dez fell asleep, the blonde had said, "You know, for someone who just a few days ago was nervous about letting her guard down, you sure have been a wild woman today."

Dez laughed and pulled her closer. "It’s ’cause you’re irresistible, hon."

"Yeah, right."

"It’s true. I’ll be lucky if I can keep you to myself. I’ll be fighting off packs of lovestruck people - both men and women."

"Oh, brother! I don’t think so!"

Jaylynn thought that was an odd thing for Dez to have said, but as she thought about it now, she realized that she thought the very same thing about her partner. Didn’t everyone want to touch her? To kiss her? To pull her to themselves and hug her tight? How was it that nobody else had come along and been swept off their feet by the blue-eyed beauty? There must be a God, and he - or she - is definitely looking out for me.

If someone had asked her, "Why Dez?" she didn’t think she could answer. She didn’t know exactly why. It was everything all rolled together. Her touch, her smell, her stubbornness, her sincerity, her sense of humor. When she fixed those piercing blue eyes on a person, the blonde felt they could see right through. She liked the fact that there was a defensive fortress around her taciturn partner, but that the tall cop had let her find the few chinks in the armor so that she had free access to come and go as she pleased. She thought there was a strange balance between the two of them. On the one hand, she felt safe with Dez, as though her partner was a refuge of warmth and safety. At the same time, she also felt that she protected and defended the bigger, stronger woman, who was, in many ways, so very vulnerable. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed an odd juxtaposition.

Dez stirred and turned over. Jaylynn lifted her head and slid her arm up, bent it at the elbow, and rested her head in her hand. Her wrist felt very tight, but it didn’t hurt and she was grateful for that. As the blonde peered over in the dim light, the dark-haired woman’s eyes looked gray. They stared blankly up at the ceiling, and the blonde knew she wasn’t fully awake yet. The tall woman cleared her throat and blinked, then turned her head to look at Jaylynn. "I had the oddest dream."

"About?"

She didn’t say anything for a few moments. Then in a soft voice, she recounted the dream. "I was in the cockpit of some sort of small plane, going very fast, and I crashed into water. I went down, down - way to the bottom of the ocean where the aircraft broke open, and I swam out and up. At first I was panicked, and then I found I could breathe under the water. So that was weird. When I broke the surface, I was treading water looking around, and you were on the beach screaming to me and holding a baby. So I swam toward you, but it was really hard. The waves were choppy, and the wind was blasting, and both of us struggled like crazy. But you hung in there, standing in this hurricane of weather, until I dragged myself out of the ocean onto this windy, sandy beach. And then, the baby - and Jay, this was a tiny little baby - this little black-haired baby smiled up at me and said, ‘Good swimming. Way to go.’ She reached up for me. I took her into my arms, and then the rain started pouring down, so we went into this big beach house where it was warm and cozy and - well, I guess that’s all I remember." She turned on her side and slid the pillow under her head. Her braid was starting to come undone, and there were tendrils of hair around her face. She brushed a few strands up off her forehead. "What the hell do you think that was all about?"

"Beats me."

"But it’s so clear. I don’t usually remember dreams like that... unless you count my horrible nightmares."

"What does Marie know about dreams?"

"I don’t know. I’ve only talked about nightmares.

"Ask her, why don’t you?"

Dez nodded and then yawned. "Wonder what that baby was all about? I’ve never even wanted kids."

"Babies in dreams can mean a lot of different things, if I remember correctly from my class on Jungian psychology. New life, growth, something being born."

"Guess that makes sense." She yawned again.

The blonde reached out her hand and threaded her fingers through Dez’s. "You have really good hands, woman."

Dez smiled. "Yours aren’t half bad either."

"Are we going to lay around all day? Or how ’bout we get up and go get something to eat?"

The dark-haired woman lifted her head and looked over Jaylynn’s shoulder at the bedside clock. "Oh wow! We’ve gone without food for, what? Three and a half hours? Quick! Better hurry."

Jaylynn shook her head and rolled her eyes, then she pounced. Dez wasn’t ready and made an "oomph" sound when the blonde dove on her. They wrestled, giggling and laughing, for a few moments, then settled down, wrapped in one another’s arms. Jaylynn lay against the dark-haired cop’s chest, her breath coming fast. Suddenly, she heard a gurgling sound and lifted her head up in surprise. "Hey! That’s you!"

"Yeah, so I got hungry before you for a change. Is it a crime?"

Jaylynn grinned. "No, but it’s a first." She sat up, pushed the sheet away, and clambered out of bed. "Let’s get a move on. We could go get a really good dinner somewhere, and then later, we can usher in the new year."

The dark-haired woman raised an eyebrow? "At a restaurant?"

"No, you fool. Right here, in bed - with lots of snacks to fortify us."

"I see. Well, your wish is my command."

"My wish is that you get outta bed and get dressed. We’re burning daylight."

* * *

"Dez," the blonde whined, "how can it be Tuesday already?"

"Comes right after Monday, I guess." She opened the refrigerator door and started pulling items out to either throw into the garbage or stack into a box.

Jaylynn sat at the dinette table and looked around the cabin’s tidy kitchen. "I don’t want to head home."

"I don’t either, but I’d like to get out of here by noon. I figure this New Year’s Day traffic is going to be pretty treacherous. Let’s get home while it’s still light."

"I can see now why you moved all your stuff up here."

Dez paused and turned around. "I didn’t move everything here."

"Well, close."

"No, not close."

"Look around, Miss Obviously Blind As A Bat. I hope we can get all this into the truck."

The tall cop straightened up and looked around the kitchen. She had to admit that she already had two boxes packed in here, and sitting in the living room there was a three-foot high stack of boxes, bedding and towels, her guitar, a box of CD’s, about twenty books, and an assortment of other things. On the bed were five duffle bags - though two of them were Jaylynn’s - and a couple of other smaller kit bags. She frowned. How did I get so much stuff up here?

Jaylynn watched her tall partner and wondered what was going on behind the troubled blue eyes. She wondered if she should ask - then worried that if she did, Dez might close off from her like she so often had in the past. Before she could say a word, the dark-haired woman spoke up.

"I think you might be right," she said thoughtfully. "I had a lot more stuff here than I realized."

"How did you manage that?"

Dez shrugged. "Seemed like every few times I went down to the Cities, I grabbed some more stuff."

"I can’t believe how unlucky I was that for all the times I called your apartment, you never happened to be there."

The tall cop shut the fridge door and turned around, her pale face turning pink. "Ah, well, actually, I just never answered the phone."

Jaylynn gaped at her. That had never occurred to her. "You mean to tell me you could have answered the phone, but you didn’t?" Dez gave an embarrassed half-smile and a slight nod. "I can’t even begin to tell you how mad that makes me." Jaylynn’s face turned red, and Dez was taken aback by her vehemence. "You just disappeared, and dammit, Dez! Not hearing from you, not knowing if you were okay, was really maddening."

Dez’s face started to flush, too, and what she really wanted to do was flee the room. Instead, she took a deep breath and stayed rooted where she was. "I’m sorry about that - but hey, at least I did send you a postcard."

The blonde stared at her for a moment. "I never got a postcard."

The big woman shrugged. "Well, I sent one."

"When?"

"Geez, I don’t know. A couple weeks ago, I guess."

"When we get back to St. Paul, I’d better check through my mail."

"What, you don’t believe me?"

Jaylynn’s face had returned to its normal color. "No, that’s not it. I guess I just tapped into a little bit of the anger I felt at you. Ooh! I went back and forth between being so mad at you and then just hurting and then missing you." She looked up silently into Dez’s face, her hazel eyes a little troubled, but then she took a deep breath. "Sure is lucky I love you, you big lug. ’Cause if I didn’t love you so much, I’d get up and smack you."

"Oh, you would not. You’re all bluster and bravado, Jay." She stepped over and grabbed the ribbed collar of the rookie’s sweatshirt as the smaller woman rose. With mock roughness she pulled the blonde to her. "Go ahead. Smack away." Bending her head and looking her partner in the eye, she grinned slyly, then leaned in, hands on either side of Jaylynn’s face, and put a firm kiss on the pink lips.

Jaylynn wrapped her arms around the tall woman’s waist and kissed her back. When she pulled away, she looked up into eyes that looked dark blue in the dim light. "You’re incorrigible, Desiree Reilly, and I can’t help it - I’m still crazy about you."

"Let’s just keep it that way, shall we?" She dropped her hands to the narrow shoulders below her. "I guess you’re right that it’ll be a bit of a stretch to get all this crap in the back and in the Xtra cab. I’ll take the first load out."

"I still don’t want to go."

"Me neither, but we have to go to work tomorrow."

"Don’t even bring that up!"

"Let’s just get this stuff loaded up and go home, Jay."

Jaylynn smiled and took her hand. "The house or the apartment?"

Dez shrugged. "Doesn’t matter. Anywhere you are is home."

* * *

Dez took down another banker’s box, and pulled the lid off. She checked her list. Box 1148 - Case No. 004-01: Jenkins Homicide - 02/14/98. She upended the box and dumped the contents on the table. Must’ve been a really bad Valentine’s Day.

She found two clothing items wrapped in plastic, three large manila envelopes, and one small white envelope, which felt like it contained jewelry. She turned that over and saw that someone had written 004-01 - 02/14/98 - Victim’s Necklace. Most of the boxes here belonged to cases that had not yet been solved, and for most of them, what she was finding could be filed in much smaller boxes.

She looked around the large, dim Evidence Room. In the three days she had been working in it, she had managed to reorganize the open, metal shelves so that everything was stored in numerical order, by box number, but every shelf was crammed full, and there were boxes stacked all over the floor. It looked worse than it had when she had first started, but she knew everyone would have to put up with a little disorder until she got things better organized. Already she had found sixteen articles that others had neglected to return to their proper boxes. The previous Tour II Evidence Room attendant, who had recently retired from his day shift, likely meant to re-file those pieces of evidence, but over time they had, instead, wound up stuck between the wall and a shelf, or on the floor behind everything. She knew for a fact that the absence of one of the items she had found, a switchblade, had caused the prosecutors to hold off from charging a gang member with a stabbing six months earlier. Lt. Finn was quite happy when Dez went to see her to discreetly explain her discovery. The dark-haired cop remembered what happened in the stabbing case because the crime had occurred in her sector, though it hadn’t been her call. She didn’t know about the other fifteen articles, but she had made a list and would notify the detectives on those cases just in case.

Once she re-filed all the "lost" items and got things in numeric order, she found that several boxes on her manifest were not there. That could mean that the case was solved and the contents relegated to the Closed Case storage - or someone had not properly checked out the evidence. Not good. I sure hope I can track those down. Five boxes on her list were highlighted, and she decided to track them down later.

Now she was going through each box, starting with the ones from the last couple years, to find out if the contents could be fit into smaller storage boxes. Everything from the Jenkins murder fit neatly into a carton one-third the size of the big brown banker’s box. She relabeled the smaller carton and carefully blacked out the data on the side of the original box so that she could use it again.

She put the lid on the smaller box and placed it on the upper shelf, then yawned. Glancing at her watch, she found it was only noon. Working the day shift had been a real change. She wasn’t at all adjusted to rising in the early morning and coming to the station, then leaving, like normal people, at five p.m.

She lowered to one knee and bent over another box, then heard a rustle at the front window. With a sigh, she rose from bended knee and set the black marker aside. What do they want now? This organizing would go a hell of a lot faster if people would just stop dropping by to chat. She wiped her dusty hands off on her blue duty pants and went around the tall shelf toward the window. The hazel eyes that met her gaze made her smile and blush. She leaned her elbows on the counter and slouched over it, holding the blonde’s gaze. "What’s up?"

Jaylynn sighed. "I’m bored. I’m hungry. What are you doing?"

Dez looked at her watch. "In about fifteen minutes, my relief will come, and I can get some lunch with you. Okay?"

"Sounds good. In the meantime, can I come in and take a look at the crime scene stuff from the Tivoli murder?"

"Sure. I know exactly where it all is, too." She pushed away from the counter and went to the locked door to open it. "You gotta sign in - and follow all the regs, you know. No special treatment."

"Oh, yeah. I know." Jaylynn picked up a pen off the counter and started filling in the sheet Dez placed in front of her. "I haven’t ever looked at the evidence. I’ve read the files and records, so I know everything that’s in there, but I’m curious."

Dez nodded, then led her to the far side of the dusty room, stepping over and around boxes until she stopped in front of a stack of boxes that looked new. "Here we go. We’ve got four boxes, total. What do you want to start with?" She picked up the first one and set it on a waist-high side counter, then put the other three next to it all in a row.

Jaylynn flipped the lid off the first one, got on tiptoes, and looked in. She pulled the tops off the other three, too.

The dark-haired cop stood to the side smirking. "You want a boost - or a little ladder?"

Jaylynn gave her a mock glare. "I’m not too proud to accept some help. Sure. Where’s the stepstool?"

Dez eyes searched the messy floor until they came to light on a stool with two steps. She made her way across the room and brought it back.

The rookie scooted it in front of the box and stepped up on the first stair. "Okay, looks like this has the contents of the snack shack." She pulled out plastic bags and manila envelopes, opened the clasps and looked in the envelopes, and read the titles on the sides in an absent-minded mumble that she didn’t expect Dez to answer. The tall woman went back to where she’d left off in consolidating items.

"Ooh, yuck! Dez, look at this." The rookie held up a big Ziplock filled with several smaller zip-lock bags containing bright yellow packages of Peanut M&M’s.

The big cop set down the box she was carrying. "What about it?"

"There’s dried blood all over these M&M’s. Blech!"

"Yeah, Jay. It’s evidence. They collect it however they find it." She bent and picked up a different box and set it on the middle shelf.

Jaylynn put that Ziplock back in the box, put the lid on, and moved to the second container. "Hmm, what have we here? Oh, this stuff is from the station wagon."

Dez turned and looked at the blonde, but Jaylynn wasn’t paying attention to her at all. She just kept talking out loud. "Here’s a worn out old blanket, a pair of sunglasses, a denim shoulder bag full of girlie junk ..." She rooted through the bag. "Strawberry flavored lipstick, garish eye makeup, eyeliner, two mirrors - oh look, a Hello Kitty wallet. My little sister loves Hello Kitty." She opened the snap on the wallet and found two crumpled dollar bills and some coins in the change purse. There were five school pictures slid into the plastic holders, four girls and one boy, all appearing to be junior high aged. She pulled each picture out, one at a time, and checked the backs. Not a single one had a last name on it, though three of them did have first names: Courtney, Brittany, Jim. She fished through everything in the wallet and the bag, but nothing gave a clue as to the identity of the dead girl. She replaced the shoulder bag and picked up a sealed plastic package. With a frown on her face, she turned to Dez. "Hey, you. I still want to know how come you never ever called me the whole time you pulled your disappearing act?"

Dez sighed. She put a lid on the box she had just rearranged and slid it out of the way with her foot. "I didn’t have a phone at the cabin."

"What about your cell phone? I called it after about a week, and it always said it was out of service."

She shrugged. "Battery died."

"How hard would it have been for you to buy some phone cards like these?" Jaylynn held up the package she had just found. "Listen here, Miss Uncommunicative, these babies are only $22.99 for 5 cards and you get 100 minutes on each. Pretty good deal, too." She cocked her head to the side. "Hmm, wait a minute ..." She examined the package, turning it over, then peeled some of the plastic away from the hard red cardboard backing.

"Whoa." Dez strode quickly across the room and stretched her arm out to take the package. "You don’t want to open that, Jay. It’s evidence."

The rookie pulled back. "I’m not opening it... it’s already been opened."

"What?" Dez leaned down and peered at the red package the blonde was picking at.

"See, someone peeled open the end, took a card out, then this gooey stuff on the plastic sort of reattached itself so it doesn’t look open. There’s only four cards in here and the plastic instruction card." She slid one out the side. The remaining cards rattled against the hard plastic. She took all of them out, too.