Hidden Promises - Chapter 2 - Part 3

Ward had been watching Jan meditate. He often did this from the balcony as she sat on the rocks deep in thought. He found it relaxing just to watch her, and today was no different. He saw her laugh, felt her laugh, and knew that she had made the final leap into the present. She was whole. As he walked back into the apartment and over to the computer he knew that the last thing he ever wanted was to have her in danger. It truly scared him, but that wasn’t the woman he had married two years ago.

He sat down at the computer and started up the links to the departmental computers. He wanted to see if there was any information on coyote activity. He knew that Jan had already done some of this work, but he also knew that double checking information was a necessity for safety. As he sat and waited for the links to connect, he remembered the first time he had seen her.

He was about six years younger. He had just finished an unscheduled overseas assignment and was coming back to the United States. Both Ward and his partner had reentered the country in L.A. on separate planes, and as Phoenix was the closest office decided to go there for a while until all the reports were completed. Over the years he had spent with the PED, he had two partners. His current partner, Gregg, thought that Phoenix would be a good stop. That way they would be able to catch up with some old friends. Gregg would never have guessed what came next.

Walking into the office and over to claim an uncluttered desk was when he caught his first glimpse of her. She was hunched over a desk. It wasn’t as if he was a novice, but something about her was different and he hadn’t even seen her face. He could only see the back of her head and the brown hair loosely tied in a ponytail. It wasn’t reading her mind, he wasn’t even about to try that here, but there was a connection, an attraction, even without reading her.

Ward didn’t know if he had stared too long, or if his thoughts had slipped somehow into hers. He didn’t even know if she could read minds, but she turned to look at him and smiled. It was a smile that spoke volumes. Their eyes locked, his breath caught in his throat, and that was all the encouragement he needed.

From that moment on they had taken every chance they could to get to know each other, in all senses of the word. It started with coffee and lunches, and as the relationship progressed it led to late night desserts and more. It hadn’t been easy, they were usually on assignments in opposite directions, but there was something between them, something that neither one of them could escape from.

Later he had transferred to Phoenix to be closer to her, although that’s not what the official request said. His move had been a good fit. It meant a change of partners for Ward, and that had been a positive. Ward and his partner had not been getting along. It hadn’t been a good fit in the beginning and it was getting worse. Gregg and Ward had not been seeing eye to eye for a quite a while and the jobs had been not been going well. The department had approved Ward’s transfer papers and moved him, silently thankful that Gregg stayed in Virginia.

He had been reassigned a partner in Phoenix, and it seemed to have worked for a while. It also gave him a chance to work with another friend that he had gone through training with. He had been stationed in Phoenix as well. The most important thing to Ward was Jan. It was when he had been reassigned that he got to know her more intimately as well. They even worked a few jobs together.

The more they were together the more they wanted to be. It was not only the fact that they had achieved the ability to freely roam through each other’s minds, communicating without words; they had connected even deeper. They became inseparable any day or night that they could afford to be together, but they didn’t allow anyone to know about it. Later, when the department learned of their growing involvement, they had surprisingly encouraged it, for a while. But it wasn’t long before they began to frown as they saw their control slowly slipping away. They were forbidden to see each other, and they complied, at least until the department thought that it was over.

After that, Jan and Ward met in secret. They never again worked together. He finally left the department under unfavorable conditions and officially charged with criminal activity. Even that didn’t stop them. At first Jan thought that maybe the charges were true; but as they continued to meet in secret she learned without a doubt that he was not guilty. She never really knew just what had happened until a couple of months ago when it had been necessary for her to learn about it. They had married in secret and now lived together in secret away from the department that they had been entrapped in. Deep in his thoughts, he never heard her come in. He never heard her move soundlessly across the room behind him.

She was skilled and he was distracted by his thoughts. She had seen his thoughts, carefully picking at them so that he would not detect her. Slowly she came up behind him and when her hands touched him, tracing the muscles in his back, he turned off the computer and stood up in one fluid movement unalarmed and totally aware of her now. His arm reached out to grab her. She ducked just as quickly, slipping away into the bedroom knowing that he would follow. With the information he wanted from the computer pushed aside; he walked toward the bedroom, removing his shirt in the process.

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