Considering
Buck stood looking out through the sliding glass doors at the sparkling
stars, slowly sipping at the mug of hot chocolate he cradled in his hands.
Tomorrow their last man would arrive in the office. And hopefully in a
few weeks, they would be up to speed and out on their own cases, instead of
helping out on other team’s cases. The
relative inactivity was beginning to wear on Buck. He liked routine, and things wouldn’t settle
until they had found their undercover man.
In the last six months since Chris had called him, Buck had barely
gotten settled and things would get shaken up again.
The biggest disruption had to have been that first phone call from Chris
making the offer for Buck to be on the team.
It had taken him less than two seconds to reply with a resounding yes.
Chris and Buck had been close since high school. Buck had been the new kid in town their
sophomore year, and Chris had taken him under his wing
and shown him around. Pretty soon they
were just about inseparable. After
graduation, they had remained close, serving in the Navy together and later on
the same police force.
When Chris had called, Buck hadn’t actually seen Chris in months. There had been a few phone calls back and
forth, but nothing more. Chris had been
drifting away from Buck ever since Sarah and Adam’s deaths, and there seemed to
be nothing Buck could do to stop it.
They had been partners on the Denver Police Department at the time of
their deaths, and Chris had resigned almost immediately, unable to deal with
his grief. For the next few months Buck
had watched helplessly as Chris drank and seemed driven to find his own grave
as quickly as possible.
Chris had finally woken up when he nearly lost control of his car on an
icy road and hit another car head on.
Chris had been completely sober at the time, and realized that if he
continued the way he was going, he might end up killing someone else. He refused to be the cause of another man
losing his family.
Buck rejoiced silently as Chris pulled himself out of the bottle, but
later mourned as he saw his good friend turning into a lonely, bitter man who
worked his land, but rarely ventured out any more. Chris had rebuilt the house and started
working the ranch, staying almost entirely to himself. His temper was kept under tight rein, but it
was always brewing just under the surface.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Buck took another sip as he considered the last few months. The first few weeks, Chris had been as he remembered
him from the last few times he saw him.
Hard, almost dictatorial, but with a quick mind, figuring out what would
be best at lightning speed. Over the
last couple of months Chris seemed to have mellowed out just a touch, but
enough that Buck thought that he could keep this going well.
When Buck had suggested Nathan Jackson as team medic, Chris had simply
asked why?
The answer was easy enough.
Nathan Jackson was the best field medic Buck had ever met….He was also a
moralistic, irreverent, insubordinate loud mouth!
Chris had laughed at Buck’s description and told him to set up a meeting
and get him his file. Buck had handed
him the folder and informed him that the meeting was scheduled for the next
morning. Chris just grunted as he
started reading the personnel folder.
The next morning, Buck was wishing that the floor would open up and
swallow him.
When Nathan arrived, Buck had immediately noticed the small blood stains
on his clothes, but Chris didn’t wait for explanations before blasting the man
for not being there on time.
Chris hired him on the spot.
Next to be added to the roster was a profiler, and when Nathan suggested
Josiah Sanchez, retired FBI, it sounded like a perfect fit. Sanchez had been one of the FBI’s most
successful profilers, but because of his radical way of looking at things, he
had never quite fit in there and had taken early retirement. According to Nathan, the man was beginning to
go a little crazy with boredom, since the only things he had to do were help
out at the local shelters and odd job repairs on the fixer-upper house he had
bought.
Whatever the case, when Josiah had shown up, he had pegged Buck in less
than ten minutes. Buck still didn’t know
him all that well, but he seemed like a solid man and he really knew his stuff,
even if he was a bit of a mystery and rather cryptic in his speech at times.
The next addition to their team had come as a great surprise. Vin Tanner, ex-Ranger and bounty hunter, had
saved Chris and Nathan’s butts when they had been working as back-up on one of
Team Four’s ops. Coker, team leader to
Team Four, had seriously miscalculated the amount of muscle that their target
was going to bring to the meeting. The
only reason they had even known Vin was there was when he started picking off
the ones that had managed to circle around behind Chris and Nathan. He had managed to take six out of the fight,
only killing one. That guy had refused
to stay down after Vin shot him the first time, and he had been forced to kill
him to order to stop him.
It had been almost humorous to watch Coker standing in the middle of the
warehouse yelling up at the rafters for whoever was up there to come down, and
watch the lithe young man seemingly materialize out of thin air ten feet behind
him. Except for the rifle in his hands,
he had looked like an average guy off the street, dressed in comfortable jeans,
a t-shirt, and a black leather jacket.
After a bunch of hoopla-ha about seeing if his permits to carry the
rifle were legit, the four members of team seven arranged to take him out for a
drink later.
Buck had wondered for the next five days if Chris had absolutely lost
his mind as he fought tooth and nail with Judge Travis to get permission to
bring Vin on the team. But it would seem
that Chris had seen something the rest of them didn’t, because Vin had proven
invaluable since he had come on board.
He had the highest range scores in the entire ATF, and those skills had
already saved several lives, including Buck’s.
Vin had even been able to raise the scores of others in the office by
giving them pointers.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Buck shook his head fondly as he considered the next man to join their
team, the one currently ensconced on his living room couch playing a video
game.
Why Chris had picked JD Dunne from the prodigious number of applicants,
Buck didn’t know, but he sure had found a gem.
He looked young enough to blend in with teen culture, if needed, but he
was a trained cop with a degree in computer forensics.
When JD first arrived in the office, Buck had thought he was seeing
things, but the kid had stood up to Chris when he had started to reject him out
of hand. With Buck prodding from one end
and the kid standing his ground from the other, Chris had eventually given in
and agreed to a probation period. After
just two weeks, Chris declared that if JD still wanted the job, it was all his.
When JD had been informed later that first morning that the apartment he
had been going to rent had been vandalized the night before and was no longer
inhabitable, Buck had volunteered his spare room. JD was still there now, weeks later. They
both felt comfortable the way things were and saw no reason the situation had
to change yet.
Their last man however, Buck wasn’t so sure of. Where Chris had dug this guy up, Buck had no
earthly clue. Chris had just announced
one morning that he would be heading for
Ezra Standish, according to his file, which was very slim, looked like a
good agent that had gotten bent. Nathan
had been quite zealous in declaring that he thought Standish would be bad
news. Chris had just replied that he
thought Nathan was wrong, and they had better give Standish a chance before
they wrote him off.
Later, in private, Buck had voiced his own concerns, but Chris had just
looked at him with a thinly veiled look of disappointment on his face and said
that they would have to wait and see.
Buck drank the last of his hot chocolate and set the mug on the counter
to be washed later. As he headed up to
bed, he yelled at the younger man that it was time for bed, since they had to
be in the office early in the morning.
JD replied in the affirmative and Buck waited for a couple of minutes as
the TV was shut off and the kid headed for the spare room.
As he slipped into bed, Buck pulled his mind from the coming day,
reminding himself that speculation never did any good, but it never hurt to
keep one’s eyes open.
