Contrary to many people's expectations, life as a member of the Blue Thunder crew was not one of constant excitement and danger. There were long interludes of routine patrols and sweeps that were almost boring in their total uneventuality. Wonderlove was of the opinion that there was nothing wrong with peace and quiet every now and then, but when they had been on routine patrols and investigative flights which had led to absolutely zip for the past month, a person could be excused for getting a mite bored.

"Jafo?"

""Yeah, Frank?" Wonderlove perked up at the sound of Chaney's voice. "What do you need?"

"I need for you to quit fidgeting. It's getting on my nerves."

Wonderlove twisted around in his seat to glare at the back of Chaney's neck. Unfortunately, the patented Wonderlove 'Gaze of Death' proved just as ineffectual on this occasion as it had before, and Chaney remained singularly unsinged, unfazed and generally unaware that he should have been a smoking pile of ashes in the pilot seat. Although, given that he was currently piloting Blue Thunder over the early morning rush hour, having anything happen to Chaney might be considered unwise.

"I wasn't fidgeting," Jafo said with considerable dignity. "I was just…" he groped for the appropriate word.

"Fidgeting," Chaney supplied ruthlessly.

"Well, it's been so boring!" Wonderlove said defensively.

Chaney twisted around to give him a crooked grin of sympathy. "Nothing wrong with a little bit of boring, every now and again," he soothed.

"Yeah, it's all right for you, but boring doesn't exactly impress the girls," Wonderlove said morosely. "I was counting on us pulling off something brilliant in time for Valentine's Day, then I could have walked up to any girl and got a date from her."

"Oh, so that's why you've stopped harping on about a life of peace and tranquillity," Chaney said as the light dawned. He managed to hold down his laughter with difficulty. "Jafo, being in the news just attracts the wrong kind of girl. You don't want to wind up with some glory-hunting groupie-type who's all cleavage and no brain, do you?" He paused as he took in the way Wonderlove's eyes had glazed over. "Forget I said that," he sighed.

"Blue Thunder, this is Apex Control, do you copy?"

The sound of the radio successfully distracted Jafo and he swung back to his station. "Apex Control, this is Blue Thunder. We copy."

"Blue Thunder, please alter course to assist in traffic accident. We haven't all the details, as yet, but it appears to be a large one, and there is a possibility of a fuel tanker being involved. All units have been asked to assist."

"We copy, Apex Control, and are on our way," Wonderlove acknowledged.

He passed on the location to Chaney and felt himself tense as the Witch altered course and started heading in the direction of the pile-up. Now that he had got his wish and a little excitement had come into his life, he found himself regretting he had made one. A traffic pile-up meant that people could be hurt, even killed, and there was no way he would have wished harm to someone just to make his life that little bit more exciting. He remembered the one traffic pile-up they had been called on to help out with and his stomach started to tie itself in knots. The spectre of a fuel-tanker going up in flames didn't exactly make him feel any better.

"Take it easy, Jafo."

As always, Frank seemed to have eyes in the back of his head, or some kind of sixth sense which told him that his partner was unsettled. Wonderlove was torn between exasperation and appreciation. "Do you have some kind of camera back here that I don't know about?" he demanded.

Chaney chuckled. "Yeah, that's likely, isn't it? Nah, I just know you and how you can start to visualise what we're going to see. I'm not saying that's a bad thing," he said hastily, practically hearing the angry bristle his young partner would make at the idea that he was anything other than professional, "but it can sometimes wear a person down if they're not careful."

"Apex said a fuel tanker, Frank," Wonderlove pointed out.

"That they did, but it hasn't exploded just yet. I can see the crash site from up here and there are no clouds of black smoke. If the tanker had gone up, we'd already know about it."

After a second, Jafo realised that Chaney was right. From the height they were flying at, they would have already spotted the signs of the kind of fire a ruptured fuel tank would create. The fact that there was nothing in sight came as a huge reassurance and he sank back into his seat with a sigh of relief. The old adage of 'be careful what you wish for' came to mind and he decided that peace and quiet had its positive side.

It didn't take them long to locate the site of the accident and Chaney circled the spot slowly as Jafo ran a few automatic scans. There was a fuel tanker, but to his relief, Jafo saw that the driver had managed to avoid piling into the tangle of wreckage of the other cars and was simply canted at an angle on the side of the freeway. He could see no sign of the actual tank having been breached and as he watched, a fireman came into sight from the far side, looked up and waved reassuringly.

"That's always a good sight to see," Chaney said as he looked down as well. "At least that's one thing we don't have to worry about. Let's see about finding a place to put down."

By now, the LAPD had co-ordinated with the other services to get things organised and it wasn't long before Chaney was able to get in touch with someone on the ground who directed him to where an air-ambulance was in the process of lifting up off the ground. He stood off until the other copter was clear and then settled down in its place. After shutting the Witch down, Chaney and Wonderlove got out and made for the uniformed officer who seemed to be in charge. He turned to give them a quick smile and acknowledging nod before returning his attention to the Fire Chief.

"Frankly, it's a damn miracle we haven't had any fatalities," the Chief was saying in relief. "We've just airlifted the two worst injured and we have about a dozen more people we need to cut out of their cars, but when I think about how bad it could have been…." He shook his head in grateful disbelief.

"Maybe St Valentine was watching over us today," the officer said with another easy smile. Now that he knew he didn't have a scene of carnage on his hands, his mood had tilted towards the mildly euphoric. He had had visions of having to arrange for people to be told that their loved ones were currently a mangled mess on the freeway.

The Fire Chief groaned. "Don't remind me! I was in the middle of arranging to send my wife a bunch of flowers when I had to scramble. Now I don't know when I'll be able to get it done."

"Here, use my cell-phone," Wonderlove offered, digging it out of his uniform and handing it to the Fire-Chief. "I've got the number of a very good florist stored, if you don't have one in mind." He realised that all three men were looking at him with identical expressions of fascinated amusement and he reddened. "I send my mother a lot of flowers, okay?" he finished defensively.

"Yeah, right," Chaney laughed. He introduced himself to the officer, letting Jafo off the hook while the Fire Chief eagerly took advantage of the offer he had been given. Chaney noted with approval that he was still watching his men as he did so, ready to respond to any sign that they needed his experience and authority. "You look like you've got everything pretty much under control," he commented.

The officer, who had introduced himself as Sergeant Grissom, nodded in relief. "It looked really bad at first, especially when we realised that a fuel tanker was involved, but there was only one critically injured person and the paramedics seemed to think that he had a pretty good chance, especially since he could be airlifted to hospital. Traffic's going to be snarled up for the rest of the morning, by the looks of things, since we need to cut people out of their cars before we can shift most of the wreckage. Could have been way worse, though."

"I'll say," Chaney agreed soberly. "Anything we can do to help?"

Grissom frowned and slowly shook his head. "Unless Chief Morris can come up with something, I don't see why we should tie you up. That air ambulance will be coming back once it's dropped off at the hospital, so if there is another badly injured person in there, we'll be able to get them to hospital fast. The firemen have already gone through the cars to make sure that the people we still have trapped are more frightened than in danger. Hey, Morris!" he called as the Chief switched off the phone and returned it to Jafo with a grateful smile. "Do you need Blue Thunder around?"

Morris pursed his lips and gave them a thoughtful look. "You got thermal imaging?" he asked.

Chaney gestured at Wonderlove. "Ask the Boy Genius," he said with a grin.

Jafo wrinkled his nose at him before turning back to the Fire Chief. "We do and I did a scan of the entire crash site as we were passing over it. Would you like to have a look?"

The Fire Chief gave him a broad smile. "That I would. Might help us catch something we missed on the visual. Lars!" he bellowed over his shoulder. A tall, chunky blond straightened up and looked in Morris' direction, then came towards them in obedience to the Chief's wave. "Right then, let's see what you've got."

Always happy to show off Blue Thunder's abilities, especially to an appreciative audience, Wonderlove spent a contented fifteen minutes going over the scans with Morris and Lars, comparing it with what the firemen had already determined on their own. Once that had been done, the firemen thanked him and drifted off, already slipping into their own specialised language and sounding as incomprehensible to Jafo as he and a fellow computer tech would undoubtedly sound to them in similar circumstances. Jafo went in search of Chaney and wasn't surprised to find him helping some of the officers keeping back the TV and newspaper reporters who had swarmed to the site. Jafo had already registered two news helicopters circling the area while he had been talking to Morris.

"Ghouls," he muttered under his breath, casting a jaundiced eye upwards. "Bet they're disappointed the tanker didn't go up and give them some prime-time footage."

He noted the look of envy a couple of the other police officers gave Chaney as he made it perfectly clear that the presence of the media swarm was unwanted. Apex had long since given up trying to get Chaney to make nice-nice with reporters. Frank actually had some reporter friends, but he had little patience with the type who would stick a microphone in the face of a grief-stricken parent and ask them how they 'felt' about their only child having been found raped and murdered in some dark alleyway. Police officers, however, were supposed to be unfailingly polite, even when every instinct was telling them to scream a few home truths in the smug faces in front of them.

A sound distracted him and he looked around, trying to pin it down. It seemed to be coming from behind a Winnebago that had been hit by another car, and Jafo circled the tangled metal warily. He had just figured out what the sound was and where it was coming from when he was startled by a hand coming down on his shoulder. He glanced around to find Chaney behind him.

"Time to go, kid. They don't really need us here and I'm going to be on assault charges if I have to listen to the sanctimonious whining from that idiot from XTWB for much longer."

"Wait up a moment, Frank," Wonderlove shushed him. "I can hear a girl crying somewhere around here."

Chaney rolled his eyes. "The way you're tuned into girls, she could be crying in the next state and you'd hear her!" he groused. He obediently shut up when Wonderlove glared at him and trailed after his partner as he continued to weave his way between the piles of shapeless metal.

Now that they were away from the main bustle, he started to hear what Jafo's sharp ears had picked up. There was definitely a girl crying somewhere close. When they eventually walked around another battered car and found her, Chaney felt his jaw sagging as he took in the sight. He wasn't sure what he had been expecting to find, but a young woman in full bridal dress had been nowhere near the top of the list!

She was sitting on the ground next to a car that was discreetly decorated with ribbons, now snapped and fluttering desultorily in what little breeze there was. A man in chauffeur's uniform, minus his jacket, was crouched down beside her, obviously trying to cheer her up. As they got closer, Chaney saw that the man's jacket had been put on the ground to prevent the girl from soiling her dress. The car, a beautifully restored 1930s Rolls Royce, had been rear-ended by another car, but neither the driver nor the bride seemed injured in any way. Neither were they going anywhere, since they were securely blocked in by all the other cars.

"Hey, how you doing?" Jafo said softly as he reached her side and crouched down beside her.

She barely seemed to register his arrival, so lost to her misery, but the young chauffeur gave him a strained smile. Chaney saw the way he was favouring one arm, but he couldn't see any sign of blood.

"She's a little upset," he said awkwardly, in one of the most massive understatements Chaney had heard in quite a while. "We were supposed to be at the church in ten minutes."

"Bummer," Jafo said, the genuine sympathy in his voice making the innocuous word thoroughly appropriate. "Can't you call and tell them what's happened?"

The girl finally seemed to register that there were new people around and she made a valiant attempt to stop her tears. "He'll… he'll think I don't w-want to marry him!" she whispered. "T-this was sup-posed to b-be third time l-lucky!"

The other men exchanged confused looks. Chaney saw that the chauffeur seemed as much at sea as he was. "Mind elaborating on that, Miss-?"

The chauffeur gave a start. "Oh, sorry, this is Miss Julie Cooper. I'm Sam."

"Hi, Sam. Any idea what's upsetting her so much?"

Sam gave a baffled shake of the head. "Apart from the obvious, that she's late, no. I know she was really agitated about being on time. Even after the accident, once she knew I was okay, all she seemed to care about was the fact that she was going to be late."

"Sure you're okay?" Chaney asked, pointing at his arm. Sam coloured.

"It's just a sprain. One of the paramedics already looked at it and strapped me up. I have to get it checked over later, but there are other people a lot more injured around. I'm more worried about Miss Cooper. The phone in the car isn't working any more, so I can't use it to let my boss know what's happened."

"Ah, now that's something we can help you with," Chaney said with a mischievous smile. He reached down to filch Jafo's phone out of his pocket, ignoring the initial yelp of protest from his partner. "Here, call in and let them know you're okay."

While Sam gratefully took advantage of the offer, Chaney watched in amusement as his partner went to work on Julie. One of the nice things about Jafo was that he seemed genuinely unaware of the effect he had on women. Half the time, he was far more successful in his quest for a date when he wasn't making a conscious effort to impress. Right now he wasn't trying to do anything more than calm down a distressed girl and see what he could do to help, but he was unknowingly saying and doing all the right things. By the time Sam had got through to his employers and had reassured them that he was all right (and broken the bad news about the car), she had calmed down enough to actually register their existence. She even managed to smile a little weakly in agreement that she was actually lucky to be alive and her fiancé had better appreciate that or be pummelled into submission by one Clinton Wonderlove!

"It's just that this was this was the third time we've tried to get married, y'know?" she said in despair. "The first time, I chickened out a month before the wedding and everyone was so mad, but I just wasn't ready. And the second time, Mikey and my parents had a blistering row and everything was in such a mess we decided not to go through with it. So this time we were so sure it was going to be third time lucky, y'know? And now it's all ruined again!"

The tears spilled over and Jafo looked up at Chaney a little helplessly. Realising that he was being called upon to add something to the conversation, Frank cast around for something positive to say. "Look, there's no way anyone can blame you for this, Julie. I figure they'll just be thankful that you weren't hurt."

"But we'll have to pay for everything and we can't afford to do it all again!" Julie wailed. "Mikey said he loved the idea of my being his Valentine bride!"

Chaney sighed as she started to sob again. Kids. They weren't rational to begin with, but when you added their being in love to the mix…. He caught the accusing look Jafo was giving him and shrugged helplessly. He'd tried to be helpful and where had it got him? "Look, it's not as if we can do anything about it, besides let your folks know what's happened-"

He actually saw it happen, for once. He actually witnessed the moment when one of Wonderlove's insane plans sprang into full-blown existence inside his head. He opened his mouth to demand that they leave, immediately, before whatever stroke of 'genius' that had hit his partner expanded to pull him into it, but he was already too late.

"You know, we might be able to do something to help," Wonderlove was saying thoughtfully.

"Yeah, like I said, we can contact her folks and let them know she's okay-" Chaney knew he was on to a loser, but he figured it was worth a try. He just knew that if he kept trying, one day he would head off one of Jafo's lunatic schemes at the pass.

"No, we could better than that," Wonderlove said scornfully. "We could take her to the church!"

"We could what?" Chaney yelped in disbelief.

"No, wait, Frank, hear me out, " Jafo said hastily as he saw Chaney suck in a breath to vehemently veto the idea. "There's no way Julie can arrange to find another lift to get her to the church on time, but Blue Thunder's just over there and we can get her there in maybe half an hour and even if we have to land a little out of the way-"

"There's a park directly opposite," Sam provided helpfully, before quailing under the glare that earned him from Chaney. "Well, there is," he said sulkily. "A nice one, with a pond."

"See, that's even better!" Jafo said enthusiastically. "It's like Fate is on our side."

"So help me, Jafo, if you even mention that fat cherub's name…" Chaney threatened. He ran his hands through his hair, helplessly aware that Julie had stopped crying and was now gazing up at him with an expression of hopeful trust on her face. So, for that matter, were Jafo and Sam. Quite why the hell he was so set on it escaped Chaney, unless it was some kind of vague professional desire for a job to be completed. "Look, it's not that simple," he began desperately. "I can't just land Blue Thunder anywhere I like in the city. You know that, Jafo."

"I can radio through to Apex and explain," Wonderlove assured him. "I'm sure they'll go for it once I explain."

"But-"

"Do you think you could?" Julie breathed, clasping her hands together, her eyes like stars. Seeing her like that, Frank could see why she had a groom hyperventilating with panic at her non-appearance at an altar somewhere.

"It'll depend on what Apex has to say," he decided, taking the coward's way out of foisting the decision on someone else. He couldn't see Braddock going for the idea, somehow.

Unfortunately for his hopes, Braddock and the entire crew back at Apex Control showed an unholy eagerness to agree to the plan. "Come on, Frank," Braddock said as Chaney fumed at him over a private channel. Jafo was fussing over Julie being buckled in properly and she was excitedly chattering over his cell-phone to her parents. "It's Valentine's Day, for God's sake. Let a little romance into your soul."

"Can't; I sold it to you, last poker night we had, remember?" Chaney groused. He found himself grinning reluctantly when Braddock laughed. "Okay, okay, so I'm stuck with being Cupid's errand-boy. I suppose it could be worse. She could be an expectant mother in labor."

"Man, don't even joke about that!" Braddock exclaimed in horror.

Chaney's hope that Chief Morris might need them for something was also destroyed by a negligent wave of the hand. Indeed, the Chief had a suspiciously soft look in his eyes when he looked across at the bride, and Frank had the sinking feeling that the man probably had a daughter of his own and was busy empathising with the other father at the church. His final hope dashed, Chaney summoned up a smile and got into the pilot's seat, quickly running through the pre-flight checks before powering up the rotors. About the only source of amusement he could find was the sight of the media circus a little off to the right of them. They had started to get excited when they had spotted the unusual sight of a woman in full bridal outfit being hurried across to Blue Thunder and being strapped in. Then Chaney got in and they were very obviously going to take off. It came as little surprise to see several of the vans reverse up and start to follow them when they took off.

"Did you get through to your parents, Julie?" he asked once they were safely in the air.

"Yes. They had heard about the accident and everyone was afraid I had been hurt, so they were really pleased to hear from me." She gave a small gurgle of amusement. "I just told them I was on my way. I sorta thought I'd keep Blue Thunder as a surprise."

Chaney rolled his eyes but couldn't help smiling back. He could dimly remember going to extraordinary lengths to surprise his parents, and he suspected that Julie was young and female enough to want to make the grandest of all possible entrances for her wedding. And he had no doubt that she had a willing co-conspirator in his partner. A glance over his shoulder caught the broad grin on Jafo's face as he kept an eye on his station. Frank sighed and shook his head, switching his attention back to piloting.

What it is to be young, he thought.

His eyes glued to the external cameras, Jafo watched the trail of news vans following after them and his grin broadened. This was going to make a much better item on the evening news!

That night, every news programme that had managed to get its hand on the film carried the item. The sight of Blue Thunder settling down in the small local park, startling the locals, was amusing enough, as was the confused mob of people who had spilled out of the small church opposite. But the icing on the cake was when the young co-pilot of Blue Thunder had got out and ran around to the other side. Then he had carefully helped down a young bride, radiant in white lace and cream satin, her head-dress whipping around in the small wind sent down by the idly turning rotors. She had laughed and tossed the head-dress to one side, leaving a coronet of tiny white flowers encircling her dark hair. She had looked around in time to see a young man running towards her and had flung herself into his arms before being swept up by him and taken towards the church.

"And that, Officer Chaney," Jafo drawled as they got back into Blue Thunder and took off again, "is how you get in good with Cupid. He owes me, now, so maybe I'll finally get that date with JJ."

Chaney snorted. "I'll believe it when I see it, Jafo. Besides, I know you won't succeed because you forgot one tiny, but essential, detail."

Wonderlove gave him a suspicious look. "Okay, I'll bite. I'm going to regret it, I know, but I'll bite. What important detail did I forget?"

"You forgot to hang around and catch the bouquet, of course!"