“Oh, ripped out his i.v.’s, attempted to storm out. They drugged him and he fought it for a very long time.”

She chuckled faintly, shaking her head. “That crazy Scot. He just never got over his childhood, did he?”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, just me doing a bit of amateur psychology. He spent his early life at the mercy of the foster care system, in state institutions, and it seems that he has spent the rest of his life making sure he was never at the mercy of other people ever again. Being in a hospital is probably a bad flashback for him.”

That made perfect sense, and he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of that. What kind of boyfriend was he? Then again, Roan didn’t talk about his childhood much, or his past in general, except in the occasional brief anecdote. Paris didn’t press him because it was clearly painful and uncomfortable for him. But part of him was a coward; he knew Roan had been at least been physically abused, those scars he didn’t talk about and the one he did (the one on the back of his hand, from a hot iron) were the obvious markers of a bad past. Did it go beyond that though? He had a hard time thinking about Roan being hurt as a child, it made him feel sick with rage, and his mind shied away from the possible worse case scenarios because he wasn’t sure he could deal with it. But he knew there were times when Ro just couldn’t bear to be touched, which could have simply been due to physical abuse, or it could have been a sign of past sexual abuse. If Roan didn’t want to talk about it, though, he wasn’t going to press it. But he knew why Ro had such a bone deep hatred of wife beaters and child abusers; some grudges were just too personal to fade away that easily.

Murphy touched his arm, and it startled him. He didn’t realize he had zoned out for a moment until she did. “Hey, you okay? Need a ride home?”

He shook his head, snapping out of it. “No, thanks. I was just …I hate that people seem to live to hurt him, both then and now.”

“Well, he can more than take care of himself now. Also, sometimes you can’t help but want to give him a smack.” She smiled faintly, trying to make it a joke, and he tried to respond in kind, but found it difficult. She seemed to realize that now wasn’t the time, and went back to a safer topic. “We found the Jeep used in the shooting.”

That was a real surprise. “Already?”

“Oh come on, with the description he gave us? He remains a wet dream as a witness - he sees all, he remembers all, and getting shot isn’t enough to stop him. We found it less than a mile away in an abandoned lot, set on fire. It had only been recently set alight, though, and only the front seats had burned by the time we put it out. We got forensics going over it, hopefully they’ll be able to pull something we can use.”

“No plates?”

Her lips thinned to a grim line as she shook her head. “Took ‘em with ‘em, so they’re not complete idiots. But they forgot the VIN, so we’re seeing if that gets us anywhere. I don’t want to say I’m glad they went after Roan, ‘cause God knows I’m not, but I’m relieved they targeted the wrong goddamn person, and that’s gonna cost ‘em. I only wish it was our killer.”

She was just full of surprises for him today, wasn’t she? “How do you know it’s not?”

“A major change in M.O. is the main one. This man - and I’m just assuming it’s a man because they’re generally your spree/serial killer; women are more your “crime of passion” type - does like to shoot his victims, and he does like to take them by surprise, but he also likes to be right there, up close and personal, so he can savor the death; it’s quite possible he even gets a sexual charge out of it. For him this act is very intimate. A drive by with an automatic weapon is a change in weapon, and a change in basic motive, and all of this ignores the fact that there was an obvious witness right there, that the victim wasn’t alone even though the victim was alone in every other case. I think someone else shot Roan - two someone else’s.”

“But who? And why?”

She held her hands open in a type of shrug. “Well big guy, I was hoping you could tell me. Has he gotten any death threats lately? Has he pissed someone off more than usual?”

“Other than the police department? No.”

That made her grimace, but she conceded the point with a nod. “If you think of anything, let me know. And I’m gonna have a prowler give your neighborhood a pass through tonight, okay? Call immediately if you think you hear or see anything suspicious.”

It was almost funny in an odd sort of way, yet he couldn’t laugh. “You think they might come after me?”

“You work together. If they have a grudge against him, they could include you in it.”

He wished they would. He wanted them to come after him, because he wanted very badly to beat the shit out of them before the cops showed up to haul them away. He knew if they could get Roan they could easily get him, but death just didn’t bother him anymore. He didn’t actively seek it out like he did before Ro, but he’d come to terms with it. It was inevitable, and after all he’d been through, it was difficult to see it as a scary thing for himself. “I’ll be okay. If Roan was the target, you should get the cops here to watch his room.”

A corner of her mouth quirked up in a bitter half smile. “Oh yeah, he’d love that.” Okay, she had a point. “Actually, I’ll have people check him in on him regularly, but cops are in and out of County all the time. This is where we drag those belligerent drunks who fight each other with pool cues and the assholes who get on the wrong side of knives. Those guys would have to be idiots to come after him here, and I really don’t think they are. I’d wager money Roan scared the shit out of them. They fired a couple dozen shots and only stuck one, and Roan fired two and hit both. How’d he do that, by the way? More of his amazing luck?”

Paris shrugged and shook his head. “Guess so.” She didn’t know, did she? She probably knew about the whole super smell thing, but didn’t she know about his eyesight, his reflexes? He thought that’s why the cops were so happy to have him, even though he was one of the freakish infected. Maybe she knew, but wasn’t actually aware of how supernatural they actually were. They all thought of him as Human, and he was slowly realizing that that was demeaning to what he actually was.

She rubbed his upper arm in a comforting gesture, and forced a weak smile. “Sure you’re okay?”

She thought his zoning out earlier was him trying not to lose it, but she‘d misinterpreted it. He wasn‘t upset about that, he was angry at himself - furious that he‘d missed the subtext of fear in Roan‘s insistence on leaving the hospital. He felt like he‘d failed him in some key way. “I’m okay, thanks. I’ve got some stuff at the office to clear up.”

That seemed to surprise her. “Are you sure you want to go back to work?”

“It’ll keep my mind off things, and believe me, I need that right now.” A bit of a lie, but he was always an excellent liar, and she never saw it. She was a good cop, an excellent profiler, and yet she couldn’t see through him. He wondered what awful thing that meant about him.

But he decided that was something else he wasn’t going to think about.

*****

He went home and killed time before he had to go to the “meeting”. He couldn’t call his sister, not now, and he couldn’t eat either, even though he knew he should. He had about a week before he entered his viral cycle, and he needed to start banking calories now if he didn’t want to look like a skeleton after his first change. Instead he did a reverse directory search on the address he’d been given, and discovered the address led to a private home owned by Reese and Amy Campbell, two people he’d never heard of. A quick check of the database showed that all Reese had on his record was a variety of traffic violations; Amy was clean. He worked as the manager of a copy shop, while she was a manicurist, and perhaps not coincidentally, their separate shops shared a strip mall location.

Paris changed into a t-shirt that advertised a golf pro shop he’d never heard of, and slightly baggy, worn jeans that hid the belt holster quite well. He put the spare clip inside one of the hiking boots he was wearing, although he thought it was crazily optimistic that he’d ever get a chance to reload. If they were guilty; if they did this. Now he wasn’t sure.

They were responsible for the killer, but not for Roan’s shooting - or they were responsible for Roan’s shooting, but not the killings. Or Dropkick was totally wrong, but he didn’t think she was. Her “profile” of the killer sounded excellent, bulletproof logic, and it just served to remind him of what an amateur he really was. But there was something he was excellent at, something that he was sure neither Roan nor Murphy could do, and that was make people believe whatever he wanted them to believe. He spent his whole life perfecting the art of bullshit, and now here was a major test of his abilities. Time to see if he could still play with the big dogs.

He left a note on the breakfast bar saying where he was going, and added that Roan should check his cell’s voice mail box. In case he didn’t come back, he wanted Ro to nail the bastards.

Although it was still drizzling, he decided to take Ro’s motorcycle, as it was generally seen as a very macho, “straight” thing to do (apparently most people were unaware of the gay leather gangs), and his bike was a bit more anonymous than the GTO. Ro’s bike was a Buell Lightning “City” model, a really beautiful bike with a four stroke fuel injected V-twin engine, chrome and black with translucent blue accents, this thing was fast and rough and kicked a hell of a lot of ass. It was also a fairly expensive bike, but Roan had got it on the cheap from a police auction - it was apparently amongst the ill gotten gains of a drug dealer that got busted a while back. He used to have a Kawasaki, but was happy to sell the thing to get this instead. It was definitely a trade up.

He put on his black leather flight jacket, zipping it up to avoid the worst of the rain, and then put on the full face helmet at the very last minute, as it always made him feel claustrophobic. But once he got going, the bike chewing up asphalt as he raced towards the city and out into the suburbs, he felt almost high. This was as close as he ever got to flying, and when he could really the kick the engine into overdrive, it felt even better than that. It was freedom as well as an open flirtation with death, an adrenaline rush that could be a major turn on. But the possibility that he was driving straight into hell killed any latent horniness.

The house of the Campbells sat in the center of a tree lined block, a pale blue two story house with egg white trim and a struggling weeping willow in the front yard, an ‘03 maroon Toyota Camry and an ‘05 Range Rover in a color that could best be described as sewage sludge brown in the oil stained driveway. This looked like a nice, quiet neighborhood, the kind where they might set a made-for-t.v. movie about the perils of alcoholism or infidelity or something. He parked the bike in the driveway, behind the sludgy Range Rover, and took off his helmet and carried it beneath his arm as he approached the front door. A helmet could actually be a pretty good weapon; you hit someone with it right, and you could break their nose as easily as snapping off a pop top.

The door was answered by a trim, petite brunette with shoulder length hair and a reasonably attractive - if slightly overly made up - face, dressed casually in a Budweiser t-shirt and tight jeans. Her storm cloud gray eyes quickly scanned him, took him in, and he saw a reaction in her pupils that suggested attraction. He made a mental note of that, in case he could string her along and take advantage of that. “Can I help you?” she asked, her voice betraying a hint of a Southern accent. Amy (Reynolds) Campbell was a thirty four year old woman who hailed from South Carolina originally, and he knew that was precisely who he was dealing with.

“I’m Kevin Stiles. I was told there was a meeting here ..?”

“Oh, of course, come on in.” She stepped back and held the door wide open, her face splitting into a warm but slightly wolfish grin. Once he was inside, she shut the door and he unzipped his jacket so he had more immediate access to the Beretta. “Ain’t you a cute one? Tim never mentioned that.”

“So how many people are here?” He asked, giving his voice just a little bit of nervous tension. If he was too relaxed, they’d be suspicious. But inside he was amazingly calm and centered; all ice. When you had decided on a course of action that could be irrevocable, it was bizarre what a weight it was off your shoulders.

“Just a few friends, that’s all. Tim said your story was really moving. Can I take your coat?”

He shook his head, and as she continued to look at him with that special glint in her eye, the one that suggested he could have her after one more beer, he gave her his best slow, sensuous smile, the one that without fail got him to at least third base. (Okay, the first time he used it on Roan it hadn’t worked, but that had only intrigued him.) “Naw, that’s okay. I picked a shitty day to take the bike out, and now I’m paying the price. I’m fucking freezing.”

Her responding smile was amused, which he thought it would be. Women were usually impressed when a man came right out and admitted he was an idiot, and he‘d found making fun of his own mental shortcomings seemed to be a good way to get women into bed. It could work the same on a man too, although that was wholly dependant on the guy. “I’m Amy, by the way. Pleased to meet you. Why don’t I get you a beer? That oughta warm you up.”

“Thanks, I’d like that.”

She threw him a smile that suggested he could have a lot more before leading him into the living room, her hips swaying a bit more than necessary. She did have a nice ass, he had to give her that.

The living room was an uncomfortable mix of Ikea and Goodwill, with a mottled brown carpet that probably hid every kind of stain known to mankind and reminded him for some reason of the ‘70’s (although there was no way this house could be more than ten years old). The sofa was a large brown sectional that was probably older than the house, and on it were seated three men, all between the ages of mid twenties to mid thirties, and he recognized Tim from the meeting, now wearing little wire framed glasses and a beige v-neck sweater. He looked so much like a therapist it was insane.

The other two men were a study in contrasts. The youngest of the men was a string bean, tall and wiry, in a Hard Rock Café t-shirt and khakis, his curly brown hair tucked beneath a trucker hat advertising STP, his eyes as shiny and empty as small brown mirrors. He was sitting on the edge of the couch, his knee bouncing up and down with nervous tension. Sitting at the opposite end of the couch was a average sized man sprawled back comfortably, his stomach a small round lump like he was smuggling a bowling ball, making his plain green t-shirt pull up and expose a small strip of skin with a few stray black hairs visible. His head was perfectly round, his skin betraying the slight flush of windburn, his scalp shaved and shiny as if waxed. His eyes were like small polished stones shoved deep in the clay of his face, and he was almost avuncular, although there was something about him that put Paris’s teeth on edge.

Tim stood up as he came in, thanked him for coming, and introduced Jack Sprat as Brad, while Humpty Dumpty was Reese. (No wonder Amy was attracted to him.) He shook hands with them all, noting that Brad’s hand was clammy although his grip was crushing, and Reese’s barely registered at all. Tim had a grip like a wet rag. Everyone had a Rolling Rock, save for Tim, who had a bottled water.

Paris sat in a white leather love seat across from the sofa, which gave him a perfect view of everyone and an unblocked shot, and he set the helmet on the carpet . Amy came sauntering into the room with two bottles of Rolling Rock and handed him one, sitting on the other end of the loveseat and curling her legs beneath her. She was careful not to sit too close to him, but when her husband wasn’t looking, he caught her giving him a certain look out of the corner of his eye. It was possible she was trying to play him, though; it was possible she was trying to bring him in or lull him into a false sense of security with the lure of her. Men were sadly simple - get them by the dick and you had them, gay or straight or other. But if she wanted to play the game with him, he hoped she realized she was tangling with a master of sexual manipulation; he wasn’t as easy to get by the short and curlies as other men. He’d learned his lesson the hard way.

Tim did the talking at first, and it was almost like they were pitching Amway at him. They quizzed him on what he knew about Humanity First, and his story of infected horror. He elaborated his story this time out, about his college roommate, “Perry“, who was deliberately infected and disappeared, never to be found, with the inclusion of his girlfriend, “Darlene” , who was apparently sleeping around on him with Perry. She too got infected, and he said she died at her first transition. He played up the pathos, allowing himself to get genuinely angry (not hard - he just thought of Roan laying in that hospital bed, and contemplated the fact that two of the fucks in this room may have done it) and even teared up a bit, although he never cried (too girly). He took several swigs of his beer, but he actually only allowed a few drops to get through his lips; he didn’t want to let his guard down by a single iota, not until he knew the game.

Tim feigned sympathetic looks, while Brad seemed to get more wound up and anxious (judging by the increased bouncing of his leg), and Reese seemed perfectly impassive. Amy made sympathetic noise, but that was about it. Paris wasn’t impressed. He added angrily, without prompting, “I hate those fucking cats. Everybody makes excuses for them - they’re diseased, they’re victims - but most of those fucking freaks got infected by their own stupid behavior. Since when do we give special rights to people who fuck themselves up, and fuck other people up? We don’t excuse rapists or killers, so why do we allow these freaks to do whatever they want?”

There were nods all around. “We should put ‘em all in camps,” Brad said, his knee still bouncing like he had a neurological disorder. “I don’t care if we firebomb ‘em after or just leave ‘em to rot, but they ain’t people and they shouldn’t be around us. The fucking PC bleeding hearts, it’s their fault the world’s so fucked up. If we locked the faggots up when AIDS started, it wouldn’t have spread, it’d just have killed off the fudge packers like it was ‘sposed ta.”

Amy sighed dramatically. “Way to make us sound nuts, Brad.”

“Hey, Buchanan said it first, I’m just -”

“I don’t care,” she snapped, glaring at him with open contempt. “Just shut the fuck up.” Although Brad had no accent, the way she talked to him and the slightest facial resemblance made him wonder if they were related. Brother and sister? Cousins?

Paris decided to play the “impatience” card now, as it would probably be expected at this point. “Is this the entire meeting? Just us? Seems a bit … small, doesn’t it?”

Tim sat forward, resting his clasped hands on his knees, taking on the look of a marriage counselor about to tell you that learning to trust is the hardest but most rewarding part of any relationship. “You have to understand, Kevin, we have to be very careful about the people we let in. We want people who are committed to the cause, who want to be proactive. We have to be careful, because there are people who wish to … sabotage us.”

He pretended to be confused, while all the while thinking ‘Yes, people like this fudge packer here’. “Sabotage you? For what, not liking cats?”

“It’s more than that,” Tim replied, clearly trying to think of some way to put it.

“You a cop?” Reese suddenly asked. It was the first thing he’d said all evening.

Paris’s scoff was genuine. “Do I smell like bacon to you? No, I’m not a cop. What the hell’s this about?”

He watched Amy, Tim, Brad, and Reese all exchange looks with each other, quizzical and demanding, and he had a feeling he was in. Which meant they didn’t shoot Roan, but that didn’t make him feel better. It just meant they were still in the running as the kitty killers.

Tim remained coy, which Paris suspected was his strength. They needed “young people like him”, full of “vitality and passion” (he was tempted to ask if he was coming on to him, but he knew no one in this room had a sense of humor), and they wanted to know if he was committed to bringing these infected “to justice”, no matter how it might seem to some people. (“Kitty fuckers.” Brad sneered. “They ain‘t people. They‘re like another species entirely.”) He pretended to take a moment to work out what they were really saying, then feigned shock at the idea before gradually settling into it, letting the anger come back as he almost accepted it. But he retained some wariness as he asked how illegal the things they were discussing were. Tim explained that they weren’t “illegal per se”, just things that people wanted to do but were afraid to do.

He found himself thinking of 1984, of Orwellian doublespeak as Tim calmly and rationally sold a vague bill of goods that could have meant anything from simple vandalism to all out murder. This was Tim’s role - he was the clear eyed, seemingly sane cult leader, the subtle snake oil salesman who gradually suckered you in, as insidious as the more obvious and charismatic Eli. They were two sides of the same coin, with Eli never hiding the fact that he was a pure showman in it for the ego stroking, and Tim hiding everything behind a plain vanilla exterior that belied something truly ugly lurking beneath the surface. He never would have pegged him for the ringleader; Roan hadn’t either. But he was. Sitting across from him in this sitcom bland living room, Paris recognized a fellow predator, someone who, in different incarnations, had probably talked the susceptible into assassinating abortion doctors or burning down synagogues. He wondered how many he had suckered, and what he’d gotten them to do for him. Was murder still on the roster?

Paris pretended to be susceptible, to fall under the hypnotic sway of his low, metronomic voice and friendly Mr. Rogers demeanor. He didn’t become an instant soldier for his personal jihad, he still held himself back at arm’s length, only agreeing to think about his proposal, but he said it in a way as to leave little doubt what his ultimate decision would be. And they bought it, of course, because Paris was still the king of all liars (although it was hardly anything to be proud of). Tim thought he was a snake oil’s salesman? He had no fucking idea. He let Tim think he was hypnotizing him, pulling him into the snare, while inside Paris quietly gloated over how easily Tim was falling for his trap.

By the time he’d left, Tim had given him a “special number”, one where they could discuss these things more in depth, as well as his IM name in case he felt more comfortable speaking that way. Amy saw him out, holding his arm in an unusually friendly manner, and she let her hand linger longer than needed as she looked him in the eyes and gave him a smile that could only be described as lascivious. He was half convinced it was an act, a honey trap, but he held her gaze longer than polite company would allow, feigning a response that she would expect. He could play the honey trap game too, and much better than her. They wanted him bad, and he suspected it was a set up. But a set up for Kevin - they needed a patsy quite badly, and he had been chosen. He was glad. Roan was great with the investigations, the motives, and the physical stuff, but this was where he shined.

It was dark when he went in, but it somehow seemed even darker out now, as if all the lights in the sky had been switched off, the moon hidden behind clouds as thick as cotton wool. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t run Tim through the database, but that was okay. If he was as slick as he suspected, he wouldn’t have a record. Just like Eli, he got people to do his dirty work for him. He drove off, not sure where he was going to go, which he figured out on the road, watching the pavement dissolve beneath his wheels.

The hospital had an underground parking garage manned by rent-a-cops, and Paris parked the bike down there, to get it out of the rain and hide it from any prying eyes, then took the elevator up into the hospital.

Dropkick had been right about the police presence in the place. In the busy lobby were two uniformed cops talking to the nurse at the front desk, with a handcuffed man between them. He had a swollen left eye and a huge gash on his forehead that was sending blood gushing down his face. He continued to rant drunkenly while the cops and the nurse talked over him. It was so noisy it was hard to tell, but it sounded like the drunk guy was going on about a moose.

No one noticed as he slipped by and ducked into one of the hospital’s inner elevators, which he shared with a nurse and a man in a wheelchair. He got out alone on the fifth floor, the one with the isolated ICU, and was only mildly surprised to find the hallway empty and quiet. There was a male nurse manning the in charge desk, but he was arguing on the phone with another nurse, about the wrong chart being left behind. No one noticed Paris duck into Roan’s room.

It was dark and quiet, the sounds of Roan’s slow, deep breathing the only noise. He tossed his helmet on the room’s only chair and went to check on him, putting a hand on his face and waiting to see if he stirred. He didn’t; he was probably only a few steps out from a drug induced coma. “You must have really freaked them out when you ripped out your i.v.s. You bled, didn’t you? Never do that around normals - you know how they spaz.” Of course he probably couldn’t hear him, but this was the only time he could scold him without getting a smart ass reply.

He took off his coat and the Beretta, wrapping the gun and the holster in the jacket before setting them on the chair. “We got him, babe. The ringleader if not the exact triggerman. Can you believe it’s the guy who looks like Doctor Phil’s replacement? He wants me as an ideological suicide bomber. I attract all types, don’t I?” He stepped out of his boots, and was relieved, as the spare clip had been poking him in the ankle for about a half an hour now. He bet it left a dent. “No hard proof yet, but let me string him along for a bit. He’ll give us enough rope to hang him with. I’m an angry and naïve young man, after all. I have no idea when someone’s trying to play me. I just want revenge against those fucking cats.”

Roan was sleeping on his side, which was good, as the hospital bed was quite small, so much so that Paris figured he’d have to balance on the edge. Which was okay, because he didn’t expect to be comfortable at all. He wasn’t here for himself.

He climbed carefully onto the bed and put his arms around Roan, which was again uncomfortable, but he didn’t care. The smell of his hair was instantly comforting. “You’re safe,” he whispered. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” Roan didn’t wake up, but he settled back against him, and Paris took that as forgiveness of a sort. He couldn’t turn back time and redo earlier, but he could stay here and let him know he wasn’t alone.

He’d failed him once. He wasn’t going to do that again.