Setting: the summer between third and fourth seasons, four or five months after the second story in this series, ‘Security Check’.

Rating: NC 17. The usual notice regarding the usual CSI-related gore and goo applies. Also, this one contains some pretty intense situations. Oh yeah, and some pretty hot situations of the romantic sort…hey, this is Catherine and Chad we’re talking about, right? Do you expect less? 

Be sure hands and feet are inside the vehicle at all times while the ride is in motion…

SURVIVOR GUILT

By DixieHellcat

Around 10:35 on a hot Saturday night in June, Chad Ayers, headliner at the venerable Garces hotel in downtown Las Vegas, exited the main stage to a thunderous ovation. A short while later, C. Layton Ackerman, private investigator, said good night to Mrs. Ng, the Garces’ showroom manager and his part-time secretary and surrogate mother, and slipped out the backstage door with a battered leather backpack bulging with paperwork and research. He winced as he folded his aching legs under the steering wheel of his Mustang—not that he was so out of shape, but every available moment of his last few days had been spent clambering all over mountainous desert terrain north of Vegas searching for clues to his latest case.

The client had been referred to Chad by Houston Tatum, part owner of the Garces and one of the few people who knew the singer and the detective were one and the same. Years ago, a sizable amount of land had been ‘purchased’ by the federal government—confiscated, really, with a pitiful token payment offered. Tatum had used his wealth and influence to rally other angry landowners and force a more reasonable settlement. One of those landowners had recently died, leaving his remaining holdings to a niece back East. A month ago, she had come to Vegas with her husband, who set off one morning to locate the inheritance, and never returned. Missing husbands being a not uncommon occurrence in Vegas, the police had shown little interest, but Tatum took the woman’s concerns more seriously. “This smells off, Chadwick,” he had said.

Chad had to agree. He gave his all to every case—he could not do otherwise—but this involved the military, which had taken charge of the seized lands: lands that, like those not appropriated (yet), bordered a collection of installations best known to the general public as Area 51. UFO rants held no interest for Chad, but the place itself did. His father had been assigned there, in the years before his death. The Air Force had ruled it suicide, until a teenaged Chad had turned his grief and fury and native curiosity to proving them wrong. When he confronted his father’s commanding officer with a laundry list of inconsistencies and impossibilities, the official verdict had quietly been changed to ‘undetermined’; but the experience left Chad with a profound skepticism about war-makers and their works. Hence, a military mouthpiece’s assurances notwithstanding, the past days’ trek over Dead Horse Flat, Quartz Mountain, and Stonewall Peak, where the missing man had been headed.

As he drove back to his condo near UNLV, Chad mentally sifted through the trip’s findings, which were essentially nonexistent. The government had taken private lands to create a buffer zone against observation by flying saucer buffs and other folks with darker purposes, but one could still find impressive views of massive hangars, ranks of enormous radar dishes and radio antennas, and skeins of high-power lines that stopped in the middle of nowhere or appeared to run straight into a hillside. Chad had run into several grumpy security guards in Jeep Cherokees and been buzzed once by a hush copter, its approach as silent as its name. All he returned with was a sunburnt neck and no evidence his subject had ever set foot in the vicinity. The more he thought about it, the grumpier he got. He parked in front of his building and took the elevator to the top floor.

Chad’s mother had invested the death benefits he wrested from the military. She had known then she was dying, and her only child would need it; cancer had spared her barely long enough to see him graduate from high school. The proceeds had paid for the car, the condo, and his college education, not in the music he loved and would probably never fully let go, but in criminal science. Chad had had to claw his way through that nightmarish twelve months, from one June to another, almost alone; if the investigative knack it had discovered in him could keep others from the same suffering he could never turn his back on them.

The condo was comfortable, if messy, but then it had been only a place to eat and sleep until recently. As Chad pulled off his suit jacket and tie and tossed them over the back of the sofa, his toe bumped a strappy red high heel shoe lying beside. The sight brought a simultaneous smile and sigh. When he had first met Catherine Willows the previous autumn, he never imagined his instant attraction to the beautiful blonde crime scene investigator would deepen into so powerful a pull of emotions, or that it would be returned in kind. For all that, though, the pathway of a relationship was rarely smooth, and their most recent conflicts rose from Chad’s commitment to his clients. When he had to cancel plans they had made, as he had the past week, she always got upset. It wasn’t as if he wanted to—he would much rather spend all his time with her and her little Lindsey, doing simple things that made him feel like part of a family again after so long without, or just wrapped in Catherine’s arms exploring her wicked wonderful self. He had tried to explain; if anyone could understand it would be her, but he wasn’t sure he could explain even to himself the drive that overtook him with every person who came to him for help. Especially with a case of this sort, one that so resonated with his own past, it just was.

I should call her, Chad thought. Another apology might accomplish nothing, or everything. If he needed a pretext the shoes would do. He found the mate and set them at the foot of the sofa, then grabbed an apple from the bag spilled across the kitchen counter when his stomach growled. While he chewed and debated whether to phone now when Catherine was just starting her shift or wait till later, his cel phone resolved the question by ringing. “Ackerman,” he answered.

“Son of Master Sergeant Terence Ackerman, deceased.”

The robotic voice, clearly filtered mechanically, did not startle Chad, but its words froze him. He managed to swallow a bite of apple without choking. “Who wants to know?”

“Your recent visits to the areas of Tolicha Peak and the Tonopah Test Range have earned you notice you probably would rather not have turned on you.”

“If you’re so well versed on my pedigree, you should also know what I do for a living,” Chad retorted. “A man went missing out there, and I’m being paid to find him.”

“That is immaterial.”

“To you, probably, but not to his wife and children and grandchildren. They need to know.”

“The way you needed to know what happened to your father?” This time Chad could not find words to reply. “It’s all connected. I know the truth. I can tell you. Rattlesnake Ridge Motor Lodge, room 26.” Click. Chad sputtered into the unresponsive phone a moment. The caller hadn’t stated a time, which meant now was a reasonable guess. He ducked into the bedroom long enough to retrieve his gun from the table by the bed—he rarely carried it at the hotel. It was probably reckless and even silly of him, but in his mind it was another way to keep his two lives separate. He checked the big automatic pistol and untucked the tails of his striped dress shirt to conceal it when he tucked it in the back waistband of his suit pants, the cool reassuring weight of the metal pressed against the bare small of his back.

The last thing his gaze fell on as he turned to shut the condo door was the lipstick-bright shoes side by side. He would call Catherine tomorrow, with whatever information he learned tonight. Excitement tickled his belly, and he was sure she would be happy for him too.

The Rattlesnake Ridge Motor Lodge was a tired, sad-looking old motel on Craig Road, north of downtown Vegas and close enough to Nellis Air Force Base to make the fine hairs on the back of Chad’s neck sit up. He pulled into the parking lot and idled in a space while he felt under the front seat for the half-empty water bottle he had taken on his expeditions earlier in the week. With a bright yellow Wendy’s napkin he swiped the thin layer of stage powder off his face. Then he splashed some on his hands and ran them through his hair, trying to work the short spiky reddish-blond stage do into something closer to its wavy untamed everyday self. He wasn’t as obsessive about changing his look as he once had been, but it was safer, and made him feel less schizophrenic. With a glare at the freckle-faced kid in the rear-view mirror he went looking for his connection.

Room 26 was around back, facing a desolate vacant lot. The stretch of identical windows were dark and deserted-looking except for two black SUVs with tinted glass, side by side several spaces down. Chad parked and knocked on 26’s door: no response. He drove back to the office in front and charmed the desk clerk into telling him the room was unoccupied. It didn’t take much; she looked bored to tears, ready for any distraction besides her dog-eared copy of Lord of the Rings, and perfectly happy to be charmed into or out of nearly anything. Chad checked in under his own name and explained vaguely that he was to meet someone there. He persuaded the scratched-up doorknob of 26 to open and tried to settle down to wait.

Calm did not come easily, though. Chad had a hard time sitting still at the best of times, and now was hard pressed to contain his anticipation. Barely daring to imagine this mystery snitch might bear the truth he yearned for, his mind raced through every scrap of evidence he had gathered in nearly ten years since his father’s death. He paced the grungy little room, fidgeted, almost wished he smoked, did wish he had at least brought that half-eaten apple, and paced some more. The TV didn’t work, and if it had he wouldn’t have turned it on for fear of missing his contact’s approach; he left the lights off for the same reason. Finally he sat down on the shabby but surprisingly clean bed, laid his gun beside him, and even slipped off his shoes.

A tinkle outside, like a footfall on a broken beer bottle, caught his ear. Moments later a rap sounded on the door. Chad scooped up his pistol, thumbed the safety off and padded soundlessly to peer out the peephole into blackness. Only a skinny shadow was visible. He jiggled the outside light switch and grumbled when nothing happened. So who else would know I’m here anyway? he reasoned, and cautiously started to open the door. It burst inward, knocking him off balance and his gun out of his hand. A single shot echoed, and masked black-clad forms poured into the room. Two finished what the door had started when they grabbed Chad and threw him to his knees.

It had all the earmarks of a SWAT raid gone wrong. Chad did not fight back, but he tried to explain while his hands were being cuffed behind him. “Uh, guys, if you’re looking for drugs to bust you’re definitely in the wrong place. My ID’s in my back pocket—“ A booted foot smashed into his ribs. Chad gasped and fell face first across the shaggy carpet. Silent shapes hurried around the dark room, and a hand fumbled for his wallet. “Who—ow—who are you guys? Vegas PD? DEA, FBI?…C’mon, I’m—ow—running out of acronyms, help me out here—“

The sound of cloth tearing came from somewhere above him. A hand grabbed his hair and pulled his head up while another forced rolled fabric between his teeth. This was definitely not law enforcement standard procedure. Chad tried to yell, to wrench free from the grappling hands and roll over and kick at his attackers. His only recompense was a sharp blow to the side of his face from a black-gloved fist after the gag was pulled tight. Dazed, he fell back to the floor face down.

As the ringing in his ears dimmed, Chad made out grunts of conversation, and then one clear voice. “Well, whaddya think?” When he squinted up through the dark his first hazy thought was that he had a concussion and was hallucinating, because the man staring down at him looked a lot like him: tall, thin, similar hip-messed hair. He even wore a white shirt, dark pants and leather jacket very like stuff hanging in Chad’s closet. The facial resemblance, however, was minimal, as Chad could see when the other crouched beside him. “Ah think ah’m prettier,” the man said in an overdone faux-Southern accent far from what remnants Chad still carried from his Carolina childhood.

“Oh, that won’t matter,” chuckled another voice while Chad’s rattled brain was still trying to add up this abrupt madness. The voice, clearly held down from a boom, struck a familiar chord, but before Chad could place it a hulking figure bent over and reached toward the back of the imposter’s neck. With the sizzling bug-zap noise of a stun gun, the thin man’s eyes bugged, and he convulsed and flopped to the floor by Chad. “Nobody’ll see your face anyhow.” The bigger form hunched over, whipped a thin cord around the fallen man’s neck and pulled.

Already unconscious, the victim did not respond, but Chad did. Panic overwhelmed sense, and he threw all his strength uselessly against the steel that bound him, thrashed his head to try and free his mouth to yell for someone, anyone’s help. He felt a presence behind him, could almost feel the garrote tighten across his own throat, and struggled even harder. Instead of a noose at his neck, however, he felt only a light touch like a finger between his shoulder blades, and another farther down his back near his right kidney. In the time it took him to draw a relieved breath, the fingers pressed, and a lightning bolt of burning agony lanced through him. His muffled shouts were seared into silence; he could barely breathe enough to make one pain-racked noise, and when he tried to fight back he could not move, his body paralyzed.

“Nerve blocks are so handy.” The pressure released, and the voice that had spoken before now sounded right in his ear. “My orders are to bring you in unharmed. That doesn’t mean I can’t hurt you.” Chad recognized it now. The man it belonged to had been known to him as Dirk Hunter, though that was unlikely to be his true name: a government operative, on some misbegotten mission Chad had inadvertently (mostly) helped to foul up. When the Vegas police questioned Hunter about an incidental murder, he had, according to Catherine, surmised Chad’s involvement, and intimated payback was in his thoughts. Chad had himself told Houston Tatum he thought Hunter the type who craved alpha status, who could not stand to be thwarted and could probably be brutal and vengeful to any who dared. For once, Chad did not relish being right. The cold chill that swept through his helpless body was as intolerable as the hot pain that preceded it.

This was no simple act of revenge, though. It was too well orchestrated, and Hunter spoke of orders. What, then? Chad fought to regain composure; outnumbered and overpowered, he would have to outthink the opposition. The pain receded to a dull echo, and sensation crept back into his numb limbs. Grunts and thumps sounded from nearby; when Hunter had assailed him he had fallen facing the opposite way, but now he dared turn his head. One intruder dragged a chair across the room and set it under a hanging lamp. Two more hauled the limp body of the man they had strangled in the same direction. Something sloshed near the door, like a large container of liquid. None of it made any sense, until the man with the chair clambered up on the seat, pulled the lamp down, and replaced it with a rope threaded through its hook—a rope with a loop knotted in one end.

It all came together then, in a blinding flash that smashed Chad’s barely reconstituted self-control, and very nearly snapped his mind altogether.

They were staging a suicide. His.

One sight of the corpse in his form being manhandled far enough into the air to hang its mashed neck in the makeshift noose was more than Chad could endure. Shaking, he squeezed his eyes shut and buried his face in the grimy shag of the motel carpet. The mystery caller had spoken the truth, but in the most horrific way possible. You wanted to know, a cool voice in his head taunted above his mute screams. You had to know what happened to your father—well, it looks like you might just find out at last, the hard way.

The thought could have driven Chad over the edge, but instead it stoked a sudden fire of rage. He would be damned if he let these bastards shock and awe him into surrender. Wherever they were taking him, whatever the purpose for this sadistic revisiting of history, whether he came out of it alive or not, he would fight them every step. When his captors dragged him to his feet, he used the anger to focus his mind and steady his legs.

The liquid sound he had heard came from a red plastic gas can. Its stinking contents were being splashed over the room and its contents, including the figure dangling like some obscene pinata with the chair now overturned under its feet. Torching the place would eliminate much evidence, except whatever was deliberately placed to be found—like his wallet, no doubt, to identify the remains. Would anyone even think to treat this as a crime scene—

Catherine. Oh, God, Catherine. If the first responders called in CSI, it would be Catherine’s team, the night shift, so many of them Chad’s friends now through her. The idea of her and Lindsey confronted with his apparent suicide, facing the grief and confusion he and his mother had faced, hurt worse than any torture. Chad felt a perverse flicker of thankfulness for their last argument—maybe Catherine was still mad enough to take his ‘death’ as a just dessert, and not be overly distressed. He wanted to believe it, but couldn’t. He loved her with all his being, and though she had not said it he thought she felt the same. That didn’t matter, though. Whether she cared or not, he wanted her to know this was not what it seemed.

The holder of the gas can finished sousing the room with accelerant. Hunter gestured, and another goon stepped in, a lit cigarette drooping from his fingers. With a flick, it landed on the far side of the bed, and the cheap coverlet began to smolder with an acrid smell like burning plastic. The others hustled Chad outside; he stepped on something sharp just outside the door and his shoeless feet stung. Outside: if he could leave something outside, where it would less likely be affected by the fire or the putting out…

The invaders trotted toward the black SUVs. One stubbed his toe on the concrete bumper of a vacant parking space and swore under his breath. A sudden desperate impulse struck Chad; he twisted away from the hands pushing him, lunged to one side and flung himself onto the battered white-painted bumper. He hit hardest on his right knee; clenching his teeth around the gag, almost grateful for it for the moment, he ground his leg against the jagged top edge of the cement bar, until his captors hauled him up and to their getaway vehicles and tossed him in the back of one.

Hot blood ran down his leg, exactly as he had hoped. Blood spatter analysis was one of Catherine’s specialties. It was a forlorn hope at best, that she or someone else might notice a few dark splotches among countless others, but in this city where gambling ruled it was the only hand Chad held to play. Bounced around the floorboard of the SUV, he pressed his injured knee against the back of his other leg to stem the bleeding. He would need all his strength for whatever Hunter and those who gave him his orders intended for him.

+++

Catherine’s bad mood darkened when she spied Chad’s car behind the Rattlesnake Ridge Motor Lodge. The green vintage Mustang was parked so close, in fact, to the crime scene to which she had been called that it was actually tangled in the web of yellow police tape. She pressed her lips together as she climbed out of her ride, pulled her kit out of the back, and greeted a uniformed officer holding a small object bagged in his hands. “Morning. What’ve we got?”

“A hanger—and the room torched. Overkill, pardon the pun, but my partner and I both figured it to be pretty cut and dried SID.” The policeman used a standard term for self-inflicted death. He nodded his head toward two women standing a short distance away, one in LVPD blue, the other younger and openly in tears. “The desk clerk—that’s her my partner’s interviewing over there—slid around back here, saw the fire, hit the sprinklers—which actually worked, can you imagine in a dump like this?—and called 911. So you CSIs got something to work with, thanks to her libido—said she came back hoping to chat, she thought the guy was a ‘hottie’.”

“Apparently hotter than she thought,” Catherine cracked dryly, her gaze scanning the scene in dawn’s pale light. Chad would be lurking somewhere near the action, with a perfectly plausible reason why: a client, a client’s family, whatever. It was so easy for men to say they loved, and so hard for them to act the part. Catherine wished he could disengage from the gumshoe game long enough to have a life, preferably one that included her.

The cop snorted. “No kidding. Anyhow, I thought it might be a freebaser that strung himself up and left the stove on, so to speak. They can drop into major depression when they’re using. I, uh, almost lost a cousin that way. But your man Grissom smells a rat, it seems, or he wouldn’t have roped it off.” He looked down at the little package he held. “A lot less got toasted than might’ve otherwise. Got ID right here, found it just inside the door—“

Before Catherine could turn her attention to it, an urgent voice called her name. She turned and found Nick Stokes, another CSI, loping toward her with a look of inexplicable agitation on his chiseled face. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

She paused, surprised by his vehemence. “I work here,” she finally responded. “What’s your excuse?” She strode toward the blistered open door of the motel room. “Gris called me. He in here?”

“No—I mean, yes he is, but—you can’t—“ Hard on her heels, Nick charged and interposed himself between her and the doorway. “Don’t go in there, Cath. I don’t know what the hell Grissom was thinking calling you here, but—just don’t.”

Nick’s voice throbbed with concern, and Catherine stared, baffled. “Nick, what’s wrong?” Sudden fear gripped her; Grissom had only last month undergone surgery for the hearing problem he had concealed from them, and barely been back on the job a few weeks. “Is Gil okay?”

Nick nodded. “It’s—I ought to make Gris get his ass out here and tell you himself, damn him, what was he thinking—“

“Tell me what, Nick?” Catherine pressed, puzzled fear deepening. She tried to sidestep him and enter the room, without success, but past him she could see two EMTs lower to the floor a body clearly beyond their help: male, she could tell, whip-thin, darkly clothed.

“It’s Chad, Cath.”

With her focus already claimed by the grisly glimpses of her work ahead, Nick’s words sounded so out of context they startled her. “What? What about Chad?” He had gotten in the way somehow, she suspected. “People are too nice to him. If he’s been bumbling around here, impeding an investigation, maybe it wouldn’t hurt him to be cuffed and run downtown, spend a night in the tank.” That wasn’t fair, and she knew it; Chad never bumbled where a case was concerned. Catherine tried to restrain her annoyance…and then registered the look Nick turned on her, far too pitying. She understood, and rejected the understanding in the same instant. With a quick turn she slipped past him and ducked under the scene tape.

Just at the threshold of the doorway, the pavement was littered with tiny needle-sharp shards of glass, some discolored reddish-amber. Catherine glanced up to see the outside light bulb shattered, before she stepped delicately over the fragments and went inside. She would photograph them later if Gil hadn’t already, and then bag them. The stink of burned flesh was hard to grow used to. Catherine halted and looked down at the body on the gurney. Nick caught up and took hold of her arm. “His wallet was found at the door, and his gun’s over there. He checked in under his own name, Ackerman, I mean. I’m sorry, Cath, really I am. You shouldn’t be here, there was no need. I’m gonna rip Grissom a new one for doing this to you. I don’t give a good damn if he is my boss, or what his excuse is.”

The body lay on its side, arms and legs drawn tightly in and fists balled in the classic pugilist posture typical of fire victims. Catherine took in the charred clothing, the scorched spikes of hair, the ligature mark clear around the pale neck. “This isn’t a suicide.” The calm voice came from her mouth, but seemed to originate somewhere outside her. It was an effect of shock, her mind recognized that, but one she could use. “The very thought was abhorrent to him, after what he and his mother suffered through when his father died. He wouldn’t do this, even if he had a reason, and he didn’t.”

“You said once that both his parents died this time of the year. Survivor guilt’s often strongest around important anniversaries.”

“Did you find a note?”

“Only fifteen percent of suicides leave a note, Cath, you know that as well as I do.”

Catherine ignored Nick’s rationality, as she dug rubber gloves out of her kit, snapped them on and knelt beside the gurney. The fire had distorted the facial features beyond any hope of recognition, but she probed the fragile bones, then started when half the lower face caved in. “The teeth are virtually all gone.”

“Fire does weird things to bodies,” Nick persisted. “Intense temperature could’ve basically blown them all out.”

A shiny scrap of paper protruded out a pocket of the heat-shriveled jacket. Catherine fished out the broiled remains of a Kit Kat bar. “Chad’s violently allergic to chocolate. He got brave last Christmas and ended up spending half the day in an oatmeal bath, all over two pieces of a Terry's Chocolate Orange. What’s this doing here?”

“Maybe a last fling, without sticking around for the consequences.” Nick was so uncomfortable he almost danced from foot to foot.

“No. This looks more wrong by the minute. Small inconsistencies pile up. It’s how Chad proved his father’s death wasn’t suicide.”

“Or so he said. Did you ever see proof?”

“Don’t condescend, Nick,” Catherine snapped while she patted the corpse’s pockets down. As long as she thought of it that way, as the corpse: as long as she didn’t think past the fact that she was running on autopilot, she would be all right. “Where are his car keys? His car’s here. Where are the keys?”

“They’re here somewhere, I’m sure.” Nick’s tone was laboriously reasonable now. Catherine stripped off her gloves and stood. “The desk clerk ID’d a photo. His prints are on the door knob. It’s done, Cath. Let me deal with Grissom. You need to—“

“I need to be right here! I have specialized knowledge that makes me invaluable to this investigation. No doubt that’s why Gil called me in. I need to be here, proving this wasn’t suicide!”

“Catherine!” Gil stepped from the tiny bathroom. “I thought I heard you.” A hint of a smile crossed his face; not long ago, by his own admission, he could hardly hear a speaker face to face. “And it sounds as if you’ve already reached the same tentative conclusion I had.”

“Dammit, Grissom!” Nick erupted. “What’s the point? Why give her false hope?”

The lead CSI cocked his head. “False hope of what?” He brandished a swab he held in his gloved hand. "I’ve taken samples from all the walls of this room. All the samples field-test positive for accelerant, except this area.” He walked a few steps to a patch of wall near where the body had been found. “Significance?”

As the EMTs wheeled the sheet-covered stretcher out, Catherine frowned and tried to visualize. The half-melted remnants of a plastic gas container sat like a red beacon near the door, and she walked over to it and turned to look again. “The body,” she said suddenly. “From this angle it would block that spot of wall.”

Gil’s nod was crisp and triumphant. “The accelerant was spread by someone standing in the doorway, after the body was placed. Hence, unless the suicide had an accomplice—“

“No,” Catherine said flatly. “Risking innocent people’s lives this way? Chad could never do that.”

“I agree.” The steely glint in Grissom’s eye surprised her, almost as much as the quick friendship that had developed between him and Chad in the months she had dated the young PI. “Nick? If your mind’s still willing to be opened, we can use you.”

Nick shrugged. “I’ll look for those car keys,” he said and walked away. He had never appeared to dislike Chad, but for some reason had never made the same connection with him that Catherine’s other coworkers had.

“Catherine, are you all right with this?’ Gil asked quietly. “When I realized this wasn’t what it seemed, I thought you would want to be here; but if not, say the word. I’ll understand.”

“I do. Thank you, Gil.” Catherine did not let her mind go farther. Keep moving, keep working, don’t think.

Without another word they spread out and set to work, measuring, photographing, bagging every scrap for study. Occasionally a tooth was found, and bagged for possible identification purposes. Catherine made the first major find, a familiar pair of boat-sized shoes kicked far under the bed that at once tore at her heart and buoyed her grim determination. “Since when do you bring a change of shoes to kill yourself?”

“Or shoot at walls, unless you’re Sherlock Holmes.” Grissom was probing a bullet hole in one. “This doesn’t come close to spelling out Victoria Regina, though.” He used a wire probe to estimate an angle, followed it to a dent in the next wall, then looked down where white tape on the carpet marked out the location where Chad’s pistol had been found. “Hand me a string, Catherine, and let’s see if these dots connect.” The dent and the hole lined up perfectly. “The gun wasn’t fired from here. It discharged when it struck the wall.”

“Thrown?” Catherine wondered. “By someone disarming him?”

“Or in anger,” Nick persisted. “Didn’t his father shoot himself? I’m sorry, this is nice attention to detail, but I still think it’s a waste of time. I’m starting to think both your judgements are being clouded by emotion. We look for facts. That’s all.”

It was bad enough he impugned Chad’s name, but to insult her professionalism was beyond Catherine’s ability to stomach. “If you’re interested in the facts, Mr. Stokes, Master Sergeant Terence Ackerman was shot in the right temple, despite being left handed, with a hunting rifle, despite its barrel being too long for him to reach the trigger, and despite no instrument to serve that purpose being found at the scene. Chad’s pistol was his father’s, but not the gun that took his father’s life.”

“Rituals and symbols are very important to the human psyche,” Gil put in mildly, his scrutiny not budging from the dent in the wall. “A survivor driven to expiate unrequited remorse by offering himself as a sort of compensatory sacrifice will more often than not employ the same means used in the original incident that triggered the guilt. Why go to all this trouble—“ he waved his free hand around the room—“when a bullet to the head is more psychologically satisfying, and more symbolic of a bloody circle of fate?” Catherine could not respond, and it seemed Nick couldn’t either. “I’ll have to do a little triangulation to figure the gun’s trajectory and starting point. Catherine, would you take charge of working…the residence?”

He was trying to avoid saying the name, as she had, as even Nick had. “Sure.” Before she stepped outside she stopped to photograph the broken glass. “The bulb’s up there.” She pointed up and to her right. “All the fragments are over here, though. If the bulb naturally broke, I’d think the spray pattern of the shards would be evenly distributed. It could have been deliberately knocked out by someone approaching from that direction, possibly waiting in room 25 over there, to avoid being seen by the person in 26.”

“Or it could have been busted a month ago by a drunk who spent three hours in room 25 arguing with a hooker over her fee,” Nick said.

Catherine’s anger had been damped by Gil’s words, but now it flared anew. “Well, maybe you can check with the desk clerk and see if that room was rented last night and by whom. Or, since this is such a damned waste of your time and you’ve already closed the case, why don’t you go back to the office and write up your report, and I’ll talk to her!”

“Catherine,” Gil stood behind Nick, holding what looked like a singed half of a pillowcase torn down the middle. “Getting angry won’t…it’s no help. Go on. We’ll see you back at the lab.”

“Right.” She grabbed her kit and almost ran for her ride. Safe inside, she breathed a bit easier, until her gaze swept over the CDs scattered over the passenger seat. The sea-green eyes of the man in the photographs pierced her through, and her fragile composure began to collapse like a cardboard box under the awful weight of what Gil had not said.

Getting angry wouldn’t bring Chad back. Nothing would bring Chad back. Chad was gone, murdered by some stranger in a dirty little motel room. All Catherine could do for him now was what he had done for his father: find his killer, clear his name, and free him to rest in peace.

+++

At least Chad’s abductors bothered to remove the handcuffs after they frisked him, before they shoved him into a small gray room. He pulled the gag loose and spun to yell at them, only to see the heavy door slam in his face. The angry slap of his palms against the metal only caused an alarming reverberation through the tiny windowless space. Momentarily deafened, Chad winced, moved toward a corner and braced his back against it to slide to the floor and sit. Alone, or at least apparently so, he finally allowed himself to limp; he was determined to show no sign of weakness to his opponents.

He was injured, though, and needed to take care of that. A careful fingertip probe of his left side sent a jolt of pain through him—a cracked rib from the kick, probably, and little could be done about that except try to protect it. Chad lifted his left foot into his lap and gingerly peeled back the sock. The dark nylon was splotched with blood, he now saw by the diffuse lighting from the ceiling, the sole of his foot cut up by whatever he had stepped on while being forced out of the motel room. He picked some slivers of glass from the wounds and wrapped a strip torn from his shirt around them, then turned his attention to the right knee. Under his shredded pants leg was raw meat halfway down his shin, full of dirt and rocks he tried to clean as best he could. The spit-wet gag, a torn part of a pillowcase, made a serviceable bandage for the knee. He ripped another strip off his shirt tail and wrapped his other foot, setting his jaw against the pain of bending the knee to reach it, then pulled his socks on over the makeshift dressings to conceal them. The dried blood trails down his leg he could do nothing with now. Please look, Catherine. Please see. That’s not me. I didn’t kill myself. I couldn’t do that to you.

Who had done it, he could venture a good guess. Lying on the floor of the SUV he could see nothing, but knew he had been driven a good distance before his kidnappers hauled him out into an indoor parking bay and through a labyrinth of identical gray corridors to this room. One thing was certain: it was no abduction planned by some gang lord or drug baron Chad had crossed. This place, the method, even the vehicles: all screamed black ops, shadow government, the people Chad knew in his gut were responsible for his parents’ deaths. And now they had him. Chad rested his head against the wall, closed his eyes and sent up a prayer against the mindless dread that crept through his being at the thought like the chill air of the cell.

The clang of the door being reopened interrupted his respite—had he slept? How long? “How smart you feeling now, asshole?”

Chad actually rolled his eyes. “You’re no fun to spar with, Hunter. You’re too predictable. Poster child for that old saying about not starting a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent.”

The big agent stood just outside the door, waved his arms and smirked. “I can do this, weasel boy. You can’t.”

“Whatever.” Chad shrugged and pushed himself up to sit straighter. “So, where are we? I must’ve slept through the tour guide’s orientation. Area 51?”

“19E, actually.” Hunter walked in and up until his boots almost touched Chad’s toes. “The secret place within the secret place. A whole honkin’ city underground. You were close last week, too damn close. I was in that hush copter that buzzed you up on Dead Horse Flat—was all for smokin’ you right then, but the powers that be had other ideas, damn them. Oh well, it was fun. Think anybody’ll give a shit you’re gone?” Chad did not reply. If they did not know about Catherine, then above all he couldn’t let it slip. Above all, his captors must not find out he was close enough to anyone who could be used as leverage against him. “Anyhow, as big as the place is, it still needs expanding. We have, uh, business associates, who need more space for their…activities. That’s what we got the land for.”

“And to the devil with private owners who might get in your way.” Chad tried not to think about how his client’s hapless husband had probably ended up. “Why tell me?”

“Hah. Just felt in a sharing mood. It’s not like you’ll have an opportunity to blab about it. The top brass want something out of you—don’t know what, don’t care. Otherwise they wouldn’t have ordered you delivered in one piece. After they get it, if I’m lucky, they’ll let me kill you. Why not? You’re already dead.” Damnably, he was right. Again despair reached for Chad, and again anger, this time at the unfeigned satisfaction in Hunter’s wolfish grin, held it at bay. “Before that, though, I’ve got to give them their shot. Get up, turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

Chad’s legs were outstretched in front of him, but now he drew his knees up till his feet were flat on the floor. “Why don’t you make me?” he drawled. “I’m not in a cooperative mood.” Hunter’s broad flat face reddened with irritation. When he reached down to grab a fistful of Chad’s shirt, Chad used the momentum of the upward pull to thrust himself upward and launch a punch that smashed Hunter’s nose flat. Clutching at his face, Hunter reeled back. Fleetingly Chad thought of making a break for the door, but he couldn’t run far if he had a place to run to, and Hunter’s yelp brought a brace of goons squeezing in the cell. So he just shook his stinging hand and grinned at Hunter. “Like I said, you’re way too predictable.” It was the type of macho stunt he rarely pulled, but being stripped of all options gave one a certain rash abandon. Chad was not fond of pain, but the look on the other man’s face was almost worth the prospect of getting beat up. “Hey, did your orders change?” he jibed when Hunter cocked a huge fist. “What about that ‘unharmed’ thing?” Oops, maybe that only applied to getting me in HERE unharmed…uh oh.

He did not get beaten up, as it happened, although his guards threw him around with their usual thorough callousness as they cuffed him and marched him though more tangled corridors. The people they passed wore uniform black or khaki or olive. Every pair of eyes was averted or downcast. The whole place exuded an atmosphere of anxiety, as if mere presence inside the walls tautened the nerves. Chad’s rough escort finally pushed him into what appeared to be a small interrogation room, and tossed him into a chair. Hunter followed, closed the door behind the two and leaned on the long table. “It’s too bad the shot I took at you at Houston Tatum’s ranch missed, but you’ve made me look bad in front of my men for the last time, Ackerman.” His nose did not look as damaged as Chad had hoped, but the whine it added to his voice took some edge off his threats. “You have no idea how I’m looking forward to killing you—but I’m gonna make you beg me for it first…” The way Chad was hurting just then, his side and leg and feet throbbing in unison, he might have considered entering an immediate plea, if the confrontation had not been interrupted by the opening of the door behind him.

“What in blue hell happened here?” Chad was too shocked to even turn around. Of all the possible ways this situation could have played itself out, he would never have expected this one, or that sharp voice, although in the next instant he mentally kicked himself for such naivete. “Didn’t I say specifically you were to be sure he wasn’t hurt?”

“Major, I’m sorry,” Hunter whined. “No permanent harm’s done. You just can’t initiate an operation like this and expect—“

“I expect that when I give an order it’ll be carried out, mister. Now get those damn bracelets off him, and then you’re dismissed.”

“But Major, I—“

“Are you defying me, soldier?”

Hunter mumbled something, and Chad felt the pressure of the cuffs give way. Another black mark by my name on Hunter’s Christmas list, he thought, unease mingled with satisfaction. Not until the door closed did he look up at the old man in full uniform who stood at parade rest by his side. “Major Coulis.”

“Chad, I’m sorry about all this,” said his father’s old commanding officer. “Damn that man, he’s a mean SOB with fast-twitch muscle fibers for a brain, but certain people find him useful for that very purpose. Are you all right?”

“No, not particularly, but thanks loads for asking. I can’t believe I didn’t figure this out the minute I got the phone call. Only you would know enough to set me up this way.”

“It would have gone far worse for you otherwise. My colleagues were all in favor of killing you outright. I barely managed to sway them to this plan.”

Chad snorted, unamused. “Wherein you killed me anyway—virtual death, if you want to think of it that way. Is this what was supposed to happen to my father? Did something go wrong? No handy imposter whose head you could blow off, maybe? So then you had to go and do it for real?”

“I’m sorry, son—“

“I’m not your son,” Chad snapped. “I’m not anyone’s son anymore. You saw to that.” With an effort, he reined in his emotions. “Never mind. Just tell me what it is you want from me, so I can say no and we can get this over with.”

With a frown, Major Coulis seated himself at the table. “It’s not exactly like that.”

“Really?” Chad leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “This should be good.” The posture helped him project a cool self-confidence he hardly felt, and gave him a sneaky chance to stretch out his hurt leg.

“You first came to the attention of the other members of the –Workgroup, we call it—of which I am a part, last winter. The man you knew as Hunter was assigned to obtain some lands that were needed to construct an extension of this installation.”

“Houston Tatum’s land.” Chad felt a sudden twinge of nausea. “By marrying Houston’s daughter, and then—“

“Letting nature take its course. Or helping it along a little.”

“You’re sick.”

“I have orders too,” Major Coulis sighed, “and a glimpse of the bigger picture. You can’t see it yet, but eventually I hope you will.”

“Doesn’t sound as if I want to.”

“Dammit, you sound exactly like Terence!”

As exasperated as the words were, they unexpectedly warmed Chad. “Thank you,” he said with his biggest onstage grin. “But the land thing went down the tubes.”

“In large part, according to Hunter, due to your interference. The initial consensus, as I said, was initially to eliminate you without delay. You’re too skilled, too much of a threat if you chose to put your nose where it didn’t belong. Then I…told them who you are. That moved them to view your talents in a new light, and made them more amenable to my suggestion that you be offered the chance to put your gifts to use, and development, in the service of a greater cause. I’ve watched you, Chad. You play at music, you see women occasionally, but work is your life, that’s plain. Use that drive, with us. There are things happening here, amazing things. You can be a part of them. Better still, you can help me to influence them, to shape their direction, to shape the direction—I’m not exaggerating here—of the nation, the planet. Perhaps my approach was drastic, but this way you need have no remorse about anything you left behind. As you said yourself, your old life is dead. You can step forward, stop wasting the powers you were born with, realize your full potential.”

Chad sat in silence for long moments, his hands clasped loosely on the table top, looking at his bruised knuckles and the scratches the cuffs had left around his wrists. “Is that it?” Coulis nodded. “All right.”

The major let out an explosive breath as if in relief. “Good. Good. You won’t regret this, you’ll see. Let’s get you cleaned up—and how the hell did you lose your shoes—“

“I didn’t say I agreed. I was asking if you were finished. My parents taught me not to interrupt my elders, and you were going to say your piece before I said no, remember?”

”Chad—“

“What do you think I am?” Chad said through his teeth, his jaw and throat tight with rage. “You murdered my father. You murdered my mother, too, as surely as if you put a bullet through her head. Now you strut around full of mock-avuncular regret, and you act like I should be pathetically grateful you persuaded your cronies to spare my life, just so you could destroy my life again and leave me no choice but to become your puppet. Well, guess what. I do have a choice. I won’t come to you. I will never come to you. So why don’t you save yourself time and us both a lot of trouble, and kill me right now.”

+++

Catherine didn’t remember the drive very well, but she retained enough of her working self to put on gloves and dust the door handle for fingerprints before she fished out her key and let herself into Chad’s condo. The only prints she lifted were his, she was sure. The condo was silent, the curtain over the glass balcony door drawn back to let in brilliant sunshine and a picture postcard view of the Strip in the distance. Chad sunburned as readily as any true redhead, but he loved sunlight and rarely closed a window if he could avoid it.

She stepped farther into the living room, trying to look at the familiar surroundings as if seeing them for the first time, through the eyes of a seasoned crime scene investigator. Her vision kept blurring, though, as if slipping between that clear cold objective sight and the eyes that saw the little table where they had first shared a meal; the sofa where they had made love on Christmas Eve by the twinkly lights of his Charlie Brown tree; his jacket and his favorite tie, the vivid purple one, tossed across the sofa back as if he had just now left them there. Catherine picked up the jacket, and a hint of scent rose with it.

Smell is the sense of emotion, the only sense that fires directly into the brain, unmediated by rational interpretation. The faint whiff of bright crisp aftershave mingled with a suggestion of soap and a whisper of warm man-smell was enough. Catherine’s knees buckled, and she sank to the floor, fighting the desire to bury her face in the fabric she clutched and weep. Losing control wasn’t going to bring Chad back either. For a while she knelt and took deep breaths of the smells, the last mortal traces left by the man she had loved. Then she noticed what sat on the dhurrie rug beside her: her favorite red shoes, the ones she had worn the last night she spent here, and forgot when she changed into sneakers before she left. In Chad’s messy domain, they were neatly arranged side by side. She brushed her gloved fingertips across them and wondered when he had found them and put them here, wondered if they too were among the last things he had touched.

With one last shaky inhalation, Catherine made it to her kit by the door to bag the jacket and tie. Steeling herself, she went into the bedroom to see if he had changed clothes and left the rest of his onstage dress in a habitual heap. She wished with all her aching heart she hadn’t nagged him so about that. What did it matter, when you were together? Why hadn’t she praised his many virtues more and bitched about his flaws less? Why hadn’t she treasured the moments they had, instead of browbeating him over the ones they hadn’t?

The secret drawer in the bedside table, where Chad kept his gun, stood open. No clothes were tossed on the floor, and the only thing lying on the unmade bed was the stuffed tiger she had bought him at the Mirage gift shop. They had met there for lunch, on a warm day in early spring, and after their meal Chad had steered her deeper into the hotel, to the Secret Garden where the legendary white tigers lounged. Shyly, he had confided what a special place it was for him, how he had been fascinated by the big cats since childhood, and how his father had brought him here as a surprise before it even opened to the public, only months before Master Sergeant Ackerman’s death. Catherine had surprised him herself with the stuffed animal before they left. He had giggled like a kid, put it carefully on a bookshelf in the bedroom when they returned to the condo, and then pounced on her as if the creature had inhabited him. In a lull in the lengthy and intense bout of lovemaking that followed, she remembered rolling over and seeing the cat’s blue glass eyes aimed at them.

“I think he’s watching us,” she had said.

Chad had howled with laughter until he nearly fell off the bed. “It’s been that long since you had an audience?”

“Excuse me? I had an audience when I danced. I have never had an audience for—this…But as long as we do I guess we should give him a good show, huh?”

They had, and now her body ached as badly as her heart just thinking about it. Her life would be immeasurably lessened by never again kissing those delicious lips, looking into those luminous green eyes, hearing his abandoned laugh or his magnificent voice soar in song, seeing his incandescent smile, feeling the strength of his embrace and the heat of him inside her. She loved so much about him, the way he delighted in giving her pleasure and his unfailing amazed joy when she did the same for him, the warm playful child and the brilliant passionate man he had been. Catherine had been blessed just to know him, and now memories would have to sustain her.

Dear God, how will I tell Lindsey? Her daughter worshipped Chad and followed him around like a duckling. Lindsey had already lost her biological father, Catherine’s ex-husband Eddie, in a crime Catherine had herself helped crack. How in God’s name could she tell her little girl that evil had once again carried away someone who had been so good to her? Catherine glanced at her watch. She didn’t have long to answer that question; her shift was almost over, and the city was in one of its periodic crackdowns on overtime. She could clock out and work on her own time, of course, but it might accomplish little, and only postpone the inevitable at home.

She closed her eyes briefly, wishing that would block the sight of the gentle ghost that now haunted this place, and went back into the living room to finish and pack up. The red shoes she left in their place; they were part of a secondary crime scene investigation now, and she doubted she could ever wear them again anyway. As she took a few last photos she noticed an apple sitting on the kitchen counter, its pale inner flesh brown from exposure to air. Only two distinct bites were taken. It was another bit of circumstantial evidence to argue against suicide—what kind of person stops eating an apple to go kill himself? She bagged it, reflecting it was of little use otherwise, since the corpse had no teeth to compare a bite mark mold to: singularly inconvenient, if they had needed to identify it…

Catherine halted, as her weary, wounded mind turned the thought on its head. She stared at the apple through the plastic baggie as if it were the very fruit of the tree of knowledge. How conveniently inconvenient that every tooth was knocked out. How convenient that Chad’s ID lay right beside the door, at the farthest point from the origin of the fire. How odd to find a food Chad could not eat in his pocket…or in someone’s pocket, someone assumed to be him, someone who would have been burned beyond all hope of conventional testing for identification, if that little desk clerk hadn’t developed a case of love at first sight for Chad.

Her thoughts were careening down the path of madness. Catherine knew that. There was no chance of mistaken identity; that only happened in bad novels. The best she could hope for realistically was that Doc Robbins’ autopsy would determine that the teeth were knocked out post-mortem. The thought of Chad dead was anguish enough, but the idea of his last moments of life spent tortured and in pain was excruciating. Yet the question, once raised, could not be laid that easily.

The chirp of her cel phone suspended her mental dispute. “I’m in the morgue,” Gil’s voice said. “Thought you might like to know we have proof of murder. The ligature mark around the neck is pre-mortem, but straight. If it had been caused by the hanging, it would be angled upward toward the knot in the rope. He was strangled, and the body then posed to simulate suicide. You were right, Catherine.”

Any satisfaction she might have felt at being vindicated was overwhelmed by her textbook knowledge of strangulation, the horrible realization that Chad had almost certainly died a slow and terrified death. “So were you,” she forced out through lips gone numb, and clung to her foolish fancy to keep from falling apart.

Gil grunted. “Doc’s just starting the autopsy. Find anything at the residence?”

“Nothing much.” There was no reason to confess to her silly imaginings. “I’ll be back in a while. I’m going back to the scene for a few minutes to, uh, look at some things.”

“Fine. Nick’s there finishing up.” Oh, great, she groaned inwardly. “By the way, I fed our measurements into the computer here, and checked with the manufacturer of Chad’s pistol. According to their description of the only conditions under which that model could impact and discharge, it had to be moving backward at a considerable rate of speed. So either it was thrown at a very odd angle—“

“And with the safety off, which is far too careless for Chad to have done; or he was facing the door with his back to that wall and was hit, and the gun flew out of his hands and backward.”

“Exactly.” Silence. “Well, I’ll look for you.”

She asked him to check with Doc about the teeth, then added, “And fingerprints, too.”

“That’ll take a while. You know what’s involved with fire vics. It usually involves breaking the fingers to extend them, then applying fixative to the skin and slipping it off the hands, and then onto a living hand like a second glove, for printing. Do you think that’s necessary?”

“This is a murder case now, Gil. If we don’t have hard ID, a clever defense lawyer could exploit that lack.” And, she reflected after Gil agreed and hung up, no one ever need know the grief-fueled whim it would put to rest.

She went back to the motor lodge anyhow; knowing more, she still felt a need to be where Chad had taken his last breaths. Yellow crime scene tape flapped around in a light hot breeze. Nick sat in his truck making notes. Catherine tapped on his window and gestured him back into room 26. “It’s murder,” she greeted him. She hurt too much to gloat.

“I know. Gris called. I’m sorry, Cath, I—I was just trying to protect you, I guess.”

“Don’t,” she told him. “I’m fine. What I need now is everybody’s help to find out who did this.”

“I’m in, all the way. I was just going through my stuff to see if we missed anything. Desk clerk says several guys checked in 25 last night. She got the impression they were hunters; only stayed a few hours and left just before she discovered the fire. Two black SUVs, parked right in front of 25.”

The spray of broken glass had been collected from the sidewalk in front of 26. Catherine rose on her toes to peer at the sheared-off base still in the outside light socket. “Wasn’t that glass amber? This doesn’t look colored.”

“Looked like it. I’ve got it bagged, I’ll get it.” While Nick went back to the truck, Catherine brought out a chair from the room and was about to climb up for a closer look when she spotted a pattern of indentations in the vinyl seat cushion. “Nick, this looks like a shoe print. Did you get it on paper?”

He handed her the bubble-wrap bag of glass fragments and gulped at the sight she pointed out. “No, but I will.”

A set of photos and an electrostatic transfer later, the print was clearly visible and saved on paper. The chair released at last, Catherine scrambled up to inspect the outside light socket. “This bulb isn’t amber. So what caused the discoloration of the glass?” She looked down and over toward the entrance to room 26, and from her elevated vantage saw something in the afternoon light she hadn’t be able to see from the ground—largish dark spots moving away from the point where the broken glass had lain—moving in the rhythm of footprints. She gasped, and dropped to the pavement. “I think I know. Come on!” A squirt of chemical on one blob reconstituted its liquidity. Catherine swabbed it and poked the swab into a vial containing another agent. The vivid blue that immediately appeared told her what she needed to know. “Human blood. If we ran the glass under the Luma-Lite, I’d bet with a bookie it’d test positive too.”

“So somebody stepped on it—“ Nick began.

“Without shoes on, but with something on, like socks. See the lack of definition of the tracks—no toe prints?” The shoes. Chad’s shoes, kicked under the motel bed. Catherine suddenly had to remind herself to breathe.

“And bled.”

“While walking…in this direction…” Catherine followed the tracks out into the parking lot, then halted in new surprise. “My God, what happened here?” She turned aside from the line of dark splotches and knelt to inspect a large rusty stain on a concrete parking bumper. A quick test confirmed it too was human blood of recent vintage. “Skin too, and fiber!”

Nick brightened; fiber analysis was one of his specialties. He joined her to take samples, then rose from his squat. “So then they continued? Yeah, more sock-prints here—and hot damn, looks like someone else stepped in the blood over here and left us a nice partial autograph of their shoe. Not the same as the one from the chair—that one looked more like a boot to me. This one looks familiar. I’ll run it through the database. Skin and fiber denotes an impact bleed; even I know that much. Who fell there?”

“I don’t know, yet.” Hope was a thing with feathers Catherine dared not speak of. She joined Nick and crouched to move along the path. “But look here, when movement resumes after the impact, new drops of blood are falling and almost overlapping the sock-foot prints. This would be a leg injury, I think, and it has to be the same person whose feet are already cut and bleeding at this point.” Be objective, Catherine, don’t think past the facts, to what they could mean.

Nick threw up his hands. “Okay, then what happened to this clumsy killer’s shoes? Or do we guess Ch—our vic came out here, banged himself up, went back in the room, changed clothes—because the clothes on the body were intact—and then got killed? No, wait, can’t be that, the bloody footprints came out of the room but don’t go back in. None of this makes any sense…unless…” At the sudden widening of his eyes, the look of stunned epiphany, Catherine held her tongue. Let HIM say it, she thought. Let him tell me I’m not crazy. Nick almost laughed. “Unless—God, I hate to say this to you, Cath—but it doesn’t make sense unless we stop assuming the body in room 26 is Chad’s.”

“Yes,” she said, and as if his words had summoned an angel her cel rang.

It was Gil. “Catherine, I need you back here now. We have a situation.”

“It isn’t him,” she said.

“We finally got the fingerprints, and...wait a minute, how did you know?”

“We’re on our way. I’ll explain when we get there.” She hung up and looked at Nick. “The prints from the corpse don’t match. Whoever that man is, he was murdered…but it’s not Chad.”

+++

Once back at CSI base office, Catherine moved quickly. While she updated Gil, Nick took the shoe and boot prints to run through databases and identify their type, and the fibers to match against both the pants worn by the corpse and Chad’s jacket. A phone call to the morgue—she couldn’t bear to waste seconds running downstairs—revealed no injuries to the lower extremities of the body from room 26. Its identity was still unknown; they couldn’t match its fingerprints in any database they had.

She made another call, this one to her home. The difficulty of deciding what to tell Lindsey had grown exponentially in the past hours. Catherine asked the neighbor watching her daughter to try and keep her away from the local TV news, then to put Lindsey on. She told her she was ‘helping Chad with his work’ and not to be worried if she heard something strange about him. It was a lie, but not totally so. If, beyond all reasoning, Chad was still alive and they found him, all would be well; if not, she would burn that bridge when she got to it. She crashed on a cot in an alcove off the locker area to rest, and was wakened a few hours later when Warrick and Sara arrived for the shift. “Damn,” she croaked and scrambled to her feet.

“Catherine? What are…how are you?” Both her coworkers looked sober and sympathetic. Warrick and Chad, both lovers of music, had become quick friends. Sara teased Catherine mercilessly about the difference in her and Chad’s ages, but paradoxically had become very fond of him as well. “We’re so sorry. Chad was—“

“Don’t bury him yet. The hanger’s not him. C’mon, test results should be back by now.” She led the way back to the lab, her steps brisk as if she had had a full night’s sleep. Earlier in the day she had been running on shock; now it was adrenaline. Hope braced her, but with the hope had come the bite of renewed fear. Dead, Chad was at least beyond anyone’s power to hurt him ever again; alive, perhaps a prisoner, almost certainly injured, he was exposed to all kinds of harm. Urgency fueled her as she went to her desk and found…nothing. “Where—“ she started to yell when Gil entered the lab with printouts. He jerked his head toward his office and they followed him in.

The supervisor closed the door before he spoke. “Blood and fiber results,” he said to Catherine with a flip of the papers he held, “from the samples you and Nick took from the motel parking lot. The blood type does not match our deceased. It does, however, match Chad’s. The fibers found with the blood don’t match the deceased’s clothing either—but they’re a perfect match for the jacket you brought from Chad’s condo.”

Catherine closed her eyes for a moment, as her highest hope and deepest fear both took hold of her. “Chad left that room last night alive,” she breathed.

“Damn,” Warrick shook his head. “The suicide was staged.”

“Apparently by someone who didn’t think we’d look past the obvious—didn’t think we were thorough enough to sift through the pieces and find the truth,” Sara said.

“Someone who didn’t know we had a secret weapon.” Warrick flashed a quick grin at Catherine. “A secret weapon who knew—knows Chad inside and out.” The change in his wording did not escape her, and she hoped with all her heart that it was valid, that Chad, wherever he was, was still alive. “That and this evidence busted the fake open. If he hadn’t fallen—“

“I’m not sure it was a fall,” Catherine dared venture. A thought had been perking in her mind, a notion at once horrible and awe-inspiring. “The footprints we found were going one direction, toward where the two black SUVs were reportedly parked. A fall logically should follow that momentum and go the same direction. It would have been tromped on by the feet of the other persons there, and the evidence ruined or at best seriously compromised. But this impact stain was considerably off to the side, besides the flow being too profuse for a simple fall. I thought about his being pushed down, but for what reason? I can’t come up with one. Then there’s the very high volume of epithelial cells in the sample, much more than you’d get by a chance strike on a hard surface of any kind.”

Sara’s catch of breath said she had taken the intuitive leap with Catherine. “Not by chance,” she repeated and slapped her hands together, “but possibly by design.” She ground her palms against each other. “You think Chad deliberately injured himself to leave us—you—trace evidence. He had to hope you’d find it, because you’d know what it meant.”

“Another miscalculation by whoever engineered this.” Grissom’s voice was low and tight, his mouth set in an angry line. “They didn’t think we were smart enough to see through their big lie, and they didn’t think Chad was resourceful enough to leave us a message written in his own blood.”

“That said, though, somebody went to a hell of a lot of trouble to make people think Chad offed himself,” Warrick frowned. “Who? And why?”

Catherine had a theory about that too, but before she could voice it another voice broke in. “I think I know—the who part, anyway.” Visibly shaken, Nick walked in and went straight for the computer on Gil’s desk. Gil let him without argument. “I ran the shoe and boot prints. No hits on the commercial database, so I tried the specialties. The boot is common military issue, available at most army surplus stores. The shoe—isn’t.” Three prints popped up on the monitor, and all crowded around to look. Sara scooted a half eaten Twinkie and a box of preserved cockroaches aside to perch on the desk top. An awful déjà vu swept over Catherine at the sight on the screen, even before Nick’s words confirmed it. “The bottom print was taken from the Rattlesnake Ridge parking lot. The top one was lifted at the Luis Dominguez murder scene at Houston Tatum’s estate last winter. The middle one was taken from our prime suspect in that case, who you’ll probably remember as—“

“Dirk Hunter.” Gil fumed. “The government agent we had to let walk.” He started for the door. “I’m going to find Brass.” Detective Jim Brass was the CSIs’ primary liaison with the rank and file officers and the police hierarchy. “He needs to know this just went from a simple murder investigation to a John Doe murder and a kidnapping.”

“The media don’t need to know this right now,” Catherine cautioned. “They’ll report Chad’s death, which is what everyone is supposed to think. If it becomes general knowledge that we know otherwise, before we’re ready for that, it could put him at even greater risk.”

Gil nodded sharply in agreement and left. “Assuming he’s still alive,” Nick said, new glumness crossing his face.

“He’s gotta be,” Warrick returned. “Why go to all this trouble otherwise?”

“Exactly the primary question,” Sara added. “We have a who, roughly, but what about the why?”

“I don’t know yet,” Catherine said slowly, “but I think I know where to look.”

+++

Hunter did not reappear to accompany the guards who took Chad out of the interrogation room. Probably off getting his nose patched up, Chad guessed after he was dumped back in his cell—at least he thought it was the same cell he had left. The featureless grayness had him totally disoriented, however, and they could have taken him anywhere in this subterranean maze. He took advantage of a small bucket in one corner, and then sat down against the opposite wall to rest. Along with the other aches, his left shoulder had begun to throb, and he supposed somewhere in the chaos of his abduction he had fallen on it. He got into as minimally uncomfortable a position as he could manage and tried to ignore the ominous rumblings of his empty stomach by reviewing what he had learned.

The one ray of light he fixed on was the fact that his captors, the denizens of Area 19E, seemed unaware of Catherine’s position in his life. He had insisted they keep their relationship low-key, and now the discretion she had so scoffed at might well prove to be her salvation. Chad felt calmer about that, until another concern rose. Once on a case she was nearly unstoppable, and might attract the same unwanted notice he had. He didn’t know now whether to hope she would find his cryptic final message or hope she wouldn’t. There won’t be anything else for her to go on, he reassured himself. The fire had seen to that. She would be obliged to let it go, to accept the imposter corpse as his and be content with proof he had been murdered rather than ending his own life.

That too, though, was questionable when he thought about it. Defying Coulis and his shadowy workgroup was in effect suicide. It would have been smarter and sneakier to string them along and pretend to consider their offer, but the very thought elicited a wave of actual nausea. Coulis’ words might have been meant as insult or scare tactic, but his comparison of father and son strengthened Chad’s resolve in a way little if anything else could have. He felt more sure than ever that his father’s death was tied to this somehow, and despite his perilous situation felt again a stirring of anticipation. It would be satisfying to know the truth before he died, something he could take with him to that place the faith in which he’d been raised said waited beyond.

The secrets behind his father’s murder were of immeasurable importance to Chad, but why had Coulis implied that Chad’s own life or death had hung at one point on his identity? The major had insisted that his revelation to his comrades that their potential target was Terence Ackerman’s son had led to their change of plans. Another lie, Chad decided. Another ploy to tempt me, to make me think I’m something special to them. They think they can snare me by offering me privilege, power, the rush of being part of some inner circle. It’s mind games, all of it. Chad had never been a game player, and he wasn’t about to start now.

He nodded off, but was wakened by a faint whoosh as a solid-looking wall slid back. Several figures in white coveralls stepped silently through and pulled Chad to his feet. He felt a sharp sting where one gripped his arm, and before he could yelp or recoil his head started to spin. His legs, suddenly rubbery, barely carried him into the glaring antiseptic expanse beyond the sliding panel before he collapsed. There were more needles after that; he remembered them but little else when he was returned to his cell. Perhaps they drew blood; one shirt sleeve was cut at the cuff and ripped up past his bicep. He slumped in a corner, sick and scared and just aware enough to be angry with himself for being sick and scared. After a bout of dry heaves he drifted into a light, fitful doze, from which he was rudely rousted by the clang of the cell door and the grand entrance of Hunter and his posse.

Chad had lost all track of time, but the rawness of his eyes said he had not been allowed to sleep long. More mind games. After the goons hauled him up and cuffed him Hunter got in his face. A clear plastic splint covered the agent’s squashed nose. “No bandages?” Chad queried. “Thought you’d go for the Jack Nicholson look from Chinatown. Something showier, more macho.”

“I’d enjoy the hell out of smashing your pretty face in right about now, except for that bleeding heart Coulis.”

Chad did not look away from the scowling face. “You could, but would it matter tomorrow? Next week, maybe?” Steam all but poured out Hunter’s ears as he directed the escort out and down more anonymous corridors. Oh, it chapped him when Chad refused to play along. When they reached a door he all but threw Chad through it and slammed it behind him.

It was the interrogation room again, or another identical to it. Chad didn’t know or care. Coulis was waiting this time—Hunter had likely known that and retreated to avoid another tongue lashing. Swearing, he pulled out a chair and Chad stumbled toward it. “What did those rat bastards do to you?”

“As if you don’t know?” Fatigue did one of two things to Chad: either it made him cranky, or sent him totally beyond cranky, to a place where he often couldn’t care less what he said. Add to that the probability that these were the final hours of his life, and the couldn’t-care-less factor multiplied accordingly. “You should’ve told me your doctors make house calls around here,” he sniped while an antsy young guard summoned by Coulis unlocked the handcuffs. “I’ve got this nasty rash that needs looking at.”

He mimed scratching his butt. Coulis shook his head. “Doctors? Sorry, I don’t know what you mean.”

“Of course you don’t. It’s all part of the game. Like you and Hunter and this good cop-bad cop routine of yours.”

“Chad, I don’t rule this place. What others want to do with you isn’t what I want. If you won’t cooperate, I can only protect you so far.”

Dry-mouthed and still groggy, Chad kept his head up with an effort. “What was good enough for my father’s good enough for me,” he said quietly. “This is what happened to him, isn’t it? In principle, anyway. There was some line he wouldn’t cross, some order he refused to follow, and he was killed for it.”

“I can’t talk about that,” the major said sharply. “It’s clear you’re not being treated as I requested, however, and I can do something about that. What can I get you?”

“The truth.”

“Use your head, boy! You’ve got to come with me. It’s either that, or…the alternatives aren’t pleasant.”

“You have my answer.”

Coulis strode to the door. “The hole,” he said to the guards who appeared, “and then get me Colonel Verlanderon pronto. I can’t buy you much more time, Chad,” he added while the guards cuffed Chad and led him out. Chad did not reply or even look at the man. So far as he was concerned, there was nothing else to say.

Through another warren of hallways, they halted in front of yet another door. By now Chad knew the drill; the door would be unlocked, he would be nudged inside a few steps, then the cuffs would be removed and the door shut in swift succession. Except this time the door was opened and rough hands shoved him through into a void. The slam of the door behind him left him, still shackled, in utter blackness. Chad backed up until his bound hands met the metal of the door, then felt his way around.

The space was barely bigger than a closet—or a tomb. It would hardly surprise him if they decided to just leave him here to rot. He lay down on the floor, with his back against the wall opposite the door, to decrease the risk of being caught off guard—although walls could be doors in this madhouse, too, so what did it matter. Maybe he could sleep a little. It was unexpectedly hard when he couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed, and couldn’t even touch them to find out. Once someone had tried to teach him to bring tied hands in front of him, but his big feet kept getting in the way…He drowsed, and dreamed he saw Catherine—or was she really here, shining like a star in this black hole? He couldn’t reach for her, and dared not call her name for fear they would hear, and come and hurt her…She vanished, or he awoke. His thoughts were becoming increasingly disjointed—the games were taking their toll on his mind and body. Chad only hoped he could hold out a little longer.

+++

After midnight on a Monday morning, the person Catherine most wanted to speak to was not available. That would have to wait a few hours, but there were other avenues she could pursue. She called the Garces, and was mildly surprised when Houston Tatum picked up his office line. “I’m so damn sorry, Cathy,” were the first words he spoke, and she knew merely by that that he was distraught. In the years of their friendship, he had only called her Cathy on a few occasions, usually when they had gotten shit-faced drunk together and cried on each others’ shoulders about their respective hard roads. “If this had anything to do with that case I put Chad onto, I’ll never forgive myself, and I doubt you’ll ever forgive me.”

“Don’t go that far yet. Will you be there a while? I do need to talk to you.”

All the way there, Catherine argued with herself about how much to tell him. Professionalism dictated not sharing information on a case with civilians not directly involved, yet Houston had taken Chad under his wing. She debated both sides, until she walked into the management office in the old hotel and found Houston sitting on the worn leather sofa comforting a sobbing Mrs. Ng. Catherine simply could not stand it one second longer. She hugged them both tight, closed the office door, and told them—not everything, but enough to calm them. “Why stage so intricate a ‘death’ for someone you’re going to kill anyway? The evidence tells us Chad was alive when he was taken. It appears he was also able to move enough, and thinking clearly enough, to leave us some clues. He’s been gone barely 24 hours. Our hope is that he’s still alive.”

“But who would do so evil a thing?” Mrs. Ng wailed, twisting a string of rosary beads around her fingers. “Who, to Chad, so good?”

“I dunno, but if I get my paws on ‘em they’ll be beggin’ for a necktie party b’time I’m through!” Houston growled, his weathered arm around the little Asian woman’s shoulders.

He meant it too, Catherine knew, which was exactly why she had not disclosed any details they had recovered. Instead she asked about the case Houston had forwarded to Chad. As the old real estate tycoon explained, a cold know of dread tightened like a fist around her insides. I’m right, she thought. I know who did this. Now I have to figure out what to do with it, and how to get Chad back safe. “So do you reckon that had anything to do with—this?” Houston finished.

“I can’t say,” Catherine replied evasively. “A great many things could have. I’ll follow some of them up in the morning. Till then—“

“Have you rested at all?” Mrs. Ng demanded. “You look bad. You go, go, go, Catherine—then you get sick, or you wreck car, you end up in hospital—you do Chad no good. You need to rest. He would want you to.” Houston backed her, and Catherine couldn’t really argue. She was between cases otherwise, and she could do nothing else for Chad right now. A few hours at home would let her rest in her own bed, refreshed for the next round of the fight, as well as giving her a little time with Lindsey, and eating up that overtime.

“I’ll have ‘em post outside the showroom that tonight’s show’s been postponed,” Houston decided. “Nothin’ more. We get our young feller back okay, he’ll be mighty ticked if I let his secret out. You have seen him ticked, haven’t you, Catherine?” She nodded, and even found a small smile at the memories that rose in response. Houston slapped his knee. “Downright frightenin’ when he keeps a tight rein on it, and a helluva show when he doesn’t! I’d say whoever nabbed him’s just now findin’ out they got themselves a tiger by the tail.”

Mrs. Ng hugged Catherine again before she left. “Back to church I go,” she declared. “I pray to Jesus and Mary, and to the saint Cecile who loves music, and I beg them to put angels around Chad, and lead you to him.”

Catherine wasn’t much on praying, but right now she’d take all the help she could get. Out in her SUV she phoned Gil who approved of her idea, then turned toward home. For the first time since this nightmare began, she slipped one of Chad’s CDs into the player. His magical voice soothed her shredded nerves, so much so that she turned off her headlights and sat in her driveway a few moments to hear the end of one of her favorite songs, so much so that she must have even dozed off briefly. She sat up with a jerk and a faint memory of dreaming: she was looking for a crime scene she’d been sent to, but the place was black as tar. She sensed someone watching her from the darkness, as she swore and smacked her flashlight to get it to work: someone waiting for her, if she could only see to find them. Catherine slipped into the house, cleaned up and crawled into her bed. Somewhere in the last few hours, hope had become conviction. Chad was alive somewhere, and she would find him.

The next thing she knew, the alarm clock was blaring like a siren. Lindsey was pleasantly surprised to find her mother home, and full of questions about the ‘work’ she had ‘helped’ Chad with. Catherine was noncommittal, and sent her daughter off to day camp with a reminder not to believe everything she read or heard. An important life lesson, but a little too early learned.

Professionally dressed to the nines (years as an exotic dancer had taught her well where the line was), Catherine swung by the office to clock in, then drove north. Passing the Rattlesnake Ridge Motor Lodge, she imagined Chad explaining what had brought him there on Saturday night after a show without even changing clothes. He gave so much to his audience when he sang, it still amazed her he wasn’t drained afterwards, but instead he always seemed energized by what the crowd had given to him. This world doesn’t need to lose that kind of spark, she thought. I don’t need to lose it, or him.

At the front gate of Nellis Air Force Base, Catherine was stopped by an officious military policeman unimpressed by LVPD credentials. “No, the major can’t see you, madam. Now, if you’ll call the public information officer for an appointment—“

“Oh, I could do that,” Catherine cut him off, “but then I’ll be obliged to bring the FBI with me, since some of the crimes I’m investigating are federal offenses. If that’s what your Major Coulis wants, that’s what he’ll get. Otherwise, he will see me, now.” As the MP hesitated she added, “None of this has come to the media’s attention yet, but that could happen at any time. It would probably be best for you if it doesn’t—I’m sure Major Coulis knows how the military is regarded in some quarters of this town.”

“Are you threatening us?” the helmeted, thick-necked MP demanded in disbelief.

“On the contrary, I’m trying to work something out that will benefit us all.” Time to launch the big rocket. “Tell Major Coulis I need to speak with him about the Ackermans, and Dirk Hunter. Then ask him how much hell he wants me to raise.”

The guard stepped back into his booth, made a call, and returned moments later with a baffled look and a visitor’s pass. The laminated plastic was a tacit confirmation of Catherine’s theory; she had gone farther than even she suspected, stating the names as if she knew them to be linked, and by acquiescing Coulis had just confirmed it. As she parked and entered the building she was directed to, hope and fear rose again inside her, winding around each other like cats meeting.

A displeased-looking secretary led her to one of a myriad of identical gray metal doors. “Ms—Willows, is it?” Major Coulis was every inch career military, as he stood up behind his desk to shake her hand, from his immaculate uniform to his precise crew cut and perfect posture. “Charmed, I’m sure, but I’m puzzled as to how you expect I can help you.”

“I don’t think you are.” Without waiting for an invitation Catherine took a seat. She remembered Chad talking about his father’s old commanding officer, the man who had heard a young boy’s pleas and changed a military verdict, the only one the senior Ackerman had trusted. He might not be altogether trustworthy, but this was as good a place to start as any. “Let me come right to the point, Major Coulis. A man was murdered Saturday night in Las Vegas. Evidence links a man on the government’s payroll to the killing—the second murder in six months connected to this man, by the way.”

The major did not look particularly moved. “That’s distressing news, Ms. Willows. Loss of life is never to be taken lightly. However, evidence can lie, and I still fail to see why you chose to come to me. And before you lay a charge of prevarication against me—you threatened our sentry with talk of Federal involvement, but murder, however reprehensible, isn’t a Federal crime.”

“No, it’s not,” Catherine said softly, “but kidnapping is.” That scored, she could tell by the narrowing of his sharp gaze. “The person your man murdered was meant to be taken for someone else—someone who, unless I’m very wrong, is now in your hands.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Do you not?” Catherine’s patience, and Chad’s time, were both running out. It was a calculated risk, but shaking the tree might be the only way to jar loose what she needed to know. “What is it about you people and the Ackermans?”

Major Coulis sighed and stood. “So that’s what this is about,” he said. “I can’t talk about that.”

“Can’t or won’t?” Catherine did not budge. She would not be dismissed, and she would not relent.

“Terence Ackerman was my dear friend. His death…changed the way I looked at what I did.”

“Not enough, apparently.”

“What are you accusing me of, Ms. Willows?”

“I don’t know. What will you confess to?” Too angry now to stay seated, she rose. “Terence Ackerman was murdered, and his killers made it look like a suicide, but thanks to his son they didn’t get away with it. You know a great deal about that, I understand. Now someone’s gone back to the old playbook for a new generation. They abducted Chad Ackerman, and tried to make that look like suicide too. I think you know a great deal about that too, more than you’ll admit, including, probably, who’s responsible. So give them a message for me, Major. Tell them they won’t get away with it this time either.” Catherine faced him across the desk, her fingers slipped under the edge of the smooth wooden top so she could press hard against it and keep her hands from visibly shaking.

Coulis regarded her with an air of increased interest. “How is it you know so much about Chad Ackerman, Ms. Willows? And why are you so—passionate—about finding…finding out what happened to him?”

This was truly dangerous ground; letting this man know too much about her relationship with Chad might not bode well for either of them. “He’s a private investigator, and a good one,” she shrugged. “I’m a crime scene investigator. Our paths have crossed on several occasions.”

“Hm.” His tone revealed nothing. “Let me ask you a question now. What do you suppose it is about the Ackermans that inspires such—passionate—loyalty?”

The answer seemed so simple, and yet was as complex as Chad himself. “Integrity,” Catherine replied after brief thought. “A man who keeps his word, holds to his principles, faces whatever comes, respects others without allowing himself to be disrespected, will give up much before he’ll compromise who he is…if a man like that is in your life, you won’t let him go without a fight.”

She expected a condescending chuckle in response. Instead, Coulis slowly nodded. “Yes,” he said, almost to himself. “Exactly. You have a gift for taking the measure of a man, Ms. Willows…The apple rarely falls far from the tree, does it?”

“How would you know?” It was her turn to challenge him.

“I have—looked in on Chad, now and again. A favor I never promised his father, but felt it right to do. A remarkable young man, the image of Terence in more ways than the obvious.” The old man’s eyes were far away for a moment, then snapped back to lock with Catherine’s. “I hesitate to make you any promises, Ms. Willows, but I will look into this and contact you as soon as I can. You have my word on that.”

“And what is your word worth, Major?” Catherine said coldly. “What’s your measure? Is it equal to theirs, or not?” She strode out, past the receptionist and to her car unescorted—amazingly, considering the tangled web of the building’s corridors, but she was running on automatic again, on rage and fear. She made it completely off the base and as far as the Rattlesnake Ridge Motor Lodge before the shaking of her hands made it impossible for her to drive safely. She pulled into the parking lot, and sat and stared at the scorched remains of room 26. For all the years she had lived in Vegas, Catherine had never been much of a gambler, and never wagered with what belonged to another. Her drug habit had been a crapshoot with her own health and sanity, but when obliged to choose between it and her baby girl the choice had been no choice at all.

This was different. She had just ventured the biggest and deadliest gambit imaginable, and the stake was the life of the man she loved. Mrs. Ng and her rosary beads came to mind again; if Catherine had believed angels hovered unseen by the world’s sight, she would ask only one thing of them. Just keep him safe till I can get to him, she thought. I’ll take it from there.

As dusk fell, Catherine returned to the CSI base office and was greeted by a makeshift tent erected in the lab. Sara ducked out of the tent, wearing clean garb and peeling off goggles. “Warrick and I just glue-tested the plastic gas can from the motel room. No prints, including Chad’s, which’ll make Brass happy. He, uh, asked us to develop evidence that Chad didn’t rig this thing himself.”

“He what?” Just then Brass and Grissom entered the lab in animated conversation, which was cut short when Catherine confronted the detective. “Jim, what kind of shit is this? You can’t think Chad staged his own suicide!”

“Whoa, whoa! I don’t, Cath! I know the kid. I like him. I respect his work. But when and if I take this up the chain they’ll want all bases covered. If they throw me some hot turd like that, I wanna be able to throw hard proof back at ‘em. You get me?” Catherine just stared. “You okay?”

“No,” she ground out. “I am not okay. In the past 36 hours I have gone from thinking someone…someone I care a great deal for killed himself, to believing he was murdered, to finding out he was kidnapped.”

“And our favorite spook bastard Hunter is all over it, from what Nick showed me.” Brass waved copies of the shoe prints, scowling.

“We don’t know that he’s CIA, Jim, or what exactly he is,” Gil remonstrated.

“Oh, c’mon, Gris. I ran into ‘em a few times when I worked in Jersey. This whole elaborate getup reeks of eau de spook. They love to show off how damn smart they are, how far beyond us common mortals.”

“That’s what tripped them up. They got too elaborate, and they fucked up.” Catherine had rarely heard Gil swear, but if pure rage could have brought Chad out from wherever he was being held, the storm brewing in Gil’s face would have come close to accomplishing it. “They overestimated their own abilities, and they underestimated their opposition.” Again Catherine’s thoughts returned to room 26. Chad had been on his guard, armed, but the attack had been framed with care and suddenly executed. He had been overwhelmed, no doubt, terrified and confused, yet still he had kept his wits about him, enough to leave a message in a code only she could read. His courage, and his trust in her, shamed her; she felt so weak and afraid.

Hands on her shoulders startled her: Nick’s, guiding her to a chair. “You nearly fell over. When’s the last time you ate?” Catherine sat and thought. “That’s what I figured,” Nick groaned, and got her a sandwich and a Sprite.

“It’s the why I still don’t get,” Brass complained. “You showed me all the evidence, and I believe you, but why would the federales whip out their whole toy box for one PI?”

“I may know, at least in part.” Quickly Catherine explained the case Chad had been working. “His delving into the land grab could explain intelligence involvement, if they have something to hide. And there’s more.” For Brass’ benefit—the others had joined them by now, but they had all heard it at one time or another from Chad himself—she shared the facts surrounding Chad’s father’s death. “The similarities are too much to be coincidence. I feel there’s a connection somehow.”

“You’re probably right.” Brass’ creased face was even more glum than usual. “But if so, there’s not a helluva lot we can do. It’s just like the other time, damn ‘em. They are outside our bounds.”

“But not outside their own.” Catherine hesitated. “I interviewed Terence Ackerman’s former CO. He knows only that we know the suicide was staged and that Hunter was involved; but he helped Chad before, and he’s promised to look into it.”

“For what that’s worth,” Warrick snorted.

“No kiddin’.” Brass started for the door. “I’ll stay in touch, you people. At least now I see why the kid’s so hell bent on every case he gets.” Jim was right, of course, and why Catherine hadn’t seen it long before she could not fathom, except for her selfishness and stubbornness. As the evening wore on she tortured herself with recriminations, rehearsed a hundred variations on apology, until the vibration of the cel phone stuffed in her pocket shocked her out of a dark rumination at her desk. Glad she had turned the ring off, she pulled it out and scanned the lab before she answered. The other CSIs were here and there, all engaged in other pursuits.

“Ms. Willows.” She almost choked at the sound of Coulis’ voice. “I can, I hope, put my hands on an item which will be of interest to you in the matter we discussed. If you will meet me, I will deliver it to you.”

“Tell me,” she said very quietly.

“There is a place called Quartz Mountain.” He gave her directions. “It is on the fringes of the government holdings, but is not military land per se. More of a no mans land. Approach the south face, and I will meet you there.” The phone went dead, and Catherine began to gather herself with studied casualness. What the major had for her she could not guess—a map, or an access code, some way to reach whatever place Chad was being held? Or a file, perhaps, some kind of information she could hold hostage, possibly barter for his freedom?

It was equally plausible that this was another ‘big lie’ as Grissom put it. The dark forces that had taken Chad could be luring her to them, to find out how much she knew, what her true bond to him was, or—who knew why. That was one more chance Catherine would have to take. Chad had trusted her to see through the lies, and she would not fail him. She checked her police issue pistol in her purse, and stood to stroll out, but she bumped into someone as she turned toward the door. It was Nick, and cradled in his arms was a high-power hunting rifle, still glistening from a good oiling.

“So,” he said, “where’s the party?”

Dumbfounded, Catherine looked around at the sound of footsteps. Warrick, Sara and Gil converged to join them. “I figure Catherine goes ahead, and we tail at a safe distance,” Warrick remarked to Nick as if continuing a conversation begun earlier. “Your ride, maybe? We’ll get directions before we pull up, in case we get split somehow—“

“Wait a minute, wait a minute!” Catherine waved her arms. “What are you doing?”

Sara hiked an eyebrow, as much of an appalled look as Catherine’s unflappable young coworker ever showed. “Providing backup,” she said as if it were absurdly obvious. “That’s how it works, if I remember my training rightly. You don’t expect to go meet an informant alone, do you?”

“But—but—“ Somehow, it had never occurred to Catherine to get anyone else involved in this. “I can’t let you risk yourselves. This is different—“

“ Is it?” Gil’s mild tone belied the hardness in his eyes, and the gun in his hand. “How? It’s our case, Catherine. A gang of thugs falsified evidence, attempted to obstruct justice, and insulted my team. I will not let that slide. And if you need more persuasion—as a licensed investigator, Chad’s as much an officer of the court as we are. He is, in essence, one of our own.”

“Besides all the professional verbiage,” Warrick finished, “you’re our friend, Cath, and Chad is too. We can no more leave him out there than we’d leave you.”

“If you think you’re dragging us into something, you’re not,” Nick added. “Brass told us not to let you sneak off. Who wants him pissed off at them?” He gave a dramatic mock-shudder, and a chuckle encircled the group.

Past the initial shock, Catherine felt a sudden and profound relief. She would not leave Chad alone, and these people would not leave her. “All right, come on,” she said. “You’d better bring Nick’s SUV, and strap in. It looks to be a bumpy ride.”

+++

Chad woke shaking, the remnants of his clothing soaked through with sweat. His skin was hot and tight, and he hurt all over, stiff from lying bound on the hard cold floor of the cell. The left shoulder must have been injured worse than he’d thought—the pain made him retch—and when he tried to curl into a ball both his damaged leg and he screamed, though his came out more as a moan. Laboriously he drew together enough strands of thought to conclude the open wound was probably infected, hence the fever that gripped him now.

He had worked his way that far when a rattle sounded, ear-splitting in the silence, and the cell door swung open, blinding Chad with the light that streamed in from the passageway beyond. Two figures stumped in, as big as horses to his clouded perception, and yanked him to his feet. He had always stood on his own when they came to fetch him in the past—hours, days, weeks? How long had he been a prisoner? It couldn’t have been that long, yet it seemed he barely recalled open sky and free air. Now he almost fell, and the hulking jailers had to hold him upright as they propelled him out into the hallway. Other people stood there, but Chad had no opportunity to check them out; he was spun around and shoved face first against the wall, and something clingy and opaque tightened over his eyes.

“Oh, God, no,” he gasped before he even realized he had spoken. A vision rose before his suddenly sightless eyes: the blindfolded guy in front of the firing squad in every old black and white movie he’d ever seen as a kid. This is it. No more games. Their patience has run out. Death as an abstract had never particularly frightened Chad, but the blunt trauma of understanding that the hours of his life had run down to minutes, if that, nearly undid him. He pressed his body against the wall for support, even though the cold concrete set off a new wave of shivers through him. Once through death’s door, he believed he would be forever safe, reunited with his parents, all pleasant prospects. It was the certainty that his killers would enjoy making his transition as unpleasant as possible that clutched at him now. Chad tried to pray, but the words wouldn’t come; all he could do was fight the shakes and offer up his fear and his pain in a silent plea for help, for the strength to die with his head up and deprive his murderers of the satisfaction of seeing him broken.

Mumbled conversation echoed behind him—the plans for killing him, he supposed. What lay before him was awful to contemplate; what lay behind was even more unbearable. Be well, Catherine. Take good care of Lindsey. I love you both so much.

A familiar voice joined the murmurs: Hunter, cursing profusely and at some length without repeating himself. True military, Chad couldn’t help thinking. A hand gripped his arm and towed him off. “C’mon, you little shit,” Hunter snarled.

“Shouldn’t you sound happier?” Chad was vaguely pleased that his own voice remained steady. “I mean, this is where you get to take me out and shoot me, right?” Hey, it couldn’t hurt to be optimistic. Plant the seed of an idea, and even Hunter’s dim bulb might light up with the realization that a quick bullet to the head was most effective. Maybe they’ll dump my body in the desert, where someone could find it eventually. Then they can mark the case closed, and Catherine will know, if she still cares by then.

“No such luck, junior. The big brass decided you’d be a nice gift for their—business associates.” Shockingly, Hunter’s was the voice that faltered briefly. “Means they won’t let me kill you, dammit. But I look on the bright side—at least I know before they’re through with you, you’ll wish I had.”

Chad’s burst of relief at the first words fell to ashes at the last. Coulis had warned him that the consequences for continued resistance would not be pleasant. How foolish he had been to fixate on death as if it were the worst that could happen. There were things far worse, and anything that could frighten this callous man certainly fell into that category. Chad forced himself to think only of walking, step by painful step. He had always thought of himself as somewhat of a coward where pain was concerned, but right now he embraced it, used it to anchor himself in the here and now and keep his imagination from rushing ahead to—what? Something worse than dying…He was limping noticeably now, but could do nothing about it; the right leg was barely functional as it was. When he was stopped, he carefully swept one foot to the side, hoping to contact a wall he could lean against.

More voices approached. “Jason, are you sure this is a good idea? They don’t like being dropped in on ‘unannounced’.”

“I’m not unannounced, Marcus. They know I’m coming. Even with the negative test results, they’ll be pleased to have him, because of his unique position in the protocol pedigree…ah, here we are. I’ll take it from here, soldier, dismissed.” Hunter released his arm, and another gripped it: Coulis, from the nearness of his voice when he spoke. "I’ve arranged a meeting place with them, as I said, so don't worry, or bother them further about it. I’ll be in touch."

“I’m sure you will.” The other man moved away, talking with Hunter in low tones. A car door opened, so close Chad jumped, and he was bundled into a vehicle’s passenger seat. He’s taking me to them…whoever ‘they’ are…so much for the compassionate crap. Shapes stirred at the edges of Chad’s mind, imaginings that filled him with a vast amorphous dread—or memories, as if on some level he knew what was about to happen.

“Hold on.” Coulis’ voice was tight now, barely audible over the start of an engine. “I swept this truck for listening devices myself. We’re safe to talk freely in here, but let’s get out of range first, in case something nosey is pointed at us.” Chad did not bother to ask for clarification. He drifted in a feverish fog until a small hard object was pressed into his hands behind his back. Long restraint had left his fingers numb, and he fumbled with it for several minutes before he could identify the shape of a handcuff key. “Don’t drop that, now. I don’t have a spare, and where we’re going I’m a candidate to be skinned alive if you show up chained like that.”

After some more fumbling Chad found the keyhole, and the release of his arms almost elicited a groan of relief. He pulled the blindfold off, and saw they were racing across the desert in an SUV. Overhead, stars and a half moon were so clear and sharp and beautiful he just stared out the window at them in silent dazed awe, before his fever-baked brain got around to wondering if he would ever see them again. After a few moments he sat back in the seat, and did a small, normal thing; the first small normal thing he had done in however long he had been a captive; the last small normal thing he might do for a very long time. He reached for the seat belt, and fastened it.

Behind the wheel, Coulis chuckled. “Good habit.” The black commando gear the major wore nearly made bile rise in Chad’s throat; it was too much like the men who had taken him. He fought back another shiver and shrugged.

“It’s kept me alive this long.” For what that was worth. A part of him wanted to ask where he was going, and to whom he was being ‘given’: sickening word. Asking even that seemed too much of a surrender, though, a yielding to their power; and besides, talking was just too much of an effort. It was easier to sit quietly in the comfortable seat and let the drone of the engine lull him into a twilight of the mind, a place where he could pretend for a few minutes that he wasn’t trapped in a nightmare that was about as bad as anything could get.

“I met your Catherine today.” Coulis’ tone was casual, almost cheerful. “Quite a woman. Not a doubt in my mind she would’ve taken my office, and probably me, apart piece by nasty little piece if it would’ve gotten her to you. You’re a lucky man.”

‘As bad as anything could get’ suddenly got infinitely worse. The last firm place of hope crumbled under Chad’s feet, leaving him suspended over an abyss of utter defeat. They had found Catherine, divined her relationship to him, and were prepared to use that knowledge, and her, however necessary. Dear God, don’t let them hurt her because of me. “Fine,” he forced out. “You’ve made your point. What do you want?”

“Hmm?”

The man wasn’t satisfied with victory; clearly he wanted to make Chad crawl. Whatever will keep Catherine safe I’ll do. Forgive me, Dad—but what would you have done if it were Mom? “You want me to say it, don’t you?”

“Say what?”

“That you win.” Chad could no longer even muster the strength to be angry. “You did yourself a disservice when you killed my parents. You left me without connections, without hostages to fortune—except for those I conveniently supplied you. Maybe your workgroup knows about her. Maybe these ‘business associates’ you’re ‘giving’ me to know. Or maybe you’re playing both ends against the middle, to make me your personal tool…As I said, you’ve made your point. So quit working for your Oscar. Just tell me what you want me to do, in return for your leaving her alone.” He rested his head against the window—the smooth cool glass felt so good against his hot face—closed his tired eyes, and waited.

Instead of a triumphant chortle, a quiet, almost rueful laugh broke the silence. “I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s not as if I’d given you any reason to trust me. You assume by my mentioning Catherine that I’m threatening her. I assure you I’m not. I’m envious, actually. The vast majority of people never have anyone in their life who would break every rule, defy every foe, go over or around or right through every obstacle for them. You’ve been singularly blessed, to have had at least two such people.” Coulis gestured behind him. “There’s a file you need to see, lying on the back seat.” Cautiously Chad turned to reach between the seat, and pain slashed the left side of his body like a knife attack that brought an involuntary yelp. He clutched the back of Coulis’ seat, and didn’t really care; he was more interesting in gasping for air and gritting his teeth against another round of dry heaves. “What’s wrong?”

Of course the bastard sounded concerned—he had implied that if his ‘gift’ arrived damaged, things would not go well with him. “My shoulder,” he half-lied, hating to admit even that much but hoping it might trouble the other man. “Guess I threw it out when Hunter and his pals jumped me.”

Coulis muttered a few choice profanities. “SOB isn’t a soldier. He’s nothing but a punk. Not like…Well, I’ll get the file for you later. It’s a plain text printout of the encrypted data on here.” Driving with one hand, he unzipped a pocket of his BDU pants and pulled a CD-ROM halfway out for a moment. “Among other things, this contains the results of the medical tests that were performed on you. I told you I didn’t know they had been done, and I meant it. As I said before, I don’t rule 19E. Others have their power, their agendas, and their own plans for you. Fortunately, I was able to intercept the results and substitute doctored ones, pardon the pun.” He zipped the pocket shut and tapped it. “This would make you of far greater interest to the Workgroup and their Associates.”

“You’re not making any sense.” The shakes were getting harder to hide. Chad slumped back in his seat and concentrated on staying upright.

“Probably not, and it’s too involved to go into in the few minutes we’ve got.” Coulis pursed his mouth briefly as if in thought. “Your father,” he began, “participated in a series of experimental procedures in the early and mid seventies. He volunteered, actually. He was given to understand it was for the good of the country, so he was willing to venture a little personal risk for that. He was a good man.”

“I know that,” Chad shot back, piqued by the man’s presumption.

“No, you don’t. Or rather, you do, I’m sure, but as a child knows a parent. I want you to know this, Chad, as a man knows another man. Terence Ackerman was a good soldier, a good American, and a damn good man.” He stared out the windshield at the desolate moonscape in silence.

“Why are you telling me this now?” Chad sighed. “So you can leave me in the hands of—whoever, whatever—knowing I’ll torture myself with the knowledge he fought you to the end and I couldn’t?”

Again, that rueful laugh. “You won’t believe it till you see it, I suppose. No. I’m telling you the truth I should have told years ago. I’m telling you because you’re like him, too much so for your own good maybe. I sat around with my thumb up my ass and let the Workgroup snuff that light out once. I can’t do it again. I can’t let them twist and warp that to suit their ends.”

Chad found himself hanging on every word. “What happened to him?” he whispered.

“The Workgroup’s ‘associates’ participated in the experiments. Hell, they instigated them, controlled, directed them. After a while it emerged that their interest was in developing ‘heritable acquired mutations’, changes in the germ cells that could then pass a trait to offspring.” A chill gripped Chad that had nothing to do with fever. ”That meant testing the children. At first it was a simple needle stick, but then they started to keep them longer, and returning them in…distress…That was the line Terence wouldn’t cross. They could monkey with him all they liked, but he would be damned if he’d let them hurt his child.

“They let it slide for a good while before they came back to him. He refused, kept refusing, and ultimately threatened to blow the whistle. It wasn’t as if they exactly needed his consent, of course; they could have taken you anytime. I think they were honestly surprised, though—Terence had always been the ideal soldier, took every order, et cetera. I tried to mediate, but there was no middle ground to be had. I even…I had—wavered—in my own allegiance over time, seeing what the Associates had commandeered the Workgroup to do. There’s a group of people, less than official but more than informal, who oppose the Workgroup’s purposes. I had been in touch with them, and not knowing what to do now I contacted them. They were willing to take Terence under their protection and force the Associates to back off, and I told Terence so. He wasn’t interested in being coddled. He could handle it, he said when he left my office; he could take care of his family.

“That was the last time I saw him alive. I don’t know who pulled the trigger, or whose decision it was to stage a suicide. In the days after, I wondered if it was intended as one more punishment they could inflict on Terence from beyond the grave for defying them. I wondered if they made sure he knew what they were doing to him, so he would go to his death fully aware that the son for whom he had sacrificed everything would be left destitute. My hands were tied, though, until something happened that no one could have anticipated.” Coulis steered toward a rocky outcropping on the horizon, and actually smiled. “You happened. You stormed into my office like Bill Gates possessed by Wyatt Earp, determined to get justice and take care of your mother. I was impressed, and I couldn’t help but think how proud your father would have been.

“The Associates appeared to lose interest in you after Terence’s death. Maybe they didn’t really expect you to manifest any of the traits they were looking for, and they just killed Terence for causing them trouble. I did my damnedest to keep you off their radar, especially as you matured and…started to exhibit some of those traits. When you started to poke your nose into the Workgroup’s business, the land acquisitions and such, the only way I could prevent them from killing you out of hand was to tell them you were part of what they term the ‘protocol pedigree’. That meant eliminating you was no longer an option, not without angering the Associates. I promised them I would bring you to heel, or else defer to the Associates. I hoped you might agree to work with me, but I couldn’t explain inside 19E—too many eyes and ears about.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Chad mumbled, his head spinning. Coulis’ tale was maddening, and yet made sense in some terrible ways. “I wouldn’t have come with you anyhow.”

“No, I realize that now. But the alternative was not acceptable—to turn you over to the Associates as research material—so I contacted the Opposition. I told them about you, and we arranged to meet so they could take you to safety. Then another avenue opened, and I changed the plans. They’ll still contact you, I expect, but this seemed the more immediate route, and, I admit, more personally satisfying to me.” The stony peaks reared in front of them, and Coulis cut the engine and glided to a halt at their base. He felt around under his seat and emerged with a small device that looked unsettlingly like a phaser. After punching at its top with his finger, he reached across and pressed it to Chad’s upper arm through the ripped sleeve. It happened too quickly for Chad to even flinch, but he felt nothing and found he was still breathing when the pressure left. “There. Can’t take the blasted thing out, but at least this gadget can deactivate it.” Chad must have looked as utterly confused as he felt. “When they took you for testing they implanted a microchip tracking appliance. The Opposition has the tech to extract it, I think, but for now it’s nonoperational.” Coulis tossed the device in the back seat, rummaged around and retrieved a small sheaf of papers and a battered pair of tennis shoes. He folded the papers and stuck them in another pocket. The shoes he handed to Chad. “Terence’s. He’d appreciate the irony, I think. We’ve got a short walk to meet your ride, so let’s not keep her waiting.”

Chad held his father’s shoes for a moment before he set his teeth and worked them onto his sore feet. Surprisingly it didn’t take that much work, and he suspected that if he lived long enough for the swelling to go down they would be a perfect fit. Coulis rolled out of the vehicle, and Chad briefly considered locking the doors and forcing the man to drag him out at gunpoint. A futile show of defiance would accomplish nothing at this point, though, and even if Chad didn’t trust the major he had to accord him some grudging respect. Of all the lies Coulis could have concocted about Terence Ackerman’s death, he had hit on the one Chad would have most wanted to hear.

The old man set a unexpectedly brisk pace clambering up and through the rocks, and Chad kept up as best he could till he stopped at a relatively flat spot. “Couldn’t you have arranged to drop me at a mall?” he grumbled and leaned against a boulder. “Someplace more civilized?”

“This is a dead zone, one of the few areas on the perimeter of government property that isn’t fully monitored. Stay here, I’ll go look for your chauffeur.” Chad waited for Coulis to disappear before he slid down the boulder to the stony ground. A dead zone; how apropos. Finally free of prying eyes, he shivered hard and clasped his hands to his chest, while a snatch of a song he had loved as a kid repeated in his head, the part he had had to ask his mom to translate: kyrie eleison…lord have mercy…

+++

Catherine switched off her lights and stopped at the base of the rocky mass marked on her map as Quartz Mountain. Behind her, she knew the rest of the team was coming, trying to stay back far enough to escape notice but near enough to move in if needed. She hoped with all her heart that it would not be. She got out and waited, the whistle of warm desert breeze through the tumbled mass of sparkly stones her only company for some minutes.

A bare trace of a moon-cast shadow alerted her an instant before Coulis appeared, clad in black like a cat burglar. He gestured for her to approach, then turned and vanished back into the jumble. Catherine hesitated at being cut off from her friends, but only for a moment. She followed, and spied a flicker of headlights back the way she had come, before she followed her guide into the labyrinth and lost sight of it. Up and in she scrambled behind the spry old soldier, until she saw him stop. She ducked between two huge chunks of rock and into a flat space the size of a small room. On the opposite side from where she stood lay what appeared to be a pile of discarded clothing, pale and dark heaped against a boulder. A pile of clothing, or something else, something worse…Then it twitched and let out a low moan, and Catherine’s brain made sense of what her eyes saw. “Chad?”

His head rose slowly, and he squinted as if straining to see her. Though his mouth moved, no sound came out at first; then with the same agonizing slowness his face turned toward Coulis. “So…you had to do it, didn’t you…to prove you can do…whatever you want to me…liar…”

The hoarse weakness of Chad’s voice did nothing to lessen the rage in it. Freed from frozen shock, Catherine started toward him as he struggled to stand. He took one step toward her, before his legs folded beneath him and he fell with a faint cry. Catherine lunged; though she could not stop his fall she slowed it a little, and then gasped when she touched him. “Dear God—Chad, you’re burning up—“ She pulled him to half-sit and half-lie against her, and slid her hands under the ruins of his dress shirt, stiff and sticky with sweat and blood. His skin was dry and his body scorching hot to her touch.

“What in blue hell?” Coulis crouched beside her. “The goons they sent to get him roughed him up a little, I knew that, but nothing like—he didn’t say a thing about feeling sick!”

“He wouldn’t,” Catherine spat. She knew where to look; she tore his pants leg, already half ripped, completely open to expose the makeshift bandage around his knee, dark with old blood and now oozing with new. “How far did you force him to walk?” she snarled. “Between blood loss, resultant dehydration, probably infection too—we’ve got to get him help fast.”

Grimacing, he pushed himself up with his right arm, the other fist clenched to his stomach. His face was salt-flat white, shadowed with stubble, and mottled with bruises and feverish slashes of scarlet flush on his cheeks. “You’re this determined to beat me?” he rasped at Coulis between labored breaths. “Let’s see…what you’ve got then. I’ll come…with you…I’ll fight you as long as I’m living, but I’ll come, if…if you’ll leave her alone…”

“Damn your hard head, boy!” Coulis grunted. “Knew you wouldn’t believe it till you saw it. You’re not going anywhere but a hospital!”

The major moved to the side with the injured leg. Chad shook his head slightly, then looked up at her, eyes glassy. “Catherine…”

“It’s all right, Chad. C’mon, let’s get you out of here.” She rose to a squat and paused, hoping she and Coulis could get him to her vehicle.

“Hope you’ve been eating your Wheaties, Cath.” She swallowed a yelp as Nick climbed into view, with Warrick, Sara and Gil on his heels.

Coulis’ momentary look of panic melted into something close to amusement. “Another surprise that shouldn’t have been one,” he chuckled. “You were quite right about how some people engender loyalty, Ms Willows.”

Catherine sighed in relief and agreement. Chad looked up and around, seeming a bit more lucid but still confused. “Wha…a welcoming committee?”

“Could say that.” Nick reached down to grip his hand. “You look like hell.”

”Thanks,” Chad replied with a dazed smile. “Beats being dead.”

“I feel ya, dawg,” Warrick snorted. He nudged Coulis aside and helped Nick get Chad onto his one good leg.

Chad swayed and bit his lip, but then the strain in his face and neck eased as he leaned into the other men’s support. “How…”

“One wild guess,” Sara grinned and actually hugged him.

He winced, sore no doubt, but when his eyes met Catherine’s the incredulous gratitude she saw there nearly made her weep . “But you all came?”

“Taking care of our own,” Gil shrugged, a firmness to the words that made it sound like a given.

Sara hurried ahead to find the easiest route down. Nick and Warrick followed, talking light guy-talk to keep Chad alert, with Gil close behind for backup. Catherine and Coulis fell in behind. “After you’re well away,” the major said as they emerged from the rocks, “I’ll roll my vehicle and send out a distress call. My cohorts will be led to believe Chad attacked me and escaped.”

Catherine watched the tattered figure limping in front of her. “If your cohorts saw him leave with you in this condition, I have my doubts as to whether you can persuade them he was capable of that.”

“They won’t find it as implausible as you might.” From a pocket he took a computer disk and handed it to her. “The information on here will help explain why. Chad’s an extraordinary young man, in more ways than the obvious.” He patted his other pockets. “Now where did I stick those—“

A shadow swept across the sky, followed by a bone-piercing crash and a blaze of light that burst the night asunder. The scene burned itself into Catherine’s awareness in the instant of glare: Nick’s SUV parked beside hers, and beyond his the insectoid bulk of a military attack helicopter hovering in the air. She spun and stumbled toward shelter. Hands grabbed her: Gil’s. He hustled her forward, his head ducked, and both fell in a heap behind her vehicle as the explosive flash died. In the scant protection of having two trucks between her and the attackers, she sat up, blinded, and felt around. “Who’s here? Sara, Nick, Warrick?” Quickly she found all three, as sightless as she for the moment. “Chad? Chad?”

“I saw him go between the cars!” Sara panted. “He’s as safe as we are, if he lies low.”

As if to make a liar of her, a sizzle ripped through the air like a high-voltage shock, and a man groaned. Catherine screamed and scrambled to stand, but Gil caught hold of her again. After interminable seconds of trembling panic, the familiar voice yelled, “I’m okay, Catherine, stay down…they don’t want you.” His words made no sense, but Catherine could do nothing about that or anything else. All she could do now, in the black desert silence broken only by the eerie whoosh-whoosh of the chopper, was wait and hope.

+++

Chad landed hard on his stomach and nearly blacked out from the pain. With Nick and Warrick’s help he had almost reached the SUVs parked side by side when the flash grenade exploded. He gritted his teeth and rolled over, and was surprised to find himself alone in the space between the vehicles. The stealthy breath of the hush-copter came from beyond the hood of Nick’s ride, and confused voices and cries from beyond Catherine’s. “…can’t see…” somebody said. They must have faced the blast—Chad’s eyes were briefly dazzled but recovered within seconds. He dragged himself around to look back the way he had come and spied Coulis standing alone on the rock-strewn sand, staring up at the chopper. A trap, Chad thought, his head cleared by a rush of adrenaline. A big elaborate trap, to show off how smart they are.

He wanted to stand and scream defiance, but before he could even sit up a bolt of lightning burst from the copter. Its forked tip struck Coulis full in the chest, and he toppled with a grunt, his clothing ablaze. Chad stared in silent horror for several moments until he realized the noise hitting his ears was Catherine shrieking his name in panic. “I’m okay!” he yelled. “Stay down!” The hush-copter moved slightly, one way and then the other, as if reconnoitering the scene, scanning for something, or someone. “They don’t want you,” he added softer.

Suddenly, he could see the whole thing unfold before him. The copter would wheel slowly around, possibly drop another flare bomb, or fire that energy weapon into the ground a time or two, to flush those hiding behind the trucks. When they ascertained their prey was not among them, they would kill them all to get them out of the way. Then they could wait Chad out, or simply come and get him. He couldn’t fight them off—his right leg felt dead, and every breath stabbed like hara-kiri; Lord only knew what that cracked rib had done. If I give up…No. If I give up they’ll take me, and kill Catherine and the others anyway, just because they can…

Chad blinked and swiped stinging sweat from his eyes. The vision of what was to come had been so real he was fleetingly startled to find it hadn’t happened yet. He reached up and hooked his fingertips in the passenger side windowsill of Nick’s ride, using the scant leverage to muscle himself high enough to peer through the windows. The looming shape of the chopper drifted past, and despair clutched at him. Then he spotted something else, a shape he knew well but had not seen or touched in a long while. He propped his hip against the side of the SUV, and yanked the door open.

+++

Sara frowned when they heard a car door open. “What the…” As Catherine’s vision returned she could see her coworker’s cheek was scraped from a fall. “Chad. Is he trying to hide in there?”

“I don’t know.” Catherine lay on her belly and peered under her vehicle in time to see Chad’s feet vanish.

+++

The bench seat looked inviting, but Chad could not tarry. He got up on his one intact knee and stretched, jaw set against the pain, to reach the gun rack in the back of Nick’s ride. Even if the hush-copter had heat sensors, they couldn’t tell exactly what he was doing. He pulled the hunting rifle off its pegs, then sprawled gasping on the seat. The cushions felt so good under him; the rifle felt comfortable in his hand, evoking memories of weekends with his father. That memory as much as anything urged him up. He checked the gun and slid out the door.

Steadying himself against the side of the big truck, he hobbled toward its rear, to stay in cover as long as he could. He focused on moving, step by slightly squishy step, but a quick look up showed the chopper slowly rising. If they had night vision, they could tell who was where when they got close enough. They want me, he thought again, and quivered despite his best intentions. They want me alive…With one more deep painful breath and a quick prayer Chad stepped around the bumper and into full view. He leaned heavily against the back door, the rifle held along his bad leg and out of sight.

The chopper’s upward movement halted, just as he had expected, and it began to move toward him. Of course, they’ll come for me first, they wouldn’t want to waste energy chasing me, if I could run, and they don’t know I can’t, so they will... His vision blurred, and his thoughts started to ramble; he fought the urge to flee, and focused on the copter’s approach.

+++

“It’s coming closer,” Nick said quietly, and the CSIs flattened themselves uselessly against the ground.

Gill looked under Catherine’s vehicle. “Where is Chad? Still inside?”

“I thought I heard him walking.” Or trying to, Catherine added mentally. She called his name, without reply, and even started to slide under her truck before the increasing noise and wind forced them to lie motionless.

+++

This near, even a hush-copter made an ungodly racket, and the backwash from the propellers nearly upset Chad’s precarious balance. He could see through the tinted glass now, where Dirk Hunter sat at the controls. Oh yeah, he’d want to be sure I saw him kill them—unless he tried to take Catherine for himself. He steadied himself and waited as the chopper drew closer, though it made no move to land. They’ve got a phaser, maybe they’ve got a transporter too. Beam me up, Scotty. Chad almost laughed out loud, hysterically.

The copter inched closer. Chad whipped the rifle to his shoulder in a single motion and sighted in. in his head he could hear his father’s instructions, could almost feel the skilled and powerful hands over his. He opened fire, not at the bullet-proof cabin, but high, at the rotor assembly, and could practically see the shots hit home. The copter’s voice changed from a breathy whisper to a hacking cough, and it rose and tried to pull away.

+++

Behind her SUV, Catherine heard the helicopter start to wheeze and whine. The buffeting wind it kicked up swiftly died. “It’s going.”

“Where?” Warrick puzzled.

“And most importantly why?” Gil added.

Catherine crept to the hood end and dared raise her head to peep over. The chopper was limping away, clearly in trouble. As she opened her mouth to voice relief, it faltered, stalled, and plunged to earth. The earth shook when the craft slammed into it, and then again when the mass of metal exploded with a blast that hurt the eardrums. In the dull natural illumination of the burning wreck, the CSIs slipped from cover. Immediately Catherine ducked between the vehicles and found Nick’s passenger door hanging open. Dark, tacky droplets clung to the handle and side, and her fingers came away red. Stomach churning, she peered inside, but the interior was vacant.

A yell from Nick sent her rushing to the rear of his SUV. Chad lay crumpled in the dirt, shivering. Nick crouched beside him as the others gathered around, and gestured toward the rifle that sat propped with care on its butt against the back door. “He even bothered to set my piece up,” he said, his voice tight, very moved or very angered or both. “Chad? Hey, bud, you’re gonna be okay. Hang tight, we’ve gotta get you in the ride.”

Chad only gasped, eyes closed, and let out a feeble groan. Catherine tossed Warrick the keys to her SUV, and she and Sara scrambled onto the bench seat of Nick’s ‘ride’. The men hefted Chad up into the passenger compartment and settled him, his head resting in Catherine’s lap and his feet in Sara’s. “Nice tennies,” Sara commented. “Old school. We’d better get them off though. Body heat escapes most through the head and feet, so baring them could help a little with the fever—“ Catherine had just enough time to wonder where the unfamiliar shoes had come from, before Sara pulled them off and her discourse ended in a strangled cry. A shallow layer of blood literally sloshed inside, and his shredded socks were saturated and stuck to his feet. With a thought of the bloody footprints at the motel, Catherine struggled to maintain some semblance of control in front of her colleagues. Sara, on the other hand, did not struggle at all. “Oh, wow,” she breathed, and cradled Chad’s wounded feet in her lap with a look of horror, heedless of the mess.

Gil jumped in to ride shotgun and they took off in a plume of desert dust, about the time it occurred to Catherine to wonder where Coulis had gone. She dismissed the thought the next moment; her concerns were only for the man tossing restlessly in her arms. “Nick, have you got any water?” From behind the wheel, he directed Gil to a bottle in the glove box. As she leaned forward to take it, Chad flinched and reached for his left shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“Hurts,” he got out. Carefully Catherine opened his shirt and inspected the area in the dim glow of the SUV’s dome light, but saw only a few bruises. His torso was another story, solid black and blue, and he whimpered when she touched his side. The contusions there literally took the shape of a footprint, she noted just before he jerked and retched, noisily but fruitlessly.

Sara observed with unease clear on her normally cool face. “I read in the paper about a hockey player with those same symptoms. If he’s broken ribs on that left side, one could be impinging on his spleen. They mentioned pain referred to the left shoulder—the Kehr sign, they called it.”

Catherine’s chest tightened with fear. They reached the highway and Nick hit the gas. The water in the bottle sloshed, and Chad’s head turned, his cracked lips parting. “Water…please…”

“I can’t give you much till we know how badly you’re hurt,” Catherine managed. Sara untied a bandana around her neck and handed it over. Catherine clung to shreds of composure while she wet it and moistened Chad’s mouth, then swabbed his hot face and neck. The bottle was barely half full, though. “Do you have any more, Nick? Anything at all?”

“Well…” With a slightly embarrassed air, he pointed under the driver’s seat. Gil dove and came up with a clear glass bottle almost full of pure grain alcohol. “Left over from a springwater party,” Nick admitted.

Gil scrutinized it with a lifted eyebrow. “Pricey sponge bath,” he deadpanned, “but it should work. Alcohol of any type evaporates quickly on contact with the skin, so it’ll help cool him down till we can get him medical care.” He handed the Everclear back, and Catherine splashed it over Chad’s chest and stomach, and pulled up his grimy sleeves to bathe the inner surfaces of his arms. His nails were ripped half off, his fingertips bloody where he had evidently clawed his way up the SUV’s side to reach the gun that had saved them all. He shuddered again, then sighed and slumped against her.

As they raced through the silent night she had leisure to further examine him, straining for the same objective eye she would use in Doc’s morgue—and then that thought, as Chad lay still as a corpse, made her shudder in turn. She did not miss a thing, from the scrapes and cuts that banded his wrists to the tiny tears in the skin at the corners of his mouth, all mute witnesses to the brutal treatment he had suffered at his captors’ hands. Violence was not Catherine’s customary first response to events, however heinous, but right now she devoutly wished for one good shot at Dirk Hunter.

Chad stirred. “Don’t…let them take me again, dad…why do they want…”

“Shhh.” Catherine wet his lips and wiped his face again with Sara’s damp scarf. “Lie still and try to rest till we get to the hospital. Then you can go home.”

“Home…don’t have a home anymore…”

The plaintive mumble flattened the last of Catherine’s defenses. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed his rough cheek, professionalism be damned. “Yes, you do,” she whispered fiercely. “You do. Everything’s going to be all right. You’re safe now—“

“No,” he almost wailed. “They want me back…want me alive…” He started to shake again, harder. Catherine felt his chest, burning hot, then his pulse, fast and thready, and fear gripped her.

Sara helped her rub him down with alcohol again. “Can’t we go any faster? This isn’t breaking the fever, and he may be bleeding internally. He’s going into shock or convulsions or both if we don’t hurry!”

In the rear view mirror Catherine saw Nick glance at his supervisor in the passenger seat, his eyes narrowed. He reached under the dashboard and produced a blue police light, slapped it on the dash and floorboarded it. It would probably have been a reprimand-level offense under normal circumstances. As it was, Gil merely looked at the flashing and spinning blue light with mild interest. The second alcohol rub seemed to at least hold Chad’s fever at bay, and he lapsed into a fitful stupor. “We need a cover story,” Gil said unexpectedly. “The truth’s likely to land us all in padded cells or worse.”

“Why?” Nick challenged while he wove in and out of increasing traffic. “Let people know what their tax dollars are doing. Tell them their government’s funding murder, kidnapping, and torture of innocent—“

“That’s exactly what we can’t do. It’s not ‘the government’, this monolithic entity, or at least we can’t prove it is. And if we could, would it have an impact? Remember, we had Dirk Hunter cold for murder, with all the forensic evidence a prosecutor could want, and couldn’t make it stick. Right now, we should just be glad we got Chad back alive, and try to keep him that way.”

It galled Catherine, but she had to agree. By the time they roared up to UNLV Medical Center’s ER door they had a story in place, something compelling without being too complex. Catherine sat in a plastic chair in the hallway outside the treatment room Chad had been taken into, and tried to find some calm. Brass barreled in, but before she could even groan Gil pulled him aside. In seconds the detective’s scowl of consternation melted into shock. After he left, Gil approached her. “I want to stay long enough to see him,” she said. Gil had the nerve to look surprised. “Yes, I’m on duty. I know what it’ll take for you to cover me even this much, to say nothing of me leading the whole team on a chase around Nevada, and I appreciate it more than I can tell you. But I can’t leave him now. I just can’t.”

Her boss’ grin was small and sly. “Yes, you’re on duty,” he echoed. “We all are. We just resolved a major case, and nobody has interviewed the principal player yet due to his unstable medical status. That’s why I’m assigning you to not move from this hospital until Mr. Ackerman regains consciousness, and your professional judgement is satisfied that you’ve obtained all the necessary information regarding this situation. I don’t care if it takes the rest of your shift and beyond. The city’ll have to cough up some overtime for a change. You stay here. That’s a direct order.”

Catherine could have hugged him. “Thank you,” she managed. He just grinned and left with the rest of the team.

It seemed only moments later when a nurse came to get her. They talked as they navigated the labyrinth of sterile pastels, and the nurse confirmed most of what they had guessed about Chad’s condition. “The fever was from the infected knee, but we’ve got that under control. Right now the spleen is our major concern. The CT scan showed a grade 3 injury—it’s on a scale from 1 to 5—but CT’s can overstate the extent of the damage, so we’ll monitor certain lab levels associated with the spleen overnight: hematocrit, amylase, lipase. If they stabilize and start rising, it’s an indication that it’s healing on its own. If they bottom out, we’ll have to take him into surgery right away and probably remove it. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.” He showed Catherine into a private room where Chad lay quiet, surrounded by a half-moon of machinery. “We had to sedate him to start the IV—he got pretty agitated,” the nurse murmured, his dark face sympathetic. “The drugs have a short half-life, though, so he’ll be coming out of it in a few. It’ll be good for him to wake up with, uh…family?”

What was Catherine to say, how to define herself in relation to him? “No.”

“Mm.” The nurse’s tone was knowing. “Hit the button if you need anything.”

As he left, Catherine pulled a chair to the side of the bed, and sat listening to the peeps of the monitors and watching Chad’s chest rise and fall. The hospital staff had cleaned him up and bandaged everything in sight, as well as starting fluids and medications dripping into his bloodstream. Even with several days’ growth of beard, he still looked so boyish as he slept; but if Catherine had still harbored any doubts about his maturity, they were gone now. Only a man’s strength and courage could have brought him alive and sane out of the nightmare he had clearly endured. She yearned to touch him, but wanted to let him rest. She leaned forward, propped her arms on the edge of the hospital bed’s rail and her chin on her hands, and looked at his tired, bruised face, momentarily at peace. “I love you,” she whispered. There, what had been so hard about that? Was it all the times she had said it to a man without meaning it, or without even knowing what it meant, that had kept her from saying it to him before now? It was easier, of course, to practice it now, when he wasn’t here, in a manner of speaking.

He moved just then, and a light smile danced on his lips. “Don’t say that unless you mean it,” he mumbled. Catherine froze but Chad lay still for some moments, his eyes still closed, his long gingery lashes dusting his freckled cheeks. “Orrr, maybe you’re not really here…maybe I’m dead, and this is heaven…” Under the sheet his long body stretched a little, slow and languid. “Maybe in heaven, you get what you wanted most in life…” Emotion choked her—could he have been waiting, wishing, for something so simple, something she could not bring herself to give him because of her own fear of being found less than the tough broad she had made herself into? Suddenly he caught his breath; his eyelids flickered and rose partway, his eyes still hazy, and he bit his lip as if in distress. “I hope my parents won’t be upset…I never imagined I could want anything more than to see them again, until I met you…”

Days of suppressed fear and grief and guilt overwhelmed Catherine, as if Boulder Dam burst and drowned her beneath its flood. She put her face in her hands and wept, barely aware of the noises around her until bandaged fingertips touched her arm, then closed around it. The mattress moved beneath her, and she looked up to find the head of the bed raised and Chad’s eyes wide open and fixed on her in disbelief. The next thing she knew, she had thrown the rail down and was sitting on the edge of the bed holding him while he gasped her name. “I thought for a minute you were crying because I was dead—or this all was a dream—but it’s not, I’m alive, and you’re real—“

“Yes,” she said as firmly as she could. “And I love you. I love you.” When she moved away far enough to look at him his eyes were rapidly clearing, but if anything he looked even more shocked. It felt so good to have said it, knowing how very close she had come to losing the chance forever, and she sat and feasted on the relief.

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” he finally asked.

“I am!” she laughed through her tears. “Grissom ordered me to stay here till I could conduct a thorough follow-up.”

“Wow. Well, Lord help anybody who countermands an order of Grissom’s!” The aventurine eyes sparked with laughter now, and the sight nearly drove Catherine to new tears of joy.

She sat there all night. They talked a while, and then Chad dozed a while with his free arm (the one not pinned down by IVs) around her. Once she even laid her head on the pillow beside his, though she did not sleep—what a waste of time that would be, with her new-found appreciation of how precious every second with him was. Naturally, the nurse who had escorted her back chose that time to peer in, but instead of scolding he only flashed a toothy grin and vanished. Nurses were among the greatest gossips known to humankind; Catherine could only imagine the conversation that must be going on at the nurses station right now, and couldn’t possibly have cared less.

When Chad tired of talking she filled in the gaps with her own account. Finally the whole story, except for some fuzzy parts that coincided with the onset of Chad’s fever, was pieced together. “You know, truth be told, it was worth it,” Chad concluded. “Because now I know, see? I know what to beware of. And I know what happened to my dad…there was nothing shameful or dishonorable about it. He died under enemy fire, just as surely as if he’d been shot down in Afghanistan or Iraq. He died a hero.”

Catherine nodded in understanding. Perhaps now, with the shade of his past laid to rest, Chad could allow himself to have a life, one she intended to be a full part of. She kissed his stubbly cheek (actually, bruises aside, he didn’t look at all bad that way) and snuggled up to him. Despite his still tenuous physical condition, she felt so confident now. Conceding to her heart had left her with an amazing sense of lightness, promise, hope. She felt like a teenager suddenly, a teenager in love, and she loved the feeling.

In the next instant, her serenity shattered. “Catherine, you’d better go now. I don’t, uh, know, really, how to…We can’t be together anymore.”

He might as well have gut-shot her, from the way his words slammed into her. “What?” she demanded. “Say that again, slowly, so I can be sure I’m slapping you for the right thing.”

“Haven’t you been listening to me? This Workgroup and their buddies, whoever they are, won’t let this go. They won’t let me go. Just because I got away, do you think they’ll say ‘oh well, that’s all folks, olly olly oxen free’? Sorry, no dice. They did something to my dad. Maybe they did something to me, something they don’t even understand themselves.” He threw up his hand, then gestured toward the bedside table where the CD-ROM Catherine had taken from Coulis lay. “Whatever is on there explains it. Coulis said he substituted fake data for that real stuff, but even if he told the truth, he’s dead now. They can find that data, and then they’ll want me even more, so they can find out what’s inside me. And when they want something, they don’t care who gets in their way or what they have to do to get it. They would have killed you out there tonight, Catherine, and your friends, with no more compunction than swatting a mosquito. I can’t let that happen. You need to stay out of my—“

“Oh, hell, no!” she growled. “That’ll play right into their hands, Chad. Don’t you see? Isolating yourself is what made you an easy target to begin with. If you do it again you become that much easier prey. No. That is not an option. I’m not afraid of them.”

“Maybe not for yourself, but what about Lindsey?” he challenged.

Catherine strove not to let him see he had scored. “I’ve taken care of her all her life, and I’ll keep doing it,” she said evasively. “You said Coulis told you about a group opposing the ones who took you; that they wanted to protect your father and were going to protect you. What about them?”

“Coulis might or might not have told the truth about them too. Either way, with him dead, I can’t very well call his boys up and ask for directions to the resistance. That’s not a solution.”

“There has to be a way.” Catherine could be as stubborn as he. She sat straight up and glared at him. “I didn’t go through hell these past days and drag you back from the dead, just so you could dump me.” She knew perfectly well he meant nothing of the sort, but if it stirred him to fight she would try it. “If you think you’re going to use this as an excuse to get rid of me—“

“No!” Chad reached for her and fell back against the pillows, his cheeks trembling. “You’ve got it all wrong, Catherine. You are all I could ever want out of life. I love you more than anything else in this world or any other, but I’d rather be without you and know you’re safe than be afraid for you all the time.”

“Don’t be afraid,” she breathed and took him carefully in her arms. “We’ll find a way, and if we can’t find a way we’ll make a way. I will not lose you again.”

+++

The front page of Wednesday’s Las Vegas Review-Journal prominently featured a story about local private investigator C.L. Ackerman. Supposed dead by his own hand, the newspaper reported, the truth made for even more compelling reading. He had been abducted by an unnamed gang boss to be offered as payment for drug debts to another unnamed gang boss the PI had angered. An anonymous tip had led an intrepid group of police investigators, also unnamed (presumably to protect their undercover status), to the crack house where the hostage was bravely resisting his crazed captors. Though Detective Brass of the LVPD was tight-lipped about further particulars, it was clear that praise was deserved all around.

On an inside page of the same paper’s entertainment section was a small article reporting an announcement made by Houston Tatum, majority owner of the Garces Hotel. The hotel’s popular headliner, singer Chad Ayers, had banged himself up in a rock-climbing accident over the weekend and would be offstage for a few weeks. Persons with tickets to his shows, which normally sold out well in advance, were assured arrangements would be made to admit them to future performances.

Meanwhile, in real life, the doctors treating Chad were dumbfounded at the speed with which his slashed spleen was mending itself. Chad wasn’t entirely clear on what a spleen did, but it was obviously important, and very uncomfortable when damaged. A steady stream of visitors arrived at the hospital, some aware only of the media’s version of reality, others of the actual facts. Somehow it had never occurred to him that this many people gave a crap about him. The realization made the thought of giving it all up even more agonizing.

Over his objections, Catherine took him back to the condo herself after he was released from the hospital. She bustled around settling him in, and then with a quick kiss she mysteriously vanished. Chad sat on his couch, stared out the glass balcony doors at the Strip in the distance, and pondered what to do. She wasn’t going to leave him alone, that was plain, so he would probably have to leave. It wasn’t as if this place, or even Vegas, was home in any real sense. With his training and background, he could transfer his PI license anywhere. The singing he would have to give up, but he probably should have done that long ago; it was only an indulgence for him, an escape from the rigors of his real job. Moving wouldn’t keep the Workgroup of Area 19E from finding him, even if Coulis really had knocked out the tracking device they had put in Chad’s body, but it would draw their attention away from those he loved. His rational brain clicked along, making nice rational plans, while tears spilled soundlessly down his face. “God, I don’t want to do this,” he begged the silence.

The sound of a key in his front door made him wipe his face hastily on his shirt tail. Until he healed enough to get away, he had to get that key back from Catherine, or else change the lock—maybe that would send her a message—

A small cannonball landed on him, squealing and hugging him. Catherine was running to catch up, simultaneously laughing and warning Lindsey not to be too rough with him. Instead, Chad squeezed the child tight, and reminded himself this was why it didn’t matter what he wanted. He put on his best face, pushed the hurt aside and welcomed her excited chatter.

Then Catherine’s pager went off, and a quick phone call left her looking very concerned. “I’m needed in court, now.” Chad panicked. There was no time to take Lindsey elsewhere, but she couldn’t leave her here—he could barely hobble on his heavily bandaged leg, let alone shield a child. Catherine knew it too, she had to, and for the first time he saw real worry in her face. This wasn’t the way he had wanted to make his point, but it was made. Lindsey was already jumping with delight over getting to stay with him though, and if another option had been available it would only have upset and frightened her.

With another quick kiss Catherine raced out the door. Chad sat and fidgeted and wished he could pace. Appearances were getting harder to keep up. Lindsey trotted up to the couch with a book, then stopped and stared at him. “You look tired,” she said gravely. “Mom says you need to rest.”

“I guess so, but what kind of host would I be if I fell asleep and left my guest alone?”

That made her giggle. “I’m not a guest. I’m just me.”

“Well, somebody’s got to take care of you while your mom’s gone.”

“I’m a big girl,” she sniffed. “I can take care of myself for a little while. I want you to get well.” This time Chad laughed, though the laugh held an edge of despair, and let her walk him beside him to lend her pretended support as he went to his bedroom. The Workgroup had lured him out of here to take him; maybe the building security was more than they wanted to be bothered with. His gun was safely back in place, and he would be even less good exhausted. It seemed you never appreciated being well until you weren’t. He stretched out on the bed and nodded off, only to wake with his heart hammering from some ghastly nightmare he could not capture. As he sucked in deep breaths against the twinges of his cracked ribs, a small figure appeared in the doorway. “I heard you yell. Did you have a bad dream?” Some reassuring lie was in order, but Chad was still so rattled he nodded before he realized it. “You wanna tell me about it?”

That sounds just like something Catherine would say. God, this kid’s so much smarter than her years. “I can’t remember it, but thanks for the offer. Did your mom tell you that?”

“Uh huh. She says if you don’t wanna talk about it it’s okay, but if you do it goes away quicker, ‘cause it’s not real.” She padded into the bedroom, her little face serious. “Those people that hurt you were really mean, weren’t they?”

It was another opportune moment for a lie, which Chad could not seem to deliver. “Pretty mean. That’s my job, though. Sometimes that happens. I’m okay.”

Lindsey clenched her tiny fists. “I—I wish I could feed ‘em to the tigers! Or the sharks at the aquarium, or something. Mom was really scared when you were gone. She didn’t want me to know it. The man on the news said you died, and she said it wasn’t true, but she sat in the driveway Sunday night and listened to you sing and cried. So I knew she was scared you might die, or go away and not come back.” She clambered onto the bed and threw her arms around Chad’s neck. “I was scared too.”

Oh, baby, how can I hold you, knowing I may HAVE to go away? “Shh, I’m here.”

The little body snuggled up to him. “Mom says if somebody’s with you it scares the bad dreams away. Do you want me to stay with you while you take your nap? I will if you want me to.”

Fighting back his tears got exponentially harder. To be loved so unselfishly, so unconditionally, was the only thing Chad had ever truly wanted in life, and now it looked as if it were the only thing he could not have. “Thank you, Lindsey,” he managed. “I think that’s the nicest thing anybody’s ever offered to do for me.”

She giggled again and curled up. The next thing Chad knew, he was blinking at the alarm clock, which informed him he had slept for nearly three hours without interruption. As he shifted, Lindsey, still nestled beside him, wriggled, sighed and grunted like a happy puppy. He lay in the quiet and held the child, and prayed with everything in him that things could be different. Eventually, she yawned, stretched and declared, “I’m hungry.”

“Me too. If you’ll go get my phone we can call for pizza.”

They conferred on ingredients, placed their order and were sitting in the kitchen nook playing Uno when Catherine returned. “Get your things, Lindsey. We need to get you home. You have camp tomorrow, remember?”

“But Mom, I took a nap. I’m not tired. And we just ordered pizza!”

Catherine’s mouth tightened. “Get your things anyway, and you can stay to eat.”

Lindsey rolled her eyes at Chad with all the drama she could muster and went off to gather her belongings. “You’re in a mighty big hurry to get your daughter out of here, for someone who says she’s not afraid of anything,” Chad said, his voice low. If he could summon up some nastiness maybe he could push her away—better that than see her come to harm.

Her only response was to cross the living room, crouch in front of his chair and take his bandaged hands in hers. He had even thought of lying to her, of exaggerating the cruelty of his kidnappers to scare her off; but no torture could have racked him as much as her touch, when he knew soon he would have to go on without it. “I’ve got to take care of her, Chad.”

“I know. I’m trying to do that too. My dad sacrificed so much to protect me, and I can’t do less for her. I love her like my own flesh and blood. I want to protect her, and protect you.”

“That goes both ways. I am going to take care of you, of us, whether you like it or not. We will find a way.”

He should be arguing, angering her, but he was just so weary of it all. “I want to,” he sighed, “but I can’t figure out how.” She pressed the backs of his hands to her cheeks. If Chad had had the temerity to hand God a wish list of components for the perfect woman, it would have added up to this one. To be trapped like this was the vilest joke imaginable.

The doorbell buzzed. Lindsey sat on the floor by the door filling up her backpack, and scrambled to her feet. “Who is it?” she sang out.

Catherine rose to her feet with a start, but at the reply of “Pizza!” Lindsey gleefully opened the door before either adult could call out. Only a petite red-haired woman with a pizza sack in her hands and a messenger bag over her shoulder stood in the doorway, but Chad did not relax. While Lindsey had scampered off in search of his cel phone for the promised pizza, he had checked his gun and tucked it in its usual place at his back. If need arose, he hoped he could manage it. “Hello, everyone!” the woman said, with an extra bright smile for Lindsey. She strolled in, set the sack down on the counter between the living room and kitchen, and scrutinized the place with a keen eye. “Glad to see you’ve got company,” she said to Chad. “After what you’ve been through, it’s much better to not be alone.” Chad thought she must be a great reader of the newspapers, to have recognized him from one deliberately fuzzy photo in the article on his fictional ordeal. The appropriately humble reply he started to formulate fell to pieces when she added, “I suppose Major Coulis told you to expect me.”

Terror gripped him and flung him out of his body. As if from a great distance, he saw Catherine start to move. Yes, go, get Lindsey and get out—Too late; if the building security had been breached there would be thugs out in the corridor or the elevator, or snipers in the parking lot. It was too late to run, and Catherine didn’t. Instead, she took only a few nonchalant steps, placing herself between Chad and the interloper. She meant that taking care of him thing, and he was ashamed to find himself weak enough to be comforted by it. “Lindsey, come here.” Eager little hands grabbed for the pizza bag. “Don’t touch that!”

“But Mom, it’s getting cold—“

“Lindsey!” Catherine snapped, and the child pouted and flopped down on the couch.

The woman watched with an air of puzzlement. “Cold pizza’s fine for breakfast straight out of the fridge, but cold pizza for supper when you’re ready for hot is not.”

“How stupid do you think we are?” Tension drew Chad’s voice into a sarcastic drawl.

“I didn’t say anyone was stupid.” Her frown deepened. “It just seems unproductive to waste a very good pizza.” She gestured toward the paper bag. “I like this place—how they won’t use boxes because they insist cardboard leaves an aftertaste? They’re right too. Sometimes the small things count most.”

Chad’s hand crept toward the small of his back. “In that case, why don’t you join us?”

“Don’t mind if I do.” The woman reached into the bag. Catherine drifted toward her purse on the near end of the counter, as if to pay; but Chad knew her mind was on the gun in there, not her wallet. She still moved casually, with that step that was so sensual without even trying—the stripper strut he loved to tease her about, and often sparked a little flashback to her past career for his troubles. All that emerged from the sack was a huge pizza, though. The visitor pulled off a slice, then paused with her eyes half closed as though asking grace before she took a bite. “Mm. Could use some black olives. You must’ve ordered double mushrooms, though, and that almost makes up for it…mmm. Good thing you got a jumbo.” Chad distinctly remembered ordering a medium, but sure enough, there was the biggie. “So what are you folks waiting for? Dig in.”

“Mom, I’m really, really hungry,” Lindsey whined.

“Go to the bedroom, Lindsey.”

“Moooom!”

“Go with her, Catherine. I’ll take care of this.” How he would do that Chad had no idea, but he had to and he would, by whatever means necessary. “Go!”

“No, Chad, I can’t leave y—“

Catherine’s rant was stopped before it got started, by the unexpected sound of laughter. “Oh, lighten up, you two!” the stranger demanded, clearly torn between amusement and exasperation. “Your love should be burning brighter than the Strip! Instead you’re in here arguing over which one would throw themselves in front of a truck quicker for the other.” She giggled some more and even wiped her eyes. “Sorry. I—know a couple—you remind me very much of them, some years ago.” Her mouth curved in a soft smile, and her thoughts seemed far away for a moment. Then her gaze sharpened, and she looked from Catherine’s wary face to Chad’s. “Coulis did tell you, didn’t he? Not about me specifically, I’m sure, but that we would contact you as soon as we could.”

“That who would contact me about what?” Chad said with care.

The woman halted, half-eaten pizza crust in hand. “About the Workgroup. To tell you not to worry about them. They’ve been informed that you and yours are under our protection now, and to back off. They have no choice. They don’t want to push us to a confrontation. In fact, if they’re smart they should realize that we could take any harm that should come to you or yours now as aggression on their part, so it would behoove them to be mindful of your safety too.” She finished the slice and licked stray sauce off her finger. “So the very people who would threaten you are forced to guard you. Nice irony, don’t you think?”

Her demeanor was so unlike that of his abductors that hope touched Chad for the first time, albeit tempered by caution. “The major told me there were people in opposition to the ones he worked for. There wasn’t time for him to tell me much else, though.”

The visitor sobered. “We would have brought him out of the Workgroup, but he chose to remain there for a number of reasons, not the least of which, it turns out, was you, Chad. He felt considerable guilt for his inaction when your father was executed, and wanted to make amends in some way. Perhaps in the end he did. He was a good man and we will miss him.” She sighed. “Well, now. You were not given all the information you should have had, so I apologize for barging in the way I did. It’s no wonder you were suspicious. You are, though, aware at least of our existence, and our opposition to the Workgroup and their—Associates.” She fairly spat the word. “Major Coulis originally contacted us to help him get you out of Area 19E. Later, he got in touch again to tell us he had found a way to get you safely back to your family.” She grinned toward Catherine. “Knowing your history we were puzzled at that, but I see now. We were taking that statement a little more literally than he meant it.”

“Sounds like everybody knows my ‘history’ except me,” Chad said sourly. “Tell me what you know about my history. Tell me about my father.”

The woman looked sad. “That was just after we—I came into the Opposition. Major Coulis told us Sergeant Ackerman was defying the Workgroup and needed help. We offered it, but he refused us. Suspicion, pride, we still don’t know exactly why. We don’t force ourselves on anyone, so we backed off, and when we tried again…it was too late. We didn’t expect them to be so abruptly vindictive. That was our mistake. If you’re willing to trust us, though, we can keep you safe, and maybe make up in part for what we were unable to do for him.”

“It’s not my personal safety I’m concerned about,” Chad admitted.

“As teenagers like to say—duh,” she chided, but with a gentle good humor. “If you’ve noticed, I haven’t referred to you, but to you and yours. Your security is meaningless if those you love remain exposed to risk. I know, believe me.”

Catherine crossed to the couch and sat down beside s still sulky Lindsey. “You offer a lot. What do you want in return?”

“In return? Nothing. Circumstances will arise in which your skills, knowledge, and unique traits will be needed to help someone else. It always happens, and we hope you will respond. That’s our payback.—or pay forward, rather.”

“Traits.” Chad seized on the word, the same word Coulis had used. “You’ve told me some things I already knew. So now tell me something I don’t. I was told that I have…some kind of ‘traits’, that they resulted from something the Workgroup and their pals did to my father, or to me. What does that mean?”

The stranger pressed her lips together in thought. “Hard to say exactly. There are certainly some things they look for—enhanced perception, increased endurance, fast healing—that emerge naturally, and can be indicators of other more, uh, unusual, latent abilities. The ability to perceive patterns in events, to the extent that it’s almost like seeing the past or the future, is one.” Chad thought of his experience in the desert, and realized it had happened numerous times before while he was on cases. “If the Workgroup believed you were manifesting such, they would have conducted a protracted battery of medical tests. With enough positive results, there are—procedures—the Associates would have subjected you to, to wake those potentialities for their own use.” The simple bluntness of her words made them all the more chilling. The Workgroup had so readily accepted Coulis’ cover story about taking Chad as a ‘gift’ to their Associates. He tried not to shiver, but something must have shown in his eyes, and the woman’s nod was compassionate. “I know. Something similar happened to me. I’m thankful you were spared that, and we will keep it from you, I promise. Without test data, though, I’m afraid I can’t be more specific about your situation.”

Catherine had taken her purse to her seat. Now she dove into it and brought out Coulis’ CD-ROM. “This might be what you mean. I’ve tried to decode it, but I can’t, and the plain text was lost.”

Chad couldn’t decide whether to be horrified or grateful when she handed the disk to the woman. Catherine wanted so much for this uncertainty to be resolved, and so did he. But was this the answer, to trust their lives, and Lindsey’s, to another batch of shadowy figures? Did he dare take a side in a war he knew nothing about? “I want to believe you,” he said, and again the woman smiled that soft smile.

“You really do remind me of someone I know,” she said.

“This is all so…vague, though. Who are you?”

“I’ve told you who we are, more or less. As for me, that’s not so important, although you can call me Starbuck if you like.”

“Like the coffee?” Lindsey chimed in.

“Oh, that name goes back farther than that.” The woman’s smile at the little girl seemed genuine enough. “As does the Workgroup, or its antecedents, and the Opposition. This balance of power has held for a long time. In the past the Associates have done as they pleased, but right now they don’t dare attack us openly. One day that may change, but not in our lifetimes, or even Lindsey’s. So I’m told, by someone who sees the patterns in events very well.” She approached Chad, feeling around in the breast pocket of her blouse, and laid a tiny round object in his hand. He looked down at it, and was certain he felt his heart stop. He held an ancient coin, its strange half-legible markings dark with age. “Do you recognize that?”

“Yes,” he breathed. “It was…I saw it in Dad’s coffin. We didn’t know where it came from.”

“It wasn’t that one, of course, but one like it. My…one of my colleagues attended your father’s funeral, and left it as a promise of sorts. We watched your mother and you for a while, but from a distance. To use a metaphor, we were never called in on the case, so we had no jurisdiction.” Chad nodded, and saw Catherine do the same; both with law enforcement training, the comparison made apt if tragic sense to them. “Free choice is the foundation of all we do. We don’t even approach unless invited, so we won’t seem to pressure anyone. The Workgroup appeared to lose interest in you, so we hoped you wouldn’t draw their eyes again. Perhaps it was inevitable you would, though. I never met your father, but according to those who did you are very like him. He made his choice in this situation. Now it’s your turn, apparently.”

“He didn’t choose.” How different things might have been if he had—but wasn’t that what Chad had just been wishing for, for a chance to make things different? He was more proud to be compared to his father than he ever had been, and yet right now walking in those shoes might not be the best path.

“Not choosing is a choice too,” the woman called Starbuck reminded him.

Clearly tired of sitting while adults debated, Lindsey hopped up and came to look into Chad’s hand. “Cool! Can I have one?”

The woman grinned. “It’s very special, and very, very old. Do you think you can take care of it?” At the child’s emphatic nod, she hunted in a pocket of her pants. “Here, I only brought two, but you can have mine. I’ll get another.” She pulled a second coin from her chest pocket and gave Lindsey both. “The other one is for your mom, if she wants it.”

Catherine came to join the little group. Delighted, Lindsey held her prizes up to show her. “If I want it?” she asked.

“It’s our token. Those who see it and are aware will know you are under our guard and not to be disturbed. It’s your decision, though.” The woman stood quietly, and even lowered her eyes, as if in meditation or prayer.

Chad turned the archaic coin over in his hand. Frankly, he felt the decision had almost made itself. “I can’t speak for Catherine, but I wouldn’t trust those clowns at 19E as far as I could dropkick them. I think I can trust you.”

As he spoke, the woman lifted her head, and now sighed and smiled. “Good. Thank you.” She laid her hand over his and squeezed gently. “Catherine?”

Catherine looked relieved as well. “I’m a scientist. Facts are my purview. I’ve seen the brutality those people are capable of…what they did to Chad…” Her voice faltered, and he felt suddenly and supremely unworthy of such love. “I don’t play hunches much, but I don’t believe you would do that. I don’t have the background to make an informed choice, but he does. If he trusts you, then I feel I can.”

“Intuition’s part of science too,” Starbuck chuckled, and hugged Catherine, much to her obvious surprise. “Well, now that that’s settled, I should leave you folks to eat in peace, unless there’s something else I can do for you.”

Another fear rose and struck Chad. “There is one more thing. When they took me they…I was told they put—something—inside me, a tracking device. Major Coulis said he deactivated it, but that you could remove it.”

The woman nodded. “I can, but if it’s been neutralized—“

“No. I want it out. I don’t want anything of theirs in me, or around me.” Chad swallowed hard, surprised to find he was almost shaking again. “Please. I want it out.”

Again, Starbuck’s eyes said she understood. Had they done this to her too, and why? From the messenger bag she pulled a device, a larger version of Coulis’. “Where is it?” He touched his left bicep.

“The hospital X-rayed your shoulder and nothing showed up,” Catherine objected. “I wondered if that was just something they told you to frighten you, and make you less likely to try to escape.”

“The microchips they use are too small, barely visible to a knowledgeable eye, and they’re not radiopaque anyway.” At the woman’s direction Chad pulled his shirt sleeve up, and she moved the apparatus across his skin. “There it is, the little bastard. Hold still. Removal hurts more than implantation-“

“No!” Lindsey’s sudden cry startled them all. She scrambled onto Chad’s lap and hugged him tightly. “I don’t want anybody to hurt him anymore!”

Chad and Catherine both tried to calm her. “Lindsey?” Starbuck said gently, and when she had the child’s attention continued, “Have you ever known somebody who had an operation? Something is in them making them sick, and the doctor takes it out. They’re sore for a while, but then they’re much better.” Lindsey nodded, her tearful little face tearing Chad’s heart out. “I’m a doctor. Chad doesn’t need an operation, but there is something inside him that needs to come out. It’ll hurt like getting a shot, but then he’ll be better.”

“I really want this, Lindsey,” Chad told her. “I really, really do. I don’t mind if it hurts a little.”

She sniffled, and then lifted her head with an effort at calm that was unsettlingly like her mother. “You want me to hold your hand? Then maybe it won’t hurt so bad.”

“That would be great,” he said. Catherine squatted beside his chair as Lindsey slid off his lap, and put her arms around both of them. In the midst of such madness, it was almost funny how Chad felt as secure as he ever had.

Starbuck ran the device over his skin again, then pressed it to his arm, and he felt a sharp sting. The object she showed them was miniscule even under magnification, intricate and nasty-looking like some nano-engineered insect. “Yet another well-laid plan screwed,” she declared happily. “Pardon my language, I’m a Navy brat. Whew, this has taken longer than I expected! Your pizza’s probably cold, and my ride will be sending out a search party.” She gathered her things and started for the door. “We change our means of contact regularly, but we’ll get you in the loop. I’ll take this disk to a good code-breaker I know, and tell you if we get anything out of it. For now, welcome back to real life. Oh, and Chad—I’m told we’re distant cousins, so when you and Catherine get around to setting a wedding date I do expect an invitation.”

She was gone before he could scrape his jaw off the floor. Catherine gasped too, and then, true to form, she dashed out the door in pursuit. Lindsey watched her go, then looked up at Chad. “Are you really gonna marry Mom?”

“That’s not altogether my decision, baby.”

“But you want to, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Chad said quietly. “I want to. I love your mom a lot, and I love you a lot too…and it’s been a long time since I’ve had a family, and I’d like to be part of yours. I want that more than anything, but it has to be okay with both of you first.”

“Good!” she squealed and nearly strangled him with another hug. “’Cause I know Mom loves you too. And I love you soooo much and I don’t ever want you to go away, not ever!”

“Then I won’t, sweetie,” he whispered and hugged her. “I promise I won’t. I’ll talk to your mom about it later.” Catherine might not want to take that step—it was understandable, the way she had been burned in the past—but Chad did not intend to let her out of his life, now or ever, whatever form their relationship took. “Right now I’m starving! Let’s see how cold that pizza is.”

It was tolerable, and they were enjoying it when Catherine returned. “She met a man at the front door,” she reported. “Tall, thin, dark hair going gray. They exchanged words, walked to an old pickup with their arms around each other and left.” The couple Starbuck had said with such fondness he and Catherine reminded her of? Chad suspected so.

After the pizza was demolished, Catherine took a reluctant Lindsey home to sleep in her own bed. Chad cleaned up, laughed at himself for doing it, and went out to the balcony for some fresh air, and the view he had thought he might soon lose forever. Even as cheesy as it could be, the Strip at dusk had its own beauty. As he leaned on the rail and took it in, his cel beeped. “Yo, Chad, how ya doin’?” said the voice on the other end.

“Hey, Nick,” Chad replied with some surprise. “Holding my own, I guess. I, uh, was pretty out of it Monday, so I didn’t really get to thank you all. You went far out of your way for me.”

“No biggie. You’ve been holdin’ out on me, though. That was some piece of shooting out there.”

“Luck. Or blessing, or whatever. I’m seriously rusty with long firearms.”

“I take it out on the weekends to practice. You ought to come with me sometime.”

“Yeah…maybe I will. Thanks. I haven’t had the time—or rather I haven’t taken the time. But there are a lot of things I haven’t taken the time for, that I’m deciding now I need to.”

“I heard that.”

Through the open glass doors Chad heard a key turn in his front lock, and breathed a prayer of relief that he did not have to fear that sound. “Gotta go, man. Thank everybody for me, will you?”

“You bet. Later.”

Catherine had halted just inside the front door. Chad limped inside, suddenly tongue-tied. With the push of crisis gone, he was unsure—how do you tell someone she truly is the most important thing on the planet to you? He stopped at the end of the couch, stared down at his big sore feet in their big awkward slippers (he never wore slippers, but the cuts needed cushioning till they healed) and saw something else. “I was going to call you Saturday night when I got home from the Garces, to tell you you left those here.” He nudged her red shoes with his toe. “Actually, it was to see if you’d answer the phone, or hang up on me if you did answer, or whatever.”

“I saw them there, when I came in here Sunday to—to process the place.” He still got shaky at the thought of her working a scene she took to be that of his own death. “They were sitting there so neatly, and the rest its usual chaos…”

“Hey, allow me to draw your attention to the fact that I just cleaned up the pizza remains,” he protested, sure she’d laugh.

Instead, her eyes overflowed with tears. “I couldn’t stop thinking about all the times I bitched about the mess, all the things I said to you that I shouldn’t have, and mostly all the things I should have said and didn’t, and how I would never be able to.” They moved together as if pulled by the same invisible thread. “And every one of those started and ended with I love you,” she murmured, her face pressed to his shoulder.

“What about me?” Chad forced out past the lump in his throat. “What about all the things I said to you and never backed up with action? I love you, Catherine. I am not wasting any more time on my past, not after it almost cost me our present and our future. Not to sound presumptuous, or anything, but—“

“I agree,” she said, probably the sweetest two words he had ever heard. They stood and held each other for a long time, while he imagined how two other words might sound from her beautiful mouth. Her kiss made him feel like a dry well being refilled. He slowly drew her lower lip into his mouth and gently sucked on it; then with his tongue, he traced the edge of the lip to the crease where it met her chin. “Chad…”

“I read this online last week. According to traditional Chinese medicine, this point right here,” he flicked his tongue tip for emphasis, “is at one end of a meridian that runs straight to…”

He nibbled on the relevant area a little more. Catherine turned her head, gasping. “Well, if it runs straight for much longer I—And we shouldn’t, not right now, you’re hurt and—“

“Didn’t you read my discharge instructions from the hospital?” he grinned evilly. “I have doctor’s permission to resume ‘normal levels of sexual activity’. Now, who defined ‘normal levels’ for them I don’t know, but far be it from me to challenge their professional judgement. How about you?”

She looked up at him and grinned, and they dashed for the bedroom like two teenagers with the house to themselves for an evening. (At least Chad guessed so—he had had so few girlfriends in his geeky adolescence that he really had nothing to judge by.) His mouth barely left Catherine’s as he unzipped her top and unhooked her bra, with no help from her, which left him feeling even more pleased with himself. Her hands slid under his shirt, then halted when they contacted the binder wrapped around his midsection to support his ribs. “Chad, are you sure we should? I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Lindsey really does get it from you,” he chuckled and slid out of his shirt. “Both of you so concerned about my health.”

“We are!” she insisted.

“I know.” He kissed her again. “And I love you even more for it, but I’m not fragile. Hey, you just got me going, don’t shut me down now!”

Her lifted eyebrows said she understood—he meant more than right now. Early in their relationship, he had been so uncertain, his feelings for her so intense they scared him; but she had welcomed them, welcomed him, and freed him to love her the way they both wanted. Still, she hesitated, and even stepped back. “I can wait, Chad.”

“I can’t! I can’t spend one more minute without you. Don’t make me chase you,” he mock-warned and moved forward as if stalking her.

Their eyes met, and she threw her head back in laughter. “It’s hard to chase something that won’t run!”

They landed on the bed in a glorious tangle of emotion, their whispers to each other alternately loving and lovingly nasty. Catherine giggled one minute and gasped the next. Chad kissed down her chest, reveling in the softness of her breasts against his cheeks, and continued down her body with its light sheen of new sweat. He slipped her pants off, and lost himself in her, the warmth and smell and taste of her, the change in her crisp ‘professional’ voice when she moaned his name. When he rose to his knees to get his pants down he was awkward, favoring his bum leg but finally giving up and trying some weight on it. Catherine gazed up at him, but then her brow creased. “Doesn’t it hurt?” He shook his head; it really didn’t, oddly. Her frown deepened. “She said they would look for unusually quick healing, that it was a sign you were…what they wanted.”

“Fine. Let ‘em want. Bet they’d love to see the good use I’m putting it to right now, huh?” Chad put his fingers to her lips. “It’s not theirs. I’m not theirs. And I won’t let them run our lives.”

Catherine nipped at his fingertips and then pulled him down to her. “You’re right. You’re not theirs. You’re mine, and I love you, mister.” She tugged his underwear down, and with the tips of her nails traced the creases where his legs met his butt. The shivers that shot through him now had nothing to do with fever, except the fever of desire. He bit his lip and drew a ragged breath, and saw her smile, pleased with herself now.

He was ready for her, but when he entered her fully he paused. She didn’t have to ask anymore; he knew she liked this, a still moment to feel him inside her. He liked it too; it gave him a strange warm sense of embrace, and acceptance. She sighed, and looked up at him and smiled again. “C’mon,” she said, and he did, directing their dance toward the peak. Watching her arch and strain, feeling her squeeze around him, drew Chad’s arousal higher with hers, thrusting, reaching, until their voices rose in a crescendo of climax.

Sweat-soaked and unsteady, Chad dropped beside Catherine and pulled her into his arms. “I hate being sick,” he panted when he could speak. “I’m beat. It’ll be at least an hour before I can do it again.”

“As opposed to your usual? Remember that time you—“

“Don’t start.” They lay and snickered, and Catherine lazily tickled Chad’s chest with her fingernails. “Ahh, that feels so good. It really is the little things that count. Like that, when you scritch at my hair like that—“ Catherine suddenly dissolved into new giggles. “What’s so funny?”

“Scritching,” she gasped. “Never mind, it’s a long story. Remind me to tell you sometime.” He pretended to pout, and she laid her head on him and laughed some more, until without warning she started to cry quietly. “I never felt a part of me would die with another person, until I walked in this room that day thinking you were never coming back to me…”

Chad held her close to comfort her, reminded again of Lindsey. Love, whether sexual or not, had its constants. “I’m sorry, Catherine. I would never have wished this craziness on you. I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to make it up to you, if you’ll let me.”

He kissed her wet cheeks, and she rested against him again. “That reminds me,” she murmured. “How about this marriage thing?”

Chad was truly shocked. “Uh, well,” he stammered, “I, um, didn’t figure you took it seriously.”

“I hear from a reliable source that you did.”

He could always deny it, tell her Lindsey had misunderstood—he didn’t want her to feel coerced—but he could not find it in himself to do it. “Yes, I did, but I’ll understand if you don’t.”

“I do,” Catherine said simply, and Chad thought his heart might burst with joy at hearing those two words he had dreamt of. "So, I repeat, how do you want to do this?"

“Well,” he grinned after a moment, “we can do it in church—or I know this great Elvis…”

(They got Elvis, but that’s another story…)

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Much thanks to those who have written with their comments. Your feedback is always coveted.

The LBFCA, especially my beloved fellow Fic Ho’s, have supported me in both my ‘play’ writing (like this) and my ‘RL’ writing. I luv you all. THANK YOU!

FYI, Area 19 does exist. The only thing in this story about it that is not based on actual reports is the letter E…

Dedicated once again, with infinite love and lechery, to the real C.A.

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~Posted 6.11.2005~

You can contact the author at theleewit@mindspring.com

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