“What is it?” The men in the room winced in fear at the cold controlled voice.

“Sir, we captured an intruder.” The man felt like a fool as Pierce turned his dark endless eyes on him. The man was a vast wasteland of emotion, unyielding and dead. His eyes were able to capture the life of those around him and suck it dry. Fear. His eyes made a person fear .

“Is he alive?” The group collectively nodded their heads.

“He's unconscious.” Pierce just noted it and gestured for them to lead them to the new prisoner.

“DeLuca. It’s DeLuca.” Pierce looked at the man lying in a heap on the floor, his hands bound in his own handcuffs. “Where there’s a DeLuca there’s usually a Guerin. Find his cop phone and beeper and destroy them.” Pierce paused. “No. Take them away from here. Far away, and bury them. They’ll send out a homing beacon, but destruction would alert them immediately.”

One of the men passed Sean’s cell and beeper to another. They watched as the second man left, feeling he was lucky to be dismissed from Pierce’s presence in one piece.

“You want us to take care of him, boss?”

Pierce turned cold eyes on the man. “Is Perdy still alive?”

“Yes.”

Pierce nodded. “He came for his witness. It’s just a little shy of forty-eight hours before the case is dismissed. I need Perdy alive until then. DeLuca, now he’s a problem.” Pierce looked off thinking. “Hang DeLuca. Teach him a lesson, but don’t kill him. Just make our company...uncomfortable.”

“You want information?” Pierce looked at the man, Kassen. He had replaced Pierce’s last frontman, the one who died in the explosion a year ago. The man was an idiot.

“Men such as he don’t talk, and no amount of persuasion will work. There’s nothing he has that I need. I know everything.” Pierce looked at his operation that had been running unimpeded for eight months. Guerin and DeLuca between them had taken out six of his larger drug operations, three guns, and four numbers over the last year. They were becoming a problem instead of a source of amusement. “Hurt him, but don’t kill him. Let him be a lesson to the others. A dead cop will just become a martyr to the cause, and Guerin won’t rest until he finds me and destroys my empire.” Pierce laughed. “My small little empire in a sea of desert on a small defenseless world.”

Pierce walked away with his normal entourage of men following. Stopping to look at DeLuca one more time, he sneered. So few men worth admiring, but this one was something. Something to fear.

“Close shop. Move out the products and cut the losses. Where DeLuca is, Guerin will follow and I don’t want him to find my goodies. Keep Perdy with DeLuca. Once Thursday morning eight a.m. hits and the case is dismissed, kill Perdy and leave his dead carcass with DeLuca’s barely alive body.”

Pierce walked out as a swath of men cleared his path. Pierce paused one more time on his way out, and without turning back dictated his demands. “When the case is dismissed, kill Rubio. Jason Rubio turned evidence. I want his body on display. Put it in the DA’s bed. Or better yet, the new ADA’s. A sort of ‘Welcome to Roswell’ present.” He laughed on his way out.

~~~

Max looked at Michael as he got into the car. The man look harried and unkempt. His irritation was evident in the movement of his hands and the clenching of his jaw.

“What’s up, partner?”

“Maria. She's been sick since early this morning, and just when she finally settled down and was resting her boss called.” Michael spoke through gritted teeth. “He wants her in for a special departmental meeting this morning. I told her to tell him to f-uck himself and take a sick day, but Maria refused. She was getting ready to go in when I left.”

“What’s wrong? Maria’s sick?”

“I think it’s morning sickness, because I’m feeling queasy too. Maria’s convinced it’s more. Her guess is she’s catching the flu.” Michael was still frowning. The flu? She didn’t have the body aches, scratchy throat or any of the things she had when she had the flu last fall.

“Any contact from Maria’s uncle?”

“No. He called. Said that the Dump in this area had closed and The Collector had moved on. The locals were looking for the new Dump, but so far they can’t find anything. He said that once they knew anything they would call.”

Max just nodded. “I expected them to be faster.”

“So did I, but I think they're reluctant to give up the new site since it’s where they dump as well. I suspect they'll search a few more days and then claim to not know anything.”

"What happened the other night, Michael?” Max had wanted to know before, but he hadn't pushed it. The other three men were in bad shape once they lost their mark. It had been close...so close. All Michael seemed to want to do was go home to Maria.

“He’s a hunter. He has the instinct, or at least the understanding. I could feel the shift in the atmosphere when he went on the hunt. I just didn’t know he would feel us coming for him.”

Max sat staring forward at the red light thinking hard about what that meant. “You realize that we’re touching some strange sh-it here, right? You and I, we’ve had this connection. Now you have one with Maria that is so multi-layered that I can’t comprehend all its twists and turns. And now this thing you’ve got going with Sean and Alex. What frickin’ twilight zone have we entered?”

“I don’t know. But I do know one thing, it feels natural. It feels righteous and good. The thing with Maria is like...hell I don’t know. What words do you say to express how much one person can be a part of you? She just knows me, loves me, and I just know that I’ll die to protect her and keep that feeling. It’s like all the comfort, safety and home feelings I associated with Mikey...with Dad...were given back and multiplied.” Michael put his hands in his lap looking down at them and then over at Max. “Sometimes, I think he’s still watching over me, saving me again, and the day I found Maria it was as if he gave me a gift. She scared me. It was like touching home again, but more of a home than I've ever known. So for the entire last year while we've been together, I've had this fear inside....like this quaking dread that if I lose her, I’ll lose myself.”

“Is that why you're so crazily possessive at times?”

“Maybe. I never asked for this, or even wanted to be this...dependent on someone.”

“Vulnerable. She makes you vulnerable.”

Michael just nodded. “The need to protect her and to keep her safe isn’t just about her. It’s about me. I know that she's my weakness, and now with the baby coming...”

“It’s worse.”

“Oh, hell yeah! I’m like this beast, needing to see her marked by me, like a sign of possession to the outer world, and I feel...primal.” Michael ran a hand over his brow. “If I were an animal I’d say I was marking my territory.”

Max glanced over at Michael in concern and with a touch of apprehension. “Please don’t tell me you're pissing on your fiancée because….Actually, no! Don’t tell me. I just don’t even want to know!”

Michael laughed, a real deep laugh. “No, I’m not! I think even Maria would have a problem with that. And these DeLucas seem to be very open about most things. Pissing on Maria? Dammit, Maxwell where your mind goes sometimes is frightening. You’re one sick f-uck.”

“ I’m sick? Ha!” Max said as they pulled into the PD garage. Both men headed for the elevators. “Hello? Even I know that if I had a strong impulse to put my brand on a woman, to mark her as my personal property, I’d at least start by buying her a frickin’ engagement ring!” Max said as he stepped into the elevator.

Michael stood stunned in the doorway, staring at his partner. His face suddenly clouded and his brows furled in dark anger.

“Dammit, Maxwell! How long were you going to wait before reminding me about the damn ring?” Michael got on the elevator all huffy, glaring at two other officers trying to enter with them. Both men just held up their hands and backed off. “At lunch we’re going to a damn bookstore or something. Someone’s had to have written a manual or something.”

Max just leaned up against the elevator wall. “Sure, The Loser’s Guide to Relationships .” Max ignored Michael’s growl. “ Zen, and the Art of Guerin Bumbling! No, no... Everything You Wanted To Know about Proposing, but Were Afraid to Ask .” Michael just waved his finger at his partner as he exited the elevator. “ The Prince Charming Complex: Why I’m Not A Man Unless My Intended Thinks I’m A Loser or Dr. GuerinLove and How I Came To Be Single .” Max kept rattling off titles. “Oh, this is the best one-- Proposing for Dummies! ”

“F-uck off!”

Max did a fair 'Michael voice' raised in horror and exasperation. “A ring? I was supposed to buy her a ring?” Max followed his fuming partner to their desks in the bullpen. “Hey, Michael, great thought...let's buy a gross of Cracker Jacks and maybe you’ll find a toy ring inside!”

~~~

Maria was barely able to sit through the staff meeting. Her hands were sweating and an empty feeling in her stomach filled her with nausea. Kenneth Price’s voice was at such a pitch that it mimicked her churning stomach. If he didn’t wind down his nasally whining tones soon, Maria was going to toss her cookies on his shoes.

Michael had been right. She should’ve stayed home. Her mother and Isabel were off together working on The Wedding since Isabel only worked the crisis line at night. They were having a merry time and Maria was smart enough to leave them to it. After work, she suspected they’d rope Liz into the fun fest. Both Isabel and Liz had dropped off floorplans for their loft on her doorstep in less than twenty-four hours. Maria looked at them and then called both women to let them know that she couldn’t do two different floorplans and they needed to come to an agreement.

“Maria?” Maria just groaned.

“Professor Price?” Maria looked at him with a growing trepidation. He knew. He had figured it out.

“Are you alright? You look ill. Your secretary told me that you were sick yesterday.”

“I was. Sick today, too.” Price just nodded. That he could see.

“Thanks for coming in for the meeting.” Maria just nodded and waited for the other shoe to drop. “I really wanted to talk to you about the Foundation.”

“Professor Price...”

“Ken. Call me Ken.” Maria felt the queasiness increase as he smiled at her.

“Ken, I’d love to talk to you about the Foundation, but I'm afraid this isn’t the time.”

“It should only take a few moments, Maria.”

Maria leaned forward and grabbed his arm, against her will. “Ken, I’m sorry, but if you don’t help me to the restroom quickly, I think I’m going to redecorate your nice suit.”

The man started and then realized she wasn’t kidding. Putting a hand on her arm, he rushed her to the restroom. Leaning beside the door he waited for her to come out. When she did, she was pale and trembling. Ken quickly helped her to the staff lounge to lie down.

“Stay here. I’ll get Cheryl.” Ken frowned on his way out the door. The flu. It was going around. Quickly working out her class schedules and the library time added in, he mentally started to rearrange her classes for the rest of the week. Luckily she wasn’t scheduled to teach until Thursday.

Cheryl quickly took control of the situation and thanked the Department Chair for his concern. He was reluctant to leave Maria in Cheryl’s hands until he talked to her. He really needed to talk to her, but now was obviously not the time as Maria had fallen asleep on the sofa.

“She looks so small,” was his only comment. He had never noticed how small the woman was. Her presence was always somehow larger than life and she tended to dominate a room with her personality. “Where did she get the scars?” He had noticed them before at special events when she came dressed in formalwear. She never seemed too self-conscious or wanting to hide them. They weren’t unsightly, just thin white lines marring the pale smooth skin of her back. Today she was wearing a long-sleeved bodysuit with an exposed back.

“A few years back I think. She said it was an accident. I just assume a car accident. Her boyfriend isn’t the greatest of drivers.”

“Guerin?” Price’s noise pinched in an ugly snarl. He hated that man. Cheryl just nodded. “That man is a menace.”

“I should call him.” Price just nodded. He made a gesture for her to do that and quickly exited the room before someone enlisted him into helping any more than he already had.

Cheryl watched the man walk away with a shake of her head. Strange little man. It was the movement of Eddie that caught her eye.

“Eddie!”

Eddie quickly entered the room at the calling of his name and immediately saw the sleeping Maria with her back towards him. “Oh god, Maria? What’s wrong with her. Sick?”

“Just now. Professor Price helped her to the restroom.” The two shared a look at that incredible knowledge. Ken Price had helped someone. A Maria someone.

“Did you call Michael?”

“Not yet. Could you sit here and watch over her? I’ll be right back.” Eddie just nodded and sat with his hand on her back gently stroking it.

Cheryl came back frowning. “The secretary at the department said that he was out on a call. Should we wake her?”

Eddie just shook his head no. It was barely ten. “I’ll take her home if you’ll get her jacket and bag. I’ll call the PD from the loft and leave a message for Michael that she’s home sick.”

“Are you sure, Eddie? Don’t you have classes or work?”

“Don’t worry. I had an errand I needed to run anyway.” Cheryl accepted that and went to get Maria’s things together. She was going to go ahead and rearrange the Professor’s classes and work schedule. If it was the flu Maria was going to be out a few days.

~~~

It was almost noon when the call came. Downstairs alerted forensics and Crime Scene Investigations first before the call came to Valenti’s desk.

“Guerin, Evans!” Both men looked up from their work as Jim motioned to them to follow. “You too, Hanson.”

They all entered the elevator for a ride to the garage. “What’s up, Cap?” Michael looked at his commander in concern. The redness of his skin was creeping upward, and Jim looked like he was going to explode.

“A present. We’ve been given a present. Your latest victim.” Jim’s face shut down as he turned silent and angry.

Max and Michael shared a look. “Where?” asked Max quietly.

Michael just stared straight ahead. He knew. It could only be one place.

“Here. Trash disposal found it less than ten minutes ago.” Jim stared at Michael as the man swore. He agreed. Nothing was worse than having an entire Station house rushing outside to see the spectacle and mucking up the site.

“How many?” Michael asked quietly. The number of people in the crime scene had to be astronomical.

“Forensics and CIS were called first, but Downstairs got there before they did.” Michael just shut his eyes and his fists clenched as he started to count to ten immediately.

Hanson just cowered in the corner and listened. He was hardly up to speed on the case, and being undercover at the club last night with Guerin had given him heartburn.

Michael was the first off the elevator. He barreled through the garage and past the motor pool. They would be gathering around too. Grease jockeys loved a good show. Going out the repair bay, he turned along the side of the PD building following it to a loading bay with large dumpsters. The amount of people milling about sent his blood pressure rocketing.

Michael pushed people aside literally growling, until a swath of men in uniform and other support teams jumped out of his way. He stopped in front of a small group of Blues and searched their faces. One man just calmly stared back refusing to be intimidated.

“Name?”

The man was confused as Michael talked to him. “What?”

“What is your name, Officer?”

“Morris.” The man looked at Guerin. He had heard stories, but he always thought that most of them were exaggerations. Suddenly he wasn’t so sure. “Um...Morris, Sir.”

“Got your ticketing pad and arrest book on you?”

“Always, Sir.”

“Good. I want every person out here with the exception of CIS ticketed, processed and held for questioning. Charge them with interfering in a criminal investigation.” Michael voice was loud enough that the people around him could hear the cold anger. “Take them to processing and call IA.”

With that said, the fringes of onlookers quickly melted away into the woodwork and back to their jobs before they were ticketed.

“All of them, Sir?”

“All of them, Morris. And Morris?” The man looked back gulping. “I’ll be very disappointed if you don’t ticket yourself.”

Michael left the sweating man and walked toward his torn-up crime scene. It was surprisingly clear of extraneous bodies and Michael went straight to Simon.

“Nice job, Guerin. My people been trying to control the masses since we got here.”

“How much contamination?”

Simon sat back on his hunches and waited for the explosion. “They rolled the body.”

Michael’s entire face turned red. Cussing an endless stream of obscenities, Michael turned around to find the few remaining faces being ticketed by Morris and a few other Blues, those who didn’t find the smarts to bleed off the site when Guerin arrived.

“Who? What idiot would walk on my crime site and touch my dead? Who?” The entire crowd stepped back in fear. Hanson, standing beside Max actually whimpered.

Max whispered to him in a low voice. “Not you! ”

Jim came forward leaving Michael to rant and rave, teaching the few and the proud to fear as he went to examine the body along with Simon. He had read all the reports, but this was the first real one he had actually laid eyes on since this case hit his desk a few weeks back.

“Simon?”

“Jim. Sorry to see you out here for this. This is bad, Jim. He drove into Cop Central, in through the security gates, and calmly dumped his latest kill.” Jim just nodded. This place was infested with incompetence, graft and corruption. That became more apparent every day.

“Last night?”

“Yeah.”

“Michael said they just lost him on Sunday night. That’s not long for him to pick up and process the body.”

“It’s not. It wasn’t. This one was done special.”

Jim didn’t even really want to know or to ask, but he did anyway. “Special?” He felt Michael joining them. Michael squatted next to the body. Taking a pair of latex gloves, he pulled back the plastic. Jim just watched as Michael’s eyes traveled the length of the corpse and back. He moved his head to the side, and then down.

“He was killed like the others--suffocation. But Simon, he opened the cavity. It wasn’t done neatly either.” Michael whistled under his breath as he took notes, ignoring the camera jockey shooting the crime.

Michael stood, and surveyed the general area. The back loading bay of the PD was behind a locked gate. During the day the only way in was at the security booth, but at night there were times when the booth was left open while the guard was off on rounds.

“Michael,” Max said quietly. “I’ll pull the duty rosters from last night.” Michael just nodded and then froze. He slowly turned around searching the areas around the gated yard. “Michael, what is it?”

“He’s here.”

Both Simon and Jim looked at each other. Jim quickly stood and walked over to the other Officers still ticketing themselves.

“Take your men and discreetly spread out. Our suspect is still here. Bring in anyone... anyone at all. All cars, licenses and tags are to be noted and searched. Move quietly and fast.”

Officer Morris looked over at Guerin, whose body was stiff and alert. Suddenly his face took on a shuttered look and he moved quickly off the bay and towards the back gate. Max quickly followed as Michael took the twelve-foot chained fence in a three-handed scramble and then was over the top. Max took a little longer being careful of the top barbed wire that Michael tossed himself over. Michael remained on the ground in a low crouch surveying the area and motioned his partner back. Suddenly in the dark wooded area parallel to the fence, movement exploded as Guerin moving in tandem with Max were suddenly running through the trees in hot pursuit of their suspect.

Morris quickly took some other Blues and took off to take units into the surrounding areas. The bastard had been watching them the entire time, and all of them had stood around like tourists at a spectator sport. Morris was angry and humiliated, and looking at his partner the feeling appeared to be mutual.

“Should I go too, Sir?” Hanson asked Jim.

Jim just looked at Hanson and sighed. The man really wasn’t a bad cop, just one lacking in confidence. To someone like that, men such as Guerin who were born with a sixth sense and intuition were a little overwhelming.

“No, you stay with Simon and me and work the scene. I want this cleared.” Hanson just nodded as Simon assigned him a task. They watched as Hanson went off to work.

“He needs more field time, Jim.” Simon said.

“I know.” Jim just watched as Hanson bumbled along. “I can’t afford a trainer for him right now. I’ve got too many cases and the only one that really could train him is Guerin, and I wouldn’t wish Guerin on my worst enemy. He’s gained some patience over the last year, even a smidgen of social skills, but he’s not a man that can really change.” Jim just shook his head. “He doesn’t suffer fools lightly.”

“He’s incredible. I’ve never seen anything like him.” Simon just looked out at the area where Michael and Max had disappeared. “How the f-uck did he know that the killer was out there?”

“It might have been an vagrant, just watching the sad spectacle.”

Simon just shook his head as he ordered his people to take the body to the morgue. “Don’t think so, Jim. He felt him. Dammit, my people usually shoot the external scene, crowd faces and such, but...hell, there were so many uniforms and our own about, we didn’t bother.”

Jim just shook his head. This was totally f-ucked up. “How was the body different?”

“He cut the cavity open, didn’t bother to close it and it’s missing an organ.” Jim looked down at the glistening body covered in a clear coating.

“Organ? Which one?”

“The heart.”

~~~

Max and Michael found an adjacent neighborhood just beyond the small wooded area. It was an older section of Roswell, a mixture of aged stores and shops with residential areas coming off on side streets, and vintage warehouse buildings that still were in use by companies that had survived for years in Roswell. They were in a packing district.

“Michael?” Max gasped still trying to get his breath. “Which way?”

“I don’t know. He lost us in the last turn into Muncing Distributors.” The suspect had run through an open bay of the distributing company, knocking over boxes and products. Muncing Distributors was a large raw-products packing and distributing warehouse.

The chased him through the perishables, past the lettuce and then stumbled into the tomatoes. Max's nice clean shirt and pressed dress pants were covered in tomato juice from where he landed in crates of fresh tomatoes. Michael looked just as bad. They came out of the establishment in time to see a fleeing back rounding a corner.

Standing at another long quiet alley, both men were searching while catching their breaths. The suspect had to equally be tired and more than likely had gone to ground, holed up in a convenient place. They slowly walked the alley since the other end was closed off by a patrol car. Max and Michael spread out in a flanking pattern with weapons drawn. Another patrol car closed the entrance of the alley.

“Talk to me, Partner. You feel him.”

Michael paused and concentrated. “He’s here.”

They continued to move forward when suddenly there was the slam of a metal door. Both men rushed forward as two patrolmen cautiously approached their position from the top of the alley. Michael and Max found the closed metal door. It wasn’t locked, but something had been moved in front of it from the other side.

Michael swore and took a patrolman’s mobile unit squawk off his uniform. He and Max kicked in the door and then put their shoulders against it and pushed it open. Michael motioned for Max to take a patrol unit to the other side of the building and another unit to circle around. He and a uniform officer went into the dark building.

Max rushed down the alley to the other patrol car that was blocking the original entrance while the patrolman minus his mobile squawk went back to his unit. Max opened the side door to the patrol car and held on, standing on the footplate and holding onto the car door as it took off down the side of the building.

Max looked at the Officer next to him in the passenger’s seat. “Give me your squawk. Radio in for a unit to cover the crossing streets.” They rounded the front of the building and Max jumped off the car with the one officer following. Both men kicked in the other door and entered the building. The place was a storage warehouse for the City of Roswell. It contained their town's supplies of decorations. Max wandered into the darkened rooms avoiding Christmas towns, Santas and tangles of Christmas lights strung on a beam to keep them untangled.

Michael moved into the warehouse with the Officer at his right and back. Michael motioned him to circle to the right and forward as he took the left. Moving between the darkened cubicles and artificial walls created by partitions, he looked upward at the small top windows thirty feet in the air that provided what little light there was. There were upper crawl rafters and cross planking holding different objects suspended in mid-air. The upper network was a problem with the large hanging lights and ground lamps the City used to spotlight events. Those spotlights weighed a few hundred pounds.

Deploying forward, Michael knew when Max entered the building. He heard the door give way and could feel his partner moving forward. The Officer who entered with Max found lights and turned them on, causing Michael to almost shoot himself. The illumination revealed that he was standing in front of a full length mirror facing his own reflection.

“Max?”

“Nothing!”

“Mary Jane one.” Michael called back.

“Mary Jane two,” called a voice to Michael’s front and left. Morris--it was the patrolman Morris calling position. Another voice rang out. There were four of them in the warehouse. Max, Michael, and the two patrolmen. They located each other's positions and slowly worked inward towards each other. Within minutes they had closed in and Michael gestured to Morris to move counter to him, as Max and the other did the same.

It was the sound of a whipping cord that alerted Michael first. Looking up he saw the large two hundred pound spotlight hurtling to the warehouse floor straight for Morris. Rushing forward and then diving, Michael hit Morris at mid-level and propelled him backwards out of the way of the falling light, but into a full panel of tempered glass with his own weight coming down hard on the man. Both men cussed as a rain of glass covered them with Morris taking the worst of it since he was facing it.

Max rushed to Michael’s side cautiously watching the upper levels and catwalks. Pulling his partner off the Officer he looked at the broken spotlight that had almost crushed Morris, and then Michael as he pushed the man out of harm's way. All of them looked up at the sound of breaking glass, and Max blinked twice at the rushing light and the view of a darkened image going through a broken upper window.

Michael swore and grabbed the squawk. “He’s mobile, upper level, just went through the window! You got him?”

“William David two, suspect just jumped the building. Proceeding north.” Michael listened to the chatter as the mobile patrol units pursued their suspect. It only took three minutes, but they lost him three blocks away as they entered a more crowded area with open shops and pedestrians.

Max waited for Michael to lose his temper, but he didn’t. He simply remained quiet, looking down at Morris still lying flat in a pile of broken tempered glass.

“You okay?”

“No.” Morris was trying hard not to move.

“What?” Michael asked.

“Glass--a large piece in my damn ass.” The other patrolman tried to help him move.

“Dammit, don’t move him. He could push it in further.” Michael called it in. “I need assistance, Officer down.” Michael squatted next to the man. “Ambulance is on the way, they’ll take you in.” Max hid a smile. He was certain that Morris would prefer to be on his feet and removing the glass from his ass without help. The teasing and ribbing was going to be bad enough, but having Medical carrying him out of the warehouse on his stomach with his bleeding ass in the air with a protruding piece of sheet glass was going to be truly humiliating.

“Maybe if you can just help me up, Sir?” Michael just clicked his tongue. Sure two of them could take the man by his armpits and lift him back to his feet, but where was the fun in that?

“Naw, you better wait, Morris. We wouldn’t want to do you any more damage. If we pull out the glass you might bleed to death. It’s best we let a professional do that.” Morris just moaned and put his head back on the glass surrounding him. F-ucking Guerin should have just let that damn light squash him. “But don’t worry, Morris, I'll let you off on ticketing yourself.” Michael patted the man’s shoulder sympathetically.

Max stood watching behind Michael and actually snickered at that. Gosh, that Guerin was becoming such a softy--a regular nice guy!

~~~

Sean woke up with a sharp searing pain in his head. It took a moment for the darkness to fade and for him to focus. The first thing that became clear was that not only did his head hurt, but his arms were killing him. He was suspended from a meat hook in the old packing plant by his handcuffed hands. Sean shook his head to clear it. Trouble. He was in trouble. Cap was going to have his hide for this.

Looking around the room, he found his missing witness, Perdy tied to a chair, mouth duct taped and obviously passed out. It was Sean’s increased consciousness and movement that sent the guard through the door to alert someone. A large heavy-handed man came back. Sean looked at him critically. In his Family's business they called men like this 'Bruisers'. They specialized in one area only. Taking out the trash.

“Finally awake, Copper?”

Sean just snorted. “Depends. Is your name Shirley and do you have blond ringlets and a pinafore?”

The man slammed a large meaty fist into Sean’s gut, knocking the breath from him.

“Yeah, guess I’m still dreaming. Lederhosen. I could get into that or maybe a Catholic schoolgirl uniform. Went to Catholic school myself, and many nights did I lie in bed dreaming about what was under those plaid skirts with those naughty pleats.”

Sean coughed as another blow pounded him in the ribs. Another man came and wet him down with a water hose. He was suspended from the hook in nothing but his jeans. Pity. They could have done it right and stripped him bare. The first rule in torture was to disarm and humiliate the victim, then strip them of their dignity and sense of self. A good torturer would sodomize him with some hard object and leave it inside while beating him bloody. These men? They were amateurs.

The water was good. It cooled the body and forced the blood to pump harder to compensate for loss in temperature. Sean could feel the hair along his skin already peaking. The leader of the rat pack hit him again, another one-two combination, but his feet were wrong. He was leaning too far forward on the balls of his feet and the misalignment of body weight detracted from the power of his punch. As Sean’s head snapped to the side, he spit out the blood. Still, the punch wasn’t bad, but it could be better.

“Dammit, Shirley at least put some power into the blow! You pulled that last punch!” Sean said coughing. Shut up you stupid f-uck and pass out so these clowns can go circle jerk each other in the back room! Idiot.

“How about this one, Copper?”

Sean took a blow to the kidney and felt a rib break under the combination punch.

Wheezing as his broken rib pressed into his lung, Sean just laughed. “Not bad, Shirley, but you’re still overcompensating. All that muscle and no power.” Sean stopped laughing as the man hit him again in the ribs and a slap across the mouth. Gathering the blood in his mouth, Sean spit it in his torturers face. Stupid. He was stupid.

Rage and anger rushed over Shirley's face and Sean's body took the punishment. Hanging with his head between his arms and down on his chest, Sean chuckled. Two men in the corner swore under their breath as Sean lifted his face and looked at the man. The Man. Right. He took better beatings from Girl Scouts trying to collect cookie money.

The man looked on in shock as Sean’s eyes met his. They were dark for a hazel eye, gleaming and deadly. Suddenly with a lift to the corner of his mouth Sean’s hand went upward to grab the chains of his cuffs. Faster than the man could comprehend Sean lifted his weight off his cuffed wrists and swung forward. Wrapping his legs around the man’s neck he twisted to the side and then released him as the neck snapped and his torturer slid to the ground in a heap.

Sean released the man's body, swearing as his weight pulled on his wrists again. The two men in the corner stood there stunned as their friend slid to the ground in death. Sean didn’t give the lump of garbage even a second thought. The man was so pathetic that Sean hadn’t even gotten hard. Sean considered that concept for a second. Hmm, maybe therapy was working.

Sean just turned his head and looked at the other two. “Next?”

One man took a baseball bat and hit Sean in the ribs again. But his partner stopped him before he could really do too much damage.

“Get the hose.” Sean winced as the cold water hit his skin, and he could feel the blood rushing down his body from the few cuts and abrasions. The other man approached Sean holding a taser. “Let’s see how you like this, Pig.”

Sean looked at the weapon in the man’s hand and was impressed. He had obviously learned his lesson from the earlier stiff, not to get too close to Sean, who wasn’t the sort of man who was ever defenseless, even while hanging from a meat hook.

“Aw, is that the Advanced M26 Taser gun? It so much more effective than the older Tasertron units.”

The man’s faced clouded and he jolted Sean, disrupting his central nervous system. Sean could feel it rush through his body as the water acted as a conduit pushing the electrical jolt even deeper. He felt the second jolt as he tried to avoid biting his tongue, and before his eyes rolled back in his head the last thing he saw was his St. Michael’s medallion resting on his chest. Little Mother . Strange...at the threshold of death suddenly the will to live was the strongest. Sean gave a laugh before he succumbed to blissful darkness. He wanted to live--wasn’t that just a sh-it-kicker? The rest was silence.

~~~

Michael and Max made it back to the department. Heading straight to the crime scene they weren’t surprised to see it was already processed. Jim and Simon were pros. Going through the motor pool past all the nice working departmental cars that weren’t theirs, they took the elevator up to the next level and went to the morgue and forensic offices.

Simon was already processing the body and Jim was watching him do it. Hanson looked green as he stood next to the body with an ink pad and fingerprint files. He was trying to print the body.

“No. No, Detective. A dead man is different from a live one. The print doesn’t work the same way. You have to roll the finger, making sure to get around the sides and top.”

Max smiled to himself as Hanson took on another shade of green, and then a pale sickly gray.

Michael ignored the others in the room and looked at the body. It was different from the others. It had been suffocated the same way, but the cut was different. It was done carelessly and wasn’t glued or sealed. The young man was in his mid-twenties and dark skinned, but otherwise appeared unblemished.

“What’s missing, Simon?”

“The heart.”

Michael looked at him and then at the body. “Any blemishes to indicate why he was dumped?”

“That’s the thing, Michael. He doesn’t have a damn mark on his body! He’s perfect. So why did the bastard dump him?”

Michael studied the body. Suddenly he looked up at Simon. “How long? Do you have a time of death?”

“About eighteen hours rough estimate. More than likely closer to twenty-four. I can give you a cleaner estimate by this afternoon.”

Michael nodded and started doing the math in his head. “We figure kill time to suffocation is approximately six hours. Add that to the estimated time and that means he was taken on Sunday.”

Max looked at his partner sharply. This wasn’t good.

“That means the f-ucker left Club Hell and went to another hunting ground, picked up a perfect specimen, and purposely killed and dumped him on my lawn.”

Jim and Max looked at each other and then at Simon. War. The lines of war had been drawn.

“Michael, where are you going? What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to work. I want this to end. He just upped the stakes. He sent a message and I got it.”

Hanson who stood quietly in the corner finally spoke in a shaking voice, “What message?”

“That he knows me. He wanted us to know that he knows where he can find us at any time. But he made a mistake.”

Max looked at his partner. “What mistake?”

“It means that now I know him as well. He just crossed the line. He’s pissing in my pool.” Michael moved towards the door pulling off his latex gloves. “He’s too much in the open and that means he's exposing himself and making mistakes. And this is a man that doesn’t allow for mistakes.”

Max quickly followed and through the open doors Michael’s voice came bellowing back. “Hanson! We don’t have all day!”