I drew in a breath to try rephrasing, and Morrison interrupted with, “A decade ago.”

It was very nearly the last thing I expected him to say. For all I didn’t want to, I found myself looking at Morrison, who had an expression of cautious restraint pulled tight across his face. It was so careful it was clear he was asking a question, and that question told me just how detailed the research he’d done on me when I’d let slip my full original name. Captain Michael Morrison knew something about me I didn’t want anybody to know, something I’d thought nobody outside of Qualla Boundary knew. My jaw and my stomach both tightened.

“Close enough.”

“All right,” he said after a long time. “I’m taking you off street beat, Walker. God knows I need you out there, but if my people are going down because of something only you can stop, then that’s what your assignment is. Get. Go save the world, however you have to do it.” He sat down at his desk, looking worn to the bone.

He hadn’t said because of something you did, which was far more than I deserved. But because it was Morrison, I had to ask: “You believe me?”

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to, Walker. Just get out of here and find a way to keep my people safe. Go.”

I went.

I wish I could say I went boldly forth with a plan in mind, but what I really did was go to the locker room and change into my regular clothes. I wasn’t going to be doing police work, and although the heat wave had broken, it was still in the eighties. Jeans and a T-shirt sounded a lot more pleasant for tromping around in than my uniform. I went out into the July morning with my head down and my eyes squinted against sunlight bouncing off the asphalt. Such diligent concentration on my feet led me over to Petite, and to a bright, semifamiliar voice saying, “Officer Walker. You don’t look like you’re on shift.”

I felt distinctly deer-in-headlights as I looked up to see Laura Corvallis perched in the open sliding door of her news van, a gotcha smile pasted across her face. It took everything I had not to break into a panicked run back toward the precinct building. “Ms. Corvallis. I thought you’d be at the studio getting your tape ready.”

“Oh, we don’t air until six. I’m looking for some human interest sides of the Blue Flu story. Captain Morrison’s got a real knack for looking handsome and not answering questions.”

I let out a little breath of laughter. “Yeah.” Crap. That was a bad confession to make. I didn’t want to build any sort of camaraderie with a news reporter. I bit my tongue so I couldn’t say anything else, unbit it and added, “That’s his job,” which I hoped would mitigate my agreement that my boss was handsome, and dug Petite’s keys out of my pocket.

“So I thought you had to go to work,” Corvallis said. “Don’t tell me you’ve got the day off, with a quarter of the workforce out.” Her voice was full of polite curiosity, but I glanced up through my eyebrows as I unlocked Petite’s door, and saw the dark glitter of a hungry hunter in her gaze.

“Ms. Corvallis, that sounds like a good idea. I won’t tell you anything.” I smiled, winked and got into Petite before she had time for a rebuttal. Cranking the engine made a satisfying lot of noise that drowned out any chance of me hearing her follow-up, and I pulled out of the parking lot feeling like I’d gotten a reprieve. Morrison had given me rope to hang myself with. I wasn’t eager to use it explaining why I’d ended up on the evening news babbling about Laura Corvallis’s poorly named Blue Flu.

About three blocks farther on I realized the news van was following me.

I pulled into a drive-thru, mostly to waste a few minutes and see if the van was actually following me. I emerged from the other side with a burger I didn’t really want and a bag of fries that would kick off a month-long craving for more if I gave into their evil seductive ways. The Channel Two van was waiting in the parking lot, so I pulled up alongside it and rolled down my window. “Want a burger?”

Corvallis was in the passenger seat, grinning at me. “No, thanks.”

“Hey! Yeah, if you’re giving it up!” The cameraman-cum-driver leaned across her, looking eager. I handed the food over, figuring the best way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, and I might need a friend on the news team if Corvallis was going to insist on following me.

I was trying not to think too hard about a reporter following me. I barely had any idea what I was going to do even without a monkey wrench in the works, and the only thing I could think of that would make it worse was broadcasting my bizarre talents on local TV. In the best-case scenario, nobody would believe her. In the worst, they would, and I’d be like Christ in the temple.

Which was not to say I was Christ-like in any way. Gah. I put on the nicest smile I could, trying to rid myself of the thought. “Are you following me, Ms. Corvallis?”

“As a matter of fact, I am.”

Outright honesty had not been the response I was expecting. I blinked up at the woman. “Why?”

“It strikes me you’ve been involved in some interesting events the past few months.” She smiled at me. I didn’t like it, and did my best blank expression. It usually worked to irritate and distract Morrison.

It didn’t work on Laurie Corvallis. “An officer—not a detective, just an officer—at the Blanchet High murder scene. Immediately after that you were on the list of approved visitors for Henrietta Potter. Mrs. Potter died quite violently, didn’t she?”

A bolt of cold loss shot right through the flutter of power behind my breastbone, making bile rise up in my stomach. For an instant I was desperately grateful I hadn’t eaten the food I’d bought, or I’d be revisiting Erik’s early-morning sickness right there in my car. The smell of vomit lingered in leather forever, too. I shuddered the feeling away, knowing Corvallis was watching my reaction with professional interest. I’d barely known Henrietta Potter, but I’d liked her enormously. Her sudden, violent death had shocked me to the core. “Yeah,” I managed. “She did.”

“Then your name came up during the police investigation of Faye Kirkland’s death,” Corvallis went on conversationally. I inhaled through my nose, long slow breath.

“That was weeks ago. Why are you following me now?”

“Well, the third time’s the charm, Officer Walker. I see you going into the precinct building, saying you’re on your way to work on a day when a quarter of the North Precinct police force has been admitted to the hospital, and half an hour later you’re walking out, still in civilian clothes and getting in your—” she broke off to consider Petite briefly, then gave me a quick grin “—shiny Mustang.” The smile faded into something more predatory. “And I start putting all these little strange things together, and I start to think maybe I have a story here.”

Nausea kept burning in my belly, churning up until it felt as if it was encouraging my heartbeat to rattle too fast. My fingertips were cold and my cheeks were hot, physical reactions to what I thought was best referred to as blind, screaming panic. I wanted Laurie Corvallis to go away, far away, from my weird little life, and to never come near me again.

Saying that, of course, would pretty much guarantee she’d be on my back like black on night. I gave her a rueful little smile that I hoped hid the ninety-mile-an-hour pulse in my throat, and managed to keep my voice steady as I said, “Ms. Corvallis, if you really want to investigate me, I can’t stop you, but you’re going to be disappointed. I’m not a very interesting person. As for being at work, I have some personal things to take care of today. I just needed to stop by the station to talk to a couple of people.” I wasn’t a very good liar, and hoped that was close enough to the truth to hide it.