I stood in the street, gazing at her windows and listening to her car tick. I leaned against her fender, and put my hand on the hood, feeling its warmth. One flight of stairs up to the second floor, but they might as well have gone on forever.

I climbed, and knocked softly at her door.

"Luce?"

She opened the door, and looked at me without drama. She was crying, sad tears like little windows into a well of hurt.

"Dolan came over because she was fired. She's in love with me, or thinks she is, and she wanted to be with me."

"You don't have to say this."

"I told her that I couldn't be with her. I told her that I love you. I was telling her that when you walked in."

Lucy stepped out of the door and told me to come in. Boxes had been put away. Furniture had been moved.

She said, "You scared me."

I nodded.

"I don't mean with Dolan. I mean from earlier. I'm angry with you, Elvis. I'm hurt with you."

Joe.

"You changed your life to come here, Luce. You're worried about Richard, and what's going to happen with Ben. You don't need to worry about me. You don't need to doubt what we have, or how I feel, and what you mean to me. You mean everything to me."

"I don't know that now."

I felt as if the world had dropped away and I was hanging in space with no control of myself, as if the slightest breeze could make me turn end over end and there was nothing I could do but let the breeze push me.

"Because of Joe."

"Because you were willing to put everything that's important to me at risk."

"Did you want me to call the cops and turn him in?" More tension was in my voice than I wanted there to be.

She closed her eyes and raised a palm.

"I guess you're mad at me, too."

"I don't like these choices, Luce. I don't like being caught between you and Joe. I don't like Dolan coming to my house because she doesn't have anywhere else to go. I don't like what's happening between us right now."

She took a breath and let it out. "Then I guess we're both disappointed."

I nodded.

"I didn't come two thousand miles for this."

I shook my head.

I said, "Do you love me?"

"I love you, but I don't know how I feel about you right now. I'm not sure how I feel about anything."

It sounded so final and so complete that I thought I must have missed something. I searched her face, trying to see if there was something in her eyes that I was missing in her voice, but if it was there I couldn't find it. I wanted an emotional catharsis; her measured consideration made my stomach knot.

"What are you saying here, Luce?"

"I'm saying I need to think about us."

"We're having a problem right now. Is it such a big problem that you'd question everything we feel for each other?"

"Of course not."

"That's what thinking about us means. One thing happens, you don't stop being an us."

I looked around at the boxes. The stuff of her life. This wasn't going the way I had hoped. I wasn't hearing things that I wanted to hear. And I wasn't doing a good job of saying the things I had wanted to say.

Lucy took my hand in both of hers.

"You said I changed my life to come here, but my coming here changes your life, too. The change didn't end when I crossed the city line. The change is still happening."

I put my arms around her. We held each other, but the uncertainty was like a membrane between us.

After a time, she eased away. She wasn't crying now; she seemed resolved.

"I love you, but you can't stay here tonight."

"Is it that clear to you?"

"No. Nothing's clear. That's the problem."

She took my hand again, gently kissed my fingers, and told me to leave.

Sacrifice

The killer presses the needle deep into his quadriceps and injects twice the usual amount of Dianabol. The pain makes him furious, his rage causing his skin to flush a deep red as his blood pressure spikes. He throws himself onto the bench, grips the bar, and pushes.

Three hundred pounds.

He lowers the weight to his chest, lifts, lowers, lifts. Eight reps of herculean inhuman effort that does nothing to appease his anger.

Three hundred motherfucking pounds.

He rolls off the bench and glares at himself in the mirror here in his shitty little rental. Muscles swollen, chest flushed, face murderous. Calm yourself. Take control. Put away the rage and hide yourself from the world.

His face empties.

Become Pike to defeat Pike.

The killer takes a calming breath, returns to the bench, sits.

Pike's escape has changed things, and so have Cole and that bitch Dolan. Knowing that he's been framed, Pike will try to figure out who, and will be coming for him. Cole and Dolan have already tried to get DeVille's file, and that's bad, but he also knows they didn't get it. Without DeVille's file they cannot follow the trail back to him, but they're getting closer, and the killer accepts that they are very close to identifying him.

He must act now. He decides to jump ahead to the final targets, and nothing must stop him. Pike is the wild card, but Cole he can account for. Cole must be distracted. Get his mind off saving Pike, and onto something else.

He believes that Dolan has always been overrated as an investigator, so the killer discounts her. But Cole is another matter. He has met Cole, and studied him. Cole is dangerous. An ex-Army guy who wears the Ranger tab, and an experienced investigator. Cole does not appear dangerous in an obvious way, but many officers respect him. He heard one senior detective say not to let the wisecracks and loud shirts fool you, that Cole can carry all the weight you put on him, and still kick your ass. The killer takes this opinion seriously.

When you are plotting against the enemy, you always look for an exploitable weakness.

Cole has a girlfriend.

And the girlfriend has a child.

I walked down the infinite flight of steps from Lucy's apartment to sit in my car. I thought about starting it, but that was beyond me. I tried to be angry with her, but wasn't. I tried to resent her, but that made me feel small. I sat there in my open car on her quiet street until her lights went out, and even then I did not move. I just wanted to be close to her, even if she was up in her apartment and I was down in my car, and for most of the night I tried to figure out how things could go so wrong so quickly. Maybe a better detective could've found answers.

The sky was pale violet when I finally pulled away. I was content to creep along in the morning traffic, the mindless monotony of driving the car familiar and comforting. By the time I reached home, Dolan was gone. She had left a note on the kitchen counter. What it said was, I'll talk to her if you want.

I cleaned our glasses from the night before, put away the tequila, and was heading upstairs for a shower when the phone rang.

My heart pounded as I stared at the phone, letting it ring a second time. I took a breath, and nodded to myself.

On the third ring I picked it up, trying not to sound like I'd just run ten miles.

"Lucy?"

Evelyn Wozniak said, "Why didn't you call?"

"What are you talking about?"

"I left a message yesterday. I said you should call no matter what time you got in."

I had checked my message machine when Pike was still in the house, but there had been no messages. I looked at it now, again finding nothing.

"Okay. You've got me now."

Evelyn gave me directions to the storage facility that her mother used in North Palm Springs. She had had a duplicate key made for the lock, and had left it for me in an envelope with the on-site manager. I asked her if she wanted to be there when I went through her father's things, but she said that she was scared of what she might find. I could understand that. I was scared, too.