When Trent walked in the door of Thunder Investigations, Sherry Kinney was waiting in a chair for him.  Before Kim could introduce them, Sherry stood, adjusting the strap of her purse on her shoulder, and offered her hand.
        “Sherry Kinney,” she said.  “I really appreciate you taking my case, Mr. Malloy.”
        “Sure,” Trent replied.  “Won’t you come to my office?” he asked.  As he ushered her into the other room he raised his eyebrows at Kim.  He wasn’t expecting this interview to take place so soon.  Kim just gave him a sheepish smile.  In his office, Trent offered Sherry a chair, while he took his seat behind his desk.  He studied her briefly-long enough for him to get an impression of her but not long enough that she would feel uncomfortable.  Sherry seemed very self-assured, with reasonable brown eyes under a mop of straight brown hair.  He sat back in his chair.  “The reason I wanted to meet with you was to get a better idea of who I’m looking for,” he said, blue eyes earnest and measuring.  “Did JC9758 tell you anything about himself?  A name?  A description?”
        “Um…we didn’t really worry too much about that,” she said.  “Once we discovered how similar we were, we got to know each other.  I know that he likes classic literature, but I don’t know what color his eyes are.”
        “What happened exactly?” Trent went on.  “All I know is I’m searching for a man that you were involved with somehow whose name or appearance you don’t know.”
        “This is going to sound silly,” she said, crossing her legs, “but I met him in a chat room one night.  It’s hard for me to meet guys because they all find out sooner or later who I am.  I’ve been through one hellish marriage already because of my family’s wealth.  So I thought if I looked online, I might find someone who could love me for me, instead of my money.  This is how I met John.”
        “He gave you that name?” Trent asked as he scribbled it down.
        “I called him John and he called me Sherry.  Anyway, we talked about everything under the stars, barring family and looks.  And even if it sounds corny, I fell in love with him.  Then a few weeks ago, he just disappeared.  I just want to give our love a chance,” she added sadly.
        “What about a birthday? Or an age?” Trent continued his inquiry.
        “It’s in his screen name,” she said.  “September 7, 1958.”
        “Excellent,” Trent murmured.  “That’s a great start.”  He went on to ask questions about Sherry herself.  Experience had taught him that knowing her would give him an edge to finding his target since the two were connected.  After the interview was completed to his satisfaction, he thanked her and showed her out.  Next, he reviewed his notes.  It was time to visit the last internet café.

[

        When Carlos returned as promised around noon for lunch, Danae was sleeping soundly on the couch, her right arm propped up on a pillow.  She looked too peaceful to move, but he had important news that couldn’t wait.  Gingerly, he sat down on the couch beside her and brushed her cheek with his fingertips.  She stirred, but did not wake, so he gently shook her.
        “Damn,” she croaked.  She breathed in deeply as she sat up.  “I need to wake up to that more often,” she sighed.  Sitting tailor-style, she ran a hand through her curls.  “What’s up?”
        “Our victim, Tim Orson, had quite the record,” Carlos told her.  “Assault, burglary, grand theft auto, assault with a deadly weapon…”
        Danae whistled.  “Bad boy.”
        “So if he was shot by someone lying on the ground…” Carlos prompted
        “Maybe it was self-defense?” she asked.  Carlos nodded.  “I could buy that, but why hasn’t the person come forward yet?  If he’s blameless, then he has nothing to fear by admitting it.  Why would he dig the bullet out of the wall?  And then there was the mysterious shot while we were sleuthing.  That doesn’t fit at all.”
        “Taking a life is never easy,” Carlos countered.  “Maybe he feels guilty or that coming forward will get him in trouble somehow.  And I have plenty of people who would love to shoot me.”
        “Hmm,” Danae digested what he had said.  “Then I guess we’re back at square one:  we don’t know who shot him or me.”  Suddenly, she slapped her forehead.  “I need to get my bullet to ballistics!” she said.  She grinned.  “I’ve been keeping it as a souvenir.”
         “Hungry?” he asked.
        “Starving!”  Danae hopped up, and Carlos found her a large sweatshirt of his she could wear as a coat.  He drove to a fast food restaurant, where they partook in an ample meal of cheeseburgers and fries.  “You look tired,” Danae said in between bites.  “What have you been up to?”
        Carlos rubbed his face wearily.  “I was interviewing all the witnesses.  That’s a job and a half.”
        Danae reached her good hand across the table and squeezed his.  “Sorry to hear it.”
        “Thanks.”  He kept her hand, though he changed the subject.  “So why did you really come to Dallas?” he asked.
        “What do you mean?” she asked.
        “You said that you needed to get a fresh start.  Fresh start from what?”
        Danae leaned forward and sipped the straw of her coke.  “That’s a long story,” she warned.
        “Thrill me.”
        “It involves me, my fiancé, and his mistress.  I needed to get away from the heart ache,” she said thoughtfully.  It was Carlos’ turn to apologize.  “Water under the bridge,” she assured him.  “I would have been miserable with him anyway.  He wasn’t my type.”
        Carlos laughed.  “Welcome to the life of Carlos Sandoval,” he grinned.  Picking up his paper cup, he toasted her.  “To the wrong type!”  Danae echoed him, and they smushed their flimsy paper glasses together in a bout of laughter.

[

        As Trent suspected, his last internet café brought him no closer to finding “John.”  Instead, the detective headed back to one of the sites he had visited the other day.  The girl who had told him he could see a list of customers was working the front desk again.
        “Why don’t you come back here?” she ushered Trent into a large office out of the sight of the public.  Trent looked around in awe.  In every nook and cranny lay stacks of paper.  He picked one up and recognized the form all computer users were made to complete before being allowed to use the services.
        “Are all of these forms?” he asked.
        “Yeah,” she said.  “These are just the hard copies, though.  I need to get them filed eventually.  We keep all information on an electronic database to make things easier to find.”  She cleared a stack of papers off a beaten-up desk chair and bade Trent sit.  “You can use this computer to look up what you need to.”  She showed him how he could look up people by first or last names, birthday, or address.
        Trent sat down, and his search for John’s birthday found one person, a Fantine O’Harris, female.  Years of experience led Trent to the conclusion that she probably was not the person for whom he was looking.  Next, he searched for the name “John,” pulling up almost forty names.  “Can I print this list out?” Trent asked his hostess, who had come back to check on him.
        “Sure,” she said.  She leaned over his shoulder and punched a button.  A few seconds later, the printer whirred out two pages of Johns and their information.  Trent thanked her and returned to Thunder Investigations to consider his next move.

[

        Danae persuaded Carlos to drop her off at the ME’s office only after she promised no less than five times to behave herself.  As it was, he picked her back up a couple hours later after his boss sent him home early.  They traded information as he drove them back to his place.
        “The ballistics came back on my bullet,” she said glumly.  “They know the caliber and the different sniping guns that can use it, but without another bullet or a gun to reference by, it’s useless.”
        “Our department’s been positively swamped,” Carlos chipped in with his bad news.  “Everything’s so backed up.”
        “Weird,” Danae commented.  “The morgue’s been a circus, too.  We all have at least one corpse per person, all of them homicides.  Why the sudden murder spree?”
        Carlos stepped hard on the brakes and skidded to a smoking halt on the shoulder of the road.  As he turned the car around, he asked, “Any common patterns?”
        “You mean like a serial killer?  No, why?” Danae replied, puzzled.
        “It’s a little too random, don’t you think?”
        Within minutes, they were back at the ME’s office, Danae leading the way to the crypt.  She thrust a clipboard at Carlos and opened the first crypt door.  She read the address where the victim was found, as well as time of death, off the toe tag and moved on to the next door.  In short order, they had compiled a list of locations, which they took to Carlos’ department.  Opposite the mostly empty row of desks there was a detailed map of Dallas divided into various compartments.  Each cop-and each ME, Danae told him-had an area of the metroplex they preferred to work, and it seemed the killer had managed to produce a corpse in every compartment.  The mastermind behind this spree was trying to draw someone out, but whom?
        “Hunh,” Carlos stated once he had finished.  One of his co-workers admired his work from the vantage of his desk nearby.
        “What are you up to, Sandoval?” he asked, approaching the map.  Carlos pointed at the map and explained about the murders.  “What does it mean?”
        “I have no idea,” Carlos sighed, running his hand through his hair.  Danae brought him a cup of coffee, which he accepted with gratitude.  As she left, the other man raised his eyebrow suggestively.  Carlos really wished people would stop doing that to him.  He walked back to his desk, where Danae looked over some notes related to the case.  “You look tired,” he told her as he sat down.
        She grinned at him.  She may have been tired, but she was too obsessed with this case to slow down.  “You do know what this means, right?” she asked, her face falling.
        “I was targeted,” Carlos said softly so that no one else could hear.
        “One of us was,” she corrected, her voice equally as soft.  “I didn’t exactly leave home on good terms.”
        He was going to ask why ending a relationship would warrant her shooting, but he stopped himself.  “There’s more to the story, isn’t there?”
        Her smile was back faintly.  “Just a lot,” she replied.

[

        “The thing I hated most about Gabriel,” Danae began, seated comfortably on Carlos’ couch with a steaming mug of coffee, “was that he smoked.  But I figured I could work on him.”  She smiled ironically and met Carlos’ eyes.  “You wouldn’t think Gabriel would be a good drug lord name, would you?”  She started to giggle.  “That all the other drug lords would beat him up, but no one messed with him.”  Her voice became serious again.  “He had his hand in everything, and when I told him he could have his business or me, he said…well he didn’t even consider it.  He would have us both or else.  So I left my practice as a doctor and came here and found work as a medical examiner.”
        “There wasn’t a mistress then?” Carlos asked.  He was sitting on the coffee table directly in front of her.
        “Oh, he was shtuping some little girl, too.  It was how she paid for heroin.  I’m not even sure if she was legal.”
        Carlos patted her knee in sympathy and expressed his condolences.  “So there’s a motive for your shooting,” his sigh turned into a laugh.  “And there are about a million reasons why someone would want me dead.”
        “So we’re back to square one?” she asked in dismay.
        “Not exactly,” he said.  “My guess is that Mr. Orson was supposed to kill someone in that spot, but it went bad and he went down instead.  We just need to find Orson’s boss.”
        “Or his shooter.”

[

        Trent worked under the assumption that one of the Johns on his list was, in fact, JC9758.  Short of researching each of the thirty two Johns, there was little he could do to get any further clues.  Or was there?
        “Kim,” Trent walked out of his office and leaned on her desk.  Her eyes were wide with panic at the tone of her boss’ voice.  Had she done something wrong?  “Can you get into a chat room and track down this guy?”
        “What domain was he using?” she asked as she looked over the notes Trent had taken during his interview with Sherry.  Finding what she sought, she turned her attention to the computer.  Her fingers became a blur as they danced across the keyboard.  It was times like these, when Kim was in her element, that Trent really appreciated her abilities.  “Here you go,” she said just as he turned to go back into his office.  She spun the monitor around, and there was an information sheet for his screen name.
        “This doesn’t help too much,” he mused as he looked over the meager stats.  “I already know his supposed name, and there’s no mention of his birthday.”
        “Maybe she just assumed his birthday from his name,” Kim said absently.  “Maybe the numbers have something to do with numerology instead.”  Trent stared at her.  It was an insane idea, but if Carlos was here, he’d go for it.  Trent grabbed his coat and yelled over his shoulder that he would be back in an hour.

[

        Trent sat in a dimly lit waiting room going over the case in his mind.  In reality, he knew nothing definitive about JC9758.  He could have lied about his name, his age, even his gender to Sherry.  Trent felt sympathy for the poor woman who only wanted to get in touch with him because she thought they were soul mates, but he had to wonder:  Why would a man as seemingly wonderful as “John” keep so much a secret?  That was one question he hoped Miss Lucky could answer.
        “Mr. Malloy?” a beautiful woman stood in the doorway, her multi-colored robe hanging loosely on her willowy frame and contrasting with her deep brown skin.  Her angled olive eyes seemed to be looking into the distance, and her face was happy and relaxed.  Trent stood and followed her into the back room, where she sat down on a lump of many-colored pillows and bade Trent do the same.  The tranquil smell of incense was thick in the tiny room, making his lids heavy.  “What can I do for you?” she asked in a soft voice, swaying in time to the sitar music playing in the background.
        “I’m…uh…” for a moment Trent couldn’t remember where he was, and then he snapped to attention.  “I’m looking for someone.”  He pulled out a scrap of paper on which he had written the screen name.
        “Are you serious?” Lucky asked him.  Her face had suddenly lost its dreaminess, and her green eyes sparkled maliciously.  “You bring to the great Miss Lucky a screen name?”  Her voice had lost its smooth accent, and she rummaged through the hidden pockets of her robe for a cigarette.  She lit one and blew a puff of smoke straight up into the air.  “Whateva.  I’ll do this one for free.”  Her over-long nails ripped the piece of paper from his hands.  “The letters are this guy’s initials, and the rest is his birthday.”  She shoved the scrap back at Trent and turned toward the window.
        “It’s not his birthday,” he insisted.
        “Well it’s an age of some sort.  I would bet ’58 is a year of importance for the fella if it’s not his age or the year he was born, and the other two numbers have significance for him.  Sports numbers?  Kids’ ages?  Now if you’ll excuse me,” she took another long drag on her smoke.  “I have things to do.  She raised her perfectly sculpted eyebrows, indicating he should go, and he did, taking the information back to Thunder Investigations.
        “I can’t believe you’re taking the word of this girl,” Kim complained as Trent dutifully poured over the list of names he had gotten.
        “It’s worth a try,” he insisted.  “If anything narrows down this list, I’ll be grateful.”  He held up his list of names with a triumphant look upon his face.  “What a coincidence!  I found a John Covenly born in 1958.”
        Kim pushed Trent out of her way and started an internet search for him.  “Uh-oh,” she said.  Trent looked at the screen, and Kim highlighted a sentence.  “He’s got a kid.”
        “Two of them,” Trent said, pointing lower on the screen.  “And they’d be…” he did the math in his head.
“Nine and seven,” Kim answered.
        Trent printed out Covenly’s picture.  Before he talked to John, he would need to get more solid evidence that this was in reality who he was looking for.  He would run the picture to the cafés tomorrow.

[

        “Is it just me, or did Guy’s Night used to be more fun?” Carlos asked around a bite of pizza.  He and Trent sat on Carlos’ couch watching basketball.  Tommy, the newest addition to their semi-regular gatherings lay on the floor, intent on the game.  “It’s all your fault you know,” Carlos said, picking up his beer.
        How do you figure?” Trent asked, taking a slag of his own bottle.
        “You had to go and get all domestic on us,” Carlos stated simply.
        “And how!” Tommy chimed in.  “Aww come on!” he yelled at the TV.  “I could’ve made that shot!”
        Trent slouched down further on the cushions and scowled.  “Don’t forget that I can take both of you…at once!”  Tommy dismissed this possibility rudely.  “And besides,” Trent said impishly, “I’m not the one whose couch smells like woman!”  Tommy was up off the floor in a flash, and all three of them smelled Carlos’ couch, Trent and Tommy teasing him without end about it.
        “Yeah, yeah,” Carlos waved them away.  “You two can talk, seeing how you’ve found your girls.”
        Tommy laughed.  “Is this the longest you’ve been single?” he asked.
        “Not counting the 13 years from his birth to his first girlfriend,” Trent answered, cackling again.
        “Maybe you just go after the wrong kind of girls,” Tommy suggested, getting another slice of pizza.
        “Well we can’t all marry our best friends,” Carlos muttered.
        “I think this girl would be good for you, then,” Trent said as Carlos polished off his beer.  “You two are already almost inseparable.”
        “Yeah, because I got her shot,” his friend said dejectedly.  “That’s not exactly a great start.”
        “You’ve had worse,” Trent shrugged, bottle to his lips.  He broke into a grin when Carlos laughed at the truth in his friend’s words, then chugged the last of his beer.
        “OHH!” the three guys yelled as the ball bounced off the rim.

[

        Carlos was unable to catch up with Danae until his lunch break the next day.  He found her bent over a microscope in an empty lab, her sling nowhere to be found.  He put a hand on her good left shoulder.  “The doctor released you?”
        Danae yelped and jumped when she felt/heard Carlos.  “You scared me,” she chided.  “Yes, I’ve been released, sort of.  I have to do physical therapy for a while yet, but it honestly wasn’t as bad a wound as you thought it was.  Stop laughing!” she turned red as Carlos continued to laugh at her startled reaction.  Then she grinned and joined in.
        “What are you working on?” he asked her when he’d calmed down a bit.
        “I’m analyzing everything on our corpse, trying to find out where he came from…or where his shooter did.”
        “The gloves are sexy,” he pointed at her latex-covered hands with a smile.
        “You’re impossible,” she scoffed.
        “You’re a nerd,” he countered, tapping her safety goggles.
        “You’re flirting with me,” she accused, her grin growing.  He just shrugged.  Their “moment” was interrupted as a slight man in a lab coat opened the glass door at the other end of the lab.
        “Phone call, Danae,” he said.  She cast an awkward, regretful glance at Carlos, then followed her co-worker to the phone.
        “Launey,” she answered, casting a smile back at Carlos through the glass.  “What?”  She turned her back to Carlos and spoke quickly into the receiver.  Carlos could tell by the way her shoulders sagged that whatever news she was getting was bad.  She hung up the phone, and he opened the door a crack.
        “Everything ok?” he asked.
        “Gabriel is dead,” she said.  Carlos began to express his condolences before she cut in.  “Don’t you get it?  That means you were the one they were after.”
        “You act like no one’s ever tried to kill me before,” he joked.
        “Carlos,” she sighed.
        “I’ll be fine, Danae,” he assured her.  “I’ve got you looking out for me.”
        She scoffed.  “I’ve got to get back to work.”
        “I still owe you dinner,” he followed her back to her microscope.  She turned and forced a smile.  “Tonight,” he pressed.  “I’ll pick you up here after work.”
        “Ok.”

[

        Trent propped his elbows on his desk and folded his hands.  “I’ve found John,” he told Sherry, who looked simultaneously excited and scared.  “I’ve talked to John, and he agreed that you could see him if you wished.”  Sherry attempted to talk, non-coherent syllables escaping her lips.  At last she managed to ask when she could see him.  “Can you come with me this afternoon?  At 4?” he asked.  She nodded, smiling broadly and biting back tears.  Trent checked his watch.  “Be back here in an hour, and I’ll take you out there.”
        Too quickly, the hour passed, and Trent was chauffeuring an anxious Sherry.  “John made me promise not to tell you anything until after the meeting,” he said.
        “Why would he do that?” she asked with a trace of alarm.
        “He also said that the final decision to meet is yours,” Trent said as he pulled up to the curb and shifted his car into park.  He glanced at the time.  “We’re here early.  Just sit tight.  He should be getting back any minute.”  He pointed out a beige house across the road.
        Sherry sat back and looked at the modest house with its small square of grass that served as the front yard and the little shack of a garage.  Was John poor?  Is that why he didn’t want to meet her?
        Her thoughts were cut short when an old, rust-eaten hatchback pulled onto the cement apron in front of the garage.  Sherry got out of the car and watched intently as a balding, middle-aged man got out of his own vehicle, holding a worn leather brief case and a suit jacket in one hand.  He trudged toward the front door but never made it there before two kids came tearing out of the house and hugged him fiercely about the waist.  He hugged them back, and Sherry could hear his throaty laugh from where she stood, partially hidden by Trent’s blue sports car.  John glanced around, searching for someone.  His eyes locked on Sherry, and she gave a tiny wave.  He smiled and shooed his kids inside, making sure the door was securely shut behind himself.
        Sherry got back in the car, and Trent started the engine.  He smoothly pulled away from the curb and headed back to Uppercuts.  “Do you have any questions?” he asked Sherry gently.
        “He’s married, then?” her question was more of a dull statement.
        “The Covenlys have been married for almost ten years now,” Trent told her.  “He has two kids aged seven and nine.”
        “Oh,” she said quietly, digesting his words.
        “The only other thing he told me was that his commitment to his family outweighs anything you two had or ever could have, but that you gave him something he, quote: ‘would cherish always.’” Trent finished.
        “Yeah, sure,” she said.  “I made the right decision,” she said, trying to convince herself.  “Not meeting him was the right thing to do…”

[

        Trent brooded over a beer while he waited for Carlos in Uppercuts.  He couldn’t shake the feeling that what John had asked him to do to Sherry was cruel.  She could have just been told that he had a family.  She seemed to understand, however, making Trent marvel at the love they must have shared.  It was too bad it wouldn’t work out.  He heard the door open and turned to see if it was his friend.  Instead of Carlos, he saw a nice-looking young woman.  Her shoulder-length curls bounced freely as she turned to laugh at whoever was behind her.  Trent turned back around to his brooding and his beer, not seeing Carlos, behind the girl, shepherd her in the door and to the bar.
        “Is anyone else coming?” Carlos asked Trent as he slapped him on the back.
        “Margo has to work late on a project,” Trent answered ruefully, “so I guess it’s just you and me tonight.”
        “And Danae,” his friend added, pushing her forward.
        “We meet again,” Trent said, shaking her hand.  “I’ve heard nothing but good things about you.”
        “And I’ve heard nothing but bad about you,” she smiled, looking at Carlos.
        “What did you tell her?” Trent asked, horrified.  If anyone could tell embarrassing stories about him, it would be his longtime friend.  By the way she and Carlos erupted into laughter, he figured he had just been hosed.  And he thought Danae was such a sweet looking girl…
        She was, in fact, good company and meshed well with the two fellows.  Carlos realized mid-way through their meal that she was rather mischievous and a bit of a tomboy, qualities he quite enjoyed.  He didn’t have to watch what he said or did nearly as much as usually had to around the ladies.  She made him incredibly relaxed.  Conversation turned from updates of friends to work.  Trent went first, sharing his heart-wrenching drama of the day.
        “I feel so bad that these two people, who are obviously in love, are forbidden from meeting.  It seems like kind of a waste,” he finished.
        “That’s rough,” Carlos agreed.
        “Tragically romantic,” Danae sighed dreamily.
        Carlos laughed.  “That’s an oxymoron.”
        She stuck her tongue out at him.  “What’d you call me?” she joked and proceeded to explain herself.  “Haven’t you ever watched the old movies?  Gone With the Wind, Casablanca and all that?  The girl never got the guy, even though they were hopelessly in love.  It was beautiful and sad and perfect like that.”
        “She got you,” Trent agreed, taking a bite of his food.
        “So anyway,” Carlos feigned vexation and changed the subject to the case he and Danae were working on.
        “And the really great news,” Danae cut in, “is that this grand mastermind murderer is after Carlos!”
        Trent raised his eyebrows and looked to Carlos who sighed somberly.  “We think,” he amended.
        “Well your day beats mine,” Trent concluded as he stretched his arms over his head.  “Carlos?” he said worriedly as he looked pointedly at a red laser dot tracing its way down the wall behind his friend and Danae.
        Carlos glanced up, saw what Trent was staring at, and overturned the table, pulling Danae down behind it as he searched for the direction of the gun.  A window shattered, and a bullet whizzed through the table, embedding itself in the booth Carlos and Danae shared moments earlier.  Immediately, Carlos drew his gun looking frantically for the shooter outside, but bedlam had erupted in Butch’s cozy bar, and people were running around crazily.  Even if Carlos had seen the shooter, he would not have been able to get a shot off without hurting an innocent bystander.  Trent squeezed in beside Danae behind the table.
        “Not bad for a first date, huh?” the blonde joked as he pulled out his cell phone to call the cops.
        “Who said this was a date?” she murmured.
        Butch stormed quickly out of his kitchen with a long shot gun.  “Everybody get down!” he yelled as he crept along the walls.  Instantly, his customers calmed and quieted.  Butch slowly inched his way to another window and carefully looked outside.  “I think it’s all clear, folks,” he said.  “Stay low just in case.”

[

        The cops arrived quickly and cased the block without results.  They tediously took down witnesses’ statements while Trent and Carlos helped Butch right tables and chairs.  They filled him in on what little they knew about the mystery sniper.
        “I hate to bother you,” Danae butted in, “but do you have any string and some tape?”
        “Women,” Butch scoffed.  He went into the kitchen and emerged a few minutes later with the supplies she had wanted.
        “Thank you,” she said graciously, and she went to work, tracing the line of the bullet with the string.
        “What is she doing?” Butch asked incredulously after Carlos had finished recounting the past days’ events.
        “Trigonometry,” Carlos responded, watching her work.  Butch gave him a puzzled look, and he explained some of the finer points of her efforts.
        “Oh don’t tell me you’ve got a girl with a head now,” Butch teased him.  Carlos blushed.
        “He doesn’t have her,” Trent explained with a laugh.  “Yet.”
        “I’m sorry, mister…” Danae had returned.
        “Butch,” the burly bartender said.
        “Mr. Butch.  My people will be here soon, and then the string will come down.”
        “Don’t worry about it,” he brushed off her apology.  “And it’s just Butch.”

[

        It was after nine before everything was straightened out.  The bullet was on its way to forensics to see if it matched the one retrieved from Danae’s shoulder.  Wearily, she sprawled on a chair.
        “How are you holding up?” Carlos asked.
        “I’m tired,” she smiled up at him so he would know that she was alright.  “They’re following us,” she added darkly.
        Carlos pulled out a chair and sat on it backwards.  “There’s more than just a sniper,” he said.  “Whoever’s doing the tailing must call the shooter.  I’d bet anything that they’re just monkeys, too.  There’s got to be someone hiring them.  Murderers don’t work together.  They can’t.  There has to be someone in charge to keep them focused.”
        “I don’t think they’re after you, Carlos,” Trent said as he joined the conversation.  “Why did they wait so long after we came into Uppercuts to do it?  If they were following you, they would know by now that you work right upstairs.  They could pick you off at any time.”
        “Oh thanks,” Carlos muttered.  “But the one person who would have motive for killing Danae is dead,” he countered hotly.
        “Grieving!” she protested.
        “Sorry, but it’s true,” he insisted.
        “So they only thing we know is that there’s no apparent motive, suspect, or target.  You’re blind,” Trent concluded.
        “Well great!” Danae threw up her arms in exasperation.
        “How ‘bout both of you come stay with me for a while,” Trent suggested.  “It won’t be too much longer before whoever it is finds out where you live and then it’s game over.”  Danae sighed and rubbed her face in her hands before agreeing to stay with him.
        “Is that what this is?” she asked Carlos softly when Trent had moved off to talk with someone else.  “A game?”
        “Basically,” Carlos said bluntly.  “It’s them or us, and we gotta stay one step ahead, or we lose.”
        Danae’s sparkling grin was back.  “That’s an understatement.”

[

        “This is a bad way to start a career,” Danae sighed as Carlos hung up the phone in Trent’s kitchen.  She had rung up her boss to tell him she would be unable to come into work for a few days.  Eventually, Carlos had to explain things to him.  Even so, her boss wrote down Carlos’ badge number, promising to call the police chief in the morning to verify everything about her story.
        “It’ll work out,” Carlos assured her.
        “Yeah,” she agreed with a small smile.  “It always does.”  Yelling came from the living room, where Trent, Margo, Tommy, and Trivette were watching the Superbowl.  She and Carlos had been cooped up in Trent’s small house for the entire weekend, and both of them were getting cabin fever.
        “I’m sorry,” he said.
        Danae grin broadened.  “Do you realize that most of what you’ve said to me since this whole thing started were apologies?”
        “And your every word has been ‘thanks’,” he grinned back.  Danae leaned in without warning and kissed him.  They rested like that, lips pressed together in an anticlimactic, juvenile kiss, for a few brief seconds.  Neither one of them wanted things to progress too far with things so hectic and dangerous.
        “Sorry,” she blushed.
        “Thank you,” Carlos replied ironically.
        “Where’s my popcorn?” Trivette shouted from the couch.  Danae and Carlos each grabbed a bowl of popcorn and rejoined the group in the living room.  They lay down on the floor in front of the TV, as there was no more room on the couch for them. Seeing how their heads touched, Margo tapped Trivette on the shoulder and rubbed her fingers together.  She was going to win this bet after all.  “We’ll see,” Trivette challenged.