Disclaimer: I do not own any rights to Psych. This goes for the entire story, so I will not be posting this disclaimer in every chapter.

Author Note: I've been dying to write this for some time. (Way before Marlowe, who irritates me a lot.) It's a single episode of Psych presented in chapters. Shawn and Gus appear, but infrequently throughout this story, which features Lassiter.

Chapter One - In Which the Coffee Is a Lie

The woman pretty in an accidental sort of way. Her long hair was a strawberry shade of auburn that hadn't come from a bottle, it's natural waves untouched by a curling iron. It was sloppily swept up into a large clip pinned to the back of her head, but even that seemed more planned than it was. Her makeup was basic and so thin that it didn't quite manage to cover up the shadows of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Her eyes were a smoky blue color that was almost gray, and she was wearing a scarlet dress that wrapped delicately across her throat, but left the back open.

She was sitting by herself in the restaurant, which was otherwise filling with chatting couples and a handful of executives meeting for business. It was fancier than she was really used to, and she hadn't been sure that the dress would still fit, but it had slipped on like an old friend. Her cheeks were slightly red and she was fidgeting with the edge of the tablecloth absently, trying to decide whether it was time to cut her losses and leave. Just as she was about to wave the concierge over, however, the man she was waiting on finally arrived.

He was announced by a slightly nervous voice just behind her.

"Excuse me, Miss," he asked, sounding uncertain. "Are you...?"

She turned in her chair and his eyes widened when they fell on her. She looked like everything he wasn't expecting to see. She looked soft and almost fragile and definitely not someone Juliet would set him up on a blind date with. She also looked a little confused.

He cleared his throat and smiled apologetically. "No, probably not," he said, answering his own question. "I'm sorry to have disturbed you. Enjoy your dinner."

He turned to leave then, and she was too shocked to react at first.

"An hour late," he muttered to himself when he was out of hearing distance. "An hour late and she's gone. I am going to kill Spencer."

"Carlton?"

He stopped, almost to the door, and rotated on the spot. When he saw her again, she was standing next to her chair, red dress falling nearly to the floor, and she was smiling at him. "Juliet texted me. She said you might be a little late." She gestured to the chair across from her. "I don't think it's too late to salvage the evening, if you still want," she said.

Realizing his mouth was hanging open slightly, Carlton closed it and straightened his posture, tugging his suit jacket down and into place. He walked over to the table and started to sit down, before jumping back up suddenly and walking around to help her into her seat.

"Sorry, I just wasn't expecting—" he started, then stopped. "Well, I'm just very sorry about the time, Miss Dalton."

She let him push the seat in beneath her and she crossed her ankles under the table. "Don't be sorry," she said. "Your job is an important one. And, well... It's actually Dr. Dalton, but there's no need to be so formal. You can just call me Kella."

Her compliment gave his embarrassed expression a bit of a smug tilt, but he frowned when she finished. "Dr. Dalton?" he asked. He jabbed the table with his finger commandingly. "If this is some scheme Juliet and Spencer cooked up to get me to see a therapist, I swear this is the last—"

"No, no," she said, waving her hands, laughing. "Nothing like that. I'm not a medical doctor. I'm a PhD."

Carlton leaned back in his seat, a little red in the face. "Oh," he said. "Sorry."

After a moment, he tried his hand at small talk. "So, you have a PhD," he said. "What did you study?"

Kella smiled and answered, "Well, I'm a double doctorate. I earned my degrees in... chemistry and engineering." She hesitated before finishing, but he didn't seem to notice.

"That's... impressive," he said, unable to think of anything else to say. It was impressive. It was also intimidating to the career cop.

The waiter came and took their orders after a few minutes of heavy silence during which Carlton glanced nervously around the room while Kella watched him.

He cleared his throat after the waiter left and apologized to her. "I haven't done this... in a while."

She smiled. "Order dinner?" she asked, her tone light.

He laughed a little. "Date. I don't really date... much."

Kella grinned. "I could tell," she said. "Not many men come to dinner armed. I promise I'm really not all that scary."

Carlton looked confused for a moment, but glanced down and saw that his jacket had fallen open so that his side holster and Glock were visible. He flushed slightly and buttoned the jacket, straightening his tie smartly. He opened his mouth to say something about how an officer of the law was never really off duty, but she spoke first.

"It's a beautiful piece of machinery," she said, leaning forward and lowering her voice, "but I prefer the Colt Mustang you have strapped to your ankle."

He shifted a little awkwardly, presumably to adjust his pant leg a little further down, and asked, "You know about guns?"

She shrugged. "You could call it a hobby of mine," she replied. She held out one hand across the table. "May I?"

He seemed to think about it for a moment before reaching down for the strap holding it to his ankle. He glanced around to make sure that everyone was paying attention to their own dinner partners, and handed it across to her as discretely as possible. It almost fit in one hand as she ran her fingers across it. "See, I like this one," she said, "because it has a good heft to it, but it's not too bulky. It's light and fast, but you still feel like you're holding a gun and not a toy."

"I always thought the same thing," Carlton said, looking impressed, but when the waiter came to the table with a bottle of wine, he saw the gun and blanched. Carlton's face immediately turned stern and, without missing a beat, he produced his badge and said, "Remain calm, civilian. Santa Barbara PD. Everything is under control."

Despite the badge, however, the waiter turned and walked very quickly back toward the kitchen with the bottle of wine in his hand. Carlton turned back to Kella. "So, you know the Colt Mustang?" he asked her.

She nodded. Her practiced and knowledgeable fingers flew across the weapon and, in three seconds she had fully disassembled it on the table. "Wow," she commented, inspecting the barrel. "Spotless." She closed her eyes for a moment, sniffing, and when she opened them, she asked, "Hoppe's Nine?"

"Always," Carlton said, clearly more comfortable since the conversation had steered toward gun maintenance.

Over his shoulder, Kella spotted the waiter trailing behind a perturbed-looking manager. "Company," she said, and Carlton glanced over his shoulder to watch the man approach. A few seconds and a series of rapid clicking noises later, the manager had arrived at the table, and the gone had vanished. Carlton gave Kella a questioning look, but she merely shrugged innocently.

"Hello, folks," the manager said in a genial tone, his eyes darting around the table and finding nothing out of place. "I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you both to leave. If we could make this as discrete as possible so as to not disturb the other diners?"

Carlton nodded like he was used to such requests, but Kella stood suddenly, taller than the squat manager by an inch or so in her high heels. "Do you know who this is?" she asked, her voice carrying across the restaurant. The manager sputtered to answer, but he was clearly expecting more trouble out of the man than the wavery woman. "This is Detective Carlton Lassiter, Head Detective of the Santa Barbara Police Department. This man puts away criminals for a living. He makes sure you're safe in your homes when you go to sleep at night."

"Now, now," the manager started, turning red in the face and trying to salvage the situation. "There's no need to—"

"No need to what?" Kella said, while Carlton looked on in semi-awe. "To serve a man who puts killers behind bars on a daily basis? That's fine. I'd rather have a street vendor hot dog anyway."

Kella turned away from the manager to the stunned Carlton and popped her eyebrows at him slightly, looking pleased with her performance. "Buy me a hot dog?" she asked, offering her arm. He jumped up from his seat finally, taking her arm. "Love to," he said, and they left together, following by a handful of disgusted-looking patrons.

Once they were out of the restaurant and around the corner, Kella burst into laughter, and Carlton joined in a few moments later. "I'm sorry about that," she said, once she'd stopped laughing. "It was my fault we were asked to leave."

Carlton shook his head, giving a look like he wasn't sure what to make of her. "No," he said finally, pulling his tie loose. "Don't worry about it. Now, how about that hot dog?"

/-

At the end of the evening, Carlton drove Kella home. His car pulled into a quaint residential district filled with one-story homes and parked in front of a pale yellow house with a small, white porch with a wooden swing to one side of the door. He turned off the engine, but left the key in the ignition. He stared at the steering wheel for a while while Kella continued to study him with kind eyes.

After a moment, he looked over at her. "I had a... good time," he said, struggling for the right words. "Thank you."

"I had a good time, too," Kella said.

"You did?" he asked, looking worried for a moment before becoming reserved again. "I mean, I'm glad. I'm glad you did."

Kella chuckled a little at his nervousness, and knowing he wasn't sure what to do with himself, asked, "Would you like me to tell you how the evening ends?"

Carlton didn't say anything at first, but he nodded slowly after thinking about the question. He was a little rusty on date protocol.

Kella smiled and shifted in her seat to look at him more directly. "Well," she started, "you're a gentleman, I can tell. So, you're going to walk me to my door. I'm going to thank you and kiss you on the cheek before turning to my door and fidgeting with my keys, because what I really want to do is invite you inside. But, I'm a lady, so of course I won't do that. You, however, being a detective, will notice my hesitance, and say something about it still being early in the evening, which isn't really true, but is just what I want to hear. I'll say you're right and ask you if you'd like to come in for some coffee. You'll say you really like that idea and come inside with me."

Carlton was hanging on her every word, his eyebrows raised and his lips slightly parted. "Then, of course, you'll discover something a little unflattering about me," she continued, confusing him.

"What...?" He doesn't bother finishing the question.

She blushed a little. "You'll find out that sometimes I'm a liar," she finished, "because, you see, I don't actually have any coffee."

There was a moment of silence while the meaning of her words sank in, and then she asked him, "Do you think you can remember all that?"

He nodded wordlessly, and she smiled brightly. "Shall we then?" she asked.

They both got out of the car, and that's precisely what happened.

/-

The crash was so deafening and unexpected, that even seasoned detective Carlton Lassiter didn't have time to reach for his service weapon. Of course, it would have done him no good, since it was still in his holster, draped carelessly across the chair in the living room. In a sleepy fog, he heard Kella scream next to him before she was muffled quickly. A pair of strong arms held him down and he had time to register the sickly sweet smell of chloroform before his vision blurred and went dark.

A/N: And commercial break. ;)