Chapter One
Matthew knew he was in trouble, even before the arriving agents entered the room. He had known that remaining in American law enforcement meant running this risk, but he'd expected any real threat of exposure to come from the FBI. That was one of the main reasons he'd chosen to relocate to Columbia -- that, and the fact that Special Agent McCormick had never worked a case there. Columbia's police department was notorious in law enforcement circles for its recalcitrant attitude when forced to deal with the various federal agencies. Based on his partner's unusually genial tone of voice, however, the adjacence of Parris Island had taught the CPD to cooperate with NCIS, if not with anyone else. If the agent snapping at Detective Carlson was that agency's usual representative in Columbia, Matthew could well understand why.
There was really no chance that he would manage to stay bent over Captain Pulaski's corpse for the duration, but he was willing to make the attempt. None of the other alternatives appealed. An abrupt departure from the scene would be noted; trying to bluff it out was stomach-churning, to say the least. If Leroy Jethro Gibbs had ever forgotten anything work-related, Matthew would eat his badges. All of them. He hovered over the corpse for a long moment, trying to make up his mind. He'd almost decided to bolt, and be damned to the consequences, when Carlson made his mind up for him.
"Hobart! Matt, get over here, would you? We've got company."
Cursing internally, Matthew abandoned Captain Pulaski to the tender mercies of CPD's soon-to-be-evicted Forensics team, and went to face Special Agent McCormick's past.
He'd first met Gibbs some fifteen years earlier, when a serial killer who'd been specializing in college students picked up a Navy lieutenant instead. It had been their one and only encounter, but Gibbs was a vivid memory despite the intervening decade and a half, and the thousands of cases and cops and agents he'd dealt with since. He could only hope that the man didn't remember him quite so clearly.
Straightening, he put on his most earnest expression -- Detective Hobart was still a little green, while McCormick had never really been anything of the kind -- and crossed the room to Carlson's side, making sure to slouch a little in his cheap suit. Going clean-shaven took a good five years off his appearance, and hopefully that, in combination with the altered mannerisms and hairstyle, would be enough to make Gibbs decide that the resemblance was circumstantial. As Carlson introduced them, however, the look in Gibbs' blue eyes was unmistakably one of recognition -- and suspicion.
Fifteen years had finished silvering Gibbs' hair, and carved new lines of responsibility and stress into his face. Looking at the changes wrought by time, Matthew was acutely aware of his own unchanged face, and of the deep sense of sorrow that always sliced through his heart when faced with the aging of a mortal about whom he cared. I
As the morning wore on, Matthew did his level best to keep Gibbs from catching him alone. It wasn't easy -- the man wasn't being obvious about it, but he was very, very good, and Matthew lacked the authority to direct anyone at the scene. Ironically, he was helped along by Gibbs' second, whose casual friendliness, though startlingly easy to encourage, didn't quite hide the skilled investigator beneath. DiNozzo's chattiness was frustrating his boss, though, and eventuallly Gibbs interrupted.
"DiNozzo! Pay attention to what you're doing." That laser-sharp gaze swung around to Matthew, who realized too late that he'd erred in his decision to use one of Gibbs' team members as a shield. "Detective Hobart, a word, please." It wasn't a request, and Matthew had no way to refuse it without putting himself in an even worse position. Catching DiNozzo's look of sympathy didn't help matters in the slightest.
He followed Gibbs into the empty study, trying to keep his reluctance from showing, a task that became far more difficult once Gibbs closed the door behind them. The room was nearly silent, the back-and-forth that went with processing a crime scene almost entirely muted by the heavy door, and Gibbs was one of the best Matthew had ever met when it came to making a silence oppressive; to making a suspect want to talk, if only to put an end to that weighty, damning quiet. Fortunately, it was a familiar technique. Matthew had been using it for centuries, and had himself perfected it during the ten years he'd spent teaching Corwin. That experience allowed him to tuck his hands into his pockets and prop a hip on Captain Pulaski's desk, his expression schooled to reveal only mild curiosity. The difference between the interrogator and the interrogated, at least in civilised modern societies, was that the interrogator had to show his cards, had to explain why the interview was being conducted in the first place, while the interrogated party didn't have to say a thing and was in fact better off not doing so. The human desire to be understood, to explain everything, had caught more criminals than anything else. Even now, Matthew could feel the slight tug of the temptation to tell the truth, to hope that Gibbs would understand. It didn't help that he'd genuinely liked the man the last time they'd met.
Gibbs let the silence stretch out for nearly three minutes before deciding that Matthew wasn't going to be the one to break it. The next step would be comments designed to throw the subject off-guard, so Matthew was at least a little prepared. It was the steel in Gibbs' voice that he hadn't quite been expecting, every syllable as precise as if they were in an actual interrogation room.
"My first thought was Witness Protection, but there's no way in hell they'd let you do anything so close to your former job."
"Sir?" Matthew lifted both eyebrows, pulling confusion over his features like a mask. He was betting now that he could bluff well enough to make Gibbs doubt his own eyes, his own memories. It was a hell of a thing to do to anyone, and a cruel thing to do to a man like Gibbs, but his choices were beyond limited. He really should have run the instant he'd heard Gibbs' voice.
"It must be quite a let-down." Gibbs continued as if Matthew hadn't spoken. "Working homicide in Columbia after twelve years as the FBI's star profiler. Do you at least get to use that talent of yours, or do you play dumb to fit in, pass it off as hunches?" He tilted his head to the side, his eyes as sharp as the edge of a sword, and the mannerism reminded Matthew so much of Methos at his most dangerous that a shiver ran involuntarily down his spine.
"Sir?" he said again. It was a useful word; it could mean everything and nothing, and a good NCO -- which Matthew has been -- could keep it up all day. Gibbs, unfortunately, was once a good NCO himself.
"You 'sir' me one more time, Detective Hobart, and you'll damn well wish you hadn't."
Matthew managed to stop himself from reaching for a weapon, but the effort was almost physical, and Gibbs' eyes narrowed at the twitch that he couldn't quite hide. Matthew very deliberately put his hands palms flat on the desk to either side of himself. He wouldn't kill a mortal to preserve his secret; hadn't had to in over seven and a half centuries of Immortal life, and he wasn't about to start with a law enforcement officer, much less with someone like Gibbs -- and if the latter wasn't aware of all of the reasons behind Matthew's gesture, he was at least sharp enough to recognize it as a signal that this wasn't going to turn violent. The worst of the tension went out of him, though none of the steel left his eyes; in fact, as Matthew opened his mouth, it only intensified.
"The same thing happens if you lie to me," he said, before Matthew had a chance to say anything. Matthew was beginning to regret telling him that this wasn't a killing matter. Not that it would have made a damn bit of difference to Gibbs, he acknowledged bitterly. And he'd been quiet for too long, after an accusation that he should have responded to instantly.
"What if I ask you what you're talking about, Agent Gibbs?" he asked. The expected explosion never came. Instead, Gibbs tilted his head to the side again.
"Rachael Mezinski. Amanda Huntington. Melissa Conroy." And even now, even fifteen years later with the bastard who'd done it dead in Virginia's electric chair, Matthew couldn't control the involuntary flinch that the mention of those names always caused. There were reasons he'd chosen not to profile any longer, and those names were high on the list, if not for the reasons that Gibbs thought. They hadn't been the first serial killing he'd dealt with; it hadn't even been the first time he'd had to get inside the heads of both killer and victims -- but he'd been working that case when the futility and enormity of his self-assigned task had finally sunk in, that he'd acknowledged to himself that the load of a hundred-odd cases which was nearly bending him double was never going to slacken even a little bit. That Gibbs had seen how affected he'd been wasn't exactly a surprise. Nor was the look of satisfaction in the man's eyes.
"Wanna tell me what's going on, Special Agent McCormick?" he asked gently.
"I'm sorry, Agent Gibbs," Matthew said, and he really was, "but I'm afraid you have me confused with someone else." Gibbs hadn't said a word about the rather conspicuous absence of fifteen years' effect on Matthew, which was really the only reason that he could still hope to bluff his way out of the situation, however distantly.
"I don't think so," Gibbs said. "I went to your funeral, you know. Three years ago. You were -- are -- a damned good agent, whatever the hell else is going on with you. And now it turns out that you've been in Columbia, playing local cop the entire time? That's not the kind of new life that gets set up on a whim."
Matthew remained silent. There really wasn't anything to say. He was lucky this hadn't happened earlier; and now he was at the mercy of a trained investigator with a stubborn streak a mile wide. It was the sort of situation he'd expected to have to rescue Corwin from, not talk himself out of.
***
Author's Notes: First, of course, I'd like to say thank you to my beta-readers, lferion and morgynleri. You gals are the abolute best. Secondly, for those of you who aren't that familiar with Highlander, Matthew is from the episode 'Manhunt'. He's spent most of his Immortal life in law-enforcement. Corwin is Cory Raines, altruistic Immortal thief and Matthew's first student. He appeared in 'Money No Object'.
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