Mark had turned his back on Hardcastle for only a few seconds, just long enough to settle things with the cabbie. He'd hardly expected the man to choose that moment to wander off. But by the time he'd finished paying their driver and turned around again, there was no sign of the judge. The house was dark and the front door closed.

Mark swallowed hard, staring, straining to see into the darkness.

"Dammit," he muttered and then he hollered, "Hardcastle?"

He was relieved to hear a matter-of-fact reply come from the direction of the back yard. He loped along the west side of the house, half-stumbling over one of the planters. Candles being in short supply, he cursed the darkness. But at least he'd finally caught up with the judge, who was standing there—perilously close to the steep drop-off at the back of the property—gesturing at the view.

The moon had risen, and through a break in the clouds it was doing an inefficient job of providing illumination. Hardcastle was staring at it with a poorly-lit expression of unadulterated admiration.

All right, it was beautiful, Mark supposed, but he thought it could be appreciated just as well from a spot not so close to the edge. He said as much, and wasn't all that surprised when Hardcastle balked. Mark stepped in closer cautiously, wondering if the judge's discharge from the emergency room hadn't been a little premature.

"You sure you're okay?" he asked tentatively.

"I'm fine," Hardcastle said. "Really, fine."

He looked as though he meant it. Mark couldn't make out his pupils—and he supposed even his own would have appeared large in the dim light—but the judge's demeanor seemed reasonable enough, even calm.

Mark let out the judgmental breath he'd been holding and felt himself relax a little. He turned to take in the sweep of Santa Monica Bay and the glittering evening skyline of Los Angeles. It really was beautiful.

"Long day," he said, glad it was finally over and he'd gotten Hardcastle home in one more-or-less intact piece. He glanced sideward at the man and asked, "You hungry?"

The judge was still studying the moon, as someone might consider a particularly intricate work of art, his head cocked slightly. It took him a moment before he responded with a thoughtful, "Maybe—a little I guess."

Mark tried to remember what their dinner plans had been—Hardcastle was supposed to have been heading over to the studio for some publicity shots and an interview. He shook his head in weary disbelief. The part of today that was before the kidnapping and attempted murder seemed a long time back. It was hard to accept that the day's events could have fitted between a single sunrise and sunset.

"How 'bout pizza?" he suggested. That was a pretty typical après chase meal at the estate, especially if no one felt up to cooking. "But let's go inside, okay?"

Hardcastle gave up his lunar meditations with a last regretful glance, but seemed to understand that he wouldn't be permitted to wander around by himself. He didn't even look all that put out when Mark waited for him to precede as they turned toward the house.

Mark let him lead the way—past the pool, where he paused for a moment to stare at the shimmering moonlit iridescence—and up the steps to the back door.

"Wait." Mark extracted his key ring from his pocket and slipped past the judge, reaching for the lock. "Might want to close your eyes for a sec," he warned as he opened the door and then flipped the switch just inside.

A sharp wedge of light spilled out onto the landing and down into the back yard. He heard Hardcastle grunt, having apparently decided incorrectly that he'd be okay with the sudden shift in lighting.

"You alright?" Mark glanced over his shoulder and saw him back against the railing, squinting into the kitchen warily.

"Yeah," the judge grumbled, but it was a moment before he detached himself from that corner and edged inside, eyes still nearly shut.

Mark steered him toward the table and pulled a chair out for him. Hardcastle lowered himself into it and gradually settled back, still at a near-squint, only gradually opening his eyes more fully. They were still dark, but nothing like they'd been earlier that afternoon.

Mark tried to turn his sigh of relief into something else as he reached for the phone on the counter.

"The usual?" he asked over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of a distracted nod. He placed their order and asked for delivery. "Forty-five minutes," he said to the judge as he hung up. "I shoulda told 'em you're a TV celebrity."

Hardcastle's air of distraction vanished, replaced by a sharper gaze and a grim set to his mouth. He looked on the verge of adding his considered opinion to that comment when the phone rang, startling them both.

Mark twitched—a spontaneous response that couldn't be completely concealed by his quick grab for the reciever. The judge's version was even more obvious evidence that things weren't as back to normal as they seemed.

Mark's tentative "Hello?" was answered with a fast interrogatory patter from a vaguely familiar and harried voice: "You're there—good," and then in a more distant voice, not directed toward the mouthpiece, "Found 'em. They're at Judge Hardcastle's estate."

From further away still came a querulous, "What the hell are they doing there?"

But the more proximate speaker wasn't wholly satisfied yet. "He is there with you isn't he? We thought we'd catch you at the hospital. Damn—why'd you hightail it out of here in such a hurry? We've already missed the seven o'clock deadline, but if we hustle we can have film at eleven—"

A name slipped into position from Mark's recent memory like a piece in a puzzle: Kendall Simmons—the late Nolan Ashley's partner at the KCSZ news desk.

"—Just stay put and we'll get a camera crew and a reporter over to you."

"Wait a sec," Mark said wearily.

He lowered the phone and didn't bother putting his hand over the mouthpiece. Hardcastle, having only heard the one word of greeting, was giving him a non-specific frown.

"It's one of the news guys from the station," Mark informed him, trying not to inject too much of his own opinion about things. "Your employers want an exclusive."

"My former employers," Hardcastle said acidly. "Dremmond oughta be back on his feet by Monday, don'tcha think?"

Mark stifled a smile. It had been too much a near-run thing to be smiling so soon—or maybe the closest calls also summoned the greatest relief. To the guy on the other end he only said, "You hear that? 'No comment'."

"Ma-ark," Kendall wheedled, "talk to him, will ya? It's sweeps month!"

Mark wasn't even sure how this guy knew his name. He supposed it could be considered a useful thing to be pals with the flunky.

He didn't bother to repeat the man's last comment to the judge. He only said, with what little patience he had left, "Listen, Ken, go talk to your station head. He's got this great program concept that'd be perfect for you: divorce, Hawaii—what's not to like? In the meantime, we're only opening the gate for the pizza guy and I'm gonna ask him for credentials. Okay?"

He glanced across the table toward Hardcastle to see if there was anything else he wanted to add. All he got was a sideways wave of the hand. He didn't give Ken a chance to reply before he hung up, looking at the phone for a moment with distaste.

"Think they'll call back?" he asked.

"Not if we take the phone of the hook."

Mark gave that a moment's thought and a sharp nod of agreement as he picked up the receiver again and set it down on the counter.

"Wanna go in the den? Or we could hide out in the gatehouse."

"The den, I think." Hardcastle got to his feet slowly, leaning on the table as though he mistrusted his balance.

Mark didn't ask him if he needed a hand. It seemed a real possibility and a reflexive "No" would just make things awkward. Instead he stayed close enough to be unobtrusively handy.

Hardcastle steered his own way to the front of the house without assistance, even managing to navigate around the bucket and mop that had been abandoned in the front hallway. Mark stared at it for a second, feeling an echo of the gut-clenching fear that he'd experienced that afternoon when Delaney had told him about Dr. Gray.

He started breathing again. He moved the items aside without comment and followed Hardcastle into the den. The judge hadn't made for his usual seat behind his desk, settling himself in one of the leather wingbacks instead. Mark was barely seated in the other one when he heard the judge clear his throat.

"I'm okay, ya know," Hardcastle grumbled. "You don't have to . . ."

"Hover?" Mark suggested. "I'm not." He leaned back ostentatiously and put his ankle up on the opposite knee—the very antithesis of a hover. "I am trying to be the responsible adult though, and as you like to point out, I need all the practice I can get."

He got a hint of a smile from the judge and then another less focused moment of staring that strung out for a bit.

"You are okay?"

Hardcastle nodded. The stare went on, though and he finally admitted, "The colors and all that . . . they're kinda interesting—once you know it's all fake. Still," he frowned—with an air that was more puzzled than unhappy, "even when you know it's not all real, things feel kinda . . . slippery."

Mark thought about that for a moment and then said, "You mean like 'hard to get a grip on'. Like things could get away from you if you aren't careful?"

He got another nod.

"Well, don't worry about it," Mark said quietly. "That's what I'm here for."

The judge pried himself loose from his stare with what seemed to be a bit of effort and shifted his sharpened look toward McCormick.

"You ever take any of this stuff?"

"Me? Uh-uh." Mark grimaced momentarily. "Trips . . . flashbacks. Nah. Not my thing. Not compatible with driving fast and living to tell about it. Driving—racing—that's enough of a high," he added in a philosophical tone.

"But you don't get to do that much anymore."

"Says who?" Mark smiled. "You shoulda seen me this afternoon."

"I did . . . sorta." Hardcastle's brow furrowed a little, though it seemed more like intent recollection, not displeasure. "Thanks," he said with a nod of acknowledgment in McCormick's direction. "How'd you get there so fast? How'd ya even know where—"

"To look? " Mark's smile was gone. He hoped the judge's vision was not one-hundred percent. "When Delaney came by and dropped the bomb about Gary, the first thing that popped in my head was that place where she ran down Ashley."

That hadn't been exactly the first thing, but the graphic post-mortem photos of that earlier victim with the judge's image superimposed would hardly make a good pre-dinner conversational gambit.

"It was in the report," Mark added with studied casualness. "Remember?"

Hardcastle nodded. He was staring again but this time it ended with a muttered, "I recognized the place when she pulled in there." He sighed.

"Back to that, huh?"

"What?"

"That sighing thing. You really do need a responsible adult, Hardcase." Mark shook his head. "She was a real psychiatrist—at least when she showed up here she was. You trying to give her a hand with her problem seemed like a decent thing to do."

"I thought I could handle her, even after I figured out things weren't kosher."

"Yeah, well, looks like she doesn't weigh much more than ninety pounds soaking wet."

"But she'd nailed Nolan Ashley—and I should have remembered that. A good cop will tell you the first time you get careless can be the last."

Mark, who had no aspirations to be any kind of cop, still had to nod at the truth of this. "Okay, so you had an off day. Even the Lone Ranger got bushwhacked once in a while. That's why he kept Tonto around, right?—To watch his back."

This time the judge cocked a genuine half-smile, and further maudlin reflections were cut off by a ring of the doorbell.

Mark straightened up and leaned forward in his chair. He was relieved to see 'Tony's Pizza Palace' on the van out front rather than a KSCZ news logo. He clambered to his feet.

"Top drawer on the right," Hardcastle said, as though he hadn't sent him there a dozen times in the past year. Then he frowned and added, "How much was the cab ride?"

"More than you want to know," Mark said cheerfully as he fished the requisite cash out of the household kitty. "And I don't want to hear any complaints. You could have just paid for gas with the Coyote."

The guy on the front step leaned on the bell again. Mark hustled a little, beating the third ring. Pizza box and money changed hands. He backed into the door to shut it, carried the box into the den, and put it down on the coffee table.

"Might as well eat in here," he said, trying to make it sound like a routine nod to mutual fatigue rather than some sort of comment on the judge being less than one-hundred percent. He thought he probably ruined the effect by adding, "You stay here—I'll go grab us some plates."

The judge said nothing. He didn't even reach for the box to sneak out his typical preview sample.

Mark hustled again, though this time not till he was out of sight—scuttling down the hall and back into the kitchen. He gathered plates, a handful of napkins, and forks, just in case. Then he tugged on the door of the fridge. He paused, his hand poised over a couple of long-necks. One beer probably wouldn't make all that much difference, but he abruptly decided the judge didn't need anything that would contribute to his already shaky grip on reality. He changed his trajectory slightly and snagged two sodas from the other shelf instead.

Hardcastle was sitting where he'd left him. Though the pizza was still intact, at least he'd made the effort to open the box. Mark was surprised at the hunger pang that struck him with the first waft: extra-cheese, onion, mushroom, green pepper, and pepperoni. He handed the judge one of the bottles and started loading up two plates.

The judge stared at his drink with a look that was a little too dark to be merely jaundiced. "Not real," he said in a tone that was just audible, and more weary than tense.

Mark spared a glance for the object of his consternation. "Of course not," he said bluntly, "it's Pinky Fizz. What's it look like to you?"

"Um," Hardcastle hesitated, "kinda, I dunno," he looked a tad shifty for an officer of the court, and he lowered his voice a notch, "radioactive."

"Hmm," Mark picked up his own bottle and gazed at it, "might improve the flavor." He took a swig, then shook his head as he put the bottle down. It definitely wasn't the right accompaniment for the meal, but if Hardcastle was campaigning for a beer with his pizza he'd come to the wrong responsible adult.

"Here." He handed a plate over. The judge accepted it without any additional sideways looks, for which Mark was grateful, and they both settled in.

Mark's new-found appetite demolished his first couple of pieces while the judge chewed with what looked like distraction, as though his mind were elsewhere and he was just eating to be polite. Polite wasn't Hardcastle's usual M.O. and Mark wondered how far the disturbing perceptions extended.

He cleared his throat hesitantly and said, "It doesn't taste funny or anything?"

The judge seemed startled, as if he'd been yanked out of a reverie. He looked at the piece of pizza in his hand—really looked at—and finally shook his head, and the rest of the meal passed in silence.

Mark was standing, gathering up the plates and the box, when a set of headlight beams tracked across the back wall. He half-turned, already scowling, figuring he'd be running Kendall and his news crew off after all, but the set of the lights and the profile of the vehicle said sedan.

The engine cut out and with it the headlights. In the relative darkness he could actually see the car's outline more clearly, as well as the man who was exiting it.

"You can run but you can't hide," he said over his shoulder to the judge. "It's Delaney." Then he switched tacks to his archest butler voice. "Are we receiving visitors?"

Hardcastle scowled but didn't back that up with any demands. Mark probably would have ignored them anyhow. He returned the remains of the pizza to the coffee table and mounted the two steps to the hallway.

This time he beat the bell entirely, though Delaney had gotten to the front stoop at a pace that suggested more than a social call. As Mark opened the door the lieutenant froze momentarily. A brief look of relief was chased off his face by a more permanent expression of disgruntlement.

"Your phone's not working," he said flatly.

"Ah . . ." Mark attempted a smile and thought better of it. "It's not my phone."

The lieutenant did not look amused. "I almost sent a squad car here but the guys down at County convinced me that Gary woman was working alone."

"We took it off the hook. The news guys were annoying him."

Delaney gave that a short consideration and a sharp nod. It might have even been that he'd been glad for an excuse to come over. The grim look was mostly gone.

"How's he doing?"

"Why don't you ask him?" Mark beckoned him in with one hand.

The lieutenant edged by, peering around the corner as if he weren't too sure how he'd be received.

Hardcastle gave him a weary wave from the wingback and said, "I'm fine—how are those guys of yours?"

"Home—ice packs and band-aids."

"Well, thank 'em for me. I appreciate the effort."

"All in a day's work; you know that Milt. Though, I'll admit I can't remember the last time I saw a squad car that jacked up."

"Lucky it was a closed course," Mark observed dryly. "If she'd freaked out on the way over there—"

He paused on that thought and all three men considered it with nearly identical grim expressions: an even higher-speed chase ending in a multi-car pile-up.

Hardcastle shrugged it off first. "Just a good thing you got there when you did. I was getting a little woozy."

Delaney cocked his head, studying him a little more closely. "That part's okay now?"

Another shrug—this one a little too studied—but Mark kept his mouth shut and Delaney seemed satisfied.

"We can wait on the statement," he said. "We've got Gary on a seventy-two hour psych eval anyway. No arraignment till we get her back from there."

"As long as she's off the street."

The judge left it at that. The other two men didn't add anything. Mark had a little trouble with that much scheming getting written off as 'not guilty', but he suspected he was too close to the victim to be objective. He tried to suppress that awkward notion but there really was no denying it—not with the bucket and mop standing silent testimony to how he'd felt when he realized he'd let Hardcase go off with a serial killer.

He shook his head slightly to clear it, relieved to find that no one had taken notice of his moment of self-awareness. Delaney and Hardcastle were making vague plans for a formal statement in a day or so.

"I'll have to drive McCormick down there tomorrow anyway to pick up his car," the judge said with an air of bluff confidence that he'd be up to it by morning.

Mark kept his expression perfectly bland, as befitted a responsible adult who'd decided they could cross that bridge when they came to it. Delaney must have also figured there'd been enough discussion for one day. He bid them both good night. Mark saw him to the door and fastened it behind him. Then he leaned back against it for a moment, gathering his thoughts.

Oddly, among the other things he was sorting through, he felt just the tiniest bit of gratitude toward Dr. Gary. He'd never seen Hardcastle shy away from any kind of confrontation with the bad guys, but random attacks from unhinged female admirers appeared to be more than even he would put up with. She'd driven the final nail into the judge's career as a TV celebrity.

Mark glanced at the mop and bucket again, then abruptly detached himself from the door and headed back into the den. The judge was sitting, looking equally pensive. Mark dropped back into the wingback opposite his, not bothering to carry the leftovers away.

"Wanna watch a movie?" he said cheerfully.

Hardcastle gave that only the briefest of considerations before he scowled in the general direction of the television. Apparently old movies were on the same black list as "indie-syndie" programs like You Be the Judge—at least for the time being.

"Just a suggestion." Mark shrugged. "I just thought it's kind of early to call it a night."

He went back to gathering up the remains of dinner, trying to ignore the judge's persistent look of disgust. After all, for once it wasn't directed at him. It was damn penetrating though, and Mark thought it was only a matter of time before it left permanent stains. He straightened up from his self-appointed chore and skewered the older man with a penetrating look of his own.

"Do you believe in destiny?"

"Huh?"

"Destiny," Mark repeated, with a little more emphasis.

The judge seemed to consider this for a moment and then said, "You mean destiny like 'Que Sera, Sera'? or destiny like 'everything happens for a reason'?"

At least he had the man's attention, Mark figured, and though he wasn't sure he liked that second definition too much, it was regrettably closer to what he'd meant.

"The second one," he said nervously. "But maybe not 'everything'—just some things. Like you doing that favor for Dremmond, taking over that stupid show. Just a favor, for a friend. You didn't even want to do it."

"Hmmph."

"Well, you didn't. I had to nudge you a little."

"Yeah, so?" Hardcastle gumped. "I caught on to it quick enough, don'tcha think?"

He was squinting less. Mark thought the drug must be finally wearing off, which meant it was well and truly time to get over this funk.

"Anyway," the judge continued, "I never liked that 'Que Sera' kind—makes it too easy for people to blame everything on fate. I've always believed in free will."

Mark had already known that implicitly, but he also thought a person could exercise a whole bunch of free will and still end up a victim—or a tool—of Providence. How else could he explain the confluence of events that had brought him to the doorstep of Hardcastle's Washington D.C. hotel a year ago, just in time to prevent his kidnapping and murder?

He wasn't about to use that example, though, not with this far more recent one at hand.

"So," he said, "you did a favor for a friend, and it turned out that you were pretty good at it—different, anyway, and people were tired of the same old thing, so different was good—"

This much was straightforward and got him a wary nod.

"—and if you hadn't exercised a little free will there and been your usually hard-nosed self, then it wouldn't have been such a big hit, and Dr. Gary, or whoever she thought she was, wouldn't have mistook you for her father—or whatever. And who else would have poked around and found those music boxes after Elaine Kemp was killed?"

"You did."

Mark drew back indignantly.

"Well, you're the guy who picked the lock on her desk," Hardcastle pointed out.

"With you looking over my shoulder," Mark snorted. "Anyway," he observed, "I wouldn't have been there if you hadn't been, so it's all the same. I don't have any free will half the time, just an errand list."

Hardcastle's expression was a little less accepting, but he didn't argue.

"So . . ." Mark concluded slowly, "the way I see it, if you hadn't done exactly what you did—if it hadn't been you doing it—Dr. Gary might have picked some other cheesy TV personality. Hell, maybe a whole series of them. Who knows how many more murders she would have gotten away with?" He spread his hands, palms up, in an ipso facto gesture.

"So all's well that ends well," the judge muttered, "even if it proves that I'm just as gullible as the next guy when a cute young thing says I'm the only one who can solve her problem?"

Mark nodded solemnly. "We all have to make sacrifices. You finding out you're merely human is a small price to pay for ending this."

"'Human', huh?"

"As in not perfect." Mark smiled.

And that faded almost at once into a sterner look as he added sharply, "Now get over it."

He hadn't been very certain what kind of a response that was going to get. The reciprocating smile took him by surprise and made him wonder if he hadn't been wrong about the drug being out of Hardcastle's system. It was a smile not unlike the one he'd received the evening before, in this very room, when he delivered his little soliloquy on the importance of going after the bad guys. Maybe he'd managed to invoke the same cause again.

Whatever it was, the knowing expression still tugged at the judge's face as the older man turned in his chair, now facing the blank screen. "Ya could have a point there," he growled.

"Think so?" Mark said. His own smile was back as he turned slightly toward the set as well. Hardcastle picked up the remote and hit the 'on' button.

The TV had been previously left on one of the double-digit stations that catered to the judge's taste in movies. The scene that appeared was familiar enough to elicit a groan of recognition from McCormick.

"Not In Old California—it's in black and white," he pointed out, as if that put it, age-wise, somewhere before dirt.

Hardcastle sighed again, though this one seemed more in the spirit of tradition rather than from some deep-seated dysphoria.

"It's a classic," he said. "Anyway, there's nothing wrong with black and white. I like black and white."

Mark stifled a quick grin at this utterly normal tone, and shook his head slowly as he turned fully to face the flickering image. A little black and white for a change wouldn't hurt anyone.