A/N: You guys have gotten by now that I don't own these guys, right? Cool, because it's Steve Franks that own them, and, awesome as he seems, I'd really love not to get sued by him.

So, I'm sorry for the delay in update, but I've started work on a couple of other projects, and I have the attention span of a fruit fly. I'm working on that, though.

The sounds of the steps had gotten louder as Joanna had led Shawn from the small room. Definitely heels, Shawn decided, nodding to himself. Juliet would be here to put a stop to the madness anytime now. Joanna was probably taking Shawn back to Lassie and Tom, probably trying to put together some form of trap, but Juliet would be smarter than that, and they'd all be back in the sun within the hour.

As Shawn smiled to himself, the sound on the stairs became more distinct. The closer Juliet got to the floor, the less echoed her steps became. As the sound took a definite shape, Shawn felt the smile slowly slide off his face. He'd heard Juliet's footsteps no less than a thousand times, and they were almost always the exact same: a sharp clicking sound followed immediately by a dull clack as the rest of the shoe hit the floor. He'd heard it on tile, hardwood, stairs, carpet, and every time it was the same.

This sound, though, this was different, a sort of squishing thud, followed by a dull thwack. And they were the only ones. None of Buzz's surprisingly light thumps or even Gus's heavy clomping. Whoever was coming had come alone, a mistake Jules never would have made if she had any idea what she was walking into. And, of course, she wouldn't be wandering around down here without knowing what she would be coming into.

And then there was the way the smile lit Joanna's face every time she looked back toward the origin of the sound. Even if they had been planning a trap for Juliet, no matter what it was they had planned, Shawn just couldn't see Joanna lighting up like that at the thought of murder, torture, and various other types of mayhem. Tommy Dead-Eyes, maybe, but not Joanna.

Shawn mentally slapped himself. Of course it wasn't Juliet. If it had been the detective, he never would have heard her coming. No one as experienced as Juliet with a partner as anal and demanding as Lassie would ever be so obvious on an approach into a situation like this.

Shawn didn't know what was going on in his head, but he knew something was wrong. He should have realized the second he heard the steps that it wasn't Jules coming to the rescue. Just like he should have realized so much earlier that Thomas and Joanna weren't nearly rational enough to pull off something on the scale of what he and Lassie had originally come here to investigate. And where had those damned drugs come from?

Shawn remembered the needle in Joanna's hand as she had kidnapped him. He had thought as he woke that he'd had the couple pegged. They had been trying so hard to emulate their dear Dr. Forest that when the couples they nabbed hadn't been cooperative, Thomas's violent tendencies had taken over and the couples had been killed. But that was making less and less sense given what he knew about them. Shawn was starting to feel his head clear, and with it came a realization that filled him with dread: Joanna and Thomas were pawns. And the mastermind had been coming down the stairs behind him.

Thomas was smiling, and that sent a chill down Lassiter's spine. The last time he'd seen that smile, the world had turned sideways and he'd woken up in this damned basement. The man had just sent off a text message, from the way his thumbs had moved over his phone, and now he seemed to be waiting for something, sitting in his chair and staring at the opening to their small cubicle.

Lassiter heard it first, the sound of Shawn struggling. There were whines and grunts peppered throughout with that sound, the one Lassiter had never been able to put a name to, the one that was uniquely Shawn. It was half a moan, half a whimper, with traces of a sigh, and it sent Lassiter into a new kind of rage.

On pure instinct, Lassiter felt his hand grasping at his empty holster, then he rounded once more on Thomas. "What is she doing to him?" he asked in a dark tone. He could feel his face reddening and his muscles tightening. Only Spencer could do this to him. "Where is he?" Lassiter shouted, and, to his great aggravation, Thomas only laughed.

Thomas smiled the smile that Lassiter had come to associate with bad things. It seemed to be the only smile the man had. "He'll be here soon, Carlton; there's no reason to get upset." For whatever reason, saying this caused Thomas to laugh harder.

Lassiter couldn't stop himself, and that was cause for alarm. But the worry would have to wait. For the moment, Lassiter was focused on the fist he was sending into Thomas's stomach, causing the man to reel back and double over. He had wanted to do that since waking up down here, and it had been satisfying as hell, but before he could get another shot in, Lassiter was being hit over the head with the butt of his own gun with a force which, had he been the one to use it, would have been labeled excessive. He growled, but fell to one knee, clasping the spot on his head which had split, allowing blood to fall freely into his eyes.

Lassiter couldn't see, but he could still hear, something Spencer had taught him long ago to use to his advantage. He heard footsteps, two sets, coming into the room. He heard one start to run toward him, and that must have been Spencer. He suspicions were confirmed as he heard the younger man's voice, too loud in the small space.

"Lassie!" Shawn called as he fell to the ground next to the detective, putting an arm around his shoulders.

But that wasn't all Lassiter heard. Taking the second set of footsteps as Joanna, he had to wonder who the third set belonged to. They were farther off, and Lassiter could hear the familiar click-clack of women's heels. They were coming closer, swift and unhesitating. They couldn't belong to O'Hara; he knew he'd trained her better than that.

Putting his hand on Shawn's back, Lassiter stood, trying to clear the blood from his eyes. He had little success until Shawn pulled his sleeve up to Lassiter's eyes and swiped at them with the soft fabric. As the world once again began to coalesce around him, Lassiter turned. He could see Thomas, standing still so near with that god-awful grin, and Joanna, with a freakishly large smile to match. And as Lassiter turned to the opening that would have served as a door to the small office space, he saw the latest addition to their disturbed little party, and he swore.

"Dammit." Shawn heard the curse muttered lightly under Lassiter's breath even as he thought it himself. He really should have seen this coming. He tried not to let the surprise show on his face, but he knew it was too late for that. For all the danger they were in, for all that the situation had long ago spiraled out of his control, all Shawn could think was that he needed a cover.

"Geez, doc, what was in that shot? It's completely messing with my aura! I can barely even hear the spirits."

Dr. Regina Forest stood in the door with a large knife and a larger smile. She put a hand against one hip, and in that hand Shawn saw a small gun. "Mr. Spencer, I believe we can go ahead and drop the act now, don't you?"

With Lassiter held under his left arm, he turned to his right and pretended to argue for a moment. "Hang on, hang on, I'm trying to talk to the doc. Okay, fine, you don't have to yell." Finally, he turned again to see the doctor standing before him. "The spirits want me to let you know that using your most deranged patients to abduct and murder other couples is pretty screwed up." She raised her eyebrows, and Shawn put his hands up in defense. "Hey, hey, their words, not mine."

Lassiter groaned. "Maybe now isn't the best time, Spencer," he whispered in Shawn's ear, but Shawn's focus was on the doctor.

He was afraid for a moment that she would have Thomas hit him, or, worse, Lassie, but in the end she just smiled. "Tell you spirits that it's not anything so simple as that."

Shawn rolled his eyes. "They're everywhere, duh. They can hear you just fine."

Forest shook her head, her amusement plain on her face, and if Shawn had been serious, he might have been annoyed. "In answer to your question, though, Mr. Spencer, the syringes contained a wonderful new miracle drug called feroinaphilinine. Take a little resentment, add in some feroinaphilinine, stir, and, voila! You have yourself one fantastic recipe for blind, murderous rage! Imagine the possibilities, gentlemen," Forest said, beginning to walk back and forth along the width of the cubicle.

"Yeah, sorry, I don't really speak maniac. Lassie, could you translate?"

Lassiter glanced up at the doctor, studying her. "Well, Spencer, just a guess here, but I'd say she's going into business with the drug cartels. They wouldn't need hired guns if they could just snatch someone close to their target and drug them into doing the dirty work for them. Nothing could be traced back to them, and the work would be done with no risk to their own soldiers."

Forest smiled approvingly. "Not a bad guess, Detective, or a bad idea for later, but I had my eye on something a little…higher priority. Imagine if one day the president's son were found in his father's room. Imagine that the president had been shot in the night by his son, who then turned to suicide. There would be no reason to see it as a political assassination, and no trail back to anyone who may have meant the man harm."

Shawn watched Lassiter's face blanch out of the corner of his eye. Okay, so maybe he didn't follow "bad guy" logic too well sometimes, but this one sounded bad. "So why the couple killings?" Shawn asked, trying to find the connection.

"Call them drug trials," the doctor said off-handedly. "Although, since almost all of my patients are reporting for court-mandated therapy, and almost all of them have histories of violence anyway, they didn't really prove what I had set out to." She seemed disappointed more than remorseful, but her eyes shone as they fell once more on the two men in the center of the room. "But that was why you two were such a great find."

Thomas and Joanna nodded around them. Shawn was having trouble putting two and two together through the haze of the drugs that still lingered around his mind, but Lassie seemed to be recovering more swiftly. Shawn turned a questioning glance on the detective, and he filled in the blanks. "We don't have the violent history the others did. She's trying to prove that she can turn anyone into a murderer."

Suddenly his talk with Joanna made more sense. Yes, it was still the creepiest conversation he'd ever had, but at least now he could see the purpose behind it. Shawn wondered how Lassie's time with Thomas had passed.

"A detective for the police force and his psychic companion, two men who love each other so deeply, with no problems but for some mild annoyances, turned to murder. You two will be…" Forest paused, seeming to look for the right words. "My masterpiece," she finally settled on, drawing the words out dramatically. "Now come along."

Lassiter and Spencer were once more wrenched apart. Lassiter didn't struggle until he saw Shawn clenched in Joanna's grasp, a look of pain flashing across his face. But Thomas wouldn't let him wriggle free, his hands digging painfully into Lassiter's biceps.

They were being moved once again through the basement, back, it seemed, to the wider space in which they had initially awoke. As they entered the comparably cavernous space, Shawn and Lassiter were thrown down near one another.

Lassiter took the opportunity to hiss in the younger man's ear, "Oh, Spencer, if we survive this, I swear, I'm going to kill you. And Guster. And O'Hara, and anybody else I come across who had anything to do with this sounding like it could ever have been a good idea."

"Don't forget the Chief," Shawn pointed out.

Lassiter couldn't help the smile that spread across his face. "Thank you, Spencer, I won't."

The more he thought about how this had happened, the angrier Lassiter became. O'Hara had interviewed the doctor and eliminated her as a suspect. The chief had talked him into the operation in the first place. Sure, it had been Spencer's idea, or the spirits' or whoever's, but without her approval it could have died quietly. Now, here he sat, waiting to be killed because everyone else had let him down. And really, he was just as bad for not sticking by the opinion that this had been a bad plan all along. The idea of some time with Spencer had been too much to pass up, and he was going to die for it. Lassiter had let this happen, and he had only himself and everyone he trusted to blame.

Thomas was stepping toward him. He felt the other man grab his shoulders and pull him entirely too close, and it was too much like Spencer invading his space on a daily basis. Then Thomas was speaking, blowing his hot air into Lassiter's face. "He drugged you and kidnapped you. He brought felons to your home. He sabotages the good work you do, he breaks into your home, and he thinks of you as his father." As Thomas completed the list, he pressed a familiar gun into Lassiter's hand.

Joanna was stepping toward Shawn, but all he could see were Thomas's hands on Lassie's arms. He was getting angry again. No one got away with touching Lassie, no one. Then Joanna was pulling him by his sleeve. "Look at him," she whispered into Shawn's ear. "He's cold and mean and cruel. He never tells you he loves you, he treats you like dirt. He's distant and unfeeling and he doesn't care about you. You'd be better off without him."

Shawn felt the weight of the knife being pressed into his hand, and all he could see was Lassie, scowling at him from across a desk, shouting at him in the station, threatening him, shoving him, hitting his head against a squad car, and, he had to admit, he was getting angry.

He tried to remember the Lassie he'd seen in the office upstairs, the sweet, vulnerable, honest Lassie that he had loved so much. The Lassie who had told him he loved him, too. But then Shawn saw the detective standing in front of him, holding his gun. Oh, crap, he's going to kill me. I can't let him do this. I have to stop him. The knife was heavy in his tight grip, and it was the only way he could think of to stop what he knew was coming. Maybe…maybe I can knick him, or just hit his hand so he'll drop the gun. Maybe, if he'll listen….

The gunshot was loud in the small space.

More to come, hopefully sooner than this one did. One, maybe two chapters left until the end.