Chapter Eleven: The Game

"You always wanted people to remember you
To leave your little mark on society
Don't you know your wish is coming true today?
Another victim dies tonight…"

Lucas ran one finger down his left cheek, feeling the light stubble, and he smiled. It was one of the first times he'd smiled in weeks, since the day Lisa had come home and told him that she was so sorry, she had to break their engagement, because she'd realized that she had always been in love with House.

Fucking House.

Lucas had decided pretty early on that Greg House was a pretty pathetic man. Then again, pretty much anyone who called on him for his P.I. services tended to be pretty pathetic.

When he'd started dating Lisa, he'd realized just how deep that label ran. Lisa had told him, in that hushed tone of please-don't-tell-anyone-I-told-you-this, that House had hallucinated having sex with her while being perpetually overdosed on Vicodin. And someone didn't get much more pathetic than that.

Lucas smirked. He wondered how a man who'd hallucinated having a sexual encounter would react to the photos he'd sent of Wilson, and, better yet, to the video he was now uploading into his e-mail. Unfortunately, the firewall and proxy were slowing down upload speed, but Lucas knew patience.

That was an important part of being a P.I., after all. One must always be patient.

He smiled again; this was really a trend this past hour. He'd enjoyed, even if he didn't entirely like enjoying, Wilson's horror and anguish and pain. He enjoyed imagining the look on House's face, too – but it bothered him that he couldn't see it.

He'd have to make contact soon. Make House understand that this was all his fault, for taking his Lisa away. Shatter him into a million pieces and then Lisa won't want him anymore and she'll want you again once she realizes again that House is nothing other than broken, broken…

He placed his hand gently on the mouse he'd connected to his laptop. 36% uploaded.

Oh well. Anything worth doing is worth doing right – and anyone worth breaking is worth breaking right.

Michael Tritter sat on his hideous, but comfortable couch - blue and army green vertical stripes – and stared at the bottle of Jack Daniels that greeted him on the TV table that sat in front of him.

Greg fuckin' House.

He swallowed and he reached out, unscrewing the top of the bottle and trying desperately to chase the images that were flooding his subconscious out of his mind, images of James Wilson tied up, suffering, in pain… Images of the terrified look on House's face and on the face of Dr. Amber Volakis.

Tritter was in so far over his fucking head and he knew it.

He closed his arms around the neck of the bottle and tilted it back, into his mouth. He knew that drinking was the only way he was going to get to sleep tonight, and he knew that when he did sleep he'd dream of Wilson, crying and calling to him, going "Detective Tritter, why did you let me die? Do you hate House so much?"

He shuddered and the bottle shook. He couldn't let Wilson die.

The doorbell rang and he nearly dropped the bottle; in his mind's eye he could see it rattle to the dingy blue carpet on the floor and maybe shatter into a million pieces – ones that Tritter would step on and be picking out of his feet for years to come as he'd remember Wilson's pleas in his head. He placed it on the table and carefully got up; he walked to the door and opened it to see Miranda, leaning impatiently on his railing and dressed in a stretchy black shirt and a pair of jeans, with a large black bag slung over her shoulder.

Without any words of introduction, Miranda pushed by him, walking into his living room and snatching the remote off the top of the TV.

"Breaking Bad's on," she said by way of explanation, and quickly changed the channel to AMC. The recap of what had happened on the previous episode began, and Miranda took that moment to cross into Tritter's kitchen and open his fridge, to discover there was nothing in the actual fridge and everything was instead shoved in the freezer. "Your fridge still broken?" she called out before reaching in to grab a can of coke. She shut the door, pulled a bag of sour cream and onion chips off the top of the fridge, and then walked back into the living room.

"So, what's the purpose of this visit?" Tritter inquired, looking shiftily at her as she opened the bag of chips and stuck her hand it to pull a few out.

"We're gonna work," Miranda replied. "We're gonna figure out where Wilson is." She looked at the screen. "Oh, I love this fucking episode." She put down the chips on Tritter's couch and pulled the black bag off of her shoulder, before pulling out of it a sleek silver laptop. Wordlessly, she set it up on Tritter's TV tray, pushing his Jack Daniels to the side without comment.

"Can't you watch TV at home?" Tritter inquired, not bothering to add that she had helped herself to his food and drink as well.

"No," Miranda replied, "My sister Shameeka's staying with us and she brought her two little damn kids. I can't get a moment's rest, let alone watch a damn show about drug dealers. I've been pushed out of my own damn home." Tritter didn't bother to retort that she was pushing him out of his; instead, he tried a different tact.

"This probably sounds racist, but how is your sister Shameeka and you're Miranda? Those names don't exactly go together." Miranda rolled her eyes.

"My parents are notoriously uncreative. Before Meeka was born, my mom saw a show with a girl named Shameeka on it. Before I was born, she saw a show with a girl named Miranda on it. And my little sister got named Niecy because at eleven, I was too obsessed with Moesha," Miranda explained happily as she booted up her laptop. She looked at the TV screen, then at Tritter as she sat back in the couch, next to him. "Does it make me a bad cop that I'd bang Jesse Pinkman?"

"Probably," Tritter replied dryly. "What's your plan to find Wilson?" Miranda smirked.

"We're gonna go by process of elimination." She pulled up Microsoft Word and clicked the "bold" button, then "center".

She typed "Places Wilson could be", and then highlighted it. She hit "underline".

"What do you think of Dr. Volakis?" Tritter inquired as he watched the underline appear under the words on the screen.

"She's scary. She must be Wilson's girlfriend," Miranda replied, before typing in, "Douglas' house."

"Where does he live?" Tritter replied. "And she's not necessarily Wilson's girlfriend. She could be House's."

"Thought House was dating that Lisa Cuddy woman," Miranda replied, "Volakis is definitely with Wilson."

"Doesn't seem his type." Miranda snorted.

"Shows how much you know. Douglas lives at 110 Sycamore Street. I found it in the White Pages. Maybe we could take a look at it on Google Earth?" Miranda grinned and let her eyes dance over to the screen, where Hank Schrader was beating up Jesse Pinkman.

"His house might be too obvious," Tritter warned.

"Well, we'll find out, won't we?" Miranda shot back. "How about a barn?" Tritter looked confused.

"A barn?"

"I read in the news about a case where they used a barn," Miranda said defensively. Tritter shook his head and slowly typed in, "barn".

* "The Game" – Disturbed, The Sickness, 2001.