Leaning back in his desk chair, Richie kicked his feet up on the desk, careful to avoid the laptop and the stacks of paper that had accumulated there. His thoughts were all over the place today, which made the empty Word page on his screen all the more difficult to deal with. He had a grant request to fill out, the usual paperwork that came from trying to run a business, the not-so-usual paperwork that came from trying to backstop his identity to make it more secure, and now plans to make for the weekend.
Emily was coming!
They'd met only a few weeks before in line for coffee at the mall. At the time, Richie hadn't been interested in doing more than getting some necessary, if unpleasant-by-its-nature, shopping finished. He'd still ended up with her number. After a conversation with Methos that had opened Richie's eyes to a few realities of Immortal life, Richie had decided to call her. They'd chatted a lot since then, but aside from a single afternoon when Richie had ridden out to her college, they hadn't spent any time together in person. And now she was coming to New York City to attend a weekend music festival—with him.
Three whole days. Together.
The musical festival would fill most of the hours, but not all of them. And in case they got tired of the festival—or it turned out to be a bust—he wanted to have some backup plans in place.
And, oh, god, Emily was coming. They'd planned on her staying at his place to save money, only that brought its own problems, because Richie'd stupidly made the offer without thinking through any part of what having his hopeful new girlfriend see the way he lived might actually mean. He dropped his head back and began to mentally berate himself for losing all his good sense again when faced with a pretty girl who needed his help. He was going to grow out of this someday, right? He had to grow out of this someday.
Distantly he registered the sound of the outer door opening—possibly any of the other building occupants passing through—and then the dojo door clanged open and footsteps clicked across the floor.
"No shoes on the mat," Richie called out reflexively. From his seat in the office he couldn't see the front door. Most people would say that was a careless security risk in this neighborhood, since it gave him no time to see an attacker before they were on him. Given the reality, he thought it was more important not to be distracted by everyone who came and went through the door.
He heard a pause, and then the sound of hard heels treading across the padded floor. The person was at least trying to be careful, but he still pulled his feet down and sat up, donning a more professional posture as he got ready to reprimand whoever stepped into his office. Parents sometimes stopped by to tell him in person that their child couldn't attend class or to drop off payment. Prospective customers also came by in person to see a class. All he knew for sure is that the person wasn't Immortal, so he left his sword where it was propped in the corner.
A moment later, Jo knocked on the partially open door and let herself in without waiting for an answer. "You busy?"
Richie took in her open blazer that revealed the gun holstered at her side and the badge pinned to her belt, then diverted his gaze to the laptop that he'd only touched enough over the last hour to keep awake. "Not really," he admitted. Jo was here on official business, and he didn't know why. His old instincts that made him wary of police attention prickled at his nerves even as he closed the screen. "What's this about?"
She could have come all the way in, taken one of the seats he had available. His office was utilitarian: a desk, a surprisingly comfortable desk chair for himself, two folding chairs for the customers, and a small bookcase that would someday display the trophies he or his students won in competitions. It was all he needed to run the dojo's office, so it was all he bothered to replace after his old one blew up. Instead, Jo nudged the door shut behind her.
"I had some questions I was hoping you could answer," she said.
The click of the door closing had a disturbing finality. No one would be interrupting them; no one was at risk of overhearing them. That could only mean she was here about something Immortal-related. "OK? Such as?"
Jo pursed her lips for a moment, tapping the manila folder she held against her thigh like she hadn't expected that answer and didn't know what to say next. "Like, where were you yesterday between noon and two p.m.?"
Great, perfect. So, it was that kind of Immortal business.
Richie pushed back in his chair and folded his arms over his stomach, unable to restrain the defensiveness a lifetime of being on the wrong side of the authorities' attention had taught him. He, at least, managed to keep his sarcasm in check. "Here, mostly."
"Mostly?"
"The dojo opens at noon on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I opened. Taught the class that meets at 12:30. Then I ran down to the drug store for some Hot Pockets and Gatorade."
Jo blinked, visibly struggling with that revelation. "You eat Hot Pockets? Someone as fit as you are?"
Of all the facts about his life he thought Jo would have trouble with, his diet was not one of them. Richie shrugged. "Call it a perk of Immortality. Junk food can't kill me, so I figure why not enjoy it? Besides, sometimes calories are more important than anything else. You gonna tell me why it matters where I was, or did you just want to talk about the eating habits of Immortal teenagers?" OK, so some sarcasm always managed to get through.
Jo flipped the manila file folder onto his desk. It slid across the rest of his papers and only his quick reflexes allowed him to catch it before it slid onto the floor. "I want to know what you know about this."
Richie's brow crinkled in confusion and he eyed the folder. Its blank cover gave no hint of its contents.
Jo made an impatient gesture at the file.
Inside lay photograph that, at first, Richie's eyes couldn't parse. He thought it was a fashion plate of some kind, maybe a mannequin, advertising an expensive suit. He caught the black of the jacket and trousers, the white button-down shirt, the blue tie—seeing each of them as discrete items that had no relation to each other. Richie raised a questioning eyebrow at Jo.
"That's Franklin Drake," she supplied. "Or, what's left of him. I know it's hard to identify someone without their head, as I figure you know. His body was found yesterday—"
"Around two?" Richie asked. Jo nodded, and Richie looked again at the picture. Knowing what the image was, he still couldn't swear whom the body belonged to, but now it looked like a body. And the tie was familiar. He tried to dredge up recollection of a distinctive watch or freckle or anything and found that nothing came to mind. If Jo had asked for an identification a few weeks or months from now, there was a good chance Richie would've forgotten all about Drake. That happened when it was every day that someone was trying to kill you. "So, someone took his head, after all." He started to close the file, then remembered who Jo was and what she was likely doing there. "Wait, you don't think I did it, do you?"
Jo gave him a look that told him the thought had crossed her mind. "Right now, you're the only person I know who could have done it."
"Yeah, well you're wrong. We agreed not to fight, and nothing happened to change that." He knew he was being defensive, but Jo had barged in and all but accuse him of breaking his word. "I didn't do it."
For his honesty, Richie received only a long, patient stare. So many lesser cops had tried that on him. Once he would have leapt to fill the silence with whatever he thought would get him off the hook. Since he wasn't guilty this time, he managed to hold his tongue.
"I know," she answered, at last. "You wouldn't have wanted to get your, ah, sword dirty." Her gaze flicked toward the item, leaving no doubt what she meant.
Sheer indignation stole Richie's response. She thought he had sent someone else to kill Drake? Like it was some kind of hit? He started to rise from his chair, and Jo pressed back against the door, her hand flinching toward her gun.
They both froze. Tension wound through the room like a foul odour, feeding on their old, familiar roles of cop and criminal. Richie pulse pounded hard in his jaw; he saw Jo's throbbing on alternating beats in the vein in her forehead.
But he wasn't a criminal anymore, and he needed to stop acting like one.
"You know better than that," he said, settling back. He spoke as calmly as he could. "You know me better than that. I fight when I have to; I've never denied that. I also try not to ever have to." He'd tasted the thrill of being an active player in the Game, and then spent years afterward trying to figure out how to live with himself. The power wasn't worth the cost.
With a sigh, Jo deliberately tucked her hands behind her back and shifted to a more comfortable parade rest. "I know," she answered, dropping her gaze. "I'm sorry."
That gave Richie pause. He let the file fall to the desk again, the picture open in front of him. A neck without a head on it never looked right, no matter how many times he'd seen it. Not that it was supposed to. But the eye was so drawn to faces that when it followed the line of a neck up and didn't find a face to continue on to, he always sensed that the problem was with him and not the body.
"You believe me?"
"I have to. You have an alibi," she answered, simply. "A solid one, too. It's not even worth my time to check it. What I need to know is who did kill him?"
Richie made a face. "Couldn't tell ya."
"Can't, or won't?"
"Jo, I don't know where you got the idea that I have some kind of inside line on what every Immortal in the City is doing. Hell, I don't even know how many Immortals are in the City. It's not like we have some kind of secret club we meet at in between trying to kill each other. All I know is Connor's not gonna be happy when he hears that the Game is active here again." He glanced down at the picture again, his eye still trying to find the rest of the body, which made him miss the expression that went with the strange noise Jo made.
"Connor? As in Connor MacLeod?" She swept in then, coming right up to the desk.
"That's him." When Richie looked up, he had to tilt his head back to see Jo's face. She looked stricken, the harsh overhead lighting casting dark shadows under her eyes that no amount of makeup could cover. "Why do I feel like I just said the wrong thing?"
Catching herself again, Jo pulled back so that she wasn't looming across the desk at him. Did she know how close to the edge she was around him? "He's…he's real?"
"Yeah. Very. Larger than life and with an ego to match his reputation," Richie answered. "Helluva fun guy to drink with, though. If you and Henry ever take a trip to Europe, let me know and I'll introduce you." He'd only had the experience once, himself, and he'd been too intimidated then to fully appreciate the experience. Most of what he knew about drunk Connor came from Duncan's stories. A part of him thought that might be safer.
Rather than being thrilled, Jo seemed to deflate at the offer and she sounded like she meant the opposite when she answered, "I'll keep that in mind." She blew out a breath that fluttered her bangs. "What do you mean he won't be happy? "
On the same day Richie had met Emily, he'd also learned that by choosing to relocate to New York City, he'd set himself up to maintain the legacy that Connor had left—namely, keep the Game from taking over the City. It was proving a lot more difficult than Richie had thought—and he'd thought the task would be damned near impossible.
"It's not important. At least, it's nothing you need to worry about. The Game's my problem, remember?"
"When the bodies are left in my jurisdiction, it's my problem too," she reminded him. "We might even be on the same side for this one. D'you see the other picture?" She motioned again at the file.
Richie hadn't noticed that the file had multiple pages in it. He slid the top one out of the way to reveal the second.
Like the first one, it was deceptively innocent. This was a crime scene photo, but it looked like a nihilistic commentary on an idyllic park scene. A man was sitting on a bench. Broken peanuts were scattered at his feet and a small bag of whole ones rested against his thigh. The viewer saw a business man enjoying a respite in a hectic day to feed the squirrels and take in nature—until the eye finished traveling up to body to the truncated neck. The businessman had lost his head for nature? The symbolism needed work, but the surreal effect was the same.
Richie preened for a second at having retained enough art appreciation skill from his days living with Tessa and Duncan to have that kind of analysis, before the horror of the image hit him.
"This is how you found him?"
Grabbing the picture, he held it up to the light, twisting it one way and another, as if the action could shift the details.
Jo hadn't answered, so Richie flipped the photo around and shoved it at her, mentally begging her to tell him it wasn't real. It couldn't be real. "Jo?"
"So I was right," she answered. "Drake was murdered."
Richie heard the distinction in her word choice and nodded sharply. "Someone ambushed him. He didn't die as part of the Game." He sunk back in his chair, trying not to think about what that meant: Unless there'd been another Immortal around-he hoped there'd been another Immortal around-Drake's Quickening had been lost. His memories, experiences, power … all gone. There was no worse fate. The photo crinkled in his grip.
"Now do you think you can tell me who did it?"
"I still don't know." Oh, how he wished he did know. Up until that moment, Drake had meant nothing to him. Immortals died in the Game; that's what happened. When friends or lovers, teachers or students got killed, some Immortals made a point of hunting down their killer and avenging the death. A cynical person-such as Methos, for example-might suggest that that's how the Game had started: someone avenging a lover's death and kicking off a cycle of retribution that could never end. Until there was no one left to fight.
No one would risk his own life seeking vengeance for a stranger-except in a situation like this. He really didn't want to have to call up Emily and tell her their weekend plans were off because he'd been arrested for murder. Their relationship was still too new to survive that. Hell, most relationships wouldn't survive that. Some things a guy had to do.
"But if I find out," Richie stated, "I'm going to kill him. I don't care if he's in your jurisdiction."
Jo's lips spread into a thin line. "I didn't expect anything else."