Henry was waiting for Jo when her shift ended, his scarf knotted, jacket buttoned, and bouquet in hand. "I had hoped to present these to you on Friday," he said, giving the flowers to her with a flourish that shone with the simplicity and ease of long practice.

It was roses. A dozen red roses, all of which displayed only perfectly formed petals without a hint of wilting or bruising. No way had these had been sitting in his office over the weekend, which meant he had just purchased them. They'd already moved in together and he was still courting her. He couldn't know that she hadn't received flowers since…well, since Sean's funeral. And those hadn't meant the same thing at all, had they? A knot tightened in Jo's stomach, a day's worth of ignored anticipation tangling at once into a physical expression that clogged her throat.

She managed to mouth a "thank you," only several beats later remembering that she also had to take the flowers. Her hand brushed past his, and she pulled it back to wipe it off on her pants leg before trying again. What was wrong with her? Already, she was fumbling.

Henry had to have noticed, yet like a true gentleman he covered her gaff with his own apology. "Alas, I was unable to secure a dinner reservation tonight on the short notice available."

He offered her a small, gentle smile, as if aware that his statement could be interpreted as blame when he wouldn't dare mean anything of the sort. With the Drake case officially closed, Tommy stopped being a witness, which meant he stopped being Jo's responsibility almost as fast as he had become it. She'd called to tell Henry as soon as she could, leaving them both once again adjusting their plans together on only a few hours notice.

"There are, however, a number of fine restaurants available that don't require a reservation," he continued, "though I'm afraid their menus will be somewhat less extravagant on a Monday night than a Friday."

The talk of food pulled a rumble from Jo's clenched stomach. Normally, she'd hit the deli on her way home from work. It was an old, well-established part of her routine. Between her schedule and Sean's, there hadn't been any time for cooking when they were together. After he died, she hadn't wanted to; cooking for one was too difficult. Needless to say, her standards for food excellence weren't high.

"I-I don't need anything extravagant," she protested. "There's still leftover spaghetti from Saturday and pizza from last night…." Not to mention all the food he had stockpiled. "Honestly, I'd prefer to stay in and heat something up." She bit her lip as the double entendre of what she'd said registered. So much had happened in the last few days that she no longer knew where she and Henry stood. Were they really supposed to go back to his apartment that night and pick up as if the derailment of the weekend hadn't happened? The paper-wrapped flowers in her hand could be taken as a backtracking of weeks, or they could be an apology, or … simply a thoughtful gesture?

But her meaning glinted in Henry's eyes, and Jo caught the twitch of his eyebrows that was prelude to a smart rejoinder. "I believe I have just the thing to satisfy that appetite—now that we have the place to ourselves." Drawing closer, he held his arm out for Jo to take. "Yes, perfectly seasoned with anticipation." The heat from his body seemed to flow across the gap between them and meld with hers as their arms interlocked.

She could get used to this, having someone who met her where she was and wanted to help her get where she was going. That was new. Already she saw how much easier that support would make whatever life threw at them next. And life, she knew too well, didn't have any depths to its cruelty.

A rush of post-work people filled the sidewalks outside the station, which threatened to make Jo and Henry's two-abreast navigation treacherous, if not impossible. Though she was tired and ready to settle into her civilian role, Jo kept her focus sharp, seeking out the elusive and ever shifting gaps between pedestrians that would allow the fastest and least difficult route to her car. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people brushed past them or crossed in front of them, coming together briefly at the crosswalks, then peeling off again. Like her, they all had somewhere better to be, all these people seemingly acting in concert while fulfilling private motivations.

She was still missing something. Jo felt a scowl of concentration tug at her face. Her work was not so easily left at the office, no matter how much she might want to, and the facts of the case—the real facts—about Tommy and what had happened continued to churn over in her mind. He had still killed Drake, and done so in a way that upset another Immortal. That was worth paying attention to. Being let off the hook did not magically make Tommy innocent, just as being let off the case did not erase what she'd learned while on it. And now he was back out there, back to his tricks.

"We never could help him," Henry stated, "no matter how much we wanted to help him. And he doesn't need us anymore."

Jo's attention jerked back toward Henry, surprised at the wistfulness she heard. "He never did, did he? I mean, I know he's not really a kid…." He wasn't. He wasn't, and she'd have to keep telling herself that until it sunk it. "It just feels like we should have been able to do something more to help him." Of all the associations she now had for Tommy, she now flashed back to the image of him eating ice-cream on the fire escape, a smear of chocolate on his chin. His loneliness had been palpable in that moment. Maybe they could have gotten through to him then. Or maybe that, too, had been a deception. She let out a sigh that was heavy with all the missed opportunities in her relationships. The perfume of the flowers wafted back at her. Reminded of why she had it to smell at all, she pulled the bouquet up to her face for a proper, appreciative sniff. "These really are beautiful. We should get them into some water before they wilt."

The corner of Henry's mouth pulled up in a grin. "I have the perfect vase. Old world, etched glass. Would you like to return to my apartment with me and see it for yourself?"

Yeah, she wasn't going to miss this opportunity again. A grin tugged at her own lips despite her efforts to keep a straight face as she replied, "Your etchings, Henry?" The sudden increase in their pace told her she'd read him right.

They tumbled through the apartment door, eager to get all the way upstairs before the clothes started coming off. With the ice broken on Monday, they'd fallen right through into a honeymoon phase that picked up every day as soon as their professional obligations ended.

Henry managed to get the door kicked shut before Jo got her hands back under his lapels and started pushing him up the stairs. A weekend of frustrations, the constant sense of having overshot or of having aimed the wrong direction entirely, had left Jo desperate to grab every moment she had left with Henry. And Henry gave every sign of agreeing.

Hot and breathless, they stumbled past the top riser and onto the landing. Jo was laughing through the kiss that had carried them up the flight and Henry was scrabbling to get a hold on her ass when a faint noise stayed her. She pulled back, suddenly sombre, while swatting at Henry's hand.

"Someone's here," she hissed.

"Who could…?" Henry started, the question bit off as he turned and got his answer.

Tommy was in the living room, sitting on the back of the couch. His legs weren't long enough to touch the floor, and his feet swung with the casual air of a person who had no cares in the world. He was whistling softly through his teeth; the sound that had alerted her. The warm haze of arousal disappeared under the spike of adrenaline as her police training took over. That's when she saw that Tommy's hands were thrust deep in the pockets of his over-sized hoodie, concealing something with enough weight to pull the front down.

"Tommy?" Jo asked, glancing around as if Rhonda was going to step into view next. She hadn't heard from Rhonda since passing Tommy back into her care on Monday, not that she'd expected to; they had standing promise to have lunch in the near future. "What're you doing here? Did you forget something?" This could be innocent; this could be a simple miscommunication, though she didn't believe it was. She started to reach to her purse and the phone inside, to check if she'd missed a call or a text and stopped as she caught the innocent blue of his eyes transform into something cold and hard. He had a gun.

He had her gun.

Jo hadn't taken her gun on the walk she'd insisted on today. When she wasn't on duty, she liked to leave her weapon off-duty as well, especially now that the temperatures had warmed enough to make a blazer or sweater prohibitively uncomfortable. As Henry's apartment didn't come with a gun safe, she'd taken to leaving the weapon in a trick drawer in the living room secretary. The drawer didn't have a lock, per se, but it could only be opened if two of the other drawers were opened first. They were both opened now, left as if Tommy had been in too much a hurry to clean up after himself before getting into position to greet Jo and Henry on their arrival. His being armed—and her not being—changed how she needed to approach their interaction.

"You're so young," she remembered saying to Richie when she first met him. The way Henry had talked about him, she'd expected to meet someone her age. No, she'd expected to meet someone who looked her age—crows' feet deepening around the eyes and mouth, gray hairs sneaking into a receding hairline, a body that was softening in front and flattening in back—and what she'd seen was an obvious teenager. She'd felt deceived then, and she still had to consciously remind herself that he was her age, that he wasn't trying to deceive her.

Here was someone younger, whom she now understood was undoubtedly much older. And much more monstrous.

"You know—" Tommy peered up toward the ceiling, his lips rolling together while he formulated his next sentence—"I thought you two were different. I thought you could be the ones I'd trust. Normal. Happy. Typical. Good, solid middle-class jobs. Nice digs." He gave a satisfied nod at his assessment. "It's the ideal situation for a foster kid to grow up in, don't you think? Solid prospects, not a lot of scrutiny or expectations."

Henry took a step forward, subtly pushing Jo to get behind him. She resisted; like it or not, Henry was a civilian, and Tommy had officially been her responsibility. Behind her the stairwell gaped, easily accessible for a quick exit. She could get outside, call for backup. Except, even if she got Henry to follow her, they'd both be sitting ducks for the few seconds they were on the stairs if Tommy decided to open fire. No, she was going to have to stay and deal with this herself. She swept her gaze around the room, searching for anything else she could use as a weapon in a pinch—provided they couldn't talk their way out of this standoff first.

"What is this about, Tommy?" Henry asked.

"But, you're not typical, are you?" Tommy continued, as if Henry hadn't spoken at all. "You know all about me, about my kind." His dangling foot kicked the back of the couch and left a smudge of dirt behind. "That was your plan, wasn't it? Win my trust and then 'introduce' me to your Immortal friend. Was he gonna pay you? Is that the deal? You get a kickback for every head you bring him?" Slipping from the couch, he landed with a thump on the wooden floor. From his pocket, he pulled Jo's gun. He pointed it at her, holding it steady, though both his little hands barely wrapped around the handle. The dark metal seemed to take all the light in the room and focus it on the little hole at the end of the barrel. "I bet it really chuffs you that I ruined your plan."

Jo raised her hands, setting them on top of her head in what she hoped Tommy would accept as a sign that she wasn't a threat to him after all. "That's not how it was," she answered. "We thought you were new. We never would have let anything happen to you. Immortal or not, you were under police protection."

The sneer that tugged at Tommy's lips told her that it didn't matter what she said; he knew his interpretation was the correct one.

And he was going to kill them for it.

In the back of her mind, a small voice informed her that this is what Tommy did; this is how he survived, by using people for whatever protection or care he could get from them, and killing them when he perceived they'd become a threat.

"It's the truth," Henry was saying. "We had no desire to hurt you. Father Liam is peaceful, and you would have met him on Holy Ground. You would've been safe there; he would have helped you. We can still help. I can help you, Tommy. More than you know. "

Oh God, no, Jo thought, wincing internally at Henry choosing now to bring up his own immortality. Tommy was so far gone that he'd only see Henry's admission as further proof that they'd been lying to him. "Henry." She needed to stop him before he said anything he couldn't take back.

"My name," Tommy responded, "is Kenny. You can stop pretending you didn't already know that."

Jo saw his fingers tightening, and her training kicked in. She dropped just as the gun went off. The bullet hit her ribs and skated around the outside of the bone in a searing stripe. Her bra strap twanged as it was sliced through, and she rolled, trying to get behind any piece of furniture she could use as a shield.

"Jo!" Henry shouted. He threw himself at Tom—Kenny, knocking him to the floor. He grunted as the boy's flailing arms and legs connected with his body. The gun went off once, twice more. Muffled, meaty thuds of bullets impacting at point blank range told Jo everything she needed to know. Henry was hit. Kenny squirmed out from under him, only to be thrown to the floor again when Henry grabbed his legs and yanked. The gun flew from Kenny's grip, and Jo lunged after it.

No longer caring that she was facing a person who looked like a child, a person she'd let herself start to care about, Jo sighted on Kenny's chest and pulled the trigger. The bullet slammed into him and knocked his small body backward. He fell, his face a mask of outrage and surprise.

"Oh my God," she said, as she watched his blood begin to stain Henry's carpet. "I killed Kenny." It was too surreal, but she'd had to kill him. He'd shot at her, at Henry.

Oh God, Henry.

Ears still ringing from the gunshots, Jo crawled across the floor to where Henry lay. He already looked too still. "'You bastard,'" she prompted him. "Come on, Henry, say it: 'You bastard'."

"Jo?" Henry said, his voice weak. His head lolled as she pulled it into her lap. The smell of copper and cordite settled around them. "Why?"

She choked out a desperate laugh; how did he not know the joke? He didn't know, and now she was never going to be able to explain it to him. He'd been hit twice: once near the heart and once in the right lung. Blood had soaked through his white dress shirt and darkened his vest. His breath came in wet gasps. He was dying.

"Hang on, Henry," she ordered. Where was her phone? She needed her phone. Needed to call for help. Needed—

His hand came up, searching for her face. "I'll be OK," he reminded her. "You know what happens next?"

Jo rocked back because she knew; she knew and she'd still forgotten. She forced herself to think, to work through what he'd told her about his unique physiology.

"You're going to vanish," she said.

Vanish, after he died. She was going to have to watch him die, and then she was going to have to watch him disappear. What if he didn't come back? She cut a glance to Kenny who hadn't disappeared, who would also be coming back. Different types of immortality, they'd told her. Different ways of responding to mortal wounds with the same result: death was temporary. She understood that, but with Kenny lying dead three feet away from her and Henry bleeding out on her lap, it was so hard to believe it.

Henry nodded weakly. "Come get me?"

All their discussions, everything else they'd been through together, and this was the big test. This was the moment where it all became real. "Of course," Jo promised.

His expression smoothed, turning peaceful. "It's time." He lay back, then suddenly jerked, trying to sit upright. "My watch!"

Distasteful as it was, Jo reached into the soaked cloth and tugged his pocket-watch out, unclipping the chain with a flick of her thumb. "I've got it." She held the blood-tarnished timepiece up for Henry to see and he gave another weak nod. On impulse she dove into his trouser's pocket and retrieved his money clip, too. "And this," she said.

"Thank you," he mouthed. His head tipped back, eyelids gave a final flicker, and then he was gone. Actually gone.

Jo looked down at the now-clean pocket-watch still looped around her fingers, the now crisp folds of 20s, and abruptly flashed back to Sean's wake. She'd clasped his cold hand and begged, begged him to blink, to breathe, to come back to her. He couldn't really be dead. The body before her wasn't really him. The mortician had done a good job, but it didn't take a genius to see that casket's occupant wasn't Sean. Only it was, and he couldn't come back.

Henry would, she reminded herself. Henry would always come back.

Not until that moment did Jo realize how much she needed to know that. Painfully, she pushed herself up. Henry's blood was gone; her own stained the side of her shirt and stiffened the leg of her jeans. She couldn't go after him looking like this.

First, though, she retrieved her handcuffs and locked Kenny's hands together. Snapping the metal around his wrists felt so redundant; she pretended he was merely playing possum as she squeezed the cuffs tight enough that he couldn't slip his hands out, using the leg of the secretary as an anchor point. Henry didn't keep any rope laying around the apartment that she saw, so she grabbed a couple of his scarfs to bind Kenny's feet with. Please don't let Abe come home early, she thought.

The ringing of her phone shattered the heavy silence of the room. Jo jolted. For a brief, horrible instant, she mistook the sound for the doorbell and she panicked, casting her gaze around in search of an exit before someone could burst in and discover her tying up a dead child. Her heart thumped wildly against her ribs, sending stabs of pain back from the wound.

"Martinez," she answered. To her own ears, she sounded guilty, all her lies and half-truths and omissions bursting like asphalt on a boiling summer day. She should have let the call go to voicemail. Certainly the caller would be able to smell the stench through the phone connection. She hadn't even had the wherewithal to check who was on the line before committing herself.

A beat of silence followed, like the caller didn't trust the connection, then Reece's voice came through. "Jo, I hope I haven't caught you at a bad time." Jo snorted softly to herself and reached over to straighten Kenny's feet. One of the sneakers had a hole over the big toe. "I've just received word that Dr. Syzmanski was assaulted this afternoon. She was discovered by a neighbor badly beaten; she's in critical condition..."

Reece continued on, providing more details that Jo wasn't ready to process, though she did her best to respond with the right noises in the right places. Officially, no one knew who'd attacked Rhonda. Unofficially, everyone did. Only one person had the motive and opportunity and couldn't be accounted for. Reece signed off with the imperative that Jo keep an eye out in case young Tommy came looking for her next.

"I will," Jo promised, looking once more at the still, silent boy. He's not a child, she thought once more, still not quite believing that what her eyes told her wasn't the truth.

Leaving the trussed up corpse in Henry's living room, she went to tend to herself. She found a first aid kit under the bathroom counter, well-stocked as she expected any doctor's would be. The medicine cabinet yielded a selection of prescription drugs—all made out in Abe's name—ranging from painkillers to cholesterol medicine. She hesitated only a second before helping herself. This was an emergency. Even so, she broke the pill in half before swallowing it, enough to take the edge off without violating the warning label's suggestion not to operate heavy machinery.

Stripping off her shirt, she finally got a look at the wound: a long gouge across her ribs that was bleeding freely. She'd need stitches. It could have been worse: If her reactions had been a microsecond slower, if she'd fallen left instead of right, if Kenny had aimed differently. She'd gotten lucky out there. Gauze and tape would hold her together for now until she could have Henry patch her up, off the record. She couldn't go to the ER for this. The mandatory reporting for a gunshot wound would be hard enough to deal without all the concomitant questions she couldn't answer.

A touch of the wound darkened her fingertips in blood. Was this really going to be her life now? Could this be her life now?

That answer became stunningly simple when she saw Henry trudge out of the river. He was alive. Goosebumps covered his skin and his teeth chattered with cold, but the wounds were gone and he showed no hint that he'd been dying only a short while before.

Jo met him with a towel she'd grabbed, wrapping it around him before anyone else saw his nakedness. "You're really alive," she said. She threw her good arm around him and hugged him as tight as she could, for as long as she could stand it before her nose wrinkled in involuntary disgust. "And you really stink." Dead fish, fetid water, motor oil, she didn't know what else. He'd been treading in the river while he waited for her, long enough for the reek to attach itself to him like a bad reputation.

"An unexpected consequence of us treating our rivers as sewers," Henry agreed. He pulled the towel tight around him as they headed for the car. Frowning, he added, "It's still better than the Thames."

Rivulets of water ran down his chest, and Jo kept reaching over to wipe them away. With each brush of her fingers across his skin, she grew more certain that he was really there. On one pass, Henry caught her hand, pressing his own over his so she could feel the steady lub-dub of his heart beating. His skin warmed beneath their combined touch, and in his brown eyes Jo saw only understanding of what she was doing and why. This was the man she'd fallen for. She leaned in to kiss him, and gasped as the movement sent a flare across her ribs.

"You're hurt," Henry declared, pushing her back to arm's length so he could give her a once over.

"I only got a little banged up; nothing you need to worry about," she said, twisting away. She didn't want him fussing over her now. "Besides, we've got bigger problems." She'd pulled the car to a hasty stop on the embankment and thrown her rotating light on the roof to keep anyone from interfering. In the early evening light, the swirling red and blue were all but lost. The same light that was keeping anyone from asking questions also kept drawing their curious stares, though she knew all the onlookers would promptly forget what they were seeing. Funny how easily standing out and blending in could become the same thing. She slid into the car, then had to stop to rest. The pill had reduced the pain in her side to a dull ache, yet was also making her sluggish. Get through this, she told herself. Get through this and then you can sleep.

"Kenny?" Henry asked.

The wrongness of the name jarred Jo, like Tommy and Kenny were two different people and she'd been mixing them up all along. "We need to do something about him. He tried to kill us." Henry shot her a wry look, and Jo could only shrug. At least her right shoulder still worked. "You know what I mean." She squeezed her eyes shut with the recollection that Kenny's attempts on their lives weren't isolated.

"Where is he now?"

It should have been a simple question, but the combination of painkillers, shock, and emotional dissonance had her thoughts flying, and for a second, Jo didn't know the answer. Then it came it her with the echo of the gun's report through her memory. "I shot him. I—I killed him." As much as she understood that his death was also temporary, she'd never forget the feeling of squeezing the cuffs onto his tiny, still wrists; the cuffs almost hadn't tightened enough to be effective. "He's right where I left him."

Henry nodded, then twisted around suddenly and leaned into the backseat. The towel that he'd tied around his waist came unsecured and flopped open, exposing the length of his near thigh. Jo allowed herself to take a hand off the wheel and pull the towel back into place before she gave in to the urge to start stuffing dollar bills into the waistband. She couldn't afford any distractions now. "He'll be safe there, as long as no one tries to break into the apartment while we're gone," Henry commented, a crinkling in the corners of his eyes giving away that he found the mere idea amusing. "As for the question of how long he'll remain deceased, I can only speculate. I've been trying to convince Richie to allow me to conduct experiments with an eye toward answering that question, and so far he's refused."

"He doesn't want you to kill him for the lulz?" Jo translated. She didn't know where that word choice had come from. It had to be the pain meds. Or too much time around Hanson's kids. Either was possible.

"However, when we first met, Richie had been dead for several hours before he revived, so I would reasonably guess that we have some time to figure out what to do." Leaning forward, Henry ducked his head to look under the passenger seat. "Did you happen to bring any clothes? Abe usually keeps spares in the trunk."

"Clothes, no," Jo answered, with a cringe at her oversight. She'd greeted a naked Henry on the shore of the East River often enough that she should have thought of that. "Sorry. I wasn't thinking. I remembered a towel!" That had to be worth something for her first go at this. On that thought, though, she blurted out, "How is it that you can die so frequently that you've figured out how to prepare for it? Even in my line of work, most people don't get close to death once until old age catches up with them."

Henry leaned back, his hair dampening the headrest. "When one knows death is going to be no more than a temporary inconvenience, adherence to a survival instinct is the first thing to go," he answered, sounding too much like a fortune cookie.

"What do you think goes when you know you're never going to grow up?" Jo asked. She didn't expect an answer beyond the one she already had — and Henry didn't supply one.

They'd reached the antique store. She pulled as close to the back door as she could get so Henry wouldn't have to spend more time semi-naked in the open than necessary, dropped him off, then went to park the car. Her legs grew heavier with each step on the walk back, and her side throbbed. She thought she could feel blood seeping through her hasty bandage, though she wasn't about to stop in the middle of the alley to check.

They had time to figure out what to do, Henry had said. Only, what were they supposed to do? Her training said to arrest Kenny and let the justice process do what it was designed for. As addled as her head was, she already knew that would create many more problems. Merely writing out the timeline of events in her report would doom her. Selectively editing the timeline for believability would end in her perjuring herself. And if it came down to her word versus Kenny's … she shuddered in the imagined breeze of how quickly that would get thrown out. So, they had time, and they were going to have to make sure to use it.

She finally reached the door, already despairing at how she was going to make it up the stairs again. Henry stood just inside the door, waiting for her, wearing only his towel. From his hand dangled a pair of empty handcuffs.

"He's gone."