The question wouldn't leave her. She had to ask. "Who is she?"

He sat up against the pillow in the middle of a smoke. "Who is who?"

"Sara…I think that was what you said in all that Frog talk. I was a little busy at the time," she poked him in the side delighting in the ripple of muscle. She got no reply. "You can tell me, Soldier Boy. I ain't gonna tell a soul."

The look on his face was that of guilt, pain even as he moved his eye away from her over painted face and across the hotel room as if he were truly seeing it all for the first time. He betrayed himself. "A girl I know."

"Wife? Girlfriend?" Her touch became suddenly disgusting as her palm rested on his abs. "Won't cost you a dime to use me as a psychiatrist. I only got one profession."

"There isn't much to say," to someone like you "she's just a girl." You wouldn't understand.

"Out of reach?"

A humorless laugh escaped his lips in a puff of smoke. "Yeah. Yeah she is."

"A goodie two shoes?" She sat up now, adjusting her blond wig, her hair was brown beneath it.

His voice was rough and low, eye distant. "A good girl."

"Ah. I see. What's stopping you?"

He could see that this is her form of entertainment, wheedling for a story, a fragment of a life that isn't hers. Vampire like, the thought brought him no mirth.

Again he didn't speak or answer but instead rose from the bed to dress. The man emerged from the hotel room once again Captain Pip Bernadette, his wallet lighter and heart heavier as he headed back to HQ hoping to God that the glance of blue eyes wouldn't undo him.