"Ok," Eames said, setting her Wendy's bag down on the stone-topped table they had stopped in front of. "I let you buy me lunch, I let you talk me into sitting out here in the park so we can stare at City Hall as we eat . . . now tell me what's going on."

"Sit," Goren insisted, waving her to the bench adjoining the table. "We have plenty of time to discuss that afterwe eat."

"You're kidding me. You practically frog-marched me down here to talk to me, and now you're saying there's 'plenty of time'?"

He reached into the bag and pulled out her salad and fork, setting them in front of her. "At least eat while we talk."

Giving him an exasperated look, she pulled the lid off of the salad and obeyed. "Happy?"

Unwrapping his own hamburger, he nodded. "Yes."

"Good. Now talk."

He blinked, surprised by her swift acquiescence. Buying time to think, he took a big bite of his burger and chewed as slowly as possible.

Eames, not fooled, leaned back in her seat and kicked him under the table. "You've got one minute to start talking or I'm going back to work."

Dropping his food back onto the table, he sighed. "I need to apologize to you."

"Okay . . ."

"What I, uh . . . what I said last night . . . it didn't come out the way I meant it to."

Her face tightened slightly. "Oh? And how was it supposed to come out?"

He shook his head dismissively. "It was stupid of me to say anything. It wasn't - isn't - an important topic."

"You can't get away with that now, Bobby. You said it, so now you need to explain it."

Damn. He had been hoping she'd allow him to let it drop. He should have known better - what investigator worth her salt would be willing to forget about what he said without demanding an explanation? "What I meant to . . . that is, what I was trying to express . . ." He paused, trying to think of the optimal phrasing. "I wasn't trying to imply that I thought you were . . . less than capable."

Eames quirked a brow and simply waited.

"What I was trying to say was that I was surprised that it doesn't annoy you that you don't get to exercise your brain in interviews like the one you had with Robi," he said all in one breath.

"I 'don't get to'?" she questioned. "How so?"

"You don't . . . need to. It's like me trying to, uh, do a weekday crossword in the Times - it looks impressive, but it bugs me to know that the puzzle wasn't enough to really challenge my abilities."

"You're saying you think I'm capable of more than just flirting with suspects? Why does that sound absolutely nothing like what you said last night? You said my body was my 'main investigative tool' then."

"I phrased it badly."

"I'll say," she said with an ironic laugh. "I'm having a little trouble reconciling the two."

"Well, you don't need to reconcile them. Overwrite the one from last night with the one from today."

"What am I, a computer?" she said, pushing away her salad. "Suddenly I feel like lettuce might corrode my circuits."

"That's not fair, Eames."

"Oh, and messing with my head is?"

"I'm not messing with your head! I'm tryingto un-mess it!"

Instead of screaming a retort back at him, Alex closed her mouth and just looked at him. Her lips worked for a few seconds and her eyes narrowed. He was preparing for a truly awesome blast when, to his shock, she burst out laughing.

"What?" Goren blurted, wondering what the hell had just happened. She just shook her head and continued to laugh, and after a few seconds he tried again: "What?"

"You . . . you . . ." she stuttered. "You're trying to un-mess me?" she managed before going off into a fresh gale of laughter.

"Not you," he corrected, at a loss for any other response. "Your head."

She was finally starting to regain control of herself, although she was still fighting the smile that remained on her face. "Ah, I don't know how I could possibly have gotten those confused. Thanks for setting me straight."

"What's so funny about me trying to fix what I did wrong?"

Stifling another giggle, she reached across the table and covered his hand with her own, saying with mock-seriousness, "You know, Bobby . . . sometimes you really do worry me."

"Why?" He was getting tired of spouting questions, but she'd thrown him so off-balance with her laughing fit that he was still floundering. "I thought this was what normal people did - converse and try to explain things to each other."

"Anyone ever tell you that you're cute when you're confused?" she said casually, retrieving her fork and taking another bite of her salad.

"Er . . . no." He paused, thinking about that for a second. "I'm cute?"

"Well," she said with a teasing smile, "when you're confused. Too bad it doesn't happen that often."

"I really am sorry for what I said last night," he said into the silence that followed her remark. He wasn't changing the subject because he didn't like being complimented by her; it was more that he liked it a little too much, and therefore feared saying anything in response. Who knew what could come out of Bobby Goren's mouth if he didn't take the time to think before speaking?

"Apology accepted," Alex said after only a moment's hesitation at the subject change. "It was dumb of me to go off on you, anyway, since I know you have no reason to say something deliberately hurtful."

"Well you're right, I wouldn't, but . . . that wasn't what I was saying. Your reaction was valid."

She studied him for a long moment, then nodded. "You're right, it was." Setting her fork into the plastic salad bowl and replacing the cover, she smiled brightly. "Ready to go back to the real world?"

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"So, what do we know?" Deakins asked as the detectives entered his office, not even waiting until they were seated. "Got the autopsy results?"

"Yes," said Eames, handing him a copy. "The short version is: the cuts were secondary; he was bleeding internally from an overdose of . . . warfarin," she said, pronouncing the last word carefully. She glanced at Goren, expecting him to pick up and explain the drug. When he didn't, she shrugged and went on. "Warfarin is a blood thinner. Some preparations are used in medicine for heart patients, but the type this guy ingested is the 'super' type that's used in rat poison."

"Rat poison," Deakins repeated contemplatively. "Just plain old off-the-shelf rat poison?"

"Disappointing, isn't it," agreed Eames.

"Just as notable," Goren broke in, "is the fact that there's a . . . delay between the time the drug is ingested and the time the symptoms - mainly hemorrhaging - become patent."

"A full twenty-four hours," Eames appended.

Deakins whistled. "A whole day, huh. You guys got any information on who he was with the night he would have taken this, uh, warfarin stuff?"

"We think he had a . . . date book," Goren replied. "It would have come in with the rest of the scene evidence."

"However, we haven't taken a look at it yet," Eames added. "Since we spent the morning communing with dead bodies and all."

"Your favorite pastime, I assume," Deakins said with a laughing look.

"No," Goren said conversationally, "I think there are other things she prefers."

Eames and Deakins exchanged a look, both unsure whether Goren was serious. "I'm . . . sure there are," Deakins said reassuringly. "So, uh . . . you guys let me know what you find in that date book, ok?"

"You bet," Eames said as she led Goren out of the room.

"Oh, Goren?" Deakins called at the last second, gesturing for the detective to come back into his office.

Goren glanced over his shoulder at Eames, who simply shrugged, and returned to stand in front of the Captain's desk. He looked inquiringly at Deakins.

"Have you talked to Alex this morning? Other than about the case, I mean."

He blinked, sorting through the possibilities of what Deakins was fishing for. Had he found out about their argument? "A, uh . . . a bit," he hedged. "Why?"

"Did she mention what she did last night?"

"No, what did she do?" He was genuinely curious; had Eames done something unusual after he left?

"I was hoping you could tell me."

"Pardon?"

Deakins held up a hand as if warding off the question. "I'm not going to say anything more. Just . . . take a close look at her when you go back out there, ok?"

Intrigued now, Goren nodded. "Sure."

"Good," Deakins said with a firm nod. "Thank you."

"No problem," Goren mumbled as he left the office.

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"What was that about?" Eames asked, looking up when Goren approached their desks.

"Um," he faltered, "just, uh, nothing that important."

Since her blow-up last night, she'd been trying to restrain the defensiveness Goren tended to spark in her, and she silently reminded herself of this goal as she said only, "Oh, ok" in response to his obvious lie.

"Yeah," he said nervously. Sitting down at his desk, he looked down at the nearest sheet of printed paper, pretending to read as he surreptitiously scrutinized his partner. Starting with the top of her head, he began a methodical scan, averting his eyes each time she looked up. The examination was difficult, since he had no idea what Deakins had been alluding to and therefore no idea what it was that he was looking for.

Her hair and face looked just the same as they always did, he decided, even if her expression was a little more brittle than usual. Her neck was similarly unchanged. And delicate, his subconscious added a second later. Her shoulders were feminine - no, they were simply undamaged, he corrected himself - and held in their usual straight posture.

"What?" Eames said suddenly, breaking his concentration.

His eyes flew to her face and he saw that she was eyeing him strangely. "Huh?"

"You're staring at me."

"Uh . . . no, I wasn't staring at you. I was just kind of staring into space while I thought."

Eames didn't look convinced, but she accepted his explanation. "Ok."

Letting out a quiet breath of relief, he kept his eyes focused on his desk for a few seconds until he was sure that she'd gone back to her work, then resumed his study. Where was he? Ah, yes . . . her shoulders. Her shoulders looked normal. Did skin above the v-neck of her shirt look just the slightest bit flushed? He couldn't be sure, but stored it away as a possible observation as he moved on.

His eyes trailed down her torso, although he doubted that either he or Deakins would be able to spot anything unusual through the barrier of her clothing. When he'd noticed nothing different by the time he reached her waist, he moved his gaze to the only other part of her he could see above the desk: her right arm. Her three-quarter length sleeve covered most of it, and he didn't see any bumps or bulges that shouldn't have been there.

Finally, his eyes moved to her forearm and, a second later, widened. A perfect imprint of his fingers adorned her wrist. Shocked, he drew in a sharp breath.

Eames's head snapped up and she this time she caught him red-handed. "You're staring at me again."

"I, uh . . ."

"Yes?" she said expectantly. "Spit it out."

"Your . . . uh . . . your arm is . . ."

She looked down and, making the obvious deduction, groaned. "Is that what he kept you in there for? To ask about these?"

Her words took a second to penetrate Goren's brain as he processed and analyzed what he was seeing. That he'd left marks on her was bad, but she obviously wasn't in pain from them or he would have noticed already. That Deakins had noticed the bruises was much worse. "Did he mention them to you?" he finally asked as he pulled his eyes away.

"Yeah. He wanted to know who beat me up," she said with an wry smile.

Horrified, he closed his eyes for a moment and tried to calm himself. "What did you tell him?"

Before replying, Eames looked around, making sure no one else was within earshot. "I told him that no one was abusing me, thank-you-very-much . . ."

Goren let out a sigh of relief, but she shook her head, saying, "Don't relax just yet. It gets better."

"Uh-oh."

"So I told him that no one was abusing me, and he looked back at my arms, and . . . well, take a guess what the other likely scenario he came up with is."

It took him only a second to make the connection. "Oh my god, did he ask if you . . .?"

Amazingly, she smiled as she shook her head. "Not out loud, but my god you should have seen his face!"

He stared at her, stunned by her lighthearted reaction. "You're not . . . upset?"

"Oh, don't get me wrong. I'm embarrassed as hell and I'd very much like to kick you somewhere vital for putting me in this situation, but as long as I can convince Deakins that he doesn't have to hunt down some cop-beating maniac, then it's more embarrassing than it is damaging."

"So you didn't tell him it was my fault?"

"No, why would I? It's not like you did it on purpose."

"Well, true, but -"

He was interrupted by another detective's shout of "Hey, Eames!" from across the room. "Evidence sent up your appointment book. You want it?"

"Don't worry about it," she whispered to Goren, then turned to face the shouter. "Yeah, we need it. Could you bring it over?"