Chapter 18 - Visitor

Leo came home for lunch to a quiet house. He took his coat off and wandered through the living room to the bedroom he shared with Piper, looking for her. The bedroom door was closed, so he opened it quietly. He didn't want to scare her, in case she was in there. He walked through the bedroom to the bathroom door and listened. Piper was in there taking a bath, splashing a little in the water as she hummed something to herself. The bathroom door was cracked open so Leo knocked as he opened it.

Piper jumped when she saw Leo. She held a hand to her heart and took a deep breath. "Oh, God, you freaking scared me."

He smiled. "I knocked, didn't I?" He looked around and asked, "Bubble bath, huh?"

Piper was smiling, too. "Yeah. I figured I needed to relax."

"Yeah. No kidding." He glanced at the bubbles on the water, covering anything good. "You're lucky," he said.

She grinned. "You are."

"Me?"

She splashed some water at him.

"Hey!"

She laughed and did it again.

"Oh, you are so in for it!" He bent down and scooped her up out of the water, getting his clothes soaked and spilling water all over the bathroom floor.

"Leo!" Piper cried. "What're you doing? I wasn't done!"

He carried her into the bedroom, set her on her own two feet, went back to grab a towel, and wrapped it around her. "You're done now."

She smiled sarcastically.

He moved her to stand at the foot of their bed, the towel still wrapped around her body, though it was slipping reasonably. When he had her standing where he wanted her, in his arms, he kissed her, doing his best to pour all of his love for her into it.

They just stood by the bed for a moment, kissing slowly, trying not to think about any of their problems. Then he pulled away and stared into her eyes.

"I love you, you know that."

She nodded. "I know." She wasn't smiling and neither was he.

His voice was somber but quiet. "I'm serious…" he told her. "I know you…refused…to take up Adam's offer…"

She opened her mouth to speak but he covered it with his own. When they pulled apart he spoke again. "I don't want this…situation…we're in…Not this one, but the…other one…"

She smiled.

"I don't want it to scare you. I don't want you to be scared…I don't want him to scare you."

She knew he was talking about Dan, and his worry made her smile. She kissed him once. "When I'm with you, I'm never afraid," she whispered.

That was all the answer he was looking for. They kissed again and the towel dropped to the floor.

No one heard from Dan for the next three weeks. Piper and Leo did their best not to think about him and no one ever brought up his name. Piper spent a lot of time at her sisters' houses and Leo put himself to work. It was a system that seemed to work for a while: They would leave the house together, get into separate cars, and go to work. Leo would come home long after Piper, usually by the time she was already asleep.

Leo and Cortez were sitting in the lounge at the police station. Leo was laughing and Cortez was trying to shut him up, which made him laugh harder. Cortez and his new wife had been fighting—a lot.

"You guys are just newlyweds, get over it," Leo was saying. "You will fight like hell for two years, trust me."

"Two years, really?"

Leo smiled. "Oh, that's right, you didn't know me and Piper back then. Ask my brothers or Adam. They'll tell you. Piper and I fought a lot for the first couple years of our marriage."

"Yeah but you guys were teenagers."

Leo nodded slowly. "Yeah, that didn't help…" They both laughed. "What's really fun is actually trying to start a fight just to see if you can get to the make-up sex that night."

Cortez laughed.

"If she's still mad at you at night, then you're screwed, take a cold shower."

They were laughing when the door to the lounge opened and Piper and Phoebe appeared in the doorway. They went into the room, faces hard as rock.

"Piper? Phoebe?"

"Someone called the restaurant and used my information to cancel a band and my beer shipment, and fire the three new guys I just hired last week," Piper said, sounding angry and confused.

"What?"

Phoebe nodded. "The band was an hour late, so we called and they said they were cancelled."

"Who called?" Cortez asked.

"I don't know…" Piper shook her head. She looked down at the floor for a second, then up at Leo. "Dan?" she suggested.

He shook his head. "I doubt it. Why would he risk it?"

"Well I don't doubt it."

"We haven't heard from him in more than a month."

"I know, but Leo…He wants me, and if he can't have me alive he'll have me dead. You heard what he said when you arrested him all that time ago. And that message, and the letter…"

Leo sighed. He'd been living on the false hope that Dan might be gone for good. "You want me to check it out?"

She nodded. "Please."

"Okay. We'll see if we can trace the call made to the band."

As it turned out, they could trace it, and they did. To a payphone. It was near the apartment Dan had, but when they checked that out, they found that no one had seen Dan since he first disappeared.

"It's like he's hidden in the walls," Mike said as he and Leo checked out Dan's apartment, looking for signs of life. The place was fairly empty, with just a few boxes pushed up against bare walls.

"That's what he does. He hides like a coward and strikes like a terrorist. Then he hides again."

"So what are you saying? He's going to strike?"

"I don't know. But I do know that Piper's not going anywhere without an officer, that's for sure."

Then Mike asked a question he had been harboring for some time. "Why Piper?"

"Because Dan hates me. He hates me and he loves her. He wants to get back at me for putting him in jail…and he wants Piper for himself."

Piper wasn't trying as hard as she was before to be strong. She knew there was a problem, and she had a horrible feeling that something very bad was going to happen. Cortez had been the one escorting her, which was good because she felt more comfortable around him than if it were an officer she didn't know following her around everywhere. It wasn't too awkward, despite the situation and the reasons he was there.

Then when Piper went home, some things changed. She'd been in the squad car riding with Cortez, and when she got out, she immediately noticed something was wrong. Very wrong.

The front door was open.

And Yukon came running from around the corner down the street. He hid behind the squad car. If Yukon was hiding, something wasn't right inside. And Leo wasn't home, so why was the door open?

"Cortez."

He noticed, too, and went ahead of Piper into the house, but as he checked the kitchen, Piper rounded the corner to the living room. She looked up and stopped dead in her tracks.

Dan was standing in her living room, arms open wide, a gun in his right hand. "Well it's about time. I've been waiting for you to come home for two hours." He had put on muscle since he went to prison, something his jacket couldn't hide. His hair was longer, shoulder-length, and a bit tangled. There was a visible stubble around his jaw line and cheek bones. He did look different, but to Piper the sight of him and the fear he instilled in her had not changed.

Cortez came up from behind Piper, gun ready. He pulled Piper by her arm to stand her behind him. "Put the gun down, Dan!"

"Okay." Dan started to drop the gun but shot it instead. The bullet went straight into Cortez and embedded itself in his chest. He fell back and hit the ground.

"Consider this a taste of what's to come. I'll be back for you later," Dan said to Piper. For one perilous moment, his gun was aimed at her, but she was kneeling beside Cortez, too shocked to notice anything. Dan turned and went out the backdoor, but not before winking at her.

Piper was hardly paying attention. She was terrified and trying to keep Cortez awake. She ran to the phone and called an ambulance.

Leo, Mike, and others from the 12th Precinct were surrounding the house. Cortez was unconscious and on a stretcher, being lifted into an ambulance. It was getting dark outside, but only twenty minutes had passed since Dan ran from the house. As soon as the ambulance had showed up, Piper started shaking uncontrollably. She was suddenly freezing, but she had a fever and a horrible headache. The medics in the ambulance had said she maybe have just had a cold but the shock and stress got to her and her temperature rose.

Now she was standing with a dark gray blanket from the ambulance wrapped around her shoulders, and she was leaning with her back against Leo's chest. He'd done all he could do for Cortez, put up the police line, held civilians back, and answered endless reporters' questions. For now he just wanted to hold Piper, and that was what he was doing. He rested his forehead on her shoulder and sighed deeply.

"He'll be okay, right?" Piper asked.

Leo nodded. "Yeah…He'll be okay…"

"You don't know for sure, do you?"

"…No, I don't."