By Monday morning, Jo could pretend that her injury was no more than a strained muscle—which is what she told Hanson when he commented on the stiffness of her posture.

"A strained muscle? Is that what we're calling it now?" he responded, half under his breath. Jiggling his mouse, he brought his computer screen to life, then pulled his chair up to his desk as if he intended to let that be the small talk that started their day.

"Excuse me?" Jo's head shot up, a flare of panic burning through her at the possibility that her partner—a damned good detective in his own right—could know what she was really hiding. She'd stuck with the selection of loose blouses she'd worn the last several days, though, adding a tank top underneath and a blazer over the top for extra layering to hide the bandage that still covered her side. No way could he see anything meaningful through all that.

"You and Henry …?" Hanson waggled his eyebrows meaningfully, then grinned at Jo's resulting blush. If it had been anyone else in the department, Jo would've torn into him over the inappropriateness of his behavior, but this was Hanson, her partner. There was little about her personal life she hadn't confided in him over the years, and he likewise.

But he couldn't know about her injury, and she couldn't give him any reason to get suspicious. If he knew, she'd have to explain how it happened—and that was a conversation she never wanted to have.

Instead, she cut her gaze to the side. "Yeah, me and Henry." She scooted her chair around so she could talk quieter. The less the rest of the department overheard, the better. "I really think this might be something. It's still new, and … complicated." She half-snorted at her own understatement. "But I think we could be good together."

Hanson studied her, his earlier amusement fading away. He wasn't joking around now, and Jo once again found herself appreciating his innate sense for when to cease the gentle teasing that so characterized his interactions.

"I'm happy for you. It's been a hard road, and it's time fate cut you a break or two. Morgan's an odd duck … but he seems like a good guy."

"Can't disagree with you on either point," Jo responded. Someone else may have been offended at hearing their boyfriend—was he her boyfriend now? Was that the right term when both people were well out of their teens?—called an odd duck; in Henry's case, the phrase might be the most charitable Hanson could choose while also being accurate. As for what fate owed her, she didn't feel comfortable speculating. "But, uh, do me a favor and don't mention this to anyone. I don't want the rumor mill getting churning."

"Getting? Jo, the rumor mill's been churning since the moment you started working cases with him."

She shook her head, chastising herself for not thinking of that. Knowing it, the precinct rumor mill had probably decided she and Henry had secretly eloped and were going to announce a pregnancy any day now. She'd have to ask around and quash those rumors before they ballooned into a surprise baby shower. Well-intentioned her colleagues may be, but not always the most tactful.

"OK, OK. Can you at least promise not to feed the fire?"

A smile quirked Hanson's lips. "I can only promise not to tell people anything that isn't true. You know I'm your last line of defense. People aren't gonna believe me if I tell them I don't know anything, and that'll just make the rumors worse."

Narrowing her eyes, Jo aimed for her best threatening glare, daring Hanson to push too hard on which liberties to take with his knowledge. Hanson didn't break. They'd been partners too long for threats to have any power, and they both knew it. Fortunately, they'd also been partners for so long that she knew she could trust his discretion.

"Fine," she agreed, bumping Hanson's fist and sealing the deal.

"Now that we've gotten that out of the way—" Hanson slapped his thigh, and the mood once again sobered. "I'm sorry to hear about your friend. Karen and I both send our best wishes for her speedy recovery."

"Thank you." Jo managed a thin smile despite the guilt that flooded through her; she'd barely thought about Rhonda herself. As easy as it would be to blame her thoughtlessness on her own injury and emotional turmoil, Jo recognized that she was also making excuses. To face Rhonda meant facing the one person who had gone up against Kenny and would suffer from the scars of what he'd done, without ever knowing why. All Rhonda had wanted to do was help a child find a home, and that child had nearly murdered her for it.

Jo bit her lip. The waxy taste of her lipstick held her attention while she formed her next question. "You don't happen to know if there's a collection for her, do you? I assume her family's been contacted and I know the department has decent insurance, but bills … don't take care of themselves."

That part Jo knew too well, and she bowed her head, taking a moment to compose herself as she recalled her own first weeks after Sean died.

It hadn't been fair. That's what she remembered thinking when she returned to the station and saw her colleagues and friends milling around and talking—the way they always did first thing in the morning.

How dare everyone continue to care about subway congestion and whether they might need an umbrella. How dare they talk about booking vacations or whether the new episode of that TV show was worth watching. How dare anyone expect her to care about mundanities of due dates and usage fees when her world had crumbled.

Yet, she had to listen, had to smile and make agreeable noises in the right places to prove that she was coping when inside she had fallen apart. And for the empty apartment she faced at the end of each day, she had to keep the lights on and the phone working, no matter how much she no longer saw a point.

"As it happens, there is a card." Hanson hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward the lunch room. "It's in there for everyone to sign, and Lieu has been collecting donations." He glanced around the bullpen, momentarily expanding the conversation to include the rest of the cops. "Pretty much everyone here has worked with Rhonda at some point—and not just our department. She has a lot of people in her court, and you know us cops, we look out for our own."

Jo felt her face heating up and tears tug at her eyes. That Rhonda was a social worker—not a cop—didn't matter; she was still one of theirs. Jo had never bothered to follow up on any of those promises of a lunch date with Rhonda, but now she vowed to change that—as soon as Rhonda was healthy enough.

In the meantime, she would see to it that when Rhonda returned home from the hospital, she'd also return to an apartment with heat and water. And if she had to brow-beat a couple immortals into helping make that happen, she would. It was the least they could do.

She pressed at the corner of her eye with a pinky finger, willing the tears back before they could catch at her mascara and ruin any pretense of composure. She didn't dare cry. She hadn't then, and she wouldn't now. Not in front of her colleagues, and definitely not in front of Hanson.

"Excuse me." Jo struggled to her feet. "I should get that card signed before I forget." She doubted the excuse fooled Hanson, but his only response was to slide a file folder from her side of the desk over to his and open it.

"I'm gonna take a look at—" He tapped the paper in front of him without glancing at it—"this. Review it. You know. Get that detecting work we do going for the day."

"Good idea," Jo responded. "I'll be back in a few minutes."

She found the card laying on one of the Formica-covered tables that dotted the lunch room. A pen held it open, revealing a dozen or so signatures and well-wishes already scrawled across the empty space. Taped on the table below the card, a memo explained whom it was for, what had happened to her, and that donations should be dropped in the deposit box on the counter or delivered in person to the Lieutenant through that Friday.

The explanation of Rhonda's injuries and the interventions necessary to aid any kind of recovery all sounded so distant, almost hypothetical, and Jo found herself reading the memo several times before any of it sunk in—even though she already knew just how real it was. Perhaps better than anyone.

She sunk into one of the chairs and picked up the pen, ready to scrawl her own signature—and got struck with the realization that the glittery cardstock with its repeated entireties to Get Well Soon! and Best Wishes on a Speedy Recovery could have been about her.

In a different world, Kenny still would have killed Drake, still would have been brought in as a witness, still would have been assigned to her care. She wouldn't have known Liam or Richie, and therefore she wouldn't have known about their kind of Immortal. Perhaps in that world, Kenny would have eaten his ice cream and split town without a trace after a few days in search of another Immortal target. More likely, in his paranoia, he'd have chosen to close off the loose ends of the mortals who'd tried to help him.

In that version of reality, Henry wouldn't have been there to take the bullet.

Her hand started to shake and the pen fell back to the table with a clatter.

She'd lived her whole life without any knowledge of them or their Game, and as soon as she did find out, suddenly they and it were everywhere. Or so it seemed.

On her coffee table in her townhouse were the files that she'd had Vivian, her police friend from Jersey, send up—the files for the homicides she thought might be Game related. They made a substantial stack. She'd leafed through them a couple times and scratched a few notes in the margins, but a part of her kept pushing them away before she could immerse herself in the details.

She was definitely going to take the time to study them now. She'd told Richie that she didn't want the borders of her reality pushed even further; if other supernatural beings existed in the world, she didn't want to know about them. That was still true.

Under the harsh industrial lights, in a stark room with its persistent smell of coffee and burned popcorn, she recognized something else: Knowing about these beings had saved her life.

In that other world, Kenny would have killed her. She might have dodged the first bullet. She might have disarmed him, restrained him, perhaps even had time to call for backup. But she wouldn't have known that he had centuries of knowledge to draw upon, that he could heal from any damage she inflicted, or that there was only one way to keep him down.

How many more Kennys were out there? Now that she knew they existed, how would she know how to recognize them? She'd asked Liam that and hadn't received a satisfactory answer. The real question, though: What was she supposed to do when she did?

She stumbled to the coffee pot and succeeded in dumping some of its contents into a mug without spilling more than a few drops on the counter and floor. Her head reeled, and the tension of an impending headache began to settle in behind her eyes. The temptation to cut out from work and go curl up at home for the rest of the day overwhelmed her, except that she'd already taken two days off and she really couldn't justify burning through her personal time. Not if she ever wanted to take a proper vacation, which she definitely needed.

As if the epiphany about Kenny's kind of Immortals weren't enough to tear her understanding of the world apart, she also had Henry to think about. Henry's world didn't include swords and killing—thank God—though it did seem to include an alarming number of fatal injuries. Temporary fatal injuries. For whatever difference that made. If she wanted to be with him, she had to recognize that his deaths and awakenings would also be her problem.

Her phone buzzed, interrupting her thoughts. Without checking the screen, she knew who the caller was.

"Hey, Henry." Her voice sounded rough, like she'd been crying, so she took a sip of the coffee. To her surprise, it tasted freshly made and … good. She couldn't recall the last time the lunchroom coffee pot had produced anything worth drinking.

"I hope I'm not interrupting anything," Henry answered. "I have a few minutes myself between tasks and thought it prudent to check in with you."

It took a second for her to figure out why Henry would feel that necessary; they'd only parted ways a couple hours earlier and would be seeing each other again as soon as their shifts ended. It wasn't like him to be clingy.

A twinge in her side reminded her.

She pressed the coffee cup to the bandaged area and further appreciated the warmth that soaked through the fabric. "I'm fine. Nothing I can't deal with."

"Good to hear." He must have covered the mouthpiece because his next words came through muffled, and obviously not for her. "Lucas, can you get started? I'll be right out." The mouthpiece cleared, and his tone softened, "I thought you'd also be pleased to know that I have booked us a reservation at Ramón's for Thursday night."

Jo nearly choked at the thought of what that would cost, followed a second later at surprise for his ability to get a reservation on such short notice. "Henry, that's—"

"The least you deserve," he finished. "I promised you an evening at a nice restaurant, and the last night of our interlude does seem fitting for that celebration."

"I—" She pressed her lips together, trapping the protest that wanted to escape. A fancy night out did sound good: expertly prepared dishes she couldn't pronounce, elegant clothing, a normal kind of exciting night. "Thank you. I'm looking forward to it."

She hadn't lied, but Henry must have caught something off in her tone. "Are you sure you're OK?" he pressed. She heard the click of his office door shutting and wondered that he hadn't done that before.

"Two weeks," she answered. "We were supposed to have two weeks. Seems like we barely got two days to just be together."

Henry's harrumph made his agreement clear. "It was quite eventful."

"Yeah, that's one way to put it." Through her head flashed memories of kneeling with a dying Henry in a pool of his blood; of Henry emerging naked from the river, reborn; of Richie executing an apparent child right in front of her; of Richie's dead body strapped into the passenger seat of her car; of Richie alive and joking around at the bar days later. She didn't spell out any of that out, but she didn't think she needed to. "I don't know how you can be so calm about everything. Every time I think I've got a handle of everything, I realize I don't. My head is spinning."

"Spinning?"

"Metaphorically," she clarified. She took a slower sip of the coffee to give Henry time to jump in if he thought he needed to. "There's a lot—it's just … a lot to think about."

"As is to be expected. You know that if there's anything I can do to help: any questions I can answer or demonstrations I can provide—"

If Jo was certain of anything, it was that she had seen enough demonstrations, thank you. "I think I've got the gist." The retort started harsh even to her, so she scrambled to soften it in case Henry took it the wrong way. "But I'll be sure to let you know if I do need anything."

Henry made a noise that might have been a soft chuckle. "Very well. In that case, I should let you return to work. Lucas is likely getting curious about what is delaying me, as well."

She didn't want to hang up. Hearing Henry's voice eased some of the turmoil in her, because above all else, she also knew he was the man she loved, and everything she'd seen over the last couple weeks demonstrated that he loved her too. She needed time to process her experiences, not their relationship. That, she recognized, was going to progress on its own time-line.

"Henry?"

"Yes?"

While she let out a careful breath, Jo's gaze aimlessly took in the brightly lit lunchroom that somehow no one had come into while she'd been on the phone—as if her colleagues were giving her space. Or were piled up outside the door and eavesdropping into. She could imagine them hushing and slapping one another while trying to keep their giggles from giving their presence away; rumor mills needed fodder. "Abe's trip isn't over yet. We still have two days left," she pointed out. "Two whole days."

She could hear the grin in his voice as he answered, "I think we can find some ways to fill that."

Jo grinned back. "Promise?"