Disclaimer: I don't own the situations or characters portrayed herein. I'm just playing with them for a while.

Odds on a Dead Pigeon Part 2

He had slept badly. In his dreams he had gone to a store, and found a little back room. Just inside there was a maze of mirrors, and Amanda was there, reflected countless times. Feverish, he had made his way through the maze, completely unable to see his own reflection.

Again and again he had reached for her, eager to gather her up in his arms. Again and again his dream fingers had met with cold glass. Each mirror-Amanda had raised her hand, pointing a shotgun at him, and as he recoiled from her, the gun had gone off, shattering the mirror and leaving him gazing at a black hole into nothing but emptiness and stars. He turned away, calling desperately for Amanda, and the sequence repeated. Again. And again.

It was four in the morning when he finally jerked awake to the pitch darkness of a burned out lamp bulb, and realized that his pillow was wet with tears.

He was too exhausted to get up and change the lightbulb, so his next dream had involved the catacomb rats - only this time Amanda was with him, and he kept losing her. The rats were gaining on him, and when he finally found her, they had recruited her to be one of them. She bared her rat teeth at him and hissed like a snake.

If he hadn't been so frantic with worry about her, he would have driven straight to the agency as soon as it was light. He would have flung himself down on Pfaff's couch, ready to undergo however many psychological evaluations were necessary to ensure that he never had those dreams again.

He arrived at Amanda's house around eight, still shaken by the nightmares. He longed to take her into his arms, reassure himself that she was all right, melt into her embrace, and just breathe deeply for a moment.

He rang the doorbell.

Twice.

There was no answer.

He headed off toward his customary place at the kitchen window, stopping to look in all the windows as he went.

And there she was. She lay sprawled on the floor like a rag doll or a corpse, unmoving, while a snake slithered toward her, inching ever closer, impeded only by the rug on which she lay.

How had he thought that yesterday was bad? It was nothing compared to this. If this hadn't been reality, it could easily have taken the prize for worst nightmare.

She couldn't hear him, but he shouted her name anyway, and knocked in a pane of glass in the back door with a flowerpot. Dotty would be beside herself, but it didn't matter.

If he could just get in there faster than the snake could move…

He stopped momentarily, taking in the position of the coiling snake, looking for anything he could put over the thing. He moved as calmly as he could, vaguely aware of dumping a wastebasket and using it to trap the coral snake underneath it.

His anxiety was at a fever pitch now, terror clawing at his mind and heart.

He knelt by Amanda, calling her name, rolling her over into his arms, cradling her face in his hand. A sudden gush of gratitude and joy swept through him when she moaned a little and opened her eyes.

"Lee." Her voice was fuzzy, but she knew him.

"I'm here now." He slipped his arm under her knees. "Come on."

He raised her in his arms and carried her the few steps to the couch. She protested feebly, but he murmured some reassuring nonsense as he laid her down gently. "You just lie back and relax. That's right."

He didn't want to let go of her. His hands lingered of their own accord as he pulled back, skimming over her neck, her shoulder, her stomach, her elbow - any part of her that he could reach, as he stood back up.

Her voice was still blurred and cracked, but he understood her. "Yeah, I'll just rest for a minute."

"It's okay." The words were as much for him as they were for her.

He rose, feeling a hundred years old. There was an open box lying on the floor, and it was obvious from the detailed contraption inside it that it had been meant as a weapon.

The pressurized vial told him that a gas had been used to knock her out, and then the snake was supposed to attack. Thank God he had come in time.

He sat down on the coffee table, watching Amanda rest a little.

Why is she mixed up in this?

"I don't know, this just doesn't track. I know why he wants to kill me, but why you?" It came out as a whimper. He felt utterly lost.

Perhaps Redding had done better research than he had guessed. Perhaps he knew that if something happened to Amanda King, Lee Stetson would either die of a broken heart or fling himself so recklessly into his work that he would catch a bullet in no time.

He had practically dragged her to the hospital, the snake held securely in a lunchbox which he left in the car. After he got her settled, he would take the vial to the agency, and someone there could take care of the snake, but for now Amanda was his first priority.

The agency doctor on staff, Dr. Medlow, was reassuring. "Well, first, we'll run the usual tests…"

"I don't want you to run the usual tests. I want you to run every test you can think of. Until the agency lab runs that vial, we won't know what gas they used. It may be toxic. And there may be side effects." He was taking no chances with Amanda's life.

"We will keep her under surveillance for twenty-four hours. Now, you call me as soon as your lab boys get an answer."

"Absolutely." Maybe if it turned out to be harmless, she could go home earlier.

"I don't think there's any major nerve damage, or anything like that. She'll be fine."

Amanda spoke for the first time, and she sounded angry.

"Excuse me there. Not only will I be fine, I'm here." She jumped a little to get his attention. "I'm right here. You're talking about me, but I'm here, and I feel terrific and everything is great. And I don't understand why you're talking about me like I'm n—"

"She seems upset," said Dr. Medlow with typical physician understatement. "That's natural. We'll talk later."

He couldn't quite keep the scolding tone out of his voice. "Amanda..."

She was so upset that her voice came out in little puffs of air. "That's not fair. That's, that's... Ah, Lee."

"What?"

"I don't know why you brought me to a hospital. I don't know why you want me to stay in a hospital. I don't wanna be in a hospital. I shouldn't be in a hospital and—"

Why was she angry? He ran over what he and the doctor had been discussing, and a sudden sinking feeling overcame him as he remembered that she had been speaking. He had just been so intent on what Dr. Medlow was saying that her interjections hadn't fazed him.

"Amanda, listen," he begged. "What's the harm in running a few tests?"

This way I know you're okay. I know you haven't been permanently injured by something I did long before I even met you.

"I don't want to—"

"For your own peace of mind."

Was I this difficult when she was caring for me, that time I was in the hospital and almost ended up killing Billy?

"I don't need any peace of mind. I have perfect peace of mind. My peace of mind is—"

She was getting more and more flustered, and he had only one more piece of ammunition to try.

"Okay. Okay, then. Okay, for mine. Hm?"

The fight drained right out of her. She looked incredulous. "You mean if..."

She pointed to herself and he nodded, starting to tug her gently toward her room.

Who knew that to calm Amanda down, he only had to be honest about his concern?

"Lee," she said, with such a caress in her voice that his heart swelled, "that's really very sweet."

Her eyes were shining, and her face lit up with such a soft, pleased expression that the traitorously persistent thought he had been keeping at bay for months wormed its way to the front of his mind as he followed her into the hospital room.

What if that was the look she had talked about, that day on the banks of the Thames? The magic look. The look that a woman gives to the man that she loves.

He stamped the thought down firmly. Amanda is a friend, not a conquest.

He left her at the hospital to go back to the agency, replaying the look on Amanda's face over and over in his mind.

He got into the car, thinking that even though it wasn't The Look, there was still magic in her eyes when she looked at him. She considered him a friend. She loved him as a friend.

That was something worth holding on to.