Dinner of swordfish steaks stuffed with spinach, feta, and garlic worked exceptionally well with the tossed green salad and roasted red potatoes. Henry wiped his mouth with his napkin and placed it next to his empty plate.

"Ohhh, that was something that I missed while away," Henry moaned in delight. "You are the best!" he declared and sprung up from his chair. Abe thanked him and began clearing the table until his father stopped him.

"No," he insisted. "You rest while I take care of the dishes." Abe protested but he insisted once again and Abe relented, smiling.

"Okay, Pops," he told him. After a few moments, he left the kitchen, realizing that his father was using the time to work things out more in his mind. He retired to his bedroom and switched on the TV to a local news channel. Although he enjoyed staying informed by reading the newspaper, sometimes it was just easier to sit back and let the news jockeys jabber the updates to him.

It only took Henry an hour to clear the kitchen. He turned off the lights in the kitchen and in the sitting area, then checked in on his son only to find him sprawled out on his bed, fast asleep. Henry covered him up with the blanket at the foot of the bed and switched off the TV and the room lights. He then retired to his own bedroom and prepared for bed. Before settling down, though, he decided to give Lucas a call.

Lucas had finally begun to feel a bit better and was thinking of trying to get a little soup down, only he didn't have any soup. Dang! When his cell phone rang, he grinned widely at the name on the Caller ID.

"Hey, Big Guy, how you doin'?" he asked Henry then coughed.

("Fine, fine, but you don't sound well at all," Henry replied, concerned. "Are you in need of anything?")

"No, no, I'm (cough) fine." He swallowed before repeating, "I'm fine."

("Have you seen a doctor?")

"Not … no, it, it's okay. Matter of fact, I'm planning on going into work tomorrow."

("You'll do nothing of the sort," Henry adamantly forbid him and then instructed him to drink plenty of fluids and get plenty of rest. "And if your fever hasn't broken by morning, I'll be over to check on you.")

Lucas didn't know how Henry knew that he had a fever. Something only a doctor would know, he told himself. But he appreciated the medical advice. Still, he had to let his boss know what he might be facing at work tomorrow now that Jo and Hanson knew about the strange DNA results.

"Doc, uh, there's something you should know," he reluctantly began. "Something to do with those -" Henry cut him off, letting him know that he already knew about the situation from Abe. "I'm really sorry, Big Guy. Didn't mean to rat you out like that."

("You did nothing of the sort, Lucas. It was all a misunderstanding for which I take full responsibility," Henry assured him. "Now that they do know about the results, I'm sure that the detectives and I will do our best to work harder to match them to the suspect.")

Lucas released a deep sigh of relief. "Boy, I was so worried that you'd be pissed!" He chuckled and coughed again. Henry urged him to get some rest now and made him promise not to come in tomorrow. "I promise," he said. A day off from work was always welcome even if it was because of illness. They ended the call and Lucas released another deep sigh and turned over on his side in bed and went to sleep.

vvvv

The next morning, Henry left the shop but was startled to find Jo sitting in her car right outside. He swallowed, schooled his features, and approached the passenger side, and bent down. She lowered the window and he managed to smile broadly at her.

"Detective, I wasn't aware that you -"

"Get in, Henry," she curtly demanded.

"Ah, in, ah, alright." He opened the door and did as she had instructed, glancing occasionally at her while he buckled his seatbelt. The car didn't move, though, and he became more nervous because of the anger he saw on her face and the heavy silence between them. "Jo -"

"Why did you lie to us about those DNA results?" she asked. Point blank. A testament to the true detective that she was.

He pursed his lips and then relaxed them, letting out a shaky breath as well. "The results were too strange, too unfathomable," he replied, keeping his eyes focused in front of him. "The presence of those antibodies from ancient diseases could only mean that the suspect is just as ancient."

"Which is utterly impossible," she said. "No living person is that old."

He merely dipped his head deeply a couple of times. "The lab must have simply made a mistake," he said, hating the lie. "What do you plan to do next?" he asked, dreading her answer.

"Try to figure out who the suspect is, naturally," she replied.

"Naturally," he agreed. "But … how?"

"Well, we already have a suspect in mind," she told him and started up the car. "If his DNA matches up with the results in the Glausser and DeSoto cases -"

"DeSoto!" Henry was alarmed to find out they had identified a suspect already. Adam. "What … how does the DNA tie in with the DeSoto case?" That razor had had only the victim's blood on it. Hadn't it?

While she drove them to the precinct, she explained about the traces of blood on the razor that hadn't belonged to the victim. His heart fell. He had tried to hide the razor from her but obviously, the CSU had found it and had it analyzed.

"The fingerprints were too smudged to be of any help," she told. "But we're working on that, too." She kept her eyes on the road in front of her but studied him in her peripheral. It dismayed her to see him try to hide his discomfort at hearing what she'd shared with him. It could mean only one thing: he was already aware that the cases might be connected and all this time had remained silent about it. She fought the urge to scream at him, demand of him what he was hiding and why. But she knew that from this point on, her unofficial partner was as much under a cloud of suspicion as their mysterious suspect was. And it hurt. She was going to have to keep a close eye on Henry. Maybe even wind up arresting him for … something, she didn't know what. She had desperately hoped he was not involved, just mistaken about the results. Now … now, she wasn't so sure. They arrived at the precinct and she parked and turned off the engine.

"This, ah, suspect," Henry began. "Do you have a name?"

"No," she replied, regretting the lie but not as much as feeling it was necessary. She wanted to tell him what Hanson was up to but decided to keep him in the dark until they found out what his chem teacher friend came up with. "Mostly just a theory," she said, hitting him with some of his own words he'd uttered at her and Hanson during the Glausser case earlier that year. Again, he appeared to stiffen and swallow hard but struggle to hide how uncomfortable he was. There. There was that innocent-looking smile he was turning to her again, to dazzle her again. To throw her off the track again. But why, Henry, why?

His behavior in past cases had annoyed her and, at times, disturbed her. This time, it was breaking her heart, though. But it was a risk to let him know what she and Hanson were up to because … he might try to sabotage … God! She wished she didn't have to think that way. But she knew she had no choice but to not show her hand.

"Welcome back, by the way," she told him as she unbuckled her seatbelt and got out of the car. He did likewise, and they walked into the precinct together. "Learn anything new that might be helpful to us in testing blood samples?"

"A bit," he replied with a soft smile. "I prefer the old, tried and true methods. The new methods were a bit too complicated for me."

"Hmmm. I thought you liked complicated," she smirked.

They parted at the elevators when he took one going down to the morgue and she took one going up to the fourth-floor bullpen. When she walked out of the elevator, she double-stepped to catch up with Hanson and they entered the bullpen together. She followed him to his desk and he sat down.

"The Doc's coming back tomorrow, right?" he asked her.

"Nope," she replied. "He's back today."

Hanson could tell by the look on her face that all of this was getting to her and not just because of her feelings for the ME. It was never any fun to have to mark a friend or colleague as a possible suspect.

"Came back early," he said, frowning. "Think he suspects something?"

"Hard to tell with Henry," she replied. "But I don't think so."

"Good," he said. "But until we hear from Stan, I think we should try to check out this Farber guy." She nodded in agreement and said she would start by calling the hospital's Human Resource Department. "I'll run him through CODIS to start," he said. His desk phone rang and he answered it. He put up a hand to stop Jo from going to her desk while he listened and frowned.

"Yeah. Okay. We're on our way." He then hung up and looked up at Jo. "That was Stan," he said, a look of astonishment on his face. "His tests are finished but the results are freaking him out."

"Mmmm. Because of the ancient antibodies," Jo said, nodding.

"Not just that," he told her. "According to Stan, he got the results at what he called an 'exorbitantly accelerated rate'. He's never seen anything 'pop' like that under his microscope before."

"How odd," Jo remarked. "Lucas would love to know about this. He'd probably say the suspect sounds like some kind of super-soldier that the government made."

"Except you're forgetting one thing," he began. "The blood sample came from that little Farber guy, whose body has been on lockdown for the past month. I'm headin' over there to pick up the results myself. Say, can you …?"

She nodded. "I'll stay here and run Farber through the system." Unbelievable, she thought to herself while she watched Hanson jog out of the bullpen and out to the elevators. Farber with some kind of super-soldier blood? Too bad it apparently hadn't helped him fight off his present physical ailment. Then the possibility hit her that Farber could be Julian's and Xander's mystery murderer. Unbelievable, she told herself. Simply unbelievable.

vvvv

Bellevue in Adams's room …

While a male nurse finished the humiliating task (humiliating to him, not the nurse) of changing him into a fresh pair of disposable underwear and rolling him onto his back again with a "There you go, buddy", Adam wished for the millionth time that he could simply die. It no longer mattered to him if anyone witnessed his body vanishing. He just wanted this physical bondage to come to an end! And for the millionth time, he berated himself for having allowed Henry to do this to him. He had been so sure that with all his careful planning that he always had the upper hand in dealing with the younger Immortal. It had never occurred to him that Henry would have prepared himself to fight back in any way he could. And for him to have won - although temporarily - was galling to Adam.

His thoughts returned to when the two detectives had visited him. Only the woman detective named Jo had spoken to him, though. Jo Martinez. Beautiful. Kind. Sensitive. No wonder the silly young man seemed to care so much for her. It was too bad, he thought, that she would age and be gone in the blink of an eye. He wondered why Henry was willing to live such a mundane existence all over again. Hadn't he learned his lesson with that Abigail woman? Any relationship with a mortal would not last and would not end well.

But that other detective. Hanson. Mike Hanson. The lumbering clod had the nerve to photograph my medical chart, he silently huffed. Why? And why was he fishing around in my wastebasket? Adam pondered for only a few moments before realizing that they were looking for evidence. Evidence that might connect him to - yessss. Evidence that might connect him to a murder ... or two. Or three! He'd laugh out loud if he could. This rigid, unflinching body would not permit him to do so. It was still funny, though, that they thought they could pin any murder on him. No one had ever been able to do that. No judicial authority had ever been able to confine him for very long. He always managed to escape. These two detectives would learn like all the others had that their efforts to bring him to justice were futile. And if Henry cared for them at all, he'd let them know that. More importantly, he'd let them know that they were putting themselves in harm's way by trying to pin anything on him.

A phlebotomist rolled her cart over to his bed just then and yanked the curtain back. "Good morning, Mr. Farber," she greeted him.

No smile. Not in her words, not on her face. Her words were always nice and flowery but she never smiled. How in the world did she keep her job? he wondered.

"Just here to take a little more blood," she told him. "Be done before you know it," she promised.

That's what she'd said the last time and the time before that. How he wished that he could voice a complaint to the rest of the staff that the woman didn't know what she was doing? He braced himself to endure whatever pain she would inflict upon him again in her bumbling efforts to draw blood from him.

"This would be so much easier if you could make a fist for me," she told him again. "Sorry," she said on her first, failed attempt. She slowly lifted the needle but was careful not to remove it from the puncture in his arm. She pushed the needle back down, missing his vein again, and repeated the process. "Sorry. So sorry. Good thing you can't cry out," she whispered. "I might lose my job." The phlebotomist, Margo, steadied her hand and tried a third time.

"Your veins are so thick!" she grumbled, keeping her voice low so her co-workers would not hear. "Sure hope you don't feel this," she said, "because it's turning my stomach." She pushed the needle harder into his arm and found a vein this time. Both of them were greatly relieved as she finally drew the blood and then withdrew the needle from his arm. When she placed a cotton swab over the puncture and a bandaid over that, Adam suddenly realized what Det. Hanson had retrieved from his wastebasket. Ahhh, a sample of his blood to try to match against … ahhh, he just had to shake off this coma somehow or DIE somehow but he had to get away from these meddlesome mortals!