For the past 15 minutes, a silent Adam had sat across from Jo and Hanson in the 11th Precinct's Interrogation Room. Occasionally, he lowered his small, brown eyes disinterestedly to the incriminating documentation spread out on the table; at other times he trained them menacingly at the spot where he figured Henry stood on the other side of the two-way glass.

Jo put her arm up on the back of her chair and twisted slightly around to gaze in frustration at the same spot. Mike, equally frustrated, leaned back in his chair, wishing to take a different approach since his "Bad Cop" to Jo's good one had not worked. Even so, he wished he could apply the screws to him. Henry had warned them that they all were probably marked for death, anyway, by this weird little creep so why not get a few licks in before then.

During questioning, the unsettling Immortal had neither confirmed nor denied that Farber was an alias or that Adam was merely a moniker he'd adopted in order to mess with Henry's mind while he'd stalked him from late last year into early this year. Didn't have a lawyer and didn't appear to want one; not even a public defender. An amused raise of the eyebrows was the most they'd managed to get out of him when asked if he understood his rights under the Miranda Law.

Jo turned back around to face him. "Since you insist on keeping up this mime act, let me tell you what I think," she said dryly. "You killed a private investigator, Mark Cisneros, in 1996. You slit his throat. Two months later, his partner, Bennie Burke, was found murdered in the exact same way. What happened?" she asked. "Did they start investigating you instead of finding Henry? You killed them when they maybe tried to blackmail you."

At that, his look of self-satisfied superiority darkened and his eyes flashed with anger. The small muscles in his cheeks twitched. But he remained silent.

Jo pressed on, seeing that she had finally struck a nerve. "In 2007, a building superintendent in Jackson Heights named Marcie Cornell was found murdered in the same manner that Julian Glasser and Xander DeSoto were. Why did you kill her? Did she get too nosy after witnessing your disappearing act?" And she hoped that Henry didn't feel insulted by her words.

He remained silent but his small, dark eyes widened and his chin jutted out for half a second, telling her that she was on the right track. Heck, she had been bluffing! But it seemed that Henry was right when he'd told them that Adam would do anything to anyone in order to protect his secret. According to Henry, Adam had even killed him in the Frenchman's basement to prevent Jo from witnessing his death and his body vanishing. Adam, it seemed, was the self-appointed keeper of both their secrets, she concluded.

"Your DNA turns up in each of these brutal murders," she continued. "Now, you can sit there and continue to say nothing but the evidence speaks loud and clear enough for any jury to convict you." She gathered up the documents and placed them back into a brown file folder.

"We're through here," she told the uni standing guard at the door. The uni moved to take charge of him while she and Mike stood up and began to leave.

"You're making a mistake," Adam finally said, his voice smooth and clear as cut glass and the cold sharpness of it cut into their sensibilities.

"Our precious Henry must have explained to you," Adam continued, "that these feeble attempts to weigh your puny, mortal justice against me is futile. Many others have found out, painfully, that in the end," he added, "I always win."

"Now, he wants to talk," Mike said, sauntering back towards the smug man. "A real Chatty Kathy."

vvvv

Behind the glass …

"He does speak, then," Reece said to Henry, her arms folded. She kept her eyes on Adam, incensed that the strange man had had the nerve to threaten everyone connected with Henry, including herself.

"Any thoughts, Henry?" Reece asked while keeping her eyes on her detectives and the suspect.

He took in and released a deep breath before responding. "I'm thinking," he said. "How to make sure Adam doesn't win this time. To have him out of our lives once and for all."

"Forever?" Reece asked as she side-eyed him. At his startled reaction, she said, "Amazing what a little research uncovers," she said with a slight smile. "And a little chat with your friends in there," she added, nodding her head at Jo and Mike. "They're not the only ones who can be trusted with your secret, Henry," she told him, turning her head to meet his gaze of surprise.

He lowered his head and smiled. "We all are now in unknown territory, Lieutenant," he replied. "As difficult as it may be for each of you to deal with the learning of my secret, know that I have never shared it with so many in such a short time."

"Unknown territory; you can say that again," Reece said, shaking her head. "But we're your friends as well as your colleagues. Your secret's safe with us, Doctor," she assured him with great sincerity.

They turned their attention back to Jo and Mike questioning the now arrogantly verbose Adam. "I liked him better when he wasn't sayin' nuthin'," Reece jokingly lamented. She sighed. "Any ideas yet on how to effectively deal with him?"

"I'm, ah, still working it out in my head," Henry replied. "But many murder suspects are placed on a suicide watch. Perhaps we can make use of that in his case."

vvvv

Back in the Interrogation Room …

Adam once again maintained his silence, seemingly content to have at least warned them of their impending doom. He likened it to having given them a head start. It always made things a little more fun when his opponent or prey believed they had a fighting chance. Of course, they really didn't; not against him. While the uni hustled him out of the room and back down the corridor to be booked, he was already mapping out his plan of escape. It was simply a matter of when. And afterward, this handful of puny mortals would find out just how mistaken they were to have ever crossed his path.

vvvv

Reece stood in the video surveillance room with two guards just outside the area that housed the holding cells, including Adam's. She watched the heartless Immortal onscreen as he slowly paced the length of his cell, looked up and around, and then directly at the camera with an expression that told her that he had "figured it out". How to escape. It was just a matter of when.

"They're here, Lieutenant," one of the guards informed her.

She turned around to find a technical crew of three men and two women with a service cart full of surveillance equipment. The guard unlocked the door to the holding area and held it open as they pushed the large cart through. While he locked the door back, the guard on the other side of the door walked ahead of them down the hallway and stopped outside Adam's cell. While they worked to set up the extra surveillance equipment and trained it at his cell, Reece watched him onscreen. The smug look on his pale face gradually melted away to anger. He walked toward the bars and stood facing the workers; his cold eyes once again were trained on the original camera as if in silent protest of the extra equipment being added.

"Kind of overkill just for one guy, ain't it, Lieutenant?" the guard asked.

"It may be barely enough," she replied, ignoring the quizzical look on the guard's face and she certainly hoped that this idea of Henry's worked.

VVVVVVVV

Notes:

Slight reference to Forever TV show 2014 episode "The Problem with Psychopaths" S01/E14.