XLI

WILL

"So your boyfriend, Nico di Angelo, has amnesia?" Apollo asked.

Apollo and his son, Will, were at the cafeteria of JHH. They sat opposite each other on one of the tables by the window. Apollo had visited him while Will was on a break.

Will sighed running his fingers through his hair. "Dad, it's an ex-boyfriend."

"And what you did yesterday was the sort of thing that ex-couples do?" Apollo pointed out.

"Dad!" Will groaned.

"Don't think we didn't notice the hickeys on Nico's neck. We're just being polite not to point that out." Apollo shrugged.

"Seriously?!"

"And why couldn't you just tell him that you were his ex?" Apollo asked.

Another sigh escaped from Will's lips. "It's not that easy. It's complicated."

"Hence, you've done other methods to tell him instead of telling him directly," Apollo said.

"That's it! I'm done with this conversation." Will was about to stand up. "I'm going back to the emergency-"

"Nico deserved the truth you know," Apollo said, staring at his son earnestly. Will paused in his seat.

He then deflated in his seat. "I-I don't know how to tell the truth. I don't know how to say it when I've introduced myself as a stranger to him. Then I'll just bring up that I was his ex? He'll get mad and that was the last thing I wanted. I just got him back and I don't want to drive him away just because I lied."

"My appearance in this neighborhood was good timing then." Apollo reached for something in the inside chest pocket of his pinstripe coat. Then he put it on the table.

Will gazed down at it. There were two VIP tickets for a classical concert at Broadway due next week on the table. Will raised an eyebrow at his father. "One of your concerts?"

"No, just a guest. That's the reason why we flew from London," Apollo said.

"And maybe next time, you can give me a heads up when you're going to be here in New York," Will said.

Apollo smirked. "So we wouldn't catch you making out with your ex-boyfriend?" He emphasized the word ex-boyfriend.

"You are not going to let this go for the rest of my life, aren't you?"

"Probably not. . . but bring Nico to the concert." Apollo tilted his head.

"Bring Nico there." Apollo continued as he tapped the concert ticket with his index finger. "Tell him the truth after the concert. Maybe Nico wouldn't get that mad if you became a little bit romantic. You can tell him while there's background music to mellow out the atmosphere."

Yes. Trust his father for some dramatic flares. Yet, Will didn't look convinced. "How sure are you that this is going to be effective?"

"You might be surprised what music can do," Apollo said in a sing-song voice.

Will sighed. "I'll think about it."

But he pocketed the tickets anyway.

"How long are you going to be here?" Will asked.

Apollo looked out the window. He had a sudden unreadable expression. "Probably we'll stay here for the time being. Besides. . ." Apollo turned his attention back to Will and smiled. "Finally, Austin is now considering finishing high school. So we'll stay here while he makes up his mind."

"Oh really?" Will looked surprised. At the same time, he was glad. "Thank goodness. . ."

Will and his father had been convincing Austin for months to continue his education but Austin hadn't budged about it, yet.

"How did you convince him?" Will asked curiously.

Apollo gave him a wicked smile. "Wonders of music. That kid really fell in love with it. So I said that if he wanted to learn more about the music he needs to finish high school first. If you'd ask me, music helped him a lot to get through the pain he had experienced from you know. . ."

Will nodded knowingly. Austin had a rough life when he had fallen into the hands of a syndicate. In addition to that, Austin had witnessed how his girlfriend had died because of the said syndicate. Now he was glad that Austin life's had changed for the better.

Suddenly, Will's phone vibrated in his lab coat. He immediately picked it up and saw that he was paged to the ER.

"Dad, I'll have to go. Sorry. Duty calls." Will pocketed back the phone.

Apollo nodded standing up. Will followed suit. "All right, we're staying in our house in Brooklyn so drop by if you have free time."

"I'll try. You know the life of me." Will chuckled as they headed out of the cafeteria.

"That's why I never wanted to be a doctor." Apollo deadpanned.

"Yes. You're doing well in the music industry-oops. Sorry." Will bumped into someone when they had reached the door.

"It's fine." The man huffed. He had brown hair that hung over his green eyes. He wore a faded t-shirt and ripped jeans. The man paused and regarded Will. "You're a doctor here?"

"Uh, yeah. Why?" Will answered. The man looked awfully familiar to Will.

"Maybe you know, Agatha Lawrence? She's also a doctor here." The man said.

Agatha was the first-year resident doctor under his supervision.

Will spoke. "Yes, I know her."

"Oh great. I'm his brother, so maybe you can tell her that I'm here. She's not answering my calls."

Will nodded, uncertain. He felt weird about this guy, a feeling he couldn't place. It bothered him. "All right. I'll let her know."

"Okay. Thanks." The man was about to walk away but seemed to change his mind as he turned again to Will. "Don't you remember me?"

Will stared at the guy. There was something about this man's gaze as if Will had seen it before. The familiarity of this man settled something heavy in Will's chest. Will swallowed. "I'm sorry but. . ."

The man smiled. "I am Bryce. I worked at Mary Grace restaurant. You were there with a woman and two guys. I was your waiter at that time."

Oh, right. He had gone to that restaurant with Nico, Hazel, and Frank after the Jewellery Exhibit. Though, Will felt like there was something more, something he was missing out about this man.

But then maybe, he was just over-reacting due to a lack of sleep.

"Oh, I see. . ." Will said.

Bryce nodded. "Anyway, please tell my sister that I am going to wait here for her. It's pretty urgent." Then he left, finding a vacant table to sit on.

Will turned to his father. Apollo was looking steely at Bryce's retreating figure. He was surprised though, it wasn't always that his father looked so serious and a little bit scary. . .

"D-dad?"

"How peculiar. . ." Apollo mused with the same expression. His sight never left Bryce, who sat on the same table they had sat on earlier. "That guy seemed to remember you among hundreds of customers going in that restaurant." The musician glanced back at Will. "He must have a good memory."

"Huh? Well, maybe because I was with a pretty well-known person. I was with Nico's sister, Hazel Levesque, she's a famous jeweler. Her clients are A-list Hollywood celebrities. I went to dinner with her together with Nico and Hazel's boyfriend."

Apollo nodded. Then he smiled, his good-natured expression was back. "Maybe, it was you. You're pretty well-known too."

Will rolled his eyes. "Dad."

"Let's go." Apollo put his arm around Will's shoulder.

"Will. . ." Apollo called when they had reached the lobby and Will was about to head back to the emergency room.

Will looked back inquiringly at his dad as he shoved his hands into his lab coat.

"Be careful, son." Apollo smiled again. "Take care."

He went on his way.

Will watched bewilderedly his father's retreating figure.

oo00oo

Reyna Ramirez-Arellano couldn't shake the feeling that there was something she had missed out in this abandoned and charred twin building. She looked up at it from across the street. Aside from the fact that this was where Nico di Angelo had been seen last before the incident, there was practically nothing in there. She had been scouting the area for weeks, for something or anything relevant that might help her solve Nico's case. But all she had seen were ashes and blackened surroundings.

She knew that she was probably wasting time but her detective instincts seemed to be telling something different. Reyna sighed. Sometimes, she hated her instincts.

All right, one last time and I'm done with this building. Reyna decided as she marched once again into the building.

She went first to the basement of the building. For starters, it was dark in there so Reyna turned on the small flashlight she had brought with her. The basement was eerily quiet. The clinking of Reyna's boots and the water dripping from the leaking pipeline somewhere echoed around. Her eyes wandered. Her flashlight pointed ahead. There was nothing really-

The light of her flashlight landed on the pile of scaffolding nearby. Something shone on the ground under the scaffoldings. The light reflected something, metal. Reyna approached it. She crouched down to retrieve it.

It was a military dog tag. Reyna inspected it. The military dog tag was owned by Henry Stevens. Reyna pointed her flashlight underneath the scaffolding where she had seen the dog tag. There were clothes, foods, and an opened sack where the dog tag had probably come from. Reyna was frozen in her spot because all these things weren't there before when Reyna had paid a visit. Someone was here.

Then she heard it, an unmistakable rustling somewhere behind her.

Reyna whipped around and trained her flashlight in nothing in a particular direction. Yet, the light caught a figure that tried to hide behind a pillar. Reyna stood up. She retrieved her gun on her holster vest. She walked slowly and quietly towards the other side of that pillar. She held up her gun chest level, while she held the flashlight right under the gun

Then in a quick motion, she turned around the other side of the pillar "Freeze. NYPD."

The figure gasped as she fell to the ground. It was a woman who looked like a beggar in her late thirties. She tried to shield her eyes from the flashlight. She whimpered "I didn't do anything wrong! Please don't kill me."

"Who are you? Why are you here?" Reyna asked, gun still in position.

"I'm Rhea McQueen, just a beggar!" The woman said in a panicky voice. "I was here because I need somewhere I can hide my stuff. Then I saw you carrying a gun and I got scared. I thought you were one of the bad guys.."

"Bad guys?" Reyna raised an eyebrow.

"Last year, I lived here in the basement but then a group of scary bad guys with big guns came here and treated like they own this place. So I was forced to leave this place. Then I heard there was a police raid and this was burning. I wanted to come back here when the raid was finished and when the cops finally left the place. But someone had been coming here from time to time at least once a month starting last October after the raid was over. I think that man was from the bad guys who hadn't been caught by the police."

"Was that man blond and tanned?" Reyna asked.

"No. He's not, black hair and big, muscular like Captain America. He looked like he was trying to find something in here. Then he stopped coming all together last April."

"Do you have any idea what he was trying to find here?"

"I do," Rhea answered. "His military dog tag."

Reyna fished out the dog tag she kept in his jeans pocket. "This one?"

"Oh, you already saw it. . ."

"How did you get this? How did you know that this was what he was trying to find?"

"I found that by chance when I came here to check. Then I saw Big Guy who came here with another guy. Another Guy called Big Guy Henry."

"If you have suspected that they're bad guys, why didn't you surrender this dog tag to the authorities or tell the cops about them sooner!" Reyna said exasperatedly.

"Hey, why would I? The last thing I wanted was to be caught up in a police drama. I love my quiet life. Thank you very much. Besides, you are a cop, so technically I already told an authority."

Reyna just shook her head disbelievingly.

"But you know. . ." Rhea continued thoughtfully. "The reason why I clearly remember that big guy because I've seen him somewhere before he came here. . ."

"Where?"

"I wouldn't forget that day because it was the same day when the raid happened here. I was just passing by E113th street and I saw him there." She said conspiringly.

A sudden chill ran down Reyna's spine. "The raid was October 20th last year. Say what time did you see this Henry guy?"

Rhea shrugged. "Around 11 to 12 a.m? I'm not quite sure."

Reyna cursed. "Was he alone at that time?"

"Yes, but he seemed to be waiting for someone. He was sitting on the hood of his car, texting."

"What else did you see?" Reyna pushed.

"That's all. As I've said I was just passing by. And oh, you know after that there had been a hit and run accident in that very same place, happened at midnight too."

Reyna let out a string of curses. Her instinct was right, as usual.