Next chapter. That is all.

I own nothing except a few OCs. The Almighty Larson owns the rest.

"How long have you had your safe house?" Collins asked Connor as he sat down in the chair next to the bed. He watched his student tie the tourniquet around his arm and take the cap off of the needle of the syringe.

"Since I was fourteen," Connor replied. He began filling the syringe with morphine. "I'm not proud of it, but I had to forge my father's name on quite a few documents to get it."

"So money is being taken from his bank account in order for you to keep this place?"

"Yes, but I've managed to pay him back every cent without him noticing."

"How?"

"There's a large number of people who want to study me and will pay a lot of money to do so. I used that money to replace what was taken out of his account. Since I recently turned eighteen, I had the house put under my name, so my father doesn't have to pay for it anymore."

"Have you called Angel back yet?"

"Yes, but she didn't answer. I'll have to try again later."

Collins nodded and tried to think of something else he could ask to stall Connor giving him the morphine. He knew people who had become addicted to the drug after being in horrible accidents. He didn't want to be like them, most of them had overdosed and died. Connor held Collins' arm out, preparing to insert the needle.

"Connor, don't," Collins said. Connor stared at Collins in confusion, holding the needle just centimeters away from his arm.

"I don't understand, Professor," he replied.

"I don't want the morphine."

"But-"

"I'm in a lot of pain and I know I'm going to need relief at least once a day," Collins interrupted. "Maybe even more than once a day. And if that happens, my body will become accustomed to having it and . . . I just don't want to develop a drug dependency." Connor placed the syringe on his lap and held Collins' hand. He looked into his professor's eyes.

"Tell me it doesn't help ease your pain and I won't give it to you," he said.

Collins stared at him, trying his hardest to form the words. He knew even if he could bring himself to say the drug didn't help, he would be lying. Knowing that he needed something to help him cope with the pain, he said nothing and slowly looked down at his arm. Connor picked the syringe up. Collins closed his eyes and took a deep breath as his student injected him with the morphine. He opened his eyes when the pain started to fade.

"It . . . does help," he commented as Connor took the tourniquet off of his arm. "But I'm still worried about it."

"You don't have to worry, Professor," Connor told him, putting the tourniquet and syringe back into the medical bag. "I won't let it get that far. No matter how much it helps." The boy was staring at the bottle of morphine, a look of desire in his eyes. Collins noticed this and instantly became uneasy.

"Connor?" The eighteen-year-old jumped slightly before turning his attention to Collins. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Professor." Connor stuffed the bottle into the medical bag. "Would you like a tour?"

"Sure, why not?" The graduate student smiled and stood up, putting the medical bag in the chair. He then walked to the other side of the room and grabbed the pair of crutches. Carefully, he helped Collins out of the bed and steady himself on the crutches.

"I think you'll like . . ." Connor stopped in mid-sentence, closed his eyes, clutched his head with one hand.

"Connor?" Collins said. The boy soon opened his eyes and brought his hand down to his side. "You all right?"

"Of course," Connor told his professor. "It was just a little headache. I get them from time to time. It's no big deal. Come on, let's start the tour."

Angel and Maureen followed Joanne into the police station. The three of them hadn't gotten much sleep, but they were all wide awake. Mark, Roger, and Mimi were out searching the city for Collins. Every last bohemian had their own level of determination to find their missing friend. None of them wanted to do anything else until Collins was home.

"Detective Baker," Joanne said as she, Maureen, and Angel approached the detective's desk. Baker held up her index finger as she finished a call.

"Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Downs," she said into the phone. "I may contact you later, but that's all for now. Goodbye." She hung up the phone and picked up a nearby cup of coffee, sighing heavily.

"Who's Mr. Downs?" Maureen inquired. Baker took a large gulp of her coffee.

"The dean at NYU. I asked him some questions about Connor Bennett. Just to see what type of kid he is."

"I know him," Angel said. "He's a sweet boy, virtually incapable of being violent."

"Just because he's not violent, doesn't mean he's sweet."

"What did you find out?" Joanne asked. Baker picked up the legal pad she had been writing on. It looked like she just scribbled, but she knew what everything meant.

"Mr. Downs described him as a kindhearted, polite young man. He's always looking toward the future because he wants to be successful in whatever career he has. He's very quiet and very shy, doesn't have many friends. And his favorite professor seems to be his philosophy professor, Thomas Collins."

"I knew all that," Angel commented. "I could have told you that, but you insisted on snooping around in his past."

"Did you also know that he got into a little bit of trouble and the only person he would talk to about it was Professor Thomas Collins?"

"'Trouble?'" Maureen repeated. "That kid probably can't even spell trouble. Well . . . I'm sure he can literally spell it, but I'm speaking figuratively. So . . . what did he do?"

"It happened in class that he's required to take in order to earn his PhD in psychology," Baker began. "He was being harassed by a few students, you know, pushed around. He asked them to stop and they made fun of him even more for being so timid."

"Where was the professor?" Joanne asked.

"The class hadn't even started yet, so the professor was on her way." Joanne nodded as Baker took another drink of her coffee. "Anyway, he asked the students to leave him alone again with no luck and one of them pushed him to the ground. Here's where it gets interesting. According to the students who were watching, Connor grabbed his head with both of his hands and started screaming like he was in pain."

"Wait a minute, why didn't anybody stop this?" Angel asked.

"They didn't know him, so they didn't care. When he started screaming, a student rushed to him to see if he was all right. He stopped screaming, took his hands away from his head, and looked at the girl, but he never answered her. Then he looked at the student who pushed him, stood up, tackled him, and started repeatedly slamming his head on the floor just as the professor appeared in the doorway."

"That does not sound like the boy I talked to about his mother," Joanne commented.

"What about his mother?"

"She's been beating him since he was three."

"There are cases where someone who was abused becomes an abuser themselves."

"You can't really call him an abuser if this only happened once," Angel pointed out. "Maybe he just snapped because he was sick of being picked on." Joanne and Maureen nodded in agreement. Before Baker could respond, Sanders appeared in front of her desk holding several file folders.

"Sixty-three cases," he said, dropping the folders on his partner's desk. Baker stared at the pile of folders with widened eyes. "I found sixty-three cases by running the last name Bennett through the system and not one of them mentions a boy named Connor."

"What about adoption records?" Joanne asked.

"Nothing."

"You're kidding!" Maureen exclaimed. "You didn't even find adoption records for him? How is that possible?"

"Why are you so surprised?"

"Connor vividly remembers his biological mother leaving him in an orphanage," Joanne said. "He was only two at the time, but still, he remembers it."

"Maybe he wasn't adopted in New York," Baker suggested.

"That's a possibility," Sanders replied.

"This is insane," Angel said. "Why are we wasting so much time on Connor instead of finding Collins?"

"Connor is the only person who gave us anything to work with," Baker explained. "Sure, the names and information didn't really help, but it lets us know that he may have more for us." The female detective sighed. "Now, all we have to figure out is how we're supposed to find anything on someone without so much as an address in the system."

The detectives and the three bohemians were silent. They tried to think of any possible methods of figuring out Connor's past and where he could be at that very moment. Baker's thoughts were interrupted when a fellow detective put a stapler down in front of her.

"Just returning that," he said. He turned and walked away, starting to zip his jacket.

"Ed!" Baker called after him. Ed turned around.

"Yeah?" He made his way back to Baker's desk.

"We've got a missing college professor, no witnesses, and no leads. Our best bet of finding a lead is by finding one of the professor's students and no one knows where he is or what his past is like because he's no where in the New York system. What should we do?" Ed put a hand to his chin and thought for a moment.

"Give up and go home," he replied.

"I thought you'd say that."

"Ed, do you think you could help us out with this one?" Sanders asked. Ed sighed and unzipped his jacket.

"What the hell?" he said, taking his jacket off. "My bed will be there next week."

"Try two weeks from now. We have absolutely nothing."

"Do you at least have the name of the student you're looking for?"

"His name is Connor Bennett," Joanne said. "He gave us names of students he thought might have something to do with-"

"Bennett?" Ed interrupted.

"Yes . . ."

"Bennett . . . Bennett. I've heard that name before." The five others stared at Ed as he mulled over the name. "I remember! It was back during my days as a beat cop up in Vermont."

"Anything to do with Connor Bennett?" Maureen asked.

"No. Just a woman screaming about how her little boy was taken from her."

"Child services?" Joanne guessed.

"Nope. She said someone kidnapped him. That's all I really remember. That and the case was filed as dismissed because the woman was bat-shit crazy. I'd have to see the file to figure out if it connects to Connor Bennett."

"Is there any way to get it?" Angel asked.

"I'd only have to make a phone call. I'll be right back." Ed walked back to his desk and picked up the phone.

"What we do if the file has nothing to do with Connor?" Maureen asked.

"We'll probably end up having to retrace Collins' steps," Joanne said. Maureen nodded as Ed walked back to Baker's desk. He had a confused look on his face.

"That was fast," Sanders commented.

"Apparently, I'm the second person in two weeks to ask for copies of that case," Ed replied in shock.

"Well . . . who asked before you?" Baker asked.

"Someone named Arthur Gibson." Maureen, Joanne, and Angel all exchanged looks. Ed noticed this and raised an eyebrow. "What's with you three?"

"Arthur Gibson is Connor's adoptive father," Joanne said.

"Tell me we can find an address for him," Sanders told Baker.

"Already on it," his partner replied. Everyone stared as her fingers moved feverishly across the keyboard of her computer. For two minutes, no words were uttered. She soon stopped typing and her eyes lit up. "Got him!"

"Let's go pay Mr. Gibson a visit then," Ed said, speaking the words the five others were thinking.

Yes, I did throw Ed Green into the story.

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