Bill rarely got drunk. Oh, he enjoyed a couple of beers with the guys or a shot of bourbon to relax after a long day, but he rarely drank to get drunk, especially when he was angry or depressed. Tonight, though, he was both, and he decided that was a special circumstance. He was careful though. He drank just fast enough to keep a solid buzz without tipping over into plastered. Just enough to dull the urge to shoot Hinton himself. Lying bastard.

Crowley dragged a stepladder from the kitchen into his bedroom and pushed years of accumulated junk around the top shelf of his closet until he could reach the box he had stored up there. He set the cardboard box on his coffee table and dug through it until he found what he was looking for - a dark red photo album.

Its scent, the smell of old Polaroids and the glue used to stick them to the now-musty paper, wafted up when he pulled it out. A memory of his grandmother flashed into his mind. Nonna, with the flashing dark eyes and quick laughter who always smelled like she'd just come in from the vineyard, even when she lived with them in Oklahoma. When he was little, they would sit in her rocking chair, and she would point to pictures taken long before he was born and tell him about the people and events, moments frozen in her memory the way those moments with her were frozen in his. His finger slid across the red vinyl and toyed with the corner, lifting and releasing it several times. Finally, he set it down. Not yet. He poured himself another drink.

He was still staring at the closed cover an hour later when there was a knock at the door. He sighed; he knew who it was. He'd been expecting her since he left the station. Still, he didn't hurry, half hoping she'd give up and leave him alone.

"Open up, Crowley. These shoes are new, and my feet hurt too much to stand on your doorstep."

He opened the door. Shoulder against the doorframe, she was already unfastening her sandals. She pulled off the shoes and stood straight. Her gaze traveled from his face down to the drink in his hand and then back up again. Her eyebrow raised a fraction of an inch, but she didn't say anything. She just waited.

After a long moment, he stepped aside and let her in. She tossed something at him as she passed, and he caught it instinctively. The medal.

"St. Jude," she said. She tossed her shoes near the door and sat on the couch, knees drawn to her chest so she could rub her feet. "Patron saint of lost causes."

"Hinton?"

She shook her head. "Father Kirk at the parish down the street. I'm pretty sure Hinton recognized it though. He seems pretty determined not to help us stop the guy who's trying to kill him." She shook her head. "Sad."

"Stupid is more like it."

"I mean Hinton himself. He's such a sad man. You don't think so?"

"I think he's cold as ice." Bill rubbed his thumb over the etched metal, and then took out his wallet and carefully tucked the medal inside.

"He's legit."

Bill's stomach lurched. He took a deep breath, then forced his jaw to relax and asked, "Do you want a drink?" He walked to the kitchen and added ice to his glass.

"Iced tea."

Her gaze burned into his back as he fixed her drink, and he could almost feel her questions. He handed her the tea, and then topped off his drink. Too agitated to sit, he paced, her eyes following his every step.

"He healed Joe's knee," she said after a minute.

He hesitated, then resumed pacing. "Okay." She kept staring at him. "What?" he demanded, turning to face her. "What do you want me to say?"

"I don't know, Bill. You've been pretty opinionated so far." He just glowered at her, so she sighed and shrugged. "Hinton claims to have gotten the 'gift' from a fireman back in Tennessee four years ago. He and his wife started moving church to church soon thereafter. It wasn't hard to check his story. He was reported as a fraud in pretty much every town he visited. Formal charges were rarely filed, and if they were, they were always quickly dropped."

He leaned against the door to the patio, staring out at the night beyond without seeing it. "Complaints?"

"Some. But apparently only one of the complainants was someone who had actually been treated by Hinton."

That penetrated the bourbon-induced fog. "When?"

She looked at him over the edge of her glass, her eyes bright. "About six weeks ago."

"Right before the threats started."

"Uh huh."

"Nature of the complaint?"

Deep breath. "Murder."

"Murder?" He hadn't expected that. Charges of fraud. Misrepresentation. Not murder. "What happened?"

"A ten year old boy died. He had a severe form of Muscular Dystrophy. His parents brought him to one of Hinton's prayer meetings. The boy stopped breathing and was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics."

"Charges?"

"Dropped. No evidence of foul play. The boy was terminal."

Bill took a swallow of his bourbon, eyes focused on the night again. "Doesn't matter," he said, more to himself than to her. "If the parents really believed, it was the same as murder. It was like cutting out their fucking hearts."

"Is that what happened to you?" Her voice was soft, soft enough that he was compelled to turn back to her. She had set her tea down and was leaning forward, ready to talk, ready to listen, ready for whatever he needed.

There was so much compassion in her voice, he almost responded. But then the anger bubbled up again, and he swallowed the words. "Nothing happened to me," he heard himself say, and he turned away again. The bourbon was making him maudlin.

He closed his eyes and leaned against the sliding glass door, pushing his mind away from Hinton, away from the case, toward anything that would block the memories that kept threatening to overwhelm him. To his surprise what his mind locked on was Pepper. The way she stood toe-to-toe with him outside the interrogation room, her eyes flashing with anger. The way she looked in the pavilion in the park, soft and relaxed. The huskiness of her voice. He wondered suddenly what it would feel like to have her naked in his bed.

The thought shocked him out of his reverie. Damn, he needed to lay off the alcohol. He realized Pepper had asked him something. He turned and tried to focus on her. "What?"

"Is this your family?" she asked.

The red photo album lay open on her lap. He fought back the urge to snatch it away from her and gave a curt nod.

She trailed a finger over a photo. "Is this you?"

Leave it alone, Pepper. Despite his misgivings, he looked at the photo, and then settled on the couch beside her. "That one," he said, pointing to the three-year-old version of himself. "The kid with the ears is my older brother, Charlie."

"You have a sister too, don't you?"

He nodded. "Jane, but she's younger. She wasn't born yet."

Her finger settled on a photo of two adults on a beach. "Your parents?" He nodded. She pointed to another. "And this?"

Conflicting emotions washed over him. The black and white picture showed a young woman with dark, windblown hair sitting on a stone patio, looking at something out of the camera's view. "That's my grandmother," he said. "When she was young. That's her house in Italy. There was a vineyard down that path to the left, and beyond that was the sea."

Pepper arched her eyebrow. "You mean you really do have an Italian grandmother?" she teased. He swore at her in Italian, and she laughed. She bent her head over the album and studied the picture. "She's beautiful," she said finally. "Strong."

"She was." He pulled the album onto his own lap. Pepper curled up next to him, looking over his shoulder, her arm warm against his. The thought of her naked in his bed flashed through his mind again, and he shifted away slightly. "Shoulder still hurts some," he mumbled.

He flipped back to the beginning. "This was my Nonna's… my grandmother's… album first. The first photos are hers from the old country. Even most of the ones of us are ones she took."

Pepper reached over and traced an outline where a photo had been removed and others reset on the page. "What was here?"

"More pictures. Mom wanted us all to have some of the photos. She divided them up among the three of us kids." He turned the page and ran his finger over another empty space. "This one was a picture of the three of us at a country fair. My sister was in this red cowgirl outfit, and I was sitting on the back of this black and white pony." He shook his head. "I remember it grabbed her hat and wouldn't let go. She started to cry and then drew her toy gun and pointed it at the pony and demanded that he give back her hat or else."

She grinned. "What happened?"

"He gave back the hat. She was little, but she was fierce." Pepper laughed and, despite himself, Bill laughed too. "Now, in this picture…." He went through the album with her, sharing the stories behind the photos. At one point he stopped and refilled his glass. Pepper smiled less after that.

She gave a cry of dismay when she turned a page and found only blank pages beyond. "Where are the rest?"

"There aren't any more." He shut the album and placed it back in the box.

"But you couldn't have been more than ten or eleven in the photos. There have to be more."

"I said there aren't any!" he snapped and stood up. Guilt twisted his gut. He leaned against a chair and rubbed his hand over his eyes. "I'm sorry." It took him a moment to gather his words. "After my grandmother died, Momma kind of lost her heart for taking pictures." He looked at the bourbon in his glass and absently swirled the ice. "She lost her heart for a lot of things."

"How did she die?"

He shook his head. "It doesn't matter." He took a deep breath to try to force away the knots of tension in his stomach. A moment later, Pepper's hand touched his arm. "Leave it alone, Pep," he insisted, turning away from her.

"I can't." She gripped his arm, tighter this time. "Come on, Bill. Talk to me."

Thirty years disappeared in a haze of raw emotion. "Faith," he said through clenched teeth. He drained his glass. "Her faith killed her." The glass exploded against the far wall. The movement wrenched his injured shoulder forcing a growl from him. He closed his eyes and grit his teeth against the shockwaves of pain, physical and emotional.

He expected her to back off. Maybe to leave. Or maybe to lecture him. He didn't expect to feel her arm, soft but firm around him, guiding him back to the couch. When he sat down, he didn't expect her to scoot in beside him and begin massaging his shoulder. He sighed, feeling the tension and pain melt away under her gentle ministrations.

"She had cancer," he said finally. An image of his grandmother flashed through his mind. Rail thin and weak, eyes and cheeks sunken, unable to get out of her bed during the last weeks. How different from the vibrant woman who had pulled him into her lap and woven fanciful tales of long-ago Italy. "She was devout, always. Being sick didn't shake her for a minute. 'Trust in God,' she said. 'It'll be all right.'"

What he remembered most was her eyes, eyes that could twinkle with amusement or flash with anger. Even at the end, when she couldn't even lift her head, her eyes shone with a light that saw him, really saw him. "Momma begged her to go to the hospital and take the treatments the doctor ordered, but she wouldn't. She went to church instead."

He remembered the priest, a man so young he must have been newly out of seminary, sitting next to her bed counseling her. "Her priest told her to stay firm, that God would be with her and would reward her, if she just had enough faith." He shook his head bitterly. What had the baby-faced priest known about death?

He fell silent for long minute, remembering the last days. Her faith had never wavered. When he would slip into her room, she would encourage him to sit next to her and read her the twenty third Psalm. He read it again and again until he could recite it from memory. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

"I was eleven when she died. And I tell ya, Pep. I spent a lot of time in that room before she died, and I never saw God there."

Pepper exhaled softly and one hand left his shoulder briefly. Bill knew, even without looking, that she was wiping away tears. He closed his eyes and absorbed the comfort that came from her hands and her presence. As her deft touch soothed the pain in his shoulder, he felt the pain in his heart reluctantly surrendering to an odd peace. He leaned back against her and felt her lips brush against his head. It wasn't a religious miracle, but it was healing, and Bill was grateful.