Kermit drove to china town and parked in front of Peter's building. He knew his friend wanted to bolt. To start driving until something clicked. Until those visions told him which direction to point his car. Which was why he didn't take him to pick up his car. If this was indeed the Sing Wah he was going to need back up. Hell his father had needed back up dealing with them. So there was no way on gods Kermit green earth that he was going to leave his side for a second until this was over.

The walked up the stairs and into the apartment. "what do you need me to do?" he asked.

"Tell me no when it looks like I'm going to give them anything they want." He said and lit several candles.

"You've got it bad." Kermit said.

"You ever meet someone that made the anger go away just by being there?"

"I can't say that I have." Karen came close. She made him not think about the anger for a while, and he loved her for it, but no one had ever taken it away.

"She does. She understands my crazy life, which no one else ever has. Not really. And as much as I know she's going to come through this in one piece. I am terrified that she won't or that she won't want to stay if she does."

"Then you go with her." Kermit said. "You don't give someone who makes you feel like that up for anyone, you hear me. Not anyone or anything. Screw em all."

"If that's what it takes." He said and sat down on his meditation cushion in the lotus position. "It's what I should have done in the first place." That was why he knew it was his fault. He'd talked her into staying because he hadn't wanted to leave.

He closed his eyes and concentrated on Leanne. He steadied his breathing, his heart rate, to calm himself. The images came in flashes. Darkness, the scent of dirt, the sound of a flat thud on wood. "They're burying her alive..." She'd survive it. He had to believe that. She was immortal. She would survive.

"Is she in a coffin?" The alternative didn't bear thinking about, but he had to ask.

"Yes." Peter said.

"I am guessing you can hear the dirt hitting the coffin. Can you hear the shovel scooping up the dirt."

Peter tried to focus. "Yes."

"How long between the scooping sound and the thunking sound." Kermit asked.

"Not long... maybe a second"

"Okay... it's not shallow but it's not deep either. Are there any other sounds."

Peter was silent for several seconds. "no."

"Secluded location. Not like a cemetery or the average back yard." Cities were noisy places. People grew accustomed to the constant noise and didn't register it after a while. But it was always there.

Peter reached out to her, she was barely conscious. Not yet aware of the horror of her situation. "I'll find you. Just hold on, I love you, and I will find you."

He opened his eyes and got to his feet "I have instant coffee or I can make tea." He said flatly.

"I'll take care of that." Kermit said. "Which do you want?"

"Coffee." He said and went to the window. It was a waiting game now.

Kermit turned on the electric water kettle and then went to the window to stand beside his friend. "You were talking to her. Is she alright?"

"She's just starting to regain consciousness. I can only hope that she heard me. I have an active imagination. I can all too easily picture what she's going through."

"How did you two meet?" He needed to distract his friend as much as possible.

"She's a social worker. Teaches anger management classes."

Kermit chuckled a little "Don't tell Karen that or she'll sign us all up."

"There are worse things she could do. Leanne uses tai chi to teach people coping mechanisms. Ways to calm down, redirect all the energy that comes with anger and anxiety. So I'm taking a walk in the park and there is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen teaching tai chi. So of course I had to ask her out."

"Just like that?"

"And she said yes." He said "I kept expecting to screw it up. You know how I always screw things up."

"Do you have a picture?" He asked as the water began to boil.

Peter nodded and went to get the manila envelope from one of the drawers. It was their engagement photos. They had just gotten them back from the photographer. They'd gone to the ruins of the temple and had pictures taken there. They were both wearing red, some of them were serious and traditional, in others they were playing around and having a good time. He traded the envelope for the cup of strong coffee that Kermit handed him.

He opened it and took out the photographs. "She's beautiful. Not that I've known you to go out with any other kind." he said "The way you two look at each other... I'm happy for you Peter. I really am."

"Thank you." Peter said. "I think you'll like her. But then I thought Paul would like her so what do I know."

"Give him time." Kermit said "But at the end of the day it doesn't matter what any one else thinks. The only opinion that matters is yours." he smirked a little "And mine."

Peter almost laughed. Any other circumstance and he would have. He took a drink of the coffee. "You know I told my father not to come back just because the Sing Wah are in town. That it was important that he stay with his own father. I really wish I hadn't. He could find her. I can't."

They turned toward the door as foot steps were heard on the stairs. Kermit drew his gun and aimed it toward the door, waiting for who ever came through.

"No need to find her." A middle aged chinese man said "Just give us the book and we'll give you the girl. It's just that simple."

"I don't know where it is." Peter said "I told her not to tell me." It was a lie. One to stall for time.

"Well that was foolish. Now you have to search for it. I wouldn't take my time if I were you. There are worse things than death."

Peter took two steps forward only to be brought up short by Kermit's hand on his shoulder.

"Don't try to be a hero, Caine. You might be Shaolin, but you're not your father. You never will be. Find the book. Save the girl. You have 24 hours." He said and turned to leave.

Kermit went to the window and watched him leave. Another car, another license plate. He took out his cell phone and called the precinct. "They made contact." He told TJ. "I have another license plate for you. I want it tracked do not intercept. We need to know where it goes."

"I'm on it." TJ said. "The captain and the captain are on their way over to Peter's place."

"Thanks. TJ. Let me know what you find out." He hung up his phone. "So Karen and Blaisdell are on their way here. Give him a chance to apologize before you take his head off. And while we're waiting, tell me about this book they're after."

"her grandfather was a Shamballa master. It's rumored that he discovered the key to immortality and that his book has the recipe."

Kermit whistled lowly. "Do you think the rumor is true?"

"Yes."

"Then there is no way in hell we can give them that book. Any suggestions on a bait and switch?"

"I have a couple of ideas." He said, and walked over to one of the shelves. He found the herbal, and the book of poisons and their antidotes that was also written by her grandfather. The books were more than 150 years old and well worn. "These are about the same age as the book they want and it was written by the same man. They have a similar look but I don't know if they'll buy it." He handed them over to Kermit to look over. "Paul and Karen are here." He said before they had crossed the street.

"Any idea what this immortality what ever it is should look like?"

"No, but with any luck neither do they." He downed the last of the coffee in his cup as Paul and Karen mounted the steps coming up to the apothacary.

"Give him a chance to get his foot out of his mouth, Peter." Kermit said. He understood both sides of that equation. One day, with any luck, Peter would too.

Karen came in first, then Paul Blaisdell.

"Any news?" Karen asked, and Kermit filled her in on everything.

Peter stared out the window, white knuckling the sill.

Paul approached slowly. "How can I help? " He asked. He wasn't sure what to say to his son to make things right between them. He didn't regret the background check. Hell he had done the same with Todd for pities sake. He'd do it again when Kelly decided to marry. It was just who he was. He had never thought for a moment that the woman would wind up kidnapped.

Peter shrugged and continued to stare out the window. "It's going to rain." He said, and that knowledge sat in his gut like a rock. "She's buried alive and it's going to rain... What the hell kind of Shaolin Priest am I that I can't …"

"The human kind." Paul said "Just like your father. Who couldn't see that you were alive after the temple was destroyed."

"Leanne doesn't have 15 years to wait for me to stumble onto her by accident."

"I don't know him as well as you do obviously. But I'm pretty sure your father would say something about your emotions clouding your qi or something along those lines." Paul sighed "No one can see anything when their emotions are tripping them up. Even cops miss what's right in front of their faces when they are too emotionally involved and there is no way that you are not too emotionally involved. I know I'm partially to blame for those emotions right now. I'm sorry, Peter." He said, and pulled his son into his arms. "I am so sorry."

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Matthew drifted off to sleep in his chair. His sons looked on sadly. It wasn't that he was going to die any moment now, or for that matter even within that year necessarily. It was that he was no longer the man Kwai Chang Caine remembered and that there would be little time for Martin to truly know him.

"So how's Peter?" Martin asked as they went into the kitchen to leave Matthew in peace and make a pot of coffee.

"By all accounts doing well. He is getting married, near Christmas I believe."

"Have you met the girl?"

Caine shook his head "No. They met after I had come to France. He speaks of her as he has never done with his other girlfriends. He is genuinely in love this time."

"So why did you come to France?" Martin asked.

"My wife was last seen in Paris. I was unable to find her." he said, sadness and frustration in his tone.

"I guess I really am out of the loop. I thought your wife was dead."

"As did I, but a friend had a photograph of her in a Paris cafe taken long after she was supposed to have died."

"okay … then who did you bury?" he asked. "It's pretty hard to actually fake your own death and have a funeral. I assumed that there was a funeral because she was supposed to have died of an illness not an explosion or the like."

"She was cremated." He said. "I had gone to the hospital to see her and was told that she had died."

"So was she Shaolin like you?"

"No." Caine said, shaking his head.

"Did you teach her any of your … tricks... for lack of a better word, like how to make it look like you don't have a heart beat or respiration?"

He shook his head "She had cancer. In her lungs. It would not have helped to slow her breathing. I taught her to slow her mind, how to block the pain. But not how to emulate death."

Martin frowned. "forgive my suspicious nature."

Caine shrugged. "You are in law enforcement. Suspicion is a job requirement."

Martin smiled faintly. "But either someone was teaching her things that you don't know about, or that picture was a fake to get you over here in France for some reason... or both. Let me look into it. See what my contacts can figure out. If she's been gone for 25 years then I may not be able to find anything, but I'd like to try."

Caine nodded "Thank you, brother."

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Peter found the powdered tea the Ancient had given him to help with meditations. Paul was right, he was too emotionally involved to see clearly. "I may be out of it for a while." He said as he mixed it with the hot water. "But if any thing comes of that APB kick me back to the present if you have to. "

Kermit nodded. "You do what you need to do, leave the rest to us."

Peter nodded and stared at the cup for a moment. He really hated the flavor of this stuff. His father's mixture was different, but he'd have to get that recipe later. For now this was what he had. He downed it in a single gulp like medicine then went to the room off to the side of the main room. He stretched out on the matt on the floor.

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply and slowly, relaxing every muscle, starting at his feet and working up to his brow. He focused on unblocking his chakras so that he might see more clearly. He focused on Leanne. Li Na. Looking for her essence in the world.

(0)

Karen Simms disconnected her call and put her phone in her purse. "Nothing. Still nothing." she said as she began to pace.

Paul shook his head "Kidnappings were the cases I hated the most." They rarely ended with the victim returned home. It wasn't like in the movies.

"Peter always worked the hardest when there was someone to save." Karen said. "Throwing everything he is into them, including his anger."

"Yeah the anger that drove him is now getting in his way. He's tripping over it." Kermit said. "He's coming at life differently now but the anger doesn't know that."

"I don't understand this life change at all. " Paul said. "I understand completing his training. I almost understand his becoming a Shaolin priest. Almost. But I do not understand him giving up everything else he has worked for to live... like this."

"I wish he'd stayed on the force too. Purely for selfish reasons." Karen said. "But this is what he was meant to be. This is what the little boy in the temple was always going to become. He just needed to pass through our world first."

"Sounds like you've spent a lot of time around his other father." Paul said.

"I have. But it's not about Kwai Chang Caine. It never was. It's about Peter. It's always been about Peter."

(0)

"you will not find her here." The voice was like his father's, but not at the same time, and Peter opened his eyes.

"You're him." Peter said quietly. "You're Kwai Chang Caine. You know I've really wanted to punch you in the face for a while now."

The man shrugged, again so similar to his father. "Would it help?"

"Not one bit." Peter said propping himself up on his elbows while looking at his great grandfather. "So I won't. And I know you are not here for chit chat."

"I am always here."

Peter tilted his head and looked at the manifestation before him. "There is something deeper in that. Unfortunately I don't have time to sort it out right now. Can you help me find her?"

"I will try."

"Am I the only one in this family that actually talks?" He asked, rhetorically. He sat up.

"I do not know."

Peter rolled his eyes, then reached for his shoes, but stopped short. He was sitting up, his body wasn't. "ah." He said. "Astral projection. That's why I can see your spirit."

Another shrug of the shoulders. "You always see me."

"ooh boy." He breathed, finally understanding the cryptic speech. "Okay... well... You waited a hell of a long time to keep that promise. Better late than never I guess." He wondered how Leanne would take that bit of news.

"I am not late. This is when we were meant to be together. As you, not as the man you see."

"Right... ahm... So how do we find her? I know she is buried somewhere. That is all the information I have."

"It will suffice."Kwai Chang said softly. "Follow the echo of her qi."

Peter nodded, and looked around the apartment. He could see her that morning looking through the clothes she had at the brownstone.

I have nothing to wear. I can't go to your sister's graduation in these. We have to go to my place on the way and I can change there.

He went it to the main room and watched as a vision of Leanne moving through and making tea was superimposed on Paul, Kermit and Captain Simms.

He and his great grandfather followed her down the stairs passing Mary Margaret as she went up. Then into a phantom version of Peter's car.

Your sister is excited about the trip to Spain. She's hoping to see her father there. I hope that can happen for her. I know she misses him

When did you and Kelly get so close? Peter echoed those words with his phantom self

"She seems happy" Kwai Chang said "She was not so when I knew her."

"Why not?" He was listening to their phantom conversation while speaking with the man who had broken her heart a century before.

"Her grandfather was not as he appeared. He was controlling, demanding, and she wished to be free. Even if it meant wandering with me."

"That's not why she wanted to go with you. She loved you. And she idolizes her grandfather."

"She is Chinese." he said as if that explained everything. In his time it would have. Elders were venerated whether they deserved it or not.

They entered the apartment and Peter followed her through, watched her look in the lacquer box to make sure the books were safe.

"And there's the source of our trouble. That damned book."

"Will you become immortal?" Kwai Chang asked.

"If she wants me to." Peter answered.

"You would change our destiny because she asks?"

"Destiny can not be changed or averted. At least that is what my father and the Ancient say."

Kwai Chang shrugged as they followed Leanne's echoes.

"Is there any way to speed this up?" He asked rhetorically.

"I do not know. I have never done this before." Kwai Chang admitted "I was not a mystic."

"I don't think I am either." Peter said.

"And yet we are here." he studied Peter a moment "Do you wish to be immortal? There is much responsibility with such a gift."

"I've never had a problem with responsibility." he thought a moment and sighed. "If it was just me. No one else involved... No. I would never seek out immortality. My aspirations were more to find someone to grow old with, but the idea of eternity with Leanne, the potential for discovery... I would take that opportunity."

Kwai Chang smiled faintly. "Then I will accept this as well."

"Pop is not going to believe this."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. I don't know that I believe it."

"Belief or disbelief change nothing."

They waited until the graduation was over. Time was truncated, moving quicker than it actually had but it was so slow to Peter's perception that it was driving him mad. They had given him 24 hours. Who knew what would happen after that time had passed. Would they do something worse than bury her alive?

"Peter... breathe." his great grandfather said.

"What? Sorry." When her qi lead them to the Blaisdell home, Peter chose to stay outside. He looked around seeing the man in the shadows with the dart gun, then the car. "That's the car they put her in."

She came outside, and it broke Peter's heart to see the tears in her eyes. Granted he had only known her a year, but he had never once seen her cry.

And then it happened. The dart struck her neck and his fierce, immortal fiance hit the sidewalk, unconscious within seconds. Peter instinctively struck out, but his ethereal fist went right through the Sing Wah foot soldier.

"We cannot change the past." Kwai Chang said.

"Wrong. It's been changed at least three times that I am aware of. Once when my father and I went back to the first temple, and once when He and Captain Simms were kidnapped and sent back to … our … temple."He said as he followed them to the car. "And once when you came forward in time needing help from my father."

He nearly got into the trunk with Leanne, but he needed to see where this was heading. The car escaped his pursuit and then took quick turns to turn back and onto another arterial road.

"She is alright. She only sleeps."

"This version is only sleeping. When I reached out before she was being buried alive and starting to wake up. Being immortal doesn't give her extra strength or the ability to float up through the earth. It's not like she's a Shamballa master."

"She is alright. She knows you will find her. Fear is transient."

"Rain turning loose dirt to mud... sliding into a wooden box, not so transient."

He began to flicker in and out of the car. Kwai Chang reached out and grabbed him.

"Your fear will make it impossible to remain in the astral. You must conquer your fear for her if you wish to find her."

He sighed and nodded, and did his best not to think about the coming rain storm. It was going to be a gusher. How immortal was immortal? Did she merely have eternal youth? Was it truly impossible to kill her? It's not like anyone has shoved a knife in her gut and waited around to see what happened next. This wasn't Highlander after all.

The car turned into a long drive, pausing to wait for a gate to open then they drove to the front of the house. They got out of the car, opened the trunk and pulled Leanne out, hefting her over one shoulder.

"Go ditch the car and get back here." The man said, then he hauled Leanne around the house.

Peter watched helplessly as she was lowered into a loosely constructed wooden crate and the top nailed onto it.

"We must go." Kwai Chang said. "You do not need to see and she will not know you are here."

Peter nodded but said nothing. He closed his eyes, willing himself to return to his body. He sat up pulled on his shoes and rushed into the main room "I know where she is." He rattled off the address to Kermit who wrote it down. "They buried her around the back. I don't have a way to prove it so you can get a warrant. So I'm not asking anyone to go with me."

"You're not doing this alone, Son. You can't fight them and dig at the same time." Paul said.

Peter looked at Kermit, " I know better than to ask you to not to come, so, you ready to do this?"

"Oh yeah." Kermit said.