Drive.

Just drive. She just had to keep moving.

She had to get away from that town, from those memories. From those pictures. From him.
Steven Archer. God himself, for all he might be that she couldn't arrest him or get him to stop harassing her.

One arrest for drunken driving. One complaint of police brutality against her, which the department had dismissed. And one huge case of sexual harassment after sexual harassment, culminating in her decision to flee Monroe in the hopes that distance would make him stop.

So Kelly kept driving, on into the night.

The pictures on the seat beside her testified to the source of her trouble, but she refused to look at them. She wanted to throw them out; ached to just reach over there and let them fly out the window like dying birds, but she might need them later, god willing. If anyone could ever get to him. If she ever met anyone who could take him down.

Not likely.

So she drove on, chasing the moon down I-95.

Four tanks of gas later, and nearly out of money, she stopped in a little town on the outskirts of Augusta, Georgia, called Hooks.

With any luck, he wouldn't be able to track her there.

José Hernandez, resident morning guard at the front gate of the Hooks Penitentiary for Women. He made a smoochy face at Kelly, who grimaced and waved him off.

And resident bachelor, desperate for a date.

"Yo Kel, you workin' tonight?" he asked as he took her security license and took it over to the copier.

"Yeah," Kelly said, dodging the inevitable question of a date. "Sorry."

The light in the scanner ran back and forth. "Aww, ain't you ever not working?"

"Sorry, I just gotta keep rolling in the dough," she said, trying to keep a straight face.

Just gotta sorta keep a low profile. As long as she worked, she wasn't outside. And as long as she worked, she could keep a gun on her.

"You work what, 8 in the morning to ten or eleven at night?" he asked, taking both her ID and the copy off of the copier.

"Yeah. There a problem with that?" Kel couldn't keep a little of the old her from seeping into her tone.

It was evidently enough for José. "Woah! I didn't mean nothin' by it. You're just an eligible young lady, just waiting for the right man." He grinned a Mexican smile at her, all teeth and charm.

If you only knew, Kel thought. She took her ID and smiled at him. "Have a nice day."

She checked in again at the inside gate of the women's prison and went to work, ignoring the clamor of warning buzzers and cells opening and closing.

Seven hours, three attempted stabbings, one actual stabbing, and a transport to the hospital later, Kel checked out and drove over to the hospital. Even now, six months after beginning work there, she always felt like she was going to the morgue or to interview a victim of some kind.

Now she was just someone she had always just breezed past on the way to some higher call. A security guard.

She checked in at the front gate and changed out of the plain khaki uniform for the blue slacks with the gold stripe on the side and the matching shirt sans stripe. The only things she kept were the badge, the gun, and the various forms of ID. G license, D license, and K license. All were required, and all had been checked out with the National Department of Licensing.

She could only hope that Archer hadn't had them flagged.

She took up her post patrolling first floor beginning with the Inpatient hallway.

"Help!" a woman yelled from the direction of the ER. "He won't stay down!"

Kelly booked it over to the third room in the ER. Before she even reached the door, one nurse staggered out of the room, clutching his ribs. He gasped for breath, and it was obvious where the trouble was.

She shoved her way through the orderlies at the door and into the room, where the mostly-female nurse staff was obviously having some trouble restraining a teenager wearing gang colors. The kid was thrashing around heavily.

"He's got a gunshot wound to the chest and we can't treat it unless he stays still!" Doctor Garrison said, edging around the knot of orderlies trying to hold the boy down. "I can't get him to hold still long enough to sedate him."

The boy was writhing around on the gurney, flailing out at the nurses and cursing heavily in Spanish.

"Okay," Kelly said, jumping into the fray.

She fought her way to the boy's head and grabbed his shoulders in a tight grip, slamming him back down onto the gurney.

"Lo siento," she panted in Spanish as he struggled to free himself. "Tienen que sedarte." I'm sorry, but they have to sedate you.

"No," he wheezed. "Por favor, Los Sangre bastardos--" Please, the Sangre Dios bastards--

Jill Garrison was at her side then, injecting the boy, and the words died in his throat.

Sangre? The Sangre Dios? Kel thought.

"Jill, what gang is he from?" Kel asked as the woman retreated to throw out the needle and the rest of her team moved in.

"Uhh, the Lobos I think. Does it matter?"

"It might," Kel said. She filed away the names for later use. "Thanks."

"We should be thanking you," the young doctor said. "So thanks."

"No prob," Kel said, heading back to the main desk to fill out an incident report.

"The baby's coming soon, Sis. What do you think of that?" Melanie said, rubbing a hand over her eight-month distended belly.

"I think it sucks," Valerie said, frowning at Melanie's huge stomach. "Right now you're the happiest I've ever seen you, and after you have the baby you're going to be tired and stressed from diaper changes and waking up in the middle of the night to change more diapers and feed the baby and--"

Melanie cut her off with an indulgent smile. "Oh, Val."

"Don't 'Oh Val' me, kiddo. I raised you. I know what all that is like." Valerie let her face soften. "And you were a good baby," she teased.

"Eh," Melanie shrugged. "I'll get used to it sooner or later. Besides, we can call you 'Auntie Val'."

"You're such a softie," Val said, earning herself a smile. Her beeper went off. "That's me. I've got to get to work."

"Love you, Sis."

"Love you too." Valerie hugged her sister one last time before walking out the door and opening her cell phone.
"Mr. Clark?"

"Valerie, Tracy Chapman says her office sent the Doverman documents back three days ago. Are you sure we didn't get it?" her boss asked.

Val sighed. "Yes, sir. I've checked the mail for the last two days running. The only things that have showed up are than bills, checks, and a few affidavits and notices."

"You're sure?" Clark's smooth-as-honey voice flowed over the phone lines, begging her to say yes.

"Yes, I'm sure, but I'll check on my way back in."

"Thank you."

The line went dead, and Valerie sighed, envisioning the nasty phone calls that would inevitably be coming from the Law Offices of Chapman and Chapman.

Today was gonna be hell.

The day dawned early for Kel, but not brightly. She drove to the jail through a hard rain, checked in, worked out, and drove back over to the hospital at three. The rain had only lessened up a little, and at this point it looked like the day was going to end with rain, too.

Crap.

"Ohmygosh, I'm on my way!" Valerie slammed the phone back down into the cradle and yelled something unintelligible at her boss that she hoped somewhat gave the message, 'My sister is in the hospital having the baby and it's a rough birth, so bye!' and ran out the door.

She managed to get down to the parking lot in record time and without breaking a heel or an ankle, managed to make it into her car without dropping her keys, and managed to get out of the parking lot without hitting any cars.

What she couldn't manage was the traffic jam on the street outside.

"Shit, shit shit!" she yelled, slamming the heel of her palm down on the horn. "Move!"

The cars wouldn't budge.

So she wove slowly through the traffic, taking a back road to get around it only to find that the jam extended down to State Road 17.

"Why?" she moaned. "Melanie, I'm coming, but why does there have to be traffic at two in the afternoon?" She edged through it, barely holding on to her temper. When she finally emerged, it had been an hour since she'd gotten the phone call, and it was now full-dark outside. Eight p.m. Valerie got into the hospital no problem, and then realized that she did, in fact have a problem.

"Where's the maternity ward?" she asked the empty hallway.

Since god (or whoever was in charge of the hospital speakers) didn't seem particularly obliging at that particular moment, she picked a direction to go in and find someone who could point her in the right way.

Then she stumbled into someone, and they both went sprawling across the floor.

"I'm so sorry, please let me help you up!" the other person exclaimed, and Val looked up as she picked herself up off of the floor.

"Oh," was all she said.

Ice blue connected with brown, and Valerie knew if there could have been sparks in the air, there would have been. The woman in front of her was absolutely gorgeous; black hair cut very short to frame a pale face that looked unfamiliar to the hairstyle, and chocolate brown eyes in a fine-boned face. All of it packaged above a neatly uniformed body that had at least a couple of inches on Val.

Unfortunately for Cupid, Valerie was in a hurry. "Where's the maternity ward?" she demanded, and the woman blinked.

"Fifth floor."

"Thanks." In a flash, Val was gone to find an elevator (or the stairs, whichever turned out to be faster), leaving the woman alone.

But before she could get to the fifth floor--she'd gotten off at the third floor to see if anyone there knew where the maternity ER was--someone slammed into her shoulder in the middle of the hallway. She turned around to yell at them, and the words stuck in her throat.

Glaring mercilessly up at her was the menacing, too-black barrel of a gun.

And it was pointed at her eye.

Kel eyed the young men who'd just come bursting in through the ER doors.

All three were dressed in ripped jeans, varied t-shirts, and pretty much the only thing they had in common was the bandana tied around their arms.

The bandana which--funnily enough--had the same colors that the Sangre Dios used. Or at least the same colors that the Sangre Dios in New York had used. Coincidence?

Red and yellow striped in an unfamiliar flag.

"Where's the guy that came in yesterday?" One demanded in heavily accented English.

"I don't know who you're talking about," she said calmly. "But you might want to leave."

She resisted the urge to place her hand on the butt of her gun, and instead stared the three kids down.

The tallest teenager--who had to be the leader, she would bet her gun on it--stepped forward.

"Bitch, where's the gang ward?"

"I don't know," she insisted.

The boys shoved past her and piled into an elevator. Before the doors closed, she glimpsed them pulling out at least one handgun each.

Hoping she could reach the cops up on the gang ward in time, she pulled out the radio she never used.

"Howie, please come back, Howie."

The radio crackled and popped. "This is Howie, go ahead."

"You have a few gang members on their way up with loaded guns, I think they--"

Before she could finish the sentence, there was a singular popping noise from upstairs. A sound that she'd heard before and had hoped she wouldn't hear again. Not here.

Gunfire.

She glanced around and grabbed one of the RNs who'd stopped moving and plastered herself to the wall. "Dora, listen to me. Call 911 and have them send some guys over here." She had to repeat herself twice before the woman nodded shakily and made a move to get to a phone, then ran like hell for the stairs.

By the time she got upstairs, it was over, but not done for.

Silence reigned over the ward, and in front of the elevator there was a body--one of the gang kids, she realized dimly as she toed him with her boot. He was dead--had to be. One side of his chest was gone.

Gotta love Glazer safety rounds, she thought in an odd, detached corner of her mind.

One of the cops--please God, don't let it be Howie--was down and groaning on the floor, clutching his stomach, and the other was by his side, radioing for backup.

The man looked up. His face was a mask of blood, and Kel realized that it was Howie, bleeding heavily from a scalp wound.

"You okay?" she yelled, making a move to come to him.

He gestured down the hall with his head, past her where the elevator shaft blocked her view. "Careful, they're down there!"

His gun was in the hand that wasn't putting pressure on the hole in his partner's torso, though it was shaking. She took it from his lax grip and laid it down on the floor; no one else needed to get shot, and he looked like he might be too twitchy to help.

Kel pulled her gun and went around the other side of the elevator shaft, heading for the other end of the hallway that formed one end of a calculator-style 8. Maybe she could catch the kids before they got into any of the rooms.

She needn't have worried. Of the other two kids, one was dead in front of room 319, and the other was long gone.

"He booked it," Howie said when the doctors from the ER pulled him away from his partner.

"Little bastard ran down the hallway and got down the stairs. I started to chase him before I heard John get hit and came back."

Inside the nurses' station, she found one of the nurses being tended to by an off-duty paramedic who'd been relaxing in the breakroom, and the woman who'd run her over earlier, struggling with another paramedic in her mission to get up.

Before she could free herself from the medic's faltering grasp, Kel moved in.

"Calm down," she said, pressing down on the woman's shoulders, steering clear of the arm wound.

"Lemme up," the woman was saying, struggling to get up in an odd echo of Kel's position yesterday with the baby gang member. "I'm gonna run after the little fucker."

"No you're not," Kel said firmly. "Stay still. He's gone."

The injured subsided for a moment, then burst into action again. "My sister! Oh god I gotta get up there!"

"You're not going anywhere," Kel said, "the hospital's locked down and the only place you're going is the ER."

"Why do I need to go there?" the woman asked. Her eyes were a little unfocused.

"You were grazed," Kel told her. She's gotta be in shock.

"Really?"

"Really really." Kel looked up, praying that the medic would be able to take over now. The man nodded. "She's good to go. We'll get the arm looked at. Better get back downstairs."

"Thanks," Kel said, getting up.

She made her way to one of the bathrooms to wash the woman's blood off of her hands, then hurried back downstairs, back to her post with a new, grim determination.

No way in hell was anyone getting past her this time.

Even if it cost her something fierce.

Valerie slowly navigated the unfamiliar walls of the hospital. Her sister had survived the breech birth and was staying overnight at the hospital for observation.

Now Val was making her way out of the hospital with one destination in mind before she went home; wherever that security guard was, she needed to be.

She found the woman on the first floor, patrolling over near the nurses' station near the ER.

"Hi," she said a little breathlessly. The woman didn't look disheveled at all, and Val knew she herself couldn't be looking her best.

The name on her tag said Kelly Sykes.

"Uh, hi," Kelly said. She nodded at Val. "How's your arm?"

Val smiled. At least she was talking. "It's been better."

The security guard coughed down a laugh. "Obviously."

"Listen, Kelly, I wanted to thank you for uh, you know, being there..." Val said, unsure of what else to say.

"Oh god, please call me Kel," the woman begged. "I can't stand that name." Something dark flashed behind her eyes, and Val nodded.

"Sure Kel. Whatever you want." Desperate for a little smalltalk, she tried, "Are you new in town?"

"Kinda," Kel said evasively. "I moved here a while ago."

"From?"

"Monroe, New York."

"Why come here from New York? There's really nothing here," Val said. Nothing except gangs and a hospital.

"I just--there were some bad memories in that town," Kel said, obviously uncomfortable with the intrusion.

Val bit her lip. Great going. What had she hoped to gain from asking about Kel's past?

"Sorry," Val said. "I just..." she trailed off.

Just what? Wanted to know more about you. Wanted to know what makes you tick.

Wanted to get close to you on a level I have no business thinking about.

"Sooo..." she said, trailing the word off, unsure of how to phrase her question. She'd never had any problems asking women out, before. Why now?

Oh god, why do I have to be tongue-tied now?

"Would you--I'm sorry, but I can't help it--would you like to have dinner with me sometime?"

Valerie asked. Her face had to be bright red; her skin felt sunburned, and the blood pounding through her ears made it hard to hear.

The security guard looked stunned. "I--uh," she stuttered, obviously confused.

Val was torn between kicking herself and grabbing Kel's gun and using it to off herself. The woman was straight!

Damnit!

"Oh, I'm sorry," Val said, embarrassed. "I just thought you were--"

"No, it's okay," Kel said slowly. She smiled. "In fact, I think it would actually be okay. To have dinner with you, I mean." She flushed. "I--uh, if you still want to, that is."

"I-it's okay if you're not—" Val began.

"No--" Kel said. "It's not--I've just never--" Her eyes were wide and panicked, growing fuller of more thoughts by the second, and then before Valerie could blurt out an apology and sink into the ground, they cleared, to be replaced by one, simple emotion that was easily readable: relief. "I'd love to."

Tonight, they'd decided, and now after her shift, it was time.

Valerie was waiting when she got off work at the hospital.

Kel had barely had a chance to change, and when she came out into the employee parking lot, she found Val waiting, all dressed up with somewhere to go.

"Uh, I feel underdressed," she said as Val got into her car wearing a dressy red halter top and a knee-length skirt.

"Don’t," the other woman had said, laughing. "You look fine."

"Fine" wasn't quite the word Kel would have used. She'd dressed down, quite unlike she'd used to. Now, instead of wearing feminine things like the old Kelly had, she dressed more boyishly, wearing blue jeans and a button-down shirt. Maybe if she dressed differently, Archer wouldn't be able to find her, and even if he did...

He wouldn't want her anymore.

Val drove them first to a short dinner at a somewhat forgettable Italian restaurant, and then to a short, wide building with blacked-out windows.

"Is this a strip club?" was Kelly's first question. The music coming from inside the building was loud and pounding, and it made her want to start moving.

"It's a club," Valerie said, leading her to the door, where there were a few women loitering outside.

A squat woman with short hair checked Kel's ID and waved her inside after looping a purple paper bracelet not unlike the ones they used at the hospital around her wrist. Inside, the music was louder, and the right of the room was full of bodies moving under the glow of strobe lights and a multicolored disco ball.

Without a word, Val pulled her into the fray of moving bodies, clearing a space for them to dance in before Kel's eyes could completely adjust.

They were hemmed in by dancing women, all twisting and swaying to the music, and Valerie was one of them. Hesitantly, for she didn't dance often, Kel joined them in the mindless, unchoreographed dance of clubs, moving together with Val.

It took a minute, but Kel soon realized that this had to be a lesbian club, or at the very least a local hangout for lesbians; women were everywhere, and most of them were dancing together in ways that were most decidedly not sororal or platonic.

And it... interested her. Hell, more than interested; aroused her, made her feel alive. More alive than she'd felt in a long time, even before Steven Archer had walked into her life.

And then Valerie moved in close to her, putting her hands on Kel's waist, pulling her close, moving on her.

Kel lost herself to The Killers' Mr. Brightside, and after that a slew of music that made the night so long that she'd forgotten that there was anything else in the world.

They found their way to Kel's apartment, still on a high from the music and atmosphere of the club, half dancing up the stairs to music only they could hear.

The apartment was dark, empty but for a few chairs and a box or two, but Valerie didn't ask.

Kel was glad. She wouldn't have liked explaining Steven Archer to Val, and it would have made the situation even more awkward.

She thought fleetingly of telling Val about her past.

"Do you want to maybe--" she began, but Val silenced her by leaning down and pressing her lips against Kel's.

"No talk," she murmured, a brush of lip against lip. "Just this."

Her mouth moved against Kel's, and when their lips parted and their tongues moved deep and hard against each other, Kelly had to suppress a thrill of desire running through her. Her hands sat still and firm at Val's waist, and the woman's fingers moved slowly around her shoulders. Their hunger for each other was unmistakable, and unmistakably female, Kel realized, when her hands moved upwards to curve around Val's ribs below her breasts.

It was more terrifying and exhilarating than anything else, and she let Val lead her in a dance that seemed to be older than time.

Val stepped forward a little, pressing Kel up against the refrigerator, using her hips more than anything else, as their tongues found each other again and again.

A bead of sweat pooled in the hollow of her throat, and Val chased it down with her lips, warm and moist against Kel's skin. She could feel the other woman plucking at the buttons of her shirt, thumbing them open one by one, exposing her skin to the air--and to Val.

Kel gasped as the shirt opened completely and Val's hand found its way inside her bra, cupping her, feeling her hard and pebbled against her palm.

After a token grope, the bra somehow came undone, and Val's lips closed around her nipple, caressing it with her tongue. The higher functions of Kel's brain evaporated into nothingness as she gave herself over to sensation, held up against the fridge by Val's hips alone when her legs wouldn't support her.

Before she could collapse completely, Val caught her by the hands and pulled away, drawing Kel with her into the bedroom--and inevitably, towards a moment that Kel was sure would redefine her life.

She had a bare minute to glance at herself in the mirror over the dresser. Her hair was hacked short, not flattering at all. Her eyes had circles under them. Would Valerie have liked her looks
better the old way? Would she have liked Officer Kelly, one of Monroe's finest? She'd been a feminine woman, not butch in the least.

Would I have even considered dating her?

She didn't know, but the question was moot.

Valerie drew her onto the bed, kissing her sweetly, tenderly, pulling her into a whirlwind tumble of sex and sensation, all fingers and sweat and lips, touching and tasting and pulling away, only to come together over and over. For a long, long time, Kel forgot that New York existed, that she would be able to stay here forever, for as long as she wanted in Valerie's arms. And for now, that was enough.

Too long of a day, Kel thought. Too long of a day and too short of sleep. Last night had been wonderful, but then she'd had to get up and leave Valerie asleep in the bed as she showered and dressed for work. Assumedly, Val would be gone by now.

What she wanted to do was go home and pass out, and now that the guy from the next shift was here, she could do just that.

Rick handed her the sign-in/-out clipboard, and she started finishing her line, which already had Sykes, Kelly, then her social security number and the time she'd signed in.

"Hi," a voice said a little breathlessly from behind her, and Kel turned around to see Valerie hovering in the door to the hospital room.

Rick coughed and looked away, obviously uncomfortable. "I'm gonna head over to the ER," he said, beating a hasty retreat.

Freaking homo was written all over the way his back had pulled tight,

When he was gone, Valerie pulled out a bundle of roses from behind her back, and Kel could feel her eyes widen in surprise.

"This is--" she said, throat tight with a foreign emotion. "Very sweet. I don't know what to say."

"How about 'Thank you, Valerie'?"

"Thank you, Valerie," Kel said automatically, recovering a little of her cool. "I wasn’t expecting to see you here. How did you know what time I get off?"

"Your schedule was on the refrigerator," Valerie said. Her cheeks were a little pink.

So were Kel's, as she remembered how exactly Valerie had probably come to stare at the schedule.

She jotted down the number of hours she'd worked next to the 2200 she'd jotted down before Valerie had come in, and put the clipboard into the drawer that Rick had fished it out of.

Then, "C'mon," she said, walking out of the room and drawing Valerie into her wake as she trotted down the hallway. Someone was watching them; she just couldn't tell who, and it scared her.

"I like you," Val confessed once the elevator doors closed. "A lot."

Kel was unsure of what to say to that, so she just kept her mouth shut and tried to drown out the feeling of eyes on her back.

Val slipped an arm around her shoulders, and Kel didn't resist, so Val pulled her closer. "I do like you," She murmured.

Down in the parking lot now, the casual, friendly touching continued all the way to where Kel's car was parked beneath the shadow of trees sprinkled freely with randomly sparkling lights.

The Chrysler loomed next to them, a comforting, familiar shadow in the dark, and the Christmas lights overhead twinkled merrily as Val kissed her hungrily.

Kel pushed her away. "I--we can't do this," she murmured. "It's--"

"Wrong?" Val asked, eyes glittering dangerously. "The hell it is. What are you afraid of?"

Not you, Kel wanted to say. "I don't know. Myself. I'm afraid to be myself," she said.

The shadow of a fight vanished from Val's eyes, and she looked genuinely surprised. "Are you afraid of yourself, or are you afraid to be a woman with me?" she asked, eyes piercing--searching­--into Kel's.

Kel couldn't answer.

Valerie looked into her eyes deeply, and was obviously a little troubled with what she saw there. "Is something wrong?" she asked.

"Yes--no," Kel said, looking around covertly. She couldn't see anyone, but she knew that somewhere out there, someone was watching them.

"I should go," she said. If she could get onto the road, maybe she could lose them.

"I'll come with you," Valerie offered. "I don't think you should be alone."

It was probably a bad idea to have Valerie with her, but Kel didn't want to face this thing--person, situation, whatever--on her own. "Thanks," she said shortly. She hit the unlock key.

"Hop in."

She peeled out of the lot quickly, looking for any tail; didn't find one.

"Why are you driving so fast?" Val asked. Her right hand was gripping the Oh Shit handle above the door, though her knuckles weren't yet white. Hopefully they wouldn't have to be.

"I thought someone was watching us in the parking lot," Kel said truthfully.

"What?" Val said. "Someone was watching us?"

"Yeah. I don't know why."

No, that was a lie. She knew why someone might be watching her, but she thought she'd gotten away.

A grey pickup pulled in behind them when they turned left onto Atlantic Avenue through the light, and Val studied the driver closely in her mirrors. It wasn't Archer, but it might be someone he'd hired. She stepped on the gas pedal, pushing the truck faster.

Val examined the mirrors. "Is there someone behind us?"

"I can't tell if he's following us yet."

Kel made four right turns in quick succession, and when the truck stayed right behind them, she realized it had to be--someone, quite possibly someone who Archer had hired.
And they were a bad tail. The few times Kel had had to go undercover and follow someone, she'd stayed a few cars behind and to another lane. This guy stuck right on their tail.

Unprofessional, Kel thought. Now she had to lose him.

But could it be as easy as she thought it might be?

She jumped onto the expressway that ran between Hooks and Augusta; took it three miles north to the next exit, staying in the leftmost lane. The exit for Northwest Regional Hospital approached, came closer, closer, closer--Kel swerved the car across three lanes of highway traffic, shooting down the exit ramp at sixty miles an hour, braking hard and fast when the turn came up, and took it towards the hospital. Before the ramp dipped out of sight of the expressway, the truck sped past, obviously unable to get off at that exit.

Yes, Kel thought, but there was no time to celebrate. She continued down the road towards the bright lights of the hospital.

"Was it the truck?" Val asked shakily.

Kel nodded, then pulled into the Inpatient parking lot and threw the car into neutral in front of the doors. "I'm going to drop you here," she said. "Then I can go find out what's going on with this--"

"You're not leaving me here," Val interrupted her.

"I'm sorry," Kel said. "I don't think I have a choice." I don't think you do, either. You're not getting caught up in all of this.

Val was incensed. "Yeah, you do have a choice. Me or whatever the hell it is that you're running from!"

Kel looked down. "I want to take you with me," she said in a small voice. "But I don't want to risk you--I don't want to risk losing you to whatever he wants."

"Fine," was all Valerie said as she got out of the car. Her voice was hard, but her eyes were harder, chips of blue ice in a beautiful, remote face that would have been better suited on a statue of death. "Call me if you're ever back in town," she said coolly, shutting the door firmly.

Before Kel could start telling herself that she'd made a mistake, she fastened the door to her heart and drove off, leaving Valerie in the parking lot.

Alone.

Just like her.

Oh, you bastard, Kel thought, glaring at the hotel room door.

On the other side stood Steven Archer. A very smug Steven Archer who'd obviously flown in from New York.

She opened the door, wishing she had a gun, but now... now all she had were her wits and whatever she could remember from the guys who'd tried to teach her hand-to-hand while she'd still been in Vice.

Archer walked in, smiling widely. He started talking without preamble, and what he said made her nauseous. "I've missed you, my officer. Wherever have you been? I know you spent some time in Hooks with a lovely young woman named Valerie."

Kel's blood ran cold.

In one hand, Archer held a sheaf of what looked like paper, and in the other he clutched a baton.

Crap.

He put the papers down on the bed next to her suitcase, then fished something out of his pocket.

Kel remained wary, hands loose at her side. Now she wished more than ever that she'd brought a gun instead of dropping it off at her job along with her letter resignation.

Archer held up a few photos, fanned out in his hand to better display them, and Kel felt her face grow pale.

Valerie!

Snapshot photos. Some of her and Valerie together, some of just Valerie. A few of the woman alone, looking particularly vulnerable. One of her crying.

God, no.

"I can have her in a matter of hours," Archer proclaimed. "She could be mine, and you'd never see her again. No one would see her again after what I would do."

His smile was cruel, and the mocking smile on her face let her know he knew he'd won.

A red film hazed Kel's vision.

Archer laughed, and Kel lost it.

She rammed her knee up into his groin--a classic move anyone should have seen coming, so she was actually surprised it worked. But not so surprised that she missed the baton swinging down towards her shoulder.

She twisted to the left and felt it swoosh down harmlessly, and punched up.

A fierce surge of joy flooded through her as she was rewarded by the feel of his nose shattering under the driving force of her knuckles, and Archer fell to the floor, clutching his nose.

"You broke by dose!" he yelled, hatred burning in the visible slits of his watering eyes. One hand snaked down to cup his groin, and he looked nauseous. Blood was streaming down his face heavily, and she knew that it was going to take a lot of plastic surgery to fix what she'd done to his face. She didn't know if she'd ruptured a testicle or not, but she hoped so. The bastard shouldn't be allowed to procreate, ever.

"I should do more than that to you, asshole," Kel hissed, picking up the baton and the photos.

She tapped him once on the side of the head, a little harder than she needed to knock him out, but any resulting brain damage couldn't make him any crazier.

She made a quick call to the Dallas police force, claiming an assault; left her name and number and a list of the stuff he'd pulled, and reluctantly left the baton, though she left it outside the door in the hallway against the door. She told the dispatcher where it was; explained the situation, how he'd had her on the run and tried to assault her, and just now threatened her girlfriend and how she had to get back to check on her.

The dispatcher told her to wait, said they could call the police department in Hooks.
Kel hung up on the woman and tapped Archer on the side of the head again, this time with her boot.

Hopefully Archer wouldn't wake up before the police could get there. She would have waited, gladly tapping the side of his head every time he might stir a little, but he could have already had people ready to grab Valerie.

Kel had to get there first.

Knock knock.

Val sighed and got up from the couch, putting down the magazine she'd been flipping through idly.

She opened the front door, half-expecting the neighbor's kid who'd just joined the Girl Scouts, but instead found herself looking at a most unexpected sight. But a welcome one, still.

Kelly Sykes.

She wanted to yell, wanted to take Kel by the shoulders and box some sense into her head, wanted to yell her into a crying ball on the porch.

Her resentment evaporated as relief took hold.

She grabbed Kel into a bear hug and squeezed, all thoughts of being angry gone at the knowledge that Kelly was okay.

"Can I come in?" Kel asked quietly.

The shadow of old anger was in her eyes, and the knuckles of her right hand were torn up and a little bloody, though they'd obviously been doctored.

"Yeah, okay," Val said, opening the door wider and gesturing the other woman in.

Before they even sat down on the couch, Kelly began talking, and Val had nothing to do but listen, so she did.

"I'm—I was... a police officer in New York City," Kel said, sitting down on the couch lightly, obviously ready to leave if Val said the word. "I'd been there for five years, and I worked my way up to Vice. I wound up making the arrest on an executive named Steven Archer. He'd been in on a number of things around town—drugs, smuggling artifacts in for his stores, a few threats here and there to people who talked, but we couldn't get any solid proof. He finally fucked up when he drove with a BAC of twelve percent, and we nailed him for that. But since I was the arresting officer, he fixated on me as the source of his trouble. That happens, sometimes..." she trailed off, obviously troubled.

"You can stop if you want," Valerie said reluctantly.

"No," Kel said. "No, this is something you should know. Something you deserve to know."
She took a breath and continued. "He got off on a technicality--we think he paid off the

Commissioner, but no one in Vice was stupid enough to say something like that outside of a bar. Then he came after me."

Came after you? Val thought, a little confused. "What do you mean?"

"I mean he came after me," Kel said. "Stalked me, pretty much. Sent flowers and stuff to my desk. It started out harmless, but when I complained to my department head, the deliveries started coming to my house. And they got creepy." She shuddered as she remembered.

"Dead roses, creepy teddy bears that looked like they'd come from a rag shop, with button eyes and badly-stitched patches everywhere, sewn-up mouths and eyes when there weren't buttons..."

She trailed off, and looked a little sick. "The pictures."

She pulled a folder out of her bag and handed it to Val, who opened it, flipped through the stack once, and then closed it again, mouth tight in distaste.

Pictures of Kel tied up, bound, gagged in various ways with diverse objects and types of rope or chains. In most of them, Kel was in various states of undress--three obviously from a shower--and Valerie wondered how the pictures had come into Steven Archer's possession.

All threats, and none that had helped Kel get at him.

Then the pictures of herself. Valerie and Kel, together at the club, dancing, draped or bound together with ropes and thorny vines. It had been so artfully done that if Val hadn't been there, she would have thought it had been posed with actual props.

Snapshot photographs of the two of them in the parking lot, kissing.

More pictures, different this time. Less professional, and obviously from a Polaroid; photos of something in a box. Something that looked like roadkill so badly mangled as to look like a chunk of ground meat.

"That was the last...shipment of a dead--something, I'd thought it had been another teddy bear at first, and then I poked it and it opened a bloody mouth and whimpered, so soft I could barely hear it. It was a mutilated kitten, a few weeks old at the most with its eyes gouged out and ears torn off." Kel paused, and then looked up. Her face was wet with tears. "I took it to the vet and had it put down. That was the last straw. I left."

She stopped again, obviously edgy and upset. "I ran into him in Texas," she whispered. "He found me there; walked right up to my hotel room. I couldn’t take it. He made me leave New York, and he made me leave you. He threatened you; said he could have you if he wanted. I broke his nose and came running back here."

Oh god. The guy was crazy. And after Kel.

But somehow Kel seemed stronger. Better than she had before.

"I'm rejoining the police force," Kel said. "I'm done with running."

Valerie stared, wide-eyed as Kel opened up into someone a little different than the woman she knew. Someone stronger, more resilient.

"He can come, but this time I'm not going anywhere. I'll fight him any way I know how."

Then she paused, and she fixed Valerie with a hard stare that abruptly gentled into something soft and feminine.

"And," she added almost hesitantly, "If you'll have me, I'd like to stay for a while. With you."

Abruptly, Valerie was able to see the potential within the battered clay, the woman within the alien, the beauty within the grayness. Time, like a painter's brush, would layer new experiences, new hopes and new dreams over the now-bright fear, and when that paint of days and weeks and years had become sufficiently thick to all but conceal the horror of her ordeal with Steven Archer, she would no longer be an angular, strange creature with death-pale skin and wounded eyes.

She would, in fact, be quite lovely. The realization made Val smile, and it made her breath catch.

"I'll go anywhere with you," Val said.

Kel came forward then, and pulled her into an embrace and a kiss. A kiss that was sweet and tender, and full of promises.

A promise sealed with a kiss, Val thought.

She couldn’t keep a smile from curving her lips, and an answering one broke over Kel's lips like the sun coming out from behind clouds. It dazzled her, and for one moment, she saw only light coming from Kelly Sykes.