William Pratt was frustrated. Exiting a courtroom in LA Superior with his new paralegal, Andrew Wells, trailing after him, he cursed his bad luck under his breath. Not only did he have a stack of unfamiliar cases to deal with waiting for him back in his office, but now he also had to figure out a way to not let the judge’s decision to suppress a witness’s testimony destroy the Papazian case completely. He felt like his mental powers were really being pushed to the breaking point.

After his colleague, Lindsey McDonald, had recently suffered a debilitating accident and gone on extended sick leave, the district attorney had directed William to take over the majority of his cases. Holland Manners suggested that he had been chosen because of his exceptional legal abilities, but William suspected that it had more to do with the fact that his winning record was the lowest among the assistant DAs. This was hardly surprising given his specialization, but Holland liked to play politics and insulate himself from controversy. A few of the cases Lindsey had been working on were quite high-profile, but William didn’t care about taking down drug dealers. He couldn’t wait to get back to the white collar crime division, where he had spent the first and last eight years of his career, futile as the endeavor of successfully prosecuting wealthy and powerful men often seemed.

At least Andrew had very usefully brought himself up to speed on the ins and outs of all the cases that William would be overseeing. If he weren’t so terrified of William that he found it impossible to take the smallest initiative without consulting his boss first and thus eating up precious time from both of their schedules, he would have made a great assistant. At the moment, he was asking William in what order he should prepare legal drafts for the Levinson and Mears cases that afternoon.

Out of the corner of his eye, William suddenly became aware of a woman walking towards them from down the long hallway. She moved with confidence and a sense of purpose, although she seemed out of place amidst the sea of suited professionals like himself in a casual pair of bootleg jeans and gauzy white scoop-neck. Her shoulder-length blonde hair seemed to have an impossible shine and bounce. He turned a little to get a better view of her, pretending to listen to Andrew as he chattered on, and was pleased to note that she seemed to be making a beeline for him. Perhaps his day was looking up.

As she approached, it became difficult for him to keep pretending he wasn’t looking at her. Her features were both delicate and soft, from her upturned nose to her petite chin. But most striking were her eyes—an elusive green gold that seemed to draw him in. “Mr. Pratt? Are you…William Pratt, the new ADA?” the woman asked, looking directly at him with those eyes.

“At your service,” he said smoothly. “Although I’m hardly new. And you are—?” He began to extend his hand, but just at that moment she turned away to pull a folder out of the messenger bag she carried over her shoulder.

“I’m Buffy Summers, from juvenile justice advocacy. I’m so glad I caught you here,” she said, letting out a relieved little sigh, before barreling on ahead. “I need to talk to you about Dashawn Richards’s case. The probation officer told me that you’re handling the prosecution?” She opened the folder and drew out a piece of paper.

“Er, yes?” He tried to remember the key points of the criminal profile. He had been briefed on Dashawn Richards because of his tangential connection to a big narcotics case involving high-level suppliers, but as far as he understood the boy had already turned over evidence on the dealer that he worked for and was ready for sentencing.

“Our agency needs a chance to evaluate him to see if he can avoid being put in a secure facility. You’ll have to reschedule his disposition hearing.” She looked at the paper she had retrieved. “Right now it’s set for tomorrow—Tuesday, but we’ll need till next Monday at least,” she informed him, looking at him expectantly.

William couldn’t quite square her appearance with the information that she was relating to him. She looked to be barely out of college and was dressed quite unprofessionally and yet here she was acting as though it was the most natural thing in the world for her to assume the DA’s office would follow the directions of some sort of representative of an independent, non-state agency. Though he was still a little confused by the processes for juvenile court cases, he was pretty sure that she was flouting them. He admired her nerve but was also a little annoyed that it was so misplaced. Plus, being told what to do was his pet peeve.

“This seems a little unorthodox,” he said dubiously. “Andrew?” he asked, turning to the small blond man standing next to him.

“Andrew Wells, senior paralegal. Pleased to meet you, Miss Summers. I’m based in narcotics but I also have some training in juvenile justice,” he offered, stepping forward to shake her hand. Off William’s glare, he hurriedly continued. “The thing is that those interviews are supposed to take place before the DA’s office is ready to present to the judge. It’s not our policy to delay disposition hearings unless new material evidence arises,” he concluded apologetically.

“Well, it appears you’re too late, love,” William said with a small sense of satisfaction. “Get your ducks in a row next time, eh?” he said lightly, feeling generous in refraining from imparting a harsher lesson to her.

Buffy blinked at his cavalier dismissal. “That’s not acceptable, Mr. Pratt.”

William balked at her refusal to accept his decision. “Excuse me?”

“There’s no reason why your office can’t wait a few more days. We may uncover—“

“I’m sorry, but you seem to be confused about who calls the shots in this legal matter,” he said severely, putting special emphasis on the word that referenced his own position.

Andrew watched the back-and-forth between his boss and this unexpectedly obstinate adversary with wide eyes and a mixed sense of fear and excitement.

Buffy couldn’t help but roll her eyes at William before forcing herself to say in a pseudo-accommodating manner, “Got it, Mr. ADA. But I still need that time to review Dashawn’s case.”

By this time, William was entirely fed up. “Look, instead of expecting me to make special allowances for you, why don’t you just run along and work on explaining to your boss why you were too busy to do your job properly?” he cut her off sharply.

Buffy couldn’t believe her ears. Here she was, trying to follow up a late tip on the off chance that a repeat juvenile offender might have crucial information that would help his case and she was getting nothing but pushback from this condescending man. She wasn’t accustomed to people either disagreeing with or simply not going along with her plans. Plus, not being taken seriously was her pet peeve.

“I’m in charge of the agency. Unless you want to explain to your boss why the media will be demanding to know why he has rejected community alternatives to incarceration when he pledged in his election campaign to support them, I’d suggest you ask for that postponement, pronto,” Buffy warned, barely able to contain her anger. “We’ll expect to hear back from your office. Good day, Mr. Pratt, Mr. Wells,” she bit out before turning on her heel and storming away, leaving one fuming man and one awed man in her wake.



Pacing about the front office with Andrew on his trail half an hour later, William was still ranting about insufferable special interest types who wanted to make his life more difficult.

“And how’d a young chit like that get to be in charge of an entire agency anyway?” William demanded of his paralegal.

“I don’t know,” Andrew answered helplessly for perhaps the tenth time.

“Maybe it’s because of her family,” the office secretary, Harmony, who had been listening in on their conversation from her perch at the front desk since they had returned, piped in.

“Come again?” William asked, head swiveling towards her.

“You said Buffy Summers, right? Her family is, like, Fortune 500? They’re old money too. Maybe her daddy pulled some strings.”

“Do you know her?” William gaped at her.

“Not really but I was at UCLA with her before she dropped out freshman year.” Harmony didn’t add that she herself had transferred to Cal-State Northridge a semester afterwards because her grades were so low that her parents had forced her to attend a cheaper college.

William practically seethed at this new information about the maddening little blonde. “Oh, this is rich! So I have to deal with an under-educated, spoiled little girl with a trust fund because she’s bored and looking for something meaningful to do with her life before she becomes a trophy wife?”

“What did you want me to do about the case, boss?” Andrew asked, hoping to distract him before he was completely lost in another one of his tirades. “It didn’t seem like she was bluffing about calling the media,” he said nervously.

“Oh, she doesn’t scare me,” William growled. But his sense of duty to his work managed to get the better of his temper. “Check with Holland just in case,” he said to Andrew, relenting. “But whatever he says, let her stew for a few days,” he instructed, a self-satisfied smile slowly forming on his face.



Two days later, William was sitting at his desk determinedly working his way through mountains of paperwork when the phone rang. Seeing the light for the external line blinking, he crossly wondered where Harmony had wandered off to that she wasn’t fielding his calls.

“Hello?” he barked.

“William Pratt?” a female voice asked.

“Yes, who is this?” he asked as he leaned back in his chair, a mad grin spreading across his face.

“This is Buffy Summers, from juvenile justice. We—spoke—earlier this week,” she replied, sounding like she might be clenching her teeth.

“Ah, yes, how could I forget? And exactly what is it that I can do for you today, Miss Summers?” he asked, his voice dripping with honeyed sarcasm.

“You can tell me when Dashawn’s hearing will take place. I haven’t heard anything from Andrew yet,” she said testily.

“Well, that must have been an oversight. The hearing is rescheduled for next Monday, per your specific request.”

“Next Monday?

“That’s right.”

“But that only leaves two days. I asked you for four. What if we need to follow up a claim? What if we need to screen a new place for him?” A frustrated Buffy bombarded him with rhetorical questions. “Do you have any idea how much work is involved in prepping a juvenile case?“

“Yeah, well, just because you paid for your job doesn’t mean you get to get out of doing it.”

“What does that even mean? This may be a joke to you but I’ll have to get my staff to cram to put this together.”

“And yet it was perfectly reasonable for you to expect my office to adjust to your schedule?”

Deciding to cut her losses, Buffy ignored his question and plowed ahead. “Fine, then. Monday it is. But I may need to talk to you about our findings. You may not take our work seriously, but—“

“On the contrary, the DA is very serious about what was it—oh yeah—alternatives to incarceration for juveniles,” William replied breezily. “Although I have to say Mr. Richards hardly seems the right candidate for your office to devote so much time to. I’ve been told he has been in and out of detention a few times already. Were you aware of that fact?” he asked skeptically.

“I am aware of that. And that’s our concern, Mr. Pratt, not yours.”

“‘Cept you’ve made it mine too, haven’t you? By strong-arming me into delaying a hearing that’s essentially a foregone conclusion?”

“If you’re looking for an apology here you’re gonna be waiting till it snows in L.A.,” she said blithely. “When will you need our assessment by?”

“If you want to make a recommendation to me you’d better do it before noon,” he warned. “Here. In my office,” he added in a tone that brooked no opposition.

“Fine,” she replied curtly.

Before he had a chance to say anything else, she hung up the phone.

***

If he didn’t come up with a plan soon, it looked to William like he would end the night a loser. Xander was down to ten dollars in chips and William himself only had about fifteen, far behind both Wesley and Gunn. On an extended break in between rounds, William stared at the figured walnut table and contemplated a comeback strategy as Wesley assembled his chips into neat piles, Xander polished off the jalapeno poppers, and Gunn popped open a new beer.

With their busy schedules, it was reassuring to each of the four friends that they maintained a regular time when they could see each other. They had enjoyed a bi-monthly game for the last two years, ever since Xander had moved out of the two-bedroom he shared with Gunn and into a condo in Mar Vista with his girlfriend Anya. Having a larger and more hospitable space than the untended bachelor apartments of the others, he always hosted poker night.

Outside of his friend Wesley, with whom he shared a cultural as well as educational background, William was closest to Xander, whose good humor and openness he appreciated despite his own more cynical style. A partner in a contracting firm, Xander was the only one who was not in law as well as the only one who had not attended college. He never felt left out, however, as the three former classmates rarely engaged in arcane shop talk, partly because they had pursued such different avenues of the profession. William had gone into the DA’s office to specialize in white collar crime after a successful summer internship experience, Gunn had taken the corporate route, joining the behemoth entertainment law firm of Wolfram and Hart immediately upon graduation, and Wesley the academic one as a law professor at USC after finishing his joint JD/PhD degree.

Tonight the men had discussed the latest brush fires in Los Angeles, the planned closure of the 405, and football, the latter only at cross purposes, however. To the puzzlement of William and Wesley, Xander and Gunn had debated the politics of the NFL lockout and William and Wesley had commiserated over Manchester United’s loss in the Champions League to the disinterest of Xander and Gunn. William attributed his latest setback—a disastrous attempt to bluff Gunn, who was holding a flush, with nothing more than a straight draw—to his refreshed sense of disappointment with the performance of his Red Devils.

“Shall we continue, gentlemen?” Wesley asked the others after having finished re-calculating his stack.

“No doubt, I’m on fire tonight,” Gunn enthused.

“Sorry, Charlie, it ain’t over yet,” William reminded him.

Their different approaches to the game kept it interesting for all of them. Wesley meticulously weighed the odds, Gunn was expert at intimidating other players when he gained the lead, Xander tended to be an emotional gut player, and William liked to bluff and take risks. From week to week, no man tended to hold the winner’s crown for long, but that didn’t mean that any of them liked to lose, especially when it came to being the dreaded first to be ejected out of the game. Still, they always managed to retain an atmosphere of sociability.

“I don’t see Anya tonight, Xander. Is she out?” Wesley asked their host as he shuffled the deck.

“Yeah, she’s doing a special accounting seminar for music industry executives tonight,” he said of his CPA girlfriend. Xander surveyed the living room filled with modern Italian furniture and the glossy open kitchen featuring a beautiful set of copper cookware from Crate and Barrel that they never used. “She says a few more of these things and she’ll be able to upgrade her Audi. That is, unless her clients find out she’s taking their money in exchange for tips that she found on the internet,” he said with an uneasy laugh.

“Don’t worry, I’ll give her a discount rate when the lawsuit hits,” Gunn joked.

“Thanks, man. You’re a friend,” Xander said wryly.

“Speaking of ballsy women, I had a run-in with some chit at juvenile justice this week.” William volunteered, as he picked up the cards Wesley dealt. “She hasn’t a clue what’s going on but thinks the world revolves around her and she can make demands right and left,” he complained.

“Aren’t you supposed to play nice with those do-gooder agencies?” Gunn asked.

William shrugged.

“Yes, their mission may not always align with that of the prosecutor’s office, but they tend to be serious about wanting to address gaps in the system. You might do well to work with her,” Wesley suggested.

“Oh, please. The only gap is in their understanding of when to bother. And she’s only biding her time there until she marries some toff anyway,” he huffed.

William took a quick glance at his cards. He had an eight and queen of hearts. He mentally noted that he was in decent position for a straight or a flush. Feeling aggressive, he decided to push. “Two dollars,” he challenged, brandishing two chips to equal his ante.

Wesley acted immediately. “Dealer folds.”

“Hold the presses. Spike Pratt met another human being that he can’t stand?” Xander chortled. “It must be Thursday. Or maybe Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…”

William rolled his eyes. “You don’t understand. Bint’s aggravating beyond belief. She actually threatened me when I wouldn’t march to her tune. And quit stalling. You in or out? That’s three more to you.”

“I’m in, I’m in,” Xander replied, tossing in his chips.

“I’m out,” Gunn sighed, taking a sip of his beer.

“Two-handed round. Here we go.” Wesley drew three cards. “Queen of diamonds, eight of clubs, and queen of spades,” he read out.

William suppressed a smirk at his good fortune. He had drawn a full house on the flop. Trying hard to contain his internal glee, he decided to slow play Xander for a bigger pot. In a show of uncertainty, he ran his fingers through his hair and tapped his chips thoughtfully.

“Let’s cut to the chase now,” Gunn proposed, interrupting William’s charade. “Is she fine?”

“I didn’t notice,” he responded, without looking at him. “Raise two,” he informed Xander, tossing in his chips.

“Curious,” Wesley observed. “Usually it’s a resounding ‘no’ or at least a ruthless deconstruction of the lady in question’s more egregious flaws, such as her receding chin or close-set eyes, or, oh yes, excessive number of moles.”

Gunn laughed. “That’s harsh.”

Xander was preoccupied by the game. “I will raise you two more,” he declared to William, wearing an expression of mock shock at his own boldness.

William suppressed another smirk. Xander loved to re-raise just to assert his masculinity when he had a truly fantastic hand. So he likely had either a queen too or two nines and was probably convinced he had the round won easily. William decided to delay his reaction to the wager.

Gunn squinted at him, trying to get a read of his silent poker face as he continued to ignore Wesley’s remarks. “I’m thinking she’s fine,” Gunn said with a slow grin, stroking his chin.

“Whatever,” William said tersely. Struggling to come up with a suitable follow-up, he finally added irritably, “she has stupid hair.” Turning his attention back to the game, he said evenly, “you’re on, Harris,” meeting the raise and silently noting Xander’s surprise at his action.

“Let’s proceed,” Wesley said, drawing another card. “Jack of diamonds.”

William decided to raise a small amount again to try to maximize his win. “Another two?” he questioned Xander, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to resist.

Xander met the raise but didn’t push further, shoring up William’s confidence.

“And the river. Nine of spades,” Wesley announced, laying down the final card.

William knew Harris couldn’t walk away now and went in for the kill. “I’ll put you all in, Harris. Just four more,” he said cajolingly, pushing a short stack to the center pile. Then he decided a little goading never hurt either. “You got the stones?”

Xander took a deep breath before agreeing. “Chock full of ‘em, my man,” he said, throwing in the last of his chips.

“All right, gentlemen, time to reveal your hands.”

“Time to pay the piper. Full house. Queens and eights,” William declared, revealing his cards triumphantly.

“Queens and nines,” Xander crowed, turning over a queen of clubs and a nine of diamonds. He stood up to do a little victory dance.

“Oh, man. Bested!” Gunn laughed.

William was flabbergasted. “What? You—you made that on the river!

“An impressive duel,” Wesley commented. “Though there might have been a strategic error somewhere along the line.”

William watched, dumbfounded, as Xander collected his winnings, chattering on about how he had just had a hunch that his unremarkable off-suit pocket cards, which many might have considered unplayable before the flop, would pan out in the end.

“It just isn’t my week,” William muttered.

At 10 a.m. on Monday morning, Buffy took a deep breath as she walked off the elevator onto the third floor of the District Attorney’s office in downtown L.A. She rehearsed once more in her mind the list of key points that she had to communicate to the ADA as she entered through the large double doors marked Major Narcotics & Forfeiture Division.



As Buffy approached her, a blonde woman in a bright pink suit with matching lipstick stationed at a circular desk in the waiting room looked up from her computer. After a moment of blankness, she suddenly flashed her a big smile. “Oh, hi. Buffy Summers, right?”



Startled, Buffy responded uncertainly, “Um, yeah. Do we know each other?”



“I’m Harmony Kendall. We went to UCLA together?” Harmony replied a bit too eagerly.



“Oh, I see,” Buffy said agreeably, but she was already wondering as she often did when an apparent stranger claimed to know her if it was because they knew who her father was.



“We were in the same psych class for a while. Freshman year?” Harmony reminded her in a leading tone.



“Uh-huh. Cool,” Buffy replied, feeling distinctly apprehensive now. References to that time in her life always made her stomach clench a little, especially when they were unexpected. Before Harmony could follow up her mention of their shared history with questions, Buffy quickly said, “It’s great to catch up. I’m, uh, here to see William Pratt today,” she said, pulling out a random folder as a prop and waving it.



Her attention diverted, Harmony nodded and said to Buffy, “I’ll just let Mr. Wells know you’re here first, ok? Mr. Pratt is strict about our process,” she confided, pronouncing the last word as if it were a foreign one as she picked up her phone.



“I’m not surprised,” Buffy muttered under her breath. In her view, the man was on a major power trip. She put the folder she was holding back in her bag and exchanged it for two others.



Not ten seconds after Harmony called him, Andrew Wells came rushing into the front office from a warren of connecting corridors. “Good morning, Miss Summers,” he greeted Buffy breathlessly.



“Hi, Andrew. You can call me Buffy.”



Andrew didn’t seem to absorb her comment. “Yes, Miss Summers. Can I get you a cup of coffee or something? If you’re here to talk about the Richards case, we can use one of the conference rooms,” he said, seemingly willing her to follow him as he jerked his shoulder in the direction of a hallway to his left.



Andrew’s jittery manner, which Buffy guessed was heightened even for him, made her suspicious. “No thanks, Andrew. I’m here to see your boss,” she said bluntly.



Andrew’s shoulders sank. “I’m so sorry. He’s preoccupied with an emergency. The Papazian case is about to blow up because the defense just got the judge to exclude some key inculpatory evidence,” he explained. “But I’ve been empowered to handle the Richards case,” he went on, sounding as if he was trying to convince himself rather than Buffy. “I’ve reviewed his file, and although he is only sixteen, this is his second arrest and our position is that no leniency is warranted,” he stated, his voice gaining in strength. “In fact, we had filed a waiver petition to get the juvenile court to forfeit their authority over his case,” he finished boldly.



“But it was denied,” Buffy said pointedly.



“Yes, that’s true,” Andrew said, deflating a little.



“So he falls within the jurisdiction of the agency. Even though he’s a repeat offender, he’s still a juvenile.” Buffy left out the detail that that fact alone would normally have disqualified him from being considered as a candidate for evaluation. “I interviewed him myself last week. And I’m actually here to report to the ADA that the circumstances of his plea have changed,” Buffy added.



“Oh,” said Andrew, losing confidence by the minute. “Um, what exactly has changed?”



“I’m sorry but I really can’t tell you about it first, Andrew.” Buffy cast about for a moment. “Process of authority. You understand?”



Andrew nodded, but still looked unsure.



Buffy paused, considering him carefully. “What did he tell you to do? Andrew?”



Andrew smiled with a mix of nervousness and relief. “His exact words were, ‘under no circumstances does that har—,” Andrew broke off, panicked, and then changed course, ‘—Miss Summers disturb me.’”



“Which one is his office?” she asked him calmly.



Andrew just looked at her like a deer caught in the headlights.



“Just point, Andrew,” Buffy said firmly.



Andrew complied.



“Thank you. I’ll take it from here.” She added, “You did a good job.”



Nodding at her, Andrew nonetheless remained standing frozen in his spot.



As she walked the few steps to the door in question, Buffy gird up her resolve. She rapped sharply on the door twice before turning the knob and walking right in.



“Andrew, unless it’s a question of where to bury Judge Nest’s body please figure out whatever it is on your own,” William growled from his seated position at his wide oak desk, eyes fixed on the pile of open files in disarray before him. He looked a lot less no-nonsense professional and a lot more bookish to Buffy today, dressed in a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up and with a pair of wire-rimmed glasses perched halfway down his nose. But as he looked up, she was met with the familiar pair of steely blue eyes. “Oh, it’s you. Color me unsurprised.” He tossed his glasses aside and stood up, rubbing his palm against his forehead as if to soothe away a headache.



Buffy opted to remain standing herself a safe distance away. “Yup. The harpy has landed,” Buffy said, doing her best to sound chipper, figuring that would annoy him the most. “That was a nice diversion tactic, by the way. But you were the one who said I had to meet you here. In your office,” she pointed out. She noted that he didn’t even have the decency to look ashamed for insulting her to his subordinate and trying to blow her off. If anything, a hint of amusement seemed to touch his eyes as he regarded her closely.



It vanished, however, as William let loose with his ranting. “I’m sure this will come as earth-shattering news, but the world doesn’t revolve around you, Summers. Things change. I’m managing a crisis so I have much higher priorities than the junkie ex-con who’s your charity case of the week.”



“Well, that’s changed too. And by the way? Real nice on the slandering of a juvenile just now,“ Buffy observed.



“Don’ have the time or the inclination for a moral lecture from you, missy,” he shot back, shaking his head.



“Well, do you have time to do your job? ‘Cause here’s the deal. You need to cancel the disposition hearing scheduled for this afternoon and get Dashawn Richards moved to a safe house as soon as possible.” “And,” Buffy went on before William could interrupt, “you need to do this because Dashawn can testify to the fact that he and his friend Carlos Trejo witnessed a murder by one of Dashawn’s suppliers. Marcus Hamilton? Ring a bell?” she asked.



William ran his hand through his hair as he tried to remember. “Fingered in Gavin’s big narcotics case. He’s the primary on that, but because I got Richards I’ve got something—,” he paused as he rifled through some papers on his desk. “Awaiting trial. He’s out on bail. How’s that possible?” He squinted at the page. “First time charged?”



“Possibly. These guys are scary good at staying under the radar,” Buffy commented.



“So what happened?”



“Dashawn and a friend of his saw Hamilton shoot and kill an unidentified man at close range in an alley about three blocks from Jordan Downs. They ran out of there and he swears that they weren’t seen but he’s not safe if he’s wrong about that,” Buffy related. “He thinks the body is boarded up in one of the abandoned units on Grape Street.”



“This happened out in the open? It sounds a bit far-fetched. He could be spinning you a story,” William countered.



“Why? To get himself hidden away?” Buffy asked. “What would be the point?”



“I don’t know, do I? But people don’t tend to roll over on their bosses unless there’s something in it for them,” William maintained.



“Maybe he was just horrified by what he saw,” Buffy suggested, remembering the look of abject fear on Dashawn’s face as he had recounted the events of that night to her.



“I’ll have to hear all of this from him directly.”



“His current detention address is in here with my write-up,” Buffy said, handing him one of the folders in her hand. “I told him to expect you,” she said peppily. “I’m sure VCU will want to talk to him too,” she added.



William sighed and furrowed his brow. “And his chum? Where’s Tweedle-Dum?”



Buffy handed him the other folder. “He’s in LA County right now on a possession charge.”



“Jail? Of course,” William concluded, rolling his eyes.



“Yeah,” Buffy sighed, missing William’s response. ”At least it’s the safest place for him right now. But he’s not in the game so he doesn’t know who any of the players are. Dashawn said he just came over to hang out when they walked in on it all going down.”



“He’ll still need to make a statement.”



Buffy nodded and then cleared her throat. “There’s one more thing,” she said determinedly. ”We’d like to see if we can get witness assistance for Dashawn’s family. He’s not just a dealer. He has a legitimate job too and he has an eleven-year old younger brother and a grandmother who—“



William held up a hand. “Oi, just spare me the sob story, all right?”



Buffy was appalled by his unfeeling attitude. “Fine,” she responded, biting her lip before she let slip something rude. “Please keep us posted on your progress, Mr. Pratt,” she reminded him tartly.



He just glared at her. “I’ll let Andrew see about assistance. I’m not gonna waste my time with that. Are there any other tasks you have for my office?” he asked snidely.



“You know, I only met your predecessor a few times, but Mr. McDonald never gave me a hard time for doing my job,” Buffy told William in a withering tone.



He snorted. “That’s probably because any bint in a skirt can push Lindsey around with a bat of her lashes.” His eyes lingered for a moment on what he could see of the pleated navy skirt that peaked out under the beige trenchcoat she wore. “But frankly, he’s a bit of a hack,” he said to her knees.



Better than a jerk, she mouthed silently to herself.



He contemplated her with narrowed eyes. “And you’re absolutely sure you’re not getting played by this boy?”



Once again, Buffy bit back a retort. “A hundred and ten percent,” she confirmed evenly.



He still looked unconvinced. “I don’t understand why this didn’t come out earlier?”



“Cops aren’t always good at getting intel out of witnesses,” she informed him with a shrug. “Believe me, I know.”



Her superior attitude irked him immensely. He couldn’t stop himself from lashing out. “Easy to be up on your high horse when you’re not working a crap job on the streets. You’ve got it made, haven’t you? A self-affirming position handed to you on a silver platter?” he challenged her.



Her eyes flashed fire with indignation. “You don’t know anything about me, or my life. So don’t pretend you do.” Buffy was so angry she was almost trembling.



“Well then, enlighten me. How did you end up in charge there? You’re clearly just slumming it—“



As William berated her, Buffy became aware of Andrew in her peripheral vision, hovering just outside the doorway. At war within herself, her devil finally won out. Her eyes on William, she gestured towards Andrew and practically yelled, “Hey, party of asshole? Your table’s ready.” She quickly exited the offices before she was tempted to apologize.





***





As she made her way back to work, Buffy kept thinking about William Pratt, chiding herself for allowing him to get to her. He’d clearly absorbed a great deal of rumor about her and although they were off the mark, his words still stung. She didn’t understand why he had it in for her so badly, especially when she had handed him a potentially huge conviction, but she knew that letting things devolve into acrimony each time she dealt with him risked distracting her from the case, which required her full vigilance.



Before returning to her private office, she made a quick round of the agency’s busy front room, going from desk to desk of her staff to check in on their individual progress and gauge their need for words of encouragement or caution, or more concrete aid for their work. Buffy didn’t like the seclusion of the manager’s office space, but there was no room to occupy in the main room and certainly no money to change things, so she relied on impromptu but regular contact to maintain more direct dialogue with the half-dozen caseworkers she supervised in addition to their bi-weekly full staff meetings.



Today she had to concentrate hard to focus on her conversations with her caseworkers, and was relieved that the issues they raised were all relatively uncomplicated. As she concluded her final overview, her caseworker Doris studied her with concern. “Are you all right, hon? You seem a little upset,” she noted sympathetically.



Buffy gave her a grateful smile. Since arriving at the agency as its newly-installed head four months ago, Buffy had found in Doris Kroeger not only a loyal employee but also something between a maternal figure and a girlfriend. She was devoted to her husband and her Siamese, childless but a natural mentor to young men and women, whether they were her clients or co-workers. In her fifties, she perfectly fit the image of the compassionate social services worker with her open, kindly countenance and her rather haplessly styled short brunette hair, dressed in her wardrobe of Chico’s mature separates. Although she had a retiring personality, she was a keen observer of others, which suited her well on the job. She also had vast reserves of patience, which made her a great listener. Buffy often wished that she could better emulate Doris’s strengths.



Doris was her most senior and experienced employee, and Buffy had initially been apprehensive that she would be wary of working under a woman much younger than herself with a complicated professional history, or worse, resentful that she herself had not been promoted to the head position when it had been vacated. Instead, Doris had given her full support to the vision that Buffy articulated of an empowered partner to the state organizations that it advised and set a welcoming and cooperative tone for the rest of the staff. Doris had moreover assured her that she had had no interest in handling the mediation responsibilities of the agency head, liaising with legal professionals and law enforcement on a regular basis. Buffy had lately come to recognize the wisdom in that reluctance.



“I’m just having some trouble communicating with—well, not so much communicating with as not killing—the ADA that replaced Lindsey McDonald,” Buffy ruefully admitted to Doris.



“Who is it?” Doris asked in a lowered voice.



“William Pratt. He’s English, I think,” Buffy said with a crinkle of her brow, as if the fact confused her.



Doris’s eyes widened. “Oh,” she in a hushed tone. “My friend Lorne started out as a paralegal for the white collar unit. He told me once that he’s a bear to work for,” Doris related to Buffy confidentially. “I’m sure it’s not you, hon.”



“He seems to think so. And I—may have lost my temper. Called him a name?” Seeing the look of increasing surprise on Doris’s face, Buffy lamented, “I’m supposed to be more diplomatic, huh? Like, that’s actually a non-minor part of my job description.“



“Just try to defuse the situation if it gets out of hand. Don’t escalate. Or just avoid him.” Doris adjusted her prescriptions downward as she watched Buffy’s doubtful expression deepen.



“Yeah,” Buffy responded to her last piece of advice. “That I can try to do.”





Late the next day, Buffy was sitting at her desk, playing a message on her answering machine. “Look Summers, this is William Pratt. I tried calling you yesterday but apparently you’re never at your desk. Anyway, we talked to the boy and the police think he’s legit. They’re gonna look for the body and I’ll confirm his story with his friend next week. Hamilton should be good and cooked. By the way Andrew made some arrangements or other for the Richards people.” There was the slightest pause before it ended, “Guess your work here is done. Congratulations.” As the deep voice echoed in her ear, a sense of dissatisfaction settled over her.





Several days later, Buffy was gazing sightlessly out her window, her mind turning over the facts of the Richards case yet again. She had that familiar feeling in her gut that always warned her when she was in danger of missing something crucial. She wished that she could talk it all over with someone to help her figure out how she should act on it. She glanced at the clock. “Too late to call,” she mused.





***





Standing in her foyer, Buffy looked at herself critically in the mirror above her side table. Her hair was crimped in a messy fashion and pulled up on one side. Her eyes were lined with smoky kohl and she had rubbed a little red gloss on her lips. She wore a strappy, dusky red moleskin tank with floral laser-cut outs along the neckline over a pair of skintight black pleather pants with pointy black ankle boots. The looser cut of the top lessened the overt sexiness of the rest of the outfit, or at least Buffy hoped so. She didn’t like to look like she was trying too hard but she was always a little nervous that she might not get in to a club or bar with a bouncer. And she had to admit it had been fun to pull out clothes that she didn’t often get to wear and go full out with her makeup and hair. Deciding to let all of her hair down, she reached for the pin when she heard Willow’s car honk outside. Instantly scuppering her plan, she grabbed her keys and darted outside.



Opening the backseat of her friend’s red Fiat 500, she excitedly greeted the two women in the front.



“Hi, guys. Thanks for the pick up.”



“No problem,” Willow called cheerily from the driver’s seat. “Just call me mistress of the car pool.”



“And how does my mistress like riding her shiny new chariot?” Buffy asked as she slid in, and then added, “okay, that sounded way dirtier than I meant.”



“The car is great,” Willow laughed. “Maybe I should name it the Italian stallion, what do you think?”



Tara groaned and shook her head. Turning back in her seat, she greeted Buffy with a smile. “Hi Buffy. You look really nice tonight,” she observed.



“So do you. You both look amazing,” Buffy replied, taking in her friends’s outfits.



“Angel’s gonna be sorry he missed you in this outfit,” Willow teased as she pulled out of Buffy’s driveway.



“Oh, this isn’t really Angel’s style,” Buffy confessed, a note of embarrassment creeping into her voice.



“No? Well then they might have to take his man card away, ‘cause I’m pretty sure ‘slutbomb’ is male fantasy number one,” Willow said mischievously, smiling back at a blushing Buffy in the rearview mirror.



“Not just male fantasy, sweetie,” Tara said, looking at her girlfriend pointedly. In stark contrast to her typical wardrobe of colorful print tops and long skirts, Willow was wearing a black miniskirt with a burgundy wrap top that exposed her creamy skin. Her red hair had been spiked with product and she had put on dramatic dark makeup in a style similar to Buffy. Tara sported a completely different, ethereal style that highlighted her soft beauty. She wore a sheer sequined top over an ivory camisole and mint silk skirt. Her lips were made up with pastel pink gloss and shimmery lavender eye shadow brought out her pale blue eyes.



Buffy giggled at the playful flirtation between her two best friends from the backseat and asked them about the club where they were headed. Willow explained that one of her patients who worked there as a waitress had recommended it to her as it was one of the few places in the city not overrun by shallow industry types. Not only that, but it had an extensive and upscale bar and the house DJ played retro music on Saturdays.



Arriving at Gem in Santa Monica half an hour later, they were waved in right away by the bouncer, much to Buffy’s relief. Entering the darkly-lit space, Buffy was impressed as she observed the chic white banquettes surrounding a lounge area, a central sunken dance space, and the glittery long bar that ran the length of one wall. People in designer styles ranging from Marni to Cavalli crowded every area of the club. The place clearly cultivated a sophisticated vibe but there was a softening element of whimsy as well, evident in the hanging crystal birds that served as light fixtures giving off a multicolor glow and the DJ frontboard that was made to look like a jeweled music box.



They grabbed drinks before heading to the lounge to perch themselves on an oversized ottoman. As they sipped their cocktails, they chatted over the skittering sounds of Radiohead about mutual friends and Willow and Tara’s upcoming vacation to Santa Barbara. Willow talked at length about the great success her still new alternative medicine practice was enjoying. She had decided to risk trading the safety of a joint-partnership with multiple other doctors for the luxury of exercising complete control over how she ran her own business, and her gamble had paid off. Even for California, the number of patients seeking acupuncture and ayurvedic treatments that continued to stream in day after day had been a welcome surprise. She was pleased to relate that she had been unable to personally address only a couple of cases, including a middle-aged man seeking an herbal Viagra and a young woman who was looking for a non-invasive colonic.



“A non-invasive colonic?” Buffy asked Willow, bewildered. “What did she expect or don’t I want to know?”



“She read something on the internet about an abdominal massage technique. I told her it was bogus. Then she asked for some healing stones.” Willow grinned. “And that’s why I referred her to you, sweetie,” she said to Tara. “She should be dropping by the Magic Box soon. Mr. Softy too.”



Tara raised her brows. “I’ll have to do some research for that,” she replied gamely. “Those crystals may be special order.”



Buffy laughed. “And do you get a kickback if she makes a sale?” Buffy asked Willow with an impish smile.



“Hey, yeah, we should negotiate terms,” Willow said to Tara teasingly.



“The power’s getting to your head, sweetie,” Tara teased back.



Willow surveyed the dance floor. “Hey, you guys wanna dance now?” she asked them eagerly as the synthesized beats of an Erol Alkan mashup unspooled.



“You guys go ahead. I’m gonna get something else to drink first. I’ll meet you down there, okay?” Leaving her friends, Buffy made her way alone back over to the other end of the club, changing her mind as she came upon a throng of people three deep swarming the long bar.



Noticing an irate man gesturing in a futile attempt to catch the attention of the bartender and then giving up in disgust, she inwardly groaned when she recognized William Pratt’s sharply defined profile and slightly curled, sandy brown hair. Steeling her resolve, she moved to intercept him as he stormed toward the tables of people seated near the bar.



She touched his arm to get his attention. “Hey there,” she said with forced brightness. “Small world, huh?”



Startled, he turned to her. “Buffy?” he frowned in surprise. William was thrown for a few moments by the unexpectedness of encountering her in a place so far removed from an office setting. He was distracted for several more by how incredible she looked, like some pixie rocker dream girl straight off the cover of a glossy indie music magazine. Then he realized she had been talking to him for some time already.



“—so that the agency can write up its own confirmation of Dashawn’s account,”



“Come again?” was all he could manage in response.



Buffy wondered if he was deliberately trying to antagonize her again. “I said,” she repeated a little louder in case it was the music, “so that we have our own confirmation of his account.” When he still looked confused, she said, “I’ll sit in? On Carlos’s interview?”



“You want to go to the jail?” William couldn’t keep the disbelief out of his voice. “It’s not some juvie hall, you know.”



Buffy scowled. “This isn’t my first time at the rodeo, ok?”



He looked incredulous but conceded, “All right, blondie, you’re on.”



Just as Buffy was about to give him a piece of her mind about his inappropriate nicknames, they were interrupted.



“Would you care to introduce us, Spike?” a pleasant English voice suddenly floated from somewhere behind William to fill the tension-filled air between them.



Turning around, William moved a few steps to the side, giving Buffy a full view of his friends at a nearby table. Though she and William remained standing next to each other, she was at eye level with the three of them seated in a semi-circle on their bar stools. William sighed. “Cordelia Chase, Xander Harris, and Wesley Wyndham-Price,” he indicated to her with a sweep of his hand. Regarding her askance, he added in a put-upon tone, “This is Buffy Summers. From juvenile justice via the ninth circle.”



Off her confused look, he said to her patronizingly, “Don’t they teach Dante at UCLA, love? Or didn’t you stay long enough to find out?”



“Well, I guess he’s not this charming all the time. Or does he pay you to spend time with him?” Buffy asked. Her demeanor was calm but her tone was caustic as she turned her eyes away from William to the table.



Xander guffawed. “No, but he really should. I am now accepting unmarked bills and pints of Guinness,” he replied merrily to William’s glare. “Nice to meet you,” he added with a broad smile to Buffy. Feeling her anger dissolve, she smiled back shyly, feeling instantly at ease with the jovial man with floppy dark hair and dancing brown eyes and drew a little closer to the table.



“It’s a pleasure, Miss Summers,” Wesley nodded at Buffy. He was closest to her, sitting to her right side. She acknowledged him in turn, noticing that his accent was refined and smooth in comparison to William’s rough and grating one. His perfectly groomed hair and tortoise-shell glasses further complemented his impeccable manners.



“Buffy Summers. Summers as in Sunnydale Industries?” Cordelia asked curiously, regarding Buffy with keen interest from across the table.



Buffy suddenly looked uncomfortable. ”I’m from Sunnydale,” she admitted. “And my father is head of SI, but I’m not involved in it,” she explained quickly. Buffy sensed that the striking brunette with a salon-finished hairstyle and wearing an expensive-looking tight sheath dress was a woman who prized status, a type that she was all too familiar with. In her slutty outfit with her bed head hair, Buffy suddenly felt distinctly ungroomed by comparison.



“Well, if you’re ever in need of a PR rep, you should know that I’m the best in the business. Here’s my card,” Cordelia offered, swiftly producing a beautifully patterned ecru business card from nowhere.



“That won’t be necessary, but thanks anyway,” Buffy replied graciously, pocketing the card quickly. “I really do work for a juvenile justice agency. And um, I keep a low profile—like, limbo low.”



“Pity,” Cordelia remarked, with a touch of condescension.



“Well, well, well. Secret’s out, Summers. Finally gonna own up to your privileged past?” William taunted her.



“There’s no secret,” Buffy protested, riled at his smug expression. Feeling several pairs of eyes on her, she took a breath and then spoke as if she had rehearsed the condensed speech many times before. “My family’s been in California a long time. My father runs Sunnydale Industries. It’s your typical big multinational transportation and energy company. And my great great great grandfather,” she recited, as if she were mentally counting, “founded a railway company with a few partners to finance what used to be the Central Pacific and Southern Pacific lines.”



“The Central Pacific was part of the first transcontinental line?” Wesley asked her for confirmation, sounding both excited and impressed, which typically meant that he was struggling internally to contain himself.



Buffy nodded.



“They built the bloody railroads?” William not so much asked as demanded in shock. Even with his experience with puffed-up brokers and slick bankers and the odd semi-powerful CEO here and there, the concept of a bona fide industrial giant was a daunting one.



“They?” Buffy repeated with a little snort. “I used to think so.” She clarified her meaning with a little shrug. “I just mean, mostly coolies actually built the railroads.”



“Ah yes,” Wesley chimed in again. “The immigrant Chinese labor force?”



A brief look of understanding seemed to pass between Wesley and Buffy.



Feeling annoyed that Wesley had become part of the conversation and was apparently better informed than him, William asked sharply, “And that bothers you? They were paid workers, weren’t they?”



“People do lots of things for money,” Buffy observed vaguely. “But it doesn’t always make it a good thing.”



“Yes, from slave labor to wage labor,” Wesley mused aloud, caught up in his own thoughts. ”The story of the nineteenth century. And the exclusion acts made naturalization and citizenship nearly impossible for the Chinese until after the Second World War, as I recall.”



Ignoring Wesley’s lecture, William pressed her, “That why you’re not in the family business? Too tainted for your precious conscience?” William didn’t know why he felt the need to insult her. He only knew that it infuriated him that she still seemed reluctant to disclose more about herself.



“I don’t have a head for business,” Buffy replied evasively.



“If I wanted to watch the History Channel I would have stayed home,” Cordelia interjected in a bored tone, much to Buffy’s relief. “Can we get back to gossiping about Gloria Allred?”



Xander, who had felt out of his depth during the conversation about Buffy’s family history between the others, welcomed the chance to reveal more details about his client’s home renovations to Cordelia and launched into a funny story about his attempt to dissuade her from installing ceramic tile on her bathroom ceiling. Meanwhile, the opening bars and verse of “I am the Resurrection” began to sound in the background. Both Buffy and William became distracted by the music, lost momentarily in their individual memories.



Down down, you bring me down

I hear you knocking down my door and I can’t sleep at night

Your face, it has no place

No room for you inside my house I need to be alone



“This is one of my favorite songs,” Buffy commented wistfully to no one in particular, a dreamy look coming into her eyes.



Staring at her, William scoffed disbelievingly. “This came out in ’89. You were probably still in your nappies, you couldn’t possibly have listened to them.”



Buffy rolled her eyes. “‘Cause there’s no such thing as CDs,” she shot back at him in an annoyed tone, “or, you know, the internet.” She felt the need to escape before she called him a name again. “I’d, uh, better get back to my friends,” she said hastily. “See you around.” Taking a breath, she looked away from William to his friends. “It was nice to meet you all,” she excused herself to the group, flashing a general smile in their direction before she turned around.



As she made her way to the dance floor, Wesley turned to him, not wanting to let the opportunity slip him by. “And you would know the date of a Stone Roses album because—?” he asked William, highly amused. “The same man who claims ‘Green Day wouldn’t know punk if it bit them in the ass’ is a fan of Brit pop?”



William shot him a dirty look. “They wouldn’t!” he said darkly. “And well, I was twelve,” he said defensively.



Wesley chuckled. “You never cease to surprise me, William.”



They both observed Buffy join two girls dancing with each other, a fuller-figured blond and slim redhead with choppy hair. They moved apart at her approach to form a triangle with her and she was turned towards William enough so that he could see her face. He could have sworn that she was looking directly at him in time as the next line played out.



I couldn’t stand another second in your company



“I realize that you’ve had your problems with Buffy but I have to say I think you were wrong about her. She seems—sincere,” Wesley commented thoughtfully.



Quickly casting a suspicious side-glance at Wesley that went unnoticed by his friend, William said nothing and resumed watching Buffy.



Don’t waste your words I don’t need anything from you

I don’t care where you’ve been or what you plan to do



I am the resurrection and I am the light

I couldn’t ever bring myself to hate you as I’d like



As the lyrics gave way to the extended psychedelic guitar solo, she became lost in the music, dancing with her eyes half-closed. Through the music’s many shifts and turns, her arms gracefully charted the rise and fall of the melody while her body moved sinuously to the back beat. When the song concluded they made their way over to the lounge on the far side of the club. William didn’t realize that he had been so absorbed by what was happening on the dance floor until his brain registered Wesley and Xander in heated mid-argument about whether archaeologists had the right to commandeer active building sites.



Turning his attention back to the table, he suddenly noticed Cordelia studying him with narrowed eyes and he raised his brows in silent question.



Regarding him with a pitying look, she asked, “Don’t you ever pick a battle you can win?”



He just returned her an expression of incomprehension.

The next morning, Buffy woke up early to wait for Angel's call despite staying out late with Willow and Tara the night before. Carrying her filled laundry basket under one arm, she blearily made her way downstairs, making a detour in the kitchen to start her coffee before heading for the basement washer. While the water boiled in her kettle, she peeked in her fridge for something to eat. She extracted a half-smashed jelly donut from its wrapper and proceeded to give it an experimental bite. “Breakfast of champions,” she concluded approvingly.

Before she could take another bite, her landline rang. Dropping the donut on the kitchen island, she reached with the other hand to shut off the stove before rushing towards the phone on the wall, picking it up before the second ring.

“Hi, Buffy. It’s me. Can you hear me okay?” Angel’s voice was transmitted perfectly from eight thousand miles away.

“Angel, hi! Yes. How are you?” Buffy responded excitedly.

“Fine, fine. You?” he asked warmly.

“Just great. What have you been up to?”

“I’ve mostly just been going over the prep for opening statements today,” he answered. Leaning back against the wall, Buffy listened as Angel launched into an explanation of how the team wanted to make sure that the gory facts were presented to the court as explicitly and unambiguously as possible to stave off any sympathy for the defendants, who were all very old men in mostly poor health. He shared his concern that firsthand accounts of the systematic atrocities would not be made over the course of the trial. As she closely followed what he told her, Buffy reiterated her faith in his judgment several times.

“How’s work?” Angel asked her after he finished describing the judges who would be presiding over the trial.

Buffy didn’t want to burden him with her petty problems, but she felt the need to vent her frustrations a little. “Ugh, I had another run-in with that ADA. You remember Pratt the prat?

“Did he put up another fight? I thought you persuaded him to help the boy?”

“No, he did. Finally.”

“So what’s the problem now?”

“He’s just so obnoxious. I mean he’s nosy and disrespectful and mean—“

Angel laughed. “Sounds like a real charmer. But I’m sure you can handle him. Remember, take no prisoners.”

“What about hostages?” Buffy asked mischievously. “I might be able to shanghai his paralegal. Not to Shanghai, of course. Maybe just—Monterey Park.”

Angel made a sound that started out as a laugh but ended as a yawn. “Anything else on your mind?”

“Nah. I just miss you.”

“I miss you too, Buffy. Look I’ll try to call you tomorrow, but Tuesday at the latest, ok?”

“Sure. I love you. Goodnight, Angel.”

“Love you too, bye.”

As Buffy hung up her phone, she glanced at the calendar and noted that he had been gone more than a month already. Seeing the marking for the date of summer solstice, she realized that it would actually be winter before she saw him again. Everything had happened so suddenly before Angel’s departure that she hadn’t fully wrapped her mind around what it would be like when he was gone and she was living in his absence day after day. Pushing her gloomy thoughts aside, she picked up her basket off the floor and got on with her morning errands.



Across town, William was waking up with a pounding headache that was being aggravated by the steady sound of drilling from the grounds of the Mormon temple a short distance away. Of course, he knew the primary reason for his pain was that he had had too much to drink after the unexpected and somewhat unnerving encounter with Buffy the night before.

He padded slowly into his bathroom and rummaged in his medicine cabinet over the sink for an aspirin. Staring in the cabinet mirror, bits and images of the previous night flitted through his mind. It had been a strange evening, all in all. For the fifth time in as many weeks, Cordelia had joined them. She was an interesting addition to the group although the places she insisted on choosing were always posher than William liked. Gem was no different, although the music there was better than most.

She came along ostensibly to spend time with Xander, whom she had dated briefly in high school to apparently disastrous effects. Somehow the two of them had recently reconnected over Facebook and decided to renew a friendship. William wasn’t too concerned about his friend facing the wrath of his live-in girlfriend, as it was obvious to him that Cordelia had her sights set on Wesley, although he couldn’t quite understand why, as Xander had revealed that she tended to prefer her men with power or money and preferably both. In any event, she was meeting with little success in her attempts to draw Wesley out with her periodic appearances and practiced flirtation. The real obstacle was not her rather transparent methods, however. She was certainly an attractive woman and as the son of an upper-class family Wesley was not averse to a woman with a haughty veneer, especially when a nicer person frequently emerged from beneath it.

Though the other man hadn’t talked about it in a long time, William suspected that Wesley was still mourning Fred, the girl he had been in love with who had tragically died two years earlier. He and Gunn had met the spritely physicist at the same party, but Gunn being the bolder man had made his move straight away and Wesley had faded into the background to pine for the woman he couldn’t have. When Gunn and Fred’s relationship ended and Wesley’s chance finally came, it was cruelly snatched away. Fred contracted a rare blood disease just days after they began dating that proved fatal with astonishing speed and Wesley was left broken-hearted. William had often wondered but never asked Wesley if in retrospect he regretted not saying anything to Fred earlier. He supposed that Wesley had preserved Gunn’s friendship by letting things play out, but he didn’t think that the principled way he had handled things could provide much more than cold comfort to him.

Not for the first time, he felt relieved not to be caught up in any of the awkward relationship histories and triangles of his friends and acquaintances. After the humiliations and failures of his youth he had abandoned the idea of lasting attachments. He simply blamed his mother’s overly romantic nature and idealization of her own tragic love for the childish dreams that stubbornly persisted, unfulfilled, in his innermost being.

Among his friends his nonchalant attitude towards women was generally accepted as part of his idiosyncratic package. Of course, Xander liked to remind him every chance he got that casual dating and hooking up was a poor substitute for a real relationship, but William knew that Anya partially put him up to it—that she grew bored with her boyfriend’s bachelor friends and would have preferred the company of another couple. William was quite certain however that he didn’t want to trade his isolation for the train wreck that Xander’s own long-term relationship seemed to him destined for, no matter how content Xander was in the meantime. It wasn’t as if Los Angeles offered many candidates for serious consideration, anyway. Among the women he picked up or who picked him up, the majority of them were much less interested in who he was than in what he could do for them, whether it was in the bedroom or anywhere else. Or perhaps it was all him. Perhaps he had slowly become too much of a misanthrope to appreciate sincerity anymore.

He mind seemed to stick on the idea for a few moments but to no purpose. As he moved into his kitchenette to search his cupboards for the ingredients for his customary Sunday morning English breakfast of beans on toast he idly pondered what the next week would bring. His thoughts turned again to the night before. He still couldn’t figure out what Buffy was playing at. She had practically confirmed that she didn’t belong at the agency let alone in charge of it and yet given no explanation as to why she was there nonetheless. He knew very well that he had a chip on his shoulder the metaphorical size of the Grand Canyon towards those who had had it easy in life, and he had to grudgingly admit that although consistently insufferable, she hadn’t turned out to be as naïve as he’d expected. The file on Richards had been very useful in his interrogation, during which it had been like pulling teeth to get him to verify the events to them that he had already related once to Buffy. He tried and failed to recall why she had asked to observe the second interview. Not like she was very forthcoming about her motives for anything although he supposed he was partly to blame. Even for him, his merciless behavior towards her had been extreme. Something about her just stuck in his craw. He smiled, thinking about how she had totally lost her temper in his office. He decided that he would be more conciliatory around her. Or try to be, at least.

Buffy glanced at the clock on her desk. They were running late. On Monday, she had arranged with William Pratt and Gavin Park for them to meet her at the agency today. They were to brief her and bring her along to sit in on Carlos’s interview. As she waited she practiced her fake smile for William Pratt. Buffy knew that he somehow managed to bring out her most childish impulses but she vowed to rise above it. If he wanted to believe the worst about her that was his prerogative, she decided. She had better things to worry about. Besides, she was optimistic they would avoid any unpleasantness today with the addition of a neutral third party.

There was a rap on her half-open door and William entered her office. He was clearly alone. Buffy’s heart sank. Her displeasure must have shown on her face, as his own greeting was less than enthusiastic.

“Morning, Summers. It’s good to see you too,” William said sardonically.

“Um, hi. I thought Mr. Park was gonna be joining us?“

“Gavin just got a call he had to follow up. Some emergency or other. Lot of that going around lately,” William explained. “Had to drop me off, actually. So you’ll have to do the honors,” he continued. “That all right?” he then asked almost politely.

While he was talking Buffy had been fidgeting, first fiddling with a pencil on her desk and then adjusting the narrow wood barrette in her hair. William noticed she had it pulled half up today, which drew even more attention to her eyes. He decided right then it was slightly ridiculous how pretty she looked all the time.

It took a moment for Buffy to process the news. Her hands returned to the pencil, gripping it tightly. “You want to ride with me?”

“Is that a problem?”

Buffy opened and closed her mouth. “No-o, not at all.”

“Let’s get going, then. We’ll talk on the way.”

William held the door open for Buffy as they left her office. As she brushed past him, he caught the subtle scent of her jasmine perfume. He involuntarily breathed in as it teased the memory of his olfactory nerves. After she had stormed out of his office the week before, he had momentarily stood in the place where she had railed at him, unconsciously deciphering the barest trace of her that remained.

As she made her way out through the agency’s front room with William behind her, Buffy’s eyes lighted on the stack of unsorted new mail in the designated incoming basket that rested on the narrow wall ledge just below their dozen individual employee mailboxes. She glimpsed the lettering of a familiar return address on a large official-looking envelope that lay on the bottom. Halting her steps, she whisked it out and tucked it in her bag. As he moved up to stand beside her, Buffy tried to pay attention to what William was saying. “I was surprised when I found out you’re only a couple miles away from us. You’re grant-funded, right?” he asked rhetorically. She looked up to see him scanning the crowded room with a critical eye. “Practical enough. Kind of a dump though,” he commented, gesturing vaguely at the evidence of peeling paint on the walls and the water-damaged drop ceiling.

Buffy was about to defend her workplace when she heard the traitorous snickers of Holden Webster, one of her junior caseworkers. She noticed all of the others seemed to be studiously ignoring William and she found herself wondering what he might have said to them on his way in.

As if just then realizing he had been overheard by all her employees, William stated somewhat contritely, “Just making an observation.”

“Maybe you could not,” Buffy suggested dryly. “We have to work here.”

He quirked an eyebrow at her. “But you’re tucked away in your cozy little private room away from the cubicle crush, eh? Perks of being the boss?”

“Our office layout isn’t Miss Summers’s fault. Or her preference,” Doris interjected from her desk several feet away in a cool tone, her face remaining turned toward her computer.

William looked baffled for a moment and then merely apologetic. “Please excuse me,” he said.

Mildly stunned, Buffy moved to open the door and let William pass through. Turning around as she exited, she called, “I’ll be back by noon, everybody.” Looking up for the first time, Doris sent her a quick triumphant smile.


***


Walking across the shared parking lot, Buffy gestured towards a vintage Volkswagen beetle with a gleaming spring green-colored body and cream piping parked at the far end. It wasn’t in mint condition, having noticeably suffered a few nicks and dents, but to an old car enthusiast or restorer it still held its appeal. To Buffy, a fan of the old Herbie series as a child, it had simply filled her with nostalgia and excitement when she spotted it in a used car lot two summers ago, the first time she was able to buy a car of her own. It didn’t matter that it was from the 70s, or that passengers could barely fit in the back seat, or that it didn’t have air conditioning. It didn’t even matter that it was a stick shift.

“Well, isn’t she cute?” William drawled, his head cocked in an appraising manner as they approached the vehicle.

“I like my car,” she felt the need to inform him prissily as she got in, trying not to blush as she saw him noticing the Supergirl floor mats that had been a birthday present from Angel.

He regarded a wilting pink daisy in the tubular vase clipped to the car’s air vent. “I like it too,” he replied honestly, a little surprised at his own admission. “Drive a vintage car myself,” he added.

Several minutes later William was rethinking his assessment as he clutched the door handle with a death grip and desperately tried to keep his breakfast down. He hadn’t thought that with a small car like a VW bug it would even be possible to careen around corners but Buffy was proving that assumption wrong. Her driving style was reactive to say the least only she seemed to be not just one but several steps behind what was happening on the road. Stops were near emergencies and accelerations were so delayed he kept expecting honking from other cars. For the first time, he was amazed by the restraint of Los Angeles drivers. Her difficulties also appeared to be compounded by the complications of the car’s manual requirements. Twice when shifting gears, Buffy neglected to take her foot completely off the gas, overrevving the engine. As they approached the intersection of Bauchet and Vignes, she barely avoided stalling as she put the clutch in.

During the momentary reprieve at the red light, William couldn’t help but open his mouth. “You know, for someone whose family legacy is in the transportation business, you’d think learning to operate a vehicle properly would be a point of pride. You do realize you’re not in an automatic, right?”

The usual nervousness of having a front-seat audience to witness her performing a skill she had little confidence in was replaced by resentment. She glared at him. “I can drive,” she grit out.

“What? Into a wall? Probably.” As she fumed silently, he smiled at his own joke and looked out the window.

Buffy refused to speak again until she was pulling into the side lot of the jail. “We’re here,” she huffed. Before William could blink, Buffy had jerkily parked the car and was slamming her door shut. Without a backwards glance, she rushed ahead, making her way across the street and towards the building.

“Oi, wait up!” William called as he locked his door. She didn’t slow down so he took off after her, wondering how someone so small could move so fast.


***


Buffy was staring stonily ahead while she and William sat side by side at the table in the attorney room of the prison, waiting for the guards to bring Carlos in. William couldn’t tell if she was pissed or just deep in thought. He cleared his throat. “So I’m just gonna ask him for his account of the night he was with Richards. Hopefully he’ll just come clean and agree to be available should Gavin need him to testify at trial. If not, I put the screws to him a little,” William said plainly. “Unlike his friend, he’s an adult so even though this is his first time through the ringer he won’t catch a break unless he has something to offer.”

Buffy nodded. “Can I ask him questions?” she asked.

William looked unhappy. “You should have told me if you had something like that in mind.”

“I didn’t really have the chance to yet,” she said pointedly. “Anyway, I might not have any.”

“What are you—,“ William began to ask just as Carlos was escorted into the room by a guard.

“Mr. Trejo,” William greeted him, standing up. “Please have a seat.”

The guard set him down on the chair opposite William and Buffy and warned him to behave before leaving the room.

Even to the interested eye, Carlos looked fairly unremarkable. He had a medium-sized build, jet-black hair, and a chubby face that seemed to swallow up his dark eyes. A couple of years older than Dashawn, Buffy thought that he looked younger than most of the teenagers she encountered.

“I’m William Pratt, assistant district attorney handling Dashawn Richards’s case, and this is Miss Summers from juvenile justice,” William began. “She’ll just be sitting in today,” he added as much for Buffy’s benefit as Carlos’s.

Carlos looked confused and suspicious. “What do you want from me?”

William decided it was best to get straight to the point. “I’m here to talk to you about what happened the night you and Dashawn witnessed a murder,” he said, clasping his hands together.

Startled, Carlos flailed for a moment before protesting, “I don’ know what you’re talking about.”

“We already know what happened, Carlos. We just want to hear your version of events,” he said, injecting a note of reassurance into his voice.

“Don’ I need my lawyer?” he asked with a tinge of nervousness in his voice.

William chose his words carefully. “You’re only in here on your first possessions charge, which you can clear up if you simply cooperate,” he said. “I don’t see that you have any need for representation. Unless you have something to hide?”

Carlos shifted in his chair uncomfortably. His eyes, focused on the corner of the table, moved to take in William’s serious gaze and then landed on Buffy. She lifted her brows, trying to keep her expression open.

“Not much to tell if you talked to Dashawn already,” he stated finally, a hint of resentment audible in his voice.

“Indeed,” William agreed. “So let’s just recap, shall we?” He glanced down at the open file before him. ”You and Dashawn Richards are friends?”

“Yeah.”

“How long?”

“Six years.”

“How do you know him?” William inquired conversationally.

“I used to date his sister,” Carlos announced with fake bravado. Buffy suddenly regarded him with intense interest.

“Do you know that he’s a drug dealer?” William asked bluntly.

Carlos grunted and said with a trace of contempt, “He just a hopper on a crew.”

“A what?”

“Like, a corner boy.”

“You seem to know a lot about the workings of the trade,” William observed with heavy implication in his voice.

“I ain’t no gang-banger wannabee,” Carlos said indignantly. “Tha’s Dashawn’s thing.”

“So you’re just a customer?” William asked.

Carlos bitterly replied, “I bought a half of coke. Big fuckin’ deal.”

“All right, let’s get back to the night in question. What were you and Dashawn doing?”

Carlos sighed. “We was just kickin’ it. We was getting my car to drive to Inglewood when we heard the yelling.”

“What time was it?”

“Bout eleven p.m.”

“Where were you when you happened upon the shooting? Specifically, can you give me an address?”

Carlos thought for a moment. “Alley on 107 near Alameda.”

Checking his notes again, William nodded, satisfied. “And then what?”

“We heard some yelling. I dunno what about. We looked down the alley.” Carlos’s narration slowed considerably. “There were two guys on the other end. All’ a sudden we saw one of the guys, uh, the taller one, had a gun in his hand. He straight popped the other guy in the chest.” Carlos seemed to be choosing his words carefully.

“How many shots?” William asked.

“Just one. Soon as we saw it go down we took off. Didn’ look back.” He seemed unburdened as he concluded his account.

“Did you see what kind of weapon Hamilton had?” Buffy suddenly chimed in. She ignored the look of displeasure William shot her.

“It was a gun,” Carlos told her, the thought that she wasn’t very bright plainly visible on his face.

Buffy pounced. “But was it a revolver or a semi? What size caliber? Frame?” Peppering him with questions, she maintained a relaxed manner.

“I dunno nothin’ about guns,” Carlos said, overwhelmed and shaking his head. “I just saw Marcus pull it out and use it.”

William sensed Buffy’s body posture stiffen slightly. In the next instant, he felt her kick him in the shin under the table. He quickly looked over to see her furtively signaling at him with an incline of her head towards Carlos. Part of William wanted to roll his eyes at her theatrics, but having arrived at the same conclusion as her, he was too distracted by its significance. Instead he turned to Carlos and crossing his arms, asked him curiously, “How do you know who the shooter was?”

Carlos lowered his eyes but not before William could read panic in them. “Dashawn tole me,” he said gruffly.

“Well, isn’t that’s interesting because Dashawn told us he never talked to you about it. In fact, he assured us you didn’t know who he was.” William sized up the young man’s slumping posture. “He also said you weren’t involved in drug selling,” he said in a disbelieving tone.

“I tole you I’m not,” Carlos said forcefully.

“How do you know who Marcus Hamilton is?” Buffy asked in a low tone.

“Everyone in the Downs know who he is,” Carlos replied, frustrated.

“That’s twice you’ve lied now. Try again. Last chance,” William said sternly.

Carlos sat unspeaking, glowering at both William and Buffy.

“Who are you afraid of?” Buffy asked, staring him down. “Marcus?”

“I ain’t afraid of anythin,’” he blustered.

“Dashawn was afraid. No, not afraid,” Buffy corrected herself. “He was terrified. But he did the right thing even though it meant he had to disappear for a while.”

Carlos let out a short laugh. “He only has to worry about Marcus. And that motherfucker’s in jail.”

Not missing a beat, Buffy asked calmly, “And who do you have to worry about?”

Realizing he had made a second strategic error, he seemed on the verge of giving up on his defensive gambit altogether. Nonetheless, he still persevered. “Nobody,” he maintained.

At that moment, something finally clicked in Buffy’s brain. “Who was the dead man Carlos? How’re you connected to him?” she demanded with quiet intensity.

“Shit,” Carlos muttered under his breath.

Caught off guard, William quickly got up to speed. “The police are finding his body as we speak,” he half-bluffed to Carlos. “Once they identify him they’ll come after you if you have any connection to him. You’d better tell me about him now before I have to take your deal off the table,” he warned. “Who was the victim?”

Carlos rubbed his hands over his eyes. He suddenly looked older than his eighteen years. “Daniel Holtz,” he finally told them. “He was my boss,” Carlos admitted in a tone of some regret.

“Your boss,” William repeated. “And what was his business? Drugs? Guns?”

“No way, man. He just ran a coupla check-cashing joints.”

“Where?”

“Um, one of ‘em is in Boyle Heights and other one is in Jefferson Park.”

“I see,” William said. “And what did you do for Holtz?”

“Security, mostly. Some delivery, back and forth.” Carlos shrugged. “Whatever he needed.”

“And?” William pushed him.

“And that was it! I swear,” Carlos insisted.

William pursed his lips. “So solve this riddle for me, Carlos,” William said. “How’s a legitimate businessman end up getting killed by a drug supplier? A few blocks from the projects?”

“I don’ know.”

“But he had a connection to Marcus Hamilton,” Buffy observed. “What do you know about that?”

“I’m not sure.”

“But you know something,” she prompted. “Or you think you do?”

“Marcus, he was at the Heights shop three times before—you know.” Carlos had a hard time saying it aloud.

“Before he killed Holtz?” William asked. When Carlos nodded, he pressed, “Why did he come to the shop? He brought drugs with him?”

“No, no.” Carlos shook his head. “Never saw no drugs. It wuddn’t about drugs,” he said as if he was talking to himself.

“Then what was it about?” William tried again.

“Just business. Just… contracts and shit,” Carlos replied uncertainly. “Every time, Marcus and Holtz, they just went to the office and talked,” he explained.

Although he had a few guesses himself, William could see that Carlos genuinely hadn’t understood what business the men had transacted.

“Did Holtz have a habit of dealing with people in the drug trade? With those who are higher up the ladder?”

“No, Holtz never dealt with no fake suits befo’.”

William scratched his head in thought and looked on the verge of moving on but Buffy had caught the subtle implication in his words. Making eye contact with Carlos, she cut in casually, “Before what?”

Carlos didn’t miss the fact that he was being worked over but he figured he had to finish what he started when he admitted to knowing Holtz. He took a deep breath and stated, “Befo’ he hooked up with Russell Winters.”

“The real estate mogul?” William asked sharply. He was shocked but not surprised at the mention of a name that had induced loathing in him for the past several years.

Carlos looked confused for a moment but then responded, “Guess so, yeah.”

“What kind of arrangement did they have?” William demanded.

“I don’ know. I just think they had one. Marcus, he was only, like, a jobber.”

“A what?” William asked.

“A middleman,” Buffy supplied. “Why do you think that?” she asked Carlos carefully.

“Coupla months back I found a check in his desk. Signed by Russell Winters. It was on top a bunch of papers with Marcus’s name all over ‘em.”

“How much was it for?” William questioned him.

“Thirty-five Gs.”

William let out a low whistle. Looking at him critically, he asked, “What do you know about Russell Winters?”

“Not much. He owns some properties.”

William snorted. “I’ll say.” Then he asked, “Holtz never talked to you about his association with Mr. Winters?”

“No.”

“And you never met him yourself?”

“No, just dropped some packages a coupla times at one of his houses.”

“But you’re afraid of him,” William observed.

Carlos shifted uneasily, not denying William’s words.

“Does he have a reason to come after you?”

“No, it’s just… man like that, that kind of money? Face is on every billboard in the city. Even I don’ know anythin’…” Carlos didn’t finish his sentence.

“Indeed,” William replied. He rubbed his chin. “Is there anything else you can tell me? Think about it.”

Carlos shook his head. “Tha’s all I got,” he said, looking utterly drained. William proceeded to furiously make some notes in his file.

As he wrote, Buffy focused in on Carlos. “Carlos,” she ventured gently. “Does Deshawn know all this?”

Carlos shook his head. “He barely even knew Marcus Hamilton. I had more face time with him than Deshawn,” he revealed. “Fuckin’ barbarian. I warned Holtz one time, you know? Even at the top, the big men are outta control.” For the first time in the interview, Carlos spoke with real anger.

Buffy tried to reconcile the two witnesses’s accounts and attitudes in her mind. “But Deshawn must have seen how spooked you were by the shooting?”

“I just tole him he was better off not knowin.’”

“You wanted to protect him?” There was an audible note of sympathy in Buffy’s voice.

Carlos looked embarrassed and shrugged. “Whatever.”

“Guess he had the same idea,” Buffy commented softly.

Finished with his writing, William looked up and took over again. “I’m sure the DA’s office will want to talk to you again,” he informed Carlos. “As well as the police. If everything checks out we’ll drop the possessions charge and see about moving you somewhere secure for the time being. I don’t think I need to remind you not to talk to anyone about any of this.”

Carlos merely nodded in silent acknowledgement.

“You think of anything else, you give me a call,” William told him. As Carlos sat with his head in his hands, William stood up and used the wall phone to call back the guard.


Within five minutes he had come to fetch Carlos and Buffy and William were told to wait a few more minutes for him to return.

Turning away from the door as it closed behind Carlos, William looked at Buffy who was still sitting, one hand propped sideways under her chin and the other steadily tapping his pencil on the table. “Well, that was unexpected. How did—“ William began but was cut off by the sound of a scream from outside. He looked at Buffy, whose eyes widened as she leapt out of her chair and ran over to the door.

William managed to get out, “Hold on, Buffy,” just as she threw it open and rushed out.

Darting after her, he was confronted with a surreal scene in the hallway. He could see the guard who had left with Carlos sprawled out unmoving on the ground at the end of the hallway. Near him a large dirty blonde man in a prisoner’s uniform had Carlos shoved against a wall by back of his neck. Carlos was whimpering and trembling.

“Shut the fuck up!” the prisoner hissed at Carlos. From somewhere he couldn’t really pinpoint, William could hear the muffled sounds of running feet and metal doors and prayed that help was on the way.

Before he could yell at Buffy to stay back, she had already run the half-length of the hallway and launched herself at the man holding Carlos and brought him to the floor face down. She wrestled a makeshift weapon of some kind out of his hand while her boot heel dug firmly into his back, eliciting screams and a string of profanities from the man. Carlos sat awkwardly a few feet away, looking dazed and clutching his neck. Another prisoner suddenly appeared from around the corner and spotted the trio.

“What the fuck!” the man growled, making a beeline for Buffy, still perched on top of the first prisoner but now fully aware of the oncoming threat. She moved into a defensive posture as he approached. Things seemed to be moving insanely fast in front of William and yet he felt like hours had passed since he first started moving towards the crush to help Buffy. Finally reaching the end of the hallway, he charged forward on a rush of adrenaline to deflect the man from his path. As the man reared back William quickly brought his left elbow up level with his shoulder before smashing his fist into the side of the man’s face. He went down with a cry. Upon impact, William had to work to keep his balance.

From the other end of the hallway, a dozen guards arrived on the scene and within moments swarmed around all of them. The next thing William knew, one of them was standing directly in front of him, blocking his view. “Are you hurt, sir?” he asked, his eyes zeroing in on William’s left hand as he unconsciously fisted and flexed it.

He stopped immediately. Fighting to catch his breath, he choked out, “What? No, no. Check on the others.” The guard withdrew and went to help one of his colleague cuff the William had brought down. Looking around him with a sense of anxiety, a group of guards on his right suddenly parted and his eyes lighted on Buffy at the same moment that she spotted him.

Hurriedly walking over to him, she gave him a quick once-over, noting his more than usually pale complexion but no signs of injury. “You ok?” she asked seriously.

William nodded dumbly and watched in silence as she marched right back over to the guards and demanded to know what had happened. He heard one of them say something about a “break attempt” and then Buffy discreetly asking him to keep a watch and extra security detail on Carlos.

A suited, older man had arrived without William noticing, and he was making an announcement over the din of guards. “No serious injuries. Let’s move. We’re going on mandatory lockdown right now.” He shepherded Buffy over to William and curtly informed them, “I’ll have a guard walk you two out,” before gesturing for assistance.

Seeing that the man was clearly not amenable to conversation just then, William postponed his questions for another time.

A couple of minutes later he and Buffy were dutifully following their escort to the exit, which the guard secured as soon as they were on the other side. Buffy and William continued walking several steps until they cleared the building and then as if on cue, both stopped. Standing there, they just looked at each other for a few moments, each of them trying to process everything that had happened since they had entered the prison less than an hour ago.

Trying for a light-hearted approach to dispel the heavy mood, Buffy commented, “That’s a nice hook you got there.” Without bothering to mask the appreciation in her voice, she asked, “Where did you learn to throw like that?”

Confused and still somewhat in shock, it took William a moment before he could jumpstart his brain and respond. “Just know how to hit is all. One too many brawls back in England.” He shook his head “Never mind me, how the hell did you get that guy on the ground? And how is it that you took to the fight like it was your bloody second nature?”

“Oh, well, I am a black belt in judo,” Buffy said slowly, absorbing his questions. Then she paused, looking like she was deciding something before she confessed, “But mostly, it’s because I used to be a cop.”

Much later that day, as he was standing before his bathroom sink finally preparing for bed, William couldn’t help but return to the shocks of the morning. He hadn’t had a spare moment to mull them over since he had returned to the office and been forced to deal with unending complications in the several cases he was overseeing until sheer exhaustion pushed him out of the office four hours past closing time. But as he rubbed a wet towel over his face now, the after effects of the tumultuous day washed over him as well. After Buffy’s revelation on the sidewalk the ride back to his building had been made mostly in silence. William had wanted to talk to her but somehow he couldn’t begin. Thinking back, he knew he didn’t want to risk saying something that would alienate her more than he already had after realizing that all his initial assumptions about her suddenly seemed completely wrong. For her part, Buffy had been pensive and tense, although part of that seemed to be her natural state at the helm of a moving vehicle. Before he knew it she was dropping him off with the brief but solemn instruction to take care of himself and keep an eye on his hand for swelling. He felt a bit as if they were playing the roles of shell-shocked bystander and concerned protector, and bizarre as they were they fit. It was also comforting in a way he hadn’t experienced since he couldn’t even remember how long ago.

As William started brushing his teeth he found himself replaying every moment of his entire acquaintance with Buffy Summers. Some things, like her unusual familiarity with the process of interrogation and police handling of criminal investigations became more obvious to him now, while others, like her reasons for intervening in Dashawn’s sentencing to begin with and for insisting on hearing Carlos’s account of the night of the murder appeared less clear, less credible, even, than they had previously. He spit into the sink and wracked his brains for more clues to explain her interest in the case. William suddenly cringed as he recalled how he had misinterpreted her comments about cops being bad with witnesses and nastily told her she didn’t belong in juvenile justice the week before. His words must have grated, even if they had only inadvertently alluded to whatever it was that had happened to make her leave the force. He guessed it must have been something big and possibly traumatic that had resulted in her ending up at a non-profit, independent agency somewhat at odds ideologically with the general tendency of law enforcement. The contradictory mixture of burning curiosity and bewildered fascination William felt settled into a deeply frustrating desire for answers. But he had painted himself into a corner in his interactions with her and it would be damn near impossible to get her to open up to him about it now, he figured. He paused to reconsider his last thought. Why did he want her to open up so badly? He stared at the mirror in horror.

“What the hell’s wrong with you, mate?”


***


Two days later, William was shuffling the deck of cards in preparation for the next round when Gunn unexpectedly broached the subject that had never been far from the forefront of his thoughts since Tuesday evening.

“So how’re things going with your newest nemesis, Spike?”

“Oh yeah,” Xander broke in with a smile. “We ran into her last weekend,” he told Gunn. “Betty.”

“Buffy,” William and Wesley corrected him simultaneously.

Gunn nodded. “She still trying to run the show?”

William absently continued moving the cards in his hands Hindu-style.

“Think we’ve both lost the plot,” he said cryptically, frowning to himself. His hands stilled. “I found out she’s an ex-cop,” he told the others.

“Are you serious? That tiny girl we met at the club?” Xander asked in disbelief.

“Apparently,” William replied with a shrug.

“Intriguing,” Wesley remarked.

“Don’t they have, like, size requirements for that job?” Xander asked, still surprised by William’s revelation.

Wesley took it upon himself to answer. “Yes, a few,” he agreed. “But most of the—ah—older guidelines profiling outsized males have been ruled discriminatory,” he explained delicately.

“So how did the ex part come about?” Gunn asked William curiously. He paused, adding, “And how did the cop part come about?”

“Yeah, well you see, she told me all about it ‘cause we’re best friends,” William responded with some hostility.

“Whoa, just asking,” Gunn laughed, immediately backing off. “Touchy,” he admonished with good humor.

“Maybe she had a hard time taking down the baddies,” Xander suggested, stuck on his theme. “You know, dealing with perps,” he said meaningfully, prompting the others to wonder if he had been watching too many Law and Order marathons again.

In his mind’s eye, William saw again how she had moved with startling speed and precise force to subdue Carlos’s attacker, vanquishing the foe like some warrior princess of medieval legend. “Really don’t think that was the problem,” he said quietly.

Then William slid the deck over to Gunn. “Cut,” he directed.


***


“I can’t hear you, Angel,” Buffy repeated for the third time.

“…in the city… try again,” the choppy voice on the other end of the line was saying.

“It doesn’t work on your cell. Call me tomorrow when you’re back at the hotel, okay? Bye. Goodbye.” Feeling stupid for talking to a phantom, Buffy nonetheless tried once more for good measure. “Bye, Angel,” she said loudly before hanging up her bedroom phone.

Flopping back onto her bed, Buffy stared at the sloped ceiling. She felt restless, and the failed connection with Angel only made her more so. She briefly thought about calling Willow and Tara but decided it was too late in the evening to disturb them. She then considered contacting Amy, who was a night owl, but nixed that idea when she reasoned she would have to spend at least fifteen minutes of the phone call trying to talk her out of coming over or going out and doing something silly like cruising Robertson Boulevard or checking out Venice boardwalk for a party.

Or worse, hitting up Hustler Hollywood again.

At least she had found something useful there last time as Amy eyed the giant dildos and the skeevy video assistant trailed them around the store, Buffy remembered with a smile. The penis wrapping paper alone, not to mention the ‘his ‘n’ hers plugs’ boxed inside it, had been great for shock value at her snobby cousin Celia’s sedate engagement party at the old Sunnydale country club. Being confronted with her father’s newest secretary slash girlfriend there had driven Buffy to accept more drinks than she was accustomed to consuming, and subsequently spilling one of those cocktails on her aunt had been the last straw. She hadn’t received another invite to a fussy family function since then, not even to Celia’s wedding. Calculating in her mind, Buffy barely reacted to the dull realization that that event over two years ago was the last time she had seen her father. Her eyes were momentarily drawn to the still unopened envelope on her nightstand.

Leaping up from the bed, Buffy started pacing her well-worn berber floor. Trader Joe’s was open for another half hour, she told herself. Her fridge was bare and she could stock up for the week. It was the most reasonable and productive course of action, but she knew it wouldn’t do anything to settle her edginess. The only viable solution was to go to the basement and hit her punching bag until she had worked off all her excess energy. Maybe it could help her clear her head of the case that she really had no business pursuing anymore but couldn’t let go of. She stopped short in front of her dresser in mid-pace. Standing stock still, her fingers tentatively reached out and grazed a small frame holding the old graduation picture she kept semi-hidden at the back behind the photos of her with Angel and her friends. In it, she was sandwiched between a brunette girl with dark eyes striking a shooter’s pose and a tall man with a guileless grin who towered over her. She smiled at the image, recalling that day, a day memorable both for the achievement it signaled and also for the promise it seemed to offer. A promise of permanence and belonging that was always doomed to splinter, she supposed now, as each one had before. As she pictured the familiar place she would return to the next week, Buffy felt her heart lurch. Tamping down her emotions, she tried to reason with herself. “Knew it’d happen sooner or later,” she whispered. Abruptly turning away from the relics of her past, she grabbed her gloves from her closet and headed for the stairs.

On Monday morning, Andrew Wells jumped up and rushed to his supervisor’s office for their ritual briefing as soon as he heard the telltale sounds of his arrival. These typically included muffled swearing and the opening and slamming of his office door. As Andrew was called in today, he half-expected to see a different man than the one he had grown accustomed to for the last few months. In lieu of even a greeting today, however, he was met with the demand, “Do you have any messages from the weekend?”

Andrew’s eyes lit up. “Yes, boss. Papazian’s people called again. They want to sit down for a plea deal. Should I call them back or are we still letting them sweat it out?” he asked eagerly.

William waved impatiently. “Is that all?”

“Yes, boss,” Andrew said. “Who were we expecting to hear from?” he asked, confused about what was bothering his temperamental supervisor. He thought Spike would have been ecstatic the tide had turned so dramatically in the Papazian case, as they had gained the upper hand in a case that looked to be unwinnable thanks to the ADA’s tour de force cross-examination the previous Friday. Then again, he had never seen his boss ecstatic or even remotely joyful. His moods tended to veer between fully irate and merely peevish.

“Where’s Gavin?” William asked, ignoring his question.

“Right now?” Andrew asked timidly.

“No, an hour from now. Of course right now,” William griped. “I didn’t see him on my way in.”

“He’s probably in court already,” Andrew suggested as if it was a question. “Judge Snyder likes to start early.”

“Right.” William nodded. “Fine, you can go now.”

For the next two hours, William tried to focus on the ever-present mountain of work that required his attention. It should have been easy given what a nasty piece of work the subject of his next trial case, Warren Mears, was proving to be. But a niggling sense of uneasiness ate away at his concentration. His mind kept wandering to Buffy. He hadn’t heard a peep from her since he’d last seen her. For three days last week he had half-expected for her to appear unannounced in his office to demand he do something for her, or at least for her to call him on the phone to pump him for information. But now it looked as though the chance of either happening was increasingly slim. What he didn’t know was if she had moved on from the case or was simply done dealing with him. His gut had already made up its mind, however. Seized by an irrational urgency he didn’t care to examine too closely, he was jolted out of his state of suspended animation.

Picking up the phone, he punched in her number and extension hoping this time he’d get a live Buffy on the other end, only to slam it down in frustration less than a minute later when he got halfway through her voice mail message. He had called and hung up without leaving a message once last Friday already. Taking a minute to think, he picked up the phone and slowly dialed again. Instead of directly punching in the last three letters of her name this time he listened to the automated reading of the roster of employee names and took a guess.

“Hello, this is Doris Kroeger,” a woman’s voice answered.

“Yes, hello, this is William Pratt, from the DA’s office. I’m looking for Buffy Summers.”

“You have the wrong number, Mr. Pratt,” Doris informed him politely. “Do you want me to transfer you to her line?” she asked.

“No. I tried it already. Nobody picked up.”

A note of impatience colored the reply. “I’m not a secretary, Mr. Pratt. You can leave a message for her on her voice mail.”

William hastily responded, “I realize you’re not her secretary. That no one is—I just—can you tell me if she’s out of the office? Do you know when she’ll be back today?”

A somewhat mollified Doris disclosed, “No, I believe she has meetings and site visits almost all day today.”

“Do you know her schedule around town?” William didn’t care how desperate he sounded. “Please, I need to speak with her.”

A pause on the other end seemed to stretch on forever. Finally, Doris said, “Well, she should still be at the library right now. She had a meeting at ten.”

“The central one on Grand?”

“Yes.”

“How long was it supposed to go?” William asked, consciously keeping his tone as pleasant as he could.

“I’m afraid I don’t know. Perhaps an hour.”

“I see. Thank you, Ms. Kroeger. Thank you very much,” William said before hanging up. He looked at his watch. Ten-thirty. The library was less than a mile away, he thought. He could even walk it in fifteen minutes, as long as it would take to drive. It was worth a shot.

Within two minutes he was rapping on the door of Andrew’s office down the hallway, poking his head in and saying, “Andrew, I’m going to lunch and I’m turning off my phone. We’ll go over the opening statements for both Levinson and Mears when I get back.“

William’s paralegal looked thoroughly perplexed. “B-but it’s only ten-thirty,” he stammered.

William shrugged. “I’m hungry.” Before Andrew could reply, William was gone.


***


Outside the central library, William fished out his lighter and a pack of cigarettes from the interior pocket of his blazer pocket as he paced aimlessly up and down the parallel series of stepped walkways surrounded by lush greenery. His semi-sprint to the grand Mediterranean Revival building had left him with time to spare. As he gazed sightlessly at the ornate pseudo-Egyptian sculptures decorating the massive façade above him it occurred to him he didn’t have a plan beyond finding Buffy. Managing the beginning of a case of nerves, he decided not to overthink it. Once he saw her, he would know what to do.

A few readers seated on the low stone ledges lining the long walkways cast dirty looks at him as he chain-smoked his way through three cigarettes. The lawyer in him briefly pondered the legality of lighting up. Poised between the library entrance and the Maguire gardens, he was technically more than twenty feet away from the building and not within the city park proper, although he doubted a groundskeeper would appreciate that nicety. Smoking in Los Angeles had become an impossible proposition, which fact simply reinforced his refusal to give it up entirely. As he started on a fourth cigarette he started to worry Buffy might exit through to another street and he would miss her entirely, if he hadn’t already. He had inexplicably chosen the scenic entrance to the library, but there were two others. Perhaps it was wishful thinking. He seldom came here but since the first time he had wandered through he had thought it was the most beautiful part of downtown Los Angeles, an oasis in a concrete island.

As if on cue, Buffy came walking through the black glass doors. She turned her head up to the sky as if she was communing with the sun for a long moment before she began to make her way across the top landing and then down the first set of stairs. She wore a sleeveless white cotton shirtdress belted at the waist and beige cork espadrilles and she carried her messenger bag on one shoulder. Her long blonde hair streaming over her shoulders, she could easily pass as the quintessential California girl but William knew better. Flinging his cigarette to the ground, he leaped up two levels of stairs and then dramatically slowed his pace as he made a beeline for her.

“Well, well, Summers. Fancy running into you here. Borrow anything interesting?”

Buffy did a double-take when she saw who had accosted her. Furrowing her brow in confusion, she ignored his question and asked warily, “Are you following me?”

“Fol-lowing you?” William choked out. Hoping it had come across as incredulous rather than guilty sounding, he quickly tried to cover. “Contrary to a certain self-involved point of view, the library happens to be between our offices and other… important parts of downtown,” he bluffed.

“Okay,” Buffy said, relenting.

William cleared his throat. “But since I’ve run into you, we need to talk,” he began.

“Sorry, but I don’t have time to chit chat right now. I’m on my way back to the office and I still need to get to Long Beach today”

“No problem,” William replied smoothly, falling into step beside her as she continued her progress down the walkway. “You’re going my way.”

Realizing she wouldn’t be rid of him that easily, Buffy resigned herself to the conversation. She took a good look at him. He seemed back to his usual smug self, and he looked well, dressed in one of his customary tailored suits, but looks were sometimes deceiving. “Are you ok and everything?” she asked conscientiously.

“What?” he asked surprised. Seeing her serious expression, he assured her, “Oh, yeah. Thanks for asking,” he added, feeling slightly warm. Thinking back to the previous week, he tried to steer the conversation in a different direction. “So the whole mild-mannered juvenile justice agency manager thing is a bit of a front, eh?”

Rather than deny the truth of his statement, Buffy zeroed in on his characterization. “Mild-mannered?” she asked, amused despite herself.

“My mistake,” he chuckled. “I meant belligerent.”

Not rising to the bait, she reminded him a little impatiently, “Was there something you wanted?”

William could see this would be harder than he’d assumed. “Thought you might like to know Holtz’s body still hasn’t been recovered,” he informed her seriously.

She couldn’t help but pause for a moment mid-stride before stating grimly, “I guess I’m not too surprised.”

“So what are your plans now?” he asked, studying her carefully.

Buffy faltered. “What?” she asked. “Why would you think I have plans?” she stalled.

“Seems like you have some vested interest in this case,” he noted with confidence, pleased she hadn’t simply lied to get rid of him. “Plus you don’t seem like the type to give up easily,” he said honestly. “What are your plans now?” he asked again.

Buffy hesitated, biting her lip. “I was thinking of paying a visit to my old department.” She shrugged. “See if they’ll talk to me.”

“And where is that?”

“Southeast Division.”

William knew he shouldn’t have been surprised, as that small detail about her past life made sense of a few things, but he was still a little thrown. Or maybe he was just impressed. “So you used to cover, what, Watts and Jordan Downs and that whole area?”

“Yeah,” Buffy said guardedly as she closely measured his reactions.

William struggled to find an in. “Do you know Detective Gates? He handled Dashawn’s statement. Forrest Gates, I think.”

She shook her head. “No. Personnel can change pretty fast. I don’t know who all’s there anymore.” She wasn’t looking at him as she spoke and William couldn’t get a good read on her.

He decided just to go for it. “Well, perhaps I should join you. When are you planning to go?”

A startled Buffy stopped walking altogether. “Why?” she asked, turning to face him.

“I can back you up,” William offered.

“I don’t need back up,” she immediately replied.

“I do represent the prosecutor’s office,” he reminded her.

Buffy regarded him with visible distrust. “Since when are you helpful lawyer guy?”

William didn’t understand why she had to be so difficult. “Why are you so suspicious of me?” he asked crossly.

Buffy could hardly believe her ears. “All you’ve done since I’ve met you is second guess me, and insult me, and try to undermine me!” she thundered at him with three weeks of pent-up fury.

William was taken aback by her outburst but recovered quickly. “Not really,” he disagreed. He scratched at the back of his neck. “C’mon, you have to admit, you were a little unreasonable in the beginning with your marching orders and holier-than-thou attitude,” he said cajolingly.

Buffy raised her chin up. “Maybe you just had a problem with who was doing the ordering. That who was a her?”

It took William a second to catch the implication behind her terrible grammar. “What, you think I’m a sexist?”

Buffy couldn’t believe he had the gall to look offended at that. “The thought had crossed my mind,” she said bitingly.

“I didn’t have a problem with you because you were a woman, I had a problem with you because you were an annoying bint!”

Buffy’s face wore a twisted smile as she absorbed his latest volley. “You really missed your calling, with your people skills you could be working for the UN. Sure, it might launch Armageddon, but I’ll risk it over seeing you again,” she concluded emphatically.

“Oh, come on. I didn’t mean anything by it,” he protested, reaching out his hand to loosely grab her arm and stop her from turning away.

The hairs on her forearm stood up and her skin felt hot under his fingers. Buffy jerked her arm away. “Don’t touch me,” she cried.

“Sorry. I’m sorry,” William repeated, backing away from her with his palms up.

He looked so remorseful Buffy became embarrassed at her over-reaction. She crossed her arms. “It’s okay,” she said, feeling herself blush.

William wasn’t sure how he had managed to screw everything up so badly. “I’m a bad, rude man,” he said apologetically. He thought about her earlier words. “I wasn’t fair to you,” he agreed. He shook his head at himself. “And I’m sorry for that.” William didn’t know if he could make her understand, or if he should even try to. “I just didn’t know then,” he confessed.

“Know what?”

“That you were for real,” he said earnestly.

The way he was looking at her made Buffy uncomfortable. “Well, real is me,” she muttered uncertainly.

“Yeah, I get that now,” he said a little hoarsely. Taking in her closed body language, he ventured to suggest, ”Look, let’s call a truce, all right?

“A truce,” Buffy repeated doubtfully.

“Yeah, you know, I can help you.”

“Help me,” she repeated again.

“We worked together pretty well last week, didn’t we? We got Carlos to fess up and came out on top in the big dust-up after,” he reminded her.

Buffy sighed. “This isn’t an episode of COPS. If you want excitement, go sky diving,” she suggested.

“I’m not looking for excitement,” William replied evenly, working hard to keep the frustration out of his voice. He pulled out his trump card. “I’ve had my eye on Winters for a long time,” he informed her. “And I know he’s dirty.”

Buffy moved a step closer to William. “How do you know?”

William leaned in. “Three, four cases I seen come through the DA’s office in the last five years have had some connection to him,” he revealed. “Tangential, but documented. Securities fraud, illegal lending, you name it. Yet he was always insulated from the fallout.” There was a hardness in William’s eyes as he related the information to Buffy.

Attentive, Buffy nodded. “But it’s weird, isn’t it? That he would get involved with
someone so low-rent like Holtz?”

William rocked back and forth on his heels. “What did Carlos tell us about the pay-off to Holtz? Thirty-five grand, right? Did you know that’s just about the exact amount you need to open a cash-checking franchise?”

Buffy was now hanging on his every word. “You think Winters gave Holtz the money to do that? Open up a third shop?”

“It would be the perfect front for laundering money,” he said with conviction.

Buffy quietly took in the implications of William’s statement. Then something suddenly occurred to her. “But this isn’t even your case, is it? Gavin Park is supposed—“

“To be handling it, yeah.” He just looked at her impassively.

Buffy raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you kinda going beyond the bounds of your job?”

“I’m game if you are,” he replied, not without a hint of a challenge.

Buffy made her decision. “Fine,” she agreed. “We’ll go to the station together. See if they can tell us anything.”

“Good,” William replied with an air of satisfaction. Then he remembered. “By the way, I’m driving this time,” he informed her.

Buffy rolled her eyes.


***


“You’re kidding.” And then despite herself, Buffy asked, “What is it?”

“It’s a ’59 DeSoto. They stopped making them in 1960,” William said proudly as they came up to an enormous glossy black vehicle perfectly parallel parked on the street outside Buffy’s office building the day after their library chat. He had come to her office to pick her up so they could drive from downtown to South L.A. together.

“I guess the roads didn’t have room for more than about three of these, huh?“

William bristled. “We can’t all zip around in cute little flower power puffs, Goldilocks.”

“Don’t talk shit about Petunia,” Buffy reproved him semi-seriously as he opened the door for her.

“Oh, it’s Petunia is it,” he said, cracking a wide smile as he slid into the car from the other side.

“Well what do you call this boat?” she challenged him as she located her seat belt.

“Nothing.”

“Figures,” Buffy replied.

“What?”

“No imagination,” she said knowingly.

“Oi, I’ve got plenty of imagination,” he retorted in a leading tone.

“Sure you do,” Buffy told him in a voice one would use to humor a child.

He grunted. “You might want to pay attention here,” he said as he started the car. “Learn a thing or two? Consider it a free lesson,” he continued arrogantly, showily pulling out of his parking spot in reverse before moving forward into traffic.

Buffy wanted to just ignore him but she couldn’t help but watch out of the corner of her eye as he expertly accelerated the car, shifting gears in effortlessly fluid motion.

He forced himself to calm down and speak in a normal tone. “I noticed you have a tendency to let the clutch out too quickly when you’re shifting.”

Buffy knew she should have thought over her choice of automobile more carefully. After all, she had been lucky to pass the force’s driving exam on an automatic vehicle. She had pretty much brought herself to accept the fact that her physical coordination skills, though stellar elsewhere, failed her in a car. “I have to focus on giving it gas,” Buffy complained. “I don’t wanna stall out,” she continued in a defeated tone, her bottom lip jutting out.

A strange sensation washed over William as his eyes fixated on her mouth. He swallowed hard. “Um, ‘course not. But you don’t want to lurch forward either--‘s not safe, yeah?”

Buffy looked away and continued to sulk.

“You just remember to try to slow down a little with your left foot after you hit the engagement point and everything will be fine,” William assured her shakily. “Old cars like yours have unforgiving clutches, so it makes it more difficult to manage it all,” he added, trying to make her feel better.

Buffy sighed and watched out the window as they sped south down the 110. They drove for several minutes in companionable silence.

It was only broken by William’s request for directions as they neared their destination. As they exited the freeway, Buffy shook herself out of her deep thoughts.

With mild curiosity, she flipped through the short stack of CDs piled beside her on the seat. “The Clash, Ramones, Pistols,” she listed aloud. She glanced at him and smiled a little half-smile. “What are you, rebel without a cause?”

“’S good music,” he defended himself. “And… I like the anti-institutional message, I guess,” he admitted. “I know that’s a bit rich coming from a state employee,” he added wryly.

“No, I get it,” she commented, putting down the CDs. Watching her, William saw a far-away look come into her eyes.

He wanted to ask her what she was thinking about when she announced in a clipped tone, “Turn right. We’re here.”


***


As they passed through the metal detectors at the entrance of the station and waited in line at the busy intake counter, Buffy mulled over whom she should call for. She decided to start small and work her way up to the top. “Is Officer Faith Lehane on duty today?” she asked the weary-looking man enclosed behind glass when they made it to the front.

The man checked his online roster. “I’m sorry, miss,” he shook his head.

“What about—,” Buffy began.

“No way. Is that you, slayer?”

An amused voice that she immediately recognized drifted over the low-level din to her ears. Buffy spun around and broke out into a wide smile when she saw him.

“Riley, hi!”

“How the heck are you?” he asked as he gave her a big hug. He was so tall that he had to lean down to do so.

“Good,” Buffy answered him as she released him from her embrace. They walked a few steps away from the counter, with William following, unnoticed, behind them.

“Wow.”

William quickly sized up the man grinning like a fool at Buffy. He seemed like a typical corn-fed Midwestern type, William thought uncharitably. Not terribly bright but with heaps of bland niceness to spare. He wondered exactly what their relationship was or had been.

“How are you?” she asked.

“Can’t complain,” he replied.

Slightly abashed, Buffy said to him, “Faith told me you made Sergeant last year.” Leaning in a little, she said with feeling, “Congratulations.” Then she cheerily remarked, “I should’ve sent a fruitbasket.”

Riley looked pleased and embarrassed at the same time. “I didn’t do anything special. It was just my time.”

“You’re too modest. It’s a big deal.”

“Thanks, Buffy.” He looked like he was going to hug her again. William cleared his throat, successfully distracting Buffy.

“Oh, um, William Pratt from the DA’s office, this is Sergeant Finn,” Buffy introduced them before gracing Riley with another megawatt smile as she used his new title. Riley beamed. William simply nodded curtly at him and tried to stare him down.

Riley wasn’t even making eye contact with William. “So what brings you by the old station?” he asked Buffy.

“We’re here to see if there are any new developments in the Hamilton case,” she replied. “I--kind of got involved with it through the agency,” she explained hastily to forestall questions. “I don’t know if it’s gotten around the station?” she asked innocently.

Riley nodded. “Oh, there’s been buzz about it. But so far the body hasn’t turned up. And they swept Grape Street twice already. Last I heard from Forrest they’re fanning out the search.”

“Hope he turns up soon,” Buffy commented. But it was obvious to William she had already lost faith in the search.

“Do you want to talk to Ripper about it?” Riley asked.

“If he has time,” Buffy said mildly.

“He always has time for you,” he reassured her.

“If you say so.”

“Go on, it’ll be fine,” Riley encouraged her. “Here, I’ll get your security passes for you,” he offered, turning back to cut his way to the front of the line.

While they waited, Buffy stared at the floor and William pretended to observe the people milling around them while he surreptitiously watched Buffy. She seemed inordinately absorbed by the lines of cracked paint in the drab cement floor that she traced with the toe of her left boot. Her suddenly pensive mood was in striking contrast to the chipper attitude she had displayed during the happy reunion with the sergeant just moments before. William then noticed her breath was coming out shallowly and her hands were gripping her folded arms. He realized she was wound tight as a drum and he could only imagine what was going on inside of her.

“You ready for this?” The second the words left his mouth he regretted it.

Buffy’s head jerked up and she stared at him with wide eyes. But instead of getting angry, Buffy, if it was possible, seemed to steel herself even more against betraying any emotion. “Yes.” She nodded to drive the point home.

At that moment, Riley returned to them with passes in hand, saying regretfully, “I’ve got to round up my squad, otherwise, I’d go back in with you.”

“No problem,” Buffy assured him, clipping her pass onto her jacket. “I still know the way,” she added.

As she said it, William thought he detected a twinge of melancholy in her voice. But the next moment she was telling Riley, “It was nice to see you again,” as she briefly touched his arm.

“Don’t be such a stranger, slayer,” he replied, flashing her his toothpaste grin. Before he departed Riley gave her ponytail a little tug, which William decided was the wanker’s unimaginative version of a slap on the ass.

As Buffy led the way through the dispatch wing to her former captain’s office, William couldn’t help asking about Riley, “He your ex or something?”

“What?” Buffy asked sharply. “No. We went through training together. He was my colleague.” William didn’t understand why she seemed pissed off by his question.

She didn’t look at him again until they were standing before a door marked with the name of Captain Rupert Giles. Turning to William, Buffy said, “I’ll introduce you.” William nodded, trying to assess her feelings. She seemed nervous and William realized he hadn’t yet seen her unsure of herself like this.

After a moment of hesitation, she rapped on the door and waited for the signal to enter. When they heard it, Buffy opened the door.

As they walked in, a man in his early fifties in the middle of perusing a large open book on his desk looked up, his placid expression was replaced by one of surprise before it swiftly reverted back to a more neutral one. From his wire-rimmed glasses to the flecks of gray at his temples, Rupert Giles wore the distinguished look of an academic. But to William’s eyes there was a hardness in the line of his mouth that belied his otherwise innocuous appearance. Or perhaps he was merely swayed by the assumption that like Holland Manners, all men who rose to the top of an organization had to possess a certain capacity for ruthlessness.

“Buffy. Hello.” His tone was familiar and almost warm.

“Hey Giles,” Buffy replied softly before casting her eyes down.

“I’m surprised to see you,” he said as he quickly got up and walked over to her. Though almost as tall, he lacked the bulky frame of an officer like Sergeant Finn, and yet his presence was somehow more imposing. His movements were not free and careless like the other man’s but instead carefully calibrated.

“I probably should have called first,” Buffy said apologetically.

“Nonsense. You’re always welcome,” he immediately replied. He stood very close to her but held himself back from making physical contact. Buffy held her hands somewhat awkwardly at her sides.

“Thanks,” she said simply.

He looked at her closely. “Are you well?” he asked seriously.

“Yes. Very.” She tried to sound upbeat, even though her nerves still felt a little frazzled at suddenly seeing Giles again after so long.

“I’m delighted to hear it.” His voice seemed an understated mixture of happiness and relief and he gave her a small but genuine smile.

Buffy remembered the man at her side. “Captain Rupert Giles, this is William Pratt, from the DA’s office.”

At the mention of his affiliation, Giles became more attentive to the presence of the other person in the room. As they shook hands, Giles said, “I don’t believe we’ve met before.” William understood immediately that it was a statement actually intended as a question.

“We haven’t. I usually work white collar cases.” William decided to keep his explanation as vague as possible.

“Yes, well, that explains it. One of the few areas of criminal activity our division doesn’t excel in,” he remarked wryly. “Please have a seat, both of you,” he invited, gesturing towards chairs and returning to sit himself behind his immaculately kept desk.

“Now how may I help you,” he asked Buffy after they sat down.

“We were hoping we could talk to you about the Hamilton case,” Buffy began tentatively.

Giles took off his glasses and producing a handkerchief from his pocket, began rubbing the lenses slowly. He addressed his words to Buffy. “Of course you know that technically this is all strictly police business.” He looked at William askance. “That being said,” he continued with an ironic smile, “What would you like to know? And why, if I may ask?”

“Um, I interviewed Dashawn Richards for his disposition hearing,” Buffy explained. “The first witness? He ended up telling me about Hamilton then. After that he was turned over to the DA’s office and VCU.”

Giles stopped polishing his glasses for a moment before resuming again. “I didn’t know that,” he stated, somewhat displeased. “Your name wasn’t in the reports.”

“Minor detail,” Buffy said flippantly.

“Hardly,” he countered kindly.

Buffy remained silent.

“So your agency is responsible for the boy? He’s your primary interest?”

Buffy wasn’t sure how to answer that. “He’s Rona’s brother,” she said, knowing he would understand.

Giles put his glasses back on and studied her openly. “The girl from the Compton case,” he said.

Buffy swallowed. “The one and only.”

“I’ve not forgotten,” he replied. There was some underlying feeling in his words but whether it was disapproval or remorse was impossible to tell. “And you’ve seen her recently?” he asked curiously.

“No. But she called me about a month ago. About Dashawn. Asked me to help.”

William felt like he had just been given a clue but he still didn’t know how the puzzle fit together.

“I see.” Giles mulled that over for a moment and then said plainly, “You know that his information hasn’t panned out. We haven’t found a body. We’ve turned Grape Street inside out twice for good measure.”

“I heard,” Buffy said readily. “And I’ve been thinking about it a lot. He was so sure about Marcus’s MO, but the thing is, there haven’t been any bodies linked to him before now. What if he only said that because he knew the Crips used to dump bodies in the boarded up apartments there,” Buffy said, her words tumbling out. “He must have heard the stories, right?” she then asked, searching Giles’s face for his reaction to her theory.

A flicker of awareness dawned in Giles’s eyes. “The sins of the fathers,” he mused.

“Something like that,” Buffy replied.

William decided he had had enough with the vague allusions and familiar shorthand between Buffy and the man he assumed was her former boss. “Excuse me, but I don’t speak cryptic. What are we talking about here?” he cut in impatiently.

Absorbed in her conversation with Giles, Buffy had forgotten William was there. She sent him an apologetic look. She tried to give him only the relevant highlights of the case that ended her first career. “Dashawn has an older sister, Rona. A few years ago she—helped to turn their uncle in for three murders. He killed for one of the biggest dealers around. This guy owned fifteen blocks of prime real estate in Watts and he protected it. Anyway, Trick always used to bag the bodies and seal them in the floor boards and walls of the abandoned units.” She paused to take a breath. “Kind of a do-it-yourself carpentry project,” she summed up with mordant humor.

Giles had been silent and impassive as he listened to Buffy’s recounting of the past. He now spoke up. “It was a highly effective—technique. And it took us quite a while to uncover it.” His voice took on a much harder edge. “But can we be sure that Dashawn has not been lying about the whole thing,” he questioned. “Frankly, it worried me when we didn’t find any casings at the scene. It was why we couldn’t charge Marcus Hamilton when we had the chance. Dashawn may have an axe to grind that we don’t know about.”

“He’s not lying, Giles,” Buffy said firmly. But she looked at him with an expression of defiance.

William could see a battle of wills raged in their unspoken exchange, but he didn’t understand the man’s doubts. “Plus the other kid corroborated the story.” He tried to get the conversation back on a practical track. “So the kid thought he knew something he really didn’t. Where does that leave the search?”

“We could try to talk to Dashawn again,” Giles suggested. “Confirm if your suspicions about his initial information are correct.”

“But odds are he doesn’t actually know anything about what Hamilton did or who helped him. No, someone has to get Hamilton to talk,” Buffy stated.

“Hamilton claimed the boys made everything up. You won’t get anything out of him,” William warned her.

“They have to try again,” Buffy said adamantly. “Find his weak spot.”

“Unfortunately, that will be difficult,” Giles interjected. “You see, he’s disappeared.”

“What?” William exploded. “When?” he demanded.

Giles looked at his watch. “Roughly four hours ago,” he stated flatly. “I was informed he missed his last check-in. It’s too early to say for sure, but I expect it may be a while before we hear from him again. Of course, he could always surprise us and resurface somewhere.”

”I don’t believe this. So now there’s no body, and no perp,” Buffy summarized, deflated. “He must have gotten scared we were getting close.”

Her automatic use of the plural pronoun didn’t go unnoticed by Giles.

William cursed under his breath. “What about Russell Winters? You ready to charge him with anything?”

Giles was affronted by the strident way he was being addressed. “My officers are still investigating Mr. Winters’s alleged involvement,” he said stiffly. “They should be keeping your office abreast of any new developments.”

William was deeply displeased at the thought that Winters would get away scot-free yet again, but he had seen too many cases in his time fall apart to hold out much hope. If history was any guide, the paper trail would lead nowhere. Even if they found the check made out to Holtz, Winters was sure to have a convenient explanation for it.

“Do you have any leads on Hamilton?” Buffy was asking Giles.

“Not as yet,” he said. ”Are you… freelancing now?” he asked her with a hint of humor.

“Not really,” she replied, giving nothing away.

He looked as though he was going to say something but then he sighed. “Very well. I trust you’ll keep in touch as well should any new information arise.”

“Will do.” She signaled to William that it was time to leave. “Thanks for your time, Giles,” Buffy said as they stood up to go.

“Buffy.” He looked at her meaningfully. “Thank you for coming in,” he said softly.

She met his eyes briefly, an unfathomable expression on her face, before turning away.


***


When they came out of the station Buffy and William unhappily discovered it was raining. It wasn’t pouring yet, but it was clearly on the brink of starting.

“Stupid weather,” Buffy grumbled.

“No point in waiting,” William suggested. Buffy agreed.

Neither one of them had an umbrella so getting wet was inevitable. Buffy was glad she happened to have worn all cotton that day. William popped the felt under-collar of his suit jacket and she held her jean jacket tightly closed as they made a dash for the car.

Once safely inside, they caught their breath. Buffy dried her face off with her sleeve. She watched as William carefully smoothed his curling hair back in the rearview mirror and then removed his wet jacket.

“Too bad about your suit,” she observed sympathetically.

Untroubled, he said, “I have three more just like it.”

“I take it you’re a sucker for variety.”

He smirked at her. “Gotta stick with what looks good.”

Buffy wanted to snort but her nose was uncooperative. Plus she had to admit his English-cut suits always fit him to perfection and their hand-stitched lapels and tortoise-shell buttons screamed quality. She suspected she liked the style better than the Italian Zegna suits with heavily padded shoulders that Angel always wore.

William looked at Buffy quizzically as she seemed to have slipped off into her own world.

“You disappointed?” he asked.

“Huh?” she asked, startled out of her digressive train of thought. Focusing, she said soberly, “You heard him. Nothing but dead ends.”

“I’ll find out what Gavin’s heard,” William promised as he started the car and began the drive back to her office. “The Captain was pretty forthcoming about the case,” he noted casually.

“He knows what it means to me,” Buffy said ambiguously.

“Were you and him like a thing?” he asked, trying to sound indifferent.

“What?” Buffy asked, confused. When she got his meaning, she erupted. “Eww, no!”

“Sorry!”

“He was, like, the father I—,” she broke off, uncertain how to finish the thought. “He’s just Giles,” she finally said, shuddering and still squicked out by the suggestion that they had been a couple.

“Misread the tension,” William said, feeling a little foolish. “What was that about, then?”

“It’s just been a long time since I’ve seen him,” Buffy said. “Or anyone there.”

Thinking back to the first man they had seen, William scoffed, “Oh, right. Captain Cardboard. Forgot him already.” He raised an eyebrow and sent her a sidelong glance. “So it’s ‘slayer,’ is it?” he asked, sounding highly amused.

“It’s just a nickname,” she said, unbothered by his teasing. “Was,” she then corrected. “Don’t you have one?” she added, trying to remember something.

Half listening, he was distracted as they approached downtown. “Hmm? Oh, yeah. Spike.”

“Spike.” She said it like it was the punchline to a joke.

He frowned. “Yeah… but don’t call me that. My friends call me that,” he said, peering through the rapid movement of the windshield wiper for the right exit.

“Got it,” Buffy replied shortly, suppressing an urge to roll her eyes. She didn’t even know why she let herself feel insulted by his casual jibes.

As William got back onto the surface streets he tried to figure out how to ask her about what was really on his mind.

“You, uh, miss it?” he asked after a lengthy silence.

“What?” she asked without looking at him.

“Police work.”

“Sometimes,” she said noncommittally.

“What was your, uh, specialty before? When you were on the force?” William asked, glancing back and forth between her and the road.

Buffy set her jaw. “Homicide.”

“Is that why you wanted to see about Dashawn—,” he broke off as Buffy very deliberately turned her head to look at him. He could practically see the walls come crashing down in front of his eyes.

“I think share time is over, ok?” she said icily.

“Sure,” he said agreeably. “I didn’t mean to pry,” he tried to reassure her.

Buffy exhaled noisily.

He knew he should let it go but as usual, he couldn’t. His eyes flicked over to her. “You just seemed… dunno… sad, maybe… back there.”

To her horror, Buffy felt for a second like she was going to burst into tears. “I’m fine,” she asserted. “And I don’t need your pity,” she said with disdain.

“I wasn’t offering you that,” he countered, hurt by her dismissal.

Before he could think of something else to say they had turned the corner to her office street.

“You can just let me off here,” Buffy was saying, gesturing for him to pull over.

William panicked, unready for her to leave. “It’s raining. I’ll park and—“

“Nah, this is closer, anyway,” Buffy insisted, putting her hand on the car handle and forcing him to come to a stop. “Thanks for the ride,” she said quickly as she popped her seat belt. “See you later,” she tossed over her shoulder without looking back as she jumped out of the car and sped towards her building.

Defeated, William slumped in his seat. “Later,” he echoed, watching her through the car window until she disappeared in a blur of rain.

The next day William was carefully reviewing transcripts from his ever-growing caseload when Harmony’s voice buzzed over the telephone intercom.

“Buffy Summers is on the line for you, Mr. Pratt. Do you wish to take her call?”

Startled out of his state of deep concentration, he unselfconsciously exclaimed, “Yes!” Trying to convey more restraint, he coughed and murmured, “That is, put her through, please.”

Shaking his head at himself, he picked up the receiver and punched the button as soon as the light began blinking.

“Hello, William Pratt here.”

An uncertain voice greeted him. “H-hi William, this is Buffy.”

A little thrill went through him and he then realized it was the first time she’d ever directly called him by his name.

“Hi, Buffy.” Wracking his brain for something to say, he drew a blank, ran out of time, and hurriedly continued on. “How are you?”

“Good. Um, do you have a minute?”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay.” Silence ensued on her end.

William slowly tapped his fingers on his desk. “You still there?” he inquired curiously.

“Yeah.” He could hear her clearing her throat. “I wanted to ask you something.”

He tried not to chuckle at the effort it obviously cost her to call him for a favor. “I gathered.”

“Do you know if the DA’s office has the latest police report on the Hamilton case? I was just gonna call Gavin Park, because I know he would have it, but then I thought since you work with him, you might know. And then I thought why not call you first ‘cause Gavin Park doesn’t even know who I am, really, and you do, so maybe—”

As she rambled on he looked at the file on his desk that he’d asked for from Gavin the day before. Internally congratulating himself for his foresight, he put her out of her misery.

“Actually, I have a copy of it.”

Buffy was struck speechless for a moment before her mind started racing. “You do?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I see it?” William could hear the eagerness in her accelerated breathing. He leaned back in his chair.

“What are you going to do with it?”

There was only the slightest hesitation before she came back with the obvious rejoinder. “Read it,” she stated in a matter-of-fact tone.

He examined his nails as he considered his response. “So how would that happen?”

Buffy responded immediately. “I can come by, whenever’s convenient for you, and I’ll make a copy of it.” She paused before she hastily added, “Or I can just borrow it and give it back to you.” William almost felt bad for stringing her along. Almost.

“No.”

“But you said—”

“I only asked you how it would happen,” he pointed out, leaning forward into an upright sitting position. “I can’t let you make a copy of it, but I might be able to let you take a look at it. Though I do need to know why you really want to see it.”

“What’s the difference?” Her annoyance was audible.

“It’s my ass on the line.”

“So butt out.”

“That was almost funny, Summers. Just tell me what you’re up to.”

“You know I’m not going to do anything illegal,” she reasoned. Buffy tried another tack. “And I’m not going to get you in trouble, I swear,” she promised. “If that’s what you’re worried about.” There was the barest suggestion of a taunt in her last words.

William could see right through the game she was playing and he wasn’t going to fall for it.

“Famous last words,” he shot back, unmoved.

Buffy gave up. “Just forget it, ok? I should have known you wouldn’t help me.”

“Now hold on, I didn’t say no either. Just answer my question first.”

“I want to take a look at the crime scene,” she snapped.

Jackpot, William thought. “Now was that so hard?” He smiled to himself. “When are we going?”


***


William wasn’t sure where he had pictured Buffy living or what he had expected Buffy’s place to look like, but he had entertained a few possibilities in his mind. A loft right in downtown L.A., maybe, or a fancy condo in West Hollywood. He could have easily seen her in a beach house if Malibu weren’t so far away. So he had been surprised when she had given him a Culver City address, and even more surprised when he made his way through the sedate tree-lined streets of the city’s older residential area just a few blocks south of its revived downtown on Sunday evening and pulled up to her house. It was an authentic craftsman-style bungalow complete with overhanging eaves, dormer windows, and tapered front columns. There were lots of plants, both potted and landscaped, decorating the walkway and porch. The overall impression was lovely and very homey. It was undoubtedly still worth well over a million dollars.

It certainly wasn’t the typical place where a young single daughter of a Fortune 500 CEO lived, however. For the first time, he wondered if she was playing house with someone. As he walked up the front steps, he noted that her car was the only one parked in the driveway.

Buffy answered the door on the first ring.

“This is a bad idea,” were the first words out of her mouth.

“Good evening to you, too.”

“I think we should reconsider this,” Buffy continued, as if he hadn’t said anything.

Although she didn’t appear inclined to invite him in, William was gratified to perceive she was clearly home alone.

“Oh really? Is that why you’re dressed like a cat burglar?”

Buffy looked down at her black ankle boots, black cords, and black turtleneck sweater. She hurriedly pulled the black knit cap off her head. Her tousled blond hair gleamed in the low light of her foyer.

She made a face. “I don’t wear the uniform anymore. This is what I came up with.” She gestured at him. “Besides, you’re wearing black too.”

At her mention of a uniform, a fantasy had immediately started unspooling in his mind. With lightning speed, patchwork images of handcuffs, shiny black boots, and Buffy roughly manhandling him bombarded his brain. Silently vowing to return to it all later, he hurriedly hit the mental pause button and tried to come back to the conversation.

“You ready to go?” he asked hastily, trying to move the mission along before she decided to abort it. It had already taken a herculean rhetorical effort on his part to get her to agree to his condition for viewing the police report.

Giving in to the inevitable, Buffy sighed and said in a tone of surrender, “Just lemme get my bag.”

While she was gone, William peeked around the half-open door into her house. It was as large as it looked from outside. Beautifully preserved hardwood floors and stairs led from the foyer to a second story. Craning his neck, he caught a look through the archway to the living room of tasteful European and ethnic-inspired furnishings. Beige damask sofas somehow harmonized with lacquered Asian end tables and African masks hanging on the walls. He was momentarily taken aback by a particularly striking one covered in chipped red paint with vicious wooden teeth that seemed through its cut-out eyes to glare at him.

He darted back to the other side of the door as Buffy reappeared, stuffing what looked like a few metal tools into her already bulging messenger bag before joining him outside.

Minutes later, as they drove by the bright lights of the Kirk Douglas Theater on Washington Boulevard to get to the 405, William cast about for a good opener and settled on the obvious.

“You like living in Culver City?”

She shrugged and looked out the window at the busy street. “There’s lots more restaurants these days,” she said affably. “We even have our own celebrity chef now.”

William was puzzled by her response. Before he could ask why she had chosen the westside suburb, she was asking him a question.

“Where do you live?”

He thought about how unimpressive his home was compared to hers, with its sterile white walls and grey pile carpeting. “Uninspiring apartment in your typical mid-sized complex near the Mormon temple.”

“Do you like it?” she asked conversationally.

William wasn’t certain she was actually listening to him. He tried a different approach. “I moved there after law school because Gunn and Xander, whom you met, were living there. It’s close to Century City, where Gunn works.” He couldn’t quite hide his disappointment as he told her, “’Course now they’ve both left the neighborhood.”

“But you’re still there.”

“Yeah.” He paused to consider why. “Just can’t be bothered to move, I guess. One place is as good as any other in Hell-A.”

“That’s one way to put down roots,” she replied, clearly unimpressed.

He studied her skeptically. “Is that what you’re trying to do? Don’t get me wrong, your place is nice enough but the Cleaver community is a bit much, isn’t it?”

There was a blank silence before she said, “I’m living in my mother’s house.”

Even though she was sitting right next to him, her voice sounded as though it was coming from far away. William suddenly felt like an atheist who had just stepped into a church.

“Oh. So she’s—”

“Dead,” Buffy said flatly.

William silently cursed the fact that somehow everything out of his mouth seemed to cut her in the most insensitive way possible.

“Sorry.” His fingers scraped the dashboard mercilessly. “Um, mine too.”

“Great, we can start a club,” Buffy said sarcastically. She wasn’t looking at him again.

As he pulled the car onto the freeway, William debated trying to smooth things over but figured he’d do best to just give her what she wanted at this point.

Buffy started when William suddenly reached over and popped open the glove compartment. “I put the police report in here,” he explained. Buffy pulled out the rubber-banded manila envelope. “I can put on the overhead light for you,” he offered.

Her eyes were riveted to the stack of paper she was removing. “Nah, I’ve got it.” She fished a large flashlight out of her bag. “Thanks.”

As they sped towards downtown, he left her to her absorbed reading and shuffling.

Once they exited the freeway, they began to make their way through the seedier urban boulevards and side streets of South Central. For the first few blocks, they passed lingering pedestrians in front of the closed shops and only a few other vehicles on the road.

As they neared the tower blocks of Watts, the traffic increased and they didn’t go unnoticed by the local population. A couple of cars filled with cruising teenagers whistled at the De Soto and watched as they drove by.

“Way to make with the inconspicuous,” Buffy groaned.

“You really think yours would have been better? Rolling up in ‘Herbie: Fully Loaded?’”

“Why don’t we drive Civics?” she lamented.

“Maybe ‘cause we actually have personalities. C’mon, we’ll fit right in with all the Lincolns and Cadillacs.”

Buffy’s lips twitched. “They’re not uncommon,” she admitted.

William grinned.

“Okay, pull up here,” Buffy directed as they turned the corner on Alameda.

Turning to her as he put on the parking brake, William stopped short as he was caught in her gaze.

She wore what he had come to recognize as her most serious expression, the same one he had seen when she had come over to check on him after the scuffle at the jail. “So listen, I should probably tell you I’m packing.” Buffy patted the flap of her bag.

“What?” an uncomprehending William asked, effectively destroying the solemnity of the moment.

“You know, ‘packing.’” Buffy rolled her eyes, whether at him or herself she wasn’t quite sure. “Heat?” She spelled it out for him. “I’m armed.”

“Oh.” William looked at her bag with the icon of a cartoon monkey gaping back at him and was struck by the incongruity of it all. “You just keep it in your messenger?”

Misinterpreting his question, Buffy defensively informed him, “I have a license to carry a concealed weapon. Even as a—civilian.”

William blinked. “I have no doubt.”

She moved back into her public servant persona. “I’m sure nothing’s gonna happen. I just thought you should know.”

“Yeah. Well, thanks. For telling me.” As the words came out, William had the sinking feeling that this was his dominant other mode with Buffy—tongue-tied and apt to blather inanities that came across as insincere. No wonder she couldn’t stand him.

She looked at him oddly before suggesting as they exited the car, “If anything weird happens, just follow my lead, ok?” She was wary he would protest, but William simply nodded dumbly and seemed content to walk along beside her as she located the alleyway two blocks down from where they had parked. The immediate area was mostly deserted, and as Buffy moved forward purposefully, she was hopeful that they might carry out their visit undisturbed.

“Looks like this was it,” she announced as they entered the alley in question.

From where they stood, they had a dim view of the dark lane.

“What the hell happened here?” William asked as they moved deeper into the street towards its lighted backsection.

The alley boasted an ample mess of garbage, apparently both indigenous and imported. Alongside tin cans and open Styrofoam trays of rotting food, the remains of a couple of neon pylons that had been ripped apart littered the ground and barricade tape was haphazardly strewn about everywhere.

“Public crime scenes have the shelf life of Wonder bread in this town,” Buffy told him.

“I can see that.”

As she studied the area illuminated by the errant glow of a streetlight from some distance away, the obvious reason why she had wanted to come down here after sundown finally sunk in for William. She wanted to approximate the conditions of the night in the alley as Dashawn and Carlos had experienced it.

Angling her head towards the sole source of light, Buffy slowly turned around in a circle to do a 360-degree scan of the alley from the perspective of a potential shooter. It occurred to her that it was not a place likely to attract much attention. The few back windows that looked onto the street were mostly barred. Even if someone had seen something, they would be extremely reluctant to cooperate with law enforcement. The police report had indicated that interviews conducted with neighboring residents had gone nowhere. Unlikely as it seemed, the possibility of premeditation couldn’t be ruled out entirely. It certainly had the advantage of helping to explain the untraceable disappearance of the body.

Breaking out of her reverie, she set about getting to work.

“Can you do something for me?” she asked William.

He tried not to sound too eager. “Sure.”

“Follow me.” He followed her back down the alley to the cross street where they had entered.

“Stand—here,” Buffy directed, gesturing towards a spot on the corner. “Let me know as soon as you can see my face from here, okay? And um, let’s try not to attract attention. Just wave to me when I’m fully visible.”

“No problem.”

Buffy flicked off her flashlight and headed back down, slowing as she reached the lighted perimeter. She turned to face him and they communicated through semaphore. William watched as she paused every few moments to make chalk markings on the ground.

“Okay,” she called out when she was finished. William walked back down the alley to join her.

Buffy spent the next fifteen minutes poring over the area within the circumference of her markings with her flashlight. She knew the CSI unit had taken a few ground fragments with blood splatter for processing, but given that a two-minute survey of any alleyway in the city would yield that kind of sample, she figured it didn’t hurt to check again with an eye for less obvious clues.

William stood outside the chalked circle silently observing her. He wanted to help but didn’t know how to except possibly by staying out of her way. Crouching down over a crack in the asphalt, Buffy pulled on a pair of latex gloves from her bag and started sifting through some debris. He couldn’t help but wince as he watched her handle what looked like broken glass and God knows what else.

As Buffy worked the area over, William remained fixed on her figure, catching flashing glimpses of her between the shadows. In her body language, he read a level of focused determination that unexpectedly moved him. He imagined he shared the sense of that dead seriousness of purpose, although in his own field of work it had always tended to be motivated by anger. He wondered what motivated her, if it was the same thing or something else altogether.

After many minutes of further examination, Buffy finally let out a dissatisfied breath and ripped off her gloves.

William ventured over to her. “What are you looking for, exactly?”

Buffy looked distractedly up at him as she stood up. “Nothing. Anything. I don’t know.”

“Well, that’s enlightening.”

Buffy threw her hands up. “You’re the one who wanted to tag along,” she reminded him testily. “Time wastage comes with the territory. It is the territory.”

William didn’t want to go down this road. “Hey, I’m not complaining, here. Just trying to understand what you’re after. Haven’t the police already gone through here?”

“Sure they have,” Buffy agreed, crossing her arms. She scanned the ground. “But… sometimes, when you already know you won’t get impressions or trace evidence, your search for physical evidence becomes kinda…” One arm came untucked from its crossed position to gesture vaguely in the air.

“Cursory?”

“Yeah.” She paused, thoughtful. “Especially outdoor shootings. If you don’t find casings, you think there’s nothing else.”

“But?” he asked, sensing she had more on her mind.

She had started prodding at some dirty textile remnants on the ground with the toe of her boot. “It is nearly impossible that there would be no usable evidence from a crime scene. The problem that remains, then, is how to find it.” She suddenly sounded like she was quoting a textbook, or maybe a motivational speaker on forensics.

“So what now?”

Switching gears, Buffy began rifling through her bag, unearthing a few pages of the report that she’d tucked into it.

“Phase two,” she announced. “Let’s block it out.” Unexpectedly, she then asked him, “How tall are you?”

William briefly considered exaggerating, but given the circumstances, thought better of it.

“‘Bout five nine.” He paused. “And a half,” he added.

“Average height,” Buffy noted to herself as she studied a page of the report. “That’ll do.”
William scowled in the dark.

“You be Holtz, and I’ll be Hamilton,” she informed him.

William bristled. “Oi, how about you be Holtz, and I’ll be Hamilton.”

She looked at him as if he’d just grown an extra head. “What?”

“I don’t see why I have to be the victim,” he griped.

Buffy’s patience, never in oversupply, instantly evaporated. “This is pretend,” she said, her voice rising.

“So you pretend you’re dead.”

“Let’s just remember which one of us has the gun, shall we?” She shot him her best menacing glare. Even in the poor lighting her intention was communicated.

William huffed. “Nice, Summers. You always resort to threats to get what you want?”

“Only when I have to,” she retorted primly. “Now—stand over there.”

“Fine,” he muttered.

Trudging over to the area she had indicated, William watched as Buffy kneeled on the ground and dug in her bag. This time she pulled out a clunky piece of equipment about a foot long that appeared to be composed entirely of metal brackets and rods. As she set it deliberately down on the ground he could see that the base of it opened like a tripod.

“Hamilton is six two.” Buffy did some mental math. “So I need eight.” She turned a knob and a retractable metal tube with brackets attached on opposite sides was raised. As she unfolded them, the brackets locked into an interlaced horizontal position. The end result seemed to be a kind of open-frame metal platform of adjustable height. She stood up and tested her weight on it with one foot.

“Nifty contraption,” William observed.

Buffy couldn’t help herself. “Isn’t it neat?” she agreed. “Never thought I’d use this again.”

William smiled at her enthusiasm. “You got to keep it?” he asked before realizing what he was saying. When he did, he wanted to kick himself.

Luckily Buffy didn’t seem bothered by the reminder. “Huh? Oh no, my friend Oz made this for me ‘cause I used to complain about my height for figuring out trajectories.” She pointed to the reinforced tripod legs. “See, part of it’s actually a converted music stand.”

“Ah. Cool.” He wondered what kind of friend would build specialized equipment for her.

“One more thing.”

She dug in her bag and pulled out a metal tape measure.

“Hold this,” she directed. William accepted it dutifully.

She located her smart phone in the back pocket of her bag. To William’s surprise, she unlocked it and began clicking through the utilities menu.

“Who you gonna call?” William stopped short. “That line’s not really usable, is it?”

Buffy shot him a little smile. “Nope. And nobody.” She showed him her phone screen. “Compass function.”

“Ah.”

“Okay, here we go.”

Buffy stepped up onto her platform, and assumed a shooter’s pose as she faced William.

She tapped him on the chest. He couldn’t so much feel as sense the heat of her whole body above him. The scent of her shampoo tickled his nose but was just out of reach. He knew it was probably just her nearness, but he idly wondered if a kink for role-playing murder scenes was an established fetish or if it constituted a whole new contribution to the oeuvre.

“Measure the height?” she requested.

“Oh. Sure.” Relieved to have something else to focus on, William quickly pulled out the metal tab of the tape. It hit the ground with a clang.

“To about here. Within three.”

“All right.” William squinted at the tape. “Five feet two inches.”

“Kay.”

She looked at her phone screen. “Two-thirty-eight southwest.” In a flash she had hopped off her riser and was making a beeline for the far side of the alley, following her marking. Halfway there, she suddenly whipped around but continued moving backwards towards the wall.

“Stay put,” she unnecessarily ordered William.

He couldn’t help but grin. “Aye, aye, captain.”

From a distance, William could just make her out, now chalking a wall. The next minute she was back, and had reassumed her perch above him.

“Okay, now keep facing me, but move slowly to your left.” William complied. As he moved, Buffy also turned her body to follow his path.

“Okay, stop.” She craned her neck back to observe the angle from which the only source of light streamed in.

“I don’t think your face would be visible from the street anymore, do you?”

William glanced towards the end of the alley. “Yeah, don’t think so,” he agreed.

She turned to her phone screen again. “Fifty-five northeast.” Neglecting this time to remind him not to move, Buffy headed back to the far side of the alley from her new direction. William observed that the length of distance she was marking off covered a good eighty feet, which included an old enclosed garage space and a wooden shed-like structure among the few nondescript buildings.

Buffy began her sweep, holding her flashlight in her left hand while she read the stucco and brick surfaces with the fingers of her right as if was a Braille text. William slowly paced a short distance behind her, keeping one eye on her progress and one eye on the quiet street. Once, she stopped and broke off her search to do a rapid re-scan of a patch of ground behind her again. The second time she moved away from the wall, William asked her what she was looking for.

She jerked her head for him to follow her back to the wall. Crouching down, Buffy then shone the light on a patch of brick wall and directed his attention to a small triangular indentation in it. Tracing it with her finger, she calmly said, “See, this is probably a bullet hole.”

William could only manage a surprised “What?”

“It’s probably not from Hamilton’s gun,” she hastily explained. “This is too low. And the angle is weird.”

“Oh.” A deflated William absorbed this new information.

“The report mentioned one marking.” Pausing, Buffy added with a trace of satisfaction, “I’ve found two so far.”

William felt himself share her small sense of triumph. “So we know they weren’t that thorough.”

Buffy nodded and returned to her task. Ten minutes must have passed while she meticulously pored over the dilapidated shingles of the makeshift shed. If there was anything new to be found, it was likely to be here, he supposed.

When she got to a narrow gap between the buildings, William watched her slip through and work her way methodically up and down a short stretch of the perpendicular wall. Around a window, she ran her fingers lightly along the edges of the frame up to its mid section. She repeated this action several times, returning to feel a particular spot just above eye level each time.

Apparently finished with her manual inspection, she stood unmoving and continued studying the spot closely with a flashlight. When she got on her tiptoes to get a better view from above, William decided to interrupt her.

“What is it?” he asked as he approached.

She spoke in a low voice. “I think there’s something here.”

“What?”

“Not sure.” She shined the light directly on a high spot where the window met the frame and moved back so that he could see. Leaning forward to see the spotlighted section, William could make out a depression in the frame. It looked as though something was embedded in the rotting wood.

From where he stood, William caught what might have been a metallic glint. “A nail?” he guessed.

Buffy strained upwards on her tiptoes. “I can’t see it from above,” she said, disappointed.

He turned to peer through the window. “What is this place?” he asked.

Buffy put the flashlight flat against the filthy window and they got a hazy view of an empty room with the abandoned remains of whatever had once been its purpose lying on the concrete floor.

William and Buffy spoke simultaneously.

“Is that a barbell?” he asked.

“An old gym, maybe? There was one somewhere around here that closed like four years ago,” Buffy remembered.

Turning her attention back to the frame, she tried to figure out a way to get at the section she was interested in without disturbing its potential contents. Retrieving her Swiss army knife, she used a small blade and began to try to cut it away from the brick wall, starting at the mitered joint at the bottom. Unfortunately, her blade was too dull and she couldn’t effectively cut through even the old wood.

After several of her futile attempts to make any headway towards her goal, a frustrated William broke in.

“You’re never gonna get it that way, pet.”

Buffy glared at him. “What would you suggest?”

Shrugging, he looked around on the ground. Spotting a large broken brick shard, he picked it up and moved her aside. Without further warning, he smashed it high against the frame, shattering some of the old glass housed within it in the process.

Buffy was horrified. “Oh my god, I was wrong.” She shook her head at him. “This isn’t COPS, this is Keystone Kops.”

“Got the job done, didn’t it?” William asked cockily, gesturing towards the split wood frame, now conveniently unloosed from its attachment to the wall.

Letting out a disbelieving grunt, Buffy inspected the remnants of the window. Gingerly, she gave the broken strip of the frame a good tug, pulling it down like a ledge and then inspected her prize still embedded intact within it below the point of break.

“Huh. Nice work,” she grudgingly admitted.

“No problem,” he replied, sounding all too pleased with himself.

Buffy whipped out a pair of tweezers and handed William the flashlight.

It was like a surgical operation. As he illuminated the spot, she gently pried apart the shredded wood around the object she was after.

As it came into view, Buffy noted, “It’s definitely not a nail.”

“I’ll be damned,” William muttered as she carefully plucked out a deformed bullet.

Buffy held her tweezers up to the light, peering at it. She rotated it slowly to inspect it from all angles.

“Full metal jacket,” she observed.

“What’s that mean?”

She furrowed her brow, eyes still on the bullet as she answered his question. “Old school ammo. Rips right through the body. Not like the new designer stuff.”

Their eyes were drawn back to the bullet as if by a magnetic force.

Thinking over their improbable quest, the enormity of the discovery sunk in for William. “This is incredible.” He gazed at her. “Isn’t it?”

“If it’s the bullet that killed Holtz,” Buffy qualified. She stared at the bullet critically and her lips pushed out in an expression of doubt. “It could just be a stray that’s been stuck here since the 80s.”

“I think we caught a break,” William said confidently.

She cocked her head at the bullet as if it were speaking to her. “The probability of a nearly impossible event is greater than zero. This means that sooner or later it will happen.” Once again, she sounded like she was reciting someone else’s words.

He decided to push his luck. “And who said that?’

She shrugged. “Giles.”

He paused a moment to consider his next words. “He trained you well.”

A ghost of a smile crossed her face. “Maybe.”

Silence descended for a moment.

Then William gestured towards their prize. “So you gonna turn that in? If you don’t want to go back and have to explain yourself to the Captain, I could do it for you.” Buffy didn’t see him looking at her hopefully.

“Nah, neither one of us can deliver it directly.” Thinking of Faith, she checked the time and said, “But don’t worry, I know someone who will help.”

He’d never fully appreciated the beauty of it. William stared, entranced by his blooming onion. The delicate, golden slivers formed concentric rings of petals. Layer after layer after layer. Would he ever penetrate through to the inner core? He shook his head to clear it of his jumbled thoughts.

“Hel-lo?” Sitting, next to him, Xander was hailing him back to earth with a perplexed smile on his face.

“What?” He noticed Gunn was now standing in front of him.

“Do you want another beer?” Gunn asked, jerking his thumb in the direction of the bar inside. “I’m gonna go grab one.”

Seeing his nearly empty glass before him, William nodded appreciatively. “Thanks, mate.”

As Gunn departed, William turned to Xander who addressed him half-questioningly, “You are so out of it lately, man.”

“Sorry.” He drained the last of his beer.

“Excuse me, are these seats free?” a melodious female voice floated above them.

William looked over to see a curvy redhead and a tall brunette standing by the adjoining table to their own in the brasserie’s crowded porch.

“Absolutely,” he replied, flashing a smile as he gallantly pulled the metal chair next to his own out for the redhead.

“Thank you.” Once seated, she leaned over slightly towards their table, making eye contact with both men to comment, “It’s so crowded inside.” She giggled in embarrassment. “This is our first time here. I’m Virginia, by the way, and this is my friend Amanda.”

“I’m Spike. And this is my friend, Xander.” As the quartet shook hands, William sized both women up quickly.

They presented contrasting female types. Virginia was short and voluptuous with curly red hair that reached past her shoulders and was lushly styled. Wearing a filmy ochre top and skirt that complimented her hair, she seemed dressed for a date rather than a casual dinner with a friend. Amanda was tall and thin, with pleasant features and hair a mousy shade of brown parted down the middle and blown stick straight in a style that was too severe to be flattering. Her pencil skirt fit her too loosely to be sexy and she was too flat-chested to fill out her sweater set in a way that suggested anything but that she might be an actual librarian.

“So do you guys work nearby?” Virginia asked casually after they had all exchanged greetings.

William immediately understood the question as one designed to suss out whether he and Xander had studio jobs at the big movie lot nearby—to discover, in other words, whether or not they were big game or just a passing distraction.

“Nope,” he replied decisively, looking her directly in the eyes. Any disappointment she may have felt was well masked.

“Neither do we,” she replied brightly. “I wish we did, though. The only place to eat where we work is Souplantation,” she said, wrinkling her nose in distaste.

“Not my kind of liquid lunch,” Xander agreed, toasting Virginia with his beer as she giggled.

As she chatted animatedly with Xander, William observed both women surreptitiously. Virginia projected an alpha female vibe, while Amanda exuded an air of suppressed shyness in keeping with her demure appearance. William cynically suspected she was the appointed sidekick, carefully selected by Virginia not to detract too much attention away from herself.

As William considered relationships of convenience, the two women were caught up in an exchange over a large white card Amanda had picked up from the table and was apparently not relinquishing.

Shaking her head at her friend, Amanda regretfully informed her, “No, this is just an ad for some club, Ginny.”

Virginia frowned. “Oh. No menu? How quaint.” She turned back to the two men. “Um, do you guys know how it works here?” she asked with a coy tilt of her head.

William nodded and absently drummed his fingers on the side of his empty glass. “So, the waiter’ll come round eventually if you want to order food. They only serve their gourmet house burgers and fries and the odd appetizer,” he explained. “And drinks you have to collect yourself up at the bar.” He inclined his head in the direction of the interior of the restaurant.

Her gushing smile was a disproportionate reward for his explanation. “Oh, thank you, Spike.” Turning to her friend, she exclaimed, “It’s so intimidating inside. We’ll have to brave it together, I guess, won’t we?” She laughed airily as she shifted in her chair, positioning her body so that it was angled towards the two men. Making eye contact with William, she fondled her throat with her fingers and widened her big brown eyes at him expectantly.

Reading her signals clearly, William sighed internally and briefly contemplated whether or not he should do the gentlemanly thing, which was also to make the required first step to advancing in Virginia’s good graces. In his experience, women like Virginia set their sights on him when they were looking for some reassuring affirmation of their sex appeal while on their quest to land the man who would provide them the lifestyle of spa appointments and philanthropic board meetings that they coveted. William was always ready and willing to provide the requisite service and flattery in exchange for the welcome relief they offered to the taxing condition of being male.

Tonight he felt rather disinclined to play waiter boy for chivalric or any other reasons, but he was still willing to make the concession to her demands. Just as he was about to take the girls’s drink orders, Virginia launched a second strike for attention.

“Gosh, I hope they haven’t forgotten about us outside here,” she commented, gesturing towards the outside serving station. “We do a two-hour pilates class after work so we’re simply famished.” She noticed his plate of food for the first time. “Oh, is that a fried onion?” she asked eagerly.

Sensing the danger, William immediately inched his plate closer to him. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Xander’s eyes practically bulge out of his head.

Virginia’s face contorted in indignant surprise for a split second before settling into a tight expression of blank neutrality. Shooting Amanda a meaningful look, she exchanged some silent, speedy communication with her friend. When she turned back to William, he could see from the decisiveness of her demeanor that she meant to cut her losses. He was mildly impressed by her ruthless calculation.

“You know, I think we’re gonna go inside and see if we can’t speed things along. And it’s kind of chilly out here.” She rubbed her hands up and down her arms as if to prove her claim. “See you guys later.” Flashing him a fleeting brush-off smile, Virginia got up and proceeded to leave with Amanda awkwardly toddling after her.

William sent her a crooked smile. “Have a nice night.”

When the women were out of earshot, Xander turned to William and asked incredulously, “What the hell was that?”

“What?” William asked irritably.

“Have you totally lost your mojo, man?”

“Oh, did I miss something?” an amused Gunn asked, cutting in to the conversation as he plunked down his spoils from the bar and resumed his place at the table. Crossing his arms, he smiled widely and sat back to observe what he hoped would be an entertaining exchange. “Please, don’t let me interrupt.”

William scoffed at Xander’s suggestion as he grabbed his beer. “A likely story. It was obvious she wanted to be chatted up. Just—wasn’t interested.”

Xander shook his head. “Dude, at this rate you’re gonna get a mandatory induction into a monastery. What’s it been, like four months since you went home with that casting agent from the Brig?

William sent him a withering stare. “You really keeping a sexual diary of my nightly activities, Harris?” he challenged him, at once snide and humorous.

Gunn laughed out loud. “Yeah, that isn’t gay at all.”

“It’s not gay,” Xander sputtered. “It’s—it’s male camaraderie.”

Gunn pointed a fry at him. “You’re just lucky you didn’t say bonding.”

Wanting to drop the subject and anything resembling it altogether, William tried to move the conversation onto a new topic. “So, eh, it’s all right here, innit? You guys like it?” Leaning back in his chair, he gestured at their urban chic surroundings.

Diverted from the subject of his friend’s waning sexual prowess, Xander looked up and was momentarily dazzled by the row of hanging lights on the porch awning. Turning his gaze to the mass of patrons, he offered slowly, “Sure, it’s—bigger than the one on Montana, I guess.”

“Less noisy,” Gunn observed.

“Scenic outdoor seating, check,” Xander added. “But—it’s different,” he concluded, giving common expression to the mildly unpleasant feeling of having one’s comfort level with unfamiliar places tested.

“Right.” Absorbing their unenthusiastic assessments, William suddenly felt a little foolish.

Xander looked down at his empty plate and felt slightly bloated by the memory of his dinner. “Same burgers, thank God.” He scratched his head. “Why’d you want to come to this one?” They had frequented My Father’s Office for the last two years after he had discovered their gourmet barbecue sauce, but they had always stuck with the one in Santa Monica.

“Just novelty, I s’pose. Thought we should see the latest incarnation of it.” William tried not to think about the fact they were a stone’s throw away from Buffy’s neighborhood.

Gunn surveyed the array of restaurants and designer furniture stores across the street that had colonized the area once dominated by the old Helms bread factory. “Culver City has changed,” he remarked, shaking his head. “I remember when this place used to be a dump,” he seemed to reminisce fondly.

”Yeah?” William asked curiously.

“Yeah, my cousin lived round here. Used to give me grief because I was a Valley boy.” Gunn chuckled. “He was in this poser gang with more attitude than game. It was always, ‘C.C., brother.’” As Gunn imitated his cousin’s words in a gruff voice, he reproduced the gang sign with his hands, making two c-shapes and crossing them so one was facing backwards and one forwards, forming an x.

William was skeptical. “Isn’t that the Chanel logo?”

Gunn grinned widely. “Like I said, they weren’t exactly the Crips.”

“Chanel?” Xander challenged William in faux-shock.

Not missing a beat, William hit back in his best condescending tone, “What can I say, I’m a sophisticated man of the world. Wouldn’t expect an American such as yourself to understand, whelp.”

“Wolfram’s new fashion division almost got a corporate contract with Eres last year,” Gunn sighed to himself.

Xander feigned offense at William’s dismissal. “Oh, you think I lack cultural capital? I’ll have you know I’m overflowing with the currency of the nouveau—no, no…” Xander held up a finger, considering his words. “That would be the old riche,” he concluded triumphantly.

“Nice save,” Gunn praised him.

Adopting a pompous Masterpiece Theatre air, Xander informed them, “Yes indeed, I’ll have you know that I have, in fact, recently become a patron of the arts. I am now the proud owner of a limited edition Lothar von Falkenleuschen print.” He struggled heroically through the Germanic pronunciation.

William managed to keep a straight face while Gunn laughed silently. “And pray tell. Who is that?”

“Oh, he’s an up and coming art photographer. Yep, an up and comer. His specialty is taking pictures of medieval torture devices that—and I quote—‘cunningly evoke the harmony of universal geometric shapes.’” By the end of his explanation Xander had devolved back to his normal self and was reflecting on the absurdity of his recent foray into fine art. “Because everybody needs a breaking wheel in their bedrooms, don’t they?”

“Sounds about right,” William agreed.

“Did Anya talk you into this?” Gunn asked, open-mouthed.

“Of course she did. We bought it down here, actually—at one of those galleries on Washington Boulevard.”

“How much did that set you back?” Gunn asked curiously, ever the financially savvy one of the group.

“Fifteen hundred big ones,” Xander replied with a mixture of awe and terror in his wide eyes.

Gunn whistled. “That’s a chunk of change.”

“And almost a week’s worth of blood, sweat, and tears. But hey, she paid half,” Xander joked hollowly. Picking up his coaster, he flipped it between his fingers and then tapped it against the table distractedly. “And speaking of Anya,” he awkwardly segued, “I, uh, I think she wants to get engaged.”

William raised an eyebrow but remained silent.

“Really,” Gunn responded, shocked but not surprised.

Xander continued fiddling with his coaster. “Yeah, she keeps dropping hints that a diamond ring is the perfect gift for a thirtieth birthday,” he told them nervously. “And she’s not talking about the De Beers’s right-hand girlpower deal. More the graduation with an M.R.S. degree trophy.”

Unusually inspired to social commentary, Gunn shook his head disapprovingly and said, “They’re all blood diamonds, dude.” Seeing his friends’s surprised looks, he then cracked a smile and shrugged. “I learned that from Kanye.”

“The king of bling himself,” William snorted and took a sip of his beer.

Momentarily intrigued, Xander grasped at straws. “Do you think she’ll believe I’m ethically opposed to buying her a ring?” he asked hopefully.

“Good luck with that. So her next birthday? Isn’t that in November?” Gunn asked.

“Every year,” Xander said wearily.

William studied his friend critically. “You don’t want to marry her,” he bluntly stated his question.

“Well, it’s just… it seems like she’s on some kind of schedule, you know? Like we’re supposed to be in lock-step with her accounting school friends.” As he spoke, Xander looked unseeing towards the windows of the bar and then back at his hands. He dropped the coaster he’d been handling. “When they moved in with their boyfriends, she wanted us to live together. And I was fine with that,” he added as if he was defending himself against an unspoken accusation. “Now her best friend Hallie’s engaged, so…”

“I hear you,” Gunn nodded. “The female countdown to matrimony. Once that clock starts ringing, you can’t hit snooze.”

Xander didn’t seem to really be listening to him, focused as he was on his dilemma. “We’ve only been living together for three years. Everything’s great. Why do we need to rock the boat? Why can’t things just be easy?” It seemed a question for the universe.

A stray line of Auden flitted through William’s mind. “‘We would rather be ruined than changed.’” He didn’t realize he’d said it aloud until he saw Xander’s flabbergasted expression, directly squarely at him.

“What? What’d you say?”

“Hmm? Nothing, sorry.” William rubbed his forehead. He knew he had nothing to really offer his friend. He tapped his fingers on the table. “You’re in a real pickle, mate.”

As if by silent agreement, Gunn and William resumed eating as Xander hunkered down in his seat and stared morosely into his beer.

Chewing thoughtfully on an onion sliver, William recalled that from the first he’d heard about her from Xander, Anya had struck him as a go-getter and a bit of a ball-buster, an impression that had only been enhanced by subsequent observations of her in person. By contrast, his friend’s tendency to let things happen to him, coupled with his troubled family background, made it difficult for him to really know what he wanted or how to go after it. He had spared himself from having to make some big decisions by simply following her reliable lead.

They had met at a bar where Xander used to bartend sporadically on the night that Anya and a group of classmates were celebrating passing their CPA exams. On their first date she had told Xander over the appetizer course that she was ready to have sex with him. The next morning she had informed him if he was going to be her boyfriend he needed to move out of his parents’ basement in West L.A. and find a job that didn’t have him working until three a.m. Through her client connections, he had gotten one contracting job, and then another, and then another until he was a partner at a medium-sized firm.

Their entire five-year relationship had developed out of that Pygmalion dynamic and one couldn’t argue with success, William supposed. Xander was successful and he was happy. The only problem was, he didn’t know how to make himself believe he could make it last. And Anya couldn’t singlehandedly change that for him as she had everything else.

Xander looked up expectantly from his beer at his friends, startling William out of his meditation. “Any thoughts?”

William just shook his head in response.

Gunn sent him a sympathetic grimace. “Better start saving up, Mr. Riche-y Rich. November’ll be here before you know it.”

As Xander sighed the sigh of the resigned, William turned his attention once again back to his onion.


***

Sprinting down the stairs, Buffy made it to the front door after the first ring and threw it open to reveal Willow and Tara on her porch, wearing matching smiles and carrying what appeared to be multiple plastic and paper grocery bags between them.

Buffy greeted them enthusiastically. “Hey guys! Come in. It’s been forever. How was Santa Barbara?”

“Oh, we had a super time,” Willow chirped brightly. “So beautiful.”

“Really? What did you do?” she asked as they entered her house.

Her two guests turned toward each other in the foyer. Talking over one another, they collectively remembered the highlights of their recent vacation. “Yeah, we visited the botanical gardens… went shopping on State Street… oh, that’s right… walked along the beach… ate ice cream… saw UCSB… ”

“And we toured the mission,” Tara finished. Handing Buffy the small square piece of thick construction paper she held in one hand, she explained, “I made a rubbing for you from an old tile illustration.”

Touched, Buffy smiled curiously at the fuzzy rendering of the old Spanish façade in cobalt blue crayon that Tara had transferred onto the paper. “Thanks. I’ll put this on the fridge,” she said excitedly, leading the way to the kitchen.

On route, Buffy called over her shoulder, “I’ve never been there. Did you take a tour? It must have been cool to learn about its history, huh? Is it still in use?”

“Well…” Willow began, coming up to stand beside Buffy as she looked for a free magnet on her fridge. “Actually, it was pretty horrifying,” she concluded in a severe tone.

Buffy turned toward Willow in surprise and blinked. “Because… monastic asceticism requires those scratchy robes?”

Willow was too caught up in her righteous indignation to register Buffy’s joke. “No, because the mission docents act like when the Chumash Indians lived with the missionaries everything was all hunky-dory when what really happened was the Spanish kidnapped them as children and forced them into barracks where they caught these deadly diseases,” she exploded.

“Oh,” was all Buffy could say as Willow concluded her diatribe.

Tara jumped in to point out, “Well, he did acknowledge that their initiation methods were problematic, but it seemed like the Indians did learn new farming and trades from the missionaries.“

“But if they were really happy living at the mission why did they rebel?” Willow questioned Tara rhetorically. Addressing Buffy again, Willow informed her with a note of triumph, “He couldn’t answer my question about the 1824 uprising at all.”

“Oh.” Buffy said again, and wished, as she often did, that she were better informed so that she could weigh in with the right response when such topics arose. For a little while after she had dropped out of college, she had kept a list of things that came up in conversation with friends and acquaintances that were unfamiliar to her—literary allusions, historical references, political arguments, sometimes just words she didn’t know—with the idea she would follow them up on Wikipedia. She had pitched the list after she realized it ran over two pages in less than two weeks and her shifts at In-N-Out left her too mentally exhausted to pursue reality T.V., let alone self-improvement.

Tara, noticing that she and Willow seemed to have lost Buffy in their rehashed conversation, tried to direct her girlfriend’s focus elsewhere. “How have you been?” she asked Buffy. “Anything new?”

“Not really.”

“Work’s good?” Tara asked.

“Today was good,” Buffy agreed, her face lighting up. “One of our first-time kids got placed into a group home.”

“Oh, that’s great sweetie.”

“Yeah. I really think it could work out for him.”

“And how’s it going with that ‘crazy case’ with Rona’s brother?” Willow interjected curiously.

Buffy started at the reminder of the moonlighting she’d been doing. She’d forgotten she’d said anything to Willow about Dashawn at all.

Tara, misinterpreting her surprise for displeasure, ventured to suggest, “I can leave you guys alone if you want to talk about it in private?” She was already moving towards the door.

“No,” Buffy objected, waving her hand. “Willow just caught me off guard.” Buffy smiled at Tara to reassure her. Though Tara had been Willow’s girlfriend for more than a year now, she still went out of her way to try to please Willow’s old friends. Buffy suspected it was a manifestation of lingering anxieties about her status as an interloper in their social circle.

The truth was Buffy had been shocked when Willow had come out to her, and her allegiance to Oz, her friend and Willow’s gone-but-not-forgotten boyfriend, had delayed her acceptance of Willow’s new relationship for a time, but after spending some time with the new couple Buffy couldn’t deny Willow seemed happier than she had ever been. Buffy herself was especially happy when Willow even managed to reach an amiable break-up with Oz when he returned to LA to retire from touring with his struggling band, only to find his romantic hopes dashed along with his professional dream. Their peaceful coexistence meant Buffy didn’t have to choose between any of them. She had quickly grown to genuinely like and trust Tara, and sometimes even sensed she might feel more comfortable confiding in her than Willow, given her utterly nonjudgmental nature.

“It’s fine to talk about the case a little,” Buffy told both women. “I didn’t say anything to compromise confidentiality.” She shrugged. “Besides, I’m not even on the force anymore. Just a concerned citizen, you know?”

Willow looked uncertain at Buffy’s blasé attitude.

“The case was kinda stalled, but then I—we came across something that was overlooked,” Buffy continued. “So hopefully it’s unstalled now.”

Willow nodded at her friend’s vague elaboration and asked, “Are you still involved?”

Her mind flashed to the strange night in the alley that had played out several days prior. As Buffy knew she would, Faith had come through for her, answering her call and agreeing to be her official proxy for the material discovery she had made. To avoid questions about their unorthodox investigation, Buffy had instructed William to go home on his own, but he had stubbornly sat in his car to wait until the police arrived. His concern was an unnecessary nuisance but she had finally, grudgingly tolerated it. Perhaps she even found it cute in a gentlemanly sort of way, though she figured she was the most dangerous thing in that alley.

Buffy struggled to answer Willow’s question. “Um. I’m not sure. There’s probably nothing else for me to do. Dashawn will be able to go home when they conclude the investigation.” She bit her lip and looked away. “But I could… I should talk to Rona, maybe.” Buffy felt uneasy just saying it aloud. Suddenly, the idea of enlisting William to join her in seeing Rona again popped into her head. Just as quickly, she dismissed the thought as a ridiculous one. They weren’t partners in crime or even friends, far from it, despite whatever accidental success they’d had tagging along with each other. She felt a little guilty as she remembered the two voice messages he had left her earlier that week. As much as she was invested in the case, she was also wary of continuing to push her luck in matters way beyond the scope of citizen Buffy.

Willow’s eyes were wide as she asked her, “Are you ready for that?”

“We’ll see,” she responded lightly.

Buffy cast about for a new topic. Just then, her stomach grumbled.

“Let’s talk about dinner,” she said wryly. Buffy noticed again the excess baggage her friends had brought in with them but not wanting to assume it was all for her, asked brightly, “So, do you guys wanna order in?” She smiled slowly. “Hu’s?”

Catching on, Willow giggled. “Who’s what?”

“Hu’s Chinese,” Buffy giggled back at their old joke.

“I don’t know, who’s Chinese?” Willow shook her head. “Actually, Tara made a casserole,” she said proudly.

Tara carefully lifted a porcelain square container swathed in hot pink saran wrap out of her grocery bag to show Buffy. “It’s curry lentil. B-but we can still order out if you’d rather?” she ventured hesitantly.

Buffy’s eyes lit up. “No, this’ll totally be better. I’ve reached my MSG quota for the month, anyway.“

“And hey, you wanna watch a video after?” Willow brought a plastic case out of her Mexican crochet shoulder bag and rattled it for effect. ”We brought your favorite,” she sang in sing-song.

Buffy’s expression of delight mirrored Willow’s. “Squee.”


***


Two hours after Willow and Tara left, Buffy was dialing Angel’s hotel number from her old bedroom phone, fifteen minutes before their scheduled talk time. Still feeling upbeat after spending quality time with friends, she had finally felt in the mood to confront the paternal missive she had been avoiding for several days. Unfortunately, despite its predictable contents, it still had the power to evaporate all her positive energy.

Now, feeling anxious, she stood next to her bureau, fiddling with the picture of herself and Angel taken at his family’s last New Year’s party as she waited for him to answer. She focused on the image of the two of them as the sound of the phone became white noise in her ear. He was dressed in a classic tux, she in a pinky mauve silk strapless dress. They sported matching ear-to-ear grins, only slightly exaggerated for the photographer. Whenever she saw the picture she kicked herself a little for not asking to keep the Pamela Dennis gown for herself and agreeing to donate it instead. It was the prettiest thing she had ever worn. On the other hand, it was a one-off garment if there ever was one, and she had understood that it would help support Angel’s relationship with Oxfam.

Angel picked up after the seventh ring, his voice cutting through her thoughts. “Buffy? Hi, sweetheart. I miss you.” He sounded a little out of breath.

“I miss you, too, Angel,” she said wistfully, turning away from her bureau.

He picked up on her tone. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, is this a good time?”

“You bet,” he replied cheerily. “I just got back. I’m all yours for the next forty-five.”

“Great.”

“What’s going on?”

“Not so much.” Buffy looked at the torn envelope in her trashcan. “I got a letter from my dad. Last week, actually. I just opened it.”

“You did? What was it?”

“Same thing as always. I don’t know why I bother opening his mail. Not like it’s ever anything different.” She swallowed hard.

“What did the letter say?” Angel pressed.

“In business-ese? He wants me to assume my minority stake. Translation? I’ll have a seat on the board and be his voting pawn.”

There was a pause on Angel’s end before he said quietly, “Maybe it’s time you should think it over, Buffy.”

“Being a pawn voter? I don’t think so. I mean, Jerry Brown fooled me once, but—“

“You know what I’m getting at. You can’t avoid it forever.”

Her tone was petulant. “Yes, I can. Watch me. This is me, avoiding it, right now.”

Angel sighed. “You should prepare for the future.”

“Still avoiding,” she interjected.

“You’ll be twenty-five next year. You need to make some decisions.” Angel sounded exasperated.

Even though he couldn’t see her, Buffy put a defiant hand on her hip. “I made my decision a long time ago. I don’t want to be a part of his world.”

“I think you’re making a mistake. Remember that you can do whatever you want with the money once it’s yours. Expand the agency. Found another one. Hell, together we could fund anything.”

Buffy’s head hurt as Angel spun his grand plan. She tried to ground herself in reality. “It’s not my agency, Angel. I just work for it.”

“But it could be. Or save the whales. Whatever. I’m only saying, just because you’ve had problems with your dad in the past, it doesn’t mean you have to write off your family legacy.”

Buffy’s voice cracked. “This isn’t like when you were pissed at your father for making you go to Pepperdine, Angel!”

Taken by surprise, Angel rushed to do damage control. “I know, I know. I’m sorry, Buffy, I know.” She could hear him breathing heavily over the phone. “Please don’t be upset. I just hate to see you throw away this opportunity.”

Buffy pushed down the hurt she felt and focused on her abiding sense of outrage towards her father. “I don’t want to sell my soul in exchange for this vague promise that I’ll make up for it,” she said firmly. “That the devil’s bargain.”

“I think you’re being a little dramatic. But I won’t bring it up again, okay?”

Buffy breathed in relief. “Thank you.”

A pause stretched on as they were both silent. Buffy didn’t want to end the conversation on such an unhappy note.

She strove for light-heartedness. “Let’s talk about something else, ok?” Picking up the cradle of her phone, she carried it with her over to her bed and sat down. “How’s the food over there?”

Angel laughed a little. “Well, the tinned sardine breakfasts are starting to lose their novelty.”

Buffy wrinkled her nose. “Eww. You never mentioned those.”

“I was trying to spare you. What about you? Are you eating well?”

Buffy smiled fondly to herself. “You mean, without Lorne to make my dinner?”

“Hey, I didn’t say it. I told you, he’d be happy to make weekly meals for you. Just say the word.”

“No, that feels weird. It’s different when you’re not there.”

“He still works for me. It isn’t—“

“I can manage to feed myself, Angel,” Buffy interrupted. Feeling a little annoyed but knowing she couldn’t back up her claim convincingly, she conceded defeat. “Anyway, Willow and Tara brought me a casserole tonight.”

“Oh, that was nice of the girls. I’m glad they’re taking care of you.”

Sensing she had successfully placated him, Buffy tried to move the conversation in the direction she wanted.

“Yeah, we had a really nice time. We watched a movie—“

“What did you see?“

"Enter the Dragon."

Angel chuckled. “Of course. That’s fantastic. How many times is that now?”

“For me? I’ve lost count,” Buffy admitted sheepishly. “Hey, it’s an oldie but goodie.”

“It is, sweetheart.”

Buffy warmed slightly at his endearment. She bit her lip and charged ahead before she could chicken out. “Willow fell asleep halfway through so Tara took her home right after.” She swallowed. “I’m getting ready for bed now.” She fingered one of the shoulder straps, trying to inject the sexual longing she felt into her voice. “I’m wearing that nightgown you gave me.”

“Oh, is it getting cold at night?”

Buffy looked down at her long white dress. Made of cotton flannel, it was strictly speaking more practical than sexy sleepwear. Buffy valiantly tried again. “No, I just put it on because it reminds me of you.” She wound her finger around the cord of her phone and breathed into the handset. “Almost like you’re here?”

As a longish pause ensued, Buffy wondered if she had shocked him speechless or if their connection was faltering. Finally, Angel replied nervously. “That’s nice. Uh, I’m on my lunch break, sweetheart.”

Disappointed, Buffy took his non-sequitur as a gentle hint. She fake yawned and let him off the hook. “I should let you get back to work. I’m tired, anyway.”

“I’ll let you sleep.”

“‘Kay. Talk to you later.”

“I’ll call you soon. Love you, Buffy.”
.
“Love you, too. Bye, Angel.”

As she unseeingly clicked off her phone and let it drop to the floor, the back of Buffy’s head hit her pillow. She lay sprawled on her bed, her hands coming up to clutch at her hair in frustrated embarrassment. She was desperate to feel something other than the emptiness that had descended over her since she had been left alone that evening.

Buffy thought of her last night with Angel before he left Los Angeles. She could sense how distracted he had been by the trip and case and that had set her a little on edge. Two days before, he’d gotten the nearly last-minute call to join the team for which he’d originally been wait-listed, said yes immediately, and had his own ticket booked within the hour. The next forty-eight hours had been spent frenetically coordinating with the other attorneys, reviewing briefs, doing his own research, and tying up loose ends at work. As for the two of them, they hadn’t really had time to seriously talk over or digest what was happening. Because she hadn’t wanted to come across as emotionally needy, Buffy’s show of effortlessly taking everything in stride turned out to be totally convincing to Angel.

But then suddenly they were having the goodbye sex that was to last them the next several months. From the vantage point of his bed Buffy kept seeing his two massive suitcases looming at her from the luggage stand in the corner of the bedroom. Though Angel had been considerate in not rushing their practiced foreplay and gentle as ever in slowly stoking the fire inside her, it had taken a lot of focus on her part to come. She kept expecting his imminent departure to bring more urgency and passion to their encounter, but the civility that she associated so strongly with the more mature, post-Darla Angel of the last few years had remained in place. Afterwards, it had felt a bit as if they had made love simply because it was the expected send-off in their situation.

Her mind danced over bits and pieces of memories of their nearly two years together as a couple, dwelling on their first time together—going back to his house after being caught in a rainstorm, and finding solace in his arms after being kicked off the force—before it went further back, to a much older memory of Angel when she had seen him at her Aunt Darlene’s McMansion in Palos Verdes the last time she attended her spring party. Angel had brought Darla with him, as he always did in those days. If Buffy was lucky, she saw him once, maybe twice a year back then, and she lived for the five minutes he would spend talking to her about her boring little suburban girl concerns.

For the moment, she repressed the subconscious knowledge of why she was thinking about that year’s meeting.

She had been irrationally hopefully that he would see her as the woman she was that day, finally past her eighteenth birthday and beginning college in the fall. In preparation for the occasion, she had highlighted her hair a lighter shade of blonde and worn a new, slinky jade green slip dress with a tiny floral print that required a strapless bra, deciding at the last minute against adding a matching cardigan that would have provided modest coverage. To Buffy’s eye, her standby strappy sandals were the weak point of her outfit. Though they were cute, their shorter, blocky heel didn’t exactly add sophistication or sex appeal.

Angel had arrived as always with his aggressive girlfriend Darla in tow, dressed in a red version of one of her trademark wrap-style belted numbers that Buffy knew she preferred because they showed off her cleavage, and tottering around in stilettos wildly inappropriate for day. Buffy had never thought much of Darla’s sense of style, but when C-cups were on display, cheap polyester fabric seemed to pass for the finest crepe silk for all men knew. Angel was in a casual pair of black slacks and a loose blue-grey button-down shirt that he wore untucked. She had always liked the fact that he didn’t seem to know how to dress himself to advantage, or didn’t care to. Though they were expensive clothes, he moved in them as if he were wearing an outfit from the Gap. Or perhaps he was simply that used to the feel of luxury.

An hour or so into the party he came directly up to her as she was lingering by the pastry table under the stucco gazebo, debating another profiterole while she avoided her father, who was busy ingratiating himself with some hedge fund honcho by the new enlarged lagoon pool on the other side of the gardens.

Angel had been courteous and as always, both put her at ease and made her heart race with the sincerity he managed to project even in their small talk.

“Hey, Buffy.”

She tried to play it cool but friendly. “Hi, Angel.”

“It’s a beautiful day,” he began, scanning the Pacific views on the horizon. Glancing towards the crowd on the lawn, he observed, “I swear, this thing gets bigger every year.”

Buffy momentarily glanced towards her aunt, holding court in front of a circle of rapt listeners next to her imported rosebushes, before replying ruefully, “Maybe she’s competing for a Guinness record.”

Angel smiled at her before asking softly, “So how’re you and your mom doing?”

Such a seemingly innocuous question, but the real concern in his big brown eyes made her feel like she had been hooked up to an I.V. machine powered by his kindness. Flooded with warmth, she told him the truth. “Great, thanks.”

“Are you still—in Culver City?”

Buffy looked him straight in the eyes. “Yeah,” she confirmed. She knew the question was probably Angel’s tactful way of finding out if she and her mother were financially stable. Since the divorce, she knew everyone gossiped about their straitened circumstances. Angel didn’t know Joyce had extracted a deed of trust for their house from Hank as the sole condition of keeping their ugly divorce confidential.

Angel nodded. “Good. And you’re enjoying your senior year?”

Of course. The four-year divide between them somehow never failed to find mention in their conversation, especially in those moments when she felt closest to him. At least this time she could remind him she was an adult now. “Can’t wait to graduate and move out of the house. Um, what about you?”

He winked at her and smiled broadly. “Same here.”

“Did you hear about law school yet?”

“Yeah. Hey, you remembered.”

Buffy felt her cheeks heat up. “Sure.”

“I got into UCLA. So I’m going to stay in L.A.”

“That’s wonderful. Congratulations.” Her heart was pounding and she tried not to let her excitement show too much. In as casual a manner as she could muster, she told him, “I’ll be there, too.”

He looked surprised. “Oh, really? I forgot you were applying there. Hey, we’ll both be Bruins.”

She beamed at him. At that inopportune moment, Darla crashed into the gazebo from out of nowhere.

“Angel, save me before Connor makes me watch him play badminton again,” she whined in a slightly slurred voice, her hand jostling his elbow.

Visibly annoyed by his girlfriend’s unceremonious interruption, Angel exhaled and greeted her with a tight smile. “If you’ll excuse us,” he apologized to Buffy while Darla sent her a silent, scathing look.

Buffy nodded. “See you later,” she said, smiling brightly for him alone.

She watched as he steered Darla away from her, muttering something to her under his breath while she swatted at his arm. Buffy lost sight of them almost immediately. Halfheartedly scanning the crowd for someone else to talk to, she quickly gave up and turned into the main house to use the restroom and hide out for a while.

Buffy weaved her way past men in golfwear and women in pastel dresses to enter her aunt’s three-story monumentalist architectural mess of a house from the back. She dodged through the busy kitchen overrun with caterers and down a long hallway. As she reached for the door of Aunt Darlene’s downstairs guest suite at the end of it, the sound of Darla’s high-pitched, mocking voice from inside the room stopped her in her tracks.

“And it’s high school girls now? Do you really think she can give you what you need?”

Angel’s voice, irritated and angry, shot back at her. “Are you crazy? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t see it. All she can do when you’re around is make moon eyes at you. It’s pathetic.”

Standing stock still, Buffy felt her cheeks burn.

She heard Angel warning Darla, “You’re wrong. You just leave her out of this, Darla. She’s a nice girl.”

Darla just continued ranting, “Are you gonna make daddy proud? Dump the slut for Hank’s little golden girl? And you think you’re such a fucking rebel, Liam.” She spat out her contempt.

“She has nothing to do with us. I’ve known Buffy since she was a kid, Darla. You know that.”

“Since that little cunt was fifteen she’s been—”

“That’s enough!” Angel was clearly furious.

Muffled sounds of a physical struggle could be heard and then Darla hissed, “I’m not afraid of you.”

“Maybe you should be,” a low and menacing voice that Buffy barely recognized as Angel’s answered her.

The next thing Buffy could make out was the sound of a zipper. Seconds later a loud masculine groan suddenly hit her ears and made Buffy gasp. A breathless Darla panted, “I know how to please you, don’t I lover?” The last thing Buffy heard before bolting from her frozen position at the door back to the kitchen, embarrassed and confused, was Darla begging Angel in her seductive little-girl voice, “Tell me we’ll be together forever.“

The memory of the overheard encounter playing out in her mind, Buffy closed her eyes and tried to imagine what had unfolded behind the closed door. She pictured Darla clawing at Angel’s stomach with one hand while the other worked the base of his cock as she sucked him off. It was something Angel never liked Buffy to do. He told her he couldn’t enjoy it, putting her in that position. She wasn’t sure if he thought of it as submissive or degrading for her and she had never been able to bring herself to ask him. As Buffy imagined Angel’s hands stroking Darla’s platinum blond hair, she reached her hand down between her legs to circle her clit with her fingers.

Squeezing her eyes tightly shut, Buffy put herself in Darla’s place. She felt Angel jerking her up by her shoulder and hair from her kneeling position to stand before him. Inhabiting her taller, more voluptuous body, she stared into Angel’s eyes, clouded by lust and anger. She licked her lips, tasting the gluey texture of the overdone, glossy tomato-red lipgloss she always wore to piss him off. She slowly untied her belt, letting her dress fall open to expose her body to him. Closing the small distance between them, Angel brought his hands up to roughly handle her breasts before using them to spin her around and bend her over the back of Aunt Darlene’s leather club chair.

Craning her neck to look back at him from her half-prone position, she watched Angel standing there with his pants open, stroking his cock with one hand while the other pulled up the hem of her dress and shoved her panties down to just above her knees. He used his legs to spread her own wider apart and she could feel them stretching the bindings of her panties. The anticipation of what he was about to do and the heat of his thighs against her body made her wet. Then she felt one hand sliding up her back to grip her neck and the other seizing onto her hip, holding her in place as he began to thrust into her without ceremony. Her fingers clawed harder down into the soft leather back cushion of the chair to keep herself from collapsing over it. She heard him grunting out how much he hated her and herself in an alien voice throwing his words back at him, ridiculing how much he despised himself for needing her. Red faced and perspiring, he turned her head to face directly forward so he wouldn’t have to see her even in profile. Clamping his hand over her mouth to muffle her screams, he fucked her relentlessly until she bit his fingers, drawing blood.

When she came, Buffy let out a sharp sound between a moan and a cry of pain. In a confused haze, she turned over on her bed, burying her head in her pillow in despair. She had never felt more screwed up in her life.

On his way into the office Monday morning, William let out an enormous yawn and cursed the restless night he’d had. His fitful sleep had made him groggy upon waking, which had subsequently made him careless in the kitchen, which had disastrously caused him to drop his French press and robbed him of his morning coffee. His dazed condition nearly made him forget one of the chief problems gnawing at him in the first place. He was halfway down the corridor to his office when he suddenly doubled back and turned the corner, making a quick detour to the other wing of the department. Finding Gavin Park’s door ajar, he knocked twice loudly and stuck his head in.

“Gavin, you got a minute?”

Glancing up from his desk, Gavin greeted him with a curt nod of the head and waved for him to enter.

“Good morning, Spike,” Gavin greeted him without looking as he turned his attention back to the form in front of him and signed it with a flourish.

“‘Mornin.’” William emerged from behind the door but opted to remain on the threshold.

Gavin set his pen aside. “What can I do for you?”

With an air of studied casualness, William leaned on one arm against the doorframe. “Wonderin’ where you are with Winters these days?”

Gavin raised his brows. “Ah yes, your indefatigable interest in the elusive Mr. Winters. Well, I’m happy to say we’re making progress. As I told you last week, his position is that he was merely an investor in Mr. Holtz’s cash-checking company. It turns out he was testing the waters, so to speak, for an aggressive push into alternative banking.”

“Is that what they call it,” William muttered under his breath.

“He expressed shock over the reported death of his business partner.”

“I’ll bet he did. Did he explain how they met? There’s no way Holtz gets a legitimate meeting with a man like Winters, let alone a start-up fund,” William argued, fully awake now and firing on all cylinders.

Gavin’s hand came up to stroke his square jaw slowly. “He sought to remain under the radar with this project. The franchise promised profit, but it would certainly not enhance the image of a man who developed the Highland complex.”

“To be frank, I don’t understand the lackadaisical attitude. The man’s selling you a pig in a poke.”

Gavin’s tone hardened. “I am not going to get distracted by a wild goose chase for your white whale, Spike. I am not interested in his illusory connections to Marcus Hamilton. At this time, I am not even interested in the whereabouts of Mr. Hamilton. My priority is the supply chain.” Taking a breath, his regained his composure. “But, in our interview with Mr. Winters he did acknowledge the three contract registration violations the police identified. Lilah and I expect him to pay the fines and plead it out. From there we will ascertain if further avenues into—shall we say—less transparent activities present themselves.”

William shook his head adamantly. “It’s never gonna work, going after him piecemeal like that. Tried that once before. We need to find a better angle.”

“We? There is no we, Spike. My staff is pursuing the case under my direction.”

William frowned at the brush-off Gavin was delivering to him in his characteristically condescending manner. As always, his colleague’s territorial posturing got his hackles up. The man had always seemed way too slick to him for a state attorney. His understated but intensely competitive nature also seemed a better fit for a cutthroat corporate environment rather than a government outfit, however tenuous its cooperative ethos might actually be.

He warned Gavin, “Winters’s willingness to come halfway clean can inspire false confidence. Truth is, the man just likes to bait you. But he weasels out of everything on technicalities and loopholes. Better not to tip your hand to him at all.”

“Excuse me, but in not one but two attempts you failed to procure even an indictment against him,” Gavin cut in crisply. “Isn’t it time for another litigator to exercise a new strategy.”

William’s jaw ticked with irritation, but he exercised total control over the faked conciliatory tone of his words as he said, “I couldn’t agree more. All the same, if you could use another pair of eyes, I’d be happy to pitch in. It is my area of expertise, after all.”

“From what I hear, your caseload’s not getting any lighter. I think the DA’s office would best be served if we all focused on our own responsibilities, don’t you? As unwelcome as they may be. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m late for a meeting,” he concluded.

With a courteous half-nod and placid smile, Gavin led William out of his office and closed the door.

William stood in the hallway, staring thoughtfully after his colleague as he walked away.




An hour later, William buzzed his paralegal for an impromptu meeting in his office. Andrew dutifully rushed over, only to find his superior apparently waiting for him, standing in front of his desk with arms crossed and looking even sterner than usual.

As he tentatively inched his way further inside, William ordered, “Come in and close the door, Andrew.”

Andrew’s eyes grew big as saucers at his words. Obeying his directions, Andrew turned back to face William and immediately began to plead his case.

“Am I in trouble, boss? Are you going to fire me? I know I was late with my last periodical review, but please, just give me another chance, I promise you—“

William threw up his hands to halt his subordinate’s verbal onslaught. “At ease, soldier,” he interrupted him loudly. “Christ, did you have a double espresso this morning or what?”

As always, Andrew strived to obey William to the letter. “N-no. Just my regular café mocha. With extra foam.”

William rolled his eyes. “Great. You’re not in any sort of trouble. Today, anyway. Look, you’re some kind of tech whiz, right?”

“Um—”

“You know your way around a computer,” he reformulated impatiently. “And software and—so on,” he concluded, gesturing vaguely.

“Yes. I was the first to introduce Cobra to TopCoder,” Andrew reminisced fondly.

William clapped his hands together. “Well, let’s put those skills to work, shall we? I want you to find out if Gavin Park’s been in personal contact with Russell Winters or anyone who works for Empire Enterprises recently.”

Andrew’s eyes grew big as saucers. “How would I do that?” he squeaked.

William folded his arms. “Anyway you know how.”

When Andrew’s only response was to blink rapidly, William spoke for him. “You’re nervous because I’m asking you do something—unorthodox.” As Andrew nodded his assent, William waved his hand dismissively. “Nothing to worry about. I’m only looking for information. You won’t be exposed in any way, you have my word.”

“What’s this about?” Andrew asked cautiously.

“What’s this about,” William repeated. “This is about justice. Do you want to go after it?” He turned his steeliest gaze on his assistant. “To actually make a difference in this world? Not just collect a paycheck and uselessly chip away at the massive rock of corruption that stands in the way of criminal prosecution in this city?” he ranted.

“Yes,” Andrew whispered helplessly.

William nodded seriously. “Winters has been exposed in case after case of financial graft but somehow he always finds cover in the nick of time. I know it, you know it. We’ve played it by the book for years. It’s time to try something else.”

Andrew looked to William to be on the verge of buying in, but his face still betrayed nervous indecision. For the first time, William mulled over alternative tactics to his normal roster of admonishment, excoriation, and intimidation. Remembering the marked loyalty of Buffy’s staff, he settled on a new strategy.

“I have faith in you.”

Andrew immediately squared his shoulders. “Okay, boss.”


***


As her lunch break neared, Buffy set aside the latest external review of alternative schools with a sigh. Closing her eyes and sitting up straighter in her chair, she ran through the sequence of upcoming tasks she would have to attend to by the end of the day. As she completed her list, the case that had begun with Dashawn flashed onto her mental calendar.

Her eyes popped open and her arm shot out for her cell phone. Searching through her list of contacts, Buffy tapped the familiar name and waited. Suddenly impatient, she unconsciously began tapping her foot under her desk.

“Hey, B. How’s it goin’?”

“Fine. Hey, um, do you have any news for me?”

“Yeah, hold on a sec.” As she waited, Buffy heard the heavy clomping of Faith’s boots and the low hum of background noise followed by the sound of a door swinging open. Then Faith was speaking again, her voice reverberating now as if she were in a tunnel.

“I’m in the ladies’. Always wins the prize of most likely to be deserted, am I right?” Faith chuckled.

“Yeah. But what’s with all the cloak and dagger?”

“You tell me. I don’t know if you’re calling me to go shopping or come pick up a body.”

“Faith,” Buffy protested.

“I’m just saying. You’re Little Miss Unpredictable these days.”

“I’m—not,” Buffy objected. Looking down, she relaxed the hand she had involuntarily fisted. “I’m sorry I didn’t warn you about what I was doing.”

“You don’t have to explain it to me,” Faith stated nonchalantly.

“Well, I appreciate all your help,” Buffy said delicately.

Buffy knew Faith was still hurt she hadn’t confided in her until it was absolutely necessary and she needed something from her. Despite the fact that Buffy felt Faith understood her on some level better than anyone, it was impossible for her to grant Faith the kind of trust she extended implicitly to Willow or Angel. She had simply seen Faith nearly lose it one too many times.

“No problem, kimosabe.”

Buffy drummed her fingers on her desk in anticipation. “So, did they run it yet?”

“Interior ballistics report came in this morning. You’re not gonna believe this. Or maybe you knew it all along?”

“What is it, Faith?”

“The bullet you picked up matched the ones they pulled from the bodies Freeman Trick did way back when. Rifling pattern was the same.”

Buffy was stunned into silence on her end of the line.

“What are the odds, huh?”

When Buffy still hadn’t replied, Faith pressed, “You still there, B?”

“Yeah,” Buffy replied quickly, snapping out of it. “I didn’t expect that at all.”

“Surprise, surprise, surprise,” Faith cracked, doing her best Gomer Pyle.

“I don’t get it.” A sinking feeling assailed her. “Does that mean—do they think it’s just a relic?”

“Now for the good news. Blood residue on the bullet didn’t match any of his old victims. Or any John Does in the database, either.”

“What about Holtz?”

“DNA profile is TBA. Labs had to wait until his missing status was upgraded.”

“Good.”

“Trick’s like a bad penny, huh? Turning up as a freaking phantom killer.” Faith let out a humorless laugh.

“I can’t believe his gun is still out there,” Buffy said, rubbing her forehead. She tried to remember the details of what Trick had told them at the time. “It wasn’t pitched.”

“Looks like.”

“One step forward, two steps back,” Buffy mumbled.

“So there you have it.” Sighing, Faith informed Buffy, “There’s one other thing. Forrest told me they’re thinking of calling Robin Wood in to consult.”

When Buffy didn’t respond, Faith awkwardly tried to fill the silence.

“Look, I know there’s no love lost between you two. Love being the operative word—”

“No,” Buffy interrupted. She took a deep breath before saying, “I mean, we didn’t exactly make good partners, but I always thought he was a good cop.”

“Well, good cop may end up back in SoCal for a few if he can get leave.”

“Good. That’s—good.”

“Yep.”

Buffy was being evasive again, and she knew Faith knew it. But she needed more time to process everything before she could talk to Faith about it, or decide if she even wanted to. She looked for a way to sort out their unfinished business and end the call.

“Did, uh, you get in any trouble with Giles?”

“Not really, but then I kinda threw you under the bus,” Faith admitted.

“Oh?”

“I didn’t want him to think I was keeping anything from him, so I didn’t exactly deny it when he asked if you pressured me into helping you.”

For her part, Buffy didn’t think that explanation was so far off the mark, but she knew Faith’s code of loyalty wouldn’t let her see it that way.

“He doesn’t know we’re still close.” Buffy couldn’t help but wonder if Giles just assumed all of her former cohort, like her ex-partner, shunned her now.

“And I didn’t tell him any different.”

“That’s fine. Was he mad?”

“Oh, he started muttering something about rogue freelancers but I can’t always tell whether he’s annoyed or maybe actually proud, you know? G-man plays it pretty cool.”

Faith’s description conjured up a familiar image, and Buffy smiled to herself.

“Yeah.”

“So yeah, there was a little fallout, but I handled it.”

“Thanks.” She hesitated before she asked, “And we’re ok?”

“Well, lemme see, after you saved my ass how many times?” Faith drawled. Chuckling, she reassured her best friend, “Sure, B. Five by five.”

“Figured you’d still be here,” a low voice carried over to her ears. “All work and no play? Front room’s emptied out already.”

Buffy jerked her head up from the schedule she was correcting at her desk. She saw a grinning William Pratt standing in her open doorway.

Buffy resisted the urge to smooth her hair as he sauntered into her office.

“Come in?” she asked rhetorically as he unceremoniously dropped into the chair opposite her desk.

“Don’t mind if I do.”

Buffy started to cross her arms, but realizing she was adopting a defensive posture, quickly unfolded them and clasped her hands together and rested them on her desk instead. “Um, how are you?”

He looked pleased. “Fine,” he said simply. “How’re you?”

She was clearly a bit flustered by his unannounced visit. William was glad because it gave him a few moments to take her in. Right away he noticed her thick blonde hair was wavier and wilder than the straight style she usually wore it in. She was wearing a light pink tank-style sweater that had a texture that reminded him of the crochet his mother used to do. He wasn’t sure if it was the feminine color, the tight fit, or the fact that so much of her toned, tanned skin was visible, but the overall effect surpassed even the most provocative mental images of her he had conjured up since he had last seen her. The whole visual package she presented was appealing in a way that he would have thought only some customized design-a-girl program, mastered no doubt by a whiz like Andrew, was capable of creating.

A puzzled Buffy observed him silently watching her, wondering what he was doing there until she suddenly remembered his two phone messages from the previous week.

“I was gonna call you—,” she started to say.

He waved his hand, “Don’t worry about it.”

“Just got busy—”

“We can have our little pow-wow right now,” he suggested easily.

Buffy nodded. “’Kay.” She paused. “So what have you heard? Any progress at the D.A.’s office?”

“Straight to business then.” He rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand. “Well, progress? That would be nil. But I have a plan. ‘Fore we get to that, though, why don’t you fill me in on your end.”

Buffy considered what to tell him. “Not much to tell. If they can’t connect Holtz’s murder to Hamilton soon it won’t matter if Hamilton surfaces or not.” She sighed as her whole body relaxed back in her chair. “At least Dashawn will be able to go home. I heard he’s going stir-crazy.”

“I can imagine. A sixteen year-old on lockdown? Not exactly a tenable long-term situation.”

Buffy shrugged in agreement.

He peered at her. “There something you’re not telling me?”

Buffy shifted uncomfortably. “No.”

William almost laughed aloud. She was a terrible liar. He decided not to push her just yet.

“Fine. Then maybe you can lend a hand with my problem.”

That got Buffy’s attention. “Sure.”

She watched as he drew an elbow up to rest on the back of his chair. The glint of his gold watch peeking through the cuff of his blazer drew her attention, and her eyes rested for a moment on his wrist bone, pale and prominent above the strong veins of his hand.

“I talked to Gavin the other day. Offered my help with Winters. He told me he’s basically giving the man a pass. Now Gavin’s all about the big wins, the flashier the better, so I didn’t know what to make of it at first.”

“Huh.”

“He tried to get me to back off by pointing out how I’d failed with Winters, but really, that should only motivate him to prove he can do what I couldn’t, right?”

“Oh. I guess so.”

“But then something occurred to me.” William paused for effect. “What if he’s on the payroll?”

With him up until his very last words, Buffy exhaled impatiently and asked him suspiciously. “Is this a joke?”

“I’m dead serious.”

Buffy rolled her eyes. “And are you just visiting Paranoia-ville today or have you always lived there?”

“It’s not so far-fetched. Winters obviously has connections at City Hall, why wouldn’t he have them in the D.A.’s office too?”

Buffy leaned far forward in her chair. “Do you hear how insane you sound right now? This is your colleague you’re talking about. How long have you worked together?”

“Together? Not bloody likely,” he snorted. “And Gavin’s slipperier than a greased eel. Wouldn’t put much past him.”

Buffy felt a headache coming on. “Why don’t you talk to your boss? Holland Manners? Or Lindsey?”

“Oh please, they’d never believe me.”

Buffy threw up her hands. “So that makes all of us, because I don’t believe you either.”

“Last thing Holland wants is to be told there’s a mole in his shop,” William continued, oblivious to Buffy’s reaction. “All the man cares about is P.R. and his reelection.” He squinted at her. “You must know that,” he said, thinking back to the first time they met.

In fact, William’s characterization fit the man to a tee, in her estimation. But she wasn’t about to admit it.

“So maybe you should just keep your little conspiracy theories to yourself,” Buffy advised, more than a little annoyed he had seen fit to confide in her.

He held his hands up in surrender.

“Fine. Don’t believe me. I’ll be vindicated or not,” William said mysteriously.

“Um-”

“As for Winters,” he went on, “he’s more vulnerable than he's ever been. I can feel it.”

“Okay.” Buffy took a deep breath, relieved they were moving back to rational ground. “So what do we know?”

“He was in business with Holtz. Claims it was all above-board, give or take a contract violation here and there.” William shook his head, disgusted. “Don’t believe it for a second.”

“All right. What can you do about it?”

William immediately relaxed. “Well for starters, Holtz’s files need another look,” he began measuredly.

“Okay.”

“Then there’s the rest of his office. The check-cashing franchise.”

“Right.” She paused. “Wait.”

“It might be tricky trying to find anything useful. Lucky for me, I know just the person to lend a hand,” he finished, looking at her pointedly.

Buffy felt a rising sense of alarm as he revealed his plan.

“Whoa there. You’re heading way off the reservation.”

“It’s the only way to get where others haven’t,” he replied, perfectly calm.

Buffy fidgeted. “When we—when we went down to the Downs, I may have bypassed my old captain but I didn’t do anything illegal.”

William tilted his head and smirked at her. “Do you think you’ve been a bad influence on me?”

Flushing, she retorted, “Only in bizarro world.”

“’Cause that’s terribly cute,” he said, still smirking.

“I am not going to get sucked into your crazy schemes,” Buffy stated categorically, trying perhaps to convince herself above all.

William shook his head. “I can’t believe you’re not going to see this thing through. Must say, I’m a little disappointed,” he clucked.

“See this thing through,” Buffy repeated incredulously.

“Investigate! It’s what you do.” William had leapt up and started pacing before her desk.

She gesticulated wildly from her chair. “Who do you think I am? I mean, take a look around you. Does this look like a precinct? Am I wearing a badge?”

“Didn’t stop you before from getting back in the game,” he pointed out, staring down at her. “Didn’t hesitate to do your bit before so why act the shrinking flower now?”

Buffy bristled at the accusation. “It’s not like I’m retired. I was dismissed. End of story.” She couldn’t stop the flush of humiliation she felt creeping over her.

Refusing to be deterred, William pressed harder.

“If that were really true, we never would have met. You inserted yourself into this mess because it’s important to you. Well, Winters is important to me. And he’s the key to this whole case. He’s the man behind the curtain. He’s the puppetmaster above the—”

“Enough with the bad metaphors, already,” Buffy interrupted. “I get it, I get it.” She paused. “What do you expect me to do anyway?”

“What you do best. Investigate the scene. You’re liable to see something I might miss. You’ve been professionally trained, haven’t you?” he asked, thinking a little goading never hurt. “No matter your current status, it’s all still there.”

“And you’re not worried at all about the legality of tossing his office,” Buffy stated disbelievingly.

“Never said I did this job because I have a love of the law,” he said plainly.

“Well that’s comforting,” Buffy countered, but there was no force behind her words.

William said softly, looking at her, “Sometimes, you have to get information the wrong way before you can get it the right way.”

Buffy was brought up short by William’s statement, which immediately resonated with the bolder and more imprudent side of her character, dormant for so long. She tried to push down that impulse and come up with a rational retort.

But William hadn’t missed the answering gleam in her eyes. He decided there had been enough discussion.

He twirled his key ring around his index finger. “So you ready to go or what?”


***

William tried not to smile in triumph as they sped across town in his DeSoto. After a few more token protests she’d given in, as he’d instinctively known she would. He avoided examining the actual necessity of persuading her to join him in his wild goose chase. It was easy to tell himself she was an asset as an ally of sorts and even easier to admit how much he appreciated the eye candy. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew it was more fundamental that, though. He just liked being around her—arguing with her and seeing her in action and trying to figure her out—and his true mission had become finding ways to maximize those opportunities, though towards what actual end he pursued them even his most honest, inner self could not yet fully explain.

“So what’s the real deal with you and Winters?” Buffy quizzed him, abruptly interrupting his half-formed train of thought.

He glanced over at her. “What do you mean?”

“You seem to have a personal vendetta against him,” she observed.

“Russell Winters,” William began slowly, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, “is a phony in every sense of the word. He’s not even Russell Winters, did you know that? He’s Bernard, like his father. Why he chose to use Russell is beyond me. As if it makes him sound like any less of a ponce,” he scoffed.

“Bastard’s always in the middle of one dodgy deal or ten. He’s careless enough that we get wind of it, and then somehow buys his way out of every jam he gets into. Fancies himself an omnipotent king of Los Angeles. These rich ‘masters of the universe’ are all the same,” William went on, warming to his theme. “And he’s not even self-made. Never had to work for anything. Would have all been better off if he’d just taken daddy’s money and pissed off to Aruba but instead he has to try to make his mark and takes every shortcut to do it,” he concluded venomously.

“Hello chip, meet shoulder,” Buffy remarked with widened eyes, sitting up straight in her seat.

His eyes slid over to her. Worried, he said, “No offense yeah? I wasn’t alluding to you, or yours.”

“No?”

“No. I know you’re nothing like that.”

“You do?” she asked, genuinely surprised by his statement.

“Well, yeah,” he admitted, becoming uncomfortable at the direction the conversation was taking.

“’Cause…” Buffy prompted.

“’Cause you’re just not,” William said crossly, feeling boxed into a corner. Instantly regretting it, he offered sheepishly, “Turns out you’re… quite all right. After all.” Feeling warm, he kept his eyes trained forward on the road.

“Ok, so now I’m starting to think you’ve been taken over by a pod person,” Buffy said lightly as she tried to back off from her leading questions. For some reason, it freaked her out a little when he was overtly nice to her.

William was determined to smooth over the past. “Look, I know things haven’t exactly been—,” he began, before breaking off with a sigh. Starting again, he said, “Couldn’t quite suss you out at first. I, ah, may have heard some misleading things about your background,” William conceded, gauging her response to that admission.

When Buffy didn’t register any reaction, he continued, “And then the cop thing was a little surprising for a girl like you. Threw me for a loop.”

“A girl like me,” she repeated.

“Not because you’re a girl,” he said hastily. “Just—you know. Rich girl.” He said it almost apologetically.

Buffy pursed her lips, considering whether or not to respond. Arching an eyebrow, she announced to him evenly, “I haven’t had a trust fund since I was sixteen.”

A triumphant little smile played on her lips as her words were met with confused silence from William.

“Did I just render you speechless?” Buffy asked primly.

“Uh—“

“Good.”

When they arrived at the dingy strip mall that housed Holtz’s business in Boyle Heights, the early evening sun was casting its intensified yellow light on the city, making the pumpkin-colored signs of the Mexican grocery on the corner glow neon. The few cars populating the lot were patronizing La Tiendita’s, the only shop still open. In the distance, the lulling strains of Spanish musak competed with sporadic blasts of jukebox favorites from a busy bar across the street. William parked his car directly in front of Holtz’s shop, sandwiched between a nail salon and a mattress outlet store. An unobtrusive police notice hung on one of the glass doors.

Buffy automatically tucked her purse into the glove compartment before exiting the car. William carried his briefcase with him.

She knew she was rusty when it was only as they approached the glass double doors that Buffy registered their first obstacle.

“You don’t have the key, do you?” Buffy asked, already running through plans of action in her mind. They could retrieve her modified Halligan bar from her house but it would definitely do too much damage to the door.

“Don’t need one.”

William wasn’t sure if what he was about to do would disgust or impress her, but he figured they had few options and when he’d driven by the day before, a cursory glance told him the lock wouldn’t post any problem to his skills.

To Buffy’s amazement, William opened his briefcase and drew out a small flat wrench from an interior pocket. Tucking it under one arm, he then plucked a paper clip off a sheaf of papers before closing and setting his briefcase down.

He deftly undid the wire of the clip until it was almost straight before bending one end into an L-shaped hook. Retrieving the wrench from under his arm, William slid it into the bottom of the lock opening as far as it would go. Buffy watched as he slowly rotated the wrench with one hand while with the other he delicately manipulated the paper clip, inserting it into the top of the lock and raking it a few times before undoing the internal pins one by one. The coordinated movement of his hands was mesmerizing, like a maestro conducting an intricate passage of music. The telltale click punctuated the completion of his performance.

“Presto.”

Buffy just looked at him pointedly.

“Would you believe I was a boy scout?”

Incredulous, she frowned.

“Got a bit of a chequered past,” William admitted by way of explanation, but appearing not in the least chagrined as he pushed the door open with his elbow.

She raised her brows and walked past him into the office. “I’m not even gonna ask.” To herself, she muttered, “See no evil…”

Buffy took quick stock of the space. There front of the store was organized as a waiting area with two neat rows of cushioned chairs lining either end, but most of the space was taken up by an interior teller office walled off with glass windows. Her rubber-soled wedges squeaked as she walked on the beige tiled floor. It smelled mildly of a lemony disinfectant.

“I’ve never actually been in one of these places,” William commented, sauntering in after her. “Practically one on every corner. Sprout up like weeds.”

Buffy’s eyes were trained on a corner of the ceiling, where a black plastic bracket was mounted.

“The police must have taken the surveillance cameras,” she told him.

William walked up to the counter. He gave the spotless window a knock, sounding a dull thud.

“Bulletproof glass. Pretty common,” Buffy said.

Through the glass he could see a nest of heavy cables snaked together on the other side of the counter. “They took the computers too.”

As if by silent assent, they both made their way into the enclosed interior office through an unlocked side door. A set of printers, phones, and a few dozen stacks of receipt pads lined the countertops and built-in lower shelving. There were obvious gaps where the cash registers and computers had rested.

From the inside of the teller office, Buffy looked back out onto the reception area. She realized her view was slightly distorted by the glass, as the further objects were the more they took on a convex, bulbous effect at their edges. She felt like an exhibit in a public aquarium and internally shuddered as she imagined having to work in such a place.

She and William circled separately around the inner office, taking mental note of the unremarkable space. Then, as if on cue, they both focused at the exact same moment on a large gray billboard hung on the back wall. It listed in blinding white letters the going rates for the array of loans and services Holtz’s business provided.

Confronted head-on with the cold, hard numbers, a familiar sense of resentment bubbled up in William that could not be contained.

“These places should be outlawed. ‘Alternative banking.’ It’s loan sharking by another name. Usury,” he seethed quietly.

“They’re not ideal, but they provide a service. Sometimes people need an emergency loan and they can’t get it at the regular bank,” Buffy said, thinking of the time she had needed help with the gas bill after draining her mother’s checking account on funeral expenses.

For some reason, her reasonable assessment bothered William more than it should have. Or perhaps, more than it would have coming from anyone else.

“I think that’s a naïve view,” he said forcefully.

“You think whatever you want,” she countered edgily.

William seemed to be stewing over her comments as he turned away from her to set his briefcase on the nearest counter.

Chewing on her thumb, Buffy watched him open his briefcase. Addressing his rigid shoulders, she finally asked, “Do you have any info on Holtz?”

“I do.” His mouth set in a grim line, he reviewed the few notes he had, recounting, “He’s an expatriate. From York in England originally. He was in seminary for a while before he left for unknown reasons. Came to America and opened up this shop ten years ago. Opened a second shop three years ago, but it’s not a full-service office like this one. As for his personal history, apparently he was a bit of a recluse, no useful leads from neighbors or friends. No family.”

“That’s a big change. From the high church to the church of Mammon.”

William let out an appreciative grunt. “The highest church of all. He must have gotten disillusioned.”

Crossing her arms, she leaned back against the counter. “I wonder why.”

“Does it matter?” William asked distractedly. “No arrests, but then I don’t know how long he was using this business as a front. ’Spose Hamilton could have been his first foray into the wonderful world of criminal patronage. But I doubt it.”

“Like they say, you speed four hundred times before you’re stopped.”

“Or crash in a wreck.”

His words made Buffy reflect upon Holtz’s end. “There’s no motive for his murder yet.”

“Holtz probably wanted more money.”

Buffy was thoughtful, trying to put the possible scenarios together, but there were too many missing pieces.

“Have they found a financial connection between Hamilton and Winters?” she asked.

“No. Winters claims he’s never heard of him and Gavin is buying it.”

“But Carlos said—.”

“I know. Carlos also said he saw papers in Holtz’s office with Hamilton’s name all over them. So where are they?”

“Here?”

He rested a hand on the counter. “We’ll find out. They ruled out recovering anything useful in his paper records. Seems the police department’s as apathetic as the D.A.’s office on this one.” He glanced back at her.

Suddenly, the words came tumbling out. “They matched the bullet we found to a gun.”

Taken aback, William asked, “They found Hamilton’s gun?”

“No. I should have said that differently.” Buffy wrinkled her nose. “They matched the bullet to pulled bullets in the database, connected to the same firearm. The bullet came from Freeman Trick’s weapon.”

“Why is that name familiar?”

“He was Dashawn’s uncle?”

William remembered then the bits of family history he had gleaned about the Richards family from his meeting with Buffy’s ex-captain. Though it bothered him that Buffy hadn’t mentioned it earlier, he said without accusation, “You didn’t say anything before.”

She looked away. “I’m saying it now.”

“Why would Hamilton have his gun? He’s dead, right?”


She nodded gravely. “And I have no idea. I wish I did.” William could see how much she meant it.

“Did they work together?”

“I don’t know.”

“They must have.”

Buffy raised and dropped her hands helplessly.

Like a thunderbolt, conviction seized William. “Dashawn must know.”

Buffy started to shake her head, and William pounced.

“It’s too much of a coincidence he happens to work for the same man who has his uncle’s gun,” he insisted.

“I thought that right away. But he doesn’t know. He didn’t understand what I was even asking about. He was still pretty young when everything happened with his uncle.”

The report she had given him earlier in her office came back to William. “So you talked to him? Recently?”

Buffy had had an inkling of it before, but now she knew for certain not much was liable to get past him. She decided to come clean.

“I did. Yesterday. After I found out about the gun.”

Shaking his head, he mock-scolded her, “You’re awfully cagey, you know.”

“I’m just careful,” Buffy defended herself.

With some impatience, William said to her, “You can trust me. What have you got to lose?”

Buffy raised an eyebrow. “This is serious stuff. Excuse me for trying to be discreet. And I’m not the one with anything to lose. You might wanna dial back the ‘I’ve gone rogue—ask me how’ attitude, by the way.”

“What, you worried about me?”

She shot him a good-natured glare. “Never.”

William was silent for a few moments, debating what to say, wondering what would break down her walls.

“You’re gonna have to tell me the whole tale some day, you know,” he said meaningfully.

“Not today,” she forced out cheekily.

“Fair enough.”

As silence fell between them, Buffy noticed she could hear her own breathing in the hermetic atmosphere. “It’s claustrophobic in here.”

William jerked his head towards the door. “Let’s move along, shall we? See the inner sanctum.”

They made their way to the back hallway, taking a brief detour into a closet-sized room that turned out to house nothing more than an open safe, before locating Holtz’s private office.

Entering the room was a jarring experience. While the public offices had felt impersonal and oppressively immaculate, his private space was shabbily furnished and lived-in. The worn umber carpeting had buckled in various places. A small desk with a wood laminate top and old-style swivel chair occupied the middle of the cramped room. Along the greater part of one wall, there were rows upon rows of books stacked on shelves six-high. On the opposite wall, a series of vertical black filing cabinets filled the space.

Buffy walked over to the shelves. As she skimmed her fingers along the spine of the books, curious titles caught her eye. “Bronze Age Antiquities… Enlightenment and Conquest… Geography of the World,” she read out.

William glanced over at her, intrigued. “Guess he fancied himself an amateur historian.“

He was inspecting the desk. It was sparsely populated by a red glass dish of hard toffee candies, a bottle green banker’s lamp, and a New York Times book of Sunday crosswords.

“How quaint. All he need’s a few doilies and he can open up a tea and reading room in here. Have to say, I expect more from my criminal masterminds.”

Buffy graced him with a sardonic smile. “Somehow, I doubt this guy qualifies.”

William opened the single desk drawer to find business cards, black pens, and a yellowed handkerchief. A silver flask for hard liquor tucked in the back brought a grudging smile to his face.

“Is that what we’re here for?” Buffy asked, getting his attention. She indicated the cabinets with a nod of her head.

“Indeed.”

William slammed the drawer shut and began walking over to the opposite wall but Buffy stood unmoving behind him.

“Research mode. Yay.” Her tone was unenthusiastic.

William was examining an open binder lying on top of one of the cabinets.

“What’s that?”

He was paging through the black binder with interest. “Index of names.”

“Clients? Cool. See if Hamilton’s in there,” Buffy said as she wandered over to a random cabinet and pulled opened a drawer. It was crammed full of manila folders front to back.

“Hold on.” His consternation was audible. Eyes glued to the page, William spoke again. “There’s something wrong with this list. Bishop de Landa. Bumbles Green.”

”Bumbles?”

William raked his fingers through his hair. “These aren’t real names. Or rather, they are. They’re pseudonyms. He’s using some kind of code.” He turned his head to look back at the bookshelves. “Product of his bibliomania.”

Buffy groaned. “Great. A con man with layers.”

“There must be some way to figure out—,” he cut off with a pause, flipping pages. “Mary Barton. Muhammad al-Khowarizmi?” William asked, tripping over the name. “Nero? What the hell?” His voice kept rising in volume.

“Let’s see.”

Buffy pulled opened the heavy drawer labeled ‘M-N,’ and searched for the file. Finding it, she opened it and her eyes landed on a name. “Quentin Travers,” she read aloud.

“Why is he labeled Nero?”

As Buffy rifled through the stack of papers, she said slowly, “I don’t know, but I think this guy looks fishy. There are a whole stack of title loans here.”

William came over to her to see them for himself. She spread the paperwork across the top of the packed row of folders.

He was standing near enough to her as he studied the receipts and documents that Buffy could smell his cologne mixed with faint traces of cigarette smoke. She had caught the same scents when she had ridden in his car but they were much pleasanter emanating from a warm body.

“Odd,” he muttered as he compared the loan scrips. “It’s the same VIN number on all of them. What’s that pile you have there?”

Buffy read the boldface type on the official, identically formatted sheets in front of her.

“Repossession notices?”

The crease in William’s brow cleared. A basic blueprint he had encountered in a myriad of different forms over the years of his career emerged for him once again.

He took a step back and made a sweeping circular gesture at the papers before them. “Well. You thought right. This is all a scam.”

“How does it work?”

Animatedly, William explained, “Mr. Travers gets a title loan from Holtz for a car, then sells the car with title to some poor sod. When the sod in question claims the title, he finds out there’s a loan on it and he has to either pay it or, more likely, return the car to the title company—that would be Holtz—to avoid repossession. Either way, they would profit. And I’m guessing no money changed hands between Holtz and Travers before the sale. The loans were fraudulent to begin with.”

Buffy glanced down at the notices. “And then the car—?”

“Goes back to Travers.” He pointed to the stack of title loan papers. “Rinse and repeat.”

Buffy nodded slowly. She was fairly awed by the speed and seeming effortlessness with which William had deciphered their scheme.

“Score one for serendipity?” she asked, handing him the folder.

“Free felony gift with homicide purchase, more like,” he said, accepting it grudgingly.

His words reminded Buffy what they were there for.

“So, none of that explains why he’s filed away as Nero. What’s the connection?”

“Search me. Some kind of nickname?”

Buffy considered this. “For Quentin Travers?”

Hearing the name again, William felt some tidbit of knowledge pushing its way to the surface. His brow creased in thought. “Well. Quentin is Latinate. For quintus, if I remember. Fifth.”

Buffy was staring at him with a blank look.

“I guess… yeah. Nero was the fifth Roman emperor, wasn’t he?” William asked.

Buffy chewed on her bottom lip.

“I was never really bookworm girl.”

“Augustus… Tiberius…” William murmured, trying to remember the order drilled into him in school. “Yeah, I think that’s right.”

Rubbing her neck, Buffy looked down at the bulging stack of vertical files before her. “So there’s a logic to all this?”

William sighed. “Only in his own brain, I’m guessing. ‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,’ as the man said.”

A name caught Buffy’s eye. “Oh look,” she said, pulling out a thin folder, “The Marquis de Sade was one of his clients too.”

William watched as she pored over the few papers in the file.

“AKA Justine Cooper. Well that’s weird. They’re not even the same gender.”

“Justine Cooper?”


“Yup.”

“Oh, alright. Justine,” William said, pronouncing it the French way. “By the Marquis de Sade. Name of a book he wrote.” He nodded, satisfied. “Simple.”

“He wrote a book?” Buffy asked in surprise.

“Oh, several.” He grinned at her wolfishly. “Great bedtime reading.”

Buffy shook her head and purposely didn’t make eye contact. “Don’t even,” she warned, suppressing a smile.

“And just what kind of nasty business was the lovely Justine involved in?”

“She bought a prepaid debit card,” Buffy deadpanned. Holding up the receipt for William to see, she said, “That’s pretty much all that’s here. Looks legit.”

“How disappointing.” William surveyed the rows of cabinets before them. “So he kept everything from meaningless transactions to second-degree felonies in these files? For what, his own amusement?”

“Maybe he thought he was gonna be audited by the IRS.” Buffy shook her head. “This guy was nuts. No wonder they gave up.”

“Well, we’re here. Might as well play it out for a bit.” He folded his arms and took a step back. “Reverse engineering, right? Who are our usual suspects?”

Catching on, Buffy chirped, “Russell Winters.”

“Right. What comes to mind?” William thought about the two files they had looked into. “Think about the first name in particular.”

“Russell.” Buffy repeated the name in her mind. “Jack Russell?” she word associated.

Looking puzzled for a moment, William then shrugged. “Why not.”

As he checked for the listings under ‘J,’ Buffy went about locating the right section of files. She moved to the bottommost drawer of the next cabinet. Getting down on her knees, she pulled the drawer open all the way out and bent over it to peer into the archival abyss.

Feeling only a little guilty about it, William blatantly stared at the perfect view she had inadvertently presented him with of her backside. His fingers twitched as his eyes took in their fill. Her khaki capris fit her like a second skin. In fact they fit her so well he soon realized she couldn’t be wearing much of anything underneath them.

“Nada,” Buffy concluded, brushing her hands together as she stood up abruptly.

He whipped his head up so fast he nearly gave his neck a cramp.

“Are you ok?” Buffy noticed he looked flushed.

“Yeah. Bit stuffy in here.”

“Yeah,” Buffy agreed. She fingered the button of the pink cardigan layer she had put on over her twinset as if she was contemplating taking it off.

William didn’t think he could handle watching even an innocuous striptease at that particular moment.

He cleared his throat to get her attention. “Anything else?” William asked. “That you can think of.”

Buffy bit her lip in thought. “Russell Crowe?” she finally offered half-heartedly.

He leafed through the pages just to focus his mind on something else. Buffy didn’t even bother to move.

“You’re the one who’s good at this,” she challenged him.

William thought for a moment. “Bertrand Russell?”

“Who’s that?”

“Philosopher.”

“Oh.” Buffy still didn’t recognize the name. “Sure.”

William checked the index. “Nothing. It’s likely he wouldn’t have anything directly connected to Winters here in the first place.”

They both deflated at that thought.

“Hey, didn’t you say his real name was Bernard?”

Approvingly, William replied, “Yes. I did. It is.” He racked his brains but couldn’t think of anything.

Buffy leaned back against a cabinet and stared into space. “So maybe Bernard.” She said the first thing that popped into her mind. “St. Bernard?”

Perplexed and amused, William turned toward her. “Are dogs and celebrities all you know?”

Instead of the smart retort he expected, Buffy just shrank before him, speechless. “Whatever,” she bit out, turning her attention back toward the open drawer on the other side of her.

Her reaction took him by complete surprise. Concerned, William unconsciously reached a hand out toward her as he said, “Hey, it was just a joke, pet.”

“You’re hilarious,” she said flatly, not looking at him as she thumbed aimlessly through the M-N files.

“Buffy, I—”

“This isn’t working,” she interrupted him. She blew out a breath. “Who’s left already so we can get of here?”

William leaned back on his heels. “Marcus Hamilton.” He scratched at his neck. “Marcus Aurelius comes to mind but that doesn’t seem to be how this works.”

Buffy remained silent.

As a last-ditch effort, William asked, “And who was your bloke again?”

“Oh, Trick? Freeman Trick.”

“Strange name.” One corner of his mouth turned up. “What do you think?”

Defiantly, she threw at him, “Morgan Freeman?”

He broke into a full-fledged smile. Then something suddenly clicked in his mind between Freeman Trick and Morgan Freeman.

“What?” Buffy asked, noticing his odd expression.

“Freeman is a name that’s not a name.”

“And that makes the kind of sense that doesn’t.”

William looked at her seriously. “It means free man.”

Turning the pages he was holding, he started rapidly scanning down the list of names.

“What are you looking for?”

“Just—a trigger.”

His finger stopped next to a name. Tapping on the paper, he said decisively, “Yes. Somerset. James Somerset.”

“Who’s James Somerset?”

With a bemused expression, he said, “First official free man in England.”

“Huh?”

He darted to the cabinets. Jerking open a drawer, he zeroed in on the object of his search while he hurriedly explained, “Was a ruling called the Mansfield Judgment. Eighteenth century. Made slavery illegal in England. And,” he said, pulling out a worn-looking folder, “James Somerset became a free man.”

With a hint of frustration, Buffy asked herself, “Why don’t I know this?”

William was confused by her question. “Most people don’t.”

“Right.” Buffy reached for the folder. “Can I see?”

“’Course.” William handed it over to her.

Needing space, Buffy moved away from the cabinets and carefully placed the folder down on Holtz’s desk. Her hand trembled a little as she opened it. Her mouth was dry and she felt like an archaeologist unearthing a newly discovered tomb.

On top of a small pile of documents was a photocopy of a fake California driver's license for one James Somerset. Picking up the piece of paper, Buffy zeroed in on the image of the bright-eyed, sculpted face sporting a pencil-thin mustache. She would recognize Trick's face anywhere. The picture was black-and-white, but she saw his trademark yellow gold hoop earrings as if it was a color photograph.

Standing beside her, William reached out to study the other papers in the file. As he flipped through the few sheets, his excitement grew.

Registering a few seconds late the fact that William had started talking, Buffy finally tore her eyes away from the image in her hand.

"What?" she asked.

"I said we just found out he's been at this a while. He laundered money for Trick."

He squinted to see what she was holding.

"What's that? Fake ID? So it wasn't just his own code name, but a pseudonym."

"I guess so." Buffy gingerly put the photocopy down.

"Look here," he said, holding out the few pages to her. "They ran a typical scheme. Money moved into the business through these phony invoices. Then Holtz opened a bank account in Panama. Probably had it wired back to his own accounts here after that." He did a quick mental calculation. "Not a whole lot of dosh, altogether. Hardly seems worth the risk. Unless it was a path to bigger things."

Buffy examined the three invoices.

"This late date is two weeks before his death," she told him.

"That explains that, then."

William began pacing in a circle. Eager to make use of the new information, he speculated, “So if Holtz did this for Trick, and Trick and Hamilton worked together, it fits that Hamilton sought out Holtz when he had a big new assignment to fulfill, don’t it?”

“For Russell Winters,” Buffy supplied.

“Only problem is, none of them are around to tell us anything and Winters is one step ahead.” William stopped moving. "Would be helpful to know how they all found each other."

Buffy thought over the newest wrinkle Trick had posthumously provided.

“I think there’s one person who can tell us more about all of this,” she told William.

“Yeah?”

“Rona Richards.”

“The sister?”

“Yeah, she used to be my C.I. I’ve been trying to reach her for days.”

“Has she skipped town?”

“I don’t think so."

Buffy was looking at him with a question in her eyes, but William wasn’t sure what it was.

"Sooner or later, she’ll call me back.”

“All right,” he replied measuredly.

“She’s—difficult.”

“Sure she’s nothing we can’t handle, right?” It seemed to be the right response, as Buffy perked up immediately.

As she began to rearrange the papers in the file, William suggested, “We might as well call it a day. Not sure what else we’re going to come up with tonight.”

Buffy was wistful as she gazed at the cabinets. “There must be more here. But there’s thousands of files.”

“We have the key.” He grabbed the binder. “I’ll have Andrew work this list over. He might be able to figure something out.”

“I hope you’re paying him overtime,” Buffy commented as they made their way back to the front of the shop.

From behind her, William muttered, “Between this and the spying he’ll be jumping ship soon.”

Buffy almost missed what he said. “Spying?”

He held the door open for her. “Hear no evil?”


***


It was still early evening as they drove back towards downtown in William’s car, side by side in comfortable silence. Both were enjoying a sense of accomplishment for more success than either had anticipated. William watched as Buffy let out an adorable yawn and though he felt a bit fatigued himself he was still loathe to drop her back off at her office just yet. Checking the time, he considered the options.

As they approached Figueroa boulevard, he said casually, “Well, I’m starving. You wanna grab a burger here? I’ve never been but I know they’re famous for them. Xander’s always going on about them. ‘Special sauce’ and so on.”

“Um, no. But you go ahead, I’ll wait,” Buffy offered.

Her accommodating refusal confounded him. Furrowing his brow, he shot her a skeptical glance. “You’re not one of those anorexic types are you, ‘cause—”

“No,” she said vehemently. “I just—don’t eat meat, actually.”

Floored, William was momentarily at a loss.

“Oh, well where do you—” he then began again.

Annoyed, Buffy said dismissively, “Just don’t worry about it, ok?”

“You do still eat, don’t you?” he stated, refusing to let the matter drop.

“Yes,” she said crisply, looking at him like he was an idiot.

“So?” he prompted, sounding the word out with infinite slowness.

She sighed. “There’s a place I go to on Grand but I really don’t think—“

“Right. Hang on.”



Fifteen minutes later, they were standing in line at the counter of Nature’s Way. William studied the unfamiliar menu in his hands. “Tofu Surprise. Now if that doesn’t inspire fear, I don’t know what will.”

“There are other things you can order,” Buffy replied, as if speaking to a child, refusing to turn around as she did so.

“Oh no, I think I have to try that,” he decided, flinging his menu back on the pile.

“Suit yourself,” she said, moving to the front of the line. “Hi, Mrs. Kim,” she greeted the serious-faced Korean woman behind the counter.

“Ah hello,” Mrs. Kim replied with something resembling a smile. “Veggie supreme, same as yesterday?”

William chuckled from behind her. “I take it you don’t brown bag it.”

Buffy turned a little red.



Ten minutes later, a harried Mr. Kim dashed out to their tiny table in the front corner of the small restaurant to deliver their food bowls and canned sodas before disappearing back into the kitchen. Buffy slid the milkglass bud vase with a single silk orchid that stood between them across the plastic yellow tablecloth to an out of the way spot next to the salt and pepper dispensers. William cracked open his Dr. Pepper and contemplated the chopsticks tucked into his rolled napkin before looking over to see Buffy discard her own set in favor of her fork and following suit.

They ate silently for several minutes.

“So how is it?” Buffy finally asked William in a tone that suggested she didn’t much care what his answer was.

Swallowing the food in his mouth, he looked at her impassively for a moment before breaking into a grin. “I’ll live."

Buffy just smiled wryly.

"No, it’s quite good actually.” He finished chewing another bite before leaning back in his chair and asking her, “So, uh, how long have you been waging this war on plants?”

Buffy pursed her lips. “Are you looking for more ammunition?”

“I’m just curious,” William backtracked carefully. “How did you become a vegetarian?”

“Just the usual way. In college, my friend Ben was a zoology major. He showed me the videos from his biology class of what happens on factory farms. Seeing that carnage kind of quelled my appetite for destruction,” Buffy said glibly, taking another bite of her stir-fry.

William studied her closed expression. “You could eat, what, organic meat instead,” he pointed out.

“A lot of my friends do. Angel does too,” Buffy agreed, nodding absently.

“So why don’t you?” William asked.

“I don’t know, I just got in the habit of not eating meat, I guess.”

William felt dissatisfied with her equivocation. “There must be a real reason,” he pressed, regarding her closely. “Something… deeper that that.”

She seemed to be sizing him up, or challenging him, he wasn’t sure which. Playing idly with the fork in her bowl, Buffy slumped back in her chair. A lock of her hair fell across her forehead.

He thought she wasn’t going to answer until she did.

“Well I guess when I was little I always wanted a dog,” she began haltingly, staring at the edge of her plastic bowl thoughtfully. “I used to have this book with every breed in it and I’d pick a new one every day to ask for. Like a catalog, almost.” Feeling slightly embarrassed by this disclosure, she plowed ahead without looking up. “So I was big with the Benji love. But it was really just this… abstract thing? And I never got one,” she shrugged and the hand holding her fork stilled. “Then when I was in college I started volunteering at this animal shelter. It was right after I saw the videos. And the dogs weren’t at all what I thought they’d be. They were cute but they were also odd and funny and mysterious. They weren’t toys and they weren’t machines. They were—alive.”

Struggling as she always did to express the profundity of her feeling through the banality of words, Buffy paused before repeating, “So alive.” She lifted up her face as she said, “And they were dying all the time.” As her eyes met William’s again she was surprised to see him so intently focused on her and what she was saying. Encouraged, she concluded, “And then it just seemed like—dogs and pigs and cows? They’re not so different. Not so different from us either, maybe. But we kill them. They live to be killed,” she finished with feeling.

A grave silence hung between them for a few moments.

A dismissive statement about how the pitiless ways of the world left no room for sentimentality was on the tip of William’s tongue when he shocked them both by blurting out instead, “I didn’t know what meat was.”

“What?” a startled Buffy asked.

Mortified, something inside of him nonetheless compelled William to go on.

“Until I was nine, I mean. I didn’t really understand it was actually muscle.” He made a vague gesture towards his head as he said, “Before then, I guess in my mind I must’ve thought that was why we ate animals, because they had what we didn’t, what we needed. They were meat, they had these… meat parts,” he finished lamely, expecting Buffy to laugh at him.

Instead she just seemed to be raptly absorbing his odd confession.

“Oh. Well that makes sense,” she said, nodding. “I don’t even know when I learned what meat really was. So how did you figure it out?” she asked, taking a sip of her diet Coke.

William’s brow furrowed deeply as the memories long laid to rest were stirred anew.

“I used to have this friend, Clem.” He smiled affectionately at the image of the pasty, ginger-haired child that immediately sprang up. “Pint-sized little runt he was with this skin condition.”

“What kind of—?” Buffy started to ask.

“Hmm? Oh, dunno really. I guess… eczema or something or other,” he mused, as if he had never considered the question before. “It kind of—fell off in pieces. He hated it, but I always told him it was like having a secret weapon.” The boisterous sound of schoolyard shrieks and screams echoed in his mind. “When we played bulldog, no one wanted to touch him.”

William paused, frowning, before saying, “He was my best mate.”

Seeing Buffy watching him expectantly brought him back to what it was he’d wanted to tell her.

“So, ah, this one time I was invited to Clem’s house for dinner and I went with him and his mother to her butcher’s beforehand to pick up her Sunday roast,” he began, running his hand through his hair. “His stock was all laid out under glass, just like at the sweet shop. Everything was marbled and perfect, nothing ragged or hacked. Butcher was trying to sell her his leftover chuck. Chuck, and silverside, and he had a special on flank too. Clem asked him what the difference was, he wanted to know what the names meant. S’pose the man thought he’d give us a tutorial. He was—friendly.” William paused and said again, “Yeah, he was trying to be friendly.”

As he pictured the proud, stocky man with watery eyes and huge cleaver in his hand, William effortlessly slipped into his thick midlands accent as he repeated the man’s words, “‘Well now, lads, see this ‘ere is supraspinatus—that’s chuck to yer layperson—and it comes out the muscle along yer shoulder blade.” Something of the feeling of muted horror that had captured the young William returned as he remembered the butcher with his blade, energetically marking over his apron the corresponding anatomy on his own body. “This ‘ere silverside is the hamstring from the back o’ yer thigh, and flank, that comes out yer abdomen.’” As William spoke the last words, he mimed running an imaginary butcher’s knife across his stomach and forcefully gutting it open.


As he made eye contact with Buffy, her mystified expression brought William back to the moment.

He cleared his throat. “Anyway, was quite a memorable lesson.” He let out a rueful laugh. “After that, I picked at my plate all night. His parents thought I was disrespecting mum’s cooking. Made quite a bad impression.” Unsure of where to look, he picked up and drained the last of his soda.

“I take it you weren’t a regular at Sunday dinner?” Buffy asked, trying uncertainly for a levity she didn’t feel.

“No, I didn’t see him outside of school after that,” William replied as his hands absently crushed his empty metal can.

“Oh,” Buffy exclaimed softly.

“His father hadn’t met me before then and his mum already had me pegged for a yob since I was from a council estate. She wanted better friends for her son,” William explained dispassionately, as if it were a perfectly logical aim to pursue. Noticing as if for the first time the crumpled metal disc he held in his hands, he tossed it aside.

Buffy was trying to keep up with the significance of everything he was telling her. “What does that mean? Council—?”

“Public housing,” William said shortly, avoiding eye contact. Not wanting to say anymore on the matter, he hurriedly changed the subject. “Anyway, the whole thing taught me how effectively words obfuscate reality. Probably laid the seeds for my legal prowess,” he suggested, trying for an arrogance that eluded him. Turning back to his meal, he swallowed a bite of tofu whole but unable to quite let the subject go he then added, “Years later in school I learned that in German meat is ‘Fleisch,’ which would be ‘flesh’ in English. A lot more honest about the product, isn’t it?” he observed wryly.

“Oh, really? Yeah.” Buffy pondered that fact for a moment. “But they still eat it.”

“Yeah, I think sausage qualifies as their national pastime. Just goes to show, can’t count on people to do what’s right. Even when they know better.” He tossed the sentiment off carelessly, almost thoughtlessly, as he reached for his napkin.

The movement of his hand was arrested as his eyes met Buffy’s.

She was staring at him with a mixture of puzzlement and sympathy as she asked, “But people are all we have to count on, aren’t they?”



As Buffy stood before her kitchen stove, idly waiting for the teapot to boil for her evening cup of chamomile, her mind returned again to her strange and unexpected conversation with William at the diner. The indelible events of his childhood had left their own subdued impression on her. There was a glimmering sense of kinship that she was only partially aware of. Less remote was the vague sadness that overlaid it, stemming perhaps from the feeling of resignation he expressed about the exclusion he had experienced, or the lingering disappointment that laced his cynicism. She wondered when he had decided to leave England and come all the way to Los Angeles. She guessed he must have wanted to start over someplace totally new, someplace where being a foreigner would distract people from the past he sought to leave behind. She thought about how lonely it was to be cut off from others knowing you in that way, or even knowing you at all, maybe.



Du musst dein Leben ändern.. The final words of Rilke’s poem came to William as he stood staring unseeingly at his reflection in the glass of his office window long after nightfall. He hadn’t thought about Rilke in a long time, probably not since he had struggled through those translation assignments for Frau Wolf in sixth form. Rilke had never really appealed to William, his esoteric mysticism like a private code seemingly decipherable only to a priestly elect. And yet a few of the sonnets had broken through the overwrought lyricism of the whole, startling William with their emotive clarity. He had spent a long time working on the last stanza of that poem, his ekphrastic masterpiece. His final pass on it had earned him no love from his instructor, a dour woman from the former East Germany who found her English students as displeasing to her sensibilities as the English weather. No real fan of literature herself, she was far too literal-minded for William’s liking and it had been no surprise to him when she had particularly disdained his rendering of the penultimate line. Yet he had stubbornly stuck with his version, convinced it conveyed the right intention despite the liberties it took with the original. Thinking about it now, he paradoxically realized both how good it was, and how impoverished his sense of its meaning had been. For the first time, he understood the point was not to put oneself in the position of the detached speaker but to inhabit the position of the one who was being addressed. In Rilke’s case it was to open himself to the undying soul of a great work of art. But in his own? Was it to recognize that she was calling to him, at once unknowingly and inexorably?

He softly recited his line from memory.

“There is nowhere to hide, nothing here that does not see you.”

Buffy stood next to her bedroom window, intermittently tracing errant patterns on the glass with her fingers while she talked to Angel on the phone. She had been torn between wanting to unburden herself by confiding in him and not wanting to make him worry about her when she knew he was preoccupied by his own fight. And today of all days she wanted to be sure they had time to talk about Darla.

As a result, she gave him a highly abridged version of everything that had happened over the past week. As Buffy talked, Angel offered the requisite agreeable expressions of support. But when she got to Rona his concern was immediate.

"I hope you’ll be careful."

"I will, Angel.”

“Because that girl is always trouble. She has it in for you, too,” he warned.

She turned away from her window and stared at the carpet. “I don’t know,” she hedged uncertainly before reassuring him, “But you don’t need to worry. I'm gonna ask the ADA to come with me. I know I need a buffer for her craziness.”

"So he'll be Buffy's buffer?" Angel asked playfully.

She smiled at him over the phone. "Yeah.”

"Good. It’s about time he did something helpful."

“He’s been fine lately,” she said, realizing how true those words were.

“Remember you don’t have to answer to the department anymore. Don’t be afraid to follow your instincts.”

Buffy felt both flattered and annoyed by his unsolicited pep talk.

“I won’t,” she reassured him again.

Buffy didn’t want to talk about work with Angel today of all days but she felt obligated to give him the chance to unload his own frustrations.

“So what’s new in the land of smiles?” she asked, trying to sound chipper.

“Not much reason to smile. But what can you do?”

Angel’s rhetorical question told Buffy he was again reluctant to go into the details of his day-to-day emotional grind. She gladly moved closer to home.

“Have you talked to Connor recently?”

“Yeah, he texted me the other day.” He chuckled derisively. “Kid told me he got a part in the school play.”

Buffy laughed. “He’s not a kid anymore, Angel. And you make it sound like he’s gonna be the ninth reindeer in Rudolph again. He told me this is cutting-edge university theatre.”

Angel snorted. “Yeah, that’s exactly what we need in the family—an actor.”

“Hey, who knows where it might take him?”

“I just don’t want to see him waste time like I did on dead-end pursuits.”

Buffy mulled over his choice of words. ”You turned out all right.”

“Thanks, sweetheart.”

After a moment of comfortable silence, Buffy tried to work up her courage. “Have you been in touch with your dad?”

Noticing his girlfriend’s unusual train of questions, Angel asked, "What's on your mind, Buffy?"

After a second’s hesitation, Buffy tentatively began, "Um, well I thought—I thought you might want to talk about Darla today.” When he didn't respond, Buffy pressed, "Since it's May 27th and it's been—"

"Oh. I didn’t even realize that." Despite his words, Angel's voice didn't betray any surprise.

Confused, Buffy blurted out, "But it’s her birthday." She didn't stop to consider how odd it was she had reminded him of that other marker of the day's significance.

He let out a short laugh. "You know how it is over here. I can barely keep track of what day of the week it is. Anyway, it’s all in the past."

"But it’s okay if--if you still think about what might have been,” Buffy said gently, a question in her voice. “I know it's hard, but if you want to talk about it—"

"Really, I came to terms with it last year."

“Last year?” Buffy echoed. All she could remember of last year's anniversary was Angel going to visit Darla's grave alone and saying very little about the experience afterward.

"Yeah. I decided I couldn't beat myself up about it forever. Even though I was a big part of her life, it wasn't my fault."

"Of course it wasn't," Buffy said firmly.

"It was her despair that led her to commit suicide and for that I have to find forgiveness."

"What?"

Angel's matter-of-fact tone surprised Buffy as much as the surety of his statement about Darla's death, which Buffy had always felt posed an unresolvable, tragic riddle for him.

Quietly, Angel said, "The priest explained to me that despair is one of the original sins. We think of it as sloth now but it's really a weakness of the will."

Though aware of Angel’s religious leanings in theory, he so seldom gave expression to them that it always unsettled her when he did. Buffy didn’t know what to make of the conclusion he reached now. The language of sin and moral failing had always seemed too abstract to her, possessing little explanatory power for the shifting mixtures of goodness and darkness she observed in others. It struck her as especially inadequate at capturing the mercurial essence of Darla, at turns so irresistibly beguiling and perilously fragile.

“I’m glad he helped you come to terms with it,” she finally said, her fingers coming up to tug on her hair.

“It feels right to move forward,” Angel said blandly, making Buffy feel like she was talking to a complete stranger.

“Right.”

Angel yawned audibly. “I’d better get some shut-eye. Let’s try to talk in a couple days, okay?”

“Okay,” she replied shakily.

“Good night, sweetheart.”

“’Night.”

Buffy hurriedly dropped the phone in its cradle and sank to the floor. Without fully understanding why, she began to cry.