"Couldn't they shut the goddamn cupboards?"

As Adrian stood in Veck's kitchen, he stared across the empty, all-open everything, watching as the poor bastard closed shit with hard claps.

On some level, it was hard to get jazzed about anything - and that included not just someone else's drawers, cabinets and closets, but the war in general. The only thing likely to get his attention was if Devina showed up again, but that demon seemed to have gone into hiding.

Never a good thing.

Next to him, Jim was hanging back as well, letting Veck do his thing to put the house back together. When the detective went upstairs, the savior glanced over.

"Devina had better make her fucking move soon or his head's going to explode."

Ad grunted in agreement. "But not much we can do about it."

He and Jim had also backseated it during the interrogation and the lie detector test and the further interro, until Ad had become convinced that they were never getting out of the police station. In the end, however, Veck had been released. All the cops had against him was circumstantial shit, and with the results of the polygraph in, there was not enough to charge him or even put him on a forty-eight-hour detainer.

Good news on some level - better to have the showdown with Devina away from all those uniforms. But the detective was pushed to his limit, and Adrian knew all too well what that was like.

Abruptly unable to stay still, Ad went over to the refrigerator and cracked the thing. Not much inside - no surprise there - but even if there had been a boatload of lo mein, he didn't have any impulse to actually eat.

Even breathing was just something he did out of habit at this point.

Matter of fact, he'd heard once that there were stages of grief. Was he in depression now? He certainly wasn't as pissed off as he had been when Eddie had first ... whatevered. At the moment, all he had was a cage of pain around his lungs and the sense that he was dragging a river barge behind him.

Shaking his head, he deliberately put that shit out of his mind. Introspection was not his friend right now -

Too bad the resolution didn't stick.

Glancing over at Jim, he said, "Do you think he's all right left alone?"

"Veck needs the space."

"Wasn't talking about him."

"You mean Eddie?" Jim crossed his arms and cursed. After a moment, he said, "Actually, yeah, I think he'll be all right. Devina's not incented to fuck with him because as long as he's with us, it's an open wound that won't heal. She takes the body or compromises it? That's a short-term thing."

Ad walked over to the window and looked out. Five o'clock and the light was just starting to drain from the sky.

Man, he was jumpy all of a sudden. "She has to know where he's being kept."

"But I marked that door. Anyone gets in there" - the guy pounded his chest with his fist - "I'm going to know."

Ad paced around a little, feeling like he had ants on the inside of his skin. Eventually, he muttered, "Look, I'm just going to head over there and check on him. I'll be right back - "

Jim stepped in front of him. "Eddie is okay. And I need you here. Shit is about to go down."

"Ten minutes."

"This is exactly what she wants. You need to realize that."

Adrian didn't want to throw down with the guy. They already had enough tempers flaring, thanks to Veck going WWE with the attitude - and Ad had enough sense to know that he was unstable himself, capable of flaring up or burning out with the flip of a coin.

But he couldn't shake the abrupt need to return to the garage.

"Look, I'll be right back. Promise." He met the savior's eyes with his own. "I swear on Eddie's soul."

"Goddamn it," Jim muttered.

"I couldn't agree more."

Without waiting for another round of disagreement, Ad spirited himself out of that house. And as soon as he took form on the garage's front lawn, he knew he'd been right to come: there was another presence inside the apartment with Eddie.

Instantly falling into fight mode, he outed his crystal dagger and -

"What the hell?" he muttered, lowering his weapon.

At that moment, Colin opened the door at the top of the staircase and stepped out onto the landing. "That would be 'Heaven,' thank you very much."

The archangel was not in namby-pamby whites, but the kind of clothes you could fight in: loose pants and a tight shirt. And he was alone, at least as far as Ad could sense thnt>

"What are you doing here?" Ad asked, even though he knew there was only one explanation.

"Watching TV."

Adrian went over to the bottom of the stairwell. "Jim doesn't have cable."

"So one can imagine how dissatisfied I am."

"Nigel's let you guard him?"

"He knows I'm here, yes - "

The wind abruptly changed direction, shifting so it came out of the east - and it brought bad news with it: Riding along the invisible currents, weaving in and out of the gusts, was a subtle groaning sound.

"Fucking. Bitch." Adrian nailed Colin with his stare. "You stay with Eddie."

"Thank you for the order," Colin said dryly. "But that is why I came."

"Yeah. Sorry."

There was no time to kiss ass any further: As the wind intensified and the moaning sounds turned into shrieks, Ad didn't just curse Devina and her warlords - he wanted to kick himself in the head. This was precisely what Jim had said was going to happen: The pair of them apart, him dealing with a bunch of soulless, boneless bastards as Jim undoubtedly handled the actual crossroads.

He'd played right into the demon's hands.

And he was going to have to stay in her palm.

He sure as shit wasn't leaving now: Colin was powerful, but there were limits - and they'd already lost Eddie once.

Not going to happen again.

Moving fast, Adrian flashed into the garage. Over in the truck, there was a duffel full of leather riding gear, and he quickly yanked on studded gloves that went all the way up his forearms, and then pulled out the black duster Eddie had used for long trips on the bike.

On his way out, he passed by a pitchfork - and doubled back to grab it. Shit knew he felt like stabbing the crap out of something - and he'd just seen how much fun lawn tools could be.

When he stepped outside again, Colin was nowhere in sight, which was good timing and exactly what he wanted: All around, minions were pulling up out of the shadows, forming into eyeless killers that were just his fucking cup of tea.

Adrian inflated his lungs until his chest stung and then he let out a war cry that shook the tree limbs around the garage, blowing them back so far a few of them even snapped.

And then he went in.

Locking a death grip on the worn wooden handle, he lunged forward, nailing the closest minion right in the gut before angling the tool heavenward - until it jacked right into the rib structure of the torso. With the tines locking in place, it was a case of up-and-over as he slung the bastard into left field like it was a bale of hay. Then it was the small matter of tucking the business end under his arm so that he caught the SOB riding up on his ass in the thighs.

Adrian wheeled around, yanked out the tool, and went over the head, bringing the curved spikes down laterally on the crippled bastard. They penetrated through the face, such as it was, and went into the chest cavity from above, reducing Devina's fighter to a mud puddle.

The squeal was so fucking satisfying.

Disengaging again, widened his stance and angled himself so that the pair of minions that were trying to split his attention got what they were asking for: Keeping his head straight forward, he measured them in the peripheral vision of both eyes.

He was banking on a third coming from behind.

It was just too cocksucking obvi.

Flexing his knees, he threw himself into the air, backflipping over the one he'd guessed right about - and then stabbing it in the back and twisting hard. As the impact registered, the minion went into a full-body spasm, acidic blood going flying to the point where he had to disengage and get gone. ping around the side of the thing, he ducked into himself and hit the ground on a roll.

When he sprang up onto his feet, he was prepared to take on the other two.

Instead, he faced an army.

Minions had boiled up from every shadow in the yard and they surrounded him, their numbers so deep, they were in and among the trees on the edges of the garage's lot.

There must have been thirty. Forty. Fifty.

Facing the overwhelming force, a resonant calm flooded through him, kind of like he was bleeding out. Eddie was going to be okay; Colin was going to make sure of that. And Ad was going to give that archangel enough time and space to get the pair of them out of here.

As for him? He wasn't getting out of this in one piece, and he was just fine with the way he was going to go.

This was the way to die: defending your territory and taking out a fuckload of the enemy on the way to your grave.

This was honorable.

As Adrian got ready to go into the thick of it, he thought, for what was going to be the last time, that he wished his friend was with still him. At least they wouldn't be separated for much longer, however.

Downtown at HQ, Reilly found herself on the verge of leaving and going home. For about an hour and a half.

There was nothing for her to do. She hadn't been assigned a new case yet; she'd finished up her work on her other ones; and God knew she was off Veck's. And yet she was sitting at her desk as though someone had superglued her butt to her chair, her colleagues having filed out a while ago.

Unfortunately, she wasn't just staring into space. She was back on Veck's father's Facebook page like some nut-job addict.

Going into the links section, she clicked through to a few sites, but none of them gave her what she was looking for. Then again, nothing with www. was going to help her out: Her answers as to why Veck had seduced her, and why she'd fallen for it, and why he had to be just like his father, were not on the Web.

She went to the videos section. God, these things were positively repulsive, most taken at fan rallies -

She frowned and leaned in toward her screen. One of the newest had been shot within the last couple days or so from in front of the prison where the elder DelVecchio was housed. In the bright sun, the signs were plainly visible and the slogans were ridiculous.

Some even rhymed.

Execution. Persecution. How original.

She watched the video again. And again. And again. Until she'd memorized the two-minute clip's pans and close-ups, as well as the part where that flashbulb went off from the back -

Wait.

Not a flashbulb.

She backed the file up and let it resume. In the back row, standing off to the side, was a man ... with a pair of mirrored sunglasses on.

There was no way of zooming in, so she just replayed.

"Oh ... God ..."

Again with the replay.

"Oh ... my ... God."

It was ... Bails?

It had to be him ... standing in and among the deranged devotees. As the camera panned, he was speaking to the guy next to him - until he saw that he was on the video and turned away.

She went back to the wall on the page. Searching the membership was useless: Not only was there no way to screen the data, more to the point, she didn't know what she was looking for in terms of a name. In fact, if she typed in "John Bails" in the Facebook directory, it brought up a guy in Arizona who was sixty, and someone in New Mexico who was seventeen, and three other people who weren't a match.

On a burst of paranoia, she paused and checked over her shoulder. No one was behind her ... or even in the department.

Back to the video.

As she watched over and over again, she wasn't absolutely sure it was him. After all, there were a million pairs of mirrored sunglasses out in the world. But the hair ... the build ... the coloring ... all of that was dead-on.

Abruptly, she thought of those "boxes" he'd talked about ... as well as the fact that Veck had passed his lie detector test. Yes, it was possible to dupe the machine, and given how cool Veck could get, he seemed like a perfect candidate for that rarified class of fibbers. But why, then, would he have admitted intent when it came to hurting Kroner? It didn't make sense.

Unless, of course ... he'd simply told the truth.

Reilly went through every video there was ... and found two other sightings of the man who appeared to be Bails. He always wore sunglasses, even at night, but not exclusively those mirrored jobs.

She sat back in her chair. Kicked her foot and sent herself on a leisurely spin.

Was it possible that Bails had a relationship with Veck's father?

Then again, if Bails was one of the legions of fans that madman had, he didn't have to actually know the guy. But why frame Veck?

As the momentum of her chair slowed, she found herself looking at the page again, and thought, Well, duh ...

If the father was executed, how did they keep the love going? Simple - someone created the illusion that the family tradition was carrying on. Maybe even got Veck jailed. Maybe even drove him to kill.

She thought of that polygraph, and considered the idea that Veck actually had a murderous impulse. If pushed hard enough, if put under enough stress, it was possible that someone could snap and act in ways they wouldn't normally. Hello, that was why police departments had homicide pisions.

As for what happened in the woods? Veck might have gone there with the thought of killing Kroner on his mind, but given the way he'd behaved with the paparazzo he'd hit, it was eivable he'd approached it as retaliation for what the man had done - which was still illegal, immoral, and inexcusable if he acted on it, but different from singling out an innocent woman and defiling her. Make that twenty-five innocent women.

Besides, Veck had not, in fact, harmed Kroner.

He had, in fact, called 911.

She thought of how Veck had been around her, the way he'd talked and acted and touched her.

Then she recalled Bails by her car, looking forlorn and betrayed by his "best friend."

Psychopaths could be very convincing. That was at the core of how they caused the damage they did.

The question was, Between those two men, who was the liar?

As she thought more about Bails's great reveal in her unmarked in front of the hospital, she had to wonder ... how had he known about the earring's discrepancy? There were hundreds of pieces of evidence in the preliminary report. Hundreds. As a detective on the case, he would have looked that list over once, maybe twice. Kind of hard to believe he'd remember a single entry.

What had prompted him to compare the two lists around that particular object? The fact that Veck had recognized the earring as Sissy Barten's?

Or maybe because Bails was the guy doing the framing?

There was only one way to know for sure. Unfortunately, it was not legal.

Reilly stood up and walked through her department, striding all the way to the rear and looking in the conference rooms; then returning to the front to check reception; before doubling back and peeking into her boss's office even though she knew the woman had left.

Over at her desk once more, she picked up her phone and dialed the one person she knew could help her.

When the call was answered, she said softly, "I need some help, but it's walking the line."

De la Cruz's voice was steady. "What kind of line we talking about?"

"The only one that counts."