Looking at Katrina in the dim light, the first urge I have is to pull her to me, to hold her and protect her. I resist the urge only by pushing past her and reminding myself of the task at hand. I don’t want to be the man whose mind cares about nothing but sex.

“What do you mean, keep me safe?” she asks after her one-word command. She locks the door, and I notice that this time, she didn't have her pistol with her when she answered the door. Why?

“Where's your pistol?” I ask, still looking around. “And is that all you have?”

“It's all I've needed,” Kat says in a relaxed voice, going over to her computer desk and taking the pistol out. “I've been doing maintenance on it today.”

“Yeah well, I hope it's in perfect condition,” I say, wanting to sit down but not knowing where. The loft is nearly black inside, with only the light from Kat's monitor illuminating anything. “Jesus Katrina, can you turn on a light?”

Katrina makes her way past me and hits a switch, illuminating what looks like, of all things, a line of white Christmas lights that stretches around her living area and over her bed. “That's new.”

“I used other lights last time. I picked these up because I can run them off a couple of double A batteries if I want,” she says, sitting down in her desk chair. “I have enough costs with just keeping my computer going. So what did you mean, Jackson? You didn't show up panicked at my door telling me Peter's going to be coming after me just to see my home lights.”

I try to find a place to sit down, finally giving up and pointing to her bed. “May I?”

“Go ahead. But get to talking, Jackson.”

I can barely call this a bed, it's so thin and uncomfortable. I think I might be more comfortable sitting on the floor as I adjust myself. “You know, you don't have to bitch at me about it, Kat. I'm serious when I said I'm here for the right reasons. Peter saw your most recent hit on him. Your friends in the online media need to watch themselves also, but Peter knows that he can't hit at them easily or invisibly. He hits you, though... hell, Kat, you don't even exist. Nathan took a week to find you, and he's one of the best in the city at it. And Peter went through the roof at this one. You touched a nerve that he isn't going to let go of.”

“I don't want him letting go,” Katrina says, her voice intense again. “I want him to latch on so that I can drag him into the light of day with it, then drive a stake through his fucking heart like a vampire.”

“Yeah well, I don't want to see you dead because of it!” I yell back, then settle back on the bed. “For fuck's sake, I know you don't care, but I care if you live through this or not.”

“And yourself?” Katrina asks, but this time, there's a bit of softness in her voice. “And what's with Peter?”

“He threw a tantrum today... Jesus, how I ever thought that man could have been my father. Throwing things, then he tells Nathan to hunt you down and cut your throat in front of me, because I dared to say that your little act may not have been from you. Then afterward, he tells me that if I ever contradict him in public again, he'll have my throat cut. So I went and talked to Nathan.”

“And what did Staff Sergeant Black say about it?” Kat asks, something I didn't know. She notices my surprise, and smirks. “I know all about him, remember? Give me five minutes, and I could have his last commanding officer's home phone number.”

I sigh, then half-laugh. She's still a step ahead of me, but I have to get through to her. “He says that he won't come after you. But he also knows that Peter is going to send someone else after you if he doesn't produce results. And he has to look like he's doing something, or else he's going to end up just as dead as Peter wants you to be. There's more than one way to kill someone in New Orleans.”

Kat nods, then leans forward, propping her elbows on her knees. “You look more awake than you were before, at least. You understand the stakes of this battle. Either I take him down, or I die. I may die either way.”

“I don't want that, Katrina!” I repeat vehemently. “I want you to live!”

“Why? Why give a damn about me?”

Her quiet question, barely above a whisper, cuts me off, and I look at her again. Her hair is totally black in the dim light from the Christmas LEDs, but those eyes of hers... like two tears in the middle of that perfect face. “Because you were one of the only decent things in my childhood, Kat. We met when we were both six, and even then, I knew my mother hated me. She kept telling me how I'd ruined her figure, how it was my fault that Peter was the way he was. I didn't understand it at the time, but I did the math later... Peter was already having an affair with Andrea's mother before I was even born. I didn't understand it at the time, and thought it was all my fault.”

“It never was,” Kat says, getting off her chair and sitting on the other end of the bed. She crosses her legs, kind of yoga style, or maybe in a meditation pose. “But go on.”

“From the beginning, you were my best friend... hell, for a lot of it, my only friend. Andrea didn't even speak English at first when she came to the house, and she and I have never got along all that well, at least until the past few days. We never did really, although I remember that you two sometimes played together. But most of the time you and I played together. I looked forward every day when you would pull up in that Ford Crown Vic that your dad drove, because it meant a whole afternoon or a full day if it was a Saturday where I felt like a normal kid, and not the son of...”

“Of what?” Katrina asks softly.

“Of a human snake,” I say after a moment. “Even when I was little, I think I knew about my... about Peter at some level. When everyone else was able to bring their parents to school for those silly days, he was never able to go. Then there were all the other signs... the sports cars, the clothes, the constant pretty girls who kept coming to the house. The son of a bitch didn't even worry about trying to hide his cheating even, although he's gotten worse as Andrea and I have gotten older. And through it all, I was the one blamed by Mom, and more or less ignored by Peter. To him, I was just an... an accessory, I guess. Something to check off the box, saying he'd done what needed to be done to complete his bucket list on life.”

“But with me, you felt different?”

I nod, smiling for the first time in what feels like all day. “Yeah. We clicked from the beginning, Katrina. I mean sure, you and I have our differences. Even back then we had those. But you liked so many of the things I liked, and every time you and I got together... it was magic to me. You know, I'd trade all the groupies, all the cars and the drugs and the parties for another chance to sit down with you and complete that stupid Corvette that I threw out later?”

“So why didn't you try and find me?” Katrina asks, and I can hear the hurt in her voice. “I spent six years in foster care, and a lot of that was hell. Even with Virginia, there was a lot of hell I went through.”

“At first, I was just told you were gone,” I answer. “Later, when I found out that your parents had been killed, I was told you were sent to live with your grandparents in Vermont. Since I didn't know anything about your grandparents, and I didn't know how much my parents lied to me on a constant basis... I believed it. But without you in my life, without that normalcy... I realize now that I've become too much like my father. I may have all my hair still, and there's a lot less fat around my waist, but in too many other ways, I've walked down his path. Except for one.”

“Which is?”

“I don't want you to die, Katrina. You were my friend, and since seeing you...” I stop, unable to finish what I want to say. “I don't want you hurt. You talk about going through a decade of hell, and I don't doubt it. But I've been through my own kind of hell for my entire life, especially when my best friend and the only girl I... liked was taken from me. But if I have to, I'd rather go through that again than have you hurt.”

I look down at my shoes, noting that I'm still wearing the same muddy and stained loafers I'd put on this morning, in fact, I'm wearing the same stuff that I wore for my walk with Nathan. It's filthy, and for the first time in years, I don't really care.

Katrina surprises me by reaching out and putting a hand on my arm, and I look up, into her glittering eyes. “I believe you,” she says softly. “Jackson... you were the only thing I missed from my old life once I accepted that my parents were dead. But I'm not going to stop, and I'm not going to run. If Peter wants to send his men after me... it's going to cost him a lot to get my head on a stick.”

“You sound a lot like Nathan,” I mutter, but I can feel her hand through my shirt, and I want her so damn bad. I want to feel her fingers on my skin again, not on my shirt. I want to kiss those lips, to see those tear-colored eyes change to what I know they can be, a clear blue like the Caribbean. I want to hold her and tell her that the pain can go away, for both of us. I want all of that, but I don't move. The hurt and distrust is still too much inside her, I can tell.

“He's misguided, but somewhat honorable still,” Katrina says. “You can learn something from him, if you study him closely enough.”

“There are other things, other people I'd rather learn from, even if he is interesting,” I reply, letting go of my pain some and covering her hand with mine. “Katrina, I want you safe... but if not, I want to be part of your life.”

Kat's about to answer, when her computer beeps and she looks over, breaking the tension between us. She pulls her hand free and goes over, pulling up a window. She's quiet for a few minutes as she reads and types, then leans back, her face slack. “Oh my God.”