When Irwin woke again, it was to the sight of two unfamiliar people standing over his bed. Blinking, he cleared some of the blurriness from his vision and was able to identify the two strangers as police officers. After a few moments more, he realized that one of them was Officer Janis, while the other person was still unknown to him.

Irwin groaned. “Not you again.”

Janis pulled a chair over and sat down, then leaned forward and smiled at him. “I don’t think you’re in a position where you can really complain about the visitors you’re getting.”

Dagwood was nowhere to be seen, though if Irwin really strained his ears he could hear some impatient shuffling outside the door. Clearly, the other man was unhappy about being forced out of the room.

How did I not hear that and wake up? I bet he put up such a fuss.

Irwin looked at Janis and said, “But I bet you’d get kicked out if I got upset.”

“But you wouldn’t do that, would you? We’re here to help.”

He sighed and settled deeper into the bed, wishing that he could sink through it and disappear. No matter how nice the cops had been to him, they were still never going to be his favorite people. He just really, really didn’t trust them. The whole time they talked, he was always afraid that they would suddenly somehow realize that he was a thief. Maybe that was guilt, though he couldn’t recall ever having felt guilty after taking something that didn’t belong to him. Mostly, he just felt alive.

“What do you want?” he asked finally.

Janis leaned in closer. “I need you to tell me everything you remember about what happened.”

He started shaking his head before she was even done speaking. Thinking about what happened was terrible enough. He couldn’t imagine talking about it.

“Irwin, this is very important. We need to know these things. It could provide important information for us.”

“I’m not sure what kind of information that could be,” Irwin replied. “It just…happened.”

“Which way did he come from, and which way did he go again when he left? These are just some of the things you can help us with.”

“I don’t remember,” he said. His heart was starting to pound. A machine nearby started beeping faster, apparently responding to him. “I really don’t. I wasn’t looking at him when it…happened. And I didn’t see anything after that. I just…felt.”

“Are you sure?” Janis pressed. “Maybe you should tell it from the beginning. Something might jog your memory.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Irwin, this is no longer a thing of want. This is a legal obligation. You have to tell us.”

“No, it isn’t.”

Everyone in the room turned to look as Dagwood barged into the room. His face was red, and he looked downright furious. Like a hunting animal, he stalked his way over to Irwin’s bedside and placed one hand on the mattress as if to claim it. “He doesn’t have to tell you anything. Can’t you see he’s scared?”

“We’ve got a whole city out there scared,” Officer Janis said. “And this one testimony could turn the tides for us. We need to hear his testimony, to get it down on the record, so that we can make our next move.”

“Why are you so eager to get his testimony?” Dagwood insisted. He kept his hand on Irwin’s bed, leaning over it now so that the police could no longer look at Irwin. For this, he was relieved. His strong, protective alpha had returned. “You know exactly what he’s going to say, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Officer Janis said. “But we weren’t there. He was. If he tells us what we suspect, then we can put it down in the file and act on it. Until then, our hands are tied by the district. We’re limited right now, in all the worst ways.”

None of this made any sense to Irwin, but he got the gist of it. Unless he told them what they wanted to hear, they couldn’t do what they thought they needed to do in order to catch Kevin Leery.

He didn’t really have a choice.

“Okay,” he said.

The others had gone back to arguing and weren’t paying much in the way of attention to him, so his voice surprised them. All three of them turned in his direction with surprise on their faces, as if they’d forgotten that he was even there.

He repeated, “Okay. But I’m not telling you anything unless Dagwood stays.”

“We can’t…” Janis looked at him and then relented. Because Dagwood was a bounty hunter, she didn’t want to reveal to him what she considered to be important information for the police. They were essentially competitors. It would be like Burger King revealing all their secret recipes to McDonalds, or for the Coca-Cola company to post its hidden ingredient on the internet for everyone to take advantage of.

But, she did relent. “Fine. But he has to be quiet. If he says one more word, he has to leave.”

“If you make him leave, I won’t talk.”

Janis seemed to barely restrain an eye roll. Pulling out a notebook, she nodded for him to get started.

Holding onto Dagwood’s hand, Irwin told his side of the story exactly as he remembered it. It seemed even harder to speak than he had thought it would, and he had to keep stopping to gather himself. Janis listened very patiently, but she only occasionally wrote anything down. Sometimes it seemed as if she wasn’t actually listening to what he said, but was rather watching to see if he said anything to confirm what she already knew.

He finished quickly and then the only sound in the room was that of machinery. His heart rate monitor counted off a steady, rapid beat, echoing the cadence of his heart. It seemed as if his entire body had turned into one gigantic heart, because he could feel his pulse in places where he never knew he had one. Or maybe this was what the beginning of hysteria was like.

“Thank you, Irwin,” Janis finally said. She didn’t close her notebook. “Now, I’d like to ask some questions to confirm what you’ve said.”

“What, you think I’d lie? Don’t you think that my heart monitor is a pretty good sign that I’m not?”

Dagwood let out a low growl, reinforcing his statement.

“No, of course I don’t think you’ve lied about anything,” Janis said soothingly. At least, she tried to sound soothing. It mostly emerged as self-serving and just weird, like she had no doubt that she was the most soothing person on the planet right now. “It’s just that sometimes, questions can jog a new perspective to light.”

Which means she wasn’t satisfied with what I said.

“So, you said this was relatively early in the day? Can you give me an exact estimate on the time?”

He knew she had to already know around what time this happened. Someone had called 911, after all, to get the ambulance to him. That call would be on record. And there were other testimonies from other people who heard the gunshots.

Nevertheless, Irwin said, “A little after noon. Maybe 12:20 or something.”

This, she wrote down. “That’s around lunchtime.”

“Uh…yeah?”

“Were you in a very populated area of the city?”

“What part of a city isn’t populated?”

Janis shot him a sharp glance. “Answer the question.”

Dagwood let out a low, threatening growl. “Back off.”

With some reluctance, Janis relented. “Would you please answer the question for me, Irwin?”

“There were a lot of people around, yeah. But no one in the park. Or not even really near the park, I don’t think.”

“You don’t think?”

Now he was suspicious. “You think there was someone else?”

“I don’t think anything. I’m asking you for your account of things as they occurred. Now, are you sure you were alone in the park?”

Irwin wracked his brains but he really just couldn’t remember. All he could do was shrug in response.

“Because that seems a little weird to me. Lunchtime. Lots of people around. No one but you at that park.”

Dagwood let out another warning growl. “I’m not sure when this turned into an interrogation, but I’m about to end it. I don’t like the way you’re talking to my boyfriend.”

Boyfriend.

Yes, that was the word to describe what they were. It felt a bit odd to be addressed in such a manner, but he quickly decided that he liked it. He especially liked the look that crossed Janis’s face. It was full of displeasure and surprise, as if she had expected them to be friends but not lovers.

“I’ll ask you this way. Irwin. Was anyone else in the park.”

“I don’t know.”

“You either do or you don’t. Please give me an answer.”

“I’ll say yes. Is yes what you want to hear?” Anger churned in his stomach, frustration knotting at his joints. He clenched his fists, pulling at the stitches in his wrists.

“I want to hear the truth.”

“Well, I told you the truth! Sorry I’m not a fucking cop, and I don’t notice how many ants there were on the ground, or how many piles of dog shit I nearly stepped in. I’m just a fucking person. I don’t remember.”

“You’re guiding him with questions!” Dagwood snapped. His voice seemed very far away from Irwin, lost behind a wall of haze that had started closing in on him. When it had begun to happen was a mystery but now pain was closing in on him like fog on the shore of a lake. His chest was tightening. Breathing was more difficult. That fucking annoying beeping…

Had there been someone else at the park? Had there? He couldn’t remember because he hadn’t been looking around, just minding his own business. Had he heard footsteps in the split second before the gun fired? Not directly behind him but off to the side, behind one of the trees? The sound nearly hidden beneath the gentle rustle of swaying branches? And he had turned to look and a woman stood there, with her hair so short and pale as to be nearly indiscernible from her skull. Weren’t her eyes a weird color? Wasn’t her mouth shaped oddly? And he remembered thinking, don’t stare, don’t stare, don’t stare, and then he had been shot and all his thoughts were blown right out of his head.

“She had purple eyes,” he whispered.

“What?” someone said.

Forcing his own eyes to open, Irwin realized that he might have been lost in his thoughts longer than he assumed. Dagwood stood protesting as a burly nurse attempted to force him and the cops out of the room. The cops were attempting to bargain, refusing to give ground, while a doctor stood over Irwin with some weird sort of medical instrument in hand. Irwin didn’t even want to think what that particular weird device was for.

Shaking in his bed, listening to the chaotic beat of his heart, he said again, “She had purple eyes.”

“Who?” the other cop demanded. She braced one hand against the doorway, only to have it knocked effortlessly away by the large nurse. “Who had purple eyes, Irwin? Was someone else there?”

“Behind a tree. Maybe. Weird mouth. And then…I got shot?”

God, now he was uncertain of his own memories. Why hadn’t these people just left him alone to his sleep, where at least the pain was muted? Everything seemed to be all jostled out of place. Had Dagwood been there? No, not Dagwood, he was in New York City. No, Albany. The weird woman was there. The one with the…

“Silver hair. Blonde? Very pale. Looked kind of like a snake.”

As he said this last part, a hush descended upon the room. Opening his eyes, he saw that the cops were now quietly letting themselves be pushed from the room. Janis was scribbling on her notebook. “Thank you, Irwin,” she said, and that was all as she finally disappeared through the door.

The nurse then turned to Dagwood. “Time for you to go out, too. Give Irwin some private time while the doctor checks him over.”

“He’s my boyfriend, and he needs me! I’m not leaving him.”

“It doesn’t matter to me if you’re his boyfriend, or the Pope’s boyfriend. You have to leave, sir.”

Irwin clenched his eyes shut. Too many fucking sounds. Too much going on. He couldn’t handle it. “Stop,” he pleaded.

“See?” the nurse said. “He wants you to stop.”

“No!” Irwin said, louder. His raw, bruised throat hated to be used so harshly, but he couldn’t seem to make himself be quiet. “He can stay. Just…I just need quiet. Okay? Everyone shut up. I can’t…I just need quiet.”

In the end, it was decided that he had been merely worked up and wasn’t in any danger of physically relapsing into a worse state. However, Dr. Harrison-Henrichs warned him that being excitable right now wasn’t the best thing for him or his baby.

He was given a small dose of pain medication to help calm him and put him back to sleep, and then he was alone in the room with Dagwood.

For some reason, he felt embarrassed. “I’m sorry for freaking out,” he muttered.

Dagwood stood up and then bent over him for a hug, touching him every so gently. Even that much contact still hurt like nobody’s business but the comfort outweighed the pain. “If anyone in the world has the right to freak out right now, it’s you. I’m sorry you’re going through this. I wish I could make it better.”

Irwin didn’t like the way that statement trailed off at the end, as if Dagwood had more to say. “But?”

“What you said, I think I know that person.”

Forgetting for a moment that he was injured, Irwin tried to sit up. Dagwood anticipated this movement and placed his hands on his shoulders to prevent him from potentially hurting himself. “Take it easy, okay?”

“You know the person? They really exist? I thought I was just imagining it. Like I just made it up because they wanted me to have seen something so badly.”

Dagwood played with his hair, soothing some of the tension from the back of his neck. “Well, you have one hell of an accurate imagination, then. I know that woman. She’s the goddamn viper who bit me.”

Though the pain medication coursing through Irwin’s system was starting to take its toll, he did manage to recall that particular incident. “You think she’s involved in all this somehow? But…how?”

Dagwood quickly explained his discoveries in Albany, then concluded by saying, “So, I think it’s pretty damn obvious that Kevin’s involved in underground fighting. And that viper woman, that Miss Hemlock, she’s covering for him. Or training him. I don’t know.”

Irwin held onto Dagwood’s hand as his eyes started to close again, with more finality than before. “So, what are you waiting for, Mr. Bounty Hunter? Isn’t it time for you to go on the chase?”

“Well, you see,” Dagwood said. “I’m officially retiring. I haven’t told my boss yet, but I can say for sure he won’t be pleased about it. But I can also say for sure that I just don’t give a fuck. I’ve had a good run. Time to turn in my uniform and settle down.”

“But…what will you do then?”

“Irwin, baby, I’ve got enough in the bank to last for two retirements. Problem is, I think we’re going to need most of it to put our kid through skydiving school.”

Oh, yeah. The baby.

God, how could he even begin to think about having a child when the rest of this mess was going on? How could he even begin to plan for it? So many things would have to be done to prepare for it to arrive, and then it would require so much upkeep and effort throughout the years. He couldn’t even imagine it. Bringing it home for the first time, the first night together, the first year, school, dates, college, a wedding…

Very suddenly, he felt old.

How was he going to do anything with his own life now, while he was busy making sure his kid had a better childhood than he did? Dagwood might be able to support all three of them on his own, but Irwin didn’t want to be a stay-at-home parent. He didn’t think that was in his future.

So, then what?

Too much to think about.

But, much to his surprise, he wasn’t really afraid of all those thoughts circling in his head like a hurricane. In fact, it all seemed almost fun.

Dagwood whispered something to him, those three little words; Irwin tried to respond but he might only have done so in his dreams because he was out like a light.