Fic: 5 Consummations Dean Winchester Never Had with Renee Sheppard, SPN/Homicide; R
Five Consummations Dean Winchester Never Had with Renee Sheppard
nwhepcat
Supernatural/Homicide
Rated R
Written for the "A Ficathon Walks into a Bar" crossover challenge
Set during sometime between SPN "Nightshifter" and "Jus in Bello" and Homicide Season 7, and I'm sure they don't math up at all, but Dean would still be a teenager. Just roll with it.
Warnings: Banter, Sex, Blood, Character Death (though, uh, not really)
Fugitives Sam and Dean come to Baltimore for a job. Five ways Dean's path doesn't cross with Homicide Detective Renee Sheppard's.
It's a simple salt-and-burn at Ft. McHenry, a welcome relief after the massive cluster-fuck that the Milwaukee job became. For the last week it's been in and out, get the job done and lay low in between. Dawn is beginning to lift the pervasive dark as they throw their shovels in the trunk and settle themselves in the Impala.
"Hey," Dean says abruptly. "Let's stop by the Inner Harbor before we blow town. Watch the sun come up."
"Dean, we look like ditch-diggers."
"Who's gonna see? Nobody but the working stiffs who are out there at 5 a.m.?"
Sam heaves a sigh. "All right. I wouldn't mind that myself."
As Dean predicted, it's mostly uniform-wearing maintenance workers and hotel maids they see down at the harbor. A few joggers who are probably staying at the hotel, with deep Vs of sweat on their sleeveless tees. It's hot and humid already, going to be a scorcher, despite the harbor breeze.
"There you go, America in a nutshell," Dean says. "The best way to celebrate history is to stick a glitzy mall on the site. Our national motto: If there isn't a $25 t-shirt to comemmorate it, it didn't happen."
Sam huffs a short laugh in response, which covers the soft gasp Dean emits. Its source is the woman who's just left the Renaissance Hotel, dressed in heels and business clothes at this hour. A gust of wind off the water has blown her long corkscrews of hair across her face, and for a fraction of an instant, Dean thinks Cassie.
The woman lifts a hand to push the mass of hair out of her face, but by that time he knows it's not Cassie. Her skin is slightly lighter, and she's taller, but the pang he felt on thinking of Cassie doesn't die down. He feels so weary and homesick all of a sudden, even though he has no home to yearn for.
She pauses outside the hotel, clearly waiting for someone else. A moment later, she's joined by a man who doesn't fit at all with her cool elegance, though he's also in business clothes. The vibe between them isn't "lovers" at all, it's more like coworkers but --
"Shit," Sam mutters under his breath.
Dean doesn't have to ask. Cops.
Cutting and running would just bring the pair down on them like the wrath of God, so he and Sam keep ambling, Sam yammering about the movie they'd watched on the motel cable last night as if Dean never saw it, as if picking up a conversation in mid-stride. They walk on, casual on the outside, tension coiled like a watchspring within.
Several yards past the detectives, Sam lets out a breath. "What d'you say we get the hell out of here?"
Here being the Inner Harbor. Here being Baltimore.
"Fuck, yes," Dean says fervently.
***
When the waitress breaks off his reverie -- more accurately a coma, he supposes -- he waves off her offer of a refill with a tired smile. She takes his pie plate, the last smear of cherry filling already scraped clean by his fork. Outside the rain is slashing down, turning the streets to glistening onyx. It's finally getting dark, but the rain isn't letting up any.
Running back in from feeding the meter, Sam slides into the booth. "NIce night for grave-digging," he mutters. His hair's already plastered to his head in a ridiculous-looking helmet.
"Even if it was supposed to let up over the next three or four days, we still couldn't wait. This sumbitch is on a tear." Kids, mostly, but Sam knows that.
Sam sighs, digs in his pocket for tip money. "Listen, I'm gonna go try and towel off a little. Be right back." He tosses some bills on the table and heads for the bathroom.
Idly turning his attention back out the window, Dean notices two white Crown Vics pulling up to the curb across the street, one after the other. "Shit," he mutters to himself. Digging his phone from his pocket, he speed dials Sam, hoping he wasn't using "towel off" as a euphemism for an epic shit or anything. "Five-O, out front," he says quietly when Sam answers, and disconnects without waiting for a response. This isn't gonna go well.
Casually, he drops some bills onto the table and ambles toward the back, as if he's headed to the john. Instead he slips through the back door, out into the alley. Next thing he knows, there's a spotlight shining in his face, and a woman's voice bellowing, "Down on the ground! Now!"
***
Dean leaves Sammy at their table, making like a student. He's had his face buried in some text Bobby loaned him, just like he's had it since they left South Dakota. It stinks all to hell, and Dean is still sneezing now and then, even though he's across the barroom at the pool table.
Hell, maybe he can use it, add a little speed to this particular night of hustling. He's already cut loose a couple of times while making a shot, mammoth sneezes that wrecked his aim and would have echoed if the bar hadn't been fairly full.
The jukebox here is good, blues and rock and the country stuff is no worse than Johnny Cash, which is actually pretty fucking awesome. The barmaid -- a busty kewpie doll of a woman, even though she's middle aged -- brings him another beer and pokes his tip money into her rack with a flirtatious smile.
Dean could get to like this place.
Kewpie Doll's not the only one checking him out. There's a cinnamon-skinned beauty with her hair brutally pulled back into a single braid giving him the eye. Dean gives her a smile and a near-wink and moves around the table to set up his next shot.
As he leans in with his cue, he glances up to see one of the bartenders eying him too. Shit, the guy can't have made this for a hustle already. He's only just racked the balls a second time. Uh, no. The guy's avid gaze tells him his interest in Dean is purely personal. Dean breaks eye contact once he boards the clue train, and settles in to shoot again.
Clack. Thunk. Roll. It's a satisfying sequence of sounds. Pausing to drink a quarter of his beer, Dean looks around to see if anyone's taken any note of the game he's playing on his own. As he sets down his beer, he's startled to find the cinnamon-skinned chick standing at his side. Her eyes are surprisingly light.
"Hey," he says, with the reckless smile he knows melts women.
"Hey," she responds, and her smoky, amused voice goes straight to his groin. "Do you know this bar is full of cops?"
Fuck! Reining in the jolt of adrenaline that shoots through his system, he gives a casual look around the bar. How the hell did he miss that? Even the sour, dark-haired guy who was behind the bar earlier had cop written all over him.
He dials the smile up to eleven. "No, but if you hum a few bars, I think I can fake it."
She lays an indulgent smile on him, but he can sense the suppressed eye-roll behind it. "You might want to take the hustle somewhere else. Just sayin'."
Forcing out a laugh, he blurts, "Hustle? Sweetheart, you've totally misread me. My brother over there has had his nose stuck in Harry Potter all evening." Damn, that sounded just wrong. He presses on. "I'm just bored."
"Mmm-hmm," she says, with a knowing smirk.
Again he looks around the barroom, which now looks like a fucking cop convention, and back at the gorgeous woman beside him. Though the light is dim, this time he spots the sign of fading bruises along one of her high cheekbones.
"Yeah," she says in response to the question he doesn't ask. "Me too."
***
Renee rides him until his back arches, then he shudders and drops back onto mint-colored sheets. She bends over him, spirals of hair curtaining around him. Dean's hand is still at the nexus of their bodies, teasing and stroking until she lets out a shuddering moan that's halfway to a wail.
With a series of feathering, salty-sweet kisses, they disengage, lying with limbs still tangled and listening to the rain hiss against her roof. Stroking her hand along the line of his jaw, she murmurs, "Who's Cassie?"
Though there's no rebuke in her tone, Dean curses and apologizes.
Her fingertips cover his lips to shush him. "It's a one-night stand. I'm not destroyed, just wondering."
Dean dips his head to press a kiss into her palm, slipping a hand into her hair. "I had a girlfriend who had hair like this."
"Serious?"
"I thought so. She couldn't deal with me being on the job, though, so she ended it."
Renee makes a soft noise of sympathy. "Familiar story. Almost all of us have one of those at one time or another. Better earlier than later, but it's a bitch no matter how it goes down."
His lips quirk. "Yeah." He likes this woman. It's a damn shame that sleeping with her shows a near-suicidal disregard for his future freedom. "Still. I'm sorry. I didn't sleep with you for your hair."
"Oh. I guess I should apologize," she says. "I slept with you for your ass."
Dean laughs. "Does it remind you of the ass of an old lover?"
Renee laughs too, and he likes the sound. "No, I just liked it."
He leans in to kiss her, soft and slow, but without the heat that they'd built up before.
Reading his signal, Renee says, "You can have a shower if you'd like. Breakfast, if you like Special K. I'm a lousy cook."
"Thanks, but I'd better get back to my motel. My partner's probably already pissed." Bending for his scattered clothes, he realizes she's propped up on one elbow, watching appreciative. He shifts to give a better view of his ass, which makes her laugh delightedly.
"It's been nice," she says at the door.
"Yeah," Dean affirms. Insanely reckless, but nice. The snick of the door lock behind him closes the book on that short chapter.
***
They have to abandon the car two blocks from the museum and make their way through the rubble and wrecked cars on foot.
"How ironic is this?" Lewis mutters. "Ball lightning, tornado, people doin' murder at the AVAM?"
Sheppard asks, "Why's that ironic?"
"They got a show goin' on right now about the apocalypse. Sounds like we had a mini-armageddon out in the sculpture plaza."
"What is AVAM, anyhow?" she asks, skirting a two-vehicle wreck that's ended up on the sidewalk.
"Visionary art, they call it," Lewis says. "Crazy people, prisoners, self-taught artists. Art with, let's say, a definite point of view."
"Why would there be a murder there?"
"Beats hell out of me. My guess is because there were two or more people there. That's all it takes."
She spots the red lights of the two prowl cars that made it in.
The uniform guarding the crime scene boundary gives them a nod and lifts the yellow tape so they can duck under.
"What have we got?" Sheppard asks.
"It'll take some figuring out," the uniform says. Donovan, the tag under his badge says. "Bodies everywhere. One still breathing, but I wouldn't bet on that for long."
"Let's see if he can tell us anything," Sheppard says.
Half the plaza lights are out as she and Lewis cross the treacherous plaza toward the place Donovan pointed out. The brick paving has buckled and heaved, making it tough to keep her feet, even in 1 1/2 inch heels. Shards of mirror are everywhere, mosaic pieces shivered from the surface of the building. Bigger pieces of a huge whirligig sculpture lie scattered across the ground like tinker toys.
There's a figure sprawled on the bricks beneath a giant silver bird sculpture. Its body looks like a supersized cello, and it's so tall you have to crane your neck to see its head. Nearby, fastened to the brick wall of the side of the museum, is an enormous wire birdnest.
"Wild," murmurs Lewis.
"What can you tell me?" Sheppard asks one of the uniforms crouching beside the blood-covered man on the ground.
"Ambo got caught up in the mess out there. The EMTs are coming on foot."
She can hear the man's ragged breathing over the officer's briefing.
"What about the bodies?"
Pointing, the officer tells her, "Most of 'em's that way."
Sheppard turns to Lewis, but before she can direct him, he says, "I'm on it."
She kneels beside the injured man, and immediately feels the wet soaking into the knee of her trousers. Blood, she's betting.
"Hey," she says softly. "Can you talk to me?"
"Sam," he rasps.
"Is that you? Are you Sam?" she asks.
A minute shake of his head. "Brother. Is he--"
Bodies, the officer had said. If the brother's still on the scene, he's no doubt one of them. That's not something she needs to tell this man. If she stalls long enough, he never has to find out. "Ambulance boys are on their way. We'll know more then."
The guy looks to be somewhere in his twenties. Hair short and spiky with gel or blood, it's hard to be sure. He'd be nice looking, if not for the pallor and the naked fear in his face. His eyes are losing focus, so Sheppard leans closer, her hair tumbling from behind her shoulders.
"I'm Detective Sheppard. Can you tell me what happened?"
He coughs one sharp laugh, and dark blood wells up from his mouth. Turning his head to spit, he says, "Sometimes you eat the bear." Another cough that produces another black gush of blood. "Sometimes ... the bear eats you."
"Pretty philosophical," she says. "Can you tell me some facts?"
"We tried to stop it."
"Stop what?"
"I think --" Two labored breaths -- "think it was a set-up."
Sheppard casts a quick glance at the uniform still crouched beside him. Drug gangs? she mouths.
"They were all pretty well armed. But none of these guys look like any of the ones I know," the officer says.
"Who set you up?"
"Sammy." He coughs again, and when the fit subsides, he sinks back on the bricks. "Take care. Dad said." His eyes close, but after a brief moment, they flutter open.
"Stay with me, okay?" Sheppard urges. "Ambo's on its way."
"Pretty hair," he says, and they drift shut again.
There's a cement block wedged in her chest, and it's not just about not having the answers to put this case down. Heedless of the blood and her unprotected hands, she lifts one of his hands and presses it between her own. "C'mon, stay with me."
He blinks his eyes open, unfocused now, but looking at Sheppard. "Cassie," he says, his hand shifting under hers. "Hey."
"Stay with me," she says again.
"Want to," he says. "You sure?"
Sheppard looks across at the uniform, who just gives her a helpless shrug. A heartbeat later, she smooths her hand over his. "Of course I'm sure."
He twists to his side and hacks up a huge amount of blood. She's surprised there was still that much left in him. After spitting two times onto the bricks, he rolls onto his back. When he looks at her again, she can tell he's sinking fast. "Cassie," he says with more than mild surprise, as if he has no memory of seeing her before.
Moved by an impulse, she says softly, "Yeah, baby. I'm here."
"That's good," he says. "Sammy -- get him up to ... Bobby's, okay?"
"I'm not sure I have his number, baby. How do I find him?"
"Phone."
Sheppard can see the immense effort it's becoming for him to stay on track. The guy has to be in agony. "Under Bobby?"
He shakes his head fractionally, biting his lip so hard it must be drawing blood. "Plant ... service."
Last thing she'd have suspected this guy needs in his daily life is a plant service, but she goes with it. "I'll tell him"
He sucks in a long, ragged gasp, and Sheppard's half certain it's his last inbound breath.
Looking up toward the uniform who'd greeted her, she snaps, "Where the fuck is that ambo?"
"Cass. Cassie."
She rubs small circles over the back of his hand. "I'm here, baby."
He writhes and arches. "Shouldn't be. Gonna get --" Breaking off, he yells in pain, and she can see fresh blood pulsing into the fibers of his shirts, already black with blood. Another coughing laugh. "Ugly."
"Don't you worry about me."
"EMTs are coming," one of the uniforms calls out.
"Hear that? Help's on its way," Sheppard tells him.
"Sam. Tell them." He coughs with a horrifying force, broken pieces welling up on the tide of blood that his convulsive hacking produces.
Just as Sheppard hears the gurney clatter over the rough brick, he heaves a broken sigh, not even loud enough to call a death rattle. But he's gone, she knows that without a doubt. Rising, she backs off to let the EMTs in to work.
Lewis has returned unnoticed at some point. He passes her his handkerchief and she scrubs at her bloody hands absently, looking out over the wrecked courtyard and its eerie, broken landscape.
nwhepcat
Supernatural/Homicide
Rated R
Written for the "A Ficathon Walks into a Bar" crossover challenge
Set during sometime between SPN "Nightshifter" and "Jus in Bello" and Homicide Season 7, and I'm sure they don't math up at all, but Dean would still be a teenager. Just roll with it.
Warnings: Banter, Sex, Blood, Character Death (though, uh, not really)
Fugitives Sam and Dean come to Baltimore for a job. Five ways Dean's path doesn't cross with Homicide Detective Renee Sheppard's.
It's a simple salt-and-burn at Ft. McHenry, a welcome relief after the massive cluster-fuck that the Milwaukee job became. For the last week it's been in and out, get the job done and lay low in between. Dawn is beginning to lift the pervasive dark as they throw their shovels in the trunk and settle themselves in the Impala.
"Hey," Dean says abruptly. "Let's stop by the Inner Harbor before we blow town. Watch the sun come up."
"Dean, we look like ditch-diggers."
"Who's gonna see? Nobody but the working stiffs who are out there at 5 a.m.?"
Sam heaves a sigh. "All right. I wouldn't mind that myself."
As Dean predicted, it's mostly uniform-wearing maintenance workers and hotel maids they see down at the harbor. A few joggers who are probably staying at the hotel, with deep Vs of sweat on their sleeveless tees. It's hot and humid already, going to be a scorcher, despite the harbor breeze.
"There you go, America in a nutshell," Dean says. "The best way to celebrate history is to stick a glitzy mall on the site. Our national motto: If there isn't a $25 t-shirt to comemmorate it, it didn't happen."
Sam huffs a short laugh in response, which covers the soft gasp Dean emits. Its source is the woman who's just left the Renaissance Hotel, dressed in heels and business clothes at this hour. A gust of wind off the water has blown her long corkscrews of hair across her face, and for a fraction of an instant, Dean thinks Cassie.
The woman lifts a hand to push the mass of hair out of her face, but by that time he knows it's not Cassie. Her skin is slightly lighter, and she's taller, but the pang he felt on thinking of Cassie doesn't die down. He feels so weary and homesick all of a sudden, even though he has no home to yearn for.
She pauses outside the hotel, clearly waiting for someone else. A moment later, she's joined by a man who doesn't fit at all with her cool elegance, though he's also in business clothes. The vibe between them isn't "lovers" at all, it's more like coworkers but --
"Shit," Sam mutters under his breath.
Dean doesn't have to ask. Cops.
Cutting and running would just bring the pair down on them like the wrath of God, so he and Sam keep ambling, Sam yammering about the movie they'd watched on the motel cable last night as if Dean never saw it, as if picking up a conversation in mid-stride. They walk on, casual on the outside, tension coiled like a watchspring within.
Several yards past the detectives, Sam lets out a breath. "What d'you say we get the hell out of here?"
Here being the Inner Harbor. Here being Baltimore.
"Fuck, yes," Dean says fervently.
***
When the waitress breaks off his reverie -- more accurately a coma, he supposes -- he waves off her offer of a refill with a tired smile. She takes his pie plate, the last smear of cherry filling already scraped clean by his fork. Outside the rain is slashing down, turning the streets to glistening onyx. It's finally getting dark, but the rain isn't letting up any.
Running back in from feeding the meter, Sam slides into the booth. "NIce night for grave-digging," he mutters. His hair's already plastered to his head in a ridiculous-looking helmet.
"Even if it was supposed to let up over the next three or four days, we still couldn't wait. This sumbitch is on a tear." Kids, mostly, but Sam knows that.
Sam sighs, digs in his pocket for tip money. "Listen, I'm gonna go try and towel off a little. Be right back." He tosses some bills on the table and heads for the bathroom.
Idly turning his attention back out the window, Dean notices two white Crown Vics pulling up to the curb across the street, one after the other. "Shit," he mutters to himself. Digging his phone from his pocket, he speed dials Sam, hoping he wasn't using "towel off" as a euphemism for an epic shit or anything. "Five-O, out front," he says quietly when Sam answers, and disconnects without waiting for a response. This isn't gonna go well.
Casually, he drops some bills onto the table and ambles toward the back, as if he's headed to the john. Instead he slips through the back door, out into the alley. Next thing he knows, there's a spotlight shining in his face, and a woman's voice bellowing, "Down on the ground! Now!"
***
Dean leaves Sammy at their table, making like a student. He's had his face buried in some text Bobby loaned him, just like he's had it since they left South Dakota. It stinks all to hell, and Dean is still sneezing now and then, even though he's across the barroom at the pool table.
Hell, maybe he can use it, add a little speed to this particular night of hustling. He's already cut loose a couple of times while making a shot, mammoth sneezes that wrecked his aim and would have echoed if the bar hadn't been fairly full.
The jukebox here is good, blues and rock and the country stuff is no worse than Johnny Cash, which is actually pretty fucking awesome. The barmaid -- a busty kewpie doll of a woman, even though she's middle aged -- brings him another beer and pokes his tip money into her rack with a flirtatious smile.
Dean could get to like this place.
Kewpie Doll's not the only one checking him out. There's a cinnamon-skinned beauty with her hair brutally pulled back into a single braid giving him the eye. Dean gives her a smile and a near-wink and moves around the table to set up his next shot.
As he leans in with his cue, he glances up to see one of the bartenders eying him too. Shit, the guy can't have made this for a hustle already. He's only just racked the balls a second time. Uh, no. The guy's avid gaze tells him his interest in Dean is purely personal. Dean breaks eye contact once he boards the clue train, and settles in to shoot again.
Clack. Thunk. Roll. It's a satisfying sequence of sounds. Pausing to drink a quarter of his beer, Dean looks around to see if anyone's taken any note of the game he's playing on his own. As he sets down his beer, he's startled to find the cinnamon-skinned chick standing at his side. Her eyes are surprisingly light.
"Hey," he says, with the reckless smile he knows melts women.
"Hey," she responds, and her smoky, amused voice goes straight to his groin. "Do you know this bar is full of cops?"
Fuck! Reining in the jolt of adrenaline that shoots through his system, he gives a casual look around the bar. How the hell did he miss that? Even the sour, dark-haired guy who was behind the bar earlier had cop written all over him.
He dials the smile up to eleven. "No, but if you hum a few bars, I think I can fake it."
She lays an indulgent smile on him, but he can sense the suppressed eye-roll behind it. "You might want to take the hustle somewhere else. Just sayin'."
Forcing out a laugh, he blurts, "Hustle? Sweetheart, you've totally misread me. My brother over there has had his nose stuck in Harry Potter all evening." Damn, that sounded just wrong. He presses on. "I'm just bored."
"Mmm-hmm," she says, with a knowing smirk.
Again he looks around the barroom, which now looks like a fucking cop convention, and back at the gorgeous woman beside him. Though the light is dim, this time he spots the sign of fading bruises along one of her high cheekbones.
"Yeah," she says in response to the question he doesn't ask. "Me too."
***
Renee rides him until his back arches, then he shudders and drops back onto mint-colored sheets. She bends over him, spirals of hair curtaining around him. Dean's hand is still at the nexus of their bodies, teasing and stroking until she lets out a shuddering moan that's halfway to a wail.
With a series of feathering, salty-sweet kisses, they disengage, lying with limbs still tangled and listening to the rain hiss against her roof. Stroking her hand along the line of his jaw, she murmurs, "Who's Cassie?"
Though there's no rebuke in her tone, Dean curses and apologizes.
Her fingertips cover his lips to shush him. "It's a one-night stand. I'm not destroyed, just wondering."
Dean dips his head to press a kiss into her palm, slipping a hand into her hair. "I had a girlfriend who had hair like this."
"Serious?"
"I thought so. She couldn't deal with me being on the job, though, so she ended it."
Renee makes a soft noise of sympathy. "Familiar story. Almost all of us have one of those at one time or another. Better earlier than later, but it's a bitch no matter how it goes down."
His lips quirk. "Yeah." He likes this woman. It's a damn shame that sleeping with her shows a near-suicidal disregard for his future freedom. "Still. I'm sorry. I didn't sleep with you for your hair."
"Oh. I guess I should apologize," she says. "I slept with you for your ass."
Dean laughs. "Does it remind you of the ass of an old lover?"
Renee laughs too, and he likes the sound. "No, I just liked it."
He leans in to kiss her, soft and slow, but without the heat that they'd built up before.
Reading his signal, Renee says, "You can have a shower if you'd like. Breakfast, if you like Special K. I'm a lousy cook."
"Thanks, but I'd better get back to my motel. My partner's probably already pissed." Bending for his scattered clothes, he realizes she's propped up on one elbow, watching appreciative. He shifts to give a better view of his ass, which makes her laugh delightedly.
"It's been nice," she says at the door.
"Yeah," Dean affirms. Insanely reckless, but nice. The snick of the door lock behind him closes the book on that short chapter.
***
They have to abandon the car two blocks from the museum and make their way through the rubble and wrecked cars on foot.
"How ironic is this?" Lewis mutters. "Ball lightning, tornado, people doin' murder at the AVAM?"
Sheppard asks, "Why's that ironic?"
"They got a show goin' on right now about the apocalypse. Sounds like we had a mini-armageddon out in the sculpture plaza."
"What is AVAM, anyhow?" she asks, skirting a two-vehicle wreck that's ended up on the sidewalk.
"Visionary art, they call it," Lewis says. "Crazy people, prisoners, self-taught artists. Art with, let's say, a definite point of view."
"Why would there be a murder there?"
"Beats hell out of me. My guess is because there were two or more people there. That's all it takes."
She spots the red lights of the two prowl cars that made it in.
The uniform guarding the crime scene boundary gives them a nod and lifts the yellow tape so they can duck under.
"What have we got?" Sheppard asks.
"It'll take some figuring out," the uniform says. Donovan, the tag under his badge says. "Bodies everywhere. One still breathing, but I wouldn't bet on that for long."
"Let's see if he can tell us anything," Sheppard says.
Half the plaza lights are out as she and Lewis cross the treacherous plaza toward the place Donovan pointed out. The brick paving has buckled and heaved, making it tough to keep her feet, even in 1 1/2 inch heels. Shards of mirror are everywhere, mosaic pieces shivered from the surface of the building. Bigger pieces of a huge whirligig sculpture lie scattered across the ground like tinker toys.
There's a figure sprawled on the bricks beneath a giant silver bird sculpture. Its body looks like a supersized cello, and it's so tall you have to crane your neck to see its head. Nearby, fastened to the brick wall of the side of the museum, is an enormous wire birdnest.
"Wild," murmurs Lewis.
"What can you tell me?" Sheppard asks one of the uniforms crouching beside the blood-covered man on the ground.
"Ambo got caught up in the mess out there. The EMTs are coming on foot."
She can hear the man's ragged breathing over the officer's briefing.
"What about the bodies?"
Pointing, the officer tells her, "Most of 'em's that way."
Sheppard turns to Lewis, but before she can direct him, he says, "I'm on it."
She kneels beside the injured man, and immediately feels the wet soaking into the knee of her trousers. Blood, she's betting.
"Hey," she says softly. "Can you talk to me?"
"Sam," he rasps.
"Is that you? Are you Sam?" she asks.
A minute shake of his head. "Brother. Is he--"
Bodies, the officer had said. If the brother's still on the scene, he's no doubt one of them. That's not something she needs to tell this man. If she stalls long enough, he never has to find out. "Ambulance boys are on their way. We'll know more then."
The guy looks to be somewhere in his twenties. Hair short and spiky with gel or blood, it's hard to be sure. He'd be nice looking, if not for the pallor and the naked fear in his face. His eyes are losing focus, so Sheppard leans closer, her hair tumbling from behind her shoulders.
"I'm Detective Sheppard. Can you tell me what happened?"
He coughs one sharp laugh, and dark blood wells up from his mouth. Turning his head to spit, he says, "Sometimes you eat the bear." Another cough that produces another black gush of blood. "Sometimes ... the bear eats you."
"Pretty philosophical," she says. "Can you tell me some facts?"
"We tried to stop it."
"Stop what?"
"I think --" Two labored breaths -- "think it was a set-up."
Sheppard casts a quick glance at the uniform still crouched beside him. Drug gangs? she mouths.
"They were all pretty well armed. But none of these guys look like any of the ones I know," the officer says.
"Who set you up?"
"Sammy." He coughs again, and when the fit subsides, he sinks back on the bricks. "Take care. Dad said." His eyes close, but after a brief moment, they flutter open.
"Stay with me, okay?" Sheppard urges. "Ambo's on its way."
"Pretty hair," he says, and they drift shut again.
There's a cement block wedged in her chest, and it's not just about not having the answers to put this case down. Heedless of the blood and her unprotected hands, she lifts one of his hands and presses it between her own. "C'mon, stay with me."
He blinks his eyes open, unfocused now, but looking at Sheppard. "Cassie," he says, his hand shifting under hers. "Hey."
"Stay with me," she says again.
"Want to," he says. "You sure?"
Sheppard looks across at the uniform, who just gives her a helpless shrug. A heartbeat later, she smooths her hand over his. "Of course I'm sure."
He twists to his side and hacks up a huge amount of blood. She's surprised there was still that much left in him. After spitting two times onto the bricks, he rolls onto his back. When he looks at her again, she can tell he's sinking fast. "Cassie," he says with more than mild surprise, as if he has no memory of seeing her before.
Moved by an impulse, she says softly, "Yeah, baby. I'm here."
"That's good," he says. "Sammy -- get him up to ... Bobby's, okay?"
"I'm not sure I have his number, baby. How do I find him?"
"Phone."
Sheppard can see the immense effort it's becoming for him to stay on track. The guy has to be in agony. "Under Bobby?"
He shakes his head fractionally, biting his lip so hard it must be drawing blood. "Plant ... service."
Last thing she'd have suspected this guy needs in his daily life is a plant service, but she goes with it. "I'll tell him"
He sucks in a long, ragged gasp, and Sheppard's half certain it's his last inbound breath.
Looking up toward the uniform who'd greeted her, she snaps, "Where the fuck is that ambo?"
"Cass. Cassie."
She rubs small circles over the back of his hand. "I'm here, baby."
He writhes and arches. "Shouldn't be. Gonna get --" Breaking off, he yells in pain, and she can see fresh blood pulsing into the fibers of his shirts, already black with blood. Another coughing laugh. "Ugly."
"Don't you worry about me."
"EMTs are coming," one of the uniforms calls out.
"Hear that? Help's on its way," Sheppard tells him.
"Sam. Tell them." He coughs with a horrifying force, broken pieces welling up on the tide of blood that his convulsive hacking produces.
Just as Sheppard hears the gurney clatter over the rough brick, he heaves a broken sigh, not even loud enough to call a death rattle. But he's gone, she knows that without a doubt. Rising, she backs off to let the EMTs in to work.
Lewis has returned unnoticed at some point. He passes her his handkerchief and she scrubs at her bloody hands absently, looking out over the wrecked courtyard and its eerie, broken landscape.