Next morning is back to Earth for Harris. He leaves Agatha to doze and shows up for work—if you can call a counseling session work. When he stumbles out of the tiny office shoved into the farthest corner of the firehouse for a reason, he's wrung out like a bandana in a laundry machine.

How can a guy feel exhausted, if all he's done all morning was talking about himself? Harris is, though. Is he really that weak? I love my job. I'm not a quitter.

Next stop: Colin and the Union. The old-timer took over the couch in the break room. When Harris calls out to him, he slides his glasses to the end of his nose, squints at Harris above a stack of folders.

"Gimme a couple of hours here, hot-shot. Didn't Villarreal put you on the inventory checks?"

"Uh-huh." Harris massages his throbbing temples.

"There you go," Colin says. "Do some, it will settle you down."

"Okay." Harris pours a cup of ice water from the cooler and throws in a few ice-cubes for a good measure.

He wanders out of the break room into the long hall, walks past the officers' rooms. It's strange to walk around without Agatha, as if he's missing a part of himself. You'll only annoy her if you call her every hour. Grow up. You're on probation, dammit, so go do the paperwork! But his head is hurting. He was talking about how screwy he was and how he plans to get back on track for two hours straight. Two hours! He deserves a break.

With a furtive look, he dives into the uniforms' closet. Yes, the same one. He even hides in its farthest corner, behind the rows of the overalls, just like Jung and his mother had done. It's private there, and it's weird. And it's private. Come on, all he needs is to hear Agatha's voice for a sec, then he'll move on with his day.

Harris slumps to the cement floor, sips from his paper cup, until his teeth hurt. Jiggles his phone on his knee as it dials her number. The phone rings a few times, then a click sends him to the voicemail. Busy? He rolls the sweating cup along his forehead, pinning the phone down with his elbow.

"Hi, sweetie," he says after the beep. "It's me. I know you're busy. I had the longest, the most grueling counseling session and you know what?"

He chuckles to cover his embarrassment. "By the end, all I could think about was you."

That's short and sweet, but he can't stop blathering.

"That pleated skirt you had on this morning? So light and puffy, I can't stop imagining how I can put my stupid head right underneath it to kiss you there. You taste amazing when you're turned on, do you know that? Anyway, sweetie, I miss you... really miss you."

God, he probably shouldn't send this. It's horny and needy and... He shouldn't.

His thumb hovers and the phone clicks again, like someone has picked it on the other side of the line. "Sweetie? Hi!"

The phone slips through his butter fingers and thuds to the floor. Fortunately, it's not the screen that hits the concrete. "Hey, give me a sec. I'm just going to..."

"You are an incurable loser, Sarkisian," Oliver's voice says from the phone.

Harris, who's just gripped the black rectangle, drops the damn thing again.

"What are you doing answering her phone?" he growls. Images of violence etched with red flow through his mind. His hands shake, making it that much more difficult to scoop the phone, but he manages.

"What am I doing answering Ablaze's phone?" Oliver scoffs. "The better question is why you are sending obscenities to my fiancée."

"Agatha is not your fiancée, creep!" Harris stares at the screen. There's no mistake. Agatha's number—her new secret and protected—number displays at the top of the screen. "And if you touch one hair on her head, I'll kill you."

"Ha-hah," Oliver says in a deadpan tone.

In the background, Agatha's voice says, "Oliver? What are you— Get out of here, or I'm calling the police."

"Agatha!" Harris screams.

Oliver speaks right over his yelp, like Harris doesn't exist. "You won't be able to, my darling. I assure you, I've handled more proficient departments than Milwaukee PD since I was a kid."

"What... what do you want?" Agatha stammers.

"You know perfectly well what I want: you. The more pertinent question is what you can get for it."

Harris hears a dickish smirk in Oliver's voice. His fists clench, even if the only thing he can punch is the wall. "Agatha!"

"She can't hear you, imbecile," Oliver says in a different, louder voice. "It's a recording."

Now Harris can comprehend the difference in quality of the sound. "Shit!" Tears sting his eyes. The asshole is torturing him, but Agatha! Agatha is... God, where's Agatha?

On the recording, her voice sounds so clear and cold, that Harris' heart nearly bursts.

"There's nothing you can offer me, Oliver. You're a liar and a murderer—"

"I prefer 'assassin' rather than 'murderer'. It's more stylish."

"I don't care what you prefer, Robert."

Agatha places an emphasis on his name. If she hoped to rattle Oliver with the revelation, she didn't succeed. The dickhead laughs. "Splendid! It saves us the introductions and a long life story."

"Are you done?"

"Far from it. I have a gift for you. It was a wedding gift, but your little caper messed up my plan. You have only yourself to blame for how hasty—"

"Get out, Robert! Oliver! Whoever you are! I don't care. I need nothing from you."

"Tut-tut. So angry... I love this emotion on you. It's fiery. But why are you angry?"

Agatha breathes heavily into the pause. Words grate against one another when she squeezes them out. "Are you... are you for real? You've tried to burn me alive! Burned my lover's house. Nearly killed an innocent man... handicapped. God, you know all this!"

"Darling, you're mistaken." In contrast to the edge of hysteria creeping into Agatha's tone, he sounds smooth. Jovial, even. "I didn't hurt you. As for your roughneck, he needed a lesson."

"Don't you dare insult him!"

"Only the truth, my darling, for your precious Harris has the intellectual capacity of an average macaque. He reacts the best to simple stimuli. So, I waved a torch at him to chase him back into the wild forest he's come from. That's all."

"You are despicable!"

"And you're impatient. You asked for an explanation. Let me finish it."

Agatha intakes of breath are shallow, fast, confused.

Oliver seizes the pause. "Of course, I knew of his father's philandering. I'm in the business of knowing secrets... granted, more interesting, upscale secrets than some old man's love affair. But I'm not heartless. I knew he would be out of the house when I lit it on fire."

"Why can't you just leave me alone?" Agatha is crying now.

"Shh, darling. Back to the gift I brought you. You were right all along when you thought your parents' death wasn't an accident."

"What?"

"Calm now, it wasn't you who killed them."

Agatha's sob turns into a wail. "Who?!"

"All in a good time, darling. Come with me, stay with me—and I shall divulge the truth. But wait, that's not all! I'll throw in vengeance. Such vengeance—"

"They... they died long ago. Vengeance won't bring them back. Get... away... from me."

"Darling, if you walk away, you will live the rest of your life rubbing shoulders with your parents' killers. You'll shake their hands. You'll smile at them. Maybe even feel affection for them, unknowingly. Not in the past. In the present."

"No..." Agatha whimpered. "No... please, no."

The recording ends abruptly with another click. Heavy silence cloaks Harris despite the bustle of the fire station. His head swims. Being cooped up with the smell of trucks and detergent, suffocated by the heavy overalls and not being able to see anything but thick fabric, stripes and badges... It makes it worse. Why did he choose the stupid room to call Agatha? It's his most hated place on Earth. But even if it was worse, if he was trapped in Gehenna, he has to think.

"Agatha didn't go with you willingly. This bait isn't enough." How he wishes that a worm of doubt didn't chomp on his heart!

A dry chuckle escapes Oliver. "Yes, and no. My poor delusional fiancée tried to double-cross me and alert the police. Imagine that!"

"Delusional? Screw you. Agatha is as sane as anyone else," Harris says through gritted teeth.

"Pah! What's sanity and who needs it?" Oliver taunts. "But pay attention, ape. The operative word I've used is—she tried. She tried, and she failed. Now she is recovering nicely from her paranoid fit. Do you get my drift?"

Harris' chest heaves. Each exhale whistles. His lungs hurt. His ribs and his side burn so much, the bandage must be off. A sick, cruel man has Agatha. Somehow, this motherfucker exists outside the law, if not above it.

If Harris goes for help, Oliver will hurt Agatha, because he lies about loving her. This twisted fuck has no idea what love is. You never hurt those you love, never confine them, never belittle them...

His exhale is rugged. He has to collect his nerves. Maximum focus, because he has only himself to rely upon here.

"Put Agatha on the phone. I want to talk to her. Make sure she's..." His mouth refuses to form the word 'alive', because if he does, it opens up a possibility that Agatha can die. He won't accept this. Won't even think of it. "I want to make sure she is okay."

Oliver scoffs—sending Harris' hatred of him to unimaginable heights. "As you wish."

The longest minute passes before the video feed flickers on.

Harris pushes his riled emotions away, pushes the headache away, pushes Oliver's heavy breathing away. He orders himself to be memory only, taking in as many details as possible from the shaking footage in atrocious light. Missing something could mean a difference between life and death. Agatha's life and death, which makes it a thousand times worse than if it was his own.

A brick wall. A drywall at an angle to it, torn down about a third way into a room. The debris from that and broken furniture piled up. Birds' droppings. The tear in the wall reveals wood studs and a metal one, either a bearing rod or a pipe. A window, partially boarded. Harris has no idea where this wreck is, but there can't be these many in town. He'll search each and everyone if he has too.

Agatha sits next to the metal pole in an almost meditative pose. She crossed her legs in front of her, knees sticking from under the skirt he was describing, her feet bare.

The moment the camera pans to Agatha, she pushes upward, her back winding up the pole—for a split second he doesn't understand why the hell she's moving like that—then it dawns at him. The bastard handcuffed her wrists behind her back!

His concentration almost breaks into a wordless wail of outrage. It's so wrong to see her lithe figure chained, her loveliness caged in this trashed place among the bird droppings and garbage.

"Agatha. I'm sorry. I'm a moron. I shouldn't have left your side, day or night—" His throat seizes.

Oliver slow-claps. "Congratulations. That's practically a cowboy song."

She sways on her feet, but the handcuffs don't let her fall over. She tilts her head to get her mussed up hair out of her face. "Harris, don't listen to anything Oliver says."

And the motherfucker shuts off the video.

"Agatha," Harris rasps.

The sensations that were ripping him to shreds dissolve. He's enraged past the point when Hell freezes over. Out of a dark void, Harris asks the only question he has left. "What do you want?"