"We were just on the topic of sharing," I said sweetly, raised my eyebrows; she held her silence for several minutes while Scott brought forth his theory on the killings, that the killers had been planted with Javelin's memories so that they would go and kill the people he himself would like to kill. He thinks this is a testbed for disposable assassins, that the who doesn't matter as much as what they're doing, a theory I'm willing to consider. I'd be just as happy if it turned out that this had nothing to do with me, or with any of us, directly.
    "Shall we talk to Javelin, then?" I asked.
    "Have we established this as our first priority?" Hans replied.
    "What are our other possibilities?"
    Lucky was looking at me again. Staring, to be entirely accurate. "You really want him to know this?" she asked quietly.
    "Who to know what?"
    "Hans. About me."
    "That's up to you, I told you that before."
    She turned to him and hesitated. It came out in a rush. "Hans, I used to be a Mafia hitter."
    "But, you are now reformed," he said in his stilted accent, half-questioning, after a startled moment.
    "Yes."
    "We all make mistakes," he said firmly.
    I have never seen Lucky so caught out. Whatever she was expecting, calm acceptance wasn't anywhere in the vicinity. I was both surprised and intrigued; given Promethean's former statements on the absolute nature of law, I expected at least somewhat of an argument.
    "Before you came on the team, I tried to kill one of my ex-bosses," she went on, watching him carefully.
    "I had heard about that," he acknowledged. "It is important that we must all escape our pasts. We cannot be tied down by these things."
    Fascinating. And a very interesting choice of words, although I can't be certain of the meaning, given his occasionally odd English. We must escape our pasts? We moved on, continued to hash over the problems on our plate for the next half hour: the Wuxia, the golem (Lucky thinks we should try to track it through the sewers), neo-Nazis, the mysterious Chimera-lookalike. Eventually we concluded that cleaning up the tongs should be our first priority, and spent a lot more time figuring out how to deal with the upcoming bust. Lucky thought it might be a setup; after a while we decided that Scott and I would go with the police, since Winters already knew we were coming, and Hans and Lucky would keep themselves in reserve nearby, waiting to see if we got ourselves into trouble.
    It was about two when we adjourned, and I decided that the meeting had gone reasonably well. Now we just have the challenge of putting our resolutions into practice‹always the hard part.
    "I've got someplace to go," Lucky said, and headed toward the door.
    "Where you off to?" I caught up with her, still a bit annoyed by her continual, and to my mind invasive, insistence on knowing my emotional state, but also still somewhat concerned about her abruptly changed behavior.
    "I'm going to see Don Vincent in the hospital, you want to come?"
    I felt like I'd physically run into something, stopped dead and just stared at her for nearly ten seconds before I could try to respond to that. "Um. Um, I don't think so. Are they going to let you in?"
    "No," she snapped.
    "Sorry, it seems rather... unlikely, I was just kind of... surprised." I shook my head.
    "I owe him an apology," she said quietly.
    "Can't really argue with you there." Although I'll be damned if I know what she expected it to accomplish. Vincent would have be a saint to forgive her, and I somehow doubt he'll be on the canonization list any time soon.
    "I'm going without my gloves."
    "You're not bringing your—OK, I'll come along, if you want." Crazy. She's crazy, that's all I can think. She's going to visit her archenemy in the hospital, weaponless. Not that Lucky is ever exactly weaponless. Just another part of whatever gesture she felt she needed to make. And I had to to be crazy to go with her, but I certainly wasn't going to let her walk in there alone and unarmed.
    "You want to fly me there?"
    "You're sneaking in, is this correct?" She gave me that look again. "Just making sure." We headed for the hospital.

[Perspective switch: A Mystery]

    We landed on the roof and made our way into a stairwell. Her incredibly sharp hearing made it easy for us to avoid people as we descended and found the proper room. About every three seconds I wondered what I was doing there.
    Vincent was alone in the room. Monitors beeped softly, the respirator hissed. Tubes snaked everywhere. He's lost considerable weight since his injury, and no longer resembles the suavely dressed, pleasant man who welcomed us into his home to investigate a robbery. He just looks... old, his skin lined and spotted. I hate hospitals. I stayed well back, faced the door to give her a modicum of privacy, heard a softly murmured Lords Prayer, then silence for a while.
    "Let's go." She was no longer wearing her cross; it glittered quietly from where she had placed it in his hands. She was crying. I didn't say anything. Whatever caused this change in her, it seems to run deep. I don't know if I'm prepared to deal with it.
    Scratch that, I know I'm not prepared to deal with it.
    "Can I drop you off somewhere?" I asked after a few minutes, during which she composed herself.
    "I should put in some time at the youth center."
    "OK, sure." I angled off in that direction. Beautiful day for flying, but I hardly paid it any attention, trying to decide if this was a good time. But I'd laid the challenge myself this very morning, and I had to prove that I meant it. Better now than later, I guessed, hesitated and plunged. "You know, this is probably not the best time to say this, but half the reason I flipped out the other day was because I thought you were dead." It had taken me a while after talking to Chandler to figure out just why I had overreacted on the scale that I did. I just don't like being scared, is all, and in retrospect, that whole episode scared the hell out of me.
    "What?"
    I took a breath and went on. "I saw you fall. I don't deal with that very well. My apologies. When I do that... just ignore me."
    "Maybe when you do, from now on I'll ask you why."
    "OK. Just wait a few minutes before you do," I added, bringing us to a gentle landing in the parking lot.

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