Adrenaline made him soar, replacing the pill's dulling effects. Lassiter was able to keep up with Brandon as he covered the manicured lawn, the stretch of cobblestone walkway, the raised porch, and into the house.

Brandon ran up the large mahogany staircase leading to the upper level. As soon as his foot landed, he whirled around and started taking wild shots at Lassiter. A picture just to the left of Lassiter's head exploded.

Lassiter instinctively threw up his arms to cover his eyes from the shards of glass and splinters of wood. Brandon took advantage of Lassiter's brief moment of obscured vision to disappear into one of the dozen rooms on the second level.

Without warning Lassiter's world tilted on its side. "Damn!" Lassiter cursed. "Not now!" A wave of nausea washed over him and he felt like he was upon the deck of a ship instead upon the level surface where he stood. He leaned over the railing and retched violently. Stomach acid and blood poured out of his mouth to the handsomely polished floor below.

"Lassie!" Shawn cried from the bottom of the stairs. He rushed to Lassiter's side and pulled the detective away from the railing. "Where are you hit?"

Lassiter wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing the blood left on his lips. "I'm fine."

"You're bleeding!" Shawn protested, searching Lassiter's body for signs of a wound.

"Only on the inside," Lassiter scoffed.

"What?" Shawn asked, dumbfounded.

It was then Lassiter realized that by some fluke or miracle Spencer hadn't witnessed him being sick. He had only seen the blood, but had no idea where it had come from.

Shawn was tugging at Lassiter's shirt, attempting to pull the material up to examine Lassiter's torso; as if the thin layer of cloth would somehow be able to hide a gushing bullet wound.

"Just a flesh wound," Lassiter lied, trying to push Shawn off of him.

"Flesh wounds don't bleed that much!" Shawn protested with a wad of cloth still in his hand.

With a draining effort, Lassiter shoved Shawn away. "Back off, Spencer. I swear to God, I will arrest you for impeding an arrest."

Shawn ignored Lassiter's treat and held fast to his shirt.

"Shawn," Lassiter said softly tone.

Shawn was so taken aback by Lassiter's change in tone that he stilled and looked up into the detective's face.

"Shawn, I need to do this. I have to do this. Please," Lassiter all but begged.

"Why?"

"For her," Lassiter said earnestly.

Shawn released the fabric of Lassiter's shirt and raised his hands in surrender. He looked toughed by the detective's actions, but right now Lassiter didn't have time to decipher the meaning behind Shawn's lingering expression of thoughtfulness.

"He's getting away. I can't let that happen."

Shawn was rendered speechless, his hands still raised.

Lassiter started back up the stairs with less energy than he had before. He had a vague awareness that Spencer was shadowing him. He knew ordering Spencer to leave would be a further waste of effort and time. At least with Spencer behind Lassiter, Lassiter could keep tabs of him, keep him out of the way and out of danger—it was the lesser of two evils.

The upper floor was eerily silent. Each room possessed a cold museum quality, lacking the warmth of a typical house. The lack of anything intimate was alienating.

Lassiter struggled to keep his breath even as the pain ate away at him. The muscles in his legs shook so hard that it was hard to stay on his feet.

"Dude," Shawn protested in a strained whisper behind him. "Let me at least bandage the wound."

Lassiter ignored him and continued to walk down the long hallway.

"Lassie," Shawn tried again, "let's wait for backup. At least Gus. Or Jules. You don't look so good. I think you might be going into shock."

"Shut up, Spencer," Lassiter snapped, searching what seemed like the hundredth room. He's probably right, Lassiter thought darkly.

"Lassie . . ."

"What, Spencer?" Lassiter whipped around fuming, finally losing his patience.

Shawn stared back at him in wide-eyed terror. Brandon had Shawn in a chokehold with the barrel of the gun pressed against Shawn's sweating temple. Brandon's sleeves were pushed up from the contact against Shawn's neck. Lassiter could see dozens of fading scratches covered his skin.

No one said anything for what felt like minutes, but was probably less than thirty seconds. The tension was palpable.

With a tremendous effort Lassiter kept his gun leveled at Brandon though his limbs were quickly on their way to becoming jelly. His adrenaline must be wearing off.

Brandon edged towards another set of stairs, which Lassiter presumed led to the third floor.

"Brandon," Shawn began, "where we going, buddy? You have to know there's no way out."

"For once in your life, shut up Spencer," Lassiter hissed. Brandon was on the ragged edge, and didn't need any reminders that his situation had become a hopeless one. To Lassiter's relief, Shawn obeyed and clamped his jaw shut.

To Lassiter's surprise the staircase led not to another level but to a balcony with a wraparound railing that had been invisible from the ground due to the tree cover.

A stiff breeze whipped their hair and clothes around their faces and bodies. Lassiter who usually held his gun with two hands so he could brace himself for the kickback when it was fired, took one hand off his gun and grabbed the railing to steady himself. His right arm still pointed the gun at Brandon's head.

"I should have known you would be trouble, Detective," Brandon yelled over the roar of the wind. "You have the same look Rachel had in her eyes."

Lassiter said nothing.

"That same wild recklessness . . ."

"You're projecting," Lassiter said, but he wasn't sure if Brandon heard him over the wind.

"No," Brandon apparently had, "I'm not. I knew Rachel better than anybody else. See, life's no fun when everything is handed to you. A half-life, with its pageantry and pretty baubles that ultimately mean nothing, surrounded by superficial people. Rachel acted the way she did because she felt she had nothing to lose, nothing that meant anything anyway."

Brandon inched backwards until his back bumped the railing. "That's something we share with Rachel, you and I. We don't have anything left to lose."

"You don't know me," Lassiter snarled, gripping the iron railing harder as his world began to spin. Lassiter's was struggling to hold his gun steady. Clouds were rolling in from the east, darkening the sky.

"I studied Pre-Med at Columbia before my parents pressured me to switch to a Business degree." Brandon raised an eyebrow. "But I don't need a degree to recognize that you're sick. A layman could tell."

Shawn craned his neck to gage the earnest expression on Brandon's face before he turned his gaze upon Lassiter. Lassiter could feel Shawn's X-Ray stare taking in his gaunt, haggard appearance that had so distorted his features. Shawn soaked in his shaking limbs, the way Lassiter's cloth hung off his thin body. Lassiter knew Shawn was recalling all the indicators he had overlooked or otherwise ignored about Lassiter's strange behavior of late. He could practically hear the gears in Shawn's brain turning, and suddenly it become so blatantly clear to Shawn that Brandon was right. Pity filled Shawn's hazel eyes.

Lassiter wished Shawn would look away.

"So what are you going to do?" Lassiter asked, ignoring Shawn.

"Like I said, I have nothing left to lose," Brandon said in an unnervingly calm voice. He had subconsciously loosened his hold on Shawn's neck while they had been talking. He pulled back the hammer of the six shooter and pressed the gun harder against Shawn's head.

"Wait, wait!" Lassiter shouted. "He didn't have anything to do with this. Look," Lassiter leaned down with a stab of pain his abdomen and put his gun on the ground. "I was the one who put two and two together, not him. He couldn't even tell I was sick. He's nothing. A nobody." Lassiter smiled his usual crooked grin.

"Harsh! I know I've been off my game, but still," Shawn interjected.

Both Brandon and Lassiter ignored Shawn.

"If you want to take revenge it should be against me," Lassiter volunteered, straightening up with his arms raised in surrender.

"Before I killed her . . . when I was leaning down over her body . . . she whispered in my ear not to hurt her baby. If she had only told me who the father was . . . life's hardly ever simple, is it?"

He turned his gun at Lassiter.

"No!" Shawn screamed as he broke the loosened chokehold and clumsily knocked the gun out of Brandon's hand. The gun hit the ground before sliding off the balcony to the garden below. When Shawn lashed out, Brandon released him, allowing Brandon enough space to pivoted and struck Shawn square in the jaw. Shawn crumpled under the force of the hit.

Brandon lunged forward to snatch up Lassiter's disregarded service revolver while Lassiter rushed forward and tackled him around the middle. The impact sent Brandon wheeling backwards over the railing with Lassiter still holding on.

Shawn recovered in time to see both men topple over backwards as the iron railing.

Shawn watched with a frame by frame clarity, like a slow motion part in a movie before time returned to its regular pace and Brandon and Lassiter were gone from his vision.

"Lassie!" Shawn cried, stumbling over to the section of missing railing.

Brandon was lying spread eagle on the ground below, blood haloing around his head. Even from this distance, Shawn knew with certainty that he hadn't survived the fall. But where was Lassie?

"Lassie!" Shawn cried again, desperation making his voice crack.

"I'm here, Spencer."

Shawn looked down and saw Lassiter holding onto the gutter drain.

"Lassie," Shawn breathed a sigh of relief. "You're alive!"

"Yes, yes," Lassiter snapped. "But I might not be for long if you don't help me up."

"Oh right," Shawn smiled. He leaned over the edge and offered his hand.

Lassiter took it.

Shawn's relief was short-lived. Once Lassiter was safe on the opposite side of the railing he fell forward onto his hands and knees.

"Hey, are you okay?" Shawn dropped to his knees beside Lassiter.

"Yeah," he said without really believing it.

"What Brandon said is true, isn't it?" Shawn asked cautiously.

Lassiter couldn't see any reason to lie anyone. The signs were too obvious to ignore now. "Yeah," he said again.

"I should have known," Shawn berated himself. "It seems so clear now. At first I suspected you might be, but I pushed it out of my mind, because you never get sick. I thought it was more likely your divorce was causing you emotional distress or someone was threatening you . . . Oh my God, you slashed your own tires to throw us off the trail." Despite the pain, Lassiter couldn't help but smile.

"You sly bastard." Shawn was half impressed, half irritated.

Lassiter coughed. A thin mist of blood decorated the palm of his hand which he used to cover his mouth.

Shawn took out his cell to call for help but Lassiter reached out and stopped him.

"What are you doing?" Shawn asked incredulously.

"Not yet," Lassiter panted. "Once you call it'll all be over."

"What do you mean?"

"My career," Lassiter lamented, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "They won't let you be a detective if you're dying."

Shawn swallowed audibly. "Dying? You can't be dying."

"I can't?" Lassiter repeated, not sure how his mortality was up for debate.

"You're Carlton Lassiter, Head Detective of the Santa Barbara Police Department. You're tough as nails. You can't die," Shawn declared as if that was the end of the argument.

"I think I might have to disappoint you," Lassiter said with a humorless laugh. He waved at the blood on his palm.

A moment of quiet passed between them.

"If I knew I was dying I would be on a beach somewhere sipping on a pineapple smoothie, watching the waves roll in, " Shawn commented absently. Another pause. "So why are you still here, instead of on a beach somewhere?"

"This is my beach," Lassiter said plainly. He didn't care how Spencer took that or even if he understood. It was his truth. The wind blew more gently now. The angry dark clouds had disappeared and were replaced with big white fluffy clouds floated against the sky. There was a soft scent of flowers in the air.

"Can I call for help now?" Shawn asked quietly.

"Yes," Lassiter answered, thinking that he had never seen the sky quite so blue before.