A/N This story takes place three weeks after the events in the episode entitled Mr. Yin Presents. It is canon until that point. To refresh your canon in case it's been awhile since you've seen the show, Abigail broke up with Shawn in this episode after Yin kidnapped she and Juliet and Yin made Shawn choose between them as to which he could save. Fortunately, Juliet is saved from being tied high above the clock tower and Abigail is saved from under the pier. Shawn gave up his chance to pursue Yin when he saw him escaping from the pier in order to save Abigail so Yin walked free. Buzz McNabb was attacked and knocked out by Yin at the airport where he was sent to protect Abigail. For the sake of this story, the characters are already aware that Yin and Yang have been interested in Shawn since his childhood, Yang is locked in a secure mental health facility and Juliet does not know Shawn's secret. This story is completely written and so will not fail to update on a regular basis until it is fully posted. And now, on with the story, with sincere thanks to everyone involved with the Psych show for letting amateur writers write fanfiction based on the show. No copyright infringement intended and no profits being made other than fun.

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Fake psychic detective, Shawn Spencer half-heartedly listened to his best friend, Gus gush over how lifelike the wax figure of Val-Kilmer-as-Batman looked as they perused Madame Tussaud's in Hollywood. The argument over finances on the two-hour drive from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles had soured Shawn's mood. Having to dump his delicious pineapple smoothie at the entrance to the wax museum because of a no-food-or-drink policy had served to irritate him even more.

"Come on, Shawn, I'll buy you another smoothie, served in a real pineapple and you can drink it while standing on The Mentalist's star on the walk of fame," Gus prodded as the pair made their way around the Western-themed gallery full of fake tumbleweeds and abandoned wagon wheels.

The Mentalist doesn't have a star on the Hollywood walk of fame, Gus," Shawn complained as he stuck his finger up Trigger the horse's nostril. The disapproving eyes of The Lone Ranger stared down at him as if the paraffin man were alive and as annoyed at Shawn as Detective Lassiter had ever been during one of Shawn's crime-solving visions back at the police station. "But he should."

"You know that's right," Gus said brightly, having distracted Shawn from their earlier arguments.

"And besides, you saw those sidewalk stars," Shawn said, wrinkling his forehead in disgust. "Gum and dirt all over them. Hollywood is not as advertised, man. Sure, they clean it up for the red carpets and abduction ceremonies but on any given, say, Tuesday... "

"It's induction ceremonies, not abduction ceremonies. Shawn," Gus said, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. "And it's Thursday." And that would be why our electricity was cut off, the final warning bill was due on Tuesday.

I've heard it both ways," Shawn continued as though a date on a calendar could be changed on a whim. He didn't want to admit that Tussaud's was creeping him out. It was like being in a crime lab where the forensics people in the sub-basement of a police department pieced murder victims back together for identification purposes from nothing but eyeless sockets in bleached white skulls; no matter how great the artist, the eyes were always dead.

"Shawn, selfie with me," Gus said enthusiastically as he put his arm around Liberace who sat at a grand piano with an outrageous set of pearly whites in his mouth to match the ivories he was tickling with his perfectly manicured, ringed fingers. And though his eyes had a friendly set of laugh lines around them, the frames didn't match the reality, they were as dead as all the others.

Shawn stepped into the frame of Gus' cell phone but didn't actually touch the sequined nightmare as Gus instructed him to say cheese. He hadn't gotten a look at Yin three weeks ago when he'd come face to mask with him on the pier the night Yin kidnapped Abigail and Juliet but he was sure that if he had, the eyes beneath that mask would be as dead as the waxen figures staring sightlessly all around him.

Shawn swore time and time again that he didn't need to talk to anyone about what Yin had done to him, to everyone he loved, even when Juliet admitted that she was seeing the department psychiatrist. Shawn shook his head. They were headed toward The Hall of Horrors where all one had to do to escape from a crazed killer was turn off the television or merely watch the movie clips between protective fingers placed strategically over the face so as not to witness the carnage with a full field of vision. Bring it on.

As Gus walked and posted his pictures, the two turned a corner and ran into Jason Voorhees. Shawn whooped in joy and whipped out a hockey mask seemingly from nowhere. Donning the mask, he stepped up to the Friday The Thirteenth figure and posed proudly.

"Selfie, Gus?" Shawn invited in a perfect voice from the nights he and Gus had spent watching marathons of the horror sequels on VHS as teenagers.

"Look, Barbara Streisand," Gus said striding away from Shawn who had just produced a clawed glove to pose in front of Freddy Krueger. Why didn't you just hide your smoothie in your Hermione Granger bag, Shawn, where did you have all that stuff?

"Me-em-oooories, like the corners of my mind," Shawn sang in a creepy voice, sneaking up on Gus from behind as he posed with Babs, pretending to admire her dress. He waved the long-fingered, gloved hand in front of the famous singer's frozen features just like he had done during his and Gus's visit to England to one of the guards in front of Buckingham Palace. His theatrical psychic reading had broken the poor officer. It was a rare occurrence but then again, Shawn Spencer was no amateur. He vaguely wondered if the guard had recovered from his nervous breakdown. Once the authorities had interviewed Shawn, the officer was of course pardoned for his lapse of control and rumor had it that he had even been visited by the Queen herself at the mental health facility.

…And speaking of the Queen, down yet another corridor, this one adorned with red carpets and an elaborate carriage pulled by yet another wax horse, was the entire royal family.

Don't stare at Liz's profile, Gus, if it's the same one from the old paper money in Canada we saw when we were chasing Despereaux in Vancouver, we'll see Satan in her hair."

"What are you talking about, Shawn?" Gus dismissed as he took in the profile, gave a small shriek and strode quickly from the royal alcove with an awkward half curtsey, half bow.

"Whoever was working at the mint when they let that slip by, needs Jesus," Gus whispered.

Shawn silently agreed as he slipped the hockey mask over Prince Charles' face and the Freddy Krueger hands over the Queen's white-gloved appendages.

"That's for Diana," Shawn whispered though he had no real ill feelings for the royals as such. Problems and feeling like an outsider were just something he could relate to on some level.

Shawn was done being in a place where soulless eyes watched you everywhere you went. Maybe it was because he was hyper-observant, but did David Hasselhoff just wink at him? Shawn shook his fist at the fake lifeguard and caught up with Gus who was currently hugging Donkey from Shrek. I'm not a real lifeguard but I play one on TV, Shawn mimicked as he ran seemingly in slow motion.

"What do you say we head over to Ripley's now?" Shawn said hopefully as he began to feel like he was about to be kidnapped and become one of the has-been figures who had a slight build up of dust on their disused shoulders. What he'd thought about dead eyes, now he could only wish. Now it felt as if he was being watched by every set of magnificently crafted glass orbs. And where were the crowds? Shawn and Gus currently occupied the animation gallery alone.

"Oh. My. Gosh!" Gus hissed as he pushed Shawn to his left to avoid the flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz. Shawn's fear of pointy things ramped up and he pushed Gus back to the right upon spying the pointy tails. The better to stab you with, my dear, thought Shawn mixing Little Red Riding Hood and the horrors of carnivorous, grandparent-eating wolves into the nightmare that was The Wizard of Oz. He looked down at his feet, nope, Sandals were not ruby slippers, although right now, the prospect that there was no place like home, was upon him.

"Gus, did you ever notice that when they colorize old black and white movies, they forget to do the inside of their mouths so that when they talk, the people look like corpses?

"Why did you have to bring that up now, Shawn?" Gus fretted, staring at the wax figure of Dorothy in a tearful pose with Toto in her arms about to sing. Gus' bottom lip quivered.

"Gus, don't be a generic paper towel in a Bounty commercial," Shawn scolded.

"I can't help it, Shawn, you know I'm a sympathetic crier."

As they passed the Wizard of Oz, the Polar Express display came into view.

"And they call The Texas Chainsaw Massacre a horror movie," Shawn scoffed. If animated Tom Hanks looked any more like a zombie they'd have cast him in The Walking Dead."

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Back in Santa Barbara, Carlton Lassiter, Head Detective of the police department leaned back in his chair and peered over the mountain of paperwork on his desk when he heard a new junior detective telling someone in a bored sort of voice that they needed to wait forty-eight hours before they could report someone missing.

Curious and needing to stretch his long legs anyway, Carlton stood up. A young woman in nurse's scrubs stood sobbing quietly into a tissue before a desk a few rows up.

"No, I don't know how long Buzz has been missing. You see I went to my mother's house because we were fighting and when I came back three days later for work and because he wouldn't pick up his phone to talk to me, he wasn't there. So, I came here to find out if he'd taken extra shifts or something. Buzz always calls me after a few hours. This is the longest fight we've ever had."

"Francie?" Juliet O'Hara asked, standing up from behind her own mound of paperwork. Juliet had chosen desk duty over fieldwork since the Yin kidnapping and would soon be transferring to city hall.

Juliet stepped around her desk and gave the much shorter, auburn-haired woman a brief hug to which Lassiter rolled his eyes.

Lassiter sat back down. O'Hara could talk to Buzz's wife about her husband's whereabouts. The buffoon was probably picking up extra shifts pulling security detail at private events and stadiums. Why people brought their private lives to work, Lassiter couldn't fathom.

"Drake," Juliet said in a scolding tone to the attending officer. "I'll take it from here. Francie, why don't you come with me?"

Juliet walked toward Chief Vick's office. Vick wasn't currently visible and she rarely locked her office while she was in the building so Juliet sought privacy there. As she opened the door, she ran her hand over her face searching for stray locks of blonde hair that were irritating her but they weren't there, hadn't been since she started tying her hair up and dying it a darker shade to match her mood since she's faced her own mortality on the clock tower at the hands of Yin.

"Have a seat, Francie," Juliet offered, gesturing to the seat across from Chief Vick's. Juliet remained standing. Shawn might sit nonchalantly in the Chief's chair but Juliet had too much respect for the first female Chief of the Santa Barbara Department. "Now what's this about Buzz being missing? He's not due in to work until night shift tonight so no one here's noticed anything unusual."

"Oh, Juliet, Buzz and I have had an awful fight," Francie sobbed louder now that she had some semblance of privacy and a sympathetic ear. Francie didn't know Juliet well but she and the other detectives had attended her and Buzz's wedding.

"What makes you think he's missing, Francie?" Juliet asked kindly, getting right to the point.

"When I went home to mother after Buzz and I had been fighting for what seemed like a week, I was sure he'd come to his senses and come after me. But … but …"

"Have you talked to him at all?" O'Hara asked, not willing to officially take a statement from Francie just yet. Protocol had to be followed and it wasn't unusual for relatively newlyweds to fight what with merging households, pets, finances and the twenty-four-seven in your face time together … that might be good with a man like Shawn.

"I don't even remember what the fight was about," Francine sniffled. "One minute I was talking about buying a new crockpot because it was the one thing we didn't get for a present for the wedding and the next Buzz … well … he's never done this before, I don't want you to get the wrong idea of my Buzzy, but … he – ah, he…"

Juliet wanted to put her hands over her ears. Francine sounded deadly serious and scared. The detective did not want to hear that the friendly, wonderfully-sensitive-to-other-people's-feelings Buzz McNab could put his hands on his wife. The young officer had lost a toe and an eyebrow and was in considerable pain when he offered to limp on crutches to get Shawn a glass of water just because he noticed that Shawn's voice was a little hoarse.

"… he yelled at me," Francine finally whispered from behind hands over her face as if she'd outed a murderer. "Buzz never yells. He just doesn't. It was just a crockpot. I asked him what was wrong. I admit that I – yelled at him too," Francine admitted sheepishly. "Told him that I worked too and if I wanted a new crock pot, well I was – damned well going to get one. I don't normally swear, detective, I swear – I mean you know what I mean, but I was so mad. And Buzz wouldn't tell me why he didn't want me to spend any money."

Bingo. It was about money. Buzz was probably licking his wounds because Francie made more money than he made as a constable at her job as an O.R. nurse.

"Okay, Francine, other than Buzz not being home when you came back from your mother's house, and not picking up the phone, why do you think he's missing?

"Because Buzz is one of the sweetest men in the world," Francine said as if that explained everything.

Juliet couldn't disagree but she couldn't justify starting a missing person's report. Francie didn't know how long Buzz had been gone from their home, she hadn't been there and it was Buzz's right to not pick up a phone. Juliet had forgotten her phone on her desk so she picked up Vick's landline and dialed Buzz's number. Knowing the number by heart confirmed just how much the young constable was called upon for duties with she and Lassiter. The call went to a full voice mailbox.

"Sorry, that would be me," Francine apologized. "I called him all night last night."

Buzz always picked up when someone from the department called him, on duty or off. Now Juliet was beginning to worry as well but that didn't change the fact that most evidence pointed to Buzz simply taking some time to lick his wounds. Until he didn't report for duty at seven o'clock, when Juliet would be allowed to officially worry, there was nothing the department could do, and even then, the night shift head could only call Officer McNab with a verbal warning for dereliction of duty if Buzz failed to call in sick or give a plausible excuse for his absence.

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It was a credit to both Buzz McNab and Chief Vick when the chief heard about Francine and Buzz's troubles that she stayed late after her five o'clock shift ending, making excuses about paperwork and phone calls to make and visiting mothers-in-law that she wanted to avoid at home.

At six o'clock it was well passed a respectful time to be calling in sick for a seven o'clock shift. At six-fifteen the clock on the wall would become self-conscious from all eyes being on it if it wasn't inanimate. At six thirty, everyone knew. Buzz McNab was always early; he put on the fresh coffee, day or night shift and was always first at briefing.

Seven o'clock. A gong might as well have gone off. Even Chief Vick held her breath as the night shift head called the absent Buzz McNab. The officer hung up with an air of anger and grabbed a report paper as he dialed a replacement.

Vick told Francine to call every one of Buzz's friends, his parents, relatives and anyone she could think of as she took Juliet aside.

"O'Hara, since you're still here, why don't you look up that hotel Buzz was doing door duty for?"

As Juliet sat at her desk, she noticed a steaming cup of coffee on Lassiter's desk. Lassiter didn't share a desk. With anyone. She turned around to see who was foolish enough to touch the touchy head detective's desk after hours when the man himself walked in carrying three sandwiches from the food stand just outside the station.

"Lassiter, I didn't know you cared," O'Hara said as Carlton tossed a whole wheat, egg salad to her, followed by a corned beef with instructions to give that one to the Chief.

"I don't, but as you can see, I'm almost done my paperwork. Unlike you, I can go home this weekend and plan for the fifty-fourth annual civil war re-enactment."

"But you're still here," Juliet smiled.

"Well, I called the station baseball league members as well to see if any of them wanted to join me on the battlefield, no takers – and uh, no one's seen Buzz either."

Carlton had already called over half of O'Hara's list and still no Buzz.

"And I called around to those hotels, you know, cheap ones that Buzz has worked at to find rooms for out of town guests at the re-enactment. No discount for knowing one of their employees, Buzz hadn't been there for months." Lassister's attempt to look nonchalant failed.

"Thanks, Carlton," Juliet said quietly. "I'll tell the chief."

"Thanks for what O'Hara, he's still technically not missing," Lassiter said with a hint of anger at the system.

"Well, am I the chief or not," said Vick as O'Hara informed her that all of Buzz's contacts had been contacted. "With everything that's been going on with Yin and the kidnappings…"

Juliet let out a small gasp.

"I'm going to make an exception. No one really knows how long Buzz has been missing or if he even is missing but I think we need to air on the side of caution. O'Hara, see if Lassiter wants to stop by McNabb's place with Francine and go over some of his belongings to see if he might have packed anything or left any clues as to where he may have gone, voluntarily or not."

Lassiter already had his keys and a half-eaten sandwich in his hand as he walked toward the doors of the police station and Juliet followed him.

"If McNabb is playing hooky for a broken heart, so help me he'll be walking the beat until he's old and grey," Lassiter muttered. "We aren't running a daycare or marriage counseling."

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At home, Francine took a deep breath and opened the door. She gave a small yelp as their cat, who usually came running to greet them, gave a pitiful meow, got up to come over and fell over gasping for air.

"Chester!" Francine cried as she rushed to the cat's side. "She can't breathe!"

Lassiter and Juliet exchanged glances. They couldn't call an ambulance. It was a cat and Francine was clearly in no state to drive. Lassiter cussed loudly as he picked up the cat with surprising gentleness. "I'll take – the little boy cat here to the vet. You and O'Hara go through your husband's things and see if anything seems off."

Without waiting to find out what vet the McNabb's used, Lassiter left the building. What was his career coming to – puppies like McNabb and kittens. Oh yes, Buzz was going to get an earful alright for worrying them all like this. How dare he when Juliet was planning to transfer out of stress from the kidnapping that Lassiter still felt guilty about, Spencer had all but quit taking cases for the department, and damn if that wasn't on the negative side now much to his annoyance. And Yin was still out there. But Lassie wasn't worried. Nope, not him.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Gus chanced sideways glances at his friend throughout the winding, wide corridors of the dark museum. Shawn caught him every time, probably even knew exactly what Gus was thinking. It was one of the disadvantages of having a hyper-observant friend.

"Gus, stop. I'm fine."

"If the bags under your eyes were Prada, we'd be rich," Gus said quietly.

"But my hair is magnificent, Gus, it doesn't get all squashed down when I don't sl-"

"I knew it," Gus said sadly, and for Shawn to screw up admitting not having slept, it meant that he hadn't slept in at least three days.

"You're still worried?"

"Gus don't be a -" Shawn started.

"Don't, Shawn, you can talk about it you know. I'm your best friend, man, you should be able to talk to me."

"No, I'm not worried - because Abigail broke up with me and now I know that even if I like Juliet, I have to let her be. If I just leave her alone, she'll be alright, Abby'll be alright too, so yeah, I'm worried." That I'm going to be alone.

"We are going to catch Yin, Shawn, you know that, right?"

"Yes, but at what cost? It's not just Abby and Jules, there was that waitress…"

Gus closed his eyes. Don't say it. Don't say it. Please don't say it.

"I mean, if I take myself out of the equation, you know, get outta Dodge for awhile…"

Gus didn't know whether to lie or tell the truth. He chose the truth.

"This whole thing started when you were a kid, Shawn, if you went away, it'd be here when you got back..."

Shawn gave an ironic smile.

"No. Just, no," Gus said firmly, shoving Shawn down onto a velveteen chaise lounge next to Scarlett O'Hara.

Clark Gable's chin rested in his hand as he took in the odd tableau unfolding beneath the curtains that would soon become his lover's dress under the backdrop of artificial sunlight peering through the window obtrusively. If Gus didn't do or say something soon, his friend would be like the movie title, Gone With The Wind – in his hair – on his motorcycle that his dad hated so very much.

"Okay, let's say for a second you really could disappear. Eventually, Yin will move on. And the next player he chooses won't have your gifts. We may have lost people but we haven't lost."

"Gifts?" Shawn said with more derision than he'd intended. "Yeah, it's great to remember exactly how Yin made me choose between Jules and Abigail." Shawn pinched the bridge of his nose and spared Gus more anger as he just breathed and tried to think of something to make Gus understand. "I can still smell Yin's breath, he had expensive Niagara ice wine to celebrate his intended victory. It was cold that night. I could literally see his breath and I wanted to reach inside him and pull it out and dangle it in front of him as he starved for it. I didn't just want him to die. I wanted him to suffer, Gus. But I couldn't do it because then two people would die. But if I had, it would have been over. I sacrificed God knows how many to save two. It wasn't just about Abby and Jules, it wasn't just about my dad, Buzz, Lassieface and … you. I left him alive because I was selfish. I didn't want to lose Abby or Jules and even though Abby told me she didn't want to die, she couldn't stay with me, I know she and Jules would have sacrificed themselves if they knew that now, so many others are going to pay for their lives. And I still can't say it was a mistake. I'm that selfish."

"You could have died saving Abby under the pier, Shawn. The paramedics wanted you to go to the hospital you'd taken in so much water. You're not selfish. You made the only decision you could. Have you ever thought that maybe it will be Jules who arrests Yin and that if you'd let her die, he'd be killing for the next twenty years? Have you ever thought that if you hadn't saved Abby, some kid that she teaches wouldn't grow up to cure cancer and save many more lives than Yin could ever take? Fate isn't perfect but…"

And somewhere from nearby a bodiless, indignant cough sounded. The two men looked at each other to confirm that they'd both heard it.

"As God is my witness, Gus, we're outta here," Shawn said in a perfect, high pitched southern accent, his hand sticking a bit to the top of Scarlett's wig. "Sorry, we didn't get our money's worth out of it."

"Frankly, Shawn, I don't give a damn," Gus said as they scrambled out of the wax museum exit only to bowl into a mime outside. The mime grabbed Shawn's midsection trying to stay upright and the two twisted, the mime falling onto Shawn's prone body. The mime then proceeded to mimic struggling to get up off the winded psychic with no real effort.

"Get off me, man!" Shawn gasped as Gus righted himself and pulled the mime off of him. Shawn stared up into the sunlight through closed eyes and when he opened them, his retinas were filled with round, white orbs as if he'd just walked one of the red carpets of camera flashing paparazzi who were setting up across the street from where they now stood.

The mime, with his white face makeup and his black hat and stupid water-squirting flower, fell out of character and disappeared into the crowd. With so many in line for Tussauds, Gus and Shawn were at a loss to explain how they'd spent most of their time in there alone. Shawn turned to look in the windows where the ticket taker stood looking irritated by the impatient tourists who were asking what was taking so long to gain entry.

"Shawn, you alright?" Gus said as Shawn paled, making the bags under his eyes more prominent.

"Y – yeah, just shouldn't have looked up in the sun for so long, it's playing with my eyes."

Gus debated calling it a day but then again, he hadn't convinced Shawn to stay in Santa Barbara and fight yet. For Shawn's part, it appeared that the detective was done talking for now.

"Let's get that smoothie and something to eat," Gus suggested.

When the two men reached the food truck with the gigantic pineapple on top, Gus was dismayed when Shawn failed to take out his phone to snap a shot of his favorite fruit. Normally Shawn would have been almost arrested for climbing the truck and posing next to it or he'd charm the owner to let him drive it and even serve food. Shawn ordered a smoothie. Gus ordered a chicken vegetable wrap for him along with his own food and drink.

As Gus and Shawn sat at a picnic table under a white canopy, Gus tried to push his delicious looking French fries closer to Shawn to entice him with the aroma. Things were bad when Shawn didn't eat at least half of Gus' fries…

"Shawn you didn't eat breakfast," Gus said, trying to sound casual but failing miserably. "And you've hardly had a bite of your wrap. I'm eating alone."

"I'm not a sympathetic eater, Gus." Shawn tried to smile but it didn't reach his eyes.

Shawn hadn't lost weight but his cheeks were a tad hollower somehow. Just for Gus he ate half of his wrap.

"Hey, a little girl cat," Shawn said as a calico slipped around the edge of one of the buildings. The owner of the food truck tossed a chunk of loose chicken to her and she dragged it away in her teeth. Shawn strategically placed his half wrap in between the buildings for the cat as well, it still had lots of chicken in it.

"How do you know it was a little girl cat?" Gus queried. "You only saw its face."

"Most calico cats are female, Gus, it's a scientific fact."

"Oh." Things were bad if Shawn quoted science instead of observation. Normally he would have said, it was the way the cat walked like a girl or meowed like a girl cat or some other absurdity. He just didn't seem to have the energy.

Shawn pretended to cheer up just a bit for Gus' sake. After all, this day would be the last time the fake psychic detective would see his best friend. Gus might have been right about Shawn not running away completely but that didn't mean that Shawn was going to chance continuing to work with Gus or being near him or anyone else he cared about. He had to focus on Yin alone and if that meant staging a huge fight with Gus in order to establish a boundary, so be it. His feet felt like lead as Gus dragged him down the street toward Ripley's.

But Shawn couldn't do it. He didn't want his last words to Gus to be a lie. He knew that leaving impulsively from Los Angeles without so much as having packed a bag back in Santa Barbara was wrong, that Gus would worry, but a worried Gus was better than a dead Gus.

Shawn smiled, sometimes genuinely, most times not as Gus shot pictures of the two of them together in front of Ripley's Believe It Or Not. He and Shawn climbed into a barrel that had gone over Niagara Falls but it only made bile rise in Shawn's throat as he thought of Niagara ice wine on Yin's breath the night everything had gone so very wrong. And worse, Yin had somehow known that Shawn knew the aroma of Niagara ice wine from a bottle that Despereaux had sent him, Yin had invaded every aspect of Shawn's life from intimate friends to distant frenemies.

"Gus, I need to use the little boy's room," Shawn stated.

When Gus followed Shawn into the restroom, Shawn ducked into a stall telling Gus not to be a sympathetic pee-er. Shawn just stood there, not really in need of a restroom. He rested his head on the back of the questionably clean stall door until the sound of running water, double soaping, and air dryer sound diminished.

"Why don't you go on out and look around nearby and I'll be out in a minute," Shawn said in a gross, strained sort of way.

Gus wrinkled his nose and headed to the doors.

Shawn waited for the ten seconds it would take for Gus to become enthralled at a display of some medieval medicine bottles or something, peeked out of the bathroom doors and slipped out in the opposite direction from which Gus had gone. As he walked, he counted the scant cash he'd managed to pickpocket from Gus and Gus' company credit card and phone and stashed it in his pocket. He had no phone, hadn't paid the bill in a month.

"Goodbye, Gus," Shawn whispered as he slipped out into the sunlight once more.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Damn you, Shawn!" Gus hissed as he felt in his pocket to find a crumpled-up napkin with a few words scrawled from Shawn in ketchup.

"Tell everyone goodbye. I'm okay. I just can't…"

Gus did everything he could think of. He even reported Shawn as a missing child and got mad at the Ripley's security guard who refused to repeat the announcement after he found out that Shawn was a full-grown man.

"Not on my watch, Shawn. Not again," Gus vowed, pulling out his personal phone only to have it ring before he could begin to call Henry and Juliet.

"Burton Guster, here," Gus said impatiently, not having checked the caller ID out of sheer frustration.

"Mr. Guster, it's Chief Vick, is Mr. Spencer with you? His phone was disconnected when I tried to call. I need both of you to come to the station right away, we have an incident."

Gus sighed. "I'm sorry, Chief, I've had an incident, too."

"Look, Mr. Guster, whatever you and Spencer have gotten yourselves into, get yourself out, you have a job to do that just might get the lights back on at Psych."

This case, whatever it was, must have been high priority for the chief to sound so frazzled and offering pay even before examining whether Shawn had any "visions" to start them off toward resolution.

"With all due respect, Chief," Gus said, his voice cracking, "Shawn's gone. He ran. I thought I had him convinced that we're stronger together as a team but…"

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

"I see," said Chief Vick, regaining her voice with a resolve that Gus could admire. After all, acceptance of refusal for casework was mandatory; Shawn was never under arrest for anything, he wasn't a full-time employee of the department, he was a victim; if he wanted to run away, there was nothing anyone could do legally to stop him. Though at the moment, she would have had some choice words for her favorite and only psychic detective.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Guster. Where are you?" Vick asked as a loud busker stalked past Gus who'd by now been in his way out front of Ripley's for over five minutes asking anyone if they'd seen which direction Shawn had gone by description alone. Shawn would've remembered exactly what I'd been wearing today Gus lamented as all he could say to passers-by was Shawn's height and hair color and how fabulous and full of life the locks were.

"Los Angeles, Chief. I brought Shawn here to try and cheer him up. He's been working all hours ever since the kidnappings, even with the bronchitis he had after swallowing too much water under the pier. He just gave me the slip." Gus failed to tell the chief about Shawn's theft. It was going to be hard enough to explain non-work-related purchases made two hours or more from Gus' doctor office routes. The pharmaceutical salesman was well and truly screwed once his boss started receiving the invoices from whatever Shawn purchased.

"Look, Chief Vick, Shawn can't have gotten far yet, why don't you tell me what the case is and if I can find him, it might convince him to come home for a bit." Before I kill him for trying to do this alone.

Chief Vick was going to refuse. After all, Gus didn't need to know about the case and she really needed to focus and organize her department. But now the station was missing not one but two of its own.

"Gus – Mr. Guster," Vick corrected sounding suddenly very tired. "Officer McNabb is missing."