Santa Barbara, 1993

Shawn Spencer watched through the one eye not swollen shut from inside his father's patrol car as Henry Spencer slipped cuffs around a shivering Alan McPherson s wrists and handed him off to his partner. The young Karen Vick, her blond hair pulled back into a ponytail and mouth preesed into a thin line, yanked him roughly away. If Henry Spencer had snapped the cuffs on a little too tight, no one mentioned it. As Alan was dragged away, Shawn's eye followed him. Alan glared, the rage from the narrowed eyes practically palpable.

As soon as Alan was on his way to the lock up awaiting trial, Henry stormed back to the patrol car.

"Dammit, Shawn! You can't hang around people like that! He's a criminal! He blew the brains out of a damn civilian's head robbing a liquor store!" Shawn winced, bowing his head. He hadn't known. He hadn't known until he'd arrived and seen the blood, splattered on his 'friend's' face, obscuring his grin.

Henry simply continued. He couldn't understand, as he wrenched the wheel around another corner, why Shawn would do this to him. Was he that bad of a father? He gripped the wheel until his knuckles turned bleach white, bloodless. The image of the blood on Shawn's split lip rose unbidden in his mind, and he swallowed down the sudden urge to glance back at his son. Instead, he ground more words out from between his clenched teeth, eyes rooted on the road.

"And when he called you to say he was in some trouble with the cops, you didn't call me until you saw his face plastered across the headlines! It's only because you, as always, were so oblivious that I managed to keep the station from pressing charges for aiding, abetting and harboring a fugitive! You can't stay around people like that or do dumb shit like that anymore. You could end up dead, or worse! In prison." The words tumbled out of Henry's mouth like knives.

"What would I have to say about being a cop with a son in prison? How could I show my face at the station?" Henry continued to rant while Shawn stared, unseeing, out the window, absorbing his father's words like blows.

"My son is a common criminal, and worse, he wouldn't even survive in prison! You'd be shanked in minutes because you're so obnoxious, and I would understand!... " Henry caught his breath for a moment at the image of Shawn lying in a pool of his own blood, like one of the victims Henry routinely dealt with.

As it sped over the moonlit road, Shawn stared sightlessly out of the window of the squad car, pulling his knees up to his chin. The dark night stared blankly back at him. The cool leather of the seat made him shiver. Worthless. His father thought so, and obviously he hadn t meant much to Alan either. The car lurched as his father squealed to a stop inches away from running a red light. The sudden stop launched Shawn forward. Instinctively, he threw a hand out in front of him. It hit the cold metal of the divider, a reminder of the division between him and his father, a gap he could never breach. And, to his father, this was the side of the bars Shawn belonged on. Henry's voice never slowed as Shawn stared at his hand, at the bars, his fingers interlocking around the strips of hard steel.