The streets were crowded. Then again, the streets are always crowded during lunch hour in New York. People jostled through the melee, briefcases and purses used as discreet battering rams to push their way through. Detective Jo Martinez happened to be following either a very powerful businessman or a very powerful drug dealer, for he and his elephantine briefcase cleared a manageable path for her to follow.

Unlike those around her, Jo wasn't heading for a meal at one of the many exorbitantly priced fast-food joints of the city. She was on a case, a case that had been especially troublesome for her preferred ME.

See, Henry had a thing for scarves. She didn't know when it'd started, and she didn't know quite why, but the man did not go anywhere without a long, thin piece of fabric around his neck. So of course a nice scarf strangling would make him a little uneasy.

At least, that was what she written his unease off toward. In reality, Henry was afraid-severely afraid. For Jo.

In fact, his anxiety was so imminent that he was currently following her through the city streets. Not closely, she was a detective, after all. Is a detective.

Henry, wearing the ubiquitous maroon scarf, was about five sidewalk squares away from her. When she would look his way, which wasn't all that often, he would look down as if he were texting. She wouldn't think to label that figure as him; he didn't own or believe in cell phones. Usually at this time he was actually feeling the lump in his right coat pocket, memorizing the feel of the object even though he'd been closely studying it for months now. Just in case.

Most of his time was spent surveilling the crowd around her. He would quickly scan the faces, then return his gaze to her, afraid she'd been harmed in the few seconds he'd looked away.

Jo turned a corner, and Henry followed. When he rounded the bend, his blood froze. He had found what he was looking for; something he'd hoped to never see.

With trembling hands, he pulled the Beretta from his pocket and raised it, never lowering his gaze from the target. He tensed his jaw, in fact, he tensed his whole body. He was frozen with fear, though his hand still trembled.

He put his left hand on the other side of the pistol to steady it. Instead, both hands and the firearm shook uncontrollably. He took a breath, hoping for deep and peaceful but ending up shallow, with a swallow of bile.

The shot rang out before Henry realized he'd pulled the trigger.

{*.*.*.*}

He felt the shots before he heard them. The vibrations from the pistol's blast coursed through the shooter's body and into the floorboards she was standing on, the ceiling over him. He knew he had precious seconds before she would come down and discover him and his immobile hostage.

He stood astride over the man, who was trying to suppress his dying moans through gritted teeth. The man was doing a good job of it, he had to admit. Both had the technique as down as possible by now given all the times they'd died.

The broken body oozed blood from the wound in his back, a glimmering antique dagger sticking up toward the man. He forcefully pulled it out, causing the man below to at last cry out in pain, though again very controlled. He had as much riding on not being discovered as did the mysterious man above, if not more.

The man abruptly yanked up the dying man's head by the hair and stuck the bloody dagger under his neck. Before he sliced the throat, he whispered "You can thank me later."

The killer waited a few seconds, watching the dead body. He knew what would happen, of course. He'd been stalking the man for centuries, he knew they were the same. But something, somewhere in the little, almost silent conscience he'd long hidden away, the idea that the man might actually have died niggled at his mind.

He was extremely relieved when the man's body vanished before his eyes, along with all the blood on the ground and on his own hands. Before the shooter above could come down and see him standing there, the man known as Adam quickly left the basement of the Frenchman's shop.