Chapter 5

His head was pounding, his stomach a constant churning ache. He managed to open the door to his office and slink over to his chair, wincing at the sound it made when he pulled it back. He sank down into it, laying his head on his arms on the desk, praying that either God would take mercy on him or kill him. Killing him would be a mercy today and God didn't grant such mercies to people like him.

Nick reached into the middle drawer of his desk, his fingers going over the different pill bottles until he found the one he needed. He flipped the cap with one finger spilling out a couple of pills to land on the floor. He pulled one out and tossed it in his mouth, dry swallowing it. Then he put his head back on the desk and waited for either death or relief.

The door to his office swept open, slamming into the wall in a loud burst of plaster dust. He cringed away from the noise and felt the floor tilt and move, fighting the nausea that kept threatening to overwhelm him. A voice called his name and all he could do was hold up one finger for them to go away and let him die. He pulled the wastebasket over and put it between his legs, breathing as deeply as the pain would allow. If he threw up the pill, it wouldn't do him any good. If he took anything stronger, the injections that would send the pain spinning away, also spun him away. He would be no good to anyone. Like he was good for anything now.

He felt a cool hand on his forehead, heard a sweet, husky voice call his name. He leaned into the hand, absorbing the comfort the coolness brought.

"I'm fine," he groaned out between gritted teeth.

Michelle looked down at the figure all but curled under the desk, the anger that had brought her fuming in here disappearing at one look at his white face. She crouched down next to him, concern etching her forehead. This wasn't a hangover. Something was wrong.

"Nick, you aren't fine. You shouldn't be here." She could see the white line of his lips pressed together, the beads of sweat along his forehead that dripped into the trash can. "Let me take you home."

"Wait," he ground out. "Give me a minute, I'll be fine." He could feel the pill starting to work, the pain receding, the ache in his stomach subsiding to a manageable level. He breathed a huge sigh of relief and moved his head a little, gauging the amount of pain movement would bring. He sat up, slowly and carefully, and let his head rest against the window behind his chair.

Michelle was still crouching down by his legs, looking at him as if he would pass out or throw up at any moment. She looked almost panicked, as if she really cared if something happened to him. It struck a chord that hit way to close to what little he thought was left of his heart.

"Hey, if I had known it would only take one of these stupid headaches to get you to call me Nick, I would have done it a while ago," he tried to grin but it came out as more of a grimace.

She spotted the pills that he had dropped and picked them up, opening the drawer a little farther and looking into a little private piece of the hero that not many people knew. She dropped the pills back into their bottle and looked at the prescription. Pills with names longer than her arm with the directions; take one every four hours or as needed. He had a stash of one use only air pressure syringes filled with another form of the same drug. Migraines. He had a couple more prescription bottles with more names that she couldn't even pronounce, the descriptive being for prevention of migraines. The price of being Nick Saint, the price of having superhuman powers was having superhuman pain.

The pain was ebbing more and Nick felt the first flash of embarrassment. The migraine had caught him off guard, attacking quickly. He had wanted to stick at home for a couple of hours until his pills could start working, but when he had gone to get one of them, the bottle had been empty. It was in his pocket now, he would drop it off at the pharmacy when he felt better. His only other stash of pills was in his office at work. He had thought that he could make it in unseen, maybe sit in the dark for an hour and pray for death before anyone would know he was there. He should have known that Michelle would find him. The girl had a nose like a bloodhound and eyes like a hawk, only hers were much better looking.

"What had you coming in here like a SWAT team?" he asked, to take the focus off of himself and his weakness.

"Forget about it." She kept her voice pitched low and soothing, hoping it wouldn't cause him pain. She didn't know how he had made it in to work, the drive alone could have killed him. It had to have been a nightmare. He could have called her, that was what partners were for. At least that was what he had been telling her for the past couple of days that they had worked together.

"No," his voice was stronger and he risked opening his eyes a little bit wider. "Tell me, maybe it will take my mind off of this." Maybe he could talk her into putting her hands on his face again. It had felt so good. "Come on, be a pal and help make me feel better."

Michelle felt like slime. She had walked in here mad, pissed enough to tell him to go to hell and forget about working with her. Now her anger was almost gone, all that was left was disgust at herself and a tiny bud of annoyance that was disappearing too quickly to matter.

"You talked to Sam about me." She said it matter-of-factly, as if it made no difference now. Which it didn't, she realized in surprise.

"Just in passing."

It wasn't quite true, but close enough. He had seen Sam, had passed him. But he had also backed him into a wall and wanted to smash his fist in the guy's face at the lascivious grin that had erupted at Michelle's name. He had managed to restrain himself. But just barely.

"That's not what Sam said." She shook her head, allowing a little of the annoyance to build. "I can take care of myself, Detective Saint. I don't need anyone protecting me from over sexed partners."

She stood up and backed away from him. Her eyes assessed the damage the headache had done to him. He was recovering, slowly. He blinked back at her owlishly, as if he wasn't sure that what he was seeing wasn't a pain induced hallucination. He wasn't steady and the hand that he pushed up into his hair was shaking.

"How did you drive here?"

He answered her truthfully, if not a little ruefully. "I'm not quite sure. I think if the sun had come out from behind the clouds, you would probably be scraping me off of some tree right now."

"Stupid."

He tried to grin again and felt it came off a little better, not hurting quite as much. "Very true, but necessary. I'm out of my pills at home." He hated the weakness in his voice almost as much as he hated being dependent on anything, especially medication.

"Did you know you're bleeding?" She reached out and gently wiped away a small trail of blood with a tissue she had taken out of the pocket of her jacket. The blood was from a small cut on his lip. It looked like a bite mark.

"Hmmm, nope, didn't know that." He touched his lip with one finger, pulled it back to look at the small smear of blood. "I think I bit my lip when I started my car and the music came on." He'd been listening to a country music radio station last night when he pulled into his driveway. The news had come on and he had punished himself by listening to the commentator desecrate everyone connected to his case from the Mayor down. His name had been mentioned, along with the no comment he had given the station when they had called yesterday asking for some kind of up date. Would the term "we still have nothing," be considered an update?

The lab reports were coming in on the second victim. Most were of no use, the same blah, blah, blah as the last set. They had managed to find a fiber caught under her fingernail. The fiber was of wool, high end and dyed a dark navy. So their subject wore high end wool suits. Which meant that they probably weren't looking for any of the hicks or rednecks that hung out at the pool hall down town.

He had washed the bodies before dropping them. The labs had found traces of a perfumed soap, Victoria's Secret's Love Spell. There were Victoria's Secret stores in most of the malls within two hours of Lapeer. Not to mention the booming internet trade as well as their mail order purchasers. But he sent out the guys anyways, telling them to ask about unusual male customers, anyone who seemed a little weird. Forty percent of the guys that went into lingerie stores were a little weird. Nut cases loved malls.

"Are you sure you don't want me to take you home?" Her voice broke him out of his bleak thoughts.

"Your home?" The grin was wolfish even though a trifle unsteady.

"Men," she sighed in mock disgust. "Two minutes ago you were on death's door and now you're a pig. And you went after Sam for doing the same thing you're doing." She shook her head. "Maybe I should call you a hypocrite, Nicholas Saint."

"Hey, whoa. Wait a minute." He moved cautiously at first and then more surely as the pain retreated for the moment, there, ready to swallow him whole but held back by strength of will and drugs. "You just said that you didn't need help defending yourself from your oversexed partner. I was just offering to help you practice."