"What about the boy?" Connor gasped as MacLeod began to help him up the steep riverbank. In the seeping light of dawn they'd both seen Richie Ryan hiding in the tall grass and watching them in wide-eyed wonder. He'd seen too much that long, fateful night to ever be a normal teenager again, but he didn't know it yet. Connor bit down on a spasm of pain as his body struggled to repair itself. "He'll need watching . . ."

"I know," MacLeod said. He'd felt deep within the same instinct Connor did when it came to the would-be thief, Richie Ryan - the recognition of an Immortal who would someday come into his own power. Older Immortals, by tradition, had an obligation to mentor the new ones, teach them the rules of the Game, give them at least a bare chance of survival against adversaries centuries older, smarter, and better with swords.

"I will," he added, agreeing to that unspoken duty.

***

He didn't.

Well, at least not right away.

MacLeod had too many of his own problems to deal with right away before he could even contemplate Richie Ryan. Even before the bridge, he'd made the decision to leave Seattle and Tessa. The city's removal he could bear. Tessa's would break his heart, and hers, but they would have to survive the pain as best they could and move on to separate lives. He could not bear the idea of risking her to Immortals like Slan Quince. After twelve years of peace it seemed as if he was going to be drawn back into the Game, and he had no intention of letting her stay on the board as a sacrifice or gambit.

Luckily, she had different ideas. And Connor, both bless and damn his scheming heart, had brought her to MacLeod's hidden island to let her persuade him with words and hands and love that they needed each other far more than they needed to fear losing each other.

By the time they decided to return to the real world, by canoe and ferry and car, nearly three weeks had passed since Slan Quince went to hell at the cut of MacLeod's sword. Their first night back, as they lay wrapped in blankets and each other's arms, MacLeod said, "Do you remember the kid? Richie?"

Tessa's hands traced the outlines of his face. He would wake sometimes to find her doing it. She claimed she was preparing herself to sculpt him some day out of fine Italian marble that would do his heroic face justice. He usually blushed when she said that.

"Yes," she said now. "What about him?"

"He knows too much. He saw too much."

Tessa frowned slightly. In the silvery moonlight spilling through the window, she said, "What does that mean? You're not going to..."

"No!" MacLeod said. "You don't think I'd do that, do you?"

Tessa kissed the edge of his nose. "No. Of course not. So what *are* you going to do?"

MacLeod brushed her hair from her face. Her hands were rapidly distracting him from the topic, and he gently disengaged her before he lost his entire train of thought in favor of more intense and erotic ones. "I'm not sure. But he probably deserves some kind of explanation. I thought I'd track him down."

"It shouldn't be hard. You could contact that Sgt. Powell at the police station again."

"I don't think he's a bad kid," MacLeod said. "Powell said he'd bounced around foster homes a great deal."

"Thinking of adopting him?" she teased.

He didn't answer.

"Mac," she warned, edging up on one elbow, "this is one of those times when you say, 'Of course not.'"

"Of course not."

"That's better."

"He's too old to adopt," MacLeod said.

"You're not thinking of turning him into your own personal project, are you?"

"Would that be so bad?"

Tessa withdrew her hands. He gazed at her across the pillow, and saw the way her eyes darkened when she didn't want to say what she was thinking.

"Tessa," he said, pulling her close to him, cradling her head against his shoulder, wrapping his arms around her, "you're my favorite project, you know that. The I Love Tessa Noel project."

"I suspect there's going to be a Let's Save Richie Ryan project as well," she grumbled, but the resistance flowed out of her body and she kissed his shoulder with a sigh. "Duncan MacLeod - Immortal warrior, Highlander, antique dealer, social worker."

"You left out the most important one."

"Which one?"

"Devoted lover of Miss Tessa Noel."

"Well," she said, and this time there was amusement and more in her voice. Her hands moved back to where'd they'd been. "Let's see how devoted you really are."

They didn't talk about Richie for the rest of that night.

***

Sergeant Powell wouldn't release to him the name of Richie's current foster family, but did set him up with Richie's juvenile services officer. Jerry Morra worked out of a community youth center on the east side. He was a tall, friendly man whose way with kids was evident from the way he refereed a basketball game in a court whose chain link boundaries were bordered by broken glass and beer cans.

When the game was over, MacLeod introduced himself. Jerry grinned, said any friend of Leonard Powell's was a friend of his, and brought him to a tiny office at the back of the center. The ceiling was chipped and peeling, and the corner was dropping in.

"Building's about sixty years ago and falling apart at the seams," Jerry told him. "The whole place is crumbling, but there's no money to fix it."

MacLeod took a seat in a battered swivel chair. One entire wall of Jerry's office was stacked high with empty soda cans. Another held color photos pasted in a splendid mosaic - kids, hundreds of kids, playing games or at parties or standing with friends in schoolyards. MacLeod wondered if Richie were in any of the pictures.

"Len tells me Richie broke into your shop, but you wouldn't press charges," Jerry said. "Is that true?"

"Yes. I didn't think court would do him any good," MacLeod said.

"Maybe. Maybe not. Len thinks Richie needs a good scare - you know, the whole Scared Straight program. I think he's just crying out for help."

"He wasn't crying when he took my antiques," MacLeod reminded him amiably.

"I've known Richie for about six years, Mr. MacLeod. What a hyperactive little kid. They had him tested for attention deficit disorder when he was twelve, and one family even had him put on Ritilin for awhile. But he doesn't have ADD. He's just got a mouth that runs one hundred miles an hour ahead of his brain, sometimes."

MacLeod smiled. "That's the one. What about the trouble with the police? When did that start?"

Jerry kicked back in his chair. "He got into a couple of bad placements. I think it started then."

"What kind of bad placements?"

"That's all confidential information," Jerry said somberly. "You may mean well, but that doesn't give you a right to Richie's history."

"I understand," MacLeod said. "But it helps to know."

Jerry rubbed his chin. "Why don't you ask him, instead? He should be here any minute, if he keeps his appointment. I'm trying to get him to take the GED."

"He didn't graduate high school?"

"Went to the prom, got into the yearbook, but didn't graduate. Some trouble with American history and algebra," Jerry said. He gestured through the window of his door. "There he is now."

MacLeod rose. Richie, crossing the indoor basketball court, looked like any other teenager - jeans, t-shirt, battered sneakers, denim jacket. He wore a tough, casual air as if he were slightly too cool to be coming to see his youth worker. He slowed to a stop when he saw MacLeod, and conflicting emotions crossed his face.

Fear. Well, after all, he'd seen MacLeod kill Slan Quince and then take his Quickening. And curiosity, the same curiosity that had brought him to that killing moment after he'd been warned away. And something else, too tight and fleeting for MacLeod to identify.

"Richie, good to see you," Jerry Morra called. "You remember Mr. MacLeod."

"I remember," Richie said warily. He came to the doorway but no further, and couldn't seem to decide whether to look at Jerry or MacLeod. "It's been awhile."

"I had to go out of town," MacLeod said. "I thought we might talk."

Richie didn't answer. Jerry, sensing a tension that hadn't been in the room before, gave MacLeod a suddenly suspicious look. "Actually, Richie and I need to go over his progress. Why don't you wait outside, Mr. MacLeod, until we're through."

MacLeod nodded. He didn't want to earn Jerry Morra's enmity, or to scare Richie. He waited by the outdoor courts, watching an impromptu game of pick-up between a dozen black, white and Hispanic kids, until Richie came out ten minutes later.

"Jerry said I didn't have to talk to you," the teenager said defiantly.

"That's right, you don't," MacLeod answered, his eyes on the game. "But you want to."

"Did you come here for trouble?"

"No. I came here to explain."

"Yeah, well, that might take some doing. I mean, it wasn't your ordinary night, was it?" Richie gripped the fence with both hands and lightly kicked at the bottom with the toes of his right foot. "You got some weird friends, MacLeod, who can pull some pretty impressive special effects out of their sleeves."

"Is that what you think that was? Special effects?"

"I don't know what it was but all of a sudden one guy's got a rocket in his sword, another's going over the bridge, you're chopping off a head, and wham! It's like the fourth of July - "

MacLeod gave him a severe look. "You could keep your voice down."

Richie scowled. "How do you know I haven't told everyone in the world what I saw? Like the police, who fished that guy Quince's body out of the river? Like maybe Geraldo or Oprah Winfrey - "

"I know that you didn't."

"How do you know?"

"Because that was our deal," MacLeod returned, a trifle more sharply than he'd intended. He was letting the kid's annoying sarcasm get to him. Not a good sign. Mentally he took a step backwards. "Richie, listen to me. I didn't come here to fight with you. I came to invite you to dinner."

"Dinner," Richie snorted. "That's a good one. Maybe more people can crash through the skylight while we're eating salad. Maybe you can come after me with that sword again." He did an imitation of MacLeod that the Highlander personally found too low and too thick to be realistic. "I'm Duncan MacLeod of the clan MacLeod, and you're dead!"

"Dinner," MacLeod repeated sternly. With a perfectly straight face he added, "No one should be crashing through the skylight tonight. I'd tell you how to get there, but you already know the way. Use the door, not the window, okay?"

Richie gave him a hard look. "Maybe. Maybe not."

"Seven o'clock. Don't be late."

A battered '84 Buick swerved into the parking lot and honked. Richie looked over and said, "My ride's here. Gotta run, MacLeod. Stay away from bridges, okay?"

Then he was gone, dashing across the asphalt and climbing into the car. MacLeod saw the bright and big hair of at least two girls, a kid in the front seat, a boy with a buzz cut on the top of his head. Then the Buick was gone with a blast of noise and exhaust.

MacLeod frowned to himself.

Maybe the Save Richie Ryan project had gotten off to a bad start.

***

"So who was the guy?" Nikki asked, and juggled Melinda as the toddler squirmed in her lap.

Richie looked out the window at the rows of liquor stores and cheap electronic shops on Saratoga Street. He knew every inch of this neighborhood with a thoroughness that was depressing. "Just a guy," he said.

Scotty fired up a cigarette, switched lanes, switched back again. "New probation officer?"

"I thought he was kind of cute," Angie said impishly from beside Richie.

"Just a guy," Richie repeated. He didn't want to discus MacLeod. He hadn't told anyone about what had happened on Soldier's Bridge, although he could recall every bizarre detail of it by just closing his eyes. He had barely slept for days, fearful that Duncan MacLeod of the clan MacLeod might come for him next, but when he finally screwed up enough courage to go to MacLeod's antique store, he found a note in a woman's handwriting taped to the door that announced it was closed until further notice.

He remembered watching Connor and Duncan MacLeod dueling with swords across the empty expanse of a warehouse, and feeling a vague but persistent thrill in his blood at the clang of metal, the traded blows of power and grace. Watching Connor go over the bridge, a projectile embedded in his chest, had seemed like something out of a horror movie. Witnessing Duncan chop off Slan Quince's head and then get hit by about a thousand lightning bolts defied horror and wonder both.

Dinner in the house of the sword man. An interesting proposition.

The four teenagers and one toddler stopped for lunch at a chili stand and ate outside at a scratched plastic table with a listing umbrella. The sun on four lanes of traffic and the endless spew of exhaust started to give Richie a headache. After lunch they stopped by a shop where Scotty traded in two boosted car stereos for fifty dollars and two worn plastic baggies of pot. The guy behind the counter was probably not older than twenty-five, had the unkempt, disheveled air of a pothead, and looked as if he was going to be at his current job for the rest of his life, if he wasn't fired first. Richie wondered suddenly if the guy had ever failed history and algebra.

"Bora-Morra wants me to take the GED," Richie told Scotty and the girls back in the car. He wasn't sure where Jerry Morra had picked up that particular nickname, or what the joke was. Someone had said Bora Bora was an island in the war, but Richie didn't know which war.

"So you can go to college?" Scotty asked with a quick grin.

For some reason that hurt. Mildly. "You don't think I'm college material?" Richie asked.

Nikki started rolling joints against her lap. "What would you do at college? Study? Join a fraternity? There's no payoff in it, Richie."

Angie gazed out the window and didn't say anything.

Scotty and his older brother Bruce lived in a dilapidated rental house on Gilmore Ave. Richie didn't think much of the house - the paint, inside and outside, was peeling off in strips, the water from the faucets was brown, and the yard was overgrown with trash and weeds - but it had ten rooms of varying upkeep and a very liberal open door policy. Richie had been crashing in one of the spare bedrooms for weeks. He had no intentions of going back to the Mitchells after his arrest, even though Bora-Morra had told him to. He guessed, technically, that he was a runaway. He was still a ward of the state, but with three months left until his eighteenth birthday, he didn't think anyone was going to push the issue.

Bruce wasn't home. Pete and Grouch, the two guitarists in Bruce's so-called band, were passed out in the living room. Nikki and Scotty went to Scotty's room, to play music and get high. Richie took custody of Melinda and he and Angie went outside, to shoot baskets in the small driveway into an old rusty rim that Scotty had found in someone's garbage.

They passed the basketball back and forth as Melinda played in the weeds.

"I'm starting school next week," Angie said.

"What kind of school?"

"Secretary school."

"How come?" His shot went straight through the rim.

Angie took the ball and threw from a dozen feet away. Missed. "So I can get a job that isn't a night clerk or a fast food waitress."

"What do you study in secretary school?"

"Typing. Computers. Stuff like that." Angie caught the ball on Richie's rebound and stopped for a moment. "Richie, I think you should take the GED. And go to college. Don't listen to what those guys say."

He gazed into her dark eyes. They'd met the first day of high school, and although she wasn't obviously pretty, he found her attractive in a subdued sort of way. She was smarter than most of their friends. She was smarter than he was.

"Angie, I need to tell you something. It's a secret, though. You got to not tell anyone."

"What is it?"

"I saw a guy kill someone else."

Doubt crossed her face.

"I'm not making it up," Richie swore. "Honest."

"Who killed who?" Angie asked.

Richie turned and threw. The ball bounced off the backboard and came back to him. "I can't tell you."

"Why not?"

"Because you don't want to get involved in this. Trust me. You don't want to get involved."

"So what are you going to do?" Angie asked. "You going to tell the police?"

"I doubt it."

"Richie, murder is like a serious crime. What if the killer comes after you?"

Richie noticed Melinda was wandering too far down the sidewalk. "Get her," he said, and as Angie retrieved the little girl, he gave serious consideration to the memory of MacLeod coming to see him at the police station. MacLeod hadn't overtly threatened him, but there's been a definite element of malice in his dark eyes as he laid down the conditions of Richie's release. Richie believed then, as he did now, that it would be a serious mistake to make an enemy of Duncan MacLeod.

Well, hadn't he just done that? He'd told Angie he'd witnessed a killing. And a resurrection, if he counted Connor MacLeod walking away from the river after taking a rocket in the chest.

"I can take care of it," he told Angie. "Don't worry."

"Someone's got to worry about you, Richie," she said, bouncing Melinda off her hip.

"I've done fine without it," Richie said firmly. "Come on. Let's find something to eat."

"We just ate," Angie protested, but she followed him up to the house.

The kitchen was clean - the only house rule Bruce inssisted on, no dishes in the sink, no leftovers caked to the stove - but the refrigerator was empty of everything but relish, mayonnaise, mustard, stale pizza slices, two cartons of orange juice, and a hardened stick of butter. Richie was wondering if re-heating pizza made it soft again when Bruce came in with his best friend Joey and Joey's girlfriend Liz. They'd brought groceries, which cheered Richie's heart but reminded him of his nearly empty wallet.

Richie liked Bruce all right, but Joey and Liz gave him the creeps. They looked sort of like Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, but even more zoned and grungy.

Bruce wanted to talk to Richie. Richie guessed he knew why. They stood on the back porch, looking at the ugly yard. Richie had tried to cut the lawn once, but Joey and Grouch had laughed and embarrassed him out of doing it.

"You need to come up with some rent money," Bruce said. "I know times are tough all over, but you've got to help out, you know?"

Richie nodded. He did know. He appreciated that Bruce had let him stay for as long as he had. Bruce was tall and stocky, rough around the edges, another man he didn't want as an enemy. But he'd been fair, so far, to Richie, and Richie did owe him. "I'm sorry," Richie said. He was so broke he'd let Angie buy his lunch. "I'll come up with something."

"How soon?"

"Tomorrow."

"Yeah, tomorrow. Why don't you think about selling that bike of yours, huh?"

Richie knew it would come down the bike. He'd saved his way through two summer jobs for his motorbike. His placement that year, with a family whose name he'd forgotten, had been awful. The bike was the only good thing to come out of it.

Bruce squeezed his shoulder. "Alright, forget about the bike for now. But don't let me down, Richie."

Angie went home, and Scotty and Nikki started mixing booze with the pot. Joey, Bruce and Liz joined in with some heroin. Richie hoped Scotty was smart enough to stay away from the heroin, but he didn't interfere. He and Melinda watched television for a couple of hours - Grouch had stolen a cable box, and run a line from the street - and then he shrugged into his jacket and banged on Scotty's bedroom door.

"I'm taking Melinda home," he told Scotty and Nikki.

"My mother's going to be pissed," Nikki said, her eyes dull, her words slurred. "I should go, too."

"No," Scotty said. "You stay here. Richie can handle it."

Maybe that would be his job for the rest of his life. Watching Nikki's kid. Richie put Melinda on the bike with him, making sure the child-size helmet he'd stolen from a shop two weeks earlier fit around down over her smooth hair. Nikki's mom, who was sick with leukemia, took the child from him with no question as to where her daughter was. Nikki and her mom were barely on speaking terms as it was.

Richie checked his watch. Nearly six o'clock. He drove around for awhile, then reminded himself he didn't have money to pay for gas. He wondered if MacLeod expected him to dress up. He'd owned one suit in his entire life, worn for the funeral of a friend killed in a drive-by shooting, and he'd outgrown it within months of his sixteenth birthday.

It seemed to Richie that when people came to dinner they brought flowers or wine or something, but he didn't even have enough money for a carnation from the blind florist on Saratoga Street.

He parked the bike and started walking along the parked cars, just walking, a young man on his way somewhere, and found a Nissan Sentra with its passenger door open. He slid inside in the growing dusk, pocketknife in hand, and quickly and efficiently relieved the owner of the burden of owning a car stereo. A traveling case of compact disc clued him in to the disc player in the trunk. He lifted both, stashed them for safety in some garbage cans, and lifted two more stereos before he checked his watch and found it was almost seven o'clock. It was seven-twelve when he rang the shop's buzzer. MacLeod answered with displeasure on his face. "You're late."

"Not by much. I had stuff to do," Richie said. MacLeod was dressed in expensive black trousers, a white shirt, polished shoes. No one Richie knew dressed like that. His own clothes felt and looked shabby, and he was seized by a sudden sense of unworthiness. He shouldn't have come, and thought about making up a spontaneous excuse for leaving.

"Come in," MacLeod said, with a critical eye on his attire. "Tessa's waiting."

Against his better judgment Richie following him into the darkened antique store and past a suit of armor, various framed portraits on easels, glass cases of crystal and swords. The apartment in the back of the shop was warm and well-lit, decorated in clean lines and subdued colors. The dining area table was set with white dishes, baskets of bread, and silverware tied up in blue cloth napkins.

The knockout blonde he remembered from his last time in the store was there, in a red dress that emphasized the gold in her hair. "Tessa," MacLeod said, "you remember Richie. Richie, this is Tessa Noel. She's an artist."

She reached out and shook his hand. Not many women did that to Richie. "Pleased to meet you," she said, her voice accented, but there was something held back in the way she smiled that Richie recognized in an all too-familiar way. Tessa Noel didn't like him. Or at least, she didn't trust him.

Which made her smarter than MacLeod, Richie decided.

MacLeod took his coat. Richie actually preferred keeping it - he wanted to be able to bolt at any time - but he let it go without complaint. Tessa moved to the counter. "What would you like to drink?"

"Um, wine?" Richie asked hopefully.

"You're too young," MacLeod called from the other room.

Tessa offered him juice, milk or seltzer. He chose seltzer, which he hoped was like regular water. He said, "Can I ask what your accent is?"

"I'm from Paris," she said. "Actually, just outside of Paris. Pontoise."

"Paris as in France?" he asked, then blushed at how stupid he must sound.

"Paris as in France," she confirmed, and handed him a glass.

The water had bubbles. He could live with that. MacLeod came back in and sipped from a glass of dark wine. "You like pot roast?"

"Whatever," Richie said.

"Good, because it's getting overdone."

Tessa and MacLeod busied themselves cutting up the meat. "Why don't you get the salad from the refrigerator?" Tessa asked kindly, and Richie obliged. He needed to make himself useful. MacLeod's fridge was stocked with more food than Bruce's had ever seen, including a large glass bowl of lettuce on the second shelf.

"You want me to put stuff in this?" Richie asked. He wasn't big on salad, but figured tomatoes or carrots or maybe cucumbers would do something for it.

"It's a Caesar salad," MacLeod said. "You don't need stuff in it."

"Sorry," Richie said before he could stop himself. "I guess you guys are just a little highbrow for me, you know?"

MacLeod and Tessa exchanged looks. MacLeod said, clearly and firmly, "Salad is not too highbrow for you, Richie. Relax, will you? You're the guest. You don't have to do anything but eat and make polite conversation."

Richie crossed his arms. "Maybe I'm not good at that, either. How come you wanted me to come, anyway?"

MacLeod transferred slices of the pot roast to a china serving platter and then to the table. "Because I owe you some explanations. Remember? Swords and men fighting and a Quickening?"

"What's a Quickening?" Richie asked.

Tessa put her hand on MacLeod's shoulder. "Can we sit down to eat, first?"

In addition to the pot roast and salad, Richie found steamed carrots and broccoli, hot buttered bread, and buttery spinach. He passed on the spinach but loaded up on everything else. Tessa's eyes widened slightly at the amount of food he piled on, and he added another roll to watch her reaction.

"Let me ask you what you think you saw," MacLeod said, once they'd started eating.

"What I think I saw?" Richie asked incredulously. "I think I saw the big ugly guy with the hockey mask go after your friend Connor with a rocket in his sword. You don't see that every day around here. Connor goes over the railing - splash! - and then you come on like Zorro. Then the whole place is lighting up like a Christmas tree on acid."

"How did you get to the bridge in the first place?"

Richie shrugged modestly. "Stowed away in the T-bird trunk."

"Why?" MacLeod asked. No reproach in his voice, which Richie found both curious and reassuring.

"Wanted to see what was going to happen," he offered. "I saw you guys practicing fighting, too. You didn't see me that time."

"We saw you by the river. What made you think we were going to survive the water?"

Richie had to think about that one. He was aware of Tessa's eyes very bright and focused on him. "I don't know," he admitted. "You just look like the kind of guys who keep coming back."

"Like a bad penny," Tessa said, "Duncan keeps turning up."

It was obviously some private joke between them, because they shared a smile that was so warm, so familiar, that Richie felt as if he'd been banished to another room. The look excluded him, as he'd been excluded so many times before. He shoveled into his plate with a lessened appetite, and wondered what Scotty was up to.

MacLeod might have sensed his discomfort, because he said, "You were pretty curious about us, weren't you?"

Richie shrugged.

"As it turns out," MacLeod said, "you're right, in one sense. Connor and I are both very hard to kill. The only way to do it is to chop off our heads."

"Like Jason with the hockey mask?" Richie shot back.

MacLeod seemed at a loss to make the connection. He must not have been much of a movie fan. "Quince? Yes, like him too."

"So you guys think you're invincible, huh?" Richie asked. For a whacko, MacLeod actually sounded plausible.

"Not invincible. Just very hard to kill," MacLeod said. "You saw me drag Connor out of the river. Did he look dead to you?"

"Not exactly," Richie admitted.

"And he's not dead now."

Richie squinted at him thoughtfully. "So what's a Quickening?"

MacLeod looked at his wine glass in deep contemplation. "Some say it's our life force. The power that keeps people like me alive, through the years. When we're killed, our enemy takes our Quickening. It's very powerful - you saw that."

"And people like you are . . . what? Martians? Vulcans? You don't look like an alien to me."

"Not alien," MacLeod said. "But not . . . mortal."

"Mortal," Richie repeated dumbly. He shot Tessa a look, but she'd developed an interest in buttering a roll, as if this information were nothing new. "Mortal like . . .what? What's not mortal?"

"Immortal," MacLeod said. "Live forever."

Richie laughed. "You think you live forever?"

MacLeod didn't even smile. "Until someone takes my head." "You sit around and think up these things all day long? Because you could write a book, you know, maybe a movie for Stephen Spielberg - "

"Richie," MacLeod said sternly, cutting him off. "It's not a fantasy, and it's not a wild tale. It's the truth. And you've landed right in the middle of it."

Richie's heart started to beat double-time in his chest. He could very clearly imagine MacLeod going for that sword again. "Well, un-land me," he said, fear fueling anger in his voice. "I don't want to be in the middle of it. I got enough problems of my own, you know, besides the floor show at the state asylum." He couldn't eat another bite. What he had swallowed threatened to come back up again.

"Look, dinner was great, okay? I mean, no one's cooked for me in a long time. So I appreciate the gesture. But you two have your lives, and I've got mine. Yours has got the cast of the Three Musketeers and Camelot running around in it, and mine - "

He stopped. Not because of Tessa and MacLeod's twin expressions of shock across the table, but because he couldn't think of any adequate movies that meet the peculiarities of his life.

"Mine doesn't," he said. "I gotta go."

He was all the way to the street before MacLeod caught up with him. "Richie," the man said, catching his arm, "wait."

Richie shrugged free. "I can't," he said, and then caught sight of a shadowy form bent over the outline of his bike parked in the mouth of the alley. "Hey!" he shouted. "You!"

The figure took off at a sprint, Richie's gym bag and the stolen stereos in hand. Richie dashed after him and grabbed at the bag. It ripped open, spilling the electronics into the street and sending Richie stumbling hard to the concrete. The flesh of his palms and knees tore open, but adrenaline and fury sent him back to his feet and into MacLeod's firm grasp.

"Let him go!" MacLeod ordered.

"Son of a bitch stole my stuff!" Richie said, trying to break free, but MacLeod was too strong.

"Calm down," MacLeod said, and held him until he ceased struggling. "You all right?"

The thief had disappeared. Richie pressed his bleeding palms against his pants. "Yeah," he said.

"How are your hands?"

"Fine," he snapped. "How come you didn't let me go after the guy?"

MacLeod bent to the broken remains of one of the stereos. "How come you said this was yours?"

"It's mine now."

"It's useless now. Who'd you steal from?"

"None of your business, MacLeod!" Richie burst out. Hands burning, wetness soaking through his knees, he turned away so the older man wouldn't see his grimace.

Too late. MacLeod, it seemed, saw everything. Firmly he grasped Richie's hands and examined them in the light of a streetlamp. "You better come inside and let me put something on these."

"They'll be fine," Richie insisted, but he went back inside with MacLeod and let the antique dealer sit him in the apartment's living room. MacLeod disappeared for a few minutes. Richie looked at the apartment's fine furnishings and felt dwarfed, insignificant, and even more poor than he had before. He heard MacLeod and Tessa exchange a few murmured words in another room, and then MacLeod came back with a bowl of warm water, a few small towels, and a first aid kit. Tessa was nowhere to be seen.

Richie palms were torn and bruised, embedded with dirt and some gravel. His knees were red, raw patches through his torn jeans. He remained stoic and tight-jawed as MacLeod washed up the wounds as best he could and rinsed them with hydrogen peroxide.

"Tell me about the stereos," MacLeod said as he worked.

Richie watched the warm water turn pink with his rinsed blood. "Just stereos," he said. "Put them in cars, they'll play music for you."

"Take them out of cars, and you're a thief."

"You already knew that, MacLeod."

"I was hoping you'd turned over a new leaf."

"Maybe if I lived in a different forest," Richie snapped. Intense weariness washed over him as he considered what he was going to tell Bruce. "I needed the money."

"Get a job."

"Doing what? Burgers and fries? Me in a polyester uniform?"

"It's an idea, Richie."

"Not my style," Richie said.

"And this is?"

"What are you, my new social worker? Why do you care?"

MacLeod sat back. The gaze he settled on Richie was dark and contemplative. "Because you've got a great deal of potential that shouldn't go to waste because you've been kicked around by the system so many years. Because I don't think anyone's ever taken the time to teach you or show you how things can be."

The words hit too close for Richie's comfort, and he shot back, "And you're going to be the one, huh?"

"If you let me. Come work for me. Starting tomorrow."

Richie finally knew what this guy's game was all about. "I get it. I come to work for you. And we take some home movies. Me, a bed, maybe some girls, maybe not - "

"Richie!" MacLeod's expression turned incredulous. "This isn't a kiddie porn set-up!"

"Yeah?" Richie demanded. "How do I know that?"

"Because you do, that's why," MacLeod said, shaking his head in disbelief. "Where do you come up with stuff like that?"

Richie let his gaze fall back to the pink water in the bowl. Bitterly he said, "Guess."

MacLeod didn't answer. A clock somewhere chimed eleven times. Finally MacLeod started repacking the first aid kit. "I'm not here to force you into anything. If you can't trust that, than there's no way I can help you."

Richie watched the man's face. He thought he was a pretty good judge of character, but MacLeod defied pegging. "How much?" he asked.

"How much what?"

"I come work for you, how much?"

MacLeod appeared to give it some thought. "Twenty five dollars a day."

"Fifty," Richie returned. "That's like minimum wage for eight hours."

"That's more than minimum wage," MacLeod returned. "Thirty."

"Forty."

"Deal."

"And I need the first day upfront," Richie added.

MacLeod sighed and pulled out his wallet. He gave Richie two crisp twenty dollar bills.

"Thanks," Richie said roughly. "What time do we start?"

"Seven thirty." "In the morning?" Richie's normal waking hour was closer to noon, and he gulped at the thought.

"In the morning," MacLeod said firmly. "Are you okay to drive home? That was a nasty fall you took."

"Fine," Richie said. At the door he said, "MacLeod - just because I need the money, and I'm going to work for you, doesn't mean I believe any of that Immortal crap or anything."

MacLeod's eyes lit up with an odd amusement. "I understand. As long as you remember that what I told you was in confidence. You're not to tell anyone else, you understand?"

"Deal," Richie said.

"Good," MacLeod said, seeing him to the door. "Be here at seven-thirty."

"Yeah," Richie said. He caught a glimpse of Tessa listening from the shadows, but didn't acknowledge her presence. He wondered what she thought of MacLeod's new plan to employ him. She probably didn't approve. She probably didn't approve at all.

***

"How could you hire him?" Tessa demanded. "He's going to rob us blind!"

MacLeod finished loading the dishwasher. "He's not going to rob us blind," he said reasonably. "We'll hide the really good gold and silver under the bed."

"This isn't a joke, Duncan."

"I'm not trying to be funny. Well, not much. Come on, Tessa, you talked to him. You really think he's a career juvenile delinquent?"

Tessa turned off the kitchen lights. "I think that remains to be seen," she said loftily.

Richie was actually ten minutes early the next morning. MacLeod was in the middle of a long kata when Richie let himself in through the open front door, and he paused between blows to say, "There's coffee in the kitchen."

Richie wandered away and came back with a steaming mug. MacLeod continued to block, punch, retreat, punch again, block, all the time aware of Richie watching his every move. The kid's eyes were still puffy with sleep, and ringed with weariness. MacLeod wondered how late he'd stayed up.

"What's that? Judo?" Richie finally asked.

"Something like that," MacLeod allowed. "You want to try?"

Richie actually laughed. "No, thanks."

"Exercise is good for you." "I get my exercise other ways."

"Breaking and entering?"

"With the ladies," Richie retorted.

"Tough guy, huh?" MacLeod smiled. "Good with women?"

"I hold my own," Richie allowed.

MacLeod went through a series of side kicks and front kicks. "You get here early tomorrow, and we'll do some running."

"Running away from who?" Richie asked in perfect bewilderment.

MacLeod stopped. He mopped his face and neck with a towel. "Run for about two and half miles, turn around, run back. We'll work you up to five each way."

Richie shook his head and wriggled his red boots. "Can't do. No sneakers, see? And my knees still hurt."

"Excuses," MacLeod told him.

"Anything that works," Richie grinned.

MacLeod showered and shaved, with instructions to Richie as to where the bagels were. He came out and found toasted bagels on the plate. The cabinets were open, as if Richie had been searching for food to devour, and he had his hands now in a brand-new bag of potato chips. He was sitting on the counter as if he owned the place.

"I'm a growing boy," Richie said. "I need my nutrition."

MacLeod took the potato chips away. "Those aren't yours. Ask first. And get off the counter."

"Where's Tessa?" Richie said, jumping down.

"Sleeping in. So keep it down."

"I'm as quiet as a church mouse, remember?"

"I remember you took the sword and started doing 'en guarde' to the post," MacLeod pointed out, and Richie became appropriately subdued at the memory.

They worked side by side for most of the day, with Tessa dropping in for occasional supervision from her workshop. MacLeod knew she was working on a new sculpture, but she wouldn't let him see it. So instead he directed Richie in the unpacking of several shipments that had arrived while they'd been on the island. The kid learned quick, but wasn't especially cautious until MacLeod pointed out the relative worth of the so-called junk coming out of the crates.

"It's not junk, Richie. That painting there is worth about two hundred and seventy five thousand. That Hindu statue comes in at just over seventy five thousand."

Richie held up an exquisite pearl-colored vase. "And this? What, a million?"

"Not a million," MacLeod allowed, "but about fifteen thousand dollars more than you probably have in your bank account."

Richie put the vase down. "I don't have a bank account," he said.

"I didn't think so."

"What's so hot about this vase, then? I mean, you can buy these at K-Mart or Woolworth's or something."

"No, you can't." MacLeod set the vase lovingly on a stand. "It's a very fine example of workmanship crafted over two hundred years ago. It survived the firebombing of Dresden in the second World War, when the first of the city was flattened by Allied forces."

"Let me guess," Richie said, a little sourly. "You were there."

MacLeod didn't answer.

They unpacked the crates slowly, checking items off inventory lists that frustrated Richie because he couldn't read the German, French or Italian that described the antiques. Several times MacLeod had to remind him sharply to keep focused on the job at hand, and not go wandering off. At the end of the day MacLeod paid him in advance for the next day. Richie hadn't asked him for that, but he figured it might obligate the kid into keep coming back.

Richie did come back, for the rest of the week and the week after. He started bringing bagels or coffee with him in the morning, but blushed in embarrassment if MacLeod thanked him. Once his morning sleepiness wore off he was animated and enthusiastic, brash and rough. MacLeod taught him how to be nice to the customers. He taught him to answer the phone and accept deliveries, and about the various articles spread through the store.

They didn't discuss Immortals at all.

When he collected his wages in the afternoon he would become less animated and visibly more tense. MacLeod wondered where exactly Richie was living, and under what circumstances. The kid didn't seem to be spending his money on his clothes, which sometimes smelled of musty cigarette smoke or, one morning, pot. MacLeod told him firmly that he wasn't to bring any drugs to the store.

"I don't use!" Richie protested. "I swear. That stuff will mess you up quicker than anything else."

MacLeod believed him. He didn't pry into Richie's home life, but he worried about it. He started having Richie stay for dinner more and more often, which didn't make Tessa exactly happy.

"You can't possibly be jealous of a seventeen year old kid," MacLeod said to her once, in a heated discussion after lunch one day. Richie had been sent out on a round of errands.

"I'm not jealous of him," Tessa said hotly. She'd been metal-working, and her skin gleamed with sweat. "I'm jealous of the time you spend with him. Why did you ask him for dinner tonight? You know we're supposed to go to L'Arabeq."

"So he can go with us," MacLeod said.

"At two hundred dollars per person? So he can eat French fries and cheeseburgers?"

"What's wrong with French fries and cheeseburgers?"

"You want to eat French fries and cheeseburgers, you eat with him. Not me," Tessa retorted, and turned to pour herself a glass of lemonade.

"Hey, there," Richie said, coming in with two large boxes. Neither Tessa or MacLeod had heard him come in through the store, but he gave no indication of having heard their conversation. He put the boxes on the table gingerly. "These were waiting at the post office. Do you just drop fifteen thousand vases and stuff in parcel post, or what?"

"They're not vases," MacLeod said curtly. "I hope."

Richie must have sensed the tension in the room, because he looked from MacLeod to Tessa and back again. "What's the matter?

"Nothing," MacLeod said.

"Richie," Tessa started, her voice calm and level, "Duncan and I have plans to go out tonight. He didn't remember that when he asked you to stay for dinner."

Richie shrugged, "Oh. Okay. Doesn't matter much to me. Friday night and all, you probably want to spend some time together."

"Yes," Tessa agreed, a little surprised perhaps at his acquiescence. "I'm sorry."

"Hey," Richie said, breaking into a smile that wasn't entirely real, "it's cool. If I were you, and I were him, I'd want to spend time with me too. I mean, me as in each other. Except that would make me schizophrenic, I guess." He looked to MacLeod. "Can I take off early today? I was thinking of calling Angie and going to the movies. There's a new Star Trek film out."

"Sure," MacLeod said, a little relieved, a little suspicious.

"Great," Richie said brightly. "I'll see you on Monday."

MacLeod followed him outside. "Forgot to pay you," he said, pulling out his wallet.

"It's cool," Richie said, sliding on his bike helmet. "I've got money."

"These are your wages, Richie."

"So pay me Monday." Richie revved the bike's engines to life. "See you later."

MacLeod watched him drive away with mixed emotions.

They did not go to L'Arabeq that night.

On Monday, when Richie came in early to watch him do kata, MacLeod had a pair of running shorts, an old t-shirt, and new sneakers waiting on a sideboard. "They should be your size," MacLeod said, already sweating easily and ready to go. "Let's go to the park."

Richie made a face. "I knew it was going to come to this. Duncan MacLeod's Physical Fitness Regime."

Protests aside, Richie didn't do badly for his first time running. They went two miles through the late summer greenery, passing other joggers, retired people feeding ducks, housewives with children. Then Richie stopped for a cramp. MacLeod walked easily beside him. They managed a mile without stopping on the way back. As they walked along the path MacLeod asked Richie if he'd ever gone out for track at his high school.

"Yeah, me, the athlete," Richie smirked. "All American Track Star. Lettered in varsity football, basketball, and detention. Wasn't going to happen."

"Why not?"

Richie took his time answering. "Because you've got to keep up a grade point average."

"And you didn't?"

"Bora-Morra told you I didn't graduate, MacLeod."

"I remember," MacLeod said. "All your teachers say you're smart, but lazy."

"He told you that?"

"No, you did. At the police station."

Richie half-smiled at the memory. "They do. Teachers hate me. They start taking Pepto Bismal and ulcer medication because of me. Two retired last year when they found out I was going to be in their classes. You may have noticed, I don't have a real big attention span."

"Maybe you haven't found anything to interest you yeet."

"Now you sound like Angie."

"She your girlfriend?"

"Nah."

"You went to the movies Friday night?"

"Actually, she couldn't go. Had to baby-sit her kid brothers." Richie had spent Friday night at the house, watching rented movies with Pete, Grouch and Scotty, drinking more beer than he'd intended because there was nothing else to do. Grouch had announced he was going off to hook up with a band in San Francisco, and by the time Richie had stumbled bleary-eyed and hangover from his room Saturday morning, the big man with the easy grin and battered guitar had gone.

"You overheard what Tessa said, didn't you?" MacLeod asked as he unlocked the Thunderbird.

Richie automatically denied it. "Who, me?"

"She didn't mean it."

"Yes, she did," Richie said, and changed the subject.

Back at the store, MacLeod tossed him a set of towels and told him he could use the spare bathroom shower. Richie grabbed his street clothes and headed off. As he turned, MacLeod saw that on the back of both legs, just above his knees, were faint scar lines. Like the kind made by a beating, with either a wire hangar or maybe an electrical cord. They weren't recent, but they weren't ever going away, either.

Richie caught his gaze and became acutely self-conscious.

"How'd you get those?" MacLeod asked somberly.

Richie shrugged. "I'm the French Fry and Cheeseburger Kid," he said flippantly.

The next day they went running again, but Richie brought a brand new pair of sweatpants to wear instead of shorts.

Wednesday dawn came with a torrent of rain. Richie arrived soaked, and MacLeod wondered why the kid didn't have enough sense to even buy a rain poncho with his wages. Neither Tessa or Richie had said much to each other since Friday, but Richie was surprisingly compliant as she ordered him out of his wet clothes and into a spare bathrobe. She threw his clothes in the dryer and made him a breakfast of hot tea and hot oatmeal.

"You'll catch your death of cold that way," she scolded.

Richie mumbled something into his cup. MacLeod, eavesdropping from outside the kitchen, frowned.

"What?" Tessa asked, more gently.

Richie ducked his head. "I said, nobody would care. Besides you two, I guess."

It was an opening, however small, however difficult. Tessa sat down at the table. He wouldn't meet her gaze. "Richie," she said, "do you remember what I said the night you broke in?"

"There was a lot going on," Richie frowned. "I don't know. You told Mac not to kill me." "That's not exactly what I said."

"You said . . . " Richie thought back hard. "You said, 'He's just a boy.'"

"I was wrong, wasn't I?"

"What do you mean?"

"Boys have no experience in the art of love. But you do."

Richie didn't say anything. MacLeod wished he could see the teenager's expression. It wouldn't have surprised him to see the sudden bashfulness that crossed Richie's face.

"What do you mean?"

"Has there been someone special?" Tessa pressed.

"Tessa, that's kind of personal, you know? I mean, I don't usually announce stuff like that."

Tessa's voice was knowing and calm. "But there was, at least once."

"Maybe. Yeah."

"You see, Richie, Duncan is that someone special for me. He has been for twelve years. We've shared everything together. We opened this shop together. And it's been hard for me to accept that he now wants to spend time with you, in addition to spending time with me."

"That's normal," Richie said, but he didn't sound sure, to himself or anyone else.

"It's selfish," Tessa proclaimed. "I've been selfish, Richie. I have been jealous and unkind."

MacLeod's chest swelled up with love at what Tessa was doing. Of all the things he admired and loved about her, her ability to give of herself and open to what true love meant was the one that pleasantly surprised him, again and again.

"Will you forgive me?" Tessa asked.

"You haven't done anything, Tessa," Richie said.

"I've been cold and indifferent."

Richie actually laughed. "Tessa, that's nothing where I come from. I had a set of foster parents once who didn't speak to each for five solid weeks. You're amateur night compared to them. You could take lessons."

"It doesn't make it acceptable."

Richie's next words came out tinged with pain. "I'm not someone people apologize to, you know?" "You're someone I apologize to," Tessa said, and MacLeod peeked around the corner in time to see her kiss Richie's forehead.

Richie and Tessa worked together for the rest of the day in her shop, leaving MacLeod to mind the store. He heard them talking and even laughing. Richie's mood plummeted, though, when he saw that one of his tires had gone flat. It was nearly five o'clock and still raining in buckets.

"The garage will be closed by the time I wheel it there," Richie said morosely.

"So we'll take it by in the morning," MacLeod told him. "I'll drive you home."

Richie's mood shifted from dismay to caution. "That's okay. I'll get there."

"Richie, I'm not letting you walk in this weather. Come on." MacLeod closed up the shop and told Tessa he would be back in a few minutes. "Richie, let's go."

Richie couldn't think of any good excuse out of MacLeod's goodwill, but he knew as an absolute certainty that he didn't want MacLeod to see Bruce's house. Sitting in the front seat of the Thunderbird, shivering until the heater kicked in gear, he watched the windshield wipers go back and forth and gave MacLeod the directions to the Mitchell's house.

A temporary lull in the stormclouds allowed for the last gray light of day to peek through as they drove up to a one-story house in a crowded neighborhood. Karen Mitchell was just putting out the garbage when MacLeod parked at the curb. She was in her early forties, a small and slight woman with a tired face but bright eyes. Richie dragged himself out of the car, and wanted to shrink into the ground as he realized MacLeod was getting out after him.

"Hi, Karen," Richie said.

"Richie," she said, wiping her hands on her apron and looking quizzically from him to MacLeod.

MacLeod introduced himself and added, "Richie had a flat so I thought I drive him home from work."

Karen said slowly, "Why, thank you, Mr. MacLeod. Would you like to come in and have a drink?"

"He's got to go," Richie said quickly.

MacLeod almost contradicted him, but he sensed then was not the time to push Richie on his foster family. He hadn't said anything about them in the three weeks he'd been at the store, and there had to be a reason. "Richie's right," he said. "I just wanted to meet his foster mother."

"Come by anytime," Karen told him. She and Richie watched him drive away.

"I'm not staying," Richie said.

"Richie, please. At least come inside and tell me what you've been doing."

Richie sighed. "Is he here?"

"No. He's out at a meeting." As Richie hesitated she took his hand between hers. "Come on. It won't hurt. Say hello to Janine and the kids."

He didn't really want to, but he followed Karen inside to the small blue kitchen he remembered from five months of living in the house. Nothing had changed - not the faded rose wallpaper, or the bills piled by the phone, or the dirty fishtank with a dozen guppies swimming endlessly around in circles. Past the kitchen, a TV blared in the dark paneled living room, and he could hear the faint thump of music from Steven's room.

"Are you hungry?" Karen asked. "The kids and I ate, but there's some leftover fried chicken."

Richie slid into one of the chairs and shrugged. He wasn't good at making decisions in this house. Except for the major one, which had been to leave. Leaving had nothing to do with Karen, whose warm personality and usual good cheer had been like balm to wounds he didn't even know he had.

She fixed him a plate of fried chicken and coleslaw with a tall glass of punch, then slid to the chair across from him and fixed her gaze on his face. "Tell me what you've been doing."

Richie smiled despite himself. "How can you always do that? Be interested in other people? People you shouldn't even think about anymore?"

"I think about you a great deal, Richie. I've been worried. I thought about calling the police to find out if you were all right, but Janine said you were living with Scotty Webster and his brother."

"They've got a house," Richie supplied, digging into the chicken. "It's okay."

"Did you finish school?"

"No," Richie admitted. "But I've got a job. With the guy who drove me home. I work in his antique store."

He let himself be drawn into telling her stories about MacLeod, although he steered far away from talk of Immortals. He avoided even thinking about Immortals, because it was such a bizarre idea. Instead he found himself concentrating on MacLeod's good points, and ignored the fact he lived in such an obvious fantasy world where it was not only okay but demanded that people chop off each other's heads with swords.

"Richie!" Janine said from the doorway. She was only two years younger than Richie, tall and gangly, glasses, but with a sweet face and quick smile. "Long time no see!"

"Hey, squirt." Richie gave her an affectionate hug. "Staying out of trouble?"

"So Boy Wonder comes home," Steven said from behind Janine, and with a pointed indifference to Richie he went to the refrigerator and scooped out a can of soda. Steven was fourteen, sullen, obnoxious, and extremely territorial. Richie had once justified all those traits because as the Mitchell's only natural kid, he'd had to put up with a number of foster placements and transient siblings. Then Richie had decided Steven was just a jerk.

"I'm glad you're here," Janine said, "you can help me with my homework."

"Him?" Steven snorted.

Karen made a chiding sound. "Steven, hush."

"I see you're still in the running for Most Popular Freshman," Richie said.

"Sophomore."

"They still pin "Kick Me" signs to your back, and glue your locker shut?"

"Why don't you shut up?" Steven challenged.

"Why don't you come with me," Janine said, taking Richie's hand and pulling him down the hallway. "Don't listen to Steven," she said once they were out of earshot of the kitchen. "He's just himself. We're saving money for the lobotomy."

Her room at the end of the hall hadn't changed from his memory of movie posters, stuffed animals, and paperback books. Her music stand was overflowing with sheet music, and her clarinet lay shining and bright in its velvet case. Janine sat him on her bed and said, "So what have you been doing?"

"Just hanging," Richie said. He leaned back against the pillows. They'd spent hours talking and sharing stories in his months with the Mitchells. She'd lived there for three years, and was afraid of being put somewhere else. "How's it been here?"

Janine shrugged. "Was the same, for awhile. Then George went to treatment."

Richie said, in surprise, "He went where?"

"Detox," Janine said, her eyes wide and solemn. "Two weeks in the drunk ward."

"How come?"

Janine took one of her stuffed bears and began to ply him between her hands. "Passed out with a cigarette, nearly burned down the bedroom. Karen threatened him a with a divorce. Steven and I listened at the door. He went off to the hospital, came back dry as the desert. But he has to go to Alcoholics Anonymous every night. Sixty meetings in sixty days."

Richie studied her face. "Is it working?"

"So far. Three weeks."

"Wow," Richie said. "That's great, I guess."

"Are you coming back here to live?"

"No. I've got a place, you know that. And a job."

"I miss you."

"I miss you too, squirt."

"Will you come to my recital Saturday night? The whole band is playing, but I get a solo part after intermission."

"Sure," Richie smiled, and gave her a hug. "My favorite musician."

They talked for awhile longer until Richie realized what time it was. He still had a half hour walk to Bruce's house. As he said goodbye in the kitchen, Karen asked him to stay the night. Richie gave the idea a few seconds' thought, but shook his head. "Can't," he said. "I've got people waiting for me."

"Take care of yourself, Richie," she said, giving him a hug, and then they were disturbed by the rattle of a key in the door.

George Mitchell looked a dozen years older than Richie remembered him. He was a fairly built guy, balding, eyes that always reminded Richie of a basset hound. "Richie," he said now, surprised. "How are you?"

"Okay," Richie said. "I just came by to . . . say hi."

"Are you staying?" George asked.

"No. Can't. See you, Karen," he said. "Bye, Janine."

"See you, Richie," Janine said, sounding wistful and sad.

"You're looking good," George told him.

"Thanks," Richie returned, then slid past him to the driveway.

Richie didn't look back on his way down the street, but stopped a few blocks later for a soda at an all-night grocery. George, Karen, Janine and even Steven followed him to Bruce's. He didn't believe in a George Mitchell who didn't drink, no matter what Janine said. It wasn't as if George had been a particularly abrasive or obnoxious drunk - he'd just been George, the drunk, the guy who passed out every night on the couch with Jack Daniels for company, the man who preferred any excuse in the world to drown the cells of his body in alcohol rather than spend a night sober with his family.

George Mitchell had reminded Richie too strongly of another foster father he'd once had. That foster father had also been a drunk, but an abusive one. A man who'd laid down the law with fists and belts, and who one night had beat the then-ten-year-old with his belt so severely his teacher had called the police the next day.

MacLeod had asked about the scars Richie still bore from that night. It was funny, because Richie almost always forgot he had them. But he never forgot that family, and George Mitchell had always seemed to be too much of a latent threat to risk staying at the Mitchell's very long.

Richie made it home around ten, and found the living room crowded with most of Bruce's band, some groupies, and Nikki and Scotty. The air was thick was cigarette smoke, the coffee table and floor crowded with pipes, needles, ashtrays, bottles and snacks. Music thumped from the speakers through the room, out the open windows, and halfway down the block. Richie hadn't seen a party like this one at Bruce's in a long time, and with a sudden premonition knew he wasn't going to get any sleep that night.

Nikki's face was red and blotchy, as if she'd been crying.

"The social workers took Melinda away," Scotty explained as he got up to change the music. He seemed, far and away, the most sober of the group, which wasn't saying much.

"Bastards," Nikki sniffed from where she sat on the couch. "They said I'm an unfit mother."

Well, she was. But Richie kept that opinion to himself. He wasn't about to get into a debate when all he really wanted to do was crash. It had been a long day, and he just needed to sleep. Joey, however, make an issue of Richie not staying for a few drinks.

"Just a few," Joey said. "Ain't going to hurt you."

"Can't," Richie said. "I have to work tomorrow."

Liz snuggled up against Joey. "He's too good for us now."

"That true?" Joey asked, an edge of malice in his voice.

"No," Richie said. "I'm just tired."

"Leave him alone," Bruce burped. The big man looked totally trashed, and Richie wondered what time the drinking had started. "Richie's the only one around here who's been paying any rent."

Joey fixed Richie with a malicious grin. "I hear you're working at the place you got busted for breaking into."

"Good night, everyone," Richie said, ignoring Joey, and earned a few good nights back.

He had a room but no furniture, and instead made do with a bare mattress and a set of sheets liberated from the Mitchells without Karen's knowledge. Without bothering to turn on the lights - there was enough from the street, through the uncurtained window - Richie sat down heavily on the mattress and pulled off his boots. Music started up again from the living room. With a groan he lay back, his thoughts in a turmoil over George Mitchell, Tessa Noel, Immortals, mortals, the families he'd lived with, the teacher who'd called the police. The back of his legs ached with phantom pain. His bedroom door opened, and he squinted against the silhouette of someone in the hall.

"Bathroom's the other way," he said, annoyed.

"Not here for the bathroom," Joey said.

Richie dragged himself wearily to his feet. "What's the matter, Joey?"

Joey came in with his shoulders tight, his whole body tensed for a fight. His eyes were very red. "I've been hearing stories about you, Richie."

"Yeah?" Richie asked. "So what?"

Joey swung out with a vicious punch. The whole right side of Richie's face went numb as the room spun out from beneath him and he landed, with a thump, against the far wall. Joey was on him in an instant, twisting his right arm behind his back with a pressure that threatened to snap the bone at his shoulder. Joey had at least thirty pounds and five inches on him, and it took only a few seconds of pained struggle for Richie to realize it was useless.

"Didn't anyone ever tell you to be nice to your elders?" Joey growled in his ear. "What do you want?" Richie demanded, and Joey twisted his arm up another fraction of an inch. Richie couldn't stop a cry of pain. Red and black and silver flashed before his eyes.

"Someone said you saw something."

"That's pretty vague, Joey, could you be more specific?"

Joey slapped the back of his head sharply. Richie vowed to shut up. His smart ass attitude had gotten him in trouble before, but it seemed he could never stop himself.

"Listen to me," Joey warned. "I find out you've been messing with my business, I'll just make sure the same thing happens to you. You get it? You understand me?"

"Yeah," Richie managed, although he didn't know what the hell Joey was talking about. Joey let him go and stalked out of the room. Richie fell to his knees, half on and half on the mattress, his arm throbbing with pain and his face coming back to life with a fierce ache.

He sat down heavily, feeling his jaw. Not broken. But it could have been.

He was cold. He was sitting on a nearly bare mattress in a run-down room in a house full of drug addicts, with music pounding through the walls, smoke in the air, his body assaulted, his mind spinning. Woodenly, without thinking much about it, he pulled on his boots and jackets and climbed out his window into the mud of the yard and the renewed rain.

It took three minutes of discreet tapping on Angie's window for her to wake. She came to the window groggily, dressed only in a short nightdress. "Richie, what's the matter?"

"Angie, I need to crash on your floor," he said.

She glanced back to the blue glowing numbers on her clock. "It's after midnight."

"I know," he said. "Please."

Angie helped him up through the window. She touched his face and the bruise he knew must be swelling there, but said nothing. Sometimes she knew without asking. Angie helped him out of his jacket and boots, and then slipped down the hall for a few minutes. She came back with a pair of her brother's shorts and a T-shirt, and turned around while he changed out of his wet clothes.

She wouldn't let him sleep on the floor. Instead, they lay in her bed spoonwise, her arms wrapped around him, and he listened to the silence of her house, the soft sounds of her breathing, the softly falling rain. Richie remembered his conversation with Tessa, about a million years ago that morning. She'd asked if there'd been someone special. He hadn't told her it had been Nikki. He hadn't told her it had been a quick, hasty decision, or that they'd done it in just the space of a few minutes in her mother's house, or that it hadn't happened since.

In the last few seconds before exhausted sleep finally took him, he wondered what it would like to have been Angie. Then a belt descended towards him, over and over again, in a nightmare that always came back, no matter how fast he ran, how well he hid, no matter whose bedroom he took as refuge from his own life.

***

Richie was late to work the next morning. MacLeod watched the clock with increasing annoyance. When Richie finally sauntered in around eleven, with a new pair of sunglasses and his shoulders hunched beneath his jacket, MacLeod said, "You're late."

"I know. Sorry." Richie sounded subdued, maybe a little nervous.

MacLeod eyed him critically. Richie was wearing the same clothes he had the day before. He took the sunglasses off his face and studied the large bruise by the teenager's eye that indicated the night had not gone well for him. Richie didn't say anything, and fixed his eyes on the suit of armor in the corner.

"Who did that to you?" MacLeod asked.

"Nobody."

MacLeod's voice turned soft and dangerous. "Was it your foster father?"

Richie mentally snickered at the idea of George Mitchell punching him. "No."

"Then who?"

Richie took the sunglasses back. "Look, if I wanted you to know, I'd tell you. Just lay off, okay?"

MacLeod scrutinized him carefully. "Okay," he said. "We've got work to do."

"I was kind of wondering if I could. . . take the rest of the day off."

"No," MacLeod said. "We have to pack two deliveries going out this afternoon."

Richie sighed and sulked but he stayed and worked the rest of the day. They packed two shipments out by three o'clock with the necessary paperwork and insurance, and then MacLeod took Richie to the bike shop for a new tire. The teenager took off afterwards with a few short words of thanks. He arrived on time Friday morning, different clothes, but with circles under his eyes. When MacLeod suggested that they go running, Richie shook his head and declined.

"I'm not up to it today, Mac."

MacLeod finished his kata and reached for his towel. "When you going to start telling me what's going on, Richie?"

"I don't know what you mean," Richie said defensively.

"You look like hell, someone punches you in the face, you're not your usual self - "

"You don't know who my usual self is," Richie said, voice rising indignantly, "so don't tell me I'm not him, okay? You're not my father, teacher, social worker, savior, anything."

"I'm not trying to be," MacLeod said calmly.

'Then just take two steps back. If I needed your help, I'd ask for it."

"Would you?"

Richie folded his arms. "Why do you care? I'm nothing to you but the punk kid who broke in here and saw the Knights of the Round Table re-enacting Camelot. You tell me this bunch of crap about people who live forever and expect me to buy that. You give me a job and then start acting like you own me twenty four hours a day. You don't, get it? I'm not the TV movie-of-the-week orphan to reform and turn loose on the world."

MacLeod didn't let on how closely Richie's words hit home. The teenager's voice and face were full of the frustration and desperation that were eating him up inside. MacLeod could see it, but he didn't know how to ease it. He didn't know how Richie could live with it, bottled up so tightly inside.

"I'm sorry you think that way," MacLeod finally said. "I didn't realize you disliked it here so much."

The words stopped Richie like a slap in the face. "I don't," he said, the words sounding strangled in his throat. "You and Tessa have been great." Then, more strongly, his hands thrown out, he stalked around the store. "I mean, look at this place. It's amazing! Stuff that's been here hundreds or thousands of years! Stuff that's priceless. I don't belong with this stuff. Forty, fifty years from now, you can throw me into a grave forever. I'm not going to be worth anything."

For a moment, MacLeod was tempted to tell him of his Immortality. But it wouldn't ease what Richie was really feeling - threatened at having to lower his defenses, frightened at the thought of needing help.

"What's going on in here?" Tessa asked sleepily from the doorway. "You could wake the dead around here."

Richie whirled, and in doing so, knocked the Dresden vase and stand over. The vase fell swiftly and smoothly, succumbing perfectly to gravity, and MacLeod watched as an object that had survived war and firebombings ended its existence in a splattering that sent china shards exploding outward along the hardwood floor.

The three of them stared in silence at the ruins.

"Oh, shit," Richie said.

"It's all right," MacLeod said automatically, although the loss hadn't truly sunk in. "We've got insurance."

Deep, wrenching guilt crossed Richie's face. "You can't fix it."

"Some things don't need to be fixed," MacLeod said.

Richie swiveled back to the shards. "It's my fault," he murmured. "I'll pay for it."

"That's an awful lot of forty-dollar days," MacLeod said, not especially trying to be funny.

Richie only shook his head and bolted from the store. MacLeod didn't follow.

Tessa said, "What in the world was that all about?"

"Not about the vase," MacLeod said.

Richie didn't return that day. Around dinnertime, MacLeod traced the Mitchell's phone number through the directory and reached Karen Mitchell. He explained to her that he was worried about Richie, and asked if she knew where he was.

"Mr. MacLeod," she said after a pause, "Richie doesn't stay here anymore. He hadn't really for a few months now. The other night, when you drove him home, was the first time I'd seen him in weeks."

"But I thought he was in your foster custody," MacLeod said, perplexed.

"Technically, he is. But he stays with one of his friends. He doesn't come here."

"Do you know the name of the friend? Where he lives?"

"Janine does. What is it, Mr. MacLeod? Is he in trouble?"

"I'm sure he's fine," he said, but the words sounded as hollow as they felt. After a few minutes of discussion with her hand over the phone, Karen Mitchell returned with the name of a Scotty Webster and an address on Gilmore Street.

MacLeod found the house a half hour later. The neighborhood was a tough one, with housing values that had plummeted in the wake of crack houses and abandoned property. The yard was overgrown with trash and weeds, and the rotten floorboards of the porch creaked ominously beneath his feet. The living room was lit against the dark night, and through the open window came the smell of cigarettes and pot and the blast of a stereo.

He knocked loudly and someone shouted for him to come in.

MacLeod waded into a living room of half-sprawled bodies. It didn't take long for him to realize Richie wasn't one of them. A party of some unimaginable proportion had evidently ripped through the place recently, and he was looking at the human debris. One of the larger men stirred from watching a television and a porn movie with its volume turned all the way down.

"Who are you?" the man asked.

"I'm looking for Richie Ryan."

"He's not here," the big man said. "This is my house, you just can't come in."

"I was invited in," MacLeod said, and reached down with both hands to haul the man off the floor and up against the wall. "Who's Scotty Webster?"

"That's me," a teenager said, coming alive on the couch. He looked Richie's age, but scrawnier. He scrambled over the coffee table. "That's my brother, leave him alone."

Bruce was trying to free himself, but MacLeod kept him easily pinned. "Tell me where Richie is," he said to Scotty.

Scotty ran his hand through his hair and chewed his bottom lip nervously. "Haven't seen him in a couple of nights. I swear! He hasn't come by."

"Didn't you wonder where he is?" MacLeod asked.

"Richie's okay, he can take care of himself."

Bruce scowled at him. "What do you care? You the police? Probation officer?"

"A friend," MacLeod said.

"We're Richie's friends," a man said ominously behind MacLeod. He had long blonde hair, a hardened expression, and an attitude that said he wouldn't mind taking MacLeod down then and there.

"Joey, man, it's cool," Scotty said.

MacLeod turned Bruce loose and turned to the second man. "You're Richie's friends, huh?"

"Yeah," Joey answered levelly. "If you're looking to mess with him, you go through us."

MacLeod didn't miss the surprised look Scotty Webster threw Joey. "Is that so?" he asked. "You wouldn't happen to be the guy who punched him, would you?"

"Richie's my pal," Joey said. "You're not. So why don't you leave?"

MacLeod nodded judiciously. "And you just be careful nothing happens to Richie." Back in the Thunderbird, he shook his head at the circumstances of life Richie accepted as inevitable. He stared out into the darkened night, wondering where to go next. Half of him was convinced he should leave Richie alone to work out his own problems. The other half of him remembered his promise to Connor on the banks of the river.

He went to ask Karen and Janine Mitchell if they knew where he could find Richie's friend Angie.

***

Richie sat at the counter of a Saratoga Street diner, his hands wrapped around a cup of lukewarm coffee, his attention fixed on the folded newspaper beside his cup. He'd stopping reading the classifieds hour before, but the pretext of doing something felt better than the emptiness of doing nothing at all. He had not idea how long he'd been sitting at the counter, and didn't really care. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

Except that he'd broken a $15,000 vase.

Except that Joey had threatened him for no apparent reason, and scared him into staying away from Bruce's house.

Except that Angie's father had flatly told Richie that morning that he had to find somewhere else to sleep at night besides his daughter's bedroom. Despite Angie's tears and Richie's best efforts at convincing him otherwise, Mr. Argello considered it inappropriate for Richie to say anywhere but with his foster family and would not be swayed.

He was jobless, homeless, in major debt, and in danger of Joey.

He'd had worse days, but not lately.

Of the nearly six hundred dollars he'd earned at MacLeod's, he had less than two hundred left. Most had gone to Bruce's house, groceries, gasoline, money he owed Scotty, money he owed Angie, and some new clothes. The rest, in his pocket, wouldn't get him real far. It wouldn't buy him more than a week at a fleabag hotel, and certainly wouldn't go anywhere towards getting an apartment.

It looked like he was back on the road of crime again, he sighed.

Richie glanced at the clock. Nearly eleven o'clock. He dug out enough money to pay his bill as a solid, stocky guy in jeans and a Steelers t-shirt slid onto the stool next to him.

"What's the special here?" the man asked. Forty, bland, he looked out of place on Saratoga Street. "Wouldn't know," Richie said.

"Don't go," the guy said. "I'm Rob."

"I'm leaving," Richie said.

Rob caught his arm, a needy hunger in his eyes. "I was hoping to find someone who could show me the sights around here."

Richie leveled him with a steady gaze. "Yeah, well, this isn't exactly a tourist hot spot, and I'm not a tour guide. You want action, try the Bull down the street. Or Red's. But not me, got it?"

Rob had the grace to look embarrassed. "Yeah. Right. You just looked . . . lonely."

"Not that lonely," Richie shot back.

Outside, in glare of headlights and neon signs, Richie took a deep breath and tried to clear his head. He wished things had gone differently with MacLeod and Tessa. He would make the money up to them, somehow. He owed them that much.

Belatedly he realized someone was following him. Rob, from the diner, his face apologetic, his eyes desperate for love.

"Are you sure I can't convince you otherwise?" he asked, catching Richie's arm again.

Richie shrugged free. "No," he said firmly. "Now scram, before I call the cops."

"Don't do that," Rob said, and out of the corner of his eye Richie saw a quick movement. Then a hand clamped down over his mouth and an arm wrapped around his neck, dragging him backwards into nearby alley. Richie fought furiously, but a savage punch in the back dropped his legs out from under him and he found himself falling to the cold, wet ground, face to face with muck and garbage, as Rob and his partner fondled his legs and buttocks.

"Wish we could take this one home," Rob's partner said.

"No," Rob said. "Take him now. We'll leave him here."

Richie bit at the hand over his mouth, and managed a hoarse shout for help before one of his attackers hit him on the back of the head and sent him spiraling down a cold, dizzy corridor where the ground heaved beneath him, his own heartbeat felt like a staccato pulse, and his body wouldn't respond to his brain's frantic commands.

He felt his jeans being loosened. He knew, with a sickening clarity, what was coming next, even as he was powerless to fight it.

Someone grunted. Flesh smacked against flesh. Another sound, like a nose or jaw breaking. Richie struggled to focus on the tall figure in a black coat who knocked Rob aside, kicked Rob's partner, tore both men from their intentions. They ran for the street. The man in the black coat reached for Richie, and he tried to flinch away.

"Richie," the man said urgently. "You all right?"

He struggled to focus. "MacLeod?"

"Yeah," MacLeod said. He hauled him up and held him against the horrid sway in his head. "Come on, let's go. I'll take you home."

Richie wondered fuzzily which home MacLeod could possibly mean, then let himself be helped down the alley towards where the Thunderbird sat half-parked on the curb. The image of Rob rose up again in Richie's eyes - Rob with a gun, aimed at them.

"I'll teach you not to mess with us," Rob growled.

MacLeod shoved Richie to the ground and took two bullets in the chest.

The blasting gunfire cleared Richie's head as nothing else could. He stared in disbelief as MacLeod sagged to his knees, his chest wet with blood, blood coming from his mouth and nose in bright bubbles.

"Mac!" Richie scrambled to his side. He lowered him to the ground with hands shaking so violently they could have been someone else's. "Mac, oh god. Stay here. I'll get an ambulance - "

MacLeod shook his head, but couldn't speak to him. His eyes remained open but glazed over, and he sagged in death in Richie's arms.

A sheet of numbness dropped out of the sky and wrapped itself around Richie's entire body. "Oh, Mac," he murmured, holding the lifeless body. Shouts and footsteps dragged him back to reality as the alley's mouth began to crowd with spectators who traded words about police, gunfire, dead, men running, an ambulance.

"It's too late," Richie said, looking up into the eyes of one of the diner's waitresses. He somehow got to his feet.

The waitress tried to stop him. "You hurt, kid?"

"I'm fine," Richie mumbled. He pushed his way past the crowd. He looked at the Thunderbird, but the thought of stealing Mac's car while he lay dead in the alley was too appalling to consider for more than a second.

"Get an ambulance!" someone yelled. "He's alive!"

Impossible. Richie ignored the shout.

He walked away.

Towards the nothingness.

MacLeod revived in the arms of a blonde waitress, who soothed him with, "You're okay, honey, just hang on. The ambulance will be here in a few minutes."

"I'm all right," he said, and pulled himself up. He made a show of peering at his chest and then wrapping his trenchcoat across the bloody shirt. "Just some grazes."

"Grazes?" the waitress asked. "Are you nuts? You were shot in the chest!"

MacLeod looked for Richie, but didn't see him in the faces of the dozen or so mortals who'd come to see a killing. He made a show, for their benefit, of being unsteady as he climbed to his feet. "Did you see a teenager? Blond hair, green and black jacket?"

"He left," someone said. "Mister, you should lay down."

MacLeod ignored the advice and the crowd. No sign of Richie in the street. He hoped that the kid had run off in fear and confusion, not fallen prey to the two men who'd been trying to rape him in the alley. Reached at her home, Angie Argello had told him he might find Richie somewhere on Saratoga. It had taken two hours of dedicated searching and a stroke of good timing to be able to save Richie, and now it looked like he had lost him again.

The Highlander swore under his breath and started looking again.

***

Richie spent the night in the park. He didn't sleep much, because every time his eyes closed he thought of MacLeod laying dead in the alley. Every soft sound made him think Rob and his partner had come back for him. Richie curled up as best he could on a bench along the path where he and MacLeod had run, his arms folded up against the cool night air. Sometime around dawn he might have slept, because Rob the Rapist became Joey, MacLeod rose from the dead, Slan Quince came at Richie with a sword. He woke with a headache and a stiff body under a gray, cloudy dawn, grieving for MacLeod and his unfounded fantasies of living forever.

He knew he couldn't stay on the streets. People like Rob would come after him for his youth and looks, or he'd end up hustling at the Bull or Red's to pay for a place to live. He could go to a runaway shelter. As long as they let him crash for a few hours, he would play the game of listening to the counselors, give them some sob story about his family in Idaho or Iowa, and then split. He could go up and down the West Coast, one shelter to the other.

Not a great plan. He rejected it, finally, and went to go find breakfast. He found a morning newspaper, but it had no accounts of MacLeod's murder. It must have happened too late in the night for them to include it in the first edition. Richie ate four donuts and two cups of coffee, then took his money to a hotel not far from Saratoga and paid fifty dollars for a room with a mattress that smelled like mildew and a color scheme done mainly in burnt orange. He blocked the door with the dresser in case anyone tried to break in, and barely got his head on the flat pillow before falling asleep. He woke around four, still tired, still emotionally raw, but forced himself to use the payphone in the hall.

Tessa answered on the second ring.

"Tessa, it's me," he said. "Richie."

"Richie! Where in the world are you?"

"It's not important. I just wanted to tell you . . . I'm sorry about Mac. God, I'm sorry. If it means anything, he died protecting me."

A moment of silence. Then, "Richie, Duncan's not dead. How could you think he was dead?"

"I saw him . . . " Richie said, feeling as if the hallway had turned upside down over his head. "He got shot in the chest."

"Richie," Tessa said, sounding calm and reasonable, "Mac is alive. He told you, the only way he can die is to have his head chopped off."

She was just as insane as MacLeod was. Richie couldn't think of a suitable answer to break through her denial. Shock and grief must have done it; she probably expected her lover of twelve years to walk through the door at any time, despite what the police must have told her.

"He's been looking for you ever since," Tessa said, "and I think I hear him now. Hold on."

He listened to her drop the phone. Footsteps. Murmured voices. Then MacLeod's voice, angry and worried and relieved at the same time. "Richie?"

Richie hung up.

He stared at the phone for several shaky seconds. He wondered if he was going to faint. Too much seemed to have happened lately for him to deal with anything else.

Gingerly he re-dialed the dead. MacLeod answered on the first ring. "Richie, don't hang up."

"I'm not going to," Richie said in a small voice. "I saw you die."

"Immortals don't die of bullet wounds."

"All that stuff you said . . . was true?"

"Yes, it was all true. Where are you?"

He couldn't even remember. "Um, downtown. I think. What . . . I don't get it. I mean, I get it, but I don't get it."

MacLeod said, "It's not important now. Tessa and I are worried about you. Come home and we'll work it all out."

That was the second time MacLeod had used the word home in a way that felt strange and hurtful but simultaneously comforting, as if there was hope. Before he could censor himself he blurted out, "Where's home, MacLeod? Where do I belong?" "You belong with Tessa and I. We want you to move in. We want you to come and stay with us, as long as you like."

Richie couldn't answer for a moment. Then he managed, "What about the vase?"

"The vase can be replaced. Human beings can't."

He didn't know what to say, so he said the first thing that came to mind. "Okay."

MacLeod sounded surprised. "Okay?"

"Okay," Richie repeated.

"Good. Now tell me where you are, and I'll come and get you."

"No," Richie said. "It's okay. I can do it. I just got to take care of some things, and then I'll come over. Are you . . . are you sure? You're cool on this?"

"I wouldn't have asked otherwise."

Richie smiled for the first time in days. "Okay. I'll be over soon."

Richie called Angie, and she came by in her father's Buick. They used the last of Richie's money to eat dinner at a decent restaurant. Richie didn't want to arrive on MacLeod's doorway starving. The thought of going back at all felt dreadful and exciting at the same time, and he took out his nervousness on the silverware until Angie made him stop fidgeting.

"He's a good guy," Angie said, "that MacLeod." She told him how MacLeod had worried over him and come by for information.

"Yeah," Richie agreed. He started tearing napkins into shreds. "But what if this doesn't work out? What if he, like, gets sick of me? What if Tessa gets mad at me?"

"What if they don't?" Angie asked gently, and reached across the table to hold his hand. "One day at a time, Richie."

"Okay," he said. "One day at a time."

After dinner they went to the high school to see Janine's band perform. Richie couldn't pick her out of the sea of freshly scrubbed faces and white shirts. There was no clarinet solo after intermission, although Janine was clearly listed in the program. He slipped out of the auditorium with Angie in tow and called the Mitchell's house.

He reached a nearly hysterical Steven.

"Steven, calm down," Richie ordered, even as a dreadfully cold finger traced a path of doom up his spine. "Just tell me what happened."

He listened carefully, his heart pounding erratically, keeping his face calm for Angie's benefit.

"What hospital?" he finally asked.

"What's the matter?" Angie asked when he hung up. "Richie, what is it?"

"George Mitchell had a car accident," he said. "They're at the emergency room."

In the fifteen awful minutes it took for Angie to drive them to the hospital, Richie sat in the front seat with his hands locked between his knees and his eyes squeezed shut. He wasn't praying. Instead he was trying to remember what Janine looked like. Her features had blanked from his mind, but he could clearly recall every detail of her pink bedroom. He could see her stuffed animals, her clarinet, her posters. But her face had left him, and he was convinced she was dead.

The emergency room that Saturday evening was a madhouse of families, patients, exasperated doctors and nurses. Richie and Angie found Karen Mitchell in a cubicle with Janine. Karen's face was blotchy with tears. Janine's left arm was in a fresh cast, and livid cuts marked her face. Her broken glasses were in Karen's hands.

"I shouldn't have let him drive," Karen said, her voice broken. "Oh, Richie, how could I have? I knew he was drinking again."

"Richie?" Janine asked, squinting against the bright light. She looked young, and frail, and broken.

"I'm right here," he said, grasping her good hand.

"I missed my solo," she cried.

Richie blinked away sudden tears to see a policeman walking by with George Mitchell in hand. George's face was bruised, but he was upright. And handcuffed. Richie felt a surge of hatred rise from his chest.

"You'll get another chance," he promised, and kissed her forehead. Then he bolted out of the cubicle and rammed George Mitchell into the wall, yelling obscenities at him.

"How could you?" he demanded, his hands around George's throat. Richie was barely aware of the cop shouting at him to stop. George sobbed and choked beneath his grip. "How could you do it? You're nothing but a lousy, stinking drunk, and you nearly got her killed!"

The cop hauled him off. Richie nearly took a swing at him, but Angie dragged him away. Richie realized the whole emergency room was looking at him, and the cop was radioing for help. Eyes blind with rage and sorrow, he bolted into the night with Angie before more police could come. He could still feel the warm softness of George's throat between his fingers, and wished he'd snapped the bastard's head off.

He had no idea how long Angie drove him around, listening to him rant and rave, but when he calmed down they were parked by the side of a road. "I don't know how to get to MacLeod's," she finally said softly.

Richie shook his head violently. "I'm not going there."

"Richie, they're waiting for you. They want you."

"They won't when the police come," Richie said, suddenly weary. And they would come. He'd nearly killed George Mitchell. The aching hollowness in his chest told him he'd blown any chance he might ever have had for a future, but the memory of Janine's bruised face made him sure he'd do it again.

Angie shook her head. "They'll help you."

"I don't need their help," Richie snapped. "Just take me to Scotty's."

"Richie, I don't think - "

"Angie, please. Forget it. Forget I even mentioned them. Take me to Scotty's." She pursed her lips tightly but started driving again. Richie stared out the window at the dry, chill night. He didn't know how he was supposed to feel, but suspected the hollowness would last a long, long time. When they crested the hill at the end of Gilmore they saw police lights outside Scotty's house, spinning blue and red hypnotically against the darkness. Neighbors stood on the porches, watching, as Scotty, Bruce, Nikki and others were led out in handcuffs.

"Shit," Richie said. "They tracked me faster than I thought."

"You think all these police are for you?" Angie asked incredulously.

Richie wasn't sure. He told Angie to back up, but another cruiser came up behind them and she stopped.

"Let's just see," she said, her voice shaking. "Richie, don't do anything stupid."

"We got to run," he said.

"No, we don't. We'll just answer their questions."

"Angie, run!" Richie ordered, and threw open his door. He sprinted as fast as he could down an alley and to the next street over. Police shouted at him to stop, but he didn't think they'd shoot him in the back. He heard Angie stop, heard the police yelling at her. Stubbornly he fled down a maze of alleys, yards, driveways, and porches until he lost the cop on his tail and a fist lashed out of blackness to drop him to the ground. A hard, solid kick to his midsection doubled Richie into an agonized ball.

Winded, badly dazed, he struggled uselessly as Joey hauled him up into the back of his van. Liz was behind the wheel, her face tight with anger and fear. Joey dumped Richie on the van's cold metal floor and ripped off the teenager's jacket, saying "Here he is, the little snitch."

Richie squinted at him helplessly. "What?" he forced out, and tried to sit up, but Joey dropped him with another punch. Richie landed hard, consciousness blinking in and out like the damaged shutter of a camera. He could taste blood in his mouth.

"You told the cops, Richie," Liz's voice said, very near, very close, strangle timbered. "That's why they're here."

"They're looking for me," Joey said, "for Grouch's murder. You must have told them."

Richie's mind spun uncontrollably. "What murder?" he gasped. "Grouch? But I don't know anything about a murder!"

"That's not what you told Angie," Joey growled. He pulled something from a black bag. A needle. Richie tried to slide away, but Joey caught him by the throat and pinned him to the floor. A red gleam in Joey's eyes told Richie what was going to happen next, even as his mind rebelled against the possibility of his own death.

"Say goodbye, Richie," Joey ordered, and slid the needle into the bare skin of Richie's arm.

***

Television was wrong. The police let her have two phone calls. Angie cried throughout the first one, to her dad. She was slightly calmer by the time she called Duncan MacLeod, who had given her his business card the day before when he came looking for Richie.

MacLeod came in ten minutes, accompanied by a stunning blonde that Angie assumed was Tessa Noel. Angie's father hadn't arrived yet, and she clung to MacLeod as someone who could at least find out what was going on. The policemen in the car had handcuffed her and mumbled something about rights. Angie had been too upset to even listen. Now, in a ugly yellow room that smelled of stale cigarettes, she listened to MacLeod and Sgt. Powell fight about Richie while Tessa held her hand in comfort.

"He shouldn't have taken off running," Powell said. "We only wanted to talk to him."

"He thought you were going to arrest him for what happened at the hospital," Angie sniffed.

Both men turned to her. "What happened at the hospital?" MacLeod asked.

Brokenly she recounted Richie's attack on George Mitchell. MacLeod's face tightened, and Powell unexpectedly sighed. "I hadn't heard anything about it," Powell said. "We went to Bruce Webster's house tonight with a search warrant, looking for items that belonged to a James Cribbs - "

"Grouch?" Angie asked, confused. "He moved."

"He was killed," Powell said flatly. "We've got witnesses who can put Joey Fuentes at the scene. We think Fuentes killed Cribbs last weekend, robbed him of about three thousand dollars in cash, and dumped his body near the zoo."

MacLeod glared at the policeman. "Why all the arrests, then? Angie, here, and the other kids? You don't think they were all in on it?"

"The other kids were in the house with a bunch of drugs. Angie tried to run, that's why she was picked up. They would have picked up Richie, too, if the kid wasn't so fast on his feet."

A uniformed policeman brought Powell a note. He excused himself. MacLeod turned to Angie and said, "This will all work out. They can't keep you."

"I can't have a police record," Angie told MacLeod and Tessa. "I just can't. My dad's going to kill me."

"I'm sure your father loves you very much and is worried about you," Tessa said reassuringly.

Powell came back twenty minutes later with a deep scowl and a familiar black and green jacket.

"That's Richie's," Angie said.

"I guessed," Powell said. "A unit picked up Joey Fuentes and his girlfriend Liz Shaw. They were doing sixty miles an hour in a residential neighborhood. The girl rolled. She said Fuentes killed for the money. She also said that he tried to kill Richie, because he thinks Richie snitched him out."

"Why would he think that?" Tessa asked.

"One of the other girls, Nikki, told him that Angie here said Richie told her he witnessed a murder."

Angie went pale in the fluorescent light. "Nikki wasn't supposed to tell anyone! And that was weeks ago, not recently."

MacLeod's eyes met Tessa's. Silently they agreed as to what killing Richie must have confided in Angie about. MacLeod fingered Richie's jacket grimly, and wondered if the Save Richie Ryan project was over.

"Nikki didn't pass that part along," Powell said.

Angie covered her face. "It's all my fault, then."

"What did they do with Richie?" MacLeod asked.

"The girl said Fuentes shot him up with heroin and some other junk to make him look like an overdose. She said Richie got away from them, but he's probably dead already."

MacLeod knew that wouldn't be true. But they needed to find Richie, all the same, before another tragedy occurred.

"We're going to go look for him," MacLeod said. Powell nodded. "Good luck. I don't like the kid, but he doesn't deserve what they did to him."

They left Angie crying inconsolably with Powell, and went looking for Richie in the Gilmore Avenue neighborhood. When that failed, they drove to the emergency room in the hopes he might have gone back to comfort Janine or confront George again, but Karen Mitchell said she hadn't seen him. She also said, somewhat defiantly, that she was glad Richie had done what he did. MacLeod cruised Saratoga Street but saw no trace of Richie, and Tessa persuaded him to return home in case Richie had gone there for help.

The darkened store and apartment showed no sign of the teenager. The hall clock struck midnight. MacLeod sat heavily on the sofa and rubbed his eyes. It seemed all he did recently was search for Richie, with varying degrees of failure. Just when it seemed that they were so close to working past obstacles, new ones jumped in the way.

Tessa folded herself against him. "He's a smart kid, Mac. He'll be okay."

"He could be anywhere," MacLeod said. "In who knows what condition."

In a way, Richie would be better to overdose quickly and start his Immortal life. But if he didn't, if the drugs Joey Fuentes gave him instead resulted in brain damage or crippling physical injury, he would never be able to defend himself against swords in the battle of the Gathering that he would someday be forced to join.

The phone rang. Tessa picked it up. "Hello?" she asked.

Richie's voice, high and thin and shaking, came through the line. "Hey, Tessa, it's me. Richie. Richie Ryan. Remember? Richie Ryan Remember?"

Tessa demanded, "Where are you?"

"Soldier's Bridge, where else?" he asked.

Tessa covered the mouthpiece and repeated the information to MacLeod. "Keep him on the phone," he said, and kissed her on the forehead. Then he grabbed his keys, his jacket and his sword, and went out the back door.

She knew it would take him about fifteen minutes to get to the bridge. Eleven, if he didn't follow the speed limits. Eight, if he ran the stop signs and red lights as well.

"Richie, talk to me," she said. "Tell me what's going on."

Both coherently and incoherently, his voice broken with various sorrows and jubilant with chemical rush, Richie spewed out a jumbled tale of Bruce's house, Janine in the hospital, MacLeod's death, Grouch's murder, Joey and the van.

Tessa kept him talking as long as she could.

Then, seven minutes after MacLeod left, Richie hung up the phone.

***

Richie realized he was standing in a freezing-cold phone booth that smelled of urine and feces. The lights of traffic and the city swam by outside. His whole body ached unbearably, but he didn't know why. He couldn't remember who he was talking to, or what the last words out of his mouth had been.

"Richie?" A woman's voice came out of the receiver. Nikki. Karen. Janine, laying pale and bandaged on an emergency room table. Their faces blurred like acid-etched paintings in his brain, all the colors running together in the rain.

But it wasn't raining. He was suddenly very hot, broken out in sweat, ready to faint.

Richie hung up the phone and stumbled outside, hoping the fresh air would clear his head. Something was terribly wrong, but he couldn't remember what. He clung to the guard rail as his stomach emptied into the overgrown weeds beyond. Vomiting made him feel no better. He saw the dark water, and the footpath to the bridge, and remembered where he was.

He stumbled up the path, knowing he had to get to MacLeod before Slan Quince cut off his head. That was wrong, though, because MacLeod was dead in an alley, and Richie was responsible. Janine's arm, in a cast. Angie, Scotty, Nikki and Bruce, all in jail. All because of him, but none of it hurt as much as MacLeod, who'd only tried to be his friend. Richie could see the bullet hit him, rip into his chest, tear out a spurt of flesh of blood. But he'd gotten up, hadn't he? He'd been a voice on a phone, or maybe it had been his ghost.

Richie wrapped his arms around his middle, cold again, and shook his head of too many memories.

Car horns honked in long notes like red ribbons as he found the place where Slan Quince had lost his head. Richie lurched over the railing to stare at the dark water below. Connor and Duncan MacLeod had tumbled there. Same clan, different vintage. He wasn't sure what a vintage was. They'd gone in, but come out alive and new in the morning.

He could do that.

With a surge of elation and confidence, he realized he could do that.

Richie swung himself up to the railing. His legs felt too unsteady to stand so instead he sat, feet dangling, waiting for the exactly right moment to fall and begin his rebirth in a life that meant a fresh start.

Or maybe the darkness would take him, and he wouldn't have to worry about the pain anymore.

"Richie!"

He turned his head and focused on the blurry ghost of Duncan MacLeod - tall, shimmering, his black coat flapping in the wind, his face etched in stone.

"I'm sorry," Richie offered. "I guess you weren't really Immortal, after all, huh? Number One with a bullet."

MacLeod thought about proving to the teenager that he was alive, but didn't know if logic would go over very well with Richie, given his current state. His eyes and voice proved Liz Shaw's story was true.

"Richie," he said instead, "you're not thinking very clearly. Do you remember what happened in the van? Do you remember Joey giving you something?"

Richie looked back to the water. Dark, inviting, cold. Rushing, like the blood in his head. "Don't worry, Mac," he said softly. "I'm going to come back, just like you."

That, MacLeod reflected grimly, was more true than Richie could hallucinate.

Richie scrambled to his feet on the railing. MacLeod moved to stop him - the nonsense had gone far enough - but Richie slid backwards out of range and put up a hand in warning. "Stay back, Mac!" he yelled. "I'm Immortal! I'll chop off your head!"

MacLeod made his voice as stern as possible. "Richie, get down from there. You are definitely not Immortal."

Not yet, at least.

"I feel Immortal!" Richie yelled to the sky and water, to the fathomless horizon, to the cityscape of skyscrapers and shining highways.

A police cruiser, lights flashing but sirens off, pulled to a stop on the bridge behind MacLeod. Richie's eyes fixed on the lights like a rabbit caught in headlights. Then he looked at MacLeod with such helplessness and vulnerability it was heartbreaking.

"Help me, Mac," he said brokenly.

"I will help you, Richie." MacLeod took another step forward. "Come down."

The Highlander stretched out his hand.

After a long moment of indecision and torn emotion, as the world paused between heartbeats and the young man's past and future locked at impasse, Richie reached for MacLeod's hand.

MacLeod pulled him down and into an embrace. Richie's shaky legs finally gave way, and MacLeod lowered him to the cold concrete, resting him against his own body, sheltering him with his arms. The teenager wept steadily, but said nothing. One of the policeman radioed for an ambulance.

"You're okay," MacLeod soothed. "Just try to stay calm."

"I can't breathe," Richie complained, as invisible steel bands tightened around his chest. He squeezed MacLeod's hands as tightly as he could. "Mac, I can't breathe."

"Yes you can, Richie. Just slow down. You're hyperventilating."

His body, shivering and unreal, rebelled from the last of Richie's control. He felt his limbs spasm, liquid rise to the back of his throat. Couldn't breathe. Voices, light, movement. Panic. All unreal, all in his hurting head, and when the warm, safe darkness of the water came for him he went willingly because the voice of Duncan MacLeod's ghost told him to.

***

Richie tried to move, but a sharp pain in his left arm and an alarming pull between his legs stopped him. He opened his eyes and saw a very large, very ugly needle impaled into the back of his left hand. Another needle stabbed into the crook of his left elbow. His whole arm seemed taped to a plastic board, and a restraint had been wound around his wrist. Beyond the needle were tubes, instruments, a plastic curtain. He felt awful. Tired and beaten and empty inside, as if something had been gouged out from his brain and chest and stomach. He tried to move his right arm and realized that wrist was restrained too. He was a prisoner, trapped in dimness and quiet, and he didn't know why.

Tears came to his eyes. He hated not knowing where he was or what had happened. He guessed he was in the hospital, but his recent memory seemed full of missing blocks of time. Blinking furiously to wash away the evidence of his weakness, Richie turned his head and found a white-tiled ceiling. He turned right, and saw Jerry Bora Morra folded into a plastic chair too small for him and playing with a Game Boy.

Richie said, "Hey," but his voice was hoarse and clogged from disuse. He cleared it as best and he could and tried again.

"Hey there," Jerry grinned. "You're awake, finally. Good morning."

Richie's voice came out like a frog's. "What time is it?"

"About nine a.m. Thirty hours after you tried to fly off the bridge. You remember what happened?"

"Bits," Richie admitted. He pulled at his wrists. "Can you get me out . . . of these things?"

"I guess you're okay now," Jerry said, and undid the restraints. He helped Richie adjust the bed with the remote control and then poured him a glass of water from a bedside pitcher. "How do you feel?"

"Okay." The water tasted the best he could ever imagine water tasting.

"Richie, don't lie to me."

"Okay," Richie said, rubbing his eyes. "Like shit, then. Am I under arrest?"

"What would you be under arrest for?"

He had so many options to pick from, Richie thought dismally.

"This have to do with Grouch's murder?" Jerry tried. "You're not under arrest. They want to know if you saw anything."

Dimly Richie remembered Joey kicking him in the van, saying something about the murder. He touched his sore ribs. "Who killed Grouch?"

Jerry pulled his seat up. "I see we've got some catching up to do."

An hour later, Richie understood what had happened more clearly, but his memory still remained hazy. He was sad about Grouch, mad at Joey, upset about Angie. She'd been let go by the police, Jerry said, but her dad was furious. Nikki, Scotty and Bruce were going to face the judge for possession charges. Janine had been discharged with a broken arm and bruises.

"She went back to the Mitchells?" Richie asked.

"To Karen and Steven Mitchell. George is in jail for drunk driving, and Karen won't bail him out. She said she's given him too many chances to start over, and now he's on his own."

The news should have cheered Richie, but didn't. He felt depressed and tired. The doctor came by, a man Richie took an instant dislike to, and told him he had to spend one more night in the hospital. A nurse pulled the curtain and removed the catheter and one of the i.v. tubes. Jerry Morra left in the face of a grim- looking lunch, with advice to rest up.

He didn't say what was going to happen to Richie, and Richie didn't want to know. After lunch, Janine came to let him sign her cast. Karen stayed in the hallway. Richie didn't know what to say to her anyway. Janine seemed all right, and managed a few smiles. She was a tough kid. When she left, Richie sank back into bed with an intense weariness that went down deep. He slept for a few hours, and when he woke it was dusk. The lights in the city were beginning to glow. Against the window, as a silhouette in black, was MacLeod.

"Hey, tough guy," he said. "About time you woke up for visitors. You missed dinner, but by the looks of it, you didn't miss much."

Richie sat up with a grimace. "You're not a ghost, are you?"

MacLeod's gaze narrowed. "I thought we worked that out on the phone."

"My memory's kind of hazy. Did I . . . try and jump off a bridge?"

"You considered the option," MacLeod allowed. "How do you feel now?"

Richie thought hard. "Like a toxic dump."

"That's accurate."

Richie looked past MacLeod to the city. "I really screwed up this week, didn't I? The vase. Getting you shot. Getting Angie arrested. Trying to take a dive off the - "

"Hold on just a minute!" MacLeod interrupted. "You think you're responsible for all that?"

Richie shrugged. "Yeah."

"One day we'll have a talk about what's your responsibility and what is other people's. You didn't screw up. You had a lot of things happen to you, all at once. If you made mistakes, that's just part of being alive."

Richie didn't want to argue about it. Maybe later, out of the hospital, he could sort it all out like MacLeod said. "What about the vase?" he asked.

"The insurance will take care of it," MacLeod said. "I'll just have to increase the deductible once you come home tomorrow."

Richie's heart did a double thump in his chest. He stared at MacLeod, trying to divine hidden meanings or deceptions.

"What?" MacLeod asked. His expression was perfectly serious. "You change your mind? You don't want to live with us anymore?"

Richie let out a careful breath. "I thought . . . that was part of the drugs. That I hallucinated it."

"It wasn't a hallucination."

The cold fear that had held him all day loosened. Richie managed a small smile.

"Of course," MacLeod added smoothly. "We have to talk about the house rules."

Warning bells went off in Richie's head. "House rules? Like what?"

"Like, you work in the shop for me. You get your GED. No more trouble with the police and no hanging around with - "

"Wait a minute," Richie interrupted. "Are these negotiable or what?"

MacLeod smiled. "Maybe. We'll talk about it tomorrow."

Richie studied the tips of his hands and asked, "Why do you want to do this?"

MacLeod's smile vanished. Somberly he returned, "Why not?"

Richie couldn't think of an answer to that. He realized he was still very tired, and decided it wouldn't hurt to go back to sleep. But he had to probe just a little deeper, because this was so important, so very important, and he wasn't going to allow himself real hope until there was a measure of safety in doing so. "You're the one on drugs, MacLeod, if you think Tessa's going to agree to it."

"I already did," Tessa said, her voice ringing from the doorway. Richie had no idea how long she'd been listening, but her face was warm and clear.

He looked from MacLeod to Tessa, Tessa to MacLeod. "Okay," he said.

"Good," MacLeod said, as if there had never been any doubt. "Now, get some sleep. We'll be back in the morning to take you home, if the doctor agrees."

Home.

A real home.

What a concept.

Richie asked, "Hey, Mac?"

"Yes?" MacLeod and Tessa stopped in the doorway.

"All that stuff about . .. well, you know. Swords and Immortals and everything."

"What about it?"

"I believe you now."

A trace of amusement crossed MacLeod's face. "Good," he said. "That might come in handy some day. Good night, Richie."

"See you tomorrow," Tessa promised.

Richie settled back into the bed and pulled up the sheets. He tried to sleep but couldn't. Instead he lay awake for hours, staring out the window, warmed by the lights of the city, and entranced at long last by the prospect of opportunities yet to come.

THE END