Chapter 20

Felicia slowly opened her eyes, wondering why the hell she wasn't dead yet. Her would-be assassin was lying on the ground, a gaping bullet hole in his forehead.

Turning around, she saw Detective Reynolds in the doorway, lowering his pistol. "It always seems to be me saving your ass." He said as he placed his pistol back in its holster.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"Most people would say thank you."

"Thank you. Now what are you doing here?"

"I found out who's been tracking you." Reynolds walked further into the room, stepping over the dead body as if it were nothing. "Where's your phone?"

"Um, it's in the bathroom."

"Go and get it."

Felicia went back into the bathroom, soon coming back with her phone, and she handed it to Reynolds, who promptly threw it to the ground before stepping on it, effectively smashing it.

"Hey!"

"They were tracking you through your phone, that's how he was always able to find you. If you need a phone, get a burner."

"Detective, what's going on? And who is 'he', anyway?"

Reynolds sighed. "Get your things together, you're coming to stay with me, I'll explain everything that I know on the way."

"Wait, the old woman in the lobby-"

"She's fine. A bit on the pissy side, though."

"What? She was such a doll when I checked in. Oh Lord, I hope that she wasn't bit."

"Bit?"

Felicia held up her affected arm as a response. "It seems that we're going to have a lot to talk about, but first, I'm going to make sure that lady's okay."

~

As it turned out, the old woman had in fact been bitten.

"Not by either of my pets, though." She said to Felicia. "It was my neighbor's guinea pig."

"Guinea pig?" So far as Felicia had known, it had only been cats and dogs that had been affected. It alarmed her to know that it seemed to have been passed on to other animals as well.

"May I see the bite?" Felicia asked, and the elderly woman nodded.

"It got me right near my ankle." She responded, rolling up her pant leg. "Are you a doctor?"

"Something like that."Her bite wasn't nearly as long as Felicia's. "How long ago did you get bit?"

"Oh, I would say about three days ago."

"Have you noticed any adverse side effects? Increased irritability, maybe?"

"Yes, now that you mention it. I snapped at my daughter yesterday. It shocked the both of us, because normally I'm the calmest person that you could ever meet."

Felicia nodded her head. "If it gets to hurting too bad, just take some Tylenol, okay?"

"Thank you so much." The woman replied.

"I hate to tell you this, but I'm going to have to cut my stay short."

"Oh?" A look of alarm crossed the aging woman's face. "Was the room unsatisfactory?"

"Nothing like that," Felicia assured her. "An emergency has come up, that's all."

"Make sure that you don't rent that room out to anyone else," Reynolds added. "And unless you want to know what it looks like when someone gets shot in the head, don't go in the room. I put in a call, some officers are going to canvass the room and the nearby area."

~

Felicia waited until they had left the lobby, and she smacked Reynolds hard in the chest.

"Shit, woman!" Reynolds rubbed the spot that she had hit. "What the hell was that for?!"

"That wasn't necessary, you could have given that poor woman a heart attack!"

"So could a bunch of police officers entering her lobby."

"Detective!"

"Sebastian."

Felicia blinked. "What?"

"My name is Sebastian. If you're going to be staying with me, then we might as well be on a first-name basis. You seem surprised."

"I just didn't expect it, I thought that it would be something more…macho."

"Macho?" Sebastian couldn't help but laugh. "What did you think that my name was going to be? Axel or something?"

"I don't know!" Felicia defended herself. "I just didn't expect such an old-fashioned name, that's all."

"I'll have you know that I was named after my grandfather."

"See, I told you that it was an old-fashioned name."

"It was considered hip back then."

Felicia gave him a look. "What was considered hip in the forties isn't exactly considered hip today."

"Okay, okay, you've made your point."

"Well, if I'm going to be calling you Sebastian, then you might as well call me Felicia."

"And you thought that my name was old-fashioned."

Felicia scoffed. "My name is unique, not old-fashioned, there's quite a difference, I'll have you know. At least my name isn't Eloise or some shit." She shuddered at that. "Thank God that my mother wasn't a fancy person."

"I was almost named Remington, if that makes you feel any better about Sebastian."

"It does, actually."

After grabbing her things from her room, she followed Sebastian to his car, which she supposed was actually her car, considering that they had switched.

Sebastian lived about forty-five minutes away, in one of the more upper-scale apartment complexes.

"Geez, how much does a detective make?" Felicia asked as she looked around, setting her bags down on the floor.

"That's about one of the only things that the movies get right about us. There's only one bedroom, though. You can have my bed and I'll sleep on the couch."

"I don't want to put you out, I would be more then happy to sleep on the couch."

"It's alright, I don't mind. Now, as you said before, we have a lot to talk about."

"You start. How did you find out that he was tracking me?"

"Let's go and sit down." Sebastian led her to the aforementioned couch. "His name was Karlek Veseley. He's Czech, a gun for hire, basically. He's good at what he does, has a victim list about a mile long. You've got to have a lot of money in your pocket to be able to hire him, though."

"Do you know who it was that hired him?"

Sebastian shook his head. "No, and there's a lot of people in los Angeles that have more then enough money to spare, so that doesn't really narrow down our suspect pool any, hence why you're staying with me. It's safer for you."

"Why are you so concerned with my safety?" Felicia asked him. "I mean, I get that it's your job to protect the people and all that, but I don't think that entails you opening your home up to strangers."

Sebastian shrugged his shoulders. "It's just who I am, I help people when they need it. As for what you were about to tell me, something tells me that we're going to need alcohol, and quite a bit of it."