Chapter 9

Felicia had an extremely fitful sleep that night, to say the least. When she woke up the following morning, she felt even more tired than when she had gone to bed the previous night.

Venturing into the kitchen, she saw that Kirk was already making breakfast.

"You look like shit." She commented, Kirk didn't look like he had slept all that well, either.

"Well good morning to you too." Kirk retorted. "Glad to see that you're talking again."

"Hm?"

"Last night, you hardly talked, the only time you talked was to that cop."

"Sorry, I don't remember much about last night. Just…you know."

"Yeah…I know that you're probably not feeling very hungry, but you need to eat something. I'm making pancakes, and there's juice and milk in the fridge if you're thirsty. Or I could make a pot of coffee."

"Some coffee would be great, thank you." Felicia leaned against the counter, watching as Kirk started up the coffee pot. "I'm assuming that you're the one who put these on me last night?" She asked, gesturing to the pajamas that she was wearing.

Kirk nodded his head. "Yeah. Hope you don't mind, but your clothes were a mess and you were kind of bloody. And like I said before, you weren't really responding to anyone, so it was kind of obvious that you were going to be needing help."

"Thanks…for everything that you did last night, you and Eddie."

"Felicia, you're our best friend, like a sister to the both of us, there's nothing that we wouldn't do for you. Except murder. I can't promise that we would do that."

"Not even to whoever killed Shadow and Dr. Blake?"

"Well, I suppose that I can make an exception there." He bit his lower lip. "Are you ready to talk about last night?"

Felicia ran a hand through her tangled hair. "No, but I probably won't ever be ready to talk about it. What the hell is going on, Kirk? I can kind of get it if it was just Dr. Blake that had been killed, some druggie looking for a fix and he got in the way, you know? But to kill Shadow, too? There's something really weird going on here."

"We're going to figure out what's happening, and who killed Shadow, but right now, we need to focus on getting you off the suspect list."

"What?"

"The cop last night thinks that you might have had something to do with Blake's death. Eddie said that we're all probably suspects in some way. The cop wants us to come down to the station so that he can ask us all some questions. He didn't seem to be too happy that you were in shock."

Kirk scoffed before continuing. "Apparently going through a traumatic event and dealing with it by tuning out the rest of the world makes you a suspect these days. These pancakes are almost done, you mind going in and waking up Eddie for me?"

"Yeah, no problem."

"Our bedroom is just down the hall."

Felicia gave him a look. "Trust me, I know. One of the times that I came over, I walked in on you and Eddie getting frisky with each other."

Kirk let out an embarrassed laugh. "That one's on you, you should have told us that you were coming over."

"It was your birthday, and I was going to surprise you with your favorite cake, but I was the one that was surprised instead. One thing I thought that I would never see is Eddie's bare ass."

"You've gotta admit that it's a sexy ass, though."

"Now you're just grossing me out." Felicia laughed before going down the hall. "Breakfast is ready!" She called out through the door. "Get down there so that I don't have to listen to Kirk drone on and on about how sexy your rear end is."

"He's just telling the truth," Eddie replied groggily. "I'll be there in a minute."

~

Ten minutes later, they were all sitting down and eating breakfast.

"I figured that you would want to go to your house before we go to the police station," Kirk said to Felicia as he spread some butter on his pancakes. "Change and maybe grab a few extra clothes."

Felicia looked at him quizzically. "Why would I want to grab extra clothes?"

"Well, I was thinking-"

"Shocker," Eddie said, and Kirk shot him a look.

"As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, I was thinking. Whoever killed Blake did it for a reason, right? And Shadow was killed as well. Don't you think it's odd that he was killed right as he told you what was going on with Shadow?"

"I guess that it does seem a little bit strange." Felicia agreed. "But what does that have to do with me needing extra clothes?"

"Whoever killed Blake, what if they think that you were told more than you actually were? I mean, Blake was probably killed to keep him quiet, so who's to say that they won't try to silence you too?"

Felicia stared at him. "Kirk, I think that you've been watching one too many action movies."

"I'm serious!"

"Kirk, do you realize how far-fetched that sounds?"

"Why else would Blake and Shadow be killed?"

"Eddie, help me talk some sense into him!"

"Actually, he's kind of making sense to me," Eddie admitted to her. "At least entertain the notion."

Felicia let out a sigh. "Okay, so say that someone is out to get me then. What do you propose that we do about it?"

"I mean, we're already going to the police station." Kirk pointed out.

"You're saying that we tell the cops that an assassin is hunting me down? They'll lock you up in an asylum for sure. We don't even have proof of why Dr. Blake was killed, let alone why someone would want to kill me. But…if it makes you feel safer that I don't stay at home for a few days, then fine."

Kirk released a sigh of relief. "Thank you. Oh, I also called Sabine this morning while you were still sleeping, and I let her know that you weren't going to be in for a couple of days at least."

"A couple of days?" Her eyes widened. "Kirk, I can't stay away for that long."

"Yes you can, and don't try saying that you wouldn't be able to afford it. You have enough PTO that you would be able to take off the next year if you wanted to. Besides, if you want to find out what happened to Shadow and Dr. Blake, then you're going to need all of the time off that you can get."

"You really know how to twist someone's arm, you know that?"

~

Once breakfast was finished and everything was cleaned up, Eddie and Kirk got dressed, and then they all headed to Felicia's house.

The fact that Shadow didn't greet them at the door just cemented in Felicia's head that he was really dead and gone.

"Are you okay?" Kirk asked her quietly, and she nodded her head, swallowing thickly. "Y-yeah, I'm just gonna run upstairs and grab some clothes, I won't be long."

Felicia slowly walked up the stairs, her eyes tearing up as she saw cat toys lying here and there. "Keep it together." She whispered as she wiped the tears from her eyes.

Walking into her bedroom, she went straight for the closet, grabbing clothes and stuffing them into a small suitcase. She honestly wasn't paying attention to the clothes that she was grabbing, she just wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. She also grabbed some toiletries from the bathroom before going back downstairs and rejoining the boys. "Alright guys, I'm ready to go."

"That didn't take long," Eddie commented.

"Yeah, well I don't really want to stick around-"

Felicia let out a scream as a nearby window shattered and something rolled into the room. Eddie's eyes widened.

"GRENADE!"