Santa Barbara, 1985

Young hands grabbed at the discarded mail as discreetly as he could. His eyes scanned over one of the letters taking in all the information he needed. He ran back to the kitchen, keeping an eye out for his father all the while. He reached for the scissors to use as a makeshift letter opener and started on the seal.

“Shawn!”

The voice startled him. He shoved the scissors back into their place and the letter behind his back. He spun on his heels to look up at his father. “Yeah dad?”

Henry fully came into the kitchen and looked down at the child with a disapproving eye. “What do you have behind your back?”

“Nothing,” Shawn tried to mumble, knowing full well he’d already been caught.

“Hand it over, now.” Henry opened his palm out to his son.

Shawn sighed and gave the envelope up.

“Why the hell were you trying to open this? This isn’t even addressed to you.”

“You were just gonna throw it away!” Shawn retorted.

“So? That doesn’t mean you can just open someone else’s mail. That’s illegal, Shawn. Not to mention potentially dangerous. You don't know what could be in one of these. Curiosity killed the cat, kid.”

“Yeah, but satisfaction brought him back.”

Henry frowned. “Don’t be a smart ass. That’s not how the real world works. Why do you want this junk mail anyways?”

“It’s a credit card offer,” Shawn stated. “I wanted to pull the glue off the cards.”

 

Santa Barbara, Present Day

Trying to convince a building full of officers that your client was being targeted while having next to no evidence was kinda impossible. Shawn knew that. He knew this was not going to be an easy task. He also knew that ‘impossible’ was just a word and Shawn wasn’t interested in dictionaries. He, instead, was electing to ignore the perceived meaning of the word learned through 30 decades of language context clues.

That’s what led him to his new career as a bodyguard. Who cared about detectives anyways. Bodyguards were what the chicks digged these days. Not that anyone could know he was a bodyguard. That would defeat the whole point of trying to catch this unknown stalker in the act.

Instead, he made flirtatious comments to Juliet and Lassiter about his sexy new job and let Gus know that a ride home wasn’t needed. Once his bases were covered he was off.

Mitchel Collins’ apartment was pretty average. It was definitely cleaner than Shawn’s but nothing too interesting of note to make of it. A second of observation told Shawn all he needed to know about the guy. For one, he still wasn’t over his last girlfriend. Though, to be fair, that one didn’t look much like it was his fault. A return address on a letter reading ‘Shanghai’ was a pretty good indicator that the relationship ended on a mutual understanding.

He also could tell that Mitchel was preparing the house for a cat but that the animal hadn’t arrived yet. The new bag of unopened cat food and a half-set-up litter box told that story clear as day.

Mitchel was a normal, if kinda lonely, dude.

What wasn’t normal, however, was the way he had his eye glued to his peep hole the moment the door was shut.

“Expecting someone?”

“Hell no,” was the gruff response.

Shawn made sure to jot down ‘paranoid’ in his mental notes. Though, he couldn’t really blame the guy. After all, paranoia is a pretty understandable response to three attempted murders.

Well, seven if you counted the four individual attempted poisonings all from the same restaurant. (Which Shawn was but Gus was not. Seven sounded cooler.)

The unfortunate part of the attempts on his life were that none left any trace of evidence. Nothing that made it seem like more than a couple freak accidents. Not even the restaurant incidents. None of the workers that Mitchel had seen those days he recognized. Not to mention that the three poisonings were spread out by a week or two between them. As for Shawn’s own looking into things, he also couldn’t sniff out anything weird.

As far as the police were concerned, they were just mishaps in the kitchen. Shawn called them attempted poisonings because that’s what Mitchel had called them when he was crying in the middle of the Psych office. In reality, even that was a bit of a stretch. What it had actually been was someone had left nuts in his order. Albeit, Mitchel was deathly allergic to nuts and already one of those three occasions had caused him to need an epipen (which, thankfully he had on his person at the time). However, it all still was much too circumstantial for the big boys in blue.

That was why Mitchel had come to Shawn. And that was why, if Shawn was to get any headway on this case, he would need to see the next attempt personally.

“Stop glaring out your peephole like that. Some poor children are gonna think Mr. Wilson lives here.”

Mitchel pulled himself from his door and gave Shawn a weary look. With a sigh he finally walked away completely and fell onto his couch. “Are you sure this is gonna work? I mean, what if-“

“Mitchie, baby,” Shawn cut him off. He stood before the couch with his arms crossed. “It’ll be fine. Remember, you have a world class psychic with you now. I’ll know where the next attempt is coming from before even the murderer does.” Shawn put his hands on his hips and gave the room another look around. “Now uhh, you got anything to drink? The spirits are parched.”

 

Shawn followed Mitchel around all day. Nothing seemed to really happen. Not even an odd word from a coworker or a strange phone call with a Darth Vader impersonator. It was all quiet.

Gus had already given his opinion on the case when Mitchel had first walked in. Gus had agreed with the police. Decided the guy was a clinical paranoid and needed a therapist, not a psychic. Even chalked the incidents at the restaurant to being that the place just sucks. (Apparently, Gus also had bad run-ins at Uncle Yum’s Hot Spot. From Gus’ retelling, the place had a bad rep with messing up orders. However, Shawn would also point out a place called ‘Uncle Yum’s Hot Spot’ probably isn’t best known for its spectacular service. Also, Gus had only gone there once. Mitchel had gone there practically twice a week or more for months since he moved to Santa Barbara.)

Either way, it seemed both Gus and the police had all decided their opinions both on the case as a whole and on Mitchel himself. At this point it wasn’t even worth calling his father to try and get another perspective on the matter. He was sure Henry would just parrot the same.

But Shawn was sure there was something more here. From what he could tell, Mitchel didn’t have a history of paranoia and he definitely didn’t have a history of cartoonishly Donald Duck-like bad luck. It was all tied together. It had to be. A clinically paranoid person wouldn’t go to a bunch of strangers looking for help. A restaurant, no matter how bad, would be hard pressed to fuck up so bad so often and with the same guy. Shawn had even looked into the place’s history. Their service wasn’t the best, like he’d expected, but they’d never caused anyone to die.

As for the other two times: Mitchel’s apartment almost burning down during the night by his stove and a car attempting to run him off the road. Both could easily be seen as accidents as well. However, Shawn knew for a fact, both by word of mouth and by observation, that Mitchel couldn’t cook. His own words even confirmed that he was terribly bad at it. The ramen packs in his kitchen and take-out boxes in the trash only helped the case.

The car off the road really could have been an accident. Shawn couldn’t see any evidence on Mitchel’s car to suspect foul play at least on that end. And since he hadn’t been there to witness the event, he really couldn’t be sure what had happened that night. As far as Shawn knew, it really could have been an accident. However, with the other ‘accidents’ seeming to be anything but, Shawn was hard pressed to disbelieve Mitchel’s recount of the event.

But that was where the problem really was. All these events really did seem circumstantial. There was no hard evidence that Shawn could dig up to help the situation. It was as if he were going after a ghost. But Shawn didn’t believe in ghosts and every time he was sent out after one he always came back with a suspect instead of a spirit.

But this time there were no suspects. Not even the unenthused servers at Uncle Yum’s had anything to hide from what he could tell. Shawn could only really hope that his time with Mitchel would produce anything even somewhat close to a lead.

The mysterious perpetrator had to slip up eventually. Their patience had to be wearing thin with every botched attempt. Shawn was banking on that being the case. It was all he had to go on. It was either that or he could leave and wait for the day Mitchel’s body showed up in the coroner’s office.

When nothing happened the whole day, Shawn stayed the night. When nothing happened during the night, Shawn walked out to help Mitchel get the mail. A large package was there for him along with a couple of letters. Mitchel grabbed the box and Shawn the letters to walk it all back to his place.

While they walked back, Shawn looked through the mail out of nothing more than boredom. Four letters. Two were credit card offers, one a bill, and the last one was hand written. The last one caught Shawn’s attention the most.

The return address said ‘Shanghai’ but there was something off about it. The handwriting was wrong. It wasn’t the same as the other letters Mitchel had lovingly kept. However, it did look familiar.

When they got into the apartment Mitchel went to work opening the box. Some cat scratch thing he’d bought off Amazon. Meanwhile, Shawn placed the other three letters on the kitchen counter before stepping into the living room, away from Mitchel with the last one.

He examined it for a moment. The letter was sealed up perfectly. No holes or divots anywhere. The handwriting still looked oddly familiar, but Shawn couldn’t pin it at the moment. He also knew for a fact it wasn’t the ex in Shanghai. As close as the mailer wanted to get it, it wasn’t it. The letter felt off. There was definitely paper inside but something else too. Shawn fingered it a bit before deciding on some kind of powder.

Any reasonable person wouldn’t open this letter. Any reasonable person would probably take it to the cops first and let them handle it. However, Shawn was the most unreasonable person anyone who’d met him had ever met. And also, he had a point to prove to the SBPD and he was going to prove it.

When Shawn opened the letter a puff of powder practically exploded in his face. He coughed and tried to waft it away with his hand. Yeah, that was about what he expected. He maneuvered the letter so not to spill anymore of the powder but to get the paper out and unfold it.

“What the hell was that?” Mitchel asked as he walked towards Shawn.

“Old lady nose powder,” Shawn responded as he looked at the paper. It was blank. Completely empty save for some of the powder that had gotten stuck on it.

“Old lady- what?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Shawn folded the paper back up and sealed the letter. He folded it and shoved it into his pocket before spinning to look at Mitchel with a smile. He put his hand to his head and said, “What you should worry about is the intense psychic vibe that I just got.”

“About what?” Mitchel clambered to grab at Shawn’s arm. Desperation laced his voice along with fear. “Is it about my murderer? Is he gonna strike again?”

Shawn closed his eyes to up the dramatics and hummed out. “Mmmm, yes. Yes it is! The spirits, they’re speaking to me through the old lady nose powder.”

Mitchel gave Shawn’s arm a hard shake. “What are they saying?”

Shawn opened his left eye to look at Mitchel. “For one they’re saying to get off my arm.”

Mitchel looked from Shawn to his own hands before snapping back and letting go. He mumbled out a “sorry.”

Shawn closed his eye again and continued to have his ‘vision’. “They’re saying… they’re saying… please spirits! Speak to me! You must speak louder! Ah-ha!”

“What? What is it?”

Shawn snapped open his eyes and looked at Mitchel. “The spirits are calling me to the police station. You need to drive me there immediately. All the evidence we need will be revealed to us then.”

That was all it took to have Mitchel scramble for his keys and practically drag Shawn to the car.

 

Shawn was pretty close on the mark. Whatever had really been in that letter was starting to take effect right as they were turning the corner to the police station’s parking lot. His muscles began to tighten and stiffen in unnatural ways. It was slow and unnoticeable for now. But the pain was what was really getting to him. His body felt like wet pop rocks were being thrown at him. Left to sizzle and snap against his skin.

By the time they parked, the sizzling was morphing into burning, with each intense clutch of muscle. Shawn and Mitchel quickly got out of the car and started towards the building when the muscle in Shawn’s calf clenched hard and made him drop to the asphalt.

“Shawn!” Mitchel cried and grabbed his arm to try and pull him back up. “What the hell was that?”

“The spirits,” Shawn croaked out through the pain. “They’re pretty pissed off.”

“Seems like it. Can you walk?”

“Theoretically,” Shawn responded before pulling away from Mitchel and continuing on.

Getting up the steps was way harder than it should have been. Shawn was pretty sure he was on a time limit. It was now or never.

He slammed open the doors to the precinct and gave a howl of anguish. It was only half fake as the muscle in his neck cinched up painfully and made his head throw back.

Those in the building looked at him for a moment before realizing who he was and going back to their normal work. It was kinda disheartening actually. Honestly, a guy takes the time out of his day not only to do their job but make it entertaining and all they can do is shrug it off. Shawn would feel insulted if he wasn’t probably dying. He made the mental note to be mad about it later.

He locked eyes with Juliet and Lassiter before quickly making a beeline for them. Mitchel followed close behind.

“Jules! Lassie!” Shawn called right as another spasm blasted through his side, causing him to falter in his stride as well as make a call of pain.

Juliet reached out a hand to grab Shawn’s arm and keep him upright. “Shawn are you okay?”

“He’s fine,” Lassiter grumbled with an eye roll. “Unless you count idiocy as a clinical issue.”

“I’ll have you know that my chronic dumbassery is none of your business, Detective.”

Lassiter only gave another hard roll of his eyes and turned back to his work. “Go away Spencer. We don’t have time for your antics.”

“But the spirits! They- Arugh!” Shawn was cut off by another call of pain as his arm muscle clinched hard.

“Shawn, are you hurt?” Juliet asked, clearly worried about her friend.

“He’s just looking for attention,” Lassiter hissed out, accusatorily. “And he can look for it elsewhere. We got a missing persons on our desk and an upset mother in our ear. Now is not the time for-“

“This!” Shawn called out as he pulled out the letter.

Juliet went to grab it but Shawn pulled back. “No! The spirits! They tell me it’s too dangerous! You need-“ he was cut off by another bout of pain and a grunt of anguish. His muscles felt like they were on fire. His face was burning as well. He was sure he looked just about as bad as he felt. “It’s poisoned!”

“What? Like the accidental peanuts in Collins’ take out?” Lassiter scoffed. “Please, Spencer. Stop trying to bring empty evidence to us.”

“Would you shut up and listen to me!” Shawn yelled back.

His yell surprised everyone in the room, including himself. They were now looking at him with full attention.

Shawn was about to take that to his advantage but was quickly cut off when the muscles in his legs tightened and caused them to give out under him. He fell to the ground, hard. Practically taking Juliet with him.

“It’s poisoned,” Shawn finally forced out. “The letter is poisoned. Some kinda powder.” He needed more than that. He wasn’t sure how much speaking ability was left in him. He also felt his consciousness was limited just the same. He had to think.

Shawn flipped through everything he had for this case. Everything he’d seen, everyone he’d talked to. He landed on the handwriting. It was different. It wasn’t the Shanghai ex. She wouldn’t do this to Mitchel anyways. He knew they were both still in love with each other. That was obvious by the letters themselves.

But this letter wasn’t sent by her. So then who sent it. Who was trying to kill Mitchel.

Then he got it. It flashed into his memory and it compared the two. There was a chance he was wrong but it was still better than nothing.

“Uncle Yum’s!” Shawn grunted out. It was getting harder to think through the pain. “The menu! The handwriting on this letter is the same. Check the, the menu,” that was all he could get out before finally dropping the rest of the way to the ground.

He heard the deaf calls of his name. But that was it. Then everything was gone.

 

When Shawn woke up his body felt stiff. It sucked a lot, actually. He started to shift around to try and ease the feeling. He wanted to go back to sleep. Honestly, he didn’t sleep much at Mitchel’s place and he was hoping to get some of that back.

He was pulled away from his nap even more when he heard his name being called. He opened his eyes and looked up to the person keeping him from his beauty sleep.

Gus was looking down at him, eyes full of worry and relief all at once.

Shawn looked at him for a moment as the events came back to him. “Oh my god,” he mumbled. “It’s Morgan Freeman. I really am in heaven.”

Gus frowned at that. “Really, Shawn? Jokes on your deathbed?”

“Not a deathbed if I’m not dead.”

“You damn well could’a been,” Gus hissed back. “Also I’m taking the Morgan Freeman comment as a compliment.”

“As you should,” Shawn responded as he pulled himself into a sitting position. “Any man would. I just compared you to one of the smoothest voices in all the English language.”

“You know that’s right,” Gus agreed with a sharp nod. He sat back down in the chair beside Shawn’s bed. The joke had the desired effect of both proving Shawn was okay and calming Gus down out of whatever panic he’d probably been in since he arrived.

Shawn finally took a moment to examine its surroundings. He obviously was in a hospital. Which sucked. Shawn hated hospitals. He had one of those big breathing assistant masks on. Lame. He also noted the IV stabbed into his wrist. He decided everything chalked up to a good ‘fuck this’.

Shawn made quick work of pulling off the breathing assistant and wiping a hand down his face.

“Shawn,” Gus started, clearly not having any of it. “What are you doing?”

“Getting the hell outta here,” Shawn explained as he made a move for the IV.

Gus quickly reacted by grabbing his arm and holding it back. “Shawn, don’t you dare pull that out.”

The detective let out a loud groan. “Gus! I’m fine. Besides, I have a case to finish solving.”

“You are not ‘fine’, Shawn!” Gus hissed out. “You nearly died! You’ve been out for almost two days! Do you even know what you inhaled?”

“Poison. Duh.”

Gus frowned harder at that.

“Gus, please, you’re going to get wrinkles worse than my father if you keep looking at me like that.”

“You’re probably the reason he has those wrinkles.”

“You wound me.” He looked up at his partner with faux hurt, putting his free hand on his chest. “Besides, I’m pretty sure my father was born a crotchety old man.”

“This is serious, Shawn. You had strychnine poisoning.”

“What is that, like the pain medicine?”

“That’s anodyne,” Gus hissed out. “Strychnine is a poison that causes muscle spasms and paranoia. And in severe cases like yours, can be fatal.”

“Ah, but it wasn’t,” Shawn smiled up at him. “And isn’t that what we should be focused on here?”

“No, it’s not. Do you even realize you-“ Gus was cut off when he noticed Shawn’s eyes dart directly to the door. Gus turned his head to follow the line of vision and saw Lassiter standing in the doorway.

“Am I interrupting?” he asked with a raised brow.

“Yes,” Gus started.

“No,” Shawn responded immediately after, cutting him off.

Gus sent Shawn a glare.

Lassiter looked between the two of them before signing out, “Right.” He let himself step more into the room. “Listen, Spencer, I wanted to-“

“Gus!” Shawn called out, interrupting the detective. “Go down to the kitchen and see if they have any pineapple.”

“Oh hell no,” Gus began to argue. “The second I leave you’re gonna make a break for it.”

“Lassie is right here,” Shawn said, gesturing to the other. “I doubt he’d let me scamper off any.”

Gus matched Shawn’s gaze for a moment. Almost as if a silent battle of wills was going off between them. Finally, Gus frowned and said, “Fine. But if you get out that bed before I get back or a doctor tells you to, I will kill you myself, Shawn.”

“Love you too, buddy!” Shawn called out after him as he left. Shawn watched him leave out the door and waited a moment before immediately pulling out the IV from his arm.

“Spencer!” Lassiter hissed out.

“Oh calm down, Lassie,” Shawn sighed as he got up from the bed and started to look around.

“Guster just threatened you with death and you’re still going against both him and the doctors?” Lassiter crossed his arms and gave the other an unimpressed look.

“I don’t do hospitals,” Shawn said as he finally found his clothes. “Gus should know better than to leave me alone in them. If anything, it’s his fault for believing me.”

Shawn started to strip off the hospital gown to throw his actual clothes back on.

Lassiter made a sound of surprise before looking away.

“I don’t mind if you look.”

“Yeah, well, I do. Couldn’t you have gone into the bathroom to do that?”

“Absolutely not. This way if a nurse walks in she’ll either be scared off from embarrassment or will be so enraptured by my masculine wiles that she’ll be mesmerized giving us time for our escape.”

“And if it’s a man?”

“Same 50-50,” Shawn finished buttoning his pants and looked to the other. “I’m decent, mother.”

Lassiter turned back to face him but not without a scowl on his face. “You really should stay.”

“Don’t start that. I’m trying to get out of here before Henry gets here. Now come on,” he said, starting for the door. But not before a hand grabbed his arm and pulled him back. Shawn looked back at Lassiter. An unreadable expression on the detective's face.

“Spencer, we need to talk.”

Shawn gave a groan. He pulled his arm back and crossed them. “Fine, fine. But make it quick. I really am trying to bolt before my father or Gus find me.”

“The tip you gave us at the police station.”

Shawn’s posture became less defensive at that, now fully listening.

“You were right. We went to that dinner and got a warrant to search the worker who does the menu art on the boards.”

Shawn sat back against the bed as he listened.

“Turns out it was a man named James Cox. His fiancé apparently was an old ex of Collins’ who’d been trying to get back in touch with him recently.”

Shawn nodded in understanding. “Not wanting some guy to be an issue with his relationship he goes in to kill him and try and make it look like an accident.”

“Doesn’t stop there,” Lassiter informed. “Collins had apparently scammed the woman out of about three hundred dollars after they split ways.”

“Well. Didn’t see that one coming. Guessing Cox still isn’t very happy with Mitch.”

“Pretty much.”

There was a small pause as Shawn flicked through the information just given to him and the information he already had. Making sure each piece was accounted for. “Just in case, you might wanna keep an eye on Mitchel. Still can’t be sure if the fiancé was in on it or not.”

“I’ve got a guy on that already. Cox admitted to it all, but we’re still on the cautious side of things. O’Hara is looking into the fiancé.”

Shawn nodded. “Well!” He slapped his leg and stood back up. “Since all that's done. Guess I’ll see you-“

“Stop.”

Shawn looked at him.

“We aren’t done talking. Sit.”

Shawn sat back down with a frown.

“You could have died.”

“But I didn’t.”

“But you could have,” Lassiter hissed out. “What part of that do you not understand? Why did you open that letter? Why didn’t you just bring it to us? If you knew what was in it and who sent it-“

“I didn’t know at the time. At least not for sure.”

“Oh, I see, so you wanted to test to make sure it was actually poisoned?”

“Duh.”

“Spencer!” Lassiter shouted in surprise.

“What! You wouldn’t have believed me if I’d brought it in!”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes I do!” Shawn leapt back to his feet, giving Lassiter an accusatory glare. “You didn’t believe Mitchel when he came to you begging for help cause someone was trying to kill him.”

“That’s because he didn’t have any kind of real evidence.”

“And what about me, huh? Why didn’t you believe me? Why don’t you ever believe me?”

“How can I? All you ever do is lie!”

Shawn wanted to argue that. But he knew even that would be a lie in itself. Instead, he said, “Every lie is built off a kernel of truth. Didn’t you learn anything from Ryan?”

“This isn’t about Ryan. This is about you. You’re not Ryan.”

“Funny that you’d say the same thing my dad did during that case,” Shawn signed out with an almost humored voice. “Especially since you’re the two people who seem to trust me the least.” He shook his head before looking back up to meet Lassiter’s eyes. “Fine. I lie. But there’s always a kernel. I’m not against you, Lassie. You don’t believe I’m psychic. But at least believe that I know what I’m doing and that I’m right.” Shawn looked around the room for a moment before realizing all his things were already in his pocket. “I always am,” he added on before making his way to the door.

Lassiter followed after him. “You’re not ‘always right’. You screw up just as much as the rest of us,” he argued. Clearly not done with this conversation like Shawn wanted him to be.

“I get there eventually. I was right about this case wasn’t I?”

“That doesn’t change the fact of what you did. And you can’t just leave, Spencer, stop!” He hissed and grabbed Shawn’s arm, stilling him right before the elevators.

Shawn gave an annoyed groan. He really wasn’t feeling up to the whole ‘cat and mouse’ shtick. “I’ll drink some charcoal when I get home, will that make you feel better?”

“Hardly.”

Shawn pulled his arm back and turned on his heel to look at the detective. “Carlton Lassiter, if I didn’t know any better I’d almost say you sound worried about me.”

Lassiter frowned at that, but didn’t give a response.

“Look, I was right. I got the guy and I survived. I’d like to call that a usual win for me and go home to get some Doritos.”

“You survived this time,” Lassiter pointed out harshly. “You keep running head first into stuff like this and there’s no telling what will happen to you. And I’ll tell you this right now, Spencer.” The detective stepped as close as he could to the other without touching. He made sure their eyes met before continuing. “I refuse to be the one who makes that call to Henry.”

Shawn’s mouth opened as if he was to respond, but he had nothing. He only looked between Lassiter’s eyes for the second they were there before the detective turned and walked off. Shawn watched him leave down the hall. Any arguments or rebuttals having completely died on his tongue.

Shawn didn’t linger for long. He really did hate hospitals and wanted to get out of there as soon as he could. When he walked out the elevator and onto the first floor, Gus was right there turning the corner.

“Shawn!” he called out, running up to him. A bowl of, most likely canned, peaches in his hand. “What the hell did I say about getting out of that bed.”

Shawn looked to him and plastered back on a faux pout. “And what about my pineapple, Gus? Those are peaches. And not even fresh ones.”

“Stop whining, Shawn. This was all they had. Are you still sick? Do you still have a fever?” Gus reached a hand up to Shawn’s forehead, only for the other to swat it away.

“How many times do I have to say ‘I’m fine’ before someone actually believes me?”

“Until you stop trying to get yourself killed,” Gus responded pointedly. He finally shoved the peaches off to Shawn who took them and, despite his complaints, did begin to eat them. “What did Lassiter want?”

“He wanted me to tell my dad about a sale at the Bass Shop going on right now,” he said as he popped a peach in his mouth and started towards the exit. “Oh and also so I could rub a healthy serving of ‘I told you so’ in his face over the Collins case. Which, I’ll spare you from if you give me a lift to my apartment.”

Gus only rolled his eyes but didn’t complain when Shawn crawled into his passenger seat.

Shawn pulled out his phone to messages from Juliet.

‘Heard you’re okay’

‘Come see me when you get a chance’

‘Lassiter too if you can’

‘He’s been really worried about you’

Shawn frowned and closed his phone. “Actually, Gus. Swing by the station for a second first.”