Bailey took the card with a quick ‘sure’ before sliding it into his back pocket. Chris gave Bailey another pat on the back before reminding him to see a doctor to be safe. Bailey assured him that he would and went to walk out the door when he realized he had forgotten to tell Chris something. With his hand on the door handle, Bailey turned back to see Chris walking towards his desk.

“Detective Walker!” Bailey called out, easily getting Chris’ attention, who turned to face Bailey with a curious gaze. “Um…I may have seen wrong but, I think there was the letter R burned into one of the buildings.”

“The letter R?” Chris asked, fully facing Bailey with his arms crossed and head tilted in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…when we were running, I happened to look back and I thought Boomer had written a ‘R’ into one of the buildings.” Bailey was starting to feel stupid for thinking that. He was panicked and running away so he likely saw wrong. Thinking that made him shake his head as he held out his hand and waved his own thoughts from the air. “Sorry, I probably saw wrong, forget I said that.”

With that, Bailey said goodbye and walked out the door, leaving Chris in thought. The officer took his bottom lip between his teeth while his fingers slowly tightened then loosened against his arms. Dropping his arms to his side, Chris spun around to a fellow officer and said, “Terry, come ‘ere.”

Officer Terry Busch popped his head up from his desk. Big blue eyes looked about for who called him until he saw Chris gesturing with his hand to come over. With a goofy grin, Terry stumbled his way out from behind his desk towards Chris and asked, “Yes, Detective?”

“When the area is safe, it may be nothing but, there’s something urgent that needs looking into.”

“What might that be, Detective?” Terry asked curiously upon hearing Chris’ slightly worried tone.

“Something that I hope is wrong,” Chris replied with a slight tremble in his voice.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

“You are going to be the end of me, Bailey Schaefer!” Amery hollered upon seeing Bailey enter his dorm. He had enough time to breathe before she was throwing herself at him. Though he was sore, he still managed to catch the girl who was crying heavily the moment she had her arms around him. “Are you ok? We saw on the news and I hadn’t heard from you so we were so worried!”

“Well, she was worried,” Ryan ‘corrected’ her to which he got a very angry tear filled glare. He shut his lips real quick and sent Amery a smile that she completely ignored. “It’s nice seeing you’re all right.”

“Yeah, sorry, Amery. It’s not like I tried to get into trouble.”

Bailey left out the part where he did in fact try to get into trouble. She didn’t need to know that, better to let the poor girl breathe. She was in hysterics enough already.

“On the plus side though…my car is fine!” Bailey looked down at Amery as if he expected her to be excited at the news. He had just found out himself since the battle between Seraph and Boomer was over. Town was being cleaned up and Bailey would get his car back some time tomorrow.

Amery did not receive the same joy Bailey did at that knowledge. She simply stared at him with an expression that stated she didn’t give a damn about the car. She was worried to death about Bailey but he came in and wanted to celebrate his car being ok? Yeah, Amery was not pleased.

“What’s important and what’s on ‘the plus side’ is that you are ok!” Amery jabbed her finger into his chest causing Bailey to curse.

“Keep stabbing me with your nail like that and I won’t be ok and that will be your fault,” Bailey explained, pointing accusingly at the girl when she finally released him from her vice grip. She scowled, rubbed at her red eyes until Bailey brought his hands up to wipe the tears away much gentler than her rough rubbing. She sniffled when he finally pulled her in for a real huge, a nice warm one that she easily sunk into.

“Sorry,I’m ok, thanks for worrying about me but it’s fine. Everything is fine and I will do my best not to let it happen again.”

“You better.”

Amery squeezed Bailey one last time before letting go. She then dragged Bailey to his bed where she had some brownies sitting on the bedside table. Apparently, she made them to calm her nerves and she thought somehow Bailey would sense there were brownies made and he would be ok. He laughed at that but thanked her for the delicious junk food.

“So what happened anyways?” Ryan asked, throwing his legs off his bed as he looked over to Bailey who was stuffing his face with brownies. Ryan chuckled at how big Bailey’s cheeks were since he had two brownies in his mouth. He munched away in an attempt to swallow them so he could answer but it seemed Amery didn’t like Ryan’s question.

“Ryan!” She hissed, spinning on her heel with her hands on her hips in a very ‘I am mad at you’ manner. Ryan held out his arms like he was confused and Bailey couldn’t blame him because he too was confused. “Don’t go asking something like that right after a terrible thing. Bailey needs time—"

“I’m fine though,” Bailey interrupted but then got Amery’s glare turned on him. He swallowed the lumps of brownies in his mouth and shrugged innocently at her burning eyes. “Seriously, like, I am fine.”

Amery didn’t seem pleased with Bailey’s answer. She mumbled something beneath her breath about ‘men’ but sat down at Bailey’s side and began stuffing her own face with brownies. When the girl made no move to yell at either of them Bailey took it as a hint that he was allowed to speak.

“To be honest, it all happened so fast it’s hard to remember it all,” Bailey admitted with a shrug of his shoulders. “Zane was there though.”

Amery choked on her brownie and Ryan laughed until she threw a brownie at him. Bailey wasn’t sure why she did that because he caught it and ate it so that wasn’t much of a punishment.

“Seriously? I bet he hates you after this,” Ryan said around his laughter, seeming to think the same thing Bailey imagined Zane did.

“He hated me before, I’m sure,” Bailey replied with a sigh and shake of his head. “Anyways, it was so hectic that I’m not even sure if I saw things correctly.”

“What makes you say that?” Amery inquired, earning herself a surprised glance from Ryan. She waved him off. He was the one who started asking questions so it was fine if Amery brought in a few of her own.

Bailey wasn’t sure if he wanted to tell them or not. He honestly believed his eyes were deceiving him the more he thought about it because how the hell could there have been a ‘R’ carved into a building?