Ethos, part 2

By Tango

Angel resisted the urge to pace around the room. He knew Kathryn had lost her memory, but didn’t a person’s basic personality remain? She was demure for Christ’s sake, covering up her body in that nightgown as if he hadn’t seen and pretty much tasted every inch of her delectable flesh. She was almost virginal in her shyness.

She wasn’t faking it, that’s for sure. The innocence in her pretty green eyes, the pure confusion could not be faked, even by a deceiving bitch like her. No, she had no clue who or what she was. Anyone with that sweet wrinkled brow who nibbled her lip nervously as she tried to understand her situation could not be acting.

She would have recognized, had she remembered anything, that this certainly was not his old apartment. The shabby apartment with its even shabbier carpet was long gone. When he lost his career, when Kathryn made sure his life’s dream had fallen away to nothing, he went from the police station to the bar where he sat in a shocked drunken haze. During his suspension, he was certain they would allow him to come back. After all, hadn’t he always done the right thing? Hadn’t he worked hard and made sure the city was safe? No one could have been more stunned than him when he realized that there was nothing left of his career.

After a few months of living in a bottle, he was evicted from his apartment and ended up sleeping on Cordelia’s couch until she demanded that he get his ass in gear before she shoved her foot up it. Begrudgingly, he started Angel Investigations and became a private investigator. Much to his surprise, Cordy’s constant nagging finally paid off.

The first few months were slow going. It was hard to find work and when they did, it usually didn’t pay well. Then one night when Angel was being forced into being sociable by his staff, he saved the life of Rebecca Lowell. She was a television actress with a flagging career, but Cordy gushed over her like she was Madonna or something. Angel had no earthly idea who she was, but after breaking three ribs and suffering a concussion saving her from the car that tried to run her down, his image was splashed in the papers as the protector of the stars. From then on out, it couldn’t have been easier.

A year after he had lost his job on the force, Angel had bought and was living in the Hotel Hyperion, running his startlingly successful PI firm from it. He hired Cordy, then Wesley and Charles Gunn to help him with the firm.

After almost three years of business, they had rehabbed most of the first floor into offices and were halfway through restoring the rest of the hotel. He had a staff of almost twenty and was the richest private investigator in the city, maybe even in the country. Angel Investigations was now a machine. It could run on its own without his supervision for long periods of time. Not too bad for an ex-cop with a sense of vengeance.

Scowling and setting his cold coffee aside, he glanced back over at Kathryn. Bruised and whimpering in her sleep, she still attracted him. She had destroyed the one thing he valued above all else and he wanted her as much as he ever did.

She whimpered again in her sleep and he let out a frustrated groan before stalking to the bedroom door. He opened it and wanted to kick himself when he looked back at her again before leaving. As much as he wanted to slam the door behind him, he didn’t.

***

Kathryn’s beach house looked serene and peaceful as he pulled into her driveway. The large, elegant home was set on a rocky cliff right above the beach. The walls were mostly made of floor to ceiling windows to allow the breathtaking scenery inside. Angel always thought she enjoyed the idea of the world seeing her in coital bliss.

He punched in the code to her three car garage and shook his head in disbelief when the center door rolled open at his request. All this time and she hadn’t bothered to change her godamn code? Was she that stupid? He didn’t fool himself into thinking that he was one of the few men to actually know the code to her garage doors, nor did he focus on the fact that after years had passed, he still remembered it.

Instead, he stepped inside and saw that three shiny, unbelievably expensive cars all sat in their respective places inside. Scratching his head, he went into the house. Nothing appeared out of place or riffled through. Whoever tried to take her out hadn’t taken her from here unless she left willingly.

He had investigated a lot of cases with very little information, but he was working with next to nothing on this one. If only she could remember something, anything, it would be easier to know where to start. Kate was keeping her eye out for possible connections, Willy would report if he heard anything (if he knew what was good for him), and Lindsey was gathering a list of her known lovers, but it wasn’t enough. He could only hope that the culprit came looking for her again to finish the job.

The light was blinking on her answering machine and he pressed the button, bracing himself for what followed. Seven messages from various men came across, several of which were fairly suggestive in their intent, but it was the last message that piqued his interest.

“Kathryn,” a voice said rife with irritation, “this is Sebastian. Buffy’s missing. As much as I doubt she’s with you, call me anyway.”

Sebastian? Buffy? Angel stared at the machine for a second before he played the message again. Come to think of it, Kathryn had never mentioned if she had family. He didn’t even know if she had parents, not that they had sat around talking about family reunions when they were together. Jotting down the names and the time of the call, he headed up the spiraling staircase.

He hesitated just a fraction of a second before he stepped across the threshold to her bedroom. He saved this room for last and felt more apprehension about entering it than he had walking into a war zone during his old cop days.

Her bed was neatly made, but he had no problem remembering what it was like when it was not, when the duvet was tossed on the floor and the sheets were tangled around their bodies. He had spent many nights wrapped in her sheets, in her. He could still taste the salt of her skin, slick with sweat, hear the husky cries as she came unraveled, feel the way her fingertips brushed across his skin.

He didn’t love her, but Kathryn was the closest he had ever been. He was smart enough to realize she was an actress, a mind blowing addiction that wriggled under a man’s skin until he could think of nothing else but being inside her. He couldn’t imagine how he had ever thought he could resist her.

He glanced around the room and was struck by the new addition to the room – a painting above her bed. He sucked in a breath and became hard almost instantly, which he was sure was the desired effect. The painting was of Kathryn herself, nude and sprawled in bed as if some man – most likely the painter – had just risen from it. The artist had captured her completely. Angel could almost hear her ragged breath, could almost see the quivering of her skin.

He stalked to the sliding glass doors off of her bedroom and looked outside at the sea. How the painting didn’t make her look even more like a slut was beyond him. She looked lustful and beautifully in disarray. He hated Kathryn, he reminded himself. No amount of sex or memories of it would change that.

Determinedly, he went to the closet and pulled out a suitcase before randomly filling it with her clothes. He didn’t fold anything and he didn’t glance at the bits of lace and silk he shoved into it from her lingerie drawer. He wasn’t going to let that little whore get the best of him.

***

“Angel.”

Angel rolled his eyes and turned to face Cordelia, whom he knew already had her hands on her shapely hips. Sure enough, he was getting the full weight of her glare.

“Cordelia,” he echoed.

“Not only is your little patient wearing *my* clothes, but you left her up there all by herself and didn’t tell anyone you were leaving. Wesley heard her screaming in her sleep and ran up there. Two customers were scared away cause they think we’re keeping people hostage.”

“I went to get some of her things,” he said, shrugging noncommittally.

“You can’t just leave Little Miss Amnesia by herself when she can’t even walk to the bathroom,” Cordelia fumed. Rolling her eyes, her glare softened to mere disapproval and she climbed the three steps to the landing where he stood. “When are you going to tell me who she is?”

“I told you, Cordy,” Angel hedged. “Her name is Kathryn Merteuil. She was attacked in the alley behind Willy’s-“

“No, I mean who she is to you?” Cordy asked, emphasizing the last word.

“She’s nothing to me,” Angel growled, tightening his hand on her suitcase and heading up the stairs. “Nothing.”

“Right,” Cordelia shot back sarcastically. “I bet she’s nothing to you.”

“Go home, Cordy,” he called back.

***

A banging on the front door caused her to jump in start. Frantically, she looked around for a place to hide. The little apartment left few options that wouldn’t be discovered fairly quickly should the visitor try to break in. The person on the other side jiggled the doorknob and she tiptoed across the room to hide behind the battered little couch against the far wall.

She held her breath as she heard what she thought was a key in the lock and folded herself more tightly into herself. She held her breath and squeezed her eyes closed. This was it. They had found her and now she was going to die.

“Buffy?” a familiar voice called out and she let out her breath in an annoyed groan.

“Fuck Sebastian,” Kathryn ground out as she stood up from her hiding place. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“Where the hell is Buffy?” Sebastian said, swinging the lightweight apartment door closed. He didn’t focus on his ex-stepsister, but looked around the apartment instead. As usual, he was dressed impeccably even though he looked slightly rumpled. Seeing how handsome and rich he looked as usual only reminded her that she was far from her usual elegance. She was stuck wearing Buffy’s clothes for the time being and although her twin had fabulous taste, they weren’t high dollar fabrics she was accustomed to.

“Nice to see you too,” she huffed crossing her arms over her chest.

Sebastian sneered. He had never forgiven her for trying to ruin his life and after he recovered from almost dying five years before, the whole family fell apart. Kathryn was expelled from Manchester and she finished off her senior year in public school. The ruin of her reputation was something she had never forgiven. Their parents’ short-lived marriage ended in divorce when the truth came out. This was only after the family spent months clawing and fighting and placing blame on each other. Buffy was the only one fairly unaffected. She had won a scholarship to a prodigious boarding school in England several years before and stayed on to finish her senior year there.

Sebastian graduated high school at Manchester and married Annette less than a year after graduation while they were both still in college. Kathryn refused to speak to Annette, but Annette and Buffy became fast friends when she visited home for the holidays. His change in attitude had forged a friendship between him and Buffy as well, but it took quite a while. She had been away for everything that had happened, but anyone who was a close friend of her sister’s was not a friend of hers. That lesson had been learned when she was very young.

“Buffy hasn’t been to work in seven days,” he snapped irritably. “Her boss called me because strangely, I, not you, am listed as her emergency contact. I flew to LA from New York, then rented something that barely passes as a car to drive to Sunnydale, after stopping by your empty house. I haven’t slept or eaten in over twenty-four hours while I was calling everyone we knew – including you – to find your twin, so if you don’t mind, we’ll dispense with the bullshit. Where’s Buffy?”

“I don’t know,” Kathryn whimpered, running a shaky hand through her hair. “I’ve been here for days and she hasn’t come home.”

Sebastian looked her up and down for a moment and then softened his glare. He had never seen Kathryn so out of sorts. Not even when she was blackballed from Manchester.

“What’s going on?” he asked, struggling to remain calm.

“They were after me and I told Buffy to hide. I swear, I called and told her not to come to LA, but she was worried and I think she might have gone anyway. My message was still on the machine when I got here.”

“Who are ‘they’?”

“Oh God,” Kathryn moaned, lowering herself to the couch. “What if they killed her?”

Sebastian watched for a moment and then froze. She wasn’t acting. With Kathryn, it was hard to tell some days. He hadn’t really spent any time with her since their parents divorced, but he knew Kathryn well even to know that she hadn’t changed. She cared about nothing but herself and Buffy. Even Buffy was left hanging by her irresponsible twin on a regular basis, but he knew that she the only thing she loved was her sister. The terror on her face was real.

“Are you fucking serious?” Sebastian demanded, crossing the room to shake her shoulders. “Kathryn!”

“Someone is trying to kill me,” she said shakily, looking up at Sebastian with tearful eyes.

“There’s a shock,” he said sarcastically, releasing her shoulders and sitting down next to her. “I can’t believe someone would try to take you out.”

“They got Buffy instead!” she shouted back. Tears streamed down her cheeks and she shuddered violently. “How else could you explain her being missing for this long?”

“I don’t know,” he said quietly.

***

Angel tiredly stripped off his clothes and climbed into the guest bedroom’s meager double bed. The room closest to his bedroom hadn’t been rehabbed yet, but thankfully they had already replaced the bed. The room had the old, musty smell that the other unrestored rooms had, but he could care less.

He hadn’t slept for days and he still was no closer to figuring out this case. After leaving Kathryn’s house, he made a couple of stops. Kate was no closer to finding the attempted murderer than he was, Willy swore he hadn’t heard anything about the “chick in the alley” and Lindsey had nothing to give him but a disturbingly long list of ex-lovers. He had been tempted to start interviewing her ex-lovers immediately, but somehow beginning that part of the investigation at one in the morning seemed a little less than professional.

Thinking over his approach to the mass of probably innocent ex-lovers, Angel fell into a troubled sleep. Barely three hours later, a shrill scream woke him and he barely took the time to slip into boxers before running into his bedroom. Kathryn was tossing and turning in her sleep, frantically clawing at some invisible attacker in a desperate attempt to escape. Cursing under his breath, Angel slid into bed with her and pulled her against him.

He wrestled with her and soothed her, whispering in her ear that she was safe, that no one was going to hurt her. Half asleep, she hiccupped and snuggled against him, pulling his arms around her. She wiggled in closer, pressing her firm little ass against his rapidly hardening groin.

He closed his eyes and tried not to think about anything at all, but the fact remained that she was in his bed, in his arms and only half covered in Cordelia’s silk nightgown that he was undoubtedly going to have to replace. Being disgusted that he wanted her didn’t change the fact that he did.

***

Faith banged loudly on Spike’s apartment door for a full ten minutes. She was already pissed off and had to tell two of his neighbors to fuck off before he opened the door.

“What the bloody hell do you want?” he shouted as he yanked the door open. He focused hung over, bleary eyes at Faith and stepped back to let her in. “God, woman, can’t you wait until a decent hour to break down a bloke’s fucking door?”

“We’ve got a huge problem, so I don’t really give a shit about your beauty sleep,” Faith growled, stomping over the threshold. She crossed the room and plopped down on his couch before lighting a cigarette and taking a long draw.

“What now?” he asked. He headed into his small half kitchen and pulled two bottles of beer from the fridge. He tossed one over to Faith before opening and downing half of his.

“The bitch isn’t dead,” Faith snarled. “You fucked up.”

“I fucked up?” he sputtered. “You’re the one who wanted to stab her to death. I strangled her neat like.”

“No, it wasn’t all neat like,” she said, mocking his voice. “She’s alive and guess where she's recuperating?”

“I killed her,” he argued. “She was dead as a bloody doornail.”

“She’s at Angel Investigations, lounging in the bed of our famous detective. I called the contact and told him the contract is off. If he wants her out of the picture, he’s going to have to do it himself.”

“We need that money,” Spike shouted, not bothering to lower his voice. “I didn’t do all that tracking and footwork and strangling for nothing!”

“We,” she corrected. “We’re keepin’ half of it, but only because I threatened to go have a chat with Angel if he didn’t.”

“If you weren’t fuck buddies with the pig, we wouldn’t have this problem,” he bit out, slumping on the couch next to her and slamming his empty beer bottle on the coffee table.

“Ex-fuck buddies and if you had just done it right the first time, we’d wouldn’t have this problem, you asshole,” she shot back.

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