"The only safe thing is to take a chance."

- Mike Nichols

                                                                                   ***

A hysterical little laugh bubbled up her throat and she clamped a hand over her mouth to try and stifle it. When the urge had passed, she slid her fingers up to the bridge of her nose and pinched it. Her eyes squeezed shut for a second before she could actually make herself answer him.

"What in the hell do you mean by we?" she asked, her voice very low. "We are not doing anything. Ever."

"I can't just let you go."

Now she did laugh, her fingers rubbing across her closed eyelids. "And what are you going to do to stop me?"

He scoffed—making her glare at him—as he took in her bloody, disheveled state. "You've got the strength of a sick kitten," he said with a cruel smirk. "So I think the real question is how are you gonna get through me?"

She closed her eyes again and her chest heaved a little with the despair she was fighting. But she couldn't be weak. Not yet. Leveling her iciest glare on the Hunter, she said, "The way I see it, you got two choices here, cowboy. Either you let me go, or one of us dies bloody here in the middle of freaking nowhere, Minnesota."

He shook his head. A stubborn light shone in his eyes and she wanted nothing more than to be alone with her misery. "You don't understand," Caleb said. "I can't just let you walk."

"In about three hours, give or take, you're not gonna have much of a choice. You won't be able to stop me." She threw out a desperate card. "You might have even less time. I'd be very surprised if there wasn't a demon headed this way now to make sure I'm doing what I'm supposed to."

"And what's that?"

She bit her tongue but couldn't stop the thoughts: Pretending like Sirius never meant anything to me. Pretending like I couldn't care less about where he is or what they're doing. Like I can just carry on like nothing ever happened.

"Don't you worry that pretty head about it." Shrugging, she continued, "That's it. That's all there is. Those three choices. You let me go, you tangle with a demon or you put me down."

Caleb tilted his head, his eyes narrowing and forehead creasing. He opened his mouth to say something, but stopped. Reluctantly, he tucked his gun back into the jacket he was wearing and sat down on the empty bed. He ran a hand through his hair, then down over his mouth. 

Looking away from her, he explained, "You kill people. You know about what Hell's planning."

"Caleb, dammit, I'm not arguing with you about whether or not you should kill me. I'm arguing about if you're going to." She bit the inside of her cheek, then said, "If you decide you gotta, fine. If you can live with that better than you can stomach letting me go, fine. I won't even be mad. But you need to pick. And then you need to do it. And then you need to go."

He stared at her for a long time, his eyes very dark. "How does a Hunter like you become a Collector?"

A disbelieving laugh gusted out of her, and she had to rein it in quickly before it could morph into an uglier emotion. She'd told Sirius because he'd earned the story. All Caleb had earned so far was her contempt. But the look on his face made her think that her answer might be important. 

That didn't mean she intended to cave so easily though.

Smiling a little, she said, "That's a pretty personal question there, Cay. You should at least buy a girl dinner first."

"You're no girl. And don't call me that," he said flatly. He leaned back, giving her a smirk of his own. "Does seem to touch a nerve though, doesn't it? What'd you do?"

"I'm serious about that demon," she hedged. "I really don't feel like watching you die."

"That's sweet. I'm still not leaving."

"Why?"

A breath huffed out through his nose. Shaking his head, he asked, "How did you become this?"

Her smirk slipped and she looked away. She had no obligation to answer this child. "Why are you still here?"

"I asked first."

"Why are you still here?" She folded forward suddenly when her broken leg shifted back into place, the bone crackling as it was repaired just enough to let her walk again.

"Why'd they take the mutt but not you?" Caleb didn't move as she took several deep breaths, trying to gauge just how much she had been healed.

"Don't call him that," she hissed, turning to glare at the Hunter. Sitting up, she leaned toward him. "You screwed up our collection and he left you alive. You should be grateful."

Caleb turned his head to show her the purplish bruise tracing an ugly pattern from his temple to his cheekbone. "Not my fault your girl was running around in the dark with a werewolf."

"Your fault you couldn't stop it from tearing her chest open," Galloway said, momentarily delighting in the wounded expression he gave her before he looked down, his mouth tight with failure and guilt.

Then she covered her mouth with a hand, horrified by that sentiment. Just because she didn't like Caleb didn't mean she should say such cruel things. She hadn't even been trying to get him to leave; she'd just known how that would hurt him.

And she'd wanted to hurt him. She'd wanted to lash out and make him suffer like she was suffering.

Her heart twisted inside her and she shook her head. But Caleb beat her to it. "Why?" he snapped viciously. "So you could sic your mongrel on her and watch her get torn apart? Has Hell twisted you that much? Because if you're really that far gone this conversation might go in a different direction."

That was a little too much.

"Don't mistake my occupation for my desires," she snarled, and he looked up. She tried to get out of the bed, but only managed two steps away before her knees gave and thudded heavily into the floor. Trembling with the effort, she said, "I made a Deal because everyone I ever loved was murdered. Torn from me. My entire family. So don't you dare sit there in judgment of me. You think you've lost things, little boy, because of that wraith?"

She blinked against the sudden blurring of her vision and was sickened by the tears she felt running down her face. But she might as well dive all the way in. She wouldn't sit here and get preached at by some child who had no idea what she'd sacrificed over the decades.

"You chose this life. You. You could have left it behind. You had a place to go, people to take you in—I made sure before I just left you. You could have chalked up what happened to you as a freak occurrence. You could have lied to yourself long enough that you started to believe whatever story they printed in the paper."

She had to stop and draw in a ragged breath. "But you chose this. And because you did, you think you know what pain and suffering are. You have no idea the depths of it I've seen. The decades I've endured working for these filthy demons. Trying to make sure I don't lose what little is left of my Soul."

Caleb was watching her, his mouth a thin line, the skin around his eyes tight and bloodless. 

Sucking in a shaky breath, she said, "You have no right. No right to demand anything from me. Not answers, not anything. Do you understand me?"

A thick silence filled the room after that and she lay down on the floor, too tired to do anything more. Tears continued to flow past her closed eyelids, but she didn't care if he saw them or not.

Then, very slowly, he said, "You sold your soul...to save your family? You don't want to be doing this?"

Her eyes still closed, she nodded, the movement barely noticeable. He muttered under his breath something that sounded suspiciously like a few four-letter words in compound form. Then he said, "So I owe you twice."

Now her eyes opened. "What?"

His jaw worked furiously for a moment. "I said Siobhan put me up. What I meant was she saved my life. I didn't listen when you told me not to tell people about what I'd seen that night. The rest of my family didn't want anything to do with the crazy boy who'd probably murdered his parents and brother. I ran away, trying to find my way back to that world. Your world. And I almost died more than once."

"I don't need your story, Caleb," she said, trying to stop him before he snapped what little was left of her mind. Galloway let her eyes fall closed. Black despair was clawing eagerly at the already ragged edges of her Soul. She didn't need this too.

Caleb didn't seem to realize the turmoil he was subjecting her to. Quietly, he finished, "She taught me. Fed me. Patched me up when I needed it—"

"Stop," Galloway gasped out, curling into a ball on the floor. "Please. I don't want to hear about the lives I've destroyed. It's bad enough that I send people to Hell."

She didn't move when she heard him kneel next to her. Her eyes opened when he slid his arms under her and picked her up once more. Listlessly, she turned her face away from him. "I don't want to know, Caleb," she said thickly. "I just want..."

He set her down much more gently this time. She sat, looking down at the floor. Eventually, she continued, "I want you to leave."

Caleb sniffed, his arms crossing over his chest. "What happens when they find you here?"

She shrugged. "Maybe they drag me downstairs, too. Maybe they just take me home."

"And what if you aren't here when they get here?"

"Doesn't matter. They'll find me. And I have to keep going, Caleb. You seem to be misunderstanding that. This little heart-to-heart doesn't change what I'm going to have to do. I collect Souls for Hell. I kill people who don't really deserve it most of the time. Because I'd rather do that than get skinned every day for a thousand years. Because this is at least marginally better than becoming a demon, which is still a possibility if I don't toe the damn line."

"Jesus H. Christ. Do you want me to kill you?" Caleb asked in exasperation. "No, seriously. Is that what this is? Some plea for me to end it for you?"

She laughed, the sound wavering. "No one wants to die, Caleb. I'm just telling you how it is. I collect poor bastards who sell their Soul. Then I go hunt monsters like I'm something different from them. I'm starting to understand that I'm not."

Caleb put his face in his hands. "You know I dream about you?"

Galloway was pulled up short by the strangeness of that statement. She blinked at him, then shook her head. "Okay. Creepy. Do you think you could keep your questions in a straight line? I can only keep up with one conversation at a time."

"It's what I've been sitting here thinking for the past ten minutes," he explained, looking up at her with a deep sigh. "Yeah. In my dreams, you save my family. Sometimes you are family. I don't know you, but at the same time I do. I've spent more than a third of my life thinking about you."

"Are you trying to confess something here?" she asked warily. She had not been expecting this.

Caleb laughed, the sound strained. "I can't kill you. I've spent too long pretending that if I did find you, you'd want to be found and that you'd want to help me. I saw you the other night with the Hellhound. It didn't make a damn bit of difference and that's wrong and more than half crazy. I came in here pretending like I could kill the person I owed my life to. Turns out I can't."

"So..." She frowned, then coughed. "You're...letting me go?"

He shrugged helplessly. "I can't kill you. I almost wish I could. I know I should. Still can't."

Galloway stared at him, watching the battle that was raging in his eyes. She didn't understand how she could be so important to someone she didn't even know.

Like he knew what she was thinking, he leaned away from her. "You were that larger than life hero. I wanted to find you so badly for so long because things just kept getting worse, and I thought you could make it better. I obsessed over you. And lately it's been getting worse. It's like some kind of warped miracle that I've finally found you and that you might actually be able to help me."

Galloway held up a hand. "You are inching ever so slowly closer into creepy stalker territory. I get it, okay? But you didn't answer my question."

Caleb stood up and took one of her arms over his shoulders, getting her to her feet. "I was never going to kill you," he said despondently, "but I am going with you."

She jerked away from him just to try and fall over before catching herself on the wall. "Caleb, no. They'll kill you."

"Nice to know you care."

Now she sighed, all of her fight abandoning her. "I've always cared, Caleb. That's kind of what's led to this whole situation."

He took her arm again and said, "I've spent years looking for you. I'm not letting you get away that easy. There are some things I need to know, and you're going to tell me. You're going to help."

"Things like what?" she asked, not really resisting as he practically dragged her toward the door.

"Things like why there's been so much demon activity across America lately." He smiled grimly at her. "A lot of this is personal, but the rest is just business. Like you said, you work for Hell, maybe you can tell us what gives. Kind of a once in a lifetime opportunity, you know?"

"Us?" she asked carefully, her legs not wanting to work as this fresh shock coursed through her.

Part of her wanted to believe this was all another fever dream: Sirius, this slightly crazy Hunter, his one in a million connection to her. The fact that he was somehow involved in what could be a buildup to the Hell gate being opened. 

Briefly she wondered how she could have missed the signs, then had the uncomfortable thought that Sirius had kept her far too occupied for her to really pay attention. She'd avoided hunting, then she'd been too wrapped up in her own drama.

Caleb nodded. "Some people I work with sometimes."

When he didn't offer anymore, she said, "What makes you think I'll help you?"

"Because you're a Hunter."

Her head was starting to ache again. He was cute, but he obviously had more than a few screws loose. "You move pretty fast, cowboy. You know this is all nuts, right?"

He wrapped his arm around her waist to keep her upright as he got the door open. "I'm aware," he said. "Crazy's just kind of how I function, though."

"Great," she muttered, scanning the parking lot for her car. "How do you know you can trust me?"

"Let's just say I've got years worth of faith. And after talking to you, I'm thinking that you hate Hell. So you'll help me stop whatever it is they're doing."

She couldn't argue with that logic. It still bothered her that, even though she'd been given an idea of their plans, she'd been blind to what Caleb said was happening. 

She frowned when she didn't immediately see the Chevelle. Then the memory crashed down over her. Breathlessly, she said, "Wait. My car. We have to get my car."

Caleb snorted as they started across the parking lot. "Leave it. That's what brought me over. I saw what was left of that beast being towed."

"No!" Galloway shrieked, frantic. "That's my car. I can't just leave her. They'll scrap it!"

Caleb winced, holding the ear closest to her. "Christ, woman, bring it down an octave."

"Go get my car!" Galloway demanded, struggling to pull away from him. She was still very weak and growled when he didn't even break a sweat trying to hold onto her.

Caleb just shook his head, and she screamed again, yanking away from him as hard as she could. Overestimating herself, she overbalanced and fell.

With a bored expression, he crouched down next to her. Muttering, he pushed a strand of hair back and said, "We need to go. No mechanic in his right mind is going to take on that mess anyway. You'd need a specialist. And we don't have the time."

"I have a specialist," she croaked and he jerked back in surprise. Then she frowned. "What do you mean, we don't have time?"

"Now who's not keeping their questions in a straight line? If demons are going to come looking for you, it's probably best they don't see you getting all friendly with someone like me." Caleb eyed her. "You have a specialist?"

Glaring at him as fiercely as she could manage, she said, "I'm not asking you to do anything more than go to the tow yard," she paused and dug into her pocket before extracting the last of the cash, "pay for the tow, pay for another tow and give them this address."

Pulling out the pen and small, black notebook she'd seen in the inside pocket of his coat, she hastily scribbled out Milo's address. Handing it back to him, she looked up desperately. "Please!"

Caleb sighed shaking his head. Holding up the notepad, he said, "I do this, you help me with the demons?"

She didn't even need to think about this. "Yes."

"Fine," he said. "But, fair warning, at the very least the frame's twisted, the front axle's out of alignment and there's a crack in the windshield."

"The windshield's gone," she said with a frown as he pulled her to her feet.

Caleb gave her a dry look as he helped her into a beat up, faded green Ford pickup. He tucked that rebellious strand of hair back. "That was a joke, Galloway."

He shut the door, ignoring her glare as he walked around to the driver's side. She looked at the door to her room, her heart aching for Sirius and bewildered by the rapid turn of events. She jumped slightly when he turned the key, the engine coughing a bit before it turned over.

Caleb pulled out, heading east and said, "Are you sure you're a Collector?"

She turned to face him, then scowled. "We've already established this."

He rubbed ruefully at his right ear. "I would have sworn you sounded just like a banshee I hunted a few years back."

Her scowl deepened, and he just gave her a smartass grin.

She turned away from him, leaning her still-warm forehead against the glass of the window. The world was whipping around her uncomfortably fast. Even for her, this situation was weird. And that was really saying something for someone like her.

"What if I couldn't tell you about Hell?" she said as they drove.

"What do you mean?" Caleb turned into the town junkyard.

"If I said I wasn't going to tell you anything about Hell, what would you have done?"

He parked, then killed the engine. Turning to look at her, he said, "We need to know. I would have needed to get that information one way or the other. It's easier this way." He looked down at the keys cradled in his hands, then shook his head. "I already told you. I didn't want to believe that you were who I thought you were. Honestly, part of me still doesn't. But it's going to work out in both of our favor, the fact that you work for Hell."

"Yeah?" She raised an eyebrow. "How so?"

"I don't suppose a little revenge would interest you?" His eyes met hers.

She shrugged, even though the idea thrilled her with a nameless joy. "Can you be more specific?"

"More and more demons have been coming through. They're looking for something, we don't know what. But when we manage to catch 'em, they don't go down easy." He cocked his head. "Exorcisms, they can be long. And tricky. Painful."

She shivered, a malicious hunger waking up inside her. Distantly, she nodded and he got out of the truck. Leaving her alone. Abandoning her to her thoughts.

Maybe fate is a real thing, she thought. That was the only explanation to everything.

When she'd first seen him in their motel room, she could have sworn he was hellbent on murder. Then it turned out this way. She had the thought that this could just be a trap to kill her in a slightly less public way, but for some reason she really believed he was telling the truth about his intentions.

Caleb wasn't as difficult to read as Sirius.

Her heart immediately shied away from that and she held her breath, struggling to keep it at bay.

Her concentration broke when her pocket started to buzz. She jumped, startled, then dug her fingers into the pocket, extracting the phone. The screen was cracked and bloody, but she could still make out who was calling.

Taking two calming breaths, she hit answer. "Theron."

"Do I need to send someone to come get you? Apparently, the demons I sent were a little overzealous."

Don't ask about Sirius. Don't ask about Sirius.

"No. I can find my own way. But I would like them to pay for damages." Even she was impressed with how steady her voice was.

"Done," he said with all the authority and crispness of a businessman closing a deal. "Also, until I can arrange for a new Hound, you'll be on administrative leave."

"I don't need a new one!" she blurted then clapped her hand over her mouth, closing her eyes.

Theron laughed, the sound nasty. "Well, I'm afraid Sirius will be staying with us for a little while."

"Why can't I just wait for him to get back?" Apparently she couldn't handle not asking about him.

"Because, foolish girl, I haven't decided if he gets to come back. In fact, think of this as your punishment as well. Feel lucky it isn't quite so physical as his."

With that sickening sentiment, leaving her to wonder what exactly they were being punished for, he hung up and she dropped the phone on the seat next to her.

But then Caleb got back in the truck. "They think you're crazy, too."

She couldn't give into her pain just yet.