Author's note: This is a direct sequel to my earlier story "Playing House"; it's the third story in the series that started with "Breaking Free." The events begin in October 1993, just over three months after the final scene of "Playing House."

A bit of a warning about the timeline for this story: Hannibal and Clarice start off traveling on separate paths, so events are not occurring simultaneously. I'm hopeful that the transition cues will be clear.

I find reader responses immensely fascinating, so if you like or dislike anything in particular as you're reading, please drop me a note via the review option or PM. If you have PMs enabled for replies, you'll personally receive my grateful thanks – and probably some babbling as well. ;-)

Finally, thanks are owed to fellow Lecterphile lovinghannibal, who provided lovely assistance with the nuances of Italian. Thanks, LH! As always, all mistakes are my own.

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine but the use of these particular words in this particular order. Everything else goes home to its proper copyright owner at last call.

Hannibal Lecter was not, strictly speaking, an insane man. Nor was he a foolish one.

But he was, in fact, a man in love - a condition known to mimic both states.

And at the moment, he was a man sifting through an uncountable number of variables, trapped on an airplane, unable to force it to bring him more swiftly to Clarice's side. The newscast had provided little information regarding her injuries, but the pain in her voice had been evident as they played a portion of her emergency call. The family of the recovered child, of course, had been media darlings, the father stoic and red-eyed, the mother sobbing and grateful for the FBI operation that had saved their daughter's life.

The child herself had not made any appearance beyond the images from the scene captured by a quick-on-its-feet local news organization that must have arrived simultaneously with the ambulance - quickly enough to enjoy international fame from its brief footage of the barefoot girl in a tattered white nightgown plastered to Clarice's side, face tucked into Clarice's neck, weight supported by Clarice's arms, refusing to be pulled away even as medical technicians attempted to assess injuries on them both and fresh blood streamed from an indeterminate wound in Clarice's side. The child appeared filthy and frightened, yes, but it was Clarice who drew the viewer's eye, coated as she was in drying blood.

Her face, her hair, what he could see of her neck and shirt alongside the little girl - she seemed to have showered in it. Presumably it belonged to one of the other agents who had entered the home with her or the pedophilic killer who had resided inside; were it hers, she would not have been standing at all, certainly not bearing the child's weight. If it belonged to a single donor, that man was, without question, dead. The question was how Clarice had come to be covered in his blood, and what damage had been done to her in return.

And those answers... those answers he could not determine until he could see her and speak with her. And that he could not do until the plane touched down and he had ascertained a safe method of reaching her hospital room. It galled.

He schooled himself to patience, reviewing again what knowledge he currently possessed and spinning out threads of possibility. He would need to be prepared for every eventuality.

On the morning of the day before Hannibal Lecter sat on a plane and contemplated her injuries, Clarice Starling rode in the back seat of an FBI-issue SUV and listened to Senior Field Agent Nelson Humphries complain about their current assignment. Beside him, eager rookie Chris Gebb drove the car and nodded in agreement with everything the senior agent said.

Shoot me now.

"Pointless waste of time, if you ask me," Humphries proclaimed for the third time since they'd left the Omaha field office behind. "Locals say it's been abandoned a long while now, and we can't confirm anything beyond that once upon a time some distant cousin owned it. We're more likely to see snow in July than come upon anything useful at this old farm shack."

Clarice was not going to make the mistake of again suggesting it was important to be thorough, not after the ear-blistering nonsense she'd gotten back the first two times. She tipped her head to look out the window, picturing not the stubby post-harvest fields waiting for someone to come along and turn them under but instead an enormous pile of paperclips. Best damn paperclip sorter in the Bureau, Doctor. She stifled her sigh. You were right. I think I've had about all the time and distance I can take. And I think… if I could still be useful, still make a difference for the lambs… I could learn to accept the rest. It probably won't be easy, but nothing worthwhile ever is, right?

"Christ, Starling, you falling asleep back there or what?" Humphries had twisted to look at her. "Thought you were supposed to be some kind of tight-assed professional. Or is sleeping on the job a perk of being Jack Crawford's little… protégé?"

His eyes crawled over her, and she burned at the implication.

"You want me to tell you again that you're not taking this seriously enough, Agent Humphries? Fine. I reiterate: You're not taking this seriously enough. A little girl is missing. She could be dead already. If she is, he'll take another one in ten to fourteen days. Maybe you don't give a shit about this little girl or the next one. But finding this guy and saving that little girl is all I care about right now."

"Maybe that's why you think you're here – but we all know this bullshit assignment is just old man Crawford throwing a bone to his very special agent." He smirked at her. "So just shut your mouth and do what you're told. Don't worry, honey; I'm sure he'll find a way to praise you anyway."

Gebb was watching her with wide eyes in the rearview mirror, and no wonder; he was from the local office out of Omaha, so fresh he squeaked, and clearly hadn't heard all the gossip yet.

Her brain nagged insistently, and she nearly ignored it in favor of the rage rapidly climbing her spine, except for one thing: It was the doctor's voice, calm and methodical, and his was the voice she could never ignore.

Maturity brought with it the realization that restrained menace was often more effective in dealing with bullies.

She relaxed back into her seat and smiled. It unsettled Humphries, she noted. Gebb was still watching her in the rearview.

"Eyes on the road, Agent Gebb." She spoke gently, with only a hint of chiding in her tone. "We still need to get to this 'bullshit assignment' in one piece."

Humphries was watching her warily now. So you're not entirely obtuse? Good for you, jackass.

"I'm at a loss, Agent Humphries. See, I can't figure out how you could be so stupid."

His eyes widened; his nostrils flared. Yeah, he was pissed now.

"You want to say that again, Starling?"

"Did you misunderstand me the first time, Agent Humphries? Was I in any way unclear?"

"You're begging for a reprimand in your jacket, Starling."

"I don't beg." Not for you. "And I really don't think that's how this is going to shake out."

"You don't think so? You don't? I'm the one in charge here, Starling. And you're being insubordinate."

"Sure, you're in charge. But you've already given your opinion of me… and you think I'm either a hard-nosed bitch or Jack Crawford's whore. So if I were either of those things, what do you think I'd do to the jackass who mouthed off about it and sexually harassed me? No, don't bother answering; I can see you're having trouble following along.

"If I'm a hard-nosed bitch, Humphries, then I file a report. A long, detailed report of every unwelcome advance, every put-down, every improper comment. Sure, we both get caught up in an internal investigation then, but I'm a straight arrow, and I want things done by the book. You, maybe, not so much.

"But if I'm Jack Crawford's whore, you're in an even worse situation, aren't you? Because now I'm going to go running back to him and complain about big bad Humphries and his mean old comments. And what do you think Mr. Crawford will do to you then, once he knows the kind of rumors you're spreading about him? He has a wife to consider, you know. You think this is a shit assignment, imagine what you'll be begging for then.

"Are you sure you want to continue down that path, Agent Humphries? Wouldn't it be better just to stop now and chalk the whole thing up to a misunderstanding?"

"You fucking bitch." He was furious; of that, she had no doubts. His face was tinged red, and the cords of muscle stood taut along his neck.

"Now you're just being rude." Her grin spread wide as the plains they crossed. Humphries was Behavioral Science; he knew the cases she had worked. He would know, surely, whom she imitated now. And if he believed those rumors, too… well. He might expect she could call upon assistance from that quarter. "And I hate rude people."

There was a glimmer of recognition on his face, a trace of fear that rolled up and over him. He twisted back around in his seat to face forward without another word.

Clarice's heart pounded.

That was fun.

Deeper in her mind, a familiar rumbling voice replied.

Mmm. Quite.

Silence reigned for the next forty-five minutes, until Gebb slowed the car and turned into a dirt-and-gravel drive.

"I, uh, I think this is the place."

A two-story farmhouse stood – well, more like leaned, Clarice thought – at the end of the lane; a weathered barn sat back and to the right. Gebb pulled the car into the wide open area in front of the house. A rusted sedan – a 1965 Ford Galaxie, if Clarice knew her cars – sat alongside the house, looking as though it had spent all of the intervening years in this lonely spot, exposed to the elements.

Gebb hopped out of the car eagerly; Humphries, clearly bored with the whole endeavor, took his time. Clarice stepped out and surveyed the landscape. Colfax County, Nebraska. Rural even by her standards; she couldn't see another farmhouse in any direction, and the land was so flat that her gaze ate up miles. It wasn't at all the hilly, cozy rural of West Virginia or the reassuring shadow of mountains that lay over Montana. She felt as exposed and vulnerable as the Ford looked.

"What a dump!" Humphries, having made his pronouncement, approached the rickety porch. "Gebb, get on over here so we can get this done and get the hell back to civilization."

Clarice's eyes slid from the Galaxie toward the barn. Something was odd. What was it? The dirt and gravel… it had been disturbed, though she couldn't say how recently. Could've been local kids doing doughnuts and scaring themselves with ghost stories at the old abandoned farm.

Plenty of ruts crisscrossed the area in front of the barn. Most had a thin layer of standing water in them; it had obviously rained recently. But one set … one set of tracks did not. A set of tracks that ended at the barn door.

"I think somebody's living here," Clarice hissed, jogging over to the porch to catch her colleagues before they could enter. "And they would've seen and heard us coming from a ways off in this landscape. See the tracks from—"

"Relax, Starling. It's an abandoned shack with a rusted-out car, and we wouldn't even be out here 'investigating' it as a lead if you hadn't stuck your nose in a case that didn't belong to you. Again." Agent Humphries pushed on the front door, which hung nearly off its hinges. "See? Door's open. What does your—"

The boom of the shotgun reached Clarice's ears a fraction of a second after the pellets sprayed through the door, sending metal and splinters into Humphries' chest and face. A pity, she thought; if he had been a taller man, the family might have managed an open casket. As it was, no amount of stitching or makeup or mortician's art would make him look like a man again.