[Later that evening]
The hospital had given them nothing useful.
Delilah had been awake when Chloe and Lucifer arrived, but every question about the watch sent her back into the shooting. Her breathing turned shallow, her eyes lost focus, and the words coming from her mouth had stopped making sense. The doctor eventually asked them to leave before the interview pushed her any further.
Lucifer had not argued.
That alone worried Chloe more than she wanted to admit.
By the time they returned to Lux, night had settled across Los Angeles again. The club had reopened, though the usual loud confidence felt slightly muted after the shooting outside. Music rolled through the room, people drank beneath colored lights, and the city continued pretending nothing terrible had happened.
Chloe sat at the bar with a beer in one hand and her phone in the other. Her smug expression from the film set was gone. Lucifer sat beside her with a glass of scotch, spinning the Pentecostal Coin across the counter with one lazy finger. Maze stood several feet away, watching both of them with a look that suggested she found the entire arrangement deeply irritating.
"I know. Check again. What about their assistants' phones, nannies?... Fan pages? Twitter?" Chloe said into the phone, her eyes fixed on the beer in front of her.
She listened for a moment, then rubbed her forehead with tired frustration. "Okay... Call if anything changes."
Chloe ended the call and took a long drink before looking toward Lucifer. "Grey and Amanda have zero connection to the shooter or the driver. Maybe the shooter wasn't working for anyone. Maybe this thing does start and end with him."
Lucifer stopped spinning the coin for the first time since they had returned. His expression hardened as the coin rested beneath his palm.
"No," he said quietly. "I don't believe it."
Chloe looked toward him. "He did have the same watch as Grey. Can't be a coincidence. Maybe Delilah gave it to him, too? Kind of her go-to gift."
Lucifer looked disgusted by the suggestion. "But that would imply she was sleeping with that maggot."
"Let's see, Jimmy, 2VILE, Grey Cooper... She was sleeping with three other maggots. Not like she had tremendous discretion." Chloe took another drink, then stared around the nightclub as if Lux itself had personally offended her. "God... why am I here?"
Lucifer lifted his glass slightly. "Wrong deity, but that is the eternal question, isn't it?"
Chloe looked at him over the rim of her beer. "No. I mean, here. In a bar. With you."
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
The music shifted into something slower. A few people danced near the far side of the room, laughing beneath colored lights while bartenders poured drinks without paying attention to the strange tension building at one end of the counter. Maze watched Lucifer from behind the bar, her expression sharpening when his usual grin faded.
Lucifer turned toward Chloe, studying her with a seriousness that did not belong to the man who had spent most of the day annoying her on purpose.
"I don't know, Detective. Despite your proclaimed revulsion, you can't deny there's a connection between us." He paused, then lowered his voice. "Tell me... what do you really want?"
Chloe gave him a faint, mocking smile. "You mean, WHAT do I desire more than anything in this life?"
"Yes," Lucifer said. "No tricks, not that they work with you, you freak. Tell me. I'm curious."
The question seemed genuine.
Chloe looked down at her beer, turning the bottle slowly between her fingers. Maybe it was the exhaustion or the alcohol. Maybe it was the strange way Lucifer had defended her in front of Dan, or the way he had listened when she talked about the precinct.
"I suppose what I was saying before wasn't all a lie... I do want to help people... I dunno..."
Lucifer frowned as if her answer had disappointed him personally. "Your purity repulses me."
"Well, your lack of it isn't wildly attractive either."
Lucifer's mouth twitched. Chloe raised her beer, and after a brief pause, he tapped his glass against it.
"My father was a cop. A pretty great one. My mother was an actress. Pretty cheesy one," Chloe continued, looking out at the crowded dance floor. "I tried the acting thing. Took my top off, not exactly contributing to the betterment of society."
Lucifer opened his mouth, clearly prepared to disagree.
"Anyway. Didn't like how it made me feel about myself. So I quit. Became a cop like my old man. Endured the staring and teasing from the entire department. 'Til I became a detective and found a whole new way to ostracize myself."
Lucifer's eyes sharpened. "Ah. The reason your ex-maggot was pressuring you to close this."
"Yeah. Few months ago, I saw a case differently than a lot of people in the department, including my ex. Stuck my neck out ...backfired. Now most of 'em hate me. And nobody'll work with me."
Lucifer leaned back against the bar, his tone casual even though something warmer flickered behind his eyes. "I'm available."
Chloe shook her head, though a reluctant smile tugged at her mouth.
Before Lucifer could add something smug, the television mounted behind the bar changed channels. A familiar piano melody filled Lux, soft enough to catch Chloe's attention immediately.
Time Will Tell.
Delilah's song played beneath a news report showing fans showing up outside the hospital. The reporter talked about the public support pouring in, along with the sudden increase in Delilah's album sales after the attack.
Maze grabbed a glass from the shelf and looked toward Lucifer with a small, spiteful smile. "Looks like your little protégée's going to cash the check and the studio is going to make big bucks."
Chloe went still.
Her eyes lifted toward the television, then shifted toward Lucifer as the pieces began sliding together inside her head.
"Oh wow. Delilah gave Grey a watch for the movie Time Will Tell. Get it?"
Lucifer looked toward the screen. "Very poetic."
"She gave one to someone else, too. But not to the drug dealer..."
Lucifer already knew who the scum was.
"Jimmy Barnes."
The producer had been attached to the soundtrack. He had access to Delilah, the industry, and money. The expensive watch on Eddie Deacon's wrist had not been a romantic gift. It had been a payment. Barnes was already out of money, so he paid the installment with that watch.
Chloe stood from the bar and reached for her jacket.
Lucifer smiled, slipped the coin into his pocket, and finished his scotch. "Now that sounds considerably more interesting."
...
[Studio]
The recording studio was inside a converted warehouse near downtown. The building looked empty from the street, but inside, every hallway buzzed with music, shouting assistants, exhausted technicians, and enough expensive equipment to make Karl's old self wonder how many years of rent the room could cover.
A young boy band was recording in the main booth when Chloe and Lucifer pushed through the studio doors.
Jimmy Barnes stood behind the glass with a headset around his neck, berating one of the singers for missing a note. He turned when the door boomed open, and his face tightened instantly when he saw Lucifer.
"Really?! Wasn't enough to destroy my wedding and steal my to-be wife, huh?"
'He stole his to-be wife?!' Chloe thought as she looked at Lucifer, but quickly shifted her focus to the task at hand. She walked toward Jimmy with her badge already visible. "How're the album sales doing?"
Jimmy's face changed.
The question hit exactly where she wanted it to.
"What album?" he asked, though the hesitation in his voice said he already knew what was coming.
"The soundtrack for Time Will Tell. That YOU produced... Whitney Houston reached the top 10 for album sales after the attack. Michael Jackson hit the stratosphere! I'm not sure you'll achieve the same heights by having Delilah shot, but that's still a buttload of royalty checks comin' your way. Not a bad year for you. Guess you need that cash, huh? Which is why you had to pay the shooter with your watch."
Lucifer stepped closer, smiling with open contempt. "The watch Delilah gave you. Now that's just sick, but then you are, so..."
Jimmy's face turned red beneath the studio lights.
For several seconds, he said nothing. The boy band stood silent behind the glass, their earlier irritation replaced by unease. The technicians stared from behind their equipment, sensing something dangerous in the way Jimmy's hands began to shake.
Then he moved.
Jimmy grabbed one of the teenage singers by the front of his shirt and pulled him close. A gun appeared in his other hand so quickly that half the room did not understand what had happened until the boy cried out.
Chloe drew her weapon in an instant. "WHOA! Hey! Jimmy?!"
The studio froze.
Jimmy pressed the gun against the boy's side, his face twisted with rage and panic. "I made her! And she ruined me! She humiliated me! She owes me!"
Lucifer stepped forward.
He did not look scared.
That was the problem.
"You're not God, Jimmy," Lucifer said, his voice lowering into something colder. "You didn't make her. But you did try to destroy her. So I'm going to punish you."
"Back off, you freak!" Jimmy shouted. "I mean it! I'm not going to prison for that bitch. NO chance."
Lucifer kept walking.
Every instinct in Karl told him to stop. A gun was pointed at a terrified kid. Chloe stood several feet away with her own weapon raised. Jimmy looked ready to pull the trigger at any moment.
Still, Lucifer could feel the old Devil's anger rising inside him.
Jimmy had hurt Delilah. He had profited from her suffering. He had tried to have her killed, then attended a wedding the next morning as if her life had meant nothing.
Lucifer wanted him to pay.
Chloe noticed the shift in him and tightened her grip on her gun. "Listen to him! Back off!"
Lucifer did not stop.
"It's fine," he said without looking at her. "I told you. I'm immortal."
Jimmy's hand jerked upward.
Two gunshots cracked through the studio.
The first bullet shattered a lamp above the mixing console. Sparks rained down across the floor, and the sudden darkness made everyone scream. The second shot struck Jimmy across the upper torso, sending him stumbling backward as the boy tore free and ran toward the sound booth.
Jimmy hit the ground hard.
Lucifer stared at Chloe with fury flashing across his face.
"WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!"
Chloe looked at him as if he had completely lost his mind. "He was going to kill you!"
"No-no-no you just let him off too easy!" Lucifer's voice rose, echoing across the silent studio. "He needs to suffer! He needs to pay! He needs to feel the pain, not escape it!"
Chloe kept her gun trained on Jimmy, trying to understand how a man could sound genuinely angry that someone had saved his life. "Well, don't worry. I'm sure where he's going the pain and punishment's coming..."
Lucifer's expression shifted.
The fury faded just enough for something bitter to replace it.
"Actually, no," he muttered. "It's not. And why? Because I am here, and..."
Three more gunshots exploded through the studio.
Jimmy had not been dead.
He had rolled toward the fallen weapon while everyone watched Lucifer and Chloe argue. The first bullet struck a wall. The second hit a speaker and sent debris across the floor.
The third ricocheted.
Chloe jerked backward as the round struck the side of her neck, just above the bulletproof vest Lucifer had insisted she wear before entering the studio.
Lucifer's world stopped.
"No!"
Chloe staggered, one hand flying toward her neck as her knees gave out beneath her. Lucifer caught her before she hit the floor, lowering her carefully onto the ground while the studio around them dissolved into screams and panicked movement.
Her eyes were unfocused when she looked at him.
"I don't want to die..."
Lucifer pressed one hand over the injury, his face pale beneath the club lights and shattered glass.
"I won't let you... My father will just have to wait for you."
More shots rang out from across the room.
Lucifer moved instantly, placing himself between Chloe and Jimmy. The bullets struck his body and flattened against his skin, tearing through his suit without piercing beneath it. He barely noticed.
His eyes remained on Chloe for one more second.
"Wait here a second..."
Then he stood.
Chloe's vision blurred at the edges.
The room stretched into strange shapes of light and shadow. She saw Lucifer walk toward Jimmy through the smoke and shattered glass. She saw him grab the producer by the throat and slam him against the glass wall of the recording booth hard enough to crack it in a spreading web.
Jimmy struggled against Lucifer's grip.
"Please," he gasped. "Don't kill me."
Lucifer turned him toward the fractured reflection.
For one brief moment, Chloe saw Lucifer's face in the broken glass.
It was wrong.
His skin looked stretched across something ancient and furious. His eyes burned through the fractured reflection. The smile was gone, replaced by a darkness that made her stomach twist even through the haze of pain.
"You're going to wish that was all I did to you," Lucifer said.
Jimmy screamed.
The sound tore through the studio as Chloe's vision finally gave out.
Everything went black.
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