Okay, so this is my first Ashes to Ashes story I have uploaded, please read and review =] Thank you to Celeste Martin for reading over this for me...enjoy! =]

Chapter 1

She screamed, she knew what was coming, she had studied the crime scene reports often enough and it what he had been talking about ever since she woke up here….. 'No…please, please don't' she begged, while trying to fend him off the best she could, still tied to the chair she had woken up on several hours previously. She couldn't believe it had come to this, Alex Drake begging someone to stop, she knew she should be annoyed with herself for not figuring out who it was sooner, or for being able to use all her training to stop this from happening, but all she had nothing left, the psychology hadn't worked, trying to fight back hadn't worked, that had just lead to him showering her in punches leaving her unconscious for a while. No all she could do was beg and hope this would all be over soon…..

Three weeks previously

'Drake, you're late again' was the first thing she heard as she entered CID on a cold Monday morning, she had been hoping he was in his office so she could just sneak in and not have the interrogation again 'Good night last night was it Bolly?' Alex sighed and sat down, holding her head in her arms.

'Fancy a cuppa Ma'am? Asked Shaz

'No time for tea Bolly, there's been another murder, same guy as before pathologist reckons, we're off down the crime scene now, so your little girlie chats with Shaz will have to wait. Ray, Chris, in the car'. Alex sighed again and picked up her coat, that she had just flung across the back of her chair, and followed Gene out to the car.

'So what do we know then?' Asked Alex as Gene sped off towards the crime scene,

'Not a lot, call came through a couple of hours ago, plods are down there at the moment, looks like it's the same guy as before'.

Over the past three weeks three young girls aged between sixteen and eighteen had been found dead outside abandoned flats all across Fenchurch, they had all been reported missing after a night out, and found exactly six days after they had gone missing. All had been raped and badly beaten but what had killed them was the stab wound to the heart each girl had received. As far as they could work out none of the girls knew each other, and none of the families could come up with any reasons as to why this had happened to their child.

Alex looked across to Gene as he continued to disobey the speed limit on the way to the crime scene, she knew this case had got to him, she knew how much he vowed to protect children from harm, take for example little Donny after his brother had been killed, or the little Alex Price after the car bomb that had killed her mum and dad, my mum and dad, Alex thought to herself. It had been five months since the car bomb, and since Alex realised she wasn't going to get back to Molly anytime soon, she still got the occasional message from home, but had vowed to keep living her life, here, with Gene, in 1982 till she found a way home. So there had been no more treating these people like constructs, in fact her and Shaz had become quite close over the past few months, especially since her and Chris had got engaged; they spent many happy evenings discussing the wedding in Luigi's over a few bottles of wine. Alex had also found herself getting closer to Gene, more often than not they would end up at 'their ' table, if the footie wasn't on, drinking and just chatting, a few times Gene had been too drunk to drive home, so on these occasions had used the sofa in Alex's flat as a bed for the night.

Alex had also realised her feelings for Gene were changing, when had she started thinking of him as more than just a friend? What is it about him?

'What do we know then?' asked Alex, trying to get thoughts of her feelings of Gene out of her head.

'Not a lot, same as the other's really, white, about eighteen to twenty, signs of assault and found dead in the early hours of this morning by some guy in the block of flats on his way to work, dumped in the hallway, just like the other three girls' replied Gene as they screeched to a halt outside the block of flats.

'Ray, Chris, you get the statement off the bloke who found er' shouted Gene as he stormed past the two police officers standing by the entrance to the flats

'And remember, be sensitive, the guy has just found a dead body!' shouted Alex as she ran to keep up with Gene, she knew they needed to solve this case…and fast.

They walked up to the second floor in silence, both lost in their own thoughts and both knowing what they would find when they reached the body. Gene could already hear Alex's brain ticking away, what did she have to think about before they had even seen the body?