A/N: Surprise! I have new story for you. (Hopefully you'll think it's a nice surprise...) So, I already have a ton of others on the go (particularly Heritage, which has rather stolen my mind lately) but what can I say, the idea came to me a while ago and I got to the stage where I just HAD to do it. I hope you all like it, and please send me a review to let me know what you think and whether I should carry on with it.

Also, as a side note before anyone asks - the speech marks key on my laptop does not work, and I can't afford a new one and/or to get it fixed, hence the apostrophes. A couple of the text keys don't work either, so I copy and paste the letters from other documents, but when it comes to speech marks there are just too many... So, short of taking donations to get it done, the apostrophes are here to stay for now. Consider it a lovable quirk rather than a grammatical manifestation of Satan's napalm.

Thank you so much to Hailey for listening to me testing out ideas for titles and summaries, and you know what? This story's yours. If it was a book, it'd have a 'For Hailey, for all her help and awesome' printed on the third page. Also to Meghan for listening to me rant and for letting me steal her name.

So, here is the prologue to my new story... and I hope you all like it, and please, PLEASE send me a review to let me know what you think of it and whether it's worth my carrying on with it.

I'd watched her for months, you know.

I never did anything to her.

Never touched her, spoke to her, smiled at her...

I never went anywhere near her.

It almost killed me.

Watching that bitch walking around, enjoying her life, enjoying the life she took from Meghan, the life Meghan will never have because of her, it was just...

Damn her.

I felt a sudden flash of anger and punched the back of seat in front of me.

Damn her, damn her, DAMN HER-

I gritted my teeth and hunched down into my coat, trying to ward off the cold a little. It wasn't like I could start up the van on or anything. With a normal person, maybe, but she was paranoid. Really, really fucking paranoid. Like, so paranoid she has a fake name on her apartment buzzer, I suppose just in case the Dominos guy decides he's had enough of toting pizzas around Manhattan on the back of his crappy moped and chooses to try and collect one of the many bounties that must be on her head instead.

And yeah, of course I know where she lives. I've followed her enough. The thing is, someone in this kind of business, they tend to move around a lot. No family ties, you know? I don't know, maybe families would weigh them down too much. God knows she didn't give two shits about mine, otherwise she wouldn't have done this.

I shook my head bitterly.

Fucking murdering bitch, how could she have done this, how could she have killed my girl, how...

What the fuck is wrong with her?

Where does she get off hurting people?

What makes her so fucking special?

Nothing.

Nothing does.

Fucking selfish bitch.

She'll pay for this.

She'll pay for what she did.

I smiled to myself. The thought of how I was going to make her pay, the thought of what I was going to do to her, how I was going to make her scream and beg and cry once I had her, the same way I knew Meghan had screamed and begged and cried before she'd killed her, was what had kept me going during the long, long months of surveillance and planning. Whenever it got difficult I just remembered the way Meghan had suffered, the look on her face the moment before she died, the way I'd actually had to stand there and watch but couldn't do a thing to stop it...

After that, things didn't seem nearly as difficult as they had before.

And believe me, it was never easy.

Hell, planning just the surveillance itself was hard enough, and that was before I'd even really got started. She was so careful that I had to alternate how I watched her. One day on foot, one day in a car, one day in a different rental car...

I never followed her the whole distance between work and home in a single day. Of course I didn't. I knew she'd notice me. The first time, I was in a rental car. I parked in the street near where she worked and then trailed her to the subway. Next time, I was on foot. I waited for her in the subway entrance hall and then followed her down to her platform, waiting to see what train she got on, and then I got on after her, sat at the other end of the car, and made a note of the station where she got off.

Then I waited a few days. I wasn't in a rush, I hadn't even got the House sorted yet, and I didn't want her to catch on before I'd even had a chance to get started. I knew that if she noticed me, it was all over, and I'd have to resort to the Black Talons, ambush her in the street and kill her right there, quick and cheap and dirty and... and...

I sighed.

And unsatisfying.

So, so unsatisfying.

I mean, yes, at first all I'd thought about was how fantastic it would be to just kill her, to put a couple of bullets in her heart and watch her whimper and choke and die in front of me, but then I'd realised that wasn't enough.

A few painful seconds of her aspirating her own blood before she finally bled out or suffocated to death wasn't nearly enough, not to pay for what she'd done.

So, I waited.

After I thought enough time had passed, the next step was to hang around in the station she had gotten off at before. I waited for almost an hour, leaning casually against one of the steel pillars on the platform her train arrived on with my face hidden behind last month's copy of the New Yorker, and she didn't let me down.

For someone who seemed so paranoid, so alert to all possible dangers, so careful, her routine was almost disappointingly predictable.

I followed her off the platform to see if she would change onto the B train. She didn't. She left the station through the turnstile by the ticket office and disappeared up the stairs.

Like before, I didn't follow her.

Instead, I went back to the House and kept preparing things there.

A week later, I was ready. I sat in a bus shelter half a block from the subway exit she used, and waited. And waited. And waited. After almost two hours she finally appeared, black leather handbag tucked closely under one arm, her keys already in her hand as she walked quickly up the street.

Fantastic. I grinned to myself. She must live close by.

I stood up, stretched my aching limbs, and followed her the six blocks to her door, pausing only to note the number of her apartment building as I walked past it, catching a glimpse of her retreating back for a second as she stepped into the elevator in the foyer.

It was an exhilarating moment.

Now I knew where she worked, where she lived, and the route she took home.

Always the same route, at the same time, every single day.

I smiled.

She was as good as mine.

I went back to the House and I kept preparing, rehearsing what exactly I was going to do and how I was going to do it, over and over and over and over until my hands were sore and cracked and my head ached.

Nothing was going to go wrong.

I was sure of that.

I had to be.

This morning, I rented a minivan. Nothing special, but it had a sliding door and tinted windows. More to the point, there was no way she could have seen it before. Even if she had somehow noticed me, which I knew she hadn't, there was no way she could connect the grey-blue minivan with the stolen Jersey plates and a Baby on Board placard in the window with the guy who may or may not have followed her once.

To be honest, though, I doubted she'd pay much attention to little details like that anyway, paranoid or not. I had the perfect plan.

I knew her weakness, you see.

She liked to think of herself as being caring, motherly, however many children like Meghan she had killed, however many lives she had ruined just for the sake of it. Maybe she gets a weird sadistic kick out of it. I don't know, and right now I don't care.

I know exactly what I need to do.

I glanced at my watch. It was getting to around the time she would normally be heading home. After everything was ready I'd decided to wait for another few months, to bide my time until the depths of winter when it was already dark by the time she'd left work, and when it was so cold that no one would be hanging around outside or lingering in the street. I'd rehearsed the route, over and over and over, selecting the only spot on her walk that was likely to be deserted and parking the van there, beside a streetlight so that I'd have something to brace against if she struggled too much.

Two days ago, I went and broke the bulb.

Wait.

My head jerked up.

She was coming.

I sat there for a few more minutes, watching her walking closer and closer, almost beside myself with excitement. She was wearing her usual clothes - smart suit to make herself look better and more important than she is, slutty top to make sure everyone's too busy looking at her admittedly gorgeous tits to notice what she is, what she does, what she'll just keep on doing until someone has the balls to stop her.

OK.

Showtime.

I took a deep breath, threw open the side door and jumped out, running towards her with tears streaming down my face. 'Oh my God, help, help me, she's not breathing, Meghan's not breathing, oh God...'

That got her attention. I knew it would. She was beside me immediately, reaching for her cellphone. 'Who, Sir? Who's not breathing?'

'My baby, my baby, she was fine and then...' I swallowed. 'And then I turned around and she was grey, and... and oh God, oh GOD-'

'Sir, calm down, I'm going to call 911-'

'NO!' I'd thought she might do this, and I was prepared for it. 'No, there's no time, please, please, you have to help me, PLEASE!' I grabbed her forearm, preventing her from raising the phone to her ear. 'PLEASE!'

She hesitated, glancing at my minivan. Fantastic. It was working. I reached into my pocket, my hand closing around the cloth as she finally gave in and ran to the van.

I was right behind her, my whole body tingling with anticipation.

She was leaning into the van, her hand resting on the back of one of the seats, when I clamped the cloth over her nose and mouth.

It's quite amazing how easy it is to get ether. They use it in schools, you know. The students euthanise crickets and flies with it.

Of course, I wasn't going to euthanise her, just put her out for long enough to get her settled into the House. Killing her now would be a huge anticlimax, not to mention being far, far more than she deserved.

She'd made Meghan suffer. She'd sat there and watched until she finally got bored and decided it was time my girl should die.

I smiled and pressed the cloth tighter against her face, listening to her choking and gagging as she tried to breathe.

Now, it was her turn.

Thank God I'd thought ahead and chosen a spot next to a streetlight. She was putting up one hell of a struggle. Maybe I diluted the ether a little too much, I don't know. Either way, I was glad to have something to brace myself against.

She kept trying to elbow me in the gut, trying to throw me off balance and push herself backwards out of the open door of the minivan, but she couldn't. I had my back pressed against the streetlight, one arm wrapped tightly around her middle and holding her body tightly against mine, pinning her arms down by her sides, the other holding the cloth that was still clamped over her face.

Oh no.

What if I really had diluted the ether too much? Way, way too much?

What if this doesn't work at all?

I mean yes, it worked on those cats and dogs, but they were smaller, weaker, maybe I didn't adjust the concentrations enough, maybe I'd left the cloth too long in my pocket and it had evaporated, maybe I'd fucked up completely and grabbed the wrong bottle before I left the House, and I'd sat in the dark front seat of the van and soaked the cloth with something stupid and harmless, like contact solution or club soda...

No.

No, I could definitely feel her weakening now.

It was working.

It was finally working.

She barely had the strength to kick any more, she couldn't scream, she could only whimper and gasp as she clawed uselessly at the air-

I heard her moan quietly, and then suddenly I was holding her up rather than holding her back, her legs sagging and her head lolling to one side as she finally fell still.

Oh my God.

I shook my head in disbelief.

I had her.

I actually had her.

She was mine.

I smiled, pushed her roughly into the van and closed the sliding door behind us, ripping off a strip of duct tape and pasting it over her mouth as she lay unconscious on the floor in front of me.

Oh my God...

Even after all my planning, all my preparations, and I'd never really believed I'd get this far, that I'd actually have her like this...

It was incredible.

I ran my hands across her body, confiscating any potential weapons she might try and use against me, quickly tossing the two guns I found onto the front passenger seat before duct-taping her wrists and ankles together.

Right.

I sat back and looked at her, smiling to myself.

Her hands were bound tightly behind her back, her body twisted uncomfortably at the waist and her pale face stained with blood from her nose as she lay on her back, limp and still, her dark eyes dull and unfocused as they stared blankly up at me.

Perfect.

I nodded, feeling a pleasant glow of satisfaction.

Unconscious or not, she wouldn't be putting up much of a struggle any time soon.

Out of courtesy, I closed her eyes before I dragged her to the rear of the van and stashed her safely under the emergency blanket. I wouldn't want her to wake up with sore eyes, after all. I wasn't cruel.

Whatever she had done, I refused to sink to her level. I was better than that.

More to the point, Meghan deserved better than that.

OK.

I was almost done now.

Just one last thing left to do.

I pulled out my knife, hacked off a thick chunk of her glossy brown hair and put it into an envelope with her gold shield and SVU ID badge, tucking it safely into the glove box until I could drop it at her precinct on the way to the House.

I smiled to myself.

I can't wait to see her stupid partner Elliot's face when he opens it tomorrow morning.

A/N: So, what did you think? Did you like it? Is it worth carrying on with? Please send me a review and let me know!