it's hard i must confess/ but i'm banking on the rest to clear away/ 'cause we have spoken everything/ everything short of i love...

The Frey, Hundred

The harsh beeping awoke her suddenly, pulling her out of her dreams. As she opened her eyes she felt movement on the other side of the bed as Danny sat up, reaching around her, blindly searching the bedside table. She rolled over as he pulled back, pager in hand.

"It's me," he said. He looked over at her for a moment and the leaned down to kiss her forehead. "Go back ta sleep."

But she watched as he climbed out of bed, searching around her tiny bedroom for his clothes, so hastily discarded just a few hours before. Even in the dark she could see just how beautiful he was. She had to admit, that Danny Messer was the hottest guy she had ever slept with. The hottest guy she had ever... cared about.

She broke off her train of thought as a shiver ran down her spine.

"What time is it?"

He looked back at her as he grabbed his coat, clipping his badge back onto his belt. "Nearly two." He walked back over to her and kissed her again, on the lips this time. Then he drew away. "Go back ta sleep Montana. See ya later."

But she watched as he left the room, listened as he moved through the apartment, and waited for the click of the front door closing behind him. She sighed and tried to go back to sleep.

Her eyes were still open twenty minutes later when her own pager went off.

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It was no longer snowing in New York, but the nights remained bitterly cold. Danny rubbed his hands together to warm them as he ran up the subway stairs and walked into the park. Pulling his knit cap down further over his ears, he made his way over to where the flashing blue and red lights marked the crime scene.

"Hey, Mac," he greeted his boss. Mac looked up from where he was crouching near the body of a young man. The body was propped up against the side of the fountain, it's position awkward in death.

"Danny," Mac greeted him. "Grab the camera out of the car, would you?"

He did so and proceeded to blanket the scene with pictures, playing particular attention to the body to the kid. He barely looked eighteen; but the wallet Mac pulled out of his coat pocket, cards and money still inside, also contained his drivers license. Casey Stratton, a student at NYU, would have been twenty in another month.

Blood was pooled around the gunshot wound in his chest. Danny knew enough anatomy by now to figure out that the bullet had probably hit his heart. When Hawkes showed up five minutes later, he agreed. Death was almost instantaneous.

The sole witness, a middle aged man who had been jogging through the darkened park, gave them his statement. He had turned a corner in the path and had almost run into someone running the other way. The witness had stopped to yell obscenities after the young man, and when he tuned back around he saw the body near the fountain.

The suspect was a little shorter than the 6 foot witness, Caucasian with shaggy blond hair and wearing dark jeans, a light colored shirt and a puffy jacket. A description had already gone out over the radio. All that was left for the uniforms to do was to shake their heads at the hapless jogger's ill luck- and possible insanity for jogging through the park at 1am.

Danny found a blood trail along the path leading away from the fountain, but it stopped within thirty feet. Photographing the blood and collecting sample, he made his way back to the fountain where Hawkes was supervising the body being loaded into the van to be transported to the morgue.

Hawkes pulled the collar of his coat higher as Danny joined him. "Cold, Doc?"

"I'm getting used to it. The heating in my apartment's been acting up. I just got warm when I got the callout."

Danny smirked. "You mean you weren't sharing body heat?"

Hawkes raised an eyebrow. "Oh, so I take it you were?" He grinned.

Danny shrugged, smirk still in place. He rubbed his hands together again and pulled on his gloves. He hated collecting samples when it was cold. Latex provided very little in the way of warmth retention.

"Didn't I hear something about you saying you don't cuddle?" Hawkes questioned, raising a hand to the driver as the van set off. He and Danny turned back to the crime scene.

"Who said anything about cuddling?" Danny asked innocently.

Hawkes raised and eyebrow but grinned nevertheless. Danny clapped his friend on the back and walked away to sweep the crime scene one last time, making sure he hadn't missed any evidence.

He may have joked about it with Sheldon, but truth was, he was worried. He and Lindsay had only been seeing each other officially for about five weeks, had only been sleeping together for three, had only agreed to start something at Christmas. But something was different.

He didn't know what was going on in her head, and she wasn't telling. He could feel it every time he kissed her, held her. Even after they had sex. And it was killing him to know that there was something she was refusing to say. Something she didn't trust him with.

Especially after everything they had to go through to get to where they were.

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Rugged up against the cold and with a beanie pulled down tight over her wavy curls, Lindsay arrived at the crime scene, kit in hand. She was still trying to shake of the shiver that had haunted her an hour before.

Under a streetlight on the northern edge of the park, Stella and Flack were standing over a body. He was the first to spot her, glancing up from where Stella was pointing at something. "Hey, Monroe."

"Hey," she greeted them, forcing a smile.

"Hey Lindsay," Stella said, watching as her young friend put down her case and pulled off her gloves. "I didn't think you were on call tonight."

Lindsay shrugged. "I wasn't asleep anyway."

Flack kept his gaze on his notebook. "Messer wake you up when he left?" he teased, tongue in cheek.

Stella rolled her eyes and Lindsay felt her face heat up. She wasn't quite ready for all of this.

"Shut up, Flack," Lindsay said, pretending to take his joke in good humor. "What have we got?"

The body was a young man lying on his back, blond hair slightly overlong and shaggy. But, as Lindsay said, his clothes were good quality. He looked like he had been out clubbing and ran into trouble on the way home.

There were two gun shoot wounds- both, the ME's assistant was quick to point out when he arrived a few minutes later, with entrance wounds in the back, and only one with an exit wound at the front.

"He was found like this?" he asked, and Flack nodded.

"Someone rolled him over," Lindsay surmised. "Looks a bit extreme for a simple mugging."

Flack shook his head, handing her a slim black wallet. "Meet Jacob Grant, 20, student at Chelsey U. Money's still there, cards too. I had a look around but couldn't find the weapon."

"Rules out robbery as a motive," Stella said. "If you shoot someone in the back twice then roll them over to make sure you killed them, you must really want them dead."

Lindsay was examining the body closer. Crouching down she gently pulled a bullet free from his clothing. It was badly deformed. "Looks like it hit something, besides the vic, I mean." She handed the plastic tweezers holding the bullet over to Stella.

"How about concrete?" Flack asked. He looked up to find both women staring at him. "What? It's simple. Guy gets shot, guy goes down- face first. Guys gets shot in the back again."

Lindsay was already scouring the concrete path around the body. "Here," she said, pointing out a chip in the concrete surrounded by a smear of blood. "Bullet must have gone through the vic, hit the concrete and somehow stayed in the outer layer of his clothes."

"Point blank range," Stella surmised.

Flack nodded. "Other bullet is probably still in the vic. I'll let you guys do your thing with that one."

Stella grinned. "Thanks."

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See, I didn't forget this series! It just needed to incubate for a bit while I sorted out my life. First case fic, so let me know what you think. Next part will be up in a few days.