Hogtied

**This story immediately follows "Timeline of a Stalker"**

Mark Antony: "The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones".

Act 3, scene ii of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

CHAPTER 1

"Matt, are you coming to bed?" CJ padded into the den and found her husband of eighteen months right where he had been four hours earlier when she had turned in for the night. She walked over to the recliner where he was asleep with his laptop open and earbuds stuck in his ears. Once again he had crashed while trying to get through a lecture on Fire Technology. After being asked to assist the Fire Marshal's office in some of their investigations, he was trying to learn about fires in order to have a better understanding of the job. But with him still working full time it was proving to be a challenge. His job as a private investigator was not always a nine to five job: he was often out until all hours and sometimes got very little or no sleep at all. Gently she pulled out the earbuds and closed the laptop, moving it to the table. As she went to cover him up with an afghan he woke up.

"Hey." He reached up and patted her hip.

"Looks like you fell asleep in class again." She smiled down at him, rubbing her hand against the stubble on his chin.

"Sorry Babe." Matt yawned and rubbed his eyes. He sat upright in the recliner and stood up, pulling CJ into his arms and kissing her. "You know, you look a whole lot better in that jersey than I ever did." She was wearing one of his high school football jerseys. He rubbed his thumb across her cheek. "Love you."

"Love you. But I think you better go crawl in the bed and get some sleep." She ran her fingers through the hair on his neck.

"Only if you're with me." He kissed her again, clearly wanting to do more than go to sleep. She took him by the hand and led him back down the hallway to their bedroom.

The next morning when Matt woke up the house was absolutely quiet. He looked at the clock: 9:24. Rolling over, he found that CJ was gone and in her place was a note.

Matt,

Thought I would let you sleep in this morning. Catey and I are at the office. I left you some waffles in the microwave.

Love,

CJ

He lay back down and stared at the ceiling and sighed. When he had decided to help out the Fire Marshal's office he had wanted to take the classes, and he still did; but his schedule was making what should have been fairly simple into something that was quickly becoming a pain in the butt. When he was a kid growing up in Houston, Texas Matt's dad had always taught him that no matter what you did, do it well or don't do it at all. Houston didn't make promises that he couldn't keep. That was another thing Daddy had taught him and he took it seriously. He decided that he was going to cut down on his caseload at the office until he got done with the classes; that was the only way he was going to be able to pull it off. The problem was that his Uncle Roy who worked at the detective agency along with CJ and himself was out of town and would be for a while. He, along with his son Will and Matt's best friend Vince Novelli were installing security systems for a chain of jewelry stores across the country. Right now they were in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Matt got out of the bed and headed to the shower. He was just going to have to back off on his caseload. It was at that point that he decided that he wouldn't take on any cases except for the ones his other best friend, Lt. Michael Hoyt of the LAPD asked for help with. Matt had been a consultant to the department since the days that Vince Novelli had been on the job. Hoyt had transferred in and taken Vince's place in the department after he was shot while working with Matt on a case.

Stepping out of the shower and drying off, he decided to call CJ and tell her his plan before anyone else could try to hire him for a new job. As he pulled a pair of jeans and a blue button-down collar shirt out of the closet he pushed the number for the office on his cell phone and hit the speaker button.

"Houston Investigations." Chris Chase, his secretary sounded like she was in a good mood.

"Mornin'. Is CJ around there?" He pulled on his socks as Chris assured him that she was and put him on hold.

"Hi there. Did you decide to wake up?" CJ was giving Catey Rose yet another bottle.

"Yeah, thanks by the way. Look, I've gotta draw the line somewhere on my workload, so don't take any more cases unless it's Michael, okay?" He pulled on his jeans and was working his belt through the loops.

"Good. I was hoping you would figure that out – that's exactly what I was thinking about on the way in this morning." She was relieved that Matt had come to the conclusion.

"Aha, I see. Well, I'm going to go dive into the waffles and then me and my school books will be there as soon as we can. Love you, Babe." He zipped up the jeans and pulled on his boots.

"Love you, Honey. See you in a little bit. 'Bye." She hung up and looked down at her now five month old daughter, Catherine Rose Houston. "Daddy's a pretty smart cookie. Now maybe we'll get to see a little more of him." Catey grinned and gurgled her approval, then went back to attacking the bottle as Chris walked into the office with some papers for CJ.

"She's really been going through the bottles the last couple of weeks." Chris reached down and tickled Catey's foot causing the infant to start giggling.

"Yes she has. I've decided to go ahead and start her on cereal. It seems like she hardly gets done with one bottle before she's hungry for another one."

"She's a growing girl." Chris tickled the baby's foot again and Catey launched into another fit of giggles. "You know, she looks a lot like her daddy when she laughs."

"Yep, she's acting more like him every day. And getting more stubborn to boot."

"Well she gets that from both of her parents." Chris grinned at CJ as she walked back out to her desk in the outer office.

Matt stepped off the elevator forty five minutes later. "Mornin', Chris. How's the married life treating you?"

"Just fine. Murray cooked again last night – this time it was butterfly shrimp." She was extremely proud of her new husband.

"So he's branching out, huh? Or did Mama Novelli threaten him if he kept trying to show her up?"

He headed on up the stairs as Chris laughed and said, "Maybe he should go to work for her."

"Nah, he loves it here too much – besides, he would miss you. I know you wouldn't leave us, now would you?" He stopped and turned to face Chris.

"I don't know…." She grinned.

Matt walked on into CJ's office and gave her a kiss and a big hug. "Thanks, Babe."

"You're welcome. You never even twitched when the alarm went off. I figured you needed it." She got up and pulled a paper out of the printer. "Time to hit the books, college boy." She smacked him on the rear.

"Uh, that's not going to make me want to work on school you know." He wiggled his eyebrows at her before picking up his daughter and getting a good morning kiss from her. She giggled as she patted on his cheek, then pulled her hand back and looked at it.

"Daddy forgot to shave this morning." CJ laughed at the expression on her daughter's face.

"No, Daddy left it there on purpose." He kissed Catey and put her back in the playpen and handed her a ball that rattled before heading out of his wife's office and into his own little-used office. He hadn't set foot in it since before Catey was born and he was working on a case with Hoyt and an agent from Homeland Security. That was when he had his tonsils out. He looked around. Usually he preferred to do most of his work on BABY, the computer that was installed inside the coffee table in front of the couch, but he was running behind on his school work and decided that he needed to be away from any distractions so he could catch up. He had an exam coming up in two weeks and had a good bit to accomplish before then.

After putting his books on the desk, Matt walked back out and grabbed a cup of coffee then went back in and closed the door of his office. He had been watching a lecture for about twenty minutes when the phone rang and there was a knock on the door. "Come in."

Chris stuck her head in the door. "Hey, Michael's on line one for you."

"Thanks Chris." He picked up the phone and pushed line one. "Hey there, pard, what's up?"

"Oh, you mean besides my blood pressure and the price of gas?" Michael Hoyt was stressed out as usual.

"You can't blame me for the gas prices anymore, Hoyt. I'm not in the business, remember?" At one time Matt had owned one of the top five oil companies in the country.

"Uh huh, I remember. Look, I need a fresh set of eyes to look at a couple of cases. Think you can help me?"

Matt didn't really want to, but he knew Michael wouldn't call if he didn't need the help badly. "Sure. Where?"

"My office." Hoyt had pulled the bottle of antacid out of his desk drawer and was about to take a sip.

"Did you eat your yogurt?" Matt loved pulling this particular trick on Hoyt – the overworked police lieutenant had searched his office several times thinking that Matt had installed one of his "critters" as he liked to call the tiny surveillance cameras that he had helped to design.

"Yes I did – and you and I need to talk. You have got to get that camera out of here, Houston." As the words came out of his mouth, he was looking around the office trying to figure out where in the hell the PI had planted it.

"See you in a few. 'Bye." Matt hung up and was snickering as he closed the laptop. He loved driving Hoyt crazy like that. He headed over to CJ's office and told her about going to see Hoyt.

She looked at him and shook her head then looked at her watch. "You didn't even get halfway through a lecture, did you?"

"Nope, not even a third of the way. See you in a little while." He kissed her. "Love you."

"Love you, too. I may have to chain you to that desk before it's over with."

"And how do you expect me to get any work done when you're talking about chains?" The last was said as he went down the steps and into the outer office where Chris had a shocked look on her face. He just smiled as he hit the button for the elevator and hopped inside.