AN: I haven't seen seasons 5 and 6 so sorry if I get anything wrong! I don't own any characters from LOCI. I wish I did! Please RnR!!

New York City

September 2000

It was the creaking of the bed that woke him and when he opened his eyes, still fuzzy with sleep, he realised that it was still dark. Not even the darkness of near dawn, but the darkness of mid-night. As his eyes adjusted, he could make out the shape of a figure silently moving around beside the bed.

"What's wrong?" he asked, when he finally found his voice.

She froze and he sensed her half-turning towards him. "Nothing."

"Then where are you going?"

There was a pause. "Home."

The single word dragged him to full alertness and he pushed himself up onto his elbows. Glancing at the bedside clock, he saw that the eerie green numbers proclaimed it to be 3.42am. "Now?" He realised immediately that he had asked the wrong question. "Why?"

"Because," she replied childishly. For a moment, he thought that was all she was going to say. "Paul gets back later this morning."

Unwilling to continue the conversation in the dark, he reached over and snapped on one of the bedside lights. The room was immediately bathed in a dirty yellow glow which only succeeded in highlighting the fact that it was a cheap motel. The sudden change didn't seem to affect her. She continued to dress, by this time pulling up her pants and drawing her sweater down over the body he had revelled in only a few hours earlier.

"So you're going home now?"

"Better now than when it gets light," she replied, pulling on her shoes. "Perhaps if I'm going through my front door when it's still dark I won't feel so much like a cheap whore."

He was stunned by the anger and bitterness in her voice. She had displayed no feelings of uncertainty or unwillingness when they had crashed through the motel door late the previous evening and barely made it to the bed. He ran a hand over his eyes, "Emily…"

"Don't." She turned to face him and he could see the fear in her eyes. "Please don't. I couldn't bear it, not right now." She turned back to the mirror and started playing with her hair. "I need to go home. I need to…think." She sighed as she looked at herself, like someone viewing their aging complexion with sorrow and regret. He watched as she ran her fingers down over the obvious lovebite on her neck. For a moment, she stared transfixed and then whirled around, making a grab for her bag lying on the chair next to the bed. "We shouldn't have done this," she muttered as she raked through the contents. "It was wrong. We shouldn't have…"

He crawled over the top of the bed towards her until he was kneeling in front of her. Reaching out, he gently put his hands on her waist and pulled her towards him, burying his face in the swell of her now covered breasts. He heard, and felt, her breath leave her body in a stuttering sigh and her fingers gently starting playing with his hair.

"Come back to bed," he whispered, pulling back and looking up at her. Even kneeling on the bed, he was practically at eye level with her. He kissed her and she responded, the weight of her body slowly starting to press against him. He knew it wouldn't take much to drag her back into the soft folds of the motel sheets.

"No…" she pulled away from him and moved out of his reach. "I told you – I can't. We should never have started this. I should never have let you…" he thought she was about to cry. "I have to go." She pulled her car keys from the bag like a prize and held them up in the dim light. "I'm sorry. I should never have come." She turned and unlocked the room door, pulling it open a fraction. Turning back again, he saw the light from the lamp hit the unshed tears in her eyes. "I'm sorry, Bobby. I'm really sorry." With that, she was gone. Into the night and out of his life.

Bobby waited as the door clicked softly shut behind her. Then he lay back down on the bed and rolled over so that his face was pressed against the pillow where she had lain, allowing him to drink in her scent and relive the memories.

New York City

July 2005

The heat was oppressive. The temperature had been in the nineties for the last two weeks making working conditions in the city almost unbearable. It also made the smell of decomposing flesh even more nauseating than usual. When they arrived at the crime scene, it was almost eleven am and Bobby Goren and Alex Eames had to cover their mouths. Rodgers, the ME, was bent over the body wearing a mask. When she saw them coming, she stood up and removed it.

"Welcome to Hell," she said by way of greeting. "This one's gonna be cooked if I don't get her out of the sun soon." She cocked her head on one side. "Is she who they say she is?"

Alex nodded, "The niece of the Chief of Detectives. That's why we're here. What have you got?"

"Well, she's in a notorious junkie hang out and the track marks would suggest that she's no first timer…"

"But?"

"But…" Rogers gave a weak smile, "the blunt force trauma to the back of the head gives it away as being not your average OD." She looked over to where Bobby was crouched in front of the body. "No sign of the weapon yet, although judging from the junk in this place, it could be anything."

Alex glanced around the small, quiet piece of waste ground just yards from the entrance to the park. It was littered with shopping carts, bricks, tree branches and other objects she was not in a hurry to get too close to. She walked over to where her partner was bent close to the girl's face. "She was pretty."

"Yes she was," Bobby replied. He lifted up her hands each in turn drawing Alex's attention to the two rings: one on each of her wedding fingers. "Obviously robbery wasn't the motive."

"Given whose niece she is, I'm guessing those are real diamonds." Alex hunkered down on the opposite side of the body. "Earrings too."

"And this," Bobby gently fingered the silver cross just visible under the neckline of the girl's thin top. He turned the cross over and read the marking on the back. "Tiffanys."

"Not too many junkies going around the city with these babies," Alex commented. "You would think she would have sold them to buy her stash." Bobby merely grunted in the way she knew indicated he was only half-listening.

"Finger marks around her neck," he pointed out.

"Yeah, I was getting to those," Rogers said, "they were pre-mortem. Looks as though he tried one way first and when that didn't work…"

"Bashed her on the head," Alex glanced down at the victim's clothing. Along with the thin white top, she was also wearing a short black skirt and high-heeled shoes. In fact, only one shoe. "Missing a shoe," she pointed out.

"Well, she wasn't killed here," Rogers said. "There's not enough blood. My guess is after the attempted strangling, she ran. The perp chased her down here and the rest is history." She batted away one of the ever increasing flies. "You guys going to be much longer?"

Bobby got to his feet. "You have her purse?" Rogers tossed the evidence bag to him and he gingerly opened it and lifted out a black satin purse.

Alex whistled, "Prada."

Bobby looked from the purse to his partner and back again. "How can you tell?"

"It's called fashion," she replied, taking it from him and opening it. She handed him a wallet and then raked through the rest of the contents. "Lipstick, compact, keys, condoms…" she lifted out a number of brightly coloured packets, "every flavour you can imagine."

Bobby opened the wallet and pulled out the victim's drivers' licence. "Gabrielle Lewis." He looked through the rest. "Cash and credit cards are still here."

"So it wasn't opportunity and it wasn't robbery…"

"It was personal," Bobby finished.

XXXX

"So, I hear you caught the Chief of D's niece?" Mike Logan asked when Bobby and Alex got back to the squad room.

"You could say that," Alex replied. "Strangled, beaten over the head…"

"Your usual exciting day at Major Case."

Alex smiled weakly. Sometimes she hated his humour. She looked over where Bobby was already tapping away on the computer. "Anything interesting?"

"I'm…looking up Gabrielle's DMV record," he replied, concentrating on the screen. "She's been busted twice in the last year for DUI."

"No wonder, all the drugs she was taking. I bet the tox report is going to make interesting reading."

At that moment, the door to the Captain's office opened and Ross stuck his head out. "Goren? Eames?" They got up from their desks and went inside, closing the door behind them. "The Chief of Detectives wants to see you this afternoon," he told them. "His brother and his wife are too distressed to talk but he thinks he might have some information which could be of assistance to the investigation."

"What kind of information?" Bobby asked.

"I don't know. He wouldn't discuss it over the phone." Ross looked sombre. "I'm sure I don't have to remind you how sensitive this case is, or how imperative it is that we get a result here. The department is trying to crack down on the drug problem in this city and if it turns out this is the result of some argument over crack…well that's not going to look too good."

"Why?" Bobby asked, "because she's the Chief of D's niece?"

"Don't look at me like that," Ross replied, "I'm only telling you what the whispers from upstairs are."

"The Chief of D's wants it to be the result of something completely innocent so that the city doesn't think 'oh dear, another dead junkie.'"

"Your words, Goren, not mine."

"Fine," Bobby walked back to the door. "I didn't realise we'd gotten to the stage where one murder was better than another." He threw the door open and stormed back into the squad room.

Ross looked over at Alex, "What's up with him?"

She shrugged, "Your guess is as good as mine."