Thank you to everyone for taking the time to leave such nice comments about Chapter 1.

I feel like I should probably clarify that although this story is AU, it's not a huge departure. If you're looking for a story in which Sam is an astronaut rescuing Andy from a hostage situation on the international space station, that is not this story. Of course, if someone else wants to write about the astronaut thing, I'd totally be up for reading it. :)


"Sir, please just quit while you're ahead." Andy scowled as she stood outside the window of a bright blue eco-friendly car. After the morning she'd had, having to listen to an arrogant windbag trying to talk himself out of a ticket had her teetering on the thin line between controlled sarcasm and overt rudeness.

"I'm just asking if you properly calibrated your gun before stopping me. I don't think I could possibly have been going as fast as you say you clocked me," he challenged her.

"Yes I did. And yes you were," she replied curtly, shoving the ticket in the window at him.

"Have you guys ever considered going paperless?" he asked as he inspected the ticket.

"Yeah. We sit around the station talking about it all the time." Andy fought the urge to roll her eyes. "Have a nice day."

As she backed away from the window the guy called her back, "Hey Officer McNally, I don't suppose you'd want to go out sometime?"

"No. I don't suppose I would," she responded. "But if you're lucky, you might see me in court next month." She walked briskly back to the cruiser and dropped into the passenger seat, yanking the door shut and crossing her arms in frustration. Looking over at Chris, she muttered, "You're taking the next two. That guy was a complete disaster. He started off by explaining how his car is scientifically incapable of exceeding the speed limit. He even drew me a diagram to illustrate his point." Andy held up a wrinkled napkin with a messy collection of lines and circles scrawled on it in blue ink.

"Nice. It's like a science lesson and a traffic stop all rolled into one," Chris observed.

Andy plowed ahead with her list of offenses, ticking them off on her fingers one-by-one. "Name-checked his Great Uncle Leonard who retired from 27 Division fifteen years ago . . . mentioned going to pick up his grandmother to take her to church . . . offered me his lunch-"

"Offered you his lunch? What was it? I'm starving."

"Chicken salad."

"Oh."

"Then, of course, he trotted out the standard gun calibration challenge. And he capped it all off by hitting on me."

"Okay. You're right. That's a lot for one stop. But I still don't think it beats the guy who exposed himself to Dov last week," Chris laughed.

"True. No one can top Dov's naked man," Andy admitted with a small grin, momentarily forgetting her irritation as she thought about the look of mortification on Dov's face when he walked back into the station at the end of his shift.

"You know he told us to stop referring to the guy like that," Chris reminded her.

"Yeah, but I'm having a really crappy day," she whined. "I need a little 'funny' to get me through it."

"You never finished telling me what happened this morning. You locked yourself out?"

"Right. So I was taking out the trash in my pajamas. On my way out the door I must've flipped the lock without thinking. A neighbor let me use her phone to call Jeff, but then she insisted that I watch one of those cheesy morning talk shows with her while I waited for him to show up. Ugh. The guests were these two sisters who slept with the same-" She interrupted herself, shaking her head back and forth rapidly to clear the image from her mind. "Never mind. All you need to know is that it was pretty terrible. Then, when Jeff showed up, he was understandably annoyed about having to leave work to come over and let me back into my place."

"Jeff was annoyed? I can't picture it. He's always so upbeat," Chris said in disbelief.

"Well, it's generally not okay for a teacher to duck out in the middle of a Chemistry lab—especially not during the first week of summer school. I get why he wasn't happy," she acknowledged with a shrug. "Then, on the way to work, I made the mistake of running into that coffee shop near my building, and there was a rear-ender right out in front of the place while I was in there. The drivers were fighting, so I had to help break it up and wait for a couple of on-duty cops to show up. Oh, and when I got to work I realized I'd forgotten to bring in a clean uniform, which means I'm wearing yesterday's clothes. So naturally, after all of that, I was late for Parade and got stuck out here running speed traps."

Chris looked over at her and winced. "You're really wearing the same uniform you wore yesterday?"

"Got a problem with it?" She asked, arching an eyebrow at him.

"Uh, no," he responded quickly. "Look, why don't we take a break? It's lunchtime and there's that diner just up the street that you like."

"I could use something to eat," she admitted. "They do incredible things with pancakes at that place."

Within fifteen minutes they were settled in a booth at the diner waiting for their lunch to arrive. "You know, one of the best things about being a cop is that you get really good service," Chris declared.

Andy smiled at him from across the booth. It was impossible to stay in a bad mood when Chris was around. He had a tendency to put a positive spin on everything from running a speed trap in the middle of a July heat wave (at least they got to be outside meeting interesting, new people) to sitting in traffic on the way out of the city before a long weekend (they should consider themselves lucky that they had the whole weekend to relax once they got to where they were going). Of course, he had his darker moments, too, but in general, Chris was a fairly positive guy most of the time and Andy appreciated that about him.

"How're things going with you and Denise?" Andy asked and immediately wished she could take back the question when she saw his face fall.

"I think she's seeing someone else," he confessed, receiving an expression of wide-eyed surprise from Andy.

"Why do you think that? I thought things were going really well," she said in confusion. Everything always seemed perfect between Chris and Denise when he talked about their relationship, but maybe that was just another example of him putting a positive spin on a not-so-positive situation.

"It's a lot of little things. She's cancelled on me the last two times I planned to visit her. When she comes here to see me she's always anxious to get back, and she's texting the whole time she's here. She just seems preoccupied, I guess," he reflected. "When we all started at 15 a year ago she used to visit me every weekend, and now we're lucky if we see each other once a month."

"It could be a million things. None of that necessarily means she's seeing someone else," Andy pointed out.

"The thing is, I just have this feeling that I can't explain. I know something's going on." Their waitress appeared with the food and the conversation stopped until she left the table.

"So what are you gonna do?" Andy asked. She reached for the syrup and poured a generous amount on her pancakes.

"I guess I'll talk to her," he said unenthusiastically as he chewed on the end of a french fry. "It's not really a conversation I want to have, but other than going to Timmins and following her around, it's the only way to know for sure. I just wish things could be simple for us like they are with you and Jeff."

"Hey, don't idealize my relationship. We have our ups and downs just like any other couple," Andy admonished him.

"Yeah, sure. Name one 'down' you two have had in recent memory."

"Well, there was . . . ." Andy began but then stopped when she really couldn't come up with a good example of a "down." Worse, though, was that she couldn't produce an "up" either. Everything with them was just the same as it had been for as long as she could remember—consistently fine. "Never mind. We're talking about you," she responded dismissively, deflecting his challenge. "Are you prepared for the possibility that she might actually tell you there's someone else?"

"I don't know. We've been together since we were teenagers. It's hard to imagine not being with her. It's just that once I put it out there and she admits it, we're done. I don't know if I'm ready to throw it all away yet," Chris admitted with a hint of desperation in his tone.

"I know it's got to be incredibly difficult," Andy agreed. "I mean, you've been in this relationship for years and you have time invested in it. There are emotions involved. Making that move to try something new has to be scary. And obviously you don't want to make a wrong choice on a whim and lose out on something great. But if things aren't right, you can't stay in an extended holding pattern forever."

"So you agree that I should talk to her?" he asked dubiously.

Andy sighed. "Yeah. I guess I do. Even if there's no one else in the picture, it sounds like you two need to figure out what you both want, and if that's no longer each other, you shouldn't stay together just because it's the comfortable option."

"You're right. Okay, I'm doing it," he decided, pounding a fist lightly on the table for emphasis. "I'm supposed to visit her this weekend—that is, if she doesn't cancel on me—and I'm confronting her."

'You've totally got this," Andy said supportively, sending him an encouraging smile as she forked a large bite of pancakes into her mouth.


"$10 bucks says it's just some homeless guy who broke in looking for a place to stay," Chris speculated as they responded to a call that had just come in on the radio. A neighboring tenant had noticed suspicious activity at a nearby warehouse that happened to be in the vicinity of their afternoon speed trap.

"Kind of sad if that's what it is. Poor guy's looking for a place to sleep and we bust him for trespassing," Andy mused.

"Hey, if it gets us off of speed traps for a while, I'll walk around and check out all the old buildings they want. Did you see what that last guy did when he was driving away after I gave him the ticket?"

"I did," Andy confirmed, holding back a laugh.

"What kind of person flips off a cop?" Chris asked indignantly. "No one appreciates what we do these days. Do they think we like traipsing around the city in Kevlar vests and black pants on one of the hottest days of the year?"

"I'm pretty sure they don't think about it at all," she informed him as they pulled up to a faded blue industrial building. They climbed out of the cruiser, and Andy did a quick visual scan of the perimeter. There were no cars outside and no signs of activity.

"It's probably some kids pranking the cops. Guys flipping us off at traffic stops . . . kids sending us out on fake calls . . . . Doesn't anyone respect the police anymore?" Chris grumbled as he walked toward a weathered metal door on the front of the building.

"Careful there or you'll lose that positive outlook of yours," Andy warned him, making a mental note to try and be more upbeat when they got back in the car. She didn't want her own bad day to affect Chris' mood.

Andy ducked back into the car and picked up the radio to confirm the address with dispatch. "This is 1520. We're at the warehouse, and there's nothing going on here. We'll just do a quick check and take off," she explained. She listened as the dispatcher recounted information regarding the caller and the building owner, and then she joined Chris at the door of the building.

He rattled the door knob and shook his head. "The place is locked up tight."

"I'm just gonna check around the corner," Andy said as she began walking to the left. "It could be a real call. Dispatch said someone from a neighboring building was walking by and heard noises inside. Apparently, the place has been vacant for a while and the neighbor was nervous because a few months ago there were some kids vandalizing buildings in the area. Dispatch tried to reach the building owner, but the number was disconnected."

"I'll take a quick peek over on the other side," Chris agreed easily, walking in the opposite direction.

When Andy rounded the corner of the building, she saw more of the same—just a faded metal façade with a small alley running alongside it. Up ahead, a grey cat startled her when it bounded out from underneath a garbage bin beside the building next door. The cat eyed Andy suspiciously before darting toward the building they were investigating. A door up ahead was cracked, and the cat nudged it open and slipped inside, leaving it slightly ajar. When Andy got there, she saw several cigarette butts scattered around nearby but no signs of forced entry or anything that looked suspicious. Sticking her foot in the door, she pushed it open slowly and peered inside, letting out a relieved breath when she saw absolutely nothing. It was just a large warehouse filled with rows of empty shelves. Light flooded in from several high windows, reflecting off of dust particles as they floated around in the air. With the exception of a closed door to her left that she assumed must be an office, there wasn't much to see other than a heavy layer of dust on every surface.

"Chris, there's a door open over on this side, and it looks like some animals might be coming in and out of it. That could explain the noise the neighbor heard. Someone probably forgot to close it all the way. I'll just take a quick look around and meet you back at the car," she said into her radio.

"Nothing over on this side. I'm on my way back," he responded.

Andy sighed, wondering whether she should look a little further into the building or just secure the door and leave. Noting the overabundance of cobwebs, it was obvious to her that the only living beings that had been inside for a long time were mice, rats, bats and now, an annoying grey cat. She couldn't even imagine a homeless person wanting to hang out in there. Andy sighed to herself as she reluctantly made the decision to do a cursory search for the cat before shutting it up inside and leaving it to fend for itself.

Rows of metal shelves ran perpendicular to a center aisle that appeared to span almost the entire length of the warehouse. Andy walked carefully and quietly down the aisle, not wanting to disturb anything that could possibly run out across her feet. At each row, she looked left and right to see if she could spot the cat. As she approached the last row, she made the decision that it was a lost cause. The cat could be anywhere and obviously didn't want to be found. Just as she decided to turn back, though, she heard muffled voices coming from behind the last row of shelves. Easing to her left, she moved out of the aisle and looked through the shelving to see what was happening on the other side.

Two men were standing in an open area near a grey cargo van. Only minimal conversation seemed to be flowing between them, and Andy assumed that was why she hadn't heard them sooner. As she looked at the area around them, she realized the van must have entered the building through a garage door in the back, explaining why no cars were parked outside. One of the men was tall and lanky with a messy array of sandy-blond hair. He glanced around the space absently, his droopy eyes giving him the appearance of being very tired or very strung out. His companion, by contrast, had dark hair and wore a serious expression. His arms were crossed and his feet were positioned apart in a stance that suggested he was much more alert than his inattentive companion.

Suddenly, the serious guy spoke up. "What's taking Levy so long?" he asked impatiently, looking at his watch.

"Take it easy, man. He's probably just taking a leak," the shaggy guy offered.

A strange prickle ran up Andy's neck at the mention of a third guy in the building. She had only seen the two and wondered where the other one was. At the same time, it occurred to her that she should probably radio to Chris for backup before approaching the men to find out if they had a legitimate purpose for being there. Sliding a hand up to her radio, she made a move to turn down the volume in case Chris responded. She didn't want to spook the men before he got there. Before she could turn it down, though, a heavy hand gripped her shoulder from behind.

Spinning around, Andy found herself facing a balding, red-faced man with an unsavory air about him. A tight smile stretched across his bloated face as he released her shoulder and dropped his hand back to his side. "What can we do for you, Officer?" he asked in an overly-polite tone that did nothing to assuage Andy's concerns about his shady demeanor. She realized he must have come from the office she passed when she entered the building.

Andy could hear the footsteps of the other two men moving toward them as she explained her purpose for being there. "A neighbor called in a report. Said he heard something over here and that the building's usually empty, so we just stopped by to check it out," she said evenly, making sure to throw in a reference to "we" so they would know she wasn't alone.

The other two men rounded the end of the shelf and crowded in beside their friend, blocking Andy's access to the aisle. As they stood in front of her, the shaggy one mumbled something unintelligible. His next move took her completely off-guard as he reached behind his back and pulled a gun out of his waist band. Andy didn't even have a chance to draw her own weapon before he aimed the gun at her with his left hand.

"Put that thing away, Rinko," the balding guy scoffed. "Sorry, Officer. We're just here doing maintenance for the building owner. Joe," he paused and angled his head in the direction of his gun-wielding associate, "just gets a little excited when there's a big, empty space and no one around."

Andy looked into the eyes of the guy they were calling Rinko, and alternately Joe, and saw that not only did he lack focus but he also looked slightly crazed. "Just looking out for the Boss," he explained vaguely. He shook his head back and forth, and Andy assumed he was trying to focus.

From beside Rinko, the dark, serious guy crept slowly into his personal space, cautiously raising a hand toward the gun. Shifting her attention away from the gun momentarily, Andy met his gaze for one long second. His eyes were sharp and focused, and she felt drawn in as a look of understanding passed between them. Her attention was quickly yanked back to Rinko, however, when he started whining and waving the gun around erratically.

"She could ruin everything," Rinko complained, slurring his speech. "Gotta take care of it . . . keep the Boss happy."

Gradually, he steadied the gun again and Andy found herself bracing involuntarily. Time seemed to crawl by in slow motion as she assessed her options. She could try turning around and running down the row at her back, but assuming that it didn't dead-end, she would most likely end up with a bullet in her back if the guy decided to shoot. She could attempt to disarm him, but his erratic behavior suggested that any sudden movements would probably be a bad idea. A third option presented itself—talking him down. She decided to give it a try.

Before she could do that, though, the serious guy started speaking in a calm, level tone that could have sliced through steel. "Put down the gun, Rinko," he said. His eyes darted quickly from the gun to Andy and back again as if he were trying to determine the best course of action, too.

"Listen, I don't know who your Boss is or anything about his business, Joe," Andy addressed Rinko evenly. "All I know is that you don't want to shoot a cop." She hoped she sounded confident even though she was doing everything in her power not to succumb to the fear that was gripping her.

"Doesn't matter who you are. You're in the way. The Boss doesn't like people who are in the way," he responded in a garbled tone that was just clear enough to be understood. As she watched the gun, she noticed that the serious guy still had his hand poised close to it as if he were hoping to disarm Rinko. Andy knew the situation was precarious because there was really no way to wrest the gun from the guy's grip that wouldn't result in setting him off and getting someone—most likely Andy—shot. "The Boss will know who to thank for this. He'll see who's got his back."

"Come on, Joe," the bald guy cautioned half-heartedly. He inched away from Andy in a very obvious attempt to distance himself from the gun. At that point, Andy assumed he was probably hoping Rinko would just pull the trigger so they wouldn't have to deal with the fallout associated with holding a police officer at gunpoint.

Andy looked at the serious guy again and saw that he was regarding her with a purposeful stare. As he nodded his head subtly, she got the impression that he wanted her to back up. She had no reason to trust him, but she did. After all, out of the three men in the warehouse with her, he was the only one who seemed concerned about the gun pointed in her direction.

Andy took one tiny step backwards but froze when Rinko said, "Don't move." His tone sounded desperate, and his gun hand was shaking.

The serious guy repeated his directive from earlier. "Joe. Put down the gun. The Boss won't be happy about you shooting a cop. It'll only bring a lot of heat down on him and you know how he hates that." As he talked, his voice assumed a hypnotic quality, and Andy got the impression that the conversation was merely a distraction because while he was talking, he seemed to be lining himself up to step in between her and Rinko.

Suddenly, Andy's radio crackled and Chris' voice spilled out into the empty warehouse. "Andy, is everything okay? Where are you?"

She barely heard Chris because as soon as his voice came through the radio, Rinko steadied his hand and pulled the trigger. The serious guy yelled, "Joe! No!" as Rinko fired off two shots in rapid succession. The deafening effect of gunshots at close range quickly dissolved into a discordant mix of noise as the sound ping-ponged around the large empty space.

The initial pain was sudden and intense, and as Andy felt the bullet rip through her right arm she screamed. That first pain was almost immediately followed up by a second more powerful one that felt like a massive punch to the gut. Her insides seemed to be splintering into a million pieces as the second impact stole her breath and propelled her backwards. Andy gasped hoarsely for the air she craved, knowing that the act of drawing in a breath might also tear her body in half. Something hard banged against the back of her head, and after that, there was nothing.