The sun rose over the city of L.A. but C.J. didn't notice it. She'd spent most of the night sitting in the waiting room at the Memorial Hospital Medical Center while Carl underwent surgery.

When she got back to the house, she'd brewed coffee for him, gotten him the brandy that she promised. She figured it might take him an hour at most maybe two. But he never showed up at her house.

Then she drifted off to sleep on the couch and she saw him there. Just standing in front of her dressed in his tux, looking peacefully down at her….his blue eyes radiant and she tried to say something to him, anything.

How much she'd loved him and hadn't told him because…well she couldn't remember why now.

But instead, he drifted slowly away from her and when she'd reached out for him, he'd slipped away from her fingers. Then she saw the shadowy figure instead.

Her nightmare man.

Matt had been kidnapped for ransom as a child by what he called the Nightmare Man. She'd been instrumental at pulling him out of his shell when he'd been a young boy that she'd met up with in the sixth grade.

He'd been friendly and in some ways fearless, but being alone in the dark terrified him. So after he finally shared why, she came up with some rather…inventive ways to address that fear. Matt had put his trauma behind him but used the memories of it as an inspiration to help others through the investigative firm.

But she had her own nightmare man, who like Matt's existed in the flesh. It had been her first year in law school at Harvard when she'd crossed his path while driving with a man named Jonathon from work to pick Julia up from a party.

Only it hadn't been what it seemed and the three of them wound up being held as collateral to get their friend Scott to turn over a disc he'd kept while working for a man named Andre.

What Andre had almost made her do…what she'd agreed to do to save her friends from death…it haunted her still. Mostly years later at night, in her dreams.

The only way he could still hurt her by making her relive that night…which had ended when men sent by Andre's father had arrived to take him and set the building ablaze. She had to find Jonathan and Julia locked up in a basement room and the three of them barely escaped with their lives.

She never heard about Andre again though she still kept in casual touch with Jonathan who'd gone off to work for the U.S. Marshal's office as a field agent. Julia had married some guy she fell in love with and started a charitable foundation. But it wasn't the present that she dreamed about, it was the past that she'd tried to put behind her.

She'd never told Matt about it….but he'd been in this dream with her trying to help her escape from the building amid burning rafters collapsing around her. Her breath burned in her lungs and she felt the heat blast her skin.

Would they make it to the only way out in time? She ran faster and the hallway got longer, longer until…

The doorbell rang waking her up, ripping her away from the world of dreams and nightmares.

Her watch read 2 AM and she heard the bell ring again. She walked to the door thinking that Carl had finally sorted out the car but when she opened it, she saw Too Mean instead. The expression on his face stopped her cold.

What he had to say nearly stopped her heart.

"I was listening to the scanner and I heard police say that someone called them about a man lying in the street in front of his car. He'd been hit more than once…"

She didn't need to ask him who it was, she already knew.

Carl.

Oh god, she should have never left him there alone on the dark street. She should have insisted he bail on his car and drive back with her. Call the Auto Club from there and have the car towed to a service garage to get fixed. They could meet the tower there.

But he'd stayed waiting for them instead and now he was critically injured. Too Mean found out which hospital. Damn, she'd been there herself not too long when she'd been shot by a member of a Chinese Triad when trying to find who murdered her friend Connie Ling. Matt had been there by her bed holding her hand when she woke up. His face lined with relief, his hand felt so good almost as if led her back to the land of the living.

She would do the same for her boyfriend. He had to make it. She called the hospital before she left and the nurse didn't give her much information. Only that he'd been unconscious when he arrived and that he'd been rushed into surgery. After she hung up, she sprung into action.

She'd dressed hastily in a pair of jeans and a black top and Too Mean rushed her to the hospital. They didn't talk much and she knew it'd be bad. But she believed that the surgeons would be able to save his life like they had hers.

That he wouldn't die…she didn't even consider that. When they got to the hospital they sat there and waited on hard seats drinking diluted coffee trying not to watch the clock on the wall. If they did that, it'd slow down like a watched pot. She had gone numb since she heard the news, had been on autopilot while getting dressed and she didn't say anything to Two-Mean so lost in her thinking that he had to make it. If anything happened to him….but she stopped right there. No, she couldn't think like that, of course he'd survive. This was one of the best trauma centers in L.A.

The hours ticked by and about an hour before sunrise, the vigil was interrupted by police officers who dropped by as part of their investigation into Carl's hit and run accident.

Accident, yeah right….from the time she heard the news she didn't believe it was that at all.

It was attempted murder, pure and simple.

The driver who hit him on the street had struck his body more than once worsening his injuries. How could that be an accident? One hit might be, but the second could only be deliberate…to make sure he was dead. Only the killer hadn't succeeded because Carl had clung to life all the way to the hospital making it past pre-op in the ER and into the operating room. But the officers wouldn't listen when she pointed out the obvious suspect.

Christian Dean.

She told him how he'd sent flowers to her, how he'd called her, how he wouldn't take no as an answer for her when she told him to stop contacting her. It had to be him that hit Carl. The car had been working just fine until they left the hotel. Maybe he'd followed them there, sabotaged it and then followed them, knowing that the car would break down.

What had he planned? To kill Carl, but then he wouldn't know ahead of time that Carl would be left alone with the car. Maybe he'd planned something else…she'd shared this with the officers but she knew they didn't believe her.

We found skid marks near the body, one said, so the driver had tried to stop and just couldn't do it in time. She argued back that the driver had done that only to make it look accidental, to cover his tracks.

God, she hated arguing with him when she needed to be strong for Carl, ready to be by his side when the surgeons fixed him up. Finally they closed up their notepads and left her alone with Too Mean.

"They acted like I was crazy," she told him, "Like I should be thrilled a man sent me flowers and called me."

Too Mean sighed.

"He's a man who couldn't take no and when he found out you had a boyfriend, he wanted him out of the picture, that's all."

More time passed and she started to pray. If Too Mean hadn't been there, she might have collapsed in despair. She might have allowed herself to feel the anger, the raw terror and the guilt that lay below the surface of her numbness. The last ate at her the most because if only she hadn't left him…

She saw herself staying with him while Too Mean went and called for a tow. But then what if that's what Dean had wanted? No sense to dwell on it as she stared at the clock again.

Matt had told her that he had said a prayer for her when it'd been her in the operating room and he'd been in the lobby waiting with Too Mean. She'd kept a vigil for Matt when he'd been shot multiple times and had been declared dead on the table. The news had nearly broken her and when she heard that they had revived him she made a promise to herself.

So far she hadn't fulfilled it. Life and the man in the operating room right now had gotten in the way. The man who had dropped everything on his business trip and flown back to make sure she was okay until Matt got out of the hospital.

She begged in her prayers that Carl survive, if only he'd make it, she'd….she'd do all kinds of things in return. C.J. could always cut a good bargain as Matt had always said. Anything to be able to hold his hand and feel life there…and not the cold chill of a life that's passed into death.

But when the surgeon finally broke through the double doors and removed his mask, she'd already known it was bad news.

She'd seen it in his eyes and something inside of her broke.

"Oh my god…"

She raised her clenched fists to her face to keep from screaming as the numbness started to break away with the news the surgeon would tell her. She barely heard what he said even though she saw his lips moving.

"We…tried…lost him twice on the table…spinal injuries C2…subdural hematoma…cerebral hemorrhage…couldn't revive…"

All fancy words for the fact that he'd died on the table.

It wasn't supposed to happen that way. The surgeons were supposed to save him, to patch his broken body back together again. She'd sit by his bed for five minutes every hours holding his hand and talking to him, knowing that he'd hear her even if his eyes didn't open.

A couple of hours later, she still just sat there in the waiting room. Oh she'd tried to call Matt but he'd been in court and couldn't be interrupted as she'd forgotten about the time difference. She couldn't even get a message to him. Not knowing what else to do, she waited for the police to come and ask her more questions for their investigation now that it'd become a homicide.

She hoped they'd changed their attitude since the first interview.

Lt. Michael Hoyt, a close friend to her and Matt entered the waiting room and she got up to meet him. She thanked him for coming and she meant it. He'd become a good friend to her and Matt.

"You okay?"

She just shook her head.

"They worked on him all night…couldn't save him. Your people said it was a hit and run accident."

"Because that is what it was."

She shook her head, rejecting that theory. She had to make him see what it was and who did it.

"He was murdered."

She heard the doubt in his voice just after she read it on his face. She sighed deeply, would she have to start from square one again? She thought Hoyt would at least listen to her not be so dismissive of her like the other officers.

"You told me your story about…secret lover or whatever it was."

She interrupted him.

"Hoyt he called and he called and he sent flowers…"

"My wife should be so lucky. C.J. when I heard it was you I asked them to double check the scene. Now from the skid marks it looked like someone tried to stop, hit their brakes and slid right into Carl. They were drunk, maybe scared and in any case they kept going. But there was no evidence whatsoever of murder…"

Hoyt put special emphasis on his last statement. C.J. ran a hand through her hair feeling the emotions threaten to take over. She wanted to scream, she wanted to pull herself out of it and go to work solving Carl's murder like it was a case that she'd taken on with Matt.

Damn, she needed him so much right now and he was several states away completely unaware of what had happened.

"Why am I going crazy…is this guy got me so wrapped…with Houston out of…"

Hoyt grabbed her arms and looked at her distraught face.

"Look I'll tell you what I'll do…I'll talk to him."

That might help, she thought. She might be getting some place here with convincing Hoyt to give the so-called accident another look.

"I don't know where he lives."

"What's his name?"

She hesitated.

"Christian Dean…I think."

"What?"

"I'm not certain that it's him."

He sighed and she knew she'd lost him.

"You're batting a thousand…"

Just as Too Mean walked in the room.

"Well I'll do what I can to check it out. Want a couple of female type officers to keep you company?"

She shook her head.

"That won't be necessary," Too Mean said, "I'll be able to handle that."

"I'm glad to hear it. I'll consider the lady… covered. Go home Ms. C.J. Parsons. Your boyfriend died last night. It's been a miserable time for you. Go home."

That pissed her off even though it hadn't been Hoyt's intention.

"Not home Hoyt…I'm going to find out about this Christian Dean."

With one last determined look at him, C.J. walked out of the room followed by Two Mean to head on back to the office and get to work at finding Carl's killer.

She'd do that if it were the last thing she ever did and she didn't know how close she'd come to that coming true.