Chapter 2:

Kate pulled up to her usual parking spot at Miami's crime lab; she looked into the rear view mirror in her car and rolled her eyes at what she saw: Jake Berkeley, the new night shift homicide detective. That was all she needed. The guy gave her the creeps. Kate got out of herblack Prius and locked the door, she tried to hurry past Jake so she wouldn't have to talk him, but he leapt out of his car as she passed him, causing her to jump. "Hi, Kate...how are you this evening?" She momentarily marvelled at the sheer amount of product in his hair, spiking it up.

"Oh, hey, Jake. I'm good, thanks." She was trying to avoid eye contact, or any sort of contact, for that matter. He locked his car and started to walk into the lab with her.

She was starting to get tired of the same old routine, Jake following her into work, constantly flirting with her. Why could he not get the hint that she wasn't interested in him? Kate didn't feel like she wanted a relationship right now, she had enough to think about what with trying to look after Matthew and she felt as though she couldn't even do that very well. Matthew, the one thing in her life that actually made her happy, was so energetic and full of life. Everybody said how much he looked like his mother, only with brown hair. She was glad people thought that instead of saying he must look like his father, that would just make the past even harder to shut out. She was snapped out her train of thought by the one voice she just wished would go away "You know, you should let me take you out for dinner, oh lets say, tomorrow...before shift?" Kate cringed at how desperate that sounded.

"Um, no thanks, I'm busy." Well she wasn't lying - she would be busy. Matthew was her top priority and she'd have to stay with him until Laura arrived. Jake didn't believe her though.

He raised his eyebrows and smirked. "Oh, come on, you'll have fun and you do look like you need a bit of fun..." She was quite frankly gobsmacked at how pushy he was being, but going on a 'date' with Jake Berkeley wasn't on the top of her list of things to do.

"I've already told you...I'm busy." Kate shrugged Jake off - yet again - and headed into the locker room. She opened her locker and placed her jacket and handbag in it carelessly. She considered Jake for a moment, objectively. He was rude, abrasive, arrogant. And she was pretty sure she'd seen him out and about with a short, blonde woman sometime in the last week or two. She frowned and picked up a random black sweater and pulled it on. He was not good father material, nor was he good romance material...She remembered Robert, how much she'd liked him at the time. Then again, she was young, she was still in school. Kate had been young, scrawny, self-conscious and Robert was tall, broad-backed and popular, almost overwhelming with confidence. He'd made the first move, walking her home one day after she'd had an argument with one of her friends. Things progressed and soon enough they ended up dating. Things got much more serious and then Kate became pregnant quite quick after that. And, after that, things fell out of shape completely, seemingly irrevocably, for a long time. Granted, Kate couldn't have been happier with Matthew, but she often wondered how her life would've turned out if she'd gone home early that night, played it cooler with Robert, been nonchalant. Her love life after him had just plummeted harshly to the ground. Laura had tried to set her up with a few guys that she knew, like Ted, a dowdy, gangly weakling of a man with a ton of money and zero personality. Then there was Bill, a strapping jock that just reminded her of Robert too much. And James. James didn't even have a category, or a genre. He just was, barely. None of these men survived past the first date, and Kate just gave up and focused on her child and her career. She closed her locker over and began walking to the lab, only to be halted once more by Jake. He had been lurking outside the door, hands in his jeans' pockets, smug grin on his face. Kate gasped at the first sight of him, loitering like he did, and then hurried to her destination. Of course, he followed her all the way there.

"Would it be so bad? Going on a date with this face?" Jake sidled closer to her, his arm grazing her arm slightly. She shuddered and moved away from him. Kate rolled her eyes. Yes, she decided, it would be so bad.

"Well, I don't know. Probably, from what I've heard the girls in the lab saying..." Kate smiled as the look of indignance crept over Jake's face. He cleared his throat. He knew exactly which girls they were, too, which only made him more determined.

"Pht, what would you listen to them for? They've got no sense of romance. Come on, Kate...just one date?" He took her by the shoulder, lips pouted, eyes droopy. Not even that could win Kate over. She felt nothing but disdain for Jake, and she showed this with a scowl and a shake of her head.

"Nope. Not on your life." She'd tried, in the beginning, just politely saying no, thinking he would stop. But then he kept asking, and recently, it had begun to annoy her. Now she just had to bite the bullet and be rude. She flashed him a smile and swanned into the lab. Kate couldn't help but feel pleased with herself, the look on Jake's face was priceless when she told him where to go and he certainly wasn't expecting that one.

XOXOX

The night was going slow, so Kate decided to head into the break room and grab a nice cup of coffee. She sat down and put her mug down on the table, she grabbed the newspaper that was in front of her and started to read. She had sat there for some time staring at the paper when she was startled by the sound of someone clearing their throat coming from behind her, Kate turned to see who it was. "Jake, I've already told you, I am not at all interested in going out with you." She spoke rather abruptly, and quite frankly she was getting sick of the sound of his voice and the sight of his face.

He walked closer to her and replied. "Actually, no...not why I'm here. There's a DB at Palmer Lake." Jake handed her details of the case, Kate pushed past him and headed to the locker room where she picked up her kit and headed out to the Hummer. She arrived at the crime scene within fifteen minutes. When she approached the lake she caught a glimpse of what she would be dealing with; a short, young male face down in the water, with what looked like, in the rapidly fading light, brown hair. For a moment Kate felt like her heart was going to burst through her chest; she looked on as another member of the team pulled the boy out of the lake and rolled him over. She gazed at his face and breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn't her son, but it was someone else's and she would have to find out who.

XOXOX

The young male had been identified as Perry Tucker, a fifteen year old boy. He had been stabbed numerous times in the chest, and then dumped into Palmer Lake. Kate was oddly disturbed by the case. Even after seeing so much death in this job, she could still, occasionally, be found in the locker room, unable to talk with the sheer shock of how brutal and hateful people could be. She sighed and asked one of the lab-technicians to run some tests for her, and she headed off to check out the photographs. She was somewhat glad that she didn't have to have as many dealings with Jake on this case. She didn't think she would be able to handle him and this case at the same time. His insensitivity would've been certain to get in the way. Perry's parents had been called down to the station a while ago, and Kate was meant to meet up with Jake to have a talk with them, ask them a few questions. Kate sighed, stuck in her thoughts. She shook her head at the pictures and frowned, deeply. The stab wounds were strangely placed, lazy, sloppy and downright wrong. It was as though the killer hadn't wanted or meant to do it, as perverse as that sounds. Just as she was about to investigate this theory deeper, her buzzer went off, and she foraged around in her pockets for a few seconds before whipping it out and checking the name. J Berkeley. She groaned and pulled her lab coat off, exiting the room in search of the aforementioned person. A few minutes later, she and Jake were sat at a table, opposite Neil and Dawn Tucker. Neil was a dark-haired man, eyebrows forehead creased in despair, clutching onto his wife's hand, willing the tears to stay away. Dawn was thin, auburn haired, very warm looking around the eye area. She looked very caring, very motherly. Well, Kate suspected that she would've been a very caring person, had she not been in the utter depths of sadness. She was clutching a tissue very tightly in her hand, eyes cast forward, staring intently at the door behind Kate.

"Can I get you anything, Mrs. Tucker?" Kate almost wished that she could get up from her seat and hug the woman. Dawn shook her head, wordlessly. Jake cleared his throat.

"Alright...do you two have any idea who would've done this to your son?" He folded his arms and sat back in the seat. Neil shook his head and so did Dawn.

"No. He was a nice, sweet little guy." Dawn sighed, eyeing up the small, rag of paper between her fingers. "He played baseball on Wednesdays, and then he went over to his friend...uh, Chris's house and usually he stayed until dinner time." She wiped a tear from her eye, blankly gazing into the wall. "Last night, though, he called Neil and asked if he could stay the night. We said yes." Dawn's voice cracked, prompting Neil to squeeze her hand. He rubbed his eye and sighed.

"Did you know Chris before you let Perry stay the night?" Kate's voice was soft and soothing, hoping to bring some comfort to the couple. Dawn nodded.

"We had him over for dinner one night. We knew all our son's friends." As Dawn said this, Jake almost scoffed. Kate nudged him and he quickly turned it into a cough. Jake was certain that no parents ever knew everything about their kids, and especially not everything about the company that they keep.

"Did he have a girlfriend?" Kate tilted her head to the side, studying both parents. They exchanged confused looks at each other before Neil asked the obvious question.

"What does that have to do with anything?" He frowned. Jake frowned at Kate. He, too, wondered what that had to do with anything. Kate didn't usually go off on one over a case, but she had a hunch.

"I was just curious." But she still wanted the question answered. Neil shook his head. He and his son had always been very close, and he was sure that Perry had told him everything.

"Not that I know about. H-he told me everything." And, if he didn't, there was a fair chance that Dawn already knew.

"Everything?" Jake intoned. Kate glared at him. He really had no business being there, in that room at that time. Kate would've preferred it that way. Neil nodded. He was really starting to annoy Jake. "Sir, teenagers can be sneaky. I mean, when I was that age, I had two girlfriends at the one time that my parents didn't have a clue about-"

"All due respect, Mr. Berkeley," Neil snapped. "You know nothing about our son or our life. He was an honest, smart kid that didn't hide numerous girls from us." He stood up, bringing Dawn with him. "Give us a call when you have some meaningful questions."

Kate stood up, restraining herself from slapping Jake. He'd gone and said too much, as per usual. "Wait, please." She threw her hands up in front of her and sighed. "I apologize for Detective Berkeley's behavior. But could you give us Chris's details please? We'd like to get in contact with him." Dawn gave Kate the details and then she and Neil left abruptly. Kate gave Jake another ice-cold death-ray before she fled the room.

As Kate headed towards the elevator she glanced over her shoulder only to find Jake powering towards her, shouting her name. She tried her best to ignore him and urged her legs to keep on walking, but at a speedier pace. "Kate...Kate!"

She stopped abruptly and yelled back at him, angrily. "What, Jake?" He closed the gap between the two of them, his face filled with anger.

"You apologize for my behavior?" Jake folded his arms, the very epitome of aggression etched all over his body language. Kate rolled her eyes - how could he have the nerve to storm though the lab creating a scene and question HER because of HIS actions?

"Yes, you were out of line, Jake. Those people had just found out that their son was murdered...you could at least consider their feelings instead of being disrespectful to them." She found herself becoming extremely uncomfortable with this situation and the ever increasing audience they had acquired was only making things worse. Kate didn't like confrontations but with every word that came out of Jake's mouth she became more and more frustrated.

"I was simply trying to get answer from them, Kate. It's not like I stuck a piece of barbed wire in their eyes!" Jake couldn't believe Kate. She'd always been tetchy, but this was ridiculous. In his mind, she had no right to intervene on his interrogation. Women.

"Oho, I'm sure that was probably the next step!" Kate pressed the button on the elevator again, but harder this time. Jake stepped towards her again and so she pressed it two more times.

"You know, Kate, what is this really about?" Jake raised one eyebrow at her, menacingly. Kate frowned, not exactly sure about what he was getting at. "Is this because you have feelings for me?"

Kate opened her mouth in shock, attempting to say something scathing but only managing a scoff. "I have...feelings...for..." She shook her head, disbelieving her ears. "Maybe in your wildest dreams, Jake, but no. I haven't got a single feeling for you other than pure hatred." She pressed her finger once more into the arrow-like button. "And, another thing; come tomorrow morning, you don't speak to me. Ever. And I mean it, Jake. I'm transferring."

This news only enraged Jake even more. He moved closer to Kate and slammed the palm of his hand against the wall. "Damn it, Kate. Why do you have to be so melodramatic? Can't we just work things out?"

Kate put her hands on her hips, about to reply with a complete stinger of a comeback, but the elevator pinged at just the right moment, telling her that it wouldn't have been professional. "Well, we could...or you could bite me." Just as she was about to saunter into the elevator as if nothing had happened, trying to show Jake that she was the bigger person, Jake grabbed a hold of Kate's arm, violently. She winced at the pain and tried to free herself from his grip. "Jake! Get off me!" Suddenly, in a whirl-wind of emotions, Kate let him take her over for a second before she shoved him against the wall, trying to get away from him long enough to actually leave the building, but only adding to his rage.

"Will...you...stop...fighting...me!" Jake gripped her waist, not letting her get away easily. Kate widened her eyes in panic as his grip wasn't easing up.

"No, I will not! Get the hell away from me, Jake!" Once more, she was writhing away from him, pushing her hand against his chest. Suddenly, there was another arm attaching itself to her from behind. Oh, great, more people to argue with. "What the hell-" It was a tall, balding man with a severe frown, and a shorter, redhead that she knew as Horatio Caine. "Oh." Kate tried to compose herself as she moved further and further away from Jake, the rat.

"Is everything all right, ma'am?" Horatio Caine asked, head tilted to the side in its infamous manner. Frank Tripp stood next to him, almost like a referee between Kate and Jake.

"Yeah." Kate squeaked, glaring at Jake before she raised her eyebrows at Horatio. "Everything's fine. Thank you." With that, she began storming down the hall, bypassing a short, blonde woman with a heavy amount of shock on her face. Tomorrow, she was definitely transferring.

XOXOX

On her way out of the building, Kate had so many thoughts in her head that she couldn't focus, couldn't concentrate on where she was going or what her purpose was. She loathed Jake, and she never wanted to have the misfortune of working with him ever again. She pushed her phone into her handbag and sighed. Things had not been going her way at all lately, and this case wasn't helping.

Just as soon as her worries about Matthew entered her head, they were thrown out by a tall, dark-haired man bumping into her. Could this day have gotten any worse? She slapped her hand against her head and apologized profusely."I'm sorry! I wasn't looking, and-". She pulled her eyes up to the man; he was suited up in a frighteningly orange shirt, dark blue jeans and a grey suit jacket. "Sorry."

The man furrowed his brows in concern and tilted his head to the side. "No, no, you're, uh...it was my fault, really." He threw his hands up in the air, gazing innocently at Kate. "Are you okay?"

Kate nodded. "I'll live." Suddenly, there was an awkward silence, and Kate only just realised that she was standing there, identical to a statue. There was another man standing next to the Mayan-God-Esque guy, arms folded, glancing around, probably wishing that Kate would magically disappear. He seemed to be in a rush. Kate blushed and shook her head. "Anyway, I have to, uh..." She motioned to her car. "Bye."

The man nodded and watched as Kate sauntered over to her car, almost dropping her keys as she tried to prise open the door. He tilted his head, studying her carefully. The man standing beside him nudged him with a playful smirk, shaking his head.

XOXOX

Mary A/N: Hola! Woot, two reviews already! Thank you so much, but, but, but, we're not updating unless we get...three reviews. Yes, three reviews would make us ecstatically happy, wouldn't it, Nikki!? Thanks again!

Nikki A/N: Yep, I'm with Mary on this one!! Lol!! But seriously, Thank You so much for reviewing and hope you liked the chapter. So please press our little friend Fred and make us really happy!! :D