Sorry about the wait for the next chapter, now that Christmas and New years are all over hopefully I will have time to write more often and post new chapters.
I just want to say thank you to those that have taken the time to review, I love reading your thoughts on this story.
Anyway here's the next chapter, enjoy.
Chapter number 2. Dead ends
The next morning Allie arrived at work to find Matt and Jen in the bull pen already working. "Morning" Allie greeted them, placing her jacket over the back of one of the chairs. "Where are the others?"
"Late" Jen sighed, "Train strike's caused there to be more traffic than usual" she explained, closing the file she'd been working on and putting it on the top of a pile in the middle of the table.
Allie didn't respond to this information, instead she relaxed a little, at least this way she could get some work done without having Nick there to distract her. She hadn't put too much thought into how exactly she would cope working alongside Nick after her rather erotic dreams about him last night, to be honest, she'd done her best not to think about it at all. "So", Allie began, her eyes focused on the white board of dead ends they had gathered so far, "anything useful yet?"
"No, not really" Matt answered, "were still stuck with alot of unanswered questions and possibilities".
Braden Wildman had been a twenty-five year old business man who had been found dead the previous day in an ally way. When he was found he had been dead a few days. There was no murder weapon found, or finger prints of the murderer, just a dead body and no apparent motive. Pathology reports said that they were looking for a crow bar and a shot gun as their murder weapon. Braden had been given some kind of sedative to make him drowsy, there had been alcohol found in his stomach so it was possibly a spiked drink. Then he'd been taken to the ally way where he was beaten with a crow bar and shot twice, once in the stomach, and then again in the heart. Braden's murder looked like a random attach to begin with, but once they'd started investigating they'd learned that close to four weeks previous to Braden's death, his younger sister Dianna had gone missing; there was no trace of her anywhere, no record of her credit card being used, no record of her leaving the country or using public transport, and no sightings of her from the media appeals put out by the officers in missing persons. Now from the attack on her brother, it looked like she could quite possibly be dead as well.
Braden and Dianna's mother hadn't been much help to them either, as far as she was concerned, nobody would have wanted to hurt their family, they were well respected in the community. It had been the same story when they had spoken to the place of work for each of the siblings, as far as anyone they spoke to, the Wildman's were loved by everybody. All of this had left them with no case what so ever to pursue.
"The only thing we really can do now is find out where the murder weapon came from" Jen spoke up.
"Yeah..." Allie agreed, "we probably won't have much luck finding where the gun came from, probably bought on the street. But we might have some luck with the crow bar; hardware stores might be able to give us some idea of who were looking for".
"Do you have any idea how many hardware stores there are in Melbourne?" Matt stopped Allie before she could say anything else.
"Yeah I know there's alot of them an it's probably going to take us ages to get onto all of them, but do we really have any other options?" Allie argued.
"Yeah good point" Matt gave in, they really had nothing on this one.
"Morning, sorry were late" Simon said as he and Duncan made their way into the room.
"Don't worry, you really didn't miss much" Jen reassured them.
"Still nothing then?" Duncan asked, placing his stuff down on the desk, "did anything come up in the background checks on the brother and sister?"
"Nope" Allie informed them, "there both completely clean aside from the odd speeding ticket and parking infringement".
"What did the sister do for work?" Simon changed the subject.
"She was a receptionist at a law firm" Allie told him, taking a seat at the table, "Me and Nick when and spoke to alot of her co-workers, but they recon she did her job properly and didn't get too much lip from any of their clients".
"So no unhappy clients, no one who knew her family well enough to hate them?"
"No, not according to anyone we spoke too". Right as Allie finished talking she looked up in time to see Nick walking through the door.
"Morning" he greeted them, putting his briefcase on the desk and sitting down next to Allie. "So where are we headed?"
"Calling hardware stores" Jen told him, throwing a list of numbers in his direction, before handing more out to each of the other detectives.
"How exciting" Duncan grinned sarcastically, getting up from the table and making his way into where their desks where as did the others.
"Anyone want coffee?" Allie offered, placing her list of places to call on her desk and looking around at the others.
"Yes" the others all answered in unison.
"I'll give you a hand" Nick offered, looking up at her and following her into the kitchen.
Once they got there Allie suddenly started to feel uncomfortable, they were alone, and the only sound that could be heard was the sound of the kettle boiling. Allie reached into the cupboard to get enough mugs out for everyone, passing them to Nick so that he could place each of them on the bench before putting a teaspoon of coffee into each of them.
Allie leaned back against the edge of the bench, her eyes wandering down from Nick's face and to his chest. The image of him shirtless from her dream last night was tattooed to her mind.
"So how was the pub last night?" Nick finally broke the silence, closing the jar of coffee.
"Um" Allie responded, trying to snap out of her day dream, "It was pretty quiet".
"You ok?" Nick asked, studying the expressions on her face closely, "you seem distracted".
"Yeah I'm fine... just wondering how we're going to solve this case, that's all" she lied.
"Mmm... yeah it doesn't look overly promising at this stage" Nick spoke, turning to face her. "But something will turn up eventually".
"Yeah maybe" Allie nodded as his eyes locked with hers, neither of them spoke another word, and although they were standing about a meter apart, it felt like there was no space between them.
The silence was almost too much to take and thoughts on how to break it again ran through Nick's mind, but nothing seemed worth saying. The only thought that couldn't escape his mind was how he was going to be able to take working with Allie and being unable to tell her how he felt. Did she feel the same way? Would bringing up the subject bring even more tension between them? Or would it instead make everyday bearable? Just like their dead end case, all of this was alot of unanswered questions and possibilities. The only difference was that in this situation, asking those questions would change everything about the working relationship that they had between them. But what Nick didn't realise was that Allie's head was full of the exact same questions, as well as the image of him half naked.
The sound of the kettle turning off with a loud ring interrupted their thoughts, making Allie jump slightly. But their eyes remained only on each other. Finally choosing to put an end to all the tension, Allie opened her mouth to talk. "Nick?" she started, taking a step forward towards him.
"Yes?" he answered, his breath getting slightly quicker as she came closer to him.
She wasn't exactly sure how to approach the topic, or if this was even the right time... actually she knew this wasn't the right time... but she couldn't take it any longer. "I, umm..."
Before Allie could say anymore, they were interrupted by the sound of the door opening and Waverly entering to make herself a cup of coffee. Trying to make it look like they hadn't been interrupted, Allie eminently turned to grab the kettle and pour the hot water into each of the six mugs that were sitting on the bench. She could feel Nick's eyes still on her as she did so, it was haunting her, she knew there would be questions about what she was going to say, but what she was going to tell him she didn't quite know yet. She couldn't tell him like this, and part of her was thanking her boss for walking in when she did.
"Morning detectives" Waverly greeted them, moving towards where they were standing.
"Morning Ma'am" they both responded in unison, trying their best not to show the tension between them. It was going to be another long day that was for sure.
