In the middle of it all
Summery: A dead body, a mysterious B&E, a hunting revelation – how much more can Angell take?
Disclaimer: I do not own CSI NY
A/N: Yay, my next installment – longer A/N at the end thanks!
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As Angell moved closed her raised out a hand and pushed her door open. Moving into the doorway and as the sun poured down on her, her eyes scanned her apartment.
'Holy shit!' she shouted looking in.
Angell stood at the doorway of her apartment staring at the devastation in front of her. The moment she looked past the gap of the door she knew something like this would happen. The pain and angry that flew through her at that point was incomprehensible. She could feel the blood drain from her face, she could feel the pulsing beat of her heart quicken, she could feel her fingers slowly becoming stone cold. Everywhere she looked all she could see was something worse. She waited for that ray of sunlight to beam down on a little bit on sanction but nothing appeared. If her feelings could be classified in terms of weather, this was a flood hitting her a thousand times harder than she'd ever felt in her life.
'I don't believe this,' she muttered under her breath as she started walking through her apartment. In the hall it was just books pulled down off it's self but in the kitchen broken pieces of china scattered along the marble floor. The living room was the worst out of all - clothes lay everywhere, furniture moved, papers still flying through the air. It looked more like someone had ransacked it.
'What happened here?' Flack asked putting his gun back into his holster. He had been into Angell's apartment once before and even though, then, she confessed to not having enough time to clean it up it was fairly more neater than his but now, the mess was more beyond anything Angell could handle.
'You were rather progressive this morning,' he said sarcastically looking around. Angell was already further up the hall picking up clothes that lay in the middle of the walk way but the moment Flack spoke she tossed them back at him hitting him square on the side of the head.
'This isn't funny!' she said to him. 'Someone's been through here. I swear I just spent my whole morning cleaning this place up. It was not like this when I left just now.'
'When you left?' Mac asked her.
'To do my laundry,' she pointed out collecting items strewed across the floor, 'I went down, helped the old lady then all of this happened. Why would someone want to break into my apartment and go through it? I mean, what were they looking for?' Angell dropped down onto her couch and rested her head in her hands. 'Why does this have to happen to me? Why today?'
Turning from the kitchen Flack watched Angell sink her self into her settee. Putting down the broken bits of plate he walked into the living room and sat down next to her. She wasn't crying but was more, lamenting in today's tragedies which were thrust upon her unexpectedly. Running his hands up and down her shoulder he tried to be a comfort to her.
'When you left to do the laundry, did you lock the door?' Mac was standing by the front doorway inspecting items that were stashed along it. Pens, notebooks, keys were all tossed from the little light stand that stood next to the door. The draw had been pulled out and receipts, bills and postcards were dumped across the floor.
'What?' Angell asked back, not concentrating.
'Did you lock the door?'
'Of course I did,' she said looking up at him.
'Did you lock your door before you went down to inspect the shooting?' Mac bent over and pulled up a set of keys that were lying on the floor near the entrance.
Angell threw her hand back into her hands, 'I didn't… but… how was I meant to remember? I was so preoccupied with what happened down stairs. It just didn't occur to me!'
'Hey, hey. It's alright. These things happen,' Flack tried to calm her down but the day was taking a toll on her.
From the hall there came the soft clatter of heels as Stella appeared in Angell's doorway, she entered and looked around at the mess. She stared at Mac and without saying anything and understood what happened, 'Listen, why don't you spend the night at someone else's place - just until we get this all sorted out. A friend? A relative maybe? '
Angell pushed back her hair in frustration and rubbed her eyes, 'Yeah, okay,' she quietly and reluctantly got up and dragged her self to her room so she could rummage through the piles of clothes thrown out of her wardrobe for anything to wear.
'Jess,' Flack called for her quietly as he entered her room behind her. 'Look, I have a spare room if you are interested. My place is between the precinct and here so you can dash from one to the other whenever you like,' he gave her a warming smile, a pleading smile, asking her to follow him so he could make her feel better.
'Are you sure?' she asked looking deep into his eyes. 'I mean I don't want to be intruding into your life out side of work or anything.'
'What if I said, I would love you to intrude on my life outside of work?' his expression changed and he gave her a cheeky little smile.
Angell closed her eyes and nodded slowly trying to hide away her own smile - they both knew how much they adored each other. The flirting on the job, the bumps at the water cooler, the linking of eyes from across the precinct. They never admitted it and it was almost as if it didn't need saying but ever since the first time they sat together on the job and just talk… everything seemed natural, everything just flowed. She felt comfortable with him and he felt happy with her. She hadn't meant to but she noticed his lack of girlfriends within the past few months. She often wondered if it was because he was gearing himself to take her on a proper date or if New York had just run out of girls his type. Maybe, though, she was just becoming paranoid and that he just believed they were friends. Two people who worked together and occasionally went out for a beer. Maybe he saw nothing but friendship in her even though she saw the world in his eyes.
In the living room, Mac and Stella began processing the door area, collecting finger prints and trace where ever they could. There was a jogging and panting coming from the stairwell in the hall before Danny appeared at their scene.
Stopping dead at the door way he looked in and whistled, 'Someone's messy,' he said out of Angell's earshot. Stella stood and nudged Danny in the ribs. She was hard headed, alright and stood up for anyone – even a non-CSI homicide detective. Angell was her friend. They had gone out some nights when shift ended late. They told each other girly things guys would never understand. Stella felt Angell understood. She even knew about her and Flack and how much she cared for him. And in turn Angell knew about Stella and her feeling for a certain colleague. Angell was understanding and sympathetic and was someone you'd go to in your time of need. If anything ever came up, Stella would known exactly who to go to. So, now in Angell's time of need Stella hoped she would come to her.
'Someone must have been looking for something,' Mac mentioned as he put away his kit. 'Everything is turned up.'
'Do you think Angell kept any documents here? You know, anything that might be linked to a case?' Stella walked over to a white study desk littered with books and papers. In the middle was a distinct empty spot. Judging by the size of it Stella was sure a laptop used to sit in that exact position. 'Maybe she held information leading to a suspect?'
'But detectives never take home case files. We're advised to do all our reporting at the station,' Flack said reentering the living room.
'Maybe they didn't know that,' Mac mentioned walking over to Danny who was carefully rearranging photos that lay face down on a shelf. 'What are you thinking?'
'That this case and the one down stairs might be linked,' he said holding up a picture of Angell in a wooden frame. 'Does anyone else think that the vic downstairs has a slight resemblance to Jess?'
Everyone stood quietly for a moment and thought. They minded rewinded to two levels below and the crime scene they had just been processing. None of them had noticed it at first but the vic stood around 5' 9, had thick curly brown hair, and fair skin all similar to Angell's. To a shooter, from the back, they would both look exactly the same.
'It's possible,' Stella mentioned. 'But why would someone want to kill Angell?'
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A/N: My dad's getting worried that I am spending too much time writing for here than doing my homework… Am I? Do you think so? I don't know school never fascinated me much – well it didn't when I got into secondary and GCSEs at least. Oh well, exams are in May and I have loads of time to study… right? I dunno, we'll just have to see =D
Oh, btw y'all, if you are interested I am have something posted on my Fictionpress site. It's a short story I am hoping to enter for a compilation held by a sister school of mine. Tell me what you think about it yeah? Cool! I am hoping to add more short stories to it soon so that I have a variety to chooses from when submitting my piece but some help from you lot would certainly make my life so much easier =D
But yeah, this is FanFiction so tell me what you think about THIS piece! Thanks!
