AN: So, as soon as I turned on the moderation of guest reviews and blocked one of them, they stopped. Someone mentioned they seemed similar in grammatical errors and when I went back and read them again, I agree. I'm comforted knowing that there are not THAT many jerks out there, rather just a single persistent one. I am still desperately trying to get this story done before the premiere, but it was a busy weekend visiting my family and work has me worn down and worn out this week. I'm going to buckle down this weekend and try to finish chapter 5 and write at least one more. Anyway, on to the reason you are all really here. On with the show!


Frankie glanced sideways at Maura as she sat next to him on the floor of the elevator. They'd been trapped for twenty minutes and she was becoming increasingly agitated.

Actually, she had been perfectly calm until they had spoken to Cavanaugh and the fire chief and found out that they were going to be stuck for...a while. Then she had paled. He'd gotten her to agree to sit down, but she was bouncing her foot restlessly.

"Hey, you're not getting claustrophobic on me, are you?" He'd been stuck in a small space with someone who had been once and it wasn't pretty.

She looked over at him and shook her head. "No. People often mistake cleithrophobia for claustrophobia. Cleithrophobia is a fear of being trapped while claustrophobia is a fear of small spaces. I am perfectly okay with small spaces, as long as I can get out of them."

He had to fight back a smile. While his sister found Maura's tendency to go 'Google mouth' obnoxious, he found it endearing and just a bit adorable. "I'm sure we'll be out in no time."

His phone was sitting between them on the floor and it rang, his sister's face appearing on the screen. "It's Jane." He slid his finger to answer it, then again to put it on speaker. "Hey Janie. You calling to tell us when we're getting out of here?"

"Wish I knew little brother. Half the firehouse is down there working on it. They'd just gotten the folks out of car two when I was on my way upstairs. Cavanaugh said you guys had something for us?"

He could tell she had him on speaker as well, indicating that 'us' meant Korsak was with her. "Yeah. Maura and I were running down everything we had on the case and we got to thinking. I was so focused at tracking our vic's GPS, that I didn't think to check the towers. The bridge she was pushed from is in a pretty remote area. If you can get a warrant for the tower records, it should show what other phones were in the area at the time."

Maura was able to focus on the case, temporarily forgetting about her cleithrophobia. "You should request the records from Sunday morning from Midnight to three am. I was able to narrow down time of death."

"Great work guys. You two okay in there? Do we need to have them get anything to you?" Frankie could tell his sister was worried.

"Nah. We're good. Just taking a nice long paid break. Let us know if you guys find anything."

Jane agreed then disconnected the call and they lapsed back into silence in the dim emergency lighting of the elevator.

It didn't take long for Maura to get fidgety again and Frankie knew he had to do something before she devolved into a complete anxiety attack. He reached over to take her hand in his. "Tell me something about you I don't know."

"What?" His tactic to distract her was working already. With her attention focused on him, she'd stopped bouncing her foot.

"Come on. It'll pass the time." He squeezed her hand gently to encourage her.

"Okay. Let me think for a moment. Okay, I vomited the first time I smelled a decomposing body." The factoid was delivered in her usual calm, matter of fact tone.

He couldn't help the laugh that exploded from him. "Really? The 'Queen of the Dead' barfed from a deco?"

She was fighting back her own smile, he was sure of it. "Yes really. I have a highly sensitive olfactory sense and no one prepared me for the intensity of the smell of rotting flesh."

"Alright, I'll buy it." He was glad his plan to distract her was working.

"Your turn. Tell me something about you I don't know."

He hadn't been prepared to have this be tit for tat, but if it would keep her mind off their situation, he'd give in. "Okay. I got detention on my first day of High School for punching a football player because he referred to Jane as 'the girl with no boobs but a killer ass'. The only reason I didn't get suspended is because my dad went to school with the dean. To this day, Janie thinks I got into that fight because he was making fun of me."

He hadn't even noticed she'd flipped her hand to entwine her fingers with his until she squeezed his hand. "That was very chivalrous of you."

"Yeah well, Pop didn't think so. He read me the riot act for not letting her fight her own battles. But Ma snuck me extra desserts for a week." He nudged her thigh gently with their hands. "Now you."

"Okay. When I was in college I rode a horse in the nude to protest the equestrian team's budget being cut."

He didn't even try to hide his smirk. "I knew there was a wild side in you."

They went back and forth for a while. Their revelations started as mostly silly or embarrassing stories, but gradually became more serious.

There were now longer pauses between their revelations, but Maura was no longer fidgeting while lost in thought. "Every member of my family has lied to me, except my adoptive father. I guess that's why I feel so close to your family. None of you have ever betrayed my trust."

A pang of guilt twisted his gut and he was speaking before he could stop himself. "That's not true. I've lied to you."

"What? When?" Her hurt was evident in her voice and he could feel her stiffen as she tried to pull away from him, but he held her hand tightly.

"That night outside Jane's apartment. I told you I was sorry and that I just wanted to see what it felt like. That wasn't true. I wasn't sorry. I'm still not. I wanted to do that for a long time and I just couldn't stand it any more. But I know you told me that I was thinking that this was more than it was so I knew I had to back off. And everyone keeps telling me how you're supposed to practically be my sister, but that's not how I feel." He released his grasp on her hand, but was surprised when she didn't do the same.

"Frankie, I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about me with the box...and with Hope. I'm sorry if you got the wrong idea. I'm not very good at handling interpersonal interactions appropriately."

He couldn't bring himself to look at her. "Oh. Well, either way, I'm sorry I lied to you about being sorry."

"I didn't want you to be sorry."

Now he couldn't help but look at her. "Now I'm confused. You seemed pretty shocked when I kissed you. That's why I apologized."

"I was...pleasantly surprised. I wasn't expecting it." She took a deep breath. "Look, Frankie, I'm really bad at this sort of thing, okay? When you kissed me, I definitely didn't feel like I was your sister. But I'm not sure what I did feel. I can honestly say I have never had a healthy emotional relationship as an adult, so I have no point of reference. I don't do well without empirical data."

"Hey, I'm not exactly an expert on relationships either. My one and only serious one was with Teresa, and you know how that turned out."

Maura was the one who broke eye contact, instead shifting her focus to their interlaced hands. "So, what do we do?"

He heard the sound of feet landing on the top of the elevator car and glanced up before returning his gaze to her. "For now, we get out of here. The rest we can figure out later." He released her hand and shoved to his feet as the escape hatch on the top of the elevator opened, revealing a firefighter, sans bulky jacket.

"You two alright in there?"