I do not own CSI or any of the characters other than Annabel and Derek.

Hope you enjoy this next installment. All mistakes are mine.

WARNING: this chapter refers to both suicide and depression - if you don't like, don't read. If i offend anyone i apologise in advance, this is all entirely fictional

But thank you all for your reviews so far - they've given me the confidence to carry on :)


As soon as she said "ex boyfriend", every CSI thought, of course. Nowadays, if someone tried to kill someone else, it was usually due to a failed relationship. But it had been a long time since they had seen one individual so focused on killing someone for a failed relationship.

Lindsay was the first to recover.

"Annabel, what happened between the two of you that made him want you dead so badly?"

Annabel sighed. She knew, that for what she was about to say to make sense, she needed to start at the beginning, even if that hadn't been the focus of the detectives question. She told herself, its now or never - after 6 years, she couldn't hide behind her secret anymore.

"I'm going to have to start at the beginning, or this won't make sense."

Both Stella and Lindsay nodded at her in support, for the both could tell that Annabel really wasn't looking forward to talking about this man, the man who had cut her friend's life so short, and tried to cut her own life short.

"I met Derek when I was 16. I'd never had a boyfriend before, so when he started hitting on me, I felt really happy - someone was taking notice of me at last. All my mates had boyfriends, so I finally felt like I belonged. At first, he was really sweet, buying me things, taking me out. I thought he was great." Annabel took a deep breath, before resuming her story.

"After a while, things began to change. Derek had problems - not with drugs or anything like that. But he had a severe depression. After a few months of dating, he started talking about how he couldn't live without me, how he'd die if I ever left him or if something ever happened to me. It began to get really disconcerting, but by that time, I couldn't leave, I couldn't walk away, as much as I wanted to. He'd become suicidal, and I wasn't about to become the reason that he died. But I felt so trapped. He wouldn't let me talk about it to my friends, he hated it when I went out."

"You have to understand, at the time, I had loads of male friends, guys that I grew up with. And Derek hated that. He hated being someone who couldn't share in my old memories, so he'd demand that I only saw him, so that only he would be a part of my new memories. But I refused to do that - my friends were my whole life. And Derek never understood that. He'd accuse me of flirting with them, of preferring them, even once accusing me of sleeping with them. I felt like I was suffocating."

"Eventually, Derek turned around and told me that if I didn't stop seeing the guys, that he would finish with me. And I once again refused to stop seeing them. He couldn't go through with his threat, but a week or so after, he … he tried to kill himself. He didn't manage it but he came close. And he told me, he told me that it was my fault, he wanted to die because of me and what I refused to do for him. He didn't see it as a big deal, he said it was only one thing that he asked of me, and the fact I couldn't do it proved that I didn't want to be with him. So he broke up with me, then and there in the hospital."

"It felt strange to be single again, but it felt so much better. My mates were so supportive and after a while, the guilt of being responsible disappeared. I knew deep down it wasn't my fault but being told that someone would rather be dead than be with you…it hurts."

"He contacted me a few months later. He said that he was sorry, that he hadn't meant what he said, that he wanted me back. And I wouldn't do it. I didn't want him, and besides I was seeing a guy who lived round the corner from me. When Derek found out he went ballistic. He tried everything he could to get the guy to stop seeing me, and it worked. I found out later that Derek had threatened to kill him if he didn't break it off. But when I found out, I refused to even talk to him. I told him I never wanted to see him again, that he'd hurt me too much, and there was absolutely no way that I would ever date him again. I wouldn't answer the door when he came round, I wouldn't pick up the phone if he rang, I wouldn't answer his emails. Eventually, it seemed that he'd given up, and that he was finally going to leave me alone."

Annabel paused for breath again, and closed her eyes as if to shield herself from what had happened or what was about to come. It seemed for a while that she had finished her story, so Lindsay was about to ask her the next question, when Annabel once again started to talk.

"I really honestly thought that it was over, that he would leave me alone," She carried on, in a voice that was almost a whisper. "But I was wrong. One day I got a letter in the post. It wasn't signed or anything, but I knew it was from him."

Stella jumped in "What did the note say?"

Annabel winced, as if the memory caused her physical pain, and she screwed her eyes shut, trying to prevent the tears from falling once again. "It said 'You had your chance bitch. If I can't have you then no one will. This ends now.'"

"Obviously, I told my mates and the police. The police went looking for him, but he seemed to have disappeared off of the face of the planet. My mates spent their free time with me, as if being with me would save me from the mad man I'd once dated. Then one night, we went out to the local club, to celebrate my friend Tiffany's birthday. We all had a little too much to drink and when we left it was freezing, so we decided to walk, as if the cold would help us deal with the inevitable hangover. We made to my street, as I was the first one to be dropped off, and I insisted I could walk the 10 metres to my door by myself. My friends started to walk off, and as I was looking in my bag for my keys, someone came out of the bushes next to my garden. I don't really remember much after that, but all I know is that there was this searing pain in my stomach, and I let out a scream. Everything after that is just flashes of memories."

"I woke up in hospital 3 days later. Tiffany and Paige were by my bedside, and they told me that I'd been stabbed. The police thought it had been Derek but he was still missing. They never caught him. After that night, I never went anywhere alone, until I received another note in the post, about a month after the stabbing. The identical note as before. I almost died from fear right then. Paige called the police, and they decided that it was too dangerous for me to carry on living in South Carolina. So they decided to re-locate me to New York. I thought I was safe. And I never told anybody about what happened. I went to university, trained to be a lawyer, tried to carry on with my life. I managed it for 5 1/2 years. Until…"

"Until he ran you off of the road." Stella finished the story for her.

"That's what he meant by third time lucky." Lindsay thought aloud.

Annabel just nodded and hung her head, as if the whole mess was her fault. Then she frowned, before asking "That's why he killed Andrew isn't it? To pass the message on?"

"It looks that way." Lindsay answered, knowing full well that Annabel would now be feeling even worse - she thought that he was dead because of her and her past. Which to an extent was true, but this didn't mean Annabel was to blame. Lindsay looked at the devastated women in front of her, and promised that they would get this guy. If they didn't, she didn't think Annabel would survive. If Derek didn't kill her, then the guilt and fear would.


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