A/N: Thanks to my reviewers.

Chapter 4: Tough Breaks

Cindy was well aware that what she was currently doing could be considered foolish at best and down right suicidal at worst, but if she wanted to keep her position at the paper she had to do some things that could be deemed dangerous.

Her pale blue Bug was out of place sitting in the parking lot of a seedy looking biker bar. She turned on the dome light and studied her reflection in the rearview mirror. She pulled a tube of bright red lip-gloss out of her purse and applied it liberally. She looked down and adjusted her low cut top so that her cleavage showed. She tousled her strawberry blonde locks to look the part she was trying to play.

Taking a deep breath and collecting her wits she got out of the car. She was dressed in a halter-top and a very tight pair of leather pants a pair of dangerously high heels set off the outfit.

"Ok, Cindy, confidence is key, just walk in there like you own the place and you won't have any problems." Cindy muttered to herself. She had no reason to be nervous it wasn't like she hadn't done things like this before. Granted it had been before she started working the crime desk, but she still had experience with this type of thing.

She walked in the door of the bar and she knew that she had dressed correctly. As a matter of fact she was almost wearing too many clothes. She took a seat at the bar and shot a flirty smile at the bartender.

Cindy had decided that the best place to start with digging up dirt on the Road Kings was in the bar that they frequented. It made the most sense to her she was likely to hear something important to her story in here.

"What'll it be, sweetheart?" The bartender asked when he lumbered over to her. He was a big guy of about six-five and well over two hundred pounds. He had a weasel like face with pockmarks left over from a bad bout with acne. His blue eyes were bright and intelligent. His bright red hair only served to further draw attention to his ugly features.

"I'll take a beer." Cindy replied giving him a charming grin. Charm was key when trying to coax information out of a subject. She was just as good as what she did as Lindsay was at interrogating a suspect. It a lot of ways the two things were very similar. The only difference was Cindy used a little honey to catch flies while Lindsay put up the badass bitch routine.

The bartender popped the cap off of a beer and set it in front of her. "Here you go,"

"Thanks," Cindy flashed her dazzling smile at him again.

"A woman after my own heart." A man said sliding on the barstool next to hers.

"How's that?" Cindy asked giving him a flirty smile.

"Any woman who can drink beer instead some fruity drink is alright in my book." The man replied. He had coal black hair and dark eyes that only served to accentuate his handsome features.

"I'm sure that I'm too much woman for you to handle." Cindy retorted.

"And quick witted too, I think that I might be falling in love." He put his hand over his chest and smiled at her.

"Before you go falling in love, it might be a good idea to tell me your name." Cindy told him logically.

"The name's Deek and I'm mighty pleased to meet you." Deek replied putting his hand out to her.

"I'm Cindy," Cindy said and she shook his offered hand.

They quickly fell into easy conversation and before either of them knew it, it was getting late and Cindy really needed to get going.

"Cindy, are you sure that I can't walk you to your car?" Deek asked her sincerely.

"Deek, it's really sweet of you to worry, but I'll be fine." Cindy replied throwing her purse on her shoulder.

"Until next time that we meet than, fair lady." Deek kissed her hand and smiled at her.

"And we've had such a good night and then you go have to go and ruin it by being cheesy." Cindy joked with him.

"You know that my quirkiness has only endeared me to you more." Deek flashed her one last smile before she walked out the door.

Standing out in the dimly lit parking lot Cindy quickly became aware that she had been stupid to refuse Deek's offer to walk her to her car.

"Get it together, Cindy, Lindsay would have a fucking field day if she could see you acting like a little girl right now." Cindy muttered to herself. The last thing she needed was her friend to find out that she had behaved like a big baby. She already thought of her as a kid anyway.

In every shadow she could swear that she saw danger lurking and she would shake her head to herself when it turned out just to be night sounds.

Cindy watched in horror as a black shape came streaking at her from the night. She let out a high-pitched squeal and then she laughed when she saw that it was only a cat that had caused that reaction.

"Really, Cindy?" She asked shaking her head at herself.

Her relief was short lived however when she felt a calloused hand clamp over her mouth and a strong arm wrap around her waist. Then out of nowhere she saw a figure rushing toward them and never had she been so glad to hear the words. "SFPD, Freeze." She felt herself falling to the ground, but she was free and before she knew it she was being pulled to her feet only to be greeted by a familiar face.

"Cindy, what the fuck are you doing here?" Lindsay demanded of her young friend.

"I was just checking out a lead for my story." Cindy replied looking down at her feet. For some reason when her friend looked at her like that she felt like a little kid again.

"So you decided that it was a good idea to come to the last place that our murder victim was seen alive?" Lindsay asked her with an incredulous tone in her voice.

"I thought I might be able to find something out." Cindy answered lamely.

"Sometimes I swear that you and Gus are the same age. Actually, Gus knows better than to do things like this." Lindsay raged at her.

"Come on, Linds, I'm only doing my job here." Cindy protested and then she thought of something else. "What are you even doing here?" she asked trying to put her friend on the defensive.

"I'm doing my job and that is all that you need to know." Lindsay retorted. She would be damned if she let the younger woman think that she was going to make anything on her.

The cop who had tackled the man who had grabbed Cindy walked over to them at that moment. "Inspector Boxer, I've got the perp in a squad car." He reported meekly.

"Thanks, Richie, you did good tonight." Lindsay said. That was pretty high praise coming from her.

Officer Richie Conklin actually blushed when she said that to him. This wasn't the first time that he had worked with Lindsay as a matter of fact he looked up to and admired her as a cop. "Thanks, Inspector Boxer." He said.

"Richie, how many times do I have to ask you to call me Lindsay?" Lindsay asked her expression softening. For some reason he brought out the mother in her.

"Just once more like always." Richie replied.

"Richie, what have you got on this guy so far?" Lindsay asked him.

"Just that his name is Gary Hart and he is a long standing member of the Road Kings. We don't have anything else right now, but I'm sure that we'll be able to find out more than moment we get him down to the station. Guys like this aren't usually known to lawyer up." Richie explained to her.

"Like, I said, good work." Lindsay told him again clapping him on the back.

"Whose the hottie?" Cindy asked once Richie was out of earshot.

"That's Officer Richie Conklin." Lindsay told her and then she glared at her. "You, young lady, are coming home with me, so I can find out what the fuck you were doing out here tonight. Cindy, this isn't the place for a single woman in her twenties to be running around." She said with a sigh.

"Lindsay, I have a career just like you do. If I want to become head of the crime section by the time I'm twenty-five then I have a lot of work to do." Cindy explained to her.

"Cindy, you're not going to be around to see that if you keep taking your life in your hands like this." Lindsay said rolling her eyes at the younger woman.

"You're one to talk." Cindy retorted with a snort.

"Come on, I'll take your statement at my apartment and we'll have a drink together or something." Lindsay said throwing her arm protectively around her shoulders.

"Linds, I really don't need you to babysit me." Cindy reasoned with her.

"I know, but it's something I need to do to give me peace of mind tonight." Lindsay replied.

"Hey, Boxer, you're home earlier than I thought you would be." Gus greeted his mother when she walked in the door of their apartment. He didn't bother looking up from the video game that he was playing to see that Cindy was with her.

"We weren't getting anywhere and I had a situation come up that I had to deal with. So, I decided I would come home early to my best guy." Lindsey replied. "Did you have a nice time with your dad tonight?" she asked him.

"Yeah, we had a pretty good time. You actually just missed him. He only dropped me off about half an hour ago." Gus informed her.

"Lindsay, I will have you know that I am not a situation." Cindy said sounding indignant.

"Cindy Lou Who, what are you doing here?" Gus asked cheerfully. To him Cindy was a good friend and an older sister all rolled into one.

"I don't know you might want to ask Lindsay, she is under the impression that she's my mother." Cindy replied rolling her blue eyes.

"I know she has to tendency to behave that way towards me too." Gus responded. His brown eyes were twinkling with mirth.

"Augustus, that's because I am your mother, thank you very much." Lindsay said smacking him on the back of the head.

Gus smacked himself in the center of the forehead. "Damn it, just when I think that I'm going to wake up from my nightmare, I am reminded that it's a reality." He muttered sarcastically.

"Augustus Chris," Lindsay said a warning tone in her voice.

"Come on, Boxer I was just having a little bit of fun." Gus replied not sounding repentant at all.

Lindsay could only shake her head at him. She knew that in his mind he was funny as hell. "I know and I'm going to need you to go have a little bit of fun in your room for awhile."

"Fine, I'm going to need to put all the dirty magazines away anyway if Cindy is going to sleep in there tonight." Gus said knowing better than to argue with her.

"Gus, I'm perfectly capable of sleeping on the couch." Cindy protested.

"Don't be ridiculous, Cindy, I'll probably be up half the night playing my game anyway. It's not going to hurt me to sleep out here." Gus said giving her a smile before he slipped out of the room.

"I'm just going to pretend like I didn't hear that comment about the dirty magazines, Gus." Lindsay yelled after him and she could see that he was shaking with laughter.

"Don't you wish you had another one?" Cindy asked her with a smirk on her face.

"I do and I'm looking at her right now." Lindsay zinged her.

"That was totally uncalled for, Linds." Cindy said clutching her chest like that last comment had hurt her.

"No, it wasn't, Cindy. You have no idea how dangerous what you pulled tonight was. You could have been hurt if not worse. You are a single woman in your twenties, that bar is no place for you to go alone. I shudder to think what would have happened to you if Richie hadn't been keeping an eye on you all day." Lindsay replied.

"You have people watching me now?" Cindy asked looking at her friend like she had lost her mind.

"I put Richie on you after we talked earlier because you had that look in your eyes that said you were going to do something to get yourself in trouble." Lindsay didn't sound repentant in the least bit.

"Who the fuck does something like that? Lindsay, I'm a big girl, I can take care of myself. I don't need you to have people watch over me." Cindy couldn't believe that her friend had gone that far.

"Cindy, Richie wasn't exactly just watching over you. He was watching you to see where you went, because you might have found something that we are missing." Lindsay explained to her.

"Lindsay, if you wanted to know something that I found out all you would have to do is ask me. I don't like the thought of you having me followed around like I'm some criminal." Cindy objected.

"It's a damn good thing that Richie was watching your ass. I shudder to think about what would have happened to you tonight without him there." Lindsay replied. She wasn't going to be sorry for keeping her friend safe.

"Lindsay, I'm never going to be able to stand on my own two feet if you don't stop treating me like a kid." Cindy reasoned with her. "Besides that I don't even know that cop that you've had following me around."

"Richie is a good kid and he is going to make a damn good cop one day. I wouldn't put someone on you that I didn't trust. He's just a couple years out of the academy and he has been working plain clothes since then. He has yet to be burnt and I knew that you probably wouldn't notice him following you." Lindsay replied.

"Don't you have to take my statement or something?" Cindy asked her with a sigh. She knew she should just give up on arguing with the older woman she would never let her win.

"I don't really need to take your statement. I saw what happened and honestly we're probably going to cut the guy loose, because that isn't our area of focus." Lindsay informed her.

"Just consider yourself lucky that Richie is cute and I don't at all mind hot guys following me around." Cindy said finally.

"Yeah, he is known as officer hottie by the girls who work the desks." Lindsay chuckled.

"I see that we're having a conversation about Richie." Gus said shaking his head as he walked into the room.

"I thought I sent you to your room?" Lindsay asked her son.

"You did, but I heard you two yelling at each other and I really didn't want to miss a chick fight." Gus replied.

"Gus, I don't know how you've managed to make it to almost sixteen with the way that you talk to her sometimes." Cindy said her mouth gaping open.

"She knows that I'm just joking or I would be in trouble." Gus assured her.

"In answer to your question, yes we were talking about Richie." Lindsay addressed the statement that he had made when he first walked in. She was choosing to ignore the other comment he had made.

"Richie is a pretty cool dude. I think that he is going to make a pretty good homicide inspector one day." Gus said giving his analysis of the situation.

"Gus, you two are only friends because he spends as much time down in the records' room as you do." Lindsay chuckled.

"I will have you know that Richie is grooming me to take over his job as soon as I'm old enough to start working at the department." Gus had never made any bones about what he wanted to do when he grew up. He really had no choice in the matter both of his parents were cops it was in his blood.

"That is if my paper isn't covering your success as a football player or a baseball star." Cindy joked with him.

"We'll just have to see about that, I haven't even played college ball yet." Gus replied like it was no big deal.

"As you can see my boy was born with overwhelming modesty." Lindsay cracked.

"Boxer, I'm just like you, so anything you say about me you're saying it about yourself." Gus pointed out to her.

"Augustus, I'm not amused by your bullshit." Lindsay said locking eyes with him.

"I happen to think that I'm a pretty damn amusing guy, mom. I don't know how you can't find me just a little bit funny." Gus retorted.

"You keep up with me and I'm going to ground you until you're thirty." Lindsay countered.

"We both know that that's not going to happen. You won't admit it to me, but you're counting the days until I leave for college." Gus could hand her bullshit right back to her, because they were so much alike.

"Linds, he really is you with facial hair." Cindy observed.

"I know that I have no one but myself to blame for the way that he behaves, but that doesn't mean that I like to be reminded of that little fact every damn time I turn around." Lindsay told her.

"Boxer, I feel the need to point out that you're being cranky right now. Knowing you the way I do that can only mean one thing, you haven't eaten in awhile." Gus threw out knowingly.

"I will have you know that I had something to eat at lunch, you should know this you were with me." Lindsay reminded him.

"Mom, that was hours ago." Gus pointed out. "Now, just tell Chef Gus what you want and he will make it. If it's not in his realm of ability his dialing finger is in very good shape." He went on putting on a fake Italian accent.

"Lindsay, I know that I probably shouldn't say this out loud, but he is pretty damn funny." Cindy said sounding highly amused.

Lindsay ignored Cindy. There was no denying that Gus was funny, but if she let him know that then she would never get him to be serious. "I could eat, but I really don't feel like you making a mess in the kitchen, so I guess you can order out. I know that you're probably hungry, I hope you two don't have any problems with Chinese food, because that's what I'm feeling right now."

"I have no objections to that." Gus said. He could always eat though, so his vote didn't count for much.

"Far be it for me to get in between two Boxers when it's feeding time, I know better than to do shit like that." Cindy said throwing her hands up in a sign of surrender.

"Cindy Lou Who, it is not nice to talk about us like that. We are not that bad when it comes to food." Gus protested.

"At least I'm not that bad about food, I can't say the same thing when it comes to my barbarian offspring." Lindsay said giving Gus a playful shove.

"Really, Boxer, who do you think I learned how to eat like a caveman from?" Gus asked his mother with an arched eyebrow.

"Tom," Lindsay replied automatically.

"I totally knew that Tom was the one who Gus learned all of his bad habits from. Because, you are totally perfect, Linds." Cindy said in a patronizing tone.

"Cindy, you're on thin ice as it is after what I caught you doing, don't push your luck, kid." Lindsay glared at her.

"I'm not a kid." Cindy huffed crossing her arms over her chest.

"Cindy, you're only like six or seven years older than my kid, that makes you a kid in my book." Lindsay reasoned with her, but she wasn't being serious.

"You are such a bitch when you want to be, Boxer." Cindy rolled her eyes, but there was a grin lighting her face.

Lindsay went to reply, but she was cut off when her phone rang. "Boxer," she answered with a sigh. "Damn, Richie, you're really on top of it tonight. I'll check it out in the morning. Thanks for the call, I'll talk to you later." she said before ending the call.

Tom slipped quietly into his house in the hopes of not waking his fiancé. He really didn't want to have to explain why he was getting home so late. He still was not really prepared to explain the existence of his son to her. The precautions that he had taken proved to be moot when Heather met him in the living room.

"Where you been so late, Tommy?" Heather asked him in her syrupy sweet voice.

"Some of the guys from the squad decided that they wanted to challenge the old man to a game of baseball. I would have called if I had thought about it." Tom lied easily. He didn't really consider it a lie, because Gus was part of the squad in everything but name and they had played a game of catch.

"I was worried, I was afraid that maybe something had happened to you." Heather replied.

"Nothing can touch me, you know that I spend most of my time behind a desk anyway. Besides that if something had happened to me one of the guys would have come over here to talk to you." Tom assured her.

Heather went to him and put her arms around him. "Just call next time, so that I'm not going out of my mind with worry."

"I promise that I will call you the next time that I'm going to be late." Tom promised. He knew that he would be making that call sooner rather than later. He had plans to get Gus to spend more time with him. He missed that kid like crazy; he had been around him since he was three after all.

Heather eyed him somewhat suspiciously. "You would tell me if there were someone else, wouldn't you?" she asked him.

Tom looked at her with confusion written on his face. "I would, but there isn't anyone else." He informed her. Again it wasn't a total lie, he didn't consider spending time with his son cheating on her. "What brought this on?" he asked in reply. He wasn't used to this coy thing, if Lindsay had had a problem with him she had just told him point blank what was bothering her.

"It's just that you have been unusually happy the last couple of days. I don't think you realize it, but you have been walking around her whistling and singing to yourself and that isn't like you unless something really exciting is going on." Heather explained to him.

Tom leaned down and pulled her into a kiss. "You've got nothing to worry about, you and I are solid." He swore to her. He knew that he needed to inform her and his son of each other's existence, but he couldn't bring himself to do it just yet.

A/N: Here's the next chapter, I hope you guys liked it. Until next time please review.