Hey, gang! Sorry this has taken me so long - training for a new job takes up time and CPU cycles! :) I hope you like this part: some inner monologues here and there, I hope not too boring. I'm trying to lead up to Rizzles and make it seem organic.

Enjoy!

Chapter 6

"He jumped this?" Lieutenant Cavanaugh asked, his usual irascibility not improved by his having to be rousted out of bed at the late hour. He stood on the roof with Jane, Maura and a couple of uniforms.

Jane nodded, very aware that she was on the hot seat…again. "Yes, sir. He took a running start, "she pointed to approximately where the cape-wearing freak started off, "and took off from here." She flung her arm to indicate the abyss her quarry had managed to jump.

Cavanaugh, for his part, had a hard time believing it; on the other hand, given that the perp wasn't currently being sponged into a body bag several stories below, he couldn't come up with a more convincing explanation of why he wasn't in custody. Plus, he had to consider the source: Jane Rizzoli was a world-class pain-in-the-keister, but she was arguably the sharpest razor in his barber shop. She had her faults, but hallucinations did not number among them.

He looked again at the gap between buildings. "How far across is this, anyway?"

"Seventeen feet, four inches," piped Maura, her grin fading slightly at the incredulous looks given her by her colleagues. "I…asked one of the crime-scene techs to measure it for me. Y'know, that's well within the range of human ability for the running long-jump; the world record is over twenty-nine feet. Plus," she continued, pointing at the other roof, "the fact the other roof is lower – by about three feet, judging by eye – than this one, would have facilitated –"

"Not now, Doctor, if you please," Cavanaugh cut in wearily. "What else to do we have?" he continued, addressing Jane. Maura crossed her arms and sighed. She was just about to get to the good part.

"It looks like he took out several of the overhead lights on the floor near her car," Jane replied to Cavanaugh's question. "We have uniforms canvassing the area around the attack, looking for a van. If what Maura said about the equipment used to drain Shirley Beckwith's blood is true, and assuming he doesn't want to carry his next victim very far, there should be a van somewhere in this parking structure."

As it turned out, there were four vans parked in the structure within a reasonable walking distance, at least for someone carrying a limp body. Detective Frost, who had himself arrived with the crime-scene techs, verified three of the vans to be registered to people employed in the adjacent office building. He could not find a registration for the fourth van, a white panel job marked with some sort of non-descript blue logo.

"These plates don't match this van," Frost announced, having checked the number on his handy tablet. "They were reported stolen off an blue SUV two weeks ago."

Cavanaugh raised an eyebrow to Jane, who matched his expectant expression. "Sounds like probable cause to me." Trying the doors, Cavanaugh found them locked. "No good. Okay, who has a crowbar here?"

"Lieutenant? Allow me…" Maura stepped forward, digging into her satchel. Before Cavanaugh could protest, Maura had dug a pair of small, arcane tools out and set out to attack the van's rear door lock. A platoon of bemused grins dropped as an audible click came from the door, signalling Maura's success.

Cavanaugh gave Jane an indecipherable look, prompting the detective to shake her head and mutter, "Don't ask, sir."

"Don't tell, Rizzoli." Nodding to Frost, who waved Maura to step back, Cavanaugh motioned to Jane to open the door. She and her partner drew their sidearms; it was highly unlikely that there were someone in the van, but taking chances of that sort was not a habit the Boston Police Department encouraged. Frost grabbed a flashlight from a nearby patrolman and held it up along with his gun.

On a silent cue from Jane, Frost opened the door and shined his flashlight into the van. A quick look confirmed that nobody was inside the van… but it was far from empty.

A metal table stood lengthwise inside the van, bolted to the floor. Mounted on side brackets next to the table was a mass of machinery and tubing connected to a clear glass bottle. An odd, somewhat medicinal smell emanated from the interior of the vehicle.

Jane felt an icy hand clutch her chest; her hands tingled in the vicinity of her scarred palms. She gripped her gun harder to keep her hands from shaking. Don't be ridiculous, Rizzoli, she told herself, trying to strap on her metaphoricals so she could climb in the van to do a prelim, Charles Hoyt is not in there, waiting to grab you, he's dead, dead and buried, goddamn son-of-a-bitch Hoyt, I killed you, I'd kill you again, I'd kill you if you weren't already dead already dead ALREADY DEAD—

"Easy," Cavanaugh warned, one hand on her shoulder, the other firmly on her weapon. Taking a breath, she collected herself and holstered her piece. "We'll have this impounded and examined at headquarters. I can't imagine anybody else having a contraption like this, other than our guy. You and Frost, go home. Dr. Isles," he raised his voice to address the medical examiner, "make sure Detective Rizzoli gets home. " The lieutenant waved to the uniforms and technicians gathered around the van, then moved off towards his car.

Jane swallowed, then started walking after the lieutenant, intending to explain herself, apologize for nearly losing her fudge at the sight of the inside of the van. Before she went a half dozen steps, Cavanaugh stopped and spun around to face her. "Rizzoli: I will see your report, on my desk, by ten a.m. Sharp." His fierce Irish mien was mitigated by the merest hint of a smile.

"Yes, sir," answered Jane, keeping a smile off her face with great effort. As she watched him walk away, Jane knew Cavanaugh still trusted her by the way he refused to cut her any slack.

Now, if I can just keep him from dating my mother…!

Maura insisted on driving the two of them back to her house, Jane being able to muster only a token protest as she was way too tired. The detective was uncharacteristically quiet during the drive. At first Maura put it down to simple fatigue, the aftermath of an adrenaline rush from the foot pursuit.

No. Something is bothering her. Maura wrestled with the notion of leaving her friend along with her thoughts and respecting her privacy for about five seconds. It put up a better fight than usual, but the outcome was never in doubt. "Hey. Talk to me."

"…uh, okay. There's, uh, a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of…um…"

"Katmandu, and I was talking about whatever it is you're thinking about." Maura concentrated on steering the car towards Beacon Hill.

From somewhere, Jane mustered a smile. "Smelled the wood burning, didja?"

"Jane."

"He flew, Maura!" Jane exploded. Only the safety belt kept her in her seat. "He… he flew to the other rooftop!"

Maura had to consciously restrain the urge to close her eyes in exasperation, given she was driving through the streets of Boston. "He jumped, okay? It was, to say the least, an impressive jump, but well within the limits of human ability. We're not chasing some supernatural creature. He's human, certainly, extremely mentally disturbed, most likely, and with surprising athletic prowess – but he is not a vampire."

"Maura," replied Jane with weary resolve, "I saw what I saw." And with that, the conversation ended.

Back at Maura's townhouse, Jane shoved her ordnance back into the usual drawer. Maura watched her friend as she moved in almost in a daze. Jane's dogged persistence enabled her to be an excellent detective, but it also induced her to run herself ragged.

"Do you want a beer?" asked Maura as Jane stood by the kitchen island, seeming to sway in an imaginary breeze.

The brunette shook her head. "Bed," she mumbled, then after a second's consideration, added, "Shower."

"In that order?" quipped Maura. Jane rolled her eyes but otherwise did not deign to answer, moving off towards the guest bathroom. Maura got British strawberries out of her refrigerator for Bass, took Jo Friday out for a quick trip around the nearest tree and then retreated to the master bath for her own nightly ablutions.

Washing the makeup from her face, Maura gazed at herself in the mirror. The discoloration from where the inmate had punched her had faded almost to invisibility. Maura inspected the faint freckles that dusted her cheeks, the lines under her eyes that deepened every so often when she was not looking. She worked a modest amount of La Mer moisturizer into the valleys of her skin.

Maura could admit, without much embarrassment and false modesty be damned, that she was an above-average-looking woman at thirty-seven. She had started to worry in recent years about not staying as attractive as she had been in her twenties; however, the discovery of her birth mother, and how striking Hope Martin was at fifty-five, gave her increased confidence of her sex appeal for years to come.

On the other hand, given how "well" that aspect of my life has been going lately – With the abruptness of a roundhouse slap, Maura shut off that line of thinking, assigning it to the #boring and #depressing hashtags and filing it away…for the moment. Jane, with her strange, oxymoronic combination of circumlocution and bluntness, had more or less pinpointed the root of her problems: self-pity.

"A lot of people in this world, in this town," Jane had said a few nights ago, her tongue slightly loosened by an extra bottle of Spucky's, "are far less well off than you. M'not even talking just money-wise, here; most people are in a job they hate, working with people they could really do without, or have no one who they can go to bitch about All Of The Above. You, on the other hand, are doing the kind of work you do, not because you need it to pay bills and buy groceries, but because you want to make a difference. And that, my friend, is rare."

Maura smiled at her reflection in the mirror; if someone as strong and self-reliant as Jane Rizzoli could consider Maura Isles her best friend, maybe she wasn't a complete lost cause.

In her walk-in closet, that Jane had jokingly dubbed "The Vault," Maura changed into silk pajamas. She had noted absently the shower being turned off in the guest bathroom some minutes before; she hoped Jane would get to sleep all right. The sight of that van with its macabre equipment had probably stirred up bad memories for the detective. Maura considered going downstairs just to check…

…and stopped dead as she exited her closet. Jane, dressed in a baggy Red Sox jersey and loose shorts, was sitting precariously on the edge of Maura's bed, head down, clearly half-asleep. She's slept-walked up here, Maura decided. Climbing lightly on the other side of the bed, she gently pulled Jane back to lay her down.

"Wha- Um, Maura?" Jane mumbled as her eyes flickered open. "What are you – how'd I get here?" The brunette started to rouse herself.

"Shhhh, it's okay, just go to sleep."

"'kay." Jane adjusted herself to lay on her side, her back against Maura's front. Maura, at first surprised Jane would adopt such an intimate posture, draped an arm over and let it nestle beside delicious curves. She felt Jane's breathing slow, her own tension draining out of her body like warm oil. She felt an urge to nuzzle Jane's neck and freshly-washed hair, her eyes raising open halfway as she recognized the incongruity of the impulse. What was she feeling? Why was she feeling it?

"M'ra?" Jane's question seemed to come down the long dark tunnel of sleep.

"Yeah?"

"…love you." Jane spooned even closer towards Maura as she fell completely asleep.

Maura's breath caught in her throat, and she wasn't even sure why. "I…I love you, too."