The cab stopped in front of one of the skyscrapers recently built, massive and safe and somewhat affordable even for little nurses like Maura. Melissa's hands were still shaking as she rang the bell. It wasn't that she didn't understand Maura. Oh she did, and if destiny hadn't obviously had her hands in this game from the beginning, maybe she would have fought the battle for Jamie in a fair way. But destiny had spoken, and it had told Melissa to keep Jamie. She couldn't let Maura stand in her way like she had done with Sydney.
She couldn't let Maura live.
Jamie leant at his locker, his eyes closed. Renzulli had sent him home half an hour ago, but he couldn't bring himself to leave the building. With all he had heard today, no matter that most of it didn't make sense at all, somehow the station seemed to be the safest place to be right now.
And he needed to talk to Renzulli again before he left, making sure he was okay – it hurt Jamie that with all the sergeant had taught him and how often he had saved his life he should feel bad now because of a mistake he had made concerning his rookie. Renzulli was a good cop but he was in no way a good actor and the regret Jamie had seen in his eyes, the guilt bringing the older man down was real. So at least he had one person believing him now. It was a bit scary, though, to see how much power Melissa had had over the sergeant. Telling him something compromising and then asking him not to tell anybody. Surely Renzulli had kept his word, and had kept the secret even from Jamie. But how many of his colleagues had seen her, too? And had they heard any of it or worse, had they spread the word? Rumors were rare in the 12th, with most of the stuff being male and many being happily married. He couldn't blame any of his colleagues if they had used the image of him and Melissa for creating new bed stories. And it wasn't as if she wasn't attractive.
It just never had occurred to Jamie to see her as a woman.
Suddenly the station felt the least safe place and Jamie decided Renzulli would also be okay if he talked to him the following morning. He left without a single word to anybody, without even as much as looking at his colleagues. What if word had spread up to his dad? What if his whole family was assuming he had slept with a victim? Surely Danny would have talked about it?
Jamie stopped dead. The tears he was fighting for the last hour were slowly winning the battle against his tired eye lids. He tried to remember his family's reactions to him telling about the date he'd have with Maura. They had all seemed happy enough, happy he finally had found someone… or just happy he had stopped seeing Melissa?
How could that name wind itself into his mind so naturally? How could it be that after almost one year of not thinking about the woman or her case at all she was haunting both his night and his day now?
With shaking hands Jamie eventually stopped the car. He got out and dialed for Danny when he realized where he was, where his subconscious had brought him to.
Melissa Samuel's house.