It had been a whole two weeks without any wedding disasters and while most would breathe easy, Shane was on the paranoid edge. The moment he got complacent, the next moment would be one of catastrophe; that was just the way the universe worked. Everyone knew that.

Thankfully, being called to a fresh scene early on the morning of March sixteenth had given him something to be distracted by, even if it looked like the case would be open and shut.

'Morning, boys,' he greeted the uniforms who ushered him towards the kitchen of the small, cramped apartment. In the equally small, cramped kitchen a man lay face down with multiple puncture wounds to his torso, leaving no room for misinterpretation of how he died. 'What do we have here?'

'Micky Doyle, aged thirty-eight according to the driver's license.'

Shane looked over and felt a pinch forming in the centre of his brain. Of course, he thought sourly. 'Officer Cruz, we meet again.'

Maggie Cruz struggled not to blush in embarrassment. The last time they'd worked a scene together, she'd tried to ask him out and it was a disaster when she learned that he was planning a wedding and therefore off-limits. 'Hello Doctor Weaver.'

'Tell me more about the victim,' he prompted her as he snapped on gloves and began to do an initial on-scene report.

'Right. Neighbours called in reports of a knock-down drag-out about seven-thirty this morning, and when the first-responders got here, they found Micky like this and his victim sitting with her sister in the living room.'

'His victim?'

Cruz nodded, jerked her head towards the partitioned area. 'Detective Ryan is with her now. Bastard had beaten her black and blue and she grabbed the knife to defend herself.'

'That does not look like defense to me,' Shane commented as he began to count stab wounds.

'Well...ummm...'

'Just my opinion, Cruz. Science may tell us otherwise. Is Homicide here?'

'No, I'll go find out.'

Shane shook his head as the officer scuttled off. The woman wasn't the same since Brennan got the boot from the force, he noted, or maybe she was just having an off-day, as he remembered her as a starchy fire-breathing dragon. Focusing his attention back where he needed it to go, he filled out his forms while his assistants photographed the body. The man did indeed die by stabbing, and hadn't been moved as was evident from the amount of pooled blood. A knife with a smooth blade, probably the carving knife missing from the butcher's block, had made the wounds but because of the frequency, there was no way to determine until the full exam which was the killing blow.

'Okay, guys let's roll him over,' Shane told his assistants when CSU had completed their thing around the remains of Micky Doyle. They did and he could only sigh. The autopsy was going to be pretty short, he realized as he saw the knife wounds to the chest; the bloom of red over the heart was a - haha - dead giveaway to the fatal wound.

'That's a nasty way to go,' Ryan commented, walking up and seeing the victim.

'Where have you been?' Shane asked.

'Talking with the perp, but it's not going down as homicide. Well, technically it will,' he amended, 'but if the story checks out, Tanner Doyle won't do any jail time.'

'Let me guess, woman goes off-grid after her husband hits her once too much and hubby shows up skunked and spoiling for a fight?'

'In a nutshell. She directed CSU where to find the paper work for her TRO and divorce proceedings against him.' Ryan sighed. 'I don't get it, how the hell did he find her?'

'How do you mean?'

'Her sister, Maria, did the most of the talking and said Tanner had off-grid. She used an old-model cellphone with no GPS to track, her job paid her in cash she manually deposited, she changed all of her computer passwords and accounts.

'So she pretty much turned herself into a ghost. How do you catch her medium?'

'We'll worry about that, you take care of the DB, bro.' Ryan patted the man's shoulder, then grinned when Shane's cellphone rang and he caught a glimpse of the caller-ID. 'That the little woman?'

'Call her that to her face, Kevin, I dare you,' Shane chuckled as he took the call. 'Hi, Lex, what's up sweetie?'

'Sick. All stuffy nosed and miserable.'

'Not surprising, you've been pushing yourself hard the last few weeks.'

'I know, I know.' There was a noise that sounded like a foghorn blast, followed with Alexis coughing. 'Think you can pick up dinner tonight?'

'Of course, honey. Anything in particular?'

'Chicken salad sandwiches and tomato soup.'

'I'll take care of it.'

'Thanks. Okay, I gotta to rest, I feel like crap. Love you.'

Shane laughed, said it back to her and hung up, all the while knowing Ryan was looking at him with a smug grin. 'Don't even say it.'

'Not a word from me, bro.'

Alexis knew she was dreaming, but she had no desire to wake up, not even when the fat pomegranate in her hand began to ring like a telephone and the little peaches on the trees around her were saying 'get up, get up!' Peeling open a wary eye, she saw it wasn't her cell ringing but the houseline.

'Nuhh, no,' she complained, her pulsating, congested head thumping in time with the telephone's ringing. When the caller didn't give up, merely waited out the call-answer and tried again, she reached over to give the intruder hell. 'Yes?'

'Alexis, that you?'

'Andrea? What's wrong?' Alexis looked at her watch on the bedside table - five-twenty-three. Shane would be home soon, she thought dreamily. 'Are you at work or home?'

'Home. Day off. The, ah, materials kit arrived for Daniel's rabbinical home-study course arrived.'

'Is there a problem?'

Andrea's laugh was dry and slightly embarrassed. 'You might say that.'

'Oh, boy. Well...hold on, I think Shane just got home.'

Wrapping her blanket around her upper body like a cape, Alexis toddled into the kitchen and saw indeed her man was home with grocery supplies for making dinner. She put the phone on speaker mode. 'Andrea, I'm in the kitchen with Shane, now tell us both what happened.'

'What's wrong,' Shane inquired, but Andrea was already opening the floodgates.

'I think either we were taken in and screwed by that website or there was a warehouse mix up, because I just took receipt of a huge box of pornography.'

The laugh escaped before she could stop it. 'I'm...I'm sorry, did you say you were delivered a big box of porn?'

'Yes, let's see, there is, ah Wet and Wild Co-Eds, an entire box set of Amores y Ambiciosas whatever the hell that is, and the one that really caught my eye was The Deep, which I don't even want to know how they parodied my favourite film ever. The box was addressed to Daniel, and I mean, I like a dirty movie every now and then as foreplay but this is a little excessive.'

'Are you sure it's the right address and everything?' Shane inquired, body shaking from held-in laughter.

'Yep, Daniel J. Brick one-thirty-two East Twenty-Second Street, apartment four-eighteen. That's our address and the company label on the box is the same as the one from the website you guys looked at.'

'Well, shit.' Shane looked at Alexis, who shrugged, then sneezed. 'What are you going to do now?'

'Wait until Daniel comes home and let him know what happened, then we'll be in touch later tonight.'

'Thanks Andrea,' Alexis honked, reached for a paper towel for her drippy nose. 'Call later, we're in for the night.'

Shane hung up the phone, then looked at Alexis. 'I'd kiss you but I want to be healthy.'

'Love you too,' she replied with a hint of sarcasm. 'I'm hungry.'

'Okay. Go get a hot shower and I'll make dinner.'

Shane nudged her towards the bathroom, then picked up the houseline phone once more, dialed his father's number in Amsterdam. The call picked up after four rings.

'Allo?'

'Hi Papa.'

'Scheine!' Chaim's voice was chipper, despite the fact it was quarter to eleven at night. 'Why are you calling me so late in the night? Is there something wrong with your mother or your bride?'

'No, not exactly, Papa.' Shane dragged a hand over his face, switched from Dutch to Hebrew. 'How important is it that Alexis and I be married by a rabbi?'

'I don't think that should really be any question, Scheine. You know the only thing we've ever asked as that you have a proper Jewish ceremony for getting married.'

'But if it's not in front of a rabbi?'

'What is going on, Scheine, are you having troubles with Gershowitz' replacement?'

Shane explained the meeting with Frankel to his father, and wasn't surprised for the resigned sigh from Chaim. 'Papa, you know that even if we had a judge or friend who was ordained, it would still be a traditional ceremony.'

'A rabbi does the marrying, Scheine, you know that.'

'Right, but I don't want Alexis to convert. It's not what I want for our marriage, and she has too much on her plate to do the courses Frankel insists upon, which would also mean waiting another year to be married.'

'Then shop around,' Chaim replied calmly. 'You will make it work.'