a/n Thanks for all the lovely reviews! Here is the next chapter! Sorry its taken so long to put up - I had major internet troubles. :)

...

One - Mike Dryden

It's too hot in here, Mike thinks to himself, as he watches Lindsay cross the room and take her seat. The stifling summer's air is almost too much for him. There's not even a hint of a breeze flooding in through the tiny window behind him. No, just waves and waves of more heat.

Then he looks across at Lindsay and feels slightly guilty. There's no window on her side of the glass, and Mike doubts her cell will be any cooler. At least when he's out of here, he has the luxury of air-conditioning.

"I have nothing to say to you." Lindsay speaks first, and her words slightly surprise him, though he's not sure why. Mike should have considered that Lindsay wouldn't want to talk to him - she hates him after all - though if that was the case, why did she allow him to come at all?

It's then he glimpses the curiosity in her gaze, and he has his answer. Lindsay wants to know why he wanted to come. She might not want to talk to him, but she wants to know, curiosity getting the better of her.

"How are y-" Mike starts, but he doesn't get any further because Lindsay cuts in.

"You don't care." She speaks in a tone that tells Mike that there's no room for change. He didn't care, and therefore now, he can't care. "Just cut to the chase, Mike. What do you want from me?"

Mike sighs, folding his arms across his chest, and then thinking better of it

because it makes him even hotter than he was before. "I'm being investigated."

After his words, he watches as Lindsay's forehead crumples into a frown.

"Investigated for what?"

"Corruption." Again, his words confuse her.

"What do you mean, corruption?" She pauses, thinking, before continuing. "And anyway, what the hell does it have to do with me?"

Again, Mike sighs. "I still have contacts in the force." Lindsay tries to interrupt, confused yet again, but he soldiers on, attempting to explain what is going on. "And when, a few weeks ago, a newspaper article was published, claiming to name names in the force who were, or had been, corrupt, and my name appeared, I reached out to one of them," Lindsay is still frowning, but Mike knows that soon, it will all make sense. "who told me that my replacement was determined to investigate every single claim the newspaper levelled." She nods, finally understanding what Mike is telling her. They think he was dodgy, corrupt, however you want to put it.

"I don't see what this has to do with me."

"I wasn't corrupt," He says, shrugging, in reply to Lindsay's words. "and as a result, there's no evidence pointing in that direction. My contact told me a few weeks ago that because of a lack of evidence, they were trying to find out if I had confided in anyone about my so called 'corrupt' activities."

Lindsay's mouth curls into a small smile. "So they're coming to talk to me? As your ex-mistress?" Mike winces at Lindsay's choice of word, but cannot fault it's accuracy. Ex-mistress is, as angry as it makes Mike feel, exactly what she is to him.

"They've already interviewed Helen." Mike adds, his voice quieter now, as if people could overhear them.

He thinks about his wife for a second: Helen who has stood by him through the years, Helen who never looses her calm and he realises what it was that attracted him to Lindsay in the first places. She always wore her emotions on her sleeve, the important ones - but soon, Mike had learnt that the two women weren't that different after all.

When things got tough, they both retired behind masks of deceptive calmness - what some people would call coldness. He sure did. Sometimes though, with Lindsay, the mask would crack wide open and bare her fiery temper or deepest emotions. Helen on the other hand never cracked, not even when she was overrun by anger - like when she discovered his affair with Lindsay. Helen had reacted with trademark coolness, calmness. It had hurt him a little, to be robbed of the chance to see his wife lose it - truly lose it. He'd never seen her do that before - Lindsay many a time - but Helen? That is a different story.

That morning she found the newspaper with his affair splashed all over the front pages, that had been the closest she had ever come to cracking the mask.

Mike can feel Lindsay looking at him and his gaze snaps up to her face. "So, what? You thought you could get here before they could and what? Tell me what tosay?" Lindsay asks, and for a spilt-second, Mike can hear traces of anger in her voice. "What was I supposed to say anyway? Lie and say that you told me everything? That you were on the take, that you-" She must see something in Mike's gaze because she abruptly stops. "Carly Kirk." He looks away, and inadvertently reveals that what she's saying is the truth. "This isn't about me lying about you being corrupt, this is about me telling the truth about Carly Kirk."

'Lindsay-"

"I'm not lying for you." Her tone leaves no room for argument.

"Then, please, just don't mention it if it comes up." Mike would sound like he is begging, except from the fact Mike Dryden doesn't beg. He just can't let this get out. He might have lost his reputation once, had it shredded to tatters, but he doesn't want what little reputation he has garnered over the last five years to go the same way. Mike doesn't want it to happen again.

"Why do I owe you anything? After what you did to me?" Lindsay asks, almost rhetorically. Mike doesn't reply. "What charges are they looking at you for? Being on the take? Or moral corruption? Abusing a position of power? Well, Mike, what is it? Because if it's only about being on the take, they could rule that out pretty quickly by looking at your bank account. And seeing as you are paranoid that I'm going to tell someone about what I saw that day, I'm guessing it's your morals that are being questioned."

Mike looks up and their gazes meet. Lindsay's reads, just simply, bullseye. She was always too good at reading him.

"Are you going to tell them?" Mike's tone is impatient now, and anger is creeping in. When Lindsay doesn't answer, he snaps. "I lost everything because of you. You and Carly Kirk. I'm not bloody doing it again!" He yells. If there had been anyone else in the room, they would have turned to look at him, but no one is there to witness his outburst.

"Welcome to prison, Mike. How do you like it?" Lindsay replies, and he can see a gleam of anger in her eyes.

"You have no proof." Mike hits back, his voice hoarse and angry.

"My word, the pictures. Maybe even Carly will testify against you."

"You admit what you saw, you have to admit why you were there in the first place. You were following me!"

"I was catching a train. You just happened to be there too." Lindsay's voice is ice cool. Never wavering.

"You bitch!" he almost hisses, anger at Lindsay overwhelming him."You were stalking me!" Lindsay doesn't even flinch. "You were stalking me!" Mike claims again, but he already feels like he's fighting a losing battle. "If your going to lie to them, at least tell me the truth. Why were you there, Lindsay?" His voice is much quieter now, because this is something he's wanted to know for a long time and he doesn't want to blow his one chance at getting an answer.

Lindsay considers his plea, before speaking, just as quietly as Mike had spoken a second before. "I wanted to talk to you."

"Of course," Mike says, sarcastically.

"Yes!" Lindsay hits back, angrily. "I wanted to confront you about what you did to me. About what you made me do. About how you hurt me." Her voice is deathly quiet now, and Mike has to strain his ears to hear.

"I didn't make you do anything." He replies, shaking his head.

"You may not of said it out loud, but you didn't want me to have that baby." The anger is back in her tone, easy to hear.

He lets Lindsay's words sink in. He hadn't been expecting Lindsay to bring up the baby - the baby that six years ago Mike had so vehemently denied was his - even when both he and Lindsay knew that it had been. Mike doesn't want children. He's never wanted them - Lindsay's or his wife's, it doesn't even matter. He doesn't want a child, a child who depends on him, looks up at him. He shivers at the thought. No, kids aren't for him.

But for a moment, after Lindsay had told him her news, he had entertained the possibility, because it had been a possibility. More than a possibility, really. It had been reality, because Lindsay had been pregnant with his child. He had been a father. And he wasn't - and still isn't - sure what to think of it.

Suddenly, he remembers the look on Lindsay's face the day she told him that she was pregnant, a look akin to that of complete and utter fury. She'd been so angry at him that day - she'd yelled and yelled, until his secretary had come in, disturbed by the shouting and Mike had had to quickly dismiss her out of hand, a small, unassuming woman who he'd replaced a few weeks later, afraid about what she'd heard. After his secretary had left, Lindsay had just continued yelling. Mike hardly said a word.

And then he turfed her out on the street, to fight her own battles all alone.

He knows now, reflecting, that his behaviour had been cruel, but Mike knows that every human being has an infinite capacity to be cruel, so that doesn't set him apart from Lindsay, or his wife, or even his mousy-haired former secretary.

Or at least that's what he tells himself, every night when he lies in bed and agonises about the decisions he has made in his life.

He never should have started the affair with Lindsay, never should have betrayed is wife, never should have got involved with Carly Kirk - but most of all, should not have ended things with Lindsay in quite the way he had.

Mike knows he ended it the way he did for one very simple reason - if he had tried to be gentle, to be kind - like he knew he could have been - he would never have been able to end it.

Because, damn it all, in the past, he had cared about her. Pretty soon after their affair had ended and even before that, however, any feelings he had for his ex-mistress - he shudders at the word - had hardened, if not quite into hate, then very close.

But by now, six years later, oh yes, it was most definitely hate he felt for Lindsay.

Hate and regret that he ever got involved with her in the first place. But somewhere, hidden deep in his heart - in a place he never goes - his love for Lindsay still lives, never to be relived, or revisited, damned to be forever shunned and forgotten by him except in the most of exceptional circumstances.

He sighs, speaking up after what seems to him like an eternity, but what actually was only three minutes. "If you wanted the...the...," Lindsay's gaze turns dark as Mike struggles to say the word.

"The baby, Mike. My baby. Our baby." He flinches at Lindsay's words, and sees anger flash across her features after he does so.

"Yes," he says curtly. "the baby - you could have had it."

"And have my child live their life with a father who was never there? A father who resented their existence? A father who never cared?" Mike is stumped, he doesn't have an answer. "You didn't have to drag me to the appointment by force, Mike, it was already by your hand I was there."

An uncomfortable silence descends on them. "What are you going-"

"I'm not lying for you."

And there he has his answer.

"And Carly? If she comes up?"

"I tell the truth." Mike sighs at the coldness in her tone.

"Please."

"You should have thought about that before you broke my heart." Her voice is a whisper, barely audible.

Without another word. Mike stands, knowing that he can't change Lindsay's mind, not now, not ever. Mike has to hope than before AC-12 come to interview her, she changes her mind, because if she doesn't...well, there's no use thinking about the worst case scenario.

And anyway, he's damned if he'll lose everything again. Mike will find a way to stop it.

He leaves the prison then, his fate held in the hands of the woman who hates him more than anyone else in the entire world.

...