Disclaimer- I don't own FMA.

Chapter 14

The Second

"There you are," a man bellowed from the doorway, his chubby, mustached face beet red as he stared heatedly at Kate who chuckled nervously and backed up until she was standing behind Roy's chair. "I don't know who you think you are young lady and I don't care, taking classified information without permission is not acceptable!"

The man was a policeman, he wore the standard black uniform that resembled the military uniforms and though Kate didn't know much about how ranking worked, she had a feeling she had managed to piss off someone a bit more powerful than his rotund appearance made her think he was. She also had a feeling that the next few minutes were going to include a lot of yelling.

"I don't suppose you mean this file," Roy asked, holding up the folder that Kate had dropped on his desk not a minute before.

"Yes, I dropped it coming up the stairs and that young woman picked it up, but as she was handing it back, she suddenly turned around and took off. Judging by the distinct lack of decoration on her uniform I'm inclined to believe she isn't a member of the military and has no right handling such sensitive information," the man snapped.

"She's my secretary, and though she isn't a member of the military, I would trust her with my own life. I'm sure it was a simple misunderstanding and Kate was only trying to help by bringing me the file since it has my name on it and it is part of her job to deliver paperwork," Roy replied casually, leaning into his chair to stare at the man in a way that suggested he felt that his time was being wasted. Unfortunately, his attempt at silently goading the man into leaving wasn't going to work as he had planned.

"I'm really sorry, it's been a hectic day, I was-"

Ignoring Roy's look and her attempt at placating him, he yelled out, "That still doesn't excuse her actions! That file was meant for you, not her!"

"It's not like I looked in it or anything," she grumbled, stubbornly crossing her arms over her chest and pretending to study the rows of books on the shelves to her left with great interest. Inside she wanted nothing more than to clap her hands together, slam them onto the floor, and with some pretty intricate alchemy, have the chunky policeman tossed out the window by his ankles. There was a young girl lying dead in a street somewhere, she thought that was more important than standing around and causing a scene because she had taken his file to the person it was going to go to anyway. She hadn't seen much of the most recent victim, but she had seen enough to believe that there was a connection between her and Leana Woodston and wanted to get to work on trying to figure out what was going on and who was murdering innocent young girls before the death toll rose any higher.

"That doesn't matter! I demand that she be punished for her actions!"

"Punished? For delivering a silly file to the person whose name is on the front of it," she argued.

"That's enough, Kate." Roy gave her a pointed look over his shoulder, telling her it was a good idea to shut up and quickly. Huffing, she stood up straight again and remained silent, which was proving difficult as the man proceeded to enter the room, introduce himself, yell some more about her lack of manners and training, all of which she ignored until she was abruptly asked to leave the room.

"Huh?" She blinked at the policeman who was the one to have demanded that she leave before looking down at Roy, her eyes narrowing and her fists clenching at her sides. She wanted badly to argue, but she could tell by the look in Roy's eyes that he wasn't trying to exclude her, but just get rid of the obnoxious man in his office as quickly as possible. The only way to do that was to give the man what he wanted. However, Kate wasn't known for keeping her temper under strict control, quite the opposite really and she had no intention of staying silent."You can't be serious!? I'm a part of this team regardless of whether or not I'm in the military! I have handled all kinds of paperwork ranging from meaningless memos to highly classified military documents and no one has ever had a problem with that before. My desk is right there, for crying out loud," she argued, jabbing a finger towards her empty desk.

"You're still a civilian and don't have the classification to see these files, let alone work on the case," the officer retorted pompously.

Shaking his head, Roy spoke up, carefully avoiding looking at Kate. "He's right, Kate. I'm sorry, but for the time being we'll have to ask that you leave."

"And where am I supposed to go," she protested angrily. "My desk, my work, everything is right there," she pointed out, gesturing at her desk again.

"You can use my office, I don't think I'll need it for awhile," he answered grimly, still avoiding her gaze that he was certain had taken on a look of hurt and bitterness. He couldn't say he blamed her, two girls had died and judging by the photos he had briefly looked over, it was the work of the same person. She found it difficult to believe that someone would rather argue about her nonexistent military ranking than try to help the poor girl and get her body off the street where it still lay as quickly as possible.

"Fine," she said, brushing past Roy and the black clad officer that seemed rather proud of himself as he gave her a stern, disapproving look. Grabbing her book bag from the floor by her desk and a pile of paperwork, she didn't say another word as she stormed from the room and into Roy's office.

Roy didn't want to exclude her, she had been the one to give them their only clues and possibilities about what was going on and now with another body that was in a state similar to the first, he wanted her help even more. This girl might have seen something more than the first, something that she might be able to show Kate that would help them in finding her murderer. The officer in front of him however was much too caught up in protocol and until he could be gotten rid of, Kate needed to be out of the picture. He wasn't surprised she was upset and he knew she was trying very hard to not say something that would give away that she already knew what was in the file in front of him and just how much she knew about the first case either.

Roy sighed before looking up at the officer again once Kate had left the room. "Happy now?"

"You should fire that smart mouthed brat, she has no right to be working with the military if she's going to act-"

"That smart mouthed brat, is my secretary, and regardless of what you think of her, she has never once given me a reason to doubt her. She has seen and handled material far more important than this and no one here, regardless of their rank has ever questioned her loyalty the way you so kindly have. While I can understand your dislike of having a simple civilian working on the case, I would rather work with her than a member of the military. That girl is smarter than you could ever hope to be and knows a great deal about alchemy, she has been extremely useful to me and does everything that's asked of her without question," Roy cut in, finding it hard to continue dealing with the pompous officer and his attitude towards Kate. "Moving on, Kate is gone, give us your report and then go. This case belongs to the military, your presence won't be needed after you tell us what you know."

"Hey," Roy said, walking into his office and quietly shutting the door behind him.

Kate was perched behind his desk, her petite frame looking out of place behind the large, bulky wooden desk. Her neat ponytail swished as she turned her head to study something on a separate sheet of paper than the one currently in front of her. She no longer looked quite as upset as she had been only a few minutes ago, now she appeared to be withdrawn and unwilling to talk.

"Hey," Kate echoed, not bothering to lift her golden eyes from her work that was now scattered haphazardly over Roy's desk.

"I'm sorry-"

"Don't be. I'm not supposed to be involved in military affairs, I'm not a part of the military and I understand that. It's just that there's a girl lying in a pool of her own blood and that idiot would rather bitch about me and ignore her."

"We're going to go to the scene, will you be ok?" He asked, stepping beside her to put a hand on her shoulder.

"I'll be fine, but you know I won't be of any help unless I can touch her, right?"

"I know," he replied, smirking at her devilishly before dipping down to place a quick kiss on her lips and then turning to leave.

"Should have figured you had something up your sleeve," she muttered, shaking her head before returning to her work to pass the time until Roy and the others got back.

Two hours had past and there had been no word from Roy, Kate had finished with her work not long before and with nothing to occupy her was staring at the clock, willing it to go slower. She had class in an hour and if Roy wasn't back in the next thirty minutes, she would have to wait to find out what was going on. If this new murder really was connected to the murder of Leana Woodston in anyway, as she thought it was, she wanted to know and she wanted to be able to help.

Tapping her nails impatiently, Kate sighed, finally giving up on waiting since she had fifteen minutes to get class. Removing herself from Roy's extremely comfy chair, she picked up her book bag and left, knowing Roy would know where she was when they returned to find her gone.

It was really no surprise to her that when she walked out of her last class, Roy was waiting for her. He was sitting on a bench across the courtyard and as soon as he saw her, he stood up and approached her, taking her bag from her and wordlessly leading her to the waiting black car that was parked in front of the school. Riza was behind the wheel and as soon as Kate had climbed into the back and Roy had taken his seat up front, the blond pulled away from the school.

"Uh, where are we going," Kate asked, confused when Riza took a turn that would not only lead them away from the HQ, but away from her apartment as well.

"The hospital," Roy answered.

"It was far too easy to get in here," Kate observed, shivering in the cold air that filled the semi-dark room she and Riza had entered.

The room was large, neatly kept and stank of sterilizer, but Kate didn't mind. She had an idea that without the scent of the abrasive cleaners that there would a much less pleasant stench wafting through the room.

"You can thank the Colonel for that, he's good at distractions if nothing else," Riza replied wryly.

Kate paused, swallowing when she the metal table in the center of the room and the sheet that covered what could only be a body. "I really don't want to do this."

Riza glanced at the girl and frowned, she was shaking and couldn't take her eyes from the body on the metal table. She may have only known Kate for a short period of time, but the girl wasn't cut out for life that was related to the military in anyway. She was far too emotional and had a hard time maintaining distance between herself and her work. Not that it was a bad thing.

Taking a deep breath, Kate stepped forward and reached her hand out, pausing to curl her fingers and let out the breath. "Please show me something, anything that will let me help you," she whispered pleadingly.

Lifting the sheet just enough so that she could see a pale wrist and nothing else, Kate let her hand rest on the top of the girl's cold hand. For several seconds, she kept her hand where it was, but nothing happened. There were no flashes, no memories, nothing. Giving it a little more time, hoping that something would happen, Kate let a minute pass and then two before sighing and pulling her hand away with a disheartened frown. Staring at the white sheet for a few seconds, Kate wasn't sure what to do. She couldn't will herself to see anything no matter how much she wanted to and it made her depressed to think that this young girl's murder might go unsolved.

"We should go, it's been long enough," Riza informed Kate, wrapping an arm around the girl and beginning to steer her from the room.

"Yeah, sorry."

Slipping back out of the cold room, Kate and Riza made their way quietly and carefully through the hospital. The lights had been dimmed given the time and only a few nurses and doctors were roaming around the halls checking on patients or talking amongst themselves. Once they were back outside in the cool of the summer air, Kate leaned into the car to wait for Roy and stare blankly up at the twinkling lights that shined above her in the darkness. She felt like she had failed everyone in not seeing anything while touching the young girl, she knew that though no one had said as much, they were all expecting her to see something. Not that she blamed them, they had no leads to follow and they were hoping that she would find one for them.

"Well?"

Kate jumped, not having noticed that Roy was standing a few feet in front of her and was staring expectantly at her. Blinking at him, she stumbled over her words before finally settling on shaking her head and frowning while lowering her eyes to the ground in disappointment.

"Oh," he said, combing a hand through his hair and trying not to sound as disappointed as Kate looked. "That's alright, we'll just have to do this the old fashioned way. Why don't we call it a night for now, we should have more information tomorrow and we can go from there."

"Her name was Milly Huntz, she was seventeen. She had brown hair, brown eyes was about five foot six and one hundred twenty pounds. She was reported missing four and a half weeks ago by her parents when she didn't show up at her grandmother's who she visits every weekend here. Just like Leana Woodston, this girl died of blood loss, but not from loss of limb. She was missing all of the organs in the upper right portion of her chest, they didn't appear to have been cut out since she had no signs of having been cut open. They appeared to have just disappeared is what's written. Organs just don't disappear," Roy grumbled, flipping through the file in his hands.

"Hey, have you looked at this," Kate asked.

"What," Roy asked, looking up from the jumble of papers on his desk.

"The pictures?" She was standing over her desk that was covered in a variety of papers and a few photos, most of which were of the first victim, Leana. She was holding another photo in her hand and was staring at it with her eyebrows pulled thoughtfully together.

"What pictures," Havoc piped up. "Did you find something?"

"I don't know," she replied hesitantly. "But has no one else noticed how similar these two girls were. I mean I know their ages where different, but other than that-"

"They were both about the same height and weight," Havoc cut in, looking at a few papers on his own desk.

"They both had brown hair," Fuery added.

"Eye color was different," Riza pointed out.

"Yeah, that's all true, but... Did you guys really not notice this," Kate inquired, grabbing a picture off her desk and stepping up to Roy's. Setting the picture she had already had in her hand down in front of him, she said, "This is of Leana Woodston, three weeks before she went missing. This one," she continued, setting the picture she had just picked up down beside the other. "Was taken two years ago. Notice anything?"

"Not really," Roy replied.

Riza walked up to the desk and studied the pictures for a moment before turning to Kate. "The pictures aren't of the same girl. Their facial structures are a bit different, but they're built almost identically."

"Right, this one," she said, pointing to the one she had just put down. "Is of Milly Huntz. It was taken two years ago, when she was fifteen. It was the picture that was put up when she went missing, so even though it's old I would assume she hadn't changed much. These girls looked a lot alike when they were alive."

"Wow, you're right," Havoc drawled, leaning over the two girls to get a better look at the pictures, just as Fuery, Breda and Falman were all trying to do.

"Hey, Kate," Roy questioned sounding a bit too somber given the small break through, though it had yet to prove useful. "How tall are you?"

"Uh..about five six."

"And you weigh how much?"

"Enough," she replied, not too enthusiastic about where he was heading with his questions. "Why?"

"No reason," he answered. "But from now on, you're not going anywhere without me or someone with you."

"What? Why?"

"You noticed the similarities between these two girls, but you failed to notice that you are the same height and weight. You have the same hair color and you're built similarly to both of them," Falman observed.

"No, I'm not....Am I?"

"Yeah, you are," Roy nodded.

"Oh. Well... That's nice," was all Kate could think of to say, though it wasn't nice. It made her a potential target for the madman that was wandering around East City.

Several days went by and Kate continued to make it seem as if she were maintaining her distance from the investigation, only getting involved after hours when the building emptied or whenever Roy or someone decided to come and give her another 'assignment'. Instead of giving her an actual assignment they would slip her any new or potentially useful info they might have or a list of questions they had for her. She would write up a reply and take it back to whomever brought it to her.

So far there was really nothing new, no clues, no suspects and no ideas as to where to even look to find any. They seemed to be going in circles, constantly going over the police reports, the autopsy reports, everything in search of something that they might have overlooked. They had found nothing.

With the semester quickly coming to an end, Kate didn't entirely mind the lack of excitement. What time she wasn't spending at work or school was spent at home studying. She had fallen asleep at her table almost every night and was drinking far more coffee than was likely to be considered healthy. The closer and closer that the end of her first college semester loomed, the more tired and emotionally drained she looked. Once it had ended and she had scored perfectly on all of her finals, she couldn't have been happier and managed to persuade Roy to let her have a few days off in celebration. He had agreed, but under the assumption that she was going to have a lot of free time to cater to him and his every whim. Instead, she spent the days laying around and sleeping, much to Roy's disappointment.

The day's eventually stretched into weeks and everyone began to think that maybe, just maybe the murders had stopped. Things were going back to normal and Kate no longer holed herself up in Roy's office. There was no need to now that the case was set aside until someone or something gave them a direction in which to go. At the current rate, that was unlikely to ever happen.

It was currently just past seven on the last Friday and the last day of June. Kate had gotten off of work several hours before and with much more free time on her hands than she was accustomed to had spent much of the evening wandering around East City. She had plans to return home for a few weeks in August and thought that it might be nice to bring her brothers a few gifts.

Normally, a ten year old and an eleven year old would probably like things a bit less boring than books on alchemy, but Kate knew better. With two books for each boy on different theories and aspects of alchemy, the young dark haired girl happily made her way back to her apartment. It wasn't much of a surprise to her to see Roy standing outside and a grin quickly spread across her face. They were supposed to try and have an actual date that night, one that consisted of more than just going to a restaurant to eat and then quickly return to her apartment so that she could continue studying where she left off.

Needless to say, Kate was fairly excited to actually have a chance to spend some real quality time with Roy and it showed in her sparkling golden orbs as she quickened her pace. Her grin began to fade the closer she got to him and the sparkle in her eyes dulled until she was full on frowning at the man that was still in his military blues. Glancing at the military sedan that he was leaning against, she noticed that Riza was in the driver's seat and though the woman tended to look serious most of the time, Kate could easily tell that the seriousness which was now plainly evident on the woman's face was far from normal.

Quickening her pace again, Kate walked up to Roy, not failing to notice that he too looked much more serious than she had seen him in awhile. "What's going on?" She questioned worriedly.

"I thought I told you not to go wandering around town alone," he replied, a hint of scolding in his tone that actually managed to make her jolt in confusion and blink at him while shaking her head and knitting her brows together.

"I'm sorry," she managed to stutter out. "I was shopping for something to take to the boys when I went to visit. There's far more material on alchemy available here than back home and I thought that-"

"You're going home," he questioned, he seemed to be asking her in a way that questioned her sanity and it irked her slightly.

"Yes, I'm pretty sure I mention I had plans to go to Resembool in August for a few weeks."

His next words would make her understand why he seemed rather upset her. "A girl was just reported missing. She's twenty and matches the same general description as the others. If we consider that the other two girls both turned up dead almost four weeks after disappearing, then we have four weeks to figure this out before another girl ends up dead."

Sighing, Kate took a minute to think before responding. She understood why Roy and everyone else would want to find the girl quickly, but if her disappearance was in anyway linked to the two girls who had been brutally murdered, she wasn't naïve enough to think that finding her would be easy. "You have to know that the chances of us actually finding this girl before that are very low. We have nothing to go on. No clues as to where to look or who to look for."

"I know that, but it's better than waiting for her to turn up dead and hoping that she gives us some sort of clue then."

"Of course it is, Roy, but right now everything is against us. We have nothing."

"I'm aware of that, but I don't plan on letting it stop me," he replied.

Kate shook her head. He was upset with her for whatever reason, probably a mix of her not listening to him about going out alone and for being such a pessimist. She wasn't intending to be pessimistic, she was being realistic even though she knew the reality of the situation was quite dire. "Why are you here?"

"I want you to come back to the office, everyone's already been called back-"

"I thought I was supposed to maintain a believable distance from your investigation," she cut in.

"I don't care about that right now. If someone wants to complain, let them. All I want from you right now is to go tell us more about The Gate you brought up and any theories you have on it."

"It won't be anything I haven't already told you. I've told you what I know," she pointed out.

"Maybe you'll think of something else," he countered.

"And if I don't? Are you still going to look at me like I'm a misbehaving child," she asked snappishly. "Whatever," she sighed, turning on her heel and walking towards the door leading to her apartment. "Let me go put these upstairs, I'll be down in a minute."

She heard the disgruntled exhale from behind her and the sound of the door being caught before it could close all the way as well as the sound of heavy boots following her up the stairs, but she ignored them and continued climbing the four flights of stairs.

"Kate," Roy called, grabbing her hand to get her to stop walking and turn to face him. "I'm sorry, I was worried."

"I understand that, but that doesn't mean that it's okay for you to be a jerk," she argued. "It's not like I'm not upset over this situation either, I know that it's serious. Girls are dying and I'm not taking that lightly, but I am trying to maintain some distance from this, I'm not like you, Roy. Or Riza, or Havoc or anyone in the military. It's easier for you guys to push things to the back of your minds at the end of the day, you were trained to do that, I wasn't."

Frowning at the way Kate had begun to shake, he stepped up next to her and wrapped his arms around her. She stubbornly refused to return the gesture and stiffly let him hold her.

"Are you going to be okay," he asked, not knowing what else to say to console her since that wasn't exactly his strong suit with woman, but he also knew that she wasn't going to be okay. The series of events that were playing out were forever going to be imprinted on her mind, just as the war was imprinted on his.

"Yeah," she replied, detaching herself from his arms and smiling. "I have you to look out for me."

Ok, I'll make this quick since I should have started getting ready for work a half hour ago.

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