A/N Rizzles is coming. I promise. I just like the slow build up. Thank you all, again, for all the kind words, all the follows, all the favorites...hell, just the sheer amount of hits I get chapter after chapter.

She sighed, running a hand through her hair. It'd been two days, and they were no closer to figuring out what had happened to Borjokewicz. It was obvious Tuckerton was a plant – there was CCTV footage of two men in black masks loading the guitar rack into a KLW van in front of the apartment where Meacham had lived. But from there? They had nothing. It was supposed to have been her day off, but even though she was currently sprawled across the couch, the kid propped up next to her getting better and better every day with the whole upright thing, she was still pouring over case notes, all the canvasing reports they had, the never-ending stream of information coming into the tip line now that it was all over the papers.

Yes, six o'clock on a Saturday evening had Jane Rizzoli still hard at work. There was a sharp, almost lyrical knock on the front door, and she found herself puzzled for a moment. Who on earth would be knocking on Maura's door? She hoped to god that her mother wasn't knitting another damn baby blanket. She was pretty sure that the kid was risking suffocation at this point. She opened the door with a one-handed ease, balancing the kid against her with the other. "Lieutenant?" She asked, obviously confused as she opened the door, wondering why the hell Cavanaugh was currently standing on Maura's doorstep. "Is there a lead or something?" She asked, not liking the sudden twinkle in her bosses' eye.

Any questions she'd had died in her throat as she watched her mother and her best friend come over from the back door, Maura with the self-satisfied smirk that her friend usually had when she'd had a particularly successful shopping venture. She was pretty sure she'd found herself in a cartoon because there was no way that her eyes were still in her head and her jaw was not bouncing off the floor. She hadn't seen her mother dress up – well, ever really. But right now her mother was the dressiest she'd seen since her cousin Gina's wedding, and there was Cavanaugh on the doorstep – handing Angela flowers.

She really hated the two matching smirks thrown her way as she watched her mother get escorted to an Audi that she idly recognized as having seen before in the precinct parking garage, never realizing just who it belonged to. It was only once the car was out of the driveway that she realized just what had happened. "You!" She turned on Maura who was watching the scene with an entertained glimmer shining in hazel eyes. "You just aided and abetted – that."

"Your mother going on a date is hardly a felony."

"It is when it's with your boss! How would you like it if she was dating-" She paused, frowning as she realized that Maura was the boss. The only one above the Chief Medical Examiner was the one that appointed said chief medical examiner, and the governor didn't really count as a boss in that sort of sense.

"I think it's sweet. Angela is quite enamored of him. And you weren't about to go helping her find an outfit for tonight. You should have heard how excited she was to get to go to dinner with him again. Apparently their first date was quite successful." It was only the fact that she had the kid in one hand that was preventing her from jamming her fingers in her ears and going la la la la la I can't hear you.

"Traitor." She knew full well she was pouting as she followed Maura back through the foyer into the living room. At least one person was on her side, she mused, as she found Jo jumping on to the couch to snuggle next to her, seemingly knowing just what she needed. She watched as the dog gave a curious look towards the kid, touching a nose to a foot that dangled, both child and dog flinching at the contact. She found Maura giggling next to her over the innocent scene, and handed the kid off to her friend as she grabbed the manilla folder yet again.

So, three dead people. One missing beat cop. Either Borjokewicz had gone to ground, or something much worse had happened to the man. She flipped through the folder again, putting together what she had. So all three of the known dead had ties to Kenbar-Levitt-Wooten. Something with the company was fishy, but she had no clue what the hell it was. Something, though, most definitely, was up. What on earth was such a huge story that people had lost their lives over it?

She looked up to find her friend on the floor with the kid, gently waving the stuffed – whatever it was Rondo had given to them in front of the kid's face, watching as the kid reached out for it time and again, trying to wrap a hand around one floppy ear. It was something she'd never thought she'd see. Prim, proper, Maura Isles, sprawled face down on her own living room floor, playing with an almost 3 – month old kid. Whatever it was, it was a damn sight more refreshing than trying to find a connection where a connection was trying desperately to not be found.

The pieces were all there, she just had to put them together. There had to be something she was missing. Their financials checked out. They were just another run-of-the-mill city-owning holding company. Nothing too out of the ordinary. But something, something was definitely rotten in the state of Denmark. There was something that they were being purposely kept in the dark about. She found herself unable to stop from peeking over the top of the folder at the sight of Maura and the kid. She was glad Maura seemed to know all the right things for the kid, doing all these brain boosting things like sticking the kid in front of the mirror, watching him entranced by his own reflection.

There was already a stack of Little Golden Books accumulating in the guest room. She'd even fallen asleep to Maura's soothing recitation of The Poky Little Puppy the other night, when her friend had the kid propped up between them on the bed, paging through the book as the kid took in the bright colors and patterns. Knowing Maura, the kid could have been born with Lydia's brainlessness and the ME would still manage to turn that brainlessness into someone that could get into MIT. Some of those brains would come in handy right now, but she refused to interrupt the moment that Maura and the kid seemed to be having.

She wondered where in the hell the kid had picked up the ability to hold his head up, looking around, braced on tiny palms Damn thing was getting big enough to actually do things and it was sort of scary. The idea that the kid could now clumsily grasp for things rather than just wrap a hand around anything placed in his own. She couldn't help the faint smile as two tiny hands clamped together, hanging on to the stuffed toy as Maura relinquished her grasp on it, letting the kid pull it in, sucking happily on one floppy ear. She could hear Maura cooing something softly at the kid, catching words here and there like smart and athletic and all sorts of other things mixed in with the baby talk.

If you had asked her four months ago if she could ever imagine Dr. Maura Isles, Cheif Medical Examiner of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts lying on a living room floor speaking fluent baby talk, she was sure she would have looked at you as though you'd grown a third, quite possibly even fourth head. But now, seeing it with her own eyes? It was something that looked so incredibly natural she wasn't quite sure how she'd ever not seen it. Maura was a natural with the kid. There'd been glimpses of that maternal instinct when they'd had that case and her friend had volunteered as a Kangaroo mother, but now, now that Maura was around a kid all the time? It was there tenfold.

But right now, the proof was in front of her for her own eyes to see. It was a stark contrast, almost black and white to her case. Right now she had clear damn proof that Maura was like, the idyllic picture of how to raise a seven week old and her case was like the perfect picture of confusing as hell. She was pretty sure the Sunday sudoku and crossword combined were easier to solve than this. Every possible lead they had fizzled out as soon as it hit KLW, with fancy coorporate lawyers blocking their path.

Every time they'd tried to question any of the employees, they found themselves met with the brick wall of lawyers. There was only so much the DAs could do with no evidence. And they found themselves in the impossible catch 22 of needing a warrant to get the evidence, and needing the evidence to get the warrant. There had to be some other way to find out what was going on there. There was something big going on, and she was going to get to the bottom of it. They had their theory of what happened. And it was a damn good theory. Davison stumbled upon something, and started digging. Confessed whatever it was to Lewis, went to the press with Meacham – whatever it was that Davison had discovered had to be huge. Colossal.

She frowned, as she flipped through the list of buildings that Davison had worked in. The last three buildings he'd been in. A cell phone manufacturer, a trucking company, the import-export company that shipped those cell phones in from whatever pacific rim hellhole they'd been made in. There was something there. There had to be. Three people did not just die for no reason. "Hey, Maur-" She was loathe to interrupt the moment playing out in front of her. "Meacham – you said she'd been pretty beat up before she got killed?" She handed the manilla folder over the coffee table wondering if it was normal to be passing case files across a living room in front of a kid.

"Yes, there was trauma to the ribcage that implies that she had taken quite a few high velocity impacts to the area roughly three to four weeks before she was killed."

"So was she beaten before or after Lewis and Davison were killed?"

"Before Lewis, but after Davison. There is also evidence of peri-mortem trauama. This time, however, there was a more distinct targeting of the cranial region. The prior incident, it seems most of the blows were focused on the thoracic region-"

"Last time they were trying to beat information out of her. This time, they didn't care, they knew she was going to die anyway." She sat back on the couch, trying to make the pieces fit. Davison was armed, but didn't make any attempt to fight back – just let himself be held in place and stabbed. "Did Lewis have any signs of defensive wounds, anything?" There was a shake of Maura's head.

"No, but unlike the other two victims the angle of entry suggests that whoever stabbed him was directly over top of him stabbing down into the chest."

"Like, kneeling over him?"

"It's a distinct possibility."

"Lewis is a big guy – did you run a tox panel?" There's an exasperated look on Maura's face. Of course a tox panel would have been run. Maura was nothing if not thorough.

"The results aren't in here-" Maura was moving to get up, head to the laptop on the counter, and she reached out to catch her friend's wrist before it could get there.

"Leave it for now, it'll still be there after dinner. Thai or pizza?" There was another exasperated glance thrown at her. "What? You do realize that right now my mother is on a date with my boss, I've got one hell of a case that you cant turn on the television without hearing about, no leads – do you really expect me to want to cook?" She scowled. "How can he even do this now? Go on a date while we have all this to deal with?"

"If he was at work right now, what would he be doing to help with your case?" The scowl deepend as she realized that Maura had a point. The lieutenant didn't really do much in terms of the cop work. He supervised, he signed off, he made sure that everything got done, and got done correctly. "I'll cook."

"Can it at least be something fattening and terrible for you?" She called over her shoulder.

"No."