They washed dishes together after Will had left and Roy had gone into the living room to read his novel. She'd rinse them in the soapy water and then hand them to him to dry with the towel before setting them in the dish rack. A comfortable silence rested between them as their shoulders occasionally brushed.

C.J. looked over at him and thought of their conversation earlier. When they had discussed what they had discovered about Abigail who after learning of her brother's death had been the only one left to claim his body.

About what she might have done as an act of revenge against the woman who killed the brother that she had loved and how she had somehow hooked up with Robert…the man she had betrayed after she found out he'd been an opportunistic killer. But she also felt the weight of her testimony inside the grand jury room weighing on her.

One reason she had been so quiet when they had cleaned up after dinner and dessert, even though she had thoroughly enjoyed the meal with her closest friends. Matt hadn't said anything seemly deep in thought.

Suddenly she wanted to break the silence.

"Great meal…."

"Great dessert too…"

She smiled at his compliment and her shoulders relaxed from the load they'd been carrying since she had entered the grand jury room. She had done her best to detail what happened to her to the jurors and the judge under the prosecutor's careful questioning. To be able to relate what happened to her at the hands of one man to the ruthlessly meticulous planning of another. And now there might be another person involved who also hated her for what she had done.

"Thanks….Will seemed happy about what he's been doing."

Matt nodded.

"Yeah he's finally coming out of himself," he said, "I think he's come a long way since he first came back."

C.J. couldn't argue with that remembering how shaky he'd been when he'd gotten off the plane with Matt and Roy after returning home for the first time in over a decade. Then he'd been nearly over the edge literally when he had gone suicidal not too long after his return.

"I'm so glad for him…and for Roy and for you…."

Matt smiled at her.

"But what about you…I know today was tough."

She nodded.

"Yeah it was….but that part of it's over at least…"

She left unspoken what would come next…meaning the long wait until they found out whether the grand jury would indict Robert and if so, would it be taken all the way to trial where she'd have to tell her story all over again in much more adversarial circumstances.

How her whole sexual history would be used to put her on trial instead…just like she would have done if she'd been the defense attorney….just like she had done in the past.

"C.J…you're not going to be alone in this…you've got your family here."

She reached over to run her hand over his shoulder and down his arm.

"Houston I know…it's just that I've never been through anything like this before and sometimes…I just don't know what to do…I don't even know how to feel sometimes…like I'm just numb."

He paused.

"It's like that when you're in shock…Will's been through that, so have I…it does lessen over time."

She leaned against him slightly perhaps not aware of it.

"I hope so…but you all have helped so much already."

"You would have done it for any of us," he said, "In fact you have when we've needed you."

She smiled at him, her hand moving to his lower back where it rested. He looked at the doorway into the dining room.

"Come on, why don't we move to the den and watch a movie?"

She thought about it and nodded.

"Something funny and sweet…if you don't mind…I know you're more into westerns."

"No…that sounds great…," he said, "I think my uncle has a pretty good selection of those kinds of movies hidden somewhere…let's go take a look."

They did and they crouched on the floor to pick out a movie which they did after a minute or two. He put it in the player while she moved to the couch. He picked up a folded comforter and handed it to her and she draped it over herself, and then invited him to join her.

He did and she covered them both with it as they rested their feet on the coffee table as the movie started. They watched it for a while, her head slowly leaning towards his shoulder until it rested against it. The scent of her lilac shampoo reaching him, making him aware of how lovely she had always been even though he hadn't focused on her beauty. Her body relaxed against his and he wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

"It's nice to be like this Houston…"

"Yes it is isn't it?"

"That's one of the things I love about you….is how you touch people when you're with them in different ways. Whether it's holding hands or wrapping an arm around them like now…"

He sighed.

"Well that's the way I was raised I guess," he said, "but it's easy with you."

"Hmmm….me too…because even after what happened…I'm not afraid of you and I'm am with everyone else."

"Everyone…?"

"Men I mean….I think about what it was like in my relationships with them in the past and I can't remember what it was like…how much I enjoyed it because all I can see or think about is what he did."

Meaning the man who raped her of course….would he forever define how she felt about even the men she wanted to get close to her? Her therapist had warned her that intimacy with the opposite sex would be her most difficult challenge she would face while she healed from her experience. She already knew that to be true…but somehow with Matt, she felt differently.

She felt secure and safe with him because she'd always trusted him and the fact that he'd never hurt her. Not intentionally and not unless he was helping her avoid even more pain than what his actions inadvertently caused.

"I don't know whether I'll ever get it back Houston…"

"Get what back?"

A long pause followed his question and he turned his face to look at hers. Her brows were knit in concentration as if she were thinking about it.

"Who I was before it happened," she said, "I feel like such a different person know, someone I don't know."

"C.J. it's going to take time but I think you'll more than get your life back, you'll build something great out of it because that's what you do when you face the bad things that happen."

She listened to the certainty in his voice, of the one person who knew her better than anyone else. The one constant in her life especially after her parents had died.

"Those men took something from you they had no right to take," he said, "but you're a much stronger woman than maybe you know….when those men kidnapped me and I looked in the mirror and saw a stranger…maybe a killer, you kept me from going down from pretty dark paths."

She reached over and brushed her fingers against the face she knew so well.

"Houston, you could never have done those horrible things you were framed with doing," she said, "and nothing and no one was going to convince me otherwise."

He sighed.

"I doubted myself anyway, but I know what it's like to question what you think you know about yourself and what you'll do…I'm just damn lucky I had people like you in my corner."

She smiled.

"Not just me…You've got a lot of people who care about you Houston," she said, "Uncle Roy…Will and your friends."

"So do you…my family's yours…"

Her heart swelled at his words.

"Thanks so much for that….you…they've been great…I don't know how I would have made it through these past weeks if it hadn't been for all of you."

"I'm always going to be there for you C.J. no matter what," he said, "That's a promise."

With that she leaned against him again and his arm tightened around her as they watched the movie together, shutting everything else out for a while.

The next day, Matt set out for the office after he overslept past the time his alarm had gone off. He had stayed at his uncle's until past midnight wanting to make sure that C.J. had fallen asleep in her bed before he left. Even then it had been hard to leave her there and go on home to sleep in his own bed but he knew that there were sentiments inside that he had to keep to himself when it came to her.

They both needed to be focused on her healing from her ordeal and in making sure that those who had engineered it wouldn't ever see outside a prison cell. Matt remained determined that both Robert and this Abigail character would go down for what they had done. He knew he had Robert and his gut told him that Dean's sister had played an instrumental role in what had been planned from inside one of the securest of prisons.

He nodded at Chris who was on the phone with a client and Roy had gone out to interview another client so he sat down in front of his computer after getting some coffee to do some more research on Abigail. He found that one of her Cal Tech classmates still worked in L.A. at Caltech so he phoned up the institution and asked if he could talk with her. She had a research fellowship that allowed her mainly to do some periodic teaching but left her free to research in the field the rest of her time. The head of her department said that she'd be in her office for some meetings the following morning so Matt said he'd call her to make an appointment at that time.

But what he didn't want to do was to give her any advance warning because he felt pretty sure if she were guilty of what he suspected, she might try to flee or otherwise avoid contact with him.

Chris walked in as he hung up the phone to hand him more paperwork.

"Mac Dexter is going to cancel the meeting with the shipping yard in Singapore," she said, "and the office in London's going to send a rep to address Parliament on the grain crop projections."

Matt nodded, flipping through some of the paperwork. It all looked like routine business that could be handled quickly enough leaving him the rest of the day to do more investigating.

"What about Murray, is he going to close escrow on that new building in Rotterdam?"

She nodded.

"At the end of the week….that's pretty much it except C.J. did call and say she's going to be in later after she meets with the prosecutor again."

"Any news from the grand jury," he asked.

Chris shook her head.

"C.J. did say that it might take hours or maybe days for them to reach a decision."

Matt figured as much, wishing the process could move along much faster because he knew that it weighed on her, adding to the rest of what stressed her.

Roy walked in behind them and Matt arched his brows.

"That was quick…did it go well?"

Roy nodded.

"The meeting did but I ran into another ex-client who might know something about Dallas, he had a run in with him not long after he came to L.A. He was pretty drunk at the time."

"Meaning he might have spilled out some valuable information?"

"Bingo…he dropped some names of his contacts," Roy said, "didn't mean anything to my client, a guy by the name of Dick Hendrix but maybe if you talk to him."

Matt felt eagerness rush through him, hoping that Roy's source could provide them with some valuable leads…because while he guessed that Robert and Abigail were involved, he still needed much more to tie them to Dallas and his deceased partner Clyde.

"Then let's set it up as soon as possible."

Roy smiled.

"I can do better than that," he said, "Dick's on his way to the Zen Garden…we can meet him there in an hour."

Matt got up out of his chair as Chris looked at the both of them.

"Then let's get going shall we," he said, "and find out what he's got to say."

The two of them left the penthouse suite to go off to their meeting hoping that it would get them closer to finding out the truth.