"He's dead, boss," Hank Voight said.

Adam Ruzek looked at the corpse of Antonio Dawson, who had until today been his primary meth cook. Now he was dead, his brains blown out at close range, now decorating one of his living room walls.

"Yes, Hank, I can see that," Ruzek said dryly, shifting his gaze to his right hand man. "What happened here?"

"The back door lock looks like it's been fucked with. My guess is whoever killed him was in the house when Antonio came home. They came in behind him real quiet, maybe while he was putting the TV on, and popped him in the back of head. On the positive side, if I may, at least he wasn't tortured."

"On the positive side? The man's fucking dead!" Kevin Atwater shouted. He was one of Ruzek's trusted inner circle, and almost always travelled with the boss and his driver and his protection.

"Shut up," Ruzek told him sternly. He had no time for hysterical outbursts. Revenge, however, he very much had time for. And revenge he would get, on whoever had done this. As for no torture, it seemed like Voight was right. Dawson likely hadn't had the chance to give up anything about the organisation Ruzek ran, including the location of the meth lab. In itself that was odd. Had whoever killed him not wanted that kind of info? If not, what had been the motive? Initially, none of it seemed to make sense.

"What do you want us to do, boss?" Erin Lindsay asked. She was Voight's foster daughter, and every bit as talented as he was in their line of work, and just as loyal to the Ruzek organisation.

"Find out who did this, and bring me their head on a fucking stick," Ruzek snapped, as if it should have been obvious. Then he changed his mind on the past part. "Actually, no. Don't kill them. Bring them to me. I want an answer on this today. Someone out there knows who's been asking questions about us, who's been making noise, who's been following Antonio. Someone knows something. Make threats, offer money, I don't care what you do. Just find out who did this and bring their ass to me."

"You've got it, boss," Lindsay said. "If I might make a suggestion?"

Ruzek just looked at her, waiting for her to go on.

"We should have someone go to the lab. Kim Burgess will have turned up for work. Obviously Antonio won't be there. There's a chance that whoever killed him might want to kill her too. We can't lose both of our meth cooks."

"She's right," Voight realised. "If someone found out who our two cooks are, they might be looking to put us out of business for a while by taking them both out."

Ruzek supposed that could be true. He wasn't going to let it happen, if so. He also wondered if Burgess, who had been Dawson's understudy at the lab, might know something. He decided to find that out for himself.

"Right, Erin, you and I are going to the lab. Kevin, Hank, you get onto Upton and Halstead. The four of you are going to find out who did this."

"One of us should call the cops and stay here with the body," Atwater pointed out.

Another good point, Ruzek thought. It occurred to him that he was more rattled than he had first thought. Ordinarily he would be on top of those kind of things himself without needing to be prompted.

"Hank, you're going to take care of that. You know most of the cops in this precinct. Make sure we don't catch any heat on this. Cops in my face is not what I need today. When you're done here, call Kevin and he will pick you up. Erin, let's go."

Without looking back at Antonio, Ruzek walked out of the room with Lindsay close behind, and Atwater right behind her. He wasted no time in getting into the passenger seat of the first of the two SUVs that were parked outside the house.

Lindsay exchanged keys with Atwater, then got into the driver's seat. "Straight to the lab?" she asked as she took off a pair of leather gloves. With that done, she fired up the engine and got the air con fired up to heat up the vehicle against the freezing winter air.

"Yes, but don't go directly there. Take a long route. And make sure we're not being followed."

Lindsay nodded and got the SUV moving. "Got it."

Something was wrong. Kim Burgess knew that. The question was what? Antonio Dawson, her superior at the Ruzek meth lab, had never failed to show up for work without a call and an explanation. Even then, it had only ever happened a couple of times. But today there was no sign of him, and there had been no call.

Starting a cook by herself was impractical, dangerous, and in any case was not permitted. With nothing else to do, Burgess had put on her hazmat suit as normal and started to clean the non-essential areas of the lab. Unlike the daily routine with the equipment, the rest of the lab had to be cleaned once every few days. It had been done two days earlier, but there was nothing else for her to do with her time. At least she couldn't be accused of not working. As an added bonus, simply cleaning didn't mean wearing the full face respirator mask that she had to have on all day most days.

Now a couple of hours into her shift, if that was the right word for it, she felt certain that something out of the ordinary was going on. In this line of work, out of the ordinary was never good. She was also running out of things to clean, and therefore work that could be done.

Then she heard footsteps on the metal flooring above her. Someone was in the lab. Actually, more than one person, she realised.

"Is it safe to come down without any gear on?"

It was Adam Ruzek himself calling down to her. He appeared at the top of the steps leading down to the lab floor. Erin Lindsay was with him. Them being there didn't mean anything good for Antonio, Burgess realised. She was struck, as she always was, by how handsome the boss was. His expensive suits and his slightly rugged, infrequently shaved look really did something for her. Or maybe it was the fact that he was the boss. Or maybe it was the money he had. Or maybe it was all of those things. That was probably it. Anyway, now wasn't the time to stare at him and go weak at the knees.

"Yes, you can come down, I'm just cleaning. Everything okay? I mean, I'm assuming it isn't, since you're here and Antonio isn't."

"He's dead, Kim," Ruzek said with what was probably his best attempt at gentleness, which didn't come naturally to him.

"Dead?" she gasped, feeling her stomach turn over. "What happened?"

"Someone shot him. We don't know who or why, but we're going to find out. Whoever it was wanted us to know what they've done because Hank Voight got a text from what we now think is a burner phone. The text was Antonio's address. Thinking it was strange, we went over there to check on him, and we found him dead."

"Jesus Christ. Antonio," Burgess said. She hadn't been particularly close to the guy, but he had always been professional with her and had helped her to grow as a cook. He certainly hadn't deserved to be murdered.

"Yes, quite," Ruzek said. "Don't worry, we'll find out who did it, and they'll be dealt with. The reason we're here is that since we don't know what the motive was, it's possible your life is in danger. Someone might be trying to take out both of our cooks.

Burgess felt almost dazed. All of this was so out of left field. She was shocked and scared. Thankfully, Mr Ruzek seemed determined to protect her. She decided to trust him to do so. "What are we going to do?"

"You're going to change out of outfit and come with us. For the time being, you're going to live at my house. There's a room you can have, and you'll be safe there. For the time being, production is shut down. We need to find another cook, and deal with whatever this Antonio situation is before you can cook again."

"Okay," Burgess said. There was no other response she could have given. Mr Ruzek hadn't been asking her a question. And anyway, she didn't want someone breaking into her house at night and shooting her. Right now, safety was the top priority. Ruzek's house would be the safest place for her.

"I'll leave the cleaning for another day," she mumbled, looking blankly the work surface she had been scrubbing before Ruzek and Lindsay had entered the lab.

A hand touching her arm made her jump, but then she realised it was a reassuring gesture, and it was coming from Ruzek. She looked at him, deep into his brown eyes, and found some strength in them.

"It'll be okay, Kim. Now get that stuff off. We need to get out of here."

"Right," she replied, doing her best to pull herself together. She set about pulling off the black heavy duty rubber gloves and removing the yellow plastic suit that comprised her lab attire. She hung the suit up in the corner, put the gloves on a work surface nearby, and took her phone and a bottle of water out of her locker. With that, she was ready to leave.

"Straight back to the house?" Lindsay asked the boss.

"Yes, but make sure we're not being followed again, just in case."

Lindsay nodded and started off up the steps. Ruzek walked just behind her, with Burgess following last. Before they got to the walkway above the lab, a thought occurred to her.

"Mr Ruzek?"

He stopped and looked at her. "Yeah?"

"If I'm going to live at your house... I mean, since I'm going to live at your house, I need to go home and get some of my things."

He weighed that up for a moment. "You're right. Erin will go over to your place with you later. Nothing will happen to you while she's there."

"Thank you."

"And you can call me Adam," he added. His eyes lingered on hers for a second before he turned and carried on up the steps.

The second had seemed to last forever to Burgess. There was something about the way he looked at her that had nearly taken her breath away. She had never felt anything like it before, and she couldn't have described it if she tried. Maybe her emotional state was playing trick on her, she wondered. But no, she knew that wasn't true. The moment had been too powerful. Adam wouldn't let anything happen to her, she was now sure. She was also given a strong impression that he was attracted to her, and that was possibly the biggest shock of the morning. Adam Ruzek himself, attracted to her? It couldn't be true. Could it?

A/N: This is my first time writing a Burzek story. I think it was only the lack of an idea that felt right for them that held me back this long, but now here we are.

Kim had a lot thrown at her in a short period of time, not least that moment between her and Adam. What do you think will happen once she arrives at his house? And who killed Antonio?