AN Thanks to 'Aiden Burn' who posted a review...guess you'll have to read more to find out if there is a love triangle grin...We hope you like it...let us know if how we did it works for you. smile We figured Flack needed an ally so why not Aiden...RR0)

She sighed and rested her head against the cold wood, "I don't fall." She whispered then shook her head and went back to her room, vulnerable was not her thing and whoever Danny Messer thought he was, he wouldn't get her there.

The next morning Aiden entered PD with two coffees and a mission. "What? We have a meeting I didn't know about?" Flack asked when she entered his office and put one of the coffees down in front of him.

"This Shelby Winters. What did she do to you?" Aiden liked to cut to the chase, she got answers a lot quicker that way.

He paused and looked at her for a moment, "What makes you think I'm going to tell you of all people? You're partner's boffing her."

"While 'boffing' is a lovely term, you still haven't answered my question." Aiden could hold her own with almost anyone on the force. She honed the skill daily, trying to prove she wasn't just a pretty face.

Flack looked up at her and was disappointed to see that he wasn't going to get out of this conversation easily. He took a long drink from his coffee to avoid her eyes.

"It was nothing. Just a thing we had back when we were rookies," he finally said dismissively.

"A 'thing', huh? That word has been coming up a lot lately. I'm thinking it was more than just a 'thing' – to you, anyway," Aiden said.

Flack still wouldn't look at her. He hadn't really talked to anybody about what had happened in years. Seeing Shelby again had been harder on him than he would care to admit and here Aiden was, trying to make him admit it.

"Look, Flack, I'm not trying to pry here…"

He looked at her incredulously.

"Okay, maybe I am a little, but I just want to know what I'm looking at here. Are you gonna be a bitch to work with this whole case or what?"

He sighed and rubbed his face. "No, Aiden, I won't be a bitch to work with this whole case."

Aiden looked at him sympathetically. "She really did a number on you, didn't she?"

"Broke my heart six ways from Sunday," he finally admitted.

"When was the last time you saw her?" she asked.

"Five years ago."

"Oh wow, that's more than just a number," Aiden remarked.

"She's, uh, been hard to get over."

"No wonder you warned Danny off."

"He told you that?"

She shrugged. "He's my partner. He's not allowed to have secrets from me." She stood to leave and put a hand on his shoulder. "You ever need to talk," she offered.

He nodded. "Thanks, Aiden."

"Hey, what are friends for?" she winked at him and closed the door behind her.

Shelby had holed herself into a small office at NARC to go over the information her co-workers had gathered on Orlando Yates. She desperately needed to focus, but all she could think about was Danny. She kind of felt like she had been hungry for something for such a long time and now finally, she'd found someone that not only whet her appetite, but actually filled her up. It scared the shit out of her. There was no way she could afford to get involved with someone, never mind getting involved with a cop. She didn't usually break oaths to herself, but it was like she couldn't help it with this guy.

She stood up, cracked her neck and picked up the file again. Maybe standing would help her focus. She read the file for the third time and finally made it stick in her brain. Yates was 26, old by street standards, and had been involved in drug running as a dealer since he was 20. He mostly sold crack cocaine and had been arrested at least a dozen times for various misdemeanors. He'd managed to avoid any big charges, which is probably what upped his rep enough to get graduated to distributor. He'd become a person of interest a few months ago when it had come to NARC's attention that he'd also graduated from cocaine to heroin – a pretty significant step up.

Shelby pried open a marker for the whiteboard in the room and started jotting notes, trying to profile Yates so that she could begin to anticipate his behavior. It didn't take long till she became lost in her musings.