I'm glad everyone liked the spoiler, little though it was. I was a tad worried thatpeople might be mad at me for, uh, spoiling, lol. I'm hopelessly impatient and I tend to know the scoop on shows way in advance, and I forget that not everyone shares that joy. At any rate, thanks for the reviews! And now, on with the show...
Thunder
Jordan's eyes blinked open reluctantly at the glare of morning. She felt like she had the world's worst hangover. Unfortunately, it wasn't the first time she had woken with this feeling. Getting drugged the way she did had to be the most uncomfortable experience possible. She cursed softly as she sat up and rubbed at her temples, vowing to change her work habits so that this wouldn't happen to her for a third time. Flinging the quilt back, she got out of bed carefully and walked towards the door with the goal of finding some Tylenol or, at the very least, some coffee.
She opened the door and jumped back with a yelp as Woody fell backwards into her room, his eyes snapping open when the door pulled away from his back. He hit the floor with a thud, but was spared by the thick rug on the ground. Still, he grimaced at the crude awakening. Jordan ran her hands over her face in frustration and closed her eyes in an attempt to slow her racing heart.
"Jesus, Woody, you scared me," she said. Not to mention the fact that he almost got an advantageous look from the floor, seeing as she had mere sleep shorts on. Woody groaned slightly, blinking his eyes into focus.
"Yup, 'cause that's how I like to wake up every morning, crashing into the floor and frightening you," he said sarcastically, sitting up and rubbing the back of his head.
"What were you doing out there?" she asked.
"Uh…sleeping," he said vaguely. Jordan looked at him curiously.
"You were out there all night?" she asked, her voice softening. Woody nodded. She could barely hide the smile tugging at her lips. "You watched my room the whole night?"
"Umm…yeah. Until I fell asleep, yeah," he said, slightly embarrassed.
"What a Prince Charming thing to do," she said with a smile, half meaning it. Woody tossed her a look that was only partly withering as he stood up. She could tell he was proud of what he had done. "Care to join me in a search for some Tylenol?" she asked as she gently ran a hand over the back of his head where he had landed.
"Your head hurts?" he said with concern.
"Yeah. And my eyes, and my lungs. That stuff really pulls a number on you," she said. She caught the worried look in his eyes. "It's normal, trust me. It'll be gone soon. Come on."
She nodded towards the door and led him out. After locating the pain killer and following it with some fresh coffee in the kitchen, Jordan told Woody that she wanted to take one more look at the crime scene. Woody seemed reluctant to let her anywhere near the place.
"Jordan, this guy targeted you. It's pretty clear that this crime is no longer centered around my uncle," Woody told her.
"And if we don't find the evidence to catch him, who's going to?" she asked him seriously. She decided to play on his righteous side. "Are you going to let this guy go free?"
The question had the desired effect. His face took on that stern look that told her he was going to stop at nothing to solve a crime. His blue eyes held hers, studying the look on her face. She had invested herself fully in this case, to the point of risking her life. That was the Jordan that he loved; the one who became so committed to something that wild horses could not drag her away. He wondered briefly if, this time, the case went hand in hand with them – their relationship…him.
"Okay," he gave his permission. "Let's go."
Jordan practically jumped up out of her seat and very nearly left him sitting there in her eagerness to leave. Woody had to rush to catch up with her. The sky outside was dark with threatening clouds. He pulled his jacket a little tighter around him against the weather, but Jordan did not seem to notice the chill. They walked quickly across the hundred or so yards that separated the main house from the guest house.
"What's the hurry?" he asked her as they walked.
"Just a hunch," she said in a non-committal way.
The cop on duty at the house let them in so that Jordan could have a look around. Woody stood on the porch as she stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips, peering with deep concentration at everything in her line of vision. It was the exact spot she had been standing in when she opened the flower box.
"I swear, when I opened the door yesterday, I thought I saw…" she trailed off, frustrating Woody. She looked beyond him, just to his right, and her eye caught a scrap of grey-blue that didn't quite match the paint of the wooden porch supports. "That."
Woody followed her gaze as she walked past him and over to the railing. Opening an evidence bag and retrieving the tweezers that were inside, Jordan pulled a scrap of fabric from where it had been snagged by splinters. She dropped it in the bag satisfactorily and held it up for Woody to see.
"Look like hospital scrubs to you?" she asked.
"Pretty damn close," Woody said in amazement.
"What person has easier access to anesthetics than someone who works in a hospital," Jordan thought out loud. In the dim light that managed to work through the clouds, something glinted against the fabric. "And what do we have here?" she looked closely at the bag. "Blonde hair."
"Good catch," Woody complimented her. "I don't know how the hell we missed this before."
"They were so concerned with keeping everything clean inside, they forgot about the outside," Jordan said. "As did we."
"They?"
"This hair is pretty long to be male," she said. "We won't know for sure until we get to the lab."
"Assuming there were two of them," Woody started, "how could they be careless enough to leave something like this? And how did it get there? People don't go around leaving shreds of clothing behind them."
"Okay, let's say the killer began his attack out here," Jordan suggested. She placed a hand on either side of Woody and moved him in front of the support post. "If you attack me, I'm going to try to fight you off, right? So I shove you against the railing, and the rough wood rips a piece of out of your clothes."
"Explain to me why I'm wearing scrubs to commit a murder," he tested her. Jordan thought for a second.
"Because…it's an easy clean up, nobody will question bloody scrubs," she said logically.
"Okay. All right, even if that did happen, I think I would have noticed my clothes were ripped. If I'm calm enough to clean the whole crime scene, I should be able to realize there's evidence sitting on the front porch," Woody said. Jordan bit her lip in thought. Getting an idea, Woody took hold of Jordan and switched places with her. "What if it wasn't before the murder? What if, like you said, there were two people in on this? As they're leaving, the girl, or whoever, starts to freak. I push you against the railing to get you under control, and in the process leave the only evidence behind. Your panicking distracts me from realizing it."
Jordan's eyes glinted with approval. She smiled at him.
"Works for me," she said. "Let's get this stuff over to the morgue and see what we can prove."
The clouds that had been threatening rain began to open up as they reached the morgue, starting a steady shower that didn't appear to want to lighten any time soon. They rushed inside under the cover of an umbrella. Mike was waiting for them outside the trace room with a file and a brown package in his arms. Woody had called him just before leaving to ask for him to bring over the lab results on the roses, as well as a standard issue scrub set from the hospital.
"Here are the scrubs," Mike said as he handed them to Jordan. He then gave the file to Woody. "Results on the roses. Almost lethally covered with ethyl chloride, according to the chemist who ran it."
Woody nodded gratefully, and instinctively placed a hand on Jordan's back as they walked into the room. He had to remind himself that she was fine, but hearing those words coming from Mike were enough to scare him all over again.
"I also took a look into the orders in all the florist shops here over the last week," Mike told them. They looked at him expectantly. "Nothing for a dozen pink roses. Several for red, and one for four dozen pink, but not an exact order of one dozen. And no one had anything sent over to David's place."
"It could have been him," Jordan said, realization hitting her. "He could have been standing right in front of me, and I didn't even know it."
"Don't think about it," Woody told her comfortingly. "It's over. We have to think about catching him now."
Jordan nodded and opened the package to pull out the set of scrubs. She cut a square of fabric out and ran it through the equipment to bring the weave pattern up on the screen. Doing the same with the fabric from the porch, she pulled the two up next to each other.
"They look exactly the same," Woody commented, not quite able to believe they had managed to find this.
"Same dye, too," Jordan added.
As the three stared at this new discovery, thunder boomed outside, startling them. The florescent lights in the morgue flickered once. Mike looked up at the ceiling.
"Storm's getting worse," he said.
"Does this place have a back up generator?" Jordan asked in concern.
"Yeah, but I wouldn't count on it to support all of this," he told her, referring to the numerous pieces of equipment she had brought with her.
Jordan snapped into action, running the blonde hair through the system. The DNA came up as female. She hesitated before taking the next step. She meant to trace the DNA to female workers at the local hospital, but in doing so she would be breaking a few rules about the laws of trace. Doing that in front Mike caused her to think twice. Another boom of thunder sounded, and she decided this might be her only chance. Maybe he wouldn't notice.
Quickly locating the hospital files online, she began to run them against the DNA she had. It seemed to take forever before the computer finally beeped to alert her to a match. She willed the computer to work faster. A picture began to load onto the screen, starting at the top. Jordan noted the blonde hair, and a second later the power surged and caused everything to flicker. Things didn't return to normal quite as quickly this time. Jordan looked up at the ceiling along with Woody and Mike.
"Ohhhh, no you don't," she warned the power system.
The image returned to the screen, slightly distorted. It had loaded down to the eyebrows of the woman, just barely touching her eyes.
"Come on," Jordan muttered worriedly.
They heard a loud pop from somewhere in the building, and the room went dark. Jordan groaned and put her face in her hands.
"Great," Woody echoed her irritation. He reached for his cell phone and flipped it open to provide some light.
"Go on out to the lobby," Mike told them. "I'll check out what the generator situation is."
They parted, and Woody led Jordan down the hall to the front of the morgue. The light coming through the windows was dim, and they could see the rain coming down steadily outside, swept at an angle by the wind. Jordan let out an agitated sigh.
"Have I mentioned that I hate storms?" she grumbled. "Cause I do."
"We managed to get a lot before the power blew," Woody tried to lift her mood. Even in the dull light he could see her roll her eyes. He sighed as well. "You're right, this bites."
They stared out the lobby windows, waiting for something to be done about the back up generator. A few people dashed down the street, seeking shelter under overhangs or in shops. After a couple minutes, Woody caught sight of Jake Sutton walking down the sidewalk on their side of the street. He walked arrogantly slow, as though he were above the storm and everyone else trying to escape it. Something snapped inside of Woody. His anger boiled inside him, and he pushed through the front door out onto the sidewalk, ignoring Jordan's surprised questions.
Jake looked taken aback as Woody walked determinedly towards him, a look of loathing clear on his face. Jordan followed him outside, but stopped in the shelter of the overhang when she registered what Woody was doing. He grabbed Jake by the collar of his jacket and pulled him over to a car parked alongside the street, pinning him against it. Jake may have appeared bigger than Woody, but the years working for the Boston PD gave Woody a tremendous advantage in strength.
"Did you send her those flowers?" he shouted at Jake, roughing him up a bit to emphasize his words. "Did you do that to her, you son of a bitch!"
"I don't know what the hell you're talking about!" Jake yelled, trying to release Woody's grip on him.
"If I find out that it was you, you better hope I don't feel the need to shoot you when I arrest you!" Woody barked forcefully.
"You've lost your mind, man," Jake said. A disgustingly confident grin appeared on his face. "Why would I bother sending her flowers? You know as well as anyone that women beg to sleep with me after spending ten minutes with you."
Woody slammed him against the car and glared at him. "You stay the hell away from her," he warned him menacingly.
He let the warning hang in the air for a moment before releasing his grip on Jake's collar. Jordan stood silently on the sidewalk, her arms crossed nervously over her chest. She wasn't sure what to do with herself as she watched the confrontation. Woody turned away from Jake and walked towards her through the rain. He looked at her with an expression that sent shivers through her body. He was claiming her. She was his. She knew it from the intensity in his blue eyes.
Despite the mesmerizing moment, she vaguely registered the movement behind Woody. It took her half a second to realize what it was.
"Woody!" she shouted, pointing behind him at Jake tearing away from the car and hurtling himself towards Woody.
Woody turned just in time to brace against Jake's running start. Jake threw his arms around Woody's torso and tried to bring him down to the ground. Finding his footing on the slippery cement, Woody attempted to pry Jake off of him before finding an opening to slug him in the stomach. Jake backed off long enough to recover his breath, but quickly took a swing at Woody. He ducked it and tried to grab hold of one of Jake's arms to pin him.
Jordan stood in shock, unsure if getting in the middle of this would be helpful or harmful. Thankfully, she didn't have to contemplate this for very long. Just as Woody managed to get Jake in a head lock, Mike came flying out of the morgue. He pulled the two men apart easily, pushing Jake into the hood of a car and physically dragging Woody away.
"What the hell is going on!" he yelled at them. Neither answered. Mike glared at Jake. "Did you start this?"
"No, he came after me like a lunatic," Jake snapped.
Mike turned his attention to Woody, who was staring angrily into space, pulling his breathing under control.
"Woody, I don't care if you are my friend, I will throw you into a cell if you cause trouble in my town," Mike said firmly. Woody didn't say anything. Mike looked back at Jake, who was rubbing the back of his neck. "You want to spend another night in jail?"
"No," he said angrily.
"Then get the hell out of here," Mike advised him. After Jake was down the street a safe distance, Mike released Woody from his strong grasp and game him a push towards Jordan. "Get him home and calm him down," he told her.