A/N: Little weirder...keep reviewing! lol.

Chapter 4: Break

The first thing that went through Garret's head was how am I going to tell her father? It was the stupidest thought, but it consumed him nonetheless. No one had seen or heard from him for months, including her. It seemed that to disappear into oblivion was a quality that ran in the family.

He just stood and stared at the screen, the damning screen, watching the name flash on and off, on and off in front of his eyes. His face betrayed no emotion. He could feel three pairs of eyes watching him, wanting him to turn around and say there had been a mistake, laugh and chide them all for scaring them so. But there was no laugh in the Chief's eye as he turned. The tell tale look of grief was not even present, the one all three knew well enough, nor the look of stress that overcame him time and time again. There was no sign that he felt anything, no look in his eye, no twitch of his lips or jerking of his fingers. He merely stood.

"Carry on," he said in a low, low voice, and walked calm, collected, controlled out of the room. He was completely numb inside, did not know where he was, didn't know what he was doing or where he was going. His feet took him too his office, where he just stood, staring out of the window, looking at the couch, thinking of all the things they had done, all the wonderful times they had had.

"No," he said calmly. The word 'mistake' kept resounding in his head. The world was white. He felt like screaming, felt like throwing something heavy out of the window, felt like murdering someone, something. He did none of these things, just stood with an infuriatingly black look on his face.

"I have to get back to the wreck," he said decisively to himself. "I have to get back to the wreck."

Still in a state of complete blankness, numbness, he drove, carefully until he reached the site. When he saw Woody, however, he wished the earth could swallow him up. The Detective would see past even the extreme blankness, his subconscious told him. I need to keep him away. He can't know. He can't… Garret stopped and allowed thoughts to filter, carefully mind, lest his entire resolve break, and wondered. Why was she on this train? She was supposed to be at work! Hell, she must have been on the train when he spoke to her! And he couldn't even remember what she had said, couldn't even recall their last conversation.

As he climbed out of the car Woody came towards him. "Where'd you go? Listen we got more news on the bastard who did this." His face was grim, but nothing compared to the intense look of hatred that had twisted the ME's features. Woody was taken aback, it was not unlike the look that Jordan got sometimes. "What's up?"

"Nothing," Garret forced out between gritted teeth, the realised he had to tell him, had to be strong, had to be the pillar. Jordan was gone, denying it would not help anyone. And keeping it from people would.

"Woody," he said. "I…oh God."

Woody was becoming slightly concerned at this stage. "Doc, who died? You're as white as a sheet."

Garret stared at him. "Maybe you should visit the morgue," he said.

"Why? What's going on?"

"I…" He couldn't fob the detective off on one of them, not Bug or Nigel, even Lily. They would all be hurting, they would help no one. Only he could break this news, only he could remain strong enough not to scream and scream like he wanted to, not to tear his hair out or kick the tree like a child, not to break and tremble and cry. He would do none of these things, he would stay true to himself, true to her. If the situations were reversed and Jordan stood here in his place, she would do the same, she wouldn't break. Se would stay focussed, and find the bastard who killed him. The thought clamped onto his brain and he knew he wouldn't rest until he knew why she was dead, why she was not here, why the damned woman didn't show up for work. All he wanted was for her car to pull up, for her to climb out of it and make some comment or another, hell he wouldn't have minded if she were days late. He just wanted her here… but it was not to be. He slammed back into the present, noticing Woody was watching him. The man knew something was up.

"What is wrong?" the detective said again, slowly.

"Jordan is dead," he said, and before Woody could react, a tangled of words tumbled out of his mouth, how the identification process was going, how Bug entered the records he had made of the victims' teeth, how her name had shown up. He watched the detective's eyes change, the light went out, and Garret knew it would only return with her, and she was not returning. Something died in them, he saw it, he knew that look oh so well, he had seen is thousands of times. It probably happened to him too. Apart from that, Woody showed no sign he had heard.

"No way," he said. "No."

She was infallible, Garret could almost see the words flashing in Woody's eyes. How can Jordan die? How can someone so full of life, with so many quirks and secrets and years die? Snuffed out, gone? He saw it every day of his life, and yet was not as well acquainted with it as he thought. He could clearly see his thoughts echoed in the young detective's eyes.

"What was she doing on the train?" he asked. Garret shrugged.

"I don't know. Stupid fool was probably on another of her damned obsessive chases!"

Denial was written all over Woody's face. "They say you feel it, they say you know something it wrong as it happens even if you don't know it yet. Nothing. I felt nothing. Its all a lie, everything is a lie!" His voice was raised in the end, but not once did it tremble, not once did he waver. Garret felt a wave of pride, the young man was conducting himself superbly. At least by his standards.

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"Yeah, the irony's killing me," she said wryly. "Do you realise how stupid that is?"

"Excuse me?"

"Its stupid. You're going to lure two accomplished men here, to 'rescue' me. Then it will be three to one, they will both be armed. It's dumb."

"What do you take me for?" he asked, affronted. "I have it all under control."

"Well I'm glad to hear it," she said, narrowing her eyes. She could picture the scene. A gun pointed at her, two at him, shots, someone dies, they cart him back to the morgue, do his autopsy and go home to forget all about it. Something told her it would not be that way this time, something told her this man was different somehow. Confident. He didn't want anything, nothing would satiate him. Even when a crazed man with a bomb had threatened to blow the entire morgue and all its residents to pieces, they had been able to get out of it because there was something he wanted, something he needed. There was nothing they could do to talk this man out of what he was doing, he was so intent on his plan, on whatever it was he was doing, she knew that only his incarceration or death would stop him. She shrugged. If it was death that was called for, she could dole it out just as well as she could clean up after it and find murderers. She glanced at her watch – 2:30pm, Friday.

"You hungry?" he asked, seemingly genuinely.

"No," she said stiffly. He shrugged as if to say it was her funeral. Well, technically, she supposed, it was.

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He wouldn't accept it. He couldn't. Not while everything was still so up in the air. Why had she been on the train? How had she gotten there? By car? It made sense, he had driven by her apartment and it had been missing. But he had put out an APB on it and so far nothing. It didn't make sense. That and the fact that