Author's Note: Hello! Thank you for stopping by! This is my first Crossing Jordan fanfic. Please read and review, all feedback is greatly appreciated!

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Crossing Jordan characters

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Do you ever wake up in the morning and think, "I hope that today is different. I hope that today is the day where my life can start to be normal."?

My name is Jordan Cavanaugh and welcome to my life.

My life is anything but normal. I have an innate ability to find, and get into, trouble. That, along with my insatiable curiosity can be a lethal combination.

From the time I was a little girl I was into everything and always asking questions. I remember my Dad, Max Cavanaugh, encouraging me to ask questions, to be curious. My mother used to laugh and tell me that there weren't enough answers in this world for all of my questions.

I work as a medical examiner for the city of Boston, Massachusetts, where I was born and raised. I haven't lived here my whole life though. On top of my other quirks I also can't stay in one place for a long period of time. I get antsy and bored and have to go do something different.

I only recently returned to Boston from California. L.A. had been fun for a while but I had gotten bored of the sun and started longing for the unpredictable weather of Boston.

I had left Boston on not the best of terms and had lucked out by getting my old job back.

My old job which, at the moment, I was extremely late to. Again.

I walked off of the elevator and tried to slip around the back way in hopes that no one would notice what time I had arrived. After all, it had worked before, several times in fact.

"JORDAN!"

"Damn," I muttered, turning to face Garrett Macy, my boss.

"You're late," he stated sternly, his face grim, which was normal.

I held up my coffee cup as a buffer. As I had been partying pretty hard the night before the volume of his voice was not a good thing this early in the morning. I gave him what I hoped was a charming smile. "Heey, Garrett, I'm sorry, I..."

"I don't want to hear your excuses Jordan. This is the third time this week."

Since it was only Wednesday I figured that wasn't the best thing. "Yeah, Garrett, I..."

"Save it Jordan. We already had a call. It's a messy one and I wanted you to be on it. I had to send Bug," Garrett said sharply.

I winced at the anger in his voice. Garrett was a good guy, if a little on the uptight side. He had given me a second chance when most people would have thrown me straight out of their office.

"I want you to go and give Bug a hand. Here," he said, handing me a sheaf of papers that I knew held what details we had of the crime. "It's an apartment on Sixth and Lexington. Apartment 36 C."

My groggy mind sharpened at the sound of that address. "Sixth and Lexington?" I asked. "What's the name of the complex?"

Garrett gave me a look and glanced down at the clipboard in his hand. "It's...Willowbend."

My mind froze. "Willowbend? Apartment 36 C?" I repeated.

"Yes. Jordan, what is it?" Garrett asked, the icy look on his face melting slightly as he stared at me standing there with my mouth hanging open.

"I've got to go," I said, not answering him. I bolted straight back into the elevator which had just opened and almost knocked Lily Libowski, our resident grief counsellor, over in my haste.

"Jordan, what's wrong?" she asked, alarmed.

I just shook my head as I pressed the door close button, the doors sliding shut and blocking out Garrett's and Lily's concerned faces.

I hurried through the lobby of the apartment complex, ignoring the media and police that swarmed around. A cop tried to stop me but I held up my ME badge and he waved me through to the elevators.

When the elevator doors slid open I strode down the hall and through the open apartment door. The whole drive I had tried to tell myself I was worried about nothing.

As I walked through the door and saw Bug crouched on the floor over the body of a red-haired young woman I knew immediately that I had been right to be worried.

"Oh, no," I whispered, feeling my face drain of color.

Bug looked up when he heard me. "Jordan!" he said, standing up.

I dropped my bag onto the floor and walked over to where Bug was standing with the body.

"What's wrong, Jordan?" he asked.

I looked down at the body. There was blood everywhere, pooled beneath the body and splashed all over the room. The walls, the cream colored couch were dripping with blood.

Being a medical examiner I had seen blood. I had seen gory, gruesome, I had seen things that would make normal people sick. It was all part of the job.

But when the body you were looking at was someone you knew, it was an entirely different matter.

"Lindsey," I said softly, looking down at the girl. She had been beaten badly; her face was a mass of bruises. Her body looked like hamburger; her chest was a mass of flesh and blood, the wounds apparently inflicted by the large bloody kitchen knife that was on the floor next to the body.

"What?" Bug said.

"Her name is Lindsey Carlson," I said, looking past Bug to the bloody apartment.

"That's right. How did you know that? We just barely id'd her," Bug said, his brow furrowed.

"Lindsey and I went to high school together," I said abruptly, walking past Bug to search around the apartment.

"You know her?" Bug asked.

"Knew," I said. "We were friends in high school but I hadn't seen her for years until about a month ago. She looked me up through my father."

"I'm sorry, Jordan," Bug said softly. "You can go, I'm sure Macy can send Nige to help."

"No, no. I'm fine. It's my job, I can handle it," I said shortly, slipping on a pair of rubber gloves so I could shuffle through a pile of mail on the kitchen table.

Bug hovered behind me for another minute before he sighed loudly and went back to the body.

"What's the time of death?" I asked as soon as I had composed myself enough to go back to stand next to Bug.

"Approximately two a.m.," Bug replied.

I hunched down on the floor next to Lindsey's body. She had been a beautiful girl. Long red hair, bright green eyes. It had been a total surprise when she had called me up a month ago. She had called my dad, wanting to hook up with her old friends, apparently feeling nostalgic since our fifteen year high school reunion was coming up. I had been in this apartment just two weeks ago talking with Lindsey and having a few drinks, just like old times.

"Jordan!"

I snapped out of my reverie and looked up to see Detective Woodrow Hoyt coming through the door. He was tall, nicely built, with black hair and piercing blue eyes and an endearing grin.

"Hey, Woody," I said, looking back down at the body. I gently picked up one of Lindsey's hands and looked carefully at her fingernails. Nothing. Nothing under the fingernails of the other hand either.

"Can you tell us anything yet?" Woody asked, all business. No one would guess that he and I had had an on again off again relationship for the past six months. Mostly off, albeit, but still...

"Liver temp puts time of death at around 2 a.m. She appears to have been beaten and stabbed to death," Bug said.

"Is that the knife?" Woody asked, nodding his head in the direction of the kitchen knife next to her body.

I shrugged. "No way to tell yet. Have to run tests."

Woody nodded. "Right, well...there was no sign of forced entry. None of the neighbors saw or heard anything. We're checking the lobby surveillance tapes to try to account for everyone that came in last night."

I stood up and pulled my gloves off. There was nothing else we could do here. The rest would have to be done at the morgue. A tight ball of anger was forming in the middle of my stomach. Someone had brutally murdered this girl, my old high school friend. Somehow or another I would make sure that they were found and paid for what they had done.

Woody, apparently noticing the look on my face, took a step closer to me. "Is everything okay Jordan?"

"Yeah, fine," I said.

"Jordan knows this girl," Bug interjected and I glared at him.

"You know her?" Woody asked.

"Yeah. We went to high school together," I said casually.

"They just recently saw each other again," Bug said, not meeting my eye.

"Jordan! When did you see her last?"

"Uh...a couple of weeks ago. She found me through my dad, she called, we got together for drinks, promised to keep in touch and that was it," I said.

"Were you in the apartment?" Woody asked.

I hesitated for a second, but the stern look on Woody's face made me sigh and say, "Yes, I met her here for drinks."

"Jordan, you have to leave! This is not good!" Woody said. He looked as if he were about to have a panic attack. He looked like that a lot, I thought.

"What?" I said irritably. "It's not like we were best friends."

"It doesn't matter! You knew her, you were here two weeks ago, this could taint the case. You need to leave."

"Fine!" I snapped. "I'll leave, but I'm staying on this case."

"Not until you talk to Macy," Woody said.

I glared at him.

"Don't give me that look, Jordan. He has to know."

I sighed loudly. "Fine, I'll go and tell him. There, do you feel better?"

Woody looked at me suspiciously. "I don't know if I believe you."

"Dude, lighten up," I said, smiling. "I'll tell him. Don't worry about it."

"Bug," Woody said, "Will you go with her to talk to Macy?"

"Sure," Bug said, his back to us as he gathered up his stuff.

"Woody, I don't need a babysitter!" I said irritably.

"Right. I'll be in touch," Woody said and turned to talk to an officer that had just walked in the room.

Fuming, I glared at Woody's retreating back as I gathered up my stuff and stalked out of the room, Bug right behind me.

"I'm sorry, Jordan, but I had to tell him," Bug said.

"Yeah, I know."

"Are you mad?"

"Of course."

"That's what I thought."

Back at the ME office

"Heey, Boss," I said as I walked off the elevator and saw Garrett talking to Lily.

"Jordan. What did you find?" Garrett asked.

"And what happened before you left?" Lily added, giving me her patented probing look.

"Well, that's the thing. I, uh, well, I know the vic," I said.

"What?" Garrett said.

"Yeah. Her name's Lindsey Carlson. We were friends in high school. She just looked me up a month ago and we hung out one night and had drinks. That's it."

"Did you go to her apartment?" Garrett asked sharply.

"Uh. Well, yes," I said.

"Jordan! You should not have stayed there once you realized you knew the vic. You know that's conflict of interest," Garrett roared.

"Take it easy, Garrett. Bug already had it handled. I didn't do anything."

Bug, who had just gotten off the elevator, was trying to slink away, but Garrett saw him.

"Bug!"

Bug stopped. "Yes?" he said innocently.

"Did you know that Jordan knew the vic?"

"She told me. I told her she could go, but she didn't want to. She said she could handle it."

"Did she also tell you that she had been in that apartment?" Garrett asked, sounding very much like a prosecuting attorney out for blood.

"Well," Bug said, looking around. "Yes?"

"Bug, you know that's a conflict of interest!"

"She didn't do anything! I was already done when she got there!" Bug protested.

Garrett sighed loudly. "Fine. Jordan, you're off the case."

"What!" I yelped.

"You know you can't be on this case, Jordan."

My jaw dropped. "But..."

"You know the rules."

"But I want to help with this one. You know, because it's personal," I said.

"No."

"But Garrett!"

"Jordan, I cannot put you on the case and you know it. If it compromises the case..."

"So assign someone else to it. Keep Bug on it. But let me help," I said.

Garrett looked unconvinced and Lily and Bug just looked uncomfortable.

Garrett sighed heavily. "Jordan..."

I decided to pull all the stops. "Please?" I said, giving him the best sad eyed look I could muster, which wasn't saying much.

He sighed again. "Fine. You can help, but if something else comes up, you have to take it if there's no one else."

I slugged Garrett in the arm. "Thanks man," I said with a smile. "I'm going to make sure this guy gets caught."

Garrett rolled his eyes and turned to walk back to his office without another word.

xx Well, what do you think? Please review and let me know! xx