A.N. Thanks Patscats for pointing that out! I did mean mote not mite. I am (temporarily, I hope) without a beta, so there may be other mistakes and missing commas.

Thanks to all those who've taken the time to review. It is very encouraging.

Chapter 3

Amanda absently hugged the file containing the preliminary autopsy report to her chest as she meandered down the halls of Community General, her legs carrying her instinctively to the doctor's lounge where she'd asked the Sloans to meet her, while her mind remained preoccupied with replaying the autopsy for something she might have missed.

She paused at the door to the lounge, initially because she needed a moment to rehearse the delivery of her findings, but the words fled unheeding from her mind as she took in the scenario inside the room and was struck by a strong sense of something off-kilter, although for a moment she couldn't pinpoint what exactly she felt was wrong. Mark was sitting in an armchair to the right of the door, intently nursing a cup of coffee while Steve sat opposite, seemingly absorbed in examining the floor. They were both unnaturally still and quiet, each a study in solitude and, with a jolt of concern, Amanda realised there was something missing.

The two Sloans had always exuded a sense of connectedness, an intangible link tempered and forged to a fine purity under the stressful conditions of Steve's work and the life-and-death situations that all too often engulfed them. They worked together, lived together and enjoyed spending their spare time together, two lives tightly entwined not just by blood but by choice.

That imperceptible bond between them was lacking today and their joint misery was palpable. The lines of strain on Steve's face seemed almost chiseled into his handsome features, and Mark looked oddly brittle as though an ill-timed blow would shatter him.

Amanda tried to imagine what could have happened in the intervening hours since she left them. At the crime scene, nothing had struck her as abnormal; she remembered the unmistakable pride shining in Steve's eyes as he watched his father investigating and the answering affection in Mark's face as they conferred.

Now the sense of profound isolation wrapped round each man disturbed Amanda more than she could say. They were still oblivious to her presence, so she withdrew slightly before bustling in. "Hey guys," she greeted them breezily, aiming for the coffee container to give them a moment to gather themselves.

Mark accepted her offer of a refill with a tired smile, but his expression revealed little of the turmoil she sensed inside whereas Steve, for once, proved the easier to read, an odd trepidation darkening his eyes as he glanced at the file tucked under her arm. It was her first clue that it was something connected to the case that was the problem. She might not know the particulars, but she could guess it was related to Carol. She knew Mark was struggling to come to terms with his daughter's death. As a fellow parent, she had a unique insight into the horror of such a loss, and at times she had tried to draw him out on the subject. However, he had on the whole deflected her efforts with kind but firm courtesy, offering only superficial glimpses of a pain he buried in an exhaustive work schedule.

This hectic schedule had prevented him from becoming involved in any of Steve's subsequent cases and, when Amanda had challenged him on this avoidance, he'd admitted that, with Carol's death, his fears for his son's safety were magnified, and he preferred not to be confronted with first-hand evidence of the danger Steve faced everyday.

It had appeared to be a sign of progress that Mark had accepted Steve's invitation to consult on the Trenton case, but now Amanda wondered if it might not prove to be the trigger that exploded the thin veneer of normality they had regained.

Unsure how to best help her friends, she decided to give them the autopsy results and see what transpired. She had just opened the file when Jesse bounded into the room.

"Hey, guys, what's going on? What did I miss?"

He was oblivious to the undercurrents swirling around the room, and his irrepressible sparkle seemed to increase the overall energy in the enclosed space.

Since neither of the Sloans seemed eager to answer the young doctor's questions, Amanda dove in with a description of the morning's activities. Jesse looked inappropriately thrilled at the mention of a murder, though he hastily explained his excitement. "This is great. I've missed this. I mean...not that emergency medicine isn't exciting, but working together again on a case, well..." Seeing that nobody looked particularly sympathetic to his point of view, he subsided, edging his enthusiasm down one notch and perching himself on the arm of Steve's chair, swinging a leg.

"Go on," he urged Amanda.

"Well, I would place the time of death between 8 and 10 p.m. last night, and the official cause of death is cerebral oximia caused by hanging. The ligature round her neck was the..."

"We expected that," Mark interrupted. "Was she drugged?"

"The preliminary tox screen came back negative," Amanda stated bluntly. "I could find no trace of drugs in her system. There was also no sign of bruising or anything to make me suspect she didn't take her own life. We'll have to wait for the official blood tests before making an announcement but, based on these findings, I'd have to rule her death a suicide."

She tried to keep an eye on both Sloans as she delivered this verdict, wanting to gauge their reactions. Steve looked unabashedly relieved, squeezing his eyes closed for a moment and taking a deep breath before relaxing back into his chair, although he ventured no opinion. Out of the corner of her eye, she also noticed Jesse's disappointment and visible deflation.

Mark's only overt response was a slight frown of concentration. "Did you find anything else anomalous?" He leaned forward, watching her intently.

"You're welcome to read the report and see what you can find," she offered. "There were two things of note. First and foremost, she was ten weeks pregnant."

From the nod she received from Mark, it was obvious he wasn't surprised by the information. "What's the second?" he asked impatiently.

"The only other thing that struck me as strange was that she'd eaten a large meal shortly before she died."

"The condemned woman ate a hearty meal," Jesse piped in irreverently.

"Well, that's it." Amanda cast him an irritated look. "It just doesn't seem like a suicidal thing to do."

Mark turned to Steve. "I don't remember seeing any signs of a meal in the kitchen."

"No, it was clean, considerably cleaner than the rest of the house."

"So, either she'd come home, cooked and eaten a large meal, tidied up that one part of her house in a totally uncharacteristic way and then killed herself, or she went out for a meal, returned home, and with scarcely a pause, strung herself up. Neither scenario seems particularly plausible to me. We need a more detailed account of her movements to figure out if she ate out and if so with whom."

Steve was disturbed by his father's enthusiasm. "Look, Dad, I'm not trying to be difficult..."

"No, it comes naturally to you." Jesse smirked, expecting a friendly scathing look or sardonic comment in response. However, his jibe was ignored and not in a deliberate refusal to acknowledge his contribution, but as if the other men were too intent to even hear anything irrelevant to the case. For the first time, he clued in to the unnatural tension reverberating dully around the room. He shot a puzzled look at Amanda who volleyed it with her best 'not now, I'll explain later' expression.

For once choosing to opt for discretion, Jesse subsided. Now alerted to his friends' anomalous behaviour, he noticed other inconsistencies. Steve was unusually tentative as he questioned his father's assumption. Few parent-child relationships were graced with the equality that characterised Mark and Steve's partnership; trust was the staunch centerpiece of their relationship encircled by a mutual loyalty that went beyond... anything. Yet mutual respect did not preclude the questioning of each other's theories in the privacy of their gatherings, and Jesse found it unsettling to see Steve so diffident.

"Isn't it possible that the fact that she was pregnant actually supports the theory that she committed suicide?" Steve continued. "After all, she wasn't married."

"Women nowadays don't commit suicide over pregnancy. They get an abortion," Amanda demurred.

"However, there are boyfriends who would kill rather than pay child-support, and jealous boyfriends who might see it as evidence of unfaithfulness - a multitude of motives for murder." The alliteration rolled sonorously from Mark's mouth, but the confidence of the assertion was at odds with the uncertainty in his expression as he caught his son's eyes, offering the pronouncement with a crisp of challenge between the melted layers of apprehension and entreaty. "It was murder."

Blue eyes held blue, and it was as if the room itself held its breath suspended, a sense of anticipation keeping their friends immobile as if the slightest movement would topple an invisible but delicate balance. Even Jesse recognised that there was more at stake here than simple acquiescence to a statement, although Steve's face held nothing that would account for such a conviction.

Steve didn't speak for a long moment. Everything he was feeling, all the fear and confusion, was trapped in a tight knot in his throat making speech impossible even if he'd known what he wanted to say. He knew that if he expressed his opposition to the continuation of their involvement in the investigation, Amanda and Jesse would abide by his decision and Mark would desist at least his official enquiries, but there was a hopefulness in his father's expression that Steve was powerless to ignore. To deny it would be a betrayal, and he was incapable of inflicting that additional hurt. He would just have to work harder to protect Mark from the consequences of his choice.

Decision made, he gave Mark a crooked grin, and saw relief in the answering smile.

"I think your past record of success has earned you more than a little leeway. I have the feeling that if I backed the suicide theory, I'd only end up eating crow later. However, there's only so long I can keep an investigation open without some proof of murder. For now, I'll work on interviewing her colleagues and friends and try to flush out the murderer, but I'd appreciate it if you guys concentrate on finding me some concrete evidence, either from the body or the scene, that she didn't kill herself."

Amanda and Jesse didn't look too thrilled at their allotted task, but accepted the logic of Steve's plan. To his surprise, Mark seemed unfazed by his de facto exclusion from further interviews and was already one step, or a giant leap, ahead of all of them.

"Actually, I have some ideas about that." He turned to Amanda. "I'm presuming you ran the standard blood tests, checking for tranquilizers and sedatives?"

"Of course." Amanda was too familiar with Mark's investigative techniques to take offense, understanding that he was merely confirming something for his own mental processing. "I ran the usual tox screen."

"Did you test any of the necrotic tissue?" Mark asked eagerly.

"No, with the cause of death clear, I didn't do anything elaborate." She paused, working through the implications of her friend's question. It was clear when inspiration struck. "You think...?"

"It's possible." Mark regarded her with bright expectation as she nodded thoughtfully.

"But where...? This time Jesse chimed in, obviously having also clued in to Mark's hunch.

Mark switched his gaze over. "We're talking about pharmaceutical companies here. It wouldn't be too hard."

As Steve watched the exchange of what he thought of as "medi-speak', any frustration he might have felt at his complete lack of comprehension of the half-sentences being merrily tossed between the others was buried under the warmth of familiarity. He'd missed this too, the companionship of this unlikely band of detectives. He cleared his throat meaningfully.

"When you guys have finished this fascinating conversation, maybe you'd like to fill me in." His smile robbed the sarcasm of its sting.

Realising how incomprehensible their reasoning must have been to a layman, Amanda hastily explained. "There are a large number of poisons that aren't detected in the body after death, and a tox screen tests only for those substances that are most likely to be there. Mark just suggested testing for a neuro-muscular blocking agent that wouldn't show up under normal conditions."

"That sounds promising. When will you have something definite?" Steve knew he had to concentrate on the facts of the case rather than on dodging the explosions in his personal minefield.

Amanda mentally calculated her workload, but capitulated with a sigh. "If I set it up now, I'll be able to give you an idea tomorrow. Obviously the official results will take much longer."

"Hey, we've almost got this case wrapped up already." Jesse's insouciant comment earned him the scathing look he'd been angling for, the one that told him things were returning to what passed for normal.

"There's the little matter of finding the actual murderer," Steve reminded him gently.

"That's the easy part." Jesse waved a dismissive hand in the air.

Seeing how much more relaxed the two Sloans were looking, Amanda hastily cut in before Jesse inadvertently said something that might squash the camaraderie that had reestablished itself. "Why don't we all go out to eat? It's been too long since we all sat down for a meal together."

Steve smiled at her gratefully. "Sounds good." There was a touch of anxiety as he looked over at his father. "Dad?"

"Just what the doctor ordered. Why don't we..." He was interrupted by the insistent sound of ringing.

With a grimace of apology, Steve pulled out his cell phone. "Sloan here...uh-huh...yes...I'll be right there."

"Sorry, guys. Cheryl's back, and the Captain wants to see us." His regret was palpable. "You go out and have fun. I'll catch up with you later."

Mark got to his feet as Steve did, disappointment clear in the older man's face. As Steve moved to leave the room, he paused, bringing his right hand up to rest on his father's nearest shoulder. Amanda didn't think he said anything, but something passed between them that lightened Mark's expression momentarily, then with a final squeeze, Steve left. Mark watched him depart, then turned to his friends, his smile forced. "So, where should we go?"

After the meal with Jesse and Amanda, Mark returned to the hospital to complete some paperwork he'd been neglecting, needing something to distract him from his own thoughts. It was early morning by the time he returned home. The house was quiet and dark, an empty coffee cup in the sink the only sign of Steve's recent presence and, feeling the need to connect with his son, Mark walked quietly down the stairs, pausing at the door between their apartments. Muted sounds and the irregular flicker of light peculiar to television showed in the gap at the bottom, but there was nothing to indicate Steve was still awake so he pushed open the door gently, without knocking.

Steve was lying asleep on the couch, his hair mussed and sticking up at odd angles. His arm was thrown up over his eyes to protect them from the light but, from the uncomfortable position into which his son had slipped, Mark guessed that he had been waiting up, hoping to talk to his father when exhaustion had crept up and shanghaied him. A wave of shame rippled caustically through Mark at the realisation that, subconsciously at least, he'd delayed his return to avoid another encounter without the leavening influence of their friends.

He turned aside to switch off the television, the abrupt cessation of movement and sound allowing his thoughts to ricochet uninterrupted around his brain. He found they made uncomfortable company.

A soft snore from the man lying still on the couch drew his attention and he wandered back to gaze down at his son, examining him as if he hadn't seen him for a long time, which in a way was true. He'd been so wrapped up in his pain, he'd been heedless of the fact that his son was grieving too. For now, Steve's face was relaxed in sleep, the tribulations and concerns of daily life all but erased from his features, the dark smudges that had recently shadowed his eyes hidden from view.

Mark's gaze slid off his son's sleeping features, pulled by a familiar object on the coffee table close by. He leaned forward and carefully picked up the neatly-framed photograph that had clearly been the object of his son's attention that evening. Just one glance was enough to remind him of the gaping holes torn in his carefully constructed universe. It was one of the last pictures taken of them all together, a few months prior to Kathryn's death, and the ravages of the cancer that would eventually take her life had started to show. His fingertip traced lovingly over her image before he focused on their two children, standing with their arms flung casually round each other. Both had longer hair back then, and the family resemblance was clear in their identical grins as they hammed it up for the camera.

Mark touched his daughter's face reverently, the now familiar ache of loss twisting deep in his heart. He knew from experience that this grief would never really heal, but that, given time, it would scab over enough to become bearable. He shifted his contemplation to the image of his son, comparing it to the older man on the couch and noting that the hint of boyish looseness still visible there had vanished, muscle and skin drawn in tighter to the bone, hardening the planes on his face.

He replaced the picture with a heavy sigh and glanced over guiltily at Steve, a notoriously light sleeper, surprised that the intrusion into his son's space hadn't already woken him. Either Steve was truly exhausted or, at some level, even when asleep, he recognised the security of his father's presence. Mark didn't particularly want his son to wake up. In the quietness there were no distractions for the path his thoughts were taking. It was what he'd needed, a time to himself to get things straight in his head, but he also wanted to bask in the reality of his son's continued existence and the knowledge that Steve was, for now, safe without the need to apologise for his actions earlier that day.

Mark knew he'd behaved intractably, rebuffing Steve's attempts to open a dialogue between them and ignoring his son's genuine concern. The truth was that it was only Steve's supportive presence that had allowed him to maintain a pretense at equanimity when Trenton's shocked grief brought back intense memories of those hideous moments following the discovery of Carol's body.

Absently, Mark also noticed that his son had changed into a tanktop, now rumpled and creased, and an indication that Steve had been running on the beach, a predictable response to emotional turmoil. The shirt didn't conceal the faint white scar tracing the length of his bicep, inflicted by a staple gun several years before. It did cloak the ragged amorphous scars on his torso left by Oz Tatum's bullets and the precise linear scars of the surgeon's scalpel wielded to save his life but, even obscured, the marks spoke eloquently to Mark of the dangerous career that could snatch his son from him any day.

The bleak awareness of the fragility of the life contained within Steve's strong frame shuddered through Mark, pain radiating from his heart and stabbing in his chest. Losing his daughter had been well-nigh unbearable but losing his son, whose life was entwined so intricately and inextricably with his own...he couldn't survive that. There would be anodyne for that pain, no cauterising a wound that immense and severe.

Tension was humming through him like current through a wire and his emotions were jumbled in a molotov cocktail of confusion, poised on the brink of explosion; the ever-present sense of devastation colliding with the haunting fear of additional loss. He knew that the turmoil he felt was a natural part of grief. In fact, he could quote chapter and verse on the process of grieving, which was one of the reasons he had refused Amanda's offer to arrange counseling -- it seemed so pointless when he knew what would be said. Yet the intellectual knowledge did little to temper the fierce sense of anguish.

Self-delusion wasn't one of his weaknesses, and he knew he'd been avoiding the necessary task of facing his emotions, deliberately burying them in the daily exhaustion of overwork. But now, he also realised that he'd been subconsciously distancing himself slightly from his son, either in a fruitless attempt to spare himself more grief, or maybe as a way of punishing himself for his inability to save his daughter.

Mark's hands clenched tightly on his knees and he bent forward as if trying to contain some inner pain as suppressed reflections fought their way thickly to the surface. Separation came to all families sooner or later, death severing even the closest of ties between parent and child, but Carol had left voluntarily many years before and Mark wasn't sure where his greatest failure lay: in allowing the breach between them to persist for so long, or not somehow arriving in time to prevent her death.

Another reason he'd shied away from Steve's homicide investigations was that it had suddenly seemed so futile; punishing the guilty did not bring back those lost. In contrast, his medical practice provided the affirmation of life or at least the possibility of prolonging it.

Yet, faced that day with another grieving father, he realised that no sense of closure was possible until those responsible had been brought to justice and an explanation for the senseless loss provided, and in some way comprehended, and for some reason he had to do that -- had to provide at least that much for Trenton. Steve was right, it wouldn't bring Carol back, but it would ease something inside, something he had yet to fully decipher that was stretched so tight that it rendered him incapable of reaching back to his son.

Hopefully, the case could be quickly resolved, leaving him free to make amends and spend time with his one remaining family member, to fully appreciate the priceless gift he still possessed.

He reached over Steve for the afghan on the back of the couch and draped it along the lean form, making sure it covered the long-legged sprawl and as far up the top arm as the cloth would go. It didn't reach all the way up to the shoulder and, for a moment, he held the edge of the afghan between his fingers, not quite touching the edge of his son's shirt. Then he released it gently and went to bed with that warmth still in his fingertips serving to thaw part of the ice that he'd been carrying in his heart.