**DISCLAIMER – I do not own the characters, they belong to TNT and associated bodies. **

A/N: Hello again everyone, sorry I've been away for a little bit (if anyone is still reading this – thankyou!) The song title is Young Girls by Bruno Mars, a ridiculously gorgeous song :-) and more than apt for this chapter.

FLIGHTLESS ANGEL.

Chapter 13 – Young Girls.

Maura was revelling in a rare, deserved moment of sheer contentment with Jane. The Detective still had her feet propped up on the desk of the M.E, and was enjoying a gentle back-rub while the blonde giggled softly into her hair, in her own personal Jane kind of heaven.

"Enjoying yourself...?" Maura whispered in between peppering Jane's earlobe with feather kisses.

She was greeted with a contented sigh, as lanky arms snaked behind the body they were attached to, to slide gently around the back of her, of the woman who had so effortlessly made all the world be still and calm, if even for just a few, precious moments.

Maura snuggled her nose into Jane's warm neck, feeling the Detectives hands repositioning themselves in a loose clasp at the back of her own neck. She breathed in the lavender that was so innately 'Jane', letting her left arm slide across the brunette's collarbones coming to rest inside the lapel of a linen shirt she had given as a gift the previous winter, while her right flexed its fingers across the expanse of well-trained abdominal muscles. She felt Jane's head turn slowly into her own and smiled as a soft, slow kiss landed on the inside corner of her fluttering eyelid. Jane relaxed entirely into the embrace, as her right hand turned the M.E's face so that her next kiss was warmly received on waiting, knowing lips.

Then another. And another. Each kiss a little longer than the last. After the seventh, Maura finally opened her eyes to be gifted the sight of orbs of hazel, sprinkled with gold, looking at her in an almost sleepily peaceful gaze, in utter contentment and warmth. Maura locked the memory into a secure place of her cerebrum, knowing moments like this were rare, where Jane opened up completely. Moments where Maura felt entirely safe, in the arms of the only woman who she had let into such a privileged place. The Doctor hummed in her reverie and touched her nose to Jane's, smiling wider with every nano-second that passed during their embrace.

A shrill ringing from Maura's telephone on her desk, followed in almost instant succession by the vibration of Jane's cell on her belt, shattered their peace, as Maura; quite out of character, nuzzled her nose into Jane's neck and whined an almost incoherent profanity, that made Jane answer her own call with a half-grunted, trademark Rizzoli guffaw.

After listening to their respective calls, and finally making eye-contact once more, Maura slowly turned and sat up on the desk, now vacant of resting feet; facing her companion. Rather than speak, Jane decided to continue with what had proved to be a much more conducive form of communication that morning, sighing heavily, before gently letting her hands roam down the back of Maura's calves to her ankles, and rubbed them silently and softly, before dipping her head and placing a long and thoughtful kiss onto Maura's right knee. Her eyes raised once more to the sympathy of green-hazel eyes looking so lovingly at her, as she stood slowly and leaned into the neck of the woman who had become her entire world.

"Swear you'll never leave me, Maur'."

Maura placed her hand inside the Detective's shirt once more, directly over a battered heart.

"I will never leave you, Jane," she whispered, kissing the brunette soundly and breathing in a last, wondrous breath of lavender, before picking up her M.E bag and walking slowing out of the office, her lover following a step behind.

The morning light caused Jane to squint and grimace, as she made her way wordlessly along the dirt path beside Maura, who was placing on blue latex gloves, indicating they were close.

The familiar "Do not cross" tape, strung between two small trees, was raised for them as they stepped into the crime scene. The usual flurry was noticeably absent, as Uniformed officers tilted their heads to the pale and visibly exhausted Detective, logging in hoarsely, without need; as her distinctive Victor 825.

The scene that confronted them was something Maura would wish on no other living creature. A young woman, bound and gagged, with a blunt force wound to the head; half covered in dirt with her blue eyes open, staring out of a shallow grave, her leg still on the path's natural surface.

Jane stared into those eyes for a minute, maybe two, maybe five; as if silently begging the young, once beautiful woman to divulge her last sights, to give her a clue.

Frost walked up beside his partner, and stood reverently for a moment before speaking. He looked to Maura, who; with the slightest of nods, indicted to him that it was time to start work.

"The victim is Kimberly Issacs, 34 years old." Frost looked to Maura once more, this time out of desperation. Maura was unsure what was making the still recovering Detective so uncomfortable. Jane turned to her young Partner, and finishing his findings.

"Can you give us a second, partner?" Jane asked quietly. Frost initially resented his 'Partner' shutting yet again, but he knew this was personal to Jane, so he stepped back and with a simple pat to Jane's shoulder, let her know he would give her the space she needed to talk.

Kim Issacs, 34, Assistant District Attorney, and a graduate of BCU. 5 foot 10 and will be wearing her grandmother's wedding ring on the little finger of her right hand." Jane spoke almost motionlessly, her lips barely moving, her eyes only leaving the victim's to look at the path her feet stood on.

"And the honeysuckle . . ." she almost mused, looking around fully now, tiptoeing towards Matthew who was a few feet away from Maura on the other side of the grave, placing something into a Petri dish.

"Right here," he continued. "Within reaching distance of the victim. And the footprint, containing the pollen, is right there," he motioned to an area of the path that led back into the woods, marked out with an evidence number marker. "I've already collected the sample, foot impression looks like . . ."

Jane finished his sentence for him.

"Looks like a 10.5; but the impression weight and depth actually point to a wearer of a 9, wearing 10.5s. Headed off to the East of the park where it would have been dark, and he escaped unseen. No witnesses," she looked to Maura. "No sign of sexual assault, no defensive wounds, no DNA." Jane rubbed her forehead wearily, letting her left hand settle on her hip just above her gun. "Nothing but a dead girl," her voice almost breaking as her eyes glazed over, taking her back into the places Maura dreaded seeing her slip back to.

"A dead girl who I knew, who was killed by suffocation but who bears the marks of being killed by blunt force trauma, who no-one has reported as missing, and who will be holding a honeysuckle flower in the inside of her palm, which will be taped behind her back to her other hand."

Jane looked finally to Maura, who gently turned the body on it's side and cut the tape binding the hands, revealing a still-fresh honeysuckle between two dirt covered hands. Jane raised her eyebrows in defeat, and half-smiled.

"No matter what you read up about this case Maura, you won't ever find that detail. It's in no case reports, no court recordings, no report. Five people know about that detail. Me. Your predecessor Carol Given. Cavanaugh. Matthew; once he'd established the link between the killings, we told him of the black-out detail. And of course, whoever is putting those flowers in those girls hands. No-one knows about the flower in the hand, Maur. No-one. This isn't a copy-cat."

Matthew closed his petri dish with a click, standing quickly. Jane looked at the youthful Doctor with empathy, if not with a touch of resentment at the same time.

"He can't kill these girls from inside a prison, Rizzoli." Matthew snapped, albeitly quietly. Maura's eyebrows raised noticeably at the harshness of his tone. "We got the guy, we proved it was him and we convicted him. By the law of this land, with all the science available to us. And it still all matches. His fingerprints were on the tape that Melissa was bound with, the cuts matched. The pollen in his boots, was from the same plant found at all 5 scenes. You tell me how we possibly convicted the wrong guy." He spat out the last few words with such venom that Maura stood, and stepped to Jane, taking off a glove and placing a comforting arm on the shoulder of a now tense and increasingly angry detective.

"We start again," Maura interjected softly, in appeasement. "From scratch. We go over everything, absolutely everything." She looked into Jane's eyes now. "I need to know every last detail about this case, and you are going to come to my house tonight and take me through the case." She turned to Matthew now. "And you are going to get every single bit of research that you did into this case, every piece of evidence tested, into my lab for 9am tomorrow morning and we go through it again. Every single piece. Until we figure out how this can possibly be happening."

Maura looked between the two, who were now both looking at the ground, seemly feeling chastised by a mother figure who had told them to stop throwing punches in the playground. Content that her words had had their intended effect, she squeezed Jane's shoulder a final time, before placing her glove back on and stepping over to the victim, removing the honeysuckle from the young woman's hands and placing it in a small evidence bag that she popped into her jacket pocket.

She looked to the two figures staring at her actions.

"Matthew, if you would help me turn the body. Jane if you would take notes as I dictate them. Let's begin processing the crime scene."