Disclaimer: I don't even know why I bother anymore…

Author's note: I'm not even going to apologize for not updating in forever, just read, enjoy, review and no flames. Same drill every time. Although, I would like some more reviews (a.k.a. A LOT more reviews.).

Jessica

Chapter 3: 8 Hours Missing

Back at FBI headquarters, Sam and Jack sat at the table in front of the white board, the contents of Jessica's safe in front of them labeled in plastic evidence bags. Danny and Martin walked up to the table from their cubicles. "Well," Danny began. "No major serial rapists or murderers paroled recently, but there is one guy who was just paroled on an assault charge; Maurice DeMartini, a.k.a. "Spider", beat up 20 year old Casey Morrison on her way home from work, apparently she owed him money," he hinted.

"Like drug money?" Sam asked him.

Danny nodded. "Yep; she was 1500 in debt and couldn't pay up, so he took his anger out on her," he concluded as he threw the manila file onto the table. Sam picked up the folder and opened it, searching through everything that it contained.

The first thing she saw was the mug shot of the guy, holding the black sign with white writing in front of his chest, a tattoo of a black widow spider on the back of his right hand. He had spiky brown hair, deep blue eyes with an angry look on his face that went very well with the long red scar running down the left side of his neck. She could tell that he was tall and well built, and she didn't like that. She sighed and looked at the police reports. Casey had been beat up pretty badly; broken ribs, concussion, fractured skull, twisted ankle, and plenty of scratches and cuts to boot. "Well, he's not a very nice guy," Sam deduced out loud.

"Yeah, no kidding," Martin said. "She was in the hospital for almost a week before they let her out, and even after that she went to live with a friend of hers until she was ready to move back into her own apartment."

Sam nodded. "Does Viv know about any of this?"

"Not yet," Danny said. "She's talking to Claire and Paige about Jessica; I doubt they know anything about what happened."

8.5 Hours Missing

"Jessica's a great person," the curly red-headed Paige Emerson told Vivian. "She's nice to everyone and she's in, like, all AP classes; she's a genius."

"Is that so?" Vivian asked.

Paige nodded, but Vivian noticed that the brunette stayed quiet, staring down at her twiddling hands. "Is that true Claire?"

Claire looked up at her with her pale, sparkling blue eyes. She nodded. "Yeah, she's in all of my classes and gets really good grades," she told Vivian, and looked back down at her hands.

Vivian eyed the girl carefully. "Is there something you're not telling me, Claire?"

Claire looked back up at her for a millisecond and then shrugged. "No, not really."

"Not really?" Vivian said, raising an eyebrow.

Claire sighed. "Okay, fine. Jess…Jessi was using."

"What!" Paige wondered as she stared down at her friend, the shock obvious in her tone of voice. "How do you know?"

Claire brushed her long hair out of her face. "Because…one day…she…came to class high. On what, I have no clue, but she sure had all the symptoms."

FLASHBACK

"Hey, Jess! How was your weekend?" Claire asked Jessica as she walked into the band room to give her friend a hug.

Immediately, Claire knew something was up; Jessica was extremely jittery and her eyes were bloodshot. There was a very large bruise on her cheek and a small little scratch just above her eyelid. "I-I-I-I-I-It was great!" She stammered and spoke extremely rapidly. "Nev-Never better! I-I mean, it's not like I couldn't hang out with my friends or anything, but I had to stay with Alex the entire time, y-you know? I-I-I mean no freedom for myself or anything, right?"

Claire's brow furrowed as she walked up to Jessica and placed her hands on her shoulders to try and calm her down. "Jess, what are you talking about?" Claire wondered.

Jessica continued to stutter and speak faster than humanly possible as she began to pace. "All I wanted to do was hang out with my friends, but NO! No! Absolutely not! It was hang out with the boyfriend and his friends or fear his wrath, which I got anyway. But not this time! No, not this time. He will be sorry. He will be sorry for everything that he's done!"

"Jess, what's going on? Are you high or something?" Claire said as she began to follow her around the room.

Jess continued to ignore Claire. "The last straw! Seriously, he's gotten on my last nerve! He can't do this to me! No, of course he can't. He's going to pay Dammit! HE'S GOING TO PAY!"

She pushed her music stand onto the floor, all of her sheet music and solo books falling out of her black band folder and onto the floor.

Everyone began to stare at the both of them. All eyeballs were on Claire and Jessica as Claire picked up Jessica's music and stand and replaced it to where it once was. She then grabbed Jessica by the shoulders and stared at her intently. "Are you done yet?" Claire asked, impatient and annoyed.

Jessica looked around the room, her eyes still bloodshot but she had calmed down. After realizing what she had done, she took a deep breath, closed her eyes and brushed her hand through her hair. "Yeah," she began. "I'm sorry. I'm ready for class now," she said as she sat back down and picked up her flute.

END OF FLASHBACK

Claire sighed. "She scared the crap out of me. Jessica would never snap like that; it was really freaky."

Vivian nodded as she wrote this down in her little black notebook where she kept all of her notes. "When did this happen?"

"Sometime last week, I think."

"Okay," Vivian said as she looked back up at the two girls. "Anything else?"

Claire looked at the table again, her eyes squinted a little, as if reluctant to say anything else. "Well," she began. Vivian brought her eyes back over to the girl. "I noticed that her eyes were red a lot. I couldn't tell if she was crying or if it was dope. But then I finally noticed the cuts and bruises and such. It never occurred to me that her boyfriend might be…abusive or anything until she started rambling that day. Then I put two and two together and tried to talk to her about it."

"What did she say?" Vivian asked, scribbling this new information into her notebook.

"'Just drop it, Claire; it's none of your business.' Her words exactly," Claire told Viv.

"And you didn't notice this at all?" Vivian asked Paige.

Paige shook her head. "No, of course not. I never would have thought that Jess would have anything to do with drugs. Ever since I met her she talked about how she wouldn't give into peer pressure or anything."

"You think her boyfriend was pressuring her?"

Silence. Paige shrugged and Claire stared at the ground. Vivian glanced over at the brunette. "Claire?"

Claire groaned. "I was suspicious, okay? I never pegged Alex to be a junkie, but then I saw him hanging out with a bunch of gang bangers snorting up and stuff. It was disgusting. I told Jess about him, but she didn't seem to do anything; she just sat there and…just…sat there, like it was nothing."

Vivian nodded again and jotted down a few things before asking. "So, you guys were going to the movies at seven, right?" She asked the girls.

Claire and Paige both looked up at her, brows furrowed. "What are you talking about?" asked Claire.

Now it was Vivian's turned to give the girls a confused expression. "Jessica's mom said that she left the house at 6:30 to go to the movies with you guys."

They both looked at each other, confusion still written all across their faces, and shook their heads. "Paige and I had a gymnastics meet that night," Claire said, glancing back over at Vivian. "We were all the way out in Queens; we couldn't have gone to the movies with her if we tried."