A/N: Thank you for the wonderful reviews!
A week in Miami and Jane was starting to settle in to her new job. She'd gotten to know her new partner a bit better but hadn't really spent much time with the rest of the team off the job.
Jane was at home watching TV when someone knocked on her door. She got up and answered the door to see Kelly McKay standing there with a six pack of bottled beer. "Mind if I come in?" She asked Jane.
Jane swung the door open more and Kelly came in. "Brought you a little something." She said handing the six-pack bottles of beer to Jane.
"Thanks." Jane said taking the case from her and putting it on her kitchen counter.
Kelly wandered around Jane's living room. "Nice place you have here." She said as she picked up one of the photos on Jane's mantle and looked at it.
"Yeah, it's home I guess." Jane said as she took the picture from Kelly and put it back in its place.
"Who's the blonde?" Kelly asked looking at the rest of the pictures on Jane's mantle.
"She's the chief medical examiner back in Boston." Jane said. "She's my best friend." Jane sipped on her beer, "At least she was."
"Oh yeah that's Paddy Doyle's daughter." Kelly said pointing to one of the pictures. "I saw her picture in the paper."
"Yeah." Jane said as she got up and grabbed a beer from the pack Kelly brought. She handed it to Kelly before she sat back down on the couch.
"You have a lot of pictures of her." Kelly said as she took a sip of beer. "You sure she's just a friend?" Kelly asked with an arched eyebrow.
"You come over here to shoot the shit with me or break balls?" Jane asked annoyed.
"Man you're touchy." Kelly said wandering over to Jane's couch and sitting down. "I just came over to see how you like it here in Miami and the job."
"I like it just fine." Jane said sipping her beer.
"Just like it huh?" Kelly asked, "Come on, this place is great. No snow, no icy winds. You don't have to bundle up like an Eskimo at a crime scene."
"I like snow and icy winds." Jane told her as she picked up her TV remote and flipped through the channels.
"Are you ready for this assignment down at the docks?" Kelly asked switching the subject.
"I've read through the case files, gone over the mission plan." Jane said taking a big swig of beer. "I'm ready."
Kelly looked at Jane who was just watching TV as if Kelly wasn't even there.
Kelly stood up, "Well listen I'm going to get going." She said putting her half-drank beer on the coffee table. "I can tell you're really not up for company."
Jane didn't argue with her. She stood up and headed over to the door and opened it for Kelly.
"See you at work Rizzoli." Kelly said then left. Jane shut the door and went back over to the couch.
A knock at Jane's door got her back up on her feet. She opened the door to see a guy in a UPS uniform holding a package and a clipboard. "Jane Rizzoli?" He asked.
"Yeah." She said and he handed her the package.
"Sign here please." He said handing over the clipboard. She scribbled down her signature then handed it back to him and he left.
Jane shut the door and took the box over to the couch and sat down. She ripped off the tape and opened up the flaps. Inside were the things Maura said she'd be sending.
Jane pulled out her long sleeved red and white Red Sox shirt, a pair of yoga pants, and 3 pairs of missed matched socks. Jane checked the box for anything else and saw a small manila envelope at the bottom. She picked it up, opened it and shook the contents into her hand. Out slid a gold chain with a medal attached. The medal was of St. Luke the Evangelist, patron saint of doctors.
Jane sighed as she looked at the necklace in her hand. She remembered the day she'd given it to Maura.
It was a week after the incident with Hoyt taking them hostage at the prison. Jane wandered down into the morgue to check on Maura, like she had done countless times since that day.
"Hey." Jane said sauntering into Maura's office and plopping down on the couch.
Maura looked up from the work on her desk, "Hey."
"Come sit with me for a minute." Jane said patting the cushion next to her.
Maura got up and came around her desk and sat next to Jane on the couch. "Is everything okay?" She asked.
"Oh yeah it's fine." Jane said as she rummaged through her jacket pocket. "I got something for you." She said pulling out a small box and handing it to Maura.
Maura took it then looked at Jane, "What's this?"
"Well you're going to have to open it to find out." Jane told her.
Maura removed the top of the box. Inside sitting on a bed of cotton was a small gold medal attached to a gold chain. Maura picked up the medal and looked at it closely.
She looked over at Jane, "It's beautiful but who's this on the medal?" Maura asked.
"That's St. Luke, he's the patron saint of doctors." Jane explained to Maura as she held out her hand for the necklace.
Maura handed it to her then she turned around. Maura lifted her hair out of the way and Jane put the necklace around her neck and clasped it on. Maura dropped her hair back into place and she turned back around to face Jane. "What's it for though?" Maura asked.
"It's to protect you." Jane said as she fingered the medal around Maura's neck.
"I thought that was your job." Maura said to Jane with a smile.
Jane dropped the medal against Maura's neck. She started to blush, feeling awkward she stood up. "Well, yeah but, that's …you know just in case I'm not around."
Maura stood up and hugged Jane tight. "Thank you." She said into Jane's ear.
Jane closed her eyes, "You're welcome."
Jane was the first to let go, "I better get back upstairs."
"Ok." Maura said and watched as Jane left.
Jane sat on her couch staring down at the necklace. She couldn't believe that Maura had given it back. She rubbed her thumb back and forth over the medal, tears fell from her eyes.
Jane wiped her tears away with an angry swipe of her hand. She grabbed her phone and dialed Maura's number. Of course Maura didn't pick up so Jane had to yell at her voicemail.
"How can you give back the St. Luke medal? That was a gift Maura, it was meant to stay with you, to protect you. How can you just give it back like it means nothing? Is this some way for you to get back at me for leaving without saying goodbye? If it is then you're being a child Maura. You should have kept the medal; I need to know someone is looking out for you." Jane said then took a breath and calmed down a bit. "Damn it Maura." She sighed then hung up.
Jane turned off her TV and went into her room. She changed out of her work clothes and into pajamas before she got into bed and eventually fell asleep.
In the morning Jane headed over to the precinct to catch up on paperwork. In the late afternoon the team was called into the conference room for tonight's mission briefing.
"This information comes to us from a reliable outside source. Tonight a guy by the name of Dickie James is moving a shipment of guns through the harbor tonight. It's been said that these guns are for Duke Stanton." Denning said as she passed around copies of the files on Duke and Dickie.
"Stanton is ultimately who we want. He's evaded us the last 2 times we've tried nabbing him." Denning told them. "But if we can get Dickie maybe he can lead us to Stanton."
Jane was half listening to the briefing. She was keeping a close watch on the other members of the team looking for any indications that one of them was about to betray them by tipping off Stanton.
After the meeting the team went down into the locker rooms and geared up. Two separate vans were taken down to the docks. They sat for almost an hour waiting for Dickie to show up at the time slotted. "Let's give it another hour people before we call it a wash." Denning said over the radio.
"It's the waiting that kills you." Kelly said to Jane as they sat in the back of the van with a surveillance crew.
"I've done stakeouts before." Jane said to her as she checked her watch.
"You don't like to talk much do you Rizzoli?" Kelly asked.
Jane looked over at her partner. "Look, it's nothing personal." Jane said to her.
"That's okay." Kelly said, "It's hard to know who to trust. I get it."
After another hour of sitting in the van with no movement on the docks Denning called the mission a wash and they all headed back to the station for a debriefing.
"Could your contact have gotten the drop time wrong?" Jane asked as they all sat at the conference table.
"Highly unlikely this informant has been accurate the last few times." Denning told her.
After the debriefing everyone was told to go home. Jane hung back for a bit though, wanting to talk to Denning.
"I didn't notice anything unusual tonight with the team. So I don't know if anyone made a call or sent out a text." Jane told her.
"It's a small fish for now that got away." Denning told her. "Go home Detective."
Jane drove home. She went inside and grabbed a beer from the fridge. She took out her cell phone and turned it on. 1 missed call from Angela. She popped the cap from her bottle and went into the living room and sat on the couch.
Jane drank her beer as she watched some news program. She didn't even realize she'd fallen asleep till her phone rang and woke her. She stretched out and grabbed her phone off the coffee table. "Rizzoli." She said gruffly.
"Rizzoli, this is Denning." She said on the phone, "Get to the precinct now."
"What's going on?" Jane asked sitting up on the couch and looked at her watch, it was a little after 7 am.
"My Informant was murdered sometime last night." Denning said and hung up the phone.
Jane showered and got dressed then headed over to the precinct. The team was in the conference room so Jane went in and sat down.
"My informant, Mike Forest was killed last night after 2am. He was found floating in the harbor. He was shot twice and his tongue was cut out." Denning informed them.
"Jesus, who would do such a thing?" McKay asked as they looked over the crime scene photos.
"My guess is someone who thought Mike was snitching on them." Denning said looking at her.
"Homicide is taking care of this case; we need to focus on Duke Stanton." Denning told them.
Maura sat distracted at her desk. She had paperwork that needed to be finished but she couldn't focus on it right now. She kept hearing Jane's message over and over in her head. She knew Jane was angry at her for sending back the medal. And a part of her did it out of spite but she could tell now that it had really hurt Jane's feelings.
Maura didn't want to hurt Jane; she was even passed Jane shooting Doyle. Some anger still lingered but now it was mostly because Jane left and they never got a chance to work through things. Not that Jane was a "work through it" kind of person. But Maura never gave Jane a chance and now she was 1500 miles away. She could call Jane but this wasn't something she wanted to discuss over the phone.
So now Maura sat confused and agitated by the situation but most of all she was sad and missing Jane.
Jane got back to her apartment late that evening. She tossed her keys on the kitchen counter and shuffled to her fridge and grabbed a small carton of leftover chow mein and a fork then went over to the couch and turned on the TV. She ate her cold dinner and watched some ball game on TV. Jane wasn't really paying attention because she was distracted by the murder of Denning's informant and the fact that she didn't have a clue who the traitor was on their team. She had her suspicions but she knew you couldn't go on suspicion alone. She needed proof.
She placed the now empty carton and fork on the coffee table and sat back. She closed her eyes and ran through all the information she knew about her team. Her cellphone rang and disrupted her thoughts. With a groan she fished the phone from her pocket. "Hello?" Jane said.
"Are you alone?" Denning asked on the phone.
Jane actually looked around her apartment. "Um yeah I'm alone." She said.
"Listen this thing with my informant, it's never happened before. Whatever is going on it's starting to escalate. This guy has been giving me information for a while now and then suddenly he gets killed." Denning said. "Something isn't right."
"You think a cop might have done it?" Jane asked.
"I don't know Rizzoli, but whatever the hell is going on you need to figure out who this dirty cop is and flush them out before more bodies started piling up." Denning told her.
"I'm doing what I can." Jane said, "But you got to understand these guys have only known me for a little over a week, so it's going to be hard for them to trust me."
"I understand that but you have to spend time with them in order for them to get to know you, to trust you." Denning told her.
Jane groaned. She didn't want to get to know these people; she didn't want to make friends in Miami. She wanted to get this job over with and go back to Boston.
"I'll see what I can do." Jane told Denning and they hung up.
The next day at work was more of the same. Homicide didn't have any leads on Mike Forest's murder and there were no new reports of shipments coming or going. So when Jane was asked out to have a beer with the team she agreed.
"This is the cop watering hole." McKay said to Jane as they walked from the precinct two streets over and down the block to the bar.
Jane looked up at the name, "The Donut Shop? Really?" she asked looking at her partner.
"Yeah, we have a sense of humor down here in Miami." Kelly said with a shrug as she opened the door and they went inside.
The rest of the team, minus Denning was sitting around a table. Carl David was middle aged, with gray hair and a mustache like Tom Selleck's. Tom Hampton didn't even look like he was old enough to be a cop with the baby face he had. Gene Dirks was tall and skinny; he was the one that reminded Jane of Frost. She started to think about her old partner and it made her a bit sad.
"Hey Rizzoli!" Hampton shouted as she and McKay approached. "So nice of you to join us tonight."
"Yeah sure, no problem." Jane said pulling out a chair for herself. She sat down and Kelly sat down next to her.
They ordered a round of beers and throughout the night Jane learned more about the people that made up the team. She learned Carl was on his 3rd marriage and he was putting his two daughters from his 1st and 2nd wife through college. Tom made detective only 3 years ago, he has a fiancé at home who's pregnant with their first child. Gene is from a long line of police officers in his family. His mother, grandfather and two uncles were on the job at one time or another.
"So what's your story Rizzoli?" Carl asked taking a sip of his beer and grabbing a handful of peanuts from the bowl in the middle of the table.
"Not much to say." Jane said, "Worked in Boston for a while and then I got transferred down here."
"Was it because of that whole Paddy Doyle thing?" Carl asked, "I hear he's the father of your chief medical examiner."
"It's not like he raised her." Jane said shrugging her shoulders.
"So tell us was being sent down here your punishment for working with Paddy Doyle?" Gene asked as a joke.
Jane just smiled at him and took another sip of her beer.
The gang started to leave one by one leaving Jane and Kelly at the table by themselves.
"So why don't you like talking about Boston?" Kelly asked Jane as a waitress took their empty bottles from the table.
"I love Boston. But you're not asking me about Boston" Jane said to her. She looked at Kelly and gave her a look "And what's with this strange fascination about why I got transferred down here?" Jane asked grabbing a peanut from the bowl and popping it into her mouth.
Kelly shrugged, "I don't know. The way they put it in the papers, it makes you sound like you might have worked with Doyle on the side."
"But there's no proof of that." Jane said taking a sip of her beer.
"You didn't really answer the question." Kelly said.
"You didn't ask one." Jane countered.
"You're right." Kelly said, "So Rizzoli, let me ask this, did you work for Paddy Doyle?"
Jane leaned forward, "What do you think?"
"I think you did." Kelly said to her, "And I think you covered your tracks well enough that no one will find any proof of it."
Jane picked up her beer bottle and tipped it at Kelly before she took a sip.
"I can't figure you out Rizzoli." Kelly said shaking her head a bit.
"Not many can." Jane said with a smile.
Kelly smiled at Jane then drank the last sip of her beer. "I think I better call it a night." Kelly said standing up.
"Yeah me too." Jane said taking one last sip of her beer before she put the bottle back on the table and stood up.
"You okay to get home by yourself?" Jane asked Kelly as she put her jacket on.
"Oh yeah, sure." Kelly said as she pulled out her phone. "You want to share a cab?"
"Um, nah that's ok." Jane said, "I think I'll just walk home."
"You sure?" Kelly asked.
"Yeah thanks anyways." Jane said as she headed out the door. "See you tomorrow partner." She called over her shoulder.
When Jane got home she tried calling her mother's cellphone but she didn't pick up. She called Frankie instead. "Hey, where's Ma?" Jane asked him.
"I don't know." He said, "Why?"
"Because I want to talk to her and I've called her cell and she's not picking up." Jane told him.
"Call her at home then." Frankie said and cringed a little when he said it.
"I thought she was staying with you." Jane said and Frankie got quiet on the phone. "Frankie, where the hell is Ma staying?"
"She's back at Maura's." Frankie told her.
Jane didn't say another word and just hung up the phone.