A/N: Thanks for the support on this story, I really appreciate it! I'll update A lie Close to the heart as soon as my beta get back at me, but as I told you- life sucks, sometimes, and I guess wea re both in that situation right now. Or, you know- just busy having a life in general. eh.

Anyway. onto chapter Two, with a quick look at Jane...

Holding her breath, her eyes hunted, Teresa returned into the room, and once kneed on the cold floor, she gently skimmed with her right hand over the pale, blood-stained skin of Angela Ruskin, shaking her head as she didn't believe it was really happening. The world stood still at her side, and she knew what was running through the minds of the other cops in the room, of all of them. Some saw a woman who had to have some connection with the victim, and probably felt sorry for her or thought the idea of giving her the case unhealthy; others probably knew the truth, and either believed her to be the only person to be able to close such a case, or the worst cop the case could have been given to.

Frankly, she didn't care. Whatever they thought, they were wrong, they didn't know her, didn't know Angela. The only other human being who could have gotten close to comprehend what was running through her mind and heart in that moment was Wayne, who had been through so much with her in the past. And yet, he still couldn't- not fully, at least. As similar as they were, they worlds were still a universe apart: Stephen Rigsby had been a biker who had always tried to make a name for himself, but who had always had to ask for permission to people who was more powerful than him, even just for breathing. Teresa, instead, could still clearly remember when the mere surname of her parents- both their surnames – awoke dread and respect in the Sacramento Underworld.

Oh, Angie, please forgive me. Teresa thought, close to tears, trying to fight the sensation that she could have done something to prevent this from happening, that deep down it was all her fault. She didn't voice her thoughts, though, and quickly recomposed herself. She could almost already hear people whispering at her back. Oh, it seems Detective Lisbon knew our victim, but she wasn't going to allow any of them to think that her relationship with Angela Ruskin-McAllister was going to cloud her judgment; nor she was going to let them think she was weak- it was a fault she wasn't going to allow them to add to her long list.

She had too many of them already: she was young (too young to be a detective according to many ), she was a woman (in a field still male-dominated) and she had her family's blood running through her veins- no matter she had abandoned them to choose a family of her own with blue blood. Many years before, listening to her mother's parting words, she had sworn she would have left everything behind eventually. That day, she had told herself that she deserved much more than what she and her brothers had been promised, and Angie, holding her like for dear life, had promised her she would have done everything, anything in her power, to make her dreams coming true. The woman had kept her promise, and now, many years later, she was dead, and Teresa couldn't shake the feeling she had something to do with it. After all, Angie had never been supposed to be there, to live that live at the side of Thomas John McAllister… if not for her.

"What…" she said at low voice as her eyes lingered on something on the body. It was wrong, oh, so wrong… and yet, it showed that she was right. There was more that it met the eyes, and everything they had been led to believe until that moment had been merely a game, smoke and mirrors and all that jazz. And the evidence was there, right before their eyes, on her left hand, on her ring finger: her wedding band, heavy and solid platinum, and an engagement ring, white gold and emeralds and diamonds. "Rigs, see if you can spot anything of value." She ordered. The tall man frowned, but as she looked at him, he saw the determination in her eyes, and did as he had been told. Teresa followed his examples, and looked around for any evidence she could have missed, fooled and moved by the body's identity.

"I've got something here." Wayne said as he fished under the bed for a rectangular item in dark blue, that it revealed itself to be an Original Chanel Vintage purse. The former arson specialist handled it his friend and superior, and Cho looked over Teresa's shoulders to see what she was going to find inside. As she went through the contents, she shook her head, and Cho looked quizzically ay was happening, too, betraying for once his poker face. A sense of danger and read was filling his whole being, remembering him of his teenage years, when war between gangs in Sacramento was everyday occurrence, and the loss could be counted daily on two hands.

"It doesn't make any sense…" Teresa muttered as Wayne kept looking around, doing his best to find evidence of his own without contaminating the crime scene. He was looking at the open drawers, when suddenly, something shiny in a corner of the wardrobe caught his eye, hidden by the clothes scattered all over the place. He carefully moved the pieces of clothing around, and kneeled on the ground, and checked to make sure he wasn't wrong: indeed, he found an hidden safe, still closed. "Don't get me wrong, but how much of this makes sense to you? Because this mess should cry robbery gone wrong, but I look around and I see designer and vintage pieces of clothing, worth of thousands of dollars, and here, right before our eyes… a safe. Still closed."

"It doesn't mean anything. Whoever did this, they didn't have to know for sure that this stuff was valuable." Cho said, crossing his arms, trying to be the voice of reason. Or was it the other way around? The part of him that screamed at him that everything was going to go to hell was getting louder and louder, and the evidence was all over the place. Once again his eyes fell on Lisbon, and he pitied her. If what people said about her was true, this case was going to cost her everything, maybe even her soul, for he knew what it meant when your past came knocking at your door demanding answers and payments in blood.

"Really?" Rigsby asked, chuckling and lifting his eyebrows and opening his arms, like in surrender. "Ok, let's say you are right, and they left her stuff here because they didn't know what they were dealing with. But how do you explain the safe?"

Cho stared at his other partner without batting an eye. "Maybe they didn't know there was a safe. Or maybe they did, and they just didn't have the tools to open it."

"It's a motel safe, Cho. I could ask T for a pin and I could open it. Keeping my eyes closed the whole time. At the age of six." Rigsby kept pointing an angry finger at Cho, determination written all over his features. Teresa looked at him, an sometimes, she didn't know what to do or to think. He scared her, if she had to be honest, because she looked at him and saw his own father, mad with one of his men- or his wife, or his own son- ready to hit whoever was closer and frailer.

No, she thought closing her eyes, fighting the memories. He would never do that. He has suffered too much. Because of that man. He would never turn into him.

But then the whispered laugh took her back to reality and to her present, and she turned to face the uniformed cops that had laughed- probably a gossip or remark about Wayne and his troubled past, his upbringing and all the rest.

"He is right, Cho. Besides, look here." She threw him the purse, and hands on her hips she looked at the whole room, trying to memorize as much as possible, trying to see all the missing of the puzzles. She took a big breath and pinched, briefly, the bridge of her nose, then she huffed and turned to face yet again her partner of three years. "they didn't leave just the purse. Her wallet is still there, with credit cards, her IDs, her mobile… they just took the money from her wallet, but for the rest, it's all here. I mean, look at her, she is even still wearing her jewels!"

"Maybe they didn't know if they could fence them. As far as they knew, they could have been personalized."

She shook her head. "No, that would imply that they knew she is Angela McAllister." She said, her heart losing a beat as she referred to Angela in the present tense instead than in the past. "And no one in Sacramento in their right mind would be willing to steal from McAllister- and kill his wife while they are at it. Trust me, this isn't a robbery gone wrong."

"Then, what do you think?" Wayne asked, arms crossed at his colleagues' sides.

"I really don't know. It doesn't look premeditated, otherwise they would have staged it better. Then, maybe…" she closed her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose like she did whenever she was stressed or nervous. "Maybe it was a message from the criminal underworld. Just because McAllister has never been proven guilty, it doesn't mean he is without enemies. His marriage alone was proof enough of his connection with the mob, and God only knows how many people out there are mad with him."

"What if it was some kind of initiation? A rookie trying to make a name for himself. It would explain the mess, doesn't it?" Wayne asked, looking at Cho, their resident expert on the matter.

Teresa held her breath as she waited for Cho to answer. She begged with every cell of her being that her friend and lover was wrong; if it really gang-related, or it was some kind of retaliation against McAllister, sooner than later more bodies were going to pop up out of the blue. Touching someone from McAllister's people meant war, and everyone in the Sacramento crime underworld was supposed to know it. If it was gang-related, she pitied the poor bastards that were going to vanish in thin air in a matter of days, without a trace. McAllister had always been good enough to hide behind a mountain of off-shore accounts and alias after alias, but he was far from clean. Words were that he was bloody and vindictive, and that he took great delight inflicting unimaginable sufferances upon his enemies, knowing that no one would touch him.

"Yeah" the cop simply said, shrugging his shoulder. "Or maybe we are looking at it completely wrong, and the reason nothing is missing is that something is missing, but we don't know it yet."

Yeah, I can so see McAllister providing us with a complete list of his wife's possessions… She hoped it truly not was gang-related, as a war was the last thing she felt like dealing with. "We can't leaven any option out. Cho, check with the gang unit and see whose territory is this and if this may look like one of their initiations. Also, call your informants and see if they've heard of someone trying to make a name for themselves."

"The two main reasons for murder are women and money." Teresa almost jumped as she heard the voice at her side, and glared in direction of the criminologist, and so did her colleagues. They hadn't even noticed that Partridge was still with them, but it wasn't like it was the first time it happened. The man had the ability to appear like from thin air, taking away at least five years of live from the people he was with, and was creepy. Not in a physical kind of way- he was nowhere close to be Lisbon's type, but he was good looking –but because of his obsession with death and serial killers. Frankly, they all believed he had joined the force to be close and personal with bleeding bodies.

Teresa sighed, hating how he would get al know-it-all when he started. She knew what was coming, and yet, she knew it wasn't like she could stop, or prevent it. After all, she needed his help too nowadays to solve cases and bring them to court.

"Ok, Partridge, enlighten me." There was an hint of exasperation as she huffed the words between clenched teeth. As much as he was creepy, and as much as she hated that he had chuckled while uttering his previous sentence, the guy knew how to do his work, and in a couple of occasions he had even been right. Yes, he was a creepy pervert, but at least he was an educated one. Of course, if he would have just stopped behaving like that annoying character she had seen in a couple of episodes of CSI, it would have helped.

"I was checking the room with Luminol when you arrived, and how you'll see from my pictures, the bed sheets have a winner: biological fluids, and not of the blood quality. Our lovely lady here, I think she had a lot of fun before the fun was over once and for all for her." He chuckled, and Teresa could imagine him with Rayban sunglasses, trying his best CSI Miami Horatio Kane impression. God, how much she hated him, he literally made insides hurt. Without bothering to glare, Teresa left the room and went back to the corridor with the excuse to check on the others, but the truth was that she couldn't handle her feelings any longer. If she stayed one other second in the room, she would have hit the pervert.

"Teresa?" Wayne whispered her name as he put an hand on her shoulder, and she shook her head, barely resisting crying. She looked into her friend's eyes, and saw what she had already seen so many times, what had been there as long as she had known him. She saw Wayne taking a big breath, and immediately she took a step back; it wasn't the time, nor the place. Besides, hadn't they said it was wrong, that they had to stop it because it was unhealthy for the both of them? They werent0 kids any longer, and as much as she was still attracted to him- and him to her- and as much as easier it would be to just be with someone who knew and didn't judge, she wasn't going for that. They both deserved better, and it was time they started to think about themselves instead of comforting the other between the sheets of a bed.

"He practically called her a whore…" she said, leaning against the wall, and Wayne put an hand on her shoulder, looking at her.

"Teresa, he may be an insensitive jerk, but he may be partly right…"

She shook her head, pointed and angry finger at him. "You don't get to say that about Angie, Wayne. You just can't. What, you already forgotten whose door you came knocking to when your father hit you? Who mended your wounds?"

"I know what she did for us, all right? I do! But…" he looked around and lowered his voice, his hands on her shoulders as to try to calm her down, to anchor her to this new reality that seemed to be able to burn them all down. "The room was strangely clear for an establishment of this kind, and the only stains found were of sperm and her blood. Add to that the fact that someone had raided the room, like to make sure they weren't going to leave any evidence of their passage there, and you'll admit that the crime of passion looks likely."

Teresa looked one last time in direction of the room, feeling like she was still there. She knew that the hotel was going to hunt her dreams for a long time to come- maybe even her whole life- along with the knowledge that she could have stopped this from happening with just one little word. Angela's blood was going to be again on her hands, whatever she liked it or not.

"So, what? We are dealing with someone who hasn't seen one single episode of CSI in their whole life and didn't know how to take forensic countermeasures? Or maybe they are in AFIS and not CODIS, and now we are screwed, but maybe…"

Wayne lowered his head, his voice a whisper. "I think you should talk with the boss, and consider the idea of closing this case as a robbery gone wrong. Allow it to get cold."

"No" she simply said, shaking her head, biting her lips. "No, no way."

"Teresa…" he sighed, looking at her like she was an exasperated child who didn't want to get her lesson right. "Teresa, if you aren't careful, this case could be ruin."

"I don't care. She saved me, Wayne. I owe her that much." You do too, she thought, but she allowed her yes to say it for her. Wayne knew her better than she did herself: you have gotten it.

"Teresa, if we are not careful, we'll ruin this whole town. If this is a gang-related, Red John will not allow anyone to get away with it, and it will start raining bodies. And if this is a crime of passion…" he paused, looked around, making sure no one would hear them. "What if he did kill her? You know what happens to people who messes with him."

"Or maybe it's him." Teresa said, her eyes looking in the distance at another member of her unit, Ron, busy questioning the bellboy. "and this time we bring him down once and for all."

"Teresa.." Wayne answered, begging her. But he knew Teresa Lisbon. Once she put her mind on something, there was no turning back.

You don't have to follow me to my grave, you scarified enough for what you think is love. She wanted to tell him, but she didn't; deep down, she knew that she needed him. Maybe not his presence in her bed- even if she certainly appreciated – but Wayne kept her grounded, remembered her why she was a good cop, and what she was supposed to do to stay one. Just with a look, or a simple touch.

Instead, she said. "Did he find the body?" indicating with a movement of her head the boy. Wayne nodded, and with a smirk, Lisbon started to walk in the child's direction.

"What are you doing?" Wayne asked her, walking quickly at her side.

"I think that the boy knows more than he is willingly to say. But who knows, maybe a good-looking girl could convince him to open up…" she sighed, dreamy as the best, and yet worst, actress, and unbuttoned the first three buttons of her black shirt, fluffing meanwhile her hair.

"Ron?" She practically sing-sang as she joined him. "I can take it from here, thanks. Could you drive Rigsby back to the precinct? Thanks!"

Ron simply nodded, and the two men walked away, Wayne sending daggers in her back, as she stood in silence for a while, looking at the young man before her. He was just a kid, probably high school or first year of college, and the fear and the discomfort in his eyes remembered her of her brother, James. She but her lips, overcame by the memories. She had to press this boy, had to know if he was hiding something from them, if he knew something he hadn't shared yet. He could be the key to solve the case, maybe even to send McAllister behind bars for the rest of his sorry life.

"I'm detective Lisbon- Teresa." She corrected herself, smiling and offering the child her hand. Being too official wasn't going to help, and she didn't want to scare him with her Major Crimes status, nor with her bad cop attitude. But she could see there was something troubling him- he kept looking at his feet, avoiding eye-contact, and he had scratched the skin of his thumb with the index, so much that his hand was covered in crimson blood. Teresa put and hand on his shoulder, trying to bring him back to reality, to that corridor and not the room with the cadaver, and her eyes fell on the name-tag- his name was Luke Donovan.

"Detective Rigsby told me you found the body." He nodded, sniffing with his nose, his eyes glassy. "Luke, could you tell me why were you there? The hotel doesn't have room service, I recon.."

The boy shook his head again, but this time he lifted his eyes until he didn't meet Teresa's. "I saw him leaving in an hurry. I thought Miss Angela had already gone, maybe while it wasn't my shift, so I went to the room to put it in order."

Miss Angela seemed very informal for a bellboy, Teresa thought. And even in his eyes, there was something she could almost recognize as her own: the pain of knowing that someone she knew and cared for had been taken away with brute force. "How well did you know her, Luke?"

"Not that well, but… she insisted that we called her Miss Angela. She was good with us. Always." Luke took a big breath, and put his hands in the pockets of his red, velvet and dusty uniform. "When I took the job around six months ago, the guy who works the other shift, he told me she came one day around seven, eight months ago, and asked for a room. For the whole month. She had been here ever since."

"Eight months ago?" she asked, perplexed. It was strange; she guessed she would have at least heard if there were troubles in paradise in the McAllister household.

"Yeah. Every first of the month, she came and paid for the whole. But the boss said to keep it quiet, because the money is… was good, and the tips even better, and she was nice with us. All we had to do was going to the room when they left, and keep it clean and in order."

"Do you think she lived here?" she asked, and the boy shook again his head.

"She came here once, sometimes twice a week. She stayed a couple of hours, and then she left. He never left- that's why I went to the room. He was always there when Miss Angela was in the room, so I thought they were both already gone." The boy looked around, then got closer and closer to Lisbon, and talked with her in a conspiracy tone. "The people I work with, they think the room was for him. A gift, or, you know, a payment of sort."

"And you are talking about the man you saw leaving the room in a hurry, right?" Better to have her case in order and avoid inaccuracies or mistakes. She thought. Maybe Wayne and partridge were right, and the crime of passion was the right angle to play.

"He came and went as he pleased; sometimes we stood weeks before seeing him, sometimes he stayed inside the room for days. But when Miss Angela was here, he was never far, nor he left. It was like he didn't want, or couldn't leave her side. That's why I went to the room. I mean… he left in such an hurry, with a couple of suitcases… I thought maybe… they had a fallout or… her husband had found out about… him, you know."

"Who told you that Miss Angela's lovers was an escort?" she asked, adding two plus two, and connecting all the dots.

"I've never…!" Luke said, taking a step back, trying to defend himself, looking for an escape.

"No, you never said it, but you implied that she was seeing an escort when you talked about a payment for him. So, is that who he was?"

Luke shook his head. "I mean, it's not like we know the guy, or one of them talked, but, we just guessed it made sense, all right? And, don't get me wrong, it's not because she was older then him. I mean, older women can be hot, all right?"

Teresa rolled her eyes- Luke's eyes were firmly on her breasts, on the skin left uncovered by the open buttons of her blouse. Man are so easy, she thought.

"I mean, he looked like one. How he behaved, I mean. Or some kind of kept man, maybe. He spent money here and there, tipped us big time, like he wasn't even spending his own money. And when Miss Angela wasn't here, he came with many other women, too. All rich and classy. And all older then him."

"I guess you don't happen to have a name.." she didn't even bother to ask if they had surveillance cameras- unlikely, she guessed. That wasn't the kind of establishment that liked having its costumers being recognizable.

"They used often pet names, but I think she called him Rick one. Other than that, I don't know. I mean, you should have seen how he looked at her, like my parents, you know? I belied he was a boyfriend, or maybe that they were having an affair. But then he started coming here with other women, and he was way too casual about it. Like he didn't care we were seeing him sleeping around." He paused, like to better concentrate, his eyes getting a faraway look. "He is, I don't know. Charming, magnetic. You feel attracted to him, and I just don't mean sexually. It's like people felt the need to be around him, and man, doesn't he enjoy it?"

Ok. A male escort by the name of Rick; it wasn't a lot, but added to this the fact that Luke had seen him plenty of times, well, it gave her something to work with.

"Have you already given my colleague a description?"

Luke shook his head. "No, but trust me, you can't forget him. Around thirty years old, a little less than six feet, in good shape, always wearing tailored suits, like Armani or Calvin Klein, and then I think… green eyes? But not like yours: more like a mixture of green and blue, and then there are the curls. Blonde curls. My girlfriend talked with him once in the lobby, and couldn't stop being dreamy about them for a whole week." He paused. "I'm not sure if he looks more like a model or a god."

"So, let's say I'd ask you to follow me to the precinct and I show you some pictures…. Do you think you could recognize him?" she asked, flirting a little.

"You kidding? The guy is freaking perfect! Everybody could recognize him after having seeing him just once!"

She called back Ron, and asked him to bring the guy downtown, saying that she would have joined them asap; then, she got back to the room, where Cho and Rigsby were still waiting for the CSI guys to finish examine the crime scene. "Cho, I want you to look into the gang initiation theory. Rigsby, debrief with organized crime, and see if they have heard something about a mob hit. I'll talk with our bellboy and check in with Vice. Words were Angela was staying here with a gigolo, who had been quite in an hurry to flee the crime scene just before the body was found."

"What are you saying? That Partridge is right and we may already have our murderer?" Wayne asked as they left the room, and he walked her to her car, an hand on the small of her back.

"Or maybe we have a witness. And a way to send behind bars Red John once and for all."